From eb38e568373152058ed6a384b12f481d62b07ba4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2017 11:49:53 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 01/17] Add initial regex performance tool. --- .gitignore | 16 + 3200.txt | 302278 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ CMakeLists.txt | 61 + README.md | 50 +- src/CMakeLists.txt | 30 + src/hyperscan.c | 64 + src/main.c | 166 + src/main.h | 28 + src/onig.c | 56 + src/pcre2.c | 196 + src/re2.cpp | 66 + src/rust.c | 37 + src/rust/.cargo/config.in | 2 + src/rust/.gitignore | 2 + src/rust/CMakeLists.txt | 18 + src/rust/Cargo.toml | 12 + src/rust/include/rregex.h | 7 + src/rust/src/lib.rs | 40 + src/tre.c | 50 + src/version.h.in | 32 + vendor/CMakeLists.txt | 61 + vendor/hyperscan | 1 + vendor/oniguruma | 1 + vendor/pcre2/.gitignore | 6 + vendor/re2 | 1 + vendor/tre | 1 + 26 files changed, 303280 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) create mode 100644 3200.txt create mode 100644 CMakeLists.txt create mode 100644 src/CMakeLists.txt create mode 100644 src/hyperscan.c create mode 100644 src/main.c create mode 100644 src/main.h create mode 100644 src/onig.c create mode 100644 src/pcre2.c create mode 100644 src/re2.cpp create mode 100644 src/rust.c create mode 100644 src/rust/.cargo/config.in create mode 100644 src/rust/.gitignore create mode 100644 src/rust/CMakeLists.txt create mode 100644 src/rust/Cargo.toml create mode 100644 src/rust/include/rregex.h create mode 100644 src/rust/src/lib.rs create mode 100644 src/tre.c create mode 100644 src/version.h.in create mode 100644 vendor/CMakeLists.txt create mode 160000 vendor/hyperscan create mode 160000 vendor/oniguruma create mode 100644 vendor/pcre2/.gitignore create mode 160000 vendor/re2 create mode 160000 vendor/tre diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore index f805e81..14f6bad 100644 --- a/.gitignore +++ b/.gitignore @@ -31,3 +31,19 @@ # Debug files *.dSYM/ *.su + +# Project files +.cproject +.project +.settings/* + +# Build artifacts +build/* +vendor/local/* +src/rust/.cargo/config +src/version.h + +# Sub projects +vendor/pcre2/* + + diff --git a/3200.txt b/3200.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c1887db --- /dev/null +++ b/3200.txt @@ -0,0 +1,302278 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Mark +Twain, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net + + +Title: The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Mark Twain + +Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +Release Date: September 20, 2004 [EBook #3200] +[Date last updated: August 5, 2005 (Pudd'nhead Wilson update)] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPLETE PG TWAIN *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger and Many Project Gutenberg Volunteers + + + + + + THE ENTIRE GUTENBERG TWAIN FILES + + BY MARK TWAIN (SAMUEL CLEMENS) + + + +PG EDITOR'S NOTE: +This is a compilation of all the works of Mark Twain in the Project +Gutenberg Mark Twain collection which now has over sixty files. These +individual files have been prepared by many different Gutenberg +volunteers over a period of many years. Any of the individual works +may be found in much smaller size than this "entire" file at: + + http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/ + +As additional works of Mark Twain become available the present file will +be updated to include them. The bibliography of Twain by Albert Bigelow +Paine has been used in organizing the major works in this collection in +the order of the date of their first publication; however many of the +short stories, speeches and other shorter works are not in chronologic +order as they were originally included as part of major works of much +different publishing date. + D.W. + + + + + CONTENTS OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG TWAIN COLLECTION + +THE INNOCENTS ABROAD +MARK TWAIN'S (BURLESQUE) AUTO-BIOGRAPHY + FIRST ROMANCE. +ROUGHING IT +THE GILDED AGE (with Charles Dudley Warner) +SKETCHES NEW AND OLD + MY WATCH + POLITICAL ECONOMY + THE JUMPING FROG + JOURNALISM IN TENNESSEE + THE STORY OF THE BAD LITTLE BOY + THE STORY OF THE GOOD LITTLE BOY + A COUPLE OF POEMS BY TWAIN AND MOORE + NIAGARA + ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS + TO RAISE POULTRY + EXPERIENCE OF THE MCWILLIAMSES WITH MEMBRANOUS CROUP + MY FIRST LITERARY VENTURE + HOW THE AUTHOR WAS SOLD IN NEWARK + THE OFFICE BORE + JOHNNY GREER + THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF THE GREAT BEEF CONTRACT + THE CASE OF GEORGE FISHER + DISGRACEFUL PERSECUTION OF A BOY + THE JUDGES "SPIRITED WOMAN" + INFORMATION WANTED + SOME LEARNED FABLES, FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS + MY LATE SENATORIAL SECRETARYSHIP + A FASHION ITEM + RILEY-NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT + A FINE OLD MAN + SCIENCE vs. LUCK + THE LATE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN + MR. BLOKE'S ITEM + A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE + PETITION CONCERNING COPYRIGHT + AFTER-DINNER SPEECH + LIONIZING MURDERERS + A NEW CRIME + A CURIOUS DREAM + A TRUE STORY + THE SIAMESE TWINS + SPEECH AT THE SCOTTISH BANQUET IN LONDON + A GHOST STORY + THE CAPITOLINE VENUS + SPEECH ON ACCIDENT INSURANCE + JOHN CHINAMAN IN NEW YORK + HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER + THE PETRIFIED MAN + MY BLOODY MASSACRE + THE UNDERTAKER'S CHAT + CONCERNING CHAMBERMAIDS + AURELIA'S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN + "AFTER" JENKINS + ABOUT BARBERS + "PARTY CRIES" IN IRELAND + THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECANT RESIGNATION + HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF + HONORED AS A CURIOSITY + FIRST INTERVIEW KITH ARTEMUS WARD + CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS + THE KILLING OF JULIUS CAESAR "LOCALIZED" + THE WIDOW'S PROTEST + THE SCRIPTURAL PANORAMIST + CURING A COLD + A CURIOUS PLEASURE EXCURSION + RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR + A MYSTERIOUS VISIT +THE CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR AND OTHER WHIMSICAL SKETCHES + THE CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR + A MEMORY + INTRODUCTORY TO "MEMORANDA". + ABOUT SMELLS + A COUPLE OF SAD EXPERIENCES + DAN MURPHY + THE "TOURNAMENT" IN A.D. 1870 + CURIOUS RELIC FOR SALE + A REMINISCENCE OF THE BACK SETTLEMENTS + A ROYAL COMPLIMENT + THE APPROACHING EPIDEMIC + THE TONE-IMPARTING COMMITTEE + OUR PRECIOUS LUNATIC + THE EUROPEAN WAR + THE WILD MAN INTERVIEWED + LAST WORDS OF GREAT MEN +1601--CONVERSATION AT THE SOCIAL FIRESIDE OF THE TUDORS +THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME IN CONNECTICUT +THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER +THE LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON AND OTHER STORIES + THE LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON + ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING + ABOUT MAGNANIMOUS-INCIDENT LITERATURE + THE GRATEFUL POODLE + THE BENEVOLENT AUTHOR + THE GRATEFUL HUSBAND + PUNCH, BROTHERS, PUNCH + THE GREAT REVOLUTION IN PITCAIRN + THE CANVASSER'S TALE + AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER + PARIS NOTES + LEGEND OF SAGENFELD, IN GERMANY + SPEECH ON THE BABIES + SPEECH ON THE WEATHER + CONCERNING THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE + ROGERS +SOME RAMBLING NOTES OF AN IDLE EXCURSION +THE STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT +A TRAMP ABROAD +THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER +LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI +THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN +A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT +THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT +EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY +IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY +FENNIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES +ESSAYS ON PAUL BOURGET + WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US + A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET +TOM SAWYER ABROAD +THE TRAGEDY OF PUDD'NHEAD WILSON +THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS +PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC +TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE +FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD +THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG AND OTHER STORIES + THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG + MY FIRST LIE, AND HOW I GOT OUT OF IT + THE ESQUIMAUX MAIDEN'S ROMANCE + CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY + IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD? + MY DEBUT AS A LITERARY PERSON + AT THE APPETITE-CURE + CONCERNING THE JEWS + FROM THE 'LONDON TIMES' OF 1904 + ABOUT PLAY-ACTING + TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER + DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES + LUCK + THE CAPTAIN'S STORY + STIRRING TIMES IN AUSTRIA + MEISTERSCHAFT + MY BOYHOOD DREAMS + TO THE ABOVE OLD PEOPLE + IN MEMORIAM--OLIVIA SUSAN CLEMENS +WHAT IS MAN AND OTHER ESSAYS + WHAT IS MAN? + THE DEATH OF JEAN + THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE + HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK + THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION + A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY + SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY + AT THE SHRINE OF ST. WAGNER + WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS + ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT + A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET + AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY + CONCERNING TOBACCO + TAMING THE BICYCLE + IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD? +THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER AND OTHER STORIES + THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER + A FABLE + HUNTING THE DECEITFUL TURKEY + THE McWILLIAMSES AND THE BURGLAR ALARM +A DOUBLE BARRELED DETECTIVE +THE $30,000 BEQUEST AND OTHER STORIES + THE $30,000 BEQUEST + A DOG'S TALE + WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL? + A CURE FOR THE BLUES + THE ENEMY CONQUERED; OR, LOVE TRIUMPHANT + THE CALIFORNIAN'S TALE + A HELPLESS SITUATION + A TELEPHONIC CONVERSATION + EDWARD MILLS AND GEORGE BENTON: A TALE + THE FIVE BOONS OF LIFE + THE FIRST WRITING-MACHINES + ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER + ITALIAN WITH GRAMMAR + A BURLESQUE BIOGRAPHY + HOW TO TELL A STORY + GENERAL WASHINGTON'S NEGRO BODY-SERVANT + WIT INSPIRATIONS OF THE "TWO-YEAR-OLDS" + AN ENTERTAINING ARTICLE + A LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY + AMENDED OBITUARIES + A MONUMENT TO ADAM + A HUMANE WORD FROM SATAN + INTRODUCTION TO "THE NEW GUIDE OF THE + CONVERSATION IN PORTUGUESE AND ENGLISH" + ADVICE TO LITTLE GIRLS + POST-MORTEM POETRY + THE DANGER OF LYING IN BED + PORTRAIT OF KING WILLIAM III + DOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD? + EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY + EVE'S DIARY +A HORSE'S TALE +CHRISTIAN SCIENCE +EXTRACT FROM CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN +IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD? +ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING +GOLDSMITH'S FRIEND ABROAD AGAIN +HOW TO TELL A STORY AND OTHER STORIES + HOW TO TELL A STORY + THE WOUNDED SOLDIER + THE GOLDEN ARM + MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN + THE INVALIDS STORY +MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES + INTRODUCTION + PREFACE + THE STORY OF A SPEECH + PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS + COMPLIMENTS AND DEGREES + BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS + DEDICATION SPEECH + DIE SCHRECKEN DER DEUTSCHEN SPRACHE. + THE HORRORS OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE + GERMAN FOR THE HUNGARIANS + A NEW GERMAN WORD + UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM + THE WEATHER + THE BABIES + OUR CHILDREN AND GREAT DISCOVERIES + EDUCATING THEATRE-GOERS + THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE + POETS AS POLICEMEN + PUDD'NHEAD WILSON DRAMATIZED + DALY THEATRE + THE DRESS OF CIVILIZED WOMAN + DRESS REFORM AND COPYRIGHT + COLLEGE GIRLS + GIRLS + THE LADIES + WOMAN'S PRESS CLUB + VOTES FOR WOMEN + WOMAN-AN OPINION + ADVICE TO GIRLS + TAXES AND MORALS + TAMMANY AND CROKER + MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION + MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT + CHINA AND THE PHILIPPINES + THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL MORALS + LAYMAN'S SERMON + UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT SOCIETY + PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION + EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP + COURAGE + THE DINNER TO MR. CHOATE + ON STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE + HENRY M. STANLEY + DINNER TO MR. JEROME + HENRY IRVING + DINNER TO HAMILTON W. MABIE + INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY + DINNER TO WHITELAW REID + ROGERS AND RAILROADS + THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER + SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS + READING-ROOM OPENING + LITERATURE + DISAPPEARANCE OF LITERATURE + THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER + THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING + SPELLING AND PICTURES + BOOKS AND BURGLARS + AUTHORS' CLUB + BOOKSELLERS + "MARK TWAIN's FIRST APPEARANCE" + MORALS AND MEMORY + QUEEN VICTORIA + JOAN OF ARC + ACCIDENT INSURANCE--ETC. + OSTEOPATHY + WATER-SUPPLY + MISTAKEN IDENTITY + CATS AND CANDY + OBITUARY POETRY + CIGARS AND TOBACCO + BILLIARDS + THE UNION RIGHT OR WRONG? + AN IDEAL FRENCH ADDRESS + STATISTICS + GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR + SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE + CHARITY AND ACTORS + RUSSIAN REPUBLIC + RUSSIAN SUFFERERS + WATTERSON AND TWAIN AS REBELS + ROBERT FULTON FUND + FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN + LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF MARK TWAIN + COPYRIGHT + IN AID OF THE BLIND + DR. MARK TWAIN, FARMEOPATH + MISSOURI UNIVERSITY SPEECH + BUSINESS + CARNEGIE THE BENEFACTOR + ON POETRY, VERACITY, AND SUICIDE + WELCOME HOME + AN UNDELIVERED SPEECH + SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY + TO THE WHITEFRIARS + THE ASCOT GOLD CUP + THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER + GENERAL MILES AND THE DOG + WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH + THE DAY WE CELEBRATE + INDEPENDENCE DAY + AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH + ABOUT LONDON + PRINCETON + THE ST. LOUIS HARBOR-BOAT "MARK TWAIN" + SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY +MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1853-1910 + ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE + + + + + + THE COMPLETE PROJECT GUTENBERG MARK TWAIN + + + + + +INNOCENTS ABROAD + +by Mark Twain + + +[From an 1869--1st Edition] + + + + CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER I. +Popular Talk of the Excursion--Programme of the Trip--Duly Ticketed for +the Excursion--Defection of the Celebrities + + CHAPTER II. +Grand Preparations--An Imposing Dignitary--The European Exodus +--Mr. Blucher's Opinion--Stateroom No. 10--The Assembling of the Clans +--At Sea at Last + + CHAPTER III. +"Averaging" the Passengers--Far, far at Sea.--Tribulation among the +Patriarchs--Seeking Amusement under Difficulties--Five Captains in the +Ship + + CHAPTER IV. +The Pilgrims Becoming Domesticated--Pilgrim Life at Sea +--"Horse-Billiards"--The "Synagogue"--The Writing School--Jack's "Journal" +--The "Q. C. Club"--The Magic Lantern--State Ball on Deck--Mock Trials +--Charades--Pilgrim Solemnity--Slow Music--The Executive Officer Delivers +an Opinion + + CHAPTER V. +Summer in Mid-Atlantic--An Eccentric Moon--Mr. Blucher Loses Confidence +--The Mystery of "Ship Time"--The Denizens of the Deep--"Land Hoh" +--The First Landing on a Foreign Shore--Sensation among the Natives +--Something about the Azores Islands--Blucher's Disastrous Dinner +--The Happy Result + + CHAPTER VI. +Solid Information--A Fossil Community--Curious Ways and Customs +--JesuitHumbuggery--Fantastic Pilgrimizing--Origin of the Russ Pavement +--Squaring Accounts with the Fossils--At Sea Again + + CHAPTER VII. +A Tempest at Night--Spain and Africa on Exhibition--Greeting a Majestic +Stranger--The Pillars of Hercules--The Rock of Gibraltar--Tiresome +Repetition--"The Queen's Chair"--Serenity Conquered--Curiosities of +the Secret Caverns--Personnel of Gibraltar--Some Odd Characters +--A Private Frolic in Africa--Bearding a Moorish Garrison (without loss +of life)--Vanity Rebuked--Disembarking in the Empire of Morocco + + CHAPTER VIII. +The Ancient City of Tangier, Morocco--Strange Sights--A Cradle of +Antiquity--We become Wealthy--How they Rob the Mail in Africa--The Danger +of being Opulent in Morocco + + CHAPTER IX. +A Pilgrim--in Deadly Peril--How they Mended the Clock--Moorish +Punishments for Crime--Marriage Customs--Looking Several ways for Sunday +--Shrewd, Practice of Mohammedan Pilgrims--Reverence for Cats--Bliss of +being a Consul-General + + CHAPTER X. +Fourth of July at Sea--Mediterranean Sunset--The "Oracle" is Delivered +of an Opinion--Celebration Ceremonies--The Captain's Speech--France in +Sight--The Ignorant Native--In Marseilles--Another Blunder--Lost in +the Great City--Found Again--A Frenchy Scene + + CHAPTER XI. +Getting used to it--No Soap--Bill of Fare, Table d'hote--"An American +Sir"--A Curious Discovery--The "Pilgrim" Bird--Strange Companionship +--A Grave of the Living--A Long Captivity--Some of Dumas' Heroes--Dungeon +of the Famous "Iron Mask." + + CHAPTXR XII. +A Holiday Flight through France--Summer Garb of the Landscape--Abroad +on the Great Plains--Peculiarities of French Cars--French Politeness +American Railway Officials--"Twenty Mnutes to Dinner!"--Why there +are no Accidents--The "Old Travellers"--Still on the Wing--Paris at +Last----French Order and Quiet--Place of the Bastile--Seeing the Sights +--A Barbarous Atrocity--Absurd Billiards + + CHAPTER XIII. +More Trouble--Monsieur Billfinger--Re-Christening the Frenchman--In the +Clutches of a Paris Guide--The International Exposition--Fine Military +Review--Glimpse of the Emperor Napoleon and the Sultan of Turkey + + CHAPTER XIV. +The Venerable Cathedral of Notre-Dame--Jean Sanspeur's Addition +--Treasures and Sacred Relics--The Legend of the Cross--The Morgue--The +Outrageious 'Can-Can'--Blondin Aflame--The Louvre Palace--The Great Park +--Showy Pageantry--Preservation of Noted Things + + CHAPTER XV. +French National Burying--Ground--Among the Great Dead--The Shrine of +Disappointed Love--The Story of Abelard and Heloise--"English Spoken +Here"--"American Drinks Compounded Here"--Imperial Honors to an +American--The Over-estimated Grisette--Departure from Paris--A Deliberate +Opinion Concerning the Comeliness of American Women + + CHAPTER XVI. +Versailles--Paradise Regained--A Wonderful Park--Paradise Lost +--Napoleonic Strategy + + CHAPTER XVII. +War--The American Forces Victorious--" Home Again"--Italy in Sight +The "City of Palaces"--Beauty of the Genoese Women--The "Stub-Hunters" +--Among the Palaces--Gifted Guide--Church Magnificence--"Women not +Admitted"--How the Genoese Live--Massive Architecture--A Scrap of Ancient +History--Graves for 60,000 + + CHAPTER XVIII. +Flying Through Italy--Marengo--First Glimpse of the Famous Cathedral +--Description of some of its Wonders--A Horror Carved in Stone----An +Unpleasant Adventure--A Good Man--A Sermon from the Tomb--Tons of Gold +and Silver--Some More Holy Relics--Solomon's Temple + + CHAPTER XIX +"Do You Wiz zo Haut can be?"--La Scala--Petrarch and Laura--Lucrezia +Borgia--Ingenious Frescoes--Ancient Roman Amphitheatre--A Clever +Delusion--Distressing Billiards--The Chief Charm of European Life--An +Italian Bath--Wanted: Soap--Crippled French--Mutilated English--The Most +Celebrated Painting in the World--Amateur Raptures--Uninspired Critics +--Anecdote--A Wonderful Echo--A Kiss for a Franc + + CHAPTER XX +Rural Italy by Rail--Fumigated, According to Law--The Sorrowing +Englishman--Night by the Lake of Como--The Famous Lake--Its Scenery +--Como compared with Tahoe--Meeting a Shipmate + + CHAPTER XXI. +The Pretty Lago di Lecco--A Carriage Drive in the Country--Astonishing +Sociability in a Coachman--Sleepy Land--Bloody Shrines--The Heart and +Home of Priestcraft--A Thrilling Mediaeval Romance--The Birthplace of +Harlequin--Approaching Venice + + CHAPTER XXII. +Night in Venice--The "Gay Gondolier"--The Grand Fete by Moonlight +--The Notable Sights of Venice--The Mother of the Republics Desolate + + CHANTER XXIII. +The Famous Gondola--The Gondola in an Unromantic Aspect--The Great Square +of St. Mark and the Winged Lion--Snobs, at Home and Abroad--Sepulchres of +the Great Dead--A Tilt at the "Old Masters"--A Contraband Guide +--The Conspiracy--Moving Again + + CHAPTER XXIV. +Down Through Italy by Rail--Idling in Florence--Dante and Galileo--An +Ungrateful City--Dazzling Generosity--Wonderful Mosaics--The Historical +Arno--Lost Again--Found Again, but no Fatted Calf Ready--The Leaning +Tower of Pisa--The Ancient Duomo--The Old Original First Pendulum that +Ever Swung--An Enchanting Echo--A New Holy Sepulchre--A Relic of +Antiquity--A Fallen Republic--At Leghorn--At Home Again, and Satisfied, +on Board the Ship--Our Vessel an Object of Grave Suspicion--Garibaldi +Visited--Threats of Quarantine + + CHAPTER XXV. +The Works of Bankruptcy--Railway Grandeur--How to Fill an Empty +Treasury--The Sumptuousness of Mother Church--Ecclesiastical Splendor +--Magnificence and Misery--General Execration--More Magnificence +A Good Word for the Priests--Civita Vecchia the Dismal--Off for Rome + + CHAPTER XXVI. +The Modern Roman on His Travels--The Grandeur of St. Peter's--Holy Relics +--Grand View from the Dome--The Holy Inquisition--Interesting Old Monkish +Frauds--The Ruined Coliseum--The Coliseum in the Days of its Prime +--Ancient Playbill of a Coliseum Performance--A Roman Newspaper Criticism +1700 Years Old + + CHAPTER XXVII. +"Butchered to Make a Roman Holiday"--The Man who Never Complained +--An Exasperating Subject--Asinine Guides--The Roman Catacombs +The Saint Whose Fervor Burst his Ribs--The Miracle of the Bleeding Heart +--The Legend of Ara Coeli + + CHAPTER XXVIII. +Picturesque Horrors--The Legend of Brother Thomas--Sorrow Scientifically +Analyzed--A Festive Company of the Dead--The Great Vatican Museum +Artist Sins of Omission--The Rape of the Sabines--Papal Protection of +Art--High Price of "Old Masters"--Improved Scripture--Scale of Rank +of the Holy Personages in Rome--Scale of Honors Accorded Them +--Fossilizing--Away for Naples + + CHAPTER XXIX. +Naples--In Quarantine at Last--Annunciation--Ascent of Mount Vesuvius--A +Two Cent Community--The Black Side of Neapolitan Character--Monkish +Miracles--Ascent of Mount Vesuvius Continued--The Stranger and the +Hackman--Night View of Naples from the Mountain-side---Ascent of Mount +Vesuvius Continued + + CHAPTER XXX. +Ascent of Mount Vesuvius Continued--Beautiful View at Dawn--Less +Beautiful in the Back Streets--Ascent of Vesuvius Continued--Dwellings a +Hundred Feet High--A Motley Procession--Bill of Fare for a Peddler's +Breakfast--Princely Salaries--Ascent of Vesuvius Continued--An Average of +Prices--The wonderful "Blue Grotto"--Visit to Celebrated Localities in +the Bay of Naples--The Poisoned "Grotto of the Dog"--A Petrified Sea of +Lava--Ascent of Mount Vesuvius Continued--The Summit Reached--Description +of the Crater--Descent of Vesuvius + + CHAPTER XXXI. +The Buried City of Pompeii--How Dwellings Appear that have been +Unoccupied for Eighteen hundred years--The Judgment Seat--Desolation--The +Footprints of the Departed--"No Women Admitted"--Theatres, Bakeshops, +Schools--Skeletons preserved by the Ashes and Cinders--The Brave Martyr +to Duty--Rip Van Winkle--The Perishable Nature of Fame + + CHAPTER XXXII. +At Sea Once More--The Pilgrims all Well--Superb Stromboli--Sicily by +Moonlight--Scylla and Charybdis--The "Oracle" at Fault--Skirting the +Isles of Greece Ancient Athens--Blockaded by Quarantine and Refused +Permission to Enter--Running the Blockade--A Bloodless Midnight +Adventure--Turning Robbers from Necessity--Attempt to Carry the Acropolis +by Storm--We Fail--Among the Glories of the Past--A World of Ruined +Sculpture--A Fairy Vision--Famous Localities--Retreating in Good Order +--Captured by the Guards--Travelling in Military State--Safe on Board +Again + + CHAPTER XXXIII. +Modern Greece--Fallen Greatness--Sailing Through the Archipelago and the +Dardanelles--Footprints of History--The First Shoddy Contractor of whom +History gives any Account--Anchored Before Constantinople--Fantastic +Fashions--The Ingenious Goose-Rancher--Marvelous Cripples--The Great +Mosque--The Thousand and One Columns--The Grand Bazaar of Stamboul + + CHAPTER XXXIV. +Scarcity of Morals and Whiskey--Slave-Girl Market Report--Commercial +Morality at a Discount--The Slandered Dogs of Constantinople +--Questionable Delights of Newspaperdom in Turkey--Ingenious Italian +Journalism--No More Turkish Lunches Desired--The Turkish Bath Fraud +--The Narghileh Fraud--Jackplaned by a Native--The Turkish Coffee Fraud + + CHAPTER XXXV. +Sailing Through the Bosporus and the Black Sea--"Far-Away Moses" +--Melancholy Sebastopol--Hospitably Received in Russia--Pleasant English +People--Desperate Fighting--Relic Hunting--How Travellers Form "Cabinets" + + CHAPTER XXXVI. +Nine Thousand Miles East--Imitation American Town in Russia--Gratitude +that Came Too Late--To Visit the Autocrat of All the Russias + + CHAPTER XXXVII. +Summer Home of Royalty--Practising for the Dread Ordeal--Committee on +Imperial Address--Reception by the Emperor and Family--Dresses of the +Imperial Party--Concentrated Power--Counting the Spoons--At the Grand +Duke's--A Charming Villa--A Knightly Figure--The Grand Duchess--A Grand +Ducal Breakfast--Baker's Boy, the Famine-Breeder--Theatrical Monarchs a +Fraud--Saved as by Fire--The Governor--General's Visit to the Ship +--Official "Style"--Aristocratic Visitors--"Munchausenizing" with Them +--Closing Ceremonies + + CHAPTER XXXVIII. +Return to Constantinople--We Sail for Asia--The Sailors Burlesque the +Imperial Visitors--Ancient Smyrna--The "Oriental Splendor" Fraud +--The "Biblical Crown of Life"--Pilgrim Prophecy-Savans--Sociable +Armenian Girls--A Sweet Reminiscence--"The Camels are Coming, Ha-ha!" + + CHAPTER XXXIX. +Smyrna's Lions--The Martyr Polycarp--The "Seven Churches"--Remains of the +Six Smyrnas--Mysterious Oyster Mine Oysters--Seeking Scenery--A Millerite +Tradition--A Railroad Out of its Sphere + + CHAPTER XL. +Journeying Toward Ancient Ephesus--Ancient Ayassalook--The Villanous +Donkey--A Fantastic Procession--Bygone Magnificence--Fragments of +History--The Legend of the Seven Sleepers + + CHAPTER XLI. +Vandalism Prohibited--Angry Pilgrims--Approaching Holy Land!--The "Shrill +Note of Preparation"--Distress About Dragomans and Transportation +--The "Long Route" Adopted--In Syria--Something about Beirout--A Choice +Specimen of a Greek "Ferguson"--Outfits--Hideous Horseflesh--Pilgrim +"Style"--What of Aladdin's Lamp? + + CHAPTER XLII. +"Jacksonville," in the Mountains of Lebanon--Breakfasting above a Grand +Panorama--The Vanished City--The Peculiar Steed, "Jericho"--The Pilgrims +Progress--Bible Scenes--Mount Hermon, Joshua's Battle Fields, etc. +--The Tomb of Noah--A Most Unfortunate People + + CHAPTER XLIII. +Patriarchal Customs--Magnificent Baalbec--Description of the Ruins +--Scribbling Smiths and Joneses--Pilgrim Fidelity to the Letter of the Law +--The Revered Fountain of Baalam's Ass + + CHAPTER XLIV. +Extracts from Note-Book--Mahomet's Paradise and the Bible's--Beautiful +Damascus the Oldest City on Earth--Oriental Scenes within the Curious Old +City--Damascus Street Car--The Story of St. Paul--The "Street called +Straight"--Mahomet's Tomb and St. George's--The Christian Massacre +--Mohammedan Dread of Pollution--The House of Naaman +--The Horrors of Leprosy + + CHAPTER XLV. +The Cholera by way of Variety--Hot--Another Outlandish Procession--Pen +and-Ink Photograph of "Jonesborough," Syria--Tomb of Nimrod, the Mighty +Hunter--The Stateliest Ruin of All--Stepping over the Borders of +Holy-Land--Bathing in the Sources of Jordan--More "Specimen" Hunting +--Ruins of Cesarea--Philippi--"On This Rock Will I Build my Church"--The +People the Disciples Knew--The Noble Steed "Baalbec"--Sentimental Horse +Idolatry of the Arabs + + CHAPTER XLVI. +Dan--Bashan--Genessaret--A Notable Panorama--Smallness of Palestine +--Scraps of History--Character of the Country--Bedouin Shepherds--Glimpses +of the Hoary Past--Mr. Grimes's Bedouins--A Battle--Ground of Joshua +--That Soldier's Manner of Fighting--Barak's Battle--The Necessity of +Unlearning Some Things--Desolation + + CHAPTER XLVII. +"Jack's Adventure"--Joseph's Pit--The Story of Joseph--Joseph's +Magnanimity and Esau's--The Sacred Lake of Genessaret--Enthusiasm of the +Pilgrims--Why We did not Sail on Galilee--About Capernaum--Concerning the +Saviour's Brothers and Sisters--Journeying toward Magdela + + CHAPTER XLVIII. +Curious Specimens of Art and Architecture--Public Reception of the +Pilgrims--Mary Magdalen's House--Tiberias and its Queer Inhabitants +--The Sacred Sea of Galilee--Galilee by Night + + CHAPTER XLIX. +The Ancient Baths--Ye Apparition--A Distinguished Panorama--The Last +Battle of the Crusades--The Story of the Lord of Kerak--Mount Tabor +--What one Sees from its Top--Memory of a Wonderful Garden--The House of +Deborah the Prophetess + + CHAPTER L. +Toward Nazareth--Bitten By a Camel--Grotto of the Annunciation, Nazareth +--Noted Grottoes in General--Joseph's Workshop--A Sacred Bowlder +--The Fountain of the Virgin--Questionable Female Beauty +--Literary Curiosities + + CHAPTER LI. +Boyhood of the Saviour--Unseemly Antics of Sober Pilgrims--Home of the +Witch of Endor--Nain--Profanation--A Popular Oriental Picture--Biblical +Metaphors Becoming steadily More Intelligible--The Shuuem Miracle +--The "Free Son of The Desert"--Ancient Jezrael--Jehu's Achievements +--Samaria and its Famous Siege + + CHAPTER LII +Curious Remnant of the Past--Shechem--The Oldest "First Family" on Earth +--The Oldest Manuscript Extant--The Genuine Tomb of Joseph--Jacob's Well +--Shiloh--Camping with the Arabs--Jacob's Ladder--More Desolation +--Ramah, Beroth, the Tomb of Samuel, The Fountain of Beira--Impatience +--Approaching Jerusalem--The Holy City in Sight--Noting Its Prominent +Features--Domiciled Within the Sacred Walls + + CHAPTER LIII. +"The Joy of the Whole Earth"--Description of Jerusalem--Church of the +Holy Sepulchre--The Stone of Unction--The Grave of Jesus--Graves of +Nicodemus and Joseph of Armattea--Places of the Apparition--The Finding +of the There Crosses----The Legend--Monkish Impostures--The Pillar of +Flagellation--The Place of a Relic--Godfrey's Sword--"The Bonds of +Christ"--"The Center of the Earth"--Place whence the Dust was taken of +which Adam was Made--Grave of Adam--The Martyred Soldier--The Copper +Plate that was on the Cross--The Good St. Helena--Place of the Division +of the Garments--St. Dimas, the Penitent Thief--The Late Emperor +Maximilian's Contribution--Grotto wherein the Crosses were Found, and the +Nails, and the Crown of Thorns--Chapel of the Mocking--Tomb of +Melchizedek--Graves of Two Renowned Crusaders--The Place of the +Crucifixion + + CHAPTER LIV. +The "Sorrowful Way"--The Legend of St. Veronica's Handkerchief +--An Illustrious Stone--House of the Wandering Jew--The Tradition of the +Wanderer--Solomon's Temple--Mosque of Omar--Moslem Traditions--"Women not +Admitted"--The Fate of a Gossip--Turkish Sacred Relics--Judgment Seat of +David and Saul--Genuine Precious Remains of Solomon's Temple--Surfeited +with Sights--The Pool of Siloam--The Garden of Gethsemane and Other +Sacred Localities + + CHAPTER LV. +Rebellion in the Camp--Charms of Nomadic Life--Dismal Rumors--En Route +for Jericho and The Dead Sea--Pilgrim Strategy--Bethany and the Dwelling +of Lazarus--"Bedouins!"--Ancient Jericho--Misery--The Night March +--The Dead Sea--An Idea of What a "Wilderness" in Palestine is--The Holy +hermits of Mars Saba--Good St. Saba--Women not Admitted--Buried from the +World for all Time--Unselfish Catholic Benevolence--Gazelles--The Plain +of the Shepherds--Birthplace of the Saviour, Bethlehem--Church of the +Nativity--Its Hundred Holy Places--The Famous "Milk" Grotto--Tradition +--Return to Jerusalem--Exhausted + + CHAPTER LVI. +Departure from Jerusalem--Samson--The Plain of Sharon--Arrival at Joppa +--Horse of Simon the Tanner--The Long Pilgrimage Ended--Character of +Palestine Scenery--The Curse + + CHAPTER LVII. +The Happiness of being at Sea once more--"Home" as it is in a Pleasure +Ship--"Shaking Hands" with the Vessel--Jack in Costume--His Father's +Parting Advice--Approaching Egypt--Ashore in Alexandria--A Deserved +Compliment for the Donkeys--Invasion of the Lost Tribes of America--End +of the Celebrated "Jaffa Colony"--Scenes in Grand Cairo--Shepheard's +Hotel Contrasted with a Certain American Hotel--Preparing for the +Pyramids + + CHAPTER LVIII. +"Recherche" Donkeys--A Wild Ride--Specimens of Egyptian Modesty--Moses in +the Bulrushes--Place where the Holy Family Sojourned--Distant view of the +Pyramids--A Nearer View--The Ascent--Superb View from the top of the +Pyramid--"Backsheesh! Backsheesh!"--An Arab Exploit--In the Bowels of the +Pyramid--Strategy--Reminiscence of "Holiday's Hill"--Boyish Exploit--The +Majestic Sphynx--Things the Author will not Tell--Grand Old Egypt + + CHAPTER LIX. +Going Home--A Demoralized Note-Book--A Boy's Diary--Mere Mention of Old +Spain--Departure from Cadiz--A Deserved Rebuke--The Beautiful Madeiras +--Tabooed--In the Delightful Bermudas--An English Welcome--Good-by to +"Our Friends the Bermudians"--Packing Trunks for Home--Our First +Accident--The Long Cruise Drawing to a Close--At Home--Amen + + CHAPTER LX. +Thankless Devotion--A Newspaper Valedictory--Conclusion + + + + + + + PREFACE + +This book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a +solemn scientific expedition, it would have about it that gravity, that +profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper +to works of that kind, and withal so attractive. Yet notwithstanding it +is only a record of a pic-nic, it has a purpose, which is to suggest to +the reader how he would be likely to see Europe and the East if he looked +at them with his own eyes instead of the eyes of those who traveled in +those countries before him. I make small pretense of showing anyone how +he ought to look at objects of interest beyond the sea--other books do +that, and therefore, even if I were competent to do it, there is no need. + +I offer no apologies for any departures from the usual style of +travel-writing that may be charged against me--for I think I have seen with +impartial eyes, and I am sure I have written at least honestly, whether +wisely or not. + +In this volume I have used portions of letters which I wrote for the +Daily Alta California, of San Francisco, the proprietors of that journal +having waived their rights and given me the necessary permission. I have +also inserted portions of several letters written for the New York +Tribune and the New York Herald. + +THE AUTHOR. +SAN FRANCISCO. + + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +For months the great pleasure excursion to Europe and the Holy Land was +chatted about in the newspapers everywhere in America and discussed at +countless firesides. It was a novelty in the way of excursions--its like +had not been thought of before, and it compelled that interest which +attractive novelties always command. It was to be a picnic on a gigantic +scale. The participants in it, instead of freighting an ungainly steam +ferry--boat with youth and beauty and pies and doughnuts, and paddling up +some obscure creek to disembark upon a grassy lawn and wear themselves +out with a long summer day's laborious frolicking under the impression +that it was fun, were to sail away in a great steamship with flags flying +and cannon pealing, and take a royal holiday beyond the broad ocean in +many a strange clime and in many a land renowned in history! They were to +sail for months over the breezy Atlantic and the sunny Mediterranean; +they were to scamper about the decks by day, filling the ship with shouts +and laughter--or read novels and poetry in the shade of the smokestacks, +or watch for the jelly-fish and the nautilus over the side, and the +shark, the whale, and other strange monsters of the deep; and at night +they were to dance in the open air, on the upper deck, in the midst of a +ballroom that stretched from horizon to horizon, and was domed by the +bending heavens and lighted by no meaner lamps than the stars and the +magnificent moon--dance, and promenade, and smoke, and sing, and make +love, and search the skies for constellations that never associate with +the "Big Dipper" they were so tired of; and they were to see the ships of +twenty navies--the customs and costumes of twenty curious peoples--the +great cities of half a world--they were to hob-nob with nobility and hold +friendly converse with kings and princes, grand moguls, and the anointed +lords of mighty empires! It was a brave conception; it was the offspring +of a most ingenious brain. It was well advertised, but it hardly needed +it: the bold originality, the extraordinary character, the seductive +nature, and the vastness of the enterprise provoked comment everywhere +and advertised it in every household in the land. Who could read the +program of the excursion without longing to make one of the party? I will +insert it here. It is almost as good as a map. As a text for this book, +nothing could be better: + + EXCURSION TO THE HOLY LAND, EGYPT, + THE CRIMEA, GREECE, AND INTERMEDIATE POINTS OF INTEREST. + BROOKLYN, February 1st, 1867 + + The undersigned will make an excursion as above during the coming + season, and begs to submit to you the following programme: + + A first-class steamer, to be under his own command, and capable of + accommodating at least one hundred and fifty cabin passengers, will + be selected, in which will be taken a select company, numbering not + more than three-fourths of the ship's capacity. There is good + reason to believe that this company can be easily made up in this + immediate vicinity, of mutual friends and acquaintances. + + The steamer will be provided with every necessary comfort, + including library and musical instruments. + + An experienced physician will be on board. + + Leaving New York about June 1st, a middle and pleasant route will + be taken across the Atlantic, and passing through the group of + Azores, St. Michael will be reached in about ten days. A day or two + will be spent here, enjoying the fruit and wild scenery of these + islands, and the voyage continued, and Gibraltar reached in three or + four days. + + A day or two will be spent here in looking over the wonderful + subterraneous fortifications, permission to visit these galleries + being readily obtained. + + From Gibraltar, running along the coasts of Spain and France, + Marseilles will be reached in three days. Here ample time will be + given not only to look over the city, which was founded six hundred + years before the Christian era, and its artificial port, the finest + of the kind in the Mediterranean, but to visit Paris during the + Great Exhibition; and the beautiful city of Lyons, lying + intermediate, from the heights of which, on a clear day, Mont Blanc + and the Alps can be distinctly seen. Passengers who may wish to + extend the time at Paris can do so, and, passing down through + Switzerland, rejoin the steamer at Genoa. + + From Marseilles to Genoa is a run of one night. The excursionists + will have an opportunity to look over this, the "magnificent city of + palaces," and visit the birthplace of Columbus, twelve miles off, + over a beautiful road built by Napoleon I. From this point, + excursions may be made to Milan, Lakes Como and Maggiore, or to + Milan, Verona (famous for its extraordinary fortifications), Padua, + and Venice. Or, if passengers desire to visit Parma (famous for + Correggio's frescoes) and Bologna, they can by rail go on to + Florence, and rejoin the steamer at Leghorn, thus spending about + three weeks amid the cities most famous for art in Italy. + + From Genoa the run to Leghorn will be made along the coast in one + night, and time appropriated to this point in which to visit + Florence, its palaces and galleries; Pisa, its cathedral and + "Leaning Tower," and Lucca and its baths, and Roman amphitheater; + Florence, the most remote, being distant by rail about sixty miles. + + From Leghorn to Naples (calling at Civita Vecchia to land any who + may prefer to go to Rome from that point), the distance will be made + in about thirty-six hours; the route will lay along the coast of + Italy, close by Caprera, Elba, and Corsica. Arrangements have been + made to take on board at Leghorn a pilot for Caprera, and, if + practicable, a call will be made there to visit the home of + Garibaldi. + + Rome [by rail], Herculaneum, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Vergil's tomb, and + possibly the ruins of Paestum can be visited, as well as the + beautiful surroundings of Naples and its charming bay. + + The next point of interest will be Palermo, the most beautiful + city of Sicily, which will be reached in one night from Naples. A + day will be spent here, and leaving in the evening, the course will + be taken towards Athens. + + Skirting along the north coast of Sicily, passing through the + group of Aeolian Isles, in sight of Stromboli and Vulcania, both + active volcanoes, through the Straits of Messina, with "Scylla" on + the one hand and "Charybdis" on the other, along the east coast of + Sicily, and in sight of Mount Etna, along the south coast of Italy, + the west and south coast of Greece, in sight of ancient Crete, up + Athens Gulf, and into the Piraeus, Athens will be reached in two and + a half or three days. After tarrying here awhile, the Bay of + Salamis will be crossed, and a day given to Corinth, whence the + voyage will be continued to Constantinople, passing on the way + through the Grecian Archipelago, the Dardanelles, the Sea of + Marmora, and the mouth of the Golden Horn, and arriving in about + forty-eight hours from Athens. + + After leaving Constantinople, the way will be taken out through + the beautiful Bosphorus, across the Black Sea to Sebastopol and + Balaklava, a run of about twenty-four hours. Here it is proposed to + remain two days, visiting the harbors, fortifications, and + battlefields of the Crimea; thence back through the Bosphorus, + touching at Constantinople to take in any who may have preferred to + remain there; down through the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles, + along the coasts of ancient Troy and Lydia in Asia, to Smyrna, which + will be reached in two or two and a half days from Constantinople. + A sufficient stay will be made here to give opportunity of visiting + Ephesus, fifty miles distant by rail. + + From Smyrna towards the Holy Land the course will lay through the + Grecian Archipelago, close by the Isle of Patmos, along the coast + of Asia, ancient Pamphylia, and the Isle of Cyprus. Beirut will be + reached in three days. At Beirut time will be given to visit + Damascus; after which the steamer will proceed to Joppa. + + From Joppa, Jerusalem, the River Jordan, the Sea of Tiberias, + Nazareth, Bethany, Bethlehem, and other points of interest in the + Holy Land can be visited, and here those who may have preferred to + make the journey from Beirut through the country, passing through + Damascus, Galilee, Capernaum, Samaria, and by the River Jordan and + Sea of Tiberias, can rejoin the steamer. + + Leaving Joppa, the next point of interest to visit will be + Alexandria, which will be reached in twenty-four hours. The ruins + of Caesar's Palace, Pompey's Pillar, Cleopatra's Needle, the + Catacombs, and ruins of ancient Alexandria will be found worth the + visit. The journey to Cairo, one hundred and thirty miles by rail, + can be made in a few hours, and from which can be visited the site + of ancient Memphis, Joseph's Granaries, and the Pyramids. + + From Alexandria the route will be taken homeward, calling at + Malta, Cagliari (in Sardinia), and Palma (in Majorca), all + magnificent harbors, with charming scenery, and abounding in fruits. + + A day or two will be spent at each place, and leaving Parma in the + evening, Valencia in Spain will be reached the next morning. A few + days will be spent in this, the finest city of Spain. + + From Valencia, the homeward course will be continued, skirting + along the coast of Spain. Alicant, Carthagena, Palos, and Malaga + will be passed but a mile or two distant, and Gibraltar reached in + about twenty-four hours. + + A stay of one day will be made here, and the voyage continued to + Madeira, which will be reached in about three days. Captain + Marryatt writes: "I do not know a spot on the globe which so much + astonishes and delights upon first arrival as Madeira." A stay of + one or two days will be made here, which, if time permits, may be + extended, and passing on through the islands, and probably in sight + of the Peak of Teneriffe, a southern track will be taken, and the + Atlantic crossed within the latitudes of the northeast trade winds, + where mild and pleasant weather, and a smooth sea, can always be + expected. + + A call will be made at Bermuda, which lies directly in this route + homeward, and will be reached in about ten days from Madeira, and + after spending a short time with our friends the Bermudians, the + final departure will be made for home, which will be reached in + about three days. + + Already, applications have been received from parties in Europe + wishing to join the Excursion there. + + The ship will at all times be a home, where the excursionists, if + sick, will be surrounded by kind friends, and have all possible + comfort and sympathy. + + Should contagious sickness exist in any of the ports named in the + program, such ports will be passed, and others of interest + substituted. + + The price of passage is fixed at $1,250, currency, for each adult + passenger. Choice of rooms and of seats at the tables apportioned + in the order in which passages are engaged; and no passage + considered engaged until ten percent of the passage money is + deposited with the treasurer. + + Passengers can remain on board of the steamer, at all ports, if + they desire, without additional expense, and all boating at the + expense of the ship. + + All passages must be paid for when taken, in order that the most + perfect arrangements be made for starting at the appointed time. + + Applications for passage must be approved by the committee before + tickets are issued, and can be made to the undersigned. + + Articles of interest or curiosity, procured by the passengers + during the voyage, may be brought home in the steamer free of + charge. + + Five dollars per day, in gold, it is believed, will be a fair + calculation to make for all traveling expenses onshore and at the + various points where passengers may wish to leave the steamer for + days at a time. + + The trip can be extended, and the route changed, by unanimous vote + of the passengers. + + CHAS. C. DUNCAN, 117 WALL STREET, NEW YORK R. R. G******, + Treasurer + + Committee on Applications J. T. H*****, ESQ. R. R. G*****, + ESQ. C. C. Duncan + + Committee on Selecting Steamer CAPT. W. W. S* * * *, Surveyor + for Board of Underwriters + + C. W. C******, Consulting Engineer for U.S. and Canada J. T. + H*****, Esq. C. C. DUNCAN + + P.S.--The very beautiful and substantial side-wheel steamship + "Quaker City" has been chartered for the occasion, and will leave + New York June 8th. Letters have been issued by the government + commending the party to courtesies abroad. + +What was there lacking about that program to make it perfectly +irresistible? Nothing that any finite mind could discover. Paris, +England, Scotland, Switzerland, Italy--Garibaldi! The Grecian +Archipelago! Vesuvius! Constantinople! Smyrna! The Holy Land! Egypt and +"our friends the Bermudians"! People in Europe desiring to join the +excursion--contagious sickness to be avoided--boating at the expense of +the ship--physician on board--the circuit of the globe to be made if the +passengers unanimously desired it--the company to be rigidly selected by +a pitiless "Committee on Applications"--the vessel to be as rigidly +selected by as pitiless a "Committee on Selecting Steamer." Human nature +could not withstand these bewildering temptations. I hurried to the +treasurer's office and deposited my ten percent. I rejoiced to know that +a few vacant staterooms were still left. I did avoid a critical personal +examination into my character by that bowelless committee, but I referred +to all the people of high standing I could think of in the community who +would be least likely to know anything about me. + +Shortly a supplementary program was issued which set forth that the +Plymouth Collection of Hymns would be used on board the ship. I then +paid the balance of my passage money. + +I was provided with a receipt and duly and officially accepted as an +excursionist. There was happiness in that but it was tame compared to +the novelty of being "select." + +This supplementary program also instructed the excursionists to provide +themselves with light musical instruments for amusement in the ship, with +saddles for Syrian travel, green spectacles and umbrellas, veils for +Egypt, and substantial clothing to use in rough pilgrimizing in the Holy +Land. Furthermore, it was suggested that although the ship's library +would afford a fair amount of reading matter, it would still be well if +each passenger would provide himself with a few guidebooks, a Bible, and +some standard works of travel. A list was appended, which consisted +chiefly of books relating to the Holy Land, since the Holy Land was part +of the excursion and seemed to be its main feature. + +Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was to have accompanied the expedition, but +urgent duties obliged him to give up the idea. There were other +passengers who could have been spared better and would have been spared +more willingly. Lieutenant General Sherman was to have been of the party +also, but the Indian war compelled his presence on the plains. A popular +actress had entered her name on the ship's books, but something +interfered and she couldn't go. The "Drummer Boy of the Potomac" +deserted, and lo, we had never a celebrity left! + +However, we were to have a "battery of guns" from the Navy Department (as +per advertisement) to be used in answering royal salutes; and the +document furnished by the Secretary of the Navy, which was to make +"General Sherman and party" welcome guests in the courts and camps of the +old world, was still left to us, though both document and battery, I +think, were shorn of somewhat of their original august proportions. +However, had not we the seductive program still, with its Paris, its +Constantinople, Smyrna, Jerusalem, Jericho, and "our friends the +Bermudians?" What did we care? + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +Occasionally, during the following month, I dropped in at 117 Wall Street +to inquire how the repairing and refurnishing of the vessel was coming +on, how additions to the passenger list were averaging, how many people +the committee were decreeing not "select" every day and banishing in +sorrow and tribulation. I was glad to know that we were to have a little +printing press on board and issue a daily newspaper of our own. I was +glad to learn that our piano, our parlor organ, and our melodeon were to +be the best instruments of the kind that could be had in the market. I +was proud to observe that among our excursionists were three ministers of +the gospel, eight doctors, sixteen or eighteen ladies, several military +and naval chieftains with sounding titles, an ample crop of "Professors" +of various kinds, and a gentleman who had "COMMISSIONER OF THE UNITED +STATES OF AMERICA TO EUROPE, ASIA, AND AFRICA" thundering after his name +in one awful blast! I had carefully prepared myself to take rather a +back seat in that ship because of the uncommonly select material that +would alone be permitted to pass through the camel's eye of that +committee on credentials; I had schooled myself to expect an imposing +array of military and naval heroes and to have to set that back seat +still further back in consequence of it maybe; but I state frankly that I +was all unprepared for this crusher. + +I fell under that titular avalanche a torn and blighted thing. I said +that if that potentate must go over in our ship, why, I supposed he must +--but that to my thinking, when the United States considered it necessary +to send a dignitary of that tonnage across the ocean, it would be in +better taste, and safer, to take him apart and cart him over in sections +in several ships. + +Ah, if I had only known then that he was only a common mortal, and that +his mission had nothing more overpowering about it than the collecting of +seeds and uncommon yams and extraordinary cabbages and peculiar bullfrogs +for that poor, useless, innocent, mildewed old fossil the Smithsonian +Institute, I would have felt so much relieved. + +During that memorable month I basked in the happiness of being for once +in my life drifting with the tide of a great popular movement. Everybody +was going to Europe--I, too, was going to Europe. Everybody was going to +the famous Paris Exposition--I, too, was going to the Paris Exposition. +The steamship lines were carrying Americans out of the various ports of +the country at the rate of four or five thousand a week in the aggregate. +If I met a dozen individuals during that month who were not going to +Europe shortly, I have no distinct remembrance of it now. I walked about +the city a good deal with a young Mr. Blucher, who was booked for the +excursion. He was confiding, good-natured, unsophisticated, +companionable; but he was not a man to set the river on fire. He had the +most extraordinary notions about this European exodus and came at last to +consider the whole nation as packing up for emigration to France. We +stepped into a store on Broadway one day, where he bought a handkerchief, +and when the man could not make change, Mr. B. said: + +"Never mind, I'll hand it to you in Paris." + +"But I am not going to Paris." + +"How is--what did I understand you to say?" + +"I said I am not going to Paris." + +"Not going to Paris! Not g---- well, then, where in the nation are you +going to?" + +"Nowhere at all." + +"Not anywhere whatsoever?--not any place on earth but this?" + +"Not any place at all but just this--stay here all summer." + +My comrade took his purchase and walked out of the store without a word +--walked out with an injured look upon his countenance. Up the street +apiece he broke silence and said impressively: "It was a lie--that is my +opinion of it!" + +In the fullness of time the ship was ready to receive her passengers. +I was introduced to the young gentleman who was to be my roommate, and +found him to be intelligent, cheerful of spirit, unselfish, full of +generous impulses, patient, considerate, and wonderfully good-natured. +Not any passenger that sailed in the Quaker City will withhold his +endorsement of what I have just said. We selected a stateroom forward of +the wheel, on the starboard side, "below decks." It had two berths in +it, a dismal dead-light, a sink with a washbowl in it, and a long, +sumptuously cushioned locker, which was to do service as a +sofa--partly--and partly as a hiding place for our things. Notwithstanding all this +furniture, there was still room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat +in, at least with entire security to the cat. However, the room was +large, for a ship's stateroom, and was in every way satisfactory. + +The vessel was appointed to sail on a certain Saturday early in June. + +A little after noon on that distinguished Saturday I reached the ship and +went on board. All was bustle and confusion. [I have seen that remark +before somewhere.] The pier was crowded with carriages and men; +passengers were arriving and hurrying on board; the vessel's decks were +encumbered with trunks and valises; groups of excursionists, arrayed in +unattractive traveling costumes, were moping about in a drizzling rain +and looking as droopy and woebegone as so many molting chickens. The +gallant flag was up, but it was under the spell, too, and hung limp and +disheartened by the mast. Altogether, it was the bluest, bluest +spectacle! It was a pleasure excursion--there was no gainsaying that, +because the program said so--it was so nominated in the bond--but it +surely hadn't the general aspect of one. + +Finally, above the banging, and rumbling, and shouting, and hissing of +steam rang the order to "cast off!"--a sudden rush to the gangways--a +scampering ashore of visitors-a revolution of the wheels, and we were +off--the pic-nic was begun! Two very mild cheers went up from the +dripping crowd on the pier; we answered them gently from the slippery +decks; the flag made an effort to wave, and failed; the "battery of guns" +spake not--the ammunition was out. + +We steamed down to the foot of the harbor and came to anchor. It was +still raining. And not only raining, but storming. "Outside" we could +see, ourselves, that there was a tremendous sea on. We must lie still, +in the calm harbor, till the storm should abate. Our passengers hailed +from fifteen states; only a few of them had ever been to sea before; +manifestly it would not do to pit them against a full-blown tempest until +they had got their sea-legs on. Toward evening the two steam tugs that +had accompanied us with a rollicking champagne-party of young New Yorkers +on board who wished to bid farewell to one of our number in due and +ancient form departed, and we were alone on the deep. On deep five +fathoms, and anchored fast to the bottom. And out in the solemn rain, at +that. This was pleasuring with a vengeance. + +It was an appropriate relief when the gong sounded for prayer meeting. +The first Saturday night of any other pleasure excursion might have been +devoted to whist and dancing; but I submit it to the unprejudiced mind if +it would have been in good taste for us to engage in such frivolities, +considering what we had gone through and the frame of mind we were in. +We would have shone at a wake, but not at anything more festive. + +However, there is always a cheering influence about the sea; and in my +berth that night, rocked by the measured swell of the waves and lulled by +the murmur of the distant surf, I soon passed tranquilly out of all +consciousness of the dreary experiences of the day and damaging +premonitions of the future. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +All day Sunday at anchor. The storm had gone down a great deal, but the +sea had not. It was still piling its frothy hills high in air "outside," +as we could plainly see with the glasses. We could not properly begin a +pleasure excursion on Sunday; we could not offer untried stomachs to so +pitiless a sea as that. We must lie still till Monday. And we did. But +we had repetitions of church and prayer-meetings; and so, of course, we +were just as eligibly situated as we could have been any where. + +I was up early that Sabbath morning and was early to breakfast. I felt a +perfectly natural desire to have a good, long, unprejudiced look at the +passengers at a time when they should be free from self-consciousness +--which is at breakfast, when such a moment occurs in the lives of human +beings at all. + +I was greatly surprised to see so many elderly people--I might almost +say, so many venerable people. A glance at the long lines of heads was +apt to make one think it was all gray. But it was not. There was a +tolerably fair sprinkling of young folks, and another fair sprinkling of +gentlemen and ladies who were non-committal as to age, being neither +actually old or absolutely young. + +The next morning we weighed anchor and went to sea. It was a great +happiness to get away after this dragging, dispiriting delay. I thought +there never was such gladness in the air before, such brightness in the +sun, such beauty in the sea. I was satisfied with the picnic then and +with all its belongings. All my malicious instincts were dead within me; +and as America faded out of sight, I think a spirit of charity rose up in +their place that was as boundless, for the time being, as the broad ocean +that was heaving its billows about us. I wished to express my feelings +--I wished to lift up my voice and sing; but I did not know anything to +sing, and so I was obliged to give up the idea. It was no loss to the +ship, though, perhaps. + +It was breezy and pleasant, but the sea was still very rough. One could +not promenade without risking his neck; at one moment the bowsprit was +taking a deadly aim at the sun in midheaven, and at the next it was +trying to harpoon a shark in the bottom of the ocean. What a weird +sensation it is to feel the stern of a ship sinking swiftly from under you +and see the bow climbing high away among the clouds! One's safest course +that day was to clasp a railing and hang on; walking was too precarious a +pastime. + +By some happy fortune I was not seasick.--That was a thing to be proud +of. I had not always escaped before. If there is one thing in the world +that will make a man peculiarly and insufferably self-conceited, it is to +have his stomach behave itself, the first day at sea, when nearly all his +comrades are seasick. Soon a venerable fossil, shawled to the chin and +bandaged like a mummy, appeared at the door of the after deck-house, and +the next lurch of the ship shot him into my arms. I said: + +"Good-morning, Sir. It is a fine day." + +He put his hand on his stomach and said, "Oh, my!" and then staggered +away and fell over the coop of a skylight. + +Presently another old gentleman was projected from the same door with +great violence. I said: + +"Calm yourself, Sir--There is no hurry. It is a fine day, Sir." + +He, also, put his hand on his stomach and said "Oh, my!" and reeled away. + +In a little while another veteran was discharged abruptly from the same +door, clawing at the air for a saving support. I said: + +"Good morning, Sir. It is a fine day for pleasuring. You were about to +say--" + +"Oh, my!" + +I thought so. I anticipated him, anyhow. I stayed there and was +bombarded with old gentlemen for an hour, perhaps; and all I got out of +any of them was "Oh, my!" + +I went away then in a thoughtful mood. I said, this is a good pleasure +excursion. I like it. The passengers are not garrulous, but still they +are sociable. I like those old people, but somehow they all seem to have +the "Oh, my" rather bad. + +I knew what was the matter with them. They were seasick. And I was glad +of it. We all like to see people seasick when we are not, ourselves. +Playing whist by the cabin lamps when it is storming outside is pleasant; +walking the quarterdeck in the moonlight is pleasant; smoking in the +breezy foretop is pleasant when one is not afraid to go up there; but +these are all feeble and commonplace compared with the joy of seeing +people suffering the miseries of seasickness. + +I picked up a good deal of information during the afternoon. At one time +I was climbing up the quarterdeck when the vessel's stem was in the sky; +I was smoking a cigar and feeling passably comfortable. Somebody +ejaculated: + +"Come, now, that won't answer. Read the sign up there--NO SMOKING ABAFT +THE WHEEL!" + +It was Captain Duncan, chief of the expedition. I went forward, of +course. I saw a long spyglass lying on a desk in one of the upper-deck +state-rooms back of the pilot-house and reached after it--there was a +ship in the distance. + +"Ah, ah--hands off! Come out of that!" + +I came out of that. I said to a deck-sweep--but in a low voice: + +"Who is that overgrown pirate with the whiskers and the discordant +voice?" + +"It's Captain Bursley--executive officer--sailing master." + +I loitered about awhile, and then, for want of something better to do, +fell to carving a railing with my knife. Somebody said, in an +insinuating, admonitory voice: + +"Now, say--my friend--don't you know any better than to be whittling the +ship all to pieces that way? You ought to know better than that." + +I went back and found the deck sweep. + +"Who is that smooth-faced, animated outrage yonder in the fine clothes?" + +"That's Captain L****, the owner of the ship--he's one of the main +bosses." + +In the course of time I brought up on the starboard side of the +pilot-house and found a sextant lying on a bench. Now, I said, they +"take the sun" through this thing; I should think I might see that vessel +through it. I had hardly got it to my eye when someone touched me on the +shoulder and said deprecatingly: + +"I'll have to get you to give that to me, Sir. If there's anything you'd +like to know about taking the sun, I'd as soon tell you as not--but I +don't like to trust anybody with that instrument. If you want any +figuring done--Aye, aye, sir!" + +He was gone to answer a call from the other side. I sought the +deck-sweep. + +"Who is that spider-legged gorilla yonder with the sanctimonious +countenance?" + +"It's Captain Jones, sir--the chief mate." + +"Well. This goes clear away ahead of anything I ever heard of before. +Do you--now I ask you as a man and a brother--do you think I could +venture to throw a rock here in any given direction without hitting a +captain of this ship?" + +"Well, sir, I don't know--I think likely you'd fetch the captain of the +watch may be, because he's a-standing right yonder in the way." + +I went below--meditating and a little downhearted. I thought, if five +cooks can spoil a broth, what may not five captains do with a pleasure +excursion. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +We plowed along bravely for a week or more, and without any conflict of +jurisdiction among the captains worth mentioning. The passengers soon +learned to accommodate themselves to their new circumstances, and life in +the ship became nearly as systematically monotonous as the routine of a +barrack. I do not mean that it was dull, for it was not entirely so by +any means--but there was a good deal of sameness about it. As is always +the fashion at sea, the passengers shortly began to pick up sailor terms +--a sign that they were beginning to feel at home. Half-past six was no +longer half-past six to these pilgrims from New England, the South, and +the Mississippi Valley, it was "seven bells"; eight, twelve, and four +o'clock were "eight bells"; the captain did not take the longitude at +nine o'clock, but at "two bells." They spoke glibly of the "after +cabin," the "for'rard cabin," "port and starboard" and the "fo'castle." + +At seven bells the first gong rang; at eight there was breakfast, for +such as were not too seasick to eat it. After that all the well people +walked arm-in-arm up and down the long promenade deck, enjoying the fine +summer mornings, and the seasick ones crawled out and propped themselves +up in the lee of the paddle-boxes and ate their dismal tea and toast, and +looked wretched. From eleven o'clock until luncheon, and from luncheon +until dinner at six in the evening, the employments and amusements were +various. Some reading was done, and much smoking and sewing, though not +by the same parties; there were the monsters of the deep to be looked +after and wondered at; strange ships had to be scrutinized through +opera-glasses, and sage decisions arrived at concerning them; and more +than that, everybody took a personal interest in seeing that the flag was +run up and politely dipped three times in response to the salutes of +those strangers; in the smoking room there were always parties of +gentlemen playing euchre, draughts and dominoes, especially dominoes, +that delightfully harmless game; and down on the main deck, "for'rard" +--for'rard of the chicken-coops and the cattle--we had what was called +"horse billiards." Horse billiards is a fine game. It affords good, +active exercise, hilarity, and consuming excitement. It is a mixture of +"hop-scotch" and shuffleboard played with a crutch. A large hop-scotch +diagram is marked out on the deck with chalk, and each compartment +numbered. You stand off three or four steps, with some broad wooden +disks before you on the deck, and these you send forward with a vigorous +thrust of a long crutch. If a disk stops on a chalk line, it does not +count anything. If it stops in division No. 7, it counts 7; in 5, it +counts 5, and so on. The game is 100, and four can play at a time. That +game would be very simple played on a stationary floor, but with us, to +play it well required science. We had to allow for the reeling of the +ship to the right or the left. Very often one made calculations for a +heel to the right and the ship did not go that way. The consequence was +that that disk missed the whole hopscotch plan a yard or two, and then +there was humiliation on one side and laughter on the other. + +When it rained the passengers had to stay in the house, of course--or at +least the cabins--and amuse themselves with games, reading, looking out +of the windows at the very familiar billows, and talking gossip. + +By 7 o'clock in the evening, dinner was about over; an hour's promenade +on the upper deck followed; then the gong sounded and a large majority of +the party repaired to the after cabin (upper), a handsome saloon fifty or +sixty feet long, for prayers. The unregenerated called this saloon the +"Synagogue." The devotions consisted only of two hymns from the Plymouth +Collection and a short prayer, and seldom occupied more than fifteen +minutes. The hymns were accompanied by parlor-organ music when the sea +was smooth enough to allow a performer to sit at the instrument without +being lashed to his chair. + +After prayers the Synagogue shortly took the semblance of a writing +school. The like of that picture was never seen in a ship before. +Behind the long dining tables on either side of the saloon, and scattered +from one end to the other of the latter, some twenty or thirty gentlemen +and ladies sat them down under the swaying lamps and for two or three +hours wrote diligently in their journals. Alas! that journals so +voluminously begun should come to so lame and impotent a conclusion as +most of them did! I doubt if there is a single pilgrim of all that host +but can show a hundred fair pages of journal concerning the first twenty +days' voyaging in the Quaker City, and I am morally certain that not ten +of the party can show twenty pages of journal for the succeeding twenty +thousand miles of voyaging! At certain periods it becomes the dearest +ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a +book; and he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him +the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world, +and the pleasantest. But if he only lives twenty-one days, he will find +out that only those rare natures that are made up of pluck, endurance, +devotion to duty for duty's sake, and invincible determination may hope +to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as the keeping of a journal +and not sustain a shameful defeat. + +One of our favorite youths, Jack, a splendid young fellow with a head +full of good sense, and a pair of legs that were a wonder to look upon in +the way of length and straightness and slimness, used to report progress +every morning in the most glowing and spirited way, and say: + +"Oh, I'm coming along bully!" (he was a little given to slang in his +happier moods.) "I wrote ten pages in my journal last night--and you +know I wrote nine the night before and twelve the night before that. +Why, it's only fun!" + +"What do you find to put in it, Jack?" + +"Oh, everything. Latitude and longitude, noon every day; and how many +miles we made last twenty-four hours; and all the domino games I beat and +horse billiards; and whales and sharks and porpoises; and the text of the +sermon Sundays (because that'll tell at home, you know); and the ships we +saluted and what nation they were; and which way the wind was, and +whether there was a heavy sea, and what sail we carried, though we don't +ever carry any, principally, going against a head wind always--wonder +what is the reason of that?--and how many lies Moult has told--Oh, every +thing! I've got everything down. My father told me to keep that +journal. Father wouldn't take a thousand dollars for it when I get it +done." + +"No, Jack; it will be worth more than a thousand dollars--when you get it +done." + +"Do you?--no, but do you think it will, though? + +"Yes, it will be worth at least as much as a thousand dollars--when you +get it done. May be more." + +"Well, I about half think so, myself. It ain't no slouch of a journal." + +But it shortly became a most lamentable "slouch of a journal." One night +in Paris, after a hard day's toil in sightseeing, I said: + +"Now I'll go and stroll around the cafes awhile, Jack, and give you a +chance to write up your journal, old fellow." + +His countenance lost its fire. He said: + +"Well, no, you needn't mind. I think I won't run that journal anymore. +It is awful tedious. Do you know--I reckon I'm as much as four thousand +pages behind hand. I haven't got any France in it at all. First I +thought I'd leave France out and start fresh. But that wouldn't do, +would it? The governor would say, 'Hello, here--didn't see anything in +France?' That cat wouldn't fight, you know. First I thought I'd copy +France out of the guide-book, like old Badger in the for'rard cabin, +who's writing a book, but there's more than three hundred pages of it. +Oh, I don't think a journal's any use--do you? They're only a bother, +ain't they?" + +"Yes, a journal that is incomplete isn't of much use, but a journal +properly kept is worth a thousand dollars--when you've got it done." + +"A thousand!--well, I should think so. I wouldn't finish it for a +million." + +His experience was only the experience of the majority of that +industrious night school in the cabin. If you wish to inflict a +heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to +keep a journal a year. + +A good many expedients were resorted to to keep the excursionists amused +and satisfied. A club was formed, of all the passengers, which met in +the writing school after prayers and read aloud about the countries we +were approaching and discussed the information so obtained. + +Several times the photographer of the expedition brought out his +transparent pictures and gave us a handsome magic-lantern exhibition. +His views were nearly all of foreign scenes, but there were one or two +home pictures among them. He advertised that he would "open his +performance in the after cabin at 'two bells' (nine P.M.) and show the +passengers where they shall eventually arrive"--which was all very well, +but by a funny accident the first picture that flamed out upon the canvas +was a view of Greenwood Cemetery! + +On several starlight nights we danced on the upper deck, under the +awnings, and made something of a ball-room display of brilliancy by +hanging a number of ship's lanterns to the stanchions. Our music +consisted of the well-mixed strains of a melodeon which was a little +asthmatic and apt to catch its breath where it ought to come out strong, +a clarinet which was a little unreliable on the high keys and rather +melancholy on the low ones, and a disreputable accordion that had a leak +somewhere and breathed louder than it squawked--a more elegant term does +not occur to me just now. However, the dancing was infinitely worse than +the music. When the ship rolled to starboard the whole platoon of +dancers came charging down to starboard with it, and brought up in mass +at the rail; and when it rolled to port they went floundering down to +port with the same unanimity of sentiment. Waltzers spun around +precariously for a matter of fifteen seconds and then went scurrying down +to the rail as if they meant to go overboard. The Virginia reel, as +performed on board the Quaker City, had more genuine reel about it than +any reel I ever saw before, and was as full of interest to the spectator +as it was full of desperate chances and hairbreadth escapes to the +participant. We gave up dancing, finally. + +We celebrated a lady's birthday anniversary with toasts, speeches, a +poem, and so forth. We also had a mock trial. No ship ever went to sea +that hadn't a mock trial on board. The purser was accused of stealing an +overcoat from stateroom No. 10. A judge was appointed; also clerks, a +crier of the court, constables, sheriffs; counsel for the State and for +the defendant; witnesses were subpoenaed, and a jury empaneled after much +challenging. The witnesses were stupid and unreliable and contradictory, +as witnesses always are. The counsel were eloquent, argumentative, and +vindictively abusive of each other, as was characteristic and proper. +The case was at last submitted and duly finished by the judge with an +absurd decision and a ridiculous sentence. + +The acting of charades was tried on several evenings by the young +gentlemen and ladies, in the cabins, and proved the most distinguished +success of all the amusement experiments. + +An attempt was made to organize a debating club, but it was a failure. +There was no oratorical talent in the ship. + +We all enjoyed ourselves--I think I can safely say that, but it was in a +rather quiet way. We very, very seldom played the piano; we played the +flute and the clarinet together, and made good music, too, what there was +of it, but we always played the same old tune; it was a very pretty tune +--how well I remember it--I wonder when I shall ever get rid of it. We +never played either the melodeon or the organ except at devotions--but I +am too fast: young Albert did know part of a tune something about +"O Something-Or-Other How Sweet It Is to Know That He's His +What's-his-Name" (I do not remember the exact title of it, but it was +very plaintive and full of sentiment); Albert played that pretty much +all the time until we contracted with him to restrain himself. But +nobody ever sang by moonlight on the upper deck, and the congregational +singing at church and prayers was not of a superior order of +architecture. I put up with it as long as I could and then joined in +and tried to improve it, but this encouraged young George to join in +too, and that made a failure of it; because George's voice was just +"turning," and when he was singing a dismal sort of bass it was apt to +fly off the handle and startle everybody with a most discordant cackle +on the upper notes. George didn't know the tunes, either, which was +also a drawback to his performances. I said: + +"Come, now, George, don't improvise. It looks too egotistical. It will +provoke remark. Just stick to 'Coronation,' like the others. It is a +good tune--you can't improve it any, just off-hand, in this way." + +"Why, I'm not trying to improve it--and I am singing like the others +--just as it is in the notes." + +And he honestly thought he was, too; and so he had no one to blame but +himself when his voice caught on the center occasionally and gave him the +lockjaw. + +There were those among the unregenerated who attributed the unceasing +head-winds to our distressing choir-music. There were those who said +openly that it was taking chances enough to have such ghastly music going +on, even when it was at its best; and that to exaggerate the crime by +letting George help was simply flying in the face of Providence. These +said that the choir would keep up their lacerating attempts at melody +until they would bring down a storm some day that would sink the ship. + +There were even grumblers at the prayers. The executive officer said the +pilgrims had no charity: + +"There they are, down there every night at eight bells, praying for fair +winds--when they know as well as I do that this is the only ship going +east this time of the year, but there's a thousand coming west--what's a +fair wind for us is a head wind to them--the Almighty's blowing a fair +wind for a thousand vessels, and this tribe wants him to turn it clear +around so as to accommodate one--and she a steamship at that! It ain't +good sense, it ain't good reason, it ain't good Christianity, it ain't +common human charity. Avast with such nonsense!" + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +Taking it "by and large," as the sailors say, we had a pleasant ten days' +run from New York to the Azores islands--not a fast run, for the distance +is only twenty-four hundred miles, but a right pleasant one in the main. +True, we had head winds all the time, and several stormy experiences +which sent fifty percent of the passengers to bed sick and made the ship +look dismal and deserted--stormy experiences that all will remember who +weathered them on the tumbling deck and caught the vast sheets of spray +that every now and then sprang high in air from the weather bow and swept +the ship like a thunder-shower; but for the most part we had balmy summer +weather and nights that were even finer than the days. We had the +phenomenon of a full moon located just in the same spot in the heavens at +the same hour every night. The reason of this singular conduct on the +part of the moon did not occur to us at first, but it did afterward when +we reflected that we were gaining about twenty minutes every day because +we were going east so fast--we gained just about enough every day to keep +along with the moon. It was becoming an old moon to the friends we had +left behind us, but to us Joshuas it stood still in the same place and +remained always the same. + +Young Mr. Blucher, who is from the Far West and is on his first voyage, +was a good deal worried by the constantly changing "ship time." He was +proud of his new watch at first and used to drag it out promptly when +eight bells struck at noon, but he came to look after a while as if he +were losing confidence in it. Seven days out from New York he came on +deck and said with great decision: + +"This thing's a swindle!" + +"What's a swindle?" + +"Why, this watch. I bought her out in Illinois--gave $150 for her--and I +thought she was good. And, by George, she is good onshore, but somehow +she don't keep up her lick here on the water--gets seasick may be. She +skips; she runs along regular enough till half-past eleven, and then, all +of a sudden, she lets down. I've set that old regulator up faster and +faster, till I've shoved it clear around, but it don't do any good; she +just distances every watch in the ship, and clatters along in a way +that's astonishing till it is noon, but them eight bells always gets in +about ten minutes ahead of her anyway. I don't know what to do with her +now. She's doing all she can--she's going her best gait, but it won't +save her. Now, don't you know, there ain't a watch in the ship that's +making better time than she is, but what does it signify? When you hear +them eight bells you'll find her just about ten minutes short of her +score sure." + +The ship was gaining a full hour every three days, and this fellow was +trying to make his watch go fast enough to keep up to her. But, as he +had said, he had pushed the regulator up as far as it would go, and the +watch was "on its best gait," and so nothing was left him but to fold his +hands and see the ship beat the race. We sent him to the captain, and he +explained to him the mystery of "ship time" and set his troubled mind at +rest. This young man asked a great many questions about seasickness +before we left, and wanted to know what its characteristics were and how +he was to tell when he had it. He found out. + +We saw the usual sharks, blackfish, porpoises, etc., of course, and by and +by large schools of Portuguese men-of-war were added to the regular list +of sea wonders. Some of them were white and some of a brilliant carmine +color. The nautilus is nothing but a transparent web of jelly that +spreads itself to catch the wind, and has fleshy-looking strings a foot +or two long dangling from it to keep it steady in the water. It is an +accomplished sailor and has good sailor judgment. It reefs its sail when +a storm threatens or the wind blows pretty hard, and furls it entirely +and goes down when a gale blows. Ordinarily it keeps its sail wet and in +good sailing order by turning over and dipping it in the water for a +moment. Seamen say the nautilus is only found in these waters between +the 35th and 45th parallels of latitude. + +At three o'clock on the morning of the twenty-first of June, we were +awakened and notified that the Azores islands were in sight. I said I +did not take any interest in islands at three o'clock in the morning. +But another persecutor came, and then another and another, and finally +believing that the general enthusiasm would permit no one to slumber in +peace, I got up and went sleepily on deck. It was five and a half +o'clock now, and a raw, blustering morning. The passengers were huddled +about the smoke-stacks and fortified behind ventilators, and all were +wrapped in wintry costumes and looking sleepy and unhappy in the pitiless +gale and the drenching spray. + +The island in sight was Flores. It seemed only a mountain of mud +standing up out of the dull mists of the sea. But as we bore down upon +it the sun came out and made it a beautiful picture--a mass of green +farms and meadows that swelled up to a height of fifteen hundred feet and +mingled its upper outlines with the clouds. It was ribbed with sharp, +steep ridges and cloven with narrow canyons, and here and there on the +heights, rocky upheavals shaped themselves into mimic battlements and +castles; and out of rifted clouds came broad shafts of sunlight, that +painted summit, and slope and glen, with bands of fire, and left belts of +somber shade between. It was the aurora borealis of the frozen pole +exiled to a summer land! + +We skirted around two-thirds of the island, four miles from shore, and +all the opera glasses in the ship were called into requisition to settle +disputes as to whether mossy spots on the uplands were groves of trees or +groves of weeds, or whether the white villages down by the sea were +really villages or only the clustering tombstones of cemeteries. Finally +we stood to sea and bore away for San Miguel, and Flores shortly became a +dome of mud again and sank down among the mists, and disappeared. But to +many a seasick passenger it was good to see the green hills again, and +all were more cheerful after this episode than anybody could have +expected them to be, considering how sinfully early they had gotten up. + +But we had to change our purpose about San Miguel, for a storm came up +about noon that so tossed and pitched the vessel that common sense +dictated a run for shelter. Therefore we steered for the nearest island +of the group--Fayal (the people there pronounce it Fy-all, and put the +accent on the first syllable). We anchored in the open roadstead of +Horta, half a mile from the shore. The town has eight thousand to ten +thousand inhabitants. Its snow-white houses nestle cosily in a sea of +fresh green vegetation, and no village could look prettier or more +attractive. It sits in the lap of an amphitheater of hills which are +three hundred to seven hundred feet high, and carefully cultivated clear +to their summits--not a foot of soil left idle. Every farm and every +acre is cut up into little square inclosures by stone walls, whose duty +it is to protect the growing products from the destructive gales that +blow there. These hundreds of green squares, marked by their black lava +walls, make the hills look like vast checkerboards. + +The islands belong to Portugal, and everything in Fayal has Portuguese +characteristics about it. But more of that anon. A swarm of swarthy, +noisy, lying, shoulder-shrugging, gesticulating Portuguese boatmen, with +brass rings in their ears and fraud in their hearts, climbed the ship's +sides, and various parties of us contracted with them to take us ashore +at so much a head, silver coin of any country. We landed under the walls +of a little fort, armed with batteries of twelve-and-thirty-two-pounders, +which Horta considered a most formidable institution, but if we were ever +to get after it with one of our turreted monitors, they would have to +move it out in the country if they wanted it where they could go and find +it again when they needed it. The group on the pier was a rusty one--men +and women, and boys and girls, all ragged and barefoot, uncombed and +unclean, and by instinct, education, and profession beggars. They +trooped after us, and never more while we tarried in Fayal did we get rid +of them. We walked up the middle of the principal street, and these +vermin surrounded us on all sides and glared upon us; and every moment +excited couples shot ahead of the procession to get a good look back, +just as village boys do when they accompany the elephant on his +advertising trip from street to street. It was very flattering to me to +be part of the material for such a sensation. Here and there in the +doorways we saw women with fashionable Portuguese hoods on. This hood is +of thick blue cloth, attached to a cloak of the same stuff, and is a +marvel of ugliness. It stands up high and spreads far abroad, and is +unfathomably deep. It fits like a circus tent, and a woman's head is +hidden away in it like the man's who prompts the singers from his tin +shed in the stage of an opera. There is no particle of trimming about +this monstrous capote, as they call it--it is just a plain, ugly +dead-blue mass of sail, and a woman can't go within eight points of the +wind with one of them on; she has to go before the wind or not at all. +The general style of the capote is the same in all the islands, and will +remain so for the next ten thousand years, but each island shapes its +capotes just enough differently from the others to enable an observer to +tell at a glance what particular island a lady hails from. + +The Portuguese pennies, or reis (pronounced rays), are prodigious. It +takes one thousand reis to make a dollar, and all financial estimates are +made in reis. We did not know this until after we had found it out +through Blucher. Blucher said he was so happy and so grateful to be on +solid land once more that he wanted to give a feast--said he had heard it +was a cheap land, and he was bound to have a grand banquet. He invited +nine of us, and we ate an excellent dinner at the principal hotel. In +the midst of the jollity produced by good cigars, good wine, and passable +anecdotes, the landlord presented his bill. Blucher glanced at it and +his countenance fell. He took another look to assure himself that his +senses had not deceived him and then read the items aloud, in a faltering +voice, while the roses in his cheeks turned to ashes: + +"'Ten dinners, at 600 reis, 6,000 reis!' Ruin and desolation! + +"'Twenty-five cigars, at 100 reis, 2,500 reis!' Oh, my sainted mother! + +"'Eleven bottles of wine, at 1,200 reis, 13,200 reis!' Be with us all! + +"'TOTAL, TWENTY-ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED REIS!' The suffering Moses! +There ain't money enough in the ship to pay that bill! Go--leave me to +my misery, boys, I am a ruined community." + +I think it was the blankest-looking party I ever saw. Nobody could say a +word. It was as if every soul had been stricken dumb. Wine glasses +descended slowly to the table, their contents untasted. Cigars dropped +unnoticed from nerveless fingers. Each man sought his neighbor's eye, +but found in it no ray of hope, no encouragement. At last the fearful +silence was broken. The shadow of a desperate resolve settled upon +Blucher's countenance like a cloud, and he rose up and said: + +"Landlord, this is a low, mean swindle, and I'll never, never stand it. +Here's a hundred and fifty dollars, Sir, and it's all you'll get--I'll +swim in blood before I'll pay a cent more." + +Our spirits rose and the landlord's fell--at least we thought so; he was +confused, at any rate, notwithstanding he had not understood a word that +had been said. He glanced from the little pile of gold pieces to Blucher +several times and then went out. He must have visited an American, for +when he returned, he brought back his bill translated into a language +that a Christian could understand--thus: + +10 dinners, 6,000 reis, or . . .$6.00 + +25 cigars, 2,500 reis, or . . . 2.50 + +11 bottles wine, 13,200 reis, or 13.20 + +Total 21,700 reis, or . . . . $21.70 + +Happiness reigned once more in Blucher's dinner party. More refreshments +were ordered. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +I think the Azores must be very little known in America. Out of our +whole ship's company there was not a solitary individual who knew +anything whatever about them. Some of the party, well read concerning +most other lands, had no other information about the Azores than that +they were a group of nine or ten small islands far out in the Atlantic, +something more than halfway between New York and Gibraltar. That was +all. These considerations move me to put in a paragraph of dry facts +just here. + +The community is eminently Portuguese--that is to say, it is slow, poor, +shiftless, sleepy, and lazy. There is a civil governor, appointed by the +King of Portugal, and also a military governor, who can assume supreme +control and suspend the civil government at his pleasure. The islands +contain a population of about 200,000, almost entirely Portuguese. +Everything is staid and settled, for the country was one hundred years +old when Columbus discovered America. The principal crop is corn, and +they raise it and grind it just as their great-great-great-grandfathers +did. They plow with a board slightly shod with iron; their trifling +little harrows are drawn by men and women; small windmills grind the +corn, ten bushels a day, and there is one assistant superintendent to +feed the mill and a general superintendent to stand by and keep him from +going to sleep. When the wind changes they hitch on some donkeys and +actually turn the whole upper half of the mill around until the sails are +in proper position, instead of fixing the concern so that the sails could +be moved instead of the mill. Oxen tread the wheat from the ear, after +the fashion prevalent in the time of Methuselah. There is not a +wheelbarrow in the land--they carry everything on their heads, or on +donkeys, or in a wicker-bodied cart, whose wheels are solid blocks of +wood and whose axles turn with the wheel. There is not a modern plow in +the islands or a threshing machine. All attempts to introduce them have +failed. The good Catholic Portuguese crossed himself and prayed God to +shield him from all blasphemous desire to know more than his father did +before him. The climate is mild; they never have snow or ice, and I saw +no chimneys in the town. The donkeys and the men, women, and children of +a family all eat and sleep in the same room, and are unclean, are ravaged +by vermin, and are truly happy. The people lie, and cheat the stranger, +and are desperately ignorant, and have hardly any reverence for their +dead. The latter trait shows how little better they are than the donkeys +they eat and sleep with. The only well-dressed Portuguese in the camp +are the half a dozen well-to-do families, the Jesuit priests, and the +soldiers of the little garrison. The wages of a laborer are twenty to +twenty-four cents a day, and those of a good mechanic about twice as +much. They count it in reis at a thousand to the dollar, and this makes +them rich and contented. Fine grapes used to grow in the islands, and an +excellent wine was made and exported. But a disease killed all the vines +fifteen years ago, and since that time no wine has been made. The +islands being wholly of volcanic origin, the soil is necessarily very +rich. Nearly every foot of ground is under cultivation, and two or three +crops a year of each article are produced, but nothing is exported save a +few oranges--chiefly to England. Nobody comes here, and nobody goes +away. News is a thing unknown in Fayal. A thirst for it is a passion +equally unknown. A Portuguese of average intelligence inquired if our +civil war was over. Because, he said, somebody had told him it was--or +at least it ran in his mind that somebody had told him something like +that! And when a passenger gave an officer of the garrison copies of the +Tribune, the Herald, and Times, he was surprised to find later news in +them from Lisbon than he had just received by the little monthly steamer. +He was told that it came by cable. He said he knew they had tried to lay +a cable ten years ago, but it had been in his mind somehow that they +hadn't succeeded! + +It is in communities like this that Jesuit humbuggery flourishes. We +visited a Jesuit cathedral nearly two hundred years old and found in it a +piece of the veritable cross upon which our Saviour was crucified. It +was polished and hard, and in as excellent a state of preservation as if +the dread tragedy on Calvary had occurred yesterday instead of eighteen +centuries ago. But these confiding people believe in that piece of wood +unhesitatingly. + +In a chapel of the cathedral is an altar with facings of solid silver--at +least they call it so, and I think myself it would go a couple of hundred +to the ton (to speak after the fashion of the silver miners)--and before +it is kept forever burning a small lamp. A devout lady who died, left +money and contracted for unlimited masses for the repose of her soul, and +also stipulated that this lamp should be kept lighted always, day and +night. She did all this before she died, you understand. It is a very +small lamp and a very dim one, and it could not work her much damage, I +think, if it went out altogether. + +The great altar of the cathedral and also three or four minor ones are a +perfect mass of gilt gimcracks and gingerbread. And they have a swarm of +rusty, dusty, battered apostles standing around the filagree work, some +on one leg and some with one eye out but a gamey look in the other, and +some with two or three fingers gone, and some with not enough nose left +to blow--all of them crippled and discouraged, and fitter subjects for +the hospital than the cathedral. + +The walls of the chancel are of porcelain, all pictured over with figures +of almost life size, very elegantly wrought and dressed in the fanciful +costumes of two centuries ago. The design was a history of something or +somebody, but none of us were learned enough to read the story. The old +father, reposing under a stone close by, dated 1686, might have told us +if he could have risen. But he didn't. + +As we came down through the town we encountered a squad of little donkeys +ready saddled for use. The saddles were peculiar, to say the least. +They consisted of a sort of saw-buck with a small mattress on it, and +this furniture covered about half the donkey. There were no stirrups, +but really such supports were not needed--to use such a saddle was the +next thing to riding a dinner table--there was ample support clear out to +one's knee joints. A pack of ragged Portuguese muleteers crowded around +us, offering their beasts at half a dollar an hour--more rascality to the +stranger, for the market price is sixteen cents. Half a dozen of us +mounted the ungainly affairs and submitted to the indignity of making a +ridiculous spectacle of ourselves through the principal streets of a town +of 10,000 inhabitants. + +We started. It was not a trot, a gallop, or a canter, but a stampede, +and made up of all possible or conceivable gaits. No spurs were +necessary. There was a muleteer to every donkey and a dozen volunteers +beside, and they banged the donkeys with their goad sticks, and pricked +them with their spikes, and shouted something that sounded like +"Sekki-yah!" and kept up a din and a racket that was worse than Bedlam +itself. These rascals were all on foot, but no matter, they were always +up to time--they can outrun and outlast a donkey. Altogether, ours was +a lively and a picturesque procession, and drew crowded audiences to the +balconies wherever we went. + +Blucher could do nothing at all with his donkey. The beast scampered +zigzag across the road and the others ran into him; he scraped Blucher +against carts and the corners of houses; the road was fenced in with high +stone walls, and the donkey gave him a polishing first on one side and +then on the other, but never once took the middle; he finally came to the +house he was born in and darted into the parlor, scraping Blucher off at +the doorway. After remounting, Blucher said to the muleteer, "Now, +that's enough, you know; you go slow hereafter." + +But the fellow knew no English and did not understand, so he simply said, +"Sekki-yah!" and the donkey was off again like a shot. He turned a comer +suddenly, and Blucher went over his head. And, to speak truly, every +mule stumbled over the two, and the whole cavalcade was piled up in a +heap. No harm done. A fall from one of those donkeys is of little more +consequence than rolling off a sofa. The donkeys all stood still after +the catastrophe and waited for their dismembered saddles to be patched up +and put on by the noisy muleteers. Blucher was pretty angry and wanted +to swear, but every time he opened his mouth his animal did so also and +let off a series of brays that drowned all other sounds. + +It was fun, scurrying around the breezy hills and through the beautiful +canyons. There was that rare thing, novelty, about it; it was a fresh, +new, exhilarating sensation, this donkey riding, and worth a hundred worn +and threadbare home pleasures. + +The roads were a wonder, and well they might be. Here was an island with +only a handful of people in it--25,000--and yet such fine roads do not +exist in the United States outside of Central Park. Everywhere you go, +in any direction, you find either a hard, smooth, level thoroughfare, +just sprinkled with black lava sand, and bordered with little gutters +neatly paved with small smooth pebbles, or compactly paved ones like +Broadway. They talk much of the Russ pavement in New York, and call it a +new invention--yet here they have been using it in this remote little +isle of the sea for two hundred years! Every street in Horta is +handsomely paved with the heavy Russ blocks, and the surface is neat and +true as a floor--not marred by holes like Broadway. And every road is +fenced in by tall, solid lava walls, which will last a thousand years in +this land where frost is unknown. They are very thick, and are often +plastered and whitewashed and capped with projecting slabs of cut stone. +Trees from gardens above hang their swaying tendrils down, and contrast +their bright green with the whitewash or the black lava of the walls and +make them beautiful. The trees and vines stretch across these narrow +roadways sometimes and so shut out the sun that you seem to be riding +through a tunnel. The pavements, the roads, and the bridges are all +government work. + +The bridges are of a single span--a single arch--of cut stone, without a +support, and paved on top with flags of lava and ornamental pebblework. +Everywhere are walls, walls, walls, and all of them tasteful and +handsome--and eternally substantial; and everywhere are those marvelous +pavements, so neat, so smooth, and so indestructible. And if ever roads +and streets and the outsides of houses were perfectly free from any sign +or semblance of dirt, or dust, or mud, or uncleanliness of any kind, it +is Horta, it is Fayal. The lower classes of the people, in their persons +and their domiciles, are not clean--but there it stops--the town and the +island are miracles of cleanliness. + +We arrived home again finally, after a ten-mile excursion, and the +irrepressible muleteers scampered at our heels through the main street, +goading the donkeys, shouting the everlasting "Sekki-yah," and singing +"John Brown's Body" in ruinous English. + +When we were dismounted and it came to settling, the shouting and jawing +and swearing and quarreling among the muleteers and with us was nearly +deafening. One fellow would demand a dollar an hour for the use of his +donkey; another claimed half a dollar for pricking him up, another a +quarter for helping in that service, and about fourteen guides presented +bills for showing us the way through the town and its environs; and every +vagrant of them was more vociferous, and more vehement and more frantic +in gesture than his neighbor. We paid one guide and paid for one +muleteer to each donkey. + +The mountains on some of the islands are very high. We sailed along the +shore of the island of Pico, under a stately green pyramid that rose up +with one unbroken sweep from our very feet to an altitude of 7,613 feet, +and thrust its summit above the white clouds like an island adrift in a +fog! + +We got plenty of fresh oranges, lemons, figs, apricots, etc., in these +Azores, of course. But I will desist. I am not here to write Patent +Office reports. + +We are on our way to Gibraltar, and shall reach there five or six days +out from the Azores. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +A week of buffeting a tempestuous and relentless sea; a week of +seasickness and deserted cabins; of lonely quarterdecks drenched with +spray--spray so ambitious that it even coated the smokestacks thick with +a white crust of salt to their very tops; a week of shivering in the +shelter of the lifeboats and deckhouses by day and blowing suffocating +"clouds" and boisterously performing at dominoes in the smoking room at +night. + +And the last night of the seven was the stormiest of all. There was no +thunder, no noise but the pounding bows of the ship, the keen whistling +of the gale through the cordage, and the rush of the seething waters. +But the vessel climbed aloft as if she would climb to heaven--then paused +an instant that seemed a century and plunged headlong down again, as from +a precipice. The sheeted sprays drenched the decks like rain. The +blackness of darkness was everywhere. At long intervals a flash of +lightning clove it with a quivering line of fire that revealed a heaving +world of water where was nothing before, kindled the dusky cordage to +glittering silver, and lit up the faces of the men with a ghastly luster! + +Fear drove many on deck that were used to avoiding the night winds and +the spray. Some thought the vessel could not live through the night, and +it seemed less dreadful to stand out in the midst of the wild tempest and +see the peril that threatened than to be shut up in the sepulchral +cabins, under the dim lamps, and imagine the horrors that were abroad on +the ocean. And once out--once where they could see the ship struggling +in the strong grasp of the storm--once where they could hear the shriek +of the winds and face the driving spray and look out upon the majestic +picture the lightnings disclosed, they were prisoners to a fierce +fascination they could not resist, and so remained. It was a wild night +--and a very, very long one. + +Everybody was sent scampering to the deck at seven o'clock this lovely +morning of the thirtieth of June with the glad news that land was in +sight! It was a rare thing and a joyful, to see all the ship's family +abroad once more, albeit the happiness that sat upon every countenance +could only partly conceal the ravages which that long siege of storms had +wrought there. But dull eyes soon sparkled with pleasure, pallid cheeks +flushed again, and frames weakened by sickness gathered new life from the +quickening influences of the bright, fresh morning. Yea, and from a +still more potent influence: the worn castaways were to see the blessed +land again!--and to see it was to bring back that motherland that was in +all their thoughts. + +Within the hour we were fairly within the Straits of Gibraltar, the tall +yellow-splotched hills of Africa on our right, with their bases veiled in +a blue haze and their summits swathed in clouds--the same being according +to Scripture, which says that "clouds and darkness are over the land." +The words were spoken of this particular portion of Africa, I believe. +On our left were the granite-ribbed domes of old Spain. The strait is +only thirteen miles wide in its narrowest part. + +At short intervals along the Spanish shore were quaint-looking old stone +towers--Moorish, we thought--but learned better afterwards. In former +times the Morocco rascals used to coast along the Spanish Main in their +boats till a safe opportunity seemed to present itself, and then dart in +and capture a Spanish village and carry off all the pretty women they +could find. It was a pleasant business, and was very popular. The +Spaniards built these watchtowers on the hills to enable them to keep a +sharper lookout on the Moroccan speculators. + +The picture on the other hand was very beautiful to eyes weary of the +changeless sea, and by and by the ship's company grew wonderfully +cheerful. But while we stood admiring the cloud-capped peaks and the +lowlands robed in misty gloom a finer picture burst upon us and chained +every eye like a magnet--a stately ship, with canvas piled on canvas till +she was one towering mass of bellying sail! She came speeding over the +sea like a great bird. Africa and Spain were forgotten. All homage was +for the beautiful stranger. While everybody gazed she swept superbly by +and flung the Stars and Stripes to the breeze! Quicker than thought, +hats and handkerchiefs flashed in the air, and a cheer went up! She was +beautiful before--she was radiant now. Many a one on our decks knew then +for the first time how tame a sight his country's flag is at home +compared to what it is in a foreign land. To see it is to see a vision +of home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a +very river of sluggish blood! + +We were approaching the famed Pillars of Hercules, and already the +African one, "Ape's Hill," a grand old mountain with summit streaked with +granite ledges, was in sight. The other, the great Rock of Gibraltar, +was yet to come. The ancients considered the Pillars of Hercules the +head of navigation and the end of the world. The information the +ancients didn't have was very voluminous. Even the prophets wrote book +after book and epistle after epistle, yet never once hinted at the +existence of a great continent on our side of the water; yet they must +have known it was there, I should think. + +In a few moments a lonely and enormous mass of rock, standing seemingly +in the center of the wide strait and apparently washed on all sides by +the sea, swung magnificently into view, and we needed no tedious traveled +parrot to tell us it was Gibraltar. There could not be two rocks like +that in one kingdom. + +The Rock of Gibraltar is about a mile and a half long, I should say, by +1,400 to 1,500 feet high, and a quarter of a mile wide at its base. One +side and one end of it come about as straight up out of the sea as the +side of a house, the other end is irregular and the other side is a steep +slant which an army would find very difficult to climb. At the foot of +this slant is the walled town of Gibraltar--or rather the town occupies +part of the slant. Everywhere--on hillside, in the precipice, by the +sea, on the heights--everywhere you choose to look, Gibraltar is clad +with masonry and bristling with guns. It makes a striking and lively +picture from whatsoever point you contemplate it. It is pushed out into +the sea on the end of a flat, narrow strip of land, and is suggestive of +a "gob" of mud on the end of a shingle. A few hundred yards of this flat +ground at its base belongs to the English, and then, extending across the +strip from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, a distance of a quarter of +a mile, comes the "Neutral Ground," a space two or three hundred yards +wide, which is free to both parties. + +"Are you going through Spain to Paris?" That question was bandied about +the ship day and night from Fayal to Gibraltar, and I thought I never +could get so tired of hearing any one combination of words again or more +tired of answering, "I don't know." At the last moment six or seven had +sufficient decision of character to make up their minds to go, and did +go, and I felt a sense of relief at once--it was forever too late now and +I could make up my mind at my leisure not to go. I must have a +prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to +make it up. + +But behold how annoyances repeat themselves. We had no sooner gotten rid +of the Spain distress than the Gibraltar guides started another--a +tiresome repetition of a legend that had nothing very astonishing about +it, even in the first place: "That high hill yonder is called the Queen's +Chair; it is because one of the queens of Spain placed her chair there +when the French and Spanish troops were besieging Gibraltar, and said she +would never move from the spot till the English flag was lowered from the +fortresses. If the English hadn't been gallant enough to lower the flag +for a few hours one day, she'd have had to break her oath or die up +there." + +We rode on asses and mules up the steep, narrow streets and entered the +subterranean galleries the English have blasted out in the rock. These +galleries are like spacious railway tunnels, and at short intervals in +them great guns frown out upon sea and town through portholes five or six +hundred feet above the ocean. There is a mile or so of this subterranean +work, and it must have cost a vast deal of money and labor. The gallery +guns command the peninsula and the harbors of both oceans, but they might +as well not be there, I should think, for an army could hardly climb the +perpendicular wall of the rock anyhow. Those lofty portholes afford +superb views of the sea, though. At one place, where a jutting crag was +hollowed out into a great chamber whose furniture was huge cannon and +whose windows were portholes, a glimpse was caught of a hill not far +away, and a soldier said: + +"That high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair; it is because a queen +of Spain placed her chair there once when the French and Spanish troops +were besieging Gibraltar, and said she would never move from the spot +till the English flag was lowered from the fortresses. If the English +hadn't been gallant enough to lower the flag for a few hours one day, +she'd have had to break her oath or die up there." + +On the topmost pinnacle of Gibraltar we halted a good while, and no doubt +the mules were tired. They had a right to be. The military road was +good, but rather steep, and there was a good deal of it. The view from +the narrow ledge was magnificent; from it vessels seeming like the +tiniest little toy boats were turned into noble ships by the telescopes, +and other vessels that were fifty miles away and even sixty, they said, +and invisible to the naked eye, could be clearly distinguished through +those same telescopes. Below, on one side, we looked down upon an +endless mass of batteries and on the other straight down to the sea. + +While I was resting ever so comfortably on a rampart, and cooling my +baking head in the delicious breeze, an officious guide belonging to +another party came up and said: + +"Senor, that high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair--" + +"Sir, I am a helpless orphan in a foreign land. Have pity on me. Don't +--now don't inflict that most in-FERNAL old legend on me anymore today!" + +There--I had used strong language after promising I would never do so +again; but the provocation was more than human nature could bear. If you +had been bored so, when you had the noble panorama of Spain and Africa +and the blue Mediterranean spread abroad at your feet, and wanted to gaze +and enjoy and surfeit yourself in its beauty in silence, you might have +even burst into stronger language than I did. + +Gibraltar has stood several protracted sieges, one of them of nearly four +years' duration (it failed), and the English only captured it by +stratagem. The wonder is that anybody should ever dream of trying so +impossible a project as the taking it by assault--and yet it has been +tried more than once. + +The Moors held the place twelve hundred years ago, and a staunch old +castle of theirs of that date still frowns from the middle of the town, +with moss-grown battlements and sides well scarred by shots fired in +battles and sieges that are forgotten now. A secret chamber in the rock +behind it was discovered some time ago, which contained a sword of +exquisite workmanship, and some quaint old armor of a fashion that +antiquaries are not acquainted with, though it is supposed to be Roman. +Roman armor and Roman relics of various kinds have been found in a cave +in the sea extremity of Gibraltar; history says Rome held this part of +the country about the Christian era, and these things seem to confirm the +statement. + +In that cave also are found human bones, crusted with a very thick, stony +coating, and wise men have ventured to say that those men not only lived +before the flood, but as much as ten thousand years before it. It may be +true--it looks reasonable enough--but as long as those parties can't vote +anymore, the matter can be of no great public interest. In this cave +likewise are found skeletons and fossils of animals that exist in every +part of Africa, yet within memory and tradition have never existed in any +portion of Spain save this lone peak of Gibraltar! So the theory is that +the channel between Gibraltar and Africa was once dry land, and that the +low, neutral neck between Gibraltar and the Spanish hills behind it was +once ocean, and of course that these African animals, being over at +Gibraltar (after rock, perhaps--there is plenty there), got closed out +when the great change occurred. The hills in Africa, across the channel, +are full of apes, and there are now and always have been apes on the rock +of Gibraltar--but not elsewhere in Spain! The subject is an interesting +one. + +There is an English garrison at Gibraltar of 6,000 or 7,000 men, and so +uniforms of flaming red are plenty; and red and blue, and undress +costumes of snowy white, and also the queer uniform of the bare-kneed +Highlander; and one sees soft-eyed Spanish girls from San Roque, and +veiled Moorish beauties (I suppose they are beauties) from Tarifa, and +turbaned, sashed, and trousered Moorish merchants from Fez, and +long-robed, bare-legged, ragged Muhammadan vagabonds from Tetuan and +Tangier, some brown, some yellow and some as black as virgin ink--and +Jews from all around, in gabardine, skullcap, and slippers, just as they +are in pictures and theaters, and just as they were three thousand years +ago, no doubt. You can easily understand that a tribe (somehow our +pilgrims suggest that expression, because they march in a straggling +procession through these foreign places with such an Indian-like air of +complacency and independence about them) like ours, made up from fifteen +or sixteen states of the Union, found enough to stare at in this +shifting panorama of fashion today. + +Speaking of our pilgrims reminds me that we have one or two people among +us who are sometimes an annoyance. However, I do not count the Oracle in +that list. I will explain that the Oracle is an innocent old ass who +eats for four and looks wiser than the whole Academy of France would have +any right to look, and never uses a one-syllable word when he can think +of a longer one, and never by any possible chance knows the meaning of +any long word he uses or ever gets it in the right place; yet he will +serenely venture an opinion on the most abstruse subject and back it up +complacently with quotations from authors who never existed, and finally +when cornered will slide to the other side of the question, say he has +been there all the time, and come back at you with your own spoken +arguments, only with the big words all tangled, and play them in your +very teeth as original with himself. He reads a chapter in the +guidebooks, mixes the facts all up, with his bad memory, and then goes +off to inflict the whole mess on somebody as wisdom which has been +festering in his brain for years and which he gathered in college from +erudite authors who are dead now and out of print. This morning at +breakfast he pointed out of the window and said: + +"Do you see that there hill out there on that African coast? It's one of +them Pillows of Herkewls, I should say--and there's the ultimate one +alongside of it." + +"The ultimate one--that is a good word--but the pillars are not both on +the same side of the strait." (I saw he had been deceived by a +carelessly written sentence in the guidebook.) + +"Well, it ain't for you to say, nor for me. Some authors states it that +way, and some states it different. Old Gibbons don't say nothing about +it--just shirks it complete--Gibbons always done that when he got stuck +--but there is Rolampton, what does he say? Why, he says that they was +both on the same side, and Trinculian, and Sobaster, and Syraccus, and +Langomarganbl----" + +"Oh, that will do--that's enough. If you have got your hand in for +inventing authors and testimony, I have nothing more to say--let them be +on the same side." + +We don't mind the Oracle. We rather like him. We can tolerate the +Oracle very easily, but we have a poet and a good-natured enterprising +idiot on board, and they do distress the company. The one gives copies +of his verses to consuls, commanders, hotel keepers, Arabs, Dutch--to +anybody, in fact, who will submit to a grievous infliction most kindly +meant. His poetry is all very well on shipboard, notwithstanding when he +wrote an "Ode to the Ocean in a Storm" in one half hour, and an +"Apostrophe to the Rooster in the Waist of the Ship" in the next, the +transition was considered to be rather abrupt; but when he sends an +invoice of rhymes to the Governor of Fayal and another to the commander +in chief and other dignitaries in Gibraltar with the compliments of the +Laureate of the Ship, it is not popular with the passengers. + +The other personage I have mentioned is young and green, and not bright, +not learned, and not wise. He will be, though, someday if he recollects +the answers to all his questions. He is known about the ship as the +"Interrogation Point," and this by constant use has become shortened to +"Interrogation." He has distinguished himself twice already. In Fayal +they pointed out a hill and told him it was 800 feet high and 1,100 feet +long. And they told him there was a tunnel 2,000 feet long and 1,000 +feet high running through the hill, from end to end. He believed it. He +repeated it to everybody, discussed it, and read it from his notes. +Finally, he took a useful hint from this remark, which a thoughtful old +pilgrim made: + +"Well, yes, it is a little remarkable--singular tunnel altogether--stands +up out of the top of the hill about two hundred feet, and one end of it +sticks out of the hill about nine hundred!" + +Here in Gibraltar he corners these educated British officers and badgers +them with braggadocio about America and the wonders she can perform! He +told one of them a couple of our gunboats could come here and knock +Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea! + +At this present moment half a dozen of us are taking a private pleasure +excursion of our own devising. We form rather more than half the list of +white passengers on board a small steamer bound for the venerable Moorish +town of Tangier, Africa. Nothing could be more absolutely certain than +that we are enjoying ourselves. One can not do otherwise who speeds over +these sparkling waters and breathes the soft atmosphere of this sunny +land. Care cannot assail us here. We are out of its jurisdiction. + +We even steamed recklessly by the frowning fortress of Malabat +(a stronghold of the Emperor of Morocco) without a twinge of fear. +The whole garrison turned out under arms and assumed a threatening +attitude--yet still we did not fear. The entire garrison marched and +counter-marched within the rampart, in full view--yet notwithstanding +even this, we never flinched. + +I suppose we really do not know what fear is. I inquired the name of the +garrison of the fortress of Malabat, and they said it was Mehemet Ali Ben +Sancom. I said it would be a good idea to get some more garrisons to +help him; but they said no, he had nothing to do but hold the place, and +he was competent to do that, had done it two years already. That was +evidence which one could not well refute. There is nothing like +reputation. + +Every now and then my glove purchase in Gibraltar last night intrudes +itself upon me. Dan and the ship's surgeon and I had been up to the +great square, listening to the music of the fine military bands and +contemplating English and Spanish female loveliness and fashion, and at +nine o'clock were on our way to the theater, when we met the General, the +Judge, the Commodore, the Colonel, and the Commissioner of the United +States of America to Europe, Asia, and Africa, who had been to the Club +House to register their several titles and impoverish the bill of fare; +and they told us to go over to the little variety store near the Hall of +Justice and buy some kid gloves. They said they were elegant and very +moderate in price. It seemed a stylish thing to go to the theater in kid +gloves, and we acted upon the hint. A very handsome young lady in the +store offered me a pair of blue gloves. I did not want blue, but she +said they would look very pretty on a hand like mine. The remark touched +me tenderly. I glanced furtively at my hand, and somehow it did seem +rather a comely member. I tried a glove on my left and blushed a little. +Manifestly the size was too small for me. But I felt gratified when she +said: + +"Oh, it is just right!" Yet I knew it was no such thing. + +I tugged at it diligently, but it was discouraging work. She said: + +"Ah! I see you are accustomed to wearing kid gloves--but some gentlemen +are so awkward about putting them on." + +It was the last compliment I had expected. I only understand putting on +the buckskin article perfectly. I made another effort and tore the glove +from the base of the thumb into the palm of the hand--and tried to hide +the rent. She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to +deserve them or die: + +"Ah, you have had experience! [A rip down the back of the hand.] They +are just right for you--your hand is very small--if they tear you need +not pay for them. [A rent across the middle.] I can always tell when a +gentleman understands putting on kid gloves. There is a grace about it +that only comes with long practice." The whole after-guard of the glove +"fetched away," as the sailors say, the fabric parted across the +knuckles, and nothing was left but a melancholy ruin. + +I was too much flattered to make an exposure and throw the merchandise on +the angel's hands. I was hot, vexed, confused, but still happy; but I +hated the other boys for taking such an absorbing interest in the +proceedings. I wished they were in Jericho. I felt exquisitely mean +when I said cheerfully: + +"This one does very well; it fits elegantly. I like a glove that fits. +No, never mind, ma'am, never mind; I'll put the other on in the street. +It is warm here." + +It was warm. It was the warmest place I ever was in. I paid the bill, +and as I passed out with a fascinating bow I thought I detected a light +in the woman's eye that was gently ironical; and when I looked back from +the street, and she was laughing all to herself about something or other, +I said to myself with withering sarcasm, "Oh, certainly; you know how to +put on kid gloves, don't you? A self-complacent ass, ready to be +flattered out of your senses by every petticoat that chooses to take the +trouble to do it!" + +The silence of the boys annoyed me. Finally Dan said musingly: + +"Some gentlemen don't know how to put on kid gloves at all, but some do." + +And the doctor said (to the moon, I thought): + +"But it is always easy to tell when a gentleman is used to putting on kid +gloves." + +Dan soliloquized after a pause: + +"Ah, yes; there is a grace about it that only comes with long, very long +practice." + +"Yes, indeed, I've noticed that when a man hauls on a kid glove like he +was dragging a cat out of an ash hole by the tail, he understands putting +on kid gloves; he's had ex--" + +"Boys, enough of a thing's enough! You think you are very smart, I +suppose, but I don't. And if you go and tell any of those old gossips in +the ship about this thing, I'll never forgive you for it; that's all." + +They let me alone then for the time being. We always let each other +alone in time to prevent ill feeling from spoiling a joke. But they had +bought gloves, too, as I did. We threw all the purchases away together +this morning. They were coarse, unsubstantial, freckled all over with +broad yellow splotches, and could neither stand wear nor public +exhibition. We had entertained an angel unawares, but we did not take +her in. She did that for us. + +Tangier! A tribe of stalwart Moors are wading into the sea to carry us +ashore on their backs from the small boats. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +This is royal! Let those who went up through Spain make the best of it +--these dominions of the Emperor of Morocco suit our little party well +enough. We have had enough of Spain at Gibraltar for the present. +Tangier is the spot we have been longing for all the time. Elsewhere we +have found foreign-looking things and foreign-looking people, but always +with things and people intermixed that we were familiar with before, and +so the novelty of the situation lost a deal of its force. We wanted +something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign--foreign from top to +bottom--foreign from center to circumference--foreign inside and outside +and all around--nothing anywhere about it to dilute its foreignness +--nothing to remind us of any other people or any other land under the sun. +And lo! In Tangier we have found it. Here is not the slightest thing +that ever we have seen save in pictures--and we always mistrusted the +pictures before. We cannot anymore. The pictures used to seem +exaggerations--they seemed too weird and fanciful for reality. But +behold, they were not wild enough--they were not fanciful enough--they +have not told half the story. Tangier is a foreign land if ever there +was one, and the true spirit of it can never be found in any book save +The Arabian Nights. Here are no white men visible, yet swarms of +humanity are all about us. Here is a packed and jammed city enclosed in +a massive stone wall which is more than a thousand years old. All the +houses nearly are one-and two-story, made of thick walls of stone, +plastered outside, square as a dry-goods box, flat as a floor on top, no +cornices, whitewashed all over--a crowded city of snowy tombs! And the +doors are arched with the peculiar arch we see in Moorish pictures; the +floors are laid in varicolored diamond flags; in tesselated, many-colored +porcelain squares wrought in the furnaces of Fez; in red tiles and broad +bricks that time cannot wear; there is no furniture in the rooms (of +Jewish dwellings) save divans--what there is in Moorish ones no man may +know; within their sacred walls no Christian dog can enter. And the +streets are oriental--some of them three feet wide, some six, but only +two that are over a dozen; a man can blockade the most of them by +extending his body across them. Isn't it an oriental picture? + +There are stalwart Bedouins of the desert here, and stately Moors proud +of a history that goes back to the night of time; and Jews whose fathers +fled hither centuries upon centuries ago; and swarthy Riffians from the +mountains--born cut-throats--and original, genuine Negroes as black as +Moses; and howling dervishes and a hundred breeds of Arabs--all sorts and +descriptions of people that are foreign and curious to look upon. + +And their dresses are strange beyond all description. Here is a bronzed +Moor in a prodigious white turban, curiously embroidered jacket, gold and +crimson sash, of many folds, wrapped round and round his waist, trousers +that only come a little below his knee and yet have twenty yards of stuff +in them, ornamented scimitar, bare shins, stockingless feet, yellow +slippers, and gun of preposterous length--a mere soldier!--I thought he +was the Emperor at least. And here are aged Moors with flowing white +beards and long white robes with vast cowls; and Bedouins with long, +cowled, striped cloaks; and Negroes and Riffians with heads clean-shaven +except a kinky scalp lock back of the ear or, rather, upon the after +corner of the skull; and all sorts of barbarians in all sorts of weird +costumes, and all more or less ragged. And here are Moorish women who +are enveloped from head to foot in coarse white robes, and whose sex can +only be determined by the fact that they only leave one eye visible and +never look at men of their own race, or are looked at by them in public. +Here are five thousand Jews in blue gabardines, sashes about their +waists, slippers upon their feet, little skullcaps upon the backs of +their heads, hair combed down on the forehead, and cut straight across +the middle of it from side to side--the selfsame fashion their Tangier +ancestors have worn for I don't know how many bewildering centuries. +Their feet and ankles are bare. Their noses are all hooked, and hooked +alike. They all resemble each other so much that one could almost +believe they were of one family. Their women are plump and pretty, and +do smile upon a Christian in a way which is in the last degree +comforting. + +What a funny old town it is! It seems like profanation to laugh and jest +and bandy the frivolous chat of our day amid its hoary relics. Only the +stately phraseology and the measured speech of the sons of the Prophet +are suited to a venerable antiquity like this. Here is a crumbling wall +that was old when Columbus discovered America; was old when Peter the +Hermit roused the knightly men of the Middle Ages to arm for the first +Crusade; was old when Charlemagne and his paladins beleaguered enchanted +castles and battled with giants and genii in the fabled days of the olden +time; was old when Christ and his disciples walked the earth; stood where +it stands today when the lips of Memnon were vocal and men bought and +sold in the streets of ancient Thebes! + +The Phoenicians, the Carthagenians, the English, Moors, Romans, all have +battled for Tangier--all have won it and lost it. Here is a ragged, +oriental-looking Negro from some desert place in interior Africa, filling +his goatskin with water from a stained and battered fountain built by the +Romans twelve hundred years ago. Yonder is a ruined arch of a bridge +built by Julius Caesar nineteen hundred years ago. Men who had seen the +infant Saviour in the Virgin's arms have stood upon it, maybe. + +Near it are the ruins of a dockyard where Caesar repaired his ships and +loaded them with grain when he invaded Britain, fifty years before the +Christian era. + +Here, under the quiet stars, these old streets seem thronged with the +phantoms of forgotten ages. My eyes are resting upon a spot where stood +a monument which was seen and described by Roman historians less than two +thousand years ago, whereon was inscribed: + + "WE ARE THE CANAANITES. WE ARE THEY THAT + HAVE BEEN DRIVEN OUT OF THE LAND OF CANAAN + BY THE JEWISH ROBBER, JOSHUA." + +Joshua drove them out, and they came here. Not many leagues from here is +a tribe of Jews whose ancestors fled thither after an unsuccessful revolt +against King David, and these their descendants are still under a ban and +keep to themselves. + +Tangier has been mentioned in history for three thousand years. And it +was a town, though a queer one, when Hercules, clad in his lion skin, +landed here, four thousand years ago. In these streets he met Anitus, +the king of the country, and brained him with his club, which was the +fashion among gentlemen in those days. The people of Tangier (called +Tingis then) lived in the rudest possible huts and dressed in skins and +carried clubs, and were as savage as the wild beasts they were constantly +obliged to war with. But they were a gentlemanly race and did no work. +They lived on the natural products of the land. Their king's country +residence was at the famous Garden of Hesperides, seventy miles down the +coast from here. The garden, with its golden apples (oranges), is gone +now--no vestige of it remains. Antiquarians concede that such a +personage as Hercules did exist in ancient times and agree that he was an +enterprising and energetic man, but decline to believe him a good, +bona-fide god, because that would be unconstitutional. + +Down here at Cape Spartel is the celebrated cave of Hercules, where that +hero took refuge when he was vanquished and driven out of the Tangier +country. It is full of inscriptions in the dead languages, which fact +makes me think Hercules could not have traveled much, else he would not +have kept a journal. + +Five days' journey from here--say two hundred miles--are the ruins of an +ancient city, of whose history there is neither record nor tradition. +And yet its arches, its columns, and its statues proclaim it to have been +built by an enlightened race. + +The general size of a store in Tangier is about that of an ordinary +shower bath in a civilized land. The Muhammadan merchant, tinman, +shoemaker, or vendor of trifles sits cross-legged on the floor and +reaches after any article you may want to buy. You can rent a whole +block of these pigeonholes for fifty dollars a month. The market people +crowd the marketplace with their baskets of figs, dates, melons, +apricots, etc., and among them file trains of laden asses, not much +larger, if any, than a Newfoundland dog. The scene is lively, is +picturesque, and smells like a police court. The Jewish money-changers +have their dens close at hand, and all day long are counting bronze coins +and transferring them from one bushel basket to another. They don't coin +much money nowadays, I think. I saw none but what was dated four or five +hundred years back, and was badly worn and battered. These coins are not +very valuable. Jack went out to get a napoleon changed, so as to have +money suited to the general cheapness of things, and came back and said +he had "swamped the bank, had bought eleven quarts of coin, and the head +of the firm had gone on the street to negotiate for the balance of the +change." I bought nearly half a pint of their money for a shilling +myself. I am not proud on account of having so much money, though. I +care nothing for wealth. + +The Moors have some small silver coins and also some silver slugs worth a +dollar each. The latter are exceedingly scarce--so much so that when +poor ragged Arabs see one they beg to be allowed to kiss it. + +They have also a small gold coin worth two dollars. And that reminds me +of something. When Morocco is in a state of war, Arab couriers carry +letters through the country and charge a liberal postage. Every now and +then they fall into the hands of marauding bands and get robbed. +Therefore, warned by experience, as soon as they have collected two +dollars' worth of money they exchange it for one of those little gold +pieces, and when robbers come upon them, swallow it. The stratagem was +good while it was unsuspected, but after that the marauders simply gave +the sagacious United States mail an emetic and sat down to wait. + +The Emperor of Morocco is a soulless despot, and the great officers under +him are despots on a smaller scale. There is no regular system of +taxation, but when the Emperor or the Bashaw want money, they levy on +some rich man, and he has to furnish the cash or go to prison. +Therefore, few men in Morocco dare to be rich. It is too dangerous a +luxury. Vanity occasionally leads a man to display wealth, but sooner or +later the Emperor trumps up a charge against him--any sort of one will +do--and confiscates his property. Of course, there are many rich men in +the empire, but their money is buried, and they dress in rags and +counterfeit poverty. Every now and then the Emperor imprisons a man who +is suspected of the crime of being rich, and makes things so +uncomfortable for him that he is forced to discover where he has hidden +his money. + +Moors and Jews sometimes place themselves under the protection of the +foreign consuls, and then they can flout their riches in the Emperor's +face with impunity. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +About the first adventure we had yesterday afternoon, after landing here, +came near finishing that heedless Blucher. We had just mounted some +mules and asses and started out under the guardianship of the stately, +the princely, the magnificent Hadji Muhammad Lamarty (may his tribe +increase!) when we came upon a fine Moorish mosque, with tall tower, rich +with checker-work of many-colored porcelain, and every part and portion +of the edifice adorned with the quaint architecture of the Alhambra, and +Blucher started to ride into the open doorway. A startling "Hi-hi!" from +our camp followers and a loud "Halt!" from an English gentleman in the +party checked the adventurer, and then we were informed that so dire a +profanation is it for a Christian dog to set foot upon the sacred +threshold of a Moorish mosque that no amount of purification can ever +make it fit for the faithful to pray in again. Had Blucher succeeded in +entering the place, he would no doubt have been chased through the town +and stoned; and the time has been, and not many years ago, either, when a +Christian would have been most ruthlessly slaughtered if captured in a +mosque. We caught a glimpse of the handsome tessellated pavements within +and of the devotees performing their ablutions at the fountains, but even +that we took that glimpse was a thing not relished by the Moorish +bystanders. + +Some years ago the clock in the tower of the mosque got out of order. +The Moors of Tangier have so degenerated that it has been long since +there was an artificer among them capable of curing so delicate a patient +as a debilitated clock. The great men of the city met in solemn conclave +to consider how the difficulty was to be met. They discussed the matter +thoroughly but arrived at no solution. Finally, a patriarch arose and +said: + +"Oh, children of the Prophet, it is known unto you that a Portuguee dog +of a Christian clock mender pollutes the city of Tangier with his +presence. Ye know, also, that when mosques are builded, asses bear the +stones and the cement, and cross the sacred threshold. Now, therefore, +send the Christian dog on all fours, and barefoot, into the holy place to +mend the clock, and let him go as an ass!" + +And in that way it was done. Therefore, if Blucher ever sees the inside +of a mosque, he will have to cast aside his humanity and go in his +natural character. We visited the jail and found Moorish prisoners +making mats and baskets. (This thing of utilizing crime savors of +civilization.) Murder is punished with death. A short time ago three +murderers were taken beyond the city walls and shot. Moorish guns are +not good, and neither are Moorish marksmen. In this instance they set up +the poor criminals at long range, like so many targets, and practiced on +them--kept them hopping about and dodging bullets for half an hour before +they managed to drive the center. + +When a man steals cattle, they cut off his right hand and left leg and +nail them up in the marketplace as a warning to everybody. Their surgery +is not artistic. They slice around the bone a little, then break off the +limb. Sometimes the patient gets well; but, as a general thing, he +don't. However, the Moorish heart is stout. The Moors were always +brave. These criminals undergo the fearful operation without a wince, +without a tremor of any kind, without a groan! No amount of suffering +can bring down the pride of a Moor or make him shame his dignity with a +cry. + +Here, marriage is contracted by the parents of the parties to it. There +are no valentines, no stolen interviews, no riding out, no courting in +dim parlors, no lovers' quarrels and reconciliations--no nothing that is +proper to approaching matrimony. The young man takes the girl his father +selects for him, marries her, and after that she is unveiled, and he sees +her for the first time. If after due acquaintance she suits him, he +retains her; but if he suspects her purity, he bundles her back to her +father; if he finds her diseased, the same; or if, after just and +reasonable time is allowed her, she neglects to bear children, back she +goes to the home of her childhood. + +Muhammadans here who can afford it keep a good many wives on hand. They +are called wives, though I believe the Koran only allows four genuine +wives--the rest are concubines. The Emperor of Morocco don't know how +many wives he has, but thinks he has five hundred. However, that is near +enough--a dozen or so, one way or the other, don't matter. + +Even the Jews in the interior have a plurality of wives. + +I have caught a glimpse of the faces of several Moorish women (for they +are only human, and will expose their faces for the admiration of a +Christian dog when no male Moor is by), and I am full of veneration for +the wisdom that leads them to cover up such atrocious ugliness. + +They carry their children at their backs, in a sack, like other savages +the world over. + +Many of the Negroes are held in slavery by the Moors. But the moment a +female slave becomes her master's concubine her bonds are broken, and as +soon as a male slave can read the first chapter of the Koran (which +contains the creed) he can no longer be held in bondage. + +They have three Sundays a week in Tangier. The Muhammadans' comes on +Friday, the Jews' on Saturday, and that of the Christian Consuls on +Sunday. The Jews are the most radical. The Moor goes to his mosque +about noon on his Sabbath, as on any other day, removes his shoes at the +door, performs his ablutions, makes his salaams, pressing his forehead to +the pavement time and again, says his prayers, and goes back to his work. + +But the Jew shuts up shop; will not touch copper or bronze money at all; +soils his fingers with nothing meaner than silver and gold; attends the +synagogue devoutly; will not cook or have anything to do with fire; and +religiously refrains from embarking in any enterprise. + +The Moor who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca is entitled to high +distinction. Men call him Hadji, and he is thenceforward a great +personage. Hundreds of Moors come to Tangier every year and embark for +Mecca. They go part of the way in English steamers, and the ten or +twelve dollars they pay for passage is about all the trip costs. They +take with them a quantity of food, and when the commissary department +fails they "skirmish," as Jack terms it in his sinful, slangy way. From +the time they leave till they get home again, they never wash, either on +land or sea. They are usually gone from five to seven months, and as +they do not change their clothes during all that time, they are totally +unfit for the drawing room when they get back. + +Many of them have to rake and scrape a long time to gather together the +ten dollars their steamer passage costs, and when one of them gets back +he is a bankrupt forever after. Few Moors can ever build up their +fortunes again in one short lifetime after so reckless an outlay. In +order to confine the dignity of Hadji to gentlemen of patrician blood and +possessions, the Emperor decreed that no man should make the pilgrimage +save bloated aristocrats who were worth a hundred dollars in specie. But +behold how iniquity can circumvent the law! For a consideration, the +Jewish money-changer lends the pilgrim one hundred dollars long enough +for him to swear himself through, and then receives it back before the +ship sails out of the harbor! + +Spain is the only nation the Moors fear. The reason is that Spain sends +her heaviest ships of war and her loudest guns to astonish these Muslims, +while America and other nations send only a little contemptible tub of a +gunboat occasionally. The Moors, like other savages, learn by what they +see, not what they hear or read. We have great fleets in the +Mediterranean, but they seldom touch at African ports. The Moors have a +small opinion of England, France, and America, and put their +representatives to a deal of red-tape circumlocution before they grant +them their common rights, let alone a favor. But the moment the Spanish +minister makes a demand, it is acceded to at once, whether it be just or +not. + +Spain chastised the Moors five or six years ago, about a disputed piece +of property opposite Gibraltar, and captured the city of Tetouan. She +compromised on an augmentation of her territory, twenty million dollars' +indemnity in money, and peace. And then she gave up the city. But she +never gave it up until the Spanish soldiers had eaten up all the cats. +They would not compromise as long as the cats held out. Spaniards are +very fond of cats. On the contrary, the Moors reverence cats as +something sacred. So the Spaniards touched them on a tender point that +time. Their unfeline conduct in eating up all the Tetouan cats aroused a +hatred toward them in the breasts of the Moors, to which even the driving +them out of Spain was tame and passionless. Moors and Spaniards are foes +forever now. France had a minister here once who embittered the nation +against him in the most innocent way. He killed a couple of battalions +of cats (Tangier is full of them) and made a parlor carpet out of their +hides. He made his carpet in circles--first a circle of old gray +tomcats, with their tails all pointing toward the center; then a circle +of yellow cats; next a circle of black cats and a circle of white ones; +then a circle of all sorts of cats; and, finally, a centerpiece of +assorted kittens. It was very beautiful, but the Moors curse his memory +to this day. + +When we went to call on our American Consul General today I noticed that +all possible games for parlor amusement seemed to be represented on his +center tables. I thought that hinted at lonesomeness. The idea was +correct. His is the only American family in Tangier. There are many +foreign consuls in this place, but much visiting is not indulged in. +Tangier is clear out of the world, and what is the use of visiting when +people have nothing on earth to talk about? There is none. So each +consul's family stays at home chiefly and amuses itself as best it can. +Tangier is full of interest for one day, but after that it is a weary +prison. The Consul General has been here five years, and has got enough +of it to do him for a century, and is going home shortly. His family +seize upon their letters and papers when the mail arrives, read them over +and over again for two days or three, talk them over and over again for +two or three more till they wear them out, and after that for days +together they eat and drink and sleep, and ride out over the same old +road, and see the same old tiresome things that even decades of centuries +have scarcely changed, and say never a single word! They have literally +nothing whatever to talk about. The arrival of an American man-of-war is +a godsend to them. "O Solitude, where are the charms which sages have +seen in thy face?" It is the completest exile that I can conceive of. +I would seriously recommend to the government of the United States that +when a man commits a crime so heinous that the law provides no adequate +punishment for it, they make him Consul General to Tangier. + +I am glad to have seen Tangier--the second-oldest town in the world. But +I am ready to bid it good-bye, I believe. + +We shall go hence to Gibraltar this evening or in the morning, and +doubtless the Quaker City will sail from that port within the next +forty-eight hours. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +We passed the Fourth of July on board the Quaker City, in mid-ocean. It +was in all respects a characteristic Mediterranean day--faultlessly +beautiful. A cloudless sky; a refreshing summer wind; a radiant sunshine +that glinted cheerily from dancing wavelets instead of crested mountains +of water; a sea beneath us that was so wonderfully blue, so richly, +brilliantly blue, that it overcame the dullest sensibilities with the +spell of its fascination. + +They even have fine sunsets on the Mediterranean--a thing that is +certainly rare in most quarters of the globe. The evening we sailed away +from Gibraltar, that hard-featured rock was swimming in a creamy mist so +rich, so soft, so enchantingly vague and dreamy, that even the Oracle, +that serene, that inspired, that overpowering humbug, scorned the dinner +gong and tarried to worship! + +He said: "Well, that's gorgis, ain't it! They don't have none of them +things in our parts, do they? I consider that them effects is on account +of the superior refragability, as you may say, of the sun's diramic +combination with the lymphatic forces of the perihelion of Jubiter. What +should you think?" + +"Oh, go to bed!" Dan said that, and went away. + +"Oh, yes, it's all very well to say go to bed when a man makes an +argument which another man can't answer. Dan don't never stand any +chance in an argument with me. And he knows it, too. What should you +say, Jack?" + +"Now, Doctor, don't you come bothering around me with that dictionary +bosh. I don't do you any harm, do I? Then you let me alone." + +"He's gone, too. Well, them fellows have all tackled the old Oracle, as +they say, but the old man's most too many for 'em. Maybe the Poet Lariat +ain't satisfied with them deductions?" + +The poet replied with a barbarous rhyme and went below. + +"'Pears that he can't qualify, neither. Well, I didn't expect nothing +out of him. I never see one of them poets yet that knowed anything. +He'll go down now and grind out about four reams of the awfullest slush +about that old rock and give it to a consul, or a pilot, or a nigger, or +anybody he comes across first which he can impose on. Pity but +somebody'd take that poor old lunatic and dig all that poetry rubbage out +of him. Why can't a man put his intellect onto things that's some value? +Gibbons, and Hippocratus, and Sarcophagus, and all them old ancient +philosophers was down on poets--" + +"Doctor," I said, "you are going to invent authorities now and I'll leave +you, too. I always enjoy your conversation, notwithstanding the +luxuriance of your syllables, when the philosophy you offer rests on your +own responsibility; but when you begin to soar--when you begin to support +it with the evidence of authorities who are the creations of your own +fancy--I lose confidence." + +That was the way to flatter the doctor. He considered it a sort of +acknowledgment on my part of a fear to argue with him. He was always +persecuting the passengers with abstruse propositions framed in language +that no man could understand, and they endured the exquisite torture a +minute or two and then abandoned the field. A triumph like this, over +half a dozen antagonists was sufficient for one day; from that time +forward he would patrol the decks beaming blandly upon all comers, and so +tranquilly, blissfully happy! + +But I digress. The thunder of our two brave cannon announced the Fourth +of July, at daylight, to all who were awake. But many of us got our +information at a later hour, from the almanac. All the flags were sent +aloft except half a dozen that were needed to decorate portions of the +ship below, and in a short time the vessel assumed a holiday appearance. +During the morning, meetings were held and all manner of committees set +to work on the celebration ceremonies. In the afternoon the ship's +company assembled aft, on deck, under the awnings; the flute, the +asthmatic melodeon, and the consumptive clarinet crippled "The +Star-Spangled Banner," the choir chased it to cover, and George came in +with a peculiarly lacerating screech on the final note and slaughtered +it. Nobody mourned. + +We carried out the corpse on three cheers (that joke was not intentional +and I do not endorse it), and then the President, throned behind a cable +locker with a national flag spread over it, announced the "Reader," who +rose up and read that same old Declaration of Independence which we have +all listened to so often without paying any attention to what it said; +and after that the President piped the Orator of the Day to quarters and +he made that same old speech about our national greatness which we so +religiously believe and so fervently applaud. Now came the choir into +court again, with the complaining instruments, and assaulted "Hail +Columbia"; and when victory hung wavering in the scale, George returned +with his dreadful wild-goose stop turned on and the choir won, of course. +A minister pronounced the benediction, and the patriotic little gathering +disbanded. The Fourth of July was safe, as far as the Mediterranean was +concerned. + +At dinner in the evening, a well-written original poem was recited with +spirit by one of the ship's captains, and thirteen regular toasts were +washed down with several baskets of champagne. The speeches were bad +--execrable almost without exception. In fact, without any exception but +one. Captain Duncan made a good speech; he made the only good speech of +the evening. He said: + +"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--May we all live to a green old age and be +prosperous and happy. Steward, bring up another basket of champagne." + +It was regarded as a very able effort. + +The festivities, so to speak, closed with another of those miraculous +balls on the promenade deck. We were not used to dancing on an even +keel, though, and it was only a questionable success. But take it all +together, it was a bright, cheerful, pleasant Fourth. + +Toward nightfall the next evening, we steamed into the great artificial +harbor of this noble city of Marseilles, and saw the dying sunlight gild +its clustering spires and ramparts, and flood its leagues of environing +verdure with a mellow radiance that touched with an added charm the white +villas that flecked the landscape far and near. [Copyright secured +according to law.] + +There were no stages out, and we could not get on the pier from the ship. +It was annoying. We were full of enthusiasm--we wanted to see France! +Just at nightfall our party of three contracted with a waterman for the +privilege of using his boat as a bridge--its stern was at our companion +ladder and its bow touched the pier. We got in and the fellow backed out +into the harbor. I told him in French that all we wanted was to walk +over his thwarts and step ashore, and asked him what he went away out +there for. He said he could not understand me. I repeated. Still he +could not understand. He appeared to be very ignorant of French. The +doctor tried him, but he could not understand the doctor. I asked this +boatman to explain his conduct, which he did; and then I couldn't +understand him. Dan said: + +"Oh, go to the pier, you old fool--that's where we want to go!" + +We reasoned calmly with Dan that it was useless to speak to this +foreigner in English--that he had better let us conduct this business in +the French language and not let the stranger see how uncultivated he was. + +"Well, go on, go on," he said, "don't mind me. I don't wish to +interfere. Only, if you go on telling him in your kind of French, he +never will find out where we want to go to. That is what I think about +it." + +We rebuked him severely for this remark and said we never knew an +ignorant person yet but was prejudiced. The Frenchman spoke again, and +the doctor said: + +"There now, Dan, he says he is going to allez to the douain. Means he is +going to the hotel. Oh, certainly--we don't know the French language." + +This was a crusher, as Jack would say. It silenced further criticism +from the disaffected member. We coasted past the sharp bows of a navy of +great steamships and stopped at last at a government building on a stone +pier. It was easy to remember then that the douain was the customhouse +and not the hotel. We did not mention it, however. With winning French +politeness the officers merely opened and closed our satchels, declined +to examine our passports, and sent us on our way. We stopped at the +first cafe we came to and entered. An old woman seated us at a table and +waited for orders. The doctor said: + +"Avez-vous du vin?" + +The dame looked perplexed. The doctor said again, with elaborate +distinctness of articulation: + +"Avez-vous du--vin!" + +The dame looked more perplexed than before. I said: + +"Doctor, there is a flaw in your pronunciation somewhere. Let me try +her. Madame, avez-vous du vin?--It isn't any use, Doctor--take the +witness." + +"Madame, avez-vous du vin--du fromage--pain--pickled pigs' feet--beurre +--des oeufs--du boeuf--horseradish, sauerkraut, hog and hominy--anything, +anything in the world that can stay a Christian stomach!" + +She said: + +"Bless you, why didn't you speak English before? I don't know anything +about your plagued French!" + +The humiliating taunts of the disaffected member spoiled the supper, and +we dispatched it in angry silence and got away as soon as we could. Here +we were in beautiful France--in a vast stone house of quaint +architecture--surrounded by all manner of curiously worded French signs +--stared at by strangely habited, bearded French people--everything +gradually and surely forcing upon us the coveted consciousness that at +last, and beyond all question, we were in beautiful France and absorbing +its nature to the forgetfulness of everything else, and coming to feel +the happy romance of the thing in all its enchanting delightfulness--and +to think of this skinny veteran intruding with her vile English, at such +a moment, to blow the fair vision to the winds! It was exasperating. + +We set out to find the centre of the city, inquiring the direction every +now and then. We never did succeed in making anybody understand just +exactly what we wanted, and neither did we ever succeed in comprehending +just exactly what they said in reply, but then they always pointed--they +always did that--and we bowed politely and said, "Merci, monsieur," and +so it was a blighting triumph over the disaffected member anyway. He was +restive under these victories and often asked: + +"What did that pirate say?" + +"Why, he told us which way to go to find the Grand Casino." + +"Yes, but what did he say?" + +"Oh, it don't matter what he said--we understood him. These are educated +people--not like that absurd boatman." + +"Well, I wish they were educated enough to tell a man a direction that +goes some where--for we've been going around in a circle for an hour. +I've passed this same old drugstore seven times." + +We said it was a low, disreputable falsehood (but we knew it was not). +It was plain that it would not do to pass that drugstore again, though +--we might go on asking directions, but we must cease from following +finger-pointings if we hoped to check the suspicions of the disaffected +member. + +A long walk through smooth, asphaltum-paved streets bordered by blocks of +vast new mercantile houses of cream-colored stone every house and every +block precisely like all the other houses and all the other blocks for a +mile, and all brilliantly lighted--brought us at last to the principal +thoroughfare. On every hand were bright colors, flashing constellations +of gas burners, gaily dressed men and women thronging the sidewalks +--hurry, life, activity, cheerfulness, conversation, and laughter +everywhere! We found the Grand Hotel du Louvre et de la Paix, and wrote +down who we were, where we were born, what our occupations were, the +place we came from last, whether we were married or single, how we liked +it, how old we were, where we were bound for and when we expected to get +there, and a great deal of information of similar importance--all for the +benefit of the landlord and the secret police. We hired a guide and +began the business of sightseeing immediately. That first night on +French soil was a stirring one. I cannot think of half the places we +went to or what we particularly saw; we had no disposition to examine +carefully into anything at all--we only wanted to glance and go--to move, +keep moving! The spirit of the country was upon us. We sat down, +finally, at a late hour, in the great Casino, and called for unstinted +champagne. It is so easy to be bloated aristocrats where it costs +nothing of consequence! There were about five hundred people in that +dazzling place, I suppose, though the walls being papered entirely with +mirrors, so to speak, one could not really tell but that there were a +hundred thousand. Young, daintily dressed exquisites and young, +stylishly dressed women, and also old gentlemen and old ladies, sat in +couples and groups about innumerable marble-topped tables and ate fancy +suppers, drank wine, and kept up a chattering din of conversation that +was dazing to the senses. There was a stage at the far end and a large +orchestra; and every now and then actors and actresses in preposterous +comic dresses came out and sang the most extravagantly funny songs, to +judge by their absurd actions; but that audience merely suspended its +chatter, stared cynically, and never once smiled, never once applauded! +I had always thought that Frenchmen were ready to laugh at any thing. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +We are getting foreignized rapidly and with facility. We are getting +reconciled to halls and bedchambers with unhomelike stone floors and no +carpets--floors that ring to the tread of one's heels with a sharpness +that is death to sentimental musing. We are getting used to tidy, +noiseless waiters, who glide hither and thither, and hover about your +back and your elbows like butterflies, quick to comprehend orders, quick +to fill them; thankful for a gratuity without regard to the amount; and +always polite--never otherwise than polite. That is the strangest +curiosity yet--a really polite hotel waiter who isn't an idiot. We are +getting used to driving right into the central court of the hotel, in the +midst of a fragrant circle of vines and flowers, and in the midst also of +parties of gentlemen sitting quietly reading the paper and smoking. We +are getting used to ice frozen by artificial process in ordinary bottles +--the only kind of ice they have here. We are getting used to all these +things, but we are not getting used to carrying our own soap. We are +sufficiently civilized to carry our own combs and toothbrushes, but this +thing of having to ring for soap every time we wash is new to us and not +pleasant at all. We think of it just after we get our heads and faces +thoroughly wet or just when we think we have been in the bathtub long +enough, and then, of course, an annoying delay follows. These +Marseillaises make Marseillaise hymns and Marseilles vests and Marseilles +soap for all the world, but they never sing their hymns or wear their +vests or wash with their soap themselves. + +We have learned to go through the lingering routine of the table d'hote +with patience, with serenity, with satisfaction. We take soup, then wait +a few minutes for the fish; a few minutes more and the plates are +changed, and the roast beef comes; another change and we take peas; +change again and take lentils; change and take snail patties (I prefer +grasshoppers); change and take roast chicken and salad; then strawberry +pie and ice cream; then green figs, pears, oranges, green almonds, etc.; +finally coffee. Wine with every course, of course, being in France. +With such a cargo on board, digestion is a slow process, and we must sit +long in the cool chambers and smoke--and read French newspapers, which +have a strange fashion of telling a perfectly straight story till you get +to the "nub" of it, and then a word drops in that no man can translate, +and that story is ruined. An embankment fell on some Frenchmen +yesterday, and the papers are full of it today--but whether those +sufferers were killed, or crippled, or bruised, or only scared is more +than I can possibly make out, and yet I would just give anything to know. + +We were troubled a little at dinner today by the conduct of an American, +who talked very loudly and coarsely and laughed boisterously where all +others were so quiet and well behaved. He ordered wine with a royal +flourish and said: + +"I never dine without wine, sir" (which was a pitiful falsehood), and +looked around upon the company to bask in the admiration he expected to +find in their faces. All these airs in a land where they would as soon +expect to leave the soup out of the bill of fare as the wine!--in a land +where wine is nearly as common among all ranks as water! This fellow +said: "I am a free-born sovereign, sir, an American, sir, and I want +everybody to know it!" He did not mention that he was a lineal +descendant of Balaam's ass, but everybody knew that without his telling +it. + +We have driven in the Prado--that superb avenue bordered with patrician +mansions and noble shade trees--and have visited the chateau Boarely and +its curious museum. They showed us a miniature cemetery there--a copy of +the first graveyard that was ever in Marseilles, no doubt. The delicate +little skeletons were lying in broken vaults and had their household gods +and kitchen utensils with them. The original of this cemetery was dug up +in the principal street of the city a few years ago. It had remained +there, only twelve feet underground, for a matter of twenty-five hundred +years or thereabouts. Romulus was here before he built Rome, and thought +something of founding a city on this spot, but gave up the idea. He may +have been personally acquainted with some of these Phoenicians whose +skeletons we have been examining. + +In the great Zoological Gardens we found specimens of all the animals the +world produces, I think, including a dromedary, a monkey ornamented with +tufts of brilliant blue and carmine hair--a very gorgeous monkey he was +--a hippopotamus from the Nile, and a sort of tall, long-legged bird with a +beak like a powder horn and close-fitting wings like the tails of a dress +coat. This fellow stood up with his eyes shut and his shoulders stooped +forward a little, and looked as if he had his hands under his coat +tails. Such tranquil stupidity, such supernatural gravity, such +self-righteousness, and such ineffable self-complacency as were in the +countenance and attitude of that gray-bodied, dark-winged, bald-headed, +and preposterously uncomely bird! He was so ungainly, so pimply about +the head, so scaly about the legs, yet so serene, so unspeakably +satisfied! He was the most comical-looking creature that can be +imagined. It was good to hear Dan and the doctor laugh--such natural and +such enjoyable laughter had not been heard among our excursionists since +our ship sailed away from America. This bird was a godsend to us, and I +should be an ingrate if I forgot to make honorable mention of him in +these pages. Ours was a pleasure excursion; therefore we stayed with +that bird an hour and made the most of him. We stirred him up +occasionally, but he only unclosed an eye and slowly closed it again, +abating no jot of his stately piety of demeanor or his tremendous +seriousness. He only seemed to say, "Defile not Heaven's anointed with +unsanctified hands." We did not know his name, and so we called him "The +Pilgrim." Dan said: + +"All he wants now is a Plymouth Collection." + +The boon companion of the colossal elephant was a common cat! This cat +had a fashion of climbing up the elephant's hind legs and roosting on his +back. She would sit up there, with her paws curved under her breast, and +sleep in the sun half the afternoon. It used to annoy the elephant at +first, and he would reach up and take her down, but she would go aft and +climb up again. She persisted until she finally conquered the elephant's +prejudices, and now they are inseparable friends. The cat plays about +her comrade's forefeet or his trunk often, until dogs approach, and then +she goes aloft out of danger. The elephant has annihilated several dogs +lately that pressed his companion too closely. + +We hired a sailboat and a guide and made an excursion to one of the small +islands in the harbor to visit the Castle d'If. This ancient fortress +has a melancholy history. It has been used as a prison for political +offenders for two or three hundred years, and its dungeon walls are +scarred with the rudely carved names of many and many a captive who +fretted his life away here and left no record of himself but these sad +epitaphs wrought with his own hands. How thick the names were! And +their long-departed owners seemed to throng the gloomy cells and +corridors with their phantom shapes. We loitered through dungeon after +dungeon, away down into the living rock below the level of the sea, it +seemed. Names everywhere!--some plebeian, some noble, some even +princely. Plebeian, prince, and noble had one solicitude in common--they +would not be forgotten! They could suffer solitude, inactivity, and the +horrors of a silence that no sound ever disturbed, but they could not +bear the thought of being utterly forgotten by the world. Hence the +carved names. In one cell, where a little light penetrated, a man had +lived twenty-seven years without seeing the face of a human being--lived +in filth and wretchedness, with no companionship but his own thoughts, +and they were sorrowful enough and hopeless enough, no doubt. Whatever +his jailers considered that he needed was conveyed to his cell by night +through a wicket. + +This man carved the walls of his prison house from floor to roof with all +manner of figures of men and animals grouped in intricate designs. He +had toiled there year after year, at his self-appointed task, while +infants grew to boyhood--to vigorous youth--idled through school and +college--acquired a profession--claimed man's mature estate--married and +looked back to infancy as to a thing of some vague, ancient time, almost. +But who shall tell how many ages it seemed to this prisoner? With the +one, time flew sometimes; with the other, never--it crawled always. To +the one, nights spent in dancing had seemed made of minutes instead of +hours; to the other, those selfsame nights had been like all other nights +of dungeon life and seemed made of slow, dragging weeks instead of hours +and minutes. + +One prisoner of fifteen years had scratched verses upon his walls, and +brief prose sentences--brief, but full of pathos. These spoke not of +himself and his hard estate, but only of the shrine where his spirit fled +the prison to worship--of home and the idols that were templed there. +He never lived to see them. + +The walls of these dungeons are as thick as some bed-chambers at home are +wide--fifteen feet. We saw the damp, dismal cells in which two of Dumas' +heroes passed their confinement--heroes of "Monte Cristo." It was here +that the brave Abbe wrote a book with his own blood, with a pen made of a +piece of iron hoop, and by the light of a lamp made out of shreds of +cloth soaked in grease obtained from his food; and then dug through the +thick wall with some trifling instrument which he wrought himself out of +a stray piece of iron or table cutlery and freed Dantes from his chains. +It was a pity that so many weeks of dreary labor should have come to +naught at last. + +They showed us the noisome cell where the celebrated "Iron Mask"--that +ill-starred brother of a hardhearted king of France--was confined for a +season before he was sent to hide the strange mystery of his life from +the curious in the dungeons of Ste. Marguerite. The place had a far +greater interest for us than it could have had if we had known beyond all +question who the Iron Mask was, and what his history had been, and why +this most unusual punishment had been meted out to him. Mystery! That +was the charm. That speechless tongue, those prisoned features, that +heart so freighted with unspoken troubles, and that breast so oppressed +with its piteous secret had been here. These dank walls had known the +man whose dolorous story is a sealed book forever! There was fascination +in the spot. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +We have come five hundred miles by rail through the heart of France. +What a bewitching land it is! What a garden! Surely the leagues of +bright green lawns are swept and brushed and watered every day and their +grasses trimmed by the barber. Surely the hedges are shaped and measured +and their symmetry preserved by the most architectural of gardeners. +Surely the long straight rows of stately poplars that divide the +beautiful landscape like the squares of a checker-board are set with line +and plummet, and their uniform height determined with a spirit level. +Surely the straight, smooth, pure white turnpikes are jack-planed and +sandpapered every day. How else are these marvels of symmetry, +cleanliness, and order attained? It is wonderful. There are no +unsightly stone walls and never a fence of any kind. There is no dirt, +no decay, no rubbish anywhere--nothing that even hints at untidiness +--nothing that ever suggests neglect. All is orderly and beautiful--every +thing is charming to the eye. + +We had such glimpses of the Rhone gliding along between its grassy banks; +of cosy cottages buried in flowers and shrubbery; of quaint old red-tiled +villages with mossy medieval cathedrals looming out of their midst; of +wooded hills with ivy-grown towers and turrets of feudal castles +projecting above the foliage; such glimpses of Paradise, it seemed to us, +such visions of fabled fairyland! + +We knew then what the poet meant when he sang of: "--thy cornfields +green, and sunny vines, O pleasant land of France!" + +And it is a pleasant land. No word describes it so felicitously as that +one. They say there is no word for "home" in the French language. Well, +considering that they have the article itself in such an attractive +aspect, they ought to manage to get along without the word. Let us not +waste too much pity on "homeless" France. I have observed that Frenchmen +abroad seldom wholly give up the idea of going back to France some time +or other. I am not surprised at it now. + +We are not infatuated with these French railway cars, though. We took +first-class passage, not because we wished to attract attention by doing +a thing which is uncommon in Europe but because we could make our journey +quicker by so doing. It is hard to make railroading pleasant in any +country. It is too tedious. Stagecoaching is infinitely more +delightful. Once I crossed the plains and deserts and mountains of the +West in a stagecoach, from the Missouri line to California, and since +then all my pleasure trips must be measured to that rare holiday frolic. +Two thousand miles of ceaseless rush and rattle and clatter, by night and +by day, and never a weary moment, never a lapse of interest! The first +seven hundred miles a level continent, its grassy carpet greener and +softer and smoother than any sea and figured with designs fitted to its +magnitude--the shadows of the clouds. Here were no scenes but summer +scenes, and no disposition inspired by them but to lie at full length on +the mail sacks in the grateful breeze and dreamily smoke the pipe of +peace--what other, where all was repose and contentment? In cool +mornings, before the sun was fairly up, it was worth a lifetime of city +toiling and moiling to perch in the foretop with the driver and see the +six mustangs scamper under the sharp snapping of the whip that never +touched them; to scan the blue distances of a world that knew no lords +but us; to cleave the wind with uncovered head and feel the sluggish +pulses rousing to the spirit of a speed that pretended to the resistless +rush of a typhoon! Then thirteen hundred miles of desert solitudes; of +limitless panoramas of bewildering perspective; of mimic cities, of +pinnacled cathedrals, of massive fortresses, counterfeited in the eternal +rocks and splendid with the crimson and gold of the setting sun; of dizzy +altitudes among fog-wreathed peaks and never-melting snows, where +thunders and lightnings and tempests warred magnificently at our feet and +the storm clouds above swung their shredded banners in our very faces! +But I forgot. I am in elegant France now, and not scurrying through the +great South Pass and the Wind River Mountains, among antelopes and +buffaloes and painted Indians on the warpath. It is not meet that I +should make too disparaging comparisons between humdrum travel on a +railway and that royal summer flight across a continent in a stagecoach. +I meant in the beginning to say that railway journeying is tedious and +tiresome, and so it is--though at the time I was thinking particularly of +a dismal fifty-hour pilgrimage between New York and St. Louis. Of course +our trip through France was not really tedious because all its scenes and +experiences were new and strange; but as Dan says, it had its +"discrepancies." + +The cars are built in compartments that hold eight persons each. Each +compartment is partially subdivided, and so there are two tolerably +distinct parties of four in it. Four face the other four. The seats and +backs are thickly padded and cushioned and are very comfortable; you can +smoke if you wish; there are no bothersome peddlers; you are saved the +infliction of a multitude of disagreeable fellow passengers. So far, so +well. But then the conductor locks you in when the train starts; there +is no water to drink in the car; there is no heating apparatus for night +travel; if a drunken rowdy should get in, you could not remove a matter +of twenty seats from him or enter another car; but above all, if you are +worn out and must sleep, you must sit up and do it in naps, with cramped +legs and in a torturing misery that leaves you withered and lifeless the +next day--for behold they have not that culmination of all charity and +human kindness, a sleeping car, in all France. I prefer the American +system. It has not so many grievous "discrepancies." + +In France, all is clockwork, all is order. They make no mistakes. Every +third man wears a uniform, and whether he be a marshal of the empire or a +brakeman, he is ready and perfectly willing to answer all your questions +with tireless politeness, ready to tell you which car to take, yea, and +ready to go and put you into it to make sure that you shall not go +astray. You cannot pass into the waiting room of the depot till you have +secured your ticket, and you cannot pass from its only exit till the +train is at its threshold to receive you. Once on board, the train will +not start till your ticket has been examined--till every passenger's +ticket has been inspected. This is chiefly for your own good. If by any +possibility you have managed to take the wrong train, you will be handed +over to a polite official who will take you whither you belong and bestow +you with many an affable bow. Your ticket will be inspected every now +and then along the route, and when it is time to change cars you will +know it. You are in the hands of officials who zealously study your +welfare and your interest, instead of turning their talents to the +invention of new methods of discommoding and snubbing you, as is very +often the main employment of that exceedingly self-satisfied monarch, the +railroad conductor of America. + +But the happiest regulation in French railway government is--thirty +minutes to dinner! No five-minute boltings of flabby rolls, muddy +coffee, questionable eggs, gutta-percha beef, and pies whose conception +and execution are a dark and bloody mystery to all save the cook that +created them! No, we sat calmly down--it was in old Dijon, which is so +easy to spell and so impossible to pronounce except when you civilize it +and call it Demijohn--and poured out rich Burgundian wines and munched +calmly through a long table d'hote bill of fare, snail patties, delicious +fruits and all, then paid the trifle it cost and stepped happily aboard +the train again, without once cursing the railroad company. A rare +experience and one to be treasured forever. + +They say they do not have accidents on these French roads, and I think it +must be true. If I remember rightly, we passed high above wagon roads or +through tunnels under them, but never crossed them on their own level. +About every quarter of a mile, it seemed to me, a man came out and held +up a club till the train went by, to signify that everything was safe +ahead. Switches were changed a mile in advance by pulling a wire rope +that passed along the ground by the rail, from station to station. +Signals for the day and signals for the night gave constant and timely +notice of the position of switches. + +No, they have no railroad accidents to speak of in France. But why? +Because when one occurs, somebody has to hang for it! Not hang, maybe, +but be punished at least with such vigor of emphasis as to make +negligence a thing to be shuddered at by railroad officials for many a +day thereafter. "No blame attached to the officers"--that lying and +disaster-breeding verdict so common to our softhearted juries is seldom +rendered in France. If the trouble occurred in the conductor's +department, that officer must suffer if his subordinate cannot be proven +guilty; if in the engineer's department and the case be similar, the +engineer must answer. + +The Old Travelers--those delightful parrots who have "been here before" +and know more about the country than Louis Napoleon knows now or ever +will know--tell us these things, and we believe them because they are +pleasant things to believe and because they are plausible and savor of +the rigid subjection to law and order which we behold about us +everywhere. + +But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and +lie. We can tell them the moment we see them. They always throw out a +few feelers; they never cast themselves adrift till they have sounded +every individual and know that he has not traveled. Then they open their +throttle valves, and how they do brag, and sneer, and swell, and soar, +and blaspheme the sacred name of Truth! Their central idea, their grand +aim, is to subjugate you, keep you down, make you feel insignificant and +humble in the blaze of their cosmopolitan glory! They will not let you +know anything. They sneer at your most inoffensive suggestions; they +laugh unfeelingly at your treasured dreams of foreign lands; they brand +the statements of your traveled aunts and uncles as the stupidest +absurdities; they deride your most trusted authors and demolish the fair +images they have set up for your willing worship with the pitiless +ferocity of the fanatic iconoclast! But still I love the Old Travelers. +I love them for their witless platitudes, for their supernatural ability +to bore, for their delightful asinine vanity, for their luxuriant +fertility of imagination, for their startling, their brilliant, their +overwhelming mendacity! + +By Lyons and the Saone (where we saw the lady of Lyons and thought little +of her comeliness), by Villa Franca, Tonnere, venerable Sens, Melun, +Fontainebleau, and scores of other beautiful cities, we swept, always +noting the absence of hog-wallows, broken fences, cow lots, unpainted +houses, and mud, and always noting, as well, the presence of cleanliness, +grace, taste in adorning and beautifying, even to the disposition of a +tree or the turning of a hedge, the marvel of roads in perfect repair, +void of ruts and guiltless of even an inequality of surface--we bowled +along, hour after hour, that brilliant summer day, and as nightfall +approached we entered a wilderness of odorous flowers and shrubbery, sped +through it, and then, excited, delighted, and half persuaded that we were +only the sport of a beautiful dream, lo, we stood in magnificent Paris! + +What excellent order they kept about that vast depot! There was no +frantic crowding and jostling, no shouting and swearing, and no +swaggering intrusion of services by rowdy hackmen. These latter gentry +stood outside--stood quietly by their long line of vehicles and said +never a word. A kind of hackman general seemed to have the whole matter +of transportation in his hands. He politely received the passengers and +ushered them to the kind of conveyance they wanted, and told the driver +where to deliver them. There was no "talking back," no dissatisfaction +about overcharging, no grumbling about anything. In a little while we +were speeding through the streets of Paris and delightfully recognizing +certain names and places with which books had long ago made us familiar. +It was like meeting an old friend when we read Rue de Rivoli on the +street corner; we knew the genuine vast palace of the Louvre as well as +we knew its picture; when we passed by the Column of July we needed no +one to tell us what it was or to remind us that on its site once stood +the grim Bastille, that grave of human hopes and happiness, that dismal +prison house within whose dungeons so many young faces put on the +wrinkles of age, so many proud spirits grew humble, so many brave hearts +broke. + +We secured rooms at the hotel, or rather, we had three beds put into one +room, so that we might be together, and then we went out to a restaurant, +just after lamplighting, and ate a comfortable, satisfactory, lingering +dinner. It was a pleasure to eat where everything was so tidy, the food +so well cooked, the waiters so polite, and the coming and departing +company so moustached, so frisky, so affable, so fearfully and +wonderfully Frenchy! All the surroundings were gay and enlivening. Two +hundred people sat at little tables on the sidewalk, sipping wine and +coffee; the streets were thronged with light vehicles and with joyous +pleasure-seekers; there was music in the air, life and action all about +us, and a conflagration of gaslight everywhere! + +After dinner we felt like seeing such Parisian specialties as we might +see without distressing exertion, and so we sauntered through the +brilliant streets and looked at the dainty trifles in variety stores and +jewelry shops. Occasionally, merely for the pleasure of being cruel, we +put unoffending Frenchmen on the rack with questions framed in the +incomprehensible jargon of their native language, and while they writhed +we impaled them, we peppered them, we scarified them, with their own vile +verbs and participles. + +We noticed that in the jewelry stores they had some of the articles +marked "gold" and some labeled "imitation." We wondered at this +extravagance of honesty and inquired into the matter. We were informed +that inasmuch as most people are not able to tell false gold from the +genuine article, the government compels jewelers to have their gold work +assayed and stamped officially according to its fineness and their +imitation work duly labeled with the sign of its falsity. They told us +the jewelers would not dare to violate this law, and that whatever a +stranger bought in one of their stores might be depended upon as being +strictly what it was represented to be. Verily, a wonderful land is +France! + +Then we hunted for a barber-shop. From earliest infancy it had been +a cherished ambition of mine to be shaved some day in a palatial +barber-shop in Paris. I wished to recline at full length in a cushioned +invalid chair, with pictures about me and sumptuous furniture; with +frescoed walls and gilded arches above me and vistas of Corinthian +columns stretching far before me; with perfumes of Araby to intoxicate +my senses and the slumbrous drone of distant noises to soothe me to +sleep. At the end of an hour I would wake up regretfully and find my +face as smooth and as soft as an infant's. Departing, I would lift my +hands above that barber's head and say, "Heaven bless you, my son!" + +So we searched high and low, for a matter of two hours, but never a +barber-shop could we see. We saw only wig-making establishments, with +shocks of dead and repulsive hair bound upon the heads of painted waxen +brigands who stared out from glass boxes upon the passer-by with their +stony eyes and scared him with the ghostly white of their countenances. +We shunned these signs for a time, but finally we concluded that the +wig-makers must of necessity be the barbers as well, since we could find +no single legitimate representative of the fraternity. We entered and +asked, and found that it was even so. + +I said I wanted to be shaved. The barber inquired where my room was. I +said never mind where my room was, I wanted to be shaved--there, on the +spot. The doctor said he would be shaved also. Then there was an +excitement among those two barbers! There was a wild consultation, and +afterwards a hurrying to and fro and a feverish gathering up of razors +from obscure places and a ransacking for soap. Next they took us into a +little mean, shabby back room; they got two ordinary sitting-room chairs +and placed us in them with our coats on. My old, old dream of bliss +vanished into thin air! + +I sat bolt upright, silent, sad, and solemn. One of the wig-making +villains lathered my face for ten terrible minutes and finished by +plastering a mass of suds into my mouth. I expelled the nasty stuff with +a strong English expletive and said, "Foreigner, beware!" Then this +outlaw strapped his razor on his boot, hovered over me ominously for six +fearful seconds, and then swooped down upon me like the genius of +destruction. The first rake of his razor loosened the very hide from my +face and lifted me out of the chair. I stormed and raved, and the other +boys enjoyed it. Their beards are not strong and thick. Let us draw the +curtain over this harrowing scene. + +Suffice it that I submitted and went through with the cruel infliction of +a shave by a French barber; tears of exquisite agony coursed down my +cheeks now and then, but I survived. Then the incipient assassin held a +basin of water under my chin and slopped its contents over my face, and +into my bosom, and down the back of my neck, with a mean pretense of +washing away the soap and blood. He dried my features with a towel and +was going to comb my hair, but I asked to be excused. I said, with +withering irony, that it was sufficient to be skinned--I declined to be +scalped. + +I went away from there with my handkerchief about my face, and never, +never, never desired to dream of palatial Parisian barber-shops anymore. +The truth is, as I believe I have since found out, that they have no +barber shops worthy of the name in Paris--and no barbers, either, for +that matter. The impostor who does duty as a barber brings his pans and +napkins and implements of torture to your residence and deliberately +skins you in your private apartments. Ah, I have suffered, suffered, +suffered, here in Paris, but never mind--the time is coming when I shall +have a dark and bloody revenge. Someday a Parisian barber will come to +my room to skin me, and from that day forth that barber will never be +heard of more. + +At eleven o'clock we alighted upon a sign which manifestly referred to +billiards. Joy! We had played billiards in the Azores with balls that +were not round and on an ancient table that was very little smoother than +a brick pavement--one of those wretched old things with dead cushions, +and with patches in the faded cloth and invisible obstructions that made +the balls describe the most astonishing and unsuspected angles and +perform feats in the way of unlooked-for and almost impossible +"scratches" that were perfectly bewildering. We had played at Gibraltar +with balls the size of a walnut, on a table like a public square--and in +both instances we achieved far more aggravation than amusement. We +expected to fare better here, but we were mistaken. The cushions were a +good deal higher than the balls, and as the balls had a fashion of always +stopping under the cushions, we accomplished very little in the way of +caroms. The cushions were hard and unelastic, and the cues were so +crooked that in making a shot you had to allow for the curve or you would +infallibly put the "English" on the wrong side of the hall. Dan was to +mark while the doctor and I played. At the end of an hour neither of us +had made a count, and so Dan was tired of keeping tally with nothing to +tally, and we were heated and angry and disgusted. We paid the heavy +bill--about six cents--and said we would call around sometime when we had +a week to spend, and finish the game. + +We adjourned to one of those pretty cafes and took supper and tested the +wines of the country, as we had been instructed to do, and found them +harmless and unexciting. They might have been exciting, however, if we +had chosen to drink a sufficiency of them. + +To close our first day in Paris cheerfully and pleasantly, we now sought +our grand room in the Grand Hotel du Louvre and climbed into our +sumptuous bed to read and smoke--but alas! + + It was pitiful, + In a whole city-full, + Gas we had none. + +No gas to read by--nothing but dismal candles. It was a shame. We tried +to map out excursions for the morrow; we puzzled over French "guides to +Paris"; we talked disjointedly in a vain endeavor to make head or tail of +the wild chaos of the day's sights and experiences; we subsided to +indolent smoking; we gaped and yawned and stretched--then feebly wondered +if we were really and truly in renowned Paris, and drifted drowsily away +into that vast mysterious void which men call sleep. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +The next morning we were up and dressed at ten o'clock. We went to the +'commissionaire' of the hotel--I don't know what a 'commissionaire' is, +but that is the man we went to--and told him we wanted a guide. He said +the national Exposition had drawn such multitudes of Englishmen and +Americans to Paris that it would be next to impossible to find a good +guide unemployed. He said he usually kept a dozen or two on hand, but he +only had three now. He called them. One looked so like a very pirate +that we let him go at once. The next one spoke with a simpering +precision of pronunciation that was irritating and said: + +"If ze zhentlemans will to me make ze grande honneur to me rattain in +hees serveece, I shall show to him every sing zat is magnifique to look +upon in ze beautiful Parree. I speaky ze Angleesh pairfaitemaw." + +He would have done well to have stopped there, because he had that much +by heart and said it right off without making a mistake. But his +self-complacency seduced him into attempting a flight into regions of +unexplored English, and the reckless experiment was his ruin. Within ten +seconds he was so tangled up in a maze of mutilated verbs and torn and +bleeding forms of speech that no human ingenuity could ever have gotten +him out of it with credit. It was plain enough that he could not +"speaky" the English quite as "pairfaitemaw" as he had pretended he +could. + +The third man captured us. He was plainly dressed, but he had a +noticeable air of neatness about him. He wore a high silk hat which was +a little old, but had been carefully brushed. He wore second-hand kid +gloves, in good repair, and carried a small rattan cane with a curved +handle--a female leg--of ivory. He stepped as gently and as daintily as +a cat crossing a muddy street; and oh, he was urbanity; he was quiet, +unobtrusive self-possession; he was deference itself! He spoke softly +and guardedly; and when he was about to make a statement on his sole +responsibility or offer a suggestion, he weighed it by drachms and +scruples first, with the crook of his little stick placed meditatively to +his teeth. His opening speech was perfect. It was perfect in +construction, in phraseology, in grammar, in emphasis, in pronunciation +--everything. He spoke little and guardedly after that. We were charmed. +We were more than charmed--we were overjoyed. We hired him at once. We +never even asked him his price. This man--our lackey, our servant, our +unquestioning slave though he was--was still a gentleman--we could see +that--while of the other two one was coarse and awkward and the other was +a born pirate. We asked our man Friday's name. He drew from his +pocketbook a snowy little card and passed it to us with a profound bow: + + A. BILLFINGER, + Guide to Paris, France, Germany, + Spain, &c., &c. + Grande Hotel du Louvre. + +"Billfinger! Oh, carry me home to die!" + +That was an "aside" from Dan. The atrocious name grated harshly on my +ear, too. The most of us can learn to forgive, and even to like, a +countenance that strikes us unpleasantly at first, but few of us, I +fancy, become reconciled to a jarring name so easily. I was almost sorry +we had hired this man, his name was so unbearable. However, no matter. +We were impatient to start. Billfinger stepped to the door to call a +carriage, and then the doctor said: + +"Well, the guide goes with the barbershop, with the billiard-table, with +the gasless room, and may be with many another pretty romance of Paris. +I expected to have a guide named Henri de Montmorency, or Armand de la +Chartreuse, or something that would sound grand in letters to the +villagers at home, but to think of a Frenchman by the name of Billfinger! +Oh! This is absurd, you know. This will never do. We can't say +Billfinger; it is nauseating. Name him over again; what had we better +call him? Alexis du Caulaincourt?" + +"Alphonse Henri Gustave de Hauteville," I suggested. + +"Call him Ferguson," said Dan. + +That was practical, unromantic good sense. Without debate, we expunged +Billfinger as Billfinger, and called him Ferguson. + +The carriage--an open barouche--was ready. Ferguson mounted beside the +driver, and we whirled away to breakfast. As was proper, Mr. Ferguson +stood by to transmit our orders and answer questions. By and by, he +mentioned casually--the artful adventurer--that he would go and get his +breakfast as soon as we had finished ours. He knew we could not get +along without him and that we would not want to loiter about and wait for +him. We asked him to sit down and eat with us. He begged, with many a +bow, to be excused. It was not proper, he said; he would sit at another +table. We ordered him peremptorily to sit down with us. + +Here endeth the first lesson. It was a mistake. + +As long as we had that fellow after that, he was always hungry; he was +always thirsty. He came early; he stayed late; he could not pass a +restaurant; he looked with a lecherous eye upon every wine shop. +Suggestions to stop, excuses to eat and to drink, were forever on his +lips. We tried all we could to fill him so full that he would have no +room to spare for a fortnight, but it was a failure. He did not hold +enough to smother the cravings of his superhuman appetite. + +He had another "discrepancy" about him. He was always wanting us to buy +things. On the shallowest pretenses he would inveigle us into shirt +stores, boot stores, tailor shops, glove shops--anywhere under the broad +sweep of the heavens that there seemed a chance of our buying anything. +Anyone could have guessed that the shopkeepers paid him a percentage on +the sales, but in our blessed innocence we didn't until this feature of +his conduct grew unbearably prominent. One day Dan happened to mention +that he thought of buying three or four silk dress patterns for presents. +Ferguson's hungry eye was upon him in an instant. In the course of +twenty minutes the carriage stopped. + +"What's this?" + +"Zis is ze finest silk magazin in Paris--ze most celebrate." + +"What did you come here for? We told you to take us to the palace of the +Louvre." + +"I suppose ze gentleman say he wish to buy some silk." + +"You are not required to 'suppose' things for the party, Ferguson. We do +not wish to tax your energies too much. We will bear some of the burden +and heat of the day ourselves. We will endeavor to do such 'supposing' +as is really necessary to be done. Drive on." So spake the doctor. + +Within fifteen minutes the carriage halted again, and before another silk +store. The doctor said: + +"Ah, the palace of the Louvre--beautiful, beautiful edifice! Does the +Emperor Napoleon live here now, Ferguson?" + +"Ah, Doctor! You do jest; zis is not ze palace; we come there directly. +But since we pass right by zis store, where is such beautiful silk--" + +"Ah! I see, I see. I meant to have told you that we did not wish to +purchase any silks to-day, but in my absent-mindedness I forgot it. I +also meant to tell you we wished to go directly to the Louvre, but I +forgot that also. However, we will go there now. Pardon my seeming +carelessness, Ferguson. Drive on." + +Within the half hour we stopped again--in front of another silk store. +We were angry; but the doctor was always serene, always smooth-voiced. +He said: + +"At last! How imposing the Louvre is, and yet how small! How +exquisitely fashioned! How charmingly situated!--Venerable, venerable +pile--" + +"Pairdon, Doctor, zis is not ze Louvre--it is--" + +"What is it?" + +"I have ze idea--it come to me in a moment--zat ze silk in zis magazin--" + +"Ferguson, how heedless I am. I fully intended to tell you that we did +not wish to buy any silks to-day, and I also intended to tell you that we +yearned to go immediately to the palace of the Louvre, but enjoying the +happiness of seeing you devour four breakfasts this morning has so filled +me with pleasurable emotions that I neglect the commonest interests of +the time. However, we will proceed now to the Louvre, Ferguson." + +"But, doctor," (excitedly,) "it will take not a minute--not but one small +minute! Ze gentleman need not to buy if he not wish to--but only look at +ze silk--look at ze beautiful fabric. [Then pleadingly.] Sair--just only +one leetle moment!" + +Dan said, "Confound the idiot! I don't want to see any silks today, and +I won't look at them. Drive on." + +And the doctor: "We need no silks now, Ferguson. Our hearts yearn for +the Louvre. Let us journey on--let us journey on." + +"But doctor! It is only one moment--one leetle moment. And ze time will +be save--entirely save! Because zere is nothing to see now--it is too +late. It want ten minute to four and ze Louvre close at four--only one +leetle moment, Doctor!" + +The treacherous miscreant! After four breakfasts and a gallon of +champagne, to serve us such a scurvy trick. We got no sight of the +countless treasures of art in the Louvre galleries that day, and our only +poor little satisfaction was in the reflection that Ferguson sold not a +solitary silk dress pattern. + +I am writing this chapter partly for the satisfaction of abusing that +accomplished knave Billfinger, and partly to show whosoever shall read +this how Americans fare at the hands of the Paris guides and what sort of +people Paris guides are. It need not be supposed that we were a stupider +or an easier prey than our countrymen generally are, for we were not. +The guides deceive and defraud every American who goes to Paris for the +first time and sees its sights alone or in company with others as little +experienced as himself. I shall visit Paris again someday, and then let +the guides beware! I shall go in my war paint--I shall carry my tomahawk +along. + +I think we have lost but little time in Paris. We have gone to bed every +night tired out. Of course we visited the renowned International +Exposition. All the world did that. We went there on our third day in +Paris--and we stayed there nearly two hours. That was our first and last +visit. To tell the truth, we saw at a glance that one would have to +spend weeks--yea, even months--in that monstrous establishment to get an +intelligible idea of it. It was a wonderful show, but the moving masses +of people of all nations we saw there were a still more wonderful show. +I discovered that if I were to stay there a month, I should still find +myself looking at the people instead of the inanimate objects on +exhibition. I got a little interested in some curious old tapestries of +the thirteenth century, but a party of Arabs came by, and their dusky +faces and quaint costumes called my attention away at once. I watched a +silver swan, which had a living grace about his movements and a living +intelligence in his eyes--watched him swimming about as comfortably and +as unconcernedly as if he had been born in a morass instead of a +jeweler's shop--watched him seize a silver fish from under the water and +hold up his head and go through all the customary and elaborate motions +of swallowing it--but the moment it disappeared down his throat some +tattooed South Sea Islanders approached and I yielded to their +attractions. + +Presently I found a revolving pistol several hundred years old which +looked strangely like a modern Colt, but just then I heard that the +Empress of the French was in another part of the building, and hastened +away to see what she might look like. We heard martial music--we saw an +unusual number of soldiers walking hurriedly about--there was a general +movement among the people. We inquired what it was all about and learned +that the Emperor of the French and the Sultan of Turkey were about to +review twenty-five thousand troops at the Arc de l'Etoile. We +immediately departed. I had a greater anxiety to see these men than I +could have had to see twenty expositions. + +We drove away and took up a position in an open space opposite the +American minister's house. A speculator bridged a couple of barrels with +a board and we hired standing places on it. Presently there was a sound +of distant music; in another minute a pillar of dust came moving slowly +toward us; a moment more and then, with colors flying and a grand crash +of military music, a gallant array of cavalrymen emerged from the dust +and came down the street on a gentle trot. After them came a long line +of artillery; then more cavalry, in splendid uniforms; and then their +imperial majesties Napoleon III and Abdul Aziz. The vast concourse of +people swung their hats and shouted--the windows and housetops in the +wide vicinity burst into a snowstorm of waving handkerchiefs, and the +wavers of the same mingled their cheers with those of the masses below. +It was a stirring spectacle. + +But the two central figures claimed all my attention. Was ever such a +contrast set up before a multitude till then? Napoleon in military +uniform--a long-bodied, short-legged man, fiercely moustached, old, +wrinkled, with eyes half closed, and such a deep, crafty, scheming +expression about them!--Napoleon, bowing ever so gently to the loud +plaudits, and watching everything and everybody with his cat eyes from +under his depressed hat brim, as if to discover any sign that those +cheers were not heartfelt and cordial. + +Abdul Aziz, absolute lord of the Ottoman empire--clad in dark green +European clothes, almost without ornament or insignia of rank; a red +Turkish fez on his head; a short, stout, dark man, black-bearded, +black-eyed, stupid, unprepossessing--a man whose whole appearance +somehow suggested that if he only had a cleaver in his hand and a white +apron on, one would not be at all surprised to hear him say: "A mutton +roast today, or will you have a nice porterhouse steak?" + +Napoleon III, the representative of the highest modern civilization, +progress, and refinement; Abdul-Aziz, the representative of a people by +nature and training filthy, brutish, ignorant, unprogressive, +superstitious--and a government whose Three Graces are Tyranny, Rapacity, +Blood. Here in brilliant Paris, under this majestic Arch of Triumph, the +First Century greets the Nineteenth! + +NAPOLEON III., Emperor of France! Surrounded by shouting thousands, by +military pomp, by the splendors of his capital city, and companioned by +kings and princes--this is the man who was sneered at and reviled and +called Bastard--yet who was dreaming of a crown and an empire all the +while; who was driven into exile--but carried his dreams with him; who +associated with the common herd in America and ran foot races for a +wager--but still sat upon a throne in fancy; who braved every danger to +go to his dying mother--and grieved that she could not be spared to see +him cast aside his plebeian vestments for the purple of royalty; who kept +his faithful watch and walked his weary beat a common policeman of +London--but dreamed the while of a coming night when he should tread the +long-drawn corridors of the Tuileries; who made the miserable fiasco of +Strasbourg; saw his poor, shabby eagle, forgetful of its lesson, refuse +to perch upon his shoulder; delivered his carefully prepared, sententious +burst of eloquence upon unsympathetic ears; found himself a prisoner, the +butt of small wits, a mark for the pitiless ridicule of all the world +--yet went on dreaming of coronations and splendid pageants as before; who +lay a forgotten captive in the dungeons of Ham--and still schemed and +planned and pondered over future glory and future power; President of +France at last! a coup d'etat, and surrounded by applauding armies, +welcomed by the thunders of cannon, he mounts a throne and waves before +an astounded world the sceptre of a mighty empire! Who talks of the +marvels of fiction? Who speaks of the wonders of romance? Who prates of +the tame achievements of Aladdin and the Magii of Arabia? + +ABDUL-AZIZ, Sultan of Turkey, Lord of the Ottoman Empire! Born to a +throne; weak, stupid, ignorant, almost, as his meanest slave; chief of a +vast royalty, yet the puppet of his Premier and the obedient child of a +tyrannical mother; a man who sits upon a throne--the beck of whose finger +moves navies and armies--who holds in his hands the power of life and +death over millions--yet who sleeps, sleeps, eats, eats, idles with his +eight hundred concubines, and when he is surfeited with eating and +sleeping and idling, and would rouse up and take the reins of government +and threaten to be a sultan, is charmed from his purpose by wary Fuad +Pacha with a pretty plan for a new palace or a new ship--charmed away +with a new toy, like any other restless child; a man who sees his people +robbed and oppressed by soulless tax-gatherers, but speaks no word to +save them; who believes in gnomes and genii and the wild fables of The +Arabian Nights, but has small regard for the mighty magicians of to-day, +and is nervous in the presence of their mysterious railroads and +steamboats and telegraphs; who would see undone in Egypt all that great +Mehemet Ali achieved, and would prefer rather to forget than emulate him; +a man who found his great empire a blot upon the earth--a degraded, +poverty-stricken, miserable, infamous agglomeration of ignorance, crime, +and brutality--and will idle away the allotted days of his trivial life +and then pass to the dust and the worms and leave it so! + +Napoleon has augmented the commercial prosperity of France in ten years +to such a degree that figures can hardly compute it. He has rebuilt +Paris and has partly rebuilt every city in the state. He condemns a +whole street at a time, assesses the damages, pays them, and rebuilds +superbly. Then speculators buy up the ground and sell, but the original +owner is given the first choice by the government at a stated price +before the speculator is permitted to purchase. But above all things, he +has taken the sole control of the empire of France into his hands and +made it a tolerably free land--for people who will not attempt to go too +far in meddling with government affairs. No country offers greater +security to life and property than France, and one has all the freedom he +wants, but no license--no license to interfere with anybody or make +anyone uncomfortable. + +As for the Sultan, one could set a trap any where and catch a dozen abler +men in a night. + +The bands struck up, and the brilliant adventurer, Napoleon III., the +genius of Energy, Persistence, Enterprise; and the feeble Abdul-Aziz, the +genius of Ignorance, Bigotry, and Indolence, prepared for the Forward +--March! + +We saw the splendid review, we saw the white-moustached old Crimean +soldier, Canrobert, Marshal of France, we saw--well, we saw every thing, +and then we went home satisfied. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +We went to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame. We had heard of it before. +It surprises me sometimes to think how much we do know and how +intelligent we are. We recognized the brown old Gothic pile in a moment; +it was like the pictures. We stood at a little distance and changed from +one point of observation to another and gazed long at its lofty square +towers and its rich front, clustered thick with stony, mutilated saints +who had been looking calmly down from their perches for ages. The +Patriarch of Jerusalem stood under them in the old days of chivalry and +romance, and preached the third Crusade, more than six hundred years ago; +and since that day they have stood there and looked quietly down upon the +most thrilling scenes, the grandest pageants, the most extraordinary +spectacles that have grieved or delighted Paris. These battered and +broken-nosed old fellows saw many and many a cavalcade of mail-clad +knights come marching home from Holy Land; they heard the bells above +them toll the signal for the St. Bartholomew's Massacre, and they saw the +slaughter that followed; later they saw the Reign of Terror, the carnage +of the Revolution, the overthrow of a king, the coronation of two +Napoleons, the christening of the young prince that lords it over a +regiment of servants in the Tuileries to-day--and they may possibly +continue to stand there until they see the Napoleon dynasty swept away +and the banners of a great republic floating above its ruins. I wish +these old parties could speak. They could tell a tale worth the +listening to. + +They say that a pagan temple stood where Notre Dame now stands, in the +old Roman days, eighteen or twenty centuries ago--remains of it are still +preserved in Paris; and that a Christian church took its place about A.D. +300; another took the place of that in A.D. 500; and that the foundations +of the present cathedral were laid about A.D. 1100. The ground ought to +be measurably sacred by this time, one would think. One portion of this +noble old edifice is suggestive of the quaint fashions of ancient times. +It was built by Jean Sans-Peur, Duke of Burgundy, to set his conscience +at rest--he had assassinated the Duke of Orleans. Alas! Those good old +times are gone when a murderer could wipe the stain from his name and +soothe his troubles to sleep simply by getting out his bricks and mortar +and building an addition to a church. + +The portals of the great western front are bisected by square pillars. +They took the central one away in 1852, on the occasion of thanksgivings +for the reinstitution of the presidential power--but precious soon they +had occasion to reconsider that motion and put it back again! And they +did. + +We loitered through the grand aisles for an hour or two, staring up at +the rich stained-glass windows embellished with blue and yellow and +crimson saints and martyrs, and trying to admire the numberless great +pictures in the chapels, and then we were admitted to the sacristy and +shown the magnificent robes which the Pope wore when he crowned Napoleon +I; a wagon-load of solid gold and silver utensils used in the great +public processions and ceremonies of the church; some nails of the true +cross, a fragment of the cross itself, a part of the crown of thorns. +We had already seen a large piece of the true cross in a church in the +Azores, but no nails. They showed us likewise the bloody robe which that +archbishop of Paris wore who exposed his sacred person and braved the +wrath of the insurgents of 1848, to mount the barricades and hold aloft +the olive branch of peace in the hope of stopping the slaughter. His +noble effort cost him his life. He was shot dead. They showed us a cast +of his face taken after death, the bullet that killed him, and the two +vertebrae in which it lodged. These people have a somewhat singular +taste in the matter of relics. Ferguson told us that the silver cross +which the good archbishop wore at his girdle was seized and thrown into +the Seine, where it lay embedded in the mud for fifteen years, and then +an angel appeared to a priest and told him where to dive for it; he did +dive for it and got it, and now it is there on exhibition at Notre Dame, +to be inspected by anybody who feels an interest in inanimate objects of +miraculous intervention. + +Next we went to visit the Morgue, that horrible receptacle for the dead +who die mysteriously and leave the manner of their taking off a dismal +secret. We stood before a grating and looked through into a room which +was hung all about with the clothing of dead men; coarse blouses, +water-soaked; the delicate garments of women and children; patrician +vestments, hacked and stabbed and stained with red; a hat that was +crushed and bloody. On a slanting stone lay a drowned man, naked, +swollen, purple; clasping the fragment of a broken bush with a grip +which death had so petrified that human strength could not unloose it +--mute witness of the last despairing effort to save the life that was +doomed beyond all help. A stream of water trickled ceaselessly over the +hideous face. We knew that the body and the clothing were there for +identification by friends, but still we wondered if anybody could love +that repulsive object or grieve for its loss. We grew meditative and +wondered if, some forty years ago, when the mother of that ghastly thing +was dandling it upon her knee, and kissing it and petting it and +displaying it with satisfied pride to the passers-by, a prophetic vision +of this dread ending ever flitted through her brain. I half feared that +the mother, or the wife or a brother of the dead man might come while we +stood there, but nothing of the kind occurred. Men and women came, and +some looked eagerly in and pressed their faces against the bars; others +glanced carelessly at the body and turned away with a disappointed look +--people, I thought, who live upon strong excitements and who attend the +exhibitions of the Morgue regularly, just as other people go to see +theatrical spectacles every night. When one of these looked in and +passed on, I could not help thinking-- + +"Now this don't afford you any satisfaction--a party with his head shot +off is what you need." + +One night we went to the celebrated Jardin Mabille, but only staid a +little while. We wanted to see some of this kind of Paris life, however, +and therefore the next night we went to a similar place of entertainment +in a great garden in the suburb of Asnieres. We went to the railroad +depot, toward evening, and Ferguson got tickets for a second-class +carriage. Such a perfect jam of people I have not often seen--but there +was no noise, no disorder, no rowdyism. Some of the women and young +girls that entered the train we knew to be of the demi-monde, but others +we were not at all sure about. + +The girls and women in our carriage behaved themselves modestly and +becomingly all the way out, except that they smoked. When we arrived at +the garden in Asnieres, we paid a franc or two admission and entered a +place which had flower beds in it, and grass plots, and long, curving +rows of ornamental shrubbery, with here and there a secluded bower +convenient for eating ice cream in. We moved along the sinuous gravel +walks, with the great concourse of girls and young men, and suddenly a +domed and filigreed white temple, starred over and over and over again +with brilliant gas jets, burst upon us like a fallen sun. Nearby was a +large, handsome house with its ample front illuminated in the same way, +and above its roof floated the Star-Spangled Banner of America. + +"Well!" I said. "How is this?" It nearly took my breath away. + +Ferguson said an American--a New Yorker--kept the place, and was carrying +on quite a stirring opposition to the Jardin Mabille. + +Crowds composed of both sexes and nearly all ages were frisking about the +garden or sitting in the open air in front of the flagstaff and the +temple, drinking wine and coffee or smoking. The dancing had not begun +yet. Ferguson said there was to be an exhibition. The famous Blondin +was going to perform on a tightrope in another part of the garden. We +went thither. Here the light was dim, and the masses of people were +pretty closely packed together. And now I made a mistake which any +donkey might make, but a sensible man never. I committed an error which +I find myself repeating every day of my life. Standing right before a +young lady, I said: + +"Dan, just look at this girl, how beautiful she is!" + +"I thank you more for the evident sincerity of the compliment, sir, than +for the extraordinary publicity you have given to it!" This in good, +pure English. + +We took a walk, but my spirits were very, very sadly dampened. I did not +feel right comfortable for some time afterward. Why will people be so +stupid as to suppose themselves the only foreigners among a crowd of ten +thousand persons? + +But Blondin came out shortly. He appeared on a stretched cable, far away +above the sea of tossing hats and handkerchiefs, and in the glare of the +hundreds of rockets that whizzed heavenward by him he looked like a wee +insect. He balanced his pole and walked the length of his rope--two or +three hundred feet; he came back and got a man and carried him across; he +returned to the center and danced a jig; next he performed some gymnastic +and balancing feats too perilous to afford a pleasant spectacle; and he +finished by fastening to his person a thousand Roman candles, Catherine +wheels, serpents and rockets of all manner of brilliant colors, setting +them on fire all at once and walking and waltzing across his rope again +in a blinding blaze of glory that lit up the garden and the people's +faces like a great conflagration at midnight. + +The dance had begun, and we adjourned to the temple. Within it was a +drinking saloon, and all around it was a broad circular platform for the +dancers. I backed up against the wall of the temple, and waited. Twenty +sets formed, the music struck up, and then--I placed my hands before my +face for very shame. But I looked through my fingers. They were dancing +the renowned "Can-can." A handsome girl in the set before me tripped +forward lightly to meet the opposite gentleman, tripped back again, +grasped her dresses vigorously on both sides with her hands, raised them +pretty high, danced an extraordinary jig that had more activity and +exposure about it than any jig I ever saw before, and then, drawing her +clothes still higher, she advanced gaily to the center and launched a +vicious kick full at her vis-a-vis that must infallibly have removed his +nose if he had been seven feet high. It was a mercy he was only six. + +That is the can-can. The idea of it is to dance as wildly, as noisily, +as furiously as you can; expose yourself as much as possible if you are a +woman; and kick as high as you can, no matter which sex you belong to. +There is no word of exaggeration in this. Any of the staid, respectable, +aged people who were there that night can testify to the truth of that +statement. There were a good many such people present. I suppose French +morality is not of that straight-laced description which is shocked at +trifles. + +I moved aside and took a general view of the can-can. Shouts, laughter, +furious music, a bewildering chaos of darting and intermingling forms, +stormy jerking and snatching of gay dresses, bobbing beads, flying arms, +lightning flashes of white-stockinged calves and dainty slippers in the +air, and then a grand final rush, riot, a terrific hubbub, and a wild +stampede! Heavens! Nothing like it has been seen on earth since +trembling Tam O'Shanter saw the devil and the witches at their orgies +that stormy night in "Alloway's auld haunted kirk." + +We visited the Louvre, at a time when we had no silk purchases in view, +and looked at its miles of paintings by the old masters. Some of them +were beautiful, but at the same time they carried such evidences about +them of the cringing spirit of those great men that we found small +pleasure in examining them. Their nauseous adulation of princely patrons +was more prominent to me and chained my attention more surely than the +charms of color and expression which are claimed to be in the pictures. +Gratitude for kindnesses is well, but it seems to me that some of those +artists carried it so far that it ceased to be gratitude and became +worship. If there is a plausible excuse for the worship of men, then by +all means let us forgive Rubens and his brethren. + +But I will drop the subject, lest I say something about the old masters +that might as well be left unsaid. + +Of course we drove in the Bois de Boulogne, that limitless park, with its +forests, its lakes, its cascades, and its broad avenues. There were +thousands upon thousands of vehicles abroad, and the scene was full of +life and gaiety. There were very common hacks, with father and mother +and all the children in them; conspicuous little open carriages with +celebrated ladies of questionable reputation in them; there were Dukes +and Duchesses abroad, with gorgeous footmen perched behind, and equally +gorgeous outriders perched on each of the six horses; there were blue and +silver, and green and gold, and pink and black, and all sorts and +descriptions of stunning and startling liveries out, and I almost yearned +to be a flunkey myself, for the sake of the fine clothes. + +But presently the Emperor came along and he outshone them all. He was +preceded by a bodyguard of gentlemen on horseback in showy uniforms, his +carriage-horses (there appeared to be somewhere in the remote +neighborhood of a thousand of them,) were bestridden by gallant-looking +fellows, also in stylish uniforms, and after the carriage followed +another detachment of bodyguards. Everybody got out of the way; +everybody bowed to the Emperor and his friend the Sultan; and they went +by on a swinging trot and disappeared. + +I will not describe the Bois de Boulogne. I can not do it. It is simply +a beautiful, cultivated, endless, wonderful wilderness. It is an +enchanting place. It is in Paris now, one may say, but a crumbling old +cross in one portion of it reminds one that it was not always so. The +cross marks the spot where a celebrated troubadour was waylaid and +murdered in the fourteenth century. It was in this park that that fellow +with an unpronounceable name made the attempt upon the Russian Czar's +life last spring with a pistol. The bullet struck a tree. Ferguson +showed us the place. Now in America that interesting tree would be +chopped down or forgotten within the next five years, but it will be +treasured here. The guides will point it out to visitors for the next +eight hundred years, and when it decays and falls down they will put up +another there and go on with the same old story just the same. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +One of our pleasantest visits was to Pere la Chaise, the national +burying-ground of France, the honored resting-place of some of her +greatest and best children, the last home of scores of illustrious men +and women who were born to no titles, but achieved fame by their own +energy and their own genius. It is a solemn city of winding streets and +of miniature marble temples and mansions of the dead gleaming white from +out a wilderness of foliage and fresh flowers. Not every city is so well +peopled as this, or has so ample an area within its walls. Few palaces +exist in any city that are so exquisite in design, so rich in art, so +costly in material, so graceful, so beautiful. + +We had stood in the ancient church of St. Denis, where the marble +effigies of thirty generations of kings and queens lay stretched at +length upon the tombs, and the sensations invoked were startling and +novel; the curious armor, the obsolete costumes, the placid faces, the +hands placed palm to palm in eloquent supplication--it was a vision of +gray antiquity. It seemed curious enough to be standing face to face, as +it were, with old Dagobert I., and Clovis and Charlemagne, those vague, +colossal heroes, those shadows, those myths of a thousand years ago! I +touched their dust-covered faces with my finger, but Dagobert was deader +than the sixteen centuries that have passed over him, Clovis slept well +after his labor for Christ, and old Charlemagne went on dreaming of his +paladins, of bloody Roncesvalles, and gave no heed to me. + +The great names of Pere la Chaise impress one, too, but differently. +There the suggestion brought constantly to his mind is, that this place +is sacred to a nobler royalty--the royalty of heart and brain. Every +faculty of mind, every noble trait of human nature, every high occupation +which men engage in, seems represented by a famous name. The effect is a +curious medley. Davoust and Massena, who wrought in many a battle +tragedy, are here, and so also is Rachel, of equal renown in mimic +tragedy on the stage. The Abbe Sicard sleeps here--the first great +teacher of the deaf and dumb--a man whose heart went out to every +unfortunate, and whose life was given to kindly offices in their service; +and not far off, in repose and peace at last, lies Marshal Ney, whose +stormy spirit knew no music like the bugle call to arms. The man who +originated public gas-lighting, and that other benefactor who introduced +the cultivation of the potato and thus blessed millions of his starving +countrymen, lie with the Prince of Masserano, and with exiled queens and +princes of Further India. Gay-Lussac the chemist, Laplace the +astronomer, Larrey the surgeon, de Suze the advocate, are here, and with +them are Talma, Bellini, Rubini; de Balzac, Beaumarchais, Beranger; +Moliere and Lafontaine, and scores of other men whose names and whose +worthy labors are as familiar in the remote by-places of civilization as +are the historic deeds of the kings and princes that sleep in the marble +vaults of St. Denis. + +But among the thousands and thousands of tombs in Pere la Chaise, there +is one that no man, no woman, no youth of either sex, ever passes by +without stopping to examine. Every visitor has a sort of indistinct idea +of the history of its dead and comprehends that homage is due there, but +not one in twenty thousand clearly remembers the story of that tomb and +its romantic occupants. This is the grave of Abelard and Heloise--a +grave which has been more revered, more widely known, more written and +sung about and wept over, for seven hundred years, than any other in +Christendom save only that of the Saviour. All visitors linger pensively +about it; all young people capture and carry away keepsakes and mementoes +of it; all Parisian youths and maidens who are disappointed in love come +there to bail out when they are full of tears; yea, many stricken lovers +make pilgrimages to this shrine from distant provinces to weep and wail +and "grit" their teeth over their heavy sorrows, and to purchase the +sympathies of the chastened spirits of that tomb with offerings of +immortelles and budding flowers. + +Go when you will, you find somebody snuffling over that tomb. Go when +you will, you find it furnished with those bouquets and immortelles. Go +when you will, you find a gravel-train from Marseilles arriving to supply +the deficiencies caused by memento-cabbaging vandals whose affections +have miscarried. + +Yet who really knows the story of Abelard and Heloise? Precious few +people. The names are perfectly familiar to every body, and that is +about all. With infinite pains I have acquired a knowledge of that +history, and I propose to narrate it here, partly for the honest +information of the public and partly to show that public that they have +been wasting a good deal of marketable sentiment very unnecessarily. + + + STORY OF ABELARD AND HELOISE + +Heloise was born seven hundred and sixty-six years ago. She may have had +parents. There is no telling. She lived with her uncle Fulbert, a canon +of the cathedral of Paris. I do not know what a canon of a cathedral is, +but that is what he was. He was nothing more than a sort of a mountain +howitzer, likely, because they had no heavy artillery in those days. +Suffice it, then, that Heloise lived with her uncle the howitzer and was +happy. She spent the most of her childhood in the convent of Argenteuil +--never heard of Argenteuil before, but suppose there was really such a +place. She then returned to her uncle, the old gun, or son of a gun, as +the case may be, and he taught her to write and speak Latin, which was +the language of literature and polite society at that period. + +Just at this time, Pierre Abelard, who had already made himself widely +famous as a rhetorician, came to found a school of rhetoric in Paris. +The originality of his principles, his eloquence, and his great physical +strength and beauty created a profound sensation. He saw Heloise, and +was captivated by her blooming youth, her beauty, and her charming +disposition. He wrote to her; she answered. He wrote again; she +answered again. He was now in love. He longed to know her--to speak to +her face to face. + +His school was near Fulbert's house. He asked Fulbert to allow him to +call. The good old swivel saw here a rare opportunity: his niece, whom +he so much loved, would absorb knowledge from this man, and it would not +cost him a cent. Such was Fulbert--penurious. + +Fulbert's first name is not mentioned by any author, which is +unfortunate. However, George W. Fulbert will answer for him as well as +any other. We will let him go at that. He asked Abelard to teach her. + +Abelard was glad enough of the opportunity. He came often and staid +long. A letter of his shows in its very first sentence that he came +under that friendly roof like a cold-hearted villain as he was, with the +deliberate intention of debauching a confiding, innocent girl. This is +the letter: + + "I cannot cease to be astonished at the simplicity of Fulbert; + I was as much surprised as if he had placed a lamb in the power + of a hungry wolf. Heloise and I, under pretext of study, gave + ourselves up wholly to love, and the solitude that love seeks + our studies procured for us. Books were open before us, but we + spoke oftener of love than philosophy, and kisses came more + readily from our lips than words." + +And so, exulting over an honorable confidence which to his degraded +instinct was a ludicrous "simplicity," this unmanly Abelard seduced the +niece of the man whose guest he was. Paris found it out. Fulbert was +told of it--told often--but refused to believe it. He could not +comprehend how a man could be so depraved as to use the sacred protection +and security of hospitality as a means for the commission of such a crime +as that. But when he heard the rowdies in the streets singing the +love-songs of Abelard to Heloise, the case was too plain--love-songs come +not properly within the teachings of rhetoric and philosophy. + +He drove Abelard from his house. Abelard returned secretly and carried +Heloise away to Palais, in Brittany, his native country. Here, shortly +afterward, she bore a son, who, from his rare beauty, was surnamed +Astrolabe--William G. The girl's flight enraged Fulbert, and he longed +for vengeance, but feared to strike lest retaliation visit Heloise--for +he still loved her tenderly. At length Abelard offered to marry Heloise +--but on a shameful condition: that the marriage should be kept secret +from the world, to the end that (while her good name remained a wreck, as +before,) his priestly reputation might be kept untarnished. It was like +that miscreant. Fulbert saw his opportunity and consented. He would see +the parties married, and then violate the confidence of the man who had +taught him that trick; he would divulge the secret and so remove somewhat +of the obloquy that attached to his niece's fame. But the niece +suspected his scheme. She refused the marriage at first; she said +Fulbert would betray the secret to save her, and besides, she did not +wish to drag down a lover who was so gifted, so honored by the world, +and who had such a splendid career before him. It was noble, +self-sacrificing love, and characteristic of the pure-souled Heloise, +but it was not good sense. + +But she was overruled, and the private marriage took place. Now for +Fulbert! The heart so wounded should be healed at last; the proud spirit +so tortured should find rest again; the humbled head should be lifted up +once more. He proclaimed the marriage in the high places of the city and +rejoiced that dishonor had departed from his house. But lo! Abelard +denied the marriage! Heloise denied it! The people, knowing the former +circumstances, might have believed Fulbert had only Abelard denied it, +but when the person chiefly interested--the girl herself--denied it, they +laughed, despairing Fulbert to scorn. + +The poor canon of the cathedral of Paris was spiked again. The last hope +of repairing the wrong that had been done his house was gone. What next? +Human nature suggested revenge. He compassed it. The historian says: + + "Ruffians, hired by Fulbert, fell upon Abelard by night, and + inflicted upon him a terrible and nameless mutilation." + +I am seeking the last resting place of those "ruffians." When I find it +I shall shed some tears on it, and stack up some bouquets and +immortelles, and cart away from it some gravel whereby to remember that +howsoever blotted by crime their lives may have been, these ruffians did +one just deed, at any rate, albeit it was not warranted by the strict +letter of the law. + +Heloise entered a convent and gave good-bye to the world and its +pleasures for all time. For twelve years she never heard of Abelard +--never even heard his name mentioned. She had become prioress of +Argenteuil and led a life of complete seclusion. She happened one day to +see a letter written by him, in which he narrated his own history. She +cried over it and wrote him. He answered, addressing her as his "sister +in Christ." They continued to correspond, she in the unweighed language +of unwavering affection, he in the chilly phraseology of the polished +rhetorician. She poured out her heart in passionate, disjointed +sentences; he replied with finished essays, divided deliberately into +heads and sub-heads, premises and argument. She showered upon him the +tenderest epithets that love could devise, he addressed her from the +North Pole of his frozen heart as the "Spouse of Christ!" The abandoned +villain! + +On account of her too easy government of her nuns, some disreputable +irregularities were discovered among them, and the Abbot of St. Denis +broke up her establishment. Abelard was the official head of the +monastery of St. Gildas de Ruys, at that time, and when he heard of her +homeless condition a sentiment of pity was aroused in his breast (it is a +wonder the unfamiliar emotion did not blow his head off,) and he placed +her and her troop in the little oratory of the Paraclete, a religious +establishment which he had founded. She had many privations and +sufferings to undergo at first, but her worth and her gentle disposition +won influential friends for her, and she built up a wealthy and +flourishing nunnery. She became a great favorite with the heads of the +church, and also the people, though she seldom appeared in public. She +rapidly advanced in esteem, in good report, and in usefulness, and +Abelard as rapidly lost ground. The Pope so honored her that he made her +the head of her order. Abelard, a man of splendid talents, and ranking +as the first debater of his time, became timid, irresolute, and +distrustful of his powers. He only needed a great misfortune to topple +him from the high position he held in the world of intellectual +excellence, and it came. Urged by kings and princes to meet the subtle +St. Bernard in debate and crush him, he stood up in the presence of a +royal and illustrious assemblage, and when his antagonist had finished he +looked about him and stammered a commencement; but his courage failed +him, the cunning of his tongue was gone: with his speech unspoken, he +trembled and sat down, a disgraced and vanquished champion. + +He died a nobody, and was buried at Cluny, A.D., 1144. They removed his +body to the Paraclete afterward, and when Heloise died, twenty years +later, they buried her with him, in accordance with her last wish. He +died at the ripe age of 64, and she at 63. After the bodies had remained +entombed three hundred years, they were removed once more. They were +removed again in 1800, and finally, seventeen years afterward, they were +taken up and transferred to Pere la Chaise, where they will remain in +peace and quiet until it comes time for them to get up and move again. + +History is silent concerning the last acts of the mountain howitzer. Let +the world say what it will about him, I, at least, shall always respect +the memory and sorrow for the abused trust and the broken heart and the +troubled spirit of the old smooth-bore. Rest and repose be his! + +Such is the story of Abelard and Heloise. Such is the history that +Lamartine has shed such cataracts of tears over. But that man never +could come within the influence of a subject in the least pathetic +without overflowing his banks. He ought to be dammed--or leveed, I +should more properly say. Such is the history--not as it is usually +told, but as it is when stripped of the nauseous sentimentality that +would enshrine for our loving worship a dastardly seducer like Pierre +Abelard. I have not a word to say against the misused, faithful girl, +and would not withhold from her grave a single one of those simple +tributes which blighted youths and maidens offer to her memory, but I am +sorry enough that I have not time and opportunity to write four or five +volumes of my opinion of her friend the founder of the Parachute, or the +Paraclete, or whatever it was. + +The tons of sentiment I have wasted on that unprincipled humbug in my +ignorance! I shall throttle down my emotions hereafter, about this sort +of people, until I have read them up and know whether they are entitled +to any tearful attentions or not. I wish I had my immortelles back, now, +and that bunch of radishes. + +In Paris we often saw in shop windows the sign "English Spoken Here," +just as one sees in the windows at home the sign "Ici on parle +francaise." We always invaded these places at once--and invariably +received the information, framed in faultless French, that the clerk who +did the English for the establishment had just gone to dinner and would +be back in an hour--would Monsieur buy something? We wondered why those +parties happened to take their dinners at such erratic and extraordinary +hours, for we never called at a time when an exemplary Christian would be +in the least likely to be abroad on such an errand. The truth was, it +was a base fraud--a snare to trap the unwary--chaff to catch fledglings +with. They had no English-murdering clerk. They trusted to the sign to +inveigle foreigners into their lairs, and trusted to their own +blandishments to keep them there till they bought something. + +We ferreted out another French imposition--a frequent sign to this +effect: "ALL MANNER OF AMERICAN DRINKS ARTISTICALLY PREPARED HERE." We +procured the services of a gentleman experienced in the nomenclature of +the American bar, and moved upon the works of one of these impostors. A +bowing, aproned Frenchman skipped forward and said: + +"Que voulez les messieurs?" I do not know what "Que voulez les +messieurs?" means, but such was his remark. + +Our general said, "We will take a whiskey straight." + +[A stare from the Frenchman.] + +"Well, if you don't know what that is, give us a champagne cock-tail." + +[A stare and a shrug.] + +"Well, then, give us a sherry cobbler." + +The Frenchman was checkmated. This was all Greek to him. + +"Give us a brandy smash!" + +The Frenchman began to back away, suspicious of the ominous vigor of the +last order--began to back away, shrugging his shoulders and spreading his +hands apologetically. + +The General followed him up and gained a complete victory. The +uneducated foreigner could not even furnish a Santa Cruz Punch, an +Eye-Opener, a Stone-Fence, or an Earthquake. It was plain that he was a +wicked impostor. + +An acquaintance of mine said the other day that he was doubtless the only +American visitor to the Exposition who had had the high honor of being +escorted by the Emperor's bodyguard. I said with unobtrusive frankness +that I was astonished that such a long-legged, lantern-jawed, +unprepossessing-looking specter as he should be singled out for a +distinction like that, and asked how it came about. He said he had +attended a great military review in the Champ de Mars some time ago, and +while the multitude about him was growing thicker and thicker every +moment he observed an open space inside the railing. He left his +carriage and went into it. He was the only person there, and so he had +plenty of room, and the situation being central, he could see all the +preparations going on about the field. By and by there was a sound of +music, and soon the Emperor of the French and the Emperor of Austria, +escorted by the famous Cent Gardes, entered the enclosure. They seemed +not to observe him, but directly, in response to a sign from the +commander of the guard, a young lieutenant came toward him with a file of +his men following, halted, raised his hand, and gave the military salute, +and then said in a low voice that he was sorry to have to disturb a +stranger and a gentleman, but the place was sacred to royalty. Then this +New Jersey phantom rose up and bowed and begged pardon, then with the +officer beside him, the file of men marching behind him, and with every +mark of respect, he was escorted to his carriage by the imperial Cent +Gardes! The officer saluted again and fell back, the New Jersey sprite +bowed in return and had presence of mind enough to pretend that he had +simply called on a matter of private business with those emperors, and so +waved them an adieu and drove from the field! + +Imagine a poor Frenchman ignorantly intruding upon a public rostrum +sacred to some six-penny dignitary in America. The police would scare +him to death first with a storm of their elegant blasphemy, and then pull +him to pieces getting him away from there. We are measurably superior to +the French in some things, but they are immeasurably our betters in +others. + +Enough of Paris for the present. We have done our whole duty by it. We +have seen the Tuileries, the Napoleon Column, the Madeleine, that wonder +of wonders the tomb of Napoleon, all the great churches and museums, +libraries, imperial palaces, and sculpture and picture galleries, the +Pantheon, Jardin des Plantes, the opera, the circus, the legislative +body, the billiard rooms, the barbers, the grisettes-- + +Ah, the grisettes! I had almost forgotten. They are another romantic +fraud. They were (if you let the books of travel tell it) always so +beautiful--so neat and trim, so graceful--so naive and trusting--so +gentle, so winning--so faithful to their shop duties, so irresistible +to buyers in their prattling importunity--so devoted to their +poverty-stricken students of the Latin Quarter--so lighthearted and +happy on their Sunday picnics in the suburbs--and oh, so charmingly, +so delightfully immoral! + +Stuff! For three or four days I was constantly saying: + +"Quick, Ferguson! Is that a grisette?" + +And he always said, "No." + +He comprehended at last that I wanted to see a grisette. Then he showed +me dozens of them. They were like nearly all the Frenchwomen I ever saw +--homely. They had large hands, large feet, large mouths; they had pug +noses as a general thing, and moustaches that not even good breeding +could overlook; they combed their hair straight back without parting; +they were ill-shaped, they were not winning, they were not graceful; I +knew by their looks that they ate garlic and onions; and lastly and +finally, to my thinking it would be base flattery to call them immoral. + +Aroint thee, wench! I sorrow for the vagabond student of the Latin +Quarter now, even more than formerly I envied him. Thus topples to earth +another idol of my infancy. + +We have seen every thing, and tomorrow we go to Versailles. We shall see +Paris only for a little while as we come back to take up our line of +march for the ship, and so I may as well bid the beautiful city a +regretful farewell. We shall travel many thousands of miles after we +leave here and visit many great cities, but we shall find none so +enchanting as this. + +Some of our party have gone to England, intending to take a roundabout +course and rejoin the vessel at Leghorn or Naples several weeks hence. +We came near going to Geneva, but have concluded to return to Marseilles +and go up through Italy from Genoa. + +I will conclude this chapter with a remark that I am sincerely proud to +be able to make--and glad, as well, that my comrades cordially endorse +it, to wit: by far the handsomest women we have seen in France were born +and reared in America. + +I feel now like a man who has redeemed a failing reputation and shed +luster upon a dimmed escutcheon, by a single just deed done at the +eleventh hour. + +Let the curtain fall, to slow music. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +VERSAILLES! It is wonderfully beautiful! You gaze and stare and try to +understand that it is real, that it is on the earth, that it is not the +Garden of Eden--but your brain grows giddy, stupefied by the world of +beauty around you, and you half believe you are the dupe of an exquisite +dream. The scene thrills one like military music! A noble palace, +stretching its ornamented front, block upon block away, till it seemed +that it would never end; a grand promenade before it, whereon the armies +of an empire might parade; all about it rainbows of flowers, and colossal +statues that were almost numberless and yet seemed only scattered over +the ample space; broad flights of stone steps leading down from the +promenade to lower grounds of the park--stairways that whole regiments +might stand to arms upon and have room to spare; vast fountains whose +great bronze effigies discharged rivers of sparkling water into the air +and mingled a hundred curving jets together in forms of matchless beauty; +wide grass-carpeted avenues that branched hither and thither in every +direction and wandered to seemingly interminable distances, walled all +the way on either side with compact ranks of leafy trees whose branches +met above and formed arches as faultless and as symmetrical as ever were +carved in stone; and here and there were glimpses of sylvan lakes with +miniature ships glassed in their surfaces. And every where--on the +palace steps, and the great promenade, around the fountains, among the +trees, and far under the arches of the endless avenues--hundreds and +hundreds of people in gay costumes walked or ran or danced, and gave to +the fairy picture the life and animation which was all of perfection it +could have lacked. + +It was worth a pilgrimage to see. Everything is on so gigantic a scale. +Nothing is small--nothing is cheap. The statues are all large; the +palace is grand; the park covers a fair-sized county; the avenues are +interminable. All the distances and all the dimensions about Versailles +are vast. I used to think the pictures exaggerated these distances and +these dimensions beyond all reason, and that they made Versailles more +beautiful than it was possible for any place in the world to be. I know +now that the pictures never came up to the subject in any respect, and +that no painter could represent Versailles on canvas as beautiful as it +is in reality. I used to abuse Louis XIV for spending two hundred +millions of dollars in creating this marvelous park, when bread was so +scarce with some of his subjects; but I have forgiven him now. He took a +tract of land sixty miles in circumference and set to work to make this +park and build this palace and a road to it from Paris. He kept 36,000 +men employed daily on it, and the labor was so unhealthy that they used +to die and be hauled off by cartloads every night. The wife of a +nobleman of the time speaks of this as an "inconvenience," but naively +remarks that "it does not seem worthy of attention in the happy state of +tranquillity we now enjoy." + +I always thought ill of people at home who trimmed their shrubbery into +pyramids and squares and spires and all manner of unnatural shapes, and +when I saw the same thing being practiced in this great park I began to +feel dissatisfied. But I soon saw the idea of the thing and the wisdom +of it. They seek the general effect. We distort a dozen sickly trees +into unaccustomed shapes in a little yard no bigger than a dining room, +and then surely they look absurd enough. But here they take two hundred +thousand tall forest trees and set them in a double row; allow no sign of +leaf or branch to grow on the trunk lower down than six feet above the +ground; from that point the boughs begin to project, and very gradually +they extend outward further and further till they meet overhead, and a +faultless tunnel of foliage is formed. The arch is mathematically +precise. The effect is then very fine. They make trees take fifty +different shapes, and so these quaint effects are infinitely varied and +picturesque. The trees in no two avenues are shaped alike, and +consequently the eye is not fatigued with anything in the nature of +monotonous uniformity. I will drop this subject now, leaving it to +others to determine how these people manage to make endless ranks of +lofty forest trees grow to just a certain thickness of trunk (say a foot +and two-thirds); how they make them spring to precisely the same height +for miles; how they make them grow so close together; how they compel one +huge limb to spring from the same identical spot on each tree and form +the main sweep of the arch; and how all these things are kept exactly in +the same condition and in the same exquisite shapeliness and symmetry +month after month and year after year--for I have tried to reason out the +problem and have failed. + +We walked through the great hall of sculpture and the one hundred and +fifty galleries of paintings in the palace of Versailles, and felt that +to be in such a place was useless unless one had a whole year at his +disposal. These pictures are all battle scenes, and only one solitary +little canvas among them all treats of anything but great French +victories. We wandered, also, through the Grand Trianon and the Petit +Trianon, those monuments of royal prodigality, and with histories so +mournful--filled, as it is, with souvenirs of Napoleon the First, and +three dead kings and as many queens. In one sumptuous bed they had all +slept in succession, but no one occupies it now. In a large dining room +stood the table at which Louis XIV and his mistress Madame Maintenon, and +after them Louis XV, and Pompadour, had sat at their meals naked and +unattended--for the table stood upon a trapdoor, which descended with it +to regions below when it was necessary to replenish its dishes. In a +room of the Petit Trianon stood the furniture, just as poor Marie +Antoinette left it when the mob came and dragged her and the King to +Paris, never to return. Near at hand, in the stables, were prodigious +carriages that showed no color but gold--carriages used by former kings +of France on state occasions, and never used now save when a kingly head +is to be crowned or an imperial infant christened. And with them were +some curious sleighs, whose bodies were shaped like lions, swans, tigers, +etc.--vehicles that had once been handsome with pictured designs and +fine workmanship, but were dusty and decaying now. They had their +history. When Louis XIV had finished the Grand Trianon, he told +Maintenon he had created a Paradise for her, and asked if she could think +of anything now to wish for. He said he wished the Trianon to be +perfection--nothing less. She said she could think of but one thing--it +was summer, and it was balmy France--yet she would like well to sleigh +ride in the leafy avenues of Versailles! The next morning found miles +and miles of grassy avenues spread thick with snowy salt and sugar, and a +procession of those quaint sleighs waiting to receive the chief concubine +of the gaiest and most unprincipled court that France has ever seen! + +From sumptuous Versailles, with its palaces, its statues, its gardens, +and its fountains, we journeyed back to Paris and sought its antipodes +--the Faubourg St. Antoine. Little, narrow streets; dirty children +blockading them; greasy, slovenly women capturing and spanking them; +filthy dens on first floors, with rag stores in them (the heaviest +business in the Faubourg is the chiffonier's); other filthy dens where +whole suits of second and third-hand clothing are sold at prices that +would ruin any proprietor who did not steal his stock; still other filthy +dens where they sold groceries--sold them by the half-pennyworth--five +dollars would buy the man out, goodwill and all. Up these little crooked +streets they will murder a man for seven dollars and dump the body in the +Seine. And up some other of these streets--most of them, I should say +--live lorettes. + +All through this Faubourg St. Antoine, misery, poverty, vice, and crime +go hand in hand, and the evidences of it stare one in the face from every +side. Here the people live who begin the revolutions. Whenever there is +anything of that kind to be done, they are always ready. They take as +much genuine pleasure in building a barricade as they do in cutting a +throat or shoving a friend into the Seine. It is these savage-looking +ruffians who storm the splendid halls of the Tuileries occasionally, and +swarm into Versailles when a king is to be called to account. + +But they will build no more barricades, they will break no more soldiers' +heads with paving-stones. Louis Napoleon has taken care of all that. He +is annihilating the crooked streets and building in their stead noble +boulevards as straight as an arrow--avenues which a cannon ball could +traverse from end to end without meeting an obstruction more irresistible +than the flesh and bones of men--boulevards whose stately edifices will +never afford refuges and plotting places for starving, discontented +revolution breeders. Five of these great thoroughfares radiate from one +ample centre--a centre which is exceedingly well adapted to the +accommodation of heavy artillery. The mobs used to riot there, but they +must seek another rallying-place in future. And this ingenious Napoleon +paves the streets of his great cities with a smooth, compact composition +of asphaltum and sand. No more barricades of flagstones--no more +assaulting his Majesty's troops with cobbles. I cannot feel friendly +toward my quondam fellow-American, Napoleon III., especially at this +time,--[July, 1867.]--when in fancy I see his credulous victim, +Maximilian, lying stark and stiff in Mexico, and his maniac widow +watching eagerly from her French asylum for the form that will never +come--but I do admire his nerve, his calm self-reliance, his shrewd good +sense. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +We had a pleasant journey of it seaward again. We found that for the +three past nights our ship had been in a state of war. The first night +the sailors of a British ship, being happy with grog, came down on the +pier and challenged our sailors to a free fight. They accepted with +alacrity, repaired to the pier, and gained--their share of a drawn +battle. Several bruised and bloody members of both parties were carried +off by the police and imprisoned until the following morning. The next +night the British boys came again to renew the fight, but our men had had +strict orders to remain on board and out of sight. They did so, and the +besieging party grew noisy and more and more abusive as the fact became +apparent (to them) that our men were afraid to come out. They went away +finally with a closing burst of ridicule and offensive epithets. The +third night they came again and were more obstreperous than ever. They +swaggered up and down the almost deserted pier, and hurled curses, +obscenity, and stinging sarcasms at our crew. It was more than human +nature could bear. The executive officer ordered our men ashore--with +instructions not to fight. They charged the British and gained a +brilliant victory. I probably would not have mentioned this war had it +ended differently. But I travel to learn, and I still remember that they +picture no French defeats in the battle-galleries of Versailles. + +It was like home to us to step on board the comfortable ship again and +smoke and lounge about her breezy decks. And yet it was not altogether +like home, either, because so many members of the family were away. We +missed some pleasant faces which we would rather have found at dinner, +and at night there were gaps in the euchre-parties which could not be +satisfactorily filled. "Moult" was in England, Jack in Switzerland, +Charley in Spain. Blucher was gone, none could tell where. But we were +at sea again, and we had the stars and the ocean to look at, and plenty +of room to meditate in. + +In due time the shores of Italy were sighted, and as we stood gazing from +the decks, early in the bright summer morning, the stately city of Genoa +rose up out of the sea and flung back the sunlight from her hundred +palaces. + +Here we rest for the present--or rather, here we have been trying to +rest, for some little time, but we run about too much to accomplish a +great deal in that line. + +I would like to remain here. I had rather not go any further. There may +be prettier women in Europe, but I doubt it. The population of Genoa is +120,000; two-thirds of these are women, I think, and at least two-thirds +of the women are beautiful. They are as dressy and as tasteful and as +graceful as they could possibly be without being angels. However, angels +are not very dressy, I believe. At least the angels in pictures are not +--they wear nothing but wings. But these Genoese women do look so +charming. Most of the young demoiselles are robed in a cloud of white +from head to foot, though many trick themselves out more elaborately. +Nine-tenths of them wear nothing on their heads but a filmy sort of veil, +which falls down their backs like a white mist. They are very fair, and +many of them have blue eyes, but black and dreamy dark brown ones are met +with oftenest. + +The ladies and gentlemen of Genoa have a pleasant fashion of promenading +in a large park on the top of a hill in the center of the city, from six +till nine in the evening, and then eating ices in a neighboring garden an +hour or two longer. We went to the park on Sunday evening. Two thousand +persons were present, chiefly young ladies and gentlemen. The gentlemen +were dressed in the very latest Paris fashions, and the robes of the +ladies glinted among the trees like so many snowflakes. The multitude +moved round and round the park in a great procession. The bands played, +and so did the fountains; the moon and the gas lamps lit up the scene, +and altogether it was a brilliant and an animated picture. I scanned +every female face that passed, and it seemed to me that all were +handsome. I never saw such a freshet of loveliness before. I did not +see how a man of only ordinary decision of character could marry here, +because before he could get his mind made up he would fall in love with +somebody else. + +Never smoke any Italian tobacco. Never do it on any account. It makes +me shudder to think what it must be made of. You cannot throw an old +cigar "stub" down anywhere, but some vagabond will pounce upon it on the +instant. I like to smoke a good deal, but it wounds my sensibilities to +see one of these stub-hunters watching me out of the corners of his +hungry eyes and calculating how long my cigar will be likely to last. +It reminded me too painfully of that San Francisco undertaker who used to +go to sick-beds with his watch in his hand and time the corpse. One of +these stub-hunters followed us all over the park last night, and we never +had a smoke that was worth anything. We were always moved to appease him +with the stub before the cigar was half gone, because he looked so +viciously anxious. He regarded us as his own legitimate prey, by right +of discovery, I think, because he drove off several other professionals +who wanted to take stock in us. + +Now, they surely must chew up those old stubs, and dry and sell them for +smoking-tobacco. Therefore, give your custom to other than Italian +brands of the article. + +"The Superb" and the "City of Palaces" are names which Genoa has held for +centuries. She is full of palaces, certainly, and the palaces are +sumptuous inside, but they are very rusty without and make no pretensions +to architectural magnificence. "Genoa the Superb" would be a felicitous +title if it referred to the women. + +We have visited several of the palaces--immense thick-walled piles, with +great stone staircases, tesselated marble pavements on the floors, +(sometimes they make a mosaic work, of intricate designs, wrought in +pebbles or little fragments of marble laid in cement,) and grand salons +hung with pictures by Rubens, Guido, Titian, Paul Veronese, and so on, +and portraits of heads of the family, in plumed helmets and gallant coats +of mail, and patrician ladies in stunning costumes of centuries ago. +But, of course, the folks were all out in the country for the summer, and +might not have known enough to ask us to dinner if they had been at home, +and so all the grand empty salons, with their resounding pavements, their +grim pictures of dead ancestors, and tattered banners with the dust of +bygone centuries upon them, seemed to brood solemnly of death and the +grave, and our spirits ebbed away, and our cheerfulness passed from us. +We never went up to the eleventh story. We always began to suspect +ghosts. There was always an undertaker-looking servant along, too, who +handed us a program, pointed to the picture that began the list of the +salon he was in, and then stood stiff and stark and unsmiling in his +petrified livery till we were ready to move on to the next chamber, +whereupon he marched sadly ahead and took up another malignantly +respectful position as before. I wasted so much time praying that the +roof would fall in on these dispiriting flunkies that I had but little +left to bestow upon palace and pictures. + +And besides, as in Paris, we had a guide. Perdition catch all the +guides. This one said he was the most gifted linguist in Genoa, as far +as English was concerned, and that only two persons in the city beside +himself could talk the language at all. He showed us the birthplace of +Christopher Columbus, and after we had reflected in silent awe before it +for fifteen minutes, he said it was not the birthplace of Columbus, but +of Columbus' grandmother! When we demanded an explanation of his conduct +he only shrugged his shoulders and answered in barbarous Italian. I +shall speak further of this guide in a future chapter. All the +information we got out of him we shall be able to carry along with us, I +think. + +I have not been to church so often in a long time as I have in the last +few weeks. The people in these old lands seem to make churches their +specialty. Especially does this seem to be the case with the citizens of +Genoa. I think there is a church every three or four hundred yards all +over town. The streets are sprinkled from end to end with shovel-hatted, +long-robed, well-fed priests, and the church bells by dozens are pealing +all the day long, nearly. Every now and then one comes across a friar of +orders gray, with shaven head, long, coarse robe, rope girdle and beads, +and with feet cased in sandals or entirely bare. These worthies suffer +in the flesh and do penance all their lives, I suppose, but they look +like consummate famine-breeders. They are all fat and serene. + +The old Cathedral of San Lorenzo is about as notable a building as we +have found in Genoa. It is vast, and has colonnades of noble pillars, +and a great organ, and the customary pomp of gilded moldings, pictures, +frescoed ceilings, and so forth. I cannot describe it, of course--it +would require a good many pages to do that. But it is a curious place. +They said that half of it--from the front door halfway down to the altar +--was a Jewish synagogue before the Saviour was born, and that no +alteration had been made in it since that time. We doubted the +statement, but did it reluctantly. We would much rather have believed +it. The place looked in too perfect repair to be so ancient. + +The main point of interest about the cathedral is the little Chapel of +St. John the Baptist. They only allow women to enter it on one day in +the year, on account of the animosity they still cherish against the sex +because of the murder of the Saint to gratify a caprice of Herodias. In +this Chapel is a marble chest, in which, they told us, were the ashes of +St. John; and around it was wound a chain, which, they said, had confined +him when he was in prison. We did not desire to disbelieve these +statements, and yet we could not feel certain that they were correct +--partly because we could have broken that chain, and so could St. John, +and partly because we had seen St. John's ashes before, in another +church. We could not bring ourselves to think St. John had two sets of +ashes. + +They also showed us a portrait of the Madonna which was painted by St. +Luke, and it did not look half as old and smoky as some of the pictures +by Rubens. We could not help admiring the Apostle's modesty in never +once mentioning in his writings that he could paint. + +But isn't this relic matter a little overdone? We find a piece of the +true cross in every old church we go into, and some of the nails that +held it together. I would not like to be positive, but I think we have +seen as much as a keg of these nails. Then there is the crown of thorns; +they have part of one in Sainte Chapelle, in Paris, and part of one also +in Notre Dame. And as for bones of St. Denis, I feel certain we have +seen enough of them to duplicate him if necessary. + +I only meant to write about the churches, but I keep wandering from the +subject. I could say that the Church of the Annunciation is a wilderness +of beautiful columns, of statues, gilded moldings, and pictures almost +countless, but that would give no one an entirely perfect idea of the +thing, and so where is the use? One family built the whole edifice, and +have got money left. There is where the mystery lies. We had an idea at +first that only a mint could have survived the expense. + +These people here live in the heaviest, highest, broadest, darkest, +solidest houses one can imagine. Each one might "laugh a siege to +scorn." A hundred feet front and a hundred high is about the style, and +you go up three flights of stairs before you begin to come upon signs of +occupancy. Everything is stone, and stone of the heaviest--floors, +stairways, mantels, benches--everything. The walls are four to five feet +thick. The streets generally are four or five to eight feet wide and as +crooked as a corkscrew. You go along one of these gloomy cracks, and +look up and behold the sky like a mere ribbon of light, far above your +head, where the tops of the tall houses on either side of the street bend +almost together. You feel as if you were at the bottom of some +tremendous abyss, with all the world far above you. You wind in and out +and here and there, in the most mysterious way, and have no more idea of +the points of the compass than if you were a blind man. You can never +persuade yourself that these are actually streets, and the frowning, +dingy, monstrous houses dwellings, till you see one of these beautiful, +prettily dressed women emerge from them--see her emerge from a dark, +dreary-looking den that looks dungeon all over, from the ground away +halfway up to heaven. And then you wonder that such a charming moth +could come from such a forbidding shell as that. The streets are wisely +made narrow and the houses heavy and thick and stony, in order that the +people may be cool in this roasting climate. And they are cool, and stay +so. And while I think of it--the men wear hats and have very dark +complexions, but the women wear no headgear but a flimsy veil like a +gossamer's web, and yet are exceedingly fair as a general thing. +Singular, isn't it? + +The huge palaces of Genoa are each supposed to be occupied by one family, +but they could accommodate a hundred, I should think. They are relics of +the grandeur of Genoa's palmy days--the days when she was a great +commercial and maritime power several centuries ago. These houses, solid +marble palaces though they be, are in many cases of a dull pinkish color, +outside, and from pavement to eaves are pictured with Genoese battle +scenes, with monstrous Jupiters and Cupids, and with familiar +illustrations from Grecian mythology. Where the paint has yielded to age +and exposure and is peeling off in flakes and patches, the effect is not +happy. A noseless Cupid or a Jupiter with an eye out or a Venus with a +fly-blister on her breast, are not attractive features in a picture. +Some of these painted walls reminded me somewhat of the tall van, +plastered with fanciful bills and posters, that follows the bandwagon of +a circus about a country village. I have not read or heard that the +outsides of the houses of any other European city are frescoed in this +way. + +I can not conceive of such a thing as Genoa in ruins. Such massive +arches, such ponderous substructions as support these towering +broad-winged edifices, we have seldom seen before; and surely the great +blocks of stone of which these edifices are built can never decay; walls +that are as thick as an ordinary American doorway is high cannot +crumble. + +The republics of Genoa and Pisa were very powerful in the Middle Ages. +Their ships filled the Mediterranean, and they carried on an extensive +commerce with Constantinople and Syria. Their warehouses were the great +distributing depots from whence the costly merchandise of the East was +sent abroad over Europe. They were warlike little nations and defied, in +those days, governments that overshadow them now as mountains overshadow +molehills. The Saracens captured and pillaged Genoa nine hundred years +ago, but during the following century Genoa and Pisa entered into an +offensive and defensive alliance and besieged the Saracen colonies in +Sardinia and the Balearic Isles with an obstinacy that maintained its +pristine vigor and held to its purpose for forty long years. They were +victorious at last and divided their conquests equably among their great +patrician families. Descendants of some of those proud families still +inhabit the palaces of Genoa, and trace in their own features a +resemblance to the grim knights whose portraits hang in their stately +halls, and to pictured beauties with pouting lips and merry eyes whose +originals have been dust and ashes for many a dead and forgotten century. + +The hotel we live in belonged to one of those great orders of knights of +the Cross in the times of the Crusades, and its mailed sentinels once +kept watch and ward in its massive turrets and woke the echoes of these +halls and corridors with their iron heels. + +But Genoa's greatness has degenerated into an unostentatious commerce in +velvets and silver filagree-work. They say that each European town has +its specialty. These filagree things are Genoa's specialty. Her smiths +take silver ingots and work them up into all manner of graceful and +beautiful forms. They make bunches of flowers, from flakes and wires of +silver, that counterfeit the delicate creations the frost weaves upon a +windowpane; and we were shown a miniature silver temple whose fluted +columns, whose Corinthian capitals and rich entablatures, whose spire, +statues, bells, and ornate lavishness of sculpture were wrought in +polished silver, and with such matchless art that every detail was a +fascinating study and the finished edifice a wonder of beauty. + +We are ready to move again, though we are not really tired yet of the +narrow passages of this old marble cave. Cave is a good word--when +speaking of Genoa under the stars. When we have been prowling at +midnight through the gloomy crevices they call streets, where no +footfalls but ours were echoing, where only ourselves were abroad, and +lights appeared only at long intervals and at a distance, and +mysteriously disappeared again, and the houses at our elbows seemed to +stretch upward farther than ever toward the heavens, the memory of a cave +I used to know at home was always in my mind, with its lofty passages, +its silence and solitude, its shrouding gloom, its sepulchral echoes, its +flitting lights, and more than all, its sudden revelations of branching +crevices and corridors where we least expected them. + +We are not tired of the endless processions of cheerful, chattering +gossipers that throng these courts and streets all day long, either; nor +of the coarse-robed monks; nor of the "Asti" wines, which that old doctor +(whom we call the Oracle,) with customary felicity in the matter of +getting everything wrong, misterms "nasty." But we must go, +nevertheless. + +Our last sight was the cemetery (a burial place intended to accommodate +60,000 bodies,) and we shall continue to remember it after we shall have +forgotten the palaces. It is a vast marble collonaded corridor extending +around a great unoccupied square of ground; its broad floor is marble, +and on every slab is an inscription--for every slab covers a corpse. On +either side, as one walks down the middle of the passage, are monuments, +tombs, and sculptured figures that are exquisitely wrought and are full +of grace and beauty. They are new and snowy; every outline is perfect, +every feature guiltless of mutilation, flaw, or blemish; and therefore, +to us these far-reaching ranks of bewitching forms are a hundred fold +more lovely than the damaged and dingy statuary they have saved from the +wreck of ancient art and set up in the galleries of Paris for the worship +of the world. + +Well provided with cigars and other necessaries of life, we are now ready +to take the cars for Milan. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +All day long we sped through a mountainous country whose peaks were +bright with sunshine, whose hillsides were dotted with pretty villas +sitting in the midst of gardens and shrubbery, and whose deep ravines +were cool and shady and looked ever so inviting from where we and the +birds were winging our flight through the sultry upper air. + +We had plenty of chilly tunnels wherein to check our perspiration, +though. We timed one of them. We were twenty minutes passing through +it, going at the rate of thirty to thirty-five miles an hour. + +Beyond Alessandria we passed the battle-field of Marengo. + +Toward dusk we drew near Milan and caught glimpses of the city and the +blue mountain peaks beyond. But we were not caring for these things +--they did not interest us in the least. We were in a fever of impatience; +we were dying to see the renowned cathedral! We watched--in this +direction and that--all around--everywhere. We needed no one to point it +out--we did not wish any one to point it out--we would recognize it even +in the desert of the great Sahara. + +At last, a forest of graceful needles, shimmering in the amber sunlight, +rose slowly above the pygmy housetops, as one sometimes sees, in the far +horizon, a gilded and pinnacled mass of cloud lift itself above the waste +of waves, at sea,--the Cathedral! We knew it in a moment. + +Half of that night, and all of the next day, this architectural autocrat +was our sole object of interest. + +What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, +so airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems in +the soft moonlight only a fairy delusion of frost-work that might vanish +with a breath! How sharply its pinnacled angles and its wilderness of +spires were cut against the sky, and how richly their shadows fell upon +its snowy roof! It was a vision!--a miracle!--an anthem sung in stone, a +poem wrought in marble! + +Howsoever you look at the great cathedral, it is noble, it is beautiful! +Wherever you stand in Milan or within seven miles of Milan, it is visible +and when it is visible, no other object can chain your whole attention. +Leave your eyes unfettered by your will but a single instant and they +will surely turn to seek it. It is the first thing you look for when you +rise in the morning, and the last your lingering gaze rests upon at +night. Surely it must be the princeliest creation that ever brain of man +conceived. + +At nine o'clock in the morning we went and stood before this marble +colossus. The central one of its five great doors is bordered with a +bas-relief of birds and fruits and beasts and insects, which have been so +ingeniously carved out of the marble that they seem like living +creatures--and the figures are so numerous and the design so complex that +one might study it a week without exhausting its interest. On the great +steeple--surmounting the myriad of spires--inside of the spires--over the +doors, the windows--in nooks and corners--every where that a niche or a +perch can be found about the enormous building, from summit to base, +there is a marble statue, and every statue is a study in itself! +Raphael, Angelo, Canova--giants like these gave birth to the designs, and +their own pupils carved them. Every face is eloquent with expression, +and every attitude is full of grace. Away above, on the lofty roof, rank +on rank of carved and fretted spires spring high in the air, and through +their rich tracery one sees the sky beyond. In their midst the central +steeple towers proudly up like the mainmast of some great Indiaman among +a fleet of coasters. + +We wished to go aloft. The sacristan showed us a marble stairway (of +course it was marble, and of the purest and whitest--there is no other +stone, no brick, no wood, among its building materials) and told us to go +up one hundred and eighty-two steps and stop till he came. It was not +necessary to say stop--we should have done that any how. We were tired +by the time we got there. This was the roof. Here, springing from its +broad marble flagstones, were the long files of spires, looking very tall +close at hand, but diminishing in the distance like the pipes of an +organ. We could see now that the statue on the top of each was the size +of a large man, though they all looked like dolls from the street. We +could see, also, that from the inside of each and every one of these +hollow spires, from sixteen to thirty-one beautiful marble statues looked +out upon the world below. + +From the eaves to the comb of the roof stretched in endless succession +great curved marble beams, like the fore-and-aft braces of a steamboat, +and along each beam from end to end stood up a row of richly carved +flowers and fruits--each separate and distinct in kind, and over 15,000 +species represented. At a little distance these rows seem to close +together like the ties of a railroad track, and then the mingling +together of the buds and blossoms of this marble garden forms a picture +that is very charming to the eye. + +We descended and entered. Within the church, long rows of fluted +columns, like huge monuments, divided the building into broad aisles, and +on the figured pavement fell many a soft blush from the painted windows +above. I knew the church was very large, but I could not fully +appreciate its great size until I noticed that the men standing far down +by the altar looked like boys, and seemed to glide, rather than walk. We +loitered about gazing aloft at the monster windows all aglow with +brilliantly colored scenes in the lives of the Saviour and his followers. +Some of these pictures are mosaics, and so artistically are their +thousand particles of tinted glass or stone put together that the work +has all the smoothness and finish of a painting. We counted sixty panes +of glass in one window, and each pane was adorned with one of these +master achievements of genius and patience. + +The guide showed us a coffee-colored piece of sculpture which he said was +considered to have come from the hand of Phidias, since it was not +possible that any other artist, of any epoch, could have copied nature +with such faultless accuracy. The figure was that of a man without a +skin; with every vein, artery, muscle, every fiber and tendon and tissue +of the human frame represented in minute detail. It looked natural, +because somehow it looked as if it were in pain. A skinned man would be +likely to look that way unless his attention were occupied with some +other matter. It was a hideous thing, and yet there was a fascination +about it some where. I am very sorry I saw it, because I shall always +see it now. I shall dream of it sometimes. I shall dream that it is +resting its corded arms on the bed's head and looking down on me with its +dead eyes; I shall dream that it is stretched between the sheets with me +and touching me with its exposed muscles and its stringy cold legs. + +It is hard to forget repulsive things. I remember yet how I ran off from +school once, when I was a boy, and then, pretty late at night, concluded +to climb into the window of my father's office and sleep on a lounge, +because I had a delicacy about going home and getting thrashed. As I lay +on the lounge and my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I fancied I +could see a long, dusky, shapeless thing stretched upon the floor. A +cold shiver went through me. I turned my face to the wall. That did not +answer. I was afraid that that thing would creep over and seize me in +the dark. I turned back and stared at it for minutes and minutes--they +seemed hours. It appeared to me that the lagging moonlight never, never +would get to it. I turned to the wall and counted twenty, to pass the +feverish time away. I looked--the pale square was nearer. I turned +again and counted fifty--it was almost touching it. With desperate will +I turned again and counted one hundred, and faced about, all in a +tremble. A white human hand lay in the moonlight! Such an awful sinking +at the heart--such a sudden gasp for breath! I felt--I cannot tell what +I felt. When I recovered strength enough, I faced the wall again. But +no boy could have remained so with that mysterious hand behind him. I +counted again and looked--the most of a naked arm was exposed. I put my +hands over my eyes and counted till I could stand it no longer, and then +--the pallid face of a man was there, with the corners of the mouth drawn +down, and the eyes fixed and glassy in death! I raised to a sitting +posture and glowered on that corpse till the light crept down the bare +breastline by line--inch by inch--past the nipple--and then it disclosed +a ghastly stab! + +I went away from there. I do not say that I went away in any sort of a +hurry, but I simply went--that is sufficient. I went out at the window, +and I carried the sash along with me. I did not need the sash, but it +was handier to take it than it was to leave it, and so I took it.--I was +not scared, but I was considerably agitated. + +When I reached home, they whipped me, but I enjoyed it. It seemed +perfectly delightful. That man had been stabbed near the office that +afternoon, and they carried him in there to doctor him, but he only lived +an hour. I have slept in the same room with him often since then--in my +dreams. + +Now we will descend into the crypt, under the grand altar of Milan +Cathedral, and receive an impressive sermon from lips that have been +silent and hands that have been gestureless for three hundred years. + +The priest stopped in a small dungeon and held up his candle. This was +the last resting-place of a good man, a warm-hearted, unselfish man; a +man whose whole life was given to succoring the poor, encouraging the +faint-hearted, visiting the sick; in relieving distress, whenever and +wherever he found it. His heart, his hand, and his purse were always +open. With his story in one's mind he can almost see his benignant +countenance moving calmly among the haggard faces of Milan in the days +when the plague swept the city, brave where all others were cowards, full +of compassion where pity had been crushed out of all other breasts by the +instinct of self-preservation gone mad with terror, cheering all, praying +with all, helping all, with hand and brain and purse, at a time when +parents forsook their children, the friend deserted the friend, and the +brother turned away from the sister while her pleadings were still +wailing in his ears. + +This was good St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop of Milan. The people idolized +him; princes lavished uncounted treasures upon him. We stood in his +tomb. Near by was the sarcophagus, lighted by the dripping candles. The +walls were faced with bas-reliefs representing scenes in his life done in +massive silver. The priest put on a short white lace garment over his +black robe, crossed himself, bowed reverently, and began to turn a +windlass slowly. The sarcophagus separated in two parts, lengthwise, and +the lower part sank down and disclosed a coffin of rock crystal as clear +as the atmosphere. Within lay the body, robed in costly habiliments +covered with gold embroidery and starred with scintillating gems. The +decaying head was black with age, the dry skin was drawn tight to the +bones, the eyes were gone, there was a hole in the temple and another in +the cheek, and the skinny lips were parted as in a ghastly smile! Over +this dreadful face, its dust and decay and its mocking grin, hung a crown +sown thick with flashing brilliants; and upon the breast lay crosses and +croziers of solid gold that were splendid with emeralds and diamonds. + +How poor, and cheap, and trivial these gew-gaws seemed in presence of the +solemnity, the grandeur, the awful majesty of Death! Think of Milton, +Shakespeare, Washington, standing before a reverent world tricked out in +the glass beads, the brass ear-rings and tin trumpery of the savages of +the plains! + +Dead Bartolomeo preached his pregnant sermon, and its burden was: You +that worship the vanities of earth--you that long for worldly honor, +worldly wealth, worldly fame--behold their worth! + +To us it seemed that so good a man, so kind a heart, so simple a nature, +deserved rest and peace in a grave sacred from the intrusion of prying +eyes, and believed that he himself would have preferred to have it so, +but peradventure our wisdom was at fault in this regard. + +As we came out upon the floor of the church again, another priest +volunteered to show us the treasures of the church. + +What, more? The furniture of the narrow chamber of death we had just +visited weighed six millions of francs in ounces and carats alone, +without a penny thrown into the account for the costly workmanship +bestowed upon them! But we followed into a large room filled with tall +wooden presses like wardrobes. He threw them open, and behold, the +cargoes of "crude bullion" of the assay offices of Nevada faded out of my +memory. There were Virgins and bishops there, above their natural size, +made of solid silver, each worth, by weight, from eight hundred thousand +to two millions of francs, and bearing gemmed books in their hands worth +eighty thousand; there were bas-reliefs that weighed six hundred pounds, +carved in solid silver; croziers and crosses, and candlesticks six and +eight feet high, all of virgin gold, and brilliant with precious stones; +and beside these were all manner of cups and vases, and such things, rich +in proportion. It was an Aladdin's palace. The treasures here, by +simple weight, without counting workmanship, were valued at fifty +millions of francs! If I could get the custody of them for a while, I +fear me the market price of silver bishops would advance shortly, on +account of their exceeding scarcity in the Cathedral of Milan. + +The priests showed us two of St. Paul's fingers, and one of St. Peter's; +a bone of Judas Iscariot, (it was black,) and also bones of all the other +disciples; a handkerchief in which the Saviour had left the impression of +his face. Among the most precious of the relics were a stone from the +Holy Sepulchre, part of the crown of thorns, (they have a whole one at +Notre Dame,) a fragment of the purple robe worn by the Saviour, a nail +from the Cross, and a picture of the Virgin and Child painted by the +veritable hand of St. Luke. This is the second of St. Luke's Virgins we +have seen. Once a year all these holy relics are carried in procession +through the streets of Milan. + +I like to revel in the dryest details of the great cathedral. The +building is five hundred feet long by one hundred and eighty wide, and +the principal steeple is in the neighborhood of four hundred feet high. +It has 7,148 marble statues, and will have upwards of three thousand more +when it is finished. In addition it has one thousand five hundred +bas-reliefs. It has one hundred and thirty-six spires--twenty-one more +are to be added. Each spire is surmounted by a statue six and a half +feet high. Every thing about the church is marble, and all from the +same quarry; it was bequeathed to the Archbishopric for this purpose +centuries ago. So nothing but the mere workmanship costs; still that is +expensive --the bill foots up six hundred and eighty-four millions of +francs thus far (considerably over a hundred millions of dollars,) and +it is estimated that it will take a hundred and twenty years yet to +finish the cathedral. It looks complete, but is far from being so. We +saw a new statue put in its niche yesterday, alongside of one which had +been standing these four hundred years, they said. There are four +staircases leading up to the main steeple, each of which cost a hundred +thousand dollars, with the four hundred and eight statues which adorn +them. Marco Compioni was the architect who designed the wonderful +structure more than five hundred years ago, and it took him forty-six +years to work out the plan and get it ready to hand over to the +builders. He is dead now. The building was begun a little less than +five hundred years ago, and the third generation hence will not see it +completed. + +The building looks best by moonlight, because the older portions of it, +being stained with age, contrast unpleasantly with the newer and whiter +portions. It seems somewhat too broad for its height, but may be +familiarity with it might dissipate this impression. + +They say that the Cathedral of Milan is second only to St. Peter's at +Rome. I cannot understand how it can be second to anything made by human +hands. + +We bid it good-bye, now--possibly for all time. How surely, in some +future day, when the memory of it shall have lost its vividness, shall we +half believe we have seen it in a wonderful dream, but never with waking +eyes! + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +"Do you wis zo haut can be?" + +That was what the guide asked when we were looking up at the bronze +horses on the Arch of Peace. It meant, do you wish to go up there? +I give it as a specimen of guide-English. These are the people that make +life a burthen to the tourist. Their tongues are never still. They talk +forever and forever, and that is the kind of billingsgate they use. +Inspiration itself could hardly comprehend them. If they would only show +you a masterpiece of art, or a venerable tomb, or a prison-house, or a +battle-field, hallowed by touching memories or historical reminiscences, +or grand traditions, and then step aside and hold still for ten minutes +and let you think, it would not be so bad. But they interrupt every +dream, every pleasant train of thought, with their tiresome cackling. +Sometimes when I have been standing before some cherished old idol of +mine that I remembered years and years ago in pictures in the geography +at school, I have thought I would give a whole world if the human parrot +at my side would suddenly perish where he stood and leave me to gaze, and +ponder, and worship. + +No, we did not "wis zo haut can be." We wished to go to La Scala, the +largest theater in the world, I think they call it. We did so. It was a +large place. Seven separate and distinct masses of humanity--six great +circles and a monster parquette. + +We wished to go to the Ambrosian Library, and we did that also. We saw a +manuscript of Virgil, with annotations in the handwriting of Petrarch, +the gentleman who loved another man's Laura, and lavished upon her all +through life a love which was a clear waste of the raw material. It was +sound sentiment, but bad judgment. It brought both parties fame, and +created a fountain of commiseration for them in sentimental breasts that +is running yet. But who says a word in behalf of poor Mr. Laura? (I do +not know his other name.) Who glorifies him? Who bedews him with tears? +Who writes poetry about him? Nobody. How do you suppose he liked the +state of things that has given the world so much pleasure? How did he +enjoy having another man following his wife every where and making her +name a familiar word in every garlic-exterminating mouth in Italy with +his sonnets to her pre-empted eyebrows? They got fame and sympathy--he +got neither. This is a peculiarly felicitous instance of what is called +poetical justice. It is all very fine; but it does not chime with my +notions of right. It is too one-sided--too ungenerous. + +Let the world go on fretting about Laura and Petrarch if it will; but as +for me, my tears and my lamentations shall be lavished upon the unsung +defendant. + +We saw also an autograph letter of Lucrezia Borgia, a lady for whom I +have always entertained the highest respect, on account of her rare +histrionic capabilities, her opulence in solid gold goblets made of +gilded wood, her high distinction as an operatic screamer, and the +facility with which she could order a sextuple funeral and get the +corpses ready for it. We saw one single coarse yellow hair from +Lucrezia's head, likewise. It awoke emotions, but we still live. In +this same library we saw some drawings by Michael Angelo (these Italians +call him Mickel Angelo,) and Leonardo da Vinci. (They spell it Vinci and +pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.) +We reserve our opinion of these sketches. + +In another building they showed us a fresco representing some lions and +other beasts drawing chariots; and they seemed to project so far from the +wall that we took them to be sculptures. The artist had shrewdly +heightened the delusion by painting dust on the creatures' backs, as if +it had fallen there naturally and properly. Smart fellow--if it be smart +to deceive strangers. + +Elsewhere we saw a huge Roman amphitheatre, with its stone seats still in +good preservation. Modernized, it is now the scene of more peaceful +recreations than the exhibition of a party of wild beasts with Christians +for dinner. Part of the time, the Milanese use it for a race track, and +at other seasons they flood it with water and have spirited yachting +regattas there. The guide told us these things, and he would hardly try +so hazardous an experiment as the telling of a falsehood, when it is all +he can do to speak the truth in English without getting the lock-jaw. + +In another place we were shown a sort of summer arbor, with a fence +before it. We said that was nothing. We looked again, and saw, through +the arbor, an endless stretch of garden, and shrubbery, and grassy lawn. +We were perfectly willing to go in there and rest, but it could not be +done. It was only another delusion--a painting by some ingenious artist +with little charity in his heart for tired folk. The deception was +perfect. No one could have imagined the park was not real. We even +thought we smelled the flowers at first. + +We got a carriage at twilight and drove in the shaded avenues with the +other nobility, and after dinner we took wine and ices in a fine garden +with the great public. The music was excellent, the flowers and +shrubbery were pleasant to the eye, the scene was vivacious, everybody +was genteel and well-behaved, and the ladies were slightly moustached, +and handsomely dressed, but very homely. + +We adjourned to a cafe and played billiards an hour, and I made six or +seven points by the doctor pocketing his ball, and he made as many by my +pocketing my ball. We came near making a carom sometimes, but not the +one we were trying to make. The table was of the usual European style +--cushions dead and twice as high as the balls; the cues in bad repair. +The natives play only a sort of pool on them. We have never seen any +body playing the French three-ball game yet, and I doubt if there is any +such game known in France, or that there lives any man mad enough to try +to play it on one of these European tables. We had to stop playing +finally because Dan got to sleeping fifteen minutes between the counts +and paying no attention to his marking. + +Afterward we walked up and down one of the most popular streets for some +time, enjoying other people's comfort and wishing we could export some of +it to our restless, driving, vitality-consuming marts at home. Just in +this one matter lies the main charm of life in Europe--comfort. In +America, we hurry--which is well; but when the day's work is done, we go +on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry +our business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them when we +ought to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep. We burn +up our energies with these excitements, and either die early or drop into +a lean and mean old age at a time of life which they call a man's prime +in Europe. When an acre of ground has produced long and well, we let it +lie fallow and rest for a season; we take no man clear across the +continent in the same coach he started in--the coach is stabled somewhere +on the plains and its heated machinery allowed to cool for a few days; +when a razor has seen long service and refuses to hold an edge, the +barber lays it away for a few weeks, and the edge comes back of its own +accord. We bestow thoughtful care upon inanimate objects, but none upon +ourselves. What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, +if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our +edges! + +I do envy these Europeans the comfort they take. When the work of the +day is done, they forget it. Some of them go, with wife and children, to +a beer hall and sit quietly and genteelly drinking a mug or two of ale +and listening to music; others walk the streets, others drive in the +avenues; others assemble in the great ornamental squares in the early +evening to enjoy the sight and the fragrance of flowers and to hear the +military bands play--no European city being without its fine military +music at eventide; and yet others of the populace sit in the open air in +front of the refreshment houses and eat ices and drink mild beverages +that could not harm a child. They go to bed moderately early, and sleep +well. They are always quiet, always orderly, always cheerful, +comfortable, and appreciative of life and its manifold blessings. One +never sees a drunken man among them. The change that has come over our +little party is surprising. Day by day we lose some of our restlessness +and absorb some of the spirit of quietude and ease that is in the +tranquil atmosphere about us and in the demeanor of the people. We grow +wise apace. We begin to comprehend what life is for. + +We have had a bath in Milan, in a public bath-house. They were going to +put all three of us in one bath-tub, but we objected. Each of us had an +Italian farm on his back. We could have felt affluent if we had been +officially surveyed and fenced in. We chose to have three bathtubs, and +large ones--tubs suited to the dignity of aristocrats who had real +estate, and brought it with them. After we were stripped and had taken +the first chilly dash, we discovered that haunting atrocity that has +embittered our lives in so many cities and villages of Italy and France +--there was no soap. I called. A woman answered, and I barely had time to +throw myself against the door--she would have been in, in another second. +I said: + +"Beware, woman! Go away from here--go away, now, or it will be the worse +for you. I am an unprotected male, but I will preserve my honor at the +peril of my life!" + +These words must have frightened her, for she skurried away very fast. + +Dan's voice rose on the air: + +"Oh, bring some soap, why don't you!" + +The reply was Italian. Dan resumed: + +"Soap, you know--soap. That is what I want--soap. S-o-a-p, soap; +s-o-p-e, soap; s-o-u-p, soap. Hurry up! I don't know how you Irish spell +it, but I want it. Spell it to suit yourself, but fetch it. I'm freezing." + +I heard the doctor say impressively: + +"Dan, how often have we told you that these foreigners cannot understand +English? Why will you not depend upon us? Why will you not tell us what +you want, and let us ask for it in the language of the country? It would +save us a great deal of the humiliation your reprehensible ignorance +causes us. I will address this person in his mother tongue: 'Here, +cospetto! corpo di Bacco! Sacramento! Solferino!--Soap, you son of a +gun!' Dan, if you would let us talk for you, you would never expose your +ignorant vulgarity." + +Even this fluent discharge of Italian did not bring the soap at once, but +there was a good reason for it. There was not such an article about the +establishment. It is my belief that there never had been. They had to +send far up town, and to several different places before they finally got +it, so they said. We had to wait twenty or thirty minutes. The same +thing had occurred the evening before, at the hotel. I think I have +divined the reason for this state of things at last. The English know +how to travel comfortably, and they carry soap with them; other +foreigners do not use the article. + +At every hotel we stop at we always have to send out for soap, at the +last moment, when we are grooming ourselves for dinner, and they put it +in the bill along with the candles and other nonsense. In Marseilles +they make half the fancy toilet soap we consume in America, but the +Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they +have obtained from books of travel, just as they have acquired an +uncertain notion of clean shirts, and the peculiarities of the gorilla, +and other curious matters. This reminds me of poor Blucher's note to the +landlord in Paris: + + PARIS, le 7 Juillet. Monsieur le Landlord--Sir: Pourquoi don't you + mettez some savon in your bed-chambers? Est-ce que vous pensez I + will steal it? La nuit passee you charged me pour deux chandelles + when I only had one; hier vous avez charged me avec glace when I had + none at all; tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other + on me, mais vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice. + Savon is a necessary de la vie to any body but a Frenchman, et je + l'aurai hors de cet hotel or make trouble. You hear me. Allons. + BLUCHER. + +I remonstrated against the sending of this note, because it was so mixed +up that the landlord would never be able to make head or tail of it; but +Blucher said he guessed the old man could read the French of it and +average the rest. + +Blucher's French is bad enough, but it is not much worse than the English +one finds in advertisements all over Italy every day. For instance, +observe the printed card of the hotel we shall probably stop at on the +shores of Lake Como: + + "NOTISH." + + "This hotel which the best it is in Italy and most superb, is + handsome locate on the best situation of the lake, with the most + splendid view near the Villas Melzy, to the King of Belgian, and + Serbelloni. This hotel have recently enlarge, do offer all + commodities on moderate price, at the strangers gentlemen who whish + spend the seasons on the Lake Come." + + ✓ + +How is that, for a specimen? In the hotel is a handsome little chapel +where an English clergyman is employed to preach to such of the guests of +the house as hail from England and America, and this fact is also set +forth in barbarous English in the same advertisement. Wouldn't you have +supposed that the adventurous linguist who framed the card would have +known enough to submit it to that clergyman before he sent it to the +printer? + +Here in Milan, in an ancient tumble-down ruin of a church, is the +mournful wreck of the most celebrated painting in the world--"The Last +Supper," by Leonardo da Vinci. We are not infallible judges of pictures, +but of course we went there to see this wonderful painting, once so +beautiful, always so worshipped by masters in art, and forever to be +famous in song and story. And the first thing that occurred was the +infliction on us of a placard fairly reeking with wretched English. Take +a morsel of it: "Bartholomew (that is the first figure on the left hand +side at the spectator,) uncertain and doubtful about what he thinks to +have heard, and upon which he wants to be assured by himself at Christ +and by no others." + +Good, isn't it? And then Peter is described as "argumenting in a +threatening and angrily condition at Judas Iscariot." + +This paragraph recalls the picture. "The Last Supper" is painted on the +dilapidated wall of what was a little chapel attached to the main church +in ancient times, I suppose. It is battered and scarred in every +direction, and stained and discolored by time, and Napoleon's horses +kicked the legs off most the disciples when they (the horses, not the +disciples,) were stabled there more than half a century ago. + +I recognized the old picture in a moment--the Saviour with bowed head +seated at the centre of a long, rough table with scattering fruits and +dishes upon it, and six disciples on either side in their long robes, +talking to each other--the picture from which all engravings and all +copies have been made for three centuries. Perhaps no living man has +ever known an attempt to paint the Lord's Supper differently. The world +seems to have become settled in the belief, long ago, that it is not +possible for human genius to outdo this creation of da Vinci's. I +suppose painters will go on copying it as long as any of the original is +left visible to the eye. There were a dozen easels in the room, and as +many artists transferring the great picture to their canvases. Fifty +proofs of steel engravings and lithographs were scattered around, too. +And as usual, I could not help noticing how superior the copies were to +the original, that is, to my inexperienced eye. Wherever you find a +Raphael, a Rubens, a Michelangelo, a Carracci, or a da Vinci (and we see +them every day,) you find artists copying them, and the copies are always +the handsomest. Maybe the originals were handsome when they were new, +but they are not now. + +This picture is about thirty feet long, and ten or twelve high, I should +think, and the figures are at least life size. It is one of the largest +paintings in Europe. + +The colors are dimmed with age; the countenances are scaled and marred, +and nearly all expression is gone from them; the hair is a dead blur upon +the wall, and there is no life in the eyes. Only the attitudes are +certain. + +People come here from all parts of the world, and glorify this +masterpiece. They stand entranced before it with bated breath and parted +lips, and when they speak, it is only in the catchy ejaculations of +rapture: + +"Oh, wonderful!" + +"Such expression!" + +"Such grace of attitude!" + +"Such dignity!" + +"Such faultless drawing!" + +"Such matchless coloring!" + +"Such feeling!" + +"What delicacy of touch!" + +"What sublimity of conception!" + +"A vision! A vision!" + +I only envy these people; I envy them their honest admiration, if it be +honest--their delight, if they feel delight. I harbor no animosity +toward any of them. But at the same time the thought will intrude itself +upon me, How can they see what is not visible? What would you think of a +man who looked at some decayed, blind, toothless, pock-marked Cleopatra, +and said: "What matchless beauty! What soul! What expression!" What +would you think of a man who gazed upon a dingy, foggy sunset, and said: +"What sublimity! What feeling! What richness of coloring!" What would +you think of a man who stared in ecstasy upon a desert of stumps and +said: "Oh, my soul, my beating heart, what a noble forest is here!" + +You would think that those men had an astonishing talent for seeing +things that had already passed away. It was what I thought when I stood +before "The Last Supper" and heard men apostrophizing wonders, and +beauties and perfections which had faded out of the picture and gone, a +hundred years before they were born. We can imagine the beauty that was +once in an aged face; we can imagine the forest if we see the stumps; but +we can not absolutely see these things when they are not there. I am +willing to believe that the eye of the practiced artist can rest upon the +Last Supper and renew a lustre where only a hint of it is left, supply a +tint that has faded away, restore an expression that is gone; patch, and +color, and add, to the dull canvas until at last its figures shall stand +before him aglow with the life, the feeling, the freshness, yea, with all +the noble beauty that was theirs when first they came from the hand of +the master. But I can not work this miracle. Can those other uninspired +visitors do it, or do they only happily imagine they do? + +After reading so much about it, I am satisfied that the Last Supper was a +very miracle of art once. But it was three hundred years ago. + +It vexes me to hear people talk so glibly of "feeling," "expression," +"tone," and those other easily acquired and inexpensive technicalities of +art that make such a fine show in conversations concerning pictures. +There is not one man in seventy-five hundred that can tell what a +pictured face is intended to express. There is not one man in five +hundred that can go into a court-room and be sure that he will not +mistake some harmless innocent of a juryman for the black-hearted +assassin on trial. Yet such people talk of "character" and presume to +interpret "expression" in pictures. There is an old story that Matthews, +the actor, was once lauding the ability of the human face to express the +passions and emotions hidden in the breast. He said the countenance +could disclose what was passing in the heart plainer than the tongue +could. + +"Now," he said, "observe my face--what does it express?" + +"Despair!" + +"Bah, it expresses peaceful resignation! What does this express?" + +"Rage!" + +"Stuff! It means terror! This!" + +"Imbecility!" + +"Fool! It is smothered ferocity! Now this!" + +"Joy!" + +"Oh, perdition! Any ass can see it means insanity!" + +Expression! People coolly pretend to read it who would think themselves +presumptuous if they pretended to interpret the hieroglyphics on the +obelisks of Luxor--yet they are fully as competent to do the one thing as +the other. I have heard two very intelligent critics speak of Murillo's +Immaculate Conception (now in the museum at Seville,) within the past few +days. One said: + +"Oh, the Virgin's face is full of the ecstasy of a joy that is complete +--that leaves nothing more to be desired on earth!" + +The other said: + +"Ah, that wonderful face is so humble, so pleading--it says as plainly as +words could say it: 'I fear; I tremble; I am unworthy. But Thy will be +done; sustain Thou Thy servant!'" + +The reader can see the picture in any drawing-room; it can be easily +recognized: the Virgin (the only young and really beautiful Virgin that +was ever painted by one of the old masters, some of us think,) stands in +the crescent of the new moon, with a multitude of cherubs hovering about +her, and more coming; her hands are crossed upon her breast, and upon her +uplifted countenance falls a glory out of the heavens. The reader may +amuse himself, if he chooses, in trying to determine which of these +gentlemen read the Virgin's "expression" aright, or if either of them did +it. + +Any one who is acquainted with the old masters will comprehend how much +"The Last Supper" is damaged when I say that the spectator can not really +tell, now, whether the disciples are Hebrews or Italians. These ancient +painters never succeeded in denationalizing themselves. The Italian +artists painted Italian Virgins, the Dutch painted Dutch Virgins, the +Virgins of the French painters were Frenchwomen--none of them ever put +into the face of the Madonna that indescribable something which proclaims +the Jewess, whether you find her in New York, in Constantinople, in +Paris, Jerusalem, or in the empire of Morocco. I saw in the Sandwich +Islands, once, a picture copied by a talented German artist from an +engraving in one of the American illustrated papers. It was an allegory, +representing Mr. Davis in the act of signing a secession act or some such +document. Over him hovered the ghost of Washington in warning attitude, +and in the background a troop of shadowy soldiers in Continental uniform +were limping with shoeless, bandaged feet through a driving snow-storm. +Valley Forge was suggested, of course. The copy seemed accurate, and yet +there was a discrepancy somewhere. After a long examination I discovered +what it was--the shadowy soldiers were all Germans! Jeff Davis was a +German! even the hovering ghost was a German ghost! The artist had +unconsciously worked his nationality into the picture. To tell the +truth, I am getting a little perplexed about John the Baptist and his +portraits. In France I finally grew reconciled to him as a Frenchman; +here he is unquestionably an Italian. What next? Can it be possible +that the painters make John the Baptist a Spaniard in Madrid and an +Irishman in Dublin? + +We took an open barouche and drove two miles out of Milan to "see ze +echo," as the guide expressed it. The road was smooth, it was bordered +by trees, fields, and grassy meadows, and the soft air was filled with +the odor of flowers. Troops of picturesque peasant girls, coming from +work, hooted at us, shouted at us, made all manner of game of us, and +entirely delighted me. My long-cherished judgment was confirmed. I +always did think those frowsy, romantic, unwashed peasant girls I had +read so much about in poetry were a glaring fraud. + +We enjoyed our jaunt. It was an exhilarating relief from tiresome +sight-seeing. + +We distressed ourselves very little about the astonishing echo the guide +talked so much about. We were growing accustomed to encomiums on wonders +that too often proved no wonders at all. And so we were most happily +disappointed to find in the sequel that the guide had even failed to rise +to the magnitude of his subject. + +We arrived at a tumble-down old rookery called the Palazzo Simonetti--a +massive hewn-stone affair occupied by a family of ragged Italians. +A good-looking young girl conducted us to a window on the second floor +which looked out on a court walled on three sides by tall buildings. She +put her head out at the window and shouted. The echo answered more times +than we could count. She took a speaking trumpet and through it she +shouted, sharp and quick, a single "Ha!" The echo answered: + +"Ha!--ha!----ha!--ha!--ha!-ha! ha! h-a-a-a-a-a!" and finally went off +into a rollicking convulsion of the jolliest laughter that could be +imagined. It was so joyful--so long continued--so perfectly cordial and +hearty, that every body was forced to join in. There was no resisting +it. + +Then the girl took a gun and fired it. We stood ready to count the +astonishing clatter of reverberations. We could not say one, two, three, +fast enough, but we could dot our notebooks with our pencil points almost +rapidly enough to take down a sort of short-hand report of the result. +My page revealed the following account. I could not keep up, but I did +as well as I could. + +I set down fifty-two distinct repetitions, and then the echo got the +advantage of me. The doctor set down sixty-four, and thenceforth the +echo moved too fast for him, also. After the separate concussions could +no longer be noted, the reverberations dwindled to a wild, long-sustained +clatter of sounds such as a watchman's rattle produces. It is likely +that this is the most remarkable echo in the world. + +The doctor, in jest, offered to kiss the young girl, and was taken a +little aback when she said he might for a franc! The commonest gallantry +compelled him to stand by his offer, and so he paid the franc and took +the kiss. She was a philosopher. She said a franc was a good thing to +have, and she did not care any thing for one paltry kiss, because she had +a million left. Then our comrade, always a shrewd businessman, offered +to take the whole cargo at thirty days, but that little financial scheme +was a failure. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +We left Milan by rail. The Cathedral six or seven miles behind us; vast, +dreamy, bluish, snow-clad mountains twenty miles in front of us,--these +were the accented points in the scenery. The more immediate scenery +consisted of fields and farm-houses outside the car and a monster-headed +dwarf and a moustached woman inside it. These latter were not +show-people. Alas, deformity and female beards are too common in Italy +to attract attention. + +We passed through a range of wild, picturesque hills, steep, wooded, +cone-shaped, with rugged crags projecting here and there, and with +dwellings and ruinous castles perched away up toward the drifting clouds. +We lunched at the curious old town of Como, at the foot of the lake, and +then took the small steamer and had an afternoon's pleasure excursion to +this place,--Bellaggio. + +When we walked ashore, a party of policemen (people whose cocked hats and +showy uniforms would shame the finest uniform in the military service of +the United States,) put us into a little stone cell and locked us in. We +had the whole passenger list for company, but their room would have been +preferable, for there was no light, there were no windows, no +ventilation. It was close and hot. We were much crowded. It was the +Black Hole of Calcutta on a small scale. Presently a smoke rose about +our feet--a smoke that smelled of all the dead things of earth, of all +the putrefaction and corruption imaginable. + +We were there five minutes, and when we got out it was hard to tell which +of us carried the vilest fragrance. + +These miserable outcasts called that "fumigating" us, and the term was a +tame one indeed. They fumigated us to guard themselves against the +cholera, though we hailed from no infected port. We had left the cholera +far behind us all the time. However, they must keep epidemics away +somehow or other, and fumigation is cheaper than soap. They must either +wash themselves or fumigate other people. Some of the lower classes had +rather die than wash, but the fumigation of strangers causes them no +pangs. They need no fumigation themselves. Their habits make it +unnecessary. They carry their preventive with them; they sweat and +fumigate all the day long. I trust I am a humble and a consistent +Christian. I try to do what is right. I know it is my duty to "pray for +them that despitefully use me;" and therefore, hard as it is, I shall +still try to pray for these fumigating, maccaroni-stuffing +organ-grinders. + +Our hotel sits at the water's edge--at least its front garden does--and +we walk among the shrubbery and smoke at twilight; we look afar off at +Switzerland and the Alps, and feel an indolent willingness to look no +closer; we go down the steps and swim in the lake; we take a shapely +little boat and sail abroad among the reflections of the stars; lie on +the thwarts and listen to the distant laughter, the singing, the soft +melody of flutes and guitars that comes floating across the water from +pleasuring gondolas; we close the evening with exasperating billiards on +one of those same old execrable tables. A midnight luncheon in our ample +bed-chamber; a final smoke in its contracted veranda facing the water, +the gardens, and the mountains; a summing up of the day's events. Then +to bed, with drowsy brains harassed with a mad panorama that mixes up +pictures of France, of Italy, of the ship, of the ocean, of home, in +grotesque and bewildering disorder. Then a melting away of familiar +faces, of cities, and of tossing waves, into a great calm of +forgetfulness and peace. + +After which, the nightmare. + +Breakfast in the morning, and then the lake. + +I did not like it yesterday. I thought Lake Tahoe was much finer. +I have to confess now, however, that my judgment erred somewhat, though +not extravagantly. I always had an idea that Como was a vast basin of +water, like Tahoe, shut in by great mountains. Well, the border of huge +mountains is here, but the lake itself is not a basin. It is as crooked +as any brook, and only from one-quarter to two-thirds as wide as the +Mississippi. There is not a yard of low ground on either side of it +--nothing but endless chains of mountains that spring abruptly from the +water's edge and tower to altitudes varying from a thousand to two +thousand feet. Their craggy sides are clothed with vegetation, and white +specks of houses peep out from the luxuriant foliage everywhere; they are +even perched upon jutting and picturesque pinnacles a thousand feet above +your head. + +Again, for miles along the shores, handsome country seats, surrounded by +gardens and groves, sit fairly in the water, sometimes in nooks carved by +Nature out of the vine-hung precipices, and with no ingress or egress +save by boats. Some have great broad stone staircases leading down to +the water, with heavy stone balustrades ornamented with statuary and +fancifully adorned with creeping vines and bright-colored flowers--for +all the world like a drop curtain in a theatre, and lacking nothing but +long-waisted, high-heeled women and plumed gallants in silken tights +coming down to go serenading in the splendid gondola in waiting. + +A great feature of Como's attractiveness is the multitude of pretty +houses and gardens that cluster upon its shores and on its mountain +sides. They look so snug and so homelike, and at eventide when every +thing seems to slumber, and the music of the vesper bells comes stealing +over the water, one almost believes that nowhere else than on the lake of +Como can there be found such a paradise of tranquil repose. + +From my window here in Bellaggio, I have a view of the other side of the +lake now, which is as beautiful as a picture. A scarred and wrinkled +precipice rises to a height of eighteen hundred feet; on a tiny bench +half way up its vast wall, sits a little snowflake of a church, no bigger +than a martin-box, apparently; skirting the base of the cliff are a +hundred orange groves and gardens, flecked with glimpses of the white +dwellings that are buried in them; in front, three or four gondolas lie +idle upon the water--and in the burnished mirror of the lake, mountain, +chapel, houses, groves and boats are counterfeited so brightly and so +clearly that one scarce knows where the reality leaves off and the +reflection begins! + +The surroundings of this picture are fine. A mile away, a grove-plumed +promontory juts far into the lake and glasses its palace in the blue +depths; in midstream a boat is cutting the shining surface and leaving a +long track behind, like a ray of light; the mountains beyond are veiled +in a dreamy purple haze; far in the opposite direction a tumbled mass of +domes and verdant slopes and valleys bars the lake, and here indeed does +distance lend enchantment to the view--for on this broad canvas, sun and +clouds and the richest of atmospheres have blended a thousand tints +together, and over its surface the filmy lights and shadows drift, hour +after hour, and glorify it with a beauty that seems reflected out of +Heaven itself. Beyond all question, this is the most voluptuous scene we +have yet looked upon. + +Last night the scenery was striking and picturesque. On the other side +crags and trees and snowy houses were reflected in the lake with a +wonderful distinctness, and streams of light from many a distant window +shot far abroad over the still waters. On this side, near at hand, great +mansions, white with moonlight, glared out from the midst of masses of +foliage that lay black and shapeless in the shadows that fell from the +cliff above--and down in the margin of the lake every feature of the +weird vision was faithfully repeated. + +Today we have idled through a wonder of a garden attached to a ducal +estate--but enough of description is enough, I judge. + +I suspect that this was the same place the gardener's son deceived the +Lady of Lyons with, but I do not know. You may have heard of the passage +somewhere: + + "A deep vale, + Shut out by Alpine hills from the rude world, + Near a clear lake margined by fruits of gold + And whispering myrtles: + Glassing softest skies, cloudless, + Save with rare and roseate shadows; + A palace, lifting to eternal heaven its marbled walls, + From out a glossy bower of coolest foliage musical with birds." + +That is all very well, except the "clear" part of the lake. It certainly +is clearer than a great many lakes, but how dull its waters are compared +with the wonderful transparence of Lake Tahoe! I speak of the north +shore of Tahoe, where one can count the scales on a trout at a depth of a +hundred and eighty feet. I have tried to get this statement off at par +here, but with no success; so I have been obliged to negotiate it at +fifty percent discount. At this rate I find some takers; perhaps the +reader will receive it on the same terms--ninety feet instead of one +hundred and eighty. But let it be remembered that those are forced +terms--Sheriff's sale prices. As far as I am privately concerned, I +abate not a jot of the original assertion that in those strangely +magnifying waters one may count the scales on a trout (a trout of the +large kind,) at a depth of a hundred and eighty feet--may see every +pebble on the bottom--might even count a paper of dray-pins. People talk +of the transparent waters of the Mexican Bay of Acapulco, but in my own +experience I know they cannot compare with those I am speaking of. I +have fished for trout, in Tahoe, and at a measured depth of eighty-four +feet I have seen them put their noses to the bait and I could see their +gills open and shut. I could hardly have seen the trout themselves at +that distance in the open air. + +As I go back in spirit and recall that noble sea, reposing among the +snow-peaks six thousand feet above the ocean, the conviction comes strong +upon me again that Como would only seem a bedizened little courtier in +that august presence. + +Sorrow and misfortune overtake the legislature that still from year to +year permits Tahoe to retain its unmusical cognomen! Tahoe! It suggests +no crystal waters, no picturesque shores, no sublimity. Tahoe for a sea +in the clouds: a sea that has character and asserts it in solemn calms at +times, at times in savage storms; a sea whose royal seclusion is guarded +by a cordon of sentinel peaks that lift their frosty fronts nine thousand +feet above the level world; a sea whose every aspect is impressive, whose +belongings are all beautiful, whose lonely majesty types the Deity! + +Tahoe means grasshoppers. It means grasshopper soup. It is Indian, and +suggestive of Indians. They say it is Pi-ute--possibly it is Digger. +I am satisfied it was named by the Diggers--those degraded savages who +roast their dead relatives, then mix the human grease and ashes of bones +with tar, and "gaum" it thick all over their heads and foreheads and +ears, and go caterwauling about the hills and call it mourning. These +are the gentry that named the Lake. + +People say that Tahoe means "Silver Lake"--"Limpid Water"--"Falling +Leaf." Bosh. It means grasshopper soup, the favorite dish of the Digger +tribe,--and of the Pi-utes as well. It isn't worth while, in these +practical times, for people to talk about Indian poetry--there never was +any in them--except in the Fenimore Cooper Indians. But they are an +extinct tribe that never existed. I know the Noble Red Man. I have +camped with the Indians; I have been on the warpath with them, taken part +in the chase with them--for grasshoppers; helped them steal cattle; I +have roamed with them, scalped them, had them for breakfast. I would +gladly eat the whole race if I had a chance. + +But I am growing unreliable. I will return to my comparison of the +lakes. Como is a little deeper than Tahoe, if people here tell the +truth. They say it is eighteen hundred feet deep at this point, but it +does not look a dead enough blue for that. Tahoe is one thousand five +hundred and twenty-five feet deep in the centre, by the state geologist's +measurement. They say the great peak opposite this town is five thousand +feet high: but I feel sure that three thousand feet of that statement is +a good honest lie. The lake is a mile wide, here, and maintains about +that width from this point to its northern extremity--which is distant +sixteen miles: from here to its southern extremity--say fifteen miles--it +is not over half a mile wide in any place, I should think. Its snow-clad +mountains one hears so much about are only seen occasionally, and then in +the distance, the Alps. Tahoe is from ten to eighteen miles wide, and +its mountains shut it in like a wall. Their summits are never free from +snow the year round. One thing about it is very strange: it never has +even a skim of ice upon its surface, although lakes in the same range of +mountains, lying in a lower and warmer temperature, freeze over in +winter. + +It is cheerful to meet a shipmate in these out-of-the-way places and +compare notes with him. We have found one of ours here--an old soldier +of the war, who is seeking bloodless adventures and rest from his +campaigns in these sunny lands.--[Colonel J. HERON FOSTER, editor of a +Pittsburgh journal, and a most estimable gentleman. As these sheets are +being prepared for the press I am pained to learn of his decease shortly +after his return home--M.T.] + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +We voyaged by steamer down the Lago di Lecco, through wild mountain +scenery, and by hamlets and villas, and disembarked at the town of Lecco. +They said it was two hours, by carriage to the ancient city of Bergamo, +and that we would arrive there in good season for the railway train. We +got an open barouche and a wild, boisterous driver, and set out. It was +delightful. We had a fast team and a perfectly smooth road. There were +towering cliffs on our left, and the pretty Lago di Lecco on our right, +and every now and then it rained on us. Just before starting, the driver +picked up, in the street, a stump of a cigar an inch long, and put it in +his mouth. When he had carried it thus about an hour, I thought it would +be only Christian charity to give him a light. I handed him my cigar, +which I had just lit, and he put it in his mouth and returned his stump +to his pocket! I never saw a more sociable man. At least I never saw a +man who was more sociable on a short acquaintance. + +We saw interior Italy, now. The houses were of solid stone, and not +often in good repair. The peasants and their children were idle, as a +general thing, and the donkeys and chickens made themselves at home in +drawing-room and bed-chamber and were not molested. The drivers of each +and every one of the slow-moving market-carts we met were stretched in +the sun upon their merchandise, sound a sleep. Every three or four +hundred yards, it seemed to me, we came upon the shrine of some saint or +other--a rude picture of him built into a huge cross or a stone pillar by +the road-side.--Some of the pictures of the Saviour were curiosities in +their way. They represented him stretched upon the cross, his +countenance distorted with agony. From the wounds of the crown of +thorns; from the pierced side; from the mutilated hands and feet; from +the scourged body--from every hand-breadth of his person streams of blood +were flowing! Such a gory, ghastly spectacle would frighten the children +out of their senses, I should think. There were some unique auxiliaries +to the painting which added to its spirited effect. These were genuine +wooden and iron implements, and were prominently disposed round about the +figure: a bundle of nails; the hammer to drive them; the sponge; the reed +that supported it; the cup of vinegar; the ladder for the ascent of the +cross; the spear that pierced the Saviour's side. The crown of thorns +was made of real thorns, and was nailed to the sacred head. In some +Italian church-paintings, even by the old masters, the Saviour and the +Virgin wear silver or gilded crowns that are fastened to the pictured +head with nails. The effect is as grotesque as it is incongruous. + +Here and there, on the fronts of roadside inns, we found huge, coarse +frescoes of suffering martyrs like those in the shrines. It could not +have diminished their sufferings any to be so uncouthly represented. +We were in the heart and home of priest craft--of a happy, cheerful, +contented ignorance, superstition, degradation, poverty, indolence, and +everlasting unaspiring worthlessness. And we said fervently: it suits +these people precisely; let them enjoy it, along with the other animals, +and Heaven forbid that they be molested. We feel no malice toward these +fumigators. + +We passed through the strangest, funniest, undreampt-of old towns, wedded +to the customs and steeped in the dreams of the elder ages, and perfectly +unaware that the world turns round! And perfectly indifferent, too, as +to whether it turns around or stands still. They have nothing to do but +eat and sleep and sleep and eat, and toil a little when they can get a +friend to stand by and keep them awake. They are not paid for thinking +--they are not paid to fret about the world's concerns. They were not +respectable people--they were not worthy people--they were not learned +and wise and brilliant people--but in their breasts, all their stupid +lives long, resteth a peace that passeth understanding! How can men, +calling themselves men, consent to be so degraded and happy. + +We whisked by many a gray old medieval castle, clad thick with ivy that +swung its green banners down from towers and turrets where once some old +Crusader's flag had floated. The driver pointed to one of these ancient +fortresses, and said, (I translate): + +"Do you see that great iron hook that projects from the wall just under +the highest window in the ruined tower?" + +We said we could not see it at such a distance, but had no doubt it was +there. + +"Well," he said; "there is a legend connected with that iron hook. +Nearly seven hundred years ago, that castle was the property of the noble +Count Luigi Gennaro Guido Alphonso di Genova----" + +"What was his other name?" said Dan. + +"He had no other name. The name I have spoken was all the name he had. +He was the son of----" + +"Poor but honest parents--that is all right--never mind the particulars +--go on with the legend." + + THE LEGEND. + +Well, then, all the world, at that time, was in a wild excitement about +the Holy Sepulchre. All the great feudal lords in Europe were pledging +their lands and pawning their plate to fit out men-at-arms so that they +might join the grand armies of Christendom and win renown in the Holy +Wars. The Count Luigi raised money, like the rest, and one mild +September morning, armed with battle-ax, portcullis and thundering +culverin, he rode through the greaves and bucklers of his donjon-keep +with as gallant a troop of Christian bandits as ever stepped in Italy. +He had his sword, Excalibur, with him. His beautiful countess and her +young daughter waved him a tearful adieu from the battering-rams and +buttresses of the fortress, and he galloped away with a happy heart. + +He made a raid on a neighboring baron and completed his outfit with the +booty secured. He then razed the castle to the ground, massacred the +family and moved on. They were hardy fellows in the grand old days of +chivalry. Alas! Those days will never come again. + +Count Luigi grew high in fame in Holy Land. He plunged into the carnage +of a hundred battles, but his good Excalibur always brought him out +alive, albeit often sorely wounded. His face became browned by exposure +to the Syrian sun in long marches; he suffered hunger and thirst; he +pined in prisons, he languished in loathsome plague-hospitals. And many +and many a time he thought of his loved ones at home, and wondered if all +was well with them. But his heart said, Peace, is not thy brother +watching over thy household? + + * * * * * * * + +Forty-two years waxed and waned; the good fight was won; Godfrey reigned +in Jerusalem--the Christian hosts reared the banner of the cross above +the Holy Sepulchre! + +Twilight was approaching. Fifty harlequins, in flowing robes, approached +this castle wearily, for they were on foot, and the dust upon their +garments betokened that they had traveled far. They overtook a peasant, +and asked him if it were likely they could get food and a hospitable bed +there, for love of Christian charity, and if perchance, a moral parlor +entertainment might meet with generous countenance--"for," said they, +"this exhibition hath no feature that could offend the most fastidious +taste." + +"Marry," quoth the peasant, "an' it please your worships, ye had better +journey many a good rood hence with your juggling circus than trust your +bones in yonder castle." + +"How now, sirrah!" exclaimed the chief monk, "explain thy ribald speech, +or by'r Lady it shall go hard with thee." + +"Peace, good mountebank, I did but utter the truth that was in my heart. +San Paolo be my witness that did ye but find the stout Count Leonardo in +his cups, sheer from the castle's topmost battlements would he hurl ye +all! Alack-a-day, the good Lord Luigi reigns not here in these sad +times." + +"The good Lord Luigi?" + +"Aye, none other, please your worship. In his day, the poor rejoiced in +plenty and the rich he did oppress; taxes were not known, the fathers of +the church waxed fat upon his bounty; travelers went and came, with none +to interfere; and whosoever would, might tarry in his halls in cordial +welcome, and eat his bread and drink his wine, withal. But woe is me! +some two and forty years agone the good count rode hence to fight for +Holy Cross, and many a year hath flown since word or token have we had of +him. Men say his bones lie bleaching in the fields of Palestine." + +"And now?" + +"Now! God 'a mercy, the cruel Leonardo lords it in the castle. He +wrings taxes from the poor; he robs all travelers that journey by his +gates; he spends his days in feuds and murders, and his nights in revel +and debauch; he roasts the fathers of the church upon his kitchen spits, +and enjoyeth the same, calling it pastime. These thirty years Luigi's +countess hath not been seen by any [he] in all this land, and many +whisper that she pines in the dungeons of the castle for that she will +not wed with Leonardo, saying her dear lord still liveth and that she +will die ere she prove false to him. They whisper likewise that her +daughter is a prisoner as well. Nay, good jugglers, seek ye refreshment +other wheres. 'Twere better that ye perished in a Christian way than +that ye plunged from off yon dizzy tower. Give ye good-day." + +"God keep ye, gentle knave--farewell." + +But heedless of the peasant's warning, the players moved straightway +toward the castle. + +Word was brought to Count Leonardo that a company of mountebanks besought +his hospitality. + +"'Tis well. Dispose of them in the customary manner. Yet stay! I have +need of them. Let them come hither. Later, cast them from the +battlements--or--how many priests have ye on hand?" + +"The day's results are meagre, good my lord. An abbot and a dozen +beggarly friars is all we have." + +"Hell and furies! Is the estate going to seed? Send hither the +mountebanks. Afterward, broil them with the priests." + +The robed and close-cowled harlequins entered. The grim Leonardo sate in +state at the head of his council board. Ranged up and down the hall on +either hand stood near a hundred men-at-arms. + +"Ha, villains!" quoth the count, "What can ye do to earn the hospitality +ye crave." + +"Dread lord and mighty, crowded audiences have greeted our humble efforts +with rapturous applause. Among our body count we the versatile and +talented Ugolino; the justly celebrated Rodolpho; the gifted and +accomplished Roderigo; the management have spared neither pains nor +expense--" + +"S'death! What can ye do? Curb thy prating tongue." + +"Good my lord, in acrobatic feats, in practice with the dumb-bells, in +balancing and ground and lofty tumbling are we versed--and sith your +highness asketh me, I venture here to publish that in the truly marvelous +and entertaining Zampillaerostation--" + +"Gag him! throttle him! Body of Bacchus! am I a dog that I am to be +assailed with polysyllabled blasphemy like to this? But hold! Lucretia, +Isabel, stand forth! Sirrah, behold this dame, this weeping wench. The +first I marry, within the hour; the other shall dry her tears or feed the +vultures. Thou and thy vagabonds shall crown the wedding with thy +merry-makings. Fetch hither the priest!" + +The dame sprang toward the chief player. + +"O, save me!" she cried; "save me from a fate far worse than death! +Behold these sad eyes, these sunken cheeks, this withered frame! See +thou the wreck this fiend hath made, and let thy heart be moved with +pity! Look upon this damosel; note her wasted form, her halting step, +her bloomless cheeks where youth should blush and happiness exult in +smiles! Hear us and have compassion. This monster was my husband's +brother. He who should have been our shield against all harm, hath kept +us shut within the noisome caverns of his donjon-keep for lo these thirty +years. And for what crime? None other than that I would not belie my +troth, root out my strong love for him who marches with the legions of +the cross in Holy Land, (for O, he is not dead!) and wed with him! Save +us, O, save thy persecuted suppliants!" + +She flung herself at his feet and clasped his knees. + +"Ha!-ha!-ha!" shouted the brutal Leonardo. "Priest, to thy work!" and +he dragged the weeping dame from her refuge. "Say, once for all, will +you be mine?--for by my halidome, that breath that uttereth thy refusal +shall be thy last on earth!" + +"NE-VER?" + +"Then die!" and the sword leaped from its scabbard. + +Quicker than thought, quicker than the lightning's flash, fifty monkish +habits disappeared, and fifty knights in splendid armor stood revealed! +fifty falchions gleamed in air above the men-at-arms, and brighter, +fiercer than them all, flamed Excalibur aloft, and cleaving downward +struck the brutal Leonardo's weapon from his grasp! + +"A Luigi to the rescue! Whoop!" + +"A Leonardo! 'tare an ouns!'" + +"Oh, God, Oh, God, my husband!" + +"Oh, God, Oh, God, my wife!" + +"My father!" + +"My precious!" [Tableau.] +=== +Count Luigi bound his usurping brother hand and foot. The practiced +knights from Palestine made holyday sport of carving the awkward +men-at-arms into chops and steaks. The victory was complete. Happiness +reigned. The knights all married the daughter. Joy! wassail! finis! + +"But what did they do with the wicked brother?" + +"Oh nothing--only hanged him on that iron hook I was speaking of. By the +chin." + +"As how?" + +"Passed it up through his gills into his mouth." + +"Leave him there?" + +"Couple of years." + +"Ah--is--is he dead?" + +"Six hundred and fifty years ago, or such a matter." + +"Splendid legend--splendid lie--drive on." + +We reached the quaint old fortified city of Bergamo, the renowned in +history, some three-quarters of an hour before the train was ready to +start. The place has thirty or forty thousand inhabitants and is +remarkable for being the birthplace of harlequin. When we discovered +that, that legend of our driver took to itself a new interest in our +eyes. + +Rested and refreshed, we took the rail happy and contented. I shall not +tarry to speak of the handsome Lago di Gardi; its stately castle that +holds in its stony bosom the secrets of an age so remote that even +tradition goeth not back to it; the imposing mountain scenery that +ennobles the landscape thereabouts; nor yet of ancient Padua or haughty +Verona; nor of their Montagues and Capulets, their famous balconies and +tombs of Juliet and Romeo et al., but hurry straight to the ancient city +of the sea, the widowed bride of the Adriatic. It was a long, long ride. +But toward evening, as we sat silent and hardly conscious of where we +were--subdued into that meditative calm that comes so surely after a +conversational storm--some one shouted-- +"VENICE!" + +And sure enough, afloat on the placid sea a league away, lay a great +city, with its towers and domes and steeples drowsing in a golden mist of +sunset. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +This Venice, which was a haughty, invincible, magnificent Republic for +nearly fourteen hundred years; whose armies compelled the world's +applause whenever and wherever they battled; whose navies well nigh held +dominion of the seas, and whose merchant fleets whitened the remotest +oceans with their sails and loaded these piers with the products of every +clime, is fallen a prey to poverty, neglect and melancholy decay. Six +hundred years ago, Venice was the Autocrat of Commerce; her mart was the +great commercial centre, the distributing-house from whence the enormous +trade of the Orient was spread abroad over the Western world. To-day her +piers are deserted, her warehouses are empty, her merchant fleets are +vanished, her armies and her navies are but memories. Her glory is +departed, and with her crumbling grandeur of wharves and palaces about +her she sits among her stagnant lagoons, forlorn and beggared, forgotten +of the world. She that in her palmy days commanded the commerce of a +hemisphere and made the weal or woe of nations with a beck of her +puissant finger, is become the humblest among the peoples of the earth, +--a peddler of glass beads for women, and trifling toys and trinkets for +school-girls and children. + +The venerable Mother of the Republics is scarce a fit subject for +flippant speech or the idle gossipping of tourists. It seems a sort of +sacrilege to disturb the glamour of old romance that pictures her to us +softly from afar off as through a tinted mist, and curtains her ruin and +her desolation from our view. One ought, indeed, to turn away from her +rags, her poverty and her humiliation, and think of her only as she was +when she sunk the fleets of Charlemagne; when she humbled Frederick +Barbarossa or waved her victorious banners above the battlements of +Constantinople. + +We reached Venice at eight in the evening, and entered a hearse belonging +to the Grand Hotel d'Europe. At any rate, it was more like a hearse than +any thing else, though to speak by the card, it was a gondola. And this +was the storied gondola of Venice!--the fairy boat in which the princely +cavaliers of the olden time were wont to cleave the waters of the moonlit +canals and look the eloquence of love into the soft eyes of patrician +beauties, while the gay gondolier in silken doublet touched his guitar +and sang as only gondoliers can sing! This the famed gondola and this +the gorgeous gondolier!--the one an inky, rusty old canoe with a sable +hearse-body clapped on to the middle of it, and the other a mangy, +barefooted guttersnipe with a portion of his raiment on exhibition which +should have been sacred from public scrutiny. Presently, as he turned a +corner and shot his hearse into a dismal ditch between two long rows of +towering, untenanted buildings, the gay gondolier began to sing, true to +the traditions of his race. I stood it a little while. Then I said: + +"Now, here, Roderigo Gonzales Michael Angelo, I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a +stranger, but I am not going to have my feelings lacerated by any such +caterwauling as that. If that goes on, one of us has got to take water. +It is enough that my cherished dreams of Venice have been blighted +forever as to the romantic gondola and the gorgeous gondolier; this +system of destruction shall go no farther; I will accept the hearse, +under protest, and you may fly your flag of truce in peace, but here I +register a dark and bloody oath that you shan't sing. Another yelp, and +overboard you go." + +I began to feel that the old Venice of song and story had departed +forever. But I was too hasty. In a few minutes we swept gracefully out +into the Grand Canal, and under the mellow moonlight the Venice of poetry +and romance stood revealed. Right from the water's edge rose long lines +of stately palaces of marble; gondolas were gliding swiftly hither and +thither and disappearing suddenly through unsuspected gates and alleys; +ponderous stone bridges threw their shadows athwart the glittering waves. +There was life and motion everywhere, and yet everywhere there was a +hush, a stealthy sort of stillness, that was suggestive of secret +enterprises of bravoes and of lovers; and clad half in moonbeams and half +in mysterious shadows, the grim old mansions of the Republic seemed to +have an expression about them of having an eye out for just such +enterprises as these at that same moment. Music came floating over the +waters--Venice was complete. + +It was a beautiful picture--very soft and dreamy and beautiful. But what +was this Venice to compare with the Venice of midnight? Nothing. There +was a fete--a grand fete in honor of some saint who had been instrumental +in checking the cholera three hundred years ago, and all Venice was +abroad on the water. It was no common affair, for the Venetians did not +know how soon they might need the saint's services again, now that the +cholera was spreading every where. So in one vast space--say a third of +a mile wide and two miles long--were collected two thousand gondolas, and +every one of them had from two to ten, twenty and even thirty colored +lanterns suspended about it, and from four to a dozen occupants. Just as +far as the eye could reach, these painted lights were massed together +--like a vast garden of many-colored flowers, except that these blossoms +were never still; they were ceaselessly gliding in and out, and mingling +together, and seducing you into bewildering attempts to follow their mazy +evolutions. Here and there a strong red, green, or blue glare from a +rocket that was struggling to get away, splendidly illuminated all the +boats around it. Every gondola that swam by us, with its crescents and +pyramids and circles of colored lamps hung aloft, and lighting up the +faces of the young and the sweet-scented and lovely below, was a picture; +and the reflections of those lights, so long, so slender, so numberless, +so many-colored and so distorted and wrinkled by the waves, was a picture +likewise, and one that was enchantingly beautiful. Many and many a party +of young ladies and gentlemen had their state gondolas handsomely +decorated, and ate supper on board, bringing their swallow-tailed, +white-cravatted varlets to wait upon them, and having their tables +tricked out as if for a bridal supper. They had brought along the +costly globe lamps from their drawing-rooms, and the lace and silken +curtains from the same places, I suppose. And they had also brought +pianos and guitars, and they played and sang operas, while the plebeian +paper-lanterned gondolas from the suburbs and the back alleys crowded +around to stare and listen. + +There was music every where--choruses, string bands, brass bands, flutes, +every thing. I was so surrounded, walled in, with music, magnificence +and loveliness, that I became inspired with the spirit of the scene, and +sang one tune myself. However, when I observed that the other gondolas +had sailed away, and my gondolier was preparing to go overboard, I +stopped. + +The fete was magnificent. They kept it up the whole night long, and I +never enjoyed myself better than I did while it lasted. + +What a funny old city this Queen of the Adriatic is! Narrow streets, +vast, gloomy marble palaces, black with the corroding damps of centuries, +and all partly submerged; no dry land visible any where, and no sidewalks +worth mentioning; if you want to go to church, to the theatre, or to the +restaurant, you must call a gondola. It must be a paradise for cripples, +for verily a man has no use for legs here. + +For a day or two the place looked so like an overflowed Arkansas town, +because of its currentless waters laving the very doorsteps of all the +houses, and the cluster of boats made fast under the windows, or skimming +in and out of the alleys and by-ways, that I could not get rid of the +impression that there was nothing the matter here but a spring freshet, +and that the river would fall in a few weeks and leave a dirty high-water +mark on the houses, and the streets full of mud and rubbish. + +In the glare of day, there is little poetry about Venice, but under the +charitable moon her stained palaces are white again, their battered +sculptures are hidden in shadows, and the old city seems crowned once +more with the grandeur that was hers five hundred years ago. It is easy, +then, in fancy, to people these silent canals with plumed gallants and +fair ladies--with Shylocks in gaberdine and sandals, venturing loans upon +the rich argosies of Venetian commerce--with Othellos and Desdemonas, +with Iagos and Roderigos--with noble fleets and victorious legions +returning from the wars. In the treacherous sunlight we see Venice +decayed, forlorn, poverty-stricken, and commerceless--forgotten and +utterly insignificant. But in the moonlight, her fourteen centuries of +greatness fling their glories about her, and once more is she the +princeliest among the nations of the earth. + + "There is a glorious city in the sea; + The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets, + Ebbing and flowing; and the salt-sea weed + Clings to the marble of her palaces. + No track of men, no footsteps to and fro, + Lead to her gates! The path lies o'er the sea, + Invisible: and from the land we went, + As to a floating city--steering in, + And gliding up her streets, as in a dream, + So smoothly, silently--by many a dome, + Mosque-like, and many a stately portico, + The statues ranged along an azure sky; + By many a pile, in more than Eastern pride, + Of old the residence of merchant kings; + The fronts of some, tho' time had shatter'd them, + Still glowing with the richest hues of art, + As tho' the wealth within them had run o'er." + +What would one naturally wish to see first in Venice? The Bridge of +Sighs, of course--and next the Church and the Great Square of St. Mark, +the Bronze Horses, and the famous Lion of St. Mark. + +We intended to go to the Bridge of Sighs, but happened into the Ducal +Palace first--a building which necessarily figures largely in Venetian +poetry and tradition. In the Senate Chamber of the ancient Republic we +wearied our eyes with staring at acres of historical paintings by +Tintoretto and Paul Veronese, but nothing struck us forcibly except the +one thing that strikes all strangers forcibly--a black square in the +midst of a gallery of portraits. In one long row, around the great hall, +were painted the portraits of the Doges of Venice (venerable fellows, +with flowing white beards, for of the three hundred Senators eligible to +the office, the oldest was usually chosen Doge,) and each had its +complimentary inscription attached--till you came to the place that +should have had Marino Faliero's picture in it, and that was blank and +black--blank, except that it bore a terse inscription, saying that the +conspirator had died for his crime. It seemed cruel to keep that +pitiless inscription still staring from the walls after the unhappy +wretch had been in his grave five hundred years. + +At the head of the Giant's Staircase, where Marino Faliero was beheaded, +and where the Doges were crowned in ancient times, two small slits in the +stone wall were pointed out--two harmless, insignificant orifices that +would never attract a stranger's attention--yet these were the terrible +Lions' Mouths! The heads were gone (knocked off by the French during +their occupation of Venice,) but these were the throats, down which went +the anonymous accusation, thrust in secretly at dead of night by an +enemy, that doomed many an innocent man to walk the Bridge of Sighs and +descend into the dungeon which none entered and hoped to see the sun +again. This was in the old days when the Patricians alone governed +Venice--the common herd had no vote and no voice. There were one +thousand five hundred Patricians; from these, three hundred Senators were +chosen; from the Senators a Doge and a Council of Ten were selected, and +by secret ballot the Ten chose from their own number a Council of Three. +All these were Government spies, then, and every spy was under +surveillance himself--men spoke in whispers in Venice, and no man trusted +his neighbor--not always his own brother. No man knew who the Council of +Three were--not even the Senate, not even the Doge; the members of that +dread tribunal met at night in a chamber to themselves, masked, and robed +from head to foot in scarlet cloaks, and did not even know each other, +unless by voice. It was their duty to judge heinous political crimes, +and from their sentence there was no appeal. A nod to the executioner +was sufficient. The doomed man was marched down a hall and out at a +door-way into the covered Bridge of Sighs, through it and into the +dungeon and unto his death. At no time in his transit was he visible to +any save his conductor. If a man had an enemy in those old days, the +cleverest thing he could do was to slip a note for the Council of Three +into the Lion's mouth, saying "This man is plotting against the +Government." If the awful Three found no proof, ten to one they would +drown him anyhow, because he was a deep rascal, since his plots were +unsolvable. Masked judges and masked executioners, with unlimited power, +and no appeal from their judgements, in that hard, cruel age, were not +likely to be lenient with men they suspected yet could not convict. + +We walked through the hall of the Council of Ten, and presently entered +the infernal den of the Council of Three. + +The table around which they had sat was there still, and likewise the +stations where the masked inquisitors and executioners formerly stood, +frozen, upright and silent, till they received a bloody order, and then, +without a word, moved off like the inexorable machines they were, to +carry it out. The frescoes on the walls were startlingly suited to the +place. In all the other saloons, the halls, the great state chambers of +the palace, the walls and ceilings were bright with gilding, rich with +elaborate carving, and resplendent with gallant pictures of Venetian +victories in war, and Venetian display in foreign courts, and hallowed +with portraits of the Virgin, the Saviour of men, and the holy saints +that preached the Gospel of Peace upon earth--but here, in dismal +contrast, were none but pictures of death and dreadful suffering!--not a +living figure but was writhing in torture, not a dead one but was smeared +with blood, gashed with wounds, and distorted with the agonies that had +taken away its life! + +From the palace to the gloomy prison is but a step--one might almost jump +across the narrow canal that intervenes. The ponderous stone Bridge of +Sighs crosses it at the second story--a bridge that is a covered tunnel +--you can not be seen when you walk in it. It is partitioned lengthwise, +and through one compartment walked such as bore light sentences in +ancient times, and through the other marched sadly the wretches whom the +Three had doomed to lingering misery and utter oblivion in the dungeons, +or to sudden and mysterious death. Down below the level of the water, by +the light of smoking torches, we were shown the damp, thick-walled cells +where many a proud patrician's life was eaten away by the long-drawn +miseries of solitary imprisonment--without light, air, books; naked, +unshaven, uncombed, covered with vermin; his useless tongue forgetting +its office, with none to speak to; the days and nights of his life no +longer marked, but merged into one eternal eventless night; far away from +all cheerful sounds, buried in the silence of a tomb; forgotten by his +helpless friends, and his fate a dark mystery to them forever; losing his +own memory at last, and knowing no more who he was or how he came there; +devouring the loaf of bread and drinking the water that were thrust into +the cell by unseen hands, and troubling his worn spirit no more with +hopes and fears and doubts and longings to be free; ceasing to scratch +vain prayers and complainings on walls where none, not even himself, +could see them, and resigning himself to hopeless apathy, driveling +childishness, lunacy! Many and many a sorrowful story like this these +stony walls could tell if they could but speak. + +In a little narrow corridor, near by, they showed us where many a +prisoner, after lying in the dungeons until he was forgotten by all save +his persecutors, was brought by masked executioners and garroted, or +sewed up in a sack, passed through a little window to a boat, at dead of +night, and taken to some remote spot and drowned. + +They used to show to visitors the implements of torture wherewith the +Three were wont to worm secrets out of the accused--villainous machines +for crushing thumbs; the stocks where a prisoner sat immovable while +water fell drop by drop upon his head till the torture was more than +humanity could bear; and a devilish contrivance of steel, which inclosed +a prisoner's head like a shell, and crushed it slowly by means of a +screw. It bore the stains of blood that had trickled through its joints +long ago, and on one side it had a projection whereon the torturer rested +his elbow comfortably and bent down his ear to catch the moanings of the +sufferer perishing within. + +Of course we went to see the venerable relic of the ancient glory of +Venice, with its pavements worn and broken by the passing feet of a +thousand years of plebeians and patricians--The Cathedral of St. Mark. +It is built entirely of precious marbles, brought from the Orient +--nothing in its composition is domestic. Its hoary traditions make it an +object of absorbing interest to even the most careless stranger, and thus +far it had interest for me; but no further. I could not go into +ecstasies over its coarse mosaics, its unlovely Byzantine architecture, +or its five hundred curious interior columns from as many distant +quarries. Every thing was worn out--every block of stone was smooth and +almost shapeless with the polishing hands and shoulders of loungers who +devoutly idled here in by-gone centuries and have died and gone to the +dev--no, simply died, I mean. + +Under the altar repose the ashes of St. Mark--and Matthew, Luke and John, +too, for all I know. Venice reveres those relics above all things +earthly. For fourteen hundred years St. Mark has been her patron saint. +Every thing about the city seems to be named after him or so named as to +refer to him in some way--so named, or some purchase rigged in some way +to scrape a sort of hurrahing acquaintance with him. That seems to be +the idea. To be on good terms with St. Mark, seems to be the very summit +of Venetian ambition. They say St. Mark had a tame lion, and used to +travel with him--and every where that St. Mark went, the lion was sure to +go. It was his protector, his friend, his librarian. And so the Winged +Lion of St. Mark, with the open Bible under his paw, is a favorite emblem +in the grand old city. It casts its shadow from the most ancient pillar +in Venice, in the Grand Square of St. Mark, upon the throngs of free +citizens below, and has so done for many a long century. The winged lion +is found every where--and doubtless here, where the winged lion is, no +harm can come. + +St. Mark died at Alexandria, in Egypt. He was martyred, I think. +However, that has nothing to do with my legend. About the founding of +the city of Venice--say four hundred and fifty years after Christ--(for +Venice is much younger than any other Italian city,) a priest dreamed +that an angel told him that until the remains of St. Mark were brought to +Venice, the city could never rise to high distinction among the nations; +that the body must be captured, brought to the city, and a magnificent +church built over it; and that if ever the Venetians allowed the Saint to +be removed from his new resting-place, in that day Venice would perish +from off the face of the earth. The priest proclaimed his dream, and +forthwith Venice set about procuring the corpse of St. Mark. One +expedition after another tried and failed, but the project was never +abandoned during four hundred years. At last it was secured by +stratagem, in the year eight hundred and something. The commander of a +Venetian expedition disguised himself, stole the bones, separated them, +and packed them in vessels filled with lard. The religion of Mahomet +causes its devotees to abhor anything that is in the nature of pork, and +so when the Christian was stopped by the officers at the gates of the +city, they only glanced once into his precious baskets, then turned up +their noses at the unholy lard, and let him go. The bones were buried in +the vaults of the grand cathedral, which had been waiting long years to +receive them, and thus the safety and the greatness of Venice were +secured. And to this day there be those in Venice who believe that if +those holy ashes were stolen away, the ancient city would vanish like a +dream, and its foundations be buried forever in the unremembering sea. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +The Venetian gondola is as free and graceful, in its gliding movement, as +a serpent. It is twenty or thirty feet long, and is narrow and deep, +like a canoe; its sharp bow and stern sweep upward from the water like +the horns of a crescent with the abruptness of the curve slightly +modified. + +The bow is ornamented with a steel comb with a battle-ax attachment which +threatens to cut passing boats in two occasionally, but never does. The +gondola is painted black because in the zenith of Venetian magnificence +the gondolas became too gorgeous altogether, and the Senate decreed that +all such display must cease, and a solemn, unembellished black be +substituted. If the truth were known, it would doubtless appear that +rich plebeians grew too prominent in their affectation of patrician show +on the Grand Canal, and required a wholesome snubbing. Reverence for the +hallowed Past and its traditions keeps the dismal fashion in force now +that the compulsion exists no longer. So let it remain. It is the color +of mourning. Venice mourns. The stern of the boat is decked over and +the gondolier stands there. He uses a single oar--a long blade, of +course, for he stands nearly erect. A wooden peg, a foot and a half +high, with two slight crooks or curves in one side of it and one in the +other, projects above the starboard gunwale. Against that peg the +gondolier takes a purchase with his oar, changing it at intervals to the +other side of the peg or dropping it into another of the crooks, as the +steering of the craft may demand--and how in the world he can back and +fill, shoot straight ahead, or flirt suddenly around a corner, and make +the oar stay in those insignificant notches, is a problem to me and a +never diminishing matter of interest. I am afraid I study the +gondolier's marvelous skill more than I do the sculptured palaces we +glide among. He cuts a corner so closely, now and then, or misses +another gondola by such an imperceptible hair-breadth that I feel myself +"scrooching," as the children say, just as one does when a buggy wheel +grazes his elbow. But he makes all his calculations with the nicest +precision, and goes darting in and out among a Broadway confusion of busy +craft with the easy confidence of the educated hackman. He never makes a +mistake. + +Sometimes we go flying down the great canals at such a gait that we can +get only the merest glimpses into front doors, and again, in obscure +alleys in the suburbs, we put on a solemnity suited to the silence, the +mildew, the stagnant waters, the clinging weeds, the deserted houses and +the general lifelessness of the place, and move to the spirit of grave +meditation. + +The gondolier is a picturesque rascal for all he wears no satin harness, +no plumed bonnet, no silken tights. His attitude is stately; he is lithe +and supple; all his movements are full of grace. When his long canoe, +and his fine figure, towering from its high perch on the stern, are cut +against the evening sky, they make a picture that is very novel and +striking to a foreign eye. + +We sit in the cushioned carriage-body of a cabin, with the curtains +drawn, and smoke, or read, or look out upon the passing boats, the +houses, the bridges, the people, and enjoy ourselves much more than we +could in a buggy jolting over our cobble-stone pavements at home. This +is the gentlest, pleasantest locomotion we have ever known. + +But it seems queer--ever so queer--to see a boat doing duty as a private +carriage. We see business men come to the front door, step into a +gondola, instead of a street car, and go off down town to the +counting-room. + +We see visiting young ladies stand on the stoop, and laugh, and kiss +good-bye, and flirt their fans and say "Come soon--now do--you've been +just as mean as ever you can be--mother's dying to see you--and we've +moved into the new house, O such a love of a place!--so convenient to the +post office and the church, and the Young Men's Christian Association; +and we do have such fishing, and such carrying on, and such +swimming-matches in the back yard--Oh, you must come--no distance at all, +and if you go down through by St. Mark's and the Bridge of Sighs, and cut +through the alley and come up by the church of Santa Maria dei Frari, and +into the Grand Canal, there isn't a bit of current--now do come, Sally +Maria--by-bye!" and then the little humbug trips down the steps, jumps +into the gondola, says, under her breath, "Disagreeable old thing, I hope +she won't!" goes skimming away, round the corner; and the other girl +slams the street door and says, "Well, that infliction's over, any way, +--but I suppose I've got to go and see her--tiresome stuck-up thing!" +Human nature appears to be just the same, all over the world. We see the +diffident young man, mild of moustache, affluent of hair, indigent of +brain, elegant of costume, drive up to her father's mansion, tell his +hackman to bail out and wait, start fearfully up the steps and meet "the +old gentleman" right on the threshold!--hear him ask what street the new +British Bank is in--as if that were what he came for--and then bounce +into his boat and skurry away with his coward heart in his boots!--see +him come sneaking around the corner again, directly, with a crack of the +curtain open toward the old gentleman's disappearing gondola, and out +scampers his Susan with a flock of little Italian endearments fluttering +from her lips, and goes to drive with him in the watery avenues down +toward the Rialto. + +We see the ladies go out shopping, in the most natural way, and flit from +street to street and from store to store, just in the good old fashion, +except that they leave the gondola, instead of a private carriage, +waiting at the curbstone a couple of hours for them,--waiting while they +make the nice young clerks pull down tons and tons of silks and velvets +and moire antiques and those things; and then they buy a paper of pins +and go paddling away to confer the rest of their disastrous patronage on +some other firm. And they always have their purchases sent home just in +the good old way. Human nature is very much the same all over the world; +and it is so like my dear native home to see a Venetian lady go into a +store and buy ten cents' worth of blue ribbon and have it sent home in a +scow. Ah, it is these little touches of nature that move one to tears in +these far-off foreign lands. + +We see little girls and boys go out in gondolas with their nurses, for an +airing. We see staid families, with prayer-book and beads, enter the +gondola dressed in their Sunday best, and float away to church. And at +midnight we see the theatre break up and discharge its swarm of hilarious +youth and beauty; we hear the cries of the hackman-gondoliers, and behold +the struggling crowd jump aboard, and the black multitude of boats go +skimming down the moonlit avenues; we see them separate here and there, +and disappear up divergent streets; we hear the faint sounds of laughter +and of shouted farewells floating up out of the distance; and then, the +strange pageant being gone, we have lonely stretches of glittering water +--of stately buildings--of blotting shadows--of weird stone faces +creeping into the moonlight--of deserted bridges--of motionless boats at +anchor. And over all broods that mysterious stillness, that stealthy +quiet, that befits so well this old dreaming Venice. + +We have been pretty much every where in our gondola. We have bought +beads and photographs in the stores, and wax matches in the Great Square +of St. Mark. The last remark suggests a digression. Every body goes to +this vast square in the evening. The military bands play in the centre +of it and countless couples of ladies and gentlemen promenade up and down +on either side, and platoons of them are constantly drifting away toward +the old Cathedral, and by the venerable column with the Winged Lion of +St. Mark on its top, and out to where the boats lie moored; and other +platoons are as constantly arriving from the gondolas and joining the +great throng. Between the promenaders and the side-walks are seated +hundreds and hundreds of people at small tables, smoking and taking +granita, (a first cousin to ice-cream;) on the side-walks are more +employing themselves in the same way. The shops in the first floor of +the tall rows of buildings that wall in three sides of the square are +brilliantly lighted, the air is filled with music and merry voices, and +altogether the scene is as bright and spirited and full of cheerfulness +as any man could desire. We enjoy it thoroughly. Very many of the young +women are exceedingly pretty and dress with rare good taste. We are +gradually and laboriously learning the ill-manners of staring them +unflinchingly in the face--not because such conduct is agreeable to us, +but because it is the custom of the country and they say the girls like +it. We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the +different countries, so that we can "show off" and astonish people when +we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with +our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off. All our +passengers are paying strict attention to this thing, with the end in +view which I have mentioned. The gentle reader will never, never know +what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad. I speak now, +of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, +and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, +I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and +call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own +heart when I shall have finished my travels. + +On this subject let me remark that there are Americans abroad in Italy +who have actually forgotten their mother tongue in three months--forgot +it in France. They can not even write their address in English in a +hotel register. I append these evidences, which I copied verbatim from +the register of a hotel in a certain Italian city: + + "John P. Whitcomb, Etats Unis. "Wm. L. Ainsworth, travailleur (he + meant traveler, I suppose,) Etats Unis. "George P. Morton et fils, + d'Amerique. "Lloyd B. Williams, et trois amis, ville de Boston, + Amerique. "J. Ellsworth Baker, tout de suite de France, place de + naissance Amerique, destination la Grand Bretagne." + +I love this sort of people. A lady passenger of ours tells of a +fellow-citizen of hers who spent eight weeks in Paris and then returned +home and addressed his dearest old bosom friend Herbert as Mr. +"Er-bare!" He apologized, though, and said, "'Pon my soul it is +aggravating, but I cahn't help it--I have got so used to speaking +nothing but French, my dear Erbare--damme there it goes again!--got so +used to French pronunciation that I cahn't get rid of it--it is +positively annoying, I assure you." This entertaining idiot, whose name +was Gordon, allowed himself to be hailed three times in the street +before he paid any attention, and then begged a thousand pardons and +said he had grown so accustomed to hearing himself addressed as "M'sieu +Gor-r-dong," with a roll to the r, that he had forgotten the legitimate +sound of his name! He wore a rose in his button-hole; he gave the French +salutation--two flips of the hand in front of the face; he called Paris +Pairree in ordinary English conversation; he carried envelopes bearing +foreign postmarks protruding from his breast-pocket; he cultivated a +moustache and imperial, and did what else he could to suggest to the +beholder his pet fancy that he resembled Louis Napoleon--and in a spirit +of thankfulness which is entirely unaccountable, considering the slim +foundation there was for it, he praised his Maker that he was as he was, +and went on enjoying his little life just the same as if he really had +been deliberately designed and erected by the great Architect of the +Universe. + +Think of our Whitcombs, and our Ainsworths and our Williamses writing +themselves down in dilapidated French in foreign hotel registers! We +laugh at Englishmen, when we are at home, for sticking so sturdily to +their national ways and customs, but we look back upon it from abroad +very forgivingly. It is not pleasant to see an American thrusting his +nationality forward obtrusively in a foreign land, but Oh, it is pitiable +to see him making of himself a thing that is neither male nor female, +neither fish, flesh, nor fowl--a poor, miserable, hermaphrodite +Frenchman! + +Among a long list of churches, art galleries, and such things, visited by +us in Venice, I shall mention only one--the church of Santa Maria dei +Frari. It is about five hundred years old, I believe, and stands on +twelve hundred thousand piles. In it lie the body of Canova and the +heart of Titian, under magnificent monuments. Titian died at the age of +almost one hundred years. A plague which swept away fifty thousand lives +was raging at the time, and there is notable evidence of the reverence in +which the great painter was held, in the fact that to him alone the state +permitted a public funeral in all that season of terror and death. + +In this church, also, is a monument to the doge Foscari, whose name a +once resident of Venice, Lord Byron, has made permanently famous. + +The monument to the doge Giovanni Pesaro, in this church, is a curiosity +in the way of mortuary adornment. It is eighty feet high and is fronted +like some fantastic pagan temple. Against it stand four colossal +Nubians, as black as night, dressed in white marble garments. The black +legs are bare, and through rents in sleeves and breeches, the skin, of +shiny black marble, shows. The artist was as ingenious as his funeral +designs were absurd. There are two bronze skeletons bearing scrolls, and +two great dragons uphold the sarcophagus. On high, amid all this +grotesqueness, sits the departed doge. + +In the conventual buildings attached to this church are the state +archives of Venice. We did not see them, but they are said to number +millions of documents. "They are the records of centuries of the most +watchful, observant and suspicious government that ever existed--in which +every thing was written down and nothing spoken out." They fill nearly +three hundred rooms. Among them are manuscripts from the archives of +nearly two thousand families, monasteries and convents. The secret +history of Venice for a thousand years is here--its plots, its hidden +trials, its assassinations, its commissions of hireling spies and masked +bravoes--food, ready to hand, for a world of dark and mysterious +romances. + +Yes, I think we have seen all of Venice. We have seen, in these old +churches, a profusion of costly and elaborate sepulchre ornamentation +such as we never dreampt of before. We have stood in the dim religious +light of these hoary sanctuaries, in the midst of long ranks of dusty +monuments and effigies of the great dead of Venice, until we seemed +drifting back, back, back, into the solemn past, and looking upon the +scenes and mingling with the peoples of a remote antiquity. We have been +in a half-waking sort of dream all the time. I do not know how else to +describe the feeling. A part of our being has remained still in the +nineteenth century, while another part of it has seemed in some +unaccountable way walking among the phantoms of the tenth. + +We have seen famous pictures until our eyes are weary with looking at +them and refuse to find interest in them any longer. And what wonder, +when there are twelve hundred pictures by Palma the Younger in Venice and +fifteen hundred by Tintoretto? And behold there are Titians and the +works of other artists in proportion. We have seen Titian's celebrated +Cain and Abel, his David and Goliah, his Abraham's Sacrifice. We have +seen Tintoretto's monster picture, which is seventy-four feet long and I +do not know how many feet high, and thought it a very commodious picture. +We have seen pictures of martyrs enough, and saints enough, to regenerate +the world. I ought not to confess it, but still, since one has no +opportunity in America to acquire a critical judgment in art, and since I +could not hope to become educated in it in Europe in a few short weeks, I +may therefore as well acknowledge with such apologies as may be due, that +to me it seemed that when I had seen one of these martyrs I had seen them +all. They all have a marked family resemblance to each other, they dress +alike, in coarse monkish robes and sandals, they are all bald headed, +they all stand in about the same attitude, and without exception they are +gazing heavenward with countenances which the Ainsworths, the Mortons and +the Williamses, et fils, inform me are full of "expression." To me there +is nothing tangible about these imaginary portraits, nothing that I can +grasp and take a living interest in. If great Titian had only been +gifted with prophecy, and had skipped a martyr, and gone over to England +and painted a portrait of Shakspeare, even as a youth, which we could all +have confidence in now, the world down to the latest generations would +have forgiven him the lost martyr in the rescued seer. I think posterity +could have spared one more martyr for the sake of a great historical +picture of Titian's time and painted by his brush--such as Columbus +returning in chains from the discovery of a world, for instance. The old +masters did paint some Venetian historical pictures, and these we did not +tire of looking at, notwithstanding representations of the formal +introduction of defunct doges to the Virgin Mary in regions beyond the +clouds clashed rather harshly with the proprieties, it seemed to us. + +But humble as we are, and unpretending, in the matter of art, our +researches among the painted monks and martyrs have not been wholly in +vain. We have striven hard to learn. We have had some success. We have +mastered some things, possibly of trifling import in the eyes of the +learned, but to us they give pleasure, and we take as much pride in our +little acquirements as do others who have learned far more, and we love +to display them full as well. When we see a monk going about with a lion +and looking tranquilly up to heaven, we know that that is St. Mark. When +we see a monk with a book and a pen, looking tranquilly up to heaven, +trying to think of a word, we know that that is St. Matthew. When we see +a monk sitting on a rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human +skull beside him, and without other baggage, we know that that is St. +Jerome. Because we know that he always went flying light in the matter +of baggage. When we see a party looking tranquilly up to heaven, +unconscious that his body is shot through and through with arrows, we +know that that is St. Sebastian. When we see other monks looking +tranquilly up to heaven, but having no trade-mark, we always ask who +those parties are. We do this because we humbly wish to learn. We have +seen thirteen thousand St. Jeromes, and twenty-two thousand St. Marks, +and sixteen thousand St. Matthews, and sixty thousand St. Sebastians, and +four millions of assorted monks, undesignated, and we feel encouraged to +believe that when we have seen some more of these various pictures, and +had a larger experience, we shall begin to take an absorbing interest in +them like our cultivated countrymen from Amerique. + +Now it does give me real pain to speak in this almost unappreciative way +of the old masters and their martyrs, because good friends of mine in the +ship--friends who do thoroughly and conscientiously appreciate them and +are in every way competent to discriminate between good pictures and +inferior ones--have urged me for my own sake not to make public the fact +that I lack this appreciation and this critical discrimination myself. I +believe that what I have written and may still write about pictures will +give them pain, and I am honestly sorry for it. I even promised that I +would hide my uncouth sentiments in my own breast. But alas! I never +could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because +the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a +very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to +make promises, that the organ which should enable me to keep them was +crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather +have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary +capacity. I certainly meant to keep that promise, but I find I can not +do it. It is impossible to travel through Italy without speaking of +pictures, and can I see them through others' eyes? + +If I did not so delight in the grand pictures that are spread before me +every day of my life by that monarch of all the old masters, Nature, I +should come to believe, sometimes, that I had in me no appreciation of +the beautiful, whatsoever. + +It seems to me that whenever I glory to think that for once I have +discovered an ancient painting that is beautiful and worthy of all +praise, the pleasure it gives me is an infallible proof that it is not a +beautiful picture and not in any wise worthy of commendation. This very +thing has occurred more times than I can mention, in Venice. In every +single instance the guide has crushed out my swelling enthusiasm with the +remark: + +"It is nothing--it is of the Renaissance." + +I did not know what in the mischief the Renaissance was, and so always I +had to simply say, + +"Ah! so it is--I had not observed it before." + +I could not bear to be ignorant before a cultivated negro, the offspring +of a South Carolina slave. But it occurred too often for even my +self-complacency, did that exasperating "It is nothing--it is of the +Renaissance." I said at last: + +"Who is this Renaissance? Where did he come from? Who gave him +permission to cram the Republic with his execrable daubs?" + +We learned, then, that Renaissance was not a man; that renaissance was a +term used to signify what was at best but an imperfect rejuvenation of +art. The guide said that after Titian's time and the time of the other +great names we had grown so familiar with, high art declined; then it +partially rose again--an inferior sort of painters sprang up, and these +shabby pictures were the work of their hands. Then I said, in my heat, +that I "wished to goodness high art had declined five hundred years +sooner." The Renaissance pictures suit me very well, though sooth to say +its school were too much given to painting real men and did not indulge +enough in martyrs. + +The guide I have spoken of is the only one we have had yet who knew any +thing. He was born in South Carolina, of slave parents. They came to +Venice while he was an infant. He has grown up here. He is well +educated. He reads, writes, and speaks English, Italian, Spanish, and +French, with perfect facility; is a worshipper of art and thoroughly +conversant with it; knows the history of Venice by heart and never tires +of talking of her illustrious career. He dresses better than any of us, +I think, and is daintily polite. Negroes are deemed as good as white +people, in Venice, and so this man feels no desire to go back to his +native land. His judgment is correct. + +I have had another shave. I was writing in our front room this afternoon +and trying hard to keep my attention on my work and refrain from looking +out upon the canal. I was resisting the soft influences of the climate +as well as I could, and endeavoring to overcome the desire to be indolent +and happy. The boys sent for a barber. They asked me if I would be +shaved. I reminded them of my tortures in Genoa, Milan, Como; of my +declaration that I would suffer no more on Italian soil. I said "Not any +for me, if you please." + +I wrote on. The barber began on the doctor. I heard him say: + +"Dan, this is the easiest shave I have had since we left the ship." + +He said again, presently: + +"Why Dan, a man could go to sleep with this man shaving him." + +Dan took the chair. Then he said: + +"Why this is Titian. This is one of the old masters." + +I wrote on. Directly Dan said: + +"Doctor, it is perfect luxury. The ship's barber isn't any thing to +him." + +My rough beard wee distressing me beyond measure. The barber was rolling +up his apparatus. The temptation was too strong. I said: + +"Hold on, please. Shave me also." + +I sat down in the chair and closed my eyes. The barber soaped my face, +and then took his razor and gave me a rake that well nigh threw me into +convulsions. I jumped out of the chair: Dan and the doctor were both +wiping blood off their faces and laughing. + +I said it was a mean, disgraceful fraud. + +They said that the misery of this shave had gone so far beyond any thing +they had ever experienced before, that they could not bear the idea of +losing such a chance of hearing a cordial opinion from me on the subject. + +It was shameful. But there was no help for it. The skinning was begun +and had to be finished. The tears flowed with every rake, and so did the +fervent execrations. The barber grew confused, and brought blood every +time. I think the boys enjoyed it better than any thing they have seen +or heard since they left home. + +We have seen the Campanile, and Byron's house and Balbi's the geographer, +and the palaces of all the ancient dukes and doges of Venice, and we have +seen their effeminate descendants airing their nobility in fashionable +French attire in the Grand Square of St. Mark, and eating ices and +drinking cheap wines, instead of wearing gallant coats of mail and +destroying fleets and armies as their great ancestors did in the days of +Venetian glory. We have seen no bravoes with poisoned stilettos, no +masks, no wild carnival; but we have seen the ancient pride of Venice, +the grim Bronze Horses that figure in a thousand legends. Venice may +well cherish them, for they are the only horses she ever had. It is said +there are hundreds of people in this curious city who never have seen a +living horse in their lives. It is entirely true, no doubt. + +And so, having satisfied ourselves, we depart to-morrow, and leave the +venerable Queen of the Republics to summon her vanished ships, and +marshal her shadowy armies, and know again in dreams the pride of her old +renown. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +Some of the Quaker City's passengers had arrived in Venice from +Switzerland and other lands before we left there, and others were +expected every day. We heard of no casualties among them, and no +sickness. + +We were a little fatigued with sight seeing, and so we rattled through a +good deal of country by rail without caring to stop. I took few notes. +I find no mention of Bologna in my memorandum book, except that we +arrived there in good season, but saw none of the sausages for which the +place is so justly celebrated. + +Pistoia awoke but a passing interest. + +Florence pleased us for a while. I think we appreciated the great figure +of David in the grand square, and the sculptured group they call the Rape +of the Sabines. We wandered through the endless collections of paintings +and statues of the Pitti and Ufizzi galleries, of course. I make that +statement in self-defense; there let it stop. I could not rest under the +imputation that I visited Florence and did not traverse its weary miles +of picture galleries. We tried indolently to recollect something about +the Guelphs and Ghibelines and the other historical cut-throats whose +quarrels and assassinations make up so large a share of Florentine +history, but the subject was not attractive. We had been robbed of all +the fine mountain scenery on our little journey by a system of +railroading that had three miles of tunnel to a hundred yards of +daylight, and we were not inclined to be sociable with Florence. We had +seen the spot, outside the city somewhere, where these people had allowed +the bones of Galileo to rest in unconsecrated ground for an age because +his great discovery that the world turned around was regarded as a +damning heresy by the church; and we know that long after the world had +accepted his theory and raised his name high in the list of its great +men, they had still let him rot there. That we had lived to see his dust +in honored sepulture in the church of Santa Croce we owed to a society of +literati, and not to Florence or her rulers. We saw Dante's tomb in that +church, also, but we were glad to know that his body was not in it; that +the ungrateful city that had exiled him and persecuted him would give +much to have it there, but need not hope to ever secure that high honor +to herself. Medicis are good enough for Florence. Let her plant Medicis +and build grand monuments over them to testify how gratefully she was +wont to lick the hand that scourged her. + +Magnanimous Florence! Her jewelry marts are filled with artists in +mosaic. Florentine mosaics are the choicest in all the world. Florence +loves to have that said. Florence is proud of it. Florence would foster +this specialty of hers. She is grateful to the artists that bring to her +this high credit and fill her coffers with foreign money, and so she +encourages them with pensions. With pensions! Think of the lavishness +of it. She knows that people who piece together the beautiful trifles +die early, because the labor is so confining, and so exhausting to hand +and brain, and so she has decreed that all these people who reach the age +of sixty shall have a pension after that! I have not heard that any of +them have called for their dividends yet. One man did fight along till +he was sixty, and started after his pension, but it appeared that there +had been a mistake of a year in his family record, and so he gave it up +and died. + +These artists will take particles of stone or glass no larger than a +mustard seed, and piece them together on a sleeve button or a shirt stud, +so smoothly and with such nice adjustment of the delicate shades of color +the pieces bear, as to form a pigmy rose with stem, thorn, leaves, petals +complete, and all as softly and as truthfully tinted as though Nature had +builded it herself. They will counterfeit a fly, or a high-toned bug, or +the ruined Coliseum, within the cramped circle of a breastpin, and do it +so deftly and so neatly that any man might think a master painted it. + +I saw a little table in the great mosaic school in Florence--a little +trifle of a centre table--whose top was made of some sort of precious +polished stone, and in the stone was inlaid the figure of a flute, with +bell-mouth and a mazy complication of keys. No painting in the world +could have been softer or richer; no shading out of one tint into another +could have been more perfect; no work of art of any kind could have been +more faultless than this flute, and yet to count the multitude of little +fragments of stone of which they swore it was formed would bankrupt any +man's arithmetic! I do not think one could have seen where two particles +joined each other with eyes of ordinary shrewdness. Certainly we could +detect no such blemish. This table-top cost the labor of one man for ten +long years, so they said, and it was for sale for thirty-five thousand +dollars. + +We went to the Church of Santa Croce, from time to time, in Florence, to +weep over the tombs of Michael Angelo, Raphael and Machiavelli, +(I suppose they are buried there, but it may be that they reside +elsewhere and rent their tombs to other parties--such being the fashion +in Italy,) and between times we used to go and stand on the bridges and +admire the Arno. It is popular to admire the Arno. It is a great +historical creek with four feet in the channel and some scows floating +around. It would be a very plausible river if they would pump some water +into it. They all call it a river, and they honestly think it is a +river, do these dark and bloody Florentines. They even help out the +delusion by building bridges over it. I do not see why they are too good +to wade. + +How the fatigues and annoyances of travel fill one with bitter prejudices +sometimes! I might enter Florence under happier auspices a month hence +and find it all beautiful, all attractive. But I do not care to think of +it now, at all, nor of its roomy shops filled to the ceiling with snowy +marble and alabaster copies of all the celebrated sculptures in Europe +--copies so enchanting to the eye that I wonder how they can really be +shaped like the dingy petrified nightmares they are the portraits of. I +got lost in Florence at nine o'clock, one night, and staid lost in that +labyrinth of narrow streets and long rows of vast buildings that look all +alike, until toward three o'clock in the morning. It was a pleasant +night and at first there were a good many people abroad, and there were +cheerful lights about. Later, I grew accustomed to prowling about +mysterious drifts and tunnels and astonishing and interesting myself with +coming around corners expecting to find the hotel staring me in the face, +and not finding it doing any thing of the kind. Later still, I felt +tired. I soon felt remarkably tired. But there was no one abroad, now +--not even a policeman. I walked till I was out of all patience, and very +hot and thirsty. At last, somewhere after one o'clock, I came +unexpectedly to one of the city gates. I knew then that I was very far +from the hotel. The soldiers thought I wanted to leave the city, and +they sprang up and barred the way with their muskets. I said: + +"Hotel d'Europe!" + +It was all the Italian I knew, and I was not certain whether that was +Italian or French. The soldiers looked stupidly at each other and at me, +and shook their heads and took me into custody. I said I wanted to go +home. They did not understand me. They took me into the guard-house and +searched me, but they found no sedition on me. They found a small piece +of soap (we carry soap with us, now,) and I made them a present of it, +seeing that they regarded it as a curiosity. I continued to say Hotel +d'Europe, and they continued to shake their heads, until at last a young +soldier nodding in the corner roused up and said something. He said he +knew where the hotel was, I suppose, for the officer of the guard sent +him away with me. We walked a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles, it +appeared to me, and then he got lost. He turned this way and that, and +finally gave it up and signified that he was going to spend the remainder +of the morning trying to find the city gate again. At that moment it +struck me that there was something familiar about the house over the way. +It was the hotel! + +It was a happy thing for me that there happened to be a soldier there +that knew even as much as he did; for they say that the policy of the +government is to change the soldiery from one place to another constantly +and from country to city, so that they can not become acquainted with the +people and grow lax in their duties and enter into plots and conspiracies +with friends. My experiences of Florence were chiefly unpleasant. I +will change the subject. + +At Pisa we climbed up to the top of the strangest structure the world has +any knowledge of--the Leaning Tower. As every one knows, it is in the +neighborhood of one hundred and eighty feet high--and I beg to observe +that one hundred and eighty feet reach to about the hight of four +ordinary three-story buildings piled one on top of the other, and is a +very considerable altitude for a tower of uniform thickness to aspire to, +even when it stands upright--yet this one leans more than thirteen feet +out of the perpendicular. It is seven hundred years old, but neither +history or tradition say whether it was built as it is, purposely, or +whether one of its sides has settled. There is no record that it ever +stood straight up. It is built of marble. It is an airy and a beautiful +structure, and each of its eight stories is encircled by fluted columns, +some of marble and some of granite, with Corinthian capitals that were +handsome when they were new. It is a bell tower, and in its top hangs a +chime of ancient bells. The winding staircase within is dark, but one +always knows which side of the tower he is on because of his naturally +gravitating from one side to the other of the staircase with the rise or +dip of the tower. Some of the stone steps are foot-worn only on one end; +others only on the other end; others only in the middle. To look down +into the tower from the top is like looking down into a tilted well. A +rope that hangs from the centre of the top touches the wall before it +reaches the bottom. Standing on the summit, one does not feel altogether +comfortable when he looks down from the high side; but to crawl on your +breast to the verge on the lower side and try to stretch your neck out +far enough to see the base of the tower, makes your flesh creep, and +convinces you for a single moment in spite of all your philosophy, that +the building is falling. You handle yourself very carefully, all the +time, under the silly impression that if it is not falling, your trifling +weight will start it unless you are particular not to "bear down" on it. + +The Duomo, close at hand, is one of the finest cathedrals in Europe. It +is eight hundred years old. Its grandeur has outlived the high +commercial prosperity and the political importance that made it a +necessity, or rather a possibility. Surrounded by poverty, decay and +ruin, it conveys to us a more tangible impression of the former greatness +of Pisa than books could give us. + +The Baptistery, which is a few years older than the Leaning Tower, is a +stately rotunda, of huge dimensions, and was a costly structure. In it +hangs the lamp whose measured swing suggested to Galileo the pendulum. +It looked an insignificant thing to have conferred upon the world of +science and mechanics such a mighty extension of their dominions as it +has. Pondering, in its suggestive presence, I seemed to see a crazy +universe of swinging disks, the toiling children of this sedate parent. +He appeared to have an intelligent expression about him of knowing that +he was not a lamp at all; that he was a Pendulum; a pendulum disguised, +for prodigious and inscrutable purposes of his own deep devising, and not +a common pendulum either, but the old original patriarchal Pendulum--the +Abraham Pendulum of the world. + +This Baptistery is endowed with the most pleasing echo of all the echoes +we have read of. The guide sounded two sonorous notes, about half an +octave apart; the echo answered with the most enchanting, the most +melodious, the richest blending of sweet sounds that one can imagine. It +was like a long-drawn chord of a church organ, infinitely softened by +distance. I may be extravagant in this matter, but if this be the case +my ear is to blame--not my pen. I am describing a memory--and one that +will remain long with me. + +The peculiar devotional spirit of the olden time, which placed a higher +confidence in outward forms of worship than in the watchful guarding of +the heart against sinful thoughts and the hands against sinful deeds, and +which believed in the protecting virtues of inanimate objects made holy +by contact with holy things, is illustrated in a striking manner in one +of the cemeteries of Pisa. The tombs are set in soil brought in ships +from the Holy Land ages ago. To be buried in such ground was regarded by +the ancient Pisans as being more potent for salvation than many masses +purchased of the church and the vowing of many candles to the Virgin. + +Pisa is believed to be about three thousand years old. It was one of the +twelve great cities of ancient Etruria, that commonwealth which has left +so many monuments in testimony of its extraordinary advancement, and so +little history of itself that is tangible and comprehensible. A Pisan +antiquarian gave me an ancient tear-jug which he averred was full four +thousand years old. It was found among the ruins of one of the oldest of +the Etruscan cities. He said it came from a tomb, and was used by some +bereaved family in that remote age when even the Pyramids of Egypt were +young, Damascus a village, Abraham a prattling infant and ancient Troy +not yet [dreampt] of, to receive the tears wept for some lost idol of a +household. It spoke to us in a language of its own; and with a pathos +more tender than any words might bring, its mute eloquence swept down the +long roll of the centuries with its tale of a vacant chair, a familiar +footstep missed from the threshold, a pleasant voice gone from the +chorus, a vanished form!--a tale which is always so new to us, so +startling, so terrible, so benumbing to the senses, and behold how +threadbare and old it is! No shrewdly-worded history could have brought +the myths and shadows of that old dreamy age before us clothed with human +flesh and warmed with human sympathies so vividly as did this poor little +unsentient vessel of pottery. + +Pisa was a republic in the middle ages, with a government of her own, +armies and navies of her own and a great commerce. She was a warlike +power, and inscribed upon her banners many a brilliant fight with Genoese +and Turks. It is said that the city once numbered a population of four +hundred thousand; but her sceptre has passed from her grasp, now, her +ships and her armies are gone, her commerce is dead. Her battle-flags +bear the mold and the dust of centuries, her marts are deserted, she has +shrunken far within her crumbling walls, and her great population has +diminished to twenty thousand souls. She has but one thing left to boast +of, and that is not much, viz: she is the second city of Tuscany. + +We reached Leghorn in time to see all we wished to see of it long before +the city gates were closed for the evening, and then came on board the +ship. + +We felt as though we had been away from home an age. We never entirely +appreciated, before, what a very pleasant den our state-room is; nor how +jolly it is to sit at dinner in one's own seat in one's own cabin, and +hold familiar conversation with friends in one's own language. Oh, the +rare happiness of comprehending every single word that is said, and +knowing that every word one says in return will be understood as well! +We would talk ourselves to death, now, only there are only about ten +passengers out of the sixty-five to talk to. The others are wandering, +we hardly know where. We shall not go ashore in Leghorn. We are +surfeited with Italian cities for the present, and much prefer to walk +the familiar quarterdeck and view this one from a distance. + +The stupid magnates of this Leghorn government can not understand that so +large a steamer as ours could cross the broad Atlantic with no other +purpose than to indulge a party of ladies and gentlemen in a pleasure +excursion. It looks too improbable. It is suspicious, they think. +Something more important must be hidden behind it all. They can not +understand it, and they scorn the evidence of the ship's papers. They +have decided at last that we are a battalion of incendiary, blood-thirsty +Garibaldians in disguise! And in all seriousness they have set a +gun-boat to watch the vessel night and day, with orders to close down on +any revolutionary movement in a twinkling! Police boats are on patrol +duty about us all the time, and it is as much as a sailor's liberty is +worth to show himself in a red shirt. These policemen follow the +executive officer's boat from shore to ship and from ship to shore and +watch his dark maneuvres with a vigilant eye. They will arrest him yet +unless he assumes an expression of countenance that shall have less of +carnage, insurrection and sedition in it. A visit paid in a friendly +way to General Garibaldi yesterday (by cordial invitation,) by some of +our passengers, has gone far to confirm the dread suspicions the +government harbors toward us. It is thought the friendly visit was only +the cloak of a bloody conspiracy. These people draw near and watch us +when we bathe in the sea from the ship's side. Do they think we are +communing with a reserve force of rascals at the bottom? + +It is said that we shall probably be quarantined at Naples. Two or three +of us prefer not to run this risk. Therefore, when we are rested, we +propose to go in a French steamer to Civita and from thence to Rome, and +by rail to Naples. They do not quarantine the cars, no matter where they +got their passengers from. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +There are a good many things about this Italy which I do not understand +--and more especially I can not understand how a bankrupt Government can +have such palatial railroad depots and such marvels of turnpikes. Why, +these latter are as hard as adamant, as straight as a line, as smooth as +a floor, and as white as snow. When it is too dark to see any other +object, one can still see the white turnpikes of France and Italy; and +they are clean enough to eat from, without a table-cloth. And yet no +tolls are charged. + +As for the railways--we have none like them. The cars slide as smoothly +along as if they were on runners. The depots are vast palaces of cut +marble, with stately colonnades of the same royal stone traversing them +from end to end, and with ample walls and ceilings richly decorated with +frescoes. The lofty gateways are graced with statues, and the broad +floors are all laid in polished flags of marble. + +These things win me more than Italy's hundred galleries of priceless art +treasures, because I can understand the one and am not competent to +appreciate the other. In the turnpikes, the railways, the depots, and +the new boulevards of uniform houses in Florence and other cities here, I +see the genius of Louis Napoleon, or rather, I see the works of that +statesman imitated. But Louis has taken care that in France there shall +be a foundation for these improvements--money. He has always the +wherewithal to back up his projects; they strengthen France and never +weaken her. Her material prosperity is genuine. But here the case is +different. This country is bankrupt. There is no real foundation for +these great works. The prosperity they would seem to indicate is a +pretence. There is no money in the treasury, and so they enfeeble her +instead of strengthening. Italy has achieved the dearest wish of her +heart and become an independent State--and in so doing she has drawn an +elephant in the political lottery. She has nothing to feed it on. +Inexperienced in government, she plunged into all manner of useless +expenditure, and swamped her treasury almost in a day. She squandered +millions of francs on a navy which she did not need, and the first time +she took her new toy into action she got it knocked higher than +Gilderoy's kite--to use the language of the Pilgrims. + +But it is an ill-wind that blows nobody good. A year ago, when Italy saw +utter ruin staring her in the face and her greenbacks hardly worth the +paper they were printed on, her Parliament ventured upon a 'coup de main' +that would have appalled the stoutest of her statesmen under less +desperate circumstances. They, in a manner, confiscated the domains of +the Church! This in priest-ridden Italy! This in a land which has +groped in the midnight of priestly superstition for sixteen hundred +years! It was a rare good fortune for Italy, the stress of weather that +drove her to break from this prison-house. + +They do not call it confiscating the church property. That would sound +too harshly yet. But it amounts to that. There are thousands of +churches in Italy, each with untold millions of treasures stored away in +its closets, and each with its battalion of priests to be supported. +And then there are the estates of the Church--league on league of the +richest lands and the noblest forests in all Italy--all yielding immense +revenues to the Church, and none paying a cent in taxes to the State. +In some great districts the Church owns all the property--lands, +watercourses, woods, mills and factories. They buy, they sell, they +manufacture, and since they pay no taxes, who can hope to compete with +them? + +Well, the Government has seized all this in effect, and will yet seize it +in rigid and unpoetical reality, no doubt. Something must be done to +feed a starving treasury, and there is no other resource in all Italy +--none but the riches of the Church. So the Government intends to take to +itself a great portion of the revenues arising from priestly farms, +factories, etc., and also intends to take possession of the churches and +carry them on, after its own fashion and upon its own responsibility. +In a few instances it will leave the establishments of great pet churches +undisturbed, but in all others only a handful of priests will be retained +to preach and pray, a few will be pensioned, and the balance turned +adrift. + +Pray glance at some of these churches and their embellishments, and see +whether the Government is doing a righteous thing or not. In Venice, +today, a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, there are twelve hundred +priests. Heaven only knows how many there were before the Parliament +reduced their numbers. There was the great Jesuit Church. Under the old +regime it required sixty priests to engineer it--the Government does it +with five, now, and the others are discharged from service. All about +that church wretchedness and poverty abound. At its door a dozen hats +and bonnets were doffed to us, as many heads were humbly bowed, and as +many hands extended, appealing for pennies--appealing with foreign words +we could not understand, but appealing mutely, with sad eyes, and sunken +cheeks, and ragged raiment, that no words were needed to translate. Then +we passed within the great doors, and it seemed that the riches of the +world were before us! Huge columns carved out of single masses of +marble, and inlaid from top to bottom with a hundred intricate figures +wrought in costly verde antique; pulpits of the same rich materials, +whose draperies hung down in many a pictured fold, the stony fabric +counterfeiting the delicate work of the loom; the grand altar brilliant +with polished facings and balustrades of oriental agate, jasper, verde +antique, and other precious stones, whose names, even, we seldom hear +--and slabs of priceless lapis lazuli lavished every where as recklessly as +if the church had owned a quarry of it. In the midst of all this +magnificence, the solid gold and silver furniture of the altar seemed +cheap and trivial. Even the floors and ceilings cost a princely fortune. + +Now, where is the use of allowing all those riches to lie idle, while +half of that community hardly know, from day to day, how they are going +to keep body and soul together? And, where is the wisdom in permitting +hundreds upon hundreds of millions of francs to be locked up in the +useless trumpery of churches all over Italy, and the people ground to +death with taxation to uphold a perishing Government? + +As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all her +energies, all her finances, and all her industry to the building up of a +vast array of wonderful church edifices, and starving half her citizens +to accomplish it. She is to-day one vast museum of magnificence and +misery. All the churches in an ordinary American city put together could +hardly buy the jeweled frippery in one of her hundred cathedrals. And +for every beggar in America, Italy can show a hundred--and rags and +vermin to match. It is the wretchedest, princeliest land on earth. + +Look at the grand Duomo of Florence--a vast pile that has been sapping +the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not nearly +finished yet. Like all other men, I fell down and worshipped it, but +when the filthy beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too striking, +too suggestive, and I said, "O, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of +enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye? +Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don't you rob your church?" + +Three hundred happy, comfortable priests are employed in that Cathedral. + +And now that my temper is up, I may as well go on and abuse every body I +can think of. They have a grand mausoleum in Florence, which they built +to bury our Lord and Saviour and the Medici family in. It sounds +blasphemous, but it is true, and here they act blasphemy. The dead and +damned Medicis who cruelly tyrannized over Florence and were her curse +for over two hundred years, are salted away in a circle of costly vaults, +and in their midst the Holy Sepulchre was to have been set up. The +expedition sent to Jerusalem to seize it got into trouble and could not +accomplish the burglary, and so the centre of the mausoleum is vacant +now. They say the entire mausoleum was intended for the Holy Sepulchre, +and was only turned into a family burying place after the Jerusalem +expedition failed--but you will excuse me. Some of those Medicis would +have smuggled themselves in sure.--What they had not the effrontery to +do, was not worth doing. Why, they had their trivial, forgotten exploits +on land and sea pictured out in grand frescoes (as did also the ancient +Doges of Venice) with the Saviour and the Virgin throwing bouquets to +them out of the clouds, and the Deity himself applauding from his throne +in Heaven! And who painted these things? Why, Titian, Tintoretto, Paul +Veronese, Raphael--none other than the world's idols, the "old masters." + +Andrea del Sarto glorified his princes in pictures that must save them +for ever from the oblivion they merited, and they let him starve. Served +him right. Raphael pictured such infernal villains as Catherine and +Marie de Medicis seated in heaven and conversing familiarly with the +Virgin Mary and the angels, (to say nothing of higher personages,) and +yet my friends abuse me because I am a little prejudiced against the old +masters--because I fail sometimes to see the beauty that is in their +productions. I can not help but see it, now and then, but I keep on +protesting against the groveling spirit that could persuade those masters +to prostitute their noble talents to the adulation of such monsters as +the French, Venetian and Florentine Princes of two and three hundred +years ago, all the same. + +I am told that the old masters had to do these shameful things for bread, +the princes and potentates being the only patrons of art. If a grandly +gifted man may drag his pride and his manhood in the dirt for bread +rather than starve with the nobility that is in him untainted, the excuse +is a valid one. It would excuse theft in Washingtons and Wellingtons, +and unchastity in women as well. + +But somehow, I can not keep that Medici mausoleum out of my memory. It +is as large as a church; its pavement is rich enough for the pavement of +a King's palace; its great dome is gorgeous with frescoes; its walls are +made of--what? Marble?--plaster?--wood?--paper? No. Red porphyry +--verde antique--jasper--oriental agate--alabaster--mother-of-pearl +--chalcedony--red coral--lapis lazuli! All the vast walls are made wholly +of these precious stones, worked in, and in and in together in elaborate +pattern s and figures, and polished till they glow like great mirrors +with the pictured splendors reflected from the dome overhead. And before +a statue of one of those dead Medicis reposes a crown that blazes with +diamonds and emeralds enough to buy a ship-of-the-line, almost. These +are the things the Government has its evil eye upon, and a happy thing it +will be for Italy when they melt away in the public treasury. + +And now----. However, another beggar approaches. I will go out and +destroy him, and then come back and write another chapter of +vituperation. + +Having eaten the friendless orphan--having driven away his comrades +--having grown calm and reflective at length--I now feel in a kindlier +mood. I feel that after talking so freely about the priests and the +churches, justice demands that if I know any thing good about either I +ought to say it. I have heard of many things that redound to the credit +of the priesthood, but the most notable matter that occurs to me now is +the devotion one of the mendicant orders showed during the prevalence of +the cholera last year. I speak of the Dominican friars--men who wear a +coarse, heavy brown robe and a cowl, in this hot climate, and go +barefoot. They live on alms altogether, I believe. They must +unquestionably love their religion, to suffer so much for it. When the +cholera was raging in Naples; when the people were dying by hundreds and +hundreds every day; when every concern for the public welfare was +swallowed up in selfish private interest, and every citizen made the +taking care of himself his sole object, these men banded themselves +together and went about nursing the sick and burying the dead. Their +noble efforts cost many of them their lives. They laid them down +cheerfully, and well they might. Creeds mathematically precise, and +hair-splitting niceties of doctrine, are absolutely necessary for the +salvation of some kinds of souls, but surely the charity, the purity, the +unselfishness that are in the hearts of men like these would save their +souls though they were bankrupt in the true religion--which is ours. + +One of these fat bare-footed rascals came here to Civita Vecchia with us +in the little French steamer. There were only half a dozen of us in the +cabin. He belonged in the steerage. He was the life of the ship, the +bloody-minded son of the Inquisition! He and the leader of the marine +band of a French man-of-war played on the piano and sang opera turn +about; they sang duets together; they rigged impromptu theatrical +costumes and gave us extravagant farces and pantomimes. We got along +first-rate with the friar, and were excessively conversational, albeit he +could not understand what we said, and certainly he never uttered a word +that we could guess the meaning of. + +This Civita Vecchia is the finest nest of dirt, vermin and ignorance we +have found yet, except that African perdition they call Tangier, which is +just like it. The people here live in alleys two yards wide, which have +a smell about them which is peculiar but not entertaining. It is well +the alleys are not wider, because they hold as much smell now as a person +can stand, and of course, if they were wider they would hold more, and +then the people would die. These alleys are paved with stone, and +carpeted with deceased cats, and decayed rags, and decomposed +vegetable-tops, and remnants of old boots, all soaked with dish-water, +and the people sit around on stools and enjoy it. They are indolent, as +a general thing, and yet have few pastimes. They work two or three +hours at a time, but not hard, and then they knock off and catch flies. +This does not require any talent, because they only have to grab--if +they do not get the one they are after, they get another. It is all the +same to them. They have no partialities. Whichever one they get is the +one they want. + +They have other kinds of insects, but it does not make them arrogant. +They are very quiet, unpretending people. They have more of these kind +of things than other communities, but they do not boast. + +They are very uncleanly--these people--in face, in person and dress. +When they see any body with a clean shirt on, it arouses their scorn. +The women wash clothes, half the day, at the public tanks in the streets, +but they are probably somebody else's. Or may be they keep one set to +wear and another to wash; because they never put on any that have ever +been washed. When they get done washing, they sit in the alleys and +nurse their cubs. They nurse one ash-cat at a time, and the others +scratch their backs against the door-post and are happy. + +All this country belongs to the Papal States. They do not appear to have +any schools here, and only one billiard table. Their education is at a +very low stage. One portion of the men go into the military, another +into the priesthood, and the rest into the shoe-making business. + +They keep up the passport system here, but so they do in Turkey. This +shows that the Papal States are as far advanced as Turkey. This fact +will be alone sufficient to silence the tongues of malignant +calumniators. I had to get my passport vised for Rome in Florence, and +then they would not let me come ashore here until a policeman had +examined it on the wharf and sent me a permit. They did not even dare to +let me take my passport in my hands for twelve hours, I looked so +formidable. They judged it best to let me cool down. They thought I +wanted to take the town, likely. Little did they know me. I wouldn't +have it. They examined my baggage at the depot. They took one of my +ablest jokes and read it over carefully twice and then read it backwards. +But it was too deep for them. They passed it around, and every body +speculated on it awhile, but it mastered them all. + +It was no common joke. At length a veteran officer spelled it over +deliberately and shook his head three or four times and said that in his +opinion it was seditious. That was the first time I felt alarmed. I +immediately said I would explain the document, and they crowded around. +And so I explained and explained and explained, and they took notes of +all I said, but the more I explained the more they could not understand +it, and when they desisted at last, I could not even understand it +myself. They said they believed it was an incendiary document, leveled +at the government. I declared solemnly that it was not, but they only +shook their heads and would not be satisfied. Then they consulted a good +while; and finally they confiscated it. I was very sorry for this, +because I had worked a long time on that joke, and took a good deal of +pride in it, and now I suppose I shall never see it any more. I suppose +it will be sent up and filed away among the criminal archives of Rome, +and will always be regarded as a mysterious infernal machine which would +have blown up like a mine and scattered the good Pope all around, but for +a miraculous providential interference. And I suppose that all the time +I am in Rome the police will dog me about from place to place because +they think I am a dangerous character. + +It is fearfully hot in Civita Vecchia. The streets are made very narrow +and the houses built very solid and heavy and high, as a protection +against the heat. This is the first Italian town I have seen which does +not appear to have a patron saint. I suppose no saint but the one that +went up in the chariot of fire could stand the climate. + +There is nothing here to see. They have not even a cathedral, with +eleven tons of solid silver archbishops in the back room; and they do not +show you any moldy buildings that are seven thousand years old; nor any +smoke-dried old fire-screens which are chef d'oeuvres of Reubens or +Simpson, or Titian or Ferguson, or any of those parties; and they haven't +any bottled fragments of saints, and not even a nail from the true cross. +We are going to Rome. There is nothing to see here. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a +man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring +to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have +walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that +you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea--to +discover a great thought--an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of +a field that many a brain--plow had gone over before. To find a new +planet, to invent a new hinge, to find the way to make the lightnings +carry your messages. To be the first--that is the idea. To do +something, say something, see something, before any body else--these are +the things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are +tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial. Morse, with his +first message, brought by his servant, the lightning; Fulton, in that +long-drawn century of suspense, when he placed his hand upon the +throttle-valve and lo, the steamboat moved; Jenner, when his patient with +the cow's virus in his blood, walked through the smallpox hospitals +unscathed; Howe, when the idea shot through his brain that for a hundred +and twenty generations the eye had been bored through the wrong end of +the needle; the nameless lord of art who laid down his chisel in some old +age that is forgotten, now, and gloated upon the finished Laocoon; +Daguerre, when he commanded the sun, riding in the zenith, to print the +landscape upon his insignificant silvered plate, and he obeyed; Columbus, +in the Pinta's shrouds, when he swung his hat above a fabled sea and +gazed abroad upon an unknown world! These are the men who have really +lived--who have actually comprehended what pleasure is--who have crowded +long lifetimes of ecstasy into a single moment. + +What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before me? +What is there for me to touch that others have not touched? What is +there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me +before it pass to others? What can I discover?--Nothing. Nothing +whatsoever. One charm of travel dies here. But if I were only a Roman! +--If, added to my own I could be gifted with modern Roman sloth, modern +Roman superstition, and modern Roman boundlessness of ignorance, what +bewildering worlds of unsuspected wonders I would discover! Ah, if I +were only a habitant of the Campagna five and twenty miles from Rome! +Then I would travel. + +I would go to America, and see, and learn, and return to the Campagna and +stand before my countrymen an illustrious discoverer. I would say: + +"I saw there a country which has no overshadowing Mother Church, and yet +the people survive. I saw a government which never was protected by +foreign soldiers at a cost greater than that required to carry on the +government itself. I saw common men and common women who could read; +I even saw small children of common country people reading from books; +if I dared think you would believe it, I would say they could write, +also. + +"In the cities I saw people drinking a delicious beverage made of chalk +and water, but never once saw goats driven through their Broadway or +their Pennsylvania Avenue or their Montgomery street and milked at the +doors of the houses. I saw real glass windows in the houses of even the +commonest people. Some of the houses are not of stone, nor yet of +bricks; I solemnly swear they are made of wood. Houses there will take +fire and burn, sometimes--actually burn entirely down, and not leave a +single vestige behind. I could state that for a truth, upon my +death-bed. And as a proof that the circumstance is not rare, I aver +that they have a thing which they call a fire-engine, which vomits forth +great streams of water, and is kept always in readiness, by night and by +day, to rush to houses that are burning. You would think one engine +would be sufficient, but some great cities have a hundred; they keep men +hired, and pay them by the month to do nothing but put out fires. For a +certain sum of money other men will insure that your house shall not +burn down; and if it burns they will pay you for it. There are hundreds +and thousands of schools, and any body may go and learn to be wise, like +a priest. In that singular country if a rich man dies a sinner, he is +damned; he can not buy salvation with money for masses. There is really +not much use in being rich, there. Not much use as far as the other +world is concerned, but much, very much use, as concerns this; because +there, if a man be rich, he is very greatly honored, and can become a +legislator, a governor, a general, a senator, no matter how ignorant an +ass he is--just as in our beloved Italy the nobles hold all the great +places, even though sometimes they are born noble idiots. There, if a +man be rich, they give him costly presents, they ask him to feasts, they +invite him to drink complicated beverages; but if he be poor and in +debt, they require him to do that which they term to "settle." The +women put on a different dress almost every day; the dress is usually +fine, but absurd in shape; the very shape and fashion of it changes +twice in a hundred years; and did I but covet to be called an +extravagant falsifier, I would say it changed even oftener. Hair does +not grow upon the American women's heads; it is made for them by cunning +workmen in the shops, and is curled and frizzled into scandalous and +ungodly forms. Some persons wear eyes of glass which they see through +with facility perhaps, else they would not use them; and in the mouths +of some are teeth made by the sacrilegious hand of man. The dress of +the men is laughably grotesque. They carry no musket in ordinary life, +nor no long-pointed pole; they wear no wide green-lined cloak; they wear +no peaked black felt hat, no leathern gaiters reaching to the knee, no +goat-skin breeches with the hair side out, no hob-nailed shoes, no +prodigious spurs. They wear a conical hat termed a "nail-kag;" a coat +of saddest black; a shirt which shows dirt so easily that it has to be +changed every month, and is very troublesome; things called pantaloons, +which are held up by shoulder straps, and on their feet they wear boots +which are ridiculous in pattern and can stand no wear. Yet dressed in +this fantastic garb, these people laughed at my costume. In that +country, books are so common that it is really no curiosity to see one. +Newspapers also. They have a great machine which prints such things by +thousands every hour. + +"I saw common men, there--men who were neither priests nor princes--who +yet absolutely owned the land they tilled. It was not rented from the +church, nor from the nobles. I am ready to take my oath of this. In +that country you might fall from a third story window three several +times, and not mash either a soldier or a priest.--The scarcity of such +people is astonishing. In the cities you will see a dozen civilians for +every soldier, and as many for every priest or preacher. Jews, there, +are treated just like human beings, instead of dogs. They can work at +any business they please; they can sell brand new goods if they want to; +they can keep drug-stores; they can practice medicine among Christians; +they can even shake hands with Christians if they choose; they can +associate with them, just the same as one human being does with another +human being; they don't have to stay shut up in one corner of the towns; +they can live in any part of a town they like best; it is said they even +have the privilege of buying land and houses, and owning them themselves, +though I doubt that, myself; they never have had to run races naked +through the public streets, against jackasses, to please the people in +carnival time; there they never have been driven by the soldiers into a +church every Sunday for hundreds of years to hear themselves and their +religion especially and particularly cursed; at this very day, in that +curious country, a Jew is allowed to vote, hold office, yea, get up on a +rostrum in the public street and express his opinion of the government if +the government don't suit him! Ah, it is wonderful. The common people +there know a great deal; they even have the effrontery to complain if +they are not properly governed, and to take hold and help conduct the +government themselves; if they had laws like ours, which give one dollar +of every three a crop produces to the government for taxes, they would +have that law altered: instead of paying thirty-three dollars in taxes, +out of every one hundred they receive, they complain if they have to pay +seven. They are curious people. They do not know when they are well +off. Mendicant priests do not prowl among them with baskets begging for +the church and eating up their substance. One hardly ever sees a +minister of the gospel going around there in his bare feet, with a +basket, begging for subsistence. In that country the preachers are not +like our mendicant orders of friars--they have two or three suits of +clothing, and they wash sometimes. In that land are mountains far higher +than the Alban mountains; the vast Roman Campagna, a hundred miles long +and full forty broad, is really small compared to the United States of +America; the Tiber, that celebrated river of ours, which stretches its +mighty course almost two hundred miles, and which a lad can scarcely +throw a stone across at Rome, is not so long, nor yet so wide, as the +American Mississippi--nor yet the Ohio, nor even the Hudson. In America +the people are absolutely wiser and know much more than their +grandfathers did. They do not plow with a sharpened stick, nor yet with +a three-cornered block of wood that merely scratches the top of the +ground. We do that because our fathers did, three thousand years ago, I +suppose. But those people have no holy reverence for their ancestors. +They plow with a plow that is a sharp, curved blade of iron, and it cuts +into the earth full five inches. And this is not all. They cut their +grain with a horrid machine that mows down whole fields in a day. If I +dared, I would say that sometimes they use a blasphemous plow that works +by fire and vapor and tears up an acre of ground in a single hour--but +--but--I see by your looks that you do not believe the things I am telling +you. Alas, my character is ruined, and I am a branded speaker of +untruths!" + +Of course we have been to the monster Church of St. Peter, frequently. +I knew its dimensions. I knew it was a prodigious structure. I knew it +was just about the length of the capitol at Washington--say seven hundred +and thirty feet. I knew it was three hundred and sixty-four feet wide, +and consequently wider than the capitol. I knew that the cross on the +top of the dome of the church was four hundred and thirty-eight feet +above the ground, and therefore about a hundred or may be a hundred and +twenty-five feet higher than the dome of the capitol.--Thus I had one +gauge. I wished to come as near forming a correct idea of how it was +going to look, as possible; I had a curiosity to see how much I would +err. I erred considerably. St. Peter's did not look nearly so large as +the capitol, and certainly not a twentieth part as beautiful, from the +outside. + +When we reached the door, and stood fairly within the church, it was +impossible to comprehend that it was a very large building. I had to +cipher a comprehension of it. I had to ransack my memory for some more +similes. St. Peter's is bulky. Its height and size would represent two +of the Washington capitol set one on top of the other--if the capitol +were wider; or two blocks or two blocks and a half of ordinary buildings +set one on top of the other. St. Peter's was that large, but it could +and would not look so. The trouble was that every thing in it and about +it was on such a scale of uniform vastness that there were no contrasts +to judge by--none but the people, and I had not noticed them. They were +insects. The statues of children holding vases of holy water were +immense, according to the tables of figures, but so was every thing else +around them. The mosaic pictures in the dome were huge, and were made of +thousands and thousands of cubes of glass as large as the end of my +little finger, but those pictures looked smooth, and gaudy of color, and +in good proportion to the dome. Evidently they would not answer to +measure by. Away down toward the far end of the church (I thought it was +really clear at the far end, but discovered afterward that it was in the +centre, under the dome,) stood the thing they call the baldacchino--a +great bronze pyramidal frame-work like that which upholds a mosquito bar. +It only looked like a considerably magnified bedstead--nothing more. Yet +I knew it was a good deal more than half as high as Niagara Falls. It +was overshadowed by a dome so mighty that its own height was snubbed. +The four great square piers or pillars that stand equidistant from each +other in the church, and support the roof, I could not work up to their +real dimensions by any method of comparison. I knew that the faces of +each were about the width of a very large dwelling-house front, (fifty or +sixty feet,) and that they were twice as high as an ordinary three-story +dwelling, but still they looked small. I tried all the different ways I +could think of to compel myself to understand how large St. Peter's was, +but with small success. The mosaic portrait of an Apostle who was +writing with a pen six feet long seemed only an ordinary Apostle. + +But the people attracted my attention after a while. To stand in the +door of St. Peter's and look at men down toward its further extremity, +two blocks away, has a diminishing effect on them; surrounded by the +prodigious pictures and statues, and lost in the vast spaces, they look +very much smaller than they would if they stood two blocks away in the +open air. I "averaged" a man as he passed me and watched him as he +drifted far down by the baldacchino and beyond--watched him dwindle to an +insignificant school-boy, and then, in the midst of the silent throng of +human pigmies gliding about him, I lost him. The church had lately been +decorated, on the occasion of a great ceremony in honor of St. Peter, and +men were engaged, now, in removing the flowers and gilt paper from the +walls and pillars. As no ladders could reach the great heights, the men +swung themselves down from balustrades and the capitals of pilasters by +ropes, to do this work. The upper gallery which encircles the inner +sweep of the dome is two hundred and forty feet above the floor of the +church--very few steeples in America could reach up to it. Visitors +always go up there to look down into the church because one gets the best +idea of some of the heights and distances from that point. While we +stood on the floor one of the workmen swung loose from that gallery at +the end of a long rope. I had not supposed, before, that a man could +look so much like a spider. He was insignificant in size, and his rope +seemed only a thread. Seeing that he took up so little space, I could +believe the story, then, that ten thousand troops went to St. Peter's, +once, to hear mass, and their commanding officer came afterward, and not +finding them, supposed they had not yet arrived. But they were in the +church, nevertheless--they were in one of the transepts. Nearly fifty +thousand persons assembled in St. Peter's to hear the publishing of the +dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It is estimated that the floor of +the church affords standing room for--for a large number of people; I +have forgotten the exact figures. But it is no matter--it is near +enough. + +They have twelve small pillars, in St. Peter's, which came from Solomon's +Temple. They have, also--which was far more interesting to me--a piece +of the true cross, and some nails, and a part of the crown of thorns. + +Of course we ascended to the summit of the dome, and of course we also +went up into the gilt copper ball which is above it.--There was room +there for a dozen persons, with a little crowding, and it was as close +and hot as an oven. Some of those people who are so fond of writing +their names in prominent places had been there before us--a million or +two, I should think. From the dome of St. Peter's one can see every +notable object in Rome, from the Castle of St. Angelo to the Coliseum. +He can discern the seven hills upon which Rome is built. He can see the +Tiber, and the locality of the bridge which Horatius kept "in the brave +days of old" when Lars Porsena attempted to cross it with his invading +host. He can see the spot where the Horatii and the Curatii fought their +famous battle. He can see the broad green Campagna, stretching away +toward the mountains, with its scattered arches and broken aqueducts of +the olden time, so picturesque in their gray ruin, and so daintily +festooned with vines. He can see the Alban Mountains, the Appenines, the +Sabine Hills, and the blue Mediterranean. He can see a panorama that is +varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious in history +than any other in Europe.--About his feet is spread the remnant of a +city that once had a population of four million souls; and among its +massed edifices stand the ruins of temples, columns, and triumphal arches +that knew the Caesars, and the noonday of Roman splendor; and close by +them, in unimpaired strength, is a drain of arched and heavy masonry that +belonged to that older city which stood here before Romulus and Remus +were born or Rome thought of. The Appian Way is here yet, and looking +much as it did, perhaps, when the triumphal processions of the Emperors +moved over it in other days bringing fettered princes from the confines +of the earth. We can not see the long array of chariots and mail-clad +men laden with the spoils of conquest, but we can imagine the pageant, +after a fashion. We look out upon many objects of interest from the dome +of St. Peter's; and last of all, almost at our feet, our eyes rest upon +the building which was once the Inquisition. How times changed, between +the older ages and the new! Some seventeen or eighteen centuries ago, +the ignorant men of Rome were wont to put Christians in the arena of the +Coliseum yonder, and turn the wild beasts in upon them for a show. It +was for a lesson as well. It was to teach the people to abhor and fear +the new doctrine the followers of Christ were teaching. The beasts tore +the victims limb from limb and made poor mangled corpses of them in the +twinkling of an eye. But when the Christians came into power, when the +holy Mother Church became mistress of the barbarians, she taught them the +error of their ways by no such means. No, she put them in this pleasant +Inquisition and pointed to the Blessed Redeemer, who was so gentle and so +merciful toward all men, and they urged the barbarians to love him; and +they did all they could to persuade them to love and honor him--first by +twisting their thumbs out of joint with a screw; then by nipping their +flesh with pincers--red-hot ones, because they are the most comfortable +in cold weather; then by skinning them alive a little, and finally by +roasting them in public. They always convinced those barbarians. The +true religion, properly administered, as the good Mother Church used to +administer it, is very, very soothing. It is wonderfully persuasive, +also. There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts +and stirring up their finer feelings in an Inquisition. One is the +system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened, civilized +people. It is a great pity the playful Inquisition is no more. + +I prefer not to describe St. Peter's. It has been done before. The +ashes of Peter, the disciple of the Saviour, repose in a crypt under the +baldacchino. We stood reverently in that place; so did we also in the +Mamertine Prison, where he was confined, where he converted the soldiers, +and where tradition says he caused a spring of water to flow in order +that he might baptize them. But when they showed us the print of Peter's +face in the hard stone of the prison wall and said he made that by +falling up against it, we doubted. And when, also, the monk at the +church of San Sebastian showed us a paving-stone with two great +footprints in it and said that Peter's feet made those, we lacked +confidence again. Such things do not impress one. The monk said that +angels came and liberated Peter from prison by night, and he started away +from Rome by the Appian Way. The Saviour met him and told him to go +back, which he did. Peter left those footprints in the stone upon which +he stood at the time. It was not stated how it was ever discovered whose +footprints they were, seeing the interview occurred secretly and at +night. The print of the face in the prison was that of a man of common +size; the footprints were those of a man ten or twelve feet high. The +discrepancy confirmed our unbelief. + +We necessarily visited the Forum, where Caesar was assassinated, and also +the Tarpeian Rock. We saw the Dying Gladiator at the Capitol, and I +think that even we appreciated that wonder of art; as much, perhaps, as +we did that fearful story wrought in marble, in the Vatican--the Laocoon. +And then the Coliseum. + +Every body knows the picture of the Coliseum; every body recognizes at +once that "looped and windowed" band-box with a side bitten out. Being +rather isolated, it shows to better advantage than any other of the +monuments of ancient Rome. Even the beautiful Pantheon, whose pagan +altars uphold the cross, now, and whose Venus, tricked out in consecrated +gimcracks, does reluctant duty as a Virgin Mary to-day, is built about +with shabby houses and its stateliness sadly marred. But the monarch of +all European ruins, the Coliseum, maintains that reserve and that royal +seclusion which is proper to majesty. Weeds and flowers spring from its +massy arches and its circling seats, and vines hang their fringes from +its lofty walls. An impressive silence broods over the monstrous +structure where such multitudes of men and women were wont to assemble in +other days. The butterflies have taken the places of the queens of +fashion and beauty of eighteen centuries ago, and the lizards sun +themselves in the sacred seat of the Emperor. More vividly than all the +written histories, the Coliseum tells the story of Rome's grandeur and +Rome's decay. It is the worthiest type of both that exists. Moving +about the Rome of to-day, we might find it hard to believe in her old +magnificence and her millions of population; but with this stubborn +evidence before us that she was obliged to have a theatre with sitting +room for eighty thousand persons and standing room for twenty thousand +more, to accommodate such of her citizens as required amusement, we find +belief less difficult. The Coliseum is over one thousand six hundred +feet long, seven hundred and fifty wide, and one hundred and sixty-five +high. Its shape is oval. + +In America we make convicts useful at the same time that we punish them +for their crimes. We farm them out and compel them to earn money for the +State by making barrels and building roads. Thus we combine business +with retribution, and all things are lovely. But in ancient Rome they +combined religious duty with pleasure. Since it was necessary that the +new sect called Christians should be exterminated, the people judged it +wise to make this work profitable to the State at the same time, and +entertaining to the public. In addition to the gladiatorial combats and +other shows, they sometimes threw members of the hated sect into the +arena of the Coliseum and turned wild beasts in upon them. It is +estimated that seventy thousand Christians suffered martyrdom in this +place. This has made the Coliseum holy ground, in the eyes of the +followers of the Saviour. And well it might; for if the chain that bound +a saint, and the footprints a saint has left upon a stone he chanced to +stand upon, be holy, surely the spot where a man gave up his life for his +faith is holy. + +Seventeen or eighteen centuries ago this Coliseum was the theatre of +Rome, and Rome was mistress of the world. Splendid pageants were +exhibited here, in presence of the Emperor, the great ministers of State, +the nobles, and vast audiences of citizens of smaller consequence. +Gladiators fought with gladiators and at times with warrior prisoners +from many a distant land. It was the theatre of Rome--of the world--and +the man of fashion who could not let fall in a casual and unintentional +manner something about "my private box at the Coliseum" could not move in +the first circles. When the clothing-store merchant wished to consume +the corner grocery man with envy, he bought secured seats in the front +row and let the thing be known. When the irresistible dry goods clerk +wished to blight and destroy, according to his native instinct, he got +himself up regardless of expense and took some other fellow's young lady +to the Coliseum, and then accented the affront by cramming her with ice +cream between the acts, or by approaching the cage and stirring up the +martyrs with his whalebone cane for her edification. The Roman swell was +in his true element only when he stood up against a pillar and fingered +his moustache unconscious of the ladies; when he viewed the bloody +combats through an opera-glass two inches long; when he excited the envy +of provincials by criticisms which showed that he had been to the +Coliseum many and many a time and was long ago over the novelty of it; +when he turned away with a yawn at last and said, + +"He a star! handles his sword like an apprentice brigand! he'll do for +the country, may be, but he don't answer for the metropolis!" + +Glad was the contraband that had a seat in the pit at the Saturday +matinee, and happy the Roman street-boy who ate his peanuts and guyed the +gladiators from the dizzy gallery. + +For me was reserved the high honor of discovering among the rubbish of +the ruined Coliseum the only playbill of that establishment now extant. +There was a suggestive smell of mint-drops about it still, a corner of it +had evidently been chewed, and on the margin, in choice Latin, these +words were written in a delicate female hand: + + "Meet me on the Tarpeian Rock tomorrow evening, dear, at sharp + seven. Mother will be absent on a visit to her friends in the + Sabine Hills. CLAUDIA." + +Ah, where is that lucky youth to-day, and where the little hand that +wrote those dainty lines? Dust and ashes these seventeen hundred years! + +Thus reads the bill: + + + ROMAN COLISEUM. + UNPARALLELED ATTRACTION! + NEW PROPERTIES! NEW LIONS! NEW GLADIATORS! + Engagement of the renowned + MARCUS MARCELLUS VALERIAN! + FOR SIX NIGHTS ONLY! + +The management beg leave to offer to the public an entertainment +surpassing in magnificence any thing that has heretofore been attempted +on any stage. No expense has been spared to make the opening season one +which shall be worthy the generous patronage which the management feel +sure will crown their efforts. The management beg leave to state that +they have succeeded in securing the services of a + + GALAXY OF TALENT! +such as has not been beheld in Rome before. + +The performance will commence this evening with a + + GRAND BROADSWORD COMBAT! +between two young and promising amateurs and a celebrated Parthian +gladiator who has just arrived a prisoner from the Camp of Verus. + +This will be followed by a grand moral + + BATTLE-AX ENGAGEMENT! +between the renowned Valerian (with one hand tied behind him,) and two +gigantic savages from Britain. + +After which the renowned Valerian (if he survive,) will fight with the +broad-sword, + + LEFT HANDED! +against six Sophomores and a Freshman from the Gladiatorial College! + +A long series of brilliant engagements will follow, in which the finest +talent of the Empire will take part + +After which the celebrated Infant Prodigy known as + + "THE YOUNG ACHILLES," +will engage four tiger whelps in combat, armed with no other weapon than +his little spear! + +The whole to conclude with a chaste and elegant + + GENERAL SLAUGHTER! +In which thirteen African Lions and twenty-two Barbarian Prisoners will +war with each other until all are exterminated. + + BOX OFFICE NOW OPEN. + +Dress Circle One Dollar; Children and Servants half price. + +An efficient police force will be on hand to preserve order and keep the +wild beasts from leaping the railings and discommoding the audience. + +Doors open at 7; performance begins at 8. + +POSITIVELY NO FREE LIST. + + Diodorus Job Press. + + +It was as singular as it was gratifying that I was also so fortunate as +to find among the rubbish of the arena, a stained and mutilated copy of +the Roman Daily Battle-Ax, containing a critique upon this very +performance. It comes to hand too late by many centuries to rank as +news, and therefore I translate and publish it simply to show how very +little the general style and phraseology of dramatic criticism has +altered in the ages that have dragged their slow length along since the +carriers laid this one damp and fresh before their Roman patrons: + + "THE OPENING SEASON.--COLISEUM.--Notwithstanding the inclemency of + the weather, quite a respectable number of the rank and fashion of + the city assembled last night to witness the debut upon metropolitan + boards of the young tragedian who has of late been winning such + golden opinions in the amphitheatres of the provinces. Some sixty + thousand persons were present, and but for the fact that the streets + were almost impassable, it is fair to presume that the house would + have been full. His august Majesty, the Emperor Aurelius, occupied + the imperial box, and was the cynosure of all eyes. Many + illustrious nobles and generals of the Empire graced the occasion + with their presence, and not the least among them was the young + patrician lieutenant whose laurels, won in the ranks of the + "Thundering Legion," are still so green upon his brow. The cheer + which greeted his entrance was heard beyond the Tiber! + + "The late repairs and decorations add both to the comeliness and the + comfort of the Coliseum. The new cushions are a great improvement + upon the hard marble seats we have been so long accustomed to. The + present management deserve well of the public. They have restored + to the Coliseum the gilding, the rich upholstery and the uniform + magnificence which old Coliseum frequenters tell us Rome was so + proud of fifty years ago. + + "The opening scene last night--the broadsword combat between two + young amateurs and a famous Parthian gladiator who was sent here a + prisoner--was very fine. The elder of the two young gentlemen + handled his weapon with a grace that marked the possession of + extraordinary talent. His feint of thrusting, followed instantly by + a happily delivered blow which unhelmeted the Parthian, was received + with hearty applause. He was not thoroughly up in the backhanded + stroke, but it was very gratifying to his numerous friends to know + that, in time, practice would have overcome this defect. However, + he was killed. His sisters, who were present, expressed + considerable regret. His mother left the Coliseum. The other youth + maintained the contest with such spirit as to call forth + enthusiastic bursts of applause. When at last he fell a corpse, his + aged mother ran screaming, with hair disheveled and tears streaming + from her eyes, and swooned away just as her hands were clutching at + the railings of the arena. She was promptly removed by the police. + Under the circumstances the woman's conduct was pardonable, perhaps, + but we suggest that such exhibitions interfere with the decorum + which should be preserved during the performances, and are highly + improper in the presence of the Emperor. The Parthian prisoner + fought bravely and well; and well he might, for he was fighting for + both life and liberty. His wife and children were there to nerve + his arm with their love, and to remind him of the old home he should + see again if he conquered. When his second assailant fell, the + woman clasped her children to her breast and wept for joy. But it + was only a transient happiness. The captive staggered toward her + and she saw that the liberty he had earned was earned too late. He + was wounded unto death. Thus the first act closed in a manner which + was entirely satisfactory. The manager was called before the + curtain and returned his thanks for the honor done him, in a speech + which was replete with wit and humor, and closed by hoping that his + humble efforts to afford cheerful and instructive entertainment + would continue to meet with the approbation of the Roman public + + "The star now appeared, and was received with vociferous applause + and the simultaneous waving of sixty thousand handkerchiefs. Marcus + Marcellus Valerian (stage name--his real name is Smith,) is a + splendid specimen of physical development, and an artist of rare + merit. His management of the battle-ax is wonderful. His gayety + and his playfulness are irresistible, in his comic parts, and yet + they are inferior to his sublime conceptions in the grave realm of + tragedy. When his ax was describing fiery circles about the heads + of the bewildered barbarians, in exact time with his springing body + and his prancing legs, the audience gave way to uncontrollable + bursts of laughter; but when the back of his weapon broke the skull + of one and almost in the same instant its edge clove the other's + body in twain, the howl of enthusiastic applause that shook the + building, was the acknowledgment of a critical assemblage that he + was a master of the noblest department of his profession. If he has + a fault, (and we are sorry to even intimate that he has,) it is that + of glancing at the audience, in the midst of the most exciting + moments of the performance, as if seeking admiration. The pausing + in a fight to bow when bouquets are thrown to him is also in bad + taste. In the great left-handed combat he appeared to be looking at + the audience half the time, instead of carving his adversaries; and + when he had slain all the sophomores and was dallying with the + freshman, he stooped and snatched a bouquet as it fell, and offered + it to his adversary at a time when a blow was descending which + promised favorably to be his death-warrant. Such levity is proper + enough in the provinces, we make no doubt, but it ill suits the + dignity of the metropolis. We trust our young friend will take + these remarks in good part, for we mean them solely for his benefit. + All who know us are aware that although we are at times justly + severe upon tigers and martyrs, we never intentionally offend + gladiators. + + "The Infant Prodigy performed wonders. He overcame his four tiger + whelps with ease, and with no other hurt than the loss of a portion + of his scalp. The General Slaughter was rendered with a + faithfulness to details which reflects the highest credit upon the + late participants in it. + + "Upon the whole, last night's performances shed honor not only upon + the management but upon the city that encourages and sustains such + wholesome and instructive entertainments. We would simply suggest + that the practice of vulgar young boys in the gallery of shying + peanuts and paper pellets at the tigers, and saying "Hi-yi!" and + manifesting approbation or dissatisfaction by such observations as + "Bully for the lion!" "Go it, Gladdy!" "Boots!" "Speech!" "Take + a walk round the block!" and so on, are extremely reprehensible, + when the Emperor is present, and ought to be stopped by the police. + Several times last night, when the supernumeraries entered the arena + to drag out the bodies, the young ruffians in the gallery shouted, + "Supe! supe!" and also, "Oh, what a coat!" and "Why don't you pad + them shanks?" and made use of various other remarks expressive of + derision. These things are very annoying to the audience. + + "A matinee for the little folks is promised for this afternoon, on + which occasion several martyrs will be eaten by the tigers. The + regular performance will continue every night till further notice. + Material change of programme every evening. Benefit of Valerian, + Tuesday, 29th, if he lives." + + +I have been a dramatic critic myself, in my time, and I was often +surprised to notice how much more I knew about Hamlet than Forrest did; +and it gratifies me to observe, now, how much better my brethren of +ancient times knew how a broad sword battle ought to be fought than the +gladiators. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +So far, good. If any man has a right to feel proud of himself, and +satisfied, surely it is I. For I have written about the Coliseum, and +the gladiators, the martyrs, and the lions, and yet have never once used +the phrase "butchered to make a Roman holiday." I am the only free white +man of mature age, who has accomplished this since Byron originated the +expression. + +Butchered to make a Roman holiday sounds well for the first seventeen or +eighteen hundred thousand times one sees it in print, but after that it +begins to grow tiresome. I find it in all the books concerning Rome--and +here latterly it reminds me of Judge Oliver. Oliver was a young lawyer, +fresh from the schools, who had gone out to the deserts of Nevada to +begin life. He found that country, and our ways of life, there, in those +early days, different from life in New England or Paris. But he put on a +woollen shirt and strapped a navy revolver to his person, took to the +bacon and beans of the country, and determined to do in Nevada as Nevada +did. Oliver accepted the situation so completely that although he must +have sorrowed over many of his trials, he never complained--that is, he +never complained but once. He, two others, and myself, started to the +new silver mines in the Humboldt mountains--he to be Probate Judge of +Humboldt county, and we to mine. The distance was two hundred miles. It +was dead of winter. We bought a two-horse wagon and put eighteen hundred +pounds of bacon, flour, beans, blasting-powder, picks and shovels in it; +we bought two sorry-looking Mexican "plugs," with the hair turned the +wrong way and more corners on their bodies than there are on the mosque +of Omar; we hitched up and started. It was a dreadful trip. But Oliver +did not complain. The horses dragged the wagon two miles from town and +then gave out. Then we three pushed the wagon seven miles, and Oliver +moved ahead and pulled the horses after him by the bits. We complained, +but Oliver did not. The ground was frozen, and it froze our backs while +we slept; the wind swept across our faces and froze our noses. Oliver +did not complain. Five days of pushing the wagon by day and freezing by +night brought us to the bad part of the journey--the Forty Mile Desert, +or the Great American Desert, if you please. Still, this +mildest-mannered man that ever was, had not complained. We started across +at eight in the morning, pushing through sand that had no bottom; toiling +all day long by the wrecks of a thousand wagons, the skeletons of ten +thousand oxen; by wagon-tires enough to hoop the Washington Monument to +the top, and ox-chains enough to girdle Long Island; by human graves; +with our throats parched always, with thirst; lips bleeding from the +alkali dust; hungry, perspiring, and very, very weary--so weary that when +we dropped in the sand every fifty yards to rest the horses, we could +hardly keep from going to sleep--no complaints from Oliver: none the next +morning at three o'clock, when we got across, tired to death. + +Awakened two or three nights afterward at midnight, in a narrow canon, by +the snow falling on our faces, and appalled at the imminent danger of +being "snowed in," we harnessed up and pushed on till eight in the +morning, passed the "Divide" and knew we were saved. No complaints. +Fifteen days of hardship and fatigue brought us to the end of the two +hundred miles, and the Judge had not complained. We wondered if any +thing could exasperate him. We built a Humboldt house. It is done in +this way. You dig a square in the steep base of the mountain, and set up +two uprights and top them with two joists. Then you stretch a great +sheet of "cotton domestic" from the point where the joists join the +hill-side down over the joists to the ground; this makes the roof and the +front of the mansion; the sides and back are the dirt walls your digging +has left. A chimney is easily made by turning up one corner of the roof. +Oliver was sitting alone in this dismal den, one night, by a sage-brush +fire, writing poetry; he was very fond of digging poetry out of himself +--or blasting it out when it came hard. He heard an animal's footsteps +close to the roof; a stone or two and some dirt came through and fell by +him. He grew uneasy and said "Hi!--clear out from there, can't you!" +--from time to time. But by and by he fell asleep where he sat, and pretty +soon a mule fell down the chimney! The fire flew in every direction, and +Oliver went over backwards. About ten nights after that, he recovered +confidence enough to go to writing poetry again. Again he dozed off to +sleep, and again a mule fell down the chimney. This time, about half of +that side of the house came in with the mule. Struggling to get up, the +mule kicked the candle out and smashed most of the kitchen furniture, and +raised considerable dust. These violent awakenings must have been +annoying to Oliver, but he never complained. He moved to a mansion on +the opposite side of the canon, because he had noticed the mules did not +go there. One night about eight o'clock he was endeavoring to finish his +poem, when a stone rolled in--then a hoof appeared below the canvas--then +part of a cow--the after part. He leaned back in dread, and shouted +"Hooy! hooy! get out of this!" and the cow struggled manfully--lost +ground steadily--dirt and dust streamed down, and before Oliver could get +well away, the entire cow crashed through on to the table and made a +shapeless wreck of every thing! + +Then, for the first time in his life, I think, Oliver complained. He +said, + +"This thing is growing monotonous!" + +Then he resigned his judgeship and left Humboldt county. "Butchered to +make a Roman holyday" has grown monotonous to me. + +In this connection I wish to say one word about Michael Angelo +Buonarotti. I used to worship the mighty genius of Michael Angelo--that +man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture--great in +every thing he undertook. But I do not want Michael Angelo for +breakfast--for luncheon--for dinner--for tea--for supper--for between +meals. I like a change, occasionally. In Genoa, he designed every +thing; in Milan he or his pupils designed every thing; he designed the +Lake of Como; in Padua, Verona, Venice, Bologna, who did we ever hear of, +from guides, but Michael Angelo? In Florence, he painted every thing, +designed every thing, nearly, and what he did not design he used to sit +on a favorite stone and look at, and they showed us the stone. In Pisa +he designed every thing but the old shot-tower, and they would have +attributed that to him if it had not been so awfully out of the +perpendicular. He designed the piers of Leghorn and the custom house +regulations of Civita Vecchia. But, here--here it is frightful. He +designed St. Peter's; he designed the Pope; he designed the Pantheon, the +uniform of the Pope's soldiers, the Tiber, the Vatican, the Coliseum, the +Capitol, the Tarpeian Rock, the Barberini Palace, St. John Lateran, the +Campagna, the Appian Way, the Seven Hills, the Baths of Caracalla, the +Claudian Aqueduct, the Cloaca Maxima--the eternal bore designed the +Eternal City, and unless all men and books do lie, he painted every thing +in it! Dan said the other day to the guide, "Enough, enough, enough! +Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say that the Creator made Italy from +designs by Michael Angelo!" + +I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled +with a blessed peace, as I did yesterday when I learned that Michael +Angelo was dead. + +But we have taken it out of this guide. He has marched us through miles +of pictures and sculpture in the vast corridors of the Vatican; and +through miles of pictures and sculpture in twenty other palaces; he has +shown us the great picture in the Sistine Chapel, and frescoes enough to +frescoe the heavens--pretty much all done by Michael Angelo. So with him +we have played that game which has vanquished so many guides for us +--imbecility and idiotic questions. These creatures never suspect--they +have no idea of a sarcasm. + +He shows us a figure and says: "Statoo brunzo." (Bronze statue.) + +We look at it indifferently and the doctor asks: "By Michael Angelo?" + +"No--not know who." + +Then he shows us the ancient Roman Forum. The doctor asks: "Michael +Angelo?" + +A stare from the guide. "No--thousan' year before he is born." + +Then an Egyptian obelisk. Again: "Michael Angelo?" + +"Oh, mon dieu, genteelmen! Zis is two thousan' year before he is born!" + +He grows so tired of that unceasing question sometimes, that he dreads to +show us any thing at all. The wretch has tried all the ways he can think +of to make us comprehend that Michael Angelo is only responsible for the +creation of a part of the world, but somehow he has not succeeded yet. +Relief for overtasked eyes and brain from study and sightseeing is +necessary, or we shall become idiotic sure enough. Therefore this guide +must continue to suffer. If he does not enjoy it, so much the worse for +him. We do. + +In this place I may as well jot down a chapter concerning those necessary +nuisances, European guides. Many a man has wished in his heart he could +do without his guide; but knowing he could not, has wished he could get +some amusement out of him as a remuneration for the affliction of his +society. We accomplished this latter matter, and if our experience can +be made useful to others they are welcome to it. + +Guides know about enough English to tangle every thing up so that a man +can make neither head or tail of it. They know their story by heart--the +history of every statue, painting, cathedral or other wonder they show +you. They know it and tell it as a parrot would--and if you interrupt, +and throw them off the track, they have to go back and begin over again. +All their lives long, they are employed in showing strange things to +foreigners and listening to their bursts of admiration. It is human +nature to take delight in exciting admiration. It is what prompts +children to say "smart" things, and do absurd ones, and in other ways +"show off" when company is present. It is what makes gossips turn out in +rain and storm to go and be the first to tell a startling bit of news. +Think, then, what a passion it becomes with a guide, whose privilege it +is, every day, to show to strangers wonders that throw them into perfect +ecstasies of admiration! He gets so that he could not by any possibility +live in a soberer atmosphere. After we discovered this, we never went +into ecstasies any more--we never admired any thing--we never showed any +but impassible faces and stupid indifference in the presence of the +sublimest wonders a guide had to display. We had found their weak point. +We have made good use of it ever since. We have made some of those +people savage, at times, but we have never lost our own serenity. + +The doctor asks the questions, generally, because he can keep his +countenance, and look more like an inspired idiot, and throw more +imbecility into the tone of his voice than any man that lives. It comes +natural to him. + +The guides in Genoa are delighted to secure an American party, because +Americans so much wonder, and deal so much in sentiment and emotion +before any relic of Columbus. Our guide there fidgeted about as if he +had swallowed a spring mattress. He was full of animation--full of +impatience. He said: + +"Come wis me, genteelmen!--come! I show you ze letter writing by +Christopher Colombo!--write it himself!--write it wis his own hand! +--come!" + +He took us to the municipal palace. After much impressive fumbling of +keys and opening of locks, the stained and aged document was spread +before us. The guide's eyes sparkled. He danced about us and tapped the +parchment with his finger: + +"What I tell you, genteelmen! Is it not so? See! handwriting +Christopher Colombo!--write it himself!" + +We looked indifferent--unconcerned. The doctor examined the document +very deliberately, during a painful pause.--Then he said, without any +show of interest: + +"Ah--Ferguson--what--what did you say was the name of the party who wrote +this?" + +"Christopher Colombo! ze great Christopher Colombo!" + +Another deliberate examination. + +"Ah--did he write it himself; or--or how?" + +"He write it himself!--Christopher Colombo! He's own hand-writing, write +by himself!" + +Then the doctor laid the document down and said: + +"Why, I have seen boys in America only fourteen years old that could +write better than that." + +"But zis is ze great Christo--" + +"I don't care who it is! It's the worst writing I ever saw. Now you +musn't think you can impose on us because we are strangers. We are not +fools, by a good deal. If you have got any specimens of penmanship of +real merit, trot them out!--and if you haven't, drive on!" + +We drove on. The guide was considerably shaken up, but he made one more +venture. He had something which he thought would overcome us. He said: + +"Ah, genteelmen, you come wis me! I show you beautiful, O, magnificent +bust Christopher Colombo!--splendid, grand, magnificent!" + +He brought us before the beautiful bust--for it was beautiful--and sprang +back and struck an attitude: + +"Ah, look, genteelmen!--beautiful, grand,--bust Christopher Colombo! +--beautiful bust, beautiful pedestal!" + +The doctor put up his eye-glass--procured for such occasions: + +"Ah--what did you say this gentleman's name was?" + +"Christopher Colombo!--ze great Christopher Colombo!" + +"Christopher Colombo--the great Christopher Colombo. Well, what did he +do?" + +"Discover America!--discover America, Oh, ze devil!" + +"Discover America. No--that statement will hardly wash. We are just +from America ourselves. We heard nothing about it. Christopher Colombo +--pleasant name--is--is he dead?" + +"Oh, corpo di Baccho!--three hundred year!" + +"What did he die of?" + +"I do not know!--I can not tell." + +"Small-pox, think?" + +"I do not know, genteelmen!--I do not know what he die of!" + +"Measles, likely?" + +"May be--may be--I do not know--I think he die of somethings." + +"Parents living?" + +"Im-poseeeble!" + +"Ah--which is the bust and which is the pedestal?" + +"Santa Maria!--zis ze bust!--zis ze pedestal!" + +"Ah, I see, I see--happy combination--very happy combination, indeed. +Is--is this the first time this gentleman was ever on a bust?" + +That joke was lost on the foreigner--guides can not master the subtleties +of the American joke. + +We have made it interesting for this Roman guide. Yesterday we spent +three or four hours in the Vatican, again, that wonderful world of +curiosities. We came very near expressing interest, sometimes--even +admiration--it was very hard to keep from it. We succeeded though. +Nobody else ever did, in the Vatican museums. The guide was bewildered +--non-plussed. He walked his legs off, nearly, hunting up extraordinary +things, and exhausted all his ingenuity on us, but it was a failure; we +never showed any interest in any thing. He had reserved what he +considered to be his greatest wonder till the last--a royal Egyptian +mummy, the best preserved in the world, perhaps. He took us there. He +felt so sure, this time, that some of his old enthusiasm came back to +him: + +"See, genteelmen!--Mummy! Mummy!" + +The eye-glass came up as calmly, as deliberately as ever. + +"Ah,--Ferguson--what did I understand you to say the gentleman's name +was?" + +"Name?--he got no name!--Mummy!--'Gyptian mummy!" + +"Yes, yes. Born here?" + +"No! 'Gyptian mummy!" + +"Ah, just so. Frenchman, I presume?" + +"No!--not Frenchman, not Roman!--born in Egypta!" + +"Born in Egypta. Never heard of Egypta before. Foreign locality, +likely. Mummy--mummy. How calm he is--how self-possessed. Is, ah--is +he dead?" + +"Oh, sacre bleu, been dead three thousan' year!" + +The doctor turned on him savagely: + +"Here, now, what do you mean by such conduct as this! Playing us for +Chinamen because we are strangers and trying to learn! Trying to impose +your vile second-hand carcasses on us!--thunder and lightning, I've a +notion to--to--if you've got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out!--or by +George we'll brain you!" + +We make it exceedingly interesting for this Frenchman. However, he has +paid us back, partly, without knowing it. He came to the hotel this +morning to ask if we were up, and he endeavored as well as he could to +describe us, so that the landlord would know which persons he meant. He +finished with the casual remark that we were lunatics. The observation +was so innocent and so honest that it amounted to a very good thing for a +guide to say. + +There is one remark (already mentioned,) which never yet has failed to +disgust these guides. We use it always, when we can think of nothing +else to say. After they have exhausted their enthusiasm pointing out +to us and praising the beauties of some ancient bronze image or +broken-legged statue, we look at it stupidly and in silence for five, +ten, fifteen minutes--as long as we can hold out, in fact--and then ask: + +"Is--is he dead?" + +That conquers the serenest of them. It is not what they are looking for +--especially a new guide. Our Roman Ferguson is the most patient, +unsuspecting, long-suffering subject we have had yet. We shall be sorry +to part with him. We have enjoyed his society very much. We trust he +has enjoyed ours, but we are harassed with doubts. + +We have been in the catacombs. It was like going down into a very deep +cellar, only it was a cellar which had no end to it. The narrow passages +are roughly hewn in the rock, and on each hand as you pass along, the +hollowed shelves are carved out, from three to fourteen deep; each held a +corpse once. There are names, and Christian symbols, and prayers, or +sentences expressive of Christian hopes, carved upon nearly every +sarcophagus. The dates belong away back in the dawn of the Christian +era, of course. Here, in these holes in the ground, the first Christians +sometimes burrowed to escape persecution. They crawled out at night to +get food, but remained under cover in the day time. The priest told us +that St. Sebastian lived under ground for some time while he was being +hunted; he went out one day, and the soldiery discovered and shot him to +death with arrows. Five or six of the early Popes--those who reigned +about sixteen hundred years ago--held their papal courts and advised with +their clergy in the bowels of the earth. During seventeen years--from +A.D. 235 to A.D. 252--the Popes did not appear above ground. Four were +raised to the great office during that period. Four years apiece, or +thereabouts. It is very suggestive of the unhealthiness of underground +graveyards as places of residence. One Pope afterward spent his entire +pontificate in the catacombs--eight years. Another was discovered in +them and murdered in the episcopal chair. There was no satisfaction in +being a Pope in those days. There were too many annoyances. There are +one hundred and sixty catacombs under Rome, each with its maze of narrow +passages crossing and recrossing each other and each passage walled to +the top with scooped graves its entire length. A careful estimate makes +the length of the passages of all the catacombs combined foot up nine +hundred miles, and their graves number seven millions. We did not go +through all the passages of all the catacombs. We were very anxious to +do it, and made the necessary arrangements, but our too limited time +obliged us to give up the idea. So we only groped through the dismal +labyrinth of St. Callixtus, under the Church of St. Sebastian. In the +various catacombs are small chapels rudely hewn in the stones, and here +the early Christians often held their religious services by dim, ghostly +lights. Think of mass and a sermon away down in those tangled caverns +under ground! + +In the catacombs were buried St. Cecilia, St. Agnes, and several other of +the most celebrated of the saints. In the catacomb of St. Callixtus, St. +Bridget used to remain long hours in holy contemplation, and St. Charles +Borromeo was wont to spend whole nights in prayer there. It was also the +scene of a very marvelous thing. + + "Here the heart of St. Philip Neri was so inflamed with divine love + as to burst his ribs." + +I find that grave statement in a book published in New York in 1808, and +written by "Rev. William H. Neligan, LL.D., M. A., Trinity College, +Dublin; Member of the Archaeological Society of Great Britain." +Therefore, I believe it. Otherwise, I could not. Under other +circumstances I should have felt a curiosity to know what Philip had for +dinner. + +This author puts my credulity on its mettle every now and then. He tells +of one St. Joseph Calasanctius whose house in Rome he visited; he visited +only the house--the priest has been dead two hundred years. He says the +Virgin Mary appeared to this saint. Then he continues: + + "His tongue and his heart, which were found after nearly a century + to be whole, when the body was disinterred before his canonization, + are still preserved in a glass case, and after two centuries the + heart is still whole. When the French troops came to Rome, and when + Pius VII. was carried away prisoner, blood dropped from it." + +To read that in a book written by a monk far back in the Middle Ages, +would surprise no one; it would sound natural and proper; but when it is +seriously stated in the middle of the nineteenth century, by a man of +finished education, an LL.D., M. A., and an Archaeological magnate, it +sounds strangely enough. Still, I would gladly change my unbelief for +Neligan's faith, and let him make the conditions as hard as he pleased. + +The old gentleman's undoubting, unquestioning simplicity has a rare +freshness about it in these matter-of-fact railroading and telegraphing +days. Hear him, concerning the church of Ara Coeli: + + "In the roof of the church, directly above the high altar, is + engraved, 'Regina Coeli laetare Alleluia." In the sixth century + Rome was visited by a fearful pestilence. Gregory the Great urged + the people to do penance, and a general procession was formed. It + was to proceed from Ara Coeli to St. Peter's. As it passed before + the mole of Adrian, now the Castle of St. Angelo, the sound of + heavenly voices was heard singing (it was Easter morn,) Regina + Coeli, laetare! alleluia! quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia! + resurrexit sicut dixit; alleluia!" The Pontiff, carrying in his + hands the portrait of the Virgin, (which is over the high altar and + is said to have been painted by St. Luke,) answered, with the + astonished people, 'Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia!' At the same time + an angel was seen to put up a sword in a scabbard, and the + pestilence ceased on the same day. There are four circumstances + which 'CONFIRM'--[The italics are mine--M. T.]--this miracle: the + annual procession which takes place in the western church on the + feast of St Mark; the statue of St. Michael, placed on the mole of + Adrian, which has since that time been called the Castle of St. + Angelo; the antiphon Regina Coeli which the Catholic church sings + during paschal time; and the inscription in the church." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +From the sanguinary sports of the Holy Inquisition; the slaughter of the +Coliseum; and the dismal tombs of the Catacombs, I naturally pass to the +picturesque horrors of the Capuchin Convent. We stopped a moment in a +small chapel in the church to admire a picture of St. Michael vanquishing +Satan--a picture which is so beautiful that I can not but think it +belongs to the reviled "Renaissance," notwithstanding I believe they told +us one of the ancient old masters painted it--and then we descended into +the vast vault underneath. + +Here was a spectacle for sensitive nerves! Evidently the old masters had +been at work in this place. There were six divisions in the apartment, +and each division was ornamented with a style of decoration peculiar to +itself--and these decorations were in every instance formed of human +bones! There were shapely arches, built wholly of thigh bones; there +were startling pyramids, built wholly of grinning skulls; there were +quaint architectural structures of various kinds, built of shin bones and +the bones of the arm; on the wall were elaborate frescoes, whose curving +vines were made of knotted human vertebrae; whose delicate tendrils were +made of sinews and tendons; whose flowers were formed of knee-caps and +toe-nails. Every lasting portion of the human frame was represented in +these intricate designs (they were by Michael Angelo, I think,) and there +was a careful finish about the work, and an attention to details that +betrayed the artist's love of his labors as well as his schooled ability. +I asked the good-natured monk who accompanied us, who did this? And he +said, "We did it"--meaning himself and his brethren up stairs. I could +see that the old friar took a high pride in his curious show. We made +him talkative by exhibiting an interest we never betrayed to guides. + +"Who were these people?" + +"We--up stairs--Monks of the Capuchin order--my brethren." + +"How many departed monks were required to upholster these six parlors?" + +"These are the bones of four thousand." + +"It took a long time to get enough?" + +"Many, many centuries." + +"Their different parts are well separated--skulls in one room, legs in +another, ribs in another--there would be stirring times here for a while +if the last trump should blow. Some of the brethren might get hold of +the wrong leg, in the confusion, and the wrong skull, and find themselves +limping, and looking through eyes that were wider apart or closer +together than they were used to. You can not tell any of these parties +apart, I suppose?" + +"Oh, yes, I know many of them." + +He put his finger on a skull. "This was Brother Anselmo--dead three +hundred years--a good man." + +He touched another. "This was Brother Alexander--dead two hundred and +eighty years. This was Brother Carlo--dead about as long." + +Then he took a skull and held it in his hand, and looked reflectively +upon it, after the manner of the grave-digger when he discourses of +Yorick. + +"This," he said, "was Brother Thomas. He was a young prince, the scion +of a proud house that traced its lineage back to the grand old days of +Rome well nigh two thousand years ago. He loved beneath his estate. His +family persecuted him; persecuted the girl, as well. They drove her from +Rome; he followed; he sought her far and wide; he found no trace of her. +He came back and offered his broken heart at our altar and his weary life +to the service of God. But look you. Shortly his father died, and +likewise his mother. The girl returned, rejoicing. She sought every +where for him whose eyes had used to look tenderly into hers out of this +poor skull, but she could not find him. At last, in this coarse garb we +wear, she recognized him in the street. He knew her. It was too late. +He fell where he stood. They took him up and brought him here. He never +spoke afterward. Within the week he died. You can see the color of his +hair--faded, somewhat--by this thin shred that clings still to the +temple. This, [taking up a thigh bone,] was his. The veins of this +leaf in the decorations over your head, were his finger-joints, a hundred +and fifty years ago." + +This business-like way of illustrating a touching story of the heart by +laying the several fragments of the lover before us and naming them, was +as grotesque a performance, and as ghastly, as any I ever witnessed. I +hardly knew whether to smile or shudder. There are nerves and muscles in +our frames whose functions and whose methods of working it seems a sort +of sacrilege to describe by cold physiological names and surgical +technicalities, and the monk's talk suggested to me something of this +kind. Fancy a surgeon, with his nippers lifting tendons, muscles and +such things into view, out of the complex machinery of a corpse, and +observing, "Now this little nerve quivers--the vibration is imparted to +this muscle--from here it is passed to this fibrous substance; here its +ingredients are separated by the chemical action of the blood--one part +goes to the heart and thrills it with what is popularly termed emotion, +another part follows this nerve to the brain and communicates +intelligence of a startling character--the third part glides along this +passage and touches the spring connected with the fluid receptacles that +lie in the rear of the eye. Thus, by this simple and beautiful process, +the party is informed that his mother is dead, and he weeps." Horrible! + +I asked the monk if all the brethren up stairs expected to be put in this +place when they died. He answered quietly: + +"We must all lie here at last." + +See what one can accustom himself to.--The reflection that he must some +day be taken apart like an engine or a clock, or like a house whose owner +is gone, and worked up into arches and pyramids and hideous frescoes, did +not distress this monk in the least. I thought he even looked as if he +were thinking, with complacent vanity, that his own skull would look well +on top of the heap and his own ribs add a charm to the frescoes which +possibly they lacked at present. + +Here and there, in ornamental alcoves, stretched upon beds of bones, lay +dead and dried-up monks, with lank frames dressed in the black robes one +sees ordinarily upon priests. We examined one closely. The skinny hands +were clasped upon the breast; two lustreless tufts of hair stuck to the +skull; the skin was brown and sunken; it stretched tightly over the cheek +bones and made them stand out sharply; the crisp dead eyes were deep in +the sockets; the nostrils were painfully prominent, the end of the nose +being gone; the lips had shriveled away from the yellow teeth: and +brought down to us through the circling years, and petrified there, was a +weird laugh a full century old! + +It was the jolliest laugh, but yet the most dreadful, that one can +imagine. Surely, I thought, it must have been a most extraordinary joke +this veteran produced with his latest breath, that he has not got done +laughing at it yet. At this moment I saw that the old instinct was +strong upon the boys, and I said we had better hurry to St. Peter's. +They were trying to keep from asking, "Is--is he dead?" + +It makes me dizzy, to think of the Vatican--of its wilderness of statues, +paintings, and curiosities of every description and every age. The "old +masters" (especially in sculpture,) fairly swarm, there. I can not write +about the Vatican. I think I shall never remember any thing I saw there +distinctly but the mummies, and the Transfiguration, by Raphael, and some +other things it is not necessary to mention now. I shall remember the +Transfiguration partly because it was placed in a room almost by itself; +partly because it is acknowledged by all to be the first oil painting in +the world; and partly because it was wonderfully beautiful. The colors +are fresh and rich, the "expression," I am told, is fine, the "feeling" +is lively, the "tone" is good, the "depth" is profound, and the width is +about four and a half feet, I should judge. It is a picture that really +holds one's attention; its beauty is fascinating. It is fine enough to +be a Renaissance. A remark I made a while ago suggests a thought--and a +hope. Is it not possible that the reason I find such charms in this +picture is because it is out of the crazy chaos of the galleries? If +some of the others were set apart, might not they be beautiful? If this +were set in the midst of the tempest of pictures one finds in the vast +galleries of the Roman palaces, would I think it so handsome? If, up to +this time, I had seen only one "old master" in each palace, instead of +acres and acres of walls and ceilings fairly papered with them, might I +not have a more civilized opinion of the old masters than I have now? I +think so. When I was a school-boy and was to have a new knife, I could +not make up my mind as to which was the prettiest in the show-case, and I +did not think any of them were particularly pretty; and so I chose with a +heavy heart. But when I looked at my purchase, at home, where no +glittering blades came into competition with it, I was astonished to see +how handsome it was. To this day my new hats look better out of the shop +than they did in it with other new hats. It begins to dawn upon me, now, +that possibly, what I have been taking for uniform ugliness in the +galleries may be uniform beauty after all. I honestly hope it is, to +others, but certainly it is not to me. Perhaps the reason I used to +enjoy going to the Academy of Fine Arts in New York was because there +were but a few hundred paintings in it, and it did not surfeit me to go +through the list. I suppose the Academy was bacon and beans in the +Forty-Mile Desert, and a European gallery is a state dinner of thirteen +courses. One leaves no sign after him of the one dish, but the thirteen +frighten away his appetite and give him no satisfaction. + +There is one thing I am certain of, though. With all the Michael +Angelos, the Raphaels, the Guidos and the other old masters, the sublime +history of Rome remains unpainted! They painted Virgins enough, and +popes enough and saintly scarecrows enough, to people Paradise, almost, +and these things are all they did paint. "Nero fiddling o'er burning +Rome," the assassination of Caesar, the stirring spectacle of a hundred +thousand people bending forward with rapt interest, in the coliseum, to +see two skillful gladiators hacking away each others' lives, a tiger +springing upon a kneeling martyr--these and a thousand other matters +which we read of with a living interest, must be sought for only in +books--not among the rubbish left by the old masters--who are no more, I +have the satisfaction of informing the public. + +They did paint, and they did carve in marble, one historical scene, and +one only, (of any great historical consequence.) And what was it and why +did they choose it, particularly? It was the Rape of the Sabines, and +they chose it for the legs and busts. + +I like to look at statues, however, and I like to look at pictures, also +--even of monks looking up in sacred ecstacy, and monks looking down in +meditation, and monks skirmishing for something to eat--and therefore I +drop ill nature to thank the papal government for so jealously guarding +and so industriously gathering up these things; and for permitting me, a +stranger and not an entirely friendly one, to roam at will and unmolested +among them, charging me nothing, and only requiring that I shall behave +myself simply as well as I ought to behave in any other man's house. I +thank the Holy Father right heartily, and I wish him long life and plenty +of happiness. + +The Popes have long been the patrons and preservers of art, just as our +new, practical Republic is the encourager and upholder of mechanics. In +their Vatican is stored up all that is curious and beautiful in art; in +our Patent Office is hoarded all that is curious or useful in mechanics. +When a man invents a new style of horse-collar or discovers a new and +superior method of telegraphing, our government issues a patent to him +that is worth a fortune; when a man digs up an ancient statue in the +Campagna, the Pope gives him a fortune in gold coin. We can make +something of a guess at a man's character by the style of nose he carries +on his face. The Vatican and the Patent Office are governmental noses, +and they bear a deal of character about them. + +The guide showed us a colossal statue of Jupiter, in the Vatican, which +he said looked so damaged and rusty--so like the God of the Vagabonds +--because it had but recently been dug up in the Campagna. He asked how +much we supposed this Jupiter was worth? I replied, with intelligent +promptness, that he was probably worth about four dollars--may be four +and a half. "A hundred thousand dollars!" Ferguson said. Ferguson +said, further, that the Pope permits no ancient work of this kind to +leave his dominions. He appoints a commission to examine discoveries +like this and report upon the value; then the Pope pays the discoverer +one-half of that assessed value and takes the statue. He said this +Jupiter was dug from a field which had just been bought for thirty-six +thousand dollars, so the first crop was a good one for the new farmer. +I do not know whether Ferguson always tells the truth or not, but I +suppose he does. I know that an exorbitant export duty is exacted upon +all pictures painted by the old masters, in order to discourage the sale +of those in the private collections. I am satisfied, also, that genuine +old masters hardly exist at all, in America, because the cheapest and +most insignificant of them are valued at the price of a fine farm. I +proposed to buy a small trifle of a Raphael, myself, but the price of it +was eighty thousand dollars, the export duty would have made it +considerably over a hundred, and so I studied on it awhile and concluded +not to take it. + +I wish here to mention an inscription I have seen, before I forget it: + +"Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth TO MEN OF GOOD WILL!" It is +not good scripture, but it is sound Catholic and human nature. + +This is in letters of gold around the apsis of a mosaic group at the side +of the 'scala santa', church of St. John Lateran, the Mother and Mistress +of all the Catholic churches of the world. The group represents the +Saviour, St. Peter, Pope Leo, St. Silvester, Constantine and Charlemagne. +Peter is giving the pallium to the Pope, and a standard to Charlemagne. +The Saviour is giving the keys to St. Silvester, and a standard to +Constantine. No prayer is offered to the Saviour, who seems to be of +little importance any where in Rome; but an inscription below says, +"Blessed Peter, give life to Pope Leo and victory to king Charles." It +does not say, "Intercede for us, through the Saviour, with the Father, +for this boon," but "Blessed Peter, give it us." + +In all seriousness--without meaning to be frivolous--without meaning to +be irreverent, and more than all, without meaning to be blasphemous,--I +state as my simple deduction from the things I have seen and the things I +have heard, that the Holy Personages rank thus in Rome: + +First--"The Mother of God"--otherwise the Virgin Mary. + +Second--The Deity. + +Third--Peter. + +Fourth--Some twelve or fifteen canonized Popes and martyrs. + +Fifth--Jesus Christ the Saviour--(but always as an infant in arms.) + +I may be wrong in this--my judgment errs often, just as is the case with +other men's--but it is my judgment, be it good or bad. + +Just here I will mention something that seems curious to me. There are +no "Christ's Churches" in Rome, and no "Churches of the Holy Ghost," that +I can discover. There are some four hundred churches, but about a fourth +of them seem to be named for the Madonna and St. Peter. There are so +many named for Mary that they have to be distinguished by all sorts of +affixes, if I understand the matter rightly. Then we have churches of +St. Louis; St. Augustine; St. Agnes; St. Calixtus; St. Lorenzo in Lucina; +St. Lorenzo in Damaso; St. Cecilia; St. Athanasius; St. Philip Neri; St. +Catherine, St. Dominico, and a multitude of lesser saints whose names are +not familiar in the world--and away down, clear out of the list of the +churches, comes a couple of hospitals: one of them is named for the +Saviour and the other for the Holy Ghost! + +Day after day and night after night we have wandered among the crumbling +wonders of Rome; day after day and night after night we have fed upon the +dust and decay of five-and-twenty centuries--have brooded over them by +day and dreampt of them by night till sometimes we seemed moldering away +ourselves, and growing defaced and cornerless, and liable at any moment +to fall a prey to some antiquary and be patched in the legs, and +"restored" with an unseemly nose, and labeled wrong and dated wrong, and +set up in the Vatican for poets to drivel about and vandals to scribble +their names on forever and forevermore. + +But the surest way to stop writing about Rome is to stop. I wished to +write a real "guide-book" chapter on this fascinating city, but I could +not do it, because I have felt all the time like a boy in a candy-shop +--there was every thing to choose from, and yet no choice. I have drifted +along hopelessly for a hundred pages of manuscript without knowing where +to commence. I will not commence at all. Our passports have been +examined. We will go to Naples. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +The ship is lying here in the harbor of Naples--quarantined. She has +been here several days and will remain several more. We that came by +rail from Rome have escaped this misfortune. Of course no one is allowed +to go on board the ship, or come ashore from her. She is a prison, now. +The passengers probably spend the long, blazing days looking out from +under the awnings at Vesuvius and the beautiful city--and in swearing. +Think of ten days of this sort of pastime!--We go out every day in a boat +and request them to come ashore. It soothes them. We lie ten steps from +the ship and tell them how splendid the city is; and how much better the +hotel fare is here than any where else in Europe; and how cool it is; and +what frozen continents of ice cream there are; and what a time we are +having cavorting about the country and sailing to the islands in the Bay. +This tranquilizes them. + + ASCENT OF VESUVIUS. + +I shall remember our trip to Vesuvius for many a day--partly because of +its sight-seeing experiences, but chiefly on account of the fatigue of +the journey. Two or three of us had been resting ourselves among the +tranquil and beautiful scenery of the island of Ischia, eighteen miles +out in the harbor, for two days; we called it "resting," but I do not +remember now what the resting consisted of, for when we got back to +Naples we had not slept for forty-eight hours. We were just about to go +to bed early in the evening, and catch up on some of the sleep we had +lost, when we heard of this Vesuvius expedition. There was to be eight +of us in the party, and we were to leave Naples at midnight. We laid in +some provisions for the trip, engaged carriages to take us to +Annunciation, and then moved about the city, to keep awake, till twelve. +We got away punctually, and in the course of an hour and a half arrived +at the town of Annunciation. Annunciation is the very last place under +the sun. In other towns in Italy the people lie around quietly and wait +for you to ask them a question or do some overt act that can be charged +for--but in Annunciation they have lost even that fragment of delicacy; +they seize a lady's shawl from a chair and hand it to her and charge a +penny; they open a carriage door, and charge for it--shut it when you get +out, and charge for it; they help you to take off a duster--two cents; +brush your clothes and make them worse than they were before--two cents; +smile upon you--two cents; bow, with a lick-spittle smirk, hat in hand +--two cents; they volunteer all information, such as that the mules will +arrive presently--two cents--warm day, sir--two cents--take you four +hours to make the ascent--two cents. And so they go. They crowd you +--infest you--swarm about you, and sweat and smell offensively, and look +sneaking and mean, and obsequious. There is no office too degrading for +them to perform, for money. I have had no opportunity to find out any +thing about the upper classes by my own observation, but from what I hear +said about them I judge that what they lack in one or two of the bad +traits the canaille have, they make up in one or two others that are +worse. How the people beg!--many of them very well dressed, too. + +I said I knew nothing against the upper classes by personal observation. +I must recall it! I had forgotten. What I saw their bravest and their +fairest do last night, the lowest multitude that could be scraped up out +of the purlieus of Christendom would blush to do, I think. They +assembled by hundreds, and even thousands, in the great Theatre of San +Carlo, to do--what? Why, simply, to make fun of an old woman--to deride, +to hiss, to jeer at an actress they once worshipped, but whose beauty is +faded now and whose voice has lost its former richness. Every body spoke +of the rare sport there was to be. They said the theatre would be +crammed, because Frezzolini was going to sing. It was said she could not +sing well, now, but then the people liked to see her, anyhow. And so we +went. And every time the woman sang they hissed and laughed--the whole +magnificent house--and as soon as she left the stage they called her on +again with applause. Once or twice she was encored five and six times in +succession, and received with hisses when she appeared, and discharged +with hisses and laughter when she had finished--then instantly encored +and insulted again! And how the high-born knaves enjoyed it! +White-kidded gentlemen and ladies laughed till the tears came, and +clapped their hands in very ecstacy when that unhappy old woman would +come meekly out for the sixth time, with uncomplaining patience, to meet +a storm of hisses! It was the cruelest exhibition--the most wanton, the +most unfeeling. The singer would have conquered an audience of American +rowdies by her brave, unflinching tranquillity (for she answered encore +after encore, and smiled and bowed pleasantly, and sang the best she +possibly could, and went bowing off, through all the jeers and hisses, +without ever losing countenance or temper:) and surely in any other land +than Italy her sex and her helplessness must have been an ample +protection to her--she could have needed no other. Think what a +multitude of small souls were crowded into that theatre last night. If +the manager could have filled his theatre with Neapolitan souls alone, +without the bodies, he could not have cleared less than ninety millions +of dollars. What traits of character must a man have to enable him to +help three thousand miscreants to hiss, and jeer, and laugh at one +friendless old woman, and shamefully humiliate her? He must have all +the vile, mean traits there are. My observation persuades me (I do not +like to venture beyond my own personal observation,) that the upper +classes of Naples possess those traits of character. Otherwise they may +be very good people; I can not say. + + + ASCENT OF VESUVIUS--CONTINUED. + +In this city of Naples, they believe in and support one of the +wretchedest of all the religious impostures one can find in Italy--the +miraculous liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. Twice a year the +priests assemble all the people at the Cathedral, and get out this vial +of clotted blood and let them see it slowly dissolve and become liquid +--and every day for eight days, this dismal farce is repeated, while the +priests go among the crowd and collect money for the exhibition. The +first day, the blood liquefies in forty-seven minutes--the church is +crammed, then, and time must be allowed the collectors to get around: +after that it liquefies a little quicker and a little quicker, every day, +as the houses grow smaller, till on the eighth day, with only a few +dozens present to see the miracle, it liquefies in four minutes. + +And here, also, they used to have a grand procession, of priests, +citizens, soldiers, sailors, and the high dignitaries of the City +Government, once a year, to shave the head of a made-up Madonna--a +stuffed and painted image, like a milliner's dummy--whose hair +miraculously grew and restored itself every twelve months. They still +kept up this shaving procession as late as four or five years ago. It +was a source of great profit to the church that possessed the remarkable +effigy, and the ceremony of the public barbering of her was always +carried out with the greatest possible eclat and display--the more the +better, because the more excitement there was about it the larger the +crowds it drew and the heavier the revenues it produced--but at last a +day came when the Pope and his servants were unpopular in Naples, and the +City Government stopped the Madonna's annual show. + +There we have two specimens of these Neapolitans--two of the silliest +possible frauds, which half the population religiously and faithfully +believed, and the other half either believed also or else said nothing +about, and thus lent themselves to the support of the imposture. I am +very well satisfied to think the whole population believed in those poor, +cheap miracles--a people who want two cents every time they bow to you, +and who abuse a woman, are capable of it, I think. + + + ASCENT OF VESUVIUS--CONTINUED. + +These Neapolitans always ask four times as much money as they intend to +take, but if you give them what they first demand, they feel ashamed of +themselves for aiming so low, and immediately ask more. When money is to +be paid and received, there is always some vehement jawing and +gesticulating about it. One can not buy and pay for two cents' worth of +clams without trouble and a quarrel. One "course," in a two-horse +carriage, costs a franc--that is law--but the hackman always demands +more, on some pretence or other, and if he gets it he makes a new demand. +It is said that a stranger took a one-horse carriage for a course +--tariff, half a franc. He gave the man five francs, by way of experiment. +He demanded more, and received another franc. Again he demanded more, +and got a franc--demanded more, and it was refused. He grew vehement +--was again refused, and became noisy. The stranger said, "Well, give me +the seven francs again, and I will see what I can do"--and when he got +them, he handed the hackman half a franc, and he immediately asked for +two cents to buy a drink with. It may be thought that I am prejudiced. + +Perhaps I am. I would be ashamed of myself if I were not. + + + ASCENT OF VESUVIUS--CONTINUED. + +Well, as I was saying, we got our mules and horses, after an hour and a +half of bargaining with the population of Annunciation, and started +sleepily up the mountain, with a vagrant at each mule's tail who +pretended to be driving the brute along, but was really holding on and +getting himself dragged up instead. I made slow headway at first, but I +began to get dissatisfied at the idea of paying my minion five francs to +hold my mule back by the tail and keep him from going up the hill, and so +I discharged him. I got along faster then. + +We had one magnificent picture of Naples from a high point on the +mountain side. We saw nothing but the gas lamps, of course--two-thirds +of a circle, skirting the great Bay--a necklace of diamonds glinting up +through the darkness from the remote distance--less brilliant than the +stars overhead, but more softly, richly beautiful--and over all the great +city the lights crossed and recrossed each other in many and many a +sparkling line and curve. And back of the town, far around and abroad +over the miles of level campagna, were scattered rows, and circles, and +clusters of lights, all glowing like so many gems, and marking where a +score of villages were sleeping. About this time, the fellow who was +hanging on to the tail of the horse in front of me and practicing all +sorts of unnecessary cruelty upon the animal, got kicked some fourteen +rods, and this incident, together with the fairy spectacle of the lights +far in the distance, made me serenely happy, and I was glad I started to +Vesuvius. + + + ASCENT OF MOUNT VESUVIUS--CONTINUED. + +This subject will be excellent matter for a chapter, and tomorrow or next +day I will write it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + + ASCENT OF VESUVIUS--CONTINUED. + +"See Naples and die." Well, I do not know that one would necessarily die +after merely seeing it, but to attempt to live there might turn out a +little differently. To see Naples as we saw it in the early dawn from +far up on the side of Vesuvius, is to see a picture of wonderful beauty. +At that distance its dingy buildings looked white--and so, rank on rank +of balconies, windows and roofs, they piled themselves up from the blue +ocean till the colossal castle of St. Elmo topped the grand white pyramid +and gave the picture symmetry, emphasis and completeness. And when its +lilies turned to roses--when it blushed under the sun's first kiss--it +was beautiful beyond all description. One might well say, then, "See +Naples and die." The frame of the picture was charming, itself. In +front, the smooth sea--a vast mosaic of many colors; the lofty islands +swimming in a dreamy haze in the distance; at our end of the city the +stately double peak of Vesuvius, and its strong black ribs and seams of +lava stretching down to the limitless level campagna--a green carpet that +enchants the eye and leads it on and on, past clusters of trees, and +isolated houses, and snowy villages, until it shreds out in a fringe of +mist and general vagueness far away. It is from the Hermitage, there on +the side of Vesuvius, that one should "see Naples and die." + +But do not go within the walls and look at it in detail. That takes away +some of the romance of the thing. The people are filthy in their habits, +and this makes filthy streets and breeds disagreeable sights and smells. +There never was a community so prejudiced against the cholera as these +Neapolitans are. But they have good reason to be. The cholera generally +vanquishes a Neapolitan when it seizes him, because, you understand, +before the doctor can dig through the dirt and get at the disease the man +dies. The upper classes take a sea-bath every day, and are pretty +decent. + +The streets are generally about wide enough for one wagon, and how they +do swarm with people! It is Broadway repeated in every street, in every +court, in every alley! Such masses, such throngs, such multitudes of +hurrying, bustling, struggling humanity! We never saw the like of it, +hardly even in New York, I think. There are seldom any sidewalks, and +when there are, they are not often wide enough to pass a man on without +caroming on him. So everybody walks in the street--and where the street +is wide enough, carriages are forever dashing along. Why a thousand +people are not run over and crippled every day is a mystery that no man +can solve. But if there is an eighth wonder in the world, it must be the +dwelling-houses of Naples. I honestly believe a good majority of them +are a hundred feet high! And the solid brick walls are seven feet +through. You go up nine flights of stairs before you get to the "first" +floor. No, not nine, but there or thereabouts. There is a little +bird-cage of an iron railing in front of every window clear away up, up, +up, among the eternal clouds, where the roof is, and there is always +somebody looking out of every window--people of ordinary size looking +out from the first floor, people a shade smaller from the second, people +that look a little smaller yet from the third--and from thence upward +they grow smaller and smaller by a regularly graduated diminution, till +the folks in the topmost windows seem more like birds in an uncommonly +tall martin-box than any thing else. The perspective of one of these +narrow cracks of streets, with its rows of tall houses stretching away +till they come together in the distance like railway tracks; its +clothes-lines crossing over at all altitudes and waving their bannered +raggedness over the swarms of people below; and the white-dressed women +perched in balcony railings all the way from the pavement up to the +heavens--a perspective like that is really worth going into Neapolitan +details to see. + + + ASCENT OF VESUVIUS--CONTINUED. + +Naples, with its immediate suburbs, contains six hundred and twenty-five +thousand inhabitants, but I am satisfied it covers no more ground than an +American city of one hundred and fifty thousand. It reaches up into the +air infinitely higher than three American cities, though, and there is +where the secret of it lies. I will observe here, in passing, that the +contrasts between opulence and poverty, and magnificence and misery, are +more frequent and more striking in Naples than in Paris even. One must +go to the Bois de Boulogne to see fashionable dressing, splendid +equipages and stunning liveries, and to the Faubourg St. Antoine to see +vice, misery, hunger, rags, dirt--but in the thoroughfares of Naples +these things are all mixed together. Naked boys of nine years and the +fancy-dressed children of luxury; shreds and tatters, and brilliant +uniforms; jackass-carts and state-carriages; beggars, Princes and +Bishops, jostle each other in every street. At six o'clock every +evening, all Naples turns out to drive on the 'Riviere di Chiaja', +(whatever that may mean;) and for two hours one may stand there and see +the motliest and the worst mixed procession go by that ever eyes beheld. +Princes (there are more Princes than policemen in Naples--the city is +infested with them)--Princes who live up seven flights of stairs and +don't own any principalities, will keep a carriage and go hungry; and +clerks, mechanics, milliners and strumpets will go without their dinners +and squander the money on a hack-ride in the Chiaja; the rag-tag and +rubbish of the city stack themselves up, to the number of twenty or +thirty, on a rickety little go-cart hauled by a donkey not much bigger +than a cat, and they drive in the Chiaja; Dukes and bankers, in sumptuous +carriages and with gorgeous drivers and footmen, turn out, also, and so +the furious procession goes. For two hours rank and wealth, and +obscurity and poverty clatter along side by side in the wild procession, +and then go home serene, happy, covered with glory! + +I was looking at a magnificent marble staircase in the King's palace, the +other day, which, it was said, cost five million francs, and I suppose it +did cost half a million, may be. I felt as if it must be a fine thing to +live in a country where there was such comfort and such luxury as this. +And then I stepped out musing, and almost walked over a vagabond who was +eating his dinner on the curbstone--a piece of bread and a bunch of +grapes. When I found that this mustang was clerking in a fruit +establishment (he had the establishment along with him in a basket,) at +two cents a day, and that he had no palace at home where he lived, I lost +some of my enthusiasm concerning the happiness of living in Italy. + +This naturally suggests to me a thought about wages here. Lieutenants in +the army get about a dollar a day, and common soldiers a couple of cents. +I only know one clerk--he gets four dollars a month. Printers get six +dollars and a half a month, but I have heard of a foreman who gets +thirteen. + +To be growing suddenly and violently rich, as this man is, naturally +makes him a bloated aristocrat. The airs he puts on are insufferable. + +And, speaking of wages, reminds me of prices of merchandise. In Paris +you pay twelve dollars a dozen for Jouvin's best kid gloves; gloves of +about as good quality sell here at three or four dollars a dozen. You +pay five and six dollars apiece for fine linen shirts in Paris; here and +in Leghorn you pay two and a half. In Marseilles you pay forty dollars +for a first-class dress coat made by a good tailor, but in Leghorn you +can get a full dress suit for the same money. Here you get handsome +business suits at from ten to twenty dollars, and in Leghorn you can get +an overcoat for fifteen dollars that would cost you seventy in New York. +Fine kid boots are worth eight dollars in Marseilles and four dollars +here. Lyons velvets rank higher in America than those of Genoa. Yet the +bulk of Lyons velvets you buy in the States are made in Genoa and +imported into Lyons, where they receive the Lyons stamp and are then +exported to America. You can buy enough velvet in Genoa for twenty-five +dollars to make a five hundred dollar cloak in New York--so the ladies +tell me. Of course these things bring me back, by a natural and easy +transition, to the + + ASCENT OF VESUVIUS--CONTINUED. + +And thus the wonderful Blue Grotto is suggested to me. It is situated on +the Island of Capri, twenty-two miles from Naples. We chartered a little +steamer and went out there. Of course, the police boarded us and put us +through a health examination, and inquired into our politics, before they +would let us land. The airs these little insect Governments put on are +in the last degree ridiculous. They even put a policeman on board of our +boat to keep an eye on us as long as we were in the Capri dominions. +They thought we wanted to steal the grotto, I suppose. It was worth +stealing. The entrance to the cave is four feet high and four feet wide, +and is in the face of a lofty perpendicular cliff--the sea-wall. You +enter in small boats--and a tight squeeze it is, too. You can not go in +at all when the tide is up. Once within, you find yourself in an arched +cavern about one hundred and sixty feet long, one hundred and twenty +wide, and about seventy high. How deep it is no man knows. It goes down +to the bottom of the ocean. The waters of this placid subterranean lake +are the brightest, loveliest blue that can be imagined. They are as +transparent as plate glass, and their coloring would shame the richest +sky that ever bent over Italy. No tint could be more ravishing, no +lustre more superb. Throw a stone into the water, and the myriad of tiny +bubbles that are created flash out a brilliant glare like blue theatrical +fires. Dip an oar, and its blade turns to splendid frosted silver, +tinted with blue. Let a man jump in, and instantly he is cased in an +armor more gorgeous than ever kingly Crusader wore. + +Then we went to Ischia, but I had already been to that island and tired +myself to death "resting" a couple of days and studying human villainy, +with the landlord of the Grande Sentinelle for a model. So we went to +Procida, and from thence to Pozzuoli, where St. Paul landed after he +sailed from Samos. I landed at precisely the same spot where St. Paul +landed, and so did Dan and the others. It was a remarkable coincidence. +St. Paul preached to these people seven days before he started to Rome. + +Nero's Baths, the ruins of Baiae, the Temple of Serapis; Cumae, where the +Cumaen Sybil interpreted the oracles, the Lake Agnano, with its ancient +submerged city still visible far down in its depths--these and a hundred +other points of interest we examined with critical imbecility, but the +Grotto of the Dog claimed our chief attention, because we had heard and +read so much about it. Every body has written about the Grotto del Cane +and its poisonous vapors, from Pliny down to Smith, and every tourist has +held a dog over its floor by the legs to test the capabilities of the +place. The dog dies in a minute and a half--a chicken instantly. As a +general thing, strangers who crawl in there to sleep do not get up until +they are called. And then they don't either. The stranger that ventures +to sleep there takes a permanent contract. I longed to see this grotto. +I resolved to take a dog and hold him myself; suffocate him a little, and +time him; suffocate him some more and then finish him. We reached the +grotto at about three in the afternoon, and proceeded at once to make the +experiments. But now, an important difficulty presented itself. We had +no dog. + + ASCENT OF VESUVIUS--CONTINUED. + +At the Hermitage we were about fifteen or eighteen hundred feet above the +sea, and thus far a portion of the ascent had been pretty abrupt. For +the next two miles the road was a mixture--sometimes the ascent was +abrupt and sometimes it was not: but one characteristic it possessed all +the time, without failure--without modification--it was all +uncompromisingly and unspeakably infamous. It was a rough, narrow trail, +and led over an old lava flow--a black ocean which was tumbled into a +thousand fantastic shapes--a wild chaos of ruin, desolation, and +barrenness--a wilderness of billowy upheavals, of furious whirlpools, of +miniature mountains rent asunder--of gnarled and knotted, wrinkled and +twisted masses of blackness that mimicked branching roots, great vines, +trunks of trees, all interlaced and mingled together: and all these weird +shapes, all this turbulent panorama, all this stormy, far-stretching +waste of blackness, with its thrilling suggestiveness of life, of action, +of boiling, surging, furious motion, was petrified!--all stricken dead +and cold in the instant of its maddest rioting!--fettered, paralyzed, and +left to glower at heaven in impotent rage for evermore! + +Finally we stood in a level, narrow valley (a valley that had been +created by the terrific march of some old time irruption) and on either +hand towered the two steep peaks of Vesuvius. The one we had to climb +--the one that contains the active volcano--seemed about eight hundred or +one thousand feet high, and looked almost too straight-up-and-down for +any man to climb, and certainly no mule could climb it with a man on his +back. Four of these native pirates will carry you to the top in a sedan +chair, if you wish it, but suppose they were to slip and let you fall, +--is it likely that you would ever stop rolling? Not this side of +eternity, perhaps. We left the mules, sharpened our finger-nails, and +began the ascent I have been writing about so long, at twenty minutes to +six in the morning. The path led straight up a rugged sweep of loose +chunks of pumice-stone, and for about every two steps forward we took, we +slid back one. It was so excessively steep that we had to stop, every +fifty or sixty steps, and rest a moment. To see our comrades, we had to +look very nearly straight up at those above us, and very nearly straight +down at those below. We stood on the summit at last--it had taken an +hour and fifteen minutes to make the trip. + +What we saw there was simply a circular crater--a circular ditch, if you +please--about two hundred feet deep, and four or five hundred feet wide, +whose inner wall was about half a mile in circumference. In the centre +of the great circus ring thus formed, was a torn and ragged upheaval a +hundred feet high, all snowed over with a sulphur crust of many and many +a brilliant and beautiful color, and the ditch inclosed this like the +moat of a castle, or surrounded it as a little river does a little +island, if the simile is better. The sulphur coating of that island was +gaudy in the extreme--all mingled together in the richest confusion were +red, blue, brown, black, yellow, white--I do not know that there was a +color, or shade of a color, or combination of colors, unrepresented--and +when the sun burst through the morning mists and fired this tinted +magnificence, it topped imperial Vesuvius like a jeweled crown! + +The crater itself--the ditch--was not so variegated in coloring, but yet, +in its softness, richness, and unpretentious elegance, it was more +charming, more fascinating to the eye. There was nothing "loud" about +its well-bred and well-creased look. Beautiful? One could stand and +look down upon it for a week without getting tired of it. It had the +semblance of a pleasant meadow, whose slender grasses and whose velvety +mosses were frosted with a shining dust, and tinted with palest green +that deepened gradually to the darkest hue of the orange leaf, and +deepened yet again into gravest brown, then faded into orange, then into +brightest gold, and culminated in the delicate pink of a new-blown rose. +Where portions of the meadow had sunk, and where other portions had been +broken up like an ice-floe, the cavernous openings of the one, and the +ragged upturned edges exposed by the other, were hung with a lace-work of +soft-tinted crystals of sulphur that changed their deformities into +quaint shapes and figures that were full of grace and beauty. + +The walls of the ditch were brilliant with yellow banks of sulphur and +with lava and pumice-stone of many colors. No fire was visible any +where, but gusts of sulphurous steam issued silently and invisibly from a +thousand little cracks and fissures in the crater, and were wafted to our +noses with every breeze. But so long as we kept our nostrils buried in +our handkerchiefs, there was small danger of suffocation. + +Some of the boys thrust long slips of paper down into holes and set them +on fire, and so achieved the glory of lighting their cigars by the flames +of Vesuvius, and others cooked eggs over fissures in the rocks and were +happy. + +The view from the summit would have been superb but for the fact that the +sun could only pierce the mists at long intervals. Thus the glimpses we +had of the grand panorama below were only fitful and unsatisfactory. + + THE DESCENT. + +The descent of the mountain was a labor of only four minutes. Instead of +stalking down the rugged path we ascended, we chose one which was bedded +knee-deep in loose ashes, and ploughed our way with prodigious strides +that would almost have shamed the performance of him of the seven-league +boots. + +The Vesuvius of today is a very poor affair compared to the mighty +volcano of Kilauea, in the Sandwich Islands, but I am glad I visited it. +It was well worth it. + +It is said that during one of the grand eruptions of Vesuvius it +discharged massy rocks weighing many tons a thousand feet into the air, +its vast jets of smoke and steam ascended thirty miles toward the +firmament, and clouds of its ashes were wafted abroad and fell upon the +decks of ships seven hundred and fifty miles at sea! I will take the +ashes at a moderate discount, if any one will take the thirty miles of +smoke, but I do not feel able to take a commanding interest in the whole +story by myself. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + + THE BURIED CITY OF POMPEII + +They pronounce it Pom-pay-e. I always had an idea that you went down +into Pompeii with torches, by the way of damp, dark stairways, just as +you do in silver mines, and traversed gloomy tunnels with lava overhead +and something on either hand like dilapidated prisons gouged out of the +solid earth, that faintly resembled houses. But you do nothing the kind. +Fully one-half of the buried city, perhaps, is completely exhumed and +thrown open freely to the light of day; and there stand the long rows of +solidly-built brick houses (roofless) just as they stood eighteen hundred +years ago, hot with the flaming sun; and there lie their floors, +clean-swept, and not a bright fragment tarnished or waiting of the +labored mosaics that pictured them with the beasts, and birds, and +flowers which we copy in perishable carpets to-day; and here are the +Venuses, and Bacchuses, and Adonises, making love and getting drunk in +many-hued frescoes on the walls of saloon and bed-chamber; and there are +the narrow streets and narrower sidewalks, paved with flags of good hard +lava, the one deeply rutted with the chariot-wheels, and the other with +the passing feet of the Pompeiians of by-gone centuries; and there are +the bake-shops, the temples, the halls of justice, the baths, the +theatres--all clean-scraped and neat, and suggesting nothing of the +nature of a silver mine away down in the bowels of the earth. The +broken pillars lying about, the doorless doorways and the crumbled tops +of the wilderness of walls, were wonderfully suggestive of the "burnt +district" in one of our cities, and if there had been any charred +timbers, shattered windows, heaps of debris, and general blackness and +smokiness about the place, the resemblance would have been perfect. But +no--the sun shines as brightly down on old Pompeii to-day as it did when +Christ was born in Bethlehem, and its streets are cleaner a hundred +times than ever Pompeiian saw them in her prime. I know whereof I +speak--for in the great, chief thoroughfares (Merchant street and the +Street of Fortune) have I not seen with my own eyes how for two hundred +years at least the pavements were not repaired!--how ruts five and even +ten inches deep were worn into the thick flagstones by the +chariot-wheels of generations of swindled tax-payers? And do I not know +by these signs that Street Commissioners of Pompeii never attended to +their business, and that if they never mended the pavements they never +cleaned them? And, besides, is it not the inborn nature of Street +Commissioners to avoid their duty whenever they get a chance? I wish I +knew the name of the last one that held office in Pompeii so that I +could give him a blast. I speak with feeling on this subject, because I +caught my foot in one of those ruts, and the sadness that came over me +when I saw the first poor skeleton, with ashes and lava sticking to it, +was tempered by the reflection that may be that party was the Street +Commissioner. + +No--Pompeii is no longer a buried city. It is a city of hundreds and +hundreds of roofless houses, and a tangled maze of streets where one +could easily get lost, without a guide, and have to sleep in some ghostly +palace that had known no living tenant since that awful November night of +eighteen centuries ago. + +We passed through the gate which faces the Mediterranean, (called the +"Marine Gate,") and by the rusty, broken image of Minerva, still keeping +tireless watch and ward over the possessions it was powerless to save, +and went up a long street and stood in the broad court of the Forum of +Justice. The floor was level and clean, and up and down either side was +a noble colonnade of broken pillars, with their beautiful Ionic and +Corinthian columns scattered about them. At the upper end were the +vacant seats of the Judges, and behind them we descended into a dungeon +where the ashes and cinders had found two prisoners chained on that +memorable November night, and tortured them to death. How they must have +tugged at the pitiless fetters as the fierce fires surged around them! + +Then we lounged through many and many a sumptuous private mansion which +we could not have entered without a formal invitation in incomprehensible +Latin, in the olden time, when the owners lived there--and we probably +wouldn't have got it. These people built their houses a good deal alike. +The floors were laid in fanciful figures wrought in mosaics of +many-colored marbles. At the threshold your eyes fall upon a Latin +sentence of welcome, sometimes, or a picture of a dog, with the legend +"Beware of the Dog," and sometimes a picture of a bear or a faun with no +inscription at all. Then you enter a sort of vestibule, where they used +to keep the hat-rack, I suppose; next a room with a large marble basin +in the midst and the pipes of a fountain; on either side are bedrooms; +beyond the fountain is a reception-room, then a little garden, +dining-room, and so forth and so on. The floors were all mosaic, the +walls were stuccoed, or frescoed, or ornamented with bas-reliefs, and +here and there were statues, large and small, and little fish-pools, and +cascades of sparkling water that sprang from secret places in the +colonnade of handsome pillars that surrounded the court, and kept the +flower-beds fresh and the air cool. Those Pompeiians were very +luxurious in their tastes and habits. The most exquisite bronzes we +have seen in Europe, came from the exhumed cities of Herculaneum and +Pompeii, and also the finest cameos and the most delicate engravings on +precious stones; their pictures, eighteen or nineteen centuries old, are +often much more pleasing than the celebrated rubbish of the old masters +of three centuries ago. They were well up in art. From the creation of +these works of the first, clear up to the eleventh century, art seems +hardly to have existed at all--at least no remnants of it are left--and +it was curious to see how far (in some things, at any rate,) these old +time pagans excelled the remote generations of masters that came after +them. The pride of the world in sculptures seem to be the Laocoon and +the Dying Gladiator, in Rome. They are as old as Pompeii, were dug from +the earth like Pompeii; but their exact age or who made them can only be +conjectured. But worn, and cracked, without a history, and with the +blemishing stains of numberless centuries upon them, they still mutely +mock at all efforts to rival their perfections. + +It was a quaint and curious pastime, wandering through this old silent +city of the dead--lounging through utterly deserted streets where +thousands and thousands of human beings once bought and sold, and walked +and rode, and made the place resound with the noise and confusion of +traffic and pleasure. They were not lazy. They hurried in those days. +We had evidence of that. There was a temple on one corner, and it was a +shorter cut to go between the columns of that temple from one street to +the other than to go around--and behold that pathway had been worn deep +into the heavy flagstone floor of the building by generations of +time-saving feet! They would not go around when it was quicker to go +through. We do that way in our cities. + +Every where, you see things that make you wonder how old these old houses +were before the night of destruction came--things, too, which bring back +those long dead inhabitants and place the living before your eyes. For +instance: The steps (two feet thick--lava blocks) that lead up out of the +school, and the same kind of steps that lead up into the dress circle of +the principal theatre, are almost worn through! For ages the boys +hurried out of that school, and for ages their parents hurried into that +theatre, and the nervous feet that have been dust and ashes for eighteen +centuries have left their record for us to read to-day. I imagined I +could see crowds of gentlemen and ladies thronging into the theatre, with +tickets for secured seats in their hands, and on the wall, I read the +imaginary placard, in infamous grammar, "POSITIVELY NO FREE LIST, EXCEPT +MEMBERS OF THE PRESS!" Hanging about the doorway (I fancied,) were +slouchy Pompeiian street-boys uttering slang and profanity, and keeping a +wary eye out for checks. I entered the theatre, and sat down in one of +the long rows of stone benches in the dress circle, and looked at the +place for the orchestra, and the ruined stage, and around at the wide +sweep of empty boxes, and thought to myself, "This house won't pay." I +tried to imagine the music in full blast, the leader of the orchestra +beating time, and the "versatile" So-and-So (who had "just returned from +a most successful tour in the provinces to play his last and farewell +engagement of positively six nights only, in Pompeii, previous to his +departure for Herculaneum,") charging around the stage and piling the +agony mountains high--but I could not do it with such a "house" as that; +those empty benches tied my fancy down to dull reality. I said, these +people that ought to be here have been dead, and still, and moldering to +dust for ages and ages, and will never care for the trifles and follies +of life any more for ever--"Owing to circumstances, etc., etc., there +will not be any performance to-night." Close down the curtain. Put out +the lights. + +And so I turned away and went through shop after shop and store after +store, far down the long street of the merchants, and called for the +wares of Rome and the East, but the tradesmen were gone, the marts were +silent, and nothing was left but the broken jars all set in cement of +cinders and ashes: the wine and the oil that once had filled them were +gone with their owners. + +In a bake-shop was a mill for grinding the grain, and the furnaces for +baking the bread: and they say that here, in the same furnaces, the +exhumers of Pompeii found nice, well baked loaves which the baker had not +found time to remove from the ovens the last time he left his shop, +because circumstances compelled him to leave in such a hurry. + +In one house (the only building in Pompeii which no woman is now allowed +to enter,) were the small rooms and short beds of solid masonry, just as +they were in the old times, and on the walls were pictures which looked +almost as fresh as if they were painted yesterday, but which no pen could +have the hardihood to describe; and here and there were Latin +inscriptions--obscene scintillations of wit, scratched by hands that +possibly were uplifted to Heaven for succor in the midst of a driving +storm of fire before the night was done. + +In one of the principal streets was a ponderous stone tank, and a +water-spout that supplied it, and where the tired, heated toilers from the +Campagna used to rest their right hands when they bent over to put their +lips to the spout, the thick stone was worn down to a broad groove an +inch or two deep. Think of the countless thousands of hands that had +pressed that spot in the ages that are gone, to so reduce a stone that +is as hard as iron! + +They had a great public bulletin board in Pompeii--a place where +announcements for gladiatorial combats, elections, and such things, were +posted--not on perishable paper, but carved in enduring stone. One lady, +who, I take it, was rich and well brought up, advertised a dwelling or so +to rent, with baths and all the modern improvements, and several hundred +shops, stipulating that the dwellings should not be put to immoral +purposes. You can find out who lived in many a house in Pompeii by the +carved stone door-plates affixed to them: and in the same way you can +tell who they were that occupy the tombs. Every where around are things +that reveal to you something of the customs and history of this forgotten +people. But what would a volcano leave of an American city, if it once +rained its cinders on it? Hardly a sign or a symbol to tell its story. + +In one of these long Pompeiian halls the skeleton of a man was found, +with ten pieces of gold in one hand and a large key in the other. He had +seized his money and started toward the door, but the fiery tempest +caught him at the very threshold, and he sank down and died. One more +minute of precious time would have saved him. I saw the skeletons of a +man, a woman, and two young girls. The woman had her hands spread wide +apart, as if in mortal terror, and I imagined I could still trace upon +her shapeless face something of the expression of wild despair that +distorted it when the heavens rained fire in these streets, so many ages +ago. The girls and the man lay with their faces upon their arms, as if +they had tried to shield them from the enveloping cinders. In one +apartment eighteen skeletons were found, all in sitting postures, and +blackened places on the walls still mark their shapes and show their +attitudes, like shadows. One of them, a woman, still wore upon her +skeleton throat a necklace, with her name engraved upon it--JULIE DI +DIOMEDE. + +But perhaps the most poetical thing Pompeii has yielded to modern +research, was that grand figure of a Roman soldier, clad in complete +armor; who, true to his duty, true to his proud name of a soldier of +Rome, and full of the stern courage which had given to that name its +glory, stood to his post by the city gate, erect and unflinching, till +the hell that raged around him burned out the dauntless spirit it could +not conquer. + +We never read of Pompeii but we think of that soldier; we can not write +of Pompeii without the natural impulse to grant to him the mention he so +well deserves. Let us remember that he was a soldier--not a policeman +--and so, praise him. Being a soldier, he staid,--because the warrior +instinct forbade him to fly. Had he been a policeman he would have +staid, also--because he would have been asleep. + +There are not half a dozen flights of stairs in Pompeii, and no other +evidences that the houses were more than one story high. The people did +not live in the clouds, as do the Venetians, the Genoese and Neapolitans +of to-day. + +We came out from under the solemn mysteries of this city of the Venerable +Past--this city which perished, with all its old ways and its quaint old +fashions about it, remote centuries ago, when the Disciples were +preaching the new religion, which is as old as the hills to us now--and +went dreaming among the trees that grow over acres and acres of its still +buried streets and squares, till a shrill whistle and the cry of "All +aboard--last train for Naples!" woke me up and reminded me that I +belonged in the nineteenth century, and was not a dusty mummy, caked with +ashes and cinders, eighteen hundred years old. The transition was +startling. The idea of a railroad train actually running to old dead +Pompeii, and whistling irreverently, and calling for passengers in the +most bustling and business-like way, was as strange a thing as one could +imagine, and as unpoetical and disagreeable as it was strange. + +Compare the cheerful life and the sunshine of this day with the horrors +the younger Pliny saw here, the 9th of November, A.D. 79, when he was so +bravely striving to remove his mother out of reach of harm, while she +begged him, with all a mother's unselfishness, to leave her to perish and +save himself. + + 'By this time the murky darkness had so increased that one might + have believed himself abroad in a black and moonless night, or in a + chamber where all the lights had been extinguished. On every hand + was heard the complaints of women, the wailing of children, and the + cries of men. One called his father, another his son, and another + his wife, and only by their voices could they know each other. Many + in their despair begged that death would come and end their + distress. + + "Some implored the gods to succor them, and some believed that this + night was the last, the eternal night which should engulf the + universe! + + "Even so it seemed to me--and I consoled myself for the coming death + with the reflection: BEHOLD, THE WORLD IS PASSING AWAY!" + + * * * * * * * * + +After browsing among the stately ruins of Rome, of Baiae, of Pompeii, and +after glancing down the long marble ranks of battered and nameless +imperial heads that stretch down the corridors of the Vatican, one thing +strikes me with a force it never had before: the unsubstantial, unlasting +character of fame. Men lived long lives, in the olden time, and +struggled feverishly through them, toiling like slaves, in oratory, in +generalship, or in literature, and then laid them down and died, happy in +the possession of an enduring history and a deathless name. Well, twenty +little centuries flutter away, and what is left of these things? A crazy +inscription on a block of stone, which snuffy antiquaries bother over and +tangle up and make nothing out of but a bare name (which they spell +wrong)--no history, no tradition, no poetry--nothing that can give it +even a passing interest. What may be left of General Grant's great name +forty centuries hence? This--in the Encyclopedia for A. D. 5868, +possibly: + + "URIAH S. (or Z.) GRAUNT--popular poet of ancient times in the Aztec + provinces of the United States of British America. Some authors say + flourished about A. D. 742; but the learned Ah-ah Foo-foo states + that he was a cotemporary of Scharkspyre, the English poet, and + flourished about A. D. 1328, some three centuries after the Trojan + war instead of before it. He wrote 'Rock me to Sleep, Mother.'" + +These thoughts sadden me. I will to bed. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + +Home, again! For the first time, in many weeks, the ship's entire family +met and shook hands on the quarter-deck. They had gathered from many +points of the compass and from many lands, but not one was missing; there +was no tale of sickness or death among the flock to dampen the pleasure +of the reunion. Once more there was a full audience on deck to listen to +the sailors' chorus as they got the anchor up, and to wave an adieu to +the land as we sped away from Naples. The seats were full at dinner +again, the domino parties were complete, and the life and bustle on the +upper deck in the fine moonlight at night was like old times--old times +that had been gone weeks only, but yet they were weeks so crowded with +incident, adventure and excitement, that they seemed almost like years. +There was no lack of cheerfulness on board the Quaker City. For once, +her title was a misnomer. + +At seven in the evening, with the western horizon all golden from the +sunken sun, and specked with distant ships, the full moon sailing high +over head, the dark blue of the sea under foot, and a strange sort of +twilight affected by all these different lights and colors around us and +about us, we sighted superb Stromboli. With what majesty the monarch +held his lonely state above the level sea! Distance clothed him in a +purple gloom, and added a veil of shimmering mist that so softened his +rugged features that we seemed to see him through a web of silver gauze. +His torch was out; his fires were smoldering; a tall column of smoke that +rose up and lost itself in the growing moonlight was all the sign he gave +that he was a living Autocrat of the Sea and not the spectre of a dead +one. + +At two in the morning we swept through the Straits of Messina, and so +bright was the moonlight that Italy on the one hand and Sicily on the +other seemed almost as distinctly visible as though we looked at them +from the middle of a street we were traversing. The city of Messina, +milk-white, and starred and spangled all over with gaslights, was a fairy +spectacle. A great party of us were on deck smoking and making a noise, +and waiting to see famous Scylla and Charybdis. And presently the Oracle +stepped out with his eternal spy-glass and squared himself on the deck +like another Colossus of Rhodes. It was a surprise to see him abroad at +such an hour. Nobody supposed he cared anything about an old fable like +that of Scylla and Charybdis. One of the boys said: + +"Hello, doctor, what are you doing up here at this time of night?--What +do you want to see this place for?" + +"What do I want to see this place for? Young man, little do you know me, +or you wouldn't ask such a question. I wish to see all the places that's +mentioned in the Bible." + +"Stuff--this place isn't mentioned in the Bible." + +"It ain't mentioned in the Bible!--this place ain't--well now, what place +is this, since you know so much about it?" + +"Why it's Scylla and Charybdis." + +"Scylla and Cha--confound it, I thought it was Sodom and Gomorrah!" + +And he closed up his glass and went below. The above is the ship story. +Its plausibility is marred a little by the fact that the Oracle was not a +biblical student, and did not spend much of his time instructing himself +about Scriptural localities.--They say the Oracle complains, in this hot +weather, lately, that the only beverage in the ship that is passable, is +the butter. He did not mean butter, of course, but inasmuch as that +article remains in a melted state now since we are out of ice, it is fair +to give him the credit of getting one long word in the right place, +anyhow, for once in his life. He said, in Rome, that the Pope was a +noble-looking old man, but he never did think much of his Iliad. + +We spent one pleasant day skirting along the Isles of Greece. They are +very mountainous. Their prevailing tints are gray and brown, approaching +to red. Little white villages surrounded by trees, nestle in the valleys +or roost upon the lofty perpendicular sea-walls. + +We had one fine sunset--a rich carmine flush that suffused the western +sky and cast a ruddy glow far over the sea.--Fine sunsets seem to be +rare in this part of the world--or at least, striking ones. They are +soft, sensuous, lovely--they are exquisite refined, effeminate, but we +have seen no sunsets here yet like the gorgeous conflagrations that flame +in the track of the sinking sun in our high northern latitudes. + +But what were sunsets to us, with the wild excitement upon us of +approaching the most renowned of cities! What cared we for outward +visions, when Agamemnon, Achilles, and a thousand other heroes of the +great Past were marching in ghostly procession through our fancies? What +were sunsets to us, who were about to live and breathe and walk in actual +Athens; yea, and go far down into the dead centuries and bid in person +for the slaves, Diogenes and Plato, in the public market-place, or gossip +with the neighbors about the siege of Troy or the splendid deeds of +Marathon? We scorned to consider sunsets. + +We arrived, and entered the ancient harbor of the Piraeus at last. We +dropped anchor within half a mile of the village. Away off, across the +undulating Plain of Attica, could be seen a little square-topped hill +with a something on it, which our glasses soon discovered to be the +ruined edifices of the citadel of the Athenians, and most prominent among +them loomed the venerable Parthenon. So exquisitely clear and pure is +this wonderful atmosphere that every column of the noble structure was +discernible through the telescope, and even the smaller ruins about it +assumed some semblance of shape. This at a distance of five or six +miles. In the valley, near the Acropolis, (the square-topped hill before +spoken of,) Athens itself could be vaguely made out with an ordinary +lorgnette. Every body was anxious to get ashore and visit these classic +localities as quickly as possible. No land we had yet seen had aroused +such universal interest among the passengers. + +But bad news came. The commandant of the Piraeus came in his boat, and +said we must either depart or else get outside the harbor and remain +imprisoned in our ship, under rigid quarantine, for eleven days! So we +took up the anchor and moved outside, to lie a dozen hours or so, taking +in supplies, and then sail for Constantinople. It was the bitterest +disappointment we had yet experienced. To lie a whole day in sight of +the Acropolis, and yet be obliged to go away without visiting Athens! +Disappointment was hardly a strong enough word to describe the +circumstances. + +All hands were on deck, all the afternoon, with books and maps and +glasses, trying to determine which "narrow rocky ridge" was the +Areopagus, which sloping hill the Pnyx, which elevation the Museum Hill, +and so on. And we got things confused. Discussion became heated, and +party spirit ran high. Church members were gazing with emotion upon a +hill which they said was the one St. Paul preached from, and another +faction claimed that that hill was Hymettus, and another that it was +Pentelicon! After all the trouble, we could be certain of only one +thing--the square-topped hill was the Acropolis, and the grand ruin that +crowned it was the Parthenon, whose picture we knew in infancy in the +school books. + +We inquired of every body who came near the ship, whether there were +guards in the Piraeus, whether they were strict, what the chances were of +capture should any of us slip ashore, and in case any of us made the +venture and were caught, what would be probably done to us? The answers +were discouraging: There was a strong guard or police force; the Piraeus +was a small town, and any stranger seen in it would surely attract +attention--capture would be certain. The commandant said the punishment +would be "heavy;" when asked "how heavy?" he said it would be "very +severe"--that was all we could get out of him. + +At eleven o'clock at night, when most of the ship's company were abed, +four of us stole softly ashore in a small boat, a clouded moon favoring +the enterprise, and started two and two, and far apart, over a low hill, +intending to go clear around the Piraeus, out of the range of its police. +Picking our way so stealthily over that rocky, nettle-grown eminence, +made me feel a good deal as if I were on my way somewhere to steal +something. My immediate comrade and I talked in an undertone about +quarantine laws and their penalties, but we found nothing cheering in the +subject. I was posted. Only a few days before, I was talking with our +captain, and he mentioned the case of a man who swam ashore from a +quarantined ship somewhere, and got imprisoned six months for it; and +when he was in Genoa a few years ago, a captain of a quarantined ship +went in his boat to a departing ship, which was already outside of the +harbor, and put a letter on board to be taken to his family, and the +authorities imprisoned him three months for it, and then conducted him +and his ship fairly to sea, and warned him never to show himself in that +port again while he lived. This kind of conversation did no good, +further than to give a sort of dismal interest to our quarantine-breaking +expedition, and so we dropped it. We made the entire circuit of the town +without seeing any body but one man, who stared at us curiously, but said +nothing, and a dozen persons asleep on the ground before their doors, +whom we walked among and never woke--but we woke up dogs enough, in all +conscience--we always had one or two barking at our heels, and several +times we had as many as ten and twelve at once. They made such a +preposterous din that persons aboard our ship said they could tell how we +were progressing for a long time, and where we were, by the barking of +the dogs. The clouded moon still favored us. When we had made the whole +circuit, and were passing among the houses on the further side of the +town, the moon came out splendidly, but we no longer feared the light. +As we approached a well, near a house, to get a drink, the owner merely +glanced at us and went within. He left the quiet, slumbering town at our +mercy. I record it here proudly, that we didn't do any thing to it. + +Seeing no road, we took a tall hill to the left of the distant Acropolis +for a mark, and steered straight for it over all obstructions, and over a +little rougher piece of country than exists any where else outside of the +State of Nevada, perhaps. Part of the way it was covered with small, +loose stones--we trod on six at a time, and they all rolled. Another +part of it was dry, loose, newly-ploughed ground. Still another part of +it was a long stretch of low grape-vines, which were tanglesome and +troublesome, and which we took to be brambles. The Attic Plain, barring +the grape-vines, was a barren, desolate, unpoetical waste--I wonder what +it was in Greece's Age of Glory, five hundred years before Christ? + +In the neighborhood of one o'clock in the morning, when we were heated +with fast walking and parched with thirst, Denny exclaimed, "Why, these +weeds are grape-vines!" and in five minutes we had a score of bunches of +large, white, delicious grapes, and were reaching down for more when a +dark shape rose mysteriously up out of the shadows beside us and said +"Ho!" And so we left. + +In ten minutes more we struck into a beautiful road, and unlike some +others we had stumbled upon at intervals, it led in the right direction. +We followed it. It was broad, and smooth, and white--handsome and in +perfect repair, and shaded on both sides for a mile or so with single +ranks of trees, and also with luxuriant vineyards. Twice we entered and +stole grapes, and the second time somebody shouted at us from some +invisible place. Whereupon we left again. We speculated in grapes no +more on that side of Athens. + +Shortly we came upon an ancient stone aqueduct, built upon arches, and +from that time forth we had ruins all about us--we were approaching our +journey's end. We could not see the Acropolis now or the high hill, +either, and I wanted to follow the road till we were abreast of them, but +the others overruled me, and we toiled laboriously up the stony hill +immediately in our front--and from its summit saw another--climbed it and +saw another! It was an hour of exhausting work. Soon we came upon a row +of open graves, cut in the solid rock--(for a while one of them served +Socrates for a prison)--we passed around the shoulder of the hill, and +the citadel, in all its ruined magnificence, burst upon us! We hurried +across the ravine and up a winding road, and stood on the old Acropolis, +with the prodigious walls of the citadel towering above our heads. We +did not stop to inspect their massive blocks of marble, or measure their +height, or guess at their extraordinary thickness, but passed at once +through a great arched passage like a railway tunnel, and went straight +to the gate that leads to the ancient temples. It was locked! So, after +all, it seemed that we were not to see the great Parthenon face to face. +We sat down and held a council of war. Result: the gate was only a +flimsy structure of wood--we would break it down. It seemed like +desecration, but then we had traveled far, and our necessities were +urgent. We could not hunt up guides and keepers--we must be on the ship +before daylight. So we argued. This was all very fine, but when we came +to break the gate, we could not do it. We moved around an angle of the +wall and found a low bastion--eight feet high without--ten or twelve +within. Denny prepared to scale it, and we got ready to follow. By dint +of hard scrambling he finally straddled the top, but some loose stones +crumbled away and fell with a crash into the court within. There was +instantly a banging of doors and a shout. Denny dropped from the wall in +a twinkling, and we retreated in disorder to the gate. Xerxes took that +mighty citadel four hundred and eighty years before Christ, when his five +millions of soldiers and camp-followers followed him to Greece, and if we +four Americans could have remained unmolested five minutes longer, we +would have taken it too. + +The garrison had turned out--four Greeks. We clamored at the gate, and +they admitted us. [Bribery and corruption.] + +We crossed a large court, entered a great door, and stood upon a pavement +of purest white marble, deeply worn by footprints. Before us, in the +flooding moonlight, rose the noblest ruins we had ever looked upon--the +Propylae; a small Temple of Minerva; the Temple of Hercules, and the +grand Parthenon. [We got these names from the Greek guide, who didn't +seem to know more than seven men ought to know.] These edifices were all +built of the whitest Pentelic marble, but have a pinkish stain upon them +now. Where any part is broken, however, the fracture looks like fine +loaf sugar. Six caryatides, or marble women, clad in flowing robes, +support the portico of the Temple of Hercules, but the porticos and +colonnades of the other structures are formed of massive Doric and Ionic +pillars, whose flutings and capitals are still measurably perfect, +notwithstanding the centuries that have gone over them and the sieges +they have suffered. The Parthenon, originally, was two hundred and +twenty-six feet long, one hundred wide, and seventy high, and had two +rows of great columns, eight in each, at either end, and single rows of +seventeen each down the sides, and was one of the most graceful and +beautiful edifices ever erected. + +Most of the Parthenon's imposing columns are still standing, but the roof +is gone. It was a perfect building two hundred and fifty years ago, when +a shell dropped into the Venetian magazine stored here, and the explosion +which followed wrecked and unroofed it. I remember but little about the +Parthenon, and I have put in one or two facts and figures for the use of +other people with short memories. Got them from the guide-book. + +As we wandered thoughtfully down the marble-paved length of this stately +temple, the scene about us was strangely impressive. Here and there, in +lavish profusion, were gleaming white statues of men and women, propped +against blocks of marble, some of them armless, some without legs, others +headless--but all looking mournful in the moonlight, and startlingly +human! They rose up and confronted the midnight intruder on every side +--they stared at him with stony eyes from unlooked-for nooks and recesses; +they peered at him over fragmentary heaps far down the desolate +corridors; they barred his way in the midst of the broad forum, and +solemnly pointed with handless arms the way from the sacred fane; and +through the roofless temple the moon looked down, and banded the floor +and darkened the scattered fragments and broken statues with the slanting +shadows of the columns. + +What a world of ruined sculpture was about us! Set up in rows--stacked +up in piles--scattered broadcast over the wide area of the Acropolis +--were hundreds of crippled statues of all sizes and of the most exquisite +workmanship; and vast fragments of marble that once belonged to the +entablatures, covered with bas-reliefs representing battles and sieges, +ships of war with three and four tiers of oars, pageants and processions +--every thing one could think of. History says that the temples of the +Acropolis were filled with the noblest works of Praxiteles and Phidias, +and of many a great master in sculpture besides--and surely these elegant +fragments attest it. + +We walked out into the grass-grown, fragment-strewn court beyond the +Parthenon. It startled us, every now and then, to see a stony white face +stare suddenly up at us out of the grass with its dead eyes. The place +seemed alive with ghosts. I half expected to see the Athenian heroes of +twenty centuries ago glide out of the shadows and steal into the old +temple they knew so well and regarded with such boundless pride. + +The full moon was riding high in the cloudless heavens, now. We +sauntered carelessly and unthinkingly to the edge of the lofty +battlements of the citadel, and looked down--a vision! And such a +vision! Athens by moonlight! The prophet that thought the splendors of +the New Jerusalem were revealed to him, surely saw this instead! It lay +in the level plain right under our feet--all spread abroad like a +picture--and we looked down upon it as we might have looked from a +balloon. We saw no semblance of a street, but every house, every window, +every clinging vine, every projection was as distinct and sharply marked +as if the time were noon-day; and yet there was no glare, no glitter, +nothing harsh or repulsive--the noiseless city was flooded with the +mellowest light that ever streamed from the moon, and seemed like some +living creature wrapped in peaceful slumber. On its further side was a +little temple, whose delicate pillars and ornate front glowed with a rich +lustre that chained the eye like a spell; and nearer by, the palace of +the king reared its creamy walls out of the midst of a great garden of +shrubbery that was flecked all over with a random shower of amber lights +--a spray of golden sparks that lost their brightness in the glory of the +moon, and glinted softly upon the sea of dark foliage like the pallid +stars of the milky-way. Overhead the stately columns, majestic still in +their ruin--under foot the dreaming city--in the distance the silver sea +--not on the broad earth is there an other picture half so beautiful! + +As we turned and moved again through the temple, I wished that the +illustrious men who had sat in it in the remote ages could visit it again +and reveal themselves to our curious eyes--Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, +Socrates, Phocion, Pythagoras, Euclid, Pindar, Xenophon, Herodotus, +Praxiteles and Phidias, Zeuxis the painter. What a constellation of +celebrated names! But more than all, I wished that old Diogenes, groping +so patiently with his lantern, searching so zealously for one solitary +honest man in all the world, might meander along and stumble on our +party. I ought not to say it, may be, but still I suppose he would have +put out his light. + +We left the Parthenon to keep its watch over old Athens, as it had kept +it for twenty-three hundred years, and went and stood outside the walls +of the citadel. In the distance was the ancient, but still almost +perfect Temple of Theseus, and close by, looking to the west, was the +Bema, from whence Demosthenes thundered his philippics and fired the +wavering patriotism of his countrymen. To the right was Mars Hill, where +the Areopagus sat in ancient times and where St. Paul defined his +position, and below was the market-place where he "disputed daily" with +the gossip-loving Athenians. We climbed the stone steps St. Paul +ascended, and stood in the square-cut place he stood in, and tried to +recollect the Bible account of the matter--but for certain reasons, I +could not recall the words. I have found them since: + + "Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in + him, when he saw the city wholly given up to idolatry. "Therefore + disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout + persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him. + * * * * * * * * * + "And they took him and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we + know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is? + * * * * * * * * * + "Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars hill, and said, Ye men of + Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious; "For + as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this + inscription: To THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly + worship, him declare I unto you."--Acts, ch. xvii." + +It occurred to us, after a while, that if we wanted to get home before +daylight betrayed us, we had better be moving. So we hurried away. When +far on our road, we had a parting view of the Parthenon, with the +moonlight streaming through its open colonnades and touching its capitals +with silver. As it looked then, solemn, grand, and beautiful it will +always remain in our memories. + +As we marched along, we began to get over our fears, and ceased to care +much about quarantine scouts or any body else. We grew bold and +reckless; and once, in a sudden burst of courage, I even threw a stone at +a dog. It was a pleasant reflection, though, that I did not hit him, +because his master might just possibly have been a policeman. Inspired +by this happy failure, my valor became utterly uncontrollable, and at +intervals I absolutely whistled, though on a moderate key. But boldness +breeds boldness, and shortly I plunged into a Vineyard, in the full light +of the moon, and captured a gallon of superb grapes, not even minding the +presence of a peasant who rode by on a mule. Denny and Birch followed my +example. + +Now I had grapes enough for a dozen, but then Jackson was all swollen up +with courage, too, and he was obliged to enter a vineyard presently. The +first bunch he seized brought trouble. A frowsy, bearded brigand sprang +into the road with a shout, and flourished a musket in the light of the +moon! We sidled toward the Piraeus--not running you understand, but only +advancing with celerity. The brigand shouted again, but still we +advanced. It was getting late, and we had no time to fool away on every +ass that wanted to drivel Greek platitudes to us. We would just as soon +have talked with him as not if we had not been in a hurry. Presently +Denny said, "Those fellows are following us!" + +We turned, and, sure enough, there they were--three fantastic pirates +armed with guns. We slackened our pace to let them come up, and in the +meantime I got out my cargo of grapes and dropped them firmly but +reluctantly into the shadows by the wayside. But I was not afraid. I +only felt that it was not right to steal grapes. And all the more so +when the owner was around--and not only around, but with his friends +around also. The villains came up and searched a bundle Dr. Birch had in +his hand, and scowled upon him when they found it had nothing in it but +some holy rocks from Mars Hill, and these were not contraband. They +evidently suspected him of playing some wretched fraud upon them, and +seemed half inclined to scalp the party. But finally they dismissed us +with a warning, couched in excellent Greek, I suppose, and dropped +tranquilly in our wake. When they had gone three hundred yards they +stopped, and we went on rejoiced. But behold, another armed rascal came +out of the shadows and took their place, and followed us two hundred +yards. Then he delivered us over to another miscreant, who emerged from +some mysterious place, and he in turn to another! For a mile and a half +our rear was guarded all the while by armed men. I never traveled in so +much state before in all my life. + +It was a good while after that before we ventured to steal any more +grapes, and when we did we stirred up another troublesome brigand, and +then we ceased all further speculation in that line. I suppose that +fellow that rode by on the mule posted all the sentinels, from Athens to +the Piraeus, about us. + +Every field on that long route was watched by an armed sentinel, some of +whom had fallen asleep, no doubt, but were on hand, nevertheless. This +shows what sort of a country modern Attica is--a community of +questionable characters. These men were not there to guard their +possessions against strangers, but against each other; for strangers +seldom visit Athens and the Piraeus, and when they do, they go in +daylight, and can buy all the grapes they want for a trifle. The modern +inhabitants are confiscators and falsifiers of high repute, if gossip +speaks truly concerning them, and I freely believe it does. + +Just as the earliest tinges of the dawn flushed the eastern sky and +turned the pillared Parthenon to a broken harp hung in the pearly +horizon, we closed our thirteenth mile of weary, round-about marching, +and emerged upon the sea-shore abreast the ships, with our usual escort +of fifteen hundred Piraean dogs howling at our heels. We hailed a boat +that was two or three hundred yards from shore, and discovered +in a moment that it was a police-boat on the lookout for any +quarantine-breakers that might chance to be abroad. So we dodged--we +were used to that by this time--and when the scouts reached the spot we +had so lately occupied, we were absent. They cruised along the shore, +but in the wrong direction, and shortly our own boat issued from the +gloom and took us aboard. They had heard our signal on the ship. We +rowed noiselessly away, and before the police-boat came in sight again, +we were safe at home once more. + +Four more of our passengers were anxious to visit Athens, and started +half an hour after we returned; but they had not been ashore five minutes +till the police discovered and chased them so hotly that they barely +escaped to their boat again, and that was all. They pursued the +enterprise no further. + +We set sail for Constantinople to-day, but some of us little care for +that. We have seen all there was to see in the old city that had its +birth sixteen hundred years before Christ was born, and was an old town +before the foundations of Troy were laid--and saw it in its most +attractive aspect. Wherefore, why should we worry? + +Two other passengers ran the blockade successfully last night. So we +learned this morning. They slipped away so quietly that they were not +missed from the ship for several hours. They had the hardihood to march +into the Piraeus in the early dusk and hire a carriage. They ran some +danger of adding two or three months' imprisonment to the other novelties +of their Holy Land Pleasure Excursion. I admire "cheek."--[Quotation +from the Pilgrims.]--But they went and came safely, and never walked a +step. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + +From Athens all through the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, we saw +little but forbidding sea-walls and barren hills, sometimes surmounted by +three or four graceful columns of some ancient temple, lonely and +deserted--a fitting symbol of the desolation that has come upon all +Greece in these latter ages. We saw no ploughed fields, very few +villages, no trees or grass or vegetation of any kind, scarcely, and +hardly ever an isolated house. Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert, +without agriculture, manufactures or commerce, apparently. What supports +its poverty-stricken people or its Government, is a mystery. + +I suppose that ancient Greece and modern Greece compared, furnish the +most extravagant contrast to be found in history. George I., an infant +of eighteen, and a scraggy nest of foreign office holders, sit in the +places of Themistocles, Pericles, and the illustrious scholars and +generals of the Golden Age of Greece. The fleets that were the wonder of +the world when the Parthenon was new, are a beggarly handful of +fishing-smacks now, and the manly people that performed such miracles of +valor at Marathon are only a tribe of unconsidered slaves to-day. The +classic Illyssus has gone dry, and so have all the sources of Grecian +wealth and greatness. The nation numbers only eight hundred thousand +souls, and there is poverty and misery and mendacity enough among them +to furnish forty millions and be liberal about it. Under King Otho the +revenues of the State were five millions of dollars--raised from a tax +of one-tenth of all the agricultural products of the land (which tenth +the farmer had to bring to the royal granaries on pack-mules any +distance not exceeding six leagues) and from extravagant taxes on trade +and commerce. Out of that five millions the small tyrant tried to keep +an army of ten thousand men, pay all the hundreds of useless Grand +Equerries in Waiting, First Grooms of the Bedchamber, Lord High +Chancellors of the Exploded Exchequer, and all the other absurdities +which these puppy-kingdoms indulge in, in imitation of the great +monarchies; and in addition he set about building a white marble palace +to cost about five millions itself. The result was, simply: ten into +five goes no times and none over. All these things could not be done +with five millions, and Otho fell into trouble. + +The Greek throne, with its unpromising adjuncts of a ragged population of +ingenious rascals who were out of employment eight months in the year +because there was little for them to borrow and less to confiscate, and a +waste of barren hills and weed-grown deserts, went begging for a good +while. It was offered to one of Victoria's sons, and afterwards to +various other younger sons of royalty who had no thrones and were out of +business, but they all had the charity to decline the dreary honor, and +veneration enough for Greece's ancient greatness to refuse to mock her +sorrowful rags and dirt with a tinsel throne in this day of her +humiliation--till they came to this young Danish George, and he took it. +He has finished the splendid palace I saw in the radiant moonlight the +other night, and is doing many other things for the salvation of Greece, +they say. + +We sailed through the barren Archipelago, and into the narrow channel +they sometimes call the Dardanelles and sometimes the Hellespont. This +part of the country is rich in historic reminiscences, and poor as Sahara +in every thing else. For instance, as we approached the Dardanelles, we +coasted along the Plains of Troy and past the mouth of the Scamander; we +saw where Troy had stood (in the distance,) and where it does not stand +now--a city that perished when the world was young. The poor Trojans are +all dead, now. They were born too late to see Noah's ark, and died too +soon to see our menagerie. We saw where Agamemnon's fleets rendezvoused, +and away inland a mountain which the map said was Mount Ida. Within the +Hellespont we saw where the original first shoddy contract mentioned in +history was carried out, and the "parties of the second part" gently +rebuked by Xerxes. I speak of the famous bridge of boats which Xerxes +ordered to be built over the narrowest part of the Hellespont (where it +is only two or three miles wide.) A moderate gale destroyed the flimsy +structure, and the King, thinking that to publicly rebuke the contractors +might have a good effect on the next set, called them out before the army +and had them beheaded. In the next ten minutes he let a new contract for +the bridge. It has been observed by ancient writers that the second +bridge was a very good bridge. Xerxes crossed his host of five millions +of men on it, and if it had not been purposely destroyed, it would +probably have been there yet. If our Government would rebuke some of our +shoddy contractors occasionally, it might work much good. In the +Hellespont we saw where Leander and Lord Byron swam across, the one to +see her upon whom his soul's affections were fixed with a devotion that +only death could impair, and the other merely for a flyer, as Jack says. +We had two noted tombs near us, too. On one shore slept Ajax, and on the +other Hecuba. + +We had water batteries and forts on both sides of the Hellespont, flying +the crimson flag of Turkey, with its white crescent, and occasionally a +village, and sometimes a train of camels; we had all these to look at +till we entered the broad sea of Marmora, and then the land soon fading +from view, we resumed euchre and whist once more. + +We dropped anchor in the mouth of the Golden Horn at daylight in the +morning. Only three or four of us were up to see the great Ottoman +capital. The passengers do not turn out at unseasonable hours, as they +used to, to get the earliest possible glimpse of strange foreign cities. +They are well over that. If we were lying in sight of the Pyramids of +Egypt, they would not come on deck until after breakfast, now-a-days. + +The Golden Horn is a narrow arm of the sea, which branches from the +Bosporus (a sort of broad river which connects the Marmora and Black +Seas,) and, curving around, divides the city in the middle. Galata and +Pera are on one side of the Bosporus, and the Golden Horn; Stamboul +(ancient Byzantium) is upon the other. On the other bank of the Bosporus +is Scutari and other suburbs of Constantinople. This great city contains +a million inhabitants, but so narrow are its streets, and so crowded +together are its houses, that it does not cover much more than half as +much ground as New York City. Seen from the anchorage or from a mile or +so up the Bosporus, it is by far the handsomest city we have seen. Its +dense array of houses swells upward from the water's edge, and spreads +over the domes of many hills; and the gardens that peep out here and +there, the great globes of the mosques, and the countless minarets that +meet the eye every where, invest the metropolis with the quaint Oriental +aspect one dreams of when he reads books of eastern travel. +Constantinople makes a noble picture. + +But its attractiveness begins and ends with its picturesqueness. From +the time one starts ashore till he gets back again, he execrates it. The +boat he goes in is admirably miscalculated for the service it is built +for. It is handsomely and neatly fitted up, but no man could handle it +well in the turbulent currents that sweep down the Bosporus from the +Black Sea, and few men could row it satisfactorily even in still water. +It is a long, light canoe (caique,) large at one end and tapering to a +knife blade at the other. They make that long sharp end the bow, and you +can imagine how these boiling currents spin it about. It has two oars, +and sometimes four, and no rudder. You start to go to a given point and +you run in fifty different directions before you get there. First one +oar is backing water, and then the other; it is seldom that both are +going ahead at once. This kind of boating is calculated to drive an +impatient man mad in a week. The boatmen are the awkwardest, the +stupidest, and the most unscientific on earth, without question. + +Ashore, it was--well, it was an eternal circus. People were thicker than +bees, in those narrow streets, and the men were dressed in all the +outrageous, outlandish, idolatrous, extravagant, thunder-and-lightning +costumes that ever a tailor with the delirium tremens and seven devils +could conceive of. There was no freak in dress too crazy to be indulged +in; no absurdity too absurd to be tolerated; no frenzy in ragged +diabolism too fantastic to be attempted. No two men were dressed alike. +It was a wild masquerade of all imaginable costumes--every struggling +throng in every street was a dissolving view of stunning contrasts. Some +patriarchs wore awful turbans, but the grand mass of the infidel horde +wore the fiery red skull-cap they call a fez. All the remainder of the +raiment they indulged in was utterly indescribable. + +The shops here are mere coops, mere boxes, bath-rooms, closets--any thing +you please to call them--on the first floor. The Turks sit cross-legged +in them, and work and trade and smoke long pipes, and smell like--like +Turks. That covers the ground. Crowding the narrow streets in front of +them are beggars, who beg forever, yet never collect any thing; and +wonderful cripples, distorted out of all semblance of humanity, almost; +vagabonds driving laden asses; porters carrying dry-goods boxes as large +as cottages on their backs; peddlers of grapes, hot corn, pumpkin seeds, +and a hundred other things, yelling like fiends; and sleeping happily, +comfortably, serenely, among the hurrying feet, are the famed dogs of +Constantinople; drifting noiselessly about are squads of Turkish women, +draped from chin to feet in flowing robes, and with snowy veils bound +about their heads, that disclose only the eyes and a vague, shadowy +notion of their features. Seen moving about, far away in the dim, arched +aisles of the Great Bazaar, they look as the shrouded dead must have +looked when they walked forth from their graves amid the storms and +thunders and earthquakes that burst upon Calvary that awful night of the +Crucifixion. A street in Constantinople is a picture which one ought to +see once--not oftener. + +And then there was the goose-rancher--a fellow who drove a hundred geese +before him about the city, and tried to sell them. He had a pole ten +feet long, with a crook in the end of it, and occasionally a goose would +branch out from the flock and make a lively break around the corner, with +wings half lifted and neck stretched to its utmost. Did the +goose-merchant get excited? No. He took his pole and reached after +that goose with unspeakable sang froid--took a hitch round his neck, and +"yanked" him back to his place in the flock without an effort. He +steered his geese with that stick as easily as another man would steer a +yawl. A few hours afterward we saw him sitting on a stone at a corner, +in the midst of the turmoil, sound asleep in the sun, with his geese +squatting around him, or dodging out of the way of asses and men. We +came by again, within the hour, and he was taking account of stock, to +see whether any of his flock had strayed or been stolen. The way he did +it was unique. He put the end of his stick within six or eight inches of +a stone wall, and made the geese march in single file between it and the +wall. He counted them as they went by. There was no dodging that +arrangement. + +If you want dwarfs--I mean just a few dwarfs for a curiosity--go to +Genoa. If you wish to buy them by the gross, for retail, go to Milan. +There are plenty of dwarfs all over Italy, but it did seem to me that in +Milan the crop was luxuriant. If you would see a fair average style of +assorted cripples, go to Naples, or travel through the Roman States. +But if you would see the very heart and home of cripples and human +monsters, both, go straight to Constantinople. A beggar in Naples who +can show a foot which has all run into one horrible toe, with one +shapeless nail on it, has a fortune--but such an exhibition as that would +not provoke any notice in Constantinople. The man would starve. Who +would pay any attention to attractions like his among the rare monsters +that throng the bridges of the Golden Horn and display their deformities +in the gutters of Stamboul? O, wretched impostor! How could he stand +against the three-legged woman, and the man with his eye in his cheek? +How would he blush in presence of the man with fingers on his elbow? +Where would he hide himself when the dwarf with seven fingers on each +hand, no upper lip, and his under-jaw gone, came down in his majesty? +Bismillah! The cripples of Europe are a delusion and a fraud. The truly +gifted flourish only in the by-ways of Pera and Stamboul. + +That three-legged woman lay on the bridge, with her stock in trade so +disposed as to command the most striking effect--one natural leg, and two +long, slender, twisted ones with feet on them like somebody else's +fore-arm. Then there was a man further along who had no eyes, and whose +face was the color of a fly-blown beefsteak, and wrinkled and twisted +like a lava-flow--and verily so tumbled and distorted were his features +that no man could tell the wart that served him for a nose from his +cheek-bones. In Stamboul was a man with a prodigious head, an uncommonly +long body, legs eight inches long and feet like snow-shoes. He traveled +on those feet and his hands, and was as sway-backed as if the Colossus +of Rhodes had been riding him. Ah, a beggar has to have exceedingly +good points to make a living in Constantinople. A blue-faced man, who +had nothing to offer except that he had been blown up in a mine, would +be regarded as a rank impostor, and a mere damaged soldier on crutches +would never make a cent. It would pay him to get apiece of his head +taken off, and cultivate a wen like a carpet sack. + +The Mosque of St. Sophia is the chief lion of Constantinople. You must +get a firman and hurry there the first thing. We did that. We did not +get a firman, but we took along four or five francs apiece, which is much +the same thing. + +I do not think much of the Mosque of St. Sophia. I suppose I lack +appreciation. We will let it go at that. It is the rustiest old barn in +heathendom. I believe all the interest that attaches to it comes from +the fact that it was built for a Christian church and then turned into a +mosque, without much alteration, by the Mohammedan conquerors of the +land. They made me take off my boots and walk into the place in my +stocking-feet. I caught cold, and got myself so stuck up with a +complication of gums, slime and general corruption, that I wore out more +than two thousand pair of boot-jacks getting my boots off that night, and +even then some Christian hide peeled off with them. I abate not a single +boot-jack. + +St. Sophia is a colossal church, thirteen or fourteen hundred years old, +and unsightly enough to be very, very much older. Its immense dome is +said to be more wonderful than St. Peter's, but its dirt is much more +wonderful than its dome, though they never mention it. The church has a +hundred and seventy pillars in it, each a single piece, and all of costly +marbles of various kinds, but they came from ancient temples at Baalbec, +Heliopolis, Athens and Ephesus, and are battered, ugly and repulsive. +They were a thousand years old when this church was new, and then the +contrast must have been ghastly--if Justinian's architects did not trim +them any. The inside of the dome is figured all over with a monstrous +inscription in Turkish characters, wrought in gold mosaic, that looks as +glaring as a circus bill; the pavements and the marble balustrades are +all battered and dirty; the perspective is marred every where by a web of +ropes that depend from the dizzy height of the dome, and suspend +countless dingy, coarse oil lamps, and ostrich-eggs, six or seven feet +above the floor. Squatting and sitting in groups, here and there and far +and near, were ragged Turks reading books, hearing sermons, or receiving +lessons like children. and in fifty places were more of the same sort +bowing and straightening up, bowing again and getting down to kiss the +earth, muttering prayers the while, and keeping up their gymnastics till +they ought to have been tired, if they were not. + +Every where was dirt, and dust, and dinginess, and gloom; every where +were signs of a hoary antiquity, but with nothing touching or beautiful +about it; every where were those groups of fantastic pagans; overhead the +gaudy mosaics and the web of lamp-ropes--nowhere was there any thing to +win one's love or challenge his admiration. + +The people who go into ecstasies over St. Sophia must surely get them out +of the guide-book (where every church is spoken of as being "considered +by good judges to be the most marvelous structure, in many respects, that +the world has ever seen.") Or else they are those old connoisseurs from +the wilds of New Jersey who laboriously learn the difference between a +fresco and a fire-plug and from that day forward feel privileged to void +their critical bathos on painting, sculpture and architecture forever +more. + +We visited the Dancing Dervishes. There were twenty-one of them. They +wore a long, light-colored loose robe that hung to their heels. Each in +his turn went up to the priest (they were all within a large circular +railing) and bowed profoundly and then went spinning away deliriously and +took his appointed place in the circle, and continued to spin. When all +had spun themselves to their places, they were about five or six feet +apart--and so situated, the entire circle of spinning pagans spun itself +three separate times around the room. It took twenty-five minutes to do +it. They spun on the left foot, and kept themselves going by passing the +right rapidly before it and digging it against the waxed floor. Some of +them made incredible "time." Most of them spun around forty times in a +minute, and one artist averaged about sixty-one times a minute, and kept +it up during the whole twenty-five. His robe filled with air and stood +out all around him like a balloon. + +They made no noise of any kind, and most of them tilted their heads back +and closed their eyes, entranced with a sort of devotional ecstacy. +There was a rude kind of music, part of the time, but the musicians were +not visible. None but spinners were allowed within the circle. A man +had to either spin or stay outside. It was about as barbarous an +exhibition as we have witnessed yet. Then sick persons came and lay +down, and beside them women laid their sick children (one a babe at the +breast,) and the patriarch of the Dervishes walked upon their bodies. He +was supposed to cure their diseases by trampling upon their breasts or +backs or standing on the back of their necks. This is well enough for a +people who think all their affairs are made or marred by viewless spirits +of the air--by giants, gnomes, and genii--and who still believe, to this +day, all the wild tales in the Arabian Nights. Even so an intelligent +missionary tells me. + +We visited the Thousand and One Columns. I do not know what it was +originally intended for, but they said it was built for a reservoir. It +is situated in the centre of Constantinople. You go down a flight of +stone steps in the middle of a barren place, and there you are. You are +forty feet under ground, and in the midst of a perfect wilderness of +tall, slender, granite columns, of Byzantine architecture. Stand where +you would, or change your position as often as you pleased, you were +always a centre from which radiated a dozen long archways and colonnades +that lost themselves in distance and the sombre twilight of the place. +This old dried-up reservoir is occupied by a few ghostly silk-spinners +now, and one of them showed me a cross cut high up in one of the pillars. +I suppose he meant me to understand that the institution was there before +the Turkish occupation, and I thought he made a remark to that effect; +but he must have had an impediment in his speech, for I did not +understand him. + +We took off our shoes and went into the marble mausoleum of the Sultan +Mahmoud, the neatest piece of architecture, inside, that I have seen +lately. Mahmoud's tomb was covered with a black velvet pall, which was +elaborately embroidered with silver; it stood within a fancy silver +railing; at the sides and corners were silver candlesticks that would +weigh more than a hundred pounds, and they supported candles as large as +a man's leg; on the top of the sarcophagus was a fez, with a handsome +diamond ornament upon it, which an attendant said cost a hundred thousand +pounds, and lied like a Turk when he said it. Mahmoud's whole family +were comfortably planted around him. + +We went to the great Bazaar in Stamboul, of course, and I shall not +describe it further than to say it is a monstrous hive of little shops +--thousands, I should say--all under one roof, and cut up into innumerable +little blocks by narrow streets which are arched overhead. One street is +devoted to a particular kind of merchandise, another to another, and so +on. + +When you wish to buy a pair of shoes you have the swing of the whole +street--you do not have to walk yourself down hunting stores in different +localities. It is the same with silks, antiquities, shawls, etc. The +place is crowded with people all the time, and as the gay-colored Eastern +fabrics are lavishly displayed before every shop, the great Bazaar of +Stamboul is one of the sights that are worth seeing. It is full of life, +and stir, and business, dirt, beggars, asses, yelling peddlers, porters, +dervishes, high-born Turkish female shoppers, Greeks, and weird-looking +and weirdly dressed Mohammedans from the mountains and the far provinces +--and the only solitary thing one does not smell when he is in the Great +Bazaar, is something which smells good. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + +Mosques are plenty, churches are plenty, graveyards are plenty, but +morals and whiskey are scarce. The Koran does not permit Mohammedans to +drink. Their natural instincts do not permit them to be moral. They say +the Sultan has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy. It +makes our cheeks burn with shame to see such a thing permitted here in +Turkey. We do not mind it so much in Salt Lake, however. + +Circassian and Georgian girls are still sold in Constantinople by their +parents, but not publicly. The great slave marts we have all read so +much about--where tender young girls were stripped for inspection, and +criticised and discussed just as if they were horses at an agricultural +fair--no longer exist. The exhibition and the sales are private now. +Stocks are up, just at present, partly because of a brisk demand created +by the recent return of the Sultan's suite from the courts of Europe; +partly on account of an unusual abundance of bread-stuffs, which leaves +holders untortured by hunger and enables them to hold back for high +prices; and partly because buyers are too weak to bear the market, while +sellers are amply prepared to bull it. Under these circumstances, if the +American metropolitan newspapers were published here in Constantinople, +their next commercial report would read about as follows, I suppose: + + SLAVE GIRL MARKET REPORT. + + "Best brands Circassians, crop of 1850, L200; 1852, L250; 1854, + L300. Best brands Georgian, none in market; second quality, 1851, + L180. Nineteen fair to middling Wallachian girls offered at L130 @ + 150, but no takers; sixteen prime A 1 sold in small lots to close + out--terms private. + + "Sales of one lot Circassians, prime to good, 1852 to 1854, at L240 + @ 242, buyer 30; one forty-niner--damaged--at L23, seller ten, no + deposit. Several Georgians, fancy brands, 1852, changed hands to + fill orders. The Georgians now on hand are mostly last year's crop, + which was unusually poor. The new crop is a little backward, but + will be coming in shortly. As regards its quantity and quality, the + accounts are most encouraging. In this connection we can safely + say, also, that the new crop of Circassians is looking extremely + well. His Majesty the Sultan has already sent in large orders for + his new harem, which will be finished within a fortnight, and this + has naturally strengthened the market and given Circassian stock a + strong upward tendency. Taking advantage of the inflated market, + many of our shrewdest operators are selling short. There are hints + of a "corner" on Wallachians. + + "There is nothing new in Nubians. Slow sale. + + "Eunuchs--None offering; however, large cargoes are expected from + Egypt today." + + +I think the above would be about the style of the commercial report. +Prices are pretty high now, and holders firm; but, two or three years +ago, parents in a starving condition brought their young daughters down +here and sold them for even twenty and thirty dollars, when they could do +no better, simply to save themselves and the girls from dying of want. +It is sad to think of so distressing a thing as this, and I for one am +sincerely glad the prices are up again. + +Commercial morals, especially, are bad. There is no gainsaying that. +Greek, Turkish and Armenian morals consist only in attending church +regularly on the appointed Sabbaths, and in breaking the ten commandments +all the balance of the week. It comes natural to them to lie and cheat +in the first place, and then they go on and improve on nature until they +arrive at perfection. In recommending his son to a merchant as a +valuable salesman, a father does not say he is a nice, moral, upright +boy, and goes to Sunday School and is honest, but he says, "This boy is +worth his weight in broad pieces of a hundred--for behold, he will cheat +whomsoever hath dealings with him, and from the Euxine to the waters of +Marmora there abideth not so gifted a liar!" How is that for a +recommendation? The Missionaries tell me that they hear encomiums like +that passed upon people every day. They say of a person they admire, +"Ah, he is a charming swindler, and a most exquisite liar!" + +Every body lies and cheats--every body who is in business, at any rate. +Even foreigners soon have to come down to the custom of the country, and +they do not buy and sell long in Constantinople till they lie and cheat +like a Greek. I say like a Greek, because the Greeks are called the +worst transgressors in this line. Several Americans long resident in +Constantinople contend that most Turks are pretty trustworthy, but few +claim that the Greeks have any virtues that a man can discover--at least +without a fire assay. + +I am half willing to believe that the celebrated dogs of Constantinople +have been misrepresented--slandered. I have always been led to suppose +that they were so thick in the streets that they blocked the way; that +they moved about in organized companies, platoons and regiments, and took +what they wanted by determined and ferocious assault; and that at night +they drowned all other sounds with their terrible howlings. The dogs I +see here can not be those I have read of. + +I find them every where, but not in strong force. The most I have found +together has been about ten or twenty. And night or day a fair +proportion of them were sound asleep. Those that were not asleep always +looked as if they wanted to be. I never saw such utterly wretched, +starving, sad-visaged, broken-hearted looking curs in my life. It seemed +a grim satire to accuse such brutes as these of taking things by force of +arms. They hardly seemed to have strength enough or ambition enough to +walk across the street--I do not know that I have seen one walk that far +yet. They are mangy and bruised and mutilated, and often you see one +with the hair singed off him in such wide and well defined tracts that he +looks like a map of the new Territories. They are the sorriest beasts +that breathe--the most abject--the most pitiful. In their faces is a +settled expression of melancholy, an air of hopeless despondency. The +hairless patches on a scalded dog are preferred by the fleas of +Constantinople to a wider range on a healthier dog; and the exposed +places suit the fleas exactly. I saw a dog of this kind start to nibble +at a flea--a fly attracted his attention, and he made a snatch at him; +the flea called for him once more, and that forever unsettled him; he +looked sadly at his flea-pasture, then sadly looked at his bald spot. +Then he heaved a sigh and dropped his head resignedly upon his paws. He +was not equal to the situation. + +The dogs sleep in the streets, all over the city. From one end of the +street to the other, I suppose they will average about eight or ten to a +block. Sometimes, of course, there are fifteen or twenty to a block. +They do not belong to any body, and they seem to have no close personal +friendships among each other. But they district the city themselves, and +the dogs of each district, whether it be half a block in extent, or ten +blocks, have to remain within its bounds. Woe to a dog if he crosses the +line! His neighbors would snatch the balance of his hair off in a +second. So it is said. But they don't look it. + +They sleep in the streets these days. They are my compass--my guide. +When I see the dogs sleep placidly on, while men, sheep, geese, and all +moving things turn out and go around them, I know I am not in the great +street where the hotel is, and must go further. In the Grand Rue the +dogs have a sort of air of being on the lookout--an air born of being +obliged to get out of the way of many carriages every day--and that +expression one recognizes in a moment. It does not exist upon the face +of any dog without the confines of that street. All others sleep +placidly and keep no watch. They would not move, though the Sultan +himself passed by. + +In one narrow street (but none of them are wide) I saw three dogs lying +coiled up, about a foot or two apart. End to end they lay, and so they +just bridged the street neatly, from gutter to gutter. A drove of a +hundred sheep came along. They stepped right over the dogs, the rear +crowding the front, impatient to get on. The dogs looked lazily up, +flinched a little when the impatient feet of the sheep touched their raw +backs--sighed, and lay peacefully down again. No talk could be plainer +than that. So some of the sheep jumped over them and others scrambled +between, occasionally chipping a leg with their sharp hoofs, and when the +whole flock had made the trip, the dogs sneezed a little, in the cloud of +dust, but never budged their bodies an inch. I thought I was lazy, but I +am a steam-engine compared to a Constantinople dog. But was not that a +singular scene for a city of a million inhabitants? + +These dogs are the scavengers of the city. That is their official +position, and a hard one it is. However, it is their protection. But +for their usefulness in partially cleansing these terrible streets, they +would not be tolerated long. They eat any thing and every thing that +comes in their way, from melon rinds and spoiled grapes up through all +the grades and species of dirt and refuse to their own dead friends and +relatives--and yet they are always lean, always hungry, always +despondent. The people are loath to kill them--do not kill them, in +fact. The Turks have an innate antipathy to taking the life of any dumb +animal, it is said. But they do worse. They hang and kick and stone and +scald these wretched creatures to the very verge of death, and then leave +them to live and suffer. + +Once a Sultan proposed to kill off all the dogs here, and did begin the +work--but the populace raised such a howl of horror about it that the +massacre was stayed. After a while, he proposed to remove them all to an +island in the Sea of Marmora. No objection was offered, and a ship-load +or so was taken away. But when it came to be known that somehow or other +the dogs never got to the island, but always fell overboard in the night +and perished, another howl was raised and the transportation scheme was +dropped. + +So the dogs remain in peaceable possession of the streets. I do not say +that they do not howl at night, nor that they do not attack people who +have not a red fez on their heads. I only say that it would be mean for +me to accuse them of these unseemly things who have not seen them do them +with my own eyes or heard them with my own ears. + +I was a little surprised to see Turks and Greeks playing newsboy right +here in the mysterious land where the giants and genii of the Arabian +Nights once dwelt--where winged horses and hydra-headed dragons guarded +enchanted castles--where Princes and Princesses flew through the air on +carpets that obeyed a mystic talisman--where cities whose houses were +made of precious stones sprang up in a night under the hand of the +magician, and where busy marts were suddenly stricken with a spell and +each citizen lay or sat, or stood with weapon raised or foot advanced, +just as he was, speechless and motionless, till time had told a hundred +years! + +It was curious to see newsboys selling papers in so dreamy a land as +that. And, to say truly, it is comparatively a new thing here. The +selling of newspapers had its birth in Constantinople about a year ago, +and was a child of the Prussian and Austrian war. + +There is one paper published here in the English language--The Levant +Herald--and there are generally a number of Greek and a few French papers +rising and falling, struggling up and falling again. Newspapers are not +popular with the Sultan's Government. They do not understand journalism. +The proverb says, "The unknown is always great." To the court, the +newspaper is a mysterious and rascally institution. They know what a +pestilence is, because they have one occasionally that thins the people +out at the rate of two thousand a day, and they regard a newspaper as a +mild form of pestilence. When it goes astray, they suppress it--pounce +upon it without warning, and throttle it. When it don't go astray for a +long time, they get suspicious and throttle it anyhow, because they think +it is hatching deviltry. Imagine the Grand Vizier in solemn council with +the magnates of the realm, spelling his way through the hated newspaper, +and finally delivering his profound decision: "This thing means mischief +--it is too darkly, too suspiciously inoffensive--suppress it! Warn the +publisher that we can not have this sort of thing: put the editor in +prison!" + +The newspaper business has its inconveniences in Constantinople. Two +Greek papers and one French one were suppressed here within a few days of +each other. No victories of the Cretans are allowed to be printed. From +time to time the Grand Vizier sends a notice to the various editors that +the Cretan insurrection is entirely suppressed, and although that editor +knows better, he still has to print the notice. The Levant Herald is too +fond of speaking praisefully of Americans to be popular with the Sultan, +who does not relish our sympathy with the Cretans, and therefore that +paper has to be particularly circumspect in order to keep out of trouble. +Once the editor, forgetting the official notice in his paper that the +Cretans were crushed out, printed a letter of a very different tenor, +from the American Consul in Crete, and was fined two hundred and fifty +dollars for it. Shortly he printed another from the same source and was +imprisoned three months for his pains. I think I could get the assistant +editorship of the Levant Herald, but I am going to try to worry along +without it. + +To suppress a paper here involves the ruin of the publisher, almost. But +in Naples I think they speculate on misfortunes of that kind. Papers are +suppressed there every day, and spring up the next day under a new name. +During the ten days or a fortnight we staid there one paper was murdered +and resurrected twice. The newsboys are smart there, just as they are +elsewhere. They take advantage of popular weaknesses. When they find +they are not likely to sell out, they approach a citizen mysteriously, +and say in a low voice--"Last copy, sir: double price; paper just been +suppressed!" The man buys it, of course, and finds nothing in it. They +do say--I do not vouch for it--but they do say that men sometimes print a +vast edition of a paper, with a ferociously seditious article in it, +distribute it quickly among the newsboys, and clear out till the +Government's indignation cools. It pays well. Confiscation don't amount +to any thing. The type and presses are not worth taking care of. + +There is only one English newspaper in Naples. It has seventy +subscribers. The publisher is getting rich very deliberately--very +deliberately indeed. + +I never shall want another Turkish lunch. The cooking apparatus was in +the little lunch room, near the bazaar, and it was all open to the +street. The cook was slovenly, and so was the table, and it had no cloth +on it. The fellow took a mass of sausage meat and coated it round a wire +and laid it on a charcoal fire to cook. When it was done, he laid it +aside and a dog walked sadly in and nipped it. He smelt it first, and +probably recognized the remains of a friend. The cook took it away from +him and laid it before us. Jack said, "I pass"--he plays euchre +sometimes--and we all passed in turn. Then the cook baked a broad, flat, +wheaten cake, greased it well with the sausage, and started towards us +with it. It dropped in the dirt, and he picked it up and polished it on +his breeches, and laid it before us. Jack said, "I pass." We all +passed. He put some eggs in a frying pan, and stood pensively prying +slabs of meat from between his teeth with a fork. Then he used the fork +to turn the eggs with--and brought them along. Jack said "Pass again." +All followed suit. We did not know what to do, and so we ordered a new +ration of sausage. The cook got out his wire, apportioned a proper +amount of sausage-meat, spat it on his hands and fell to work! This +time, with one accord, we all passed out. We paid and left. That is +all I learned about Turkish lunches. A Turkish lunch is good, no doubt, +but it has its little drawbacks. + +When I think how I have been swindled by books of Oriental travel, I want +a tourist for breakfast. For years and years I have dreamed of the +wonders of the Turkish bath; for years and years I have promised myself +that I would yet enjoy one. Many and many a time, in fancy, I have lain +in the marble bath, and breathed the slumbrous fragrance of Eastern +spices that filled the air; then passed through a weird and complicated +system of pulling and hauling, and drenching and scrubbing, by a gang of +naked savages who loomed vast and vaguely through the steaming mists, +like demons; then rested for a while on a divan fit for a king; then +passed through another complex ordeal, and one more fearful than the +first; and, finally, swathed in soft fabrics, been conveyed to a princely +saloon and laid on a bed of eider down, where eunuchs, gorgeous of +costume, fanned me while I drowsed and dreamed, or contentedly gazed at +the rich hangings of the apartment, the soft carpets, the sumptuous +furniture, the pictures, and drank delicious coffee, smoked the soothing +narghili, and dropped, at the last, into tranquil repose, lulled by +sensuous odors from unseen censers, by the gentle influence of the +narghili's Persian tobacco, and by the music of fountains that +counterfeited the pattering of summer rain. + +That was the picture, just as I got it from incendiary books of travel. +It was a poor, miserable imposture. The reality is no more like it than +the Five Points are like the Garden of Eden. They received me in a great +court, paved with marble slabs; around it were broad galleries, one above +another, carpeted with seedy matting, railed with unpainted balustrades, +and furnished with huge rickety chairs, cushioned with rusty old +mattresses, indented with impressions left by the forms of nine +successive generations of men who had reposed upon them. The place was +vast, naked, dreary; its court a barn, its galleries stalls for human +horses. The cadaverous, half nude varlets that served in the +establishment had nothing of poetry in their appearance, nothing of +romance, nothing of Oriental splendor. They shed no entrancing odors +--just the contrary. Their hungry eyes and their lank forms continually +suggested one glaring, unsentimental fact--they wanted what they term in +California "a square meal." + +I went into one of the racks and undressed. An unclean starveling +wrapped a gaudy table-cloth about his loins, and hung a white rag over my +shoulders. If I had had a tub then, it would have come natural to me to +take in washing. I was then conducted down stairs into the wet, slippery +court, and the first things that attracted my attention were my heels. +My fall excited no comment. They expected it, no doubt. It belonged in +the list of softening, sensuous influences peculiar to this home of +Eastern luxury. It was softening enough, certainly, but its application +was not happy. They now gave me a pair of wooden clogs--benches in +miniature, with leather straps over them to confine my feet (which they +would have done, only I do not wear No. 13s.) These things dangled +uncomfortably by the straps when I lifted up my feet, and came down in +awkward and unexpected places when I put them on the floor again, and +sometimes turned sideways and wrenched my ankles out of joint. However, +it was all Oriental luxury, and I did what I could to enjoy it. + +They put me in another part of the barn and laid me on a stuffy sort of +pallet, which was not made of cloth of gold, or Persian shawls, but was +merely the unpretending sort of thing I have seen in the negro quarters +of Arkansas. There was nothing whatever in this dim marble prison but +five more of these biers. It was a very solemn place. I expected that +the spiced odors of Araby were going to steal over my senses now, but +they did not. A copper-colored skeleton, with a rag around him, brought +me a glass decanter of water, with a lighted tobacco pipe in the top of +it, and a pliant stem a yard long, with a brass mouth-piece to it. + +It was the famous "narghili" of the East--the thing the Grand Turk smokes +in the pictures. This began to look like luxury. I took one blast at +it, and it was sufficient; the smoke went in a great volume down into my +stomach, my lungs, even into the uttermost parts of my frame. I exploded +one mighty cough, and it was as if Vesuvius had let go. For the next +five minutes I smoked at every pore, like a frame house that is on fire +on the inside. Not any more narghili for me. The smoke had a vile +taste, and the taste of a thousand infidel tongues that remained on that +brass mouthpiece was viler still. I was getting discouraged. Whenever, +hereafter, I see the cross-legged Grand Turk smoking his narghili, in +pretended bliss, on the outside of a paper of Connecticut tobacco, I +shall know him for the shameless humbug he is. + +This prison was filled with hot air. When I had got warmed up +sufficiently to prepare me for a still warmer temperature, they took me +where it was--into a marble room, wet, slippery and steamy, and laid me +out on a raised platform in the centre. It was very warm. Presently my +man sat me down by a tank of hot water, drenched me well, gloved his hand +with a coarse mitten, and began to polish me all over with it. I began +to smell disagreeably. The more he polished the worse I smelt. It was +alarming. I said to him: + +"I perceive that I am pretty far gone. It is plain that I ought to be +buried without any unnecessary delay. Perhaps you had better go after my +friends at once, because the weather is warm, and I can not 'keep' long." + +He went on scrubbing, and paid no attention. I soon saw that he was +reducing my size. He bore hard on his mitten, and from under it rolled +little cylinders, like maccaroni. It could not be dirt, for it was too +white. He pared me down in this way for a long time. Finally I said: + +"It is a tedious process. It will take hours to trim me to the size you +want me; I will wait; go and borrow a jack-plane." + +He paid no attention at all. + +After a while he brought a basin, some soap, and something that seemed to +be the tail of a horse. He made up a prodigious quantity of soap-suds, +deluged me with them from head to foot, without warning me to shut my +eyes, and then swabbed me viciously with the horse-tail. Then he left me +there, a snowy statue of lather, and went away. When I got tired of +waiting I went and hunted him up. He was propped against the wall, in +another room, asleep. I woke him. He was not disconcerted. He took me +back and flooded me with hot water, then turbaned my head, swathed me +with dry table-cloths, and conducted me to a latticed chicken-coop in one +of the galleries, and pointed to one of those Arkansas beds. I mounted +it, and vaguely expected the odors of Araby a gain. They did not come. + +The blank, unornamented coop had nothing about it of that oriental +voluptuousness one reads of so much. It was more suggestive of the +county hospital than any thing else. The skinny servitor brought a +narghili, and I got him to take it out again without wasting any time +about it. Then he brought the world-renowned Turkish coffee that poets +have sung so rapturously for many generations, and I seized upon it as +the last hope that was left of my old dreams of Eastern luxury. It was +another fraud. Of all the unchristian beverages that ever passed my +lips, Turkish coffee is the worst. The cup is small, it is smeared with +grounds; the coffee is black, thick, unsavory of smell, and execrable in +taste. The bottom of the cup has a muddy sediment in it half an inch +deep. This goes down your throat, and portions of it lodge by the way, +and produce a tickling aggravation that keeps you barking and coughing +for an hour. + +Here endeth my experience of the celebrated Turkish bath, and here also +endeth my dream of the bliss the mortal revels in who passes through it. +It is a malignant swindle. The man who enjoys it is qualified to enjoy +any thing that is repulsive to sight or sense, and he that can invest it +with a charm of poetry is able to do the same with any thing else in the +world that is tedious, and wretched, and dismal, and nasty. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + +We left a dozen passengers in Constantinople, and sailed through the +beautiful Bosporus and far up into the Black Sea. We left them in the +clutches of the celebrated Turkish guide, "FAR-AWAY MOSES," who will +seduce them into buying a ship-load of ottar of roses, splendid Turkish +vestments, and ail manner of curious things they can never have any use +for. Murray's invaluable guide-books have mentioned 'Far-away Moses' +name, and he is a made man. He rejoices daily in the fact that he is a +recognized celebrity. However, we can not alter our established customs +to please the whims of guides; we can not show partialities this late in +the day. Therefore, ignoring this fellow's brilliant fame, and ignoring +the fanciful name he takes such pride in, we called him Ferguson, just as +we had done with all other guides. It has kept him in a state of +smothered exasperation all the time. Yet we meant him no harm. After he +has gotten himself up regardless of expense, in showy, baggy trowsers, +yellow, pointed slippers, fiery fez, silken jacket of blue, voluminous +waist-sash of fancy Persian stuff filled with a battery of silver-mounted +horse-pistols, and has strapped on his terrible scimitar, he considers it +an unspeakable humiliation to be called Ferguson. It can not be helped. +All guides are Fergusons to us. We can not master their dreadful foreign +names. + +Sebastopol is probably the worst battered town in Russia or any where +else. But we ought to be pleased with it, nevertheless, for we have been +in no country yet where we have been so kindly received, and where we +felt that to be Americans was a sufficient visa for our passports. The +moment the anchor was down, the Governor of the town immediately +dispatched an officer on board to inquire if he could be of any +assistance to us, and to invite us to make ourselves at home in +Sebastopol! If you know Russia, you know that this was a wild stretch of +hospitality. They are usually so suspicious of strangers that they worry +them excessively with the delays and aggravations incident to a +complicated passport system. Had we come from any other country we could +not have had permission to enter Sebastopol and leave again under three +days--but as it was, we were at liberty to go and come when and where we +pleased. Every body in Constantinople warned us to be very careful about +our passports, see that they were strictly 'en regle', and never to +mislay them for a moment: and they told us of numerous instances of +Englishmen and others who were delayed days, weeks, and even months, in +Sebastopol, on account of trifling informalities in their passports, and +for which they were not to blame. I had lost my passport, and was +traveling under my room-mate's, who stayed behind in Constantinople to +await our return. To read the description of him in that passport and +then look at me, any man could see that I was no more like him than I am +like Hercules. So I went into the harbor of Sebastopol with fear and +trembling--full of a vague, horrible apprehension that I was going to be +found out and hanged. But all that time my true passport had been +floating gallantly overhead--and behold it was only our flag. They never +asked us for any other. + +We have had a great many Russian and English gentlemen and ladies on +board to-day, and the time has passed cheerfully away. They were all +happy-spirited people, and I never heard our mother tongue sound so +pleasantly as it did when it fell from those English lips in this far-off +land. I talked to the Russians a good deal, just to be friendly, and +they talked to me from the same motive; I am sure that both enjoyed the +conversation, but never a word of it either of us understood. I did most +of my talking to those English people though, and I am sorry we can not +carry some of them along with us. + +We have gone whithersoever we chose, to-day, and have met with nothing +but the kindest attentions. Nobody inquired whether we had any passports +or not. + +Several of the officers of the Government have suggested that we take the +ship to a little watering-place thirty miles from here, and pay the +Emperor of Russia a visit. He is rusticating there. These officers said +they would take it upon themselves to insure us a cordial reception. +They said if we would go, they would not only telegraph the Emperor, but +send a special courier overland to announce our coming. Our time is so +short, though, and more especially our coal is so nearly out, that we +judged it best to forego the rare pleasure of holding social intercourse +with an Emperor. + +Ruined Pompeii is in good condition compared to Sebastopol. Here, you +may look in whatsoever direction you please, and your eye encounters +scarcely any thing but ruin, ruin, ruin!--fragments of houses, crumbled +walls, torn and ragged hills, devastation every where! It is as if a +mighty earthquake had spent all its terrible forces upon this one little +spot. For eighteen long months the storms of war beat upon the helpless +town, and left it at last the saddest wreck that ever the sun has looked +upon. Not one solitary house escaped unscathed--not one remained +habitable, even. Such utter and complete ruin one could hardly conceive +of. The houses had all been solid, dressed stone structures; most of +them were ploughed through and through by cannon balls--unroofed and +sliced down from eaves to foundation--and now a row of them, half a mile +long, looks merely like an endless procession of battered chimneys. No +semblance of a house remains in such as these. Some of the larger +buildings had corners knocked off; pillars cut in two; cornices smashed; +holes driven straight through the walls. Many of these holes are as +round and as cleanly cut as if they had been made with an auger. Others +are half pierced through, and the clean impression is there in the rock, +as smooth and as shapely as if it were done in putty. Here and there a +ball still sticks in a wall, and from it iron tears trickle down and +discolor the stone. + +The battle-fields were pretty close together. The Malakoff tower is on +a hill which is right in the edge of the town. The Redan was within +rifle-shot of the Malakoff; Inkerman was a mile away; and Balaklava +removed but an hour's ride. The French trenches, by which they +approached and invested the Malakoff were carried so close under its +sloping sides that one might have stood by the Russian guns and tossed a +stone into them. Repeatedly, during three terrible days, they swarmed up +the little Malakoff hill, and were beaten back with terrible slaughter. +Finally, they captured the place, and drove the Russians out, who then +tried to retreat into the town, but the English had taken the Redan, and +shut them off with a wall of flame; there was nothing for them to do but +go back and retake the Malakoff or die under its guns. They did go +back; they took the Malakoff and retook it two or three times, but their +desperate valor could not avail, and they had to give up at last. + +These fearful fields, where such tempests of death used to rage, are +peaceful enough now; no sound is heard, hardly a living thing moves about +them, they are lonely and silent--their desolation is complete. + +There was nothing else to do, and so every body went to hunting relics. +They have stocked the ship with them. They brought them from the +Malakoff, from the Redan, Inkerman, Balaklava--every where. They have +brought cannon balls, broken ramrods, fragments of shell--iron enough to +freight a sloop. Some have even brought bones--brought them laboriously +from great distances, and were grieved to hear the surgeon pronounce them +only bones of mules and oxen. I knew Blucher would not lose an +opportunity like this. He brought a sack full on board and was going for +another. I prevailed upon him not to go. He has already turned his +state-room into a museum of worthless trumpery, which he has gathered up +in his travels. He is labeling his trophies, now. I picked up one a +while ago, and found it marked "Fragment of a Russian General." I +carried it out to get a better light upon it--it was nothing but a couple +of teeth and part of the jaw-bone of a horse. I said with some asperity: + +"Fragment of a Russian General! This is absurd. Are you never going to +learn any sense?" + +He only said: "Go slow--the old woman won't know any different." [His +aunt.] + +This person gathers mementoes with a perfect recklessness, now-a-days; +mixes them all up together, and then serenely labels them without any +regard to truth, propriety, or even plausibility. I have found him +breaking a stone in two, and labeling half of it "Chunk busted from the +pulpit of Demosthenes," and the other half "Darnick from the Tomb of +Abelard and Heloise." I have known him to gather up a handful of pebbles +by the roadside, and bring them on board ship and label them as coming +from twenty celebrated localities five hundred miles apart. I +remonstrate against these outrages upon reason and truth, of course, but +it does no good. I get the same tranquil, unanswerable reply every time: + +"It don't signify--the old woman won't know any different." + +Ever since we three or four fortunate ones made the midnight trip to +Athens, it has afforded him genuine satisfaction to give every body in +the ship a pebble from the Mars-hill where St. Paul preached. He got all +those pebbles on the sea shore, abreast the ship, but professes to have +gathered them from one of our party. However, it is not of any use for +me to expose the deception--it affords him pleasure, and does no harm to +any body. He says he never expects to run out of mementoes of St. Paul +as long as he is in reach of a sand-bank. Well, he is no worse than +others. I notice that all travelers supply deficiencies in their +collections in the same way. I shall never have any confidence in such +things again while I live. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + +We have got so far east, now--a hundred and fifty-five degrees of +longitude from San Francisco--that my watch can not "keep the hang" of +the time any more. It has grown discouraged, and stopped. I think it +did a wise thing. The difference in time between Sebastopol and the +Pacific coast is enormous. When it is six o'clock in the morning here, +it is somewhere about week before last in California. We are excusable +for getting a little tangled as to time. These distractions and +distresses about the time have worried me so much that I was afraid my +mind was so much affected that I never would have any appreciation of +time again; but when I noticed how handy I was yet about comprehending +when it was dinner-time, a blessed tranquillity settled down upon me, and +I am tortured with doubts and fears no more. + +Odessa is about twenty hours' run from Sebastopol, and is the most +northerly port in the Black Sea. We came here to get coal, principally. +The city has a population of one hundred and thirty-three thousand, and +is growing faster than any other small city out of America. It is a free +port, and is the great grain mart of this particular part of the world. +Its roadstead is full of ships. Engineers are at work, now, turning the +open roadstead into a spacious artificial harbor. It is to be almost +inclosed by massive stone piers, one of which will extend into the sea +over three thousand feet in a straight line. + +I have not felt so much at home for a long time as I did when I "raised +the hill" and stood in Odessa for the first time. It looked just like an +American city; fine, broad streets, and straight as well; low houses, +(two or three stories,) wide, neat, and free from any quaintness of +architectural ornamentation; locust trees bordering the sidewalks (they +call them acacias;) a stirring, business-look about the streets and the +stores; fast walkers; a familiar new look about the houses and every +thing; yea, and a driving and smothering cloud of dust that was so like a +message from our own dear native land that we could hardly refrain from +shedding a few grateful tears and execrations in the old time-honored +American way. Look up the street or down the street, this way or that +way, we saw only America! There was not one thing to remind us that we +were in Russia. We walked for some little distance, reveling in this +home vision, and then we came upon a church and a hack-driver, and +presto! the illusion vanished! The church had a slender-spired dome that +rounded inward at its base, and looked like a turnip turned upside down, +and the hackman seemed to be dressed in a long petticoat with out any +hoops. These things were essentially foreign, and so were the carriages +--but every body knows about these things, and there is no occasion for +my describing them. + +We were only to stay here a day and a night and take in coal; we +consulted the guide-books and were rejoiced to know that there were no +sights in Odessa to see; and so we had one good, untrammeled holyday on +our hands, with nothing to do but idle about the city and enjoy +ourselves. We sauntered through the markets and criticised the fearful +and wonderful costumes from the back country; examined the populace as +far as eyes could do it; and closed the entertainment with an ice-cream +debauch. We do not get ice-cream every where, and so, when we do, we are +apt to dissipate to excess. We never cared any thing about ice-cream at +home, but we look upon it with a sort of idolatry now that it is so +scarce in these red-hot climates of the East. + +We only found two pieces of statuary, and this was another blessing. One +was a bronze image of the Duc de Richelieu, grand-nephew of the splendid +Cardinal. It stood in a spacious, handsome promenade, overlooking the +sea, and from its base a vast flight of stone steps led down to the +harbor--two hundred of them, fifty feet long, and a wide landing at the +bottom of every twenty. It is a noble staircase, and from a distance the +people toiling up it looked like insects. I mention this statue and this +stairway because they have their story. Richelieu founded Odessa +--watched over it with paternal care--labored with a fertile brain and a +wise understanding for its best interests--spent his fortune freely to +the same end--endowed it with a sound prosperity, and one which will yet +make it one of the great cities of the Old World--built this noble +stairway with money from his own private purse--and--. Well, the people +for whom he had done so much, let him walk down these same steps, one +day, unattended, old, poor, without a second coat to his back; and when, +years afterwards, he died in Sebastopol in poverty and neglect, they +called a meeting, subscribed liberally, and immediately erected this +tasteful monument to his memory, and named a great street after him. +It reminds me of what Robert Burns' mother said when they erected a +stately monument to his memory: "Ah, Robbie, ye asked them for bread and +they hae gi'en ye a stane." + +The people of Odessa have warmly recommended us to go and call on the +Emperor, as did the Sebastopolians. They have telegraphed his Majesty, +and he has signified his willingness to grant us an audience. So we are +getting up the anchors and preparing to sail to his watering-place. What +a scratching around there will be, now! what a holding of important +meetings and appointing of solemn committees!--and what a furbishing up +of claw-hammer coats and white silk neck-ties! As this fearful ordeal we +are about to pass through pictures itself to my fancy in all its dread +sublimity, I begin to feel my fierce desire to converse with a genuine +Emperor cooling down and passing away. What am I to do with my hands? +What am I to do with my feet? What in the world am I to do with myself? + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. + +We anchored here at Yalta, Russia, two or three days ago. To me the +place was a vision of the Sierras. The tall, gray mountains that back +it, their sides bristling with pines--cloven with ravines--here and there +a hoary rock towering into view--long, straight streaks sweeping down +from the summit to the sea, marking the passage of some avalanche of +former times--all these were as like what one sees in the Sierras as if +the one were a portrait of the other. The little village of Yalta +nestles at the foot of an amphitheatre which slopes backward and upward +to the wall of hills, and looks as if it might have sunk quietly down to +its present position from a higher elevation. This depression is covered +with the great parks and gardens of noblemen, and through the mass of +green foliage the bright colors of their palaces bud out here and there +like flowers. It is a beautiful spot. + +We had the United States Consul on board--the Odessa Consul. We +assembled in the cabin and commanded him to tell us what we must do to be +saved, and tell us quickly. He made a speech. The first thing he said +fell like a blight on every hopeful spirit: he had never seen a court +reception. (Three groans for the Consul.) But he said he had seen +receptions at the Governor General's in Odessa, and had often listened to +people's experiences of receptions at the Russian and other courts, and +believed he knew very well what sort of ordeal we were about to essay. +(Hope budded again.) He said we were many; the summer palace was small +--a mere mansion; doubtless we should be received in summer fashion--in the +garden; we would stand in a row, all the gentlemen in swallow-tail coats, +white kids, and white neck-ties, and the ladies in light-colored silks, +or something of that kind; at the proper moment--12 meridian--the +Emperor, attended by his suite arrayed in splendid uniforms, would appear +and walk slowly along the line, bowing to some, and saying two or three +words to others. At the moment his Majesty appeared, a universal, +delighted, enthusiastic smile ought to break out like a rash among the +passengers--a smile of love, of gratification, of admiration--and with +one accord, the party must begin to bow--not obsequiously, but +respectfully, and with dignity; at the end of fifteen minutes the Emperor +would go in the house, and we could run along home again. We felt +immensely relieved. It seemed, in a manner, easy. There was not a man +in the party but believed that with a little practice he could stand in a +row, especially if there were others along; there was not a man but +believed he could bow without tripping on his coat tail and breaking his +neck; in a word, we came to believe we were equal to any item in the +performance except that complicated smile. The Consul also said we ought +to draft a little address to the Emperor, and present it to one of his +aides-de-camp, who would forward it to him at the proper time. +Therefore, five gentlemen were appointed to prepare the document, and the +fifty others went sadly smiling about the ship--practicing. During the +next twelve hours we had the general appearance, somehow, of being at a +funeral, where every body was sorry the death had occurred, but glad it +was over--where every body was smiling, and yet broken-hearted. + +A committee went ashore to wait on his Excellency the Governor-General, +and learn our fate. At the end of three hours of boding suspense, they +came back and said the Emperor would receive us at noon the next day +--would send carriages for us--would hear the address in person. The Grand +Duke Michael had sent to invite us to his palace also. Any man could see +that there was an intention here to show that Russia's friendship for +America was so genuine as to render even her private citizens objects +worthy of kindly attentions. + +At the appointed hour we drove out three miles, and assembled in the +handsome garden in front of the Emperor's palace. + +We formed a circle under the trees before the door, for there was no one +room in the house able to accommodate our three-score persons +comfortably, and in a few minutes the imperial family came out bowing and +smiling, and stood in our midst. A number of great dignitaries of the +Empire, in undress unit forms, came with them. With every bow, his +Majesty said a word of welcome. I copy these speeches. There is +character in them--Russian character--which is politeness itself, and the +genuine article. The French are polite, but it is often mere ceremonious +politeness. A Russian imbues his polite things with a heartiness, both +of phrase and expression, that compels belief in their sincerity. As I +was saying, the Czar punctuated his speeches with bows: + +"Good morning--I am glad to see you--I am gratified--I am delighted--I am +happy to receive you!" + +All took off their hats, and the Consul inflicted the address on him. He +bore it with unflinching fortitude; then took the rusty-looking document +and handed it to some great officer or other, to be filed away among the +archives of Russia--in the stove. He thanked us for the address, and +said he was very much pleased to see us, especially as such friendly +relations existed between Russia and the United States. The Empress said +the Americans were favorites in Russia, and she hoped the Russians were +similarly regarded in America. These were all the speeches that were +made, and I recommend them to parties who present policemen with gold +watches, as models of brevity and point. After this the Empress went and +talked sociably (for an Empress) with various ladies around the circle; +several gentlemen entered into a disjointed general conversation with the +Emperor; the Dukes and Princes, Admirals and Maids of Honor dropped into +free-and-easy chat with first one and then another of our party, and +whoever chose stepped forward and spoke with the modest little Grand +Duchess Marie, the Czar's daughter. She is fourteen years old, +light-haired, blue-eyed, unassuming and pretty. Every body talks +English. + +The Emperor wore a cap, frock coat and pantaloons, all of some kind of +plain white drilling--cotton or linen and sported no jewelry or any +insignia whatever of rank. No costume could be less ostentatious. He is +very tall and spare, and a determined-looking man, though a very +pleasant-looking one nevertheless. It is easy to see that he is kind and +affectionate There is something very noble in his expression when his cap +is off. There is none of that cunning in his eye that all of us noticed +in Louis Napoleon's. + +The Empress and the little Grand Duchess wore simple suits of foulard +(or foulard silk, I don't know which is proper,) with a small blue spot +in it; the dresses were trimmed with blue; both ladies wore broad blue +sashes about their waists; linen collars and clerical ties of muslin; +low-crowned straw-hats trimmed with blue velvet; parasols and +flesh-colored gloves. The Grand Duchess had no heels on her shoes. I +do not know this of my own knowledge, but one of our ladies told me so. +I was not looking at her shoes. I was glad to observe that she wore her +own hair, plaited in thick braids against the back of her head, instead +of the uncomely thing they call a waterfall, which is about as much like +a waterfall as a canvas-covered ham is like a cataract. Taking the kind +expression that is in the Emperor's face and the gentleness that is in +his young daughter's into consideration, I wondered if it would not tax +the Czar's firmness to the utmost to condemn a supplicating wretch to +misery in the wastes of Siberia if she pleaded for him. Every time +their eyes met, I saw more and more what a tremendous power that weak, +diffident school-girl could wield if she chose to do it. Many and many +a time she might rule the Autocrat of Russia, whose lightest word is law +to seventy millions of human beings! She was only a girl, and she +looked like a thousand others I have seen, but never a girl provoked +such a novel and peculiar interest in me before. A strange, new +sensation is a rare thing in this hum-drum life, and I had it here. +There was nothing stale or worn out about the thoughts and feelings the +situation and the circumstances created. It seemed strange--stranger +than I can tell--to think that the central figure in the cluster of men +and women, chatting here under the trees like the most ordinary +individual in the land, was a man who could open his lips and ships +would fly through the waves, locomotives would speed over the plains, +couriers would hurry from village to village, a hundred telegraphs would +flash the word to the four corners of an Empire that stretches its vast +proportions over a seventh part of the habitable globe, and a countless +multitude of men would spring to do his bidding. I had a sort of vague +desire to examine his hands and see if they were of flesh and blood, +like other men's. Here was a man who could do this wonderful thing, and +yet if I chose I could knock him down. The case was plain, but it +seemed preposterous, nevertheless--as preposterous as trying to knock +down a mountain or wipe out a continent. If this man sprained his +ankle, a million miles of telegraph would carry the news over mountains +--valleys--uninhabited deserts--under the trackless sea--and ten thousand +newspapers would prate of it; if he were grievously ill, all the nations +would know it before the sun rose again; if he dropped lifeless where he +stood, his fall might shake the thrones of half a world! If I could +have stolen his coat, I would have done it. When I meet a man like +that, I want something to remember him by. + +As a general thing, we have been shown through palaces by some +plush-legged filagreed flunkey or other, who charged a franc for it; but +after talking with the company half an hour, the Emperor of Russia and +his family conducted us all through their mansion themselves. They made +no charge. They seemed to take a real pleasure in it. + +We spent half an hour idling through the palace, admiring the cosy +apartments and the rich but eminently home-like appointments of the +place, and then the Imperial family bade our party a kind good-bye, and +proceeded to count the spoons. + +An invitation was extended to us to visit the palace of the eldest son, +the Crown Prince of Russia, which was near at hand. The young man was +absent, but the Dukes and Countesses and Princes went over the premises +with us as leisurely as was the case at the Emperor's, and conversation +continued as lively as ever. + +It was a little after one o'clock, now. We drove to the Grand Duke +Michael's, a mile away, in response to his invitation, previously given. + +We arrived in twenty minutes from the Emperor's. It is a lovely place. +The beautiful palace nestles among the grand old groves of the park, the +park sits in the lap of the picturesque crags and hills, and both look +out upon the breezy ocean. In the park are rustic seats, here and there, +in secluded nooks that are dark with shade; there are rivulets of crystal +water; there are lakelets, with inviting, grassy banks; there are +glimpses of sparkling cascades through openings in the wilderness of +foliage; there are streams of clear water gushing from mimic knots on the +trunks of forest trees; there are miniature marble temples perched upon +gray old crags; there are airy lookouts whence one may gaze upon a broad +expanse of landscape and ocean. The palace is modeled after the choicest +forms of Grecian architecture, and its wide colonnades surround a central +court that is banked with rare flowers that fill the place with their +fragrance, and in their midst springs a fountain that cools the summer +air, and may possibly breed mosquitoes, but I do not think it does. + +The Grand Duke and his Duchess came out, and the presentation ceremonies +were as simple as they had been at the Emperor's. In a few minutes, +conversation was under way, as before. The Empress appeared in the +verandah, and the little Grand Duchess came out into the crowd. They had +beaten us there. In a few minutes, the Emperor came himself on +horseback. It was very pleasant. You can appreciate it if you have ever +visited royalty and felt occasionally that possibly you might be wearing +out your welcome--though as a general thing, I believe, royalty is not +scrupulous about discharging you when it is done with you. + +The Grand Duke is the third brother of the Emperor, is about thirty-seven +years old, perhaps, and is the princeliest figure in Russia. He is even +taller than the Czar, as straight as an Indian, and bears himself like +one of those gorgeous knights we read about in romances of the Crusades. +He looks like a great-hearted fellow who would pitch an enemy into the +river in a moment, and then jump in and risk his life fishing him out +again. The stories they tell of him show him to be of a brave and +generous nature. He must have been desirous of proving that Americans +were welcome guests in the imperial palaces of Russia, because he rode +all the way to Yalta and escorted our procession to the Emperor's +himself, and kept his aids scurrying about, clearing the road and +offering assistance wherever it could be needed. We were rather familiar +with him then, because we did not know who he was. We recognized him +now, and appreciated the friendly spirit that prompted him to do us a +favor that any other Grand Duke in the world would have doubtless +declined to do. He had plenty of servitors whom he could have sent, but +he chose to attend to the matter himself. + +The Grand Duke was dressed in the handsome and showy uniform of a Cossack +officer. The Grand Duchess had on a white alpaca robe, with the seams +and gores trimmed with black barb lace, and a little gray hat with a +feather of the same color. She is young, rather pretty modest and +unpretending, and full of winning politeness. + +Our party walked all through the house, and then the nobility escorted +them all over the grounds, and finally brought them back to the palace +about half-past two o'clock to breakfast. They called it breakfast, but +we would have called it luncheon. It consisted of two kinds of wine; +tea, bread, cheese, and cold meats, and was served on the centre-tables +in the reception room and the verandahs--anywhere that was convenient; +there was no ceremony. It was a sort of picnic. I had heard before that +we were to breakfast there, but Blucher said he believed Baker's boy had +suggested it to his Imperial Highness. I think not--though it would be +like him. Baker's boy is the famine-breeder of the ship. He is always +hungry. They say he goes about the state-rooms when the passengers are +out, and eats up all the soap. And they say he eats oakum. They say he +will eat any thing he can get between meals, but he prefers oakum. He +does not like oakum for dinner, but he likes it for a lunch, at odd +hours, or any thing that way. It makes him very disagreeable, because it +makes his breath bad, and keeps his teeth all stuck up with tar. Baker's +boy may have suggested the breakfast, but I hope he did not. It went off +well, anyhow. The illustrious host moved about from place to place, and +helped to destroy the provisions and keep the conversation lively, and +the Grand Duchess talked with the verandah parties and such as had +satisfied their appetites and straggled out from the reception room. + +The Grand Duke's tea was delicious. They give one a lemon to squeeze +into it, or iced milk, if he prefers it. The former is best. This tea +is brought overland from China. It injures the article to transport it +by sea. + +When it was time to go, we bade our distinguished hosts good-bye, and +they retired happy and contented to their apartments to count their +spoons. + +We had spent the best part of half a day in the home of royalty, and had +been as cheerful and comfortable all the time as we could have been in +the ship. I would as soon have thought of being cheerful in Abraham's +bosom as in the palace of an Emperor. I supposed that Emperors were +terrible people. I thought they never did any thing but wear magnificent +crowns and red velvet dressing-gowns with dabs of wool sewed on them in +spots, and sit on thrones and scowl at the flunkies and the people in the +parquette, and order Dukes and Duchesses off to execution. I find, +however, that when one is so fortunate as to get behind the scenes and +see them at home and in the privacy of their firesides, they are +strangely like common mortals. They are pleasanter to look upon then +than they are in their theatrical aspect. It seems to come as natural to +them to dress and act like other people as it is to put a friend's cedar +pencil in your pocket when you are done using it. But I can never have +any confidence in the tinsel kings of the theatre after this. It will be +a great loss. I used to take such a thrilling pleasure in them. But, +hereafter, I will turn me sadly away and say; + +"This does not answer--this isn't the style of king that I am acquainted +with." + +When they swagger around the stage in jeweled crowns and splendid robes, +I shall feel bound to observe that all the Emperors that ever I was +personally acquainted with wore the commonest sort of clothes, and did +not swagger. And when they come on the stage attended by a vast +body-guard of supes in helmets and tin breastplates, it will be my duty +as well as my pleasure to inform the ignorant that no crowned head of my +acquaintance has a soldier any where about his house or his person. + +Possibly it may be thought that our party tarried too long, or did other +improper things, but such was not the case. The company felt that they +were occupying an unusually responsible position--they were representing +the people of America, not the Government--and therefore they were +careful to do their best to perform their high mission with credit. + +On the other hand, the Imperial families, no doubt, considered that in +entertaining us they were more especially entertaining the people of +America than they could by showering attentions on a whole platoon of +ministers plenipotentiary and therefore they gave to the event its +fullest significance, as an expression of good will and friendly feeling +toward the entire country. We took the kindnesses we received as +attentions thus directed, of course, and not to ourselves as a party. +That we felt a personal pride in being received as the representatives of +a nation, we do not deny; that we felt a national pride in the warm +cordiality of that reception, can not be doubted. + +Our poet has been rigidly suppressed, from the time we let go the anchor. +When it was announced that we were going to visit the Emperor of Russia, +the fountains of his great deep were broken up, and he rained ineffable +bosh for four-and-twenty hours. Our original anxiety as to what we were +going to do with ourselves, was suddenly transformed into anxiety about +what we were going to do with our poet. The problem was solved at last. +Two alternatives were offered him--he must either swear a dreadful oath +that he would not issue a line of his poetry while he was in the Czar's +dominions, or else remain under guard on board the ship until we were +safe at Constantinople again. He fought the dilemma long, but yielded at +last. It was a great deliverance. Perhaps the savage reader would like +a specimen of his style. I do not mean this term to be offensive. I +only use it because "the gentle reader" has been used so often that any +change from it can not but be refreshing: + + "Save us and sanctify us, and finally, then, + See good provisions we enjoy while we journey to Jerusalem. + For so man proposes, which it is most true + And time will wait for none, nor for us too." + +The sea has been unusually rough all day. However, we have had a +lively time of it, anyhow. We have had quite a run of visitors. The +Governor-General came, and we received him with a salute of nine guns. +He brought his family with him. I observed that carpets were spread +from the pier-head to his carriage for him to walk on, though I have +seen him walk there without any carpet when he was not on business. I +thought may be he had what the accidental insurance people might call an +extra-hazardous polish ("policy" joke, but not above mediocrity,) on his +boots, and wished to protect them, but I examined and could not see that +they were blacked any better than usual. It may have been that he had +forgotten his carpet, before, but he did not have it with him, anyhow. +He was an exceedingly pleasant old gentleman; we all liked him, +especially Blucher. When he went away, Blucher invited him to come +again and fetch his carpet along. + +Prince Dolgorouki and a Grand Admiral or two, whom we had seen yesterday +at the reception, came on board also. I was a little distant with these +parties, at first, because when I have been visiting Emperors I do not +like to be too familiar with people I only know by reputation, and whose +moral characters and standing in society I can not be thoroughly +acquainted with. I judged it best to be a little offish, at first. I +said to myself, Princes and Counts and Grand Admirals are very well, but +they are not Emperors, and one can not be too particular about who he +associates with. + +Baron Wrangel came, also. He used to be Russian Ambassador at +Washington. I told him I had an uncle who fell down a shaft and broke +himself in two, as much as a year before that. That was a falsehood, but +then I was not going to let any man eclipse me on surprising adventures, +merely for the want of a little invention. The Baron is a fine man, and +is said to stand high in the Emperor's confidence and esteem. + +Baron Ungern-Sternberg, a boisterous, whole-souled old nobleman, came +with the rest. He is a man of progress and enterprise--a representative +man of the age. He is the Chief Director of the railway system of +Russia--a sort of railroad king. In his line he is making things move +along in this country He has traveled extensively in America. He says he +has tried convict labor on his railroads, and with perfect success. He +says the convicts work well, and are quiet and peaceable. He observed +that he employs nearly ten thousand of them now. + +This appeared to be another call on my resources. I was equal to the +emergency. I said we had eighty thousand convicts employed on the +railways in America--all of them under sentence of death for murder in +the first degree. That closed him out. + +We had General Todtleben (the famous defender of Sebastopol, during the +siege,) and many inferior army and also navy officers, and a number of +unofficial Russian ladies and gentlemen. Naturally, a champagne luncheon +was in order, and was accomplished without loss of life. Toasts and +jokes were discharged freely, but no speeches were made save one thanking +the Emperor and the Grand Duke, through the Governor-General, for our +hospitable reception, and one by the Governor-General in reply, in which +he returned the Emperor's thanks for the speech, etc., etc. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + +We returned to Constantinople, and after a day or two spent in exhausting +marches about the city and voyages up the Golden Horn in caiques, we +steamed away again. We passed through the Sea of Marmora and the +Dardanelles, and steered for a new land--a new one to us, at least--Asia. +We had as yet only acquired a bowing acquaintance with it, through +pleasure excursions to Scutari and the regions round about. + +We passed between Lemnos and Mytilene, and saw them as we had seen Elba +and the Balearic Isles--mere bulky shapes, with the softening mists of +distance upon them--whales in a fog, as it were. Then we held our course +southward, and began to "read up" celebrated Smyrna. + +At all hours of the day and night the sailors in the forecastle amused +themselves and aggravated us by burlesquing our visit to royalty. The +opening paragraph of our Address to the Emperor was framed as follows: + + "We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply + for recreation--and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial + state--and, therefore, we have no excuse to tender for presenting + ourselves before your Majesty, save the desire of offering our + grateful acknowledgments to the lord of a realm, which, through good + and through evil report, has been the steadfast friend of the land + we love so well." + +The third cook, crowned with a resplendent tin basin and wrapped royally +in a table-cloth mottled with grease-spots and coffee stains, and bearing +a sceptre that looked strangely like a belaying-pin, walked upon a +dilapidated carpet and perched himself on the capstan, careless of the +flying spray; his tarred and weather-beaten Chamberlains, Dukes and Lord +High Admirals surrounded him, arrayed in all the pomp that spare +tarpaulins and remnants of old sails could furnish. Then the visiting +"watch below," transformed into graceless ladies and uncouth pilgrims, by +rude travesties upon waterfalls, hoopskirts, white kid gloves and +swallow-tail coats, moved solemnly up the companion way, and bowing low, +began a system of complicated and extraordinary smiling which few +monarchs could look upon and live. Then the mock consul, a +slush-plastered deck-sweep, drew out a soiled fragment of paper and +proceeded to read, laboriously: + +"To His Imperial Majesty, Alexander II., Emperor of Russia: + +"We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for +recreation,--and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial state--and +therefore, we have no excuse to tender for presenting ourselves before +your Majesty--" + +The Emperor--"Then what the devil did you come for?" + +--"Save the desire of offering our grateful acknowledgments to the lord +of a realm which--" + +The Emperor--" Oh, d--n the Address!--read it to the police. +Chamberlain, take these people over to my brother, the Grand Duke's, and +give them a square meal. Adieu! I am happy--I am gratified--I am +delighted--I am bored. Adieu, adieu--vamos the ranch! The First Groom +of the Palace will proceed to count the portable articles of value +belonging to the premises." + +The farce then closed, to be repeated again with every change of the +watches, and embellished with new and still more extravagant inventions +of pomp and conversation. + +At all times of the day and night the phraseology of that tiresome +address fell upon our ears. Grimy sailors came down out of the foretop +placidly announcing themselves as "a handful of private citizens of +America, traveling simply for recreation and unostentatiously," etc.; the +coal passers moved to their duties in the profound depths of the ship, +explaining the blackness of their faces and their uncouthness of dress, +with the reminder that they were "a handful of private citizens, +traveling simply for recreation," etc., and when the cry rang through the +vessel at midnight: "EIGHT BELLS!--LARBOARD WATCH, TURN OUT!" the +larboard watch came gaping and stretching out of their den, with the +everlasting formula: "Aye-aye, sir! We are a handful of private citizens +of America, traveling simply for recreation, and unostentatiously, as +becomes our unofficial state!" + +As I was a member of the committee, and helped to frame the Address, +these sarcasms came home to me. I never heard a sailor proclaiming +himself as a handful of American citizens traveling for recreation, but I +wished he might trip and fall overboard, and so reduce his handful by one +individual, at least. I never was so tired of any one phrase as the +sailors made me of the opening sentence of the Address to the Emperor of +Russia. + +This seaport of Smyrna, our first notable acquaintance in Asia, is a +closely packed city of one hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants, and, +like Constantinople, it has no outskirts. It is as closely packed at its +outer edges as it is in the centre, and then the habitations leave +suddenly off and the plain beyond seems houseless. It is just like any +other Oriental city. That is to say, its Moslem houses are heavy and +dark, and as comfortless as so many tombs; its streets are crooked, +rudely and roughly paved, and as narrow as an ordinary staircase; the +streets uniformly carry a man to any other place than the one he wants to +go to, and surprise him by landing him in the most unexpected localities; +business is chiefly carried on in great covered bazaars, celled like a +honeycomb with innumerable shops no larger than a common closet, and the +whole hive cut up into a maze of alleys about wide enough to accommodate +a laden camel, and well calculated to confuse a stranger and eventually +lose him; every where there is dirt, every where there are fleas, every +where there are lean, broken-hearted dogs; every alley is thronged with +people; wherever you look, your eye rests upon a wild masquerade of +extravagant costumes; the workshops are all open to the streets, and the +workmen visible; all manner of sounds assail the ear, and over them all +rings out the muezzin's cry from some tall minaret, calling the faithful +vagabonds to prayer; and superior to the call to prayer, the noises in +the streets, the interest of the costumes--superior to every thing, and +claiming the bulk of attention first, last, and all the time--is a +combination of Mohammedan stenches, to which the smell of even a Chinese +quarter would be as pleasant as the roasting odors of the fatted calf to +the nostrils of the returning Prodigal. Such is Oriental luxury--such is +Oriental splendor! We read about it all our days, but we comprehend it +not until we see it. Smyrna is a very old city. Its name occurs several +times in the Bible, one or two of the disciples of Christ visited it, and +here was located one of the original seven apocalyptic churches spoken of +in Revelations. These churches were symbolized in the Scriptures as +candlesticks, and on certain conditions there was a sort of implied +promise that Smyrna should be endowed with a "crown of life." She was to +"be faithful unto death"--those were the terms. She has not kept up her +faith straight along, but the pilgrims that wander hither consider that +she has come near enough to it to save her, and so they point to the fact +that Smyrna to-day wears her crown of life, and is a great city, with a +great commerce and full of energy, while the cities wherein were located +the other six churches, and to which no crown of life was promised, have +vanished from the earth. So Smyrna really still possesses her crown of +life, in a business point of view. Her career, for eighteen centuries, +has been a chequered one, and she has been under the rule of princes of +many creeds, yet there has been no season during all that time, as far as +we know, (and during such seasons as she was inhabited at all,) that she +has been without her little community of Christians "faithful unto +death." Hers was the only church against which no threats were implied +in the Revelations, and the only one which survived. + +With Ephesus, forty miles from here, where was located another of the +seven churches, the case was different. The "candlestick" has been +removed from Ephesus. Her light has been put out. Pilgrims, always +prone to find prophecies in the Bible, and often where none exist, speak +cheerfully and complacently of poor, ruined Ephesus as the victim of +prophecy. And yet there is no sentence that promises, without due +qualification, the destruction of the city. The words are: + + "Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and + do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will + remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent." + +That is all; the other verses are singularly complimentary to Ephesus. +The threat is qualified. There is no history to show that she did not +repent. But the cruelest habit the modern prophecy-savans have, is that +one of coolly and arbitrarily fitting the prophetic shirt on to the wrong +man. They do it without regard to rhyme or reason. Both the cases I +have just mentioned are instances in point. Those "prophecies" are +distinctly leveled at the "churches of Ephesus, Smyrna," etc., and yet +the pilgrims invariably make them refer to the cities instead. No crown +of life is promised to the town of Smyrna and its commerce, but to the +handful of Christians who formed its "church." If they were "faithful +unto death," they have their crown now--but no amount of faithfulness and +legal shrewdness combined could legitimately drag the city into a +participation in the promises of the prophecy. The stately language of +the Bible refers to a crown of life whose lustre will reflect the +day-beams of the endless ages of eternity, not the butterfly existence +of a city built by men's hands, which must pass to dust with the +builders and be forgotten even in the mere handful of centuries +vouchsafed to the solid world itself between its cradle and its grave. + +The fashion of delving out fulfillments of prophecy where that prophecy +consists of mere "ifs," trenches upon the absurd. Suppose, a thousand +years from now, a malarious swamp builds itself up in the shallow harbor +of Smyrna, or something else kills the town; and suppose, also, that +within that time the swamp that has filled the renowned harbor of Ephesus +and rendered her ancient site deadly and uninhabitable to-day, becomes +hard and healthy ground; suppose the natural consequence ensues, to wit: +that Smyrna becomes a melancholy ruin, and Ephesus is rebuilt. What +would the prophecy-savans say? They would coolly skip over our age of +the world, and say: "Smyrna was not faithful unto death, and so her crown +of life was denied her; Ephesus repented, and lo! her candle-stick was +not removed. Behold these evidences! How wonderful is prophecy!" + +Smyrna has been utterly destroyed six times. If her crown of life had +been an insurance policy, she would have had an opportunity to collect on +it the first time she fell. But she holds it on sufferance and by a +complimentary construction of language which does not refer to +her. Six different times, however, I suppose some infatuated +prophecy-enthusiast blundered along and said, to the infinite disgust of +Smyrna and the Smyrniotes: "In sooth, here is astounding fulfillment of +prophecy! Smyrna hath not been faithful unto death, and behold her +crown of life is vanished from her head. Verily, these things be +astonishing!" + +Such things have a bad influence. They provoke worldly men into using +light conversation concerning sacred subjects. Thick-headed commentators +upon the Bible, and stupid preachers and teachers, work more damage to +religion than sensible, cool-brained clergymen can fight away again, toil +as they may. It is not good judgment to fit a crown of life upon a city +which has been destroyed six times. That other class of wiseacres who +twist prophecy in such a manner as to make it promise the destruction and +desolation of the same city, use judgment just as bad, since the city is +in a very flourishing condition now, unhappily for them. These things +put arguments into the mouth of infidelity. + +A portion of the city is pretty exclusively Turkish; the Jews have a +quarter to themselves; the Franks another quarter; so, also, with the +Armenians. The Armenians, of course, are Christians. Their houses are +large, clean, airy, handsomely paved with black and white squares of +marble, and in the centre of many of them is a square court, which has in +it a luxuriant flower-garden and a sparkling fountain; the doors of all +the rooms open on this. A very wide hall leads to the street door, and +in this the women sit, the most of the day. In the cool of the evening +they dress up in their best raiment and show themselves at the door. +They are all comely of countenance, and exceedingly neat and cleanly; +they look as if they were just out of a band-box. Some of the young +ladies--many of them, I may say--are even very beautiful; they average a +shade better than American girls--which treasonable words I pray may be +forgiven me. They are very sociable, and will smile back when a stranger +smiles at them, bow back when he bows, and talk back if he speaks to +them. No introduction is required. An hour's chat at the door with a +pretty girl one never saw before, is easily obtained, and is very +pleasant. I have tried it. I could not talk anything but English, and +the girl knew nothing but Greek, or Armenian, or some such barbarous +tongue, but we got along very well. I find that in cases like these, the +fact that you can not comprehend each other isn't much of a drawback. +In that Russia n town of Yalta I danced an astonishing sort of dance an +hour long, and one I had not heard of before, with a very pretty girl, +and we talked incessantly, and laughed exhaustingly, and neither one ever +knew what the other was driving at. But it was splendid. There were +twenty people in the set, and the dance was very lively and complicated. +It was complicated enough without me--with me it was more so. I threw in +a figure now and then that surprised those Russians. But I have never +ceased to think of that girl. I have written to her, but I can not +direct the epistle because her name is one of those nine-jointed Russian +affairs, and there are not letters enough in our alphabet to hold out. +I am not reckless enough to try to pronounce it when I am awake, but I +make a stagger at it in my dreams, and get up with the lockjaw in the +morning. I am fading. I do not take my meals now, with any sort of +regularity. Her dear name haunts me still in my dreams. It is awful on +teeth. It never comes out of my mouth but it fetches an old snag along +with it. And then the lockjaw closes down and nips off a couple of the +last syllables--but they taste good. + +Coming through the Dardanelles, we saw camel trains on shore with the +glasses, but we were never close to one till we got to Smyrna. These +camels are very much larger than the scrawny specimens one sees in the +menagerie. They stride along these streets, in single file, a dozen in a +train, with heavy loads on their backs, and a fancy-looking negro in +Turkish costume, or an Arab, preceding them on a little donkey and +completely overshadowed and rendered insignificant by the huge beasts. +To see a camel train laden with the spices of Arabia and the rare fabrics +of Persia come marching through the narrow alleys of the bazaar, among +porters with their burdens, money-changers, lamp-merchants, Al-naschars +in the glassware business, portly cross-legged Turks smoking the famous +narghili; and the crowds drifting to and fro in the fanciful costumes of +the East, is a genuine revelation of the Orient. The picture lacks +nothing. It casts you back at once into your forgotten boyhood, and +again you dream over the wonders of the Arabian Nights; again your +companions are princes, your lord is the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid, and +your servants are terrific giants and genii that come with smoke and +lightning and thunder, and go as a storm goes when they depart! + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + +We inquired, and learned that the lions of Smyrna consisted of the ruins +of the ancient citadel, whose broken and prodigious battlements frown +upon the city from a lofty hill just in the edge of the town--the Mount +Pagus of Scripture, they call it; the site of that one of the Seven +Apocalyptic Churches of Asia which was located here in the first century +of the Christian era; and the grave and the place of martyrdom of the +venerable Polycarp, who suffered in Smyrna for his religion some eighteen +hundred years ago. + +We took little donkeys and started. We saw Polycarp's tomb, and then +hurried on. + +The "Seven Churches"--thus they abbreviate it--came next on the list. We +rode there--about a mile and a half in the sweltering sun--and visited a +little Greek church which they said was built upon the ancient site; and +we paid a small fee, and the holy attendant gave each of us a little wax +candle as a remembrancer of the place, and I put mine in my hat and the +sun melted it and the grease all ran down the back of my neck; and so now +I have not any thing left but the wick, and it is a sorry and a +wilted-looking wick at that. + +Several of us argued as well as we could that the "church" mentioned in +the Bible meant a party of Christians, and not a building; that the Bible +spoke of them as being very poor--so poor, I thought, and so subject to +persecution (as per Polycarp's martyrdom) that in the first place they +probably could not have afforded a church edifice, and in the second +would not have dared to build it in the open light of day if they could; +and finally, that if they had had the privilege of building it, common +judgment would have suggested that they build it somewhere near the town. +But the elders of the ship's family ruled us down and scouted our +evidences. However, retribution came to them afterward. They found that +they had been led astray and had gone to the wrong place; they discovered +that the accepted site is in the city. + +Riding through the town, we could see marks of the six Smyrnas that have +existed here and been burned up by fire or knocked down by earthquakes. +The hills and the rocks are rent asunder in places, excavations expose +great blocks of building-stone that have lain buried for ages, and all +the mean houses and walls of modern Smyrna along the way are spotted +white with broken pillars, capitals and fragments of sculptured marble +that once adorned the lordly palaces that were the glory of the city in +the olden time. + +The ascent of the hill of the citadel is very steep, and we proceeded +rather slowly. But there were matters of interest about us. In one +place, five hundred feet above the sea, the perpendicular bank on the +upper side of the road was ten or fifteen feet high, and the cut exposed +three veins of oyster shells, just as we have seen quartz veins exposed +in the cutting of a road in Nevada or Montana. The veins were about +eighteen inches thick and two or three feet apart, and they slanted along +downward for a distance of thirty feet or more, and then disappeared +where the cut joined the road. Heaven only knows how far a man might +trace them by "stripping." They were clean, nice oyster shells, large, +and just like any other oyster shells. They were thickly massed +together, and none were scattered above or below the veins. Each one was +a well-defined lead by itself, and without a spur. My first instinct was +to set up the usual-- + NOTICE: + + "We, the undersigned, claim five claims of two hundred feet each, + (and one for discovery,) on this ledge or lode of oyster-shells, + with all its dips, spurs, angles, variations and sinuosities, and + fifty feet on each side of the same, to work it, etc., etc., + according to the mining laws of Smyrna." + +They were such perfectly natural-looking leads that I could hardly keep +from "taking them up." Among the oyster-shells were mixed many fragments +of ancient, broken crockery ware. Now how did those masses of +oyster-shells get there? I can not determine. Broken crockery and +oyster-shells are suggestive of restaurants--but then they could have +had no such places away up there on that mountain side in our time, +because nobody has lived up there. A restaurant would not pay in such a +stony, forbidding, desolate place. And besides, there were no champagne +corks among the shells. If there ever was a restaurant there, it must +have been in Smyrna's palmy days, when the hills were covered with +palaces. I could believe in one restaurant, on those terms; but then how +about the three? Did they have restaurants there at three different +periods of the world?--because there are two or three feet of solid +earth between the oyster leads. Evidently, the restaurant solution will +not answer. + +The hill might have been the bottom of the sea, once, and been lifted up, +with its oyster-beds, by an earthquake--but, then, how about the +crockery? And moreover, how about three oyster beds, one above another, +and thick strata of good honest earth between? + +That theory will not do. It is just possible that this hill is Mount +Ararat, and that Noah's Ark rested here, and he ate oysters and threw the +shells overboard. But that will not do, either. There are the three +layers again and the solid earth between--and, besides, there were only +eight in Noah's family, and they could not have eaten all these oysters +in the two or three months they staid on top of that mountain. The +beasts--however, it is simply absurd to suppose he did not know any more +than to feed the beasts on oyster suppers. + +It is painful--it is even humiliating--but I am reduced at last to one +slender theory: that the oysters climbed up there of their own accord. +But what object could they have had in view?--what did they want up +there? What could any oyster want to climb a hill for? To climb a hill +must necessarily be fatiguing and annoying exercise for an oyster. The +most natural conclusion would be that the oysters climbed up there to +look at the scenery. Yet when one comes to reflect upon the nature of an +oyster, it seems plain that he does not care for scenery. An oyster has +no taste for such things; he cares nothing for the beautiful. An oyster +is of a retiring disposition, and not lively--not even cheerful above the +average, and never enterprising. But above all, an oyster does not take +any interest in scenery--he scorns it. What have I arrived at now? +Simply at the point I started from, namely, those oyster shells are +there, in regular layers, five hundred feet above the sea, and no man +knows how they got there. I have hunted up the guide-books, and the gist +of what they say is this: "They are there, but how they got there is a +mystery." + +Twenty-five years ago, a multitude of people in America put on their +ascension robes, took a tearful leave of their friends, and made ready to +fly up into heaven at the first blast of the trumpet. But the angel did +not blow it. Miller's resurrection day was a failure. The Millerites +were disgusted. I did not suspect that there were Millers in Asia Minor, +but a gentleman tells me that they had it all set for the world to come +to an end in Smyrna one day about three years ago. There was much +buzzing and preparation for a long time previously, and it culminated in +a wild excitement at the appointed time. A vast number of the populace +ascended the citadel hill early in the morning, to get out of the way of +the general destruction, and many of the infatuated closed up their shops +and retired from all earthly business. But the strange part of it was +that about three in the afternoon, while this gentleman and his friends +were at dinner in the hotel, a terrific storm of rain, accompanied by +thunder and lightning, broke forth and continued with dire fury for two +or three hours. It was a thing unprecedented in Smyrna at that time of +the year, and scared some of the most skeptical. The streets ran rivers +and the hotel floor was flooded with water. The dinner had to be +suspended. When the storm finished and left every body drenched through +and through, and melancholy and half-drowned, the ascensionists came down +from the mountain as dry as so many charity-sermons! They had been +looking down upon the fearful storm going on below, and really believed +that their proposed destruction of the world was proving a grand success. + +A railway here in Asia--in the dreamy realm of the Orient--in the fabled +land of the Arabian Nights--is a strange thing to think of. And yet they +have one already, and are building another. The present one is well +built and well conducted, by an English Company, but is not doing an +immense amount of business. The first year it carried a good many +passengers, but its freight list only comprised eight hundred pounds of +figs! + +It runs almost to the very gates of Ephesus--a town great in all ages of +the world--a city familiar to readers of the Bible, and one which was as +old as the very hills when the disciples of Christ preached in its +streets. It dates back to the shadowy ages of tradition, and was the +birthplace of gods renowned in Grecian mythology. The idea of a +locomotive tearing through such a place as this, and waking the phantoms +of its old days of romance out of their dreams of dead and gone +centuries, is curious enough. + +We journey thither tomorrow to see the celebrated ruins. + + + + +CHAPTER XL. + +This has been a stirring day. The Superintendent of the railway put a +train at our disposal, and did us the further kindness of accompanying us +to Ephesus and giving to us his watchful care. We brought sixty scarcely +perceptible donkeys in the freight cars, for we had much ground to go +over. We have seen some of the most grotesque costumes, along the line +of the railroad, that can be imagined. I am glad that no possible +combination of words could describe them, for I might then be foolish +enough to attempt it. + +At ancient Ayassalook, in the midst of a forbidding desert, we came upon +long lines of ruined aqueducts, and other remnants of architectural +grandeur, that told us plainly enough we were nearing what had been a +metropolis, once. We left the train and mounted the donkeys, along with +our invited guests--pleasant young gentlemen from the officers' list of +an American man-of-war. + +The little donkeys had saddles upon them which were made very high in +order that the rider's feet might not drag the ground. The preventative +did not work well in the cases of our tallest pilgrims, however. There +were no bridles--nothing but a single rope, tied to the bit. It was +purely ornamental, for the donkey cared nothing for it. If he were +drifting to starboard, you might put your helm down hard the other way, +if it were any satisfaction to you to do it, but he would continue to +drift to starboard all the same. There was only one process which could +be depended on, and it was to get down and lift his rear around until his +head pointed in the right direction, or take him under your arm and carry +him to a part of the road which he could not get out of without climbing. +The sun flamed down as hot as a furnace, and neck-scarfs, veils and +umbrellas seemed hardly any protection; they served only to make the long +procession look more than ever fantastic--for be it known the ladies were +all riding astride because they could not stay on the shapeless saddles +sidewise, the men were perspiring and out of temper, their feet were +banging against the rocks, the donkeys were capering in every direction +but the right one and being belabored with clubs for it, and every now +and then a broad umbrella would suddenly go down out of the cavalcade, +announcing to all that one more pilgrim had bitten the dust. It was a +wilder picture than those solitudes had seen for many a day. No donkeys +ever existed that were as hard to navigate as these, I think, or that had +so many vile, exasperating instincts. Occasionally we grew so tired and +breathless with fighting them that we had to desist,--and immediately the +donkey would come down to a deliberate walk. This, with the fatigue, and +the sun, would put a man asleep; and soon as the man was asleep, the +donkey would lie down. My donkey shall never see his boyhood's home +again. He has lain down once too often. He must die. + +We all stood in the vast theatre of ancient Ephesus,--the stone-benched +amphitheatre I mean--and had our picture taken. We looked as proper +there as we would look any where, I suppose. We do not embellish the +general desolation of a desert much. We add what dignity we can to a +stately ruin with our green umbrellas and jackasses, but it is little. +However, we mean well. + +I wish to say a brief word of the aspect of Ephesus. + +On a high, steep hill, toward the sea, is a gray ruin of ponderous blocks +of marble, wherein, tradition says, St. Paul was imprisoned eighteen +centuries ago. From these old walls you have the finest view of the +desolate scene where once stood Ephesus, the proudest city of ancient +times, and whose Temple of Diana was so noble in design, and so exquisite +of workmanship, that it ranked high in the list of the Seven Wonders of +the World. + +Behind you is the sea; in front is a level green valley, (a marsh, in +fact,) extending far away among the mountains; to the right of the front +view is the old citadel of Ayassalook, on a high hill; the ruined Mosque +of the Sultan Selim stands near it in the plain, (this is built over the +grave of St. John, and was formerly Christian Church ;) further toward +you is the hill of Pion, around whose front is clustered all that remains +of the ruins of Ephesus that still stand; divided from it by a narrow +valley is the long, rocky, rugged mountain of Coressus. The scene is a +pretty one, and yet desolate--for in that wide plain no man can live, and +in it is no human habitation. But for the crumbling arches and monstrous +piers and broken walls that rise from the foot of the hill of Pion, one +could not believe that in this place once stood a city whose renown is +older than tradition itself. It is incredible to reflect that things as +familiar all over the world to-day as household words, belong in the +history and in the shadowy legends of this silent, mournful solitude. +We speak of Apollo and of Diana--they were born here; of the +metamorphosis of Syrinx into a reed--it was done here; of the great god +Pan--he dwelt in the caves of this hill of Coressus; of the Amazons--this +was their best prized home; of Bacchus and Hercules both fought the +warlike women here; of the Cyclops--they laid the ponderous marble blocks +of some of the ruins yonder; of Homer--this was one of his many +birthplaces; of Cirmon of Athens; of Alcibiades, Lysander, Agesilaus +--they visited here; so did Alexander the Great; so did Hannibal and +Antiochus, Scipio, Lucullus and Sylla; Brutus, Cassius, Pompey, Cicero, +and Augustus; Antony was a judge in this place, and left his seat in the +open court, while the advocates were speaking, to run after Cleopatra, +who passed the door; from this city these two sailed on pleasure +excursions, in galleys with silver oars and perfumed sails, and with +companies of beautiful girls to serve them, and actors and musicians to +amuse them; in days that seem almost modern, so remote are they from the +early history of this city, Paul the Apostle preached the new religion +here, and so did John, and here it is supposed the former was pitted +against wild beasts, for in 1 Corinthians, xv. 32 he says: + + "If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus," + &c., + +when many men still lived who had seen the Christ; here Mary Magdalen +died, and here the Virgin Mary ended her days with John, albeit Rome has +since judged it best to locate her grave elsewhere; six or seven hundred +years ago--almost yesterday, as it were--troops of mail-clad Crusaders +thronged the streets; and to come down to trifles, we speak of meandering +streams, and find a new interest in a common word when we discover that +the crooked river Meander, in yonder valley, gave it to our dictionary. +It makes me feel as old as these dreary hills to look down upon these +moss-hung ruins, this historic desolation. One may read the Scriptures +and believe, but he can not go and stand yonder in the ruined theatre and +in imagination people it again with the vanished multitudes who mobbed +Paul's comrades there and shouted, with one voice, "Great is Diana of the +Ephesians!" The idea of a shout in such a solitude as this almost makes +one shudder. + +It was a wonderful city, this Ephesus. Go where you will about these +broad plains, you find the most exquisitely sculptured marble fragments +scattered thick among the dust and weeds; and protruding from the ground, +or lying prone upon it, are beautiful fluted columns of porphyry and all +precious marbles; and at every step you find elegantly carved capitals +and massive bases, and polished tablets engraved with Greek inscriptions. +It is a world of precious relics, a wilderness of marred and mutilated +gems. And yet what are these things to the wonders that lie buried here +under the ground? At Constantinople, at Pisa, in the cities of Spain, +are great mosques and cathedrals, whose grandest columns came from the +temples and palaces of Ephesus, and yet one has only to scratch the +ground here to match them. We shall never know what magnificence is, +until this imperial city is laid bare to the sun. + +The finest piece of sculpture we have yet seen and the one that impressed +us most, (for we do not know much about art and can not easily work up +ourselves into ecstasies over it,) is one that lies in this old theatre +of Ephesus which St. Paul's riot has made so celebrated. It is only the +headless body of a man, clad in a coat of mail, with a Medusa head upon +the breast-plate, but we feel persuaded that such dignity and such +majesty were never thrown into a form of stone before. + +What builders they were, these men of antiquity! The massive arches of +some of these ruins rest upon piers that are fifteen feet square and +built entirely of solid blocks of marble, some of which are as large as a +Saratoga trunk, and some the size of a boarding-house sofa. They are not +shells or shafts of stone filled inside with rubbish, but the whole pier +is a mass of solid masonry. Vast arches, that may have been the gates of +the city, are built in the same way. They have braved the storms and +sieges of three thousand years, and have been shaken by many an +earthquake, but still they stand. When they dig alongside of them, they +find ranges of ponderous masonry that are as perfect in every detail as +they were the day those old Cyclopian giants finished them. An English +Company is going to excavate Ephesus--and then! + +And now am I reminded of-- + + THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. + +In the Mount of Pion, yonder, is the Cave of the Seven Sleepers. Once +upon a time, about fifteen hundred years ago, seven young men lived near +each other in Ephesus, who belonged to the despised sect of the +Christians. It came to pass that the good King Maximilianus, (I am +telling this story for nice little boys and girls,) it came to pass, I +say, that the good King Maximilianus fell to persecuting the Christians, +and as time rolled on he made it very warm for them. So the seven young +men said one to the other, let us get up and travel. And they got up and +traveled. They tarried not to bid their fathers and mothers good-bye, or +any friend they knew. They only took certain moneys which their parents +had, and garments that belonged unto their friends, whereby they might +remember them when far away; and they took also the dog Ketmehr, which +was the property of their neighbor Malchus, because the beast did run his +head into a noose which one of the young men was carrying carelessly, and +they had not time to release him; and they took also certain chickens +that seemed lonely in the neighboring coops, and likewise some bottles of +curious liquors that stood near the grocer's window; and then they +departed from the city. By-and-by they came to a marvelous cave in the +Hill of Pion and entered into it and feasted, and presently they hurried +on again. But they forgot the bottles of curious liquors, and left them +behind. They traveled in many lands, and had many strange adventures. +They were virtuous young men, and lost no opportunity that fell in their +way to make their livelihood. Their motto was in these words, namely, +"Procrastination is the thief of time." And so, whenever they did come +upon a man who was alone, they said, Behold, this person hath the +wherewithal--let us go through him. And they went through him. At the +end of five years they had waxed tired of travel and adventure, and +longed to revisit their old home again and hear the voices and see the +faces that were dear unto their youth. Therefore they went through such +parties as fell in their way where they sojourned at that time, and +journeyed back toward Ephesus again. For the good King Maximilianus was +become converted unto the new faith, and the Christians rejoiced because +they were no longer persecuted. One day as the sun went down, they came +to the cave in the Mount of Pion, and they said, each to his fellow, Let +us sleep here, and go and feast and make merry with our friends when the +morning cometh. And each of the seven lifted up his voice and said, It +is a whiz. So they went in, and lo, where they had put them, there lay +the bottles of strange liquors, and they judged that age had not impaired +their excellence. Wherein the wanderers were right, and the heads of the +same were level. So each of the young men drank six bottles, and behold +they felt very tired, then, and lay down and slept soundly. + +When they awoke, one of them, Johannes--surnamed Smithianus--said, We are +naked. And it was so. Their raiment was all gone, and the money which +they had gotten from a stranger whom they had proceeded through as they +approached the city, was lying upon the ground, corroded and rusted and +defaced. Likewise the dog Ketmehr was gone, and nothing save the brass +that was upon his collar remained. They wondered much at these things. +But they took the money, and they wrapped about their bodies some leaves, +and came up to the top of the hill. Then were they perplexed. The +wonderful temple of Diana was gone; many grand edifices they had never +seen before stood in the city; men in strange garbs moved about the +streets, and every thing was changed. + +Johannes said, It hardly seems like Ephesus. Yet here is the great +gymnasium; here is the mighty theatre, wherein I have seen seventy +thousand men assembled; here is the Agora; there is the font where the +sainted John the Baptist immersed the converts; yonder is the prison of +the good St. Paul, where we all did use to go to touch the ancient chains +that bound him and be cured of our distempers; I see the tomb of the +disciple Luke, and afar off is the church wherein repose the ashes of the +holy John, where the Christians of Ephesus go twice a year to gather the +dust from the tomb, which is able to make bodies whole again that are +corrupted by disease, and cleanse the soul from sin; but see how the +wharves encroach upon the sea, and what multitudes of ships are anchored +in the bay; see, also, how the city hath stretched abroad, far over the +valley behind Pion, and even unto the walls of Ayassalook; and lo, all +the hills are white with palaces and ribbed with colonnades of marble. +How mighty is Ephesus become! + +And wondering at what their eyes had seen, they went down into the city +and purchased garments and clothed themselves. And when they would have +passed on, the merchant bit the coins which they had given him, with his +teeth, and turned them about and looked curiously upon them, and cast +them upon his counter, and listened if they rang; and then he said, These +be bogus. And they said, Depart thou to Hades, and went their way. When +they were come to their houses, they recognized them, albeit they seemed +old and mean; and they rejoiced, and were glad. They ran to the doors, +and knocked, and strangers opened, and looked inquiringly upon them. And +they said, with great excitement, while their hearts beat high, and the +color in their faces came and went, Where is my father? Where is my +mother? Where are Dionysius and Serapion, and Pericles, and Decius? And +the strangers that opened said, We know not these. The Seven said, How, +you know them not? How long have ye dwelt here, and whither are they +gone that dwelt here before ye? And the strangers said, Ye play upon us +with a jest, young men; we and our fathers have sojourned under these +roofs these six generations; the names ye utter rot upon the tombs, and +they that bore them have run their brief race, have laughed and sung, +have borne the sorrows and the weariness that were allotted them, and are +at rest; for nine-score years the summers have come and gone, and the +autumn leaves have fallen, since the roses faded out of their cheeks and +they laid them to sleep with the dead. + +Then the seven young men turned them away from their homes, and the +strangers shut the doors upon them. The wanderers marveled greatly, and +looked into the faces of all they met, as hoping to find one that they +knew; but all were strange, and passed them by and spake no friendly +word. They were sore distressed and sad. Presently they spake unto a +citizen and said, Who is King in Ephesus? And the citizen answered and +said, Whence come ye that ye know not that great Laertius reigns in +Ephesus? They looked one at the other, greatly perplexed, and presently +asked again, Where, then, is the good King Maximilianus? The citizen +moved him apart, as one who is afraid, and said, Verily these men be mad, +and dream dreams, else would they know that the King whereof they speak +is dead above two hundred years agone. + +Then the scales fell from the eyes of the Seven, and one said, Alas, that +we drank of the curious liquors. They have made us weary, and in +dreamless sleep these two long centuries have we lain. Our homes are +desolate, our friends are dead. Behold, the jig is up--let us die. And +that same day went they forth and laid them down and died. And in that +self-same day, likewise, the Seven-up did cease in Ephesus, for that the +Seven that were up were down again, and departed and dead withal. And +the names that be upon their tombs, even unto this time, are Johannes +Smithianus, Trumps, Gift, High, and Low, Jack, and The Game. And with +the sleepers lie also the bottles wherein were once the curious liquors: +and upon them is writ, in ancient letters, such words as these--Dames of +heathen gods of olden time, perchance: Rumpunch, Jinsling, Egnog. + +Such is the story of the Seven Sleepers, (with slight variations,) and I +know it is true, because I have seen the cave myself. + +Really, so firm a faith had the ancients this legend, that as late as +eight or nine hundred years ago, learned travelers held it in +superstitious fear. Two of them record that they ventured into it, but +ran quickly out again, not daring to tarry lest they should fall asleep +and outlive their great grand-children a century or so. Even at this day +the ignorant denizens of the neighboring country prefer not to sleep in +it. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + +When I last made a memorandum, we were at Ephesus. We are in Syria, now, +encamped in the mountains of Lebanon. The interregnum has been long, +both as to time and distance. We brought not a relic from Ephesus! +After gathering up fragments of sculptured marbles and breaking ornaments +from the interior work of the Mosques; and after bringing them at a cost +of infinite trouble and fatigue, five miles on muleback to the railway +depot, a government officer compelled all who had such things to +disgorge! He had an order from Constantinople to look out for our party, +and see that we carried nothing off. It was a wise, a just, and a +well-deserved rebuke, but it created a sensation. I never resist a +temptation to plunder a stranger's premises without feeling insufferably +vain about it. This time I felt proud beyond expression. I was serene +in the midst of the scoldings that were heaped upon the Ottoman +government for its affront offered to a pleasuring party of entirely +respectable gentlemen and ladies I said, "We that have free souls, it +touches us not." The shoe not only pinched our party, but it pinched +hard; a principal sufferer discovered that the imperial order was +inclosed in an envelop bearing the seal of the British Embassy at +Constantinople, and therefore must have been inspired by the +representative of the Queen. This was bad--very bad. Coming solely +from the Ottomans, it might have signified only Ottoman hatred of +Christians, and a vulgar ignorance as to genteel methods of expressing +it; but coming from the Christianized, educated, politic British +legation, it simply intimated that we were a sort of gentlemen and +ladies who would bear watching! So the party regarded it, and were +incensed accordingly. The truth doubtless was, that the same +precautions would have been taken against any travelers, because the +English Company who have acquired the right to excavate Ephesus, and +have paid a great sum for that right, need to be protected, and deserve +to be. They can not afford to run the risk of having their hospitality +abused by travelers, especially since travelers are such notorious +scorners of honest behavior. + +We sailed from Smyrna, in the wildest spirit of expectancy, for the chief +feature, the grand goal of the expedition, was near at hand--we were +approaching the Holy Land! Such a burrowing into the hold for trunks +that had lain buried for weeks, yes for months; such a hurrying to and +fro above decks and below; such a riotous system of packing and +unpacking; such a littering up of the cabins with shirts and skirts, and +indescribable and unclassable odds and ends; such a making up of bundles, +and setting apart of umbrellas, green spectacles and thick veils; such a +critical inspection of saddles and bridles that had never yet touched +horses; such a cleaning and loading of revolvers and examining of +bowie-knives; such a half-soling of the seats of pantaloons with +serviceable buckskin; then such a poring over ancient maps; such a +reading up of Bibles and Palestine travels; such a marking out of +routes; such exasperating efforts to divide up the company into little +bands of congenial spirits who might make the long and arduous Journey +without quarreling; and morning, noon and night, such mass-meetings in +the cabins, such speech-making, such sage suggesting, such worrying and +quarreling, and such a general raising of the very mischief, was never +seen in the ship before! + +But it is all over now. We are cut up into parties of six or eight, and +by this time are scattered far and wide. Ours is the only one, however, +that is venturing on what is called "the long trip"--that is, out into +Syria, by Baalbec to Damascus, and thence down through the full length of +Palestine. It would be a tedious, and also a too risky journey, at this +hot season of the year, for any but strong, healthy men, accustomed +somewhat to fatigue and rough life in the open air. The other parties +will take shorter journeys. + +For the last two months we have been in a worry about one portion of this +Holy Land pilgrimage. I refer to transportation service. We knew very +well that Palestine was a country which did not do a large passenger +business, and every man we came across who knew any thing about it gave +us to understand that not half of our party would be able to get dragomen +and animals. At Constantinople every body fell to telegraphing the +American Consuls at Alexandria and Beirout to give notice that we wanted +dragomen and transportation. We were desperate--would take horses, +jackasses, cameleopards, kangaroos--any thing. At Smyrna, more +telegraphing was done, to the same end. Also fearing for the worst, we +telegraphed for a large number of seats in the diligence for Damascus, +and horses for the ruins of Baalbec. + +As might have been expected, a notion got abroad in Syria and Egypt that +the whole population of the Province of America (the Turks consider us a +trifling little province in some unvisited corner of the world,) were +coming to the Holy Land--and so, when we got to Beirout yesterday, we +found the place full of dragomen and their outfits. We had all intended +to go by diligence to Damascus, and switch off to Baalbec as we went +along--because we expected to rejoin the ship, go to Mount Carmel, and +take to the woods from there. However, when our own private party of +eight found that it was possible, and proper enough, to make the "long +trip," we adopted that programme. We have never been much trouble to a +Consul before, but we have been a fearful nuisance to our Consul at +Beirout. I mention this because I can not help admiring his patience, +his industry, and his accommodating spirit. I mention it also, because I +think some of our ship's company did not give him as full credit for his +excellent services as he deserved. + +Well, out of our eight, three were selected to attend to all business +connected with the expedition. The rest of us had nothing to do but look +at the beautiful city of Beirout, with its bright, new houses nestled +among a wilderness of green shrubbery spread abroad over an upland that +sloped gently down to the sea; and also at the mountains of Lebanon that +environ it; and likewise to bathe in the transparent blue water that +rolled its billows about the ship (we did not know there were sharks +there.) We had also to range up and down through the town and look at the +costumes. These are picturesque and fanciful, but not so varied as at +Constantinople and Smyrna; the women of Beirout add an agony--in the two +former cities the sex wear a thin veil which one can see through (and +they often expose their ancles,) but at Beirout they cover their entire +faces with dark-colored or black veils, so that they look like mummies, +and then expose their breasts to the public. A young gentleman (I +believe he was a Greek,) volunteered to show us around the city, and said +it would afford him great pleasure, because he was studying English and +wanted practice in that language. When we had finished the rounds, +however, he called for remuneration--said he hoped the gentlemen would +give him a trifle in the way of a few piastres (equivalent to a few five +cent pieces.) We did so. The Consul was surprised when he heard it, and +said he knew the young fellow's family very well, and that they were an +old and highly respectable family and worth a hundred and fifty thousand +dollars! Some people, so situated, would have been ashamed of the berth +he had with us and his manner of crawling into it. + +At the appointed time our business committee reported, and said all +things were in readdress--that we were to start to-day, with horses, pack +animals, and tents, and go to Baalbec, Damascus, the Sea of Tiberias, and +thence southward by the way of the scene of Jacob's Dream and other +notable Bible localities to Jerusalem--from thence probably to the Dead +Sea, but possibly not--and then strike for the ocean and rejoin the ship +three or four weeks hence at Joppa; terms, five dollars a day apiece, in +gold, and every thing to be furnished by the dragoman. They said we +would lie as well as at a hotel. I had read something like that before, +and did not shame my judgment by believing a word of it. I said nothing, +however, but packed up a blanket and a shawl to sleep in, pipes and +tobacco, two or three woollen shirts, a portfolio, a guide-book, and a +Bible. I also took along a towel and a cake of soap, to inspire respect +in the Arabs, who would take me for a king in disguise. + +We were to select our horses at 3 P.M. At that hour Abraham, the +dragoman, marshaled them before us. With all solemnity I set it down +here, that those horses were the hardest lot I ever did come across, and +their accoutrements were in exquisite keeping with their style. One +brute had an eye out; another had his tail sawed off close, like a +rabbit, and was proud of it; another had a bony ridge running from his +neck to his tail, like one of those ruined aqueducts one sees about Rome, +and had a neck on him like a bowsprit; they all limped, and had sore +backs, and likewise raw places and old scales scattered about their +persons like brass nails in a hair trunk; their gaits were marvelous to +contemplate, and replete with variety under way the procession looked +like a fleet in a storm. It was fearful. Blucher shook his head and +said: + +"That dragon is going to get himself into trouble fetching these old +crates out of the hospital the way they are, unless he has got a permit." + +I said nothing. The display was exactly according to the guide-book, and +were we not traveling by the guide-book? I selected a certain horse +because I thought I saw him shy, and I thought that a horse that had +spirit enough to shy was not to be despised. + +At 6 o'clock P.M., we came to a halt here on the breezy summit of a +shapely mountain overlooking the sea, and the handsome valley where dwelt +some of those enterprising Phoenicians of ancient times we read so much +about; all around us are what were once the dominions of Hiram, King of +Tyre, who furnished timber from the cedars of these Lebanon hills to +build portions of King Solomon's Temple with. + +Shortly after six, our pack train arrived. I had not seen it before, and +a good right I had to be astonished. We had nineteen serving men and +twenty-six pack mules! It was a perfect caravan. It looked like one, +too, as it wound among the rocks. I wondered what in the very mischief +we wanted with such a vast turn-out as that, for eight men. I wondered +awhile, but soon I began to long for a tin plate, and some bacon and +beans. I had camped out many and many a time before, and knew just what +was coming. I went off, without waiting for serving men, and unsaddled +my horse, and washed such portions of his ribs and his spine as projected +through his hide, and when I came back, behold five stately circus tents +were up--tents that were brilliant, within, with blue, and gold, and +crimson, and all manner of splendid adornment! I was speechless. Then +they brought eight little iron bedsteads, and set them up in the tents; +they put a soft mattress and pillows and good blankets and two snow-white +sheets on each bed. Next, they rigged a table about the centre-pole, and +on it placed pewter pitchers, basins, soap, and the whitest of towels +--one set for each man; they pointed to pockets in the tent, and said we +could put our small trifles in them for convenience, and if we needed +pins or such things, they were sticking every where. Then came the +finishing touch--they spread carpets on the floor! I simply said, "If +you call this camping out, all right--but it isn't the style I am used +to; my little baggage that I brought along is at a discount." + +It grew dark, and they put candles on the tables--candles set in bright, +new, brazen candlesticks. And soon the bell--a genuine, simon-pure bell +--rang, and we were invited to "the saloon." I had thought before that +we had a tent or so too many, but now here was one, at least, provided +for; it was to be used for nothing but an eating-saloon. Like the +others, it was high enough for a family of giraffes to live in, and was +very handsome and clean and bright-colored within. It was a gem of a +place. A table for eight, and eight canvas chairs; a table-cloth and +napkins whose whiteness and whose fineness laughed to scorn the things we +were used to in the great excursion steamer; knives and forks, +soup-plates, dinner-plates--every thing, in the handsomest kind of +style. It was wonderful! And they call this camping out. Those +stately fellows in baggy trowsers and turbaned fezzes brought in a +dinner which consisted of roast mutton, roast chicken, roast goose, +potatoes, bread, tea, pudding, apples, and delicious grapes; the viands +were better cooked than any we had eaten for weeks, and the table made a +finer appearance, with its large German silver candlesticks and other +finery, than any table we had sat down to for a good while, and yet that +polite dragoman, Abraham, came bowing in and apologizing for the whole +affair, on account of the unavoidable confusion of getting under way for +a very long trip, and promising to do a great deal better in future! + +It is midnight, now, and we break camp at six in the morning. + +They call this camping out. At this rate it is a glorious privilege to +be a pilgrim to the Holy Land. + + + + +CHAPTER XLII. + +We are camped near Temnin-el-Foka--a name which the boys have simplified +a good deal, for the sake of convenience in spelling. They call it +Jacksonville. It sounds a little strangely, here in the Valley of +Lebanon, but it has the merit of being easier to remember than the Arabic +name. + + "COME LIKE SPIRITS, SO DEPART." + + "The night shall be filled with music, + And the cares that infest the day + Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, + And as silently steal away." + +I slept very soundly last night, yet when the dragoman's bell rang at +half-past five this morning and the cry went abroad of "Ten minutes to +dress for breakfast!" I heard both. It surprised me, because I have not +heard the breakfast gong in the ship for a month, and whenever we have +had occasion to fire a salute at daylight, I have only found it out in +the course of conversation afterward. However, camping out, even though +it be in a gorgeous tent, makes one fresh and lively in the morning +--especially if the air you are breathing is the cool, fresh air of the +mountains. + +I was dressed within the ten minutes, and came out. The saloon tent had +been stripped of its sides, and had nothing left but its roof; so when we +sat down to table we could look out over a noble panorama of mountain, +sea and hazy valley. And sitting thus, the sun rose slowly up and +suffused the picture with a world of rich coloring. + +Hot mutton chops, fried chicken, omelettes, fried potatoes and coffee +--all excellent. This was the bill of fare. It was sauced with a savage +appetite purchased by hard riding the day before, and refreshing sleep in +a pure atmosphere. As I called for a second cup of coffee, I glanced +over my shoulder, and behold our white village was gone--the splendid +tents had vanished like magic! It was wonderful how quickly those Arabs +had "folded their tents;" and it was wonderful, also, how quickly they +had gathered the thousand odds and ends of the camp together and +disappeared with them. + +By half-past six we were under way, and all the Syrian world seemed to be +under way also. The road was filled with mule trains and long +processions of camels. This reminds me that we have been trying for some +time to think what a camel looks like, and now we have made it out. When +he is down on all his knees, flat on his breast to receive his load, he +looks something like a goose swimming; and when he is upright he looks +like an ostrich with an extra set of legs. Camels are not beautiful, and +their long under lip gives them an exceedingly "gallus"--[Excuse the +slang, no other word will describe it]--expression. They have immense, +flat, forked cushions of feet, that make a track in the dust like a pie +with a slice cut out of it. They are not particular about their diet. +They would eat a tombstone if they could bite it. A thistle grows about +here which has needles on it that would pierce through leather, I think; +if one touches you, you can find relief in nothing but profanity. The +camels eat these. They show by their actions that they enjoy them. I +suppose it would be a real treat to a camel to have a keg of nails for +supper. + +While I am speaking of animals, I will mention that I have a horse now by +the name of "Jericho." He is a mare. I have seen remarkable horses +before, but none so remarkable as this. I wanted a horse that could shy, +and this one fills the bill. I had an idea that shying indicated spirit. +If I was correct, I have got the most spirited horse on earth. He shies +at every thing he comes across, with the utmost impartiality. He appears +to have a mortal dread of telegraph poles, especially; and it is +fortunate that these are on both sides of the road, because as it is now, +I never fall off twice in succession on the same side. If I fell on the +same side always, it would get to be monotonous after a while. This +creature has scared at every thing he has seen to-day, except a haystack. +He walked up to that with an intrepidity and a recklessness that were +astonishing. And it would fill any one with admiration to see how he +preserves his self-possession in the presence of a barley sack. This +dare-devil bravery will be the death of this horse some day. + +He is not particularly fast, but I think he will get me through the Holy +Land. He has only one fault. His tail has been chopped off or else he +has sat down on it too hard, some time or other, and he has to fight the +flies with his heels. This is all very well, but when he tries to kick a +fly off the top of his head with his hind foot, it is too much variety. +He is going to get himself into trouble that way some day. He reaches +around and bites my legs too. I do not care particularly about that, +only I do not like to see a horse too sociable. + +I think the owner of this prize had a wrong opinion about him. He had an +idea that he was one of those fiery, untamed steeds, but he is not of +that character. I know the Arab had this idea, because when he brought +the horse out for inspection in Beirout, he kept jerking at the bridle +and shouting in Arabic, "Ho! will you? Do you want to run away, you +ferocious beast, and break your neck?" when all the time the horse was +not doing anything in the world, and only looked like he wanted to lean +up against something and think. Whenever he is not shying at things, or +reaching after a fly, he wants to do that yet. How it would surprise his +owner to know this. + +We have been in a historical section of country all day. At noon we +camped three hours and took luncheon at Mekseh, near the junction of the +Lebanon Mountains and the Jebel el Kuneiyiseh, and looked down into the +immense, level, garden-like Valley of Lebanon. To-night we are camping +near the same valley, and have a very wide sweep of it in view. We can +see the long, whale-backed ridge of Mount Hermon projecting above the +eastern hills. The "dews of Hermon" are falling upon us now, and the +tents are almost soaked with them. + +Over the way from us, and higher up the valley, we can discern, through +the glasses, the faint outlines of the wonderful ruins of Baalbec, the +supposed Baal-Gad of Scripture. Joshua, and another person, were the two +spies who were sent into this land of Canaan by the children of Israel to +report upon its character--I mean they were the spies who reported +favorably. They took back with them some specimens of the grapes of this +country, and in the children's picture-books they are always represented +as bearing one monstrous bunch swung to a pole between them, a +respectable load for a pack-train. The Sunday-school books exaggerated +it a little. The grapes are most excellent to this day, but the bunches +are not as large as those in the pictures. I was surprised and hurt when +I saw them, because those colossal bunches of grapes were one of my most +cherished juvenile traditions. + +Joshua reported favorably, and the children of Israel journeyed on, with +Moses at the head of the general government, and Joshua in command of the +army of six hundred thousand fighting men. Of women and children and +civilians there was a countless swarm. Of all that mighty host, none but +the two faithful spies ever lived to set their feet in the Promised Land. +They and their descendants wandered forty years in the desert, and then +Moses, the gifted warrior, poet, statesman and philosopher, went up into +Pisgah and met his mysterious fate. Where he was buried no man knows +--for + + "* * * no man dug that sepulchre, + And no man saw it e'er +-- For the Sons of God upturned the sod + And laid the dead man there!" + +Then Joshua began his terrible raid, and from Jericho clear to this +Baal-Gad, he swept the land like the Genius of Destruction. He +slaughtered the people, laid waste their soil, and razed their cities to +the ground. He wasted thirty-one kings also. One may call it that, +though really it can hardly be called wasting them, because there were +always plenty of kings in those days, and to spare. At any rate, he +destroyed thirty-one kings, and divided up their realms among his +Israelites. He divided up this valley stretched out here before us, and +so it was once Jewish territory. The Jews have long since disappeared +from it, however. + +Back yonder, an hour's journey from here, we passed through an Arab +village of stone dry-goods boxes (they look like that,) where Noah's tomb +lies under lock and key. [Noah built the ark.] Over these old hills and +valleys the ark that contained all that was left of a vanished world once +floated. + +I make no apology for detailing the above information. It will be news +to some of my readers, at any rate. + +Noah's tomb is built of stone, and is covered with a long stone building. +Bucksheesh let us in. The building had to be long, because the grave of +the honored old navigator is two hundred and ten feet long itself! It is +only about four feet high, though. He must have cast a shadow like a +lightning-rod. The proof that this is the genuine spot where Noah was +buried can only be doubted by uncommonly incredulous people. The +evidence is pretty straight. Shem, the son of Noah, was present at the +burial, and showed the place to his descendants, who transmitted the +knowledge to their descendants, and the lineal descendants of these +introduced themselves to us to-day. It was pleasant to make the +acquaintance of members of so respectable a family. It was a thing to be +proud of. It was the next thing to being acquainted with Noah himself. + +Noah's memorable voyage will always possess a living interest for me, +henceforward. + +If ever an oppressed race existed, it is this one we see fettered around +us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman Empire. I wish Europe would +let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it +difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a +diving-bell. The Syrians are very poor, and yet they are ground down by +a system of taxation that would drive any other nation frantic. Last +year their taxes were heavy enough, in all conscience--but this year +they have been increased by the addition of taxes that were forgiven +them in times of famine in former years. On top of this the Government +has levied a tax of one-tenth of the whole proceeds of the land. This +is only half the story. The Pacha of a Pachalic does not trouble +himself with appointing tax-collectors. He figures up what all these +taxes ought to amount to in a certain district. Then he farms the +collection out. He calls the rich men together, the highest bidder gets +the speculation, pays the Pacha on the spot, and then sells out to +smaller fry, who sell in turn to a piratical horde of still smaller fry. +These latter compel the peasant to bring his little trifle of grain to +the village, at his own cost. It must be weighed, the various taxes set +apart, and the remainder returned to the producer. But the collector +delays this duty day after day, while the producer's family are +perishing for bread; at last the poor wretch, who can not but understand +the game, says, "Take a quarter--take half--take two-thirds if you will, +and let me go!" It is a most outrageous state of things. + +These people are naturally good-hearted and intelligent, and with +education and liberty, would be a happy and contented race. They often +appeal to the stranger to know if the great world will not some day come +to their relief and save them. The Sultan has been lavishing money like +water in England and Paris, but his subjects are suffering for it now. + +This fashion of camping out bewilders me. We have boot-jacks and a +bath-tub, now, and yet all the mysteries the pack-mules carry are not +revealed. What next? + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII. + +We had a tedious ride of about five hours, in the sun, across the Valley +of Lebanon. It proved to be not quite so much of a garden as it had +seemed from the hill-sides. It was a desert, weed-grown waste, littered +thickly with stones the size of a man's fist. Here and there the natives +had scratched the ground and reared a sickly crop of grain, but for the +most part the valley was given up to a handful of shepherds, whose flocks +were doing what they honestly could to get a living, but the chances were +against them. We saw rude piles of stones standing near the roadside, at +intervals, and recognized the custom of marking boundaries which obtained +in Jacob's time. There were no walls, no fences, no hedges--nothing to +secure a man's possessions but these random heaps of stones. The +Israelites held them sacred in the old patriarchal times, and these other +Arabs, their lineal descendants, do so likewise. An American, of +ordinary intelligence, would soon widely extend his property, at an +outlay of mere manual labor, performed at night, under so loose a system +of fencing as this. + +The plows these people use are simply a sharpened stick, such as Abraham +plowed with, and they still winnow their wheat as he did--they pile it on +the house-top, and then toss it by shovel-fulls into the air until the +wind has blown all the chaff away. They never invent any thing, never +learn any thing. + +We had a fine race, of a mile, with an Arab perched on a camel. Some of +the horses were fast, and made very good time, but the camel scampered by +them without any very great effort. The yelling and shouting, and +whipping and galloping, of all parties interested, made it an +exhilarating, exciting, and particularly boisterous race. + +At eleven o'clock, our eyes fell upon the walls and columns of Baalbec, a +noble ruin whose history is a sealed book. It has stood there for +thousands of years, the wonder and admiration of travelers; but who built +it, or when it was built, are questions that may never be answered. One +thing is very sure, though. Such grandeur of design, and such grace of +execution, as one sees in the temples of Baalbec, have not been equaled +or even approached in any work of men's hands that has been built within +twenty centuries past. + +The great Temple of the Sun, the Temple of Jupiter, and several smaller +temples, are clustered together in the midst of one of these miserable +Syrian villages, and look strangely enough in such plebeian company. +These temples are built upon massive substructions that might support a +world, almost; the materials used are blocks of stone as large as an +omnibus--very few, if any of them, are smaller than a carpenter's tool +chest--and these substructions are traversed by tunnels of masonry +through which a train of cars might pass. With such foundations as +these, it is little wonder that Baalbec has lasted so long. The Temple +of the Sun is nearly three hundred feet long and one hundred and sixty +feet wide. It had fifty-four columns around it, but only six are +standing now--the others lie broken at its base, a confused and +picturesque heap. The six columns are their bases, Corinthian capitals +and entablature--and six more shapely columns do not exist. The columns +and the entablature together are ninety feet high--a prodigious altitude +for shafts of stone to reach, truly--and yet one only thinks of their +beauty and symmetry when looking at them; the pillars look slender and +delicate, the entablature, with its elaborate sculpture, looks like rich +stucco-work. But when you have gazed aloft till your eyes are weary, you +glance at the great fragments of pillars among which you are standing, +and find that they are eight feet through; and with them lie beautiful +capitals apparently as large as a small cottage; and also single slabs of +stone, superbly sculptured, that are four or five feet thick, and would +completely cover the floor of any ordinary parlor. You wonder where +these monstrous things came from, and it takes some little time to +satisfy yourself that the airy and graceful fabric that towers above your +head is made up of their mates. It seems too preposterous. + +The Temple of Jupiter is a smaller ruin than the one I have been speaking +of, and yet is immense. It is in a tolerable state of preservation. One +row of nine columns stands almost uninjured. They are sixty-five feet +high and support a sort of porch or roof, which connects them with the +roof of the building. This porch-roof is composed of tremendous slabs of +stone, which are so finely sculptured on the under side that the work +looks like a fresco from below. One or two of these slabs had fallen, +and again I wondered if the gigantic masses of carved stone that lay +about me were no larger than those above my head. Within the temple, the +ornamentation was elaborate and colossal. What a wonder of architectural +beauty and grandeur this edifice must have been when it was new! And +what a noble picture it and its statelier companion, with the chaos of +mighty fragments scattered about them, yet makes in the moonlight! + +I can not conceive how those immense blocks of stone were ever hauled +from the quarries, or how they were ever raised to the dizzy heights they +occupy in the temples. And yet these sculptured blocks are trifles in +size compared with the rough-hewn blocks that form the wide verandah or +platform which surrounds the Great Temple. One stretch of that platform, +two hundred feet long, is composed of blocks of stone as large, and some +of them larger, than a street-car. They surmount a wall about ten or +twelve feet high. I thought those were large rocks, but they sank into +insignificance compared with those which formed another section of the +platform. These were three in number, and I thought that each of them +was about as long as three street cars placed end to end, though of +course they are a third wider and a third higher than a street car. +Perhaps two railway freight cars of the largest pattern, placed end to +end, might better represent their size. In combined length these three +stones stretch nearly two hundred feet; they are thirteen feet square; +two of them are sixty-four feet long each, and the third is sixty-nine. +They are built into the massive wall some twenty feet above the ground. +They are there, but how they got there is the question. I have seen the +hull of a steamboat that was smaller than one of those stones. All these +great walls are as exact and shapely as the flimsy things we build of +bricks in these days. A race of gods or of giants must have inhabited +Baalbec many a century ago. Men like the men of our day could hardly +rear such temples as these. + +We went to the quarry from whence the stones of Baalbec were taken. It +was about a quarter of a mile off, and down hill. In a great pit lay the +mate of the largest stone in the ruins. It lay there just as the giants +of that old forgotten time had left it when they were called hence--just +as they had left it, to remain for thousands of years, an eloquent rebuke +unto such as are prone to think slightingly of the men who lived before +them. This enormous block lies there, squared and ready for the +builders' hands--a solid mass fourteen feet by seventeen, and but a few +inches less than seventy feet long! Two buggies could be driven abreast +of each other, on its surface, from one end of it to the other, and leave +room enough for a man or two to walk on either side. + +One might swear that all the John Smiths and George Wilkinsons, and all +the other pitiful nobodies between Kingdom Come and Baalbec would +inscribe their poor little names upon the walls of Baalbec's magnificent +ruins, and would add the town, the county and the State they came from +--and swearing thus, be infallibly correct. It is a pity some great ruin +does not fall in and flatten out some of these reptiles, and scare their +kind out of ever giving their names to fame upon any walls or monuments +again, forever. + +Properly, with the sorry relics we bestrode, it was a three days' journey +to Damascus. It was necessary that we should do it in less than two. +It was necessary because our three pilgrims would not travel on the +Sabbath day. We were all perfectly willing to keep the Sabbath day, but +there are times when to keep the letter of a sacred law whose spirit is +righteous, becomes a sin, and this was a case in point. We pleaded for +the tired, ill-treated horses, and tried to show that their faithful +service deserved kindness in return, and their hard lot compassion. But +when did ever self-righteousness know the sentiment of pity? What were a +few long hours added to the hardships of some over-taxed brutes when +weighed against the peril of those human souls? It was not the most +promising party to travel with and hope to gain a higher veneration for +religion through the example of its devotees. We said the Saviour who +pitied dumb beasts and taught that the ox must be rescued from the mire +even on the Sabbath day, would not have counseled a forced march like +this. We said the "long trip" was exhausting and therefore dangerous in +the blistering heats of summer, even when the ordinary days' stages were +traversed, and if we persisted in this hard march, some of us might be +stricken down with the fevers of the country in consequence of it. +Nothing could move the pilgrims. They must press on. Men might die, +horses might die, but they must enter upon holy soil next week, with no +Sabbath-breaking stain upon them. Thus they were willing to commit a sin +against the spirit of religious law, in order that they might preserve +the letter of it. It was not worth while to tell them "the letter +kills." I am talking now about personal friends; men whom I like; men +who are good citizens; who are honorable, upright, conscientious; but +whose idea of the Saviour's religion seems to me distorted. They lecture +our shortcomings unsparingly, and every night they call us together and +read to us chapters from the Testament that are full of gentleness, of +charity, and of tender mercy; and then all the next day they stick to +their saddles clear up to the summits of these rugged mountains, and +clear down again. Apply the Testament's gentleness, and charity, and +tender mercy to a toiling, worn and weary horse?--Nonsense--these are for +God's human creatures, not His dumb ones. What the pilgrims choose to +do, respect for their almost sacred character demands that I should allow +to pass--but I would so like to catch any other member of the party +riding his horse up one of these exhausting hills once! + +We have given the pilgrims a good many examples that might benefit them, +but it is virtue thrown away. They have never heard a cross word out of +our lips toward each other--but they have quarreled once or twice. We +love to hear them at it, after they have been lecturing us. The very +first thing they did, coming ashore at Beirout, was to quarrel in the +boat. I have said I like them, and I do like them--but every time they +read me a scorcher of a lecture I mean to talk back in print. + +Not content with doubling the legitimate stages, they switched off the +main road and went away out of the way to visit an absurd fountain called +Figia, because Baalam's ass had drank there once. So we journeyed on, +through the terrible hills and deserts and the roasting sun, and then far +into the night, seeking the honored pool of Baalam's ass, the patron +saint of all pilgrims like us. I find no entry but this in my note-book: + + "Rode to-day, altogether, thirteen hours, through deserts, partly, + and partly over barren, unsightly hills, and latterly through wild, + rocky scenery, and camped at about eleven o'clock at night on the + banks of a limpid stream, near a Syrian village. Do not know its + name--do not wish to know it--want to go to bed. Two horses lame + (mine and Jack's) and the others worn out. Jack and I walked three + or four miles, over the hills, and led the horses. Fun--but of a + mild type." + +Twelve or thirteen hours in the saddle, even in a Christian land and a +Christian climate, and on a good horse, is a tiresome journey; but in an +oven like Syria, in a ragged spoon of a saddle that slips fore-and-aft, +and "thort-ships," and every way, and on a horse that is tired and lame, +and yet must be whipped and spurred with hardly a moment's cessation all +day long, till the blood comes from his side, and your conscience hurts +you every time you strike if you are half a man,--it is a journey to be +remembered in bitterness of spirit and execrated with emphasis for a +liberal division of a man's lifetime. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV. + +The next day was an outrage upon men and horses both. It was another +thirteen-hour stretch (including an hour's "nooning.") It was over the +barrenest chalk-hills and through the baldest canons that even Syria can +show. The heat quivered in the air every where. In the canons we almost +smothered in the baking atmosphere. On high ground, the reflection from +the chalk-hills was blinding. It was cruel to urge the crippled horses, +but it had to be done in order to make Damascus Saturday night. We saw +ancient tombs and temples of fanciful architecture carved out of the +solid rock high up in the face of precipices above our heads, but we had +neither time nor strength to climb up there and examine them. The terse +language of my note-book will answer for the rest of this day's +experiences: + + "Broke camp at 7 A.M., and made a ghastly trip through the Zeb Dana + valley and the rough mountains--horses limping and that Arab + screech-owl that does most of the singing and carries the + water-skins, always a thousand miles ahead, of course, and no water + to drink--will he never die? Beautiful stream in a chasm, lined + thick with pomegranate, fig, olive and quince orchards, and nooned + an hour at the celebrated Baalam's Ass Fountain of Figia, second in + size in Syria, and the coldest water out of Siberia--guide-books do + not say Baalam's ass ever drank there--somebody been imposing on + the pilgrims, may be. Bathed in it--Jack and I. Only a + second--ice-water. It is the principal source of the Abana river + --only one-half mile down to where it joins. Beautiful + place--giant trees all around--so shady and cool, if one could keep + awake--vast stream gushes straight out from under the mountain in a + torrent. Over it is a very ancient ruin, with no known history + --supposed to have been for the worship of the deity of the fountain + or Baalam's ass or somebody. Wretched nest of human vermin about + the fountain--rags, dirt, sunken cheeks, pallor of sickness, sores, + projecting bones, dull, aching misery in their eyes and ravenous + hunger speaking from every eloquent fibre and muscle from head to + foot. How they sprang upon a bone, how they crunched the bread we + gave them! Such as these to swarm about one and watch every bite + he takes, with greedy looks, and swallow unconsciously every time + he swallows, as if they half fancied the precious morsel went down + their own throats --hurry up the caravan!--I never shall enjoy a + meal in this distressful country. To think of eating three times + every day under such circumstances for three weeks yet--it is worse + punishment than riding all day in the sun. There are sixteen + starving babies from one to six years old in the party, and their + legs are no larger than broom handles. Left the fountain at 1 P.M. + (the fountain took us at least two hours out of our way,) and + reached Mahomet's lookout perch, over Damascus, in time to get a + good long look before it was necessary to move on. Tired? Ask of + the winds that far away with fragments strewed the sea." + +As the glare of day mellowed into twilight, we looked down upon a picture +which is celebrated all over the world. I think I have read about four +hundred times that when Mahomet was a simple camel-driver he reached this +point and looked down upon Damascus for the first time, and then made a +certain renowned remark. He said man could enter only one paradise; he +preferred to go to the one above. So he sat down there and feasted his +eyes upon the earthly paradise of Damascus, and then went away without +entering its gates. They have erected a tower on the hill to mark the +spot where he stood. + +Damascus is beautiful from the mountain. It is beautiful even to +foreigners accustomed to luxuriant vegetation, and I can easily +understand how unspeakably beautiful it must be to eyes that are only +used to the God-forsaken barrenness and desolation of Syria. I should +think a Syrian would go wild with ecstacy when such a picture bursts upon +him for the first time. + +From his high perch, one sees before him and below him, a wall of dreary +mountains, shorn of vegetation, glaring fiercely in the sun; it fences in +a level desert of yellow sand, smooth as velvet and threaded far away +with fine lines that stand for roads, and dotted with creeping mites we +know are camel-trains and journeying men; right in the midst of the +desert is spread a billowy expanse of green foliage; and nestling in its +heart sits the great white city, like an island of pearls and opals +gleaming out of a sea of emeralds. This is the picture you see spread +far below you, with distance to soften it, the sun to glorify it, strong +contrasts to heighten the effects, and over it and about it a drowsing +air of repose to spiritualize it and make it seem rather a beautiful +estray from the mysterious worlds we visit in dreams than a substantial +tenant of our coarse, dull globe. And when you think of the leagues of +blighted, blasted, sandy, rocky, sun-burnt, ugly, dreary, infamous +country you have ridden over to get here, you think it is the most +beautiful, beautiful picture that ever human eyes rested upon in all the +broad universe! If I were to go to Damascus again, I would camp on +Mahomet's hill about a week, and then go away. There is no need to go +inside the walls. The Prophet was wise without knowing it when he +decided not to go down into the paradise of Damascus. + +There is an honored old tradition that the immense garden which Damascus +stands in was the Garden of Eden, and modern writers have gathered up +many chapters of evidence tending to show that it really was the Garden +of Eden, and that the rivers Pharpar and Abana are the "two rivers" that +watered Adam's Paradise. It may be so, but it is not paradise now, and +one would be as happy outside of it as he would be likely to be within. +It is so crooked and cramped and dirty that one can not realize that he +is in the splendid city he saw from the hill-top. The gardens are hidden +by high mud-walls, and the paradise is become a very sink of pollution +and uncomeliness. Damascus has plenty of clear, pure water in it, +though, and this is enough, of itself, to make an Arab think it beautiful +and blessed. Water is scarce in blistered Syria. We run railways by our +large cities in America; in Syria they curve the roads so as to make them +run by the meagre little puddles they call "fountains," and which are not +found oftener on a journey than every four hours. But the "rivers" of +Pharpar and Abana of Scripture (mere creeks,) run through Damascus, and +so every house and every garden have their sparkling fountains and +rivulets of water. With her forest of foliage and her abundance of +water, Damascus must be a wonder of wonders to the Bedouin from the +deserts. Damascus is simply an oasis--that is what it is. For four +thousand years its waters have not gone dry or its fertility failed. +Now we can understand why the city has existed so long. It could not +die. So long as its waters remain to it away out there in the midst of +that howling desert, so long will Damascus live to bless the sight of the +tired and thirsty wayfarer. + + "Though old as history itself, thou art fresh as the breath of + spring, blooming as thine own rose-bud, and fragrant as thine own + orange flower, O Damascus, pearl of the East!" + +Damascus dates back anterior to the days of Abraham, and is the oldest +city in the world. It was founded by Uz, the grandson of Noah. "The +early history of Damascus is shrouded in the mists of a hoary antiquity." +Leave the matters written of in the first eleven chapters of the Old +Testament out, and no recorded event has occurred in the world but +Damascus was in existence to receive the news of it. Go back as far as +you will into the vague past, there was always a Damascus. In the +writings of every century for more than four thousand years, its name has +been mentioned and its praises sung. To Damascus, years are only +moments, decades are only flitting trifles of time. She measures time, +not by days and months and years, but by the empires she has seen rise, +and prosper and crumble to ruin. She is a type of immortality. She saw +the foundations of Baalbec, and Thebes, and Ephesus laid; she saw these +villages grow into mighty cities, and amaze the world with their +grandeur--and she has lived to see them desolate, deserted, and given +over to the owls and the bats. She saw the Israelitish empire exalted, +and she saw it annihilated. She saw Greece rise, and flourish two +thousand years, and die. In her old age she saw Rome built; she saw it +overshadow the world with its power; she saw it perish. The few hundreds +of years of Genoese and Venetian might and splendor were, to grave old +Damascus, only a trifling scintillation hardly worth remembering. +Damascus has seen all that has ever occurred on earth, and still she +lives. She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires, and will +see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies. Though another claims +the name, old Damascus is by right the Eternal City. + +We reached the city gates just at sundown. They do say that one can get +into any walled city of Syria, after night, for bucksheesh, except +Damascus. But Damascus, with its four thousand years of respectability +in the world, has many old fogy notions. There are no street lamps +there, and the law compels all who go abroad at night to carry lanterns, +just as was the case in old days, when heroes and heroines of the Arabian +Nights walked the streets of Damascus, or flew away toward Bagdad on +enchanted carpets. + +It was fairly dark a few minutes after we got within the wall, and we +rode long distances through wonderfully crooked streets, eight to ten +feet wide, and shut in on either side by the high mud-walls of the +gardens. At last we got to where lanterns could be seen flitting about +here and there, and knew we were in the midst of the curious old city. +In a little narrow street, crowded with our pack-mules and with a swarm +of uncouth Arabs, we alighted, and through a kind of a hole in the wall +entered the hotel. We stood in a great flagged court, with flowers and +citron trees about us, and a huge tank in the centre that was receiving +the waters of many pipes. We crossed the court and entered the rooms +prepared to receive four of us. In a large marble-paved recess between +the two rooms was a tank of clear, cool water, which was kept running +over all the time by the streams that were pouring into it from half a +dozen pipes. Nothing, in this scorching, desolate land could look so +refreshing as this pure water flashing in the lamp-light; nothing could +look so beautiful, nothing could sound so delicious as this mimic rain to +ears long unaccustomed to sounds of such a nature. Our rooms were large, +comfortably furnished, and even had their floors clothed with soft, +cheerful-tinted carpets. It was a pleasant thing to see a carpet again, +for if there is any thing drearier than the tomb-like, stone-paved +parlors and bed-rooms of Europe and Asia, I do not know what it is. +They make one think of the grave all the time. A very broad, gaily +caparisoned divan, some twelve or fourteen feet long, extended across one +side of each room, and opposite were single beds with spring mattresses. +There were great looking-glasses and marble-top tables. All this luxury +was as grateful to systems and senses worn out with an exhausting day's +travel, as it was unexpected--for one can not tell what to expect in a +Turkish city of even a quarter of a million inhabitants. + +I do not know, but I think they used that tank between the rooms to draw +drinking water from; that did not occur to me, however, until I had +dipped my baking head far down into its cool depths. I thought of it +then, and superb as the bath was, I was sorry I had taken it, and was +about to go and explain to the landlord. But a finely curled and scented +poodle dog frisked up and nipped the calf of my leg just then, and before +I had time to think, I had soused him to the bottom of the tank, and when +I saw a servant coming with a pitcher I went off and left the pup trying +to climb out and not succeeding very well. Satisfied revenge was all I +needed to make me perfectly happy, and when I walked in to supper that +first night in Damascus I was in that condition. We lay on those divans +a long time, after supper, smoking narghilies and long-stemmed chibouks, +and talking about the dreadful ride of the day, and I knew then what I +had sometimes known before--that it is worth while to get tired out, +because one so enjoys resting afterward. + +In the morning we sent for donkeys. It is worthy of note that we had to +send for these things. I said Damascus was an old fossil, and she is. +Any where else we would have been assailed by a clamorous army of +donkey-drivers, guides, peddlers and beggars--but in Damascus they so +hate the very sight of a foreign Christian that they want no intercourse +whatever with him; only a year or two ago, his person was not always +safe in Damascus streets. It is the most fanatical Mohammedan purgatory +out of Arabia. Where you see one green turban of a Hadji elsewhere (the +honored sign that my lord has made the pilgrimage to Mecca,) I think you +will see a dozen in Damascus. The Damascenes are the ugliest, wickedest +looking villains we have seen. All the veiled women we had seen yet, +nearly, left their eyes exposed, but numbers of these in Damascus +completely hid the face under a close-drawn black veil that made the +woman look like a mummy. If ever we caught an eye exposed it was +quickly hidden from our contaminating Christian vision; the beggars +actually passed us by without demanding bucksheesh; the merchants in the +bazaars did not hold up their goods and cry out eagerly, "Hey, John!" +or "Look this, Howajji!" On the contrary, they only scowled at us and +said never a word. + +The narrow streets swarmed like a hive with men and women in strange +Oriental costumes, and our small donkeys knocked them right and left as +we plowed through them, urged on by the merciless donkey-boys. These +persecutors run after the animals, shouting and goading them for hours +together; they keep the donkey in a gallop always, yet never get tired +themselves or fall behind. The donkeys fell down and spilt us over their +heads occasionally, but there was nothing for it but to mount and hurry +on again. We were banged against sharp corners, loaded porters, camels, +and citizens generally; and we were so taken up with looking out for +collisions and casualties that we had no chance to look about us at all. +We rode half through the city and through the famous "street which is +called Straight" without seeing any thing, hardly. Our bones were nearly +knocked out of joint, we were wild with excitement, and our sides ached +with the jolting we had suffered. I do not like riding in the Damascus +street-cars. + +We were on our way to the reputed houses of Judas and Ananias. About +eighteen or nineteen hundred years ago, Saul, a native of Tarsus, was +particularly bitter against the new sect called Christians, and he left +Jerusalem and started across the country on a furious crusade against +them. He went forth "breathing threatenings and slaughter against the +disciples of the Lord." + + "And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus, and suddenly there + shined round about him a light from heaven: + + "And he fell to the earth and heard a voice saying unto him, 'Saul, + Saul, why persecutest thou me?' + + "And when he knew that it was Jesus that spoke to him he trembled, + and was astonished, and said, 'Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?'" + +He was told to arise and go into the ancient city and one would tell +him what to do. In the meantime his soldiers stood speechless and +awe-stricken, for they heard the mysterious voice but saw no man. Saul +rose up and found that that fierce supernatural light had destroyed his +sight, and he was blind, so "they led him by the hand and brought him to +Damascus." He was converted. + +Paul lay three days, blind, in the house of Judas, and during that time +he neither ate nor drank. + +There came a voice to a citizen of Damascus, named Ananias, saying, +"Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire at +the house of Judas, for one called Saul, of Tarsus; for behold, he +prayeth." + +Ananias did not wish to go at first, for he had heard of Saul before, and +he had his doubts about that style of a "chosen vessel" to preach the +gospel of peace. However, in obedience to orders, he went into the +"street called Straight" (how he found his way into it, and after he did, +how he ever found his way out of it again, are mysteries only to be +accounted for by the fact that he was acting under Divine inspiration.) +He found Paul and restored him, and ordained him a preacher; and from +this old house we had hunted up in the street which is miscalled +Straight, he had started out on that bold missionary career which he +prosecuted till his death. It was not the house of the disciple who sold +the Master for thirty pieces of silver. I make this explanation in +justice to Judas, who was a far different sort of man from the person +just referred to. A very different style of man, and lived in a very +good house. It is a pity we do not know more about him. + +I have given, in the above paragraphs, some more information for people +who will not read Bible history until they are defrauded into it by some +such method as this. I hope that no friend of progress and education +will obstruct or interfere with my peculiar mission. + +The street called Straight is straighter than a corkscrew, but not as +straight as a rainbow. St. Luke is careful not to commit himself; he +does not say it is the street which is straight, but the "street which is +called Straight." It is a fine piece of irony; it is the only facetious +remark in the Bible, I believe. We traversed the street called Straight +a good way, and then turned off and called at the reputed house of +Ananias. There is small question that a part of the original house is +there still; it is an old room twelve or fifteen feet under ground, and +its masonry is evidently ancient. If Ananias did not live there in St. +Paul's time, somebody else did, which is just as well. I took a drink +out of Ananias' well, and singularly enough, the water was just as fresh +as if the well had been dug yesterday. + +We went out toward the north end of the city to see the place where the +disciples let Paul down over the Damascus wall at dead of night--for he +preached Christ so fearlessly in Damascus that the people sought to kill +him, just as they would to-day for the same offense, and he had to escape +and flee to Jerusalem. + +Then we called at the tomb of Mahomet's children and at a tomb which +purported to be that of St. George who killed the dragon, and so on out +to the hollow place under a rock where Paul hid during his flight till +his pursuers gave him up; and to the mausoleum of the five thousand +Christians who were massacred in Damascus in 1861 by the Turks. They say +those narrow streets ran blood for several days, and that men, women and +children were butchered indiscriminately and left to rot by hundreds all +through the Christian quarter; they say, further, that the stench was +dreadful. All the Christians who could get away fled from the city, and +the Mohammedans would not defile their hands by burying the "infidel +dogs." The thirst for blood extended to the high lands of Hermon and +Anti-Lebanon, and in a short time twenty-five thousand more Christians +were massacred and their possessions laid waste. How they hate a +Christian in Damascus!--and pretty much all over Turkeydom as well. And +how they will pay for it when Russia turns her guns upon them again! + +It is soothing to the heart to abuse England and France for interposing +to save the Ottoman Empire from the destruction it has so richly deserved +for a thousand years. It hurts my vanity to see these pagans refuse to +eat of food that has been cooked for us; or to eat from a dish we have +eaten from; or to drink from a goatskin which we have polluted with our +Christian lips, except by filtering the water through a rag which they +put over the mouth of it or through a sponge! I never disliked a +Chinaman as I do these degraded Turks and Arabs, and when Russia is ready +to war with them again, I hope England and France will not find it good +breeding or good judgment to interfere. + +In Damascus they think there are no such rivers in all the world as their +little Abana and Pharpar. The Damascenes have always thought that way. +In 2 Kings, chapter v., Naaman boasts extravagantly about them. That was +three thousand years ago. He says: "Are not Abana and Pharpar rivers of +Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them +and be clean?" But some of my readers have forgotten who Naaman was, +long ago. Naaman was the commander of the Syrian armies. He was the +favorite of the king and lived in great state. "He was a mighty man of +valor, but he was a leper." Strangely enough, the house they point out +to you now as his, has been turned into a leper hospital, and the inmates +expose their horrid deformities and hold up their hands and beg for +bucksheesh when a stranger enters. + +One can not appreciate the horror of this disease until he looks upon it +in all its ghastliness, in Naaman's ancient dwelling in Damascus. Bones +all twisted out of shape, great knots protruding from face and body, +joints decaying and dropping away--horrible! + + + + +CHAPTER XLV. + +The last twenty-four hours we staid in Damascus I lay prostrate with a +violent attack of cholera, or cholera morbus, and therefore had a good +chance and a good excuse to lie there on that wide divan and take an +honest rest. I had nothing to do but listen to the pattering of the +fountains and take medicine and throw it up again. It was dangerous +recreation, but it was pleasanter than traveling in Syria. I had plenty +of snow from Mount Hermon, and as it would not stay on my stomach, there +was nothing to interfere with my eating it--there was always room for +more. I enjoyed myself very well. Syrian travel has its interesting +features, like travel in any other part of the world, and yet to break +your leg or have the cholera adds a welcome variety to it. + +We left Damascus at noon and rode across the plain a couple of hours, and +then the party stopped a while in the shade of some fig-trees to give me +a chance to rest. It was the hottest day we had seen yet--the sun-flames +shot down like the shafts of fire that stream out before a blow-pipe--the +rays seemed to fall in a steady deluge on the head and pass downward like +rain from a roof. I imagined I could distinguish between the floods of +rays--I thought I could tell when each flood struck my head, when it +reached my shoulders, and when the next one came. It was terrible. All +the desert glared so fiercely that my eyes were swimming in tears all the +time. The boys had white umbrellas heavily lined with dark green. They +were a priceless blessing. I thanked fortune that I had one, too, +notwithstanding it was packed up with the baggage and was ten miles +ahead. It is madness to travel in Syria without an umbrella. They told +me in Beirout (these people who always gorge you with advice) that it was +madness to travel in Syria without an umbrella. It was on this account +that I got one. + +But, honestly, I think an umbrella is a nuisance any where when its +business is to keep the sun off. No Arab wears a brim to his fez, or +uses an umbrella, or any thing to shade his eyes or his face, and he +always looks comfortable and proper in the sun. But of all the +ridiculous sights I ever have seen, our party of eight is the most so +--they do cut such an outlandish figure. They travel single file; they all +wear the endless white rag of Constantinople wrapped round and round +their hats and dangling down their backs; they all wear thick green +spectacles, with side-glasses to them; they all hold white umbrellas, +lined with green, over their heads; without exception their stirrups are +too short--they are the very worst gang of horsemen on earth, their +animals to a horse trot fearfully hard--and when they get strung out one +after the other; glaring straight ahead and breathless; bouncing high and +out of turn, all along the line; knees well up and stiff, elbows flapping +like a rooster's that is going to crow, and the long file of umbrellas +popping convulsively up and down--when one sees this outrageous picture +exposed to the light of day, he is amazed that the gods don't get out +their thunderbolts and destroy them off the face of the earth! I do--I +wonder at it. I wouldn't let any such caravan go through a country of +mine. + +And when the sun drops below the horizon and the boys close their +umbrellas and put them under their arms, it is only a variation of the +picture, not a modification of its absurdity. + +But may be you can not see the wild extravagance of my panorama. You +could if you were here. Here, you feel all the time just as if you were +living about the year 1200 before Christ--or back to the patriarchs--or +forward to the New Era. The scenery of the Bible is about you--the +customs of the patriarchs are around you--the same people, in the same +flowing robes, and in sandals, cross your path--the same long trains of +stately camels go and come--the same impressive religious solemnity and +silence rest upon the desert and the mountains that were upon them in the +remote ages of antiquity, and behold, intruding upon a scene like this, +comes this fantastic mob of green-spectacled Yanks, with their flapping +elbows and bobbing umbrellas! It is Daniel in the lion's den with a +green cotton umbrella under his arm, all over again. + +My umbrella is with the baggage, and so are my green spectacles--and +there they shall stay. I will not use them. I will show some respect +for the eternal fitness of things. It will be bad enough to get +sun-struck, without looking ridiculous into the bargain. If I fall, +let me fall bearing about me the semblance of a Christian, at least. + +Three or four hours out from Damascus we passed the spot where Saul was +so abruptly converted, and from this place we looked back over the +scorching desert, and had our last glimpse of beautiful Damascus, decked +in its robes of shining green. After nightfall we reached our tents, +just outside of the nasty Arab village of Jonesborough. Of course the +real name of the place is El something or other, but the boys still +refuse to recognize the Arab names or try to pronounce them. When I say +that that village is of the usual style, I mean to insinuate that all +Syrian villages within fifty miles of Damascus are alike--so much alike +that it would require more than human intelligence to tell wherein one +differed from another. A Syrian village is a hive of huts one story high +(the height of a man,) and as square as a dry-goods box; it is +mud-plastered all over, flat roof and all, and generally whitewashed +after a fashion. The same roof often extends over half the town, +covering many of the streets, which are generally about a yard wide. +When you ride through one of these villages at noon-day, you first meet +a melancholy dog, that looks up at you and silently begs that you won't +run over him, but he does not offer to get out of the way; next you meet +a young boy without any clothes on, and he holds out his hand and says +"Bucksheesh!" --he don't really expect a cent, but then he learned to +say that before he learned to say mother, and now he can not break +himself of it; next you meet a woman with a black veil drawn closely +over her face, and her bust exposed; finally, you come to several +sore-eyed children and children in all stages of mutilation and decay; +and sitting humbly in the dust, and all fringed with filthy rags, is a +poor devil whose arms and legs are gnarled and twisted like grape-vines. +These are all the people you are likely to see. The balance of the +population are asleep within doors, or abroad tending goats in the +plains and on the hill-sides. The village is built on some consumptive +little water-course, and about it is a little fresh-looking vegetation. +Beyond this charmed circle, for miles on every side, stretches a weary +desert of sand and gravel, which produces a gray bunchy shrub like +sage-brush. A Syrian village is the sorriest sight in the world, and +its surroundings are eminently in keeping with it. + +I would not have gone into this dissertation upon Syrian villages but for +the fact that Nimrod, the Mighty Hunter of Scriptural notoriety, is +buried in Jonesborough, and I wished the public to know about how he is +located. Like Homer, he is said to be buried in many other places, but +this is the only true and genuine place his ashes inhabit. + +When the original tribes were dispersed, more than four thousand years +ago, Nimrod and a large party traveled three or four hundred miles, and +settled where the great city of Babylon afterwards stood. Nimrod built +that city. He also began to build the famous Tower of Babel, but +circumstances over which he had no control put it out of his power to +finish it. He ran it up eight stories high, however, and two of them +still stand, at this day--a colossal mass of brickwork, rent down the +centre by earthquakes, and seared and vitrified by the lightnings of an +angry God. But the vast ruin will still stand for ages, to shame the +puny labors of these modern generations of men. Its huge compartments +are tenanted by owls and lions, and old Nimrod lies neglected in this +wretched village, far from the scene of his grand enterprise. + +We left Jonesborough very early in the morning, and rode forever and +forever and forever, it seemed to me, over parched deserts and rocky +hills, hungry, and with no water to drink. We had drained the goat-skins +dry in a little while. At noon we halted before the wretched Arab town +of El Yuba Dam, perched on the side of a mountain, but the dragoman said +if we applied there for water we would be attacked by the whole tribe, +for they did not love Christians. We had to journey on. Two hours later +we reached the foot of a tall isolated mountain, which is crowned by the +crumbling castle of Banias, the stateliest ruin of that kind on earth, no +doubt. It is a thousand feet long and two hundred wide, all of the most +symmetrical, and at the same time the most ponderous masonry. The +massive towers and bastions are more than thirty feet high, and have been +sixty. From the mountain's peak its broken turrets rise above the groves +of ancient oaks and olives, and look wonderfully picturesque. It is of +such high antiquity that no man knows who built it or when it was built. +It is utterly inaccessible, except in one place, where a bridle-path +winds upward among the solid rocks to the old portcullis. The horses' +hoofs have bored holes in these rocks to the depth of six inches during +the hundreds and hundreds of years that the castle was garrisoned. We +wandered for three hours among the chambers and crypts and dungeons of +the fortress, and trod where the mailed heels of many a knightly Crusader +had rang, and where Phenician heroes had walked ages before them. + +We wondered how such a solid mass of masonry could be affected even by an +earthquake, and could not understand what agency had made Banias a ruin; +but we found the destroyer, after a while, and then our wonder was +increased tenfold. Seeds had fallen in crevices in the vast walls; the +seeds had sprouted; the tender, insignificant sprouts had hardened; they +grew larger and larger, and by a steady, imperceptible pressure forced +the great stones apart, and now are bringing sure destruction upon a +giant work that has even mocked the earthquakes to scorn! Gnarled and +twisted trees spring from the old walls every where, and beautify and +overshadow the gray battlements with a wild luxuriance of foliage. + +From these old towers we looked down upon a broad, far-reaching green +plain, glittering with the pools and rivulets which are the sources of +the sacred river Jordan. It was a grateful vision, after so much desert. + +And as the evening drew near, we clambered down the mountain, through +groves of the Biblical oaks of Bashan, (for we were just stepping over +the border and entering the long-sought Holy Land,) and at its extreme +foot, toward the wide valley, we entered this little execrable village of +Banias and camped in a great grove of olive trees near a torrent of +sparkling water whose banks are arrayed in fig-trees, pomegranates and +oleanders in full leaf. Barring the proximity of the village, it is a +sort of paradise. + +The very first thing one feels like doing when he gets into camp, all +burning up and dusty, is to hunt up a bath. We followed the stream up to +where it gushes out of the mountain side, three hundred yards from the +tents, and took a bath that was so icy that if I did not know this was +the main source of the sacred river, I would expect harm to come of it. +It was bathing at noonday in the chilly source of the Abana, "River of +Damascus," that gave me the cholera, so Dr. B. said. However, it +generally does give me the cholera to take a bath. + +The incorrigible pilgrims have come in with their pockets full of +specimens broken from the ruins. I wish this vandalism could be stopped. +They broke off fragments from Noah's tomb; from the exquisite sculptures +of the temples of Baalbec; from the houses of Judas and Ananias, in +Damascus; from the tomb of Nimrod the Mighty Hunter in Jonesborough; from +the worn Greek and Roman inscriptions set in the hoary walls of the +Castle of Banias; and now they have been hacking and chipping these old +arches here that Jesus looked upon in the flesh. Heaven protect the +Sepulchre when this tribe invades Jerusalem! + +The ruins here are not very interesting. There are the massive walls of +a great square building that was once the citadel; there are many +ponderous old arches that are so smothered with debris that they barely +project above the ground; there are heavy-walled sewers through which the +crystal brook of which Jordan is born still runs; in the hill-side are +the substructions of a costly marble temple that Herod the Great built +here--patches of its handsome mosaic floors still remain; there is a +quaint old stone bridge that was here before Herod's time, may be; +scattered every where, in the paths and in the woods, are Corinthian +capitals, broken porphyry pillars, and little fragments of sculpture; and +up yonder in the precipice where the fountain gushes out, are well-worn +Greek inscriptions over niches in the rock where in ancient times the +Greeks, and after them the Romans, worshipped the sylvan god Pan. But +trees and bushes grow above many of these ruins now; the miserable huts +of a little crew of filthy Arabs are perched upon the broken masonry of +antiquity, the whole place has a sleepy, stupid, rural look about it, and +one can hardly bring himself to believe that a busy, substantially built +city once existed here, even two thousand years ago. The place was +nevertheless the scene of an event whose effects have added page after +page and volume after volume to the world's history. For in this place +Christ stood when he said to Peter: + + "Thou art Peter; and upon this rock will I build my church, and the + gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto + thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt + bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt + loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." + +On those little sentences have been built up the mighty edifice of the +Church of Rome; in them lie the authority for the imperial power of the +Popes over temporal affairs, and their godlike power to curse a soul or +wash it white from sin. To sustain the position of "the only true +Church," which Rome claims was thus conferred upon her, she has fought +and labored and struggled for many a century, and will continue to keep +herself busy in the same work to the end of time. The memorable words I +have quoted give to this ruined city about all the interest it possesses +to people of the present day. + +It seems curious enough to us to be standing on ground that was once +actually pressed by the feet of the Saviour. The situation is suggestive +of a reality and a tangibility that seem at variance with the vagueness +and mystery and ghostliness that one naturally attaches to the character +of a god. I can not comprehend yet that I am sitting where a god has +stood, and looking upon the brook and the mountains which that god looked +upon, and am surrounded by dusky men and women whose ancestors saw him, +and even talked with him, face to face, and carelessly, just as they +would have done with any other stranger. I can not comprehend this; the +gods of my understanding have been always hidden in clouds and very far +away. + +This morning, during breakfast, the usual assemblage of squalid humanity +sat patiently without the charmed circle of the camp and waited for such +crumbs as pity might bestow upon their misery. There were old and young, +brown-skinned and yellow. Some of the men were tall and stalwart, (for +one hardly sees any where such splendid-looking men as here in the East,) +but all the women and children looked worn and sad, and distressed with +hunger. They reminded me much of Indians, did these people. They had +but little clothing, but such as they had was fanciful in character and +fantastic in its arrangement. Any little absurd gewgaw or gimcrack they +had they disposed in such a way as to make it attract attention most +readily. They sat in silence, and with tireless patience watched our +every motion with that vile, uncomplaining impoliteness which is so truly +Indian, and which makes a white man so nervous and uncomfortable and +savage that he wants to exterminate the whole tribe. + +These people about us had other peculiarities, which I have noticed in +the noble red man, too: they were infested with vermin, and the dirt had +caked on them till it amounted to bark. + +The little children were in a pitiable condition--they all had sore eyes, +and were otherwise afflicted in various ways. They say that hardly a +native child in all the East is free from sore eyes, and that thousands +of them go blind of one eye or both every year. I think this must be so, +for I see plenty of blind people every day, and I do not remember seeing +any children that hadn't sore eyes. And, would you suppose that an +American mother could sit for an hour, with her child in her arms, and +let a hundred flies roost upon its eyes all that time undisturbed? I see +that every day. It makes my flesh creep. Yesterday we met a woman +riding on a little jackass, and she had a little child in her arms +--honestly, I thought the child had goggles on as we approached, and I +wondered how its mother could afford so much style. But when we drew +near, we saw that the goggles were nothing but a camp meeting of flies +assembled around each of the child's eyes, and at the same time there was +a detachment prospecting its nose. The flies were happy, the child was +contented, and so the mother did not interfere. + +As soon as the tribe found out that we had a doctor in our party, they +began to flock in from all quarters. Dr. B., in the charity of his +nature, had taken a child from a woman who sat near by, and put some sort +of a wash upon its diseased eyes. That woman went off and started the +whole nation, and it was a sight to see them swarm! The lame, the halt, +the blind, the leprous--all the distempers that are bred of indolence, +dirt, and iniquity--were represented in the Congress in ten minutes, and +still they came! Every woman that had a sick baby brought it along, and +every woman that hadn't, borrowed one. What reverent and what worshiping +looks they bent upon that dread, mysterious power, the Doctor! They +watched him take his phials out; they watched him measure the particles +of white powder; they watched him add drops of one precious liquid, and +drops of another; they lost not the slightest movement; their eyes were +riveted upon him with a fascination that nothing could distract. +I believe they thought he was gifted like a god. When each individual +got his portion of medicine, his eyes were radiant with joy +--notwithstanding by nature they are a thankless and impassive race--and +upon his face was written the unquestioning faith that nothing on earth +could prevent the patient from getting well now. + +Christ knew how to preach to these simple, superstitious, +disease-tortured creatures: He healed the sick. They flocked to our +poor human doctor this morning when the fame of what he had done to the +sick child went abroad in the land, and they worshiped him with their +eyes while they did not know as yet whether there was virtue in his +simples or not. The ancestors of these--people precisely like them in +color, dress, manners, customs, simplicity--flocked in vast multitudes +after Christ, and when they saw Him make the afflicted whole with a +word, it is no wonder they worshiped Him. No wonder His deeds were the +talk of the nation. No wonder the multitude that followed Him was so +great that at one time--thirty miles from here--they had to let a sick +man down through the roof because no approach could be made to the door; +no wonder His audiences were so great at Galilee that He had to preach +from a ship removed a little distance from the shore; no wonder that +even in the desert places about Bethsaida, five thousand invaded His +solitude, and He had to feed them by a miracle or else see them suffer +for their confiding faith and devotion; no wonder when there was a great +commotion in a city in those days, one neighbor explained it to another +in words to this effect: "They say that Jesus of Nazareth is come!" + +Well, as I was saying, the doctor distributed medicine as long as he had +any to distribute, and his reputation is mighty in Galilee this day. +Among his patients was the child of the Shiek's daughter--for even this +poor, ragged handful of sores and sin has its royal Shiek--a poor old +mummy that looked as if he would be more at home in a poor-house than in +the Chief Magistracy of this tribe of hopeless, shirtless savages. The +princess--I mean the Shiek's daughter--was only thirteen or fourteen +years old, and had a very sweet face and a pretty one. She was the only +Syrian female we have seen yet who was not so sinfully ugly that she +couldn't smile after ten o'clock Saturday night without breaking the +Sabbath. Her child was a hard specimen, though--there wasn't enough of +it to make a pie, and the poor little thing looked so pleadingly up at +all who came near it (as if it had an idea that now was its chance or +never,) that we were filled with compassion which was genuine and not put +on. + +But this last new horse I have got is trying to break his neck over the +tent-ropes, and I shall have to go out and anchor him. Jericho and I +have parted company. The new horse is not much to boast of, I think. +One of his hind legs bends the wrong way, and the other one is as +straight and stiff as a tent-pole. Most of his teeth are gone, and he is +as blind as bat. His nose has been broken at some time or other, and is +arched like a culvert now. His under lip hangs down like a camel's, and +his ears are chopped off close to his head. I had some trouble at first +to find a name for him, but I finally concluded to call him Baalbec, +because he is such a magnificent ruin. I can not keep from talking about +my horses, because I have a very long and tedious journey before me, and +they naturally occupy my thoughts about as much as matters of apparently +much greater importance. + +We satisfied our pilgrims by making those hard rides from Baalbec to +Damascus, but Dan's horse and Jack's were so crippled we had to leave +them behind and get fresh animals for them. The dragoman says Jack's +horse died. I swapped horses with Mohammed, the kingly-looking Egyptian +who is our Ferguson's lieutenant. By Ferguson I mean our dragoman +Abraham, of course. I did not take this horse on account of his personal +appearance, but because I have not seen his back. I do not wish to see +it. I have seen the backs of all the other horses, and found most of +them covered with dreadful saddle-boils which I know have not been washed +or doctored for years. The idea of riding all day long over such ghastly +inquisitions of torture is sickening. My horse must be like the others, +but I have at least the consolation of not knowing it to be so. + +I hope that in future I may be spared any more sentimental praises of the +Arab's idolatry of his horse. In boyhood I longed to be an Arab of the +desert and have a beautiful mare, and call her Selim or Benjamin or +Mohammed, and feed her with my own hands, and let her come into the tent, +and teach her to caress me and look fondly upon me with her great tender +eyes; and I wished that a stranger might come at such a time and offer me +a hundred thousand dollars for her, so that I could do like the other +Arabs--hesitate, yearn for the money, but overcome by my love for my +mare, at last say, "Part with thee, my beautiful one! Never with my +life! Away, tempter, I scorn thy gold!" and then bound into the saddle +and speed over the desert like the wind! + +But I recall those aspirations. If these Arabs be like the other Arabs, +their love for their beautiful mares is a fraud. These of my +acquaintance have no love for their horses, no sentiment of pity for +them, and no knowledge of how to treat them or care for them. The Syrian +saddle-blanket is a quilted mattress two or three inches thick. It is +never removed from the horse, day or night. It gets full of dirt and +hair, and becomes soaked with sweat. It is bound to breed sores. These +pirates never think of washing a horse's back. They do not shelter the +horses in the tents, either--they must stay out and take the weather as +it comes. Look at poor cropped and dilapidated "Baalbec," and weep for +the sentiment that has been wasted upon the Selims of romance! + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI. + +About an hour's ride over a rough, rocky road, half flooded with water, +and through a forest of oaks of Bashan, brought us to Dan. + +From a little mound here in the plain issues a broad stream of limpid +water and forms a large shallow pool, and then rushes furiously onward, +augmented in volume. This puddle is an important source of the Jordan. +Its banks, and those of the brook are respectably adorned with blooming +oleanders, but the unutterable beauty of the spot will not throw a +well-balanced man into convulsions, as the Syrian books of travel would +lead one to suppose. + +From the spot I am speaking of, a cannon-ball would carry beyond the +confines of Holy Land and light upon profane ground three miles away. +We were only one little hour's travel within the borders of Holy Land--we +had hardly begun to appreciate yet that we were standing upon any +different sort of earth than that we had always been used to, and see how +the historic names began already to cluster! Dan--Bashan--Lake Huleh +--the Sources of Jordan--the Sea of Galilee. They were all in sight but +the last, and it was not far away. The little township of Bashan was +once the kingdom so famous in Scripture for its bulls and its oaks. +Lake Huleh is the Biblical "Waters of Merom." Dan was the northern and +Beersheba the southern limit of Palestine--hence the expression "from Dan +to Beersheba." It is equivalent to our phrases "from Maine to Texas" +--"from Baltimore to San Francisco." Our expression and that of the +Israelites both mean the same--great distance. With their slow camels +and asses, it was about a seven days' journey from Dan to Beersheba---say +a hundred and fifty or sixty miles--it was the entire length of their +country, and was not to be undertaken without great preparation and much +ceremony. When the Prodigal traveled to "a far country," it is not +likely that he went more than eighty or ninety miles. Palestine is only +from forty to sixty miles wide. The State of Missouri could be split +into three Palestines, and there would then be enough material left for +part of another--possibly a whole one. From Baltimore to San Francisco +is several thousand miles, but it will be only a seven days' journey in +the cars when I am two or three years older.--[The railroad has been +completed since the above was written.]--If I live I shall necessarily +have to go across the continent every now and then in those cars, but one +journey from Dan to Beersheba will be sufficient, no doubt. It must be +the most trying of the two. Therefore, if we chance to discover that +from Dan to Beersheba seemed a mighty stretch of country to the +Israelites, let us not be airy with them, but reflect that it was and is +a mighty stretch when one can not traverse it by rail. + +The small mound I have mentioned a while ago was once occupied by the +Phenician city of Laish. A party of filibusters from Zorah and Eschol +captured the place, and lived there in a free and easy way, worshiping +gods of their own manufacture and stealing idols from their neighbors +whenever they wore their own out. Jeroboam set up a golden calf here to +fascinate his people and keep them from making dangerous trips to +Jerusalem to worship, which might result in a return to their rightful +allegiance. With all respect for those ancient Israelites, I can not +overlook the fact that they were not always virtuous enough to withstand +the seductions of a golden calf. Human nature has not changed much since +then. + +Some forty centuries ago the city of Sodom was pillaged by the Arab +princes of Mesopotamia, and among other prisoners they seized upon the +patriarch Lot and brought him here on their way to their own possessions. +They brought him to Dan, and father Abraham, who was pursuing them, crept +softly in at dead of night, among the whispering oleanders and under the +shadows of the stately oaks, and fell upon the slumbering victors and +startled them from their dreams with the clash of steel. He recaptured +Lot and all the other plunder. + +We moved on. We were now in a green valley, five or six miles wide and +fifteen long. The streams which are called the sources of the Jordan +flow through it to Lake Huleh, a shallow pond three miles in diameter, +and from the southern extremity of the Lake the concentrated Jordan flows +out. The Lake is surrounded by a broad marsh, grown with reeds. Between +the marsh and the mountains which wall the valley is a respectable strip +of fertile land; at the end of the valley, toward Dan, as much as half +the land is solid and fertile, and watered by Jordan's sources. There is +enough of it to make a farm. It almost warrants the enthusiasm of the +spies of that rabble of adventurers who captured Dan. They said: "We +have seen the land, and behold it is very good. * * * A place where +there is no want of any thing that is in the earth." + +Their enthusiasm was at least warranted by the fact that they had never +seen a country as good as this. There was enough of it for the ample +support of their six hundred men and their families, too. + +When we got fairly down on the level part of the Danite farm, we came to +places where we could actually run our horses. It was a notable +circumstance. + +We had been painfully clambering over interminable hills and rocks for +days together, and when we suddenly came upon this astonishing piece of +rockless plain, every man drove the spurs into his horse and sped away +with a velocity he could surely enjoy to the utmost, but could never hope +to comprehend in Syria. + +Here were evidences of cultivation--a rare sight in this country--an acre +or two of rich soil studded with last season's dead corn-stalks of the +thickness of your thumb and very wide apart. But in such a land it was a +thrilling spectacle. Close to it was a stream, and on its banks a great +herd of curious-looking Syrian goats and sheep were gratefully eating +gravel. I do not state this as a petrified fact--I only suppose they +were eating gravel, because there did not appear to be any thing else for +them to eat. The shepherds that tended them were the very pictures of +Joseph and his brethren I have no doubt in the world. They were tall, +muscular, and very dark-skinned Bedouins, with inky black beards. They +had firm lips, unquailing eyes, and a kingly stateliness of bearing. +They wore the parti-colored half bonnet, half hood, with fringed ends +falling upon their shoulders, and the full, flowing robe barred with +broad black stripes--the dress one sees in all pictures of the swarthy +sons of the desert. These chaps would sell their younger brothers if +they had a chance, I think. They have the manners, the customs, the +dress, the occupation and the loose principles of the ancient stock. +[They attacked our camp last night, and I bear them no good will.] +They had with them the pigmy jackasses one sees all over Syria and +remembers in all pictures of the "Flight into Egypt," where Mary and the +Young Child are riding and Joseph is walking alongside, towering high +above the little donkey's shoulders. + +But really, here the man rides and carries the child, as a general thing, +and the woman walks. The customs have not changed since Joseph's time. +We would not have in our houses a picture representing Joseph riding and +Mary walking; we would see profanation in it, but a Syrian Christian +would not. I know that hereafter the picture I first spoke of will look +odd to me. + +We could not stop to rest two or three hours out from our camp, of +course, albeit the brook was beside us. So we went on an hour longer. +We saw water, then, but nowhere in all the waste around was there a foot +of shade, and we were scorching to death. "Like unto the shadow of a +great rock in a weary land." Nothing in the Bible is more beautiful than +that, and surely there is no place we have wandered to that is able to +give it such touching expression as this blistering, naked, treeless +land. + +Here you do not stop just when you please, but when you can. We found +water, but no shade. We traveled on and found a tree at last, but no +water. We rested and lunched, and came on to this place, Ain Mellahah +(the boys call it Baldwinsville.) It was a very short day's run, but the +dragoman does not want to go further, and has invented a plausible lie +about the country beyond this being infested by ferocious Arabs, who +would make sleeping in their midst a dangerous pastime. Well, they ought +to be dangerous. They carry a rusty old weather-beaten flint-lock gun, +with a barrel that is longer than themselves; it has no sights on it, it +will not carry farther than a brickbat, and is not half so certain. And +the great sash they wear in many a fold around their waists has two or +three absurd old horse-pistols in it that are rusty from eternal disuse +--weapons that would hang fire just about long enough for you to walk out +of range, and then burst and blow the Arab's head off. Exceedingly +dangerous these sons of the desert are. + +It used to make my blood run cold to read Wm. C. Grimes' hairbreadth +escapes from Bedouins, but I think I could read them now without a +tremor. He never said he was attacked by Bedouins, I believe, or was +ever treated uncivilly, but then in about every other chapter he +discovered them approaching, any how, and he had a blood-curdling fashion +of working up the peril; and of wondering how his relations far away +would feel could they see their poor wandering boy, with his weary feet +and his dim eyes, in such fearful danger; and of thinking for the last +time of the old homestead, and the dear old church, and the cow, and +those things; and of finally straightening his form to its utmost height +in the saddle, drawing his trusty revolver, and then dashing the spurs +into "Mohammed" and sweeping down upon the ferocious enemy determined to +sell his life as dearly as possible. True the Bedouins never did any +thing to him when he arrived, and never had any intention of doing any +thing to him in the first place, and wondered what in the mischief he was +making all that to-do about; but still I could not divest myself of the +idea, somehow, that a frightful peril had been escaped through that man's +dare-devil bravery, and so I never could read about Wm. C. Grimes' +Bedouins and sleep comfortably afterward. But I believe the Bedouins to +be a fraud, now. I have seen the monster, and I can outrun him. I shall +never be afraid of his daring to stand behind his own gun and discharge +it. + +About fifteen hundred years before Christ, this camp-ground of ours by +the Waters of Merom was the scene of one of Joshua's exterminating +battles. Jabin, King of Hazor, (up yonder above Dan,) called all the +sheiks about him together, with their hosts, to make ready for Israel's +terrible General who was approaching. + + "And when all these Kings were met together, they came and pitched + together by the Waters of Merom, to fight against Israel. And they + went out, they and all their hosts with them, much people, even as + the sand that is upon the sea-shore for multitude," etc. + +But Joshua fell upon them and utterly destroyed them, root and branch. +That was his usual policy in war. He never left any chance for newspaper +controversies about who won the battle. He made this valley, so quiet +now, a reeking slaughter-pen. + +Somewhere in this part of the country--I do not know exactly where +--Israel fought another bloody battle a hundred years later. Deborah, the +prophetess, told Barak to take ten thousand men and sally forth against +another King Jabin who had been doing something. Barak came down from +Mount Tabor, twenty or twenty-five miles from here, and gave battle to +Jabin's forces, who were in command of Sisera. Barak won the fight, and +while he was making the victory complete by the usual method of +exterminating the remnant of the defeated host, Sisera fled away on foot, +and when he was nearly exhausted by fatigue and thirst, one Jael, a woman +he seems to have been acquainted with, invited him to come into her tent +and rest himself. The weary soldier acceded readily enough, and Jael put +him to bed. He said he was very thirsty, and asked his generous +preserver to get him a cup of water. She brought him some milk, and he +drank of it gratefully and lay down again, to forget in pleasant dreams +his lost battle and his humbled pride. Presently when he was asleep she +came softly in with a hammer and drove a hideous tent-pen down through +his brain! + +"For he was fast asleep and weary. So he died." Such is the touching +language of the Bible. "The Song of Deborah and Barak" praises Jael for +the memorable service she had rendered, in an exultant strain: + + "Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, + blessed shall she be above women in the tent. + + "He asked for water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter + in a lordly dish. + + "She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman's + hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head + when she had pierced and stricken through his temples. + + "At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, + he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead." + +Stirring scenes like these occur in this valley no more. There is not a +solitary village throughout its whole extent--not for thirty miles in +either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin +tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride ten miles, +hereabouts, and not see ten human beings. + +To this region one of the prophecies is applied: + + "I will bring the land into desolation; and your enemies which dwell + therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the + heathen, and I will draw out a sword after you; and your land shall + be desolate and your cities waste." + +No man can stand here by deserted Ain Mellahah and say the prophecy has +not been fulfilled. + +In a verse from the Bible which I have quoted above, occurs the phrase +"all these kings." It attracted my attention in a moment, because it +carries to my mind such a vastly different significance from what it +always did at home. I can see easily enough that if I wish to profit by +this tour and come to a correct understanding of the matters of interest +connected with it, I must studiously and faithfully unlearn a great many +things I have somehow absorbed concerning Palestine. I must begin a +system of reduction. Like my grapes which the spies bore out of the +Promised Land, I have got every thing in Palestine on too large a scale. +Some of my ideas were wild enough. The word Palestine always brought to +my mind a vague suggestion of a country as large as the United States. +I do not know why, but such was the case. I suppose it was because I +could not conceive of a small country having so large a history. I think +I was a little surprised to find that the grand Sultan of Turkey was a +man of only ordinary size. I must try to reduce my ideas of Palestine to +a more reasonable shape. One gets large impressions in boyhood, +sometimes, which he has to fight against all his life. "All these +kings." When I used to read that in Sunday School, it suggested to me +the several kings of such countries as England, France, Spain, Germany, +Russia, etc., arrayed in splendid robes ablaze with jewels, marching in +grave procession, with sceptres of gold in their hands and flashing +crowns upon their heads. But here in Ain Mellahah, after coming through +Syria, and after giving serious study to the character and customs of the +country, the phrase "all these kings" loses its grandeur. It suggests +only a parcel of petty chiefs--ill-clad and ill-conditioned savages much +like our Indians, who lived in full sight of each other and whose +"kingdoms" were large when they were five miles square and contained two +thousand souls. The combined monarchies of the thirty "kings" destroyed +by Joshua on one of his famous campaigns, only covered an area about +equal to four of our counties of ordinary size. The poor old sheik we +saw at Cesarea Philippi with his ragged band of a hundred followers, +would have been called a "king" in those ancient times. + +It is seven in the morning, and as we are in the country, the grass ought +to be sparkling with dew, the flowers enriching the air with their +fragrance, and the birds singing in the trees. But alas, there is no dew +here, nor flowers, nor birds, nor trees. There is a plain and an +unshaded lake, and beyond them some barren mountains. The tents are +tumbling, the Arabs are quarreling like dogs and cats, as usual, the +campground is strewn with packages and bundles, the labor of packing them +upon the backs of the mules is progressing with great activity, the +horses are saddled, the umbrellas are out, and in ten minutes we shall +mount and the long procession will move again. The white city of the +Mellahah, resurrected for a moment out of the dead centuries, will have +disappeared again and left no sign. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII. + +We traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil is rich enough, +but is given over wholly to weeds--a silent, mournful expanse, wherein we +saw only three persons--Arabs, with nothing on but a long coarse shirt +like the "tow-linen" shirts which used to form the only summer garment of +little negro boys on Southern plantations. Shepherds they were, and they +charmed their flocks with the traditional shepherd's pipe--a reed +instrument that made music as exquisitely infernal as these same Arabs +create when they sing. + +In their pipes lingered no echo of the wonderful music the shepherd +forefathers heard in the Plains of Bethlehem what time the angels sang +"Peace on earth, good will to men." + +Part of the ground we came over was not ground at all, but +rocks--cream-colored rocks, worn smooth, as if by water; with seldom an +edge or a corner on them, but scooped out, honey-combed, bored out with +eye-holes, and thus wrought into all manner of quaint shapes, among +which the uncouth imitation of skulls was frequent. Over this part of +the route were occasional remains of an old Roman road like the Appian +Way, whose paving-stones still clung to their places with Roman +tenacity. + +Gray lizards, those heirs of ruin, of sepulchres and desolation, glided +in and out among the rocks or lay still and sunned themselves. Where +prosperity has reigned, and fallen; where glory has flamed, and gone out; +where beauty has dwelt, and passed away; where gladness was, and sorrow +is; where the pomp of life has been, and silence and death brood in its +high places, there this reptile makes his home, and mocks at human +vanity. His coat is the color of ashes: and ashes are the symbol of +hopes that have perished, of aspirations that came to nought, of loves +that are buried. If he could speak, he would say, Build temples: I will +lord it in their ruins; build palaces: I will inhabit them; erect +empires: I will inherit them; bury your beautiful: I will watch the worms +at their work; and you, who stand here and moralize over me: I will crawl +over your corpse at the last. + +A few ants were in this desert place, but merely to spend the summer. +They brought their provisions from Ain Mellahah--eleven miles. + +Jack is not very well to-day, it is easy to see; but boy as he is, he is +too much of a man to speak of it. He exposed himself to the sun too much +yesterday, but since it came of his earnest desire to learn, and to make +this journey as useful as the opportunities will allow, no one seeks to +discourage him by fault-finding. We missed him an hour from the camp, +and then found him some distance away, by the edge of a brook, and with +no umbrella to protect him from the fierce sun. If he had been used to +going without his umbrella, it would have been well enough, of course; +but he was not. He was just in the act of throwing a clod at a +mud-turtle which was sunning itself on a small log in the brook. +We said: + +"Don't do that, Jack. What do you want to harm him for? What has he +done?" + +"Well, then, I won't kill him, but I ought to, because he is a fraud." + +We asked him why, but he said it was no matter. We asked him why, once +or twice, as we walked back to the camp but he still said it was no +matter. But late at night, when he was sitting in a thoughtful mood on +the bed, we asked him again and he said: + +"Well, it don't matter; I don't mind it now, but I did not like it today, +you know, because I don't tell any thing that isn't so, and I don't think +the Colonel ought to, either. But he did; he told us at prayers in the +Pilgrims' tent, last night, and he seemed as if he was reading it out of +the Bible, too, about this country flowing with milk and honey, and about +the voice of the turtle being heard in the land. I thought that was +drawing it a little strong, about the turtles, any how, but I asked Mr. +Church if it was so, and he said it was, and what Mr. Church tells me, I +believe. But I sat there and watched that turtle nearly an hour today, +and I almost burned up in the sun; but I never heard him sing. I believe +I sweated a double handful of sweat---I know I did--because it got in my +eyes, and it was running down over my nose all the time; and you know my +pants are tighter than any body else's--Paris foolishness--and the +buckskin seat of them got wet with sweat, and then got dry again and +began to draw up and pinch and tear loose--it was awful--but I never +heard him sing. Finally I said, This is a fraud--that is what it is, it +is a fraud--and if I had had any sense I might have known a cursed +mud-turtle couldn't sing. And then I said, I don't wish to be hard on +this fellow, and I will just give him ten minutes to commence; ten +minutes --and then if he don't, down goes his building. But he didn't +commence, you know. I had staid there all that time, thinking may be he +might, pretty soon, because he kept on raising his head up and letting +it down, and drawing the skin over his eyes for a minute and then +opening them out again, as if he was trying to study up something to +sing, but just as the ten minutes were up and I was all beat out and +blistered, he laid his blamed head down on a knot and went fast asleep." + +"It was a little hard, after you had waited so long." + +"I should think so. I said, Well, if you won't sing, you shan't sleep, +any way; and if you fellows had let me alone I would have made him shin +out of Galilee quicker than any turtle ever did yet. But it isn't any +matter now--let it go. The skin is all off the back of my neck." + +About ten in the morning we halted at Joseph's Pit. This is a ruined +Khan of the Middle Ages, in one of whose side courts is a great walled +and arched pit with water in it, and this pit, one tradition says, is the +one Joseph's brethren cast him into. A more authentic tradition, aided +by the geography of the country, places the pit in Dothan, some two days' +journey from here. However, since there are many who believe in this +present pit as the true one, it has its interest. + +It is hard to make a choice of the most beautiful passage in a book which +is so gemmed with beautiful passages as the Bible; but it is certain that +not many things within its lids may take rank above the exquisite story +of Joseph. Who taught those ancient writers their simplicity of +language, their felicity of expression, their pathos, and above all, +their faculty of sinking themselves entirely out of sight of the reader +and making the narrative stand out alone and seem to tell itself? +Shakspeare is always present when one reads his book; Macaulay is present +when we follow the march of his stately sentences; but the Old Testament +writers are hidden from view. + +If the pit I have been speaking of is the right one, a scene transpired +there, long ages ago, which is familiar to us all in pictures. The sons +of Jacob had been pasturing their flocks near there. Their father grew +uneasy at their long absence, and sent Joseph, his favorite, to see if +any thing had gone wrong with them. He traveled six or seven days' +journey; he was only seventeen years old, and, boy like, he toiled +through that long stretch of the vilest, rockiest, dustiest country in +Asia, arrayed in the pride of his heart, his beautiful claw-hammer coat +of many colors. Joseph was the favorite, and that was one crime in the +eyes of his brethren; he had dreamed dreams, and interpreted them to +foreshadow his elevation far above all his family in the far future, and +that was another; he was dressed well and had doubtless displayed the +harmless vanity of youth in keeping the fact prominently before his +brothers. These were crimes his elders fretted over among themselves and +proposed to punish when the opportunity should offer. When they saw him +coming up from the Sea of Galilee, they recognized him and were glad. +They said, "Lo, here is this dreamer--let us kill him." But Reuben +pleaded for his life, and they spared it. But they seized the boy, and +stripped the hated coat from his back and pushed him into the pit. They +intended to let him die there, but Reuben intended to liberate him +secretly. However, while Reuben was away for a little while, the +brethren sold Joseph to some Ishmaelitish merchants who were journeying +towards Egypt. Such is the history of the pit. And the self-same pit is +there in that place, even to this day; and there it will remain until the +next detachment of image-breakers and tomb desecraters arrives from the +Quaker City excursion, and they will infallibly dig it up and carry it +away with them. For behold in them is no reverence for the solemn +monuments of the past, and whithersoever they go they destroy and spare +not. + +Joseph became rich, distinguished, powerful--as the Bible expresses it, +"lord over all the land of Egypt." Joseph was the real king, the +strength, the brain of the monarchy, though Pharaoh held the title. +Joseph is one of the truly great men of the Old Testament. And he was +the noblest and the manliest, save Esau. Why shall we not say a good +word for the princely Bedouin? The only crime that can be brought +against him is that he was unfortunate. Why must every body praise +Joseph's great-hearted generosity to his cruel brethren, without stint of +fervent language, and fling only a reluctant bone of praise to Esau for +his still sublimer generosity to the brother who had wronged him? Jacob +took advantage of Esau's consuming hunger to rob him of his birthright +and the great honor and consideration that belonged to the position; by +treachery and falsehood he robbed him of his father's blessing; he made +of him a stranger in his home, and a wanderer. Yet after twenty years +had passed away and Jacob met Esau and fell at his feet quaking with fear +and begging piteously to be spared the punishment he knew he deserved, +what did that magnificent savage do? He fell upon his neck and embraced +him! When Jacob--who was incapable of comprehending nobility of +character--still doubting, still fearing, insisted upon "finding grace +with my lord" by the bribe of a present of cattle, what did the gorgeous +son of the desert say? + +"Nay, I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast unto thyself!" + +Esau found Jacob rich, beloved by wives and children, and traveling in +state, with servants, herds of cattle and trains of camels--but he +himself was still the uncourted outcast this brother had made him. After +thirteen years of romantic mystery, the brethren who had wronged Joseph, +came, strangers in a strange land, hungry and humble, to buy "a little +food"; and being summoned to a palace, charged with crime, they beheld in +its owner their wronged brother; they were trembling beggars--he, the +lord of a mighty empire! What Joseph that ever lived would have thrown +away such a chance to "show off?" Who stands first--outcast Esau +forgiving Jacob in prosperity, or Joseph on a king's throne forgiving the +ragged tremblers whose happy rascality placed him there? + +Just before we came to Joseph's Pit, we had "raised" a hill, and there, a +few miles before us, with not a tree or a shrub to interrupt the view, +lay a vision which millions of worshipers in the far lands of the earth +would give half their possessions to see--the sacred Sea of Galilee! + +Therefore we tarried only a short time at the pit. We rested the horses +and ourselves, and felt for a few minutes the blessed shade of the +ancient buildings. We were out of water, but the two or three scowling +Arabs, with their long guns, who were idling about the place, said they +had none and that there was none in the vicinity. They knew there was a +little brackish water in the pit, but they venerated a place made sacred +by their ancestor's imprisonment too much to be willing to see Christian +dogs drink from it. But Ferguson tied rags and handkerchiefs together +till he made a rope long enough to lower a vessel to the bottom, and we +drank and then rode on; and in a short time we dismounted on those shores +which the feet of the Saviour have made holy ground. + +At noon we took a swim in the Sea of Galilee--a blessed privilege in this +roasting climate--and then lunched under a neglected old fig-tree at the +fountain they call Ain-et-Tin, a hundred yards from ruined Capernaum. +Every rivulet that gurgles out of the rocks and sands of this part of the +world is dubbed with the title of "fountain," and people familiar with +the Hudson, the great lakes and the Mississippi fall into transports of +admiration over them, and exhaust their powers of composition in writing +their praises. If all the poetry and nonsense that have been discharged +upon the fountains and the bland scenery of this region were collected in +a book, it would make a most valuable volume to burn. + +During luncheon, the pilgrim enthusiasts of our party, who had been so +light-hearted and so happy ever since they touched holy ground that they +did little but mutter incoherent rhapsodies, could scarcely eat, so +anxious were they to "take shipping" and sail in very person upon the +waters that had borne the vessels of the Apostles. Their anxiety grew +and their excitement augmented with every fleeting moment, until my fears +were aroused and I began to have misgivings that in their present +condition they might break recklessly loose from all considerations of +prudence and buy a whole fleet of ships to sail in instead of hiring a +single one for an hour, as quiet folk are wont to do. I trembled to +think of the ruined purses this day's performances might result in. +I could not help reflecting bodingly upon the intemperate zeal with which +middle-aged men are apt to surfeit themselves upon a seductive folly +which they have tasted for the first time. And yet I did not feel that +I had a right to be surprised at the state of things which was giving me +so much concern. These men had been taught from infancy to revere, +almost to worship, the holy places whereon their happy eyes were resting +now. For many and many a year this very picture had visited their +thoughts by day and floated through their dreams by night. To stand +before it in the flesh--to see it as they saw it now--to sail upon the +hallowed sea, and kiss the holy soil that compassed it about: these were +aspirations they had cherished while a generation dragged its lagging +seasons by and left its furrows in their faces and its frosts upon their +hair. To look upon this picture, and sail upon this sea, they had +forsaken home and its idols and journeyed thousands and thousands of +miles, in weariness and tribulation. What wonder that the sordid lights +of work-day prudence should pale before the glory of a hope like theirs +in the full splendor of its fruition? Let them squander millions! +I said--who speaks of money at a time like this? + +In this frame of mind I followed, as fast as I could, the eager footsteps +of the pilgrims, and stood upon the shore of the lake, and swelled, with +hat and voice, the frantic hail they sent after the "ship" that was +speeding by. It was a success. The toilers of the sea ran in and +beached their barque. Joy sat upon every countenance. + +"How much?--ask him how much, Ferguson!--how much to take us all--eight +of us, and you--to Bethsaida, yonder, and to the mouth of Jordan, and to +the place where the swine ran down into the sea--quick!--and we want to +coast around every where--every where!--all day long!--I could sail a +year in these waters!--and tell him we'll stop at Magdala and finish at +Tiberias!--ask him how much?--any thing--any thing whatever!--tell him we +don't care what the expense is!" [I said to myself, I knew how it would +be.] + +Ferguson--(interpreting)--"He says two Napoleons--eight dollars." + +One or two countenances fell. Then a pause. + +"Too much!--we'll give him one!" + +I never shall know how it was--I shudder yet when I think how the place +is given to miracles--but in a single instant of time, as it seemed to +me, that ship was twenty paces from the shore, and speeding away like a +frightened thing! Eight crestfallen creatures stood upon the shore, and +O, to think of it! this--this--after all that overmastering ecstacy! +Oh, shameful, shameful ending, after such unseemly boasting! It was too +much like "Ho! let me at him!" followed by a prudent "Two of you hold +him--one can hold me!" + +Instantly there was wailing and gnashing of teeth in the camp. The two +Napoleons were offered--more if necessary--and pilgrims and dragoman +shouted themselves hoarse with pleadings to the retreating boatmen to +come back. But they sailed serenely away and paid no further heed to +pilgrims who had dreamed all their lives of some day skimming over the +sacred waters of Galilee and listening to its hallowed story in the +whisperings of its waves, and had journeyed countless leagues to do it, +and--and then concluded that the fare was too high. Impertinent +Mohammedan Arabs, to think such things of gentlemen of another faith! + +Well, there was nothing to do but just submit and forego the privilege of +voyaging on Genessaret, after coming half around the globe to taste that +pleasure. There was a time, when the Saviour taught here, that boats +were plenty among the fishermen of the coasts--but boats and fishermen +both are gone, now; and old Josephus had a fleet of men-of-war in these +waters eighteen centuries ago--a hundred and thirty bold canoes--but +they, also, have passed away and left no sign. They battle here no more +by sea, and the commercial marine of Galilee numbers only two small +ships, just of a pattern with the little skiffs the disciples knew. One +was lost to us for good--the other was miles away and far out of hail. +So we mounted the horses and rode grimly on toward Magdala, cantering +along in the edge of the water for want of the means of passing over it. + +How the pilgrims abused each other! Each said it was the other's fault, +and each in turn denied it. No word was spoken by the sinners--even the +mildest sarcasm might have been dangerous at such a time. Sinners that +have been kept down and had examples held up to them, and suffered +frequent lectures, and been so put upon in a moral way and in the matter +of going slow and being serious and bottling up slang, and so crowded in +regard to the matter of being proper and always and forever behaving, +that their lives have become a burden to them, would not lag behind +pilgrims at such a time as this, and wink furtively, and be joyful, and +commit other such crimes--because it would not occur to them to do it. +Otherwise they would. But they did do it, though--and it did them a +world of good to hear the pilgrims abuse each other, too. We took an +unworthy satisfaction in seeing them fall out, now and then, because it +showed that they were only poor human people like us, after all. + +So we all rode down to Magdala, while the gnashing of teeth waxed and +waned by turns, and harsh words troubled the holy calm of Galilee. + +Lest any man think I mean to be ill-natured when I talk about our +pilgrims as I have been talking, I wish to say in all sincerity that I do +not. I would not listen to lectures from men I did not like and could +not respect; and none of these can say I ever took their lectures +unkindly, or was restive under the infliction, or failed to try to profit +by what they said to me. They are better men than I am; I can say that +honestly; they are good friends of mine, too--and besides, if they did +not wish to be stirred up occasionally in print, why in the mischief did +they travel with me? They knew me. They knew my liberal way--that I +like to give and take--when it is for me to give and other people to +take. When one of them threatened to leave me in Damascus when I had the +cholera, he had no real idea of doing it--I know his passionate nature +and the good impulses that underlie it. And did I not overhear Church, +another pilgrim, say he did not care who went or who staid, he would +stand by me till I walked out of Damascus on my own feet or was carried +out in a coffin, if it was a year? And do I not include Church every +time I abuse the pilgrims--and would I be likely to speak ill-naturedly +of him? I wish to stir them up and make them healthy; that is all. + +We had left Capernaum behind us. It was only a shapeless ruin. It bore +no semblance to a town, and had nothing about it to suggest that it had +ever been a town. But all desolate and unpeopled as it was, it was +illustrious ground. From it sprang that tree of Christianity whose broad +arms overshadow so many distant lands to-day. After Christ was tempted +of the devil in the desert, he came here and began his teachings; and +during the three or four years he lived afterward, this place was his +home almost altogether. He began to heal the sick, and his fame soon +spread so widely that sufferers came from Syria and beyond Jordan, and +even from Jerusalem, several days' journey away, to be cured of their +diseases. Here he healed the centurion's servant and Peter's +mother-in-law, and multitudes of the lame and the blind and persons +possessed of devils; and here, also, he raised Jairus's daughter from +the dead. He went into a ship with his disciples, and when they roused +him from sleep in the midst of a storm, he quieted the winds and lulled +the troubled sea to rest with his voice. He passed over to the other +side, a few miles away and relieved two men of devils, which passed into +some swine. After his return he called Matthew from the receipt of +customs, performed some cures, and created scandal by eating with +publicans and sinners. Then he went healing and teaching through +Galilee, and even journeyed to Tyre and Sidon. He chose the twelve +disciples, and sent them abroad to preach the new gospel. He worked +miracles in Bethsaida and Chorazin--villages two or three miles from +Capernaum. It was near one of them that the miraculous draft of fishes +is supposed to have been taken, and it was in the desert places near the +other that he fed the thousands by the miracles of the loaves and +fishes. He cursed them both, and Capernaum also, for not repenting, +after all the great works he had done in their midst, and prophesied +against them. They are all in ruins, now--which is gratifying to the +pilgrims, for, as usual, they fit the eternal words of gods to the +evanescent things of this earth; Christ, it is more probable, referred +to the people, not their shabby villages of wigwams: he said it would be +sad for them at "the day of judgment"--and what business have mud-hovels +at the Day of Judgment? It would not affect the prophecy in the least +--it would neither prove it or disprove it--if these towns were splendid +cities now instead of the almost vanished ruins they are. Christ visited +Magdala, which is near by Capernaum, and he also visited Cesarea +Philippi. He went up to his old home at Nazareth, and saw his brothers +Joses, and Judas, and James, and Simon--those persons who, being own +brothers to Jesus Christ, one would expect to hear mentioned sometimes, +yet who ever saw their names in a newspaper or heard them from a pulpit? +Who ever inquires what manner of youths they were; and whether they +slept with Jesus, played with him and romped about him; quarreled with +him concerning toys and trifles; struck him in anger, not suspecting +what he was? Who ever wonders what they thought when they saw him come +back to Nazareth a celebrity, and looked long at his unfamiliar face to +make sure, and then said, "It is Jesus?" Who wonders what passed in +their minds when they saw this brother, (who was only a brother to them, +however much he might be to others a mysterious stranger who was a god +and had stood face to face with God above the clouds,) doing strange +miracles with crowds of astonished people for witnesses? Who wonders if +the brothers of Jesus asked him to come home with them, and said his +mother and his sisters were grieved at his long absence, and would be +wild with delight to see his face again? Who ever gives a thought to +the sisters of Jesus at all?--yet he had sisters; and memories of them +must have stolen into his mind often when he was ill-treated among +strangers; when he was homeless and said he had not where to lay his +head; when all deserted him, even Peter, and he stood alone among his +enemies. + +Christ did few miracles in Nazareth, and staid but a little while. The +people said, "This the Son of God! Why, his father is nothing but a +carpenter. We know the family. We see them every day. Are not his +brothers named so and so, and his sisters so and so, and is not his +mother the person they call Mary? This is absurd." He did not curse his +home, but he shook its dust from his feet and went away. + +Capernaum lies close to the edge of the little sea, in a small plain some +five miles long and a mile or two wide, which is mildly adorned with +oleanders which look all the better contrasted with the bald hills and +the howling deserts which surround them, but they are not as deliriously +beautiful as the books paint them. If one be calm and resolute he can +look upon their comeliness and live. + +One of the most astonishing things that have yet fallen under our +observation is the exceedingly small portion of the earth from which +sprang the now flourishing plant of Christianity. The longest journey +our Saviour ever performed was from here to Jerusalem--about one hundred +to one hundred and twenty miles. The next longest was from here to +Sidon--say about sixty or seventy miles. Instead of being wide apart--as +American appreciation of distances would naturally suggest--the places +made most particularly celebrated by the presence of Christ are nearly +all right here in full view, and within cannon-shot of Capernaum. +Leaving out two or three short journeys of the Saviour, he spent his +life, preached his gospel, and performed his miracles within a compass no +larger than an ordinary county in the United States. It is as much as I +can do to comprehend this stupefying fact. How it wears a man out to +have to read up a hundred pages of history every two or three miles--for +verily the celebrated localities of Palestine occur that close together. +How wearily, how bewilderingly they swarm about your path! + +In due time we reached the ancient village of Magdala. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII. + +Magdala is not a beautiful place. It is thoroughly Syrian, and that is +to say that it is thoroughly ugly, and cramped, squalid, uncomfortable, +and filthy--just the style of cities that have adorned the country since +Adam's time, as all writers have labored hard to prove, and have +succeeded. The streets of Magdala are any where from three to six feet +wide, and reeking with uncleanliness. The houses are from five to seven +feet high, and all built upon one arbitrary plan--the ungraceful form of +a dry-goods box. The sides are daubed with a smooth white plaster, and +tastefully frescoed aloft and alow with disks of camel-dung placed there +to dry. This gives the edifice the romantic appearance of having been +riddled with cannon-balls, and imparts to it a very warlike aspect. When +the artist has arranged his materials with an eye to just proportion +--the small and the large flakes in alternate rows, and separated by +carefully-considered intervals--I know of nothing more cheerful to look +upon than a spirited Syrian fresco. The flat, plastered roof is +garnished by picturesque stacks of fresco materials, which, having +become thoroughly dried and cured, are placed there where it will be +convenient. It is used for fuel. There is no timber of any consequence +in Palestine--none at all to waste upon fires--and neither are there any +mines of coal. If my description has been intelligible, you will +perceive, now, that a square, flat-roofed hovel, neatly frescoed, with +its wall-tops gallantly bastioned and turreted with dried camel-refuse, +gives to a landscape a feature that is exceedingly festive and +picturesque, especially if one is careful to remember to stick in a cat +wherever, about the premises, there is room for a cat to sit. There are +no windows to a Syrian hut, and no chimneys. When I used to read that +they let a bed-ridden man down through the roof of a house in Capernaum +to get him into the presence of the Saviour, I generally had a +three-story brick in my mind, and marveled that they did not break his +neck with the strange experiment. I perceive now, however, that they +might have taken him by the heels and thrown him clear over the house +without discommoding him very much. Palestine is not changed any since +those days, in manners, customs, architecture, or people. + +As we rode into Magdala not a soul was visible. But the ring of the +horses' hoofs roused the stupid population, and they all came trooping +out--old men and old women, boys and girls, the blind, the crazy, and the +crippled, all in ragged, soiled and scanty raiment, and all abject +beggars by nature, instinct and education. How the vermin-tortured +vagabonds did swarm! How they showed their scars and sores, and +piteously pointed to their maimed and crooked limbs, and begged with +their pleading eyes for charity! We had invoked a spirit we could not +lay. They hung to the horses's tails, clung to their manes and the +stirrups, closed in on every aide in scorn of dangerous hoofs--and out of +their infidel throats, with one accord, burst an agonizing and most +infernal chorus: "Howajji, bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh! howajji, +bucksheesh! bucksheesh! bucksheesh!" I never was in a storm like that +before. + +As we paid the bucksheesh out to sore-eyed children and brown, buxom +girls with repulsively tattooed lips and chins, we filed through the town +and by many an exquisite fresco, till we came to a bramble-infested +inclosure and a Roman-looking ruin which had been the veritable dwelling +of St. Mary Magdalene, the friend and follower of Jesus. The guide +believed it, and so did I. I could not well do otherwise, with the house +right there before my eyes as plain as day. The pilgrims took down +portions of the front wall for specimens, as is their honored custom, and +then we departed. + +We are camped in this place, now, just within the city walls of Tiberias. +We went into the town before nightfall and looked at its people--we cared +nothing about its houses. Its people are best examined at a distance. +They are particularly uncomely Jews, Arabs, and negroes. Squalor and +poverty are the pride of Tiberias. The young women wear their dower +strung upon a strong wire that curves downward from the top of the head +to the jaw--Turkish silver coins which they have raked together or +inherited. Most of these maidens were not wealthy, but some few had been +very kindly dealt with by fortune. I saw heiresses there worth, in their +own right--worth, well, I suppose I might venture to say, as much as nine +dollars and a half. But such cases are rare. When you come across one +of these, she naturally puts on airs. She will not ask for bucksheesh. +She will not even permit of undue familiarity. She assumes a crushing +dignity and goes on serenely practicing with her fine-tooth comb and +quoting poetry just the same as if you were not present at all. Some +people can not stand prosperity. + +They say that the long-nosed, lanky, dyspeptic-looking body-snatchers, +with the indescribable hats on, and a long curl dangling down in front of +each ear, are the old, familiar, self-righteous Pharisees we read of in +the Scriptures. Verily, they look it. Judging merely by their general +style, and without other evidence, one might easily suspect that +self-righteousness was their specialty. + +From various authorities I have culled information concerning Tiberias. +It was built by Herod Antipas, the murderer of John the Baptist, and +named after the Emperor Tiberius. It is believed that it stands upon the +site of what must have been, ages ago, a city of considerable +architectural pretensions, judging by the fine porphyry pillars that are +scattered through Tiberias and down the lake shore southward. These were +fluted, once, and yet, although the stone is about as hard as iron, the +flutings are almost worn away. These pillars are small, and doubtless +the edifices they adorned were distinguished more for elegance than +grandeur. This modern town--Tiberias--is only mentioned in the New +Testament; never in the Old. + +The Sanhedrim met here last, and for three hundred years Tiberias was the +metropolis of the Jews in Palestine. It is one of the four holy cities +of the Israelites, and is to them what Mecca is to the Mohammedan and +Jerusalem to the Christian. It has been the abiding place of many +learned and famous Jewish rabbins. They lie buried here, and near them +lie also twenty-five thousand of their faith who traveled far to be near +them while they lived and lie with them when they died. The great Rabbi +Ben Israel spent three years here in the early part of the third century. +He is dead, now. + +The celebrated Sea of Galilee is not so large a sea as Lake Tahoe +--[I measure all lakes by Tahoe, partly because I am far more familiar with +it than with any other, and partly because I have such a high admiration +for it and such a world of pleasant recollections of it, that it is very +nearly impossible for me to speak of lakes and not mention it.]--by a +good deal--it is just about two-thirds as large. And when we come to +speak of beauty, this sea is no more to be compared to Tahoe than a +meridian of longitude is to a rainbow. The dim waters of this pool can +not suggest the limpid brilliancy of Tahoe; these low, shaven, yellow +hillocks of rocks and sand, so devoid of perspective, can not suggest the +grand peaks that compass Tahoe like a wall, and whose ribbed and chasmed +fronts are clad with stately pines that seem to grow small and smaller as +they climb, till one might fancy them reduced to weeds and shrubs far +upward, where they join the everlasting snows. Silence and solitude +brood over Tahoe; and silence and solitude brood also over this lake of +Genessaret. But the solitude of the one is as cheerful and fascinating +as the solitude of the other is dismal and repellant. + +In the early morning one watches the silent battle of dawn and darkness +upon the waters of Tahoe with a placid interest; but when the shadows +sulk away and one by one the hidden beauties of the shore unfold +themselves in the full splendor of noon; when the still surface is belted +like a rainbow with broad bars of blue and green and white, half the +distance from circumference to centre; when, in the lazy summer +afternoon, he lies in a boat, far out to where the dead blue of the deep +water begins, and smokes the pipe of peace and idly winks at the +distant crags and patches of snow from under his cap-brim; when the boat +drifts shoreward to the white water, and he lolls over the gunwale and +gazes by the hour down through the crystal depths and notes the colors of +the pebbles and reviews the finny armies gliding in procession a hundred +feet below; when at night he sees moon and stars, mountain ridges +feathered with pines, jutting white capes, bold promontories, grand +sweeps of rugged scenery topped with bald, glimmering peaks, all +magnificently pictured in the polished mirror of the lake, in richest, +softest detail, the tranquil interest that was born with the morning +deepens and deepens, by sure degrees, till it culminates at last in +resistless fascination! + +It is solitude, for birds and squirrels on the shore and fishes in the +water are all the creatures that are near to make it otherwise, but it is +not the sort of solitude to make one dreary. Come to Galilee for that. +If these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barrenness, that never, +never, never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and fade and +faint into vague perspective; that melancholy ruin of Capernaum; this +stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal plumes of +palms; yonder desolate declivity where the swine of the miracle ran down +into the sea, and doubtless thought it was better to swallow a devil or +two and get drowned into the bargain than have to live longer in such a +place; this cloudless, blistering sky; this solemn, sailless, tintless +lake, reposing within its rim of yellow hills and low, steep banks, and +looking just as expressionless and unpoetical (when we leave its sublime +history out of the question,) as any metropolitan reservoir in +Christendom--if these things are not food for rock me to sleep, mother, +none exist, I think. + +But I should not offer the evidence for the prosecution and leave the +defense unheard. Wm. C. Grimes deposes as follows:-- + + "We had taken ship to go over to the other side. The sea was not + more than six miles wide. Of the beauty of the scene, however, I + can not say enough, nor can I imagine where those travelers carried + their eyes who have described the scenery of the lake as tame or + uninteresting. The first great characteristic of it is the deep + basin in which it lies. This is from three to four hundred feet + deep on all sides except at the lower end, and the sharp slope of + the banks, which are all of the richest green, is broken and + diversified by the wadys and water-courses which work their way down + through the sides of the basin, forming dark chasms or light sunny + valleys. Near Tiberias these banks are rocky, and ancient + sepulchres open in them, with their doors toward the water. They + selected grand spots, as did the Egyptians of old, for burial + places, as if they designed that when the voice of God should reach + the sleepers, they should walk forth and open their eyes on scenes + of glorious beauty. On the east, the wild and desolate mountains + contrast finely with the deep blue lake; and toward the north, + sublime and majestic, Hermon looks down on the sea, lifting his + white crown to heaven with the pride of a hill that has seen the + departing footsteps of a hundred generations. On the north-east + shore of the sea was a single tree, and this is the only tree of any + size visible from the water of the lake, except a few lonely palms + in the city of Tiberias, and by its solitary position attracts more + attention than would a forest. The whole appearance of the scene is + precisely what we would expect and desire the scenery of Genessaret + to be, grand beauty, but quiet calm. The very mountains are calm." + +It is an ingeniously written description, and well calculated to deceive. +But if the paint and the ribbons and the flowers be stripped from it, a +skeleton will be found beneath. + +So stripped, there remains a lake six miles wide and neutral in color; +with steep green banks, unrelieved by shrubbery; at one end bare, +unsightly rocks, with (almost invisible) holes in them of no consequence +to the picture; eastward, "wild and desolate mountains;" (low, desolate +hills, he should have said;) in the north, a mountain called Hermon, with +snow on it; peculiarity of the picture, "calmness;" its prominent +feature, one tree. + +No ingenuity could make such a picture beautiful--to one's actual vision. + +I claim the right to correct misstatements, and have so corrected the +color of the water in the above recapitulation. The waters of Genessaret +are of an exceedingly mild blue, even from a high elevation and a +distance of five miles. Close at hand (the witness was sailing on the +lake,) it is hardly proper to call them blue at all, much less "deep" +blue. I wish to state, also, not as a correction, but as matter of +opinion, that Mount Hermon is not a striking or picturesque mountain by +any means, being too near the height of its immediate neighbors to be so. +That is all. I do not object to the witness dragging a mountain +forty-five miles to help the scenery under consideration, because it is +entirely proper to do it, and besides, the picture needs it. + +"C. W. E.," (of "Life in the Holy Land,") deposes as follows:-- + + "A beautiful sea lies unbosomed among the Galilean hills, in the + midst of that land once possessed by Zebulon and Naphtali, Asher and + Dan. The azure of the sky penetrates the depths of the lake, and + the waters are sweet and cool. On the west, stretch broad fertile + plains; on the north the rocky shores rise step by step until in the + far distance tower the snowy heights of Hermon; on the east through + a misty veil are seen the high plains of Perea, which stretch away + in rugged mountains leading the mind by varied paths toward + Jerusalem the Holy. Flowers bloom in this terrestrial paradise, + once beautiful and verdant with waving trees; singing birds enchant + the ear; the turtle-dove soothes with its soft note; the crested + lark sends up its song toward heaven, and the grave and stately + stork inspires the mind with thought, and leads it on to meditation + and repose. Life here was once idyllic, charming; here were once no + rich, no poor, no high, no low. It was a world of ease, simplicity, + and beauty; now it is a scene of desolation and misery." + +This is not an ingenious picture. It is the worst I ever saw. It +describes in elaborate detail what it terms a "terrestrial paradise," and +closes with the startling information that this paradise is "a scene of +desolation and misery." + +I have given two fair, average specimens of the character of the +testimony offered by the majority of the writers who visit this region. +One says, "Of the beauty of the scene I can not say enough," and then +proceeds to cover up with a woof of glittering sentences a thing which, +when stripped for inspection, proves to be only an unobtrusive basin of +water, some mountainous desolation, and one tree. The other, after a +conscientious effort to build a terrestrial paradise out of the same +materials, with the addition of a "grave and stately stork," spoils it +all by blundering upon the ghastly truth at the last. + +Nearly every book concerning Galilee and its lake describes the scenery +as beautiful. No--not always so straightforward as that. Sometimes the +impression intentionally conveyed is that it is beautiful, at the same +time that the author is careful not to say that it is, in plain Saxon. +But a careful analysis of these descriptions will show that the materials +of which they are formed are not individually beautiful and can not be +wrought into combinations that are beautiful. The veneration and the +affection which some of these men felt for the scenes they were speaking +of, heated their fancies and biased their judgment; but the pleasant +falsities they wrote were full of honest sincerity, at any rate. Others +wrote as they did, because they feared it would be unpopular to write +otherwise. Others were hypocrites and deliberately meant to deceive. +Any of them would say in a moment, if asked, that it was always right and +always best to tell the truth. They would say that, at any rate, if they +did not perceive the drift of the question. + +But why should not the truth be spoken of this region? Is the truth +harmful? Has it ever needed to hide its face? God made the Sea of +Galilee and its surroundings as they are. Is it the province of Mr. +Grimes to improve upon the work? + +I am sure, from the tenor of books I have read, that many who have +visited this land in years gone by, were Presbyterians, and came seeking +evidences in support of their particular creed; they found a Presbyterian +Palestine, and they had already made up their minds to find no other, +though possibly they did not know it, being blinded by their zeal. +Others were Baptists, seeking Baptist evidences and a Baptist Palestine. +Others were Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, seeking evidences +indorsing their several creeds, and a Catholic, a Methodist, an +Episcopalian Palestine. Honest as these men's intentions may have been, +they were full of partialities and prejudices, they entered the country +with their verdicts already prepared, and they could no more write +dispassionately and impartially about it than they could about their own +wives and children. Our pilgrims have brought their verdicts with them. +They have shown it in their conversation ever since we left Beirout. +I can almost tell, in set phrase, what they will say when they see Tabor, +Nazareth, Jericho and Jerusalem--because I have the books they will +"smouch" their ideas from. These authors write pictures and frame +rhapsodies, and lesser men follow and see with the author's eyes instead +of their own, and speak with his tongue. What the pilgrims said at +Cesarea Philippi surprised me with its wisdom. I found it afterwards in +Robinson. What they said when Genessaret burst upon their vision, +charmed me with its grace. I find it in Mr. Thompson's "Land and the +Book." They have spoken often, in happily worded language which never +varied, of how they mean to lay their weary heads upon a stone at Bethel, +as Jacob did, and close their dim eyes, and dream, perchance, of angels +descending out of heaven on a ladder. It was very pretty. But I have +recognized the weary head and the dim eyes, finally. They borrowed the +idea--and the words--and the construction--and the punctuation--from +Grimes. The pilgrims will tell of Palestine, when they get home, not as +it appeared to them, but as it appeared to Thompson and Robinson and +Grimes--with the tints varied to suit each pilgrim's creed. + +Pilgrims, sinners and Arabs are all abed, now, and the camp is still. +Labor in loneliness is irksome. Since I made my last few notes, I have +been sitting outside the tent for half an hour. Night is the time to see +Galilee. Genessaret under these lustrous stars has nothing repulsive +about it. Genessaret with the glittering reflections of the +constellations flecking its surface, almost makes me regret that I ever +saw the rude glare of the day upon it. Its history and its associations +are its chiefest charm, in any eyes, and the spells they weave are feeble +in the searching light of the sun. Then, we scarcely feel the fetters. +Our thoughts wander constantly to the practical concerns of life, and +refuse to dwell upon things that seem vague and unreal. But when the day +is done, even the most unimpressible must yield to the dreamy influences +of this tranquil starlight. The old traditions of the place steal upon +his memory and haunt his reveries, and then his fancy clothes all sights +and sounds with the supernatural. In the lapping of the waves upon the +beach, he hears the dip of ghostly oars; in the secret noises of the +night he hears spirit voices; in the soft sweep of the breeze, the rush +of invisible wings. Phantom ships are on the sea, the dead of twenty +centuries come forth from the tombs, and in the dirges of the night wind +the songs of old forgotten ages find utterance again. + +In the starlight, Galilee has no boundaries but the broad compass of the +heavens, and is a theatre meet for great events; meet for the birth of a +religion able to save a world; and meet for the stately Figure appointed +to stand upon its stage and proclaim its high decrees. But in the +sunlight, one says: Is it for the deeds which were done and the words +which were spoken in this little acre of rocks and sand eighteen +centuries gone, that the bells are ringing to-day in the remote islands +of the sea and far and wide over continents that clasp the circumference +of the huge globe? + +One can comprehend it only when night has hidden all incongruities and +created a theatre proper for so grand a drama. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX. + +We took another swim in the Sea of Galilee at twilight yesterday, and +another at sunrise this morning. We have not sailed, but three swims are +equal to a sail, are they not? There were plenty of fish visible in the +water, but we have no outside aids in this pilgrimage but "Tent Life in +the Holy Land," "The Land and the Book," and other literature of like +description--no fishing-tackle. There were no fish to be had in the +village of Tiberias. True, we saw two or three vagabonds mending their +nets, but never trying to catch any thing with them. + +We did not go to the ancient warm baths two miles below Tiberias. I had +no desire in the world to go there. This seemed a little strange, and +prompted me to try to discover what the cause of this unreasonable +indifference was. It turned out to be simply because Pliny mentions +them. I have conceived a sort of unwarrantable unfriendliness toward +Pliny and St. Paul, because it seems as if I can never ferret out a place +that I can have to myself. It always and eternally transpires that St. +Paul has been to that place, and Pliny has "mentioned" it. + +In the early morning we mounted and started. And then a weird apparition +marched forth at the head of the procession--a pirate, I thought, if ever +a pirate dwelt upon land. It was a tall Arab, as swarthy as an Indian; +young-say thirty years of age. On his head he had closely bound a +gorgeous yellow and red striped silk scarf, whose ends, lavishly fringed +with tassels, hung down between his shoulders and dallied with the wind. +From his neck to his knees, in ample folds, a robe swept down that was a +very star-spangled banner of curved and sinuous bars of black and white. +Out of his back, somewhere, apparently, the long stem of a chibouk +projected, and reached far above his right shoulder. Athwart his back, +diagonally, and extending high above his left shoulder, was an Arab gum +of Saladin's time, that was splendid with silver plating from stock clear +up to the end of its measureless stretch of barrel. About his waist was +bound many and many a yard of elaborately figured but sadly tarnished +stuff that came from sumptuous Persia, and among the baggy folds in front +the sunbeams glinted from a formidable battery of old brass-mounted +horse-pistols and the gilded hilts of blood-thirsty knives. There were +holsters for more pistols appended to the wonderful stack of long-haired +goat-skins and Persian carpets, which the man had been taught to regard +in the light of a saddle; and down among the pendulous rank of vast +tassels that swung from that saddle, and clanging against the iron shovel +of a stirrup that propped the warrior's knees up toward his chin, was a +crooked, silver-clad scimitar of such awful dimensions and such +implacable expression that no man might hope to look upon it and not +shudder. The fringed and bedizened prince whose privilege it is to ride +the pony and lead the elephant into a country village is poor and naked +compared to this chaos of paraphernalia, and the happy vanity of the one +is the very poverty of satisfaction compared to the majestic serenity, +the overwhelming complacency of the other. + +"Who is this? What is this?" That was the trembling inquiry all down +the line. + +"Our guard! From Galilee to the birthplace of the Savior, the country is +infested with fierce Bedouins, whose sole happiness it is, in this life, +to cut and stab and mangle and murder unoffending Christians. Allah be +with us!" + +"Then hire a regiment! Would you send us out among these desperate +hordes, with no salvation in our utmost need but this old turret?" + +The dragoman laughed--not at the facetiousness of the simile, for verily, +that guide or that courier or that dragoman never yet lived upon earth +who had in him the faintest appreciation of a joke, even though that joke +were so broad and so ponderous that if it fell on him it would flatten +him out like a postage stamp--the dragoman laughed, and then, emboldened +by some thought that was in his brain, no doubt, proceeded to extremities +and winked. + +In straits like these, when a man laughs, it is encouraging when he +winks, it is positively reassuring. He finally intimated that one guard +would be sufficient to protect us, but that that one was an absolute +necessity. It was because of the moral weight his awful panoply would +have with the Bedouins. Then I said we didn't want any guard at all. +If one fantastic vagabond could protect eight armed Christians and a pack +of Arab servants from all harm, surely that detachment could protect +themselves. He shook his head doubtfully. Then I said, just think of +how it looks--think of how it would read, to self-reliant Americans, that +we went sneaking through this deserted wilderness under the protection of +this masquerading Arab, who would break his neck getting out of the +country if a man that was a man ever started after him. It was a mean, +low, degrading position. Why were we ever told to bring navy revolvers +with us if we had to be protected at last by this infamous star-spangled +scum of the desert? These appeals were vain--the dragoman only smiled +and shook his head. + +I rode to the front and struck up an acquaintance with King +Solomon-in-all-his-glory, and got him to show me his lingering eternity +of a gun. It had a rusty flint lock; it was ringed and barred and plated +with silver from end to end, but it was as desperately out of the +perpendicular as are the billiard cues of '49 that one finds yet in +service in the ancient mining camps of California. The muzzle was eaten +by the rust of centuries into a ragged filigree-work, like the end of a +burnt-out stove-pipe. I shut one eye and peered within--it was flaked +with iron rust like an old steamboat boiler. I borrowed the ponderous +pistols and snapped them. They were rusty inside, too--had not been +loaded for a generation. I went back, full of encouragement, and +reported to the guide, and asked him to discharge this dismantled +fortress. It came out, then. This fellow was a retainer of the Sheik +of Tiberias. He was a source of Government revenue. He was to the +Empire of Tiberias what the customs are to America. The Sheik imposed +guards upon travelers and charged them for it. It is a lucrative source +of emolument, and sometimes brings into the national treasury as much as +thirty-five or forty dollars a year. + +I knew the warrior's secret now; I knew the hollow vanity of his rusty +trumpery, and despised his asinine complacency. I told on him, and with +reckless daring the cavalcade straight ahead into the perilous solitudes +of the desert, and scorned his frantic warnings of the mutilation and +death that hovered about them on every side. + +Arrived at an elevation of twelve hundred feet above the lake, (I ought +to mention that the lake lies six hundred feet below the level of the +Mediterranean--no traveler ever neglects to flourish that fragment of +news in his letters,) as bald and unthrilling a panorama as any land can +afford, perhaps, was spread out before us. Yet it was so crowded with +historical interest, that if all the pages that have been written about +it were spread upon its surface, they would flag it from horizon to +horizon like a pavement. Among the localities comprised in this view, +were Mount Hermon; the hills that border Cesarea Philippi, Dan, the +Sources of the Jordan and the Waters of Merom; Tiberias; the Sea of +Galilee; Joseph's Pit; Capernaum; Bethsaida; the supposed scenes of the +Sermon on the Mount, the feeding of the multitudes and the miraculous +draught of fishes; the declivity down which the swine ran to the sea; the +entrance and the exit of the Jordan; Safed, "the city set upon a hill," +one of the four holy cities of the Jews, and the place where they believe +the real Messiah will appear when he comes to redeem the world; part of +the battle-field of Hattin, where the knightly Crusaders fought their +last fight, and in a blaze of glory passed from the stage and ended their +splendid career forever; Mount Tabor, the traditional scene of the Lord's +Transfiguration. And down toward the southeast lay a landscape that +suggested to my mind a quotation (imperfectly remembered, no doubt:) + + "The Ephraimites, not being called upon to share in the rich spoils + of the Ammonitish war, assembled a mighty host to fight against + Jeptha, Judge of Israel; who, being apprised of their approach, + gathered together the men of Israel and gave them battle and put + them to flight. To make his victory the more secure, he stationed + guards at the different fords and passages of the Jordan, with + instructions to let none pass who could not say Shibboleth. The + Ephraimites, being of a different tribe, could not frame to + pronounce the word right, but called it Sibboleth, which proved them + enemies and cost them their lives; wherefore, forty and two thousand + fell at the different fords and passages of the Jordan that day." + +We jogged along peacefully over the great caravan route from Damascus to +Jerusalem and Egypt, past Lubia and other Syrian hamlets, perched, in the +unvarying style, upon the summit of steep mounds and hills, and fenced +round about with giant cactuses, (the sign of worthless land,) with +prickly pears upon them like hams, and came at last to the battle-field +of Hattin. + +It is a grand, irregular plateau, and looks as if it might have been +created for a battle-field. Here the peerless Saladin met the Christian +host some seven hundred years ago, and broke their power in Palestine for +all time to come. There had long been a truce between the opposing +forces, but according to the Guide-Book, Raynauld of Chatillon, Lord of +Kerak, broke it by plundering a Damascus caravan, and refusing to give up +either the merchants or their goods when Saladin demanded them. This +conduct of an insolent petty chieftain stung the Sultan to the quick, and +he swore that he would slaughter Raynauld with his own hand, no matter +how, or when, or where he found him. Both armies prepared for war. +Under the weak King of Jerusalem was the very flower of the Christian +chivalry. He foolishly compelled them to undergo a long, exhausting +march, in the scorching sun, and then, without water or other +refreshment, ordered them to encamp in this open plain. The splendidly +mounted masses of Moslem soldiers swept round the north end of +Genessaret, burning and destroying as they came, and pitched their camp +in front of the opposing lines. At dawn the terrific fight began. +Surrounded on all sides by the Sultan's swarming battalions, the +Christian Knights fought on without a hope for their lives. They fought +with desperate valor, but to no purpose; the odds of heat and numbers, +and consuming thirst, were too great against them. Towards the middle of +the day the bravest of their band cut their way through the Moslem ranks +and gained the summit of a little hill, and there, hour after hour, they +closed around the banner of the Cross, and beat back the charging +squadrons of the enemy. + +But the doom of the Christian power was sealed. Sunset found Saladin +Lord of Palestine, the Christian chivalry strewn in heaps upon the field, +and the King of Jerusalem, the Grand Master of the Templars, and Raynauld +of Chatillon, captives in the Sultan's tent. Saladin treated two of the +prisoners with princely courtesy, and ordered refreshments to be set +before them. When the King handed an iced Sherbet to Chatillon, the +Sultan said," It is thou that givest it to him, not I." He remembered +his oath, and slaughtered the hapless Knight of Chatillon with his own +hand. + +It was hard to realize that this silent plain had once resounded with +martial music and trembled to the tramp of armed men. It was hard to +people this solitude with rushing columns of cavalry, and stir its torpid +pulses with the shouts of victors, the shrieks of the wounded, and the +flash of banner and steel above the surging billows of war. A desolation +is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and +action. + +We reached Tabor safely, and considerably in advance of that old +iron-clad swindle of a guard. We never saw a human being on the whole +route, much less lawless hordes of Bedouins. Tabor stands solitary and +alone, a giant sentinel above the Plain of Esdraelon. It rises some +fourteen hundred feet above the surrounding level, a green, wooden cone, +symmetrical and full of grace--a prominent landmark, and one that is +exceedingly pleasant to eyes surfeited with the repulsive monotony of +desert Syria. We climbed the steep path to its summit, through breezy +glades of thorn and oak. The view presented from its highest peak was +almost beautiful. Below, was the broad, level plain of Esdraelon, +checkered with fields like a chess-board, and full as smooth and level, +seemingly; dotted about its borders with white, compact villages, and +faintly penciled, far and near, with the curving lines of roads and +trails. When it is robed in the fresh verdure of spring, it must form a +charming picture, even by itself. Skirting its southern border rises +"Little Hermon," over whose summit a glimpse of Gilboa is caught. Nain, +famous for the raising of the widow's son, and Endor, as famous for the +performances of her witch are in view. To the eastward lies the Valley +of the Jordan and beyond it the mountains of Gilead. Westward is Mount +Carmel. Hermon in the north--the table-lands of Bashan--Safed, the holy +city, gleaming white upon a tall spur of the mountains of Lebanon +--a steel-blue corner of the Sea of Galilee--saddle-peaked Hattin, +traditional "Mount of Beatitudes" and mute witness brave fights of the +Crusading host for Holy Cross--these fill up the picture. + +To glance at the salient features of this landscape through the +picturesque framework of a ragged and ruined stone window--arch of the +time of Christ, thus hiding from sight all that is unattractive, is to +secure to yourself a pleasure worth climbing the mountain to enjoy. One +must stand on his head to get the best effect in a fine sunset, and set a +landscape in a bold, strong framework that is very close at hand, to +bring out all its beauty. One learns this latter truth never more to +forget it, in that mimic land of enchantment, the wonderful garden of my +lord the Count Pallavicini, near Genoa. You go wandering for hours among +hills and wooded glens, artfully contrived to leave the impression that +Nature shaped them and not man; following winding paths and coming +suddenly upon leaping cascades and rustic bridges; finding sylvan lakes +where you expected them not; loitering through battered mediaeval castles +in miniature that seem hoary with age and yet were built a dozen years +ago; meditating over ancient crumbling tombs, whose marble columns were +marred and broken purposely by the modern artist that made them; +stumbling unawares upon toy palaces, wrought of rare and costly +materials, and again upon a peasant's hut, whose dilapidated furniture +would never suggest that it was made so to order; sweeping round and +round in the midst of a forest on an enchanted wooden horse that is moved +by some invisible agency; traversing Roman roads and passing under +majestic triumphal arches; resting in quaint bowers where unseen spirits +discharge jets of water on you from every possible direction, and where +even the flowers you touch assail you with a shower; boating on a +subterranean lake among caverns and arches royally draped with clustering +stalactites, and passing out into open day upon another lake, which is +bordered with sloping banks of grass and gay with patrician barges that +swim at anchor in the shadow of a miniature marble temple that rises out +of the clear water and glasses its white statues, its rich capitals and +fluted columns in the tranquil depths. So, from marvel to marvel you +have drifted on, thinking all the time that the one last seen must be the +chiefest. And, verily, the chiefest wonder is reserved until the last, +but you do not see it until you step ashore, and passing through a +wilderness of rare flowers, collected from every corner of the earth, you +stand at the door of one more mimic temple. Right in this place the +artist taxed his genius to the utmost, and fairly opened the gates of +fairy land. You look through an unpretending pane of glass, stained +yellow--the first thing you see is a mass of quivering foliage, ten short +steps before you, in the midst of which is a ragged opening like a +gateway-a thing that is common enough in nature, and not apt to excite +suspicions of a deep human design--and above the bottom of the gateway, +project, in the most careless way! a few broad tropic leaves and +brilliant flowers. All of a sudden, through this bright, bold gateway, +you catch a glimpse of the faintest, softest, richest picture that ever +graced the dream of a dying Saint, since John saw the New Jerusalem +glimmering above the clouds of Heaven. A broad sweep of sea, flecked +with careening sails; a sharp, jutting cape, and a lofty lighthouse on +it; a sloping lawn behind it; beyond, a portion of the old "city of +palaces," with its parks and hills and stately mansions; beyond these, a +prodigious mountain, with its strong outlines sharply cut against ocean +and sky; and over all, vagrant shreds and flakes of cloud, floating in a +sea of gold. The ocean is gold, the city is gold, the meadow, the +mountain, the sky--every thing is golden-rich, and mellow, and dreamy as +a vision of Paradise. No artist could put upon canvas, its entrancing +beauty, and yet, without the yellow glass, and the carefully contrived +accident of a framework that cast it into enchanted distance and shut out +from it all unattractive features, it was not a picture to fall into +ecstasies over. Such is life, and the trail of the serpent is over us +all. + +There is nothing for it now but to come back to old Tabor, though the +subject is tiresome enough, and I can not stick to it for wandering off +to scenes that are pleasanter to remember. I think I will skip, any how. +There is nothing about Tabor (except we concede that it was the scene of +the Transfiguration,) but some gray old ruins, stacked up there in all +ages of the world from the days of stout Gideon and parties that +flourished thirty centuries ago to the fresh yesterday of Crusading +times. It has its Greek Convent, and the coffee there is good, but never +a splinter of the true cross or bone of a hallowed saint to arrest the +idle thoughts of worldlings and turn them into graver channels. +A Catholic church is nothing to me that has no relics. + +The plain of Esdraelon--"the battle-field of the nations"--only sets one +to dreaming of Joshua, and Benhadad, and Saul, and Gideon; Tamerlane, +Tancred, Coeur de Lion, and Saladin; the warrior Kings of Persia, Egypt's +heroes, and Napoleon--for they all fought here. If the magic of the +moonlight could summon from the graves of forgotten centuries and many +lands the countless myriads that have battled on this wide, far-reaching +floor, and array them in the thousand strange Costumes of their hundred +nationalities, and send the vast host sweeping down the plain, splendid +with plumes and banners and glittering lances, I could stay here an age +to see the phantom pageant. But the magic of the moonlight is a vanity +and a fraud; and whoso putteth his trust in it shall suffer sorrow and +disappointment. + +Down at the foot of Tabor, and just at the edge of the storied Plain of +Esdraelon, is the insignificant village of Deburieh, where Deborah, +prophetess of Israel, lived. It is just like Magdala. + + + + +CHAPTER L. + +We descended from Mount Tabor, crossed a deep ravine, followed a hilly, +rocky road to Nazareth--distant two hours. All distances in the East are +measured by hours, not miles. A good horse will walk three miles an hour +over nearly any kind of a road; therefore, an hour, here, always stands +for three miles. This method of computation is bothersome and annoying; +and until one gets thoroughly accustomed to it, it carries no +intelligence to his mind until he has stopped and translated the pagan +hours into Christian miles, just as people do with the spoken words of a +foreign language they are acquainted with, but not familiarly enough to +catch the meaning in a moment. Distances traveled by human feet are also +estimated by hours and minutes, though I do not know what the base of the +calculation is. In Constantinople you ask, "How far is it to the +Consulate?" and they answer, "About ten minutes." "How far is it to the +Lloyds' Agency?" "Quarter of an hour." "How far is it to the lower +bridge?" "Four minutes." I can not be positive about it, but I think +that there, when a man orders a pair of pantaloons, he says he wants them +a quarter of a minute in the legs and nine seconds around the waist. + +Two hours from Tabor to Nazareth--and as it was an uncommonly narrow, +crooked trail, we necessarily met all the camel trains and jackass +caravans between Jericho and Jacksonville in that particular place and +nowhere else. The donkeys do not matter so much, because they are so +small that you can jump your horse over them if he is an animal of +spirit, but a camel is not jumpable. A camel is as tall as any ordinary +dwelling-house in Syria--which is to say a camel is from one to two, and +sometimes nearly three feet taller than a good-sized man. In this part +of the country his load is oftenest in the shape of colossal sacks--one +on each side. He and his cargo take up as much room as a carriage. +Think of meeting this style of obstruction in a narrow trail. The camel +would not turn out for a king. He stalks serenely along, bringing his +cushioned stilts forward with the long, regular swing of a pendulum, and +whatever is in the way must get out of the way peaceably, or be wiped out +forcibly by the bulky sacks. It was a tiresome ride to us, and perfectly +exhausting to the horses. We were compelled to jump over upwards of +eighteen hundred donkeys, and only one person in the party was unseated +less than sixty times by the camels. This seems like a powerful +statement, but the poet has said, "Things are not what they seem." I can +not think of any thing, now, more certain to make one shudder, than to +have a soft-footed camel sneak up behind him and touch him on the ear +with its cold, flabby under-lip. A camel did this for one of the boys, +who was drooping over his saddle in a brown study. He glanced up and saw +the majestic apparition hovering above him, and made frantic efforts to +get out of the way, but the camel reached out and bit him on the shoulder +before he accomplished it. This was the only pleasant incident of the +journey. + +At Nazareth we camped in an olive grove near the Virgin Mary's fountain, +and that wonderful Arab "guard" came to collect some bucksheesh for his +"services" in following us from Tiberias and warding off invisible +dangers with the terrors of his armament. The dragoman had paid his +master, but that counted as nothing--if you hire a man to sneeze for you, +here, and another man chooses to help him, you have got to pay both. +They do nothing whatever without pay. How it must have surprised these +people to hear the way of salvation offered to them "without money and +without price." If the manners, the people or the customs of this +country have changed since the Saviour's time, the figures and metaphors +of the Bible are not the evidences to prove it by. + +We entered the great Latin Convent which is built over the traditional +dwelling-place of the Holy Family. We went down a flight of fifteen +steps below the ground level, and stood in a small chapel tricked out +with tapestry hangings, silver lamps, and oil paintings. A spot marked +by a cross, in the marble floor, under the altar, was exhibited as the +place made forever holy by the feet of the Virgin when she stood up to +receive the message of the angel. So simple, so unpretending a locality, +to be the scene of so mighty an event! The very scene of the +Annunciation--an event which has been commemorated by splendid shrines +and august temples all over the civilized world, and one which the +princes of art have made it their loftiest ambition to picture worthily +on their canvas; a spot whose history is familiar to the very children of +every house, and city, and obscure hamlet of the furthest lands of +Christendom; a spot which myriads of men would toil across the breadth of +a world to see, would consider it a priceless privilege to look upon. +It was easy to think these thoughts. But it was not easy to bring myself +up to the magnitude of the situation. I could sit off several thousand +miles and imagine the angel appearing, with shadowy wings and lustrous +countenance, and note the glory that streamed downward upon the Virgin's +head while the message from the Throne of God fell upon her ears--any one +can do that, beyond the ocean, but few can do it here. I saw the little +recess from which the angel stepped, but could not fill its void. The +angels that I know are creatures of unstable fancy--they will not fit in +niches of substantial stone. Imagination labors best in distant fields. +I doubt if any man can stand in the Grotto of the Annunciation and people +with the phantom images of his mind its too tangible walls of stone. + +They showed us a broken granite pillar, depending from the roof, which +they said was hacked in two by the Moslem conquerors of Nazareth, in the +vain hope of pulling down the sanctuary. But the pillar remained +miraculously suspended in the air, and, unsupported itself, supported +then and still supports the roof. By dividing this statement up among +eight, it was found not difficult to believe it. + +These gifted Latin monks never do any thing by halves. If they were to +show you the Brazen Serpent that was elevated in the wilderness, you +could depend upon it that they had on hand the pole it was elevated on +also, and even the hole it stood in. They have got the "Grotto" of the +Annunciation here; and just as convenient to it as one's throat is to his +mouth, they have also the Virgin's Kitchen, and even her sitting-room, +where she and Joseph watched the infant Saviour play with Hebrew toys +eighteen hundred years ago. All under one roof, and all clean, spacious, +comfortable "grottoes." It seems curious that personages intimately +connected with the Holy Family always lived in grottoes--in Nazareth, in +Bethlehem, in imperial Ephesus--and yet nobody else in their day and +generation thought of doing any thing of the kind. If they ever did, +their grottoes are all gone, and I suppose we ought to wonder at the +peculiar marvel of the preservation of these I speak of. When the Virgin +fled from Herod's wrath, she hid in a grotto in Bethlehem, and the same +is there to this day. The slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem was +done in a grotto; the Saviour was born in a grotto--both are shown to +pilgrims yet. It is exceedingly strange that these tremendous events all +happened in grottoes--and exceedingly fortunate, likewise, because the +strongest houses must crumble to ruin in time, but a grotto in the living +rock will last forever. It is an imposture--this grotto stuff--but it is +one that all men ought to thank the Catholics for. Wherever they ferret +out a lost locality made holy by some Scriptural event, they straightway +build a massive--almost imperishable--church there, and preserve the +memory of that locality for the gratification of future generations. If +it had been left to Protestants to do this most worthy work, we would not +even know where Jerusalem is to-day, and the man who could go and put his +finger on Nazareth would be too wise for this world. The world owes the +Catholics its good will even for the happy rascality of hewing out these +bogus grottoes in the rock; for it is infinitely more satisfactory to +look at a grotto, where people have faithfully believed for centuries +that the Virgin once lived, than to have to imagine a dwelling-place for +her somewhere, any where, nowhere, loose and at large all over this town +of Nazareth. There is too large a scope of country. The imagination can +not work. There is no one particular spot to chain your eye, rivet your +interest, and make you think. The memory of the Pilgrims can not perish +while Plymouth Rock remains to us. The old monks are wise. They know +how to drive a stake through a pleasant tradition that will hold it to +its place forever. + +We visited the places where Jesus worked for fifteen years as a +carpenter, and where he attempted to teach in the synagogue and was +driven out by a mob. Catholic chapels stand upon these sites and protect +the little fragments of the ancient walls which remain. Our pilgrims +broke off specimens. We visited, also, a new chapel, in the midst of the +town, which is built around a boulder some twelve feet long by four feet +thick; the priests discovered, a few years ago, that the disciples had +sat upon this rock to rest, once, when they had walked up from Capernaum. +They hastened to preserve the relic. Relics are very good property. +Travelers are expected to pay for seeing them, and they do it cheerfully. +We like the idea. One's conscience can never be the worse for the +knowledge that he has paid his way like a man. Our pilgrims would have +liked very well to get out their lampblack and stencil-plates and paint +their names on that rock, together with the names of the villages they +hail from in America, but the priests permit nothing of that kind. +To speak the strict truth, however, our party seldom offend in that way, +though we have men in the ship who never lose an opportunity to do it. +Our pilgrims' chief sin is their lust for "specimens." I suppose that by +this time they know the dimensions of that rock to an inch, and its +weight to a ton; and I do not hesitate to charge that they will go back +there to-night and try to carry it off. + +This "Fountain of the Virgin" is the one which tradition says Mary used +to get water from, twenty times a day, when she was a girl, and bear it +away in a jar upon her head. The water streams through faucets in the +face of a wall of ancient masonry which stands removed from the houses of +the village. The young girls of Nazareth still collect about it by the +dozen and keep up a riotous laughter and sky-larking. The Nazarene girls +are homely. Some of them have large, lustrous eyes, but none of them +have pretty faces. These girls wear a single garment, usually, and it is +loose, shapeless, of undecided color; it is generally out of repair, too. +They wear, from crown to jaw, curious strings of old coins, after the +manner of the belles of Tiberias, and brass jewelry upon their wrists and +in their ears. They wear no shoes and stockings. They are the most +human girls we have found in the country yet, and the best natured. +But there is no question that these picturesque maidens sadly lack +comeliness. + +A pilgrim--the "Enthusiast"--said: "See that tall, graceful girl! look at +the Madonna-like beauty of her countenance!" + +Another pilgrim came along presently and said: "Observe that tall, +graceful girl; what queenly Madonna-like gracefulness of beauty is in her +countenance." + +I said: "She is not tall, she is short; she is not beautiful, she is +homely; she is graceful enough, I grant, but she is rather boisterous." + +The third and last pilgrim moved by, before long, and he said: "Ah, what +a tall, graceful girl! what Madonna-like gracefulness of queenly beauty!" + +The verdicts were all in. It was time, now, to look up the authorities +for all these opinions. I found this paragraph, which follows. Written +by whom? Wm. C. Grimes: + + "After we were in the saddle, we rode down to the spring to have a + last look at the women of Nazareth, who were, as a class, much the + prettiest that we had seen in the East. As we approached the crowd + a tall girl of nineteen advanced toward Miriam and offered her a cup + of water. Her movement was graceful and queenly. We exclaimed on + the spot at the Madonna-like beauty of her countenance. Whitely was + suddenly thirsty, and begged for water, and drank it slowly, with + his eyes over the top of the cup, fixed on her large black eyes, + which gazed on him quite as curiously as he on her. Then Moreright + wanted water. She gave it to him and he managed to spill it so as + to ask for another cup, and by the time she came to me she saw + through the operation; her eyes were full of fun as she looked at + me. I laughed outright, and she joined me in as gay a shout as ever + country maiden in old Orange county. I wished for a picture of her. + A Madonna, whose face was a portrait of that beautiful Nazareth + girl, would be a 'thing of beauty' and 'a joy forever.'" + +That is the kind of gruel which has been served out from Palestine for +ages. Commend me to Fennimore Cooper to find beauty in the Indians, and +to Grimes to find it in the Arabs. Arab men are often fine looking, but +Arab women are not. We can all believe that the Virgin Mary was +beautiful; it is not natural to think otherwise; but does it follow that +it is our duty to find beauty in these present women of Nazareth? + +I love to quote from Grimes, because he is so dramatic. And because he +is so romantic. And because he seems to care but little whether he tells +the truth or not, so he scares the reader or excites his envy or his +admiration. + +He went through this peaceful land with one hand forever on his revolver, +and the other on his pocket-handkerchief. Always, when he was not on the +point of crying over a holy place, he was on the point of killing an +Arab. More surprising things happened to him in Palestine than ever +happened to any traveler here or elsewhere since Munchausen died. + +At Beit Jin, where nobody had interfered with him, he crept out of his +tent at dead of night and shot at what he took to be an Arab lying on a +rock, some distance away, planning evil. The ball killed a wolf. Just +before he fired, he makes a dramatic picture of himself--as usual, to +scare the reader: + + "Was it imagination, or did I see a moving object on the surface of + the rock? If it were a man, why did he not now drop me? He had a + beautiful shot as I stood out in my black boornoose against the + white tent. I had the sensation of an entering bullet in my throat, + breast, brain." + +Reckless creature! + +Riding toward Genessaret, they saw two Bedouins, and "we looked to our +pistols and loosened them quietly in our shawls," etc. Always cool. + +In Samaria, he charged up a hill, in the face of a volley of stones; he +fired into the crowd of men who threw them. He says: + + "I never lost an opportunity of impressing the Arabs with the + perfection of American and English weapons, and the danger of + attacking any one of the armed Franks. I think the lesson of that + ball not lost." + +At Beit Jin he gave his whole band of Arab muleteers a piece of his mind, +and then-- + + "I contented myself with a solemn assurance that if there occurred + another instance of disobedience to orders I would thrash the + responsible party as he never dreamed of being thrashed, and if I + could not find who was responsible, I would whip them all, from + first to last, whether there was a governor at hand to do it or I + had to do it myself" + +Perfectly fearless, this man. + +He rode down the perpendicular path in the rocks, from the Castle of +Banias to the oak grove, at a flying gallop, his horse striding "thirty +feet" at every bound. I stand prepared to bring thirty reliable +witnesses to prove that Putnam's famous feat at Horseneck was +insignificant compared to this. + +Behold him--always theatrical--looking at Jerusalem--this time, by an +oversight, with his hand off his pistol for once. + + "I stood in the road, my hand on my horse's neck, and with my dim + eyes sought to trace the outlines of the holy places which I had + long before fixed in my mind, but the fast-flowing tears forbade my + succeeding. There were our Mohammedan servants, a Latin monk, two + Armenians and a Jew in our cortege, and all alike gazed with + overflowing eyes." + +If Latin monks and Arabs cried, I know to a moral certainty that the +horses cried also, and so the picture is complete. + +But when necessity demanded, he could be firm as adamant. In the Lebanon +Valley an Arab youth--a Christian; he is particular to explain that +Mohammedans do not steal--robbed him of a paltry ten dollars' worth of +powder and shot. He convicted him before a sheik and looked on while he +was punished by the terrible bastinado. Hear him: + + "He (Mousa) was on his back in a twinkling, howling, shouting, + screaming, but he was carried out to the piazza before the door, + where we could see the operation, and laid face down. One man sat + on his back and one on his legs, the latter holding up his feet, + while a third laid on the bare soles a rhinoceros-hide koorbash + --["A Koorbash is Arabic for cowhide, the cow being a rhinoceros. + It is the most cruel whip known to fame. Heavy as lead, and + flexible as India-rubber, usually about forty inches long and + tapering gradually from an inch in diameter to a point, it + administers a blow which leaves its mark for time."--Scow Life in + Egypt, by the same author.]--that whizzed through the air at every + stroke. Poor Moreright was in agony, and Nama and Nama the Second + (mother and sister of Mousa,) were on their faces begging and + wailing, now embracing my knees and now Whitely's, while the + brother, outside, made the air ring with cries louder than Mousa's. + Even Yusef came and asked me on his knees to relent, and last of + all, Betuni--the rascal had lost a feed-bag in their house and had + been loudest in his denunciations that morning--besought the Howajji + to have mercy on the fellow." + +But not he! The punishment was "suspended," at the fifteenth blow to +hear the confession. Then Grimes and his party rode away, and left the +entire Christian family to be fined and as severely punished as the +Mohammedan sheik should deem proper. + + "As I mounted, Yusef once more begged me to interfere and have mercy + on them, but I looked around at the dark faces of the crowd, and I + couldn't find one drop of pity in my heart for them." + +He closes his picture with a rollicking burst of humor which contrasts +finely with the grief of the mother and her children. + +One more paragraph: + + "Then once more I bowed my head. It is no shame to have wept in + Palestine. I wept, when I saw Jerusalem, I wept when I lay in the + starlight at Bethlehem. I wept on the blessed shores of Galilee. + My hand was no less firm on the rein, my anger did not tremble on + the trigger of my pistol when I rode with it in my right hand along + the shore of the blue sea" (weeping.) "My eye was not dimmed by + those tears nor my heart in aught weakened. Let him who would sneer + at my emotion close this volume here, for he will find little to his + taste in my journeyings through Holy Land." + +He never bored but he struck water. + +I am aware that this is a pretty voluminous notice of Mr. Grimes' book. +However, it is proper and legitimate to speak of it, for "Nomadic Life in +Palestine" is a representative book--the representative of a class of +Palestine books--and a criticism upon it will serve for a criticism upon +them all. And since I am treating it in the comprehensive capacity of a +representative book, I have taken the liberty of giving to both book and +author fictitious names. Perhaps it is in better taste, any how, to do +this. + + + + +CHAPTER LI. + +Nazareth is wonderfully interesting because the town has an air about it +of being precisely as Jesus left it, and one finds himself saying, all +the time, "The boy Jesus has stood in this doorway--has played in that +street--has touched these stones with his hands--has rambled over these +chalky hills." Whoever shall write the boyhood of Jesus ingeniously will +make a book which will possess a vivid interest for young and old alike. +I judge so from the greater interest we found in Nazareth than any of our +speculations upon Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee gave rise to. It was +not possible, standing by the Sea of Galilee, to frame more than a vague, +far-away idea of the majestic Personage who walked upon the crested waves +as if they had been solid earth, and who touched the dead and they rose +up and spoke. I read among my notes, now, with a new interest, some +sentences from an edition of 1621 of the Apocryphal New Testament. +[Extract.] + + "Christ, kissed by a bride made dumb by sorcerers, cures her. A + leprous girl cured by the water in which the infant Christ was + washed, and becomes the servant of Joseph and Mary. The leprous son + of a Prince cured in like manner. + + "A young man who had been bewitched and turned into a mule, + miraculously cured by the infant Savior being put on his back, and + is married to the girl who had been cured of leprosy. Whereupon the + bystanders praise God. + + "Chapter 16. Christ miraculously widens or contracts gates, + milk-pails, sieves or boxes, not properly made by Joseph, he not + being skillful at his carpenter's trade. The King of Jerusalem + gives Joseph an order for a throne. Joseph works on it for two + years and makes it two spans too short. The King being angry with + him, Jesus comforts him--commands him to pull one side of the + throne while he pulls the other, and brings it to its proper + dimensions. + + "Chapter 19. Jesus, charged with throwing a boy from the roof of a + house, miraculously causes the dead boy to speak and acquit him; + fetches water for his mother, breaks the pitcher and miraculously + gathers the water in his mantle and brings it home. + + "Sent to a schoolmaster, refuses to tell his letters, and the + schoolmaster going to whip him, his hand withers." + +Further on in this quaint volume of rejected gospels is an epistle of St. +Clement to the Corinthians, which was used in the churches and considered +genuine fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago. In it this account of the +fabled phoenix occurs: + + "1. Let us consider that wonderful type of the resurrection, which + is seen in the Eastern countries, that is to say, in Arabia. + + "2. There is a certain bird called a phoenix. Of this there is + never but one at a time, and that lives five hundred years. And + when the time of its dissolution draws near, that it must die, it + makes itself a nest of frankincense, and myrrh, and other spices, + into which, when its time is fulfilled, it enters and dies. + + "3. But its flesh, putrefying, breeds a certain worm, which, being + nourished by the juice of the dead bird, brings forth feathers; and + when it is grown to a perfect state, it takes up the nest in which + the bones of its parent lie, and carries it from Arabia into Egypt, + to a city called Heliopolis: + + "4. And flying in open day in the sight of all men, lays it upon + the altar of the sun, and so returns from whence it came. + + "5. The priests then search into the records of the time, and find + that it returned precisely at the end of five hundred years." + +Business is business, and there is nothing like punctuality, especially +in a phoenix. + +The few chapters relating to the infancy of the Saviour contain many +things which seem frivolous and not worth preserving. A large part of +the remaining portions of the book read like good Scripture, however. +There is one verse that ought not to have been rejected, because it so +evidently prophetically refers to the general run of Congresses of the +United States: + + "199. They carry themselves high, and as prudent men; and though + they are fools, yet would seem to be teachers." + +I have set these extracts down, as I found them. Everywhere among the +cathedrals of France and Italy, one finds traditions of personages that +do not figure in the Bible, and of miracles that are not mentioned in its +pages. But they are all in this Apocryphal New Testament, and though +they have been ruled out of our modern Bible, it is claimed that they +were accepted gospel twelve or fifteen centuries ago, and ranked as high +in credit as any. One needs to read this book before he visits those +venerable cathedrals, with their treasures of tabooed and forgotten +tradition. + +They imposed another pirate upon us at Nazareth--another invincible Arab +guard. We took our last look at the city, clinging like a whitewashed +wasp's nest to the hill-side, and at eight o'clock in the morning +departed. We dismounted and drove the horses down a bridle-path which I +think was fully as crooked as a corkscrew, which I know to be as steep as +the downward sweep of a rainbow, and which I believe to be the worst +piece of road in the geography, except one in the Sandwich Islands, which +I remember painfully, and possibly one or two mountain trails in the +Sierra Nevadas. Often, in this narrow path the horse had to poise +himself nicely on a rude stone step and then drop his fore-feet over the +edge and down something more than half his own height. This brought his +nose near the ground, while his tail pointed up toward the sky somewhere, +and gave him the appearance of preparing to stand on his head. A horse +cannot look dignified in this position. We accomplished the long descent +at last, and trotted across the great Plain of Esdraelon. + +Some of us will be shot before we finish this pilgrimage. The pilgrims +read "Nomadic Life" and keep themselves in a constant state of Quixotic +heroism. They have their hands on their pistols all the time, and every +now and then, when you least expect it, they snatch them out and take aim +at Bedouins who are not visible, and draw their knives and make savage +passes at other Bedouins who do not exist. I am in deadly peril always, +for these spasms are sudden and irregular, and of course I cannot tell +when to be getting out of the way. If I am accidentally murdered, some +time, during one of these romantic frenzies of the pilgrims, Mr. Grimes +must be rigidly held to answer as an accessory before the fact. If the +pilgrims would take deliberate aim and shoot at a man, it would be all +right and proper--because that man would not be in any danger; but these +random assaults are what I object to. I do not wish to see any more +places like Esdraelon, where the ground is level and people can gallop. +It puts melodramatic nonsense into the pilgrims' heads. All at once, +when one is jogging along stupidly in the sun, and thinking about +something ever so far away, here they come, at a stormy gallop, spurring +and whooping at those ridgy old sore-backed plugs till their heels fly +higher than their heads, and as they whiz by, out comes a little +potato-gun of a revolver, there is a startling little pop, and a small pellet +goes singing through the air. Now that I have begun this pilgrimage, I +intend to go through with it, though sooth to say, nothing but the most +desperate valor has kept me to my purpose up to the present time. I do +not mind Bedouins,--I am not afraid of them; because neither Bedouins nor +ordinary Arabs have shown any disposition to harm us, but I do feel +afraid of my own comrades. + +Arriving at the furthest verge of the Plain, we rode a little way up a +hill and found ourselves at Endor, famous for its witch. Her descendants +are there yet. They were the wildest horde of half-naked savages we have +found thus far. They swarmed out of mud bee-hives; out of hovels of the +dry-goods box pattern; out of gaping caves under shelving rocks; out of +crevices in the earth. In five minutes the dead solitude and silence of +the place were no more, and a begging, screeching, shouting mob were +struggling about the horses' feet and blocking the way. "Bucksheesh! +bucksheesh! bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh!" It was Magdala over +again, only here the glare from the infidel eyes was fierce and full of +hate. The population numbers two hundred and fifty, and more than half +the citizens live in caves in the rock. Dirt, degradation and savagery +are Endor's specialty. We say no more about Magdala and Deburieh now. +Endor heads the list. It is worse than any Indian 'campoodie'. The hill +is barren, rocky, and forbidding. No sprig of grass is visible, and only +one tree. This is a fig-tree, which maintains a precarious footing among +the rocks at the mouth of the dismal cavern once occupied by the +veritable Witch of Endor. In this cavern, tradition says, Saul, the +king, sat at midnight, and stared and trembled, while the earth shook, +the thunders crashed among the hills, and out of the midst of fire and +smoke the spirit of the dead prophet rose up and confronted him. Saul +had crept to this place in the darkness, while his army slept, to learn +what fate awaited him in the morrow's battle. He went away a sad man, to +meet disgrace and death. + +A spring trickles out of the rock in the gloomy recesses of the cavern, +and we were thirsty. The citizens of Endor objected to our going in +there. They do not mind dirt; they do not mind rags; they do not mind +vermin; they do not mind barbarous ignorance and savagery; they do not +mind a reasonable degree of starvation, but they do like to be pure and +holy before their god, whoever he may be, and therefore they shudder and +grow almost pale at the idea of Christian lips polluting a spring whose +waters must descend into their sanctified gullets. We had no wanton +desire to wound even their feelings or trample upon their prejudices, but +we were out of water, thus early in the day, and were burning up with +thirst. It was at this time, and under these circumstances, that I +framed an aphorism which has already become celebrated. I said: +"Necessity knows no law." We went in and drank. + +We got away from the noisy wretches, finally, dropping them in squads and +couples as we filed over the hills--the aged first, the infants next, the +young girls further on; the strong men ran beside us a mile, and only +left when they had secured the last possible piastre in the way of +bucksheesh. + +In an hour, we reached Nain, where Christ raised the widow's son to life. +Nain is Magdala on a small scale. It has no population of any +consequence. Within a hundred yards of it is the original graveyard, for +aught I know; the tombstones lie flat on the ground, which is Jewish +fashion in Syria. I believe the Moslems do not allow them to have +upright tombstones. A Moslem grave is usually roughly plastered over and +whitewashed, and has at one end an upright projection which is shaped +into exceedingly rude attempts at ornamentation. In the cities, there is +often no appearance of a grave at all; a tall, slender marble tombstone, +elaborately lettred, gilded and painted, marks the burial place, and this +is surmounted by a turban, so carved and shaped as to signify the dead +man's rank in life. + +They showed a fragment of ancient wall which they said was one side of +the gate out of which the widow's dead son was being brought so many +centuries ago when Jesus met the procession: + + "Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold there was a + dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a + widow: and much people of the city was with her. + + "And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said, Weep + not. + + "And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood + still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, arise. + + "And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered + him to his mother. + + "And there came a fear on all. And they glorified God, saying, That + a great prophet is risen up among us; and That God hath visited his + people." + +A little mosque stands upon the spot which tradition says was occupied by +the widow's dwelling. Two or three aged Arabs sat about its door. We +entered, and the pilgrims broke specimens from the foundation walls, +though they had to touch, and even step, upon the "praying carpets" to do +it. It was almost the same as breaking pieces from the hearts of those +old Arabs. To step rudely upon the sacred praying mats, with booted +feet--a thing not done by any Arab--was to inflict pain upon men who had +not offended us in any way. Suppose a party of armed foreigners were to +enter a village church in America and break ornaments from the altar +railings for curiosities, and climb up and walk upon the Bible and the +pulpit cushions? However, the cases are different. One is the +profanation of a temple of our faith--the other only the profanation of a +pagan one. + +We descended to the Plain again, and halted a moment at a well--of +Abraham's time, no doubt. It was in a desert place. It was walled three +feet above ground with squared and heavy blocks of stone, after the +manner of Bible pictures. Around it some camels stood, and others knelt. +There was a group of sober little donkeys with naked, dusky children +clambering about them, or sitting astride their rumps, or pulling their +tails. Tawny, black-eyed, barefooted maids, arrayed in rags and adorned +with brazen armlets and pinchbeck ear-rings, were poising water-jars upon +their heads, or drawing water from the well. A flock of sheep stood by, +waiting for the shepherds to fill the hollowed stones with water, so that +they might drink--stones which, like those that walled the well, were +worn smooth and deeply creased by the chafing chins of a hundred +generations of thirsty animals. Picturesque Arabs sat upon the ground, +in groups, and solemnly smoked their long-stemmed chibouks. Other Arabs +were filling black hog-skins with water--skins which, well filled, and +distended with water till the short legs projected painfully out of the +proper line, looked like the corpses of hogs bloated by drowning. Here +was a grand Oriental picture which I had worshiped a thousand times in +soft, rich steel engravings! But in the engraving there was no +desolation; no dirt; no rags; no fleas; no ugly features; no sore eyes; +no feasting flies; no besotted ignorance in the countenances; no raw +places on the donkeys' backs; no disagreeable jabbering in unknown +tongues; no stench of camels; no suggestion that a couple of tons of +powder placed under the party and touched off would heighten the effect +and give to the scene a genuine interest and a charm which it would +always be pleasant to recall, even though a man lived a thousand years. +Oriental scenes look best in steel engravings. I cannot be imposed upon +any more by that picture of the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon. I shall +say to myself, You look fine, Madam but your feet are not clean and you +smell like a camel. + +Presently a wild Arab in charge of a camel train recognized an old friend +in Ferguson, and they ran and fell upon each other's necks and kissed +each other's grimy, bearded faces upon both cheeks. It explained +instantly a something which had always seemed to me only a farfetched +Oriental figure of speech. I refer to the circumstance of Christ's +rebuking a Pharisee, or some such character, and reminding him that from +him he had received no "kiss of welcome." It did not seem reasonable to +me that men should kiss each other, but I am aware, now, that they did. +There was reason in it, too. The custom was natural and proper; because +people must kiss, and a man would not be likely to kiss one of the women +of this country of his own free will and accord. One must travel, to +learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any +significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning. + +We journeyed around the base of the mountain--"Little Hermon,"--past the +old Crusaders' castle of El Fuleh, and arrived at Shunem. This was +another Magdala, to a fraction, frescoes and all. Here, tradition says, +the prophet Samuel was born, and here the Shunamite woman built a little +house upon the city wall for the accommodation of the prophet Elisha. +Elisha asked her what she expected in return. It was a perfectly natural +question, for these people are and were in the habit of proffering favors +and services and then expecting and begging for pay. Elisha knew them +well. He could not comprehend that any body should build for him that +humble little chamber for the mere sake of old friendship, and with no +selfish motive whatever. It used to seem a very impolite, not to say a +rude, question, for Elisha to ask the woman, but it does not seem so to +me now. The woman said she expected nothing. Then for her goodness and +her unselfishness, he rejoiced her heart with the news that she should +bear a son. It was a high reward--but she would not have thanked him for +a daughter--daughters have always been unpopular here. The son was born, +grew, waxed strong, died. Elisha restored him to life in Shunem. + +We found here a grove of lemon trees--cool, shady, hung with fruit. One +is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare, but to me this grove +seemed very beautiful. It was beautiful. I do not overestimate it. I +must always remember Shunem gratefully, as a place which gave to us this +leafy shelter after our long, hot ride. We lunched, rested, chatted, +smoked our pipes an hour, and then mounted and moved on. + +As we trotted across the Plain of Jezreel, we met half a dozen Digger +Indians (Bedouins) with very long spears in their hands, cavorting around +on old crowbait horses, and spearing imaginary enemies; whooping, and +fluttering their rags in the wind, and carrying on in every respect like +a pack of hopeless lunatics. At last, here were the "wild, free sons of +the desert, speeding over the plain like the wind, on their beautiful +Arabian mares" we had read so much about and longed so much to see! Here +were the "picturesque costumes!" This was the "gallant spectacle!" +Tatterdemalion vagrants--cheap braggadocio--"Arabian mares" spined and +necked like the ichthyosaurus in the museum, and humped and cornered like +a dromedary! To glance at the genuine son of the desert is to take the +romance out of him forever--to behold his steed is to long in charity to +strip his harness off and let him fall to pieces. + +Presently we came to a ruinous old town on a hill, the same being the +ancient Jezreel. + +Ahab, King of Samaria, (this was a very vast kingdom, for those days, and +was very nearly half as large as Rhode Island) dwelt in the city of +Jezreel, which was his capital. Near him lived a man by the name of +Naboth, who had a vineyard. The King asked him for it, and when he would +not give it, offered to buy it. But Naboth refused to sell it. In those +days it was considered a sort of crime to part with one's inheritance at +any price--and even if a man did part with it, it reverted to himself or +his heirs again at the next jubilee year. So this spoiled child of a +King went and lay down on the bed with his face to the wall, and grieved +sorely. The Queen, a notorious character in those days, and whose name +is a by-word and a reproach even in these, came in and asked him +wherefore he sorrowed, and he told her. Jezebel said she could secure +the vineyard; and she went forth and forged letters to the nobles and +wise men, in the King's name, and ordered them to proclaim a fast and set +Naboth on high before the people, and suborn two witnesses to swear that +he had blasphemed. They did it, and the people stoned the accused by the +city wall, and he died. Then Jezebel came and told the King, and said, +Behold, Naboth is no more--rise up and seize the vineyard. So Ahab +seized the vineyard, and went into it to possess it. But the Prophet +Elijah came to him there and read his fate to him, and the fate of +Jezebel; and said that in the place where dogs licked the blood of +Naboth, dogs should also lick his blood--and he said, likewise, the dogs +should eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel. In the course of time, the +King was killed in battle, and when his chariot wheels were washed in the +pool of Samaria, the dogs licked the blood. In after years, Jehu, who +was King of Israel, marched down against Jezreel, by order of one of the +Prophets, and administered one of those convincing rebukes so common +among the people of those days: he killed many kings and their subjects, +and as he came along he saw Jezebel, painted and finely dressed, looking +out of a window, and ordered that she be thrown down to him. A servant +did it, and Jehu's horse trampled her under foot. Then Jehu went in and +sat down to dinner; and presently he said, Go and bury this cursed woman, +for she is a King's daughter. The spirit of charity came upon him too +late, however, for the prophecy had already been fulfilled--the dogs had +eaten her, and they "found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, +and the palms of her hands." + +Ahab, the late King, had left a helpless family behind him, and Jehu +killed seventy of the orphan sons. Then he killed all the relatives, and +teachers, and servants and friends of the family, and rested from his +labors, until he was come near to Samaria, where he met forty-two persons +and asked them who they were; they said they were brothers of the King of +Judah. He killed them. When he got to Samaria, he said he would show +his zeal for the Lord; so he gathered all the priests and people together +that worshiped Baal, pretending that he was going to adopt that worship +and offer up a great sacrifice; and when they were all shut up where they +could not defend themselves, he caused every person of them to be killed. +Then Jehu, the good missionary, rested from his labors once more. + +We went back to the valley, and rode to the Fountain of Ain Jelud. They +call it the Fountain of Jezreel, usually. It is a pond about one hundred +feet square and four feet deep, with a stream of water trickling into it +from under an overhanging ledge of rocks. It is in the midst of a great +solitude. Here Gideon pitched his camp in the old times; behind Shunem +lay the "Midianites, the Amalekites, and the Children of the East," who +were "as grasshoppers for multitude; both they and their camels were +without number, as the sand by the sea-side for multitude." Which means +that there were one hundred and thirty-five thousand men, and that they +had transportation service accordingly. + +Gideon, with only three hundred men, surprised them in the night, and +stood by and looked on while they butchered each other until a hundred +and twenty thousand lay dead on the field. + +We camped at Jenin before night, and got up and started again at one +o'clock in the morning. Somewhere towards daylight we passed the +locality where the best authenticated tradition locates the pit into +which Joseph's brethren threw him, and about noon, after passing over a +succession of mountain tops, clad with groves of fig and olive trees, +with the Mediterranean in sight some forty miles away, and going by many +ancient Biblical cities whose inhabitants glowered savagely upon our +Christian procession, and were seemingly inclined to practice on it with +stones, we came to the singularly terraced and unlovely hills that +betrayed that we were out of Galilee and into Samaria at last. + +We climbed a high hill to visit the city of Samaria, where the woman may +have hailed from who conversed with Christ at Jacob's Well, and from +whence, no doubt, came also the celebrated Good Samaritan. Herod the +Great is said to have made a magnificent city of this place, and a great +number of coarse limestone columns, twenty feet high and two feet +through, that are almost guiltless of architectural grace of shape and +ornament, are pointed out by many authors as evidence of the fact. They +would not have been considered handsome in ancient Greece, however. + +The inhabitants of this camp are particularly vicious, and stoned two +parties of our pilgrims a day or two ago who brought about the difficulty +by showing their revolvers when they did not intend to use them--a thing +which is deemed bad judgment in the Far West, and ought certainly to be +so considered any where. In the new Territories, when a man puts his +hand on a weapon, he knows that he must use it; he must use it instantly +or expect to be shot down where he stands. Those pilgrims had been +reading Grimes. + +There was nothing for us to do in Samaria but buy handfuls of old Roman +coins at a franc a dozen, and look at a dilapidated church of the +Crusaders and a vault in it which once contained the body of John the +Baptist. This relic was long ago carried away to Genoa. + +Samaria stood a disastrous siege, once, in the days of Elisha, at the +hands of the King of Syria. Provisions reached such a figure that "an +ass' head was sold for eighty pieces of silver and the fourth part of a +cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver." + +An incident recorded of that heavy time will give one a very good idea of +the distress that prevailed within these crumbling walls. As the King +was walking upon the battlements one day, "a woman cried out, saying, +Help, my lord, O King! And the King said, What aileth thee? and she +answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him +to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and did +eat him; and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son that we may +eat him; and she hath hid her son." + +The prophet Elisha declared that within four and twenty hours the prices +of food should go down to nothing, almost, and it was so. The Syrian +army broke camp and fled, for some cause or other, the famine was +relieved from without, and many a shoddy speculator in dove's dung and +ass's meat was ruined. + +We were glad to leave this hot and dusty old village and hurry on. At +two o'clock we stopped to lunch and rest at ancient Shechem, between the +historic Mounts of Gerizim and Ebal, where in the old times the books of +the law, the curses and the blessings, were read from the heights to the +Jewish multitudes below. + + + + +CHAPTER LII. + +The narrow canon in which Nablous, or Shechem, is situated, is under high +cultivation, and the soil is exceedingly black and fertile. It is well +watered, and its affluent vegetation gains effect by contrast with the +barren hills that tower on either side. One of these hills is the +ancient Mount of Blessings and the other the Mount of Curses and wise men +who seek for fulfillments of prophecy think they find here a wonder of +this kind--to wit, that the Mount of Blessings is strangely fertile and +its mate as strangely unproductive. We could not see that there was +really much difference between them in this respect, however. + +Shechem is distinguished as one of the residences of the patriarch Jacob, +and as the seat of those tribes that cut themselves loose from their +brethren of Israel and propagated doctrines not in conformity with those +of the original Jewish creed. For thousands of years this clan have +dwelt in Shechem under strict tabu, and having little commerce or +fellowship with their fellow men of any religion or nationality. For +generations they have not numbered more than one or two hundred, but they +still adhere to their ancient faith and maintain their ancient rites and +ceremonies. Talk of family and old descent! Princes and nobles pride +themselves upon lineages they can trace back some hundreds of years. +What is this trifle to this handful of old first families of Shechem who +can name their fathers straight back without a flaw for thousands +--straight back to a period so remote that men reared in a country where +the days of two hundred years ago are called "ancient" times grow dazed +and bewildered when they try to comprehend it! Here is respectability +for you--here is "family"--here is high descent worth talking about. +This sad, proud remnant of a once mighty community still hold themselves +aloof from all the world; they still live as their fathers lived, labor +as their fathers labored, think as they did, feel as they did, worship in +the same place, in sight of the same landmarks, and in the same quaint, +patriarchal way their ancestors did more than thirty centuries ago. I +found myself gazing at any straggling scion of this strange race with a +riveted fascination, just as one would stare at a living mastodon, or a +megatherium that had moved in the grey dawn of creation and seen the +wonders of that mysterious world that was before the flood. + +Carefully preserved among the sacred archives of this curious community +is a MSS. copy of the ancient Jewish law, which is said to be the oldest +document on earth. It is written on vellum, and is some four or five +thousand years old. Nothing but bucksheesh can purchase a sight. Its +fame is somewhat dimmed in these latter days, because of the doubts so +many authors of Palestine travels have felt themselves privileged to cast +upon it. Speaking of this MSS. reminds me that I procured from the +high-priest of this ancient Samaritan community, at great expense, a +secret document of still higher antiquity and far more extraordinary +interest, which I propose to publish as soon as I have finished +translating it. + +Joshua gave his dying injunction to the children of Israel at Shechem, +and buried a valuable treasure secretly under an oak tree there about the +same time. The superstitious Samaritans have always been afraid to hunt +for it. They believe it is guarded by fierce spirits invisible to men. + +About a mile and a half from Shechem we halted at the base of Mount Ebal +before a little square area, inclosed by a high stone wall, neatly +whitewashed. Across one end of this inclosure is a tomb built after the +manner of the Moslems. It is the tomb of Joseph. No truth is better +authenticated than this. + +When Joseph was dying he prophesied that exodus of the Israelites from +Egypt which occurred four hundred years afterwards. At the same time he +exacted of his people an oath that when they journeyed to the land of +Canaan they would bear his bones with them and bury them in the ancient +inheritance of his fathers. The oath was kept. "And the bones of Joseph, +which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in +Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor +the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of silver." + +Few tombs on earth command the veneration of so many races and men of +divers creeds as this of Joseph. "Samaritan and Jew, Moslem and +Christian alike, revere it, and honor it with their visits. The tomb of +Joseph, the dutiful son, the affectionate, forgiving brother, the +virtuous man, the wise Prince and ruler. Egypt felt his influence--the +world knows his history." + +In this same "parcel of ground" which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor +for a hundred pieces of silver, is Jacob's celebrated well. It is cut in +the solid rock, and is nine feet square and ninety feet deep. The name +of this unpretending hole in the ground, which one might pass by and take +no notice of, is as familiar as household words to even the children and +the peasants of many a far-off country. It is more famous than the +Parthenon; it is older than the Pyramids. + +It was by this well that Jesus sat and talked with a woman of that +strange, antiquated Samaritan community I have been speaking of, and told +her of the mysterious water of life. As descendants of old English +nobles still cherish in the traditions of their houses how that this king +or that king tarried a day with some favored ancestor three hundred years +ago, no doubt the descendants of the woman of Samaria, living there in +Shechem, still refer with pardonable vanity to this conversation of their +ancestor, held some little time gone by, with the Messiah of the +Christians. It is not likely that they undervalue a distinction such as +this. Samaritan nature is human nature, and human nature remembers +contact with the illustrious, always. + +For an offense done to the family honor, the sons of Jacob exterminated +all Shechem once. + +We left Jacob's Well and traveled till eight in the evening, but rather +slowly, for we had been in the saddle nineteen hours, and the horses were +cruelly tired. We got so far ahead of the tents that we had to camp in +an Arab village, and sleep on the ground. We could have slept in the +largest of the houses; but there were some little drawbacks: it was +populous with vermin, it had a dirt floor, it was in no respect cleanly, +and there was a family of goats in the only bedroom, and two donkeys in +the parlor. Outside there were no inconveniences, except that the dusky, +ragged, earnest-eyed villagers of both sexes and all ages grouped +themselves on their haunches all around us, and discussed us and +criticised us with noisy tongues till midnight. We did not mind the +noise, being tired, but, doubtless, the reader is aware that it is almost +an impossible thing to go to sleep when you know that people are looking +at you. We went to bed at ten, and got up again at two and started once +more. Thus are people persecuted by dragomen, whose sole ambition in +life is to get ahead of each other. + +About daylight we passed Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant rested +three hundred years, and at whose gates good old Eli fell down and "brake +his neck" when the messenger, riding hard from the battle, told him of +the defeat of his people, the death of his sons, and, more than all, the +capture of Israel's pride, her hope, her refuge, the ancient Ark her +forefathers brought with them out of Egypt. It is little wonder that +under circumstances like these he fell down and brake his neck. But +Shiloh had no charms for us. We were so cold that there was no comfort +but in motion, and so drowsy we could hardly sit upon the horses. + +After a while we came to a shapeless mass of ruins, which still bears the +name of Bethel. It was here that Jacob lay down and had that superb +vision of angels flitting up and down a ladder that reached from the +clouds to earth, and caught glimpses of their blessed home through the +open gates of Heaven. + +The pilgrims took what was left of the hallowed ruin, and we pressed on +toward the goal of our crusade, renowned Jerusalem. + +The further we went the hotter the sun got, and the more rocky and bare, +repulsive and dreary the landscape became. There could not have been +more fragments of stone strewn broadcast over this part of the world, if +every ten square feet of the land had been occupied by a separate and +distinct stonecutter's establishment for an age. There was hardly a tree +or a shrub any where. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends +of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. No landscape +exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds the +approaches to Jerusalem. The only difference between the roads and the +surrounding country, perhaps, is that there are rather more rocks in the +roads than in the surrounding country. + +We passed Ramah, and Beroth, and on the right saw the tomb of the prophet +Samuel, perched high upon a commanding eminence. Still no Jerusalem came +in sight. We hurried on impatiently. We halted a moment at the ancient +Fountain of Beira, but its stones, worn deeply by the chins of thirsty +animals that are dead and gone centuries ago, had no interest for us--we +longed to see Jerusalem. We spurred up hill after hill, and usually +began to stretch our necks minutes before we got to the top--but +disappointment always followed:--more stupid hills beyond--more unsightly +landscape--no Holy City. + +At last, away in the middle of the day, ancient bite of wall and +crumbling arches began to line the way--we toiled up one more hill, and +every pilgrim and every sinner swung his hat on high! Jerusalem! + +Perched on its eternal hills, white and domed and solid, massed together +and hooped with high gray walls, the venerable city gleamed in the sun. +So small! Why, it was no larger than an American village of four +thousand inhabitants, and no larger than an ordinary Syrian city of +thirty thousand. Jerusalem numbers only fourteen thousand people. + +We dismounted and looked, without speaking a dozen sentences, across the +wide intervening valley for an hour or more; and noted those prominent +features of the city that pictures make familiar to all men from their +school days till their death. We could recognize the Tower of Hippicus, +the Mosque of Omar, the Damascus Gate, the Mount of Olives, the Valley of +Jehoshaphat, the Tower of David, and the Garden of Gethsemane--and dating +from these landmarks could tell very nearly the localities of many others +we were not able to distinguish. + +I record it here as a notable but not discreditable fact that not even +our pilgrims wept. I think there was no individual in the party whose +brain was not teeming with thoughts and images and memories invoked by +the grand history of the venerable city that lay before us, but still +among them all was no "voice of them that wept." + +There was no call for tears. Tears would have been out of place. The +thoughts Jerusalem suggests are full of poetry, sublimity, and more than +all, dignity. Such thoughts do not find their appropriate expression in +the emotions of the nursery. + +Just after noon we entered these narrow, crooked streets, by the ancient +and the famed Damascus Gate, and now for several hours I have been trying +to comprehend that I am actually in the illustrious old city where +Solomon dwelt, where Abraham held converse with the Deity, and where +walls still stand that witnessed the spectacle of the Crucifixion. + + + + +CHAPTER LIII. + +A fast walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk entirely +around the city in an hour. I do not know how else to make one +understand how small it is. The appearance of the city is peculiar. It +is as knobby with countless little domes as a prison door is with +bolt-heads. Every house has from one to half a dozen of these white +plastered domes of stone, broad and low, sitting in the centre of, or in +a cluster upon, the flat roof. Wherefore, when one looks down from an +eminence, upon the compact mass of houses (so closely crowded together, +in fact, that there is no appearance of streets at all, and so the city +looks solid,) he sees the knobbiest town in the world, except +Constantinople. It looks as if it might be roofed, from centre to +circumference, with inverted saucers. The monotony of the view is +interrupted only by the great Mosque of Omar, the Tower of Hippicus, and +one or two other buildings that rise into commanding prominence. + +The houses are generally two stories high, built strongly of masonry, +whitewashed or plastered outside, and have a cage of wooden lattice-work +projecting in front of every window. To reproduce a Jerusalem street, it +would only be necessary to up-end a chicken-coop and hang it before each +window in an alley of American houses. + +The streets are roughly and badly paved with stone, and are tolerably +crooked--enough so to make each street appear to close together +constantly and come to an end about a hundred yards ahead of a pilgrim as +long as he chooses to walk in it. Projecting from the top of the lower +story of many of the houses is a very narrow porch-roof or shed, without +supports from below; and I have several times seen cats jump across the +street from one shed to the other when they were out calling. The cats +could have jumped double the distance without extraordinary exertion. I +mention these things to give an idea of how narrow the streets are. +Since a cat can jump across them without the least inconvenience, it is +hardly necessary to state that such streets are too narrow for carriages. +These vehicles cannot navigate the Holy City. + +The population of Jerusalem is composed of Moslems, Jews, Greeks, Latins, +Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Abyssinians, Greek Catholics, and a handful of +Protestants. One hundred of the latter sect are all that dwell now in +this birthplace of Christianity. The nice shades of nationality +comprised in the above list, and the languages spoken by them, are +altogether too numerous to mention. It seems to me that all the races +and colors and tongues of the earth must be represented among the +fourteen thousand souls that dwell in Jerusalem. Rags, wretchedness, +poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of +Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound. Lepers, +cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand, and they +know but one word of but one language apparently--the eternal +"bucksheesh." To see the numbers of maimed, malformed and diseased +humanity that throng the holy places and obstruct the gates, one might +suppose that the ancient days had come again, and that the angel of the +Lord was expected to descend at any moment to stir the waters of +Bethesda. Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not +desire to live here. + +One naturally goes first to the Holy Sepulchre. It is right in the city, +near the western gate; it and the place of the Crucifixion, and, in fact, +every other place intimately connected with that tremendous event, are +ingeniously massed together and covered by one roof--the dome of the +Church of the Holy Sepulchre. + +Entering the building, through the midst of the usual assemblage of +beggars, one sees on his left a few Turkish guards--for Christians of +different sects will not only quarrel, but fight, also, in this sacred +place, if allowed to do it. Before you is a marble slab, which covers +the Stone of Unction, whereon the Saviour's body was laid to prepare it +for burial. It was found necessary to conceal the real stone in this way +in order to save it from destruction. Pilgrims were too much given to +chipping off pieces of it to carry home. Near by is a circular railing +which marks the spot where the Virgin stood when the Lord's body was +anointed. + +Entering the great Rotunda, we stand before the most sacred locality in +Christendom--the grave of Jesus. It is in the centre of the church, and +immediately under the great dome. It is inclosed in a sort of little +temple of yellow and white stone, of fanciful design. Within the little +temple is a portion of the very stone which was rolled away from the door +of the Sepulchre, and on which the angel was sitting when Mary came +thither "at early dawn." Stooping low, we enter the vault--the Sepulchre +itself. It is only about six feet by seven, and the stone couch on which +the dead Saviour lay extends from end to end of the apartment and +occupies half its width. It is covered with a marble slab which has been +much worn by the lips of pilgrims. This slab serves as an altar, now. +Over it hang some fifty gold and silver lamps, which are kept always +burning, and the place is otherwise scandalized by trumpery, gewgaws, and +tawdry ornamentation. + +All sects of Christians (except Protestants,) have chapels under the roof +of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and each must keep to itself and not +venture upon another's ground. It has been proven conclusively that they +can not worship together around the grave of the Saviour of the World in +peace. The chapel of the Syrians is not handsome; that of the Copts is +the humblest of them all. It is nothing but a dismal cavern, roughly +hewn in the living rock of the Hill of Calvary. In one side of it two +ancient tombs are hewn, which are claimed to be those in which Nicodemus +and Joseph of Aramathea were buried. + +As we moved among the great piers and pillars of another part of the +church, we came upon a party of black-robed, animal-looking Italian +monks, with candles in their hands, who were chanting something in Latin, +and going through some kind of religious performance around a disk of +white marble let into the floor. It was there that the risen Saviour +appeared to Mary Magdalen in the likeness of a gardener. Near by was a +similar stone, shaped like a star--here the Magdalen herself stood, at +the same time. Monks were performing in this place also. They perform +everywhere--all over the vast building, and at all hours. Their candles +are always flitting about in the gloom, and making the dim old church +more dismal than there is any necessity that it should be, even though it +is a tomb. + +We were shown the place where our Lord appeared to His mother after the +Resurrection. Here, also, a marble slab marks the place where St. +Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, found the crosses about +three hundred years after the Crucifixion. According to the legend, this +great discovery elicited extravagant demonstrations of joy. But they +were of short duration. The question intruded itself: "Which bore the +blessed Saviour, and which the thieves?" To be in doubt, in so mighty a +matter as this--to be uncertain which one to adore--was a grievous +misfortune. It turned the public joy to sorrow. But when lived there a +holy priest who could not set so simple a trouble as this at rest? One +of these soon hit upon a plan that would be a certain test. A noble lady +lay very ill in Jerusalem. The wise priests ordered that the three +crosses be taken to her bedside one at a time. It was done. When her +eyes fell upon the first one, she uttered a scream that was heard beyond +the Damascus Gate, and even upon the Mount of Olives, it was said, and +then fell back in a deadly swoon. They recovered her and brought the +second cross. Instantly she went into fearful convulsions, and it was +with the greatest difficulty that six strong men could hold her. They +were afraid, now, to bring in the third cross. They began to fear that +possibly they had fallen upon the wrong crosses, and that the true cross +was not with this number at all. However, as the woman seemed likely to +die with the convulsions that were tearing her, they concluded that the +third could do no more than put her out of her misery with a happy +dispatch. So they brought it, and behold, a miracle! The woman sprang +from her bed, smiling and joyful, and perfectly restored to health. When +we listen to evidence like this, we cannot but believe. We would be +ashamed to doubt, and properly, too. Even the very part of Jerusalem +where this all occurred is there yet. So there is really no room for +doubt. + +The priests tried to show us, through a small screen, a fragment of the +genuine Pillar of Flagellation, to which Christ was bound when they +scourged him. But we could not see it, because it was dark inside the +screen. However, a baton is kept here, which the pilgrim thrusts through +a hole in the screen, and then he no longer doubts that the true Pillar +of Flagellation is in there. He can not have any excuse to doubt it, for +he can feel it with the stick. He can feel it as distinctly as he could +feel any thing. + +Not far from here was a niche where they used to preserve a piece of the +True Cross, but it is gone, now. This piece of the cross was discovered +in the sixteenth century. The Latin priests say it was stolen away, long +ago, by priests of another sect. That seems like a hard statement to +make, but we know very well that it was stolen, because we have seen it +ourselves in several of the cathedrals of Italy and France. + +But the relic that touched us most was the plain old sword of that stout +Crusader, Godfrey of Bulloigne--King Godfrey of Jerusalem. No blade in +Christendom wields such enchantment as this--no blade of all that rust in +the ancestral halls of Europe is able to invoke such visions of romance +in the brain of him who looks upon it--none that can prate of such +chivalric deeds or tell such brave tales of the warrior days of old. It +stirs within a man every memory of the Holy Wars that has been sleeping +in his brain for years, and peoples his thoughts with mail-clad images, +with marching armies, with battles and with sieges. It speaks to him of +Baldwin, and Tancred, the princely Saladin, and great Richard of the Lion +Heart. It was with just such blades as these that these splendid heroes +of romance used to segregate a man, so to speak, and leave the half of +him to fall one way and the other half the other. This very sword has +cloven hundreds of Saracen Knights from crown to chin in those old times +when Godfrey wielded it. It was enchanted, then, by a genius that was +under the command of King Solomon. When danger approached its master's +tent it always struck the shield and clanged out a fierce alarm upon the +startled ear of night. In times of doubt, or in fog or darkness, if it +were drawn from its sheath it would point instantly toward the foe, and +thus reveal the way--and it would also attempt to start after them of its +own accord. A Christian could not be so disguised that it would not know +him and refuse to hurt him--nor a Moslem so disguised that it would not +leap from its scabbard and take his life. These statements are all well +authenticated in many legends that are among the most trustworthy legends +the good old Catholic monks preserve. I can never forget old Godfrey's +sword, now. I tried it on a Moslem, and clove him in twain like a +doughnut. The spirit of Grimes was upon me, and if I had had a graveyard +I would have destroyed all the infidels in Jerusalem. I wiped the blood +off the old sword and handed it back to the priest--I did not want the +fresh gore to obliterate those sacred spots that crimsoned its brightness +one day six hundred years ago and thus gave Godfrey warning that before +the sun went down his journey of life would end. + +Still moving through the gloom of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre we +came to a small chapel, hewn out of the rock--a place which has been +known as "The Prison of Our Lord" for many centuries. Tradition says +that here the Saviour was confined just previously to the crucifixion. +Under an altar by the door was a pair of stone stocks for human legs. +These things are called the "Bonds of Christ," and the use they were once +put to has given them the name they now bear. + +The Greek Chapel is the most roomy, the richest and the showiest chapel +in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Its altar, like that of all the +Greek churches, is a lofty screen that extends clear across the chapel, +and is gorgeous with gilding and pictures. The numerous lamps that hang +before it are of gold and silver, and cost great sums. + +But the feature of the place is a short column that rises from the middle +of the marble pavement of the chapel, and marks the exact centre of the +earth. The most reliable traditions tell us that this was known to be +the earth's centre, ages ago, and that when Christ was upon earth he set +all doubts upon the subject at rest forever, by stating with his own lips +that the tradition was correct. Remember, He said that that particular +column stood upon the centre of the world. If the centre of the world +changes, the column changes its position accordingly. This column has +moved three different times of its own accord. This is because, in great +convulsions of nature, at three different times, masses of the earth +--whole ranges of mountains, probably--have flown off into space, thus +lessening the diameter of the earth, and changing the exact locality of +its centre by a point or two. This is a very curious and interesting +circumstance, and is a withering rebuke to those philosophers who would +make us believe that it is not possible for any portion of the earth to +fly off into space. + +To satisfy himself that this spot was really the centre of the earth, a +sceptic once paid well for the privilege of ascending to the dome of the +church to see if the sun gave him a shadow at noon. He came down +perfectly convinced. The day was very cloudy and the sun threw no +shadows at all; but the man was satisfied that if the sun had come out +and made shadows it could not have made any for him. Proofs like these +are not to be set aside by the idle tongues of cavilers. To such as are +not bigoted, and are willing to be convinced, they carry a conviction +that nothing can ever shake. + +If even greater proofs than those I have mentioned are wanted, to satisfy +the headstrong and the foolish that this is the genuine centre of the +earth, they are here. The greatest of them lies in the fact that from +under this very column was taken the dust from which Adam was made. This +can surely be regarded in the light of a settler. It is not likely that +the original first man would have been made from an inferior quality of +earth when it was entirely convenient to get first quality from the +world's centre. This will strike any reflecting mind forcibly. That +Adam was formed of dirt procured in this very spot is amply proven by the +fact that in six thousand years no man has ever been able to prove that +the dirt was not procured here whereof he was made. + +It is a singular circumstance that right under the roof of this same +great church, and not far away from that illustrious column, Adam +himself, the father of the human race, lies buried. There is no question +that he is actually buried in the grave which is pointed out as his +--there can be none--because it has never yet been proven that that grave +is not the grave in which he is buried. + +The tomb of Adam! How touching it was, here in a land of strangers, far +away from home, and friends, and all who cared for me, thus to discover +the grave of a blood relation. True, a distant one, but still a +relation. The unerring instinct of nature thrilled its recognition. The +fountain of my filial affection was stirred to its profoundest depths, +and I gave way to tumultuous emotion. I leaned upon a pillar and burst +into tears. I deem it no shame to have wept over the grave of my poor +dead relative. Let him who would sneer at my emotion close this volume +here, for he will find little to his taste in my journeyings through Holy +Land. Noble old man--he did not live to see me--he did not live to see +his child. And I--I--alas, I did not live to see him. Weighed down by +sorrow and disappointment, he died before I was born--six thousand brief +summers before I was born. But let us try to bear it with fortitude. +Let us trust that he is better off where he is. Let us take comfort in +the thought that his loss is our eternal gain. + +The next place the guide took us to in the holy church was an altar +dedicated to the Roman soldier who was of the military guard that +attended at the Crucifixion to keep order, and who--when the vail of the +Temple was rent in the awful darkness that followed; when the rock of +Golgotha was split asunder by an earthquake; when the artillery of heaven +thundered, and in the baleful glare of the lightnings the shrouded dead +flitted about the streets of Jerusalem--shook with fear and said, "Surely +this was the Son of God!" Where this altar stands now, that Roman +soldier stood then, in full view of the crucified Saviour--in full sight +and hearing of all the marvels that were transpiring far and wide about +the circumference of the Hill of Calvary. And in this self-same spot the +priests of the Temple beheaded him for those blasphemous words he had +spoken. + +In this altar they used to keep one of the most curious relics that human +eyes ever looked upon--a thing that had power to fascinate the beholder +in some mysterious way and keep him gazing for hours together. It was +nothing less than the copper plate Pilate put upon the Saviour's cross, +and upon which he wrote, "THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS." I think St. +Helena, the mother of Constantine, found this wonderful memento when she +was here in the third century. She traveled all over Palestine, and was +always fortunate. Whenever the good old enthusiast found a thing +mentioned in her Bible, Old or New, she would go and search for that +thing, and never stop until she found it. If it was Adam, she would find +Adam; if it was the Ark, she would find the Ark; if it was Goliath, or +Joshua, she would find them. She found the inscription here that I was +speaking of, I think. She found it in this very spot, close to where the +martyred Roman soldier stood. That copper plate is in one of the +churches in Rome, now. Any one can see it there. The inscription is +very distinct. + +We passed along a few steps and saw the altar built over the very spot +where the good Catholic priests say the soldiers divided the raiment of +the Saviour. + +Then we went down into a cavern which cavilers say was once a cistern. +It is a chapel, now, however--the Chapel of St. Helena. It is fifty-one +feet long by forty-three wide. In it is a marble chair which Helena used +to sit in while she superintended her workmen when they were digging and +delving for the True Cross. In this place is an altar dedicated to St. +Dimas, the penitent thief. A new bronze statue is here--a statue of St. +Helena. It reminded us of poor Maximilian, so lately shot. He presented +it to this chapel when he was about to leave for his throne in Mexico. + +From the cistern we descended twelve steps into a large roughly-shaped +grotto, carved wholly out of the living rock. Helena blasted it out when +she was searching for the true Cross. She had a laborious piece of work, +here, but it was richly rewarded. Out of this place she got the crown of +thorns, the nails of the cross, the true Cross itself, and the cross of +the penitent thief. When she thought she had found every thing and was +about to stop, she was told in a dream to continue a day longer. It was +very fortunate. She did so, and found the cross of the other thief. + +The walls and roof of this grotto still weep bitter tears in memory of +the event that transpired on Calvary, and devout pilgrims groan and sob +when these sad tears fall upon them from the dripping rock. The monks +call this apartment the "Chapel of the Invention of the Cross"--a name +which is unfortunate, because it leads the ignorant to imagine that a +tacit acknowledgment is thus made that the tradition that Helena found +the true Cross here is a fiction--an invention. It is a happiness to +know, however, that intelligent people do not doubt the story in any of +its particulars. + +Priests of any of the chapels and denominations in the Church of the Holy +Sepulchre can visit this sacred grotto to weep and pray and worship the +gentle Redeemer. Two different congregations are not allowed to enter at +the same time, however, because they always fight. + +Still marching through the venerable Church of the Holy Sepulchre, among +chanting priests in coarse long robes and sandals; pilgrims of all colors +and many nationalities, in all sorts of strange costumes; under dusky +arches and by dingy piers and columns; through a sombre cathedral gloom +freighted with smoke and incense, and faintly starred with scores of +candles that appeared suddenly and as suddenly disappeared, or drifted +mysteriously hither and thither about the distant aisles like ghostly +jack-o'-lanterns--we came at last to a small chapel which is called the +"Chapel of the Mocking." Under the altar was a fragment of a marble +column; this was the seat Christ sat on when he was reviled, and +mockingly made King, crowned with a crown of thorns and sceptred with a +reed. It was here that they blindfolded him and struck him, and said in +derision, "Prophesy who it is that smote thee." The tradition that this +is the identical spot of the mocking is a very ancient one. The guide +said that Saewulf was the first to mention it. I do not know Saewulf, +but still, I cannot well refuse to receive his evidence--none of us can. + +They showed us where the great Godfrey and his brother Baldwin, the first +Christian Kings of Jerusalem, once lay buried by that sacred sepulchre +they had fought so long and so valiantly to wrest from the hands of the +infidel. But the niches that had contained the ashes of these renowned +crusaders were empty. Even the coverings of their tombs were gone +--destroyed by devout members of the Greek Church, because Godfrey and +Baldwin were Latin princes, and had been reared in a Christian faith +whose creed differed in some unimportant respects from theirs. + +We passed on, and halted before the tomb of Melchisedek! You will +remember Melchisedek, no doubt; he was the King who came out and levied a +tribute on Abraham the time that he pursued Lot's captors to Dan, and +took all their property from them. That was about four thousand years +ago, and Melchisedek died shortly afterward. However, his tomb is in a +good state of preservation. + +When one enters the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Sepulchre itself is +the first thing he desires to see, and really is almost the first thing +he does see. The next thing he has a strong yearning to see is the spot +where the Saviour was crucified. But this they exhibit last. It is the +crowning glory of the place. One is grave and thoughtful when he stands +in the little Tomb of the Saviour--he could not well be otherwise in such +a place--but he has not the slightest possible belief that ever the Lord +lay there, and so the interest he feels in the spot is very, very greatly +marred by that reflection. He looks at the place where Mary stood, in +another part of the church, and where John stood, and Mary Magdalen; +where the mob derided the Lord; where the angel sat; where the crown of +thorns was found, and the true Cross; where the risen Saviour appeared +--he looks at all these places with interest, but with the same conviction +he felt in the case of the Sepulchre, that there is nothing genuine about +them, and that they are imaginary holy places created by the monks. But +the place of the Crucifixion affects him differently. He fully believes +that he is looking upon the very spot where the Savior gave up his +life. He remembers that Christ was very celebrated, long before he came +to Jerusalem; he knows that his fame was so great that crowds followed +him all the time; he is aware that his entry into the city produced a +stirring sensation, and that his reception was a kind of ovation; he can +not overlook the fact that when he was crucified there were very many in +Jerusalem who believed that he was the true Son of God. To publicly +execute such a personage was sufficient in itself to make the locality of +the execution a memorable place for ages; added to this, the storm, the +darkness, the earthquake, the rending of the vail of the Temple, and the +untimely waking of the dead, were events calculated to fix the execution +and the scene of it in the memory of even the most thoughtless witness. +Fathers would tell their sons about the strange affair, and point out the +spot; the sons would transmit the story to their children, and thus a +period of three hundred years would easily be spanned--[The thought is +Mr. Prime's, not mine, and is full of good sense. I borrowed it from his +"Tent Life."--M. T.]--at which time Helena came and built a church upon +Calvary to commemorate the death and burial of the Lord and preserve the +sacred place in the memories of men; since that time there has always +been a church there. It is not possible that there can be any mistake +about the locality of the Crucifixion. Not half a dozen persons knew +where they buried the Saviour, perhaps, and a burial is not a startling +event, any how; therefore, we can be pardoned for unbelief in the +Sepulchre, but not in the place of the Crucifixion. Five hundred years +hence there will be no vestige of Bunker Hill Monument left, but America +will still know where the battle was fought and where Warren fell. The +crucifixion of Christ was too notable an event in Jerusalem, and the Hill +of Calvary made too celebrated by it, to be forgotten in the short space +of three hundred years. I climbed the stairway in the church which +brings one to the top of the small inclosed pinnacle of rock, and looked +upon the place where the true cross once stood, with a far more absorbing +interest than I had ever felt in any thing earthly before. I could not +believe that the three holes in the top of the rock were the actual ones +the crosses stood in, but I felt satisfied that those crosses had stood +so near the place now occupied by them, that the few feet of possible +difference were a matter of no consequence. + +When one stands where the Saviour was crucified, he finds it all he can +do to keep it strictly before his mind that Christ was not crucified in a +Catholic Church. He must remind himself every now and then that the +great event transpired in the open air, and not in a gloomy, +candle-lighted cell in a little corner of a vast church, up-stairs +--a small cell all bejeweled and bespangled with flashy ornamentation, +in execrable taste. + +Under a marble altar like a table, is a circular hole in the marble +floor, corresponding with the one just under it in which the true Cross +stood. The first thing every one does is to kneel down and take a candle +and examine this hole. He does this strange prospecting with an amount +of gravity that can never be estimated or appreciated by a man who has +not seen the operation. Then he holds his candle before a richly +engraved picture of the Saviour, done on a messy slab of gold, and +wonderfully rayed and starred with diamonds, which hangs above the hole +within the altar, and his solemnity changes to lively admiration. He +rises and faces the finely wrought figures of the Saviour and the +malefactors uplifted upon their crosses behind the altar, and bright with +a metallic lustre of many colors. He turns next to the figures close to +them of the Virgin and Mary Magdalen; next to the rift in the living rock +made by the earthquake at the time of the Crucifixion, and an extension +of which he had seen before in the wall of one of the grottoes below; he +looks next at the show-case with a figure of the Virgin in it, and is +amazed at the princely fortune in precious gems and jewelry that hangs so +thickly about the form as to hide it like a garment almost. All about +the apartment the gaudy trappings of the Greek Church offend the eye and +keep the mind on the rack to remember that this is the Place of the +Crucifixion--Golgotha--the Mount of Calvary. And the last thing he looks +at is that which was also the first--the place where the true Cross +stood. That will chain him to the spot and compel him to look once more, +and once again, after he has satisfied all curiosity and lost all +interest concerning the other matters pertaining to the locality. + +And so I close my chapter on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre--the most +sacred locality on earth to millions and millions of men, and women, and +children, the noble and the humble, bond and free. In its history from +the first, and in its tremendous associations, it is the most illustrious +edifice in Christendom. With all its clap-trap side-shows and unseemly +impostures of every kind, it is still grand, reverend, venerable--for a +god died there; for fifteen hundred years its shrines have been wet with +the tears of pilgrims from the earth's remotest confines; for more than +two hundred, the most gallant knights that ever wielded sword wasted +their lives away in a struggle to seize it and hold it sacred from +infidel pollution. Even in our own day a war, that cost millions of +treasure and rivers of blood, was fought because two rival nations +claimed the sole right to put a new dome upon it. History is full of +this old Church of the Holy Sepulchre--full of blood that was shed +because of the respect and the veneration in which men held the last +resting-place of the meek and lowly, the mild and gentle, Prince of +Peace! + + + + +CHAPTER LIV. + +We were standing in a narrow street, by the Tower of Antonio. "On these +stones that are crumbling away," the guide said, "the Saviour sat and +rested before taking up the cross. This is the beginning of the +Sorrowful Way, or the Way of Grief." The party took note of the sacred +spot, and moved on. We passed under the "Ecce Homo Arch," and saw the +very window from which Pilate's wife warned her husband to have nothing +to do with the persecution of the Just Man. This window is in an +excellent state of preservation, considering its great age. They showed +us where Jesus rested the second time, and where the mob refused to give +him up, and said, "Let his blood be upon our heads, and upon our +children's children forever." The French Catholics are building a church +on this spot, and with their usual veneration for historical relics, are +incorporating into the new such scraps of ancient walls as they have +found there. Further on, we saw the spot where the fainting Saviour fell +under the weight of his cross. A great granite column of some ancient +temple lay there at the time, and the heavy cross struck it such a blow +that it broke in two in the middle. Such was the guide's story when he +halted us before the broken column. + +We crossed a street, and came presently to the former residence of St. +Veronica. When the Saviour passed there, she came out, full of womanly +compassion, and spoke pitying words to him, undaunted by the hootings and +the threatenings of the mob, and wiped the perspiration from his face +with her handkerchief. We had heard so much of St. Veronica, and seen +her picture by so many masters, that it was like meeting an old friend +unexpectedly to come upon her ancient home in Jerusalem. The strangest +thing about the incident that has made her name so famous, is, that when +she wiped the perspiration away, the print of the Saviour's face remained +upon the handkerchief, a perfect portrait, and so remains unto this day. +We knew this, because we saw this handkerchief in a cathedral in Paris, +in another in Spain, and in two others in Italy. In the Milan cathedral +it costs five francs to see it, and at St. Peter's, at Rome, it is almost +impossible to see it at any price. No tradition is so amply verified as +this of St. Veronica and her handkerchief. + +At the next corner we saw a deep indention in the hard stone masonry of +the corner of a house, but might have gone heedlessly by it but that the +guide said it was made by the elbow of the Saviour, who stumbled here and +fell. Presently we came to just such another indention in a stone wall. +The guide said the Saviour fell here, also, and made this depression with +his elbow. + +There were other places where the Lord fell, and others where he rested; +but one of the most curious landmarks of ancient history we found on this +morning walk through the crooked lanes that lead toward Calvary, was a +certain stone built into a house--a stone that was so seamed and scarred +that it bore a sort of grotesque resemblance to the human face. The +projections that answered for cheeks were worn smooth by the passionate +kisses of generations of pilgrims from distant lands. We asked "Why?" +The guide said it was because this was one of "the very stones of +Jerusalem" that Christ mentioned when he was reproved for permitting the +people to cry "Hosannah!" when he made his memorable entry into the +city upon an ass. One of the pilgrims said, "But there is no evidence +that the stones did cry out--Christ said that if the people stopped from +shouting Hosannah, the very stones would do it." The guide was perfectly +serene. He said, calmly, "This is one of the stones that would have +cried out. "It was of little use to try to shake this fellow's simple +faith--it was easy to see that. + +And so we came at last to another wonder, of deep and abiding interest +--the veritable house where the unhappy wretch once lived who has been +celebrated in song and story for more than eighteen hundred years as the +Wandering Jew. On the memorable day of the Crucifixion he stood in this +old doorway with his arms akimbo, looking out upon the struggling mob +that was approaching, and when the weary Saviour would have sat down and +rested him a moment, pushed him rudely away and said, "Move on!" The +Lord said, "Move on, thou, likewise," and the command has never been +revoked from that day to this. All men know how that the miscreant upon +whose head that just curse fell has roamed up and down the wide world, +for ages and ages, seeking rest and never finding it--courting death but +always in vain--longing to stop, in city, in wilderness, in desert +solitudes, yet hearing always that relentless warning to march--march on! +They say--do these hoary traditions--that when Titus sacked Jerusalem and +slaughtered eleven hundred thousand Jews in her streets and by-ways, the +Wandering Jew was seen always in the thickest of the fight, and that when +battle-axes gleamed in the air, he bowed his head beneath them; when +swords flashed their deadly lightnings, he sprang in their way; he bared +his breast to whizzing javelins, to hissing arrows, to any and to every +weapon that promised death and forgetfulness, and rest. But it was +useless--he walked forth out of the carnage without a wound. And it is +said that five hundred years afterward he followed Mahomet when he +carried destruction to the cities of Arabia, and then turned against him, +hoping in this way to win the death of a traitor. His calculations were +wrong again. No quarter was given to any living creature but one, and +that was the only one of all the host that did not want it. He sought +death five hundred years later, in the wars of the Crusades, and offered +himself to famine and pestilence at Ascalon. He escaped again--he could +not die. These repeated annoyances could have at last but one effect +--they shook his confidence. Since then the Wandering Jew has carried on a +kind of desultory toying with the most promising of the aids and +implements of destruction, but with small hope, as a general thing. He +has speculated some in cholera and railroads, and has taken almost a +lively interest in infernal machines and patent medicines. He is old, +now, and grave, as becomes an age like his; he indulges in no light +amusements save that he goes sometimes to executions, and is fond of +funerals. + +There is one thing he can not avoid; go where he will about the world, he +must never fail to report in Jerusalem every fiftieth year. Only a year +or two ago he was here for the thirty-seventh time since Jesus was +crucified on Calvary. They say that many old people, who are here now, +saw him then, and had seen him before. He looks always the same--old, +and withered, and hollow-eyed, and listless, save that there is about him +something which seems to suggest that he is looking for some one, +expecting some one--the friends of his youth, perhaps. But the most of +them are dead, now. He always pokes about the old streets looking +lonesome, making his mark on a wall here and there, and eyeing the oldest +buildings with a sort of friendly half interest; and he sheds a few tears +at the threshold of his ancient dwelling, and bitter, bitter tears they +are. Then he collects his rent and leaves again. He has been seen +standing near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on many a starlight night, +for he has cherished an idea for many centuries that if he could only +enter there, he could rest. But when he approaches, the doors slam to +with a crash, the earth trembles, and all the lights in Jerusalem burn a +ghastly blue! He does this every fifty years, just the same. It is +hopeless, but then it is hard to break habits one has been eighteen +hundred years accustomed to. The old tourist is far away on his +wanderings, now. How he must smile to see a pack of blockheads like us, +galloping about the world, and looking wise, and imagining we are finding +out a good deal about it! He must have a consuming contempt for the +ignorant, complacent asses that go skurrying about the world in these +railroading days and call it traveling. + +When the guide pointed out where the Wandering Jew had left his familiar +mark upon a wall, I was filled with astonishment. It read: + + "S. T.--1860--X." + +All I have revealed about the Wandering Jew can be amply proven by +reference to our guide. + +The mighty Mosque of Omar, and the paved court around it, occupy a fourth +part of Jerusalem. They are upon Mount Moriah, where King Solomon's +Temple stood. This Mosque is the holiest place the Mohammedan knows, +outside of Mecca. Up to within a year or two past, no Christian could +gain admission to it or its court for love or money. But the prohibition +has been removed, and we entered freely for bucksheesh. + +I need not speak of the wonderful beauty and the exquisite grace and +symmetry that have made this Mosque so celebrated--because I did not see +them. One can not see such things at an instant glance--one frequently +only finds out how really beautiful a really beautiful woman is after +considerable acquaintance with her; and the rule applies to Niagara +Falls, to majestic mountains and to mosques--especially to mosques. + +The great feature of the Mosque of Omar is the prodigious rock in the +centre of its rotunda. It was upon this rock that Abraham came so near +offering up his son Isaac--this, at least, is authentic--it is very much +more to be relied on than most of the traditions, at any rate. On this +rock, also, the angel stood and threatened Jerusalem, and David persuaded +him to spare the city. Mahomet was well acquainted with this stone. +From it he ascended to heaven. The stone tried to follow him, and if the +angel Gabriel had not happened by the merest good luck to be there to +seize it, it would have done it. Very few people have a grip like +Gabriel--the prints of his monstrous fingers, two inches deep, are to be +seen in that rock to-day. + +This rock, large as it is, is suspended in the air. It does not touch +any thing at all. The guide said so. This is very wonderful. In the +place on it where Mahomet stood, he left his foot-prints in the solid +stone. I should judge that he wore about eighteens. But what I was +going to say, when I spoke of the rock being suspended, was, that in the +floor of the cavern under it they showed us a slab which they said +covered a hole which was a thing of extraordinary interest to all +Mohammedans, because that hole leads down to perdition, and every soul +that is transferred from thence to Heaven must pass up through this +orifice. Mahomet stands there and lifts them out by the hair. All +Mohammedans shave their heads, but they are careful to leave a lock of +hair for the Prophet to take hold of. Our guide observed that a good +Mohammedan would consider himself doomed to stay with the damned forever +if he were to lose his scalp-lock and die before it grew again. The most +of them that I have seen ought to stay with the damned, any how, without +reference to how they were barbered. + +For several ages no woman has been allowed to enter the cavern where that +important hole is. The reason is that one of the sex was once caught +there blabbing every thing she knew about what was going on above ground, +to the rapscallions in the infernal regions down below. She carried her +gossiping to such an extreme that nothing could be kept private--nothing +could be done or said on earth but every body in perdition knew all about +it before the sun went down. It was about time to suppress this woman's +telegraph, and it was promptly done. Her breath subsided about the same +time. + +The inside of the great mosque is very showy with variegated marble walls +and with windows and inscriptions of elaborate mosaic. The Turks have +their sacred relics, like the Catholics. The guide showed us the +veritable armor worn by the great son-in-law and successor of Mahomet, +and also the buckler of Mahomet's uncle. The great iron railing which +surrounds the rock was ornamented in one place with a thousand rags tied +to its open work. These are to remind Mahomet not to forget the +worshipers who placed them there. It is considered the next best thing +to tying threads around his finger by way of reminders. + +Just outside the mosque is a miniature temple, which marks the spot where +David and Goliah used to sit and judge the people.--[A pilgrim informs +me that it was not David and Goliah, but David and Saul. I stick to my +own statement--the guide told me, and he ought to know.] + +Every where about the Mosque of Omar are portions of pillars, curiously +wrought altars, and fragments of elegantly carved marble--precious +remains of Solomon's Temple. These have been dug from all depths in the +soil and rubbish of Mount Moriah, and the Moslems have always shown a +disposition to preserve them with the utmost care. At that portion of +the ancient wall of Solomon's Temple which is called the Jew's Place of +Wailing, and where the Hebrews assemble every Friday to kiss the +venerated stones and weep over the fallen greatness of Zion, any one can +see a part of the unquestioned and undisputed Temple of Solomon, the same +consisting of three or four stones lying one upon the other, each of +which is about twice as long as a seven-octave piano, and about as thick +as such a piano is high. But, as I have remarked before, it is only a +year or two ago that the ancient edict prohibiting Christian rubbish like +ourselves to enter the Mosque of Omar and see the costly marbles that +once adorned the inner Temple was annulled. The designs wrought upon +these fragments are all quaint and peculiar, and so the charm of novelty +is added to the deep interest they naturally inspire. One meets with +these venerable scraps at every turn, especially in the neighboring +Mosque el Aksa, into whose inner walls a very large number of them are +carefully built for preservation. These pieces of stone, stained and +dusty with age, dimly hint at a grandeur we have all been taught to +regard as the princeliest ever seen on earth; and they call up pictures +of a pageant that is familiar to all imaginations--camels laden with +spices and treasure--beautiful slaves, presents for Solomon's harem--a +long cavalcade of richly caparisoned beasts and warriors--and Sheba's +Queen in the van of this vision of "Oriental magnificence." These +elegant fragments bear a richer interest than the solemn vastness of the +stones the Jews kiss in the Place of Wailing can ever have for the +heedless sinner. + +Down in the hollow ground, underneath the olives and the orange-trees +that flourish in the court of the great Mosque, is a wilderness of +pillars--remains of the ancient Temple; they supported it. There are +ponderous archways down there, also, over which the destroying "plough" +of prophecy passed harmless. It is pleasant to know we are disappointed, +in that we never dreamed we might see portions of the actual Temple of +Solomon, and yet experience no shadow of suspicion that they were a +monkish humbug and a fraud. + +We are surfeited with sights. Nothing has any fascination for us, now, +but the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We have been there every day, and +have not grown tired of it; but we are weary of every thing else. The +sights are too many. They swarm about you at every step; no single foot +of ground in all Jerusalem or within its neighborhood seems to be without +a stirring and important history of its own. It is a very relief to +steal a walk of a hundred yards without a guide along to talk unceasingly +about every stone you step upon and drag you back ages and ages to the +day when it achieved celebrity. + +It seems hardly real when I find myself leaning for a moment on a ruined +wall and looking listlessly down into the historic pool of Bethesda. I +did not think such things could be so crowded together as to diminish +their interest. But in serious truth, we have been drifting about, for +several days, using our eyes and our ears more from a sense of duty than +any higher and worthier reason. And too often we have been glad when it +was time to go home and be distressed no more about illustrious +localities. + +Our pilgrims compress too much into one day. One can gorge sights to +repletion as well as sweetmeats. Since we breakfasted, this morning, we +have seen enough to have furnished us food for a year's reflection if we +could have seen the various objects in comfort and looked upon them +deliberately. We visited the pool of Hezekiah, where David saw Uriah's +wife coming from the bath and fell in love with her. + +We went out of the city by the Jaffa gate, and of course were told many +things about its Tower of Hippicus. + +We rode across the Valley of Hinnom, between two of the Pools of Gihon, +and by an aqueduct built by Solomon, which still conveys water to the +city. We ascended the Hill of Evil Counsel, where Judas received his +thirty pieces of silver, and we also lingered a moment under the tree a +venerable tradition says he hanged himself on. + +We descended to the canon again, and then the guide began to give name +and history to every bank and boulder we came to: "This was the Field of +Blood; these cuttings in the rocks were shrines and temples of Moloch; +here they sacrificed children; yonder is the Zion Gate; the Tyropean +Valley, the Hill of Ophel; here is the junction of the Valley of +Jehoshaphat--on your right is the Well of Job." We turned up +Jehoshaphat. The recital went on. "This is the Mount of Olives; this is +the Hill of Offense; the nest of huts is the Village of Siloam; here, +yonder, every where, is the King's Garden; under this great tree +Zacharias, the high priest, was murdered; yonder is Mount Moriah and the +Temple wall; the tomb of Absalom; the tomb of St. James; the tomb of +Zacharias; beyond, are the Garden of Gethsemane and the tomb of the +Virgin Mary; here is the Pool of Siloam, and----" + +We said we would dismount, and quench our thirst, and rest. We were +burning up with the heat. We were failing under the accumulated fatigue +of days and days of ceaseless marching. All were willing. + +The Pool is a deep, walled ditch, through which a clear stream of water +runs, that comes from under Jerusalem somewhere, and passing through the +Fountain of the Virgin, or being supplied from it, reaches this place by +way of a tunnel of heavy masonry. The famous pool looked exactly as it +looked in Solomon's time, no doubt, and the same dusky, Oriental women, +came down in their old Oriental way, and carried off jars of the water on +their heads, just as they did three thousand years ago, and just as they +will do fifty thousand years hence if any of them are still left on +earth. + +We went away from there and stopped at the Fountain of the Virgin. But +the water was not good, and there was no comfort or peace any where, on +account of the regiment of boys and girls and beggars that persecuted us +all the time for bucksheesh. The guide wanted us to give them some +money, and we did it; but when he went on to say that they were starving +to death we could not but feel that we had done a great sin in throwing +obstacles in the way of such a desirable consummation, and so we tried to +collect it back, but it could not be done. + +We entered the Garden of Gethsemane, and we visited the Tomb of the +Virgin, both of which we had seen before. It is not meet that I should +speak of them now. A more fitting time will come. + +I can not speak now of the Mount of Olives or its view of Jerusalem, the +Dead Sea and the mountains of Moab; nor of the Damascus Gate or the tree +that was planted by King Godfrey of Jerusalem. One ought to feel +pleasantly when he talks of these things. I can not say any thing about +the stone column that projects over Jehoshaphat from the Temple wall like +a cannon, except that the Moslems believe Mahomet will sit astride of it +when he comes to judge the world. It is a pity he could not judge it +from some roost of his own in Mecca, without trespassing on our holy +ground. Close by is the Golden Gate, in the Temple wall--a gate that was +an elegant piece of sculpture in the time of the Temple, and is even so +yet. From it, in ancient times, the Jewish High Priest turned loose the +scapegoat and let him flee to the wilderness and bear away his +twelve-month load of the sins of the people. If they were to turn one +loose now, he would not get as far as the Garden of Gethsemane, till +these miserable vagabonds here would gobble him up,--[Favorite pilgrim +expression.]--sins and all. They wouldn't care. Mutton-chops and sin +is good enough living for them. The Moslems watch the Golden Gate with +a jealous eye, and an anxious one, for they have an honored tradition +that when it falls, Islamism will fall and with it the Ottoman Empire. +It did not grieve me any to notice that the old gate was getting a +little shaky. + +We are at home again. We are exhausted. The sun has roasted us, almost. +We have full comfort in one reflection, however. Our experiences in +Europe have taught us that in time this fatigue will be forgotten; the +heat will be forgotten; the thirst, the tiresome volubility of the guide, +the persecutions of the beggars--and then, all that will be left will be +pleasant memories of Jerusalem, memories we shall call up with always +increasing interest as the years go by, memories which some day will +become all beautiful when the last annoyance that incumbers them shall +have faded out of our minds never again to return. School-boy days are +no happier than the days of after life, but we look back upon them +regretfully because we have forgotten our punishments at school, and how +we grieved when our marbles were lost and our kites destroyed--because we +have forgotten all the sorrows and privations of that canonized epoch and +remember only its orchard robberies, its wooden sword pageants and its +fishing holydays. We are satisfied. We can wait. Our reward will come. +To us, Jerusalem and to-day's experiences will be an enchanted memory a +year hence--memory which money could not buy from us. + + + + +CHAPTER LV. + +We cast up the account. It footed up pretty fairly. There was nothing +more at Jerusalem to be seen, except the traditional houses of Dives and +Lazarus of the parable, the Tombs of the Kings, and those of the Judges; +the spot where they stoned one of the disciples to death, and beheaded +another; the room and the table made celebrated by the Last Supper; the +fig-tree that Jesus withered; a number of historical places about +Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives, and fifteen or twenty others in +different portions of the city itself. + +We were approaching the end. Human nature asserted itself, now. +Overwork and consequent exhaustion began to have their natural effect. +They began to master the energies and dull the ardor of the party. +Perfectly secure now, against failing to accomplish any detail of the +pilgrimage, they felt like drawing in advance upon the holiday soon to be +placed to their credit. They grew a little lazy. They were late to +breakfast and sat long at dinner. Thirty or forty pilgrims had arrived +from the ship, by the short routes, and much swapping of gossip had to be +indulged in. And in hot afternoons, they showed a strong disposition to +lie on the cool divans in the hotel and smoke and talk about pleasant +experiences of a month or so gone by--for even thus early do episodes of +travel which were sometimes annoying, sometimes exasperating and full as +often of no consequence at all when they transpired, begin to rise above +the dead level of monotonous reminiscences and become shapely landmarks +in one's memory. The fog-whistle, smothered among a million of trifling +sounds, is not noticed a block away, in the city, but the sailor hears it +far at sea, whither none of those thousands of trifling sounds can reach. +When one is in Rome, all the domes are alike; but when he has gone away +twelve miles, the city fades utterly from sight and leaves St. Peter's +swelling above the level plain like an anchored balloon. When one is +traveling in Europe, the daily incidents seem all alike; but when he has +placed them all two months and two thousand miles behind him, those that +were worthy of being remembered are prominent, and those that were really +insignificant have vanished. This disposition to smoke, and idle and +talk, was not well. It was plain that it must not be allowed to gain +ground. A diversion must be tried, or demoralization would ensue. The +Jordan, Jericho and the Dead Sea were suggested. The remainder of +Jerusalem must be left unvisited, for a little while. The journey was +approved at once. New life stirred in every pulse. In the saddle +--abroad on the plains--sleeping in beds bounded only by the horizon: fancy +was at work with these things in a moment.--It was painful to note how +readily these town-bred men had taken to the free life of the camp and +the desert The nomadic instinct is a human instinct; it was born with +Adam and transmitted through the patriarchs, and after thirty centuries +of steady effort, civilization has not educated it entirely out of us +yet. It has a charm which, once tasted, a man will yearn to taste again. +The nomadic instinct can not be educated out of an Indian at all. + +The Jordan journey being approved, our dragoman was notified. + +At nine in the morning the caravan was before the hotel door and we were +at breakfast. There was a commotion about the place. Rumors of war and +bloodshed were flying every where. The lawless Bedouins in the Valley of +the Jordan and the deserts down by the Dead Sea were up in arms, and were +going to destroy all comers. They had had a battle with a troop of +Turkish cavalry and defeated them; several men killed. They had shut up +the inhabitants of a village and a Turkish garrison in an old fort near +Jericho, and were besieging them. They had marched upon a camp of our +excursionists by the Jordan, and the pilgrims only saved their lives by +stealing away and flying to Jerusalem under whip and spur in the darkness +of the night. Another of our parties had been fired on from an ambush +and then attacked in the open day. Shots were fired on both sides. +Fortunately there was no bloodshed. We spoke with the very pilgrim who +had fired one of the shots, and learned from his own lips how, in this +imminent deadly peril, only the cool courage of the pilgrims, their +strength of numbers and imposing display of war material, had saved them +from utter destruction. It was reported that the Consul had requested +that no more of our pilgrims should go to the Jordan while this state of +things lasted; and further, that he was unwilling that any more should +go, at least without an unusually strong military guard. Here was +trouble. But with the horses at the door and every body aware of what +they were there for, what would you have done? Acknowledged that you +were afraid, and backed shamefully out? Hardly. It would not be human +nature, where there were so many women. You would have done as we did: +said you were not afraid of a million Bedouins--and made your will and +proposed quietly to yourself to take up an unostentatious position in the +rear of the procession. + +I think we must all have determined upon the same line of tactics, for it +did seem as if we never would get to Jericho. I had a notoriously slow +horse, but somehow I could not keep him in the rear, to save my neck. +He was forever turning up in the lead. In such cases I trembled a +little, and got down to fix my saddle. But it was not of any use. The +others all got down to fix their saddles, too. I never saw such a time +with saddles. It was the first time any of them had got out of order in +three weeks, and now they had all broken down at once. I tried walking, +for exercise--I had not had enough in Jerusalem searching for holy +places. But it was a failure. The whole mob were suffering for +exercise, and it was not fifteen minutes till they were all on foot and I +had the lead again. It was very discouraging. + +This was all after we got beyond Bethany. We stopped at the village of +Bethany, an hour out from Jerusalem. They showed us the tomb of Lazarus. +I had rather live in it than in any house in the town. And they showed +us also a large "Fountain of Lazarus," and in the centre of the village +the ancient dwelling of Lazarus. Lazarus appears to have been a man of +property. The legends of the Sunday Schools do him great injustice; they +give one the impression that he was poor. It is because they get him +confused with that Lazarus who had no merit but his virtue, and virtue +never has been as respectable as money. The house of Lazarus is a +three-story edifice, of stone masonry, but the accumulated rubbish of +ages has buried all of it but the upper story. We took candles and +descended to the dismal cell-like chambers where Jesus sat at meat with +Martha and Mary, and conversed with them about their brother. We could +not but look upon these old dingy apartments with a more than common +interest. + +We had had a glimpse, from a mountain top, of the Dead Sea, lying like a +blue shield in the plain of the Jordan, and now we were marching down a +close, flaming, rugged, desolate defile, where no living creature could +enjoy life, except, perhaps, a salamander. It was such a dreary, +repulsive, horrible solitude! It was the "wilderness" where John +preached, with camel's hair about his loins--raiment enough--but he never +could have got his locusts and wild honey here. We were moping along +down through this dreadful place, every man in the rear. Our guards--two +gorgeous young Arab sheiks, with cargoes of swords, guns, pistols and +daggers on board--were loafing ahead. + +"Bedouins!" + +Every man shrunk up and disappeared in his clothes like a mud-turtle. +My first impulse was to dash forward and destroy the Bedouins. My second +was to dash to the rear to see if there were any coming in that +direction. I acted on the latter impulse. So did all the others. If +any Bedouins had approached us, then, from that point of the compass, +they would have paid dearly for their rashness. We all remarked that, +afterwards. There would have been scenes of riot and bloodshed there +that no pen could describe. I know that, because each man told what he +would have done, individually; and such a medley of strange and +unheard-of inventions of cruelty you could not conceive of. One man +said he had calmly made up his mind to perish where he stood, if need +be, but never yield an inch; he was going to wait, with deadly patience, +till he could count the stripes upon the first Bedouin's jacket, and +then count them and let him have it. Another was going to sit still +till the first lance reached within an inch of his breast, and then +dodge it and seize it. I forbear to tell what he was going to do to +that Bedouin that owned it. It makes my blood run cold to think of it. +Another was going to scalp such Bedouins as fell to his share, and take +his bald-headed sons of the desert home with him alive for trophies. +But the wild-eyed pilgrim rhapsodist was silent. His orbs gleamed with +a deadly light, but his lips moved not. Anxiety grew, and he was +questioned. If he had got a Bedouin, what would he have done with him +--shot him? He smiled a smile of grim contempt and shook his head. +Would he have stabbed him? Another shake. Would he have quartered him +--flayed him? More shakes. Oh! horror what would he have done? + +"Eat him!" + +Such was the awful sentence that thundered from his lips. What was +grammar to a desperado like that? I was glad in my heart that I had been +spared these scenes of malignant carnage. No Bedouins attacked our +terrible rear. And none attacked the front. The new-comers were only a +reinforcement of cadaverous Arabs, in shirts and bare legs, sent far +ahead of us to brandish rusty guns, and shout and brag, and carry on like +lunatics, and thus scare away all bands of marauding Bedouins that might +lurk about our path. What a shame it is that armed white Christians must +travel under guard of vermin like this as a protection against the +prowling vagabonds of the desert--those sanguinary outlaws who are always +going to do something desperate, but never do it. I may as well mention +here that on our whole trip we saw no Bedouins, and had no more use for +an Arab guard than we could have had for patent leather boots and white +kid gloves. The Bedouins that attacked the other parties of pilgrims so +fiercely were provided for the occasion by the Arab guards of those +parties, and shipped from Jerusalem for temporary service as Bedouins. +They met together in full view of the pilgrims, after the battle, and +took lunch, divided the bucksheesh extorted in the season of danger, and +then accompanied the cavalcade home to the city! The nuisance of an Arab +guard is one which is created by the Sheiks and the Bedouins together, +for mutual profit, it is said, and no doubt there is a good deal of truth +in it. + +We visited the fountain the prophet Elisha sweetened (it is sweet yet,) +where he remained some time and was fed by the ravens. + +Ancient Jericho is not very picturesque as a ruin. When Joshua marched +around it seven times, some three thousand years ago, and blew it down +with his trumpet, he did the work so well and so completely that he +hardly left enough of the city to cast a shadow. The curse pronounced +against the rebuilding of it, has never been removed. One King, holding +the curse in light estimation, made the attempt, but was stricken sorely +for his presumption. Its site will always remain unoccupied; and yet it +is one of the very best locations for a town we have seen in all +Palestine. + +At two in the morning they routed us out of bed--another piece of +unwarranted cruelty--another stupid effort of our dragoman to get ahead +of a rival. It was not two hours to the Jordan. However, we were +dressed and under way before any one thought of looking to see what time +it was, and so we drowsed on through the chill night air and dreamed of +camp fires, warm beds, and other comfortable things. + +There was no conversation. People do not talk when they are cold, and +wretched, and sleepy. We nodded in the saddle, at times, and woke up +with a start to find that the procession had disappeared in the gloom. +Then there was energy and attention to business until its dusky outlines +came in sight again. Occasionally the order was passed in a low voice +down the line: "Close up--close up! Bedouins lurk here, every where!" +What an exquisite shudder it sent shivering along one's spine! + +We reached the famous river before four o'clock, and the night was so +black that we could have ridden into it without seeing it. Some of us +were in an unhappy frame of mind. We waited and waited for daylight, but +it did not come. Finally we went away in the dark and slept an hour on +the ground, in the bushes, and caught cold. It was a costly nap, on that +account, but otherwise it was a paying investment because it brought +unconsciousness of the dreary minutes and put us in a somewhat fitter +mood for a first glimpse of the sacred river. + +With the first suspicion of dawn, every pilgrim took off his clothes and +waded into the dark torrent, singing: + + "On Jordan's stormy banks I stand, + And cast a wistful eye + To Canaan's fair and happy land, + Where my possessions lie." + +But they did not sing long. The water was so fearfully cold that they +were obliged to stop singing and scamper out again. Then they stood on +the bank shivering, and so chagrined and so grieved, that they merited +holiest compassion. Because another dream, another cherished hope, had +failed. They had promised themselves all along that they would cross the +Jordan where the Israelites crossed it when they entered Canaan from +their long pilgrimage in the desert. They would cross where the twelve +stones were placed in memory of that great event. While they did it they +would picture to themselves that vast army of pilgrims marching through +the cloven waters, bearing the hallowed ark of the covenant and shouting +hosannahs, and singing songs of thanksgiving and praise. Each had +promised himself that he would be the first to cross. They were at the +goal of their hopes at last, but the current was too swift, the water was +too cold! + +It was then that Jack did them a service. With that engaging +recklessness of consequences which is natural to youth, and so proper and +so seemly, as well, he went and led the way across the Jordan, and all +was happiness again. Every individual waded over, then, and stood upon +the further bank. The water was not quite breast deep, any where. If it +had been more, we could hardly have accomplished the feat, for the strong +current would have swept us down the stream, and we would have been +exhausted and drowned before reaching a place where we could make a +landing. The main object compassed, the drooping, miserable party sat +down to wait for the sun again, for all wanted to see the water as well +as feel it. But it was too cold a pastime. Some cans were filled from +the holy river, some canes cut from its banks, and then we mounted and +rode reluctantly away to keep from freezing to death. So we saw the +Jordan very dimly. The thickets of bushes that bordered its banks threw +their shadows across its shallow, turbulent waters ("stormy," the hymn +makes them, which is rather a complimentary stretch of fancy,) and we +could not judge of the width of the stream by the eye. We knew by our +wading experience, however, that many streets in America are double as +wide as the Jordan. + +Daylight came, soon after we got under way, and in the course of an hour +or two we reached the Dead Sea. Nothing grows in the flat, burning +desert around it but weeds and the Dead Sea apple the poets say is +beautiful to the eye, but crumbles to ashes and dust when you break it. +Such as we found were not handsome, but they were bitter to the taste. +They yielded no dust. It was because they were not ripe, perhaps. + +The desert and the barren hills gleam painfully in the sun, around the +Dead Sea, and there is no pleasant thing or living creature upon it or +about its borders to cheer the eye. It is a scorching, arid, repulsive +solitude. A silence broods over the scene that is depressing to the +spirits. It makes one think of funerals and death. + +The Dead Sea is small. Its waters are very clear, and it has a pebbly +bottom and is shallow for some distance out from the shores. It yields +quantities of asphaltum; fragments of it lie all about its banks; this +stuff gives the place something of an unpleasant smell. + +All our reading had taught us to expect that the first plunge into the +Dead Sea would be attended with distressing results--our bodies would +feel as if they were suddenly pierced by millions of red-hot needles; the +dreadful smarting would continue for hours; we might even look to be +blistered from head to foot, and suffer miserably for many days. We were +disappointed. Our eight sprang in at the same time that another party of +pilgrims did, and nobody screamed once. None of them ever did complain +of any thing more than a slight pricking sensation in places where their +skin was abraded, and then only for a short time. My face smarted for a +couple of hours, but it was partly because I got it badly sun-burned +while I was bathing, and staid in so long that it became plastered over +with salt. + +No, the water did not blister us; it did not cover us with a slimy ooze +and confer upon us an atrocious fragrance; it was not very slimy; and I +could not discover that we smelt really any worse than we have always +smelt since we have been in Palestine. It was only a different kind of +smell, but not conspicuous on that account, because we have a great deal +of variety in that respect. We didn't smell, there on the Jordan, the +same as we do in Jerusalem; and we don't smell in Jerusalem just as we +did in Nazareth, or Tiberias, or Cesarea Philippi, or any of those other +ruinous ancient towns in Galilee. No, we change all the time, and +generally for the worse. We do our own washing. + +It was a funny bath. We could not sink. One could stretch himself at +full length on his back, with his arms on his breast, and all of his body +above a line drawn from the corner of his jaw past the middle of his +side, the middle of his leg and through his ancle bone, would remain out +of water. He could lift his head clear out, if he chose. No position +can be retained long; you lose your balance and whirl over, first on your +back and then on your face, and so on. You can lie comfortably, on your +back, with your head out, and your legs out from your knees down, by +steadying yourself with your hands. You can sit, with your knees drawn +up to your chin and your arms clasped around them, but you are bound to +turn over presently, because you are top-heavy in that position. You can +stand up straight in water that is over your head, and from the middle of +your breast upward you will not be wet. But you can not remain so. The +water will soon float your feet to the surface. You can not swim on your +back and make any progress of any consequence, because your feet stick +away above the surface, and there is nothing to propel yourself with but +your heels. If you swim on your face, you kick up the water like a +stern-wheel boat. You make no headway. A horse is so top-heavy that he +can neither swim nor stand up in the Dead Sea. He turns over on his side +at once. Some of us bathed for more than an hour, and then came out +coated with salt till we shone like icicles. We scrubbed it off with a +coarse towel and rode off with a splendid brand-new smell, though it was +one which was not any more disagreeable than those we have been for +several weeks enjoying. It was the variegated villainy and novelty of it +that charmed us. Salt crystals glitter in the sun about the shores of +the lake. In places they coat the ground like a brilliant crust of ice. + +When I was a boy I somehow got the impression that the river Jordan was +four thousand miles long and thirty-five miles wide. It is only ninety +miles long, and so crooked that a man does not know which side of it he +is on half the time. In going ninety miles it does not get over more +than fifty miles of ground. It is not any wider than Broadway in New +York. + +There is the Sea of Galilee and this Dead Sea--neither of them twenty +miles long or thirteen wide. And yet when I was in Sunday School I +thought they were sixty thousand miles in diameter. + +Travel and experience mar the grandest pictures and rob us of the most +cherished traditions of our boyhood. Well, let them go. I have already +seen the Empire of King Solomon diminish to the size of the State of +Pennsylvania; I suppose I can bear the reduction of the seas and the +river. + +We looked every where, as we passed along, but never saw grain or crystal +of Lot's wife. It was a great disappointment. For many and many a year +we had known her sad story, and taken that interest in her which +misfortune always inspires. But she was gone. Her picturesque form no +longer looms above the desert of the Dead Sea to remind the tourist of +the doom that fell upon the lost cities. + +I can not describe the hideous afternoon's ride from the Dead Sea to Mars +Saba. It oppresses me yet, to think of it. The sun so pelted us that +the tears ran down our cheeks once or twice. The ghastly, treeless, +grassless, breathless canons smothered us as if we had been in an oven. +The sun had positive weight to it, I think. Not a man could sit erect +under it. All drooped low in the saddles. John preached in this +"Wilderness!" It must have been exhausting work. What a very heaven the +messy towers and ramparts of vast Mars Saba looked to us when we caught a +first glimpse of them! + +We staid at this great convent all night, guests of the hospitable +priests. Mars Saba, perched upon a crag, a human nest stock high up +against a perpendicular mountain wall, is a world of grand masonry that +rises, terrace upon terrace away above your head, like the terraced and +retreating colonnades one sees in fanciful pictures of Belshazzar's Feast +and the palaces of the ancient Pharaohs. No other human dwelling is +near. It was founded many ages ago by a holy recluse who lived at first +in a cave in the rock--a cave which is inclosed in the convent walls, +now, and was reverently shown to us by the priests. This recluse, by his +rigorous torturing of his flesh, his diet of bread and water, his utter +withdrawal from all society and from the vanities of the world, and his +constant prayer and saintly contemplation of a skull, inspired an +emulation that brought about him many disciples. The precipice on the +opposite side of the canyon is well perforated with the small holes they +dug in the rock to live in. The present occupants of Mars Saba, about +seventy in number, are all hermits. They wear a coarse robe, an ugly, +brimless stove-pipe of a hat, and go without shoes. They eat nothing +whatever but bread and salt; they drink nothing but water. As long as +they live they can never go outside the walls, or look upon a woman--for +no woman is permitted to enter Mars Saba, upon any pretext whatsoever. + +Some of those men have been shut up there for thirty years. In all that +dreary time they have not heard the laughter of a child or the blessed +voice of a woman; they have seen no human tears, no human smiles; they +have known no human joys, no wholesome human sorrows. In their hearts +are no memories of the past, in their brains no dreams of the future. +All that is lovable, beautiful, worthy, they have put far away from them; +against all things that are pleasant to look upon, and all sounds that +are music to the ear, they have barred their massive doors and reared +their relentless walls of stone forever. They have banished the tender +grace of life and left only the sapped and skinny mockery. Their lips +are lips that never kiss and never sing; their hearts are hearts that +never hate and never love; their breasts are breasts that never swell +with the sentiment, "I have a country and a flag." They are dead men who +walk. + +I set down these first thoughts because they are natural--not because +they are just or because it is right to set them down. It is easy for +book-makers to say "I thought so and so as I looked upon such and such a +scene"--when the truth is, they thought all those fine things afterwards. +One's first thought is not likely to be strictly accurate, yet it is no +crime to think it and none to write it down, subject to modification by +later experience. These hermits are dead men, in several respects, but +not in all; and it is not proper, that, thinking ill of them at first, I +should go on doing so, or, speaking ill of them I should reiterate the +words and stick to them. No, they treated us too kindly for that. There +is something human about them somewhere. They knew we were foreigners +and Protestants, and not likely to feel admiration or much friendliness +toward them. But their large charity was above considering such things. +They simply saw in us men who were hungry, and thirsty, and tired, and +that was sufficient. They opened their doors and gave us welcome. They +asked no questions, and they made no self-righteous display of their +hospitality. They fished for no compliments. They moved quietly about, +setting the table for us, making the beds, and bringing water to wash in, +and paid no heed when we said it was wrong for them to do that when we +had men whose business it was to perform such offices. We fared most +comfortably, and sat late at dinner. We walked all over the building +with the hermits afterward, and then sat on the lofty battlements and +smoked while we enjoyed the cool air, the wild scenery and the sunset. +One or two chose cosy bed-rooms to sleep in, but the nomadic instinct +prompted the rest to sleep on the broad divan that extended around the +great hall, because it seemed like sleeping out of doors, and so was more +cheery and inviting. It was a royal rest we had. + +When we got up to breakfast in the morning, we were new men. For all +this hospitality no strict charge was made. We could give something if +we chose; we need give nothing, if we were poor or if we were stingy. +The pauper and the miser are as free as any in the Catholic Convents of +Palestine. I have been educated to enmity toward every thing that is +Catholic, and sometimes, in consequence of this, I find it much easier to +discover Catholic faults than Catholic merits. But there is one thing I +feel no disposition to overlook, and no disposition to forget: and that +is, the honest gratitude I and all pilgrims owe, to the Convent Fathers +in Palestine. Their doors are always open, and there is always a welcome +for any worthy man who comes, whether he comes in rags or clad in purple. +The Catholic Convents are a priceless blessing to the poor. A pilgrim +without money, whether he be a Protestant or a Catholic, can travel the +length and breadth of Palestine, and in the midst of her desert wastes +find wholesome food and a clean bed every night, in these buildings. +Pilgrims in better circumstances are often stricken down by the sun and +the fevers of the country, and then their saving refuge is the Convent. +Without these hospitable retreats, travel in Palestine would be a +pleasure which none but the strongest men could dare to undertake. Our +party, pilgrims and all, will always be ready and always willing, to +touch glasses and drink health, prosperity and long life to the Convent +Fathers of Palestine. + +So, rested and refreshed, we fell into line and filed away over the +barren mountains of Judea, and along rocky ridges and through sterile +gorges, where eternal silence and solitude reigned. Even the scattering +groups of armed shepherds we met the afternoon before, tending their +flocks of long-haired goats, were wanting here. We saw but two living +creatures. They were gazelles, of "soft-eyed" notoriety. They looked +like very young kids, but they annihilated distance like an express +train. I have not seen animals that moved faster, unless I might say it +of the antelopes of our own great plains. + +At nine or ten in the morning we reached the Plain of the Shepherds, and +stood in a walled garden of olives where the shepherds were watching +their flocks by night, eighteen centuries ago, when the multitude of +angels brought them the tidings that the Saviour was born. A quarter of +a mile away was Bethlehem of Judea, and the pilgrims took some of the +stone wall and hurried on. + +The Plain of the Shepherds is a desert, paved with loose stones, void of +vegetation, glaring in the fierce sun. Only the music of the angels it +knew once could charm its shrubs and flowers to life again and restore +its vanished beauty. No less potent enchantment could avail to work this +miracle. + +In the huge Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, built fifteen hundred +years ago by the inveterate St. Helena, they took us below ground, and +into a grotto cut in the living rock. This was the "manger" where Christ +was born. A silver star set in the floor bears a Latin inscription to +that effect. It is polished with the kisses of many generations of +worshiping pilgrims. The grotto was tricked out in the usual tasteless +style observable in all the holy places of Palestine. As in the Church +of the Holy Sepulchre, envy and uncharitableness were apparent here. The +priests and the members of the Greek and Latin churches can not come by +the same corridor to kneel in the sacred birthplace of the Redeemer, but +are compelled to approach and retire by different avenues, lest they +quarrel and fight on this holiest ground on earth. + +I have no "meditations," suggested by this spot where the very first +"Merry Christmas!" was uttered in all the world, and from whence the +friend of my childhood, Santa Claus, departed on his first journey, to +gladden and continue to gladden roaring firesides on wintry mornings in +many a distant land forever and forever. I touch, with reverent finger, +the actual spot where the infant Jesus lay, but I think--nothing. + +You can not think in this place any more than you can in any other in +Palestine that would be likely to inspire reflection. Beggars, cripples +and monks compass you about, and make you think only of bucksheesh when +you would rather think of something more in keeping with the character of +the spot. + +I was glad to get away, and glad when we had walked through the grottoes +where Eusebius wrote, and Jerome fasted, and Joseph prepared for the +flight into Egypt, and the dozen other distinguished grottoes, and knew +we were done. The Church of the Nativity is almost as well packed with +exceeding holy places as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself. They +even have in it a grotto wherein twenty thousand children were +slaughtered by Herod when he was seeking the life of the infant Saviour. + +We went to the Milk Grotto, of course--a cavern where Mary hid herself +for a while before the flight into Egypt. Its walls were black before +she entered, but in suckling the Child, a drop of her milk fell upon the +floor and instantly changed the darkness of the walls to its own snowy +hue. We took many little fragments of stone from here, because it is +well known in all the East that a barren woman hath need only to touch +her lips to one of these and her failing will depart from her. We took +many specimens, to the end that we might confer happiness upon certain +households that we wot of. + +We got away from Bethlehem and its troops of beggars and relic-peddlers +in the afternoon, and after spending some little time at Rachel's tomb, +hurried to Jerusalem as fast as possible. I never was so glad to get +home again before. I never have enjoyed rest as I have enjoyed it during +these last few hours. The journey to the Dead Sea, the Jordan and +Bethlehem was short, but it was an exhausting one. Such roasting heat, +such oppressive solitude, and such dismal desolation can not surely exist +elsewhere on earth. And such fatigue! + +The commonest sagacity warns me that I ought to tell the customary +pleasant lie, and say I tore myself reluctantly away from every noted +place in Palestine. Every body tells that, but with as little +ostentation as I may, I doubt the word of every he who tells it. I could +take a dreadful oath that I have never heard any one of our forty +pilgrims say any thing of the sort, and they are as worthy and as +sincerely devout as any that come here. They will say it when they get +home, fast enough, but why should they not? They do not wish to array +themselves against all the Lamartines and Grimeses in the world. It does +not stand to reason that men are reluctant to leave places where the very +life is almost badgered out of them by importunate swarms of beggars and +peddlers who hang in strings to one's sleeves and coat-tails and shriek +and shout in his ears and horrify his vision with the ghastly sores and +malformations they exhibit. One is glad to get away. I have heard +shameless people say they were glad to get away from Ladies' Festivals +where they were importuned to buy by bevies of lovely young ladies. +Transform those houris into dusky hags and ragged savages, and replace +their rounded forms with shrunken and knotted distortions, their soft +hands with scarred and hideous deformities, and the persuasive music of +their voices with the discordant din of a hated language, and then see +how much lingering reluctance to leave could be mustered. No, it is the +neat thing to say you were reluctant, and then append the profound +thoughts that "struggled for utterance," in your brain; but it is the +true thing to say you were not reluctant, and found it impossible to +think at all--though in good sooth it is not respectable to say it, and +not poetical, either. + +We do not think, in the holy places; we think in bed, afterwards, when +the glare, and the noise, and the confusion are gone, and in fancy we +revisit alone, the solemn monuments of the past, and summon the phantom +pageants of an age that has passed away. + + + + +CHAPTER LVI. + +We visited all the holy places about Jerusalem which we had left +unvisited when we journeyed to the Jordan and then, about three o'clock +one afternoon, we fell into procession and marched out at the stately +Damascus gate, and the walls of Jerusalem shut us out forever. We paused +on the summit of a distant hill and took a final look and made a final +farewell to the venerable city which had been such a good home to us. + +For about four hours we traveled down hill constantly. We followed a +narrow bridle-path which traversed the beds of the mountain gorges, and +when we could we got out of the way of the long trains of laden camels +and asses, and when we could not we suffered the misery of being mashed +up against perpendicular walls of rock and having our legs bruised by the +passing freight. Jack was caught two or three times, and Dan and Moult +as often. One horse had a heavy fall on the slippery rocks, and the +others had narrow escapes. However, this was as good a road as we had +found in Palestine, and possibly even the best, and so there was not much +grumbling. + +Sometimes, in the glens, we came upon luxuriant orchards of figs, +apricots, pomegranates, and such things, but oftener the scenery was +rugged, mountainous, verdureless and forbidding. Here and there, towers +were perched high up on acclivities which seemed almost inaccessible. +This fashion is as old as Palestine itself and was adopted in ancient +times for security against enemies. + +We crossed the brook which furnished David the stone that killed Goliah, +and no doubt we looked upon the very ground whereon that noted battle was +fought. We passed by a picturesque old gothic ruin whose stone pavements +had rung to the armed heels of many a valorous Crusader, and we rode +through a piece of country which we were told once knew Samson as a +citizen. + +We staid all night with the good monks at the convent of Ramleh, and in +the morning got up and galloped the horses a good part of the distance +from there to Jaffa, or Joppa, for the plain was as level as a floor and +free from stones, and besides this was our last march in Holy Land. +These two or three hours finished, we and the tired horses could have +rest and sleep as long as we wanted it. This was the plain of which +Joshua spoke when he said, "Sun, stand thou still on Gibeon, and thou +moon in the valley of Ajalon." As we drew near to Jaffa, the boys +spurred up the horses and indulged in the excitement of an actual race +--an experience we had hardly had since we raced on donkeys in the Azores +islands. + +We came finally to the noble grove of orange-trees in which the Oriental +city of Jaffa lies buried; we passed through the walls, and rode again +down narrow streets and among swarms of animated rags, and saw other +sights and had other experiences we had long been familiar with. We +dismounted, for the last time, and out in the offing, riding at anchor, +we saw the ship! I put an exclamation point there because we felt one +when we saw the vessel. The long pilgrimage was ended, and somehow we +seemed to feel glad of it. + +[For description of Jaffa, see Universal Gazetteer.] Simon the Tanner +formerly lived here. We went to his house. All the pilgrims visit Simon +the Tanner's house. Peter saw the vision of the beasts let down in a +sheet when he lay upon the roof of Simon the Tanner's house. It was from +Jaffa that Jonah sailed when he was told to go and prophesy against +Nineveh, and no doubt it was not far from the town that the whale threw +him up when he discovered that he had no ticket. Jonah was disobedient, +and of a fault-finding, complaining disposition, and deserves to be +lightly spoken of, almost. The timbers used in the construction of +Solomon's Temple were floated to Jaffa in rafts, and the narrow opening +in the reef through which they passed to the shore is not an inch wider +or a shade less dangerous to navigate than it was then. Such is the +sleepy nature of the population Palestine's only good seaport has now and +always had. Jaffa has a history and a stirring one. It will not be +discovered any where in this book. If the reader will call at the +circulating library and mention my name, he will be furnished with books +which will afford him the fullest information concerning Jaffa. + +So ends the pilgrimage. We ought to be glad that we did not make it for +the purpose of feasting our eyes upon fascinating aspects of nature, for +we should have been disappointed--at least at this season of the year. A +writer in "Life in the Holy Land" observes: + + "Monotonous and uninviting as much of the Holy Land will appear to + persons accustomed to the almost constant verdure of flowers, ample + streams and varied surface of our own country, we must remember that + its aspect to the Israelites after the weary march of forty years + through the desert must have been very different." + +Which all of us will freely grant. But it truly is "monotonous and +uninviting," and there is no sufficient reason for describing it as being +otherwise. + +Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be +the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are +unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a +feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and +despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a +vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant +tint, no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or +mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every +feature is distinct, there is no perspective--distance works no +enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land. + +Small shreds and patches of it must be very beautiful in the full flush +of spring, however, and all the more beautiful by contrast with the +far-reaching desolation that surrounds them on every side. I would like +much to see the fringes of the Jordan in spring-time, and Shechem, +Esdraelon, Ajalon and the borders of Galilee--but even then these spots +would seem mere toy gardens set at wide intervals in the waste of a +limitless desolation. + +Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a +curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where +Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now +floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists--over +whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead +--about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of +cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching +lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that +ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with +songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins +of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even +as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem +and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about +them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the +Saviour's presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their +flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, good will to +men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature +that is pleasant to the eye. Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest +name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a +pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the +admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was +the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone, and the Ottoman crescent is +lifted above the spot where, on that most memorable day in the annals of +the world, they reared the Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where +Roman fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed +in their ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and +commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a +shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and +Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the "desert places" round +about them where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour's voice +and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is +inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes. + +Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can +the curse of the Deity beautify a land? + +Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred to poetry and +tradition--it is dream-land. + + + + +CHAPTER LVII. + +It was worth a kingdom to be at sea again. It was a relief to drop all +anxiety whatsoever--all questions as to where we should go; how long we +should stay; whether it were worth while to go or not; all anxieties +about the condition of the horses; all such questions as "Shall we ever +get to water?" "Shall we ever lunch?" "Ferguson, how many more million +miles have we got to creep under this awful sun before we camp?" It was +a relief to cast all these torturing little anxieties far away--ropes of +steel they were, and every one with a separate and distinct strain on it +--and feel the temporary contentment that is born of the banishment of +all care and responsibility. We did not look at the compass: we did not +care, now, where the ship went to, so that she went out of sight of land +as quickly as possible. When I travel again, I wish to go in a pleasure +ship. No amount of money could have purchased for us, in a strange +vessel and among unfamiliar faces, the perfect satisfaction and the sense +of being at home again which we experienced when we stepped on board the +"Quaker City,"--our own ship--after this wearisome pilgrimage. It is a +something we have felt always when we returned to her, and a something we +had no desire to sell. + +We took off our blue woollen shirts, our spurs, and heavy boots, our +sanguinary revolvers and our buckskin-seated pantaloons, and got shaved +and came out in Christian costume once more. All but Jack, who changed +all other articles of his dress, but clung to his traveling pantaloons. +They still preserved their ample buckskin seat intact; and so his short +pea jacket and his long, thin legs assisted to make him a picturesque +object whenever he stood on the forecastle looking abroad upon the ocean +over the bows. At such times his father's last injunction suggested +itself to me. He said: + +"Jack, my boy, you are about to go among a brilliant company of gentlemen +and ladies, who are refined and cultivated, and thoroughly accomplished +in the manners and customs of good society. Listen to their +conversation, study their habits of life, and learn. Be polite and +obliging to all, and considerate towards every one's opinions, failings +and prejudices. Command the just respect of all your fellow-voyagers, +even though you fail to win their friendly regard. And Jack--don't you +ever dare, while you live, appear in public on those decks in fair +weather, in a costume unbecoming your mother's drawing-room!" + +It would have been worth any price if the father of this hopeful youth +could have stepped on board some time, and seen him standing high on the +fore-castle, pea jacket, tasseled red fez, buckskin patch and all, +placidly contemplating the ocean--a rare spectacle for any body's +drawing-room. + +After a pleasant voyage and a good rest, we drew near to Egypt and out of +the mellowest of sunsets we saw the domes and minarets of Alexandria rise +into view. As soon as the anchor was down, Jack and I got a boat and +went ashore. It was night by this time, and the other passengers were +content to remain at home and visit ancient Egypt after breakfast. It +was the way they did at Constantinople. They took a lively interest in +new countries, but their school-boy impatience had worn off, and they had +learned that it was wisdom to take things easy and go along comfortably +--these old countries do not go away in the night; they stay till after +breakfast. + +When we reached the pier we found an army of Egyptian boys with donkeys +no larger than themselves, waiting for passengers--for donkeys are the +omnibuses of Egypt. We preferred to walk, but we could not have our own +way. The boys crowded about us, clamored around us, and slewed their +donkeys exactly across our path, no matter which way we turned. They +were good-natured rascals, and so were the donkeys. We mounted, and the +boys ran behind us and kept the donkeys in a furious gallop, as is the +fashion at Damascus. I believe I would rather ride a donkey than any +beast in the world. He goes briskly, he puts on no airs, he is docile, +though opinionated. Satan himself could not scare him, and he is +convenient--very convenient. When you are tired riding you can rest your +feet on the ground and let him gallop from under you. + +We found the hotel and secured rooms, and were happy to know that the +Prince of Wales had stopped there once. They had it every where on +signs. No other princes had stopped there since, till Jack and I came. +We went abroad through the town, then, and found it a city of huge +commercial buildings, and broad, handsome streets brilliant with +gas-light. By night it was a sort of reminiscence of Paris. But finally +Jack found an ice-cream saloon, and that closed investigations for that +evening. The weather was very hot, it had been many a day since Jack had +seen ice-cream, and so it was useless to talk of leaving the saloon till +it shut up. + +In the morning the lost tribes of America came ashore and infested the +hotels and took possession of all the donkeys and other open barouches +that offered. They went in picturesque procession to the American +Consul's; to the great gardens; to Cleopatra's Needles; to Pompey's +Pillar; to the palace of the Viceroy of Egypt; to the Nile; to the superb +groves of date-palms. One of our most inveterate relic-hunters had his +hammer with him, and tried to break a fragment off the upright Needle and +could not do it; he tried the prostrate one and failed; he borrowed a +heavy sledge hammer from a mason and tried again. He tried Pompey's +Pillar, and this baffled him. Scattered all about the mighty monolith +were sphinxes of noble countenance, carved out of Egyptian granite as +hard as blue steel, and whose shapely features the wear of five thousand +years had failed to mark or mar. The relic-hunter battered at these +persistently, and sweated profusely over his work. He might as well have +attempted to deface the moon. They regarded him serenely with the +stately smile they had worn so long, and which seemed to say, "Peck away, +poor insect; we were not made to fear such as you; in ten-score dragging +ages we have seen more of your kind than there are sands at your feet: +have they left a blemish upon us?" + +But I am forgetting the Jaffa Colonists. At Jaffa we had taken on board +some forty members of a very celebrated community. They were male and +female; babies, young boys and young girls; young married people, and +some who had passed a shade beyond the prime of life. I refer to the +"Adams Jaffa Colony." Others had deserted before. We left in Jaffa Mr. +Adams, his wife, and fifteen unfortunates who not only had no money but +did not know where to turn or whither to go. Such was the statement made +to us. Our forty were miserable enough in the first place, and they lay +about the decks seasick all the voyage, which about completed their +misery, I take it. However, one or two young men remained upright, and +by constant persecution we wormed out of them some little information. +They gave it reluctantly and in a very fragmentary condition, for, having +been shamefully humbugged by their prophet, they felt humiliated and +unhappy. In such circumstances people do not like to talk. + +The colony was a complete fiasco. I have already said that such as could +get away did so, from time to time. The prophet Adams--once an actor, +then several other things, afterward a Mormon and a missionary, always an +adventurer--remains at Jaffa with his handful of sorrowful subjects. The +forty we brought away with us were chiefly destitute, though not all of +them. They wished to get to Egypt. What might become of them then they +did not know and probably did not care--any thing to get away from hated +Jaffa. They had little to hope for. Because after many appeals to the +sympathies of New England, made by strangers of Boston, through the +newspapers, and after the establishment of an office there for the +reception of moneyed contributions for the Jaffa colonists, One Dollar +was subscribed. The consul-general for Egypt showed me the newspaper +paragraph which mentioned the circumstance and mentioned also the +discontinuance of the effort and the closing of the office. It was +evident that practical New England was not sorry to be rid of such +visionaries and was not in the least inclined to hire any body to bring +them back to her. Still, to get to Egypt, was something, in the eyes of +the unfortunate colonists, hopeless as the prospect seemed of ever +getting further. + +Thus circumstanced, they landed at Alexandria from our ship. One of our +passengers, Mr. Moses S. Beach, of the New York Sun, inquired of the +consul-general what it would cost to send these people to their home in +Maine by the way of Liverpool, and he said fifteen hundred dollars in +gold would do it. Mr. Beach gave his check for the money and so the +troubles of the Jaffa colonists were at an end.--[It was an unselfish +act of benevolence; it was done without any ostentation, and has never +been mentioned in any newspaper, I think. Therefore it is refreshing to +learn now, several months after the above narrative was written, that +another man received all the credit of this rescue of the colonists. +Such is life.] + +Alexandria was too much like a European city to be novel, and we soon +tired of it. We took the cars and came up here to ancient Cairo, which +is an Oriental city and of the completest pattern. There is little about +it to disabuse one's mind of the error if he should take it into his head +that he was in the heart of Arabia. Stately camels and dromedaries, +swarthy Egyptians, and likewise Turks and black Ethiopians, turbaned, +sashed, and blazing in a rich variety of Oriental costumes of all shades +of flashy colors, are what one sees on every hand crowding the narrow +streets and the honeycombed bazaars. We are stopping at Shepherd's +Hotel, which is the worst on earth except the one I stopped at once in a +small town in the United States. It is pleasant to read this sketch in +my note-book, now, and know that I can stand Shepherd's Hotel, sure, +because I have been in one just like it in America and survived: + + I stopped at the Benton House. It used to be a good hotel, but that + proves nothing--I used to be a good boy, for that matter. Both of + us have lost character of late years. The Benton is not a good + hotel. The Benton lacks a very great deal of being a good hotel. + Perdition is full of better hotels than the Benton. + + It was late at night when I got there, and I told the clerk I would + like plenty of lights, because I wanted to read an hour or two. + When I reached No. 15 with the porter (we came along a dim hall that + was clad in ancient carpeting, faded, worn out in many places, and + patched with old scraps of oil cloth--a hall that sank under one's + feet, and creaked dismally to every footstep,) he struck a light +-- two inches of sallow, sorrowful, consumptive tallow candle, that + burned blue, and sputtered, and got discouraged and went out. The + porter lit it again, and I asked if that was all the light the clerk + sent. He said, "Oh no, I've got another one here," and he produced + another couple of inches of tallow candle. I said, "Light them both + --I'll have to have one to see the other by." He did it, but the + result was drearier than darkness itself. He was a cheery, + accommodating rascal. He said he would go "somewheres" and steal a + lamp. I abetted and encouraged him in his criminal design. I heard + the landlord get after him in the hall ten minutes afterward. + + "Where are you going with that lamp?" + + "Fifteen wants it, sir." + + "Fifteen! why he's got a double lot of candles--does the man want + to illuminate the house?--does he want to get up a torch-light + procession?--what is he up to, any how?" + + "He don't like them candles--says he wants a lamp." + + "Why what in the nation does----why I never heard of such a thing? + What on earth can he want with that lamp?" + + "Well, he only wants to read--that's what he says." + + "Wants to read, does he?--ain't satisfied with a thousand candles, + but has to have a lamp!--I do wonder what the devil that fellow + wants that lamp for? Take him another candle, and then if----" + + "But he wants the lamp--says he'll burn the d--d old house down if + he don't get a lamp!" (a remark which I never made.) + + "I'd like to see him at it once. Well, you take it along--but I + swear it beats my time, though--and see if you can't find out what + in the very nation he wants with that lamp." + + And he went off growling to himself and still wondering and + wondering over the unaccountable conduct of No. 15. The lamp was a + good one, but it revealed some disagreeable things--a bed in the + suburbs of a desert of room--a bed that had hills and valleys in it, + and you'd have to accommodate your body to the impression left in it + by the man that slept there last, before you could lie comfortably; + a carpet that had seen better days; a melancholy washstand in a + remote corner, and a dejected pitcher on it sorrowing over a broken + nose; a looking-glass split across the centre, which chopped your + head off at the chin and made you look like some dreadful unfinished + monster or other; the paper peeling in shreds from the walls. + + I sighed and said: "This is charming; and now don't you think you + could get me something to read?" + + The porter said, "Oh, certainly; the old man's got dead loads of + books;" and he was gone before I could tell him what sort of + literature I would rather have. And yet his countenance expressed + the utmost confidence in his ability to execute the commission with + credit to himself. The old man made a descent on him. + + "What are you going to do with that pile of books?" + + "Fifteen wants 'em, sir." + + "Fifteen, is it? He'll want a warming-pan, next--he'll want a + nurse! Take him every thing there is in the house--take him the + bar-keeper--take him the baggage-wagon--take him a chamber-maid! + Confound me, I never saw any thing like it. What did he say he + wants with those books?" + + "Wants to read 'em, like enough; it ain't likely he wants to eat + 'em, I don't reckon." + + "Wants to read 'em--wants to read 'em this time of night, the + infernal lunatic! Well, he can't have them." + + "But he says he's mor'ly bound to have 'em; he says he'll just go + a-rairin' and a-chargin' through this house and raise more--well, + there's no tellin' what he won't do if he don't get 'em; because + he's drunk and crazy and desperate, and nothing'll soothe him down + but them cussed books." [I had not made any threats, and was not in + the condition ascribed to me by the porter.] + + "Well, go on; but I will be around when he goes to rairing and + charging, and the first rair he makes I'll make him rair out of the + window." And then the old gentleman went off, growling as before. + + The genius of that porter was something wonderful. He put an armful + of books on the bed and said "Good night" as confidently as if he + knew perfectly well that those books were exactly my style of + reading matter. And well he might. His selection covered the whole + range of legitimate literature. It comprised "The Great + Consummation," by Rev. Dr. Cummings--theology; "Revised Statutes of + the State of Missouri"--law; "The Complete Horse-Doctor"--medicine; + "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo--romance; "The works of + William Shakspeare"--poetry. I shall never cease to admire the tact + and the intelligence of that gifted porter. + +But all the donkeys in Christendom, and most of the Egyptian boys, I +think, are at the door, and there is some noise going on, not to put it +in stronger language.--We are about starting to the illustrious Pyramids +of Egypt, and the donkeys for the voyage are under inspection. I will go +and select one before the choice animals are all taken. + + + + +CHAPTER LVIII. + +The donkeys were all good, all handsome, all strong and in good +condition, all fast and all willing to prove it. They were the best we +had found any where, and the most 'recherche'. I do not know what +'recherche' is, but that is what these donkeys were, anyhow. Some +were of a soft mouse-color, and the others were white, black, and +vari-colored. Some were close-shaven, all over, except that a tuft like +a paint-brush was left on the end of the tail. Others were so shaven in +fanciful landscape garden patterns, as to mark their bodies with curving +lines, which were bounded on one side by hair and on the other by the +close plush left by the shears. They had all been newly barbered, and +were exceedingly stylish. Several of the white ones were barred like +zebras with rainbow stripes of blue and red and yellow paint. These +were indescribably gorgeous. Dan and Jack selected from this lot +because they brought back Italian reminiscences of the "old masters." +The saddles were the high, stuffy, frog-shaped things we had known in +Ephesus and Smyrna. The donkey-boys were lively young Egyptian rascals +who could follow a donkey and keep him in a canter half a day without +tiring. We had plenty of spectators when we mounted, for the hotel was +full of English people bound overland to India and officers getting +ready for the African campaign against the Abyssinian King Theodorus. +We were not a very large party, but as we charged through the streets of +the great metropolis, we made noise for five hundred, and displayed +activity and created excitement in proportion. Nobody can steer a +donkey, and some collided with camels, dervishes, effendis, asses, +beggars and every thing else that offered to the donkeys a reasonable +chance for a collision. When we turned into the broad avenue that leads +out of the city toward Old Cairo, there was plenty of room. The walls +of stately date-palms that fenced the gardens and bordered the way, +threw their shadows down and made the air cool and bracing. We rose to +the spirit of the time and the race became a wild rout, a stampede, a +terrific panic. I wish to live to enjoy it again. + +Somewhere along this route we had a few startling exhibitions of Oriental +simplicity. A girl apparently thirteen years of age came along the great +thoroughfare dressed like Eve before the fall. We would have called her +thirteen at home; but here girls who look thirteen are often not more +than nine, in reality. Occasionally we saw stark-naked men of superb +build, bathing, and making no attempt at concealment. However, an hour's +acquaintance with this cheerful custom reconciled the pilgrims to it, and +then it ceased to occasion remark. Thus easily do even the most +startling novelties grow tame and spiritless to these sight-surfeited +wanderers. + +Arrived at Old Cairo, the camp-followers took up the donkeys and tumbled +them bodily aboard a small boat with a lateen sail, and we followed and +got under way. The deck was closely packed with donkeys and men; the two +sailors had to climb over and under and through the wedged mass to work +the sails, and the steersman had to crowd four or five donkeys out of the +way when he wished to swing his tiller and put his helm hard-down. But +what were their troubles to us? We had nothing to do; nothing to do but +enjoy the trip; nothing to do but shove the donkeys off our corns and +look at the charming scenery of the Nile. + +On the island at our right was the machine they call the Nilometer, a +stone-column whose business it is to mark the rise of the river and +prophecy whether it will reach only thirty-two feet and produce a famine, +or whether it will properly flood the land at forty and produce plenty, +or whether it will rise to forty-three and bring death and destruction to +flocks and crops--but how it does all this they could not explain to us +so that we could understand. On the same island is still shown the spot +where Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes. Near the spot we +sailed from, the Holy Family dwelt when they sojourned in Egypt till +Herod should complete his slaughter of the innocents. The same tree they +rested under when they first arrived, was there a short time ago, but the +Viceroy of Egypt sent it to the Empress Eugenie lately. He was just in +time, otherwise our pilgrims would have had it. + +The Nile at this point is muddy, swift and turbid, and does not lack a +great deal of being as wide as the Mississippi. + +We scrambled up the steep bank at the shabby town of Ghizeh, mounted the +donkeys again, and scampered away. For four or five miles the route lay +along a high embankment which they say is to be the bed of a railway the +Sultan means to build for no other reason than that when the Empress of +the French comes to visit him she can go to the Pyramids in comfort. +This is true Oriental hospitality. I am very glad it is our privilege to +have donkeys instead of cars. + +At the distance of a few miles the Pyramids rising above the palms, +looked very clean-cut, very grand and imposing, and very soft and filmy, +as well. They swam in a rich haze that took from them all suggestions of +unfeeling stone, and made them seem only the airy nothings of a dream +--structures which might blossom into tiers of vague arches, or ornate +colonnades, may be, and change and change again, into all graceful forms +of architecture, while we looked, and then melt deliciously away and +blend with the tremulous atmosphere. + +At the end of the levee we left the mules and went in a sailboat across +an arm of the Nile or an overflow, and landed where the sands of the +Great Sahara left their embankment, as straight as a wall, along the +verge of the alluvial plain of the river. A laborious walk in the +flaming sun brought us to the foot of the great Pyramid of Cheops. It +was a fairy vision no longer. It was a corrugated, unsightly mountain of +stone. Each of its monstrous sides was a wide stairway which rose +upward, step above step, narrowing as it went, till it tapered to a point +far aloft in the air. Insect men and women--pilgrims from the Quaker +City--were creeping about its dizzy perches, and one little black swarm +were waving postage stamps from the airy summit--handkerchiefs will be +understood. + +Of course we were besieged by a rabble of muscular Egyptians and Arabs +who wanted the contract of dragging us to the top--all tourists are. Of +course you could not hear your own voice for the din that was around you. +Of course the Sheiks said they were the only responsible parties; that +all contracts must be made with them, all moneys paid over to them, and +none exacted from us by any but themselves alone. Of course they +contracted that the varlets who dragged us up should not mention +bucksheesh once. For such is the usual routine. Of course we contracted +with them, paid them, were delivered into the hands of the draggers, +dragged up the Pyramids, and harried and be-deviled for bucksheesh from +the foundation clear to the summit. We paid it, too, for we were +purposely spread very far apart over the vast side of the Pyramid. There +was no help near if we called, and the Herculeses who dragged us had a +way of asking sweetly and flatteringly for bucksheesh, which was +seductive, and of looking fierce and threatening to throw us down the +precipice, which was persuasive and convincing. + +Each step being full as high as a dinner-table; there being very, very +many of the steps; an Arab having hold of each of our arms and springing +upward from step to step and snatching us with them, forcing us to lift +our feet as high as our breasts every time, and do it rapidly and keep it +up till we were ready to faint, who shall say it is not lively, +exhilarating, lacerating, muscle-straining, bone-wrenching and perfectly +excruciating and exhausting pastime, climbing the Pyramids? I beseeched +the varlets not to twist all my joints asunder; I iterated, reiterated, +even swore to them that I did not wish to beat any body to the top; did +all I could to convince them that if I got there the last of all I would +feel blessed above men and grateful to them forever; I begged them, +prayed them, pleaded with them to let me stop and rest a moment--only one +little moment: and they only answered with some more frightful springs, +and an unenlisted volunteer behind opened a bombardment of determined +boosts with his head which threatened to batter my whole political +economy to wreck and ruin. + +Twice, for one minute, they let me rest while they extorted bucksheesh, +and then continued their maniac flight up the Pyramid. They wished to +beat the other parties. It was nothing to them that I, a stranger, must +be sacrificed upon the altar of their unholy ambition. But in the midst +of sorrow, joy blooms. Even in this dark hour I had a sweet consolation. +For I knew that except these Mohammedans repented they would go straight +to perdition some day. And they never repent--they never forsake their +paganism. This thought calmed me, cheered me, and I sank down, limp and +exhausted, upon the summit, but happy, so happy and serene within. + +On the one hand, a mighty sea of yellow sand stretched away toward the +ends of the earth, solemn, silent, shorn of vegetation, its solitude +uncheered by any forms of creature life; on the other, the Eden of Egypt +was spread below us--a broad green floor, cloven by the sinuous river, +dotted with villages, its vast distances measured and marked by the +diminishing stature of receding clusters of palms. It lay asleep in an +enchanted atmosphere. There was no sound, no motion. Above the +date-plumes in the middle distance, swelled a domed and pinnacled mass, +glimmering through a tinted, exquisite mist; away toward the horizon a +dozen shapely pyramids watched over ruined Memphis: and at our feet the +bland impassible Sphynx looked out upon the picture from her throne in +the sands as placidly and pensively as she had looked upon its like full +fifty lagging centuries ago. + +We suffered torture no pen can describe from the hungry appeals for +bucksheesh that gleamed from Arab eyes and poured incessantly from Arab +lips. Why try to call up the traditions of vanished Egyptian grandeur; +why try to fancy Egypt following dead Rameses to his tomb in the Pyramid, +or the long multitude of Israel departing over the desert yonder? Why +try to think at all? The thing was impossible. One must bring his +meditations cut and dried, or else cut and dry them afterward. + +The traditional Arab proposed, in the traditional way, to run down +Cheops, cross the eighth of a mile of sand intervening between it and the +tall pyramid of Cephron, ascend to Cephron's summit and return to us on +the top of Cheops--all in nine minutes by the watch, and the whole +service to be rendered for a single dollar. In the first flush of +irritation, I said let the Arab and his exploits go to the mischief. +But stay. The upper third of Cephron was coated with dressed marble, +smooth as glass. A blessed thought entered my brain. He must infallibly +break his neck. Close the contract with dispatch, I said, and let him +go. He started. We watched. He went bounding down the vast broadside, +spring after spring, like an ibex. He grew small and smaller till he +became a bobbing pigmy, away down toward the bottom--then disappeared. +We turned and peered over the other side--forty seconds--eighty seconds +--a hundred--happiness, he is dead already!--two minutes--and a quarter +--"There he goes!" Too true--it was too true. He was very small, now. +Gradually, but surely, he overcame the level ground. He began to spring +and climb again. Up, up, up--at last he reached the smooth coating--now +for it. But he clung to it with toes and fingers, like a fly. He +crawled this way and that--away to the right, slanting upward--away to +the left, still slanting upward--and stood at last, a black peg on the +summit, and waved his pigmy scarf! Then he crept downward to the raw +steps again, then picked up his agile heels and flew. We lost him +presently. But presently again we saw him under us, mounting with +undiminished energy. Shortly he bounded into our midst with a gallant +war-whoop. Time, eight minutes, forty-one seconds. He had won. His +bones were intact. It was a failure. I reflected. I said to myself, he +is tired, and must grow dizzy. I will risk another dollar on him. + +He started again. Made the trip again. Slipped on the smooth coating +--I almost had him. But an infamous crevice saved him. He was with us +once more--perfectly sound. Time, eight minutes, forty-six seconds. + +I said to Dan, "Lend me a dollar--I can beat this game, yet." + +Worse and worse. He won again. Time, eight minutes, forty-eight +seconds. I was out of all patience, now. I was desperate.--Money was +no longer of any consequence. I said, "Sirrah, I will give you a hundred +dollars to jump off this pyramid head first. If you do not like the +terms, name your bet. I scorn to stand on expenses now. I will stay +right here and risk money on you as long as Dan has got a cent." + +I was in a fair way to win, now, for it was a dazzling opportunity for an +Arab. He pondered a moment, and would have done it, I think, but his +mother arrived, then, and interfered. Her tears moved me--I never can +look upon the tears of woman with indifference--and I said I would give +her a hundred to jump off, too. + +But it was a failure. The Arabs are too high-priced in Egypt. They put +on airs unbecoming to such savages. + +We descended, hot and out of humor. The dragoman lit candles, and we all +entered a hole near the base of the pyramid, attended by a crazy rabble +of Arabs who thrust their services upon us uninvited. They dragged us up +a long inclined chute, and dripped candle-grease all over us. This chute +was not more than twice as wide and high as a Saratoga trunk, and was +walled, roofed and floored with solid blocks of Egyptian granite as wide +as a wardrobe, twice as thick and three times as long. We kept on +climbing, through the oppressive gloom, till I thought we ought to be +nearing the top of the pyramid again, and then came to the "Queen's +Chamber," and shortly to the Chamber of the King. These large apartments +were tombs. The walls were built of monstrous masses of smoothed +granite, neatly joined together. Some of them were nearly as large +square as an ordinary parlor. A great stone sarcophagus like a bath-tub +stood in the centre of the King's Chamber. Around it were gathered a +picturesque group of Arab savages and soiled and tattered pilgrims, who +held their candles aloft in the gloom while they chattered, and the +winking blurs of light shed a dim glory down upon one of the +irrepressible memento-seekers who was pecking at the venerable +sarcophagus with his sacrilegious hammer. + +We struggled out to the open air and the bright sunshine, and for the +space of thirty minutes received ragged Arabs by couples, dozens and +platoons, and paid them bucksheesh for services they swore and proved by +each other that they had rendered, but which we had not been aware of +before--and as each party was paid, they dropped into the rear of the +procession and in due time arrived again with a newly-invented delinquent +list for liquidation. + +We lunched in the shade of the pyramid, and in the midst of this +encroaching and unwelcome company, and then Dan and Jack and I started +away for a walk. A howling swarm of beggars followed us--surrounded us +--almost headed us off. A sheik, in flowing white bournous and gaudy +head-gear, was with them. He wanted more bucksheesh. But we had +adopted a new code--it was millions for defense, but not a cent for +bucksheesh. I asked him if he could persuade the others to depart if we +paid him. He said yes--for ten francs. We accepted the contract, and +said-- + +"Now persuade your vassals to fall back." + +He swung his long staff round his head and three Arabs bit the dust. He +capered among the mob like a very maniac. His blows fell like hail, and +wherever one fell a subject went down. We had to hurry to the rescue and +tell him it was only necessary to damage them a little, he need not kill +them.--In two minutes we were alone with the sheik, and remained so. +The persuasive powers of this illiterate savage were remarkable. + +Each side of the Pyramid of Cheops is about as long as the Capitol at +Washington, or the Sultan's new palace on the Bosporus, and is longer +than the greatest depth of St. Peter's at Rome--which is to say that each +side of Cheops extends seven hundred and some odd feet. It is about +seventy-five feet higher than the cross on St. Peter's. The first time I +ever went down the Mississippi, I thought the highest bluff on the river +between St. Louis and New Orleans--it was near Selma, Missouri--was +probably the highest mountain in the world. It is four hundred and +thirteen feet high. It still looms in my memory with undiminished +grandeur. I can still see the trees and bushes growing smaller and +smaller as I followed them up its huge slant with my eye, till they +became a feathery fringe on the distant summit. This symmetrical Pyramid +of Cheops--this solid mountain of stone reared by the patient hands of +men--this mighty tomb of a forgotten monarch--dwarfs my cherished +mountain. For it is four hundred and eighty feet high. In still earlier +years than those I have been recalling, Holliday's Hill, in our town, was +to me the noblest work of God. It appeared to pierce the skies. It was +nearly three hundred feet high. In those days I pondered the subject +much, but I never could understand why it did not swathe its summit with +never-failing clouds, and crown its majestic brow with everlasting snows. +I had heard that such was the custom of great mountains in other parts of +the world. I remembered how I worked with another boy, at odd afternoons +stolen from study and paid for with stripes, to undermine and start from +its bed an immense boulder that rested upon the edge of that hilltop; I +remembered how, one Saturday afternoon, we gave three hours of honest +effort to the task, and saw at last that our reward was at hand; I +remembered how we sat down, then, and wiped the perspiration away, and +waited to let a picnic party get out of the way in the road below--and +then we started the boulder. It was splendid. It went crashing down the +hillside, tearing up saplings, mowing bushes down like grass, ripping and +crushing and smashing every thing in its path--eternally splintered and +scattered a wood pile at the foot of the hill, and then sprang from the +high bank clear over a dray in the road--the negro glanced up once and +dodged--and the next second it made infinitesimal mince-meat of a frame +cooper-shop, and the coopers swarmed out like bees. Then we said it was +perfectly magnificent, and left. Because the coopers were starting up +the hill to inquire. + +Still, that mountain, prodigious as it was, was nothing to the Pyramid of +Cheops. I could conjure up no comparison that would convey to my mind a +satisfactory comprehension of the magnitude of a pile of monstrous stones +that covered thirteen acres of ground and stretched upward four hundred +and eighty tiresome feet, and so I gave it up and walked down to the +Sphynx. + +After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great face was so +sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity not of +earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as never any +thing human wore. It was stone, but it seemed sentient. If ever image +of stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking toward the verge of +the landscape, yet looking at nothing--nothing but distance and vacancy. +It was looking over and beyond every thing of the present, and far into +the past. It was gazing out over the ocean of Time--over lines of +century-waves which, further and further receding, closed nearer and +nearer together, and blended at last into one unbroken tide, away toward +the horizon of remote antiquity. It was thinking of the wars of departed +ages; of the empires it had seen created and destroyed; of the nations +whose birth it had witnessed, whose progress it had watched, whose +annihilation it had noted; of the joy and sorrow, the life and death, the +grandeur and decay, of five thousand slow revolving years. It was the +type of an attribute of man--of a faculty of his heart and brain. It was +MEMORY--RETROSPECTION--wrought into visible, tangible form. All who know +what pathos there is in memories of days that are accomplished and faces +that have vanished--albeit only a trifling score of years gone by--will +have some appreciation of the pathos that dwells in these grave eyes that +look so steadfastly back upon the things they knew before History was +born--before Tradition had being--things that were, and forms that moved, +in a vague era which even Poetry and Romance scarce know of--and passed +one by one away and left the stony dreamer solitary in the midst of a +strange new age, and uncomprehended scenes. + +The Sphynx is grand in its loneliness; it is imposing in its magnitude; +it is impressive in the mystery that hangs over its story. And there is +that in the overshadowing majesty of this eternal figure of stone, with +its accusing memory of the deeds of all ages, which reveals to one +something of what he shall feel when he shall stand at last in the awful +presence of God. + +There are some things which, for the credit of America, should be left +unsaid, perhaps; but these very things happen sometimes to be the very +things which, for the real benefit of Americans, ought to have prominent +notice. While we stood looking, a wart, or an excrescence of some kind, +appeared on the jaw of the Sphynx. We heard the familiar clink of a +hammer, and understood the case at once. One of our well meaning +reptiles--I mean relic-hunters--had crawled up there and was trying to +break a "specimen" from the face of this the most majestic creation the +hand of man has wrought. But the great image contemplated the dead ages +as calmly as ever, unconscious of the small insect that was fretting at +its jaw. Egyptian granite that has defied the storms and earthquakes of +all time has nothing to fear from the tack-hammers of ignorant +excursionists--highwaymen like this specimen. He failed in his +enterprise. We sent a sheik to arrest him if he had the authority, or to +warn him, if he had not, that by the laws of Egypt the crime he was +attempting to commit was punishable with imprisonment or the bastinado. +Then he desisted and went away. + +The Sphynx: a hundred and twenty-five feet long, sixty feet high, and a +hundred and two feet around the head, if I remember rightly--carved out +of one solid block of stone harder than any iron. The block must have +been as large as the Fifth Avenue Hotel before the usual waste (by the +necessities of sculpture) of a fourth or a half of the original mass was +begun. I only set down these figures and these remarks to suggest the +prodigious labor the carving of it so elegantly, so symmetrically, so +faultlessly, must have cost. This species of stone is so hard that +figures cut in it remain sharp and unmarred after exposure to the weather +for two or three thousand years. Now did it take a hundred years of +patient toil to carve the Sphynx? It seems probable. + +Something interfered, and we did not visit the Red Sea and walk upon the +sands of Arabia. I shall not describe the great mosque of Mehemet Ali, +whose entire inner walls are built of polished and glistening alabaster; +I shall not tell how the little birds have built their nests in the +globes of the great chandeliers that hang in the mosque, and how they +fill the whole place with their music and are not afraid of any body +because their audacity is pardoned, their rights are respected, and +nobody is allowed to interfere with them, even though the mosque be thus +doomed to go unlighted; I certainly shall not tell the hackneyed story of +the massacre of the Mamelukes, because I am glad the lawless rascals were +massacred, and I do not wish to get up any sympathy in their behalf; I +shall not tell how that one solitary Mameluke jumped his horse a hundred +feet down from the battlements of the citadel and escaped, because I do +not think much of that--I could have done it myself; I shall not tell of +Joseph's well which he dug in the solid rock of the citadel hill and +which is still as good as new, nor how the same mules he bought to draw +up the water (with an endless chain) are still at it yet and are getting +tired of it, too; I shall not tell about Joseph's granaries which he +built to store the grain in, what time the Egyptian brokers were "selling +short," unwitting that there would be no corn in all the land when it +should be time for them to deliver; I shall not tell any thing about the +strange, strange city of Cairo, because it is only a repetition, a good +deal intensified and exaggerated, of the Oriental cities I have already +spoken of; I shall not tell of the Great Caravan which leaves for Mecca +every year, for I did not see it; nor of the fashion the people have of +prostrating themselves and so forming a long human pavement to be ridden +over by the chief of the expedition on its return, to the end that their +salvation may be thus secured, for I did not see that either; I shall not +speak of the railway, for it is like any other railway--I shall only say +that the fuel they use for the locomotive is composed of mummies three +thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that +purpose, and that sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out +pettishly, "D--n these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent--pass out +a King;"--[Stated to me for a fact. I only tell it as I got it. I am +willing to believe it. I can believe any thing.]--I shall not tell of +the groups of mud cones stuck like wasps' nests upon a thousand mounds +above high water-mark the length and breadth of Egypt--villages of the +lower classes; I shall not speak of the boundless sweep of level plain, +green with luxuriant grain, that gladdens the eye as far as it can pierce +through the soft, rich atmosphere of Egypt; I shall not speak of the +vision of the Pyramids seen at a distance of five and twenty miles, for +the picture is too ethereal to be limned by an uninspired pen; I shall +not tell of the crowds of dusky women who flocked to the cars when they +stopped a moment at a station, to sell us a drink of water or a ruddy, +juicy pomegranate; I shall not tell of the motley multitudes and wild +costumes that graced a fair we found in full blast at another barbarous +station; I shall not tell how we feasted on fresh dates and enjoyed the +pleasant landscape all through the flying journey; nor how we thundered +into Alexandria, at last, swarmed out of the cars, rowed aboard the ship, +left a comrade behind, (who was to return to Europe, thence home,) raised +the anchor, and turned our bows homeward finally and forever from the +long voyage; nor how, as the mellow sun went down upon the oldest land on +earth, Jack and Moult assembled in solemn state in the smoking-room and +mourned over the lost comrade the whole night long, and would not be +comforted. I shall not speak a word of any of these things, or write a +line. They shall be as a sealed book. I do not know what a sealed book +is, because I never saw one, but a sealed book is the expression to use +in this connection, because it is popular. + +We were glad to have seen the land which was the mother of civilization +--which taught Greece her letters, and through Greece Rome, and through +Rome the world; the land which could have humanized and civilized the +hapless children of Israel, but allowed them to depart out of her borders +little better than savages. We were glad to have seen that land which +had an enlightened religion with future eternal rewards and punishment in +it, while even Israel's religion contained no promise of a hereafter. +We were glad to have seen that land which had glass three thousand years +before England had it, and could paint upon it as none of us can paint +now; that land which knew, three thousand years ago, well nigh all of +medicine and surgery which science has discovered lately; which had all +those curious surgical instruments which science has invented recently; +which had in high excellence a thousand luxuries and necessities of an +advanced civilization which we have gradually contrived and accumulated +in modern times and claimed as things that were new under the sun; that +had paper untold centuries before we dreampt of it--and waterfalls before +our women thought of them; that had a perfect system of common schools so +long before we boasted of our achievements in that direction that it +seems forever and forever ago; that so embalmed the dead that flesh was +made almost immortal--which we can not do; that built temples which mock +at destroying time and smile grimly upon our lauded little prodigies of +architecture; that old land that knew all which we know now, perchance, +and more; that walked in the broad highway of civilization in the gray +dawn of creation, ages and ages before we were born; that left the +impress of exalted, cultivated Mind upon the eternal front of the Sphynx +to confound all scoffers who, when all her other proofs had passed away, +might seek to persuade the world that imperial Egypt, in the days of her +high renown, had groped in darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER LIX. + +We were at sea now, for a very long voyage--we were to pass through the +entire length of the Levant; through the entire length of the +Mediterranean proper, also, and then cross the full width of the +Atlantic--a voyage of several weeks. We naturally settled down into a +very slow, stay-at-home manner of life, and resolved to be quiet, +exemplary people, and roam no more for twenty or thirty days. No more, +at least, than from stem to stern of the ship. It was a very comfortable +prospect, though, for we were tired and needed a long rest. + +We were all lazy and satisfied, now, as the meager entries in my +note-book (that sure index, to me, of my condition), prove. What a +stupid thing a note-book gets to be at sea, any way. Please observe the +style: + + "Sunday--Services, as usual, at four bells. Services at night, + also. No cards. + + "Monday--Beautiful day, but rained hard. The cattle purchased at + Alexandria for beef ought to be shingled. Or else fattened. The + water stands in deep puddles in the depressions forward of their + after shoulders. Also here and there all over their backs. It is + well they are not cows--it would soak in and ruin the milk. The + poor devil eagle--[Afterwards presented to the Central Park.]--from + Syria looks miserable and droopy in the rain, perched on the forward + capstan. He appears to have his own opinion of a sea voyage, and if + it were put into language and the language solidified, it would + probably essentially dam the widest river in the world. + + "Tuesday--Somewhere in the neighborhood of the island of Malta. Can + not stop there. Cholera. Weather very stormy. Many passengers + seasick and invisible. + + "Wednesday--Weather still very savage. Storm blew two land birds to + sea, and they came on board. A hawk was blown off, also. He + circled round and round the ship, wanting to light, but afraid of + the people. He was so tired, though, that he had to light, at last, + or perish. He stopped in the foretop, repeatedly, and was as often + blown away by the wind. At last Harry caught him. Sea full of + flying-fish. They rise in flocks of three hundred and flash along + above the tops of the waves a distance of two or three hundred feet, + then fall and disappear. + + "Thursday--Anchored off Algiers, Africa. Beautiful city, beautiful + green hilly landscape behind it. Staid half a day and left. Not + permitted to land, though we showed a clean bill of health. They + were afraid of Egyptian plague and cholera. + + "Friday--Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening, + promenading the deck. Afterwards, charades. + + "Saturday--Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening, + promenading the decks. Afterwards, dominoes. + + "Sunday--Morning service, four bells. Evening service, eight bells. + Monotony till midnight.--Whereupon, dominoes. + + "Monday--Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening, + promenading the decks. Afterward, charades and a lecture from Dr. + C. Dominoes. + + "No date--Anchored off the picturesque city of Cagliari, Sardinia. + Staid till midnight, but not permitted to land by these infamous + foreigners. They smell inodorously--they do not wash--they dare not + risk cholera. + + "Thursday--Anchored off the beautiful cathedral city of Malaga, + Spain.--Went ashore in the captain's boat--not ashore, either, for + they would not let us land. Quarantine. Shipped my newspaper + correspondence, which they took with tongs, dipped it in sea water, + clipped it full of holes, and then fumigated it with villainous + vapors till it smelt like a Spaniard. Inquired about chances to run + to blockade and visit the Alhambra at Granada. Too risky--they + might hang a body. Set sail--middle of afternoon. + + "And so on, and so on, and so forth, for several days. Finally, + anchored off Gibraltar, which looks familiar and home-like." + +It reminds me of the journal I opened with the New Year, once, when I was +a boy and a confiding and a willing prey to those impossible schemes of +reform which well-meaning old maids and grandmothers set for the feet of +unwary youths at that season of the year--setting oversized tasks for +them, which, necessarily failing, as infallibly weaken the boy's strength +of will, diminish his confidence in himself and injure his chances of +success in life. Please accept of an extract: + + "Monday--Got up, washed, went to bed. + "Tuesday--Got up, washed, went to bed. + "Wednesday--Got up, washed, went to bed. + "Thursday--Got up, washed, went to bed. + "Friday--Got up, washed, went to bed. + "Next Friday--Got up, washed, went to bed. + "Friday fortnight--Got up, washed, went to bed. + "Following month--Got up, washed, went to bed." + +I stopped, then, discouraged. Startling events appeared to be too rare, +in my career, to render a diary necessary. I still reflect with pride, +however, that even at that early age I washed when I got up. That +journal finished me. I never have had the nerve to keep one since. My +loss of confidence in myself in that line was permanent. + +The ship had to stay a week or more at Gibraltar to take in coal for the +home voyage. + +It would be very tiresome staying here, and so four of us ran the +quarantine blockade and spent seven delightful days in Seville, Cordova, +Cadiz, and wandering through the pleasant rural scenery of Andalusia, the +garden of Old Spain. The experiences of that cheery week were too varied +and numerous for a short chapter and I have not room for a long one. +Therefore I shall leave them all out. + + + + +CHAPTER LX. + +Ten or eleven o'clock found us coming down to breakfast one morning in +Cadiz. They told us the ship had been lying at anchor in the harbor two +or three hours. It was time for us to bestir ourselves. The ship could +wait only a little while because of the quarantine. We were soon on +board, and within the hour the white city and the pleasant shores of +Spain sank down behind the waves and passed out of sight. We had seen no +land fade from view so regretfully. + +It had long ago been decided in a noisy public meeting in the main cabin +that we could not go to Lisbon, because we must surely be quarantined +there. We did every thing by mass-meeting, in the good old national way, +from swapping off one empire for another on the programme of the voyage +down to complaining of the cookery and the scarcity of napkins. I am +reminded, now, of one of these complaints of the cookery made by a +passenger. The coffee had been steadily growing more and more execrable +for the space of three weeks, till at last it had ceased to be coffee +altogether and had assumed the nature of mere discolored water--so this +person said. He said it was so weak that it was transparent an inch in +depth around the edge of the cup. As he approached the table one morning +he saw the transparent edge--by means of his extraordinary vision long +before he got to his seat. He went back and complained in a high-handed +way to Capt. Duncan. He said the coffee was disgraceful. The Captain +showed his. It seemed tolerably good. The incipient mutineer was more +outraged than ever, then, at what he denounced as the partiality shown +the captain's table over the other tables in the ship. He flourished +back and got his cup and set it down triumphantly, and said: + +"Just try that mixture once, Captain Duncan." + +He smelt it--tasted it--smiled benignantly--then said: + +"It is inferior--for coffee--but it is pretty fair tea." + +The humbled mutineer smelt it, tasted it, and returned to his seat. He +had made an egregious ass of himself before the whole ship. He did it no +more. After that he took things as they came. That was me. + +The old-fashioned ship-life had returned, now that we were no longer in +sight of land. For days and days it continued just the same, one day +being exactly like another, and, to me, every one of them pleasant. At +last we anchored in the open roadstead of Funchal, in the beautiful +islands we call the Madeiras. + +The mountains looked surpassingly lovely, clad as they were in living, +green; ribbed with lava ridges; flecked with white cottages; riven by +deep chasms purple with shade; the great slopes dashed with sunshine and +mottled with shadows flung from the drifting squadrons of the sky, and +the superb picture fitly crowned by towering peaks whose fronts were +swept by the trailing fringes of the clouds. + +But we could not land. We staid all day and looked, we abused the man +who invented quarantine, we held half a dozen mass-meetings and crammed +them full of interrupted speeches, motions that fell still-born, +amendments that came to nought and resolutions that died from sheer +exhaustion in trying to get before the house. At night we set sail. + +We averaged four mass-meetings a week for the voyage--we seemed always in +labor in this way, and yet so often fallaciously that whenever at long +intervals we were safely delivered of a resolution, it was cause for +public rejoicing, and we hoisted the flag and fired a salute. + +Days passed--and nights; and then the beautiful Bermudas rose out of the +sea, we entered the tortuous channel, steamed hither and thither among +the bright summer islands, and rested at last under the flag of England +and were welcome. We were not a nightmare here, where were civilization +and intelligence in place of Spanish and Italian superstition, dirt and +dread of cholera. A few days among the breezy groves, the flower +gardens, the coral caves, and the lovely vistas of blue water that went +curving in and out, disappearing and anon again appearing through jungle +walls of brilliant foliage, restored the energies dulled by long drowsing +on the ocean, and fitted us for our final cruise--our little run of a +thousand miles to New York--America--HOME. + +We bade good-bye to "our friends the Bermudians," as our programme hath +it--the majority of those we were most intimate with were negroes--and +courted the great deep again. I said the majority. We knew more negroes +than white people, because we had a deal of washing to be done, but we +made some most excellent friends among the whites, whom it will be a +pleasant duty to hold long in grateful remembrance. + +We sailed, and from that hour all idling ceased. Such another system of +overhauling, general littering of cabins and packing of trunks we had not +seen since we let go the anchor in the harbor of Beirout. Every body was +busy. Lists of all purchases had to be made out, and values attached, to +facilitate matters at the custom-house. Purchases bought by bulk in +partnership had to be equitably divided, outstanding debts canceled, +accounts compared, and trunks, boxes and packages labeled. All day long +the bustle and confusion continued. + +And now came our first accident. A passenger was running through a +gangway, between decks, one stormy night, when he caught his foot in the +iron staple of a door that had been heedlessly left off a hatchway, and +the bones of his leg broke at the ancle. It was our first serious +misfortune. We had traveled much more than twenty thousand miles, by +land and sea, in many trying climates, without a single hurt, without a +serious case of sickness and without a death among five and sixty +passengers. Our good fortune had been wonderful. A sailor had jumped +overboard at Constantinople one night, and was seen no more, but it was +suspected that his object was to desert, and there was a slim chance, at +least, that he reached the shore. But the passenger list was complete. +There was no name missing from the register. + +At last, one pleasant morning, we steamed up the harbor of New York, all +on deck, all dressed in Christian garb--by special order, for there was a +latent disposition in some quarters to come out as Turks--and amid a +waving of handkerchiefs from welcoming friends, the glad pilgrims noted +the shiver of the decks that told that ship and pier had joined hands +again and the long, strange cruise was over. Amen. + + + + +CHAPTER LXI. + +In this place I will print an article which I wrote for the New York +Herald the night we arrived. I do it partly because my contract with my +publishers makes it compulsory; partly because it is a proper, tolerably +accurate, and exhaustive summing up of the cruise of the ship and the +performances of the pilgrims in foreign lands; and partly because some of +the passengers have abused me for writing it, and I wish the public to +see how thankless a task it is to put one's self to trouble to glorify +unappreciative people. I was charged with "rushing into print" with +these compliments. I did not rush. I had written news letters to the +Herald sometimes, but yet when I visited the office that day I did not +say any thing about writing a valedictory. I did go to the Tribune +office to see if such an article was wanted, because I belonged on the +regular staff of that paper and it was simply a duty to do it. The +managing editor was absent, and so I thought no more about it. At night +when the Herald's request came for an article, I did not "rush." In +fact, I demurred for a while, because I did not feel like writing +compliments then, and therefore was afraid to speak of the cruise lest I +might be betrayed into using other than complimentary language. However, +I reflected that it would be a just and righteous thing to go down and +write a kind word for the Hadjis--Hadjis are people who have made the +pilgrimage--because parties not interested could not do it so feelingly +as I, a fellow-Hadji, and so I penned the valedictory. I have read it, +and read it again; and if there is a sentence in it that is not fulsomely +complimentary to captain, ship and passengers, I can not find it. If it +is not a chapter that any company might be proud to have a body write +about them, my judgment is fit for nothing. With these remarks I +confidently submit it to the unprejudiced judgment of the reader: + + RETURN OF THE HOLY LAND EXCURSIONISTS--THE STORY OF THE CRUISE. + + TO THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD: + + The steamer Quaker City has accomplished at last her extraordinary + voyage and returned to her old pier at the foot of Wall street. + The expedition was a success in some respects, in some it was not. + Originally it was advertised as a "pleasure excursion." Well, + perhaps, it was a pleasure excursion, but certainly it did not look + like one; certainly it did not act like one. Any body's and every + body's notion of a pleasure excursion is that the parties to it will + of a necessity be young and giddy and somewhat boisterous. They + will dance a good deal, sing a good deal, make love, but sermonize + very little. Any body's and every body's notion of a well conducted + funeral is that there must be a hearse and a corpse, and chief + mourners and mourners by courtesy, many old people, much solemnity, + no levity, and a prayer and a sermon withal. Three-fourths of the + Quaker City's passengers were between forty and seventy years of + age! There was a picnic crowd for you! It may be supposed that the + other fourth was composed of young girls. But it was not. It was + chiefly composed of rusty old bachelors and a child of six years. + Let us average the ages of the Quaker City's pilgrims and set the + figure down as fifty years. Is any man insane enough to imagine + that this picnic of patriarchs sang, made love, danced, laughed, + told anecdotes, dealt in ungodly levity? In my experience they + sinned little in these matters. No doubt it was presumed here at + home that these frolicsome veterans laughed and sang and romped all + day, and day after day, and kept up a noisy excitement from one end + of the ship to the other; and that they played blind-man's buff or + danced quadrilles and waltzes on moonlight evenings on the + quarter-deck; and that at odd moments of unoccupied time they jotted + a laconic item or two in the journals they opened on such an + elaborate plan when they left home, and then skurried off to their + whist and euchre labors under the cabin lamps. If these things were + presumed, the presumption was at fault. The venerable excursionists + were not gay and frisky. They played no blind-man's buff; they + dealt not in whist; they shirked not the irksome journal, for alas! + most of them were even writing books. They never romped, they + talked but little, they never sang, save in the nightly + prayer-meeting. The pleasure ship was a synagogue, and the pleasure + trip was a funeral excursion without a corpse. (There is nothing + exhilarating about a funeral excursion without a corpse.) A free, + hearty laugh was a sound that was not heard oftener than once in + seven days about those decks or in those cabins, and when it was + heard it met with precious little sympathy. The excursionists + danced, on three separate evenings, long, long ago, (it seems an + age.) quadrilles, of a single set, made up of three ladies and five + gentlemen, (the latter with handkerchiefs around their arms to + signify their sex.) who timed their feet to the solemn wheezing of a + melodeon; but even this melancholy orgie was voted to be sinful, and + dancing was discontinued. + + The pilgrims played dominoes when too much Josephus or Robinson's + Holy Land Researches, or book-writing, made recreation necessary +-- for dominoes is about as mild and sinless a game as any in the + world, perhaps, excepting always the ineffably insipid diversion + they call croquet, which is a game where you don't pocket any balls + and don't carom on any thing of any consequence, and when you are + done nobody has to pay, and there are no refreshments to saw off, + and, consequently, there isn't any satisfaction whatever about it +-- they played dominoes till they were rested, and then they + blackguarded each other privately till prayer-time. When they were + not seasick they were uncommonly prompt when the dinner-gong + sounded. Such was our daily life on board the ship--solemnity, + decorum, dinner, dominoes, devotions, slander. It was not lively + enough for a pleasure trip; but if we had only had a corpse it would + have made a noble funeral excursion. It is all over now; but when I + look back, the idea of these venerable fossils skipping forth on a + six months' picnic, seems exquisitely refreshing. The advertised + title of the expedition--"The Grand Holy Land Pleasure Excursion" +-- was a misnomer. "The Grand Holy Land Funeral Procession" would have + been better--much better. + + Wherever we went, in Europe, Asia, or Africa, we made a sensation, + and, I suppose I may add, created a famine. None of us had ever + been any where before; we all hailed from the interior; travel was a + wild novelty to us, and we conducted ourselves in accordance with + the natural instincts that were in us, and trammeled ourselves with + no ceremonies, no conventionalities. We always took care to make it + understood that we were Americans--Americans! When we found that a + good many foreigners had hardly ever heard of America, and that a + good many more knew it only as a barbarous province away off + somewhere, that had lately been at war with somebody, we pitied the + ignorance of the Old World, but abated no jot of our importance. + Many and many a simple community in the Eastern hemisphere will + remember for years the incursion of the strange horde in the year of + our Lord 1867, that called themselves Americans, and seemed to + imagine in some unaccountable way that they had a right to be proud + of it. We generally created a famine, partly because the coffee on + the Quaker City was unendurable, and sometimes the more substantial + fare was not strictly first class; and partly because one naturally + tires of sitting long at the same board and eating from the same + dishes. + + The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They + looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of + America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. + They noticed that we looked out for expenses, and got what we + conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the + mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes + and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in + making those idiots understand their own language. One of our + passengers said to a shopkeeper, in reference to a proposed return + to buy a pair of gloves, "Allong restay trankeel--may be ve coom + Moonday;" and would you believe it, that shopkeeper, a born + Frenchman, had to ask what it was that had been said. Sometimes it + seems to me, somehow, that there must be a difference between + Parisian French and Quaker City French. + + The people stared at us every where, and we stared at them. We + generally made them feel rather small, too, before we got done with + them, because we bore down on them with America's greatness until we + crushed them. And yet we took kindly to the manners and customs, + and especially to the fashions of the various people we visited. + When we left the Azores, we wore awful capotes and used fine tooth + combs--successfully. When we came back from Tangier, in Africa, we + were topped with fezzes of the bloodiest hue, hung with tassels like + an Indian's scalp-lock. In France and Spain we attracted some + attention in these costumes. In Italy they naturally took us for + distempered Garibaldians, and set a gunboat to look for any thing + significant in our changes of uniform. We made Rome howl. We could + have made any place howl when we had all our clothes on. We got no + fresh raiment in Greece--they had but little there of any kind. But + at Constantinople, how we turned out! Turbans, scimetars, fezzes, + horse-pistols, tunics, sashes, baggy trowsers, yellow slippers--Oh, + we were gorgeous! The illustrious dogs of Constantinople barked + their under jaws off, and even then failed to do us justice. They + are all dead by this time. They could not go through such a run of + business as we gave them and survive. + + And then we went to see the Emperor of Russia. We just called on + him as comfortably as if we had known him a century or so, and when + we had finished our visit we variegated ourselves with selections + from Russian costumes and sailed away again more picturesque than + ever. In Smyrna we picked up camel's hair shawls and other dressy + things from Persia; but in Palestine--ah, in Palestine--our splendid + career ended. They didn't wear any clothes there to speak of. We + were satisfied, and stopped. We made no experiments. We did not + try their costume. But we astonished the natives of that country. + We astonished them with such eccentricities of dress as we could + muster. We prowled through the Holy Land, from Cesarea Philippi to + Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, a weird procession of pilgrims, gotten + up regardless of expense, solemn, gorgeous, green-spectacled, + drowsing under blue umbrellas, and astride of a sorrier lot of + horses, camels and asses than those that came out of Noah's ark, + after eleven months of seasickness and short rations. If ever those + children of Israel in Palestine forget when Gideon's Band went + through there from America, they ought to be cursed once more and + finished. It was the rarest spectacle that ever astounded mortal + eyes, perhaps. + + Well, we were at home in Palestine. It was easy to see that that + was the grand feature of the expedition. We had cared nothing much + about Europe. We galloped through the Louvre, the Pitti, the + Ufizzi, the Vatican--all the galleries--and through the pictured and + frescoed churches of Venice, Naples, and the cathedrals of Spain; + some of us said that certain of the great works of the old masters + were glorious creations of genius, (we found it out in the + guide-book, though we got hold of the wrong picture sometimes,) and + the others said they were disgraceful old daubs. We examined modern + and ancient statuary with a critical eye in Florence, Rome, or any + where we found it, and praised it if we saw fit, and if we didn't we + said we preferred the wooden Indians in front of the cigar stores of + America. But the Holy Land brought out all our enthusiasm. We fell + into raptures by the barren shores of Galilee; we pondered at Tabor + and at Nazareth; we exploded into poetry over the questionable + loveliness of Esdraelon; we meditated at Jezreel and Samaria over + the missionary zeal of Jehu; we rioted--fairly rioted among the holy + places of Jerusalem; we bathed in Jordan and the Dead Sea, reckless + whether our accident-insurance policies were extra-hazardous or not, + and brought away so many jugs of precious water from both places + that all the country from Jericho to the mountains of Moab will + suffer from drouth this year, I think. Yet, the pilgrimage part of + the excursion was its pet feature--there is no question about that. + After dismal, smileless Palestine, beautiful Egypt had few charms + for us. We merely glanced at it and were ready for home. + + They wouldn't let us land at Malta--quarantine; they would not let + us land in Sardinia; nor at Algiers, Africa; nor at Malaga, Spain, + nor Cadiz, nor at the Madeira islands. So we got offended at all + foreigners and turned our backs upon them and came home. I suppose + we only stopped at the Bermudas because they were in the programme. + We did not care any thing about any place at all. We wanted to go + home. Homesickness was abroad in the ship--it was epidemic. If the + authorities of New York had known how badly we had it, they would + have quarantined us here. + + The grand pilgrimage is over. Good-bye to it, and a pleasant memory + to it, I am able to say in all kindness. I bear no malice, no + ill-will toward any individual that was connected with it, either as + passenger or officer. Things I did not like at all yesterday I like + very well to-day, now that I am at home, and always hereafter I + shall be able to poke fun at the whole gang if the spirit so moves + me to do, without ever saying a malicious word. The expedition + accomplished all that its programme promised that it should + accomplish, and we ought all to be satisfied with the management of + the matter, certainly. Bye-bye! + + MARK TWAIN. + + +I call that complimentary. It is complimentary; and yet I never have +received a word of thanks for it from the Hadjis; on the contrary I speak +nothing but the serious truth when I say that many of them even took +exceptions to the article. In endeavoring to please them I slaved over +that sketch for two hours, and had my labor for my pains. I never will +do a generous deed again. + + + + +CONCLUSION. + +Nearly one year has flown since this notable pilgrimage was ended; and as +I sit here at home in San Francisco thinking, I am moved to confess that +day by day the mass of my memories of the excursion have grown more and +more pleasant as the disagreeable incidents of travel which encumbered +them flitted one by one out of my mind--and now, if the Quaker City were +weighing her anchor to sail away on the very same cruise again, nothing +could gratify me more than to be a passenger. With the same captain and +even the same pilgrims, the same sinners. I was on excellent terms with +eight or nine of the excursionists (they are my staunch friends yet,) and +was even on speaking terms with the rest of the sixty-five. I have been +at sea quite enough to know that that was a very good average. Because a +long sea-voyage not only brings out all the mean traits one has, and +exaggerates them, but raises up others which he never suspected he +possessed, and even creates new ones. A twelve months' voyage at sea +would make of an ordinary man a very miracle of meanness. On the other +hand, if a man has good qualities, the spirit seldom moves him to exhibit +them on shipboard, at least with any sort of emphasis. Now I am +satisfied that our pilgrims are pleasant old people on shore; I am also +satisfied that at sea on a second voyage they would be pleasanter, +somewhat, than they were on our grand excursion, and so I say without +hesitation that I would be glad enough to sail with them again. I could +at least enjoy life with my handful of old friends. They could enjoy +life with their cliques as well--passengers invariably divide up into +cliques, on all ships. + +And I will say, here, that I would rather travel with an excursion party +of Methuselahs than have to be changing ships and comrades constantly, as +people do who travel in the ordinary way. Those latter are always +grieving over some other ship they have known and lost, and over other +comrades whom diverging routes have separated from them. They learn to +love a ship just in time to change it for another, and they become +attached to a pleasant traveling companion only to lose him. They have +that most dismal experience of being in a strange vessel, among strange +people who care nothing about them, and of undergoing the customary +bullying by strange officers and the insolence of strange servants, +repeated over and over again within the compass of every month. They +have also that other misery of packing and unpacking trunks--of running +the distressing gauntlet of custom-houses--of the anxieties attendant +upon getting a mass of baggage from point to point on land in safety. +I had rasher sail with a whole brigade of patriarchs than suffer so. +We never packed our trunks but twice--when we sailed from New York, and +when we returned to it. Whenever we made a land journey, we estimated +how many days we should be gone and what amount of clothing we should +need, figured it down to a mathematical nicety, packed a valise or two +accordingly, and left the trunks on board. We chose our comrades from +among our old, tried friends, and started. We were never dependent upon +strangers for companionship. We often had occasion to pity Americans +whom we found traveling drearily among strangers with no friends to +exchange pains and pleasures with. Whenever we were coming back from a +land journey, our eyes sought one thing in the distance first--the ship +--and when we saw it riding at anchor with the flag apeak, we felt as a +returning wanderer feels when he sees his home. When we stepped on +board, our cares vanished, our troubles were at an end--for the ship was +home to us. We always had the same familiar old state-room to go to, and +feel safe and at peace and comfortable again. + +I have no fault to find with the manner in which our excursion was +conducted. Its programme was faithfully carried out--a thing which +surprised me, for great enterprises usually promise vastly more than they +perform. It would be well if such an excursion could be gotten up every +year and the system regularly inaugurated. Travel is fatal to prejudice, +bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on +these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can +not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's +lifetime. + +The Excursion is ended, and has passed to its place among the things that +were. But its varied scenes and its manifold incidents will linger +pleasantly in our memories for many a year to come. Always on the wing, +as we were, and merely pausing a moment to catch fitful glimpses of the +wonders of half a world, we could not hope to receive or retain vivid +impressions of all it was our fortune to see. Yet our holyday flight has +not been in vain--for above the confusion of vague recollections, certain +of its best prized pictures lift themselves and will still continue +perfect in tint and outline after their surroundings shall have faded +away. + +We shall remember something of pleasant France; and something also of +Paris, though it flashed upon us a splendid meteor, and was gone again, +we hardly knew how or where. We shall remember, always, how we saw +majestic Gibraltar glorified with the rich coloring of a Spanish sunset +and swimming in a sea of rainbows. In fancy we shall see Milan again, +and her stately Cathedral with its marble wilderness of graceful spires. +And Padua--Verona--Como, jeweled with stars; and patrician Venice, afloat +on her stagnant flood--silent, desolate, haughty--scornful of her humbled +state--wrapping herself in memories of her lost fleets, of battle and +triumph, and all the pageantry of a glory that is departed. + +We can not forget Florence--Naples--nor the foretaste of heaven that is +in the delicious atmosphere of Greece--and surely not Athens and the +broken temples of the Acropolis. Surely not venerable Rome--nor the +green plain that compasses her round about, contrasting its brightness +with her gray decay--nor the ruined arches that stand apart in the plain +and clothe their looped and windowed raggedness with vines. We shall +remember St. Peter's: not as one sees it when he walks the streets of +Rome and fancies all her domes are just alike, but as he sees it leagues +away, when every meaner edifice has faded out of sight and that one dome +looms superbly up in the flush of sunset, full of dignity and grace, +strongly outlined as a mountain. + +We shall remember Constantinople and the Bosporus--the colossal +magnificence of Baalbec--the Pyramids of Egypt--the prodigious form, the +benignant countenance of the Sphynx--Oriental Smyrna--sacred Jerusalem +--Damascus, the "Pearl of the East," the pride of Syria, the fabled Garden +of Eden, the home of princes and genii of the Arabian Nights, the oldest +metropolis on earth, the one city in all the world that has kept its name +and held its place and looked serenely on while the Kingdoms and Empires +of four thousand years have risen to life, enjoyed their little season of +pride and pomp, and then vanished and been forgotten! + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Innocents Abroad +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +A BURLESQUE AUTOBIOGRAPHY + +by Mark Twain + + + +Contents: + Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Auto-Biography + First Romance. + + + +1871 + + + + +BURLESQUE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. + +Two or three persons having at different times intimated that if I would +write an autobiography they would read it, when they got leisure, I yield +at last to this frenzied public demand, and herewith tender my history: + +Ours is a noble old house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity. +The earliest ancestor the Twains have any record of was a friend of the +family by the name of Higgins. This was in the eleventh century, when +our people were living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England. Why it is +that our long line has ever since borne the maternal name (except when +one of them now and then took a playful refuge in an alias to avert +foolishness), instead of Higgins, is a mystery which none of us has ever +felt much desire to stir. It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we +leave it alone. All the old families do that way. + +Arthour Twain was a man of considerable note a solicitor on the highway +in William Rufus' time. At about the age of thirty he went to one of +those fine old English places of resort called Newgate, to see about +something, and never returned again. While there he died suddenly. + +Augustus Twain, seems to have made something of a stir about the year +1160. He was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his old +sabre and sharpen it up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night, +and stick it through people as they went by, to see them jump. He was a +born humorist. But he got to going too far with it; and the first time +he was found stripping one of these parties, the authorities removed one +end of him, and put it up on a nice high place on Temple Bar, where it +could contemplate the people and have a good time. He never liked any +situation so much or stuck to it so long. + +Then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows a succession of +soldiers--noble, high-spirited fellows, who always went into battle +singing; right behind the army, and always went out a-whooping, right +ahead of it. + +This is a scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart's poor witticism that our +family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuck out at +right angles, and bore fruit winter, and summer. + + ||=======|==== + || | + || | + || O + || / || \ + || || + || || + || + || + || + OUR FAMILY TREE + +Early in the fifteenth century we have Beau Twain, called "the Scholar." +He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand. And he could imitate anybody's +hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head off to +see it. He had infinite sport with his talent. But by and by he took a +contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness of the work spoiled +his hand. Still, he enjoyed life all the time he was in the stone +business, which, with inconsiderable intervals, was some forty-two years. +In fact, he died in harness. During all those long years he gave such +satisfaction that he never was through with one contract a week till +government gave him another. He was a perfect pet. And he was always a +favorite with his fellow-artists, and was a conspicuous member of their +benevolent secret society, called the Chain Gang. He always wore his +hair short, had a preference for striped clothes, and died lamented by +the government. He was a sore loss to his country. For he was so +regular. + +Some years later we have the illustrious John Morgan Twain. He came over +to this country with Columbus in 1492, as a passenger. He appears to +have been of a crusty, uncomfortable disposition. He complained of the +food all the way over, and was always threatening to go ashore unless +there was a change. He wanted fresh shad. Hardly a day passed over his +head that he did not go idling about the ship with his nose in the air, +sneering about the commander, and saying he did not believe Columbus knew +where he was going to or had ever been there before. The memorable cry +of "Land ho!" thrilled every heart in the ship but his. He gazed a while +through a piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on the distant +water, and then said: "Land be hanged,--it's a raft!" + +When this questionable passenger came on board the ship, he brought +nothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief marked +"B. G.," one cotton sock marked "L. W. C." one woollen one marked "D. F." +and a night-shirt marked "O. M. R." And yet during the voyage he worried +more about his "trunk," and gave himself more airs about it, than all +the rest of the passengers put together. + +If the ship was "down by the head," and would got steer, he would go and +move his "trunk" farther aft, and then watch the effect. If the +ship was "by the stern," he would suggest to Columbus to detail some men +to "shift that baggage." In storms he had to be gagged, because his +wailings about his "trunk" made it impossible for the men to hear the +orders. The man does not appear to have been openly charged with any +gravely unbecoming thing, but it is noted in the ship's log as a "curious +circumstance" that albeit he brought his baggage on board the ship in a +newspaper, he took it ashore in four trunks, a queensware crate, and a +couple of champagne baskets. But when he came back insinuating in an +insolent, swaggering way, that some of his things were missing, and was +going to search the other passengers' baggage, it was too much, and they +threw him overboard. They watched long and wonderingly for him to come +up, but not even a bubble rose on the quietly ebbing tide. But while +every one was most absorbed in gazing over the side, and the interest was +momentarily increasing, it was observed with consternation that the +vessel was adrift and the anchor cable hanging limp from the bow. Then +in the ship's dimmed and ancient log we find this quaint note: + + "In time it was discouvered yt ye troblesome passenger hadde + gonne downe and got ye anchor, and toke ye same and solde it to + ye dam sauvages from ye interior, saying yt he hadde founde it, + ye sonne of a ghun!" + +Yet this ancestor had good and noble instincts, and it is with pride that +we call to mind the fact that he was the first white person who ever +interested himself in the work of elevating and civilizing our Indians. +He built a commodious jail and put up a gallows, and to his dying day he +claimed with satisfaction that he had had a more restraining and +elevating influence on the Indians than any other reformer that ever, +labored among them. At this point the chronicle becomes less frank and +chatty, and closes abruptly by saying that the old voyager went to see +his gallows perform on the first white man ever hanged in America, and +while there received injuries which terminated in his death. + +The great grandson of the "Reformer" flourished in sixteen hundred and +something, and was known in our annals as, "the old Admiral," though in +history he had other titles. He was long in command of fleets of swift +vessels, well armed and, manned, and did great service in hurrying up +merchantmen. Vessels which he followed and kept his eagle eye on, always +made good fair time across the ocean. But if a ship still loitered in +spite of all he could do, his indignation would grow till he could +contain himself no longer--and then he would take that ship home where he +lived and, keep it there carefully, expecting the owners to come for it, +but they never did. And he would try to get the idleness and sloth out +of the sailors of that ship by compelling, them to take invigorating +exercise and a bath. He called it "walking a plank." All the pupils +liked it. At any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying +it. When the owners were late coming for their ships, the Admiral always +burned them, so that the insurance money should not be lost. At last +this fine old tar was cut down in the fulness of his years and honors. +And to her dying day, his poor heart-broken widow believed that if he had +been cut down fifteen minutes sooner he might have been resuscitated. + +Charles Henry Twain lived during the latter part of the seventeenth +century, and was a zealous and distinguished missionary. He converted +sixteen thousand South Sea islanders, and taught them that a dog-tooth +necklace and a pair of spectacles was not enough clothing to come to +divine service in. His poor flock loved him very, very dearly; and when +his funeral was over, they got up in a body (and came out of the +restaurant) with tears in their eyes, and saying, one to another, that he +was a good tender missionary, and they wished they had some more of him. + +PAH-GO-TO-WAH-WAH-PUKKETEKEEWIS (Mighty-Hunter-with-a-Hog-Eye) TWAIN +adorned the middle of the eighteenth century, and aided Gen. Braddock +with all his heart to resist the oppressor Washington. It was this +ancestor who fired seventeen times at our Washington from behind a tree. +So far the beautiful romantic narrative in the moral story-books is +correct; but when that narrative goes on to say that at the seventeenth +round the awe-stricken savage said solemnly that that man was being +reserved by the Great Spirit for some mighty mission, and he dared not +lift his sacrilegious rifle against him again, the narrative seriously +impairs the integrity of history. What he did say was: + +"It ain't no (hic !) no use. 'At man's so drunk he can't stan' still +long enough for a man to hit him. I (hic !) I can't 'ford to fool away +any more am'nition on him!" + +That was why he stopped at the seventeenth round, and it was, a good +plain matter-of-fact reason, too, and one that easily commends itself to +us by the eloquent, persuasive flavor of probability there is about it. + +I always enjoyed the story-book narrative, but I felt a marring misgiving +that every Indian at Braddock's Defeat who fired at a soldier a couple of +times (two easily grows to seventeen in a century), and missed him, +jumped to the conclusion that the Great Spirit was reserving that soldier +for some grand mission; and so I somehow feared that the only reason why +Washington's case is remembered and the others forgotten is, that in his +the prophecy' came true, and in that of the others it didn't. There are +not books enough on earth to contain the record of the prophecies Indians +and other unauthorized parties have made; but one may carry in his +overcoat pockets the record of all the prophecies that have been +fulfilled. + +I will remark here, in passing, that certain ancestors of mine are so +thoroughly well known in history by their aliases, that I have not felt +it to be worth while to dwell upon them, or even mention them in the +order of their birth. Among these may be mentioned RICHARD BRINSLEY +TWAIN, alias Guy Fawkes; JOHN WENTWORTH TWAIN, alias Sixteen-String Jack; +WILLIAM HOGARTH TWAIN, alias Jack Sheppard; ANANIAS TWAIN, alias Baron +Munchausen; JOHN GEORGE TWAIN, alias Capt. Kydd; and them there are +George Francis Train, Tom Pepper, Nebuchadnezzar and Baalam's Ass--they +all belong to our family, but to a branch of it somewhat distantly +removed from the honorable direct line--in fact, a collateral branch, +whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that, in order to +acquire the notoriety we have always yearned and hungered for, they have +got into a low way of going to jail instead of getting hanged. + +It is not well; when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry +down too close to your own time--it is safest to speak only vaguely of +your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, which I now +do. + +I was born without teeth--and there Richard III had the advantage of me; +but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I had the +advantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously +honest. + +But now a thought occurs to me. My own history would really seem so tame +contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom to leave +it unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I have read +had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would have +been a felicitous thing, for the reading public. How does it strike you? + + + + + + + + AWFUL, TERRIBLE + MEDIEVAL ROMANCE + +CHAPTER I + +THE SECRET REVEALED. + +It was night. Stillness reigned in the grand old feudal castle of +Klugenstein. The year 1222 was drawing to a close. Far away up in the +tallest of the castle's towers a single light glimmered. A secret +council was being held there. The stern old lord of Klugenstein sat in +a chair of state meditating. Presently he, said, with a tender +accent: + +"My daughter!" + +A young man of noble presence, clad from head to heel in knightly mail, +answered: + +"Speak, father!" + +"My daughter, the time is come for the revealing of the mystery that hath +puzzled all your young life. Know, then, that it had its birth in the +matters which I shall now unfold. My brother Ulrich is the great Duke of +Brandenburgh. Our father, on his deathbed, decreed that if no son were +born to Ulrich, the succession should pass to my house, provided a son +were born to me. And further, in case no son, were born to either, but +only daughters, then the succession should pass to Ulrich's daughter, +if she proved stainless; if she did not, my daughter should succeed, +if she retained a blameless name. And so I, and my old wife here, prayed +fervently for the good boon of a son, but the prayer was vain. You were +born to us. I was in despair. I saw the mighty prize slipping from my +grasp, the splendid dream vanishing away. And I had been so hopeful! +Five years had Ulrich lived in wedlock, and yet his wife had borne no +heir of either sex. + +"'But hold,' I said, 'all is not lost.' A saving scheme had shot athwart +my brain. You were born at midnight. Only the leech, the nurse, and six +waiting-women knew your sex. I hanged them every one before an hour had +sped. Next morning all the barony went mad with rejoicing over the +proclamation that a son was born to Klugenstein, an heir to mighty +Brandenburgh! And well the secret has been kept. Your mother's own +sister nursed your infancy, and from that time forward we feared nothing. + +"When you were ten years old, a daughter was born to Ulrich. We grieved, +but hoped for good results from measles, or physicians, or other natural +enemies of infancy, but were always disappointed. She lived, she throve +--Heaven's malison upon her! But it is nothing. We are safe. For, +Ha-ha! have we not a son? And is not our son the future Duke? Our +well-beloved Conrad, is it not so?--for, woman of eight-and-twenty years +--as you are, my child, none other name than that hath ever fallen to you! + +"Now it hath come to pass that age hath laid its hand upon my brother, +and he waxes feeble. The cares of state do tax him sore. Therefore he +wills that you shall come to him and be already Duke--in act, though not +yet in name. Your servitors are ready--you journey forth to-night. + +"Now listen well. Remember every word I say. There is a law as old as +Germany that if any woman sit for a single instant in the great ducal +chair before she hath been absolutely crowned in presence of the people, +SHE SHALL DIE! So heed my words. Pretend humility. Pronounce your +judgments from the Premier's chair, which stands at the foot of the +throne. Do this until you are crowned and safe. It is not likely that +your sex will ever be discovered; but still it is the part of wisdom to +make all things as safe as may be in this treacherous earthly life." + +"Oh; my father, is it for this my life hath been a lie! Was it that I +might cheat my unoffending cousin of her rights? Spare me, father, +spare your child!" + +"What, huzzy! Is this my reward for the august fortune my brain has +wrought for thee? By the bones of my father, this puling sentiment of +thine but ill accords with my humor. + +"Betake thee to the Duke, instantly! And beware how thou meddlest with my +purpose!" + +Let this suffice, of the conversation. It is enough for us to know that +the prayers, the entreaties and the tears of the gentle-natured girl +availed nothing. They nor anything could move the stout old lord of +Klugenstein. And so, at last, with a heavy heart, the daughter saw the +castle gates close behind her, and found herself riding away in the +darkness surrounded by a knightly array of armed, vassals and a brave +following of servants. + +The old baron sat silent for many minutes after his daughter's departure, +and then he turned to his sad wife and said: + +"Dame, our matters seem speeding fairly. It is full three months since I +sent the shrewd and handsome Count Detzin on his devilish mission to my +brother's daughter Constance. If he fail, we are not wholly safe; but if +he do succeed, no power can bar our girl from being Duchess e'en though +ill-fortune should decree she never should be Duke!" + +"My heart is full of bodings, yet all may still be well." + +"Tush, woman! Leave the owls to croak. To bed with ye, and dream of +Brandenburgh and grandeur!" + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +FESTIVITY AND TEARS + +Six days after the occurrences related in the above chapter, the +brilliant capital of the Duchy of Brandenburgh was resplendent with +military pageantry, and noisy with the rejoicings of loyal multitudes; +for Conrad, the young heir to the crown, was come. The old Duke's, heart +was full of happiness, for Conrad's handsome person and graceful bearing +had won his love at once. The great halls of the palace were thronged +with nobles, who welcomed Conrad bravely; and so bright and happy did all +things seem, that he felt his fears and sorrows passing away and giving +place to a comforting contentment. + +But in a remote apartment of the palace a scene of a different nature +was, transpiring. By a window stood the Duke's only child, the Lady +Constance. Her eyes were red and swollen, and full of tears. She was +alone. Presently she fell to weeping anew, and said aloud: + +"The villain Detzin is gone--has fled the dukedom! I could not believe +it at first, but alas! it is too true. And I loved him so. I dared to +love him though I knew the Duke my father would never let me wed him. +I loved him--but now I hate him! With all, my soul I hate him! Oh, what +is to become of me! I am lost, lost, lost! I shall go mad!" + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE PLOT THICKENS. + +Few months drifted by. All men published the praises of the young +Conrad's government and extolled the wisdom of his judgments, the +mercifulness of his sentences, and the modesty with which he bore himself +in his great office. The old Duke soon gave everything into his hands, +and sat apart and listened with proud satisfaction while his heir +delivered the decrees of the crown from the seat of the premier. +It seemed plain that one so loved and praised and honored of all men +as Conrad was, could not be otherwise than happy. But strange enough, +he was not. For he saw with dismay that the Princess Constance had begun +to love him! The love of, the rest of the world was happy fortune for +him, but this was freighted with danger! And he saw, moreover, that the +delighted Duke had discovered his daughter's passion likewise, and was +already dreaming of a marriage. Every day somewhat of the deep sadness +that had been in the princess' face faded away; every day hope and +animation beamed brighter from her eye; and by and by even vagrant smiles +visited the face that had been so troubled. + +Conrad was appalled. He bitterly cursed himself for having yielded to +the instinct that had made him seek the companionship of one of his own +sex when he was new and a stranger in the palace--when he was sorrowful +and yearned for a sympathy such as only women can give or feel. He now +began to avoid, his cousin. But this only made matters worse, for, +naturally enough, the more he avoided her, the more she cast herself in +his way. He marveled at this at first; and next it startled him. The +girl haunted him; she hunted him; she happened upon him at all times and +in all places, in the night as well as in the day. She seemed singularly +anxious. There was surely a mystery somewhere. + +This could not go on forever. All the world was talking about it. The +Duke was beginning to look perplexed. Poor Conrad was becoming a very +ghost through dread and dire distress. One day as he was emerging from a +private ante-room attached to the picture gallery, Constance confronted +him, and seizing both his hands, in hers, exclaimed: + +"Oh, why, do you avoid me? What have I done--what have I said, to lose +your kind opinion of me--for, surely I had it once? Conrad, do not +despise me, but pity a tortured heart? I cannot--cannot hold the words +unspoken longer, lest they kill me--I LOVE you, CONRAD! There, despise +me if you must, but they would be uttered!" + +Conrad was speechless. Constance hesitated a moment, and then, +misinterpreting his silence, a wild gladness flamed in her eyes, and she +flung her arms about his neck and said: + +"You relent! you relent! You can love me--you will love me! Oh, say you +will, my own, my worshipped Conrad!'" + +Conrad groaned aloud. A sickly pallor overspread his countenance, and +he trembled like an aspen. Presently, in desperation, he thrust the poor +girl from him, and cried: + +"You know not what you ask! It is forever and ever impossible!" And then +he fled like a criminal and left the princess stupefied with amazement. +A minute afterward she was crying and sobbing there, and Conrad was +crying and sobbing in his chamber. Both were in despair. Both save ruin +staring them in the face. + +By and by Constance rose slowly to her feet and moved away, saying: + +"To think that he was despising my love at the very moment that I thought +it was melting his cruel heart! I hate him! He spurned me--did this +man--he spurned me from him like a dog!" + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE AWFUL REVELATION. + +Time passed on. A settled sadness rested once more upon the countenance +of the good Duke's daughter. She and Conrad were seen together no more +now. The Duke grieved at this. But as the weeks wore away, Conrad's +color came back to his cheeks and his old-time vivacity to his eye, and +he administered the government with a clear and steadily ripening wisdom. + +Presently a strange whisper began to be heard about the palace. It grew +louder; it spread farther. The gossips of the city got hold-of it. It +swept the dukedom. And this is what the whisper said: + +"The Lady Constance hath given birth to a child!" + +When the lord of Klugenstein heard it, he swung his plumed helmet thrice +around his head and shouted: + +"Long live. Duke Conrad!--for lo, his crown is sure, from this day +forward! Detzin has done his errand well, and the good scoundrel shall +be rewarded!" + +And he spread, the tidings far and wide, and for eight-and-forty hours no +soul in all the barony but did dance and sing, carouse and illuminate, to +celebrate the great event, and all at proud and happy old Klugenstein's +expense. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE FRIGHTFUL CATASTROPHE. + +The trial was at hand. All the great lords and barons of Brandenburgh +were assembled in the Hall of Justice in the ducal palace. No space was +left unoccupied where there was room for a spectator to stand or sit. +Conrad, clad in purple and ermine, sat in the premier's chair, and on +either side sat the great judges of the realm. The old Duke had sternly +commanded that the trial of his daughter should proceed, without favor, +and then had taken to his bed broken-hearted. His days were numbered. +Poor Conrad had begged, as for his very life, that he might be spared the +misery of sitting in judgment upon his cousin's crime, but it did not +avail. + +The saddest heart in all that great assemblage was in Conrad's breast. + +The gladdest was in his father's. For, unknown to his daughter "Conrad," +the old Baron Klugenstein was come, and was among the crowd of nobles, +triumphant in the swelling fortunes of his house. + +After the heralds had made due proclamation and the other preliminaries +had followed, the venerable Lord Chief justice said: + +"Prisoner, stand forth!" + +The unhappy princess rose and stood unveiled before the vast multitude. +The Lord Chief Justice continued: + +"Most noble lady, before the great judges of this realm it hath been +charged and proven that out of holy wedlock your Grace hath given birth +unto a child; and by our ancient law the penalty is death, excepting in +one sole contingency, whereof his Grace the acting Duke, our good Lord +Conrad, will advertise you in his solemn sentence now; wherefore, give +heed." + +Conrad stretched forth the reluctant sceptre, and in the self-same moment +the womanly heart beneath his robe yearned pityingly toward the doomed +prisoner, and the tears came into his eyes. He opened his lips to speak, +but the Lord Chief Justice said quickly: + +"Not there, your Grace, not there! It is not lawful to pronounce +judgment upon any of the ducal line SAVE FROM THE DUCAL THRONE!" + +A shudder went to the heart of poor Conrad, and a tremor shook the iron +frame of his old father likewise. CONRAD HAD NOT BEEN CROWNED--dared he +profane the throne? He hesitated and turned pale with fear. But it must +be done. Wondering eyes were already upon him. They would be suspicious +eyes if he hesitated longer. He ascended the throne. Presently he +stretched forth the sceptre again, and said: + +"Prisoner, in the name of our sovereign lord, Ulrich, Duke of +Brandenburgh, I proceed to the solemn duty that hath devolved upon me. +Give heed to my words. By the ancient law of the land, except you +produce the partner of your guilt and deliver him up to the executioner, +you must surely die. Embrace this opportunity--save yourself while yet +you may. Name the father of your child!" + +A solemn hush fell upon the great court--a silence so profound that men +could hear their own hearts beat. Then the princess slowly turned, with +eyes gleaming with hate, and pointing her finger straight at Conrad, +said: + +"Thou art the man!" + +An appalling conviction of his helpless, hopeless peril struck a chill to +Conrad's heart like the chill of death itself. What power on earth could +save him! To disprove the charge, he must reveal that he was a woman; +and for an uncrowned woman to sit in the ducal chair was death! At one +and the same moment, he and his grim old father swooned and fell to, the +ground. + +[The remainder of this thrilling and eventful story will NOT be found in +this or any other publication, either now or at any future time.] + +The truth is, I have got my hero (or heroine) into such a particularly +close place, that I do not see how I am ever going to get him (or her) +out of it again--and therefore I will wash my hands of the whole +business, and leave that person to get out the best way that offers--or +else stay there. I thought it was going to be easy enough to straighten +out that little difficulty, but it looks different now. + +[If Harper's Weekly or the New York Tribune desire to copy these initial +chapters into the, reading columns of their valuable journals, just as +they do the opening chapters of Ledger and New York Weekly novels, they +are at liberty to do so at the usual rates, provided they "trust."] + + MARK TWAIN + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Burlesque Autobiography +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + + ROUGHING IT + + by Mark Twain + + 1880 + + + + TO + CALVIN H. HIGBIE, + Of California, + an Honest Man, a Genial Comrade, and a Steadfast Friend. + THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED + By the Author, + In Memory of the Curious Time + When We Two + WERE MILLIONAIRES FOR TEN DAYS. + + + + + ROUGHING IT + + BY + MARK TWAIN. + (SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.) + + + + PREFATORY. + +This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history +or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of +variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting +reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad +him with science. Still, there is information in the volume; information +concerning an interesting episode in the history of the Far West, about +which no books have been written by persons who were on the ground in +person, and saw the happenings of the time with their own eyes. I allude +to the rise, growth and culmination of the silver-mining fever in Nevada +-a curious episode, in some respects; the only one, of its peculiar kind, +that has occurred in the land; and the only one, indeed, that is likely +to occur in it. + +Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the +book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped: +information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar +of roses out of the otter. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would +give worlds if I could retain my facts; but it cannot be. The more I calk +up the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom. Therefore, +I can only claim indulgence at the hands of the reader, not +justification. + +THE AUTHOR. + + + +CONTENTS. + +CHAPTER I. +My Brother appointed Secretary of Nevada--I Envy His Prospective +Adventures--Am Appointed Private Secretary Under Him--My Contentment +Complete--Packed in One Hour--Dreams and Visions--On the Missouri River +--A Bully Boat + +CHAPTER II. +Arrive at St. Joseph--Only Twenty-five Pounds Baggage Allowed--Farewell +to Kid Gloves and Dress Coats--Armed to the Teeth--The "Allen"--A +Cheerful Weapon--Persuaded to Buy a Mule--Schedule of Luxuries--We Leave +the "States"--"Our Coach"--Mails for the Indians--Between a Wink and an +Earthquake--A Modern Sphynx and How She Entertained Us--A Sociable Heifer + +CHAPTER III. +"The Thoroughbrace is Broke"--Mails Delivered Properly--Sleeping Under +Difficulties--A Jackass Rabbit Meditating, and on Business--A Modern +Gulliver--Sage-brush--Overcoats as an Article of Diet--Sad Fate of a +Camel--Warning to Experimenters + +CHAPTER IV. +Making Our Bed--Assaults by the Unabridged--At a Station--Our Driver a +Great and Shining Dignitary--Strange Place for a Frontyard +--Accommodations--Double Portraits--An Heirloom--Our Worthy Landlord +--"Fixings and Things"--An Exile--Slumgullion--A Well Furnished Table--The +Landlord Astonished--Table Etiquette--Wild Mexican Mules--Stage-coaching +and Railroading + +CHAPTER V. +New Acquaintances--The Cayote--A Dog's Experiences--A Disgusted Dog--The +Relatives of the Cayote--Meals Taken Away from Home + +CHAPTER VI. +The Division Superintendent--The Conductor--The Driver--One Hundred and +Fifty Miles' Drive Without Sleep--Teaching a Subordinate--Our Old Friend +Jack and a Pilgrim--Ben Holliday Compared to Moses + +CHAPTER VII. +Overland City--Crossing the Platte--Bemis's Buffalo Hunt--Assault by a +Buffalo--Bemis's Horse Goes Crazy--An Impromptu Circus--A New Departure +--Bemis Finds Refuge in a Tree--Escapes Finally by a Wonderful Method + +CHAPTER VIII. +The Pony Express--Fifty Miles Without Stopping--"Here he Comes"--Alkali +Water--Riding an Avalanche--Indian Massacre + +CHAPTER IX. +Among the Indians--An Unfair Advantage--Laying on our Arms--A Midnight +Murder--Wrath of Outlaws--A Dangerous, yet Valuable Citizen + +CHAPTER X. +History of Slade--A Proposed Fist-fight--Encounter with Jules--Paradise +of Outlaws--Slade as Superintendent--As Executioner--A Doomed Whisky +Seller--A Prisoner--A Wife's Bravery--An Ancient Enemy Captured--Enjoying +a Luxury--Hob-nobbing with Slade--Too Polite--A Happy Escape + +CHAPTER XI. +Slade in Montana--"On a Spree"--In Court--Attack on a Judge--Arrest by +the Vigilantes--Turn out of the Miners--Execution of Slade--Lamentations +of His Wife--Was Slade a Coward? + +CHAPTER XII. +A Mormon Emigrant Train--The Heart of the Rocky Mountains--Pure +Saleratus--A Natural Ice-House--An Entire Inhabitant--In Sight of +"Eternal Snow"--The South Pass--The Parting Streams--An Unreliable Letter +Carrier--Meeting of Old Friends--A Spoiled Watermelon--Down the +Mountain--A Scene of Desolation--Lost in the Dark--Unnecessary Advice +--U.S. Troops and Indians--Sublime Spectacle--Another Delusion Dispelled +--Among the Angels + +CHAPTER XIII. +Mormons and Gentiles--Exhilarating Drink, and its Effect on Bemis--Salt +Lake City--A Great Contrast--A Mormon Vagrant--Talk with a Saint--A Visit +to the "King"--A Happy Simile + +CHAPTER XIV. +Mormon Contractors--How Mr. Street Astonished Them--The Case Before +Brigham Young, and How he Disposed of it--Polygamy Viewed from a New +Position + +CHAPTER XV. +A Gentile Den--Polygamy Discussed--Favorite Wife and D. 4--Hennery for +Retired Wives--Children Need Marking--Cost of a Gift to No. 6 +--A Penny-whistle Gift and its Effects--Fathering the Foundlings +--It Resembled Him--The Family Bedstead + +CHAPTER XVI +The Mormon Bible--Proofs of its Divinity--Plagiarism of its Authors +--Story of Nephi--Wonderful Battle--Kilkenny Cats Outdone + +CHAPTER XVII. +Three Sides to all Questions--Everything "A Quarter"--Shriveled Up +--Emigrants and White Shirts at a Discount--"Forty-Niners"--Above Par--Real +Happiness + +CHAPTER XVIII. +Alkali Desert--Romance of Crossing Dispelled--Alkali Dust--Effect on the +Mules--Universal Thanksgiving + +CHAPTER XIX. +The Digger Indians Compared with the Bushmen of Africa--Food, Life and +Characteristics--Cowardly Attack on a Stage Coach--A Brave Driver--The +Noble Red Man + +CHAPTER XX. +The Great American Desert--Forty Miles on Bones--Lakes Without Outlets +--Greely's Remarkable Ride--Hank Monk, the Renowned Driver--Fatal Effects +of "Corking" a Story--Bald-Headed Anecdote + +CHAPTER XXI. +Alkali Dust--Desolation and Contemplation--Carson City--Our Journey +Ended--We are Introduced to Several Citizens--A Strange Rebuke--A Washoe +Zephyr at Play--Its Office Hours--Governor's Palace--Government Offices +--Our French Landlady Bridget O'Flannigan--Shadow Secrets--Cause for a +Disturbance at Once--The Irish Brigade--Mrs. O'Flannigan's Boarders--The +Surveying Expedition--Escape of the Tarantulas + +CHAPTER XXII. +The Son of a Nabob--Start for Lake Tahoe--Splendor of the Views--Trip on +the Lake--Camping Out--Reinvigorating Climate--Clearing a Tract of Land +--Securing a Title--Outhouse and Fences + +CHAPTER XXIII. +A Happy Life--Lake Tahoe and its Moods--Transparency of the Waters--A +Catastrophe--Fire! Fire!--A Magnificent Spectacle--Homeless Again--We +take to the Lake--A Storm--Return to Carson + +CHAPTER XXIV. +Resolve to Buy a Horse--Horsemanship in Carson--A Temptation--Advice +Given Me Freely--I Buy the Mexican Plug--My First Ride--A Good Bucker--I +Loan the Plug--Experience of Borrowers--Attempts to Sell--Expense of the +Experiment--A Stranger Taken In + +CHAPTER XXV. +The Mormons in Nevada--How to Persuade a Loan from Them--Early History of +the Territory--Silver Mines Discovered--The New Territorial Government--A +Foreign One and a Poor One--Its Funny Struggles for Existence--No Credit, +no Cash--Old Abe Currey Sustains it and its Officers--Instructions and +Vouchers--An Indian's Endorsement--Toll-Gates + +CHAPTER XXVI. +The Silver Fever--State of the Market--Silver Bricks--Tales Told--Off for +the Humboldt Mines + +CHAPTER XXVII. +Our manner of going--Incidents of the Trip--A Warm but Too Familiar a +Bedfellow--Mr. Ballou Objects--Sunshine amid Clouds--Safely Arrived + +CHAPTER XXVIII. +Arrive at the Mountains--Building Our Cabin--My First Prospecting Tour +--My First Gold Mine--Pockets Filled With Treasures--Filtering the News to +My Companions--The Bubble Pricked--All Not Gold That Glitters + +CHAPTER XXIX. +Out Prospecting--A Silver Mine At Last--Making a Fortune With Sledge and +Drill--A Hard Road to Travel--We Own in Claims--A Rocky Country + +CHAPTER XXX. +Disinterested Friends--How "Feet" Were Sold--We Quit Tunnelling--A Trip +to Esmeralda--My Companions--An Indian Prophesy--A Flood--Our Quarters +During It + +CHAPTER XXXI. +The Guests at "Honey Lake Smith's"--"Bully Old Arkansas"--"Our Landlord" +--Determined to Fight--The Landlord's Wife--The Bully Conquered by Her +--Another Start--Crossing the Carson--A Narrow Escape--Following Our Own +Track--A New Guide--Lost in the Snow + +CHAPTER XXXII. +Desperate Situation--Attempts to Make a Fire--Our Horses leave us--We +Find Matches--One, Two, Three and the Last--No Fire--Death Seems +Inevitable--We Mourn Over Our Evil Lives--Discarded Vices--We Forgive +Each Other--An Affectionate Farewell--The Sleep of Oblivion + +CHAPTER XXXIII. +Return of Consciousness--Ridiculous Developments--A Station House--Bitter +Feelings--Fruits of Repentance--Resurrected Vices + +CHAPTER XXXIV. +About Carson--General Buncombe--Hyde vs. Morgan--How Hyde Lost His Ranch +--The Great Landslide Case--The Trial--General Buncombe in Court--A +Wonderful Decision--A Serious Afterthought + +CHAPTER XXXV. +A New Travelling Companion--All Full and No Accommodations--How Captain +Nye found Room--and Caused Our Leaving to be Lamented--The Uses of +Tunnelling--A Notable Example--We Go into the "Claim" Business and Fail +--At the Bottom + +CHAPTER XXXVI. +A Quartz Mill--Amalgamation--"Screening Tailings"--First Quartz Mill in +Nevada--Fire Assay--A Smart Assayer--I stake for an advance + +CHAPTER XXXVII. +The Whiteman Cement Mine--Story of its Discovery--A Secret Expedition--A +Nocturnal Adventure--A Distressing Position--A Failure and a Week's +Holiday + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. +Mono Lake--Shampooing Made Easy--Thoughtless Act of Our Dog and the +Results--Lye Water--Curiosities of the Lake--Free Hotel--Some Funny +Incidents a Little Overdrawn + +CHAPTER XXXIX. +Visit to the Islands in Lake Mono--Ashes and Desolation--Life Amid Death +Our Boat Adrift--A Jump For Life--A Storm On the Lake--A Mass of Soap +Suds--Geological Curiosities--A Week On the Sierras--A Narrow Escape From +a Funny Explosion--"Stove Heap Gone" + +CHAPTER XL. +The "Wide West" Mine--It is "Interviewed" by Higbie--A Blind Lead--Worth +a Million--We are Rich At Last--Plans for the Future + +CHAPTER XLI. +A Rheumatic Patient--Day Dreams--An Unfortunate Stumble--I Leave +Suddenly--Another Patient--Higbie in the Cabin--Our Balloon Bursted +--Worth Nothing--Regrets and Explanations--Our Third Partner + +CHAPTER XLII. +What to do Next?--Obstacles I Had Met With--"Jack of All Trades"--Mining +Again--Target Shooting--I Turn City Editor--I Succeed Finely + +CHAPTER XLIII. +My Friend Boggs--The School Report--Boggs Pays Me An Old Debt--Virginia +City + +CHAPTER XLIV. +Flush Times--Plenty of Stock--Editorial Puffing--Stocks Given Me--Salting +Mines--A Tragedian In a New Role + +CHAPTER XLV. +Flush Times Continue--Sanitary Commission Fund--Wild Enthusiasm of the +People--Would not wait to Contribute--The Sanitary Flour Sack--It is +Carried to Gold Hill and Dayton--Final Reception in Virginia--Results of +the Sale--A Grand Total + +CHAPTER XLVI. +The Nabobs of Those Days--John Smith as a Traveler--Sudden Wealth--A +Sixty-Thousand-Dollar Horse--A Smart Telegraph Operator--A Nabob in New +York City--Charters an Omnibus--"Walk in, It's All Free"--"You Can't Pay +a Cent"--"Hold On, Driver, I Weaken"--Sociability of New Yorkers + +CHAPTER XLVII. +Buck Fanshaw's Death--The Cause Thereof--Preparations for His Burial +--Scotty Briggs the Committee Man--He Visits the Minister--Scotty Can't +Play His Hand--The Minister Gets Mixed--Both Begin to See--"All Down +Again But Nine"--Buck Fanshaw as a Citizen--How To "Shook Your Mother" +--The Funeral--Scotty Briggs as a Sunday School Teacher + +CHAPTER XLVIII. +The First Twenty-Six Graves in Nevada--The Prominent Men of the County +--The Man Who Had Killed His Dozen--Trial by Jury--Specimen Jurors--A +Private Grave Yard--The Desperadoes--Who They Killed--Waking up the Weary +Passenger--Satisfaction Without Fighting + +CHAPTER XLIX. +Fatal Shooting Affray--Robbery and Desperate Affray--A Specimen City +Official--A Marked Man--A Street Fight--Punishment of Crime + +CHAPTER L. +Captain Ned Blakely--Bill Nookes Receives Desired Information--Killing of +Blakely's Mate--A Walking Battery--Blakely Secures Nookes--Hang First and +Be Tried Afterwards--Captain Blakely as a Chaplain--The First Chapter of +Genesis Read at a Hanging--Nookes Hung--Blakely's Regrets + +CHAPTER LI. +The Weekly Occidental--A Ready Editor--A Novel--A Concentration of +Talent--The Heroes and the Heroines--The Dissolute Author Engaged +--Extraordinary Havoc With the Novel--A Highly Romantic Chapter--The Lovers +Separated--Jonah Out-done--A Lost Poem--The Aged Pilot Man--Storm On the +Erie Canal--Dollinger the Pilot Man--Terrific Gale--Danger Increases--A +Crisis Arrived--Saved as if by a Miracle + +CHAPTER LII. +Freights to California--Silver Bricks--Under Ground Mines--Timber +Supports--A Visit to the Mines--The Caved Mines--Total of Shipments in +1863 + +CHAPTER LIII. +Jim Blaine and his Grandfather's Ram--Filkin's Mistake--Old Miss Wagner +and her Glass Eye--Jacobs, the Coffin Dealer--Waiting for a Customer--His +Bargain With Old Robbins--Robbins Sues for Damage and Collects--A New Use +for Missionaries--The Effect--His Uncle Lem. and the Use Providence Made +of Him--Sad Fate of Wheeler--Devotion of His Wife--A Model Monument--What +About the Ram? + +CHAPTER LIV. +Chinese in Virginia City--Washing Bills--Habit of Imitation--Chinese +Immigration--A Visit to Chinatown--Messrs. Ah Sing, Hong Wo, See Yup, &c. + +CHAPTER LV. +Tired of Virginia City--An Old Schoolmate--A Two Years' Loan--Acting as +an Editor--Almost Receive an Offer--An Accident--Three Drunken Anecdotes +--Last Look at Mt. Davidson--A Beautiful Incident + +CHAPTER LVI. +Off for San Francisco--Western and Eastern Landscapes--The Hottest place +on Earth--Summer and Winter + +CHAPTER LVII. +California--Novelty of Seeing a Woman--"Well if it ain't a Child!"--One +Hundred and Fifty Dollars for a Kiss--Waiting for a turn + +CHAPTER LVIII. +Life in San Francisco--Worthless Stocks--My First Earthquake--Reportorial +Instincts--Effects of the Shocks--Incidents and Curiosities--Sabbath +Breakers--The Lodger and the Chambermaid--A Sensible Fashion to Follow +--Effects of the Earthquake on the Ministers + +CHAPTER LIX. +Poor Again--Slinking as a Business--A Model Collector--Misery loves +Company--Comparing Notes for Comfort--A Streak of Luck--Finding a Dime +--Wealthy by Comparison--Two Sumptuous Dinners + +CHAPTER LX. +An Old Friend--An Educated Miner--Pocket Mining--Freaks of Fortune + +CHAPTER LXI. +Dick Baker and his Cat--Tom Quartz's Peculiarities--On an Excursion +--Appearance On His Return--A Prejudiced Cat--Empty Pockets and a Roving +Life + +CHAPTER LXII. +Bound for the Sandwich Islands--The Three Captains--The Old Admiral--His +Daily Habits--His Well Fought Fields--An Unexpected Opponent--The Admiral +Overpowered--The Victor Declared a Hero + +CHAPTER LXIII. +Arrival at the Islands--Honolulu--What I Saw There--Dress and Habits of +the Inhabitants--The Animal Kingdom--Fruits and Delightful Effects + +CHAPTER LXIV. +An Excursion--Captain Phillips and his Turn-Out--A Horseback Ride--A +Vicious Animal--Nature and Art--Interesting Ruins--All Praise to the +Missionaries + +CHAPTER LXV. +Interesting Mementoes and Relics--An Old Legend of a Frightful Leap--An +Appreciative Horse--Horse Jockeys and Their Brothers--A New Trick--A Hay +Merchant--Good Country for Horse Lovers + +CHAPTER LXVI. +A Saturday Afternoon--Sandwich Island Girls on a Frolic--The Poi +Merchant--Grand Gala Day--A Native Dance--Church Membership--Cats and +Officials--An Overwhelming Discovery + +CHAPTER LXVII. +The Legislature of the Island--What Its President Has Seen--Praying for +an Enemy--Women's Rights--Romantic Fashions--Worship of the Shark--Desire +for Dress--Full Dress--Not Paris Style--Playing Empire--Officials and +Foreign Ambassadors--Overwhelming Magnificence + +CHAPTER LXVIII. +A Royal Funeral--Order of Procession--Pomp and Ceremony--A Striking +Contrast--A Sick Monarch--Human Sacrifices at His Death--Burial Orgies + +CHAPTER LXIX. +"Once more upon the Waters."--A Noisy Passenger--Several Silent Ones--A +Moonlight Scene--Fruits and Plantations + +CHAPTER LXX. +A Droll Character--Mrs. Beazely and Her Son--Meditations on Turnips--A +Letter from Horace Greeley--An Indignant Rejoinder--The Letter Translated +but too Late + +CHAPTER LXXI. +Kealakekua Bay--Death of Captain Cook--His Monument--Its Construction--On +Board the Schooner + +CHAPTER LXXII. +Young Kanakas in New England--A Temple Built by Ghosts--Female Bathers--I +Stood Guard--Women and Whiskey--A Fight for Religion--Arrival of +Missionaries + +CHAPTER LXXIII. +Native Canoes--Surf Bathing--A Sanctuary--How Built--The Queen's Rock +--Curiosities--Petrified Lava + +CHAPTER LXXIV. +Visit to the Volcano--The Crater--Pillar of Fire--Magnificent Spectacle +--A Lake of Fire + +CHAPTER LXXV. +The North Lake--Fountains of Fire--Streams of Burning Lava--Tidal Waves + +CHAPTER LXXVI. +A Reminiscence--Another Horse Story--My Ride with the Retired Milk Horse +--A Picnicing Excursion--Dead Volcano of Holeakala--Comparison with +Vesuvius--An Inside View + +CHAPTER LXXVII. +A Curious Character--A Series of Stories--Sad Fate of a Liar--Evidence of +Insanity + +CHAPTER LXXVIII. +Return to San Francisco--Ship Amusements--Preparing for Lecturing +--Valuable Assistance Secured--My First Attempt--The Audience Carried +--"All's Well that Ends Well." + +CHAPTER LXXIX. +Highwaymen--A Predicament--A Huge Joke--Farewell to California--At Home +Again--Great Changes. Moral. + + + +APPENDIX. +A.--Brief Sketch of Mormon History +B.--The Mountain Meadows Massacre +C.--Concerning a Frightful Assassination that was never Consummated + + + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory--an +office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and +dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting +Governor in the Governor's absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars +a year and the title of "Mr. Secretary," gave to the great position an +air of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I +envied my brother. I coveted his distinction and his financial splendor, +but particularly and especially the long, strange journey he was going to +make, and the curious new world he was going to explore. He was going to +travel! I never had been away from home, and that word "travel" had a +seductive charm for me. Pretty soon he would be hundreds and hundreds of +miles away on the great plains and deserts, and among the mountains of +the Far West, and would see buffaloes and Indians, and prairie dogs, and +antelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and may be get hanged or +scalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home and tell us all +about it, and be a hero. And he would see the gold mines and the silver +mines, and maybe go about of an afternoon when his work was done, and +pick up two or three pailfuls of shining slugs, and nuggets of gold and +silver on the hillside. And by and by he would become very rich, and +return home by sea, and be able to talk as calmly about San Francisco and +the ocean, and "the isthmus" as if it was nothing of any consequence to +have seen those marvels face to face. What I suffered in contemplating +his happiness, pen cannot describe. And so, when he offered me, in cold +blood, the sublime position of private secretary under him, it appeared +to me that the heavens and the earth passed away, and the firmament was +rolled together as a scroll! I had nothing more to desire. My +contentment was complete. + +At the end of an hour or two I was ready for the journey. Not much +packing up was necessary, because we were going in the overland stage +from the Missouri frontier to Nevada, and passengers were only allowed a +small quantity of baggage apiece. There was no Pacific railroad in those +fine times of ten or twelve years ago--not a single rail of it. +I only proposed to stay in Nevada three months--I had no thought of +staying longer than that. I meant to see all I could that was new and +strange, and then hurry home to business. I little thought that I would +not see the end of that three-month pleasure excursion for six or seven +uncommonly long years! + +I dreamed all night about Indians, deserts, and silver bars, and in due +time, next day, we took shipping at the St. Louis wharf on board a +steamboat bound up the Missouri River. + +We were six days going from St. Louis to "St. Jo."--a trip that was so +dull, and sleepy, and eventless that it has left no more impression on my +memory than if its duration had been six minutes instead of that many +days. No record is left in my mind, now, concerning it, but a confused +jumble of savage-looking snags, which we deliberately walked over with +one wheel or the other; and of reefs which we butted and butted, and then +retired from and climbed over in some softer place; and of sand-bars +which we roosted on occasionally, and rested, and then got out our +crutches and sparred over. + +In fact, the boat might almost as well have gone to St. Jo. by land, for +she was walking most of the time, anyhow--climbing over reefs and +clambering over snags patiently and laboriously all day long. The +captain said she was a "bully" boat, and all she wanted was more "shear" +and a bigger wheel. I thought she wanted a pair of stilts, but I had the +deep sagacity not to say so. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +The first thing we did on that glad evening that landed us at St. Joseph +was to hunt up the stage-office, and pay a hundred and fifty dollars +apiece for tickets per overland coach to Carson City, Nevada. + +The next morning, bright and early, we took a hasty breakfast, and +hurried to the starting-place. Then an inconvenience presented itself +which we had not properly appreciated before, namely, that one cannot +make a heavy traveling trunk stand for twenty-five pounds of baggage +--because it weighs a good deal more. But that was all we could take +--twenty-five pounds each. So we had to snatch our trunks open, and make a +selection in a good deal of a hurry. We put our lawful twenty-five +pounds apiece all in one valise, and shipped the trunks back to St. Louis +again. It was a sad parting, for now we had no swallow-tail coats and +white kid gloves to wear at Pawnee receptions in the Rocky Mountains, and +no stove-pipe hats nor patent-leather boots, nor anything else necessary +to make life calm and peaceful. We were reduced to a war-footing. Each +of us put on a rough, heavy suit of clothing, woolen army shirt and +"stogy" boots included; and into the valise we crowded a few white +shirts, some under-clothing and such things. My brother, the Secretary, +took along about four pounds of United States statutes and six pounds of +Unabridged Dictionary; for we did not know--poor innocents--that such +things could be bought in San Francisco on one day and received in Carson +City the next. I was armed to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith & +Wesson's seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homoeopathic pill, +and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult. But I thought +it was grand. It appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It only had +one fault--you could not hit anything with it. One of our "conductors" +practiced awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still and +behaved herself she was safe; but as soon as she went to moving about, +and he got to shooting at other things, she came to grief. The Secretary +had a small-sized Colt's revolver strapped around him for protection +against the Indians, and to guard against accidents he carried it +uncapped. Mr. George Bemis was dismally formidable. George Bemis was +our fellow-traveler. + +We had never seen him before. He wore in his belt an old original +"Allen" revolver, such as irreverent people called a "pepper-box." Simply +drawing the trigger back, cocked and fired the pistol. As the trigger +came back, the hammer would begin to rise and the barrel to turn over, +and presently down would drop the hammer, and away would speed the ball. +To aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing aimed at was a feat +which was probably never done with an "Allen" in the world. But George's +was a reliable weapon, nevertheless, because, as one of the stage-drivers +afterward said, "If she didn't get what she went after, she would fetch +something else." And so she did. She went after a deuce of spades nailed +against a tree, once, and fetched a mule standing about thirty yards to +the left of it. Bemis did not want the mule; but the owner came out with +a double-barreled shotgun and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow. It was a +cheerful weapon--the "Allen." Sometimes all its six barrels would go off +at once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, +but behind it. + +We took two or three blankets for protection against frosty weather in +the mountains. In the matter of luxuries we were modest--we took none +along but some pipes and five pounds of smoking tobacco. We had two +large canteens to carry water in, between stations on the Plains, and we +also took with us a little shot-bag of silver coin for daily expenses in +the way of breakfasts and dinners. + +By eight o'clock everything was ready, and we were on the other side of +the river. We jumped into the stage, the driver cracked his whip, and we +bowled away and left "the States" behind us. It was a superb summer +morning, and all the landscape was brilliant with sunshine. There was a +freshness and breeziness, too, and an exhilarating sense of emancipation +from all sorts of cares and responsibilities, that almost made us feel +that the years we had spent in the close, hot city, toiling and slaving, +had been wasted and thrown away. We were spinning along through Kansas, +and in the course of an hour and a half we were fairly abroad on the +great Plains. Just here the land was rolling--a grand sweep of regular +elevations and depressions as far as the eye could reach--like the +stately heave and swell of the ocean's bosom after a storm. And +everywhere were cornfields, accenting with squares of deeper green, this +limitless expanse of grassy land. But presently this sea upon dry ground +was to lose its "rolling" character and stretch away for seven hundred +miles as level as a floor! + +Our coach was a great swinging and swaying stage, of the most sumptuous +description--an imposing cradle on wheels. It was drawn by six handsome +horses, and by the side of the driver sat the "conductor," the legitimate +captain of the craft; for it was his business to take charge and care of +the mails, baggage, express matter, and passengers. We three were the +only passengers, this trip. We sat on the back seat, inside. About all +the rest of the coach was full of mail bags--for we had three days' +delayed mails with us. Almost touching our knees, a perpendicular wall +of mail matter rose up to the roof. There was a great pile of it +strapped on top of the stage, and both the fore and hind boots were full. +We had twenty-seven hundred pounds of it aboard, the driver said--"a +little for Brigham, and Carson, and 'Frisco, but the heft of it for the +Injuns, which is powerful troublesome 'thout they get plenty of truck to +read." But as he just then got up a fearful convulsion of his countenance +which was suggestive of a wink being swallowed by an earthquake, we +guessed that his remark was intended to be facetious, and to mean that we +would unload the most of our mail matter somewhere on the Plains and +leave it to the Indians, or whosoever wanted it. + +We changed horses every ten miles, all day long, and fairly flew over the +hard, level road. We jumped out and stretched our legs every time the +coach stopped, and so the night found us still vivacious and unfatigued. + +After supper a woman got in, who lived about fifty miles further on, and +we three had to take turns at sitting outside with the driver and +conductor. Apparently she was not a talkative woman. She would sit +there in the gathering twilight and fasten her steadfast eyes on a +mosquito rooting into her arm, and slowly she would raise her other hand +till she had got his range, and then she would launch a slap at him that +would have jolted a cow; and after that she would sit and contemplate the +corpse with tranquil satisfaction--for she never missed her mosquito; she +was a dead shot at short range. She never removed a carcase, but left +them there for bait. I sat by this grim Sphynx and watched her kill +thirty or forty mosquitoes--watched her, and waited for her to say +something, but she never did. So I finally opened the conversation +myself. I said: + +"The mosquitoes are pretty bad, about here, madam." + +"You bet!" + +"What did I understand you to say, madam?" + +"You BET!" + +Then she cheered up, and faced around and said: + +"Danged if I didn't begin to think you fellers was deef and dumb. I did, +b'gosh. Here I've sot, and sot, and sot, a-bust'n muskeeters and +wonderin' what was ailin' ye. Fust I thot you was deef and dumb, then I +thot you was sick or crazy, or suthin', and then by and by I begin to +reckon you was a passel of sickly fools that couldn't think of nothing to +say. Wher'd ye come from?" + +The Sphynx was a Sphynx no more! The fountains of her great deep were +broken up, and she rained the nine parts of speech forty days and forty +nights, metaphorically speaking, and buried us under a desolating deluge +of trivial gossip that left not a crag or pinnacle of rejoinder +projecting above the tossing waste of dislocated grammar and decomposed +pronunciation! + +How we suffered, suffered, suffered! She went on, hour after hour, till +I was sorry I ever opened the mosquito question and gave her a start. +She never did stop again until she got to her journey's end toward +daylight; and then she stirred us up as she was leaving the stage (for we +were nodding, by that time), and said: + +"Now you git out at Cottonwood, you fellers, and lay over a couple o' +days, and I'll be along some time to-night, and if I can do ye any good +by edgin' in a word now and then, I'm right thar. Folks'll tell you't +I've always ben kind o' offish and partic'lar for a gal that's raised in +the woods, and I am, with the rag-tag and bob-tail, and a gal has to be, +if she wants to be anything, but when people comes along which is my +equals, I reckon I'm a pretty sociable heifer after all." + +We resolved not to "lay by at Cottonwood." + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +About an hour and a half before daylight we were bowling along smoothly +over the road--so smoothly that our cradle only rocked in a gentle, +lulling way, that was gradually soothing us to sleep, and dulling our +consciousness--when something gave away under us! We were dimly aware of +it, but indifferent to it. The coach stopped. We heard the driver and +conductor talking together outside, and rummaging for a lantern, and +swearing because they could not find it--but we had no interest in +whatever had happened, and it only added to our comfort to think of those +people out there at work in the murky night, and we snug in our nest with +the curtains drawn. But presently, by the sounds, there seemed to be an +examination going on, and then the driver's voice said: + +"By George, the thoroughbrace is broke!" + +This startled me broad awake--as an undefined sense of calamity is always +apt to do. I said to myself: "Now, a thoroughbrace is probably part of a +horse; and doubtless a vital part, too, from the dismay in the driver's +voice. Leg, maybe--and yet how could he break his leg waltzing along +such a road as this? No, it can't be his leg. That is impossible, +unless he was reaching for the driver. Now, what can be the +thoroughbrace of a horse, I wonder? Well, whatever comes, I shall not +air my ignorance in this crowd, anyway." + +Just then the conductor's face appeared at a lifted curtain, and his +lantern glared in on us and our wall of mail matter. He said: +"Gents, you'll have to turn out a spell. Thoroughbrace is broke." + +We climbed out into a chill drizzle, and felt ever so homeless and +dreary. When I found that the thing they called a "thoroughbrace" was +the massive combination of belts and springs which the coach rocks itself +in, I said to the driver: + +"I never saw a thoroughbrace used up like that, before, that I can +remember. How did it happen?" + +"Why, it happened by trying to make one coach carry three days' mail +--that's how it happened," said he. "And right here is the very direction +which is wrote on all the newspaper-bags which was to be put out for the +Injuns for to keep 'em quiet. It's most uncommon lucky, becuz it's so +nation dark I should 'a' gone by unbeknowns if that air thoroughbrace +hadn't broke." + +I knew that he was in labor with another of those winks of his, though I +could not see his face, because he was bent down at work; and wishing him +a safe delivery, I turned to and helped the rest get out the mail-sacks. +It made a great pyramid by the roadside when it was all out. When they +had mended the thoroughbrace we filled the two boots again, but put no +mail on top, and only half as much inside as there was before. The +conductor bent all the seat-backs down, and then filled the coach just +half full of mail-bags from end to end. We objected loudly to this, for +it left us no seats. But the conductor was wiser than we, and said a bed +was better than seats, and moreover, this plan would protect his +thoroughbraces. We never wanted any seats after that. The lazy bed was +infinitely preferable. I had many an exciting day, subsequently, lying +on it reading the statutes and the dictionary, and wondering how the +characters would turn out. + +The conductor said he would send back a guard from the next station to +take charge of the abandoned mail-bags, and we drove on. + +It was now just dawn; and as we stretched our cramped legs full length on +the mail sacks, and gazed out through the windows across the wide wastes +of greensward clad in cool, powdery mist, to where there was an expectant +look in the eastern horizon, our perfect enjoyment took the form of a +tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking +gait, the breeze flapping curtains and suspended coats in a most +exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering +of the horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi! +g'lang!" were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared +to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after +us with interest, or envy, or something; and as we lay and smoked the +pipe of peace and compared all this luxury with the years of tiresome +city life that had gone before it, we felt that there was only one +complete and satisfying happiness in the world, and we had found it. + +After breakfast, at some station whose name I have forgotten, we three +climbed up on the seat behind the driver, and let the conductor have our +bed for a nap. And by and by, when the sun made me drowsy, I lay down on +my face on top of the coach, grasping the slender iron railing, and slept +for an hour or more. That will give one an appreciable idea of those +matchless roads. Instinct will make a sleeping man grip a fast hold of +the railing when the stage jolts, but when it only swings and sways, no +grip is necessary. Overland drivers and conductors used to sit in their +places and sleep thirty or forty minutes at a time, on good roads, while +spinning along at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour. I saw them do +it, often. There was no danger about it; a sleeping man will seize the +irons in time when the coach jolts. These men were hard worked, and it +was not possible for them to stay awake all the time. + +By and by we passed through Marysville, and over the Big Blue and Little +Sandy; thence about a mile, and entered Nebraska. About a mile further +on, we came to the Big Sandy--one hundred and eighty miles from St. +Joseph. + +As the sun was going down, we saw the first specimen of an animal known +familiarly over two thousand miles of mountain and desert--from Kansas +clear to the Pacific Ocean--as the "jackass rabbit." He is well named. +He is just like any other rabbit, except that he is from one third to +twice as large, has longer legs in proportion to his size, and has the +most preposterous ears that ever were mounted on any creature but a +jackass. + +When he is sitting quiet, thinking about his sins, or is absent-minded or +unapprehensive of danger, his majestic ears project above him +conspicuously; but the breaking of a twig will scare him nearly to death, +and then he tilts his ears back gently and starts for home. All you can +see, then, for the next minute, is his long gray form stretched out +straight and "streaking it" through the low sage-brush, head erect, eyes +right, and ears just canted a little to the rear, but showing you where +the animal is, all the time, the same as if he carried a jib. Now and +then he makes a marvelous spring with his long legs, high over the +stunted sage-brush, and scores a leap that would make a horse envious. +Presently he comes down to a long, graceful "lope," and shortly he +mysteriously disappears. He has crouched behind a sage-bush, and will +sit there and listen and tremble until you get within six feet of him, +when he will get under way again. But one must shoot at this creature +once, if he wishes to see him throw his heart into his heels, and do the +best he knows how. He is frightened clear through, now, and he lays his +long ears down on his back, straightens himself out like a yard-stick +every spring he makes, and scatters miles behind him with an easy +indifference that is enchanting. + +Our party made this specimen "hump himself," as the conductor said. The +secretary started him with a shot from the Colt; I commenced spitting at +him with my weapon; and all in the same instant the old "Allen's" whole +broadside let go with a rattling crash, and it is not putting it too +strong to say that the rabbit was frantic! He dropped his ears, set up +his tail, and left for San Francisco at a speed which can only be +described as a flash and a vanish! Long after he was out of sight we +could hear him whiz. + +I do not remember where we first came across "sage-brush," but as I have +been speaking of it I may as well describe it. + +This is easily done, for if the reader can imagine a gnarled and +venerable live oak-tree reduced to a little shrub two feet-high, with its +rough bark, its foliage, its twisted boughs, all complete, he can picture +the "sage-brush" exactly. Often, on lazy afternoons in the mountains, I +have lain on the ground with my face under a sage-bush, and entertained +myself with fancying that the gnats among its foliage were liliputian +birds, and that the ants marching and countermarching about its base were +liliputian flocks and herds, and myself some vast loafer from Brobdignag +waiting to catch a little citizen and eat him. + +It is an imposing monarch of the forest in exquisite miniature, is the +"sage-brush." Its foliage is a grayish green, and gives that tint to +desert and mountain. It smells like our domestic sage, and "sage-tea" +made from it taste like the sage-tea which all boys are so well +acquainted with. The sage-brush is a singularly hardy plant, and grows +right in the midst of deep sand, and among barren rocks, where nothing +else in the vegetable world would try to grow, except "bunch-grass." +--["Bunch-grass" grows on the bleak mountain-sides of Nevada and +neighboring territories, and offers excellent feed for stock, even in the +dead of winter, wherever the snow is blown aside and exposes it; +notwithstanding its unpromising home, bunch-grass is a better and more +nutritious diet for cattle and horses than almost any other hay or grass +that is known--so stock-men say.]--The sage-bushes grow from three to +six or seven feet apart, all over the mountains and deserts of the Far +West, clear to the borders of California. There is not a tree of any +kind in the deserts, for hundreds of miles--there is no vegetation at all +in a regular desert, except the sage-brush and its cousin the +"greasewood," which is so much like the sage-brush that the difference +amounts to little. Camp-fires and hot suppers in the deserts would be +impossible but for the friendly sage-brush. Its trunk is as large as a +boy's wrist (and from that up to a man's arm), and its crooked branches +are half as large as its trunk--all good, sound, hard wood, very like +oak. + +When a party camps, the first thing to be done is to cut sage-brush; and +in a few minutes there is an opulent pile of it ready for use. A hole a +foot wide, two feet deep, and two feet long, is dug, and sage-brush +chopped up and burned in it till it is full to the brim with glowing +coals. Then the cooking begins, and there is no smoke, and consequently +no swearing. Such a fire will keep all night, with very little +replenishing; and it makes a very sociable camp-fire, and one around +which the most impossible reminiscences sound plausible, instructive, and +profoundly entertaining. + +Sage-brush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished +failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his +illegitimate child the mule. But their testimony to its nutritiousness +is worth nothing, for they will eat pine knots, or anthracite coal, or +brass filings, or lead pipe, or old bottles, or anything that comes +handy, and then go off looking as grateful as if they had had oysters for +dinner. Mules and donkeys and camels have appetites that anything will +relieve temporarily, but nothing satisfy. + +In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of +my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined it with a +critical eye, all over, with as much interest as if he had an idea of +getting one made like it; and then, after he was done figuring on it as +an article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet. +He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, +and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while +opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had +never tasted anything as good as an overcoat before, in his life. Then +he smacked his lips once or twice, and reached after the other sleeve. +Next he tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile of such contentment +that it was plain to see that he regarded that as the daintiest thing +about an overcoat. The tails went next, along with some percussion caps +and cough candy, and some fig-paste from Constantinople. And then my +newspaper correspondence dropped out, and he took a chance in that +--manuscript letters written for the home papers. But he was treading on +dangerous ground, now. He began to come across solid wisdom in those +documents that was rather weighty on his stomach; and occasionally he +would take a joke that would shake him up till it loosened his teeth; it +was getting to be perilous times with him, but he held his grip with good +courage and hopefully, till at last he began to stumble on statements +that not even a camel could swallow with impunity. He began to gag and +gasp, and his eyes to stand out, and his forelegs to spread, and in about +a quarter of a minute he fell over as stiff as a carpenter's work-bench, +and died a death of indescribable agony. I went and pulled the +manuscript out of his mouth, and found that the sensitive creature had +choked to death on one of the mildest and gentlest statements of fact +that I ever laid before a trusting public. + +I was about to say, when diverted from my subject, that occasionally one +finds sage-bushes five or six feet high, and with a spread of branch and +foliage in proportion, but two or two and a half feet is the usual +height. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +As the sun went down and the evening chill came on, we made preparation +for bed. We stirred up the hard leather letter-sacks, and the knotty +canvas bags of printed matter (knotty and uneven because of projecting +ends and corners of magazines, boxes and books). We stirred them up and +redisposed them in such a way as to make our bed as level as possible. +And we did improve it, too, though after all our work it had an upheaved +and billowy look about it, like a little piece of a stormy sea. Next we +hunted up our boots from odd nooks among the mail-bags where they had +settled, and put them on. Then we got down our coats, vests, pantaloons +and heavy woolen shirts, from the arm-loops where they had been swinging +all day, and clothed ourselves in them--for, there being no ladies either +at the stations or in the coach, and the weather being hot, we had looked +to our comfort by stripping to our underclothing, at nine o'clock in the +morning. All things being now ready, we stowed the uneasy Dictionary +where it would lie as quiet as possible, and placed the water-canteens +and pistols where we could find them in the dark. Then we smoked a final +pipe, and swapped a final yarn; after which, we put the pipes, tobacco +and bag of coin in snug holes and caves among the mail-bags, and then +fastened down the coach curtains all around, and made the place as "dark +as the inside of a cow," as the conductor phrased it in his picturesque +way. It was certainly as dark as any place could be--nothing was even +dimly visible in it. And finally, we rolled ourselves up like +silk-worms, each person in his own blanket, and sank peacefully to sleep. + +Whenever the stage stopped to change horses, we would wake up, and try to +recollect where we were--and succeed--and in a minute or two the stage +would be off again, and we likewise. We began to get into country, now, +threaded here and there with little streams. These had high, steep banks +on each side, and every time we flew down one bank and scrambled up the +other, our party inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down +in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture, +and in a second we would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads. +And we would sprawl and kick, too, and ward off ends and corners of +mail-bags that came lumbering over us and about us; and as the dust rose +from the tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the majority of us +would grumble, and probably say some hasty thing, like: "Take your elbow +out of my ribs!--can't you quit crowding?" + +Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to the other, the +Unabridged Dictionary would come too; and every time it came it damaged +somebody. One trip it "barked" the Secretary's elbow; the next trip it +hurt me in the stomach, and the third it tilted Bemis's nose up till he +could look down his nostrils--he said. The pistols and coin soon settled +to the bottom, but the pipes, pipe-stems, tobacco and canteens clattered +and floundered after the Dictionary every time it made an assault on us, +and aided and abetted the book by spilling tobacco in our eyes, and water +down our backs. + +Still, all things considered, it was a very comfortable night. It wore +gradually away, and when at last a cold gray light was visible through +the puckers and chinks in the curtains, we yawned and stretched with +satisfaction, shed our cocoons, and felt that we had slept as much as was +necessary. By and by, as the sun rose up and warmed the world, we pulled +off our clothes and got ready for breakfast. We were just pleasantly in +time, for five minutes afterward the driver sent the weird music of his +bugle winding over the grassy solitudes, and presently we detected a low +hut or two in the distance. Then the rattling of the coach, the clatter +of our six horses' hoofs, and the driver's crisp commands, awoke to a +louder and stronger emphasis, and we went sweeping down on the station at +our smartest speed. It was fascinating--that old overland stagecoaching. + +We jumped out in undress uniform. The driver tossed his gathered reins +out on the ground, gaped and stretched complacently, drew off his heavy +buckskin gloves with great deliberation and insufferable dignity--taking +not the slightest notice of a dozen solicitous inquires after his health, +and humbly facetious and flattering accostings, and obsequious tenders of +service, from five or six hairy and half-civilized station-keepers and +hostlers who were nimbly unhitching our steeds and bringing the fresh +team out of the stables--for in the eyes of the stage-driver of that day, +station-keepers and hostlers were a sort of good enough low creatures, +useful in their place, and helping to make up a world, but not the kind +of beings which a person of distinction could afford to concern himself +with; while, on the contrary, in the eyes of the station-keeper and the +hostler, the stage-driver was a hero--a great and shining dignitary, the +world's favorite son, the envy of the people, the observed of the +nations. When they spoke to him they received his insolent silence +meekly, and as being the natural and proper conduct of so great a man; +when he opened his lips they all hung on his words with admiration (he +never honored a particular individual with a remark, but addressed it +with a broad generality to the horses, the stables, the surrounding +country and the human underlings); when he discharged a facetious +insulting personality at a hostler, that hostler was happy for the day; +when he uttered his one jest--old as the hills, coarse, profane, witless, +and inflicted on the same audience, in the same language, every time his +coach drove up there--the varlets roared, and slapped their thighs, and +swore it was the best thing they'd ever heard in all their lives. And +how they would fly around when he wanted a basin of water, a gourd of the +same, or a light for his pipe!--but they would instantly insult a +passenger if he so far forgot himself as to crave a favor at their hands. +They could do that sort of insolence as well as the driver they copied it +from--for, let it be borne in mind, the overland driver had but little +less contempt for his passengers than he had for his hostlers. + +The hostlers and station-keepers treated the really powerful conductor of +the coach merely with the best of what was their idea of civility, but +the driver was the only being they bowed down to and worshipped. How +admiringly they would gaze up at him in his high seat as he gloved +himself with lingering deliberation, while some happy hostler held the +bunch of reins aloft, and waited patiently for him to take it! And how +they would bombard him with glorifying ejaculations as he cracked his +long whip and went careering away. + +The station buildings were long, low huts, made of sundried, mud-colored +bricks, laid up without mortar (adobes, the Spaniards call these bricks, +and Americans shorten it to 'dobies). The roofs, which had no slant to +them worth speaking of, were thatched and then sodded or covered with a +thick layer of earth, and from this sprung a pretty rank growth of weeds +and grass. It was the first time we had ever seen a man's front yard on +top of his house. The building consisted of barns, stable-room for +twelve or fifteen horses, and a hut for an eating-room for passengers. +This latter had bunks in it for the station-keeper and a hostler or two. +You could rest your elbow on its eaves, and you had to bend in order to +get in at the door. In place of a window there was a square hole about +large enough for a man to crawl through, but this had no glass in it. +There was no flooring, but the ground was packed hard. There was no +stove, but the fire-place served all needful purposes. There were no +shelves, no cupboards, no closets. In a corner stood an open sack of +flour, and nestling against its base were a couple of black and venerable +tin coffee-pots, a tin teapot, a little bag of salt, and a side of bacon. + + +By the door of the station-keeper's den, outside, was a tin wash-basin, +on the ground. Near it was a pail of water and a piece of yellow bar +soap, and from the eaves hung a hoary blue woolen shirt, significantly +--but this latter was the station-keeper's private towel, and only two +persons in all the party might venture to use it--the stage-driver and +the conductor. The latter would not, from a sense of decency; the former +would not, because did not choose to encourage the advances of a +station-keeper. We had towels--in the valise; they might as well have +been in Sodom and Gomorrah. We (and the conductor) used our +handkerchiefs, and the driver his pantaloons and sleeves. By the door, +inside, was fastened a small old-fashioned looking-glass frame, with two +little fragments of the original mirror lodged down in one corner of it. +This arrangement afforded a pleasant double-barreled portrait of you when +you looked into it, with one half of your head set up a couple of inches +above the other half. From the glass frame hung the half of a comb by a +string--but if I had to describe that patriarch or die, I believe I would +order some sample coffins. + +It had come down from Esau and Samson, and had been accumulating hair +ever since--along with certain impurities. In one corner of the room +stood three or four rifles and muskets, together with horns and pouches +of ammunition. The station-men wore pantaloons of coarse, country-woven +stuff, and into the seat and the inside of the legs were sewed ample +additions of buckskin, to do duty in place of leggings, when the man rode +horseback--so the pants were half dull blue and half yellow, and +unspeakably picturesque. The pants were stuffed into the tops of high +boots, the heels whereof were armed with great Spanish spurs, whose +little iron clogs and chains jingled with every step. The man wore a +huge beard and mustachios, an old slouch hat, a blue woolen shirt, no +suspenders, no vest, no coat--in a leathern sheath in his belt, a great +long "navy" revolver (slung on right side, hammer to the front), and +projecting from his boot a horn-handled bowie-knife. The furniture of +the hut was neither gorgeous nor much in the way. The rocking-chairs and +sofas were not present, and never had been, but they were represented by +two three-legged stools, a pine-board bench four feet long, and two empty +candle-boxes. The table was a greasy board on stilts, and the +table-cloth and napkins had not come--and they were not looking for them, +either. A battered tin platter, a knife and fork, and a tin pint cup, +were at each man's place, and the driver had a queens-ware saucer that +had seen better days. Of course this duke sat at the head of the table. +There was one isolated piece of table furniture that bore about it a +touching air of grandeur in misfortune. This was the caster. It was +German silver, and crippled and rusty, but it was so preposterously out +of place there that it was suggestive of a tattered exiled king among +barbarians, and the majesty of its native position compelled respect even +in its degradation. + +There was only one cruet left, and that was a stopperless, fly-specked, +broken-necked thing, with two inches of vinegar in it, and a dozen +preserved flies with their heels up and looking sorry they had invested +there. + +The station-keeper upended a disk of last week's bread, of the shape and +size of an old-time cheese, and carved some slabs from it which were as +good as Nicholson pavement, and tenderer. + +He sliced off a piece of bacon for each man, but only the experienced old +hands made out to eat it, for it was condemned army bacon which the +United States would not feed to its soldiers in the forts, and the stage +company had bought it cheap for the sustenance of their passengers and +employees. We may have found this condemned army bacon further out on +the plains than the section I am locating it in, but we found it--there +is no gainsaying that. + +Then he poured for us a beverage which he called "Slum gullion," and it +is hard to think he was not inspired when he named it. It really +pretended to be tea, but there was too much dish-rag, and sand, and old +bacon-rind in it to deceive the intelligent traveler. + +He had no sugar and no milk--not even a spoon to stir the ingredients +with. + +We could not eat the bread or the meat, nor drink the "slumgullion." And +when I looked at that melancholy vinegar-cruet, I thought of the anecdote +(a very, very old one, even at that day) of the traveler who sat down to +a table which had nothing on it but a mackerel and a pot of mustard. He +asked the landlord if this was all. The landlord said: + +"All! Why, thunder and lightning, I should think there was mackerel +enough there for six." + +"But I don't like mackerel." + +"Oh--then help yourself to the mustard." + +In other days I had considered it a good, a very good, anecdote, but +there was a dismal plausibility about it, here, that took all the humor +out of it. + +Our breakfast was before us, but our teeth were idle. + +I tasted and smelt, and said I would take coffee, I believed. The +station-boss stopped dead still, and glared at me speechless. At last, +when he came to, he turned away and said, as one who communes with +himself upon a matter too vast to grasp: + +"Coffee! Well, if that don't go clean ahead of me, I'm d---d!" + +We could not eat, and there was no conversation among the hostlers and +herdsmen--we all sat at the same board. At least there was no +conversation further than a single hurried request, now and then, from +one employee to another. It was always in the same form, and always +gruffly friendly. Its western freshness and novelty startled me, at +first, and interested me; but it presently grew monotonous, and lost its +charm. It was: + +"Pass the bread, you son of a skunk!" No, I forget--skunk was not the +word; it seems to me it was still stronger than that; I know it was, in +fact, but it is gone from my memory, apparently. However, it is no +matter--probably it was too strong for print, anyway. It is the landmark +in my memory which tells me where I first encountered the vigorous new +vernacular of the occidental plains and mountains. + +We gave up the breakfast, and paid our dollar apiece and went back to our +mail-bag bed in the coach, and found comfort in our pipes. Right here we +suffered the first diminution of our princely state. We left our six +fine horses and took six mules in their place. But they were wild +Mexican fellows, and a man had to stand at the head of each of them and +hold him fast while the driver gloved and got himself ready. And when at +last he grasped the reins and gave the word, the men sprung suddenly away +from the mules' heads and the coach shot from the station as if it had +issued from a cannon. How the frantic animals did scamper! It was a +fierce and furious gallop--and the gait never altered for a moment till +we reeled off ten or twelve miles and swept up to the next collection of +little station-huts and stables. + +So we flew along all day. At 2 P.M. the belt of timber that fringes the +North Platte and marks its windings through the vast level floor of the +Plains came in sight. At 4 P.M. we crossed a branch of the river, and +at 5 P.M. we crossed the Platte itself, and landed at Fort Kearney, +fifty-six hours out from St. Joe--THREE HUNDRED MILES! + +Now that was stage-coaching on the great overland, ten or twelve years +ago, when perhaps not more than ten men in America, all told, expected to +live to see a railroad follow that route to the Pacific. But the +railroad is there, now, and it pictures a thousand odd comparisons and +contrasts in my mind to read the following sketch, in the New York Times, +of a recent trip over almost the very ground I have been describing. I +can scarcely comprehend the new state of things: + + "ACROSS THE CONTINENT. + + "At 4.20 P.M., Sunday, we rolled out of the station at Omaha, and + started westward on our long jaunt. A couple of hours out, dinner + was announced--an "event" to those of us who had yet to experience + what it is to eat in one of Pullman's hotels on wheels; so, stepping + into the car next forward of our sleeping palace, we found ourselves + in the dining-car. It was a revelation to us, that first dinner on + Sunday. And though we continued to dine for four days, and had as + many breakfasts and suppers, our whole party never ceased to admire + the perfection of the arrangements, and the marvelous results + achieved. Upon tables covered with snowy linen, and garnished with + services of solid silver, Ethiop waiters, flitting about in spotless + white, placed as by magic a repast at which Delmonico himself could + have had no occasion to blush; and, indeed, in some respects it + would be hard for that distinguished chef to match our menu; for, in + addition to all that ordinarily makes up a first-chop dinner, had we + not our antelope steak (the gormand who has not experienced this + --bah! what does he know of the feast of fat things?) our delicious + mountain-brook trout, and choice fruits and berries, and (sauce + piquant and unpurchasable!) our sweet-scented, appetite-compelling + air of the prairies? + + "You may depend upon it, we all did justice to the good things, and + as we washed them down with bumpers of sparkling Krug, whilst we + sped along at the rate of thirty miles an hour, agreed it was the + fastest living we had ever experienced. (We beat that, however, two + days afterward when we made twenty-seven miles in twenty-seven + minutes, while our Champagne glasses filled to the brim spilled not + a drop!) After dinner we repaired to our drawing-room car, and, as + it was Sabbath eve, intoned some of the grand old hymns--"Praise God + from whom," etc.; "Shining Shore," "Coronation," etc.--the voices of + the men singers and of the women singers blending sweetly in the + evening air, while our train, with its great, glaring Polyphemus + eye, lighting up long vistas of prairie, rushed into the night and + the Wild. Then to bed in luxurious couches, where we slept the + sleep of the just and only awoke the next morning (Monday) at eight + o'clock, to find ourselves at the crossing of the North Platte, + three hundred miles from Omaha--fifteen hours and forty minutes + out." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +Another night of alternate tranquillity and turmoil. But morning came, +by and by. It was another glad awakening to fresh breezes, vast expanses +of level greensward, bright sunlight, an impressive solitude utterly +without visible human beings or human habitations, and an atmosphere of +such amazing magnifying properties that trees that seemed close at hand +were more than three mile away. We resumed undress uniform, climbed +a-top of the flying coach, dangled our legs over the side, shouted +occasionally at our frantic mules, merely to see them lay their ears back +and scamper faster, tied our hats on to keep our hair from blowing away, +and leveled an outlook over the world-wide carpet about us for things new +and strange to gaze at. Even at this day it thrills me through and +through to think of the life, the gladness and the wild sense of freedom +that used to make the blood dance in my veins on those fine overland +mornings! + +Along about an hour after breakfast we saw the first prairie-dog +villages, the first antelope, and the first wolf. If I remember rightly, +this latter was the regular cayote (pronounced ky-o-te) of the farther +deserts. And if it was, he was not a pretty creature or respectable +either, for I got well acquainted with his race afterward, and can speak +with confidence. The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking +skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail +that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and +misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly +lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all +over. The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always +hungry. + +He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures +despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is +so spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are +pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he +is so homely!--so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful. +When he sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and +then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his head +a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sage-brush, +glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is about +out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate survey +of you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again--another fifty and stop +again; and finally the gray of his gliding body blends with the gray of +the sage-brush, and he disappears. All this is when you make no +demonstration against him; but if you do, he develops a livelier interest +in his journey, and instantly electrifies his heels and puts such a deal +of real estate between himself and your weapon, that by the time you have +raised the hammer you see that you need a minie rifle, and by the time +you have got him in line you need a rifled cannon, and by the time you +have "drawn a bead" on him you see well enough that nothing but an +unusually long-winded streak of lightning could reach him where he is +now. But if you start a swift-footed dog after him, you will enjoy it +ever so much--especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of +himself, and has been brought up to think he knows something about speed. + +The cayote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of his, and +every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder that +will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and worldly ambition, +and make him lay his head still lower to the ground, and stretch his neck +further to the front, and pant more fiercely, and stick his tail out +straighter behind, and move his furious legs with a yet wilder frenzy, +and leave a broader and broader, and higher and denser cloud of desert +sand smoking behind, and marking his long wake across the level plain! +And all this time the dog is only a short twenty feet behind the cayote, +and to save the soul of him he cannot understand why it is that he cannot +get perceptibly closer; and he begins to get aggravated, and it makes him +madder and madder to see how gently the cayote glides along and never +pants or sweats or ceases to smile; and he grows still more and more +incensed to see how shamefully he has been taken in by an entire +stranger, and what an ignoble swindle that long, calm, soft-footed trot +is; and next he notices that he is getting fagged, and that the cayote +actually has to slacken speed a little to keep from running away from +him--and then that town-dog is mad in earnest, and he begins to strain +and weep and swear, and paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for the +cayote with concentrated and desperate energy. This "spurt" finds him +six feet behind the gliding enemy, and two miles from his friends. And +then, in the instant that a wild new hope is lighting up his face, the +cayote turns and smiles blandly upon him once more, and with a something +about it which seems to say: "Well, I shall have to tear myself away from +you, bub--business is business, and it will not do for me to be fooling +along this way all day"--and forthwith there is a rushing sound, and the +sudden splitting of a long crack through the atmosphere, and behold that +dog is solitary and alone in the midst of a vast solitude! + +It makes his head swim. He stops, and looks all around; climbs the +nearest sand-mound, and gazes into the distance; shakes his head +reflectively, and then, without a word, he turns and jogs along back to +his train, and takes up a humble position under the hindmost wagon, and +feels unspeakably mean, and looks ashamed, and hangs his tail at +half-mast for a week. And for as much as a year after that, whenever +there is a great hue and cry after a cayote, that dog will merely glance +in that direction without emotion, and apparently observe to himself, +"I believe I do not wish any of the pie." + +The cayote lives chiefly in the most desolate and forbidding desert, +along with the lizard, the jackass-rabbit and the raven, and gets an +uncertain and precarious living, and earns it. He seems to subsist +almost wholly on the carcases of oxen, mules and horses that have dropped +out of emigrant trains and died, and upon windfalls of carrion, and +occasional legacies of offal bequeathed to him by white men who have been +opulent enough to have something better to butcher than condemned army +bacon. + +He will eat anything in the world that his first cousins, the +desert-frequenting tribes of Indians will, and they will eat anything +they can bite. It is a curious fact that these latter are the only +creatures known to history who will eat nitro-glycerine and ask for more +if they survive. + +The cayote of the deserts beyond the Rocky Mountains has a peculiarly +hard time of it, owing to the fact that his relations, the Indians, are +just as apt to be the first to detect a seductive scent on the desert +breeze, and follow the fragrance to the late ox it emanated from, as he +is himself; and when this occurs he has to content himself with sitting +off at a little distance watching those people strip off and dig out +everything edible, and walk off with it. Then he and the waiting ravens +explore the skeleton and polish the bones. It is considered that the +cayote, and the obscene bird, and the Indian of the desert, testify their +blood kinship with each other in that they live together in the waste +places of the earth on terms of perfect confidence and friendship, while +hating all other creature and yearning to assist at their funerals. He +does not mind going a hundred miles to breakfast, and a hundred and fifty +to dinner, because he is sure to have three or four days between meals, +and he can just as well be traveling and looking at the scenery as lying +around doing nothing and adding to the burdens of his parents. + +We soon learned to recognize the sharp, vicious bark of the cayote as it +came across the murky plain at night to disturb our dreams among the +mail-sacks; and remembering his forlorn aspect and his hard fortune, made +shift to wish him the blessed novelty of a long day's good luck and a +limitless larder the morrow. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +Our new conductor (just shipped) had been without sleep for twenty hours. +Such a thing was very frequent. From St. Joseph, Missouri, to +Sacramento, California, by stage-coach, was nearly nineteen hundred +miles, and the trip was often made in fifteen days (the cars do it in +four and a half, now), but the time specified in the mail contracts, and +required by the schedule, was eighteen or nineteen days, if I remember +rightly. This was to make fair allowance for winter storms and snows, +and other unavoidable causes of detention. The stage company had +everything under strict discipline and good system. Over each two +hundred and fifty miles of road they placed an agent or superintendent, +and invested him with great authority. His beat or jurisdiction of two +hundred and fifty miles was called a "division." He purchased horses, +mules harness, and food for men and beasts, and distributed these things +among his stage stations, from time to time, according to his judgment of +what each station needed. He erected station buildings and dug wells. +He attended to the paying of the station-keepers, hostlers, drivers and +blacksmiths, and discharged them whenever he chose. He was a very, very +great man in his "division"--a kind of Grand Mogul, a Sultan of the +Indies, in whose presence common men were modest of speech and manner, +and in the glare of whose greatness even the dazzling stage-driver +dwindled to a penny dip. There were about eight of these kings, all +told, on the overland route. + +Next in rank and importance to the division-agent came the "conductor." +His beat was the same length as the agent's--two hundred and fifty miles. +He sat with the driver, and (when necessary) rode that fearful distance, +night and day, without other rest or sleep than what he could get perched +thus on top of the flying vehicle. Think of it! He had absolute charge +of the mails, express matter, passengers and stage, coach, until he +delivered them to the next conductor, and got his receipt for them. + +Consequently he had to be a man of intelligence, decision and +considerable executive ability. He was usually a quiet, pleasant man, +who attended closely to his duties, and was a good deal of a gentleman. +It was not absolutely necessary that the division-agent should be a +gentleman, and occasionally he wasn't. But he was always a general in +administrative ability, and a bull-dog in courage and determination +--otherwise the chieftainship over the lawless underlings of the overland +service would never in any instance have been to him anything but an +equivalent for a month of insolence and distress and a bullet and a +coffin at the end of it. There were about sixteen or eighteen conductors +on the overland, for there was a daily stage each way, and a conductor on +every stage. + +Next in real and official rank and importance, after the conductor, came +my delight, the driver--next in real but not in apparent importance--for +we have seen that in the eyes of the common herd the driver was to the +conductor as an admiral is to the captain of the flag-ship. The driver's +beat was pretty long, and his sleeping-time at the stations pretty short, +sometimes; and so, but for the grandeur of his position his would have +been a sorry life, as well as a hard and a wearing one. We took a new +driver every day or every night (for they drove backward and forward over +the same piece of road all the time), and therefore we never got as well +acquainted with them as we did with the conductors; and besides, they +would have been above being familiar with such rubbish as passengers, +anyhow, as a general thing. Still, we were always eager to get a sight +of each and every new driver as soon as the watch changed, for each and +every day we were either anxious to get rid of an unpleasant one, or +loath to part with a driver we had learned to like and had come to be +sociable and friendly with. And so the first question we asked the +conductor whenever we got to where we were to exchange drivers, was +always, "Which is him?" The grammar was faulty, maybe, but we could not +know, then, that it would go into a book some day. As long as everything +went smoothly, the overland driver was well enough situated, but if a +fellow driver got sick suddenly it made trouble, for the coach must go +on, and so the potentate who was about to climb down and take a luxurious +rest after his long night's siege in the midst of wind and rain and +darkness, had to stay where he was and do the sick man's work. Once, in +the Rocky Mountains, when I found a driver sound asleep on the box, and +the mules going at the usual break-neck pace, the conductor said never +mind him, there was no danger, and he was doing double duty--had driven +seventy-five miles on one coach, and was now going back over it on this +without rest or sleep. A hundred and fifty miles of holding back of six +vindictive mules and keeping them from climbing the trees! It sounds +incredible, but I remember the statement well enough. + +The station-keepers, hostlers, etc., were low, rough characters, as +already described; and from western Nebraska to Nevada a considerable +sprinkling of them might be fairly set down as outlaws--fugitives from +justice, criminals whose best security was a section of country which was +without law and without even the pretence of it. When the +"division-agent" issued an order to one of these parties he did it with +the full understanding that he might have to enforce it with a navy +six-shooter, and so he always went "fixed" to make things go along +smoothly. + +Now and then a division-agent was really obliged to shoot a hostler +through the head to teach him some simple matter that he could have +taught him with a club if his circumstances and surroundings had been +different. But they were snappy, able men, those division-agents, and +when they tried to teach a subordinate anything, that subordinate +generally "got it through his head." + +A great portion of this vast machinery--these hundreds of men and +coaches, and thousands of mules and horses--was in the hands of Mr. Ben +Holliday. All the western half of the business was in his hands. This +reminds me of an incident of Palestine travel which is pertinent here, so +I will transfer it just in the language in which I find it set down in my +Holy Land note-book: + + No doubt everybody has heard of Ben Holliday--a man of prodigious + energy, who used to send mails and passengers flying across the + continent in his overland stage-coaches like a very whirlwind--two + thousand long miles in fifteen days and a half, by the watch! But + this fragment of history is not about Ben Holliday, but about a + young New York boy by the name of Jack, who traveled with our small + party of pilgrims in the Holy Land (and who had traveled to + California in Mr. Holliday's overland coaches three years before, + and had by no means forgotten it or lost his gushing admiration of + Mr. H.) Aged nineteen. Jack was a good boy--a good-hearted and + always well-meaning boy, who had been reared in the city of New + York, and although he was bright and knew a great many useful + things, his Scriptural education had been a good deal neglected--to + such a degree, indeed, that all Holy Land history was fresh and new + to him, and all Bible names mysteries that had never disturbed his + virgin ear. + + Also in our party was an elderly pilgrim who was the reverse of + Jack, in that he was learned in the Scriptures and an enthusiast + concerning them. He was our encyclopedia, and we were never tired + of listening to his speeches, nor he of making them. He never + passed a celebrated locality, from Bashan to Bethlehem, without + illuminating it with an oration. One day, when camped near the + ruins of Jericho, he burst forth with something like this: + + "Jack, do you see that range of mountains over yonder that bounds + the Jordan valley? The mountains of Moab, Jack! Think of it, my + boy--the actual mountains of Moab--renowned in Scripture history! + We are actually standing face to face with those illustrious crags + and peaks--and for all we know" [dropping his voice impressively], + "our eyes may be resting at this very moment upon the spot WHERE + LIES THE MYSTERIOUS GRAVE OF MOSES! Think of it, Jack!" + + "Moses who?" (falling inflection). + + "Moses who! Jack, you ought to be ashamed of yourself--you ought to + be ashamed of such criminal ignorance. Why, Moses, the great guide, + soldier, poet, lawgiver of ancient Israel! Jack, from this spot + where we stand, to Egypt, stretches a fearful desert three hundred + miles in extent--and across that desert that wonderful man brought + the children of Israel!--guiding them with unfailing sagacity for + forty years over the sandy desolation and among the obstructing + rocks and hills, and landed them at last, safe and sound, within + sight of this very spot; and where we now stand they entered the + Promised Land with anthems of rejoicing! It was a wonderful, + wonderful thing to do, Jack! Think of it!" + + "Forty years? Only three hundred miles? Humph! Ben Holliday would + have fetched them through in thirty-six hours!" + +The boy meant no harm. He did not know that he had said anything that +was wrong or irreverent. And so no one scolded him or felt offended with +him--and nobody could but some ungenerous spirit incapable of excusing +the heedless blunders of a boy. + +At noon on the fifth day out, we arrived at the "Crossing of the South +Platte," alias "Julesburg," alias "Overland City," four hundred and +seventy miles from St. Joseph--the strangest, quaintest, funniest +frontier town that our untraveled eyes had ever stared at and been +astonished with. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +It did seem strange enough to see a town again after what appeared to us +such a long acquaintance with deep, still, almost lifeless and houseless +solitude! We tumbled out into the busy street feeling like meteoric +people crumbled off the corner of some other world, and wakened up +suddenly in this. For an hour we took as much interest in Overland City +as if we had never seen a town before. The reason we had an hour to +spare was because we had to change our stage (for a less sumptuous +affair, called a "mud-wagon") and transfer our freight of mails. + +Presently we got under way again. We came to the shallow, yellow, muddy +South Platte, with its low banks and its scattering flat sand-bars and +pigmy islands--a melancholy stream straggling through the centre of the +enormous flat plain, and only saved from being impossible to find with +the naked eye by its sentinel rank of scattering trees standing on either +bank. The Platte was "up," they said--which made me wish I could see it +when it was down, if it could look any sicker and sorrier. They said it +was a dangerous stream to cross, now, because its quicksands were liable +to swallow up horses, coach and passengers if an attempt was made to ford +it. But the mails had to go, and we made the attempt. Once or twice in +midstream the wheels sunk into the yielding sands so threateningly that +we half believed we had dreaded and avoided the sea all our lives to be +shipwrecked in a "mud-wagon" in the middle of a desert at last. But we +dragged through and sped away toward the setting sun. + +Next morning, just before dawn, when about five hundred and fifty miles +from St. Joseph, our mud-wagon broke down. We were to be delayed five or +six hours, and therefore we took horses, by invitation, and joined a +party who were just starting on a buffalo hunt. It was noble sport +galloping over the plain in the dewy freshness of the morning, but our +part of the hunt ended in disaster and disgrace, for a wounded buffalo +bull chased the passenger Bemis nearly two miles, and then he forsook his +horse and took to a lone tree. He was very sullen about the matter for +some twenty-four hours, but at last he began to soften little by little, +and finally he said: + +"Well, it was not funny, and there was no sense in those gawks making +themselves so facetious over it. I tell you I was angry in earnest for +awhile. I should have shot that long gangly lubber they called Hank, if +I could have done it without crippling six or seven other people--but of +course I couldn't, the old 'Allen's' so confounded comprehensive. I wish +those loafers had been up in the tree; they wouldn't have wanted to laugh +so. If I had had a horse worth a cent--but no, the minute he saw that +buffalo bull wheel on him and give a bellow, he raised straight up in the +air and stood on his heels. The saddle began to slip, and I took him +round the neck and laid close to him, and began to pray. Then he came +down and stood up on the other end awhile, and the bull actually stopped +pawing sand and bellowing to contemplate the inhuman spectacle. + +"Then the bull made a pass at him and uttered a bellow that sounded +perfectly frightful, it was so close to me, and that seemed to literally +prostrate my horse's reason, and make a raving distracted maniac of him, +and I wish I may die if he didn't stand on his head for a quarter of a +minute and shed tears. He was absolutely out of his mind--he was, as +sure as truth itself, and he really didn't know what he was doing. Then +the bull came charging at us, and my horse dropped down on all fours and +took a fresh start--and then for the next ten minutes he would actually +throw one hand-spring after another so fast that the bull began to get +unsettled, too, and didn't know where to start in--and so he stood there +sneezing, and shovelling dust over his back, and bellowing every now and +then, and thinking he had got a fifteen-hundred dollar circus horse for +breakfast, certain. Well, I was first out on his neck--the horse's, not +the bull's--and then underneath, and next on his rump, and sometimes head +up, and sometimes heels--but I tell you it seemed solemn and awful to be +ripping and tearing and carrying on so in the presence of death, as you +might say. Pretty soon the bull made a snatch for us and brought away +some of my horse's tail (I suppose, but do not know, being pretty busy at +the time), but something made him hungry for solitude and suggested to +him to get up and hunt for it. + +"And then you ought to have seen that spider legged old skeleton go! and +you ought to have seen the bull cut out after him, too--head down, tongue +out, tail up, bellowing like everything, and actually mowing down the +weeds, and tearing up the earth, and boosting up the sand like a +whirlwind! By George, it was a hot race! I and the saddle were back on +the rump, and I had the bridle in my teeth and holding on to the pommel +with both hands. First we left the dogs behind; then we passed a jackass +rabbit; then we overtook a cayote, and were gaining on an antelope when +the rotten girth let go and threw me about thirty yards off to the left, +and as the saddle went down over the horse's rump he gave it a lift with +his heels that sent it more than four hundred yards up in the air, I wish +I may die in a minute if he didn't. I fell at the foot of the only +solitary tree there was in nine counties adjacent (as any creature could +see with the naked eye), and the next second I had hold of the bark with +four sets of nails and my teeth, and the next second after that I was +astraddle of the main limb and blaspheming my luck in a way that made my +breath smell of brimstone. I had the bull, now, if he did not think of +one thing. But that one thing I dreaded. I dreaded it very seriously. +There was a possibility that the bull might not think of it, but there +were greater chances that he would. I made up my mind what I would do in +case he did. It was a little over forty feet to the ground from where I +sat. I cautiously unwound the lariat from the pommel of my saddle----" + +"Your saddle? Did you take your saddle up in the tree with you?" + +"Take it up in the tree with me? Why, how you talk. Of course I didn't. +No man could do that. It fell in the tree when it came down." + +"Oh--exactly." + +"Certainly. I unwound the lariat, and fastened one end of it to the +limb. It was the very best green raw-hide, and capable of sustaining +tons. I made a slip-noose in the other end, and then hung it down to see +the length. It reached down twenty-two feet--half way to the ground. +I then loaded every barrel of the Allen with a double charge. I felt +satisfied. I said to myself, if he never thinks of that one thing that I +dread, all right--but if he does, all right anyhow--I am fixed for him. +But don't you know that the very thing a man dreads is the thing that +always happens? Indeed it is so. I watched the bull, now, with anxiety +--anxiety which no one can conceive of who has not been in such a +situation and felt that at any moment death might come. Presently a +thought came into the bull's eye. I knew it! said I--if my nerve fails +now, I am lost. Sure enough, it was just as I had dreaded, he started in +to climb the tree----" + +"What, the bull?" + +"Of course--who else?" + +"But a bull can't climb a tree." + +"He can't, can't he? Since you know so much about it, did you ever see a +bull try?" + +"No! I never dreamt of such a thing." + +"Well, then, what is the use of your talking that way, then? Because you +never saw a thing done, is that any reason why it can't be done?" + +"Well, all right--go on. What did you do?" + +"The bull started up, and got along well for about ten feet, then slipped +and slid back. I breathed easier. He tried it again--got up a little +higher--slipped again. But he came at it once more, and this time he was +careful. He got gradually higher and higher, and my spirits went down +more and more. Up he came--an inch at a time--with his eyes hot, and his +tongue hanging out. Higher and higher--hitched his foot over the stump +of a limb, and looked up, as much as to say, 'You are my meat, friend.' +Up again--higher and higher, and getting more excited the closer he got. +He was within ten feet of me! I took a long breath,--and then said I, +'It is now or never.' I had the coil of the lariat all ready; I paid it +out slowly, till it hung right over his head; all of a sudden I let go of +the slack, and the slipnoose fell fairly round his neck! Quicker than +lightning I out with the Allen and let him have it in the face. It was +an awful roar, and must have scared the bull out of his senses. When the +smoke cleared away, there he was, dangling in the air, twenty foot from +the ground, and going out of one convulsion into another faster than you +could count! I didn't stop to count, anyhow--I shinned down the tree and +shot for home." + +"Bemis, is all that true, just as you have stated it?" + +"I wish I may rot in my tracks and die the death of a dog if it isn't." + +"Well, we can't refuse to believe it, and we don't. But if there were +some proofs----" + +"Proofs! Did I bring back my lariat?" + +"No." + +"Did I bring back my horse?" + +"No." + +"Did you ever see the bull again?" + +"No." + +"Well, then, what more do you want? I never saw anybody as particular as +you are about a little thing like that." + +I made up my mind that if this man was not a liar he only missed it by +the skin of his teeth. This episode reminds me of an incident of my +brief sojourn in Siam, years afterward. The European citizens of a town +in the neighborhood of Bangkok had a prodigy among them by the name of +Eckert, an Englishman--a person famous for the number, ingenuity and +imposing magnitude of his lies. They were always repeating his most +celebrated falsehoods, and always trying to "draw him out" before +strangers; but they seldom succeeded. Twice he was invited to the house +where I was visiting, but nothing could seduce him into a specimen lie. +One day a planter named Bascom, an influential man, and a proud and +sometimes irascible one, invited me to ride over with him and call on +Eckert. As we jogged along, said he: + +"Now, do you know where the fault lies? It lies in putting Eckert on his +guard. The minute the boys go to pumping at Eckert he knows perfectly +well what they are after, and of course he shuts up his shell. Anybody +might know he would. But when we get there, we must play him finer than +that. Let him shape the conversation to suit himself--let him drop it or +change it whenever he wants to. Let him see that nobody is trying to +draw him out. Just let him have his own way. He will soon forget +himself and begin to grind out lies like a mill. Don't get impatient +--just keep quiet, and let me play him. I will make him lie. It does seem +to me that the boys must be blind to overlook such an obvious and simple +trick as that." + +Eckert received us heartily--a pleasant-spoken, gentle-mannered creature. +We sat in the veranda an hour, sipping English ale, and talking about the +king, and the sacred white elephant, the Sleeping Idol, and all manner of +things; and I noticed that my comrade never led the conversation himself +or shaped it, but simply followed Eckert's lead, and betrayed no +solicitude and no anxiety about anything. The effect was shortly +perceptible. Eckert began to grow communicative; he grew more and more +at his ease, and more and more talkative and sociable. Another hour +passed in the same way, and then all of a sudden Eckert said: + +"Oh, by the way! I came near forgetting. I have got a thing here to +astonish you. Such a thing as neither you nor any other man ever heard +of--I've got a cat that will eat cocoanut! Common green cocoanut--and +not only eat the meat, but drink the milk. It is so--I'll swear to it." + +A quick glance from Bascom--a glance that I understood--then: + +"Why, bless my soul, I never heard of such a thing. Man, it is +impossible." + +"I knew you would say it. I'll fetch the cat." + +He went in the house. Bascom said: + +"There--what did I tell you? Now, that is the way to handle Eckert. You +see, I have petted him along patiently, and put his suspicions to sleep. +I am glad we came. You tell the boys about it when you go back. Cat eat +a cocoanut--oh, my! Now, that is just his way, exactly--he will tell the +absurdest lie, and trust to luck to get out of it again. + +"Cat eat a cocoanut--the innocent fool!" + +Eckert approached with his cat, sure enough. + +Bascom smiled. Said he: + +"I'll hold the cat--you bring a cocoanut." + +Eckert split one open, and chopped up some pieces. Bascom smuggled a +wink to me, and proffered a slice of the fruit to puss. She snatched it, +swallowed it ravenously, and asked for more! + +We rode our two miles in silence, and wide apart. At least I was silent, +though Bascom cuffed his horse and cursed him a good deal, +notwithstanding the horse was behaving well enough. When I branched off +homeward, Bascom said: + +"Keep the horse till morning. And--you need not speak of this +--foolishness to the boys." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +In a little while all interest was taken up in stretching our necks and +watching for the "pony-rider"--the fleet messenger who sped across the +continent from St. Joe to Sacramento, carrying letters nineteen hundred +miles in eight days! Think of that for perishable horse and human flesh +and blood to do! The pony-rider was usually a little bit of a man, +brimful of spirit and endurance. No matter what time of the day or night +his watch came on, and no matter whether it was winter or summer, +raining, snowing, hailing, or sleeting, or whether his "beat" was a level +straight road or a crazy trail over mountain crags and precipices, or +whether it led through peaceful regions or regions that swarmed with +hostile Indians, he must be always ready to leap into the saddle and be +off like the wind! There was no idling-time for a pony-rider on duty. +He rode fifty miles without stopping, by daylight, moonlight, starlight, +or through the blackness of darkness--just as it happened. He rode a +splendid horse that was born for a racer and fed and lodged like a +gentleman; kept him at his utmost speed for ten miles, and then, as he +came crashing up to the station where stood two men holding fast a fresh, +impatient steed, the transfer of rider and mail-bag was made in the +twinkling of an eye, and away flew the eager pair and were out of sight +before the spectator could get hardly the ghost of a look. Both rider +and horse went "flying light." The rider's dress was thin, and fitted +close; he wore a "round-about," and a skull-cap, and tucked his +pantaloons into his boot-tops like a race-rider. He carried no arms--he +carried nothing that was not absolutely necessary, for even the postage +on his literary freight was worth five dollars a letter. + +He got but little frivolous correspondence to carry--his bag had business +letters in it, mostly. His horse was stripped of all unnecessary weight, +too. He wore a little wafer of a racing-saddle, and no visible blanket. +He wore light shoes, or none at all. The little flat mail-pockets +strapped under the rider's thighs would each hold about the bulk of a +child's primer. They held many and many an important business chapter +and newspaper letter, but these were written on paper as airy and thin as +gold-leaf, nearly, and thus bulk and weight were economized. The +stage-coach traveled about a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five miles +a day (twenty-four hours), the pony-rider about two hundred and fifty. +There were about eighty pony-riders in the saddle all the time, night and +day, stretching in a long, scattering procession from Missouri to +California, forty flying eastward, and forty toward the west, and among +them making four hundred gallant horses earn a stirring livelihood and +see a deal of scenery every single day in the year. + +We had had a consuming desire, from the beginning, to see a pony-rider, +but somehow or other all that passed us and all that met us managed to +streak by in the night, and so we heard only a whiz and a hail, and the +swift phantom of the desert was gone before we could get our heads out of +the windows. But now we were expecting one along every moment, and would +see him in broad daylight. Presently the driver exclaims: + +"HERE HE COMES!" + +Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Away +across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears +against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so! + +In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, +rising and falling--sweeping toward us nearer and nearer--growing more +and more distinct, more and more sharply defined--nearer and still +nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear--another +instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider's +hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and +go winging away like a belated fragment of a storm! + +So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but for +the flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail-sack after +the vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might have doubted whether +we had seen any actual horse and man at all, maybe. + +We rattled through Scott's Bluffs Pass, by and by. It was along here +somewhere that we first came across genuine and unmistakable alkali water +in the road, and we cordially hailed it as a first-class curiosity, and a +thing to be mentioned with eclat in letters to the ignorant at home. +This water gave the road a soapy appearance, and in many places the +ground looked as if it had been whitewashed. I think the strange alkali +water excited us as much as any wonder we had come upon yet, and I know +we felt very complacent and conceited, and better satisfied with life +after we had added it to our list of things which we had seen and some +other people had not. In a small way we were the same sort of simpletons +as those who climb unnecessarily the perilous peaks of Mont Blanc and the +Matterhorn, and derive no pleasure from it except the reflection that it +isn't a common experience. But once in a while one of those parties +trips and comes darting down the long mountain-crags in a sitting +posture, making the crusted snow smoke behind him, flitting from bench to +bench, and from terrace to terrace, jarring the earth where he strikes, +and still glancing and flitting on again, sticking an iceberg into +himself every now and then, and tearing his clothes, snatching at things +to save himself, taking hold of trees and fetching them along with him, +roots and all, starting little rocks now and then, then big boulders, +then acres of ice and snow and patches of forest, gathering and still +gathering as he goes, adding and still adding to his massed and sweeping +grandeur as he nears a three thousand-foot precipice, till at last he +waves his hat magnificently and rides into eternity on the back of a +raging and tossing avalanche! + +This is all very fine, but let us not be carried away by excitement, but +ask calmly, how does this person feel about it in his cooler moments next +day, with six or seven thousand feet of snow and stuff on top of him? + +We crossed the sand hills near the scene of the Indian mail robbery and +massacre of 1856, wherein the driver and conductor perished, and also all +the passengers but one, it was supposed; but this must have been a +mistake, for at different times afterward on the Pacific coast I was +personally acquainted with a hundred and thirty-three or four people who +were wounded during that massacre, and barely escaped with their lives. +There was no doubt of the truth of it--I had it from their own lips. One +of these parties told me that he kept coming across arrow-heads in his +system for nearly seven years after the massacre; and another of them +told me that he was struck so literally full of arrows that after the +Indians were gone and he could raise up and examine himself, he could not +restrain his tears, for his clothes were completely ruined. + +The most trustworthy tradition avers, however, that only one man, a +person named Babbitt, survived the massacre, and he was desperately +wounded. He dragged himself on his hands and knee (for one leg was +broken) to a station several miles away. He did it during portions of +two nights, lying concealed one day and part of another, and for more +than forty hours suffering unimaginable anguish from hunger, thirst and +bodily pain. The Indians robbed the coach of everything it contained, +including quite an amount of treasure. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +We passed Fort Laramie in the night, and on the seventh morning out we +found ourselves in the Black Hills, with Laramie Peak at our elbow +(apparently) looming vast and solitary--a deep, dark, rich indigo blue in +hue, so portentously did the old colossus frown under his beetling brows +of storm-cloud. He was thirty or forty miles away, in reality, but he +only seemed removed a little beyond the low ridge at our right. We +breakfasted at Horse-Shoe Station, six hundred and seventy-six miles out +from St. Joseph. We had now reached a hostile Indian country, and during +the afternoon we passed Laparelle Station, and enjoyed great discomfort +all the time we were in the neighborhood, being aware that many of the +trees we dashed by at arm's length concealed a lurking Indian or two. +During the preceding night an ambushed savage had sent a bullet through +the pony-rider's jacket, but he had ridden on, just the same, because +pony-riders were not allowed to stop and inquire into such things except +when killed. As long as they had life enough left in them they had to +stick to the horse and ride, even if the Indians had been waiting for +them a week, and were entirely out of patience. About two hours and a +half before we arrived at Laparelle Station, the keeper in charge of it +had fired four times at an Indian, but he said with an injured air that +the Indian had "skipped around so's to spile everything--and ammunition's +blamed skurse, too." The most natural inference conveyed by his manner of +speaking was, that in "skipping around," the Indian had taken an unfair +advantage. + +The coach we were in had a neat hole through its front--a reminiscence of +its last trip through this region. The bullet that made it wounded the +driver slightly, but he did not mind it much. He said the place to keep +a man "huffy" was down on the Southern Overland, among the Apaches, +before the company moved the stage line up on the northern route. He +said the Apaches used to annoy him all the time down there, and that he +came as near as anything to starving to death in the midst of abundance, +because they kept him so leaky with bullet holes that he "couldn't hold +his vittles." + +This person's statement were not generally believed. + +We shut the blinds down very tightly that first night in the hostile +Indian country, and lay on our arms. We slept on them some, but most of +the time we only lay on them. We did not talk much, but kept quiet and +listened. It was an inky-black night, and occasionally rainy. We were +among woods and rocks, hills and gorges--so shut in, in fact, that when +we peeped through a chink in a curtain, we could discern nothing. The +driver and conductor on top were still, too, or only spoke at long +intervals, in low tones, as is the way of men in the midst of invisible +dangers. We listened to rain-drops pattering on the roof; and the +grinding of the wheels through the muddy gravel; and the low wailing of +the wind; and all the time we had that absurd sense upon us, inseparable +from travel at night in a close-curtained vehicle, the sense of remaining +perfectly still in one place, notwithstanding the jolting and swaying of +the vehicle, the trampling of the horses, and the grinding of the wheels. +We listened a long time, with intent faculties and bated breath; every +time one of us would relax, and draw a long sigh of relief and start to +say something, a comrade would be sure to utter a sudden "Hark!" and +instantly the experimenter was rigid and listening again. So the +tiresome minutes and decades of minutes dragged away, until at last our +tense forms filmed over with a dulled consciousness, and we slept, if one +might call such a condition by so strong a name--for it was a sleep set +with a hair-trigger. It was a sleep seething and teeming with a weird +and distressful confusion of shreds and fag-ends of dreams--a sleep that +was a chaos. Presently, dreams and sleep and the sullen hush of the +night were startled by a ringing report, and cloven by such a long, wild, +agonizing shriek! Then we heard--ten steps from the stage-- + +"Help! help! help!" [It was our driver's voice.] + +"Kill him! Kill him like a dog!" + +"I'm being murdered! Will no man lend me a pistol?" + +"Look out! head him off! head him off!" + +[Two pistol shots; a confusion of voices and the trampling of many feet, +as if a crowd were closing and surging together around some object; +several heavy, dull blows, as with a club; a voice that said appealingly, +"Don't, gentlemen, please don't--I'm a dead man!" Then a fainter groan, +and another blow, and away sped the stage into the darkness, and left the +grisly mystery behind us.] + +What a startle it was! Eight seconds would amply cover the time it +occupied--maybe even five would do it. We only had time to plunge at a +curtain and unbuckle and unbutton part of it in an awkward and hindering +flurry, when our whip cracked sharply overhead, and we went rumbling and +thundering away, down a mountain "grade." + +We fed on that mystery the rest of the night--what was left of it, for it +was waning fast. It had to remain a present mystery, for all we could +get from the conductor in answer to our hails was something that sounded, +through the clatter of the wheels, like "Tell you in the morning!" + +So we lit our pipes and opened the corner of a curtain for a chimney, and +lay there in the dark, listening to each other's story of how he first +felt and how many thousand Indians he first thought had hurled themselves +upon us, and what his remembrance of the subsequent sounds was, and the +order of their occurrence. And we theorized, too, but there was never a +theory that would account for our driver's voice being out there, nor yet +account for his Indian murderers talking such good English, if they were +Indians. + +So we chatted and smoked the rest of the night comfortably away, our +boding anxiety being somehow marvelously dissipated by the real presence +of something to be anxious about. + +We never did get much satisfaction about that dark occurrence. All that +we could make out of the odds and ends of the information we gathered in +the morning, was that the disturbance occurred at a station; that we +changed drivers there, and that the driver that got off there had been +talking roughly about some of the outlaws that infested the region ("for +there wasn't a man around there but had a price on his head and didn't +dare show himself in the settlements," the conductor said); he had talked +roughly about these characters, and ought to have "drove up there with +his pistol cocked and ready on the seat alongside of him, and begun +business himself, because any softy would know they would be laying for +him." + +That was all we could gather, and we could see that neither the conductor +nor the new driver were much concerned about the matter. They plainly +had little respect for a man who would deliver offensive opinions of +people and then be so simple as to come into their presence unprepared to +"back his judgment," as they pleasantly phrased the killing of any +fellow-being who did not like said opinions. And likewise they plainly +had a contempt for the man's poor discretion in venturing to rouse the +wrath of such utterly reckless wild beasts as those outlaws--and the +conductor added: + +"I tell you it's as much as Slade himself want to do!" + +This remark created an entire revolution in my curiosity. I cared +nothing now about the Indians, and even lost interest in the murdered +driver. There was such magic in that name, SLADE! Day or night, now, I +stood always ready to drop any subject in hand, to listen to something +new about Slade and his ghastly exploits. Even before we got to Overland +City, we had begun to hear about Slade and his "division" (for he was a +"division-agent") on the Overland; and from the hour we had left Overland +City we had heard drivers and conductors talk about only three things +--"Californy," the Nevada silver mines, and this desperado Slade. And a +deal the most of the talk was about Slade. We had gradually come to have +a realizing sense of the fact that Slade was a man whose heart and hands +and soul were steeped in the blood of offenders against his dignity; a +man who awfully avenged all injuries, affront, insults or slights, of +whatever kind--on the spot if he could, years afterward if lack of +earlier opportunity compelled it; a man whose hate tortured him day and +night till vengeance appeased it--and not an ordinary vengeance either, +but his enemy's absolute death--nothing less; a man whose face would +light up with a terrible joy when he surprised a foe and had him at a +disadvantage. A high and efficient servant of the Overland, an outlaw +among outlaws and yet their relentless scourge, Slade was at once the +most bloody, the most dangerous and the most valuable citizen that +inhabited the savage fastnesses of the mountains. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +Really and truly, two thirds of the talk of drivers and conductors had +been about this man Slade, ever since the day before we reached +Julesburg. In order that the eastern reader may have a clear conception +of what a Rocky Mountain desperado is, in his highest state of +development, I will reduce all this mass of overland gossip to one +straightforward narrative, and present it in the following shape: + +Slade was born in Illinois, of good parentage. At about twenty-six years +of age he killed a man in a quarrel and fled the country. At St. Joseph, +Missouri, he joined one of the early California-bound emigrant trains, +and was given the post of train-master. One day on the plains he had an +angry dispute with one of his wagon-drivers, and both drew their +revolvers. But the driver was the quicker artist, and had his weapon +cocked first. So Slade said it was a pity to waste life on so small a +matter, and proposed that the pistols be thrown on the ground and the +quarrel settled by a fist-fight. The unsuspecting driver agreed, and +threw down his pistol--whereupon Slade laughed at his simplicity, and +shot him dead! + +He made his escape, and lived a wild life for awhile, dividing his time +between fighting Indians and avoiding an Illinois sheriff, who had been +sent to arrest him for his first murder. It is said that in one Indian +battle he killed three savages with his own hand, and afterward cut their +ears off and sent them, with his compliments, to the chief of the tribe. + +Slade soon gained a name for fearless resolution, and this was sufficient +merit to procure for him the important post of overland division-agent at +Julesburg, in place of Mr. Jules, removed. For some time previously, the +company's horses had been frequently stolen, and the coaches delayed, by +gangs of outlaws, who were wont to laugh at the idea of any man's having +the temerity to resent such outrages. Slade resented them promptly. + +The outlaws soon found that the new agent was a man who did not fear +anything that breathed the breath of life. He made short work of all +offenders. The result was that delays ceased, the company's property was +let alone, and no matter what happened or who suffered, Slade's coaches +went through, every time! True, in order to bring about this wholesome +change, Slade had to kill several men--some say three, others say four, +and others six--but the world was the richer for their loss. The first +prominent difficulty he had was with the ex-agent Jules, who bore the +reputation of being a reckless and desperate man himself. Jules hated +Slade for supplanting him, and a good fair occasion for a fight was all +he was waiting for. By and by Slade dared to employ a man whom Jules had +once discharged. Next, Slade seized a team of stage-horses which he +accused Jules of having driven off and hidden somewhere for his own use. +War was declared, and for a day or two the two men walked warily about +the streets, seeking each other, Jules armed with a double-barreled shot +gun, and Slade with his history-creating revolver. Finally, as Slade +stepped into a store Jules poured the contents of his gun into him from +behind the door. Slade was plucky, and Jules got several bad pistol +wounds in return. + +Then both men fell, and were carried to their respective lodgings, both +swearing that better aim should do deadlier work next time. Both were +bedridden a long time, but Jules got to his feet first, and gathering his +possessions together, packed them on a couple of mules, and fled to the +Rocky Mountains to gather strength in safety against the day of +reckoning. For many months he was not seen or heard of, and was +gradually dropped out of the remembrance of all save Slade himself. But +Slade was not the man to forget him. On the contrary, common report said +that Slade kept a reward standing for his capture, dead or alive! + +After awhile, seeing that Slade's energetic administration had restored +peace and order to one of the worst divisions of the road, the overland +stage company transferred him to the Rocky Ridge division in the Rocky +Mountains, to see if he could perform a like miracle there. It was the +very paradise of outlaws and desperadoes. There was absolutely no +semblance of law there. Violence was the rule. Force was the only +recognized authority. The commonest misunderstandings were settled on +the spot with the revolver or the knife. Murders were done in open day, +and with sparkling frequency, and nobody thought of inquiring into them. +It was considered that the parties who did the killing had their private +reasons for it; for other people to meddle would have been looked upon as +indelicate. After a murder, all that Rocky Mountain etiquette required +of a spectator was, that he should help the gentleman bury his game +--otherwise his churlishness would surely be remembered against him the +first time he killed a man himself and needed a neighborly turn in +interring him. + +Slade took up his residence sweetly and peacefully in the midst of this +hive of horse-thieves and assassins, and the very first time one of them +aired his insolent swaggerings in his presence he shot him dead! He +began a raid on the outlaws, and in a singularly short space of time he +had completely stopped their depredations on the stage stock, recovered a +large number of stolen horses, killed several of the worst desperadoes of +the district, and gained such a dread ascendancy over the rest that they +respected him, admired him, feared him, obeyed him! He wrought the same +marvelous change in the ways of the community that had marked his +administration at Overland City. He captured two men who had stolen +overland stock, and with his own hands he hanged them. He was supreme +judge in his district, and he was jury and executioner likewise--and not +only in the case of offences against his employers, but against passing +emigrants as well. On one occasion some emigrants had their stock lost +or stolen, and told Slade, who chanced to visit their camp. With a +single companion he rode to a ranch, the owners of which he suspected, +and opening the door, commenced firing, killing three, and wounding the +fourth. + +From a bloodthirstily interesting little Montana book.--["The Vigilantes +of Montana," by Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale.]--I take this paragraph: + + "While on the road, Slade held absolute sway. He would ride down to + a station, get into a quarrel, turn the house out of windows, and + maltreat the occupants most cruelly. The unfortunates had no means + of redress, and were compelled to recuperate as best they could." + +On one of these occasions, it is said he killed the father of the fine +little half-breed boy Jemmy, whom he adopted, and who lived with his +widow after his execution. Stories of Slade's hanging men, and of +innumerable assaults, shootings, stabbings and beatings, in which he was +a principal actor, form part of the legends of the stage line. As for +minor quarrels and shootings, it is absolutely certain that a minute +history of Slade's life would be one long record of such practices. + +Slade was a matchless marksman with a navy revolver. The legends say +that one morning at Rocky Ridge, when he was feeling comfortable, he saw +a man approaching who had offended him some days before--observe the fine +memory he had for matters like that--and, "Gentlemen," said Slade, +drawing, "it is a good twenty-yard shot--I'll clip the third button on +his coat!" Which he did. The bystanders all admired it. And they all +attended the funeral, too. + +On one occasion a man who kept a little whisky-shelf at the station did +something which angered Slade--and went and made his will. A day or two +afterward Slade came in and called for some brandy. The man reached +under the counter (ostensibly to get a bottle--possibly to get something +else), but Slade smiled upon him that peculiarly bland and satisfied +smile of his which the neighbors had long ago learned to recognize as a +death-warrant in disguise, and told him to "none of that!--pass out the +high-priced article." So the poor bar-keeper had to turn his back and +get the high-priced brandy from the shelf; and when he faced around again +he was looking into the muzzle of Slade's pistol. "And the next +instant," added my informant, impressively, "he was one of the deadest +men that ever lived." + +The stage-drivers and conductors told us that sometimes Slade would leave +a hated enemy wholly unmolested, unnoticed and unmentioned, for weeks +together--had done it once or twice at any rate. And some said they +believed he did it in order to lull the victims into unwatchfulness, so +that he could get the advantage of them, and others said they believed he +saved up an enemy that way, just as a schoolboy saves up a cake, and made +the pleasure go as far as it would by gloating over the anticipation. +One of these cases was that of a Frenchman who had offended Slade. +To the surprise of everybody Slade did not kill him on the spot, but let +him alone for a considerable time. Finally, however, he went to the +Frenchman's house very late one night, knocked, and when his enemy opened +the door, shot him dead--pushed the corpse inside the door with his foot, +set the house on fire and burned up the dead man, his widow and three +children! I heard this story from several different people, and they +evidently believed what they were saying. It may be true, and it may +not. "Give a dog a bad name," etc. + +Slade was captured, once, by a party of men who intended to lynch him. +They disarmed him, and shut him up in a strong log-house, and placed a +guard over him. He prevailed on his captors to send for his wife, so +that he might have a last interview with her. She was a brave, loving, +spirited woman. She jumped on a horse and rode for life and death. +When she arrived they let her in without searching her, and before the +door could be closed she whipped out a couple of revolvers, and she and +her lord marched forth defying the party. And then, under a brisk fire, +they mounted double and galloped away unharmed! + +In the fulness of time Slade's myrmidons captured his ancient enemy +Jules, whom they found in a well-chosen hiding-place in the remote +fastnesses of the mountains, gaining a precarious livelihood with his +rifle. They brought him to Rocky Ridge, bound hand and foot, and +deposited him in the middle of the cattle-yard with his back against a +post. It is said that the pleasure that lit Slade's face when he heard +of it was something fearful to contemplate. He examined his enemy to see +that he was securely tied, and then went to bed, content to wait till +morning before enjoying the luxury of killing him. Jules spent the night +in the cattle-yard, and it is a region where warm nights are never known. +In the morning Slade practised on him with his revolver, nipping the +flesh here and there, and occasionally clipping off a finger, while Jules +begged him to kill him outright and put him out of his misery. Finally +Slade reloaded, and walking up close to his victim, made some +characteristic remarks and then dispatched him. The body lay there half +a day, nobody venturing to touch it without orders, and then Slade +detailed a party and assisted at the burial himself. But he first cut +off the dead man's ears and put them in his vest pocket, where he carried +them for some time with great satisfaction. That is the story as I have +frequently heard it told and seen it in print in California newspapers. +It is doubtless correct in all essential particulars. + +In due time we rattled up to a stage-station, and sat down to +breakfast with a half-savage, half-civilized company of armed and +bearded mountaineers, ranchmen and station employees. The most +gentlemanly-appearing, quiet and affable officer we had yet found along +the road in the Overland Company's service was the person who sat at the +head of the table, at my elbow. Never youth stared and shivered as I did +when I heard them call him SLADE! + +Here was romance, and I sitting face to face with it!--looking upon it +--touching it--hobnobbing with it, as it were! Here, right by my side, was +the actual ogre who, in fights and brawls and various ways, had taken the +lives of twenty-six human beings, or all men lied about him! I suppose I +was the proudest stripling that ever traveled to see strange lands and +wonderful people. + +He was so friendly and so gentle-spoken that I warmed to him in +spite of his awful history. It was hardly possible to realize that +this pleasant person was the pitiless scourge of the outlaws, the +raw-head-and-bloody-bones the nursing mothers of the mountains terrified +their children with. And to this day I can remember nothing remarkable +about Slade except that his face was rather broad across the cheek bones, +and that the cheek bones were low and the lips peculiarly thin and +straight. But that was enough to leave something of an effect upon me, +for since then I seldom see a face possessing those characteristics +without fancying that the owner of it is a dangerous man. + +The coffee ran out. At least it was reduced to one tin-cupful, and Slade +was about to take it when he saw that my cup was empty. + +He politely offered to fill it, but although I wanted it, I politely +declined. I was afraid he had not killed anybody that morning, and might +be needing diversion. But still with firm politeness he insisted on +filling my cup, and said I had traveled all night and better deserved it +than he--and while he talked he placidly poured the fluid, to the last +drop. I thanked him and drank it, but it gave me no comfort, for I could +not feel sure that he would not be sorry, presently, that he had given it +away, and proceed to kill me to distract his thoughts from the loss. +But nothing of the kind occurred. We left him with only twenty-six dead +people to account for, and I felt a tranquil satisfaction in the thought +that in so judiciously taking care of No. 1 at that breakfast-table I had +pleasantly escaped being No. 27. Slade came out to the coach and saw us +off, first ordering certain rearrangements of the mail-bags for our +comfort, and then we took leave of him, satisfied that we should hear of +him again, some day, and wondering in what connection. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +And sure enough, two or three years afterward, we did hear him again. +News came to the Pacific coast that the Vigilance Committee in Montana +(whither Slade had removed from Rocky Ridge) had hanged him. I find an +account of the affair in the thrilling little book I quoted a paragraph +from in the last chapter--"The Vigilantes of Montana; being a Reliable +Account of the Capture, Trial and Execution of Henry Plummer's Notorious +Road Agent Band: By Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale, Virginia City, M.T." +Mr. Dimsdale's chapter is well worth reading, as a specimen of how the +people of the frontier deal with criminals when the courts of law prove +inefficient. Mr. Dimsdale makes two remarks about Slade, both of which +are accurately descriptive, and one of which is exceedingly picturesque: +"Those who saw him in his natural state only, would pronounce him to be a +kind husband, a most hospitable host and a courteous gentleman; on the +contrary, those who met him when maddened with liquor and surrounded by a +gang of armed roughs, would pronounce him a fiend incarnate." And this: +"From Fort Kearney, west, he was feared a great deal more than the +almighty." For compactness, simplicity and vigor of expression, I will +"back" that sentence against anything in literature. Mr. Dimsdale's +narrative is as follows. In all places where italics occur, they are +mine: + + After the execution of the five men on the 14th of January, the + Vigilantes considered that their work was nearly ended. They had + freed the country of highwaymen and murderers to a great extent, and + they determined that in the absence of the regular civil authority + they would establish a People's Court where all offenders should be + tried by judge and jury. This was the nearest approach to social + order that the circumstances permitted, and, though strict legal + authority was wanting, yet the people were firmly determined to + maintain its efficiency, and to enforce its decrees. It may here be + mentioned that the overt act which was the last round on the fatal + ladder leading to the scaffold on which Slade perished, was the + tearing in pieces and stamping upon a writ of this court, followed + by his arrest of the Judge Alex. Davis, by authority of a presented + Derringer, and with his own hands. + + J. A. Slade was himself, we have been informed, a Vigilante; he + openly boasted of it, and said he knew all that they knew. He was + never accused, or even suspected, of either murder or robbery, + committed in this Territory (the latter crime was never laid to his + charge, in any place); but that he had killed several men in other + localities was notorious, and his bad reputation in this respect was + a most powerful argument in determining his fate, when he was + finally arrested for the offence above mentioned. On returning from + Milk River he became more and more addicted to drinking, until at + last it was a common feat for him and his friends to "take the + town." He and a couple of his dependents might often be seen on one + horse, galloping through the streets, shouting and yelling, firing + revolvers, etc. On many occasions he would ride his horse into + stores, break up bars, toss the scales out of doors and use most + insulting language to parties present. Just previous to the day of + his arrest, he had given a fearful beating to one of his followers; + but such was his influence over them that the man wept bitterly at + the gallows, and begged for his life with all his power. It had + become quite common, when Slade was on a spree, for the shop-keepers + and citizens to close the stores and put out all the lights; being + fearful of some outrage at his hands. For his wanton destruction of + goods and furniture, he was always ready to pay, when sober, if he + had money; but there were not a few who regarded payment as small + satisfaction for the outrage, and these men were his personal + enemies. + + From time to time Slade received warnings from men that he well knew + would not deceive him, of the certain end of his conduct. There was + not a moment, for weeks previous to his arrest, in which the public + did not expect to hear of some bloody outrage. The dread of his + very name, and the presence of the armed band of hangers-on who + followed him alone prevented a resistance which must certainly have + ended in the instant murder or mutilation of the opposing party. + + Slade was frequently arrested by order of the court whose + organization we have described, and had treated it with respect by + paying one or two fines and promising to pay the rest when he had + money; but in the transaction that occurred at this crisis, he + forgot even this caution, and goaded by passion and the hatred of + restraint, he sprang into the embrace of death. + + Slade had been drunk and "cutting up" all night. He and his + companions had made the town a perfect hell. In the morning, J. M. + Fox, the sheriff, met him, arrested him, took him into court and + commenced reading a warrant that he had for his arrest, by way of + arraignment. He became uncontrollably furious, and seizing the + writ, he tore it up, threw it on the ground and stamped upon it. + + The clicking of the locks of his companions' revolvers was instantly + heard, and a crisis was expected. The sheriff did not attempt his + retention; but being at least as prudent as he was valiant, he + succumbed, leaving Slade the master of the situation and the + conqueror and ruler of the courts, law and law-makers. This was a + declaration of war, and was so accepted. The Vigilance Committee + now felt that the question of social order and the preponderance of + the law-abiding citizens had then and there to be decided. They + knew the character of Slade, and they were well aware that they must + submit to his rule without murmur, or else that he must be dealt + with in such fashion as would prevent his being able to wreak his + vengeance on the committee, who could never have hoped to live in + the Territory secure from outrage or death, and who could never + leave it without encountering his friend, whom his victory would + have emboldened and stimulated to a pitch that would have rendered + them reckless of consequences. The day previous he had ridden into + Dorris's store, and on being requested to leave, he drew his + revolver and threatened to kill the gentleman who spoke to him. + Another saloon he had led his horse into, and buying a bottle of + wine, he tried to make the animal drink it. This was not considered + an uncommon performance, as he had often entered saloons and + commenced firing at the lamps, causing a wild stampede. + + A leading member of the committee met Slade, and informed him in the + quiet, earnest manner of one who feels the importance of what he is + saying: "Slade, get your horse at once, and go home, or there will + be ---- to pay." Slade started and took a long look, with his dark + and piercing eyes, at the gentleman. "What do you mean?" said he. + "You have no right to ask me what I mean," was the quiet reply, "get + your horse at once, and remember what I tell you." After a short + pause he promised to do so, and actually got into the saddle; but, + being still intoxicated, he began calling aloud to one after another + of his friends, and at last seemed to have forgotten the warning he + had received and became again uproarious, shouting the name of a + well-known courtezan in company with those of two men whom he + considered heads of the committee, as a sort of challenge; perhaps, + however, as a simple act of bravado. It seems probable that the + intimation of personal danger he had received had not been forgotten + entirely; though fatally for him, he took a foolish way of showing + his remembrance of it. He sought out Alexander Davis, the Judge of + the Court, and drawing a cocked Derringer, he presented it at his + head, and told him that he should hold him as a hostage for his own + safety. As the judge stood perfectly quiet, and offered no + resistance to his captor, no further outrage followed on this score. + Previous to this, on account of the critical state of affairs, the + committee had met, and at last resolved to arrest him. His + execution had not been agreed upon, and, at that time, would have + been negatived, most assuredly. A messenger rode down to Nevada to + inform the leading men of what was on hand, as it was desirable to + show that there was a feeling of unanimity on the subject, all along + the gulch. + + The miners turned out almost en masse, leaving their work and + forming in solid column about six hundred strong, armed to the + teeth, they marched up to Virginia. The leader of the body well + knew the temper of his men on the subject. He spurred on ahead of + them, and hastily calling a meeting of the executive, he told them + plainly that the miners meant "business," and that, if they came up, + they would not stand in the street to be shot down by Slade's + friends; but that they would take him and hang him. The meeting was + small, as the Virginia men were loath to act at all. This momentous + announcement of the feeling of the Lower Town was made to a cluster + of men, who were deliberation behind a wagon, at the rear of a store + on Main street. + + The committee were most unwilling to proceed to extremities. All + the duty they had ever performed seemed as nothing to the task + before them; but they had to decide, and that quickly. It was + finally agreed that if the whole body of the miners were of the + opinion that he should be hanged, that the committee left it in + their hands to deal with him. Off, at hot speed, rode the leader of + the Nevada men to join his command. + + Slade had found out what was intended, and the news sobered him + instantly. He went into P. S. Pfouts' store, where Davis was, and + apologized for his conduct, saying that he would take it all back. + + The head of the column now wheeled into Wallace street and marched + up at quick time. Halting in front of the store, the executive + officer of the committee stepped forward and arrested Slade, who was + at once informed of his doom, and inquiry was made as to whether he + had any business to settle. Several parties spoke to him on the + subject; but to all such inquiries he turned a deaf ear, being + entirely absorbed in the terrifying reflections on his own awful + position. He never ceased his entreaties for life, and to see his + dear wife. The unfortunate lady referred to, between whom and Slade + there existed a warm affection, was at this time living at their + ranch on the Madison. She was possessed of considerable personal + attractions; tall, well-formed, of graceful carriage, pleasing + manners, and was, withal, an accomplished horsewoman. + + A messenger from Slade rode at full speed to inform her of her + husband's arrest. In an instant she was in the saddle, and with all + the energy that love and despair could lend to an ardent temperament + and a strong physique, she urged her fleet charger over the twelve + miles of rough and rocky ground that intervened between her and the + object of her passionate devotion. + + Meanwhile a party of volunteers had made the necessary preparations + for the execution, in the valley traversed by the branch. Beneath + the site of Pfouts and Russell's stone building there was a corral, + the gate-posts of which were strong and high. Across the top was + laid a beam, to which the rope was fastened, and a dry-goods box + served for the platform. To this place Slade was marched, + surrounded by a guard, composing the best armed and most numerous + force that has ever appeared in Montana Territory. + + The doomed man had so exhausted himself by tears, prayers and + lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the + fatal beam. He repeatedly exclaimed, "My God! my God! must I die? + Oh, my dear wife!" + + On the return of the fatigue party, they encountered some friends of + Slade, staunch and reliable citizens and members of the committee, + but who were personally attached to the condemned. On hearing of + his sentence, one of them, a stout-hearted man, pulled out his + handkerchief and walked away, weeping like a child. Slade still + begged to see his wife, most piteously, and it seemed hard to deny + his request; but the bloody consequences that were sure to follow + the inevitable attempt at a rescue, that her presence and entreaties + would have certainly incited, forbade the granting of his request. + Several gentlemen were sent for to see him, in his last moments, one + of whom (Judge Davis) made a short address to the people; but in + such low tones as to be inaudible, save to a few in his immediate + vicinity. One of his friends, after exhausting his powers of + entreaty, threw off his coat and declared that the prisoner could + not be hanged until he himself was killed. A hundred guns were + instantly leveled at him; whereupon he turned and fled; but, being + brought back, he was compelled to resume his coat, and to give a + promise of future peaceable demeanor. + + Scarcely a leading man in Virginia could be found, though numbers of + the citizens joined the ranks of the guard when the arrest was made. + All lamented the stern necessity which dictated the execution. + + Everything being ready, the command was given, "Men, do your duty," + and the box being instantly slipped from beneath his feet, he died + almost instantaneously. + + The body was cut down and carried to the Virginia Hotel, where, in a + darkened room, it was scarcely laid out, when the unfortunate and + bereaved companion of the deceased arrived, at headlong speed, to + find that all was over, and that she was a widow. Her grief and + heart-piercing cries were terrible evidences of the depth of her + attachment for her lost husband, and a considerable period elapsed + before she could regain the command of her excited feelings. + +There is something about the desperado-nature that is wholly +unaccountable--at least it looks unaccountable. It is this. The true +desperado is gifted with splendid courage, and yet he will take the most +infamous advantage of his enemy; armed and free, he will stand up before +a host and fight until he is shot all to pieces, and yet when he is under +the gallows and helpless he will cry and plead like a child. Words are +cheap, and it is easy to call Slade a coward (all executed men who do not +"die game" are promptly called cowards by unreflecting people), and when +we read of Slade that he "had so exhausted himself by tears, prayers and +lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the fatal +beam," the disgraceful word suggests itself in a moment--yet in +frequently defying and inviting the vengeance of banded Rocky Mountain +cut-throats by shooting down their comrades and leaders, and never +offering to hide or fly, Slade showed that he was a man of peerless +bravery. No coward would dare that. Many a notorious coward, many a +chicken-livered poltroon, coarse, brutal, degraded, has made his dying +speech without a quaver in his voice and been swung into eternity with +what looked liked the calmest fortitude, and so we are justified in +believing, from the low intellect of such a creature, that it was not +moral courage that enabled him to do it. Then, if moral courage is not +the requisite quality, what could it have been that this stout-hearted +Slade lacked?--this bloody, desperate, kindly-mannered, urbane gentleman, +who never hesitated to warn his most ruffianly enemies that he would kill +them whenever or wherever he came across them next! I think it is a +conundrum worth investigating. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +Just beyond the breakfast-station we overtook a Mormon emigrant train of +thirty-three wagons; and tramping wearily along and driving their herd of +loose cows, were dozens of coarse-clad and sad-looking men, women and +children, who had walked as they were walking now, day after day for +eight lingering weeks, and in that time had compassed the distance our +stage had come in eight days and three hours--seven hundred and +ninety-eight miles! They were dusty and uncombed, hatless, bonnetless +and ragged, and they did look so tired! + +After breakfast, we bathed in Horse Creek, a (previously) limpid, +sparkling stream--an appreciated luxury, for it was very seldom that our +furious coach halted long enough for an indulgence of that kind. We +changed horses ten or twelve times in every twenty-four hours--changed +mules, rather--six mules--and did it nearly every time in four minutes. +It was lively work. As our coach rattled up to each station six +harnessed mules stepped gayly from the stable; and in the twinkling of an +eye, almost, the old team was out, and the new one in and we off and away +again. + +During the afternoon we passed Sweetwater Creek, Independence Rock, +Devil's Gate and the Devil's Gap. The latter were wild specimens of +rugged scenery, and full of interest--we were in the heart of the Rocky +Mountains, now. And we also passed by "Alkali" or "Soda Lake," and we +woke up to the fact that our journey had stretched a long way across the +world when the driver said that the Mormons often came there from Great +Salt Lake City to haul away saleratus. He said that a few days gone by +they had shoveled up enough pure saleratus from the ground (it was a dry +lake) to load two wagons, and that when they got these two wagons-loads +of a drug that cost them nothing, to Salt Lake, they could sell it for +twenty-five cents a pound. + +In the night we sailed by a most notable curiosity, and one we had been +hearing a good deal about for a day or two, and were suffering to see. +This was what might be called a natural ice-house. It was August, now, +and sweltering weather in the daytime, yet at one of the stations the men +could scape the soil on the hill-side under the lee of a range of +boulders, and at a depth of six inches cut out pure blocks of ice--hard, +compactly frozen, and clear as crystal! + +Toward dawn we got under way again, and presently as we sat with raised +curtains enjoying our early-morning smoke and contemplating the first +splendor of the rising sun as it swept down the long array of mountain +peaks, flushing and gilding crag after crag and summit after summit, as +if the invisible Creator reviewed his gray veterans and they saluted with +a smile, we hove in sight of South Pass City. The hotel-keeper, the +postmaster, the blacksmith, the mayor, the constable, the city marshal +and the principal citizen and property holder, all came out and greeted +us cheerily, and we gave him good day. He gave us a little Indian news, +and a little Rocky Mountain news, and we gave him some Plains information +in return. He then retired to his lonely grandeur and we climbed on up +among the bristling peaks and the ragged clouds. South Pass City +consisted of four log cabins, one if which was unfinished, and the +gentleman with all those offices and titles was the chiefest of the ten +citizens of the place. Think of hotel-keeper, postmaster, blacksmith, +mayor, constable, city marshal and principal citizen all condensed into +one person and crammed into one skin. Bemis said he was "a perfect +Allen's revolver of dignities." And he said that if he were to die as +postmaster, or as blacksmith, or as postmaster and blacksmith both, the +people might stand it; but if he were to die all over, it would be a +frightful loss to the community. + +Two miles beyond South Pass City we saw for the first time that +mysterious marvel which all Western untraveled boys have heard of and +fully believe in, but are sure to be astounded at when they see it with +their own eyes, nevertheless--banks of snow in dead summer time. We were +now far up toward the sky, and knew all the time that we must presently +encounter lofty summits clad in the "eternal snow" which was so common +place a matter of mention in books, and yet when I did see it glittering +in the sun on stately domes in the distance and knew the month was August +and that my coat was hanging up because it was too warm to wear it, I was +full as much amazed as if I never had heard of snow in August before. +Truly, "seeing is believing"--and many a man lives a long life through, +thinking he believes certain universally received and well established +things, and yet never suspects that if he were confronted by those things +once, he would discover that he did not really believe them before, but +only thought he believed them. + +In a little while quite a number of peaks swung into view with long claws +of glittering snow clasping them; and with here and there, in the shade, +down the mountain side, a little solitary patch of snow looking no larger +than a lady's pocket-handkerchief but being in reality as large as a +"public square." + +And now, at last, we were fairly in the renowned SOUTH PASS, and whirling +gayly along high above the common world. We were perched upon the +extreme summit of the great range of the Rocky Mountains, toward which we +had been climbing, patiently climbing, ceaselessly climbing, for days and +nights together--and about us was gathered a convention of Nature's kings +that stood ten, twelve, and even thirteen thousand feet high--grand old +fellows who would have to stoop to see Mount Washington, in the twilight. +We were in such an airy elevation above the creeping populations of the +earth, that now and then when the obstructing crags stood out of the way +it seemed that we could look around and abroad and contemplate the whole +great globe, with its dissolving views of mountains, seas and continents +stretching away through the mystery of the summer haze. + +As a general thing the Pass was more suggestive of a valley than a +suspension bridge in the clouds--but it strongly suggested the latter at +one spot. At that place the upper third of one or two majestic purple +domes projected above our level on either hand and gave us a sense of a +hidden great deep of mountains and plains and valleys down about their +bases which we fancied we might see if we could step to the edge and look +over. These Sultans of the fastnesses were turbaned with tumbled volumes +of cloud, which shredded away from time to time and drifted off fringed +and torn, trailing their continents of shadow after them; and catching +presently on an intercepting peak, wrapped it about and brooded there +--then shredded away again and left the purple peak, as they had left the +purple domes, downy and white with new-laid snow. In passing, these +monstrous rags of cloud hung low and swept along right over the +spectator's head, swinging their tatters so nearly in his face that his +impulse was to shrink when they came closet. In the one place I speak +of, one could look below him upon a world of diminishing crags and +canyons leading down, down, and away to a vague plain with a thread in it +which was a road, and bunches of feathers in it which were trees,--a +pretty picture sleeping in the sunlight--but with a darkness stealing +over it and glooming its features deeper and deeper under the frown of a +coming storm; and then, while no film or shadow marred the noon +brightness of his high perch, he could watch the tempest break forth down +there and see the lightnings leap from crag to crag and the sheeted rain +drive along the canyon-sides, and hear the thunders peal and crash and +roar. We had this spectacle; a familiar one to many, but to us a +novelty. + +We bowled along cheerily, and presently, at the very summit (though it +had been all summit to us, and all equally level, for half an hour or +more), we came to a spring which spent its water through two outlets and +sent it in opposite directions. The conductor said that one of those +streams which we were looking at, was just starting on a journey westward +to the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean, through hundreds and +even thousands of miles of desert solitudes. He said that the other was +just leaving its home among the snow-peaks on a similar journey eastward +--and we knew that long after we should have forgotten the simple rivulet +it would still be plodding its patient way down the mountain sides, and +canyon-beds, and between the banks of the Yellowstone; and by and by +would join the broad Missouri and flow through unknown plains and deserts +and unvisited wildernesses; and add a long and troubled pilgrimage among +snags and wrecks and sandbars; and enter the Mississippi, touch the +wharves of St. Louis and still drift on, traversing shoals and rocky +channels, then endless chains of bottomless and ample bends, walled with +unbroken forests, then mysterious byways and secret passages among woody +islands, then the chained bends again, bordered with wide levels of +shining sugar-cane in place of the sombre forests; then by New Orleans +and still other chains of bends--and finally, after two long months of +daily and nightly harassment, excitement, enjoyment, adventure, and awful +peril of parched throats, pumps and evaporation, pass the Gulf and enter +into its rest upon the bosom of the tropic sea, never to look upon its +snow-peaks again or regret them. + +I freighted a leaf with a mental message for the friends at home, and +dropped it in the stream. But I put no stamp on it and it was held for +postage somewhere. + +On the summit we overtook an emigrant train of many wagons, many tired +men and women, and many a disgusted sheep and cow. + +In the wofully dusty horseman in charge of the expedition I recognized +John -----. Of all persons in the world to meet on top of the Rocky +Mountains thousands of miles from home, he was the last one I should have +looked for. We were school-boys together and warm friends for years. +But a boyish prank of mine had disruptured this friendship and it had +never been renewed. The act of which I speak was this. I had been +accustomed to visit occasionally an editor whose room was in the third +story of a building and overlooked the street. One day this editor gave +me a watermelon which I made preparations to devour on the spot, but +chancing to look out of the window, I saw John standing directly under it +and an irresistible desire came upon me to drop the melon on his head, +which I immediately did. I was the loser, for it spoiled the melon, and +John never forgave me and we dropped all intercourse and parted, but now +met again under these circumstances. + +We recognized each other simultaneously, and hands were grasped as warmly +as if no coldness had ever existed between us, and no allusion was made +to any. All animosities were buried and the simple fact of meeting a +familiar face in that isolated spot so far from home, was sufficient to +make us forget all things but pleasant ones, and we parted again with +sincere "good-bye" and "God bless you" from both. + +We had been climbing up the long shoulders of the Rocky Mountains for +many tedious hours--we started down them, now. And we went spinning away +at a round rate too. + +We left the snowy Wind River Mountains and Uinta Mountains behind, and +sped away, always through splendid scenery but occasionally through long +ranks of white skeletons of mules and oxen--monuments of the huge +emigration of other days--and here and there were up-ended boards or +small piles of stones which the driver said marked the resting-place of +more precious remains. + +It was the loneliest land for a grave! A land given over to the cayote +and the raven--which is but another name for desolation and utter +solitude. On damp, murky nights, these scattered skeletons gave forth a +soft, hideous glow, like very faint spots of moonlight starring the vague +desert. It was because of the phosphorus in the bones. But no +scientific explanation could keep a body from shivering when he drifted +by one of those ghostly lights and knew that a skull held it. + +At midnight it began to rain, and I never saw anything like it--indeed, I +did not even see this, for it was too dark. We fastened down the +curtains and even caulked them with clothing, but the rain streamed in in +twenty places, nothwithstanding. There was no escape. If one moved his +feet out of a stream, he brought his body under one; and if he moved his +body he caught one somewhere else. If he struggled out of the drenched +blankets and sat up, he was bound to get one down the back of his neck. +Meantime the stage was wandering about a plain with gaping gullies in it, +for the driver could not see an inch before his face nor keep the road, +and the storm pelted so pitilessly that there was no keeping the horses +still. With the first abatement the conductor turned out with lanterns +to look for the road, and the first dash he made was into a chasm about +fourteen feet deep, his lantern following like a meteor. As soon as he +touched bottom he sang out frantically: + +"Don't come here!" + +To which the driver, who was looking over the precipice where he had +disappeared, replied, with an injured air: "Think I'm a dam fool?" + +The conductor was more than an hour finding the road--a matter which +showed us how far we had wandered and what chances we had been taking. +He traced our wheel-tracks to the imminent verge of danger, in two +places. I have always been glad that we were not killed that night. +I do not know any particular reason, but I have always been glad. +In the morning, the tenth day out, we crossed Green River, a fine, large, +limpid stream--stuck in it with the water just up to the top of our +mail-bed, and waited till extra teams were put on to haul us up the steep +bank. But it was nice cool water, and besides it could not find any +fresh place on us to wet. + +At the Green River station we had breakfast--hot biscuits, fresh antelope +steaks, and coffee--the only decent meal we tasted between the United +States and Great Salt Lake City, and the only one we were ever really +thankful for. + +Think of the monotonous execrableness of the thirty that went before it, +to leave this one simple breakfast looming up in my memory like a +shot-tower after all these years have gone by! + +At five P.M. we reached Fort Bridger, one hundred and seventeen miles +from the South Pass, and one thousand and twenty-five miles from St. +Joseph. Fifty-two miles further on, near the head of Echo Canyon, we met +sixty United States soldiers from Camp Floyd. The day before, they had +fired upon three hundred or four hundred Indians, whom they supposed +gathered together for no good purpose. In the fight that had ensued, +four Indians were captured, and the main body chased four miles, but +nobody killed. This looked like business. We had a notion to get out +and join the sixty soldiers, but upon reflecting that there were four +hundred of the Indians, we concluded to go on and join the Indians. + +Echo Canyon is twenty miles long. It was like a long, smooth, narrow +street, with a gradual descending grade, and shut in by enormous +perpendicular walls of coarse conglomerate, four hundred feet high in +many places, and turreted like mediaeval castles. This was the most +faultless piece of road in the mountains, and the driver said he would +"let his team out." He did, and if the Pacific express trains whiz +through there now any faster than we did then in the stage-coach, I envy +the passengers the exhilaration of it. We fairly seemed to pick up our +wheels and fly--and the mail matter was lifted up free from everything +and held in solution! I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a +thing I mean it. + +However, time presses. At four in the afternoon we arrived on the summit +of Big Mountain, fifteen miles from Salt Lake City, when all the world +was glorified with the setting sun, and the most stupendous panorama of +mountain peaks yet encountered burst on our sight. We looked out upon +this sublime spectacle from under the arch of a brilliant rainbow! Even +the overland stage-driver stopped his horses and gazed! + +Half an hour or an hour later, we changed horses, and took supper with a +Mormon "Destroying Angel." + +"Destroying Angels," as I understand it, are Latter-Day Saints who are +set apart by the Church to conduct permanent disappearances of obnoxious +citizens. I had heard a deal about these Mormon Destroying Angels and +the dark and bloody deeds they had done, and when I entered this one's +house I had my shudder all ready. But alas for all our romances, he was +nothing but a loud, profane, offensive, old blackguard! He was murderous +enough, possibly, to fill the bill of a Destroyer, but would you have any +kind of an Angel devoid of dignity? Could you abide an Angel in an +unclean shirt and no suspenders? Could you respect an Angel with a +horse-laugh and a swagger like a buccaneer? + +There were other blackguards present--comrades of this one. And there +was one person that looked like a gentleman--Heber C. Kimball's son, tall +and well made, and thirty years old, perhaps. A lot of slatternly women +flitted hither and thither in a hurry, with coffee-pots, plates of bread, +and other appurtenances to supper, and these were said to be the wives of +the Angel--or some of them, at least. And of course they were; for if +they had been hired "help" they would not have let an angel from above +storm and swear at them as he did, let alone one from the place this one +hailed from. + +This was our first experience of the western "peculiar institution," and +it was not very prepossessing. We did not tarry long to observe it, but +hurried on to the home of the Latter-Day Saints, the stronghold of the +prophets, the capital of the only absolute monarch in America--Great Salt +Lake City. As the night closed in we took sanctuary in the Salt Lake +House and unpacked our baggage. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +We had a fine supper, of the freshest meats and fowls and vegetables--a +great variety and as great abundance. We walked about the streets some, +afterward, and glanced in at shops and stores; and there was fascination +in surreptitiously staring at every creature we took to be a Mormon. +This was fairy-land to us, to all intents and purposes--a land of +enchantment, and goblins, and awful mystery. We felt a curiosity to ask +every child how many mothers it had, and if it could tell them apart; and +we experienced a thrill every time a dwelling-house door opened and shut +as we passed, disclosing a glimpse of human heads and backs and +shoulders--for we so longed to have a good satisfying look at a Mormon +family in all its comprehensive ampleness, disposed in the customary +concentric rings of its home circle. + +By and by the Acting Governor of the Territory introduced us to other +"Gentiles," and we spent a sociable hour with them. "Gentiles" are +people who are not Mormons. Our fellow-passenger, Bemis, took care of +himself, during this part of the evening, and did not make an +overpowering success of it, either, for he came into our room in the +hotel about eleven o'clock, full of cheerfulness, and talking loosely, +disjointedly and indiscriminately, and every now and then tugging out a +ragged word by the roots that had more hiccups than syllables in it. +This, together with his hanging his coat on the floor on one side of a +chair, and his vest on the floor on the other side, and piling his pants +on the floor just in front of the same chair, and then comtemplating the +general result with superstitious awe, and finally pronouncing it "too +many for him" and going to bed with his boots on, led us to fear that +something he had eaten had not agreed with him. + +But we knew afterward that it was something he had been drinking. It was +the exclusively Mormon refresher, "valley tan." + +Valley tan (or, at least, one form of valley tan) is a kind of whisky, +or first cousin to it; is of Mormon invention and manufactured only in +Utah. Tradition says it is made of (imported) fire and brimstone. If I +remember rightly no public drinking saloons were allowed in the kingdom +by Brigham Young, and no private drinking permitted among the faithful, +except they confined themselves to "valley tan." + +Next day we strolled about everywhere through the broad, straight, level +streets, and enjoyed the pleasant strangeness of a city of fifteen +thousand inhabitants with no loafers perceptible in it; and no visible +drunkards or noisy people; a limpid stream rippling and dancing through +every street in place of a filthy gutter; block after block of trim +dwellings, built of "frame" and sunburned brick--a great thriving orchard +and garden behind every one of them, apparently--branches from the street +stream winding and sparkling among the garden beds and fruit trees--and a +grand general air of neatness, repair, thrift and comfort, around and +about and over the whole. And everywhere were workshops, factories, and +all manner of industries; and intent faces and busy hands were to be seen +wherever one looked; and in one's ears was the ceaseless clink of +hammers, the buzz of trade and the contented hum of drums and fly-wheels. + +The armorial crest of my own State consisted of two dissolute bears +holding up the head of a dead and gone cask between them and making the +pertinent remark, "UNITED, WE STAND--(hic!)--DIVIDED, WE FALL." It was +always too figurative for the author of this book. But the Mormon crest +was easy. And it was simple, unostentatious, and fitted like a glove. +It was a representation of a GOLDEN BEEHIVE, with the bees all at work! + +The city lies in the edge of a level plain as broad as the State of +Connecticut, and crouches close down to the ground under a curving wall +of mighty mountains whose heads are hidden in the clouds, and whose +shoulders bear relics of the snows of winter all the summer long. + +Seen from one of these dizzy heights, twelve or fifteen miles off, Great +Salt Lake City is toned down and diminished till it is suggestive of a +child's toy-village reposing under the majestic protection of the Chinese +wall. + +On some of those mountains, to the southwest, it had been raining every +day for two weeks, but not a drop had fallen in the city. And on hot +days in late spring and early autumn the citizens could quit fanning and +growling and go out and cool off by looking at the luxury of a glorious +snow-storm going on in the mountains. They could enjoy it at a distance, +at those seasons, every day, though no snow would fall in their streets, +or anywhere near them. + +Salt Lake City was healthy--an extremely healthy city. + +They declared there was only one physician in the place and he was +arrested every week regularly and held to answer under the vagrant act +for having "no visible means of support." They always give you a good +substantial article of truth in Salt Lake, and good measure and good +weight, too. [Very often, if you wished to weigh one of their airiest +little commonplace statements you would want the hay scales.] + +We desired to visit the famous inland sea, the American "Dead Sea," the +great Salt Lake--seventeen miles, horseback, from the city--for we had +dreamed about it, and thought about it, and talked about it, and yearned +to see it, all the first part of our trip; but now when it was only arm's +length away it had suddenly lost nearly every bit of its interest. And +so we put it off, in a sort of general way, till next day--and that was +the last we ever thought of it. We dined with some hospitable Gentiles; +and visited the foundation of the prodigious temple; and talked long with +that shrewd Connecticut Yankee, Heber C. Kimball (since deceased), a +saint of high degree and a mighty man of commerce. + +We saw the "Tithing-House," and the "Lion House," and I do not know or +remember how many more church and government buildings of various kinds +and curious names. We flitted hither and thither and enjoyed every hour, +and picked up a great deal of useful information and entertaining +nonsense, and went to bed at night satisfied. + +The second day, we made the acquaintance of Mr. Street (since deceased) +and put on white shirts and went and paid a state visit to the king. +He seemed a quiet, kindly, easy-mannered, dignified, self-possessed old +gentleman of fifty-five or sixty, and had a gentle craft in his eye that +probably belonged there. He was very simply dressed and was just taking +off a straw hat as we entered. He talked about Utah, and the Indians, +and Nevada, and general American matters and questions, with our +secretary and certain government officials who came with us. But he +never paid any attention to me, notwithstanding I made several attempts +to "draw him out" on federal politics and his high handed attitude toward +Congress. I thought some of the things I said were rather fine. But he +merely looked around at me, at distant intervals, something as I have +seen a benignant old cat look around to see which kitten was meddling +with her tail. + +By and by I subsided into an indignant silence, and so sat until the end, +hot and flushed, and execrating him in my heart for an ignorant savage. +But he was calm. His conversation with those gentlemen flowed on as +sweetly and peacefully and musically as any summer brook. When the +audience was ended and we were retiring from the presence, he put his +hand on my head, beamed down on me in an admiring way and said to my +brother: + +"Ah--your child, I presume? Boy, or girl?" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +Mr. Street was very busy with his telegraphic matters--and considering +that he had eight or nine hundred miles of rugged, snowy, uninhabited +mountains, and waterless, treeless, melancholy deserts to traverse with +his wire, it was natural and needful that he should be as busy as +possible. He could not go comfortably along and cut his poles by the +road-side, either, but they had to be hauled by ox teams across those +exhausting deserts--and it was two days' journey from water to water, in +one or two of them. Mr. Street's contract was a vast work, every way one +looked at it; and yet to comprehend what the vague words "eight hundred +miles of rugged mountains and dismal deserts" mean, one must go over the +ground in person--pen and ink descriptions cannot convey the dreary +reality to the reader. And after all, Mr. S.'s mightiest difficulty +turned out to be one which he had never taken into the account at all. +Unto Mormons he had sub-let the hardest and heaviest half of his great +undertaking, and all of a sudden they concluded that they were going to +make little or nothing, and so they tranquilly threw their poles +overboard in mountain or desert, just as it happened when they took the +notion, and drove home and went about their customary business! They +were under written contract to Mr. Street, but they did not care anything +for that. They said they would "admire" to see a "Gentile" force a +Mormon to fulfil a losing contract in Utah! And they made themselves +very merry over the matter. Street said--for it was he that told us +these things: + +"I was in dismay. I was under heavy bonds to complete my contract in a +given time, and this disaster looked very much like ruin. It was an +astounding thing; it was such a wholly unlooked-for difficulty, that I +was entirely nonplussed. I am a business man--have always been a +business man--do not know anything but business--and so you can imagine +how like being struck by lightning it was to find myself in a country +where written contracts were worthless!--that main security, that +sheet-anchor, that absolute necessity, of business. My confidence left +me. There was no use in making new contracts--that was plain. I talked +with first one prominent citizen and then another. They all sympathized +with me, first rate, but they did not know how to help me. But at last a +Gentile said, 'Go to Brigham Young!--these small fry cannot do you any +good.' I did not think much of the idea, for if the law could not help +me, what could an individual do who had not even anything to do with +either making the laws or executing them? He might be a very good +patriarch of a church and preacher in its tabernacle, but something +sterner than religion and moral suasion was needed to handle a hundred +refractory, half-civilized sub-contractors. But what was a man to do? I +thought if Mr. Young could not do anything else, he might probably be +able to give me some advice and a valuable hint or two, and so I went +straight to him and laid the whole case before him. He said very little, +but he showed strong interest all the way through. He examined all the +papers in detail, and whenever there seemed anything like a hitch, either +in the papers or my statement, he would go back and take up the thread +and follow it patiently out to an intelligent and satisfactory result. +Then he made a list of the contractors' names. Finally he said: + +"'Mr. Street, this is all perfectly plain. These contracts are strictly +and legally drawn, and are duly signed and certified. These men +manifestly entered into them with their eyes open. I see no fault or +flaw anywhere.' + +"Then Mr. Young turned to a man waiting at the other end of the room and +said: 'Take this list of names to So-and-so, and tell him to have these +men here at such-and-such an hour.' + +"They were there, to the minute. So was I. Mr. Young asked them a +number of questions, and their answers made my statement good. Then he +said to them: + +"'You signed these contracts and assumed these obligations of your own +free will and accord?' + +"'Yes.' + +"'Then carry them out to the letter, if it makes paupers of you! Go!' + +"And they did go, too! They are strung across the deserts now, working +like bees. And I never hear a word out of them. + +"There is a batch of governors, and judges, and other officials here, +shipped from Washington, and they maintain the semblance of a republican +form of government--but the petrified truth is that Utah is an absolute +monarchy and Brigham Young is king!" + +Mr. Street was a fine man, and I believe his story. I knew him well +during several years afterward in San Francisco. + +Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we +had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of +polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to +calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter. + +I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I +was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here--until +I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my +head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically "homely" +creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I +said, "No--the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian +charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their +harsh censure--and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of +open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered +in his presence and worship in silence." + + [For a brief sketch of Mormon history, and the noted Mountain Meadow + massacre, see Appendices A and B. ] + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +It is a luscious country for thrilling evening stories about +assassinations of intractable Gentiles. I cannot easily conceive of +anything more cosy than the night in Salt Lake which we spent in a +Gentile den, smoking pipes and listening to tales of how Burton galloped +in among the pleading and defenceless "Morisites" and shot them down, men +and women, like so many dogs. And how Bill Hickman, a Destroying Angel, +shot Drown and Arnold dead for bringing suit against him for a debt. +And how Porter Rockwell did this and that dreadful thing. And how +heedless people often come to Utah and make remarks about Brigham, or +polygamy, or some other sacred matter, and the very next morning at +daylight such parties are sure to be found lying up some back alley, +contentedly waiting for the hearse. + +And the next most interesting thing is to sit and listen to these +Gentiles talk about polygamy; and how some portly old frog of an elder, +or a bishop, marries a girl--likes her, marries her sister--likes her, +marries another sister--likes her, takes another--likes her, marries her +mother--likes her, marries her father, grandfather, great grandfather, +and then comes back hungry and asks for more. And how the pert young +thing of eleven will chance to be the favorite wife and her own venerable +grandmother have to rank away down toward D 4 in their mutual husband's +esteem, and have to sleep in the kitchen, as like as not. And how this +dreadful sort of thing, this hiving together in one foul nest of mother +and daughters, and the making a young daughter superior to her own mother +in rank and authority, are things which Mormon women submit to because +their religion teaches them that the more wives a man has on earth, and +the more children he rears, the higher the place they will all have in +the world to come--and the warmer, maybe, though they do not seem to say +anything about that. + +According to these Gentile friends of ours, Brigham Young's harem +contains twenty or thirty wives. They said that some of them had grown +old and gone out of active service, but were comfortably housed and cared +for in the henery--or the Lion House, as it is strangely named. Along +with each wife were her children--fifty altogether. The house was +perfectly quiet and orderly, when the children were still. They all took +their meals in one room, and a happy and home-like sight it was +pronounced to be. None of our party got an opportunity to take dinner +with Mr. Young, but a Gentile by the name of Johnson professed to have +enjoyed a sociable breakfast in the Lion House. He gave a preposterous +account of the "calling of the roll," and other preliminaries, and the +carnage that ensued when the buckwheat cakes came in. But he embellished +rather too much. He said that Mr. Young told him several smart sayings +of certain of his "two-year-olds," observing with some pride that for +many years he had been the heaviest contributor in that line to one of +the Eastern magazines; and then he wanted to show Mr. Johnson one of the +pets that had said the last good thing, but he could not find the child. + +He searched the faces of the children in detail, but could not decide +which one it was. Finally he gave it up with a sigh and said: + +"I thought I would know the little cub again but I don't." Mr. Johnson +said further, that Mr. Young observed that life was a sad, sad thing +--"because the joy of every new marriage a man contracted was so apt to be +blighted by the inopportune funeral of a less recent bride." And Mr. +Johnson said that while he and Mr. Young were pleasantly conversing in +private, one of the Mrs. Youngs came in and demanded a breast-pin, +remarking that she had found out that he had been giving a breast-pin to +No. 6, and she, for one, did not propose to let this partiality go on +without making a satisfactory amount of trouble about it. Mr. Young +reminded her that there was a stranger present. Mrs. Young said that if +the state of things inside the house was not agreeable to the stranger, +he could find room outside. Mr. Young promised the breast-pin, and she +went away. But in a minute or two another Mrs. Young came in and +demanded a breast-pin. Mr. Young began a remonstrance, but Mrs. Young +cut him short. She said No. 6 had got one, and No. 11 was promised one, +and it was "no use for him to try to impose on her--she hoped she knew +her rights." He gave his promise, and she went. And presently three +Mrs. Youngs entered in a body and opened on their husband a tempest of +tears, abuse, and entreaty. They had heard all about No. 6, No. 11, and +No. 14. Three more breast-pins were promised. They were hardly gone +when nine more Mrs. Youngs filed into the presence, and a new tempest +burst forth and raged round about the prophet and his guest. Nine +breast-pins were promised, and the weird sisters filed out again. And in +came eleven more, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. Eleven +promised breast-pins purchased peace once more. + +"That is a specimen," said Mr. Young. "You see how it is. You see what +a life I lead. A man can't be wise all the time. In a heedless moment I +gave my darling No. 6--excuse my calling her thus, as her other name has +escaped me for the moment--a breast-pin. It was only worth twenty-five +dollars--that is, apparently that was its whole cost--but its ultimate +cost was inevitably bound to be a good deal more. You yourself have seen +it climb up to six hundred and fifty dollars--and alas, even that is not +the end! For I have wives all over this Territory of Utah. I have +dozens of wives whose numbers, even, I do not know without looking in the +family Bible. They are scattered far and wide among the mountains and +valleys of my realm. And mark you, every solitary one of them will hear +of this wretched breast pin, and every last one of them will have one or +die. No. 6's breast pin will cost me twenty-five hundred dollars before +I see the end of it. And these creatures will compare these pins +together, and if one is a shade finer than the rest, they will all be +thrown on my hands, and I will have to order a new lot to keep peace in +the family. Sir, you probably did not know it, but all the time you were +present with my children your every movement was watched by vigilant +servitors of mine. If you had offered to give a child a dime, or a stick +of candy, or any trifle of the kind, you would have been snatched out of +the house instantly, provided it could be done before your gift left your +hand. Otherwise it would be absolutely necessary for you to make an +exactly similar gift to all my children--and knowing by experience the +importance of the thing, I would have stood by and seen to it myself that +you did it, and did it thoroughly. Once a gentleman gave one of my +children a tin whistle--a veritable invention of Satan, sir, and one +which I have an unspeakable horror of, and so would you if you had eighty +or ninety children in your house. But the deed was done--the man +escaped. I knew what the result was going to be, and I thirsted for +vengeance. I ordered out a flock of Destroying Angels, and they hunted +the man far into the fastnesses of the Nevada mountains. But they never +caught him. I am not cruel, sir--I am not vindictive except when sorely +outraged--but if I had caught him, sir, so help me Joseph Smith, I would +have locked him into the nursery till the brats whistled him to death. +By the slaughtered body of St. Parley Pratt (whom God assail!) there +was never anything on this earth like it! I knew who gave the whistle to +the child, but I could, not make those jealous mothers believe me. They +believed I did it, and the result was just what any man of reflection +could have foreseen: I had to order a hundred and ten whistles--I think +we had a hundred and ten children in the house then, but some of them are +off at college now--I had to order a hundred and ten of those shrieking +things, and I wish I may never speak another word if we didn't have to +talk on our fingers entirely, from that time forth until the children got +tired of the whistles. And if ever another man gives a whistle to a +child of mine and I get my hands on him, I will hang him higher than +Haman! That is the word with the bark on it! Shade of Nephi! You don't +know anything about married life. I am rich, and everybody knows it. I +am benevolent, and everybody takes advantage of it. I have a strong +fatherly instinct and all the foundlings are foisted on me. + +"Every time a woman wants to do well by her darling, she puzzles her brain +to cipher out some scheme for getting it into my hands. Why, sir, a +woman came here once with a child of a curious lifeless sort of +complexion (and so had the woman), and swore that the child was mine and +she my wife--that I had married her at such-and-such a time in +such-and-such a place, but she had forgotten her number, and of course I +could not remember her name. Well, sir, she called my attention to the +fact that the child looked like me, and really it did seem to resemble +me--a common thing in the Territory--and, to cut the story short, I put +it in my nursery, and she left. And by the ghost of Orson Hyde, when +they came to wash the paint off that child it was an Injun! Bless my +soul, you don't know anything about married life. It is a perfect dog's +life, sir--a perfect dog's life. You can't economize. It isn't +possible. I have tried keeping one set of bridal attire for all +occasions. But it is of no use. First you'll marry a combination of +calico and consumption that's as thin as a rail, and next you'll get a +creature that's nothing more than the dropsy in disguise, and then you've +got to eke out that bridal dress with an old balloon. That is the way it +goes. And think of the wash-bill--(excuse these tears)--nine hundred and +eighty-four pieces a week! No, sir, there is no such a thing as economy +in a family like mine. Why, just the one item of cradles--think of it! +And vermifuge! Soothing syrup! Teething rings! And 'papa's watches' for +the babies to play with! And things to scratch the furniture with! And +lucifer matches for them to eat, and pieces of glass to cut themselves +with! The item of glass alone would support your family, I venture to +say, sir. Let me scrimp and squeeze all I can, I still can't get ahead as +fast as I feel I ought to, with my opportunities. Bless you, sir, at a +time when I had seventy-two wives in this house, I groaned under the +pressure of keeping thousands of dollars tied up in seventy-two bedsteads +when the money ought to have been out at interest; and I just sold out +the whole stock, sir, at a sacrifice, and built a bedstead seven feet +long and ninety-six feet wide. But it was a failure, sir. I could not +sleep. It appeared to me that the whole seventy-two women snored at once. +The roar was deafening. And then the danger of it! That was what I was +looking at. They would all draw in their breath at once, and you could +actually see the walls of the house suck in--and then they would all +exhale their breath at once, and you could see the walls swell out, and +strain, and hear the rafters crack, and the shingles grind together. My +friend, take an old man's advice, and don't encumber yourself with a +large family--mind, I tell you, don't do it. In a small family, and in a +small family only, you will find that comfort and that peace of mind +which are the best at last of the blessings this world is able to afford +us, and for the lack of which no accumulation of wealth, and no +acquisition of fame, power, and greatness can ever compensate us. Take my +word for it, ten or eleven wives is all you need--never go over it." + +Some instinct or other made me set this Johnson down as being unreliable. +And yet he was a very entertaining person, and I doubt if some of the +information he gave us could have been acquired from any other source. +He was a pleasant contrast to those reticent Mormons. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have +seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a +copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a +pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of +inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this +book, the act was a miracle--keeping awake while he did it was, at any +rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain +ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he +found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of +translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason. + +The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the +Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New +Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, +old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James's translation of the +Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel--half modern glibness, and half +ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; +the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his +speech growing too modern--which was about every sentence or two--he +ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came +to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to +pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been +only a pamphlet. + +The title-page reads as follows: + + THE BOOK OF MORMON: AN ACCOUNT WRITTEN BY THE HAND OF MORMON, UPON + PLATES TAKEN FROM THE PLATES OF NEPHI. + + Wherefore it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, + and also of the Lamanites; written to the Lamanites, who are a + remnant of the House of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile; written + by way of commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of + revelation. Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that + they might not be destroyed; to come forth by the gift and power of + God unto the interpretation thereof; sealed by the hand of Moroni, + and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by the way of + Gentile; the interpretation thereof by the gift of God. An + abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also; which is a record of + the people of Jared; who were scattered at the time the Lord + confounded the language of the people when they were building a + tower to get to Heaven. + +"Hid up" is good. And so is "wherefore"--though why "wherefore"? Any +other word would have answered as well--though--in truth it would not +have sounded so Scriptural. + +Next comes: + + THE TESTIMONY OF THREE WITNESSES. + Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people unto + whom this work shall come, that we, through the grace of God the + Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which + contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and + also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of + Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken; and we + also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of + God, for His voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a + surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen + the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown + unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with + words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and + he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the + plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the + grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld + and bear record that these things are true; and it is marvellous in + our eyes; nevertheless the voice of the Lord commanded us that we + should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the + commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know + that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the + blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of + Christ, and shall dwell with Him eternally in the heavens. And the + honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which + is one God. Amen. + OLIVER COWDERY, + DAVID WHITMER, + MARTIN HARRIS. + +Some people have to have a world of evidence before they can come +anywhere in the neighborhood of believing anything; but for me, when a +man tells me that he has "seen the engravings which are upon the plates," +and not only that, but an angel was there at the time, and saw him see +them, and probably took his receipt for it, I am very far on the road to +conviction, no matter whether I ever heard of that man before or not, and +even if I do not know the name of the angel, or his nationality either. + +Next is this: + + AND ALSO THE TESTIMONY OF EIGHT WITNESSES. + Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people unto + whom this work shall come, that Joseph Smith, Jr., the translator of + this work, has shown unto us the plates of which hath been spoken, + which have the appearance of gold; and as many of the leaves as the + said Smith has translated, we did handle with our hands; and we also + saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the appearance of + ancient work, and of curious workmanship. And this we bear record + with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shown unto us, for + we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith + has got the plates of which we have spoken. And we give our names + unto the world, to witness unto the world that which we have seen; + and we lie not, God bearing witness of it. + CHRISTIAN WHITMER, + JACOB WHITMER, + PETER WHITMER, JR., + JOHN WHITMER, + HIRAM PAGE, + JOSEPH SMITH, SR., + HYRUM SMITH, + SAMUEL H. SMITH. + +And when I am far on the road to conviction, and eight men, be they +grammatical or otherwise, come forward and tell me that they have seen +the plates too; and not only seen those plates but "hefted" them, I am +convinced. I could not feel more satisfied and at rest if the entire +Whitmer family had testified. + +The Mormon Bible consists of fifteen "books"--being the books of Jacob, +Enos, Jarom, Omni, Mosiah, Zeniff, Alma, Helaman, Ether, Moroni, two +"books" of Mormon, and three of Nephi. + +In the first book of Nephi is a plagiarism of the Old Testament, which +gives an account of the exodus from Jerusalem of the "children of Lehi"; +and it goes on to tell of their wanderings in the wilderness, during +eight years, and their supernatural protection by one of their number, a +party by the name of Nephi. They finally reached the land of +"Bountiful," and camped by the sea. After they had remained there "for +the space of many days"--which is more Scriptural than definite--Nephi +was commanded from on high to build a ship wherein to "carry the people +across the waters." He travestied Noah's ark--but he obeyed orders in +the matter of the plan. He finished the ship in a single day, while his +brethren stood by and made fun of it--and of him, too--"saying, our +brother is a fool, for he thinketh that he can build a ship." They did +not wait for the timbers to dry, but the whole tribe or nation sailed the +next day. Then a bit of genuine nature cropped out, and is revealed by +outspoken Nephi with Scriptural frankness--they all got on a spree! +They, "and also their wives, began to make themselves merry, insomuch +that they began to dance, and to sing, and to speak with much rudeness; +yea, they were lifted up unto exceeding rudeness." + +Nephi tried to stop these scandalous proceedings; but they tied him neck +and heels, and went on with their lark. But observe how Nephi the +prophet circumvented them by the aid of the invisible powers: + + And it came to pass that after they had bound me, insomuch that I + could not move, the compass, which had been prepared of the Lord, + did cease to work; wherefore, they knew not whither they should + steer the ship, insomuch that there arose a great storm, yea, a + great and terrible tempest, and we were driven back upon the waters + for the space of three days; and they began to be frightened + exceedingly, lest they should be drowned in the sea; nevertheless + they did not loose me. And on the fourth day, which we had been + driven back, the tempest began to be exceeding sore. And it came to + pass that we were about to be swallowed up in the depths of the sea. + +Then they untied him. + + And it came to pass after they had loosed me, behold, I took the + compass, and it did work whither I desired it. And it came to pass + that I prayed unto the Lord; and after I had prayed, the winds did + cease, and the storm did cease, and there was a great calm. + +Equipped with their compass, these ancients appear to have had the +advantage of Noah. + +Their voyage was toward a "promised land"--the only name they give it. +They reached it in safety. + +Polygamy is a recent feature in the Mormon religion, and was added by +Brigham Young after Joseph Smith's death. Before that, it was regarded +as an "abomination." This verse from the Mormon Bible occurs in Chapter +II. of the book of Jacob: + + For behold, thus saith the Lord, this people begin to wax in + iniquity; they understand not the Scriptures; for they seek to + excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things + which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son. Behold, + David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing + was abominable before me, saith the Lord; wherefore, thus saith the + Lord, I have led this people forth out of the land of Jerusalem, by + the power of mine arm, that I might raise up unto me a righteous + branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph. Wherefore, I the Lord + God, will no suffer that this people shall do like unto them of old. + +However, the project failed--or at least the modern Mormon end of it--for +Brigham "suffers" it. This verse is from the same chapter: + + Behold, the Lamanites your brethren, whom ye hate, because of their + filthiness and the cursings which hath come upon their skins, are + more righteous than you; for they have not forgotten the commandment + of the Lord, which was given unto our fathers, that they should + have, save it were one wife; and concubines they should have none. + +The following verse (from Chapter IX. of the Book of Nephi) appears to +contain information not familiar to everybody: + + And now it came to pass that when Jesus had ascended into heaven, + the multitude did disperse, and every man did take his wife and his + children, and did return to his own home. + + And it came to pass that on the morrow, when the multitude was + gathered together, behold, Nephi and his brother whom he had raised + from the dead, whose name was Timothy, and also his son, whose name + was Jonas, and also Mathoni, and Mathonihah, his brother, and Kumen, + and Kumenenhi, and Jeremiah, and Shemnon, and Jonas, and Zedekiah, + and Isaiah; now these were the names of the disciples whom Jesus had + chosen. + +In order that the reader may observe how much more grandeur and +picturesqueness (as seen by these Mormon twelve) accompanied on of the +tenderest episodes in the life of our Saviour than other eyes seem to +have been aware of, I quote the following from the same "book"--Nephi: + + And it came to pass that Jesus spake unto them, and bade them arise. + And they arose from the earth, and He said unto them, Blessed are ye + because of your faith. And now behold, My joy is full. And when He + had said these words, He wept, and the multitude bear record of it, + and He took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and + prayed unto the Father for them. And when He had done this He wept + again, and He spake unto the multitude, and saith unto them, Behold + your little ones. And as they looked to behold, they cast their + eyes toward heaven, and they saw the heavens open, and they saw + angels descending out of heaven as it were, in the midst of fire; + and they came down and encircled those little ones about, and they + were encircled about with fire; and the angels did minister unto + them, and the multitude did see and hear and bear record; and they + know that their record is true, for they all of them did see and + hear, every man for himself; and they were in number about two + thousand and five hundred souls; and they did consist of men, women, + and children. + +And what else would they be likely to consist of? + +The Book of Ether is an incomprehensible medley of if "history," much of +it relating to battles and sieges among peoples whom the reader has +possibly never heard of; and who inhabited a country which is not set +down in the geography. These was a King with the remarkable name of +Coriantumr,^^ and he warred with Shared, and Lib, and Shiz, and others, +in the "plains of Heshlon"; and the "valley of Gilgal"; and the +"wilderness of Akish"; and the "land of Moran"; and the "plains of +Agosh"; and "Ogath," and "Ramah," and the "land of Corihor," and the +"hill Comnor," by "the waters of Ripliancum," etc., etc., etc. "And it +came to pass," after a deal of fighting, that Coriantumr, upon making +calculation of his losses, found that "there had been slain two millions +of mighty men, and also their wives and their children"--say 5,000,000 or +6,000,000 in all--"and he began to sorrow in his heart." Unquestionably +it was time. So he wrote to Shiz, asking a cessation of hostilities, and +offering to give up his kingdom to save his people. Shiz declined, +except upon condition that Coriantumr would come and let him cut his head +off first--a thing which Coriantumr would not do. Then there was more +fighting for a season; then four years were devoted to gathering the +forces for a final struggle--after which ensued a battle, which, I take +it, is the most remarkable set forth in history,--except, perhaps, that +of the Kilkenny cats, which it resembles in some respects. This is the +account of the gathering and the battle: + + 7. And it came to pass that they did gather together all the + people, upon all the face of the land, who had not been slain, save + it was Ether. And it came to pass that Ether did behold all the + doings of the people; and he beheld that the people who were for + Coriantumr, were gathered together to the army of Coriantumr; and + the people who were for Shiz, were gathered together to the army of + Shiz; wherefore they were for the space of four years gathering + together the people, that they might get all who were upon the face + of the land, and that they might receive all the strength which it + was possible that they could receive. And it came to pass that when + they were all gathered together, every one to the army which he + would, with their wives and their children; both men, women, and + children being armed with weapons of war, having shields, and + breast-plates, and head-plates, and being clothed after the manner + of war, they did march forth one against another, to battle; and + they fought all that day, and conquered not. And it came to pass + that when it was night they were weary, and retired to their camps; + and after they had retired to their camps, they took up a howling + and a lamentation for the loss of the slain of their people; and so + great were their cries, their howlings and lamentations, that it did + rend the air exceedingly. And it came to pass that on the morrow + they did go again to battle, and great and terrible was that day; + nevertheless they conquered not, and when the night came again, they + did rend the air with their cries, and their howlings, and their + mournings, for the loss of the slain of their people. + + 8. And it came to pass that Coriantumr wrote again an epistle unto + Shiz, desiring that he would not come again to battle, but that he + would take the kingdom, and spare the lives of the people. But + behold, the Spirit of the Lord had ceased striving with them, and + Satan had full power over the hearts of the people, for they were + given up unto the hardness of their hearts, and the blindness of + their minds that they might be destroyed; wherefore they went again + to battle. And it came to pass that they fought all that day, and + when the night came they slept upon their swords; and on the morrow + they fought even until the night came; and when the night came they + were drunken with anger, even as a man who is drunken with wine; and + they slept again upon their swords; and on the morrow they fought + again; and when the night came they had all fallen by the sword save + it were fifty and two of the people of Coriantumr, and sixty and + nine of the people of Shiz. And it came to pass that they slept + upon their swords that night, and on the morrow they fought again, + and they contended in their mights with their swords, and with their + shields, all that day; and when the night came there were thirty and + two of the people of Shiz, and twenty and seven of the people of + Coriantumr. + + 9. And it came to pass that they ate and slept, and prepared for + death on the morrow. And they were large and mighty men, as to the + strength of men. And it came to pass that they fought for the space + of three hours, and they fainted with the loss of blood. And it + came to pass that when the men of Coriantumr had received sufficient + strength, that they could walk, they were about to flee for their + lives, but behold, Shiz arose, and also his men, and he swore in his + wrath that he would slay Coriantumr, or he would perish by the + sword: wherefore he did pursue them, and on the morrow he did + overtake them; and they fought again with the sword. And it came to + pass that when they had all fallen by the sword, save it were + Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with loss of blood. + And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword, + that he rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz. And it came + to pass that after he had smote off the head of Shiz, that Shiz + raised upon his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for + breath, he died. And it came to pass that Coriantumr fell to the + earth, and became as if he had no life. And the Lord spake unto + Ether, and said unto him, go forth. And he went forth, and beheld + that the words of the Lord had all been fulfilled; and he finished + his record; and the hundredth part I have not written. + +It seems a pity he did not finish, for after all his dreary former +chapters of commonplace, he stopped just as he was in danger of becoming +interesting. + +The Mormon Bible is rather stupid and tiresome to read, but there is +nothing vicious in its teachings. Its code of morals is unobjectionable +--it is "smouched" [Milton] from the New Testament and no credit given. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +At the end of our two days' sojourn, we left Great Salt Lake City hearty +and well fed and happy--physically superb but not so very much wiser, as +regards the "Mormon question," than we were when we arrived, perhaps. +We had a deal more "information" than we had before, of course, but we +did not know what portion of it was reliable and what was not--for it all +came from acquaintances of a day--strangers, strictly speaking. We were +told, for instance, that the dreadful "Mountain Meadows Massacre" was the +work of the Indians entirely, and that the Gentiles had meanly tried to +fasten it upon the Mormons; we were told, likewise, that the Indians were +to blame, partly, and partly the Mormons; and we were told, likewise, and +just as positively, that the Mormons were almost if not wholly and +completely responsible for that most treacherous and pitiless butchery. +We got the story in all these different shapes, but it was not till +several years afterward that Mrs. Waite's book, "The Mormon Prophet," +came out with Judge Cradlebaugh's trial of the accused parties in it and +revealed the truth that the latter version was the correct one and that +the Mormons were the assassins. All our "information" had three sides to +it, and so I gave up the idea that I could settle the "Mormon question" +in two days. Still I have seen newspaper correspondents do it in one. + +I left Great Salt Lake a good deal confused as to what state of things +existed there--and sometimes even questioning in my own mind whether a +state of things existed there at all or not. But presently I remembered +with a lightening sense of relief that we had learned two or three +trivial things there which we could be certain of; and so the two days +were not wholly lost. For instance, we had learned that we were at last +in a pioneer land, in absolute and tangible reality. + +The high prices charged for trifles were eloquent of high freights and +bewildering distances of freightage. In the east, in those days, the +smallest moneyed denomination was a penny and it represented the smallest +purchasable quantity of any commodity. West of Cincinnati the smallest +coin in use was the silver five-cent piece and no smaller quantity of an +article could be bought than "five cents' worth." In Overland City the +lowest coin appeared to be the ten-cent piece; but in Salt Lake there did +not seem to be any money in circulation smaller than a quarter, or any +smaller quantity purchasable of any commodity than twenty-five cents' +worth. We had always been used to half dimes and "five cents' worth" as +the minimum of financial negotiations; but in Salt Lake if one wanted a +cigar, it was a quarter; if he wanted a chalk pipe, it was a quarter; if +he wanted a peach, or a candle, or a newspaper, or a shave, or a little +Gentile whiskey to rub on his corns to arrest indigestion and keep him +from having the toothache, twenty-five cents was the price, every time. +When we looked at the shot-bag of silver, now and then, we seemed to be +wasting our substance in riotous living, but if we referred to the +expense account we could see that we had not been doing anything of the +kind. + +But people easily get reconciled to big money and big prices, and fond +and vain of both--it is a descent to little coins and cheap prices that +is hardest to bear and slowest to take hold upon one's toleration. After +a month's acquaintance with the twenty-five cent minimum, the average +human being is ready to blush every time he thinks of his despicable +five-cent days. How sunburnt with blushes I used to get in gaudy Nevada, +every time I thought of my first financial experience in Salt Lake. +It was on this wise (which is a favorite expression of great authors, and +a very neat one, too, but I never hear anybody say on this wise when they +are talking). A young half-breed with a complexion like a yellow-jacket +asked me if I would have my boots blacked. It was at the Salt Lake House +the morning after we arrived. I said yes, and he blacked them. Then I +handed him a silver five-cent piece, with the benevolent air of a person +who is conferring wealth and blessedness upon poverty and suffering. The +yellow-jacket took it with what I judged to be suppressed emotion, and +laid it reverently down in the middle of his broad hand. Then he began +to contemplate it, much as a philosopher contemplates a gnat's ear in the +ample field of his microscope. Several mountaineers, teamsters, +stage-drivers, etc., drew near and dropped into the tableau and fell to +surveying the money with that attractive indifference to formality which +is noticeable in the hardy pioneer. Presently the yellow-jacket handed +the half dime back to me and told me I ought to keep my money in my +pocket-book instead of in my soul, and then I wouldn't get it cramped and +shriveled up so! + +What a roar of vulgar laughter there was! I destroyed the mongrel +reptile on the spot, but I smiled and smiled all the time I was detaching +his scalp, for the remark he made was good for an "Injun." + +Yes, we had learned in Salt Lake to be charged great prices without +letting the inward shudder appear on the surface--for even already we had +overheard and noted the tenor of conversations among drivers, conductors, +and hostlers, and finally among citizens of Salt Lake, until we were well +aware that these superior beings despised "emigrants." We permitted no +tell-tale shudders and winces in our countenances, for we wanted to seem +pioneers, or Mormons, half-breeds, teamsters, stage-drivers, Mountain +Meadow assassins--anything in the world that the plains and Utah +respected and admired--but we were wretchedly ashamed of being +"emigrants," and sorry enough that we had white shirts and could not +swear in the presence of ladies without looking the other way. + +And many a time in Nevada, afterwards, we had occasion to remember with +humiliation that we were "emigrants," and consequently a low and inferior +sort of creatures. Perhaps the reader has visited Utah, Nevada, or +California, even in these latter days, and while communing with himself +upon the sorrowful banishment of these countries from what he considers +"the world," has had his wings clipped by finding that he is the one to +be pitied, and that there are entire populations around him ready and +willing to do it for him--yea, who are complacently doing it for him +already, wherever he steps his foot. + +Poor thing, they are making fun of his hat; and the cut of his New York +coat; and his conscientiousness about his grammar; and his feeble +profanity; and his consumingly ludicrous ignorance of ores, shafts, +tunnels, and other things which he never saw before, and never felt +enough interest in to read about. And all the time that he is thinking +what a sad fate it is to be exiled to that far country, that lonely land, +the citizens around him are looking down on him with a blighting +compassion because he is an "emigrant" instead of that proudest and +blessedest creature that exists on all the earth, a "FORTY-NINER." + +The accustomed coach life began again, now, and by midnight it almost +seemed as if we never had been out of our snuggery among the mail sacks +at all. We had made one alteration, however. We had provided enough +bread, boiled ham and hard boiled eggs to last double the six hundred +miles of staging we had still to do. + +And it was comfort in those succeeding days to sit up and contemplate the +majestic panorama of mountains and valleys spread out below us and eat +ham and hard boiled eggs while our spiritual natures revelled alternately +in rainbows, thunderstorms, and peerless sunsets. Nothing helps scenery +like ham and eggs. Ham and eggs, and after these a pipe--an old, rank, +delicious pipe--ham and eggs and scenery, a "down grade," a flying coach, +a fragrant pipe and a contented heart--these make happiness. It is what +all the ages have struggled for. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +At eight in the morning we reached the remnant and ruin of what had been +the important military station of "Camp Floyd," some forty-five or fifty +miles from Salt Lake City. At four P.M. we had doubled our distance and +were ninety or a hundred miles from Salt Lake. And now we entered upon +one of that species of deserts whose concentrated hideousness shames the +diffused and diluted horrors of Sahara--an "alkali" desert. For +sixty-eight miles there was but one break in it. I do not remember that +this was really a break; indeed it seems to me that it was nothing but a +watering depot in the midst of the stretch of sixty-eight miles. If my +memory serves me, there was no well or spring at this place, but the +water was hauled there by mule and ox teams from the further side of the +desert. There was a stage station there. It was forty-five miles from +the beginning of the desert, and twenty-three from the end of it. + +We plowed and dragged and groped along, the whole live-long night, +and at the end of this uncomfortable twelve hours we finished the +forty-five-mile part of the desert and got to the stage station where the +imported water was. The sun was just rising. It was easy enough to +cross a desert in the night while we were asleep; and it was pleasant to +reflect, in the morning, that we in actual person had encountered an +absolute desert and could always speak knowingly of deserts in presence +of the ignorant thenceforward. And it was pleasant also to reflect that +this was not an obscure, back country desert, but a very celebrated one, +the metropolis itself, as you may say. All this was very well and very +comfortable and satisfactory--but now we were to cross a desert in +daylight. This was fine--novel--romantic--dramatically adventurous +--this, indeed, was worth living for, worth traveling for! We would +write home all about it. + +This enthusiasm, this stern thirst for adventure, wilted under the sultry +August sun and did not last above one hour. One poor little hour--and +then we were ashamed that we had "gushed" so. The poetry was all in the +anticipation--there is none in the reality. Imagine a vast, waveless +ocean stricken dead and turned to ashes; imagine this solemn waste tufted +with ash-dusted sage-bushes; imagine the lifeless silence and solitude +that belong to such a place; imagine a coach, creeping like a bug through +the midst of this shoreless level, and sending up tumbled volumes of dust +as if it were a bug that went by steam; imagine this aching monotony of +toiling and plowing kept up hour after hour, and the shore still as far +away as ever, apparently; imagine team, driver, coach and passengers so +deeply coated with ashes that they are all one colorless color; imagine +ash-drifts roosting above moustaches and eyebrows like snow accumulations +on boughs and bushes. This is the reality of it. + +The sun beats down with dead, blistering, relentless malignity; the +perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely a +sign of it finds its way to the surface--it is absorbed before it gets +there; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not a +merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not a +living creature visible in any direction whither one searches the blank +level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a +sound--not a sigh--not a whisper--not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or +distant pipe of bird--not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless +people that dead air. And so the occasional sneezing of the resting +mules, and the champing of the bits, grate harshly on the grim stillness, +not dissipating the spell but accenting it and making one feel more +lonesome and forsaken than before. + +The mules, under violent swearing, coaxing and whip-cracking, would make +at stated intervals a "spurt," and drag the coach a hundred or may be two +hundred yards, stirring up a billowy cloud of dust that rolled back, +enveloping the vehicle to the wheel-tops or higher, and making it seem +afloat in a fog. Then a rest followed, with the usual sneezing and +bit-champing. Then another "spurt" of a hundred yards and another rest at +the end of it. All day long we kept this up, without water for the mules +and without ever changing the team. At least we kept it up ten hours, +which, I take it, is a day, and a pretty honest one, in an alkali desert. +It was from four in the morning till two in the afternoon. And it was so +hot! and so close! and our water canteens went dry in the middle of the +day and we got so thirsty! It was so stupid and tiresome and dull! and +the tedious hours did lag and drag and limp along with such a cruel +deliberation! It was so trying to give one's watch a good long +undisturbed spell and then take it out and find that it had been fooling +away the time and not trying to get ahead any! The alkali dust cut +through our lips, it persecuted our eyes, it ate through the delicate +membranes and made our noses bleed and kept them bleeding--and truly and +seriously the romance all faded far away and disappeared, and left the +desert trip nothing but a harsh reality--a thirsty, sweltering, longing, +hateful reality! + +Two miles and a quarter an hour for ten hours--that was what we +accomplished. It was hard to bring the comprehension away down to such a +snail-pace as that, when we had been used to making eight and ten miles +an hour. When we reached the station on the farther verge of the desert, +we were glad, for the first time, that the dictionary was along, because +we never could have found language to tell how glad we were, in any sort +of dictionary but an unabridged one with pictures in it. But there could +not have been found in a whole library of dictionaries language +sufficient to tell how tired those mules were after their twenty-three +mile pull. To try to give the reader an idea of how thirsty they were, +would be to "gild refined gold or paint the lily." + +Somehow, now that it is there, the quotation does not seem to fit--but no +matter, let it stay, anyhow. I think it is a graceful and attractive +thing, and therefore have tried time and time again to work it in where +it would fit, but could not succeed. These efforts have kept my mind +distracted and ill at ease, and made my narrative seem broken and +disjointed, in places. Under these circumstances it seems to me best to +leave it in, as above, since this will afford at least a temporary +respite from the wear and tear of trying to "lead up" to this really apt +and beautiful quotation. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +On the morning of the sixteenth day out from St. Joseph we arrived at the +entrance of Rocky Canyon, two hundred and fifty miles from Salt Lake. +It was along in this wild country somewhere, and far from any habitation +of white men, except the stage stations, that we came across the +wretchedest type of mankind I have ever seen, up to this writing. I +refer to the Goshoot Indians. From what we could see and all we could +learn, they are very considerably inferior to even the despised Digger +Indians of California; inferior to all races of savages on our continent; +inferior to even the Terra del Fuegans; inferior to the Hottentots, and +actually inferior in some respects to the Kytches of Africa. Indeed, I +have been obliged to look the bulky volumes of Wood's "Uncivilized Races +of Men" clear through in order to find a savage tribe degraded enough to +take rank with the Goshoots. I find but one people fairly open to that +shameful verdict. It is the Bosjesmans (Bushmen) of South Africa. Such +of the Goshoots as we saw, along the road and hanging about the stations, +were small, lean, "scrawny" creatures; in complexion a dull black like +the ordinary American negro; their faces and hands bearing dirt which +they had been hoarding and accumulating for months, years, and even +generations, according to the age of the proprietor; a silent, sneaking, +treacherous looking race; taking note of everything, covertly, like all +the other "Noble Red Men" that we (do not) read about, and betraying no +sign in their countenances; indolent, everlastingly patient and tireless, +like all other Indians; prideless beggars--for if the beggar instinct +were left out of an Indian he would not "go," any more than a clock +without a pendulum; hungry, always hungry, and yet never refusing +anything that a hog would eat, though often eating what a hog would +decline; hunters, but having no higher ambition than to kill and eat +jack-ass rabbits, crickets and grasshoppers, and embezzle carrion from +the buzzards and cayotes; savages who, when asked if they have the common +Indian belief in a Great Spirit show a something which almost amounts to +emotion, thinking whiskey is referred to; a thin, scattering race of +almost naked black children, these Goshoots are, who produce nothing at +all, and have no villages, and no gatherings together into strictly +defined tribal communities--a people whose only shelter is a rag cast on +a bush to keep off a portion of the snow, and yet who inhabit one of the +most rocky, wintry, repulsive wastes that our country or any other can +exhibit. + +The Bushmen and our Goshoots are manifestly descended from the self-same +gorilla, or kangaroo, or Norway rat, which-ever animal--Adam the +Darwinians trace them to. + +One would as soon expect the rabbits to fight as the Goshoots, and yet +they used to live off the offal and refuse of the stations a few months +and then come some dark night when no mischief was expected, and burn +down the buildings and kill the men from ambush as they rushed out. +And once, in the night, they attacked the stage-coach when a District +Judge, of Nevada Territory, was the only passenger, and with their first +volley of arrows (and a bullet or two) they riddled the stage curtains, +wounded a horse or two and mortally wounded the driver. The latter was +full of pluck, and so was his passenger. At the driver's call Judge Mott +swung himself out, clambered to the box and seized the reins of the team, +and away they plunged, through the racing mob of skeletons and under a +hurtling storm of missiles. The stricken driver had sunk down on the +boot as soon as he was wounded, but had held on to the reins and said he +would manage to keep hold of them until relieved. + +And after they were taken from his relaxing grasp, he lay with his head +between Judge Mott's feet, and tranquilly gave directions about the road; +he said he believed he could live till the miscreants were outrun and +left behind, and that if he managed that, the main difficulty would be at +an end, and then if the Judge drove so and so (giving directions about +bad places in the road, and general course) he would reach the next +station without trouble. The Judge distanced the enemy and at last +rattled up to the station and knew that the night's perils were done; but +there was no comrade-in-arms for him to rejoice with, for the soldierly +driver was dead. + +Let us forget that we have been saying harsh things about the Overland +drivers, now. The disgust which the Goshoots gave me, a disciple of +Cooper and a worshipper of the Red Man--even of the scholarly savages in +the "Last of the Mohicans" who are fittingly associated with backwoodsmen +who divide each sentence into two equal parts: one part critically +grammatical, refined and choice of language, and the other part just such +an attempt to talk like a hunter or a mountaineer, as a Broadway clerk +might make after eating an edition of Emerson Bennett's works and +studying frontier life at the Bowery Theatre a couple of weeks--I say +that the nausea which the Goshoots gave me, an Indian worshipper, set me +to examining authorities, to see if perchance I had been over-estimating +the Red Man while viewing him through the mellow moonshine of romance. +The revelations that came were disenchanting. It was curious to see how +quickly the paint and tinsel fell away from him and left him treacherous, +filthy and repulsive--and how quickly the evidences accumulated that +wherever one finds an Indian tribe he has only found Goshoots more or +less modified by circumstances and surroundings--but Goshoots, after all. +They deserve pity, poor creatures; and they can have mine--at this +distance. Nearer by, they never get anybody's. + +There is an impression abroad that the Baltimore and Washington Railroad +Company and many of its employees are Goshoots; but it is an error. +There is only a plausible resemblance, which, while it is apt enough to +mislead the ignorant, cannot deceive parties who have contemplated both +tribes. But seriously, it was not only poor wit, but very wrong to start +the report referred to above; for however innocent the motive may have +been, the necessary effect was to injure the reputation of a class who +have a hard enough time of it in the pitiless deserts of the Rocky +Mountains, Heaven knows! If we cannot find it in our hearts to give +those poor naked creatures our Christian sympathy and compassion, in +God's name let us at least not throw mud at them. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +On the seventeenth day we passed the highest mountain peaks we had yet +seen, and although the day was very warm the night that followed upon its +heels was wintry cold and blankets were next to useless. + +On the eighteenth day we encountered the eastward-bound +telegraph-constructors at Reese River station and sent a message to his +Excellency Gov. Nye at Carson City (distant one hundred and fifty-six +miles). + +On the nineteenth day we crossed the Great American Desert--forty +memorable miles of bottomless sand, into which the coach wheels sunk from +six inches to a foot. We worked our passage most of the way across. +That is to say, we got out and walked. It was a dreary pull and a long +and thirsty one, for we had no water. From one extremity of this desert +to the other, the road was white with the bones of oxen and horses. +It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that we could have walked the +forty miles and set our feet on a bone at every step! The desert was one +prodigious graveyard. And the log-chains, wagon tyres, and rotting +wrecks of vehicles were almost as thick as the bones. I think we saw +log-chains enough rusting there in the desert, to reach across any State +in the Union. Do not these relics suggest something of an idea of the +fearful suffering and privation the early emigrants to California +endured? + +At the border of the Desert lies Carson Lake, or The "Sink" of the +Carson, a shallow, melancholy sheet of water some eighty or a hundred +miles in circumference. Carson River empties into it and is lost--sinks +mysteriously into the earth and never appears in the light of the sun +again--for the lake has no outlet whatever. + +There are several rivers in Nevada, and they all have this mysterious +fate. They end in various lakes or "sinks," and that is the last of +them. Carson Lake, Humboldt Lake, Walker Lake, Mono Lake, are all great +sheets of water without any visible outlet. Water is always flowing into +them; none is ever seen to flow out of them, and yet they remain always +level full, neither receding nor overflowing. What they do with their +surplus is only known to the Creator. + +On the western verge of the Desert we halted a moment at Ragtown. It +consisted of one log house and is not set down on the map. + +This reminds me of a circumstance. Just after we left Julesburg, on the +Platte, I was sitting with the driver, and he said: + +"I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to +listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was +leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an +engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through +quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. +The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the +buttons all off of Horace's coat, and finally shot his head clean through +the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to +go easier--said he warn't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. +But Hank Monk said, 'Keep your seat, Horace, and I'll get you there on +time'--and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!" + +A day or two after that we picked up a Denver man at the cross roads, and +he told us a good deal about the country and the Gregory Diggings. +He seemed a very entertaining person and a man well posted in the affairs +of Colorado. By and by he remarked: + +"I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to +listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was +leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an +engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through +quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The +coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the +buttons all off of Horace's coat, and finally shot his head clean through +the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to +go easier--said he warn't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. +But Hank Monk said, 'Keep your seat, Horace, and I'll get you there on +time!'--and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!" + +At Fort Bridger, some days after this, we took on board a cavalry +sergeant, a very proper and soldierly person indeed. From no other man +during the whole journey, did we gather such a store of concise and +well-arranged military information. It was surprising to find in the +desolate wilds of our country a man so thoroughly acquainted with +everything useful to know in his line of life, and yet of such inferior +rank and unpretentious bearing. For as much as three hours we listened +to him with unabated interest. Finally he got upon the subject of +trans-continental travel, and presently said: + +"I can tell you a very laughable thing indeed, if you would like to +listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was +leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an +engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through +quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The +coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the +buttons all off of Horace's coat, and finally shot his head clean through +the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to +go easier--said he warn't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. +But Hank Monk said, 'Keep your seat, Horace, and I'll get you there on +time!'--and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!" + +When we were eight hours out from Salt Lake City a Mormon preacher got in +with us at a way station--a gentle, soft-spoken, kindly man, and one whom +any stranger would warm to at first sight. I can never forget the pathos +that was in his voice as he told, in simple language, the story of his +people's wanderings and unpitied sufferings. No pulpit eloquence was +ever so moving and so beautiful as this outcast's picture of the first +Mormon pilgrimage across the plains, struggling sorrowfully onward to the +land of its banishment and marking its desolate way with graves and +watering it with tears. His words so wrought upon us that it was a +relief to us all when the conversation drifted into a more cheerful +channel and the natural features of the curious country we were in came +under treatment. One matter after another was pleasantly discussed, and +at length the stranger said: + +"I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to +listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was +leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an +engagement to lecture in Placerville, and was very anxious to go through +quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The +coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the +buttons all off of Horace's coat, and finally shot his head clean through +the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to +go easier--said he warn't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. +But Hank Monk said, 'Keep your seat, Horace, and I'll get you there on +time!'--and you bet you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!" + +Ten miles out of Ragtown we found a poor wanderer who had lain down to +die. He had walked as long as he could, but his limbs had failed him at +last. Hunger and fatigue had conquered him. It would have been inhuman +to leave him there. We paid his fare to Carson and lifted him into the +coach. It was some little time before he showed any very decided signs +of life; but by dint of chafing him and pouring brandy between his lips +we finally brought him to a languid consciousness. Then we fed him a +little, and by and by he seemed to comprehend the situation and a +grateful light softened his eye. We made his mail-sack bed as +comfortable as possible, and constructed a pillow for him with our coats. +He seemed very thankful. Then he looked up in our faces, and said in a +feeble voice that had a tremble of honest emotion in it: + +"Gentlemen, I know not who you are, but you have saved my life; and +although I can never be able to repay you for it, I feel that I can at +least make one hour of your long journey lighter. I take it you are +strangers to this great thorough fare, but I am entirely familiar with +it. In this connection I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if +you would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley----" + +I said, impressively: + +"Suffering stranger, proceed at your peril. You see in me the melancholy +wreck of a once stalwart and magnificent manhood. What has brought me to +this? That thing which you are about to tell. Gradually but surely, +that tiresome old anecdote has sapped my strength, undermined my +constitution, withered my life. Pity my helplessness. Spare me only +just this once, and tell me about young George Washington and his little +hatchet for a change." + +We were saved. But not so the invalid. In trying to retain the anecdote +in his system he strained himself and died in our arms. + +I am aware, now, that I ought not to have asked of the sturdiest citizen +of all that region, what I asked of that mere shadow of a man; for, after +seven years' residence on the Pacific coast, I know that no passenger or +driver on the Overland ever corked that anecdote in, when a stranger was +by, and survived. Within a period of six years I crossed and recrossed +the Sierras between Nevada and California thirteen times by stage and +listened to that deathless incident four hundred and eighty-one or +eighty-two times. I have the list somewhere. Drivers always told it, +conductors told it, landlords told it, chance passengers told it, the +very Chinamen and vagrant Indians recounted it. I have had the same +driver tell it to me two or three times in the same afternoon. It has +come to me in all the multitude of tongues that Babel bequeathed to +earth, and flavored with whiskey, brandy, beer, cologne, sozodont, +tobacco, garlic, onions, grasshoppers--everything that has a fragrance to +it through all the long list of things that are gorged or guzzled by the +sons of men. I never have smelt any anecdote as often as I have smelt +that one; never have smelt any anecdote that smelt so variegated as that +one. And you never could learn to know it by its smell, because every +time you thought you had learned the smell of it, it would turn up with a +different smell. Bayard Taylor has written about this hoary anecdote, +Richardson has published it; so have Jones, Smith, Johnson, Ross Browne, +and every other correspondence-inditing being that ever set his foot upon +the great overland road anywhere between Julesburg and San Francisco; and +I have heard that it is in the Talmud. I have seen it in print in nine +different foreign languages; I have been told that it is employed in the +inquisition in Rome; and I now learn with regret that it is going to be +set to music. I do not think that such things are right. + +Stage-coaching on the Overland is no more, and stage drivers are a race +defunct. I wonder if they bequeathed that bald-headed anecdote to their +successors, the railroad brakemen and conductors, and if these latter +still persecute the helpless passenger with it until he concludes, as did +many a tourist of other days, that the real grandeurs of the Pacific +coast are not Yo Semite and the Big Trees, but Hank Monk and his +adventure with Horace Greeley. [And what makes that worn anecdote the +more aggravating, is, that the adventure it celebrates never occurred. +If it were a good anecdote, that seeming demerit would be its chiefest +virtue, for creative power belongs to greatness; but what ought to be +done to a man who would wantonly contrive so flat a one as this? If I +were to suggest what ought to be done to him, I should be called +extravagant--but what does the sixteenth chapter of Daniel say? Aha!] + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +We were approaching the end of our long journey. It was the morning of +the twentieth day. At noon we would reach Carson City, the capital of +Nevada Territory. We were not glad, but sorry. It had been a fine +pleasure trip; we had fed fat on wonders every day; we were now well +accustomed to stage life, and very fond of it; so the idea of coming to a +stand-still and settling down to a humdrum existence in a village was not +agreeable, but on the contrary depressing. + +Visibly our new home was a desert, walled in by barren, snow-clad +mountains. There was not a tree in sight. There was no vegetation but +the endless sage-brush and greasewood. All nature was gray with it. We +were plowing through great deeps of powdery alkali dust that rose in +thick clouds and floated across the plain like smoke from a burning +house. + +We were coated with it like millers; so were the coach, the mules, the +mail-bags, the driver--we and the sage-brush and the other scenery were +all one monotonous color. Long trains of freight wagons in the distance +envelope in ascending masses of dust suggested pictures of prairies on +fire. These teams and their masters were the only life we saw. +Otherwise we moved in the midst of solitude, silence and desolation. +Every twenty steps we passed the skeleton of some dead beast of burthen, +with its dust-coated skin stretched tightly over its empty ribs. +Frequently a solemn raven sat upon the skull or the hips and contemplated +the passing coach with meditative serenity. + +By and by Carson City was pointed out to us. It nestled in the edge of a +great plain and was a sufficient number of miles away to look like an +assemblage of mere white spots in the shadow of a grim range of mountains +overlooking it, whose summits seemed lifted clear out of companionship +and consciousness of earthly things. + +We arrived, disembarked, and the stage went on. It was a "wooden" town; +its population two thousand souls. The main street consisted of four or +five blocks of little white frame stores which were too high to sit down +on, but not too high for various other purposes; in fact, hardly high +enough. They were packed close together, side by side, as if room were +scarce in that mighty plain. + +The sidewalk was of boards that were more or less loose and inclined to +rattle when walked upon. In the middle of the town, opposite the stores, +was the "plaza" which is native to all towns beyond the Rocky Mountains +--a large, unfenced, level vacancy, with a liberty pole in it, and very +useful as a place for public auctions, horse trades, and mass meetings, +and likewise for teamsters to camp in. Two other sides of the plaza were +faced by stores, offices and stables. + +The rest of Carson City was pretty scattering. + +We were introduced to several citizens, at the stage-office and on the +way up to the Governor's from the hotel--among others, to a Mr. Harris, +who was on horseback; he began to say something, but interrupted himself +with the remark: + +"I'll have to get you to excuse me a minute; yonder is the witness that +swore I helped to rob the California coach--a piece of impertinent +intermeddling, sir, for I am not even acquainted with the man." + +Then he rode over and began to rebuke the stranger with a six-shooter, +and the stranger began to explain with another. When the pistols were +emptied, the stranger resumed his work (mending a whip-lash), and Mr. +Harris rode by with a polite nod, homeward bound, with a bullet through +one of his lungs, and several in his hips; and from them issued little +rivulets of blood that coursed down the horse's sides and made the animal +look quite picturesque. I never saw Harris shoot a man after that but it +recalled to mind that first day in Carson. + +This was all we saw that day, for it was two o'clock, now, and according +to custom the daily "Washoe Zephyr" set in; a soaring dust-drift about +the size of the United States set up edgewise came with it, and the +capital of Nevada Territory disappeared from view. + +Still, there were sights to be seen which were not wholly uninteresting +to new comers; for the vast dust cloud was thickly freckled with things +strange to the upper air--things living and dead, that flitted hither and +thither, going and coming, appearing and disappearing among the rolling +billows of dust--hats, chickens and parasols sailing in the remote +heavens; blankets, tin signs, sage-brush and shingles a shade lower; +door-mats and buffalo robes lower still; shovels and coal scuttles on the +next grade; glass doors, cats and little children on the next; disrupted +lumber yards, light buggies and wheelbarrows on the next; and down only +thirty or forty feet above ground was a scurrying storm of emigrating +roofs and vacant lots. + +It was something to see that much. I could have seen more, if I could +have kept the dust out of my eyes. + +But seriously a Washoe wind is by no means a trifling matter. It blows +flimsy houses down, lifts shingle roofs occasionally, rolls up tin ones +like sheet music, now and then blows a stage coach over and spills the +passengers; and tradition says the reason there are so many bald people +there, is, that the wind blows the hair off their heads while they are +looking skyward after their hats. Carson streets seldom look inactive on +Summer afternoons, because there are so many citizens skipping around +their escaping hats, like chambermaids trying to head off a spider. + +The "Washoe Zephyr" (Washoe is a pet nickname for Nevada) is a peculiar +Scriptural wind, in that no man knoweth "whence it cometh." That is to +say, where it originates. It comes right over the mountains from the +West, but when one crosses the ridge he does not find any of it on the +other side! It probably is manufactured on the mountain-top for the +occasion, and starts from there. It is a pretty regular wind, in the +summer time. Its office hours are from two in the afternoon till two the +next morning; and anybody venturing abroad during those twelve hours +needs to allow for the wind or he will bring up a mile or two to leeward +of the point he is aiming at. And yet the first complaint a Washoe +visitor to San Francisco makes, is that the sea winds blow so, there! +There is a good deal of human nature in that. + +We found the state palace of the Governor of Nevada Territory to consist +of a white frame one-story house with two small rooms in it and a +stanchion supported shed in front--for grandeur--it compelled the respect +of the citizen and inspired the Indians with awe. The newly arrived +Chief and Associate Justices of the Territory, and other machinery of the +government, were domiciled with less splendor. They were boarding around +privately, and had their offices in their bedrooms. + +The Secretary and I took quarters in the "ranch" of a worthy French lady +by the name of Bridget O'Flannigan, a camp follower of his Excellency the +Governor. She had known him in his prosperity as commander-in-chief of +the Metropolitan Police of New York, and she would not desert him in his +adversity as Governor of Nevada. + +Our room was on the lower floor, facing the plaza, and when we had got +our bed, a small table, two chairs, the government fire-proof safe, and +the Unabridged Dictionary into it, there was still room enough left for a +visitor--may be two, but not without straining the walls. But the walls +could stand it--at least the partitions could, for they consisted simply +of one thickness of white "cotton domestic" stretched from corner to +corner of the room. This was the rule in Carson--any other kind of +partition was the rare exception. And if you stood in a dark room and +your neighbors in the next had lights, the shadows on your canvas told +queer secrets sometimes! Very often these partitions were made of old +flour sacks basted together; and then the difference between the common +herd and the aristocracy was, that the common herd had unornamented +sacks, while the walls of the aristocrat were overpowering with +rudimental fresco--i.e., red and blue mill brands on the flour sacks. + +Occasionally, also, the better classes embellished their canvas by +pasting pictures from Harper's Weekly on them. In many cases, too, the +wealthy and the cultured rose to spittoons and other evidences of a +sumptuous and luxurious taste. [Washoe people take a joke so hard that I +must explain that the above description was only the rule; there were +many honorable exceptions in Carson--plastered ceilings and houses that +had considerable furniture in them.--M. T.] + +We had a carpet and a genuine queen's-ware washbowl. Consequently we +were hated without reserve by the other tenants of the O'Flannigan +"ranch." When we added a painted oilcloth window curtain, we simply took +our lives into our own hands. To prevent bloodshed I removed up stairs +and took up quarters with the untitled plebeians in one of the fourteen +white pine cot-bedsteads that stood in two long ranks in the one sole +room of which the second story consisted. + +It was a jolly company, the fourteen. They were principally voluntary +camp-followers of the Governor, who had joined his retinue by their own +election at New York and San Francisco and came along, feeling that in +the scuffle for little territorial crumbs and offices they could not make +their condition more precarious than it was, and might reasonably expect +to make it better. They were popularly known as the "Irish Brigade," +though there were only four or five Irishmen among all the Governor's +retainers. + +His good-natured Excellency was much annoyed at the gossip his henchmen +created--especially when there arose a rumor that they were paid +assassins of his, brought along to quietly reduce the democratic vote +when desirable! + +Mrs. O'Flannigan was boarding and lodging them at ten dollars a week +apiece, and they were cheerfully giving their notes for it. They were +perfectly satisfied, but Bridget presently found that notes that could +not be discounted were but a feeble constitution for a Carson +boarding-house. So she began to harry the Governor to find employment +for the "Brigade." Her importunities and theirs together drove him to a +gentle desperation at last, and he finally summoned the Brigade to the +presence. Then, said he: + +"Gentlemen, I have planned a lucrative and useful service for you +--a service which will provide you with recreation amid noble landscapes, +and afford you never ceasing opportunities for enriching your minds by +observation and study. I want you to survey a railroad from Carson City +westward to a certain point! When the legislature meets I will have the +necessary bill passed and the remuneration arranged." + +"What, a railroad over the Sierra Nevada Mountains?" + +"Well, then, survey it eastward to a certain point!" + +He converted them into surveyors, chain-bearers and so on, and turned +them loose in the desert. It was "recreation" with a vengeance! +Recreation on foot, lugging chains through sand and sage-brush, under a +sultry sun and among cattle bones, cayotes and tarantulas. + +"Romantic adventure" could go no further. They surveyed very slowly, +very deliberately, very carefully. They returned every night during the +first week, dusty, footsore, tired, and hungry, but very jolly. They +brought in great store of prodigious hairy spiders--tarantulas--and +imprisoned them in covered tumblers up stairs in the "ranch." After the +first week, they had to camp on the field, for they were getting well +eastward. They made a good many inquiries as to the location of that +indefinite "certain point," but got no information. At last, to a +peculiarly urgent inquiry of "How far eastward?" Governor Nye +telegraphed back: + +"To the Atlantic Ocean, blast you!--and then bridge it and go on!" + +This brought back the dusty toilers, who sent in a report and ceased from +their labors. The Governor was always comfortable about it; he said Mrs. +O'Flannigan would hold him for the Brigade's board anyhow, and he +intended to get what entertainment he could out of the boys; he said, +with his old-time pleasant twinkle, that he meant to survey them into +Utah and then telegraph Brigham to hang them for trespass! + +The surveyors brought back more tarantulas with them, and so we had quite +a menagerie arranged along the shelves of the room. Some of these +spiders could straddle over a common saucer with their hairy, muscular +legs, and when their feelings were hurt, or their dignity offended, they +were the wickedest-looking desperadoes the animal world can furnish. +If their glass prison-houses were touched ever so lightly they were up +and spoiling for a fight in a minute. Starchy?--proud? Indeed, they +would take up a straw and pick their teeth like a member of Congress. +There was as usual a furious "zephyr" blowing the first night of the +brigade's return, and about midnight the roof of an adjoining stable blew +off, and a corner of it came crashing through the side of our ranch. +There was a simultaneous awakening, and a tumultuous muster of the +brigade in the dark, and a general tumbling and sprawling over each other +in the narrow aisle between the bedrows. In the midst of the turmoil, +Bob H---- sprung up out of a sound sleep, and knocked down a shelf with +his head. Instantly he shouted: + +"Turn out, boys--the tarantulas is loose!" + +No warning ever sounded so dreadful. Nobody tried, any longer, to leave +the room, lest he might step on a tarantula. Every man groped for a +trunk or a bed, and jumped on it. Then followed the strangest silence--a +silence of grisly suspense it was, too--waiting, expectancy, fear. It +was as dark as pitch, and one had to imagine the spectacle of those +fourteen scant-clad men roosting gingerly on trunks and beds, for not a +thing could be seen. Then came occasional little interruptions of the +silence, and one could recognize a man and tell his locality by his +voice, or locate any other sound a sufferer made by his gropings or +changes of position. The occasional voices were not given to much +speaking--you simply heard a gentle ejaculation of "Ow!" followed by a +solid thump, and you knew the gentleman had felt a hairy blanket or +something touch his bare skin and had skipped from a bed to the floor. +Another silence. Presently you would hear a gasping voice say: + +"Su--su--something's crawling up the back of my neck!" + +Every now and then you could hear a little subdued scramble and a +sorrowful "O Lord!" and then you knew that somebody was getting away from +something he took for a tarantula, and not losing any time about it, +either. Directly a voice in the corner rang out wild and clear: + +"I've got him! I've got him!" [Pause, and probable change of +circumstances.] "No, he's got me! Oh, ain't they never going to fetch a +lantern!" + +The lantern came at that moment, in the hands of Mrs. O'Flannigan, whose +anxiety to know the amount of damage done by the assaulting roof had not +prevented her waiting a judicious interval, after getting out of bed and +lighting up, to see if the wind was done, now, up stairs, or had a larger +contract. + +The landscape presented when the lantern flashed into the room was +picturesque, and might have been funny to some people, but was not to us. +Although we were perched so strangely upon boxes, trunks and beds, and so +strangely attired, too, we were too earnestly distressed and too +genuinely miserable to see any fun about it, and there was not the +semblance of a smile anywhere visible. I know I am not capable of +suffering more than I did during those few minutes of suspense in the +dark, surrounded by those creeping, bloody-minded tarantulas. I had +skipped from bed to bed and from box to box in a cold agony, and every +time I touched anything that was furzy I fancied I felt the fangs. I had +rather go to war than live that episode over again. Nobody was hurt. +The man who thought a tarantula had "got him" was mistaken--only a crack +in a box had caught his finger. Not one of those escaped tarantulas was +ever seen again. There were ten or twelve of them. We took candles and +hunted the place high and low for them, but with no success. Did we go +back to bed then? We did nothing of the kind. Money could not have +persuaded us to do it. We sat up the rest of the night playing cribbage +and keeping a sharp lookout for the enemy. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +It was the end of August, and the skies were cloudless and the weather +superb. In two or three weeks I had grown wonderfully fascinated with +the curious new country and concluded to put off my return to "the +States" awhile. I had grown well accustomed to wearing a damaged slouch +hat, blue woolen shirt, and pants crammed into boot-tops, and gloried in +the absence of coat, vest and braces. I felt rowdyish and "bully," (as +the historian Josephus phrases it, in his fine chapter upon the +destruction of the Temple). It seemed to me that nothing could be so +fine and so romantic. I had become an officer of the government, but +that was for mere sublimity. The office was an unique sinecure. I had +nothing to do and no salary. I was private Secretary to his majesty the +Secretary and there was not yet writing enough for two of us. So Johnny +K---- and I devoted our time to amusement. He was the young son of an +Ohio nabob and was out there for recreation. He got it. We had heard a +world of talk about the marvellous beauty of Lake Tahoe, and finally +curiosity drove us thither to see it. Three or four members of the +Brigade had been there and located some timber lands on its shores and +stored up a quantity of provisions in their camp. We strapped a couple +of blankets on our shoulders and took an axe apiece and started--for we +intended to take up a wood ranch or so ourselves and become wealthy. +We were on foot. The reader will find it advantageous to go horseback. +We were told that the distance was eleven miles. We tramped a long time +on level ground, and then toiled laboriously up a mountain about a +thousand miles high and looked over. No lake there. We descended on the +other side, crossed the valley and toiled up another mountain three or +four thousand miles high, apparently, and looked over again. No lake +yet. We sat down tired and perspiring, and hired a couple of Chinamen to +curse those people who had beguiled us. Thus refreshed, we presently +resumed the march with renewed vigor and determination. We plodded on, +two or three hours longer, and at last the Lake burst upon us--a noble +sheet of blue water lifted six thousand three hundred feet above the +level of the sea, and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that +towered aloft full three thousand feet higher still! It was a vast oval, +and one would have to use up eighty or a hundred good miles in traveling +around it. As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly +photographed upon its still surface I thought it must surely be the +fairest picture the whole earth affords. + +We found the small skiff belonging to the Brigade boys, and without loss +of time set out across a deep bend of the lake toward the landmarks that +signified the locality of the camp. I got Johnny to row--not because I +mind exertion myself, but because it makes me sick to ride backwards when +I am at work. But I steered. A three-mile pull brought us to the camp +just as the night fell, and we stepped ashore very tired and wolfishly +hungry. In a "cache" among the rocks we found the provisions and the +cooking utensils, and then, all fatigued as I was, I sat down on a +boulder and superintended while Johnny gathered wood and cooked supper. +Many a man who had gone through what I had, would have wanted to rest. + +It was a delicious supper--hot bread, fried bacon, and black coffee. +It was a delicious solitude we were in, too. Three miles away was a +saw-mill and some workmen, but there were not fifteen other human beings +throughout the wide circumference of the lake. As the darkness closed +down and the stars came out and spangled the great mirror with jewels, we +smoked meditatively in the solemn hush and forgot our troubles and our +pains. In due time we spread our blankets in the warm sand between two +large boulders and soon feel asleep, careless of the procession of ants +that passed in through rents in our clothing and explored our persons. +Nothing could disturb the sleep that fettered us, for it had been fairly +earned, and if our consciences had any sins on them they had to adjourn +court for that night, any way. The wind rose just as we were losing +consciousness, and we were lulled to sleep by the beating of the surf +upon the shore. + +It is always very cold on that lake shore in the night, but we had plenty +of blankets and were warm enough. We never moved a muscle all night, but +waked at early dawn in the original positions, and got up at once, +thoroughly refreshed, free from soreness, and brim full of friskiness. +There is no end of wholesome medicine in such an experience. That +morning we could have whipped ten such people as we were the day before +--sick ones at any rate. But the world is slow, and people will go to +"water cures" and "movement cures" and to foreign lands for health. +Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy +to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator. I do +not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones. +The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and +delicious. And why shouldn't it be?--it is the same the angels breathe. +I think that hardly any amount of fatigue can be gathered together that a +man cannot sleep off in one night on the sand by its side. Not under a +roof, but under the sky; it seldom or never rains there in the summer +time. I know a man who went there to die. But he made a failure of it. +He was a skeleton when he came, and could barely stand. He had no +appetite, and did nothing but read tracts and reflect on the future. +Three months later he was sleeping out of doors regularly, eating all he +could hold, three times a day, and chasing game over mountains three +thousand feet high for recreation. And he was a skeleton no longer, but +weighed part of a ton. This is no fancy sketch, but the truth. His +disease was consumption. I confidently commend his experience to other +skeletons. + +I superintended again, and as soon as we had eaten breakfast we got in +the boat and skirted along the lake shore about three miles and +disembarked. We liked the appearance of the place, and so we claimed +some three hundred acres of it and stuck our "notices" on a tree. It was +yellow pine timber land--a dense forest of trees a hundred feet high and +from one to five feet through at the butt. It was necessary to fence our +property or we could not hold it. That is to say, it was necessary to +cut down trees here and there and make them fall in such a way as to form +a sort of enclosure (with pretty wide gaps in it). We cut down three +trees apiece, and found it such heart-breaking work that we decided to +"rest our case" on those; if they held the property, well and good; if +they didn't, let the property spill out through the gaps and go; it was +no use to work ourselves to death merely to save a few acres of land. +Next day we came back to build a house--for a house was also necessary, +in order to hold the property. We decided to build a substantial +log-house and excite the envy of the Brigade boys; but by the time we had +cut and trimmed the first log it seemed unnecessary to be so elaborate, +and so we concluded to build it of saplings. However, two saplings, duly +cut and trimmed, compelled recognition of the fact that a still modester +architecture would satisfy the law, and so we concluded to build a +"brush" house. We devoted the next day to this work, but we did so much +"sitting around" and discussing, that by the middle of the afternoon we +had achieved only a half-way sort of affair which one of us had to watch +while the other cut brush, lest if both turned our backs we might not be +able to find it again, it had such a strong family resemblance to the +surrounding vegetation. But we were satisfied with it. + +We were land owners now, duly seized and possessed, and within the +protection of the law. Therefore we decided to take up our residence on +our own domain and enjoy that large sense of independence which only such +an experience can bring. Late the next afternoon, after a good long +rest, we sailed away from the Brigade camp with all the provisions and +cooking utensils we could carry off--borrow is the more accurate word +--and just as the night was falling we beached the boat at our own landing. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +If there is any life that is happier than the life we led on our timber +ranch for the next two or three weeks, it must be a sort of life which I +have not read of in books or experienced in person. We did not see a +human being but ourselves during the time, or hear any sounds but those +that were made by the wind and the waves, the sighing of the pines, and +now and then the far-off thunder of an avalanche. The forest about us +was dense and cool, the sky above us was cloudless and brilliant with +sunshine, the broad lake before us was glassy and clear, or rippled and +breezy, or black and storm-tossed, according to Nature's mood; and its +circling border of mountain domes, clothed with forests, scarred with +land-slides, cloven by canons and valleys, and helmeted with glittering +snow, fitly framed and finished the noble picture. The view was always +fascinating, bewitching, entrancing. The eye was never tired of gazing, +night or day, in calm or storm; it suffered but one grief, and that was +that it could not look always, but must close sometimes in sleep. + +We slept in the sand close to the water's edge, between two protecting +boulders, which took care of the stormy night-winds for us. We never +took any paregoric to make us sleep. At the first break of dawn we were +always up and running foot-races to tone down excess of physical vigor +and exuberance of spirits. That is, Johnny was--but I held his hat. +While smoking the pipe of peace after breakfast we watched the sentinel +peaks put on the glory of the sun, and followed the conquering light as +it swept down among the shadows, and set the captive crags and forests +free. We watched the tinted pictures grow and brighten upon the water +till every little detail of forest, precipice and pinnacle was wrought in +and finished, and the miracle of the enchanter complete. Then to +"business." + +That is, drifting around in the boat. We were on the north shore. +There, the rocks on the bottom are sometimes gray, sometimes white. +This gives the marvelous transparency of the water a fuller advantage +than it has elsewhere on the lake. We usually pushed out a hundred yards +or so from shore, and then lay down on the thwarts, in the sun, and let +the boat drift by the hour whither it would. We seldom talked. +It interrupted the Sabbath stillness, and marred the dreams the luxurious +rest and indolence brought. The shore all along was indented with deep, +curved bays and coves, bordered by narrow sand-beaches; and where the +sand ended, the steep mountain-sides rose right up aloft into space--rose +up like a vast wall a little out of the perpendicular, and thickly wooded +with tall pines. + +So singularly clear was the water, that where it was only twenty or +thirty feet deep the bottom was so perfectly distinct that the boat +seemed floating in the air! Yes, where it was even eighty feet deep. +Every little pebble was distinct, every speckled trout, every +hand's-breadth of sand. Often, as we lay on our faces, a granite +boulder, as large as a village church, would start out of the bottom +apparently, and seem climbing up rapidly to the surface, till presently +it threatened to touch our faces, and we could not resist the impulse to +seize an oar and avert the danger. But the boat would float on, and the +boulder descend again, and then we could see that when we had been +exactly above it, it must still have been twenty or thirty feet below the +surface. Down through the transparency of these great depths, the water +was not merely transparent, but dazzlingly, brilliantly so. All objects +seen through it had a bright, strong vividness, not only of outline, but +of every minute detail, which they would not have had when seen simply +through the same depth of atmosphere. So empty and airy did all spaces +seem below us, and so strong was the sense of floating high aloft in +mid-nothingness, that we called these boat-excursions "balloon-voyages." + +We fished a good deal, but we did not average one fish a week. We could +see trout by the thousand winging about in the emptiness under us, or +sleeping in shoals on the bottom, but they would not bite--they could see +the line too plainly, perhaps. We frequently selected the trout we +wanted, and rested the bait patiently and persistently on the end of his +nose at a depth of eighty feet, but he would only shake it off with an +annoyed manner, and shift his position. + +We bathed occasionally, but the water was rather chilly, for all it +looked so sunny. Sometimes we rowed out to the "blue water," a mile or +two from shore. It was as dead blue as indigo there, because of the +immense depth. By official measurement the lake in its centre is one +thousand five hundred and twenty-five feet deep! + +Sometimes, on lazy afternoons, we lolled on the sand in camp, and smoked +pipes and read some old well-worn novels. At night, by the camp-fire, we +played euchre and seven-up to strengthen the mind--and played them with +cards so greasy and defaced that only a whole summer's acquaintance with +them could enable the student to tell the ace of clubs from the jack of +diamonds. + +We never slept in our "house." It never recurred to us, for one thing; +and besides, it was built to hold the ground, and that was enough. We +did not wish to strain it. + +By and by our provisions began to run short, and we went back to the old +camp and laid in a new supply. We were gone all day, and reached home +again about night-fall, pretty tired and hungry. While Johnny was +carrying the main bulk of the provisions up to our "house" for future +use, I took the loaf of bread, some slices of bacon, and the coffee-pot, +ashore, set them down by a tree, lit a fire, and went back to the boat to +get the frying-pan. While I was at this, I heard a shout from Johnny, +and looking up I saw that my fire was galloping all over the premises! +Johnny was on the other side of it. He had to run through the flames to +get to the lake shore, and then we stood helpless and watched the +devastation. + +The ground was deeply carpeted with dry pine-needles, and the fire +touched them off as if they were gunpowder. It was wonderful to see with +what fierce speed the tall sheet of flame traveled! My coffee-pot was +gone, and everything with it. In a minute and a half the fire seized +upon a dense growth of dry manzanita chapparal six or eight feet high, +and then the roaring and popping and crackling was something terrific. +We were driven to the boat by the intense heat, and there we remained, +spell-bound. + +Within half an hour all before us was a tossing, blinding tempest of +flame! It went surging up adjacent ridges--surmounted them and +disappeared in the canons beyond--burst into view upon higher and farther +ridges, presently--shed a grander illumination abroad, and dove again +--flamed out again, directly, higher and still higher up the +mountain-side--threw out skirmishing parties of fire here and there, and +sent them trailing their crimson spirals away among remote ramparts and +ribs and gorges, till as far as the eye could reach the lofty +mountain-fronts were webbed as it were with a tangled network of red lava +streams. Away across the water the crags and domes were lit with a ruddy +glare, and the firmament above was a reflected hell! + +Every feature of the spectacle was repeated in the glowing mirror of the +lake! Both pictures were sublime, both were beautiful; but that in the +lake had a bewildering richness about it that enchanted the eye and held +it with the stronger fascination. + +We sat absorbed and motionless through four long hours. We never thought +of supper, and never felt fatigue. But at eleven o'clock the +conflagration had traveled beyond our range of vision, and then darkness +stole down upon the landscape again. + +Hunger asserted itself now, but there was nothing to eat. The provisions +were all cooked, no doubt, but we did not go to see. We were homeless +wanderers again, without any property. Our fence was gone, our house +burned down; no insurance. Our pine forest was well scorched, the dead +trees all burned up, and our broad acres of manzanita swept away. Our +blankets were on our usual sand-bed, however, and so we lay down and went +to sleep. The next morning we started back to the old camp, but while +out a long way from shore, so great a storm came up that we dared not try +to land. So I baled out the seas we shipped, and Johnny pulled heavily +through the billows till we had reached a point three or four miles +beyond the camp. The storm was increasing, and it became evident that it +was better to take the hazard of beaching the boat than go down in a +hundred fathoms of water; so we ran in, with tall white-caps following, +and I sat down in the stern-sheets and pointed her head-on to the shore. +The instant the bow struck, a wave came over the stern that washed crew +and cargo ashore, and saved a deal of trouble. We shivered in the lee of +a boulder all the rest of the day, and froze all the night through. In +the morning the tempest had gone down, and we paddled down to the camp +without any unnecessary delay. We were so starved that we ate up the +rest of the Brigade's provisions, and then set out to Carson to tell them +about it and ask their forgiveness. It was accorded, upon payment of +damages. + +We made many trips to the lake after that, and had many a hair-breadth +escape and blood-curdling adventure which will never be recorded in any +history. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +I resolved to have a horse to ride. I had never seen such wild, free, +magnificent horsemanship outside of a circus as these picturesquely-clad +Mexicans, Californians and Mexicanized Americans displayed in Carson +streets every day. How they rode! Leaning just gently forward out of +the perpendicular, easy and nonchalant, with broad slouch-hat brim blown +square up in front, and long riata swinging above the head, they swept +through the town like the wind! The next minute they were only a sailing +puff of dust on the far desert. If they trotted, they sat up gallantly +and gracefully, and seemed part of the horse; did not go jiggering up and +down after the silly Miss-Nancy fashion of the riding-schools. I had +quickly learned to tell a horse from a cow, and was full of anxiety to +learn more. I was resolved to buy a horse. + +While the thought was rankling in my mind, the auctioneer came skurrying +through the plaza on a black beast that had as many humps and corners on +him as a dromedary, and was necessarily uncomely; but he was "going, +going, at twenty-two!--horse, saddle and bridle at twenty-two dollars, +gentlemen!" and I could hardly resist. + +A man whom I did not know (he turned out to be the auctioneer's brother) +noticed the wistful look in my eye, and observed that that was a very +remarkable horse to be going at such a price; and added that the saddle +alone was worth the money. It was a Spanish saddle, with ponderous +'tapidaros', and furnished with the ungainly sole-leather covering with +the unspellable name. I said I had half a notion to bid. Then this +keen-eyed person appeared to me to be "taking my measure"; but I +dismissed the suspicion when he spoke, for his manner was full of +guileless candor and truthfulness. Said he: + +"I know that horse--know him well. You are a stranger, I take it, and so +you might think he was an American horse, maybe, but I assure you he is +not. He is nothing of the kind; but--excuse my speaking in a low voice, +other people being near--he is, without the shadow of a doubt, a Genuine +Mexican Plug!" + +I did not know what a Genuine Mexican Plug was, but there was something +about this man's way of saying it, that made me swear inwardly that I +would own a Genuine Mexican Plug, or die. + +"Has he any other--er--advantages?" I inquired, suppressing what +eagerness I could. + +He hooked his forefinger in the pocket of my army-shirt, led me to one +side, and breathed in my ear impressively these words: + +"He can out-buck anything in America!" + +"Going, going, going--at twent--ty--four dollars and a half, gen--" + +"Twenty-seven!" I shouted, in a frenzy. + +"And sold!" said the auctioneer, and passed over the Genuine Mexican Plug +to me. + +I could scarcely contain my exultation. I paid the money, and put the +animal in a neighboring livery-stable to dine and rest himself. + +In the afternoon I brought the creature into the plaza, and certain +citizens held him by the head, and others by the tail, while I mounted +him. As soon as they let go, he placed all his feet in a bunch together, +lowered his back, and then suddenly arched it upward, and shot me +straight into the air a matter of three or four feet! I came as straight +down again, lit in the saddle, went instantly up again, came down almost +on the high pommel, shot up again, and came down on the horse's neck--all +in the space of three or four seconds. Then he rose and stood almost +straight up on his hind feet, and I, clasping his lean neck desperately, +slid back into the saddle and held on. He came down, and immediately +hoisted his heels into the air, delivering a vicious kick at the sky, and +stood on his forefeet. And then down he came once more, and began the +original exercise of shooting me straight up again. The third time I +went up I heard a stranger say: + +"Oh, don't he buck, though!" + +While I was up, somebody struck the horse a sounding thwack with a +leathern strap, and when I arrived again the Genuine Mexican Plug was not +there. A California youth chased him up and caught him, and asked if he +might have a ride. I granted him that luxury. He mounted the Genuine, +got lifted into the air once, but sent his spurs home as he descended, +and the horse darted away like a telegram. He soared over three fences +like a bird, and disappeared down the road toward the Washoe Valley. + +I sat down on a stone, with a sigh, and by a natural impulse one of my +hands sought my forehead, and the other the base of my stomach. I +believe I never appreciated, till then, the poverty of the human +machinery--for I still needed a hand or two to place elsewhere. Pen +cannot describe how I was jolted up. Imagination cannot conceive how +disjointed I was--how internally, externally and universally I was +unsettled, mixed up and ruptured. There was a sympathetic crowd around +me, though. + +One elderly-looking comforter said: + +"Stranger, you've been taken in. Everybody in this camp knows that +horse. Any child, any Injun, could have told you that he'd buck; he is +the very worst devil to buck on the continent of America. You hear me. +I'm Curry. Old Curry. Old Abe Curry. And moreover, he is a simon-pure, +out-and-out, genuine d--d Mexican plug, and an uncommon mean one at that, +too. Why, you turnip, if you had laid low and kept dark, there's chances +to buy an American horse for mighty little more than you paid for that +bloody old foreign relic." + +I gave no sign; but I made up my mind that if the auctioneer's brother's +funeral took place while I was in the Territory I would postpone all +other recreations and attend it. + +After a gallop of sixteen miles the Californian youth and the Genuine +Mexican Plug came tearing into town again, shedding foam-flakes like the +spume-spray that drives before a typhoon, and, with one final skip over a +wheelbarrow and a Chinaman, cast anchor in front of the "ranch." + +Such panting and blowing! Such spreading and contracting of the red +equine nostrils, and glaring of the wild equine eye! But was the +imperial beast subjugated? Indeed he was not. + +His lordship the Speaker of the House thought he was, and mounted him to +go down to the Capitol; but the first dash the creature made was over a +pile of telegraph poles half as high as a church; and his time to the +Capitol--one mile and three quarters--remains unbeaten to this day. But +then he took an advantage--he left out the mile, and only did the three +quarters. That is to say, he made a straight cut across lots, preferring +fences and ditches to a crooked road; and when the Speaker got to the +Capitol he said he had been in the air so much he felt as if he had made +the trip on a comet. + +In the evening the Speaker came home afoot for exercise, and got the +Genuine towed back behind a quartz wagon. The next day I loaned the +animal to the Clerk of the House to go down to the Dana silver mine, six +miles, and he walked back for exercise, and got the horse towed. +Everybody I loaned him to always walked back; they never could get enough +exercise any other way. + +Still, I continued to loan him to anybody who was willing to borrow him, +my idea being to get him crippled, and throw him on the borrower's hands, +or killed, and make the borrower pay for him. But somehow nothing ever +happened to him. He took chances that no other horse ever took and +survived, but he always came out safe. It was his daily habit to try +experiments that had always before been considered impossible, but he +always got through. Sometimes he miscalculated a little, and did not get +his rider through intact, but he always got through himself. Of course I +had tried to sell him; but that was a stretch of simplicity which met +with little sympathy. The auctioneer stormed up and down the streets on +him for four days, dispersing the populace, interrupting business, and +destroying children, and never got a bid--at least never any but the +eighteen-dollar one he hired a notoriously substanceless bummer to make. +The people only smiled pleasantly, and restrained their desire to buy, if +they had any. Then the auctioneer brought in his bill, and I withdrew +the horse from the market. We tried to trade him off at private vendue +next, offering him at a sacrifice for second-hand tombstones, old iron, +temperance tracts--any kind of property. But holders were stiff, and we +retired from the market again. I never tried to ride the horse any more. +Walking was good enough exercise for a man like me, that had nothing the +matter with him except ruptures, internal injuries, and such things. +Finally I tried to give him away. But it was a failure. Parties said +earthquakes were handy enough on the Pacific coast--they did not wish to +own one. As a last resort I offered him to the Governor for the use of +the "Brigade." His face lit up eagerly at first, but toned down again, +and he said the thing would be too palpable. + +Just then the livery stable man brought in his bill for six weeks' +keeping--stall-room for the horse, fifteen dollars; hay for the horse, +two hundred and fifty! The Genuine Mexican Plug had eaten a ton of the +article, and the man said he would have eaten a hundred if he had let +him. + +I will remark here, in all seriousness, that the regular price of hay +during that year and a part of the next was really two hundred and fifty +dollars a ton. During a part of the previous year it had sold at five +hundred a ton, in gold, and during the winter before that there was such +scarcity of the article that in several instances small quantities had +brought eight hundred dollars a ton in coin! The consequence might be +guessed without my telling it: peopled turned their stock loose to +starve, and before the spring arrived Carson and Eagle valleys were +almost literally carpeted with their carcases! Any old settler there +will verify these statements. + +I managed to pay the livery bill, and that same day I gave the Genuine +Mexican Plug to a passing Arkansas emigrant whom fortune delivered into +my hand. If this ever meets his eye, he will doubtless remember the +donation. + +Now whoever has had the luck to ride a real Mexican plug will recognize +the animal depicted in this chapter, and hardly consider him exaggerated +--but the uninitiated will feel justified in regarding his portrait as a +fancy sketch, perhaps. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +Originally, Nevada was a part of Utah and was called Carson county; and a +pretty large county it was, too. Certain of its valleys produced no end +of hay, and this attracted small colonies of Mormon stock-raisers and +farmers to them. A few orthodox Americans straggled in from California, +but no love was lost between the two classes of colonists. There was +little or no friendly intercourse; each party staid to itself. The +Mormons were largely in the majority, and had the additional advantage of +being peculiarly under the protection of the Mormon government of the +Territory. Therefore they could afford to be distant, and even +peremptory toward their neighbors. One of the traditions of Carson +Valley illustrates the condition of things that prevailed at the time I +speak of. The hired girl of one of the American families was Irish, and +a Catholic; yet it was noted with surprise that she was the only person +outside of the Mormon ring who could get favors from the Mormons. She +asked kindnesses of them often, and always got them. It was a mystery to +everybody. But one day as she was passing out at the door, a large bowie +knife dropped from under her apron, and when her mistress asked for an +explanation she observed that she was going out to "borry a wash-tub from +the Mormons!" + +In 1858 silver lodes were discovered in "Carson County," and then the +aspect of things changed. Californians began to flock in, and the +American element was soon in the majority. Allegiance to Brigham Young +and Utah was renounced, and a temporary territorial government for +"Washoe" was instituted by the citizens. Governor Roop was the first and +only chief magistrate of it. In due course of time Congress passed a +bill to organize "Nevada Territory," and President Lincoln sent out +Governor Nye to supplant Roop. + +At this time the population of the Territory was about twelve or fifteen +thousand, and rapidly increasing. Silver mines were being vigorously +developed and silver mills erected. Business of all kinds was active and +prosperous and growing more so day by day. + +The people were glad to have a legitimately constituted government, but +did not particularly enjoy having strangers from distant States put in +authority over them--a sentiment that was natural enough. They thought +the officials should have been chosen from among themselves from among +prominent citizens who had earned a right to such promotion, and who +would be in sympathy with the populace and likewise thoroughly acquainted +with the needs of the Territory. They were right in viewing the matter +thus, without doubt. The new officers were "emigrants," and that was no +title to anybody's affection or admiration either. + +The new government was received with considerable coolness. It was not +only a foreign intruder, but a poor one. It was not even worth plucking +--except by the smallest of small fry office-seekers and such. Everybody +knew that Congress had appropriated only twenty thousand dollars a year +in greenbacks for its support--about money enough to run a quartz mill a +month. And everybody knew, also, that the first year's money was still +in Washington, and that the getting hold of it would be a tedious and +difficult process. Carson City was too wary and too wise to open up a +credit account with the imported bantling with anything like indecent +haste. + +There is something solemnly funny about the struggles of a new-born +Territorial government to get a start in this world. Ours had a trying +time of it. The Organic Act and the "instructions" from the State +Department commanded that a legislature should be elected at +such-and-such a time, and its sittings inaugurated at such-and-such a +date. It was easy to get legislators, even at three dollars a day, +although board was four dollars and fifty cents, for distinction has its +charm in Nevada as well as elsewhere, and there were plenty of patriotic +souls out of employment; but to get a legislative hall for them to meet +in was another matter altogether. Carson blandly declined to give a room +rent-free, or let one to the government on credit. + +But when Curry heard of the difficulty, he came forward, solitary and +alone, and shouldered the Ship of State over the bar and got her afloat +again. I refer to "Curry--Old Curry--Old Abe Curry." But for him the +legislature would have been obliged to sit in the desert. He offered his +large stone building just outside the capital limits, rent-free, and it +was gladly accepted. Then he built a horse-railroad from town to the +capitol, and carried the legislators gratis. + +He also furnished pine benches and chairs for the legislature, and +covered the floors with clean saw-dust by way of carpet and spittoon +combined. But for Curry the government would have died in its tender +infancy. A canvas partition to separate the Senate from the House of +Representatives was put up by the Secretary, at a cost of three dollars +and forty cents, but the United States declined to pay for it. Upon +being reminded that the "instructions" permitted the payment of a liberal +rent for a legislative hall, and that that money was saved to the country +by Mr. Curry's generosity, the United States said that did not alter the +matter, and the three dollars and forty cents would be subtracted from +the Secretary's eighteen hundred dollar salary--and it was! + +The matter of printing was from the beginning an interesting feature of +the new government's difficulties. The Secretary was sworn to obey his +volume of written "instructions," and these commanded him to do two +certain things without fail, viz.: + +1. Get the House and Senate journals printed; and, +2. For this work, pay one dollar and fifty cents per "thousand" for +composition, and one dollar and fifty cents per "token" for press-work, +in greenbacks. + +It was easy to swear to do these two things, but it was entirely +impossible to do more than one of them. When greenbacks had gone down to +forty cents on the dollar, the prices regularly charged everybody by +printing establishments were one dollar and fifty cents per "thousand" +and one dollar and fifty cents per "token," in gold. The "instructions" +commanded that the Secretary regard a paper dollar issued by the +government as equal to any other dollar issued by the government. Hence +the printing of the journals was discontinued. Then the United States +sternly rebuked the Secretary for disregarding the "instructions," and +warned him to correct his ways. Wherefore he got some printing done, +forwarded the bill to Washington with full exhibits of the high prices of +things in the Territory, and called attention to a printed market report +wherein it would be observed that even hay was two hundred and fifty +dollars a ton. The United States responded by subtracting the +printing-bill from the Secretary's suffering salary--and moreover +remarked with dense gravity that he would find nothing in his +"instructions" requiring him to purchase hay! + +Nothing in this world is palled in such impenetrable obscurity as a U.S. +Treasury Comptroller's understanding. The very fires of the hereafter +could get up nothing more than a fitful glimmer in it. In the days I +speak of he never could be made to comprehend why it was that twenty +thousand dollars would not go as far in Nevada, where all commodities +ranged at an enormous figure, as it would in the other Territories, where +exceeding cheapness was the rule. He was an officer who looked out for +the little expenses all the time. The Secretary of the Territory kept +his office in his bedroom, as I before remarked; and he charged the +United States no rent, although his "instructions" provided for that item +and he could have justly taken advantage of it (a thing which I would +have done with more than lightning promptness if I had been Secretary +myself). But the United States never applauded this devotion. Indeed, I +think my country was ashamed to have so improvident a person in its +employ. + +Those "instructions" (we used to read a chapter from them every morning, +as intellectual gymnastics, and a couple of chapters in Sunday school +every Sabbath, for they treated of all subjects under the sun and had +much valuable religious matter in them along with the other statistics) +those "instructions" commanded that pen-knives, envelopes, pens and +writing-paper be furnished the members of the legislature. So the +Secretary made the purchase and the distribution. The knives cost three +dollars apiece. There was one too many, and the Secretary gave it to the +Clerk of the House of Representatives. The United States said the Clerk +of the House was not a "member" of the legislature, and took that three +dollars out of the Secretary's salary, as usual. + +White men charged three or four dollars a "load" for sawing up +stove-wood. The Secretary was sagacious enough to know that the United +States would never pay any such price as that; so he got an Indian to saw +up a load of office wood at one dollar and a half. He made out the usual +voucher, but signed no name to it--simply appended a note explaining that +an Indian had done the work, and had done it in a very capable and +satisfactory way, but could not sign the voucher owing to lack of ability +in the necessary direction. The Secretary had to pay that dollar and a +half. He thought the United States would admire both his economy and his +honesty in getting the work done at half price and not putting a +pretended Indian's signature to the voucher, but the United States did +not see it in that light. + +The United States was too much accustomed to employing dollar-and-a-half +thieves in all manner of official capacities to regard his explanation of +the voucher as having any foundation in fact. + +But the next time the Indian sawed wood for us I taught him to make a +cross at the bottom of the voucher--it looked like a cross that had been +drunk a year--and then I "witnessed" it and it went through all right. +The United States never said a word. I was sorry I had not made the +voucher for a thousand loads of wood instead of one. + +The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic +villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable +pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two. + +That was a fine collection of sovereigns, that first Nevada legislature. +They levied taxes to the amount of thirty or forty thousand dollars and +ordered expenditures to the extent of about a million. Yet they had +their little periodical explosions of economy like all other bodies of +the kind. A member proposed to save three dollars a day to the nation by +dispensing with the Chaplain. And yet that short-sighted man needed the +Chaplain more than any other member, perhaps, for he generally sat with +his feet on his desk, eating raw turnips, during the morning prayer. + +The legislature sat sixty days, and passed private tollroad franchises +all the time. When they adjourned it was estimated that every citizen +owned about three franchises, and it was believed that unless Congress +gave the Territory another degree of longitude there would not be room +enough to accommodate the toll-roads. The ends of them were hanging over +the boundary line everywhere like a fringe. + +The fact is, the freighting business had grown to such important +proportions that there was nearly as much excitement over suddenly +acquired toll-road fortunes as over the wonderful silver mines. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +By and by I was smitten with the silver fever. "Prospecting parties" +were leaving for the mountains every day, and discovering and taking +possession of rich silver-bearing lodes and ledges of quartz. Plainly +this was the road to fortune. The great "Gould and Curry" mine was held +at three or four hundred dollars a foot when we arrived; but in two +months it had sprung up to eight hundred. The "Ophir" had been worth +only a mere trifle, a year gone by, and now it was selling at nearly four +thousand dollars a foot! Not a mine could be named that had not +experienced an astonishing advance in value within a short time. +Everybody was talking about these marvels. Go where you would, you heard +nothing else, from morning till far into the night. Tom So-and-So had +sold out of the "Amanda Smith" for $40,000--hadn't a cent when he "took +up" the ledge six months ago. John Jones had sold half his interest in +the "Bald Eagle and Mary Ann" for $65,000, gold coin, and gone to the +States for his family. The widow Brewster had "struck it rich" in the +"Golden Fleece" and sold ten feet for $18,000--hadn't money enough to buy +a crape bonnet when Sing-Sing Tommy killed her husband at Baldy Johnson's +wake last spring. The "Last Chance" had found a "clay casing" and knew +they were "right on the ledge"--consequence, "feet" that went begging +yesterday were worth a brick house apiece to-day, and seedy owners who +could not get trusted for a drink at any bar in the country yesterday +were roaring drunk on champagne to-day and had hosts of warm personal +friends in a town where they had forgotten how to bow or shake hands from +long-continued want of practice. Johnny Morgan, a common loafer, had +gone to sleep in the gutter and waked up worth a hundred thousand +dollars, in consequence of the decision in the "Lady Franklin and Rough +and Ready" lawsuit. And so on--day in and day out the talk pelted our +ears and the excitement waxed hotter and hotter around us. + +I would have been more or less than human if I had not gone mad like the +rest. Cart-loads of solid silver bricks, as large as pigs of lead, were +arriving from the mills every day, and such sights as that gave substance +to the wild talk about me. I succumbed and grew as frenzied as the +craziest. + +Every few days news would come of the discovery of a bran-new mining +region; immediately the papers would teem with accounts of its richness, +and away the surplus population would scamper to take possession. By the +time I was fairly inoculated with the disease, "Esmeralda" had just had a +run and "Humboldt" was beginning to shriek for attention. "Humboldt! +Humboldt!" was the new cry, and straightway Humboldt, the newest of the +new, the richest of the rich, the most marvellous of the marvellous +discoveries in silver-land was occupying two columns of the public prints +to "Esmeralda's" one. I was just on the point of starting to Esmeralda, +but turned with the tide and got ready for Humboldt. That the reader may +see what moved me, and what would as surely have moved him had he been +there, I insert here one of the newspaper letters of the day. It and +several other letters from the same calm hand were the main means of +converting me. I shall not garble the extract, but put it in just as it +appeared in the Daily Territorial Enterprise: + + But what about our mines? I shall be candid with you. I shall + express an honest opinion, based upon a thorough examination. + Humboldt county is the richest mineral region upon God's footstool. + Each mountain range is gorged with the precious ores. Humboldt is + the true Golconda. + + The other day an assay of mere croppings yielded exceeding four + thousand dollars to the ton. A week or two ago an assay of just + such surface developments made returns of seven thousand dollars to + the ton. Our mountains are full of rambling prospectors. Each day + and almost every hour reveals new and more startling evidences of + the profuse and intensified wealth of our favored county. The metal + is not silver alone. There are distinct ledges of auriferous ore. + A late discovery plainly evinces cinnabar. The coarser metals are + in gross abundance. Lately evidences of bituminous coal have been + detected. My theory has ever been that coal is a ligneous + formation. I told Col. Whitman, in times past, that the + neighborhood of Dayton (Nevada) betrayed no present or previous + manifestations of a ligneous foundation, and that hence I had no + confidence in his lauded coal mines. I repeated the same doctrine + to the exultant coal discoverers of Humboldt. I talked with my + friend Captain Burch on the subject. My pyrhanism vanished upon his + statement that in the very region referred to he had seen petrified + trees of the length of two hundred feet. Then is the fact + established that huge forests once cast their grim shadows over this + remote section. I am firm in the coal faith. + + Have no fears of the mineral resources of Humboldt county. They are + immense--incalculable. + +Let me state one or two things which will help the reader to better +comprehend certain items in the above. At this time, our near neighbor, +Gold Hill, was the most successful silver mining locality in Nevada. It +was from there that more than half the daily shipments of silver bricks +came. "Very rich" (and scarce) Gold Hill ore yielded from $100 to $400 +to the ton; but the usual yield was only $20 to $40 per ton--that is to +say, each hundred pounds of ore yielded from one dollar to two dollars. +But the reader will perceive by the above extract, that in Humboldt from +one fourth to nearly half the mass was silver! That is to say, every one +hundred pounds of the ore had from two hundred dollars up to about three +hundred and fifty in it. Some days later this same correspondent wrote: + + I have spoken of the vast and almost fabulous wealth of this + region--it is incredible. The intestines of our mountains are + gorged with precious ore to plethora. I have said that nature + has so shaped our mountains as to furnish most excellent + facilities for the working of our mines. I have also told you + that the country about here is pregnant with the finest mill + sites in the world. But what is the mining history of Humboldt? + The Sheba mine is in the hands of energetic San Francisco + capitalists. It would seem that the ore is combined with metals + that render it difficult of reduction with our imperfect mountain + machinery. The proprietors have combined the capital and labor + hinted at in my exordium. They are toiling and probing. Their + tunnel has reached the length of one hundred feet. From primal + assays alone, coupled with the development of the mine and public + confidence in the continuance of effort, the stock had reared + itself to eight hundred dollars market value. I do not know that + one ton of the ore has been converted into current metal. I do + know that there are many lodes in this section that surpass the + Sheba in primal assay value. Listen a moment to the calculations + of the Sheba operators. They purpose transporting the ore + concentrated to Europe. The conveyance from Star City (its + locality) to Virginia City will cost seventy dollars per ton; + from Virginia to San Francisco, forty dollars per ton; from + thence to Liverpool, its destination, ten dollars per ton. Their + idea is that its conglomerate metals will reimburse them their + cost of original extraction, the price of transportation, and the + expense of reduction, and that then a ton of the raw ore will net + them twelve hundred dollars. The estimate may be extravagant. + Cut it in twain, and the product is enormous, far transcending + any previous developments of our racy Territory. + + A very common calculation is that many of our mines will yield + five hundred dollars to the ton. Such fecundity throws the Gould + & Curry, the Ophir and the Mexican, of your neighborhood, in the + darkest shadow. I have given you the estimate of the value of a + single developed mine. Its richness is indexed by its market + valuation. The people of Humboldt county are feet crazy. As I + write, our towns are near deserted. They look as languid as a + consumptive girl. What has become of our sinewy and athletic + fellow-citizens? They are coursing through ravines and over + mountain tops. Their tracks are visible in every direction. + Occasionally a horseman will dash among us. His steed betrays + hard usage. He alights before his adobe dwelling, hastily + exchanges courtesies with his townsmen, hurries to an assay + office and from thence to the District Recorder's. In the + morning, having renewed his provisional supplies, he is off again + on his wild and unbeaten route. Why, the fellow numbers already + his feet by the thousands. He is the horse-leech. He has the + craving stomach of the shark or anaconda. He would conquer + metallic worlds. + +This was enough. The instant we had finished reading the above article, +four of us decided to go to Humboldt. We commenced getting ready at +once. And we also commenced upbraiding ourselves for not deciding +sooner--for we were in terror lest all the rich mines would be found and +secured before we got there, and we might have to put up with ledges that +would not yield more than two or three hundred dollars a ton, maybe. An +hour before, I would have felt opulent if I had owned ten feet in a Gold +Hill mine whose ore produced twenty-five dollars to the ton; now I was +already annoyed at the prospect of having to put up with mines the +poorest of which would be a marvel in Gold Hill. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +Hurry, was the word! We wasted no time. Our party consisted of four +persons--a blacksmith sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and myself. +We bought a wagon and two miserable old horses. We put eighteen hundred +pounds of provisions and mining tools in the wagon and drove out of +Carson on a chilly December afternoon. The horses were so weak and old +that we soon found that it would be better if one or two of us got out +and walked. It was an improvement. Next, we found that it would be +better if a third man got out. That was an improvement also. It was at +this time that I volunteered to drive, although I had never driven a +harnessed horse before and many a man in such a position would have felt +fairly excused from such a responsibility. But in a little while it was +found that it would be a fine thing if the drive got out and walked also. +It was at this time that I resigned the position of driver, and never +resumed it again. Within the hour, we found that it would not only be +better, but was absolutely necessary, that we four, taking turns, two at +a time, should put our hands against the end of the wagon and push it +through the sand, leaving the feeble horses little to do but keep out of +the way and hold up the tongue. Perhaps it is well for one to know his +fate at first, and get reconciled to it. We had learned ours in one +afternoon. It was plain that we had to walk through the sand and shove +that wagon and those horses two hundred miles. So we accepted the +situation, and from that time forth we never rode. More than that, we +stood regular and nearly constant watches pushing up behind. + +We made seven miles, and camped in the desert. Young Clagett (now member +of Congress from Montana) unharnessed and fed and watered the horses; +Oliphant and I cut sagebrush, built the fire and brought water to cook +with; and old Mr. Ballou the blacksmith did the cooking. This division +of labor, and this appointment, was adhered to throughout the journey. +We had no tent, and so we slept under our blankets in the open plain. We +were so tired that we slept soundly. + +We were fifteen days making the trip--two hundred miles; thirteen, +rather, for we lay by a couple of days, in one place, to let the horses +rest. + +We could really have accomplished the journey in ten days if we had towed +the horses behind the wagon, but we did not think of that until it was +too late, and so went on shoving the horses and the wagon too when we +might have saved half the labor. Parties who met us, occasionally, +advised us to put the horses in the wagon, but Mr. Ballou, through whose +iron-clad earnestness no sarcasm could pierce, said that that would not +do, because the provisions were exposed and would suffer, the horses +being "bituminous from long deprivation." The reader will excuse me from +translating. What Mr. Ballou customarily meant, when he used a long +word, was a secret between himself and his Maker. He was one of the best +and kindest hearted men that ever graced a humble sphere of life. He was +gentleness and simplicity itself--and unselfishness, too. Although he +was more than twice as old as the eldest of us, he never gave himself any +airs, privileges, or exemptions on that account. He did a young man's +share of the work; and did his share of conversing and entertaining from +the general stand-point of any age--not from the arrogant, overawing +summit-height of sixty years. His one striking peculiarity was his +Partingtonian fashion of loving and using big words for their own sakes, +and independent of any bearing they might have upon the thought he was +purposing to convey. He always let his ponderous syllables fall with an +easy unconsciousness that left them wholly without offensiveness. +In truth his air was so natural and so simple that one was always +catching himself accepting his stately sentences as meaning something, +when they really meant nothing in the world. If a word was long and +grand and resonant, that was sufficient to win the old man's love, and he +would drop that word into the most out-of-the-way place in a sentence or +a subject, and be as pleased with it as if it were perfectly luminous +with meaning. + +We four always spread our common stock of blankets together on the frozen +ground, and slept side by side; and finding that our foolish, long-legged +hound pup had a deal of animal heat in him, Oliphant got to admitting him +to the bed, between himself and Mr. Ballou, hugging the dog's warm back +to his breast and finding great comfort in it. But in the night the pup +would get stretchy and brace his feet against the old man's back and +shove, grunting complacently the while; and now and then, being warm and +snug, grateful and happy, he would paw the old man's back simply in +excess of comfort; and at yet other times he would dream of the chase and +in his sleep tug at the old man's back hair and bark in his ear. The old +gentleman complained mildly about these familiarities, at last, and when +he got through with his statement he said that such a dog as that was not +a proper animal to admit to bed with tired men, because he was "so +meretricious in his movements and so organic in his emotions." We turned +the dog out. + +It was a hard, wearing, toilsome journey, but it had its bright side; for +after each day was done and our wolfish hunger appeased with a hot supper +of fried bacon, bread, molasses and black coffee, the pipe-smoking, +song-singing and yarn-spinning around the evening camp-fire in the still +solitudes of the desert was a happy, care-free sort of recreation that +seemed the very summit and culmination of earthly luxury. + +It is a kind of life that has a potent charm for all men, whether city or +country-bred. We are descended from desert-lounging Arabs, and countless +ages of growth toward perfect civilization have failed to root out of us +the nomadic instinct. We all confess to a gratified thrill at the +thought of "camping out." + +Once we made twenty-five miles in a day, and once we made forty miles +(through the Great American Desert), and ten miles beyond--fifty in all +--in twenty-three hours, without halting to eat, drink or rest. To stretch +out and go to sleep, even on stony and frozen ground, after pushing a +wagon and two horses fifty miles, is a delight so supreme that for the +moment it almost seems cheap at the price. + +We camped two days in the neighborhood of the "Sink of the Humboldt." +We tried to use the strong alkaline water of the Sink, but it would not +answer. It was like drinking lye, and not weak lye, either. It left a +taste in the mouth, bitter and every way execrable, and a burning in the +stomach that was very uncomfortable. We put molasses in it, but that +helped it very little; we added a pickle, yet the alkali was the +prominent taste and so it was unfit for drinking. + +The coffee we made of this water was the meanest compound man has yet +invented. It was really viler to the taste than the unameliorated water +itself. Mr. Ballou, being the architect and builder of the beverage felt +constrained to endorse and uphold it, and so drank half a cup, by little +sips, making shift to praise it faintly the while, but finally threw out +the remainder, and said frankly it was "too technical for him." + +But presently we found a spring of fresh water, convenient, and then, +with nothing to mar our enjoyment, and no stragglers to interrupt it, we +entered into our rest. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +After leaving the Sink, we traveled along the Humboldt river a little +way. People accustomed to the monster mile-wide Mississippi, grow +accustomed to associating the term "river" with a high degree of watery +grandeur. Consequently, such people feel rather disappointed when they +stand on the shores of the Humboldt or the Carson and find that a "river" +in Nevada is a sickly rivulet which is just the counterpart of the Erie +canal in all respects save that the canal is twice as long and four times +as deep. One of the pleasantest and most invigorating exercises one can +contrive is to run and jump across the Humboldt river till he is +overheated, and then drink it dry. + +On the fifteenth day we completed our march of two hundred miles and +entered Unionville, Humboldt county, in the midst of a driving +snow-storm. Unionville consisted of eleven cabins and a liberty-pole. +Six of the cabins were strung along one side of a deep canyon, and the +other five faced them. The rest of the landscape was made up of bleak +mountain walls that rose so high into the sky from both sides of the +canyon that the village was left, as it were, far down in the bottom of a +crevice. It was always daylight on the mountain tops a long time before +the darkness lifted and revealed Unionville. + +We built a small, rude cabin in the side of the crevice and roofed it +with canvas, leaving a corner open to serve as a chimney, through which +the cattle used to tumble occasionally, at night, and mash our furniture +and interrupt our sleep. It was very cold weather and fuel was scarce. +Indians brought brush and bushes several miles on their backs; and when +we could catch a laden Indian it was well--and when we could not (which +was the rule, not the exception), we shivered and bore it. + +I confess, without shame, that I expected to find masses of silver lying +all about the ground. I expected to see it glittering in the sun on the +mountain summits. I said nothing about this, for some instinct told me +that I might possibly have an exaggerated idea about it, and so if I +betrayed my thought I might bring derision upon myself. Yet I was as +perfectly satisfied in my own mind as I could be of anything, that I was +going to gather up, in a day or two, or at furthest a week or two, silver +enough to make me satisfactorily wealthy--and so my fancy was already +busy with plans for spending this money. The first opportunity that +offered, I sauntered carelessly away from the cabin, keeping an eye on +the other boys, and stopping and contemplating the sky when they seemed +to be observing me; but as soon as the coast was manifestly clear, I fled +away as guiltily as a thief might have done and never halted till I was +far beyond sight and call. Then I began my search with a feverish +excitement that was brimful of expectation--almost of certainty. +I crawled about the ground, seizing and examining bits of stone, blowing +the dust from them or rubbing them on my clothes, and then peering at +them with anxious hope. Presently I found a bright fragment and my heart +bounded! I hid behind a boulder and polished it and scrutinized it with +a nervous eagerness and a delight that was more pronounced than absolute +certainty itself could have afforded. The more I examined the fragment +the more I was convinced that I had found the door to fortune. I marked +the spot and carried away my specimen. Up and down the rugged mountain +side I searched, with always increasing interest and always augmenting +gratitude that I had come to Humboldt and come in time. Of all the +experiences of my life, this secret search among the hidden treasures of +silver-land was the nearest to unmarred ecstasy. It was a delirious +revel. + +By and by, in the bed of a shallow rivulet, I found a deposit of shining +yellow scales, and my breath almost forsook me! A gold mine, and in my +simplicity I had been content with vulgar silver! I was so excited that +I half believed my overwrought imagination was deceiving me. Then a fear +came upon me that people might be observing me and would guess my secret. +Moved by this thought, I made a circuit of the place, and ascended a +knoll to reconnoiter. Solitude. No creature was near. Then I returned +to my mine, fortifying myself against possible disappointment, but my +fears were groundless--the shining scales were still there. I set about +scooping them out, and for an hour I toiled down the windings of the +stream and robbed its bed. But at last the descending sun warned me to +give up the quest, and I turned homeward laden with wealth. As I walked +along I could not help smiling at the thought of my being so excited over +my fragment of silver when a nobler metal was almost under my nose. In +this little time the former had so fallen in my estimation that once or +twice I was on the point of throwing it away. + +The boys were as hungry as usual, but I could eat nothing. Neither could +I talk. I was full of dreams and far away. Their conversation +interrupted the flow of my fancy somewhat, and annoyed me a little, too. +I despised the sordid and commonplace things they talked about. But as +they proceeded, it began to amuse me. It grew to be rare fun to hear +them planning their poor little economies and sighing over possible +privations and distresses when a gold mine, all our own, lay within sight +of the cabin and I could point it out at any moment. Smothered hilarity +began to oppress me, presently. It was hard to resist the impulse to +burst out with exultation and reveal everything; but I did resist. I +said within myself that I would filter the great news through my lips +calmly and be serene as a summer morning while I watched its effect in +their faces. I said: + +"Where have you all been?" + +"Prospecting." + +"What did you find?" + +"Nothing." + +"Nothing? What do you think of the country?" + +"Can't tell, yet," said Mr. Ballou, who was an old gold miner, and had +likewise had considerable experience among the silver mines. + +"Well, haven't you formed any sort of opinion?" + +"Yes, a sort of a one. It's fair enough here, may be, but overrated. +Seven thousand dollar ledges are scarce, though. + +"That Sheba may be rich enough, but we don't own it; and besides, the rock +is so full of base metals that all the science in the world can't work +it. We'll not starve, here, but we'll not get rich, I'm afraid." + +"So you think the prospect is pretty poor?" + +"No name for it!" + +"Well, we'd better go back, hadn't we?" + +"Oh, not yet--of course not. We'll try it a riffle, first." + +"Suppose, now--this is merely a supposition, you know--suppose you could +find a ledge that would yield, say, a hundred and fifty dollars a ton +--would that satisfy you?" + +"Try us once!" from the whole party. + +"Or suppose--merely a supposition, of course--suppose you were to find a +ledge that would yield two thousand dollars a ton--would that satisfy +you?" + +"Here--what do you mean? What are you coming at? Is there some mystery +behind all this?" + +"Never mind. I am not saying anything. You know perfectly well there +are no rich mines here--of course you do. Because you have been around +and examined for yourselves. Anybody would know that, that had been +around. But just for the sake of argument, suppose--in a kind of general +way--suppose some person were to tell you that two-thousand-dollar ledges +were simply contemptible--contemptible, understand--and that right yonder +in sight of this very cabin there were piles of pure gold and pure +silver--oceans of it--enough to make you all rich in twenty-four hours! +Come!" + +"I should say he was as crazy as a loon!" said old Ballou, but wild with +excitement, nevertheless. + +"Gentlemen," said I, "I don't say anything--I haven't been around, you +know, and of course don't know anything--but all I ask of you is to cast +your eye on that, for instance, and tell me what you think of it!" and I +tossed my treasure before them. + +There was an eager scramble for it, and a closing of heads together over +it under the candle-light. Then old Ballou said: + +"Think of it? I think it is nothing but a lot of granite rubbish and +nasty glittering mica that isn't worth ten cents an acre!" + +So vanished my dream. So melted my wealth away. So toppled my airy +castle to the earth and left me stricken and forlorn. + +Moralizing, I observed, then, that "all that glitters is not gold." + +Mr. Ballou said I could go further than that, and lay it up among my +treasures of knowledge, that nothing that glitters is gold. So I learned +then, once for all, that gold in its native state is but dull, +unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the admiration +of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of +the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of +mica. Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +True knowledge of the nature of silver mining came fast enough. We went +out "prospecting" with Mr. Ballou. We climbed the mountain sides, and +clambered among sage-brush, rocks and snow till we were ready to drop +with exhaustion, but found no silver--nor yet any gold. Day after day we +did this. Now and then we came upon holes burrowed a few feet into the +declivities and apparently abandoned; and now and then we found one or +two listless men still burrowing. But there was no appearance of silver. +These holes were the beginnings of tunnels, and the purpose was to drive +them hundreds of feet into the mountain, and some day tap the hidden +ledge where the silver was. Some day! It seemed far enough away, and +very hopeless and dreary. Day after day we toiled, and climbed and +searched, and we younger partners grew sicker and still sicker of the +promiseless toil. At last we halted under a beetling rampart of rock +which projected from the earth high upon the mountain. Mr. Ballou broke +off some fragments with a hammer, and examined them long and attentively +with a small eye-glass; threw them away and broke off more; said this +rock was quartz, and quartz was the sort of rock that contained silver. +Contained it! I had thought that at least it would be caked on the +outside of it like a kind of veneering. He still broke off pieces and +critically examined them, now and then wetting the piece with his tongue +and applying the glass. At last he exclaimed: + +"We've got it!" + +We were full of anxiety in a moment. The rock was clean and white, where +it was broken, and across it ran a ragged thread of blue. He said that +that little thread had silver in it, mixed with base metal, such as lead +and antimony, and other rubbish, and that there was a speck or two of +gold visible. After a great deal of effort we managed to discern some +little fine yellow specks, and judged that a couple of tons of them +massed together might make a gold dollar, possibly. We were not +jubilant, but Mr. Ballou said there were worse ledges in the world than +that. He saved what he called the "richest" piece of the rock, in order +to determine its value by the process called the "fire-assay." Then we +named the mine "Monarch of the Mountains" (modesty of nomenclature is not +a prominent feature in the mines), and Mr. Ballou wrote out and stuck up +the following "notice," preserving a copy to be entered upon the books in +the mining recorder's office in the town. + + "NOTICE." + + "We the undersigned claim three claims, of three hundred feet each + (and one for discovery), on this silver-bearing quartz lead or lode, + extending north and south from this notice, with all its dips, + spurs, and angles, variations and sinuosities, together with fifty + feet of ground on either side for working the same." + +We put our names to it and tried to feel that our fortunes were made. +But when we talked the matter all over with Mr. Ballou, we felt depressed +and dubious. He said that this surface quartz was not all there was of +our mine; but that the wall or ledge of rock called the "Monarch of the +Mountains," extended down hundreds and hundreds of feet into the earth +--he illustrated by saying it was like a curb-stone, and maintained a +nearly uniform thickness-say twenty feet--away down into the bowels of +the earth, and was perfectly distinct from the casing rock on each side +of it; and that it kept to itself, and maintained its distinctive +character always, no matter how deep it extended into the earth or how +far it stretched itself through and across the hills and valleys. He +said it might be a mile deep and ten miles long, for all we knew; and +that wherever we bored into it above ground or below, we would find gold +and silver in it, but no gold or silver in the meaner rock it was cased +between. And he said that down in the great depths of the ledge was its +richness, and the deeper it went the richer it grew. Therefore, instead +of working here on the surface, we must either bore down into the rock +with a shaft till we came to where it was rich--say a hundred feet or so +--or else we must go down into the valley and bore a long tunnel into the +mountain side and tap the ledge far under the earth. To do either was +plainly the labor of months; for we could blast and bore only a few feet +a day--some five or six. But this was not all. He said that after we +got the ore out it must be hauled in wagons to a distant silver-mill, +ground up, and the silver extracted by a tedious and costly process. Our +fortune seemed a century away! + +But we went to work. We decided to sink a shaft. So, for a week we +climbed the mountain, laden with picks, drills, gads, crowbars, shovels, +cans of blasting powder and coils of fuse and strove with might and main. +At first the rock was broken and loose and we dug it up with picks and +threw it out with shovels, and the hole progressed very well. But the +rock became more compact, presently, and gads and crowbars came into +play. But shortly nothing could make an impression but blasting powder. + +That was the weariest work! One of us held the iron drill in its place +and another would strike with an eight-pound sledge--it was like driving +nails on a large scale. In the course of an hour or two the drill would +reach a depth of two or three feet, making a hole a couple of inches in +diameter. We would put in a charge of powder, insert half a yard of +fuse, pour in sand and gravel and ram it down, then light the fuse and +run. When the explosion came and the rocks and smoke shot into the air, +we would go back and find about a bushel of that hard, rebellious quartz +jolted out. Nothing more. One week of this satisfied me. I resigned. +Clagget and Oliphant followed. Our shaft was only twelve feet deep. We +decided that a tunnel was the thing we wanted. + +So we went down the mountain side and worked a week; at the end of which +time we had blasted a tunnel about deep enough to hide a hogshead in, and +judged that about nine hundred feet more of it would reach the ledge. +I resigned again, and the other boys only held out one day longer. +We decided that a tunnel was not what we wanted. We wanted a ledge that +was already "developed." There were none in the camp. + +We dropped the "Monarch" for the time being. + +Meantime the camp was filling up with people, and there was a constantly +growing excitement about our Humboldt mines. We fell victims to the +epidemic and strained every nerve to acquire more "feet." We prospected +and took up new claims, put "notices" on them and gave them grandiloquent +names. We traded some of our "feet" for "feet" in other people's claims. +In a little while we owned largely in the "Gray Eagle," the "Columbiana," +the "Branch Mint," the "Maria Jane," the "Universe," the +"Root-Hog-or-Die," the "Samson and Delilah," the "Treasure Trove," the +"Golconda," the "Sultana," the "Boomerang," the "Great Republic," the +"Grand Mogul," and fifty other "mines" that had never been molested by a +shovel or scratched with a pick. We had not less than thirty thousand +"feet" apiece in the "richest mines on earth" as the frenzied cant +phrased it--and were in debt to the butcher. We were stark mad with +excitement--drunk with happiness--smothered under mountains of +prospective wealth--arrogantly compassionate toward the plodding millions +who knew not our marvellous canyon--but our credit was not good at the +grocer's. + +It was the strangest phase of life one can imagine. It was a beggars' +revel. There was nothing doing in the district--no mining--no milling +--no productive effort--no income--and not enough money in the entire camp +to buy a corner lot in an eastern village, hardly; and yet a stranger +would have supposed he was walking among bloated millionaires. +Prospecting parties swarmed out of town with the first flush of dawn, and +swarmed in again at nightfall laden with spoil--rocks. Nothing but +rocks. Every man's pockets were full of them; the floor of his cabin was +littered with them; they were disposed in labeled rows on his shelves. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + +I met men at every turn who owned from one thousand to thirty thousand +"feet" in undeveloped silver mines, every single foot of which they +believed would shortly be worth from fifty to a thousand dollars--and as +often as any other way they were men who had not twenty-five dollars in +the world. Every man you met had his new mine to boast of, and his +"specimens" ready; and if the opportunity offered, he would infallibly +back you into a corner and offer as a favor to you, not to him, to part +with just a few feet in the "Golden Age," or the "Sarah Jane," or some +other unknown stack of croppings, for money enough to get a "square meal" +with, as the phrase went. And you were never to reveal that he had made +you the offer at such a ruinous price, for it was only out of friendship +for you that he was willing to make the sacrifice. Then he would fish a +piece of rock out of his pocket, and after looking mysteriously around as +if he feared he might be waylaid and robbed if caught with such wealth in +his possession, he would dab the rock against his tongue, clap an +eyeglass to it, and exclaim: + +"Look at that! Right there in that red dirt! See it? See the specks of +gold? And the streak of silver? That's from the Uncle Abe. There's a +hundred thousand tons like that in sight! Right in sight, mind you! +And when we get down on it and the ledge comes in solid, it will be the +richest thing in the world! Look at the assay! I don't want you to +believe me--look at the assay!" + +Then he would get out a greasy sheet of paper which showed that the +portion of rock assayed had given evidence of containing silver and gold +in the proportion of so many hundreds or thousands of dollars to the ton. + + +I little knew, then, that the custom was to hunt out the richest piece of +rock and get it assayed! Very often, that piece, the size of a filbert, +was the only fragment in a ton that had a particle of metal in it--and +yet the assay made it pretend to represent the average value of the ton +of rubbish it came from! + +On such a system of assaying as that, the Humboldt world had gone crazy. +On the authority of such assays its newspaper correspondents were +frothing about rock worth four and seven thousand dollars a ton! + +And does the reader remember, a few pages back, the calculations, of a +quoted correspondent, whereby the ore is to be mined and shipped all the +way to England, the metals extracted, and the gold and silver contents +received back by the miners as clear profit, the copper, antimony and +other things in the ore being sufficient to pay all the expenses +incurred? Everybody's head was full of such "calculations" as those +--such raving insanity, rather. Few people took work into their +calculations--or outlay of money either; except the work and expenditures +of other people. + +We never touched our tunnel or our shaft again. Why? Because we judged +that we had learned the real secret of success in silver mining--which +was, not to mine the silver ourselves by the sweat of our brows and the +labor of our hands, but to sell the ledges to the dull slaves of toil and +let them do the mining! + +Before leaving Carson, the Secretary and I had purchased "feet" from +various Esmeralda stragglers. We had expected immediate returns of +bullion, but were only afflicted with regular and constant "assessments" +instead--demands for money wherewith to develop the said mines. These +assessments had grown so oppressive that it seemed necessary to look into +the matter personally. Therefore I projected a pilgrimage to Carson and +thence to Esmeralda. I bought a horse and started, in company with +Mr. Ballou and a gentleman named Ollendorff, a Prussian--not the party +who has inflicted so much suffering on the world with his wretched +foreign grammars, with their interminable repetitions of questions which +never have occurred and are never likely to occur in any conversation +among human beings. We rode through a snow-storm for two or three days, +and arrived at "Honey Lake Smith's," a sort of isolated inn on the Carson +river. It was a two-story log house situated on a small knoll in the +midst of the vast basin or desert through which the sickly Carson winds +its melancholy way. Close to the house were the Overland stage stables, +built of sun-dried bricks. There was not another building within several +leagues of the place. Towards sunset about twenty hay-wagons arrived and +camped around the house and all the teamsters came in to supper--a very, +very rough set. There were one or two Overland stage drivers there, +also, and half a dozen vagabonds and stragglers; consequently the house +was well crowded. + +We walked out, after supper, and visited a small Indian camp in the +vicinity. The Indians were in a great hurry about something, and were +packing up and getting away as fast as they could. In their broken +English they said, "By'm-by, heap water!" and by the help of signs made +us understand that in their opinion a flood was coming. The weather was +perfectly clear, and this was not the rainy season. There was about a +foot of water in the insignificant river--or maybe two feet; the stream +was not wider than a back alley in a village, and its banks were scarcely +higher than a man's head. + +So, where was the flood to come from? We canvassed the subject awhile +and then concluded it was a ruse, and that the Indians had some better +reason for leaving in a hurry than fears of a flood in such an +exceedingly dry time. + +At seven in the evening we went to bed in the second story--with our +clothes on, as usual, and all three in the same bed, for every available +space on the floors, chairs, etc., was in request, and even then there +was barely room for the housing of the inn's guests. An hour later we +were awakened by a great turmoil, and springing out of bed we picked our +way nimbly among the ranks of snoring teamsters on the floor and got to +the front windows of the long room. A glance revealed a strange +spectacle, under the moonlight. The crooked Carson was full to the brim, +and its waters were raging and foaming in the wildest way--sweeping +around the sharp bends at a furious speed, and bearing on their surface a +chaos of logs, brush and all sorts of rubbish. A depression, where its +bed had once been, in other times, was already filling, and in one or two +places the water was beginning to wash over the main bank. Men were +flying hither and thither, bringing cattle and wagons close up to the +house, for the spot of high ground on which it stood extended only some +thirty feet in front and about a hundred in the rear. Close to the old +river bed just spoken of, stood a little log stable, and in this our +horses were lodged. + +While we looked, the waters increased so fast in this place that in a few +minutes a torrent was roaring by the little stable and its margin +encroaching steadily on the logs. We suddenly realized that this flood +was not a mere holiday spectacle, but meant damage--and not only to the +small log stable but to the Overland buildings close to the main river, +for the waves had now come ashore and were creeping about the foundations +and invading the great hay-corral adjoining. We ran down and joined the +crowd of excited men and frightened animals. We waded knee-deep into the +log stable, unfastened the horses and waded out almost waist-deep, so +fast the waters increased. Then the crowd rushed in a body to the +hay-corral and began to tumble down the huge stacks of baled hay and roll +the bales up on the high ground by the house. Meantime it was discovered +that Owens, an overland driver, was missing, and a man ran to the large +stable, and wading in, boot-top deep, discovered him asleep in his bed, +awoke him, and waded out again. But Owens was drowsy and resumed his +nap; but only for a minute or two, for presently he turned in his bed, +his hand dropped over the side and came in contact with the cold water! +It was up level with the mattress! He waded out, breast-deep, almost, +and the next moment the sun-burned bricks melted down like sugar and the +big building crumbled to a ruin and was washed away in a twinkling. + +At eleven o'clock only the roof of the little log stable was out of +water, and our inn was on an island in mid-ocean. As far as the eye +could reach, in the moonlight, there was no desert visible, but only a +level waste of shining water. The Indians were true prophets, but how +did they get their information? I am not able to answer the question. +We remained cooped up eight days and nights with that curious crew. +Swearing, drinking and card playing were the order of the day, and +occasionally a fight was thrown in for variety. Dirt and vermin--but let +us forget those features; their profusion is simply inconceivable--it is +better that they remain so. + +There were two men----however, this chapter is long enough. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + +There were two men in the company who caused me particular discomfort. +One was a little Swede, about twenty-five years old, who knew only one +song, and he was forever singing it. By day we were all crowded into one +small, stifling bar-room, and so there was no escaping this person's +music. Through all the profanity, whisky-guzzling, "old sledge" and +quarreling, his monotonous song meandered with never a variation in its +tiresome sameness, and it seemed to me, at last, that I would be content +to die, in order to be rid of the torture. The other man was a stalwart +ruffian called "Arkansas," who carried two revolvers in his belt and a +bowie knife projecting from his boot, and who was always drunk and always +suffering for a fight. But he was so feared, that nobody would +accommodate him. He would try all manner of little wary ruses to entrap +somebody into an offensive remark, and his face would light up now and +then when he fancied he was fairly on the scent of a fight, but +invariably his victim would elude his toils and then he would show a +disappointment that was almost pathetic. The landlord, Johnson, was a +meek, well-meaning fellow, and Arkansas fastened on him early, as a +promising subject, and gave him no rest day or night, for awhile. On the +fourth morning, Arkansas got drunk and sat himself down to wait for an +opportunity. Presently Johnson came in, just comfortably sociable with +whisky, and said: + +"I reckon the Pennsylvania 'lection--" + +Arkansas raised his finger impressively and Johnson stopped. Arkansas +rose unsteadily and confronted him. Said he: + +"Wha-what do you know a--about Pennsylvania? Answer me that. Wha--what +do you know 'bout Pennsylvania?" + +"I was only goin' to say--" + +"You was only goin' to say. You was! You was only goin' to say--what +was you goin' to say? That's it! That's what I want to know. I want to +know wha--what you ('ic) what you know about Pennsylvania, since you're +makin' yourself so d---d free. Answer me that!" + +"Mr. Arkansas, if you'd only let me--" + +"Who's a henderin' you? Don't you insinuate nothing agin me!--don't you +do it. Don't you come in here bullyin' around, and cussin' and goin' on +like a lunatic--don't you do it. 'Coz I won't stand it. If fight's what +you want, out with it! I'm your man! Out with it!" + +Said Johnson, backing into a corner, Arkansas following, menacingly: + +"Why, I never said nothing, Mr. Arkansas. You don't give a man no +chance. I was only goin' to say that Pennsylvania was goin' to have an +election next week--that was all--that was everything I was goin' to say +--I wish I may never stir if it wasn't." + +"Well then why d'n't you say it? What did you come swellin' around that +way for, and tryin' to raise trouble?" + +"Why I didn't come swellin' around, Mr. Arkansas--I just--" + +"I'm a liar am I! Ger-reat Caesar's ghost--" + +"Oh, please, Mr. Arkansas, I never meant such a thing as that, I wish I +may die if I did. All the boys will tell you that I've always spoke well +of you, and respected you more'n any man in the house. Ask Smith. Ain't +it so, Smith? Didn't I say, no longer ago than last night, that for a +man that was a gentleman all the time and every way you took him, give me +Arkansas? I'll leave it to any gentleman here if them warn't the very +words I used. Come, now, Mr. Arkansas, le's take a drink--le's shake +hands and take a drink. Come up--everybody! It's my treat. Come up, +Bill, Tom, Bob, Scotty--come up. I want you all to take a drink with me +and Arkansas--old Arkansas, I call him--bully old Arkansas. Gimme your +hand agin. Look at him, boys--just take a look at him. Thar stands the +whitest man in America!--and the man that denies it has got to fight me, +that's all. Gimme that old flipper agin!" + +They embraced, with drunken affection on the landlord's part and +unresponsive toleration on the part of Arkansas, who, bribed by a drink, +was disappointed of his prey once more. But the foolish landlord was so +happy to have escaped butchery, that he went on talking when he ought to +have marched himself out of danger. The consequence was that Arkansas +shortly began to glower upon him dangerously, and presently said: + +"Lan'lord, will you p-please make that remark over agin if you please?" + +"I was a-sayin' to Scotty that my father was up'ards of eighty year old +when he died." + +"Was that all that you said?" + +"Yes, that was all." + +"Didn't say nothing but that?" + +"No--nothing." + +Then an uncomfortable silence. + +Arkansas played with his glass a moment, lolling on his elbows on the +counter. Then he meditatively scratched his left shin with his right +boot, while the awkward silence continued. But presently he loafed away +toward the stove, looking dissatisfied; roughly shouldered two or three +men out of a comfortable position; occupied it himself, gave a sleeping +dog a kick that sent him howling under a bench, then spread his long legs +and his blanket-coat tails apart and proceeded to warm his back. In a +little while he fell to grumbling to himself, and soon he slouched back +to the bar and said: + +"Lan'lord, what's your idea for rakin' up old personalities and blowin' +about your father? Ain't this company agreeable to you? Ain't it? If +this company ain't agreeable to you, p'r'aps we'd better leave. Is that +your idea? Is that what you're coming at?" + +"Why bless your soul, Arkansas, I warn't thinking of such a thing. My +father and my mother--" + +"Lan'lord, don't crowd a man! Don't do it. If nothing'll do you but a +disturbance, out with it like a man ('ic)--but don't rake up old bygones +and fling'em in the teeth of a passel of people that wants to be +peaceable if they could git a chance. What's the matter with you this +mornin', anyway? I never see a man carry on so." + +"Arkansas, I reely didn't mean no harm, and I won't go on with it if it's +onpleasant to you. I reckon my licker's got into my head, and what with +the flood, and havin' so many to feed and look out for--" + +"So that's what's a-ranklin' in your heart, is it? You want us to leave +do you? There's too many on us. You want us to pack up and swim. Is +that it? Come!" + +"Please be reasonable, Arkansas. Now you know that I ain't the man to--" + +"Are you a threatenin' me? Are you? By George, the man don't live that +can skeer me! Don't you try to come that game, my chicken--'cuz I can +stand a good deal, but I won't stand that. Come out from behind that bar +till I clean you! You want to drive us out, do you, you sneakin' +underhanded hound! Come out from behind that bar! I'll learn you to +bully and badger and browbeat a gentleman that's forever trying to +befriend you and keep you out of trouble!" + +"Please, Arkansas, please don't shoot! If there's got to be bloodshed--" + +"Do you hear that, gentlemen? Do you hear him talk about bloodshed? So +it's blood you want, is it, you ravin' desperado! You'd made up your +mind to murder somebody this mornin'--I knowed it perfectly well. I'm +the man, am I? It's me you're goin' to murder, is it? But you can't do +it 'thout I get one chance first, you thievin' black-hearted, +white-livered son of a nigger! Draw your weepon!" + +With that, Arkansas began to shoot, and the landlord to clamber over +benches, men and every sort of obstacle in a frantic desire to escape. +In the midst of the wild hubbub the landlord crashed through a glass +door, and as Arkansas charged after him the landlord's wife suddenly +appeared in the doorway and confronted the desperado with a pair of +scissors! Her fury was magnificent. With head erect and flashing eye +she stood a moment and then advanced, with her weapon raised. The +astonished ruffian hesitated, and then fell back a step. She followed. +She backed him step by step into the middle of the bar-room, and then, +while the wondering crowd closed up and gazed, she gave him such another +tongue-lashing as never a cowed and shamefaced braggart got before, +perhaps! As she finished and retired victorious, a roar of applause +shook the house, and every man ordered "drinks for the crowd" in one and +the same breath. + +The lesson was entirely sufficient. The reign of terror was over, and +the Arkansas domination broken for good. During the rest of the season +of island captivity, there was one man who sat apart in a state of +permanent humiliation, never mixing in any quarrel or uttering a boast, +and never resenting the insults the once cringing crew now constantly +leveled at him, and that man was "Arkansas." + +By the fifth or sixth morning the waters had subsided from the land, but +the stream in the old river bed was still high and swift and there was no +possibility of crossing it. On the eighth it was still too high for an +entirely safe passage, but life in the inn had become next to +insupportable by reason of the dirt, drunkenness, fighting, etc., and so +we made an effort to get away. In the midst of a heavy snow-storm we +embarked in a canoe, taking our saddles aboard and towing our horses +after us by their halters. The Prussian, Ollendorff, was in the bow, +with a paddle, Ballou paddled in the middle, and I sat in the stern +holding the halters. When the horses lost their footing and began to +swim, Ollendorff got frightened, for there was great danger that the +horses would make our aim uncertain, and it was plain that if we failed +to land at a certain spot the current would throw us off and almost +surely cast us into the main Carson, which was a boiling torrent, now. +Such a catastrophe would be death, in all probability, for we would be +swept to sea in the "Sink" or overturned and drowned. We warned +Ollendorff to keep his wits about him and handle himself carefully, but +it was useless; the moment the bow touched the bank, he made a spring and +the canoe whirled upside down in ten-foot water. + +Ollendorff seized some brush and dragged himself ashore, but Ballou and I +had to swim for it, encumbered with our overcoats. But we held on to the +canoe, and although we were washed down nearly to the Carson, we managed +to push the boat ashore and make a safe landing. We were cold and +water-soaked, but safe. The horses made a landing, too, but our saddles +were gone, of course. We tied the animals in the sage-brush and there +they had to stay for twenty-four hours. We baled out the canoe and +ferried over some food and blankets for them, but we slept one more night +in the inn before making another venture on our journey. + +The next morning it was still snowing furiously when we got away with our +new stock of saddles and accoutrements. We mounted and started. The +snow lay so deep on the ground that there was no sign of a road +perceptible, and the snow-fall was so thick that we could not see more +than a hundred yards ahead, else we could have guided our course by the +mountain ranges. The case looked dubious, but Ollendorff said his +instinct was as sensitive as any compass, and that he could "strike a +bee-line" for Carson city and never diverge from it. He said that if he +were to straggle a single point out of the true line his instinct would +assail him like an outraged conscience. Consequently we dropped into his +wake happy and content. For half an hour we poked along warily enough, +but at the end of that time we came upon a fresh trail, and Ollendorff +shouted proudly: + +"I knew I was as dead certain as a compass, boys! Here we are, right in +somebody's tracks that will hunt the way for us without any trouble. +Let's hurry up and join company with the party." + +So we put the horses into as much of a trot as the deep snow would allow, +and before long it was evident that we were gaining on our predecessors, +for the tracks grew more distinct. We hurried along, and at the end of +an hour the tracks looked still newer and fresher--but what surprised us +was, that the number of travelers in advance of us seemed to steadily +increase. We wondered how so large a party came to be traveling at such +a time and in such a solitude. Somebody suggested that it must be a +company of soldiers from the fort, and so we accepted that solution and +jogged along a little faster still, for they could not be far off now. +But the tracks still multiplied, and we began to think the platoon of +soldiers was miraculously expanding into a regiment--Ballou said they had +already increased to five hundred! Presently he stopped his horse and +said: + +"Boys, these are our own tracks, and we've actually been circussing round +and round in a circle for more than two hours, out here in this blind +desert! By George this is perfectly hydraulic!" + +Then the old man waxed wroth and abusive. He called Ollendorff all +manner of hard names--said he never saw such a lurid fool as he was, and +ended with the peculiarly venomous opinion that he "did not know as much +as a logarythm!" + +We certainly had been following our own tracks. Ollendorff and his +"mental compass" were in disgrace from that moment. + +After all our hard travel, here we were on the bank of the stream again, +with the inn beyond dimly outlined through the driving snow-fall. While +we were considering what to do, the young Swede landed from the canoe and +took his pedestrian way Carson-wards, singing his same tiresome song +about his "sister and his brother" and "the child in the grave with its +mother," and in a short minute faded and disappeared in the white +oblivion. He was never heard of again. He no doubt got bewildered and +lost, and Fatigue delivered him over to Sleep and Sleep betrayed him to +Death. Possibly he followed our treacherous tracks till he became +exhausted and dropped. + +Presently the Overland stage forded the now fast receding stream and +started toward Carson on its first trip since the flood came. We +hesitated no longer, now, but took up our march in its wake, and trotted +merrily along, for we had good confidence in the driver's bump of +locality. But our horses were no match for the fresh stage team. We +were soon left out of sight; but it was no matter, for we had the deep +ruts the wheels made for a guide. By this time it was three in the +afternoon, and consequently it was not very long before night came--and +not with a lingering twilight, but with a sudden shutting down like a +cellar door, as is its habit in that country. The snowfall was still as +thick as ever, and of course we could not see fifteen steps before us; +but all about us the white glare of the snow-bed enabled us to discern +the smooth sugar-loaf mounds made by the covered sage-bushes, and just in +front of us the two faint grooves which we knew were the steadily filling +and slowly disappearing wheel-tracks. + +Now those sage-bushes were all about the same height--three or four feet; +they stood just about seven feet apart, all over the vast desert; each of +them was a mere snow-mound, now; in any direction that you proceeded (the +same as in a well laid out orchard) you would find yourself moving down a +distinctly defined avenue, with a row of these snow-mounds an either side +of it--an avenue the customary width of a road, nice and level in its +breadth, and rising at the sides in the most natural way, by reason of +the mounds. But we had not thought of this. Then imagine the chilly +thrill that shot through us when it finally occurred to us, far in the +night, that since the last faint trace of the wheel-tracks had long ago +been buried from sight, we might now be wandering down a mere sage-brush +avenue, miles away from the road and diverging further and further away +from it all the time. Having a cake of ice slipped down one's back is +placid comfort compared to it. There was a sudden leap and stir of blood +that had been asleep for an hour, and as sudden a rousing of all the +drowsing activities in our minds and bodies. We were alive and awake at +once--and shaking and quaking with consternation, too. There was an +instant halting and dismounting, a bending low and an anxious scanning of +the road-bed. Useless, of course; for if a faint depression could not be +discerned from an altitude of four or five feet above it, it certainly +could not with one's nose nearly against it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + +We seemed to be in a road, but that was no proof. We tested this by +walking off in various directions--the regular snow-mounds and the +regular avenues between them convinced each man that he had found the +true road, and that the others had found only false ones. Plainly the +situation was desperate. We were cold and stiff and the horses were +tired. We decided to build a sage-brush fire and camp out till morning. +This was wise, because if we were wandering from the right road and the +snow-storm continued another day our case would be the next thing to +hopeless if we kept on. + +All agreed that a camp fire was what would come nearest to saving us, +now, and so we set about building it. We could find no matches, and so +we tried to make shift with the pistols. Not a man in the party had ever +tried to do such a thing before, but not a man in the party doubted that +it could be done, and without any trouble--because every man in the party +had read about it in books many a time and had naturally come to believe +it, with trusting simplicity, just as he had long ago accepted and +believed that other common book-fraud about Indians and lost hunters +making a fire by rubbing two dry sticks together. + +We huddled together on our knees in the deep snow, and the horses put +their noses together and bowed their patient heads over us; and while the +feathery flakes eddied down and turned us into a group of white statuary, +we proceeded with the momentous experiment. We broke twigs from a sage +bush and piled them on a little cleared place in the shelter of our +bodies. In the course of ten or fifteen minutes all was ready, and then, +while conversation ceased and our pulses beat low with anxious suspense, +Ollendorff applied his revolver, pulled the trigger and blew the pile +clear out of the county! It was the flattest failure that ever was. + +This was distressing, but it paled before a greater horror--the horses +were gone! I had been appointed to hold the bridles, but in my absorbing +anxiety over the pistol experiment I had unconsciously dropped them and +the released animals had walked off in the storm. It was useless to try +to follow them, for their footfalls could make no sound, and one could +pass within two yards of the creatures and never see them. We gave them +up without an effort at recovering them, and cursed the lying books that +said horses would stay by their masters for protection and companionship +in a distressful time like ours. + +We were miserable enough, before; we felt still more forlorn, now. +Patiently, but with blighted hope, we broke more sticks and piled them, +and once more the Prussian shot them into annihilation. Plainly, to +light a fire with a pistol was an art requiring practice and experience, +and the middle of a desert at midnight in a snow-storm was not a good +place or time for the acquiring of the accomplishment. We gave it up and +tried the other. Each man took a couple of sticks and fell to chafing +them together. At the end of half an hour we were thoroughly chilled, +and so were the sticks. We bitterly execrated the Indians, the hunters +and the books that had betrayed us with the silly device, and wondered +dismally what was next to be done. At this critical moment Mr. Ballou +fished out four matches from the rubbish of an overlooked pocket. To +have found four gold bars would have seemed poor and cheap good luck +compared to this. + +One cannot think how good a match looks under such circumstances--or how +lovable and precious, and sacredly beautiful to the eye. This time we +gathered sticks with high hopes; and when Mr. Ballou prepared to light +the first match, there was an amount of interest centred upon him that +pages of writing could not describe. The match burned hopefully a +moment, and then went out. It could not have carried more regret with it +if it had been a human life. The next match simply flashed and died. +The wind puffed the third one out just as it was on the imminent verge of +success. We gathered together closer than ever, and developed a +solicitude that was rapt and painful, as Mr. Ballou scratched our last +hope on his leg. It lit, burned blue and sickly, and then budded into a +robust flame. Shading it with his hands, the old gentleman bent +gradually down and every heart went with him--everybody, too, for that +matter--and blood and breath stood still. The flame touched the sticks +at last, took gradual hold upon them--hesitated--took a stronger hold +--hesitated again--held its breath five heart-breaking seconds, then gave a +sort of human gasp and went out. + +Nobody said a word for several minutes. It was a solemn sort of silence; +even the wind put on a stealthy, sinister quiet, and made no more noise +than the falling flakes of snow. Finally a sad-voiced conversation +began, and it was soon apparent that in each of our hearts lay the +conviction that this was our last night with the living. I had so hoped +that I was the only one who felt so. When the others calmly acknowledged +their conviction, it sounded like the summons itself. Ollendorff said: + +"Brothers, let us die together. And let us go without one hard feeling +towards each other. Let us forget and forgive bygones. I know that you +have felt hard towards me for turning over the canoe, and for knowing too +much and leading you round and round in the snow--but I meant well; +forgive me. I acknowledge freely that I have had hard feelings against +Mr. Ballou for abusing me and calling me a logarythm, which is a thing I +do not know what, but no doubt a thing considered disgraceful and +unbecoming in America, and it has scarcely been out of my mind and has +hurt me a great deal--but let it go; I forgive Mr. Ballou with all my +heart, and--" + +Poor Ollendorff broke down and the tears came. He was not alone, for I +was crying too, and so was Mr. Ballou. Ollendorff got his voice again +and forgave me for things I had done and said. Then he got out his +bottle of whisky and said that whether he lived or died he would never +touch another drop. He said he had given up all hope of life, and +although ill-prepared, was ready to submit humbly to his fate; that he +wished he could be spared a little longer, not for any selfish reason, +but to make a thorough reform in his character, and by devoting himself +to helping the poor, nursing the sick, and pleading with the people to +guard themselves against the evils of intemperance, make his life a +beneficent example to the young, and lay it down at last with the +precious reflection that it had not been lived in vain. He ended by +saying that his reform should begin at this moment, even here in the +presence of death, since no longer time was to be vouchsafed wherein to +prosecute it to men's help and benefit--and with that he threw away the +bottle of whisky. + +Mr. Ballou made remarks of similar purport, and began the reform he could +not live to continue, by throwing away the ancient pack of cards that had +solaced our captivity during the flood and made it bearable. + +He said he never gambled, but still was satisfied that the meddling with +cards in any way was immoral and injurious, and no man could be wholly +pure and blemishless without eschewing them. "And therefore," continued +he, "in doing this act I already feel more in sympathy with that +spiritual saturnalia necessary to entire and obsolete reform." These +rolling syllables touched him as no intelligible eloquence could have +done, and the old man sobbed with a mournfulness not unmingled with +satisfaction. + +My own remarks were of the same tenor as those of my comrades, and I know +that the feelings that prompted them were heartfelt and sincere. We were +all sincere, and all deeply moved and earnest, for we were in the +presence of death and without hope. I threw away my pipe, and in doing +it felt that at last I was free of a hated vice and one that had ridden +me like a tyrant all my days. While I yet talked, the thought of the +good I might have done in the world and the still greater good I might +now do, with these new incentives and higher and better aims to guide me +if I could only be spared a few years longer, overcame me and the tears +came again. We put our arms about each other's necks and awaited the +warning drowsiness that precedes death by freezing. + +It came stealing over us presently, and then we bade each other a last +farewell. A delicious dreaminess wrought its web about my yielding +senses, while the snow-flakes wove a winding sheet about my conquered +body. Oblivion came. The battle of life was done. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + +I do not know how long I was in a state of forgetfulness, but it seemed +an age. A vague consciousness grew upon me by degrees, and then came a +gathering anguish of pain in my limbs and through all my body. I +shuddered. The thought flitted through my brain, "this is death--this is +the hereafter." + +Then came a white upheaval at my side, and a voice said, with bitterness: + +"Will some gentleman be so good as to kick me behind?" + +It was Ballou--at least it was a towzled snow image in a sitting posture, +with Ballou's voice. + +I rose up, and there in the gray dawn, not fifteen steps from us, were +the frame buildings of a stage station, and under a shed stood our still +saddled and bridled horses! + +An arched snow-drift broke up, now, and Ollendorff emerged from it, and +the three of us sat and stared at the houses without speaking a word. +We really had nothing to say. We were like the profane man who could not +"do the subject justice," the whole situation was so painfully ridiculous +and humiliating that words were tame and we did not know where to +commence anyhow. + +The joy in our hearts at our deliverance was poisoned; well-nigh +dissipated, indeed. We presently began to grow pettish by degrees, and +sullen; and then, angry at each other, angry at ourselves, angry at +everything in general, we moodily dusted the snow from our clothing and +in unsociable single file plowed our way to the horses, unsaddled them, +and sought shelter in the station. + +I have scarcely exaggerated a detail of this curious and absurd +adventure. It occurred almost exactly as I have stated it. We actually +went into camp in a snow-drift in a desert, at midnight in a storm, +forlorn and hopeless, within fifteen steps of a comfortable inn. + +For two hours we sat apart in the station and ruminated in disgust. +The mystery was gone, now, and it was plain enough why the horses had +deserted us. Without a doubt they were under that shed a quarter of a +minute after they had left us, and they must have overheard and enjoyed +all our confessions and lamentations. + +After breakfast we felt better, and the zest of life soon came back. +The world looked bright again, and existence was as dear to us as ever. +Presently an uneasiness came over me--grew upon me--assailed me without +ceasing. Alas, my regeneration was not complete--I wanted to smoke! +I resisted with all my strength, but the flesh was weak. I wandered away +alone and wrestled with myself an hour. I recalled my promises of reform +and preached to myself persuasively, upbraidingly, exhaustively. But it +was all vain, I shortly found myself sneaking among the snow-drifts +hunting for my pipe. I discovered it after a considerable search, and +crept away to hide myself and enjoy it. I remained behind the barn a +good while, asking myself how I would feel if my braver, stronger, truer +comrades should catch me in my degradation. At last I lit the pipe, and +no human being can feel meaner and baser than I did then. I was ashamed +of being in my own pitiful company. Still dreading discovery, I felt +that perhaps the further side of the barn would be somewhat safer, and so +I turned the corner. As I turned the one corner, smoking, Ollendorff +turned the other with his bottle to his lips, and between us sat +unconscious Ballou deep in a game of "solitaire" with the old greasy +cards! + +Absurdity could go no farther. We shook hands and agreed to say no more +about "reform" and "examples to the rising generation." + +The station we were at was at the verge of the Twenty-six-Mile Desert. +If we had approached it half an hour earlier the night before, we must +have heard men shouting there and firing pistols; for they were expecting +some sheep drovers and their flocks and knew that they would infallibly +get lost and wander out of reach of help unless guided by sounds. + +While we remained at the station, three of the drovers arrived, nearly +exhausted with their wanderings, but two others of their party were never +heard of afterward. + +We reached Carson in due time, and took a rest. This rest, together with +preparations for the journey to Esmeralda, kept us there a week, and the +delay gave us the opportunity to be present at the trial of the great +land-slide case of Hyde vs. Morgan--an episode which is famous in Nevada +to this day. After a word or two of necessary explanation, I will set +down the history of this singular affair just as it transpired. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + +The mountains are very high and steep about Carson, Eagle and Washoe +Valleys--very high and very steep, and so when the snow gets to melting +off fast in the Spring and the warm surface-earth begins to moisten and +soften, the disastrous land-slides commence. The reader cannot know what +a land-slide is, unless he has lived in that country and seen the whole +side of a mountain taken off some fine morning and deposited down in the +valley, leaving a vast, treeless, unsightly scar upon the mountain's +front to keep the circumstance fresh in his memory all the years that he +may go on living within seventy miles of that place. + +General Buncombe was shipped out to Nevada in the invoice of Territorial +officers, to be United States Attorney. He considered himself a lawyer +of parts, and he very much wanted an opportunity to manifest it--partly +for the pure gratification of it and partly because his salary was +Territorially meagre (which is a strong expression). Now the older +citizens of a new territory look down upon the rest of the world with a +calm, benevolent compassion, as long as it keeps out of the way--when it +gets in the way they snub it. Sometimes this latter takes the shape of a +practical joke. + +One morning Dick Hyde rode furiously up to General Buncombe's door in +Carson city and rushed into his presence without stopping to tie his +horse. He seemed much excited. He told the General that he wanted him +to conduct a suit for him and would pay him five hundred dollars if he +achieved a victory. And then, with violent gestures and a world of +profanity, he poured out his grief. He said it was pretty well known +that for some years he had been farming (or ranching as the more +customary term is) in Washoe District, and making a successful thing of +it, and furthermore it was known that his ranch was situated just in the +edge of the valley, and that Tom Morgan owned a ranch immediately above +it on the mountain side. + +And now the trouble was, that one of those hated and dreaded land-slides +had come and slid Morgan's ranch, fences, cabins, cattle, barns and +everything down on top of his ranch and exactly covered up every single +vestige of his property, to a depth of about thirty-eight feet. Morgan +was in possession and refused to vacate the premises--said he was +occupying his own cabin and not interfering with anybody else's--and said +the cabin was standing on the same dirt and same ranch it had always +stood on, and he would like to see anybody make him vacate. + +"And when I reminded him," said Hyde, weeping, "that it was on top of my +ranch and that he was trespassing, he had the infernal meanness to ask me +why didn't I stay on my ranch and hold possession when I see him +a-coming! Why didn't I stay on it, the blathering lunatic--by George, +when I heard that racket and looked up that hill it was just like the +whole world was a-ripping and a-tearing down that mountain side +--splinters, and cord-wood, thunder and lightning, hail and snow, odds and +ends of hay stacks, and awful clouds of dust!--trees going end over end +in the air, rocks as big as a house jumping 'bout a thousand feet high +and busting into ten million pieces, cattle turned inside out and +a-coming head on with their tails hanging out between their teeth!--and +in the midst of all that wrack and destruction sot that cussed Morgan on +his gate-post, a-wondering why I didn't stay and hold possession! Laws +bless me, I just took one glimpse, General, and lit out'n the county in +three jumps exactly. + +"But what grinds me is that that Morgan hangs on there and won't move +off'n that ranch--says it's his'n and he's going to keep it--likes it +better'n he did when it was higher up the hill. Mad! Well, I've been so +mad for two days I couldn't find my way to town--been wandering around in +the brush in a starving condition--got anything here to drink, General? +But I'm here now, and I'm a-going to law. You hear me!" + +Never in all the world, perhaps, were a man's feelings so outraged as +were the General's. He said he had never heard of such high-handed +conduct in all his life as this Morgan's. And he said there was no use +in going to law--Morgan had no shadow of right to remain where he was +--nobody in the wide world would uphold him in it, and no lawyer would take +his case and no judge listen to it. Hyde said that right there was where +he was mistaken--everybody in town sustained Morgan; Hal Brayton, a very +smart lawyer, had taken his case; the courts being in vacation, it was to +be tried before a referee, and ex-Governor Roop had already been +appointed to that office and would open his court in a large public hall +near the hotel at two that afternoon. + +The General was amazed. He said he had suspected before that the people +of that Territory were fools, and now he knew it. But he said rest easy, +rest easy and collect the witnesses, for the victory was just as certain +as if the conflict were already over. Hyde wiped away his tears and +left. + +At two in the afternoon referee Roop's Court opened and Roop appeared +throned among his sheriffs, the witnesses, and spectators, and wearing +upon his face a solemnity so awe-inspiring that some of his +fellow-conspirators had misgivings that maybe he had not comprehended, +after all, that this was merely a joke. An unearthly stillness +prevailed, for at the slightest noise the judge uttered sternly the +command: + +"Order in the Court!" + +And the sheriffs promptly echoed it. Presently the General elbowed his +way through the crowd of spectators, with his arms full of law-books, and +on his ears fell an order from the judge which was the first respectful +recognition of his high official dignity that had ever saluted them, and +it trickled pleasantly through his whole system: + +"Way for the United States Attorney!" + +The witnesses were called--legislators, high government officers, +ranchmen, miners, Indians, Chinamen, negroes. Three fourths of them were +called by the defendant Morgan, but no matter, their testimony invariably +went in favor of the plaintiff Hyde. Each new witness only added new +testimony to the absurdity of a man's claiming to own another man's +property because his farm had slid down on top of it. Then the Morgan +lawyers made their speeches, and seemed to make singularly weak ones +--they did really nothing to help the Morgan cause. And now the General, +with exultation in his face, got up and made an impassioned effort; he +pounded the table, he banged the law-books, he shouted, and roared, and +howled, he quoted from everything and everybody, poetry, sarcasm, +statistics, history, pathos, bathos, blasphemy, and wound up with a grand +war-whoop for free speech, freedom of the press, free schools, the +Glorious Bird of America and the principles of eternal justice! +[Applause.] + +When the General sat down, he did it with the conviction that if there +was anything in good strong testimony, a great speech and believing and +admiring countenances all around, Mr. Morgan's case was killed. +Ex-Governor Roop leant his head upon his hand for some minutes, thinking, +and the still audience waited for his decision. Then he got up and stood +erect, with bended head, and thought again. Then he walked the floor +with long, deliberate strides, his chin in his hand, and still the +audience waited. At last he returned to his throne, seated himself, and +began impressively: + +"Gentlemen, I feel the great responsibility that rests upon me this day. +This is no ordinary case. On the contrary it is plain that it is the +most solemn and awful that ever man was called upon to decide. +Gentlemen, I have listened attentively to the evidence, and have +perceived that the weight of it, the overwhelming weight of it, is in +favor of the plaintiff Hyde. I have listened also to the remarks of +counsel, with high interest--and especially will I commend the masterly +and irrefutable logic of the distinguished gentleman who represents the +plaintiff. But gentlemen, let us beware how we allow mere human +testimony, human ingenuity in argument and human ideas of equity, to +influence us at a moment so solemn as this. Gentlemen, it ill becomes +us, worms as we are, to meddle with the decrees of Heaven. It is plain +to me that Heaven, in its inscrutable wisdom, has seen fit to move this +defendant's ranch for a purpose. We are but creatures, and we must +submit. If Heaven has chosen to favor the defendant Morgan in this +marked and wonderful manner; and if Heaven, dissatisfied with the +position of the Morgan ranch upon the mountain side, has chosen to remove +it to a position more eligible and more advantageous for its owner, it +ill becomes us, insects as we are, to question the legality of the act or +inquire into the reasons that prompted it. No--Heaven created the +ranches and it is Heaven's prerogative to rearrange them, to experiment +with them around at its pleasure. It is for us to submit, without +repining. + +"I warn you that this thing which has happened is a thing with which the +sacrilegious hands and brains and tongues of men must not meddle. +Gentlemen, it is the verdict of this court that the plaintiff, Richard +Hyde, has been deprived of his ranch by the visitation of God! And from +this decision there is no appeal." + +Buncombe seized his cargo of law-books and plunged out of the court-room +frantic with indignation. He pronounced Roop to be a miraculous fool, an +inspired idiot. In all good faith he returned at night and remonstrated +with Roop upon his extravagant decision, and implored him to walk the +floor and think for half an hour, and see if he could not figure out some +sort of modification of the verdict. Roop yielded at last and got up to +walk. He walked two hours and a half, and at last his face lit up +happily and he told Buncombe it had occurred to him that the ranch +underneath the new Morgan ranch still belonged to Hyde, that his title to +the ground was just as good as it had ever been, and therefore he was of +opinion that Hyde had a right to dig it out from under there and-- + +The General never waited to hear the end of it. He was always an +impatient and irascible man, that way. At the end of two months the fact +that he had been played upon with a joke had managed to bore itself, like +another Hoosac Tunnel, through the solid adamant of his understanding. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + +When we finally left for Esmeralda, horseback, we had an addition to the +company in the person of Capt. John Nye, the Governor's brother. He had +a good memory, and a tongue hung in the middle. This is a combination +which gives immortality to conversation. Capt. John never suffered the +talk to flag or falter once during the hundred and twenty miles of the +journey. In addition to his conversational powers, he had one or two +other endowments of a marked character. One was a singular "handiness" +about doing anything and everything, from laying out a railroad or +organizing a political party, down to sewing on buttons, shoeing a horse, +or setting a broken leg, or a hen. Another was a spirit of accommodation +that prompted him to take the needs, difficulties and perplexities of +anybody and everybody upon his own shoulders at any and all times, and +dispose of them with admirable facility and alacrity--hence he always +managed to find vacant beds in crowded inns, and plenty to eat in the +emptiest larders. And finally, wherever he met a man, woman or child, in +camp, inn or desert, he either knew such parties personally or had been +acquainted with a relative of the same. Such another traveling comrade +was never seen before. I cannot forbear giving a specimen of the way in +which he overcame difficulties. On the second day out, we arrived, very +tired and hungry, at a poor little inn in the desert, and were told that +the house was full, no provisions on hand, and neither hay nor barley to +spare for the horses--must move on. The rest of us wanted to hurry on +while it was yet light, but Capt. John insisted on stopping awhile. +We dismounted and entered. There was no welcome for us on any face. +Capt. John began his blandishments, and within twenty minutes he had +accomplished the following things, viz.: found old acquaintances in three +teamsters; discovered that he used to go to school with the landlord's +mother; recognized his wife as a lady whose life he had saved once in +California, by stopping her runaway horse; mended a child's broken toy +and won the favor of its mother, a guest of the inn; helped the hostler +bleed a horse, and prescribed for another horse that had the "heaves"; +treated the entire party three times at the landlord's bar; produced a +later paper than anybody had seen for a week and sat himself down to read +the news to a deeply interested audience. The result, summed up, was as +follows: The hostler found plenty of feed for our horses; we had a trout +supper, an exceedingly sociable time after it, good beds to sleep in, and +a surprising breakfast in the morning--and when we left, we left lamented +by all! Capt. John had some bad traits, but he had some uncommonly +valuable ones to offset them with. + +Esmeralda was in many respects another Humboldt, but in a little more +forward state. The claims we had been paying assessments on were +entirely worthless, and we threw them away. The principal one cropped +out of the top of a knoll that was fourteen feet high, and the inspired +Board of Directors were running a tunnel under that knoll to strike the +ledge. The tunnel would have to be seventy feet long, and would then +strike the ledge at the same dept that a shaft twelve feet deep would +have reached! The Board were living on the "assessments." [N.B.--This +hint comes too late for the enlightenment of New York silver miners; they +have already learned all about this neat trick by experience.] The Board +had no desire to strike the ledge, knowing that it was as barren of +silver as a curbstone. This reminiscence calls to mind Jim Townsend's +tunnel. He had paid assessments on a mine called the "Daley" till he was +well-nigh penniless. Finally an assessment was levied to run a tunnel +two hundred and fifty feet on the Daley, and Townsend went up on the hill +to look into matters. + +He found the Daley cropping out of the apex of an exceedingly +sharp-pointed peak, and a couple of men up there "facing" the proposed +tunnel. Townsend made a calculation. Then he said to the men: + +"So you have taken a contract to run a tunnel into this hill two hundred +and fifty feet to strike this ledge?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Well, do you know that you have got one of the most expensive and +arduous undertakings before you that was ever conceived by man?" + +"Why no--how is that?" + +"Because this hill is only twenty-five feet through from side to side; +and so you have got to build two hundred and twenty-five feet of your +tunnel on trestle-work!" + +The ways of silver mining Boards are exceedingly dark and sinuous. + +We took up various claims, and commenced shafts and tunnels on them, but +never finished any of them. We had to do a certain amount of work on +each to "hold" it, else other parties could seize our property after the +expiration of ten days. We were always hunting up new claims and doing a +little work on them and then waiting for a buyer--who never came. We +never found any ore that would yield more than fifty dollars a ton; and +as the mills charged fifty dollars a ton for working ore and extracting +the silver, our pocket-money melted steadily away and none returned to +take its place. We lived in a little cabin and cooked for ourselves; and +altogether it was a hard life, though a hopeful one--for we never ceased +to expect fortune and a customer to burst upon us some day. + +At last, when flour reached a dollar a pound, and money could not be +borrowed on the best security at less than eight per cent a month (I +being without the security, too), I abandoned mining and went to milling. +That is to say, I went to work as a common laborer in a quartz mill, at +ten dollars a week and board. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + +I had already learned how hard and long and dismal a task it is to burrow +down into the bowels of the earth and get out the coveted ore; and now I +learned that the burrowing was only half the work; and that to get the +silver out of the ore was the dreary and laborious other half of it. +We had to turn out at six in the morning and keep at it till dark. +This mill was a six-stamp affair, driven by steam. Six tall, upright +rods of iron, as large as a man's ankle, and heavily shod with a mass of +iron and steel at their lower ends, were framed together like a gate, and +these rose and fell, one after the other, in a ponderous dance, in an +iron box called a "battery." Each of these rods or stamps weighed six +hundred pounds. One of us stood by the battery all day long, breaking up +masses of silver-bearing rock with a sledge and shoveling it into the +battery. The ceaseless dance of the stamps pulverized the rock to +powder, and a stream of water that trickled into the battery turned it to +a creamy paste. The minutest particles were driven through a fine wire +screen which fitted close around the battery, and were washed into great +tubs warmed by super-heated steam--amalgamating pans, they are called. +The mass of pulp in the pans was kept constantly stirred up by revolving +"mullers." A quantity of quicksilver was kept always in the battery, and +this seized some of the liberated gold and silver particles and held on +to them; quicksilver was shaken in a fine shower into the pans, also, +about every half hour, through a buckskin sack. Quantities of coarse +salt and sulphate of copper were added, from time to time to assist the +amalgamation by destroying base metals which coated the gold and silver +and would not let it unite with the quicksilver. + +All these tiresome things we had to attend to constantly. Streams of +dirty water flowed always from the pans and were carried off in broad +wooden troughs to the ravine. One would not suppose that atoms of gold +and silver would float on top of six inches of water, but they did; and +in order to catch them, coarse blankets were laid in the troughs, and +little obstructing "riffles" charged with quicksilver were placed here +and there across the troughs also. These riffles had to be cleaned and +the blankets washed out every evening, to get their precious +accumulations--and after all this eternity of trouble one third of the +silver and gold in a ton of rock would find its way to the end of the +troughs in the ravine at last and have to be worked over again some day. +There is nothing so aggravating as silver milling. There never was any +idle time in that mill. There was always something to do. It is a pity +that Adam could not have gone straight out of Eden into a quartz mill, in +order to understand the full force of his doom to "earn his bread by the +sweat of his brow." Every now and then, during the day, we had to scoop +some pulp out of the pans, and tediously "wash" it in a horn spoon--wash +it little by little over the edge till at last nothing was left but some +little dull globules of quicksilver in the bottom. If they were soft and +yielding, the pan needed some salt or some sulphate of copper or some +other chemical rubbish to assist digestion; if they were crisp to the +touch and would retain a dint, they were freighted with all the silver +and gold they could seize and hold, and consequently the pan needed a +fresh charge of quicksilver. When there was nothing else to do, one +could always "screen tailings." That is to say, he could shovel up the +dried sand that had washed down to the ravine through the troughs and +dash it against an upright wire screen to free it from pebbles and +prepare it for working over. + +The process of amalgamation differed in the various mills, and this +included changes in style of pans and other machinery, and a great +diversity of opinion existed as to the best in use, but none of the +methods employed, involved the principle of milling ore without +"screening the tailings." Of all recreations in the world, screening +tailings on a hot day, with a long-handled shovel, is the most +undesirable. + +At the end of the week the machinery was stopped and we "cleaned up." +That is to say, we got the pulp out of the pans and batteries, and washed +the mud patiently away till nothing was left but the long accumulating +mass of quicksilver, with its imprisoned treasures. This we made into +heavy, compact snow-balls, and piled them up in a bright, luxurious heap +for inspection. Making these snow-balls cost me a fine gold ring--that +and ignorance together; for the quicksilver invaded the ring with the +same facility with which water saturates a sponge--separated its +particles and the ring crumbled to pieces. + +We put our pile of quicksilver balls into an iron retort that had a pipe +leading from it to a pail of water, and then applied a roasting heat. +The quicksilver turned to vapor, escaped through the pipe into the pail, +and the water turned it into good wholesome quicksilver again. +Quicksilver is very costly, and they never waste it. On opening the +retort, there was our week's work--a lump of pure white, frosty looking +silver, twice as large as a man's head. Perhaps a fifth of the mass was +gold, but the color of it did not show--would not have shown if two +thirds of it had been gold. We melted it up and made a solid brick of it +by pouring it into an iron brick-mould. + +By such a tedious and laborious process were silver bricks obtained. +This mill was but one of many others in operation at the time. The first +one in Nevada was built at Egan Canyon and was a small insignificant +affair and compared most unfavorably with some of the immense +establishments afterwards located at Virginia City and elsewhere. + +From our bricks a little corner was chipped off for the "fire-assay"--a +method used to determine the proportions of gold, silver and base metals +in the mass. This is an interesting process. The chip is hammered out +as thin as paper and weighed on scales so fine and sensitive that if you +weigh a two-inch scrap of paper on them and then write your name on the +paper with a course, soft pencil and weigh it again, the scales will take +marked notice of the addition. + +Then a little lead (also weighed) is rolled up with the flake of silver +and the two are melted at a great heat in a small vessel called a cupel, +made by compressing bone ashes into a cup-shape in a steel mold. The +base metals oxydize and are absorbed with the lead into the pores of the +cupel. A button or globule of perfectly pure gold and silver is left +behind, and by weighing it and noting the loss, the assayer knows the +proportion of base metal the brick contains. He has to separate the gold +from the silver now. The button is hammered out flat and thin, put in +the furnace and kept some time at a red heat; after cooling it off it is +rolled up like a quill and heated in a glass vessel containing nitric +acid; the acid dissolves the silver and leaves the gold pure and ready to +be weighed on its own merits. Then salt water is poured into the vessel +containing the dissolved silver and the silver returns to palpable form +again and sinks to the bottom. Nothing now remains but to weigh it; then +the proportions of the several metals contained in the brick are known, +and the assayer stamps the value of the brick upon its surface. + +The sagacious reader will know now, without being told, that the +speculative miner, in getting a "fire-assay" made of a piece of rock from +his mine (to help him sell the same), was not in the habit of picking out +the least valuable fragment of rock on his dump-pile, but quite the +contrary. I have seen men hunt over a pile of nearly worthless quartz +for an hour, and at last find a little piece as large as a filbert, which +was rich in gold and silver--and this was reserved for a fire-assay! Of +course the fire-assay would demonstrate that a ton of such rock would +yield hundreds of dollars--and on such assays many an utterly worthless +mine was sold. + +Assaying was a good business, and so some men engaged in it, +occasionally, who were not strictly scientific and capable. One assayer +got such rich results out of all specimens brought to him that in time he +acquired almost a monopoly of the business. But like all men who achieve +success, he became an object of envy and suspicion. The other assayers +entered into a conspiracy against him, and let some prominent citizens +into the secret in order to show that they meant fairly. Then they broke +a little fragment off a carpenter's grindstone and got a stranger to take +it to the popular scientist and get it assayed. In the course of an hour +the result came--whereby it appeared that a ton of that rock would yield +$1,184.40 in silver and $366.36 in gold! + +Due publication of the whole matter was made in the paper, and the +popular assayer left town "between two days." + +I will remark, in passing, that I only remained in the milling business +one week. I told my employer I could not stay longer without an advance +in my wages; that I liked quartz milling, indeed was infatuated with it; +that I had never before grown so tenderly attached to an occupation in so +short a time; that nothing, it seemed to me, gave such scope to +intellectual activity as feeding a battery and screening tailings, and +nothing so stimulated the moral attributes as retorting bullion and +washing blankets--still, I felt constrained to ask an increase of salary. +He said he was paying me ten dollars a week, and thought it a good round +sum. How much did I want? + +I said about four hundred thousand dollars a month, and board, was about +all I could reasonably ask, considering the hard times. + +I was ordered off the premises! And yet, when I look back to those days +and call to mind the exceeding hardness of the labor I performed in that +mill, I only regret that I did not ask him seven hundred thousand. + +Shortly after this I began to grow crazy, along with the rest of the +population, about the mysterious and wonderful "cement mine," and to make +preparations to take advantage of any opportunity that might offer to go +and help hunt for it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. + +It was somewhere in the neighborhood of Mono Lake that the marvellous +Whiteman cement mine was supposed to lie. Every now and then it would be +reported that Mr. W. had passed stealthily through Esmeralda at dead of +night, in disguise, and then we would have a wild excitement--because he +must be steering for his secret mine, and now was the time to follow him. +In less than three hours after daylight all the horses and mules and +donkeys in the vicinity would be bought, hired or stolen, and half the +community would be off for the mountains, following in the wake of +Whiteman. But W. would drift about through the mountain gorges for days +together, in a purposeless sort of way, until the provisions of the +miners ran out, and they would have to go back home. I have known it +reported at eleven at night, in a large mining camp, that Whiteman had +just passed through, and in two hours the streets, so quiet before, would +be swarming with men and animals. Every individual would be trying to be +very secret, but yet venturing to whisper to just one neighbor that W. +had passed through. And long before daylight--this in the dead of +Winter--the stampede would be complete, the camp deserted, and the whole +population gone chasing after W. + +The tradition was that in the early immigration, more than twenty years +ago, three young Germans, brothers, who had survived an Indian massacre +on the Plains, wandered on foot through the deserts, avoiding all trails +and roads, and simply holding a westerly direction and hoping to find +California before they starved, or died of fatigue. And in a gorge in +the mountains they sat down to rest one day, when one of them noticed a +curious vein of cement running along the ground, shot full of lumps of +dull yellow metal. They saw that it was gold, and that here was a +fortune to be acquired in a single day. The vein was about as wide as a +curbstone, and fully two thirds of it was pure gold. Every pound of the +wonderful cement was worth well-nigh $200. + +Each of the brothers loaded himself with about twenty-five pounds of it, +and then they covered up all traces of the vein, made a rude drawing of +the locality and the principal landmarks in the vicinity, and started +westward again. But troubles thickened about them. In their wanderings +one brother fell and broke his leg, and the others were obliged to go on +and leave him to die in the wilderness. Another, worn out and starving, +gave up by and by, and laid down to die, but after two or three weeks of +incredible hardships, the third reached the settlements of California +exhausted, sick, and his mind deranged by his sufferings. He had thrown +away all his cement but a few fragments, but these were sufficient to set +everybody wild with excitement. However, he had had enough of the cement +country, and nothing could induce him to lead a party thither. He was +entirely content to work on a farm for wages. But he gave Whiteman his +map, and described the cement region as well as he could and thus +transferred the curse to that gentleman--for when I had my one accidental +glimpse of Mr. W. in Esmeralda he had been hunting for the lost mine, in +hunger and thirst, poverty and sickness, for twelve or thirteen years. +Some people believed he had found it, but most people believed he had +not. I saw a piece of cement as large as my fist which was said to have +been given to Whiteman by the young German, and it was of a seductive +nature. Lumps of virgin gold were as thick in it as raisins in a slice +of fruit cake. The privilege of working such a mine one week would be +sufficient for a man of reasonable desires. + +A new partner of ours, a Mr. Higbie, knew Whiteman well by sight, and a +friend of ours, a Mr. Van Dorn, was well acquainted with him, and not +only that, but had Whiteman's promise that he should have a private hint +in time to enable him to join the next cement expedition. Van Dorn had +promised to extend the hint to us. One evening Higbie came in greatly +excited, and said he felt certain he had recognized Whiteman, up town, +disguised and in a pretended state of intoxication. In a little while +Van Dorn arrived and confirmed the news; and so we gathered in our cabin +and with heads close together arranged our plans in impressive whispers. + +We were to leave town quietly, after midnight, in two or three small +parties, so as not to attract attention, and meet at dawn on the "divide" +overlooking Mono Lake, eight or nine miles distant. We were to make no +noise after starting, and not speak above a whisper under any +circumstances. It was believed that for once Whiteman's presence was +unknown in the town and his expedition unsuspected. Our conclave broke +up at nine o'clock, and we set about our preparation diligently and with +profound secrecy. At eleven o'clock we saddled our horses, hitched them +with their long riatas (or lassos), and then brought out a side of bacon, +a sack of beans, a small sack of coffee, some sugar, a hundred pounds of +flour in sacks, some tin cups and a coffee pot, frying pan and some few +other necessary articles. All these things were "packed" on the back of +a led horse--and whoever has not been taught, by a Spanish adept, to pack +an animal, let him never hope to do the thing by natural smartness. That +is impossible. Higbie had had some experience, but was not perfect. He +put on the pack saddle (a thing like a saw-buck), piled the property on +it and then wound a rope all over and about it and under it, "every which +way," taking a hitch in it every now and then, and occasionally surging +back on it till the horse's sides sunk in and he gasped for breath--but +every time the lashings grew tight in one place they loosened in another. +We never did get the load tight all over, but we got it so that it would +do, after a fashion, and then we started, in single file, close order, +and without a word. It was a dark night. We kept the middle of the +road, and proceeded in a slow walk past the rows of cabins, and whenever +a miner came to his door I trembled for fear the light would shine on us +an excite curiosity. But nothing happened. We began the long winding +ascent of the canyon, toward the "divide," and presently the cabins began +to grow infrequent, and the intervals between them wider and wider, and +then I began to breathe tolerably freely and feel less like a thief and a +murderer. I was in the rear, leading the pack horse. As the ascent grew +steeper he grew proportionately less satisfied with his cargo, and began +to pull back on his riata occasionally and delay progress. My comrades +were passing out of sight in the gloom. I was getting anxious. I coaxed +and bullied the pack horse till I presently got him into a trot, and then +the tin cups and pans strung about his person frightened him and he ran. +His riata was wound around the pummel of my saddle, and so, as he went by +he dragged me from my horse and the two animals traveled briskly on +without me. But I was not alone--the loosened cargo tumbled overboard +from the pack horse and fell close to me. It was abreast of almost the +last cabin. + +A miner came out and said: + +"Hello!" + +I was thirty steps from him, and knew he could not see me, it was so very +dark in the shadow of the mountain. So I lay still. Another head +appeared in the light of the cabin door, and presently the two men walked +toward me. They stopped within ten steps of me, and one said: + +"Sh! Listen." + +I could not have been in a more distressed state if I had been escaping +justice with a price on my head. Then the miners appeared to sit down on +a boulder, though I could not see them distinctly enough to be very sure +what they did. One said: + +"I heard a noise, as plain as I ever heard anything. It seemed to be +about there--" + +A stone whizzed by my head. I flattened myself out in the dust like a +postage stamp, and thought to myself if he mended his aim ever so little +he would probably hear another noise. In my heart, now, I execrated +secret expeditions. I promised myself that this should be my last, +though the Sierras were ribbed with cement veins. Then one of the men +said: + +"I'll tell you what! Welch knew what he was talking about when he said +he saw Whiteman to-day. I heard horses--that was the noise. I am going +down to Welch's, right away." + +They left and I was glad. I did not care whither they went, so they +went. I was willing they should visit Welch, and the sooner the better. + +As soon as they closed their cabin door my comrades emerged from the +gloom; they had caught the horses and were waiting for a clear coast +again. We remounted the cargo on the pack horse and got under way, and +as day broke we reached the "divide" and joined Van Dorn. Then we +journeyed down into the valley of the Lake, and feeling secure, we halted +to cook breakfast, for we were tired and sleepy and hungry. Three hours +later the rest of the population filed over the "divide" in a long +procession, and drifted off out of sight around the borders of the Lake! + +Whether or not my accident had produced this result we never knew, but at +least one thing was certain--the secret was out and Whiteman would not +enter upon a search for the cement mine this time. We were filled with +chagrin. + +We held a council and decided to make the best of our misfortune and +enjoy a week's holiday on the borders of the curious Lake. Mono, it is +sometimes called, and sometimes the "Dead Sea of California." It is one +of the strangest freaks of Nature to be found in any land, but it is +hardly ever mentioned in print and very seldom visited, because it lies +away off the usual routes of travel and besides is so difficult to get at +that only men content to endure the roughest life will consent to take +upon themselves the discomforts of such a trip. On the morning of our +second day, we traveled around to a remote and particularly wild spot on +the borders of the Lake, where a stream of fresh, ice-cold water entered +it from the mountain side, and then we went regularly into camp. We +hired a large boat and two shot-guns from a lonely ranchman who lived +some ten miles further on, and made ready for comfort and recreation. +We soon got thoroughly acquainted with the Lake and all its +peculiarities. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + +Mono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand +feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousand +feet higher, whose summits are always clothed in clouds. This solemn, +silent, sail-less sea--this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earth +--is little graced with the picturesque. It is an unpretending expanse +of grayish water, about a hundred miles in circumference, with two +islands in its centre, mere upheavals of rent and scorched and blistered +lava, snowed over with gray banks and drifts of pumice-stone and ashes, +the winding sheet of the dead volcano, whose vast crater the lake has +seized upon and occupied. + +The lake is two hundred feet deep, and its sluggish waters are so strong +with alkali that if you only dip the most hopelessly soiled garment into +them once or twice, and wring it out, it will be found as clean as if it +had been through the ablest of washerwomen's hands. While we camped +there our laundry work was easy. We tied the week's washing astern of +our boat, and sailed a quarter of a mile, and the job was complete, all +to the wringing out. If we threw the water on our heads and gave them a +rub or so, the white lather would pile up three inches high. This water +is not good for bruised places and abrasions of the skin. We had a +valuable dog. He had raw places on him. He had more raw places on him +than sound ones. He was the rawest dog I almost ever saw. He jumped +overboard one day to get away from the flies. But it was bad judgment. +In his condition, it would have been just as comfortable to jump into the +fire. + +The alkali water nipped him in all the raw places simultaneously, and he +struck out for the shore with considerable interest. He yelped and +barked and howled as he went--and by the time he got to the shore there +was no bark to him--for he had barked the bark all out of his inside, and +the alkali water had cleaned the bark all off his outside, and he +probably wished he had never embarked in any such enterprise. He ran +round and round in a circle, and pawed the earth and clawed the air, and +threw double somersaults, sometimes backward and sometimes forward, in +the most extraordinary manner. He was not a demonstrative dog, as a +general thing, but rather of a grave and serious turn of mind, and I +never saw him take so much interest in anything before. He finally +struck out over the mountains, at a gait which we estimated at about two +hundred and fifty miles an hour, and he is going yet. This was about +nine years ago. We look for what is left of him along here every day. + +A white man cannot drink the water of Mono Lake, for it is nearly pure +lye. It is said that the Indians in the vicinity drink it sometimes, +though. It is not improbable, for they are among the purest liars I ever +saw. [There will be no additional charge for this joke, except to +parties requiring an explanation of it. This joke has received high +commendation from some of the ablest minds of the age.] + +There are no fish in Mono Lake--no frogs, no snakes, no polliwigs +--nothing, in fact, that goes to make life desirable. Millions of wild +ducks and sea-gulls swim about the surface, but no living thing exists +under the surface, except a white feathery sort of worm, one half an inch +long, which looks like a bit of white thread frayed out at the sides. If +you dip up a gallon of water, you will get about fifteen thousand of +these. They give to the water a sort of grayish-white appearance. Then +there is a fly, which looks something like our house fly. These settle +on the beach to eat the worms that wash ashore--and any time, you can see +there a belt of flies an inch deep and six feet wide, and this belt +extends clear around the lake--a belt of flies one hundred miles long. +If you throw a stone among them, they swarm up so thick that they look +dense, like a cloud. You can hold them under water as long as you +please--they do not mind it--they are only proud of it. When you let +them go, they pop up to the surface as dry as a patent office report, and +walk off as unconcernedly as if they had been educated especially with a +view to affording instructive entertainment to man in that particular +way. Providence leaves nothing to go by chance. All things have their +uses and their part and proper place in Nature's economy: the ducks eat +the flies--the flies eat the worms--the Indians eat all three--the wild +cats eat the Indians--the white folks eat the wild cats--and thus all +things are lovely. + +Mono Lake is a hundred miles in a straight line from the ocean--and +between it and the ocean are one or two ranges of mountains--yet +thousands of sea-gulls go there every season to lay their eggs and rear +their young. One would as soon expect to find sea-gulls in Kansas. +And in this connection let us observe another instance of Nature's +wisdom. The islands in the lake being merely huge masses of lava, coated +over with ashes and pumice-stone, and utterly innocent of vegetation or +anything that would burn; and sea-gull's eggs being entirely useless to +anybody unless they be cooked, Nature has provided an unfailing spring of +boiling water on the largest island, and you can put your eggs in there, +and in four minutes you can boil them as hard as any statement I have +made during the past fifteen years. Within ten feet of the boiling +spring is a spring of pure cold water, sweet and wholesome. + +So, in that island you get your board and washing free of charge--and if +nature had gone further and furnished a nice American hotel clerk who was +crusty and disobliging, and didn't know anything about the time tables, +or the railroad routes--or--anything--and was proud of it--I would not +wish for a more desirable boarding-house. + +Half a dozen little mountain brooks flow into Mono Lake, but not a stream +of any kind flows out of it. It neither rises nor falls, apparently, and +what it does with its surplus water is a dark and bloody mystery. + +There are only two seasons in the region round about Mono Lake--and these +are, the breaking up of one Winter and the beginning of the next. More +than once (in Esmeralda) I have seen a perfectly blistering morning open +up with the thermometer at ninety degrees at eight o'clock, and seen the +snow fall fourteen inches deep and that same identical thermometer go +down to forty-four degrees under shelter, before nine o'clock at night. +Under favorable circumstances it snows at least once in every single +month in the year, in the little town of Mono. So uncertain is the +climate in Summer that a lady who goes out visiting cannot hope to be +prepared for all emergencies unless she takes her fan under one arm and +her snow shoes under the other. When they have a Fourth of July +procession it generally snows on them, and they do say that as a general +thing when a man calls for a brandy toddy there, the bar keeper chops it +off with a hatchet and wraps it up in a paper, like maple sugar. And it +is further reported that the old soakers haven't any teeth--wore them out +eating gin cocktails and brandy punches. I do not endorse that +statement--I simply give it for what it is worth--and it is worth--well, +I should say, millions, to any man who can believe it without straining +himself. But I do endorse the snow on the Fourth of July--because I know +that to be true. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + +About seven o'clock one blistering hot morning--for it was now dead +summer time--Higbie and I took the boat and started on a voyage of +discovery to the two islands. We had often longed to do this, but had +been deterred by the fear of storms; for they were frequent, and severe +enough to capsize an ordinary row-boat like ours without great +difficulty--and once capsized, death would ensue in spite of the bravest +swimming, for that venomous water would eat a man's eyes out like fire, +and burn him out inside, too, if he shipped a sea. It was called twelve +miles, straight out to the islands--a long pull and a warm one--but the +morning was so quiet and sunny, and the lake so smooth and glassy and +dead, that we could not resist the temptation. So we filled two large +tin canteens with water (since we were not acquainted with the locality +of the spring said to exist on the large island), and started. Higbie's +brawny muscles gave the boat good speed, but by the time we reached our +destination we judged that we had pulled nearer fifteen miles than +twelve. + +We landed on the big island and went ashore. We tried the water in the +canteens, now, and found that the sun had spoiled it; it was so brackish +that we could not drink it; so we poured it out and began a search for +the spring--for thirst augments fast as soon as it is apparent that one +has no means at hand of quenching it. The island was a long, moderately +high hill of ashes--nothing but gray ashes and pumice-stone, in which we +sunk to our knees at every step--and all around the top was a forbidding +wall of scorched and blasted rocks. When we reached the top and got +within the wall, we found simply a shallow, far-reaching basin, carpeted +with ashes, and here and there a patch of fine sand. In places, +picturesque jets of steam shot up out of crevices, giving evidence that +although this ancient crater had gone out of active business, there was +still some fire left in its furnaces. Close to one of these jets of +steam stood the only tree on the island--a small pine of most graceful +shape and most faultless symmetry; its color was a brilliant green, for +the steam drifted unceasingly through its branches and kept them always +moist. It contrasted strangely enough, did this vigorous and beautiful +outcast, with its dead and dismal surroundings. It was like a cheerful +spirit in a mourning household. + +We hunted for the spring everywhere, traversing the full length of the +island (two or three miles), and crossing it twice--climbing ash-hills +patiently, and then sliding down the other side in a sitting posture, +plowing up smothering volumes of gray dust. But we found nothing but +solitude, ashes and a heart-breaking silence. Finally we noticed that +the wind had risen, and we forgot our thirst in a solicitude of greater +importance; for, the lake being quiet, we had not taken pains about +securing the boat. We hurried back to a point overlooking our landing +place, and then--but mere words cannot describe our dismay--the boat was +gone! The chances were that there was not another boat on the entire +lake. The situation was not comfortable--in truth, to speak plainly, it +was frightful. We were prisoners on a desolate island, in aggravating +proximity to friends who were for the present helpless to aid us; and +what was still more uncomfortable was the reflection that we had neither +food nor water. But presently we sighted the boat. It was drifting +along, leisurely, about fifty yards from shore, tossing in a foamy sea. +It drifted, and continued to drift, but at the same safe distance from +land, and we walked along abreast it and waited for fortune to favor us. +At the end of an hour it approached a jutting cape, and Higbie ran ahead +and posted himself on the utmost verge and prepared for the assault. If +we failed there, there was no hope for us. It was driving gradually +shoreward all the time, now; but whether it was driving fast enough to +make the connection or not was the momentous question. When it got +within thirty steps of Higbie I was so excited that I fancied I could +hear my own heart beat. When, a little later, it dragged slowly along +and seemed about to go by, only one little yard out of reach, it seemed +as if my heart stood still; and when it was exactly abreast him and began +to widen away, and he still standing like a watching statue, I knew my +heart did stop. But when he gave a great spring, the next instant, and +lit fairly in the stern, I discharged a war-whoop that woke the +solitudes! + +But it dulled my enthusiasm, presently, when he told me he had not been +caring whether the boat came within jumping distance or not, so that it +passed within eight or ten yards of him, for he had made up his mind to +shut his eyes and mouth and swim that trifling distance. Imbecile that I +was, I had not thought of that. It was only a long swim that could be +fatal. + +The sea was running high and the storm increasing. It was growing late, +too--three or four in the afternoon. Whether to venture toward the +mainland or not, was a question of some moment. But we were so +distressed by thirst that we decide to try it, and so Higbie fell to work +and I took the steering-oar. When we had pulled a mile, laboriously, +we were evidently in serious peril, for the storm had greatly augmented; +the billows ran very high and were capped with foaming crests, +the heavens were hung with black, and the wind blew with great fury. +We would have gone back, now, but we did not dare to turn the boat +around, because as soon as she got in the trough of the sea she would +upset, of course. Our only hope lay in keeping her head-on to the seas. +It was hard work to do this, she plunged so, and so beat and belabored +the billows with her rising and falling bows. Now and then one of +Higbie's oars would trip on the top of a wave, and the other one would +snatch the boat half around in spite of my cumbersome steering apparatus. +We were drenched by the sprays constantly, and the boat occasionally +shipped water. By and by, powerful as my comrade was, his great +exertions began to tell on him, and he was anxious that I should change +places with him till he could rest a little. But I told him this was +impossible; for if the steering oar were dropped a moment while we +changed, the boat would slue around into the trough of the sea, capsize, +and in less than five minutes we would have a hundred gallons of +soap-suds in us and be eaten up so quickly that we could not even be +present at our own inquest. + +But things cannot last always. Just as the darkness shut down we came +booming into port, head on. Higbie dropped his oars to hurrah--I dropped +mine to help--the sea gave the boat a twist, and over she went! + +The agony that alkali water inflicts on bruises, chafes and blistered +hands, is unspeakable, and nothing but greasing all over will modify it +--but we ate, drank and slept well, that night, notwithstanding. + +In speaking of the peculiarities of Mono Lake, I ought to have mentioned +that at intervals all around its shores stand picturesque turret-looking +masses and clusters of a whitish, coarse-grained rock that resembles +inferior mortar dried hard; and if one breaks off fragments of this rock +he will find perfectly shaped and thoroughly petrified gulls' eggs deeply +imbedded in the mass. How did they get there? I simply state the fact +--for it is a fact--and leave the geological reader to crack the nut at his +leisure and solve the problem after his own fashion. + +At the end of a week we adjourned to the Sierras on a fishing excursion, +and spent several days in camp under snowy Castle Peak, and fished +successfully for trout in a bright, miniature lake whose surface was +between ten and eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea; cooling +ourselves during the hot August noons by sitting on snow banks ten feet +deep, under whose sheltering edges fine grass and dainty flowers +flourished luxuriously; and at night entertaining ourselves by almost +freezing to death. Then we returned to Mono Lake, and finding that the +cement excitement was over for the present, packed up and went back to +Esmeralda. Mr. Ballou reconnoitred awhile, and not liking the prospect, +set out alone for Humboldt. + +About this time occurred a little incident which has always had a sort of +interest to me, from the fact that it came so near "instigating" my +funeral. At a time when an Indian attack had been expected, the citizens +hid their gunpowder where it would be safe and yet convenient to hand +when wanted. A neighbor of ours hid six cans of rifle powder in the +bake-oven of an old discarded cooking stove which stood on the open +ground near a frame out-house or shed, and from and after that day never +thought of it again. We hired a half-tamed Indian to do some washing for +us, and he took up quarters under the shed with his tub. The ancient +stove reposed within six feet of him, and before his face. Finally it +occurred to him that hot water would be better than cold, and he went out +and fired up under that forgotten powder magazine and set on a kettle of +water. Then he returned to his tub. + +I entered the shed presently and threw down some more clothes, and was +about to speak to him when the stove blew up with a prodigious crash, and +disappeared, leaving not a splinter behind. Fragments of it fell in the +streets full two hundred yards away. Nearly a third of the shed roof +over our heads was destroyed, and one of the stove lids, after cutting a +small stanchion half in two in front of the Indian, whizzed between us +and drove partly through the weather-boarding beyond. I was as white as +a sheet and as weak as a kitten and speechless. But the Indian betrayed +no trepidation, no distress, not even discomfort. He simply stopped +washing, leaned forward and surveyed the clean, blank ground a moment, +and then remarked: + +"Mph! Dam stove heap gone!"--and resumed his scrubbing as placidly as if +it were an entirely customary thing for a stove to do. I will explain, +that "heap" is "Injun-English" for "very much." The reader will perceive +the exhaustive expressiveness of it in the present instance. + + + + +CHAPTER XL. +I now come to a curious episode--the most curious, I think, that had yet +accented my slothful, valueless, heedless career. Out of a hillside +toward the upper end of the town, projected a wall of reddish looking +quartz-croppings, the exposed comb of a silver-bearing ledge that +extended deep down into the earth, of course. It was owned by a company +entitled the "Wide West." There was a shaft sixty or seventy feet deep +on the under side of the croppings, and everybody was acquainted with the +rock that came from it--and tolerably rich rock it was, too, but nothing +extraordinary. I will remark here, that although to the inexperienced +stranger all the quartz of a particular "district" looks about alike, an +old resident of the camp can take a glance at a mixed pile of rock, +separate the fragments and tell you which mine each came from, as easily +as a confectioner can separate and classify the various kinds and +qualities of candy in a mixed heap of the article. + +All at once the town was thrown into a state of extraordinary excitement. +In mining parlance the Wide West had "struck it rich!" Everybody went to +see the new developments, and for some days there was such a crowd of +people about the Wide West shaft that a stranger would have supposed +there was a mass meeting in session there. No other topic was discussed +but the rich strike, and nobody thought or dreamed about anything else. +Every man brought away a specimen, ground it up in a hand mortar, washed +it out in his horn spoon, and glared speechless upon the marvelous +result. It was not hard rock, but black, decomposed stuff which could be +crumbled in the hand like a baked potato, and when spread out on a paper +exhibited a thick sprinkling of gold and particles of "native" silver. +Higbie brought a handful to the cabin, and when he had washed it out his +amazement was beyond description. Wide West stock soared skywards. It +was said that repeated offers had been made for it at a thousand dollars +a foot, and promptly refused. We have all had the "blues"--the mere +sky-blues--but mine were indigo, now--because I did not own in the Wide +West. The world seemed hollow to me, and existence a grief. I lost my +appetite, and ceased to take an interest in anything. Still I had to +stay, and listen to other people's rejoicings, because I had no money to +get out of the camp with. + +The Wide West company put a stop to the carrying away of "specimens," and +well they might, for every handful of the ore was worth a sun of some +consequence. To show the exceeding value of the ore, I will remark that +a sixteen-hundred-pounds parcel of it was sold, just as it lay, at the +mouth of the shaft, at one dollar a pound; and the man who bought it +"packed" it on mules a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles, over the +mountains, to San Francisco, satisfied that it would yield at a rate that +would richly compensate him for his trouble. The Wide West people also +commanded their foreman to refuse any but their own operatives permission +to enter the mine at any time or for any purpose. I kept up my "blue" +meditations and Higbie kept up a deal of thinking, too, but of a +different sort. He puzzled over the "rock," examined it with a glass, +inspected it in different lights and from different points of view, and +after each experiment delivered himself, in soliloquy, of one and the +same unvarying opinion in the same unvarying formula: + +"It is not Wide West rock!" + +He said once or twice that he meant to have a look into the Wide West +shaft if he got shot for it. I was wretched, and did not care whether he +got a look into it or not. He failed that day, and tried again at night; +failed again; got up at dawn and tried, and failed again. Then he lay in +ambush in the sage brush hour after hour, waiting for the two or three +hands to adjourn to the shade of a boulder for dinner; made a start once, +but was premature--one of the men came back for something; tried it +again, but when almost at the mouth of the shaft, another of the men rose +up from behind the boulder as if to reconnoitre, and he dropped on the +ground and lay quiet; presently he crawled on his hands and knees to the +mouth of the shaft, gave a quick glance around, then seized the rope and +slid down the shaft. + +He disappeared in the gloom of a "side drift" just as a head appeared in +the mouth of the shaft and somebody shouted "Hello!"--which he did not +answer. He was not disturbed any more. An hour later he entered the +cabin, hot, red, and ready to burst with smothered excitement, and +exclaimed in a stage whisper: + +"I knew it! We are rich! IT'S A BLIND LEAD!" + +I thought the very earth reeled under me. Doubt--conviction--doubt +again--exultation--hope, amazement, belief, unbelief--every emotion +imaginable swept in wild procession through my heart and brain, and I +could not speak a word. After a moment or two of this mental fury, I +shook myself to rights, and said: + +"Say it again!" + +"It's blind lead!" + +"Cal, let's--let's burn the house--or kill somebody! Let's get out where +there's room to hurrah! But what is the use? It is a hundred times too +good to be true." + +"It's a blind lead, for a million!--hanging wall--foot wall--clay +casings--everything complete!" He swung his hat and gave three cheers, +and I cast doubt to the winds and chimed in with a will. For I was worth +a million dollars, and did not care "whether school kept or not!" + +But perhaps I ought to explain. A "blind lead" is a lead or ledge that +does not "crop out" above the surface. A miner does not know where to +look for such leads, but they are often stumbled upon by accident in the +course of driving a tunnel or sinking a shaft. Higbie knew the Wide West +rock perfectly well, and the more he had examined the new developments +the more he was satisfied that the ore could not have come from the Wide +West vein. And so had it occurred to him alone, of all the camp, that +there was a blind lead down in the shaft, and that even the Wide West +people themselves did not suspect it. He was right. When he went down +the shaft, he found that the blind lead held its independent way through +the Wide West vein, cutting it diagonally, and that it was enclosed in +its own well-defined casing-rocks and clay. Hence it was public +property. Both leads being perfectly well defined, it was easy for any +miner to see which one belonged to the Wide West and which did not. + +We thought it well to have a strong friend, and therefore we brought the +foreman of the Wide West to our cabin that night and revealed the great +surprise to him. Higbie said: + +"We are going to take possession of this blind lead, record it and +establish ownership, and then forbid the Wide West company to take out +any more of the rock. You cannot help your company in this matter +--nobody can help them. I will go into the shaft with you and prove to +your entire satisfaction that it is a blind lead. Now we propose to take +you in with us, and claim the blind lead in our three names. What do you +say?" + +What could a man say who had an opportunity to simply stretch forth his +hand and take possession of a fortune without risk of any kind and +without wronging any one or attaching the least taint of dishonor to his +name? He could only say, "Agreed." + +The notice was put up that night, and duly spread upon the recorder's +books before ten o'clock. We claimed two hundred feet each--six hundred +feet in all--the smallest and compactest organization in the district, +and the easiest to manage. + +No one can be so thoughtless as to suppose that we slept, that night. +Higbie and I went to bed at midnight, but it was only to lie broad awake +and think, dream, scheme. The floorless, tumble-down cabin was a palace, +the ragged gray blankets silk, the furniture rosewood and mahogany. +Each new splendor that burst out of my visions of the future whirled me +bodily over in bed or jerked me to a sitting posture just as if an +electric battery had been applied to me. We shot fragments of +conversation back and forth at each other. Once Higbie said: + +"When are you going home--to the States?" + +"To-morrow!"--with an evolution or two, ending with a sitting position. +"Well--no--but next month, at furthest." + +"We'll go in the same steamer." + +"Agreed." + +A pause. + +"Steamer of the 10th?" + +"Yes. No, the 1st." + +"All right." + +Another pause. + +"Where are you going to live?" said Higbie. + +"San Francisco." + +"That's me!" + +Pause. + +"Too high--too much climbing"--from Higbie. + +"What is?" + +"I was thinking of Russian Hill--building a house up there." + +"Too much climbing? Shan't you keep a carriage?" + +"Of course. I forgot that." + +Pause. + +"Cal., what kind of a house are you going to build?" + +"I was thinking about that. Three-story and an attic." + +"But what kind?" + +"Well, I don't hardly know. Brick, I suppose." + +"Brick--bosh." + +"Why? What is your idea?" + +"Brown stone front--French plate glass--billiard-room off the +dining-room--statuary and paintings--shrubbery and two-acre grass plat +--greenhouse--iron dog on the front stoop--gray horses--landau, and a +coachman with a bug on his hat!" + +"By George!" + +A long pause. + +"Cal., when are you going to Europe?" + +"Well--I hadn't thought of that. When are you?" + +"In the Spring." + +"Going to be gone all summer?" + +"All summer! I shall remain there three years." + +"No--but are you in earnest?" + +"Indeed I am." + +"I will go along too." + +"Why of course you will." + +"What part of Europe shall you go to?" + +"All parts. France, England, Germany--Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Syria, +Greece, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, Egypt--all over--everywhere." + +"I'm agreed." + +"All right." + +"Won't it be a swell trip!" + +"We'll spend forty or fifty thousand dollars trying to make it one, +anyway." + +Another long pause. + +"Higbie, we owe the butcher six dollars, and he has been threatening to +stop our--" + +"Hang the butcher!" + +"Amen." + +And so it went on. By three o'clock we found it was no use, and so we +got up and played cribbage and smoked pipes till sunrise. It was my week +to cook. I always hated cooking--now, I abhorred it. + +The news was all over town. The former excitement was great--this one +was greater still. I walked the streets serene and happy. Higbie said +the foreman had been offered two hundred thousand dollars for his third +of the mine. I said I would like to see myself selling for any such +price. My ideas were lofty. My figure was a million. Still, I honestly +believe that if I had been offered it, it would have had no other effect +than to make me hold off for more. + +I found abundant enjoyment in being rich. A man offered me a +three-hundred-dollar horse, and wanted to take my simple, unendorsed note +for it. That brought the most realizing sense I had yet had that I was +actually rich, beyond shadow of doubt. It was followed by numerous other +evidences of a similar nature--among which I may mention the fact of the +butcher leaving us a double supply of meat and saying nothing about +money. + +By the laws of the district, the "locators" or claimants of a ledge were +obliged to do a fair and reasonable amount of work on their new property +within ten days after the date of the location, or the property was +forfeited, and anybody could go and seize it that chose. So we +determined to go to work the next day. About the middle of the +afternoon, as I was coming out of the post office, I met a Mr. Gardiner, +who told me that Capt. John Nye was lying dangerously ill at his place +(the "Nine-Mile Ranch"), and that he and his wife were not able to give +him nearly as much care and attention as his case demanded. I said if he +would wait for me a moment, I would go down and help in the sick room. +I ran to the cabin to tell Higbie. He was not there, but I left a note +on the table for him, and a few minutes later I left town in Gardiner's +wagon. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + +Captain Nye was very ill indeed, with spasmodic rheumatism. But the old +gentleman was himself--which is to say, he was kind-hearted and agreeable +when comfortable, but a singularly violent wild-cat when things did not +go well. He would be smiling along pleasantly enough, when a sudden +spasm of his disease would take him and he would go out of his smile into +a perfect fury. He would groan and wail and howl with the anguish, and +fill up the odd chinks with the most elaborate profanity that strong +convictions and a fine fancy could contrive. With fair opportunity he +could swear very well and handle his adjectives with considerable +judgment; but when the spasm was on him it was painful to listen to him, +he was so awkward. However, I had seen him nurse a sick man himself and +put up patiently with the inconveniences of the situation, and +consequently I was willing that he should have full license now that his +own turn had come. He could not disturb me, with all his raving and +ranting, for my mind had work on hand, and it labored on diligently, +night and day, whether my hands were idle or employed. I was altering +and amending the plans for my house, and thinking over the propriety of +having the billard-room in the attic, instead of on the same floor with +the dining-room; also, I was trying to decide between green and blue for +the upholstery of the drawing-room, for, although my preference was blue +I feared it was a color that would be too easily damaged by dust and +sunlight; likewise while I was content to put the coachman in a modest +livery, I was uncertain about a footman--I needed one, and was even +resolved to have one, but wished he could properly appear and perform his +functions out of livery, for I somewhat dreaded so much show; and yet, +inasmuch as my late grandfather had had a coachman and such things, but +no liveries, I felt rather drawn to beat him;--or beat his ghost, at any +rate; I was also systematizing the European trip, and managed to get it +all laid out, as to route and length of time to be devoted to it +--everything, with one exception--namely, whether to cross the desert from +Cairo to Jerusalem per camel, or go by sea to Beirut, and thence down +through the country per caravan. Meantime I was writing to the friends +at home every day, instructing them concerning all my plans and +intentions, and directing them to look up a handsome homestead for my +mother and agree upon a price for it against my coming, and also +directing them to sell my share of the Tennessee land and tender the +proceeds to the widows' and orphans' fund of the typographical union of +which I had long been a member in good standing. [This Tennessee land +had been in the possession of the family many years, and promised to +confer high fortune upon us some day; it still promises it, but in a less +violent way.] + +When I had been nursing the Captain nine days he was somewhat better, +but very feeble. During the afternoon we lifted him into a chair and +gave him an alcoholic vapor bath, and then set about putting him on the +bed again. We had to be exceedingly careful, for the least jar produced +pain. Gardiner had his shoulders and I his legs; in an unfortunate +moment I stumbled and the patient fell heavily on the bed in an agony of +torture. I never heard a man swear so in my life. He raved like a +maniac, and tried to snatch a revolver from the table--but I got it. +He ordered me out of the house, and swore a world of oaths that he would +kill me wherever he caught me when he got on his feet again. It was +simply a passing fury, and meant nothing. I knew he would forget it in +an hour, and maybe be sorry for it, too; but it angered me a little, at +the moment. So much so, indeed, that I determined to go back to +Esmeralda. I thought he was able to get along alone, now, since he was +on the war path. I took supper, and as soon as the moon rose, began my +nine-mile journey, on foot. + +Even millionaires needed no horses, in those days, for a mere nine-mile +jaunt without baggage. + +As I "raised the hill" overlooking the town, it lacked fifteen minutes of +twelve. I glanced at the hill over beyond the canyon, and in the bright +moonlight saw what appeared to be about half the population of the +village massed on and around the Wide West croppings. My heart gave an +exulting bound, and I said to myself, "They have made a new strike +to-night--and struck it richer than ever, no doubt." I started over +there, but gave it up. I said the "strick" would keep, and I had climbed +hill enough for one night. I went on down through the town, and as I was +passing a little German bakery, a woman ran out and begged me to come in +and help her. She said her husband had a fit. I went in, and judged she +was right--he appeared to have a hundred of them, compressed into one. +Two Germans were there, trying to hold him, and not making much of a +success of it. I ran up the street half a block or so and routed out a +sleeping doctor, brought him down half dressed, and we four wrestled with +the maniac, and doctored, drenched and bled him, for more than an hour, +and the poor German woman did the crying. He grew quiet, now, and the +doctor and I withdrew and left him to his friends. + +It was a little after one o'clock. As I entered the cabin door, tired +but jolly, the dingy light of a tallow candle revealed Higbie, sitting by +the pine table gazing stupidly at my note, which he held in his fingers, +and looking pale, old, and haggard. I halted, and looked at him. He +looked at me, stolidly. I said: + +"Higbie, what--what is it?" + +"We're ruined--we didn't do the work--THE BLIND LEAD'S RELOCATED!" + +It was enough. I sat down sick, grieved--broken-hearted, indeed. A +minute before, I was rich and brimful of vanity; I was a pauper now, and +very meek. We sat still an hour, busy with thought, busy with vain and +useless self-upbraidings, busy with "Why didn't I do this, and why didn't +I do that," but neither spoke a word. Then we dropped into mutual +explanations, and the mystery was cleared away. It came out that Higbie +had depended on me, as I had on him, and as both of us had on the +foreman. The folly of it! It was the first time that ever staid and +steadfast Higbie had left an important matter to chance or failed to be +true to his full share of a responsibility. + +But he had never seen my note till this moment, and this moment was the +first time he had been in the cabin since the day he had seen me last. +He, also, had left a note for me, on that same fatal afternoon--had +ridden up on horseback, and looked through the window, and being in a +hurry and not seeing me, had tossed the note into the cabin through a +broken pane. Here it was, on the floor, where it had remained +undisturbed for nine days: + + "Don't fail to do the work before the ten days expire. W. + has passed through and given me notice. I am to join him at + Mono Lake, and we shall go on from there to-night. He says + he will find it this time, sure. CAL." + +"W." meant Whiteman, of course. That thrice accursed "cement!" + +That was the way of it. An old miner, like Higbie, could no more +withstand the fascination of a mysterious mining excitement like this +"cement" foolishness, than he could refrain from eating when he was +famishing. Higbie had been dreaming about the marvelous cement for +months; and now, against his better judgment, he had gone off and "taken +the chances" on my keeping secure a mine worth a million undiscovered +cement veins. They had not been followed this time. His riding out of +town in broad daylight was such a common-place thing to do that it had +not attracted any attention. He said they prosecuted their search in the +fastnesses of the mountains during nine days, without success; they could +not find the cement. Then a ghastly fear came over him that something +might have happened to prevent the doing of the necessary work to hold +the blind lead (though indeed he thought such a thing hardly possible), +and forthwith he started home with all speed. He would have reached +Esmeralda in time, but his horse broke down and he had to walk a great +part of the distance. And so it happened that as he came into Esmeralda +by one road, I entered it by another. His was the superior energy, +however, for he went straight to the Wide West, instead of turning aside +as I had done--and he arrived there about five or ten minutes too late! +The "notice" was already up, the "relocation" of our mine completed +beyond recall, and the crowd rapidly dispersing. He learned some facts +before he left the ground. The foreman had not been seen about the +streets since the night we had located the mine--a telegram had called +him to California on a matter of life and death, it was said. At any +rate he had done no work and the watchful eyes of the community were +taking note of the fact. At midnight of this woful tenth day, the ledge +would be "relocatable," and by eleven o'clock the hill was black with men +prepared to do the relocating. That was the crowd I had seen when I +fancied a new "strike" had been made--idiot that I was. + +[We three had the same right to relocate the lead that other people had, +provided we were quick enough.] As midnight was announced, fourteen men, +duly armed and ready to back their proceedings, put up their "notice" and +proclaimed their ownership of the blind lead, under the new name of the +"Johnson." But A. D. Allen our partner (the foreman) put in a sudden +appearance about that time, with a cocked revolver in his hand, and said +his name must be added to the list, or he would "thin out the Johnson +company some." He was a manly, splendid, determined fellow, and known to +be as good as his word, and therefore a compromise was effected. They +put in his name for a hundred feet, reserving to themselves the customary +two hundred feet each. Such was the history of the night's events, as +Higbie gathered from a friend on the way home. + +Higbie and I cleared out on a new mining excitement the next morning, +glad to get away from the scene of our sufferings, and after a month or +two of hardship and disappointment, returned to Esmeralda once more. +Then we learned that the Wide West and the Johnson companies had +consolidated; that the stock, thus united, comprised five thousand feet, +or shares; that the foreman, apprehending tiresome litigation, and +considering such a huge concern unwieldy, had sold his hundred feet for +ninety thousand dollars in gold and gone home to the States to enjoy it. +If the stock was worth such a gallant figure, with five thousand shares +in the corporation, it makes me dizzy to think what it would have been +worth with only our original six hundred in it. It was the difference +between six hundred men owning a house and five thousand owning it. We +would have been millionaires if we had only worked with pick and spade +one little day on our property and so secured our ownership! + +It reads like a wild fancy sketch, but the evidence of many witnesses, +and likewise that of the official records of Esmeralda District, is +easily obtainable in proof that it is a true history. I can always have +it to say that I was absolutely and unquestionably worth a million +dollars, once, for ten days. + +A year ago my esteemed and in every way estimable old millionaire +partner, Higbie, wrote me from an obscure little mining camp in +California that after nine or ten years of buffetings and hard striving, +he was at last in a position where he could command twenty-five hundred +dollars, and said he meant to go into the fruit business in a modest way. +How such a thought would have insulted him the night we lay in our cabin +planning European trips and brown stone houses on Russian Hill! + + + + +CHAPTER XLII. + +What to do next? + +It was a momentous question. I had gone out into the world to shift for +myself, at the age of thirteen (for my father had endorsed for friends; +and although he left us a sumptuous legacy of pride in his fine Virginian +stock and its national distinction, I presently found that I could not +live on that alone without occasional bread to wash it down with). I had +gained a livelihood in various vocations, but had not dazzled anybody +with my successes; still the list was before me, and the amplest liberty +in the matter of choosing, provided I wanted to work--which I did not, +after being so wealthy. I had once been a grocery clerk, for one day, +but had consumed so much sugar in that time that I was relieved from +further duty by the proprietor; said he wanted me outside, so that he +could have my custom. I had studied law an entire week, and then given +it up because it was so prosy and tiresome. I had engaged briefly in the +study of blacksmithing, but wasted so much time trying to fix the bellows +so that it would blow itself, that the master turned me adrift in +disgrace, and told me I would come to no good. I had been a bookseller's +clerk for awhile, but the customers bothered me so much I could not read +with any comfort, and so the proprietor gave me a furlough and forgot to +put a limit to it. I had clerked in a drug store part of a summer, but +my prescriptions were unlucky, and we appeared to sell more stomach pumps +than soda water. So I had to go. I had made of myself a tolerable +printer, under the impression that I would be another Franklin some day, +but somehow had missed the connection thus far. There was no berth open +in the Esmeralda Union, and besides I had always been such a slow +compositor that I looked with envy upon the achievements of apprentices +of two years' standing; and when I took a "take," foremen were in the +habit of suggesting that it would be wanted "some time during the year." + +I was a good average St. Louis and New Orleans pilot and by no means +ashamed of my abilities in that line; wages were two hundred and fifty +dollars a month and no board to pay, and I did long to stand behind a +wheel again and never roam any more--but I had been making such an ass of +myself lately in grandiloquent letters home about my blind lead and my +European excursion that I did what many and many a poor disappointed +miner had done before; said "It is all over with me now, and I will never +go back home to be pitied--and snubbed." I had been a private secretary, +a silver miner and a silver mill operative, and amounted to less than +nothing in each, and now-- + +What to do next? + +I yielded to Higbie's appeals and consented to try the mining once more. +We climbed far up on the mountain side and went to work on a little +rubbishy claim of ours that had a shaft on it eight feet deep. Higbie +descended into it and worked bravely with his pick till he had loosened +up a deal of rock and dirt and then I went down with a long-handled +shovel (the most awkward invention yet contrived by man) to throw it out. +You must brace the shovel forward with the side of your knee till it is +full, and then, with a skilful toss, throw it backward over your left +shoulder. I made the toss, and landed the mess just on the edge of the +shaft and it all came back on my head and down the back of my neck. +I never said a word, but climbed out and walked home. I inwardly +resolved that I would starve before I would make a target of myself and +shoot rubbish at it with a long-handled shovel. + +I sat down, in the cabin, and gave myself up to solid misery--so to +speak. Now in pleasanter days I had amused myself with writing letters +to the chief paper of the Territory, the Virginia Daily Territorial +Enterprise, and had always been surprised when they appeared in print. +My good opinion of the editors had steadily declined; for it seemed to me +that they might have found something better to fill up with than my +literature. I had found a letter in the post office as I came home from +the hill side, and finally I opened it. Eureka! [I never did know what +Eureka meant, but it seems to be as proper a word to heave in as any when +no other that sounds pretty offers.] It was a deliberate offer to me of +Twenty-Five Dollars a week to come up to Virginia and be city editor of +the Enterprise. + +I would have challenged the publisher in the "blind lead" days--I wanted +to fall down and worship him, now. Twenty-Five Dollars a week--it looked +like bloated luxury--a fortune a sinful and lavish waste of money. +But my transports cooled when I thought of my inexperience and consequent +unfitness for the position--and straightway, on top of this, my long +array of failures rose up before me. Yet if I refused this place I must +presently become dependent upon somebody for my bread, a thing +necessarily distasteful to a man who had never experienced such a +humiliation since he was thirteen years old. Not much to be proud of, +since it is so common--but then it was all I had to be proud of. So I +was scared into being a city editor. I would have declined, otherwise. +Necessity is the mother of "taking chances." I do not doubt that if, at +that time, I had been offered a salary to translate the Talmud from the +original Hebrew, I would have accepted--albeit with diffidence and some +misgivings--and thrown as much variety into it as I could for the money. + +I went up to Virginia and entered upon my new vocation. I was a rusty +looking city editor, I am free to confess--coatless, slouch hat, blue +woolen shirt, pantaloons stuffed into boot-tops, whiskered half down to +the waist, and the universal navy revolver slung to my belt. But I +secured a more Christian costume and discarded the revolver. + +I had never had occasion to kill anybody, nor ever felt a desire to do +so, but had worn the thing in deference to popular sentiment, and in +order that I might not, by its absence, be offensively conspicuous, and a +subject of remark. But the other editors, and all the printers, carried +revolvers. I asked the chief editor and proprietor (Mr. Goodman, I will +call him, since it describes him as well as any name could do) for some +instructions with regard to my duties, and he told me to go all over town +and ask all sorts of people all sorts of questions, make notes of the +information gained, and write them out for publication. And he added: + +"Never say 'We learn' so-and-so, or 'It is reported,' or 'It is rumored,' +or 'We understand' so-and-so, but go to headquarters and get the absolute +facts, and then speak out and say 'It is so-and-so.' Otherwise, people +will not put confidence in your news. Unassailable certainly is the +thing that gives a newspaper the firmest and most valuable reputation." + +It was the whole thing in a nut-shell; and to this day when I find a +reporter commencing his article with "We understand," I gather a +suspicion that he has not taken as much pains to inform himself as he +ought to have done. I moralize well, but I did not always practise well +when I was a city editor; I let fancy get the upper hand of fact too +often when there was a dearth of news. I can never forget my first day's +experience as a reporter. I wandered about town questioning everybody, +boring everybody, and finding out that nobody knew anything. At the end +of five hours my notebook was still barren. I spoke to Mr. Goodman. He +said: + +"Dan used to make a good thing out of the hay wagons in a dry time when +there were no fires or inquests. Are there no hay wagons in from the +Truckee? If there are, you might speak of the renewed activity and all +that sort of thing, in the hay business, you know. + +"It isn't sensational or exciting, but it fills up and looks business +like." + +I canvassed the city again and found one wretched old hay truck dragging +in from the country. But I made affluent use of it. I multiplied it by +sixteen, brought it into town from sixteen different directions, made +sixteen separate items out of it, and got up such another sweat about hay +as Virginia City had never seen in the world before. + +This was encouraging. Two nonpareil columns had to be filled, and I was +getting along. Presently, when things began to look dismal again, a +desperado killed a man in a saloon and joy returned once more. I never +was so glad over any mere trifle before in my life. I said to the +murderer: + +"Sir, you are a stranger to me, but you have done me a kindness this day +which I can never forget. If whole years of gratitude can be to you any +slight compensation, they shall be yours. I was in trouble and you have +relieved me nobly and at a time when all seemed dark and drear. Count me +your friend from this time forth, for I am not a man to forget a favor." + +If I did not really say that to him I at least felt a sort of itching +desire to do it. I wrote up the murder with a hungry attention to +details, and when it was finished experienced but one regret--namely, +that they had not hanged my benefactor on the spot, so that I could work +him up too. + +Next I discovered some emigrant wagons going into camp on the plaza and +found that they had lately come through the hostile Indian country and +had fared rather roughly. I made the best of the item that the +circumstances permitted, and felt that if I were not confined within +rigid limits by the presence of the reporters of the other papers I could +add particulars that would make the article much more interesting. +However, I found one wagon that was going on to California, and made some +judicious inquiries of the proprietor. When I learned, through his short +and surly answers to my cross-questioning, that he was certainly going on +and would not be in the city next day to make trouble, I got ahead of the +other papers, for I took down his list of names and added his party to +the killed and wounded. Having more scope here, I put this wagon through +an Indian fight that to this day has no parallel in history. + +My two columns were filled. When I read them over in the morning I felt +that I had found my legitimate occupation at last. I reasoned within +myself that news, and stirring news, too, was what a paper needed, and I +felt that I was peculiarly endowed with the ability to furnish it. +Mr. Goodman said that I was as good a reporter as Dan. I desired no +higher commendation. With encouragement like that, I felt that I could +take my pen and murder all the immigrants on the plains if need be and +the interests of the paper demanded it. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII. + +However, as I grew better acquainted with the business and learned the +run of the sources of information I ceased to require the aid of fancy to +any large extent, and became able to fill my columns without diverging +noticeably from the domain of fact. + +I struck up friendships with the reporters of the other journals, and we +swapped "regulars" with each other and thus economized work. "Regulars" +are permanent sources of news, like courts, bullion returns, "clean-ups" +at the quartz mills, and inquests. Inasmuch as everybody went armed, we +had an inquest about every day, and so this department was naturally set +down among the "regulars." We had lively papers in those days. My great +competitor among the reporters was Boggs of the Union. He was an +excellent reporter. Once in three or four months he would get a little +intoxicated, but as a general thing he was a wary and cautious drinker +although always ready to tamper a little with the enemy. He had the +advantage of me in one thing; he could get the monthly public school +report and I could not, because the principal hated the Enterprise. +One snowy night when the report was due, I started out sadly wondering +how I was going to get it. Presently, a few steps up the almost deserted +street I stumbled on Boggs and asked him where he was going. + +"After the school report." + +"I'll go along with you." + +"No, sir. I'll excuse you." + +"Just as you say." + +A saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steaming pitcher of hot punch, and +Boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully. He gazed fondly after the boy +and saw him start up the Enterprise stairs. I said: + +"I wish you could help me get that school business, but since you can't, +I must run up to the Union office and see if I can get them to let me +have a proof of it after they have set it up, though I don't begin to +suppose they will. Good night." + +"Hold on a minute. I don't mind getting the report and sitting around +with the boys a little, while you copy it, if you're willing to drop down +to the principal's with me." + +"Now you talk like a rational being. Come along." + +We plowed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the report and +returned to our office. It was a short document and soon copied. +Meantime Boggs helped himself to the punch. I gave the manuscript back +to him and we started out to get an inquest, for we heard pistol shots +near by. We got the particulars with little loss of time, for it was +only an inferior sort of bar-room murder, and of little interest to the +public, and then we separated. Away at three o'clock in the morning, +when we had gone to press and were having a relaxing concert as usual +--for some of the printers were good singers and others good performers on +the guitar and on that atrocity the accordion--the proprietor of the +Union strode in and desired to know if anybody had heard anything of +Boggs or the school report. We stated the case, and all turned out to +help hunt for the delinquent. We found him standing on a table in a +saloon, with an old tin lantern in one hand and the school report in the +other, haranguing a gang of intoxicated Cornish miners on the iniquity of +squandering the public moneys on education "when hundreds and hundreds of +honest hard-working men are literally starving for whiskey." [Riotous +applause.] He had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties for +hours. We dragged him away and put him to bed. + +Of course there was no school report in the Union, and Boggs held me +accountable, though I was innocent of any intention or desire to compass +its absence from that paper and was as sorry as any one that the +misfortune had occurred. + +But we were perfectly friendly. The day that the school report was next +due, the proprietor of the "Genessee" mine furnished us a buggy and asked +us to go down and write something about the property--a very common +request and one always gladly acceded to when people furnished buggies, +for we were as fond of pleasure excursions as other people. In due time +we arrived at the "mine"--nothing but a hole in the ground ninety feet +deep, and no way of getting down into it but by holding on to a rope and +being lowered with a windlass. The workmen had just gone off somewhere +to dinner. I was not strong enough to lower Boggs's bulk; so I took an +unlighted candle in my teeth, made a loop for my foot in the end of the +rope, implored Boggs not to go to sleep or let the windlass get the start +of him, and then swung out over the shaft. I reached the bottom muddy +and bruised about the elbows, but safe. I lit the candle, made an +examination of the rock, selected some specimens and shouted to Boggs to +hoist away. No answer. Presently a head appeared in the circle of +daylight away aloft, and a voice came down: + +"Are you all set?" + +"All set--hoist away." + +"Are you comfortable?" + +"Perfectly." + +"Could you wait a little?" + +"Oh certainly--no particular hurry." + +"Well--good by." + +"Why? Where are you going?" + +"After the school report!" + +And he did. I staid down there an hour, and surprised the workmen when +they hauled up and found a man on the rope instead of a bucket of rock. +I walked home, too--five miles--up hill. We had no school report next +morning; but the Union had. + +Six months after my entry into journalism the grand "flush times" of +Silverland began, and they continued with unabated splendor for three +years. All difficulty about filling up the "local department" ceased, +and the only trouble now was how to make the lengthened columns hold the +world of incidents and happenings that came to our literary net every +day. Virginia had grown to be the "livest" town, for its age and +population, that America had ever produced. The sidewalks swarmed with +people--to such an extent, indeed, that it was generally no easy matter +to stem the human tide. The streets themselves were just as crowded with +quartz wagons, freight teams and other vehicles. The procession was +endless. So great was the pack, that buggies frequently had to wait half +an hour for an opportunity to cross the principal street. Joy sat on +every countenance, and there was a glad, almost fierce, intensity in +every eye, that told of the money-getting schemes that were seething in +every brain and the high hope that held sway in every heart. Money was +as plenty as dust; every individual considered himself wealthy, and a +melancholy countenance was nowhere to be seen. There were military +companies, fire companies, brass bands, banks, hotels, theatres, +"hurdy-gurdy houses," wide-open gambling palaces, political pow-wows, +civic processions, street fights, murders, inquests, riots, a whiskey +mill every fifteen steps, a Board of Aldermen, a Mayor, a City Surveyor, +a City Engineer, a Chief of the Fire Department, with First, Second and +Third Assistants, a Chief of Police, City Marshal and a large police +force, two Boards of Mining Brokers, a dozen breweries and half a dozen +jails and station-houses in full operation, and some talk of building a +church. The "flush times" were in magnificent flower! Large fire-proof +brick buildings were going up in the principal streets, and the wooden +suburbs were spreading out in all directions. Town lots soared up to +prices that were amazing. + +The great "Comstock lode" stretched its opulent length straight through +the town from north to south, and every mine on it was in diligent +process of development. One of these mines alone employed six hundred +and seventy-five men, and in the matter of elections the adage was, "as +the 'Gould and Curry' goes, so goes the city." Laboring men's wages were +four and six dollars a day, and they worked in three "shifts" or gangs, +and the blasting and picking and shoveling went on without ceasing, night +and day. + +The "city" of Virginia roosted royally midway up the steep side of Mount +Davidson, seven thousand two hundred feet above the level of the sea, and +in the clear Nevada atmosphere was visible from a distance of fifty +miles! It claimed a population of fifteen thousand to eighteen thousand, +and all day long half of this little army swarmed the streets like bees +and the other half swarmed among the drifts and tunnels of the +"Comstock," hundreds of feet down in the earth directly under those same +streets. Often we felt our chairs jar, and heard the faint boom of a +blast down in the bowels of the earth under the office. + +The mountain side was so steep that the entire town had a slant to it +like a roof. Each street was a terrace, and from each to the next street +below the descent was forty or fifty feet. The fronts of the houses were +level with the street they faced, but their rear first floors were +propped on lofty stilts; a man could stand at a rear first floor window +of a C street house and look down the chimneys of the row of houses below +him facing D street. It was a laborious climb, in that thin atmosphere, +to ascend from D to A street, and you were panting and out of breath when +you got there; but you could turn around and go down again like a house +a-fire--so to speak. The atmosphere was so rarified, on account of the +great altitude, that one's blood lay near the surface always, and the +scratch of a pin was a disaster worth worrying about, for the chances +were that a grievous erysipelas would ensue. But to offset this, the +thin atmosphere seemed to carry healing to gunshot wounds, and therefore, +to simply shoot your adversary through both lungs was a thing not likely +to afford you any permanent satisfaction, for he would be nearly certain +to be around looking for you within the month, and not with an opera +glass, either. + +From Virginia's airy situation one could look over a vast, far-reaching +panorama of mountain ranges and deserts; and whether the day was bright +or overcast, whether the sun was rising or setting, or flaming in the +zenith, or whether night and the moon held sway, the spectacle was always +impressive and beautiful. Over your head Mount Davidson lifted its gray +dome, and before and below you a rugged canyon clove the battlemented +hills, making a sombre gateway through which a soft-tinted desert was +glimpsed, with the silver thread of a river winding through it, bordered +with trees which many miles of distance diminished to a delicate fringe; +and still further away the snowy mountains rose up and stretched their +long barrier to the filmy horizon--far enough beyond a lake that burned +in the desert like a fallen sun, though that, itself, lay fifty miles +removed. Look from your window where you would, there was fascination in +the picture. At rare intervals--but very rare--there were clouds in our +skies, and then the setting sun would gild and flush and glorify this +mighty expanse of scenery with a bewildering pomp of color that held the +eye like a spell and moved the spirit like music. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV. + +My salary was increased to forty dollars a week. But I seldom drew it. +I had plenty of other resources, and what were two broad twenty-dollar +gold pieces to a man who had his pockets full of such and a cumbersome +abundance of bright half dollars besides? [Paper money has never come +into use on the Pacific coast.] Reporting was lucrative, and every man +in the town was lavish with his money and his "feet." The city and all +the great mountain side were riddled with mining shafts. There were more +mines than miners. True, not ten of these mines were yielding rock worth +hauling to a mill, but everybody said, "Wait till the shaft gets down +where the ledge comes in solid, and then you will see!" So nobody was +discouraged. These were nearly all "wild cat" mines, and wholly +worthless, but nobody believed it then. The "Ophir," the "Gould & +Curry," the "Mexican," and other great mines on the Comstock lead in +Virginia and Gold Hill were turning out huge piles of rich rock every +day, and every man believed that his little wild cat claim was as good as +any on the "main lead" and would infallibly be worth a thousand dollars a +foot when he "got down where it came in solid." Poor fellow, he was +blessedly blind to the fact that he never would see that day. So the +thousand wild cat shafts burrowed deeper and deeper into the earth day by +day, and all men were beside themselves with hope and happiness. How +they labored, prophesied, exulted! Surely nothing like it was ever seen +before since the world began. Every one of these wild cat mines--not +mines, but holes in the ground over imaginary mines--was incorporated and +had handsomely engraved "stock" and the stock was salable, too. It was +bought and sold with a feverish avidity in the boards every day. You +could go up on the mountain side, scratch around and find a ledge (there +was no lack of them), put up a "notice" with a grandiloquent name in it, +start a shaft, get your stock printed, and with nothing whatever to prove +that your mine was worth a straw, you could put your stock on the market +and sell out for hundreds and even thousands of dollars. To make money, +and make it fast, was as easy as it was to eat your dinner. + +Every man owned "feet" in fifty different wild cat mines and considered +his fortune made. Think of a city with not one solitary poor man in it! +One would suppose that when month after month went by and still not a +wild cat mine (by wild cat I mean, in general terms, any claim not +located on the mother vein, i.e., the "Comstock") yielded a ton of rock +worth crushing, the people would begin to wonder if they were not putting +too much faith in their prospective riches; but there was not a thought +of such a thing. They burrowed away, bought and sold, and were happy. + +New claims were taken up daily, and it was the friendly custom to run +straight to the newspaper offices, give the reporter forty or fifty +"feet," and get them to go and examine the mine and publish a notice of +it. They did not care a fig what you said about the property so you said +something. Consequently we generally said a word or two to the effect +that the "indications" were good, or that the ledge was "six feet wide," +or that the rock "resembled the Comstock" (and so it did--but as a +general thing the resemblance was not startling enough to knock you +down). If the rock was moderately promising, we followed the custom of +the country, used strong adjectives and frothed at the mouth as if a very +marvel in silver discoveries had transpired. If the mine was a +"developed" one, and had no pay ore to show (and of course it hadn't), we +praised the tunnel; said it was one of the most infatuating tunnels in +the land; driveled and driveled about the tunnel till we ran entirely out +of ecstasies--but never said a word about the rock. We would squander +half a column of adulation on a shaft, or a new wire rope, or a dressed +pine windlass, or a fascinating force pump, and close with a burst of +admiration of the "gentlemanly and efficient Superintendent" of the mine +--but never utter a whisper about the rock. And those people were always +pleased, always satisfied. Occasionally we patched up and varnished our +reputation for discrimination and stern, undeviating accuracy, by giving +some old abandoned claim a blast that ought to have made its dry bones +rattle--and then somebody would seize it and sell it on the fleeting +notoriety thus conferred upon it. + +There was nothing in the shape of a mining claim that was not salable. +We received presents of "feet" every day. If we needed a hundred dollars +or so, we sold some; if not, we hoarded it away, satisfied that it would +ultimately be worth a thousand dollars a foot. I had a trunk about half +full of "stock." When a claim made a stir in the market and went up to a +high figure, I searched through my pile to see if I had any of its stock +--and generally found it. + +The prices rose and fell constantly; but still a fall disturbed us +little, because a thousand dollars a foot was our figure, and so we were +content to let it fluctuate as much as it pleased till it reached it. +My pile of stock was not all given to me by people who wished their +claims "noticed." At least half of it was given me by persons who had no +thought of such a thing, and looked for nothing more than a simple verbal +"thank you;" and you were not even obliged by law to furnish that. +If you are coming up the street with a couple of baskets of apples in +your hands, and you meet a friend, you naturally invite him to take a +few. That describes the condition of things in Virginia in the "flush +times." Every man had his pockets full of stock, and it was the actual +custom of the country to part with small quantities of it to friends +without the asking. + +Very often it was a good idea to close the transaction instantly, when a +man offered a stock present to a friend, for the offer was only good and +binding at that moment, and if the price went to a high figure shortly +afterward the procrastination was a thing to be regretted. Mr. Stewart +(Senator, now, from Nevada) one day told me he would give me twenty feet +of "Justis" stock if I would walk over to his office. It was worth five +or ten dollars a foot. I asked him to make the offer good for next day, +as I was just going to dinner. He said he would not be in town; so I +risked it and took my dinner instead of the stock. Within the week the +price went up to seventy dollars and afterward to a hundred and fifty, +but nothing could make that man yield. I suppose he sold that stock of +mine and placed the guilty proceeds in his own pocket. [My revenge will +be found in the accompanying portrait.] I met three friends one +afternoon, who said they had been buying "Overman" stock at auction at +eight dollars a foot. One said if I would come up to his office he would +give me fifteen feet; another said he would add fifteen; the third said +he would do the same. But I was going after an inquest and could not +stop. A few weeks afterward they sold all their "Overman" at six hundred +dollars a foot and generously came around to tell me about it--and also +to urge me to accept of the next forty-five feet of it that people tried +to force on me. + +These are actual facts, and I could make the list a long one and still +confine myself strictly to the truth. Many a time friends gave us as +much as twenty-five feet of stock that was selling at twenty-five dollars +a foot, and they thought no more of it than they would of offering a +guest a cigar. These were "flush times" indeed! I thought they were +going to last always, but somehow I never was much of a prophet. + +To show what a wild spirit possessed the mining brain of the community, +I will remark that "claims" were actually "located" in excavations for +cellars, where the pick had exposed what seemed to be quartz veins--and +not cellars in the suburbs, either, but in the very heart of the city; +and forthwith stock would be issued and thrown on the market. It was +small matter who the cellar belonged to--the "ledge" belonged to the +finder, and unless the United States government interfered (inasmuch as +the government holds the primary right to mines of the noble metals in +Nevada--or at least did then), it was considered to be his privilege to +work it. Imagine a stranger staking out a mining claim among the costly +shrubbery in your front yard and calmly proceeding to lay waste the +ground with pick and shovel and blasting powder! It has been often done +in California. In the middle of one of the principal business streets of +Virginia, a man "located" a mining claim and began a shaft on it. He +gave me a hundred feet of the stock and I sold it for a fine suit of +clothes because I was afraid somebody would fall down the shaft and sue +for damages. I owned in another claim that was located in the middle of +another street; and to show how absurd people can be, that "East India" +stock (as it was called) sold briskly although there was an ancient +tunnel running directly under the claim and any man could go into it and +see that it did not cut a quartz ledge or anything that remotely +resembled one. + +One plan of acquiring sudden wealth was to "salt" a wild cat claim and +sell out while the excitement was up. The process was simple. + +The schemer located a worthless ledge, sunk a shaft on it, bought a wagon +load of rich "Comstock" ore, dumped a portion of it into the shaft and +piled the rest by its side, above ground. Then he showed the property to +a simpleton and sold it to him at a high figure. Of course the wagon +load of rich ore was all that the victim ever got out of his purchase. +A most remarkable case of "salting" was that of the "North Ophir." +It was claimed that this vein was a "remote extension" of the original +"Ophir," a valuable mine on the "Comstock." For a few days everybody was +talking about the rich developments in the North Ophir. It was said that +it yielded perfectly pure silver in small, solid lumps. I went to the +place with the owners, and found a shaft six or eight feet deep, in the +bottom of which was a badly shattered vein of dull, yellowish, +unpromising rock. One would as soon expect to find silver in a +grindstone. We got out a pan of the rubbish and washed it in a puddle, +and sure enough, among the sediment we found half a dozen black, +bullet-looking pellets of unimpeachable "native" silver. Nobody had ever +heard of such a thing before; science could not account for such a queer +novelty. The stock rose to sixty-five dollars a foot, and at this figure +the world-renowned tragedian, McKean Buchanan, bought a commanding +interest and prepared to quit the stage once more--he was always doing +that. And then it transpired that the mine had been "salted"--and not in +any hackneyed way, either, but in a singularly bold, barefaced and +peculiarly original and outrageous fashion. On one of the lumps of +"native" silver was discovered the minted legend, "TED STATES OF," and +then it was plainly apparent that the mine had been "salted" with melted +half-dollars! The lumps thus obtained had been blackened till they +resembled native silver, and were then mixed with the shattered rock in +the bottom of the shaft. It is literally true. Of course the price of +the stock at once fell to nothing, and the tragedian was ruined. But for +this calamity we might have lost McKean Buchanan from the stage. + + + + +CHAPTER XLV. + +The "flush times" held bravely on. Something over two years before, Mr. +Goodman and another journeyman printer, had borrowed forty dollars and +set out from San Francisco to try their fortunes in the new city of +Virginia. They found the Territorial Enterprise, a poverty-stricken +weekly journal, gasping for breath and likely to die. They bought it, +type, fixtures, good-will and all, for a thousand dollars, on long time. +The editorial sanctum, news-room, press-room, publication office, +bed-chamber, parlor, and kitchen were all compressed into one apartment +and it was a small one, too. The editors and printers slept on the +floor, a Chinaman did their cooking, and the "imposing-stone" was the +general dinner table. But now things were changed. The paper was a +great daily, printed by steam; there were five editors and twenty-three +compositors; the subscription price was sixteen dollars a year; the +advertising rates were exorbitant, and the columns crowded. The paper +was clearing from six to ten thousand dollars a month, and the +"Enterprise Building" was finished and ready for occupation--a stately +fireproof brick. Every day from five all the way up to eleven columns +of "live" advertisements were left out or crowded into spasmodic and +irregular "supplements." + +The "Gould & Curry" company were erecting a monster hundred-stamp mill at +a cost that ultimately fell little short of a million dollars. Gould & +Curry stock paid heavy dividends--a rare thing, and an experience +confined to the dozen or fifteen claims located on the "main lead," the +"Comstock." The Superintendent of the Gould & Curry lived, rent free, in +a fine house built and furnished by the company. He drove a fine pair of +horses which were a present from the company, and his salary was twelve +thousand dollars a year. The superintendent of another of the great +mines traveled in grand state, had a salary of twenty-eight thousand +dollars a year, and in a law suit in after days claimed that he was to +have had one per cent. on the gross yield of the bullion likewise. + +Money was wonderfully plenty. The trouble was, not how to get it,--but +how to spend it, how to lavish it, get rid of it, squander it. And so it +was a happy thing that just at this juncture the news came over the wires +that a great United States Sanitary Commission had been formed and money +was wanted for the relief of the wounded sailors and soldiers of the +Union languishing in the Eastern hospitals. Right on the heels of it +came word that San Francisco had responded superbly before the telegram +was half a day old. Virginia rose as one man! A Sanitary Committee was +hurriedly organized, and its chairman mounted a vacant cart in C street +and tried to make the clamorous multitude understand that the rest of the +committee were flying hither and thither and working with all their might +and main, and that if the town would only wait an hour, an office would +be ready, books opened, and the Commission prepared to receive +contributions. His voice was drowned and his information lost in a +ceaseless roar of cheers, and demands that the money be received now +--they swore they would not wait. The chairman pleaded and argued, but, +deaf to all entreaty, men plowed their way through the throng and rained +checks of gold coin into the cart and skurried away for more. Hands +clutching money, were thrust aloft out of the jam by men who hoped this +eloquent appeal would cleave a road their strugglings could not open. +The very Chinamen and Indians caught the excitement and dashed their half +dollars into the cart without knowing or caring what it was all about. +Women plunged into the crowd, trimly attired, fought their way to the +cart with their coin, and emerged again, by and by, with their apparel in +a state of hopeless dilapidation. It was the wildest mob Virginia had +ever seen and the most determined and ungovernable; and when at last it +abated its fury and dispersed, it had not a penny in its pocket. + +To use its own phraseology, it came there "flush" and went away "busted." + +After that, the Commission got itself into systematic working order, and +for weeks the contributions flowed into its treasury in a generous +stream. Individuals and all sorts of organizations levied upon +themselves a regular weekly tax for the sanitary fund, graduated +according to their means, and there was not another grand universal +outburst till the famous "Sanitary Flour Sack" came our way. Its history +is peculiar and interesting. A former schoolmate of mine, by the name of +Reuel Gridley, was living at the little city of Austin, in the Reese +river country, at this time, and was the Democratic candidate for mayor. +He and the Republican candidate made an agreement that the defeated man +should be publicly presented with a fifty-pound sack of flour by the +successful one, and should carry it home on his shoulder. Gridley was +defeated. The new mayor gave him the sack of flour, and he shouldered it +and carried it a mile or two, from Lower Austin to his home in Upper +Austin, attended by a band of music and the whole population. Arrived +there, he said he did not need the flour, and asked what the people +thought he had better do with it. A voice said: + +"Sell it to the highest bidder, for the benefit of the Sanitary fund." + +The suggestion was greeted with a round of applause, and Gridley mounted +a dry-goods box and assumed the role of auctioneer. The bids went higher +and higher, as the sympathies of the pioneers awoke and expanded, till at +last the sack was knocked down to a mill man at two hundred and fifty +dollars, and his check taken. He was asked where he would have the flour +delivered, and he said: + +"Nowhere--sell it again." + +Now the cheers went up royally, and the multitude were fairly in the +spirit of the thing. So Gridley stood there and shouted and perspired +till the sun went down; and when the crowd dispersed he had sold the sack +to three hundred different people, and had taken in eight thousand +dollars in gold. And still the flour sack was in his possession. + +The news came to Virginia, and a telegram went back: + +"Fetch along your flour sack!" + +Thirty-six hours afterward Gridley arrived, and an afternoon mass meeting +was held in the Opera House, and the auction began. But the sack had +come sooner than it was expected; the people were not thoroughly aroused, +and the sale dragged. At nightfall only five thousand dollars had been +secured, and there was a crestfallen feeling in the community. However, +there was no disposition to let the matter rest here and acknowledge +vanquishment at the hands of the village of Austin. Till late in the +night the principal citizens were at work arranging the morrow's +campaign, and when they went to bed they had no fears for the result. +At eleven the next morning a procession of open carriages, attended by +clamorous bands of music and adorned with a moving display of flags, +filed along C street and was soon in danger of blockade by a huzzaing +multitude of citizens. In the first carriage sat Gridley, with the flour +sack in prominent view, the latter splendid with bright paint and gilt +lettering; also in the same carriage sat the mayor and the recorder. +The other carriages contained the Common Council, the editors and +reporters, and other people of imposing consequence. The crowd pressed +to the corner of C and Taylor streets, expecting the sale to begin there, +but they were disappointed, and also unspeakably surprised; for the +cavalcade moved on as if Virginia had ceased to be of importance, and +took its way over the "divide," toward the small town of Gold Hill. +Telegrams had gone ahead to Gold Hill, Silver City and Dayton, and those +communities were at fever heat and rife for the conflict. It was a very +hot day, and wonderfully dusty. At the end of a short half hour we +descended into Gold Hill with drums beating and colors flying, and +enveloped in imposing clouds of dust. The whole population--men, women +and children, Chinamen and Indians, were massed in the main street, all +the flags in town were at the mast head, and the blare of the bands was +drowned in cheers. Gridley stood up and asked who would make the first +bid for the National Sanitary Flour Sack. Gen. W. said: + +"The Yellow Jacket silver mining company offers a thousand dollars, +coin!" + +A tempest of applause followed. A telegram carried the news to Virginia, +and fifteen minutes afterward that city's population was massed in the +streets devouring the tidings--for it was part of the programme that the +bulletin boards should do a good work that day. Every few minutes a new +dispatch was bulletined from Gold Hill, and still the excitement grew. +Telegrams began to return to us from Virginia beseeching Gridley to bring +back the flour sack; but such was not the plan of the campaign. At the +end of an hour Gold Hill's small population had paid a figure for the +flour sack that awoke all the enthusiasm of Virginia when the grand total +was displayed upon the bulletin boards. Then the Gridley cavalcade moved +on, a giant refreshed with new lager beer and plenty of it--for the +people brought it to the carriages without waiting to measure it--and +within three hours more the expedition had carried Silver City and Dayton +by storm and was on its way back covered with glory. Every move had been +telegraphed and bulletined, and as the procession entered Virginia and +filed down C street at half past eight in the evening the town was abroad +in the thoroughfares, torches were glaring, flags flying, bands playing, +cheer on cheer cleaving the air, and the city ready to surrender at +discretion. The auction began, every bid was greeted with bursts of +applause, and at the end of two hours and a half a population of fifteen +thousand souls had paid in coin for a fifty-pound sack of flour a sum +equal to forty thousand dollars in greenbacks! It was at a rate in the +neighborhood of three dollars for each man, woman and child of the +population. The grand total would have been twice as large, but the +streets were very narrow, and hundreds who wanted to bid could not get +within a block of the stand, and could not make themselves heard. These +grew tired of waiting and many of them went home long before the auction +was over. This was the greatest day Virginia ever saw, perhaps. + +Gridley sold the sack in Carson city and several California towns; also +in San Francisco. Then he took it east and sold it in one or two +Atlantic cities, I think. I am not sure of that, but I know that he +finally carried it to St. Louis, where a monster Sanitary Fair was being +held, and after selling it there for a large sum and helping on the +enthusiasm by displaying the portly silver bricks which Nevada's donation +had produced, he had the flour baked up into small cakes and retailed +them at high prices. + +It was estimated that when the flour sack's mission was ended it had been +sold for a grand total of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in +greenbacks! This is probably the only instance on record where common +family flour brought three thousand dollars a pound in the public market. + +It is due to Mr. Gridley's memory to mention that the expenses of his +sanitary flour sack expedition of fifteen thousand miles, going and +returning, were paid in large part if not entirely, out of his own +pocket. The time he gave to it was not less than three months. +Mr. Gridley was a soldier in the Mexican war and a pioneer Californian. +He died at Stockton, California, in December, 1870, greatly regretted. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI. + +There were nabobs in those days--in the "flush times," I mean. Every +rich strike in the mines created one or two. I call to mind several of +these. They were careless, easy-going fellows, as a general thing, and +the community at large was as much benefited by their riches as they were +themselves--possibly more, in some cases. + +Two cousins, teamsters, did some hauling for a man and had to take a +small segregated portion of a silver mine in lieu of $300 cash. They +gave an outsider a third to open the mine, and they went on teaming. But +not long. Ten months afterward the mine was out of debt and paying each +owner $8,000 to $10,000 a month--say $100,000 a year. + +One of the earliest nabobs that Nevada was delivered of wore $6,000 worth +of diamonds in his bosom, and swore he was unhappy because he could not +spend his money as fast as he made it. + +Another Nevada nabob boasted an income that often reached $16,000 a +month; and he used to love to tell how he had worked in the very mine +that yielded it, for five dollars a day, when he first came to the +country. + +The silver and sage-brush State has knowledge of another of these pets of +fortune--lifted from actual poverty to affluence almost in a single +night--who was able to offer $100,000 for a position of high official +distinction, shortly afterward, and did offer it--but failed to get it, +his politics not being as sound as his bank account. + +Then there was John Smith. He was a good, honest, kind-hearted soul, +born and reared in the lower ranks of life, and miraculously ignorant. +He drove a team, and owned a small ranch--a ranch that paid him a +comfortable living, for although it yielded but little hay, what little +it did yield was worth from $250 to $300 in gold per ton in the market. +Presently Smith traded a few acres of the ranch for a small undeveloped +silver mine in Gold Hill. He opened the mine and built a little +unpretending ten-stamp mill. Eighteen months afterward he retired from +the hay business, for his mining income had reached a most comfortable +figure. Some people said it was $30,000 a month, and others said it was +$60,000. Smith was very rich at any rate. + +And then he went to Europe and traveled. And when he came back he was +never tired of telling about the fine hogs he had seen in England, and +the gorgeous sheep he had seen in Spain, and the fine cattle he had +noticed in the vicinity of Rome. He was full of wonders of the old +world, and advised everybody to travel. He said a man never imagined +what surprising things there were in the world till he had traveled. + +One day, on board ship, the passengers made up a pool of $500, which was +to be the property of the man who should come nearest to guessing the run +of the vessel for the next twenty-four hours. Next day, toward noon, the +figures were all in the purser's hands in sealed envelopes. Smith was +serene and happy, for he had been bribing the engineer. But another +party won the prize! Smith said: + +"Here, that won't do! He guessed two miles wider of the mark than I did." + +The purser said, "Mr. Smith, you missed it further than any man on board. +We traveled two hundred and eight miles yesterday." + +"Well, sir," said Smith, "that's just where I've got you, for I guessed +two hundred and nine. If you'll look at my figgers again you'll find a 2 +and two 0's, which stands for 200, don't it?--and after 'em you'll find a +9 (2009), which stands for two hundred and nine. I reckon I'll take that +money, if you please." + +The Gould & Curry claim comprised twelve hundred feet, and it all +belonged originally to the two men whose names it bears. Mr. Curry owned +two thirds of it--and he said that he sold it out for twenty-five hundred +dollars in cash, and an old plug horse that ate up his market value in +hay and barley in seventeen days by the watch. And he said that Gould +sold out for a pair of second-hand government blankets and a bottle of +whisky that killed nine men in three hours, and that an unoffending +stranger that smelt the cork was disabled for life. Four years afterward +the mine thus disposed of was worth in the San Francisco market seven +millions six hundred thousand dollars in gold coin. + +In the early days a poverty-stricken Mexican who lived in a canyon +directly back of Virginia City, had a stream of water as large as a man's +wrist trickling from the hill-side on his premises. The Ophir Company +segregated a hundred feet of their mine and traded it to him for the +stream of water. The hundred feet proved to be the richest part of the +entire mine; four years after the swap, its market value (including its +mill) was $1,500,000. + +An individual who owned twenty feet in the Ophir mine before its great +riches were revealed to men, traded it for a horse, and a very sorry +looking brute he was, too. A year or so afterward, when Ophir stock went +up to $3,000 a foot, this man, who had not a cent, used to say he was the +most startling example of magnificence and misery the world had ever +seen--because he was able to ride a sixty-thousand-dollar horse--yet +could not scrape up cash enough to buy a saddle, and was obliged to +borrow one or ride bareback. He said if fortune were to give him another +sixty-thousand-dollar horse it would ruin him. + +A youth of nineteen, who was a telegraph operator in Virginia on a salary +of a hundred dollars a month, and who, when he could not make out German +names in the list of San Francisco steamer arrivals, used to ingeniously +select and supply substitutes for them out of an old Berlin city +directory, made himself rich by watching the mining telegrams that passed +through his hands and buying and selling stocks accordingly, through a +friend in San Francisco. Once when a private dispatch was sent from +Virginia announcing a rich strike in a prominent mine and advising that +the matter be kept secret till a large amount of the stock could be +secured, he bought forty "feet" of the stock at twenty dollars a foot, +and afterward sold half of it at eight hundred dollars a foot and the +rest at double that figure. Within three months he was worth $150,000, +and had resigned his telegraphic position. + +Another telegraph operator who had been discharged by the company for +divulging the secrets of the office, agreed with a moneyed man in San +Francisco to furnish him the result of a great Virginia mining lawsuit +within an hour after its private reception by the parties to it in San +Francisco. For this he was to have a large percentage of the profits on +purchases and sales made on it by his fellow-conspirator. So he went, +disguised as a teamster, to a little wayside telegraph office in the +mountains, got acquainted with the operator, and sat in the office day +after day, smoking his pipe, complaining that his team was fagged out and +unable to travel--and meantime listening to the dispatches as they passed +clicking through the machine from Virginia. Finally the private dispatch +announcing the result of the lawsuit sped over the wires, and as soon as +he heard it he telegraphed his friend in San Francisco: + +"Am tired waiting. Shall sell the team and go home." + +It was the signal agreed upon. The word "waiting" left out, would have +signified that the suit had gone the other way. + +The mock teamster's friend picked up a deal of the mining stock, at low +figures, before the news became public, and a fortune was the result. + +For a long time after one of the great Virginia mines had been +incorporated, about fifty feet of the original location were still in the +hands of a man who had never signed the incorporation papers. The stock +became very valuable, and every effort was made to find this man, but he +had disappeared. Once it was heard that he was in New York, and one or +two speculators went east but failed to find him. Once the news came +that he was in the Bermudas, and straightway a speculator or two hurried +east and sailed for Bermuda--but he was not there. Finally he was heard +of in Mexico, and a friend of his, a bar-keeper on a salary, scraped +together a little money and sought him out, bought his "feet" for a +hundred dollars, returned and sold the property for $75,000. + +But why go on? The traditions of Silverland are filled with instances +like these, and I would never get through enumerating them were I to +attempt do it. I only desired to give, the reader an idea of a +peculiarity of the "flush times" which I could not present so strikingly +in any other way, and which some mention of was necessary to a realizing +comprehension of the time and the country. + +I was personally acquainted with the majority of the nabobs I have +referred to, and so, for old acquaintance sake, I have shifted their +occupations and experiences around in such a way as to keep the Pacific +public from recognizing these once notorious men. No longer notorious, +for the majority of them have drifted back into poverty and obscurity +again. + +In Nevada there used to be current the story of an adventure of two of +her nabobs, which may or may not have occurred. I give it for what it is +worth: + +Col. Jim had seen somewhat of the world, and knew more or less of its +ways; but Col. Jack was from the back settlements of the States, had led +a life of arduous toil, and had never seen a city. These two, blessed +with sudden wealth, projected a visit to New York,--Col. Jack to see the +sights, and Col. Jim to guard his unsophistication from misfortune. They +reached San Francisco in the night, and sailed in the morning. Arrived +in New York, Col. Jack said: + +"I've heard tell of carriages all my life, and now I mean to have a ride +in one; I don't care what it costs. Come along." + +They stepped out on the sidewalk, and Col. Jim called a stylish barouche. +But Col. Jack said: + +"No, sir! None of your cheap-John turn-outs for me. I'm here to have a +good time, and money ain't any object. I mean to have the nobbiest rig +that's going. Now here comes the very trick. Stop that yaller one with +the pictures on it--don't you fret--I'll stand all the expenses myself." + +So Col. Jim stopped an empty omnibus, and they got in. Said Col. Jack: + +"Ain't it gay, though? Oh, no, I reckon not! Cushions, and windows, and +pictures, till you can't rest. What would the boys say if they could see +us cutting a swell like this in New York? By George, I wish they could +see us." + +Then he put his head out of the window, and shouted to the driver: + +"Say, Johnny, this suits me!--suits yours truly, you bet, you! I want +this shebang all day. I'm on it, old man! Let 'em out! Make 'em go! +We'll make it all right with you, sonny!" + +The driver passed his hand through the strap-hole, and tapped for his +fare--it was before the gongs came into common use. Col. Jack took the +hand, and shook it cordially. He said: + +"You twig me, old pard! All right between gents. Smell of that, and see +how you like it!" + +And he put a twenty-dollar gold piece in the driver's hand. After a +moment the driver said he could not make change. + +"Bother the change! Ride it out. Put it in your pocket." + +Then to Col. Jim, with a sounding slap on his thigh: + +"Ain't it style, though? Hanged if I don't hire this thing every day for +a week." + +The omnibus stopped, and a young lady got in. Col. Jack stared a moment, +then nudged Col. Jim with his elbow: + +"Don't say a word," he whispered. "Let her ride, if she wants to. +Gracious, there's room enough." + +The young lady got out her porte-monnaie, and handed her fare to Col. +Jack. + +"What's this for?" said he. + +"Give it to the driver, please." + +"Take back your money, madam. We can't allow it. You're welcome to ride +here as long as you please, but this shebang's chartered, and we can't +let you pay a cent." + +The girl shrunk into a corner, bewildered. An old lady with a basket +climbed in, and proffered her fare. + +"Excuse me," said Col. Jack. "You're perfectly welcome here, madam, but +we can't allow you to pay. Set right down there, mum, and don't you be +the least uneasy. Make yourself just as free as if you was in your own +turn-out." + +Within two minutes, three gentlemen, two fat women, and a couple of +children, entered. + +"Come right along, friends," said Col. Jack; "don't mind us. This is a +free blow-out." Then he whispered to Col. Jim, + +"New York ain't no sociable place, I don't reckon--it ain't no name for +it!" + +He resisted every effort to pass fares to the driver, and made everybody +cordially welcome. The situation dawned on the people, and they pocketed +their money, and delivered themselves up to covert enjoyment of the +episode. Half a dozen more passengers entered. + +"Oh, there's plenty of room," said Col. Jack. "Walk right in, and make +yourselves at home. A blow-out ain't worth anything as a blow-out, +unless a body has company." Then in a whisper to Col. Jim: "But ain't +these New Yorkers friendly? And ain't they cool about it, too? Icebergs +ain't anywhere. I reckon they'd tackle a hearse, if it was going their +way." + +More passengers got in; more yet, and still more. Both seats were +filled, and a file of men were standing up, holding on to the cleats +overhead. Parties with baskets and bundles were climbing up on the roof. +Half-suppressed laughter rippled up from all sides. + +"Well, for clean, cool, out-and-out cheek, if this don't bang anything +that ever I saw, I'm an Injun!" whispered Col. Jack. + +A Chinaman crowded his way in. + +"I weaken!" said Col. Jack. "Hold on, driver! Keep your seats, ladies, +and gents. Just make yourselves free--everything's paid for. Driver, +rustle these folks around as long as they're a mind to go--friends of +ours, you know. Take them everywheres--and if you want more money, come +to the St. Nicholas, and we'll make it all right. Pleasant journey to +you, ladies and gents--go it just as long as you please--it shan't cost +you a cent!" + +The two comrades got out, and Col. Jack said: + +"Jimmy, it's the sociablest place I ever saw. The Chinaman waltzed in as +comfortable as anybody. If we'd staid awhile, I reckon we'd had some +niggers. B' George, we'll have to barricade our doors to-night, or some +of these ducks will be trying to sleep with us." + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII. + +Somebody has said that in order to know a community, one must observe the +style of its funerals and know what manner of men they bury with most +ceremony. I cannot say which class we buried with most eclat in our +"flush times," the distinguished public benefactor or the distinguished +rough--possibly the two chief grades or grand divisions of society +honored their illustrious dead about equally; and hence, no doubt the +philosopher I have quoted from would have needed to see two +representative funerals in Virginia before forming his estimate of the +people. + +There was a grand time over Buck Fanshaw when he died. He was a +representative citizen. He had "killed his man"--not in his own quarrel, +it is true, but in defence of a stranger unfairly beset by numbers. +He had kept a sumptuous saloon. He had been the proprietor of a dashing +helpmeet whom he could have discarded without the formality of a divorce. +He had held a high position in the fire department and been a very +Warwick in politics. When he died there was great lamentation throughout +the town, but especially in the vast bottom-stratum of society. + +On the inquest it was shown that Buck Fanshaw, in the delirium of a +wasting typhoid fever, had taken arsenic, shot himself through the body, +cut his throat, and jumped out of a four-story window and broken his +neck--and after due deliberation, the jury, sad and tearful, but with +intelligence unblinded by its sorrow, brought in a verdict of death "by +the visitation of God." What could the world do without juries? + +Prodigious preparations were made for the funeral. All the vehicles in +town were hired, all the saloons put in mourning, all the municipal and +fire-company flags hung at half-mast, and all the firemen ordered to +muster in uniform and bring their machines duly draped in black. Now +--let us remark in parenthesis--as all the peoples of the earth had +representative adventurers in the Silverland, and as each adventurer had +brought the slang of his nation or his locality with him, the combination +made the slang of Nevada the richest and the most infinitely varied and +copious that had ever existed anywhere in the world, perhaps, except in +the mines of California in the "early days." Slang was the language of +Nevada. It was hard to preach a sermon without it, and be understood. +Such phrases as "You bet!" "Oh, no, I reckon not!" "No Irish need +apply," and a hundred others, became so common as to fall from the lips +of a speaker unconsciously--and very often when they did not touch the +subject under discussion and consequently failed to mean anything. + +After Buck Fanshaw's inquest, a meeting of the short-haired brotherhood +was held, for nothing can be done on the Pacific coast without a public +meeting and an expression of sentiment. Regretful resolutions were +passed and various committees appointed; among others, a committee of one +was deputed to call on the minister, a fragile, gentle, spiritual new +fledgling from an Eastern theological seminary, and as yet unacquainted +with the ways of the mines. The committeeman, "Scotty" Briggs, made his +visit; and in after days it was worth something to hear the minister tell +about it. Scotty was a stalwart rough, whose customary suit, when on +weighty official business, like committee work, was a fire helmet, +flaming red flannel shirt, patent leather belt with spanner and revolver +attached, coat hung over arm, and pants stuffed into boot tops. +He formed something of a contrast to the pale theological student. It is +fair to say of Scotty, however, in passing, that he had a warm heart, and +a strong love for his friends, and never entered into a quarrel when he +could reasonably keep out of it. Indeed, it was commonly said that +whenever one of Scotty's fights was investigated, it always turned out +that it had originally been no affair of his, but that out of native +good-heartedness he had dropped in of his own accord to help the man who +was getting the worst of it. He and Buck Fanshaw were bosom friends, for +years, and had often taken adventurous "pot-luck" together. On one +occasion, they had thrown off their coats and taken the weaker side in a +fight among strangers, and after gaining a hard-earned victory, turned +and found that the men they were helping had deserted early, and not only +that, but had stolen their coats and made off with them! But to return +to Scotty's visit to the minister. He was on a sorrowful mission, now, +and his face was the picture of woe. Being admitted to the presence he +sat down before the clergyman, placed his fire-hat on an unfinished +manuscript sermon under the minister's nose, took from it a red silk +handkerchief, wiped his brow and heaved a sigh of dismal impressiveness, +explanatory of his business. + +He choked, and even shed tears; but with an effort he mastered his voice +and said in lugubrious tones: + +"Are you the duck that runs the gospel-mill next door?" + +"Am I the--pardon me, I believe I do not understand?" + +With another sigh and a half-sob, Scotty rejoined: + +"Why you see we are in a bit of trouble, and the boys thought maybe you +would give us a lift, if we'd tackle you--that is, if I've got the rights +of it and you are the head clerk of the doxology-works next door." + +"I am the shepherd in charge of the flock whose fold is next door." + +"The which?" + +"The spiritual adviser of the little company of believers whose sanctuary +adjoins these premises." + +Scotty scratched his head, reflected a moment, and then said: + +"You ruther hold over me, pard. I reckon I can't call that hand. Ante +and pass the buck." + +"How? I beg pardon. What did I understand you to say?" + +"Well, you've ruther got the bulge on me. Or maybe we've both got the +bulge, somehow. You don't smoke me and I don't smoke you. You see, one +of the boys has passed in his checks and we want to give him a good +send-off, and so the thing I'm on now is to roust out somebody to jerk +a little chin-music for us and waltz him through handsome." + +"My friend, I seem to grow more and more bewildered. Your observations +are wholly incomprehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them in some way? +At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now. Would it +not expedite matters if you restricted yourself to categorical statements +of fact unencumbered with obstructing accumulations of metaphor and +allegory?" + +Another pause, and more reflection. Then, said Scotty: + +"I'll have to pass, I judge." + +"How?" + +"You've raised me out, pard." + +"I still fail to catch your meaning." + +"Why, that last lead of yourn is too many for me--that's the idea. I +can't neither-trump nor follow suit." + +The clergyman sank back in his chair perplexed. Scotty leaned his head +on his hand and gave himself up to thought. + +Presently his face came up, sorrowful but confident. + +"I've got it now, so's you can savvy," he said. "What we want is a +gospel-sharp. See?" + +"A what?" + +"Gospel-sharp. Parson." + +"Oh! Why did you not say so before? I am a clergyman--a parson." + +"Now you talk! You see my blind and straddle it like a man. Put it +there!"--extending a brawny paw, which closed over the minister's small +hand and gave it a shake indicative of fraternal sympathy and fervent +gratification. + +"Now we're all right, pard. Let's start fresh. Don't you mind my +snuffling a little--becuz we're in a power of trouble. You see, one of +the boys has gone up the flume--" + +"Gone where?" + +"Up the flume--throwed up the sponge, you understand." + +"Thrown up the sponge?" + +"Yes--kicked the bucket--" + +"Ah--has departed to that mysterious country from whose bourne no +traveler returns." + +"Return! I reckon not. Why pard, he's dead!" + +"Yes, I understand." + +"Oh, you do? Well I thought maybe you might be getting tangled some +more. Yes, you see he's dead again--" + +"Again? Why, has he ever been dead before?" + +"Dead before? No! Do you reckon a man has got as many lives as a cat? +But you bet you he's awful dead now, poor old boy, and I wish I'd never +seen this day. I don't want no better friend than Buck Fanshaw. +I knowed him by the back; and when I know a man and like him, I freeze to +him--you hear me. Take him all round, pard, there never was a bullier +man in the mines. No man ever knowed Buck Fanshaw to go back on a +friend. But it's all up, you know, it's all up. It ain't no use. +They've scooped him." + +"Scooped him?" + +"Yes--death has. Well, well, well, we've got to give him up. Yes +indeed. It's a kind of a hard world, after all, ain't it? But pard, he +was a rustler! You ought to seen him get started once. He was a bully +boy with a glass eye! Just spit in his face and give him room according +to his strength, and it was just beautiful to see him peel and go in. +He was the worst son of a thief that ever drawed breath. Pard, he was on +it! He was on it bigger than an Injun!" + +"On it? On what?" + +"On the shoot. On the shoulder. On the fight, you understand. +He didn't give a continental for any body. Beg your pardon, friend, for +coming so near saying a cuss-word--but you see I'm on an awful strain, in +this palaver, on account of having to cramp down and draw everything so +mild. But we've got to give him up. There ain't any getting around +that, I don't reckon. Now if we can get you to help plant him--" + +"Preach the funeral discourse? Assist at the obsequies?" + +"Obs'quies is good. Yes. That's it--that's our little game. We are +going to get the thing up regardless, you know. He was always nifty +himself, and so you bet you his funeral ain't going to be no slouch +--solid silver door-plate on his coffin, six plumes on the hearse, and a +nigger on the box in a biled shirt and a plug hat--how's that for high? +And we'll take care of you, pard. We'll fix you all right. There'll be +a kerridge for you; and whatever you want, you just 'scape out and we'll +'tend to it. We've got a shebang fixed up for you to stand behind, in +No. 1's house, and don't you be afraid. Just go in and toot your horn, +if you don't sell a clam. Put Buck through as bully as you can, pard, +for anybody that knowed him will tell you that he was one of the whitest +men that was ever in the mines. You can't draw it too strong. He never +could stand it to see things going wrong. He's done more to make this +town quiet and peaceable than any man in it. I've seen him lick four +Greasers in eleven minutes, myself. If a thing wanted regulating, he +warn't a man to go browsing around after somebody to do it, but he would +prance in and regulate it himself. He warn't a Catholic. Scasely. He +was down on 'em. His word was, 'No Irish need apply!' But it didn't +make no difference about that when it came down to what a man's rights +was--and so, when some roughs jumped the Catholic bone-yard and started +in to stake out town-lots in it he went for 'em! And he cleaned 'em, +too! I was there, pard, and I seen it myself." + +"That was very well indeed--at least the impulse was--whether the act was +strictly defensible or not. Had deceased any religious convictions? +That is to say, did he feel a dependence upon, or acknowledge allegiance +to a higher power?" + +More reflection. + +"I reckon you've stumped me again, pard. Could you say it over once +more, and say it slow?" + +"Well, to simplify it somewhat, was he, or rather had he ever been +connected with any organization sequestered from secular concerns and +devoted to self-sacrifice in the interests of morality?" + +"All down but nine--set 'em up on the other alley, pard." + +"What did I understand you to say?" + +"Why, you're most too many for me, you know. When you get in with your +left I hunt grass every time. Every time you draw, you fill; but I don't +seem to have any luck. Lets have a new deal." + +"How? Begin again?" + +"That's it." + +"Very well. Was he a good man, and--" + +"There--I see that; don't put up another chip till I look at my hand. +A good man, says you? Pard, it ain't no name for it. He was the best +man that ever--pard, you would have doted on that man. He could lam any +galoot of his inches in America. It was him that put down the riot last +election before it got a start; and everybody said he was the only man +that could have done it. He waltzed in with a spanner in one hand and a +trumpet in the other, and sent fourteen men home on a shutter in less +than three minutes. He had that riot all broke up and prevented nice +before anybody ever got a chance to strike a blow. He was always for +peace, and he would have peace--he could not stand disturbances. Pard, +he was a great loss to this town. It would please the boys if you could +chip in something like that and do him justice. Here once when the Micks +got to throwing stones through the Methodis' Sunday school windows, Buck +Fanshaw, all of his own notion, shut up his saloon and took a couple of +six-shooters and mounted guard over the Sunday school. Says he, 'No +Irish need apply!' And they didn't. He was the bulliest man in the +mountains, pard! He could run faster, jump higher, hit harder, and hold +more tangle-foot whisky without spilling it than any man in seventeen +counties. Put that in, pard--it'll please the boys more than anything +you could say. And you can say, pard, that he never shook his mother." + +"Never shook his mother?" + +"That's it--any of the boys will tell you so." + +"Well, but why should he shake her?" + +"That's what I say--but some people does." + +"Not people of any repute?" + +"Well, some that averages pretty so-so." + +"In my opinion the man that would offer personal violence to his own +mother, ought to--" + +"Cheese it, pard; you've banked your ball clean outside the string. +What I was a drivin' at, was, that he never throwed off on his mother +--don't you see? No indeedy. He give her a house to live in, and town +lots, and plenty of money; and he looked after her and took care of her +all the time; and when she was down with the small-pox I'm d---d if he +didn't set up nights and nuss her himself! Beg your pardon for saying +it, but it hopped out too quick for yours truly. + +"You've treated me like a gentleman, pard, and I ain't the man to hurt +your feelings intentional. I think you're white. I think you're a +square man, pard. I like you, and I'll lick any man that don't. I'll +lick him till he can't tell himself from a last year's corpse! Put it +there!" [Another fraternal hand-shake--and exit.] + +The obsequies were all that "the boys" could desire. Such a marvel of +funeral pomp had never been seen in Virginia. The plumed hearse, the +dirge-breathing brass bands, the closed marts of business, the flags +drooping at half mast, the long, plodding procession of uniformed secret +societies, military battalions and fire companies, draped engines, +carriages of officials, and citizens in vehicles and on foot, attracted +multitudes of spectators to the sidewalks, roofs and windows; and for +years afterward, the degree of grandeur attained by any civic display in +Virginia was determined by comparison with Buck Fanshaw's funeral. + +Scotty Briggs, as a pall-bearer and a mourner, occupied a prominent place +at the funeral, and when the sermon was finished and the last sentence of +the prayer for the dead man's soul ascended, he responded, in a low +voice, but with feelings: + +"AMEN. No Irish need apply." + +As the bulk of the response was without apparent relevancy, it was +probably nothing more than a humble tribute to the memory of the friend +that was gone; for, as Scotty had once said, it was "his word." + +Scotty Briggs, in after days, achieved the distinction of becoming the +only convert to religion that was ever gathered from the Virginia roughs; +and it transpired that the man who had it in him to espouse the quarrel +of the weak out of inborn nobility of spirit was no mean timber whereof +to construct a Christian. The making him one did not warp his generosity +or diminish his courage; on the contrary it gave intelligent direction to +the one and a broader field to the other. + +If his Sunday-school class progressed faster than the other classes, was +it matter for wonder? I think not. He talked to his pioneer small-fry +in a language they understood! It was my large privilege, a month before +he died, to hear him tell the beautiful story of Joseph and his brethren +to his class "without looking at the book." I leave it to the reader to +fancy what it was like, as it fell, riddled with slang, from the lips of +that grave, earnest teacher, and was listened to by his little learners +with a consuming interest that showed that they were as unconscious as he +was that any violence was being done to the sacred proprieties! + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII. + +The first twenty-six graves in the Virginia cemetery were occupied by +murdered men. So everybody said, so everybody believed, and so they will +always say and believe. The reason why there was so much slaughtering +done, was, that in a new mining district the rough element predominates, +and a person is not respected until he has "killed his man." That was +the very expression used. + +If an unknown individual arrived, they did not inquire if he was capable, +honest, industrious, but--had he killed his man? If he had not, he +gravitated to his natural and proper position, that of a man of small +consequence; if he had, the cordiality of his reception was graduated +according to the number of his dead. It was tedious work struggling up +to a position of influence with bloodless hands; but when a man came with +the blood of half a dozen men on his soul, his worth was recognized at +once and his acquaintance sought. + +In Nevada, for a time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the chief +desperado, the chief gambler, and the saloon keeper, occupied the same +level in society, and it was the highest. The cheapest and easiest way +to become an influential man and be looked up to by the community at +large, was to stand behind a bar, wear a cluster-diamond pin, and sell +whisky. I am not sure but that the saloon-keeper held a shade higher +rank than any other member of society. His opinion had weight. It was +his privilege to say how the elections should go. No great movement +could succeed without the countenance and direction of the +saloon-keepers. It was a high favor when the chief saloon-keeper +consented to serve in the legislature or the board of aldermen. + +Youthful ambition hardly aspired so much to the honors of the law, or the +army and navy as to the dignity of proprietorship in a saloon. + +To be a saloon-keeper and kill a man was to be illustrious. Hence the +reader will not be surprised to learn that more than one man was killed +in Nevada under hardly the pretext of provocation, so impatient was the +slayer to achieve reputation and throw off the galling sense of being +held in indifferent repute by his associates. I knew two youths who +tried to "kill their men" for no other reason--and got killed themselves +for their pains. "There goes the man that killed Bill Adams" was higher +praise and a sweeter sound in the ears of this sort of people than any +other speech that admiring lips could utter. + +The men who murdered Virginia's original twenty-six cemetery-occupants +were never punished. Why? Because Alfred the Great, when he invented +trial by jury and knew that he had admirably framed it to secure justice +in his age of the world, was not aware that in the nineteenth century the +condition of things would be so entirely changed that unless he rose from +the grave and altered the jury plan to meet the emergency, it would prove +the most ingenious and infallible agency for defeating justice that human +wisdom could contrive. For how could he imagine that we simpletons would +go on using his jury plan after circumstances had stripped it of its +usefulness, any more than he could imagine that we would go on using his +candle-clock after we had invented chronometers? In his day news could +not travel fast, and hence he could easily find a jury of honest, +intelligent men who had not heard of the case they were called to try +--but in our day of telegraphs and newspapers his plan compels us to swear +in juries composed of fools and rascals, because the system rigidly +excludes honest men and men of brains. + +I remember one of those sorrowful farces, in Virginia, which we call a +jury trial. A noted desperado killed Mr. B., a good citizen, in the most +wanton and cold-blooded way. Of course the papers were full of it, and +all men capable of reading, read about it. And of course all men not +deaf and dumb and idiotic, talked about it. A jury-list was made out, +and Mr. B. L., a prominent banker and a valued citizen, was questioned +precisely as he would have been questioned in any court in America: + +"Have you heard of this homicide?" + +"Yes." + +"Have you held conversations upon the subject?" + +"Yes." + +"Have you formed or expressed opinions about it?" + +"Yes." + +"Have you read the newspaper accounts of it?" + +"Yes." + +"We do not want you." + +A minister, intelligent, esteemed, and greatly respected; a merchant of +high character and known probity; a mining superintendent of intelligence +and unblemished reputation; a quartz mill owner of excellent standing, +were all questioned in the same way, and all set aside. Each said the +public talk and the newspaper reports had not so biased his mind but that +sworn testimony would overthrow his previously formed opinions and enable +him to render a verdict without prejudice and in accordance with the +facts. But of course such men could not be trusted with the case. +Ignoramuses alone could mete out unsullied justice. + +When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of twelve men +was impaneled--a jury who swore they had neither heard, read, talked +about nor expressed an opinion concerning a murder which the very cattle +in the corrals, the Indians in the sage-brush and the stones in the +streets were cognizant of! It was a jury composed of two desperadoes, +two low beer-house politicians, three bar-keepers, two ranchmen who could +not read, and three dull, stupid, human donkeys! It actually came out +afterward, that one of these latter thought that incest and arson were +the same thing. + +The verdict rendered by this jury was, Not Guilty. What else could one +expect? + +The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium +upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury. It is a shame that we must +continue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand years +ago. In this age, when a gentleman of high social standing, intelligence +and probity, swears that testimony given under solemn oath will outweigh, +with him, street talk and newspaper reports based upon mere hearsay, he +is worth a hundred jurymen who will swear to their own ignorance and +stupidity, and justice would be far safer in his hands than in theirs. +Why could not the jury law be so altered as to give men of brains and +honesty and equal chance with fools and miscreants? Is it right to show +the present favoritism to one class of men and inflict a disability on +another, in a land whose boast is that all its citizens are free and +equal? I am a candidate for the legislature. I desire to tamper with +the jury law. I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on intelligence +and character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, and +people who do not read newspapers. But no doubt I shall be defeated +--every effort I make to save the country "misses fire." + +My idea, when I began this chapter, was to say something about +desperadoism in the "flush times" of Nevada. To attempt a portrayal of +that era and that land, and leave out the blood and carnage, would be +like portraying Mormondom and leaving out polygamy. The desperado +stalked the streets with a swagger graded according to the number of his +homicides, and a nod of recognition from him was sufficient to make a +humble admirer happy for the rest of the day. The deference that was +paid to a desperado of wide reputation, and who "kept his private +graveyard," as the phrase went, was marked, and cheerfully accorded. +When he moved along the sidewalk in his excessively long-tailed +frock-coat, shiny stump-toed boots, and with dainty little slouch hat +tipped over left eye, the small-fry roughs made room for his majesty; +when he entered the restaurant, the waiters deserted bankers and +merchants to overwhelm him with obsequious service; when he shouldered +his way to a bar, the shouldered parties wheeled indignantly, recognized +him, and --apologized. + +They got a look in return that froze their marrow, and by that time a +curled and breast-pinned bar keeper was beaming over the counter, proud +of the established acquaintanceship that permitted such a familiar form +of speech as: + +"How're ye, Billy, old fel? Glad to see you. What'll you take--the old +thing?" + +The "old thing" meant his customary drink, of course. + +The best known names in the Territory of Nevada were those belonging to +these long-tailed heroes of the revolver. Orators, Governors, +capitalists and leaders of the legislature enjoyed a degree of fame, but +it seemed local and meagre when contrasted with the fame of such men as +Sam Brown, Jack Williams, Billy Mulligan, Farmer Pease, Sugarfoot Mike, +Pock Marked Jake, El Dorado Johnny, Jack McNabb, Joe McGee, Jack Harris, +Six-fingered Pete, etc., etc. There was a long list of them. They were +brave, reckless men, and traveled with their lives in their hands. To +give them their due, they did their killing principally among themselves, +and seldom molested peaceable citizens, for they considered it small +credit to add to their trophies so cheap a bauble as the death of a man +who was "not on the shoot," as they phrased it. They killed each other +on slight provocation, and hoped and expected to be killed themselves +--for they held it almost shame to die otherwise than "with their boots +on," as they expressed it. + +I remember an instance of a desperado's contempt for such small game as a +private citizen's life. I was taking a late supper in a restaurant one +night, with two reporters and a little printer named--Brown, for +instance--any name will do. Presently a stranger with a long-tailed coat +on came in, and not noticing Brown's hat, which was lying in a chair, sat +down on it. Little Brown sprang up and became abusive in a moment. The +stranger smiled, smoothed out the hat, and offered it to Brown with +profuse apologies couched in caustic sarcasm, and begged Brown not to +destroy him. Brown threw off his coat and challenged the man to fight +--abused him, threatened him, impeached his courage, and urged and even +implored him to fight; and in the meantime the smiling stranger placed +himself under our protection in mock distress. But presently he assumed +a serious tone, and said: + +"Very well, gentlemen, if we must fight, we must, I suppose. But don't +rush into danger and then say I gave you no warning. I am more than a +match for all of you when I get started. I will give you proofs, and +then if my friend here still insists, I will try to accommodate him." + +The table we were sitting at was about five feet long, and unusually +cumbersome and heavy. He asked us to put our hands on the dishes and +hold them in their places a moment--one of them was a large oval dish +with a portly roast on it. Then he sat down, tilted up one end of the +table, set two of the legs on his knees, took the end of the table +between his teeth, took his hands away, and pulled down with his teeth +till the table came up to a level position, dishes and all! He said he +could lift a keg of nails with his teeth. He picked up a common glass +tumbler and bit a semi-circle out of it. Then he opened his bosom and +showed us a net-work of knife and bullet scars; showed us more on his +arms and face, and said he believed he had bullets enough in his body to +make a pig of lead. He was armed to the teeth. He closed with the +remark that he was Mr. ---- of Cariboo--a celebrated name whereat we shook +in our shoes. I would publish the name, but for the suspicion that he +might come and carve me. He finally inquired if Brown still thirsted for +blood. Brown turned the thing over in his mind a moment, and then--asked +him to supper. + +With the permission of the reader, I will group together, in the next +chapter, some samples of life in our small mountain village in the old +days of desperadoism. I was there at the time. The reader will observe +peculiarities in our official society; and he will observe also, an +instance of how, in new countries, murders breed murders. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX. + +An extract or two from the newspapers of the day will furnish a +photograph that can need no embellishment: + + FATAL SHOOTING AFFRAY.--An affray occurred, last evening, in a + billiard saloon on C street, between Deputy Marshal Jack Williams + and Wm. Brown, which resulted in the immediate death of the latter. + There had been some difficulty between the parties for several + months. + + An inquest was immediately held, and the following testimony + adduced: + + Officer GEO. BIRDSALL, sworn, says:--I was told Wm. Brown was drunk + and was looking for Jack Williams; so soon as I heard that I started + for the parties to prevent a collision; went into the billiard + saloon; saw Billy Brown running around, saying if anybody had + anything against him to show cause; he was talking in a boisterous + manner, and officer Perry took him to the other end of the room to + talk to him; Brown came back to me; remarked to me that he thought + he was as good as anybody, and knew how to take care of himself; he + passed by me and went to the bar; don't know whether he drank or + not; Williams was at the end of the billiard-table, next to the + stairway; Brown, after going to the bar, came back and said he was + as good as any man in the world; he had then walked out to the end + of the first billiard-table from the bar; I moved closer to them, + supposing there would be a fight; as Brown drew his pistol I caught + hold of it; he had fired one shot at Williams; don't know the effect + of it; caught hold of him with one hand, and took hold of the pistol + and turned it up; think he fired once after I caught hold of the + pistol; I wrenched the pistol from him; walked to the end of the + billiard-table and told a party that I had Brown's pistol, and to + stop shooting; I think four shots were fired in all; after walking + out, Mr. Foster remarked that Brown was shot dead. + +Oh, there was no excitement about it--he merely "remarked" the small +circumstance! + +Four months later the following item appeared in the same paper (the +Enterprise). In this item the name of one of the city officers above +referred to (Deputy Marshal Jack Williams) occurs again: + + ROBBERY AND DESPERATE AFFRAY.--On Tuesday night, a German named + Charles Hurtzal, engineer in a mill at Silver City, came to this + place, and visited the hurdy-gurdy house on B street. The music, + dancing and Teutonic maidens awakened memories of Faderland until + our German friend was carried away with rapture. He evidently had + money, and was spending if freely. Late in the evening Jack + Williams and Andy Blessington invited him down stairs to take a cup + of coffee. Williams proposed a game of cards and went up stairs to + procure a deck, but not finding any returned. On the stairway he + met the German, and drawing his pistol knocked him down and rifled + his pockets of some seventy dollars. Hurtzal dared give no alarm, + as he was told, with a pistol at his head, if he made any noise or + exposed them, they would blow his brains out. So effectually was he + frightened that he made no complaint, until his friends forced him. + Yesterday a warrant was issued, but the culprits had disappeared. + +This efficient city officer, Jack Williams, had the common reputation of +being a burglar, a highwayman and a desperado. It was said that he had +several times drawn his revolver and levied money contributions on +citizens at dead of night in the public streets of Virginia. + +Five months after the above item appeared, Williams was assassinated +while sitting at a card table one night; a gun was thrust through the +crack of the door and Williams dropped from his chair riddled with balls. +It was said, at the time, that Williams had been for some time aware that +a party of his own sort (desperadoes) had sworn away his life; and it was +generally believed among the people that Williams's friends and enemies +would make the assassination memorable--and useful, too--by a wholesale +destruction of each other. + +It did not so happen, but still, times were not dull during the next +twenty-four hours, for within that time a woman was killed by a pistol +shot, a man was brained with a slung shot, and a man named Reeder was +also disposed of permanently. Some matters in the Enterprise account of +the killing of Reeder are worth nothing--especially the accommodating +complaisance of a Virginia justice of the peace. The italics in the +following narrative are mine: + + MORE CUTTING AND SHOOTING.--The devil seems to have again broken + loose in our town. Pistols and guns explode and knives gleam in our + streets as in early times. When there has been a long season of + quiet, people are slow to wet their hands in blood; but once blood + is spilled, cutting and shooting come easy. Night before last Jack + Williams was assassinated, and yesterday forenoon we had more bloody + work, growing out of the killing of Williams, and on the same street + in which he met his death. It appears that Tom Reeder, a friend of + Williams, and George Gumbert were talking, at the meat market of the + latter, about the killing of Williams the previous night, when + Reeder said it was a most cowardly act to shoot a man in such a way, + giving him "no show." Gumbert said that Williams had "as good a + show as he gave Billy Brown," meaning the man killed by Williams + last March. Reeder said it was a d---d lie, that Williams had no + show at all. At this, Gumbert drew a knife and stabbed Reeder, + cutting him in two places in the back. One stroke of the knife cut + into the sleeve of Reeder's coat and passed downward in a slanting + direction through his clothing, and entered his body at the small of + the back; another blow struck more squarely, and made a much more + dangerous wound. Gumbert gave himself up to the officers of + justice, and was shortly after discharged by Justice Atwill, on his + own recognizance, to appear for trial at six o'clock in the evening. + In the meantime Reeder had been taken into the office of Dr. Owens, + where his wounds were properly dressed. One of his wounds was + considered quite dangerous, and it was thought by many that it would + prove fatal. But being considerably under the influence of liquor, + Reeder did not feel his wounds as he otherwise would, and he got up + and went into the street. He went to the meat market and renewed + his quarrel with Gumbert, threatening his life. Friends tried to + interfere to put a stop to the quarrel and get the parties away from + each other. In the Fashion Saloon Reeder made threats against the + life of Gumbert, saying he would kill him, and it is said that he + requested the officers not to arrest Gumbert, as he intended to kill + him. After these threats Gumbert went off and procured a + double-barreled shot gun, loaded with buck-shot or revolver balls, + and went after Reeder. Two or three persons were assisting him along + the street, trying to get him home, and had him just in front of the + store of Klopstock & Harris, when Gumbert came across toward him + from the opposite side of the street with his gun. He came up + within about ten or fifteen feet of Reeder, and called out to those + with him to "look out! get out of the way!" and they had only time + to heed the warning, when he fired. Reeder was at the time + attempting to screen himself behind a large cask, which stood + against the awning post of Klopstock & Harris's store, but some of + the balls took effect in the lower part of his breast, and he reeled + around forward and fell in front of the cask. Gumbert then raised + his gun and fired the second barrel, which missed Reeder and entered + the ground. At the time that this occurred, there were a great many + persons on the street in the vicinity, and a number of them called + out to Gumbert, when they saw him raise his gun, to "hold on," and + "don't shoot!" The cutting took place about ten o'clock and the + shooting about twelve. After the shooting the street was instantly + crowded with the inhabitants of that part of the town, some + appearing much excited and laughing--declaring that it looked like + the "good old times of '60." Marshal Perry and officer Birdsall + were near when the shooting occurred, and Gumbert was immediately + arrested and his gun taken from him, when he was marched off to + jail. Many persons who were attracted to the spot where this bloody + work had just taken place, looked bewildered and seemed to be asking + themselves what was to happen next, appearing in doubt as to whether + the killing mania had reached its climax, or whether we were to turn + in and have a grand killing spell, shooting whoever might have given + us offence. It was whispered around that it was not all over yet + --five or six more were to be killed before night. Reeder was taken + to the Virginia City Hotel, and doctors called in to examine his + wounds. They found that two or three balls had entered his right + side; one of them appeared to have passed through the substance of + the lungs, while another passed into the liver. Two balls were also + found to have struck one of his legs. As some of the balls struck + the cask, the wounds in Reeder's leg were probably from these, + glancing downwards, though they might have been caused by the second + shot fired. After being shot, Reeder said when he got on his feet + --smiling as he spoke--"It will take better shooting than that to + kill me." The doctors consider it almost impossible for him to + recover, but as he has an excellent constitution he may survive, + notwithstanding the number and dangerous character of the wounds he + has received. The town appears to be perfectly quiet at present, as + though the late stormy times had cleared our moral atmosphere; but + who can tell in what quarter clouds are lowering or plots ripening? + +Reeder--or at least what was left of him--survived his wounds two days! +Nothing was ever done with Gumbert. + +Trial by jury is the palladium of our liberties. I do not know what a +palladium is, having never seen a palladium, but it is a good thing no +doubt at any rate. Not less than a hundred men have been murdered in +Nevada--perhaps I would be within bounds if I said three hundred--and as +far as I can learn, only two persons have suffered the death penalty +there. However, four or five who had no money and no political influence +have been punished by imprisonment--one languished in prison as much as +eight months, I think. However, I do not desire to be extravagant--it +may have been less. + +However, one prophecy was verified, at any rate. It was asserted by the +desperadoes that one of their brethren (Joe McGee, a special policeman) +was known to be the conspirator chosen by lot to assassinate Williams; +and they also asserted that doom had been pronounced against McGee, and +that he would be assassinated in exactly the same manner that had been +adopted for the destruction of Williams--a prophecy which came true a +year later. After twelve months of distress (for McGee saw a fancied +assassin in every man that approached him), he made the last of many +efforts to get out of the country unwatched. He went to Carson and sat +down in a saloon to wait for the stage--it would leave at four in the +morning. But as the night waned and the crowd thinned, he grew uneasy, +and told the bar-keeper that assassins were on his track. The bar-keeper +told him to stay in the middle of the room, then, and not go near the +door, or the window by the stove. But a fatal fascination seduced him to +the neighborhood of the stove every now and then, and repeatedly the +bar-keeper brought him back to the middle of the room and warned him to +remain there. But he could not. At three in the morning he again +returned to the stove and sat down by a stranger. Before the bar-keeper +could get to him with another warning whisper, some one outside fired +through the window and riddled McGee's breast with slugs, killing him +almost instantly. By the same discharge the stranger at McGee's side +also received attentions which proved fatal in the course of two or three +days. + + + + +CHAPTER L. + +These murder and jury statistics remind me of a certain very +extraordinary trial and execution of twenty years ago; it is a scrap of +history familiar to all old Californians, and worthy to be known by other +peoples of the earth that love simple, straightforward justice +unencumbered with nonsense. I would apologize for this digression but +for the fact that the information I am about to offer is apology enough +in itself. And since I digress constantly anyhow, perhaps it is as well +to eschew apologies altogether and thus prevent their growing irksome. + +Capt. Ned Blakely--that name will answer as well as any other fictitious +one (for he was still with the living at last accounts, and may not +desire to be famous)--sailed ships out of the harbor of San Francisco for +many years. He was a stalwart, warm-hearted, eagle-eyed veteran, who had +been a sailor nearly fifty years--a sailor from early boyhood. He was a +rough, honest creature, full of pluck, and just as full of hard-headed +simplicity, too. He hated trifling conventionalities--"business" was the +word, with him. He had all a sailor's vindictiveness against the quips +and quirks of the law, and steadfastly believed that the first and last +aim and object of the law and lawyers was to defeat justice. + +He sailed for the Chincha Islands in command of a guano ship. He had a +fine crew, but his negro mate was his pet--on him he had for years +lavished his admiration and esteem. It was Capt. Ned's first voyage to +the Chinchas, but his fame had gone before him--the fame of being a man +who would fight at the dropping of a handkerchief, when imposed upon, and +would stand no nonsense. It was a fame well earned. Arrived in the +islands, he found that the staple of conversation was the exploits of one +Bill Noakes, a bully, the mate of a trading ship. This man had created a +small reign of terror there. At nine o'clock at night, Capt. Ned, all +alone, was pacing his deck in the starlight. A form ascended the side, +and approached him. Capt. Ned said: + +"Who goes there?" + +"I'm Bill Noakes, the best man in the islands." + +"What do you want aboard this ship?" + +"I've heard of Capt. Ned Blakely, and one of us is a better man than +'tother--I'll know which, before I go ashore." + +"You've come to the right shop--I'm your man. I'll learn you to come +aboard this ship without an invite." + +He seized Noakes, backed him against the mainmast, pounded his face to a +pulp, and then threw him overboard. + +Noakes was not convinced. He returned the next night, got the pulp +renewed, and went overboard head first, as before. + +He was satisfied. + +A week after this, while Noakes was carousing with a sailor crowd on +shore, at noonday, Capt. Ned's colored mate came along, and Noakes tried +to pick a quarrel with him. The negro evaded the trap, and tried to get +away. Noakes followed him up; the negro began to run; Noakes fired on +him with a revolver and killed him. Half a dozen sea-captains witnessed +the whole affair. Noakes retreated to the small after-cabin of his ship, +with two other bullies, and gave out that death would be the portion of +any man that intruded there. There was no attempt made to follow the +villains; there was no disposition to do it, and indeed very little +thought of such an enterprise. There were no courts and no officers; +there was no government; the islands belonged to Peru, and Peru was far +away; she had no official representative on the ground; and neither had +any other nation. + +However, Capt. Ned was not perplexing his head about such things. They +concerned him not. He was boiling with rage and furious for justice. +At nine o'clock at night he loaded a double-barreled gun with slugs, +fished out a pair of handcuffs, got a ship's lantern, summoned his +quartermaster, and went ashore. He said: + +"Do you see that ship there at the dock?" + +"Ay-ay, sir." + +"It's the Venus." + +"Ay-ay, sir." + +"You--you know me." + +"Ay-ay, sir." + +"Very well, then. Take the lantern. Carry it just under your chin. +I'll walk behind you and rest this gun-barrel on your shoulder, p'inting +forward--so. Keep your lantern well up so's I can see things ahead of +you good. I'm going to march in on Noakes--and take him--and jug the +other chaps. If you flinch--well, you know me." + +"Ay-ay, sir." + +In this order they filed aboard softly, arrived at Noakes's den, the +quartermaster pushed the door open, and the lantern revealed the three +desperadoes sitting on the floor. Capt. Ned said: + +"I'm Ned Blakely. I've got you under fire. Don't you move without +orders--any of you. You two kneel down in the corner; faces to the wall +--now. Bill Noakes, put these handcuffs on; now come up close. +Quartermaster, fasten 'em. All right. Don't stir, sir. Quartermaster, +put the key in the outside of the door. Now, men, I'm going to lock you +two in; and if you try to burst through this door--well, you've heard of +me. Bill Noakes, fall in ahead, and march. All set. Quartermaster, +lock the door." + +Noakes spent the night on board Blakely's ship, a prisoner under strict +guard. Early in the morning Capt. Ned called in all the sea-captains in +the harbor and invited them, with nautical ceremony, to be present on +board his ship at nine o'clock to witness the hanging of Noakes at the +yard-arm! + +"What! The man has not been tried." + +"Of course he hasn't. But didn't he kill the nigger?" + +"Certainly he did; but you are not thinking of hanging him without a +trial?" + +"Trial! What do I want to try him for, if he killed the nigger?" + +"Oh, Capt. Ned, this will never do. Think how it will sound." + +"Sound be hanged! Didn't he kill the nigger?" + +"Certainly, certainly, Capt. Ned,--nobody denies that,--but--" + +"Then I'm going to hang him, that's all. Everybody I've talked to talks +just the same way you do. Everybody says he killed the nigger, everybody +knows he killed the nigger, and yet every lubber of you wants him tried +for it. I don't understand such bloody foolishness as that. Tried! +Mind you, I don't object to trying him, if it's got to be done to give +satisfaction; and I'll be there, and chip in and help, too; but put it +off till afternoon--put it off till afternoon, for I'll have my hands +middling full till after the burying--" + +"Why, what do you mean? Are you going to hang him any how--and try him +afterward?" + +"Didn't I say I was going to hang him? I never saw such people as you. +What's the difference? You ask a favor, and then you ain't satisfied +when you get it. Before or after's all one--you know how the trial will +go. He killed the nigger. Say--I must be going. If your mate would +like to come to the hanging, fetch him along. I like him." + +There was a stir in the camp. The captains came in a body and pleaded +with Capt. Ned not to do this rash thing. They promised that they would +create a court composed of captains of the best character; they would +empanel a jury; they would conduct everything in a way becoming the +serious nature of the business in hand, and give the case an impartial +hearing and the accused a fair trial. And they said it would be murder, +and punishable by the American courts if he persisted and hung the +accused on his ship. They pleaded hard. Capt. Ned said: + +"Gentlemen, I'm not stubborn and I'm not unreasonable. I'm always +willing to do just as near right as I can. How long will it take?" + +"Probably only a little while." + +"And can I take him up the shore and hang him as soon as you are done?" + +"If he is proven guilty he shall be hanged without unnecessary delay." + +"If he's proven guilty. Great Neptune, ain't he guilty? This beats my +time. Why you all know he's guilty." + +But at last they satisfied him that they were projecting nothing +underhanded. Then he said: + +"Well, all right. You go on and try him and I'll go down and overhaul +his conscience and prepare him to go--like enough he needs it, and I +don't want to send him off without a show for hereafter." + +This was another obstacle. They finally convinced him that it was +necessary to have the accused in court. Then they said they would send a +guard to bring him. + +"No, sir, I prefer to fetch him myself--he don't get out of my hands. +Besides, I've got to go to the ship to get a rope, anyway." + +The court assembled with due ceremony, empaneled a jury, and presently +Capt. Ned entered, leading the prisoner with one hand and carrying a +Bible and a rope in the other. He seated himself by the side of his +captive and told the court to "up anchor and make sail." Then he turned +a searching eye on the jury, and detected Noakes's friends, the two +bullies. + +He strode over and said to them confidentially: + +"You're here to interfere, you see. Now you vote right, do you hear?--or +else there'll be a double-barreled inquest here when this trial's off, +and your remainders will go home in a couple of baskets." + +The caution was not without fruit. The jury was a unit--the verdict. +"Guilty." + +Capt. Ned sprung to his feet and said: + +"Come along--you're my meat now, my lad, anyway. Gentlemen you've done +yourselves proud. I invite you all to come and see that I do it all +straight. Follow me to the canyon, a mile above here." + +The court informed him that a sheriff had been appointed to do the +hanging, and-- + +Capt. Ned's patience was at an end. His wrath was boundless. The +subject of a sheriff was judiciously dropped. + +When the crowd arrived at the canyon, Capt. Ned climbed a tree and +arranged the halter, then came down and noosed his man. He opened his +Bible, and laid aside his hat. Selecting a chapter at random, he read it +through, in a deep bass voice and with sincere solemnity. Then he said: + +"Lad, you are about to go aloft and give an account of yourself; and the +lighter a man's manifest is, as far as sin's concerned, the better for +him. Make a clean breast, man, and carry a log with you that'll bear +inspection. You killed the nigger?" + +No reply. A long pause. + +The captain read another chapter, pausing, from time to time, to impress +the effect. Then he talked an earnest, persuasive sermon to him, and +ended by repeating the question: + +"Did you kill the nigger?" + +No reply--other than a malignant scowl. The captain now read the first +and second chapters of Genesis, with deep feeling--paused a moment, +closed the book reverently, and said with a perceptible savor of +satisfaction: + +"There. Four chapters. There's few that would have took the pains with +you that I have." + +Then he swung up the condemned, and made the rope fast; stood by and +timed him half an hour with his watch, and then delivered the body to the +court. A little after, as he stood contemplating the motionless figure, +a doubt came into his face; evidently he felt a twinge of conscience--a +misgiving--and he said with a sigh: + +"Well, p'raps I ought to burnt him, maybe. But I was trying to do for +the best." + +When the history of this affair reached California (it was in the "early +days") it made a deal of talk, but did not diminish the captain's +popularity in any degree. It increased it, indeed. California had a +population then that "inflicted" justice after a fashion that was +simplicity and primitiveness itself, and could therefore admire +appreciatively when the same fashion was followed elsewhere. + + + + +CHAPTER LI. + +Vice flourished luxuriantly during the hey-day of our "flush times." The +saloons were overburdened with custom; so were the police courts, the +gambling dens, the brothels and the jails--unfailing signs of high +prosperity in a mining region--in any region for that matter. Is it not +so? A crowded police court docket is the surest of all signs that trade +is brisk and money plenty. Still, there is one other sign; it comes +last, but when it does come it establishes beyond cavil that the "flush +times" are at the flood. This is the birth of the "literary" paper. +The Weekly Occidental, "devoted to literature," made its appearance in +Virginia. All the literary people were engaged to write for it. Mr. F. +was to edit it. He was a felicitous skirmisher with a pen, and a man who +could say happy things in a crisp, neat way. Once, while editor of the +Union, he had disposed of a labored, incoherent, two-column attack made +upon him by a contemporary, with a single line, which, at first glance, +seemed to contain a solemn and tremendous compliment--viz.: "THE LOGIC OF +OUR ADVERSARY RESEMBLES THE PEACE OF GOD,"--and left it to the reader's +memory and after-thought to invest the remark with another and "more +different" meaning by supplying for himself and at his own leisure the +rest of the Scripture--"in that it passeth understanding." He once said +of a little, half-starved, wayside community that had no subsistence +except what they could get by preying upon chance passengers who stopped +over with them a day when traveling by the overland stage, that in their +Church service they had altered the Lord's Prayer to read: "Give us this +day our daily stranger!" + +We expected great things of the Occidental. Of course it could not get +along without an original novel, and so we made arrangements to hurl into +the work the full strength of the company. Mrs. F. was an able romancist +of the ineffable school--I know no other name to apply to a school whose +heroes are all dainty and all perfect. She wrote the opening chapter, +and introduced a lovely blonde simpleton who talked nothing but pearls +and poetry and who was virtuous to the verge of eccentricity. She also +introduced a young French Duke of aggravated refinement, in love with the +blonde. Mr. F. followed next week, with a brilliant lawyer who set about +getting the Duke's estates into trouble, and a sparkling young lady of +high society who fell to fascinating the Duke and impairing the appetite +of the blonde. Mr. D., a dark and bloody editor of one of the dailies, +followed Mr. F., the third week, introducing a mysterious Roscicrucian +who transmuted metals, held consultations with the devil in a cave at +dead of night, and cast the horoscope of the several heroes and heroines +in such a way as to provide plenty of trouble for their future careers +and breed a solemn and awful public interest in the novel. He also +introduced a cloaked and masked melodramatic miscreant, put him on a +salary and set him on the midnight track of the Duke with a poisoned +dagger. He also created an Irish coachman with a rich brogue and placed +him in the service of the society-young-lady with an ulterior mission to +carry billet-doux to the Duke. + +About this time there arrived in Virginia a dissolute stranger with a +literary turn of mind--rather seedy he was, but very quiet and +unassuming; almost diffident, indeed. He was so gentle, and his manners +were so pleasing and kindly, whether he was sober or intoxicated, that he +made friends of all who came in contact with him. He applied for +literary work, offered conclusive evidence that he wielded an easy and +practiced pen, and so Mr. F. engaged him at once to help write the novel. +His chapter was to follow Mr. D.'s, and mine was to come next. Now what +does this fellow do but go off and get drunk and then proceed to his +quarters and set to work with his imagination in a state of chaos, and +that chaos in a condition of extravagant activity. The result may be +guessed. He scanned the chapters of his predecessors, found plenty of +heroes and heroines already created, and was satisfied with them; he +decided to introduce no more; with all the confidence that whisky +inspires and all the easy complacency it gives to its servant, he then +launched himself lovingly into his work: he married the coachman to the +society-young-lady for the sake of the scandal; married the Duke to the +blonde's stepmother, for the sake of the sensation; stopped the +desperado's salary; created a misunderstanding between the devil and the +Roscicrucian; threw the Duke's property into the wicked lawyer's hands; +made the lawyer's upbraiding conscience drive him to drink, thence to +delirium tremens, thence to suicide; broke the coachman's neck; let his +widow succumb to contumely, neglect, poverty and consumption; caused the +blonde to drown herself, leaving her clothes on the bank with the +customary note pinned to them forgiving the Duke and hoping he would be +happy; revealed to the Duke, by means of the usual strawberry mark on +left arm, that he had married his own long-lost mother and destroyed his +long-lost sister; instituted the proper and necessary suicide of the Duke +and the Duchess in order to compass poetical justice; opened the earth +and let the Roscicrucian through, accompanied with the accustomed smoke +and thunder and smell of brimstone, and finished with the promise that in +the next chapter, after holding a general inquest, he would take up the +surviving character of the novel and tell what became of the devil! +It read with singular smoothness, and with a "dead" earnestness that was +funny enough to suffocate a body. But there was war when it came in. +The other novelists were furious. The mild stranger, not yet more than +half sober, stood there, under a scathing fire of vituperation, meek and +bewildered, looking from one to another of his assailants, and wondering +what he could have done to invoke such a storm. When a lull came at +last, he said his say gently and appealingly--said he did not rightly +remember what he had written, but was sure he had tried to do the best he +could, and knew his object had been to make the novel not only pleasant +and plausible but instructive and---- + +The bombardment began again. The novelists assailed his ill-chosen +adjectives and demolished them with a storm of denunciation and ridicule. +And so the siege went on. Every time the stranger tried to appease the +enemy he only made matters worse. Finally he offered to rewrite the +chapter. This arrested hostilities. The indignation gradually quieted +down, peace reigned again and the sufferer retired in safety and got him +to his own citadel. + +But on the way thither the evil angel tempted him and he got drunk again. +And again his imagination went mad. He led the heroes and heroines a +wilder dance than ever; and yet all through it ran that same convincing +air of honesty and earnestness that had marked his first work. He got +the characters into the most extraordinary situations, put them through +the most surprising performances, and made them talk the strangest talk! +But the chapter cannot be described. It was symmetrically crazy; it was +artistically absurd; and it had explanatory footnotes that were fully as +curious as the text. I remember one of the "situations," and will offer +it as an example of the whole. He altered the character of the brilliant +lawyer, and made him a great-hearted, splendid fellow; gave him fame and +riches, and set his age at thirty-three years. Then he made the blonde +discover, through the help of the Roscicrucian and the melodramatic +miscreant, that while the Duke loved her money ardently and wanted it, he +secretly felt a sort of leaning toward the society-young-lady. Stung to +the quick, she tore her affections from him and bestowed them with +tenfold power upon the lawyer, who responded with consuming zeal. But +the parents would none of it. What they wanted in the family was a Duke; +and a Duke they were determined to have; though they confessed that next +to the Duke the lawyer had their preference. Necessarily the blonde now +went into a decline. The parents were alarmed. They pleaded with her to +marry the Duke, but she steadfastly refused, and pined on. Then they +laid a plan. They told her to wait a year and a day, and if at the end +of that time she still felt that she could not marry the Duke, she might +marry the lawyer with their full consent. The result was as they had +foreseen: gladness came again, and the flush of returning health. Then +the parents took the next step in their scheme. They had the family +physician recommend a long sea voyage and much land travel for the +thorough restoration of the blonde's strength; and they invited the Duke +to be of the party. They judged that the Duke's constant presence and +the lawyer's protracted absence would do the rest--for they did not +invite the lawyer. + +So they set sail in a steamer for America--and the third day out, when +their sea-sickness called truce and permitted them to take their first +meal at the public table, behold there sat the lawyer! The Duke and +party made the best of an awkward situation; the voyage progressed, and +the vessel neared America. + +But, by and by, two hundred miles off New Bedford, the ship took fire; +she burned to the water's edge; of all her crew and passengers, only +thirty were saved. They floated about the sea half an afternoon and all +night long. Among them were our friends. The lawyer, by superhuman +exertions, had saved the blonde and her parents, swimming back and forth +two hundred yards and bringing one each time--(the girl first). The Duke +had saved himself. In the morning two whale ships arrived on the scene +and sent their boats. The weather was stormy and the embarkation was +attended with much confusion and excitement. The lawyer did his duty +like a man; helped his exhausted and insensible blonde, her parents and +some others into a boat (the Duke helped himself in); then a child fell +overboard at the other end of the raft and the lawyer rushed thither and +helped half a dozen people fish it out, under the stimulus of its +mother's screams. Then he ran back--a few seconds too late--the blonde's +boat was under way. So he had to take the other boat, and go to the +other ship. The storm increased and drove the vessels out of sight of +each other--drove them whither it would. + +When it calmed, at the end of three days, the blonde's ship was seven +hundred miles north of Boston and the other about seven hundred south of +that port. The blonde's captain was bound on a whaling cruise in the +North Atlantic and could not go back such a distance or make a port +without orders; such being nautical law. The lawyer's captain was to +cruise in the North Pacific, and he could not go back or make a port +without orders. All the lawyer's money and baggage were in the blonde's +boat and went to the blonde's ship--so his captain made him work his +passage as a common sailor. When both ships had been cruising nearly a +year, the one was off the coast of Greenland and the other in Behring's +Strait. The blonde had long ago been well-nigh persuaded that her lawyer +had been washed overboard and lost just before the whale ships reached +the raft, and now, under the pleadings of her parents and the Duke she +was at last beginning to nerve herself for the doom of the covenant, and +prepare for the hated marriage. + +But she would not yield a day before the date set. The weeks dragged on, +the time narrowed, orders were given to deck the ship for the wedding--a +wedding at sea among icebergs and walruses. Five days more and all would +be over. So the blonde reflected, with a sigh and a tear. Oh where was +her true love--and why, why did he not come and save her? At that moment +he was lifting his harpoon to strike a whale in Behring's Strait, five +thousand miles away, by the way of the Arctic Ocean, or twenty thousand +by the way of the Horn--that was the reason. He struck, but not with +perfect aim--his foot slipped and he fell in the whale's mouth and went +down his throat. He was insensible five days. Then he came to himself +and heard voices; daylight was streaming through a hole cut in the +whale's roof. He climbed out and astonished the sailors who were +hoisting blubber up a ship's side. He recognized the vessel, flew +aboard, surprised the wedding party at the altar and exclaimed: + +"Stop the proceedings--I'm here! Come to my arms, my own!" + +There were foot-notes to this extravagant piece of literature wherein the +author endeavored to show that the whole thing was within the +possibilities; he said he got the incident of the whale traveling from +Behring's Strait to the coast of Greenland, five thousand miles in five +days, through the Arctic Ocean, from Charles Reade's "Love Me Little Love +Me Long," and considered that that established the fact that the thing +could be done; and he instanced Jonah's adventure as proof that a man +could live in a whale's belly, and added that if a preacher could stand +it three days a lawyer could surely stand it five! + +There was a fiercer storm than ever in the editorial sanctum now, and the +stranger was peremptorily discharged, and his manuscript flung at his +head. But he had already delayed things so much that there was not time +for some one else to rewrite the chapter, and so the paper came out +without any novel in it. It was but a feeble, struggling, stupid +journal, and the absence of the novel probably shook public confidence; +at any rate, before the first side of the next issue went to press, the +Weekly Occidental died as peacefully as an infant. + +An effort was made to resurrect it, with the proposed advantage of a +telling new title, and Mr. F. said that The Phenix would be just the name +for it, because it would give the idea of a resurrection from its dead +ashes in a new and undreamed of condition of splendor; but some +low-priced smarty on one of the dailies suggested that we call it the +Lazarus; and inasmuch as the people were not profound in Scriptural +matters but thought the resurrected Lazarus and the dilapidated mendicant +that begged in the rich man's gateway were one and the same person, the +name became the laughing stock of the town, and killed the paper for good +and all. + +I was sorry enough, for I was very proud of being connected with a +literary paper--prouder than I have ever been of anything since, perhaps. +I had written some rhymes for it--poetry I considered it--and it was a +great grief to me that the production was on the "first side" of the +issue that was not completed, and hence did not see the light. But time +brings its revenges--I can put it in here; it will answer in place of a +tear dropped to the memory of the lost Occidental. The idea (not the +chief idea, but the vehicle that bears it) was probably suggested by the +old song called "The Raging Canal," but I cannot remember now. I do +remember, though, that at that time I thought my doggerel was one of the +ablest poems of the age: + + +THE AGED PILOT MAN. + +On the Erie Canal, it was, +All on a summer's day, +I sailed forth with my parents +Far away to Albany. + +From out the clouds at noon that day +There came a dreadful storm, +That piled the billows high about, +And filled us with alarm. + +A man came rushing from a house, +Saying, "Snub up your boat I pray, +[The customary canal technicality for "tie up."] +Snub up your boat, snub up, alas, +Snub up while yet you may." + +Our captain cast one glance astern, +Then forward glanced he, +And said, "My wife and little ones +I never more shall see." + +Said Dollinger the pilot man, +In noble words, but few, +--"Fear not, but lean on Dollinger, +And he will fetch you through." + +The boat drove on, the frightened mules +Tore through the rain and wind, +And bravely still, in danger's post, +The whip-boy strode behind. + +"Come 'board, come 'board," the captain cried, +"Nor tempt so wild a storm;" +But still the raging mules advanced, +And still the boy strode on. + +Then said the captain to us all, +"Alas, 'tis plain to me, +The greater danger is not there, +But here upon the sea. + +"So let us strive, while life remains, +To save all souls on board, +And then if die at last we must, +Let . . . . I cannot speak the word!" + +Said Dollinger the pilot man, +Tow'ring above the crew, +"Fear not, but trust in Dollinger, +And he will fetch you through." + +"Low bridge! low bridge!" all heads went down, +The laboring bark sped on; +A mill we passed, we passed church, +Hamlets, and fields of corn; +And all the world came out to see, +And chased along the shore +Crying, "Alas, alas, the sheeted rain, +The wind, the tempest's roar! +Alas, the gallant ship and crew, +Can nothing help them more?" + +And from our deck sad eyes looked out +Across the stormy scene: +The tossing wake of billows aft, +The bending forests green, +The chickens sheltered under carts +In lee of barn the cows, +The skurrying swine with straw in mouth, +The wild spray from our bows! + +"She balances! +She wavers! +Now let her go about! +If she misses stays and broaches to, +We're all"--then with a shout, +"Huray! huray! +Avast! belay! +Take in more sail! +Lord, what a gale! +Ho, boy, haul taut on the hind mule's tail!" +"Ho! lighten ship! ho! man the pump! +Ho, hostler, heave the lead!" + +"A quarter-three!--'tis shoaling fast! +Three feet large!--t-h-r-e-e feet! +--Three feet scant!" I cried in fright +"Oh, is there no retreat?" + +Said Dollinger, the pilot man, +As on the vessel flew, +"Fear not, but trust in Dollinger, +And he will fetch you through." + +A panic struck the bravest hearts, +The boldest cheek turned pale; +For plain to all, this shoaling said +A leak had burst the ditch's bed! +And, straight as bolt from crossbow sped, +Our ship swept on, with shoaling lead, +Before the fearful gale! + +"Sever the tow-line! Cripple the mules!" +Too late! There comes a shock! +Another length, and the fated craft +Would have swum in the saving lock! + +Then gathered together the shipwrecked crew +And took one last embrace, +While sorrowful tears from despairing eyes +Ran down each hopeless face; +And some did think of their little ones +Whom they never more might see, +And others of waiting wives at home, +And mothers that grieved would be. + +But of all the children of misery there +On that poor sinking frame, +But one spake words of hope and faith, +And I worshipped as they came: +Said Dollinger the pilot man, +--(O brave heart, strong and true!) +--"Fear not, but trust in Dollinger, +For he will fetch you through." + +Lo! scarce the words have passed his lips +The dauntless prophet say'th, +When every soul about him seeth +A wonder crown his faith! + +"And count ye all, both great and small, +As numbered with the dead: +For mariner for forty year, +On Erie, boy and man, +I never yet saw such a storm, +Or one't with it began!" + +So overboard a keg of nails +And anvils three we threw, +Likewise four bales of gunny-sacks, +Two hundred pounds of glue, +Two sacks of corn, four ditto wheat, +A box of books, a cow, +A violin, Lord Byron's works, +A rip-saw and a sow. + +A curve! a curve! the dangers grow! +"Labbord!--stabbord!--s-t-e-a-d-y!--so! +--Hard-a-port, Dol!--hellum-a-lee! +Haw the head mule!--the aft one gee! +Luff!--bring her to the wind!" + +For straight a farmer brought a plank, +--(Mysteriously inspired) +--And laying it unto the ship, +In silent awe retired. + +Then every sufferer stood amazed +That pilot man before; +A moment stood. Then wondering turned, +And speechless walked ashore. + + + + +CHAPTER LII. + +Since I desire, in this chapter, to say an instructive word or two about +the silver mines, the reader may take this fair warning and skip, if he +chooses. The year 1863 was perhaps the very top blossom and culmination +of the "flush times." Virginia swarmed with men and vehicles to that +degree that the place looked like a very hive--that is when one's vision +could pierce through the thick fog of alkali dust that was generally +blowing in summer. I will say, concerning this dust, that if you drove +ten miles through it, you and your horses would be coated with it a +sixteenth of an inch thick and present an outside appearance that was a +uniform pale yellow color, and your buggy would have three inches of dust +in it, thrown there by the wheels. The delicate scales used by the +assayers were inclosed in glass cases intended to be air-tight, and yet +some of this dust was so impalpable and so invisibly fine that it would +get in, somehow, and impair the accuracy of those scales. + +Speculation ran riot, and yet there was a world of substantial business +going on, too. All freights were brought over the mountains from +California (150 miles) by pack-train partly, and partly in huge wagons +drawn by such long mule teams that each team amounted to a procession, +and it did seem, sometimes, that the grand combined procession of animals +stretched unbroken from Virginia to California. Its long route was +traceable clear across the deserts of the Territory by the writhing +serpent of dust it lifted up. By these wagons, freights over that +hundred and fifty miles were $200 a ton for small lots (same price for +all express matter brought by stage), and $100 a ton for full loads. +One Virginia firm received one hundred tons of freight a month, and paid +$10,000 a month freightage. In the winter the freights were much higher. +All the bullion was shipped in bars by stage to San Francisco (a bar was +usually about twice the size of a pig of lead and contained from $1,500 +to $3,000 according to the amount of gold mixed with the silver), and the +freight on it (when the shipment was large) was one and a quarter per +cent. of its intrinsic value. + +So, the freight on these bars probably averaged something more than $25 +each. Small shippers paid two per cent. There were three stages a day, +each way, and I have seen the out-going stages carry away a third of a +ton of bullion each, and more than once I saw them divide a two-ton lot +and take it off. However, these were extraordinary events. +[Mr. Valentine, Wells Fargo's agent, has handled all the bullion shipped +through the Virginia office for many a month. To his memory--which is +excellent--we are indebted for the following exhibit of the company's +business in the Virginia office since the first of January, 1862: From +January 1st to April 1st, about $270,000 worth of bullion passed through +that office, during the next quarter, $570,000; next quarter, $800,000; +next quarter, $956,000; next quarter, $1,275,000; and for the quarter +ending on the 30th of last June, about $1,600,000. Thus in a year and a +half, the Virginia office only shipped $5,330,000 in bullion. During the +year 1862 they shipped $2,615,000, so we perceive the average shipments +have more than doubled in the last six months. This gives us room to +promise for the Virginia office $500,000 a month for the year 1863 +(though perhaps, judging by the steady increase in the business, we are +under estimating, somewhat). This gives us $6,000,000 for the year. +Gold Hill and Silver City together can beat us--we will give them +$10,000,000. To Dayton, Empire City, Ophir and Carson City, we will +allow an aggregate of $8,000,000, which is not over the mark, perhaps, +and may possibly be a little under it. To Esmeralda we give $4,000,000. +To Reese River and Humboldt $2,000,000, which is liberal now, but may not +be before the year is out. So we prognosticate that the yield of bullion +this year will be about $30,000,000. Placing the number of mills in the +Territory at one hundred, this gives to each the labor of producing +$300,000 in bullion during the twelve months. Allowing them to run three +hundred days in the year (which none of them more than do), this makes +their work average $1,000 a day. Say the mills average twenty tons of +rock a day and this rock worth $50 as a general thing, and you have the +actual work of our one hundred mills figured down "to a spot"--$1,000 a +day each, and $30,000,000 a year in the aggregate.--Enterprise. +[A considerable over estimate--M. T.]] + +Two tons of silver bullion would be in the neighborhood of forty bars, +and the freight on it over $1,000. Each coach always carried a deal of +ordinary express matter beside, and also from fifteen to twenty +passengers at from $25 to $30 a head. With six stages going all the +time, Wells, Fargo and Co.'s Virginia City business was important and +lucrative. + +All along under the centre of Virginia and Gold Hill, for a couple of +miles, ran the great Comstock silver lode--a vein of ore from fifty to +eighty feet thick between its solid walls of rock--a vein as wide as some +of New York's streets. I will remind the reader that in Pennsylvania a +coal vein only eight feet wide is considered ample. + +Virginia was a busy city of streets and houses above ground. Under it +was another busy city, down in the bowels of the earth, where a great +population of men thronged in and out among an intricate maze of tunnels +and drifts, flitting hither and thither under a winking sparkle of +lights, and over their heads towered a vast web of interlocking timbers +that held the walls of the gutted Comstock apart. These timbers were as +large as a man's body, and the framework stretched upward so far that no +eye could pierce to its top through the closing gloom. It was like +peering up through the clean-picked ribs and bones of some colossal +skeleton. Imagine such a framework two miles long, sixty feet wide, and +higher than any church spire in America. Imagine this stately +lattice-work stretching down Broadway, from the St. Nicholas to Wall +street, and a Fourth of July procession, reduced to pigmies, parading on +top of it and flaunting their flags, high above the pinnacle of Trinity +steeple. One can imagine that, but he cannot well imagine what that +forest of timbers cost, from the time they were felled in the pineries +beyond Washoe Lake, hauled up and around Mount Davidson at atrocious +rates of freightage, then squared, let down into the deep maw of the mine +and built up there. Twenty ample fortunes would not timber one of the +greatest of those silver mines. The Spanish proverb says it requires a +gold mine to "run" a silver one, and it is true. A beggar with a silver +mine is a pitiable pauper indeed if he cannot sell. + +I spoke of the underground Virginia as a city. The Gould and Curry is +only one single mine under there, among a great many others; yet the +Gould and Curry's streets of dismal drifts and tunnels were five miles in +extent, altogether, and its population five hundred miners. Taken as a +whole, the underground city had some thirty miles of streets and a +population of five or six thousand. In this present day some of those +populations are at work from twelve to sixteen hundred feet under +Virginia and Gold Hill, and the signal-bells that tell them what the +superintendent above ground desires them to do are struck by telegraph as +we strike a fire alarm. Sometimes men fall down a shaft, there, a +thousand feet deep. In such cases, the usual plan is to hold an inquest. + +If you wish to visit one of those mines, you may walk through a tunnel +about half a mile long if you prefer it, or you may take the quicker plan +of shooting like a dart down a shaft, on a small platform. It is like +tumbling down through an empty steeple, feet first. When you reach the +bottom, you take a candle and tramp through drifts and tunnels where +throngs of men are digging and blasting; you watch them send up tubs full +of great lumps of stone--silver ore; you select choice specimens from the +mass, as souvenirs; you admire the world of skeleton timbering; you +reflect frequently that you are buried under a mountain, a thousand feet +below daylight; being in the bottom of the mine you climb from "gallery" +to "gallery," up endless ladders that stand straight up and down; when +your legs fail you at last, you lie down in a small box-car in a cramped +"incline" like a half-up-ended sewer and are dragged up to daylight +feeling as if you are crawling through a coffin that has no end to it. +Arrived at the top, you find a busy crowd of men receiving the ascending +cars and tubs and dumping the ore from an elevation into long rows of +bins capable of holding half a dozen tons each; under the bins are rows +of wagons loading from chutes and trap-doors in the bins, and down the +long street is a procession of these wagons wending toward the silver +mills with their rich freight. It is all "done," now, and there you are. +You need never go down again, for you have seen it all. If you have +forgotten the process of reducing the ore in the mill and making the +silver bars, you can go back and find it again in my Esmeralda chapters +if so disposed. + +Of course these mines cave in, in places, occasionally, and then it is +worth one's while to take the risk of descending into them and observing +the crushing power exerted by the pressing weight of a settling mountain. +I published such an experience in the Enterprise, once, and from it I +will take an extract: + + AN HOUR IN THE CAVED MINES.--We journeyed down into the Ophir mine, + yesterday, to see the earthquake. We could not go down the deep + incline, because it still has a propensity to cave in places. + Therefore we traveled through the long tunnel which enters the hill + above the Ophir office, and then by means of a series of long + ladders, climbed away down from the first to the fourth gallery. + Traversing a drift, we came to the Spanish line, passed five sets of + timbers still uninjured, and found the earthquake. Here was as + complete a chaos as ever was seen--vast masses of earth and + splintered and broken timbers piled confusedly together, with + scarcely an aperture left large enough for a cat to creep through. + Rubbish was still falling at intervals from above, and one timber + which had braced others earlier in the day, was now crushed down out + of its former position, showing that the caving and settling of the + tremendous mass was still going on. We were in that portion of the + Ophir known as the "north mines." Returning to the surface, we + entered a tunnel leading into the Central, for the purpose of + getting into the main Ophir. Descending a long incline in this + tunnel, we traversed a drift or so, and then went down a deep shaft + from whence we proceeded into the fifth gallery of the Ophir. From + a side-drift we crawled through a small hole and got into the midst + of the earthquake again--earth and broken timbers mingled together + without regard to grace or symmetry. A large portion of the second, + third and fourth galleries had caved in and gone to destruction--the + two latter at seven o'clock on the previous evening. + + At the turn-table, near the northern extremity of the fifth gallery, + two big piles of rubbish had forced their way through from the fifth + gallery, and from the looks of the timbers, more was about to come. + These beams are solid--eighteen inches square; first, a great beam + is laid on the floor, then upright ones, five feet high, stand on + it, supporting another horizontal beam, and so on, square above + square, like the framework of a window. The superincumbent weight + was sufficient to mash the ends of those great upright beams fairly + into the solid wood of the horizontal ones three inches, compressing + and bending the upright beam till it curved like a bow. Before the + Spanish caved in, some of their twelve-inch horizontal timbers were + compressed in this way until they were only five inches thick! + Imagine the power it must take to squeeze a solid log together in + that way. Here, also, was a range of timbers, for a distance of + twenty feet, tilted six inches out of the perpendicular by the + weight resting upon them from the caved galleries above. You could + hear things cracking and giving way, and it was not pleasant to know + that the world overhead was slowly and silently sinking down upon + you. The men down in the mine do not mind it, however. + + Returning along the fifth gallery, we struck the safe part of the + Ophir incline, and went down it to the sixth; but we found ten + inches of water there, and had to come back. In repairing the + damage done to the incline, the pump had to be stopped for two + hours, and in the meantime the water gained about a foot. However, + the pump was at work again, and the flood-water was decreasing. + We climbed up to the fifth gallery again and sought a deep shaft, + whereby we might descend to another part of the sixth, out of reach + of the water, but suffered disappointment, as the men had gone to + dinner, and there was no one to man the windlass. So, having seen + the earthquake, we climbed out at the Union incline and tunnel, and + adjourned, all dripping with candle grease and perspiration, to + lunch at the Ophir office. + + During the great flush year of 1863, Nevada [claims to have] + produced $25,000,000 in bullion--almost, if not quite, a round + million to each thousand inhabitants, which is very well, + considering that she was without agriculture and manufactures. + Silver mining was her sole productive industry. [Since the above was + in type, I learn from an official source that the above figure is + too high, and that the yield for 1863 did not exceed $20,000,000.] + However, the day for large figures is approaching; the Sutro Tunnel + is to plow through the Comstock lode from end to end, at a depth of + two thousand feet, and then mining will be easy and comparatively + inexpensive; and the momentous matters of drainage, and hoisting and + hauling of ore will cease to be burdensome. This vast work will + absorb many years, and millions of dollars, in its completion; but + it will early yield money, for that desirable epoch will begin as + soon as it strikes the first end of the vein. The tunnel will be + some eight miles long, and will develop astonishing riches. Cars + will carry the ore through the tunnel and dump it in the mills and + thus do away with the present costly system of double handling and + transportation by mule teams. The water from the tunnel will + furnish the motive power for the mills. Mr. Sutro, the originator + of this prodigious enterprise, is one of the few men in the world + who is gifted with the pluck and perseverance necessary to follow up + and hound such an undertaking to its completion. He has converted + several obstinate Congresses to a deserved friendliness toward his + important work, and has gone up and down and to and fro in Europe + until he has enlisted a great moneyed interest in it there. + + + + +CHAPTER LIII. + +Every now and then, in these days, the boys used to tell me I ought to +get one Jim Blaine to tell me the stirring story of his grandfather's old +ram--but they always added that I must not mention the matter unless Jim +was drunk at the time--just comfortably and sociably drunk. They kept +this up until my curiosity was on the rack to hear the story. I got to +haunting Blaine; but it was of no use, the boys always found fault with +his condition; he was often moderately but never satisfactorily drunk. +I never watched a man's condition with such absorbing interest, such +anxious solicitude; I never so pined to see a man uncompromisingly drunk +before. At last, one evening I hurried to his cabin, for I learned that +this time his situation was such that even the most fastidious could find +no fault with it--he was tranquilly, serenely, symmetrically drunk--not a +hiccup to mar his voice, not a cloud upon his brain thick enough to +obscure his memory. As I entered, he was sitting upon an empty +powder-keg, with a clay pipe in one hand and the other raised to command +silence. His face was round, red, and very serious; his throat was bare +and his hair tumbled; in general appearance and costume he was a stalwart +miner of the period. On the pine table stood a candle, and its dim light +revealed "the boys" sitting here and there on bunks, candle-boxes, +powder-kegs, etc. They said: + +"Sh--! Don't speak--he's going to commence." + + + THE STORY OF THE OLD RAM. + +I found a seat at once, and Blaine said: + +'I don't reckon them times will ever come again. There never was a more +bullier old ram than what he was. Grandfather fetched him from Illinois +--got him of a man by the name of Yates--Bill Yates--maybe you might have +heard of him; his father was a deacon--Baptist--and he was a rustler, +too; a man had to get up ruther early to get the start of old Thankful +Yates; it was him that put the Greens up to jining teams with my +grandfather when he moved west. + +'Seth Green was prob'ly the pick of the flock; he married a Wilkerson +--Sarah Wilkerson--good cretur, she was--one of the likeliest heifers that +was ever raised in old Stoddard, everybody said that knowed her. She +could heft a bar'l of flour as easy as I can flirt a flapjack. And spin? +Don't mention it! Independent? Humph! When Sile Hawkins come a +browsing around her, she let him know that for all his tin he couldn't +trot in harness alongside of her. You see, Sile Hawkins was--no, it +warn't Sile Hawkins, after all--it was a galoot by the name of Filkins +--I disremember his first name; but he was a stump--come into pra'r meeting +drunk, one night, hooraying for Nixon, becuz he thought it was a primary; +and old deacon Ferguson up and scooted him through the window and he lit +on old Miss Jefferson's head, poor old filly. She was a good soul--had a +glass eye and used to lend it to old Miss Wagner, that hadn't any, to +receive company in; it warn't big enough, and when Miss Wagner warn't +noticing, it would get twisted around in the socket, and look up, maybe, +or out to one side, and every which way, while t' other one was looking +as straight ahead as a spy-glass. + +'Grown people didn't mind it, but it most always made the children cry, it +was so sort of scary. She tried packing it in raw cotton, but it +wouldn't work, somehow--the cotton would get loose and stick out and look +so kind of awful that the children couldn't stand it no way. She was +always dropping it out, and turning up her old dead-light on the company +empty, and making them oncomfortable, becuz she never could tell when it +hopped out, being blind on that side, you see. So somebody would have to +hunch her and say, "Your game eye has fetched loose. Miss Wagner dear" +--and then all of them would have to sit and wait till she jammed it in +again--wrong side before, as a general thing, and green as a bird's egg, +being a bashful cretur and easy sot back before company. But being wrong +side before warn't much difference, anyway; becuz her own eye was +sky-blue and the glass one was yaller on the front side, so whichever way +she turned it it didn't match nohow. + +'Old Miss Wagner was considerable on the borrow, she was. When she had a +quilting, or Dorcas S'iety at her house she gen'ally borrowed Miss +Higgins's wooden leg to stump around on; it was considerable shorter than +her other pin, but much she minded that. She said she couldn't abide +crutches when she had company, becuz they were so slow; said when she had +company and things had to be done, she wanted to get up and hump herself. +She was as bald as a jug, and so she used to borrow Miss Jacops's wig +--Miss Jacops was the coffin-peddler's wife--a ratty old buzzard, he was, +that used to go roosting around where people was sick, waiting for 'em; +and there that old rip would sit all day, in the shade, on a coffin that +he judged would fit the can'idate; and if it was a slow customer and kind +of uncertain, he'd fetch his rations and a blanket along and sleep in the +coffin nights. He was anchored out that way, in frosty weather, for +about three weeks, once, before old Robbins's place, waiting for him; and +after that, for as much as two years, Jacops was not on speaking terms +with the old man, on account of his disapp'inting him. He got one of his +feet froze, and lost money, too, becuz old Robbins took a favorable turn +and got well. The next time Robbins got sick, Jacops tried to make up +with him, and varnished up the same old coffin and fetched it along; but +old Robbins was too many for him; he had him in, and 'peared to be +powerful weak; he bought the coffin for ten dollars and Jacops was to pay +it back and twenty-five more besides if Robbins didn't like the coffin +after he'd tried it. And then Robbins died, and at the funeral he +bursted off the lid and riz up in his shroud and told the parson to let +up on the performances, becuz he could not stand such a coffin as that. +You see he had been in a trance once before, when he was young, and he +took the chances on another, cal'lating that if he made the trip it was +money in his pocket, and if he missed fire he couldn't lose a cent. And +by George he sued Jacops for the rhino and got jedgment; and he set up +the coffin in his back parlor and said he 'lowed to take his time, now. +It was always an aggravation to Jacops, the way that miserable old thing +acted. He moved back to Indiany pretty soon--went to Wellsville +--Wellsville was the place the Hogadorns was from. Mighty fine family. +Old Maryland stock. Old Squire Hogadorn could carry around more mixed +licker, and cuss better than most any man I ever see. His second wife +was the widder Billings--she that was Becky Martin; her dam was deacon +Dunlap's first wife. Her oldest child, Maria, married a missionary and +died in grace--et up by the savages. They et him, too, poor feller +--biled him. It warn't the custom, so they say, but they explained to +friends of his'n that went down there to bring away his things, that +they'd tried missionaries every other way and never could get any good +out of 'em--and so it annoyed all his relations to find out that that +man's life was fooled away just out of a dern'd experiment, so to speak. +But mind you, there ain't anything ever reely lost; everything that +people can't understand and don't see the reason of does good if you only +hold on and give it a fair shake; Prov'dence don't fire no blank +ca'tridges, boys. That there missionary's substance, unbeknowns to +himself, actu'ly converted every last one of them heathens that took a +chance at the barbacue. Nothing ever fetched them but that. Don't tell +me it was an accident that he was biled. There ain't no such a thing as +an accident. + +'When my uncle Lem was leaning up agin a scaffolding once, sick, or drunk, +or suthin, an Irishman with a hod full of bricks fell on him out of the +third story and broke the old man's back in two places. People said it +was an accident. Much accident there was about that. He didn't know +what he was there for, but he was there for a good object. If he hadn't +been there the Irishman would have been killed. Nobody can ever make me +believe anything different from that. Uncle Lem's dog was there. Why +didn't the Irishman fall on the dog? Becuz the dog would a seen him a +coming and stood from under. That's the reason the dog warn't appinted. +A dog can't be depended on to carry out a special providence. Mark my +words it was a put-up thing. Accidents don't happen, boys. Uncle Lem's +dog--I wish you could a seen that dog. He was a reglar shepherd--or +ruther he was part bull and part shepherd--splendid animal; belonged to +parson Hagar before Uncle Lem got him. Parson Hagar belonged to the +Western Reserve Hagars; prime family; his mother was a Watson; one of his +sisters married a Wheeler; they settled in Morgan county, and he got +nipped by the machinery in a carpet factory and went through in less than +a quarter of a minute; his widder bought the piece of carpet that had his +remains wove in, and people come a hundred mile to 'tend the funeral. +There was fourteen yards in the piece. + +'She wouldn't let them roll him up, but planted him just so--full length. +The church was middling small where they preached the funeral, and they +had to let one end of the coffin stick out of the window. They didn't +bury him--they planted one end, and let him stand up, same as a monument. +And they nailed a sign on it and put--put on--put on it--sacred to--the +m-e-m-o-r-y--of fourteen y-a-r-d-s--of three-ply--car---pet--containing +all that was--m-o-r-t-a-l--of--of--W-i-l-l-i-a-m--W-h-e--' + +Jim Blaine had been growing gradually drowsy and drowsier--his head +nodded, once, twice, three times--dropped peacefully upon his breast, and +he fell tranquilly asleep. The tears were running down the boys' cheeks +--they were suffocating with suppressed laughter--and had been from the +start, though I had never noticed it. I perceived that I was "sold." +I learned then that Jim Blaine's peculiarity was that whenever he reached +a certain stage of intoxication, no human power could keep him from +setting out, with impressive unction, to tell about a wonderful adventure +which he had once had with his grandfather's old ram--and the mention of +the ram in the first sentence was as far as any man had ever heard him +get, concerning it. He always maundered off, interminably, from one +thing to another, till his whisky got the best of him and he fell asleep. +What the thing was that happened to him and his grandfather's old ram is +a dark mystery to this day, for nobody has ever yet found out. + + + + +CHAPTER LIV. + +Of course there was a large Chinese population in Virginia--it is the +case with every town and city on the Pacific coast. They are a harmless +race when white men either let them alone or treat them no worse than +dogs; in fact they are almost entirely harmless anyhow, for they seldom +think of resenting the vilest insults or the cruelest injuries. They are +quiet, peaceable, tractable, free from drunkenness, and they are as +industrious as the day is long. A disorderly Chinaman is rare, and a +lazy one does not exist. So long as a Chinaman has strength to use his +hands he needs no support from anybody; white men often complain of want +of work, but a Chinaman offers no such complaint; he always manages to +find something to do. He is a great convenience to everybody--even to +the worst class of white men, for he bears the most of their sins, +suffering fines for their petty thefts, imprisonment for their robberies, +and death for their murders. Any white man can swear a Chinaman's life +away in the courts, but no Chinaman can testify against a white man. +Ours is the "land of the free"--nobody denies that--nobody challenges it. +[Maybe it is because we won't let other people testify.] As I write, news +comes that in broad daylight in San Francisco, some boys have stoned an +inoffensive Chinaman to death, and that although a large crowd witnessed +the shameful deed, no one interfered. + +There are seventy thousand (and possibly one hundred thousand) Chinamen +on the Pacific coast. There were about a thousand in Virginia. They +were penned into a "Chinese quarter"--a thing which they do not +particularly object to, as they are fond of herding together. Their +buildings were of wood; usually only one story high, and set thickly +together along streets scarcely wide enough for a wagon to pass through. +Their quarter was a little removed from the rest of the town. The chief +employment of Chinamen in towns is to wash clothing. They always send a +bill, like this below, pinned to the clothes. It is mere ceremony, for +it does not enlighten the customer much. Their price for washing was +$2.50 per dozen--rather cheaper than white people could afford to wash +for at that time. A very common sign on the Chinese houses was: "See +Yup, Washer and Ironer"; "Hong Wo, Washer"; "Sam Sing & Ah Hop, Washing." +The house servants, cooks, etc., in California and Nevada, were chiefly +Chinamen. There were few white servants and no Chinawomen so employed. +Chinamen make good house servants, being quick, obedient, patient, quick +to learn and tirelessly industrious. They do not need to be taught a +thing twice, as a general thing. They are imitative. If a Chinaman were +to see his master break up a centre table, in a passion, and kindle a +fire with it, that Chinaman would be likely to resort to the furniture +for fuel forever afterward. + +All Chinamen can read, write and cipher with easy facility--pity but all +our petted voters could. In California they rent little patches of +ground and do a deal of gardening. They will raise surprising crops of +vegetables on a sand pile. They waste nothing. What is rubbish to a +Christian, a Chinaman carefully preserves and makes useful in one way or +another. He gathers up all the old oyster and sardine cans that white +people throw away, and procures marketable tin and solder from them by +melting. He gathers up old bones and turns them into manure. +In California he gets a living out of old mining claims that white men +have abandoned as exhausted and worthless--and then the officers come +down on him once a month with an exorbitant swindle to which the +legislature has given the broad, general name of "foreign" mining tax, +but it is usually inflicted on no foreigners but Chinamen. This swindle +has in some cases been repeated once or twice on the same victim in the +course of the same month--but the public treasury was no additionally +enriched by it, probably. + +Chinamen hold their dead in great reverence--they worship their departed +ancestors, in fact. Hence, in China, a man's front yard, back yard, or +any other part of his premises, is made his family burying ground, in +order that he may visit the graves at any and all times. Therefore that +huge empire is one mighty cemetery; it is ridged and wringled from its +centre to its circumference with graves--and inasmuch as every foot of +ground must be made to do its utmost, in China, lest the swarming +population suffer for food, the very graves are cultivated and yield a +harvest, custom holding this to be no dishonor to the dead. Since the +departed are held in such worshipful reverence, a Chinaman cannot bear +that any indignity be offered the places where they sleep. +Mr. Burlingame said that herein lay China's bitter opposition to +railroads; a road could not be built anywhere in the empire without +disturbing the graves of their ancestors or friends. + +A Chinaman hardly believes he could enjoy the hereafter except his body +lay in his beloved China; also, he desires to receive, himself, after +death, that worship with which he has honored his dead that preceded him. +Therefore, if he visits a foreign country, he makes arrangements to have +his bones returned to China in case he dies; if he hires to go to a +foreign country on a labor contract, there is always a stipulation that +his body shall be taken back to China if he dies; if the government sells +a gang of Coolies to a foreigner for the usual five-year term, it is +specified in the contract that their bodies shall be restored to China in +case of death. On the Pacific coast the Chinamen all belong to one or +another of several great companies or organizations, and these companies +keep track of their members, register their names, and ship their bodies +home when they die. The See Yup Company is held to be the largest of +these. The Ning Yeong Company is next, and numbers eighteen thousand +members on the coast. Its headquarters are at San Francisco, where it +has a costly temple, several great officers (one of whom keeps regal +state in seclusion and cannot be approached by common humanity), and a +numerous priesthood. In it I was shown a register of its members, with +the dead and the date of their shipment to China duly marked. Every ship +that sails from San Francisco carries away a heavy freight of Chinese +corpses--or did, at least, until the legislature, with an ingenious +refinement of Christian cruelty, forbade the shipments, as a neat +underhanded way of deterring Chinese immigration. The bill was offered, +whether it passed or not. It is my impression that it passed. There was +another bill--it became a law--compelling every incoming Chinaman to be +vaccinated on the wharf and pay a duly appointed quack (no decent doctor +would defile himself with such legalized robbery) ten dollars for it. +As few importers of Chinese would want to go to an expense like that, the +law-makers thought this would be another heavy blow to Chinese +immigration. + +What the Chinese quarter of Virginia was like--or, indeed, what the +Chinese quarter of any Pacific coast town was and is like--may be +gathered from this item which I printed in the Enterprise while reporting +for that paper: + + CHINATOWN.--Accompanied by a fellow reporter, we made a trip through + our Chinese quarter the other night. The Chinese have built their + portion of the city to suit themselves; and as they keep neither + carriages nor wagons, their streets are not wide enough, as a + general thing, to admit of the passage of vehicles. At ten o'clock + at night the Chinaman may be seen in all his glory. In every little + cooped-up, dingy cavern of a hut, faint with the odor of burning + Josh-lights and with nothing to see the gloom by save the sickly, + guttering tallow candle, were two or three yellow, long-tailed + vagabonds, coiled up on a sort of short truckle-bed, smoking opium, + motionless and with their lustreless eyes turned inward from excess + of satisfaction--or rather the recent smoker looks thus, immediately + after having passed the pipe to his neighbor--for opium-smoking is a + comfortless operation, and requires constant attention. A lamp sits + on the bed, the length of the long pipe-stem from the smoker's + mouth; he puts a pellet of opium on the end of a wire, sets it on + fire, and plasters it into the pipe much as a Christian would fill a + hole with putty; then he applies the bowl to the lamp and proceeds + to smoke--and the stewing and frying of the drug and the gurgling of + the juices in the stem would well-nigh turn the stomach of a statue. + John likes it, though; it soothes him, he takes about two dozen + whiffs, and then rolls over to dream, Heaven only knows what, for we + could not imagine by looking at the soggy creature. Possibly in his + visions he travels far away from the gross world and his regular + washing, and feast on succulent rats and birds'-nests in Paradise. + +Mr. Ah Sing keeps a general grocery and provision store at No. 13 Wang +street. He lavished his hospitality upon our party in the friendliest +way. He had various kinds of colored and colorless wines and brandies, +with unpronouncable names, imported from China in little crockery jugs, +and which he offered to us in dainty little miniature wash-basins of +porcelain. He offered us a mess of birds'-nests; also, small, neat +sausages, of which we could have swallowed several yards if we had chosen +to try, but we suspected that each link contained the corpse of a mouse, +and therefore refrained. Mr. Sing had in his store a thousand articles +of merchandise, curious to behold, impossible to imagine the uses of, and +beyond our ability to describe. + +His ducks, however, and his eggs, we could understand; the former were +split open and flattened out like codfish, and came from China in that +shape, and the latter were plastered over with some kind of paste which +kept them fresh and palatable through the long voyage. + +We found Mr. Hong Wo, No. 37 Chow-chow street, making up a lottery +scheme--in fact we found a dozen others occupied in the same way in +various parts of the quarter, for about every third Chinaman runs a +lottery, and the balance of the tribe "buck" at it. "Tom," who speaks +faultless English, and used to be chief and only cook to the Territorial +Enterprise, when the establishment kept bachelor's hall two years ago, +said that "Sometime Chinaman buy ticket one dollar hap, ketch um two tree +hundred, sometime no ketch um anything; lottery like one man fight um +seventy--may-be he whip, may-be he get whip heself, welly good." + +However, the percentage being sixty-nine against him, the chances are, +as a general thing, that "he get whip heself." We could not see that +these lotteries differed in any respect from our own, save that the +figures being Chinese, no ignorant white man might ever hope to succeed +in telling "t'other from which;" the manner of drawing is similar to +ours. + +Mr. See Yup keeps a fancy store on Live Fox street. He sold us fans of +white feathers, gorgeously ornamented; perfumery that smelled like +Limburger cheese, Chinese pens, and watch-charms made of a stone +unscratchable with steel instruments, yet polished and tinted like the +inner coat of a sea-shell. As tokens of his esteem, See Yup presented +the party with gaudy plumes made of gold tinsel and trimmed with +peacocks' feathers. + +We ate chow-chow with chop-sticks in the celestial restaurants; our +comrade chided the moon-eyed damsels in front of the houses for their +want of feminine reserve; we received protecting Josh-lights from our +hosts and "dickered" for a pagan God or two. Finally, we were impressed +with the genius of a Chinese book-keeper; he figured up his accounts on a +machine like a gridiron with buttons strung on its bars; the different +rows represented units, tens, hundreds and thousands. He fingered them +with incredible rapidity--in fact, he pushed them from place to place as +fast as a musical professor's fingers travel over the keys of a piano. + +They are a kindly disposed, well-meaning race, and are respected and well +treated by the upper classes, all over the Pacific coast. No Californian +gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any +circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the East. +Only the scum of the population do it--they and their children; they, +and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, +for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as +well as elsewhere in America. + + + + +CHAPTER LV. + +I began to get tired of staying in one place so long. + +There was no longer satisfying variety in going down to Carson to report +the proceedings of the legislature once a year, and horse-races and +pumpkin-shows once in three months; (they had got to raising pumpkins and +potatoes in Washoe Valley, and of course one of the first achievements of +the legislature was to institute a ten-thousand-dollar Agricultural Fair +to show off forty dollars' worth of those pumpkins in--however, the +territorial legislature was usually spoken of as the "asylum"). I wanted +to see San Francisco. I wanted to go somewhere. I wanted--I did not +know what I wanted. I had the "spring fever" and wanted a change, +principally, no doubt. Besides, a convention had framed a State +Constitution; nine men out of every ten wanted an office; I believed that +these gentlemen would "treat" the moneyless and the irresponsible among +the population into adopting the constitution and thus well-nigh killing +the country (it could not well carry such a load as a State government, +since it had nothing to tax that could stand a tax, for undeveloped mines +could not, and there were not fifty developed ones in the land, there was +but little realty to tax, and it did seem as if nobody was ever going to +think of the simple salvation of inflicting a money penalty on murder). +I believed that a State government would destroy the "flush times," and I +wanted to get away. I believed that the mining stocks I had on hand +would soon be worth $100,000, and thought if they reached that before the +Constitution was adopted, I would sell out and make myself secure from +the crash the change of government was going to bring. I considered +$100,000 sufficient to go home with decently, though it was but a small +amount compared to what I had been expecting to return with. I felt +rather down-hearted about it, but I tried to comfort myself with the +reflection that with such a sum I could not fall into want. About this +time a schoolmate of mine whom I had not seen since boyhood, came +tramping in on foot from Reese River, a very allegory of Poverty. +The son of wealthy parents, here he was, in a strange land, hungry, +bootless, mantled in an ancient horse-blanket, roofed with a brimless +hat, and so generally and so extravagantly dilapidated that he could have +"taken the shine out of the Prodigal Son himself," as he pleasantly +remarked. + +He wanted to borrow forty-six dollars--twenty-six to take him to San +Francisco, and twenty for something else; to buy some soap with, maybe, +for he needed it. I found I had but little more than the amount wanted, +in my pocket; so I stepped in and borrowed forty-six dollars of a banker +(on twenty days' time, without the formality of a note), and gave it him, +rather than walk half a block to the office, where I had some specie laid +up. If anybody had told me that it would take me two years to pay back +that forty-six dollars to the banker (for I did not expect it of the +Prodigal, and was not disappointed), I would have felt injured. And so +would the banker. + +I wanted a change. I wanted variety of some kind. It came. Mr. Goodman +went away for a week and left me the post of chief editor. It destroyed +me. The first day, I wrote my "leader" in the forenoon. The second day, +I had no subject and put it off till the afternoon. The third day I put +it off till evening, and then copied an elaborate editorial out of the +"American Cyclopedia," that steadfast friend of the editor, all over this +land. The fourth day I "fooled around" till midnight, and then fell back +on the Cyclopedia again. The fifth day I cudgeled my brain till +midnight, and then kept the press waiting while I penned some bitter +personalities on six different people. The sixth day I labored in +anguish till far into the night and brought forth--nothing. The paper +went to press without an editorial. The seventh day I resigned. On the +eighth, Mr. Goodman returned and found six duels on his hands--my +personalities had borne fruit. + +Nobody, except he has tried it, knows what it is to be an editor. It is +easy to scribble local rubbish, with the facts all before you; it is easy +to clip selections from other papers; it is easy to string out a +correspondence from any locality; but it is unspeakable hardship to write +editorials. Subjects are the trouble--the dreary lack of them, I mean. +Every day, it is drag, drag, drag--think, and worry and suffer--all the +world is a dull blank, and yet the editorial columns must be filled. +Only give the editor a subject, and his work is done--it is no trouble to +write it up; but fancy how you would feel if you had to pump your brains +dry every day in the week, fifty-two weeks in the year. It makes one low +spirited simply to think of it. The matter that each editor of a daily +paper in America writes in the course of a year would fill from four to +eight bulky volumes like this book! Fancy what a library an editor's +work would make, after twenty or thirty years' service. Yet people often +marvel that Dickens, Scott, Bulwer, Dumas, etc., have been able to +produce so many books. If these authors had wrought as voluminously as +newspaper editors do, the result would be something to marvel at, indeed. +How editors can continue this tremendous labor, this exhausting +consumption of brain fibre (for their work is creative, and not a mere +mechanical laying-up of facts, like reporting), day after day and year +after year, is incomprehensible. Preachers take two months' holiday in +midsummer, for they find that to produce two sermons a week is wearing, +in the long run. In truth it must be so, and is so; and therefore, how +an editor can take from ten to twenty texts and build upon them from ten +to twenty painstaking editorials a week and keep it up all the year +round, is farther beyond comprehension than ever. Ever since I survived +my week as editor, I have found at least one pleasure in any newspaper +that comes to my hand; it is in admiring the long columns of editorial, +and wondering to myself how in the mischief he did it! + +Mr. Goodman's return relieved me of employment, unless I chose to become +a reporter again. I could not do that; I could not serve in the ranks +after being General of the army. So I thought I would depart and go +abroad into the world somewhere. Just at this juncture, Dan, my +associate in the reportorial department, told me, casually, that two +citizens had been trying to persuade him to go with them to New York and +aid in selling a rich silver mine which they had discovered and secured +in a new mining district in our neighborhood. He said they offered to +pay his expenses and give him one third of the proceeds of the sale. +He had refused to go. It was the very opportunity I wanted. I abused +him for keeping so quiet about it, and not mentioning it sooner. He said +it had not occurred to him that I would like to go, and so he had +recommended them to apply to Marshall, the reporter of the other paper. +I asked Dan if it was a good, honest mine, and no swindle. He said the +men had shown him nine tons of the rock, which they had got out to take +to New York, and he could cheerfully say that he had seen but little rock +in Nevada that was richer; and moreover, he said that they had secured a +tract of valuable timber and a mill-site, near the mine. My first idea +was to kill Dan. But I changed my mind, notwithstanding I was so angry, +for I thought maybe the chance was not yet lost. Dan said it was by no +means lost; that the men were absent at the mine again, and would not be +in Virginia to leave for the East for some ten days; that they had +requested him to do the talking to Marshall, and he had promised that he +would either secure Marshall or somebody else for them by the time they +got back; he would now say nothing to anybody till they returned, and +then fulfil his promise by furnishing me to them. + +It was splendid. I went to bed all on fire with excitement; for nobody +had yet gone East to sell a Nevada silver mine, and the field was white +for the sickle. I felt that such a mine as the one described by Dan +would bring a princely sum in New York, and sell without delay or +difficulty. I could not sleep, my fancy so rioted through its castles in +the air. It was the "blind lead" come again. + +Next day I got away, on the coach, with the usual eclat attending +departures of old citizens,--for if you have only half a dozen friends +out there they will make noise for a hundred rather than let you seem to +go away neglected and unregretted--and Dan promised to keep strict watch +for the men that had the mine to sell. + +The trip was signalized but by one little incident, and that occurred +just as we were about to start. A very seedy looking vagabond passenger +got out of the stage a moment to wait till the usual ballast of silver +bricks was thrown in. He was standing on the pavement, when an awkward +express employee, carrying a brick weighing a hundred pounds, stumbled +and let it fall on the bummer's foot. He instantly dropped on the ground +and began to howl in the most heart-breaking way. A sympathizing crowd +gathered around and were going to pull his boot off; but he screamed +louder than ever and they desisted; then he fell to gasping, and between +the gasps ejaculated "Brandy! for Heaven's sake, brandy!" They poured +half a pint down him, and it wonderfully restored and comforted him. +Then he begged the people to assist him to the stage, which was done. +The express people urged him to have a doctor at their expense, but he +declined, and said that if he only had a little brandy to take along with +him, to soothe his paroxyms of pain when they came on, he would be +grateful and content. He was quickly supplied with two bottles, and we +drove off. He was so smiling and happy after that, that I could not +refrain from asking him how he could possibly be so comfortable with a +crushed foot. + +"Well," said he, "I hadn't had a drink for twelve hours, and hadn't a +cent to my name. I was most perishing--and so, when that duffer dropped +that hundred-pounder on my foot, I see my chance. Got a cork leg, you +know!" and he pulled up his pantaloons and proved it. + +He was as drunk as a lord all day long, and full of chucklings over his +timely ingenuity. + +One drunken man necessarily reminds one of another. I once heard a +gentleman tell about an incident which he witnessed in a Californian +bar-room. He entitled it "Ye Modest Man Taketh a Drink." It was nothing +but a bit of acting, but it seemed to me a perfect rendering, and worthy +of Toodles himself. The modest man, tolerably far gone with beer and +other matters, enters a saloon (twenty-five cents is the price for +anything and everything, and specie the only money used) and lays down a +half dollar; calls for whiskey and drinks it; the bar-keeper makes change +and lays the quarter in a wet place on the counter; the modest man +fumbles at it with nerveless fingers, but it slips and the water holds +it; he contemplates it, and tries again; same result; observes that +people are interested in what he is at, blushes; fumbles at the quarter +again--blushes--puts his forefinger carefully, slowly down, to make sure +of his aim--pushes the coin toward the bar-keeper, and says with a sigh: + +"Gimme a cigar!" + +Naturally, another gentleman present told about another drunken man. He +said he reeled toward home late at night; made a mistake and entered the +wrong gate; thought he saw a dog on the stoop; and it was--an iron one. + +He stopped and considered; wondered if it was a dangerous dog; ventured +to say "Be (hic) begone!" No effect. Then he approached warily, and +adopted conciliation; pursed up his lips and tried to whistle, but +failed; still approached, saying, "Poor dog!--doggy, doggy, doggy!--poor +doggy-dog!" Got up on the stoop, still petting with fond names; till +master of the advantages; then exclaimed, "Leave, you thief!"--planted a +vindictive kick in his ribs, and went head-over-heels overboard, of +course. A pause; a sigh or two of pain, and then a remark in a +reflective voice: + +"Awful solid dog. What could he ben eating? ('ic!) Rocks, p'raps. +Such animals is dangerous.--' At's what I say--they're dangerous. If a +man--('ic!)--if a man wants to feed a dog on rocks, let him feed him on +rocks; 'at's all right; but let him keep him at home--not have him layin' +round promiscuous, where ('ic!) where people's liable to stumble over him +when they ain't noticin'!" + +It was not without regret that I took a last look at the tiny flag (it +was thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide) fluttering like a lady's +handkerchief from the topmost peak of Mount Davidson, two thousand feet +above Virginia's roofs, and felt that doubtless I was bidding a permanent +farewell to a city which had afforded me the most vigorous enjoyment of +life I had ever experienced. And this reminds me of an incident which +the dullest memory Virginia could boast at the time it happened must +vividly recall, at times, till its possessor dies. Late one summer +afternoon we had a rain shower. + +That was astonishing enough, in itself, to set the whole town buzzing, +for it only rains (during a week or two weeks) in the winter in Nevada, +and even then not enough at a time to make it worth while for any +merchant to keep umbrellas for sale. But the rain was not the chief +wonder. It only lasted five or ten minutes; while the people were still +talking about it all the heavens gathered to themselves a dense blackness +as of midnight. All the vast eastern front of Mount Davidson, +over-looking the city, put on such a funereal gloom that only the +nearness and solidity of the mountain made its outlines even faintly +distinguishable from the dead blackness of the heavens they rested +against. This unaccustomed sight turned all eyes toward the mountain; +and as they looked, a little tongue of rich golden flame was seen waving +and quivering in the heart of the midnight, away up on the extreme +summit! In a few minutes the streets were packed with people, gazing with +hardly an uttered word, at the one brilliant mote in the brooding world +of darkness. It flicked like a candle-flame, and looked no larger; but +with such a background it was wonderfully bright, small as it was. It +was the flag!--though no one suspected it at first, it seemed so like a +supernatural visitor of some kind--a mysterious messenger of good +tidings, some were fain to believe. It was the nation's emblem +transfigured by the departing rays of a sun that was entirely palled from +view; and on no other object did the glory fall, in all the broad +panorama of mountain ranges and deserts. Not even upon the staff of the +flag--for that, a needle in the distance at any time, was now untouched +by the light and undistinguishable in the gloom. For a whole hour the +weird visitor winked and burned in its lofty solitude, and still the +thousands of uplifted eyes watched it with fascinated interest. How the +people were wrought up! The superstition grew apace that this was a +mystic courier come with great news from the war--the poetry of the idea +excusing and commending it--and on it spread, from heart to heart, from +lip to lip and from street to street, till there was a general impulse to +have out the military and welcome the bright waif with a salvo of +artillery! + +And all that time one sorely tried man, the telegraph operator sworn to +official secrecy, had to lock his lips and chain his tongue with a +silence that was like to rend them; for he, and he only, of all the +speculating multitude, knew the great things this sinking sun had seen +that day in the east--Vicksburg fallen, and the Union arms victorious at +Gettysburg! + +But for the journalistic monopoly that forbade the slightest revealment +of eastern news till a day after its publication in the California +papers, the glorified flag on Mount Davidson would have been saluted and +re-saluted, that memorable evening, as long as there was a charge of +powder to thunder with; the city would have been illuminated, and every +man that had any respect for himself would have got drunk,--as was the +custom of the country on all occasions of public moment. Even at this +distant day I cannot think of this needlessly marred supreme opportunity +without regret. What a time we might have had! + + + + +CHAPTER LVI. + +We rumbled over the plains and valleys, climbed the Sierras to the +clouds, and looked down upon summer-clad California. And I will remark +here, in passing, that all scenery in California requires distance to +give it its highest charm. The mountains are imposing in their sublimity +and their majesty of form and altitude, from any point of view--but one +must have distance to soften their ruggedness and enrich their tintings; +a Californian forest is best at a little distance, for there is a sad +poverty of variety in species, the trees being chiefly of one monotonous +family--redwood, pine, spruce, fir--and so, at a near view there is a +wearisome sameness of attitude in their rigid arms, stretched down ward +and outward in one continued and reiterated appeal to all men to "Sh! +--don't say a word!--you might disturb somebody!" Close at hand, too, +there is a reliefless and relentless smell of pitch and turpentine; there +is a ceaseless melancholy in their sighing and complaining foliage; one +walks over a soundless carpet of beaten yellow bark and dead spines of +the foliage till he feels like a wandering spirit bereft of a footfall; +he tires of the endless tufts of needles and yearns for substantial, +shapely leaves; he looks for moss and grass to loll upon, and finds none, +for where there is no bark there is naked clay and dirt, enemies to +pensive musing and clean apparel. Often a grassy plain in California, is +what it should be, but often, too, it is best contemplated at a distance, +because although its grass blades are tall, they stand up vindictively +straight and self-sufficient, and are unsociably wide apart, with +uncomely spots of barren sand between. + +One of the queerest things I know of, is to hear tourists from "the +States" go into ecstasies over the loveliness of "ever-blooming +California." And they always do go into that sort of ecstasies. But +perhaps they would modify them if they knew how old Californians, with +the memory full upon them of the dust-covered and questionable summer +greens of Californian "verdure," stand astonished, and filled with +worshipping admiration, in the presence of the lavish richness, the +brilliant green, the infinite freshness, the spend-thrift variety of form +and species and foliage that make an Eastern landscape a vision of +Paradise itself. The idea of a man falling into raptures over grave and +sombre California, when that man has seen New England's meadow-expanses +and her maples, oaks and cathedral-windowed elms decked in summer attire, +or the opaline splendors of autumn descending upon her forests, comes +very near being funny--would be, in fact, but that it is so pathetic. +No land with an unvarying climate can be very beautiful. The tropics are +not, for all the sentiment that is wasted on them. They seem beautiful +at first, but sameness impairs the charm by and by. Change is the +handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with. The land that has +four well-defined seasons, cannot lack beauty, or pall with monotony. +Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of +its unfolding, its gradual, harmonious development, its culminating +graces--and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a +radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train. +And I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its +turn, seems the loveliest. + +San Francisco, a truly fascinating city to live in, is stately and +handsome at a fair distance, but close at hand one notes that the +architecture is mostly old-fashioned, many streets are made up of +decaying, smoke-grimed, wooden houses, and the barren sand-hills toward +the outskirts obtrude themselves too prominently. Even the kindly +climate is sometimes pleasanter when read about than personally +experienced, for a lovely, cloudless sky wears out its welcome by and by, +and then when the longed for rain does come it stays. Even the playful +earthquake is better contemplated at a dis---- + +However there are varying opinions about that. + +The climate of San Francisco is mild and singularly equable. The +thermometer stands at about seventy degrees the year round. It hardly +changes at all. You sleep under one or two light blankets Summer and +Winter, and never use a mosquito bar. Nobody ever wears Summer clothing. +You wear black broadcloth--if you have it--in August and January, just +the same. It is no colder, and no warmer, in the one month than the +other. You do not use overcoats and you do not use fans. It is as +pleasant a climate as could well be contrived, take it all around, and is +doubtless the most unvarying in the whole world. The wind blows there a +good deal in the summer months, but then you can go over to Oakland, if +you choose--three or four miles away--it does not blow there. It has +only snowed twice in San Francisco in nineteen years, and then it only +remained on the ground long enough to astonish the children, and set them +to wondering what the feathery stuff was. + +During eight months of the year, straight along, the skies are bright and +cloudless, and never a drop of rain falls. But when the other four +months come along, you will need to go and steal an umbrella. Because +you will require it. Not just one day, but one hundred and twenty days +in hardly varying succession. When you want to go visiting, or attend +church, or the theatre, you never look up at the clouds to see whether it +is likely to rain or not--you look at the almanac. If it is Winter, it +will rain--and if it is Summer, it won't rain, and you cannot help it. +You never need a lightning-rod, because it never thunders and it never +lightens. And after you have listened for six or eight weeks, every +night, to the dismal monotony of those quiet rains, you will wish in your +heart the thunder would leap and crash and roar along those drowsy skies +once, and make everything alive--you will wish the prisoned lightnings +would cleave the dull firmament asunder and light it with a blinding +glare for one little instant. You would give anything to hear the old +familiar thunder again and see the lightning strike somebody. And along +in the Summer, when you have suffered about four months of lustrous, +pitiless sunshine, you are ready to go down on your knees and plead for +rain--hail--snow--thunder and lightning--anything to break the monotony +--you will take an earthquake, if you cannot do any better. And the +chances are that you'll get it, too. + +San Francisco is built on sand hills, but they are prolific sand hills. +They yield a generous vegetation. All the rare flowers which people in +"the States" rear with such patient care in parlor flower-pots and +green-houses, flourish luxuriantly in the open air there all the year +round. Calla lilies, all sorts of geraniums, passion flowers, moss +roses--I do not know the names of a tenth part of them. I only know that +while New Yorkers are burdened with banks and drifts of snow, +Californians are burdened with banks and drifts of flowers, if they only +keep their hands off and let them grow. And I have heard that they have +also that rarest and most curious of all the flowers, the beautiful +Espiritu Santo, as the Spaniards call it--or flower of the Holy Spirit +--though I thought it grew only in Central America--down on the Isthmus. +In its cup is the daintiest little facsimile of a dove, as pure as snow. +The Spaniards have a superstitious reverence for it. The blossom has +been conveyed to the States, submerged in ether; and the bulb has been +taken thither also, but every attempt to make it bloom after it arrived, +has failed. + +I have elsewhere spoken of the endless Winter of Mono, California, and +but this moment of the eternal Spring of San Francisco. Now if we travel +a hundred miles in a straight line, we come to the eternal Summer of +Sacramento. One never sees Summer-clothing or mosquitoes in San +Francisco--but they can be found in Sacramento. Not always and +unvaryingly, but about one hundred and forty-three months out of twelve +years, perhaps. Flowers bloom there, always, the reader can easily +believe--people suffer and sweat, and swear, morning, noon and night, and +wear out their stanchest energies fanning themselves. It gets hot there, +but if you go down to Fort Yuma you will find it hotter. Fort Yuma is +probably the hottest place on earth. The thermometer stays at one +hundred and twenty in the shade there all the time--except when it varies +and goes higher. It is a U.S. military post, and its occupants get so +used to the terrific heat that they suffer without it. There is a +tradition (attributed to John Phenix [It has been purloined by fifty +different scribblers who were too poor to invent a fancy but not ashamed +to steal one.--M. T.]) that a very, very wicked soldier died there, +once, and of course, went straight to the hottest corner of perdition, +--and the next day he telegraphed back for his blankets. There is no doubt +about the truth of this statement--there can be no doubt about it. I +have seen the place where that soldier used to board. In Sacramento it +is fiery Summer always, and you can gather roses, and eat strawberries +and ice-cream, and wear white linen clothes, and pant and perspire, at +eight or nine o'clock in the morning, and then take the cars, and at noon +put on your furs and your skates, and go skimming over frozen Donner +Lake, seven thousand feet above the valley, among snow banks fifteen feet +deep, and in the shadow of grand mountain peaks that lift their frosty +crags ten thousand feet above the level of the sea. + +There is a transition for you! Where will you find another like it in +the Western hemisphere? And some of us have swept around snow-walled +curves of the Pacific Railroad in that vicinity, six thousand feet above +the sea, and looked down as the birds do, upon the deathless Summer of +the Sacramento Valley, with its fruitful fields, its feathery foliage, +its silver streams, all slumbering in the mellow haze of its enchanted +atmosphere, and all infinitely softened and spiritualized by distance--a +dreamy, exquisite glimpse of fairyland, made all the more charming and +striking that it was caught through a forbidden gateway of ice and snow, +and savage crags and precipices. + + + + +CHAPTER LVII. + +It was in this Sacramento Valley, just referred to, that a deal of the +most lucrative of the early gold mining was done, and you may still see, +in places, its grassy slopes and levels torn and guttered and disfigured +by the avaricious spoilers of fifteen and twenty years ago. You may see +such disfigurements far and wide over California--and in some such +places, where only meadows and forests are visible--not a living +creature, not a house, no stick or stone or remnant of a ruin, and not a +sound, not even a whisper to disturb the Sabbath stillness--you will find +it hard to believe that there stood at one time a fiercely-flourishing +little city, of two thousand or three thousand souls, with its newspaper, +fire company, brass band, volunteer militia, bank, hotels, noisy Fourth +of July processions and speeches, gambling hells crammed with tobacco +smoke, profanity, and rough-bearded men of all nations and colors, with +tables heaped with gold dust sufficient for the revenues of a German +principality--streets crowded and rife with business--town lots worth +four hundred dollars a front foot--labor, laughter, music, dancing, +swearing, fighting, shooting, stabbing--a bloody inquest and a man for +breakfast every morning--everything that delights and adorns existence +--all the appointments and appurtenances of a thriving and prosperous and +promising young city,--and now nothing is left of it all but a lifeless, +homeless solitude. The men are gone, the houses have vanished, even the +name of the place is forgotten. In no other land, in modern times, have +towns so absolutely died and disappeared, as in the old mining regions of +California. + +It was a driving, vigorous, restless population in those days. It was a +curious population. It was the only population of the kind that the +world has ever seen gathered together, and it is not likely that the +world will ever see its like again. For observe, it was an assemblage of +two hundred thousand young men--not simpering, dainty, kid-gloved +weaklings, but stalwart, muscular, dauntless young braves, brimful of +push and energy, and royally endowed with every attribute that goes to +make up a peerless and magnificent manhood--the very pick and choice of +the world's glorious ones. No women, no children, no gray and stooping +veterans,--none but erect, bright-eyed, quick-moving, strong-handed young +giants--the strangest population, the finest population, the most gallant +host that ever trooped down the startled solitudes of an unpeopled land. +And where are they now? Scattered to the ends of the earth--or +prematurely aged and decrepit--or shot or stabbed in street affrays--or +dead of disappointed hopes and broken hearts--all gone, or nearly all +--victims devoted upon the altar of the golden calf--the noblest holocaust +that ever wafted its sacrificial incense heavenward. It is pitiful to +think upon. + +It was a splendid population--for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained +sloths staid at home--you never find that sort of people among pioneers +--you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that +population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding +enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring +and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this +day--and when she projects a new surprise, the grave world smiles as +usual, and says "Well, that is California all over." + +But they were rough in those times! They fairly reveled in gold, whisky, +fights, and fandangoes, and were unspeakably happy. The honest miner +raked from a hundred to a thousand dollars out of his claim a day, and +what with the gambling dens and the other entertainments, he hadn't a +cent the next morning, if he had any sort of luck. They cooked their own +bacon and beans, sewed on their own buttons, washed their own shirts +--blue woollen ones; and if a man wanted a fight on his hands without any +annoying delay, all he had to do was to appear in public in a white shirt +or a stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated. For those people +hated aristocrats. They had a particular and malignant animosity toward +what they called a "biled shirt." + +It was a wild, free, disorderly, grotesque society! Men--only swarming +hosts of stalwart men--nothing juvenile, nothing feminine, visible +anywhere! + +In those days miners would flock in crowds to catch a glimpse of that +rare and blessed spectacle, a woman! Old inhabitants tell how, in a +certain camp, the news went abroad early in the morning that a woman was +come! They had seen a calico dress hanging out of a wagon down at the +camping-ground--sign of emigrants from over the great plains. Everybody +went down there, and a shout went up when an actual, bona fide dress was +discovered fluttering in the wind! The male emigrant was visible. The +miners said: + +"Fetch her out!" + +He said: "It is my wife, gentlemen--she is sick--we have been robbed of +money, provisions, everything, by the Indians--we want to rest." + +"Fetch her out! We've got to see her!" + +"But, gentlemen, the poor thing, she--" + +"FETCH HER OUT!" + +He "fetched her out," and they swung their hats and sent up three rousing +cheers and a tiger; and they crowded around and gazed at her, and touched +her dress, and listened to her voice with the look of men who listened to +a memory rather than a present reality--and then they collected +twenty-five hundred dollars in gold and gave it to the man, and swung +their hats again and gave three more cheers, and went home satisfied. + + +Once I dined in San Francisco with the family of a pioneer, and talked +with his daughter, a young lady whose first experience in San Francisco +was an adventure, though she herself did not remember it, as she was only +two or three years old at the time. Her father said that, after landing +from the ship, they were walking up the street, a servant leading the +party with the little girl in her arms. And presently a huge miner, +bearded, belted, spurred, and bristling with deadly weapons--just down +from a long campaign in the mountains, evidently-barred the way, stopped +the servant, and stood gazing, with a face all alive with gratification +and astonishment. Then he said, reverently: + +"Well, if it ain't a child!" And then he snatched a little leather sack +out of his pocket and said to the servant: + +"There's a hundred and fifty dollars in dust, there, and I'll give it to +you to let me kiss the child!" + +That anecdote is true. + +But see how things change. Sitting at that dinner-table, listening to +that anecdote, if I had offered double the money for the privilege of +kissing the same child, I would have been refused. Seventeen added years +have far more than doubled the price. + +And while upon this subject I will remark that once in Star City, in the +Humboldt Mountains, I took my place in a sort of long, post-office single +file of miners, to patiently await my chance to peep through a crack in +the cabin and get a sight of the splendid new sensation--a genuine, live +Woman! And at the end of half of an hour my turn came, and I put my eye +to the crack, and there she was, with one arm akimbo, and tossing +flap-jacks in a frying-pan with the other. + +And she was one hundred and sixty-five [Being in calmer mood, now, I +voluntarily knock off a hundred from that.--M.T.] years old, and hadn't a +tooth in her head. + + + + +CHAPTER LVIII. + +For a few months I enjoyed what to me was an entirely new phase of +existence--a butterfly idleness; nothing to do, nobody to be responsible +to, and untroubled with financial uneasiness. I fell in love with the +most cordial and sociable city in the Union. After the sage-brush and +alkali deserts of Washoe, San Francisco was Paradise to me. I lived at +the best hotel, exhibited my clothes in the most conspicuous places, +infested the opera, and learned to seem enraptured with music which +oftener afflicted my ignorant ear than enchanted it, if I had had the +vulgar honesty to confess it. However, I suppose I was not greatly worse +than the most of my countrymen in that. I had longed to be a butterfly, +and I was one at last. I attended private parties in sumptuous evening +dress, simpered and aired my graces like a born beau, and polkad and +schottisched with a step peculiar to myself--and the kangaroo. In a +word, I kept the due state of a man worth a hundred thousand dollars +(prospectively,) and likely to reach absolute affluence when that +silver-mine sale should be ultimately achieved in the East. I spent +money with a free hand, and meantime watched the stock sales with an +interested eye and looked to see what might happen in Nevada. + +Something very important happened. The property holders of Nevada voted +against the State Constitution; but the folks who had nothing to lose +were in the majority, and carried the measure over their heads. But +after all it did not immediately look like a disaster, though +unquestionably it was one I hesitated, calculated the chances, and then +concluded not to sell. Stocks went on rising; speculation went mad; +bankers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, laborers, even the very +washerwomen and servant girls, were putting up their earnings on silver +stocks, and every sun that rose in the morning went down on paupers +enriched and rich men beggared. What a gambling carnival it was! Gould +and Curry soared to six thousand three hundred dollars a foot! And then +--all of a sudden, out went the bottom and everything and everybody went +to ruin and destruction! The wreck was complete. + +The bubble scarcely left a microscopic moisture behind it. I was an +early beggar and a thorough one. My hoarded stocks were not worth the +paper they were printed on. I threw them all away. I, the cheerful +idiot that had been squandering money like water, and thought myself +beyond the reach of misfortune, had not now as much as fifty dollars when +I gathered together my various debts and paid them. I removed from the +hotel to a very private boarding house. I took a reporter's berth and +went to work. I was not entirely broken in spirit, for I was building +confidently on the sale of the silver mine in the east. But I could not +hear from Dan. My letters miscarried or were not answered. + +One day I did not feel vigorous and remained away from the office. The +next day I went down toward noon as usual, and found a note on my desk +which had been there twenty-four hours. It was signed "Marshall"--the +Virginia reporter--and contained a request that I should call at the +hotel and see him and a friend or two that night, as they would sail for +the east in the morning. A postscript added that their errand was a big +mining speculation! I was hardly ever so sick in my life. I abused +myself for leaving Virginia and entrusting to another man a matter I +ought to have attended to myself; I abused myself for remaining away from +the office on the one day of all the year that I should have been there. +And thus berating myself I trotted a mile to the steamer wharf and +arrived just in time to be too late. The ship was in the stream and +under way. + +I comforted myself with the thought that may be the speculation would +amount to nothing--poor comfort at best--and then went back to my +slavery, resolved to put up with my thirty-five dollars a week and forget +all about it. + +A month afterward I enjoyed my first earthquake. It was one which was +long called the "great" earthquake, and is doubtless so distinguished +till this day. It was just after noon, on a bright October day. I was +coming down Third street. The only objects in motion anywhere in sight +in that thickly built and populous quarter, were a man in a buggy behind +me, and a street car wending slowly up the cross street. Otherwise, all +was solitude and a Sabbath stillness. As I turned the corner, around a +frame house, there was a great rattle and jar, and it occurred to me that +here was an item!--no doubt a fight in that house. Before I could turn +and seek the door, there came a really terrific shock; the ground seemed +to roll under me in waves, interrupted by a violent joggling up and down, +and there was a heavy grinding noise as of brick houses rubbing together. +I fell up against the frame house and hurt my elbow. I knew what it was, +now, and from mere reportorial instinct, nothing else, took out my watch +and noted the time of day; at that moment a third and still severer shock +came, and as I reeled about on the pavement trying to keep my footing, +I saw a sight! The entire front of a tall four-story brick building in +Third street sprung outward like a door and fell sprawling across the +street, raising a dust like a great volume of smoke! And here came the +buggy--overboard went the man, and in less time than I can tell it the +vehicle was distributed in small fragments along three hundred yards of +street. + +One could have fancied that somebody had fired a charge of chair-rounds +and rags down the thoroughfare. The street car had stopped, the horses +were rearing and plunging, the passengers were pouring out at both ends, +and one fat man had crashed half way through a glass window on one side +of the car, got wedged fast and was squirming and screaming like an +impaled madman. Every door, of every house, as far as the eye could +reach, was vomiting a stream of human beings; and almost before one could +execute a wink and begin another, there was a massed multitude of people +stretching in endless procession down every street my position commanded. +Never was solemn solitude turned into teeming life quicker. + +Of the wonders wrought by "the great earthquake," these were all that +came under my eye; but the tricks it did, elsewhere, and far and wide +over the town, made toothsome gossip for nine days. + +The destruction of property was trifling--the injury to it was +wide-spread and somewhat serious. + +The "curiosities" of the earthquake were simply endless. Gentlemen and +ladies who were sick, or were taking a siesta, or had dissipated till a +late hour and were making up lost sleep, thronged into the public streets +in all sorts of queer apparel, and some without any at all. One woman +who had been washing a naked child, ran down the street holding it by the +ankles as if it were a dressed turkey. Prominent citizens who were +supposed to keep the Sabbath strictly, rushed out of saloons in their +shirt-sleeves, with billiard cues in their hands. Dozens of men with +necks swathed in napkins, rushed from barber-shops, lathered to the eyes +or with one cheek clean shaved and the other still bearing a hairy +stubble. Horses broke from stables, and a frightened dog rushed up a +short attic ladder and out on to a roof, and when his scare was over had +not the nerve to go down again the same way he had gone up. + +A prominent editor flew down stairs, in the principal hotel, with nothing +on but one brief undergarment--met a chambermaid, and exclaimed: + +"Oh, what shall I do! Where shall I go!" + +She responded with naive serenity: + +"If you have no choice, you might try a clothing-store!" + +A certain foreign consul's lady was the acknowledged leader of fashion, +and every time she appeared in anything new or extraordinary, the ladies +in the vicinity made a raid on their husbands' purses and arrayed +themselves similarly. One man who had suffered considerably and growled +accordingly, was standing at the window when the shocks came, and the +next instant the consul's wife, just out of the bath, fled by with no +other apology for clothing than--a bath-towel! The sufferer rose +superior to the terrors of the earthquake, and said to his wife: + +"Now that is something like! Get out your towel my dear!" + +The plastering that fell from ceilings in San Francisco that day, would +have covered several acres of ground. For some days afterward, groups of +eyeing and pointing men stood about many a building, looking at long +zig-zag cracks that extended from the eaves to the ground. Four feet of +the tops of three chimneys on one house were broken square off and turned +around in such a way as to completely stop the draft. + +A crack a hundred feet long gaped open six inches wide in the middle of +one street and then shut together again with such force, as to ridge up +the meeting earth like a slender grave. A lady sitting in her rocking +and quaking parlor, saw the wall part at the ceiling, open and shut +twice, like a mouth, and then-drop the end of a brick on the floor like a +tooth. She was a woman easily disgusted with foolishness, and she arose +and went out of there. One lady who was coming down stairs was +astonished to see a bronze Hercules lean forward on its pedestal as if to +strike her with its club. They both reached the bottom of the flight at +the same time,--the woman insensible from the fright. Her child, born +some little time afterward, was club-footed. However--on second +thought,--if the reader sees any coincidence in this, he must do it at +his own risk. + +The first shock brought down two or three huge organ-pipes in one of the +churches. The minister, with uplifted hands, was just closing the +services. He glanced up, hesitated, and said: + +"However, we will omit the benediction!"--and the next instant there was +a vacancy in the atmosphere where he had stood. + +After the first shock, an Oakland minister said: + +"Keep your seats! There is no better place to die than this"-- + +And added, after the third: + +"But outside is good enough!" He then skipped out at the back door. + +Such another destruction of mantel ornaments and toilet bottles as the +earthquake created, San Francisco never saw before. There was hardly a +girl or a matron in the city but suffered losses of this kind. Suspended +pictures were thrown down, but oftener still, by a curious freak of the +earthquake's humor, they were whirled completely around with their faces +to the wall! There was great difference of opinion, at first, as to the +course or direction the earthquake traveled, but water that splashed out +of various tanks and buckets settled that. Thousands of people were made +so sea-sick by the rolling and pitching of floors and streets that they +were weak and bed-ridden for hours, and some few for even days +afterward.--Hardly an individual escaped nausea entirely. + +The queer earthquake--episodes that formed the staple of San Francisco +gossip for the next week would fill a much larger book than this, and so +I will diverge from the subject. + +By and by, in the due course of things, I picked up a copy of the +Enterprise one day, and fell under this cruel blow: + + NEVADA MINES IN NEW YORK.--G. M. Marshall, Sheba Hurs and Amos H. + Rose, who left San Francisco last July for New York City, with ores + from mines in Pine Wood District, Humboldt County, and on the Reese + River range, have disposed of a mine containing six thousand feet + and called the Pine Mountains Consolidated, for the sum of + $3,000,000. The stamps on the deed, which is now on its way to + Humboldt County, from New York, for record, amounted to $3,000, + which is said to be the largest amount of stamps ever placed on one + document. A working capital of $1,000,000 has been paid into the + treasury, and machinery has already been purchased for a large + quartz mill, which will be put up as soon as possible. The stock in + this company is all full paid and entirely unassessable. The ores + of the mines in this district somewhat resemble those of the Sheba + mine in Humboldt. Sheba Hurst, the discoverer of the mines, with + his friends corralled all the best leads and all the land and timber + they desired before making public their whereabouts. Ores from + there, assayed in this city, showed them to be exceedingly rich in + silver and gold--silver predominating. There is an abundance of + wood and water in the District. We are glad to know that New York + capital has been enlisted in the development of the mines of this + region. Having seen the ores and assays, we are satisfied that the + mines of the District are very valuable--anything but wild-cat. + +Once more native imbecility had carried the day, and I had lost a +million! It was the "blind lead" over again. + +Let us not dwell on this miserable matter. If I were inventing these +things, I could be wonderfully humorous over them; but they are too true +to be talked of with hearty levity, even at this distant day. [True, and +yet not exactly as given in the above figures, possibly. I saw Marshall, +months afterward, and although he had plenty of money he did not claim to +have captured an entire million. In fact I gathered that he had not then +received $50,000. Beyond that figure his fortune appeared to consist of +uncertain vast expectations rather than prodigious certainties. However, +when the above item appeared in print I put full faith in it, and +incontinently wilted and went to seed under it.] Suffice it that I so +lost heart, and so yielded myself up to repinings and sighings and +foolish regrets, that I neglected my duties and became about worthless, +as a reporter for a brisk newspaper. And at last one of the proprietors +took me aside, with a charity I still remember with considerable respect, +and gave me an opportunity to resign my berth and so save myself the +disgrace of a dismissal. + + + + +CHAPTER LIX. + +For a time I wrote literary screeds for the Golden Era. C. H. Webb had +established a very excellent literary weekly called the Californian, but +high merit was no guaranty of success; it languished, and he sold out to +three printers, and Bret Harte became editor at $20 a week, and I was +employed to contribute an article a week at $12. But the journal still +languished, and the printers sold out to Captain Ogden, a rich man and a +pleasant gentleman who chose to amuse himself with such an expensive +luxury without much caring about the cost of it. When he grew tired of +the novelty, he re-sold to the printers, the paper presently died a +peaceful death, and I was out of work again. I would not mention these +things but for the fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs +that characterize life on the Pacific coast. A man could hardly stumble +into such a variety of queer vicissitudes in any other country. + +For two months my sole occupation was avoiding acquaintances; for during +that time I did not earn a penny, or buy an article of any kind, or pay +my board. I became a very adept at "slinking." I slunk from back street +to back street, I slunk away from approaching faces that looked familiar, +I slunk to my meals, ate them humbly and with a mute apology for every +mouthful I robbed my generous landlady of, and at midnight, after +wanderings that were but slinkings away from cheerfulness and light, I +slunk to my bed. I felt meaner, and lowlier and more despicable than the +worms. During all this time I had but one piece of money--a silver ten +cent piece--and I held to it and would not spend it on any account, lest +the consciousness coming strong upon me that I was entirely penniless, +might suggest suicide. I had pawned every thing but the clothes I had +on; so I clung to my dime desperately, till it was smooth with handling. + +However, I am forgetting. I did have one other occupation beside that of +"slinking." It was the entertaining of a collector (and being +entertained by him,) who had in his hands the Virginia banker's bill for +forty-six dollars which I had loaned my schoolmate, the "Prodigal." This +man used to call regularly once a week and dun me, and sometimes oftener. +He did it from sheer force of habit, for he knew he could get nothing. +He would get out his bill, calculate the interest for me, at five per +cent a month, and show me clearly that there was no attempt at fraud in +it and no mistakes; and then plead, and argue and dun with all his might +for any sum--any little trifle--even a dollar--even half a dollar, on +account. Then his duty was accomplished and his conscience free. He +immediately dropped the subject there always; got out a couple of cigars +and divided, put his feet in the window, and then we would have a long, +luxurious talk about everything and everybody, and he would furnish me a +world of curious dunning adventures out of the ample store in his memory. +By and by he would clap his hat on his head, shake hands and say briskly: + +"Well, business is business--can't stay with you always!"--and was off in +a second. + +The idea of pining for a dun! And yet I used to long for him to come, +and would get as uneasy as any mother if the day went by without his +visit, when I was expecting him. But he never collected that bill, at +last nor any part of it. I lived to pay it to the banker myself. + +Misery loves company. Now and then at night, in out-of-the way, dimly +lighted places, I found myself happening on another child of misfortune. +He looked so seedy and forlorn, so homeless and friendless and forsaken, +that I yearned toward him as a brother. I wanted to claim kinship with +him and go about and enjoy our wretchedness together. The drawing toward +each other must have been mutual; at any rate we got to falling together +oftener, though still seemingly by accident; and although we did not +speak or evince any recognition, I think the dull anxiety passed out of +both of us when we saw each other, and then for several hours we would +idle along contentedly, wide apart, and glancing furtively in at home +lights and fireside gatherings, out of the night shadows, and very much +enjoying our dumb companionship. + +Finally we spoke, and were inseparable after that. For our woes were +identical, almost. He had been a reporter too, and lost his berth, and +this was his experience, as nearly as I can recollect it. After losing +his berth he had gone down, down, down, with never a halt: from a +boarding house on Russian Hill to a boarding house in Kearney street; +from thence to Dupont; from thence to a low sailor den; and from thence +to lodgings in goods boxes and empty hogsheads near the wharves. Then; +for a while, he had gained a meagre living by sewing up bursted sacks of +grain on the piers; when that failed he had found food here and there as +chance threw it in his way. He had ceased to show his face in daylight, +now, for a reporter knows everybody, rich and poor, high and low, and +cannot well avoid familiar faces in the broad light of day. + +This mendicant Blucher--I call him that for convenience--was a splendid +creature. He was full of hope, pluck and philosophy; he was well read +and a man of cultivated taste; he had a bright wit and was a master of +satire; his kindliness and his generous spirit made him royal in my eyes +and changed his curb-stone seat to a throne and his damaged hat to a +crown. + +He had an adventure, once, which sticks fast in my memory as the most +pleasantly grotesque that ever touched my sympathies. He had been +without a penny for two months. He had shirked about obscure streets, +among friendly dim lights, till the thing had become second nature to +him. But at last he was driven abroad in daylight. The cause was +sufficient; he had not tasted food for forty-eight hours, and he could +not endure the misery of his hunger in idle hiding. He came along a back +street, glowering at the loaves in bake-shop windows, and feeling that he +could trade his life away for a morsel to eat. The sight of the bread +doubled his hunger; but it was good to look at it, any how, and imagine +what one might do if one only had it. + +Presently, in the middle of the street he saw a shining spot--looked +again--did not, and could not, believe his eyes--turned away, to try +them, then looked again. It was a verity--no vain, hunger-inspired +delusion--it was a silver dime! + +He snatched it--gloated over it; doubted it--bit it--found it genuine +--choked his heart down, and smothered a halleluiah. Then he looked +around--saw that nobody was looking at him--threw the dime down where it +was before--walked away a few steps, and approached again, pretending he +did not know it was there, so that he could re-enjoy the luxury of +finding it. He walked around it, viewing it from different points; then +sauntered about with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the signs +and now and then glancing at it and feeling the old thrill again. +Finally he took it up, and went away, fondling it in his pocket. He +idled through unfrequented streets, stopping in doorways and corners to +take it out and look at it. By and by he went home to his lodgings--an +empty queens-ware hogshead,--and employed himself till night trying to +make up his mind what to buy with it. But it was hard to do. To get the +most for it was the idea. He knew that at the Miner's Restaurant he +could get a plate of beans and a piece of bread for ten cents; or a +fish-ball and some few trifles, but they gave "no bread with one +fish-ball" there. At French Pete's he could get a veal cutlet, plain, +and some radishes and bread, for ten cents; or a cup of coffee--a pint at +least--and a slice of bread; but the slice was not thick enough by the +eighth of an inch, and sometimes they were still more criminal than that +in the cutting of it. At seven o'clock his hunger was wolfish; and still +his mind was not made up. He turned out and went up Merchant street, +still ciphering; and chewing a bit of stick, as is the way of starving +men. + +He passed before the lights of Martin's restaurant, the most aristocratic +in the city, and stopped. It was a place where he had often dined, in +better days, and Martin knew him well. Standing aside, just out of the +range of the light, he worshiped the quails and steaks in the show +window, and imagined that may be the fairy times were not gone yet and +some prince in disguise would come along presently and tell him to go in +there and take whatever he wanted. He chewed his stick with a hungry +interest as he warmed to his subject. Just at this juncture he was +conscious of some one at his side, sure enough; and then a finger touched +his arm. He looked up, over his shoulder, and saw an apparition--a very +allegory of Hunger! It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven, hung +with rags; with a haggard face and sunken cheeks, and eyes that pleaded +piteously. This phantom said: + +"Come with me--please." + +He locked his arm in Blucher's and walked up the street to where the +passengers were few and the light not strong, and then facing about, put +out his hands in a beseeching way, and said: + +"Friend--stranger--look at me! Life is easy to you--you go about, placid +and content, as I did once, in my day--you have been in there, and eaten +your sumptuous supper, and picked your teeth, and hummed your tune, and +thought your pleasant thoughts, and said to yourself it is a good world +--but you've never suffered! You don't know what trouble is--you don't +know what misery is--nor hunger! Look at me! Stranger have pity on a +poor friendless, homeless dog! As God is my judge, I have not tasted +food for eight and forty hours!--look in my eyes and see if I lie! Give +me the least trifle in the world to keep me from starving--anything +--twenty-five cents! Do it, stranger--do it, please. It will be nothing +to you, but life to me. Do it, and I will go down on my knees and lick +the dust before you! I will kiss your footprints--I will worship the +very ground you walk on! Only twenty-five cents! I am famishing +--perishing--starving by inches! For God's sake don't desert me!" + +Blucher was bewildered--and touched, too--stirred to the depths. He +reflected. Thought again. Then an idea struck him, and he said: + +"Come with me." + +He took the outcast's arm, walked him down to Martin's restaurant, seated +him at a marble table, placed the bill of fare before him, and said: + +"Order what you want, friend. Charge it to me, Mr. Martin." + +"All right, Mr. Blucher," said Martin. + +Then Blucher stepped back and leaned against the counter and watched the +man stow away cargo after cargo of buckwheat cakes at seventy-five cents +a plate; cup after cup of coffee, and porter house steaks worth two +dollars apiece; and when six dollars and a half's worth of destruction +had been accomplished, and the stranger's hunger appeased, Blucher went +down to French Pete's, bought a veal cutlet plain, a slice of bread, and +three radishes, with his dime, and set to and feasted like a king! + +Take the episode all around, it was as odd as any that can be culled from +the myriad curiosities of Californian life, perhaps. + + + + +CHAPTER LX. + +By and by, an old friend of mine, a miner, came down from one of the +decayed mining camps of Tuolumne, California, and I went back with him. +We lived in a small cabin on a verdant hillside, and there were not five +other cabins in view over the wide expanse of hill and forest. Yet a +flourishing city of two or three thousand population had occupied this +grassy dead solitude during the flush times of twelve or fifteen years +before, and where our cabin stood had once been the heart of the teeming +hive, the centre of the city. When the mines gave out the town fell into +decay, and in a few years wholly disappeared--streets, dwellings, shops, +everything--and left no sign. The grassy slopes were as green and smooth +and desolate of life as if they had never been disturbed. The mere +handful of miners still remaining, had seen the town spring up spread, +grow and flourish in its pride; and they had seen it sicken and die, and +pass away like a dream. With it their hopes had died, and their zest of +life. They had long ago resigned themselves to their exile, and ceased +to correspond with their distant friends or turn longing eyes toward +their early homes. They had accepted banishment, forgotten the world and +been forgotten of the world. They were far from telegraphs and +railroads, and they stood, as it were, in a living grave, dead to the +events that stirred the globe's great populations, dead to the common +interests of men, isolated and outcast from brotherhood with their kind. +It was the most singular, and almost the most touching and melancholy +exile that fancy can imagine.--One of my associates in this locality, for +two or three months, was a man who had had a university education; but +now for eighteen years he had decayed there by inches, a bearded, +rough-clad, clay-stained miner, and at times, among his sighings and +soliloquizings, he unconsciously interjected vaguely remembered Latin and +Greek sentences--dead and musty tongues, meet vehicles for the thoughts +of one whose dreams were all of the past, whose life was a failure; a +tired man, burdened with the present, and indifferent to the future; a +man without ties, hopes, interests, waiting for rest and the end. + +In that one little corner of California is found a species of mining +which is seldom or never mentioned in print. It is called "pocket +mining" and I am not aware that any of it is done outside of that little +corner. The gold is not evenly distributed through the surface dirt, as +in ordinary placer mines, but is collected in little spots, and they are +very wide apart and exceedingly hard to find, but when you do find one +you reap a rich and sudden harvest. There are not now more than twenty +pocket miners in that entire little region. I think I know every one of +them personally. I have known one of them to hunt patiently about the +hill-sides every day for eight months without finding gold enough to make +a snuff-box--his grocery bill running up relentlessly all the time--and +then find a pocket and take out of it two thousand dollars in two dips of +his shovel. I have known him to take out three thousand dollars in two +hours, and go and pay up every cent of his indebtedness, then enter on a +dazzling spree that finished the last of his treasure before the night +was gone. And the next day he bought his groceries on credit as usual, +and shouldered his pan and shovel and went off to the hills hunting +pockets again happy and content. This is the most fascinating of all the +different kinds of mining, and furnishes a very handsome percentage of +victims to the lunatic asylum. + +Pocket hunting is an ingenious process. You take a spadeful of earth +from the hill-side and put it in a large tin pan and dissolve and wash it +gradually away till nothing is left but a teaspoonful of fine sediment. +Whatever gold was in that earth has remained, because, being the +heaviest, it has sought the bottom. Among the sediment you will find +half a dozen yellow particles no larger than pin-heads. You are +delighted. You move off to one side and wash another pan. If you find +gold again, you move to one side further, and wash a third pan. If you +find no gold this time, you are delighted again, because you know you are +on the right scent. + +You lay an imaginary plan, shaped like a fan, with its handle up the +hill--for just where the end of the handle is, you argue that the rich +deposit lies hidden, whose vagrant grains of gold have escaped and been +washed down the hill, spreading farther and farther apart as they +wandered. And so you proceed up the hill, washing the earth and +narrowing your lines every time the absence of gold in the pan shows that +you are outside the spread of the fan; and at last, twenty yards up the +hill your lines have converged to a point--a single foot from that point +you cannot find any gold. Your breath comes short and quick, you are +feverish with excitement; the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you +pay no attention; friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burn down, +they are nothing to you; you sweat and dig and delve with a frantic +interest--and all at once you strike it! Up comes a spadeful of earth +and quartz that is all lovely with soiled lumps and leaves and sprays of +gold. Sometimes that one spadeful is all--$500. Sometimes the nest +contains $10,000, and it takes you three or four days to get it all out. +The pocket-miners tell of one nest that yielded $60,000 and two men +exhausted it in two weeks, and then sold the ground for $10,000 to a +party who never got $300 out of it afterward. + +The hogs are good pocket hunters. All the summer they root around the +bushes, and turn up a thousand little piles of dirt, and then the miners +long for the rains; for the rains beat upon these little piles and wash +them down and expose the gold, possibly right over a pocket. Two pockets +were found in this way by the same man in one day. One had $5,000 in it +and the other $8,000. That man could appreciate it, for he hadn't had a +cent for about a year. + +In Tuolumne lived two miners who used to go to the neighboring village in +the afternoon and return every night with household supplies. Part of +the distance they traversed a trail, and nearly always sat down to rest +on a great boulder that lay beside the path. In the course of thirteen +years they had worn that boulder tolerably smooth, sitting on it. By and +by two vagrant Mexicans came along and occupied the seat. They began to +amuse themselves by chipping off flakes from the boulder with a +sledge-hammer. They examined one of these flakes and found it rich with +gold. That boulder paid them $800 afterward. But the aggravating +circumstance was that these "Greasers" knew that there must be more gold +where that boulder came from, and so they went panning up the hill and +found what was probably the richest pocket that region has yet produced. +It took three months to exhaust it, and it yielded $120,000. The two +American miners who used to sit on the boulder are poor yet, and they +take turn about in getting up early in the morning to curse those +Mexicans--and when it comes down to pure ornamental cursing, the native +American is gifted above the sons of men. + +I have dwelt at some length upon this matter of pocket mining because it +is a subject that is seldom referred to in print, and therefore I judged +that it would have for the reader that interest which naturally attaches +to novelty. + + + + +CHAPTER LXI. + +One of my comrades there--another of those victims of eighteen years of +unrequited toil and blighted hopes--was one of the gentlest spirits that +ever bore its patient cross in a weary exile: grave and simple Dick +Baker, pocket-miner of Dead-House Gulch.--He was forty-six, gray as a +rat, earnest, thoughtful, slenderly educated, slouchily dressed and +clay-soiled, but his heart was finer metal than any gold his shovel ever +brought to light--than any, indeed, that ever was mined or minted. + +Whenever he was out of luck and a little down-hearted, he would fall to +mourning over the loss of a wonderful cat he used to own (for where women +and children are not, men of kindly impulses take up with pets, for they +must love something). And he always spoke of the strange sagacity of +that cat with the air of a man who believed in his secret heart that +there was something human about it--may be even supernatural. + +I heard him talking about this animal once. He said: + +"Gentlemen, I used to have a cat here, by the name of Tom Quartz, which +you'd a took an interest in I reckon--most any body would. I had him +here eight year--and he was the remarkablest cat I ever see. He was a +large gray one of the Tom specie, an' he had more hard, natchral sense +than any man in this camp--'n' a power of dignity--he wouldn't let the +Gov'ner of Californy be familiar with him. He never ketched a rat in his +life--'peared to be above it. He never cared for nothing but mining. +He knowed more about mining, that cat did, than any man I ever, ever see. +You couldn't tell him noth'n 'bout placer diggin's--'n' as for pocket +mining, why he was just born for it. + +"He would dig out after me an' Jim when we went over the hills +prospect'n', and he would trot along behind us for as much as five mile, +if we went so fur. An' he had the best judgment about mining ground--why +you never see anything like it. When we went to work, he'd scatter a +glance around, 'n' if he didn't think much of the indications, he would +give a look as much as to say, 'Well, I'll have to get you to excuse me,' +'n' without another word he'd hyste his nose into the air 'n' shove for +home. But if the ground suited him, he would lay low 'n' keep dark till +the first pan was washed, 'n' then he would sidle up 'n' take a look, an' +if there was about six or seven grains of gold he was satisfied--he +didn't want no better prospect 'n' that--'n' then he would lay down on +our coats and snore like a steamboat till we'd struck the pocket, an' +then get up 'n' superintend. He was nearly lightnin' on superintending. + +"Well, bye an' bye, up comes this yer quartz excitement. Every body was +into it--every body was pick'n' 'n' blast'n' instead of shovelin' dirt on +the hill side--every body was put'n' down a shaft instead of scrapin' the +surface. Noth'n' would do Jim, but we must tackle the ledges, too, 'n' +so we did. We commenced put'n' down a shaft, 'n' Tom Quartz he begin to +wonder what in the Dickens it was all about. He hadn't ever seen any +mining like that before, 'n' he was all upset, as you may say--he +couldn't come to a right understanding of it no way--it was too many for +him. He was down on it, too, you bet you--he was down on it powerful +--'n' always appeared to consider it the cussedest foolishness out. But +that cat, you know, was always agin new fangled arrangements--somehow he +never could abide'em. You know how it is with old habits. But by an' by +Tom Quartz begin to git sort of reconciled a little, though he never +could altogether understand that eternal sinkin' of a shaft an' never +pannin' out any thing. At last he got to comin' down in the shaft, +hisself, to try to cipher it out. An' when he'd git the blues, 'n' feel +kind o'scruffy, 'n' aggravated 'n' disgusted--knowin' as he did, that the +bills was runnin' up all the time an' we warn't makin' a cent--he would +curl up on a gunny sack in the corner an' go to sleep. Well, one day +when the shaft was down about eight foot, the rock got so hard that we +had to put in a blast--the first blast'n' we'd ever done since Tom Quartz +was born. An' then we lit the fuse 'n' clumb out 'n' got off 'bout fifty +yards--'n' forgot 'n' left Tom Quartz sound asleep on the gunny sack. + +"In 'bout a minute we seen a puff of smoke bust up out of the hole, 'n' +then everything let go with an awful crash, 'n' about four million ton of +rocks 'n' dirt 'n' smoke 'n; splinters shot up 'bout a mile an' a half +into the air, an' by George, right in the dead centre of it was old Tom +Quartz a goin' end over end, an' a snortin' an' a sneez'n', an' a clawin' +an' a reachin' for things like all possessed. But it warn't no use, you +know, it warn't no use. An' that was the last we see of him for about +two minutes 'n' a half, an' then all of a sudden it begin to rain rocks +and rubbage, an' directly he come down ker-whop about ten foot off f'm +where we stood Well, I reckon he was p'raps the orneriest lookin' beast +you ever see. One ear was sot back on his neck, 'n' his tail was stove +up, 'n' his eye-winkers was swinged off, 'n' he was all blacked up with +powder an' smoke, an' all sloppy with mud 'n' slush f'm one end to the +other. + +"Well sir, it warn't no use to try to apologize--we couldn't say a word. +He took a sort of a disgusted look at hisself, 'n' then he looked at us +--an' it was just exactly the same as if he had said--'Gents, may be you +think it's smart to take advantage of a cat that 'ain't had no experience +of quartz minin', but I think different'--an' then he turned on his heel +'n' marched off home without ever saying another word. + +"That was jest his style. An' may be you won't believe it, but after +that you never see a cat so prejudiced agin quartz mining as what he was. +An' by an' bye when he did get to goin' down in the shaft agin, you'd 'a +been astonished at his sagacity. The minute we'd tetch off a blast 'n' +the fuse'd begin to sizzle, he'd give a look as much as to say: 'Well, +I'll have to git you to excuse me,' an' it was surpris'n' the way he'd +shin out of that hole 'n' go f'r a tree. Sagacity? It ain't no name for +it. 'Twas inspiration!" + +I said, "Well, Mr. Baker, his prejudice against quartz-mining was +remarkable, considering how he came by it. Couldn't you ever cure him of +it?" + +"Cure him! No! When Tom Quartz was sot once, he was always sot--and you +might a blowed him up as much as three million times 'n' you'd never a +broken him of his cussed prejudice agin quartz mining." + +The affection and the pride that lit up Baker's face when he delivered +this tribute to the firmness of his humble friend of other days, will +always be a vivid memory with me. + +At the end of two months we had never "struck" a pocket. We had panned +up and down the hillsides till they looked plowed like a field; we could +have put in a crop of grain, then, but there would have been no way to +get it to market. We got many good "prospects," but when the gold gave +out in the pan and we dug down, hoping and longing, we found only +emptiness--the pocket that should have been there was as barren as our +own.--At last we shouldered our pans and shovels and struck out over the +hills to try new localities. We prospected around Angel's Camp, in +Calaveras county, during three weeks, but had no success. Then we +wandered on foot among the mountains, sleeping under the trees at night, +for the weather was mild, but still we remained as centless as the last +rose of summer. That is a poor joke, but it is in pathetic harmony with +the circumstances, since we were so poor ourselves. In accordance with +the custom of the country, our door had always stood open and our board +welcome to tramping miners--they drifted along nearly every day, dumped +their paust shovels by the threshold and took "pot luck" with us--and now +on our own tramp we never found cold hospitality. + +Our wanderings were wide and in many directions; and now I could give the +reader a vivid description of the Big Trees and the marvels of the Yo +Semite--but what has this reader done to me that I should persecute him? +I will deliver him into the hands of less conscientious tourists and take +his blessing. Let me be charitable, though I fail in all virtues else. + +Note: Some of the phrases in the above are mining technicalities, purely, +and may be a little obscure to the general reader. In "placer diggings" +the gold is scattered all through the surface dirt; in "pocket" diggings +it is concentrated in one little spot; in "quartz" the gold is in a +solid, continuous vein of rock, enclosed between distinct walls of some +other kind of stone--and this is the most laborious and expensive of all +the different kinds of mining. "Prospecting" is hunting for a "placer"; +"indications" are signs of its presence; "panning out" refers to the +washing process by which the grains of gold are separated from the dirt; +a "prospect" is what one finds in the first panful of dirt--and its value +determines whether it is a good or a bad prospect, and whether it is +worth while to tarry there or seek further. + + + + +CHAPTER LXII. + +After a three months' absence, I found myself in San Francisco again, +without a cent. When my credit was about exhausted, (for I had become +too mean and lazy, now, to work on a morning paper, and there were no +vacancies on the evening journals,) I was created San Francisco +correspondent of the Enterprise, and at the end of five months I was out +of debt, but my interest in my work was gone; for my correspondence being +a daily one, without rest or respite, I got unspeakably tired of it. +I wanted another change. The vagabond instinct was strong upon me. +Fortune favored and I got a new berth and a delightful one. It was to go +down to the Sandwich Islands and write some letters for the Sacramento +Union, an excellent journal and liberal with employees. + +We sailed in the propeller Ajax, in the middle of winter. The almanac +called it winter, distinctly enough, but the weather was a compromise +between spring and summer. Six days out of port, it became summer +altogether. We had some thirty passengers; among them a cheerful soul +by the name of Williams, and three sea-worn old whaleship captains going +down to join their vessels. These latter played euchre in the smoking +room day and night, drank astonishing quantities of raw whisky without +being in the least affected by it, and were the happiest people I think +I ever saw. And then there was "the old Admiral--" a retired whaleman. +He was a roaring, terrific combination of wind and lightning and thunder, +and earnest, whole-souled profanity. But nevertheless he was +tender-hearted as a girl. He was a raving, deafening, devastating +typhoon, laying waste the cowering seas but with an unvexed refuge in the +centre where all comers were safe and at rest. Nobody could know the +"Admiral" without liking him; and in a sudden and dire emergency I think +no friend of his would know which to choose--to be cursed by him or +prayed for by a less efficient person. + +His Title of "Admiral" was more strictly "official" than any ever worn by +a naval officer before or since, perhaps--for it was the voluntary +offering of a whole nation, and came direct from the people themselves +without any intermediate red tape--the people of the Sandwich Islands. +It was a title that came to him freighted with affection, and honor, and +appreciation of his unpretending merit. And in testimony of the +genuineness of the title it was publicly ordained that an exclusive flag +should be devised for him and used solely to welcome his coming and wave +him God-speed in his going. From that time forth, whenever his ship was +signaled in the offing, or he catted his anchor and stood out to sea, +that ensign streamed from the royal halliards on the parliament house and +the nation lifted their hats to it with spontaneous accord. + +Yet he had never fired a gun or fought a battle in his life. When I knew +him on board the Ajax, he was seventy-two years old and had plowed the +salt water sixty-one of them. For sixteen years he had gone in and out +of the harbor of Honolulu in command of a whaleship, and for sixteen more +had been captain of a San Francisco and Sandwich Island passenger packet +and had never had an accident or lost a vessel. The simple natives knew +him for a friend who never failed them, and regarded him as children +regard a father. It was a dangerous thing to oppress them when the +roaring Admiral was around. + +Two years before I knew the Admiral, he had retired from the sea on a +competence, and had sworn a colossal nine-jointed oath that he would +"never go within smelling distance of the salt water again as long as he +lived." And he had conscientiously kept it. That is to say, he +considered he had kept it, and it would have been more than dangerous to +suggest to him, even in the gentlest way, that making eleven long sea +voyages, as a passenger, during the two years that had transpired since +he "retired," was only keeping the general spirit of it and not the +strict letter. + +The Admiral knew only one narrow line of conduct to pursue in any and all +cases where there was a fight, and that was to shoulder his way straight +in without an inquiry as to the rights or the merits of it, and take the +part of the weaker side.--And this was the reason why he was always sure +to be present at the trial of any universally execrated criminal to +oppress and intimidate the jury with a vindictive pantomime of what he +would do to them if he ever caught them out of the box. And this was why +harried cats and outlawed dogs that knew him confidently took sanctuary +under his chair in time of trouble. In the beginning he was the most +frantic and bloodthirsty Union man that drew breath in the shadow of the +Flag; but the instant the Southerners began to go down before the sweep +of the Northern armies, he ran up the Confederate colors and from that +time till the end was a rampant and inexorable secessionist. + +He hated intemperance with a more uncompromising animosity than any +individual I have ever met, of either sex; and he was never tired of +storming against it and beseeching friends and strangers alike to be wary +and drink with moderation. And yet if any creature had been guileless +enough to intimate that his absorbing nine gallons of "straight" whiskey +during our voyage was any fraction short of rigid or inflexible +abstemiousness, in that self-same moment the old man would have spun him +to the uttermost parts of the earth in the whirlwind of his wrath. Mind, +I am not saying his whisky ever affected his head or his legs, for it did +not, in even the slightest degree. He was a capacious container, but he +did not hold enough for that. He took a level tumblerful of whisky every +morning before he put his clothes on--"to sweeten his bilgewater," he +said.--He took another after he got the most of his clothes on, "to +settle his mind and give him his bearings." He then shaved, and put on a +clean shirt; after which he recited the Lord's Prayer in a fervent, +thundering bass that shook the ship to her kelson and suspended all +conversation in the main cabin. Then, at this stage, being invariably +"by the head," or "by the stern," or "listed to port or starboard," he +took one more to "put him on an even keel so that he would mind his +hellum and not miss stays and go about, every time he came up in the +wind."--And now, his state-room door swung open and the sun of his +benignant face beamed redly out upon men and women and children, and he +roared his "Shipmets a'hoy!" in a way that was calculated to wake the +dead and precipitate the final resurrection; and forth he strode, a +picture to look at and a presence to enforce attention. Stalwart and +portly; not a gray hair; broadbrimmed slouch hat; semi-sailor toggery of +blue navy flannel--roomy and ample; a stately expanse of shirt-front and +a liberal amount of black silk neck-cloth tied with a sailor knot; large +chain and imposing seals impending from his fob; awe-inspiring feet, and +"a hand like the hand of Providence," as his whaling brethren expressed +it; wrist-bands and sleeves pushed back half way to the elbow, out of +respect for the warm weather, and exposing hairy arms, gaudy with red and +blue anchors, ships, and goddesses of liberty tattooed in India ink. +But these details were only secondary matters--his face was the lodestone +that chained the eye. It was a sultry disk, glowing determinedly out +through a weather beaten mask of mahogany, and studded with warts, seamed +with scars, "blazed" all over with unfailing fresh slips of the razor; +and with cheery eyes, under shaggy brows, contemplating the world from +over the back of a gnarled crag of a nose that loomed vast and lonely out +of the undulating immensity that spread away from its foundations. +At his heels frisked the darling of his bachelor estate, his terrier +"Fan," a creature no larger than a squirrel. The main part of his daily +life was occupied in looking after "Fan," in a motherly way, and +doctoring her for a hundred ailments which existed only in his +imagination. + +The Admiral seldom read newspapers; and when he did he never believed +anything they said. He read nothing, and believed in nothing, but "The +Old Guard," a secession periodical published in New York. He carried a +dozen copies of it with him, always, and referred to them for all +required information. If it was not there, he supplied it himself, out +of a bountiful fancy, inventing history, names, dates, and every thing +else necessary to make his point good in an argument. Consequently he +was a formidable antagonist in a dispute. Whenever he swung clear of the +record and began to create history, the enemy was helpless and had to +surrender. Indeed, the enemy could not keep from betraying some little +spark of indignation at his manufactured history--and when it came to +indignation, that was the Admiral's very "best hold." He was always +ready for a political argument, and if nobody started one he would do it +himself. With his third retort his temper would begin to rise, and +within five minutes he would be blowing a gale, and within fifteen his +smoking-room audience would be utterly stormed away and the old man left +solitary and alone, banging the table with his fist, kicking the chairs, +and roaring a hurricane of profanity. It got so, after a while, that +whenever the Admiral approached, with politics in his eye, the passengers +would drop out with quiet accord, afraid to meet him; and he would camp +on a deserted field. + +But he found his match at last, and before a full company. At one time +or another, everybody had entered the lists against him and been routed, +except the quiet passenger Williams. He had never been able to get an +expression of opinion out of him on politics. But now, just as the +Admiral drew near the door and the company were about to slip out, +Williams said: + +"Admiral, are you certain about that circumstance concerning the +clergymen you mentioned the other day?"--referring to a piece of the +Admiral's manufactured history. + +Every one was amazed at the man's rashness. The idea of deliberately +inviting annihilation was a thing incomprehensible. The retreat came to +a halt; then everybody sat down again wondering, to await the upshot of +it. The Admiral himself was as surprised as any one. He paused in the +door, with his red handkerchief half raised to his sweating face, and +contemplated the daring reptile in the corner. + +"Certain of it? Am I certain of it? Do you think I've been lying about +it? What do you take me for? Anybody that don't know that circumstance, +don't know anything; a child ought to know it. Read up your history! +Read it up-----, and don't come asking a man if he's certain about a bit +of ABC stuff that the very southern niggers know all about." + +Here the Admiral's fires began to wax hot, the atmosphere thickened, the +coming earthquake rumbled, he began to thunder and lighten. Within three +minutes his volcano was in full irruption and he was discharging flames +and ashes of indignation, belching black volumes of foul history aloft, +and vomiting red-hot torrents of profanity from his crater. Meantime +Williams sat silent, and apparently deeply and earnestly interested in +what the old man was saying. By and by, when the lull came, he said in +the most deferential way, and with the gratified air of a man who has had +a mystery cleared up which had been puzzling him uncomfortably: + +"Now I understand it. I always thought I knew that piece of history well +enough, but was still afraid to trust it, because there was not that +convincing particularity about it that one likes to have in history; but +when you mentioned every name, the other day, and every date, and every +little circumstance, in their just order and sequence, I said to myself, +this sounds something like--this is history--this is putting it in a +shape that gives a man confidence; and I said to myself afterward, I will +just ask the Admiral if he is perfectly certain about the details, and if +he is I will come out and thank him for clearing this matter up for me. +And that is what I want to do now--for until you set that matter right it +was nothing but just a confusion in my mind, without head or tail to it." + +Nobody ever saw the Admiral look so mollified before, and so pleased. +Nobody had ever received his bogus history as gospel before; its +genuineness had always been called in question either by words or looks; +but here was a man that not only swallowed it all down, but was grateful +for the dose. He was taken a back; he hardly knew what to say; even his +profanity failed him. Now, Williams continued, modestly and earnestly: + +"But Admiral, in saying that this was the first stone thrown, and that +this precipitated the war, you have overlooked a circumstance which you +are perfectly familiar with, but which has escaped your memory. Now I +grant you that what you have stated is correct in every detail--to wit: +that on the 16th of October, 1860, two Massachusetts clergymen, named +Waite and Granger, went in disguise to the house of John Moody, in +Rockport, at dead of night, and dragged forth two southern women and +their two little children, and after tarring and feathering them conveyed +them to Boston and burned them alive in the State House square; and I +also grant your proposition that this deed is what led to the secession +of South Carolina on the 20th of December following. Very well." [Here +the company were pleasantly surprised to hear Williams proceed to come +back at the Admiral with his own invincible weapon--clean, pure, +manufactured history, without a word of truth in it.] "Very well, I say. +But Admiral, why overlook the Willis and Morgan case in South Carolina? +You are too well informed a man not to know all about that circumstance. +Your arguments and your conversations have shown you to be intimately +conversant with every detail of this national quarrel. You develop +matters of history every day that show plainly that you are no smatterer +in it, content to nibble about the surface, but a man who has searched +the depths and possessed yourself of everything that has a bearing upon +the great question. Therefore, let me just recall to your mind that +Willis and Morgan case--though I see by your face that the whole thing is +already passing through your memory at this moment. On the 12th of +August, 1860, two months before the Waite and Granger affair, two South +Carolina clergymen, named John H. Morgan and Winthrop L. Willis, one a +Methodist and the other an Old School Baptist, disguised themselves, and +went at midnight to the house of a planter named Thompson--Archibald F. +Thompson, Vice President under Thomas Jefferson,--and took thence, at +midnight, his widowed aunt, (a Northern woman,) and her adopted child, an +orphan--named Mortimer Highie, afflicted with epilepsy and suffering at +the time from white swelling on one of his legs, and compelled to walk on +crutches in consequence; and the two ministers, in spite of the pleadings +of the victims, dragged them to the bush, tarred and feathered them, and +afterward burned them at the stake in the city of Charleston. You +remember perfectly well what a stir it made; you remember perfectly well +that even the Charleston Courier stigmatized the act as being unpleasant, +of questionable propriety, and scarcely justifiable, and likewise that it +would not be matter of surprise if retaliation ensued. And you remember +also, that this thing was the cause of the Massachusetts outrage. Who, +indeed, were the two Massachusetts ministers? and who were the two +Southern women they burned? I do not need to remind you, Admiral, with +your intimate knowledge of history, that Waite was the nephew of the +woman burned in Charleston; that Granger was her cousin in the second +degree, and that the woman they burned in Boston was the wife of John H. +Morgan, and the still loved but divorced wife of Winthrop L. Willis. +Now, Admiral, it is only fair that you should acknowledge that the first +provocation came from the Southern preachers and that the Northern ones +were justified in retaliating. In your arguments you never yet have +shown the least disposition to withhold a just verdict or be in anywise +unfair, when authoritative history condemned your position, and therefore +I have no hesitation in asking you to take the original blame from the +Massachusetts ministers, in this matter, and transfer it to the South +Carolina clergymen where it justly belongs." + +The Admiral was conquered. This sweet spoken creature who swallowed his +fraudulent history as if it were the bread of life; basked in his furious +blasphemy as if it were generous sunshine; found only calm, even-handed +justice in his rampart partisanship; and flooded him with invented +history so sugarcoated with flattery and deference that there was no +rejecting it, was "too many" for him. He stammered some awkward, profane +sentences about the-----Willis and Morgan business having escaped his +memory, but that he "remembered it now," and then, under pretence of +giving Fan some medicine for an imaginary cough, drew out of the battle +and went away, a vanquished man. Then cheers and laughter went up, and +Williams, the ship's benefactor was a hero. The news went about the +vessel, champagne was ordered, and enthusiastic reception instituted in +the smoking room, and everybody flocked thither to shake hands with the +conqueror. The wheelman said afterward, that the Admiral stood up behind +the pilot house and "ripped and cursed all to himself" till he loosened +the smokestack guys and becalmed the mainsail. + +The Admiral's power was broken. After that, if he began argument, +somebody would bring Williams, and the old man would grow weak and begin +to quiet down at once. And as soon as he was done, Williams in his +dulcet, insinuating way, would invent some history (referring for proof, +to the old man's own excellent memory and to copies of "The Old Guard" +known not to be in his possession) that would turn the tables completely +and leave the Admiral all abroad and helpless. By and by he came to so +dread Williams and his gilded tongue that he would stop talking when he +saw him approach, and finally ceased to mention politics altogether, and +from that time forward there was entire peace and serenity in the ship. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIII. + +On a certain bright morning the Islands hove in sight, lying low on the +lonely sea, and everybody climbed to the upper deck to look. After two +thousand miles of watery solitude the vision was a welcome one. As we +approached, the imposing promontory of Diamond Head rose up out of the +ocean its rugged front softened by the hazy distance, and presently the +details of the land began to make themselves manifest: first the line of +beach; then the plumed coacoanut trees of the tropics; then cabins of the +natives; then the white town of Honolulu, said to contain between twelve +and fifteen thousand inhabitants spread over a dead level; with streets +from twenty to thirty feet wide, solid and level as a floor, most of them +straight as a line and few as crooked as a corkscrew. + +The further I traveled through the town the better I liked it. +Every step revealed a new contrast--disclosed something I was +unaccustomed to. In place of the grand mud-colored brown fronts of +San Francisco, I saw dwellings built of straw, adobies, and cream-colored +pebble-and-shell-conglomerated coral, cut into oblong blocks and laid in +cement; also a great number of neat white cottages, with green +window-shutters; in place of front yards like billiard-tables with iron +fences around them, I saw these homes surrounded by ample yards, thickly +clad with green grass, and shaded by tall trees, through whose dense +foliage the sun could scarcely penetrate; in place of the customary +geranium, calla lily, etc., languishing in dust and general debility, I +saw luxurious banks and thickets of flowers, fresh as a meadow after a +rain, and glowing with the richest dyes; in place of the dingy horrors of +San Francisco's pleasure grove, the "Willows," I saw huge-bodied, +wide-spreading forest trees, with strange names and stranger appearance +--trees that cast a shadow like a thunder-cloud, and were able to stand +alone without being tied to green poles; in place of gold fish, wiggling +around in glass globes, assuming countless shades and degrees of +distortion through the magnifying and diminishing qualities of their +transparent prison houses, I saw cats--Tom-cats, Mary Ann cats, +long-tailed cats, bob-tailed cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyed +cats, cross-eyed cats, gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, +striped cats, spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual +cats, groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, regiments of +cats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of +them sleek, fat, lazy and sound asleep. I looked on a multitude of +people, some white, in white coats, vests, pantaloons, even white cloth +shoes, made snowy with chalk duly laid on every morning; but the majority +of the people were almost as dark as negroes--women with comely features, +fine black eyes, rounded forms, inclining to the voluptuous, clad in a +single bright red or white garment that fell free and unconfined from +shoulder to heel, long black hair falling loose, gypsy hats, encircled +with wreaths of natural flowers of a brilliant carmine tint; plenty of +dark men in various costumes, and some with nothing on but a battered +stove-pipe hat tilted on the nose, and a very scant breech-clout; +--certain smoke-dried children were clothed in nothing but sunshine +--a very neat fitting and picturesque apparel indeed. + +In place of roughs and rowdies staring and blackguarding on the corners, +I saw long-haired, saddle-colored Sandwich Island maidens sitting on the +ground in the shade of corner houses, gazing indolently at whatever or +whoever happened along; instead of wretched cobble-stone pavements, I +walked on a firm foundation of coral, built up from the bottom of the sea +by the absurd but persevering insect of that name, with a light layer of +lava and cinders overlying the coral, belched up out of fathomless +perdition long ago through the seared and blackened crater that stands +dead and harmless in the distance now; instead of cramped and crowded +street-cars, I met dusky native women sweeping by, free as the wind, on +fleet horses and astride, with gaudy riding-sashes, streaming like +banners behind them; instead of the combined stenches of Chinadom and +Brannan street slaughter-houses, I breathed the balmy fragrance of +jessamine, oleander, and the Pride of India; in place of the hurry and +bustle and noisy confusion of San Francisco, I moved in the midst of a +Summer calm as tranquil as dawn in the Garden of Eden; in place of the +Golden City's skirting sand hills and the placid bay, I saw on the one +side a frame-work of tall, precipitous mountains close at hand, clad in +refreshing green, and cleft by deep, cool, chasm-like valleys--and in +front the grand sweep of the ocean; a brilliant, transparent green near +the shore, bound and bordered by a long white line of foamy spray dashing +against the reef, and further out the dead blue water of the deep sea, +flecked with "white caps," and in the far horizon a single, lonely sail +--a mere accent-mark to emphasize a slumberous calm and a solitude that +were without sound or limit. When the sun sunk down--the one intruder +from other realms and persistent in suggestions of them--it was tranced +luxury to sit in the perfumed air and forget that there was any world but +these enchanted islands. + +It was such ecstacy to dream, and dream--till you got a bite. + +A scorpion bite. Then the first duty was to get up out of the grass and +kill the scorpion; and the next to bathe the bitten place with alcohol or +brandy; and the next to resolve to keep out of the grass in future. Then +came an adjournment to the bed-chamber and the pastime of writing up the +day's journal with one hand and the destruction of mosquitoes with the +other--a whole community of them at a slap. Then, observing an enemy +approaching,--a hairy tarantula on stilts--why not set the spittoon on +him? It is done, and the projecting ends of his paws give a luminous +idea of the magnitude of his reach. Then to bed and become a promenade +for a centipede with forty-two legs on a side and every foot hot enough +to burn a hole through a raw-hide. More soaking with alcohol, and a +resolution to examine the bed before entering it, in future. Then wait, +and suffer, till all the mosquitoes in the neighborhood have crawled in +under the bar, then slip out quickly, shut them in and sleep peacefully +on the floor till morning. Meantime it is comforting to curse the +tropics in occasional wakeful intervals. + +We had an abundance of fruit in Honolulu, of course. Oranges, +pine-apples, bananas, strawberries, lemons, limes, mangoes, guavas, +melons, and a rare and curious luxury called the chirimoya, which is +deliciousness itself. Then there is the tamarind. I thought tamarinds +were made to eat, but that was probably not the idea. I ate several, and +it seemed to me that they were rather sour that year. They pursed up my +lips, till they resembled the stem-end of a tomato, and I had to take my +sustenance through a quill for twenty-four hours. + +They sharpened my teeth till I could have shaved with them, and gave them +a "wire edge" that I was afraid would stay; but a citizen said "no, it +will come off when the enamel does"--which was comforting, at any rate. +I found, afterward, that only strangers eat tamarinds--but they only eat +them once. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIV. + +In my diary of our third day in Honolulu, I find this: + +I am probably the most sensitive man in Hawaii to-night--especially about +sitting down in the presence of my betters. I have ridden fifteen or +twenty miles on horse-back since 5 P.M. and to tell the honest truth, I +have a delicacy about sitting down at all. + +An excursion to Diamond Head and the King's Coacoanut Grove was planned +to-day--time, 4:30 P.M.--the party to consist of half a dozen gentlemen +and three ladies. They all started at the appointed hour except myself. +I was at the Government prison, (with Captain Fish and another +whaleship-skipper, Captain Phillips,) and got so interested in its +examination that I did not notice how quickly the time was passing. +Somebody remarked that it was twenty minutes past five o'clock, and that +woke me up. It was a fortunate circumstance that Captain Phillips was +along with his "turn out," as he calls a top-buggy that Captain Cook +brought here in 1778, and a horse that was here when Captain Cook came. +Captain Phillips takes a just pride in his driving and in the speed of +his horse, and to his passion for displaying them I owe it that we were +only sixteen minutes coming from the prison to the American Hotel--a +distance which has been estimated to be over half a mile. But it took +some fearful driving. The Captain's whip came down fast, and the blows +started so much dust out of the horse's hide that during the last half of +the journey we rode through an impenetrable fog, and ran by a pocket +compass in the hands of Captain Fish, a whaler of twenty-six years +experience, who sat there through the perilous voyage as self-possessed +as if he had been on the euchre-deck of his own ship, and calmly said, +"Port your helm--port," from time to time, and "Hold her a little free +--steady--so--so," and "Luff--hard down to starboard!" and never once +lost his presence of mind or betrayed the least anxiety by voice or +manner. When we came to anchor at last, and Captain Phillips looked at +his watch and said, "Sixteen minutes--I told you it was in her! that's +over three miles an hour!" I could see he felt entitled to a compliment, +and so I said I had never seen lightning go like that horse. And I never +had. + +The landlord of the American said the party had been gone nearly an hour, +but that he could give me my choice of several horses that could overtake +them. I said, never mind--I preferred a safe horse to a fast one--I +would like to have an excessively gentle horse--a horse with no spirit +whatever--a lame one, if he had such a thing. Inside of five minutes I +was mounted, and perfectly satisfied with my outfit. I had no time to +label him "This is a horse," and so if the public took him for a sheep I +cannot help it. I was satisfied, and that was the main thing. I could +see that he had as many fine points as any man's horse, and so I hung my +hat on one of them, behind the saddle, and swabbed the perspiration from +my face and started. I named him after this island, "Oahu" (pronounced +O-waw-hee). The first gate he came to he started in; I had neither whip +nor spur, and so I simply argued the case with him. He resisted +argument, but ultimately yielded to insult and abuse. He backed out of +that gate and steered for another one on the other side of the street. +I triumphed by my former process. Within the next six hundred yards he +crossed the street fourteen times and attempted thirteen gates, and in +the meantime the tropical sun was beating down and threatening to cave +the top of my head in, and I was literally dripping with perspiration. +He abandoned the gate business after that and went along peaceably +enough, but absorbed in meditation. I noticed this latter circumstance, +and it soon began to fill me with apprehension. I said to my self, this +creature is planning some new outrage, some fresh deviltry or other--no +horse ever thought over a subject so profoundly as this one is doing just +for nothing. The more this thing preyed upon my mind the more uneasy I +became, until the suspense became almost unbearable and I dismounted to +see if there was anything wild in his eye--for I had heard that the eye +of this noblest of our domestic animals is very expressive. + +I cannot describe what a load of anxiety was lifted from my mind when I +found that he was only asleep. I woke him up and started him into a +faster walk, and then the villainy of his nature came out again. He +tried to climb over a stone wall, five or six feet high. I saw that I +must apply force to this horse, and that I might as well begin first as +last. I plucked a stout switch from a tamarind tree, and the moment he +saw it, he surrendered. He broke into a convulsive sort of a canter, +which had three short steps in it and one long one, and reminded me +alternately of the clattering shake of the great earthquake, and the +sweeping plunging of the Ajax in a storm. + +And now there can be no fitter occasion than the present to pronounce a +left-handed blessing upon the man who invented the American saddle. +There is no seat to speak of about it--one might as well sit in a shovel +--and the stirrups are nothing but an ornamental nuisance. If I were to +write down here all the abuse I expended on those stirrups, it would make +a large book, even without pictures. Sometimes I got one foot so far +through, that the stirrup partook of the nature of an anklet; sometimes +both feet were through, and I was handcuffed by the legs; and sometimes +my feet got clear out and left the stirrups wildly dangling about my +shins. Even when I was in proper position and carefully balanced upon +the balls of my feet, there was no comfort in it, on account of my +nervous dread that they were going to slip one way or the other in a +moment. But the subject is too exasperating to write about. + +A mile and a half from town, I came to a grove of tall cocoanut trees, +with clean, branchless stems reaching straight up sixty or seventy feet +and topped with a spray of green foliage sheltering clusters of +cocoa-nuts--not more picturesque than a forest of collossal ragged +parasols, with bunches of magnified grapes under them, would be. + +I once heard a gouty northern invalid say that a cocoanut tree might be +poetical, possibly it was; but it looked like a feather-duster struck by +lightning. I think that describes it better than a picture--and yet, +without any question, there is something fascinating about a cocoa-nut +tree--and graceful, too. + +About a dozen cottages, some frame and the others of native grass, +nestled sleepily in the shade here and there. The grass cabins are of a +grayish color, are shaped much like our own cottages, only with higher +and steeper roofs usually, and are made of some kind of weed strongly +bound together in bundles. The roofs are very thick, and so are the +walls; the latter have square holes in them for windows. At a little +distance these cabins have a furry appearance, as if they might be made +of bear skins. They are very cool and pleasant inside. The King's flag +was flying from the roof of one of the cottages, and His Majesty was +probably within. He owns the whole concern thereabouts, and passes his +time there frequently, on sultry days "laying off." The spot is called +"The King's Grove." + +Near by is an interesting ruin--the meagre remains of an ancient heathen +temple--a place where human sacrifices were offered up in those old +bygone days when the simple child of nature, yielding momentarily to sin +when sorely tempted, acknowledged his error when calm reflection had +shown it him, and came forward with noble frankness and offered up his +grandmother as an atoning sacrifice--in those old days when the luckless +sinner could keep on cleansing his conscience and achieving periodical +happiness as long as his relations held out; long, long before the +missionaries braved a thousand privations to come and make them +permanently miserable by telling them how beautiful and how blissful a +place heaven is, and how nearly impossible it is to get there; and showed +the poor native how dreary a place perdition is and what unnecessarily +liberal facilities there are for going to it; showed him how, in his +ignorance he had gone and fooled away all his kinfolks to no purpose; +showed him what rapture it is to work all day long for fifty cents to buy +food for next day with, as compared with fishing for pastime and lolling +in the shade through eternal Summer, and eating of the bounty that nobody +labored to provide but Nature. How sad it is to think of the multitudes +who have gone to their graves in this beautiful island and never knew +there was a hell! + +This ancient temple was built of rough blocks of lava, and was simply a +roofless inclosure a hundred and thirty feet long and seventy wide +--nothing but naked walls, very thick, but not much higher than a man's +head. They will last for ages no doubt, if left unmolested. Its three +altars and other sacred appurtenances have crumbled and passed away years +ago. It is said that in the old times thousands of human beings were +slaughtered here, in the presence of naked and howling savages. If these +mute stones could speak, what tales they could tell, what pictures they +could describe, of fettered victims writhing under the knife; of massed +forms straining forward out of the gloom, with ferocious faces lit up by +the sacrificial fires; of the background of ghostly trees; of the dark +pyramid of Diamond Head standing sentinel over the uncanny scene, and the +peaceful moon looking down upon it through rifts in the cloud-rack! + +When Kamehameha (pronounced Ka-may-ha-may-ah) the Great--who was a sort +of a Napoleon in military genius and uniform success--invaded this island +of Oahu three quarters of a century ago, and exterminated the army sent +to oppose him, and took full and final possession of the country, he +searched out the dead body of the King of Oahu, and those of the +principal chiefs, and impaled their heads on the walls of this temple. + +Those were savage times when this old slaughter-house was in its prime. +The King and the chiefs ruled the common herd with a rod of iron; made +them gather all the provisions the masters needed; build all the houses +and temples; stand all the expenses, of whatever kind; take kicks and +cuffs for thanks; drag out lives well flavored with misery, and then +suffer death for trifling offences or yield up their lives on the +sacrificial altars to purchase favors from the gods for their hard +rulers. The missionaries have clothed them, educated them, broken up the +tyrannous authority of their chiefs, and given them freedom and the right +to enjoy whatever their hands and brains produce with equal laws for all, +and punishment for all alike who transgress them. The contrast is so +strong--the benefit conferred upon this people by the missionaries is so +prominent, so palpable and so unquestionable, that the frankest +compliment I can pay them, and the best, is simply to point to the +condition of the Sandwich Islanders of Captain Cook's time, and their +condition to-day. + +Their work speaks for itself. + + + + +CHAPTER LXV. + +By and by, after a rugged climb, we halted on the summit of a hill which +commanded a far-reaching view. The moon rose and flooded mountain and +valley and ocean with a mellow radiance, and out of the shadows of the +foliage the distant lights of Honolulu glinted like an encampment of +fireflies. The air was heavy with the fragrance of flowers. The halt +was brief.--Gayly laughing and talking, the party galloped on, and I +clung to the pommel and cantered after. Presently we came to a place +where no grass grew--a wide expanse of deep sand. They said it was an +old battle ground. All around everywhere, not three feet apart, the +bleached bones of men gleamed white in the moonlight. We picked up a lot +of them for mementoes. I got quite a number of arm bones and leg bones +--of great chiefs, may be, who had fought savagely in that fearful battle +in the old days, when blood flowed like wine where we now stood--and wore +the choicest of them out on Oahu afterward, trying to make him go. All +sorts of bones could be found except skulls; but a citizen said, +irreverently, that there had been an unusual number of "skull-hunters" +there lately--a species of sportsmen I had never heard of before. + +Nothing whatever is known about this place--its story is a secret that +will never be revealed. The oldest natives make no pretense of being +possessed of its history. They say these bones were here when they were +children. They were here when their grandfathers were children--but how +they came here, they can only conjecture. Many people believe this spot +to be an ancient battle-ground, and it is usual to call it so; and they +believe that these skeletons have lain for ages just where their +proprietors fell in the great fight. Other people believe that +Kamehameha I. fought his first battle here. On this point, I have heard +a story, which may have been taken from one of the numerous books which +have been written concerning these islands--I do not know where the +narrator got it. He said that when Kamehameha (who was at first merely a +subordinate chief on the island of Hawaii), landed here, he brought a +large army with him, and encamped at Waikiki. The Oahuans marched +against him, and so confident were they of success that they readily +acceded to a demand of their priests that they should draw a line where +these bones now lie, and take an oath that, if forced to retreat at all, +they would never retreat beyond this boundary. The priests told them +that death and everlasting punishment would overtake any who violated the +oath, and the march was resumed. Kamehameha drove them back step by +step; the priests fought in the front rank and exhorted them both by +voice and inspiriting example to remember their oath--to die, if need be, +but never cross the fatal line. The struggle was manfully maintained, +but at last the chief priest fell, pierced to the heart with a spear, and +the unlucky omen fell like a blight upon the brave souls at his back; +with a triumphant shout the invaders pressed forward--the line was +crossed--the offended gods deserted the despairing army, and, accepting +the doom their perjury had brought upon them, they broke and fled over +the plain where Honolulu stands now--up the beautiful Nuuanu Valley +--paused a moment, hemmed in by precipitous mountains on either hand and +the frightful precipice of the Pari in front, and then were driven over +--a sheer plunge of six hundred feet! + +The story is pretty enough, but Mr. Jarves' excellent history says the +Oahuans were intrenched in Nuuanu Valley; that Kamehameha ousted them, +routed them, pursued them up the valley and drove them over the +precipice. He makes no mention of our bone-yard at all in his book. + +Impressed by the profound silence and repose that rested over the +beautiful landscape, and being, as usual, in the rear, I gave voice to my +thoughts. I said: + +"What a picture is here slumbering in the solemn glory of the moon! How +strong the rugged outlines of the dead volcano stand out against the +clear sky! What a snowy fringe marks the bursting of the surf over the +long, curved reef! How calmly the dim city sleeps yonder in the plain! +How soft the shadows lie upon the stately mountains that border the +dream-haunted Mauoa Valley! What a grand pyramid of billowy clouds +towers above the storied Pari! How the grim warriors of the past seem +flocking in ghostly squadrons to their ancient battlefield again--how the +wails of the dying well up from the--" + +At this point the horse called Oahu sat down in the sand. Sat down to +listen, I suppose. Never mind what he heard, I stopped apostrophising +and convinced him that I was not a man to allow contempt of Court on the +part of a horse. I broke the back-bone of a Chief over his rump and set +out to join the cavalcade again. + +Very considerably fagged out we arrived in town at 9 o'clock at night, +myself in the lead--for when my horse finally came to understand that he +was homeward bound and hadn't far to go, he turned his attention strictly +to business. + +This is a good time to drop in a paragraph of information. There is no +regular livery stable in Honolulu, or, indeed, in any part of the Kingdom +of Hawaii; therefore unless you are acquainted with wealthy residents +(who all have good horses), you must hire animals of the wretchedest +description from the Kanakas. (i.e. natives.) Any horse you hire, even +though it be from a white man, is not often of much account, because it +will be brought in for you from some ranch, and has necessarily been +leading a hard life. If the Kanakas who have been caring for him +(inveterate riders they are) have not ridden him half to death every day +themselves, you can depend upon it they have been doing the same thing by +proxy, by clandestinely hiring him out. At least, so I am informed. The +result is, that no horse has a chance to eat, drink, rest, recuperate, or +look well or feel well, and so strangers go about the Islands mounted as +I was to-day. + +In hiring a horse from a Kanaka, you must have all your eyes about you, +because you can rest satisfied that you are dealing with a shrewd +unprincipled rascal. You may leave your door open and your trunk +unlocked as long as you please, and he will not meddle with your +property; he has no important vices and no inclination to commit robbery +on a large scale; but if he can get ahead of you in the horse business, +he will take a genuine delight in doing it. This traits is +characteristic of horse jockeys, the world over, is it not? He will +overcharge you if he can; he will hire you a fine-looking horse at night +(anybody's--may be the King's, if the royal steed be in convenient view), +and bring you the mate to my Oahu in the morning, and contend that it is +the same animal. If you make trouble, he will get out by saying it was +not himself who made the bargain with you, but his brother, "who went out +in the country this morning." They have always got a "brother" to shift +the responsibility upon. A victim said to one of these fellows one day: + +"But I know I hired the horse of you, because I noticed that scar on your +cheek." + +The reply was not bad: "Oh, yes--yes--my brother all same--we twins!" + +A friend of mine, J. Smith, hired a horse yesterday, the Kanaka +warranting him to be in excellent condition. + +Smith had a saddle and blanket of his own, and he ordered the Kanaka to +put these on the horse. The Kanaka protested that he was perfectly +willing to trust the gentleman with the saddle that was already on the +animal, but Smith refused to use it. The change was made; then Smith +noticed that the Kanaka had only changed the saddles, and had left the +original blanket on the horse; he said he forgot to change the blankets, +and so, to cut the bother short, Smith mounted and rode away. The horse +went lame a mile from town, and afterward got to cutting up some +extraordinary capers. Smith got down and took off the saddle, but the +blanket stuck fast to the horse--glued to a procession of raw places. +The Kanaka's mysterious conduct stood explained. + +Another friend of mine bought a pretty good horse from a native, a day or +two ago, after a tolerably thorough examination of the animal. He +discovered today that the horse was as blind as a bat, in one eye. He +meant to have examined that eye, and came home with a general notion that +he had done it; but he remembers now that every time he made the attempt +his attention was called to something else by his victimizer. + +One more instance, and then I will pass to something else. I am informed +that when a certain Mr. L., a visiting stranger, was here, he bought a +pair of very respectable-looking match horses from a native. They were +in a little stable with a partition through the middle of it--one horse +in each apartment. Mr. L. examined one of them critically through a +window (the Kanaka's "brother" having gone to the country with the key), +and then went around the house and examined the other through a window on +the other side. He said it was the neatest match he had ever seen, and +paid for the horses on the spot. Whereupon the Kanaka departed to join +his brother in the country. The fellow had shamefully swindled L. There +was only one "match" horse, and he had examined his starboard side +through one window and his port side through another! I decline to +believe this story, but I give it because it is worth something as a +fanciful illustration of a fixed fact--namely, that the Kanaka +horse-jockey is fertile in invention and elastic in conscience. + +You can buy a pretty good horse for forty or fifty dollars, and a good +enough horse for all practical purposes for two dollars and a half. I +estimate "Oahu" to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five +cents. A good deal better animal than he is was sold here day before +yesterday for a dollar and seventy-five cents, and sold again to-day for +two dollars and twenty-five cents; Williams bought a handsome and lively +little pony yesterday for ten dollars; and about the best common horse on +the island (and he is a really good one) sold yesterday, with Mexican +saddle and bridle, for seventy dollars--a horse which is well and widely +known, and greatly respected for his speed, good disposition and +everlasting bottom. + +You give your horse a little grain once a day; it comes from San +Francisco, and is worth about two cents a pound; and you give him as much +hay as he wants; it is cut and brought to the market by natives, and is +not very good it is baled into long, round bundles, about the size of a +large man; one of them is stuck by the middle on each end of a six foot +pole, and the Kanaka shoulders the pole and walks about the streets +between the upright bales in search of customers. These hay bales, thus +carried, have a general resemblance to a colossal capital 'H.' + +The hay-bundles cost twenty-five cents apiece, and one will last a horse +about a day. You can get a horse for a song, a week's hay for another +song, and you can turn your animal loose among the luxuriant grass in +your neighbor's broad front yard without a song at all--you do it at +midnight, and stable the beast again before morning. You have been at no +expense thus far, but when you come to buy a saddle and bridle they will +cost you from twenty to thirty-five dollars. You can hire a horse, +saddle and bridle at from seven to ten dollars a week, and the owner will +take care of them at his own expense. + +It is time to close this day's record--bed time. As I prepare for sleep, +a rich voice rises out of the still night, and, far as this ocean rock is +toward the ends of the earth, I recognize a familiar home air. But the +words seem somewhat out of joint: + + +"Waikiki lantoni oe Kaa hooly hooly wawhoo." + +Translated, that means "When we were marching through Georgia." + + + + +CHAPTER LXVI. + +Passing through the market place we saw that feature of Honolulu under +its most favorable auspices--that is, in the full glory of Saturday +afternoon, which is a festive day with the natives. The native girls by +twos and threes and parties of a dozen, and sometimes in whole platoons +and companies, went cantering up and down the neighboring streets astride +of fleet but homely horses, and with their gaudy riding habits streaming +like banners behind them. Such a troop of free and easy riders, in their +natural home, the saddle, makes a gay and graceful spectacle. The riding +habit I speak of is simply a long, broad scarf, like a tavern table cloth +brilliantly colored, wrapped around the loins once, then apparently +passed between the limbs and each end thrown backward over the same, and +floating and flapping behind on both sides beyond the horse's tail like a +couple of fancy flags; then, slipping the stirrup-irons between her toes, +the girl throws her chest for ward, sits up like a Major General and goes +sweeping by like the wind. + +The girls put on all the finery they can on Saturday afternoon--fine +black silk robes; flowing red ones that nearly put your eyes out; others +as white as snow; still others that discount the rainbow; and they wear +their hair in nets, and trim their jaunty hats with fresh flowers, and +encircle their dusky throats with home-made necklaces of the brilliant +vermillion-tinted blossom of the ohia; and they fill the markets and the +adjacent street with their bright presences, and smell like a rag factory +on fire with their offensive cocoanut oil. + +Occasionally you see a heathen from the sunny isles away down in the +South Seas, with his face and neck tatooed till he looks like the +customary mendicant from Washoe who has been blown up in a mine. Some +are tattooed a dead blue color down to the upper lip--masked, as it were +--leaving the natural light yellow skin of Micronesia unstained from +thence down; some with broad marks drawn down from hair to neck, on both +sides of the face, and a strip of the original yellow skin, two inches +wide, down the center--a gridiron with a spoke broken out; and some with +the entire face discolored with the popular mortification tint, relieved +only by one or two thin, wavy threads of natural yellow running across +the face from ear to ear, and eyes twinkling out of this darkness, from +under shadowing hat-brims, like stars in the dark of the moon. + +Moving among the stirring crowds, you come to the poi merchants, +squatting in the shade on their hams, in true native fashion, and +surrounded by purchasers. (The Sandwich Islanders always squat on their +hams, and who knows but they may be the old original "ham sandwiches?" +The thought is pregnant with interest.) The poi looks like common flour +paste, and is kept in large bowls formed of a species of gourd, and +capable of holding from one to three or four gallons. Poi is the chief +article of food among the natives, and is prepared from the taro plant. + +The taro root looks like a thick, or, if you please, a corpulent sweet +potato, in shape, but is of a light purple color when boiled. When +boiled it answers as a passable substitute for bread. The buck Kanakas +bake it under ground, then mash it up well with a heavy lava pestle, mix +water with it until it becomes a paste, set it aside and let if ferment, +and then it is poi--and an unseductive mixture it is, almost tasteless +before it ferments and too sour for a luxury afterward. But nothing is +more nutritious. When solely used, however, it produces acrid humors, a +fact which sufficiently accounts for the humorous character of the +Kanakas. I think there must be as much of a knack in handling poi as +there is in eating with chopsticks. The forefinger is thrust into the +mess and stirred quickly round several times and drawn as quickly out, +thickly coated, just as it it were poulticed; the head is thrown back, +the finger inserted in the mouth and the delicacy stripped off and +swallowed--the eye closing gently, meanwhile, in a languid sort of +ecstasy. Many a different finger goes into the same bowl and many a +different kind of dirt and shade and quality of flavor is added to the +virtues of its contents. + +Around a small shanty was collected a crowd of natives buying the awa +root. It is said that but for the use of this root the destruction of +the people in former times by certain imported diseases would have been +far greater than it was, and by others it is said that this is merely a +fancy. All agree that poi will rejuvenate a man who is used up and his +vitality almost annihilated by hard drinking, and that in some kinds of +diseases it will restore health after all medicines have failed; but all +are not willing to allow to the awa the virtues claimed for it. The +natives manufacture an intoxicating drink from it which is fearful in its +effects when persistently indulged in. It covers the body with dry, +white scales, inflames the eyes, and causes premature decripitude. +Although the man before whose establishment we stopped has to pay a +Government license of eight hundred dollars a year for the exclusive +right to sell awa root, it is said that he makes a small fortune every +twelve-month; while saloon keepers, who pay a thousand dollars a year for +the privilege of retailing whiskey, etc., only make a bare living. + +We found the fish market crowded; for the native is very fond of fish, +and eats the article raw and alive! Let us change the subject. + +In old times here Saturday was a grand gala day indeed. All the native +population of the town forsook their labors, and those of the surrounding +country journeyed to the city. Then the white folks had to stay indoors, +for every street was so packed with charging cavaliers and cavalieresses +that it was next to impossible to thread one's way through the cavalcades +without getting crippled. + +At night they feasted and the girls danced the lascivious hula hula--a +dance that is said to exhibit the very perfection of educated notion of +limb and arm, hand, head and body, and the exactest uniformity of +movement and accuracy of "time." It was performed by a circle of girls +with no raiment on them to speak of, who went through an infinite variety +of motions and figures without prompting, and yet so true was their +"time," and in such perfect concert did they move that when they were +placed in a straight line, hands, arms, bodies, limbs and heads waved, +swayed, gesticulated, bowed, stooped, whirled, squirmed, twisted and +undulated as if they were part and parcel of a single individual; and it +was difficult to believe they were not moved in a body by some exquisite +piece of mechanism. + +Of late years, however, Saturday has lost most of its quondam gala +features. This weekly stampede of the natives interfered too much with +labor and the interests of the white folks, and by sticking in a law +here, and preaching a sermon there, and by various other means, they +gradually broke it up. The demoralizing hula hula was forbidden to be +performed, save at night, with closed doors, in presence of few +spectators, and only by permission duly procured from the authorities and +the payment of ten dollars for the same. There are few girls now-a-days +able to dance this ancient national dance in the highest perfection of +the art. + +The missionaries have christianized and educated all the natives. They +all belong to the Church, and there is not one of them, above the age of +eight years, but can read and write with facility in the native tongue. +It is the most universally educated race of people outside of China. +They have any quantity of books, printed in the Kanaka language, and all +the natives are fond of reading. They are inveterate church-goers +--nothing can keep them away. All this ameliorating cultivation has at +last built up in the native women a profound respect for chastity--in +other people. Perhaps that is enough to say on that head. The national +sin will die out when the race does, but perhaps not earlier.--But +doubtless this purifying is not far off, when we reflect that contact +with civilization and the whites has reduced the native population from +four hundred thousand (Captain Cook's estimate,) to fifty-five thousand +in something over eighty years! + +Society is a queer medley in this notable missionary, whaling and +governmental centre. If you get into conversation with a stranger and +experience that natural desire to know what sort of ground you are +treading on by finding out what manner of man your stranger is, strike +out boldly and address him as "Captain." Watch him narrowly, and if you +see by his countenance that you are on the wrong tack, ask him where he +preaches. It is a safe bet that he is either a missionary or captain of +a whaler. I am now personally acquainted with seventy-two captains and +ninety-six missionaries. The captains and ministers form one-half of the +population; the third fourth is composed of common Kanakas and mercantile +foreigners and their families, and the final fourth is made up of high +officers of the Hawaiian Government. And there are just about cats +enough for three apiece all around. + +A solemn stranger met me in the suburbs the other day, and said: + +"Good morning, your reverence. Preach in the stone church yonder, no +doubt?" + +"No, I don't. I'm not a preacher." + +"Really, I beg your pardon, Captain. I trust you had a good season. How +much oil"-- + +"Oil? What do you take me for? I'm not a whaler." + +"Oh, I beg a thousand pardons, your Excellency. + +"Major General in the household troops, no doubt? Minister of the +Interior, likely? Secretary of war? First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber? +Commissioner of the Royal"-- + +"Stuff! I'm no official. I'm not connected in any way with the +Government." + +"Bless my life! Then, who the mischief are you? what the mischief are +you? and how the mischief did you get here, and where in thunder did you +come from?" + +"I'm only a private personage--an unassuming stranger--lately arrived +from America." + +"No? Not a missionary! Not a whaler! not a member of his Majesty's +Government! not even Secretary of the Navy! Ah, Heaven! it is too +blissful to be true; alas, I do but dream. And yet that noble, honest +countenance--those oblique, ingenuous eyes--that massive head, incapable +of--of--anything; your hand; give me your hand, bright waif. Excuse +these tears. For sixteen weary years I have yearned for a moment like +this, and"-- + +Here his feelings were too much for him, and he swooned away. I pitied +this poor creature from the bottom of my heart. I was deeply moved. I +shed a few tears on him and kissed him for his mother. I then took what +small change he had and "shoved". + + + + +CHAPTER LXVII. + +I still quote from my journal: + +I found the national Legislature to consist of half a dozen white men and +some thirty or forty natives. It was a dark assemblage. The nobles and +Ministers (about a dozen of them altogether) occupied the extreme left of +the hall, with David Kalakaua (the King's Chamberlain) and Prince William +at the head. The President of the Assembly, His Royal Highness M. +Kekuanaoa, [Kekuanaoa is not of the blood royal. He derives his princely +rank from his wife, who was a daughter of Kamehameha the Great. Under +other monarchies the male line takes precedence of the female in tracing +genealogies, but here the opposite is the case--the female line takes +precedence. Their reason for this is exceedingly sensible, and I +recommend it to the aristocracy of Europe: They say it is easy to know +who a man's mother was, but, etc., etc.] and the Vice President (the +latter a white man,) sat in the pulpit, if I may so term it. +The President is the King's father. He is an erect, strongly built, +massive featured, white-haired, tawny old gentleman of eighty years of +age or thereabouts. He was simply but well dressed, in a blue cloth coat +and white vest, and white pantaloons, without spot, dust or blemish upon +them. He bears himself with a calm, stately dignity, and is a man of +noble presence. He was a young man and a distinguished warrior under +that terrific fighter, Kamehameha I., more than half a century ago. A +knowledge of his career suggested some such thought as this: "This man, +naked as the day he was born, and war-club and spear in hand, has charged +at the head of a horde of savages against other hordes of savages more +than a generation and a half ago, and reveled in slaughter and carnage; +has worshipped wooden images on his devout knees; has seen hundreds of +his race offered up in heathen temples as sacrifices to wooden idols, at +a time when no missionary's foot had ever pressed this soil, and he had +never heard of the white man's God; has believed his enemy could secretly +pray him to death; has seen the day, in his childhood, when it was a +crime punishable by death for a man to eat with his wife, or for a +plebeian to let his shadow fall upon the King--and now look at him; an +educated Christian; neatly and handsomely dressed; a high-minded, elegant +gentleman; a traveler, in some degree, and one who has been the honored +guest of royalty in Europe; a man practiced in holding the reins of an +enlightened government, and well versed in the politics of his country +and in general, practical information. Look at him, sitting there +presiding over the deliberations of a legislative body, among whom are +white men--a grave, dignified, statesmanlike personage, and as seemingly +natural and fitted to the place as if he had been born in it and had +never been out of it in his life time. How the experiences of this old +man's eventful life shame the cheap inventions of romance!" + +The christianizing of the natives has hardly even weakened some of their +barbarian superstitions, much less destroyed them. I have just referred +to one of these. It is still a popular belief that if your enemy can get +hold of any article belonging to you he can get down on his knees over it +and pray you to death. Therefore many a native gives up and dies merely +because he imagines that some enemy is putting him through a course of +damaging prayer. This praying an individual to death seems absurd enough +at a first glance, but then when we call to mind some of the pulpit +efforts of certain of our own ministers the thing looks plausible. + +In former times, among the Islanders, not only a plurality of wives was +customary, but a plurality of husbands likewise. Some native women of +noble rank had as many as six husbands. A woman thus supplied did not +reside with all her husbands at once, but lived several months with each +in turn. An understood sign hung at her door during these months. When +the sign was taken down, it meant "NEXT." + +In those days woman was rigidly taught to "know her place." Her place +was to do all the work, take all the cuffs, provide all the food, and +content herself with what was left after her lord had finished his +dinner. She was not only forbidden, by ancient law, and under penalty of +death, to eat with her husband or enter a canoe, but was debarred, under +the same penalty, from eating bananas, pine-apples, oranges and other +choice fruits at any time or in any place. She had to confine herself +pretty strictly to "poi" and hard work. These poor ignorant heathen seem +to have had a sort of groping idea of what came of woman eating fruit in +the garden of Eden, and they did not choose to take any more chances. +But the missionaries broke up this satisfactory arrangement of things. +They liberated woman and made her the equal of man. + +The natives had a romantic fashion of burying some of their children +alive when the family became larger than necessary. The missionaries +interfered in this matter too, and stopped it. + +To this day the natives are able to lie down and die whenever they want +to, whether there is anything the matter with them or not. If a Kanaka +takes a notion to die, that is the end of him; nobody can persuade him to +hold on; all the doctors in the world could not save him. + +A luxury which they enjoy more than anything else, is a large funeral. +If a person wants to get rid of a troublesome native, it is only +necessary to promise him a fine funeral and name the hour and he will be +on hand to the minute--at least his remains will. + +All the natives are Christians, now, but many of them still desert to the +Great Shark God for temporary succor in time of trouble. An irruption of +the great volcano of Kilauea, or an earthquake, always brings a deal of +latent loyalty to the Great Shark God to the surface. It is common +report that the King, educated, cultivated and refined Christian +gentleman as he undoubtedly is, still turns to the idols of his fathers +for help when disaster threatens. A planter caught a shark, and one of +his christianized natives testified his emancipation from the thrall of +ancient superstition by assisting to dissect the shark after a fashion +forbidden by his abandoned creed. But remorse shortly began to torture +him. He grew moody and sought solitude; brooded over his sin, refused +food, and finally said he must die and ought to die, for he had sinned +against the Great Shark God and could never know peace any more. He was +proof against persuasion and ridicule, and in the course of a day or two +took to his bed and died, although he showed no symptom of disease. +His young daughter followed his lead and suffered a like fate within the +week. Superstition is ingrained in the native blood and bone and it is +only natural that it should crop out in time of distress. Wherever one +goes in the Islands, he will find small piles of stones by the wayside, +covered with leafy offerings, placed there by the natives to appease evil +spirits or honor local deities belonging to the mythology of former days. + +In the rural districts of any of the Islands, the traveler hourly comes +upon parties of dusky maidens bathing in the streams or in the sea +without any clothing on and exhibiting no very intemperate zeal in the +matter of hiding their nakedness. When the missionaries first took up +their residence in Honolulu, the native women would pay their families +frequent friendly visits, day by day, not even clothed with a blush. +It was found a hard matter to convince them that this was rather +indelicate. Finally the missionaries provided them with long, loose +calico robes, and that ended the difficulty--for the women would troop +through the town, stark naked, with their robes folded under their arms, +march to the missionary houses and then proceed to dress!--The natives +soon manifested a strong proclivity for clothing, but it was shortly +apparent that they only wanted it for grandeur. The missionaries +imported a quantity of hats, bonnets, and other male and female wearing +apparel, instituted a general distribution, and begged the people not to +come to church naked, next Sunday, as usual. And they did not; but the +national spirit of unselfishness led them to divide up with neighbors who +were not at the distribution, and next Sabbath the poor preachers could +hardly keep countenance before their vast congregations. In the midst of +the reading of a hymn a brown, stately dame would sweep up the aisle with +a world of airs, with nothing in the world on but a "stovepipe" hat and a +pair of cheap gloves; another dame would follow, tricked out in a man's +shirt, and nothing else; another one would enter with a flourish, with +simply the sleeves of a bright calico dress tied around her waist and the +rest of the garment dragging behind like a peacock's tail off duty; a +stately "buck" Kanaka would stalk in with a woman's bonnet on, wrong side +before--only this, and nothing more; after him would stride his fellow, +with the legs of a pair of pantaloons tied around his neck, the rest of +his person untrammeled; in his rear would come another gentleman simply +gotten up in a fiery neck-tie and a striped vest. + +The poor creatures were beaming with complacency and wholly unconscious +of any absurdity in their appearance. They gazed at each other with +happy admiration, and it was plain to see that the young girls were +taking note of what each other had on, as naturally as if they had always +lived in a land of Bibles and knew what churches were made for; here was +the evidence of a dawning civilization. The spectacle which the +congregation presented was so extraordinary and withal so moving, that +the missionaries found it difficult to keep to the text and go on with +the services; and by and by when the simple children of the sun began a +general swapping of garments in open meeting and produced some +irresistibly grotesque effects in the course of re-dressing, there was +nothing for it but to cut the thing short with the benediction and +dismiss the fantastic assemblage. + +In our country, children play "keep house;" and in the same high-sounding +but miniature way the grown folk here, with the poor little material of +slender territory and meagre population, play "empire." There is his +royal Majesty the King, with a New York detective's income of thirty or +thirty-five thousand dollars a year from the "royal civil list" and the +"royal domain." He lives in a two-story frame "palace." + +And there is the "royal family"--the customary hive of royal brothers, +sisters, cousins and other noble drones and vagrants usual to monarchy, +--all with a spoon in the national pap-dish, and all bearing such titles as +his or her Royal Highness the Prince or Princess So-and-so. Few of them +can carry their royal splendors far enough to ride in carriages, however; +they sport the economical Kanaka horse or "hoof it" with the plebeians. + +Then there is his Excellency the "royal Chamberlain"--a sinecure, for his +majesty dresses himself with his own hands, except when he is ruralizing +at Waikiki and then he requires no dressing. + +Next we have his Excellency the Commander-in-chief of the Household +Troops, whose forces consist of about the number of soldiers usually +placed under a corporal in other lands. + +Next comes the royal Steward and the Grand Equerry in Waiting--high +dignitaries with modest salaries and little to do. + +Then we have his Excellency the First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber--an +office as easy as it is magnificent. + +Next we come to his Excellency the Prime Minister, a renegade American +from New Hampshire, all jaw, vanity, bombast and ignorance, a lawyer of +"shyster" calibre, a fraud by nature, a humble worshipper of the sceptre +above him, a reptile never tired of sneering at the land of his birth or +glorifying the ten-acre kingdom that has adopted him--salary, $4,000 a +year, vast consequence, and no perquisites. + +Then we have his Excellency the Imperial Minister of Finance, who handles +a million dollars of public money a year, sends in his annual "budget" +with great ceremony, talks prodigiously of "finance," suggests imposing +schemes for paying off the "national debt" (of $150,000,) and does it all +for $4,000 a year and unimaginable glory. + +Next we have his Excellency the Minister of War, who holds sway over the +royal armies--they consist of two hundred and thirty uniformed Kanakas, +mostly Brigadier Generals, and if the country ever gets into trouble with +a foreign power we shall probably hear from them. I knew an American +whose copper-plate visiting card bore this impressive legend: +"Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Infantry." To say that he was proud of +this distinction is stating it but tamely. The Minister of War has also +in his charge some venerable swivels on Punch-Bowl Hill wherewith royal +salutes are fired when foreign vessels of war enter the port. + +Next comes his Excellency the Minister of the Navy--a nabob who rules the +"royal fleet," (a steam-tug and a sixty-ton schooner.) + +And next comes his Grace the Lord Bishop of Honolulu, the chief dignitary +of the "Established Church"--for when the American Presbyterian +missionaries had completed the reduction of the nation to a compact +condition of Christianity, native royalty stepped in and erected the +grand dignity of an "Established (Episcopal) Church" over it, and +imported a cheap ready-made Bishop from England to take charge. The +chagrin of the missionaries has never been comprehensively expressed, to +this day, profanity not being admissible. + +Next comes his Excellency the Minister of Public Instruction. + +Next, their Excellencies the Governors of Oahu, Hawaii, etc., and after +them a string of High Sheriffs and other small fry too numerous for +computation. + +Then there are their Excellencies the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister +Plenipotentiary of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of the French; her +British Majesty's Minister; the Minister Resident, of the United States; +and some six or eight representatives of other foreign nations, all with +sounding titles, imposing dignity and prodigious but economical state. + +Imagine all this grandeur in a play-house "kingdom" whose population +falls absolutely short of sixty thousand souls! + +The people are so accustomed to nine-jointed titles and colossal magnates +that a foreign prince makes very little more stir in Honolulu than a +Western Congressman does in New York. + +And let it be borne in mind that there is a strictly defined "court +costume" of so "stunning" a nature that it would make the clown in a +circus look tame and commonplace by comparison; and each Hawaiian +official dignitary has a gorgeous vari-colored, gold-laced uniform +peculiar to his office--no two of them are alike, and it is hard to tell +which one is the "loudest." The King had a "drawing-room" at stated +intervals, like other monarchs, and when these varied uniforms congregate +there--weak-eyed people have to contemplate the spectacle through smoked +glass. Is there not a gratifying contrast between this latter-day +exhibition and the one the ancestors of some of these magnates afforded +the missionaries the Sunday after the old-time distribution of clothing? +Behold what religion and civilization have wrought! + + + + +CHAPTER LXVIII. + +While I was in Honolulu I witnessed the ceremonious funeral of the King's +sister, her Royal Highness the Princess Victoria. According to the royal +custom, the remains had lain in state at the palace thirty days, watched +day and night by a guard of honor. And during all that time a great +multitude of natives from the several islands had kept the palace grounds +well crowded and had made the place a pandemonium every night with their +howlings and wailings, beating of tom-toms and dancing of the (at other +times) forbidden "hula-hula" by half-clad maidens to the music of songs +of questionable decency chanted in honor of the deceased. The printed +programme of the funeral procession interested me at the time; and after +what I have just said of Hawaiian grandiloquence in the matter of +"playing empire," I am persuaded that a perusal of it may interest the +reader: + + After reading the long list of dignitaries, etc., and remembering + the sparseness of the population, one is almost inclined to wonder + where the material for that portion of the procession devoted to + "Hawaiian Population Generally" is going to be procured: + +Undertaker. +Royal School. Kawaiahao School. Roman Catholic School. Maemae School. +Honolulu Fire Department. +Mechanics' Benefit Union. +Attending Physicians. +Knonohikis (Superintendents) of the Crown Lands, Konohikis of the Private + Lands of His Majesty Konohikis of the Private Lands of Her late Royal +Highness. +Governor of Oahu and Staff. +Hulumanu (Military Company). +Household Troops. +The Prince of Hawaii's Own (Military Company). +The King's household servants. +Servants of Her late Royal Highness. +Protestant Clergy. The Clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. +His Lordship Louis Maigret, The Right Rev. Bishop of Arathea, + Vicar-Apostolic of the Hawaiian Islands. +The Clergy of the Hawaiian Reformed Catholic Church. +His Lordship the Right Rev. Bishop of Honolulu. +Her Majesty Queen Emma's Carriage. +His Majesty's Staff. +Carriage of Her late Royal Highness. +Carriage of Her Majesty the Queen Dowager. +The King's Chancellor. +Cabinet Ministers. +His Excellency the Minister Resident of the United States. +H. B. M's Commissioner. +H. B. M's Acting Commissioner. +Judges of Supreme Court. +Privy Councillors. +Members of Legislative Assembly. +Consular Corps. +Circuit Judges. +Clerks of Government Departments. +Members of the Bar. +Collector General, Custom-house Officers and Officers of the Customs. +Marshal and Sheriffs of the different Islands. +King's Yeomanry. +Foreign Residents. +Ahahui Kaahumanu. +Hawaiian Population Generally. +Hawaiian Cavalry. +Police Force. + +I resume my journal at the point where the procession arrived at the +royal mausoleum: + + As the procession filed through the gate, the military deployed + handsomely to the right and left and formed an avenue through which + the long column of mourners passed to the tomb. The coffin was + borne through the door of the mausoleum, followed by the King and + his chiefs, the great officers of the kingdom, foreign Consuls, + Embassadors and distinguished guests (Burlingame and General Van + Valkenburgh). Several of the kahilis were then fastened to a + frame-work in front of the tomb, there to remain until they decay + and fall to pieces, or, forestalling this, until another scion of + royalty dies. At this point of the proceedings the multitude set + up such a heart-broken wailing as I hope never to hear again. + +The soldiers fired three volleys of musketry--the wailing being +previously silenced to permit of the guns being heard. His Highness +Prince William, in a showy military uniform (the "true prince," this +--scion of the house over-thrown by the present dynasty--he was formerly +betrothed to the Princess but was not allowed to marry her), stood guard +and paced back and forth within the door. The privileged few who +followed the coffin into the mausoleum remained sometime, but the King +soon came out and stood in the door and near one side of it. A stranger +could have guessed his rank (although he was so simply and +unpretentiously dressed) by the profound deference paid him by all +persons in his vicinity; by seeing his high officers receive his quiet +orders and suggestions with bowed and uncovered heads; and by observing +how careful those persons who came out of the mausoleum were to avoid +"crowding" him (although there was room enough in the doorway for a wagon +to pass, for that matter); how respectfully they edged out sideways, +scraping their backs against the wall and always presenting a front view +of their persons to his Majesty, and never putting their hats on until +they were well out of the royal presence. + +He was dressed entirely in black--dress-coat and silk hat--and looked +rather democratic in the midst of the showy uniforms about him. On his +breast he wore a large gold star, which was half hidden by the lapel of +his coat. He remained at the door a half hour, and occasionally gave an +order to the men who were erecting the kahilis [Ranks of long-handled +mops made of gaudy feathers--sacred to royalty. They are stuck in the +ground around the tomb and left there.] before the tomb. He had the +good taste to make one of them substitute black crape for the ordinary +hempen rope he was about to tie one of them to the frame-work with. +Finally he entered his carriage and drove away, and the populace shortly +began to drop into his wake. While he was in view there was but one man +who attracted more attention than himself, and that was Harris (the +Yankee Prime Minister). This feeble personage had crape enough around +his hat to express the grief of an entire nation, and as usual he +neglected no opportunity of making himself conspicuous and exciting the +admiration of the simple Kanakas. Oh! noble ambition of this modern +Richelieu! + +It is interesting to contrast the funeral ceremonies of the Princess +Victoria with those of her noted ancestor Kamehameha the Conqueror, who +died fifty years ago--in 1819, the year before the first missionaries +came. + + "On the 8th of May, 1819, at the age of sixty-six, he died, as he + had lived, in the faith of his country. It was his misfortune not + to have come in contact with men who could have rightly influenced + his religious aspirations. Judged by his advantages and compared + with the most eminent of his countrymen he may be justly styled not + only great, but good. To this day his memory warms the heart and + elevates the national feelings of Hawaiians. They are proud of + their old warrior King; they love his name; his deeds form their + historical age; and an enthusiasm everywhere prevails, shared even + by foreigners who knew his worth, that constitutes the firmest + pillar of the throne of his dynasty. + + "In lieu of human victims (the custom of that age), a sacrifice of + three hundred dogs attended his obsequies--no mean holocaust when + their national value and the estimation in which they were held are + considered. The bones of Kamehameha, after being kept for a while, + were so carefully concealed that all knowledge of their final + resting place is now lost. There was a proverb current among the + common people that the bones of a cruel King could not be hid; they + made fish-hooks and arrows of them, upon which, in using them, they + vented their abhorrence of his memory in bitter execrations." + +The account of the circumstances of his death, as written by the native +historians, is full of minute detail, but there is scarcely a line of it +which does not mention or illustrate some by-gone custom of the country. +In this respect it is the most comprehensive document I have yet met +with. I will quote it entire: + + "When Kamehameha was dangerously sick, and the priests were unable + to cure him, they said: 'Be of good courage and build a house for + the god' (his own private god or idol), that thou mayest recover.' + The chiefs corroborated this advice of the priests, and a place of + worship was prepared for Kukailimoku, and consecrated in the + evening. They proposed also to the King, with a view to prolong his + life, that human victims should be sacrificed to his deity; upon + which the greater part of the people absconded through fear of + death, and concealed themselves in hiding places till the tabu [Tabu + (pronounced tah-boo,) means prohibition (we have borrowed it,) or + sacred. The tabu was sometimes permanent, sometimes temporary; and + the person or thing placed under tabu was for the time being sacred + to the purpose for which it was set apart. In the above case the + victims selected under the tabu would be sacred to the sacrifice] + in which destruction impended, was past. It is doubtful whether + Kamehameha approved of the plan of the chiefs and priests to + sacrifice men, as he was known to say, 'The men are sacred for the + King;' meaning that they were for the service of his successor. + This information was derived from Liholiho, his son. + + "After this, his sickness increased to such a degree that he had not + strength to turn himself in his bed. When another season, + consecrated for worship at the new temple (heiau) arrived, he said + to his son, Liholiho, 'Go thou and make supplication to thy god; I + am not able to go, and will offer my prayers at home.' When his + devotions to his feathered god, Kukailimoku, were concluded, a + certain religiously disposed individual, who had a bird god, + suggested to the King that through its influence his sickness might + be removed. The name of this god was Pua; its body was made of a + bird, now eaten by the Hawaiians, and called in their language alae. + Kamehameha was willing that a trial should be made, and two houses + were constructed to facilitate the experiment; but while dwelling in + them he became so very weak as not to receive food. After lying + there three days, his wives, children and chiefs, perceiving that he + was very low, returned him to his own house. In the evening he was + carried to the eating house, where he took a little food in his + mouth which he did not swallow; also a cup of water. The chiefs + requested him to give them his counsel; but he made no reply, and + was carried back to the dwelling house; but when near midnight--ten + o'clock, perhaps--he was carried again to the place to eat; but, as + before, he merely tasted of what was presented to him. Then + Kaikioewa addressed him thus: 'Here we all are, your younger + brethren, your son Liholiho and your foreigner; impart to us your + dying charge, that Liholiho and Kaahumanu may hear.' Then Kamehameha + inquired, 'What do you say?' Kaikioewa repeated, 'Your counsels for + us.' + + "He then said, 'Move on in my good way and--.' He could proceed no + further. The foreigner, Mr. Young, embraced and kissed him. + Hoapili also embraced him, whispering something in his ear, after + which he was taken back to the house. About twelve he was carried + once more to the house for eating, into which his head entered, + while his body was in the dwelling house immediately adjoining. It + should be remarked that this frequent carrying of a sick chief from + one house to another resulted from the tabu system, then in force. + There were at that time six houses (huts) connected with an + establishment--one was for worship, one for the men to eat in, an + eating house for the women, a house to sleep in, a house in which to + manufacture kapa (native cloth) and one where, at certain intervals, + the women might dwell in seclusion. + + "The sick was once more taken to his house, when he expired; this + was at two o'clock, a circumstance from which Leleiohoku derived his + name. As he breathed his last, Kalaimoku came to the eating house + to order those in it to go out. There were two aged persons thus + directed to depart; one went, the other remained on account of love + to the King, by whom he had formerly been kindly sustained. The + children also were sent away. Then Kalaimoku came to the house, and + the chiefs had a consultation. One of them spoke thus: 'This is my + thought--we will eat him raw. [This sounds suspicious, in view of + the fact that all Sandwich Island historians, white and black, + protest that cannibalism never existed in the islands. However, + since they only proposed to "eat him raw" we "won't count that". + But it would certainly have been cannibalism if they had cooked + him.--M. T.] Kaahumanu (one of the dead King's widows) replied, + 'Perhaps his body is not at our disposal; that is more properly with + his successor. Our part in him--his breath--has departed; his + remains will be disposed of by Liholiho.' + + "After this conversation the body was taken into the consecrated + house for the performance of the proper rites by the priest and the + new King. The name of this ceremony is uko; and when the sacred hog + was baked the priest offered it to the dead body, and it became a + god, the King at the same time repeating the customary prayers. + + "Then the priest, addressing himself to the King and chiefs, said: + 'I will now make known to you the rules to be observed respecting + persons to be sacrificed on the burial of this body. If you obtain + one man before the corpse is removed, one will be sufficient; but + after it leaves this house four will be required. If delayed until + we carry the corpse to the grave there must be ten; but after it is + deposited in the grave there must be fifteen. To-morrow morning + there will be a tabu, and, if the sacrifice be delayed until that + time, forty men must die.' + + "Then the high priest, Hewahewa, inquired of the chiefs, 'Where + shall be the residence of King Liholiho?' They replied, 'Where, + indeed? You, of all men, ought to know.' Then the priest observed, + 'There are two suitable places; one is Kau, the other is Kohala.' + The chiefs preferred the latter, as it was more thickly inhabited. + The priest added, 'These are proper places for the King's residence; + but he must not remain in Kona, for it is polluted.' This was + agreed to. It was now break of day. As he was being carried to the + place of burial the people perceived that their King was dead, and + they wailed. When the corpse was removed from the house to the + tomb, a distance of one chain, the procession was met by a certain + man who was ardently attached to the deceased. He leaped upon the + chiefs who were carrying the King's body; he desired to die with him + on account of his love. The chiefs drove him away. He persisted in + making numerous attempts, which were unavailing. Kalaimoka also had + it in his heart to die with him, but was prevented by Hookio. + + "The morning following Kamehameha's death, Liholiho and his train + departed for Kohala, according to the suggestions of the priest, to + avoid the defilement occasioned by the dead. At this time if a + chief died the land was polluted, and the heirs sought a residence + in another part of the country until the corpse was dissected and + the bones tied in a bundle, which being done, the season of + defilement terminated. If the deceased were not a chief, the house + only was defiled which became pure again on the burial of the body. + Such were the laws on this subject. + + "On the morning on which Liholiho sailed in his canoe for Kohala, + the chiefs and people mourned after their manner on occasion of a + chief's death, conducting themselves like madmen and like beasts. + Their conduct was such as to forbid description; The priests, also, + put into action the sorcery apparatus, that the person who had + prayed the King to death might die; for it was not believed that + Kamehameha's departure was the effect either of sickness or old age. + When the sorcerers set up by their fire-places sticks with a strip + of kapa flying at the top, the chief Keeaumoku, Kaahumaun's brother, + came in a state of intoxication and broke the flag-staff of the + sorcerers, from which it was inferred that Kaahumanu and her friends + had been instrumental in the King's death. On this account they + were subjected to abuse." + +You have the contrast, now, and a strange one it is. This great Queen, +Kaahumanu, who was "subjected to abuse" during the frightful orgies that +followed the King's death, in accordance with ancient custom, afterward +became a devout Christian and a steadfast and powerful friend of the +missionaries. + +Dogs were, and still are, reared and fattened for food, by the natives +--hence the reference to their value in one of the above paragraphs. + +Forty years ago it was the custom in the Islands to suspend all law for a +certain number of days after the death of a royal personage; and then a +saturnalia ensued which one may picture to himself after a fashion, but +not in the full horror of the reality. The people shaved their heads, +knocked out a tooth or two, plucked out an eye sometimes, cut, bruised, +mutilated or burned their flesh, got drunk, burned each other's huts, +maimed or murdered one another according to the caprice of the moment, +and both sexes gave themselves up to brutal and unbridled licentiousness. + +And after it all, came a torpor from which the nation slowly emerged +bewildered and dazed, as if from a hideous half-remembered nightmare. +They were not the salt of the earth, those "gentle children of the sun." + +The natives still keep up an old custom of theirs which cannot be +comforting to an invalid. When they think a sick friend is going to die, +a couple of dozen neighbors surround his hut and keep up a deafening +wailing night and day till he either dies or gets well. No doubt this +arrangement has helped many a subject to a shroud before his appointed +time. + +They surround a hut and wail in the same heart-broken way when its +occupant returns from a journey. This is their dismal idea of a welcome. +A very little of it would go a great way with most of us. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIX. + +Bound for Hawaii (a hundred and fifty miles distant,) to visit the great +volcano and behold the other notable things which distinguish that island +above the remainder of the group, we sailed from Honolulu on a certain +Saturday afternoon, in the good schooner Boomerang. + +The Boomerang was about as long as two street cars, and about as wide as +one. She was so small (though she was larger than the majority of the +inter-island coasters) that when I stood on her deck I felt but little +smaller than the Colossus of Rhodes must have felt when he had a +man-of-war under him. I could reach the water when she lay over under a +strong breeze. When the Captain and my comrade (a Mr. Billings), myself +and four other persons were all assembled on the little after portion of +the deck which is sacred to the cabin passengers, it was full--there was +not room for any more quality folks. Another section of the deck, twice +as large as ours, was full of natives of both sexes, with their customary +dogs, mats, blankets, pipes, calabashes of poi, fleas, and other luxuries +and baggage of minor importance. As soon as we set sail the natives all +lay down on the deck as thick as negroes in a slave-pen, and smoked, +conversed, and spit on each other, and were truly sociable. + +The little low-ceiled cabin below was rather larger than a hearse, and as +dark as a vault. It had two coffins on each side--I mean two bunks. +A small table, capable of accommodating three persons at dinner, stood +against the forward bulkhead, and over it hung the dingiest whale oil +lantern that ever peopled the obscurity of a dungeon with ghostly shapes. +The floor room unoccupied was not extensive. One might swing a cat in +it, perhaps, but not a long cat. The hold forward of the bulkhead had +but little freight in it, and from morning till night a portly old +rooster, with a voice like Baalam's ass, and the same disposition to use +it, strutted up and down in that part of the vessel and crowed. He +usually took dinner at six o'clock, and then, after an hour devoted to +meditation, he mounted a barrel and crowed a good part of the night. +He got hoarser all the time, but he scorned to allow any personal +consideration to interfere with his duty, and kept up his labors in +defiance of threatened diphtheria. + +Sleeping was out of the question when he was on watch. He was a source +of genuine aggravation and annoyance. It was worse than useless to shout +at him or apply offensive epithets to him--he only took these things for +applause, and strained himself to make more noise. Occasionally, during +the day, I threw potatoes at him through an aperture in the bulkhead, but +he only dodged and went on crowing. + +The first night, as I lay in my coffin, idly watching the dim lamp +swinging to the rolling of the ship, and snuffing the nauseous odors of +bilge water, I felt something gallop over me. I turned out promptly. +However, I turned in again when I found it was only a rat. Presently +something galloped over me once more. I knew it was not a rat this time, +and I thought it might be a centipede, because the Captain had killed one +on deck in the afternoon. I turned out. The first glance at the pillow +showed me repulsive sentinel perched upon each end of it--cockroaches as +large as peach leaves--fellows with long, quivering antennae and fiery, +malignant eyes. They were grating their teeth like tobacco worms, and +appeared to be dissatisfied about something. I had often heard that +these reptiles were in the habit of eating off sleeping sailors' toe +nails down to the quick, and I would not get in the bunk any more. I lay +down on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and shortly afterward +a procession of cockroaches arrived and camped in my hair. In a few +moments the rooster was crowing with uncommon spirit and a party of fleas +were throwing double somersaults about my person in the wildest disorder, +and taking a bite every time they struck. I was beginning to feel really +annoyed. I got up and put my clothes on and went on deck. + +The above is not overdrawn; it is a truthful sketch of inter-island +schooner life. There is no such thing as keeping a vessel in elegant +condition, when she carries molasses and Kanakas. + +It was compensation for my sufferings to come unexpectedly upon so +beautiful a scene as met my eye--to step suddenly out of the sepulchral +gloom of the cabin and stand under the strong light of the moon--in the +centre, as it were, of a glittering sea of liquid silver--to see the +broad sails straining in the gale, the ship heeled over on her side, the +angry foam hissing past her lee bulwarks, and sparkling sheets of spray +dashing high over her bows and raining upon her decks; to brace myself +and hang fast to the first object that presented itself, with hat jammed +down and coat tails whipping in the breeze, and feel that exhilaration +that thrills in one's hair and quivers down his back bone when he knows +that every inch of canvas is drawing and the vessel cleaving through the +waves at her utmost speed. There was no darkness, no dimness, no +obscurity there. All was brightness, every object was vividly defined. +Every prostrate Kanaka; every coil of rope; every calabash of poi; every +puppy; every seam in the flooring; every bolthead; every object; however +minute, showed sharp and distinct in its every outline; and the shadow of +the broad mainsail lay black as a pall upon the deck, leaving Billings's +white upturned face glorified and his body in a total eclipse. +Monday morning we were close to the island of Hawaii. Two of its high +mountains were in view--Mauna Loa and Hualaiai. + +The latter is an imposing peak, but being only ten thousand feet high is +seldom mentioned or heard of. Mauna Loa is said to be sixteen thousand +feet high. The rays of glittering snow and ice, that clasped its summit +like a claw, looked refreshing when viewed from the blistering climate we +were in. One could stand on that mountain (wrapped up in blankets and +furs to keep warm), and while he nibbled a snowball or an icicle to +quench his thirst he could look down the long sweep of its sides and see +spots where plants are growing that grow only where the bitter cold of +Winter prevails; lower down he could see sections devoted to production +that thrive in the temperate zone alone; and at the bottom of the +mountain he could see the home of the tufted cocoa-palms and other +species of vegetation that grow only in the sultry atmosphere of eternal +Summer. He could see all the climes of the world at a single glance of +the eye, and that glance would only pass over a distance of four or five +miles as the bird flies! + +By and by we took boat and went ashore at Kailua, designing to ride +horseback through the pleasant orange and coffee region of Kona, and +rejoin the vessel at a point some leagues distant. This journey is well +worth taking. The trail passes along on high ground--say a thousand feet +above sea level--and usually about a mile distant from the ocean, which +is always in sight, save that occasionally you find yourself buried in +the forest in the midst of a rank tropical vegetation and a dense growth +of trees, whose great bows overarch the road and shut out sun and sea and +everything, and leave you in a dim, shady tunnel, haunted with invisible +singing birds and fragrant with the odor of flowers. It was pleasant to +ride occasionally in the warm sun, and feast the eye upon the +ever-changing panorama of the forest (beyond and below us), with its many +tints, its softened lights and shadows, its billowy undulations sweeping +gently down from the mountain to the sea. It was pleasant also, at +intervals, to leave the sultry sun and pass into the cool, green depths +of this forest and indulge in sentimental reflections under the +inspiration of its brooding twilight and its whispering foliage. +We rode through one orange grove that had ten thousand tree in it! +They were all laden with fruit. + +At one farmhouse we got some large peaches of excellent flavor. +This fruit, as a general thing, does not do well in the Sandwich Islands. +It takes a sort of almond shape, and is small and bitter. It needs +frost, they say, and perhaps it does; if this be so, it will have a good +opportunity to go on needing it, as it will not be likely to get it. +The trees from which the fine fruit I have spoken of, came, had been +planted and replanted sixteen times, and to this treatment the proprietor +of the orchard attributed his-success. + +We passed several sugar plantations--new ones and not very extensive. +The crops were, in most cases, third rattoons. [NOTE.--The first crop is +called "plant cane;" subsequent crops which spring from the original +roots, without replanting, are called "rattoons."] Almost everywhere on +the island of Hawaii sugar-cane matures in twelve months, both rattoons +and plant, and although it ought to be taken off as soon as it tassels, +no doubt, it is not absolutely necessary to do it until about four months +afterward. In Kona, the average yield of an acre of ground is two tons +of sugar, they say. This is only a moderate yield for these islands, but +would be astounding for Louisiana and most other sugar growing countries. +The plantations in Kona being on pretty high ground--up among the light +and frequent rains--no irrigation whatever is required. + + + + +CHAPTER LXX. + +We stopped some time at one of the plantations, to rest ourselves and +refresh the horses. We had a chatty conversation with several gentlemen +present; but there was one person, a middle aged man, with an absent look +in his face, who simply glanced up, gave us good-day and lapsed again +into the meditations which our coming had interrupted. The planters +whispered us not to mind him--crazy. They said he was in the Islands for +his health; was a preacher; his home, Michigan. They said that if he +woke up presently and fell to talking about a correspondence which he had +some time held with Mr. Greeley about a trifle of some kind, we must +humor him and listen with interest; and we must humor his fancy that this +correspondence was the talk of the world. + +It was easy to see that he was a gentle creature and that his madness had +nothing vicious in it. He looked pale, and a little worn, as if with +perplexing thought and anxiety of mind. He sat a long time, looking at +the floor, and at intervals muttering to himself and nodding his head +acquiescingly or shaking it in mild protest. He was lost in his thought, +or in his memories. We continued our talk with the planters, branching +from subject to subject. But at last the word "circumstance," casually +dropped, in the course of conversation, attracted his attention and +brought an eager look into his countenance. He faced about in his chair +and said: + +"Circumstance? What circumstance? Ah, I know--I know too well. So you +have heard of it too." [With a sigh.] "Well, no matter--all the world +has heard of it. All the world. The whole world. It is a large world, +too, for a thing to travel so far in--now isn't it? Yes, yes--the +Greeley correspondence with Erickson has created the saddest and +bitterest controversy on both sides of the ocean--and still they keep it +up! It makes us famous, but at what a sorrowful sacrifice! I was so +sorry when I heard that it had caused that bloody and distressful war +over there in Italy. It was little comfort to me, after so much +bloodshed, to know that the victors sided with me, and the vanquished +with Greeley.--It is little comfort to know that Horace Greeley is +responsible for the battle of Sadowa, and not me. + +"Queen Victoria wrote me that she felt just as I did about it--she said +that as much as she was opposed to Greeley and the spirit he showed in +the correspondence with me, she would not have had Sadowa happen for +hundreds of dollars. I can show you her letter, if you would like to see +it. But gentlemen, much as you may think you know about that unhappy +correspondence, you cannot know the straight of it till you hear it from +my lips. It has always been garbled in the journals, and even in +history. Yes, even in history--think of it! Let me--please let me, give +you the matter, exactly as it occurred. I truly will not abuse your +confidence." + +Then he leaned forward, all interest, all earnestness, and told his +story--and told it appealingly, too, and yet in the simplest and most +unpretentious way; indeed, in such a way as to suggest to one, all the +time, that this was a faithful, honorable witness, giving evidence in the +sacred interest of justice, and under oath. He said: + +"Mrs. Beazeley--Mrs. Jackson Beazeley, widow, of the village of +Campbellton, Kansas,--wrote me about a matter which was near her heart +--a matter which many might think trivial, but to her it was a thing of +deep concern. I was living in Michigan, then--serving in the ministry. +She was, and is, an estimable woman--a woman to whom poverty and hardship +have proven incentives to industry, in place of discouragements. +Her only treasure was her son William, a youth just verging upon manhood; +religious, amiable, and sincerely attached to agriculture. He was the +widow's comfort and her pride. And so, moved by her love for him, she +wrote me about a matter, as I have said before, which lay near her heart +--because it lay near her boy's. She desired me to confer with +Mr. Greeley about turnips. Turnips were the dream of her child's young +ambition. While other youths were frittering away in frivolous +amusements the precious years of budding vigor which God had given them +for useful preparation, this boy was patiently enriching his mind with +information concerning turnips. The sentiment which he felt toward the +turnip was akin to adoration. He could not think of the turnip without +emotion; he could not speak of it calmly; he could not contemplate it +without exaltation. He could not eat it without shedding tears. All the +poetry in his sensitive nature was in sympathy with the gracious +vegetable. With the earliest pipe of dawn he sought his patch, and when +the curtaining night drove him from it he shut himself up with his books +and garnered statistics till sleep overcame him. On rainy days he sat +and talked hours together with his mother about turnips. When company +came, he made it his loving duty to put aside everything else and +converse with them all the day long of his great joy in the turnip. + +"And yet, was this joy rounded and complete? Was there no secret alloy of +unhappiness in it? Alas, there was. There was a canker gnawing at his +heart; the noblest inspiration of his soul eluded his endeavor--viz: he +could not make of the turnip a climbing vine. Months went by; the bloom +forsook his cheek, the fire faded out of his eye; sighings and +abstraction usurped the place of smiles and cheerful converse. But a +watchful eye noted these things and in time a motherly sympathy unsealed +the secret. Hence the letter to me. She pleaded for attention--she said +her boy was dying by inches. + +"I was a stranger to Mr. Greeley, but what of that? The matter was +urgent. I wrote and begged him to solve the difficult problem if +possible and save the student's life. My interest grew, until it partook +of the anxiety of the mother. I waited in much suspense.--At last the +answer came. + +"I found that I could not read it readily, the handwriting being +unfamiliar and my emotions somewhat wrought up. It seemed to refer in +part to the boy's case, but chiefly to other and irrelevant matters--such +as paving-stones, electricity, oysters, and something which I took to be +'absolution' or 'agrarianism,' I could not be certain which; still, these +appeared to be simply casual mentions, nothing more; friendly in spirit, +without doubt, but lacking the connection or coherence necessary to make +them useful.--I judged that my understanding was affected by my feelings, +and so laid the letter away till morning. + +"In the morning I read it again, but with difficulty and uncertainty +still, for I had lost some little rest and my mental vision seemed +clouded. The note was more connected, now, but did not meet the +emergency it was expected to meet. It was too discursive. It appeared +to read as follows, though I was not certain of some of the words: + + "Polygamy dissembles majesty; extracts redeem polarity; causes + hitherto exist. Ovations pursue wisdom, or warts inherit and + condemn. Boston, botany, cakes, folony undertakes, but who shall + allay? We fear not. Yrxwly, + HEVACE EVEELOJ.' + +"But there did not seem to be a word about turnips. There seemed to be +no suggestion as to how they might be made to grow like vines. There was +not even a reference to the Beazeleys. I slept upon the matter; I ate no +supper, neither any breakfast next morning. So I resumed my work with a +brain refreshed, and was very hopeful. Now the letter took a different +aspect-all save the signature, which latter I judged to be only a +harmless affectation of Hebrew. The epistle was necessarily from Mr. +Greeley, for it bore the printed heading of The Tribune, and I had +written to no one else there. The letter, I say, had taken a different +aspect, but still its language was eccentric and avoided the issue. It +now appeared to say: + + "Bolivia extemporizes mackerel; borax esteems polygamy; sausages + wither in the east. Creation perdu, is done; for woes inherent one + can damn. Buttons, buttons, corks, geology underrates but we shall + allay. My beer's out. Yrxwly, + HEVACE EVEELOJ.' + +"I was evidently overworked. My comprehension was impaired. Therefore I +gave two days to recreation, and then returned to my task greatly +refreshed. The letter now took this form: + + "Poultices do sometimes choke swine; tulips reduce posterity; causes + leather to resist. Our notions empower wisdom, her let's afford + while we can. Butter but any cakes, fill any undertaker, we'll wean + him from his filly. We feel hot. + Yrxwly, HEVACE EVEELOJ.' + +"I was still not satisfied. These generalities did not meet the +question. They were crisp, and vigorous, and delivered with a confidence +that almost compelled conviction; but at such a time as this, with a +human life at stake, they seemed inappropriate, worldly, and in bad +taste. At any other time I would have been not only glad, but proud, to +receive from a man like Mr. Greeley a letter of this kind, and would have +studied it earnestly and tried to improve myself all I could; but now, +with that poor boy in his far home languishing for relief, I had no heart +for learning. + +"Three days passed by, and I read the note again. Again its tenor had +changed. It now appeared to say: + + "Potations do sometimes wake wines; turnips restrain passion; causes + necessary to state. Infest the poor widow; her lord's effects will + be void. But dirt, bathing, etc., etc., followed unfairly, will + worm him from his folly--so swear not. + Yrxwly, HEVACE EVEELOJ.' + +"This was more like it. But I was unable to proceed. I was too much +worn. The word 'turnips' brought temporary joy and encouragement, but my +strength was so much impaired, and the delay might be so perilous for the +boy, that I relinquished the idea of pursuing the translation further, +and resolved to do what I ought to have done at first. I sat down and +wrote Mr. Greeley as follows: + + "DEAR SIR: I fear I do not entirely comprehend your kind note. It + cannot be possible, Sir, that 'turnips restrain passion'--at least + the study or contemplation of turnips cannot--for it is this very + employment that has scorched our poor friend's mind and sapped his + bodily strength.--But if they do restrain it, will you bear with us + a little further and explain how they should be prepared? I observe + that you say 'causes necessary to state,' but you have omitted to + state them. + + "Under a misapprehension, you seem to attribute to me interested + motives in this matter--to call it by no harsher term. But I assure + you, dear sir, that if I seem to be 'infesting the widow,' it is all + seeming, and void of reality. It is from no seeking of mine that I + am in this position. She asked me, herself, to write you. I never + have infested her--indeed I scarcely know her. I do not infest + anybody. I try to go along, in my humble way, doing as near right + as I can, never harming anybody, and never throwing out + insinuations. As for 'her lord and his effects,' they are of no + interest to me. I trust I have effects enough of my own--shall + endeavor to get along with them, at any rate, and not go mousing + around to get hold of somebody's that are 'void.' But do you not + see?--this woman is a widow--she has no 'lord.' He is dead--or + pretended to be, when they buried him. Therefore, no amount of + 'dirt, bathing,' etc., etc., howsoever 'unfairly followed' will be + likely to 'worm him from his folly'--if being dead and a ghost is + 'folly.' Your closing remark is as unkind as it was uncalled for; + and if report says true you might have applied it to yourself, sir, + with more point and less impropriety. + Very Truly Yours, SIMON ERICKSON. + +"In the course of a few days, Mr. Greely did what would have saved a +world of trouble, and much mental and bodily suffering and +misunderstanding, if he had done it sooner. To wit, he sent an +intelligible rescript or translation of his original note, made in a +plain hand by his clerk. Then the mystery cleared, and I saw that his +heart had been right, all the time. I will recite the note in its +clarified form: + + [Translation.] + 'Potatoes do sometimes make vines; turnips remain passive: cause + unnecessary to state. Inform the poor widow her lad's efforts will + be vain. But diet, bathing, etc. etc., followed uniformly, will + wean him from his folly--so fear not. + Yours, HORACE GREELEY.' + +"But alas, it was too late, gentlemen--too late. The criminal delay had +done its work--young Beazely was no more. His spirit had taken its +flight to a land where all anxieties shall be charmed away, all desires +gratified, all ambitions realized. Poor lad, they laid him to his rest +with a turnip in each hand." + +So ended Erickson, and lapsed again into nodding, mumbling, and +abstraction. The company broke up, and left him so.... But they did not +say what drove him crazy. In the momentary confusion, I forgot to ask. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXI. + +At four o'clock in the afternoon we were winding down a mountain of +dreary and desolate lava to the sea, and closing our pleasant land +journey. This lava is the accumulation of ages; one torrent of fire +after another has rolled down here in old times, and built up the island +structure higher and higher. Underneath, it is honey-combed with caves; +it would be of no use to dig wells in such a place; they would not hold +water--you would not find any for them to hold, for that matter. +Consequently, the planters depend upon cisterns. + +The last lava flow occurred here so long ago that there are none now +living who witnessed it. In one place it enclosed and burned down a +grove of cocoa-nut trees, and the holes in the lava where the trunks +stood are still visible; their sides retain the impression of the bark; +the trees fell upon the burning river, and becoming partly submerged, +left in it the perfect counterpart of every knot and branch and leaf, +and even nut, for curiosity seekers of a long distant day to gaze upon +and wonder at. + +There were doubtless plenty of Kanaka sentinels on guard hereabouts at +that time, but they did not leave casts of their figures in the lava as +the Roman sentinels at Herculaneum and Pompeii did. It is a pity it is +so, because such things are so interesting; but so it is. They probably +went away. They went away early, perhaps. However, they had their +merits; the Romans exhibited the higher pluck, but the Kanakas showed the +sounder judgment. + +Shortly we came in sight of that spot whose history is so familiar to +every school-boy in the wide world--Kealakekua Bay--the place where +Captain Cook, the great circumnavigator, was killed by the natives, +nearly a hundred years ago. The setting sun was flaming upon it, a +Summer shower was falling, and it was spanned by two magnificent +rainbows. Two men who were in advance of us rode through one of these +and for a moment their garments shone with a more than regal splendor. +Why did not Captain Cook have taste enough to call his great discovery +the Rainbow Islands? These charming spectacles are present to you at +every turn; they are common in all the islands; they are visible every +day, and frequently at night also--not the silvery bow we see once in an +age in the States, by moonlight, but barred with all bright and beautiful +colors, like the children of the sun and rain. I saw one of them a few +nights ago. What the sailors call "raindogs"--little patches of rainbow +--are often seen drifting about the heavens in these latitudes, like +stained cathedral windows. + +Kealakekua Bay is a little curve like the last kink of a snail-shell, +winding deep into the land, seemingly not more than a mile wide from +shore to shore. It is bounded on one side--where the murder was done--by +a little flat plain, on which stands a cocoanut grove and some ruined +houses; a steep wall of lava, a thousand feet high at the upper end and +three or four hundred at the lower, comes down from the mountain and +bounds the inner extremity of it. From this wall the place takes its +name, Kealakekua, which in the native tongue signifies "The Pathway of +the Gods." They say, (and still believe, in spite of their liberal +education in Christianity), that the great god Lono, who used to live +upon the hillside, always traveled that causeway when urgent business +connected with heavenly affairs called him down to the seashore in a +hurry. + +As the red sun looked across the placid ocean through the tall, clean +stems of the cocoanut trees, like a blooming whiskey bloat through the +bars of a city prison, I went and stood in the edge of the water on the +flat rock pressed by Captain Cook's feet when the blow was dealt which +took away his life, and tried to picture in my mind the doomed man +struggling in the midst of the multitude of exasperated savages--the men +in the ship crowding to the vessel's side and gazing in anxious dismay +toward the shore--the--but I discovered that I could not do it. + +It was growing dark, the rain began to fall, we could see that the +distant Boomerang was helplessly becalmed at sea, and so I adjourned to +the cheerless little box of a warehouse and sat down to smoke and think, +and wish the ship would make the land--for we had not eaten much for ten +hours and were viciously hungry. + +Plain unvarnished history takes the romance out of Captain Cook's +assassination, and renders a deliberate verdict of justifiable homicide. +Wherever he went among the islands, he was cordially received and +welcomed by the inhabitants, and his ships lavishly supplied with all +manner of food. He returned these kindnesses with insult and +ill-treatment. Perceiving that the people took him for the long vanished +and lamented god Lono, he encouraged them in the delusion for the sake of +the limitless power it gave him; but during the famous disturbance at +this spot, and while he and his comrades were surrounded by fifteen +thousand maddened savages, he received a hurt and betrayed his earthly +origin with a groan. It was his death-warrant. Instantly a shout went +up: "He groans!--he is not a god!" So they closed in upon him and +dispatched him. + +His flesh was stripped from the bones and burned (except nine pounds of +it which were sent on board the ships). The heart was hung up in a +native hut, where it was found and eaten by three children, who mistook +it for the heart of a dog. One of these children grew to be a very old +man, and died in Honolulu a few years ago. Some of Cook's bones were +recovered and consigned to the deep by the officers of the ships. + +Small blame should attach to the natives for the killing of Cook. +They treated him well. In return, he abused them. He and his men +inflicted bodily injury upon many of them at different times, and killed +at least three of them before they offered any proportionate retaliation. + +Near the shore we found "Cook's Monument"--only a cocoanut stump, four +feet high and about a foot in diameter at the butt. It had lava boulders +piled around its base to hold it up and keep it in its place, and it was +entirely sheathed over, from top to bottom, with rough, discolored sheets +of copper, such as ships' bottoms are coppered with. Each sheet had a +rude inscription scratched upon it--with a nail, apparently--and in every +case the execution was wretched. Most of these merely recorded the +visits of British naval commanders to the spot, but one of them bore this +legend: + + "Near this spot fell + CAPTAIN JAMES COOK, + The Distinguished Circumnavigator, + Who Discovered these Islands + A. D. 1778." + +After Cook's murder, his second in command, on board the ship, opened +fire upon the swarms of natives on the beach, and one of his cannon balls +cut this cocoanut tree short off and left this monumental stump standing. +It looked sad and lonely enough to us, out there in the rainy twilight. +But there is no other monument to Captain Cook. True, up on the mountain +side we had passed by a large inclosure like an ample hog-pen, built of +lava blocks, which marks the spot where Cook's flesh was stripped from +his bones and burned; but this is not properly a monument since it was +erected by the natives themselves, and less to do honor to the +circumnavigator than for the sake of convenience in roasting him. +A thing like a guide-board was elevated above this pen on a tall pole, +and formerly there was an inscription upon it describing the memorable +occurrence that had there taken place; but the sun and the wind have long +ago so defaced it as to render it illegible. + +Toward midnight a fine breeze sprang up and the schooner soon worked +herself into the bay and cast anchor. The boat came ashore for us, and +in a little while the clouds and the rain were all gone. The moon was +beaming tranquilly down on land and sea, and we two were stretched upon +the deck sleeping the refreshing sleep and dreaming the happy dreams that +are only vouchsafed to the weary and the innocent. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXII. + +In the breezy morning we went ashore and visited the ruined temple of the +last god Lono. The high chief cook of this temple--the priest who +presided over it and roasted the human sacrifices--was uncle to Obookia, +and at one time that youth was an apprentice-priest under him. Obookia +was a young native of fine mind, who, together with three other native +boys, was taken to New England by the captain of a whaleship during the +reign of Kamehameha I, and they were the means of attracting the +attention of the religious world to their country. This resulted in the +sending of missionaries there. And this Obookia was the very same +sensitive savage who sat down on the church steps and wept because his +people did not have the Bible. That incident has been very elaborately +painted in many a charming Sunday School book--aye, and told so +plaintively and so tenderly that I have cried over it in Sunday School +myself, on general principles, although at a time when I did not know +much and could not understand why the people of the Sandwich Islands +needed to worry so much about it as long as they did not know there was a +Bible at all. + +Obookia was converted and educated, and was to have returned to his +native land with the first missionaries, had he lived. The other native +youths made the voyage, and two of them did good service, but the third, +William Kanui, fell from grace afterward, for a time, and when the gold +excitement broke out in California he journeyed thither and went to +mining, although he was fifty years old. He succeeded pretty well, but +the failure of Page, Bacon & Co. relieved him of six thousand dollars, +and then, to all intents and purposes, he was a bankrupt in his old age +and he resumed service in the pulpit again. He died in Honolulu in 1864. + +Quite a broad tract of land near the temple, extending from the sea to +the mountain top, was sacred to the god Lono in olden times--so sacred +that if a common native set his sacrilegious foot upon it it was +judicious for him to make his will, because his time had come. He might +go around it by water, but he could not cross it. It was well sprinkled +with pagan temples and stocked with awkward, homely idols carved out of +logs of wood. There was a temple devoted to prayers for rain--and with +fine sagacity it was placed at a point so well up on the mountain side +that if you prayed there twenty-four times a day for rain you would be +likely to get it every time. You would seldom get to your Amen before +you would have to hoist your umbrella. + +And there was a large temple near at hand which was built in a single +night, in the midst of storm and thunder and rain, by the ghastly hands +of dead men! Tradition says that by the weird glare of the lightning a +noiseless multitude of phantoms were seen at their strange labor far up +the mountain side at dead of night--flitting hither and thither and +bearing great lava-blocks clasped in their nerveless fingers--appearing +and disappearing as the pallid lustre fell upon their forms and faded +away again. Even to this day, it is said, the natives hold this dread +structure in awe and reverence, and will not pass by it in the night. + +At noon I observed a bevy of nude native young ladies bathing in the sea, +and went and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen. +I begged them to come out, for the sea was rising and I was satisfied +that they were running some risk. But they were not afraid, and +presently went on with their sport. They were finished swimmers and +divers, and enjoyed themselves to the last degree. + +They swam races, splashed and ducked and tumbled each other about, and +filled the air with their laughter. It is said that the first thing an +Islander learns is how to swim; learning to walk being a matter of +smaller consequence, comes afterward. One hears tales of native men and +women swimming ashore from vessels many miles at sea--more miles, indeed, +than I dare vouch for or even mention. And they tell of a native diver +who went down in thirty or forty-foot waters and brought up an anvil! +I think he swallowed the anvil afterward, if my memory serves me. +However I will not urge this point. + +I have spoken, several times, of the god Lono--I may as well furnish two +or three sentences concerning him. + +The idol the natives worshipped for him was a slender, unornamented staff +twelve feet long. Tradition says he was a favorite god on the Island of +Hawaii--a great king who had been deified for meritorious services--just +our own fashion of rewarding heroes, with the difference that we would +have made him a Postmaster instead of a god, no doubt. In an angry +moment he slew his wife, a goddess named Kaikilani Aiii. Remorse of +conscience drove him mad, and tradition presents us the singular +spectacle of a god traveling "on the shoulder;" for in his gnawing grief +he wandered about from place to place boxing and wrestling with all whom +he met. Of course this pastime soon lost its novelty, inasmuch as it +must necessarily have been the case that when so powerful a deity sent a +frail human opponent "to grass" he never came back any more. Therefore, +he instituted games called makahiki, and ordered that they should be held +in his honor, and then sailed for foreign lands on a three-cornered raft, +stating that he would return some day--and that was the last of Lono. +He was never seen any more; his raft got swamped, perhaps. But the +people always expected his return, and thus they were easily led to +accept Captain Cook as the restored god. + +Some of the old natives believed Cook was Lono to the day of their death; +but many did not, for they could not understand how he could die if he +was a god. + +Only a mile or so from Kealakekua Bay is a spot of historic interest--the +place where the last battle was fought for idolatry. Of course we +visited it, and came away as wise as most people do who go and gaze upon +such mementoes of the past when in an unreflective mood. + +While the first missionaries were on their way around the Horn, the +idolatrous customs which had obtained in the island, as far back as +tradition reached were suddenly broken up. Old Kamehameha I., was dead, +and his son, Liholiho, the new King was a free liver, a roystering, +dissolute fellow, and hated the restraints of the ancient tabu. His +assistant in the Government, Kaahumanu, the Queen dowager, was proud and +high-spirited, and hated the tabu because it restricted the privileges of +her sex and degraded all women very nearly to the level of brutes. +So the case stood. Liholiho had half a mind to put his foot down, +Kaahumahu had a whole mind to badger him into doing it, and whiskey did +the rest. It was probably the rest. It was probably the first time +whiskey ever prominently figured as an aid to civilization. Liholiho +came up to Kailua as drunk as a piper, and attended a great feast; the +determined Queen spurred his drunken courage up to a reckless pitch, and +then, while all the multitude stared in blank dismay, he moved +deliberately forward and sat down with the women! + +They saw him eat from the same vessel with them, and were appalled! +Terrible moments drifted slowly by, and still the King ate, still he +lived, still the lightnings of the insulted gods were withheld! +Then conviction came like a revelation--the superstitions of a hundred +generations passed from before the people like a cloud, and a shout went +up, "the tabu is broken! the tabu is broken!" + +Thus did King Liholiho and his dreadful whiskey preach the first sermon +and prepare the way for the new gospel that was speeding southward over +the waves of the Atlantic. + +The tabu broken and destruction failing to follow the awful sacrilege, +the people, with that childlike precipitancy which has always +characterized them, jumped to the conclusion that their gods were a weak +and wretched swindle, just as they formerly jumped to the conclusion that +Captain Cook was no god, merely because he groaned, and promptly killed +him without stopping to inquire whether a god might not groan as well as +a man if it suited his convenience to do it; and satisfied that the idols +were powerless to protect themselves they went to work at once and pulled +them down--hacked them to pieces--applied the torch--annihilated them! + +The pagan priests were furious. And well they might be; they had held +the fattest offices in the land, and now they were beggared; they had +been great--they had stood above the chiefs--and now they were vagabonds. +They raised a revolt; they scared a number of people into joining their +standard, and Bekuokalani, an ambitious offshoot of royalty, was easily +persuaded to become their leader. + +In the first skirmish the idolaters triumphed over the royal army sent +against them, and full of confidence they resolved to march upon Kailua. +The King sent an envoy to try and conciliate them, and came very near +being an envoy short by the operation; the savages not only refused to +listen to him, but wanted to kill him. So the King sent his men forth +under Major General Kalaimoku and the two host met a Kuamoo. The battle +was long and fierce--men and women fighting side by side, as was the +custom--and when the day was done the rebels were flying in every +direction in hopeless panic, and idolatry and the tabu were dead in the +land! + +The royalists marched gayly home to Kailua glorifying the new +dispensation. "There is no power in the gods," said they; "they are a +vanity and a lie. The army with idols was weak; the army without idols +was strong and victorious!" + +The nation was without a religion. + +The missionary ship arrived in safety shortly afterward, timed by +providential exactness to meet the emergency, and the Gospel was planted +as in a virgin soil. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXIII. + +At noon, we hired a Kanaka to take us down to the ancient ruins at +Honaunan in his canoe--price two dollars--reasonable enough, for a sea +voyage of eight miles, counting both ways. + +The native canoe is an irresponsible looking contrivance. I cannot think +of anything to liken it to but a boy's sled runner hollowed out, and that +does not quite convey the correct idea. It is about fifteen feet long, +high and pointed at both ends, is a foot and a half or two feet deep, and +so narrow that if you wedged a fat man into it you might not get him out +again. It sits on top of the water like a duck, but it has an outrigger +and does not upset easily, if you keep still. This outrigger is formed +of two long bent sticks like plow handles, which project from one side, +and to their outer ends is bound a curved beam composed of an extremely +light wood, which skims along the surface of the water and thus saves you +from an upset on that side, while the outrigger's weight is not so easily +lifted as to make an upset on the other side a thing to be greatly +feared. Still, until one gets used to sitting perched upon this +knifeblade, he is apt to reason within himself that it would be more +comfortable if there were just an outrigger or so on the other side also. +I had the bow seat, and Billings sat amidships and faced the Kanaka, who +occupied the stern of the craft and did the paddling. With the first +stroke the trim shell of a thing shot out from the shore like an arrow. +There was not much to see. While we were on the shallow water of the +reef, it was pastime to look down into the limpid depths at the large +bunches of branching coral--the unique shrubbery of the sea. We lost +that, though, when we got out into the dead blue water of the deep. +But we had the picture of the surf, then, dashing angrily against the +crag-bound shore and sending a foaming spray high into the air. + +There was interest in this beetling border, too, for it was honey-combed +with quaint caves and arches and tunnels, and had a rude semblance of the +dilapidated architecture of ruined keeps and castles rising out of the +restless sea. When this novelty ceased to be a novelty, we turned our +eyes shoreward and gazed at the long mountain with its rich green forests +stretching up into the curtaining clouds, and at the specks of houses in +the rearward distance and the diminished schooner riding sleepily at +anchor. And when these grew tiresome we dashed boldly into the midst of +a school of huge, beastly porpoises engaged at their eternal game of +arching over a wave and disappearing, and then doing it over again and +keeping it up--always circling over, in that way, like so many +well-submerged wheels. But the porpoises wheeled themselves away, and +then we were thrown upon our own resources. It did not take many minutes +to discover that the sun was blazing like a bonfire, and that the weather +was of a melting temperature. It had a drowsing effect, too. In one +place we came upon a large company of naked natives, of both sexes and +all ages, amusing themselves with the national pastime of surf-bathing. +Each heathen would paddle three or four hundred yards out to sea, (taking +a short board with him), then face the shore and wait for a particularly +prodigious billow to come along; at the right moment he would fling his +board upon its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here he would +come whizzing by like a bombshell! It did not seem that a lightning +express train could shoot along at a more hair-lifting speed. I tried +surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the +board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the +connection myself.--The board struck the shore in three quarters of a +second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, +with a couple of barrels of water in me. None but natives ever master +the art of surf-bathing thoroughly. + +At the end of an hour, we had made the four miles, and landed on a level +point of land, upon which was a wide extent of old ruins, with many a +tall cocoanut tree growing among them. Here was the ancient City of +Refuge--a vast inclosure, whose stone walls were twenty feet thick at the +base, and fifteen feet high; an oblong square, a thousand and forty feet +one way and a fraction under seven hundred the other. Within this +inclosure, in early times, has been three rude temples; each two hundred +and ten feet long by one hundred wide, and thirteen high. + +In those days, if a man killed another anywhere on the island the +relatives were privileged to take the murderer's life; and then a chase +for life and liberty began--the outlawed criminal flying through pathless +forests and over mountain and plain, with his hopes fixed upon the +protecting walls of the City of Refuge, and the avenger of blood +following hotly after him! + +Sometimes the race was kept up to the very gates of the temple, and the +panting pair sped through long files of excited natives, who watched the +contest with flashing eye and dilated nostril, encouraging the hunted +refugee with sharp, inspiriting ejaculations, and sending up a ringing +shout of exultation when the saving gates closed upon him and the cheated +pursuer sank exhausted at the threshold. But sometimes the flying +criminal fell under the hand of the avenger at the very door, when one +more brave stride, one more brief second of time would have brought his +feet upon the sacred ground and barred him against all harm. Where did +these isolated pagans get this idea of a City of Refuge--this ancient +Oriental custom? + +This old sanctuary was sacred to all--even to rebels in arms and invading +armies. Once within its walls, and confession made to the priest and +absolution obtained, the wretch with a price upon his head could go forth +without fear and without danger--he was tabu, and to harm him was death. +The routed rebels in the lost battle for idolatry fled to this place to +claim sanctuary, and many were thus saved. + +Close to the corner of the great inclosure is a round structure of stone, +some six or eight feet high, with a level top about ten or twelve in +diameter. This was the place of execution. A high palisade of cocoanut +piles shut out the cruel scenes from the vulgar multitude. Here +criminals were killed, the flesh stripped from the bones and burned, and +the bones secreted in holes in the body of the structure. If the man had +been guilty of a high crime, the entire corpse was burned. + +The walls of the temple are a study. The same food for speculation that +is offered the visitor to the Pyramids of Egypt he will find here--the +mystery of how they were constructed by a people unacquainted with +science and mechanics. The natives have no invention of their own for +hoisting heavy weights, they had no beasts of burden, and they have never +even shown any knowledge of the properties of the lever. Yet some of the +lava blocks quarried out, brought over rough, broken ground, and built +into this wall, six or seven feet from the ground, are of prodigious size +and would weigh tons. How did they transport and how raise them? + +Both the inner and outer surfaces of the walls present a smooth front and +are very creditable specimens of masonry. The blocks are of all manner +of shapes and sizes, but yet are fitted together with the neatest +exactness. The gradual narrowing of the wall from the base upward is +accurately preserved. + +No cement was used, but the edifice is firm and compact and is capable of +resisting storm and decay for centuries. Who built this temple, and how +was it built, and when, are mysteries that may never be unraveled. +Outside of these ancient walls lies a sort of coffin-shaped stone eleven +feet four inches long and three feet square at the small end (it would +weigh a few thousand pounds), which the high chief who held sway over +this district many centuries ago brought thither on his shoulder one day +to use as a lounge! This circumstance is established by the most +reliable traditions. He used to lie down on it, in his indolent way, and +keep an eye on his subjects at work for him and see that there was no +"soldiering" done. And no doubt there was not any done to speak of, +because he was a man of that sort of build that incites to attention to +business on the part of an employee. + +He was fourteen or fifteen feet high. When he stretched himself at full +length on his lounge, his legs hung down over the end, and when he snored +he woke the dead. These facts are all attested by irrefragable +tradition. + +On the other side of the temple is a monstrous seven-ton rock, eleven +feet long, seven feet wide and three feet thick. It is raised a foot or +a foot and a half above the ground, and rests upon half a dozen little +stony pedestals. The same old fourteen-footer brought it down from the +mountain, merely for fun (he had his own notions about fun), and propped +it up as we find it now and as others may find it a century hence, for it +would take a score of horses to budge it from its position. They say +that fifty or sixty years ago the proud Queen Kaahumanu used to fly to +this rock for safety, whenever she had been making trouble with her +fierce husband, and hide under it until his wrath was appeased. But +these Kanakas will lie, and this statement is one of their ablest +efforts--for Kaahumanu was six feet high--she was bulky--she was built +like an ox--and she could no more have squeezed herself under that rock +than she could have passed between the cylinders of a sugar mill. What +could she gain by it, even if she succeeded? To be chased and abused by +a savage husband could not be otherwise than humiliating to her high +spirit, yet it could never make her feel so flat as an hour's repose +under that rock would. + +We walked a mile over a raised macadamized road of uniform width; a road +paved with flat stones and exhibiting in its every detail a considerable +degree of engineering skill. Some say that that wise old pagan, +Kamehameha I planned and built it, but others say it was built so long +before his time that the knowledge of who constructed it has passed out +of the traditions. In either case, however, as the handiwork of an +untaught and degraded race it is a thing of pleasing interest. The +stones are worn and smooth, and pushed apart in places, so that the road +has the exact appearance of those ancient paved highways leading out of +Rome which one sees in pictures. + +The object of our tramp was to visit a great natural curiosity at the +base of the foothills--a congealed cascade of lava. Some old forgotten +volcanic eruption sent its broad river of fire down the mountain side +here, and it poured down in a great torrent from an overhanging bluff +some fifty feet high to the ground below. The flaming torrent cooled in +the winds from the sea, and remains there to-day, all seamed, and frothed +and rippled a petrified Niagara. It is very picturesque, and withal so +natural that one might almost imagine it still flowed. A smaller stream +trickled over the cliff and built up an isolated pyramid about thirty +feet high, which has the semblance of a mass of large gnarled and knotted +vines and roots and stems intricately twisted and woven together. + +We passed in behind the cascade and the pyramid, and found the bluff +pierced by several cavernous tunnels, whose crooked courses we followed a +long distance. + +Two of these winding tunnels stand as proof of Nature's mining abilities. +Their floors are level, they are seven feet wide, and their roofs are +gently arched. Their height is not uniform, however. We passed through +one a hundred feet long, which leads through a spur of the hill and opens +out well up in the sheer wall of a precipice whose foot rests in the +waves of the sea. It is a commodious tunnel, except that there are +occasional places in it where one must stoop to pass under. The roof is +lava, of course, and is thickly studded with little lava-pointed icicles +an inch long, which hardened as they dripped. They project as closely +together as the iron teeth of a corn-sheller, and if one will stand up +straight and walk any distance there, he can get his hair combed free of +charge. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXIV. + +We got back to the schooner in good time, and then sailed down to Kau, +where we disembarked and took final leave of the vessel. Next day we +bought horses and bent our way over the summer-clad mountain-terraces, +toward the great volcano of Kilauea (Ke-low-way-ah). We made nearly a +two days' journey of it, but that was on account of laziness. Toward +sunset on the second day, we reached an elevation of some four thousand +feet above sea level, and as we picked our careful way through billowy +wastes of lava long generations ago stricken dead and cold in the climax +of its tossing fury, we began to come upon signs of the near presence of +the volcano--signs in the nature of ragged fissures that discharged jets +of sulphurous vapor into the air, hot from the molten ocean down in the +bowels of the mountain. + +Shortly the crater came into view. I have seen Vesuvius since, but it +was a mere toy, a child's volcano, a soup-kettle, compared to this. +Mount Vesuvius is a shapely cone thirty-six hundred feet high; its crater +an inverted cone only three hundred feet deep, and not more than a +thousand feet in diameter, if as much as that; its fires meagre, modest, +and docile.--But here was a vast, perpendicular, walled cellar, nine +hundred feet deep in some places, thirteen hundred in others, +level-floored, and ten miles in circumference! Here was a yawning pit +upon whose floor the armies of Russia could camp, and have room to spare. + +Perched upon the edge of the crater, at the opposite end from where we +stood, was a small look-out house--say three miles away. It assisted us, +by comparison, to comprehend and appreciate the great depth of the basin +--it looked like a tiny martin-box clinging at the eaves of a cathedral. +After some little time spent in resting and looking and ciphering, we +hurried on to the hotel. + +By the path it is half a mile from the Volcano House to the +lookout-house. After a hearty supper we waited until it was thoroughly +dark and then started to the crater. The first glance in that direction +revealed a scene of wild beauty. There was a heavy fog over the crater +and it was splendidly illuminated by the glare from the fires below. The +illumination was two miles wide and a mile high, perhaps; and if you +ever, on a dark night and at a distance beheld the light from thirty or +forty blocks of distant buildings all on fire at once, reflected strongly +against over-hanging clouds, you can form a fair idea of what this looked +like. + +A colossal column of cloud towered to a great height in the air +immediately above the crater, and the outer swell of every one of its +vast folds was dyed with a rich crimson luster, which was subdued to a +pale rose tint in the depressions between. It glowed like a muffled +torch and stretched upward to a dizzy height toward the zenith. I +thought it just possible that its like had not been seen since the +children of Israel wandered on their long march through the desert so +many centuries ago over a path illuminated by the mysterious "pillar of +fire." And I was sure that I now had a vivid conception of what the +majestic "pillar of fire" was like, which almost amounted to a +revelation. + +Arrived at the little thatched lookout house, we rested our elbows on the +railing in front and looked abroad over the wide crater and down over the +sheer precipice at the seething fires beneath us. The view was a +startling improvement on my daylight experience. I turned to see the +effect on the balance of the company and found the reddest-faced set of +men I almost ever saw. In the strong light every countenance glowed like +red-hot iron, every shoulder was suffused with crimson and shaded +rearward into dingy, shapeless obscurity! The place below looked like +the infernal regions and these men like half-cooled devils just come up +on a furlough. + +I turned my eyes upon the volcano again. The "cellar" was tolerably well +lighted up. For a mile and a half in front of us and half a mile on +either side, the floor of the abyss was magnificently illuminated; beyond +these limits the mists hung down their gauzy curtains and cast a +deceptive gloom over all that made the twinkling fires in the remote +corners of the crater seem countless leagues removed--made them seem like +the camp-fires of a great army far away. Here was room for the +imagination to work! You could imagine those lights the width of a +continent away--and that hidden under the intervening darkness were +hills, and winding rivers, and weary wastes of plain and desert--and even +then the tremendous vista stretched on, and on, and on!--to the fires and +far beyond! You could not compass it--it was the idea of eternity made +tangible--and the longest end of it made visible to the naked eye! + +The greater part of the vast floor of the desert under us was as black as +ink, and apparently smooth and level; but over a mile square of it was +ringed and streaked and striped with a thousand branching streams of +liquid and gorgeously brilliant fire! It looked like a colossal railroad +map of the State of Massachusetts done in chain lightning on a midnight +sky. Imagine it--imagine a coal-black sky shivered into a tangled +net-work of angry fire! + +Here and there were gleaming holes a hundred feet in diameter, broken in +the dark crust, and in them the melted lava--the color a dazzling white +just tinged with yellow--was boiling and surging furiously; and from +these holes branched numberless bright torrents in many directions, like +the spokes of a wheel, and kept a tolerably straight course for a while +and then swept round in huge rainbow curves, or made a long succession of +sharp worm-fence angles, which looked precisely like the fiercest jagged +lightning. These streams met other streams, and they mingled with and +crossed and recrossed each other in every conceivable direction, like +skate tracks on a popular skating ground. Sometimes streams twenty or +thirty feet wide flowed from the holes to some distance without dividing +--and through the opera-glasses we could see that they ran down small, +steep hills and were genuine cataracts of fire, white at their source, +but soon cooling and turning to the richest red, grained with alternate +lines of black and gold. Every now and then masses of the dark crust +broke away and floated slowly down these streams like rafts down a river. +Occasionally the molten lava flowing under the superincumbent crust broke +through--split a dazzling streak, from five hundred to a thousand feet +long, like a sudden flash of lightning, and then acre after acre of the +cold lava parted into fragments, turned up edgewise like cakes of ice +when a great river breaks up, plunged downward and were swallowed in the +crimson cauldron. Then the wide expanse of the "thaw" maintained a ruddy +glow for a while, but shortly cooled and became black and level again. +During a "thaw," every dismembered cake was marked by a glittering white +border which was superbly shaded inward by aurora borealis rays, which +were a flaming yellow where they joined the white border, and from thence +toward their points tapered into glowing crimson, then into a rich, pale +carmine, and finally into a faint blush that held its own a moment and +then dimmed and turned black. Some of the streams preferred to mingle +together in a tangle of fantastic circles, and then they looked something +like the confusion of ropes one sees on a ship's deck when she has just +taken in sail and dropped anchor--provided one can imagine those ropes on +fire. + +Through the glasses, the little fountains scattered about looked very +beautiful. They boiled, and coughed, and spluttered, and discharged +sprays of stringy red fire--of about the consistency of mush, for +instance--from ten to fifteen feet into the air, along with a shower of +brilliant white sparks--a quaint and unnatural mingling of gouts of blood +and snow-flakes! + +We had circles and serpents and streaks of lightning all twined and +wreathed and tied together, without a break throughout an area more than +a mile square (that amount of ground was covered, though it was not +strictly "square"), and it was with a feeling of placid exultation that +we reflected that many years had elapsed since any visitor had seen such +a splendid display--since any visitor had seen anything more than the now +snubbed and insignificant "North" and "South" lakes in action. We had +been reading old files of Hawaiian newspapers and the "Record Book" at +the Volcano House, and were posted. + +I could see the North Lake lying out on the black floor away off in the +outer edge of our panorama, and knitted to it by a web-work of lava +streams. In its individual capacity it looked very little more +respectable than a schoolhouse on fire. True, it was about nine hundred +feet long and two or three hundred wide, but then, under the present +circumstances, it necessarily appeared rather insignificant, and besides +it was so distant from us. + +I forgot to say that the noise made by the bubbling lava is not great, +heard as we heard it from our lofty perch. It makes three distinct +sounds--a rushing, a hissing, and a coughing or puffing sound; and if you +stand on the brink and close your eyes it is no trick at all to imagine +that you are sweeping down a river on a large low-pressure steamer, and +that you hear the hissing of the steam about her boilers, the puffing +from her escape-pipes and the churning rush of the water abaft her +wheels. The smell of sulphur is strong, but not unpleasant to a sinner. + +We left the lookout house at ten o'clock in a half cooked condition, +because of the heat from Pele's furnaces, and wrapping up in blankets, +for the night was cold, we returned to our Hotel. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXV. + +The next night was appointed for a visit to the bottom of the crater, for +we desired to traverse its floor and see the "North Lake" (of fire) which +lay two miles away, toward the further wall. After dark half a dozen of +us set out, with lanterns and native guides, and climbed down a crazy, +thousand-foot pathway in a crevice fractured in the crater wall, and +reached the bottom in safety. + +The irruption of the previous evening had spent its force and the floor +looked black and cold; but when we ran out upon it we found it hot yet, +to the feet, and it was likewise riven with crevices which revealed the +underlying fires gleaming vindictively. A neighboring cauldron was +threatening to overflow, and this added to the dubiousness of the +situation. So the native guides refused to continue the venture, and +then every body deserted except a stranger named Marlette. He said he +had been in the crater a dozen times in daylight and believed he could +find his way through it at night. He thought that a run of three hundred +yards would carry us over the hottest part of the floor and leave us our +shoe-soles. His pluck gave me back-bone. We took one lantern and +instructed the guides to hang the other to the roof of the look-out house +to serve as a beacon for us in case we got lost, and then the party +started back up the precipice and Marlette and I made our run. +We skipped over the hot floor and over the red crevices with brisk +dispatch and reached the cold lava safe but with pretty warm feet. Then +we took things leisurely and comfortably, jumping tolerably wide and +probably bottomless chasms, and threading our way through picturesque +lava upheavals with considerable confidence. When we got fairly away +from the cauldrons of boiling fire, we seemed to be in a gloomy desert, +and a suffocatingly dark one, surrounded by dim walls that seemed to +tower to the sky. The only cheerful objects were the glinting stars high +overhead. + +By and by Marlette shouted "Stop!" I never stopped quicker in my life. +I asked what the matter was. He said we were out of the path. He said +we must not try to go on till we found it again, for we were surrounded +with beds of rotten lava through which we could easily break and plunge +down a thousand feet. I thought eight hundred would answer for me, and +was about to say so when Marlette partly proved his statement by +accidentally crushing through and disappearing to his arm-pits. + +He got out and we hunted for the path with the lantern. He said there +was only one path and that it was but vaguely defined. We could not find +it. The lava surface was all alike in the lantern light. But he was an +ingenious man. He said it was not the lantern that had informed him that +we were out of the path, but his feet. He had noticed a crisp grinding +of fine lava-needles under his feet, and some instinct reminded him that +in the path these were all worn away. So he put the lantern behind him, +and began to search with his boots instead of his eyes. It was good +sagacity. The first time his foot touched a surface that did not grind +under it he announced that the trail was found again; and after that we +kept up a sharp listening for the rasping sound and it always warned us +in time. + +It was a long tramp, but an exciting one. We reached the North Lake +between ten and eleven o'clock, and sat down on a huge overhanging +lava-shelf, tired but satisfied. The spectacle presented was worth +coming double the distance to see. Under us, and stretching away before +us, was a heaving sea of molten fire of seemingly limitless extent. The +glare from it was so blinding that it was some time before we could bear +to look upon it steadily. + +It was like gazing at the sun at noon-day, except that the glare was not +quite so white. At unequal distances all around the shores of the lake +were nearly white-hot chimneys or hollow drums of lava, four or five feet +high, and up through them were bursting gorgeous sprays of lava-gouts and +gem spangles, some white, some red and some golden--a ceaseless +bombardment, and one that fascinated the eye with its unapproachable +splendor. The mere distant jets, sparkling up through an intervening +gossamer veil of vapor, seemed miles away; and the further the curving +ranks of fiery fountains receded, the more fairy-like and beautiful they +appeared. + +Now and then the surging bosom of the lake under our noses would calm +down ominously and seem to be gathering strength for an enterprise; and +then all of a sudden a red dome of lava of the bulk of an ordinary +dwelling would heave itself aloft like an escaping balloon, then burst +asunder, and out of its heart would flit a pale-green film of vapor, and +float upward and vanish in the darkness--a released soul soaring homeward +from captivity with the damned, no doubt. The crashing plunge of the +ruined dome into the lake again would send a world of seething billows +lashing against the shores and shaking the foundations of our perch. By +and by, a loosened mass of the hanging shelf we sat on tumbled into the +lake, jarring the surroundings like an earthquake and delivering a +suggestion that may have been intended for a hint, and may not. We did +not wait to see. + +We got lost again on our way back, and were more than an hour hunting for +the path. We were where we could see the beacon lantern at the look-out +house at the time, but thought it was a star and paid no attention to it. +We reached the hotel at two o'clock in the morning pretty well fagged +out. + +Kilauea never overflows its vast crater, but bursts a passage for its +lava through the mountain side when relief is necessary, and then the +destruction is fearful. About 1840 it rent its overburdened stomach and +sent a broad river of fire careering down to the sea, which swept away +forests, huts, plantations and every thing else that lay in its path. +The stream was five miles broad, in places, and two hundred feet deep, +and the distance it traveled was forty miles. It tore up and bore away +acre-patches of land on its bosom like rafts--rocks, trees and all +intact. At night the red glare was visible a hundred miles at sea; and +at a distance of forty miles fine print could be read at midnight. The +atmosphere was poisoned with sulphurous vapors and choked with falling +ashes, pumice stones and cinders; countless columns of smoke rose up and +blended together in a tumbled canopy that hid the heavens and glowed with +a ruddy flush reflected from the fires below; here and there jets of lava +sprung hundreds of feet into the air and burst into rocket-sprays that +returned to earth in a crimson rain; and all the while the laboring +mountain shook with Nature's great palsy and voiced its distress in +moanings and the muffled booming of subterranean thunders. + +Fishes were killed for twenty miles along the shore, where the lava +entered the sea. The earthquakes caused some loss of human life, and a +prodigious tidal wave swept inland, carrying every thing before it and +drowning a number of natives. The devastation consummated along the +route traversed by the river of lava was complete and incalculable. Only +a Pompeii and a Herculaneum were needed at the foot of Kilauea to make +the story of the irruption immortal. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXVI. + +We rode horseback all around the island of Hawaii (the crooked road +making the distance two hundred miles), and enjoyed the journey very +much. We were more than a week making the trip, because our Kanaka +horses would not go by a house or a hut without stopping--whip and spur +could not alter their minds about it, and so we finally found that it +economized time to let them have their way. Upon inquiry the mystery was +explained: the natives are such thorough-going gossips that they never +pass a house without stopping to swap news, and consequently their horses +learn to regard that sort of thing as an essential part of the whole duty +of man, and his salvation not to be compassed without it. However, at a +former crisis of my life I had once taken an aristocratic young lady out +driving, behind a horse that had just retired from a long and honorable +career as the moving impulse of a milk wagon, and so this present +experience awoke a reminiscent sadness in me in place of the exasperation +more natural to the occasion. I remembered how helpless I was that day, +and how humiliated; how ashamed I was of having intimated to the girl +that I had always owned the horse and was accustomed to grandeur; how +hard I tried to appear easy, and even vivacious, under suffering that was +consuming my vitals; how placidly and maliciously the girl smiled, and +kept on smiling, while my hot blushes baked themselves into a permanent +blood-pudding in my face; how the horse ambled from one side of the +street to the other and waited complacently before every third house two +minutes and a quarter while I belabored his back and reviled him in my +heart; how I tried to keep him from turning corners and failed; how I +moved heaven and earth to get him out of town, and did not succeed; how +he traversed the entire settlement and delivered imaginary milk at a +hundred and sixty-two different domiciles, and how he finally brought up +at a dairy depot and refused to budge further, thus rounding and +completing the revealment of what the plebeian service of his life had +been; how, in eloquent silence, I walked the girl home, and how, when I +took leave of her, her parting remark scorched my soul and appeared to +blister me all over: she said that my horse was a fine, capable animal, +and I must have taken great comfort in him in my time--but that if I +would take along some milk-tickets next time, and appear to deliver them +at the various halting places, it might expedite his movements a little. +There was a coolness between us after that. + +In one place in the island of Hawaii, we saw a laced and ruffled cataract +of limpid water leaping from a sheer precipice fifteen hundred feet high; +but that sort of scenery finds its stanchest ally in the arithmetic +rather than in spectacular effect. If one desires to be so stirred by a +poem of Nature wrought in the happily commingled graces of picturesque +rocks, glimpsed distances, foliage, color, shifting lights and shadows, +and failing water, that the tears almost come into his eyes so potent is +the charm exerted, he need not go away from America to enjoy such an +experience. The Rainbow Fall, in Watkins Glen (N.Y.), on the Erie +railway, is an example. It would recede into pitiable insignificance if +the callous tourist drew on arithmetic on it; but left to compete for the +honors simply on scenic grace and beauty--the grand, the august and the +sublime being barred the contest--it could challenge the old world and +the new to produce its peer. + +In one locality, on our journey, we saw some horses that had been born +and reared on top of the mountains, above the range of running water, and +consequently they had never drank that fluid in their lives, but had been +always accustomed to quenching their thirst by eating dew-laden or +shower-wetted leaves. And now it was destructively funny to see them +sniff suspiciously at a pail of water, and then put in their noses and +try to take a bite out of the fluid, as if it were a solid. Finding it +liquid, they would snatch away their heads and fall to trembling, +snorting and showing other evidences of fright. When they became +convinced at last that the water was friendly and harmless, they thrust +in their noses up to their eyes, brought out a mouthful of water, and +proceeded to chew it complacently. We saw a man coax, kick and spur one +of them five or ten minutes before he could make it cross a running +stream. It spread its nostrils, distended its eyes and trembled all +over, just as horses customarily do in the presence of a serpent--and for +aught I know it thought the crawling stream was a serpent. + +In due course of time our journey came to an end at Kawaehae (usually +pronounced To-a-hi--and before we find fault with this elaborate +orthographical method of arriving at such an unostentatious result, let +us lop off the ugh from our word "though"). I made this horseback trip +on a mule. I paid ten dollars for him at Kau (Kah-oo), added four to get +him shod, rode him two hundred miles, and then sold him for fifteen +dollars. I mark the circumstance with a white stone (in the absence of +chalk--for I never saw a white stone that a body could mark anything +with, though out of respect for the ancients I have tried it often +enough); for up to that day and date it was the first strictly commercial +transaction I had ever entered into, and come out winner. We returned to +Honolulu, and from thence sailed to the island of Maui, and spent several +weeks there very pleasantly. I still remember, with a sense of indolent +luxury, a picnicing excursion up a romantic gorge there, called the Iao +Valley. The trail lay along the edge of a brawling stream in the bottom +of the gorge--a shady route, for it was well roofed with the verdant +domes of forest trees. Through openings in the foliage we glimpsed +picturesque scenery that revealed ceaseless changes and new charms with +every step of our progress. Perpendicular walls from one to three +thousand feet high guarded the way, and were sumptuously plumed with +varied foliage, in places, and in places swathed in waving ferns. +Passing shreds of cloud trailed their shadows across these shining +fronts, mottling them with blots; billowy masses of white vapor hid the +turreted summits, and far above the vapor swelled a background of +gleaming green crags and cones that came and went, through the veiling +mists, like islands drifting in a fog; sometimes the cloudy curtain +descended till half the canon wall was hidden, then shredded gradually +away till only airy glimpses of the ferny front appeared through it--then +swept aloft and left it glorified in the sun again. Now and then, as our +position changed, rocky bastions swung out from the wall, a mimic ruin of +castellated ramparts and crumbling towers clothed with mosses and hung +with garlands of swaying vines, and as we moved on they swung back again +and hid themselves once more in the foliage. Presently a verdure-clad +needle of stone, a thousand feet high, stepped out from behind a corner, +and mounted guard over the mysteries of the valley. It seemed to me that +if Captain Cook needed a monument, here was one ready made--therefore, +why not put up his sign here, and sell out the venerable cocoanut stump? + +But the chief pride of Maui is her dead volcano of Haleakala--which +means, translated, "the house of the sun." We climbed a thousand feet up +the side of this isolated colossus one afternoon; then camped, and next +day climbed the remaining nine thousand feet, and anchored on the summit, +where we built a fire and froze and roasted by turns, all night. With +the first pallor of dawn we got up and saw things that were new to us. +Mounted on a commanding pinnacle, we watched Nature work her silent +wonders. The sea was spread abroad on every hand, its tumbled surface +seeming only wrinkled and dimpled in the distance. A broad valley below +appeared like an ample checker-board, its velvety green sugar plantations +alternating with dun squares of barrenness and groves of trees diminished +to mossy tufts. Beyond the valley were mountains picturesquely grouped +together; but bear in mind, we fancied that we were looking up at these +things--not down. We seemed to sit in the bottom of a symmetrical bowl +ten thousand feet deep, with the valley and the skirting sea lifted away +into the sky above us! It was curious; and not only curious, but +aggravating; for it was having our trouble all for nothing, to climb ten +thousand feet toward heaven and then have to look up at our scenery. +However, we had to be content with it and make the best of it; for, all +we could do we could not coax our landscape down out of the clouds. +Formerly, when I had read an article in which Poe treated of this +singular fraud perpetrated upon the eye by isolated great altitudes, +I had looked upon the matter as an invention of his own fancy. + +I have spoken of the outside view--but we had an inside one, too. That +was the yawning dead crater, into which we now and then tumbled rocks, +half as large as a barrel, from our perch, and saw them go careering down +the almost perpendicular sides, bounding three hundred feet at a jump; +kicking up cast-clouds wherever they struck; diminishing to our view as +they sped farther into distance; growing invisible, finally, and only +betraying their course by faint little puffs of dust; and coming to a +halt at last in the bottom of the abyss, two thousand five hundred feet +down from where they started! It was magnificent sport. We wore +ourselves out at it. + +The crater of Vesuvius, as I have before remarked, is a modest pit about +a thousand feet deep and three thousand in circumference; that of Kilauea +is somewhat deeper, and ten miles in circumference. But what are either +of them compared to the vacant stomach of Haleakala? I will not offer +any figures of my own, but give official ones--those of Commander Wilkes, +U.S.N., who surveyed it and testifies that it is twenty-seven miles in +circumference! If it had a level bottom it would make a fine site for a +city like London. It must have afforded a spectacle worth contemplating +in the old days when its furnaces gave full rein to their anger. + +Presently vagrant white clouds came drifting along, high over the sea and +the valley; then they came in couples and groups; then in imposing +squadrons; gradually joining their forces, they banked themselves solidly +together, a thousand feet under us, and totally shut out land and ocean +--not a vestige of anything was left in view but just a little of the rim +of the crater, circling away from the pinnacle whereon we sat (for a +ghostly procession of wanderers from the filmy hosts without had drifted +through a chasm in the crater wall and filed round and round, and +gathered and sunk and blended together till the abyss was stored to the +brim with a fleecy fog). Thus banked, motion ceased, and silence +reigned. Clear to the horizon, league on league, the snowy floor +stretched without a break--not level, but in rounded folds, with shallow +creases between, and with here and there stately piles of vapory +architecture lifting themselves aloft out of the common plain--some near +at hand, some in the middle distances, and others relieving the monotony +of the remote solitudes. There was little conversation, for the +impressive scene overawed speech. I felt like the Last Man, neglected of +the judgment, and left pinnacled in mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of a +vanished world. + +While the hush yet brooded, the messengers of the coming resurrection +appeared in the East. A growing warmth suffused the horizon, and soon +the sun emerged and looked out over the cloud-waste, flinging bars of +ruddy light across it, staining its folds and billow-caps with blushes, +purpling the shaded troughs between, and glorifying the massy +vapor-palaces and cathedrals with a wasteful splendor of all blendings +and combinations of rich coloring. + +It was the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the memory +of it will remain with me always. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXVII. + +I stumbled upon one curious character in the Island of Mani. He became a +sore annoyance to me in the course of time. My first glimpse of him was +in a sort of public room in the town of Lahaina. He occupied a chair at +the opposite side of the apartment, and sat eyeing our party with +interest for some minutes, and listening as critically to what we were +saying as if he fancied we were talking to him and expecting him to +reply. I thought it very sociable in a stranger. Presently, in the +course of conversation, I made a statement bearing upon the subject under +discussion--and I made it with due modesty, for there was nothing +extraordinary about it, and it was only put forth in illustration of a +point at issue. I had barely finished when this person spoke out with +rapid utterance and feverish anxiety: + +"Oh, that was certainly remarkable, after a fashion, but you ought to +have seen my chimney--you ought to have seen my chimney, sir! Smoke! +I wish I may hang if--Mr. Jones, you remember that chimney--you must +remember that chimney! No, no--I recollect, now, you warn't living on +this side of the island then. But I am telling you nothing but the +truth, and I wish I may never draw another breath if that chimney didn't +smoke so that the smoke actually got caked in it and I had to dig it out +with a pickaxe! You may smile, gentlemen, but the High Sheriff's got a +hunk of it which I dug out before his eyes, and so it's perfectly easy +for you to go and examine for yourselves." + +The interruption broke up the conversation, which had already begun to +lag, and we presently hired some natives and an out-rigger canoe or two, +and went out to overlook a grand surf-bathing contest. + +Two weeks after this, while talking in a company, I looked up and +detected this same man boring through and through me with his intense +eye, and noted again his twitching muscles and his feverish anxiety to +speak. The moment I paused, he said: + +"Beg your pardon, sir, beg your pardon, but it can only be considered +remarkable when brought into strong outline by isolation. Sir, +contrasted with a circumstance which occurred in my own experience, it +instantly becomes commonplace. No, not that--for I will not speak so +discourteously of any experience in the career of a stranger and a +gentleman--but I am obliged to say that you could not, and you would not +ever again refer to this tree as a large one, if you could behold, as I +have, the great Yakmatack tree, in the island of Ounaska, sea of +Kamtchatka--a tree, sir, not one inch less than four hundred and fifteen +feet in solid diameter!--and I wish I may die in a minute if it isn't so! +Oh, you needn't look so questioning, gentlemen; here's old Cap Saltmarsh +can say whether I know what I'm talking about or not. I showed him the +tree." + +Captain Saltmarsh--"Come, now, cat your anchor, lad--you're heaving too +taut. You promised to show me that stunner, and I walked more than +eleven mile with you through the cussedest jungle I ever see, a hunting +for it; but the tree you showed me finally warn't as big around as a beer +cask, and you know that your own self, Markiss." + +"Hear the man talk! Of course the tree was reduced that way, but didn't +I explain it? Answer me, didn't I? Didn't I say I wished you could have +seen it when I first saw it? When you got up on your ear and called me +names, and said I had brought you eleven miles to look at a sapling, +didn't I explain to you that all the whale-ships in the North Seas had +been wooding off of it for more than twenty-seven years? And did you +s'pose the tree could last for-ever, con-found it? I don't see why you +want to keep back things that way, and try to injure a person that's +never done you any harm." + +Somehow this man's presence made me uncomfortable, and I was glad when a +native arrived at that moment to say that Muckawow, the most +companionable and luxurious among the rude war-chiefs of the Islands, +desired us to come over and help him enjoy a missionary whom he had found +trespassing on his grounds. + +I think it was about ten days afterward that, as I finished a statement I +was making for the instruction of a group of friends and acquaintances, +and which made no pretence of being extraordinary, a familiar voice +chimed instantly in on the heels of my last word, and said: + +"But, my dear sir, there was nothing remarkable about that horse, or the +circumstance either--nothing in the world! I mean no sort of offence +when I say it, sir, but you really do not know anything whatever about +speed. Bless your heart, if you could only have seen my mare Margaretta; +there was a beast!--there was lightning for you! Trot! Trot is no name +for it--she flew! How she could whirl a buggy along! I started her out +once, sir--Colonel Bilgewater, you recollect that animal perfectly well +--I started her out about thirty or thirty-five yards ahead of the +awfullest storm I ever saw in my life, and it chased us upwards of +eighteen miles! It did, by the everlasting hills! And I'm telling you +nothing but the unvarnished truth when I say that not one single drop of +rain fell on me--not a single drop, sir! And I swear to it! But my dog +was a-swimming behind the wagon all the way!" + +For a week or two I stayed mostly within doors, for I seemed to meet this +person everywhere, and he had become utterly hateful to me. But one +evening I dropped in on Captain Perkins and his friends, and we had a +sociable time. About ten o'clock I chanced to be talking about a +merchant friend of mine, and without really intending it, the remark +slipped out that he was a little mean and parsimonious about paying his +workmen. Instantly, through the steam of a hot whiskey punch on the +opposite side of the room, a remembered voice shot--and for a moment I +trembled on the imminent verge of profanity: + +"Oh, my dear sir, really you expose yourself when you parade that as a +surprising circumstance. Bless your heart and hide, you are ignorant of +the very A B C of meanness! ignorant as the unborn babe! ignorant as +unborn twins! You don't know anything about it! It is pitiable to see +you, sir, a well-spoken and prepossessing stranger, making such an +enormous pow-wow here about a subject concerning which your ignorance is +perfectly humiliating! Look me in the eye, if you please; look me in the +eye. John James Godfrey was the son of poor but honest parents in the +State of Mississippi--boyhood friend of mine--bosom comrade in later +years. Heaven rest his noble spirit, he is gone from us now. John James +Godfrey was hired by the Hayblossom Mining Company in California to do +some blasting for them--the "Incorporated Company of Mean Men," the boys +used to call it. + +"Well, one day he drilled a hole about four feet deep and put in an awful +blast of powder, and was standing over it ramming it down with an iron +crowbar about nine foot long, when the cussed thing struck a spark and +fired the powder, and scat! away John Godfrey whizzed like a skyrocket, +him and his crowbar! Well, sir, he kept on going up in the air higher +and higher, till he didn't look any bigger than a boy--and he kept going +on up higher and higher, till he didn't look any bigger than a doll--and +he kept on going up higher and higher, till he didn't look any bigger +than a little small bee--and then he went out of sight! Presently he +came in sight again, looking like a little small bee--and he came along +down further and further, till he looked as big as a doll again--and down +further and further, till he was as big as a boy again--and further and +further, till he was a full-sized man once more; and then him and his +crowbar came a wh-izzing down and lit right exactly in the same old +tracks and went to r-ramming down, and r-ramming down, and r-ramming down +again, just the same as if nothing had happened! Now do you know, that +poor cuss warn't gone only sixteen minutes, and yet that Incorporated +Company of Mean Men DOCKED HIM FOR THE LOST TIME!" + +I said I had the headache, and so excused myself and went home. And on +my diary I entered "another night spoiled" by this offensive loafer. +And a fervent curse was set down with it to keep the item company. And +the very next day I packed up, out of all patience, and left the Island. + +Almost from the very beginning, I regarded that man as a liar. + +The line of points represents an interval of years. At the end of which +time the opinion hazarded in that last sentence came to be gratifyingly +and remarkably endorsed, and by wholly disinterested persons. The man +Markiss was found one morning hanging to a beam of his own bedroom (the +doors and windows securely fastened on the inside), dead; and on his +breast was pinned a paper in his own handwriting begging his friends to +suspect no innocent person of having any thing to do with his death, for +that it was the work of his own hands entirely. Yet the jury brought in +the astounding verdict that deceased came to his death "by the hands of +some person or persons unknown!" They explained that the perfectly +undeviating consistency of Markiss's character for thirty years towered +aloft as colossal and indestructible testimony, that whatever statement +he chose to make was entitled to instant and unquestioning acceptance as +a lie. And they furthermore stated their belief that he was not dead, +and instanced the strong circumstantial evidence of his own word that he +was dead--and beseeched the coroner to delay the funeral as long as +possible, which was done. And so in the tropical climate of Lahaina the +coffin stood open for seven days, and then even the loyal jury gave him +up. But they sat on him again, and changed their verdict to "suicide +induced by mental aberration"--because, said they, with penetration, "he +said he was dead, and he was dead; and would he have told the truth if he +had been in his right mind? No, sir." + + + + +CHAPTER LXXVIII. + +After half a year's luxurious vagrancy in the islands, I took shipping in +a sailing vessel, and regretfully returned to San Francisco--a voyage in +every way delightful, but without an incident: unless lying two long +weeks in a dead calm, eighteen hundred miles from the nearest land, may +rank as an incident. Schools of whales grew so tame that day after day +they played about the ship among the porpoises and the sharks without the +least apparent fear of us, and we pelted them with empty bottles for lack +of better sport. Twenty-four hours afterward these bottles would be +still lying on the glassy water under our noses, showing that the ship +had not moved out of her place in all that time. The calm was absolutely +breathless, and the surface of the sea absolutely without a wrinkle. +For a whole day and part of a night we lay so close to another ship that +had drifted to our vicinity, that we carried on conversations with her +passengers, introduced each other by name, and became pretty intimately +acquainted with people we had never heard of before, and have never heard +of since. This was the only vessel we saw during the whole lonely +voyage. We had fifteen passengers, and to show how hard pressed they +were at last for occupation and amusement, I will mention that the +gentlemen gave a good part of their time every day, during the calm, to +trying to sit on an empty champagne bottle (lying on its side), and +thread a needle without touching their heels to the deck, or falling +over; and the ladies sat in the shade of the mainsail, and watched the +enterprise with absorbing interest. We were at sea five Sundays; and +yet, but for the almanac, we never would have known but that all the +other days were Sundays too. + +I was home again, in San Francisco, without means and without employment. +I tortured my brain for a saving scheme of some kind, and at last a +public lecture occurred to me! I sat down and wrote one, in a fever of +hopeful anticipation. I showed it to several friends, but they all shook +their heads. They said nobody would come to hear me, and I would make a +humiliating failure of it. + +They said that as I had never spoken in public, I would break down in the +delivery, anyhow. I was disconsolate now. But at last an editor slapped +me on the back and told me to "go ahead." He said, "Take the largest +house in town, and charge a dollar a ticket." The audacity of the +proposition was charming; it seemed fraught with practical worldly +wisdom, however. The proprietor of the several theatres endorsed the +advice, and said I might have his handsome new opera-house at half price +--fifty dollars. In sheer desperation I took it--on credit, for +sufficient reasons. In three days I did a hundred and fifty dollars' +worth of printing and advertising, and was the most distressed and +frightened creature on the Pacific coast. I could not sleep--who could, +under such circumstances? For other people there was facetiousness in +the last line of my posters, but to me it was plaintive with a pang when +I wrote it: + + "Doors open at 7 1/2. The trouble will begin at 8." + +That line has done good service since. Showmen have borrowed it +frequently. I have even seen it appended to a newspaper advertisement +reminding school pupils in vacation what time next term would begin. As +those three days of suspense dragged by, I grew more and more unhappy. +I had sold two hundred tickets among my personal friends, but I feared +they might not come. My lecture, which had seemed "humorous" to me, at +first, grew steadily more and more dreary, till not a vestige of fun +seemed left, and I grieved that I could not bring a coffin on the stage +and turn the thing into a funeral. I was so panic-stricken, at last, +that I went to three old friends, giants in stature, cordial by nature, +and stormy-voiced, and said: + +"This thing is going to be a failure; the jokes in it are so dim that +nobody will ever see them; I would like to have you sit in the parquette, +and help me through." + +They said they would. Then I went to the wife of a popular citizen, and +said that if she was willing to do me a very great kindness, I would be +glad if she and her husband would sit prominently in the left-hand +stage-box, where the whole house could see them. I explained that I +should need help, and would turn toward her and smile, as a signal, when +I had been delivered of an obscure joke--"and then," I added, "don't wait +to investigate, but respond!" + +She promised. Down the street I met a man I never had seen before. He +had been drinking, and was beaming with smiles and good nature. He said: + +"My name's Sawyer. You don't know me, but that don't matter. I haven't +got a cent, but if you knew how bad I wanted to laugh, you'd give me a +ticket. Come, now, what do you say?" + +"Is your laugh hung on a hair-trigger?--that is, is it critical, or can +you get it off easy?" + +My drawling infirmity of speech so affected him that he laughed a +specimen or two that struck me as being about the article I wanted, and I +gave him a ticket, and appointed him to sit in the second circle, in the +centre, and be responsible for that division of the house. I gave him +minute instructions about how to detect indistinct jokes, and then went +away, and left him chuckling placidly over the novelty of the idea. + +I ate nothing on the last of the three eventful days--I only suffered. +I had advertised that on this third day the box-office would be opened +for the sale of reserved seats. I crept down to the theater at four in +the afternoon to see if any sales had been made. The ticket seller was +gone, the box-office was locked up. I had to swallow suddenly, or my +heart would have got out. "No sales," I said to myself; "I might have +known it." I thought of suicide, pretended illness, flight. I thought +of these things in earnest, for I was very miserable and scared. But of +course I had to drive them away, and prepare to meet my fate. I could +not wait for half-past seven--I wanted to face the horror, and end it +--the feeling of many a man doomed to hang, no doubt. I went down back +streets at six o'clock, and entered the theatre by the back door. +I stumbled my way in the dark among the ranks of canvas scenery, and +stood on the stage. The house was gloomy and silent, and its emptiness +depressing. I went into the dark among the scenes again, and for an hour +and a half gave myself up to the horrors, wholly unconscious of +everything else. Then I heard a murmur; it rose higher and higher, and +ended in a crash, mingled with cheers. It made my hair raise, it was so +close to me, and so loud. + +There was a pause, and then another; presently came a third, and before I +well knew what I was about, I was in the middle of the stage, staring at +a sea of faces, bewildered by the fierce glare of the lights, and quaking +in every limb with a terror that seemed like to take my life away. The +house was full, aisles and all! + +The tumult in my heart and brain and legs continued a full minute before +I could gain any command over myself. Then I recognized the charity and +the friendliness in the faces before me, and little by little my fright +melted away, and I began to talk Within three or four minutes I was +comfortable, and even content. My three chief allies, with three +auxiliaries, were on hand, in the parquette, all sitting together, all +armed with bludgeons, and all ready to make an onslaught upon the +feeblest joke that might show its head. And whenever a joke did fall, +their bludgeons came down and their faces seemed to split from ear to +ear. + +Sawyer, whose hearty countenance was seen looming redly in the centre of +the second circle, took it up, and the house was carried handsomely. +Inferior jokes never fared so royally before. Presently I delivered a +bit of serious matter with impressive unction (it was my pet), and the +audience listened with an absorbed hush that gratified me more than any +applause; and as I dropped the last word of the clause, I happened to +turn and catch Mrs.--'s intent and waiting eye; my conversation with her +flashed upon me, and in spite of all I could do I smiled. She took it +for the signal, and promptly delivered a mellow laugh that touched off +the whole audience; and the explosion that followed was the triumph of +the evening. I thought that that honest man Sawyer would choke himself; +and as for the bludgeons, they performed like pile-drivers. But my poor +little morsel of pathos was ruined. It was taken in good faith as an +intentional joke, and the prize one of the entertainment, and I wisely +let it go at that. + +All the papers were kind in the morning; my appetite returned; I had a +abundance of money. All's well that ends well. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXIX. + +I launched out as a lecturer, now, with great boldness. I had the field +all to myself, for public lectures were almost an unknown commodity in +the Pacific market. They are not so rare, now, I suppose. I took an old +personal friend along to play agent for me, and for two or three weeks we +roamed through Nevada and California and had a very cheerful time of it. +Two days before I lectured in Virginia City, two stagecoaches were robbed +within two miles of the town. The daring act was committed just at dawn, +by six masked men, who sprang up alongside the coaches, presented +revolvers at the heads of the drivers and passengers, and commanded a +general dismount. Everybody climbed down, and the robbers took their +watches and every cent they had. Then they took gunpowder and blew up +the express specie boxes and got their contents. The leader of the +robbers was a small, quick-spoken man, and the fame of his vigorous +manner and his intrepidity was in everybody's mouth when we arrived. + +The night after instructing Virginia, I walked over the desolate "divide" +and down to Gold Hill, and lectured there. The lecture done, I stopped +to talk with a friend, and did not start back till eleven. The "divide" +was high, unoccupied ground, between the towns, the scene of twenty +midnight murders and a hundred robberies. As we climbed up and stepped +out on this eminence, the Gold Hill lights dropped out of sight at our +backs, and the night closed down gloomy and dismal. A sharp wind swept +the place, too, and chilled our perspiring bodies through. + +"I tell you I don't like this place at night," said Mike the agent. + +"Well, don't speak so loud," I said. "You needn't remind anybody that we +are here." + +Just then a dim figure approached me from the direction of Virginia--a +man, evidently. He came straight at me, and I stepped aside to let him +pass; he stepped in the way and confronted me again. Then I saw that he +had a mask on and was holding something in my face--I heard a click-click +and recognized a revolver in dim outline. I pushed the barrel aside with +my hand and said: + +"Don't!" + +He ejaculated sharply: + +"Your watch! Your money!" + +I said: + +"You can have them with pleasure--but take the pistol away from my face, +please. It makes me shiver." + +"No remarks! Hand out your money!" + +"Certainly--I--" + +"Put up your hands! Don't you go for a weapon! Put 'em up! Higher!" + +I held them above my head. + +A pause. Then: + +"Are you going to hand out your money or not?" + +I dropped my hands to my pockets and said: + +Certainly! I--" + +"Put up your hands! Do you want your head blown off? Higher!" + +I put them above my head again. + +Another pause. + +Are you going to hand out your money or not? Ah-ah--again? Put up your +hands! By George, you want the head shot off you awful bad!" + +"Well, friend, I'm trying my best to please you. You tell me to give up +my money, and when I reach for it you tell me to put up my hands. If you +would only--. Oh, now--don't! All six of you at me! That other man +will get away while.--Now please take some of those revolvers out of my +face--do, if you please! Every time one of them clicks, my liver comes +up into my throat! If you have a mother--any of you--or if any of you +have ever had a mother--or a--grandmother--or a--" + +"Cheese it! Will you give up your money, or have we got to--. There +--there--none of that! Put up your hands!" + +"Gentlemen--I know you are gentlemen by your--" + +"Silence! If you want to be facetious, young man, there are times and +places more fitting. This is a serious business." + +"You prick the marrow of my opinion. The funerals I have attended in my +time were comedies compared to it. Now I think--" + +"Curse your palaver! Your money!--your money!--your money! Hold!--put +up your hands!" + +"Gentlemen, listen to reason. You see how I am situated--now don't put +those pistols so close--I smell the powder. + +"You see how I am situated. If I had four hands--so that I could hold up +two and--" + +"Throttle him! Gag him! Kill him!" + +"Gentlemen, don't! Nobody's watching the other fellow. Why don't some +of you--. Ouch! Take it away, please! + +"Gentlemen, you see that I've got to hold up my hands; and so I can't take +out my money--but if you'll be so kind as to take it out for me, I will +do as much for you some--" + +"Search him Beauregard--and stop his jaw with a bullet, quick, if he wags +it again. Help Beauregard, Stonewall." + +Then three of them, with the small, spry leader, adjourned to Mike and +fell to searching him. I was so excited that my lawless fancy tortured +me to ask my two men all manner of facetious questions about their rebel +brother-generals of the South, but, considering the order they had +received, it was but common prudence to keep still. When everything had +been taken from me,--watch, money, and a multitude of trifles of small +value,--I supposed I was free, and forthwith put my cold hands into my +empty pockets and began an inoffensive jig to warm my feet and stir up +some latent courage--but instantly all pistols were at my head, and the +order came again: + +They stood Mike up alongside of me, with strict orders to keep his hands +above his head, too, and then the chief highwayman said: + +"Beauregard, hide behind that boulder; Phil Sheridan, you hide behind +that other one; Stonewall Jackson, put yourself behind that sage-bush +there. Keep your pistols bearing on these fellows, and if they take down +their hands within ten minutes, or move a single peg, let them have it!" + +Then three disappeared in the gloom toward the several ambushes, and the +other three disappeared down the road toward Virginia. + +It was depressingly still, and miserably cold. Now this whole thing was +a practical joke, and the robbers were personal friends of ours in +disguise, and twenty more lay hidden within ten feet of us during the +whole operation, listening. Mike knew all this, and was in the joke, but +I suspected nothing of it. To me it was most uncomfortably genuine. +When we had stood there in the middle of the road five minutes, like a +couple of idiots, with our hands aloft, freezing to death by inches, +Mike's interest in the joke began to wane. He said: + +"The time's up, now, aint it?" + +"No, you keep still. Do you want to take any chances with these bloody +savages?" + +Presently Mike said: + +"Now the time's up, anyway. I'm freezing." + +"Well freeze. Better freeze than carry your brains home in a basket. +Maybe the time is up, but how do we know?--got no watch to tell by. +I mean to give them good measure. I calculate to stand here fifteen +minutes or die. Don't you move." + +So, without knowing it, I was making one joker very sick of his contract. +When we took our arms down at last, they were aching with cold and +fatigue, and when we went sneaking off, the dread I was in that the time +might not yet be up and that we would feel bullets in a moment, was not +sufficient to draw all my attention from the misery that racked my +stiffened body. + +The joke of these highwayman friends of ours was mainly a joke upon +themselves; for they had waited for me on the cold hill-top two full +hours before I came, and there was very little fun in that; they were so +chilled that it took them a couple of weeks to get warm again. Moreover, +I never had a thought that they would kill me to get money which it was +so perfectly easy to get without any such folly, and so they did not +really frighten me bad enough to make their enjoyment worth the trouble +they had taken. I was only afraid that their weapons would go off +accidentally. Their very numbers inspired me with confidence that no +blood would be intentionally spilled. They were not smart; they ought to +have sent only one highwayman, with a double-barrelled shot gun, if they +desired to see the author of this volume climb a tree. + +However, I suppose that in the long run I got the largest share of the +joke at last; and in a shape not foreseen by the highwaymen; for the +chilly exposure on the "divide" while I was in a perspiration gave me a +cold which developed itself into a troublesome disease and kept my hands +idle some three months, besides costing me quite a sum in doctor's bills. +Since then I play no practical jokes on people and generally lose my +temper when one is played upon me. + +When I returned to San Francisco I projected a pleasure journey to Japan +and thence westward around the world; but a desire to see home again +changed my mind, and I took a berth in the steamship, bade good-bye to +the friendliest land and livest, heartiest community on our continent, +and came by the way of the Isthmus to New York--a trip that was not much +of a pic-nic excursion, for the cholera broke out among us on the passage +and we buried two or three bodies at sea every day. I found home a +dreary place after my long absence; for half the children I had known +were now wearing whiskers or waterfalls, and few of the grown people I +had been acquainted with remained at their hearthstones prosperous and +happy--some of them had wandered to other scenes, some were in jail, and +the rest had been hanged. These changes touched me deeply, and I went +away and joined the famous Quaker City European Excursion and carried my +tears to foreign lands. + +Thus, after seven years of vicissitudes, ended a "pleasure trip" to the +silver mines of Nevada which had originally been intended to occupy only +three months. However, I usually miss my calculations further than that. + + +MORAL. + +If the reader thinks he is done, now, and that this book has no moral to +it, he is in error. The moral of it is this: If you are of any account, +stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence; but if you are "no +account," go away from home, and then you will have to work, whether you +want to or not. Thus you become a blessing to your friends by ceasing to +be a nuisance to them--if the people you go among suffer by the +operation. + + + + +APPENDIX. A. + +BRIEF SKETCH OF MORMON HISTORY. + +Mormonism is only about forty years old, but its career has been full of +stir and adventure from the beginning, and is likely to remain so to the +end. Its adherents have been hunted and hounded from one end of the +country to the other, and the result is that for years they have hated +all "Gentiles" indiscriminately and with all their might. Joseph Smith, +the finder of the Book of Mormon and founder of the religion, was driven +from State to State with his mysterious copperplates and the miraculous +stones he read their inscriptions with. Finally he instituted his +"church" in Ohio and Brigham Young joined it. The neighbors began to +persecute, and apostasy commenced. Brigham held to the faith and worked +hard. He arrested desertion. He did more--he added converts in the +midst of the trouble. He rose in favor and importance with the brethren. +He was made one of the Twelve Apostles of the Church. He shortly fought +his way to a higher post and a more powerful--President of the Twelve. +The neighbors rose up and drove the Mormons out of Ohio, and they settled +in Missouri. Brigham went with them. The Missourians drove them out and +they retreated to Nauvoo, Illinois. They prospered there, and built a +temple which made some pretensions to architectural grace and achieved +some celebrity in a section of country where a brick court-house with a +tin dome and a cupola on it was contemplated with reverential awe. +But the Mormons were badgered and harried again by their neighbors. +All the proclamations Joseph Smith could issue denouncing polygamy and +repudiating it as utterly anti-Mormon were of no avail; the people of the +neighborhood, on both sides of the Mississippi, claimed that polygamy was +practised by the Mormons, and not only polygamy but a little of +everything that was bad. Brigham returned from a mission to England, +where he had established a Mormon newspaper, and he brought back with him +several hundred converts to his preaching. His influence among the +brethren augmented with every move he made. Finally Nauvoo was invaded +by the Missouri and Illinois Gentiles, and Joseph Smith killed. A Mormon +named Rigdon assumed the Presidency of the Mormon church and government, +in Smith's place, and even tried his hand at a prophecy or two. But a +greater than he was at hand. Brigham seized the advantage of the hour +and without other authority than superior brain and nerve and will, +hurled Rigdon from his high place and occupied it himself. He did more. +He launched an elaborate curse at Rigdon and his disciples; and he +pronounced Rigdon's "prophecies" emanations from the devil, and ended by +"handing the false prophet over to the buffetings of Satan for a thousand +years"--probably the longest term ever inflicted in Illinois. The people +recognized their master. They straightway elected Brigham Young +President, by a prodigious majority, and have never faltered in their +devotion to him from that day to this. Brigham had forecast--a quality +which no other prominent Mormon has probably ever possessed. +He recognized that it was better to move to the wilderness than be moved. +By his command the people gathered together their meagre effects, turned +their backs upon their homes, and their faces toward the wilderness, and +on a bitter night in February filed in sorrowful procession across the +frozen Mississippi, lighted on their way by the glare from their burning +temple, whose sacred furniture their own hands had fired! They camped, +several days afterward, on the western verge of Iowa, and poverty, want, +hunger, cold, sickness, grief and persecution did their work, and many +succumbed and died--martyrs, fair and true, whatever else they might have +been. Two years the remnant remained there, while Brigham and a small +party crossed the country and founded Great Salt Lake City, purposely +choosing a land which was outside the ownership and jurisdiction of the +hated American nation. Note that. This was in 1847. Brigham moved his +people there and got them settled just in time to see disaster fall +again. For the war closed and Mexico ceded Brigham's refuge to the +enemy--the United States! In 1849 the Mormons organized a "free and +independent" government and erected the "State of Deseret," with Brigham +Young as its head. But the very next year Congress deliberately snubbed +it and created the "Territory of Utah" out of the same accumulation of +mountains, sage-brush, alkali and general desolation,--but made Brigham +Governor of it. Then for years the enormous migration across the plains +to California poured through the land of the Mormons and yet the church +remained staunch and true to its lord and master. Neither hunger, +thirst, poverty, grief, hatred, contempt, nor persecution could drive the +Mormons from their faith or their allegiance; and even the thirst for +gold, which gleaned the flower of the youth and strength of many nations +was not able to entice them! That was the final test. An experiment +that could survive that was an experiment with some substance to it +somewhere. + +Great Salt Lake City throve finely, and so did Utah. One of the last +things which Brigham Young had done before leaving Iowa, was to appear in +the pulpit dressed to personate the worshipped and lamented prophet +Smith, and confer the prophetic succession, with all its dignities, +emoluments and authorities, upon "President Brigham Young!" The people +accepted the pious fraud with the maddest enthusiasm, and Brigham's power +was sealed and secured for all time. Within five years afterward he +openly added polygamy to the tenets of the church by authority of a +"revelation" which he pretended had been received nine years before by +Joseph Smith, albeit Joseph is amply on record as denouncing polygamy to +the day of his death. + +Now was Brigham become a second Andrew Johnson in the small beginning and +steady progress of his official grandeur. He had served successively as +a disciple in the ranks; home missionary; foreign missionary; editor and +publisher; Apostle; President of the Board of Apostles; President of all +Mormondom, civil and ecclesiastical; successor to the great Joseph by the +will of heaven; "prophet," "seer," "revelator." There was but one +dignity higher which he could aspire to, and he reached out modestly and +took that--he proclaimed himself a God! + +He claims that he is to have a heaven of his own hereafter, and that he +will be its God, and his wives and children its goddesses, princes and +princesses. Into it all faithful Mormons will be admitted, with their +families, and will take rank and consequence according to the number of +their wives and children. If a disciple dies before he has had time to +accumulate enough wives and children to enable him to be respectable in +the next world any friend can marry a few wives and raise a few children +for him after he is dead, and they are duly credited to his account and +his heavenly status advanced accordingly. + +Let it be borne in mind that the majority of the Mormons have always been +ignorant, simple, of an inferior order of intellect, unacquainted with +the world and its ways; and let it be borne in mind that the wives of +these Mormons are necessarily after the same pattern and their children +likely to be fit representatives of such a conjunction; and then let it +be remembered that for forty years these creatures have been driven, +driven, driven, relentlessly! and mobbed, beaten, and shot down; cursed, +despised, expatriated; banished to a remote desert, whither they +journeyed gaunt with famine and disease, disturbing the ancient solitudes +with their lamentations and marking the long way with graves of their +dead--and all because they were simply trying to live and worship God in +the way which they believed with all their hearts and souls to be the +true one. Let all these things be borne in mind, and then it will not be +hard to account for the deathless hatred which the Mormons bear our +people and our government. + +That hatred has "fed fat its ancient grudge" ever since Mormon Utah +developed into a self-supporting realm and the church waxed rich and +strong. Brigham as Territorial Governor made it plain that Mormondom was +for the Mormons. The United States tried to rectify all that by +appointing territorial officers from New England and other anti-Mormon +localities, but Brigham prepared to make their entrance into his +dominions difficult. Three thousand United States troops had to go +across the plains and put these gentlemen in office. And after they were +in office they were as helpless as so many stone images. They made laws +which nobody minded and which could not be executed. The federal judges +opened court in a land filled with crime and violence and sat as holiday +spectacles for insolent crowds to gape at--for there was nothing to try, +nothing to do nothing on the dockets! And if a Gentile brought a suit, +the Mormon jury would do just as it pleased about bringing in a verdict, +and when the judgment of the court was rendered no Mormon cared for it +and no officer could execute it. Our Presidents shipped one cargo of +officials after another to Utah, but the result was always the same--they +sat in a blight for awhile they fairly feasted on scowls and insults day +by day, they saw every attempt to do their official duties find its +reward in darker and darker looks, and in secret threats and warnings of +a more and more dismal nature--and at last they either succumbed and +became despised tools and toys of the Mormons, or got scared and +discomforted beyond all endurance and left the Territory. If a brave +officer kept on courageously till his pluck was proven, some pliant +Buchanan or Pierce would remove him and appoint a stick in his place. +In 1857 General Harney came very near being appointed Governor of Utah. +And so it came very near being Harney governor and Cradlebaugh judge! +--two men who never had any idea of fear further than the sort of murky +comprehension of it which they were enabled to gather from the +dictionary. Simply (if for nothing else) for the variety they would have +made in a rather monotonous history of Federal servility and +helplessness, it is a pity they were not fated to hold office together in +Utah. + +Up to the date of our visit to Utah, such had been the Territorial +record. The Territorial government established there had been a hopeless +failure, and Brigham Young was the only real power in the land. He was +an absolute monarch--a monarch who defied our President--a monarch who +laughed at our armies when they camped about his capital--a monarch who +received without emotion the news that the august Congress of the United +States had enacted a solemn law against polygamy, and then went forth +calmly and married twenty-five or thirty more wives. + + + + +B. +THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE. + +The persecutions which the Mormons suffered so long--and which they +consider they still suffer in not being allowed to govern themselves +--they have endeavored and are still endeavoring to repay. The now almost +forgotten "Mountain Meadows massacre" was their work. It was very famous +in its day. The whole United States rang with its horrors. A few items +will refresh the reader's memory. A great emigrant train from Missouri +and Arkansas passed through Salt Lake City and a few disaffected Mormons +joined it for the sake of the strong protection it afforded for their +escape. In that matter lay sufficient cause for hot retaliation by the +Mormon chiefs. Besides, these one hundred and forty-five or one hundred +and fifty unsuspecting emigrants being in part from Arkansas, where a +noted Mormon missionary had lately been killed, and in part from +Missouri, a State remembered with execrations as a bitter persecutor of +the saints when they were few and poor and friendless, here were +substantial additional grounds for lack of love for these wayfarers. +And finally, this train was rich, very rich in cattle, horses, mules and +other property--and how could the Mormons consistently keep up their +coveted resemblance to the Israelitish tribes and not seize the "spoil" +of an enemy when the Lord had so manifestly "delivered it into their +hand?" + +Wherefore, according to Mrs. C. V. Waite's entertaining book, "The Mormon +Prophet," it transpired that-- + +"A 'revelation' from Brigham Young, as Great Grand Archee or God, was +dispatched to President J. C. Haight, Bishop Higbee and J. D. Lee +(adopted son of Brigham), commanding them to raise all the forces they +could muster and trust, follow those cursed Gentiles (so read the +revelation), attack them disguised as Indians, and with the arrows of the +Almighty make a clean sweep of them, and leave none to tell the tale; and +if they needed any assistance they were commanded to hire the Indians as +their allies, promising them a share of the booty. They were to be +neither slothful nor negligent in their duty, and to be punctual in +sending the teams back to him before winter set in, for this was the +mandate of Almighty God." + +The command of the "revelation" was faithfully obeyed. A large party of +Mormons, painted and tricked out as Indians, overtook the train of +emigrant wagons some three hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, and +made an attack. But the emigrants threw up earthworks, made fortresses +of their wagons and defended themselves gallantly and successfully for +five days! Your Missouri or Arkansas gentleman is not much afraid of the +sort of scurvy apologies for "Indians" which the southern part of Utah +affords. He would stand up and fight five hundred of them. + +At the end of the five days the Mormons tried military strategy. They +retired to the upper end of the "Meadows," resumed civilized apparel, +washed off their paint, and then, heavily armed, drove down in wagons to +the beleaguered emigrants, bearing a flag of truce! When the emigrants +saw white men coming they threw down their guns and welcomed them with +cheer after cheer! And, all unconscious of the poetry of it, no doubt, +they lifted a little child aloft, dressed in white, in answer to the flag +of truce! + +The leaders of the timely white "deliverers" were President Haight and +Bishop John D. Lee, of the Mormon Church. Mr. Cradlebaugh, who served a +term as a Federal Judge in Utah and afterward was sent to Congress from +Nevada, tells in a speech delivered in Congress how these leaders next +proceeded: + +"They professed to be on good terms with the Indians, and represented +them as being very mad. They also proposed to intercede and settle the +matter with the Indians. After several hours parley they, having +(apparently) visited the Indians, gave the ultimatum of the savages; +which was, that the emigrants should march out of their camp, leaving +everything behind them, even their guns. It was promised by the Mormon +bishops that they would bring a force and guard the emigrants back to the +settlements. The terms were agreed to, the emigrants being desirous of +saving the lives of their families. The Mormons retired, and +subsequently appeared with thirty or forty armed men. The emigrants were +marched out, the women and children in front and the men behind, the +Mormon guard being in the rear. When they had marched in this way about +a mile, at a given signal the slaughter commenced. The men were almost +all shot down at the first fire from the guard. Two only escaped, who +fled to the desert, and were followed one hundred and fifty miles before +they were overtaken and slaughtered. The women and children ran on, two +or three hundred yards further, when they were overtaken and with the aid +of the Indians they were slaughtered. Seventeen individuals only, of all +the emigrant party, were spared, and they were little children, the +eldest of them being only seven years old. Thus, on the 10th day of +September, 1857, was consummated one of the most cruel, cowardly and +bloody murders known in our history." + +The number of persons butchered by the Mormons on this occasion was one +hundred and twenty. + +With unheard-of temerity Judge Cradlebaugh opened his court and proceeded +to make Mormondom answer for the massacre. And what a spectacle it must +have been to see this grim veteran, solitary and alone in his pride and +his pluck, glowering down on his Mormon jury and Mormon auditory, +deriding them by turns, and by turns "breathing threatenings and +slaughter!" + +An editorial in the Territorial Enterprise of that day says of him and of +the occasion: + +"He spoke and acted with the fearlessness and resolution of a Jackson; +but the jury failed to indict, or even report on the charges, while +threats of violence were heard in every quarter, and an attack on the +U.S. troops intimated, if he persisted in his course. + +"Finding that nothing could be done with the juries, they were discharged +with a scathing rebuke from the judge. And then, sitting as a committing +magistrate, he commenced his task alone. He examined witnesses, made +arrests in every quarter, and created a consternation in the camps of the +saints greater than any they had ever witnessed before, since Mormondom +was born. At last accounts terrified elders and bishops were decamping +to save their necks; and developments of the most starling character were +being made, implicating the highest Church dignitaries in the many +murders and robberies committed upon the Gentiles during the past eight +years." + +Had Harney been Governor, Cradlebaugh would have been supported in his +work, and the absolute proofs adduced by him of Mormon guilt in this +massacre and in a number of previous murders, would have conferred +gratuitous coffins upon certain citizens, together with occasion to use +them. But Cumming was the Federal Governor, and he, under a curious +pretense of impartiality, sought to screen the Mormons from the demands +of justice. On one occasion he even went so far as to publish his +protest against the use of the U.S. troops in aid of Cradlebaugh's +proceedings. + +Mrs. C. V. Waite closes her interesting detail of the great massacre with +the following remark and accompanying summary of the testimony--and the +summary is concise, accurate and reliable: + +"For the benefit of those who may still be disposed to doubt the guilt of +Young and his Mormons in this transaction, the testimony is here collated +and circumstances given which go not merely to implicate but to fasten +conviction upon them by 'confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ:' + +"1. The evidence of Mormons themselves, engaged in the affair, as shown +by the statements of Judge Cradlebaugh and Deputy U.S. Marshall Rodgers. + +"2. The failure of Brigham Young to embody any account of it in his +Report as Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Also his failure to make any +allusion to it whatever from the pulpit, until several years after the +occurrence + +"3. The flight to the mountains of men high in authority in the Mormon +Church and State, when this affair was brought to the ordeal of a +judicial investigation. + +"4. The failure of the Deseret News, the Church organ, and the only +paper then published in the Territory, to notice the massacre until +several months afterward, and then only to deny that Mormons were engaged +in it. + +"5. The testimony of the children saved from the massacre. + +"6. The children and the property of the emigrants found in possession +of the Mormons, and that possession traced back to the very day after the +massacre. + +"7. The statements of Indians in the neighborhood of the scene of the +massacre: these statements are shown, not only by Cradlebaugh and +Rodgers, but by a number of military officers, and by J. Forney, who was, +in 1859, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory. To all +these were such statements freely and frequently made by the Indians. + +"8. The testimony of R. P. Campbell, Capt. 2d Dragoons, who was sent in +the Spring of 1859 to Santa Clara, to protect travelers on the road to +California and to inquire into Indian depredations." + + + + +C. +CONCERNING A FRIGHTFUL ASSASSINATION THAT WAS NEVER CONSUMMATED + +If ever there was a harmless man, it is Conrad Wiegand, of Gold Hill, +Nevada. If ever there was a gentle spirit that thought itself unfired +gunpowder and latent ruin, it is Conrad Wiegand. If ever there was an +oyster that fancied itself a whale; or a jack-o'lantern, confined to a +swamp, that fancied itself a planet with a billion-mile orbit; or a +summer zephyr that deemed itself a hurricane, it is Conrad Wiegand. +Therefore, what wonder is it that when he says a thing, he thinks the +world listens; that when he does a thing the world stands still to look; +and that when he suffers, there is a convulsion of nature? When I met +Conrad, he was "Superintendent of the Gold Hill Assay Office"--and he was +not only its Superintendent, but its entire force. And he was a street +preacher, too, with a mongrel religion of his own invention, whereby he +expected to regenerate the universe. This was years ago. Here latterly +he has entered journalism; and his journalism is what it might be +expected to be: colossal to ear, but pigmy to the eye. It is extravagant +grandiloquence confined to a newspaper about the size of a double letter +sheet. He doubtless edits, sets the type, and prints his paper, all +alone; but he delights to speak of the concern as if it occupies a block +and employs a thousand men. + +[Something less than two years ago, Conrad assailed several people +mercilessly in his little "People's Tribune," and got himself into +trouble. Straightway he airs the affair in the "Territorial Enterprise," +in a communication over his own signature, and I propose to reproduce it +here, in all its native simplicity and more than human candor. Long as +it is, it is well worth reading, for it is the richest specimen of +journalistic literature the history of America can furnish, perhaps:] + +From the Territorial Enterprise, Jan. 20, 1870. + +SEEMING PLOT FOR ASSASSINATION MISCARRIED. + +TO THE EDITOR OF THE ENTERPRISE: Months ago, when Mr. Sutro incidentally +exposed mining management on the Comstock, and among others roused me to +protest against its continuance, in great kindness you warned me that any +attempt by publications, by public meetings and by legislative action, +aimed at the correction of chronic mining evils in Storey County, must +entail upon me (a) business ruin, (b) the burden of all its costs, (c) +personal violence, and if my purpose were persisted in, then (d) +assassination, and after all nothing would be effected. + +YOUR PROPHECY FULFILLING. +In large part at least your prophecies have been fulfilled, for (a) +assaying, which was well attended to in the Gold Hill Assay Office (of +which I am superintendent), in consequence of my publications, has been +taken elsewhere, so the President of one of the companies assures me. +With no reason assigned, other work has been taken away. With but one or +two important exceptions, our assay business now consists simply of the +gleanings of the vicinity. (b) Though my own personal donations to the +People's Tribune Association have already exceeded $1,500, outside of our +own numbers we have received (in money) less than $300 as contributions +and subscriptions for the journal. (c) On Thursday last, on the main +street in Gold Hill, near noon, with neither warning nor cause assigned, +by a powerful blow I was felled to the ground, and while down I was +kicked by a man who it would seem had been led to believe that I had +spoken derogatorily of him. By whom he was so induced to believe I am as +yet unable to say. On Saturday last I was again assailed and beaten by a +man who first informed me why he did so, and who persisted in making his +assault even after the erroneous impression under which he also was at +first laboring had been clearly and repeatedly pointed out. This same +man, after failing through intimidation to elicit from me the names of +our editorial contributors, against giving which he knew me to be +pledged, beat himself weary upon me with a raw hide, I not resisting, and +then pantingly threatened me with permanent disfiguring mayhem, if ever +again I should introduce his name into print, and who but a few minutes +before his attack upon me assured me that the only reason I was +"permitted" to reach home alive on Wednesday evening last (at which time +the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE was issued) was, that he deems me only half-witted, +and be it remembered the very next morning I was knocked down and kicked +by a man who seemed to be prepared for flight. + +[He sees doom impending:] + +WHEN WILL THE CIRCLE JOIN? +How long before the whole of your prophecy will be fulfilled I cannot +say, but under the shadow of so much fulfillment in so short a time, and +with such threats from a man who is one of the most prominent exponents +of the San Francisco mining-ring staring me and this whole community +defiantly in the face and pointing to a completion of your augury, do you +blame me for feeling that this communication is the last I shall ever +write for the Press, especially when a sense alike of personal +self-respect, of duty to this money-oppressed and fear-ridden community, +and of American fealty to the spirit of true Liberty all command me, and +each more loudly than love of life itself, to declare the name of that +prominent man to be JOHN B. WINTERS, President of the Yellow Jacket +Company, a political aspirant and a military General? The name of his +partially duped accomplice and abettor in this last marvelous assault, is +no other than PHILIP LYNCH, Editor and Proprietor of the Gold Hill News. + +Despite the insult and wrong heaped upon me by John B. Winters, on +Saturday afternoon, only a glimpse of which I shall be able to afford +your readers, so much do I deplore clinching (by publicity) a serious +mistake of any one, man or woman, committed under natural and not +self-wrought passion, in view of his great apparent excitement at the +time and in view of the almost perfect privacy of the assault, I am far +from sure that I should not have given him space for repentance before +exposing him, were it not that he himself has so far exposed the matter +as to make it the common talk of the town that he has horsewhipped me. +That fact having been made public, all the facts in connection need to be +also, or silence on my part would seem more than singular, and with many +would be proof either that I was conscious of some unworthy aim in +publishing the article, or else that my "non-combatant" principles are +but a convenient cloak alike of physical and moral cowardice. I +therefore shall try to present a graphic but truthful picture of this +whole affair, but shall forbear all comments, presuming that the editors +of our own journal, if others do not, will speak freely and fittingly +upon this subject in our next number, whether I shall then be dead or +living, for my death will not stop, though it may suspend, the +publication of the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE. [The "non-combatant" sticks to +principle, but takes along a friend or two of a conveniently different +stripe:] + +THE TRAP SET. +On Saturday morning John B. Winters sent verbal word to the Gold Hill +Assay Office that he desired to see me at the Yellow Jacket office. +Though such a request struck me as decidedly cool in view of his own +recent discourtesies to me there alike as a publisher and as a +stockholder in the Yellow Jacket mine, and though it seemed to me more +like a summons than the courteous request by one gentleman to another for +a favor, hoping that some conference with Sharon looking to the +betterment of mining matters in Nevada might arise from it, I felt +strongly inclined to overlook what possibly was simply an oversight in +courtesy. But as then it had only been two days since I had been bruised +and beaten under a hasty and false apprehension of facts, my caution was +somewhat aroused. Moreover I remembered sensitively his contemptuousness +of manner to me at my last interview in his office. I therefore felt it +needful, if I went at all, to go accompanied by a friend whom he would +not dare to treat with incivility, and whose presence with me might +secure exemption from insult. Accordingly I asked a neighbor to +accompany me. + +THE TRAP ALMOST DETECTED. +Although I was not then aware of this fact, it would seem that previous +to my request this same neighbor had heard Dr. Zabriskie state publicly +in a saloon, that Mr. Winters had told him he had decided either to kill +or to horsewhip me, but had not finally decided on which. My neighbor, +therefore, felt unwilling to go down with me until he had first called on +Mr. Winters alone. He therefore paid him a visit. From that interview +he assured me that he gathered the impression that he did not believe I +would have any difficulty with Mr. Winters, and that he (Winters) would +call on me at four o'clock in my own office. + +MY OWN PRECAUTIONS. +As Sheriff Cummings was in Gold Hill that afternoon, and as I desired to +converse with him about the previous assault, I invited him to my office, +and he came. Although a half hour had passed beyond four o'clock, Mr. +Winters had not called, and we both of us began preparing to go home. +Just then, Philip Lynch, Publisher of the Gold Hill News, came in and +said, blandly and cheerily, as if bringing good news: + +"Hello, John B. Winters wants to see you." + +I replied, "Indeed! Why he sent me word that he would call on me here +this afternoon at four o'clock!" + +"O, well, it don't do to be too ceremonious just now, he's in my office, +and that will do as well--come on in, Winters wants to consult with you +alone. He's got something to say to you." + +Though slightly uneasy at this change of programme, yet believing that in +an editor's house I ought to be safe, and anyhow that I would be within +hail of the street, I hurriedly, and but partially whispered my dim +apprehensions to Mr. Cummings, and asked him if he would not keep near +enough to hear my voice in case I should call. He consented to do so +while waiting for some other parties, and to come in if he heard my voice +or thought I had need of protection. + +On reaching the editorial part of the News office, which viewed from the +street is dark, I did not see Mr. Winters, and again my misgivings arose. +Had I paused long enough to consider the case, I should have invited +Sheriff Cummings in, but as Lynch went down stairs, he said: "This way, +Wiegand--it's best to be private," or some such remark. + +[I do not desire to strain the reader's fancy, hurtfully, and yet it +would be a favor to me if he would try to fancy this lamb in battle, or +the duelling ground or at the head of a vigilance committee--M. T.:] + +I followed, and without Mr. Cummings, and without arms, which I never do +or will carry, unless as a soldier in war, or unless I should yet come to +feel I must fight a duel, or to join and aid in the ranks of a necessary +Vigilance Committee. But by following I made a fatal mistake. Following +was entering a trap, and whatever animal suffers itself to be caught +should expect the common fate of a caged rat, as I fear events to come +will prove. + +Traps commonly are not set for benevolence. +[His body-guard is shut out:] + +THE TRAP INSIDE. +I followed Lynch down stairs. At their foot a door to the left opened +into a small room. From that room another door opened into yet another +room, and once entered I found myself inveigled into what many will ever +henceforth regard as a private subterranean Gold Hill den, admirably +adapted in proper hands to the purposes of murder, raw or disguised, for +from it, with both or even one door closed, when too late, I saw that I +could not be heard by Sheriff Cummings, and from it, BY VIOLENCE AND BY +FORCE, I was prevented from making a peaceable exit, when I thought I saw +the studious object of this "consultation" was no other than to compass +my killing, in the presence of Philip Lynch as a witness, as soon as by +insult a proverbially excitable man should be exasperated to the point of +assailing Mr. Winters, so that Mr. Lynch, by his conscience and by his +well known tenderness of heart toward the rich and potent would be +compelled to testify that he saw Gen. John B. Winters kill Conrad Wiegand +in "self-defence." But I am going too fast. + +OUR HOST. +Mr. Lynch was present during the most of the time (say a little short of +an hour), but three times he left the room. His testimony, therefore, +would be available only as to the bulk of what transpired. On entering +this carpeted den I was invited to a seat near one corner of the room. +Mr. Lynch took a seat near the window. J. B. Winters sat (at first) near +the door, and began his remarks essentially as follows: + +"I have come here to exact of you a retraction, in black and white, of +those damnably false charges which you have preferred against me in +that---infamous lying sheet of yours, and you must declare yourself their +author, that you published them knowing them to be false, and that your +motives were malicious." + +"Hold, Mr. Winters. Your language is insulting and your demand an +enormity. I trust I was not invited here either to be insulted or +coerced. I supposed myself here by invitation of Mr. Lynch, at your +request." + +"Nor did I come here to insult you. I have already told you that I am +here for a very different purpose." + +"Yet your language has been offensive, and even now shows strong +excitement. If insult is repeated I shall either leave the room or call +in Sheriff Cummings, whom I just left standing and waiting for me outside +the door." + +"No, you won't, sir. You may just as well understand it at once as not. +Here you are my man, and I'll tell you why! Months ago you put your +property out of your hands, boasting that you did so to escape losing it +on prosecution for libel." + +"It is true that I did convert all my immovable property into personal +property, such as I could trust safely to others, and chiefly to escape +ruin through possible libel suits." + +"Very good, sir. Having placed yourself beyond the pale of the law, may +God help your soul if you DON'T make precisely such a retraction as I +have demanded. I've got you now, and by--before you can get out of this +room you've got to both write and sign precisely the retraction I have +demanded, and before you go, anyhow--you---low-lived--lying---, I'll +teach you what personal responsibility is outside of the law; and, by--, +Sheriff Cummings and all the friends you've got in the world besides, +can't save you, you---, etc.! No, sir. I'm alone now, and I'm prepared +to be shot down just here and now rather than be villified by you as I +have been, and suffer you to escape me after publishing those charges, +not only here where I am known and universally respected, but where I am +not personally known and may be injured." + +I confess this speech, with its terrible and but too plainly implied +threat of killing me if I did not sign the paper he demanded, terrified +me, especially as I saw he was working himself up to the highest possible +pitch of passion, and instinct told me that any reply other than one of +seeming concession to his demands would only be fuel to a raging fire, +so I replied: + +"Well, if I've got to sign--," and then I paused some time. Resuming, +I said, "But, Mr. Winters, you are greatly excited. Besides, I see you +are laboring under a total misapprehension. It is your duty not to +inflame but to calm yourself. I am prepared to show you, if you will +only point out the article that you allude to, that you regard as +'charges' what no calm and logical mind has any right to regard as such. +Show me the charges, and I will try, at all events; and if it becomes +plain that no charges have been preferred, then plainly there can be +nothing to retract, and no one could rightly urge you to demand a +retraction. You should beware of making so serious a mistake, for +however honest a man may be, every one is liable to misapprehend. +Besides you assume that I am the author of some certain article which you +have not pointed out. It is hasty to do so." + +He then pointed to some numbered paragraphs in a TRIBUNE article, headed +"What's the Matter with Yellow Jacket?" saying "That's what I refer to." + +To gain time for general reflection and resolution, I took up the paper +and looked it over for awhile, he remaining silent, and as I hoped, +cooling. I then resumed saying, "As I supposed. I do not admit having +written that article, nor have you any right to assume so important a +point, and then base important action upon your assumption. You might +deeply regret it afterwards. In my published Address to the People, I +notified the world that no information as to the authorship of any +article would be given without the consent of the writer. I therefore +cannot honorably tell you who wrote that article, nor can you exact it." + +"If you are not the author, then I do demand to know who is?" + +"I must decline to say." + +"Then, by--, I brand you as its author, and shall treat you accordingly." + +"Passing that point, the most important misapprehension which I notice +is, that you regard them as 'charges' at all, when their context, both at +their beginning and end, show they are not. These words introduce them: +'Such an investigation [just before indicated], we think MIGHT result in +showing some of the following points.' Then follow eleven specifications, +and the succeeding paragraph shows that the suggested investigation +'might EXONERATE those who are generally believed guilty.' You see, +therefore, the context proves they are not preferred as charges, and this +you seem to have overlooked." + +While making those comments, Mr. Winters frequently interrupted me in +such a way as to convince me that he was resolved not to consider +candidly the thoughts contained in my words. He insisted upon it that +they were charges, and "By--," he would make me take them back as +charges, and he referred the question to Philip Lynch, to whom I then +appealed as a literary man, as a logician, and as an editor, calling his +attention especially to the introductory paragraph just before quoted. +He replied, "if they are not charges, they certainly are insinuations," +whereupon Mr. Winters renewed his demands for retraction precisely such +as he had before named, except that he would allow me to state who did +write the article if I did not myself, and this time shaking his fist in +my face with more cursings and epithets. + +When he threatened me with his clenched fist, instinctively I tried to +rise from my chair, but Winters then forcibly thrust me down, as he did +every other time (at least seven or eight), when under similar imminent +danger of bruising by his fist (or for aught I could know worse than that +after the first stunning blow), which he could easily and safely to +himself have dealt me so long as he kept me down and stood over me. + +This fact it was, which more than anything else, convinced me that by +plan and plot I was purposely made powerless in Mr. Winters' hands, and +that he did not mean to allow me that advantage of being afoot, which he +possessed. Moreover, I then became convinced, that Philip Lynch (and for +what reason I wondered) would do absolutely nothing to protect me in his +own house. I realized then the situation thoroughly. I had found it +equally vain to protest or argue, and I would make no unmanly appeal for +pity, still less apologize. Yet my life had been by the plainest +possible implication threatened. I was a weak man. I was unarmed. I +was helplessly down, and Winters was afoot and probably armed. Lynch was +the only "witness." The statements demanded, if given and not explained, +would utterly sink me in my own self-respect, in my family's eyes, and in +the eyes of the community. On the other hand, should I give the author's +name how could I ever expect that confidence of the People which I should +no longer deserve, and how much dearer to me and to my family was my life +than the life of the real author to his friends. Yet life seemed dear +and each minute that remained seemed precious if not solemn. I sincerely +trust that neither you nor any of your readers, and especially none with +families, may ever be placed in such seeming direct proximity to death +while obliged to decide the one question I was compelled to, viz.: What +should I do--I, a man of family, and not as Mr. Winters is, "alone." +[The reader is requested not to skip the following.--M. T.:] + +STRATEGY AND MESMERISM. +To gain time for further reflection, and hoping that by a seeming +acquiescence I might regain my personal liberty, at least till I could +give an alarm, or take advantage of some momentary inadvertence of +Winters, and then without a cowardly flight escape, I resolved to write a +certain kind of retraction, but previously had inwardly decided: + +First.--That I would studiously avoid every action which might be +construed into the drawing of a weapon, even by a self-infuriated man, no +matter what amount of insult might be heaped upon me, for it seemed to me +that this great excess of compound profanity, foulness and epithet must +be more than a mere indulgence, and therefore must have some object. +"Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird." Therefore, +as before without thought, I thereafter by intent kept my hands away from +my pockets, and generally in sight and spread upon my knees. + +Second.--I resolved to make no motion with my arms or hands which could +possibly be construed into aggression. + +Third.--I resolved completely to govern my outward manner and suppress +indignation. To do this, I must govern my spirit. To do that, by force +of imagination I was obliged like actors on the boards to resolve myself +into an unnatural mental state and see all things through the eyes of an +assumed character. + +Fourth.--I resolved to try on Winters, silently, and unconsciously to +himself a mesmeric power which I possess over certain kinds of people, +and which at times I have found to work even in the dark over the lower +animals. + +Does any one smile at these last counts? God save you from ever being +obliged to beat in a game of chess, whose stake is your life, you having +but four poor pawns and pieces and your adversary with his full force +unshorn. But if you are, provided you have any strength with breadth of +will, do not despair. Though mesmeric power may not save you, it may +help you; try it at all events. In this instance I was conscious of +power coming into me, and by a law of nature, I know Winters was +correspondingly weakened. If I could have gained more time I am sure he +would not even have struck me. + +It takes time both to form such resolutions and to recite them. That +time, however, I gained while thinking of my retraction, which I first +wrote in pencil, altering it from time to time till I got it to suit me, +my aim being to make it look like a concession to demands, while in fact +it should tersely speak the truth into Mr. Winters' mind. When it was +finished, I copied it in ink, and if correctly copied from my first draft +it should read as follows. In copying I do not think I made any material +change. + +COPY. +To Philip Lynch, Editor of the Gold Hill News: I learn that Gen. John B. +Winters believes the following (pasted on) clipping from the PEOPLE'S +TRIBUNE of January to contain distinct charges of mine against him +personally, and that as such he desires me to retract them unqualifiedly. + +In compliance with his request, permit me to say that, although Mr. +Winters and I see this matter differently, in view of his strong feelings +in the premises, I hereby declare that I do not know those "charges" (if +such they are) to be true, and I hope that a critical examination would +altogether disprove them. + CONRAD WIEGAND. + Gold Hill, January 15, 1870. + + +I then read what I had written and handed it to Mr. Lynch, whereupon Mr. +Winters said: + +"That's not satisfactory, and it won't do;" and then addressing himself +to Mr. Lynch, he further said: "How does it strike you?" + +"Well, I confess I don't see that it retracts anything." + +"Nor do I," said Winters; "in fact, I regard it as adding insult to +injury. Mr. Wiegand you've got to do better than that. You are not the +man who can pull wool over my eyes." + +"That, sir, is the only retraction I can write." + +"No it isn't, sir, and if you so much as say so again you do it at your +peril, for I'll thrash you to within an inch of your life, and, by--, +sir, I don't pledge myself to spare you even that inch either. I want +you to understand I have asked you for a very different paper, and that +paper you've got to sign." + +"Mr. Winters, I assure you that I do not wish to irritate you, but, at +the same time, it is utterly impossible for me to write any other paper +than that which I have written. If you are resolved to compel me to sign +something, Philip Lynch's hand must write at your dictation, and if, when +written, I can sign it I will do so, but such a document as you say you +must have from me, I never can sign. I mean what I say." + +"Well, sir, what's to be done must be done quickly, for I've been here +long enough already. I'll put the thing in another shape (and then +pointing to the paper); don't you know those charges to be false?" + +"I do not." + +"Do you know them to be true?" + +"Of my own personal knowledge I do not." + +"Why then did you print them?" + +"Because rightly considered in their connection they are not charges, but +pertinent and useful suggestions in answer to the queries of a +correspondent who stated facts which are inexplicable." + +"Don't you know that I know they are false?" + +"If you do, the proper course is simply to deny them and court an +investigation." + +"And do YOU claim the right to make ME come out and deny anything you may +choose to write and print?" + +To that question I think I made no reply, and he then further said: + +"Come, now, we've talked about the matter long enough. I want your final +answer--did you write that article or not?" + +"I cannot in honor tell you who wrote it." + +"Did you not see it before it was printed?" + +"Most certainly, sir." + +"And did you deem it a fit thing to publish?" + +"Most assuredly, sir, or I would never have consented to its appearance. +Of its authorship I can say nothing whatever, but for its publication I +assume full, sole and personal responsibility." + +"And do you then retract it or not?" + +"Mr. Winters, if my refusal to sign such a paper as you have demanded +must entail upon me all that your language in this room fairly implies, +then I ask a few minutes for prayer." + +"Prayer!---you, this is not your hour for prayer--your time to pray was +when you were writing those--lying charges. Will you sign or not?" + +"You already have my answer." + +"What! do you still refuse?" + +"I do, sir." + +"Take that, then," and to my amazement and inexpressible relief he drew +only a rawhide instead of what I expected--a bludgeon or pistol. With +it, as he spoke, he struck at my left ear downwards, as if to tear it +off, and afterwards on the side of the head. As he moved away to get a +better chance for a more effective shot, for the first time I gained a +chance under peril to rise, and I did so pitying him from the very bottom +of my soul, to think that one so naturally capable of true dignity, power +and nobility could, by the temptations of this State, and by unfortunate +associations and aspirations, be so deeply debased as to find in such +brutality anything which he could call satisfaction--but the great hope +for us all is in progress and growth, and John B. Winters, I trust, will +yet be able to comprehend my feelings. + +He continued to beat me with all his great force, until absolutely weary, +exhausted and panting for breath. I still adhered to my purpose of +non-aggressive defence, and made no other use of my arms than to defend +my head and face from further disfigurement. The mere pain arising from +the blows he inflicted upon my person was of course transient, and my +clothing to some extent deadened its severity, as it now hides all +remaining traces. + +When I supposed he was through, taking the butt end of his weapon and +shaking it in my face, he warned me, if I correctly understood him, of +more yet to come, and furthermore said, if ever I again dared introduce +his name to print, in either my own or any other public journal, he would +cut off my left ear (and I do not think he was jesting) and send me home +to my family a visibly mutilated man, to be a standing warning to all +low-lived puppies who seek to blackmail gentlemen and to injure their +good names. And when he did so operate, he informed me that his +implement would not be a whip but a knife. + +When he had said this, unaccompanied by Mr. Lynch, as I remember it, he +left the room, for I sat down by Mr. Lynch, exclaiming: "The man is mad +--he is utterly mad--this step is his ruin--it is a mistake--it would be +ungenerous in me, despite of all the ill usage I have here received, to +expose him, at least until he has had an opportunity to reflect upon the +matter. I shall be in no haste." + +"Winters is very mad just now," replied Mr. Lynch, "but when he is +himself he is one of the finest men I ever met. In fact, he told me the +reason he did not meet you upstairs was to spare you the humiliation of a +beating in the sight of others." + +I submit that that unguarded remark of Philip Lynch convicts him of +having been privy in advance to Mr. Winters' intentions whatever they may +have been, or at least to his meaning to make an assault upon me, but I +leave to others to determine how much censure an editor deserves for +inveigling a weak, non-combatant man, also a publisher, to a pen of his +own to be horsewhipped, if no worse, for the simple printing of what is +verbally in the mouth of nine out of ten men, and women too, upon the +street. + +While writing this account two theories have occurred to me as possibly +true respecting this most remarkable assault: +First--The aim may have been simply to extort from me such admissions as +in the hands of money and influence would have sent me to the +Penitentiary for libel. This, however, seems unlikely, because any +statements elicited by fear or force could not be evidence in law or +could be so explained as to have no force. The statements wanted so +badly must have been desired for some other purpose. +Second--The other theory has so dark and wilfully murderous a look that I +shrink from writing it, yet as in all probability my death at the +earliest practicable moment has already been decreed, I feel I should do +all I can before my hour arrives, at least to show others how to break up +that aristocratic rule and combination which has robbed all Nevada of +true freedom, if not of manhood itself. Although I do not prefer this +hypothesis as a "charge," I feel that as an American citizen I still have +a right both to think and to speak my thoughts even in the land of Sharon +and Winters, and as much so respecting the theory of a brutal assault +(especially when I have been its subject) as respecting any other +apparent enormity. I give the matter simply as a suggestion which may +explain to the proper authorities and to the people whom they should +represent, a well ascertained but notwithstanding a darkly mysterious +fact. The scheme of the assault may have been: + +First--To terrify me by making me conscious of my own helplessness after +making actual though not legal threats against my life. + +Second--To imply that I could save my life only by writing or signing +certain specific statements which if not subsequently explained would +eternally have branded me as infamous and would have consigned my family +to shame and want, and to the dreadful compassion and patronage of the +rich. + +Third--To blow my brains out the moment I had signed, thereby preventing +me from making any subsequent explanation such as could remove the +infamy. + +Fourth--Philip Lynch to be compelled to testify that I was killed by John +B. Winters in self-defence, for the conviction of Winters would bring +him in as an accomplice. If that was the programme in John B. Winters' +mind nothing saved my life but my persistent refusal to sign, when that +refusal seemed clearly to me to be the choice of death. + +The remarkable assertion made to me by Mr. Winters, that pity only spared +my life on Wednesday evening last, almost compels me to believe that at +first he could not have intended me to leave that room alive; and why I +was allowed to, unless through mesmeric or some other invisible +influence, I cannot divine. The more I reflect upon this matter, the +more probable as true does this horrible interpretation become. + +The narration of these things I might have spared both to Mr. Winters and +to the public had he himself observed silence, but as he has both +verbally spoken and suffered a thoroughly garbled statement of facts to +appear in the Gold Hill News I feel it due to myself no less than to this +community, and to the entire independent press of America and Great +Britain, to give a true account of what even the Gold Hill News has +pronounced a disgraceful affair, and which it deeply regrets because of +some alleged telegraphic mistake in the account of it. [Who received the +erroneous telegrams?] + +Though he may not deem it prudent to take my life just now, the +publication of this article I feel sure must compel Gen. Winters (with +his peculiar views about his right to exemption from criticism by me) to +resolve on my violent death, though it may take years to compass it. +Notwithstanding I bear him no ill will; and if W. C. Ralston and William +Sharon, and other members of the San Francisco mining and milling Ring +feel that he above all other men in this State and California is the most +fitting man to supervise and control Yellow Jacket matters, until I am +able to vote more than half their stock I presume he will be retained to +grace his present post. + +Meantime, I cordially invite all who know of any sort of important +villainy which only can be cured by exposure (and who would expose it if +they felt sure they would not be betrayed under bullying threats), to +communicate with the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE; for until I am murdered, so long +as I can raise the means to publish, I propose to continue my efforts at +least to revive the liberties of the State, to curb oppression, and to +benefit man's world and God's earth. + + CONRAD WIEGAND. + + +[It does seem a pity that the Sheriff was shut out, since the good sense +of a general of militia and of a prominent editor failed to teach them +that the merited castigation of this weak, half-witted child was a thing +that ought to have been done in the street, where the poor thing could +have a chance to run. When a journalist maligns a citizen, or attacks +his good name on hearsay evidence, he deserves to be thrashed for it, +even if he is a "non-combatant" weakling; but a generous adversary would +at least allow such a lamb the use of his legs at such a time.--M. T.] + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Roughing It, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +THE GILDED AGE + +A Tale of Today + +by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner + +1873 + + + +PREFACE. + +This book was not written for private circulation among friends; it was +not written to cheer and instruct a diseased relative of the author's; +it was not thrown off during intervals of wearing labor to amuse an idle +hour. It was not written for any of these reasons, and therefore it is +submitted without the usual apologies. + +It will be seen that it deals with an entirely ideal state of society; +and the chief embarrassment of the writers in this realm of the +imagination has been the want of illustrative examples. In a State where +there is no fever of speculation, no inflamed desire for sudden wealth, +where the poor are all simple-minded and contented, and the rich are all +honest and generous, where society is in a condition of primitive purity +and politics is the occupation of only the capable and the patriotic, +there are necessarily no materials for such a history as we have +constructed out of an ideal commonwealth. + +No apology is needed for following the learned custom of placing +attractive scraps of literature at the heads of our chapters. It has +been truly observed by Wagner that such headings, with their vague +suggestions of the matter which is to follow them, pleasantly inflame the +reader's interest without wholly satisfying his curiosity, and we will +hope that it may be found to be so in the present case. + +Our quotations are set in a vast number of tongues; this is done for the +reason that very few foreign nations among whom the book will circulate +can read in any language but their own; whereas we do not write for a +particular class or sect or nation, but to take in the whole world. + +We do not object to criticism; and we do not expect that the critic will +read the book before writing a notice of it: We do not even expect the +reviewer of the book will say that he has not read it. No, we have no +anticipations of anything unusual in this age of criticism. But if the +Jupiter, Who passes his opinion on the novel, ever happens to peruse it +in some weary moment of his subsequent life, we hope that he will not be +the victim of a remorse bitter but too late. + +One word more. This is--what it pretends to be a joint production, in +the conception of the story, the exposition of the characters, and in its +literal composition. There is scarcely a chapter that does not bear the +marks of the two writers of the book. S. L. C. + C. D. W. + + + +[Etext Editor's Note: The following chapters were written by Mark Twain: +1-11, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32-34, 36, 37, 42, 43, 45, 51-53, 57, 59-62; +and portions of 35, 49, and 56. See Twain's letter to Dr. John Brown +Feb. 28, 1874 D.W.] + + + +CHAPTER I. + +June 18--. Squire Hawkins sat upon the pyramid of large blocks, called +the "stile," in front of his house, contemplating the morning. + +The locality was Obedstown, East Tennessee. You would not know that +Obedstown stood on the top of a mountain, for there was nothing about the +landscape to indicate it--but it did: a mountain that stretched abroad +over whole counties, and rose very gradually. The district was called +the "Knobs of East Tennessee," and had a reputation like Nazareth, as far +as turning out any good thing was concerned. + +The Squire's house was a double log cabin, in a state of decay; two or +three gaunt hounds lay asleep about the threshold, and lifted their heads +sadly whenever Mrs. Hawkins or the children stepped in and out over their +bodies. Rubbish was scattered about the grassless yard; a bench stood +near the door with a tin wash basin on it and a pail of water and a +gourd; a cat had begun to drink from the pail, but the exertion was +overtaxing her energies, and she had stopped to rest. There was an +ash-hopper by the fence, and an iron pot, for soft-soap-boiling, near it. + +This dwelling constituted one-fifteenth of Obedstown; the other fourteen +houses were scattered about among the tall pine trees and among the +corn-fields in such a way that a man might stand in the midst of the city +and not know but that he was in the country if he only depended on his +eyes for information. + +"Squire" Hawkins got his title from being postmaster of Obedstown--not +that the title properly belonged to the office, but because in those +regions the chief citizens always must have titles of some sort, and so +the usual courtesy had been extended to Hawkins. The mail was monthly, +and sometimes amounted to as much as three or four letters at a single +delivery. Even a rush like this did not fill up the postmaster's whole +month, though, and therefore he "kept store" in the intervals. + +The Squire was contemplating the morning. It was balmy and tranquil, +the vagrant breezes were laden with the odor of flowers, the murmur of +bees was in the air, there was everywhere that suggestion of repose that +summer woodlands bring to the senses, and the vague, pleasurable +melancholy that such a time and such surroundings inspire. + +Presently the United States mail arrived, on horseback. There was but +one letter, and it was for the postmaster. The long-legged youth who +carried the mail tarried an hour to talk, for there was no hurry; and in +a little while the male population of the village had assembled to help. +As a general thing, they were dressed in homespun "jeans," blue or +yellow--here were no other varieties of it; all wore one suspender and +sometimes two--yarn ones knitted at home,--some wore vests, but few wore +coats. Such coats and vests as did appear, however, were rather +picturesque than otherwise, for they were made of tolerably fanciful +patterns of calico--a fashion which prevails thereto this day among those +of the community who have tastes above the common level and are able to +afford style. Every individual arrived with his hands in his pockets; +a hand came out occasionally for a purpose, but it always went back again +after service; and if it was the head that was served, just the cant that +the dilapidated straw hat got by being uplifted and rooted under, was +retained until the next call altered the inclination; many' hats were +present, but none were erect and no two were canted just alike. We are +speaking impartially of men, youths and boys. And we are also speaking +of these three estates when we say that every individual was either +chewing natural leaf tobacco prepared on his own premises, or smoking the +same in a corn-cob pipe. Few of the men wore whiskers; none wore +moustaches; some had a thick jungle of hair under the chin and hiding the +throat--the only pattern recognized there as being the correct thing in +whiskers; but no part of any individual's face had seen a razor for a +week. + +These neighbors stood a few moments looking at the mail carrier +reflectively while he talked; but fatigue soon began to show itself, +and one after another they climbed up and occupied the top rail of the +fence, hump-shouldered and grave, like a company of buzzards assembled +for supper and listening for the death-rattle. Old Damrell said: + +"Tha hain't no news 'bout the jedge, hit ain't likely?" + +"Cain't tell for sartin; some thinks he's gwyne to be 'long toreckly, +and some thinks 'e hain't. Russ Mosely he tote ole Hanks he mought git +to Obeds tomorrer or nex' day he reckoned." + +"Well, I wisht I knowed. I got a 'prime sow and pigs in the, cote-house, +and I hain't got no place for to put 'em. If the jedge is a gwyne to +hold cote, I got to roust 'em out, I reckon. But tomorrer'll do, I +'spect." + +The speaker bunched his thick lips together like the stem-end of a tomato +and shot a bumble-bee dead that had lit on a weed seven feet away. +One after another the several chewers expressed a charge of tobacco juice +and delivered it at the deceased with steady, aim and faultless accuracy. + +"What's a stirrin', down 'bout the Forks?" continued Old Damrell. + +"Well, I dunno, skasely. Ole, Drake Higgins he's ben down to Shelby las' +week. Tuck his crap down; couldn't git shet o' the most uv it; hit +wasn't no time for to sell, he say, so he 'fotch it back agin, 'lowin' to +wait tell fall. Talks 'bout goin' to Mozouri--lots uv 'ems talkin' +that-away down thar, Ole Higgins say. Cain't make a livin' here no mo', +sich times as these. Si Higgins he's ben over to Kaintuck n' married a +high-toned gal thar, outen the fust families, an' he's come back to the +Forks with jist a hell's-mint o' whoop-jamboree notions, folks says. +He's tuck an' fixed up the ole house like they does in Kaintuck, he say, +an' tha's ben folks come cler from Turpentine for to see it. He's tuck +an gawmed it all over on the inside with plarsterin'." + +"What's plasterin'?" + +"I dono. Hit's what he calls it. 'Ole Mam Higgins, she tole me. +She say she wasn't gwyne to hang out in no sich a dern hole like a hog. +Says it's mud, or some sich kind o' nastiness that sticks on n' covers up +everything. Plarsterin', Si calls it." + +This marvel was discussed at considerable length; and almost with +animation. But presently there was a dog-fight over in the neighborhood +of the blacksmith shop, and the visitors slid off their perch like so +many turtles and strode to the battle-field with an interest bordering on +eagerness. The Squire remained, and read his letter. Then he sighed, +and sat long in meditation. At intervals he said: + +"Missouri. Missouri. Well, well, well, everything is so uncertain." + +At last he said: + +"I believe I'll do it.--A man will just rot, here. My house my yard, +everything around me, in fact, shows' that I am becoming one of these +cattle--and I used to be thrifty in other times." + +He was not more than thirty-five, but he had a worn look that made him +seem older. He left the stile, entered that part of his house which was +the store, traded a quart of thick molasses for a coonskin and a cake of +beeswax, to an old dame in linsey-woolsey, put his letter away, an went +into the kitchen. His wife was there, constructing some dried apple +pies; a slovenly urchin of ten was dreaming over a rude weather-vane of +his own contriving; his small sister, close upon four years of age, was +sopping corn-bread in some gravy left in the bottom of a frying-pan and +trying hard not to sop over a finger-mark that divided the pan through +the middle--for the other side belonged to the brother, whose musings +made him forget his stomach for the moment; a negro woman was busy +cooking, at a vast fire-place. Shiftlessness and poverty reigned in the +place. + +"Nancy, I've made up my mind. The world is done with me, and perhaps I +ought to be done with it. But no matter--I can wait. I am going to +Missouri. I won't stay in this dead country and decay with it. I've had +it on my mind sometime. I'm going to sell out here for whatever I can +get, and buy a wagon and team and put you and the children in it and +start." + +"Anywhere that suits you, suits me, Si. And the children can't be any +worse off in Missouri than, they are here, I reckon." + +Motioning his wife to a private conference in their own room, Hawkins +said: "No, they'll be better off. I've looked out for them, Nancy," and +his face lighted. "Do you see these papers? Well, they are evidence +that I have taken up Seventy-five Thousand Acres of Land in this county +--think what an enormous fortune it will be some day! Why, Nancy, enormous +don't express it--the word's too tame! I tell your Nancy----" + +"For goodness sake, Si----" + +"Wait, Nancy, wait--let me finish--I've been secretly bailing and fuming +with this grand inspiration for weeks, and I must talk or I'll burst! +I haven't whispered to a soul--not a word--have had my countenance under +lock and key, for fear it might drop something that would tell even these +animals here how to discern the gold mine that's glaring under their +noses. Now all that is necessary to hold this land and keep it in the +family is to pay the trifling taxes on it yearly--five or ten dollars +--the whole tract would not sell for over a third of a cent an acre now, +but some day people wild be glad to get it for twenty dollars, fifty +dollars, a hundred dollars an acre! What should you say to" [here he +dropped his voice to a whisper and looked anxiously around to see that +there were no eavesdroppers,] "a thousand dollars an acre! + +"Well you may open your eyes and stare! But it's so. You and I may not +see the day, but they'll see it. Mind I tell you; they'll see it. +Nancy, you've heard of steamboats, and maybe you believed in them--of +course you did. You've heard these cattle here scoff at them and call +them lies and humbugs,--but they're not lies and humbugs, they're a +reality and they're going to be a more wonderful thing some day than they +are now. They're going to make a revolution in this world's affairs that +will make men dizzy to contemplate. I've been watching--I've been +watching while some people slept, and I know what's coming. + +"Even you and I will see the day that steamboats will come up that little +Turkey river to within twenty miles of this land of ours--and in high +water they'll come right to it! And this is not all, Nancy--it isn't +even half! There's a bigger wonder--the railroad! These worms here have +never even heard of it--and when they do they'll not believe in it. +But it's another fact. Coaches that fly over the ground twenty miles an +hour--heavens and earth, think of that, Nancy! Twenty miles an hour. +It makes a main's brain whirl. Some day, when you and I are in our +graves, there'll be a railroad stretching hundreds of miles--all the way +down from the cities of the Northern States to New Orleans--and its got +to run within thirty miles of this land--may be even touch a corner of +it. Well; do you know, they've quit burning wood in some places in the +Eastern States? And what do you suppose they burn? Coal!" [He bent over +and whispered again:] "There's world--worlds of it on this land! You +know that black stuff that crops out of the bank of the branch?--well, +that's it. You've taken it for rocks; so has every body here; and +they've built little dams and such things with it. One man was going to +build a chimney out of it. Nancy I expect I turned as white as a sheet! +Why, it might have caught fire and told everything. I showed him it was +too crumbly. Then he was going to build it of copper ore--splendid +yellow forty-per-cent. ore! There's fortunes upon fortunes of copper ore +on our land! It scared me to death, the idea of this fool starting a +smelting furnace in his house without knowing it, and getting his dull +eyes opened. And then he was going to build it of iron ore! There's +mountains of iron ore here, Nancy--whole mountains of it. I wouldn't +take any chances. I just stuck by him--I haunted him--I never let him +alone till he built it of mud and sticks like all the rest of the +chimneys in this dismal country. Pine forests, wheat land, corn land, +iron, copper, coal-wait till the railroads come, and the steamboats! +We'll never see the day, Nancy--never in the world---never, never, never, +child. We've got to drag along, drag along, and eat crusts in toil and +poverty, all hopeless and forlorn--but they'll ride in coaches, Nancy! +They'll live like the princes of the earth; they'll be courted and +worshiped; their names will be known from ocean to ocean! Ah, +well-a-day! Will they ever come back here, on the railroad and the +steamboat, and say, 'This one little spot shall not be touched--this +hovel shall be sacred--for here our father and our mother suffered for +us, thought for us, laid the foundations of our future as solid as the +hills!'" + +"You are a great, good, noble soul, Si Hawkins, and I am an honored woman +to be the wife of such a man"--and the tears stood in her eyes when she +said it. "We will go to Missouri. You are out of your place, here, +among these groping dumb creatures. We will find a higher place, where +you can walk with your own kind, and be understood when you speak--not +stared at as if you were talking some foreign tongue. I would go +anywhere, anywhere in the wide world with you I would rather my body +would starve and die than your mind should hunger and wither away in this +lonely land." + +"Spoken like yourself, my child! But we'll not starve, Nancy. Far from +it. I have a letter from Beriah Sellers--just came this day. A letter +that--I'll read you a line from it!" + +He flew out of the room. A shadow blurred the sunlight in Nancy's face +--there was uneasiness in it, and disappointment. A procession of +disturbing thoughts began to troop through her mind. Saying nothing +aloud, she sat with her hands in her lap; now and then she clasped them, +then unclasped them, then tapped the ends of the fingers together; +sighed, nodded, smiled--occasionally paused, shook her head. This +pantomime was the elocutionary expression of an unspoken soliloquy which +had something of this shape: + +"I was afraid of it--was afraid of it. Trying to make our fortune in +Virginia, Beriah Sellers nearly ruined us and we had to settle in +Kentucky and start over again. Trying to make our fortune in Kentucky he +crippled us again and we had to move here. Trying to make our fortune +here, he brought us clear down to the ground, nearly. He's an honest +soul, and means the very best in the world, but I'm afraid, I'm afraid +he's too flighty. He has splendid ideas, and he'll divide his chances +with his friends with a free hand, the good generous soul, but something +does seem to always interfere and spoil everything. I never did think he +was right well balanced. But I don't blame my husband, for I do think +that when that man gets his head full of a new notion, he can out-talk a +machine. He'll make anybody believe in that notion that'll listen to him +ten minutes--why I do believe he would make a deaf and dumb man believe +in it and get beside himself, if you only set him where he could see his +eyes tally and watch his hands explain. What a head he has got! When he +got up that idea there in Virginia of buying up whole loads of negroes in +Delaware and Virginia and Tennessee, very quiet, having papers drawn to +have them delivered at a place in Alabama and take them and pay for them, +away yonder at a certain time, and then in the meantime get a law made +stopping everybody from selling negroes to the south after a certain day +--it was somehow that way--mercy how the man would have made money! +Negroes would have gone up to four prices. But after he'd spent money +and worked hard, and traveled hard, and had heaps of negroes all +contracted for, and everything going along just right, he couldn't get +the laws passed and down the whole thing tumbled. And there in Kentucky, +when he raked up that old numskull that had been inventing away at a +perpetual motion machine for twenty-two years, and Beriah Sellers saw at +a glance where just one more little cog-wheel would settle the business, +why I could see it as plain as day when he came in wild at midnight and +hammered us out of bed and told the whole thing in a whisper with the +doors bolted and the candle in an empty barrel. Oceans of money in it +--anybody could see that. But it did cost a deal to buy the old numskull +out--and then when they put the new cog wheel in they'd overlooked +something somewhere and it wasn't any use--the troublesome thing wouldn't +go. That notion he got up here did look as handy as anything in the +world; and how him and Si did sit up nights working at it with the +curtains down and me watching to see if any neighbors were about. The +man did honestly believe there was a fortune in that black gummy oil that +stews out of the bank Si says is coal; and he refined it himself till it +was like water, nearly, and it did burn, there's no two ways about that; +and I reckon he'd have been all right in Cincinnati with his lamp that he +got made, that time he got a house full of rich speculators to see him +exhibit only in the middle of his speech it let go and almost blew the +heads off the whole crowd. I haven't got over grieving for the money +that cost yet. I am sorry enough Beriah Sellers is in Missouri, now, but +I was glad when he went. I wonder what his letter says. But of course +it's cheerful; he's never down-hearted--never had any trouble in his +life--didn't know it if he had. It's always sunrise with that man, and +fine and blazing, at that--never gets noon; though--leaves off and rises +again. Nobody can help liking the creature, he means so well--but I do +dread to come across him again; he's bound to set us all crazy, of +coarse. Well, there goes old widow Hopkins--it always takes her a week +to buy a spool of thread and trade a hank of yarn. Maybe Si can come +with the letter, now." + +And he did: + +"Widow Hopkins kept me--I haven't any patience with such tedious people. +Now listen, Nancy--just listen at this: + + "'Come right along to Missouri! Don't wait and worry about a good + price but sell out for whatever you can get, and come along, or you + might be too late. Throw away your traps, if necessary, and come + empty-handed. You'll never regret it. It's the grandest country + --the loveliest land--the purest atmosphere--I can't describe it; no + pen can do it justice. And it's filling up, every day--people + coming from everywhere. I've got the biggest scheme on earth--and + I'll take you in; I'll take in every friend I've got that's ever + stood by me, for there's enough for all, and to spare. Mum's the + word--don't whisper--keep yourself to yourself. You'll see! Come! + --rush!--hurry!--don't wait for anything!' + +"It's the same old boy, Nancy, jest the same old boy--ain't he?" + +"Yes, I think there's a little of the old sound about his voice yet. +I suppose you--you'll still go, Si?" + +"Go! Well, I should think so, Nancy. It's all a chance, of course, and, +chances haven't been kind to us, I'll admit--but whatever comes, old +wife, they're provided for. Thank God for that!" + +"Amen," came low and earnestly. + +And with an activity and a suddenness that bewildered Obedstown and +almost took its breath away, the Hawkinses hurried through with their +arrangements in four short months and flitted out into the great +mysterious blank that lay beyond the Knobs of Tennessee. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +Toward the close of the third day's journey the wayfarers were just +beginning to think of camping, when they came upon a log cabin in the +woods. Hawkins drew rein and entered the yard. A boy about ten years +old was sitting in the cabin door with his face bowed in his hands. +Hawkins approached, expecting his footfall to attract attention, but it +did not. He halted a moment, and then said: + +"Come, come, little chap, you mustn't be going to sleep before sundown" + +With a tired expression the small face came up out of the hands,--a face +down which tears were flowing. + +"Ah, I'm sorry I spoke so, my boy. Tell me--is anything the matter?" + +The boy signified with a scarcely perceptible gesture that the trouble +was in the, house, and made room for Hawkins to pass. Then he put his +face in his hands again and rocked himself about as one suffering a grief +that is too deep to find help in moan or groan or outcry. Hawkins +stepped within. It was a poverty stricken place. Six or eight +middle-aged country people of both sexes were grouped about an object in +the middle of the room; they were noiselessly busy and they talked in +whispers when they spoke. Hawkins uncovered and approached. A coffin +stood upon two backless chairs. These neighbors had just finished +disposing the body of a woman in it--a woman with a careworn, gentle face +that had more the look of sleep about it than of death. An old lady +motioned, toward the door and said to Hawkins in a whisper: + +"His mother, po' thing. Died of the fever, last night. Tha warn't no +sich thing as saving of her. But it's better for her--better for her. +Husband and the other two children died in the spring, and she hain't +ever hilt up her head sence. She jest went around broken-hearted like, +and never took no intrust in anything but Clay--that's the boy thar. +She jest worshiped Clay--and Clay he worshiped her. They didn't 'pear to +live at all, only when they was together, looking at each other, loving +one another. She's ben sick three weeks; and if you believe me that +child has worked, and kep' the run of the med'cin, and the times of +giving it, and sot up nights and nussed her, and tried to keep up her +sperits, the same as a grown-up person. And last night when she kep' a +sinking and sinking, and turned away her head and didn't know him no mo', +it was fitten to make a body's heart break to see him climb onto the bed +and lay his cheek agin hern and call her so pitiful and she not answer. +But bymeby she roused up, like, and looked around wild, and then she see +him, and she made a great cry and snatched him to her breast and hilt him +close and kissed him over and over agin; but it took the last po' +strength she had, and so her eyelids begin to close down, and her arms +sort o' drooped away and then we see she was gone, po' creetur. And +Clay, he--Oh, the po' motherless thing--I cain't talk abort it--I cain't +bear to talk about it." + +Clay had disappeared from the door; but he came in, now, and the +neighbors reverently fell apart and made way for him. He leaned upon the +open coffin and let his tears course silently. Then he put out his small +hand and smoothed the hair and stroked the dead face lovingly. After a +bit he brought his other hand up from behind him and laid three or four +fresh wild flowers upon the breast, bent over and kissed the unresponsive +lips time and time again, and then turned away and went out of the house +without looking at any of the company. The old lady said to Hawkins: + +"She always loved that kind o' flowers. He fetched 'em for her every +morning, and she always kissed him. They was from away north somers--she +kep' school when she fust come. Goodness knows what's to become o' that +po' boy. No father, no mother, no kin folks of no kind. Nobody to go +to, nobody that k'yers for him--and all of us is so put to it for to get +along and families so large." + +Hawkins understood. All, eyes were turned inquiringly upon him. He +said: + +"Friends, I am not very well provided for, myself, but still I would not +turn my back on a homeless orphan. If he will go with me I will give him +a home, and loving regard--I will do for him as I would have another do +for a child of my own in misfortune." + +One after another the people stepped forward and wrung the stranger's +hand with cordial good will, and their eyes looked all that their hands +could not express or their lips speak. + +"Said like a true man," said one. + +"You was a stranger to me a minute ago, but you ain't now," said another. + +"It's bread cast upon the waters--it'll return after many days," said the +old lady whom we have heard speak before. + +"You got to camp in my house as long as you hang out here," said one. +"If tha hain't room for you and yourn my tribe'll turn out and camp in +the hay loft." + +A few minutes afterward, while the preparations for the funeral were +being concluded, Mr. Hawkins arrived at his wagon leading his little waif +by the hand, and told his wife all that had happened, and asked her if he +had done right in giving to her and to himself this new care? She said: + +"If you've done wrong, Si Hawkins, it's a wrong that will shine brighter +at the judgment day than the rights that many' a man has done before you. +And there isn't any compliment you can pay me equal to doing a thing like +this and finishing it up, just taking it for granted that I'll be willing +to it. Willing? Come to me; you poor motherless boy, and let me take +your grief and help you carry it." + +When the child awoke in the morning, it was as if from a troubled dream. +But slowly the confusion in his mind took form, and he remembered his +great loss; the beloved form in the coffin; his talk with a generous +stranger who offered him a home; the funeral, where the stranger's wife +held him by the hand at the grave, and cried with him and comforted him; +and he remembered how this, new mother tucked him in his bed in the +neighboring farm house, and coaxed him to talk about his troubles, and +then heard him say his prayers and kissed him good night, and left him +with the soreness in his heart almost healed and his bruised spirit at +rest. + +And now the new mother came again, and helped him to dress, and combed +his hair, and drew his mind away by degrees from the dismal yesterday, +by telling him about the wonderful journey he was going to take and the +strange things he was going to see. And after breakfast they two went +alone to the grave, and his heart went out to his new friend and his +untaught eloquence poured the praises of his buried idol into her ears +without let or hindrance. Together they planted roses by the headboard +and strewed wild flowers upon the grave; and then together they went +away, hand in hand, and left the dead to the long sleep that heals all +heart-aches and ends all sorrows. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +Whatever the lagging dragging journey may have been to the rest of the +emigrants, it was a wonder and delight to the children, a world of +enchantment; and they believed it to be peopled with the mysterious +dwarfs and giants and goblins that figured in the tales the negro slaves +were in the habit of telling them nightly by the shuddering light of the +kitchen fire. + +At the end of nearly a week of travel, the party went into camp near a +shabby village which was caving, house by house, into the hungry +Mississippi. The river astonished the children beyond measure. Its +mile-breadth of water seemed an ocean to them, in the shadowy twilight, +and the vague riband of trees on the further shore, the verge of a +continent which surely none but they had ever seen before. + +"Uncle Dan'l"(colored,) aged 40; his wife, "aunt Jinny," aged 30, "Young +Miss" Emily Hawkins, "Young Mars" Washington Hawkins and "Young Mars" +Clay, the new member of the family, ranged themselves on a log, after +supper, and contemplated the marvelous river and discussed it. The moon +rose and sailed aloft through a maze of shredded cloud-wreaths; the +sombre river just perceptibly brightened under the veiled light; a deep +silence pervaded the air and was emphasized, at intervals, rather than +broken, by the hooting of an owl, the baying of a dog, or the muffled +crash of a raving bank in the distance. + +The little company assembled on the log were all children (at least in +simplicity and broad and comprehensive ignorance,) and the remarks they +made about the river were in keeping with the character; and so awed were +they by the grandeur and the solemnity of the scene before then, and by +their belief that the air was filled with invisible spirits and that the +faint zephyrs were caused by their passing wings, that all their talk +took to itself a tinge of the supernatural, and their voices were subdued +to a low and reverent tone. Suddenly Uncle Dan'l exclaimed: + +"Chil'en, dah's sum fin a comin!" + +All crowded close together and every heart beat faster. + +Uncle Dan'l pointed down the river with his bony finger. + +A deep coughing sound troubled the stillness, way toward a wooded cape +that jetted into the stream a mile distant. All in an instant a fierce +eye of fire shot out froth behind the cape and sent a long brilliant +pathway quivering athwart the dusky water. The coughing grew louder and +louder, the glaring eye grew larger and still larger, glared wilder and +still wilder. A huge shape developed itself out of the gloom, and from +its tall duplicate horns dense volumes of smoke, starred and spangled +with sparks, poured out and went tumbling away into the farther darkness. +Nearer and nearer the thing came, till its long sides began to glow with +spots of light which mirrored themselves in the river and attended the +monster like a torchlight procession. + +"What is it! Oh, what is it, Uncle Dan'l!" + +With deep solemnity the answer came: + +"It's de Almighty! Git down on yo' knees!" + +It was not necessary to say it twice. They were all kneeling, in a +moment. And then while the mysterious coughing rose stronger and +stronger and the threatening glare reached farther and wider, the negro's +voice lifted up its supplications: + +"O Lord', we's ben mighty wicked, an' we knows dat we 'zerve to go to de +bad place, but good Lord, deah Lord, we ain't ready yit, we ain't ready +--let dese po' chilen hab one mo' chance, jes' one mo' chance. Take de ole +niggah if you's, got to hab somebody.--Good Lord, good deah Lord, we +don't know whah you's a gwyne to, we don't know who you's got yo' eye on, +but we knows by de way you's a comin', we knows by de way you's a tiltin' +along in yo' charyot o' fiah dat some po' sinner's a gwyne to ketch it. +But good Lord, dose chilen don't b'long heah, dey's f'm Obedstown whah +dey don't know nuffin, an' you knows, yo' own sef, dat dey ain't +'sponsible. An' deah Lord, good Lord, it ain't like yo' mercy, it ain't +like yo' pity, it ain't like yo' long-sufferin' lovin' kindness for to +take dis kind o' 'vantage o' sick little chil'en as dose is when dey's so +many ornery grown folks chuck full o' cussedness dat wants roastin' down +dah. Oh, Lord, spah de little chil'en, don't tar de little chil'en away +f'm dey frens, jes' let 'em off jes' dis once, and take it out'n de ole +niggah. HEAH I IS, LORD, HEAH I IS! De ole niggah's ready, Lord, +de ole----" + +The flaming and churning steamer was right abreast the party, and not +twenty steps away. The awful thunder of a mud-valve suddenly burst +forth, drowning the prayer, and as suddenly Uncle Dan'l snatched a child +under each arm and scoured into the woods with the rest of the pack at +his heels. And then, ashamed of himself, he halted in the deep darkness +and shouted, (but rather feebly:) + +"Heah I is, Lord, heah I is!" + +There was a moment of throbbing suspense, and then, to the surprise and +the comfort of the party, it was plain that the august presence had gone +by, for its dreadful noises were receding. Uncle Dan'l headed a cautious +reconnaissance in the direction of the log. Sure enough "the Lord" was +just turning a point a short distance up the river, and while they looked +the lights winked out and the coughing diminished by degrees and +presently ceased altogether. + +"H'wsh! Well now dey's some folks says dey ain't no 'ficiency in prah. +Dis Chile would like to know whah we'd a ben now if it warn't fo' dat +prah? Dat's it. Dat's it!" + +"Uncle Dan'l, do you reckon it was the prayer that saved us?" said Clay. + +"Does I reckon? Don't I know it! Whah was yo' eyes? Warn't de Lord +jes' a cumin' chow! chow! CHOW! an' a goin' on turrible--an' do de +Lord carry on dat way 'dout dey's sumfin don't suit him? An' warn't he a +lookin' right at dis gang heah, an' warn't he jes' a reachin' for 'em? +An' d'you spec' he gwyne to let 'em off 'dout somebody ast him to do it? +No indeedy!" + +"Do you reckon he saw, us, Uncle Dan'l? + +"De law sakes, Chile, didn't I see him a lookin' at us?". + +"Did you feel scared, Uncle Dan'l?" + +"No sah! When a man is 'gaged in prah, he ain't fraid o' nuffin--dey +can't nuffin tetch him." + +"Well what did you run for?" + +"Well, I--I--mars Clay, when a man is under de influence ob de sperit, +he do-no, what he's 'bout--no sah; dat man do-no what he's 'bout. You +mout take an' tah de head off'n dat man an' he wouldn't scasely fine it +out. Date's de Hebrew chil'en dat went frough de fiah; dey was burnt +considable--ob coase dey was; but dey didn't know nuffin 'bout it--heal +right up agin; if dey'd ben gals dey'd missed dey long haah, (hair,) +maybe, but dey wouldn't felt de burn." + +"I don't know but what they were girls. I think they were." + +"Now mars Clay, you knows bettern dat. Sometimes a body can't tell +whedder you's a sayin' what you means or whedder you's a sayin' what you +don't mean, 'case you says 'em bofe de same way." + +"But how should I know whether they were boys or girls?" + +"Goodness sakes, mars Clay, don't de Good Book say? 'Sides, don't it +call 'em de HE-brew chil'en? If dey was gals wouldn't dey be de SHE-brew +chil'en? Some people dat kin read don't 'pear to take no notice when dey +do read." + +"Well, Uncle Dan'l, I think that-----My! here comes another one up the +river! There can't be two!" + +"We gone dis time--we done gone dis time, sho'! Dey ain't two, mars +Clay--days de same one. De Lord kin 'pear eberywhah in a second. +Goodness, how do fiah and de smoke do belch up! Dat mean business, +honey. He comin' now like he fo'got sumfin. Come 'long, chil'en, time +you's gwyne to roos'. Go 'long wid you--ole Uncle Daniel gwyne out in de +woods to rastle in prah--de ole nigger gwyne to do what he kin to sabe +you agin" + +He did go to the woods and pray; but he went so far that he doubted, +himself, if the Lord heard him when He went by. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +--Seventhly, Before his Voyage, He should make his peace with God, +satisfie his Creditors if he be in debt; Pray earnestly to God to prosper +him in his Voyage, and to keep him from danger, and, if he be 'sui juris' +he should make his last will, and wisely order all his affairs, since +many that go far abroad, return not home. (This good and Christian +Counsel is given by Martinus Zeilerus in his Apodemical Canons before his +Itinerary of Spain and Portugal.) + + +Early in the morning Squire Hawkins took passage in a small steamboat, +with his family and his two slaves, and presently the bell rang, the +stage-plank; was hauled in, and the vessel proceeded up the river. +The children and the slaves were not much more at ease after finding out +that this monster was a creature of human contrivance than they were the +night before when they thought it the Lord of heaven and earth. They +started, in fright, every time the gauge-cocks sent out an angry hiss, +and they quaked from head to foot when the mud-valves thundered. The +shivering of the boat under the beating of the wheels was sheer misery to +them. + +But of course familiarity with these things soon took away their terrors, +and then the voyage at once became a glorious adventure, a royal progress +through the very heart and home of romance, a realization of their +rosiest wonder-dreams. They sat by the hour in the shade of the pilot +house on the hurricane deck and looked out over the curving expanses of +the river sparkling in the sunlight. Sometimes the boat fought the +mid-stream current, with a verdant world on either hand, and remote from +both; sometimes she closed in under a point, where the dead water and the +helping eddies were, and shaved the bank so closely that the decks were +swept by the jungle of over-hanging willows and littered with a spoil of +leaves; departing from these "points" she regularly crossed the river +every five miles, avoiding the "bight" of the great binds and thus +escaping the strong current; sometimes she went out and skirted a high +"bluff" sand-bar in the middle of the stream, and occasionally followed +it up a little too far and touched upon the shoal water at its head--and +then the intelligent craft refused to run herself aground, but "smelt" +the bar, and straightway the foamy streak that streamed away from her +bows vanished, a great foamless wave rolled forward and passed her under +way, and in this instant she leaned far over on her side, shied from the +bar and fled square away from the danger like a frightened thing--and the +pilot was lucky if he managed to "straighten her up" before she drove her +nose into the opposite bank; sometimes she approached a solid wall of +tall trees as if she meant to break through it, but all of a sudden a +little crack would open just enough to admit her, and away she would go +plowing through the "chute" with just barely room enough between the +island on one side and the main land on the other; in this sluggish water +she seemed to go like a racehorse; now and then small log cabins appeared +in little clearings, with the never-failing frowsy women and girls in +soiled and faded linsey-woolsey leaning in the doors or against woodpiles +and rail fences, gazing sleepily at the passing show; sometimes she found +shoal water, going out at the head of those "chutes" or crossing the +river, and then a deck-hand stood on the bow and hove the lead, while the +boat slowed down and moved cautiously; sometimes she stopped a moment at +a landing and took on some freight or a passenger while a crowd of +slouchy white men and negroes stood on the bank and looked sleepily on +with their hands in their pantaloons pockets,--of course--for they never +took them out except to stretch, and when they did this they squirmed +about and reached their fists up into the air and lifted themselves on +tip-toe in an ecstasy of enjoyment. + +When the sun went down it turned all the broad river to a national banner +laid in gleaming bars of gold and purple and crimson; and in time these +glories faded out in the twilight and left the fairy archipelagoes +reflecting their fringing foliage in the steely mirror of the stream. + +At night the boat forged on through the deep solitudes of the river, +hardly ever discovering a light to testify to a human presence--mile +after mile and league after league the vast bends were guarded by +unbroken walls of forest that had never been disturbed by the voice or +the foot-fall of man or felt the edge of his sacrilegious axe. + +An hour after supper the moon came up, and Clay and Washington ascended +to the hurricane deck to revel again in their new realm of enchantment. +They ran races up and down the deck; climbed about the bell; made friends +with the passenger-dogs chained under the lifeboat; tried to make friends +with a passenger-bear fastened to the verge-staff but were not +encouraged; "skinned the cat" on the hog-chains; in a word, exhausted the +amusement-possibilities of the deck. Then they looked wistfully up at +the pilot house, and finally, little by little, Clay ventured up there, +followed diffidently by Washington. The pilot turned presently to "get +his stern-marks," saw the lads and invited them in. Now their happiness +was complete. This cosy little house, built entirely of glass and +commanding a marvelous prospect in every direction was a magician's +throne to them and their enjoyment of the place was simply boundless. + +They sat them down on a high bench and looked miles ahead and saw the +wooded capes fold back and reveal the bends beyond; and they looked miles +to the rear and saw the silvery highway diminish its breadth by degrees +and close itself together in the distance. Presently the pilot said: + +"By George, yonder comes the Amaranth!" + +A spark appeared, close to the water, several miles down the river. The +pilot took his glass and looked at it steadily for a moment, and said, +chiefly to himself: + +"It can't be the Blue Wing. She couldn't pick us up this way. It's the +Amaranth, sure!" + +He bent over a speaking tube and said: + +"Who's on watch down there?" + +A hollow, unhuman voice rumbled up through the tube in answer: + +"I am. Second engineer." + +"Good! You want to stir your stumps, now, Harry--the Amaranth's just +turned the point--and she's just a--humping herself, too!" + +The pilot took hold of a rope that stretched out forward, jerked it +twice, and two mellow strokes of the big bell responded. A voice out on +the deck shouted: + +"Stand by, down there, with that labboard lead!" + +"No, I don't want the lead," said the pilot, "I want you. Roust out the +old man--tell him the Amaranth's coming. And go and call Jim--tell him." + +"Aye-aye, sir!" + +The "old man" was the captain--he is always called so, on steamboats and +ships; "Jim" was the other pilot. Within two minutes both of these men +were flying up the pilothouse stairway, three steps at a jump. Jim was +in his shirt sleeves,--with his coat and vest on his arm. He said: + +"I was just turning in. Where's the glass" + +He took it and looked: + +"Don't appear to be any night-hawk on the jack-staff--it's the Amaranth, +dead sure!" + +The captain took a good long look, and only said: + +"Damnation!" + +George Davis, the pilot on watch, shouted to the night-watchman on deck: + +"How's she loaded?" + +"Two inches by the head, sir." + +"'T ain't enough!" + +The captain shouted, now: + +"Call the mate. Tell him to call all hands and get a lot of that sugar +forrard--put her ten inches by the head. Lively, now!" + +"Aye-aye, sir." + +A riot of shouting and trampling floated up from below, presently, and +the uneasy steering of the boat soon showed that she was getting "down by +the head." + +The three men in the pilot house began to talk in short, sharp sentences, +low and earnestly. As their excitement rose, their voices went down. +As fast as one of them put down the spy-glass another took it up--but +always with a studied air of calmness. Each time the verdict was: + +"She's a gaining!" + +The captain spoke through the tube: + +"What steam are You carrying?" + +"A hundred and forty-two, sir! But she's getting hotter and hotter all +the time." + +The boat was straining and groaning and quivering like a monster in pain. +Both pilots were at work now, one on each side of the wheel, with their +coats and vests off, their bosoms and collars wide open and the +perspiration flowing down heir faces. They were holding the boat so +close to the shore that the willows swept the guards almost from stem to +stern. + +"Stand by!" whispered George. + +"All ready!" said Jim, under his breath. + +"Let her come!" + +The boat sprang away, from the bank like a deer, and darted in a long +diagonal toward the other shore. She closed in again and thrashed her +fierce way along the willows as before. The captain put down the glass: + +"Lord how she walks up on us! I do hate to be beat!" + +"Jim," said George, looking straight ahead, watching the slightest yawing +of the boat and promptly meeting it with the wheel, "how'll it do to try +Murderer's Chute?" + +"Well, it's--it's taking chances. How was the cottonwood stump on the +false point below Boardman's Island this morning?" + +"Water just touching the roots." + +"Well it's pretty close work. That gives six feet scant in the head of +Murderer's Chute. We can just barely rub through if we hit it exactly +right. But it's worth trying. She don't dare tackle it!"--meaning the +Amaranth. + +In another instant the Boreas plunged into what seemed a crooked creek, +and the Amaranth's approaching lights were shut out in a moment. Not a +whisper was uttered, now, but the three men stared ahead into the shadows +and two of them spun the wheel back and forth with anxious watchfulness +while the steamer tore along. The chute seemed to come to an end every +fifty yards, but always opened out in time. Now the head of it was at +hand. George tapped the big bell three times, two leadsmen sprang to +their posts, and in a moment their weird cries rose on the night air and +were caught up and repeated by two men on the upper deck: + +"No-o bottom!" + +"De-e-p four!" + +"Half three!" + +"Quarter three!" + +"Mark under wa-a-ter three!" + +"Half twain!" + +"Quarter twain!-----" + +Davis pulled a couple of ropes--there was a jingling of small bells far +below, the boat's speed slackened, and the pent steam began to whistle +and the gauge-cocks to scream: + +"By the mark twain!" + +"Quar--ter--her--er--less twain!" + +"Eight and a half!" + +"Eight feet!" + +"Seven-ana-half!" + +Another jingling of little bells and the wheels ceased turning +altogether. The whistling of the steam was something frightful now--it +almost drowned all other noises. + +"Stand by to meet her!" + +George had the wheel hard down and was standing on a spoke. + +"All ready!" + +The, boat hesitated seemed to hold her breath, as did the captain and +pilots--and then she began to fall away to starboard and every eye +lighted: + +"Now then!--meet her! meet her! Snatch her!" + +The wheel flew to port so fast that the spokes blended into a spider-web +--the swing of the boat subsided--she steadied herself---- + +"Seven feet!" + +"Sev--six and a half!" + +"Six feet! Six f----" + +Bang! She hit the bottom! George shouted through the tube: + +"Spread her wide open! Whale it at her!" + +Pow-wow-chow! The escape-pipes belched snowy pillars of steam aloft, the +boat ground and surged and trembled--and slid over into---- + +"M-a-r-k twain!" + +"Quarter-her----" + +"Tap! tap! tap!" (to signify "Lay in the leads") + +And away she went, flying up the willow shore, with the whole silver sea +of the Mississippi stretching abroad on every hand. + +No Amaranth in sight! + +"Ha-ha, boys, we took a couple of tricks that time!" said the captain. + +And just at that moment a red glare appeared in the head of the chute and +the Amaranth came springing after them! + +"Well, I swear!" + +"Jim, what is the meaning of that?" + +"I'll tell you what's the meaning of it. That hail we had at Napoleon +was Wash Hastings, wanting to come to Cairo--and we didn't stop. He's in +that pilot house, now, showing those mud turtles how to hunt for easy +water." + +"That's it! I thought it wasn't any slouch that was running that middle +bar in Hog-eye Bend. If it's Wash Hastings--well, what he don't know +about the river ain't worth knowing--a regular gold-leaf, kid-glove, +diamond breastpin pilot Wash Hastings is. We won't take any tricks off +of him, old man!" + +"I wish I'd a stopped for him, that's all." + +The Amaranth was within three hundred yards of the Boreas, and still +gaining. The "old man" spoke through the tube: + +"What is she-carrying now?" + +"A hundred and sixty-five, sir!" + +"How's your wood?" + +"Pine all out-cypress half gone-eating up cotton-wood like pie!" + +"Break into that rosin on the main deck-pile it in, the boat can pay for +it!" + +Soon the boat was plunging and quivering and screaming more madly than +ever. But the Amaranth's head was almost abreast the Boreas's stern: + +"How's your steam, now, Harry?" + +"Hundred and eighty-two, sir!" + +"Break up the casks of bacon in the forrard hold! Pile it in! Levy on +that turpentine in the fantail-drench every stick of wood with it!" + +The boat was a moving earthquake by this time: + +"How is she now?" + +"A hundred and ninety-six and still a-swelling!--water, below the middle +gauge-cocks!--carrying every pound she can stand!--nigger roosting on the +safety-valve!" + +"Good! How's your draft?" + +"Bully! Every time a nigger heaves a stick of wood into the furnace he +goes out the chimney, with it!" + +The Amaranth drew steadily up till her jack-staff breasted the Boreas's +wheel-house--climbed along inch by inch till her chimneys breasted it +--crept along, further and further, till the boats were wheel to wheel +--and then they, closed up with a heavy jolt and locked together tight +and fast in the middle of the big river under the flooding moonlight! A +roar and a hurrah went up from the crowded decks of both steamers--all +hands rushed to the guards to look and shout and gesticulate--the weight +careened the vessels over toward each other--officers flew hither and +thither cursing and storming, trying to drive the people amidships--both +captains were leaning over their railings shaking their fists, swearing +and threatening--black volumes of smoke rolled up and canopied the +scene,--delivering a rain of sparks upon the vessels--two pistol shots +rang out, and both captains dodged unhurt and the packed masses of +passengers surged back and fell apart while the shrieks of women and +children soared above the intolerable din---- + +And then there was a booming roar, a thundering crash, and the riddled +Amaranth dropped loose from her hold and drifted helplessly away! + +Instantly the fire-doors of the Boreas were thrown open and the men began +dashing buckets of water into the furnaces--for it would have been death +and destruction to stop the engines with such a head of steam on. + +As soon as possible the Boreas dropped down to the floating wreck and +took off the dead, the wounded and the unhurt--at least all that could be +got at, for the whole forward half of the boat was a shapeless ruin, with +the great chimneys lying crossed on top of it, and underneath were a +dozen victims imprisoned alive and wailing for help. While men with axes +worked with might and main to free these poor fellows, the Boreas's boats +went about, picking up stragglers from the river. + +And now a new horror presented itself. The wreck took fire from the +dismantled furnaces! Never did men work with a heartier will than did +those stalwart braves with the axes. But it was of no use. The fire ate +its way steadily, despising the bucket brigade that fought it. It +scorched the clothes, it singed the hair of the axemen--it drove them +back, foot by foot-inch by inch--they wavered, struck a final blow in the +teeth of the enemy, and surrendered. And as they fell back they heard +prisoned voices saying: + +"Don't leave us! Don't desert us! Don't, don't do it!" + +And one poor fellow said: + +"I am Henry Worley, striker of the Amaranth! My mother lives in St. +Louis. Tell her a lie for a poor devil's sake, please. Say I was killed +in an instant and never knew what hurt me--though God knows I've neither +scratch nor bruise this moment! It's hard to burn up in a coop like this +with the whole wide world so near. Good-bye boys--we've all got to come +to it at last, anyway!" + +The Boreas stood away out of danger, and the ruined steamer went drifting +down the stream an island of wreathing and climbing flame that vomited +clouds of smoke from time to time, and glared more fiercely and sent its +luminous tongues higher and higher after each emission. A shriek at +intervals told of a captive that had met his doom. The wreck lodged upon +a sandbar, and when the Boreas turned the next point on her upward +journey it was still burning with scarcely abated fury. + +When the boys came down into the main saloon of the Boreas, they saw a +pitiful sight and heard a world of pitiful sounds. Eleven poor creatures +lay dead and forty more lay moaning, or pleading or screaming, while a +score of Good Samaritans moved among them doing what they could to +relieve their sufferings; bathing their chinless faces and bodies with +linseed oil and lime water and covering the places with bulging masses of +raw cotton that gave to every face and form a dreadful and unhuman +aspect. + +A little wee French midshipman of fourteen lay fearfully injured, but +never uttered a sound till a physician of Memphis was about to dress his +hurts. Then he said: + +"Can I get well? You need not be afraid to tell me." + +"No--I--I am afraid you can not." + +"Then do not waste your time with me--help those that can get well." + +"But----" + +"Help those that can get well! It is, not for me to be a girl. I carry +the blood of eleven generations of soldiers in my veins!" + +The physician--himself a man who had seen service in the navy in his +time--touched his hat to this little hero, and passed on. + +The head engineer of the Amaranth, a grand specimen of physical manhood, +struggled to his feet a ghastly spectacle and strode toward his brother, +the second engineer, who was unhurt. He said: + +"You were on watch. You were boss. You would not listen to me when I +begged you to reduce your steam. Take that!--take it to my wife and tell +her it comes from me by the hand of my murderer! Take it--and take my +curse with it to blister your heart a hundred years--and may you live so +long!" + +And he tore a ring from his finger, stripping flesh and skin with it, +threw it down and fell dead! + +But these things must not be dwelt upon. The Boreas landed her dreadful +cargo at the next large town and delivered it over to a multitude of +eager hands and warm southern hearts--a cargo amounting by this time to +39 wounded persons and 22 dead bodies. And with these she delivered a +list of 96 missing persons that had drowned or otherwise perished at the +scene of the disaster. + +A jury of inquest was impaneled, and after due deliberation and inquiry +they returned the inevitable American verdict which has been so familiar +to our ears all the days of our lives--"NOBODY TO BLAME." + +**[The incidents of the explosion are not invented. They happened just +as they are told.--The Authors.] + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +Il veut faire secher de la neige au four et la vendre pour du sel blanc. + + +When the Boreas backed away from the land to continue her voyage up the +river, the Hawkinses were richer by twenty-four hours of experience in +the contemplation of human suffering and in learning through honest hard +work how to relieve it. And they were richer in another way also. +In the early turmoil an hour after the explosion, a little black-eyed +girl of five years, frightened and crying bitterly, was struggling +through the throng in the Boreas' saloon calling her mother and father, +but no one answered. Something in the face of Mr. Hawkins attracted her +and she came and looked up at him; was satisfied, and took refuge with +him. He petted her, listened to her troubles, and said he would find her +friends for her. Then he put her in a state-room with his children and +told them to be kind to her (the adults of his party were all busy with +the wounded) and straightway began his search. + +It was fruitless. But all day he and his wife made inquiries, and hoped +against hope. All that they could learn was that the child and her +parents came on board at New Orleans, where they had just arrived in a +vessel from Cuba; that they looked like people from the Atlantic States; +that the family name was Van Brunt and the child's name Laura. This was +all. The parents had not been seen since the explosion. The child's +manners were those of a little lady, and her clothes were daintier and +finer than any Mrs. Hawkins had ever seen before. + +As the hours dragged on the child lost heart, and cried so piteously for +her mother that it seemed to the Hawkinses that the moanings and the +wailings of the mutilated men and women in the saloon did not so strain +at their heart-strings as the sufferings of this little desolate +creature. They tried hard to comfort her; and in trying, learned to love +her; they could not help it, seeing how she clung, to them and put her +arms about their necks and found-no solace but in their kind eyes and +comforting words: There was a question in both their hearts--a question +that rose up and asserted itself with more and more pertinacity as the +hours wore on--but both hesitated to give it voice--both kept silence +--and--waited. But a time came at last when the matter would bear delay +no longer. The boat had landed, and the dead and the wounded were being +conveyed to the shore. The tired child was asleep in the arms of Mrs. +Hawkins. Mr. Hawkins came into their presence and stood without +speaking. His eyes met his wife's; then both looked at the child--and as +they looked it stirred in its sleep and nestled closer; an expression of +contentment and peace settled upon its face that touched the +mother-heart; and when the eyes of husband and wife met again, the +question was asked and answered. + +When the Boreas had journeyed some four hundred miles from the time the +Hawkinses joined her, a long rank of steamboats was sighted, packed side +by side at a wharf like sardines, in a box, and above and beyond them +rose the domes and steeples and general architectural confusion of a +city--a city with an imposing umbrella of black smoke spread over it. +This was St. Louis. The children of the Hawkins family were playing +about the hurricane deck, and the father and mother were sitting in the +lee of the pilot house essaying to keep order and not greatly grieved +that they were not succeeding. + +"They're worth all the trouble they are, Nancy." + +"Yes, and more, Si." + +"I believe you! You wouldn't sell one of them at a good round figure?" + +"Not for all the money in the bank, Si." + +"My own sentiments every time. It is true we are not rich--but still you +are not sorry---you haven't any misgivings about the additions?" + +"No. God will provide" + +"Amen. And so you wouldn't even part with Clay? Or Laura!" + +"Not for anything in the world. I love them just the same as I love my +own: They pet me and spoil me even more than the others do, I think. +I reckon we'll get along, Si." + +"Oh yes, it will all come out right, old mother. I wouldn't be afraid to +adopt a thousand children if I wanted to, for there's that Tennessee +Land, you know--enough to make an army of them rich. A whole army, +Nancy! You and I will never see the day, but these little chaps will. +Indeed they will. One of these days it will be the rich Miss Emily +Hawkins--and the wealthy Miss Laura Van Brunt Hawkins--and the Hon. +George Washington Hawkins, millionaire--and Gov. Henry Clay Hawkins, +millionaire! That is the way the world will word it! Don't let's ever +fret about the children, Nancy--never in the world. They're all right. +Nancy, there's oceans and oceans of money in that land--mark my words!" + +The children had stopped playing, for the moment, and drawn near to +listen. Hawkins said: + +"Washington, my boy, what will you do when you get to be one of the +richest men in the world?" + +"I don't know, father. Sometimes I think I'll have a balloon and go up +in the air; and sometimes I think I'll have ever so many books; and +sometimes I think I'll have ever so many weathercocks and water-wheels; +or have a machine like that one you and Colonel Sellers bought; and +sometimes I think I'll have--well, somehow I don't know--somehow I ain't +certain; maybe I'll get a steamboat first." + +"The same old chap!--always just a little bit divided about things.--And +what will you do when you get to be one of the richest men in the world, +Clay?" + +"I don't know, sir. My mother--my other mother that's gone away--she +always told me to work along and not be much expecting to get rich, and +then I wouldn't be disappointed if I didn't get rich. And so I reckon +it's better for me to wait till I get rich, and then by that time maybe +I'll know what I'll want--but I don't now, sir." + +"Careful old head!--Governor Henry Clay Hawkins!--that's what you'll be, +Clay, one of these days. Wise old head! weighty old head! Go on, now, +and play--all of you. It's a prime lot, Nancy; as the Obedstown folk say +about their hogs." + +A smaller steamboat received the Hawkinses and their fortunes, and bore +them a hundred and thirty miles still higher up the Mississippi, and +landed them at a little tumble-down village on the Missouri shore in the +twilight of a mellow October day. + +The next morning they harnessed up their team and for two days they +wended slowly into the interior through almost roadless and uninhabited +forest solitudes. And when for the last time they pitched their tents, +metaphorically speaking, it was at the goal of their hopes, their new +home. + +By the muddy roadside stood a new log cabin, one story high--the store; +clustered in the neighborhood were ten or twelve more cabins, some new, +some old. + +In the sad light of the departing day the place looked homeless enough. +Two or three coatless young men sat in front of the store on a dry-goods +box, and whittled it with their knives, kicked it with their vast boots, +and shot tobacco-juice at various marks. Several ragged negroes leaned +comfortably against the posts of the awning and contemplated the arrival +of the wayfarers with lazy curiosity. All these people presently managed +to drag themselves to the vicinity of the Hawkins' wagon, and there they +took up permanent positions, hands in pockets and resting on one leg; and +thus anchored they proceeded to look and enjoy. Vagrant dogs came +wagging around and making inquiries of Hawkins's dog, which were not +satisfactory and they made war on him in concert. This would have +interested the citizens but it was too many on one to amount to anything +as a fight, and so they commanded the peace and the foreign dog coiled +his tail and took sanctuary under the wagon. Slatternly negro girls and +women slouched along with pails deftly balanced on their heads, and +joined the group and stared. Little half dressed white boys, and little +negro boys with nothing whatever on but tow-linen shirts with a fine +southern exposure, came from various directions and stood with their +hands locked together behind them and aided in the inspection. The rest +of the population were laying down their employments and getting ready to +come, when a man burst through the assemblage and seized the new-comers +by the hands in a frenzy of welcome, and exclaimed--indeed almost +shouted: + +"Well who could have believed it! Now is it you sure enough--turn +around! hold up your heads! I want to look at you good! Well, well, +well, it does seem most too good to be true, I declare! Lord, I'm so +glad to see you! Does a body's whole soul good to look at you! Shake +hands again! Keep on shaking hands! Goodness gracious alive. What will +my wife say?--Oh yes indeed, it's so!--married only last week--lovely, +perfectly lovely creature, the noblest woman that ever--you'll like her, +Nancy! Like her? Lord bless me you'll love her--you'll dote on her +--you'll be twins! Well, well, well, let me look at you again! Same old +--why bless my life it was only jest this very morning that my wife says, +'Colonel'--she will call me Colonel spite of everything I can do--she +says 'Colonel, something tells me somebody's coming!' and sure enough +here you are, the last people on earth a body could have expected. +Why she'll think she's a prophetess--and hanged if I don't think so too +--and you know there ain't any, country but what a prophet's an honor to, +as the proverb says. Lord bless me and here's the children, too! +Washington, Emily, don't you know me? Come, give us a kiss. Won't I fix +you, though!--ponies, cows, dogs, everything you can think of that'll +delight a child's heart-and--Why how's this? Little strangers? Well +you won't be any strangers here, I can tell you. Bless your souls we'll +make you think you never was at home before--'deed and 'deed we will, +I can tell you! Come, now, bundle right along with me. You can't +glorify any hearth stone but mine in this camp, you know--can't eat +anybody's bread but mine--can't do anything but just make yourselves +perfectly at home and comfortable, and spread yourselves out and rest! +You hear me! Here--Jim, Tom, Pete, Jake, fly around! Take that team to +my place--put the wagon in my lot--put the horses under the shed, and get +out hay and oats and fill them up! Ain't any hay and oats? Well get +some--have it charged to me--come, spin around, now! Now, Hawkins, the +procession's ready; mark time, by the left flank, forward-march!" + +And the Colonel took the lead, with Laura astride his neck, and the +newly-inspired and very grateful immigrants picked up their tired limbs +with quite a spring in them and dropped into his wake. + +Presently they were ranged about an old-time fire-place whose blazing +logs sent out rather an unnecessary amount of heat, but that was no +matter-supper was needed, and to have it, it had to be cooked. This +apartment was the family bedroom, parlor, library and kitchen, all in +one. The matronly little wife of the Colonel moved hither and thither +and in and out with her pots and pans in her hands', happiness in her +heart and a world of admiration of her husband in her eyes. And when at +last she had spread the cloth and loaded it with hot corn bread, fried +chickens, bacon, buttermilk, coffee, and all manner of country luxuries, +Col. Sellers modified his harangue and for a moment throttled it down to +the orthodox pitch for a blessing, and then instantly burst forth again +as from a parenthesis and clattered on with might and main till every +stomach in the party was laden with all it could carry. And when the +new-comers ascended the ladder to their comfortable feather beds on the +second floor--to wit the garret--Mrs. Hawkins was obliged to say: + +"Hang the fellow, I do believe he has gone wilder than ever, but still a +body can't help liking him if they would--and what is more, they don't +ever want to try when they see his eyes and hear him talk." + +Within a week or two the Hawkinses were comfortably domiciled in a new +log house, and were beginning to feel at home. The children were put to +school; at least it was what passed for a school in those days: a place +where tender young humanity devoted itself for eight or ten hours a day +to learning incomprehensible rubbish by heart out of books and reciting +it by rote, like parrots; so that a finished education consisted simply +of a permanent headache and the ability to read without stopping to spell +the words or take breath. Hawkins bought out the village store for a +song and proceeded to reap the profits, which amounted to but little more +than another song. + +The wonderful speculation hinted at by Col. Sellers in his letter turned +out to be the raising of mules for the Southern market; and really it +promised very well. The young stock cost but a trifle, the rearing but +another trifle, and so Hawkins was easily persuaded to embark his slender +means in the enterprise and turn over the keep and care of the animals to +Sellers and Uncle Dan'l. + +All went well: Business prospered little by little. Hawkins even built a +new house, made it two full stories high and put a lightning rod on it. +People came two or three miles to look at it. But they knew that the rod +attracted the lightning, and so they gave the place a wide berth in a +storm, for they were familiar with marksmanship and doubted if the +lightning could hit that small stick at a distance of a mile and a half +oftener than once in a hundred and fifty times. Hawkins fitted out his +house with "store" furniture from St. Louis, and the fame of its +magnificence went abroad in the land. Even the parlor carpet was from +St. Louis--though the other rooms were clothed in the "rag" carpeting of +the country. Hawkins put up the first "paling" fence that had ever +adorned the village; and he did not stop there, but whitewashed it. +His oil-cloth window-curtains had noble pictures on them of castles such +as had never been seen anywhere in the world but on window-curtains. +Hawkins enjoyed the admiration these prodigies compelled, but he always +smiled to think how poor and, cheap they were, compared to what the +Hawkins mansion would display in a future day after the Tennessee Land +should have borne its minted fruit. Even Washington observed, once, that +when the Tennessee Land was sold he would have a "store" carpet in his +and Clay's room like the one in the parlor. This pleased Hawkins, but it +troubled his wife. It did not seem wise, to her, to put one's entire +earthly trust in the Tennessee Land and never think of doing any work. + +Hawkins took a weekly Philadelphia newspaper and a semi-weekly St. Louis +journal--almost the only papers that came to the village, though Godey's +Lady's Book found a good market there and was regarded as the perfection +of polite literature by some of the ablest critics in the place. Perhaps +it is only fair to explain that we are writing of a by gone age--some +twenty or thirty years ago. In the two newspapers referred to lay the +secret of Hawkins's growing prosperity. They kept him informed of the +condition of the crops south and east, and thus he knew which articles +were likely to be in demand and which articles were likely to be +unsalable, weeks and even months in advance of the simple folk about him. +As the months went by he came to be regarded as a wonderfully lucky man. +It did not occur to the citizens that brains were at the bottom of his +luck. + +His title of "Squire" came into vogue again, but only for a season; for, +as his wealth and popularity augmented, that title, by imperceptible +stages, grew up into "Judge;" indeed' it bade fair to swell into +"General" bye and bye. All strangers of consequence who visited the +village gravitated to the Hawkins Mansion and became guests of the +"Judge." + +Hawkins had learned to like the people of his section very much. They +were uncouth and not cultivated, and not particularly industrious; but +they were honest and straightforward, and their virtuous ways commanded +respect. Their patriotism was strong, their pride in the flag was of the +old fashioned pattern, their love of country amounted to idolatry. +Whoever dragged the national honor in the dirt won their deathless +hatred. They still cursed Benedict Arnold as if he were a personal +friend who had broken faith--but a week gone by. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +We skip ten years and this history finds certain changes to record. + +Judge Hawkins and Col. Sellers have made and lost two or three moderate +fortunes in the meantime and are now pinched by poverty. Sellers has two +pairs of twins and four extras. In Hawkins's family are six children of +his own and two adopted ones. From time to time, as fortune smiled, the +elder children got the benefit of it, spending the lucky seasons at +excellent schools in St. Louis and the unlucky ones at home in the +chafing discomfort of straightened circumstances. + +Neither the Hawkins children nor the world that knew them ever supposed +that one of the girls was of alien blood and parentage: Such difference +as existed between Laura and Emily is not uncommon in a family. The +girls had grown up as sisters, and they were both too young at the time +of the fearful accident on the Mississippi to know that it was that which +had thrown their lives together. + +And yet any one who had known the secret of Laura's birth and had seen +her during these passing years, say at the happy age of twelve or +thirteen, would have fancied that he knew the reason why she was more +winsome than her school companion. + +Philosophers dispute whether it is the promise of what she will be in +the careless school-girl, that makes her attractive, the undeveloped +maidenhood, or the mere natural, careless sweetness of childhood. +If Laura at twelve was beginning to be a beauty, the thought of it had +never entered her head. No, indeed. Her mind wad filled with more +important thoughts. To her simple school-girl dress she was beginning to +add those mysterious little adornments of ribbon-knots and ear-rings, +which were the subject of earnest consultations with her grown friends. + +When she tripped down the street on a summer's day with her dainty hands +propped into the ribbon-broidered pockets of her apron, and elbows +consequently more or less akimbo with her wide Leghorn hat flapping down +and hiding her face one moment and blowing straight up against her fore +head the next and making its revealment of fresh young beauty; with all +her pretty girlish airs and graces in full play, and that sweet ignorance +of care and that atmosphere of innocence and purity all about her that +belong to her gracious time of life, indeed she was a vision to warm the +coldest heart and bless and cheer the saddest. + +Willful, generous, forgiving, imperious, affectionate, improvident, +bewitching, in short--was Laura at this period. Could she have remained +there, this history would not need to be written. But Laura had grown to +be almost a woman in these few years, to the end of which we have now +come--years which had seen Judge Hawkins pass through so many trials. + +When the judge's first bankruptcy came upon him, a homely human angel +intruded upon him with an offer of $1,500 for the Tennessee Land. Mrs. +Hawkins said take it. It was a grievous temptation, but the judge +withstood it. He said the land was for the children--he could not rob +them of their future millions for so paltry a sum. When the second +blight fell upon him, another angel appeared and offered $3,000 for the +land. He was in such deep distress that he allowed his wife to persuade +him to let the papers be drawn; but when his children came into his +presence in their poor apparel, he felt like a traitor and refused to +sign. + +But now he was down again, and deeper in the mire than ever. He paced +the floor all day, he scarcely slept at night. He blushed even to +acknowledge it to himself, but treason was in his mind--he was +meditating, at last, the sale of the land. Mrs. Hawkins stepped into the +room. He had not spoken a word, but he felt as guilty as if she had +caught him in some shameful act. She said: + +"Si, I do not know what we are going to do. The children are not fit to +be seen, their clothes are in such a state. But there's something more +serious still.--There is scarcely a bite in the house to eat" + +"Why, Nancy, go to Johnson----." + +"Johnson indeed! You took that man's part when he hadn't a friend in the +world, and you built him up and made him rich. And here's the result of +it: He lives in our fine house, and we live in his miserable log cabin. +He has hinted to our children that he would rather they wouldn't come +about his yard to play with his children,--which I can bear, and bear +easy enough, for they're not a sort we want to associate with much--but +what I can't bear with any quietness at all, is his telling Franky our +bill was running pretty high this morning when I sent him for some meal +--and that was all he said, too--didn't give him the meal--turned off and +went to talking with the Hargrave girls about some stuff they wanted to +cheapen." + +"Nancy, this is astounding!" + +"And so it is, I warrant you. I've kept still, Si, as long as ever I +could. Things have been getting worse and worse, and worse and worse, +every single day; I don't go out of the house, I feel so down; but you +had trouble enough, and I wouldn't say a word--and I wouldn't say a word +now, only things have got so bad that I don't know what to do, nor where +to turn." And she gave way and put her face in her hands and cried. + +"Poor child, don't grieve so. I never thought that of Johnson. I am +clear at my wit's end. I don't know what in the world to do. Now if +somebody would come along and offer $3,000--Uh, if somebody only would +come along and offer $3,000 for that Tennessee Land." + +"You'd sell it, S!" said Mrs. Hawkins excitedly. + +"Try me!" + +Mrs. Hawkins was out of the room in a moment. Within a minute she was +back again with a business-looking stranger, whom she seated, and then +she took her leave again. Hawkins said to himself, "How can a man ever +lose faith? When the blackest hour comes, Providence always comes with +it--ah, this is the very timeliest help that ever poor harried devil had; +if this blessed man offers but a thousand I'll embrace him like a +brother!" + +The stranger said: + +"I am aware that you own 75,000 acres, of land in East Tennessee, and +without sacrificing your time, I will come to the point at once. I am +agent of an iron manufacturing company, and they empower me to offer you +ten thousand dollars for that land." + +Hawkins's heart bounded within him. His whole frame was racked and +wrenched with fettered hurrahs. His first impulse was to shout "Done! +and God bless the iron company, too!" + +But a something flitted through his mind, and his opened lips uttered +nothing. The enthusiasm faded away from his eyes, and the look of a man +who is thinking took its place. Presently, in a hesitating, undecided +way, he said: + +"Well, I--it don't seem quite enough. That--that is a very valuable +property--very valuable. It's brim full of iron-ore, sir--brim full of +it! And copper, coal,--everything--everything you can think of! Now, +I'll tell you what I'll, do. I'll reserve everything except the iron, +and I'll sell them the iron property for $15,000 cash, I to go in with +them and own an undivided interest of one-half the concern--or the stock, +as you may say. I'm out of business, and I'd just as soon help run the +thing as not. Now how does that strike you?" + +"Well, I am only an agent of these people, who are friends of mine, and +I am not even paid for my services. To tell you the truth, I have tried +to persuade them not to go into the thing; and I have come square out +with their offer, without throwing out any feelers--and I did it in the +hope that you would refuse. A man pretty much always refuses another +man's first offer, no matter what it is. But I have performed my duty, +and will take pleasure in telling them what you say." + +He was about to rise. Hawkins said, + +"Wait a bit." + +Hawkins thought again. And the substance of his thought was: "This +is a deep man; this is a very deep man; I don't like his candor; your +ostentatiously candid business man's a deep fox--always a deep fox; +this man's that iron company himself--that's what he is; he wants that +property, too; I am not so blind but I can see that; he don't want the +company to go into this thing--O, that's very good; yes, that's very +good indeed--stuff! he'll be back here tomorrow, sure, and take my offer; +take it? I'll risk anything he is suffering to take it now; here--I must +mind what I'm about. What has started this sudden excitement about iron? +I wonder what is in the wind? just as sure as I'm alive this moment, +there's something tremendous stirring in iron speculation" [here Hawkins +got up and began to pace the floor with excited eyes and with gesturing +hands]--"something enormous going on in iron, without the shadow of a +doubt, and here I sit mousing in the dark and never knowing anything +about it; great heaven, what an escape I've made! this underhanded +mercenary creature might have taken me up--and ruined me! but I have +escaped, and I warrant me I'll not put my foot into--" + +He stopped and turned toward the stranger; saying: + +"I have made you a proposition, you have not accepted it, and I desire +that you will consider that I have made none. At the same time my +conscience will not allow me to--. Please alter the figures I named to +thirty thousand dollars, if you will, and let the proposition go to the +company--I will stick to it if it breaks my heart!" The stranger looked +amused, and there was a pretty well defined touch of surprise in his +expression, too, but Hawkins never noticed it. Indeed he scarcely +noticed anything or knew what he was about. The man left; Hawkins flung +himself into a chair; thought a few moments, then glanced around, looked +frightened, sprang to the door---- + +"Too late--too late! He's gone! Fool that I am! always a fool! Thirty +thousand--ass that I am! Oh, why didn't I say fifty thousand!" + +He plunged his hands into his hair and leaned his elbows on his knees, +and fell to rocking himself back and forth in anguish. Mrs. Hawkins +sprang in, beaming: + +"Well, Si?" + +"Oh, con-found the con-founded--con-found it, Nancy. I've gone and done +it, now!" + +"Done what Si for mercy's sake!" + +"Done everything! Ruined everything!" + +"Tell me, tell me, tell me! Don't keep a body in such suspense. Didn't +he buy, after all? Didn't he make an offer?" + +Offer? He offered $10,000 for our land, and----" + +"Thank the good providence from the very bottom of my heart of hearts! +What sort of ruin do you call that, Si!" + +"Nancy, do you suppose I listened to such a preposterous proposition? +No! Thank fortune I'm not a simpleton! I saw through the pretty scheme +in a second. It's a vast iron speculation!--millions upon millions in +it! But fool as I am I told him he could have half the iron property for +thirty thousand--and if I only had him back here he couldn't touch it for +a cent less than a quarter of a million!" + +Mrs. Hawkins looked up white and despairing: + +"You threw away this chance, you let this man go, and we in this awful +trouble? You don't mean it, you can't mean it!" + +"Throw it away? Catch me at it! Why woman, do you suppose that man +don't know what he is about? Bless you, he'll be back fast enough +to-morrow." + +"Never, never, never. He never will comeback. I don't know what is to +become of us. I don't know what in the world is to become of us." + +A shade of uneasiness came into Hawkins's face. He said: + +"Why, Nancy, you--you can't believe what you are saying." + +"Believe it, indeed? I know it, Si. And I know that we haven't a cent +in the world, and we've sent ten thousand dollars a-begging." + +"Nancy, you frighten me. Now could that man--is it possible that I +--hanged if I don't believe I have missed a chance! Don't grieve, Nancy, +don't grieve. I'll go right after him. I'll take--I'll take--what a +fool I am!--I'll take anything he'll give!" + +The next instant he left the house on a run. But the man was no longer +in the town. Nobody knew where he belonged or whither he had gone. +Hawkins came slowly back, watching wistfully but hopelessly for the +stranger, and lowering his price steadily with his sinking heart. And +when his foot finally pressed his own threshold, the value he held the +entire Tennessee property at was five hundred dollars--two hundred down +and the rest in three equal annual payments, without interest. + +There was a sad gathering at the Hawkins fireside the next night. All +the children were present but Clay. Mr. Hawkins said: + +"Washington, we seem to be hopelessly fallen, hopelessly involved. I am +ready to give up. I do not know where to turn--I never have been down so +low before, I never have seen things so dismal. There are many mouths to +feed; Clay is at work; we must lose you, also, for a little while, my +boy. But it will not be long--the Tennessee land----" + +He stopped, and was conscious of a blush. There was silence for a +moment, and then Washington--now a lank, dreamy-eyed stripling between +twenty-two and twenty-three years of age--said: + +"If Col. Sellers would come for me, I would go and stay with him a while, +till the Tennessee land is sold. He has often wanted me to come, ever +since he moved to Hawkeye." + +"I'm afraid he can't well come for you, Washington. From what I can +hear--not from him of course, but from others--he is not far from as bad +off as we are--and his family is as large, too. He might find something +for you to do, maybe, but you'd better try to get to him yourself, +Washington--it's only thirty miles." + +"But how can I, father? There's no stage or anything." + +"And if there were, stages require money. A stage goes from Swansea, +five miles from here. But it would be cheaper to walk." + +"Father, they must know you there, and no doubt they would credit you in +a moment, for a little stage ride like that. Couldn't you write and ask +them?" + +"Couldn't you, Washington--seeing it's you that wants the ride? And what +do you think you'll do, Washington, when you get to Hawkeye? Finish your +invention for making window-glass opaque?" + +"No, sir, I have given that up. I almost knew I could do it, but it was +so tedious and troublesome I quit it." + +"I was afraid of it, my boy. Then I suppose you'll finish your plan of +coloring hen's eggs by feeding a peculiar diet to the hen?" + +"No, sir. I believe I have found out the stuff that will do it, but it +kills the hen; so I have dropped that for the present, though I can take +it up again some day when I learn how to manage the mixture better." + +"Well, what have you got on hand--anything?" + +"Yes, sir, three or four things. I think they are all good and can all +be done, but they are tiresome, and besides they require money. But as +soon as the land is sold----" + +"Emily, were you about to say something?" said Hawkins. + +Yes, sir. If you are willing, I will go to St. Louis. That will make +another mouth less to feed. Mrs. Buckner has always wanted me to come." + +"But the money, child?" + +"Why I think she would send it, if you would write her--and I know she +would wait for her pay till----" + +"Come, Laura, let's hear from you, my girl." + +Emily and Laura were about the same age--between seventeen and eighteen. +Emily was fair and pretty, girlish and diffident--blue eyes and light +hair. Laura had a proud bearing, and a somewhat mature look; she had +fine, clean-cut features, her complexion was pure white and contrasted +vividly with her black hair and eyes; she was not what one calls pretty +--she was beautiful. She said: + +"I will go to St. Louis, too, sir. I will find a way to get there. +I will make a way. And I will find a way to help myself along, and do +what I can to help the rest, too." + +She spoke it like a princess. Mrs. Hawkins smiled proudly and kissed +her, saying in a tone of fond reproof: + +"So one of my girls is going to turn out and work for her living! It's +like your pluck and spirit, child, but we will hope that we haven't got +quite down to that, yet." + +The girl's eyes beamed affection under her mother's caress. Then she +straightened up, folded her white hands in her lap and became a splendid +ice-berg. Clay's dog put up his brown nose for a little attention, and +got it. He retired under the table with an apologetic yelp, which did +not affect the iceberg. + +Judge Hawkins had written and asked Clay to return home and consult with +him upon family affairs. He arrived the evening after this conversation, +and the whole household gave him a rapturous welcome. He brought sadly +needed help with him, consisting of the savings of a year and a half of +work--nearly two hundred dollars in money. + +It was a ray of sunshine which (to this easy household) was the earnest +of a clearing sky. + +Bright and early in the morning the family were astir, and all were busy +preparing Washington for his journey--at least all but Washington +himself, who sat apart, steeped in a reverie. When the time for his +departure came, it was easy to see how fondly all loved him and how hard +it was to let him go, notwithstanding they had often seen him go before, +in his St. Louis schooling days. In the most matter-of-course way they +had borne the burden of getting him ready for his trip, never seeming to +think of his helping in the matter; in the same matter-of-course way Clay +had hired a horse and cart; and now that the good-byes were ended he +bundled Washington's baggage in and drove away with the exile. + +At Swansea Clay paid his stage fare, stowed him away in the vehicle, and +saw him off. Then he returned home and reported progress, like a +committee of the whole. + +Clay remained at home several days. He held many consultations with his +mother upon the financial condition of the family, and talked once with +his father upon the same subject, but only once. He found a change in +that quarter which was distressing; years of fluctuating fortune had done +their work; each reverse had weakened the father's spirit and impaired +his energies; his last misfortune seemed to have left hope and ambition +dead within him; he had no projects, formed no plans--evidently he was a +vanquished man. He looked worn and tired. He inquired into Clay's +affairs and prospects, and when he found that Clay was doing pretty well +and was likely to do still better, it was plain that he resigned himself +with easy facility to look to the son for a support; and he said, "Keep +yourself informed of poor Washington's condition and movements, and help +him along all you can, Clay." + +The younger children, also, seemed relieved of all fears and distresses, +and very ready and willing to look to Clay for a livelihood. Within +three days a general tranquility and satisfaction reigned in the +household. Clay's hundred and eighty or ninety, dollars had worked a +wonder. The family were as contented, now, and as free from care as they +could have been with a fortune. It was well that Mrs. Hawkins held the +purse otherwise the treasure would have lasted but a very little while. + +It took but a trifle to pay Hawkins's outstanding obligations, for he had +always had a horror of debt. + +When Clay bade his home good-bye and set out to return to the field of +his labors, he was conscious that henceforth he was to have his father's +family on his hands as pensioners; but he did not allow himself to chafe +at the thought, for he reasoned that his father had dealt by him with a +free hand and a loving one all his life, and now that hard fortune had +broken his spirit it ought to be a pleasure, not a pain, to work for him. +The younger children were born and educated dependents. They had never +been taught to do anything for themselves, and it did not seem to occur +to them to make an attempt now. + +The girls would not have been permitted to work for a living under any +circumstances whatever. It was a southern family, and of good blood; +and for any person except Laura, either within or without the household +to have suggested such an idea would have brought upon the suggester the +suspicion of being a lunatic. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + Via, Pecunia! when she's run and gone + And fled, and dead, then will I fetch her again + With aqua vita, out of an old hogshead! + While there are lees of wine, or dregs of beer, + I'll never want her! Coin her out of cobwebs, + Dust, but I'll have her! raise wool upon egg-shells, + Sir, and make grass grow out of marrow-bones, + To make her come! + B. Jonson. + +Bearing Washington Hawkins and his fortunes, the stage-coach tore out of +Swansea at a fearful gait, with horn tooting gaily and half the town +admiring from doors and windows. But it did not tear any more after it +got to the outskirts; it dragged along stupidly enough, then--till it +came in sight of the next hamlet; and then the bugle tooted gaily again +and again the vehicle went tearing by the horses. This sort of conduct +marked every entry to a station and every exit from it; and so in those +days children grew up with the idea that stage-coaches always tore and +always tooted; but they also grew up with the idea that pirates went into +action in their Sunday clothes, carrying the black flag in one hand and +pistolling people with the other, merely because they were so represented +in the pictures--but these illusions vanished when later years brought +their disenchanting wisdom. They learned then that the stagecoach is but +a poor, plodding, vulgar thing in the solitudes of the highway; and that +the pirate is only a seedy, unfantastic "rough," when he is out of the +pictures. + +Toward evening, the stage-coach came thundering into Hawkeye with a +perfectly triumphant ostentation--which was natural and proper, for +Hawkey a was a pretty large town for interior Missouri. Washington, +very stiff and tired and hungry, climbed out, and wondered how he was to +proceed now. But his difficulty was quickly solved. Col. Sellers came +down the street on a run and arrived panting for breath. He said: + +"Lord bless you--I'm glad to see you, Washington--perfectly delighted to +see you, my boy! I got your message. Been on the look-out for you. +Heard the stage horn, but had a party I couldn't shake off--man that's +got an enormous thing on hand--wants me to put some capital into it--and +I tell you, my boy, I could do worse, I could do a deal worse. No, now, +let that luggage alone; I'll fix that. Here, Jerry, got anything to do? +All right-shoulder this plunder and follow me. Come along, Washington. +Lord I'm glad to see you! Wife and the children are just perishing to +look at you. Bless you, they won't know you, you've grown so. Folks all +well, I suppose? That's good--glad to hear that. We're always going to +run down and see them, but I'm into so many operations, and they're not +things a man feels like trusting to other people, and so somehow we keep +putting it off. Fortunes in them! Good gracious, it's the country to +pile up wealth in! Here we are--here's where the Sellers dynasty hangs +out. Hump it on the door-step, Jerry--the blackest niggro in the State, +Washington, but got a good heart--mighty likely boy, is Jerry. And now I +suppose you've got to have ten cents, Jerry. That's all right--when a +man works for me--when a man--in the other pocket, I reckon--when a man +--why, where the mischief as that portmonnaie!--when a--well now that's +odd--Oh, now I remember, must have left it at the bank; and b'George I've +left my check-book, too--Polly says I ought to have a nurse--well, no +matter. Let me have a dime, Washington, if you've got--ah, thanks. Now +clear out, Jerry, your complexion has brought on the twilight half an +hour ahead of time. Pretty fair joke--pretty fair. Here he is, Polly! +Washington's come, children! come now, don't eat him up--finish him in +the house. Welcome, my boy, to a mansion that is proud to shelter the +son of the best man that walks on the ground. Si Hawkins has been a good +friend to me, and I believe I can say that whenever I've had a chance to +put him into a good thing I've done it, and done it pretty cheerfully, +too. I put him into that sugar speculation--what a grand thing that was, +if we hadn't held on too long!" + +True enough; but holding on too long had utterly ruined both of them; +and the saddest part of it was, that they never had had so much money to +lose before, for Sellers's sale of their mule crop that year in New +Orleans had been a great financial success. If he had kept out of sugar +and gone back home content to stick to mules it would have been a happy +wisdom. As it was, he managed to kill two birds with one stone--that is +to say, he killed the sugar speculation by holding for high rates till he +had to sell at the bottom figure, and that calamity killed the mule that +laid the golden egg--which is but a figurative expression and will be so +understood. Sellers had returned home cheerful but empty-handed, and the +mule business lapsed into other hands. The sale of the Hawkins property +by the Sheriff had followed, and the Hawkins hearts been torn to see +Uncle Dan'l and his wife pass from the auction-block into the hands of a +negro trader and depart for the remote South to be seen no more by the +family. It had seemed like seeing their own flesh and blood sold into +banishment. + +Washington was greatly pleased with the Sellers mansion. It was a +two-story-and-a-half brick, and much more stylish than any of its +neighbors. He was borne to the family sitting room in triumph by the +swarm of little Sellerses, the parents following with their arms about +each other's waists. + +The whole family were poorly and cheaply dressed; and the clothing, +although neat and clean, showed many evidences of having seen long +service. The Colonel's "stovepipe" hat was napless and shiny with much +polishing, but nevertheless it had an almost convincing expression about +it of having been just purchased new. The rest of his clothing was +napless and shiny, too, but it had the air of being entirely satisfied +with itself and blandly sorry for other people's clothes. It was growing +rather dark in the house, and the evening air was chilly, too. Sellers +said: + +"Lay off your overcoat, Washington, and draw up to the stove and make +yourself at home--just consider yourself under your own shingles my boy +--I'll have a fire going, in a jiffy. Light the lamp, Polly, dear, and +let's have things cheerful just as glad to see you, Washington, as if +you'd been lost a century and we'd found you again!" + +By this time the Colonel was conveying a lighted match into a poor little +stove. Then he propped the stove door to its place by leaning the poker +against it, for the hinges had retired from business. This door framed +a small square of isinglass, which now warmed up with a faint glow. +Mrs. Sellers lit a cheap, showy lamp, which dissipated a good deal of the +gloom, and then everybody gathered into the light and took the stove into +close companionship. + +The children climbed all over Sellers, fondled him, petted him, and were +lavishly petted in return. Out from this tugging, laughing, chattering +disguise of legs and arms and little faces, the Colonel's voice worked +its way and his tireless tongue ran blithely on without interruption; +and the purring little wife, diligent with her knitting, sat near at hand +and looked happy and proud and grateful; and she listened as one who +listens to oracles and, gospels and whose grateful soul is being +refreshed with the bread of life. Bye and bye the children quieted down +to listen; clustered about their father, and resting their elbows on his +legs, they hung upon his words as if he were uttering the music of the +spheres. + +A dreary old hair-cloth sofa against the wall; a few damaged chairs; the +small table the lamp stood on; the crippled stove--these things +constituted the furniture of the room. There was no carpet on the floor; +on the wall were occasional square-shaped interruptions of the general +tint of the plaster which betrayed that there used to be pictures in the +house--but there were none now. There were no mantel ornaments, unless +one might bring himself to regard as an ornament a clock which never came +within fifteen strokes of striking the right time, and whose hands always +hitched together at twenty-two minutes past anything and traveled in +company the rest of the way home. + +"Remarkable clock!" said Sellers, and got up and wound it. "I've been +offered--well, I wouldn't expect you to believe what I've been offered +for that clock. Old Gov. Hager never sees me but he says, 'Come, now, +Colonel, name your price--I must have that clock!' But my goodness I'd +as soon think of selling my wife. As I was saying to ---- silence in the +court, now, she's begun to strike! You can't talk against her--you have +to just be patient and hold up till she's said her say. Ah well, as I +was saying, when--she's beginning again! Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, +twenty-two, twen----ah, that's all.--Yes, as I was saying to old Judge +----go it, old girl, don't mind me.--Now how is that?----isn't that a +good, spirited tone? She can wake the dead! Sleep? Why you might as +well try to sleep in a thunder-factory. Now just listen at that. She'll +strike a hundred and fifty, now, without stopping,--you'll see. There +ain't another clock like that in Christendom." + +Washington hoped that this might be true, for the din was distracting +--though the family, one and all, seemed filled with joy; and the more the +clock "buckled down to her work" as the Colonel expressed it, and the +more insupportable the clatter became, the more enchanted they all +appeared to be. When there was silence, Mrs Sellers lifted upon +Washington a face that beamed with a childlike pride, and said: + +"It belonged to his grandmother." + +The look and the tone were a plain call for admiring surprise, and +therefore Washington said (it was the only thing that offered itself at +the moment:) + +"Indeed!" + +"Yes, it did, didn't it father!" exclaimed one of the twins. "She was my +great-grandmother--and George's too; wasn't she, father! You never saw +her, but Sis has seen her, when Sis was a baby-didn't you, Sis! Sis has +seen her most a hundred times. She was awful deef--she's dead, now. +Aint she, father!" + +All the children chimed in, now, with one general Babel of information +about deceased--nobody offering to read the riot act or seeming to +discountenance the insurrection or disapprove of it in any way--but the +head twin drowned all the turmoil and held his own against the field: + +"It's our clock, now--and it's got wheels inside of it, and a thing that +flutters every time she strikes--don't it, father! Great-grandmother +died before hardly any of us was born--she was an Old-School Baptist and +had warts all over her--you ask father if she didn't. She had an uncle +once that was bald-headed and used to have fits; he wasn't our uncle, +I don't know what he was to us--some kin or another I reckon--father's +seen him a thousand times--hain't you, father! We used to have a calf +that et apples and just chawed up dishrags like nothing, and if you stay +here you'll see lots of funerals--won't he, Sis! Did you ever see a +house afire? I have! Once me and Jim Terry----" + +But Sellers began to speak now, and the storm ceased. He began to tell +about an enormous speculation he was thinking of embarking some capital +in--a speculation which some London bankers had been over to consult with +him about--and soon he was building glittering pyramids of coin, and +Washington was presently growing opulent under the magic of his +eloquence. But at the same time Washington was not able to ignore the +cold entirely. He was nearly as close to the stove as he could get, +and yet he could not persuade himself, that he felt the slightest heat, +notwithstanding the isinglass' door was still gently and serenely +glowing. He tried to get a trifle closer to the stove, and the +consequence was, he tripped the supporting poker and the stove-door +tumbled to the floor. And then there was a revelation--there was nothing +in the stove but a lighted tallow-candle! The poor youth blushed and +felt as if he must die with shame. But the Colonel was only +disconcerted for a moment--he straightway found his voice again: + +"A little idea of my own, Washington--one of the greatest things in the +world! You must write and tell your father about it--don't forget that, +now. I have been reading up some European Scientific reports--friend of +mine, Count Fugier, sent them to me--sends me all sorts of things from +Paris--he thinks the world of me, Fugier does. Well, I saw that the +Academy of France had been testing the properties of heat, and they came +to the conclusion that it was a nonconductor or something like that, +and of course its influence must necessarily be deadly in nervous +organizations with excitable temperaments, especially where there is any +tendency toward rheumatic affections. Bless you I saw in a moment what +was the matter with us, and says I, out goes your fires!--no more slow +torture and certain death for me, sir. What you want is the appearance +of heat, not the heat itself--that's the idea. Well how to do it was the +next thing. I just put my head, to work, pegged away, a couple of days, +and here you are! Rheumatism? Why a man can't any more start a case of +rheumatism in this house than he can shake an opinion out of a mummy! +Stove with a candle in it and a transparent door--that's it--it has been +the salvation of this family. Don't you fail to write your father about +it, Washington. And tell him the idea is mine--I'm no more conceited +than most people, I reckon, but you know it is human nature for a man to +want credit for a thing like that." + +Washington said with his blue lips that he would, but he said in his +secret heart that he would promote no such iniquity. He tried to believe +in the healthfulness of the invention, and succeeded tolerably well; +but after all he could not feel that good health in a frozen, body was +any real improvement on the rheumatism. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + --Whan pe horde is thynne, as of seruyse, + Nought replenesshed with grete diuersite + Of mete & drinke, good chere may then suffise + With honest talkyng---- + The Book of Curtesye. + + MAMMON. Come on, sir. Now, you set your foot on shore + In Novo Orbe; here's the rich Peru: + And there within, sir, are the golden mines, + Great Solomon's Ophir!---- + B. Jonson + +The supper at Col. Sellers's was not sumptuous, in the beginning, but it +improved on acquaintance. That is to say, that what Washington regarded +at first sight as mere lowly potatoes, presently became awe-inspiring +agricultural productions that had been reared in some ducal garden beyond +the sea, under the sacred eye of the duke himself, who had sent them to +Sellers; the bread was from corn which could be grown in only one favored +locality in the earth and only a favored few could get it; the Rio +coffee, which at first seemed execrable to the taste, took to itself an +improved flavor when Washington was told to drink it slowly and not hurry +what should be a lingering luxury in order to be fully appreciated--it +was from the private stores of a Brazilian nobleman with an +unrememberable name. The Colonel's tongue was a magician's wand that +turned dried apples into figs and water into wine as easily as it could +change a hovel into a palace and present poverty into imminent future +riches. + +Washington slept in a cold bed in a carpetless room and woke up in a +palace in the morning; at least the palace lingered during the moment +that he was rubbing his eyes and getting his bearings--and then it +disappeared and he recognized that the Colonel's inspiring talk had been +influencing his dreams. Fatigue had made him sleep late; when he entered +the sitting room he noticed that the old hair-cloth sofa was absent; when +he sat down to breakfast the Colonel tossed six or seven dollars in bills +on the table, counted them over, said he was a little short and must call +upon his banker; then returned the bills to his wallet with the +indifferent air of a man who is used to money. The breakfast was not an +improvement upon the supper, but the Colonel talked it up and transformed +it into an oriental feast. Bye and bye, he said: + +"I intend to look out for you, Washington, my boy. I hunted up a place +for you yesterday, but I am not referring to that,--now--that is a mere +livelihood--mere bread and butter; but when I say I mean to look out for +you I mean something very different. I mean to put things in your way +than will make a mere livelihood a trifling thing. I'll put you in a way +to make more money than you'll ever know what to do with. You'll be +right here where I can put my hand on you when anything turns up. I've +got some prodigious operations on foot; but I'm keeping quiet; mum's the +word; your old hand don't go around pow-wowing and letting everybody see +his k'yards and find out his little game. But all in good time, +Washington, all in good time. You'll see. Now there's an operation in +corn that looks well. Some New York men are trying to get me to go into +it--buy up all the growing crops and just boss the market when they +mature--ah I tell you it's a great thing. And it only costs a trifle; +two millions or two and a half will do it. I haven't exactly promised +yet--there's no hurry--the more indifferent I seem, you know, the more +anxious those fellows will get. And then there is the hog speculation +--that's bigger still. We've got quiet men at work," [he was very +impressive here,] "mousing around, to get propositions out of all the +farmers in the whole west and northwest for the hog crop, and other +agents quietly getting propositions and terms out of all the +manufactories--and don't you see, if we can get all the hogs and all the +slaughter horses into our hands on the dead quiet--whew! it would take +three ships to carry the money.--I've looked into the thing--calculated +all the chances for and all the chances against, and though I shake my +head and hesitate and keep on thinking, apparently, I've got my mind made +up that if the thing can be done on a capital of six millions, that's the +horse to put up money on! Why Washington--but what's the use of talking +about it--any man can see that there's whole Atlantic oceans of cash in +it, gulfs and bays thrown in. But there's a bigger thing than that, yes +bigger----" + +"Why Colonel, you can't want anything bigger!" said Washington, his eyes +blazing. "Oh, I wish I could go into either of those speculations--I +only wish I had money--I wish I wasn't cramped and kept down and fettered +with poverty, and such prodigious chances lying right here in sight! +Oh, it is a fearful thing to be poor. But don't throw away those things +--they are so splendid and I can see how sure they are. Don't throw them +away for something still better and maybe fail in it! I wouldn't, +Colonel. I would stick to these. I wish father were here and were his +old self again--Oh, he never in his life had such chances as these are. +Colonel; you can't improve on these--no man can improve on them!" + +A sweet, compassionate smile played about the Colonel's features, and he +leaned over the table with the air of a man who is "going to show you" +and do it without the least trouble: + +"Why Washington, my boy, these things are nothing. They look large of +course--they look large to a novice, but to a man who has been all his +life accustomed to large operations--shaw! They're well enough to while +away an idle hour with, or furnish a bit of employment that will give a +trifle of idle capital a chance to earn its bread while it is waiting for +something to do, but--now just listen a moment--just let me give you an +idea of what we old veterans of commerce call 'business.' Here's the +Rothschild's proposition--this is between you and me, you understand----" + +Washington nodded three or four times impatiently, and his glowing eyes +said, "Yes, yes--hurry--I understand----" + +----"for I wouldn't have it get out for a fortune. They want me to go in +with them on the sly--agent was here two weeks ago about it--go in on the +sly" [voice down to an impressive whisper, now,] "and buy up a hundred +and thirteen wild cat banks in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and +Missouri--notes of these banks are at all sorts of discount now--average +discount of the hundred and thirteen is forty-four per cent--buy them all +up, you see, and then all of a sudden let the cat out of the bag! Whiz! +the stock of every one of those wildcats would spin up to a tremendous +premium before you could turn a handspring--profit on the speculation not +a dollar less than forty millions!" [An eloquent pause, while the +marvelous vision settled into W.'s focus.] "Where's your hogs now? +Why my dear innocent boy, we would just sit down on the front door-steps +and peddle banks like lucifer matches!" + +Washington finally got his breath and said: + +"Oh, it is perfectly wonderful! Why couldn't these things have happened +in father's day? And I--it's of no use--they simply lie before my face +and mock me. There is nothing for me but to stand helpless and see other +people reap the astonishing harvest." + +"Never mind, Washington, don't you worry. I'll fix you. There's plenty +of chances. How much money have you got?" + +In the presence of so many millions, Washington could not keep from +blushing when he had to confess that he had but eighteen dollars in the +world. + +"Well, all right--don't despair. Other people have been obliged to begin +with less. I have a small idea that may develop into something for us +both, all in good time. Keep your money close and add to it. I'll make +it breed. I've been experimenting (to pass away the time), on a little +preparation for curing sore eyes--a kind of decoction nine-tenths water +and the other tenth drugs that don't cost more than a dollar a barrel; +I'm still experimenting; there's one ingredient wanted yet to perfect the +thing, and somehow I can't just manage to hit upon the thing that's +necessary, and I don't dare talk with a chemist, of course. But I'm +progressing, and before many weeks I wager the country will ring with the +fame of Beriah Sellers' Infallible Imperial Oriental Optic Liniment and +Salvation for Sore Eyes--the Medical Wonder of the Age! Small bottles +fifty cents, large ones a dollar. Average cost, five and seven cents for +the two sizes. + +"The first year sell, say, ten thousand bottles in Missouri, seven +thousand in Iowa, three thousand in Arkansas, four thousand in Kentucky, +six thousand in Illinois, and say twenty-five thousand in the rest of the +country. Total, fifty five thousand bottles; profit clear of all +expenses, twenty thousand dollars at the very lowest calculation. All +the capital needed is to manufacture the first two thousand bottles +--say a hundred and fifty dollars--then the money would begin to flow in. +The second year, sales would reach 200,000 bottles--clear profit, say, +$75,000--and in the meantime the great factory would be building in St. +Louis, to cost, say, $100,000. The third year we could, easily sell +1,000,000 bottles in the United States and----" + +"O, splendid!" said Washington. "Let's commence right away--let's----" + +"----1,000,000 bottles in the United States--profit at least $350,000 +--and then it would begin to be time to turn our attention toward the real +idea of the business." + +"The real idea of it! Ain't $350,000 a year a pretty real----" + +"Stuff! Why what an infant you are, Washington--what a guileless, +short-sighted, easily-contented innocent you, are, my poor little +country-bred know-nothing! Would I go to all that trouble and bother for +the poor crumbs a body might pick up in this country? Now do I look like +a man who----does my history suggest that I am a man who deals in +trifles, contents himself with the narrow horizon that hems in the common +herd, sees no further than the end of his nose? Now you know that that +is not me--couldn't be me. You ought to know that if I throw my time and +abilities into a patent medicine, it's a patent medicine whose field of +operations is the solid earth! its clients the swarming nations that +inhabit it! Why what is the republic of America for an eye-water +country? Lord bless you, it is nothing but a barren highway that you've +got to cross to get to the true eye-water market! Why, Washington, in +the Oriental countries people swarm like the sands of the desert; every +square mile of ground upholds its thousands upon thousands of struggling +human creatures--and every separate and individual devil of them's got +the ophthalmia! It's as natural to them as noses are--and sin. It's +born with them, it stays with them, it's all that some of them have left +when they die. Three years of introductory trade in the orient and what +will be the result? Why, our headquarters would be in Constantinople and +our hindquarters in Further India! Factories and warehouses in Cairo, +Ispahan, Bagdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Yedo, Peking, Bangkok, Delhi, +Bombay--and Calcutta! Annual income--well, God only knows how many +millions and millions apiece!" + +Washington was so dazed, so bewildered--his heart and his eyes had +wandered so far away among the strange lands beyond the seas, and such +avalanches of coin and currency had fluttered and jingled confusedly down +before him, that he was now as one who has been whirling round and round +for a time, and, stopping all at once, finds his surroundings still +whirling and all objects a dancing chaos. However, little by little the +Sellers family cooled down and crystalized into shape, and the poor room +lost its glitter and resumed its poverty. Then the youth found his voice +and begged Sellers to drop everything and hurry up the eye-water; and he +got his eighteen dollars and tried to force it upon the Colonel--pleaded +with him to take it--implored him to do it. But the Colonel would not; +said he would not need the capital (in his native magnificent way he +called that eighteen dollars Capital) till the eye-water was an +accomplished fact. He made Washington easy in his mind, though, by +promising that he would call for it just as soon as the invention was +finished, and he added the glad tidings that nobody but just they two +should be admitted to a share in the speculation. + +When Washington left the breakfast table he could have worshiped that +man. Washington was one of that kind of people whose hopes are in the +very, clouds one day and in the gutter the next. He walked on air, now. +The Colonel was ready to take him around and introduce him to the +employment he had found for him, but Washington begged for a few moments +in which to write home; with his kind of people, to ride to-day's new +interest to death and put off yesterday's till another time, is nature +itself. He ran up stairs and wrote glowingly, enthusiastically, to his +mother about the hogs and the corn, the banks and the eye-water--and +added a few inconsequential millions to each project. And he said that +people little dreamed what a man Col. Sellers was, and that the world +would open its eyes when it found out. And he closed his letter thus: + +"So make yourself perfectly easy, mother-in a little while you shall have +everything you want, and more. I am not likely to stint you in anything, +I fancy. This money will not be for me, alone, but for all of us. +I want all to share alike; and there is going to be far more for each +than one person can spend. Break it to father cautiously--you understand +the need of that--break it to him cautiously, for he has had such cruel +hard fortune, and is so stricken by it that great good news might +prostrate him more surely than even bad, for he is used to the bad but +is grown sadly unaccustomed to the other. Tell Laura--tell all the +children. And write to Clay about it if he is not with you yet. You may +tell Clay that whatever I get he can freely share in-freely. He knows +that that is true--there will be no need that I should swear to that to +make him believe it. Good-bye--and mind what I say: Rest perfectly easy, +one and all of you, for our troubles are nearly at an end." + +Poor lad, he could not know that his mother would cry some loving, +compassionate tears over his letter and put off the family with a +synopsis of its contents which conveyed a deal of love to then but not +much idea of his prospects or projects. And he never dreamed that such a +joyful letter could sadden her and fill her night with sighs, and +troubled thoughts, and bodings of the future, instead of filling it with +peace and blessing it with restful sleep. + +When the letter was done, Washington and the Colonel sallied forth, and +as they walked along Washington learned what he was to be. He was to be +a clerk in a real estate office. Instantly the fickle youth's dreams +forsook the magic eye-water and flew back to the Tennessee Land. And the +gorgeous possibilities of that great domain straightway began to occupy +his imagination to such a degree that he could scarcely manage to keep +even enough of his attention upon the Colonel's talk to retain the +general run of what he was saying. He was glad it was a real estate +office--he was a made man now, sure. + +The Colonel said that General Boswell was a rich man and had a good and +growing business; and that Washington's work world be light and he would +get forty dollars a month and be boarded and lodged in the General's +family--which was as good as ten dollars more; and even better, for he +could not live as well even at the "City Hotel" as he would there, and +yet the hotel charged fifteen dollars a month where a man had a good +room. + +General Boswell was in his office; a comfortable looking place, with +plenty of outline maps hanging about the walls and in the windows, and +a spectacled man was marking out another one on a long table. The office +was in the principal street. The General received Washington with a +kindly but reserved politeness. Washington rather liked his looks. +He was about fifty years old, dignified, well preserved and well dressed. +After the Colonel took his leave, the General talked a while with +Washington--his talk consisting chiefly of instructions about the +clerical duties of the place. He seemed satisfied as to Washington's +ability to take care of the books, he was evidently a pretty fair +theoretical bookkeeper, and experience would soon harden theory into +practice. By and by dinner-time came, and the two walked to the +General's house; and now Washington noticed an instinct in himself that +moved him to keep not in the General's rear, exactly, but yet not at his +side--somehow the old gentleman's dignity and reserve did not inspire +familiarity. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +Washington dreamed his way along the street, his fancy flitting from +grain to hogs, from hogs to banks, from banks to eyewater, from eye-water +to Tennessee Land, and lingering but a feverish moment upon each of these +fascinations. He was conscious of but one outward thing, to wit, the +General, and he was really not vividly conscious of him. + +Arrived at the finest dwelling in the town, they entered it and were at +home. Washington was introduced to Mrs. Boswell, and his imagination was +on the point of flitting into the vapory realms of speculation again, +when a lovely girl of sixteen or seventeen came in. This vision swept +Washington's mind clear of its chaos of glittering rubbish in an instant. +Beauty had fascinated him before; many times he had been in love even for +weeks at a time with the same object but his heart had never suffered so +sudden and so fierce an assault as this, within his recollection. + +Louise Boswell occupied his mind and drifted among his multiplication +tables all the afternoon. He was constantly catching himself in a +reverie--reveries made up of recalling how she looked when she first +burst upon him; how her voice thrilled him when she first spoke; how +charmed the very air seemed by her presence. Blissful as the afternoon +was, delivered up to such a revel as this, it seemed an eternity, so +impatient was he to see the girl again. Other afternoons like it +followed. Washington plunged into this love affair as he plunged into +everything else--upon impulse and without reflection. As the days went +by it seemed plain that he was growing in favor with Louise,--not +sweepingly so, but yet perceptibly, he fancied. His attentions to her +troubled her father and mother a little, and they warned Louise, without +stating particulars or making allusions to any special person, that a +girl was sure to make a mistake who allowed herself to marry anybody but +a man who could support her well. + +Some instinct taught Washington that his present lack of money would be +an obstruction, though possibly not a bar, to his hopes, and straightway +his poverty became a torture to him which cast all his former sufferings +under that held into the shade. He longed for riches now as he had ever +longed for them before. + +He had been once or twice to dine with Col. Sellers, and had been +discouraged to note that the Colonel's bill of fare was falling off both +in quantity and quality--a sign, he feared, that the lacking ingredient +in the eye-water still remained undiscovered--though Sellers always +explained that these changes in the family diet had been ordered by the +doctor, or suggested by some new scientific work the Colonel had stumbled +upon. But it always turned out that the lacking ingredient was still +lacking--though it always appeared, at the same time, that the Colonel +was right on its heels. + +Every time the Colonel came into the real estate office Washington's +heart bounded and his eyes lighted with hope, but it always turned out +that the Colonel was merely on the scent of some vast, undefined landed +speculation--although he was customarily able to say that he was nearer +to the all-necessary ingredient than ever, and could almost name the hour +when success would dawn. And then Washington's heart world sink again +and a sigh would tell when it touched bottom. + +About this time a letter came, saying that Judge Hawkins had been ailing +for a fortnight, and was now considered to be seriously ill. It was +thought best that Washington should come home. The news filled him with +grief, for he loved and honored his father; the Boswells were touched by +the youth's sorrow, and even the General unbent and said encouraging +things to him.--There was balm in this; but when Louise bade him +good-bye, and shook his hand and said, "Don't be cast down--it will all +come out right--I know it will all come out right," it seemed a blessed +thing to be in misfortune, and the tears that welled up to his eyes were +the messengers of an adoring and a grateful heart; and when the girl saw +them and answering tears came into her own eyes, Washington could hardly +contain the excess of happiness that poured into the cavities of his +breast that were so lately stored to the roof with grief. + +All the way home he nursed his woe and exalted it. He pictured himself +as she must be picturing him: a noble, struggling young spirit persecuted +by misfortune, but bravely and patiently waiting in the shadow of a dread +calamity and preparing to meet the blow as became one who was all too +used to hard fortune and the pitiless buffetings of fate. These thoughts +made him weep, and weep more broken-heartedly than ever; and be wished +that she could see his sufferings now. + +There was nothing significant in the fact that Louise, dreamy and +distraught, stood at her bedroom bureau that night, scribbling +"Washington" here and there over a sheet of paper. But there was +something significant in the fact that she scratched the word out every +time she wrote it; examined the erasure critically to see if anybody +could guess at what the word had been; then buried it under a maze of +obliterating lines; and finally, as if still unsatisfied, burned the +paper. + +When Washington reached home, he recognized at once how serious his +father's case was. The darkened room, the labored breathing and +occasional moanings of the patient, the tip-toeing of the attendants and +their whispered consultations, were full of sad meaning. For three or +four nights Mrs. Hawkins and Laura had been watching by the bedside; Clay +had arrived, preceding Washington by one day, and he was now added to the +corps of watchers. Mr. Hawkins would have none but these three, though +neighborly assistance was offered by old friends. From this time forth +three-hour watches were instituted, and day and night the watchers kept +their vigils. By degrees Laura and her mother began to show wear, but +neither of them would yield a minute of their tasks to Clay. He ventured +once to let the midnight hour pass without calling Laura, but he ventured +no more; there was that about her rebuke when he tried to explain, that +taught him that to let her sleep when she might be ministering to her +father's needs, was to rob her of moments that were priceless in her +eyes; he perceived that she regarded it as a privilege to watch, not a +burden. And, he had noticed, also, that when midnight struck, the +patient turned his eyes toward the door, with an expectancy in them which +presently grew into a longing but brightened into contentment as soon +as the door opened and Laura appeared. And he did not need Laura's +rebuke when he heard his father say: + +"Clay is good, and you are tired, poor child; but I wanted you so." + +"Clay is not good, father--he did not call me. I would not have treated +him so. How could you do it, Clay?" + +Clay begged forgiveness and promised not to break faith again; and as he +betook him to his bed, he said to himself: "It's a steadfast little +soul; whoever thinks he is doing the Duchess a kindness by intimating +that she is not sufficient for any undertaking she puts her hand to, +makes a mistake; and if I did not know it before, I know now that there +are surer ways of pleasing her than by trying to lighten her labor when +that labor consists in wearing herself out for the sake of a person she +loves." + +A week drifted by, and all the while the patient sank lower and lower. +The night drew on that was to end all suspense. It was a wintry one. +The darkness gathered, the snow was falling, the wind wailed plaintively +about the house or shook it with fitful gusts. The doctor had paid his +last visit and gone away with that dismal remark to the nearest friend of +the family that he "believed there was nothing more that he could do" +--a remark which is always overheard by some one it is not meant for and +strikes a lingering half-conscious hope dead with a withering shock; +the medicine phials had been removed from the bedside and put out of +sight, and all things made orderly and meet for the solemn event that was +impending; the patient, with closed eyes, lay scarcely breathing; the +watchers sat by and wiped the gathering damps from his forehead while the +silent tears flowed down their faces; the deep hush was only interrupted +by sobs from the children, grouped about the bed. + +After a time--it was toward midnight now--Mr. Hawkins roused out of a +doze, looked about him and was evidently trying to speak. Instantly +Laura lifted his head and in a failing voice he said, while something of +the old light shone in his eyes: + +"Wife--children--come nearer--nearer. The darkness grows. Let me see +you all, once more." + +The group closed together at the bedside, and their tears and sobs came +now without restraint. + +"I am leaving you in cruel poverty. I have been--so foolish--so +short-sighted. But courage! A better day is--is coming. Never lose +sight of the Tennessee Land! Be wary. There is wealth stored up for you +there --wealth that is boundless! The children shall hold up their heads +with the best in the land, yet. Where are the papers?--Have you got the +papers safe? Show them--show them to me!" + +Under his strong excitement his voice had gathered power and his last +sentences were spoken with scarcely a perceptible halt or hindrance. +With an effort he had raised himself almost without assistance to a +sitting posture. But now the fire faded out of his eyes and be fell back +exhausted. The papers were brought and held before him, and the +answering smile that flitted across his face showed that he was +satisfied. He closed his eyes, and the signs of approaching dissolution +multiplied rapidly. He lay almost motionless for a little while, then +suddenly partly raised his head and looked about him as one who peers +into a dim uncertain light. He muttered: + +"Gone? No--I see you--still. It is--it is-over. But you are--safe. +Safe. The Ten-----" + +The voice died out in a whisper; the sentence was never finished. The +emaciated fingers began to pick at the coverlet, a fatal sign. After a +time there were no sounds but the cries of the mourners within and the +gusty turmoil of the wind without. Laura had bent down and kissed her +father's lips as the spirit left the body; but she did not sob, or utter +any ejaculation; her tears flowed silently. Then she closed the dead +eyes, and crossed the hands upon the breast; after a season, she kissed +the forehead reverently, drew the sheet up over the face, and then walked +apart and sat down with the look of one who is done with life and has no +further interest in its joys and sorrows, its hopes or its ambitions. +Clay buried his face in the coverlet of the bed; when the other children +and the mother realized that death was indeed come at last, they threw +themselves into each others' arms and gave way to a frenzy of grief. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +Only two or three days had elapsed since the funeral, when something +happened which was to change the drift of Laura's life somewhat, and +influence in a greater or lesser degree the formation of her character. + +Major Lackland had once been a man of note in the State--a man of +extraordinary natural ability and as extraordinary learning. He had been +universally trusted and honored in his day, but had finally, fallen into +misfortune; while serving his third term in Congress, and while upon the +point of being elevated to the Senate--which was considered the summit of +earthly aggrandizement in those days--he had yielded to temptation, when +in distress for money wherewith to save his estate; and sold his vote. +His crime was discovered, and his fall followed instantly. Nothing could +reinstate him in the confidence of the people, his ruin was +irretrievable--his disgrace complete. All doors were closed against him, +all men avoided him. After years of skulking retirement and dissipation, +death had relieved him of his troubles at last, and his funeral followed +close upon that of Mr. Hawkins. He died as he had latterly lived--wholly +alone and friendless. He had no relatives--or if he had they did not +acknowledge him. The coroner's jury found certain memoranda upon his +body and about the premises which revealed a fact not suspected by the +villagers before-viz., that Laura was not the child of Mr. and Mrs. +Hawkins. + +The gossips were soon at work. They were but little hampered by the fact +that the memoranda referred to betrayed nothing but the bare circumstance +that Laura's real parents were unknown, and stopped there. So far from +being hampered by this, the gossips seemed to gain all the more freedom +from it. They supplied all the missing information themselves, they +filled up all the blanks. The town soon teemed with histories of Laura's +origin and secret history, no two versions precisely alike, but all +elaborate, exhaustive, mysterious and interesting, and all agreeing in +one vital particular-to-wit, that there was a suspicious cloud about her +birth, not to say a disreputable one. + +Laura began to encounter cold looks, averted eyes and peculiar nods and +gestures which perplexed her beyond measure; but presently the pervading +gossip found its way to her, and she understood them--then. Her pride +was stung. She was astonished, and at first incredulous. She was about +to ask her mother if there was any truth in these reports, but upon +second thought held her peace. She soon gathered that Major Lackland's +memoranda seemed to refer to letters which had passed between himself and +Judge Hawkins. She shaped her course without difficulty the day that +that hint reached her. + +That night she sat in her room till all was still, and then she stole +into the garret and began a search. She rummaged long among boxes of +musty papers relating to business matters of no, interest to her, but at +last she found several bundles of letters. One bundle was marked +"private," and in that she found what she wanted. She selected six or +eight letters from the package and began to devour their contents, +heedless of the cold. + +By the dates, these letters were from five to seven years old. They were +all from Major Lackland to Mr. Hawkins. The substance of them was, that +some one in the east had been inquiring of Major Lackland about a lost +child and its parents, and that it was conjectured that the child might +be Laura. + +Evidently some of the letters were missing, for the name of the +inquirer was not mentioned; there was a casual reference to "this +handsome-featured aristocratic gentleman," as if the reader and the +writer were accustomed to speak of him and knew who was meant. + +In one letter the Major said he agreed with Mr. Hawkins that the inquirer +seemed not altogether on the wrong track; but he also agreed that it +would be best to keep quiet until more convincing developments were +forthcoming. + +Another letter said that "the poor soul broke completely down when be saw +Laura's picture, and declared it must be she." + +Still another said: + + "He seems entirely alone in the world, and his heart is so wrapped + up in this thing that I believe that if it proved a false hope, it + would kill him; I have persuaded him to wait a little while and go + west when I go." + +Another letter had this paragraph in it: + + "He is better one day and worse the next, and is out of his mind a + good deal of the time. Lately his case has developed a something + which is a wonder to the hired nurses, but which will not be much of + a marvel to you if you have read medical philosophy much. It is + this: his lost memory returns to him when he is delirious, and goes + away again when he is himself-just as old Canada Joe used to talk + the French patois of his boyhood in the delirium of typhus fever, + though he could not do it when his mind was clear. Now this poor + gentleman's memory has always broken down before he reached the + explosion of the steamer; he could only remember starting up the + river with his wife and child, and he had an idea that there was a + race, but he was not certain; he could not name the boat he was on; + there was a dead blank of a month or more that supplied not an item + to his recollection. It was not for me to assist him, of course. + But now in his delirium it all comes out: the names of the boats, + every incident of the explosion, and likewise the details of his + astonishing escape--that is, up to where, just as a yawl-boat was + approaching him (he was clinging to the starboard wheel of the + burning wreck at the time), a falling timber struck him on the head. + But I will write out his wonderful escape in full to-morrow or next + day. Of course the physicians will not let me tell him now that our + Laura is indeed his child--that must come later, when his health is + thoroughly restored. His case is not considered dangerous at all; + he will recover presently, the doctors say. But they insist that he + must travel a little when he gets well--they recommend a short sea + voyage, and they say he can be persuaded to try it if we continue to + keep him in ignorance and promise to let him see L. as soon as he + returns." + +The letter that bore the latest date of all, contained this clause: + + "It is the most unaccountable thing in the world; the mystery + remains as impenetrable as ever; I have hunted high and low for him, + and inquired of everybody, but in vain; all trace of him ends at + that hotel in New York; I never have seen or heard of him since, + up to this day; he could hardly have sailed, for his name does not + appear upon the books of any shipping office in New York or Boston + or Baltimore. How fortunate it seems, now, that we kept this thing + to ourselves; Laura still has a father in you, and it is better for + her that we drop this subject here forever." + +That was all. Random remarks here and there, being pieced together gave +Laura a vague impression of a man of fine presence, abort forty-three or +forty-five years of age, with dark hair and eyes, and a slight limp in +his walk--it was not stated which leg was defective. And this indistinct +shadow represented her father. She made an exhaustive search for the +missing letters, but found none. They had probably been burned; and she +doubted not that the ones she had ferreted out would have shared the same +fate if Mr. Hawkins had not been a dreamer, void of method, whose mind +was perhaps in a state of conflagration over some bright new speculation +when he received them. + +She sat long, with the letters in her lap, thinking--and unconsciously +freezing. She felt like a lost person who has traveled down a long lane +in good hope of escape, and, just as the night descends finds his +progress barred by a bridge-less river whose further shore, if it has +one, is lost in the darkness. If she could only have found these letters +a month sooner! That was her thought. But now the dead had carried +their secrets with them. A dreary, melancholy settled down upon her. +An undefined sense of injury crept into her heart. She grew very +miserable. + +She had just reached the romantic age--the age when there is a sad +sweetness, a dismal comfort to a girl to find out that there is a mystery +connected with her birth, which no other piece of good luck can afford. +She had more than her rightful share of practical good sense, but still +she was human; and to be human is to have one's little modicum of romance +secreted away in one's composition. One never ceases to make a hero of +one's self, (in private,) during life, but only alters the style of his +heroism from time to time as the drifting years belittle certain gods of +his admiration and raise up others in their stead that seem greater. + +The recent wearing days and nights of watching, and the wasting grief +that had possessed her, combined with the profound depression that +naturally came with the reaction of idleness, made Laura peculiarly +susceptible at this time to romantic impressions. She was a heroine, +now, with a mysterious father somewhere. She could not really tell +whether she wanted to find him and spoil it all or not; but still all the +traditions of romance pointed to the making the attempt as the usual and +necessary, course to follow; therefore she would some day begin the +search when opportunity should offer. + +Now a former thought struck her--she would speak to Mrs. Hawkins. +And naturally enough Mrs. Hawkins appeared on the stage at that moment. + +She said she knew all--she knew that Laura had discovered the secret that +Mr. Hawkins, the elder children, Col. Sellers and herself had kept so +long and so faithfully; and she cried and said that now that troubles had +begun they would never end; her daughter's love would wean itself away +from her and her heart would break. Her grief so wrought upon Laura that +the girl almost forgot her own troubles for the moment in her compassion +for her mother's distress. Finally Mrs. Hawkins said: + +"Speak to me, child--do not forsake me. Forget all this miserable talk. +Say I am your mother!--I have loved you so long, and there is no other. +I am your mother, in the sight of God, and nothing shall ever take you +from me!" + +All barriers fell, before this appeal. Laura put her arms about her +mother's neck and said: + +"You are my mother, and always shall be. We will be as we have always +been; and neither this foolish talk nor any other thing shall part us or +make us less to each other than we are this hour." + +There was no longer any sense of separation or estrangement between them. +Indeed their love seemed more perfect now than it had ever been before. +By and by they went down stairs and sat by the fire and talked long and +earnestly about Laura's history and the letters. But it transpired that +Mrs. Hawkins had never known of this correspondence between her husband +and Major Lackland. With his usual consideration for his wife, Mr. +Hawkins had shielded her from the worry the matter would have caused her. + +Laura went to bed at last with a mind that had gained largely in +tranquility and had lost correspondingly in morbid romantic exaltation. +She was pensive, the next day, and subdued; but that was not matter for +remark, for she did not differ from the mournful friends about her in +that respect. Clay and Washington were the same loving and admiring +brothers now that they had always been. The great secret was new to some +of the younger children, but their love suffered no change under the +wonderful revelation. + +It is barely possible that things might have presently settled down into +their old rut and the mystery have lost the bulk of its romantic +sublimity in Laura's eyes, if the village gossips could have quieted +down. But they could not quiet down and they did not. Day after day +they called at the house, ostensibly upon visits of condolence, and they +pumped away at the mother and the children without seeming to know that +their questionings were in bad taste. They meant no harm they only +wanted to know. Villagers always want to know. + +The family fought shy of the questionings, and of course that was high +testimony "if the Duchess was respectably born, why didn't they come out +and prove it?--why did they, stick to that poor thin story about picking +her up out of a steamboat explosion?" + +Under this ceaseless persecution, Laura's morbid self-communing was +renewed. At night the day's contribution of detraction, innuendo and +malicious conjecture would be canvassed in her mind, and then she would +drift into a course of thinking. As her thoughts ran on, the indignant +tears would spring to her eyes, and she would spit out fierce little +ejaculations at intervals. But finally she would grow calmer and say +some comforting disdainful thing--something like this: + +"But who are they?--Animals! What are their opinions to me? Let them +talk--I will not stoop to be affected by it. I could hate----. +Nonsense--nobody I care for or in any way respect is changed toward me, +I fancy." + +She may have supposed she was thinking of many individuals, but it was +not so--she was thinking of only one. And her heart warmed somewhat, +too, the while. One day a friend overheard a conversation like this: +--and naturally came and told her all about it: + +"Ned, they say you don't go there any more. How is that?" + +"Well, I don't; but I tell you it's not because I don't want to and it's +not because I think it is any matter who her father was or who he wasn't, +either; it's only on account of this talk, talk, talk. I think she is a +fine girl every way, and so would you if you knew her as well as I do; +but you know how it is when a girl once gets talked about--it's all up +with her--the world won't ever let her alone, after that." + +The only comment Laura made upon this revelation, was: + +"Then it appears that if this trouble had not occurred I could have had +the happiness of Mr. Ned Thurston's serious attentions. He is well +favored in person, and well liked, too, I believe, and comes of one of +the first families of the village. He is prosperous, too, I hear; has +been a doctor a year, now, and has had two patients--no, three, I think; +yes, it was three. I attended their funerals. Well, other people have +hoped and been disappointed; I am not alone in that. I wish you could +stay to dinner, Maria--we are going to have sausages; and besides, +I wanted to talk to you about Hawkeye and make you promise to come and +see us when we are settled there." + +But Maria could not stay. She had come to mingle romantic tears with +Laura's over the lover's defection and had found herself dealing with a +heart that could not rise to an appreciation of affliction because its +interest was all centred in sausages. + +But as soon as Maria was gone, Laura stamped her expressive foot and +said: + +"The coward! Are all books lies? I thought he would fly to the front, +and be brave and noble, and stand up for me against all the world, and +defy my enemies, and wither these gossips with his scorn! Poor crawling +thing, let him go. I do begin to despise thin world!" + +She lapsed into thought. Presently she said: + +"If the time ever comes, and I get a chance, Oh, I'll----" + +She could not find a word that was strong enough, perhaps. By and by she +said: + +"Well, I am glad of it--I'm glad of it. I never cared anything for him +anyway!" + +And then, with small consistency, she cried a little, and patted her foot +more indignantly than ever. + + + +CHAPTER XI + +Two months had gone by and the Hawkins family were domiciled in Hawkeye. +Washington was at work in the real estate office again, and was +alternately in paradise or the other place just as it happened that +Louise was gracious to him or seemingly indifferent--because indifference +or preoccupation could mean nothing else than that she was thinking of +some other young person. Col. Sellers had asked him several times, to +dine with him, when he first returned to Hawkeye, but Washington, for no +particular reason, had not accepted. No particular reason except one +which he preferred to keep to himself--viz. that he could not bear to be +away from Louise. It occurred to him, now, that the Colonel had not +invited him lately--could he be offended? He resolved to go that very +day, and give the Colonel a pleasant surprise. It was a good idea; +especially as Louise had absented herself from breakfast that morning, +and torn his heart; he would tear hers, now, and let her see how it felt. + +The Sellers family were just starting to dinner when Washington burst +upon them with his surprise. For an instant the Colonel looked +nonplussed, and just a bit uncomfortable; and Mrs. Sellers looked +actually distressed; but the next moment the head of the house was +himself again, and exclaimed: + +"All right, my boy, all right--always glad to see you--always glad to +hear your voice and take you by the hand. Don't wait for special +invitations--that's all nonsense among friends. Just come whenever you +can, and come as often as you can--the oftener the better. You can't +please us any better than that, Washington; the little woman will tell +you so herself. We don't pretend to style. Plain folks, you know--plain +folks. Just a plain family dinner, but such as it is, our friends are +always welcome, I reckon you know that yourself, Washington. Run along, +children, run along; Lafayette,--[**In those old days the average man +called his children after his most revered literary and historical idols; +consequently there was hardly a family, at least in the West, but had a +Washington in it--and also a Lafayette, a Franklin, and six or eight +sounding names from Byron, Scott, and the Bible, if the offspring held +out. To visit such a family, was to find one's self confronted by a +congress made up of representatives of the imperial myths and the +majestic dead of all the ages. There was something thrilling about it, +to a stranger, not to say awe inspiring.]--stand off the cat's tail, +child, can't you see what you're doing?--Come, come, come, Roderick Dhu, +it isn't nice for little boys to hang onto young gentlemen's coat tails +--but never mind him, Washington, he's full of spirits and don't mean any +harm. Children will be children, you know. Take the chair next to Mrs. +Sellers, Washington--tut, tut, Marie Antoinette, let your brother have +the fork if he wants it, you are bigger than he is." + +Washington contemplated the banquet, and wondered if he were in his right +mind. Was this the plain family dinner? And was it all present? It was +soon apparent that this was indeed the dinner: it was all on the table: +it consisted of abundance of clear, fresh water, and a basin of raw +turnips--nothing more. + +Washington stole a glance at Mrs. Sellers's face, and would have given +the world, the next moment, if he could have spared her that. The poor +woman's face was crimson, and the tears stood in her eyes. Washington +did not know what to do. He wished he had never come there and spied out +this cruel poverty and brought pain to that poor little lady's heart and +shame to her cheek; but he was there, and there was no escape. Col. +Sellers hitched back his coat sleeves airily from his wrists as who +should say "Now for solid enjoyment!" seized a fork, flourished it and +began to harpoon turnips and deposit them in the plates before him "Let +me help you, Washington--Lafayette pass this plate Washington--ah, well, +well, my boy, things are looking pretty bright, now, I tell you. +Speculation--my! the whole atmosphere's full of money. I would'nt take +three fortunes for one little operation I've got on hand now--have +anything from the casters? No? Well, you're right, you're right. Some +people like mustard with turnips, but--now there was Baron Poniatowski +--Lord, but that man did know how to live!--true Russian you know, Russian +to the back bone; I say to my wife, give me a Russian every time, for a +table comrade. The Baron used to say, 'Take mustard, Sellers, try the +mustard,--a man can't know what turnips are in perfection without, +mustard,' but I always said, 'No, Baron, I'm a plain man and I want my +food plain--none of your embellishments for Beriah Sellers--no made +dishes for me! And it's the best way--high living kills more than it +cures in this world, you can rest assured of that.--Yes indeed, +Washington, I've got one little operation on hand that--take some more +water--help yourself, won't you?--help yourself, there's plenty of it. +--You'll find it pretty good, I guess. How does that fruit strike you?" + +Washington said he did not know that he had ever tasted better. He did +not add that he detested turnips even when they were cooked loathed them +in their natural state. No, he kept this to himself, and praised the +turnips to the peril of his soul. + +"I thought you'd like them. Examine them--examine them--they'll bear it. +See how perfectly firm and juicy they are--they can't start any like them +in this part of the country, I can tell you. These are from New Jersey +--I imported them myself. They cost like sin, too; but lord bless me, +I go in for having the best of a thing, even if it does cost a little +more--it's the best economy, in the long run. These are the Early +Malcolm--it's a turnip that can't be produced except in just one orchard, +and the supply never is up to the demand. Take some more water, +Washington--you can't drink too much water with fruit--all the doctors +say that. The plague can't come where this article is, my boy!" + +"Plague? What plague?" + +"What plague, indeed? Why the Asiatic plague that nearly depopulated +London a couple of centuries ago." + +"But how does that concern us? There is no plague here, I reckon." + +"Sh! I've let it out! Well, never mind--just keep it to yourself. +Perhaps I oughtn't said anything, but its bound to come out sooner or +later, so what is the odds? Old McDowells wouldn't like me to--to +--bother it all, I'll jest tell the whole thing and let it go. You see, +I've been down to St. Louis, and I happened to run across old Dr. +McDowells--thinks the world of me, does the doctor. He's a man that +keeps himself to himself, and well he may, for he knows that he's got a +reputation that covers the whole earth--he won't condescend to open +himself out to many people, but lord bless you, he and I are just like +brothers; he won't let me go to a hotel when I'm in the city--says I'm +the only man that's company to him, and I don't know but there's some +truth in it, too, because although I never like to glorify myself and +make a great to-do over what I am or what I can do or what I know, +I don't mind saying here among friends that I am better read up in most +sciences, maybe, than the general run of professional men in these days. +Well, the other day he let me into a little secret, strictly on the +quiet, about this matter of the plague. + +"You see it's booming right along in our direction--follows the Gulf +Stream, you know, just as all those epidemics do, and within three months +it will be just waltzing through this land like a whirlwind! And whoever +it touches can make his will and contract for the funeral. Well you +can't cure it, you know, but you can prevent it. How? Turnips! that's +it! Turnips and water! Nothing like it in the world, old McDowells +says, just fill yourself up two or three times a day, and you can snap +your fingers at the plague. Sh!--keep mum, but just you confine yourself +to that diet and you're all right. I wouldn't have old McDowells know +that I told about it for anything--he never would speak to me again. +Take some more water, Washington--the more water you drink, the better. +Here, let me give you some more of the turnips. No, no, no, now, I +insist. There, now. Absorb those. They're, mighty sustaining--brim +full of nutriment--all the medical books say so. Just eat from four to +seven good-sized turnips at a meal, and drink from a pint and a half to a +quart of water, and then just sit around a couple of hours and let them +ferment. You'll feel like a fighting cock next day." + +Fifteen or twenty minutes later the Colonel's tongue was still chattering +away--he had piled up several future fortunes out of several incipient +"operations" which he had blundered into within the past week, and was +now soaring along through some brilliant expectations born of late +promising experiments upon the lacking ingredient of the eye-water. +And at such a time Washington ought to have been a rapt and enthusiastic +listener, but he was not, for two matters disturbed his mind and +distracted his attention. One was, that he discovered, to his confusion +and shame, that in allowing himself to be helped a second time to the +turnips, he had robbed those hungry children. He had not needed the +dreadful "fruit," and had not wanted it; and when he saw the pathetic +sorrow in their faces when they asked for more and there was no more to +give them, he hated himself for his stupidity and pitied the famishing +young things with all his heart. The other matter that disturbed him was +the dire inflation that had begun in his stomach. It grew and grew, it +became more and more insupportable. Evidently the turnips were +"fermenting." He forced himself to sit still as long as he could, but +his anguish conquered him at last. + +He rose in the midst of the Colonel's talk and excused himself on the +plea of a previous engagement. The Colonel followed him to the door, +promising over and over again that he would use his influence to get some +of the Early Malcolms for him, and insisting that he should not be such a +stranger but come and take pot-luck with him every chance he got. +Washington was glad enough to get away and feel free again. He +immediately bent his steps toward home. + +In bed he passed an hour that threatened to turn his hair gray, and then +a blessed calm settled down upon him that filled his heart with +gratitude. Weak and languid, he made shift to turn himself about and +seek rest and sleep; and as his soul hovered upon the brink of +unconciousness, he heaved a long, deep sigh, and said to himself that in +his heart he had cursed the Colonel's preventive of rheumatism, before, +and now let the plague come if it must--he was done with preventives; +if ever any man beguiled him with turnips and water again, let him die +the death. + +If he dreamed at all that night, no gossiping spirit disturbed his +visions to whisper in his ear of certain matters just then in bud in the +East, more than a thousand miles away that after the lapse of a few years +would develop influences which would profoundly affect the fate and +fortunes of the Hawkins family. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +"Oh, it's easy enough to make a fortune," Henry said. + +"It seems to be easier than it is, I begin to think," replied Philip. + +"Well, why don't you go into something? You'll never dig it out of the +Astor Library." + +If there be any place and time in the world where and when it seems easy +to "go into something" it is in Broadway on a spring morning, when one is +walking city-ward, and has before him the long lines of palace-shops with +an occasional spire seen through the soft haze that lies over the lower +town, and hears the roar and hum of its multitudinous traffic. + +To the young American, here or elsewhere, the paths to fortune are +innumerable and all open; there is invitation in the air and success in +all his wide horizon. He is embarrassed which to choose, and is not +unlikely to waste years in dallying with his chances, before giving +himself to the serious tug and strain of a single object. He has no +traditions to bind him or guide him, and his impulse is to break away +from the occupation his father has followed, and make a new way for +himself. + +Philip Sterling used to say that if he should seriously set himself for +ten years to any one of the dozen projects that were in his brain, he +felt that he could be a rich man. He wanted to be rich, he had a sincere +desire for a fortune, but for some unaccountable reason he hesitated +about addressing himself to the narrow work of getting it. He never +walked Broadway, a part of its tide of abundant shifting life, without +feeling something of the flush of wealth, and unconsciously taking the +elastic step of one well-to-do in this prosperous world. + +Especially at night in the crowded theatre--Philip was too young to +remember the old Chambers' Street box, where the serious Burton led his +hilarious and pagan crew--in the intervals of the screaming comedy, when +the orchestra scraped and grunted and tooted its dissolute tunes, the +world seemed full of opportunities to Philip, and his heart exulted with +a conscious ability to take any of its prizes he chose to pluck. + +Perhaps it was the swimming ease of the acting, on the stage, where +virtue had its reward in three easy acts, perhaps it was the excessive +light of the house, or the music, or the buzz of the excited talk between +acts, perhaps it was youth which believed everything, but for some reason +while Philip was at the theatre he had the utmost confidence in life and +his ready victory in it. + +Delightful illusion of paint and tinsel and silk attire, of cheap +sentiment and high and mighty dialogue! Will there not always be rosin +enough for the squeaking fiddle-bow? + +Do we not all like the maudlin hero, who is sneaking round the right +entrance, in wait to steal the pretty wife of his rich and tyrannical +neighbor from the paste-board cottage at the left entrance? and when he +advances down to the foot-lights and defiantly informs the audience that, +"he who lays his hand on a woman except in the way of kindness," do we +not all applaud so as to drown the rest of the sentence? + +Philip never was fortunate enough to hear what would become of a man who +should lay his hand on a woman with the exception named; but he learned +afterwards that the woman who lays her hand on a man, without any +exception whatsoever, is always acquitted by the jury. + +The fact was, though Philip Sterling did not know it, that he wanted +several other things quite as much as he wanted wealth. The modest +fellow would have liked fame thrust upon him for some worthy achievement; +it might be for a book, or for the skillful management of some great +newspaper, or for some daring expedition like that of Lt. Strain or Dr. +Kane. He was unable to decide exactly what it should be. Sometimes he +thought he would like to stand in a conspicuous pulpit and humbly preach +the gospel of repentance; and it even crossed his mind that it would be +noble to give himself to a missionary life to some benighted region, +where the date-palm grows, and the nightingale's voice is in tune, and +the bul-bul sings on the off nights. If he were good enough he would +attach himself to that company of young men in the Theological Seminary, +who were seeing New York life in preparation for the ministry. + +Philip was a New England boy and had graduated at Yale; he had not +carried off with him all the learning of that venerable institution, but +he knew some things that were not in the regular course of study. A very +good use of the English language and considerable knowledge of its +literature was one of them; he could sing a song very well, not in time +to be sure, but with enthusiasm; he could make a magnetic speech at a +moment's notice in the class room, the debating society, or upon any +fence or dry-goods box that was convenient; he could lift himself by one +arm, and do the giant swing in the gymnasium; he could strike out from +his left shoulder; he could handle an oar like a professional and pull +stroke in a winning race. Philip had a good appetite, a sunny temper, +and a clear hearty laugh. He had brown hair, hazel eyes set wide apart, +a broad but not high forehead, and a fresh winning face. He was six feet +high, with broad shoulders, long legs and a swinging gait; one of those +loose-jointed, capable fellows, who saunter into the world with a free +air and usually make a stir in whatever company they enter. + +After he left college Philip took the advice of friends and read law. +Law seemed to him well enough as a science, but he never could discover a +practical case where it appeared to him worth while to go to law, and all +the clients who stopped with this new clerk in the ante-room of the law +office where he was writing, Philip invariably advised to settle--no +matter how, but settle--greatly to the disgust of his employer, who knew +that justice between man and man could only be attained by the recognized +processes, with the attendant fees. Besides Philip hated the copying of +pleadings, and he was certain that a life of "whereases" and "aforesaids" +and whipping the devil round the stump, would be intolerable. + +[Note: these few paragraphs are nearly an autobiography of the life of +Charles Dudley Warner whose contributions to the story start here with +Chapter XII. D.W.] + +His pen therefore, and whereas, and not as aforesaid, strayed off into +other scribbling. In an unfortunate hour, he had two or three papers +accepted by first-class magazines, at three dollars the printed page, +and, behold, his vocation was open to him. He would make his mark in +literature. + +Life has no moment so sweet as that in which a young man believes himself +called into the immortal ranks of the masters of literature. It is such +a noble ambition, that it is a pity it has usually such a shallow +foundation. + +At the time of this history, Philip had gone to New York for a career. +With his talent he thought he should have little difficulty in getting an +editorial position upon a metropolitan newspaper; not that he knew +anything about news paper work, or had the least idea of journalism; he +knew he was not fitted for the technicalities of the subordinate +departments, but he could write leaders with perfect ease, he was sure. +The drudgery of the newspaper office was too distaste ful, and besides it +would be beneath the dignity of a graduate and a successful magazine +writer. He wanted to begin at the top of the ladder. + +To his surprise he found that every situation in the editorial department +of the journals was full, always had been full, was always likely to be +full. It seemed to him that the newspaper managers didn't want genius, +but mere plodding and grubbing. Philip therefore read diligently in the +Astor library, planned literary works that should compel attention, and +nursed his genius. He had no friend wise enough to tell him to step into +the Dorking Convention, then in session, make a sketch of the men and +women on the platform, and take it to the editor of the Daily Grapevine, +and see what he could get a line for it. + +One day he had an offer from some country friends, who believed in him, +to take charge of a provincial daily newspaper, and he went to consult +Mr. Gringo--Gringo who years ago managed the Atlas--about taking the +situation. + +"Take it of course," says Gringo, take anything that offers, why not?" + +"But they want me to make it an opposition paper." + +"Well, make it that. That party is going to succeed, it's going to elect +the next president." + +"I don't believe it," said Philip, stoutly, "its wrong in principle, and +it ought not to succeed, but I don't see how I can go for a thing I don't +believe in." + +"O, very well," said Gringo, turning away with a shade of contempt, +"you'll find if you are going into literature and newspaper work that you +can't afford a conscience like that." + +But Philip did afford it, and he wrote, thanking his friends, and +declining because he said the political scheme would fail, and ought to +fail. And he went back to his books and to his waiting for an opening +large enough for his dignified entrance into the literary world. + +It was in this time of rather impatient waiting that Philip was one +morning walking down Broadway with Henry Brierly. He frequently +accompanied Henry part way down town to what the latter called his office +in Broad Street, to which he went, or pretended to go, with regularity +every day. It was evident to the most casual acquaintance that he was a +man of affairs, and that his time was engrossed in the largest sort of +operations, about which there was a mysterious air. His liability to be +suddenly summoned to Washington, or Boston or Montreal or even to +Liverpool was always imminent. He never was so summoned, but none of his +acquaintances would have been surprised to hear any day that he had gone +to Panama or Peoria, or to hear from him that he had bought the Bank of +Commerce. + +The two were intimate at that time,--they had been class, mates--and saw +a great deal of each other. Indeed, they lived together in Ninth Street, +in a boarding-house, there, which had the honor of lodging and partially +feeding several other young fellows of like kidney, who have since gone +their several ways into fame or into obscurity. + +It was during the morning walk to which reference has been made that +Henry Brierly suddenly said, "Philip, how would you like to go to +St. Jo?" + +"I think I should like it of all things," replied Philip, with some +hesitation, "but what for." + +"Oh, it's a big operation. We are going, a lot of us, railroad men, +engineers, contractors. You know my uncle is a great railroad man. I've +no doubt I can get you a chance to go if you'll go." + +"But in what capacity would I go?" + +"Well, I'm going as an engineer. You can go as one." + +"I don't know an engine from a coal cart." + +"Field engineer, civil engineer. You can begin by carrying a rod, and +putting down the figures. It's easy enough. I'll show you about that. +We'll get Trautwine and some of those books." + +"Yes, but what is it for, what is it all about?" + +"Why don't you see? We lay out a line, spot the good land, enter it up, +know where the stations are to be, spot them, buy lots; there's heaps of +money in it. We wouldn't engineer long." + +"When do you go?" was Philip's next question, after some moments of +silence. + +"To-morrow. Is that too soon?" + +"No, its not too soon. I've been ready to go anywhere for six months. +The fact is, Henry, that I'm about tired of trying to force myself into +things, and am quite willing to try floating with the stream for a while, +and see where I will land. This seems like a providential call; it's +sudden enough." + +The two young men who were by this time full of the adventure, went down +to the Wall street office of Henry's uncle and had a talk with that wily +operator. The uncle knew Philip very well, and was pleased with his +frank enthusiasm, and willing enough to give him a trial in the western +venture. It was settled therefore, in the prompt way in which things are +settled in New York, that they would start with the rest of the company +next morning for the west. + +On the way up town these adventurers bought books on engineering, and +suits of India-rubber, which they supposed they would need in a new and +probably damp country, and many other things which nobody ever needed +anywhere. + +The night was spent in packing up and writing letters, for Philip would +not take such an important step without informing his friends. If they +disapprove, thought he, I've done my duty by letting them know. Happy +youth, that is ready to pack its valise, and start for Cathay on an +hour's notice. + +"By the way," calls out Philip from his bed-room, to Henry, "where is +St. Jo.?" + +"Why, it's in Missouri somewhere, on the frontier I think. We'll get a +map." + +"Never mind the map. We will find the place itself. I was afraid it was +nearer home." + +Philip wrote a long letter, first of all, to his mother, full of love and +glowing anticipations of his new opening. He wouldn't bother her with +business details, but he hoped that the day was not far off when she +would see him return, with a moderate fortune, and something to add to +the comfort of her advancing years. + +To his uncle he said that he had made an arrangement with some New York +capitalists to go to Missouri, in a land and railroad operation, which +would at least give him a knowledge of the world and not unlikely offer +him a business opening. He knew his uncle would be glad to hear that he +had at last turned his thoughts to a practical matter. + +It was to Ruth Bolton that Philip wrote last. He might never see her +again; he went to seek his fortune. He well knew the perils of the +frontier, the savage state of society, the lurking Indians and the +dangers of fever. But there was no real danger to a person who took care +of himself. Might he write to her often and, tell her of his life. +If he returned with a fortune, perhaps and perhaps. If he was +unsuccessful, or if he never returned--perhaps it would be as well. +No time or distance, however, would ever lessen his interest in her. He +would say good-night, but not good-bye. + +In the soft beginning of a Spring morning, long before New York had +breakfasted, while yet the air of expectation hung about the wharves of +the metropolis, our young adventurers made their way to the Jersey City +railway station of the Erie road, to begin the long, swinging, crooked +journey, over what a writer of a former day called a causeway of cracked +rails and cows, to the West. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + What ever to say be toke in his entente, + his langage was so fayer & pertynante, + yt semeth unto manys herying not only the worde, + but veryly the thyng. + Caxton's Book of Curtesye. + +In the party of which our travelers found themselves members, was Duff +Brown, the great railroad contractor, and subsequently a well-known +member of Congress; a bluff, jovial Bost'n man, thick-set, close shaven, +with a heavy jaw and a low forehead--a very pleasant man if you were not +in his way. He had government contracts also, custom houses and dry +docks, from Portland to New Orleans, and managed to get out of congress, +in appropriations, about weight for weight of gold for the stone +furnished. + +Associated with him, and also of this party, was Rodney Schaick, a sleek +New York broker, a man as prominent in the church as in the stock +exchange, dainty in his dress, smooth of speech, the necessary complement +of Duff Brown in any enterprise that needed assurance and adroitness. + +It would be difficult to find a pleasanter traveling party one that shook +off more readily the artificial restraints of Puritanic strictness, and +took the world with good-natured allowance. Money was plenty for every +attainable luxury, and there seemed to be no doubt that its supply would +continue, and that fortunes were about to be made without a great deal of +toil. Even Philip soon caught the prevailing spirit; Barry did not need +any inoculation, he always talked in six figures. It was as natural for +the dear boy to be rich as it is for most people to be poor. + +The elders of the party were not long in discovering the fact, which +almost all travelers to the west soon find out; that the water was poor. +It must have been by a lucky premonition of this that they all had brandy +flasks with which to qualify the water of the country; and it was no +doubt from an uneasy feeling of the danger of being poisoned that they +kept experimenting, mixing a little of the dangerous and changing fluid, +as they passed along, with the contents of the flasks, thus saving their +lives hour by hour. Philip learned afterwards that temperance and the +strict observance of Sunday and a certain gravity of deportment are +geographical habits, which people do not usually carry with them away +from home. + +Our travelers stopped in Chicago long enough to see that they could make +their fortunes there in two week's tine, but it did not seem worth while; +the west was more attractive; the further one went the wider the +opportunities opened. + +They took railroad to Alton and the steamboat from there to St. Louis, +for the change and to have a glimpse of the river. + +"Isn't this jolly?" cried Henry, dancing out of the barber's room, and +coming down the deck with a one, two, three step, shaven, curled and +perfumed after his usual exquisite fashion. + +"What's jolly?" asked Philip, looking out upon the dreary and monotonous +waste through which the shaking steamboat was coughing its way. + +"Why, the whole thing; it's immense I can tell you. I wouldn't give that +to be guaranteed a hundred thousand cold cash in a year's time." + +"Where's Mr. Brown?" + +"He is in the saloon, playing poker with Schaick and that long haired +party with the striped trousers, who scrambled aboard when the stage +plank was half hauled in, and the big Delegate to Congress from out +west." + +"That's a fine looking fellow, that delegate, with his glossy, black +whiskers; looks like a Washington man; I shouldn't think he'd be at +poker." + +"Oh, its only five cent ante, just to make it interesting, the Delegate +said." + +"But I shouldn't think a representative in Congress would play poker any +way in a public steamboat." + +"Nonsense, you've got to pass the time. I tried a hand myself, but those +old fellows are too many for me. The Delegate knows all the points. +I'd bet a hundred dollars he will ante his way right into the United +States Senate when his territory comes in. He's got the cheek for it." + +"He has the grave and thoughtful manner of expectoration of a public man, +for one thing," added Philip. + +"Harry," said Philip, after a pause, "what have you got on those big +boots for; do you expect to wade ashore?" + +"I'm breaking 'em in." + +The fact was Harry had got himself up in what he thought a proper costume +for a new country, and was in appearance a sort of compromise between a +dandy of Broadway and a backwoodsman. Harry, with blue eyes, fresh +complexion, silken whiskers and curly chestnut hair, was as handsome as +a fashion plate. He wore this morning a soft hat, a short cutaway coat, +an open vest displaying immaculate linen, a leathern belt round his +waist, and top-boots of soft leather, well polished, that came above his +knees and required a string attached to his belt to keep them up. The +light hearted fellow gloried in these shining encasements of his well +shaped legs, and told Philip that they were a perfect protection against +prairie rattle-snakes, which never strike above the knee. + +The landscape still wore an almost wintry appearance when our travelers +left Chicago. It was a genial spring day when they landed at St. Louis; +the birds were singing, the blossoms of peach trees in city garden plots, +made the air sweet, and in the roar and tumult on the long river levee +they found an excitement that accorded with their own hopeful +anticipations. + +The party went to the Southern Hotel, where the great Duff Brown was very +well known, and indeed was a man of so much importance that even the +office clerk was respectful to him. He might have respected in him also +a certain vulgar swagger and insolence of money, which the clerk greatly +admired. + +The young fellows liked the house and liked the city; it seemed to them a +mighty free and hospitable town. Coming from the East they were struck +with many peculiarities. Everybody smoked in the streets, for one thing, +they noticed; everybody "took a drink" in an open manner whenever he +wished to do so or was asked, as if the habit needed no concealment or +apology. In the evening when they walked about they found people sitting +on the door-steps of their dwellings, in a manner not usual in a northern +city; in front of some of the hotels and saloons the side walks were +filled with chairs and benches--Paris fashion, said Harry--upon which +people lounged in these warm spring evenings, smoking, always smoking; +and the clink of glasses and of billiard balls was in the air. It was +delightful. + +Harry at once found on landing that his back-woods custom would not be +needed in St. Louis, and that, in fact, he had need of all the resources +of his wardrobe to keep even with the young swells of the town. But this +did not much matter, for Harry was always superior to his clothes. +As they were likely to be detained some time in the city, Harry told +Philip that he was going to improve his time. And he did. It was an +encouragement to any industrious man to see this young fellow rise, +carefully dress himself, eat his breakfast deliberately, smoke his cigar +tranquilly, and then repair to his room, to what he called his work, with +a grave and occupied manner, but with perfect cheerfulness. + +Harry would take off his coat, remove his cravat, roll up his +shirt-sleeves, give his curly hair the right touch before the glass, get +out his book on engineering, his boxes of instruments, his drawing paper, +his profile paper, open the book of logarithms, mix his India ink, +sharpen his pencils, light a cigar, and sit down at the table to "lay out +a line," with the most grave notion that he was mastering the details of +engineering. He would spend half a day in these preparations without +ever working out a problem or having the faintest conception of the use +of lines or logarithms. And when he had finished, he had the most +cheerful confidence that he had done a good day's work. + +It made no difference, however, whether Harry was in his room in a hotel +or in a tent, Philip soon found, he was just the same. In camp he would +get himself, up in the most elaborate toilet at his command, polish his +long boots to the top, lay out his work before him, and spend an hour or +longer, if anybody was looking at him, humming airs, knitting his brows, +and "working" at engineering; and if a crowd of gaping rustics were +looking on all the while it was perfectly satisfactory to him. + +"You see," he says to Philip one morning at the hotel when he was thus +engaged, "I want to get the theory of this thing, so that I can have a +check on the engineers." + +"I thought you were going to be an engineer yourself," queried Philip. + +"Not many times, if the court knows herself. There's better game. Brown +and Schaick have, or will have, the control for the whole line of the +Salt Lick Pacific Extension, forty thousand dollars a mile over the +prairie, with extra for hard-pan--and it'll be pretty much all hardpan +I can tell you; besides every alternate section of land on this line. +There's millions in the job. I'm to have the sub-contract for the first +fifty miles, and you can bet it's a soft thing." + +"I'll tell you what you do, Philip," continued Larry, in a burst of +generosity, "if I don't get you into my contract, you'll be with the +engineers, and you jest stick a stake at the first ground marked for a +depot, buy the land of the farmer before he knows where the depot will +be, and we'll turn a hundred or so on that. I'll advance the money for +the payments, and you can sell the lots. Schaick is going to let me have +ten thousand just for a flyer in such operations." + +"But that's a good deal of money." + +"Wait till you are used to handling money. I didn't come out here for a +bagatelle. My uncle wanted me to stay East and go in on the Mobile +custom house, work up the Washington end of it; he said there was a +fortune in it for a smart young fellow, but I preferred to take the +chances out here. Did I tell you I had an offer from Bobbett and Fanshaw +to go into their office as confidential clerk on a salary of ten +thousand?" + +"Why didn't you take it ?" asked Philip, to whom a salary of two thousand +would have seemed wealth, before he started on this journey. + +"Take it? I'd rather operate on my own hook;" said Harry, in his most +airy manner. + +A few evenings after their arrival at the Southern, Philip and Harry made +the acquaintance of a very agreeable gentleman, whom they had frequently +seen before about the hotel corridors, and passed a casual word with. He +had the air of a man of business, and was evidently a person of +importance. + +The precipitating of this casual intercourse into the more substantial +form of an acquaintanceship was the work of the gentleman himself, and +occurred in this wise. Meeting the two friends in the lobby one evening, +he asked them to give him the time, and added: + +"Excuse me, gentlemen--strangers in St. Louis? Ah, yes-yes. From the +East, perhaps? Ah; just so, just so. Eastern born myself--Virginia. +Sellers is my name--Beriah Sellers. + +"Ah! by the way--New York, did you say? That reminds me; just met some +gentlemen from your State, a week or two ago--very prominent gentlemen +--in public life they are; you must know them, without doubt. Let me see +--let me see. Curious those names have escaped me. I know they were from +your State, because I remember afterward my old friend Governor Shackleby +said to me--fine man, is the Governor--one of the finest men our country +has produced--said he, 'Colonel, how did you like those New York +gentlemen?--not many such men in the world,--Colonel Sellers,' said the +Governor--yes, it was New York he said--I remember it distinctly. +I can't recall those names, somehow. But no matter. Stopping here, +gentlemen--stopping at the Southern?" + +In shaping their reply in their minds, the title "Mr." had a place in it; +but when their turn had arrived to speak, the title "Colonel" came from +their lips instead. + +They said yes, they were abiding at the Southern, and thought it a very +good house. + +"Yes, yes, the Southern is fair. I myself go to the Planter's, old, +aristocratic house. We Southern gentlemen don't change our ways, you +know. I always make it my home there when I run down from Hawkeye--my +plantation is in Hawkeye, a little up in the country. You should know +the Planter's." + +Philip and Harry both said they should like to see a hotel that had been +so famous in its day--a cheerful hostelrie, Philip said it must have been +where duels were fought there across the dining-room table. + +"You may believe it, sir, an uncommonly pleasant lodging. Shall we +walk?" + +And the three strolled along the streets, the Colonel talking all +the way in the most liberal and friendly manner, and with a frank +open-heartedness that inspired confidence. + +"Yes, born East myself, raised all along, know the West--a great country, +gentlemen. The place for a young fellow of spirit to pick up a fortune, +simply pick it up, it's lying round loose here. Not a day that I don't +put aside an opportunity; too busy to look into it. Management of my own +property takes my time. First visit? Looking for an opening?" + +"Yes, looking around," replied Harry. + +"Ah, here we are. You'd rather sit here in front than go to my +apartments? So had I. An opening eh?" + +The Colonel's eyes twinkled. "Ah, just so. The country is opening up, +all we want is capital to develop it. Slap down the rails and bring the +land into market. The richest land on God Almighty's footstool is lying +right out there. If I had my capital free I could plant it for +millions." + +"I suppose your capital is largely in your plantation?" asked Philip. + +"Well, partly, sir, partly. I'm down here now with reference to a little +operation--a little side thing merely. By the way gentlemen, excuse the +liberty, but it's about my usual time"-- + +The Colonel paused, but as no movement of his acquaintances followed this +plain remark, he added, in an explanatory manner, + +"I'm rather particular about the exact time--have to be in this climate." + +Even this open declaration of his hospitable intention not being +understood the Colonel politely said, + +"Gentlemen, will you take something?" + +Col. Sellers led the way to a saloon on Fourth street under the hotel, +and the young gentlemen fell into the custom of the country. + +"Not that," said the Colonel to the bar-keeper, who shoved along the +counter a bottle of apparently corn-whiskey, as if he had done it before +on the same order; "not that," with a wave of the hand. "That Otard if +you please. Yes. Never take an inferior liquor, gentlemen, not in the +evening, in this climate. There. That's the stuff. My respects!" + +The hospitable gentleman, having disposed of his liquor, remarking that +it was not quite the thing--"when a man has his own cellar to go to, he +is apt to get a little fastidious about his liquors"--called for cigars. +But the brand offered did not suit him; he motioned the box away, and +asked for some particular Havana's, those in separate wrappers. + +"I always smoke this sort, gentlemen; they are a little more expensive, +but you'll learn, in this climate, that you'd better not economize on +poor cigars" + +Having imparted this valuable piece of information, the Colonel lighted +the fragrant cigar with satisfaction, and then carelessly put his fingers +into his right vest pocket. That movement being without result, with a +shade of disappointment on his face, he felt in his left vest pocket. +Not finding anything there, he looked up with a serious and annoyed air, +anxiously slapped his right pantaloon's pocket, and then his left, and +exclaimed, + +"By George, that's annoying. By George, that's mortifying. Never had +anything of that kind happen to me before. I've left my pocket-book. +Hold! Here's a bill, after all. No, thunder, it's a receipt." + +"Allow me," said Philip, seeing how seriously the Colonel was annoyed, +and taking out his purse. + +The Colonel protested he couldn't think of it, and muttered something to +the barkeeper about "hanging it up," but the vender of exhilaration made +no sign, and Philip had the privilege of paying the costly shot; Col. +Sellers profusely apologizing and claiming the right "next time, next +time." + +As soon as Beriah Sellers had bade his friends good night and seen them +depart, he did not retire apartments in the Planter's, but took his way +to his lodgings with a friend in a distant part of the city. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +The letter that Philip Sterling wrote to Ruth Bolton, on the evening of +setting out to seek his fortune in the west, found that young lady in her +own father's house in Philadelphia. It was one of the pleasantest of the +many charming suburban houses in that hospitable city, which is +territorially one of the largest cities in the world, and only prevented +from becoming the convenient metropolis of the country by the intrusive +strip of Camden and Amboy sand which shuts it off from the Atlantic +ocean. It is a city of steady thrift, the arms of which might well be +the deliberate but delicious terrapin that imparts such a royal flavor to +its feasts. + +It was a spring morning, and perhaps it was the influence of it that made +Ruth a little restless, satisfied neither with the out-doors nor the +in-doors. Her sisters had gone to the city to show some country visitors +Independence Hall, Girard College and Fairmount Water Works and Park, +four objects which Americans cannot die peacefully, even in Naples, +without having seen. But Ruth confessed that she was tired of them, and +also of the Mint. She was tired of other things. She tried this morning +an air or two upon the piano, sang a simple song in a sweet but slightly +metallic voice, and then seating herself by the open window, read +Philip's letter. Was she thinking about Philip, as she gazed across the +fresh lawn over the tree tops to the Chelton Hills, or of that world +which his entrance, into her tradition-bound life had been one of the +means of opening to her? Whatever she thought, she was not idly musing, +as one might see by the expression of her face. After a time she took +up a book; it was a medical work, and to all appearance about as +interesting to a girl of eighteen as the statutes at large; but her face +was soon aglow over its pages, and she was so absorbed in it that she did +not notice the entrance of her mother at the open door. + +"Ruth?" + +"Well, mother," said the young student, looking up, with a shade of +impatience. + +"I wanted to talk with thee a little about thy plans." + +"Mother; thee knows I couldn't stand it at Westfield; the school stifled +me, it's a place to turn young people into dried fruit." + +"I know," said Margaret Bolton, with a half anxious smile, thee chafes +against all the ways of Friends, but what will thee do? Why is thee so +discontented?" + +"If I must say it, mother, I want to go away, and get out of this dead +level." + +With a look half of pain and half of pity, her mother answered, "I am +sure thee is little interfered with; thee dresses as thee will, and goes +where thee pleases, to any church thee likes, and thee has music. I had +a visit yesterday from the society's committee by way of discipline, +because we have a piano in the house, which is against the rules." + +"I hope thee told the elders that father and I are responsible for the +piano, and that, much as thee loves music, thee is never in the room when +it is played. Fortunately father is already out of meeting, so they +can't discipline him. I heard father tell cousin Abner that he was +whipped so often for whistling when he was a boy that he was determined +to have what compensation he could get now." + +"Thy ways greatly try me, Ruth, and all thy relations. I desire thy +happiness first of all, but thee is starting out on a dangerous path. +Is thy father willing thee should go away to a school of the world's +people?" + +"I have not asked him," Ruth replied with a look that might imply that +she was one of those determined little bodies who first made up her own +mind and then compelled others to make up theirs in accordance with hers. + +"And when thee has got the education thee wants, and lost all relish for +the society of thy friends and the ways of thy ancestors, what then?" + +Ruth turned square round to her mother, and with an impassive face and +not the slightest change of tone, said, + +"Mother, I'm going to study medicine?" + +Margaret Bolton almost lost for a moment her habitual placidity. + +"Thee, study medicine! A slight frail girl like thee, study medicine! +Does thee think thee could stand it six months? And the lectures, +and the dissecting rooms, has thee thought of the dissecting rooms?" + +"Mother," said Ruth calmly, "I have thought it all over. I know I can go +through the whole, clinics, dissecting room and all. Does thee think I +lack nerve? What is there to fear in a person dead more than in a person +living?" + +"But thy health and strength, child; thee can never stand the severe +application. And, besides, suppose thee does learn medicine?" + +"I will practice it." + +"Here?" + +"Here." + +"Where thee and thy family are known?" + +"If I can get patients." + +"I hope at least, Ruth, thee will let us know when thee opens an office," +said her mother, with an approach to sarcasm that she rarely indulged in, +as she rose and left the room. + +Ruth sat quite still for a tine, with face intent and flushed. It was +out now. She had begun her open battle. + +The sight-seers returned in high spirits from the city. Was there any +building in Greece to compare with Girard College, was there ever such a +magnificent pile of stone devised for the shelter of poor orphans? Think +of the stone shingles of the roof eight inches thick! Ruth asked the +enthusiasts if they would like to live in such a sounding mausoleum, with +its great halls and echoing rooms, and no comfortable place in it for the +accommodation of any body? If they were orphans, would they like to be +brought up in a Grecian temple? + +And then there was Broad street! Wasn't it the broadest and the longest +street in the world? There certainly was no end to it, and even Ruth was +Philadelphian enough to believe that a street ought not to have any end, +or architectural point upon which the weary eye could rest. + +But neither St. Girard, nor Broad street, neither wonders of the Mint nor +the glories of the Hall where the ghosts of our fathers sit always +signing the Declaration; impressed the visitors so much as the splendors +of the Chestnut street windows, and the bargains on Eighth street. +The truth is that the country cousins had come to town to attend the +Yearly Meeting, and the amount of shopping that preceded that religious +event was scarcely exceeded by the preparations for the opera in more +worldly circles. + +"Is thee going to the Yearly Meeting, Ruth?" asked one of the girls. + +"I have nothing to wear," replied that demure person. "If thee wants to +see new bonnets, orthodox to a shade and conformed to the letter of the +true form, thee must go to the Arch Street Meeting. Any departure from +either color or shape would be instantly taken note of. It has occupied +mother a long time, to find at the shops the exact shade for her new +bonnet. Oh, thee must go by all means. But thee won't see there a +sweeter woman than mother." + +"And thee won't go?" + +"Why should I? I've been again and again. If I go to Meeting at all I +like best to sit in the quiet old house in Germantown, where the windows +are all open and I can see the trees, and hear the stir of the leaves. +It's such a crush at the Yearly Meeting at Arch Street, and then there's +the row of sleek-looking young men who line the curbstone and stare at us +as we come out. No, I don't feel at home there." + +That evening Ruth and her father sat late by the drawing-room fire, as +they were quite apt to do at night. It was always a time of confidences. + +"Thee has another letter from young Sterling," said Eli Bolton. + +"Yes. Philip has gone to the far west." + +"How far?" + +"He doesn't say, but it's on the frontier, and on the map everything +beyond it is marked 'Indians' and 'desert,' and looks as desolate as a +Wednesday Meeting." + +"Humph. It was time for him to do something. Is he going to start a +daily newspaper among the Kick-a-poos?" + +"Father, thee's unjust to Philip. He's going into business." + +"What sort of business can a young man go into without capital?" + +"He doesn't say exactly what it is," said Ruth a little dubiously, "but +it's something about land and railroads, and thee knows, father, that +fortunes are made nobody knows exactly how, in a new country." + +"I should think so, you innocent puss, and in an old one too. But Philip +is honest, and he has talent enough, if he will stop scribbling, to make +his way. But thee may as well take care of theeself, Ruth, and not go +dawdling along with a young man in his adventures, until thy own mind is +a little more settled what thee wants." + +This excellent advice did not seem to impress Ruth greatly, for she was +looking away with that abstraction of vision which often came into her +grey eyes, and at length she exclaimed, with a sort of impatience, + +"I wish I could go west, or south, or somewhere. What a box women are +put into, measured for it, and put in young; if we go anywhere it's in a +box, veiled and pinioned and shut in by disabilities. Father, I should +like to break things and get loose!" + +What a sweet-voiced little innocent, it was to be sure. + +"Thee will no doubt break things enough when thy time comes, child; women +always have; but what does thee want now that thee hasn't?" + +"I want to be something, to make myself something, to do something. Why +should I rust, and be stupid, and sit in inaction because I am a girl? +What would happen to me if thee should lose thy property and die? What +one useful thing could I do for a living, for the support of mother and +the children? And if I had a fortune, would thee want me to lead a +useless life?" + +"Has thy mother led a useless life?" + +"Somewhat that depends upon whether her children amount to anything," +retorted the sharp little disputant. "What's the good, father, of a +series of human beings who don't advance any?" + +Friend Eli, who had long ago laid aside the Quaker dress, and was out of +Meeting, and who in fact after a youth of doubt could not yet define his +belief, nevertheless looked with some wonder at this fierce young eagle +of his, hatched in a Friend's dove-cote. But he only said, + +"Has thee consulted thy mother about a career, I suppose it is a career +thee wants?" + +Ruth did not reply directly; she complained that her mother didn't +understand her. But that wise and placid woman understood the sweet +rebel a great deal better than Ruth understood herself. She also had a +history, possibly, and had sometime beaten her young wings against the +cage of custom, and indulged in dreams of a new social order, and had +passed through that fiery period when it seems possible for one mind, +which has not yet tried its limits, to break up and re-arrange the world. + +Ruth replied to Philip's letter in due time and in the most cordial and +unsentimental manner. Philip liked the letter, as he did everything she +did; but he had a dim notion that there was more about herself in the +letter than about him. He took it with him from the Southern Hotel, when +he went to walk, and read it over and again in an unfrequented street as +he stumbled along. The rather common-place and unformed hand-writing +seemed to him peculiar and characteristic, different from that of any +other woman. + +Ruth was glad to hear that Philip had made a push into the world, and she +was sure that his talent and courage would make a way for him. She +should pray for his success at any rate, and especially that the Indians, +in St. Louis, would not take his scalp. + +Philip looked rather dubious at this sentence, and wished that he had +written nothing about Indians. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +Eli Bolton and his wife talked over Ruth's case, as they had often done +before, with no little anxiety. Alone of all their children she was +impatient of the restraints and monotony of the Friends' Society, and +wholly indisposed to accept the "inner light" as a guide into a life of +acceptance and inaction. When Margaret told her husband of Ruth's newest +project, he did not exhibit so much surprise as she hoped for. In fact +he said that he did not see why a woman should not enter the medical +profession if she felt a call to it. + +"But," said Margaret, "consider her total inexperience of the world, and +her frail health. Can such a slight little body endure the ordeal of the +preparation for, or the strain of, the practice of the profession?" + +"Did thee ever think, Margaret, whether, she can endure being thwarted in +an, object on which she has so set her heart, as she has on this? Thee +has trained her thyself at home, in her enfeebled childhood, and thee +knows how strong her will is, and what she has been able to accomplish in +self-culture by the simple force of her determination. She never will be +satisfied until she has tried her own strength." + +"I wish," said Margaret, with an inconsequence that is not exclusively +feminine, "that she were in the way to fall in love and marry by and by. +I think that would cure her of some of her notions. I am not sure but if +she went away, to some distant school, into an entirely new life, her +thoughts would be diverted." + +Eli Bolton almost laughed as he regarded his wife, with eyes that never +looked at her except fondly, and replied, + +"Perhaps thee remembers that thee had notions also, before we were +married, and before thee became a member of Meeting. I think Ruth comes +honestly by certain tendencies which thee has hidden under the Friend's +dress." + +Margaret could not say no to this, and while she paused, it was evident +that memory was busy with suggestions to shake her present opinions. + +"Why not let Ruth try the study for a time," suggested Eli; "there is a +fair beginning of a Woman's Medical College in the city. Quite likely +she will soon find that she needs first a more general culture, and fall, +in with thy wish that she should see more of the world at some large +school." + +There really seemed to be nothing else to be done, and Margaret consented +at length without approving. And it was agreed that Ruth, in order to +spare her fatigue, should take lodgings with friends near the college and +make a trial in the pursuit of that science to which we all owe our +lives, and sometimes as by a miracle of escape. + +That day Mr. Bolton brought home a stranger to dinner, Mr. Bigler of the +great firm of Pennybacker, Bigler & Small, railroad contractors. He was +always bringing home somebody, who had a scheme; to build a road, or open +a mine, or plant a swamp with cane to grow paper-stock, or found a +hospital, or invest in a patent shad-bone separator, or start a college +somewhere on the frontier, contiguous to a land speculation. + +The Bolton house was a sort of hotel for this kind of people. They were +always coming. Ruth had known them from childhood, and she used to say +that her father attracted them as naturally as a sugar hogshead does +flies. Ruth had an idea that a large portion of the world lived by +getting the rest of the world into schemes. Mr. Bolton never could say +"no" to any of them, not even, said Ruth again, to the society for +stamping oyster shells with scripture texts before they were sold at +retail. + +Mr. Bigler's plan this time, about which he talked loudly, with his mouth +full, all dinner time, was the building of the Tunkhannock, Rattlesnake +and Young-womans-town railroad, which would not only be a great highway to +the west, but would open to market inexhaustible coal-fields and untold +millions of lumber. The plan of operations was very simple. + +"We'll buy the lands," explained he, "on long time, backed by the notes +of good men; and then mortgage them for money enough to get the road well +on. Then get the towns on the line to issue their bonds for stock, and +sell their bonds for enough to complete the road, and partly stock it, +especially if we mortgage each section as we complete it. We can then +sell the rest of the stock on the prospect of the business of the road +through an improved country, and also sell the lands at a big advance, +on the strength of the road. All we want," continued Mr. Bigler in his +frank manner, "is a few thousand dollars to start the surveys, and +arrange things in the legislature. There is some parties will have to be +seen, who might make us trouble." + +"It will take a good deal of money to start the enterprise," remarked Mr. +Bolton, who knew very well what "seeing" a Pennsylvania Legislature +meant, but was too polite to tell Mr. Bigler what he thought of him, +while he was his guest; "what security would one have for it?" + +Mr. Bigler smiled a hard kind of smile, and said, "You'd be inside, Mr. +Bolton, and you'd have the first chance in the deal." + +This was rather unintelligible to Ruth, who was nevertheless somewhat +amused by the study of a type of character she had seen before. +At length she interrupted the conversation by asking, + +"You'd sell the stock, I suppose, Mr. Bigler, to anybody who was +attracted by the prospectus?" + +"O, certainly, serve all alike," said Mr. Bigler, now noticing Ruth for +the first time, and a little puzzled by the serene, intelligent face that +was turned towards him. + +"Well, what would become of the poor people who had been led to put their +little money into the speculation, when you got out of it and left it +half way?" + +It would be no more true to say of Mr. Bigler that he was or could be +embarrassed, than to say that a brass counterfeit dollar-piece would +change color when refused; the question annoyed him a little, in Mr. +Bolton's presence. + +"Why, yes, Miss, of course, in a great enterprise for the benefit of the +community there will little things occur, which, which--and, of course, +the poor ought to be looked to; I tell my wife, that the poor must be +looked to; if you can tell who are poor--there's so many impostors. And +then, there's so many poor in the legislature to be looked after," said +the contractor with a sort of a chuckle, "isn't that so, Mr. Bolton?" + +Eli Bolton replied that he never had much to do with the legislature. + +"Yes," continued this public benefactor, "an uncommon poor lot this year, +uncommon. Consequently an expensive lot. The fact is, Mr. Bolton, that +the price is raised so high on United States Senator now, that it affects +the whole market; you can't get any public improvement through on +reasonable terms. Simony is what I call it, Simony," repeated Mr. +Bigler, as if he had said a good thing. + +Mr. Bigler went on and gave some very interesting details of the intimate +connection between railroads and politics, and thoroughly entertained +himself all dinner time, and as much disgusted Ruth, who asked no more +questions, and her father who replied in monosyllables: + +"I wish," said Ruth to her father, after the guest had gone, "that you +wouldn't bring home any more such horrid men. Do all men who wear big +diamond breast-pins, flourish their knives at table, and use bad grammar, +and cheat?" + +"O, child, thee mustn't be too observing. Mr. Bigler is one of the most +important men in the state; nobody has more influence at Harrisburg. +I don't like him any more than thee does, but I'd better lend him a +little money than to have his ill will." + +"Father, I think thee'd better have his ill-will than his company. Is it +true that he gave money to help build the pretty little church of +St. James the Less, and that he is, one of the vestrymen?" + +"Yes. He is not such a bad fellow. One of the men in Third street asked +him the other day, whether his was a high church or a low church? Bigler +said he didn't know; he'd been in it once, and he could touch the ceiling +in the side aisle with his hand." + +"I think he's just horrid," was Ruth's final summary of him, after the +manner of the swift judgment of women, with no consideration of the +extenuating circumstances. Mr. Bigler had no idea that he had not made a +good impression on the whole family; he certainly intended to be +agreeable. Margaret agreed with her daughter, and though she never said +anything to such people, she was grateful to Ruth for sticking at least +one pin into him. + +Such was the serenity of the Bolton household that a stranger in it would +never have suspected there was any opposition to Ruth's going to the +Medical School. And she went quietly to take her residence in town, and +began her attendance of the lectures, as if it were the most natural +thing in the world. She did not heed, if she heard, the busy and +wondering gossip of relations and acquaintances, gossip that has no less +currency among the Friends than elsewhere because it is whispered slyly +and creeps about in an undertone. + +Ruth was absorbed, and for the first time in her life thoroughly happy; +happy in the freedom of her life, and in the keen enjoyment of the +investigation that broadened its field day by day. She was in high +spirits when she came home to spend First Days; the house was full of her +gaiety and her merry laugh, and the children wished that Ruth would never +go away again. But her mother noticed, with a little anxiety, the +sometimes flushed face, and the sign of an eager spirit in the kindling +eyes, and, as well, the serious air of determination and endurance in her +face at unguarded moments. + +The college was a small one and it sustained itself not without +difficulty in this city, which is so conservative, and is yet the origin +of so many radical movements. There were not more than a dozen +attendants on the lectures all together, so that the enterprise had the +air of an experiment, and the fascination of pioneering for those engaged +in it. There was one woman physician driving about town in her carriage, +attacking the most violent diseases in all quarters with persistent +courage, like a modern Bellona in her war chariot, who was popularly +supposed to gather in fees to the amount ten to twenty thousand dollars a +year. Perhaps some of these students looked forward to the near day when +they would support such a practice and a husband besides, but it is +unknown that any of them ever went further than practice in hospitals and +in their own nurseries, and it is feared that some of them were quite as +ready as their sisters, in emergencies, to "call a man." + +If Ruth had any exaggerated expectations of a professional life, she kept +them to herself, and was known to her fellows of the class simply as a +cheerful, sincere student, eager in her investigations, and never +impatient at anything, except an insinuation that women had not as much +mental capacity for science as men. + +"They really say," said one young Quaker sprig to another youth of his +age, "that Ruth Bolton is really going to be a saw-bones, attends +lectures, cuts up bodies, and all that. She's cool enough for a surgeon, +anyway." He spoke feelingly, for he had very likely been weighed in +Ruth's calm eyes sometime, and thoroughly scared by the little laugh that +accompanied a puzzling reply to one of his conversational nothings. Such +young gentlemen, at this time, did not come very distinctly into Ruth's +horizon, except as amusing circumstances. + +About the details of her student life, Ruth said very little to her +friends, but they had reason to know, afterwards, that it required all +her nerve and the almost complete exhaustion of her physical strength, +to carry her through. She began her anatomical practice upon detached +portions of the human frame, which were brought into the demonstrating +room--dissecting the eye, the ear, and a small tangle of muscles and +nerves--an occupation which had not much more savor of death in it than +the analysis of a portion of a plant out of which the life went when it +was plucked up by the roots. Custom inures the most sensitive persons to +that which is at first most repellant; and in the late war we saw the +most delicate women, who could not at home endure the sight of blood, +become so used to scenes of carnage, that they walked the hospitals and +the margins of battle-fields, amid the poor remnants of torn humanity, +with as perfect self-possession as if they were strolling in a flower +garden. + +It happened that Ruth was one evening deep in a line of investigation +which she could not finish or understand without demonstration, and so +eager was she in it, that it seemed as if she could not wait till the +next day. She, therefore, persuaded a fellow student, who was reading +that evening with her, to go down to the dissecting room of the college, +and ascertain what they wanted to know by an hour's work there. Perhaps, +also, Ruth wanted to test her own nerve, and to see whether the power of +association was stronger in her mind than her own will. + +The janitor of the shabby and comfortless old building admitted the +girls, not without suspicion, and gave them lighted candles, which they +would need, without other remark than "there's a new one, Miss," as the +girls went up the broad stairs. + +They climbed to the third story, and paused before a door, which they +unlocked, and which admitted them into a long apartment, with a row of +windows on one side and one at the end. The room was without light, save +from the stars and the candles the girls carried, which revealed to them +dimly two long and several small tables, a few benches and chairs, a +couple of skeletons hanging on the wall, a sink, and cloth-covered heaps +of something upon the tables here and there. + +The windows were open, and the cool night wind came in strong enough to +flutter a white covering now and then, and to shake the loose casements. +But all the sweet odors of the night could not take from the room a faint +suggestion of mortality. + +The young ladies paused a moment. The room itself was familiar enough, +but night makes almost any chamber eerie, and especially such a room of +detention as this where the mortal parts of the unburied might--almost be +supposed to be, visited, on the sighing night winds, by the wandering +spirits of their late tenants. + +Opposite and at some distance across the roofs of lower buildings, the +girls saw a tall edifice, the long upper story of which seemed to be a +dancing hall. The windows of that were also open, and through them they +heard the scream of the jiggered and tortured violin, and the pump, pump +of the oboe, and saw the moving shapes of men and women in quick +transition, and heard the prompter's drawl. + +"I wonder," said Ruth, "what the girls dancing there would think if they +saw us, or knew that there was such a room as this so near them." + +She did not speak very loud, and, perhaps unconsciously, the girls drew +near to each other as they approached the long table in the centre of the +room. A straight object lay upon it, covered with a sheet. This was +doubtless "the new one" of which the janitor spoke. Ruth advanced, and +with a not very steady hand lifted the white covering from the upper part +of the figure and turned it down. Both the girls started. It was a +negro. The black face seemed to defy the pallor of death, and asserted +an ugly life-likeness that was frightful. + +Ruth was as pale as the white sheet, and her comrade whispered, "Come +away, Ruth, it is awful." + +Perhaps it was the wavering light of the candles, perhaps it was only the +agony from a death of pain, but the repulsive black face seemed to wear a +scowl that said, "Haven't you yet done with the outcast, persecuted black +man, but you must now haul him from his grave, and send even your women +to dismember his body?" + +Who is this dead man, one of thousands who died yesterday, and will be +dust anon, to protest that science shall not turn his worthless carcass +to some account? + +Ruth could have had no such thought, for with a pity in her sweet face, +that for the moment overcame fear and disgust, she reverently replaced +the covering, and went away to her own table, as her companion did to +hers. And there for an hour they worked at their several problems, +without speaking, but not without an awe of the presence there, "the new +one," and not without an awful sense of life itself, as they heard the +pulsations of the music and the light laughter from the dancing-hall. + +When, at length, they went away, and locked the dreadful room behind +them, and came out into the street, where people were passing, they, for +the first time, realized, in the relief they felt, what a nervous strain +they had been under. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +While Ruth was thus absorbed in her new occupation, and the spring was +wearing away, Philip and his friends were still detained at the Southern +Hotel. The great contractors had concluded their business with the state +and railroad officials and with the lesser contractors, and departed for +the East. But the serious illness of one of the engineers kept Philip +and Henry in the city and occupied in alternate watchings. + +Philip wrote to Ruth of the new acquaintance they had made, Col. Sellers, +an enthusiastic and hospitable gentleman, very much interested in the +development of the country, and in their success. They had not had an +opportunity to visit at his place "up in the country" yet, but the +Colonel often dined with them, and in confidence, confided to them his +projects, and seemed to take a great liking to them, especially to his +friend Harry. It was true that he never seemed to have ready money, +but he was engaged in very large operations. + +The correspondence was not very brisk between these two young persons, +so differently occupied; for though Philip wrote long letters, he got +brief ones in reply, full of sharp little observations however, such as +one concerning Col. Sellers, namely, that such men dined at their house +every week. + +Ruth's proposed occupation astonished Philip immensely, but while he +argued it and discussed it, he did not dare hint to her his fear that it +would interfere with his most cherished plans. He too sincerely +respected Ruth's judgment to make any protest, however, and he would have +defended her course against the world. + +This enforced waiting at St. Louis was very irksome to Philip. His money +was running away, for one thing, and he longed to get into the field, +and see for himself what chance there was for a fortune or even an +occupation. The contractors had given the young men leave to join the +engineer corps as soon as they could, but otherwise had made no provision +for them, and in fact had left them with only the most indefinite +expectations of something large in the future. + +Harry was entirely happy; in his circumstances. He very soon knew +everybody, from the governor of the state down to the waiters at the +hotel. He had the Wall street slang at his tongue's end; he always +talked like a capitalist, and entered with enthusiasm into all the land +and railway schemes with which the air was thick. + +Col. Sellers and Harry talked together by the hour and by the day. Harry +informed his new friend that he was going out with the engineer corps of +the Salt Lick Pacific Extension, but that wasn't his real business. + +"I'm to have, with another party," said Harry, "a big contract in the +road, as soon as it is let; and, meantime, I'm with the engineers to spy +out the best land and the depot sites." + +"It's everything," suggested' the Colonel, "in knowing where to invest. +I've known people throwaway their money because they were too +consequential to take Sellers' advice. Others, again, have made their +pile on taking it. I've looked over the ground; I've been studying it +for twenty years. You can't put your finger on a spot in the map of +Missouri that I don't know as if I'd made it. When you want to place +anything," continued the Colonel, confidently, "just let Beriah Sellers +know. That's all." + +"Oh, I haven't got much in ready money I can lay my hands on now, but if +a fellow could do anything with fifteen or twenty thousand dollars, +as a beginning, I shall draw for that when I see the right opening." + +"Well, that's something, that's something, fifteen or twenty thousand +dollars, say twenty--as an advance," said the Colonel reflectively, as if +turning over his mind for a project that could be entered on with such a +trifling sum. + +"I'll tell you what it is--but only to you Mr. Brierly, only to you, +mind; I've got a little project that I've been keeping. It looks small, +looks small on paper, but it's got a big future. What should you say, +sir, to a city, built up like the rod of Aladdin had touched it, built up +in two years, where now you wouldn't expect it any more than you'd expect +a light-house on the top of Pilot Knob? and you could own the land! It +can be done, sir. It can be done!" + +The Colonel hitched up his chair close to Harry, laid his hand on his +knee, and, first looking about him, said in a low voice, "The Salt Lick +Pacific Extension is going to run through Stone's Landing! The Almighty +never laid out a cleaner piece of level prairie for a city; and it's the +natural center of all that region of hemp and tobacco." + +"What makes you think the road will go there? It's twenty miles, on the +map, off the straight line of the road?" + +"You can't tell what is the straight line till the engineers have been +over it. Between us, I have talked with Jeff Thompson, the division +engineer. He understands the wants of Stone's Landing, and the claims of +the inhabitants--who are to be there. Jeff says that a railroad is for +--the accommodation of the people and not for the benefit of gophers; and +if, he don't run this to Stone's Landing he'll be damned! You ought to +know Jeff; he's one of the most enthusiastic engineers in this western +country, and one of the best fellows that ever looked through the bottom +of a glass." + +The recommendation was not undeserved. There was nothing that Jeff +wouldn't do, to accommodate a friend, from sharing his last dollar with +him, to winging him in a duel. When he understood from Col. Sellers. +how the land lay at Stone's Landing, he cordially shook hands with that +gentleman, asked him to drink, and fairly roared out, "Why, God bless my +soul, Colonel, a word from one Virginia gentleman to another is 'nuff +ced.' There's Stone's Landing been waiting for a railroad more than four +thousand years, and damme if she shan't have it." + +Philip had not so much faith as Harry in Stone's Landing, when the latter +opened the project to him, but Harry talked about it as if he already +owned that incipient city. + +Harry thoroughly believed in all his projects and inventions, and lived +day by day in their golden atmosphere. Everybody liked the young fellow, +for how could they help liking one of such engaging manners and large +fortune? The waiters at the hotel would do more for him than for any +other guest, and he made a great many acquaintances among the people of +St. Louis, who liked his sensible and liberal views about the development +of the western country, and about St. Louis. He said it ought to be the +national capital. Harry made partial arrangements with several of the +merchants for furnishing supplies for his contract on the Salt Lick +Pacific Extension; consulted the maps with the engineers, and went over +the profiles with the contractors, figuring out estimates for bids. +He was exceedingly busy with those things when he was not at the bedside +of his sick acquaintance, or arranging the details of his speculation +with Col. Sellers. + +Meantime the days went along and the weeks, and the money in Harry's +pocket got lower and lower. He was just as liberal with what he had as +before, indeed it was his nature to be free with his money or with that +of others, and he could lend or spend a dollar with an air that made it +seem like ten. At length, at the end of one week, when his hotel bill +was presented, Harry found not a cent in his pocket to meet it. He +carelessly remarked to the landlord that he was not that day in funds, +but he would draw on New York, and he sat down and wrote to the +contractors in that city a glowing letter about the prospects of the +road, and asked them to advance a hundred or two, until he got at work. +No reply came. He wrote again, in an unoffended business like tone, +suggesting that he had better draw at three days. A short answer came to +this, simply saying that money was very tight in Wall street just then, +and that he had better join the engineer corps as soon as he could. + +But the bill had to be paid, and Harry took it to Philip, and asked him +if he thought he hadn't better draw on his uncle. Philip had not much +faith in Harry's power of "drawing," and told him that he would pay the +bill himself. Whereupon Harry dismissed the matter then and thereafter +from his thoughts, and, like a light-hearted good fellow as he was, gave +himself no more trouble about his board-bills. Philip paid them, swollen +as they were with a monstrous list of extras; but he seriously counted +the diminishing bulk of his own hoard, which was all the money he had in +the world. Had he not tacitly agreed to share with Harry to the last in +this adventure, and would not the generous fellow divide; with him if he, +Philip, were in want and Harry had anything? + +The fever at length got tired of tormenting the stout young engineer, who +lay sick at the hotel, and left him, very thin, a little sallow but an +"acclimated" man. Everybody said he was "acclimated" now, and said it +cheerfully. What it is to be acclimated to western fevers no two persons +exactly agree. + +Some say it is a sort of vaccination that renders death by some malignant +type of fever less probable. Some regard it as a sort of initiation, +like that into the Odd Fellows, which renders one liable to his regular +dues thereafter. Others consider it merely the acquisition of a habit of +taking every morning before breakfast a dose of bitters, composed of +whiskey and assafoetida, out of the acclimation jug. + +Jeff Thompson afterwards told Philip that he once asked Senator Atchison, +then acting Vice-President: of the United States, about the possibility +of acclimation; he thought the opinion of the second officer of our great +government would be, valuable on this point. They were sitting together +on a bench before a country tavern, in the free converse permitted by our +democratic habits. + +"I suppose, Senator, that you have become acclimated to this country?" + +"Well," said the Vice-President, crossing his legs, pulling his +wide-awake down over his forehead, causing a passing chicken to hop +quickly one side by the accuracy of his aim, and speaking with senatorial +deliberation, "I think I have. I've been here twenty-five years, and +dash, dash my dash to dash, if I haven't entertained twenty-five separate +and distinct earthquakes, one a year. The niggro is the only person who +can stand the fever and ague of this region." + +The convalescence of the engineer was the signal for breaking up quarters +at St. Louis, and the young fortune-hunters started up the river in good +spirits. It was only the second time either of them had been upon a +Mississippi steamboat, and nearly everything they saw had the charm of +novelty. Col. Sellers was at the landing to bid thorn good-bye. + +"I shall send you up that basket of champagne by the next boat; no, no; +no thanks; you'll find it not bad in camp," he cried out as the plank was +hauled in. "My respects to Thompson. Tell him to sight for Stone's. +Let me know, Mr. Brierly, when you are ready to locate; I'll come over +from Hawkeye. Goodbye." + +And the last the young fellows saw of the Colonel, he was waving his hat, +and beaming prosperity and good luck. + +The voyage was delightful, and was not long enough to become monotonous. +The travelers scarcely had time indeed to get accustomed to the splendors +of the great saloon where the tables were spread for meals, a marvel of +paint and gilding, its ceiling hung with fancifully cut tissue-paper of +many colors, festooned and arranged in endless patterns. The whole was +more beautiful than a barber's shop. The printed bill of fare at dinner +was longer and more varied, the proprietors justly boasted, than that of +any hotel in New York. It must have been the work of an author of talent +and imagination, and it surely was not his fault if the dinner itself was +to a certain extent a delusion, and if the guests got something that +tasted pretty much the same whatever dish they ordered; nor was it his +fault if a general flavor of rose in all the dessert dishes suggested +that they hid passed through the barber's saloon on their way from the +kitchen. + +The travelers landed at a little settlement on the left bank, and at once +took horses for the camp in the interior, carrying their clothes and +blankets strapped behind the saddles. Harry was dressed as we have seen +him once before, and his long and shining boots attracted not a little +the attention of the few persons they met on the road, and especially of +the bright faced wenches who lightly stepped along the highway, +picturesque in their colored kerchiefs, carrying light baskets, or riding +upon mules and balancing before them a heavier load. + +Harry sang fragments of operas and talked abort their fortune. Philip +even was excited by the sense of freedom and adventure, and the beauty of +the landscape. The prairie, with its new grass and unending acres of +brilliant flowers--chiefly the innumerable varieties of phlox-bore the +look of years of cultivation, and the occasional open groves of white +oaks gave it a park-like appearance. It was hardly unreasonable to +expect to see at any moment, the gables and square windows of an +Elizabethan mansion in one of the well kept groves. + +Towards sunset of the third day, when the young gentlemen thought they +ought to be near the town of Magnolia, near which they had been directed +to find the engineers' camp, they descried a log house and drew up before +it to enquire the way. Half the building was store, and half was +dwelling house. At the door of the latter stood a regress with a bright +turban on her head, to whom Philip called, + +"Can you tell me, auntie, how far it is to the town of Magnolia?" + +"Why, bress you chile," laughed the woman, "you's dere now." + +It was true. This log horse was the compactly built town, and all +creation was its suburbs. The engineers' camp was only two or three +miles distant. + +"You's boun' to find it," directed auntie, "if you don't keah nuffin +'bout de road, and go fo' de sun-down." + +A brisk gallop brought the riders in sight of the twinkling light of the +camp, just as the stars came out. It lay in a little hollow, where a +small stream ran through a sparse grove of young white oaks. A half +dozen tents were pitched under the trees, horses and oxen were corraled +at a little distance, and a group of men sat on camp stools or lay on +blankets about a bright fire. The twang of a banjo became audible as +they drew nearer, and they saw a couple of negroes, from some neighboring +plantation, "breaking down" a juba in approved style, amid the "hi, hi's" +of the spectators. + +Mr. Jeff Thompson, for it was the camp of this redoubtable engineer, gave +the travelers a hearty welcome, offered them ground room in his own tent, +ordered supper, and set out a small jug, a drop from which he declared +necessary on account of the chill of the evening. + +"I never saw an Eastern man," said Jeff, "who knew how to drink from a +jug with one hand. It's as easy as lying. So." He grasped the handle +with the right hand, threw the jug back upon his arm, and applied his +lips to the nozzle. It was an act as graceful as it was simple. +"Besides," said Mr. Thompson, setting it down, "it puts every man on his +honor as to quantity." + +Early to turn in was the rule of the camp, and by nine o'clock everybody +was under his blanket, except Jeff himself, who worked awhile at his +table over his field-book, and then arose, stepped outside the tent door +and sang, in a strong and not unmelodious tenor, the Star Spangled Banner +from beginning to end. It proved to be his nightly practice to let off +the unexpended seam of his conversational powers, in the words of this +stirring song. + +It was a long time before Philip got to sleep. He saw the fire light, +he saw the clear stars through the tree-tops, he heard the gurgle of the +stream, the stamp of the horses, the occasional barking of the dog which +followed the cook's wagon, the hooting of an owl; and when these failed +he saw Jeff, standing on a battlement, mid the rocket's red glare, and +heard him sing, "Oh, say, can you see?", It was the first time he had +ever slept on the ground. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + + ----"We have view'd it, + And measur'd it within all, by the scale + The richest tract of land, love, in the kingdom! + There will be made seventeen or eighteeen millions, + Or more, as't may be handled!" + The Devil is an Ass. + +Nobody dressed more like an engineer than Mr. Henry Brierly. The +completeness of his appointments was the envy of the corps, and the gay +fellow himself was the admiration of the camp servants, axemen, teamsters +and cooks. + +"I reckon you didn't git them boots no wher's this side o' Sent Louis?" +queried the tall Missouri youth who acted as commissariy's assistant. + +"No, New York." + +"Yas, I've heern o' New York," continued the butternut lad, attentively +studying each item of Harry's dress, and endeavoring to cover his design +with interesting conversation. "'N there's Massachusetts.", + +"It's not far off." + +"I've heern Massachusetts was a-----of a place. Les, see, what state's +Massachusetts in?" + +"Massachusetts," kindly replied Harry, "is in the state of Boston." + +"Abolish'n wan't it? They must a cost right smart," referring to the +boots. + +Harry shouldered his rod and went to the field, tramped over the prairie +by day, and figured up results at night, with the utmost cheerfulness and +industry, and plotted the line on the profile paper, without, however, +the least idea of engineering practical or theoretical. Perhaps there +was not a great deal of scientific knowledge in the entire corps, nor was +very much needed. They were making, what is called a preliminary survey, +and the chief object of a preliminary survey was to get up an excitement +about the road, to interest every town in that part of the state in it, +under the belief that the road would run through it, and to get the aid +of every planter upon the prospect that a station would be on his land. + +Mr. Jeff Thompson was the most popular engineer who could be found for +this work. He did not bother himself much about details or +practicabilities of location, but ran merrily along, sighting from the +top of one divide to the top of another, and striking "plumb" every town +site and big plantation within twenty or thirty miles of his route. In +his own language he "just went booming." + +This course gave Harry an opportunity, as he said, to learn the practical +details of engineering, and it gave Philip a chance to see the country, +and to judge for himself what prospect of a fortune it offered. Both he +and Harry got the "refusal" of more than one plantation as they went +along, and wrote urgent letters to their eastern correspondents, upon the +beauty of the land and the certainty that it would quadruple in value as +soon as the road was finally located. It seemed strange to them that +capitalists did not flock out there and secure this land. + +They had not been in the field over two weeks when Harry wrote to his +friend Col. Sellers that he'd better be on the move, for the line was +certain to go to Stone's Landing. Any one who looked at the line on the +map, as it was laid down from day to day, would have been uncertain which +way it was going; but Jeff had declared that in his judgment the only +practicable route from the point they then stood on was to follow the +divide to Stone's Landing, and it was generally understood that that town +would be the next one hit. + +"We'll make it, boys," said the chief, "if we have to go in a balloon." + +And make it they did In less than a week, this indomitable engineer had +carried his moving caravan over slues and branches, across bottoms and +along divides, and pitched his tents in the very heart of the city of +Stone's Landing. + +"Well, I'll be dashed," was heard the cheery voice of Mr. Thompson, as he +stepped outside the tent door at sunrise next morning. "If this don't +get me. I say, yon, Grayson, get out your sighting iron and see if you +can find old Sellers' town. Blame me if we wouldn't have run plumb by it +if twilight had held on a little longer. Oh! Sterling, Brierly, get up +and see the city. There's a steamboat just coming round the bend." And +Jeff roared with laughter. "The mayor'll be round here to breakfast." + +The fellows turned out of the tents, rubbing their eyes, and stared about +them. They were camped on the second bench of the narrow bottom of a +crooked, sluggish stream, that was some five rods wide in the present +good stage of water. Before them were a dozen log cabins, with stick and +mud chimneys, irregularly disposed on either side of a not very well +defined road, which did not seem to know its own mind exactly, and, after +straggling through the town, wandered off over the rolling prairie in an +uncertain way, as if it had started for nowhere and was quite likely to +reach its destination. Just as it left the town, however, it was cheered +and assisted by a guide-board, upon which was the legend "10 Mils to +Hawkeye." + +The road had never been made except by the travel over it, and at this +season--the rainy June--it was a way of ruts cut in the black soil, and +of fathomless mud-holes. In the principal street of the city, it had +received more attention; for hogs; great and small, rooted about in it +and wallowed in it, turning the street into a liquid quagmire which could +only be crossed on pieces of plank thrown here and there. + +About the chief cabin, which was the store and grocery of this mart of +trade, the mud was more liquid than elsewhere, and the rude platform in +front of it and the dry-goods boxes mounted thereon were places of refuge +for all the loafers of the place. Down by the stream was a dilapidated +building which served for a hemp warehouse, and a shaky wharf extended +out from it, into the water. In fact a flat-boat was there moored by it, +it's setting poles lying across the gunwales. Above the town the stream +was crossed by a crazy wooden bridge, the supports of which leaned all +ways in the soggy soil; the absence of a plank here and there in the +flooring made the crossing of the bridge faster than a walk an offense +not necessary to be prohibited by law. + +"This, gentlemen," said Jeff, "is Columbus River, alias Goose Run. If it +was widened, and deepened, and straightened, and made, long enough, it +would be one of the finest rivers in the western country." + +As the sun rose and sent his level beams along the stream, the thin +stratum of mist, or malaria, rose also and dispersed, but the light was +not able to enliven the dull water nor give any hint of its apparently +fathomless depth. Venerable mud-turtles crawled up and roosted upon the +old logs in the stream, their backs glistening in the sun, the first +inhabitants of the metropolis to begin the active business of the day. + +It was not long, however, before smoke began to issue from the city +chimneys; and before the engineers, had finished their breakfast they +were the object of the curious inspection of six or eight boys and men, +who lounged into the camp and gazed about them with languid interest, +their hands in their pockets every one. + +"Good morning; gentlemen," called out the chief engineer, from the table. + +"Good mawning," drawled out the spokesman of the party. "I allow +thish-yers the railroad, I heern it was a-comin'." + +"Yes, this is the railroad; all but the rails and the ironhorse." + +"I reckon you kin git all the rails you want oaten my white oak timber +over, thar," replied the first speaker, who appeared to be a man of +property and willing to strike up a trade. + +"You'll have to negotiate with the contractors about the rails, sir," +said Jeff; "here's Mr. Brierly, I've no doubt would like to buy your +rails when the time comes." + +"O," said the man, "I thought maybe you'd fetch the whole bilin along +with you. But if you want rails, I've got em, haint I Eph." + +"Heaps," said Eph, without taking his eyes off the group at the table. + +"Well," said Mr. Thompson, rising from his seat and moving towards his +tent, "the railroad has come to Stone's Landing, sure; I move we take a +drink on it all round." + +The proposal met with universal favor. Jeff gave prosperity to Stone's +Landing and navigation to Goose Run, and the toast was washed down with +gusto, in the simple fluid of corn; and with the return compliment that a +rail road was a good thing, and that Jeff Thompson was no slouch. + +About ten o'clock a horse and wagon was descried making a slow approach +to the camp over the prairie. As it drew near, the wagon was seen to +contain a portly gentleman, who hitched impatiently forward on his seat, +shook the reins and gently touched up his horse, in the vain attempt to +communicate his own energy to that dull beast, and looked eagerly at the +tents. When the conveyance at length drew up to Mr. Thompson's door, +the gentleman descended with great deliberation, straightened himself up, +rubbed his hands, and beaming satisfaction from every part of his radiant +frame, advanced to the group that was gathered to welcome him, and which +had saluted him by name as soon as he came within hearing. + +"Welcome to Napoleon, gentlemen, welcome. I am proud to see you here +Mr. Thompson. You are, looking well Mr. Sterling. This is the country, +sir. Right glad to see you Mr. Brierly. You got that basket of +champagne? No? Those blasted river thieves! I'll never send anything +more by 'em. The best brand, Roederer. The last I had in my cellar, +from a lot sent me by Sir George Gore--took him out on a buffalo hunt, +when he visited our, country. Is always sending me some trifle. You +haven't looked about any yet, gentlemen? It's in the rough yet, in the +rough. Those buildings will all have to come down. That's the place for +the public square, Court House, hotels, churches, jail--all that sort of +thing. About where we stand, the deepo. How does that strike your +engineering eye, Mr. Thompson? Down yonder the business streets, running +to the wharves. The University up there, on rising ground, sightly +place, see the river for miles. That's Columbus river, only forty-nine +miles to the Missouri. You see what it is, placid, steady, no current to +interfere with navigation, wants widening in places and dredging, dredge +out the harbor and raise a levee in front of the town; made by nature on +purpose for a mart. Look at all this country, not another building +within ten miles, no other navigable stream, lay of the land points right +here; hemp, tobacco, corn, must come here. The railroad will do it, +Napoleon won't know itself in a year." + +"Don't now evidently," said Philip aside to Harry. "Have you breakfasted +Colonel?" + +"Hastily. Cup of coffee. Can't trust any coffee I don't import myself. +But I put up a basket of provisions,--wife would put in a few delicacies, +women always will, and a half dozen of that Burgundy, I was telling you +of Mr. Briefly. By the way, you never got to dine with me." And the +Colonel strode away to the wagon and looked under the seat for the +basket. + +Apparently it was not there. For the Colonel raised up the flap, looked +in front and behind, and then exclaimed, + +"Confound it. That comes of not doing a thing yourself. I trusted to +the women folks to set that basket in the wagon, and it ain't there." + +The camp cook speedily prepared a savory breakfast for the Colonel, +broiled chicken, eggs, corn-bread, and coffee, to which he did ample +justice, and topped off with a drop of Old Bourbon, from Mr. Thompson's +private store, a brand which he said he knew well, he should think it +came from his own sideboard. + +While the engineer corps went to the field, to run back a couple of miles +and ascertain, approximately, if a road could ever get down to the +Landing, and to sight ahead across the Run, and see if it could ever get +out again, Col. Sellers and Harry sat down and began to roughly map out +the city of Napoleon on a large piece of drawing paper. + +"I've got the refusal of a mile square here," said the Colonel, "in our +names, for a year, with a quarter interest reserved for the four owners." + +They laid out the town liberally, not lacking room, leaving space for the +railroad to come in, and for the river as it was to be when improved. + +The engineers reported that the railroad could come in, by taking a +little sweep and crossing the stream on a high bridge, but the grades +would be steep. Col. Sellers said he didn't care so much about the +grades, if the road could only be made to reach the elevators on the +river. The next day Mr. Thompson made a hasty survey of the stream for a +mile or two, so that the Colonel and Harry were enabled to show on their +map how nobly that would accommodate the city. Jeff took a little +writing from the Colonel and Harry for a prospective share but Philip +declined to join in, saying that he had no money, and didn't want to make +engagements he couldn't fulfill. + +The next morning the camp moved on, followed till it was out of sight by +the listless eyes of the group in front of the store, one of whom +remarked that, "he'd be doggoned if he ever expected to see that railroad +any mo'." + +Harry went with the Colonel to Hawkeye to complete their arrangements, a +part of which was the preparation of a petition to congress for the +improvement of the navigation of Columbus River. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +Eight years have passed since the death of Mr. Hawkins. Eight years are +not many in the life of a nation or the history of a state, but they +maybe years of destiny that shall fix the current of the century +following. Such years were those that followed the little scrimmage on +Lexington Common. Such years were those that followed the double-shotted +demand for the surrender of Fort Sumter. History is never done with +inquiring of these years, and summoning witnesses about them, and trying +to understand their significance. + +The eight years in America from 1860 to 1868 uprooted institutions that +were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the +social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the +entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of +two or three generations. + +As we are accustomed to interpret the economy of providence, the life of +the individual is as nothing to that of the nation or the race; but who +can say, in the broader view and the more intelligent weight of values, +that the life of one man is not more than that of a nationality, and that +there is not a tribunal where the tragedy of one human soul shall not +seem more significant than the overturning of any human institution +whatever? + +When one thinks of the tremendous forces of the upper and the nether +world which play for the mastery of the soul of a woman during the few +years in which she passes from plastic girlhood to the ripe maturity of +womanhood, he may well stand in awe before the momentous drama. + +What capacities she has of purity, tenderness, goodness; what capacities +of vileness, bitterness and evil. Nature must needs be lavish with the +mother and creator of men, and centre in her all the possibilities of +life. And a few critical years can decide whether her life is to be full +of sweetness and light, whether she is to be the vestal of a holy temple, +or whether she will be the fallen priestess of a desecrated shrine. +There are women, it is true, who seem to be capable neither of rising +much nor of falling much, and whom a conventional life saves from any +special development of character. + +But Laura was not one of them. She had the fatal gift of beauty, and +that more fatal gift which does not always accompany mere beauty, the +power of fascination, a power that may, indeed, exist without beauty. +She had will, and pride and courage and ambition, and she was left to be +very much her own guide at the age when romance comes to the aid of +passion, and when the awakening powers of her vigorous mind had little +object on which to discipline themselves. + +The tremendous conflict that was fought in this girl's soul none of those +about her knew, and very few knew that her life had in it anything +unusual or romantic or strange. + +Those were troublous days in Hawkeye as well as in most other Missouri +towns, days of confusion, when between Unionist and Confederate +occupations, sudden maraudings and bush-whackings and raids, individuals +escaped observation or comment in actions that would have filled the town +with scandal in quiet times. + +Fortunately we only need to deal with Laura's life at this period +historically, and look back upon such portions of it as will serve to +reveal the woman as she was at the time of the arrival of Mr. Harry +Brierly in Hawkeye. + +The Hawkins family were settled there, and had a hard enough struggle +with poverty and the necessity of keeping up appearances in accord with +their own family pride and the large expectations they secretly cherished +of a fortune in the Knobs of East Tennessee. How pinched they were +perhaps no one knew but Clay, to whom they looked for almost their whole +support. Washington had been in Hawkeye off and on, attracted away +occasionally by some tremendous speculation, from which he invariably +returned to Gen. Boswell's office as poor as he went. He was the +inventor of no one knew how many useless contrivances, which were not +worth patenting, and his years had been passed in dreaming and planning +to no purpose; until he was now a man of about thirty, without a +profession or a permanent occupation, a tall, brown-haired, dreamy person +of the best intentions and the frailest resolution. Probably however +the, eight years had been happier to him than to any others in his +circle, for the time had been mostly spent in a blissful dream of the +coming of enormous wealth. + +He went out with a company from Hawkeye to the war, and was not wanting +in courage, but he would have been a better soldier if he had been less +engaged in contrivances for circumventing the enemy by strategy unknown +to the books. + +It happened to him to be captured in one of his self-appointed +expeditions, but the federal colonel released him, after a short +examination, satisfied that he could most injure the confederate forces +opposed to the Unionists by returning him to his regiment. Col. Sellers +was of course a prominent man during the war. He was captain of the home +guards in Hawkeye, and he never left home except upon one occasion, when +on the strength of a rumor, he executed a flank movement and fortified +Stone's Landing, a place which no one unacquainted with the country would +be likely to find. + +"Gad," said the Colonel afterwards, "the Landing is the key to upper +Missouri, and it is the only place the enemy never captured. If other +places had been defended as well as that was, the result would have been +different, sir." + +The Colonel had his own theories about war as he had in other things. +If everybody had stayed at home as he did, he said, the South never would +have been conquered. For what would there have been to conquer? Mr. +Jeff Davis was constantly writing him to take command of a corps in the +confederate army, but Col. Sellers said, no, his duty was at home. And +he was by no means idle. He was the inventor of the famous air torpedo, +which came very near destroying the Union armies in Missouri, and the +city of St. Louis itself. + +His plan was to fill a torpedo with Greek fire and poisonous and deadly +missiles, attach it to a balloon, and then let it sail away over the +hostile camp and explode at the right moment, when the time-fuse burned +out. He intended to use this invention in the capture of St. Louis, +exploding his torpedoes over the city, and raining destruction upon it +until the army of occupation would gladly capitulate. He was unable to +procure the Greek fire, but he constructed a vicious torpedo which would +have answered the purpose, but the first one prematurely exploded in his +wood-house, blowing it clean away, and setting fire to his house. The +neighbors helped him put out the conflagration, but they discouraged any +more experiments of that sort. + +The patriotic old gentleman, however, planted so much powder and so many +explosive contrivances in the roads leading into Hawkeye, and then forgot +the exact spots of danger, that people were afraid to travel the +highways, and used to come to town across the fields, The Colonel's motto +was, "Millions for defence but not one cent for tribute." + +When Laura came to Hawkeye she might have forgotten the annoyances of the +gossips of Murpheysburg and have out lived the bitterness that was +growing in her heart, if she had been thrown less upon herself, or if the +surroundings of her life had been more congenial and helpful. But she +had little society, less and less as she grew older that was congenial to +her, and her mind preyed upon itself; and the mystery of her birth at +once chagrined her and raised in her the most extravagant expectations. +She was proud and she felt the sting of poverty. She could not but be +conscious of her beauty also, and she was vain of that, and came to take +a sort of delight in the exercise of her fascinations upon the rather +loutish young men who came in her way and whom she despised. + +There was another world opened to her--a world of books. But it was not +the best world of that sort, for the small libraries she had access to in +Hawkeye were decidedly miscellaneous, and largely made up of romances and +fictions which fed her imagination with the most exaggerated notions of +life, and showed her men and women in a very false sort of heroism. From +these stories she learned what a woman of keen intellect and some culture +joined to beauty and fascination of manner, might expect to accomplish in +society as she read of it; and along with these ideas she imbibed other +very crude ones in regard to the emancipation of woman. + +There were also other books-histories, biographies of distinguished +people, travels in far lands, poems, especially those of Byron, Scott and +Shelley and Moore, which she eagerly absorbed, and appropriated therefrom +what was to her liking. Nobody in Hawkeye had read so much or, after a +fashion, studied so diligently as Laura. She passed for an accomplished +girl, and no doubt thought herself one, as she was, judged by any +standard near her. + +During the war there came to Hawkeye a confederate officer, Col. Selby, +who was stationed there for a time, in command of that district. He was +a handsome, soldierly man of thirty years, a graduate of the University +of Virginia, and of distinguished family, if his story might be believed, +and, it was evident, a man of the world and of extensive travel and +adventure. + +To find in such an out of the way country place a woman like Laura was a +piece of good luck upon which Col. Selby congratulated himself. He was +studiously polite to her and treated her with a consideration to which +she was unaccustomed. She had read of such men, but she had never seen +one before, one so high-bred, so noble in sentiment, so entertaining in +conversation, so engaging in manner. + +It is a long story; unfortunately it is an old story, and it need not be +dwelt on. Laura loved him, and believed that his love for her was as +pure and deep as her own. She worshipped him and would have counted her +life a little thing to give him, if he would only love her and let her +feed the hunger of her heart upon him. + +The passion possessed her whole being, and lifted her up, till she seemed +to walk on air. It was all true, then, the romances she had read, the +bliss of love she had dreamed of. Why had she never noticed before how +blithesome the world was, how jocund with love; the birds sang it, the +trees whispered it to her as she passed, the very flowers beneath her +feet strewed the way as for a bridal march. + +When the Colonel went away they were engaged to be married, as soon as he +could make certain arrangements which he represented to be necessary, and +quit the army. He wrote to her from Harding, a small town in the +southwest corner of the state, saying that he should be held in the +service longer than he had expected, but that it would not be more than a +few months, then he should be at liberty to take her to Chicago where he +had property, and should have business, either now or as soon as the war +was over, which he thought could not last long. Meantime why should they +be separated? He was established in comfortable quarters, and if she +could find company and join him, they would be married, and gain so many +more months of happiness. + +Was woman ever prudent when she loved? Laura went to Harding, the +neighbors supposed to nurse Washington who had fallen ill there. +Her engagement was, of course, known in Hawkeye, and was indeed a matter +of pride to her family. Mrs. Hawkins would have told the first inquirer +that. Laura had gone to be married; but Laura had cautioned her; she did +not want to be thought of, she said, as going in search of a husband; let +the news come back after she was married. + +So she traveled to Harding on the pretence we have mentioned, and was +married. She was married, but something must have happened on that very +day or the next that alarmed her. Washington did not know then or after +what it was, but Laura bound him not to send news of her marriage to +Hawkeye yet, and to enjoin her mother not to speak of it. Whatever cruel +suspicion or nameless dread this was, Laura tried bravely to put it away, +and not let it cloud her happiness. + +Communication that summer, as may be imagined, was neither regular nor +frequent between the remote confederate camp at Harding and Hawkeye, and +Laura was in a measure lost sight of--indeed, everyone had troubles +enough of his own without borrowing from his neighbors. + +Laura had given herself utterly to her husband, and if he had faults, if +he was selfish, if he was sometimes coarse, if he was dissipated, she did +not or would not see it. It was the passion of her life, the time when +her whole nature went to flood tide and swept away all barriers. Was her +husband ever cold or indifferent? She shut her eyes to everything but +her sense of possession of her idol. + +Three months passed. One morning her husband informed her that he had +been ordered South, and must go within two hours. + +"I can be ready," said Laura, cheerfully. + +"But I can't take you. You must go back to Hawkeye." + +"Can't-take-me?" Laura asked, with wonder in her eyes. "I can't live +without you. You said-----" + +"O bother what I said,"--and the Colonel took up his sword to buckle it +on, and then continued coolly, "the fact is Laura, our romance is played +out." + +Laura heard, but she did not comprehend. She caught his arm and cried, +"George, how can you joke so cruelly? I will go any where with you. +I will wait any where. I can't go back to Hawkeye." + +"Well, go where you like. Perhaps," continued he with a sneer, "you +would do as well to wait here, for another colonel." + +Laura's brain whirled. She did not yet comprehend. "What does this +mean? Where are you going?" + +"It means," said the officer, in measured words, "that you haven't +anything to show for a legal marriage, and that I am going to New +Orleans." + +"It's a lie, George, it's a lie. I am your wife. I shall go. I shall +follow you to New Orleans." + +"Perhaps my wife might not like it!" + +Laura raised her head, her eyes flamed with fire, she tried to utter a +cry, and fell senseless on the floor. + +When she came to herself the Colonel was gone. Washington Hawkins stood +at her bedside. Did she come to herself? Was there anything left in her +heart but hate and bitterness, a sense of an infamous wrong at the hands +of the only man she had ever loved? + +She returned to Hawkeye. With the exception of Washington and his +mother, no one knew what had happened. The neighbors supposed that the +engagement with Col. Selby had fallen through. Laura was ill for a long +time, but she recovered; she had that resolution in her that could +conquer death almost. And with her health came back her beauty, and an +added fascination, a something that might be mistaken for sadness. Is +there a beauty in the knowledge of evil, a beauty that shines out in the +face of a person whose inward life is transformed by some terrible +experience? Is the pathos in the eyes of the Beatrice Cenci from her +guilt or her innocence? + +Laura was not much changed. The lovely woman had a devil in her heart. +That was all. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +Mr. Harry Brierly drew his pay as an engineer while he was living at the +City Hotel in Hawkeye. Mr. Thompson had been kind enough to say that it +didn't make any difference whether he was with the corps or not; and +although Harry protested to the Colonel daily and to Washington Hawkins +that he must go back at once to the line and superintend the lay-out with +reference to his contract, yet he did not go, but wrote instead long +letters to Philip, instructing him to keep his eye out, and to let him +know when any difficulty occurred that required his presence. + +Meantime Harry blossomed out in the society of Hawkeye, as he did in any +society where fortune cast him and he had the slightest opportunity to +expand. Indeed the talents of a rich and accomplished young fellow like +Harry were not likely to go unappreciated in such a place. A land +operator, engaged in vast speculations, a favorite in the select circles +of New York, in correspondence with brokers and bankers, intimate with +public men at Washington, one who could play the guitar and touch the +banjo lightly, and who had an eye for a pretty girl, and knew the +language of flattery, was welcome everywhere in Hawkeye. Even Miss Laura +Hawkins thought it worth while to use her fascinations upon him, and to +endeavor to entangle the volatile fellow in the meshes of her +attractions. + +"Gad," says Harry to the Colonel, "she's a superb creature, she'd make a +stir in New York, money or no money. There are men I know would give her +a railroad or an opera house, or whatever she wanted--at least they'd +promise." + +Harry had a way of looking at women as he looked at anything else in the +world he wanted, and he half resolved to appropriate Miss Laura, during +his stay in Hawkeye. Perhaps the Colonel divined his thoughts, or was +offended at Harry's talk, for he replied, + +"No nonsense, Mr. Brierly. Nonsense won't do in Hawkeye, not with my +friends. The Hawkins' blood is good blood, all the way from Tennessee. +The Hawkinses are under the weather now, but their Tennessee property is +millions when it comes into market." + +"Of course, Colonel. Not the least offense intended. But you can see +she is a fascinating woman. I was only thinking, as to this +appropriation, now, what such a woman could do in Washington. All +correct, too, all correct. Common thing, I assure you in Washington; the +wives of senators, representatives, cabinet officers, all sorts of wives, +and some who are not wives, use their influence. You want an +appointment? Do you go to Senator X? Not much. You get on the right +side of his wife. Is it an appropriation? You'd go 'straight to the +Committee, or to the Interior office, I suppose? You'd learn better than +that. It takes a woman to get any thing through the Land Office: I tell +you, Miss Laura would fascinate an appropriation right through the Senate +and the House of Representatives in one session, if she was in +Washington, as your friend, Colonel, of course as your friend." + +"Would you have her sign our petition?" asked the Colonel, innocently. + +Harry laughed. "Women don't get anything by petitioning Congress; nobody +does, that's for form. Petitions are referred somewhere, and that's the +last of them; you can't refer a handsome woman so easily, when she is +present. They prefer 'em mostly." + +The petition however was elaborately drawn up, with a glowing description +of Napoleon and the adjacent country, and a statement of the absolute +necessity to the prosperity of that region and of one of the stations on +the great through route to the Pacific, of the, immediate improvement of +Columbus River; to this was appended a map of the city and a survey of +the river. It was signed by all the people at Stone's Landing who could +write their names, by Col. Beriah Sellers, and the Colonel agreed to have +the names headed by all the senators and representatives from the state +and by a sprinkling of ex-governors and ex-members of congress. When +completed it was a formidable document. Its preparation and that of more +minute plots of the new city consumed the valuable time of Sellers and +Harry for many weeks, and served to keep them both in the highest +spirits. + +In the eyes of Washington Hawkins, Harry was a superior being, a man who +was able to bring things to pass in a way that excited his enthusiasm. +He never tired of listening to his stories of what he had done and of +what he was going to do. As for Washington, Harry thought he was a man +of ability and comprehension, but "too visionary," he told the Colonel. +The Colonel said he might be right, but he had never noticed anything +visionary about him. + +"He's got his plans, sir. God bless my soul, at his age, I was full of +plans. But experience sobers a man, I never touch any thing now that +hasn't been weighed in my judgment; and when Beriah Sellers puts his +judgment on a thing, there it is." + +Whatever might have been Harry's intentions with regard to Laura, he saw +more and more of her every day, until he got to be restless and nervous +when he was not with her. + +That consummate artist in passion allowed him to believe that the +fascination was mainly on his side, and so worked upon his vanity, while +inflaming his ardor, that he scarcely knew what he was about. Her +coolness and coyness were even made to appear the simple precautions of a +modest timidity, and attracted him even more than the little tendernesses +into which she was occasionally surprised. He could never be away from +her long, day or evening; and in a short time their intimacy was the town +talk. She played with him so adroitly that Harry thought she was +absorbed in love for him, and yet he was amazed that he did not get on +faster in his conquest. + +And when he thought of it, he was piqued as well. A country girl, poor +enough, that was evident; living with her family in a cheap and most +unattractive frame house, such as carpenters build in America, scantily +furnished and unadorned; without the adventitious aids of dress or jewels +or the fine manners of society--Harry couldn't understand it. But she +fascinated him, and held him just beyond the line of absolute familiarity +at the same time. While he was with her she made him forget that the +Hawkins' house was nothing but a wooden tenement, with four small square +rooms on the ground floor and a half story; it might have been a palace +for aught he knew. + +Perhaps Laura was older than Harry. She was, at any rate, at that ripe +age when beauty in woman seems more solid than in the budding period of +girlhood, and she had come to understand her powers perfectly, and to +know exactly how much of the susceptibility and archness of the girl it +was profitable to retain. She saw that many women, with the best +intentions, make a mistake of carrying too much girlishness into +womanhood. Such a woman would have attracted Harry at any time, but only +a woman with a cool brain and exquisite art could have made him lose his +head in this way; for Harry thought himself a man of the world. The +young fellow never dreamed that he was merely being experimented on; he +was to her a man of another society and another culture, different from +that she had any knowledge of except in books, and she was not unwilling +to try on him the fascinations of her mind and person. + +For Laura had her dreams. She detested the narrow limits in which her +lot was cast, she hated poverty. Much of her reading had been of modern +works of fiction, written by her own sex, which had revealed to her +something of her own powers and given her indeed, an exaggerated notion +of the influence, the wealth, the position a woman may attain who has +beauty and talent and ambition and a little culture, and is not too +scrupulous in the use of them. She wanted to be rich, she wanted luxury, +she wanted men at her feet, her slaves, and she had not--thanks to some +of the novels she had read--the nicest discrimination between notoriety +and reputation; perhaps she did not know how fatal notoriety usually is +to the bloom of womanhood. + +With the other Hawkins children Laura had been brought up in the belief +that they had inherited a fortune in the Tennessee Lands. She did not by +any means share all the delusion of the family; but her brain was not +seldom busy with schemes about it. Washington seemed to her only to +dream of it and to be willing to wait for its riches to fall upon him in +a golden shower; but she was impatient, and wished she were a man to take +hold of the business. + +"You men must enjoy your schemes and your activity and liberty to go +about the world," she said to Harry one day, when he had been talking of +New York and Washington and his incessant engagements. + +"Oh, yes," replied that martyr to business, "it's all well enough, if you +don't have too much of it, but it only has one object." + +"What is that?" + +"If a woman doesn't know, it's useless to tell her. What do you suppose +I am staying in Hawkeye for, week after week, when I ought to be with my +corps?" + +"I suppose it's your business with Col. Sellers about Napoleon, you've +always told me so," answered Laura, with a look intended to contradict +her words. + +"And now I tell you that is all arranged, I suppose you'll tell me I +ought to go?" + +"Harry!" exclaimed Laura, touching his arm and letting her pretty hand +rest there a moment. "Why should I want you to go away? The only person +in Hawkeye who understands me." + +"But you refuse to understand me," replied Harry, flattered but still +petulant. "You are like an iceberg, when we are alone." + +Laura looked up with wonder in her great eyes, and something like a blush +suffusing her face, followed by a look of langour that penetrated Harry's +heart as if it had been longing. + +"Did I ever show any want of confidence in you, Harry?" And she gave him +her hand, which Harry pressed with effusion--something in her manner told +him that he must be content with that favor. + +It was always so. She excited his hopes and denied him, inflamed his +passion and restrained it, and wound him in her toils day by day. To +what purpose? It was keen delight to Laura to prove that she had power +over men. + +Laura liked to hear about life at the east, and especially about the +luxurious society in which Mr. Brierly moved when he was at home. It +pleased her imagination to fancy herself a queen in it. + +"You should be a winter in Washington," Harry said. + +"But I have no acquaintances there." + +"Don't know any of the families of the congressmen? They like to have a +pretty woman staying with them." + +"Not one." + +"Suppose Col. Sellers should, have business there; say, about this +Columbus River appropriation?" + +"Sellers!" and Laura laughed. + +"You needn't laugh. Queerer things have happened. Sellers knows +everybody from Missouri, and from the West, too, for that matter. He'd +introduce you to Washington life quick enough. It doesn't need a crowbar +to break your way into society there as it does in Philadelphia. It's +democratic, Washington is. Money or beauty will open any door. If I +were a handsome woman, I shouldn't want any better place than the capital +to pick up a prince or a fortune." + +"Thank you," replied Laura. "But I prefer the quiet of home, and the +love of those I know;" and her face wore a look of sweet contentment and +unworldliness that finished Mr. Harry Brierly for the day. + +Nevertheless, the hint that Harry had dropped fell upon good ground, and +bore fruit an hundred fold; it worked in her mind until she had built up +a plan on it, and almost a career for herself. Why not, she said, why +shouldn't I do as other women have done? She took the first opportunity +to see Col. Sellers, and to sound him about the Washington visit. How +was he getting on with his navigation scheme, would it be likely to take +him from home to Jefferson City; or to Washington, perhaps? + +"Well, maybe. If the people of Napoleon want me to go to Washington, and +look after that matter, I might tear myself from my home. It's been +suggested to me, but--not a word of it to Mrs. Sellers and the children. +Maybe they wouldn't like to think of their father in Washington. But +Dilworthy, Senator Dilworthy, says to me, 'Colonel, you are the man, you +could influence more votes than any one else on such a measure, an old +settler, a man of the people, you know the wants of Missouri; you've a +respect for religion too, says he, and know how the cause of the gospel +goes with improvements: Which is true enough, Miss Laura, and hasn't been +enough thought of in connection with Napoleon. He's an able man, +Dilworthy, and a good man. A man has got to be good to succeed as he +has. He's only been in Congress a few years, and he must be worth a +million. First thing in the morning when he stayed with me he asked +about family prayers, whether we had 'em before or after breakfast. +I hated to disappoint the Senator, but I had to out with it, tell him we +didn't have 'em, not steady. He said he understood, business +interruptions and all that, some men were well enough without, but as for +him he never neglected the ordinances of religion. He doubted if the +Columbus River appropriation would succeed if we did not invoke the +Divine Blessing on it." + +Perhaps it is unnecessary to say to the reader that Senator Dilworthy had +not stayed with Col. Sellers while he was in Hawkeye; this visit to his +house being only one of the Colonel's hallucinations--one of those +instant creations of his fertile fancy, which were always flashing into +his brain and out of his mouth in the course of any conversation and +without interrupting the flow of it. + +During the summer Philip rode across the country and made a short visit +in Hawkeye, giving Harry an opportunity to show him the progress that he +and the Colonel had made in their operation at Stone's Landing, to +introduce him also to Laura, and to borrow a little money when he +departed. Harry bragged about his conquest, as was his habit, and took +Philip round to see his western prize. + +Laura received Mr. Philip with a courtesy and a slight hauteur that +rather surprised and not a little interested him. He saw at once that +she was older than Harry, and soon made up his mind that she was leading +his friend a country dance to which he was unaccustomed. At least he +thought he saw that, and half hinted as much to Harry, who flared up at +once; but on a second visit Philip was not so sure, the young lady was +certainly kind and friendly and almost confiding with Harry, and treated +Philip with the greatest consideration. She deferred to his opinions, +and listened attentively when he talked, and in time met his frank manner +with an equal frankness, so that he was quite convinced that whatever she +might feel towards Harry, she was sincere with him. Perhaps his manly +way did win her liking. Perhaps in her mind, she compared him with +Harry, and recognized in him a man to whom a woman might give her whole +soul, recklessly and with little care if she lost it. Philip was not +invincible to her beauty nor to the intellectual charm of her presence. + +The week seemed very short that he passed in Hawkeye, and when he bade +Laura good by, he seemed to have known her a year. + +"We shall see you again, Mr. Sterling," she said as she gave him her +hand, with just a shade of sadness in her handsome eyes. + +And when he turned away she followed him with a look that might have +disturbed his serenity, if he had not at the moment had a little square +letter in his breast pocket, dated at Philadelphia, and signed "Ruth." + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +The visit of Senator Abner Dilworthy was an event in Hawkeye. When a +Senator, whose place is in Washington moving among the Great and guiding +the destinies of the nation, condescends to mingle among the people and +accept the hospitalities of such a place as Hawkeye, the honor is not +considered a light one. All, parties are flattered by it and politics +are forgotten in the presence of one so distinguished among his fellows. + +Senator Dilworthy, who was from a neighboring state, had been a Unionist +in the darkest days of his country, and had thriven by it, but was that +any reason why Col. Sellers, who had been a confederate and had not +thriven by it, should give him the cold shoulder? + +The Senator was the guest of his old friend Gen. Boswell, but it almost +appeared that he was indebted to Col. Sellers for the unreserved +hospitalities of the town. It was the large hearted Colonel who, in a +manner, gave him the freedom of the city. + +"You are known here, sir," said the Colonel, "and Hawkeye is proud of +you. You will find every door open, and a welcome at every hearthstone. +I should insist upon your going to my house, if you were not claimed by +your older friend Gen. Boswell. But you will mingle with our people, and +you will see here developments that will surprise you." + +The Colonel was so profuse in his hospitality that he must have made the +impression upon himself that he had entertained the Senator at his own +mansion during his stay; at any rate, he afterwards always spoke of him +as his guest, and not seldom referred to the Senator's relish of certain +viands on his table. He did, in fact, press him to dine upon the morning +of the day the Senator was going away. + +Senator Dilworthy was large and portly, though not tall--a pleasant +spoken man, a popular man with the people. + +He took a lively interest in the town and all the surrounding country, +and made many inquiries as to the progress of agriculture, of education, +and of religion, and especially as to the condition of the emancipated +race. + +"Providence," he said, "has placed them in our hands, and although you +and I, General, might have chosen a different destiny for them, under the +Constitution, yet Providence knows best." + +"You can't do much with 'em," interrupted Col. Sellers. "They are a +speculating race, sir, disinclined to work for white folks without +security, planning how to live by only working for themselves. Idle, +sir, there's my garden just a ruin of weeds. Nothing practical in 'em." + +"There is some truth in your observation, Colonel, but you must educate +them." + +"You educate the niggro and you make him more speculating than he was +before. If he won't stick to any industry except for himself now, what +will he do then?" + +"But, Colonel, the negro when educated will be more able to make his +speculations fruitful." + +"Never, sir, never. He would only have a wider scope to injure himself. +A niggro has no grasp, sir. Now, a white man can conceive great +operations, and carry them out; a niggro can't." + +"Still," replied the Senator, "granting that he might injure himself in a +worldly point of view, his elevation through education would multiply his +chances for the hereafter--which is the important thing after all, +Colonel. And no matter what the result is, we must fulfill our duty by +this being." + +"I'd elevate his soul," promptly responded the Colonel; "that's just it; +you can't make his soul too immortal, but I wouldn't touch him, himself. +Yes, sir! make his soul immortal, but don't disturb the niggro as he +is." + +Of course one of the entertainments offered the Senator was a public +reception, held in the court house, at which he made a speech to his +fellow citizens. Col. Sellers was master of ceremonies. He escorted the +band from the city hotel to Gen. Boswell's; he marshalled the procession +of Masons, of Odd Fellows, and of Firemen, the Good Templars, the Sons of +Temperance, the Cadets of Temperance, the Daughters of Rebecca, the +Sunday School children, and citizens generally, which followed the +Senator to the court house; he bustled about the room long after every +one else was seated, and loudly cried "Order!" in the dead silence which +preceded the introduction of the Senator by Gen. Boswell. The occasion +was one to call out his finest powers of personal appearance, and one he +long dwelt on with pleasure. + +This not being an edition of the Congressional Globe it is impossible to +give Senator Dilworthy's speech in full. He began somewhat as follows: + +"Fellow citizens: It gives me great pleasure to thus meet and mingle with +you, to lay aside for a moment the heavy duties of an official and +burdensome station, and confer in familiar converse with my friends in +your great state. The good opinion of my fellow citizens of all sections +is the sweetest solace in all my anxieties. I look forward with longing +to the time when I can lay aside the cares of office--" ["dam sight," +shouted a tipsy fellow near the door. Cries of "put him out."] + +"My friends, do not remove him. Let the misguided man stay. I see that +he is a victim of that evil which is swallowing up public virtue and +sapping the foundation of society. As I was saying, when I can lay down +the cares of office and retire to the sweets of private life in some such +sweet, peaceful, intelligent, wide-awake and patriotic place as Hawkeye +(applause). I have traveled much, I have seen all parts of our glorious +union, but I have never seen a lovelier village than yours, or one that +has more signs of commercial and industrial and religious prosperity +--(more applause)." + +The Senator then launched into a sketch of our great country, and dwelt +for an hour or more upon its prosperity and the dangers which threatened +it. + +He then touched reverently upon the institutions of religion, and upon +the necessity of private purity, if we were to have any public morality. +"I trust," he said, "that there are children within the sound of my +voice," and after some remarks to them, the Senator closed with an +apostrophe to "the genius of American Liberty, walking with the Sunday +School in one hand and Temperance in the other up the glorified steps of +the National Capitol." + +Col. Sellers did not of course lose the opportunity to impress upon so +influential a person as the Senator the desirability of improving the +navigation of Columbus river. He and Mr. Brierly took the Senator over +to Napoleon and opened to him their plan. It was a plan that the Senator +could understand without a great deal of explanation, for he seemed to be +familiar with the like improvements elsewhere. When, however, they +reached Stone's Landing the Senator looked about him and inquired, + +"Is this Napoleon?" + +"This is the nucleus, the nucleus," said the Colonel, unrolling his map. +"Here is the deepo, the church, the City Hall and so on." + +"Ah, I see. How far from here is Columbus River? Does that stream +empty----" + +"That, why, that's Goose Run. Thar ain't no Columbus, thout'n it's over +to Hawkeye," interrupted one of the citizens, who had come out to stare +at the strangers. "A railroad come here last summer, but it haint been +here no mo'." + +"Yes, sir," the Colonel hastened to explain, "in the old records +Columbus River is called Goose Run. You see how it sweeps round the +town--forty-nine miles to the Missouri; sloop navigation all the way +pretty much, drains this whole country; when it's improved steamboats +will run right up here. It's got to be enlarged, deepened. You see by +the map. Columbus River. This country must have water communication!" + +"You'll want a considerable appropriation, Col. Sellers. + +"I should say a million; is that your figure Mr. Brierly." + +"According to our surveys," said Harry, "a million would do it; a million +spent on the river would make Napoleon worth two millions at least." + +"I see," nodded the Senator. "But you'd better begin by asking only for +two or three hundred thousand, the usual way. You can begin to sell town +lots on that appropriation you know." + +The Senator, himself, to do him justice, was not very much interested in +the country or the stream, but he favored the appropriation, and he gave +the Colonel and Mr. Brierly to and understand that he would endeavor to +get it through. Harry, who thought he was shrewd and understood +Washington, suggested an interest. + +But he saw that the Senator was wounded by the suggestion. + +"You will offend me by repeating such an observation," he said. +"Whatever I do will be for the public interest. It will require a +portion of the appropriation for necessary expenses, and I am sorry to +say that there are members who will have to be seen. But you can reckon +upon my humble services." + +This aspect of the subject was not again alluded to. The Senator +possessed himself of the facts, not from his observation of the ground, +but from the lips of Col. Sellers, and laid the appropriation scheme away +among his other plans for benefiting the public. + +It was on this visit also that the Senator made the acquaintance of Mr. +Washington Hawkins, and was greatly taken with his innocence, his +guileless manner and perhaps with his ready adaptability to enter upon +any plan proposed. + +Col. Sellers was pleased to see this interest that Washington had +awakened, especially since it was likely to further his expectations with +regard to the Tennessee lands; the Senator having remarked to the +Colonel, that he delighted to help any deserving young man, when the +promotion of a private advantage could at the same time be made to +contribute to the general good. And he did not doubt that this was an +opportunity of that kind. + +The result of several conferences with Washington was that the Senator +proposed that he should go to Washington with him and become his private +secretary and the secretary of his committee; a proposal which was +eagerly accepted. + +The Senator spent Sunday in Hawkeye and attended church. He cheered the +heart of the worthy and zealous minister by an expression of his sympathy +in his labors, and by many inquiries in regard to the religious state of +the region. It was not a very promising state, and the good man felt how +much lighter his task would be, if he had the aid of such a man as +Senator Dilworthy. + +"I am glad to see, my dear sir," said the Senator, "that you give them +the doctrines. It is owing to a neglect of the doctrines, that there is +such a fearful falling away in the country. I wish that we might have +you in Washington--as chaplain, now, in the senate." + +The good man could not but be a little flattered, and if sometimes, +thereafter, in his discouraging work, he allowed the thought that he +might perhaps be called to Washington as chaplain of the Senate, to cheer +him, who can wonder. The Senator's commendation at least did one service +for him, it elevated him in the opinion of Hawkeye. + +Laura was at church alone that day, and Mr. Brierly walked home with her. +A part of their way lay with that of General Boswell and Senator +Dilworthy, and introductions were made. Laura had her own reasons for +wishing to know the Senator, and the Senator was not a man who could be +called indifferent to charms such as hers. That meek young lady so +commended herself to him in the short walk, that he announced his +intentions of paying his respects to her the next day, an intention which +Harry received glumly; and when the Senator was out of hearing he called +him "an old fool." + +"Fie," said Laura, "I do believe you are jealous, Harry. He is a very +pleasant man. He said you were a young man of great promise." + +The Senator did call next day, and the result of his visit was that he +was confirmed in his impression that there was something about him very +attractive to ladies. He saw Laura again and again daring his stay, and +felt more and more the subtle influence of her feminine beauty, which +every man felt who came near her. + +Harry was beside himself with rage while the Senator remained in town; +he declared that women were always ready to drop any man for higher game; +and he attributed his own ill-luck to the Senator's appearance. The +fellow was in fact crazy about her beauty and ready to beat his brains +out in chagrin. Perhaps Laura enjoyed his torment, but she soothed him +with blandishments that increased his ardor, and she smiled to herself to +think that he had, with all his protestations of love, never spoken of +marriage. Probably the vivacious fellow never had thought of it. At any +rate when he at length went away from Hawkeye he was no nearer it. But +there was no telling to what desperate lengths his passion might not +carry him. + +Laura bade him good bye with tender regret, which, however, did not +disturb her peace or interfere with her plans. The visit of Senator +Dilworthy had become of more importance to her, and it by and by bore the +fruit she longed for, in an invitation to visit his family in the +National Capital during the winter session of Congress. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + + O lift your natures up: + Embrace our aims: work out your freedom. Girls, + Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed; + Drink deep until the habits of the slave, + The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite + And slander, die. + The Princess. + +Whether medicine is a science, or only an empirical method of getting a +living out of the ignorance of the human race, Ruth found before her +first term was over at the medical school that there were other things +she needed to know quite as much as that which is taught in medical +books, and that she could never satisfy her aspirations without more +general culture. + +"Does your doctor know any thing--I don't mean about medicine, but about +things in general, is he a man of information and good sense?" once asked +an old practitioner. "If he doesn't know any thing but medicine the +chance is he doesn't know that:" + +The close application to her special study was beginning to tell upon +Ruth's delicate health also, and the summer brought with it only +weariness and indisposition for any mental effort. + +In this condition of mind and body the quiet of her home and the +unexciting companionship of those about her were more than ever tiresome. + +She followed with more interest Philip's sparkling account of his life +in the west, and longed for his experiences, and to know some of those +people of a world so different from here, who alternately amused and +displeased him. He at least was learning the world, the good and the bad +of it, as must happen to every one who accomplishes anything in it. + +But what, Ruth wrote, could a woman do, tied up by custom, and cast into +particular circumstances out of which it was almost impossible to +extricate herself? Philip thought that he would go some day and +extricate Ruth, but he did not write that, for he had the instinct to +know that this was not the extrication she dreamed of, and that she must +find out by her own experience what her heart really wanted. + +Philip was not a philosopher, to be sure, but he had the old fashioned +notion, that whatever a woman's theories of life might be, she would come +round to matrimony, only give her time. He could indeed recall to mind +one woman--and he never knew a nobler--whose whole soul was devoted and +who believed that her life was consecrated to a certain benevolent +project in singleness of life, who yielded to the touch of matrimony, as +an icicle yields to a sunbeam. + +Neither at home nor elsewhere did Ruth utter any complaint, or admit any +weariness or doubt of her ability to pursue the path she had marked out +for herself. But her mother saw clearly enough her struggle with +infirmity, and was not deceived by either her gaiety or by the cheerful +composure which she carried into all the ordinary duties that fell to +her. She saw plainly enough that Ruth needed an entire change of scene +and of occupation, and perhaps she believed that such a change, with the +knowledge of the world it would bring, would divert Ruth from a course +for which she felt she was physically entirely unfitted. + +It therefore suited the wishes of all concerned, when autumn came, that +Ruth should go away to school. She selected a large New England +Seminary, of which she had often heard Philip speak, which was attended +by both sexes and offered almost collegiate advantages of education. +Thither she went in September, and began for the second time in the year +a life new to her. + +The Seminary was the chief feature of Fallkill, a village of two to three +thousand inhabitants. It was a prosperous school, with three hundred +students, a large corps of teachers, men and women, and with a venerable +rusty row of academic buildings on the shaded square of the town. The +students lodged and boarded in private families in the place, and so it +came about that while the school did a great deal to support the town, +the town gave the students society and the sweet influences of home life. +It is at least respectful to say that the influences of home life are +sweet. + +Ruth's home, by the intervention of Philip, was in a family--one of the +rare exceptions in life or in fiction--that had never known better days. +The Montagues, it is perhaps well to say, had intended to come over in +the Mayflower, but were detained at Delft Haven by the illness of a +child. They came over to Massachusetts Bay in another vessel, and thus +escaped the onus of that brevet nobility under which the successors of +the Mayflower Pilgrims have descended. Having no factitious weight of +dignity to carry, the Montagues steadily improved their condition from +the day they landed, and they were never more vigorous or prosperous than +at the date of this narrative. With character compacted by the rigid +Puritan discipline of more than two centuries, they had retained its +strength and purity and thrown off its narrowness, and were now +blossoming under the generous modern influences. Squire Oliver Montague, +a lawyer who had retired from the practice of his profession except in +rare cases, dwelt in a square old fashioned New England mansion a quarter +of a mile away from the green. It was called a mansion because it stood +alone with ample fields about it, and had an avenue of trees leading to +it from the road, and on the west commanded a view of a pretty little +lake with gentle slopes and nodding were now blossoming under the +generous modern influences. Squire Oliver Montague, a lawyer who +had retired from the practice of his profession except in rare cases, +dwelt in a square old fashioned New England groves. But it was just +a plain, roomy house, capable of extending to many guests an +unpretending hospitality. + +The family consisted of the Squire and his wife, a son and a daughter +married and not at home, a son in college at Cambridge, another son at +the Seminary, and a daughter Alice, who was a year or more older than +Ruth. Having only riches enough to be able to gratify reasonable +desires, and yet make their gratifications always a novelty and a +pleasure, the family occupied that just mean in life which is so rarely +attained, and still more rarely enjoyed without discontent. + +If Ruth did not find so much luxury in the house as in her own home, +there were evidences of culture, of intellectual activity and of a zest +in the affairs of all the world, which greatly impressed her. Every room +had its book-cases or book-shelves, and was more or less a library; upon +every table was liable to be a litter of new books, fresh periodicals and +daily newspapers. There were plants in the sunny windows and some choice +engravings on the walls, with bits of color in oil or water-colors; +the piano was sure to be open and strewn with music; and there were +photographs and little souvenirs here and there of foreign travel. +An absence of any "what-pots" in the corners with rows of cheerful +shells, and Hindoo gods, and Chinese idols, and nests of use less boxes +of lacquered wood, might be taken as denoting a languidness in the family +concerning foreign missions, but perhaps unjustly. + +At any rate the life of the world flowed freely into this hospitable +house, and there was always so much talk there of the news of the day, +of the new books and of authors, of Boston radicalism and New York +civilization, and the virtue of Congress, that small gossip stood a very +poor chance. + +All this was in many ways so new to Ruth that she seemed to have passed +into another world, in which she experienced a freedom and a mental +exhilaration unknown to her before. Under this influence she entered +upon her studies with keen enjoyment, finding for a time all the +relaxation she needed, in the charming social life at the Montague house. + +It is strange, she wrote to Philip, in one of her occasional letters, +that you never told me more about this delightful family, and scarcely +mentioned Alice who is the life of it, just the noblest girl, unselfish, +knows how to do so many things, with lots of talent, with a dry humor, +and an odd way of looking at things, and yet quiet and even serious +often--one of your "capable" New England girls. We shall be great +friends. It had never occurred to Philip that there was any thing +extraordinary about the family that needed mention. He knew dozens of +girls like Alice, he thought to himself, but only one like Ruth. + +Good friends the two girls were from the beginning. Ruth was a study to +Alice; the product of a culture entirely foreign to her experience, so +much a child in some things, so much a woman in others; and Ruth in turn, +it must be confessed, probing Alice sometimes with her serious grey eyes, +wondered what her object in life was, and whether she had any purpose +beyond living as she now saw her. For she could scarcely conceive of a +life that should not be devoted to the accomplishment of some definite +work, and she had-no doubt that in her own case everything else would +yield to the professional career she had marked out. + +"So you know Philip Sterling," said Ruth one day as the girls sat at +their sewing. Ruth never embroidered, and never sewed when she could +avoid it. Bless her. + +"Oh yes, we are old friends. Philip used to come to Fallkill often while +he was in college. He was once rusticated here for a term." + +"Rusticated?" + +"Suspended for some College scrape. He was a great favorite here. +Father and he were famous friends. Father said that Philip had no end of +nonsense in him and was always blundering into something, but he was a +royal good fellow and would come out all right." + +"Did you think he was fickle?" + +"Why, I never thought whether he was or not," replied Alice looking up. +"I suppose he was always in love with some girl or another, as college +boys are. He used to make me his confidant now and then, and be terribly +in the dumps." + +"Why did he come to you?" pursued Ruth you were younger than he." + +"I'm sure I don't know. He was at our house a good deal. Once at a +picnic by the lake, at the risk of his own life, he saved sister Millie +from drowning, and we all liked to have him here. Perhaps he thought as +he had saved one sister, the other ought to help him when he was in +trouble. I don't know." + +The fact was that Alice was a person who invited confidences, because she +never betrayed them, and gave abundant sympathy in return. There are +persons, whom we all know, to whom human confidences, troubles and +heart-aches flow as naturally its streams to a placid lake. + +This is not a history of Fallkill, nor of the Montague family, worthy as +both are of that honor, and this narrative cannot be diverted into long +loitering with them. If the reader visits the village to-day, he will +doubtless be pointed out the Montague dwelling, where Ruth lived, the +cross-lots path she traversed to the Seminary, and the venerable chapel +with its cracked bell. + +In the little society of the place, the Quaker girl was a favorite, and +no considerable social gathering or pleasure party was thought complete +without her. There was something in this seemingly transparent and yet +deep character, in her childlike gaiety and enjoyment of the society +about her, and in her not seldom absorption in herself, that would have +made her long remembered there if no events had subsequently occurred to +recall her to mind. + +To the surprise of Alice, Ruth took to the small gaieties of the village +with a zest of enjoyment that seemed foreign to one who had devoted her +life to a serious profession from the highest motives. Alice liked +society well enough, she thought, but there was nothing exciting in that +of Fallkill, nor anything novel in the attentions of the well-bred young +gentlemen one met in it. It must have worn a different aspect to Ruth, +for she entered into its pleasures at first with curiosity, and then with +interest and finally with a kind of staid abandon that no one would have +deemed possible for her. Parties, picnics, rowing-matches, moonlight +strolls, nutting expeditions in the October woods,--Alice declared that +it was a whirl of dissipation. The fondness of Ruth, which was scarcely +disguised, for the company of agreeable young fellows, who talked +nothings, gave Alice opportunity for no end of banter. + +"Do you look upon them as I subjects, dear?" she would ask. + +And Ruth laughed her merriest laugh, and then looked sober again. +Perhaps she was thinking, after all, whether she knew herself. + +If you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would +swim if you brought it to the Nile. + +Surely no one would have predicted when Ruth left Philadelphia that she +would become absorbed to this extent, and so happy, in a life so unlike +that she thought she desired. But no one can tell how a woman will act +under any circumstances. The reason novelists nearly always fail in +depicting women when they make them act, is that they let them do what +they have observed some woman has done at sometime or another. And that +is where they make a mistake; for a woman will never do again what has +been done before. It is this uncertainty that causes women, considered +as materials for fiction, to be so interesting to themselves and to +others. + +As the fall went on and the winter, Ruth did not distinguish herself +greatly at the Fallkill Seminary as a student, a fact that apparently +gave her no anxiety, and did not diminish her enjoyment of a new sort of +power which had awakened within her. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. +In mid-winter, an event occurred of unusual interest to the inhabitants +of the Montague house, and to the friends of the young ladies who sought +their society. + +This was the arrival at the Sassacua Hotel of two young gentlemen from +the west. + +It is the fashion in New England to give Indian names to the public +houses, not that the late lamented savage knew how to keep a hotel, but +that his warlike name may impress the traveler who humbly craves shelter +there, and make him grateful to the noble and gentlemanly clerk if he is +allowed to depart with his scalp safe. + +The two young gentlemen were neither students for the Fallkill Seminary, +nor lecturers on physiology, nor yet life assurance solicitors, three +suppositions that almost exhausted the guessing power of the people at +the hotel in respect to the names of "Philip Sterling and Henry Brierly, +Missouri," on the register. They were handsome enough fellows, that was +evident, browned by out-door exposure, and with a free and lordly way +about them that almost awed the hotel clerk himself. Indeed, he very +soon set down Mr. Brierly as a gentleman of large fortune, with enormous +interests on his shoulders. Harry had a way of casually mentioning +western investments, through lines, the freighting business, and the +route through the Indian territory to Lower California, which was +calculated to give an importance to his lightest word. + +"You've a pleasant town here, sir, and the most comfortable looking hotel +I've seen out of New York," said Harry to the clerk; "we shall stay here +a few days if you can give us a roomy suite of apartments." + +Harry usually had the best of everything, wherever he went, as such +fellows always do have in this accommodating world. Philip would have +been quite content with less expensive quarters, but there was no +resisting Harry's generosity in such matters. + +Railroad surveying and real-estate operations were at a standstill during +the winter in Missouri, and the young men had taken advantage of the lull +to come east, Philip to see if there was any disposition in his friends, +the railway contractors, to give him a share in the Salt Lick Union +Pacific Extension, and Harry to open out to his uncle the prospects of +the new city at Stone's Landing, and to procure congressional +appropriations for the harbor and for making Goose Run navigable. Harry +had with him a map of that noble stream and of the harbor, with a perfect +net-work of railroads centering in it, pictures of wharves, crowded with +steamboats, and of huge grain-elevators on the bank, all of which grew +out of the combined imaginations of Col. Sellers and Mr. Brierly. The +Colonel had entire confidence in Harry's influence with Wall street, and +with congressmen, to bring about the consummation of their scheme, and he +waited his return in the empty house at Hawkeye, feeding his pinched +family upon the most gorgeous expectations with a reckless prodigality. + +"Don't let 'em into the thing more than is necessary," says the Colonel +to Harry; "give 'em a small interest; a lot apiece in the suburbs of the +Landing ought to do a congressman, but I reckon you'll have to mortgage a +part of the city itself to the brokers." + +Harry did not find that eagerness to lend money on Stone's Landing in +Wall street which Col. Sellers had expected, (it had seen too many such +maps as he exhibited), although his uncle and some of the brokers looked +with more favor on the appropriation for improving the navigation of +Columbus River, and were not disinclined to form a company for that +purpose. An appropriation was a tangible thing, if you could get hold of +it, and it made little difference what it was appropriated for, so long +as you got hold of it. + +Pending these weighty negotiations, Philip has persuaded Harry to take a +little run up to Fallkill, a not difficult task, for that young man would +at any time have turned his back upon all the land in the West at sight +of a new and pretty face, and he had, it must be confessed, a facility in +love making which made it not at all an interference with the more +serious business of life. He could not, to be sure, conceive how Philip +could be interested in a young lady who was studying medicine, but he had +no objection to going, for he did not doubt that there were other girls +in Fallkill who were worth a week's attention. + +The young men were received at the house of the Montagues with the +hospitality which never failed there. + +"We are glad to see you again," exclaimed the Squire heartily, "you are +welcome Mr. Brierly, any friend of Phil's is welcome at our house" + +"It's more like home to me, than any place except my own home," cried +Philip, as he looked about the cheerful house and went through a general +hand-shaking. + +"It's a long time, though, since you have been here to say so," Alice +said, with her father's frankness of manner; "and I suspect we owe the +visit now to your sudden interest in the Fallkill Seminary." + +Philip's color came, as it had an awkward way of doing in his tell-tale +face, but before he could stammer a reply, Harry came in with, + +"That accounts for Phil's wish to build a Seminary at Stone's Landing, +our place in Missouri, when Col. Sellers insisted it should be a +University. Phil appears to have a weakness for Seminaries." + +"It would have been better for your friend Sellers," retorted Philip, +"if he had had a weakness for district schools. Col. Sellers, Miss +Alice, is a great friend of Harry's, who is always trying to build a +house by beginning at the top." + +"I suppose it's as easy to build a University on paper as a Seminary, and +it looks better," was Harry's reflection; at which the Squire laughed, +and said he quite agreed with him. The old gentleman understood Stone's +Landing a good deal better than he would have done after an hour's talk +with either of it's expectant proprietors. + +At this moment, and while Philip was trying to frame a question that he +found it exceedingly difficult to put into words, the door opened +quietly, and Ruth entered. Taking in the, group with a quick glance, her +eye lighted up, and with a merry smile she advanced and shook hands with +Philip. She was so unconstrained and sincerely cordial, that it made +that hero of the west feel somehow young, and very ill at ease. + +For months and months he had thought of this meeting and pictured it to +himself a hundred times, but he had never imagined it would be like this. +He should meet Ruth unexpectedly, as she was walking alone from the +school, perhaps, or entering the room where he was waiting for her, and +she would cry "Oh! Phil," and then check herself, and perhaps blush, and +Philip calm but eager and enthusiastic, would reassure her by his warm +manner, and he would take her hand impressively, and she would look up +timidly, and, after his' long absence, perhaps he would be permitted to +Good heavens, how many times he had come to this point, and wondered if +it could happen so. Well, well; he had never supposed that he should be +the one embarrassed, and above all by a sincere and cordial welcome. + +"We heard you were at the Sassacus House," were Ruth's first words; "and +this I suppose is your friend?" + +"I beg your pardon," Philip at length blundered out, "this is Mr. Brierly +of whom I have written you." + +And Ruth welcomed Harry with a friendliness that Philip thought was due +to his friend, to be sure, but which seemed to him too level with her +reception of himself, but which Harry received as his due from the other +sex. + +Questions were asked about the journey and about the West, and the +conversation became a general one, until Philip at length found himself +talking with the Squire in relation to land and railroads and things he +couldn't keep his mind on especially as he heard Ruth and Harry in an +animated discourse, and caught the words "New York," and "opera," and +"reception," and knew that Harry was giving his imagination full range in +the world of fashion. + +Harry knew all about the opera, green room and all (at least he said so) +and knew a good many of the operas and could make very entertaining +stories of their plots, telling how the soprano came in here, and the +basso here, humming the beginning of their airs--tum-ti-tum-ti-ti +--suggesting the profound dissatisfaction of the basso recitative--down +--among--the--dead--men--and touching off the whole with an airy grace +quite captivating; though he couldn't have sung a single air through to +save himself, and he hadn't an ear to know whether it was sung correctly. +All the same he doted on the opera, and kept a box there, into which he +lounged occasionally to hear a favorite scene and meet his society +friends. + +If Ruth was ever in the city he should be happy to place his box at the +disposal of Ruth and her friends. Needless to say that she was delighted +with the offer. + +When she told Philip of it, that discreet young fellow only smiled, and +said that he hoped she would be fortunate enough to be in New York some +evening when Harry had not already given the use of his private box to +some other friend. + +The Squire pressed the visitors to let him send for their trunks and +urged them to stay at his house, and Alice joined in the invitation, but +Philip had reasons for declining. They staid to supper, however, and in; +the evening Philip had a long talk apart with Ruth, a delightful hour to +him, in which she spoke freely of herself as of old, of her studies at +Philadelphia and of her plans, and she entered into his adventures and +prospects in the West with a genuine and almost sisterly interest; an +interest, however, which did not exactly satisfy Philip--it was too +general and not personal enough to suit him. And with all her freedom in +speaking of her own hopes, Philip could not, detect any reference to +himself in them; whereas he never undertook anything that he did not +think of Ruth in connection with it, he never made a plan that had not +reference to her, and he never thought of anything as complete if she +could not share it. Fortune, reputation these had no value to him except +in Ruth's eyes, and there were times when it seemed to him that if Ruth +was not on this earth, he should plunge off into some remote wilderness +and live in a purposeless seclusion. + +"I hoped," said Philip; "to get a little start in connection with this +new railroad, and make a little money, so that I could came east and +engage in something more suited to my tastes. I shouldn't like to live +in the West. Would you? + +"It never occurred to me whether I would or not," was the unembarrassed +reply. "One of our graduates went to Chicago, and has a nice practice +there. I don't know where I shall go. It would mortify mother +dreadfully to have me driving about Philadelphia in a doctor's gig." + +Philip laughed at the idea of it. "And does it seem as necessary to you +to do it as it did before you came to Fallkill?" + +It was a home question, and went deeper than Philip knew, for Ruth at +once thought of practicing her profession among the young gentlemen and +ladies of her acquaintance in the village; but she was reluctant to admit +to herself that her notions of a career had undergone any change. + +"Oh, I don't think I should come to Fallkill to practice, but I must do +something when I am through school; and why not medicine?" + +Philip would like to have explained why not, but the explanation would be +of no use if it were not already obvious to Ruth. + +Harry was equally in his element whether instructing Squire Montague +about the investment of capital in Missouri, the improvement of Columbus +River, the project he and some gentlemen in New York had for making a +shorter Pacific connection with the Mississippi than the present one; or +diverting Mrs. Montague with his experience in cooking in camp; or +drawing for Miss Alice an amusing picture of the social contrasts of New +England and the border where he had been. Harry was a very entertaining +fellow, having his imagination to help his memory, and telling his +stories as if he believed them--as perhaps he did. Alice was greatly +amused with Harry and listened so seriously to his romancing that he +exceeded his usual limits. Chance allusions to his bachelor +establishment in town and the place of his family on the Hudson, could +not have been made by a millionaire, more naturally. + +"I should think," queried Alice, "you would rather stay in New York than +to try the rough life at the West you have been speaking of." + +"Oh, adventure," says Harry, "I get tired of New York. And besides I +got involved in some operations that I had to see through. Parties in +New York only last week wanted me to go down into Arizona in a big +diamond interest. I told them, no, no speculation for me. I've got my +interests in Missouri; and I wouldn't leave Philip, as long as he stays +there." + +When the young gentlemen were on their way back to the hotel, Mr. Philip, +who was not in very good humor, broke out, + +"What the deuce, Harry, did you go on in that style to the Montagues +for?" + +"Go on?" cried Harry. "Why shouldn't I try to make a pleasant evening? +And besides, ain't I going to do those things? What difference does it +make about the mood and tense of a mere verb? Didn't uncle tell me only +last Saturday, that I might as well go down to Arizona and hunt for +diamonds? A fellow might as well make a good impression as a poor one." + +"Nonsense. You'll get to believing your own romancing by and by." + +"Well, you'll see. When Sellers and I get that appropriation, I'll show +you an establishment in town and another on the Hudson and a box at the +opera." + +"Yes, it will be like Col. Sellers' plantation at Hawkeye. Did you ever +see that?" + +"Now, don't be cross, Phil. She's just superb, that little woman. You +never told me." + +"Who's just superb?" growled Philip, fancying this turn of the +conversation less than the other. + +"Well, Mrs. Montague, if you must know." And Harry stopped to light a +cigar, and then puffed on in silence. The little quarrel didn't last +over night, for Harry never appeared to cherish any ill-will half a +second, and Philip was too sensible to continue a row about nothing; and +he had invited Harry to come with him. + +The young gentlemen stayed in Fallkill a week, and were every day at the +Montagues, and took part in the winter gaieties of the village. There +were parties here and there to which the friends of Ruth and the +Montagues were of course invited, and Harry in the generosity of his +nature, gave in return a little supper at the hotel, very simple indeed, +with dancing in the hall, and some refreshments passed round. And Philip +found the whole thing in the bill when he came to pay it. + +Before the week was over Philip thought he had a new light on the +character of Ruth. Her absorption in the small gaieties of the society +there surprised him. He had few opportunities for serious conversation +with her. There was always some butterfly or another flitting about, +and when Philip showed by his manner that he was not pleased, Ruth +laughed merrily enough and rallied him on his soberness--she declared he +was getting to be grim and unsocial. He talked indeed more with Alice +than with Ruth, and scarcely concealed from her the trouble that was in +his mind. It needed, in fact, no word from him, for she saw clearly +enough what was going forward, and knew her sex well enough to know there +was no remedy for it but time. + +"Ruth is a dear girl, Philip, and has as much firmness of purpose as +ever, but don't you see she has just discovered that she is fond of +society? Don't you let her see you are selfish about it, is my advice." + +The last evening they were to spend in Fallkill, they were at the +Montagues, and Philip hoped that he would find Ruth in a different mood. +But she was never more gay, and there was a spice of mischief in her eye +and in her laugh. "Confound it," said Philip to himself, "she's in a +perfect twitter." + +He would have liked to quarrel with her, and fling himself out of the +house in tragedy style, going perhaps so far as to blindly wander off +miles into the country and bathe his throbbing brow in the chilling rain +of the stars, as people do in novels; but he had no opportunity. For +Ruth was as serenely unconscious of mischief as women can be at times, +and fascinated him more than ever with her little demurenesses and +half-confidences. She even said "Thee" to him once in reproach for a +cutting speech he began. And the sweet little word made his heart beat +like a trip-hammer, for never in all her life had she said "thee" to him +before. + +Was she fascinated with Harry's careless 'bon homie' and gay assurance? +Both chatted away in high spirits, and made the evening whirl along in +the most mirthful manner. Ruth sang for Harry, and that young gentleman +turned the leaves for her at the piano, and put in a bass note now and +then where he thought it would tell. + +Yes, it was a merry evening, and Philip was heartily glad when it was +over, and the long leave-taking with the family was through with. + +"Farewell Philip. Good night Mr. Brierly," Ruth's clear voice sounded +after them as they went down the walk. + +And she spoke Harry's name last, thought Philip. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + + "O see ye not yon narrow road + So thick beset wi' thorns and briers? + That is the Path of Righteousness, + Though after it but few inquires. + + "And see ye not yon braid, braid road, + That lies across the lily leven? + That is the Path of Wickedness, + Though some call it the road to Heaven." + + Thomas the Rhymer. + +Phillip and Harry reached New York in very different states of mind. +Harry was buoyant. He found a letter from Col. Sellers urging him to go +to Washington and confer with Senator Dilworthy. The petition was in his +hands. + +It had been signed by everybody of any importance in Missouri, and would +be presented immediately. + +"I should go on myself," wrote the Colonel, "but I am engaged in the +invention of a process for lighting such a city as St. Louis by means of +water; just attach my machine to the water-pipes anywhere and the +decomposition of the fluid begins, and you will have floods of light for +the mere cost of the machine. I've nearly got the lighting part, but I +want to attach to it a heating, cooking, washing and ironing apparatus. +It's going to be the great thing, but we'd better keep this appropriation +going while I am perfecting it." + +Harry took letters to several congressmen from his uncle and from Mr. +Duff Brown, each of whom had an extensive acquaintance in both houses +where they were well known as men engaged in large private operations for +the public good and men, besides, who, in the slang of the day, +understood the virtues of "addition, division and silence." + +Senator Dilworthy introduced the petition into the Senate with the remark +that he knew, personally, the signers of it, that they were men +interested; it was true, in the improvement of the country, but he +believed without any selfish motive, and that so far as he knew the +signers were loyal. It pleased him to see upon the roll the names of +many colored citizens, and it must rejoice every friend of humanity to +know that this lately emancipated race were intelligently taking part in +the development of the resources of their native land. He moved the +reference of the petition to the proper committee. + +Senator Dilworthy introduced his young friend to influential members, +as a person who was very well informed about the Salt Lick Extension of +the Pacific, and was one of the Engineers who had made a careful survey +of Columbus River; and left him to exhibit his maps and plans and to show +the connection between the public treasury, the city of Napoleon and +legislation for the benefit off the whole country. + +Harry was the guest of Senator Dilworthy. There was scarcely any good +movement in which the Senator was not interested. His house was open to +all the laborers in the field of total abstinence, and much of his time +was taken up in attending the meetings of this cause. He had a Bible +class in the Sunday school of the church which he attended, and he +suggested to Harry that he might take a class during the time he remained +in Washington, Mr. Washington Hawkins had a class. Harry asked the +Senator if there was a class of young ladies for him to teach, and after +that the Senator did not press the subject. + +Philip, if the truth must be told, was not well satisfied with his +western prospects, nor altogether with the people he had fallen in with. +The railroad contractors held out large but rather indefinite promises. +Opportunities for a fortune he did not doubt existed in Missouri, but for +himself he saw no better means for livelihood than the mastery of the +profession he had rather thoughtlessly entered upon. During the summer +he had made considerable practical advance in the science of engineering; +he had been diligent, and made himself to a certain extent necessary to +the work he was engaged on. The contractors called him into their +consultations frequently, as to the character of the country he had been +over, and the cost of constructing the road, the nature of the work, etc. + +Still Philip felt that if he was going to make either reputation or money +as an engineer, he had a great deal of hard study before him, and it is +to his credit that he did not shrink from it. While Harry was in +Washington dancing attendance upon the national legislature and making +the acquaintance of the vast lobby that encircled it, Philip devoted +himself day and night, with an energy and a concentration he was capable +of, to the learning and theory of his profession, and to the science of +railroad building. He wrote some papers at this time for the "Plow, the +Loom and the Anvil," upon the strength of materials, and especially upon +bridge-building, which attracted considerable attention, and were copied +into the English "Practical Magazine." They served at any rate to raise +Philip in the opinion of his friends the contractors, for practical men +have a certain superstitious estimation of ability with the pen, and +though they may a little despise the talent, they are quite ready to make +use of it. + +Philip sent copies of his performances to Ruth's father and to other +gentlemen whose good opinion he coveted, but he did not rest upon his +laurels. Indeed, so diligently had he applied himself, that when it came +time for him to return to the West, he felt himself, at least in theory, +competent to take charge of a division in the field. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +The capital of the Great Republic was a new world to country-bred +Washington Hawkins. St. Louis was a greater city, but its floating. +population did not hail from great distances, and so it had the general +family aspect of the permanent population; but Washington gathered its +people from the four winds of heaven, and so the manners, the faces and +the fashions there, presented a variety that was infinite. Washington +had never been in "society" in St. Louis, and he knew nothing of the ways +of its wealthier citizens and had never inspected one of their dwellings. +Consequently, everything in the nature of modern fashion and grandeur was +a new and wonderful revelation to him. + +Washington is an interesting city to any of us. It seems to become more +and more interesting the oftener we visit it. Perhaps the reader has +never been there? Very well. You arrive either at night, rather too +late to do anything or see anything until morning, or you arrive so early +in the morning that you consider it best to go to your hotel and sleep an +hour or two while the sun bothers along over the Atlantic. You cannot +well arrive at a pleasant intermediate hour, because the railway +corporation that keeps the keys of the only door that leads into the town +or out of it take care of that. You arrive in tolerably good spirits, +because it is only thirty-eight miles from Baltimore to the capital, and +so you have only been insulted three times (provided you are not in a +sleeping car--the average is higher there): once when you renewed your +ticket after stopping over in Baltimore, once when you were about to +enter the "ladies' car" without knowing it was a lady's car, and once +When you asked the conductor at what hour you would reach Washington. + +You are assailed by a long rank of hackmen who shake their whips in your +face as you step out upon the sidewalk; you enter what they regard as a +"carriage," in the capital, and you wonder why they do not take it out of +service and put it in the museum: we have few enough antiquities, and +it is little to our credit that we make scarcely any effort to preserve +the few we have. You reach your hotel, presently--and here let us draw +the curtain of charity--because of course you have gone to the wrong one. +You being a stranger, how could you do otherwise? There are a hundred +and eighteen bad hotels, and only one good one. The most renowned and +popular hotel of them all is perhaps the worst one known to history. + +It is winter, and night. When you arrived, it was snowing. When you +reached the hotel, it was sleeting. When you went to bed, it was +raining. During the night it froze hard, and the wind blew some chimneys +down. When you got up in the morning, it was foggy. When you finished +your breakfast at ten o'clock and went out, the sunshine was brilliant, +the weather balmy and delicious, and the mud and slush deep and +all-pervading. You will like the climate when you get used to it. + +You naturally wish to view the city; so you take an umbrella, an +overcoat, and a fan, and go forth. The prominent features you soon +locate and get familiar with; first you glimpse the ornamental upper +works of a long, snowy palace projecting above a grove of trees, and a +tall, graceful white dome with a statue on it surmounting the palace and +pleasantly contrasting with the background of blue sky. That building is +the capitol; gossips will tell you that by the original estimates it was +to cost $12,000,000, and that the government did come within $21,200,000 +of building it for that sum. + +You stand at the back of the capitol to treat yourself to a view, and it +is a very noble one. You understand, the capitol stands upon the verge +of a high piece of table land, a fine commanding position, and its front +looks out over this noble situation for a city--but it don't see it, for +the reason that when the capitol extension was decided upon, the property +owners at once advanced their prices to such inhuman figures that the +people went down and built the city in the muddy low marsh behind the +temple of liberty; so now the lordly front of the building, with, its +imposing colonades, its, projecting, graceful wings, its, picturesque +groups of statuary, and its long terraced ranges of steps, flowing down +in white marble waves to the ground, merely looks out upon a sorrowful +little desert of cheap boarding houses. + +So you observe, that you take your view from the back of the capitol. +And yet not from the airy outlooks of the dome, by the way, because to +get there you must pass through the great rotunda: and to do that, you +would have to see the marvelous Historical Paintings that hang there, +and the bas-reliefs--and what have you done that you should suffer thus? +And besides, you might have to pass through the old part of the building, +and you could not help seeing Mr. Lincoln, as petrified by a young lady +artist for $10,000--and you might take his marble emancipation +proclamation, which he holds out in his hand and contemplates, for a +folded napkin; and you might conceive from his expression and his +attitude, that he is finding fault with the washing. Which is not the +case. Nobody knows what is the matter with him; but everybody feels for +him. Well, you ought not to go into the dome anyhow, because it would be +utterly impossible to go up there without seeing the frescoes in it--and +why should you be interested in the delirium tremens of art? + +The capitol is a very noble and a very beautiful building, both within +and without, but you need not examine it now. Still, if you greatly +prefer going into the dome, go. Now your general glance gives you +picturesque stretches of gleaming water, on your left, with a sail here +and there and a lunatic asylum on shore; over beyond the water, on a +distant elevation, you see a squat yellow temple which your eye dwells +upon lovingly through a blur of unmanly moisture, for it recalls your +lost boyhood and the Parthenons done in molasses candy which made it +blest and beautiful. Still in the distance, but on this side of the +water and close to its edge, the Monument to the Father of his Country +towers out of the mud--sacred soil is the, customary term. It has the +aspect of a factory chimney with the top broken off. The skeleton of a +decaying scaffolding lingers about its summit, and tradition says that +the spirit of Washington often comes down and sits on those rafters to +enjoy this tribute of respect which the nation has reared as the symbol +of its unappeasable gratitude. The Monument is to be finished, some day, +and at that time our Washington will have risen still higher in the +nation's veneration, and will be known as the Great-Great-Grandfather of +his Country. The memorial Chimney stands in a quiet pastoral locality +that is full of reposeful expression. With a glass you can see the +cow-sheds about its base, and the contented sheep nimbling pebbles in the +desert solitudes that surround it, and the tired pigs dozing in the holy +calm of its protecting shadow. + +Now you wrench your gaze loose, and you look down in front of you and see +the broad Pennsylvania Avenue stretching straight ahead for a mile or +more till it brings up against the iron fence in front of a pillared +granite pile, the Treasury building-an edifice that would command respect +in any capital. The stores and hotels that wall in this broad avenue are +mean, and cheap, and dingy, and are better left without comment. Beyond +the Treasury is a fine large white barn, with wide unhandsome grounds +about it. The President lives there. It is ugly enough outside, but +that is nothing to what it is inside. Dreariness, flimsiness, bad taste +reduced to mathematical completeness is what the inside offers to the +eye, if it remains yet what it always has been. + +The front and right hand views give you the city at large. It is a wide +stretch of cheap little brick houses, with here and there a noble +architectural pile lifting itself out of the midst-government buildings, +these. If the thaw is still going on when you come down and go about +town, you will wonder at the short-sightedness of the city fathers, when +you come to inspect the streets, in that they do not dilute the mud a +little more and use them for canals. + +If you inquire around a little, you will find that there are more +boardinghouses to the square acre in Washington than there are in any +other city in the land, perhaps. If you apply for a home in one of them, +it will seem odd to you to have the landlady inspect you with a severe +eye and then ask you if you are a member of Congress. Perhaps, just as a +pleasantry, you will say yes. And then she will tell you that she is +"full." Then you show her her advertisement in the morning paper, and +there she stands, convicted and ashamed. She will try to blush, and it +will be only polite in you to take the effort for the deed. She shows +you her rooms, now, and lets you take one--but she makes you pay in +advance for it. That is what you will get for pretending to be a member +of Congress. If you had been content to be merely a private citizen, +your trunk would have been sufficient security for your board. If you +are curious and inquire into this thing, the chances are that your +landlady will be ill-natured enough to say that the person and property +of a Congressman are exempt from arrest or detention, and that with the +tears in her eyes she has seen several of the people's representatives +walk off to their several States and Territories carrying her unreceipted +board bills in their pockets for keepsakes. And before you have been in +Washington many weeks you will be mean enough to believe her, too. + +Of course you contrive to see everything and find out everything. And +one of the first and most startling things you find out is, that every +individual you encounter in the City of Washington almost--and certainly +every separate and distinct individual in the public employment, from the +highest bureau chief, clear down to the maid who scrubs Department halls, +the night watchmen of the public buildings and the darkey boy who +purifies the Department spittoons--represents Political Influence. +Unless you can get the ear of a Senator, or a Congressman, or a Chief of +a Bureau or Department, and persuade him to use his "influence" in your +behalf, you cannot get an employment of the most trivial nature in +Washington. Mere merit, fitness and capability, are useless baggage to +you without "influence." The population of Washington consists pretty +much entirely of government employee and the people who board them. +There are thousands of these employees, and they have gathered there from +every corner of the Union and got their berths through the intercession +(command is nearer the word) of the Senators and Representatives of their +respective States. It would be an odd circumstance to see a girl get +employment at three or four dollars a week in one of the great public +cribs without any political grandee to back her, but merely because she +was worthy, and competent, and a good citizen of a free country that +"treats all persons alike." Washington would be mildly thunderstruck at +such a thing as that. If you are a member of Congress, (no offence,) and +one of your constituents who doesn't know anything, and does not want to +go into the bother of learning something, and has no money, and no +employment, and can't earn a living, comes besieging you for help, do you +say, "Come, my friend, if your services were valuable you could get +employment elsewhere--don't want you here?" Oh, no: You take him to a +Department and say, "Here, give this person something to pass away the +time at--and a salary"--and the thing is done. You throw him on his +country. He is his country's child, let his country support him. There +is something good and motherly about Washington, the grand old benevolent +National Asylum for the Helpless. + +The wages received by this great hive of employees are placed at the +liberal figure meet and just for skilled and competent labor. Such of +them as are immediately employed about the two Houses of Congress, are +not only liberally paid also, but are remembered in the customary Extra +Compensation bill which slides neatly through, annually, with the general +grab that signalizes the last night of a session, and thus twenty per +cent. is added to their wages, for--for fun, no doubt. + +Washington Hawkins' new life was an unceasing delight to him. Senator +Dilworthy lived sumptuously, and Washington's quarters were charming +--gas; running water, hot and cold; bath-room, coal-fires, rich carpets, +beautiful pictures on the walls; books on religion, temperance, public +charities and financial schemes; trim colored servants, dainty food +--everything a body could wish for. And as for stationery, there was no +end to it; the government furnished it; postage stamps were not needed +--the Senator's frank could convey a horse through the mails, if necessary. + +And then he saw such dazzling company. Renowned generals and admirals +who had seemed but colossal myths when he was in the far west, went in +and out before him or sat at the Senator's table, solidified into +palpable flesh and blood; famous statesmen crossed his path daily; that +once rare and awe-inspiring being, a Congressman, was become a common +spectacle--a spectacle so common, indeed, that he could contemplate it +without excitement, even without embarrassment; foreign ministers were +visible to the naked eye at happy intervals; he had looked upon the +President himself, and lived. And more; this world of enchantment teemed +with speculation--the whole atmosphere was thick with hand that indeed +was Washington Hawkins' native air; none other refreshed his lungs so +gratefully. He had found paradise at last. + +The more he saw of his chief the Senator, the more he honored him, and +the more conspicuously the moral grandeur of his character appeared to +stand out. To possess the friendship and the kindly interest of such a +man, Washington said in a letter to Louise, was a happy fortune for a +young man whose career had been so impeded and so clouded as his. + +The weeks drifted by;--Harry Brierly flirted, danced, added lustre +to the brilliant Senatorial receptions, and diligently "buzzed" and +"button-holed" Congressmen in the interest of the Columbus River scheme; +meantime Senator Dilworthy labored hard in the same interest--and in +others of equal national importance. Harry wrote frequently to Sellers, +and always encouragingly; and from these letters it was easy to see that +Harry was a pet with all Washington, and was likely to carry the thing +through; that the assistance rendered him by "old Dilworthy" was pretty +fair--pretty fair; "and every little helps, you know," said Harry. + +Washington wrote Sellers officially, now and then. In one of his letters +it appeared that whereas no member of the House committee favored the +scheme at first, there was now needed but one more vote to compass a +majority report. Closing sentence: + + "Providence seems to further our efforts." + (Signed,) "ABNER DILWORTHY, U. S. S., + per WASHINGTON HAWKINS, P. S." + +At the end of a week, Washington was able to send the happy news, +officially, as usual,--that the needed vote had been added and the bill +favorably reported from the Committee. Other letters recorded its perils +in Committee of the whole, and by and by its victory, by just the skin of +its teeth, on third reading and final passage. Then came letters telling +of Mr. Dilworthy's struggles with a stubborn majority in his own +Committee in the Senate; of how these gentlemen succumbed, one by one, +till a majority was secured. + +Then there was a hiatus. Washington watched every move on the board, and +he was in a good position to do this, for he was clerk of this committee, +and also one other. He received no salary as private secretary, but +these two clerkships, procured by his benefactor, paid him an aggregate +of twelve dollars a day, without counting the twenty percent extra +compensation which would of course be voted to him on the last night of +the session. + +He saw the bill go into Committee of the whole and struggle for its life +again, and finally worry through. In the fullness of time he noted its +second reading, and by and by the day arrived when the grand ordeal came, +and it was put upon its final passage. Washington listened with bated +breath to the "Aye!" "No!" "No!" "Aye!" of the voters, for a few dread +minutes, and then could bear the suspense no longer. He ran down from +the gallery and hurried home to wait. + +At the end of two or three hours the Senator arrived in the bosom of his +family, and dinner was waiting. Washington sprang forward, with the +eager question on his lips, and the Senator said: + +"We may rejoice freely, now, my son--Providence has crowned our efforts +with success." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +Washington sent grand good news to Col. Sellers that night. To Louise he +wrote: + +"It is beautiful to hear him talk when his heart is full of thankfulness +for some manifestation of the Divine favor. You shall know him, some day +my Louise, and knowing him you will honor him, as I do." + +Harry wrote: + +"I pulled it through, Colonel, but it was a tough job, there is no +question about that. There was not a friend to the measure in the House +committee when I began, and not a friend in the Senate committee except +old Dil himself, but they were all fixed for a majority report when I +hauled off my forces. Everybody here says you can't get a thing like +this through Congress without buying committees for straight-out cash on +delivery, but I think I've taught them a thing or two--if I could only +make them believe it. When I tell the old residenters that this thing +went through without buying a vote or making a promise, they say, 'That's +rather too thin.' And when I say thin or not thin it's a fact, anyway, +they say, 'Come, now, but do you really believe that?' and when I say I +don't believe anything about it, I know it, they smile and say, 'Well, +you are pretty innocent, or pretty blind, one or the other--there's no +getting around that.' Why they really do believe that votes have been +bought--they do indeed. But let them keep on thinking so. I have found +out that if a man knows how to talk to women, and has a little gift in +the way of argument with men, he can afford to play for an appropriation +against a money bag and give the money bag odds in the game. We've raked +in $200,000 of Uncle Sam's money, say what they will--and there is more +where this came from, when we want it, and I rather fancy I am the person +that can go in and occupy it, too, if I do say it myself, that shouldn't, +perhaps. I'll be with you within a week. Scare up all the men you can, +and put them to work at once. When I get there I propose to make things +hum." The great news lifted Sellers into the clouds. He went to work on +the instant. He flew hither and thither making contracts, engaging men, +and steeping his soul in the ecstasies of business. He was the happiest +man in Missouri. And Louise was the happiest woman; for presently came a +letter from Washington which said: + +"Rejoice with me, for the long agony is over! We have waited patiently +and faithfully, all these years, and now at last the reward is at hand. +A man is to pay our family $40,000 for the Tennessee Land! It is but a +little sum compared to what we could get by waiting, but I do so long to +see the day when I can call you my own, that I have said to myself, +better take this and enjoy life in a humble way than wear out our best +days in this miserable separation. Besides, I can put this money into +operations here that will increase it a hundred fold, yes, a thousand +fold, in a few months. The air is full of such chances, and I know our +family would consent in a moment that I should put in their shares with +mine. Without a doubt we shall be worth half a million dollars in a year +from this time--I put it at the very lowest figure, because it is always +best to be on the safe side--half a million at the very lowest +calculation, and then your father will give his consent and we can marry +at last. Oh, that will be a glorious day. Tell our friends the good +news--I want all to share it." + +And she did tell her father and mother, but they said, let it be kept +still for the present. The careful father also told her to write +Washington and warn him not to speculate with the money, but to wait a +little and advise with one or two wise old heads. She did this. And she +managed to keep the good news to herself, though it would seem that the +most careless observer might have seen by her springing step and her +radiant countenance that some fine piece of good fortune had descended +upon her. + +Harry joined the Colonel at Stone's Landing, and that dead place sprang +into sudden life. A swarm of men were hard at work, and the dull air was +filled with the cheery music of labor. Harry had been constituted +engineer-in-general, and he threw the full strength of his powers into +his work. He moved among his hirelings like a king. Authority seemed to +invest him with a new splendor. Col. Sellers, as general superintendent +of a great public enterprise, was all that a mere human being could be +--and more. These two grandees went at their imposing "improvement" with +the air of men who had been charged with the work of altering the +foundations of the globe. + +They turned their first attention to straightening the river just above +the Landing, where it made a deep bend, and where the maps and plans +showed that the process of straightening would not only shorten distance +but increase the "fall." They started a cut-off canal across the +peninsula formed by the bend, and such another tearing up of the earth +and slopping around in the mud as followed the order to the men, had +never been seen in that region before. There was such a panic among the +turtles that at the end of six hours there was not one to be found within +three miles of Stone's Landing. They took the young and the aged, the +decrepit and the sick upon their backs and left for tide-water in +disorderly procession, the tadpoles following and the bull-frogs bringing +up the rear. + +Saturday night came, but the men were obliged to wait, because the +appropriation had not come. Harry said he had written to hurry up the +money and it would be along presently. So the work continued, on Monday. +Stone's Landing was making quite a stir in the vicinity, by this time. +Sellers threw a lot or two on the market, "as a feeler," and they sold +well. He re-clothed his family, laid in a good stock of provisions, and +still had money left. He started a bank account, in a small way--and +mentioned the deposit casually to friends; and to strangers, too; to +everybody, in fact; but not as a new thing--on the contrary, as a matter +of life-long standing. He could not keep from buying trifles every day +that were not wholly necessary, it was such a gaudy thing to get out his +bank-book and draw a check, instead of using his old customary formula, +"Charge it" Harry sold a lot or two, also--and had a dinner party or two +at Hawkeye and a general good time with the money. Both men held on +pretty strenuously for the coming big prices, however. + +At the end of a month things were looking bad. Harry had besieged the +New York headquarters of the Columbus River Slack-water Navigation +Company with demands, then commands, and finally appeals, but to no +purpose; the appropriation did not come; the letters were not even +answered. The workmen were clamorous, now. The Colonel and Harry +retired to consult. + +"What's to be done?" said the Colonel. + +"Hang'd if I know." + +"Company say anything?" + +"Not a word." + +"You telegraphed yesterday?" + +Yes, and the day before, too." + +"No answer?" + +"None-confound them!" + +Then there was a long pause. Finally both spoke at once: + +"I've got it!" + +"I've got it!" + +"What's yours?" said Harry. + +"Give the boys thirty-day orders on the Company for the back pay." + +"That's it-that's my own idea to a dot. But then--but then----" + +"Yes, I know," said the Colonel; "I know they can't wait for the orders +to go to New York and be cashed, but what's the reason they can't get +them discounted in Hawkeye?" + +"Of course they can. That solves the difficulty. Everybody knows the +appropriation's been made and the Company's perfectly good." + +So the orders were given and the men appeased, though they grumbled a +little at first. The orders went well enough for groceries and such +things at a fair discount, and the work danced along gaily for a time. +Two or three purchasers put up frame houses at the Landing and moved in, +and of course a far-sighted but easy-going journeyman printer wandered +along and started the "Napoleon Weekly Telegraph and Literary +Repository"--a paper with a Latin motto from the Unabridged dictionary, +and plenty of "fat" conversational tales and double-leaded poetry--all +for two dollars a year, strictly in advance. Of course the merchants +forwarded the orders at once to New York--and never heard of them again. + +At the end of some weeks Harry's orders were a drug in the market--nobody +would take them at any discount whatever. The second month closed with a +riot.--Sellers was absent at the time, and Harry began an active absence +himself with the mob at his heels. But being on horseback, he had the +advantage. He did not tarry in Hawkeye, but went on, thus missing +several appointments with creditors. He was far on his flight eastward, +and well out of danger when the next morning dawned. He telegraphed the +Colonel to go down and quiet the laborers--he was bound east for money +--everything would be right in a week--tell the men so--tell them to rely +on him and not be afraid. + +Sellers found the mob quiet enough when he reached the Landing. +They had gutted the Navigation office, then piled the beautiful engraved +stock-books and things in the middle of the floor and enjoyed the bonfire +while it lasted. They had a liking for the Colonel, but still they had +some idea of hanging him, as a sort of make-shift that might answer, +after a fashion, in place of more satisfactory game. + +But they made the mistake of waiting to hear what he had to say first. +Within fifteen minutes his tongue had done its work and they were all +rich men.--He gave every one of them a lot in the suburbs of the city of +Stone's Landing, within a mile and a half of the future post office and +railway station, and they promised to resume work as soon as Harry got +east and started the money along. Now things were blooming and pleasant +again, but the men had no money, and nothing to live on. The Colonel +divided with them the money he still had in bank--an act which had +nothing surprising about it because he was generally ready to divide +whatever he had with anybody that wanted it, and it was owing to this +very trait that his family spent their days in poverty and at times were +pinched with famine. + +When the men's minds had cooled and Sellers was gone, they hated +themselves for letting him beguile them with fine speeches, but it was +too late, now--they agreed to hang him another time--such time as +Providence should appoint. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +Rumors of Ruth's frivolity and worldliness at Fallkill traveled to +Philadelphia in due time, and occasioned no little undertalk among the +Bolton relatives. + +Hannah Shoecraft told another, cousin that, for her part, she never +believed that Ruth had so much more "mind" than other people; and Cousin +Hulda added that she always thought Ruth was fond of admiration, and that +was the reason she was unwilling to wear plain clothes and attend +Meeting. The story that Ruth was "engaged" to a young gentleman of +fortune in Fallkill came with the other news, and helped to give point to +the little satirical remarks that went round about Ruth's desire to be a +doctor! + +Margaret Bolton was too wise to be either surprised or alarmed by these +rumors. They might be true; she knew a woman's nature too well to think +them improbable, but she also knew how steadfast Ruth was in her +purposes, and that, as a brook breaks into ripples and eddies and dances +and sports by the way, and yet keeps on to the sea, it was in Ruth's +nature to give back cheerful answer to the solicitations of friendliness +and pleasure, to appear idly delaying even, and sporting in the sunshine, +while the current of her resolution flowed steadily on. + +That Ruth had this delight in the mere surface play of life that she +could, for instance, be interested in that somewhat serious by-play +called "flirtation," or take any delight in the exercise of those little +arts of pleasing and winning which are none the less genuine and charming +because they are not intellectual, Ruth, herself, had never suspected +until she went to Fallkill. She had believed it her duty to subdue her +gaiety of temperament, and let nothing divert her from what are called +serious pursuits: In her limited experience she brought everything to the +judgment of her own conscience, and settled the affairs of all the world +in her own serene judgment hall. Perhaps her mother saw this, and saw +also that there was nothing in the Friends' society to prevent her from +growing more and more opinionated. + +When Ruth returned to Philadelphia, it must be confessed--though it would +not have been by her--that a medical career did seem a little less +necessary for her than formerly; and coming back in a glow of triumph, as +it were, and in the consciousness of the freedom and life in a lively +society and in new and sympathetic friendship, she anticipated pleasure +in an attempt to break up the stiffness and levelness of the society at +home, and infusing into it something of the motion and sparkle which were +so agreeable at Fallkill. She expected visits from her new friends, she +would have company, the new books and the periodicals about which all the +world was talking, and, in short, she would have life. + +For a little while she lived in this atmosphere which she had brought +with her. Her mother was delighted with this change in her, with the +improvement in her health and the interest she exhibited in home affairs. +Her father enjoyed the society of his favorite daughter as he did few +things besides; he liked her mirthful and teasing ways, and not less a +keen battle over something she had read. He had been a great reader all +his life, and a remarkable memory had stored his mind with encyclopaedic +information. It was one of Ruth's delights to cram herself with some out +of the way subject and endeavor to catch her father; but she almost +always failed. Mr. Bolton liked company, a house full of it, and the +mirth of young people, and he would have willingly entered into any +revolutionary plans Ruth might have suggested in relation to Friends' +society. + +But custom and the fixed order are stronger than the most enthusiastic +and rebellious young lady, as Ruth very soon found. In spite of all her +brave efforts, her frequent correspondence, and her determined animation, +her books and her music, she found herself settling into the clutches of +the old monotony, and as she realized the hopelessness of her endeavors, +the medical scheme took new hold of her, and seemed to her the only +method of escape. + +"Mother, thee does not know how different it is in Fallkill, how much +more interesting the people are one meets, how much more life there is." + +"But thee will find the world, child, pretty much all the same, when thee +knows it better. I thought once as thee does now, and had as little +thought of being a Friend as thee has. Perhaps when thee has seen more, +thee will better appreciate a quiet life." + +"Thee married young. I shall not marry young, and perhaps not at all," +said Ruth, with a look of vast experience. + +"Perhaps thee doesn't know thee own mind; I have known persons of thy +age who did not. Did thee see anybody whom thee would like to live with +always in Fallkill?" + +"Not always," replied Ruth with a little laugh. "Mother, I think I +wouldn't say 'always' to any one until I have a profession and am as +independent as he is. Then my love would be a free act, and not in any +way a necessity." + +Margaret Bolton smiled at this new-fangled philosophy. "Thee will find +that love, Ruth, is a thing thee won't reason about, when it comes, nor +make any bargains about. Thee wrote that Philip Sterling was at +Fallkill." + +"Yes, and Henry Brierly, a friend of his; a very amusing young fellow and +not so serious-minded as Philip, but a bit of a fop maybe." + +"And thee preferred the fop to the serious-minded?" + +"I didn't prefer anybody; but Henry Brierly was good company, which +Philip wasn't always." + +"Did thee know thee father had been in correspondence with Philip?" + +Ruth looked up surprised and with a plain question in her eyes. + +"Oh, it's not about thee." + +"What then?" and if there was any shade of disappointment in her tone, +probably Ruth herself did not know it. + +"It's about some land up in the country. That man Bigler has got father +into another speculation." + +"That odious man! Why will father have anything to do with him? Is it +that railroad?" + +"Yes. Father advanced money and took land as security, and whatever has +gone with the money and the bonds, he has on his hands a large tract of +wild land." + +"And what has Philip to do with that?" + +"It has good timber, if it could ever be got out, and father says that +there must be coal in it; it's in a coal region. He wants Philip to +survey it, and examine it for indications of coal." + +"It's another of father's fortunes, I suppose," said Ruth. "He has put +away so many fortunes for us that I'm afraid we never shall find them." + +Ruth was interested in it nevertheless, and perhaps mainly because Philip +was to be connected with the enterprise. Mr. Bigler came to dinner with +her father next day, and talked a great deal about Mr. Bolton's +magnificent tract of land, extolled the sagacity that led him to secure +such a property, and led the talk along to another railroad which would +open a northern communication to this very land. + +"Pennybacker says it's full of coal, he's no doubt of it, and a railroad +to strike the Erie would make it a fortune." + +"Suppose you take the land and work the thing up, Mr. Bigler; you may +have the tract for three dollars an acre." + +"You'd throw it away, then," replied Mr. Bigler, "and I'm not the man to +take advantage of a friend. But if you'll put a mortgage on it for the +northern road, I wouldn't mind taking an interest, if Pennybacker is +willing; but Pennybacker, you know, don't go much on land, he sticks to +the legislature." And Mr. Bigler laughed. + +When Mr. Bigler had gone, Ruth asked her father about Philip's connection +with the land scheme. + +"There's nothing definite," said Mr. Bolton. "Philip is showing aptitude +for his profession. I hear the best reports of him in New York, though +those sharpers don't 'intend to do anything but use him. I've written +and offered him employment in surveying and examining the land. We want +to know what it is. And if there is anything in it that his enterprise +can dig out, he shall have an interest. I should be glad to give the +young fellow a lift." + +All his life Eli Bolton had been giving young fellows a lift, and +shouldering the loses when things turned out unfortunately. His ledger, +take-it-altogether, would not show a balance on the right side; but +perhaps the losses on his books will turn out to be credits in a world +where accounts are kept on a different basis. The left hand of the +ledger will appear the right, looked at from the other side. + +Philip, wrote to Ruth rather a comical account of the bursting up of the +city of Napoleon and the navigation improvement scheme, of Harry's flight +and the Colonel's discomfiture. Harry left in such a hurry that he +hadn't even time to bid Miss Laura Hawkins good-bye, but he had no doubt +that Harry would console himself with the next pretty face he saw +--a remark which was thrown in for Ruth's benefit. Col. Sellers had in all +probability, by this time, some other equally brilliant speculation in +his brain. + +As to the railroad, Philip had made up his mind that it was merely kept +on foot for speculative purposes in Wall street, and he was about to quit +it. Would Ruth be glad to hear, he wondered, that he was coming East? +For he was coming, in spite of a letter from Harry in New York, advising +him to hold on until he had made some arrangements in regard to +contracts, he to be a little careful about Sellers, who was somewhat +visionary, Harry said. + +The summer went on without much excitement for Ruth. She kept up a +correspondence with Alice, who promised a visit in the fall, she read, +she earnestly tried to interest herself in home affairs and such people +as came to the house; but she found herself falling more and more into +reveries, and growing weary of things as they were. She felt that +everybody might become in time like two relatives from a Shaker +establishment in Ohio, who visited the Boltons about this time, a father +and son, clad exactly alike, and alike in manners. The son; however, +who was not of age, was more unworldly and sanctimonious than his father; +he always addressed his parent as "Brother Plum," and bore himself, +altogether in such a superior manner that Ruth longed to put bent pins in +his chair. Both father and son wore the long, single breasted collarless +coats of their society, without buttons, before or behind, but with a row +of hooks and eyes on either side in front. It was Ruth's suggestion that +the coats would be improved by a single hook and eye sewed on in the +small of the back where the buttons usually are. + +Amusing as this Shaker caricature of the Friends was, it oppressed Ruth +beyond measure; and increased her feeling of being stifled. + +It was a most unreasonable feeling. No home could be pleasanter than +Ruth's. The house, a little out of the city; was one of those elegant +country residences which so much charm visitors to the suburbs of +Philadelphia. A modern dwelling and luxurious in everything that wealth +could suggest for comfort, it stood in the midst of exquisitely kept +lawns, with groups of trees, parterres of flowers massed in colors, with +greenhouse, grapery and garden; and on one side, the garden sloped away +in undulations to a shallow brook that ran over a pebbly bottom and sang +under forest trees. The country about teas the perfection of cultivated +landscape, dotted with cottages, and stately mansions of Revolutionary +date, and sweet as an English country-side, whether seen in the soft +bloom of May or in the mellow ripeness of late October. + +It needed only the peace of the mind within, to make it a paradise. +One riding by on the Old Germantown road, and seeing a young girl +swinging in the hammock on the piazza and, intent upon some volume of old +poetry or the latest novel, would no doubt have envied a life so idyllic. +He could not have imagined that the young girl was reading a volume of +reports of clinics and longing to be elsewhere. + +Ruth could not have been more discontented if all the wealth about her +had been as unsubstantial as a dream. Perhaps she so thought it. + +"I feel," she once said to her father, "as if I were living in a house of +cards." + +"And thee would like to turn it into a hospital?" + +"No. But tell me father," continued Ruth, not to be put off, "is thee +still going on with that Bigler and those other men who come here and +entice thee?" + +Mr. Bolton smiled, as men do when they talk with women about "business" +"Such men have their uses, Ruth. They keep the world active, and I owe a +great many of my best operations to such men. Who knows, Ruth, but this +new land purchase, which I confess I yielded a little too much to Bigler +in, may not turn out a fortune for thee and the rest of the children?" + +"Ah, father, thee sees every thing in a rose-colored light. I do believe +thee wouldn't have so readily allowed me to begin the study of medicine, +if it hadn't had the novelty of an experiment to thee." + +"And is thee satisfied with it?" + +"If thee means, if I have had enough of it, no. I just begin to see what +I can do in it, and what a noble profession it is for a woman. Would +thee have me sit here like a bird on a bough and wait for somebody to +come and put me in a cage?" + +Mr. Bolton was not sorry to divert the talk from his own affairs, and he +did not think it worth while to tell his family of a performance that +very day which was entirely characteristic of him. + +Ruth might well say that she felt as if she were living in a house of +cards, although the Bolton household had no idea of the number of perils +that hovered over them, any more than thousands of families in America +have of the business risks and contingences upon which their prosperity +and luxury hang. + +A sudden call upon Mr. Bolton for a large sum of money, which must be +forthcoming at once, had found him in the midst of a dozen ventures, from +no one of which a dollar could be realized. It was in vain that he +applied to his business acquaintances and friends; it was a period of +sudden panic and no money. "A hundred thousand! Mr. Bolton," said +Plumly. "Good God, if you should ask me for ten, I shouldn't know where +to get it." + +And yet that day Mr. Small (Pennybacker, Bigler and Small) came to Mr. +Bolton with a piteous story of ruin in a coal operation, if he could not +raise ten thousand dollars. Only ten, and he was sure of a fortune. +Without it he was a beggar. Mr. Bolton had already Small's notes for a +large amount in his safe, labeled "doubtful;" he had helped him again and +again, and always with the same result. But Mr. Small spoke with a +faltering voice of his family, his daughter in school, his wife ignorant +of his calamity, and drew such a picture of their agony, that Mr. Bolton +put by his own more pressing necessity, and devoted the day to scraping +together, here and there, ten thousand dollars for this brazen beggar, +who had never kept a promise to him nor paid a debt. + +Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that +this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon +human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a +whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar +newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished +speculator in lands and mines this remark:--"I wasn't worth a cent two +years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +It was a hard blow to poor Sellers to see the work on his darling +enterprise stop, and the noise and bustle and confusion that had been +such refreshment to his soul, sicken and die out. It was hard to come +down to humdrum ordinary life again after being a General Superintendent +and the most conspicuous man in the community. It was sad to see his +name disappear from the newspapers; sadder still to see it resurrected at +intervals, shorn of its aforetime gaudy gear of compliments and clothed +on with rhetorical tar and feathers. + +But his friends suffered more on his account than he did. He was a cork +that could not be kept under the water many moments at a time. + +He had to bolster up his wife's spirits every now and then. On one of +these occasions he said: + +"It's all right, my dear, all right; it will all come right in a little +while. There's $200,000 coming, and that will set things booming again: +Harry seems to be having some difficulty, but that's to be expected--you +can't move these big operations to the tune of Fisher's Hornpipe, you +know. But Harry will get it started along presently, and then you'll +see! I expect the news every day now." + +"But Beriah, you've been expecting it every day, all along, haven't you?" + +"Well, yes; yes--I don't know but I have. But anyway, the longer it's +delayed, the nearer it grows to the time when it will start--same as +every day you live brings you nearer to--nearer--" + +"The grave?" + +"Well, no--not that exactly; but you can't understand these things, Polly +dear--women haven't much head for business, you know. You make yourself +perfectly comfortable, old lady, and you'll see how we'll trot this right +along. Why bless you, let the appropriation lag, if it wants to--that's +no great matter--there's a bigger thing than that." + +"Bigger than $200,000, Beriah?" + +"Bigger, child?--why, what's $200,000? Pocket money! Mere pocket money! +Look at the railroad! Did you forget the railroad? It ain't many months +till spring; it will be coming right along, and the railroad swimming +right along behind it. Where'll it be by the middle of summer? Just +stop and fancy a moment--just think a little--don't anything suggest +itself? Bless your heart, you dear women live right in the present all +the time--but a man, why a man lives---- + +"In the future, Beriah? But don't we live in the future most too much, +Beriah? We do somehow seem to manage to live on next year's crop of corn +and potatoes as a general thing while this year is still dragging along, +but sometimes it's not a robust diet,--Beriah. But don't look that way, +dear--don't mind what I say. I don't mean to fret, I don't mean to +worry; and I don't, once a month, do I, dear? But when I get a little +low and feel bad, I get a bit troubled and worrisome, but it don't mean +anything in the world. It passes right away. I know you're doing all +you can, and I don't want to seem repining and ungrateful--for I'm not, +Beriah--you know I'm not, don't you?" + +"Lord bless you, child, I know you are the very best little woman that +ever lived--that ever lived on the whole face of the Earth! And I know +that I would be a dog not to work for you and think for you and scheme +for you with all my might. And I'll bring things all right yet, honey +--cheer up and don't you fear. The railroad----" + +"Oh, I had forgotten the railroad, dear, but when a body gets blue, a +body forgets everything. Yes, the railroad--tell me about the railroad." + +"Aha, my girl, don't you see? Things ain't so dark, are they? Now I +didn't forget the railroad. Now just think for a moment--just figure up +a little on the future dead moral certainties. For instance, call this +waiter St. Louis. + +"And we'll lay this fork (representing the railroad) from St. Louis to +this potato, which is Slouchburg: + +"Then with this carving knife we'll continue the railroad from Slouchburg +to Doodleville, shown by the black pepper: + +"Then we run along the--yes--the comb--to the tumbler that's Brimstone: + +"Thence by the pipe to Belshazzar, which is the salt-cellar: + +"Thence to, to--that quill--Catfish--hand me the pincushion, Marie +Antoinette: + +"Thence right along these shears to this horse, Babylon: + +"Then by the spoon to Bloody Run--thank you, the ink: + +"Thence to Hail Columbia--snuffers, Polly, please move that cup and +saucer close up, that's Hail Columbia: + +"Then--let me open my knife--to Hark-from-the-Tomb, where we'll put +the candle-stick--only a little distance from Hail Columbia to +Hark-from-the-Tomb--down-grade all the way. + +"And there we strike Columbus River--pass me two or throe skeins of +thread to stand for the river; the sugar bowl will do for Hawkeye, and +the rat trap for Stone's Landing-Napoleon, I mean--and you can see how +much better Napoleon is located than Hawkeye. Now here you are with your +railroad complete, and showing its continuation to Hallelujah and thence +to Corruptionville. + +"Now then-them you are! It's a beautiful road, beautiful. Jeff Thompson +can out-engineer any civil engineer that ever sighted through an aneroid, +or a theodolite, or whatever they call it--he calls it sometimes one and +sometimes the other just whichever levels off his sentence neatest, I +reckon. But ain't it a ripping toad, though? I tell you, it'll make a +stir when it gets along. Just see what a country it goes through. +There's your onions at Slouchburg--noblest onion country that graces +God's footstool; and there's your turnip country all around Doodleville +--bless my life, what fortunes are going to be made there when they get +that contrivance perfected for extracting olive oil out of turnips--if +there's any in them; and I reckon there is, because Congress has made an +appropriation of money to test the thing, and they wouldn't have done +that just on conjecture, of course. And now we come to the Brimstone +region--cattle raised there till you can't rest--and corn, and all that +sort of thing. Then you've got a little stretch along through Belshazzar +that don't produce anything now--at least nothing but rocks--but +irrigation will fetch it. Then from Catfish to Babylon it's a little +swampy, but there's dead loads of peat down under there somewhere. Next +is the Bloody Run and Hail Columbia country--tobacco enough can be raised +there to support two such railroads. Next is the sassparilla region. +I reckon there's enough of that truck along in there on the line of the +pocket-knife, from Hail Columbia to Hark-from-the Tomb to fat up all the +consumptives in all the hospitals from Halifax to the Holy Land. It just +grows like weeds! I've got a little belt of sassparilla land in there +just tucked away unobstrusively waiting for my little Universal +Expectorant to get into shape in my head. And I'll fix that, you know. +One of these days I'll have all the nations of the earth expecto--" + +"But Beriah, dear--" + +"Don't interrupt me; Polly--I don't want you to lose the run of the map +--well, take your toy-horse, James Fitz-James, if you must have it--and run +along with you. Here, now--the soap will do for Babylon. Let me see +--where was I? Oh yes--now we run down to Stone's Lan--Napoleon--now we +run down to Napoleon. Beautiful road. Look at that, now. Perfectly +straight line-straight as the way to the grave. And see where it leaves +Hawkeye-clear out in the cold, my dear, clear out in the cold. That +town's as bound to die as--well if I owned it I'd get its obituary ready, +now, and notify the mourners. Polly, mark my words--in three years from +this, Hawkeye'll be a howling wilderness. You'll see. And just look at +that river--noblest stream that meanders over the thirsty earth! +--calmest, gentlest artery that refreshes her weary bosom! Railroad +goes all over it and all through it--wades right along on stilts. +Seventeen bridges in three miles and a half--forty-nine bridges from +Hark-from-the-Tomb to Stone's Landing altogether--forty nine bridges, and +culverts enough to culvert creation itself! Hadn't skeins of thread +enough to represent them all--but you get an idea--perfect trestle-work +of bridges for seventy two miles: Jeff Thompson and I fixed all that, you +know; he's to get the contracts and I'm to put them through on the +divide. Just oceans of money in those bridges. It's the only part of +the railroad I'm interested in,--down along the line--and it's all I +want, too. It's enough, I should judge. Now here we are at Napoleon. +Good enough country plenty good enough--all it wants is population. +That's all right--that will come. And it's no bad country now for +calmness and solitude, I can tell you--though there's no money in that, +of course. No money, but a man wants rest, a man wants peace--a man +don't want to rip and tear around all the time. And here we go, now, +just as straight as a string for Hallelujah--it's a beautiful angle +--handsome up grade all the way --and then away you go to Corruptionville, +the gaudiest country for early carrots and cauliflowers that ever--good +missionary field, too. There ain't such another missionary field outside +the jungles of Central Africa. And patriotic?--why they named it after +Congress itself. Oh, I warn you, my dear, there's a good time coming, +and it'll be right along before you know what you're about, too. That +railroad's fetching it. You see what it is as far as I've got, and if I +had enough bottles and soap and boot-jacks and such things to carry it +along to where it joins onto the Union Pacific, fourteen hundred miles +from here, I should exhibit to you in that little internal improvement a +spectacle of inconceivable sublimity. So, don't you see? We've got the +rail road to fall back on; and in the meantime, what are we worrying +about that $200,000 appropriation for? That's all right. I'd be willing +to bet anything that the very next letter that comes from Harry will--" + +The eldest boy entered just in the nick of time and brought a letter, +warm from the post-office. + +"Things do look bright, after all, Beriah. I'm sorry I was blue, but it +did seem as if everything had been going against us for whole ages. Open +the letter--open it quick, and let's know all about it before we stir out +of our places. I am all in a fidget to know what it says." + +The letter was opened, without any unnecessary delay. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +Whatever may have been the language of Harry's letter to the Colonel, +the information it conveyed was condensed or expanded, one or the other, +from the following episode of his visit to New York: + +He called, with official importance in his mien, at No.-- Wall street, +where a great gilt sign betokened the presence of the head-quarters of +the "Columbus River Slack-Water Navigation Company." He entered and +gave a dressy porter his card, and was requested to wait a moment in a +sort of ante-room. The porter returned in a minute; and asked whom he +would like to see? + +"The president of the company, of course." + +"He is busy with some gentlemen, sir; says he will be done with them +directly." + +That a copper-plate card with "Engineer-in-Chief" on it should be +received with such tranquility as this, annoyed Mr. Brierly not a little. +But he had to submit. Indeed his annoyance had time to augment a good +deal; for he was allowed to cool his heels a frill half hour in the +ante-room before those gentlemen emerged and he was ushered into the +presence. He found a stately dignitary occupying a very official chair +behind a long green morocco-covered table, in a room with sumptuously +carpeted and furnished, and well garnished with pictures. + +"Good morning, sir; take a seat--take a seat." + +"Thank you sir," said Harry, throwing as much chill into his manner as +his ruffled dignity prompted. + +"We perceive by your reports and the reports of the Chief Superintendent, +that you have been making gratifying progress with the work.--We are all +very much pleased." + +"Indeed? We did not discover it from your letters--which we have not +received; nor by the treatment our drafts have met with--which were not +honored; nor by the reception of any part of the appropriation, no part +of it having come to hand." + +"Why, my dear Mr. Brierly, there must be some mistake, I am sure we wrote +you and also Mr. Sellers, recently--when my clerk comes he will show +copies--letters informing you of the ten per cent. assessment." + +"Oh, certainly, we got those letters. But what we wanted was money to +carry on the work--money to pay the men." + +"Certainly, certainly--true enough--but we credited you both for a large +part of your assessments--I am sure that was in our letters." + +"Of course that was in--I remember that." + +"Ah, very well then. Now we begin to understand each other." + +"Well, I don't see that we do. There's two months' wages due the men, +and----" + +"How? Haven't you paid the men?" + +"Paid them! How are we going to pay them when you don't honor our +drafts?" + +"Why, my dear sir, I cannot see how you can find any fault with us. I am +sure we have acted in a perfectly straight forward business way.--Now let +us look at the thing a moment. You subscribed for 100 shares of the +capital stock, at $1,000 a share, I believe?" + +"Yes, sir, I did." + +"And Mr. Sellers took a like amount?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Very well. No concern can get along without money. We levied a ten per +cent. assessment. It was the original understanding that you and Mr. +Sellers were to have the positions you now hold, with salaries of $600 a +month each, while in active service. You were duly elected to these +places, and you accepted them. Am I right?" + +"Certainly." + +"Very well. You were given your instructions and put to work. By your +reports it appears that you have expended the sum of $9,610 upon the said +work. Two months salary to you two officers amounts altogether to +$2,400--about one-eighth of your ten per cent. assessment, you see; which +leaves you in debt to the company for the other seven-eighths of the +assessment--viz, something over $8,000 apiece. Now instead of requiring +you to forward this aggregate of $16,000 or $17,000 to New York, the +company voted unanimously to let you pay it over to the contractors, +laborers from time to time, and give you credit on the books for it. +And they did it without a murmur, too, for they were pleased with the +progress you had made, and were glad to pay you that little compliment +--and a very neat one it was, too, I am sure. The work you did fell short +of $10,000, a trifle. Let me see--$9,640 from $20,000 salary $2;400 +added--ah yes, the balance due the company from yourself and Mr. Sellers +is $7,960, which I will take the responsibility of allowing to stand for +the present, unless you prefer to draw a check now, and thus----" + +"Confound it, do you mean to say that instead of the company owing us +$2,400, we owe the company $7,960?" + +"Well, yes." + +"And that we owe the men and the contractors nearly ten thousand dollars +besides?" + +"Owe them! Oh bless my soul, you can't mean that you have not paid these +people?" + +"But I do mean it!" + +The president rose and walked the floor like a man in bodily pain. His +brows contracted, he put his hand up and clasped his forehead, and kept +saying, "Oh, it is, too bad, too bad, too bad! Oh, it is bound to be +found out--nothing can prevent it--nothing!" + +Then he threw himself into his chair and said: + +"My dear Mr. Brierson, this is dreadful--perfectly dreadful. It will be +found out. It is bound to tarnish the good name of the company; our +credit will be seriously, most seriously impaired. How could you be so +thoughtless--the men ought to have been paid though it beggared us all!" + +"They ought, ought they? Then why the devil--my name is not Bryerson, by +the way--why the mischief didn't the compa--why what in the nation ever +became of the appropriation? Where is that appropriation?--if a +stockholder may make so bold as to ask." + +The appropriation?--that paltry $200,000, do you mean?" + +"Of course--but I didn't know that $200,000 was so very paltry. Though I +grant, of course, that it is not a large sum, strictly speaking. But +where is it?" + +"My dear sir, you surprise me. You surely cannot have had a large +acquaintance with this sort of thing. Otherwise you would not have +expected much of a result from a mere INITIAL appropriation like that. +It was never intended for anything but a mere nest egg for the future and +real appropriations to cluster around." + +"Indeed? Well, was it a myth, or was it a reality? Whatever become of +it?" + +"Why the--matter is simple enough. A Congressional appropriation costs +money. Just reflect, for instance--a majority of the House Committee, +say $10,000 apiece--$40,000; a majority of the Senate Committee, the same +each--say $40,000; a little extra to one or two chairman of one or two +such committees, say $10,000 each--$20,000; and there's $100,000 of the +money gone, to begin with. Then, seven male lobbyists, at $3,000 each +--$21,000; one female lobbyist, $10,000; a high moral Congressman or +Senator here and there--the high moral ones cost more, because they. +give tone to a measure--say ten of these at $3,000 each, is $30,000; then +a lot of small-fry country members who won't vote for anything whatever +without pay--say twenty at $500 apiece, is $10,000; a lot of dinners to +members--say $10,000 altogether; lot of jimcracks for Congressmen's wives +and children--those go a long way--you can't sped too much money in that +line--well, those things cost in a lump, say $10,000--along there +somewhere; and then comes your printed documents--your maps, your tinted +engravings, your pamphlets, your illuminated show cards, your +advertisements in a hundred and fifty papers at ever so much a line +--because you've got to keep the papers all light or you are gone up, you +know. Oh, my dear sir, printing bills are destruction itself. Ours so +far amount to--let me see--10; 52; 22; 13;--and then there's 11; 14; 33 +--well, never mind the details, the total in clean numbers foots up +$118,254.42 thus far!" + +"What!" + +"Oh, yes indeed. Printing's no bagatelle, I can tell you. And then +there's your contributions, as a company, to Chicago fires and Boston +fires, and orphan asylums and all that sort of thing--head the list, you +see, with the company's full name and a thousand dollars set opposite +--great card, sir--one of the finest advertisements in the world--the +preachers mention it in the pulpit when it's a religious charity--one of +the happiest advertisements in the world is your benevolent donation. +Ours have amounted to sixteen thousand dollars and some cents up to this +time." + +"Good heavens!" + +"Oh, yes. Perhaps the biggest thing we've done in the advertising line +was to get an officer of the U. S. government, of perfectly Himmalayan +official altitude, to write up our little internal improvement for a +religious paper of enormous circulation--I tell you that makes our bonds +go handsomely among the pious poor. Your religious paper is by far the +best vehicle for a thing of this kind, because they'll 'lead' your +article and put it right in the midst of the reading matter; and if it's +got a few Scripture quotations in it, and some temperance platitudes and +a bit of gush here and there about Sunday Schools, and a sentimental +snuffle now and then about 'God's precious ones, the honest hard-handed +poor,' it works the nation like a charm, my dear sir, and never a man +suspects that it is an advertisement; but your secular paper sticks you +right into the advertising columns and of course you don't take a trick. +Give me a religious paper to advertise in, every time; and if you'll just +look at their advertising pages, you'll observe that other people think a +good deal as I do--especially people who have got little financial +schemes to make everybody rich with. Of course I mean your great big +metropolitan religious papers that know how to serve God and make money +at the same time--that's your sort, sir, that's your sort--a religious +paper that isn't run to make money is no use to us, sir, as an +advertising medium--no use to anybody--in our line of business. I guess +our next best dodge was sending a pleasure trip of newspaper reporters +out to Napoleon. Never paid them a cent; just filled them up with +champagne and the fat of the land, put pen, ink and paper before them +while they were red-hot, and bless your soul when you come to read their +letters you'd have supposed they'd been to heaven. And if a sentimental +squeamishness held one or two of them back from taking a less rosy view +of Napoleon, our hospitalities tied his tongue, at least, and he said +nothing at all and so did us no harm. Let me see--have I stated all the +expenses I've been at? No, I was near forgetting one or two items. +There's your official salaries--you can't get good men for nothing. +Salaries cost pretty lively. And then there's your big high-sounding +millionaire names stuck into your advertisements as stockholders--another +card, that--and they are stockholders, too, but you have to give them the +stock and non-assessable at that--so they're an expensive lot. Very, +very expensive thing, take it all around, is a big internal improvement +concern--but you see that yourself, Mr. Bryerman--you see that, yourself, +sir." + +"But look here. I think you are a little mistaken about it's ever having +cost anything for Congressional votes. I happen to know something about +that. I've let you say your say--now let me say mine. I don't wish to +seem to throw any suspicion on anybody's statements, because we are all +liable to be mistaken. But how would it strike you if I were to say that +I was in Washington all the time this bill was pending? and what if I +added that I put the measure through myself? Yes, sir, I did that little +thing. And moreover, I never paid a dollar for any man's vote and never +promised one. There are some ways of doing a thing that are as good as +others which other people don't happen to think about, or don't have the +knack of succeeding in, if they do happen to think of them. My dear sir, +I am obliged to knock some of your expenses in the head--for never a cent +was paid a Congressman or Senator on the part of this Navigation Company." + +The president smiled blandly, even sweetly, all through this harangue, +and then said: + +"Is that so?" + +"Every word of it." + +"Well it does seem to alter the complexion of things a little. You are +acquainted with the members down there, of course, else you could not +have worked to such advantage?" + +"I know them all, sir. I know their wives, their children, their babies +--I even made it a point to be on good terms with their lackeys. I know +every Congressman well--even familiarly." + +"Very good. Do you know any of their signatures? Do you know their +handwriting?" + +"Why I know their handwriting as well as I know my own--have had +correspondence enough with them, I should think. And their signatures +--why I can tell their initials, even." + +The president went to a private safe, unlocked it and got out some +letters and certain slips of paper. Then he said: + +"Now here, for instance; do you believe that that is a genuine letter? +Do you know this signature here?--and this one? Do you know who those +initials represent--and are they forgeries?" + +Harry was stupefied. There were things there that made his brain swim. +Presently, at the bottom of one of the letters he saw a signature that +restored his equilibrium; it even brought the sunshine of a smile to his +face. + +The president said: + +"That one amuses you. You never suspected him?" + +"Of course I ought to have suspected him, but I don't believe it ever +really occurred to me. Well, well, well--how did you ever have the nerve +to approach him, of all others?" + +"Why my friend, we never think of accomplishing anything without his +help. He is our mainstay. But how do those letters strike you?" + +"They strike me dumb! What a stone-blind idiot I have been!" + +"Well, take it all around, I suppose you had a pleasant time in +Washington," said the president, gathering up the letters; "of course you +must have had. Very few men could go there and get a money bill through +without buying a single" + +"Come, now, Mr. President, that's plenty of that! I take back everything +I said on that head. I'm a wiser man to-day than I was yesterday, I can +tell you." + +"I think you are. In fact I am satisfied you are. But now I showed you +these things in confidence, you understand. Mention facts as much as you +want to, but don't mention names to anybody. I can depend on you for +that, can't I?" + +"Oh, of course. I understand the necessity of that. I will not betray +the names. But to go back a bit, it begins to look as if you never saw +any of that appropriation at all?" + +"We saw nearly ten thousand dollars of it--and that was all. Several of +us took turns at log-rolling in Washington, and if we had charged +anything for that service, none of that $10,000 would ever have reached +New York." + +"If you hadn't levied the assessment you would have been in a close place +I judge?" + +"Close? Have you figured up the total of the disbursements I told you +of?" + +"No, I didn't think of that." + +"Well, lets see: + +Spent in Washington, say, ........... $191,000 +Printing, advertising, etc., say .... $118,000 +Charity, say, ....................... $16,000 + + Total, ............... $325,000 + +The money to do that with, comes from +--Appropriation, ...................... $200,000 + +Ten per cent. assessment on capital of + $1,000,000 ..................... $100,000 + + Total, ............... $300,000 + +"Which leaves us in debt some $25,000 at this moment. Salaries of home +officers are still going on; also printing and advertising. Next month +will show a state of things!" + +"And then--burst up, I suppose?" + +"By no means. Levy another assessment" + +"Oh, I see. That's dismal." + +"By no means." + +"Why isn't it? What's the road out?" + +"Another appropriation, don't you see?" + +"Bother the appropriations. They cost more than they come to." + +"Not the next one. We'll call for half a million--get it and go for a +million the very next month."--"Yes, but the cost of it!" + +The president smiled, and patted his secret letters affectionately. He +said: + +"All these people are in the next Congress. We shan't have to pay them a +cent. And what is more, they will work like beavers for us--perhaps it +might be to their advantage." + +Harry reflected profoundly a while. Then he said: + +"We send many missionaries to lift up the benighted races of other lands. +How much cheaper and better it would be if those people could only come +here and drink of our civilization at its fountain head." + +"I perfectly agree with you, Mr. Beverly. Must you go? Well, good +morning. Look in, when you are passing; and whenever I can give you any +information about our affairs and pro'spects, I shall be glad to do it." + +Harry's letter was not a long one, but it contained at least the +calamitous figures that came out in the above conversation. The Colonel +found himself in a rather uncomfortable place--no $1,200 salary +forthcoming; and himself held responsible for half of the $9,640 due the +workmen, to say nothing of being in debt to the company to the extent of +nearly $4,000. Polly's heart was nearly broken; the "blues" returned in +fearful force, and she had to go out of the room to hide the tears that +nothing could keep back now. + +There was mourning in another quarter, too, for Louise had a letter. +Washington had refused, at the last moment, to take $40,000 for the +Tennessee Land, and had demanded $150,000! So the trade fell through, +and now Washington was wailing because he had been so foolish. But he +wrote that his man might probably return to the city soon, and then he +meant to sell to him, sure, even if he had to take $10,000. Louise had a +good cry-several of them, indeed--and the family charitably forebore to +make any comments that would increase her grief. + +Spring blossomed, summer came, dragged its hot weeks by, and the +Colonel's spirits rose, day by day, for the railroad was making good +progress. But by and by something happened. Hawkeye had always declined +to subscribe anything toward the railway, imagining that her large +business would be a sufficient compulsory influence; but now Hawkeye was +frightened; and before Col. Sellers knew what he was about, Hawkeye, in a +panic, had rushed to the front and subscribed such a sum that Napoleon's +attractions suddenly sank into insignificance and the railroad concluded +to follow a comparatively straight coarse instead of going miles out of +its way to build up a metropolis in the muddy desert of Stone's Landing. + +The thunderbolt fell. After all the Colonel's deep planning; after all +his brain work and tongue work in drawing public attention to his pet +project and enlisting interest in it; after all his faithful hard toil +with his hands, and running hither and thither on his busy feet; after +all his high hopes and splendid prophecies, the fates had turned their +backs on him at last, and all in a moment his air-castles crumbled to +ruins abort him. Hawkeye rose from her fright triumphant and rejoicing, +and down went Stone's Landing! One by one its meagre parcel of +inhabitants packed up and moved away, as the summer waned and fall +approached. Town lots were no longer salable, traffic ceased, a deadly +lethargy fell upon the place once more, the "Weekly Telegraph" faded into +an early grave, the wary tadpole returned from exile, the bullfrog +resumed his ancient song, the tranquil turtle sunned his back upon bank +and log and drowsed his grateful life away as in the old sweet days of +yore. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +Philip Sterling was on his way to Ilium, in the state of Pennsylvania. +Ilium was the railway station nearest to the tract of wild land which +Mr. Bolton had commissioned him to examine. + +On the last day of the journey as the railway train Philip was on was +leaving a large city, a lady timidly entered the drawing-room car, and +hesitatingly took a chair that was at the moment unoccupied. Philip saw +from the window that a gentleman had put her upon the car just as it was +starting. In a few moments the conductor entered, and without waiting an +explanation, said roughly to the lady, + +"Now you can't sit there. That seat's taken. Go into the other car." + +"I did not intend to take the seat," said the lady rising, "I only sat +down a moment till the conductor should come and give me a seat." + +"There aint any. Car's full. You'll have to leave." + +"But, sir," said the lady, appealingly, "I thought--" + +"Can't help what you thought--you must go into the other car." + +"The train is going very fast, let me stand here till we stop." + +"The lady can have my seat," cried Philip, springing up. + +The conductor turned towards Philip, and coolly and deliberately surveyed +him from head to foot, with contempt in every line of his face, turned +his back upon him without a word, and said to the lady, + +"Come, I've got no time to talk. You must go now." + +The lady, entirely disconcerted by such rudeness, and frightened, moved +towards the door, opened it and stepped out. The train was swinging +along at a rapid rate, jarring from side to side; the step was a long one +between the cars and there was no protecting grating. The lady attempted +it, but lost her balance, in the wind and the motion of the car, and +fell! She would inevitably have gone down under the wheels, if Philip, +who had swiftly followed her, had not caught her arm and drawn her up. +He then assisted her across, found her a seat, received her bewildered +thanks, and returned to his car. + +The conductor was still there, taking his tickets, and growling something +about imposition. Philip marched up to him, and burst out with, + +"You are a brute, an infernal brute, to treat a woman that way." + +"Perhaps you'd like to make a fuss about it," sneered the conductor. + +Philip's reply was a blow, given so suddenly and planted so squarely in +the conductor's face, that it sent him reeling over a fat passenger, who +was looking up in mild wonder that any one should dare to dispute with a +conductor, and against the side of the car. + +He recovered himself, reached the bell rope, "Damn you, I'll learn you," +stepped to the door and called a couple of brakemen, and then, as the +speed slackened; roared out, + +"Get off this train." + +"I shall not get off. I have as much right here as you." + +"We'll see," said the conductor, advancing with the brakemen. The +passengers protested, and some of them said to each other, "That's too +bad," as they always do in such cases, but none of them offered to take a +hand with Philip. The men seized him, wrenched him from his seat, +dragged him along the aisle, tearing his clothes, thrust him from the +car, and, then flung his carpet-bag, overcoat and umbrella after him. +And the train went on. + +The conductor, red in the face and puffing from his exertion, swaggered +through the car, muttering "Puppy, I'll learn him." The passengers, when +he had gone, were loud in their indignation, and talked about signing a +protest, but they did nothing more than talk. + +The next morning the Hooverville Patriot and Clarion had this "item":-- + + SLIGHTUALLY OVERBOARD. + + "We learn that as the down noon express was leaving H---- yesterday + a lady! (God save the mark) attempted to force herself into the + already full palatial car. Conductor Slum, who is too old a bird to + be caught with chaff, courteously informed her that the car was + full, and when she insisted on remaining, he persuaded her to go + into the car where she belonged. Thereupon a young sprig, from the + East, blustered like a Shanghai rooster, and began to sass the + conductor with his chin music. That gentleman delivered the young + aspirant for a muss one of his elegant little left-handers, which so + astonished him that he began to feel for his shooter. Whereupon Mr. + Slum gently raised the youth, carried him forth, and set him down + just outside the car to cool off. Whether the young blood has yet + made his way out of Bascom's swamp, we have not learned. Conductor + Slum is one of the most gentlemanly and efficient officers on the + road; but he ain't trifled with, not much. We learn that the + company have put a new engine on the seven o'clock train, and newly + upholstered the drawing-room car throughout. It spares no effort + for the comfort of the traveling public." + +Philip never had been before in Bascom's swamp, and there was nothing +inviting in it to detain him. After the train got out of the way he +crawled out of the briars and the mud, and got upon the track. He was +somewhat bruised, but he was too angry to mind that. He plodded along +over the ties in a very hot condition of mind and body. In the scuffle, +his railway check had disappeared, and he grimly wondered, as he noticed +the loss, if the company would permit him to walk over their track if +they should know he hadn't a ticket. + +Philip had to walk some five miles before he reached a little station, +where he could wait for a train, and he had ample time for reflection. +At first he was full of vengeance on the company. He would sue it. He +would make it pay roundly. But then it occurred to him that he did not +know the name of a witness he could summon, and that a personal fight +against a railway corporation was about the most hopeless in the world. +He then thought he would seek out that conductor, lie in wait for him at +some station, and thrash him, or get thrashed himself. + +But as he got cooler, that did not seem to him a project worthy of a +gentleman exactly. Was it possible for a gentleman to get even with such +a fellow as that conductor on the letter's own plane? And when he came +to this point, he began to ask himself, if he had not acted very much +like a fool. He didn't regret striking the fellow--he hoped he had left +a mark on him. But, after all, was that the best way? Here was he, +Philip Sterling, calling himself a gentleman, in a brawl with a vulgar +conductor, about a woman he had never seen before. Why should he have +put himself in such a ridiculous position? Wasn't it enough to have +offered the lady his seat, to have rescued her from an accident, perhaps +from death? Suppose he had simply said to the conductor, "Sir, your +conduct is brutal, I shall report you." The passengers, who saw the +affair, might have joined in a report against the conductor, and he might +really have accomplished something. And, now! Philip looked at leis +torn clothes, and thought with disgust of his haste in getting into a +fight with such an autocrat. + +At the little station where Philip waited for the next train, he met a +man--who turned out to be a justice of the peace in that neighborhood, +and told him his adventure. He was a kindly sort of man, and seemed very +much interested. + +"Dum 'em," said he, when he had heard the story. + +"Do you think any thing can be done, sir?" + +"Wal, I guess tain't no use. I hain't a mite of doubt of every word you +say. But suin's no use. The railroad company owns all these people +along here, and the judges on the bench too. Spiled your clothes! Wal, +'least said's soonest mended.' You haint no chance with the company." + +When next morning, he read the humorous account in the Patriot and +Clarion, he saw still more clearly what chance he would have had before +the public in a fight with the railroad company. + +Still Philip's conscience told him that it was his plain duty to carry +the matter into the courts, even with the certainty of defeat. +He confessed that neither he nor any citizen had a right to consult his +own feelings or conscience in a case where a law of the land had been +violated before his own eyes. He confessed that every citizen's first +duty in such case is to put aside his own business and devote his time +and his best efforts to seeing that the infraction is promptly punished; +and he knew that no country can be well governed unless its citizens as +a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians +of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its +execution, nothing more. As a finality he was obliged to confess that he +was a bad citizen, and also that the general laxity of the time, and the +absence of a sense of duty toward any part of the community but the +individual himself were ingrained in him, am he was no better than the +rest of the people. + +The result of this little adventure was that Philip did not reach Ilium +till daylight the next morning, when he descended sleepy and sore, from a +way train, and looked about him. Ilium was in a narrow mountain gorge, +through which a rapid stream ran. It consisted of the plank platform on +which he stood, a wooden house, half painted, with a dirty piazza +(unroofed) in front, and a sign board hung on a slanting pole--bearing +the legend, "Hotel. P. Dusenheimer," a sawmill further down the stream, +a blacksmith-shop, and a store, and three or four unpainted dwellings of +the slab variety. + +As Philip approached the hotel he saw what appeared to be a wild beast +crouching on the piazza. It did not stir, however, and he soon found +that it was only a stuffed skin. This cheerful invitation to the tavern +was the remains of a huge panther which had been killed in the region a +few weeks before. Philip examined his ugly visage and strong crooked +fore-arm, as he was waiting admittance, having pounded upon the door. + +"Yait a bit. I'll shoost--put on my trowsers," shouted a voice from the +window, and the door was soon opened by the yawning landlord. + +"Morgen! Didn't hear d' drain oncet. Dem boys geeps me up zo spate. +Gom right in." + +Philip was shown into a dirty bar-room. It was a small room, with a +stove in the middle, set in a long shallow box of sand, for the benefit +of the "spitters," a bar across one end--a mere counter with a sliding +glass-case behind it containing a few bottles having ambitious labels, +and a wash-sink in one corner. On the walls were the bright yellow and +black handbills of a traveling circus, with pictures of acrobats in human +pyramids, horses flying in long leaps through the air, and sylph-like +women in a paradisaic costume, balancing themselves upon the tips of +their toes on the bare backs of frantic and plunging steeds, and kissing +their hands to the spectators meanwhile. + +As Philip did not desire a room at that hour, he was invited to wash +himself at the nasty sink, a feat somewhat easier than drying his face, +for the towel that hung in a roller over the sink was evidently as much a +fixture as the sink itself, and belonged, like the suspended brush and +comb, to the traveling public. Philip managed to complete his toilet by +the use of his pocket-handkerchief, and declining the hospitality of the +landlord, implied in the remark, "You won'd dake notin'?" he went into +the open air to wait for breakfast. + +The country he saw was wild but not picturesque. The mountain before him +might be eight hundred feet high, and was only a portion of a long +unbroken range, savagely wooded, which followed the stream. Behind the +hotel, and across the brawling brook, was another level-topped, wooded +range exactly like it. Ilium itself, seen at a glance, was old enough to +be dilapidated, and if it had gained anything by being made a wood and +water station of the new railroad, it was only a new sort of grime and +rawness. P. Dusenheimer, standing in the door of his uninviting +groggery, when the trains stopped for water; never received from the +traveling public any patronage except facetious remarks upon his personal +appearance. Perhaps a thousand times he had heard the remark, "Ilium +fuit," followed in most instances by a hail to himself as "AEneas," with +the inquiry "Where is old Anchises?" At first he had replied, "Dere +ain't no such man;" but irritated by its senseless repetition, he had +latterly dropped into the formula of, "You be dam." + +Philip was recalled from the contemplation of Ilium by the rolling and +growling of the gong within the hotel, the din and clamor increasing till +the house was apparently unable to contain it; when it burst out of the +front door and informed the world that breakfast was on the table. + +The dining room was long, low and narrow, and a narrow table extended its +whole length. Upon this was spread a cloth which from appearance might +have been as long in use as the towel in the barroom. Upon the table was +the usual service, the heavy, much nicked stone ware, the row of plated +and rusty castors, the sugar bowls with the zinc tea-spoons sticking up +in them, the piles of yellow biscuits, the discouraged-looking plates of +butter. The landlord waited, and Philip was pleased to observe the +change in his manner. In the barroom he was the conciliatory landlord. +Standing behind his guests at table, he had an air of peremptory +patronage, and the voice in which he shot out the inquiry, as he seized +Philip's plate, "Beefsteak or liver?" quite took away Philip's power of +choice. He begged for a glass of milk, after trying that green hued +compound called coffee, and made his breakfast out of that and some hard +crackers which seemed to have been imported into Ilium before the +introduction of the iron horse, and to have withstood a ten years siege +of regular boarders, Greeks and others. + +The land that Philip had come to look at was at least five miles distant +from Ilium station. A corner of it touched the railroad, but the rest +was pretty much an unbroken wilderness, eight or ten thousand acres of +rough country, most of it such a mountain range as he saw at Ilium. + +His first step was to hire three woodsmen to accompany him. By their +help he built a log hut, and established a camp on the land, and then +began his explorations, mapping down his survey as he went along, noting +the timber, and the lay of the land, and making superficial observations +as to the prospect of coal. + +The landlord at Ilium endeavored to persuade Philip to hire the services +of a witch-hazel professor of that region, who could walk over the land +with his wand and tell him infallibly whether it contained coal, and +exactly where the strata ran. But Philip preferred to trust to his own +study of the country, and his knowledge of the geological formation. +He spent a month in traveling over the land and making calculations; +and made up his mind that a fine vein of coal ran through the mountain +about a mile from the railroad, and that the place to run in a tunnel was +half way towards its summit. + +Acting with his usual promptness, Philip, with the consent of Mr. Bolton, +broke ground there at once, and, before snow came, had some rude +buildings up, and was ready for active operations in the spring. It was +true that there were no outcroppings of coal at the place, and the people +at Ilium said he "mought as well dig for plug terbaccer there;" but +Philip had great faith in the uniformity of nature's operations in ages +past, and he had no doubt that he should strike at this spot the rich +vein that had made the fortune of the Golden Briar Company. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + +Once more Louise had good news from her Washington--Senator Dilworthy was +going to sell the Tennessee Land to the government! Louise told Laura in +confidence. She had told her parents, too, and also several bosom +friends; but all of these people had simply looked sad when they heard +the news, except Laura. Laura's face suddenly brightened under it--only +for an instant, it is true, but poor Louise was grateful for even that +fleeting ray of encouragement. When next Laura was alone, she fell into +a train of thought something like this: + +"If the Senator has really taken hold of this matter, I may look for that +invitation to his house at, any moment. I am perishing to go! I do long +to know whether I am only simply a large-sized pigmy among these pigmies +here, who tumble over so easily when one strikes them, or whether I am +really--." Her thoughts drifted into other channels, for a season. +Then she continued:-- "He said I could be useful in the great cause of +philanthropy, and help in the blessed work of uplifting the poor and the +ignorant, if he found it feasible to take hold of our Land. Well, that +is neither here nor there; what I want, is to go to Washington and find +out what I am. I want money, too; and if one may judge by what she +hears, there are chances there for a--." For a fascinating woman, she +was going to say, perhaps, but she did not. + +Along in the fall the invitation came, sure enough. It came officially +through brother Washington, the private Secretary, who appended a +postscript that was brimming with delight over the prospect of seeing the +Duchess again. He said it would be happiness enough to look upon her +face once more--it would be almost too much happiness when to it was +added the fact that she would bring messages with her that were fresh +from Louise's lips. + +In Washington's letter were several important enclosures. For instance, +there was the Senator's check for $2,000--"to buy suitable clothing in +New York with!" It was a loan to be refunded when the Land was sold. +Two thousand--this was fine indeed. Louise's father was called rich, but +Laura doubted if Louise had ever had $400 worth of new clothing at one +time in her life. With the check came two through tickets--good on the +railroad from Hawkeye to Washington via New York--and they were +"dead-head" tickets, too, which had been given to Senator Dilworthy by +the railway companies. Senators and representatives were paid thousands +of dollars by the government for traveling expenses, but they always +traveled "deadhead" both ways, and then did as any honorable, high-minded +men would naturally do--declined to receive the mileage tendered them by +the government. The Senator had plenty of railway passes, and could. +easily spare two to Laura--one for herself and one for a male escort. +Washington suggested that she get some old friend of the family to come +with her, and said the Senator would "deadhead" him home again as soon as +he had grown tired, of the sights of the capital. Laura thought the +thing over. At first she was pleased with the idea, but presently she +began to feel differently about it. Finally she said, "No, our staid, +steady-going Hawkeye friends' notions and mine differ about some things +--they respect me, now, and I respect them--better leave it so--I will go +alone; I am not afraid to travel by myself." And so communing with +herself, she left the house for an afternoon walk. + +Almost at the door she met Col. Sellers. She told him about her +invitation to Washington. + +"Bless me!" said the Colonel. "I have about made up my mind to go there +myself. You see we've got to get another appropriation through, and the +Company want me to come east and put it through Congress. Harry's there, +and he'll do what he can, of course; and Harry's a good fellow and always +does the very best he knows how, but then he's young--rather young for +some parts of such work, you know--and besides he talks too much, talks a +good deal too much; and sometimes he appears to be a little bit +visionary, too, I think the worst thing in the world for a business man. +A man like that always exposes his cards, sooner or later. This sort of +thing wants an old, quiet, steady hand--wants an old cool head, you know, +that knows men, through and through, and is used to large operations. +I'm expecting my salary, and also some dividends from the company, and if +they get along in time, I'll go along with you Laura--take you under my +wing--you mustn't travel alone. Lord I wish I had the money right now. +--But there'll be plenty soon--plenty." + +Laura reasoned with herself that if the kindly, simple-hearted Colonel +was going anyhow, what could she gain by traveling alone and throwing +away his company? So she told him she accepted his offer gladly, +gratefully. She said it would be the greatest of favors if he would go +with her and protect her--not at his own expense as far as railway fares +were concerned, of course; she could not expect him to put himself to so +much trouble for her and pay his fare besides. But he wouldn't hear of +her paying his fare--it would be only a pleasure to him to serve her. +Laura insisted on furnishing the tickets; and finally, when argument +failed, she said the tickets cost neither her nor any one else a cent +--she had two of them--she needed but one--and if he would not take the +other she would not go with him. That settled the matter. He took the +ticket. Laura was glad that she had the check for new clothing, for she +felt very certain of being able to get the Colonel to borrow a little of +the money to pay hotel bills with, here and there. + +She wrote Washington to look for her and Col. Sellers toward the end of +November; and at about the time set the two travelers arrived safe in the +capital of the nation, sure enough. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + + She the, gracious lady, yet no paines did spare + To doe him ease, or doe him remedy: + Many restoratives of vertues rare + And costly cordialles she did apply, + To mitigate his stubborne malady. + Spenser's Faerie Queens. + +Mr. Henry Brierly was exceedingly busy in New York, so he wrote Col. +Sellers, but he would drop everything and go to Washington. + +The Colonel believed that Harry was the prince of lobbyists, a little too +sanguine, may be, and given to speculation, but, then, he knew everybody; +the Columbus River navigation scheme was, got through almost entirely by +his aid. He was needed now to help through another scheme, a benevolent +scheme in which Col. Sellers, through the Hawkinses, had a deep interest. + +"I don't care, you know," he wrote to Harry, "so much about the niggroes. +But if the government will buy this land, it will set up the Hawkins +family--make Laura an heiress--and I shouldn't wonder if Beriah Sellers +would set up his carriage again. Dilworthy looks at it different, +of course. He's all for philanthropy, for benefiting the colored race. +There's old Balsam, was in the Interior--used to be the Rev. Orson Balsam +of Iowa--he's made the riffle on the Injun; great Injun pacificator and +land dealer. Balaam'a got the Injun to himself, and I suppose that +Senator Dilworthy feels that there is nothing left him but the colored +man. I do reckon he is the best friend the colored man has got in +Washington." + +Though Harry was in a hurry to reach Washington, he stopped in +Philadelphia; and prolonged his visit day after day, greatly to the +detriment of his business both in New York and Washington. The society +at the Bolton's might have been a valid excuse for neglecting business +much more important than his. Philip was there; he was a partner with +Mr. Bolton now in the new coal venture, concerning which there was much +to be arranged in preparation for the Spring work, and Philip lingered +week after week in the hospitable house. Alice was making a winter +visit. Ruth only went to town twice a week to attend lectures, and the +household was quite to Mr. Bolton's taste, for he liked the cheer of +company and something going on evenings. Harry was cordially asked to +bring his traveling-bag there, and he did not need urging to do so. +Not even the thought of seeing Laura at the capital made him restless in +the society of the two young ladies; two birds in hand are worth one in +the bush certainly. + +Philip was at home--he sometimes wished he were not so much so. He felt +that too much or not enough was taken for granted. Ruth had met him, +when he first came, with a cordial frankness, and her manner continued +entirely unrestrained. She neither sought his company nor avoided it, +and this perfectly level treatment irritated him more than any other +could have done. It was impossible to advance much in love-making with +one who offered no obstacles, had no concealments and no embarrassments, +and whom any approach to sentimentality would be quite likely to set into +a fit of laughter. + +"Why, Phil," she would say, "what puts you in the dumps to day? You are +as solemn as the upper bench in Meeting. I shall have to call Alice to +raise your spirits; my presence seems to depress you." + +"It's not your presence, but your absence when you are present," began +Philip, dolefully, with the idea that he was saying a rather deep thing. +"But you won't understand me." + +"No, I confess I cannot. If you really are so low, as to think I am +absent when I am present, it's a frightful case of aberration; I shall +ask father to bring out Dr. Jackson. Does Alice appear to be present +when she is absent?" + +"Alice has some human feeling, anyway. She cares for something besides +musty books and dry bones. I think, Ruth, when I die," said Philip, +intending to be very grim and sarcastic, "I'll leave you my skeleton. +You might like that." + +"It might be more cheerful than you are at times," Ruth replied with a +laugh. "But you mustn't do it without consulting Alice. She might not. +like it." + +"I don't know why you should bring Alice up on every occasion. Do you +think I am in love with her?" + +"Bless you, no. It never entered my head. Are you? The thought of +Philip Sterling in love is too comical. I thought you were only in love +with the Ilium coal mine, which you and father talk about half the time." + +This is a specimen of Philip's wooing. Confound the girl, he would say +to himself, why does she never tease Harry and that young Shepley who +comes here? + +How differently Alice treated him. She at least never mocked him, and it +was a relief to talk with one who had some sympathy with him. And he did +talk to her, by the hour, about Ruth. The blundering fellow poured all +his doubts and anxieties into her ear, as if she had been the impassive +occupant of one of those little wooden confessionals in the Cathedral on +Logan Square. Has, a confessor, if she is young and pretty, any feeling? +Does it mend the matter by calling her your sister? + +Philip called Alice his good sister, and talked to her about love and +marriage, meaning Ruth, as if sisters could by no possibility have any +personal concern in such things. Did Ruth ever speak of him? Did she +think Ruth cared for him? Did Ruth care for anybody at Fallkill? Did +she care for anything except her profession? And so on. + +Alice was loyal to Ruth, and if she knew anything she did not betray her +friend. She did not, at any rate, give Philip too much encouragement. +What woman, under the circumstances, would? + +"I can tell you one thing, Philip," she said, "if ever Ruth Bolton loves, +it will be with her whole soul, in a depth of passion that will sweep +everything before it and surprise even herself." + +A remark that did not much console Philip, who imagined that only some +grand heroism could unlock the sweetness of such a heart; and Philip +feared that he wasn't a hero. He did not know out of what materials a +woman can construct a hero, when she is in the creative mood. + +Harry skipped into this society with his usual lightness and gaiety. +His good nature was inexhaustible, and though he liked to relate his own +exploits, he had a little tact in adapting himself to the tastes of his +hearers. He was not long in finding out that Alice liked to hear about +Philip, and Harry launched out into the career of his friend in the West, +with a prodigality of invention that would have astonished the chief +actor. He was the most generous fellow in the world, and picturesque +conversation was the one thing in which he never was bankrupt. With Mr. +Bolton he was the serious man of business, enjoying the confidence of +many of the monied men in New York, whom Mr. Bolton knew, and engaged +with them in railway schemes and government contracts. Philip, who had +so long known Harry, never could make up his mind that Harry did not +himself believe that he was a chief actor in all these large operations +of which he talked so much. + +Harry did not neglect to endeavor to make himself agreeable to Mrs. +Bolton, by paying great attention to the children, and by professing the +warmest interest in the Friends' faith. It always seemed to him the most +peaceful religion; he thought it must be much easier to live by an +internal light than by a lot of outward rules; he had a dear Quaker aunt +in Providence of whom Mrs. Bolton constantly reminded him. He insisted +upon going with Mrs. Bolton and the children to the Friends Meeting on +First Day, when Ruth and Alice and Philip, "world's people," went to a +church in town, and he sat through the hour of silence with his hat on, +in most exemplary patience. In short, this amazing actor succeeded so +well with Mrs. Bolton, that she said to Philip one day, + +"Thy friend, Henry Brierly, appears to be a very worldly minded young +man. Does he believe in anything?" + +"Oh, yes," said Philip laughing, "he believes in more things than any +other person I ever saw." + +To Ruth, Harry seemed to be very congenial. He was never moody for one +thing, but lent himself with alacrity to whatever her fancy was. He was +gay or grave as the need might be. No one apparently could enter more +fully into her plans for an independent career. + +"My father," said Harry, "was bred a physician, and practiced a little +before he went into Wall street. I always had a leaning to the study. +There was a skeleton hanging in the closet of my father's study when I +was a boy, that I used to dress up in old clothes. Oh, I got quite +familiar with the human frame." + +"You must have," said Philip. "Was that where you learned to play the +bones? He is a master of those musical instruments, Ruth; he plays well +enough to go on the stage." + +"Philip hates science of any kind, and steady application," retorted +Harry. He didn't fancy Philip's banter, and when the latter had gone +out, and Ruth asked, + +"Why don't you take up medicine, Mr. Brierly?" + +Harry said, "I have it in mind. I believe I would begin attending +lectures this winter if it weren't for being wanted in Washington. But +medicine is particularly women's province." + +"Why so?" asked Ruth, rather amused. + +"Well, the treatment of disease is a good deal a matter of sympathy. +A woman's intuition is better than a man's. Nobody knows anything, +really, you know, and a woman can guess a good deal nearer than a man." + +"You are very complimentary to my sex." + +"But," said Harry frankly; "I should want to choose my doctor; an ugly +woman would ruin me, the disease would be sure to strike in and kill me +at sight of her. I think a pretty physician, with engaging manners, +would coax a fellow to live through almost anything." + +"I am afraid you are a scoffer, Mr. Brierly." + +"On the contrary, I am quite sincere. Wasn't it old what's his name? +that said only the beautiful is useful?" + +Whether Ruth was anything more than diverted with Harry's company; Philip +could not determine. He scorned at any rate to advance his own interest +by any disparaging communications about Harry, both because he could not +help liking the fellow himself, and because he may have known that he +could not more surely create a sympathy for him in Ruth's mind. That +Ruth was in no danger of any serious impression he felt pretty sure, +felt certain of it when he reflected upon her severe occupation with her +profession. Hang it, he would say to himself, she is nothing but pure +intellect anyway. And he only felt uncertain of it when she was in one +of her moods of raillery, with mocking mischief in her eyes. At such +times she seemed to prefer Harry's society to his. When Philip was +miserable about this, he always took refuge with Alice, who was never +moody, and who generally laughed him out of his sentimental nonsense. +He felt at his ease with Alice, and was never in want of something to +talk about; and he could not account for the fact that he was so often +dull with Ruth, with whom, of all persons in the world, he wanted to +appear at his best. + +Harry was entirely satisfied with his own situation. A bird of passage +is always at its ease, having no house to build, and no responsibility. +He talked freely with Philip about Ruth, an almighty fine girl, he said, +but what the deuce she wanted to study medicine for, he couldn't see. + +There was a concert one night at the Musical Fund Hall and the four had +arranged to go in and return by the Germantown cars. It was Philip's +plan, who had engaged the seats, and promised himself an evening with +Ruth, walking with her, sitting by her in the hall, and enjoying the +feeling of protecting that a man always has of a woman in a public place. +He was fond of music, too, in a sympathetic way; at least, he knew that +Ruth's delight in it would be enough for him. + +Perhaps he meant to take advantage of the occasion to say some very +serious things. His love for Ruth was no secret to Mrs. Bolton, and he +felt almost sure that he should have no opposition in the family. Mrs. +Bolton had been cautious in what she said, but Philip inferred everything +from her reply to his own questions, one day, "Has thee ever spoken thy +mind to Ruth?" + +Why shouldn't he speak his mind, and end his doubts? Ruth had been more +tricksy than usual that day, and in a flow of spirits quite inconsistent, +it would seem, in a young lady devoted to grave studies. + +Had Ruth a premonition of Philip's intention, in his manner? It may be, +for when the girls came down stairs, ready to walk to the cars; and met +Philip and Harry in the hall, Ruth said, laughing, + +"The two tallest must walk together" and before Philip knew how it +happened Ruth had taken Harry's arm, and his evening was spoiled. He had +too much politeness and good sense and kindness to show in his manner +that he was hit. So he said to Harry, + +"That's your disadvantage in being short." And he gave Alice no reason +to feel during the evening that she would not have been his first choice +for the excursion. But he was none the less chagrined, and not a little +angry at the turn the affair took. + +The Hall was crowded with the fashion of the town. The concert was one +of those fragmentary drearinesses that people endure because they are +fashionable; tours de force on the piano, and fragments from operas, +which have no meaning without the setting, with weary pauses of waiting +between; there is the comic basso who is so amusing and on such familiar +terms with the audience, and always sings the Barber; the attitudinizing +tenor, with his languishing "Oh, Summer Night;" the soprano with her +"Batti Batti," who warbles and trills and runs and fetches her breath, +and ends with a noble scream that brings down a tempest of applause in +the midst of which she backs off the stage smiling and bowing. It was +this sort of concert, and Philip was thinking that it was the most stupid +one he ever sat through, when just as the soprano was in the midst of +that touching ballad, "Comin' thro' the Rye" (the soprano always sings +"Comin' thro' the Rye" on an encore)--the Black Swan used to make it +irresistible, Philip remembered, with her arch, "If a body kiss a body" +there was a cry of "Fire!" + +The hall is long and narrow, and there is only one place of egress. +Instantly the audience was on its feet, and a rush began for the door. +Men shouted, women screamed, and panic seized the swaying mass. +A second's thought would have convinced every one that getting out was +impossible, and that the only effect of a rush would be to crash people +to death. But a second's thought was not given. A few cried: + +"Sit down, sit down," but the mass was turned towards the door. Women +were down and trampled on in the aisles, and stout men, utterly lost to +self-control, were mounting the benches, as if to run a race over the +mass to the entrance. + +Philip who had forced the girls to keep their seats saw, in a flash, the +new danger, and sprang to avert it. In a second more those infuriated +men would be over the benches and crushing Ruth and Alice under their +boots. He leaped upon the bench in front of them and struck out before +him with all his might, felling one man who was rushing on him, and +checking for an instant the movement, or rather parting it, and causing +it to flow on either side of him. But it was only for an instant; the +pressure behind was too great, and, the next Philip was dashed backwards +over the seat. + +And yet that instant of arrest had probably saved the girls, for as +Philip fell, the orchestra struck up "Yankee Doodle" in the liveliest +manner. The familiar tune caught the ear of the mass, which paused in +wonder, and gave the conductor's voice a chance to be heard--"It's a +false alarm!" + +The tumult was over in a minute, and the next, laughter was heard, and +not a few said, "I knew it wasn't anything." "What fools people are at +such a time." + +The concert was over, however. A good many people were hurt, some of +them seriously, and among them Philip Sterling was found bent across the +seat, insensible, with his left arm hanging limp and a bleeding wound on +his head. + +When he was carried into the air he revived, and said it was nothing. +A surgeon was called, and it was thought best to drive at once to the +Bolton's, the surgeon supporting Philip, who did not speak the whole way. +His arm was set and his head dressed, and the surgeon said he would come +round all right in his mind by morning; he was very weak. Alice who was +not much frightened while the panic lasted in the hall, was very much +unnerved by seeing Philip so pale and bloody. Ruth assisted the surgeon +with the utmost coolness and with skillful hands helped to dress Philip's +wounds. And there was a certain intentness and fierce energy in what she +did that might have revealed something to Philip if he had been in his +senses. + +But he was not, or he would not have murmured "Let Alice do it, she is +not too tall." + +It was Ruth's first case. + + + + +CHAPTER, XXXII. + +Washington's delight in his beautiful sister was measureless. He said +that she had always been the queenliest creature in the land, but that +she was only commonplace before, compared to what she was now, so +extraordinary was the improvement wrought by rich fashionable attire. + +"But your criticisms are too full of brotherly partiality to be depended +on, Washington. Other people will judge differently." + +"Indeed they won't. You'll see. There will never be a woman in +Washington that can compare with you. You'll be famous within a +fortnight, Laura. Everybody will want to know you. You wait--you'll +see." + +Laura wished in her heart that the prophecy might come true; and +privately she even believed it might--for she had brought all the women +whom she had seen since she left home under sharp inspection, and the +result had not been unsatisfactory to her. + +During a week or two Washington drove about the city every day with her +and familiarized her with all of its salient features. She was beginning +to feel very much at home with the town itself, and she was also fast +acquiring ease with the distinguished people she met at the Dilworthy +table, and losing what little of country timidity she had brought with +her from Hawkeye. She noticed with secret pleasure the little start of +admiration that always manifested itself in the faces of the guests when +she entered the drawing-room arrayed in evening costume: she took +comforting note of the fact that these guests directed a very liberal +share of their conversation toward her; she observed with surprise, that +famous statesmen and soldiers did not talk like gods, as a general thing, +but said rather commonplace things for the most part; and she was filled +with gratification to discover that she, on the contrary, was making a +good many shrewd speeches and now and then a really brilliant one, and +furthermore, that they were beginning to be repeated in social circles +about the town. + +Congress began its sittings, and every day or two Washington escorted her +to the galleries set apart for lady members of the households of Senators +and Representatives. Here was a larger field and a wider competition, +but still she saw that many eyes were uplifted toward her face, and that +first one person and then another called a neighbor's attention to her; +she was not too dull to perceive that the speeches of some of the younger +statesmen were delivered about as much and perhaps more at her than to +the presiding officer; and she was not sorry to see that the dapper young +Senator from Iowa came at once and stood in the open space before the +president's desk to exhibit his feet as soon as she entered the gallery, +whereas she had early learned from common report that his usual custom +was to prop them on his desk and enjoy them himself with a selfish +disregard of other people's longings. + +Invitations began to flow in upon her and soon she was fairly "in +society." "The season" was now in full bloom, and the first select +reception was at hand that is to say, a reception confined to invited +guests. Senator Dilworthy had become well convinced; by this time, that +his judgment of the country-bred Missouri girl had not deceived him--it +was plain that she was going to be a peerless missionary in the field of +labor he designed her for, and therefore it would be perfectly safe and +likewise judicious to send her forth well panoplied for her work.--So he +had added new and still richer costumes to her wardrobe, and assisted +their attractions with costly jewelry-loans on the future land sale. + +This first select reception took place at a cabinet minister's--or rather +a cabinet secretary's mansion. When Laura and the Senator arrived, about +half past nine or ten in the evening, the place was already pretty well +crowded, and the white-gloved negro servant at the door was still +receiving streams of guests.--The drawing-rooms were brilliant with +gaslight, and as hot as ovens. The host and hostess stood just within +the door of entrance; Laura was presented, and then she passed on into +the maelstrom of be-jeweled and richly attired low-necked ladies and +white-kid-gloved and steel pen-coated gentlemen and wherever she moved +she was followed by a buzz of admiration that was grateful to all her +senses--so grateful, indeed, that her white face was tinged and its +beauty heightened by a perceptible suffusion of color. She caught such +remarks as, "Who is she?" "Superb woman!" "That is the new beauty from +the west," etc., etc. + +Whenever she halted, she was presently surrounded by Ministers, Generals, +Congressmen, and all manner of aristocratic, people. Introductions +followed, and then the usual original question, "How do you like +Washington, Miss Hawkins?" supplemented by that other usual original +question, "Is this your first visit?" + +These two exciting topics being exhausted, conversation generally drifted +into calmer channels, only to be interrupted at frequent intervals by new +introductions and new inquiries as to how Laura liked the capital and +whether it was her first visit or not. And thus for an hour or more the +Duchess moved through the crush in a rapture of happiness, for her doubts +were dead and gone, now she knew she could conquer here. A familiar face +appeared in the midst of the multitude and Harry Brierly fought his +difficult way to her side, his eyes shouting their gratification, so to +speak: + +"Oh, this is a happiness! Tell me, my dear Miss Hawkins--" + +"Sh! I know what you are going to ask. I do like Washington--I like it +ever so much!" + +"No, but I was going to ask--" + +"Yes, I am coming to it, coming to it as fast as I can. It is my first +visit. I think you should know that yourself." + +And straightway a wave of the crowd swept her beyond his reach. + +"Now what can the girl mean? Of course she likes Washington--I'm not +such a dummy as to have to ask her that. And as to its being her first +visit, why bang it, she knows that I knew it was. Does she think I have +turned idiot? Curious girl, anyway. But how they do swarm about her! +She is the reigning belle of Washington after this night. She'll know +five hundred of the heaviest guns in the town before this night's +nonsense is over. And this isn't even the beginning. Just as I used to +say--she'll be a card in the matter of--yes sir! She shall turn the +men's heads and I'll turn the women's! What a team that will be in +politics here. I wouldn't take a quarter of a million for what I can do +in this present session--no indeed I wouldn't. Now, here--I don't +altogether like this. That insignificant secretary of legation is--why, +she's smiling on him as if he--and now on the Admiral! Now she's +illuminating that, stuffy Congressman from Massachusetts--vulgar +ungrammatcal shovel-maker--greasy knave of spades. I don't like this +sort of thing. She doesn't appear to be much distressed about me--she +hasn't looked this way once. All right, my bird of Paradise, if it suits +you, go on. But I think I know your sex. I'll go to smiling around a +little, too, and see what effect that will have on you" + +And he did "smile around a little," and got as near to her as he could to +watch the effect, but the scheme was a failure--he could not get her +attention. She seemed wholly unconscious of him, and so he could not +flirt with any spirit; he could only talk disjointedly; he could not keep +his eyes on the charmers he talked to; he grew irritable, jealous, and +very, unhappy. He gave up his enterprise, leaned his shoulder against a +fluted pilaster and pouted while he kept watch upon Laura's every +movement. His other shoulder stole the bloom from many a lovely cheek +that brushed him in the surging crush, but he noted it not. He was too +busy cursing himself inwardly for being an egotistical imbecile. An hour +ago he had thought to take this country lass under his protection and +show her "life" and enjoy her wonder and delight--and here she was, +immersed in the marvel up to her eyes, and just a trifle more at home in +it than he was himself. And now his angry comments ran on again: + +"Now she's sweetening old Brother Balaam; and he--well he is inviting her +to the Congressional prayer-meeting, no doubt--better let old Dilworthy +alone to see that she doesn't overlook that. And now its Splurge, of New +York; and now its Batters of New Hampshire--and now the Vice President! +Well I may as well adjourn. I've got enough." + +But he hadn't. He got as far as the door--and then struggled back to +take one more look, hating himself all the while for his weakness. + +Toward midnight, when supper was announced, the crowd thronged to the +supper room where a long table was decked out with what seemed a rare +repast, but which consisted of things better calculated to feast the eye +than the appetite. The ladies were soon seated in files along the wall, +and in groups here and there, and the colored waiters filled the plates +and glasses and the, male guests moved hither and thither conveying them +to the privileged sex. + +Harry took an ice and stood up by the table with other gentlemen, and +listened to the buzz of conversation while he ate. + +From these remarks he learned a good deal about Laura that was news to +him. For instance, that she was of a distinguished western family; that +she was highly educated; that she was very rich and a great landed +heiress; that she was not a professor of religion, and yet was a +Christian in the truest and best sense of the word, for her whole heart +was devoted to the accomplishment of a great and noble enterprise--none +other than the sacrificing of her landed estates to the uplifting of the +down-trodden negro and the turning of his erring feet into the way of +light and righteousness. Harry observed that as soon as one listener had +absorbed the story, he turned about and delivered it to his next neighbor +and the latter individual straightway passed it on. And thus he saw it +travel the round of the gentlemen and overflow rearward among the ladies. +He could not trace it backward to its fountain head, and so he could not +tell who it was that started it. + +One thing annoyed Harry a great deal; and that was the reflection that he +might have been in Washington days and days ago and thrown his +fascinations about Laura with permanent effect while she was new and +strange to the capital, instead of dawdling in Philadelphia to no +purpose. He feared he had "missed a trick," as he expressed it. + +He only found one little opportunity of speaking again with Laura before +the evening's festivities ended, and then, for the first time in years, +his airy self-complacency failed him, his tongue's easy confidence +forsook it in a great measure, and he was conscious of an unheroic +timidity. He was glad to get away and find a place where he could +despise himself in private and try to grow his clipped plumes again. + +When Laura reached home she was tired but exultant, and Senator Dilworthy +was pleased and satisfied. He called Laura "my daughter," next morning, +and gave her some "pin money," as he termed it, and she sent a hundred +and fifty dollars of it to her mother and loaned a trifle to Col. +Sellers. Then the Senator had a long private conference with Laura, and +unfolded certain plans of his for the good of the country, and religion, +and the poor, and temperance, and showed her how she could assist him in +developing these worthy and noble enterprises. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + +Laura soon discovered that there were three distinct aristocracies in +Washington. One of these, (nick-named the Antiques,) consisted of +cultivated, high-bred old families who looked back with pride upon an +ancestry that had been always great in the nation's councils and its wars +from the birth of the republic downward. Into this select circle it was +difficult to gain admission. No. 2 was the aristocracy of the middle +ground--of which, more anon. No. 3 lay beyond; of it we will say a word +here. We will call it the Aristocracy of the Parvenus--as, indeed, the +general public did. Official position, no matter how obtained, entitled +a man to a place in it, and carried his family with him, no matter whence +they sprang. Great wealth gave a man a still higher and nobler place in +it than did official position. If this wealth had been acquired by +conspicuous ingenuity, with just a pleasant little spice of illegality +about it, all the better. This aristocracy was "fast," and not averse to +ostentation. + +The aristocracy of the Antiques ignored the aristocracy of the Parvenus; +the Parvenus laughed at the Antiques, (and secretly envied them.) + +There were certain important "society" customs which one in Laura's +position needed to understand. For instance, when a lady of any +prominence comes to one of our cities and takes up her residence, all the +ladies of her grade favor her in turn with an initial call, giving their +cards to the servant at the door by way of introduction. They come +singly, sometimes; sometimes in couples; and always in elaborate full +dress. They talk two minutes and a quarter and then go. If the lady +receiving the call desires a further acquaintance, she must return the +visit within two weeks; to neglect it beyond that time means "let the +matter drop." But if she does return the visit within two weeks, it then +becomes the other party's privilege to continue the acquaintance or drop +it. She signifies her willingness to continue it by calling again any +time within twelve-months; after that, if the parties go on calling upon +each other once a year, in our large cities, that is sufficient, and the +acquaintanceship holds good. The thing goes along smoothly, now. +The annual visits are made and returned with peaceful regularity and +bland satisfaction, although it is not necessary that the two ladies +shall actually see each other oftener than once every few years. Their +cards preserve the intimacy and keep the acquaintanceship intact. + +For instance, Mrs. A. pays her annual visit, sits in her carriage and +sends in her card with the lower right hand corner turned down, which +signifies that she has "called in person;" Mrs. B: sends down word that +she is "engaged" or "wishes to be excused"--or if she is a Parvenu and +low-bred, she perhaps sends word that she is "not at home." Very good; +Mrs. A. drives, on happy and content. If Mrs. A.'s daughter marries, +or a child is born to the family, Mrs. B. calls, sends in her card with +the upper left hand corner turned down, and then goes along about her +affairs--for that inverted corner means "Congratulations." If Mrs. B.'s +husband falls downstairs and breaks his neck, Mrs. A. calls, leaves her +card with the upper right hand corner turned down, and then takes her +departure; this corner means "Condolence." It is very necessary to get +the corners right, else one may unintentionally condole with a friend on +a wedding or congratulate her upon a funeral. If either lady is about to +leave the city, she goes to the other's house and leaves her card with +"P. P. C." engraved under the name--which signifies, "Pay Parting Call." +But enough of etiquette. Laura was early instructed in the mysteries of +society life by a competent mentor, and thus was preserved from +troublesome mistakes. + +The first fashionable call she received from a member of the ancient +nobility, otherwise the Antiques, was of a pattern with all she received +from that limb of the aristocracy afterward. This call was paid by Mrs. +Major-General Fulke-Fulkerson and daughter. They drove up at one in the +afternoon in a rather antiquated vehicle with a faded coat of arms on the +panels, an aged white-wooled negro coachman on the box and a younger +darkey beside him--the footman. Both of these servants were dressed in +dull brown livery that had seen considerable service. + +The ladies entered the drawing-room in full character; that is to say, +with Elizabethan stateliness on the part of the dowager, and an easy +grace and dignity on the part of the young lady that had a nameless +something about it that suggested conscious superiority. The dresses of +both ladies were exceedingly rich, as to material, but as notably modest +as to color and ornament. All parties having seated themselves, the +dowager delivered herself of a remark that was not unusual in its form, +and yet it came from her lips with the impressiveness of Scripture: + +"The weather has been unpropitious of late, Miss Hawkins." + +"It has indeed," said Laura. "The climate seems to be variable." + +"It is its nature of old, here," said the daughter--stating it apparently +as a fact, only, and by her manner waving aside all personal +responsibility on account of it. "Is it not so, mamma?" + +"Quite so, my child. Do you like winter, Miss Hawkins?" She said "like" +as if she had, an idea that its dictionary meaning was "approve of." + +"Not as well as summer--though I think all seasons have their charms." + +"It is a very just remark. The general held similar views. He +considered snow in winter proper; sultriness in summer legitimate; frosts +in the autumn the same, and rains in spring not objectionable. He was +not an exacting man. And I call to mind now that he always admired +thunder. You remember, child, your father always admired thunder?" + +"He adored it." + +"No doubt it reminded him of battle," said Laura. + +"Yes, I think perhaps it did. He had a great respect for Nature. +He often said there was something striking about the ocean. You remember +his saying that, daughter?" + +"Yes, often, Mother. I remember it very well." + +"And hurricanes... He took a great interest in hurricanes. And animals. +Dogs, especially--hunting dogs. Also comets. I think we all have our +predilections. I think it is this that gives variety to our tastes." + +Laura coincided with this view. + +"Do you find it hard and lonely to be so far from your home and friends, +Miss Hawkins?" + +"I do find it depressing sometimes, but then there is so much about me +here that is novel and interesting that my days are made up more of +sunshine than shadow." + +"Washington is not a dull city in the season," said the young lady. +"We have some very good society indeed, and one need not be at a loss for +means to pass the time pleasantly. Are you fond of watering-places, Miss +Hawkins?" + +"I have really had no experience of them, but I have always felt a strong +desire to see something of fashionable watering-place life." + +"We of Washington are unfortunately situated in that respect," said the +dowager. "It is a tedious distance to Newport. But there is no help for +it." + +Laura said to herself, "Long Branch and Cape May are nearer than Newport; +doubtless these places are low; I'll feel my way a little and see." Then +she said aloud: + +"Why I thought that Long Branch--" + +There was no need to "feel" any further--there was that in both faces +before her which made that truth apparent. The dowager said: + +"Nobody goes there, Miss Hawkins--at least only persons of no position in +society. And the President." She added that with tranquility. + +"Newport is damp, and cold, and windy and excessively disagreeable," said +the daughter, "but it is very select. One cannot be fastidious about +minor matters when one has no choice." + +The visit had spun out nearly three minutes, now. Both ladies rose with +grave dignity, conferred upon Laura a formal invitation to call, aid then +retired from the conference. Laura remained in the drawing-room and left +them to pilot themselves out of the house--an inhospitable thing, +it seemed to her, but then she was following her instructions. She +stood, steeped in reverie, a while, and then she said: + +"I think I could always enjoy icebergs--as scenery but not as company." + +Still, she knew these two people by reputation, and was aware that they +were not ice-bergs when they were in their own waters and amid their +legitimate surroundings, but on the contrary were people to be respected +for their stainless characters and esteemed for their social virtues and +their benevolent impulses. She thought it a pity that they had to be +such changed and dreary creatures on occasions of state. + +The first call Laura received from the other extremity of the Washington +aristocracy followed close upon the heels of the one we have just been +describing. The callers this time were the Hon. Mrs. Oliver Higgins, +the Hon. Mrs. Patrique Oreille (pronounced O-relay,) Miss Bridget +(pronounced Breezhay) Oreille, Mrs. Peter Gashly, Miss Gashly, and Miss +Emmeline Gashly. + +The three carriages arrived at the same moment from different directions. +They were new and wonderfully shiny, and the brasses on the harness were +highly polished and bore complicated monograms. There were showy coats +of arms, too, with Latin mottoes. The coachmen and footmen were clad in +bright new livery, of striking colors, and they had black rosettes with +shaving-brushes projecting above them, on the sides of their stove-pipe +hats. + +When the visitors swept into the drawing-room they filled the place with +a suffocating sweetness procured at the perfumer's. Their costumes, +as to architecture, were the latest fashion intensified; they were +rainbow-hued; they were hung with jewels--chiefly diamonds. It would +have been plain to any eye that it had cost something to upholster these +women. + +The Hon. Mrs. Oliver Higgins was the wife of a delegate from a distant +territory--a gentleman who had kept the principal "saloon," and sold the +best whiskey in the principal village in his wilderness, and so, of +course, was recognized as the first man of his commonwealth and its +fittest representative. + +He was a man of paramount influence at home, for he was public spirited, +he was chief of the fire department, he had an admirable command of +profane language, and had killed several "parties." His shirt fronts +were always immaculate; his boots daintily polished, and no man could +lift a foot and fire a dead shot at a stray speck of dirt on it with a +white handkerchief with a finer grace than he; his watch chain weighed a +pound; the gold in his finger ring was worth forty five dollars; he wore +a diamond cluster-pin and he parted his hair behind. He had always been, +regarded as the most elegant gentleman in his territory, and it was +conceded by all that no man thereabouts was anywhere near his equal in +the telling of an obscene story except the venerable white-haired +governor himself. The Hon. Higgins had not come to serve his country in +Washington for nothing. The appropriation which he had engineered +through Congress for the maintenance, of the Indians in his Territory +would have made all those savages rich if it had ever got to them. + +The Hon. Mrs. Higgins was a picturesque woman, and a fluent talker, and +she held a tolerably high station among the Parvenus. Her English was +fair enough, as a general thing--though, being of New York origin, she +had the fashion peculiar to many natives of that city of pronouncing saw +and law as if they were spelt sawr and lawr. + +Petroleum was the agent that had suddenly transformed the Gashlys from +modest hard-working country village folk into "loud" aristocrats and +ornaments of the city. + +The Hon. Patrique Oreille was a wealthy Frenchman from Cork. Not that he +was wealthy when he first came from Cork, but just the reverse. When he +first landed in New York with his wife, he had only halted at Castle +Garden for a few minutes to receive and exhibit papers showing that he +had resided in this country two years--and then he voted the democratic +ticket and went up town to hunt a house. He found one and then went to +work as assistant to an architect and builder, carrying a hod all day and +studying politics evenings. Industry and economy soon enabled him to +start a low rum shop in a foul locality, and this gave him political +influence. In our country it is always our first care to see that our +people have the opportunity of voting for their choice of men to +represent and govern them--we do not permit our great officials to +appoint the little officials. We prefer to have so tremendous a power as +that in our own hands. We hold it safest to elect our judges and +everybody else. In our cities, the ward meetings elect delegates to the +nominating conventions and instruct them whom to nominate. The publicans +and their retainers rule the ward meetings (for every body else hates the +worry of politics and stays at home); the delegates from the ward +meetings organize as a nominating convention and make up a list of +candidates--one convention offering a democratic and another a republican +list of incorruptibles; and then the great meek public come forward at +the proper time and make unhampered choice and bless Heaven that they +live in a free land where no form of despotism can ever intrude. + +Patrick O'Riley (as his name then stood) created friends and influence +very, fast, for he was always on hand at the police courts to give straw +bail for his customers or establish an alibi for them in case they had +been beating anybody to death on his premises. Consequently he presently +became a political leader, and was elected to a petty office under the +city government. Out of a meager salary he soon saved money enough to +open quite a stylish liquor saloon higher up town, with a faro bank +attached and plenty of capital to conduct it with. This gave him fame +and great respectability. The position of alderman was forced upon him, +and it was just the same as presenting him a gold mine. He had fine +horses and carriages, now, and closed up his whiskey mill. + +By and by he became a large contractor for city work, and was a bosom +friend of the great and good Wm. M. Weed himself, who had stolen +$20,600,000 from the city and was a man so envied, so honored,--so +adored, indeed, that when the sheriff went to his office to arrest him as +a felon, that sheriff blushed and apologized, and one of the illustrated +papers made a picture of the scene and spoke of the matter in such a way +as to show that the editor regretted that the offense of an arrest had +been offered to so exalted a personage as Mr. Weed. + +Mr. O'Riley furnished shingle nails to, the new Court House at three +thousand dollars a keg, and eighteen gross of 60-cent thermometers at +fifteen hundred dollars a dozen; the controller and the board of audit +passed the bills, and a mayor, who was simply ignorant but not criminal, +signed them. When they were paid, Mr. O'Riley's admirers gave him a +solitaire diamond pin of the size of a filbert, in imitation of the +liberality of Mr. Weed's friends, and then Mr. O'Riley retired from +active service and amused himself with buying real estate at enormous +figures and holding it in other people's names. By and by the newspapers +came out with exposures and called Weed and O'Riley "thieves,"--whereupon +the people rose as one man (voting repeatedly) and elected the two +gentlemen to their proper theatre of action, the New York legislature. +The newspapers clamored, and the courts proceeded to try the new +legislators for their small irregularities. Our admirable jury system +enabled the persecuted ex-officials to secure a jury of nine gentlemen +from a neighboring asylum and three graduates from Sing-Sing, and +presently they walked forth with characters vindicated. The legislature +was called upon to spew them forth--a thing which the legislature +declined to do. It was like asking children to repudiate their own +father. It was a legislature of the modern pattern. + +Being now wealthy and distinguished, Mr. O'Riley, still bearing the +legislative "Hon." attached to his name (for titles never die in America, +although we do take a republican pride in poking fun at such trifles), +sailed for Europe with his family. They traveled all about, turning +their noses up at every thing, and not finding it a difficult thing to +do, either, because nature had originally given those features a cast in +that direction; and finally they established themselves in Paris, that +Paradise of Americans of their sort.--They staid there two years and +learned to speak English with a foreign accent--not that it hadn't always +had a foreign accent (which was indeed the case) but now the nature of it +was changed. Finally they returned home and became ultra fashionables. +They landed here as the Hon. Patrique Oreille and family, and so are +known unto this day. + +Laura provided seats for her visitors and they immediately launched forth +into a breezy, sparkling conversation with that easy confidence which is +to be found only among persons accustomed to high life. + +"I've been intending to call sooner, Miss Hawkins," said the Hon. Mrs. +Oreille, "but the weather's been so horrid. How do you like Washington?" + +Laura liked it very well indeed. + +Mrs. Gashly--"Is it your first visit?" + +Yea, it was her first. + +All--"Indeed?" + +Mrs. Oreille--"I'm afraid you'll despise the weather, Miss Hawkins. +It's perfectly awful. It always is. I tell Mr. Oreille I can't and +I won't put up with any such a climate. If we were obliged to do it, +I wouldn't mind it; but we are not obliged to, and so I don't see the use +of it. Sometimes its real pitiful the way the childern pine for Parry +--don't look so sad, Bridget, 'ma chere'--poor child, she can't hear Parry +mentioned without getting the blues." + +Mrs. Gashly--"Well I should think so, Mrs. Oreille. A body lives in +Paris, but a body, only stays here. I dote on Paris; I'd druther scrimp +along on ten thousand dollars a year there, than suffer and worry here on +a real decent income." + +Miss Gashly--"Well then, I wish you'd take us back, mother; I'm sure I +hate this stoopid country enough, even if it is our dear native land." + +Miss Emmeline Gashly--"What and leave poor Johnny Peterson behind?" [An +airy genial laugh applauded this sally]. + +Miss Gashly--"Sister, I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself!" + +Miss Emmeline--"Oh, you needn't ruffle your feathers so: I was only +joking. He don't mean anything by coming to, the house every evening +--only comes to see mother. Of course that's all!" [General laughter]. + +Miss G. prettily confused--"Emmeline, how can you!" + +Mrs. G.--"Let your sister alone, Emmeline. I never saw such a tease!" + +Mrs. Oreille--"What lovely corals you have, Miss Hawkins! Just look at +them, Bridget, dear. I've a great passion for corals--it's a pity +they're getting a little common. I have some elegant ones--not as +elegant as yours, though--but of course I don't wear them now." + +Laura--"I suppose they are rather common, but still I have a great +affection for these, because they were given to me by a dear old friend +of our family named Murphy. He was a very charming man, but very +eccentric. We always supposed he was an Irishman, but after be got rich +he went abroad for a year or two, and when he came back you would have +been amused to see how interested he was in a potato. He asked what it +was! Now you know that when Providence shapes a mouth especially for the +accommodation of a potato you can detect that fact at a glance when that +mouth is in repose--foreign travel can never remove that sign. But he +was a very delightful gentleman, and his little foible did not hurt him +at all. We all have our shams--I suppose there is a sham somewhere about +every individual, if we could manage to ferret it out. I would so like +to go to France. I suppose our society here compares very favorably with +French society does it not, Mrs. Oreille?" + +Mrs. O.--"Not by any means, Miss Hawkins! French society is much more +elegant--much more so." + +Laura--"I am sorry to hear that. I suppose ours has deteriorated of +late." + +Mrs. O.--"Very much indeed. There are people in society here that have +really no more money to live on than what some of us pay for servant +hire. Still I won't say but what some of them are very good people--and +respectable, too." + +Laura--"The old families seem to be holding themselves aloof, from what I +hear. I suppose you seldom meet in society now, the people you used to +be familiar with twelve or fifteen years ago?" + +Mrs. O.--"Oh, no-hardly ever." + +Mr. O'Riley kept his first rum-mill and protected his customers from the +law in those days, and this turn of the conversation was rather +uncomfortable to madame than otherwise. + +Hon. Mrs. Higgins--"Is Francois' health good now, Mrs. Oreille?" + +Mrs. O.--(Thankful for the intervention)--"Not very. A body couldn't +expect it. He was always delicate--especially his lungs--and this odious +climate tells on him strong, now, after Parry, which is so mild." + +Mrs. H:--"I should think so. Husband says Percy'll die if he don't have +a change; and so I'm going to swap round a little and see what can be +done. I saw a lady from Florida last week, and she recommended Key West. +I told her Percy couldn't abide winds, as he was threatened with a +pulmonary affection, and then she said try St. Augustine. It's an awful +distance--ten or twelve hundred mile, they say but then in a case of this +kind--a body can't stand back for trouble, you know." + +Mrs. O.--"No, of course that's off. If Francois don't get better soon +we've got to look out for some other place, or else Europe. We've +thought some of the Hot Springs, but I don't know. It's a great +responsibility and a body wants to go cautious. Is Hildebrand about +again, Mrs. Gashly?" + +Mrs. G.--"Yes, but that's about all. It was indigestion, you know, and +it looks as if it was chronic. And you know I do dread dyspepsia. We've +all been worried a good deal about him. The doctor recommended baked +apple and spoiled meat, and I think it done him good. It's about the +only thing that will stay on his stomach now-a-days. We have Dr. Shovel +now. Who's your doctor, Mrs. Higgins?" + +Mrs. H.--"Well, we had Dr. Spooner a good while, but he runs so much to +emetics, which I think are weakening, that we changed off and took Dr. +Leathers. We like him very much. He has a fine European reputation, +too. The first thing he suggested for Percy was to have him taken out in +the back yard for an airing, every afternoon, with nothing at all on." + +Mrs. O. and Mrs. G.--"What!" + +Mrs. H.--"As true as I'm sitting here. And it actually helped him for +two or three days; it did indeed. But after that the doctor said it +seemed to be too severe and so he has fell back on hot foot-baths at +night and cold showers in the morning. But I don't think there, can be +any good sound help for him in such a climate as this. I believe we are +going to lose him if we don't make a change." + +Mrs. O. "I suppose you heard of the fright we had two weeks ago last +Saturday? No? Why that is strange--but come to remember, you've all +been away to Richmond. Francois tumbled from the sky light--in the +second-story hall clean down to the first floor--" + +Everybody--"Mercy!" + +Mrs. O.--"Yes indeed--and broke two of his ribs--" + +Everybody--"What!" + +Mrs. O. "Just as true as you live. First we thought he must be injured +internally. It was fifteen minutes past 8 in the evening. Of course we +were all distracted in a moment--everybody was flying everywhere, and +nobody doing anything worth anything. By and by I flung out next door +and dragged in Dr. Sprague; President of the Medical University no time +to go for our own doctor of course--and the minute he saw Francois he +said, 'Send for your own physician, madam;' said it as cross as a bear, +too, and turned right on his heel, and cleared out without doing a +thing!" + +Everybody--"The mean, contemptible brute!" + +Mrs. O--"Well you may say it. I was nearly out of my wits by this time. +But we hurried off the servants after our own doctor and telegraphed +mother--she was in New York and rushed down on the first train; and when +the doctor got there, lo and behold you he found Francois had broke one +of his legs, too!" + +Everybody--"Goodness!" + +Mrs. O.--"Yes. So he set his leg and bandaged it up, and fixed his ribs +and gave him a dose of something to quiet down his excitement and put him +to sleep--poor thing he was trembling and frightened to death and it was +pitiful to see him. We had him in my bed--Mr. Oreille slept in the guest +room and I laid down beside Francois--but not to sleep bless you no. +Bridget and I set up all night, and the doctor staid till two in the +morning, bless his old heart.--When mother got there she was so used up +with anxiety, that she had to go to bed and have the doctor; but when she +found that Francois was not in immediate danger she rallied, and by night +she was able to take a watch herself. Well for three days and nights we +three never left that bedside only to take an hour's nap at a time. +And then the doctor said Francois was out of danger and if ever there was +a thankful set, in this world, it was us." + +Laura's respect for these, women had augmented during this conversation, +naturally enough; affection and devotion are qualities that are able to +adorn and render beautiful a character that is otherwise unattractive, +and even repulsive. + +Mrs. Gashly--"I do believe I would a died if I had been in your place, +Mrs. Oreille. The time Hildebrand was so low with the pneumonia Emmeline +and me were all, alone with him most of the time and we never took a +minute's sleep for as much as two days, and nights. It was at Newport +and we wouldn't trust hired nurses. One afternoon he had a fit, and +jumped up and run out on the portico of the hotel with nothing in the +world on and the wind a blowing liken ice and we after him scared to +death; and when the ladies and gentlemen saw that he had a fit, every +lady scattered for her room and not a gentleman lifted his hand to help, +the wretches! Well after that his life hung by a thread for as much as +ten days, and the minute he was out of danger Emmeline and me just went +to bed sick and worn out. I never want to pass through such a time +again. Poor dear Francois--which leg did he break, Mrs. Oreille!" + +Mrs. O.--"It was his right hand hind leg. Jump down, Francois dear, and +show the ladies what a cruel limp you've got yet." + +Francois demurred, but being coaxed and delivered gently upon the floor, +he performed very satisfactorily, with his "right hand hind leg" in the +air. All were affected--even Laura--but hers was an affection of the +stomach. The country-bred girl had not suspected that the little whining +ten-ounce black and tan reptile, clad in a red embroidered pigmy blanket +and reposing in Mrs. Oreille's lap all through the visit was the +individual whose sufferings had been stirring the dormant generosities of +her nature. She said: + +"Poor little creature! You might have lost him!" + +Mrs. O.--"O pray don't mention it, Miss Hawkins--it gives me such a +turn!" + +Laura--"And Hildebrand and Percy--are they-are they like this one?" + +Mrs. G.--"No, Hilly has considerable Skye blood in him, I believe." + +Mrs. H.--"Percy's the same, only he is two months and ten days older and +has his ears cropped. His father, Martin Farquhar Tupper, was sickly, +and died young, but he was the sweetest disposition.--His mother had +heart disease but was very gentle and resigned, and a wonderful ratter." +--[** As impossible and exasperating as this conversation may sound to a +person who is not an idiot, it is scarcely in any respect an exaggeration +of one which one of us actually listened to in an American drawing room +--otherwise we could not venture to put such a chapter into a book which, +professes to deal with social possibilities.--THE AUTHORS.] + +So carried away had the visitors become by their interest attaching to +this discussion of family matters, that their stay had been prolonged to +a very improper and unfashionable length; but they suddenly recollected +themselves now and took their departure. + +Laura's scorn was boundless. The more she thought of these people and +their extraordinary talk, the more offensive they seemed to her; and yet +she confessed that if one must choose between the two extreme +aristocracies it might be best, on the whole, looking at things from a +strictly business point of view, to herd with the Parvenus; she was in +Washington solely to compass a certain matter and to do it at any cost, +and these people might be useful to her, while it was plain that her +purposes and her schemes for pushing them would not find favor in the +eyes of the Antiques. If it came to choice--and it might come to that, +sooner or later--she believed she could come to a decision without much +difficulty or many pangs. + +But the best aristocracy of the three Washington castes, and really the +most powerful, by far, was that of the Middle Ground: It was made up of +the families of public men from nearly every state in the Union--men who +held positions in both the executive and legislative branches of the +government, and whose characters had been for years blemishless, both at +home and at the capital. These gentlemen and their households were +unostentatious people; they were educated and refined; they troubled +themselves but little about the two other orders of nobility, but moved +serenely in their wide orbit, confident in their own strength and well +aware of the potency of their influence. They had no troublesome +appearances to keep up, no rivalries which they cared to distress +themselves about, no jealousies to fret over. They could afford to mind +their own affairs and leave other combinations to do the same or do +otherwise, just as they chose. They were people who were beyond +reproach, and that was sufficient. + +Senator Dilworthy never came into collision with any of these factions. +He labored for them all and with them all. He said that all men were +brethren and all were entitled to the honest unselfish help and +countenance of a Christian laborer in the public vineyard. + +Laura concluded, after reflection, to let circumstances determine the +course it might be best for her to pursue as regarded the several +aristocracies. + +Now it might occur to the reader that perhaps Laura had been somewhat +rudely suggestive in her remarks to Mrs. Oreille when the subject of +corals was under discussion, but it did not occur to Laura herself. +She was not a person of exaggerated refinement; indeed, the society and +the influences that had formed her character had not been of a nature +calculated to make her so; she thought that "give and take was fair +play," and that to parry an offensive thrust with a sarcasm was a neat +and legitimate thing to do. She some times talked to people in a way +which some ladies would consider, actually shocking; but Laura rather +prided herself upon some of her exploits of that character. We are sorry +we cannot make her a faultless heroine; but we cannot, for the reason +that she was human. + +She considered herself a superior conversationist. Long ago, when the +possibility had first been brought before her mind that some day she +might move in Washington society, she had recognized the fact that +practiced conversational powers would be a necessary weapon in that +field; she had also recognized the fact that since her dealings there +must be mainly with men, and men whom she supposed to be exceptionally +cultivated and able, she would need heavier shot in her magazine than +mere brilliant "society" nothings; whereupon she had at once entered upon +a tireless and elaborate course of reading, and had never since ceased to +devote every unoccupied moment to this sort of preparation. Having now +acquired a happy smattering of various information, she used it with good +effect--she passed for a singularly well informed woman in Washington. +The quality of her literary tastes had necessarily undergone constant +improvement under this regimen, and as necessarily, also; the duality of +her language had improved, though it cannot be denied that now and then +her former condition of life betrayed itself in just perceptible +inelegancies of expression and lapses of grammar. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + +When Laura had been in Washington three months, she was still the same +person, in one respect, that she was when she first arrived there--that +is to say, she still bore the name of Laura Hawkins. Otherwise she was +perceptibly changed.-- + +She had arrived in a state of grievous uncertainty as to what manner of +woman she was, physically and intellectually, as compared with eastern +women; she was well satisfied, now, that her beauty was confessed, her +mind a grade above the average, and her powers of fascination rather +extraordinary. So she, was at ease upon those points. When she arrived, +she was possessed of habits of economy and not possessed of money; now +she dressed elaborately, gave but little thought to the cost of things, +and was very well fortified financially. She kept her mother and +Washington freely supplied with money, and did the same by Col. Sellers +--who always insisted upon giving his note for loans--with interest; he was +rigid upon that; she must take interest; and one of the Colonel's +greatest satisfactions was to go over his accounts and note what a +handsome sum this accruing interest amounted to, and what a comfortable +though modest support it would yield Laura in case reverses should +overtake her. + +In truth he could not help feeling that he was an efficient shield for +her against poverty; and so, if her expensive ways ever troubled him for +a brief moment, he presently dismissed the thought and said to himself, +"Let her go on--even if she loses everything she is still safe--this +interest will always afford her a good easy income." + +Laura was on excellent terms with a great many members of Congress, and +there was an undercurrent of suspicion in some quarters that she was one +of that detested class known as "lobbyists;" but what belle could escape +slander in such a city? Fairminded people declined to condemn her on +mere suspicion, and so the injurious talk made no very damaging headway. +She was very gay, now, and very celebrated, and she might well expect to +be assailed by many kinds of gossip. She was growing used to celebrity, +and could already sit calm and seemingly unconscious, under the fire of +fifty lorgnettes in a theatre, or even overhear the low voice "That's +she!" as she passed along the street without betraying annoyance. + +The whole air was full of a vague vast scheme which was to eventuate in +filling Laura's pockets with millions of money; some had one idea of the +scheme, and some another, but nobody had any exact knowledge upon the +subject. All that any one felt sure about, was that Laura's landed +estates were princely in value and extent, and that the government was +anxious to get hold of them for public purposes, and that Laura was +willing to make the sale but not at all anxious about the matter and not +at all in a hurry. It was whispered that Senator Dilworthy was a +stumbling block in the way of an immediate sale, because he was resolved +that the government should not have the lands except with the +understanding that they should be devoted to the uplifting of the negro +race; Laura did not care what they were devoted to, it was said, (a world +of very different gossip to the contrary notwithstanding,) but there were +several other heirs and they would be guided entirely by the Senator's +wishes; and finally, many people averred that while it would be easy to +sell the lands to the government for the benefit of the negro, by +resorting to the usual methods of influencing votes, Senator Dilworthy +was unwilling to have so noble a charity sullied by any taint of +corruption--he was resolved that not a vote should be bought. Nobody +could get anything definite from Laura about these matters, and so gossip +had to feed itself chiefly upon guesses. But the effect of it all was, +that Laura was considered to be very wealthy and likely to be vastly more +so in a little while. Consequently she was much courted and as much +envied: Her wealth attracted many suitors. Perhaps they came to worship +her riches, but they remained to worship her. Some of the noblest men of +the time succumbed to her fascinations. She frowned upon no lover when +he made his first advances, but by and by when she was hopelessly +enthralled, he learned from her own lips that she had formed a resolution +never to marry. Then he would go away hating and cursing the whole sex, +and she would calmly add his scalp to her string, while she mused upon +the bitter day that Col. Selby trampled her love and her pride in the +dust. In time it came to be said that her way was paved with broken +hearts. + +Poor Washington gradually woke up to the fact that he too was an +intellectual marvel as well as his gifted sister. He could not conceive +how it had come about (it did not occur to him that the gossip about his +family's great wealth had any thing to do with it). He could not account +for it by any process of reasoning, and was simply obliged to accept the +fact and give up trying to solve the riddle. He found himself dragged +into society and courted, wondered at and envied very much as if he were +one of those foreign barbers who flit over here now and then with a +self-conferred title of nobility and marry some rich fool's absurd +daughter. Sometimes at a dinner party or a reception he would find +himself the centre of interest, and feel unutterably uncomfortable in the +discovery. Being obliged to say something, he would mine his brain and +put in a blast and when the smoke and flying debris had cleared away the +result would be what seemed to him but a poor little intellectual clod of +dirt or two, and then he would be astonished to see everybody as lost in +admiration as if he had brought up a ton or two of virgin gold. Every +remark he made delighted his hearers and compelled their applause; he +overheard people say he was exceedingly bright--they were chiefly mammas +and marriageable young ladies. He found that some of his good things +were being repeated about the town. Whenever he heard of an instance of +this kind, he would keep that particular remark in mind and analyze it at +home in private. At first he could not see that the remark was anything +better than a parrot might originate; but by and by he began to feel that +perhaps he underrated his powers; and after that he used to analyze his +good things with a deal of comfort, and find in them a brilliancy which +would have been unapparent to him in earlier days--and then he would make +a note, of that good thing and say it again the first time he found +himself in a new company. Presently he had saved up quite a repertoire +of brilliancies; and after that he confined himself to repeating these +and ceased to originate any more, lest he might injure his reputation by +an unlucky effort. + +He was constantly having young ladies thrust upon his notice at +receptions, or left upon his hands at parties, and in time he began to +feel that he was being deliberately persecuted in this way; and after +that he could not enjoy society because of his constant dread of these +female ambushes and surprises. He was distressed to find that nearly +every time he showed a young lady a polite attention he was straightway +reported to be engaged to her; and as some of these reports got into the +newspapers occasionally, he had to keep writing to Louise that they were +lies and she must believe in him and not mind them or allow them to +grieve her. + +Washington was as much in the dark as anybody with regard to the great +wealth that was hovering in the air and seemingly on the point of +tumbling into the family pocket. Laura would give him no satisfaction. +All she would say, was: + +"Wait. Be patient. You will see." + +"But will it be soon, Laura?" + +"It will not be very long, I think." + +"But what makes you think so?" + +"I have reasons--and good ones. Just wait, and be patient." + +"But is it going to be as much as people say it is?" + +"What do they say it is?" + +"Oh, ever so much. Millions!" + +"Yes, it will be a great sum." + +"But how great, Laura? Will it be millions?" + +"Yes, you may call it that. Yes, it will be millions. There, now--does +that satisfy you?" + +"Splendid! I can wait. I can wait patiently--ever so patiently. Once I +was near selling the land for twenty thousand dollars; once for thirty +thousand dollars; once after that for seven thousand dollars; and once +for forty thousand dollars--but something always told me not to do it. +What a fool I would have been to sell it for such a beggarly trifle! It +is the land that's to bring the money, isn't it Laura? You can tell me +that much, can't you?" + +"Yes, I don't mind saying that much. It is the land. + +"But mind--don't ever hint that you got it from me. Don't mention me in +the matter at all, Washington." + +"All right--I won't. Millions! Isn't it splendid! I mean to look +around for a building lot; a lot with fine ornamental shrubbery and all +that sort of thing. I will do it to-day. And I might as well see an +architect, too, and get him to go to work at a plan for a house. I don't +intend to spare and expense; I mean to have the noblest house that money +can build." Then after a pause--he did not notice Laura's smiles "Laura, +would you lay the main hall in encaustic tiles, or just in fancy patterns +of hard wood?" + +Laura laughed a good old-fashioned laugh that had more of her former +natural self about it than any sound that had issued from her mouth in +many weeks. She said: + +"You don't change, Washington. You still begin to squander a fortune +right and left the instant you hear of it in the distance; you never wait +till the foremost dollar of it arrives within a hundred miles of you," +--and she kissed her brother good bye and left him weltering in his dreams, +so to speak. + +He got up and walked the floor feverishly during two hours; and when he +sat down he had married Louise, built a house, reared a family, married +them off, spent upwards of eight hundred thousand dollars on mere +luxuries, and died worth twelve millions. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + + +Laura went down stairs, knocked at/the study door, and entered, scarcely +waiting for the response. Senator Dilworthy was alone--with an open +Bible in his hand, upside down. Laura smiled, and said, forgetting her +acquired correctness of speech, + +"It is only me." + +"Ah, come in, sit down," and the Senator closed the book and laid it +down. "I wanted to see you. Time to report progress from the committee +of the whole," and the Senator beamed with his own congressional wit. + +"In the committee of the whole things are working very well. We have +made ever so much progress in a week. I believe that you and I together +could run this government beautifully, uncle." + +The Senator beamed again. He liked to be called "uncle" by this +beautiful woman. + +"Did you see Hopperson last night after the congressional prayer +meeting?" + +"Yes. He came. He's a kind of--" + +"Eh? he is one of my friends, Laura. He's a fine man, a very fine man. +I don't know any man in congress I'd sooner go to for help in any +Christian work. What did he say?" + +"Oh, he beat around a little. He said he should like to help the negro, +his heart went out to the negro, and all that--plenty of them say that +but he was a little afraid of the Tennessee Land bill; if Senator +Dilworthy wasn't in it, he should suspect there was a fraud on the +government." + +"He said that, did he?" + +"Yes. And he said he felt he couldn't vote for it. He was shy." + +"Not shy, child, cautious. He's a very cautious man. I have been with +him a great deal on conference committees. He wants reasons, good ones. +Didn't you show him he was in error about the bill?" + +"I did. I went over the whole thing. I had to tell him some of the side +arrangements, some of the--" + +"You didn't mention me?" + +"Oh, no. I told him you were daft about the negro and the philanthropy +part of it, as you are." + +"Daft is a little strong, Laura. But you know that I wouldn't touch this +bill if it were not for the public good, and for the good of the colored +race; much as I am interested in the heirs of this property, and would +like to have them succeed." + +Laura looked a little incredulous, and the Senator proceeded. + +"Don't misunderstand me, I don't deny that it is for the interest of all +of us that this bill should go through, and it will. I have no +concealments from you. But I have one principle in my public life, which +I should like you to keep in mind; it has always been my guide. I never +push a private interest if it is not Justified and ennobled by some +larger public good. I doubt Christian would be justified in working for +his own salvation if it was not to aid in the salvation of his fellow +men." + +The Senator spoke with feeling, and then added, + +"I hope you showed Hopperson that our motives were pure?" + +"Yes, and he seemed to have a new light on the measure: I think will vote +for it." + +"I hope so; his name will give tone and strength to it. I knew you would +only have to show him that it was just and pure, in order to secure his +cordial support." + +"I think I convinced him. Yes, I am perfectly sure he will vote right +now." + +"That's good, that's good," said the Senator; smiling, and rubbing his +hands. "Is there anything more?" + +"You'll find some changes in that I guess," handing the Senator a printed +list of names. "Those checked off are all right." + +"Ah--'m--'m," running his eye down the list. "That's encouraging. What +is the 'C' before some of the names, and the 'B. B.'?" + +"Those are my private marks. That 'C' stands for 'convinced,' with +argument. The 'B. B.' is a general sign for a relative. You see it +stands before three of the Hon. Committee. I expect to see the chairman +of the committee to-day, Mr. Buckstone." + +"So, you must, he ought to be seen without any delay. Buckstone is a +worldly sort of a fellow, but he has charitable impulses. If we secure +him we shall have a favorable report by the committee, and it will be a +great thing to be able to state that fact quietly where it will do good." + +"Oh, I saw Senator Balloon" + +"He will help us, I suppose? Balloon is a whole-hearted fellow. I can't +help loving that man, for all his drollery and waggishness. He puts on +an air of levity sometimes, but there aint a man in the senate knows the +scriptures as he does. He did not make any objections?" + +"Not exactly, he said--shall I tell you what he said?" asked Laura +glancing furtively at him. + +"Certainly." + +"He said he had no doubt it was a good thing; if Senator Dilworthy was in +it, it would pay to look into it." + +The Senator laughed, but rather feebly, and said, "Balloon is always full +of his jokes." + +"I explained it to him. He said it was all right, he only wanted a word +with you,", continued Laura. "He is a handsome old gentleman, and he is +gallant for an old man." + +"My daughter," said the Senator, with a grave look, "I trust there was +nothing free in his manner?" + +"Free?" repeated Laura, with indignation in her face. "With me!" + +"There, there, child. I meant nothing, Balloon talks a little freely +sometimes, with men. But he is right at heart. His term expires next +year and I fear we shall lose him." + +"He seemed to be packing the day I was there. His rooms were full of dry +goods boxes, into which his servant was crowding all manner of old +clothes and stuff: I suppose he will paint 'Pub. Docs' on them and frank +them home. That's good economy, isn't it?" + +"Yes, yes, but child, all Congressmen do that. It may not be strictly +honest, indeed it is not unless he had some public documents mixed in +with the clothes." + +"It's a funny world. Good-bye, uncle. I'm going to see that chairman." + +And humming a cheery opera air, she departed to her room to dress for +going out. Before she did that, however, she took out her note book and +was soon deep in its contents; marking, dashing, erasing, figuring, and +talking to herself. + +"Free! I wonder what Dilworthy does think of me anyway? One . . . +two. . .eight . . . seventeen . . . twenty-one,. . 'm'm . . . +it takes a heap for a majority. Wouldn't Dilworthy open his eyes if he +knew some of the things Balloon did say to me. There. . . . +Hopperson's influence ought to count twenty . . . the sanctimonious +old curmudgeon. Son-in-law. . . . sinecure in the negro institution +. . . .That about gauges him . . . The three committeemen . . . . +sons-in-law. Nothing like a son-in-law here in Washington or a brother- +in-law . . . And everybody has 'em . . . Let's see: . . . sixty- +one. . . . with places . . . twenty-five . . . persuaded--it is +getting on; . . . . we'll have two-thirds of Congress in time . . . +Dilworthy must surely know I understand him. Uncle Dilworthy . . . . +Uncle Balloon!--Tells very amusing stories . . . when ladies are not +present . . . I should think so . . . .'m . . . 'm. Eighty-five. +There. I must find that chairman. Queer. . . . Buckstone acts . . +Seemed to be in love . . . . . I was sure of it. He promised to +come here. . . and he hasn't. . . Strange. Very strange . . . . +I must chance to meet him to-day." + +Laura dressed and went out, thinking she was perhaps too early for Mr. +Buckstone to come from the house, but as he lodged near the bookstore she +would drop in there and keep a look out for him. + +While Laura is on her errand to find Mr. Buckstone, it may not be out of +the way to remark that she knew quite as much of Washington life as +Senator Dilworthy gave her credit for, and more than she thought proper +to tell him. She was acquainted by this time with a good many of the +young fellows of Newspaper Row; and exchanged gossip with them to their +mutual advantage. + +They were always talking in the Row, everlastingly gossiping, bantering +and sarcastically praising things, and going on in a style which was a +curious commingling of earnest and persiflage. Col. Sellers liked this +talk amazingly, though he was sometimes a little at sea in it--and +perhaps that didn't lessen the relish of the conversation to the +correspondents. + +It seems that they had got hold of the dry-goods box packing story about +Balloon, one day, and were talking it over when the Colonel came in. +The Colonel wanted to know all about it, and Hicks told him. And then +Hicks went on, with a serious air, + +"Colonel, if you register a letter, it means that it is of value, doesn't +it? And if you pay fifteen cents for registering it, the government will +have to take extra care of it and even pay you back its full value if it +is lost. Isn't that so?" + +"Yes. I suppose it's so.". + +"Well Senator Balloon put fifteen cents worth of stamps on each of those +seven huge boxes of old clothes, and shipped that ton of second-hand +rubbish, old boots and pantaloons and what not through the mails as +registered matter! It was an ingenious thing and it had a genuine touch +of humor about it, too. I think there is more real: talent among our +public men of to-day than there was among those of old times--a far more +fertile fancy, a much happier ingenuity. Now, Colonel, can you picture +Jefferson, or Washington or John Adams franking their wardrobes through +the mails and adding the facetious idea of making the government +responsible for the cargo for the sum of one dollar and five cents? +Statesmen were dull creatures in those days. I have a much greater +admiration for Senator Balloon." + +"Yes, Balloon is a man of parts, there is no denying it" + +"I think so. He is spoken of for the post of Minister to China, or +Austria, and I hope will be appointed. What we want abroad is good +examples of the national character. + +"John Jay and Benjamin Franklin were well enough in their day, but the +nation has made progress since then. Balloon is a man we know and can +depend on to be true to himself." + +"Yes, and Balloon has had a good deal of public experience. He is an old +friend of mine. He was governor of one of the territories a while, and +was very satisfactory." + +"Indeed he was. He was ex-officio Indian agent, too. Many a man would +have taken the Indian appropriation and devoted the money to feeding and +clothing the helpless savages, whose land had been taken from them by the +white man in the interests of civilization; but Balloon knew their needs +better. He built a government saw-mill on the reservation with the +money, and the lumber sold for enormous prices--a relative of his did all +the work free of charge--that is to say he charged nothing more than the +lumber world bring." "But the poor Injuns--not that I care much for +Injuns--what did he do for them?" + +"Gave them the outside slabs to fence in the reservation with. Governor +Balloon was nothing less than a father to the poor Indians. But Balloon +is not alone, we have many truly noble statesmen in our country's service +like Balloon. The Senate is full of them. Don't you think so Colonel?" + +"Well, I dunno. I honor my country's public servants as much as any one +can. I meet them, Sir, every day, and the more I see of them the more I +esteem them and the more grateful I am that our institutions give us the +opportunity of securing their services. Few lands are so blest." + +"That is true, Colonel. To be sure you can buy now and then a Senator or +a Representative but they do not know it is wrong, and so they are not +ashamed of it. They are gentle, and confiding and childlike, and in my +opinion these are qualities that ennoble them far more than any amount of +sinful sagacity could. I quite agree with you, Col. Sellers." + +"Well"--hesitated the, Colonel--"I am afraid some of them do buy their +seats--yes, I am afraid they do--but as Senator Dilworthy himself said to +me, it is sinful,--it is very wrong--it is shameful; Heaven protect me +from such a charge. That is what Dilworthy said. And yet when you come +to look at it you cannot deny that we would have to go without the +services of some of our ablest men, sir, if the country were opposed to +--to--bribery. It is a harsh term. I do not like to use it." + +The Colonel interrupted himself at this point to meet an engagement with +the Austrian minister, and took his leave with his usual courtly bow. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + + +In due time Laura alighted at the book store, and began to look at the +titles of the handsome array of books on the counter. A dapper clerk of +perhaps nineteen or twenty years, with hair accurately parted and +surprisingly slick, came bustling up and leaned over with a pretty smile +and an affable-- + +"Can I--was there any particular book you wished to see?" + +"Have you Taine's England?" + +"Beg pardon?" + +"Taine's Notes on England." + +The young gentleman scratched the side of his nose with a cedar pencil +which he took down from its bracket on the side of his head, and +reflected a moment: + +"Ah--I see," [with a bright smile]--"Train, you mean--not Taine. George +Francis Train. No, ma'm we--" + +"I mean Taine--if I may take the liberty." + +The clerk reflected again--then: + +"Taine . . . . Taine . . . . Is it hymns?" + +"No, it isn't hymns. It is a volume that is making a deal of talk just +now, and is very widely known--except among parties who sell it." + +The clerk glanced at her face to see if a sarcasm might not lurk +somewhere in that obscure speech, but the gentle simplicity of the +beautiful eyes that met his, banished that suspicion. He went away and +conferred with the proprietor. Both appeared to be non-plussed. They +thought and talked, and talked and thought by turns. Then both came +forward and the proprietor said: + +"Is it an American book, ma'm?" + +"No, it is an American reprint of an English translation." + +"Oh! Yes--yes--I remember, now. We are expecting it every day. It +isn't out yet." + +"I think you must be mistaken, because you advertised it a week ago." + +"Why no--can that be so?" + +"Yes, I am sure of it. And besides, here is the book itself, on the +counter." + +She bought it and the proprietor retired from the field. Then she asked +the clerk for the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table--and was pained to see +the admiration her beauty had inspired in him fade out of his face. +He said with cold dignity, that cook books were somewhat out of their +line, but he would order it if she desired it. She said, no, never mind. +Then she fell to conning the titles again, finding a delight in the +inspection of the Hawthornes, the Longfellows, the Tennysons, and other +favorites of her idle hours. Meantime the clerk's eyes were busy, and no +doubt his admiration was returning again--or may be he was only gauging +her probable literary tastes by some sagacious system of admeasurement +only known to his guild. Now he began to "assist" her in making a +selection; but his efforts met with no success--indeed they only annoyed +her and unpleasantly interrupted her meditations. Presently, while she +was holding a copy of "Venetian Life" in her hand and running over a +familiar passage here and there, the clerk said, briskly, snatching up a +paper-covered volume and striking the counter a smart blow with it to +dislodge the dust: + +"Now here is a work that we've sold a lot of. Everybody that's read it +likes it"--and he intruded it under her nose; "it's a book that I can +recommend--'The Pirate's Doom, or the Last of the Buccaneers.' I think +it's one of the best things that's come out this season." + +Laura pushed it gently aside her hand and went on and went on filching +from "Venetian Life." + +"I believe I do not want it," she said. + +The clerk hunted around awhile, glancing at one title and then another, +but apparently not finding what he wanted. + +However, he succeeded at last. Said he: + +"Have you ever read this, ma'm? I am sure you'll like it. It's by the +author of 'The Hooligans of Hackensack.' It is full of love troubles and +mysteries and all sorts of such things. The heroine strangles her own +mother. Just glance at the title please,--'Gonderil the Vampire, or The +Dance of Death.' And here is 'The Jokist's Own Treasury, or, The Phunny +Phellow's Bosom Phriend.' The funniest thing!--I've read it four times, +ma'm, and I can laugh at the very sight of it yet. And 'Gonderil,' +--I assure you it is the most splendid book I ever read. I know you will +like these books, ma'm, because I've read them myself and I know what +they are." + +"Oh, I was perplexed--but I see how it is, now. You must have thought +I asked you to tell me what sort of books I wanted--for I am apt to say +things which I don't really mean, when I am absent minded. I suppose I +did ask you, didn't I?" + +"No ma'm,--but I--" + +"Yes, I must have done it, else you would not have offered your services, +for fear it might be rude. But don't be troubled--it was all my fault. +I ought not to have been so heedless--I ought not to have asked you." + +"But you didn't ask me, ma'm. We always help customers all we can. +You see our experience--living right among books all the time--that sort +of thing makes us able to help a customer make a selection, you know." + +"Now does it, indeed? It is part of your business, then?" + +"Yes'm, we always help." + +"How good it is of you. Some people would think it rather obtrusive, +perhaps, but I don't--I think it is real kindness--even charity. Some +people jump to conclusions without any thought--you have noticed that?" + +"O yes," said the clerk, a little perplexed as to whether to feel +comfortable or the reverse; "Oh yes, indeed, I've often noticed that, +ma'm." + +"Yes, they jump to conclusions with an absurd heedlessness. Now some +people would think it odd that because you, with the budding tastes and +the innocent enthusiasms natural to your time of life, enjoyed the +Vampires and the volume of nursery jokes, you should imagine that an +older person would delight in them too--but I do not think it odd at all. +I think it natural--perfectly natural in you. And kind, too. You look +like a person who not only finds a deep pleasure in any little thing in +the way of literature that strikes you forcibly, but is willing and glad +to share that pleasure with others--and that, I think, is noble and +admirable--very noble and admirable. I think we ought all--to share our +pleasures with others, and do what we can to make each other happy, do +not you?" + +"Oh, yes. Oh, yes, indeed. Yes, you are quite right, ma'm." + +But he was getting unmistakably uncomfortable, now, notwithstanding +Laura's confiding sociability and almost affectionate tone. + +"Yes, indeed. Many people would think that what a bookseller--or perhaps +his clerk--knows about literature as literature, in contradistinction to +its character as merchandise, would hardly, be of much assistance to a +person--that is, to an adult, of course--in the selection of food for the +mind--except of course wrapping paper, or twine, or wafers, or something +like that--but I never feel that way. I feel that whatever service you +offer me, you offer with a good heart, and I am as grateful for it as if +it were the greatest boon to me. And it is useful to me--it is bound to +be so. It cannot be otherwise. If you show me a book which you have +read--not skimmed over or merely glanced at, but read--and you tell me +that you enjoyed it and that you could read it three or four times, then +I know what book I want--" + +"Thank you!--th--" + +--"to avoid. Yes indeed. I think that no information ever comes amiss +in this world. Once or twice I have traveled in the cars--and there you +know, the peanut boy always measures you with his eye, and hands you out +a book of murders if you are fond of theology; or Tupper or a dictionary +or T. S. Arthur if you are fond of poetry; or he hands you a volume of +distressing jokes or a copy of the American Miscellany if you +particularly dislike that sort of literary fatty degeneration of the +heart--just for the world like a pleasant spoken well-meaning gentleman +in any, bookstore. But here I am running on as if business men had +nothing to do but listen to women talk. You must pardon me, for I was +not thinking.--And you must let me thank you again for helping me. +I read a good deal, and shall be in nearly every day and I would be sorry +to have you think me a customer who talks too much and buys too little. +Might I ask you to give me the time? Ah-two-twenty-two. Thank you +very much. I will set mine while I have the opportunity." + +But she could not get her watch open, apparently. She tried, and tried +again. Then the clerk, trembling at his own audacity, begged to be +allowed to assist. She allowed him. He succeeded, and was radiant under +the sweet influences of her pleased face and her seductively worded +acknowledgements with gratification. Then he gave her the exact time +again, and anxiously watched her turn the hands slowly till they reached +the precise spot without accident or loss of life, and then he looked as +happy as a man who had helped a fellow being through a momentous +undertaking, and was grateful to know that he had not lived in vain. +Laura thanked him once more. The words were music to his ear; but what +were they compared to the ravishing smile with which she flooded his +whole system? When she bowed her adieu and turned away, he was no longer +suffering torture in the pillory where she had had him trussed up during +so many distressing moments, but he belonged to the list of her conquests +and was a flattered and happy thrall, with the dawn-light of love +breaking over the eastern elevations of his heart. + +It was about the hour, now, for the chairman of the House Committee on +Benevolent Appropriations to make his appearance, and Laura stepped to +the door to reconnoiter. She glanced up the street, and sure enough-- + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. + + +That Chairman was nowhere in sight. Such disappointments seldom occur in +novels, but are always happening in real life. + +She was obliged to make a new plan. She sent him a note, and asked him +to call in the evening--which he did. + +She received the Hon. Mr. Buckstone with a sunny smile, and said: + +"I don't know how I ever dared to send you a note, Mr. Buckstone, for you +have the reputation of not being very partial to our sex." + +"Why I am sure my, reputation does me wrong, then, Miss Hawkins. I have +been married once--is that nothing in my favor?" + +"Oh, yes--that is, it may be and it may not be. If you have known what +perfection is in woman, it is fair to argue that inferiority cannot +interest you now." + +"Even if that were the case it could not affect you, Miss Hawkins," said +the chairman gallantly. "Fame does not place you in the list of ladies +who rank below perfection." This happy speech delighted Mr. Buckstone as +much as it seemed to delight Laura. But it did not confuse him as much +as it apparently did her. + +"I wish in all sincerity that I could be worthy of such a felicitous +compliment as that. But I am a woman, and so I am gratified for it just +as it is, and would not have it altered." + +"But it is not merely a compliment--that is, an empty complement--it is +the truth. All men will endorse that." + +Laura looked pleased, and said: + +"It is very kind of you to say it. It is a distinction indeed, for a +country-bred girl like me to be so spoken of by people of brains and +culture. You are so kind that I know you will pardon my putting you to +the trouble to come this evening." + +"Indeed it was no trouble. It was a pleasure. I am alone in the world +since I lost my wife, and I often long for the society of your sex, Miss +Hawkins, notwithstanding what people may say to the contrary." + +"It is pleasant to hear you say that. I am sure it must be so. If I +feel lonely at times, because of my exile from old friends, although +surrounded by new ones who are already very dear to me, how much more +lonely must you feel, bereft as you are, and with no wholesome relief +from the cares of state that weigh you down. For your own sake, as well +as for the sake of others, you ought to go into society oftener. +I seldom see you at a reception, and when I do you do not usually give me +very, much of your attention" + +"I never imagined that you wished it or I would have been very glad to +make myself happy in that way.--But one seldom gets an opportunity to say +more than a sentence to you in a place like that. You are always the +centre of a group--a fact which you may have noticed yourself. But if +one might come here--" + +"Indeed you would always find a hearty welcome, Mr. Buckstone. I have +often wished you would come and tell me more about Cairo and the +Pyramids, as you once promised me you would." + +"Why, do you remember that yet, Miss Hawkins? I thought ladies' memories +were more fickle than that." + +"Oh, they are not so fickle as gentlemen's promises. And besides, if I +had been inclined to forget, I--did you not give me something by way of a +remembrancer?" + +"Did I?" + +"Think." + +"It does seem to me that I did; but I have forgotten what it was now." + +"Never, never call a lady's memory fickle again! Do you recognize this?" + +"A little spray of box! I am beaten--I surrender. But have you kept +that all this time?" + +Laura's confusion was very, pretty. She tried to hide it, but the more +she tried the more manifest it became and withal the more captivating to +look upon. Presently she threw the spray of box from her with an annoyed +air, and said: + +"I forgot myself. I have been very foolish. I beg that you will forget +this absurd thing." + +Mr. Buckstone picked up the spray, and sitting down by Laura's side on +the sofa, said: + +"Please let me keep it, Miss Hawkins. I set a very high value upon it +now." + +"Give it to me, Mr. Buckstone, and do not speak so. I have been +sufficiently punished for my thoughtlessness. You cannot take pleasure +in adding to my distress. Please give it to me." + +"Indeed I do not wish to distress you. But do not consider the matter so +gravely; you have done yourself no wrong. You probably forgot that you +had it; but if you had given it to me I would have kept it--and not +forgotten it." + +"Do not talk so, Mr. Buckstone. Give it to me, please, and forget the +matter." + +"It would not be kind to refuse, since it troubles you so, and so I +restore it. But if you would give me part of it and keep the rest--" + +"So that you might have something to remind you of me when you wished to +laugh at my foolishness?" + +"Oh, by no means, no! Simply that I might remember that I had once +assisted to discomfort you, and be reminded to do so no more." + +Laura looked up, and scanned his face a moment. She was about to break +the twig, but she hesitated and said: + +"If I were sure that you--" She threw the spray away, and continued: +"This is silly! We will change the subject. No, do not insist--I must +have my way in this." + +Then Mr. Buckstone drew off his forces and proceeded to make a wily +advance upon the fortress under cover of carefully--contrived artifices +and stratagems of war. But he contended with an alert and suspicious +enemy; and so at the end of two hours it was manifest to him that he had +made but little progress. Still, he had made some; he was sure of that. + +Laura sat alone and communed with herself; + +"He is fairly hooked, poor thing. I can play him at my leisure and land +him when I choose. He was all ready to be caught, days and days ago +--I saw that, very well. He will vote for our bill--no fear about that; +and moreover he will work for it, too, before I am done with him. If he +had a woman's eyes he would have noticed that the spray of box had grown +three inches since he first gave it to me, but a man never sees anything +and never suspects. If I had shown him a whole bush he would have +thought it was the same. Well, it is a good night's work: the committee +is safe. But this is a desperate game I am playing in these days +--a wearing, sordid, heartless game. If I lose, I lose everything--even +myself. And if I win the game, will it be worth its cost after all? +I do not know. Sometimes I doubt. Sometimes I half wish I had not +begun. But no matter; I have begun, and I will never turn back; never +while I live." + +Mr. Buckstone indulged in a reverie as he walked homeward: + +"She is shrewd and deep, and plays her cards with considerable +discretion--but she will lose, for all that. There is no hurry; I shall +come out winner, all in good time. She is the most beautiful woman in +the world; and she surpassed herself to-night. I suppose I must vote for +that bill, in the end maybe; but that is not a matter of much consequence +the government can stand it. She is bent on capturing me, that is plain; +but she will find by and by that what she took for a sleeping garrison +was an ambuscade." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + + Now this surprising news caus'd her fall in 'a trance, + Life as she were dead, no limbs she could advance, + Then her dear brother came, her from the ground he took + And she spake up and said, O my poor heart is broke. + + The Barnardcastle Tragedy. + +"Don't you think he is distinguished looking?" + +"What! That gawky looking person, with Miss Hawkins?" + +"There. He's just speaking to Mrs. Schoonmaker. Such high-bred +negligence and unconsciousness. Nothing studied. See his fine eyes." + +"Very. They are moving this way now. Maybe he is coming here. But he +looks as helpless as a rag baby. Who is he, Blanche?" + +"Who is he? And you've been here a week, Grace, and don't know? He's +the catch of the season. That's Washington Hawkins--her brother." + +"No, is it?" + +"Very old family, old Kentucky family I believe. He's got enormous +landed property in Tennessee, I think. The family lost everything, +slaves and that sort of thing, you know, in the war. But they have a +great deal of land, minerals, mines and all that. Mr. Hawkins and his +sister too are very much interested in the amelioration of the condition +of the colored race; they have some plan, with Senator Dilworthy, to +convert a large part of their property to something another for the +freedmen." + +"You don't say so? I thought he was some guy from Pennsylvania. But he +is different from others. Probably he has lived all his life on his +plantation." + +It was a day reception of Mrs. Representative Schoonmaker, a sweet woman, +of simple and sincere manners. Her house was one of the most popular in +Washington. There was less ostentation there than in some others, and +people liked to go where the atmosphere reminded them of the peace and +purity of home. Mrs. Schoonmaker was as natural and unaffected in +Washington society as she was in her own New York house, and kept up the +spirit of home-life there, with her husband and children. And that was +the reason, probably, why people of refinement liked to go there. + +Washington is a microcosm, and one can suit himself with any sort of +society within a radius of a mile. To a large portion of the people who +frequent Washington or dwell where, the ultra fashion, the shoddy, the +jobbery are as utterly distasteful as they would he in a refined New +England City. Schoonmaker was not exactly a leader in the House, but he +was greatly respected for his fine talents and his honesty. No one would +have thought of offering to carry National Improvement Directors Relief +stock for him. + +These day receptions were attended by more women than men, and those +interested in the problem might have studied the costumes of the ladies +present, in view of this fact, to discover whether women dress more for +the eyes of women or for effect upon men. It is a very important +problem, and has been a good deal discussed, and its solution would form +one fixed, philosophical basis, upon which to estimate woman's character. +We are inclined to take a medium ground, and aver that woman dresses to +please herself, and in obedience to a law of her own nature. + +"They are coming this way," said Blanche. People who made way for them +to pass, turned to look at them. Washington began to feel that the eyes +of the public were on him also, and his eyes rolled about, now towards +the ceiling, now towards the floor, in an effort to look unconscious. + +"Good morning, Miss Hawkins. Delighted. Mr. Hawkins. My friend, Miss +Medlar." + +Mr. Hawkins, who was endeavoring to square himself for a bow, put his +foot through the train of Mrs. Senator Poplin, who looked round with a +scowl, which turned into a smile as she saw who it was. In extricating +himself, Mr. Hawkins, who had the care of his hat as well as the +introduction on his mind, shambled against Miss Blanche, who said pardon, +with the prettiest accent, as if the awkwardness were her own. And Mr. +Hawkins righted himself. + +"Don't you find it very warm to-day, Mr. Hawkins?" said Blanche, by way +of a remark. + +"It's awful hot," said Washington. + +"It's warm for the season," continued Blanche pleasantly. "But I suppose +you are accustomed to it," she added, with a general idea that the +thermometer always stands at 90 deg. in all parts of the late slave +states. "Washington weather generally cannot be very congenial to you?" + +"It's congenial," said Washington brightening up, "when it's not +congealed." + +"That's very good. Did you hear, Grace, Mr. Hawkins says it's congenial +when it's not congealed." + +"What is, dear?" said Grace, who was talking with Laura. + +The conversation was now finely under way. Washington launched out an +observation of his own. + +"Did you see those Japs, Miss Leavitt?" + +"Oh, yes, aren't they queer. But so high-bred, so picturesque. Do you +think that color makes any difference, Mr. Hawkins? I used to be so +prejudiced against color." + +"Did you? I never was. I used to think my old mammy was handsome." + +"How interesting your life must have been! I should like to hear about +it." + +Washington was about settling himself into his narrative style, +when Mrs. Gen. McFingal caught his eye. + +"Have you been at the Capitol to-day, Mr. Hawkins?" + +Washington had not. "Is anything uncommon going on?" + +"They say it was very exciting. The Alabama business you know. +Gen. Sutler, of Massachusetts, defied England, and they say he wants +war." + +"He wants to make himself conspicuous more like," said Laura. +"He always, you have noticed, talks with one eye on the gallery, while +the other is on the speaker." + +"Well, my husband says, its nonsense to talk of war, and wicked. +He knows what war is. If we do have war, I hope it will be for the +patriots of Cuba. Don't you think we want Cuba, Mr. Hawkins?" + +"I think we want it bad," said Washington. "And Santo Domingo. Senator +Dilworthy says, we are bound to extend our religion over the isles of the +sea. We've got to round out our territory, and--" + +Washington's further observations were broken off by Laura, who whisked +him off to another part of the room, and reminded him that they must make +their adieux. + +"How stupid and tiresome these people are," she said. "Let's go." + +They were turning to say good-by to the hostess, when Laura's attention +was arrested by the sight of a gentleman who was just speaking to Mrs. +Schoonmaker. For a second her heart stopped beating. He was a handsome +man of forty and perhaps more, with grayish hair and whiskers, and he +walked with a cane, as if he were slightly lame. He might be less than +forty, for his face was worn into hard lines, and he was pale. + +No. It could not be, she said to herself. It is only a resemblance. +But as the gentleman turned and she saw his full face, Laura put out her +hand and clutched Washington's arm to prevent herself from falling. + +Washington, who was not minding anything, as usual, looked 'round in +wonder. Laura's eyes were blazing fire and hatred; he had never seen her +look so before; and her face, was livid. + +"Why, what is it, sis? Your face is as white as paper." + +"It's he, it's he. Come, come," and she dragged him away. + +"It's who?" asked Washington, when they had gained the carriage. + +"It's nobody, it's nothing. Did I say he? I was faint with the heat. +Don't mention it. Don't you speak of it," she added earnestly, grasping +his arm. + +When she had gained her room she went to the glass and saw a pallid and +haggard face. + +"My God," she cried, "this will never do. I should have killed him, if I +could. The scoundrel still lives, and dares to come here. I ought to +kill him. He has no right to live. How I hate him. And yet I loved +him. Oh heavens, how I did love that man. And why didn't he kill me? +He might better. He did kill all that was good in me. Oh, but he shall +not escape. He shall not escape this time. He may have forgotten. He +will find that a woman's hate doesn't forget. The law? What would the +law do but protect him and make me an outcast? How all Washington would +gather up its virtuous skirts and avoid me, if it knew. I wonder if he +hates me as I do him?" + +So Laura raved, in tears and in rage by turns, tossed in a tumult of +passion, which she gave way to with little effort to control. + +A servant came to summon her to dinner. She had a headache. The hour +came for the President's reception. She had a raving headache, and the +Senator must go without her. + +That night of agony was like another night she recalled. How vividly it +all came back to her. And at that time she remembered she thought she +might be mistaken. He might come back to her. Perhaps he loved her, +a little, after all. Now, she knew he did not. Now, she knew he was a +cold-blooded scoundrel, without pity. Never a word in all these years. +She had hoped he was dead. Did his wife live, she wondered. She caught +at that--and it gave a new current to her thoughts. Perhaps, after all +--she must see him. She could not live without seeing him. Would he smile +as in the old days when she loved him so; or would he sneer as when she +last saw him? If be looked so, she hated him. If he should call her +"Laura, darling," and look SO! She must find him. She must end her +doubts. + +Laura kept her room for two days, on one excuse and another--a nervous +headache, a cold--to the great anxiety of the Senator's household. +Callers, who went away, said she had been too gay--they did not say +"fast," though some of them may have thought it. One so conspicuous and +successful in society as Laura could not be out of the way two days, +without remarks being made, and not all of them complimentary. + +When she came down she appeared as usual, a little pale may be, but +unchanged in manner. If there were any deepened lines about the eyes +they had been concealed. Her course of action was quite determined. + +At breakfast she asked if any one had heard any unusual noise during the +night? Nobody had. Washington never heard any noise of any kind after +his eyes were shut. Some people thought he never did when they were open +either. + +Senator Dilworthy said he had come in late. He was detained in a little +consultation after the Congressional prayer meeting. Perhaps it was his +entrance. + +No, Laura said. She heard that. It was later. She might have been +nervous, but she fancied somebody was trying to get into the house. + +Mr. Brierly humorously suggested that it might be, as none of the members +were occupied in night session. + +The Senator frowned, and said he did not like to hear that kind of +newspaper slang. There might be burglars about. + +Laura said that very likely it was only her nervousness. But she thought +she world feel safer if Washington would let her take one of his pistols. +Washington brought her one of his revolvers, and instructed her in the +art of loading and firing it. + +During the morning Laura drove down to Mrs. Schoonmaker's to pay a +friendly call. + +"Your receptions are always delightful," she said to that lady, "the +pleasant people all seem to come here." + +"It's pleasant to hear you say so, Miss Hawkins. I believe my friends +like to come here. Though society in Washington is mixed; we have a +little of everything." + +"I suppose, though, you don't see much of the old rebel element?" said +Laura with a smile. + +If this seemed to Mrs. Schoonmaker a singular remark for a lady to make, +who was meeting "rebels" in society every day, she did not express it in +any way, but only said, + +"You know we don't say 'rebel' anymore. Before we came to Washington I +thought rebels would look unlike other people. I find we are very much +alike, and that kindness and good nature wear away prejudice. And then +you know there are all sorts of common interests. My husband sometimes +says that he doesn't see but confederates are just as eager to get at the +treasury as Unionists. You know that Mr. Schoonmaker is on the +appropriations." + +"Does he know many Southerners?" + +"Oh, yes. There were several at my reception the other day. Among +others a confederate Colonel--a stranger--handsome man with gray hair, +probably you didn't notice him, uses a cane in walking. A very agreeable +man. I wondered why he called. When my husband came home and looked +over the cards, he said he had a cotton claim. A real southerner. +Perhaps you might know him if I could think of his name. Yes, here's his +card--Louisiana." + +Laura took the card, looked at it intently till she was sure of the +address, and then laid it down, with, + +"No, he is no friend of ours." + +That afternoon, Laura wrote and dispatched the following note. It was in +a round hand, unlike her flowing style, and it was directed to a number +and street in Georgetown:-- + + "A Lady at Senator Dilworthy's would like to see Col. George Selby, + on business connected with the Cotton Claims. Can he call Wednesday + at three o'clock P. M.?" + +On Wednesday at 3 P. M, no one of the family was likely to be in the +house except Laura. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + +Col. Selby had just come to Washington, and taken lodgings in Georgetown. +His business was to get pay for some cotton that was destroyed during the +war. There were many others in Washington on the same errand, some of +them with claims as difficult to establish as his. A concert of action +was necessary, and he was not, therefore, at all surprised to receive the +note from a lady asking him to call at Senator Dilworthy's. + +At a little after three on Wednesday he rang the bell of the Senator's +residence. It was a handsome mansion on the Square opposite the +President's house. The owner must be a man of great wealth, the Colonel +thought; perhaps, who knows, said he with a smile, he may have got some +of my cotton in exchange for salt and quinine after the capture of New +Orleans. As this thought passed through his mind he was looking at the +remarkable figure of the Hero of New Orleans, holding itself by main +strength from sliding off the back of the rearing bronze horse, and +lifting its hat in the manner of one who acknowledges the playing of that +martial air: "See, the Conquering Hero Comes!" "Gad," said the Colonel +to himself, "Old Hickory ought to get down and give his seat to Gen. +Sutler--but they'd have to tie him on." + +Laura was in the drawing room. She heard the bell, she heard the steps +in the hall, and the emphatic thud of the supporting cane. She had risen +from her chair and was leaning against the piano, pressing her left hand +against the violent beating of her heart. The door opened and the +Colonel entered, standing in the full light of the opposite window. +Laura was more in the shadow and stood for an instant, long enough for +the Colonel to make the inward observation that she was a magnificent +Woman. She then advanced a step. + +"Col. Selby, is it not?" + +The Colonel staggered back, caught himself by a chair, and turned towards +her a look of terror. + +"Laura? My God!" + +"Yes, your wife!" + +"Oh, no, it can't be. How came you here? I thought you were--" + +"You thought I was dead? You thought you were rid of me? Not so long as +you live, Col. Selby, not so long as you live;" Laura in her passion was +hurried on to say. + +No man had ever accused Col. Selby of cowardice. But he was a coward +before this woman. May be he was not the man he once was. Where was his +coolness? Where was his sneering, imperturbable manner, with which he +could have met, and would have met, any woman he had wronged, if he had +only been forewarned. He felt now that he must temporize, that he must +gain time. There was danger in Laura's tone. There was something +frightful in her calmness. Her steady eyes seemed to devour him. + +"You have ruined my life," she said; "and I was so young, so ignorant, +and loved you so. You betrayed me, and left me mocking me and trampling +me into the dust, a soiled cast-off. You might better have killed me +then. Then I should not have hated you." + +"Laura," said the Colonel, nerving himself, but still pale, and speaking +appealingly, "don't say that. Reproach me. I deserve it. I was a +scoundrel. I was everything monstrous. But your beauty made me crazy. +You are right. I was a brute in leaving you as I did. But what could I +do? I was married, and--" + +"And your wife still lives?" asked Laura, bending a little forward in her +eagerness. + +The Colonel noticed the action, and he almost said "no," but he thought +of the folly of attempting concealment. + +"Yes. She is here." + +What little color had wandered back into Laura's face forsook it again. +Her heart stood still, her strength seemed going from her limbs. Her +last hope was gone. The room swam before her for a moment, and the +Colonel stepped towards her, but she waved him back, as hot anger again +coursed through her veins, and said, + +"And you dare come with her, here, and tell me of it, here and mock me +with it! And you think I will have it; George? You think I will let you +live with that woman? You think I am as powerless as that day I fell +dead at your feet?" + +She raged now. She was in a tempest of excitement. And she advanced +towards him with a threatening mien. She would kill me if she could, +thought the Colonel; but he thought at the same moment, how beautiful she +is. He had recovered his head now. She was lovely when he knew her, +then a simple country girl, Now she was dazzling, in the fullness of ripe +womanhood, a superb creature, with all the fascination that a woman of +the world has for such a man as Col. Selby. Nothing of this was lost on +him. He stepped quickly to her, grasped both her hands in his, and said, + +"Laura, stop! think! Suppose I loved you yet! Suppose I hated my fate! +What can I do? I am broken by the war. I have lost everything almost. +I had as lief be dead and done with it." + +The Colonel spoke with a low remembered voice that thrilled through +Laura. He was looking into her eyes as he had looked in those old days, +when no birds of all those that sang in the groves where they walked sang +a note of warning. He was wounded. He had been punished. Her strength +forsook her with her rage, and she sank upon a chair, sobbing, + +"Oh! my God, I thought I hated him!" + +The Colonel knelt beside her. He took her hand and she let him keep it. +She, looked down into his face, with a pitiable tenderness, and said in a +weak voice. + +"And you do love me a little?" + +The Colonel vowed and protested. He kissed her hand and her lips. He +swore his false soul into perdition. + +She wanted love, this woman. Was not her love for George Selby deeper +than any other woman's could be? Had she not a right to him? Did he +not belong to her by virtue of her overmastering passion? His wife--she +was not his wife, except by the law. She could not be. Even with the +law she could have no right to stand between two souls that were one. +It was an infamous condition in society that George should be tied to +her. + +Laura thought this, believed it; because she desired to believe it. She +came to it as an original propositions founded an the requirements of her +own nature. She may have heard, doubtless she had, similar theories that +were prevalent at that day, theories of the tyranny of marriage and of +the freedom of marriage. She had even heard women lecturers say, that +marriage should only continue so long as it pleased either party to it +--for a year, or a month, or a day. She had not given much heed to this, +but she saw its justice now in a dash of revealing desire. It must be +right. God would not have permitted her to love George Selby as she did, +and him to love her, if it was right for society to raise up a barrier +between them. He belonged to her. Had he not confessed it himself? + +Not even the religious atmosphere of Senator Dilworthy's house had been +sufficient to instill into Laura that deep Christian principle which had +been somehow omitted in her training. Indeed in that very house had she +not heard women, prominent before the country and besieging Congress, +utter sentiments that fully justified the course she was marking out for +herself. + +They were seated now, side by side, talking with more calmness. Laura +was happy, or thought she was. But it was that feverish sort of +happiness which is snatched out of the black shadow of falsehood, and is +at the moment recognized as fleeting and perilous, and indulged +tremblingly. She loved. She was loved. That is happiness certainly. +And the black past and the troubled present and the uncertain future +could not snatch that from her. + +What did they say as they sat there? What nothings do people usually say +in such circumstances, even if they are three-score and ten? It was +enough for Laura to hear his voice and be near him. It was enough for +him to be near her, and avoid committing himself as much as he could. +Enough for him was the present also. Had there not always been some way +out of such scrapes? + +And yet Laura could not be quite content without prying into tomorrow. +How could the Colonel manage to free himself from his wife? Would it be +long? Could he not go into some State where it would not take much time? +He could not say exactly. That they must think of. That they must talk +over. And so on. Did this seem like a damnable plot to Laura against +the life, maybe, of a sister, a woman like herself? Probably not. +It was right that this man should be hers, and there were some obstacles +in the way. That was all. There are as good reasons for bad actions as +for good ones,--to those who commit them. When one has broken the tenth +commandment, the others are not of much account. + +Was it unnatural, therefore, that when George Selby departed, Laura +should watch him from the window, with an almost joyful heart as he went +down the sunny square? "I shall see him to-morrow," she said, "and the +next day, and the next. He is mine now." + +"Damn the woman," said the Colonel as he picked his way down the steps. +"Or," he added, as his thoughts took a new turn, "I wish my wife was in +New Orleans." + + + + +CHAPTER XL. + + Open your ears; for which of you will stop, + The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks? + I, from the orient to the drooping west, + Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold + The acts commenced on this ball of earth: + Upon my tongues continual slanders ride; + The which in every, language I pronounce, + Stuffing the ears of men with false reports. + + King Henry IV. + +As may be readily believed, Col. Beriah Sellers was by this time one of +the best known men in Washington. For the first time in his life his +talents had a fair field. + +He was now at the centre of the manufacture of gigantic schemes, +of speculations of all sorts, of political and social gossip. +The atmosphere was full of little and big rumors and of vast, undefined +expectations. Everybody was in haste, too, to push on his private plan, +and feverish in his haste, as if in constant apprehension that tomorrow +would be Judgment Day. Work while Congress is in session, said the +uneasy spirit, for in the recess there is no work and no device. + +The Colonel enjoyed this bustle and confusion amazingly; he thrived in +the air of-indefinite expectation. All his own schemes took larger shape +and more misty and majestic proportions; and in this congenial air, the +Colonel seemed even to himself to expand into something large and +mysterious. If he respected himself before, he almost worshipped Beriah +Sellers now, as a superior being. If he could have chosen an official +position out of the highest, he would have been embarrassed in the +selection. The presidency of the republic seemed too limited and cramped +in the constitutional restrictions. If he could have been Grand Llama of +the United States, that might have come the nearest to his idea of a +position. And next to that he would have luxuriated in the irresponsible +omniscience of the Special Correspondent. + +Col. Sellers knew the President very well, and had access to his presence +when officials were kept cooling their heels in the Waiting-room. The +President liked to hear the Colonel talk, his voluble ease was a +refreshment after the decorous dullness of men who only talked business +and government, and everlastingly expounded their notions of justice and +the distribution of patronage. The Colonel was as much a lover of +farming and of horses as Thomas Jefferson was. He talked to the +President by the hour about his magnificent stud, and his plantation at +Hawkeye, a kind of principality--he represented it. He urged the +President to pay him a visit during the recess, and see his stock farm. + +"The President's table is well enough," he used to say, to the loafers +who gathered about him at Willard's, "well enough for a man on a salary, +but God bless my soul, I should like him to see a little old-fashioned +hospitality--open house, you know. A person seeing me at home might +think I paid no attention to what was in the house, just let things flow +in and out. He'd be mistaken. What I look to is quality, sir. The +President has variety enough, but the quality! Vegetables of course you +can't expect here. I'm very particular about mine. Take celery, now +--there's only one spot in this country where celery will grow. But I an +surprised about the wines. I should think they were manufactured in the +New York Custom House. I must send the President some from my cellar. +I was really mortified the other day at dinner to see Blacque Bey leave +his standing in the glasses." + +When the Colonel first came to Washington he had thoughts of taking the +mission to Constantinople, in order to be on the spot to look after the +dissemination, of his Eye Water, but as that invention; was not yet quite +ready, the project shrank a little in the presence of vaster schemes. +Besides he felt that he could do the country more good by remaining at +home. He was one of the Southerners who were constantly quoted as +heartily "accepting the situation." + +"I'm whipped," he used to say with a jolly laugh, "the government was too +many for me; I'm cleaned out, done for, except my plantation and private +mansion. We played for a big thing, and lost it, and I don't whine, for +one. I go for putting the old flag on all the vacant lots. I said to +the President, says I, 'Grant, why don't you take Santo Domingo, annex +the whole thing, and settle the bill afterwards. That's my way. I'd, +take the job to manage Congress. The South would come into it. You've +got to conciliate the South, consolidate the two debts, pay 'em off in +greenbacks, and go ahead. That's my notion. Boutwell's got the right +notion about the value of paper, but he lacks courage. I should like to +run the treasury department about six months. I'd make things plenty, +and business look up.'" + +The Colonel had access to the departments. He knew all the senators and +representatives, and especially, the lobby. He was consequently a great +favorite in Newspaper Row, and was often lounging in the offices there, +dropping bits of private, official information, which were immediately, +caught up and telegraphed all over the country. But it need to surprise +even the Colonel when he read it, it was embellished to that degree that +he hardly recognized it, and the hint was not lost on him. He began to +exaggerate his heretofore simple conversation to suit the newspaper +demand. + +People used to wonder in the winters of 187- and 187-, where the +"Specials" got that remarkable information with which they every morning +surprised the country, revealing the most secret intentions of the +President and his cabinet, the private thoughts of political leaders, +the hidden meaning of every movement. This information was furnished by +Col. Sellers. + +When he was asked, afterwards, about the stolen copy of the Alabama +Treaty which got into the "New York Tribune," he only looked mysterious, +and said that neither he nor Senator Dilworthy knew anything about it. +But those whom he was in the habit of meeting occasionally felt almost +certain that he did know. + +It must not be supposed that the Colonel in his general patriotic labors +neglected his own affairs. The Columbus River Navigation Scheme absorbed +only a part of his time, so he was enabled to throw quite a strong +reserve force of energy into the Tennessee Land plan, a vast enterprise +commensurate with his abilities, and in the prosecution of which he was +greatly aided by Mr. Henry Brierly, who was buzzing about the capitol and +the hotels day and night, and making capital for it in some mysterious +way. + +"We must create, a public opinion," said Senator Dilworthy. "My only +interest in it is a public one, and if the country wants the institution, +Congress will have to yield." + +It may have been after a conversation between the Colonel and Senator +Dilworthy that the following special despatch was sent to a New York +newspaper: + + "We understand that a philanthropic plan is on foot in relation to + the colored race that will, if successful, revolutionize the whole + character of southern industry. An experimental institution is in + contemplation in Tennessee which will do for that state what the + Industrial School at Zurich did for Switzerland. We learn that + approaches have been made to the heirs of the late Hon. Silas + Hawkins of Missouri, in reference to a lease of a portion of their + valuable property in East Tennessee. Senator Dilworthy, it is + understood, is inflexibly opposed to any arrangement that will not + give the government absolute control. Private interests must give + way to the public good. It is to be hoped that Col. Sellers, who + represents the heirs, will be led to see the matter in this light." + +When Washington Hawkins read this despatch, he went to the Colonel in +some anxiety. He was for a lease, he didn't want to surrender anything. +What did he think the government would offer? Two millions? + +"May be three, may be four," said the Colonel, "it's worth more than the +bank of England." + +"If they will not lease," said Washington, "let 'em make it two millions +for an undivided half. I'm not going to throw it away, not the whole of +it." + +Harry told the Colonel that they must drive the thing through, he +couldn't be dallying round Washington when Spring opened. Phil wanted +him, Phil had a great thing on hand up in Pennsylvania. + +"What is that?" inquired the Colonel, always ready to interest himself in +anything large. + +"A mountain of coal; that's all. He's going to run a tunnel into it in +the Spring." + +"Does he want any capital?", asked the Colonel, in the tone of a man who +is given to calculating carefully before he makes an investment. + +"No. Old man Bolton's behind him. He has capital, but I judged that he +wanted my experience in starting." + +"If he wants me, tell him I'll come, after Congress adjourns. I should +like to give him a little lift. He lacks enterprise--now, about that +Columbus River. He doesn't see his chances. But he's a good fellow, and +you can tell him that Sellers won't go back on him." + +"By the way," asked Harry, "who is that rather handsome party that's +hanging 'round Laura? I see him with her everywhere, at the Capitol, in +the horse cars, and he comes to Dilworthy's. If he weren't lame, I +should think he was going to run off with her." + +"Oh, that's nothing. Laura knows her business. He has a cotton claim. +Used to be at Hawkeye during the war. + +"Selby's his name, was a Colonel. Got a wife and family. +Very respectable people, the Selby's." + +"Well, that's all right," said Harry, "if it's business. But if a woman +looked at me as I've seen her at Selby, I should understand it. And it's +talked about, I can tell you." + +Jealousy had no doubt sharpened this young gentleman's observation. +Laura could not have treated him with more lofty condescension if she had +been the Queen of Sheba, on a royal visit to the great republic. And he +resented it, and was "huffy" when he was with her, and ran her errands, +and brought her gossip, and bragged of his intimacy with the lovely +creature among the fellows at Newspaper Row. + +Laura's life was rushing on now in the full stream of intrigue and +fashionable dissipation. She was conspicuous at the balls of the fastest +set, and was suspected of being present at those doubtful suppers that +began late and ended early. If Senator Dilworthy remonstrated about +appearances, she had a way of silencing him. Perhaps she had some hold +on him, perhaps she was necessary to his plan for ameliorating the +condition the tube colored race. + +She saw Col. Selby, when the public knew and when it did not know. +She would see him, whatever excuses he made, and however he avoided her. +She was urged on by a fever of love and hatred and jealousy, which +alternately possessed her. Sometimes she petted him, and coaxed him and +tried all her fascinations. And again she threatened him and reproached +him. What was he doing? Why had he taken no steps to free himself? +Why didn't he send his wife home? She should have money soon. +They could go to Europe--anywhere. What did she care for talk? + +And he promised, and lied, and invented fresh excuses for delay, like a +cowardly gambler and roue as he was, fearing to break with her, and half +the time unwilling to give her up. + +"That woman doesn't know what fear is," he said to himself, "and she +watches me like a hawk." + +He told his wife that this woman was a lobbyist, whom he had to tolerate +and use in getting through his claims, and that he should pay her and +have done with her, when he succeeded. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + +Henry Brierly was at the Dilworthy's constantly and on such terms of +intimacy that he came and went without question. The Senator was not an +inhospitable man, he liked to have guests in his house, and Harry's gay +humor and rattling way entertained him; for even the most devout men and +busy statesmen must have hours of relaxation. + +Harry himself believed that he was of great service in the University +business, and that the success of the scheme depended upon him to a great +degree. He spent many hours in talking it over with the Senator after +dinner. He went so far as to consider whether it would be worth his +while to take the professorship of civil engineering in the new +institution. + +But it was not the Senator's society nor his dinners--at which this +scapegrace remarked that there was too much grace and too little wine +--which attracted him to the horse. The fact was the poor fellow hung +around there day after day for the chance of seeing Laura for five +minutes at a time. For her presence at dinner he would endure the long +bore of the Senator's talk afterwards, while Laura was off at some +assembly, or excused herself on the plea of fatigue. Now and then he +accompanied her to some reception, and rarely, on off nights, he was +blessed with her company in the parlor, when he sang, and was chatty and +vivacious and performed a hundred little tricks of imitation and +ventriloquism, and made himself as entertaining as a man could be. + +It puzzled him not a little that all his fascinations seemed to go for so +little with Laura; it was beyond his experience with women. Sometimes +Laura was exceedingly kind and petted him a little, and took the trouble +to exert her powers of pleasing, and to entangle him deeper and deeper. +But this, it angered him afterwards to think, was in private; in public +she was beyond his reach, and never gave occasion to the suspicion that +she had any affair with him. He was never permitted to achieve the +dignity of a serious flirtation with her in public. + +"Why do you treat me so?" he once said, reproachfully. + +"Treat you how?" asked Laura in a sweet voice, lifting her eyebrows. + +"You know well enough. You let other fellows monopolize you in society, +and you are as indifferent to me as if we were strangers." + +"Can I help it if they are attentive, can I be rude? But we are such old +friends, Mr. Brierly, that I didn't suppose you would be jealous." + +"I think I must be a very old friend, then, by your conduct towards me. +By the same rule I should judge that Col. Selby must be very new." + +Laura looked up quickly, as if about to return an indignant answer to +such impertinence, but she only said, "Well, what of Col. Selby, +sauce-box?" + +"Nothing, probably, you'll care for. Your being with him so much is the +town talk, that's all?" + +"What do people say?" asked Laura calmly. + +"Oh, they say a good many things. You are offended, though, to have me +speak of it?" + +"Not in the least. You are my true friend. I feel that I can trust you. +You wouldn't deceive me, Harry?" throwing into her eyes a look of trust +and tenderness that melted away all his petulance and distrust. "What do +they say?" + +"Some say that you've lost your head about him; others that you don't +care any more for him than you do for a dozen others, but that he is +completely fascinated with you and about to desert his wife; and others +say it is nonsense to suppose you would entangle yourself with a married +man, and that your intimacy only arises from the matter of the cotton, +claims, for which he wants your influence with Dilworthy. But you know +everybody is talked about more or less in Washington. I shouldn't care; +but I wish you wouldn't have so much to do with Selby, Laura," continued +Harry, fancying that he was now upon such terms that his, advice, would +be heeded. + +"And you believed these slanders?" + +"I don't believe anything against you, Laura, but Col. Selby does not +mean you any good. I know you wouldn't be seen with him if you knew his +reputation." + +"Do you know him?" Laura asked, as indifferently as she could. + +"Only a little. I was at his lodgings' in Georgetown a day or two ago, +with Col. Sellers. Sellers wanted to talk with him about some patent +remedy he has, Eye Water, or something of that sort, which he wants to +introduce into Europe. Selby is going abroad very soon." + +Laura started; in spite of her self-control. + +"And his wife!--Does he take his family? Did you see his wife?" + +"Yes. A dark little woman, rather worn--must have been pretty once +though. Has three or four children, one of them a baby. They'll all +go of course. She said she should be glad enough to get away from +Washington. You know Selby has got his claim allowed, and they say he +has had a run, of luck lately at Morrissey's." + +Laura heard all this in a kind of stupor, looking straight at Harry, +without seeing him. Is it possible, she was thinking, that this base +wretch, after, all his promises, will take his wife and children and +leave me? Is it possible the town is saying all these things about me? +And a look of bitterness coming into her face--does the fool think he can +escape so? + +"You are angry with me, Laura," said Harry, not comprehending in the +least what was going on in her mind. + +"Angry?" she said, forcing herself to come back to his presence. +"With you? Oh no. I'm angry with the cruel world, which, pursues an +independent woman as it never does a man. I'm grateful to you Harry; +I'm grateful to you for telling me of that odious man." + +And she rose from her chair and gave him her pretty hand, which the silly +fellow took, and kissed and clung to. And he said many silly things, +before she disengaged herself gently, and left him, saying it was time to +dress, for dinner. + +And Harry went away, excited, and a little hopeful, but only a little. +The happiness was only a gleam, which departed and left him thoroughly, +miserable. She never would love him, and she was going to the devil, +besides. He couldn't shut his eyes to what he saw, nor his ears to what +he heard of her. + +What had come over this thrilling young lady-killer? It was a pity to see +such a gay butterfly broken on a wheel. Was there something good in him, +after all, that had been touched? He was in fact madly in love with this +woman. + +It is not for us to analyze the passion and say whether it was a worthy +one. It absorbed his whole nature and made him wretched enough. If he +deserved punishment, what more would you have? Perhaps this love was +kindling a new heroism in him. + +He saw the road on which Laura was going clearly enough, though he did +not believe the worst he heard of her. He loved her too passionately to +credit that for a moment. And it seemed to him that if he could compel +her to recognize her position, and his own devotion, she might love him, +and that he could save her. His love was so far ennobled, and become a +very different thing from its beginning in Hawkeye. Whether he ever +thought that if he could save her from ruin, he could give her up +himself, is doubtful. Such a pitch of virtue does not occur often in +real life, especially in such natures as Harry's, whose generosity and +unselfishness were matters of temperament rather than habits or +principles. + +He wrote a long letter to Laura, an incoherent, passionate letter, +pouring out his love as he could not do in her presence, and warning her +as plainly as he dared of the dangers that surrounded her, and the risks +she ran of compromising herself in many ways. + +Laura read the letter, with a little sigh may be, as she thought of other +days, but with contempt also, and she put it into the fire with the +thought, "They are all alike." + +Harry was in the habit of writing to Philip freely, and boasting also +about his doings, as he could not help doing and remain himself. +Mixed up with his own exploits, and his daily triumphs as a lobbyist, +especially in the matter of the new University, in which Harry was to +have something handsome, were amusing sketches of Washington society, +hints about Dilworthy, stories about Col. Sellers, who had become a +well-known character, and wise remarks upon the machinery of private +legislation for the public-good, which greatly entertained Philip in his +convalescence. + +Laura's name occurred very often in these letters, at first in casual +mention as the belle of the season, carrying everything before her with +her wit and beauty, and then more seriously, as if Harry did not exactly +like so much general admiration of her, and was a little nettled by her +treatment of him. + +This was so different from Harry's usual tone about women, that Philip +wondered a good deal over it. Could it be possible that he was seriously +affected? Then came stories about Laura, town talk, gossip which Harry +denied the truth of indignantly; but he was evidently uneasy, and at +length wrote in such miserable spirits that Philip asked him squarely +what the trouble was; was he in love? + +Upon this, Harry made a clean breast of it, and told Philip all he knew +about the Selby affair, and Laura's treatment of him, sometimes +encouraging him--and then throwing him off, and finally his belief that +she would go, to the bad if something was not done to arouse her from her +infatuation. He wished Philip was in Washington. He knew Laura, and she +had a great respect for his character, his opinions, his judgment. +Perhaps he, as an uninterested person whom she would have some +confidence, and as one of the public, could say some thing to her that +would show her where she stood. + +Philip saw the situation clearly enough. Of Laura he knew not much, +except that she was a woman of uncommon fascination, and he thought from +what he had seen of her in Hawkeye, her conduct towards him and towards +Harry, of not too much principle. Of course he knew nothing of her +history; he knew nothing seriously against her, and if Harry was +desperately enamored of her, why should he not win her if he could. +If, however, she had already become what Harry uneasily felt she might +become, was it not his duty to go to the rescue of his friend and try to +save him from any rash act on account of a woman that might prove to be +entirely unworthy of him; for trifler and visionary as he was, Harry +deserved a better fate than this. + +Philip determined to go to Washington and see for himself. He had other +reasons also. He began to know enough of Mr. Bolton's affairs to be +uneasy. Pennybacker had been there several times during the winter, and +he suspected that he was involving Mr. Bolton in some doubtful scheme. +Pennybacker was in Washington, and Philip thought he might perhaps find +out something about him, and his plans, that would be of service to Mr. +Bolton. + +Philip had enjoyed his winter very well, for a man with his arm broken +and his head smashed. With two such nurses as Ruth and Alice, illness +seemed to him rather a nice holiday, and every moment of his +convalescence had been precious and all too fleeting. With a young +fellow of the habits of Philip, such injuries cannot be counted on to +tarry long, even for the purpose of love-making, and Philip found himself +getting strong with even disagreeable rapidity. + +During his first weeks of pain and weakness, Ruth was unceasing in her +ministrations; she quietly took charge of him, and with a gentle firmness +resisted all attempts of Alice or any one else to share to any great +extent the burden with her. She was clear, decisive and peremptory in +whatever she did; but often when Philip, opened his eyes in those first +days of suffering and found her standing by his bedside, he saw a look of +tenderness in her anxious face that quickened his already feverish pulse, +a look that, remained in his heart long after he closed his eyes. +Sometimes he felt her hand on his forehead, and did not open his eyes for +fear she world take it away. He watched for her coming to his chamber; +he could distinguish her light footstep from all others. If this is what +is meant by women practicing medicine, thought Philip to himself, I like +it. + +"Ruth," said he one day when he was getting to be quite himself, +"I believe in it?" + +"Believe in what?" + +"Why, in women physicians." + +"Then, I'd better call in Mrs. Dr. Longstreet." + +"Oh, no. One will do, one at a time. I think I should be well tomorrow, +if I thought I should never have any other." + +"Thy physician thinks thee mustn't talk, Philip," said Ruth putting her +finger on his lips. + +"But, Ruth, I want to tell you that I should wish I never had got well +if--" + +"There, there, thee must not talk. Thee is wandering again," and Ruth +closed his lips, with a smile on her own that broadened into a merry +laugh as she ran away. + +Philip was not weary, however, of making these attempts, he rather +enjoyed it. But whenever he inclined to be sentimental, Ruth would cut +him off, with some such gravely conceived speech as, "Does thee think +that thy physician will take advantage of the condition of a man who is +as weak as thee is? I will call Alice, if thee has any dying confessions +to make." + +As Philip convalesced, Alice more and more took Ruth's place as his +entertainer, and read to him by the hour, when he did not want to talk +--to talk about Ruth, as he did a good deal of the time. Nor was this +altogether unsatisfactory to Philip. He was always happy and contented +with Alice. She was the most restful person he knew. Better informed +than Ruth and with a much more varied culture, and bright and +sympathetic, he was never weary of her company, if he was not greatly +excited by it. She had upon his mind that peaceful influence that Mrs. +Bolton had when, occasionally, she sat by his bedside with her work. +Some people have this influence, which is like an emanation. They bring +peace to a house, they diffuse serene content in a room full of mixed +company, though they may say very little, and are apparently, unconscious +of their own power. + +Not that Philip did not long for Ruth's presence all the same. Since he +was well enough to be about the house, she was busy again with her +studies. Now and then her teasing humor came again. She always had a +playful shield against his sentiment. Philip used sometimes to declare +that she had no sentiment; and then he doubted if he should be pleased +with her after all if she were at all sentimental; and he rejoiced that +she had, in such matters what he called the airy grace of sanity. She +was the most gay serious person he ever saw. + +Perhaps he waw not so much at rest or so contented with her as with +Alice. But then he loved her. And what have rest and contentment to do +with love? + + + + +CHAPTER XLII + +Mr. Buckstone's campaign was brief--much briefer than he supposed it +would be. He began it purposing to win Laura without being won himself; +but his experience was that of all who had fought on that field before +him; he diligently continued his effort to win her, but he presently +found that while as yet he could not feel entirely certain of having won +her, it was very manifest that she had won him. He had made an able +fight, brief as it was, and that at least was to his credit. He was in +good company, now; he walked in a leash of conspicuous captives. These +unfortunates followed Laura helplessly, for whenever she took a prisoner +he remained her slave henceforth. Sometimes they chafed in their +bondage; sometimes they tore themselves free and said their serfdom was +ended; but sooner or later they always came back penitent and worshiping. +Laura pursued her usual course: she encouraged Mr. Buckstone by turns, +and by turns she harassed him; she exalted him to the clouds at one time, +and at another she dragged him down again. She constituted him chief +champion of the Knobs University bill, and he accepted the position, at +first reluctantly, but later as a valued means of serving her--he even +came to look upon it as a piece of great good fortune, since it brought +him into such frequent contact with her. + +Through him she learned that the Hon. Mr. Trollop was a bitter enemy of +her bill. He urged her not to attempt to influence Mr. Trollop in any +way, and explained that whatever she might attempt in that direction +would surely be used against her and with damaging effect. + +She at first said she knew Mr. Trollop, "and was aware that he had a +Blank-Blank;"--[**Her private figure of speech for Brother--or +Son-in-law]--but Mr. Buckstone said that he was not able to conceive what +so curious a phrase as Blank-Blank might mean, and had no wish to pry +into the matter, since it was probably private, he "would nevertheless +venture the blind assertion that nothing would answer in this particular +case and during this particular session but to be exceedingly wary and +keep clear away from Mr. Trollop; any other course would be fatal." + +It seemed that nothing could be done. Laura was seriously troubled. +Everything was looking well, and yet it was plain that one vigorous and +determined enemy might eventually succeed in overthrowing all her plans. +A suggestion came into her mind presently and she said: + +"Can't you fight against his great Pension bill and, bring him to terms?" + +"Oh, never; he and I are sworn brothers on that measure; we work in +harness and are very loving--I do everything I possibly can for him +there. But I work with might and main against his Immigration bill, +--as pertinaciously and as vindictively, indeed, as he works against our +University. We hate each other through half a conversation and are all +affection through the other half. We understand each other. He is an +admirable worker outside the capitol; he will do more for the Pension +bill than any other man could do; I wish he would make the great speech +on it which he wants to make--and then I would make another and we would +be safe." + +"Well if he wants to make a great speech why doesn't he do it?" + +Visitors interrupted the conversation and Mr. Buckstone took his leave. +It was not of the least moment to Laura that her question had not been +answered, inasmuch as it concerned a thing which did not interest her; +and yet, human being like, she thought she would have liked to know. +An opportunity occurring presently, she put the same question to another +person and got an answer that satisfied her. She pondered a good while +that night, after she had gone to bed, and when she finally turned over, +to, go to sleep, she had thought out a new scheme. The next evening at +Mrs. Gloverson's party, she said to Mr. Buckstone: + +"I want Mr. Trollop to make his great speech on the Pension bill." + +"Do you? But you remember I was interrupted, and did not explain +to you--" + +"Never mind, I know. You must' make him make that speech. I very. +particularly desire, it." + +"Oh, it is easy, to say make him do it, but how am I to make him!" + +"It is perfectly easy; I have thought it all out." + +She then went into the details. At length Mr. Buckstone said: + +"I see now. I can manage it, I am sure. Indeed I wonder he never +thought of it himself--there are no end of precedents. But how is this +going to benefit you, after I have managed it? There is where the +mystery lies." + +"But I will take care of that. It will benefit me a great deal." + +"I only wish I could see how; it is the oddest freak. You seem to go the +furthest around to get at a thing--but you are in earnest, aren't you?" + +"Yes I am, indeed." + +"Very well, I will do it--but why not tell me how you imagine it is going +to help you?" + +"I will, by and by.--Now there is nobody talking to him. Go straight and +do it, there's a good fellow." + +A moment or two later the two sworn friends of the Pension bill were +talking together, earnestly, and seemingly unconscious of the moving +throng about them. They talked an hour, and then Mr. Buckstone came back +and said: + +"He hardly fancied it at first, but he fell in love with it after a bit. +And we have made a compact, too. I am to keep his secret and he is to +spare me, in future, when he gets ready to denounce the supporters of the +University bill--and I can easily believe he will keep his word on this +occasion." + +A fortnight elapsed, and the University bill had gathered to itself many +friends, meantime. Senator Dilworthy began to think the harvest was +ripe. He conferred with Laura privately. She was able to tell him +exactly how the House would vote. There was a majority--the bill would +pass, unless weak members got frightened at the last, and deserted--a +thing pretty likely to occur. The Senator said: + +"I wish we had one more good strong man. Now Trollop ought to be on our +side, for he is a friend of the negro. But he is against us, and is our +bitterest opponent. If he would simply vote No, but keep quiet and not +molest us, I would feel perfectly cheerful and content. But perhaps +there is no use in thinking of that." + +"Why I laid a little plan for his benefit two weeks ago. I think he will +be tractable, maybe. He is to come here tonight." + +"Look out for him, my child! He means mischief, sure. It is said that +he claims to know of improper practices having been used in the interest +of this bill, and he thinks be sees a chance to make a great sensation +when the bill comes up. Be wary. Be very, very careful, my dear. +Do your very-ablest talking, now. You can convince a man of anything, +when you try. You must convince him that if anything improper has been +done, you at least are ignorant of it and sorry for it. And if you could +only persuade him out of his hostility to the bill, too--but don't overdo +the thing; don't seem too anxious, dear." + +"I won't; I'll be ever so careful. I'll talk as sweetly to him as if he +were my own child! You may trust me--indeed you may." + +The door-bell rang. + +"That is the gentleman now," said Laura. Senator Dilworthy retired to +his study. + +Laura welcomed Mr. Trollop, a grave, carefully dressed and very +respectable looking man, with a bald head, standing collar and old +fashioned watch seals. + +"Promptness is a virtue, Mr. Trollop, and I perceive that you have it. +You are always prompt with me." + +"I always meet my engagements, of every kind, Miss Hawkins." + +"It is a quality which is rarer in the world than it has been, I believe. +I wished to see you on business, Mr. Trollop." + +"I judged so. What can I do for you?" + +"You know my bill--the Knobs University bill?" + +"Ah, I believe it is your bill. I had forgotten. Yes, I know the bill." + +"Well, would you mind telling me your opinion of it?" + +"Indeed, since you seem to ask it without reserve, I am obliged to say +that I do not regard it favorably. I have not seen the bill itself, but +from what I can hear, it--it--well, it has a bad look about it. It--" + +"Speak it out--never fear." + +"Well, it--they say it contemplates a fraud upon the government." + +"Well?" said Laura tranquilly. + +"Well! I say 'Well?' too." + +"Well, suppose it were a fraud--which I feel able to deny--would it be +the first one?" + +"You take a body's breath away! Would you--did you wish me to vote for +it? Was that what you wanted to see me about?" + +"Your instinct is correct. I did want you--I do want you to vote for +it." + +"Vote for a fr--for a measure which is generally believed to be at least +questionable? I am afraid we cannot come to an understanding, Miss +Hawkins." + +"No, I am afraid not--if you have resumed your principles, Mr. Trollop." + +"Did you send for we merely to insult me? It is time for me to take my +leave, Miss Hawkins." + +"No-wait a moment. Don't be offended at a trifle. Do not be offish and +unsociable. The Steamship Subsidy bill was a fraud on the government. +You voted for it, Mr. Trollop, though you always opposed the measure +until after you had an interview one evening with a certain Mrs. McCarter +at her house. She was my agent. She was acting for me. Ah, that is +right--sit down again. You can be sociable, easily enough if you have a +mind to. Well? I am waiting. Have you nothing to say?" + +"Miss Hawkins, I voted for that bill because when I came to examine into +it--" + +"Ah yes. When you came to examine into it. Well, I only want you to +examine into my bill. Mr. Trollop, you would not sell your vote on that +subsidy bill--which was perfectly right--but you accepted of some +of the stock, with the understanding that it was to stand in your +brother-in-law's name." + +"There is no pr--I mean, this is, utterly groundless, Miss Hawkins." But +the gentleman seemed somewhat uneasy, nevertheless. + +"Well, not entirely so, perhaps. I and a person whom we will call Miss +Blank (never mind the real name,) were in a closet at your elbow all the +while." + +Mr. Trollop winced--then he said with dignity: + +"Miss Hawkins is it possible that you were capable of such a thing as +that?" + +"It was bad; I confess that. It was bad. Almost as bad as selling one's +vote for--but I forget; you did not sell your vote--you only accepted a +little trifle, a small token of esteem, for your brother-in-law. Oh, let +us come out and be frank with each other: I know you, Mr. Trollop. +I have met you on business three or four times; true, I never offered to +corrupt your principles--never hinted such a thing; but always when I had +finished sounding you, I manipulated you through an agent. Let us be +frank. Wear this comely disguise of virtue before the public--it will +count there; but here it is out of place. My dear sir, by and by there +is going to be an investigation into that National Internal Improvement +Directors' Relief Measure of a few years ago, and you know very well that +you will be a crippled man, as likely as not, when it is completed." + +"It cannot be shown that a man is a knave merely for owning that stock. +I am not distressed about the National Improvement Relief Measure." + +"Oh indeed I am not trying to distress you. I only wished, to make good +my assertion that I knew you. Several of you gentlemen bought of that +stack (without paying a penny down) received dividends from it, (think of +the happy idea of receiving dividends, and very large ones, too, from +stock one hasn't paid for!) and all the while your names never appeared +in the transaction; if ever you took the stock at all, you took it in +other people's names. Now you see, you had to know one of two things; +namely, you either knew that the idea of all this preposterous generosity +was to bribe you into future legislative friendship, or you didn't know +it. That is to say, you had to be either a knave or a--well, a fool +--there was no middle ground. You are not a fool, Mr. Trollop." + +"Miss Hawking you flatter me. But seriously, you do not forget that some +of the best and purest men in Congress took that stock in that way?" + +"Did Senator Bland?" + +"Well, no--I believe not." + +"Of course you believe not. Do you suppose he was ever approached, on +the subject?" + +"Perhaps not." + +"If you had approached him, for instance, fortified with the fact that +some of the best men in Congress, and the purest, etc., etc.; what would +have been the result?" + +"Well, what WOULD have been the result?" + +"He would have shown you the door! For Mr. Blank is neither a knave nor +a fool. There are other men in the Senate and the House whom no one +would have been hardy enough to approach with that Relief Stock in that +peculiarly generous way, but they are not of the class that you regard as +the best and purest. No, I say I know you Mr. Trollop. That is to say, +one may suggest a thing to Mr. Trollop which it would not do to suggest +to Mr. Blank. Mr. Trollop, you are pledged to support the Indigent +Congressmen's Retroactive Appropriation which is to come up, either in +this or the next session. You do not deny that, even in public. The man +that will vote for that bill will break the eighth commandment in any +other way, sir!" + +"But he will not vote for your corrupt measure, nevertheless, madam!" +exclaimed Mr. Trollop, rising from his seat in a passion. + +"Ah, but he will. Sit down again, and let me explain why. Oh, come, +don't behave so. It is very unpleasant. Now be good, and you shall +have, the missing page of your great speech. Here it is!"--and she +displayed a sheet of manuscript. + +Mr. Trollop turned immediately back from the threshold. It might have +been gladness that flashed into his face; it might have been something +else; but at any rate there was much astonishment mixed with it. + +"Good! Where did you get it? Give it me!" + +"Now there is no hurry. Sit down; sit down and let us talk and be +friendly." + +The gentleman wavered. Then he said: + +"No, this is only a subterfuge. I will go. It is not the missing page." + +Laura tore off a couple of lines from the bottom of the sheet. + +"Now," she said, "you will know whether this is the handwriting or not. +You know it is the handwriting. Now if you will listen, you will know +that this must be the list of statistics which was to be the 'nub' of +your great effort, and the accompanying blast the beginning of the burst +of eloquence which was continued on the next page--and you will recognize +that there was where you broke down." + +She read the page. Mr. Trollop said: + +"This is perfectly astounding. Still, what is all this to me? It is +nothing. It does not concern me. The speech is made, and there an end. +I did break down for a moment, and in a rather uncomfortable place, since +I had led up to those statistics with some grandeur; the hiatus was +pleasanter to the House and the galleries than it was to me. But it is +no matter now. A week has passed; the jests about it ceased three or +four days ago. The, whole thing is a matter of indifference to me, Miss +Hawkins." + +"But you apologized; and promised the statistics for next day. Why +didn't you keep your promise." + +"The matter was not of sufficient consequence. The time was gone by to +produce an effect with them." + +"But I hear that other friends of the Soldiers' Pension Bill desire them +very much. I think you ought to let them have them." + +"Miss Hawkins, this silly blunder of my copyist evidently has more +interest for you than it has for me. I will send my private secretary to +you and let him discuss the subject with you at length." + +"Did he copy your speech for you?" + +"Of course he did. Why all these questions? Tell me--how did you get +hold of that page of manuscript? That is the only thing that stirs a +passing interest in my mind." + +"I'm coming to that." Then she said, much as if she were talking to +herself: "It does seem like taking a deal of unnecessary pains, for a +body to hire another body to construct a great speech for him and then go +and get still another body to copy it before it can be read in the +House." + +"Miss Hawkins, what do yo mean by such talk as that?" + +"Why I am sure I mean no harm--no harm to anybody in the world. I am +certain that I overheard the Hon. Mr. Buckstone either promise to write +your great speech for you or else get some other competent person to do +it." + +"This is perfectly absurd, madam, perfectly absurd!" and Mr. Trollop +affected a laugh of derision. + +"Why, the thing has occurred before now. I mean that I have heard that +Congressmen have sometimes hired literary grubs to build speeches for +them.--Now didn't I overhear a conversation like that I spoke of?" + +"Pshaw! Why of course you may have overheard some such jesting nonsense. +But would one be in earnest about so farcical a thing?" + +"Well if it was only a joke, why did you make a serious matter of it? +Why did you get the speech written for you, and then read it in the House +without ever having it copied?" + +Mr. Trollop did not laugh this time; he seemed seriously perplexed. He +said: + +"Come, play out your jest, Miss Hawkins. I can't understand what you are +contriving--but it seems to entertain you--so please, go on." + +"I will, I assure you; but I hope to make the matter entertaining to you, +too. Your private secretary never copied your speech." + +"Indeed? Really you seem to know my affairs better than I do myself." + +"I believe I do. You can't name your own amanuensis, Mr. Trollop." + +"That is sad, indeed. Perhaps Miss Hawkins can?" + +"Yes, I can. I wrote your speech myself, and you read it from my +manuscript. There, now!" + +Mr. Trollop did not spring to his feet and smite his brow with his hand +while a cold sweat broke out all over him and the color forsook his face +--no, he only said, "Good God!" and looked greatly astonished. + +Laura handed him her commonplace-book and called his attention to the +fact that the handwriting there and the handwriting of this speech were +the same. He was shortly convinced. He laid the book aside and said, +composedly: + +"Well, the wonderful tragedy is done, and it transpires that I am +indebted to you for my late eloquence. What of it? What was all this +for and what does it amount to after all? What do you propose to do +about it?" + +"Oh nothing. It is only a bit of pleasantry. When I overheard that +conversation I took an early opportunity to ask Mr. Buckstone if he knew +of anybody who might want a speech written--I had a friend, and so forth +and so on. I was the friend, myself; I thought I might do you a good +turn then and depend on you to do me one by and by. I never let Mr. +Buckstone have the speech till the last moment, and when you hurried off +to the House with it, you did not know there was a missing page, of +course, but I did. + +"And now perhaps you think that if I refuse to support your bill, you +will make a grand exposure?" + +"Well I had not thought of that. I only kept back the page for the mere +fun of the thing; but since you mention it, I don't know but I might do +something if I were angry." + +"My dear Miss Hawkins, if you were to give out that you composed my +speech, you know very well that people would say it was only your +raillery, your fondness for putting a victim in the pillory and amusing +the public at his expense. It is too flimsy, Miss Hawkins, for a person +of your fine inventive talent--contrive an abler device than that. +Come!" + +"It is easily done, Mr. Trollop. I will hire a man, and pin this page on +his breast, and label it, 'The Missing Fragment of the Hon. Mr. Trollop's +Great Speech--which speech was written and composed by Miss Laura Hawkins +under a secret understanding for one hundred dollars--and the money has +not been paid.' And I will pin round about it notes in my handwriting, +which I will procure from prominent friends of mine for the occasion; +also your printed speech in the Globe, showing the connection between its +bracketed hiatus and my Fragment; and I give you my word of honor that I +will stand that human bulletin board in the rotunda of the capitol and +make him stay there a week! You see you are premature, Mr. Trollop, the +wonderful tragedy is not done yet, by any means. Come, now, doesn't it +improve?" + +Mr Trollop opened his eyes rather widely at this novel aspect of the +case. He got up and walked the floor and gave himself a moment for +reflection. Then he stopped and studied Laura's face a while, and ended +by saying: + +"Well, I am obliged to believe you would be reckless enough to do that." + +"Then don't put me to the test, Mr. Trollop. But let's drop the matter. +I have had my joke and you've borne the infliction becomingly enough. +It spoils a jest to harp on it after one has had one's laugh. I would +much rather talk about my bill." + +"So would I, now, my clandestine amanuensis. Compared with some other +subjects, even your bill is a pleasant topic to discuss." + +"Very good indeed! I thought. I could persuade you. Now I am sure you +will be generous to the poor negro and vote for that bill." + +"Yes, I feel more tenderly toward the oppressed colored man than I did. +Shall we bury the hatchet and be good friends and respect each other's +little secrets, on condition that I vote Aye on the measure?" + +"With all my heart, Mr. Trollop. I give you my word of that." + +"It is a bargain. But isn't there something else you could give me, +too?" + +Laura looked at him inquiringly a moment, and then she comprehended. + +"Oh, yes! You may have it now. I haven't any, more use for it." She +picked up the page of manuscript, but she reconsidered her intention of +handing it to him, and said, "But never mind; I will keep it close; no +one shall see it; you shall have it as soon as your vote is recorded." + +Mr. Trollop looked disappointed. But presently made his adieux, and had +got as far as the hall, when something occurred to Laura. She said to +herself, "I don't simply want his vote under compulsion--he might vote +aye, but work against the bill in secret, for revenge; that man is +unscrupulous enough to do anything. I must have his hearty co-operation +as well as his vote. There is only one way to get that." + +She called him back, and said: + +"I value your vote, Mr. Trollop, but I value your influence more. You +are able to help a measure along in many ways, if you choose. I want to +ask you to work for the bill as well as vote for it." + +"It takes so much of one's time, Miss Hawkins--and time is money, you +know." + +"Yes, I know it is--especially in Congress. Now there is no use in you +and I dealing in pretenses and going at matters in round-about ways. +We know each other--disguises are nonsense. Let us be plain. I will +make it an object to you to work for the bill." + +"Don't make it unnecessarily plain, please. There are little proprieties +that are best preserved. What do you propose?" + +"Well, this." She mentioned the names of several prominent Congressmen. + +"Now," said she, "these gentlemen are to vote and work for the bill, +simply out of love for the negro--and out of pure generosity I have put +in a relative of each as a member of the University incorporation. They +will handle a million or so of money, officially, but will receive no +salaries. A larger number of statesmen are to, vote and work for the +bill--also out of love for the negro--gentlemen of but moderate +influence, these--and out of pure generosity I am to see that relatives +of theirs have positions in the University, with salaries, and good ones, +too. You will vote and work for the bill, from mere affection for the +negro, and I desire to testify my gratitude becomingly. Make free +choice. Have you any friend whom you would like to present with a +salaried or unsalaried position in our institution?" + +"Well, I have a brother-in-law--" + +"That same old brother-in-law, you good unselfish provider! I have heard +of him often, through my agents. How regularly he does 'turn up,' to be +sure. He could deal with those millions virtuously, and withal with +ability, too--but of course you would rather he had a salaried position?" + +"Oh, no," said the gentleman, facetiously, "we are very humble, very +humble in our desires; we want no money; we labor solely, for our country +and require no reward but the luxury of an applauding conscience. Make +him one of those poor hard working unsalaried corporators and let him do +every body good with those millions--and go hungry himself! I will try +to exert a little influence in favor of the bill." + +Arrived at home, Mr. Trollop sat down and thought it all over--something +after this fashion: it is about the shape it might have taken if he had +spoken it aloud. + +"My reputation is getting a little damaged, and I meant to clear it up +brilliantly with an exposure of this bill at the supreme moment, and ride +back into Congress on the eclat of it; and if I had that bit of +manuscript, I would do it yet. It would be more money in my pocket in +the end, than my brother-in-law will get out of that incorporatorship, +fat as it is. But that sheet of paper is out of my reach--she will never +let that get out of her hands. And what a mountain it is! It blocks up +my road, completely. She was going to hand it to me, once. Why didn't +she! Must be a deep woman. Deep devil! That is what she is; +a beautiful devil--and perfectly fearless, too. The idea of her pinning +that paper on a man and standing him up in the rotunda looks absurd at a +first glance. But she would do it! She is capable of doing anything. +I went there hoping she would try to bribe me--good solid capital that +would be in the exposure. Well, my prayer was answered; she did try to +bribe me; and I made the best of a bad bargain and let her. I am +check-mated. I must contrive something fresh to get back to Congress on. +Very well; a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; I will work for +the bill--the incorporatorship will be a very good thing." + +As soon as Mr. Trollop had taken his leave, Laura ran to Senator +Dilworthy and began to speak, but he interrupted her and said +distressfully, without even turning from his writing to look at her: + +"Only half an hour! You gave it up early, child. However, it was best, +it was best--I'm sure it was best--and safest." + +"Give it up! I!" + +The Senator sprang up, all aglow: + +"My child, you can't mean that you--" + +"I've made him promise on honor to think about a compromise tonight and +come and tell me his decision in the morning." + +"Good! There's hope yet that--" + +Nonsense, uncle. I've made him engage to let the Tennessee Land bill +utterly alone!" + +"Impossible! You--" + +"I've made him promise to vote with us!" + +"INCREDIBLE! Abso--" + +"I've made him swear that he'll work for us!" + +"PRE - - - POSTEROUS!--Utterly pre--break a window, child, before I +suffocate!" + +"No matter, it's true anyway. Now we can march into Congress with drums +beating and colors flying!" + +"Well--well--well. I'm sadly bewildered, sadly bewildered. I can't +understand it at all--the most extraordinary woman that ever--it's a +great day, it's a great day. There--there--let me put my hand in +benediction on this precious head. Ah, my child, the poor negro will +bless--" + +"Oh bother the poor negro, uncle! Put it in your speech. Good-night, +good-bye--we'll marshal our forces and march with the dawn!" + +Laura reflected a while, when she was alone, and then fell to laughing, +peacefully. + +"Everybody works for me,"--so ran her thought. "It was a good idea to +make Buckstone lead Mr. Trollop on to get a great speech written for him; +and it was a happy part of the same idea for me to copy the speech after +Mr. Buckstone had written it, and then keep back a page. Mr. B. was +very complimentary to me when Trollop's break-down in the House showed +him the object of my mysterious scheme; I think he will say, still finer +things when I tell him the triumph the sequel to it has gained for us. + +"But what a coward the man was, to believe I would have exposed that page +in the rotunda, and so exposed myself. However, I don't know--I don't +know. I will think a moment. Suppose he voted no; suppose the bill +failed; that is to suppose this stupendous game lost forever, that I have +played so desperately for; suppose people came around pitying me--odious! +And he could have saved me by his single voice. Yes, I would have +exposed him! What would I care for the talk that that would have made +about me when I was gone to Europe with Selby and all the world was busy +with my history and my dishonor? It would be almost happiness to spite +somebody at such a time." + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII. + +The very next day, sure enough, the campaign opened. In due course, the +Speaker of the House reached that Order of Business which is termed +"Notices of Bills," and then the Hon. Mr. Buckstone rose in his place and +gave notice of a bill "To Found and Incorporate the Knobs Industrial +University," and then sat down without saying anything further. The busy +gentlemen in the reporters' gallery jotted a line in their note-books, +ran to the telegraphic desk in a room which communicated with their own +writing-parlor, and then hurried back to their places in the gallery; and +by the time they had resumed their seats, the line which they had +delivered to the operator had been read in telegraphic offices in towns +and cities hundreds of miles away. It was distinguished by frankness of +language as well as by brevity: + +"The child is born. Buckstone gives notice of the thieving Knobs +University job. It is said the noses have been counted and enough votes +have been bought to pass it." + +For some time the correspondents had been posting their several journals +upon the alleged disreputable nature of the bill, and furnishing daily +reports of the Washington gossip concerning it. So the next morning, +nearly every newspaper of character in the land assailed the measure and +hurled broadsides of invective at Mr. Buckstone. The Washington papers +were more respectful, as usual--and conciliatory, also, as usual. They +generally supported measures, when it was possible; but when they could +not they "deprecated" violent expressions of opinion in other +journalistic quarters. + +They always deprecated, when there was trouble ahead. However, 'The +Washington Daily Love-Feast' hailed the bill with warm approbation. This +was Senator Balaam's paper--or rather, "Brother" Balaam, as he was +popularly called, for he had been a clergyman, in his day; and he himself +and all that he did still emitted an odor of sanctity now that he had +diverged into journalism and politics. He was a power in the +Congressional prayer meeting, and in all movements that looked to the +spread of religion and temperance. + +His paper supported the new bill with gushing affection; it was a noble +measure; it was a just measure; it was a generous measure; it was a pure +measure, and that surely should recommend it in these corrupt times; and +finally, if the nature of the bill were not known at all, the 'Love +Feast' would support it anyway, and unhesitatingly, for the fact that +Senator Dilworthy was the originator of the measure was a guaranty that +it contemplated a worthy and righteous work. + +Senator Dilworthy was so anxious to know what the New York papers would +say about the bill; that he had arranged to have synopses of their +editorials telegraphed to him; he could not wait for the papers +themselves to crawl along down to Washington by a mail train which has +never run over a cow since the road was built; for the reason that it has +never been able to overtake one. It carries the usual "cow-catcher" in +front of the locomotive, but this is mere ostentation. It ought to be +attached to the rear car, where it could do some good; but instead, no +provision is made there for the protection of the traveling public, and +hence it is not a matter of surprise that cows so frequently climb aboard +that train and among the passengers. + +The Senator read his dispatches aloud at the breakfast table. Laura was +troubled beyond measure at their tone, and said that that sort of comment +would defeat the bill; but the Senator said: + +"Oh, not at all, not at all, my child. It is just what we want. +Persecution is the one thing needful, now--all the other forces are +secured. Give us newspaper persecution enough, and we are safe. +Vigorous persecution will alone carry a bill sometimes, dear; and when +you start with a strong vote in the first place, persecution comes in +with double effect. It scares off some of the weak supporters, true, +but it soon turns strong ones into stubborn ones. And then, presently, +it changes the tide of public opinion. The great public is weak-minded; +the great public is sentimental; the great public always turns around and +weeps for an odious murderer, and prays for-him, and carries flowers to +his prison and besieges the governor with appeals to his clemency, as +soon as the papers begin to howl for that man's blood.--In a word, the +great putty-hearted public loves to 'gush,' and there is no such darling +opportunity to gush as a case of persecution affords." + +"Well, uncle, dear; if your theory is right, let us go into raptures, +for nobody can ask a heartier persecution than these editorials are +furnishing." + +"I am not so sure of that, my daughter. I don't entirely like the tone +of some of these remarks. They lack vim, they lack venom. Here is one +calls it a 'questionable measure.' Bah, there is no strength in that. +This one is better; it calls it 'highway robbery.' That sounds something +like. But now this one seems satisfied to call it an 'iniquitous +scheme'. 'Iniquitous' does not exasperate anybody; it is weak--puerile. +The ignorant will imagine it to be intended for a compliment. But this +other one--the one I read last--has the true ring: 'This vile, dirty +effort to rob the public treasury, by the kites and vultures that now +infest the filthy den called Congress'--that is admirable, admirable! +We must have more of that sort. But it will come--no fear of that; +they're not warmed up, yet. A week from now you'll see." + +"Uncle, you and Brother Balaam are bosom friends--why don't you get his +paper to persecute us, too?" + +"It isn't worth while, my, daughter. His support doesn't hurt a bill. +Nobody reads his editorials but himself. But I wish the New York papers +would talk a little plainer. It is annoying to have to wait a week for +them to warm up. I expected better things at their hands--and time is +precious, now." + +At the proper hour, according to his previous notice, Mr. Buckstone duly +introduced his bill entitled "An Act to Found and Incorporate the Knobs +Industrial University," moved its proper reference, and sat down. + +The Speaker of the House rattled off this observation: + +"'Fnobjectionbilltakuzhlcoixrssoreferred!'" + +Habitues of the House comprehended that this long, lightning-heeled word +signified that if there was no objection, the bill would take the +customary course of a measure of its nature, and be referred to the +Committee on Benevolent Appropriations, and that it was accordingly so +referred. Strangers merely supposed that the Speaker was taking a gargle +for some affection of the throat. + +The reporters immediately telegraphed the introduction of the bill.--And +they added: + + "The assertion that the bill will pass was premature. It is said + that many favorers of it will desert when the storm breaks upon them + from the public press." + +The storm came, and during ten days it waxed more and more violent day by +day. The great "Negro University Swindle" became the one absorbing topic +of conversation throughout the Union. Individuals denounced it, journals +denounced it, public meetings denounced it, the pictorial papers +caricatured its friends, the whole nation seemed to be growing frantic +over it. Meantime the Washington correspondents were sending such +telegrams as these abroad in the land; Under date of-- + +SATURDAY. "Congressmen Jex and Fluke are wavering; it is believed they +will desert the execrable bill." + +MONDAY. "Jex and Fluke have deserted!" + +THURSDAY. "Tubbs and Huffy left the sinking ship last night" + +Later on: + +"Three desertions. The University thieves are getting scared, though +they will not own it." + +Later: + +"The leaders are growing stubborn--they swear they can carry it, but it +is now almost certain that they no longer have a majority!" + +After a day or two of reluctant and ambiguous telegrams: + +"Public sentiment seems changing, a trifle in favor of the bill +--but only a trifle." + +And still later: + +"It is whispered that the Hon. Mr. Trollop has gone over to the pirates. +It is probably a canard. Mr. Trollop has all along been the bravest and +most efficient champion of virtue and the people against the bill, and +the report is without doubt a shameless invention." + +Next day: + +"With characteristic treachery, the truckling and pusillanimous reptile, +Crippled-Speech Trollop, has gone over to the enemy. It is contended, +now, that he has been a friend to the bill, in secret, since the day it +was introduced, and has had bankable reasons for being so; but he himself +declares that he has gone over because the malignant persecution of the +bill by the newspapers caused him to study its provisions with more care +than he had previously done, and this close examination revealed the fact +that the measure is one in every way worthy of support. (Pretty thin!) +It cannot be denied that this desertion has had a damaging effect. Jex +and Fluke have returned to their iniquitous allegiance, with six or eight +others of lesser calibre, and it is reported and believed that Tubbs and +Huffy are ready to go back. It is feared that the University swindle is +stronger to-day than it has ever been before." + +Later-midnight: + +"It is said that the committee will report the bill back to-morrow. Both +sides are marshaling their forces, and the fight on this bill is +evidently going to be the hottest of the session.--All Washington is +boiling." + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV. + +"It's easy enough for another fellow to talk," said Harry, despondingly, +after he had put Philip in possession of his view of the case. "It's +easy enough to say 'give her up,' if you don't care for her. What am I +going to do to give her up?" + +It seemed to Harry that it was a situation requiring some active +measures. He couldn't realize that he had fallen hopelessly in love +without some rights accruing to him for the possession of the object of +his passion. Quiet resignation under relinquishment of any thing he +wanted was not in his line. And when it appeared to him that his +surrender of Laura would be the withdrawal of the one barrier that kept +her from ruin, it was unreasonable to expect that he could see how to +give her up. + +Harry had the most buoyant confidence in his own projects always; he saw +everything connected with himself in a large way and in rosy lines. This +predominance of the imagination over the judgment gave that appearance of +exaggeration to his conversation and to his communications with regard to +himself, which sometimes conveyed the impression that he was not speaking +the truth. His acquaintances had been known to say that they invariably +allowed a half for shrinkage in his statements, and held the other half +under advisement for confirmation. + +Philip in this case could not tell from Harry's story exactly how much +encouragement Laura had given him, nor what hopes he might justly have of +winning her. He had never seen him desponding before. The "brag" +appeared to be all taken out of him, and his airy manner only asserted +itself now and then in a comical imitation of its old self. + +Philip wanted time to look about him before he decided what to do. +He was not familiar with Washington, and it was difficult to adjust his +feelings and perceptions to its peculiarities. Coming out of the sweet +sanity of the Bolton household, this was by contrast the maddest Vanity +Fair one could conceive. It seemed to him a feverish, unhealthy +atmosphere in which lunacy would be easily developed. He fancied that +everybody attached to himself an exaggerated importance, from the fact of +being at the national capital, the center of political influence, the +fountain of patronage, preferment, jobs and opportunities. + +People were introduced to each other as from this or that state, not from +cities or towns, and this gave a largeness to their representative +feeling. All the women talked politics as naturally and glibly as they +talk fashion or literature elsewhere. There was always some exciting +topic at the Capitol, or some huge slander was rising up like a miasmatic +exhalation from the Potomac, threatening to settle no one knew exactly +where. Every other person was an aspirant for a place, or, if he had +one, for a better place, or more pay; almost every other one had some +claim or interest or remedy to urge; even the women were all advocates +for the advancement of some person, and they violently espoused or +denounced this or that measure as it would affect some relative, +acquaintance or friend. + +Love, travel, even death itself, waited on the chances of the dies daily +thrown in the two Houses, and the committee rooms there. If the measure +went through, love could afford to ripen into marriage, and longing for +foreign travel would have fruition; and it must have been only eternal +hope springing in the breast that kept alive numerous old claimants who +for years and years had besieged the doors of Congress, and who looked as +if they needed not so much an appropriation of money as six feet of +ground. And those who stood so long waiting for success to bring them +death were usually those who had a just claim. + +Representing states and talking of national and even international +affairs, as familiarly as neighbors at home talk of poor crops and the +extravagance of their ministers, was likely at first to impose upon +Philip as to the importance of the people gathered here. + +There was a little newspaper editor from Phil's native town, the +assistant on a Peddletonian weekly, who made his little annual joke about +the "first egg laid on our table," and who was the menial of every +tradesman in the village and under bonds to him for frequent "puffs," +except the undertaker, about whose employment he was recklessly +facetious. In Washington he was an important man, correspondent, and +clerk of two house committees, a "worker" in politics, and a confident +critic of every woman and every man in Washington. He would be a consul +no doubt by and by, at some foreign port, of the language of which he was +ignorant--though if ignorance of language were a qualification he might +have been a consul at home. His easy familiarity with great men was +beautiful to see, and when Philip learned what a tremendous underground +influence this little ignoramus had, he no longer wondered at the queer +appointments and the queerer legislation. + +Philip was not long in discovering that people in Washington did not +differ much from other people; they had the same meannesses, +generosities, and tastes: A Washington boarding house had the odor of a +boarding house the world over. + +Col. Sellers was as unchanged as any one Philip saw whom he had known +elsewhere. Washington appeared to be the native element of this man. +His pretentions were equal to any he encountered there. He saw nothing +in its society that equalled that of Hawkeye, he sat down to no table +that could not be unfavorably contrasted with his own at home; the most +airy scheme inflated in the hot air of the capital only reached in +magnitude some of his lesser fancies, the by-play of his constructive +imagination. + +"The country is getting along very well," he said to Philip, "but our +public men are too timid. What we want is more money. I've told +Boutwell so. Talk about basing the currency on gold; you might as well +base it on pork. Gold is only one product. Base it on everything! +You've got to do something for the West. How am I to move my crops? +We must have improvements. Grant's got the idea. We want a canal from +the James River to the Mississippi. Government ought to build it." + +It was difficult to get the Colonel off from these large themes when he +was once started, but Philip brought the conversation round to Laura and +her reputation in the City. + +"No," he said, "I haven't noticed much. We've been so busy about this +University. It will make Laura rich with the rest of us, and she has +done nearly as much as if she were a man. She has great talent, and will +make a big match. I see the foreign ministers and that sort after her. +Yes, there is talk, always will be about a pretty woman so much in public +as she is. Tough stories come to me, but I put'em away. 'Taint likely +one of Si Hawkins's children would do that--for she is the same as a +child of his. I told her, though, to go slow," added the Colonel, as if +that mysterious admonition from him would set everything right. + +"Do you know anything about a Col. Selby?" + +"Know all about him. Fine fellow. But he's got a wife; and I told him, +as a friend, he'd better sheer off from Laura. I reckon he thought +better of it and did." + +But Philip was not long in learning the truth. Courted as Laura was by a +certain class and still admitted into society, that, nevertheless, buzzed +with disreputable stories about her, she had lost character with the best +people. Her intimacy with Selby was open gossip, and there were winks +and thrustings of the tongue in any group of men when she passed by. +It was clear enough that Harry's delusion must be broken up, and that no +such feeble obstacle as his passion could interpose would turn Laura from +her fate. Philip determined to see her, and put himself in possession of +the truth, as he suspected it, in order to show Harry his folly. + +Laura, after her last conversation with Harry, had a new sense of her +position. She had noticed before the signs of a change in manner towards +her, a little less respect perhaps from men, and an avoidance by women. +She had attributed this latter partly to jealousy of her, for no one is +willing to acknowledge a fault in himself when a more agreeable motive +can be found for the estrangement of his acquaintances. But now, if +society had turned on her, she would defy it. It was not in her nature +to shrink. She knew she had been wronged, and she knew that she had no +remedy. + +What she heard of Col. Selby's proposed departure alarmed her more than +anything else, and she calmly determined that if he was deceiving her the +second time it should be the last. Let society finish the tragedy if it +liked; she was indifferent what came after. At the first opportunity, +she charged Selby with his intention to abandon her. He unblushingly +denied it. + +He had not thought of going to Europe. He had only been amusing himself +with Sellers' schemes. He swore that as soon as she succeeded with her +bill, he would fly with her to any part of the world. + +She did not quite believe him, for she saw that he feared her, and she +began to suspect that his were the protestations of a coward to gain +time. But she showed him no doubts. + +She only watched his movements day by day, and always held herself ready +to act promptly. + +When Philip came into the presence of this attractive woman, he could not +realize that she was the subject of all the scandal he had heard. She +received him with quite the old Hawkeye openness and cordiality, and fell +to talking at once of their little acquaintance there; and it seemed +impossible that he could ever say to her what he had come determined to +say. Such a man as Philip has only one standard by which to judge women. + +Laura recognized that fact no doubt. The better part of her woman's +nature saw it. Such a man might, years ago, not now, have changed her +nature, and made the issue of her life so different, even after her cruel +abandonment. She had a dim feeling of this, and she would like now to +stand well with him. The spark of truth and honor that was left in her +was elicited by his presence. It was this influence that governed her +conduct in this interview. + +"I have come," said Philip in his direct manner, "from my friend +Mr. Brierly. You are not ignorant of his feeling towards you?" + +"Perhaps not." + +"But perhaps you do not know, you who have so much admiration, how +sincere and overmastering his love is for you?" Philip would not have +spoken so plainly, if he had in mind anything except to draw from Laura +something that would end Harry's passion. + +"And is sincere love so rare, Mr. Sterling?" asked Laura, moving her foot +a little, and speaking with a shade of sarcasm. + +"Perhaps not in Washington," replied Philip,--tempted into a similar +tone. "Excuse my bluntness," he continued, "but would the knowledge of +his love; would his devotion, make any difference to you in your +Washington life?" + +"In respect to what?" asked Laura quickly. + +"Well, to others. I won't equivocate--to Col. Selby?" + +Laura's face flushed with anger, or shame; she looked steadily at Philip +and began, + +"By what right, sir,--" + +"By the right of friendship," interrupted Philip stoutly. "It may matter +little to you. It is everything to him. He has a Quixotic notion that +you would turn back from what is before you for his sake. You cannot be +ignorant of what all the city is talking of." Philip said this +determinedly and with some bitterness. + +It was a full minute before Laura spoke. Both had risen, Philip as if to +go, and Laura in suppressed excitement. When she spoke her voice was +very unsteady, and she looked down. + +"Yes, I know. I perfectly understand what you mean. Mr. Brierly is +nothing--simply nothing. He is a moth singed, that is all--the trifler +with women thought he was a wasp. I have no pity for him, not the least. +You may tell him not to make a fool of himself, and to keep away. I say +this on your account, not his. You are not like him. It is enough for +me that you want it so. Mr. Sterling," she continued, looking up; and +there were tears in her eyes that contradicted the hardness of her +language, "you might not pity him if you knew my history; perhaps you +would not wonder at some things you hear. No; it is useless to ask me +why it must be so. You can't make a life over--society wouldn't let you +if you would--and mine must be lived as it is. There, sir, I'm not +offended; but it is useless for you to say anything more." + +Philip went away with his heart lightened about Harry, but profoundly +saddened by the glimpse of what this woman might have been. He told +Harry all that was necessary of the conversation--she was bent on going +her own way, he had not the ghost of a chance--he was a fool, she had +said, for thinking he had. + +And Harry accepted it meekly, and made up his own mind that Philip didn't +know much about women. + + + + +CHAPTER XLV. + +The galleries of the House were packed, on the momentous day, not because +the reporting of an important bill back by a committee was a thing to be +excited about, if the bill were going to take the ordinary course +afterward; it would be like getting excited over the empaneling of a +coroner's jury in a murder case, instead of saving up one's emotions for +the grander occasion of the hanging of the accused, two years later, +after all the tedious forms of law had been gone through with. + +But suppose you understand that this coroner's jury is going to turn out +to be a vigilance committee in disguise, who will hear testimony for an +hour and then hang the murderer on the spot? That puts a different +aspect upon the matter. Now it was whispered that the legitimate forms +of procedure usual in the House, and which keep a bill hanging along for +days and even weeks, before it is finally passed upon, were going to be +overruled, in this case, and short work made of the, measure; and so, +what was beginning as a mere inquest might, torn out to be something very +different. + +In the course of the day's business the Order of "Reports of Committees" +was finally reached and when the weary crowds heard that glad +announcement issue from the Speaker's lips they ceased to fret at the +dragging delay, and plucked up spirit. The Chairman of the Committee on +Benevolent Appropriations rose and made his report, and just then a +blue-uniformed brass-mounted little page put a note into his hand. + +It was from Senator Dilworthy, who had appeared upon the floor of the +House for a moment and flitted away again: + + "Everybody expects a grand assault in force; no doubt you believe, + as I certainly do, that it is the thing to do; we are strong, and + everything is hot for the contest. Trollop's espousal of our cause + has immensely helped us and we grow in power constantly. Ten of the + opposition were called away from town about noon,(but--so it is + said--only for one day). Six others are sick, but expect to be + about again tomorrow or next day, a friend tells me. A bold + onslaught is worth trying. Go for a suspension of the rules! You + will find we can swing a two-thirds vote--I am perfectly satisfied + of it. The Lord's truth will prevail. + "DILWORTHY." + +Mr. Buckstone had reported the bills from his committee, one by one, +leaving the bill to the last. When the House had voted upon the +acceptance or rejection of the report upon all but it, and the question +now being upon its disposal--Mr. Buckstone begged that the House would +give its attention to a few remarks which he desired to make. His +committee had instructed him to report the bill favorably; he wished to +explain the nature of the measure, and thus justify the committee's +action; the hostility roused by the press would then disappear, and the +bill would shine forth in its true and noble character. He said that its +provisions were simple. It incorporated the Knobs Industrial University, +locating it in East Tennessee, declaring it open to all persons without +distinction of sex, color or religion, and committing its management to a +board of perpetual trustees, with power to fill vacancies in their own +number. It provided for the erection of certain buildings for the +University, dormitories, lecture-halls, museums, libraries, laboratories, +work-shops, furnaces, and mills. It provided also for the purchase of +sixty-five thousand acres of land, (fully described) for the purposes of +the University, in the Knobs of East Tennessee. And it appropriated +[blank] dollars for the purchase of the Land, which should be the +property of the national trustees in trust for the uses named. + +Every effort had been made to secure the refusal of the whole amount of +the property of the Hawkins heirs in the Knobs, some seventy-five +thousand acres Mr. Buckstone said. But Mr. Washington Hawkins (one of +the heirs) objected. He was, indeed, very reluctant to sell any part of +the land at any price; and indeed--this reluctance was justifiable when +one considers how constantly and how greatly the property is rising in +value. + +What the South needed, continued Mr. Buckstone, was skilled labor. +Without that it would be unable to develop its mines, build its roads, +work to advantage and without great waste its fruitful land, establish +manufactures or enter upon a prosperous industrial career. Its laborers +were almost altogether unskilled. Change them into intelligent, trained +workmen, and you increased at once the capital, the resources of the +entire south, which would enter upon a prosperity hitherto unknown. +In five years the increase in local wealth would not only reimburse the +government for the outlay in this appropriation, but pour untold wealth +into the treasury. + +This was the material view, and the least important in the honorable +gentleman's opinion. [Here he referred to some notes furnished him by +Senator Dilworthy, and then continued.] God had given us the care of +these colored millions. What account should we render to Him of our +stewardship? We had made them free. Should we leave them ignorant? +We had cast them upon their own resources. Should we leave them without +tools? We could not tell what the intentions of Providence are in regard +to these peculiar people, but our duty was plain. The Knobs Industrial +University would be a vast school of modern science and practice, worthy +of a great nation. It would combine the advantages of Zurich, Freiburg, +Creuzot and the Sheffield Scientific. Providence had apparently reserved +and set apart the Knobs of East Tennessee for this purpose. What else +were they for? Was it not wonderful that for more than thirty years, +over a generation, the choicest portion of them had remained in one +family, untouched, as if, separated for some great use! + +It might be asked why the government should buy this land, when it had +millions of yes, more than the railroad companies desired, which, it +might devote to this purpose? He answered, that the government had no +such tract of land as this. It had nothing comparable to it for the +purposes of the University: This was to be a school of mining, of +engineering, of the working of metals, of chemistry, zoology, botany, +manufactures, agriculture, in short of all the complicated industries +that make a state great. There was no place for the location of such a +school like the Knobs of East Tennessee. The hills abounded in metals of +all sorts, iron in all its combinations, copper, bismuth, gold and silver +in small quantities, platinum he--believed, tin, aluminium; it was +covered with forests and strange plants; in the woods were found the +coon, the opossum, the fox, the deer and many other animals who roamed in +the domain of natural history; coal existed in enormous quantity and no +doubt oil; it was such a place for the practice of agricultural +experiments that any student who had been successful there would have an +easy task in any other portion of the country. + +No place offered equal facilities for experiments in mining, metallurgy, +engineering. He expected to live to see the day, when the youth of the +south would resort to its mines, its workshops, its laboratories, its +furnaces and factories for practical instruction in all the great +industrial pursuits. + +A noisy and rather ill-natured debate followed, now, and lasted hour +after hour. The friends of the bill were instructed by the leaders to +make no effort to check it; it was deemed better strategy to tire out the +opposition; it was decided to vote down every proposition to adjourn, and +so continue the sitting into the night; opponents might desert, then, one +by one and weaken their party, for they had no personal stake in the +bill. + +Sunset came, and still the fight went on; the gas was lit, the crowd in +the galleries began to thin, but the contest continued; the crowd +returned, by and by, with hunger and thirst appeased, and aggravated the +hungry and thirsty House by looking contented and comfortable; but still +the wrangle lost nothing of its bitterness. Recesses were moved +plaintively by the opposition, and invariably voted down by the +University army. + +At midnight the House presented a spectacle calculated to interest a +stranger. The great galleries were still thronged--though only with men, +now; the bright colors that had made them look like hanging gardens were +gone, with the ladies. The reporters' gallery, was merely occupied by +one or two watchful sentinels of the quill-driving guild; the main body +cared nothing for a debate that had dwindled to a mere vaporing of dull +speakers and now and then a brief quarrel over a point of order; but +there was an unusually large attendance of journalists in the reporters' +waiting-room, chatting, smoking, and keeping on the 'qui vive' for the +general irruption of the Congressional volcano that must come when the +time was ripe for it. Senator Dilworthy and Philip were in the +Diplomatic Gallery; Washington sat in the public gallery, and Col. +Sellers was, not far away. The Colonel had been flying about the +corridors and button-holing Congressmen all the evening, and believed +that he had accomplished a world of valuable service; but fatigue was +telling upon him, now, and he was quiet and speechless--for once. Below, +a few Senators lounged upon the sofas set apart for visitors, and talked +with idle Congressmen. A dreary member was speaking; the presiding +officer was nodding; here and there little knots of members stood in the +aisles, whispering together; all about the House others sat in all the +various attitudes that express weariness; some, tilted back, had one or +more legs disposed upon their desks; some sharpened pencils indolently; +some scribbled aimlessly; some yawned and stretched; a great many lay +upon their breasts upon the desks, sound asleep and gently snoring. +The flooding gaslight from the fancifully wrought roof poured down upon +the tranquil scene. Hardly a sound disturbed the stillness, save the +monotonous eloquence of the gentleman who occupied the floor. Now and +then a warrior of the opposition broke down under the pressure, gave it +up, and went home. + +Mr. Buckstone began to think it might be safe, now, to "proceed to +business." He consulted with Trollop and one or two others. Senator +Dilworthy descended to the floor of the House and they went to meet him. +After a brief comparison of notes, the Congressmen sought their seats and +sent pages about the House with messages to friends. These latter +instantly roused up, yawned, and began to look alert. The moment the +floor was unoccupied, Mr. Buckstone rose, with an injured look, and said +it was evident that the opponents of the bill were merely talking against +time, hoping in this unbecoming way to tire out the friends of the +measure and so defeat it. Such conduct might be respectable enough in a +village debating society, but it was trivial among statesmen, it was out +of place in so august an assemblage as the House of Representatives of +the United States. The friends of the bill had been not only willing +that its opponents should express their opinions, but had strongly +desired it. They courted the fullest and freest discussion; but it +seemed to him that this fairness was but illy appreciated, since +gentlemen were capable of taking advantage of it for selfish and unworthy +ends. This trifling had gone far enough. He called for the question. + +The instant Mr. Buckstone sat down, the storm burst forth. A dozen +gentlemen sprang to their feet. + +"Mr. Speaker!" + +"Mr. Speaker!" + +"Mr. Speaker!" + +"Order! Order! Order! Question! Question!" + +The sharp blows of the Speaker's gavel rose above the din. + +The "previous question," that hated gag, was moved and carried. All +debate came to a sudden end, of course. Triumph No. 1. + +Then the vote was taken on the adoption of the report and it carried by a +surprising majority. + +Mr. Buckstone got the floor again and moved that the rules be suspended +and the bill read a first time. + +Mr. Trollop--"Second the motion!" + +The Speaker--"It is moved and--" + +Clamor of Voices. "Move we adjourn! Second the motion! Adjourn! +Adjourn! Order! Order!" + +The Speaker, (after using his gavel vigorously)--"It is moved and +seconded that the House do now adjourn. All those in favor--" + +Voices--"Division! Division! Ayes and nays! Ayes and nays!" + +It was decided to vote upon the adjournment by ayes and nays. This was +in earnest. The excitement was furious. The galleries were in commotion +in an instant, the reporters swarmed to their places. Idling members of +the House flocked to their seats, nervous gentlemen sprang to their feet, +pages flew hither and thither, life and animation were visible +everywhere, all the long ranks of faces in the building were kindled. + +"This thing decides it!" thought Mr. Buckstone; "but let the fight +proceed." + +The voting began, and every sound ceased but the calling if the names +and the "Aye!" "No!" "No!" "Aye!" of the responses. There was not a +movement in the House; the people seemed to hold their breath. + +The voting ceased, and then there was an interval of dead silence while +the clerk made up his count. There was a two-thirds vote on the +University side--and two over. + +The Speaker--"The rules are suspended, the motion is carried--first +reading of the bill!" + +By one impulse the galleries broke forth into stormy applause, and even +some of the members of the House were not wholly able to restrain their +feelings. The Speaker's gavel came to the rescue and his clear voice +followed: + +"Order, gentlemen--! The House will come to order! If spectators offend +again, the Sergeant-at-arms will clear the galleries!" + +Then he cast his eyes aloft and gazed at some object attentively for a +moment. All eyes followed the direction of the Speaker's, and then there +was a general titter. The Speaker said: + +"Let the Sergeant-at Arms inform the gentleman that his conduct is an +infringement of the dignity of the House--and one which is not warranted +by the state of the weather." Poor Sellers was the culprit. He sat in +the front seat of the gallery, with his arms and his tired body +overflowing the balustrade--sound asleep, dead to all excitements, all +disturbances. The fluctuations of the Washington weather had influenced +his dreams, perhaps, for during the recent tempest of applause he had +hoisted his gingham umbrella, and calmly gone on with his slumbers. +Washington Hawkins had seen the act, but was not near enough at hand to +save his friend, and no one who was near enough desired to spoil the +effect. But a neighbor stirred up the Colonel, now that the House had +its eye upon him, and the great speculator furled his tent like the Arab. +He said: + +"Bless my soul, I'm so absent-minded when I, get to thinking! I never +wear an umbrella in the house--did anybody 'notice it'? What-asleep? +Indeed? And did you wake me sir? Thank you--thank you very much indeed. +It might have fallen out of my hands and been injured. Admirable +article, sir--present from a friend in Hong Kong; one doesn't come across +silk like that in this country--it's the real--Young Hyson, I'm told." + +By this time the incident was forgotten, for the House was at war again. +Victory was almost in sight, now, and the friends of the bill threw +themselves into their work with enthusiasm. They soon moved and carried +its second reading, and after a strong, sharp fight, carried a motion to +go into Committee of the whole. The Speaker left his place, of course, +and a chairman was appointed. + +Now the contest raged hotter than ever--for the authority that compels +order when the House sits as a House, is greatly diminished when it sits +as Committee. The main fight came upon the filling of the blanks with +the sum to be appropriated for the purchase of the land, of course. + +Buckstone--"Mr. Chairman, I move you, sir, that the words 'three millions +of' be inserted." + +Mr. Hadley--"Mr. Chairman, I move that the words two and a half dollars +be inserted." + +Mr. Clawson--"Mr. Chairman, I move the insertion of the words five and +twenty cents, as representing the true value of this barren and isolated +tract of desolation." + +The question, according to rule, was taken upon the smallest sum first. +It was lost. + +Then upon the nest smallest sum. Lost, also. + +And then upon the three millions. After a vigorous battle that lasted a +considerable time, this motion was carried. + +Then, clause by clause the bill was read, discussed, and amended in +trifling particulars, and now the Committee rose and reported. + +The moment the House had resumed its functions and received the report, +Mr. Buckstone moved and carried the third reading of the bill. + +The same bitter war over the sum to be paid was fought over again, and +now that the ayes and nays could be called and placed on record, every +man was compelled to vote by name on the three millions, and indeed on +every paragraph of the bill from the enacting clause straight through. +But as before, the friends of the measure stood firm and voted in a solid +body every time, and so did its enemies. + +The supreme moment was come, now, but so sure was the result that not +even a voice was raised to interpose an adjournment. The enemy were +totally demoralized. The bill was put upon its final passage almost +without dissent, and the calling of the ayes and nays began. When it was +ended the triumph was complete--the two-thirds vote held good, and a veto +was impossible, as far as the House was concerned! + +Mr. Buckstone resolved that now that the nail was driven home, he would +clinch it on the other side and make it stay forever. He moved a +reconsideration of the vote by which the bill had passed. The motion was +lost, of course, and the great Industrial University act was an +accomplished fact as far as it was in the power of the House of +Representatives to make it so. + +There was no need to move an adjournment. The instant the last motion +was decided, the enemies of the University rose and flocked out of the +Hall, talking angrily, and its friends flocked after them jubilant and +congratulatory. The galleries disgorged their burden, and presently the +house was silent and deserted. + +When Col. Sellers and Washington stepped out of the building they were +surprised to find that the daylight was old and the sun well up. Said +the Colonel: + +"Give me your hand, my boy! You're all right at last! You're a +millionaire! At least you're going to be. The thing is dead sure. +Don't you bother about the Senate. Leave me and Dilworthy to take care +of that. Run along home, now, and tell Laura. Lord, it's magnificent +news--perfectly magnificent! Run, now. I'll telegraph my wife. She +must come here and help me build a house. Everything's all right now!" + +Washington was so dazed by his good fortune and so bewildered by the +gaudy pageant of dreams that was already trailing its long ranks through +his brain, that he wandered he knew not where, and so loitered by the way +that when at last he reached home he woke to a sudden annoyance in the +fact that his news must be old to Laura, now, for of course Senator +Dilworthy must have already been home and told her an hour before. He +knocked at her door, but there was no answer. + +"That is like the Duchess," said he. "Always cool; a body can't excite +her-can't keep her excited, anyway. Now she has gone off to sleep again, +as comfortably as if she were used to picking up a million dollars every +day or two" + +Then he vent to bed. But he could not sleep; so he got up and wrote a +long, rapturous letter to Louise, and another to his mother. And he +closed both to much the same effect: + + "Laura will be queen of America, now, and she will be applauded, and + honored and petted by the whole nation. Her name will be in every + one's mouth more than ever, and how they will court her and quote + her bright speeches. And mine, too, I suppose; though they do that + more already, than they really seem to deserve. Oh, the world is so + bright, now, and so cheery; the clouds are all gone, our long + struggle is ended, our, troubles are all over. Nothing can ever + make us unhappy any more. You dear faithful ones will have the + reward of your patient waiting now. How father's Wisdom is proven + at last! And how I repent me, that there have been times when I + lost faith and said, the blessing he stored up for us a tedious + generation ago was but a long-drawn curse, a blight upon us all. + But everything is well, now--we are done with poverty, sad toil, + weariness and heart-break; all the world is filled with sunshine." + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI. + +Philip left the capitol and walked up Pennsylvania Avenue in company with +Senator Dilworthy. It was a bright spring morning, the air was soft and +inspiring; in the deepening wayside green, the pink flush of the +blossoming peach trees, the soft suffusion on the heights of Arlington, +and the breath of the warm south wind was apparent, the annual miracle of +the resurrection of the earth. + +The Senator took off his hat and seemed to open his soul to the sweet +influences of the morning. After the heat and noise of the chamber, +under its dull gas-illuminated glass canopy, and the all night struggle +of passion and feverish excitement there, the open, tranquil world seemed +like Heaven. The Senator was not in an exultant mood, but rather in a +condition of holy joy, befitting a Christian statesman whose benevolent +plans Providence has made its own and stamped with approval. The great +battle had been fought, but the measure had still to encounter the +scrutiny of the Senate, and Providence sometimes acts differently in the +two Houses. Still the Senator was tranquil, for he knew that there is an +esprit de corps in the Senate which does not exist in the House, the +effect of which is to make the members complaisant towards the projects +of each other, and to extend a mutual aid which in a more vulgar body +would be called "log-rolling." + +"It is, under Providence, a good night's work, Mr. Sterling. The +government has founded an institution which will remove half the +difficulty from the southern problem. And it is a good thing for the +Hawkins heirs, a very good thing. Laura will be almost a millionaire." + +"Do you think, Mr. Dilworthy, that the Hawkinses will get much of the +money?" asked Philip innocently, remembering the fate of the Columbus +River appropriation. + +The Senator looked at his companion scrutinizingly for a moment to see if +he meant any thing personal, and then replied, + +"Undoubtedly, undoubtedly. I have had their interests greatly at heart. +There will of course be a few expenses, but the widow and orphans will +realize all that Mr. Hawkins, dreamed of for them." + +The birds were singing as they crossed the Presidential Square, now +bright with its green turf and tender foliage. After the two had gained +the steps of the Senator's house they stood a moment, looking upon the +lovely prospect: + +"It is like the peace of God," said the Senator devoutly. + +Entering the house, the Senator called a servant and said, "Tell Miss +Laura that we are waiting to see her. I ought to have sent a messenger +on horseback half an hour ago," he added to Philip, "she will be +transported with our victory. You must stop to breakfast, and see the +excitement." The servant soon came back, with a wondering look and +reported, + +"Miss Laura ain't dah, sah. I reckon she hain't been dah all night!" + +The Senator and Philip both started up. In Laura's room there were the +marks of a confused and hasty departure, drawers half open, little +articles strewn on the floor. The bed had not been disturbed. Upon +inquiry it appeared that Laura had not been at dinner, excusing herself +to Mrs. Dilworthy on the plea of a violent headache; that she made a +request to the servants that she might not be disturbed. + +The Senator was astounded. Philip thought at once of Col. Selby. Could +Laura have run away with him? The Senator thought not. In fact it could +not be. Gen. Leffenwell, the member from New Orleans, had casually told +him at the house last night that Selby and his family went to New York +yesterday morning and were to sail for Europe to-day. + +Philip had another idea which, he did not mention. He seized his hat, +and saying that he would go and see what he could learn, ran to the +lodgings of Harry; whom he had not seen since yesterday afternoon, when +he left him to go to the House. + +Harry was not in. He had gone out with a hand-bag before six o'clock +yesterday, saying that he had to go to New York, but should return next +day. In Harry's-room on the table Philip found this note: + + "Dear Mr. Brierly:--Can you meet me at the six o'clock train, + and be my escort to New York? I have to go about this + University bill, the vote of an absent member we must have + here, Senator Dilworthy cannot go. + Yours, L. H." + +"Confound it," said Phillip, "the noodle has fallen into her trap. And +she promised she would let him alone." + +He only stopped to send a note to Senator Dilworthy, telling him what he +had found, and that he should go at once to New York, and then hastened +to the railway station. He had to wait an hour for a train, and when it +did start it seemed to go at a snail's pace. + +Philip was devoured with anxiety. Where could they, have gone? What was +Laura's object in taking Harry? Had the flight anything to do with +Selby? Would Harry be such a fool as to be dragged into some public +scandal? + +It seemed as if the train would never reach Baltimore. Then there was a +long delay at Havre de Grace. A hot box had to be cooled at Wilmington. +Would it never get on? Only in passing around the city of Philadelphia +did the train not seem to go slow. Philip stood upon the platform and +watched for the Boltons' house, fancied he could distinguish its roof +among the trees, and wondered how Ruth would feel if she knew he was so +near her. + +Then came Jersey, everlasting Jersey, stupid irritating Jersey, where the +passengers are always asking which line they are on, and where they are +to come out, and whether they have yet reached Elizabeth. Launched into +Jersey, one has a vague notion that he is on many lines and no one in +particular, and that he is liable at any moment to come to Elizabeth. +He has no notion what Elizabeth is, and always resolves that the next +time he goes that way, he will look out of the window and see what it is +like; but he never does. Or if he does, he probably finds that it is +Princeton or something of that sort. He gets annoyed, and never can see +the use of having different names for stations in Jersey. By and by. +there is Newark, three or four Newarks apparently; then marshes; then +long rock cuttings devoted to the advertisements of 'patent medicines and +ready-made, clothing, and New York tonics for Jersey agues, and Jersey +City is reached. + +On the ferry-boat Philip bought an evening paper from a boy crying +"'Ere's the Evening Gram, all about the murder," and with breathless +haste--ran his eyes over the following: + + SHOCKING MURDER!!! + + TRAGEDY IN HIGH LIFE!! A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN SHOOTS A DISTINGUISHED + CONFEDERATE SOLDIER AT THE SOUTHERN HOTEL!!! JEALOUSY THE CAUSE!!! + + This morning occurred another of those shocking murders which have + become the almost daily food of the newspapers, the direct result of + the socialistic doctrines and woman's rights agitations, which have + made every woman the avenger of her own wrongs, and all society the + hunting ground for her victims. + + About nine o'clock a lady deliberately shot a man dead in the public + parlor of the Southern Hotel, coolly remarking, as she threw down + her revolver and permitted herself to be taken into custody, "He + brought it on himself." Our reporters were immediately dispatched + to the scene of the tragedy, and gathered the following particulars. + + Yesterday afternoon arrived at the hotel from Washington, Col. + George Selby and family, who had taken passage and were to sail at + noon to-day in the steamer Scotia for England. The Colonel was a + handsome man about forty, a gentleman Of wealth and high social + position, a resident of New Orleans. He served with distinction in + the confederate army, and received a wound in the leg from which he + has never entirely recovered, being obliged to use a cane in + locomotion. + + This morning at about nine o'clock, a lady, accompanied by a + gentleman, called at the office Of the hotel and asked for Col. + Selby. The Colonel was at breakfast. Would the clerk tell him that + a lady and gentleman wished to see him for a moment in the parlor? + The clerk says that the gentleman asked her, "What do you want to + see him for?" and that she replied, "He is going to Europe, and I + ought to just say good by." + + Col. Selby was informed; and the lady and gentleman were shown to + the parlor, in which were at the time three or four other persons. + Five minutes after two shots were fired in quick succession, and + there was a rush to the parlor from which the reports came. + + Col. Selby was found lying on the floor, bleeding, but not dead. + Two gentlemen, who had just come in, had seized the lady, who made + no resistance, and she was at once given in charge of a police + officer who arrived. The persons who were in the parlor agree + substantially as to what occurred. They had happened to be looking + towards the door when the man--Col. Selby--entered with his cane, + and they looked at him, because he stopped as if surprised and + frightened, and made a backward movement. At the same moment the + lady in the bonnet advanced towards him and said something like, + "George, will you go with me?" He replied, throwing up his hand and + retreating, "My God I can't, don't fire," and the next instants two + shots were heard and he fell. The lady appeared to be beside + herself with rage or excitement, and trembled very much when the + gentlemen took hold of her; it was to them she said, "He brought it + on himself." + + Col. Selby was carried at once to his room and Dr. Puffer, the + eminent surgeon was sent for. It was found that he was shot through + the breast and through the abdomen. Other aid was summoned, but the + wounds were mortal, and Col Selby expired in an hour, in pain, but + his mind was clear to the last and he made a full deposition. The + substance of it was that his murderess is a Miss Laura Hawkins, whom + he had known at Washington as a lobbyist and had some business with + her. She had followed him with her attentions and solicitations, + and had endeavored to make him desert his wife and go to Europe with + her. When he resisted and avoided her she had threatened him. Only + the day before he left Washington she had declared that he should + never go out of the city alive without her. + + It seems to have been a deliberate and premeditated murder, the + woman following him to Washington on purpose to commit it. + + We learn that the, murderess, who is a woman of dazzling and + transcendent beauty and about twenty six or seven, is a niece of + Senator Dilworthy at whose house she has been spending the winter. + She belongs to a high Southern family, and has the reputation of + being an heiress. Like some other great beauties and belles in + Washington however there have been whispers that she had something + to do with the lobby. If we mistake not we have heard her name + mentioned in connection with the sale of the Tennessee Lands to the + Knobs University, the bill for which passed the House last night. + + Her companion is Mr. Harry Brierly, a New York dandy, who has been + in Washington. His connection with her and with this tragedy is not + known, but he was also taken into custody, and will be detained at + least as a witness. + + P. S. One of the persons present in the parlor says that after + Laura Hawkins had fired twice, she turned the pistol towards + herself, but that Brierly sprung and caught it from her hand, and + that it was he who threw it on the floor. + + Further particulars with full biographies of all the parties in our + next edition. + +Philip hastened at once to the Southern Hotel, where he found still a +great state of excitement, and a thousand different and exaggerated +stories passing from mouth to mouth. The witnesses of the event had told +it over so many time that they had worked it up into a most dramatic +scene, and embellished it with whatever could heighten its awfulness. +Outsiders had taken up invention also. The Colonel's wife had gone +insane, they said. The children had rushed into the parlor and rolled +themselves in their father's blood. The hotel clerk said that he noticed +there was murder in the woman's eye when he saw her. A person who had +met the woman on the stairs felt a creeping sensation. Some thought +Brierly was an accomplice, and that he had set the woman on to kill his +rival. Some said the woman showed the calmness and indifference of +insanity. + +Philip learned that Harry and Laura had both been taken to the city +prison, and he went there; but he was not admitted. Not being a +newspaper reporter, he could not see either of them that night; but the +officer questioned him suspiciously and asked him who he was. He might +perhaps see Brierly in the morning. + +The latest editions of the evening papers had the result of the inquest. +It was a plain enough case for the jury, but they sat over it a long +time, listening to the wrangling of the physicians. Dr. Puffer insisted +that the man died from the effects of the wound in the chest. Dr. Dobb +as strongly insisted that the wound in the abdomen caused death. Dr. +Golightly suggested that in his opinion death ensued from a complication +of the two wounds and perhaps other causes. He examined the table +waiter, as to whether Col. Selby ate any breakfast, and what he ate, and +if he had any appetite. + +The jury finally threw themselves back upon the indisputable fact that +Selby was dead, that either wound would have killed him (admitted by the +doctors), and rendered a verdict that he died from pistol-shot wounds +inflicted by a pistol in the hands of Laura Hawkins. + +The morning papers blazed with big type, and overflowed with details of +the murder. The accounts in the evening papers were only the premonitory +drops to this mighty shower. The scene was dramatically worked up in +column after column. There were sketches, biographical and historical. +There were long "specials" from Washington, giving a full history of +Laura's career there, with the names of men with whom she was said to be +intimate, a description of Senator Dilworthy's residence and of his +family, and of Laura's room in his house, and a sketch of the Senator's +appearance and what he said. There was a great deal about her beauty, +her accomplishments and her brilliant position in society, and her +doubtful position in society. There was also an interview with Col. +Sellers and another with Washington Hawkins, the brother of the +murderess. One journal had a long dispatch from Hawkeye, reporting the +excitement in that quiet village and the reception of the awful +intelligence. + +All the parties had been "interviewed." There were reports of +conversations with the clerk at the hotel; with the call-boy; with the +waiter at table with all the witnesses, with the policeman, with the +landlord (who wanted it understood that nothing of that sort had ever +happened in his house before, although it had always been frequented by +the best Southern society,) and with Mrs. Col. Selby. There were +diagrams illustrating the scene of the shooting, and views of the hotel +and street, and portraits of the parties. There were three minute and +different statements from the doctors about the wounds, so technically +worded that nobody could understand them. Harry and Laura had also been +"interviewed" and there was a statement from Philip himself, which a +reporter had knocked him up out of bed at midnight to give, though how he +found him, Philip never could conjecture. + +What some of the journals lacked in suitable length for the occasion, +they made up in encyclopaedic information about other similar murders and +shootings. + +The statement from Laura was not full, in fact it was fragmentary, and +consisted of nine parts of, the reporter's valuable observations to one +of Laura's, and it was, as the reporter significantly remarked, +"incoherent", but it appeared that Laura claimed to be Selby's wife, +or to have been his wife, that he had deserted her and betrayed her, and +that she was going to follow him to Europe. When the reporter asked: + +"What made you shoot him Miss. Hawkins?" + +Laura's only reply was, very simply, + +"Did I shoot him? Do they say I shot him?". And she would say no more. + +The news of the murder was made the excitement of the day. Talk of it +filled the town. The facts reported were scrutinized, the standing of +the parties was discussed, the dozen different theories of the motive, +broached in the newspapers, were disputed over. + +During the night subtle electricity had carried the tale over all the +wires of the continent and under the sea; and in all villages and towns +of the Union, from the. Atlantic to the territories, and away up and +down the Pacific slope, and as far as London and Paris and Berlin, that +morning the name of Laura Hawkins was spoken by millions and millions of +people, while the owner of it--the sweet child of years ago, the +beautiful queen of Washington drawing rooms--sat shivering on her cot-bed +in the darkness of a damp cell in the Tombs. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII. + +Philip's first effort was to get Harry out of the Tombs. He gained +permission to see him, in the presence of an officer, during the day, +and he found that hero very much cast down. + +"I never intended to come to such a place as this, old fellow," he said +to Philip; "it's no place for a gentleman, they've no idea how to treat a +gentleman. Look at that provender," pointing to his uneaten prison +ration. "They tell me I am detained as a witness, and I passed the night +among a lot of cut-throats and dirty rascals--a pretty witness I'd be in +a month spent in such company." + +"But what under heavens," asked Philip, "induced you to come to New York +with Laura! What was it for?" + +"What for? Why, she wanted me to come. I didn't know anything about +that cursed Selby. She said it was lobby business for the University. +I'd no idea what she was dragging me into that confounded hotel for. +I suppose she knew that the Southerners all go there, and thought she'd +find her man. Oh! Lord, I wish I'd taken your advice. You might as +well murder somebody and have the credit of it, as get into the +newspapers the way I have. She's pure devil, that girl. You ought to +have seen how sweet she was on me; what an ass I am." + +"Well, I'm not going to dispute a poor, prisoner. But the first thing is +to get you out of this. I've brought the note Laura wrote you, for one +thing, and I've seen your uncle, and explained the truth of the case to +him. He will be here soon." + +Harry's uncle came, with; other friends, and in the course of the day +made such a showing to the authorities that Harry was released, on giving +bonds to appear as a witness when wanted. His spirits rose with their +usual elasticity as soon as he was out of Centre Street, and he insisted +on giving Philip and his friends a royal supper at Delmonico's, an excess +which was perhaps excusable in the rebound of his feelings, and which was +committed with his usual reckless generosity. Harry ordered, the supper, +and it is perhaps needless to say, that Philip paid the bill. + +Neither of the young men felt like attempting to see Laura that day, +and she saw no company except the newspaper reporters, until the arrival +of Col. Sellers and Washington Hawkins, who had hastened to New York +with all speed. + +They found Laura in a cell in the upper tier of the women's department. +The cell was somewhat larger than those in the men's department, and +might be eight feet by ten square, perhaps a little longer. It was of +stone, floor and all, and tile roof was oven shaped. A narrow slit in +the roof admitted sufficient light, and was the only means of +ventilation; when the window was opened there was nothing to prevent the +rain coming in. The only means of heating being from the corridor, when +the door was ajar, the cell was chilly and at this time damp. It was +whitewashed and clean, but it had a slight jail odor; its only furniture +was a narrow iron bedstead, with a tick of straw and some blankets, not +too clean. + +When Col. Sellers was conducted to this cell by the matron and looked +in, his emotions quite overcame him, the tears rolled down his cheeks and +his voice trembled so that he could hardly speak. Washington was unable +to say anything; he looked from Laura to the miserable creatures who were +walking in the corridor with unutterable disgust. Laura was alone calm +and self-contained, though she was not unmoved by the sight of the grief +of her friends. + +"Are you comfortable, Laura?" was the first word the Colonel could get +out. + +"You see," she replied. "I can't say it's exactly comfortable." + +"Are you cold?" + +"It is pretty chilly. The stone floor is like ice. It chills me through +to step on it. I have to sit on the bed." + +"Poor thing, poor thing. And can you eat any thing?" + +"No, I am not hungry. I don't know that I could eat any thing, I can't +eat that." + +"Oh dear," continued the Colonel, "it's dreadful. But cheer up, dear, +cheer up;" and the Colonel broke down entirely. + +"But," he went on, "we'll stand by you. We'll do everything for you. +I know you couldn't have meant to do it, it must have been insanity, you +know, or something of that sort. You never did anything of the sort +before." + +Laura smiled very faintly and said, + +"Yes, it was something of that sort. It's all a whirl. He was a +villain; you don't know." + +"I'd rather have killed him myself, in a duel you know, all fair. I wish +I had. But don't you be down. We'll get you the best counsel, the +lawyers in New York can do anything; I've read of cases. But you must be +comfortable now. We've brought some of your clothes, at the hotel. What +else, can we get for you?" + +Laura suggested that she would like some sheets for her bed, a piece of +carpet to step on, and her meals sent in; and some books and writing +materials if it was allowed. The Colonel and Washington promised to +procure all these things, and then took their sorrowful leave, a great +deal more affected than the criminal was, apparently, by her situation. + +The colonel told the matron as he went away that if she would look to +Laura's comfort a little it shouldn't be the worse for her; and to the +turnkey who let them out he patronizingly said, + +"You've got a big establishment here, a credit to the city. I've got a +friend in there--I shall see you again, sir." + +By the next day something more of Laura's own story began to appear in +the newspapers, colored and heightened by reporters' rhetoric. Some of +them cast a lurid light upon the Colonel's career, and represented his +victim as a beautiful avenger of her murdered innocence; and others +pictured her as his willing paramour and pitiless slayer. Her +communications to the reporters were stopped by her lawyers as soon as +they were retained and visited her, but this fact did not prevent--it may +have facilitated--the appearance of casual paragraphs here and there +which were likely to beget popular sympathy for the poor girl. + +The occasion did not pass without "improvement" by the leading journals; +and Philip preserved the editorial comments of three or four of them +which pleased him most. These he used to read aloud to his friends +afterwards and ask them to guess from which journal each of them had been +cut. One began in this simple manner:-- + + History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of + the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken + fragments of antique legends. Washington is not Corinth, and Lais, + the beautiful daughter of Timandra, might not have been the + prototype of the ravishing Laura, daughter of the plebeian house of + Hawkins; but the orators add statesmen who were the purchasers of + the favors of the one, may have been as incorruptible as the + Republican statesmen who learned how to love and how to vote from + the sweet lips of the Washington lobbyist; and perhaps the modern + Lais would never have departed from the national Capital if there + had been there even one republican Xenocrates who resisted her + blandishments. But here the parallel: fails. Lais, wandering away + with the youth Rippostratus, is slain by the women who are jealous + of her charms. Laura, straying into her Thessaly with the youth + Brierly, slays her other lover and becomes the champion of the + wrongs of her sex. + +Another journal began its editorial with less lyrical beauty, but with +equal force. It closed as follows:-- + + With Laura Hawkins, fair, fascinating and fatal, and with the + dissolute Colonel of a lost cause, who has reaped the harvest he + sowed, we have nothing to do. But as the curtain rises on this + awful tragedy, we catch a glimpse of the society at the capital + under this Administration, which we cannot contemplate without alarm + for the fate of the Republic. + +A third newspaper took up the subject in a different tone. It said:-- + + Our repeated predictions are verified. The pernicious doctrines + which we have announced as prevailing in American society have been + again illustrated. The name of the city is becoming a reproach. + We may have done something in averting its ruin in our resolute + exposure of the Great Frauds; we shall not be deterred from + insisting that the outraged laws for the protection of human life + shall be vindicated now, so that a person can walk the streets or + enter the public houses, at least in the day-time, without the risk + of a bullet through his brain. + +A fourth journal began its remarks as follows:-- + + The fullness with which we present our readers this morning the + details of the Selby-Hawkins homicide is a miracle of modern + journalism. Subsequent investigation can do little to fill out the + picture. It is the old story. A beautiful woman shoots her + absconding lover in cold-blood; and we shall doubtless learn in due + time that if she was not as mad as a hare in this month of March, + she was at least laboring under what is termed "momentary insanity." + +It would not be too much to say that upon the first publication of the +facts of the tragedy, there was an almost universal feeling of rage +against the murderess in the Tombs, and that reports of her beauty only +heightened the indignation. It was as if she presumed upon that and upon +her sex, to defy the law; and there was a fervent, hope that the law +would take its plain course. + +Yet Laura was not without friends, and some of them very influential too. +She had in keeping a great many secrets and a great many reputations, +perhaps. Who shall set himself up to judge human motives. Why, indeed, +might we not feel pity for a woman whose brilliant career had been so +suddenly extinguished in misfortune and crime? Those who had known her +so well in Washington might find it impossible to believe that the +fascinating woman could have had murder in her heart, and would readily +give ear to the current sentimentality about the temporary aberration of +mind under the stress of personal calamity. + +Senator Dilworthy, was greatly shocked, of course, but he was full of +charity for the erring. + +"We shall all need mercy," he said. "Laura as an inmate of my family was +a most exemplary female, amiable, affectionate and truthful, perhaps too +fond of gaiety, and neglectful of the externals of religion, but a woman +of principle. She may have had experiences of which I am ignorant, but +she could not have gone to this extremity if she had been in her own +right mind." + +To the Senator's credit be it said, he was willing to help Laura and her +family in this dreadful trial. She, herself, was not without money, for +the Washington lobbyist is not seldom more fortunate than the Washington +claimant, and she was able to procure a good many luxuries to mitigate +the severity of her prison life. It enabled her also to have her own +family near her, and to see some of them daily. The tender solicitude of +her mother, her childlike grief, and her firm belief in the real +guiltlessness of her daughter, touched even the custodians of the Tombs +who are enured to scenes of pathos. + +Mrs. Hawkins had hastened to her daughter as soon as she received money +for the journey. She had no reproaches, she had only tenderness and +pity. She could not shut out the dreadful facts of the case, but it had +been enough for her that Laura had said, in their first interview, +"mother, I did not know what I was doing." She obtained lodgings near, +the prison and devoted her life to her daughter, as if she had been +really her own child. She would have remained in the prison day and +night if it had been permitted. She was aged and feeble, but this great +necessity seemed to give her new life. + +The pathetic story of the old lady's ministrations, and her simplicity +and faith, also got into the newspapers in time, and probably added to +the pathos of this wrecked woman's fate, which was beginning to be felt +by the public. It was certain that she had champions who thought that +her wrongs ought to be placed against her crime, and expressions of this +feeling came to her in various ways. Visitors came to see her, and gifts +of fruit and flowers were sent, which brought some cheer into her hard +and gloomy cell. + +Laura had declined to see either Philip or Harry, somewhat to the +former's relief, who had a notion that she would necessarily feel +humiliated by seeing him after breaking faith with him, but to the +discomfiture of Harry, who still felt her fascination, and thought her +refusal heartless. He told Philip that of course he had got through with +such a woman, but he wanted to see her. + +Philip, to keep him from some new foolishness, persuaded him to go with +him to Philadelphia; and, give his valuable services in the mining +operations at Ilium. + +The law took its course with Laura. She was indicted for murder in the +first degree and held for trial at the summer term. The two most +distinguished criminal lawyers in the city had been retained for her +defence, and to that the resolute woman devoted her days with a courage +that rose as she consulted with her counsel and understood the methods of +criminal procedure in New York. + +She was greatly depressed, however, by the news from Washington. +Congress adjourned and her bill had failed to pass the Senate. It must +wait for the next session. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII + +It had been a bad winter, somehow, for the firm of Pennybacker, Bigler +and Small. These celebrated contractors usually made more money during +the session of the legislature at Harrisburg than upon all their summer +work, and this winter had been unfruitful. It was unaccountable to +Bigler. + +"You see, Mr. Bolton," he said, and Philip was present at the +conversation, "it puts us all out. It looks as if politics was played +out. We'd counted on the year of Simon's re-election. And, now, he's +reelected, and I've yet to see the first man who's the better for it." + +"You don't mean to say," asked Philip, "that he went in without paying +anything?" + +"Not a cent, not a dash cent, as I can hear," repeated Mr. Bigler, +indignantly. "I call it a swindle on the state. How it was done gets +me. I never saw such a tight time for money in Harrisburg." + +"Were there no combinations, no railroad jobs, no mining schemes put +through in connection with the election? + +"Not that I knew," said Bigler, shaking his head in disgust. "In fact it +was openly said, that there was no money in the election. It's perfectly +unheard of." + +"Perhaps," suggested Philip, "it was effected on what the insurance +companies call the 'endowment,' or the 'paid up' plan, by which a policy +is secured after a certain time without further payment." + +"You think then," said Mr. Bolton smiling, "that a liberal and sagacious +politician might own a legislature after a time, and not be bothered with +keeping up his payments?" + +"Whatever it is," interrupted Mr. Bigler, "it's devilish ingenious and +goes ahead of my calculations; it's cleaned me out, when I thought we had +a dead sure thing. I tell you what it is, gentlemen, I shall go in for +reform. Things have got pretty mixed when a legislature will give away a +United States senatorship." + +It was melancholy, but Mr. Bigler was not a man to be crushed by one +misfortune, or to lose his confidence in human nature, on one exhibition +of apparent honesty. He was already on his feet again, or would be if +Mr. Bolton could tide him over shoal water for ninety days. + +"We've got something with money in it," he explained to Mr. Bolton, +"got hold of it by good luck. We've got the entire contract for Dobson's +Patent Pavement for the city of Mobile. See here." + +Mr. Bigler made some figures; contract so; much, cost of work and +materials so much, profits so much. At the end of three months the city +would owe the company three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars-two +hundred thousand of that would be profits. The whole job was worth at +least a million to the company--it might be more. There could be no +mistake in these figures; here was the contract, Mr. Bolton knew what +materials were worth and what the labor would cost. + +Mr. Bolton knew perfectly well from sore experience that there was always +a mistake in figures when Bigler or Small made them, and he knew that he +ought to send the fellow about his business. Instead of that, he let him +talk. + +They only wanted to raise fifty thousand dollars to carry on the +contract--that expended they would have city bonds. Mr. Bolton said he +hadn't the money. But Bigler could raise it on his name. Mr. Bolton +said he had no right to put his family to that risk. But the entire +contract could be assigned to him--the security was ample--it was a +fortune to him if it was forfeited. Besides Mr. Bigler had been +unfortunate, he didn't know where to look for the necessaries of life for +his family. If he could only have one more chance, he was sure he could +right himself. He begged for it. + +And Mr. Bolton yielded. He could never refuse such appeals. If he had +befriended a man once and been cheated by him, that man appeared to have +a claim upon him forever. He shrank, however, from telling his wife what +he had done on this occasion, for he knew that if any person was more +odious than Small to his family it was Bigler. + +"Philip tells me," Mrs. Bolton said that evening, "that the man Bigler +has been with thee again to-day. I hope thee will have nothing more to +do with him." + +"He has been very unfortunate," replied Mr. Bolton, uneasily. + +"He is always unfortunate, and he is always getting thee into trouble. +But thee didn't listen to him again?" + +"Well, mother, his family is in want, and I lent him my name--but I took +ample security. The worst that can happen will be a little +inconvenience." + +Mrs. Bolton looked grave and anxious, but she did not complain or +remonstrate; she knew what a "little inconvenience" meant, but she knew +there was no help for it. If Mr. Bolton had been on his way to market to +buy a dinner for his family with the only dollar he had in the world in +his pocket, he would have given it to a chance beggar who asked him for +it. Mrs. Bolton only asked (and the question showed that she was no mere +provident than her husband where her heart was interested), + +"But has thee provided money for Philip to use in opening the coal mine?" + +"Yes, I have set apart as much as it ought to cost to open the mine, +as much as we can afford to lose if no coal is found. Philip has the +control of it, as equal partner in the venture, deducting the capital +invested. He has great confidence in his success, and I hope for his +sake he won't be disappointed." + +Philip could not but feel that he was treated very much like one of the +Bolton-family--by all except Ruth. His mother, when he went home after +his recovery from his accident, had affected to be very jealous of Mrs. +Bolton, about whom and Ruth she asked a thousand questions +--an affectation of jealousy which no doubt concealed a real heartache, +which comes to every mother when her son goes out into the world and +forms new ties. And to Mrs. Sterling; a widow, living on a small income +in a remote Massachusetts village, Philadelphia was a city of many +splendors. All its inhabitants seemed highly favored, dwelling in ease +and surrounded by superior advantages. Some of her neighbors had +relations living in Philadelphia, and it seemed to them somehow a +guarantee of respectability to have relations in Philadelphia. +Mrs. Sterling was not sorry to have Philip make his way among such +well-to-do people, and she was sure that no good fortune could be too +good for his deserts. + +"So, sir," said Ruth, when Philip came from New York, "you have been +assisting in a pretty tragedy. I saw your name in the papers. Is this +woman a specimen of your western friends?" + +"My only assistance," replied Philip, a little annoyed, was in trying to +keep Harry out of a bad scrape, and I failed after all. He walked into +her trap, and he has been punished for it. I'm going to take him up to +Ilium to see if he won't work steadily at one thing, and quit his +nonsense." + +"Is she as beautiful as the newspapers say she is?" + +"I don't know, she has a kind of beauty--she is not like--' + +"Not like Alice?" + +"Well, she is brilliant; she was called the handsomest woman in +Washington--dashing, you know, and sarcastic and witty. Ruth, do you +believe a woman ever becomes a devil?" + +"Men do, and I don't know why women shouldn't. But I never saw one." + +"Well, Laura Hawkins comes very near it. But it is dreadful to think of +her fate." + +"Why, do you suppose they will hang a woman? Do you suppose they will be +so barbarous as that?" + +"I wasn't thinking of that--it's doubtful if a New York jury would find a +woman guilty of any such crime. But to think of her life if she is +acquitted." + +"It is dreadful," said Ruth, thoughtfully, "but the worst of it is that +you men do not want women educated to do anything, to be able to earn an +honest living by their own exertions. They are educated as if they were +always to be petted and supported, and there was never to be any such +thing as misfortune. I suppose, now, that you would all choose to have +me stay idly at home, and give up my profession." + +"Oh, no," said Philip, earnestly, "I respect your resolution. But, +Ruth, do you think you would be happier or do more good in following your +profession than in having a home of your own?" + +"What is to hinder having a home of my, own?" + +"Nothing, perhaps, only you never would be in it--you would be away day +and night, if you had any practice; and what sort of a home would that +make for your husband?" + +"What sort of a home is it for the wife whose husband is always away +riding about in his doctor's gig?" + +"Ah, you know that is not fair. The woman makes the home." + +Philip and Ruth often had this sort of discussion, to which Philip was +always trying to give a personal turn. He was now about to go to Ilium +for the season, and he did not like to go without some assurance from +Ruth that she might perhaps love him some day; when he was worthy of it, +and when he could offer her something better than a partnership in his +poverty. + +"I should work with a great deal better heart, Ruth," he said the morning +he was taking leave, "if I knew you cared for me a little." + +Ruth was looking down; the color came faintly to her cheeks, and she +hesitated. She needn't be looking down, he thought, for she was ever so +much shorter than tall Philip. + +"It's not much of a place, Ilium," Philip went on, as if a little +geographical remark would fit in here as well as anything else, "and I +shall have plenty of time to think over the responsibility I have taken, +and--" his observation did not seem to be coming out any where. + +But Ruth looked up, and there was a light in her eyes that quickened +Phil's pulse. She took his hand, and said with serious sweetness: + +"Thee mustn't lose heart, Philip." And then she added, in another mood, +"Thee knows I graduate in the summer and shall have my diploma. And if +any thing happens--mines explode sometimes--thee can send for me. +Farewell." + +The opening of the Ilium coal mine was begun with energy, but without +many omens of success. Philip was running a tunnel into the breast of +the mountain, in faith that the coal stratum ran there as it ought to. +How far he must go in he believed he knew, but no one could tell exactly. +Some of the miners said that they should probably go through the +mountain, and that the hole could be used for a railway tunnel. The +mining camp was a busy place at any rate. Quite a settlement of board +and log shanties had gone up, with a blacksmith shop, a small machine +shop, and a temporary store for supplying the wants of the workmen. +Philip and Harry pitched a commodious tent, and lived in the full +enjoyment of the free life. + +There is no difficulty in digging a bole in the ground, if you have money +enough to pay for the digging, but those who try this sort of work are +always surprised at the large amount of money necessary to make a small +hole. The earth is never willing to yield one product, hidden in her +bosom, without an equivalent for it. And when a person asks of her coal, +she is quite apt to require gold in exchange. + +It was exciting work for all concerned in it. As the tunnel advanced +into the rock every day promised to be the golden day. This very blast +might disclose the treasure. + +The work went on week after week, and at length during the night as well +as the daytime. Gangs relieved each other, and the tunnel was every +hour, inch by inch and foot by foot, crawling into the mountain. Philip +was on the stretch of hope and excitement. Every pay day he saw his +funds melting away, and still there was only the faintest show of what +the miners call "signs." + +The life suited Harry, whose buoyant hopefulness was never disturbed. +He made endless calculations, which nobody could understand, of the +probable position of the vein. He stood about among the workmen with the +busiest air. When he was down at Ilium he called himself the engineer of +the works, and he used to spend hours smoking his pipe with the Dutch +landlord on the hotel porch, and astonishing the idlers there with the +stories of his railroad operations in Missouri. He talked with the +landlord, too, about enlarging his hotel, and about buying some village +lots, in the prospect of a rise, when the mine was opened. He taught the +Dutchman how to mix a great many cooling drinks for the summer time, and +had a bill at the hotel, the growing length of which Mr. Dusenheimer +contemplated with pleasant anticipations. Mr. Brierly was a very useful +and cheering person wherever he went. + +Midsummer arrived: Philip could report to Mr. Bolton only progress, and +this was not a cheerful message for him to send to Philadelphia in reply +to inquiries that he thought became more and more anxious. Philip +himself was a prey to the constant fear that the money would give out +before the coal was struck. + +At this time Harry was summoned to New York, to attend the trial of Laura +Hawkins. It was possible that Philip would have to go also, her lawyer +wrote, but they hoped for a postponement. There was important evidence +that they could not yet obtain, and he hoped the judge would not force +them to a trial unprepared. There were many reasons for a delay, reasons +which of course are never mentioned, but which it would seem that a New +York judge sometimes must understand, when he grants a postponement upon +a motion that seems to the public altogether inadequate. + +Harry went, but he soon came back. The trial was put off. Every week we +can gain, said the learned counsel, Braham, improves our chances. The +popular rage never lasts long. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX. + +"We've struck it!" + +This was the announcement at the tent door that woke Philip out of a +sound sleep at dead of night, and shook all the sleepiness out of him in +a trice. + +"What! Where is it? When? Coal? Let me see it. What quality is it?" +were some of the rapid questions that Philip poured out as he hurriedly +dressed. "Harry, wake up, my boy, the coal train is coming. Struck it, +eh? Let's see?" + +The foreman put down his lantern, and handed Philip a black lump. There +was no mistake about it, it was the hard, shining anthracite, and its +freshly fractured surface, glistened in the light like polished steel. +Diamond never shone with such lustre in the eyes of Philip. + +Harry was exuberant, but Philip's natural caution found expression in his +next remark. + +"Now, Roberts, you are sure about this?" + +"What--sure that it's coal?" + +"O, no, sure that it's the main vein." + +"Well, yes. We took it to be that" + +"Did you from the first?" + +"I can't say we did at first. No, we didn't. Most of the indications +were there, but not all of them, not all of them. So we thought we'd +prospect a bit." + +"Well?" + +"It was tolerable thick, and looked as if it might be the vein--looked as +if it ought to be the vein. Then we went down on it a little. Looked +better all the time." + +"When did you strike it?" + +"About ten o'clock." + +"Then you've been prospecting about four hours." + +"Yes, been sinking on it something over four hours." + +"I'm afraid you couldn't go down very far in four hours--could you?" + +"O yes--it's a good deal broke up, nothing but picking and gadding +stuff." + +"Well, it does look encouraging, sure enough--but then the lacking +indications--" + +"I'd rather we had them, Mr. Sterling, but I've seen more than one good +permanent mine struck without 'em in my time." + +"Well, that is encouraging too." + +"Yes, there was the Union, the Alabama and the Black Mohawk--all good, +sound mines, you know--all just exactly like this one when we first +struck them." + +"Well, I begin to feel a good deal more easy. I guess we've really got +it. I remember hearing them tell about the Black Mohawk." + +"I'm free to say that I believe it, and the men all think so too. They +are all old hands at this business." + +"Come Harry, let's go up and look at it, just for the comfort of it," +said Philip. They came back in the course of an hour, satisfied and +happy. + +There was no more sleep for them that night. They lit their pipes, put a +specimen of the coal on the table, and made it a kind of loadstone of +thought and conversation. + +"Of course," said Harry, "there will have to be a branch track built, and +a 'switch-back' up the hill." + +"Yes, there will be no trouble about getting the money for that now. We +could sell-out tomorrow for a handsome sum. That sort of coal doesn't go +begging within a mile of a rail-road. I wonder if Mr. Bolton' would +rather sell out or work it?" + +"Oh, work it," says Harry, "probably the whole mountain is coal now +you've got to it." + +"Possibly it might not be much of a vein after all," suggested Philip. + +"Possibly it is; I'll bet it's forty feet thick. I told you. I knew the +sort of thing as soon as I put my eyes on it." + +Philip's next thought was to write to his friends and announce their good +fortune. To Mr. Bolton he wrote a short, business letter, as calm as he +could make it. They had found coal of excellent quality, but they could +not yet tell with absolute certainty what the vein was. The prospecting +was still going on. Philip also wrote to Ruth; but though this letter +may have glowed, it was not with the heat of burning anthracite. He +needed no artificial heat to warm his pen and kindle his ardor when he +sat down to write to Ruth. But it must be confessed that the words never +flowed so easily before, and he ran on for an hour disporting in all the +extravagance of his imagination. When Ruth read it, she doubted if the +fellow had not gone out of his senses. And it was not until she reached +the postscript that she discovered the cause of the exhilaration. +"P. S.--We have found coal." + +The news couldn't have come to Mr. Bolton in better time. He had never +been so sorely pressed. A dozen schemes which he had in hand, any one +of which might turn up a fortune, all languished, and each needed just +a little more, money to save that which had been invested. He hadn't +a piece of real estate that was not covered with mortgages, even to the +wild tract which Philip was experimenting on, and which had, no +marketable value above the incumbrance on it. + +He had come home that day early, unusually dejected. + +"I am afraid," he said to his wife, "that we shall have to give up our +house. I don't care for myself, but for thee and the children." + +"That will be the least of misfortunes," said Mrs. Bolton, cheerfully, +"if thee can clear thyself from debt and anxiety, which is wearing thee +out, we can live any where. Thee knows we were never happier than when +we were in a much humbler home." + +"The truth is, Margaret, that affair of Bigler and Small's has come on me +just when I couldn't stand another ounce. They have made another failure +of it. I might have known they would; and the sharpers, or fools, I +don't know which, have contrived to involve me for three times as much as +the first obligation. The security is in my hands, but it is good for +nothing to me. I have not the money to do anything with the contract." + +Ruth heard this dismal news without great surprise. She had long felt +that they were living on a volcano, that might go in to active operation +at any hour. Inheriting from her father an active brain and the courage +to undertake new things, she had little of his sanguine temperament which +blinds one to difficulties and possible failures. She had little +confidence in the many schemes which had been about to lift her father +out of all his embarrassments and into great wealth, ever since she was +a child; as she grew older, she rather wondered that they were as +prosperous as they seemed to be, and that they did not all go to smash +amid so many brilliant projects. She was nothing but a woman, and did +not know how much of the business prosperity of the world is only a, +bubble of credit and speculation, one scheme helping to float another +which is no better than it, and the whole liable to come to naught and +confusion as soon as the busy brain that conceived them ceases its power +to devise, or when some accident produces a sudden panic. + +"Perhaps, I shall be the stay of the family, yet," said Ruth, with an +approach to gaiety; "When we move into a little house in town, will thee +let me put a little sign on the door: DR. RUTH BOLTON?" + +"Mrs. Dr. Longstreet, thee knows, has a great income." + +"Who will pay for the sign, Ruth?" asked Mr. Bolton. + +A servant entered with the afternoon mail from the office. Mr. Bolton +took his letters listlessly, dreading to open them. He knew well what +they contained, new difficulties, more urgent demands fox money. + +"Oh, here is one from Philip. Poor fellow. I shall feel his +disappointment as much as my own bad luck. It is hard to bear when one +is young." + +He opened the letter and read. As he read his face lightened, and he +fetched such a sigh of relief, that Mrs. Bolton and Ruth both exclaimed. + +"Read that," he cried, "Philip has found coal!" + +The world was changed in a moment. One little sentence had done it. +There was no more trouble. Philip had found coal. That meant relief. +That meant fortune. A great weight was taken off, and the spirits of the +whole household rose magically. Good Money! beautiful demon of Money, +what an enchanter thou art! Ruth felt that she was of less consequence +in the household, now that Philip had found Coal, and perhaps she was not +sorry to feel so. + +Mr. Bolton was ten years younger the next morning. He went into the +city, and showed his letter on change. It was the sort of news his +friends were quite willing to listen to. They took a new interest in +him. If it was confirmed, Bolton would come right up again. There would +be no difficulty about his getting all the money he wanted. The money +market did not seem to be half so tight as it was the day before. +Mr. Bolton spent a very pleasant day in his office, and went home +revolving some new plans, and the execution of some projects he had long +been prevented from entering upon by the lack of money. + +The day had been spent by Philip in no less excitement. By daylight, +with Philip's letters to the mail, word had gone down to Ilium that coal +had been found, and very early a crowd of eager spectators had come up to +see for themselves. + +The "prospecting" continued day and night for upwards of a week, and +during the first four or five days the indications grew more and more +promising, and the telegrams and letters kept Mr. Bolton duly posted. +But at last a change came, and the promises began to fail with alarming +rapidity. In the end it was demonstrated without the possibility of a +doubt that the great "find" was nothing but a worthless seam. + +Philip was cast down, all the more so because he had been so foolish as +to send the news to Philadelphia before he knew what he was writing +about. And now he must contradict it. "It turns out to be only a mere +seam," he wrote, "but we look upon it as an indication of better further +in." + +Alas! Mr. Bolton's affairs could not wait for "indications." The future +might have a great deal in store, but the present was black and hopeless. +It was doubtful if any sacrifice could save him from ruin. Yet sacrifice +he must make, and that instantly, in the hope of saving something from +the wreck of his fortune. + +His lovely country home must go. That would bring the most ready money. +The house that he had built with loving thought for each one of his +family, as he planned its luxurious apartments and adorned it; the +grounds that he had laid out, with so much delight in following the +tastes of his wife, with whom the country, the cultivation of rare trees +and flowers, the care of garden and lawn and conservatories were a +passion almost; this home, which he had hoped his children would enjoy +long after he had done with it, must go. + +The family bore the sacrifice better than he did. They declared in fact +--women are such hypocrites--that they quite enjoyed the city (it was in +August) after living so long in the country, that it was a thousand tunes +more convenient in every respect; Mrs. Bolton said it was a relief from +the worry of a large establishment, and Ruth reminded her father that she +should have had to come to town anyway before long. + +Mr. Bolton was relieved, exactly as a water-logged ship is lightened by +throwing overboard the most valuable portion of the cargo--but the leak +was not stopped. Indeed his credit was injured instead of helped by the +prudent step be had taken. It was regarded as a sure evidence of his +embarrassment, and it was much more difficult for him to obtain help than +if he had, instead of retrenching, launched into some new speculation. + +Philip was greatly troubled, and exaggerated his own share in the +bringing about of the calamity. + +"You must not look at it so!" Mr. Bolton wrote him. "You have neither +helped nor hindered--but you know you may help by and by. It would have +all happened just so, if we had never begun to dig that hole. That is +only a drop. Work away. I still have hope that something will occur to +relieve me. At any rate we must not give up the mine, so long as we have +any show." + +Alas! the relief did not come. New misfortunes came instead. When the +extent of the Bigler swindle was disclosed there was no more hope that +Mr. Bolton could extricate himself, and he had, as an honest man, no +resource except to surrender all his property for the benefit of his +creditors. + +The Autumn came and found Philip working with diminished force but still +with hope. He had again and again been encouraged by good "indications," +but he had again and again been disappointed. He could not go on much +longer, and almost everybody except himself had thought it was useless to +go on as long as he had been doing. + +When the news came of Mr. Bolton's failure, of course the work stopped. +The men were discharged, the tools were housed, the hopeful noise of +pickman and driver ceased, and the mining camp had that desolate and +mournful aspect which always hovers over a frustrated enterprise. + +Philip sat down amid the ruins, and almost wished he were buried in them. +How distant Ruth was now from him, now, when she might need him most. +How changed was all the Philadelphia world, which had hitherto stood for +the exemplification of happiness and prosperity. + +He still had faith that there was coal in that mountain. He made +a picture of himself living there a hermit in a shanty by the tunnel, +digging away with solitary pick and wheelbarrow, day after day and year +after year, until he grew gray and aged, and was known in all that region +as the old man of the mountain. Perhaps some day--he felt it must be so +some day--he should strike coal. But what if he did? Who would be alive +to care for it then? What would he care for it then? No, a man wants +riches in his youth, when the world is fresh to him. He wondered why +Providence could not have reversed the usual process, and let the +majority of men begin with wealth and gradually spend it, and die poor +when they no longer needed it. + +Harry went back to the city. It was evident that his services were no +longer needed. Indeed, he had letters from his uncle, which he did not +read to Philip, desiring him to go to San Francisco to look after some +government contracts in the harbor there. + +Philip had to look about him for something to do; he was like Adam; +the world was all before him whereto choose. He made, before he went +elsewhere, a somewhat painful visit to Philadelphia, painful but yet not +without its sweetnesses. The family had never shown him so much +affection before; they all seemed to think his disappointment of more +importance than their own misfortune. And there was that in Ruth's +manner--in what she gave him and what she withheld--that would have made +a hero of a very much less promising character than Philip Sterling. + +Among the assets of the Bolton property, the Ilium tract was sold, and +Philip bought it in at the vendue, for a song, for no one cared to even +undertake the mortgage on it except himself. He went away the owner of +it, and had ample time before he reached home in November, to calculate +how much poorer he was by possessing it. + + + + +CHAPTER L. + +It is impossible for the historian, with even the best intentions, +to control events or compel the persons of his narrative to act wisely +or to be successful. It is easy to see how things might have been better +managed; a very little change here and there would have made a very, +different history of this one now in hand. + +If Philip had adopted some regular profession, even some trade, he might +now be a prosperous editor or a conscientious plumber, or an honest +lawyer, and have borrowed money at the saving's bank and built a cottage, +and be now furnishing it for the occupancy of Ruth and himself. Instead +of this, with only a smattering of civil engineering, he is at his +mother's house, fretting and fuming over his ill-luck, and the hardness +and, dishonesty of men, and thinking of nothing but how to get the coal +out of the Ilium hills. + +If Senator Dilworthy had not made that visit to Hawkeye, the Hawkins +family and Col. Sellers would not now be dancing attendance upon +Congress, and endeavoring to tempt that immaculate body into one of those +appropriations, for the benefit of its members, which the members find it +so difficult to explain to their constituents; and Laura would not be +lying in the Tombs, awaiting her trial for murder, and doing her best, +by the help of able counsel, to corrupt the pure fountain of criminal +procedure in New York. + +If Henry Brierly had been blown up on the first Mississippi steamboat he +set foot on, as the chances were that he would be, he and Col. Sellers +never would have gone into the Columbus Navigation scheme, and probably +never into the East Tennessee Land scheme, and he would not now be +detained in New York from very important business operations on the +Pacific coast, for the sole purpose of giving evidence to convict of +murder the only woman he ever loved half as much as he loves himself. +If Mr. Bolton had said the little word "no" to Mr. Bigler, Alice Montague +might now be spending the winter in Philadelphia, and Philip also +(waiting to resume his mining operations in the spring); and Ruth would +not be an assistant in a Philadelphia hospital, taxing her strength with +arduous routine duties, day by day, in order to lighten a little the +burdens that weigh upon her unfortunate family. + +It is altogether a bad business. An honest historian, who had progressed +thus far, and traced everything to such a condition of disaster and +suspension, might well be justified in ending his narrative and writing +--"after this the deluge." His only consolation would be in the reflection +that he was not responsible for either characters or events. + +And the most annoying thought is that a little money, judiciously +applied, would relieve the burdens and anxieties of most of these people; +but affairs seem to be so arranged that money is most difficult to get +when people need it most. + +A little of what Mr. Bolton has weakly given to unworthy people would now +establish his family in a sort of comfort, and relieve Ruth of the +excessive toil for which she inherited no adequate physical vigor. +A little money would make a prince of Col. Sellers; and a little more +would calm the anxiety of Washington Hawkins about Laura, for however the +trial ended, he could feel sure of extricating her in the end. And if +Philip had a little money he could unlock the stone door in the mountain +whence would issue a stream of shining riches. It needs a golden wand to +strike that rock. If the Knobs University bill could only go through, +what a change would be wrought in the condition of most of the persons in +this history. Even Philip himself would feel the good effects of it; +for Harry would have something and Col. Sellers would have something; +and have not both these cautious people expressed a determination to take +an interest in the Ilium mine when they catch their larks? + +Philip could not resist the inclination to pay a visit to Fallkill. He +had not been at the Montague's since the time he saw Ruth there, and he +wanted to consult the Squire about an occupation. He was determined now +to waste no more time in waiting on Providence, but to go to work at +something, if it were nothing better, than teaching in the Fallkill +Seminary, or digging clams on Hingham beach. Perhaps he could read law +in Squire Montague's office while earning his bread as a teacher in the +Seminary. + +It was not altogether Philip's fault, let us own, that he was in this +position. There are many young men like him in American society, of his +age, opportunities, education and abilities, who have really been +educated for nothing and have let themselves drift, in the hope that they +will find somehow, and by some sudden turn of good luck, the golden road +to fortune. He was not idle or lazy, he had energy and a disposition to +carve his own way. But he was born into a time when all young men of his +age caught the fever of speculation, and expected to get on in the world +by the omission of some of the regular processes which have been +appointed from of old. And examples were not wanting to encourage him. +He saw people, all around him, poor yesterday, rich to-day, who had come +into sudden opulence by some means which they could not have classified +among any of the regular occupations of life. A war would give such a +fellow a career and very likely fame. He might have been a "railroad +man," or a politician, or a land speculator, or one of those mysterious +people who travel free on all rail-roads and steamboats, and are +continually crossing and recrossing the Atlantic, driven day and night +about nobody knows what, and make a great deal of money by so doing. +Probably, at last, he sometimes thought with a whimsical smile, he should +end by being an insurance agent, and asking people to insure their lives +for his benefit. + +Possibly Philip did not think how much the attractions of Fallkill were +increased by the presence of Alice there. He had known her so long, she +had somehow grown into his life by habit, that he would expect the +pleasure of her society without thinking mach about it. Latterly he +never thought of her without thinking of Ruth, and if he gave the subject +any attention, it was probably in an undefined consciousness that, he had +her sympathy in his love, and that she was always willing to hear him +talk about it. If he ever wondered that Alice herself was not in love +and never spoke of the possibility of her own marriage, it was a +transient thought for love did not seem necessary, exactly, to one so +calm and evenly balanced and with so many resources in her herself. + +Whatever her thoughts may have been they were unknown to Philip, as they +are to these historians; if she was seeming to be what she was not, and +carrying a burden heavier than any one else carried, because she had to +bear it alone, she was only doing what thousands of women do, with a +self-renunciation and heroism, of which men, impatient and complaining, +have no conception. Have not these big babies with beards filled all +literature with their outcries, their griefs and their lamentations? It +is always the gentle sex which is hard and cruel and fickle and +implacable. + +"Do you think you would be contented to live in Fallkill, and attend the +county Court?" asked Alice, when Philip had opened the budget of his new +programme. + +"Perhaps not always," said Philip, "I might go and practice in Boston +maybe, or go to Chicago." + +"Or you might get elected to Congress." + +Philip looked at Alice to see if she was in earnest and not chaffing him. +Her face was quite sober. Alice was one of those patriotic women in the +rural districts, who think men are still selected for Congress on account +of qualifications for the office. + +"No," said Philip, "the chances are that a man cannot get into congress +now without resorting to arts and means that should render hint unfit to +go there; of course there are exceptions; but do you know that I could +not go into politics if I were a lawyer, without losing standing somewhat +in my profession, and without raising at least a suspicion of my +intentions and unselfishness? Why, it is telegraphed all over the +country and commented on as something wonderful if a congressman votes +honestly and unselfishly and refuses to take advantage of his position to +steal from the government." + +"But," insisted Alice, "I should think it a noble ambition to go to +congress, if it is so bad, and help reform it. I don't believe it is as +corrupt as the English parliament used to be, if there is any truth in +the novels, and I suppose that is reformed." + +"I'm sure I don't know where the reform is to begin. I've seen a +perfectly capable, honest man, time and again, run against an illiterate +trickster, and get beaten. I suppose if the people wanted decent members +of congress they would elect them. Perhaps," continued Philip with a +smile, "the women will have to vote." + +"Well, I should be willing to, if it were a necessity, just as I would go +to war and do what I could, if the country couldn't be saved otherwise," +said Alice, with a spirit that surprised Philip, well as he thought he +knew her. "If I were a young gentleman in these times--" + +Philip laughed outright. "It's just what Ruth used to say, 'if she were +a man.' I wonder if all the young ladies are contemplating a change of +sex." + +"No, only a changed sex," retorted Alice; "we contemplate for the most +part young men who don't care for anything they ought to care for." + +"Well," said Philip, looking humble, "I care for some things, you and +Ruth for instance; perhaps I ought not to. Perhaps I ought to care for +Congress and that sort of thing." + +"Don't be a goose, Philip. I heard from Ruth yesterday." + +"Can I see her letter?" + +"No, indeed. But I am afraid her hard work is telling on her, together +with her anxiety about her father." + +"Do you think, Alice," asked Philip with one of those selfish thoughts +that are not seldom mixed with real love, "that Ruth prefers her +profession to--to marriage?" + +"Philip," exclaimed Alice, rising to quit the room, and speaking +hurriedly as if the words were forced from her, "you are as blind as a +bat; Ruth would cut off her right hand for you this minute." + +Philip never noticed that Alice's face was flushed and that her voice was +unsteady; he only thought of the delicious words he had heard. And the +poor girl, loyal to Ruth, loyal to Philip, went straight to her room, +locked the door, threw herself on the bed and sobbed as if her heart +world break. And then she prayed that her Father in Heaven would give +her strength. And after a time she was calm again, and went to her +bureau drawer and took from a hiding place a little piece of paper, +yellow with age. Upon it was pinned a four-leaved clover, dry and yellow +also. She looked long at this foolish memento. Under the clover leaf +was written in a school-girl's hand--"Philip, June, 186-." + +Squire Montague thought very well of Philip's proposal. It would have +been better if he had begun the study of the law as soon as he left +college, but it was not too late now, and besides he had gathered some +knowledge of the world. + +"But," asked the Squire, "do you mean to abandon your land in +Pennsylvania?" This track of land seemed an immense possible fortune to +this New England lawyer-farmer. Hasn't it good timber, and doesn't the +railroad almost touch it?" + +"I can't do anything with it now. Perhaps I can sometime." + +"What is your reason for supposing that there is coal there?" + +"The opinion of the best geologist I could consult, my own observation +of the country, and the little veins of it we found. I feel certain it +is there. I shall find it some day. I know it. If I can only keep the +land till I make money enough to try again." + +Philip took from his pocket a map of the anthracite coal region, and +pointed out the position of the Ilium mountain which he had begun to +tunnel. + +"Doesn't it look like it?" + +"It certainly does," said the Squire, very much interested. It is not +unusual for a quiet country gentleman to be more taken with such a +venture than a speculator who, has had more experience in its +uncertainty. It was astonishing how many New England clergymen, in the +time of the petroleum excitement, took chances in oil. The Wall street +brokers are said to do a good deal of small business for country +clergymen, who are moved no doubt with the laudable desire of purifying +the New York stock board. + +"I don't see that there is much risk," said the Squire, at length. +"The timber is worth more than the mortgage; and if that coal seam does +run there, it's a magnificent fortune. Would you like to try it again in +the spring, Phil?" + +Like to try it! If he could have a little help, he would work himself, +with pick and barrow, and live on a crust. Only give him one more +chance. + +And this is how it came about that the cautious old Squire Montague was +drawn into this young fellow's speculation, and began to have his serene +old age disturbed by anxieties and by the hope of a great stroke of luck. + +"To be sure, I only care about it for the boy," he said. The Squire was +like everybody else; sooner or later he must "take a chance." + +It is probably on account of the lack of enterprise in women that they +are not so fond of stock speculations and mine ventures as men. It is +only when woman becomes demoralized that she takes to any sort of +gambling. Neither Alice nor Ruth were much elated with the prospect of +Philip's renewal of his mining enterprise. + +But Philip was exultant. He wrote to Ruth as if his fortune were already +made, and as if the clouds that lowered over the house of Bolton were +already in the deep bosom of a coal mine buried. Towards spring he went +to Philadelphia with his plans all matured for a new campaign. His +enthusiasm was irresistible. + +"Philip has come, Philip has come," cried the children, as if some great +good had again come into the household; and the refrain even sang itself +over in Ruth's heart as she went the weary hospital rounds. Mr. Bolton +felt more courage than he had had in months, at the sight of his manly +face and the sound of his cheery voice. + +Ruth's course was vindicated now, and it certainly did not become Philip, +who had nothing to offer but a future chance against the visible result +of her determination and industry, to open an argument with her. Ruth +was never more certain that she was right and that she was sufficient +unto herself. She, may be, did not much heed the still small voice that +sang in her maiden heart as she went about her work, and which lightened +it and made it easy, "Philip has come." + +"I am glad for father's sake," she said to Philip, that thee has come. +"I can see that he depends greatly upon what thee can do. He thinks women +won't hold out long," added Ruth with the smile that Philip never exactly +understood. + +"And aren't you tired sometimes of the struggle?" + +"Tired? Yes, everybody is tired I suppose. But it is a glorious +profession. And would you want me to be dependent, Philip?" + +"Well, yes, a little," said Philip, feeling his way towards what he +wanted to say. + +"On what, for instance, just now?" asked Ruth, a little maliciously +Philip thought. + +"Why, on----" he couldn't quite say it, for it occurred to him that he was +a poor stick for any body to lean on in the present state of his fortune, +and that the woman before him was at least as independent as he was. + +"I don't mean depend," he began again. "But I love you, that's all. Am +I nothing--to you?" And Philip looked a little defiant, and as if he had +said something that ought to brush away all the sophistries of obligation +on either side, between man and woman. + +Perhaps Ruth saw this. Perhaps she saw that her own theories of a +certain equality of power, which ought to precede a union of two hearts, +might be pushed too far. Perhaps she had felt sometimes her own weakness +and the need after all of so dear a sympathy and so tender an interest +confessed, as that which Philip could give. Whatever moved her--the +riddle is as old as creation--she simply looked up to Philip and said in +a low voice, "Everything." + +And Philip clasping both her hands in his, and looking down into her +eyes, which drank in all his tenderness with the thirst of a true woman's +nature-- + +"Oh! Philip, come out here," shouted young Eli, throwing the door wide +open. + +And Ruth escaped away to her room, her heart singing again, and now as if +it would burst for joy, "Philip has come." + +That night Philip received a dispatch from Harry--"The trial begins +tomorrow." + + + + +CHAPTER, LI + +December 18--, found Washington Hawkins and Col. Sellers once more at the +capitol of the nation, standing guard over the University bill. The +former gentleman was despondent, the latter hopeful. Washington's +distress of mind was chiefly on Laura's account. The court would soon +sit to try her, case, he said, and consequently a great deal of ready +money would be needed in the engineering of it. The University bill was +sure to pass this, time, and that would make money plenty, but might not +the, help come too late? Congress had only just assembled, and delays +were to be feared. + +"Well," said the Colonel, "I don't know but you are more or less right, +there. Now let's figure up a little on, the preliminaries. I think +Congress always tries to do as near right as it can, according to its +lights. A man can't ask any fairer, than that. The first preliminary it +always starts out on, is, to clean itself, so to speak. It will arraign +two or three dozen of its members, or maybe four or five dozen, for +taking bribes to vote for this and that and the other bill last winter." + +"It goes up into the dozens, does it?" + +"Well, yes; in a free country likes ours, where any man can run for +Congress and anybody can vote for him, you can't expect immortal purity +all the time--it ain't in nature. Sixty or eighty or a hundred and fifty +people are bound to get in who are not angels in disguise, as young Hicks +the correspondent says; but still it is a very good average; very good +indeed. As long as it averages as well as that, I think we can feel very +well satisfied. Even in these days, when people growl so much and the +newspapers are so out of patience, there is still a very respectable +minority of honest men in Congress." + +"Why a respectable minority of honest men can't do any good, Colonel." + +"Oh, yes it can, too" + +"Why, how?" + +"Oh, in many ways, many ways." + +"But what are the ways?" + +"Well--I don't know--it is a question that requires time; a body can't +answer every question right off-hand. But it does do good. I am +satisfied of that." + +"All right, then; grant that it does good; go on with the preliminaries." + +"That is what I am coming to. First, as I said, they will try a lot of +members for taking money for votes. That will take four weeks." + +"Yes, that's like last year; and it is a sheer waste of the time for +which the nation pays those men to work--that is what that is. And it +pinches when a body's got a bill waiting." + +"A waste of time, to purify the fountain of public law? Well, I never +heard anybody express an idea like that before. But if it were, it would +still be the fault of the minority, for the majority don't institute +these proceedings. There is where that minority becomes an obstruction +--but still one can't say it is on the wrong side.--Well, after they have +finished the bribery cases, they will take up cases of members who have +bought their seats with money. That will take another four weeks." + +"Very good; go on. You have accounted for two-thirds of the session." + +"Next they will try each other for various smaller irregularities, like +the sale of appointments to West Point cadetships, and that sort of +thing--mere trifling pocket-money enterprises that might better, be +passed over in silence, perhaps, but then one of our Congresses can never +rest easy till it has thoroughly purified itself of all blemishes--and +that is a thing to be applauded." + +"How long does it take to disinfect itself of these minor impurities?" + +"Well, about two weeks, generally." + +"So Congress always lies helpless in quarantine ten weeks of a session. +That's encouraging. Colonel, poor Laura will never get any benefit from +our bill. Her trial will be over before Congress has half purified +itself.--And doesn't it occur to you that by the time it has expelled all +its impure members there, may not be enough members left to do business +legally?" + +"Why I did not say Congress would expel anybody." + +"Well won't it expel anybody?" + +"Not necessarily. Did it last year? It never does. That would not be +regular." + +"Then why waste all the session in that tomfoolery of trying members?" + +"It is usual; it is customary; the country requires it." + +"Then the country is a fool, I think." + +"Oh, no. The country thinks somebody is going to be expelled." + +"Well, when nobody is expelled, what does the country think then?" + +"By that time, the thing has strung out so long that the country is sick +and tired of it and glad to have a change on any terms. But all that +inquiry is not lost. It has a good moral effect." + +"Who does it have a good moral effect on?" + +"Well--I don't know. On foreign countries, I think. We have always been +under the gaze of foreign countries. There is no country in the world, +sir, that pursues corruption as inveterately as we do. There is no +country in the world whose representatives try each other as much as ours +do, or stick to it as long on a stretch. I think there is something +great in being a model for the whole civilized world, Washington" + +"You don't mean a model; you mean an example." + +"Well, it's all the same; it's just the same thing. It shows that a man +can't be corrupt in this country without sweating for it, I can tell you +that." + +"Hang it, Colonel, you just said we never punish anybody for villainous +practices." + +"But good God we try them, don't we! Is it nothing to show a disposition +to sift things and bring people to a strict account? I tell you it has +its effect." + +"Oh, bother the effect!--What is it they do do? How do they proceed? +You know perfectly well--and it is all bosh, too. Come, now, how do they +proceed?" + +"Why they proceed right and regular--and it ain't bosh, Washington, it +ain't bosh. They appoint a committee to investigate, and that committee +hears evidence three weeks, and all the witnesses on one side swear that +the accused took money or stock or something for his vote. Then the +accused stands up and testifies that he may have done it, but he was +receiving and handling a good deal of money at the time and he doesn't +remember this particular circumstance--at least with sufficient +distinctness to enable him to grasp it tangibly. So of course the thing +is not proven--and that is what they say in the verdict. They don't +acquit, they don't condemn. They just say, 'Charge not proven.' It +leaves the accused is a kind of a shaky condition before the country, +it purifies Congress, it satisfies everybody, and it doesn't seriously +hurt anybody. It has taken a long time to perfect our system, but it is +the most admirable in the world, now." + +"So one of those long stupid investigations always turns out in that lame +silly way. Yes, you are correct. I thought maybe you viewed the matter +differently from other people. Do you think a Congress of ours could +convict the devil of anything if he were a member?" + +"My dear boy, don't let these damaging delays prejudice you against +Congress. Don't use such strong language; you talk like a newspaper. +Congress has inflicted frightful punishments on its members--now you know +that. When they tried Mr. Fairoaks, and a cloud of witnesses proved him +to be--well, you know what they proved him to be--and his own testimony +and his own confessions gave him the same character, what did Congress do +then?--come!" + +"Well, what did Congress do?" + +"You know what Congress did, Washington. Congress intimated plainly +enough, that they considered him almost a stain upon their body; and +without waiting ten days, hardly, to think the thing over, the rose up +and hurled at him a resolution declaring that they disapproved of his +conduct! Now you know that, Washington." + +"It was a terrific thing--there is no denying that. If he had been +proven guilty of theft, arson, licentiousness, infanticide, and defiling +graves, I believe they would have suspended him for two days." + +"You can depend on it, Washington. Congress is vindictive, Congress is +savage, sir, when it gets waked up once. It will go to any length to +vindicate its honor at such a time." + +"Ah well, we have talked the morning through, just as usual in these +tiresome days of waiting, and we have reached the same old result; that +is to say, we are no better off than when we began. The land bill is +just as far away as ever, and the trial is closer at hand. Let's give up +everything and die." + +"Die and leave the Duchess to fight it out all alone? Oh, no, that won't +do. Come, now, don't talk so. It is all going to come out right. Now +you'll see." + +"It never will, Colonel, never in the world. Something tells me that. +I get more tired and more despondent every day. I don't see any hope; +life is only just a trouble. I am so miserable, these days!" + +The Colonel made Washington get up and walk the floor with him, arm in +arm. The good old speculator wanted to comfort him, but he hardly knew +how to go about it. He made many attempts, but they were lame; they +lacked spirit; the words were encouraging; but they were only words--he +could not get any heart into them. He could not always warm up, now, +with the old Hawkeye fervor. By and by his lips trembled and his voice +got unsteady. He said: + +"Don't give up the ship, my boy--don't do it. The wind's bound to fetch +around and set in our favor. I know it." + +And the prospect was so cheerful that he wept. Then he blew a +trumpet-blast that started the meshes of his handkerchief, and said in +almost his breezy old-time way: + +"Lord bless us, this is all nonsense! Night doesn't last always; day has +got to break some time or other. Every silver lining has a cloud behind +it, as the poet says; and that remark has always cheered me; though +--I never could see any meaning to it. Everybody uses it, though, and +everybody gets comfort out of it. I wish they would start something +fresh. Come, now, let's cheer up; there's been as good fish in the sea +as there are now. It shall never be said that Beriah Sellers +--Come in?" + +It was the telegraph boy. The Colonel reached for the message and +devoured its contents: + +"I said it! Never give up the ship! The trial's, postponed till +February, and we'll save the child yet. Bless my life, what lawyers +they, have in New-York! Give them money to fight with; and the ghost of +an excuse, and they: would manage to postpone anything in this world, +unless it might be the millennium or something like that. Now for work +again my boy. The trial will last to the middle of March, sure; Congress +ends the fourth of March. Within three days of the end of the session +they will be done putting through the preliminaries then they will be +ready for national business: Our bill will go through in forty-eight +hours, then, and we'll telegraph a million dollar's to the jury--to the +lawyers, I mean--and the verdict of the jury will be 'Accidental murder +resulting from justifiable insanity'--or something to, that effect, +something to that effect.--Everything is dead sure, now. Come, what is +the matter? What are you wilting down like that, for? You mustn't be a +girl, you know." + +"Oh, Colonel, I am become so used to troubles, so used to failures, +disappointments, hard luck of all kinds, that a little good news breaks +me right down. Everything has been so hopeless that now I can't stand +good news at all. It is too good to be true, anyway. Don't you see how +our bad luck has worked on me? My hair is getting gray, and many nights +I don't sleep at all. I wish it was all over and we could rest. I wish +we could lie, down and just forget everything, and let it all be just a +dream that is done and can't come back to trouble us any more. I am so +tired." + +"Ah, poor child, don't talk like that-cheer up--there's daylight ahead. +Don't give, up. You'll have Laura again, and--Louise, and your mother, +and oceans and oceans of money--and then you can go away, ever so far +away somewhere, if you want to, and forget all about this infernal place. +And by George I'll go with you! I'll go with you--now there's my word on +it. Cheer up. I'll run out and tell the friends the news." + +And he wrung Washington's hand and was about to hurry away when his +companion, in a burst of grateful admiration said: + +"I think you are the best soul and the noblest I ever knew, Colonel +Sellers! and if the people only knew you as I do, you would not be +tagging around here a nameless man--you would be in Congress." + +The gladness died out of the Colonel's face, and he laid his hand upon +Washington's shoulder and said gravely: + +"I have always been a friend of your family, Washington, and I think I +have always tried to do right as between man and man, according to my +lights. Now I don't think there has ever been anything in my conduct +that should make you feel Justified in saying a thing like that." + +He turned, then, and walked slowly out, leaving Washington abashed and +somewhat bewildered. When Washington had presently got his thoughts into +line again, he said to himself, "Why, honestly, I only meant to +compliment him--indeed I would not have hurt him for the world." + + + + +CHAPTER LII. + +The weeks drifted by monotonously enough, now. The "preliminaries" +continued to drag along in Congress, and life was a dull suspense to +Sellers and Washington, a weary waiting which might have broken their +hearts, maybe, but for the relieving change which they got out of am +occasional visit to New York to see Laura. Standing guard in Washington +or anywhere else is not an exciting business in time of peace, but +standing guard was all that the two friends had to do; all that was +needed of them was that they should be on hand and ready for any +emergency that might come up. There was no work to do; that was all +finished; this was but the second session of the last winter's Congress, +and its action on the bill could have but one result--its passage. The +house must do its work over again, of course, but the same membership was +there to see that it did it.--The Senate was secure--Senator Dilworthy +was able to put all doubts to rest on that head. Indeed it was no secret +in Washington that a two-thirds vote in the Senate was ready and waiting +to be cast for the University bill as soon as it should come before that +body. + +Washington did not take part in the gaieties of "the season," as he had +done the previous winter. He had lost his interest in such things; he +was oppressed with cares, now. Senator Dilworthy said to Washington that +an humble deportment, under punishment, was best, and that there was but +one way in which the troubled heart might find perfect repose and peace. +The suggestion found a response in Washington's breast, and the Senator +saw the sign of it in his face. + +From that moment one could find the youth with the Senator even oftener +than with Col. Sellers. When the statesman presided at great temperance +meetings, he placed Washington in the front rank of impressive +dignitaries that gave tone to the occasion and pomp to the platform. +His bald headed surroundings made the youth the more conspicuous. + +When the statesman made remarks in these meetings, he not infrequently +alluded with effect to the encouraging spectacle of one of the wealthiest +and most brilliant young favorites of society forsaking the light +vanities of that butterfly existence to nobly and self-sacrificingly +devote his talents and his riches to the cause of saving his hapless +fellow creatures from shame and misery here and eternal regret hereafter. +At the prayer meetings the Senator always brought Washington up the aisle +on his arm and seated him prominently; in his prayers he referred to him +in the cant terms which the Senator employed, perhaps unconsciously, and +mistook, maybe, for religion, and in other ways brought him into notice. +He had him out at gatherings for the benefit of the negro, gatherings for +the benefit of the Indian, gatherings for the benefit of the heathen in +distant lands. He had him out time and again, before Sunday Schools, +as an example for emulation. Upon all these occasions the Senator made +casual references to many benevolent enterprises which his ardent young +friend was planning against the day when the passage of the University +bill should make his means available for the amelioration of the +condition of the unfortunate among his fellow men of all nations and all. +climes. Thus as the weeks rolled on Washington grew up, into an imposing +lion once more, but a lion that roamed the peaceful fields of religion +and temperance, and revisited the glittering domain of fashion no more. +A great moral influence was thus brought, to bear in favor of the bill; +the weightiest of friends flocked to its standard; its most energetic +enemies said it was useless to fight longer; they had tacitly surrendered +while as yet the day of battle was not come. + + + + +CHAPTER LIII. + +The session was drawing toward its close. Senator Dilworthy thought he +would run out west and shake hands with his constituents and let them +look at him. The legislature whose duty it would be to re-elect him to +the United States Senate, was already in session. Mr. Dilworthy +considered his re-election certain, but he was a careful, painstaking +man, and if, by visiting his State he could find the opportunity to +persuade a few more legislators to vote for him, he held the journey to +be well worth taking. The University bill was safe, now; he could leave +it without fear; it needed his presence and his watching no longer. +But there was a person in his State legislature who did need watching +--a person who, Senator Dilworthy said, was a narrow, grumbling, +uncomfortable malcontent--a person who was stolidly opposed to reform, +and progress and him,--a person who, he feared, had been bought with +money to combat him, and through him the commonwealth's welfare and its +politics' purity. + +"If this person Noble," said Mr. Dilworthy, in a little speech at a +dinner party given him by some of his admirers, "merely desired to +sacrifice me.--I would willingly offer up my political life on the altar +of my dear State's weal, I would be glad and grateful to do it; but when +he makes of me but a cloak to hide his deeper designs, when he proposes +to strike through me at the heart of my beloved State, all the lion in me +is roused--and I say here I stand, solitary and alone, but unflinching, +unquailing, thrice armed with my sacred trust; and whoso passes, to do +evil to this fair domain that looks to me for protection, must do so over +my dead body." + +He further said that if this Noble were a pure man, and merely misguided, +he could bear it, but that he should succeed in his wicked designs +through, a base use of money would leave a blot upon his State which +would work untold evil to the morals of the people, and that he would not +suffer; the public morals must not be contaminated. He would seek this +man Noble; he would argue, he would persuade, he would appeal to his +honor. + +When he arrived on the ground he found his friends unterrified; they were +standing firmly by him and were full of courage. Noble was working hard, +too, but matters were against him, he was not making much progress. +Mr. Dilworthy took an early opportunity to send for Mr. Noble; he had a +midnight interview with him, and urged him to forsake his evil ways; he +begged him to come again and again, which he did. He finally sent the +man away at 3 o'clock one morning; and when he was gone, Mr. Dilworthy +said to himself, + +"I feel a good deal relieved, now, a great deal relieved." + +The Senator now turned his attention to matters touching the souls of his +people. He appeared in church; he took a leading part in prayer +meetings; he met and encouraged the temperance societies; he graced the +sewing circles of the ladies with his presence, and even took a needle +now and then and made a stitch or two upon a calico shirt for some poor +Bibleless pagan of the South Seas, and this act enchanted the ladies, +who regarded the garments thus honored as in a manner sanctified. +The Senator wrought in Bible classes, and nothing could keep him away +from the Sunday Schools--neither sickness nor storms nor weariness. +He even traveled a tedious thirty miles in a poor little rickety +stagecoach to comply with the desire of the miserable hamlet of +Cattleville that he would let its Sunday School look upon him. + +All the town was assembled at the stage office when he arrived, +two bonfires were burning, and a battery of anvils was popping exultant +broadsides; for a United States Senator was a sort of god in the +understanding of these people who never had seen any creature mightier +than a county judge. To them a United States Senator was a vast, vague +colossus, an awe inspiring unreality. + +Next day everybody was at the village church a full half hour before time +for Sunday School to open; ranchmen and farmers had come with their +families from five miles around, all eager to get a glimpse of the great +man--the man who had been to Washington; the man who had seen the +President of the United States, and had even talked with him; the man who +had seen the actual Washington Monument--perhaps touched it with his +hands. + +When the Senator arrived the Church was crowded, the windows were full, +the aisles were packed, so was the vestibule, and so indeed was the yard +in front of the building. As he worked his way through to the pulpit on +the arm of the minister and followed by the envied officials of the +village, every neck was stretched and, every eye twisted around +intervening obstructions to get a glimpse. Elderly people directed each +other's attention and, said, "There! that's him, with the grand, noble +forehead!" Boys nudged each other and said, "Hi, Johnny, here he is, +there, that's him, with the peeled head!" + +The Senator took his seat in the pulpit, with the minister' on one side +of him and the Superintendent of the Sunday School on the other. +The town dignitaries sat in an impressive row within the altar railings +below. The Sunday School children occupied ten of the front benches. +dressed in their best and most uncomfortable clothes, and with hair +combed and faces too clean to feel natural. So awed were they by the +presence of a living United States Senator, that during three minutes not +a "spit ball" was thrown. After that they began to come to themselves by +degrees, and presently the spell was wholly gone and they were reciting +verses and pulling hair. + +The usual Sunday School exercises were hurried through, and then the +minister, got up and bored the house with a speech built on the customary +Sunday School plan; then the Superintendent put in his oar; then the town +dignitaries had their say. They all made complimentary reference to +"their friend the, Senator," and told what a great and illustrious man he +was and what he had done for his country and for religion and temperance, +and exhorted the little boys to be good and diligent and try to become +like him some day. The speakers won the deathless hatred of the house by +these delays, but at last there was an end and hope revived; inspiration +was about to find utterance. + +Senator Dilworthy rose and beamed upon the assemblage for a full minute +in silence. Then he smiled with an access of sweetness upon the children +and began: + +"My little friends--for I hope that all these bright-faced little people +are my friends and will let me be their friend--my little friends, I have +traveled much, I have been in many cities and many States, everywhere in +our great and noble country, and by the blessing of Providence I have +been permitted to see many gatherings like this--but I am proud, I am +truly proud to say that I never have looked upon so much intelligence, +so much grace, such sweetness of disposition as I see in the charming +young countenances I see before me at this moment. I have been asking +myself as I sat here, Where am I? Am I in some far-off monarchy, looking +upon little princes and princesses? No. Am I in some populous centre of +my own country, where the choicest children of the land have been +selected and brought together as at a fair for a prize? No. Am I in +some strange foreign clime where the children are marvels that we know +not of? No. Then where am I? Yes--where am I? I am in a simple, +remote, unpretending settlement of my own dear State, and these are the +children of the noble and virtuous men who have made me what I am! +My soul is lost in wonder at the thought! And I humbly thank Him to whom +we are but as worms of the dust, that he has been pleased to call me to +serve such men! Earth has no higher, no grander position for me. Let +kings and emperors keep their tinsel crowns, I want them not; my heart is +here! + +"Again I thought, Is this a theatre? No. Is it a concert or a gilded +opera? No. Is it some other vain, brilliant, beautiful temple of +soul-staining amusement and hilarity? No. Then what is it? What did +my consciousness reply? I ask you, my little friends, What did my +consciousness reply? It replied, It is the temple of the Lord! Ah, +think of that, now. I could hardly keep the tears back, I was so +grateful. Oh, how beautiful it is to see these ranks of sunny little +faces assembled here to learn the way of life; to learn to be good; to +learn to be useful; to learn to be pious; to learn to be great and +glorious men and women; to learn to be props and pillars of the State and +shining lights in the councils and the households of the nation; to be +bearers of the banner and soldiers of the cross in the rude campaigns of +life, and raptured souls in the happy fields of Paradise hereafter. + +"Children, honor your parents and be grateful to them for providing for +you the precious privileges of a Sunday School. + +"Now my dear little friends, sit up straight and pretty--there, that's +it--and give me your attention and let me tell you about a poor little +Sunday School scholar I once knew.--He lived in the far west, and his +parents were poor. They could not give him a costly education; but they +were good and wise and they sent him to the Sunday School. He loved the +Sunday School. I hope you love your Sunday School--ah, I see by your +faces that you do! That is right! + +"Well, this poor little boy was always in his place when the bell rang, +and he always knew his lesson; for his teachers wanted him to learn and +he loved his teachers dearly. Always love your teachers, my children, +for they love you more than you can know, now. He would not let bad boys +persuade him to go to play on Sunday. There was one little bad boy who +was always trying to persuade him, but he never could. + +"So this poor little boy grew up to be a man, and had to go out in the +world, far from home and friends to earn his living. Temptations lay all +about him, and sometimes he was about to yield, but he would think of +some precious lesson he learned in his Sunday School a long time ago, and +that would save him. By and by he was elected to the legislature--Then +he did everything he could for Sunday Schools. He got laws passed for +them; he got Sunday Schools established wherever he could. + +"And by and by the people made him governor--and he said it was all owing +to the Sunday School. + +"After a while the people elected him a Representative to the Congress of +the United States, and he grew very famous.--Now temptations assailed him +on every hand. People tried to get him to drink wine; to dance, to go to +theatres; they even tried to buy his vote; but no, the memory of his +Sunday School saved him from all harm; he remembered the fate of the bad +little boy who used to try to get him to play on Sunday, and who grew up +and became a drunkard and was hanged. He remembered that, and was glad +he never yielded and played on Sunday. + +"Well, at last, what do you think happened? Why the people gave him a +towering, illustrious position, a grand, imposing position. And what do +you think it was? What should you say it was, children? It was Senator +of the United States! That poor little boy that loved his Sunday School +became that man. That man stands before you! All that he is, he owes to +the Sunday School. + +"My precious children, love your parents, love your teachers, love your +Sunday School, be pious, be obedient, be honest, be diligent, and then +you will succeed in life and be honored of all men. Above all things, +my children, be honest. Above all things be pure-minded as the snow. +Let us join in prayer." + +When Senator Dilworthy departed from Cattleville, he left three dozen +boys behind him arranging a campaign of life whose objective point was +the United States Senate. + +When be arrived at the State capital at midnight Mr. Noble came and held +a three-hours' conference with him, and then as he was about leaving +said: + +"I've worked hard, and I've got them at last. Six of them haven't got +quite back-bone enough to slew around and come right out for you on the +first ballot to-morrow; but they're going to vote against you on the +first for the sake of appearances, and then come out for you all in a +body on the second--I've fixed all that! By supper time to-morrow you'll +be re-elected. You can go to bed and sleep easy on that." + +After Mr. Noble was gone, the Senator said: + +"Well, to bring about a complexion of things like this was worth coming +West for." + + + + +CHAPTER LIV. + +The case of the State of New York against Laura Hawkins was finally set +down for trial on the 15th day of February, less than a year after the +shooting of George Selby. + +If the public had almost forgotten the existence of Laura and her crime, +they were reminded of all the details of the murder by the newspapers, +which for some days had been announcing the approaching trial. But they +had not forgotten. The sex, the age, the beauty of the prisoner; her +high social position in Washington, the unparalleled calmness with which +the crime was committed had all conspired to fix the event in the public +mind, although nearly three hundred and sixty-five subsequent murders had +occurred to vary the monotony of metropolitan life. + +No, the public read from time to time of the lovely prisoner, languishing +in the city prison, the tortured victim of the law's delay; and as the +months went by it was natural that the horror of her crime should become +a little indistinct in memory, while the heroine of it should be invested +with a sort of sentimental interest. Perhaps her counsel had calculated +on this. Perhaps it was by their advice that Laura had interested +herself in the unfortunate criminals who shared her prison confinement, +and had done not a little to relieve, from her own purse, the necessities +of some of the poor creatures. That she had done this, the public read +in the journals of the day, and the simple announcement cast a softening +light upon her character. + +The court room was crowded at an early hour, before the arrival of +judges, lawyers and prisoner. There is no enjoyment so keen to certain +minds as that of looking upon the slow torture of a human being on trial +for life, except it be an execution; there is no display of human +ingenuity, wit and power so fascinating as that made by trained lawyers +in the trial of an important case, nowhere else is exhibited such +subtlety, acumen, address, eloquence. + +All the conditions of intense excitement meet in a murder trial. The +awful issue at stake gives significance to the lightest word or look. +How the quick eyes of the spectators rove from the stolid jury to the +keen lawyers, the impassive judge, the anxious prisoner. Nothing is +lost of the sharp wrangle of the counsel on points of law, the measured +decision's of the bench; the duels between the attorneys and the +witnesses. The crowd sways with the rise and fall of the shifting, +testimony, in sympathetic interest, and hangs upon the dicta of the +judge in breathless silence. It speedily takes sides for or against +the accused, and recognizes as quickly its favorites among the lawyers. +Nothing delights it more than the sharp retort of a witness and the +discomfiture of an obnoxious attorney. A joke, even if it be a lame, +one, is no where so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder +trial. + +Within the bar the young lawyers and the privileged hangers-on filled all +the chairs except those reserved at the table for those engaged in the +case. Without, the throng occupied all the seats, the window ledges and +the standing room. The atmosphere was already something horrible. +It was the peculiar odor of a criminal court, as if it were tainted by +the presence, in different persons, of all the crimes that men and women +can commit. + +There was a little stir when the Prosecuting Attorney, with two +assistants, made his way in, seated himself at the table, and spread his +papers before him. There was more stir when the counsel of the defense +appeared. They were Mr. Braham, the senior, and Mr. Quiggle and Mr. +O'Keefe, the juniors. + +Everybody in the court room knew Mr. Braham, the great criminal lawyer, +and he was not unaware that he was the object of all eyes as he moved to +his place, bowing to his friends in the bar. A large but rather spare +man, with broad shoulders and a massive head, covered with chestnut curls +which fell down upon his coat collar and which he had a habit of shaking +as a lion is supposed to shake his mane. His face was clean shaven, +and he had a wide mouth and rather small dark eyes, set quite too near +together: Mr. Braham wore a brown frock coat buttoned across his breast, +with a rose-bud in the upper buttonhole, and light pantaloons. +A diamond stud was seen to flash from his bosom; and as he seated himself +and drew off his gloves a heavy seal ring was displayed upon his white +left hand. Mr. Braham having seated himself, deliberately surveyed the +entire house, made a remark to one of his assistants, and then taking an +ivory-handled knife from his pocket began to pare his finger nails, +rocking his chair backwards and forwards slowly. + +A moment later Judge O'Shaunnessy entered at the rear door and took his +seat in one of the chairs behind the bench; a gentleman in black +broadcloth, with sandy hair, inclined to curl, a round; reddish and +rather jovial face, sharp rather than intellectual, and with a +self-sufficient air. His career had nothing remarkable in it. He was +descended from a long line of Irish Kings, and he was the first one of +them who had ever come into his kingdom--the kingdom of such being the +city of New York. He had, in fact, descended so far and so low that he +found himself, when a boy, a sort of street Arab in that city; but he had +ambition and native shrewdness, and he speedily took to boot-polishing, +and newspaper hawking, became the office and errand boy of a law firm, +picked up knowledge enough to get some employment in police courts, was +admitted to the bar, became a rising young politician, went to the +legislature, and was finally elected to the bench which he now honored. +In this democratic country he was obliged to conceal his royalty under +a plebeian aspect. Judge O'Shaunnessy never had a lucrative practice nor +a large salary but he had prudently laid away money-believing that +a dependant judge can never be impartial--and he had lands and houses +to the value of three or four hundred thousand dollars. Had he not +helped to build and furnish this very Court House? Did he not know that +the very "spittoon" which his judgeship used cost the city the sum of one +thousand dollars? + +As soon as the judge was seated, the court was opened, with the "oi yis, +oi yis" of the officer in his native language, the case called, and the +sheriff was directed to bring in the prisoner. In the midst of a +profound hush Laura entered, leaning on the arm of the officer, and was +conducted to a seat by her counsel. She was followed by her mother and +by Washington Hawkins, who were given seats near her. + +Laura was very pale, but this pallor heightened the lustre of her large +eyes and gave a touching sadness to her expressive face. She was dressed +in simple black, with exquisite taste, and without an ornament. The thin +lace vail which partially covered her face did not so much conceal as +heighten her beauty. She would not have entered a drawing room with more +self-poise, nor a church with more haughty humility. There was in her +manner or face neither shame nor boldness, and when she took her seat in +fall view of half the spectators, her eyes were downcast. A murmur of +admiration ran through the room. The newspaper reporters made their +pencils fly. Mr. Braham again swept his eyes over the house as if in +approval. When Laura at length raised her eyes a little, she saw Philip +and Harry within the bar, but she gave no token of recognition. + +The clerk then read the indictment, which was in the usual form. It +charged Laura Hawkins, in effect, with the premeditated murder of George +Selby, by shooting him with a pistol, with a revolver, shotgun, rifle, +repeater, breech-loader, cannon, six-shooter, with a gun, or some other, +weapon; with killing him with a slung-shot, a bludgeon, carving knife, +bowie knife, pen knife, rolling pin, car, hook, dagger, hair pin, with a +hammer, with a screw-driver; with a nail, and with all other weapons and +utensils whatsoever, at the Southern hotel and in all other hotels and +places wheresoever, on the thirteenth day of March and all other days of +the Christian era wheresoever. + +Laura stood while the long indictment was read; and at the end, in +response to the inquiry, of the judge, she said in a clear, low voice; +"Not guilty." She sat down and the court proceeded to impanel a jury. + +The first man called was Michael Lanigan, saloon keeper. + +"Have you formed or expressed any opinion on this case, and do you know +any of the parties?" + +"Not any," said Mr. Lanigan. + +"Have you any conscientious objections to capital punishment?" + +"No, sir, not to my knowledge." + +"Have you read anything about this case?" + +"To be sure, I read the papers, y'r Honor." + +Objected to by Mr. Braham, for cause, and discharged. + +Patrick Coughlin. + +"What is your business?" + +"Well--I haven't got any particular business." + +"Haven't any particular business, eh? Well, what's your general +business? What do you do for a living?" + +"I own some terriers, sir." + +"Own some terriers, eh? Keep a rat pit?" + +"Gentlemen comes there to have a little sport. I never fit 'em, sir." + +"Oh, I see--you are probably the amusement committee of the city council. +Have you ever heard of this case?" + +"Not till this morning, sir." + +"Can you read?" + +"Not fine print, y'r Honor." + +The man was about to be sworn, when Mr. Braham asked, + +"Could your father read?" + +"The old gentleman was mighty handy at that, sir." + +Mr. Braham submitted that the man was disqualified Judge thought not. +Point argued. Challenged peremptorily, and set aside. + +Ethan Dobb, cart-driver. + +"Can you read?" + +"Yes, but haven't a habit of it." + +"Have you heard of this case?" + +"I think so--but it might be another. I have no opinion about it." + +Dist. A. "Tha--tha--there! Hold on a bit? Did anybody tell you to say +you had no opinion about it?" + +"N--n--o, sir." + +Take care now, take care. Then what suggested it to you to volunteer +that remark?" + +"They've always asked that, when I was on juries." + +All right, then. Have you any conscientious scruples about capital +punishment?" + +"Any which?" + +"Would you object to finding a person guilty--of murder on evidence?" + +"I might, sir, if I thought he wan't guilty." + +The district attorney thought he saw a point. + +"Would this feeling rather incline you against a capital conviction?" + +The juror said he hadn't any feeling, and didn't know any of the parties. +Accepted and sworn. + +Dennis Lafin, laborer. Have neither formed nor expressed an opinion. +Never had heard of the case. Believed in hangin' for them that deserved +it. Could read if it was necessary. + +Mr. Braham objected. The man was evidently bloody minded. Challenged +peremptorily. + +Larry O'Toole, contractor. A showily dressed man of the style known as +"vulgar genteel," had a sharp eye and a ready tongue. Had read the +newspaper reports of the case, but they made no impression on him. +Should be governed by the evidence. Knew no reason why he could not be +an impartial juror. + +Question by District Attorney. + +"How is it that the reports made no impression on you?" + +"Never believe anything I see in the newspapers." + +(Laughter from the crowd, approving smiles from his Honor and Mr. +Braham.) Juror sworn in. Mr. Braham whispered to O'Keefe, "that's the +man." + +Avery Hicks, pea-nut peddler. Did he ever hear of this case? The man +shook his head. + +"Can you read?" + +"No." "Any scruples about capital punishment?" + +"No." + +He was about to be sworn, when the district attorney turning to him +carelessly, remarked, + +"Understand the nature of an oath?" + +"Outside," said the man, pointing to the door. + +"I say, do you know what an oath is?" + +"Five cents," explained the man. + +"Do you mean to insult me?" roared the prosecuting officer. "Are you an +idiot?" + +"Fresh baked. I'm deefe. I don't hear a word you say." + +The man was discharged. "He wouldn't have made a bad juror, though," +whispered Braham. "I saw him looking at the prisoner sympathizingly. +That's a point you want to watch for." + +The result of the whole day's work was the selection of only two jurors. +These however were satisfactory to Mr. Braham. He had kept off all those +he did not know. No one knew better than this great criminal lawyer that +the battle was fought on the selection of the jury. The subsequent +examination of witnesses, the eloquence expended on the jury are all for +effect outside. At least that is the theory of Mr. Braham. But human +nature is a queer thing, he admits; sometimes jurors are unaccountably +swayed, be as careful as you can in choosing them. + +It was four weary days before this jury was made up, but when it was +finally complete, it did great credit to the counsel for the defence. +So far as Mr. Braham knew, only two could read, one of whom was the +foreman, Mr. Braham's friend, the showy contractor. Low foreheads and +heavy faces they all had; some had a look of animal cunning, while the +most were only stupid. The entire panel formed that boasted heritage +commonly described as the "bulwark of our liberties." + +The District Attorney, Mr. McFlinn, opened the case for the state. He +spoke with only the slightest accent, one that had been inherited but not +cultivated. He contented himself with a brief statement of the case. +The state would prove that Laura Hawkins, the prisoner at the bar, a +fiend in the form of a beautiful woman, shot dead George Selby, a +Southern gentleman, at the, time and place described. That the murder +was in cold blood, deliberate and without provocation; that it had been +long premeditated and threatened; that she had followed the deceased-from +Washington to commit it. All this would be proved by unimpeachable +witnesses. The attorney added that the duty of the jury, however painful +it might be, would be plain and simple. They were citizens, husbands, +perhaps fathers. They knew how insecure life had become in the +metropolis. Tomorrow our own wives might be widows, their own children +orphans, like the bereaved family in yonder hotel, deprived of husband +and father by the jealous hand of some murderous female. The attorney +sat down, and the clerk called?" + +"Henry Brierly." + + + + +CHAPTER LV. + +Henry Brierly took the stand. Requested by the District Attorney to tell +the jury all he knew about the killing, he narrated the circumstances +substantially as the reader already knows them. + +He accompanied Miss Hawkins to New York at her request, supposing she was +coming in relation to a bill then pending in Congress, to secure the +attendance of absent members. Her note to him was here shown. She +appeared to be very much excited at the Washington station. After she +had asked the conductor several questions, he heard her say, "He can't +escape." Witness asked her "Who?" and she replied "Nobody." Did not see +her during the night. They traveled in a sleeping car. In the morning +she appeared not to have slept, said she had a headache. In crossing the +ferry she asked him about the shipping in sight; he pointed out where the +Cunarders lay when in port. They took a cup of coffee that morning at a +restaurant. She said she was anxious to reach the Southern Hotel where +Mr. Simons, one of the absent members, was staying, before he went out. +She was entirely self-possessed, and beyond unusual excitement did not +act unnaturally. After she had fired twice at Col. Selby, she turned the +pistol towards her own breast, and witness snatched it from her. She had +seen a great deal with Selby in Washington, appeared to be infatuated +with him. + +(Cross-examined by Mr. Braham.) "Mist-er.....er Brierly!" (Mr. Braham had +in perfection this lawyer's trick of annoying a witness, by drawling out +the "Mister," as if unable to recall the name, until the witness is +sufficiently aggravated, and then suddenly, with a rising inflection, +flinging his name at him with startling unexpectedness.) "Mist-er.....er +Brierly! What is your occupation?" + +"Civil Engineer, sir." + +"Ah, civil engineer, (with a glance at the jury). Following that +occupation with Miss Hawkins?" (Smiles by the jury). + +"No, sir," said Harry, reddening. + +"How long have you known the prisoner?" + +"Two years, sir. I made her acquaintance in Hawkeye, Missouri." + +"M.....m...m. Mist-er.....er Brierly! Were you not a lover of Miss +Hawkins?" + +Objected to. "I submit, your Honor, that I have the right to establish +the relation of this unwilling witness to the prisoner." Admitted. + +"Well, sir," said Harry hesitatingly, "we were friends." + +"You act like a friend!" (sarcastically.) The jury were beginning to hate +this neatly dressed young sprig. "Mister......er....Brierly! Didn't +Miss Hawkins refuse you?" + +Harry blushed and stammered and looked at the judge. "You must answer, +sir," said His Honor. + +"She--she--didn't accept me." + +"No. I should think not. Brierly do you dare tell the jury that you had +not an interest in the removal of your rival, Col. Selby?" roared Mr. +Braham in a voice of thunder. + +"Nothing like this, sir, nothing like this," protested the witness. + +"That's all, sir," said Mr. Braham severely. + +"One word," said the District Attorney. "Had you the least suspicion of +the prisoner's intention, up to the moment of the shooting?" + +"Not the least," answered Harry earnestly. + +"Of course not, of course-not," nodded Mr. Braham to the jury. + +The prosecution then put upon the stand the other witnesses of the +shooting at the hotel, and the clerk and the attending physicians. The +fact of the homicide was clearly established. Nothing new was elicited, +except from the clerk, in reply to a question by Mr. Braham, the fact +that when the prisoner enquired for Col. Selby she appeared excited and +there was a wild look in her eyes. + +The dying deposition of Col. Selby was then produced. It set forth +Laura's threats, but there was a significant addition to it, which the +newspaper report did not have. It seemed that after the deposition was +taken as reported, the Colonel was told for the first time by his +physicians that his wounds were mortal. He appeared to be in great +mental agony and fear; and said he had not finished his deposition. +He added, with great difficulty and long pauses these words. "I--have +--not--told--all. I must tell--put--it--down--I--wronged--her. Years +--ago--I--can't see--O--God--I--deserved----" That was all. He fainted +and did not revive again. + +The Washington railway conductor testified that the prisoner had asked +him if a gentleman and his family went out on the evening train, +describing the persons he had since learned were Col. Selby and family. + +Susan Cullum, colored servant at Senator Dilworthy's, was sworn. Knew +Col. Selby. Had seen him come to the house often, and be alone in the +parlor with Miss Hawkins. He came the day but one before he was shot. +She let him in. He appeared flustered like. She heard talking in the +parlor, I peared like it was quarrelin'. Was afeared sumfin' was wrong: +Just put her ear to--the--keyhole of the back parlor-door. Heard a man's +voice, "I--can't--I can't, Good God," quite beggin' like. Heard--young +Miss' voice, "Take your choice, then. If you 'bandon me, you knows what +to 'spect." Then he rushes outen the house, I goes in--and I says, +"Missis did you ring?" She was a standin' like a tiger, her eyes +flashin'. I come right out. + +This was the substance of Susan's testimony, which was not shaken in the +least by severe cross-examination. In reply to Mr. Braham's question, if +the prisoner did not look insane, Susan said, "Lord; no, sir, just mad as +a hawnet." + +Washington Hawkins was sworn. The pistol, identified by the officer as +the one used in the homicide, was produced Washington admitted that it +was his. She had asked him for it one morning, saying she thought she +had heard burglars the night before. Admitted that he never had heard +burglars in the house. Had anything unusual happened just before that. + +Nothing that he remembered. Did he accompany her to a reception at Mrs. +Shoonmaker's a day or two before? Yes. What occurred? Little by little +it was dragged out of the witness that Laura had behaved strangely there, +appeared to be sick, and he had taken her home. Upon being pushed he +admitted that she had afterwards confessed that she saw Selby there. +And Washington volunteered the statement that Selby, was a black-hearted +villain. + +The District Attorney said, with some annoyance; "There--there! That will +do." + +The defence declined to examine Mr. Hawkins at present. The case for the +prosecution was closed. Of the murder there could not be the least +doubt, or that the prisoner followed the deceased to New York with a +murderous intent: On the evidence the jury must convict, and might do so +without leaving their seats. This was the condition of the case +two days after the jury had been selected. A week had passed since the +trial opened; and a Sunday had intervened. + +The public who read the reports of the evidence saw no chance for the +prisoner's escape. The crowd of spectators who had watched the trial +were moved with the most profound sympathy for Laura. + +Mr. Braham opened the case for the defence. His manner was subdued, and +he spoke in so low a voice that it was only by reason of perfect silence +in the court room that he could be heard. He spoke very distinctly, +however, and if his nationality could be discovered in his speech it was +only in a certain richness and breadth of tone. + +He began by saying that he trembled at the responsibility he had +undertaken; and he should, altogether despair, if he did not see before +him a jury of twelve men of rare intelligence, whose acute minds would +unravel all the sophistries of the prosecution, men with a sense, of +honor, which would revolt at the remorseless persecution of this hunted +woman by the state, men with hearts to feel for the wrongs of which she +was the victim. Far be it from him to cast any suspicion upon the +motives of the able, eloquent and ingenious lawyers of the state; they +act officially; their business is to convict. It is our business, +gentlemen, to see that justice is done. + +"It is my duty, gentlemen, to untold to you one of the most affecting +dramas in all, the history of misfortune. I shall have to show you a +life, the sport of fate and circumstances, hurried along through shifting +storm and sun, bright with trusting innocence and anon black with +heartless villainy, a career which moves on in love and desertion and +anguish, always hovered over by the dark spectre of INSANITY--an insanity +hereditary and induced by mental torture,--until it ends, if end it must +in your verdict, by one of those fearful accidents, which are inscrutable +to men and of which God alone knows the secret. + +"Gentlemen, I, shall ask you to go with me away from this court room and +its minions of the law, away from the scene of this tragedy, to a +distant, I wish I could say a happier day. The story I have to tell is +of a lovely little girl, with sunny hair and laughing eyes, traveling +with her parents, evidently people of wealth and refinement, upon a +Mississippi steamboat. There is an explosion, one of those terrible +catastrophes which leave the imprint of an unsettled mind upon the +survivors. Hundreds of mangled remains are sent into eternity. When the +wreck is cleared away this sweet little girl is found among the panic +stricken survivors in the midst of a scene of horror enough to turn the +steadiest brain. Her parents have disappeared. Search even for their +bodies is in vain. The bewildered, stricken child--who can say what +changes the fearful event wrought in her tender brain--clings to the +first person who shows her sympathy. It is Mrs. Hawkins, this good lady +who is still her loving friend. Laura is adopted into the Hawkins +family. Perhaps she forgets in time that she is not their child. She is +an orphan. No, gentlemen, I will not deceive you, she is not an orphan. +Worse than that. There comes another day of agony. She knows that her +father lives. Who is he, where is he? Alas, I cannot tell you. Through +the scenes of this painful history he flits here and there a lunatic! +If he, seeks his daughter, it is the purposeless search of a lunatic, as +one who wanders bereft of reason, crying where is my child? Laura seeks +her father. In vain just as she is about to find him, again and again-he +disappears, he is gone, he vanishes. + +"But this is only the prologue to the tragedy. Bear with me while I +relate it. (Mr. Braham takes out a handkerchief, unfolds it slowly; +crashes it in his nervous hand, and throws it on the table). Laura grew +up in her humble southern home, a beautiful creature, the joy, of the +house, the pride of the neighborhood, the loveliest flower in all the +sunny south. She might yet have been happy; she was happy. But the +destroyer came into this paradise. He plucked the sweetest bud that grew +there, and having enjoyed its odor, trampled it in the mire beneath his +feet. George Selby, the deceased, a handsome, accomplished Confederate +Colonel, was this human fiend. He deceived her with a mock marriage; +after some months he brutally, abandoned her, and spurned her as if she +were a contemptible thing; all the time he had a wife in New Orleans. +Laura was crushed. For weeks, as I shall show you by the testimony of +her adopted mother and brother, she hovered over death in delirium. +Gentlemen, did she ever emerge from this delirium? I shall show you that +when she recovered her health, her mind was changed, she was not what she +had been. You can judge yourselves whether the tottering reason ever +recovered its throne. + +"Years pass. She is in Washington, apparently the happy favorite of a +brilliant society. Her family have become enormously rich by one of +those sudden turns, in fortune that the inhabitants of America are +familiar with--the discovery of immense mineral wealth in some wild lands +owned by them. She is engaged in a vast philanthropic scheme for the +benefit of the poor, by, the use of this wealth. But, alas, even here +and now, the same, relentless fate pursued her. The villain Selby +appears again upon the scene, as if on purpose to complete the ruin of +her life. He appeared to taunt her with her dishonor, he threatened +exposure if she did not become again the mistress of his passion. +Gentlemen, do you wonder if this woman, thus pursued, lost her reason, +was beside herself with fear, and that her wrongs preyed upon her mind +until she was no longer responsible for her acts? I turn away my head as +one who would not willingly look even upon the just vengeance of Heaven. +(Mr. Braham paused as if overcome by his emotions. Mrs. Hawkins and +Washington were in tears, as were many of the spectators also. The jury +looked scared.) + +"Gentlemen, in this condition of affairs it needed but a spark--I do not +say a suggestion, I do not say a hint--from this butterfly Brierly; this +rejected rival, to cause the explosion. I make no charges, but if this +woman was in her right mind when she fled from Washington and reached +this city in company--with Brierly, then I do not know what insanity is." + +When Mr. Braham sat down, he felt that he had the jury with him. A burst +of applause followed, which the officer promptly, suppressed. Laura, +with tears in her eyes, turned a grateful look upon her counsel. All the +women among the spectators saw the tears and wept also. They thought as +they also looked at Mr. Braham; how handsome he is! + +Mrs. Hawkins took the stand. She was somewhat confused to be the target +of so many, eyes, but her honest and good face at once told in Laura's +favor. + +"Mrs. Hawkins," said Mr. Braham, "will you' be kind enough to state the +circumstances of your finding Laura?" + +"I object," said Mr. McFlinn; rising to his feet. "This has nothing +whatever to do with the case, your honor. I am surprised at it, even +after the extraordinary speech of my learned friend." + +"How do you propose to connect it, Mr. Braham?" asked the judge. + +"If it please the court," said Mr. Braham, rising impressively, "your +Honor has permitted the prosecution, and I have submitted without a word; +to go into the most extraordinary testimony to establish a motive. Are +we to be shut out from showing that the motive attributed to us could not +by reason of certain mental conditions exist? I purpose, may, it please +your Honor, to show the cause and the origin of an aberration of mind, +to follow it up, with other like evidence, connecting it with the very +moment of the homicide, showing a condition of the intellect, of the +prisoner that precludes responsibility." + +"The State must insist upon its objections," said the District Attorney. +"The purpose evidently is to open the door to a mass of irrelevant +testimony, the object of which is to produce an effect upon the jury your +Honor well understands." + +"Perhaps," suggested the judge, "the court ought to hear the testimony, +and exclude it afterwards, if it is irrelevant." + +"Will your honor hear argument on that!" + +"Certainly." + +And argument his honor did hear, or pretend to, for two whole days, +from all the counsel in turn, in the course of which the lawyers read +contradictory decisions enough to perfectly establish both sides, from +volume after volume, whole libraries in fact, until no mortal man could +say what the rules were. The question of insanity in all its legal +aspects was of course drawn into the discussion, and its application +affirmed and denied. The case was felt to turn upon the admission or +rejection of this evidence. It was a sort of test trial of strength +between the lawyers. At the end the judge decided to admit the +testimony, as the judge usually does in such cases, after a sufficient +waste of time in what are called arguments. + +Mrs. Hawkins was allowed to go on. + + + + +CHAPTER LVI. + +Mrs. Hawkins slowly and conscientiously, as if every detail of her family +history was important, told the story of the steamboat explosion, of the +finding and adoption of Laura. Silas, that its Mr. Hawkins, and she +always loved Laura, as if she had been their own, child. + +She then narrated the circumstances of Laura's supposed marriage, her +abandonment and long illness, in a manner that touched all hearts. Laura +had been a different woman since then. + +Cross-examined. At the time of first finding Laura on the steamboat, +did she notice that Laura's mind was at all deranged? She couldn't say +that she did. After the recovery of Laura from her long illness, did +Mrs. Hawkins think there, were any signs of insanity about her? Witness +confessed that she did not think of it then. + +Re-Direct examination. "But she was different after that?" + +"O, yes, sir." + +Washington Hawkins corroborated his mother's testimony as to Laura's +connection with Col. Selby. He was at Harding during the time of her +living there with him. After Col. Selby's desertion she was almost dead, +never appeared to know anything rightly for weeks. He added that he +never saw such a scoundrel as Selby. (Checked by District attorney.) +Had he noticed any change in, Laura after her illness? Oh, yes. +Whenever, any allusion was made that might recall Selby to mind, she +looked awful--as if she could kill him. + +"You mean," said Mr. Braham, "that there was an unnatural, insane gleam +in her eyes?" + +"Yes, certainly," said Washington in confusion. + +All this was objected to by the district attorney, but it was got before +the jury, and Mr. Braham did not care how much it was ruled out after +that. + +"Beriah Sellers was the next witness called. The Colonel made his way to +the stand with majestic, yet bland deliberation. Having taken the oath +and kissed the Bible with a smack intended to show his great respect for +that book, he bowed to his Honor with dignity, to the jury with +familiarity, and then turned to the lawyers and stood in an attitude of +superior attention. + +"Mr. Sellers, I believe?" began Mr. Braham. + +"Beriah Sellers, Missouri," was the courteous acknowledgment that the +lawyer was correct. + +"Mr. Sellers; you know the parties here, you are a friend of the family?" + +"Know them all, from infancy, sir. It was me, sir, that induced Silas +Hawkins, Judge Hawkins, to come to Missouri, and make his fortune. +It was by my advice and in company with me, sir, that he went into the +operation of--" + +"Yes, yes. Mr. Sellers, did you know a Major Lackland?" + +"Knew him, well, sir, knew him and honored him, sir. He was one of the +most remarkable men of our country, sir. A member of congress. He was +often at my mansion sir, for weeks. He used to say to me, 'Col. Sellers, +if you would go into politics, if I had you for a colleague, we should +show Calhoun and Webster that the brain of the country didn't lie east of +the Alleganies. But I said--" + +"Yes, yes. I believe Major Lackland is not living, Colonel?" + +There was an almost imperceptible sense of pleasure betrayed in the +Colonel's face at this prompt acknowledgment of his title. + +"Bless you, no. Died years ago, a miserable death, sir, a ruined man, +a poor sot. He was suspected of selling his vote in Congress, and +probably he did; the disgrace killed' him, he was an outcast, sir, +loathed by himself and by his constituents. And I think; sir"---- + +The Judge. "You will confine yourself, Col. Sellers to the questions of +the counsel." + +"Of course, your honor. This," continued the Colonel in confidential +explanation, "was twenty years ago. I shouldn't have thought of referring +to such a trifling circumstance now. If I remember rightly, sir"-- + +A bundle of letters was here handed to the witness. + +"Do you recognize, that hand-writing?" + +"As if it was my own, sir. It's Major Lackland's. I was knowing to these +letters when Judge Hawkins received them. [The Colonel's memory was a +little at fault here. Mr. Hawkins had never gone into detail's with him +on this subject.] He used to show them to me, and say, 'Col, Sellers +you've a mind to untangle this sort of thing.' Lord, how everything +comes back to me. Laura was a little thing then. 'The Judge and I were +just laying our plans to buy the Pilot Knob, and--" + +"Colonel, one moment. Your Honor, we put these letters in evidence." + +The letters were a portion of the correspondence of Major Lackland with +Silas Hawkins; parts of them were missing and important letters were +referred to that were not here. They related, as the reader knows, to +Laura's father. Lackland had come upon the track of a man who was +searching for a lost child in a Mississippi steamboat explosion years +before. The man was lame in one leg, and appeared to be flitting from +place to place. It seemed that Major Lackland got so close track of him +that he was able to describe his personal appearance and learn his name. +But the letter containing these particulars was lost. Once he heard of +him at a hotel in Washington; but the man departed, leaving an empty +trunk, the day before the major went there. There was something very +mysterious in all his movements. + +Col. Sellers, continuing his testimony, said that he saw this lost +letter, but could not now recall the name. Search for the supposed +father had been continued by Lackland, Hawkins and himself for several +years, but Laura was not informed of it till after the death of Hawkins, +for fear of raising false hopes in her mind. + +Here the Distract Attorney arose and said, + +"Your Honor, I must positively object to letting the witness wander off +into all these irrelevant details." + +Mr. Braham. "I submit your honor, that we cannot be interrupted in this +manner we have suffered the state to have full swing. Now here is a +witness, who has known the prisoner from infancy, and is competent to +testify upon the one point vital to her safety. Evidently he is a +gentleman of character, and his knowledge of the case cannot be shut out +without increasing the aspect of persecution which the State's attitude +towards the prisoner already has assumed." + +The wrangle continued, waxing hotter and hotter. The Colonel seeing the +attention of the counsel and Court entirely withdrawn from him, thought +he perceived here his opportunity, turning and beaming upon the jury, he +began simply to talk, but as the grandeur of his position grew upon him +--talk broadened unconsciously into an oratorical vein. + +"You see how she was situated, gentlemen; poor child, it might have +broken her, heart to let her mind get to running on such a thing as that. +You see, from what we could make out her father was lame in the left leg +and had a deep scar on his left forehead. And so ever since the day she +found out she had another father, she never could, run across a lame +stranger without being taken all over with a shiver, and almost fainting +where she, stood. And the next minute she would go right after that man. +Once she stumbled on a stranger with a game leg; and she was the most +grateful thing in this world--but it was the wrong leg, and it was days +and days before she could leave her bed. Once she found a man with a scar +on his forehead and she was just going to throw herself into his arms,` +but he stepped out just then, and there wasn't anything the matter with +his legs. Time and time again, gentlemen of the jury, has this poor +suffering orphan flung herself on her knees with all her heart's +gratitude in her eyes before some scarred and crippled veteran, but +always, always to be disappointed, always to be plunged into new +despair--if his legs were right his scar was wrong, if his scar was right +his legs were wrong. Never could find a man that would fill the bill. +Gentlemen of the jury; you have hearts, you have feelings, you have warm +human sympathies; you can feel for this poor suffering child. Gentlemen +of the jury, if I had time, if I had the opportunity, if I might be +permitted to go on and tell you the thousands and thousands and thousands +of mutilated strangers this poor girl has started out of cover, and +hunted from city to city, from state to state, from continent to +continent, till she has run them down and found they wan't the ones; I +know your hearts--" + +By this time the Colonel had become so warmed up, that his voice, had +reached a pitch above that of the contending counsel; the lawyers +suddenly stopped, and they and the Judge turned towards the Colonel and +remained far several seconds too surprised at this novel exhibition to +speak. In this interval of silence, an appreciation of the situation +gradually stole over the, audience, and an explosion of laughter +followed, in which even the Court and the bar could hardly keep from +joining. + +Sheriff. "Order in the Court." + +The Judge. "The witness will confine his remarks to answers to +questions." + +The Colonel turned courteously to the Judge and said, + +"Certainly, your Honor--certainly. I am not well acquainted with the +forms of procedure in the courts of New York, but in the West, sir, in +the West--" + +The Judge. "There, there, that will do, that will do! + +"You see, your Honor, there were no questions asked me, and I thought I +would take advantage of the lull in the proceedings to explain to the, +jury a very significant train of--" + +The Judge. "That will DO sir! Proceed Mr. Braham." + +"Col. Sellers, have you any, reason to suppose that this man is still +living?" + +"Every reason, sir, every reason. + +"State why" + +"I have never heard of his death, sir. It has never come to my +knowledge. In fact, sir, as I once said to Governor--" + +"Will you state to the jury what has been the effect of the knowledge of +this wandering and evidently unsettled being, supposed to be her father, +upon the mind of Miss Hawkins for so many years!" + +Question objected to. Question ruled out. + +Cross-examined. "Major Sellers, what is your occupation?" + +The Colonel looked about him loftily, as if casting in his mind what +would be the proper occupation of a person of such multifarious interests +and then said with dignity: + +"A gentleman, sir. My father used to always say, sir"-- + +"Capt. Sellers, did you; ever see this man, this supposed father?" + +"No, Sir. But upon one occasion, old Senator Thompson said to me, its my +opinion, Colonel Sellers"-- + +"Did you ever see any body who had seen him?" + +"No, sir: It was reported around at one time, that"-- + +"That is all." + +The defense then sent a day in the examination of medical experts in +insanity who testified, on the evidence heard, that sufficient causes had +occurred to produce an insane mind in the prisoner. Numerous cases were +cited to sustain this opinion. There was such a thing as momentary +insanity, in which the person, otherwise rational to all appearances, +was for the time actually bereft of reason, and not responsible for his +acts. The causes of this momentary possession could often be found in +the person's life. [It afterwards came out that the chief expert for the +defense, was paid a thousand dollars for looking into the case.] + +The prosecution consumed another day in the examination of experts +refuting the notion of insanity. These causes might have produced +insanity, but there was no evidence that they have produced it in this +case, or that the prisoner was not at the time of the commission of the +crime in full possession of her ordinary faculties. + +The trial had now lasted two weeks. It required four days now for the +lawyers to "sum up." These arguments of the counsel were very important +to their friends, and greatly enhanced their reputation at the bar but +they have small interest to us. Mr. Braham in his closing speech +surpassed himself; his effort is still remembered as the greatest in the +criminal annals of New York. + +Mr. Braham re-drew for the jury the picture, of Laura's early life; he +dwelt long upon that painful episode of the pretended marriage and the +desertion. Col. Selby, he said, belonged, gentlemen; to what is called +the "upper classes:" It is the privilege of the "upper classes" to prey +upon the sons and daughters of the people. The Hawkins family, though +allied to the best blood of the South, were at the time in humble +circumstances. He commented upon her parentage. Perhaps her agonized +father, in his intervals of sanity, was still searching for his lost +daughter. Would he one day hear that she had died a felon's death? +Society had pursued her, fate had pursued her, and in a moment of +delirium she had turned and defied fate and society. He dwelt upon the +admission of base wrong in Col. Selby's dying statement. He drew a +vivid, picture of the villain at last overtaken by the vengeance of +Heaven. Would the jury say that this retributive justice, inflicted by +an outraged, and deluded woman, rendered irrational by the most cruel +wrongs, was in the nature of a foul, premeditated murder? "Gentlemen; +it is enough for me to look upon the life of this most beautiful and +accomplished of her sex, blasted by the heartless villainy of man, +without seeing, at the-end of it; the horrible spectacle of a gibbet. +Gentlemen, we are all human, we have all sinned, we all have need of +mercy. But I do not ask mercy of you who are the guardians of society +and of the poor waifs, its sometimes wronged victims; I ask only that +justice which you and I shall need in that last, dreadful hour, when +death will be robbed of half its terrors if we can reflect that we have +never wronged a human being. Gentlemen, the life of this lovely and once +happy girl, this now stricken woman, is in your hands." + +The jury were risibly affected. Half the court room was in tears. If a +vote of both spectators and jury could have been taken then, the verdict +would have been, "let her go, she has suffered enough." + +But the district attorney had the closing argument. Calmly and without +malice or excitement he reviewed the testimony. As the cold facts were +unrolled, fear settled upon the listeners. There was no escape from the +murder or its premeditation. Laura's character as a lobbyist in +Washington which had been made to appear incidentally in the evidence was +also against her: the whole body of the testimony of the defense was +shown to be irrelevant, introduced only to excite sympathy, and not +giving a color of probability to the absurd supposition of insanity. +The attorney then dwelt upon, the insecurity of life in the city, and the +growing immunity with which women committed murders. Mr. McFlinn made a +very able speech; convincing the reason without touching the feelings. + +The Judge in his charge reviewed the, testimony with great show of +impartiality. He ended by saying that the verdict must be acquittal or +murder in the first, degree. If you find that the prisoner committed a +homicide, in possession of her reason and with premeditation, your +verdict will be accordingly. If you find she was not in her right mind, +that she was the victim of insanity, hereditary or momentary, as it has +been explained, your verdict will take that into account. + +As the Judge finished his charge, the spectators anxiously watched the +faces of the jury. It was not a remunerative study. In the court room +the general feeling was in favor of Laura, but whether this feeling +extended to the jury, their stolid faces did not reveal. The public +outside hoped for a conviction, as it always does; it wanted an example; +the newspapers trusted the jury would have the courage to do its duty. +When Laura was convicted, then the public would tern around and abuse the +governor if he did; not pardon her. + +The jury went out. Mr. Braham preserved his serene confidence, but +Laura's friends were dispirited. Washington and Col. Sellers had been +obliged to go to Washington, and they had departed under the unspoken +fear the verdict would be unfavorable, a disagreement was the best they +could hope for, and money was needed. The necessity of the passage of +the University bill was now imperative. + +The Court waited, for, some time, but the jury gave no signs of coming +in. Mr. Braham said it was extraordinary. The Court then took a recess +for a couple of hours. Upon again coming in, word was brought that the +jury had not yet agreed. + +But the, jury, had a question. The point upon which, they wanted +instruction was this. They wanted to know if Col. Sellers was related to +the Hawkins family. The court then adjourned till morning. + +Mr. Braham, who was in something of a pet, remarked to Mr. O'Toole that +they must have been deceived, that juryman with the broken nose could +read! + + + + +CHAPTER LVII. + +The momentous day was at hand--a day that promised to make or mar the +fortunes of Hawkins family for all time. Washington Hawkins and Col. +Sellers were both up early, for neither of them could sleep. Congress +was expiring, and was passing bill after bill as if they were gasps and +each likely to be its last. The University was on file for its third +reading this day, and to-morrow Washington would be a millionaire and +Sellers no longer, impecunious but this day, also, or at farthest the +next, the jury in Laura's Case would come to a decision of some kind or +other--they would find her guilty, Washington secretly feared, and then +the care and the trouble would all come back again, and these would be +wearing months of besieging judges for new trials; on this day, also, the +re-election of Mr. Dilworthy to the Senate would take place. So +Washington's mind was in a state of turmoil; there were more interests at +stake than it could handle with serenity. He exulted when he thought of +his millions; he was filled with dread when he thought of Laura. But +Sellers was excited and happy. He said: + +"Everything is going right, everything's going perfectly right. Pretty +soon the telegrams will begin to rattle in, and then you'll see, my boy. +Let the jury do what they please; what difference is it going to make? +To-morrow we can send a million to New York and set the lawyers at work +on the judges; bless your heart they will go before judge after judge and +exhort and beseech and pray and shed tears. They always do; and they +always win, too. And they will win this time. They will get a writ of +habeas corpus, and a stay of proceedings, and a supersedeas, and a new +trial and a nolle prosequi, and there you are! That's the routine, and +it's no trick at all to a New York lawyer. That's the regular routine +--everything's red tape and routine in the law, you see; it's all Greek +to you, of course, but to a man who is acquainted with those things it's +mere--I'll explain it to you sometime. Everything's going to glide right +along easy and comfortable now. You'll see, Washington, you'll see how +it will be. And then, let me think ..... Dilwortby will be elected +to-day, and by day, after to-morrow night be will be in New York ready to +put in his shovel--and you haven't lived in Washington all this time not +to know that the people who walk right by a Senator whose term is up +without hardly seeing him will be down at the deepo to say 'Welcome back +and God bless you; Senator, I'm glad to see you, sir!' when he comes +along back re-elected, you know. Well, you see, his influence was +naturally running low when he left here, but now he has got a new +six-years' start, and his suggestions will simply just weigh a couple of +tons a-piece day after tomorrow. Lord bless you he could rattle through +that habeas corpus and supersedeas and all those things for Laura all by +himself if he wanted to, when he gets back." + +"I hadn't thought of that," said Washington, brightening, but it is so. +A newly-elected Senator is a power, I know that." + +"Yes indeed he is.--Why it, is just human nature. Look at me. When we +first came here, I was Mr. Sellers, and Major Sellers, Captain Sellers, +but nobody could ever get it right, somehow; but the minute our bill +went, through the House, I was Col. Sellers every time. And nobody could +do enough for me, and whatever I said was wonderful, Sir, it was always +wonderful; I never seemed to say any flat things at all. It was Colonel, +won't you come and dine with us; and Colonel why don't we ever see you at +our house; and the Colonel says this; and the Colonel says that; and we +know such-and-such is so-and-so because my husband heard Col. Sellers say +so. Don't you see? Well, the Senate adjourned and left our bill high, +and dry, and I'll be hanged if I warn't Old Sellers from that day, till +our bill passed the House again last week. Now I'm the Colonel again; +and if I were to eat all the dinners I am invited to, I reckon I'd wear +my teeth down level with my gums in a couple of weeks." + +"Well I do wonder what you will be to-morrow; Colonel, after the +President signs the bill!" + +"General, sir?--General, without a doubt. Yes, sir, tomorrow it will be +General, let me congratulate you, sir; General, you've done a great work, +sir;--you've done a great work for the niggro; Gentlemen allow me the +honor to introduce my friend General Sellers, the humane friend of the +niggro. Lord bless me; you'll' see the newspapers say, General Sellers +and servants arrived in the city last night and is stopping at the Fifth +Avenue; and General Sellers has accepted a reception and banquet by the +Cosmopolitan Club; you'll see the General's opinions quoted, too +--and what the General has to say about the propriety of a new trial and +a habeas corpus for the unfortunate Miss Hawkins will not be without +weight in influential quarters, I can tell you." + +"And I want to be the first to shake your faithful old hand and salute +you with your new honors, and I want to do it now--General!" said +Washington, suiting the action to the word, and accompanying it with all +the meaning that a cordial grasp and eloquent eyes could give it. + +The Colonel was touched; he was pleased and proud, too; his face answered +for that. + +Not very long after breakfast the telegrams began to arrive. The first +was from Braham, and ran thus: + + "We feel certain that the verdict will be rendered to-day. Be it + good or bad, let it find us ready to make the next move instantly, + whatever it may be:" + +"That's the right talk," said Sellers. "That Graham's a wonderful man. +He was the only man there that really understood me; he told me so +himself, afterwards." + +The next telegram was from Mr. Dilworthy: + + "I have not only brought over the Great Invincible, but through him + a dozen more of the opposition. Shall be re-elected to-day by an + overwhelming majority." + +"Good again!" said the Colonel. "That man's talent for organization is +something marvelous. He wanted me to go out there and engineer that +thing, but I said, No, Dilworthy, I must be on hand here,--both on +Laura's account and the bill's--but you've no trifling genius for +organization yourself, said I--and I was right. You go ahead, said I +--you can fix it--and so he has. But I claim no credit for that--if I +stiffened up his back-bone a little, I simply put him in the way to make +his fight--didn't undertake it myself. He has captured Noble--. +I consider that a splendid piece of diplomacy--Splendid, Sir!" + +By and by came another dispatch from New York: + +"Jury still out. Laura calm and firm as a statue. The report that the +jury have brought her in guilty is false and premature." + +"Premature!" gasped Washington, turning white. "Then they all expect +that sort of a verdict, when it comes in." + +And so did he; but he had not had courage enough to put it into words. +He had been preparing himself for the worst, but after all his +preparation the bare suggestion of the possibility of such a verdict +struck him cold as death. + +The friends grew impatient, now; the telegrams did not come fast enough: +even the lightning could not keep up with their anxieties. They walked +the floor talking disjointedly and listening for the door-bell. Telegram +after telegram came. Still no result. By and by there was one which +contained a single line: + +"Court now coming in after brief recess to hear verdict. Jury ready." + +"Oh, I wish they would finish!" said Washington. "This suspense is +killing me by inches!" + +Then came another telegram: + +"Another hitch somewhere. Jury want a little more time and further +instructions." + +"Well, well, well, this is trying," said the Colonel. And after a pause, +"No dispatch from Dilworthy for two hours, now. Even a dispatch from him +would be better than nothing, just to vary this thing." + +They waited twenty minutes. It seemed twenty hours. + +"Come!" said Washington. "I can't wait for the telegraph boy to come all +the way up here. Let's go down to Newspaper Row--meet him on the way." + +While they were passing along the Avenue, they saw someone putting up a +great display-sheet on the bulletin board of a newspaper office, and an +eager crowd of men was collecting abort the place. Washington and the +Colonel ran to the spot and read this: + +"Tremendous Sensation! Startling news from Saint's Rest! On first ballot +for U. S. Senator, when voting was about to begin, Mr. Noble rose in his +place and drew forth a package, walked forward and laid it on the +Speaker's desk, saying, 'This contains $7,000 in bank bills and was given +me by Senator Dilworthy in his bed-chamber at midnight last night to buy +--my vote for him--I wish the Speaker to count the money and retain it to +pay the expense of prosecuting this infamous traitor for bribery. The +whole legislature was stricken speechless with dismay and astonishment. +Noble further said that there were fifty members present with money in +their pockets, placed there by Dilworthy to buy their votes. Amidst +unparalleled excitement the ballot was now taken, and J. W. Smith elected +U. S. Senator; Dilworthy receiving not one vote! Noble promises damaging +exposures concerning Dilworthy and certain measures of his now pending in +Congress. + +"Good heavens and earth!" exclaimed the Colonel. + +"To the Capitol!" said Washington. "Fly!" + +And they did fly. Long before they got there the newsboys were running +ahead of them with Extras, hot from the press, announcing the astounding +news. + +Arrived in the gallery of the Senate, the friends saw a curious spectacle +very Senator held an Extra in his hand and looked as interested as if it +contained news of the destruction of the earth. Not a single member was +paying the least attention to the business of the hour. + +The Secretary, in a loud voice, was just beginning to read the title of a +bill: + +"House-Bill--No. 4,231,--An-Act-to-Found-and-Incorporate-the Knobs- +Industrial-University!--Read-first-and-second-time-considered-in- +committee-of-the-whole-ordered-engrossed and-passed-to-third-reading-and- +final passage!" + +The President--"Third reading of the bill!" + +The two friends shook in their shoes. Senators threw down their extras +and snatched a word or two with each other in whispers. Then the gavel +rapped to command silence while the names were called on the ayes and +nays. Washington grew paler and paler, weaker and weaker while the +lagging list progressed; and when it was finished, his head fell +helplessly forward on his arms. The fight was fought, the long struggle +was over, and he was a pauper. Not a man had voted for the bill! + +Col. Sellers was bewildered and well nigh paralyzed, himself. But no man +could long consider his own troubles in the presence of such suffering as +Washington's. He got him up and supported him--almost carried him +indeed--out of the building and into a carriage. All the way home +Washington lay with his face against the Colonel's shoulder and merely +groaned and wept. The Colonel tried as well as he could under the dreary +circumstances to hearten him a little, but it was of no use. Washington +was past all hope of cheer, now. He only said: + +"Oh, it is all over--it is all over for good, Colonel. We must beg our +bread, now. We never can get up again. It was our last chance, and it +is gone. They will hang Laura! My God they will hang her! Nothing can +save the poor girl now. Oh, I wish with all my soul they would hang me +instead!" + +Arrived at home, Washington fell into a chair and buried his face in his +hands and gave full way to his misery. The Colonel did not know where to +turn nor what to do. The servant maid knocked at the door and passed in +a telegram, saying it had come while they were gone. + +The Colonel tore it open and read with the voice of a man-of-war's +broadside: + +"VERDICT OF JURY, NOT GUILTY AND LAURA IS FREE!" + + + + +CHAPTER LVIII. + +The court room was packed on the morning on which the verdict of the jury +was expected, as it had been every day of the trial, and by the same +spectators, who had followed its progress with such intense interest. + +There is a delicious moment of excitement which the frequenter of trials +well knows, and which he would not miss for the world. It is that +instant when the foreman of the jury stands up to give the verdict, +and before he has opened his fateful lips. + +The court assembled and waited. It was an obstinate jury. + +It even had another question--this intelligent jury--to ask the judge +this morning. + +The question was this: "Were the doctors clear that the deceased had no +disease which might soon have carried him off, if he had not been shot?" +There was evidently one jury man who didn't want to waste life, and was +willing to stake a general average, as the jury always does in a civil +case, deciding not according to the evidence but reaching the verdict by +some occult mental process. + +During the delay the spectators exhibited unexampled patience, finding +amusement and relief in the slightest movements of the court, the +prisoner and the lawyers. Mr. Braham divided with Laura the attention +of the house. Bets were made by the Sheriff's deputies on the verdict, +with large odds in favor of a disagreement. + +It was afternoon when it was announced that the jury was coming in. +The reporters took their places and were all attention; the judge and +lawyers were in their seats; the crowd swayed and pushed in eager +expectancy, as the jury walked in and stood up in silence. + +Judge. "Gentlemen, have you agreed upon your verdict?" + +Foreman. "We have." + +Judge. "What is it?" + +Foreman. "NOT GUILTY." + +A shout went up from the entire room and a tumult of cheering which the +court in vain attempted to quell. For a few moments all order was lost. +The spectators crowded within the bar and surrounded Laura who, calmer +than anyone else, was supporting her aged mother, who had almost fainted +from excess of joy. + +And now occurred one of those beautiful incidents which no fiction-writer +would dare to imagine, a scene of touching pathos, creditable to our +fallen humanity. In the eyes of the women of the audience Mr. Braham was +the hero of the occasion; he had saved the life of the prisoner; and +besides he was such a handsome man. The women could not restrain their +long pent-up emotions. They threw themselves upon Mr. Braham in a +transport of gratitude; they kissed him again and again, the young as +well as the advanced in years, the married as well as the ardent single +women; they improved the opportunity with a touching self-sacrifice; in +the words of a newspaper of the day they "lavished him with kisses." + +It was something sweet to do; and it would be sweet for a woman to +remember in after years, that she had kissed Braham! Mr. Braham himself +received these fond assaults with the gallantry of his nation, enduring +the ugly, and heartily paying back beauty in its own coin. + +This beautiful scene is still known in New York as "the kissing of +Braham." + +When the tumult of congratulation had a little spent itself, and order +was restored, Judge O'Shaunnessy said that it now became his duty to +provide for the proper custody and treatment of the acquitted. The +verdict of the jury having left no doubt that the woman was of an unsound +mind, with a kind of insanity dangerous to the safety of the community, +she could not be permitted to go at large. "In accordance with the +directions of the law in such cases," said the Judge, "and in obedience +to the dictates of a wise humanity, I hereby commit Laura Hawkins to the +care of the Superintendent of the State Hospital for Insane Criminals, to +be held in confinement until the State Commissioners on Insanity shall +order her discharge. Mr. Sheriff, you will attend at once to the +execution of this decree." + +Laura was overwhelmed and terror-stricken. She had expected to walk +forth in freedom in a few moments. The revulsion was terrible. Her +mother appeared like one shaken with an ague fit. Laura insane! And +about to be locked up with madmen! She had never contemplated this. +Mr. Graham said he should move at once for a writ of 'habeas corpus'. + +But the judge could not do less than his duty, the law must have its way. +As in the stupor of a sudden calamity, and not fully comprehending it, +Mrs. Hawkins saw Laura led away by the officer. + +With little space for thought she was, rapidly driven to the railway +station, and conveyed to the Hospital for Lunatic Criminals. It was only +when she was within this vast and grim abode of madness that she realized +the horror of her situation. It was only when she was received by the +kind physician and read pity in his eyes, and saw his look of hopeless +incredulity when she attempted to tell him that she was not insane; it +was only when she passed through the ward to which she was consigned and +saw the horrible creatures, the victims of a double calamity, whose +dreadful faces she was hereafter to see daily, and was locked into the +small, bare room that was to be her home, that all her fortitude forsook +her. She sank upon the bed, as soon as she was left alone--she had been +searched by the matron--and tried to think. But her brain was in a +whirl. She recalled Braham's speech, she recalled the testimony +regarding her lunacy. She wondered if she were not mad; she felt that +she soon should be among these loathsome creatures. Better almost to +have died, than to slowly go mad in this confinement. + +--We beg the reader's pardon. This is not history, which has just been +written. It is really what would have occurred if this were a novel. +If this were a work of fiction, we should not dare to dispose of Laura +otherwise. True art and any attention to dramatic proprieties required +it. The novelist who would turn loose upon society an insane murderess +could not escape condemnation. Besides, the safety of society, the +decencies of criminal procedure, what we call our modern civilization, +all would demand that Laura should be disposed of in the manner we have +described. Foreigners, who read this sad story, will be unable to +understand any other termination of it. + +But this is history and not fiction. There is no such law or custom as +that to which his Honor is supposed to have referred; Judge O'Shaunnessy +would not probably pay any attention to it if there were. There is no +Hospital for Insane Criminals; there is no State commission of lunacy. +What actually occurred when the tumult in the court room had subsided the +sagacious reader will now learn. + +Laura left the court room, accompanied by her mother and other friends, +amid the congratulations of those assembled, and was cheered as she +entered a carriage, and drove away. How sweet was the sunlight, how +exhilarating the sense of freedom! Were not these following cheers the +expression of popular approval and affection? Was she not the heroine of +the hour? + +It was with a feeling of triumph that Laura reached her hotel, a scornful +feeling of victory over society with its own weapons. + +Mrs. Hawkins shared not at all in this feeling; she was broken with the +disgrace and the long anxiety. + +"Thank God, Laura," she said, "it is over. Now we will go away from this +hateful city. Let us go home at once." + +"Mother," replied Laura, speaking with some tenderness, "I cannot go with +you. There, don't cry, I cannot go back to that life." + +Mrs. Hawkins was sobbing. This was more cruel than anything else, for +she had a dim notion of what it would be to leave Laura to herself. + +"No, mother, you have been everything to me. You know how dearly I love +you. But I cannot go back." + +A boy brought in a telegraphic despatch. Laura took it and read: + +"The bill is lost. Dilworthy ruined. (Signed) WASHINGTON." + +For a moment the words swam before her eyes. The next her eyes flashed +fire as she handed the dispatch to her m other and bitterly said, + +"The world is against me. Well, let it be, let it. I am against it." + +"This is a cruel disappointment," said Mrs. Hawkins, to whom one grief +more or less did not much matter now, "to you and, Washington; but we +must humbly bear it." + +"Bear it;" replied Laura scornfully, "I've all my life borne it, and fate +has thwarted me at every step." + +A servant came to the door to say that there was a gentleman below who +wished to speak with Miss Hawkins. "J. Adolphe Griller" was the name +Laura read on the card. "I do not know such a person. He probably comes +from Washington. Send him up." + +Mr. Griller entered. He was a small man, slovenly in dress, his tone +confidential, his manner wholly void of animation, all his features below +the forehead protruding--particularly the apple of his throat--hair +without a kink in it, a hand with no grip, a meek, hang-dog countenance. +a falsehood done in flesh and blood; for while every visible sign about +him proclaimed him a poor, witless, useless weakling, the truth was that +he had the brains to plan great enterprises and the pluck to carry them +through. That was his reputation, and it was a deserved one. He softly +said: + +"I called to see you on business, Miss Hawkins. You have my card?" + +Laura bowed. + +Mr. Griller continued to purr, as softly as before. + +"I will proceed to business. I am a business man. I am a lecture-agent, +Miss Hawkins, and as soon as I saw that you were acquitted, it occurred +to me that an early interview would be mutually beneficial." + +"I don't understand you, sir," said Laura coldly. + +"No? You see, Miss Hawkins, this is your opportunity. If you will enter +the lecture field under good auspices, you will carry everything before +you." + +"But, sir, I never lectured, I haven't any lecture, I don't know anything +about it." + +"Ah, madam, that makes no difference--no real difference. It is not +necessary to be able to lecture in order to go into the lecture tour. +If ones name is celebrated all over the land, especially, and, if she is +also beautiful, she is certain to draw large audiences." + +"But what should I lecture about?" asked Laura, beginning in spite of +herself to be a little interested as well as amused. + +"Oh, why; woman--something about woman, I should say; the marriage +relation, woman's fate, anything of that sort. Call it The Revelations +of a Woman's Life; now, there's a good title. I wouldn't want any better +title than that. I'm prepared to make you an offer, Miss Hawkins, +a liberal offer,--twelve thousand dollars for thirty nights." + +Laura thought. She hesitated. Why not? It would give her employment, +money. She must do something. + +"I will think of it, and let you know soon. But still, there is very +little likelihood that I--however, we will not discuss it further now." + +"Remember, that the sooner we get to work the better, Miss Hawkins, +public curiosity is so fickle. Good day, madam." + +The close of the trial released Mr. Harry Brierly and left him free to +depart upon his long talked of Pacific-coast mission. He was very +mysterious about it, even to Philip. + +"It's confidential, old boy," he said, "a little scheme we have hatched +up. I don't mind telling you that it's a good deal bigger thing than +that in Missouri, and a sure thing. I wouldn't take a half a million +just for my share. And it will open something for you, Phil. You will +hear from me." + +Philip did hear, from Harry a few months afterward. Everything promised +splendidly, but there was a little delay. Could Phil let him have a +hundred, say, for ninety days? + +Philip himself hastened to Philadelphia, and, as soon as the spring +opened, to the mine at Ilium, and began transforming the loan he had +received from Squire Montague into laborers' wages. He was haunted with +many anxieties; in the first place, Ruth was overtaxing her strength in +her hospital labors, and Philip felt as if he must move heaven and earth +to save her from such toil and suffering. His increased pecuniary +obligation oppressed him. It seemed to him also that he had been one +cause of the misfortune to the Bolton family, and that he was dragging +into loss and ruin everybody who associated with him. He worked on day +after day and week after week, with a feverish anxiety. + +It would be wicked, thought Philip, and impious, to pray for luck; he +felt that perhaps he ought not to ask a blessing upon the sort of labor +that was only a venture; but yet in that daily petition, which this very +faulty and not very consistent young Christian gentleman put up, he +prayed earnestly enough for Ruth and for the Boltons and for those whom +he loved and who trusted in him, and that his life might not be a +misfortune to them and a failure to himself. + +Since this young fellow went out into the world from his New England +home, he had done some things that he would rather his mother should not +know, things maybe that he would shrink from telling Ruth. At a certain +green age young gentlemen are sometimes afraid of being called milksops, +and Philip's associates had not always been the most select, such as +these historians would have chosen for him, or whom at a later, period he +would have chosen for himself. It seemed inexplicable, for instance, +that his life should have been thrown so much with his college +acquaintance, Henry Brierly. + +Yet, this was true of Philip, that in whatever company he had been he had +never been ashamed to stand up for the principles he learned from his +mother, and neither raillery nor looks of wonder turned him from that +daily habit had learned at his mother's knees.--Even flippant Harry +respected this, and perhaps it was one of the reasons why Harry and all +who knew Philip trusted him implicitly. And yet it must be confessed +that Philip did not convey the impression to the world of a very serious +young man, or of a man who might not rather easily fall into temptation. +One looking for a real hero would have to go elsewhere. + +The parting between Laura and her mother was exceedingly painful to both. +It was as if two friends parted on a wide plain, the one to journey +towards the setting and the other towards the rising sun, each +comprehending that every, step henceforth must separate their lives, +wider and wider. + + + + +CHAPTER LIX. + +When Mr. Noble's bombshell fell, in Senator Dilworthy's camp, the +statesman was disconcerted for a moment. For a moment; that was all. +The next moment he was calmly up and doing. From the centre of our +country to its circumference, nothing was talked of but Mr. Noble's +terrible revelation, and the people were furious. Mind, they were not +furious because bribery was uncommon in our public life, but merely +because here was another case. Perhaps it did not occur to the nation of +good and worthy people that while they continued to sit comfortably at +home and leave the true source of our political power (the "primaries,") +in the hands of saloon-keepers, dog-fanciers and hod-carriers, they could +go on expecting "another" case of this kind, and even dozens and hundreds +of them, and never be disappointed. However, they may have thought that +to sit at home and grumble would some day right the evil. + +Yes, the nation was excited, but Senator Dilworthy was calm--what was +left of him after the explosion of the shell. Calm, and up and doing. +What did he do first? What would you do first, after you had tomahawked +your mother at the breakfast table for putting too much sugar in your +coffee? You would "ask for a suspension of public opinion." That is +what Senator Dilworthy did. It is the custom. He got the usual amount +of suspension. Far and wide he was called a thief, a briber, a promoter +of steamship subsidies, railway swindles, robberies of the government in +all possible forms and fashions. Newspapers and everybody else called +him a pious hypocrite, a sleek, oily fraud, a reptile who manipulated +temperance movements, prayer meetings, Sunday schools, public charities, +missionary enterprises, all for his private benefit. And as these +charges were backed up by what seemed to be good and sufficient, +evidence, they were believed with national unanimity. + +Then Mr. Dilworthy made another move. He moved instantly to Washington +and "demanded an investigation." Even this could not pass without, +comment. Many papers used language to this effect: + + "Senator Dilworthy's remains have demanded an investigation. This + sounds fine and bold and innocent; but when we reflect that they + demand it at the hands of the Senate of the United States, it simply + becomes matter for derision. One might as well set the gentlemen + detained in the public prisons to trying each other. This + investigation is likely to be like all other Senatorial + investigations--amusing but not useful. Query. Why does the Senate + still stick to this pompous word, 'Investigation?' One does not + blindfold one's self in order to investigate an object." + +Mr. Dilworthy appeared in his place in the Senate and offered a +resolution appointing a committee to investigate his case. It carried, +of course, and the committee was appointed. Straightway the newspapers +said: + + "Under the guise of appointing a committee to investigate the late + Mr. Dilworthy, the Senate yesterday appointed a committee to + investigate his accuser, Mr. Noble. This is the exact spirit and + meaning of the resolution, and the committee cannot try anybody but + Mr. Noble without overstepping its authority. That Dilworthy had + the effrontery to offer such a resolution will surprise no one, and + that the Senate could entertain it without blushing and pass it + without shame will surprise no one. We are now reminded of a note + which we have received from the notorious burglar Murphy, in which + he finds fault with a statement of ours to the effect that he had + served one term in the penitentiary and also one in the U. S. + Senate. He says, 'The latter statement is untrue and does me great + injustice.' After an unconscious sarcasm like that, further comment + is unnecessary." + +And yet the Senate was roused by the Dilworthy trouble. Many speeches +were made. One Senator (who was accused in the public prints of selling +his chances of re-election to his opponent for $50,000 and had not yet +denied the charge) said that, "the presence in the Capital of such a +creature as this man Noble, to testify against a brother member of their +body, was an insult to the Senate." + +Another Senator said, "Let the investigation go on and let it make an +example of this man Noble; let it teach him and men like him that they +could not attack the reputation of a United States-Senator with +impunity." + +Another said he was glad the investigation was to be had, for it was high +time that the Senate should crush some cur like this man Noble, and thus +show his kind that it was able and resolved to uphold its ancient +dignity. + +A by-stander laughed, at this finely delivered peroration; and said: + +"Why, this is the Senator who franked his, baggage home through the mails +last week-registered, at that. However, perhaps he was merely engaged in +'upholding the ancient dignity of the Senate,'--then." + +"No, the modern dignity of it," said another by-stander. "It don't +resemble its ancient dignity but it fits its modern style like a glove." + +There being no law against making offensive remarks about U. S. +Senators, this conversation, and others like it, continued without let or +hindrance. But our business is with the investigating committee. + +Mr. Noble appeared before the Committee of the Senate; and testified to +the following effect: + +He said that he was a member of the State legislature of the +Happy-Land-of-Canaan; that on the --- day of ------ he assembled himself +together at the city of Saint's Rest, the capital of the State, along +with his brother legislators; that he was known to be a political enemy +of Mr. Dilworthy and bitterly opposed to his re-election; that Mr. +Dilworthy came to Saint's Rest and reported to be buying pledges of votes +with money; that the said Dilworthy sent for him to come to his room in +the hotel at night, and he went; was introduced to Mr. Dilworthy; called +two or three times afterward at Dilworthy's request--usually after +midnight; Mr. Dilworthy urged him to vote for him Noble declined; +Dilworthy argued; said he was bound to be elected, and could then ruin +him (Noble) if he voted no; said he had every railway and every public +office and stronghold of political power in the State under his thumb, +and could set up or pull down any man he chose; gave instances showing +where and how he had used this power; if Noble would vote for him he +would make him a Representative in Congress; Noble still declined to +vote, and said he did not believe Dilworthy was going to be elected; +Dilworthy showed a list of men who would vote for him--a majority of the +legislature; gave further proofs of his power by telling Noble everything +the opposing party had done or said in secret caucus; claimed that his +spies reported everything to him, and that-- + +Here a member of the Committee objected that this evidence was irrelevant +and also in opposition to the spirit of the Committee's instructions, +because if these things reflected upon any one it was upon Mr. Dilworthy. +The chairman said, let the person proceed with his statement--the +Committee could exclude evidence that did not bear upon the case. + +Mr. Noble continued. He said that his party would cast him out if he +voted for Mr, Dilworthy; Dilwortby said that that would inure to his +benefit because he would then be a recognized friend of his (Dilworthy's) +and he could consistently exalt him politically and make his fortune; +Noble said he was poor, and it was hard to tempt him so; Dilworthy said +he would fix that; he said, "Tell, me what you want, and say you will vote +for me;" Noble could not say; Dilworthy said "I will give you $5,000." + +A Committee man said, impatiently, that this stuff was all outside the +case, and valuable time was being wasted; this was all, a plain +reflection upon a brother Senator. The Chairman said it was the quickest +way to proceed, and the evidence need have no weight. + +Mr. Noble continued. He said he told Dilworthy that $5,000 was not much +to pay for a man's honor, character and everything that was worth having; +Dilworthy said he was surprised; he considered $5,000 a fortune--for some +men; asked what Noble's figure was; Noble said he could not think $10,000 +too little; Dilworthy said it was a great deal too much; he would not do +it for any other man, but he had conceived a liking for Noble, and where +he liked a man his heart yearned to help him; he was aware that Noble was +poor, and had a family to support, and that he bore an unblemished +reputation at home; for such a man and such a man's influence he could do +much, and feel that to help such a man would be an act that would have +its reward; the struggles of the poor always touched him; he believed +that Noble would make a good use of this money and that it would cheer +many a sad heart and needy home; he would give the, $10,000; all he +desired in return was that when the balloting began, Noble should cast +his vote for him and should explain to the legislature that upon looking +into the charges against Mr. Dilworthy of bribery, corruption, and +forwarding stealing measures in Congress he had found them to be base +calumnies upon a man whose motives were pure and whose character was +stainless; he then took from his pocket $2,000 in bank bills and handed +them to Noble, and got another package containing $5,000 out of his trunk +and gave to him also. He---- + +A Committee man jumped up, and said: + +"At last, Mr. Chairman, this shameless person has arrived at the point. +This is sufficient and conclusive. By his own confession he has received +a bribe, and did it deliberately. + +"This is a grave offense, and cannot be passed over in silence, sir. By +the terms of our instructions we can now proceed to mete out to him such +punishment as is meet for one who has maliciously brought disrespect upon +a Senator of the United States. We have no need to hear the rest of his +evidence." + +The Chairman said it would be better and more regular to proceed with the +investigation according to the usual forms. A note would be made of +Mr. Noble's admission. + +Mr. Noble continued. He said that it was now far past midnight; that he +took his leave and went straight to certain legislators, told them +everything, made them count the money, and also told them of the exposure +he would make in joint convention; he made that exposure, as all the +world knew. The rest of the $10,000 was to be paid the day after +Dilworthy was elected. + +Senator Dilworthy was now asked to take the stand and tell what he knew +about the man Noble. The Senator wiped his mouth with his handkerchief, +adjusted his white cravat, and said that but for the fact that public +morality required an example, for the warning of future Nobles, he would +beg that in Christian charity this poor misguided creature might be +forgiven and set free. He said that it was but too evident that this +person had approached him in the hope of obtaining a bribe; he had +intruded himself time and again, and always with moving stories of his +poverty. Mr. Dilworthy said that his heart had bled for him--insomuch +that he had several times been on the point of trying to get some one to +do something for him. Some instinct had told him from the beginning that +this was a bad man, an evil-minded man, but his inexperience of such had +blinded him to his real motives, and hence he had never dreamed that his +object was to undermine the purity of a United States Senator. +He regretted that it was plain, now, that such was the man's object and +that punishment could not with safety to the Senate's honor be withheld. +He grieved to say that one of those mysterious dispensations of an +inscrutable Providence which are decreed from time to time by His wisdom +and for His righteous, purposes, had given this conspirator's tale a +color of plausibility,--but this would soon disappear under the clear +light of truth which would now be thrown upon the case. + +It so happened, (said the Senator,) that about the time in question, a +poor young friend of mine, living in a distant town of my State, wished +to establish a bank; he asked me to lend him the necessary money; I said +I had no, money just then, but world try to borrow it. The day before +the election a friend said to me that my election expenses must be very +large specially my hotel bills, and offered to lend me some money. +Remembering my young, friend, I said I would like a few thousands now, +and a few more by and by; whereupon he gave me two packages of bills said +to contain $2,000 and $5,000 respectively; I did not open the packages or +count the money; I did not give any note or receipt for the same; I made +no memorandum of the transaction, and neither did my friend. That night +this evil man Noble came troubling me again: I could not rid myself of +him, though my time was very precious. He mentioned my young friend and +said he was very anxious to have the $7000 now to begin his banking +operations with, and could wait a while for the rest. Noble wished to +get the money and take it to him. I finally gave him the two packages of +bills; I took no note or receipt from him, and made no memorandum of the +matter. I no more look for duplicity and deception in another man than I +would look for it in myself. I never thought of this man again until I +was overwhelmed the next day by learning what a shameful use he had made +of the confidence I had reposed in him and the money I had entrusted to +his care. This is all, gentlemen. To the absolute truth of every detail +of my statement I solemnly swear, and I call Him to witness who is the +Truth and the loving Father of all whose lips abhor false speaking; I +pledge my honor as a Senator, that I have spoken but the truth. May God +forgive this wicked man as I do. + +Mr. Noble--"Senator Dilworthy, your bank account shows that up to that +day, and even on that very day, you conducted all your financial business +through the medium of checks instead of bills, and so kept careful record +of every moneyed transaction. Why did you deal in bank bills on this +particular occasion?" + +The Chairman--"The gentleman will please to remember that the Committee +is conducting this investigation." + +Mr. Noble--"Then will the Committee ask the question?" + +The Chairman--"The Committee will--when it desires to know." + +Mr. Noble--"Which will not be daring this century perhaps." + +The Chairman--"Another remark like that, sir, will procure you the +attentions of the Sergeant-at-arms." + +Mr. Noble--"D--n the Sergeant-at-arms, and the Committee too!" + +Several Committeemen--"Mr. Chairman, this is Contempt!" + +Mr. Noble--"Contempt of whom?" + +"Of the Committee! Of the Senate of the United States!" + +Mr. Noble--"Then I am become the acknowledged representative of a nation. +You know as well as I do that the whole nation hold as much as +three-fifths of the United States Senate in entire contempt.--Three-fifths +of you are Dilworthys." + +The Sergeant-at-arms very soon put a quietus upon the observations of the +representative of the nation, and convinced him that he was not, in the +over-free atmosphere of his Happy-Land-of-Canaan: + +The statement of Senator Dilworthy naturally carried conviction to the +minds of the committee.--It was close, logical, unanswerable; it bore +many internal evidences of its, truth. For instance, it is customary in +all countries for business men to loan large sums of money in bank bills +instead of checks. It is customary for the lender to make no memorandum +of the transaction. It is customary, for the borrower to receive the +money without making a memorandum of it, or giving a note or a receipt +for it's use--the borrower is not likely to die or forget about it. +It is customary to lend nearly anybody money to start a bank with +especially if you have not the money to lend him and have to borrow it +for the purpose. It is customary to carry large sums of money in bank +bills about your person or in your trunk. It is customary to hand a +large sure in bank bills to a man you have just been introduced to (if he +asks you to do it,) to be conveyed to a distant town and delivered to +another party. It is not customary to make a memorandum of this +transaction; it is not customary for the conveyor to give a note or a +receipt for the money; it is not customary to require that he shall get a +note or a receipt from the man he is to convey it to in the distant town. +It would be at least singular in you to say to the proposed conveyor, +"You might be robbed; I will deposit the money in a bank and send a check +for it to my friend through the mail." + +Very well. It being plain that Senator Dilworthy's statement was rigidly +true, and this fact being strengthened by his adding to it the support of +"his honor as a Senator," the Committee rendered a verdict of "Not proven +that a bribe had been offered and accepted." This in a manner exonerated +Noble and let him escape. + +The Committee made its report to the Senate, and that body proceeded to +consider its acceptance. One Senator indeed, several Senators--objected +that the Committee had failed of its duty; they had proved this man Noble +guilty of nothing, they had meted out no punishment to him; if the report +were accepted, he would go forth free and scathless, glorying in his +crime, and it would be a tacit admission that any blackguard could insult +the Senate of the United States and conspire against the sacred +reputation of its members with impunity; the Senate owed it to the +upholding of its ancient dignity to make an example of this man Noble +--he should be crushed. + +An elderly Senator got up and took another view of the case. This was a +Senator of the worn-out and obsolete pattern; a man still lingering among +the cobwebs of the past, and behind the spirit of the age. He said that +there seemed to be a curious misunderstanding of the case. Gentlemen +seemed exceedingly anxious to preserve and maintain the honor and dignity +of the Senate. + +Was this to be done by trying an obscure adventurer for attempting to +trap a Senator into bribing him? Or would not the truer way be to find +out whether the Senator was capable of being entrapped into so shameless +an act, and then try him? Why, of course. Now the whole idea of the +Senate seemed to be to shield the Senator and turn inquiry away from him. +The true way to uphold the honor of the Senate was to have none but +honorable men in its body. If this Senator had yielded to temptation and +had offered a bribe, he was a soiled man and ought to be instantly +expelled; therefore he wanted the Senator tried, and not in the usual +namby-pamby way, but in good earnest. He wanted to know the truth of +this matter. For himself, he believed that the guilt of Senator +Dilworthy was established beyond the shadow of a doubt; and he considered +that in trifling with his case and shirking it the Senate was doing a +shameful and cowardly thing--a thing which suggested that in its +willingness to sit longer in the company of such a man, it was +acknowledging that it was itself of a kind with him and was therefore not +dishonored by his presence. He desired that a rigid examination be made +into Senator Dilworthy's case, and that it be continued clear into the +approaching extra session if need be. There was no dodging this thing +with the lame excuse of want of time. + +In reply, an honorable Senator said that he thought it would be as well +to drop the matter and accept the Committee's report. He said with some +jocularity that the more one agitated this thing, the worse it was for +the agitator. He was not able to deny that he believed Senator Dilworthy +to be guilty--but what then? Was it such an extraordinary case? For his +part, even allowing the Senator to be guilty, he did not think his +continued presence during the few remaining days of the Session would +contaminate the Senate to a dreadful degree. [This humorous sally was +received with smiling admiration--notwithstanding it was not wholly new, +having originated with the Massachusetts General in the House a day or +two before, upon the occasion of the proposed expulsion of a member for +selling his vote for money.] + +The Senate recognized the fact that it could not be contaminated by +sitting a few days longer with Senator Dilworthy, and so it accepted the +committee's report and dropped the unimportant matter. + +Mr. Dilworthy occupied his seat to the last hour of the session. He said +that his people had reposed a trust in him, and it was not for him to +desert them. He would remain at his post till he perished, if need be. + +His voice was lifted up and his vote cast for the last time, in support +of an ingenious measure contrived by the General from Massachusetts +whereby the President's salary was proposed to be doubled and every +Congressman paid several thousand dollars extra for work previously done, +under an accepted contract, and already paid for once and receipted for. + +Senator Dilworthy was offered a grand ovation by his friends at home, who +said that their affection for him and their confidence in him were in no +wise impaired by the persecutions that had pursued him, and that he was +still good enough for them. + +--[The $7,000 left by Mr. Noble with his state legislature was placed in +safe keeping to await the claim of the legitimate owner. Senator +Dilworthy made one little effort through his protege the embryo banker +to recover it, but there being no notes of hand or, other memoranda to +support the claim, it failed. The moral of which is, that when one loans +money to start a bank with, one ought to take the party's written +acknowledgment of the fact.] + + + + +CHAPTER LX. + +For some days Laura had been a free woman once more. During this time, +she had experienced--first, two or three days of triumph, excitement, +congratulations, a sort of sunburst of gladness, after a long night of +gloom and anxiety; then two or three days of calming down, by degrees +--a receding of tides, a quieting of the storm-wash to a murmurous +surf-beat, a diminishing of devastating winds to a refrain that bore the +spirit of a truce-days given to solitude, rest, self-communion, and the +reasoning of herself into a realization of the fact that she was actually +done with bolts and bars, prison, horrors and impending, death; then came +a day whose hours filed slowly by her, each laden with some remnant, +some remaining fragment of the dreadful time so lately ended--a day +which, closing at last, left the past a fading shore behind her and +turned her eyes toward the broad sea of the future. So speedily do we +put the dead away and come back to our place in the ranks to march in the +pilgrimage of life again. + +And now the sun rose once more and ushered in the first day of what Laura +comprehended and accepted as a new life. + +The past had sunk below the horizon, and existed no more for her; +she was done with it for all time. She was gazing out over the trackless +expanses of the future, now, with troubled eyes. Life must be begun +again--at eight and twenty years of age. And where to begin? The page +was blank, and waiting for its first record; so this was indeed a +momentous day. + +Her thoughts drifted back, stage by stage, over her career. As far as +the long highway receded over the plain of her life, it was lined with +the gilded and pillared splendors of her ambition all crumbled to ruin +and ivy-grown; every milestone marked a disaster; there was no green spot +remaining anywhere in memory of a hope that had found its fruition; the +unresponsive earth had uttered no voice of flowers in testimony that one +who was blest had gone that road. + +Her life had been a failure. That was plain, she said. No more of that. +She would now look the future in the face; she would mark her course upon +the chart of life, and follow it; follow it without swerving, through +rocks and shoals, through storm and calm, to a haven of rest and peace or +shipwreck. Let the end be what it might, she would mark her course now +--to-day--and follow it. + +On her table lay six or seven notes. They were from lovers; from some of +the prominent names in the land; men whose devotion had survived even the +grisly revealments of her character which the courts had uncurtained; +men who knew her now, just as she was, and yet pleaded as for their lives +for the dear privilege of calling the murderess wife. + +As she read these passionate, these worshiping, these supplicating +missives, the woman in her nature confessed itself; a strong yearning +came upon her to lay her head upon a loyal breast and find rest from the +conflict of life, solace for her griefs, the healing of love for her +bruised heart. + +With her forehead resting upon her hand, she sat thinking, thinking, +while the unheeded moments winged their flight. It was one of those +mornings in early spring when nature seems just stirring to a half +consciousness out of a long, exhausting lethargy; when the first faint +balmy airs go wandering about, whispering the secret of the coming +change; when the abused brown grass, newly relieved of snow, seems +considering whether it can be worth the trouble and worry of contriving +its green raiment again only to fight the inevitable fight with the +implacable winter and be vanquished and buried once more; when the sun +shines out and a few birds venture forth and lift up a forgotten song; +when a strange stillness and suspense pervades the waiting air. It is a +time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the +past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the +future but a way to death. It is a time when one is filled with vague +longings; when one dreams of flight to peaceful islands in the remote +solitudes of the sea, or folds his hands and says, What is the use of +struggling, and toiling and worrying any more? let us give it all up. + +It was into such a mood as this that Laura had drifted from the musings +which the letters of her lovers had called up. Now she lifted her head +and noted with surprise how the day had wasted. She thrust the letters +aside, rose up and went and stood at the window. But she was soon +thinking again, and was only gazing into vacancy. + +By and by she turned; her countenance had cleared; the dreamy look was +gone out of her face, all indecision had vanished; the poise of her head +and the firm set of her lips told that her resolution was formed. +She moved toward the table with all the old dignity in her carriage, +and all the old pride in her mien. She took up each letter in its turn, +touched a match to it and watched it slowly consume to ashes. Then she +said: + +"I have landed upon a foreign shore, and burned my ships behind me. +These letters were the last thing that held me in sympathy with any +remnant or belonging of the old life. Henceforth that life and all that +appertains to it are as dead to me and as far removed from me as if I +were become a denizen of another world." + +She said that love was not for her--the time that it could have satisfied +her heart was gone by and could not return; the opportunity was lost, +nothing could restore it. She said there could be no love without +respect, and she would only despise a man who could content himself with +a thing like her. Love, she said, was a woman's first necessity: love +being forfeited; there was but one thing left that could give a passing +zest to a wasted life, and that was fame, admiration, the applause of the +multitude. + +And so her resolution was taken. She would turn to that final resort of +the disappointed of her sex, the lecture platform. She would array +herself in fine attire, she would adorn herself with jewels, and stand in +her isolated magnificence before massed, audiences and enchant them with +her eloquence and amaze them with her unapproachable beauty. She would +move from city to city like a queen of romance, leaving marveling +multitudes behind her and impatient multitudes awaiting her coming. +Her life, during one hour of each day, upon the platform, would be a +rapturous intoxication--and when the curtain fell; and the lights were +out, and the people gone, to nestle in their homes and forget her, she +would find in sleep oblivion of her homelessness, if she could, if not +she would brave out the night in solitude and wait for the next day's +hour of ecstasy. + +So, to take up life and begin again was no great evil. She saw her way. +She would be brave and strong; she would make the best of, what was left +for her among the possibilities. + +She sent for the lecture agent, and matters were soon arranged. + +Straightway, all the papers were filled with her name, and all the dead +walls flamed with it. The papers called down imprecations upon her head; +they reviled her without stint; they wondered if all sense of decency was +dead in this shameless murderess, this brazen lobbyist, this heartless +seducer of the affections of weak and misguided men; they implored the +people, for the sake of their pure wives, their sinless daughters, for +the sake of decency, for the sake of public morals, to give this wretched +creature such a rebuke as should be an all-sufficient evidence to her and +to such as her, that there was a limit where the flaunting of their foul +acts and opinions before the world must stop; certain of them, with a +higher art, and to her a finer cruelty, a sharper torture, uttered no +abuse, but always spoke of her in terms of mocking eulogy and ironical +admiration. Everybody talked about the new wonder, canvassed the theme +of her proposed discourse, and marveled how she would handle it. + +Laura's few friends wrote to her or came and talked with her, and pleaded +with her to retire while it was yet time, and not attempt to face the +gathering storm. But it was fruitless. She was stung to the quick by +the comments of the newspapers; her spirit was roused, her ambition was +towering, now. She was more determined than ever. She would show these +people what a hunted and persecuted woman could do. + +The eventful night came. Laura arrived before the great lecture hall in +a close carriage within five minutes of the time set for the lecture to +begin. When she stepped out of the vehicle her heart beat fast and her +eyes flashed with exultation: the whole street was packed with people, +and she could hardly force her way to the hall! She reached the +ante-room, threw off her wraps and placed herself before the +dressing-glass. She turned herself this way and that--everything was +satisfactory, her attire was perfect. She smoothed her hair, rearranged +a jewel here and there, and all the while her heart sang within her, and +her face was radiant. She had not been so happy for ages and ages, it +seemed to her. Oh, no, she had never been so overwhelmingly grateful and +happy in her whole life before. The lecture agent appeared at the door. +She waved him away and said: + +"Do not disturb me. I want no introduction. And do not fear for me; the +moment the hands point to eight I will step upon the platform." + +He disappeared. She held her watch before her. She was so impatient +that the second-hand seemed whole tedious minutes dragging its way around +the circle. At last the supreme moment came, and with head erect and the +bearing of an empress she swept through the door and stood upon the +stage. Her eyes fell upon only a vast, brilliant emptiness--there were +not forty people in the house! There were only a handful of coarse men +and ten or twelve still coarser women, lolling upon the benches and +scattered about singly and in couples. + +Her pulses stood still, her limbs quaked, the gladness went out of her +face. There was a moment of silence, and then a brutal laugh and an +explosion of cat-calls and hisses saluted her from the audience. The +clamor grew stronger and louder, and insulting speeches were shouted at +her. A half-intoxicated man rose up and threw something, which missed +her but bespattered a chair at her side, and this evoked an outburst of +laughter and boisterous admiration. She was bewildered, her strength was +forsaking her. She reeled away from the platform, reached the ante-room, +and dropped helpless upon a sofa. The lecture agent ran in, with a +hurried question upon his lips; but she put forth her hands, and with the +tears raining from her eyes, said: + +"Oh, do not speak! Take me away-please take me away, out of this. +dreadful place! Oh, this is like all my life--failure, disappointment, +misery--always misery, always failure. What have I done, to be so +pursued! Take me away, I beg of you, I implore you!" + +Upon the pavement she was hustled by the mob, the surging masses roared +her name and accompanied it with every species of insulting epithet; +they thronged after the carriage, hooting, jeering, cursing, and even +assailing the vehicle with missiles. A stone crushed through a blind, +wounding Laura's forehead, and so stunning her that she hardly knew what +further transpired during her flight. + +It was long before her faculties were wholly restored, and then she found +herself lying on the floor by a sofa in her own sitting-room, and alone. +So she supposed she must have sat down upon the sofa and afterward +fallen. She raised herself up, with difficulty, for the air was chilly +and her limbs were stiff. She turned up the gas and sought the glass. +She hardly knew herself, so worn and old she looked, and so marred with +blood were her features. The night was far spent, and a dead stillness +reigned. She sat down by her table, leaned her elbows upon it and put +her face in her hands. + +Her thoughts wandered back over her old life again and her tears flowed +unrestrained. Her pride was humbled, her spirit was broken. Her memory +found but one resting place; it lingered about her young girlhood with a +caressing regret; it dwelt upon it as the one brief interval of her life +that bore no curse. She saw herself again in the budding grace of her +twelve years, decked in her dainty pride of ribbons, consorting with the +bees and the butterflies, believing in fairies, holding confidential +converse with the flowers, busying herself all day long with airy trifles +that were as weighty to her as the affairs that tax the brains of +diplomats and emperors. She was without sin, then, and unacquainted with +grief; the world was full of sunshine and her heart was full of music. +From that--to this! + +"If I could only die!" she said. "If I could only go back, and be as I +was then, for one hour--and hold my father's hand in mine again, and see +all the household about me, as in that old innocent time--and then die! +My God, I am humbled, my pride is all gone, my stubborn heart repents +--have pity!" + +When the spring morning dawned, the form still sat there, the elbows +resting upon the table and the face upon the hands. All day long the +figure sat there, the sunshine enriching its costly raiment and flashing +from its jewels; twilight came, and presently the stars, but still the +figure remained; the moon found it there still, and framed the picture +with the shadow of the window sash, and flooded, it with mellow light; by +and by the darkness swallowed it up, and later the gray dawn revealed it +again; the new day grew toward its prime, and still the forlorn presence +was undisturbed. + +But now the keepers of the house had become uneasy; their periodical +knockings still finding no response, they burst open the door. + +The jury of inquest found that death had resulted from heart disease, and +was instant and painless. That was all. Merely heart disease. + + + + +CHAPTER LXI. + +Clay Hawkins, years gone by, had yielded, after many a struggle, to the +migratory and speculative instinct of our age and our people, and had +wandered further and further westward upon trading ventures. Settling +finally in Melbourne, Australia, he ceased to roam, became a steady-going +substantial merchant, and prospered greatly. His life lay beyond the +theatre of this tale. + +His remittances had supported the Hawkins family, entirely, from the time +of his father's death until latterly when Laura by her efforts in +Washington had been able to assist in this work. Clay was away on a long +absence in some of the eastward islands when Laura's troubles began, +trying (and almost in vain,) to arrange certain interests which had +become disordered through a dishonest agent, and consequently he knew +nothing of the murder till he returned and read his letters and papers. +His natural impulse was to hurry to the States and save his sister if +possible, for he loved her with a deep and abiding affection. His +business was so crippled now, and so deranged, that to leave it would be +ruin; therefore he sold out at a sacrifice that left him considerably +reduced in worldly possessions, and began his voyage to San Francisco. +Arrived there, he perceived by the newspapers that the trial was near its +close. At Salt Lake later telegrams told him of the acquittal, and his +gratitude was boundless--so boundless, indeed, that sleep was driven from +his eyes by the pleasurable excitement almost as effectually as preceding +weeks of anxiety had done it. He shaped his course straight for Hawkeye, +now, and his meeting with his mother and the rest of the household was +joyful--albeit he had been away so long that he seemed almost a stranger +in his own home. + +But the greetings and congratulations were hardly finished when all the +journals in the land clamored the news of Laura's miserable death. +Mrs. Hawkins was prostrated by this last blow, and it was well that Clay +was at her side to stay her with comforting words and take upon himself +the ordering of the household with its burden of labors and cares. + +Washington Hawkins had scarcely more than entered upon that decade which +carries one to the full blossom of manhood which we term the beginning: +of middle age, and yet a brief sojourn at the capital of the nation had +made him old. His hair was already turning gray when the late session of +Congress began its sittings; it grew grayer still, and rapidly, after the +memorable day that saw Laura proclaimed a murderess; it waxed grayer and +still grayer during the lagging suspense that succeeded it and after the +crash which ruined his last hope--the failure of his bill in the Senate +and the destruction of its champion, Dilworthy. A few days later, when +he stood uncovered while the last prayer was pronounced over Laura's +grave, his hair was whiter and his face hardly less old than the +venerable minister's whose words were sounding in his ears. + +A week after this, he was sitting in a double-bedded room in a cheap +boarding house in Washington, with Col. Sellers. The two had been living +together lately, and this mutual cavern of theirs the Colonel sometimes +referred to as their "premises" and sometimes as their "apartments"--more +particularly when conversing with persons outside. A canvas-covered +modern trunk, marked "G. W. H." stood on end by the door, strapped and +ready for a journey; on it lay a small morocco satchel, also marked "G. +W. H." There was another trunk close by--a worn, and scarred, and +ancient hair relic, with "B. S." wrought in brass nails on its top; +on it lay a pair of saddle-bags that probably knew more about the last +century than they could tell. Washington got up and walked the floor a +while in a restless sort of way, and finally was about to sit down on the +hair trunk. + +"Stop, don't sit down on that!" exclaimed the Colonel: "There, now that's +all right--the chair's better. I couldn't get another trunk like that +--not another like it in America, I reckon." + +"I am afraid not," said Washington, with a faint attempt at a smile. + +"No indeed; the man is dead that made that trunk and that saddle-bags." + + +"Are his great-grand-children still living?" said Washington, with levity +only in the words, not in the tone. + +"Well, I don't know--I hadn't thought of that--but anyway they can't make +trunks and saddle-bags like that, if they are--no man can," said the +Colonel with honest simplicity. "Wife didn't like to see me going off +with that trunk--she said it was nearly certain to be stolen." + +"Why?" + +"Why? Why, aren't trunks always being stolen?" + +"Well, yes--some kinds of trunks are." + +"Very well, then; this is some kind of a trunk--and an almighty rare +kind, too." + +"Yes, I believe it is." + +"Well, then, why shouldn't a man want to steal it if he got a chance?" + +"Indeed I don't know.--Why should he?" + +"Washington, I never heard anybody talk like you. Suppose you were a +thief, and that trunk was lying around and nobody watching--wouldn't you +steal it? Come, now, answer fair--wouldn't you steal it? + +"Well, now, since you corner me, I would take it,--but I wouldn't +consider it stealing. + +"You wouldn't! Well, that beats me. Now what would you call stealing?" + +"Why, taking property is stealing." + +"Property! Now what a way to talk that is: What do you suppose that +trunk is worth?" + +"Is it in good repair?" + +"Perfect. Hair rubbed off a little, but the main structure is perfectly +sound." + +"Does it leak anywhere?" + +"Leak? Do you want to carry water in it? What do you mean by does it +leak?" + +"Why--a--do the clothes fall out of it when it is--when it is +stationary?" + +"Confound it, Washington, you are trying to make fun of me. I don't know +what has got into you to-day; you act mighty curious. What is the matter +with you?" + +"Well, I'll tell you, old friend. I am almost happy. I am, indeed. +It wasn't Clay's telegram that hurried me up so and got me ready to start +with you. It was a letter from Louise." + +"Good! What is it? What does she say?" + +"She says come home--her father has consented, at last." + +"My boy, I want to congratulate you; I want to shake you by the hand! +It's a long turn that has no lane at the end of it, as the proverb says, +or somehow that way. You'll be happy yet, and Beriah Sellers will be +there to see, thank God!" + +"I believe it. General Boswell is pretty nearly a poor man, now. The +railroad that was going to build up Hawkeye made short work of him, along +with the rest. He isn't so opposed to a son-in-law without a fortune, +now." + +"Without a fortune, indeed! Why that Tennessee Land--" + +"Never mind the Tennessee Land, Colonel. I am done with that, forever +and forever--" + +"Why no! You can't mean to say--" + +"My father, away back yonder, years ago, bought it for a blessing for his +children, and--" + +"Indeed he did! Si Hawkins said to me--" + +"It proved a curse to him as long as he lived, and never a curse like it +was inflicted upon any man's heirs--" + +"I'm bound to say there's more or less truth--" + +"It began to curse me when I was a baby, and it has cursed every hour of +my life to this day--" + +"Lord, lord, but it's so! Time and again my wife--" + +"I depended on it all through my boyhood and never tried to do an honest +stroke of work for my living--" + +"Right again--but then you--" + +"I have chased it years and years as children chase butterflies. We +might all have been prosperous, now; we might all have been happy, all +these heart-breaking years, if we had accepted our poverty at first and +gone contentedly to work and built up our own wealth by our own toil and +sweat--" + +"It's so, it's so; bless my soul, how often I've told Si Hawkins--" + +"Instead of that, we have suffered more than the damned themselves +suffer! I loved my father, and I honor his memory and recognize his good +intentions; but I grieve for his mistaken ideas of conferring happiness +upon his children. I am going to begin my life over again, and begin it +and end it with good solid work! I'll leave my children no Tennessee +Land!" + +"Spoken like a man, sir, spoken like a man! Your hand, again my boy! +And always remember that when a word of advice from Beriah Sellers can +help, it is at your service. I'm going to begin again, too!" + +"Indeed!" + +"Yes, sir. I've seen enough to show me where my mistake was. The law is +what I was born for. I shall begin the study of the law. Heavens and +earth, but that Brabant's a wonderful man--a wonderful man sir! Such a +head! And such a way with him! But I could see that he was jealous of +me. The little licks I got in in the course of my argument before the +jury--" + +"Your argument! Why, you were a witness." + +"Oh, yes, to the popular eye, to the popular eye--but I knew when I was +dropping information and when I was letting drive at the court with an +insidious argument. But the court knew it, bless you, and weakened every +time! And Brabant knew it. I just reminded him of it in a quiet way, +and its final result, and he said in a whisper, 'You did it, Colonel, you +did it, sir--but keep it mum for my sake; and I'll tell you what you do,' +says he, 'you go into the law, Col. Sellers--go into the law, sir; that's +your native element!' And into the law the subscriber is going. There's +worlds of money in it!--whole worlds of money! Practice first in +Hawkeye, then in Jefferson, then in St. Louis, then in New York! In the +metropolis of the western world! Climb, and climb, and climb--and wind +up on the Supreme bench. Beriah Sellers, Chief Justice of the Supreme +Court of the United States, sir! A made man for all time and eternity! +That's the way I block it out, sir--and it's as clear as day--clear as +the rosy-morn!" + +Washington had heard little of this. The first reference to Laura's +trial had brought the old dejection to his face again, and he stood +gazing out of the window at nothing, lost in reverie. + +There was a knock-the postman handed in a letter. It was from Obedstown. +East Tennessee, and was for Washington. He opened it. There was a note +saying that enclosed he would please find a bill for the current year's +taxes on the 75,000 acres of Tennessee Land belonging to the estate of +Silas Hawkins, deceased, and added that the money must be paid within +sixty days or the land would be sold at public auction for the taxes, as +provided by law. The bill was for $180--something more than twice the +market value of the land, perhaps. + +Washington hesitated. Doubts flitted through his mind. The old instinct +came upon him to cling to the land just a little longer and give it one +more chance. He walked the floor feverishly, his mind tortured by +indecision. Presently he stopped, took out his pocket book and counted +his money. Two hundred and thirty dollars--it was all he had in the +world. + +"One hundred and eighty . . . . . . . from two hundred and +thirty," he said to himself. "Fifty left . . . . . . It is enough +to get me home . . . .. . . Shall I do it, or shall I not? . . . +. . . . I wish I had somebody to decide for me." + +The pocket book lay open in his hand, with Louise's small letter in view. +His eye fell upon that, and it decided him. + +"It shall go for taxes," he said, "and never tempt me or mine any more!" + +He opened the window and stood there tearing the tax bill to bits and +watching the breeze waft them away, till all were gone. + +"The spell is broken, the life-long curse is ended!" he said. "Let us +go." + +The baggage wagon had arrived; five minutes later the two friends were +mounted upon their luggage in it, and rattling off toward the station, +the Colonel endeavoring to sing "Homeward Bound," a song whose words he +knew, but whose tune, as he rendered it, was a trial to auditors. + + + + + +CHAPTER LXII + + +Philip Sterling's circumstances were becoming straightened. The prospect +was gloomy. His long siege of unproductive labor was beginning to tell +upon his spirits; but what told still more upon them was the undeniable +fact that the promise of ultimate success diminished every day, now. +That is to say, the tunnel had reached a point in the hill which was +considerably beyond where the coal vein should pass (according to all his +calculations) if there were a coal vein there; and so, every foot that +the tunnel now progressed seemed to carry it further away from the object +of the search. + +Sometimes he ventured to hope that he had made a mistake in estimating +the direction which the vein should naturally take after crossing the +valley and entering the hill. Upon such occasions he would go into the +nearest mine on the vein he was hunting for, and once more get the +bearings of the deposit and mark out its probable course; but the result +was the same every time; his tunnel had manifestly pierced beyond the +natural point of junction; and then his, spirits fell a little lower. +His men had already lost faith, and he often overheard them saying it was +perfectly plain that there was no coal in the hill. + +Foremen and laborers from neighboring mines, and no end of experienced +loafers from the village, visited the tunnel from time to time, and their +verdicts were always the same and always disheartening--"No coal in that +hill." Now and then Philip would sit down and think it all over and +wonder what the mystery meant; then he would go into the tunnel and ask +the men if there were no signs yet? None--always "none." + +He would bring out a piece of rock and examine it, and say to himself, +"It is limestone--it has crinoids and corals in it--the rock is right" +Then he would throw it down with a sigh, and say, "But that is nothing; +where coal is, limestone with these fossils in it is pretty certain to +lie against its foot casing; but it does not necessarily follow that +where this peculiar rock is coal must lie above it or beyond it; this +sign is not sufficient." + +The thought usually followed:--"There is one infallible sign--if I could +only strike that!" + +Three or four tines in as many weeks he said to himself, "Am I a +visionary? I must be a visionary; everybody is in these days; everybody +chases butterflies: everybody seeks sudden fortune and will not lay one +up by slow toil. This is not right, I will discharge the men and go at +some honest work. There is no coal here. What a fool I have been; I +will give it up." + +But he never could do it. A half hour of profound thinking always +followed; and at the end of it he was sure to get up and straighten +himself and say: "There is coal there; I will not give it up; and coal +or no coal I will drive the tunnel clear through the hill; I will not +surrender while I am alive." + +He never thought of asking Mr. Montague for more money. He said there +was now but one chance of finding coal against nine hundred and ninety +nine that he would not find it, and so it would be wrong in him to make +the request and foolish in Mr. Montague to grant it. + +He had been working three shifts of men. Finally, the settling of a +weekly account exhausted his means. He could not afford to run in debt, +and therefore he gave the men their discharge. They came into his cabin +presently, where he sat with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his +hands--the picture of discouragement and their spokesman said: + +"Mr. Sterling, when Tim was down a week with his fall you kept him on +half-wages and it was a mighty help to his family; whenever any of us was +in trouble you've done what you could to help us out; you've acted fair +and square with us every time, and I reckon we are men and know a man +when we see him. We haven't got any faith in that hill, but we have a +respect for a man that's got the pluck that you've showed; you've fought +a good fight, with everybody agin you and if we had grub to go on, I'm +d---d if we wouldn't stand by you till the cows come home! That is what +the boys say. Now we want to put in one parting blast for luck. We want +to work three days more; if we don't find anything, we won't bring in no +bill against you. That is what we've come to say." + +Philip was touched. If he had had money enough to buy three days' "grub" +he would have accepted the generous offer, but as it was, he could not +consent to be less magnanimous than the men, and so he declined in a +manly speech; shook hands all around and resumed his solitary communings. +The men went back to the tunnel and "put in a parting blast for luck" +anyhow. They did a full day's work and then took their leave. They +called at his cabin and gave him good-bye, but were not able to tell him +their day's effort had given things a mere promising look. + +The next day Philip sold all the tools but two or three sets; he also +sold one of the now deserted cabins as old, lumber, together with its +domestic wares; and made up his mind that he would buy, provisions with +the trifle of money thus gained and continue his work alone. About the +middle of the after noon he put on his roughest clothes and went to the +tunnel. He lit a candle and groped his way in. Presently he heard the +sound of a pick or a drill, and wondered, what it meant. A spark of light +now appeared in the far end of the tunnel, and when he arrived there he +found the man Tim at work. Tim said: + +"I'm to have a job in the Golden Brier mine by and by--in a week or ten +days--and I'm going to work here till then. A man might as well be at +some thing, and besides I consider that I owe you what you paid me when I +was laid up." + +Philip said, Oh, no, he didn't owe anything; but Tim persisted, and then +Philip said he had a little provision now, and would share. So for +several days Philip held the drill and Tim did the striking. At first +Philip was impatient to see the result of every blast, and was always +back and peering among the smoke the moment after the explosion. But +there was never any encouraging result; and therefore he finally lost +almost all interest, and hardly troubled himself to inspect results at +all. He simply labored on, stubbornly and with little hope. + +Tim staid with him till the last moment, and then took up his job at the +Golden Brier, apparently as depressed by the continued barrenness of +their mutual labors as Philip was himself. After that, Philip fought his +battle alone, day after day, and slow work it was; he could scarcely see +that he made any progress. + +Late one afternoon he finished drilling a hole which he had been at work +at for more than two hours; he swabbed it out, and poured in the powder +and inserted the fuse; then filled up the rest of the hole with dirt and +small fragments of stone; tamped it down firmly, touched his candle to +the fuse, and ran. By and by the I dull report came, and he was about to +walk back mechanically and see what was accomplished; but he halted; +presently turned on his heel and thought, rather than said: + +"No, this is useless, this is absurd. If I found anything it would only +be one of those little aggravating seams of coal which doesn't mean +anything, and--" + +By this time he was walking out of the tunnel. His thought ran on: + +"I am conquered . . . . . . I am out of provisions, out of money. +. . . . I have got to give it up . . . . . . All this hard work +lost! But I am not conquered! I will go and work for money, and come +back and have another fight with fate. Ah me, it may be years, it may, +be years." + +Arrived at the mouth of the tunnel, he threw his coat upon the ground, +sat down on, a stone, and his eye sought the westering sun and dwelt upon +the charming landscape which stretched its woody ridges, wave upon wave, +to the golden horizon. + +Something was taking place at his feet which did not attract his +attention. + +His reverie continued, and its burden grew more and more gloomy. +Presently he rose up and, cast a look far away toward the valley, and his +thoughts took a new direction: + +"There it is! How good it looks! But down there is not up here. Well, +I will go home and pack up--there is nothing else to do" + +He moved off moodily toward his cabin. He had gone some distance before +he thought of his coat; then he was about to turn back, but he smiled at +the thought, and continued his journey--such a coat as that could be of +little use in a civilized land; a little further on, he remembered that +there were some papers of value in one of the pockets of the relic, and +then with a penitent ejaculation he turned back picked up the coat and +put it on. + +He made a dozen steps, and then stopped very suddenly. He stood still a +moment, as one who is trying to believe something and cannot. He put a +hand up over his shoulder and felt his back, and a great thrill shot +through him. He grasped the skirt of the coat impulsively and another +thrill followed. He snatched the coat from his back, glanced at it, +threw it from him and flew back to the tunnel. He sought the spot where +the coat had lain--he had to look close, for the light was waning--then +to make sure, he put his hand to the ground and a little stream of water +swept against his fingers: + +"Thank God, I've struck it at last!" + +He lit a candle and ran into the tunnel; he picked up a piece of rubbish +cast out by the last blast, and said: + +"This clayey stuff is what I've longed for--I know what is behind it." + +He swung his pick with hearty good will till long after the darkness had +gathered upon the earth, and when he trudged home at length he knew he +had a coal vein and that it was seven feet thick from wall to wall. + +He found a yellow envelope lying on his rickety table, and recognized +that it was of a family sacred to the transmission of telegrams. + +He opened it, read it, crushed it in his hand and threw it down. It +simply said: + +"Ruth is very ill." + + + + +CHAPTER LXIII. + +It was evening when Philip took the cars at the Ilium station. The news +of, his success had preceded him, and while he waited for the train, he +was the center of a group of eager questioners, who asked him a hundred +things about the mine, and magnified his good fortune. There was no +mistake this time. + +Philip, in luck, had become suddenly a person of consideration, whose +speech was freighted with meaning, whose looks were all significant. +The words of the proprietor of a rich coal mine have a golden sound, +and his common sayings are repeated as if they were solid wisdom. + +Philip wished to be alone; his good fortune at this moment seemed an +empty mockery, one of those sarcasms of fate, such as that which spreads +a dainty banquet for the man who has no appetite. He had longed for +success principally for Ruth's sake; and perhaps now, at this very moment +of his triumph, she was dying. + +"Shust what I said, Mister Sederling," the landlord of the Ilium hotel +kept repeating. "I dold Jake Schmidt he find him dere shust so sure as +noting." + +"You ought to have taken a share, Mr. Dusenheimer," said Philip. + +"Yaas, I know. But d'old woman, she say 'You sticks to your pisiness. +So I sticks to 'em. Und I makes noting. Dat Mister Prierly, he don't +never come back here no more, ain't it?" + +"Why?" asked Philip. + +"Vell, dere is so many peers, and so many oder dhrinks, I got 'em all set +down, ven he coomes back." + +It was a long night for Philip, and a restless one. At any other time +the swing of the cars would have lulled him to sleep, and the rattle and +clank of wheels and rails, the roar of the whirling iron would have only +been cheerful reminders of swift and safe travel. Now they were voices +of warning and taunting; and instead of going rapidly the train seemed to +crawl at a snail's pace. And it not only crawled, but it frequently +stopped; and when it stopped it stood dead still and there was an ominous +silence. Was anything the matter, he wondered. Only a station probably. +Perhaps, he thought, a telegraphic station. And then he listened +eagerly. Would the conductor open the door and ask for Philip Sterling, +and hand him a fatal dispatch? + +How long they seemed to wait. And then slowly beginning to move, they +were off again, shaking, pounding, screaming through the night. He drew +his curtain from time to time and looked out. There was the lurid sky +line of the wooded range along the base of which they were crawling. +There was the Susquehannah, gleaming in the moon-light. There was a +stretch of level valley with silent farm houses, the occupants all at +rest, without trouble, without anxiety. There was a church, a graveyard, +a mill, a village; and now, without pause or fear, the train had mounted +a trestle-work high in air and was creeping along the top of it while a +swift torrent foamed a hundred feet below. + +What would the morning bring? Even while he was flying to her, her gentle +spirit might have gone on another flight, whither he could not follow +her. He was full of foreboding. He fell at length into a restless doze. +There was a noise in his ears as of a rushing torrent when a stream is +swollen by a freshet in the spring. It was like the breaking up of life; +he was struggling in the consciousness of coming death: when Ruth stood +by his side, clothed in white, with a face like that of an angel, +radiant, smiling, pointing to the sky, and saying, "Come." He awoke with +a cry--the train was roaring through a bridge, and it shot out into +daylight. + +When morning came the train was industriously toiling along through the +fat lands of Lancaster, with its broad farms of corn and wheat, its mean +houses of stone, its vast barns and granaries, built as if, for storing +the riches of Heliogabalus. Then came the smiling fields of Chester, +with their English green, and soon the county of Philadelphia itself, and +the increasing signs of the approach to a great city. Long trains of +coal cars, laden and unladen, stood upon sidings; the tracks of other +roads were crossed; the smoke of other locomotives was seen on parallel +lines; factories multiplied; streets appeared; the noise of a busy city +began to fill the air;--and with a slower and slower clank on the +connecting rails and interlacing switches the train rolled into the +station and stood still. + +It was a hot August morning. The broad streets glowed in the sun, and +the white-shuttered houses stared at the hot thoroughfares like closed +bakers' ovens set along the highway. Philip was oppressed with the heavy +air; the sweltering city lay as in a swoon. Taking a street car, he rode +away to the northern part of the city, the newer portion, formerly the +district of Spring Garden, for in this the Boltons now lived, in a small +brick house, befitting their altered fortunes. + +He could scarcely restrain his impatience when he came in sight of the +house. The window shutters were not "bowed"; thank God, for that. Ruth +was still living, then. He ran up the steps and rang. Mrs. Bolton met +him at the door. + +"Thee is very welcome, Philip." + +"And Ruth?" + +"She is very ill, but quieter than, she has been, and the fever is a +little abating. The most dangerous time will be when the fever leaves +her. The doctor fears she will not have strength enough to rally from +it. Yes, thee can see her." + +Mrs. Bolton led the way to the little chamber where Ruth lay. "Oh," +said her mother, "if she were only in her cool and spacious room in our +old home. She says that seems like heaven." + +Mr. Bolton sat by Ruth's bedside, and he rose and silently pressed +Philip's hand. The room had but one window; that was wide open to admit +the air, but the air that came in was hot and lifeless. Upon the table +stood a vase of flowers. Ruth's eyes were closed; her cheeks were +flushed with fever, and she moved her head restlessly as if in pain. + +"Ruth," said her mother, bending over her, "Philip is here." + +Ruth's eyes unclosed, there was a gleam of recognition in them, there was +an attempt at a smile upon her face, and she tried to raise her thin +hand, as Philip touched her forehead with his lips; and he heard her +murmur, + +"Dear Phil." + +There was nothing to be done but to watch and wait for the cruel fever to +burn itself out. Dr. Longstreet told Philip that the fever had +undoubtedly been contracted in the hospital, but it was not malignant, +and would be little dangerous if Ruth were not so worn down with work, +or if she had a less delicate constitution. + +"It is only her indomitable will that has kept her up for weeks. And if +that should leave her now, there will be no hope. You can do more for +her now, sir, than I can?" + +"How?" asked Philip eagerly. + +"Your presence, more than anything else, will inspire her with the desire +to live." + +When the fever turned, Ruth was in a very critical condition. For two +days her life was like the fluttering of a lighted candle in the wind. +Philip was constantly by her side, and she seemed to be conscious of his +presence, and to cling to him, as one borne away by a swift stream clings +to a stretched-out hand from the shore. If he was absent a moment her +restless eyes sought something they were disappointed not to find. + +Philip so yearned to bring her back to life, he willed it so strongly and +passionately, that his will appeared to affect hers and she seemed slowly +to draw life from his. + +After two days of this struggle with the grasping enemy, it was evident +to Dr. Longstreet that Ruth's will was beginning to issue its orders to +her body with some force, and that strength was slowly coming back. +In another day there was a decided improvement. As Philip sat holding +her weak hand and watching the least sign of resolution in her face, Ruth +was able to whisper, + +"I so want to live, for you, Phil!" + +"You will; darling, you must," said Philip in a tone of faith and courage +that carried a thrill of determination--of command--along all her nerves. + +Slowly Philip drew her back to life. Slowly she came back, as one +willing but well nigh helpless. It was new for Ruth to feel this +dependence on another's nature, to consciously draw strength of will from +the will of another. It was a new but a dear joy, to be lifted up and +carried back into the happy world, which was now all aglow with the light +of love; to be lifted and carried by the one she loved more than her own +life. + +"Sweetheart," she said to Philip, "I would not have cared to come back +but for thy love." + +"Not for thy profession?" + +"Oh, thee may be glad enough of that some day, when thy coal bed is dug +out and thee and father are in the air again." + +When Ruth was able to ride she was taken into the country, for the pure +air was necessary to her speedy recovery. The family went with her. +Philip could not be spared from her side, and Mr. Bolton had gone up to +Ilium to look into that wonderful coal mine and to make arrangements for +developing it, and bringing its wealth to market. Philip had insisted on +re-conveying the Ilium property to Mr. Bolton, retaining only the share +originally contemplated for himself, and Mr. Bolton, therefore, once +more found himself engaged in business and a person of some consequence +in Third street. The mine turned out even better than was at first +hoped, and would, if judiciously managed, be a fortune to them all. +This also seemed to be the opinion of Mr. Bigler, who heard of it as soon +as anybody, and, with the impudence of his class called upon Mr. Bolton +for a little aid in a patent car-wheel he had bought an interest in. +That rascal, Small, he said, had swindled him out of all he had. + +Mr. Bolton told him he was very sorry, and recommended him to sue Small. + +Mr. Small also came with a similar story about Mr. Bigler; and Mr. +Bolton had the grace to give him like advice. And he added, "If you and +Bigler will procure the indictment of each other, you may have the +satisfaction of putting each other in the penitentiary for the forgery of +my acceptances." + +Bigler and Small did not quarrel however. They both attacked Mr. Bolton +behind his back as a swindler, and circulated the story that he had made +a fortune by failing. + +In the pure air of the highlands, amid the golden glories of ripening +September, Ruth rapidly came back to health. How beautiful the world is +to an invalid, whose senses are all clarified, who has been so near the +world of spirits that she is sensitive to the finest influences, and +whose frame responds with a thrill to the subtlest ministrations of +soothing nature. Mere life is a luxury, and the color of the grass, of +the flowers, of the sky, the wind in the trees, the outlines of the +horizon, the forms of clouds, all give a pleasure as exquisite as the +sweetest music to the ear famishing for it. The world was all new and +fresh to Ruth, as if it had just been created for her, and love filled +it, till her heart was overflowing with happiness. + +It was golden September also at Fallkill. And Alice sat by the open +window in her room at home, looking out upon the meadows where the +laborers were cutting the second crop of clover. The fragrance of it +floated to her nostrils. Perhaps she did not mind it. She was thinking. +She had just been writing to Ruth, and on the table before her was a +yellow piece of paper with a faded four-leaved clover pinned on it--only +a memory now. In her letter to Ruth she had poured out her heartiest +blessings upon them both, with her dear love forever and forever. + +"Thank God," she said, "they will never know" + +They never would know. And the world never knows how many women there +are like Alice, whose sweet but lonely lives of self-sacrifice, gentle, +faithful, loving souls, bless it continually. + +"She is a dear girl," said Philip, when Ruth showed him the letter. + +"Yes, Phil, and we can spare a great deal of love for her, our own lives +are so full." + + + + +APPENDIX. + +Perhaps some apology to the reader is necessary in view of our failure to +find Laura's father. We supposed, from the ease with which lost persons +are found in novels, that it would not be difficult. But it was; indeed, +it was impossible; and therefore the portions of the narrative containing +the record of the search have been stricken out. Not because they were +not interesting--for they were; but inasmuch as the man was not found, +after all, it did not seem wise to harass and excite the reader to no +purpose. + +THE AUTHORS + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gilded Age, Complete +by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner + + + + + + +SKETCHES NEW AND OLD + +by Mark Twain + + + +CONTENTS: + + Preface + My Watch + Political Economy + The Jumping Frog + Journalism In Tennessee + The Story Of The Bad Little Boy + The Story Of The Good Little Boy + A Couple Of Poems By Twain And Moore + Niagara + Answers To Correspondents + To Raise Poultry + Experience Of The Mcwilliamses With Membranous Croup + My First Literary Venture + How The Author Was Sold In Newark + The Office Bore + Johnny Greer + The Facts In The Case Of The Great Beef Contract + The Case Of George Fisher + Disgraceful Persecution Of A Boy + The Judges "Spirited Woman" + Information Wanted + Some Learned Fables, For Good Old Boys And Girls + My Late Senatorial Secretaryship + A Fashion Item + Riley-Newspaper Correspondent + A Fine Old Man + Science Vs. Luck + The Late Benjamin Franklin + Mr. Bloke's Item + A Medieval Romance + Petition Concerning Copyright + After-Dinner Speech + Lionizing Murderers + A New Crime + A Curious Dream + A True Story + The Siamese Twins + Speech At The Scottish Banquet In London + A Ghost Story + The Capitoline Venus + Speech On Accident Insurance + John Chinaman In New York + How I Edited An Agricultural Paper + The Petrified Man + My Bloody Massacre + The Undertaker's Chat + Concerning Chambermaids + Aurelia's Unfortunate Young Man + "After" Jenkins + About Barbers + "Party Cries" In Ireland + The Facts Concerning The Recent Resignation + History Repeats Itself + Honored As A Curiosity + First Interview With Artemus Ward + Cannibalism In The Cars + The Killing Of Julius Caesar "Localized" + The Widow's Protest + The Scriptural Panoramist + Curing A Cold + A Curious Pleasure Excursion + Running For Governor + A Mysterious Visit + + + + +PREFACE + +I have scattered through this volume a mass of matter which has never +been in print before (such as "Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and +Girls," the "Jumping Frog restored to the English tongue after martyrdom +in the French," the "Membranous Croup" sketch, and many others which I +need not specify): not doing this in order to make an advertisement of +it, but because these things seemed instructive. + +HARTFORD, 1875. + MARK TWAIN. + + + + + + +SKETCHES NEW AND OLD + + + + +MY WATCH--[Written about 1870.] + +AN INSTRUCTIVE LITTLE TALE + +My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, +and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come +to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to +consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last, one +night, I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized +messenger and forerunner of calamity. But by and by I cheered up, set +the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart. +Next day I stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact time, +and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to +set it for me. Then he said, "She is four minutes slow-regulator wants +pushing up." I tried to stop him--tried to make him understand that the +watch kept perfect time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was +that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator must be pushed up +a little; and so, while I danced around him in anguish, and implored him +to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My +watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the +week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred +and fifty in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the +timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen +days ahead of the almanac. It was away into November enjoying the snow, +while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house rent, +bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not +abide it. I took it to the watchmaker to be regulated. He asked me if I +had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had never needed any repairing. +He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open, +and then put a small dice-box into his eye and peered into its machinery. +He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating--come in a +week. After being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down +to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by +trains, I failed all appointments, I got to missing my dinner; my watch +strung out three days' grace to four and let me go to protest; +I gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last +week, and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and +alone I was lingering along in week before last, and the world was out of +sight. I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling +for the mummy in the museum, and a desire to swap news with him. I went +to a watchmaker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited, +and then said the barrel was "swelled." He said he could reduce it in +three days. After this the watch averaged well, but nothing more. For +half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking +and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that I could not +hear myself think for the disturbance; and as long as it held out there +was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. But the +rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all +the clocks it had left behind caught up again. So at last, at the end of +twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and +just in time. It would show a fair and square average, and no man could +say it had done more or less than its duty. But a correct average is +only a mild virtue in a watch, and I took this instrument to another +watchmaker. He said the king-bolt was broken. I said I was glad it was +nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the +king-bolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. +He repaired the king-bolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost +in another. It would run awhile and then stop awhile, and then run +awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals. +And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I padded my +breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker. +He picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his +glass; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with +the hair-trigger. He fixed it, and gave it a fresh start. It did well +now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut +together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would +travel together. The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail +of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the thing +repaired. This person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the +mainspring was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works +needed half-soling. He made these things all right, and then my +timepiece performed unexceptionably, save that now and then, after +working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let +go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would +straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their +individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate +spider's web over the face of the watch. She would reel off the next +twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang. +I went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he +took her to pieces. Then I prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for +this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars +originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for +repairs. While I waited and looked on I presently recognized in this +watchmaker an old acquaintance--a steamboat engineer of other days, and +not a good engineer, either. He examined all the parts carefully, just +as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with +the same confidence of manner. + +He said: + +"She makes too much steam-you want to hang the monkey-wrench on the +safety-valve!" + +I brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense. + +My uncle William (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good horse was, +a good horse until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good +watch until the repairers got a chance at it. And he used to wonder what +became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, +and engineers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him. + + + + + + +POLITICAL ECONOMY + + Political Economy is the basis of all good government. The wisest + men of all ages have brought to bear upon this subject the-- + +[Here I was interrupted and informed that a stranger wished to see me +down at the door. I went and confronted him, and asked to know his +business, struggling all the time to keep a tight rein on my seething +political-economy ideas, and not let them break away from me or get +tangled in their harness. And privately I wished the stranger was in the +bottom of the canal with a cargo of wheat on top of him. I was all in a +fever, but he was cool. He said he was sorry to disturb me, but as he +was passing he noticed that I needed some lightning-rods. I said, "Yes, +yes--go on--what about it?" He said there was nothing about it, in +particular--nothing except that he would like to put them up for me. +I am new to housekeeping; have been used to hotels and boarding-houses +all my life. Like anybody else of similar experience, I try to appear +(to strangers) to be an old housekeeper; consequently I said in an +offhand way that I had been intending for some time to have six or eight +lightning-rods put up, but--The stranger started, and looked inquiringly +at me, but I was serene. I thought that if I chanced to make any +mistakes, he would not catch me by my countenance. He said he would +rather have my custom than any man's in town. I said, "All right," and +started off to wrestle with my great subject again, when he called me +back and said it would be necessary to know exactly how many "points" I +wanted put up, what parts of the house I wanted them on, and what quality +of rod I preferred. It was close quarters for a man not used to the +exigencies of housekeeping; but I went through creditably, and he +probably never suspected that I was a novice. I told him to put up eight +"points," and put them all on the roof, and use the best quality of rod. +He said he could furnish the "plain" article at 20 cents a foot; +"coppered," 25 cents; "zinc-plated spiral-twist," at 30 cents, that would +stop a streak of lightning any time, no matter where it was bound, and +"render its errand harmless and its further progress apocryphal." I said +apocryphal was no slouch of a word, emanating from the source it did, +but, philology aside, I liked the spiral-twist and would take that brand. +Then he said he could make two hundred and fifty feet answer; but to do +it right, and make the best job in town of it, and attract the admiration +of the just and the unjust alike, and compel all parties to say they +never saw a more symmetrical and hypothetical display of lightning-rods +since they were born, he supposed he really couldn't get along without +four hundred, though he was not vindictive, and trusted he was willing to +try. I said, go ahead and use four hundred, and make any kind of a job +he pleased out of it, but let me get back to my work. So I got rid of +him at last; and now, after half an hour spent in getting my train of +political-economy thoughts coupled together again, I am ready to go on +once more.] + + richest treasures of their genius, their experience of life, and + their learning. The great lights of commercial jurisprudence, + international confraternity, and biological deviation, of all ages, + all civilizations, and all nationalities, from Zoroaster down to + Horace Greeley, have-- + +[Here I was interrupted again, and required to go down and confer further +with that lightning-rod man. I hurried off, boiling and surging with +prodigious thoughts wombed in words of such majesty that each one of them +was in itself a straggling procession of syllables that might be fifteen +minutes passing a given point, and once more I confronted him--he so calm +and sweet, I so hot and frenzied. He was standing in the contemplative +attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, with one foot on my infant tuberose, +and the other among my pansies, his hands on his hips, his hat-brim +tilted forward, one eye shut and the other gazing critically and +admiringly in the direction of my principal chimney. He said now there +was a state of things to make a man glad to be alive; and added, "I leave +it to you if you ever saw anything more deliriously picturesque than +eight lightning-rods on one chimney?" I said I had no present +recollection of anything that transcended it. He said that in his +opinion nothing on earth but Niagara Falls was superior to it in the way +of natural scenery. All that was needed now, he verily believed, to make +my house a perfect balm to the eye, was to kind of touch up the other +chimneys a little, and thus "add to the generous 'coup d'oeil' a soothing +uniformity of achievement which would allay the excitement naturally +consequent upon the 'coup d'etat.'" I asked him if he learned to talk +out of a book, and if I could borrow it anywhere? He smiled pleasantly, +and said that his manner of speaking was not taught in books, and that +nothing but familiarity with lightning could enable a man to handle his +conversational style with impunity. He then figured up an estimate, and +said that about eight more rods scattered about my roof would about fix +me right, and he guessed five hundred feet of stuff would do it; and +added that the first eight had got a little the start of him, so to +speak, and used up a mere trifle of material more than he had calculated +on--a hundred feet or along there. I said I was in a dreadful hurry, +and I wished we could get this business permanently mapped out, so that I +could go on with my work. He said, "I could have put up those eight +rods, and marched off about my business--some men would have done it. +But no; I said to myself, this man is a stranger to me, and I will die +before I'll wrong him; there ain't lightning-rods enough on that house, +and for one I'll never stir out of my tracks till I've done as I would be +done by, and told him so. Stranger, my duty is accomplished; if the +recalcitrant and dephlogistic messenger of heaven strikes your--" +"There, now, there," I said, "put on the other eight--add five hundred +feet of spiral-twist--do anything and everything you want to do; but calm +your sufferings, and try to keep your feelings where you can reach them +with the dictionary. Meanwhile, if we understand each other now, I will +go to work again." + +I think I have been sitting here a full hour this time, trying to get +back to where I was when my train of thought was broken up by the last +interruption; but I believe I have accomplished it at last, and may +venture to proceed again.] + + wrestled with this great subject, and the greatest among them have + found it a worthy adversary, and one that always comes up fresh and + smiling after every throw. The great Confucius said that he would + rather be a profound political economist than chief of police. + Cicero frequently said that political economy was the grandest + consummation that the human mind was capable of consuming; and even + our own Greeley had said vaguely but forcibly that "Political-- + +[Here the lightning-rod man sent up another call for me. I went down in +a state of mind bordering on impatience. He said he would rather have +died than interrupt me, but when he was employed to do a job, and that +job was expected to be done in a clean, workmanlike manner, and when it +was finished and fatigue urged him to seek the rest and recreation he +stood so much in need of, and he was about to do it, but looked up and +saw at a glance that all the calculations had been a little out, and if a +thunder-storm were to come up, and that house, which he felt a personal +interest in, stood there with nothing on earth to protect it but sixteen +lightning-rods--"Let us have peace!" I shrieked. "Put up a hundred and +fifty! Put some on the kitchen! Put a dozen on the barn! Put a couple +on the cow! Put one on the cook!--scatter them all over the persecuted +place till it looks like a zinc-plated, spiral-twisted, silver-mounted +canebrake! Move! Use up all the material you can get your hands on, and +when you run out of lightning-rods put up ramrods, cam-rods, stair-rods, +piston-rods--anything that will pander to your dismal appetite for +artificial scenery, and bring respite to my raging brain and healing to +my lacerated soul!" Wholly unmoved--further than to smile sweetly--this +iron being simply turned back his wrist-bands daintily, and said he would +now proceed to hump himself. Well, all that was nearly three hours ago. +It is questionable whether I am calm enough yet to write on the noble +theme of political economy, but I cannot resist the desire to try, for it +is the one subject that is nearest to my heart and dearest to my brain of +all this world's philosophy.] + + economy is heaven's best boon to man." When the loose but gifted + Byron lay in his Venetian exile he observed that, if it could be + granted him to go back and live his misspent life over again, he + would give his lucid and unintoxicated intervals to the composition, + not of frivolous rhymes, but of essays upon political economy. + Washington loved this exquisite science; such names as Baker, + Beckwith, Judson, Smith, are imperishably linked with it; and even + imperial Homer, in the ninth book of the Iliad, has said: + + Fiat justitia, ruat coelum, + Post mortem unum, ante bellum, + Hic facet hoc, ex-parte res, + Politicum e-conomico est. + + The grandeur of these conceptions of the old poet, together with the + felicity of the wording which clothes them, and the sublimity of the + imagery whereby they are illustrated, have singled out that stanza, + and made it more celebrated than any that ever-- + +["Now, not a word out of you--not a single word. Just state your bill +and relapse into impenetrable silence for ever and ever on these +premises. Nine hundred, dollars? Is that all? This check for the +amount will be honored at any respectable bank in America. What is that +multitude of people gathered in the street for? How?--'looking at the +lightning-rods!' Bless my life, did they never see any lightning-rods +before? Never saw 'such a stack of them on one establishment,' did I +understand you to say? I will step down and critically observe this +popular ebullition of ignorance."] + +THREE DAYS LATER.--We are all about worn out. For four-and-twenty hours +our bristling premises were the talk and wonder of the town. The +theaters languished, for their happiest scenic inventions were tame and +commonplace compared with my lightning-rods. Our street was blocked +night and day with spectators, and among them were many who came from +the country to see. It was a blessed relief on the second day when a +thunderstorm came up and the lightning began to "go for" my house, as the +historian Josephus quaintly phrases it. It cleared the galleries, so to +speak. In five minutes there was not a spectator within half a mile of +my place; but all the high houses about that distance away were full, +windows, roof, and all. And well they might be, for all the falling +stars and Fourth-of-July fireworks of a generation, put together and +rained down simultaneously out of heaven in one brilliant shower upon one +helpless roof, would not have any advantage of the pyrotechnic display +that was making my house so magnificently conspicuous in the general +gloom of the storm. + +By actual count, the lightning struck at my establishment seven +hundred and sixty-four times in forty minutes, but tripped on one of +those faithful rods every time, and slid down the spiral-twist and shot +into the earth before it probably had time to be surprised at the way the +thing was done. And through all that bombardment only one patch of slates +was ripped up, and that was because, for a single instant, the rods in +the vicinity were transporting all the lightning they could possibly +accommodate. Well, nothing was ever seen like it since the world began. +For one whole day and night not a member of my family stuck his head out +of the window but he got the hair snatched off it as smooth as a +billiard-ball; and; if the reader will believe me, not one of us ever +dreamt of stirring abroad. But at last the awful siege came to an +end-because there was absolutely no more electricity left in the clouds +above us within grappling distance of my insatiable rods. Then I sallied +forth, and gathered daring workmen together, and not a bite or a nap did +we take till the premises were utterly stripped of all their terrific +armament except just three rods on the house, one on the kitchen, and one +on the barn--and, behold, these remain there even unto this day. And +then, and not till then, the people ventured to use our street again. +I will remark here, in passing, that during that fearful time I did not +continue my essay upon political economy. I am not even yet settled +enough in nerve and brain to resume it. + +TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.--Parties having need of three thousand two +hundred and eleven feet of best quality zinc-plated spiral-twist +lightning-rod stuff, and sixteen hundred and thirty-one silver-tipped +points, all in tolerable repair (and, although much worn by use, still +equal to any ordinary emergency), can hear of a bargains by addressing +the publisher. + + + + + + +THE JUMPING FROG [written about 1865] + +IN ENGLISH. THEN IN FRENCH. THEN CLAWED BACK INTO A CIVILIZED LANGUAGE +ONCE MORE BY PATIENT, UNREMUNERATED TOIL. + +Even a criminal is entitled to fair play; and certainly when a man who +has done no harm has been unjustly treated, he is privileged to do his +best to right himself. My attention has just beep called to an article +some three years old in a French Magazine entitled, 'Revue des Deux +Mondes' (Review of Some Two Worlds), wherein the writer treats of "Les +Humoristes Americaines" (These Humorist Americans). I am one of these +humorists American dissected by him, and hence the complaint I am making. + +This gentleman's article is an able one (as articles go, in the French, +where they always tangle up everything to that degree that when you start +into a sentence you never know whether you are going to come out alive or +not). It is a very good article and the writer says all manner of kind +and complimentary things about me--for which I am sure thank him with all +my heart; but then why should he go and spoil all his praise by one +unlucky experiment? What I refer to is this: he says my jumping Frog is +a funny story, but still he can't see why it should ever really convulse +any one with laughter--and straightway proceeds to translate it into +French in order to prove to his nation that there is nothing so very +extravagantly funny about it. Just there is where my complaint +originates. He has not translated it at all; he has simply mixed it all +up; it is no more like the jumping Frog when he gets through with it than +I am like a meridian of longitude. But my mere assertion is not proof; +wherefore I print the French version, that all may see that I do not +speak falsely; furthermore, in order that even the unlettered may know my +injury and give me their compassion, I have been at infinite pains and +trouble to retranslate this French version back into English; and to tell +the truth I have well-nigh worn myself out at it, having scarcely rested +from my work during five days and nights. I cannot speak the French +language, but I can translate very well, though not fast, I being +self-educated. I ask the reader to run his eye over the original English +version of the jumping Frog, and then read the French or my +retranslation, and kindly take notice how the Frenchman has riddled the +grammar. I think it is the worst I ever saw; and yet the French are +called a polished nation. If I had a boy that put sentences together as +they do, I would polish him to some purpose. Without further +introduction, the jumping Frog, as I originally wrote it, was as follows +[after it will be found the French version--(French version is deleted +from this edition)--, and after the latter my retranslation from the +French] + + + + +THE NOTORIOUS JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY [Pronounced Cal-e-va-ras] + +In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the +East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired +after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I +hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. +Smiley is a myth that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he +on conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him +of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me to death +with some exasperating reminiscence him as long and as tedious as it +should be useless to me. If that was the design, it succeeded. + +I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the +dilapidated tavern in the decayed mining camp Angel's, and I noticed that +he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness +and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up, and gave me +good day. I told him that a friend of mine had commissioned me to make +some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas +W. Smiley--Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, a young minister of the Gospel, who +he had heard was at one time resident of Angel's Camp. I added that if +Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, +I would feel under many obligations to him. + +Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his +chair, and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which +follows this paragraph. He never smiled he never frowned, he never +changed his voice from the gentle flowing key to which he tuned his +initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of +enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein +of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, +so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny +about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired +its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in 'finesse.' I let him go +on in his own way, and never interrupted him once. + +"Rev. Leonidas W. H'm, Reverend Le--well, there was a feller here, once +by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of '49--or maybe it was the +spring of '50--I don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me +think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume warn't +finished when he first come to the camp; but anyway, he was the +curiousest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever +see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't +he'd change sides. Any way that suited the other man would suit him any +way just so's he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still he was lucky, +uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and +laying for a chance; there couldn't be no solit'ry thing mentioned but +that feller'd offer to bet on it, and take any side you please, as I was +just telling you. If there was a horse-race, you'd find him flush or +you'd find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he'd +bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a +chicken-fight, he'd bet on it; why, if there was two birds setting on a +fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a +camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar to bet on Parson Walker, which he +judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was too, and a good +man. If he even see a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet +you how long it would take him to get to--to wherever he was going to, +and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but +what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the +road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about +him. Why, it never made no difference to him--he'd bet on any thing--the +dangdest feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once, for a good +while, and it seemed as if they warn't going to save her; but one morning +he come in, and Smiley up and asked him how she was, and he said she was +considerable better--thank the Lord for his inf'nite mercy--and coming on +so smart that with the blessing of Prov'dence she'd get well yet; and +Smiley, before he thought, says, 'Well, I'll resk two-and-a-half she +don't anyway.' + +"Thish-yer Smiley had a mare--the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag, +but that was only in fun, you know, because of course she was faster than +that--and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and +always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something +of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards' start, +and then pass her under way; but always at the fag end of the race she +get excited and desperate like, and come cavorting and straddling up, +and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and +sometimes out to one side among the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust +and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her +nose--and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near +as you could cipher it down. + +"And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you'd think he +warn't worth a cent but to set around and look ornery and lay for a +chance to steal something. But as soon as money was up on him he was a +different dog; his under-jaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of +a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover and shine like the furnaces. +And a dog might tackle him and bully-rag him, and bite him, and throw him +over his shoulder two or three times, and Andrew Jackson--which was the +name of the pup--Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he was +satisfied, and hadn't expected nothing else--and the bets being doubled +and doubled on the other side all the time, till the money was all up; +and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the j'int +of his hind leg and freeze to it--not chaw, you understand, but only just +grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year. +Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he harnessed a dog once +that didn't have no hind legs, because they'd been sawed off in a +circular saw, and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money +was all up, and he come to make a snatch for his pet holt, he see in a +minute how he'd been imposed on, and how the other dog had him in the +door, so to speak, and he 'peared surprised, and then he looked sorter +discouraged-like and didn't try no more to win the fight, and so he got +shucked out bad. He give Smiley a look, as much as to say his heart was +broke, and it was his fault, for putting up a dog that hadn't no hind +legs for him to take holt of, which was his main dependence in a fight, +and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died. It was a good +pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for hisself if +he'd lived, for the stuff was in him and he had genius--I know it, +because he hadn't no opportunities to speak of, and it don't stand to +reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them +circumstances if he hadn't no talent. It always makes me feel sorry when +I think of that last fight of his'n, and the way it turned out. + +"Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tomcats +and all them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't +fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you. He ketched a frog +one day, and took him home, and said he cal'lated to educate him; and so +he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn +that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him a +little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in +the air like a doughnut--see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple, +if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a +cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep' him in +practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could +see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do +'most anything--and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster +down here on this floor--Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog--and sing +out, 'Flies, Dan'l, flies!' and quicker'n you could wink he'd spring +straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the +floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of +his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd +been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest +and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it +come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more +ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. +Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it +come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red. +Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers +that had traveled and been everywheres all said he laid over any frog +that ever they see. + +"Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to +fetch him down-town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller +--a stranger in the camp, he was--come acrost him with his box, and says: + +"'What might it be that you've got in the box?' + +"And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, 'It might be a parrot, or it +might be a canary, maybe, but it ain't--it's only just a frog.' + +"And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round +this way and that, and says, 'H'm--so 'tis. Well, what's HE good for. + +"'Well,' Smiley says, easy and careless, 'he's good enough for one thing, +I should judge--he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County. + +"The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, +and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, 'Well,' he says, +'I don't see no pints about that frog that's any better'n any other +frog.' + +"'Maybe you don't,' Smiley says. 'Maybe you understand frogs and maybe +you don't understand 'em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you +ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll +resk forty dollars the he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.' + +"And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad-like, 'Well, +I'm only a, stranger here, and I ain't got no frog; but if I had a frog, +I'd bet you. + +"And then Smiley says, 'That's all right--that's all right if you'll hold +my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog.' Any so the feller took the +box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's, and set down to +wait. + +"So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to himself and then +he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and +filled him full of quail-shot-filled him pretty near up to his chin--and +set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in +the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him +in, and give him to this feller and says: + +"'Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore paws +just even with Dan'l's, and I'll give the word.' Then he says, +'One-two-three--git' and him and the feller touches up the frogs from +behind, and the new frog hopped off lively but Dan'l give a heave, and +hysted up his shoulders---so-like a Frenchman, but it warn't no use--he +couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn't no +more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised, +and he was disgusted too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter was +of course. + +"The Teller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at +the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder--so--at Dan'l, and +says again, very deliberate, 'Well,' he says, 'I don't see no pints about +that frog that's any better'n any other frog.' + +"Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long +time, and at last he says, 'I do wonder what in the nation that frog +throw'd off for--I wonder if there ain't something the matter with him +--he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.' And he ketched Dan'l by the +nap of the neck, and hefted him, and says, 'Why blame my cats if he don't +weigh five pound!' and turned him upside down and he belched out a double +handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man +--he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never +ketched him. And--" + +[Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got up +to see what was wanted.] And turning to me as he moved away, he said: +"Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy--I ain't going to be +gone a second." + +But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of +the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much +information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started +away. + +At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he buttonholed me +and recommenced: + +"Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn't have no +tail, only just a short stump like a bannanner, and--" + +However, lacking both time and inclination, I did not wait to hear about +the afflicted cow, but took my leave. + + +Now let the learned look upon this picture and say if iconoclasm can +further go: + +[From the Revue des Deux Mondes, of July 15th, 1872.] + + ....................... + + +THE JUMPING FROG + +"--Il y avait, une fois ici un individu connu sous le nom de Jim Smiley: +c'etait dans l'hiver de 49, peut-etre bien au printemps de 50, je ne me +reappelle pas exactement. Ce qui me fait croire que c'etait l'un ou +l'autre, c'est que je me souviens que le grand bief n'etait pas acheve +lorsqu'il arriva au camp pour la premiere fois, mais de toutes facons il +etait l'homme le plus friand de paris qui se put voir, pariant sur tout +ce qui se presentaat, quand il pouvait trouver un adversaire, et, quand +n'en trouvait pas il passait du cote oppose. Tout ce qui convenaiat +l'autre lui convenait; pourvu qu'il eut un pari, Smiley etait satisfait. +Et il avait une chance! une chance inouie: presque toujours il gagnait. +It faut dire qu'il etait toujours pret a'exposer, qu'on ne pouvait +mentionner la moindre chose sans que ce gaillard offrit de parier +la-dessus n'importe quoi et de prendre le cote que l'on voudrait, comme +je vous le disais tout a l'heure. S'il y avait des courses, vous le +trouviez riche ou ruine a la fin; s'il y avait un combat de chiens, il +apportait son enjeu; il l'apportait pour un combat de chats, pour un +combat de coqs;--parbleu! si vous aviez vu deux oiseaux sur une haie il +vous aurait offert de parier lequel s'envolerait le premier, et s'il y +aviat 'meeting' au camp, il venait parier regulierement pour le cure +Walker, qu'il jugeait etre le meilleur predicateur des environs, et qui +l'etait en effet, et un brave homme. Il aurai rencontre une punaise de +bois en chemin, qu'il aurait parie sur le temps qu'il lui faudrait pour +aller ou elle voudrait aller, et si vous l'aviez pris au mot, it aurait +suivi la punaise jusqu'au Mexique, sans se soucier d'aller si loin, ni du +temps qu'il y perdrait. Une fois la femme du cure Walker fut tres malade +pendant longtemps, il semblait qu'on ne la sauverait pas; mai un matin le +cure arrive, et Smiley lui demande comment ella va et il dit qu'elle est +bien mieux, grace a l'infinie misericorde tellement mieux qu'avec la +benediction de la Providence elle s'en tirerait, et voila que, sans y +penser, Smiley repond:--Eh bien! ye gage deux et demi qu'elle mourra tout +de meme. + +"Ce Smiley avait une jument que les gars appelaient le bidet du quart +d'heure, mais seulement pour plaisanter, vous comprenez, parse que, bien +entendu, elle etait plus vite que ca! Et il avait coutume de gagner de +l'argent avec cette bete, quoi-qu'elle fut poussive, cornarde, toujours +prise d'asthme, de colique ou de consomption, ou de quelque chose +d'approchant. On lui donnait 2 ou 300 'yards' au depart, puffs on la +depassait sans peine; mais jamais a la fin elle ne manquait de +s'echauffer, de s'exasperer et elle arrivait, s'ecartant, se defendant, +ses jambes greles en l'ai devant les obstacles, quelquefois les evitant +et faisant avec cela plus de poussiare qu'aucun cheval, plus de bruit +surtout avec ses eternumens et reniflemens.---crac! elle arrivaat donc +toujour premiere d'une tete, aussi juste qu'on peut le mesurer. Et il +avait un petit bouledogue qui, a le voir, ne valait pas un sou; on aurait +cru que parier contre lui c'etait voler, tant il etait ordinaire; mais +aussitot les enjeux faits, il devenait un autre chien. Sa machoire +inferieure commencait a ressortir comme un gaillard d'avant, ses dents se +decouvcraient brillantes commes des fournaises, et un chien pouvait le +taquiner, l'exciter, le mordre, le jeter deux ou trois fois par-dessus +son epaule, Andre Jackson, c'etait le nom du chien, Andre Jackson prenait +cela tranquillement, comme s'il ne se fut jamais attendu a autre chose, +et quand les paris etaient doubles et redoubles contre lui, il vous +saisissait l'autre chien juste a l'articulation de la jambe de derriere, +et il ne la lachait plus, non pas qu'il la machat, vous concevez, mais il +s'y serait tenu pendu jusqu'a ce qu'on jetat l'eponge en l'air, fallut-il +attendre un an. Smiley gagnait toujours avec cette bete-la; +malheureusement ils ont fini par dresser un chien qui n'avait pas de +pattes de derriere, parce qu'on les avait sciees, et quand les choses +furent au point qu'il voulait, et qu'il en vint a se jeter sur son +morceau favori, le pauvre chien comprit en un instant qu'on s'etait moque +de lui, et que l'autre le tenait. Vous n'avez jamais vu personne avoir +l'air plus penaud et plus decourage; il ne fit aucun effort pour gagner +le combat et fut rudement secoue, de sorte que, regardant Smiley comme +pour lui dire:--Mon coeur est brise, c'est to faute; pourquoi m'avoir +livre a un chien qui n'a pas de pattes de derriere, puisque c'est par la +que je les bats?--il s'en alla en clopinant, et se coucha pour mourir. +Ah! c'etait un bon chien, cet Andre Jackson, et il se serait fait un nom, +s'il avait vecu, car il y avait de l'etoffe en lui, il avait du genie, +je la sais, bien que de grandes occasions lui aient manque; mais il est +impossible de supposer qu'un chien capable de se battre comme lui, +certaines circonstances etant donnees, ait manque de talent. Je me sens +triste toutes les fois que je pense a son dernier combat et au denoument +qu'il a eu. Eh bien! ce Smiley nourrissait des terriers a rats, et des +coqs combat, et des chats, et toute sorte de choses, au point qu'il etait +toujours en mesure de vous tenir tete, et qu'avec sa rage de paris on +n'avait plus de repos. Il attrapa un jour une grenouille et l'emporta +chez lui, disant qu'il pretendait faire son Education; vous me croirez si +vous voulez, mais pendant trois mois il n'a rien fait que lui apprendre a +sauter dans une cour retire de sa maison. Et je vous reponds qu'il avait +reussi. Il lui donnait un petit coup par derriere, et l'instant d'apres +vous voyiez la grenouille tourner en l'air comme un beignet au-dessus de +la poele, faire une culbute, quelquefois deux, lorsqu'elle etait bien +partie, et retomber sur ses pattes comme un chat. Il l'avait dressee +dans l'art de gober des mouches, er l'y exercait continuellement, si bien +qu'une mouche, du plus loin qu'elle apparaissait, etait une mouche +perdue. Smiley avait coutume de dire que tout ce qui manquait a une +grenouille, c'etait l'education, qu'avec l'education elle pouvait faire +presque tout, et je le crois. Tenez, je l'ai vu poser Daniel Webster la +sur se plancher,--Daniel Webster etait le nom de la grenouille,--et lui +chanter: Des mouches! Daniel, des mouches!--En un clin d'oeil, Daniel +avait bondi et saisi une mouche ici sur le comptoir, puis saute de +nouveau par terre, ou il restait vraiment a se gratter la tete avec sa +patte de derriere, comme s'il n'avait pas eu la moindre idee de sa +superiorite. Jamais vous n'avez grenouille vu de aussi modeste, aussi +naturelle, douee comme elle l'etait! Et quand il s'agissait de sauter +purement et simplement sur terrain plat, elle faisait plus de chemin en +un saut qu'aucune bete de son espece que vous puissiez connaitre. Sauter +a plat, c'etait son fort! Quand il s'agissait de cela, Smiley en tassait +les enjeux sur elle tant qu'il lui, restait un rouge liard. Il faut le +reconnaitre, Smiley etait monstrueusement fier de sa grenouille, et il en +avait le droit, car des gens qui avaient voyage, qui avaient tout vu, +disaient qu'on lui ferait injure de la comparer a une autre; de facon que +Smiley gardait Daniel dans une petite boite a claire-voie qu'il emportait +parfois a la Ville pour quelque pari. + +"Un jour, un individu etranger au camp l'arrete aver sa boite et lui +dit:--Qu'est-ce que vous avez donc serre la dedans? + +"Smiley dit d'un air indifferent:--Cela pourrait etre un perroquet ou un +serin, mais ce n'est rien de pareil, ce n'est qu'une grenouille. + +"L'individu la prend, la regarde avec soin, la tourne d'un cote et de +l'autre puis il dit.--Tiens! en effet! A quoi estelle bonne? + +"--Mon Dieu! repond Smiley, toujours d'un air degage, elle est bonne pour +une chose a mon avis, elle peut battre en sautant toute grenouille du +comte de Calaveras. + +"L'individu reprend la boite, l'examine de nouveau longuement, et la rend +a Smiley en disant d'un air delibere:--Eh bien! je ne vois pas que cette +grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune grenouille. + +"--Possible qua vous ne le voyiez pat, dit Smiley, possible que vous vous +entendiez en grenouilles, possible que vous ne vous y entendez point, +possible qua vous avez de l'experience, et possible que vous ne soyez +qu'un amateur. De toute maniere, je parie quarante dollars qu'elle +battra en sautant n'importe quelle grenouille du comte de Calaveras. + +"L'individu reflechit one seconde et dit comma attriste:--Je ne suis +qu'un etranger ici, je n'ai pas de grenouille; mais, si j'en +avais une, je tiendrais le pari. + +"--Fort bien! repond Smiley. Rien de plus facile. Si vous voulez tenir +ma boite one minute, j'irai vous chercher une grenouille.--Voile donc +l'individu qui garde la boite, qui met ses quarante dollars sur ceux de +Smiley et qui attend. Il attend assez longtemps, reflechissant tout +seul, et figurez-vous qu'il prend Daniel, lui ouvre la bouche de force at +avec une cuiller a the l'emplit de menu plomb de chasse, mail l'emplit +jusqu'au menton, puis il le pose par terre. Smiley pendant ce temps +etait a barboter dans une mare. Finalement il attrape une grenouille, +l'apporte cet individu et dit:--Maintenant, si vous etes pret, mettez-la +tout contra Daniel, avec leurs pattes de devant sur la meme ligne, et je +donnerai le signal; puis il ajoute:--Un, deux, trois, sautez! + +"Lui et l'individu touchent leurs grenouilles par derriere, et la +grenouille neuve se met h sautiller, mais Daniel se souleve lourdement, +hausse les epaules ainsi, comma un Francais; a quoi bon? il ne pouvait +bouger, il etait plante solide comma une enclume, il n'avancait pas plus +que si on l'eut mis a l'ancre. Smiley fut surpris et degoute, mais il ne +se doutait pas du tour, bien entendu. L'individu empoche l'argent, s'en +va, et en s'en allant est-ce qu'il ne donna pas un coup de pouce +pardessus l'epaule, comma ca, au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air +delibere:--Eh bien! je ne vois pas qua cette grenouille ait rien de muiex +qu'une autre. + +"Smiley se gratta longtemps la tete, les yeux fixes Sur Daniel; jusqu'a +ce qu'enfin il dit:--je me demande comment diable il se fait qua cette +bite ait refuse, . . . Est-ce qu'elle aurait quelque chose? . . . On +croirait qu'elle est enflee. + +"Il empoigne Daniel par la peau du coo, le souleve et dit:--Le loup me +croque, s'il ne pese pas cinq livres. + +"Il le retourne, et le malheureux crache deux poignees de plomb. Quand +Smiley reconnut ce qui en etait, il fut comme fou. Vous le voyez d'ici +poser sa grenouille par terra et courir apres cet individu, mais il ne le +rattrapa jamais, et ...." + + + +[Translation of the above back from the French:] + +THE FROG JUMPING OF THE COUNTY OF CALAVERAS + +It there was one time here an individual known under the name of Jim +Smiley; it was in the winter of '89, possibly well at the spring of '50, +I no me recollect not exactly. This which me makes to believe that it +was the one or the other, it is that I shall remember that the grand +flume is not achieved when he arrives at the camp for the first time, but +of all sides he was the man the most fond of to bet which one have seen, +betting upon all that which is presented, when he could find an +adversary; and when he not of it could not, he passed to the side +opposed. All that which convenienced to the other to him convenienced +also; seeing that he had a bet Smiley was satisfied. And he had a +chance! a chance even worthless; nearly always he gained. It must to say +that he was always near to himself expose, but one no could mention the +least thing without that this gaillard offered to bet the bottom, no +matter what, and to take the side that one him would, as I you it said +all at the hour (tout a l'heure). If it there was of races, you him find +rich or ruined at the end; if it, here is a combat of dogs, he bring his +bet; he himself laid always for a combat of cats, for a combat of cocks +--by-blue! If you have see two birds upon a fence, he you should have +offered of to bet which of those birds shall fly the first; and if there +is meeting at the camp (meeting au camp) he comes to bet regularly for +the cure Walker, which he judged to be the best predicator of the +neighborhood (predicateur des environs) and which he was in effect, and a +brave man. He would encounter a bug of wood in the road, whom he will +bet upon the time which he shall take to go where she would go--and if +you him have take at the word, he will follow the bug as far as Mexique, +without himself caring to go so far; neither of the time which he there +lost. One time the woman of the cure Walker is very sick during long +time, it seemed that one not her saved not; but one morning the cure +arrives, and Smiley him demanded how she goes, and he said that she is +well better, grace to the infinite misery (lui demande comment elle va, +et il dit qu'elle est bien mieux, grace a l'infinie misericorde) so much +better that with the benediction of the Providence she herself of it +would pull out (elle s'en tirerait); and behold that without there +thinking Smiley responds: "Well, I gage two-and-half that she will die +all of same." + +This Smiley had an animal which the boys called the nag of the quarter of +hour, but solely for pleasantry, you comprehend, because, well +understand, she was more fast as that! [Now why that exclamation?--M. T.] +And it was custom of to gain of the silver with this beast, +notwithstanding she was poussive, cornarde, always taken of asthma, of +colics or of consumption, or something of approaching. One him would +give two or three hundred yards at the departure, then one him passed +without pain; but never at the last she not fail of herself echauffer, +of herself exasperate, and she arrives herself ecartant, se defendant, +her legs greles in the air before the obstacles, sometimes them elevating +and making with this more of dust than any horse, more of noise above +with his eternumens and reniflemens--crac! she arrives then always first +by one head, as just as one can it measure. And he had a small bulldog +(bouledogue!) who, to him see, no value, not a cent; one would believe +that to bet against him it was to steal, so much he was ordinary; but as +soon as the game made, she becomes another dog. Her jaw inferior +commence to project like a deck of before, his teeth themselves discover +brilliant like some furnaces, and a dog could him tackle (le taquiner), +him excite, him murder (le mordre), him throw two or three times over his +shoulder, Andre Jackson--this was the name of the dog--Andre Jackson +takes that tranquilly, as if he not himself was never expecting other +thing, and when the bets were doubled and redoubled against him, he you +seize the other dog just at the articulation of the leg of behind, and he +not it leave more, not that he it masticate, you conceive, but he himself +there shall be holding during until that one throws the sponge in the +air, must he wait a year. Smiley gained always with this beast-la; +unhappily they have finished by elevating a dog who no had not of feet of +behind, because one them had sawed; and when things were at the point +that he would, and that he came to himself throw upon his morsel +favorite, the poor dog comprehended in an instant that he himself was +deceived in him, and that the other dog him had. You no have never seen +person having the air more penaud and more discouraged; he not made no +effort to gain the combat, and was rudely shucked. + +Eh bien! this Smiley nourished some terriers a rats, and some cocks of +combat, and some pats, and all sorts of things; and with his rage of +betting one no had more of repose. He trapped one day a frog and him +imported with him (et l'emporta chez lui) saying that he pretended to +make his education. You me believe if you will, but during three months +he not has nothing done but to him apprehend to jump (apprendre a sauter) +in a court retired of her mansion (de sa maison). And I you respond that +he have succeeded. He him gives a small blow by behind, and the instant +after you shall see the frog turn in the air like a grease-biscuit, make +one summersault, sometimes two, when she was well started, and refall +upon his feet like a cat. He him had accomplished in the art of to +gobble the flies (gober des mouches), and him there exercised continually +--so well that a fly at the most far that she appeared was a fly lost. +Smiley had custom to say that all which lacked to a frog it was the +education, but with the education she could do nearly all--and I him +believe. Tenez, I him have seen pose Daniel Webster there upon this +plank--Daniel Webster was the name of the frog--and to him sing, "Some +flies, Daniel, some fifes!"--in a flash of the eye Daniel 30 +had bounded and seized a fly here upon the counter, then jumped anew at +the earth, where he rested truly to himself scratch the head with his +behind foot, as if he no had not the least idea of his superiority. +Never you not have seen frog as modest, as natural, sweet as she was. +And when he himself agitated to jump purely and simply upon plain earth, +she does more ground in one jump than any beast of his species than you +can know. To jump plain-this was his strong. When he himself agitated +for that, Smiley multiplied the bets upon her as long as there to him +remained a red. It must to know, Smiley was monstrously proud of his +frog, and he of it was right, for some men who were traveled, who had all +seen, said that they to him would be injurious to him compare, to another +frog. Smiley guarded Daniel in a little box latticed which he carried +bytimes to the village for some bet. + +One day an individual stranger at the camp him arrested with his box and +him said: + +"What is this that you have them shut up there within?" + +Smiley said, with an air indifferent: + +"That could be a paroquet, or a syringe (ou un serin), but this no is +nothing of such, it not is but a frog." + +The individual it took, it regarded with care, it turned from one side +and from the other, then he said: + +"Tiens! in effect!--At what is she good?" + +"My God!" respond Smiley, always with an air disengaged, "she is good for +one thing, to my notice (A mon avis), she can better in jumping (elle pent +battre en sautant) all frogs of the county of Calaveras." + +The individual retook the box, it examined of new longly, and it rendered +to Smiley in saying with an air deliberate: + +"Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each +frog." (Je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune +grenouille.) [If that isn't grammar gone to seed, then I count myself no +judge.--M. T.] + +"Possible that you not it saw not," said Smiley, "possible that you--you +comprehend frogs; possible that you not you there comprehend nothing; +possible that you had of the experience, and possible that you not be but +an amateur. Of all manner (De toute maniere) I bet forty dollars that +she better in jumping no matter which frog of the county of Calaveras." + +The individual reflected a second, and said like sad: + +"I not am but a stranger here, I no have not a frog; but if I of it had +one, I would embrace the bet." + +"Strong well!" respond Smiley; "nothing of more facility. If you will +hold my box a minute, I go you to search a frog (j'irai vous chercher)." + +Behold, then, the individual, who guards the box, who puts his forty +dollars upon those of Smiley, and who attends (et qui attend). He +attended enough long times, reflecting all solely. And figure you that +he takes Daniel, him opens the mouth by force and with a teaspoon him +fills with shot of the hunt, even him fills just to the chin, then he him +puts by the earth. Smiley during these times was at slopping in a swamp. +Finally he trapped (attrape) a frog, him carried to that individual, and +said: + +"Now if you be ready, put him all against Daniel with their before feet +upon the same line, and I give the signal"--then he added: "One, two, +three--advance!" + +Him and the individual touched their frogs by behind, and the frog new +put to jump smartly, but Daniel himself lifted ponderously, exalted the +shoulders thus, like a Frenchman--to what good? he not could budge, he +is planted solid like a church he not advance no more than if one him had +put at the anchor. + +Smiley was surprised and disgusted, but he no himself doubted not of the +turn being intended (mais il ne se doutait pas du tour, bien entendu). +The individual empocketed the silver, himself with it went, and of it +himself in going is it that he no gives not a jerk of thumb over the +shoulder--like that--at the poor Daniel, in saying with his air +deliberate--(L'individu empoche l'argent, s'en va et en s'en allant +est-ce qu'il ne donne pas un coup d pouce par-dessus l'epaule, comme ga, +au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air delibere): + +"Eh bien! I no see not that that frog has nothin of better than another." + +Smiley himself scratched longtimes the head, the eyes fixed upon Daniel, +until that which at last he said: + +"I me demand how the devil it makes itself that this beast has refused. +Is it that she had something? One would believe that she is stuffed." + +He grasped Daniel by the skin of the neck, him lifted and said: + +"The wolf me bite if he no weigh not five pounds:" + +He him reversed and the unhappy belched two handfuls of shot (et le +malheureux, etc.). When Smiley recognized how it was, he was like mad. +He deposited his frog by the earth and ran after that individual, but he +not him caught never. + + +Such is the jumping Frog, to the distorted French eye. I claim that I +never put together such an odious mixture of bad grammar and delirium +tremens in my life. And what has a poor foreigner like me done, to be +abused and misrepresented like this? When I say, "Well, I don't see no +pints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog," is it kind, +is it just, for this Frenchman to try to make it appear that I said, "Eh +bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog"? +I have no heart to write more. I never felt so about anything before. + +HARTFORD, March, 1875. + + + + + + +JOURNALISM IN TENNESSEE--[Written about 1871.] + + The editor of the Memphis Avalanche swoops thus mildly down upon a + correspondent who posted him as a Radical:--"While he was writing + the first word, the middle, dotting his i's, crossing his t's, and + punching his period, he knew he was concocting a sentence that was + saturated with infamy and reeking with falsehood."--Exchange. + +I was told by the physician that a Southern climate would improve my +health, and so I went down to Tennessee, and got a berth on the Morning +Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop as associate editor. When I went on +duty I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair +with his feet on a pine table. There was another pine table in the room +and another afflicted chair, and both were half buried under newspapers +and scraps and sheets of manuscript. There was a wooden box of sand, +sprinkled with cigar stubs and "old soldiers," and a stove with a door +hanging by its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black +cloth frock-coat on, and white linen pants. His boots were small and +neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal-ring, a standing +collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief with the ends +hanging down. Date of costume about 1848. He was smoking a cigar, and +trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he had rumpled his +locks a good deal. He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he was +concocting a particularly knotty editorial. He told me to take the +exchanges and skim through them and write up the "Spirit of the Tennessee +Press," condensing into the article all of their contents that seemed of +interest. + +I wrote as follows: + + SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS + + The editors of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake evidently labor under a + misapprehension with regard to the Dallyhack railroad. It is not + the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off to one side. + On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important points + along the line, and consequently can have no desire to slight it. + The gentlemen of the Earthquake will, of course, take pleasure in + making the correction. + + John W. Blossom, Esq., the able editor of the Higginsville + Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, arrived in the city + yesterday. He is stopping at the Van Buren House. + + We observe that our contemporary of the Mud Springs Morning Howl has + fallen into the error of supposing that the election of Van Werter + is not an established fact, but he will have discovered his mistake + before this reminder reaches him, no doubt. He was doubtless misled + by incomplete election returns. + + It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is endeavoring + to contract with some New York gentlemen to pave its well-nigh + impassable streets with the Nicholson pavement. The Daily Hurrah + urges the measure with ability, and seems confident of ultimate + success. + +I passed my manuscript over to the chief editor for acceptance, +alteration, or destruction. He glanced at it and his face clouded. He +ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentous. It was +easy to see that something was wrong. Presently he sprang up and said: + +"Thunder and lightning! Do you suppose I am going to speak of those +cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such +gruel as that? Give me the pen!" + +I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or plow +through another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly. While he was +in the midst of his work, somebody shot at him through the open window, +and marred the symmetry of my ear. + +"Ah," said he, "that is that scoundrel Smith, of the Moral Volcano--he +was due yesterday." And he snatched a navy revolver from his belt and +fired--Smith dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot spoiled Smith's aim, +who was just taking a second chance and he crippled a stranger. It was +me. Merely a finger shot off. + +Then the chief editor went on with his erasure; and interlineations. +Just as he finished them a hand grenade came down the stove-pipe, and the +explosion shivered the stove into a thousand fragments. However, it did +no further damage, except that a vagrant piece knocked a couple of my +teeth out. + +"That stove is utterly ruined," said the chief editor. + +I said I believed it was. + +"Well, no matter--don't want it this kind of weather. I know the man +that did it. I'll get him. Now, here is the way this stuff ought to be +written." + +I took the manuscript. It was scarred with erasures and interlineations +till its mother wouldn't have known it if it had had one. It now read as +follows: + + SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS + + The inveterate liars of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake are evidently + endeavoring to palm off upon a noble and chivalrous people another + of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard to that most + glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack + railroad. The idea that Buzzardville was to be left off at one side + originated in their own fulsome brains--or rather in the settlings + which they regard as brains. They had better, swallow this lie if + they want to save their abandoned reptile carcasses the cowhiding + they so richly deserve. + + That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of + Freedom, is down here again sponging at the Van Buren. + + We observe that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Springs Morning + Howl is giving out, with his usual propensity for lying, that Van + Werter is not elected. The heaven-born mission of journalism is to + disseminate truth; to eradicate error; to educate, refine, and + elevate the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more + gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better, and + holier, and happier; and yet this blackhearted scoundrel degrades + his great office persistently to the dissemination of falsehood, + calumny, vituperation, and vulgarity. + + Blathersville wants a Nicholson pavement--it wants a jail and a + poorhouse more. The idea of a pavement in a one-horse town composed + of two gin-mills, a blacksmith shop, and that mustard-plaster of a + newspaper, the Daily Hurrah! The crawling insect, Buckner, who + edits the Hurrah, is braying about his business with his customary + imbecility, and imagining that he is talking sense. + + +"Now that is the way to write--peppery and to the point. Mush-and-milk +journalism gives me the fan-tods." + +About this time a brick came through the window with a splintering crash, +and gave me a considerable of a jolt in the back. I moved out of range +--I began to feel in the way. + +The chief said, "That was the Colonel, likely. I've been expecting him +for two days. He will be up now right away." + +He was correct. The Colonel appeared in the door a moment afterward with +a dragoon revolver in his hand. + +He said, "Sir, have I the honor of addressing the poltroon who edits this +mangy sheet?" + +"You have. Be seated, sir. Be careful of the chair, one of its legs is +gone. I believe I have the honor of addressing the putrid liar, Colonel +Blatherskite Tecumseh?" + +"Right, Sir. I have a little account to settle with you. If you are at +leisure we will begin." + +"I have an article on the 'Encouraging Progress of Moral and Intellectual +Development in America' to finish, but there is no hurry. Begin." + +Both pistols rang out their fierce clamor at the same instant. The chief +lost a lock of his hair, and the Colonel's bullet ended its career in the +fleshy part of my thigh. The Colonel's left shoulder was clipped a +little. They fired again. Both missed their men this time, but I got my +share, a shot in the arm. At the third fire both gentlemen were wounded +slightly, and I had a knuckle chipped. I then said, I believed I would +go out and take a walk, as this was a private matter, and I had a +delicacy about participating in it further. But both gentlemen begged me +to keep my seat, and assured me that I was not in the way. + +They then talked about the elections and the crops while they reloaded, +and I fell to tying up my wounds. But presently they opened fire again +with animation, and every shot took effect--but it is proper to remark +that five out of the six fell to my share. The sixth one mortally +wounded the Colonel, who remarked, with fine humor, that he would have to +say good morning now, as he had business uptown. He then inquired the +way to the undertaker's and left. + +The chief turned to me and said, "I am expecting company to dinner, and +shall have to get ready. It will be a favor to me if you will read proof +and attend to the customers." + +I winced a little at the idea of attending to the customers, but I was +too bewildered by the fusillade that was still ringing in my ears to +think of anything to say. + +He continued, "Jones will be here at three--cowhide him. Gillespie will +call earlier, perhaps--throw him out of the window. Ferguson will be +along about four--kill him. That is all for today, I believe. If you +have any odd time, you may write a blistering article on the police--give +the chief inspector rats. The cowhides are under the table; weapons in +the drawer--ammunition there in the corner--lint and bandages up there in +the pigeonholes. In case of accident, go to Lancet, the surgeon, +downstairs. He advertises--we take it out in trade." + +He was gone. I shuddered. At the end of the next three hours I had been +through perils so awful that all peace of mind and all cheerfulness were +gone from me. Gillespie had called and thrown me out of the window. +Jones arrived promptly, and when I got ready to do the cowhiding he took +the job off my hands. In an encounter with a stranger, not in the bill +of fare, I had lost my scalp. Another stranger, by the name of Thompson, +left me a mere wreck and ruin of chaotic rags. And at last, at bay in +the corner, and beset by an infuriated mob of editors, blacklegs, +politicians, and desperadoes, who raved and swore and flourished their +weapons about my head till the air shimmered with glancing flashes of +steel, I was in the act of resigning my berth on the paper when the chief +arrived, and with him a rabble of charmed and enthusiastic friends. Then +ensued a scene of riot and carnage such as no human pen, or steel one +either, could describe. People were shot, probed, dismembered, blown up, +thrown out of the window. There was a brief tornado of murky blasphemy, +with a confused and frantic war-dance glimmering through it, and then all +was over. In five minutes there was silence, and the gory chief and I +sat alone and surveyed the sanguinary ruin that strewed the floor around +us. + +He said, "You'll like this place when you get used to it." + +I said, "I'll have to get you to excuse me; I think maybe I might write +to suit you after a while; as soon as I had had some practice and learned +the language I am confident I could. But, to speak the plain truth, that +sort of energy of expression has its inconveniences, and a, man is liable +to interruption. + +"You see that yourself. Vigorous writing is calculated to elevate the +public, no doubt, but then I do not like to attract so much attention as +it calls forth. I can't write with comfort when I am interrupted so much +as I have been to-day. I like this berth well enough, but I don't like +to be left here to wait on the customers. The experiences are novel, +I grant you, and entertaining, too, after a fashion, but they are not +judiciously distributed. A gentleman shoots at you through the window +and cripples me; a bombshell comes down the stovepipe for your +gratification and sends the stove door down my throat; a friend drops in +to swap compliments with you, and freckles me with bullet-holes till my +skin won't hold my principles; you go to dinner, and Jones comes with his +cowhide, Gillespie throws me out of the window, Thompson tears all my +clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my scalp with the easy freedom +of an old acquaintance; and in less than five minutes all the blackguards +in the country arrive in their war-paint, and proceed to scare the rest +of me to death with their tomahawks. Take it altogether, I never had +such a spirited time in all my life as I have had to-day. No; I like +you, and I like your calm unruffled way of explaining things to the +customers, but you see I am not used to it. The Southern heart is too +impulsive; Southern hospitality is too lavish with the stranger. The +paragraphs which I have written to-day, and into whose cold sentences +your masterly hand has infused the fervent spirit of Tennesseean +journalism, will wake up another nest of hornets. All that mob of +editors will come--and they will come hungry, too, and want somebody for +breakfast. I shall have to bid you adieu. I decline to be present at +these festivities. I came South for my health, I will go back on the +same errand, and suddenly. Tennesseean journalism is too stirring for +me." + +After which we parted with mutual regret, and I took apartments at the +hospital. + + + + + + +THE STORY OF THE BAD LITTLE BOY--[Written about 1865] + +Once there was a bad little boy whose name was Jim--though, if you will +notice, you will find that bad little boys are nearly always called James +in your Sunday-school books. It was strange, but still it was true, that +this one was called Jim. + +He didn't have any sick mother, either--a sick mother who was pious and +had the consumption, and would be glad to lie down in the grave and be at +rest but for the strong love she bore her boy, and the anxiety she felt +that the world might be harsh and cold toward him when she was gone. +Most bad boys in the Sunday books are named James, and have sick mothers, +who teach them to say, "Now, I lay me down," etc., and sing them to sleep +with sweet, plaintive voices, and then kiss them good night, and kneel +down by the bedside and weep. But it was different with this fellow. +He was named Jim, and there wasn't anything the matter with his mother +--no consumption, nor anything of that kind. She was rather stout than +otherwise, and she was not pious; moreover, she was not anxious on Jim's +account. She said if he were to break his neck it wouldn't be much loss. +She always spanked Jim to sleep, and she never kissed him good night; on +the contrary, she boxed his ears when she was ready to leave him. + +Once this little bad boy stole the key of the pantry, and slipped in +there and helped himself to some jam, and filled up the vessel with tar, +so that his mother would never know the difference; but all at once a +terrible feeling didn't come over him, and something didn't seem to +whisper to him, "Is it right to disobey my mother? Isn't it sinful to do +this? Where do bad little boys go who gobble up their good kind mother's +jam?" and then he didn't kneel down all alone and promise never to be +wicked any more, and rise up with a light, happy heart, and go and tell +his mother all about it, and beg her forgiveness, and be blessed by her +with tears of pride and thankfulness in her eyes. No; that is the way +with all other bad boys in the books; but it happened otherwise with this +Jim, strangely enough. He ate that jam, and said it was bully, in his +sinful, vulgar way; and he put in the tar, and said that was bully also, +and laughed, and observed "that the old woman would get up and snort" +when she found it out; and when she did find it out, he denied knowing +anything about it, and she whipped him severely, and he did the crying +himself. Everything about this boy was curious--everything turned out +differently with him from the way it does to the bad Jameses in the +books. + +Once he climbed up in Farmer Acorn's apple tree to steal apples, and the +limb didn't break, and he didn't fall and break his arm, and get torn by +the farmer's great dog, and then languish on a sickbed for weeks, and +repent and become good. Oh, no; he stole as many apples as he wanted and +came down all right; and he was all ready for the dog, too, and knocked +him endways with a brick when he came to tear him. It was very strange +--nothing like it ever happened in those mild little books with marbled +backs, and with pictures in them of men with swallow-tailed coats and +bell-crowned hats, and pantaloons that are short in the legs, and women +with the waists of their dresses under their arms, and no hoops on. +Nothing like it in any of the Sunday-school books. + +Once he stole the teacher's penknife, and, when he was afraid it would be +found out and he would get whipped, he slipped it into George Wilson's +cap poor Widow Wilson's son, the moral boy, the good little boy of the +village, who always obeyed his mother, and never told an untruth, and was +fond of his lessons, and infatuated with Sunday-school. And when the +knife dropped from the cap, and poor George hung his head and blushed, +as if in conscious guilt, and the grieved teacher charged the theft upon +him, and was just in the very act of bringing the switch down upon his +trembling shoulders, a white-haired, improbable justice of the peace did +not suddenly appear in their midst, and strike an attitude and say, +"Spare this noble boy--there stands the cowering culprit! I was passing +the school door at recess, and, unseen myself, I saw the theft +committed!" And then Jim didn't get whaled, and the venerable justice +didn't read the tearful school a homily, and take George by the hand and +say such boy deserved to be exalted, and then tell him come and make his +home with him, and sweep out the office, and make fires, and run errands, +and chop wood, and study law, and help his wife do household labors, and +have all the balance of the time to play and get forty cents a month, and +be happy. No it would have happened that way in the books, but didn't +happen that way to Jim. No meddling old clam of a justice dropped in to +make trouble, and so the model boy George got thrashed, and Jim was glad +of it because, you know, Jim hated moral boys. Jim said he was "down on +them milksops." Such was the coarse language of this bad, neglected boy. + +But the strangest thing that ever happened to Jim was the time he went +boating on Sunday, and didn't get drowned, and that other time that he +got caught out in the storm when he was fishing on Sunday and didn't get +struck by lightning. Why, you might look, and look, all through the +Sunday-school books from now till next Christmas, and you would never +come across anything like this. Oh, no; you would find that all the bad +boys who go boating on Sunday invariably get drowned; and all the bad +boys who get caught out in storms when they are fishing on Sunday +infallibly get struck by lightning. Boats with bad boys in them always +upset on Sunday, and it always storms when bad boys go fishing on the +Sabbath. How this Jim ever escaped is a mystery to me. + +This Jim bore a charmed life--that must have been the way of it. Nothing +could hurt him. He even gave the elephant in the menagerie a plug of +tobacco, and the elephant didn't knock the top of his head off with his +trunk. He browsed around the cupboard after essence-of peppermint, and +didn't make a mistake and drink aqua fortis. He stole his father's gun +and went hunting on the Sabbath, and didn't shoot three or four of his +fingers off. He struck his little sister on the temple with his fist +when he was angry, and she didn't linger in pain through long summer +days, and die with sweet words of forgiveness upon her lips that +redoubled the anguish of his breaking heart. No; she got over it. He +ran off and went to sea at last, and didn't come back and find himself +sad and alone in the world, his loved ones sleeping in the quiet +churchyard, and the vine-embowered home of his boyhood tumbled down and +gone to decay. Ah, no; he came home as drunk as a piper, and got into +the station-house the first thing. + +And he grew up and married, and raised a large family, and brained them +all with an ax one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and +rascality; and now he is the infernalest wickedest scoundrel in his +native village, and is universally respected, and belongs to the +legislature. + +So you see there never was a bad James in the Sunday-school books that +had such a streak of luck as this sinful Jim with the charmed life. + + + + + + +THE STORY OF THE GOOD LITTLE BOY--[Written about 1865] + +Once there was a good little boy by the name of Jacob Blivens. He always +obeyed his parents, no matter how absurd and unreasonable their demands +were; and he always learned his book, and never was late at +Sabbath-school. He would not play hookey, even when his sober judgment +told him it was the most profitable thing he could do. None of the other +boys could ever make that boy out, he acted so strangely. He wouldn't +lie, no matter how convenient it was. He just said it was wrong to lie, +and that was sufficient for him. And he was so honest that he was simply +ridiculous. The curious ways that that Jacob had, surpassed everything. +He wouldn't play marbles on Sunday, he wouldn't rob birds' nests, he +wouldn't give hot pennies to organ-grinders' monkeys; he didn't seem to +take any interest in any kind of rational amusement. So the other boys +used to try to reason it out and come to an understanding of him, but +they couldn't arrive at any satisfactory conclusion. As I said before, +they could only figure out a sort of vague idea that he was "afflicted," +and so they took him under their protection, and never allowed any harm +to come to him. + +This good little boy read all the Sunday-school books; they were his +greatest delight. This was the whole secret of it. He believed in the +good little boys they put in the Sunday-school book; he had every +confidence in them. He longed to come across one of them alive once; +but he never did. They all died before his time, maybe. Whenever he +read about a particularly good one he turned over quickly to the end to +see what became of him, because he wanted to travel thousands of miles +and gaze on him; but it wasn't any use; that good little boy always died +in the last chapter, and there was a picture of the funeral, with all his +relations and the Sunday-school children standing around the grave in +pantaloons that were too short, and bonnets that were too large, and +everybody crying into handkerchiefs that had as much as a yard and a half +of stuff in them. He was always headed off in this way. He never could +see one of those good little boys on account of his always dying in the +last chapter. + +Jacob had a noble ambition to be put in a Sunday school book. He wanted +to be put in, with pictures representing him gloriously declining to lie +to his mother, and her weeping for joy about it; and pictures +representing him standing on the doorstep giving a penny to a poor +beggar-woman with six children, and telling her to spend it freely, but +not to be extravagant, because extravagance is a sin; and pictures of him +magnanimously refusing to tell on the bad boy who always lay in wait for +him around the corner as he came from school, and welted him so over the +head with a lath, and then chased him home, saying, "Hi! hi!" as he +proceeded. That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens. He wished to +be put in a Sunday-school book. It made him feel a lithe uncomfortable +sometimes when he reflected that the good little boys always died. He +loved to live, you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about +being a Sunday-school-boo boy. He knew it was not healthy to be good. +He knew it was more fatal than consumption to be so supernaturally good +as the boys in the books were he knew that none of them had ever been +able to stand it long, and it pained him to think that if they put him in +a book he wouldn't ever see it, or even if they did get the book out +before he died it wouldn't be popular without any picture of his funeral +in the back part of it. It couldn't be much of a Sunday-school book that +couldn't tell about the advice he gave to the community when he was +dying. So at last, of course, he had to make up his mind to do the best +he could under the circumstances--to live right, and hang on as long as +he could and have his dying speech all ready when his time came. + +But somehow nothing ever went right with the good little boy; nothing +ever turned out with him the way it turned out with the good little boys +in the books. They always had a good time, and the bad boys had the +broken legs; but in his case there was a screw loose somewhere, and it +all happened just the other way. When he found Jim Blake stealing +apples, and went under the tree to read to him about the bad little boy +who fell out of a neighbor's apple tree and broke his arm, Jim fell out +of the tree, too, but he fell on him and broke his arm, and Jim wasn't +hurt at all. Jacob couldn't understand that. There wasn't anything in +the books like it. + +And once, when some bad boys pushed a blind man over in the mud, and +Jacob ran to help him up and receive his blessing, the blind man did not +give him any blessing at all, but whacked him over the head with his +stick and said he would like to catch him shoving him again, and then +pretending to help him up. This was not in accordance with any of the +books. Jacob looked them all over to see. + +One thing that Jacob wanted to do was to find a lame dog that hadn't any +place to stay, and was hungry and persecuted, and bring him home and pet +him and have that dog's imperishable gratitude. And at last he found one +and was happy; and he brought him home and fed him, but when he was going +to pet him the dog flew at him and tore all the clothes off him except +those that were in front, and made a spectacle of him that was +astonishing. He examined authorities, but he could not understand the +matter. It was of the same breed of dogs that was in the books, but it +acted very differently. Whatever this boy did he got into trouble. The +very things the boys in the books got rewarded for turned out to be about +the most unprofitable things he could invest in. + +Once, when he was on his way to Sunday-school, he saw some bad boys +starting off pleasuring in a sailboat. He was filled with consternation, +because he knew from his reading that boys who went sailing on Sunday +invariably got drowned. So he ran out on a raft to warn them, but a log +turned with him and slid him into the river. A man got him out pretty +soon, and the doctor pumped the water out of him, and gave him a fresh +start with his bellows, but he caught cold and lay sick abed nine weeks. +But the most unaccountable thing about it was that the bad boys in the +boat had a good time all day, and then reached home alive and well in the +most surprising manner. Jacob Blivens said there was nothing like these +things in the books. He was perfectly dumfounded. + +When he got well he was a little discouraged, but he resolved to keep on +trying anyhow. He knew that so far his experiences wouldn't do to go in +a book, but he hadn't yet reached the allotted term of life for good +little boys, and he hoped to be able to make a record yet if he could +hold on till his time was fully up. If everything else failed he had his +dying speech to fall back on. + +He examined his authorities, and found that it was now time for him to go +to sea as a cabin-boy. He called on a ship-captain and made his +application, and when the captain asked for his recommendations he +proudly drew out a tract and pointed to the word, "To Jacob Blivens, from +his affectionate teacher." But the captain was a coarse, vulgar man, and +he said, "Oh, that be blowed! that wasn't any proof that he knew how to +wash dishes or handle a slush-bucket, and he guessed he didn't want him." +This was altogether the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to +Jacob in all his life. A compliment from a teacher, on a tract, had +never failed to move the tenderest emotions of ship-captains, and open +the way to all offices of honor and profit in their gift it never had in +any book that ever he had read. He could hardly believe his senses. + +This boy always had a hard time of it. Nothing ever came out according +to the authorities with him. At last, one day, when he was around +hunting up bad little boys to admonish, he found a lot of them in the old +iron-foundry fixing up a little joke on fourteen or fifteen dogs, which +they had tied together in long procession, and were going to ornament +with empty nitroglycerin cans made fast to their tails. Jacob's heart +was touched. He sat down on one of those cans (for he never minded +grease when duty was before him), and he took hold of the foremost dog by +the collar, and turned his reproving eye upon wicked Tom Jones. But just +at that moment Alderman McWelter, full of wrath, stepped in. All the bad +boys ran away, but Jacob Blivens rose in conscious innocence and began +one of those stately little Sunday-school-book speeches which always +commence with "Oh, sir!" in dead opposition to the fact that no boy, good +or bad, ever starts a remark with "Oh, sir." But the alderman never +waited to hear the rest. He took Jacob Blivens by the ear and turned him +around, and hit him a whack in the rear with the flat of his hand; and in +an instant that good little boy shot out through the roof and soared away +toward the sun with the fragments of those fifteen dogs stringing after +him like the tail of a kite. And there wasn't a sign of that alderman or +that old iron-foundry left on the face of the earth; and, as for young +Jacob Blivens, he never got a chance to make his last dying speech after +all his trouble fixing it up, unless he made it to the birds; because, +although the bulk of him came down all right in a tree-top in an +adjoining county, the rest of him was apportioned around among four +townships, and so they had to hold five inquests on him to find out +whether he was dead or not, and how it occurred. You never saw a boy +scattered so.--[This glycerin catastrophe is borrowed from a floating +newspaper item, whose author's name I would give if I knew it.--M. T.] + +Thus perished the good little boy who did the best he could, but didn't +come out according to the books. Every boy who ever did as he did +prospered except him. His case is truly remarkable. It will probably +never be accounted for. + + + + + + +A COUPLE OF POEMS BY TWAIN AND MOORE--[Written about 1865] + + + THOSE EVENING BELLS + + BY THOMAS MOORE + + Those evening bells! those evening bells! + How many a tale their music tells + Of youth, and home, and that sweet time + When last I heard their soothing chime. + + Those joyous hours are passed away; + And many a heart that then was gay, + Within the tomb now darkly dwells, + And hears no more those evening bells. + + And so 'twill be when I am gone + That tuneful peal will still ring on; + While other bards shall walk these dells, + And sing your praise, sweet evening bells. + + + THOSE ANNUAL BILLS + + BY MARK TWAIN + + These annual bills! these annual bills! + How many a song their discord trills + Of "truck" consumed, enjoyed, forgot, + Since I was skinned by last year's lot! + + Those joyous beans are passed away; + Those onions blithe, O where are they? + Once loved, lost, mourned--now vexing ILLS + Your shades troop back in annual bills! + + And so 'twill be when I'm aground + These yearly duns will still go round, + While other bards, with frantic quills, + Shall damn and damn these annual bills! + + + + + + +NIAGARA [ Written about 1871.] + +Niagara Falls is a most enjoyable place of resort. The hotels are +excellent, and the prices not at all exorbitant. The opportunities for +fishing are not surpassed in the country; in fact, they are not even +equaled elsewhere. Because, in other localities, certain places in the +streams are much better than others; but at Niagara one place is just as +good as another, for the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere, and +so there is no use in your walking five miles to fish, when you can +depend on being just as unsuccessful nearer home. The advantages of this +state of things have never heretofore been properly placed before the +public. + +The weather is cool in summer, and the walks and drives are all pleasant +and none of them fatiguing. When you start out to "do" the Falls you +first drive down about a mile, and pay a small sum for the privilege of +looking down from a precipice into the narrowest part of the Niagara +River. A railway "cut" through a hill would be as comely if it had the +angry river tumbling and foaming through its bottom. You can descend a +staircase here a hundred and fifty feet down, and stand at the edge of +the water. After you have done it, you will wonder why you did it; but +you will then be too late. + +The guide will explain to you, in his blood-curdling way, how he saw the +little steamer, Maid of the Mist, descend the fearful rapids--how first +one paddle-box was out of sight behind the raging billows and then the +other, and at what point it was that her smokestack toppled overboard, +and where her planking began to break and part asunder--and how she did +finally live through the trip, after accomplishing the incredible feat of +traveling seventeen miles in six minutes, or six miles in seventeen +minutes, I have really forgotten which. But it was very extraordinary, +anyhow. It is worth the price of admission to hear the guide tell the +story nine times in succession to different parties, and never miss a +word or alter a sentence or a gesture. + +Then you drive over to Suspension Bridge, and divide your misery between +the chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river below, and +the chances of having the railway-train overhead smashing down onto you. +Either possibility is discomforting taken by itself, but, mixed together, +they amount in the aggregate to positive unhappiness. + +On the Canada side you drive along the chasm between long ranks of +photographers standing guard behind their cameras, ready to make an +ostentatious frontispiece of you and your decaying ambulance, and your +solemn crate with a hide on it, which you are expected to regard in the +light of a horse, and a diminished and unimportant background of sublime +Niagara; and a great many people have the incredible effrontery or the +native depravity to aid and abet this sort of crime. + +Any day, in the hands of these photographers, you may see stately +pictures of papa and mamma, Johnny and Bub and Sis or a couple of country +cousins, all smiling vacantly, and all disposed in studied and +uncomfortable attitudes in their carriage, and all looming up in their +awe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment of +that majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose +voice is the thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds, who was +monarch here dead and forgotten ages before this sackful of small +reptiles was deemed temporarily necessary to fill a crack in the world's +unnoted myriads, and will still be monarch here ages and decades of ages +after they shall have gathered themselves to their blood-relations, the +other worms, and been mingled with the unremembering dust. + +There is no actual harm in making Niagara a background whereon to display +one's marvelous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a +sort of superhuman self-complacency to enable one to do it. + +When you have examined the stupendous Horseshoe Fall till you are +satisfied you cannot improve on it, you return to America by the new +Suspension Bridge, and follow up the bank to where they exhibit the Cave +of the Winds. + +Here I followed instructions, and divested myself of all my clothing, and +put on a waterproof jacket and overalls. This costume is picturesque, +but not beautiful. A guide, similarly dressed, led the way down a flight +of winding stairs, which wound and wound, and still kept on winding long +after the thing ceased to be a novelty, and then terminated long before +it had begun to be a pleasure. We were then well down under the +precipice, but still considerably above the level of the river. + +We now began to creep along flimsy bridges of a single plank, our persons +shielded from destruction by a crazy wooden railing, to which I clung +with both hands--not because I was afraid, but because I wanted to. +Presently the descent became steeper and the bridge flimsier, and sprays +from the American Fall began to rain down on us in fast increasing sheets +that soon became blinding, and after that our progress was mostly in the +nature of groping. Nova a furious wind began to rush out from behind the +waterfall, which seemed determined to sweep us from the bridge, and +scatter us on the rocks and among the torrents below. I remarked that I +wanted to go home; but it was too late. We were almost under the +monstrous wall of water thundering down from above, and speech was in +vain in the midst of such a pitiless crash of sound. + +In another moment the guide disappeared behind the deluge, and bewildered +by the thunder, driven helplessly by the wind, and smitten by the arrowy +tempest of rain, I followed. All was darkness. Such a mad storming, +roaring, and bellowing of warring wind and water never crazed my ears +before. I bent my head, and seemed to receive the Atlantic on my back. +The world seemed going to destruction. I could not see anything, the +flood poured down savagely. I raised my head, with open mouth, and the +most of the American cataract went down my throat. If I had sprung a +leak now I had been lost. And at this moment I discovered that the +bridge had ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and +precipitous rocks. I never was so scared before and survived it. But we +got through at last, and emerged into the open day, where we could stand +in front of the laced and frothy and seething world of descending water, +and look at it. When I saw how much of it there was, and how fearfully +in earnest it was, I was sorry I had gone behind it. + +The noble Red Man has always been a friend and darling of mine. I love +to read about him in tales and legends and romances. I love to read of +his inspired sagacity, and his love of the wild free life of mountain and +forest, and his general nobility of character, and his stately +metaphorical manner of speech, and his chivalrous love for the dusky +maiden, and the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements. +Especially the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements. When I +found the shops at Niagara Falls full of dainty Indian beadwork, and +stunning moccasins, and equally stunning toy figures representing human +beings who carried their weapons in holes bored through their arms and +bodies, and had feet shaped like a pie, I was filled with emotion. +I knew that now, at last, I was going to come face to face with the noble +Red Man. + +A lady clerk in a shop told me, indeed, that all her grand array of +curiosities were made by the Indians, and that they were plenty about the +Falls, and that they were friendly, and it would not be dangerous to +speak to them. And sure enough, as I approached the bridge leading over +to Luna Island, I came upon a noble Son of the Forest sitting under a +tree, diligently at work on a bead reticule. He wore a slouch hat and +brogans, and had a short black pipe in his mouth. Thus does the baneful +contact with our effeminate civilization dilute the picturesque pomp +which is so natural to the Indian when far removed from us in his native +haunts. I addressed the relic as follows: + +"Is the Wawhoo-Wang-Wang of the Whack-a-Whack happy? Does the great +Speckled Thunder sigh for the war-path, or is his heart contented with +dreaming of the dusky maiden, the Pride of the Forest? Does the mighty +Sachem yearn to drink the blood of his enemies, or is he satisfied to +make bead reticules for the pappooses of the paleface? Speak, sublime +relic of bygone grandeur--venerable ruin, speak!" + +The relic said: + +"An' is it mesilf, Dennis Hooligan, that ye'd be takon' for a dirty +Injin, ye drawlin', lantern-jawed, spider-legged divil! By the piper +that played before Moses, I'll ate ye!" + +I went away from there. + +By and by, in the neighborhood of the Terrapin Tower, I came upon a +gentle daughter of the aborigines in fringed and beaded buckskin +moccasins and leggins, seated on a bench with her pretty wares about her. +She had just carved out a wooden chief that had a strong family +resemblance to a clothes-pin, and was now boring a hole through his +abdomen to put his bow through. I hesitated a moment, and then addressed +her: + +"Is the heart of the forest maiden heavy? Is the Laughing Tadpole +lonely? Does she mourn over the extinguished council-fires of her race, +and the vanished glory of her ancestors? Or does her sad spirit wander +afar toward the hunting-grounds whither her brave Gobbler-of-the- +Lightnings is gone? Why is my daughter silent? Has she ought against +the paleface stranger?" + +The maiden said: + +"Faix, an' is it Biddy Malone ye dare to be callin' names? Lave this, or +I'll shy your lean carcass over the cataract, ye sniveling blaggard!" + +I adjourned from there also. + +"Confound these Indians!" I said. "They told me they were tame; but, if +appearances go for anything, I should say they were all on the warpath." + +I made one more attempt to fraternize with them, and only one. I came +upon a camp of them gathered in the shade of a great tree, making wampum +and moccasins, and addressed them in the language of friendship: + +"Noble Red Men, Braves, Grand Sachems, War Chiefs, Squaws, and High +Muck-a-Mucks, the paleface from the land of the setting sun greets you! +You, Beneficent Polecat--you, Devourer of Mountains--you, Roaring +Thundergust --you, Bully Boy with a Glass eye--the paleface from beyond +the great waters greets you all! War and pestilence have thinned your +ranks and destroyed your once proud nation. Poker and seven-up, and a +vain modern expense for soap, unknown to your glorious ancestors, have +depleted your purses. Appropriating, in your simplicity, the property of +others has gotten you into trouble. Misrepresenting facts, in your +simple innocence, has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper. +Trading for forty-rod whisky, to enable you to get drunk and happy and +tomahawk your families, has played the everlasting mischief with the +picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light of +the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag and bobtail of the +purlieus of New York. For shame! Remember your ancestors! Recall their +mighty deeds! Remember Uncas!--and Red jacket! and Hole in the Day!--and +Whoopdedoodledo! Emulate their achievements! Unfurl yourselves under my +banner, noble savages, illustrious guttersnipes--" + +"Down wid him!" "Scoop the blaggard!" "Burn him!" "Bang him!" +"Dhround him!" + +It was the quickest operation that ever was. I simply saw a sudden flash +in the air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead-baskets, and moccasins--a +single flash, and they all appeared to hit me at once, and no two of them +in the same place. In the next instant the entire tribe was upon me. +They tore half the clothes off me; they broke my arms and legs; they gave +me a thump that dented the top of my head till it would hold coffee like +a saucer; and, to crown their disgraceful proceedings and add insult to +injury, they threw me over the Niagara Falls, and I got wet. + +About ninety or a hundred feet from the top, the remains of my vest +caught on a projecting rock, and I was almost drowned before I could get +loose. I finally fell, and brought up in a world of white foam at the +foot of the Fall, whose celled and bubbly masses towered up several +inches above my head. Of course I got into the eddy. I sailed round and +round in it forty-four times--chasing a chip and gaining on it--each +round trip a half-mile--reaching for the same bush on the bank forty-four +times, and just exactly missing it by a hair's-breadth every time. + +At last a man walked down and sat down close to that bush, and put a pipe +in his mouth, and lit a match, and followed me with one eye and kept the +other on the match, while he sheltered it in his hands from the wind. +Presently a puff of wind blew it out. The next time I swept around he +said: + +"Got a match?" + +"Yes; in my other vest. Help me out, please." + +"Not for Joe." + +When I came round again, I said: + +"Excuse the seemingly impertinent curiosity of a drowning man, but will +you explain this singular conduct of yours?" + +"With pleasure. I am the coroner. Don't hurry on my account. I can +wait for you. But I wish I had a match." + +I said: "Take my place, and I'll go and get you one." + +He declined. This lack of confidence on his part created a coldness +between us, and from that time forward I avoided him. It was my idea, +in case anything happened to me, to so time the occurrence as to throw my +custom into the hands of the opposition coroner on the American side. + +At last a policeman came along, and arrested me for disturbing the peace +by yelling at people on shore for help. The judge fined me, but had the +advantage of him. My money was with my pantaloons, and my pantaloons +were with the Indians. + +Thus I escaped. I am now lying in a very critical condition. At least I +am lying anyway---critical or not critical. I am hurt all over, but I +cannot tell the full extent yet, because the doctor is not done taking +inventory. He will make out my manifest this evening. However, thus far +he thinks only sixteen of my wounds are fatal. I don't mind the others. + +Upon regaining my right mind, I said: + +"It is an awful savage tribe of Indians that do the beadwork and +moccasins for Niagara Falls, doctor. Where are they from?" + +"Limerick, my son." + + + + + + +ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS--[Written about 1865.] + +"MORAL STATISTICIAN."--I don't want any of your statistics; I took your +whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You +are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much +his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he +wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal +practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking +coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of +wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc. And you are always figuring out how +many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of +wearing expansive hoops, etc., etc., etc. You never see more than one +side of the question. You are blind to the fact that most old men in +America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they +ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and +survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet +grow older and fatter all the time. And you never by to find out how +much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking +in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would +save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost +in a lifetime your kind of people from not smoking. Of course you can +save money by denying yourself all the little vicious enjoyments for +fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you put it +to? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul. All the use that money +can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life; +therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use +of accumulating cash? It won't do for you say that you can use it to +better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in +supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who +have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you +stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and +hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor +wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you; +and in church you are always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in +the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give +the revenue officer: full statement of your income. Now you know these +things yourself, don't you? Very well, then what is the use of your +stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age? What +is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In +a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying +to seduce people into becoming as "ornery" and unlovable as you are +yourselves, by your villainous "moral statistics"? Now I don't approve +of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it, either; but I haven't a +particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices, and so +I don't want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same +man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of +smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence, with your +reprehensible fireproof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor +stove. + + +"YOUNG AUTHOR."--Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because +the phosphorus in it makes brain. So far you are correct. But I cannot +help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat--at least, not +with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about your fair +usual average, I should judge that perhaps a couple of whales would be +all you would want for the present. Not the largest kind, but simply +good, middling-sized whales. + + +"SIMON WHEELER," Sonora.--The following simple and touching remarks and +accompanying poem have just come to hand from the rich gold-mining region +of Sonora: + + To Mr. Mark Twain: The within parson, which I have set to poetry + under the name and style of "He Done His Level Best," was one among + the whitest men I ever see, and it ain't every man that knowed him + that can find it in his heart to say he's glad the poor cuss is + busted and gone home to the States. He was here in an early day, + and he was the handyest man about takin' holt of anything that come + along you most ever see, I judge. He was a cheerful, stirnn' + cretur, always doin' somethin', and no man can say he ever see him + do anything by halvers. Preachin was his nateral gait, but he + warn't a man to lay back a twidle his thumbs because there didn't + happen to be nothin' do in his own especial line--no, sir, he was a + man who would meander forth and stir up something for hisself. His + last acts was to go his pile on "Kings-and" (calkatin' to fill, but + which he didn't fill), when there was a "flush" out agin him, and + naterally, you see, he went under. And so he was cleaned out as you + may say, and he struck the home-trail, cheerful but flat broke. I + knowed this talonted man in Arkansaw, and if you would print this + humbly tribute to his gorgis abilities, you would greatly obleege + his onhappy friend. + + HE DONE HIS LEVEL BEST + Was he a mining on the flat-- + He done it with a zest; + Was he a leading of the choir-- + He done his level best. + + If he'd a reg'lar task to do, + He never took no rest; + Or if 'twas off-and-on-the same-- + He done his level best. + + If he was preachin' on his beat, + He'd tramp from east to west, + And north to south-in cold and heat + He done his level best. + + He'd yank a sinner outen (Hades),** + And land him with the blest; + Then snatch a prayer'n waltz in again, + And do his level best. + + **Here I have taken a slight liberty with the original MS. "Hades" + does not make such good meter as the other word of one syllable, but + it sounds better. + + He'd cuss and sing and howl and pray, + And dance and drink and jest, + And lie and steal--all one to him-- + He done his level best. + + Whate'er this man was sot to do, + He done it with a zest; + No matter what his contract was, + HE'D DO HIS LEVEL BEST. + +Verily, this man was gifted with "gorgis abilities," and it is a +happiness to me to embalm the memory of their luster in these columns. +If it were not that the poet crop is unusually large and rank in +California this year, I would encourage you to continue writing, Simon +Wheeler; but, as it is, perhaps it might be too risky in you to enter +against so much opposition. + + +"PROFESSIONAL BEGGAR."--NO; you are not obliged to take greenbacks at +par. + + +"MELTON MOWBRAY," Dutch Flat.--This correspondent sends a lot of +doggerel, and says it has been regarded as very good in Dutch Flat. I +give a specimen verse: + + The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, + And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold; + And the sheen of his spears was like stars on the sea, + When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.** + + **This piece of pleasantry, published in a San Francisco paper, was + mistaken by the country journals for seriousness, and many and loud + were the denunciations of the ignorance of author and editor, in not + knowing that the lines in question were "written by Byron." + +There, that will do. That may be very good Dutch Flat poetry, but it +won't do in the metropolis. It is too smooth and blubbery; it reads like +butter milk gurgling from a jug. What the people ought to have is +something spirited--something like "Johnny Comes Marching Home." However +keep on practising, and you may succeed yet. There is genius in you, but +too much blubber. + + + "ST. CLAIR HIGGINS." Los Angeles.--"My life is a failure; I have + adored, wildly, madly, and she whom I love has turned coldly from me + and shed her affections upon another. What would you advise me to + do?" + +You should set your affections on another also--or on several, if there +are enough to go round. Also, do everything you can to make your former +flame unhappy. There is an absurd idea disseminated in novels, that the +happier a girl is with another man, the happier it makes the old lover +she has blighted. Don't allow yourself to believe any such nonsense as +that. The more cause that girl finds to regret that she did not marry +you, the more comfortable you will feel over it. It isn't poetical, but +it is mighty sound doctrine. + + + "ARITHMETICUS." Virginia, Nevada.--"If it would take a cannon-ball + 3 and 1/3 seconds to travel four miles, and 3 and 3/8 seconds to + travel the next four, and 3 and 5/8 to travel the next four, and if + its rate of progress continued to diminish in the same ratio, how + long would it take it to go fifteen hundred million miles?" + +I don't know. + + +"AMBITIOUS LEARNER," Oakland.--Yes; you are right America was not +discovered by Alexander Selkirk. + + + "DISCARDED LOVER."--"I loved, and still love, the beautiful Edwitha + Howard, and intended to marry her. Yet, during my temporary absence + at Benicia, last week, alas! she married Jones. Is my happiness to + be thus blasted for life? Have I no redress?" + +Of course you have. All the law, written and unwritten, is on your side. +The intention and not the act constitutes crime--in other words, +constitutes the deed. If you call your bosom friend a fool, and intend +it for an insult, it is an insult; but if you do it playfully, and +meaning no insult, it is not an insult. If you discharge a pistol +accidentally, and kill a man, you can go free, for you have done no +murder; but if you try to kill a man, and manifestly intend to kill him, +but fail utterly to do it, the law still holds that the intention +constituted the crime, and you are guilty of murder. Ergo, if you had +married Edwitha accidentally, and without really intending to do it, you +would not actually be married to her at all, because the act of marriage +could not be complete without the intention. And ergo, in the strict +spirit of the law, since you deliberately intended to marry Edwitha, and +didn't do it, you are married to her all the same--because, as I said +before, the intention constitutes the crime. It is as clear as day that +Edwitha is your wife, and your redress lies in taking a club and +mutilating Jones with it as much as you can. Any man has a right to +protect his own wife from the advances of other men. But you have +another alternative--you were married to Edwitha first, because of your +deliberate intention, and now you can prosecute her for bigamy, in +subsequently marrying Jones. But there is another phase in this +complicated case: You intended to marry Edwitha, and consequently, +according to law, she is your wife--there is no getting around that; but +she didn't marry you, and if she never intended to marry you, you are not +her husband, of course. Ergo, in marrying Jones, she was guilty of +bigamy, because she was the wife of another man at the time; which is all +very well as far as it goes--but then, don't you see, she had no other +husband when she married Jones, and consequently she was not guilty of +bigamy. Now, according to this view of the case, Jones married a +spinster, who was a widow at the same time and another man's wife at the +same time, and yet who had no husband and never had one, and never had +any intention of getting married, and therefore, of course, never had +been married; and by the same reasoning you are a bachelor, because you +have never been any one's husband; and a married man, because you have a +wife living; and to all intents and purposes a widower, because you have +been deprived of that wife; and a consummate ass for going off to Benicia +in the first place, while things were so mixed. And by this time I have +got myself so tangled up in the intricacies of this extraordinary case +that I shall have to give up any further attempt to advise you--I might +get confused and fail to make myself understood. I think I could take up +the argument where I left off, and by following it closely awhile, +perhaps I could prove to your satisfaction, either that you never existed +at all, or that you are dead now, and consequently don't need the +faithless Edwitha--I think I could do that, if it would afford you any +comfort. + + +"ARTHUR AUGUSTUS."--No; you are wrong; that is the proper way to throw a +brickbat or a tomahawk; but it doesn't answer so well for a bouquet; you +will hurt somebody if you keep it up. Turn your nosegay upside down, +take it by the stems, and toss it with an upward sweep. Did you ever +pitch quoits? that is the idea. The practice of recklessly heaving +immense solid bouquets, of the general size and weight of prize cabbages, +from the dizzy altitude of the galleries, is dangerous and very +reprehensible. Now, night before last, at the Academy of Music, just +after Signorina had finished that exquisite melody, "The Last Rose of +Summer," one of these floral pile-drivers came cleaving down through the +atmosphere of applause, and if she hadn't deployed suddenly to the right, +it would have driven her into the floor like a shinglenail. Of course +that bouquet was well meant; but how would you like to have been the +target? A sincere compliment is always grateful to a lady, so long as +you don't try to knock her down with it. + + +"YOUNG MOTHER."--And so you think a baby is a thing of beauty and a joy +forever? Well, the idea is pleasing, but not original; every cow thinks +the same of its own calf. Perhaps the cow may not think it so elegantly, +but still she thinks it nevertheless. I honor the cow for it. We all +honor this touching maternal instinct wherever we find it, be it in the +home of luxury or in the humble cow-shed. But really, madam, when I +come to examine the matter in all its bearings, I find that the +correctness of your assertion does not assert itself in all cases. +A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded +as a thing of beauty; and inasmuch as babyhood spans but three short +years, no baby is competent to be a joy "forever." It pains me thus to +demolish two-thirds of your pretty sentiment in a single sentence; but +the position I hold in this chair requires that I shall not permit you to +deceive and mislead the public with your plausible figures of speech. +I know a female baby, aged eighteen months, in this city, which cannot +hold out as a "joy" twenty-four hours on a stretch, let alone "forever." +And it possesses some of the most remarkable eccentricities of character +and appetite that have ever fallen under my notice. I will set down here +a statement of this infant's operations (conceived, planned, and earned +out by itself, and without suggestion or assistance from its mother or +any one else), during a single day; and what I shall say can be +substantiated by the sworn testimony of witnesses. + +It commenced by eating one dozen large blue-mass pills, box and all; then +it fell down a flight of stairs, and arose with a blue and purple knot on +its forehead, after which it proceeded in quest of further refreshment +and amusement. It found a glass trinket ornamented with brass-work +--smashed up and ate the glass, and then swallowed the brass. +Then it drank about twenty drops of laudanum, and more than a dozen +tablespoonfuls of strong spirits of camphor. The reason why it took no +more laudanum was because there was no more to take. After this it lay +down on its back, and shoved five or six, inches of a silver-headed +whalebone cane down its throat; got it fast there, and it was all its +mother could do to pull the cane out again, without pulling out some of +the child with it. Then, being hungry for glass again, it broke up +several wine glasses, and fell to eating and swallowing the fragments, +not minding a cut or two. Then it ate a quantity of butter, pepper, +salt, and California matches, actually taking a spoonful of butter, a +spoonful of salt, a spoonful of pepper, and three or four lucifer matches +at each mouthful. (I will remark here that this thing of beauty likes +painted German lucifers, and eats all she can get of them; but she +prefers California matches, which I regard as a compliment to our home +manufactures of more than ordinary value, coming, as it does, from one +who is too young to flatter.) Then she washed her head with soap and +water, and afterward ate what soap was left, and drank as much of the +suds as she had room for; after which she sallied forth and took the cow +familiarly by the tail, and got kicked heels over head. At odd times +during the day, when this joy forever happened to have nothing particular +on hand, she put in the time by climbing up on places, and falling down +off them, uniformly damaging her self in the operation. As young as she +is, she speaks many words tolerably distinctly; and being plain spoken in +other respects, blunt and to the point, she opens conversation with all +strangers, male or female, with the same formula, "How do, Jim?" + +Not being familiar with the ways of children, it is possible that I have +been magnifying into matter of surprise things which may not strike any +one who is familiar with infancy as being at all astonishing. However, I +cannot believe that such is the case, and so I repeat that my report of +this baby's performances is strictly true; and if any one doubts it, +I can produce the child. I will further engage that she will devour +anything that is given her (reserving to myself only the right to exclude +anvils), and fall down from any place to which she may be elevated +(merely stipulating that her preference for alighting on her head shall +be respected, and, therefore, that the elevation chosen shall be high +enough to enable her to accomplish this to her satisfaction). But I find +I have wandered from my subject; so, without further argument, I will +reiterate my conviction that not all babies are things of beauty and joys +forever. + + + "ARITHMETICUS." Virginia, Nevada.--"I am an enthusiastic student of + mathematics, and it is so vexatious to me to find my progress + constantly impeded by these mysterious arithmetical technicalities. + Now do tell me what the difference is between geometry and + conchology?" + +Here you come again with your arithmetical conundrums, when I am +suffering death with a cold in the head. If you could have seen the +expression of scorn that darkened my countenance a moment ago, and was +instantly split from the center in every direction like a fractured +looking-glass by my last sneeze, you never would have written that +disgraceful question. Conchology is a science which has nothing to do +with mathematics; it relates only to shells. At the same time, however, +a man who opens oysters for a hotel, or shells a fortified town, or sucks +eggs, is not, strictly speaking, a conchologist-a fine stroke of sarcasm +that, but it will be lost on such an unintellectual clam as you. Now +compare conchology and geometry together, and you will see what the +difference is, and your question will be answered. But don't torture me +with any more arithmetical horrors until you know I am rid of my cold. I +feel the bitterest animosity toward you at this moment-bothering me in +this way, when I can do nothing but sneeze and rage and snort +pocket-handkerchiefs to atoms. If I had you in range of my nose now +I would blow your brains out. + + + + + + +TO RAISE POULTRY + +--[Being a letter written to a Poultry Society that had conferred a +complimentary membership upon the author. Written about 1870.] + +Seriously, from early youth I have taken an especial interest in the +subject of poultry-raising, and so this membership touches a ready +sympathy in my breast. Even as a schoolboy, poultry-raising was a study +with me, and I may say without egotism that as early as the age of +seventeen I was acquainted with all the best and speediest methods of +raising chickens, from raising them off a roost by burning lucifer +matches under their noses, down to lifting them off a fence on a frosty +night by insinuating the end of a warm board under their heels. By the +time I was twenty years old, I really suppose I had raised more poultry +than any one individual in all the section round about there. The very +chickens came to know my talent by and by. The youth of both sexes +ceased to paw the earth for worms, and old roosters that came to crow, +"remained to pray," when I passed by. + +I have had so much experience in the raising of fowls that I cannot but +think that a few hints from me might be useful to the society. The two +methods I have already touched upon are very simple, and are only used in +the raising of the commonest class of fowls; one is for summer, the other +for winter. In the one case you start out with a friend along about +eleven o'clock' on a summer's night (not later, because in some states +--especially in California and Oregon--chickens always rouse up just at +midnight and crow from ten to thirty minutes, according to the ease or +difficulty they experience in getting the public waked up), and your +friend carries with him a sack. Arrived at the henroost (your +neighbor's, not your own), you light a match and hold it under first one +and then another pullet's nose until they are willing to go into that bag +without making any trouble about it. You then return home, either taking +the bag with you or leaving it behind, according as circumstances shall +dictate. N. B.--I have seen the time when it was eligible and +appropriate to leave the sack behind and walk off with considerable +velocity, without ever leaving any word where to send it. + +In the case of the other method mentioned for raising poultry, your +friend takes along a covered vessel with a charcoal fire in it, and you +carry a long slender plank. This is a frosty night, understand. Arrived +at the tree, or fence, or other henroost (your own if you are an idiot), +you warm the end of your plank in your friend's fire vessel, and then +raise it aloft and ease it up gently against a slumbering chicken's foot. +If the subject of your attentions is a true bird, he will infallibly +return thanks with a sleepy cluck or two, and step out and take up +quarters on the plank, thus becoming so conspicuously accessory before +the fact to his own murder as to make it a grave question in our minds as +it once was in the mind of Blackstone, whether he is not really and +deliberately, committing suicide in the second degree. [But you enter +into a contemplation of these legal refinements subsequently not then.] + +When you wish to raise a fine, large, donkey voiced Shanghai rooster, you +do it with a lasso, just as you would a bull. It is because he must +choked, and choked effectually, too. It is the only good, certain way, +for whenever he mentions a matter which he is cordially interested in, +the chances are ninety-nine in a hundred that he secures somebody else's +immediate attention to it too, whether it day or night. + +The Black Spanish is an exceedingly fine bird and a costly one. +Thirty-five dollars is the usual figure and fifty a not uncommon price +for a specimen. Even its eggs are worth from a dollar to a dollar and a +half apiece, and yet are so unwholesome that the city physician seldom or +never orders them for the workhouse. Still I have once or twice procured +as high as a dozen at a time for nothing, in the dark of the moon. The +best way to raise the Black Spanish fowl is to go late in the evening and +raise coop and all. The reason I recommend this method is that, the +birds being so valuable, the owners do not permit them to roost around +promiscuously, they put them in a coop as strong as a fireproof safe and +keep it in the kitchen at night. The method I speak of is not always a +bright and satisfying success, and yet there are so many little articles +of vertu about a kitchen, that if you fail on the coop you can generally +bring away something else. I brought away a nice steel trap one night, +worth ninety cents. + +But what is the use in my pouring out my whole intellect on this subject? +I have shown the Western New York Poultry Society that they have taken to +their bosom a party who is not a spring chicken by any means, but a man +who knows all about poultry, and is just as high up in the most efficient +methods of raising it as the president of the institution himself. +I thank these gentlemen for the honorary membership they have conferred +upon me, and shall stand at all times ready and willing to testify my +good feeling and my official zeal by deeds as well as by this hastily +penned advice and information. Whenever they are ready to go to raising +poultry, let them call for me any evening after eleven o'clock. + + + + + + +EXPERIENCE OF THE McWILLIAMSES WITH MEMBRANOUS CROUP + +[As related to the author of this book by Mr. McWilliams, a pleasant New +York gentleman whom the said author met by chance on a journey.] + +Well, to go back to where I was before I digressed to explain to you how +that frightful and incurable disease, membranous croup,[Diphtheria D.W.] +was ravaging the town and driving all mothers mad with terror, I called +Mrs. McWilliams's attention to little Penelope, and said: + +"Darling, I wouldn't let that child be chewing that pine stick if I were +you." + +"Precious, where is the harm in it?" said she, but at the same time +preparing to take away the stick for women cannot receive even the most +palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it, that is married women. + +I replied: + +"Love, it is notorious that pine is the least nutritious wood that a +child can eat." + +My wife's hand paused, in the act of taking the stick, and returned +itself to her lap. She bridled perceptibly, and said: + +"Hubby, you know better than that. You know you do. Doctors all say +that the turpentine in pine wood is good for weak back and the kidneys." + +"Ah--I was under a misapprehension. I did not know that the child's +kidneys and spine were affected, and that the family physician had +recommended--" + +"Who said the child's spine and kidneys were affected?" + +"My love, you intimated it." + +"The idea! I never intimated anything of the kind." + +"Why, my dear, it hasn't been two minutes since you said--" + +"Bother what I said! I don't care what I did say. There isn't any harm +in the child's chewing a bit of pine stick if she wants to, and you know +it perfectly well. And she shall chew it, too. So there, now!" + +"Say no more, my dear. I now see the force of your reasoning, and I will +go and order two or three cords of the best pine wood to-day. No child +of mine shall want while I--" + +"Oh, please go along to your office and let me have some peace. A body +can never make the simplest remark but you must take it up and go to +arguing and arguing and arguing till you don't know what you are talking +about, and you never do." + +"Very well, it shall be as you say. But there is a want of logic in your +last remark which--" + +However, she was gone with a flourish before I could finish, and had +taken the child with her. That night at dinner she confronted me with a +face a white as a sheet: + +"Oh, Mortimer, there's another! Little Georgi Gordon is taken." + +"Membranous croup?" + +"Membranous croup." + +"Is there any hope for him?" + +"None in the wide world. Oh, what is to be come of us!" + +By and by a nurse brought in our Penelope to say good night and offer the +customary prayer at the mother's knee. In the midst of "Now I lay me +down to sleep," she gave a slight cough! My wife fell back like one +stricken with death. But the next moment she was up and brimming with +the activities which terror inspires. + +She commanded that the child's crib be removed from the nursery to our +bedroom; and she went along to see the order executed. She took me with +her, of course. We got matters arranged with speed. A cot-bed was put +up in my wife's dressing room for the nurse. But now Mrs. McWilliams +said we were too far away from the other baby, and what if he were to +have the symptoms in the night--and she blanched again, poor thing. + +We then restored the crib and the nurse to the nursery and put up a bed +for ourselves in a room adjoining. + +Presently, however, Mrs. McWilliams said suppose the baby should catch it +from Penelope? This thought struck a new panic to her heart, and the +tribe of us could not get the crib out of the nursery again fast enough +to satisfy my wife, though she assisted in her own person and well-nigh +pulled the crib to pieces in her frantic hurry. + +We moved down-stairs; but there was no place there to stow the nurse, and +Mrs. McWilliams said the nurse's experience would be an inestimable help. +So we returned, bag and baggage, to our own bedroom once more, and felt a +great gladness, like storm-buffeted birds that have found their nest +again. + +Mrs. McWilliams sped to the nursery to see how things were going on +there. She was back in a moment with a new dread. She said: + +"What can make Baby sleep so?" + +I said: + +"Why, my darling, Baby always sleeps like a graven image." + +"I know. I know; but there's something peculiar about his sleep now. +He seems to--to--he seems to breathe so regularly. Oh, this is +dreadful." + +"But, my dear, he always breathes regularly." + +"Oh, I know it, but there's something frightful about it now. His nurse +is too young and inexperienced. Maria shall stay there with her, and be +on hand if anything happens." + +"That is a good idea, but who will help you?" + +"You can help me all I want. I wouldn't allow anybody to do anything but +myself, anyhow, at such a time as this." + +I said I would feel mean to lie abed and sleep, and leave her to watch +and toil over our little patient all the weary night. But she reconciled +me to it. So old Maria departed and took up her ancient quarters in the +nursery. + +Penelope coughed twice in her sleep. + +"Oh, why don't that doctor come! Mortimer, this room is too warm. This +room is certainly too warm. Turn off the register-quick!" + +I shut it off, glancing at the thermometer at the same time, and +wondering to myself if 70 was too warm for a sick child. + +The coachman arrived from down-town now with the news that our physician +was ill and confined to his bed. Mrs. McWilliams turned a dead eye upon +me, and said in a dead voice: + +"There is a Providence in it. It is foreordained. He never was sick +before. Never. We have not been living as we ought to live, Mortimer. +Time and time again I have told you so. Now you see the result. Our +child will never get well. Be thankful if you can forgive yourself; I +never can forgive myself." + +I said, without intent to hurt, but with heedless choice of words, that I +could not see that we had been living such an abandoned life. + +"Mortimer! Do you want to bring the judgment upon Baby, too!" + +Then she began to cry, but suddenly exclaimed: + +"The doctor must have sent medicines!" + +I said: + +"Certainly. They are here. I was only waiting for you to give me a +chance." + +"Well do give them to me! Don't you know that every moment is precious +now? But what was the use in sending medicines, when he knows that the +disease is incurable?" + +I said that while there was life there was hope. + +"Hope! Mortimer, you know no more what you are talking about than the +child unborn. If you would--As I live, the directions say give one +teaspoonful once an hour! Once an hour!--as if we had a whole year +before us to save the child in! Mortimer, please hurry. Give the poor +perishing thing a tablespoonful, and try to be quick!" + +"Why, my dear, a tablespoonful might--" + +"Don't drive me frantic! . . . There, there, there, my precious, my +own; it's nasty bitter stuff, but it's good for Nelly--good for mother's +precious darling; and it will make her well. There, there, there, put +the little head on mamma's breast and go to sleep, and pretty soon--oh, +I know she can't live till morning! Mortimer, a tablespoonful every +half-hour will--Oh, the child needs belladonna, too; I know she does--and +aconite. Get them, Mortimer. Now do let me have my way. You know +nothing about these things." + +We now went to bed, placing the crib close to my wife's pillow. All this +turmoil had worn upon me, and within two minutes I was something more +than half asleep. Mrs. McWilliams roused me: + +"Darling, is that register turned on?" + +"No." + +"I thought as much. Please turn it on at once. This room is cold." + +I turned it on, and presently fell asleep again. I was aroused once +more: + +"Dearie, would you mind moving the crib to your side of the bed? It is +nearer the register." + +I moved it, but had a collision with the rug and woke up the child. I +dozed off once more, while my wife quieted the sufferer. But in a little +while these words came murmuring remotely through the fog of my +drowsiness: + +"Mortimer, if we only had some goose grease--will you ring?" + +I climbed dreamily out, and stepped on a cat, which responded with a +protest and would have got a convincing kick for it if a chair had not +got it instead. + +"Now, Mortimer, why do you want to turn up the gas and wake up the child +again?" + +"Because I want to see how much I am hurt, Caroline." + +"Well, look at the chair, too--I have no doubt it is ruined. Poor cat, +suppose you had--" + +"Now I am not going to suppose anything about the cat. It never would +have occurred if Maria had been allowed to remain here and attend to +these duties, which are in her line and are not in mine." + +"Now, Mortimer, I should think you would be ashamed to make a remark like +that. It is a pity if you cannot do the few little things I ask of you +at such an awful time as this when our child--" + +"There, there, I will do anything you want. But I can't raise anybody +with this bell. They're all gone to bed. Where is the goose grease?" + +"On the mantelpiece in the nursery. If you'll step there and speak to +Maria--" + +I fetched the goose grease and went to sleep again. Once more I was +called: + +"Mortimer, I so hate to disturb you, but the room is still too cold for +me to try to apply this stuff. Would you mind lighting the fire? It is +all ready to touch a match to." + +I dragged myself out and lit the fire, and then sat down disconsolate. + +"Mortimer, don't sit there and catch your death of cold. Come to bed." + +As I was stepping in she said: + +"But wait a moment. Please give the child some more of the medicine." + +Which I did. It was a medicine which made a child more or less lively; +so my wife made use of its waking interval to strip it and grease it all +over with the goose oil. I was soon asleep once more, but once more I +had to get up. + +"Mortimer, I feel a draft. I feel it distinctly. There is nothing so +bad for this disease as a draft. Please move the crib in front of the +fire." + +I did it; and collided with the rug again, which I threw in the fire. +Mrs. McWilliams sprang out of bed and rescued it and we had some words. +I had another trifling interval of sleep, and then got up, by request, +and constructed a flax-seed poultice. This was placed upon the child's +breast and left there to do its healing work. + +A wood-fire is not a permanent thing. I got up every twenty minutes and +renewed ours, and this gave Mrs. McWilliams the opportunity to shorten +the times of giving the medicines by ten minutes, which was a great +satisfaction to her. Now and then, between times, I reorganized the +flax-seed poultices, and applied sinapisms and other sorts of blisters +where unoccupied places could be found upon the child. Well, toward +morning the wood gave out and my wife wanted me to go down cellar and get +some more. I said: + +"My dear, it is a laborious job, and the child must be nearly warm +enough, with her extra clothing. Now mightn't we put on another layer of +poultices and--" + +I did not finish, because I was interrupted. I lugged wood up from below +for some little time, and then turned in and fell to snoring as only a +man can whose strength is all gone and whose soul is worn out. Just at +broad daylight I felt a grip on my shoulder that brought me to my senses +suddenly. My wife was glaring down upon me and gasping. As soon as she +could command her tongue she said: + +"It is all over! All over! The child's perspiring! What shall we do?" + +"Mercy, how you terrify me! I don't know what we ought to do. Maybe if +we scraped her and put her in the draft again--" + +"Oh, idiot! There is not a moment to lose! Go for the doctor. +Go yourself. Tell him he must come, dead or alive." + +I dragged that poor sick man from his bed and brought him. He looked at +the child and said she was not dying. This was joy unspeakable to me, +but it made my wife as mad as if he had offered her a personal affront. +Then he said the child's cough was only caused by some trifling +irritation or other in the throat. At this I thought my wife had a mind +to show him the door. Now the doctor said he would make the child cough +harder and dislodge the trouble. So he gave her something that sent her +into a spasm of coughing, and presently up came a little wood splinter or +so. + +"This child has no membranous croup," said he. "She has been chewing a +bit of pine shingle or something of the kind, and got some little slivers +in her throat. They won't do her any hurt." + +"No," said I, "I can well believe that. Indeed, the turpentine that is +in them is very good for certain sorts of diseases that are peculiar to +children. My wife will tell you so." + +But she did not. She turned away in disdain and left the room; and since +that time there is one episode in our life which we never refer to. +Hence the tide of our days flows by in deep and untroubled serenity. + +[Very few married men have such an experience as McWilliams's, and so the +author of this book thought that maybe the novelty of it would give it a +passing interest to the reader.] + + + + + + +MY FIRST LITERARY VENTURE + +I was a very smart child at the age of thirteen--an unusually smart +child, I thought at the time. It was then that I did my first newspaper +scribbling, and most unexpectedly to me it stirred up a fine sensation in +the community. It did, indeed, and I was very proud of it, too. I was a +printer's "devil," and a progressive and aspiring one. My uncle had me +on his paper (the Weekly Hannibal journal, two dollars a year in advance +--five hundred subscribers, and they paid in cordwood, cabbages, and +unmarketable turnips), and on a lucky summer's day he left town to be +gone a week, and asked me if I thought I could edit one issue of the +paper judiciously. Ah! didn't I want to try! Higgins was the editor on +the rival paper. He had lately been jilted, and one night a friend found +an open note on the poor fellow's bed, in which he stated that he could +not longer endure life and had drowned himself in Bear Creek. The friend +ran down there and discovered Higgins wading back to shore. He had +concluded he wouldn't. The village was full of it for several days, +but Higgins did not suspect it. I thought this was a fine opportunity. +I wrote an elaborately wretched account of the whole matter, and then +illustrated it with villainous cuts engraved on the bottoms of wooden +type with a jackknife--one of them a picture of Higgins wading out into +the creek in his shirt, with a lantern, sounding the depth of the water +with a walking-stick. I thought it was desperately funny, and was +densely unconscious that there was any moral obliquity about such a +publication. Being satisfied with this effort I looked around for other +worlds to conquer, and it struck me that it would make good, interesting +matter to charge the editor of a neighboring country paper with a piece +of gratuitous rascality and "see him squirm." + +I did it, putting the article into the form of a parody on the "Burial of +Sir John Moore"--and a pretty crude parody it was, too. + +Then I lampooned two prominent citizens outrageously--not because they +had done anything to deserve, but merely because I thought it was my duty +to make the paper lively. + +Next I gently touched up the newest stranger--the lion of the day, the +gorgeous journeyman tailor from Quincy. He was a simpering coxcomb of +the first water, and the "loudest" dressed man in the state. He was an +inveterate woman-killer. Every week he wrote lushy "poetry" for the +journal, about his newest conquest. His rhymes for my week were headed, +"To MARY IN H--l," meaning to Mary in Hannibal, of course. But while +setting up the piece I was suddenly riven from head to heel by what I +regarded as a perfect thunderbolt of humor, and I compressed it into a +snappy footnote at the bottom--thus: "We will let this thing pass, just +this once; but we wish Mr. J. Gordon Runnels to understand distinctly +that we have a character to sustain, and from this time forth when he +wants to commune with his friends in h--l, he must select some other +medium than the columns of this journal!" + +The paper came out, and I never knew any little thing attract so much +attention as those playful trifles of mine. + +For once the Hannibal Journal was in demand--a novelty it had not +experienced before. The whole town was stirred. Higgins dropped in with +a double-barreled shotgun early in the forenoon. When he found that it +was an infant (as he called me) that had done him the damage, he simply +pulled my ears and went away; but he threw up his situation that night +and left town for good. The tailor came with his goose and a pair of +shears; but he despised me, too, and departed for the South that night. +The two lampooned citizens came with threats of libel, and went away +incensed at my insignificance. The country editor pranced in with a +war-whoop next day, suffering for blood to drink; but he ended by +forgiving me cordially and inviting me down to the drug store to wash +away all animosity in a friendly bumper of "Fahnestock's Vermifuge." +It was his little joke. My uncle was very angry when he got back +--unreasonably so, I thought, considering what an impetus I had given the +paper, and considering also that gratitude for his preservation ought to +have been uppermost in his mind, inasmuch as by his delay he had so +wonderfully escaped dissection, tomahawking, libel, and getting his head +shot off. + +But he softened when he looked at the accounts and saw that I had +actually booked the unparalleled number of thirty-three new subscribers, +and had the vegetables to show for it, cordwood, cabbage, beans, and +unsalable turnips enough to run the family for two dears! + + + + + + +HOW THE AUTHOR WAS SOLD IN NEWARK--[Written about 1869.] + +It is seldom pleasant to tell on oneself, but some times it is a sort of +relief to a man to make a confession. I wish to unburden my mind now, +and yet I almost believe that I am moved to do it more because I long to +bring censure upon another man than because I desire to pour balm upon my +wounded heart. (I don't know what balm is, but I believe it is the +correct expression to use in this connection--never having seen any +balm.) You may remember that I lectured in Newark lately for the young +gentlemen of the-----Society? I did at any rate. During the afternoon +of that day I was talking with one of the young gentlemen just referred +to, and he said he had an uncle who, from some cause or other, seemed to +have grown permanently bereft of all emotion. And with tears in his +eyes, this young man said, "Oh, if I could only see him laugh once more! +Oh, if I could only see him weep!" I was touched. I could never +withstand distress. + +I said: "Bring him to my lecture. I'll start him for you." + +"Oh, if you could but do it! If you could but do it, all our family +would bless you for evermore--for he is so very dear to us. Oh, my +benefactor, can you make him laugh? can you bring soothing tears to those +parched orbs?" + +I was profoundly moved. I said: "My son, bring the old party round. +I have got some jokes in that lecture that will make him laugh if there +is any laugh in him; and if they miss fire, I have got some others that +will make him cry or kill him, one or the other." Then the young man +blessed me, and wept on my neck, and went after his uncle. He placed him +in full view, in the second row of benches, that night, and I began on +him. I tried him with mild jokes, then with severe ones; I dosed him +with bad jokes and riddled him with good ones; I fired old stale jokes +into him, and peppered him fore and aft with red-hot new ones; I warmed +up to my work, and assaulted him on the right and left, in front and +behind; I fumed and sweated and charged and ranted till I was hoarse and +sick and frantic and furious; but I never moved him once--I never started +a smile or a tear! Never a ghost of a smile, and never a suspicion of +moisture! I was astounded. I closed the lecture at last with one +despairing shriek--with one wild burst of humor, and hurled a joke of +supernatural atrocity full at him! + +Then I sat down bewildered and exhausted. + +The president of the society came up and bathed my head with cold water, +and said: "What made you carry on so toward the last?" + +I said: "I was trying to make that confounded old fool laugh, in the +second row." + +And he said: "Well, you were wasting your time, because he is deaf and +dumb, and as blind as a badger!" + +Now, was that any way for that old man's nephew to impose on a stranger +and orphan like me? I ask you as a man and brother, if that was any way +for him to do? + + + + + + +THE OFFICE BORE--[Written about 1869] + +He arrives just as regularly as the clock strikes nine in the morning. +And so he even beats the editor sometimes, and the porter must leave his +work and climb two or three pairs of stairs to unlock the "Sanctum" door +and let him in. He lights one of the office pipes--not reflecting, +perhaps, that the editor may be one of those "stuck-up" people who would +as soon have a stranger defile his tooth-brush as his pipe-stem. Then he +begins to loll--for a person who can consent to loaf his useless life +away in ignominious indolence has not the energy to sit up straight. +He stretches full length on the sofa awhile; then draws up to half +length; then gets into a chair, hangs his head back and his arms abroad, +and stretches his legs till the rims of his boot-heels rest upon the +floor; by and by sits up and leans forward, with one leg or both over the +arm of the chair. But it is still observable that with all his changes +of position, he never assumes the upright or a fraudful affectation of +dignity. From time to time he yawns, and stretches, and scratches +himself with a tranquil, mangy enjoyment, and now and then he grunts a +kind of stuffy, overfed grunt, which is full of animal contentment. At +rare and long intervals, however, he sighs a sigh that is the eloquent +expression of a secret confession, to wit "I am useless and a nuisance, +a cumberer of the earth." The bore and his comrades--for there are +usually from two to four on hand, day and night--mix into the +conversation when men come in to see the editors for a moment on +business; they hold noisy talks among themselves about politics in +particular, and all other subjects in general--even warming up, after a +fashion, sometimes, and seeming to take almost a real interest in what +they are discussing. They ruthlessly call an editor from his work with +such a remark as: "Did you see this, Smith, in the Gazette?" and proceed +to read the paragraph while the sufferer reins in his impatient pen and +listens; they often loll and sprawl round the office hour after hour, +swapping anecdotes and relating personal experiences to each other +--hairbreadth escapes, social encounters with distinguished men, election +reminiscences, sketches of odd characters, etc. And through all those +hours they never seem to comprehend that they are robbing the editors of +their time, and the public of journalistic excellence in next day's +paper. At other times they drowse, or dreamily pore over exchanges, or +droop limp and pensive over the chair-arms for an hour. Even this solemn +silence is small respite to the editor, for the next uncomfortable thing +to having people look over his shoulders, perhaps, is to have them sit by +in silence and listen to the scratching of his pen. If a body desires to +talk private business with one of the editors, he must call him outside, +for no hint milder than blasting-powder or nitroglycerin would be likely +to move the bores out of listening-distance. To have to sit and endure +the presence of a bore day after day; to feel your cheerful spirits begin +to sink as his footstep sounds on the stair, and utterly vanish away as +his tiresome form enters the door; to suffer through his anecdotes and +die slowly to his reminiscences; to feel always the fetters of his +clogging presence; to long hopelessly for one single day's privacy; to +note with a shudder, by and by, that to contemplate his funeral in fancy +has ceased to soothe, to imagine him undergoing in strict and fearful +detail the tortures of the ancient Inquisition has lost its power to +satisfy the heart, and that even to wish him millions and millions and +millions of miles in Tophet is able to bring only a fitful gleam of joy; +to have to endure all this, day after day, and week after week, and month +after month, is an affliction that transcends any other that men suffer. +Physical pain is pastime to it, and hanging a pleasure excursion. + + + + + + +JOHNNY GREER + +"The church was densely crowded that lovely summer Sabbath," said the +Sunday-school superintendent, "and all, as their eyes rested upon the +small coffin, seemed impressed by the poor black boy's fate. Above the +stillness the pastor's voice rose, and chained the interest of every ear +as he told, with many an envied compliment, how that the brave, noble, +daring little Johnny Greer, when he saw the drowned body sweeping down +toward the deep part of the river whence the agonized parents never could +have recovered it in this world, gallantly sprang into the stream, and, +at the risk of his life, towed the corpse to shore, and held it fast till +help came and secured it. Johnny Greer was sitting just in front of me. +A ragged street-boy, with eager eye, turned upon him instantly, and said +in a hoarse whisper + +"'No; but did you, though?' + +"'Yes.' + +"'Towed the carkiss ashore and saved it yo'self?' + +"'Yes.' + +"'Cracky! What did they give you?' + +"'Nothing.' + +"'W-h-a-t [with intense disgust]! D'you know what I'd 'a' done? I'd 'a' +anchored him out in the stream, and said, Five dollars, gents, or you +carn't have yo' nigger.'" + + + + + + +THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF THE GREAT BEEF CONTRACT--[Written about 1867.] + +In as few words as possible I wish to lay before the nation what's here, +howsoever small, I have had in this matter--this matter which has so +exercised the public mind, engendered so much ill-feeling, and so filled +the newspapers of both continents with distorted statements and +extravagant comments. + +The origin of this distressful thing was this--and I assert here that +every fact in the following resume can be amply proved by the official +records of the General Government. + +John Wilson Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey, +deceased, contracted with the General Government, on or about the 10th +day of October, 1861, to furnish to General Sherman the sum total of +thirty barrels of beef. + +Very well. + +He started after Sherman with the beef, but when he got to Washington +Sherman had gone to Manassas; so he took the beef and followed him there, +but arrived too late; he followed him to Nashville, and from Nashville to +Chattanooga, and from Chattanooga to Atlanta--but he never could overtake +him. At Atlanta he took a fresh start and followed him clear through his +march to the sea. He arrived too late again by a few days; but hearing +that Sherman was going out in the Quaker City excursion to the Holy Land, +he took shipping for Beirut, calculating to head off the other vessel. +When he arrived in Jerusalem with his beef, he learned that Sherman had +not sailed in the Quaker City, but had gone to the Plains to fight the +Indians. He returned to America and started for the Rocky Mountains. +After sixty-eight days of arduous travel on the Plains, and when he had +got within four miles of Sherman's headquarters, he was tomahawked and +scalped, and the Indians got the beef. They got all of it but one +barrel. Sherman's army captured that, and so, even in death, the bold +navigator partly fulfilled his contract. In his will, which he had kept +like a journal, he bequeathed the contract to his son Bartholomew W. +Bartholomew W. made out the following bill, and then died: + + THE UNITED STATES + + In account with JOHN WILSON MACKENZIE, of New Jersey, + deceased, . . . . . . . . . . Dr. + + To thirty barrels of beef for General Sherman, at $100, $3,000 + To traveling expenses and transportation . . . . . 14,000 + + Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $17,000 + Rec'd Pay't. + + +He died then; but he left the contract to Wm. J. Martin, who tried to +collect it, but died before he got through. He left it to Barker J. +Allen, and he tried to collect it also. He did not survive. Barker J. +Allen left it to Anson G. Rogers, who attempted to collect it, and got +along as far as the Ninth Auditor's Office, when Death, the great +Leveler, came all unsummoned, and foreclosed on him also. He left the +bill to a relative of his in Connecticut, Vengeance Hopkins by name, who +lasted four weeks and two days, and made the best time on record, coming +within one of reaching the Twelfth Auditor. In his will he gave the +contract bill to his uncle, by the name of O-be-joyful Johnson. It was +too undermining for joyful. His last words were: "Weep not for me--I am +willing to go." And so he was, poor soul. Seven people inherited the +contract after that; but they all died. So it came into my hands at +last. It fell to me through a relative by the name of, Hubbard +--Bethlehem Hubbard, of Indiana. He had had a grudge against me for a +long time; but in his last moments he sent for me, and forgave me +everything, and, weeping, gave me the beef contract. + +This ends the history of it up to the time that I succeeded to the +property. I will now endeavor to set myself straight before the nation +in everything that concerns my share in the matter. I took this beef +contract, and the bill for mileage and transportation, to the President +of the United States. + +He said, "Well, sir, what can I do for you?" + +I said, "Sire, on or about the 10th day of October, 1861, John Wilson +Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey, deceased, contracted +with the General Government to furnish to General Sherman the sum total +of thirty barrels of beef--" + +He stopped me there, and dismissed me from his presence--kindly, but +firmly. The next day called on the Secretary of State. + +He said, "Well, sir?" + +I said, "Your Royal Highness: on or about the 10th day of October, 1861, +John Wilson Mackenzie of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey, deceased, +contracted with the General Government to furnish to General Sherman the +sum total of thirty barrels of beef--" + +"That will do, sir--that will do; this office has nothing to do with +contracts for beef." + +I was bowed out. I thought the matter all over and finally, the +following day, I visited the Secretary of the Navy, who said, "Speak +quickly, sir; do not keep me waiting." + +I said, "Your Royal Highness, on or about the 10th day of October, 1861, +John Wilson Mackenzie of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey, deceased, +contracted with the General Government to General Sherman the sum total +of thirty barrels of beef--" + +Well, it was as far as I could get. He had nothing to do with beef +contracts for General Sherman either. I began to think it was a curious +kind of government. It looked somewhat as if they wanted to get out of +paying for that beef. The following day I went to the Secretary of the +Interior. + +I said, "Your Imperial Highness, on or about the 10th day of October--" + +"That is sufficient, sir. I have heard of you before. Go, take your +infamous beef contract out of this establishment. The Interior +Department has nothing whatever to do with subsistence for the army." + +I went away. But I was exasperated now. I said I would haunt them; +I would infest every department of this iniquitous government till that +contract business was settled. I would collect that bill, or fall, as +fell my predecessors, trying. I assailed the Postmaster-General; +I besieged the Agricultural Department; I waylaid the Speaker of the +House of Representatives. They had nothing to do with army contracts for +beef. I moved upon the Commissioner of the Patent Office. + +I said, "Your August Excellency, on or about--" + +"Perdition! have you got here with your incendiary beef contract, at +last? We have nothing to do with beef contracts for the army, my dear +sir." + +"Oh, that is all very well--but somebody has got to pay for that beef. +It has got to be paid now, too, or I'll confiscate this old Patent Office +and everything in it." + +"But, my dear sir--" + +"It don't make any difference, sir. The Patent Office is liable for that +beef, I reckon; and, liable or not liable, the Patent Office has got to +pay for it." + +Never mind the details. It ended in a fight. The Patent Office won. +But I found out something to my advantage. I was told that the Treasury +Department was the proper place for me to go to. I went there. I waited +two hours and a half, and then I was admitted to the First Lord of the +Treasury. + +I said, "Most noble, grave, and reverend Signor, on or about the 10th day +of October, 1861, John Wilson Macken--" + +"That is sufficient, sir. I have heard of you. Go to the First Auditor +of the Treasury." + +I did so. He sent me to the Second Auditor. The Second Auditor sent me +to the Third, and the Third sent me to the First Comptroller of the +Corn-Beef Division. This began to look like business. He examined his +books and all his loose papers, but found no minute of the beef contract. +I went to the Second Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division. He examined +his books and his loose papers, but with no success. I was encouraged. +During that week I got as far as the Sixth Comptroller in that division; +the next week I got through the Claims Department; the third week I began +and completed the Mislaid Contracts Department, and got a foothold in the +Dead Reckoning Department. I finished that in three days. There was +only one place left for it now. I laid siege to the Commissioner of Odds +and Ends. To his clerk, rather--he was not there himself. There were +sixteen beautiful young ladies in the room, writing in books, and there +were seven well-favored young clerks showing them how. The young women +smiled up over their shoulders, and the clerks smiled back at them, and +all went merry as a marriage bell. Two or three clerks that were reading +the newspapers looked at me rather hard, but went on reading, and nobody +said anything. However, I had been used to this kind of alacrity from +Fourth Assistant Junior Clerks all through my eventful career, from the +very day I entered the first office of the Corn-Beef Bureau clear till I +passed out of the last one in the Dead Reckoning Division. I had got so +accomplished by this time that I could stand on one foot from the moment +I entered an office till a clerk spoke to me, without changing more than +two, or maybe three, times. + +So I stood there till I had changed four different times. Then I said to +one of the clerks who was reading: + +"Illustrious Vagrant, where is the Grand Turk?" + +"What do you mean, sir? whom do you mean? If you mean the Chief of the +Bureau, he is out." + +"Will he visit the harem to-day?" + +The young man glared upon me awhile, and then went on reading his paper. +But I knew the ways of those clerks. I knew I was safe if he got through +before another New York mail arrived. He only had two more papers left. +After a while he finished them, and then he yawned and asked me what I +wanted. + +"Renowned and honored Imbecile: on or about--" + +"You are the beef-contract man. Give me your papers." + +He took them, and for a long time he ransacked his odds and ends. +Finally he found the Northwest Passage, as I regarded it--he found the +long lost record of that beef contract--he found the rock upon which so +many of my ancestors had split before they ever got to it. I was deeply +moved. And yet I rejoiced--for I had survived. I said with emotion, +"Give it me. The government will settle now." He waved me back, and +said there was something yet to be done first. + +"Where is this John Wilson Mackenzie?" said he. + +"Dead." + +"When did he die?" + +"He didn't die at all--he was killed." + +"How?" + +"Tomahawked." + +"Who tomahawked him?" + +"Why, an Indian, of course. You didn't suppose it was the superintendent +of a Sunday-school, did you?" + +"No. An Indian, was it?" + +"The same." + +"Name of the Indian?" + +"His name? I don't know his name." + +"Must have his name. Who saw the tomahawking done?" + +"I don't know." + +"You were not present yourself, then?" + +"Which you can see by my hair. I was absent. + +"Then how do you know that Mackenzie is dead?" + +"Because he certainly died at that time, and have every reason to believe +that he has been dead ever since. I know he has, in fact." + +"We must have proofs. Have you got this Indian?" + +"Of course not." + +"Well, you must get him. Have you got the tomahawk?" + +"I never thought of such a thing." + +"You must get the tomahawk. You must produce the Indian and the +tomahawk. If Mackenzie's death can be proven by these, you can then go +before the commission appointed to audit claims with some show of getting +your bill under such headway that your children may possibly live to +receive the money and enjoy it. But that man's death must be proven. +However, I may as well tell you that the government will never pay that +transportation and those traveling expenses of the lamented Mackenzie. +It may possibly pay for the barrel of beef that Sherman's soldiers +captured, if you can get a relief bill through Congress making an +appropriation for that purpose; but it will not pay for the twenty-nine +barrels the Indians ate." + +"Then there is only a hundred dollars due me, and that isn't certain! +After all Mackenzie's travels in Europe, Asia, and America with that +beef; after all his trials and tribulations and transportation; after the +slaughter of all those innocents that tried to collect that bill! Young +man, why didn't the First Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division tell me +this?" + +"He didn't know anything about the genuineness of your claim." + +"Why didn't the Second tell me? why didn't the, Third? why didn't all +those divisions and departments tell me?" + +"None of them knew. We do things by routine here. You have followed the +routine and found out what you wanted to know. It is the best way. +It is the only way. It is very regular, and very slow, but it is very +certain." + +"Yes, certain death. It has been, to the most of our tribe. I begin to +feel that I, too, am called." + +"Young man, you love the bright creature yonder with the gentle blue eyes +and the steel pens behind her ears--I see it in your soft glances; you +wish to marry her--but you are poor. Here, hold out your hand--here is +the beef contract; go, take her and be happy Heaven bless you, my +children!" + +This is all I know about the great beef contract that has created so much +talk in the community. The clerk to whom I bequeathed it died. I know +nothing further about the contract, or any one connected with it. I only +know that if a man lives long enough he can trace a thing through the +Circumlocution Office of Washington and find out, after much labor and +trouble and delay, that which he could have found out on the first day if +the business of the Circumlocution Office were as ingeniously +systematized as it would be if it were a great private mercantile +institution. + + + + + + +THE CASE OF GEORGE FISHER + +--[Some years ago, about 1867, when this was first published, few people +believed it, but considered it a mere extravaganza. In these latter days +it seems hard to realize that there was ever a time when the robbing of +our government was a novelty. The very man who showed me where to find +the documents for this case was at that very time spending hundreds of +thousands of dollars in Washington for a mail steamship concern, in the +effort to procure a subsidy for the company--a fact which was a long time +in coming to the surface, but leaked out at last and underwent +Congressional investigation.] + +This is history. It is not a wild extravaganza, like "John Wilson +Mackenzie's Great Beef Contract," but is a plain statement of facts and +circumstances with which the Congress of the United States has interested +itself from time to time during the long period of half a century. + +I will not call this matter of George Fisher's a great deathless and +unrelenting swindle upon the government and people of the United States +--for it has never been so decided, and I hold that it is a grave and +solemn wrong for a writer to cast slurs or call names when such is the +case--but will simply present the evidence and let the reader deduce his +own verdict. Then we shall do nobody injustice, and our consciences +shall be clear. + +On or about the 1st day of September, 1813, the Creek war being then in +progress in Florida, the crops, herds, and houses of Mr. George Fisher, +a citizen, were destroyed, either by the Indians or by the United States +troops in pursuit of them. By the terms of the law, if the Indians +destroyed the property, there was no relief for Fisher; but if the troops +destroyed it, the Government of the United States was debtor to Fisher +for the amount involved. + +George Fisher must have considered that the Indians destroyed the +property, because, although he lived several years afterward, he does not +appear to have ever made any claim upon the government. + +In the course of time Fisher died, and his widow married again. +And by and by, nearly twenty years after that dimly remembered raid upon +Fisher's corn-fields, the widow Fisher's new husband petitioned Congress +for pay for the property, and backed up the petition with many +depositions and affidavits which purported to prove that the troops, +and not the Indians, destroyed the property; that the troops, for some +inscrutable reason, deliberately burned down "houses" (or cabins) valued +at $600, the same belonging to a peaceable private citizen, and also +destroyed various other property belonging to the same citizen. But +Congress declined to believe that the troops were such idiots (after +overtaking and scattering a band of Indians proved to have been found +destroying Fisher's property) as to calmly continue the work of +destruction themselves; and make a complete job of what the Indians had +only commenced. So Congress denied the petition of the heirs of George +Fisher in 1832, and did not pay them a cent. + +We hear no more from them officially until 1848, sixteen years after +their first attempt on the Treasury, and a full generation after the +death of the man whose fields were destroyed. The new generation of +Fisher heirs then came forward and put in a bill for damages. The Second +Auditor awarded them $8,873, being half the damage sustained by Fisher. +The Auditor said the testimony showed that at least half the destruction +was done by the Indians "before the troops started in pursuit," and of +course the government was not responsible for that half. + +2. That was in April, 1848. In December, 1848, the heirs of George +Fisher, deceased, came forward and pleaded for a "revision" of their bill +of damages. The revision was made, but nothing new could be found in +their favor except an error of $100 in the former calculation. However, +in order to keep up the spirits of the Fisher family, the Auditor +concluded to go back and allow interest from the date of the first +petition (1832) to the date when the bill of damages was awarded. This +sent the Fishers home happy with sixteen years' interest on $8,873--the +same amounting to $8,997.94. Total, $17,870.94. + +3. For an entire year the suffering Fisher family remained quiet--even +satisfied, after a fashion. Then they swooped down upon the government +with their wrongs once more. That old patriot, Attorney-General Toucey, +burrowed through the musty papers of the Fishers and discovered one more +chance for the desolate orphans--interest on that original award of +$8,873 from date of destruction of the property (1813) up to 1832! +Result, $110,004.89 for the indigent Fishers. So now we have: First, +$8,873 damages; second, interest on it from 1832 to 1848, $8997.94; +third, interest on it dated back to 1813, $10,004.89. Total, $27,875.83! +What better investment for a great-grandchild than to get the Indians to +burn a corn-field for him sixty or seventy years before his birth, and +plausibly lay it on lunatic United States troops? + +4. Strange as it may seem, the Fishers let Congress alone for five +years--or, what is perhaps more likely, failed to make themselves heard +by Congress for that length of time. But at last, in 1854, they got a +hearing. They persuaded Congress to pass an act requiring the Auditor to +re-examine their case. But this time they stumbled upon the misfortune +of an honest Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. James Guthrie), and he +spoiled everything. He said in very plain language that the Fishers were +not only not entitled to another cent, but that those children of many +sorrows and acquainted with grief had been paid too much already. + +5. Therefore another interval of rest and silent ensued-an interval +which lasted four years--viz till 1858. The "right man in the right +place" was then Secretary of War--John B. Floyd, of peculiar renown! +Here was a master intellect; here was the very man to succor the +suffering heirs of dead and forgotten Fisher. They came up from Florida +with a rush--a great tidal wave of Fishers freighted with the same old +musty documents about the same in immortal corn-fields of their ancestor. +They straight-way got an act passed transferring the Fisher matter from +the dull Auditor to the ingenious Floyd. What did Floyd do? He said, +"IT WAS PROVED that the Indians destroyed everything they could before +the troops entered in pursuit." He considered, therefore, that what they +destroyed must have consisted of "the houses with all their contents, and +the liquor" (the most trifling part of the destruction, and set down at +only $3,200 all told), and that the government troops then drove them off +and calmly proceeded to destroy-- + +Two hundred and twenty acres of corn in the field, thirty-five acres of +wheat, and nine hundred and eighty-six head of live stock! [What a +singularly intelligent army we had in those days, according to Mr. Floyd +--though not according to the Congress of 1832.] + +So Mr. Floyd decided that the Government was not responsible for that +$3,200 worth of rubbish which the Indians destroyed, but was responsible +for the property destroyed by the troops--which property consisted of (I +quote from the printed United States Senate document): + + Dollars + Corn at Bassett's Creek, ............... 3,000 + Cattle, ................................ 5,000 + Stock hogs, ............................ 1,050 + Drove hogs, ............................ 1,204 + Wheat, ................................. 350 + Hides, ................................. 4,000 + Corn on the Alabama River, ............. 3,500 + + Total, .............18,104 + +That sum, in his report, Mr. Floyd calls the "full value of the property +destroyed by the troops." + +He allows that sum to the starving Fishers, TOGETHER WITH INTEREST FROM +1813. From this new sum total the amounts already paid to the Fishers +were deducted, and then the cheerful remainder (a fraction under forty +thousand dollars) was handed to then and again they retired to Florida in +a condition of temporary tranquillity. Their ancestor's farm had now +yielded them altogether nearly sixty-seven thousand dollars in cash. + +6. Does the reader suppose that that was the end of it? Does he suppose +those diffident Fishers we: satisfied? Let the evidence show. The +Fishers were quiet just two years. Then they came swarming up out of the +fertile swamps of Florida with their same old documents, and besieged +Congress once more. Congress capitulated on the 1st of June, 1860, and +instructed Mr. Floyd to overhaul those papers again, and pay that bill. +A Treasury clerk was ordered to go through those papers and report to Mr. +Floyd what amount was still due the emaciated Fishers. This clerk (I can +produce him whenever he is wanted) discovered what was apparently a +glaring and recent forgery in the paper; whereby a witness's testimony as +to the price of corn in Florida in 1813 was made to name double the +amount which that witness had originally specified as the price! The +clerk not only called his superior's attention to this thing, but in +making up his brief of the case called particular attention to it in +writing. That part of the brief never got before Congress, nor has +Congress ever yet had a hint of forgery existing among the Fisher papers. +Nevertheless, on the basis of the double prices (and totally ignoring the +clerk's assertion that the figures were manifestly and unquestionably a +recent forgery), Mr. Floyd remarks in his new report that "the testimony, +particularly in regard to the corn crops, DEMANDS A MUCH HIGHER ALLOWANCE +than any heretofore made by the Auditor or myself." So he estimates the +crop at sixty bushels to the acre (double what Florida acres produce), +and then virtuously allows pay for only half the crop, but allows two +dollars and a half a bushel for that half, when there are rusty old books +and documents in the Congressional library to show just what the Fisher +testimony showed before the forgery--viz., that in the fall of 1813 corn +was only worth from $1.25 to $1.50 a bushel. Having accomplished this, +what does Mr. Floyd do next? Mr. Floyd ("with an earnest desire to +execute truly the legislative will," as he piously remarks) goes to work +and makes out an entirely new bill of Fisher damages, and in this new +bill he placidly ignores the Indians altogether puts no particle of the +destruction of the Fisher property upon them, but, even repenting him of +charging them with burning the cabins and drinking the whisky and +breaking the crockery, lays the entire damage at the door of the imbecile +United States troops down to the very last item! And not only that, but +uses the forgery to double the loss of corn at "Bassett's Creek," and +uses it again to absolutely treble the loss of corn on the "Alabama +River." This new and ably conceived and executed bill of Mr. Floyd's +figures up as follows (I copy again from the printed United States Senate +document): + + The United States in account with the legal representatives + of George Fisher, deceased. + DOL.C +1813.--To 550 head of cattle, at 10 dollars, ............. 5,500.00 + To 86 head of drove hogs, ......................... 1,204.00 + To 350 head of stock hogs, ........................ 1,750.00 + To 100 ACRES OF CORN ON BASSETT'S CREEK, .......... 6,000.00 + To 8 barrels of whisky, ........................... 350.00 + To 2 barrels of brandy, ........................... 280.00 + To 1 barrel of rum, ............................... 70.00 + To dry-goods and merchandise in store, ............ 1,100.00 + To 35 acres of wheat, ............................. 350.00 + To 2,000 hides, ................................... 4,000.00 + To furs and hats in store, ........................ 600.00 + To crockery ware in store, ........................ 100.00 + To smith's and carpenter's tools, ................. 250.00 + To houses burned and destroyed, ................... 600.00 + To 4 dozen bottles of wine, ....................... 48.00 +1814.--To 120 acres of corn on Alabama River, ............ 9,500.00 + To crops of peas, fodder, etc. .................... 3,250.00 + + Total, ..........................34,952.00 + + To interest on $22,202, from July 1813 + to November 1860, 47 years and 4 months, .......63,053.68 + To interest on $12,750, from September + 1814 to November 1860, 46 years and 2 months, ..35,317.50 + + Total, ........................ 133,323.18 + +He puts everything in this time. He does not even allow that the Indians +destroyed the crockery or drank the four dozen bottles of (currant) wine. +When it came to supernatural comprehensiveness in "gobbling," John B. +Floyd was without his equal, in his own or any other generation. +Subtracting from the above total the $67,000 already paid to +George Fisher's implacable heirs, Mr. Floyd announced that the government +was still indebted to them in the sum of sixty-six thousand five hundred +and nineteen dollars and eighty-five cents, "which," Mr. Floyd +complacently remarks, "will be paid, accordingly, to the administrator of +the estate of George Fisher, deceased, or to his attorney in fact." + +But, sadly enough for the destitute orphans, a new President came in just +at this time, Buchanan and Floyd went out, and they never got their +money. The first thing Congress did in 1861 was to rescind the +resolution of June 1, 1860, under which Mr. Floyd had been ciphering. +Then Floyd (and doubtless the heirs of George Fisher likewise) had to +give up financial business for a while, and go into the Confederate army +and serve their country. + +Were the heirs of George Fisher killed? No. They are back now at this +very time (July, 1870), beseeching Congress through that blushing and +diffident creature, Garrett Davis, to commence making payments again on +their interminable and insatiable bill of damages for corn and whisky +destroyed by a gang of irresponsible Indians, so long ago that even +government red-tape has failed to keep consistent and intelligent track +of it. + +Now the above are facts. They are history. Any one who doubts it can +send to the Senate Document Department of the Capitol for H. R. Ex. Doc. +No. 21, 36th Congress, 2d Session; and for S. Ex. Doc. No. 106, 41st +Congress, 2d Session, and satisfy himself. The whole case is set forth +in the first volume of the Court of Claims Reports. + +It is my belief that as long as the continent of America holds together, +the heirs of George Fisher, deceased, will still make pilgrimages to +Washington from the swamps of Florida, to plead for just a little more +cash on their bill of damages (even when they received the last of that +sixty-seven thousand dollars, they said it was only one fourth what the +government owed them on that fruitful corn-field), and as long as they +choose to come they will find Garrett Davises to drag their vampire +schemes before Congress. This is not the only hereditary fraud (if fraud +it is--which I have before repeatedly remarked is not proven) that is +being quietly handed down from generation to generation of fathers and +sons, through the persecuted Treasury of the United States. + + + + + + +DISGRACEFUL PERSECUTION OF A BOY + +In San Francisco, the other day, "A well-dressed boy, on his way to +Sunday-school, was arrested and thrown into the city prison for stoning +Chinamen." + +What a commentary is this upon human justice! What sad prominence it +gives to our human disposition to tyrannize over the weak! San Francisco +has little right to take credit to herself for her treatment of this poor +boy. What had the child's education been? How should he suppose it was +wrong to stone a Chinaman? Before we side against him, along with +outraged San Francisco, let us give him a chance--let us hear the +testimony for the defense. + +He was a "well-dressed" boy, and a Sunday-school scholar, and therefore +the chances are that his parents were intelligent, well-to-do people, +with just enough natural villainy in their composition to make them yearn +after the daily papers, and enjoy them; and so this boy had opportunities +to learn all through the week how to do right, as well as on Sunday. + +It was in this way that he found out that the great commonwealth of +California imposes an unlawful mining-tax upon John the foreigner, and +allows Patrick the foreigner to dig gold for nothing--probably because +the degraded Mongol is at no expense for whisky, and the refined Celt +cannot exist without it. + +It was in this way that he found out that a respectable number of the +tax-gatherers--it would be unkind to say all of them--collect the tax +twice, instead of once; and that, inasmuch as they do it solely to +discourage Chinese immigration into the mines, it is a thing that is much +applauded, and likewise regarded as being singularly facetious. + +It was in this way that he found out that when a white man robs a +sluice-box (by the term white man is meant Spaniards, Mexicans, +Portuguese, Irish, Hondurans, Peruvians, Chileans, etc., etc.), they make +him leave the camp; and when a Chinaman does that thing, they hang him. + +It was in this way that he found out that in many districts of the vast +Pacific coast, so strong is the wild, free love of justice in the hearts +of the people, that whenever any secret and mysterious crime is +committed, they say, "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall," and +go straightway and swing a Chinaman. + +It was in this way that he found out that by studying one half of each +day's "local items," it would appear that the police of San Francisco +were either asleep or dead, and by studying the other half it would seem +that the reporters were gone mad with admiration of the energy, the +virtue, the high effectiveness, and the dare-devil intrepidity of that +very police-making exultant mention of how "the Argus-eyed officer +So-and-so" captured a wretched knave of a Chinaman who was stealing +chickens, and brought him gloriously to the city prison; and how "the +gallant officer Such-and-such-a-one" quietly kept an eye on the movements +of an "unsuspecting, almond-eyed son of Confucius" (your reporter is +nothing if not facetious), following him around with that far-off look. +of vacancy and unconsciousness always so finely affected by that +inscrutable being, the forty-dollar policeman, during a waking interval, +and captured him at last in the very act of placing his hands in a +suspicious manner upon a paper of tacks, left by the owner in an exposed +situation; and how one officer performed this prodigious thing, and +another officer that, and another the other--and pretty much every one of +these performances having for a dazzling central incident a Chinaman +guilty of a shilling's worth of crime, an unfortunate, whose misdemeanor +must be hurrahed into something enormous in order to keep the public from +noticing how many really important rascals went uncaptured in the mean +time, and how overrated those glorified policemen actually are. + +It was in this way that the boy found out that the legislature, being +aware that the Constitution has made America, an asylum for the poor and +the oppressed of all nations, and that, therefore, the poor and oppressed +who fly to our shelter must not be charged a disabling admission fee, +made a law that every Chinaman, upon landing, must be vaccinated upon the +wharf, and pay to the state's appointed officer ten dollars for the +service, when there are plenty of doctors in San Francisco who would be +glad enough to do it for him for fifty cents. + +It was in this way that the boy found out that a Chinaman had no rights +that any man was bound to respect; that he had no sorrows that any man +was bound to pity; that neither his life nor his liberty was worth the +purchase of a penny when a white man needed a scapegoat; that nobody +loved Chinamen, nobody befriended them, nobody spared them suffering when +it was convenient to inflict it; everybody, individuals, communities, the +majesty of the state itself, joined in hating, abusing, and persecuting +these humble strangers. + +And, therefore, what could have been more natural than for this +sunny-hearted-boy, tripping along to Sunday-school, with his mind teeming +with freshly learned incentives to high and virtuous action, to say to +himself: + +"Ah, there goes a Chinaman! God will not love me if I do not stone him." + +And for this he was arrested and put in the city jail. + +Everything conspired to teach him that it was a high and holy thing to +stone a Chinaman, and yet he no sooner attempts to do his duty than he is +punished for it--he, poor chap, who has been aware all his life that one +of the principal recreations of the police, out toward the Gold Refinery, +is to look on with tranquil enjoyment while the butchers of Brannan +Street set their dogs on unoffending Chinamen, and make them flee for +their lives. + +--[I have many such memories in my mind, but am thinking just at present +of one particular one, where the Brannan Street butchers set their dogs +on a Chinaman who was quietly passing with a basket of clothes on his +head; and while the dogs mutilated his flesh, a butcher increased the +hilarity of the occasion by knocking some of the Chinaman's teeth down +his throat with half a brick. This incident sticks in my memory with a +more malevolent tenacity, perhaps, on account of the fact that I was in +the employ of a San Francisco journal at the time, and was not allowed to +publish it because it might offend some of the peculiar element that +subscribed for the paper.] + +Keeping in mind the tuition in the humanities which the entire "Pacific +coast" gives its youth, there is a very sublimity of incongruity in the +virtuous flourish with which the good city fathers of San Francisco +proclaim (as they have lately done) that "The police are positively +ordered to arrest all boys, of every description and wherever found, who +engage in assaulting Chinamen." + +Still, let us be truly glad they have made the order, notwithstanding its +inconsistency; and let us rest perfectly confident the police are glad, +too. Because there is no personal peril in arresting boys, provided they +be of the small kind, and the reporters will have to laud their +performances just as loyally as ever, or go without items. + +The new form for local items in San Francisco will now be: "The +ever-vigilant and efficient officer So-and-so succeeded, yesterday +afternoon, in arresting Master Tommy Jones, after a determined +resistance," etc., etc., followed by the customary statistics and final +hurrah, with its unconscious sarcasm: "We are happy in being able to +state that this is the forty-seventh boy arrested by this gallant officer +since the new ordinance went into effect. The most extraordinary +activity prevails in the police department. Nothing like it has been +seen since we can remember." + + + + + + +THE JUDGE'S "SPIRITED WOMAN" + +"I was sitting here," said the judge, "in this old pulpit, holding court, +and we were trying a big, wicked-looking Spanish desperado for killing +the husband of a bright, pretty Mexican woman. It was a lazy summer day, +and an awfully long one, and the witnesses were tedious. None of us took +any interest in the trial except that nervous, uneasy devil of a Mexican +woman because you know how they love and how they hate, and this one had +loved her husband with all her might, and now she had boiled it all down +into hate, and stood here spitting it at that Spaniard with her eyes; +and I tell you she would stir me up, too, with a little of her summer +lightning, occasionally. Well, I had my coat off and my heels up, +lolling and sweating, and smoking one of those cabbage cigars the San +Francisco people used to think were good enough for us in those times; +and the lawyers they all had their coats off, and were smoking and +whittling, and the witnesses the same, and so was the prisoner. Well, +the fact is, there warn't any interest in a murder trial then, because +the fellow was always brought in 'not guilty,' the jury expecting him to +do as much for them some time; and, although the evidence was straight +and square against this Spaniard, we knew we could not convict him +without seeming to be rather high-handed and sort of reflecting on every +gentleman in the community; for there warn't any carriages and liveries +then, and so the only 'style' there was, was to keep your private +graveyard. But that woman seemed to have her heart set on hanging that +Spaniard; and you'd ought to have seen how she would glare on him a +minute, and then look up at me in her pleading way, and then turn and for +the next five minutes search the jury's faces, and by and by drop her +face in her hands for just a little while as if she was most ready to +give up; but out she'd come again directly, and be as live and anxious as +ever. But when the jury announced the verdict--Not Guilty--and I told +the prisoner he was acquitted and free to go, that woman rose up till she +appeared to be as tall and grand as a seventy-four-gun ship, and says +she: + +"'Judge, do I understand you to say that this man is not guilty that +murdered my husband without any cause before my own eyes and my little +children's, and that all has been done to him that ever justice and the +law can do?' + +"'The same,' says I. + +"And then what do you reckon she did? Why, she turned on that smirking +Spanish fool like a wildcat, and out with a 'navy' and shot him dead in +open court!" + +"That was spirited, I am willing to admit." + +"Wasn't it, though?" said the judge admiringly. + +"I wouldn't have missed it for anything. I adjourned court right on the +spot, and we put on our coats and went out and took up a collection for +her and her cubs, and sent them over the mountains to their friends. +Ah, she was a spirited wench!" + + + + + + +INFORMATION WANTED + + "WASHINGTON, December 10, 1867. + +"Could you give me any information respecting such islands, if any, as +the government is going to purchase?" + +It is an uncle of mine that wants to know. He is an industrious man and +well disposed, and wants to make a living in an honest, humble way, but +more especially he wants to be quiet. He wishes to settle down, and be +quiet and unostentatious. He has been to the new island St. Thomas, but +he says he thinks things are unsettled there. He went there early with +an attache of the State Department, who was sent down with money to pay +for the island. My uncle had his money in the same box, and so when they +went ashore, getting a receipt, the sailors broke open the box and took +all the money, not making any distinction between government money, which +was legitimate money to be stolen, and my uncle's, which was his own +private property, and should have been respected. But he came home and +got some more and went back. And then he took the fever. There are +seven kinds of fever down there, you know; and, as his blood was out of +order by reason of loss of sleep and general wear and tear of mind, he +failed to cure the first fever, and then somehow he got the other six. +He is not a kind of man that enjoys fevers, though he is well meaning and +always does what he thinks is right, and so he was a good deal annoyed +when it appeared he was going to die. + +But he worried through, and got well and started a farm. He fenced it +in, and the next day that great storm came on and washed the most of it +over to Gibraltar, or around there somewhere. He only said, in his +patient way, that it was gone, and he wouldn't bother about trying to +find out where it went to, though it was his opinion it went to +Gibraltar. + +Then he invested in a mountain, and started a farm up there, so as to be +out of the way when the sea came ashore again. It was a good mountain, +and a good farm, but it wasn't any use; an earthquake came the next night +and shook it all down. It was all fragments, you know, and so mixed up +with another man's property that he could not tell which were his +fragments without going to law; and he would not do that, because his +main object in going to St. Thomas was to be quiet. All that he wanted +was to settle down and be quiet. + +He thought it all over, and finally he concluded to try the low ground +again, especially as he wanted to start a brickyard this time. He bought +a flat, and put out a hundred thousand bricks to dry preparatory to +baking them. But luck appeared to be against him. A volcano shoved +itself through there that night, and elevated his brickyard about two +thousand feet in the air. It irritated him a good deal. He has been up +there, and he says the bricks are all baked right enough, but he can't +get them down. At first, he thought maybe the government would get the +bricks down for him, because since government bought the island, it ought +to protect the property where a man has invested in good faith; but all +he wants is quiet, and so he is not going to apply for the subsidy he was +thinking about. + +He went back there last week in a couple of ships of war, to prospect +around the coast for a safe place for a farm where he could be quiet; +but a great "tidal wave" came, and hoisted both of the ships out into one +of the interior counties, and he came near losing his life. So he has +given up prospecting in a ship, and is discouraged. + +Well, now he don't know what to do. He has tried Alaska; but the bears +kept after him so much, and kept him so much on the jump, as it were, +that he had to leave the country. He could not be quiet there with those +bears prancing after him all the time. That is how he came to go to the +new island we have bought--St. Thomas. But he is getting to think St. +Thomas is not quiet enough for a man of his turn of mind, and that is why +he wishes me to find out if government is likely to buy some more islands +shortly. He has heard that government is thinking about buying Porto +Rico. If that is true, he wishes to try Porto Rico, if it is a quiet +place. How is Porto Rico for his style of man? Do you think the +government will buy it? + + + + + + +SOME LEARNED FABLES, FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS + +IN THREE PARTS + + +PART FIRST + +HOW THE ANIMALS OF THE WOOD SENT OUT A SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION + +Once the creatures of the forest held a great convention and appointed a +commission consisting of the most illustrious scientists among them to go +forth, clear beyond the forest and out into the unknown and unexplored +world, to verify the truth of the matters already taught in their schools +and colleges and also to make discoveries. It was the most imposing +enterprise of the kind the nation had ever embarked in. True, the +government had once sent Dr. Bull Frog, with a picked crew, to hunt for a +northwesterly passage through the swamp to the right-hand corner of the +wood, and had since sent out many expeditions to hunt for Dr. Bull Frog; +but they never could find him, and so government finally gave him up and +ennobled his mother to show its gratitude for the services her son had +rendered to science. And once government sent Sir Grass Hopper to hunt +for the sources of the rill that emptied into the swamp; and afterward +sent out many expeditions to hunt for Sir Grass, and at last they were +successful--they found his body, but if he had discovered the sources +meantime, he did not let on. So government acted handsomely by deceased, +and many envied his funeral. + +But these expeditions were trifles compared with the present one; for +this one comprised among its servants the very greatest among the +learned; and besides it was to go to the utterly unvisited regions +believed to lie beyond the mighty forest--as we have remarked before. +How the members were banqueted, and glorified, and talked about! +Everywhere that one of them showed himself, straightway there was a crowd +to gape and stare at him. + +Finally they set off, and it was a sight to see the long procession of +dry-land Tortoises heavily laden with savants, scientific instruments, +Glow-Worms and Fire-Flies for signal service, provisions, Ants and +Tumble-Bugs to fetch and carry and delve, Spiders to carry the surveying +chain and do other engineering duty, and so forth and so on; and after +the Tortoises came another long train of ironclads--stately and spacious +Mud Turtles for marine transportation service; and from every Tortoise +and every Turtle flaunted a flaming gladiolus or other splendid banner; +at the head of the column a great band of Bumble-Bees, Mosquitoes, +Katy-Dids, and Crickets discoursed martial music; and the entire train +was under the escort and protection of twelve picked regiments of the +Army Worm. + +At the end of three weeks the expedition emerged from the forest and +looked upon the great Unknown World. Their eyes were greeted with an +impressive spectacle. A vast level plain stretched before them, watered +by a sinuous stream; and beyond there towered up against the sky along +and lofty barrier of some kind, they did not know what. The Tumble-Bug +said he believed it was simply land tilted up on its edge, because he +knew he could see trees on it. But Professor Snail and the others said: + +"You are hired to dig, sir--that is all. We need your muscle, not your +brains. When we want your opinion on scientific matters, we will hasten +to let you know. Your coolness is intolerable, too--loafing about here +meddling with august matters of learning, when the other laborers are +pitching camp. Go along and help handle the baggage." + +The Tumble-Bug turned on his heel uncrushed, unabashed, observing to +himself, "If it isn't land tilted up, let me die the death of the +unrighteous." + +Professor Bull Frog (nephew of the late explorer) said he believed the +ridge was the wall that inclosed the earth. He continued: + +"Our fathers have left us much learning, but they had not traveled far, +and so we may count this a noble new discovery. We are safe for renown +now, even though our labors began and ended with this single achievement. +I wonder what this wall is built of? Can it be fungus? Fungus is an +honorable good thing to build a wall of." + +Professor Snail adjusted his field-glass and examined the rampart +critically. Finally he said: + +"'The fact that it is not diaphanous convinces me that it is a dense +vapor formed by the calorification of ascending moisture dephlogisticated +by refraction. A few endiometrical experiments would confirm this, but +it is not necessary. The thing is obvious." + +So he shut up his glass and went into his shell to make a note of the +discovery of the world's end, and the nature of it. + +"Profound mind!" said Professor Angle-Worm to Professor Field-Mouse; +"profound mind! nothing can long remain a mystery to that august brain." + +Night drew on apace, the sentinel crickets were posted, the Glow-Worm and +Fire-Fly lamps were lighted, and the camp sank to silence and sleep. +After breakfast in the morning, the expedition moved on. About noon a +great avenue was reached, which had in it two endless parallel bars of +some kind of hard black substance, raised the height of the tallest Bull +Frog, above the general level. The scientists climbed up on these and +examined and tested them in various ways. They walked along them for a +great distance, but found no end and no break in them. They could arrive +at no decision. There was nothing in the records of science that +mentioned anything of this kind. But at last the bald and venerable +geographer, Professor Mud Turtle, a person who, born poor, and of a +drudging low family, had, by his own native force raised himself to the +headship of the geographers of his generation, said: + +"'My friends, we have indeed made a discovery here. We have found in a +palpable, compact, and imperishable state what the wisest of our fathers +always regarded as a mere thing of the imagination. Humble yourselves, +my friends, for we stand in a majestic presence. These are parallels of +latitude!" + +Every heart and every head was bowed, so awful, so sublime was the +magnitude of the discovery. Many shed tears. + +The camp was pitched and the rest of the day given up to writing +voluminous accounts of the marvel, and correcting astronomical tables to +fit it. Toward midnight a demoniacal shriek was heard, then a clattering +and rumbling noise, and the next instant a vast terrific eye shot by, +with a long tail attached, and disappeared in the gloom, still uttering +triumphant shrieks. + +The poor damp laborers were stricken to the heart with fright, and +stampeded for the high grass in a body. But not the scientists. They +had no superstitions. They calmly proceeded to exchange theories. +The ancient geographer's opinion was asked. He went into his shell and +deliberated long and profoundly. When he came out at last, they all knew +by his worshiping countenance that he brought light. Said he: + +"Give thanks for this stupendous thing which we have been permitted to +witness. It is the Vernal Equinox!" + +There were shoutings and great rejoicings. + +"But," said the Angle-Worm, uncoiling after reflection, "this is dead +summer-time." + +"Very well," said the Turtle, "we are far from our region; the season +differs with the difference of time between the two points." + +"Ah, true: True enough. But it is night. How should the sun pass in +the night?" + +"In these distant regions he doubtless passes always in the night at this +hour." + +"Yes, doubtless that is true. But it being night, how is it that we +could see him?" + +"It is a great mystery. I grant that. But I am persuaded that the +humidity of the atmosphere in these remote regions is such that particles +of daylight adhere to the disk and it was by aid of these that we were +enabled to see the sun in the dark." + +This was deemed satisfactory, and due entry was made of the decision. + +But about this moment those dreadful shriekings were heard again; again +the rumbling and thundering came speeding up out of the night; and once +more a flaming great eye flashed by and lost itself in gloom and +distance. + +The camp laborers gave themselves up for lost. The savants were sorely +perplexed. Here was a marvel hard to account for. They thought and they +talked, they talked and they thought. Finally the learned and aged Lord +Grand-Daddy-Longlegs, who had been sitting in deep study, with his +slender limbs crossed and his stemmy arms folded, said: + +"Deliver your opinions, brethren, and then I will tell my thought--for I +think I have solved this problem." + +"So be it, good your lordship," piped the weak treble of the wrinkled and +withered Professor Woodlouse, "for we shall hear from your lordship's +lips naught but wisdom." [Here the speaker threw in a mess of trite, +threadbare, exasperating quotations from the ancient poets and +philosophers, delivering them with unction in the sounding grandeurs of +the original tongues, they being from the Mastodon, the Dodo, and other +dead languages.] "Perhaps I ought not to presume to meddle with matters +pertaining to astronomy at all, in such a presence as this, I who have +made it the business of my life to delve only among the riches of the +extinct languages and unearth the opulence of their ancient lore; but +still, as unacquainted as I am with the noble science of astronomy, I beg +with deference and humility to suggest that inasmuch as the last of these +wonderful apparitions proceeded in exactly the opposite direction from +that pursued by the first, which you decide to be the Vernal Equinox, +and greatly resembled it in all particulars, is it not possible, nay +certain, that this last is the Autumnal Equi--" + +"O-o-o!" "O-o-o! go to bed! go to bed!" with annoyed derision from +everybody. So the poor old Woodlouse retreated out of sight, consumed +with shame. + +Further discussion followed, and then the united voice of the commission +begged Lord Longlegs to speak. He said: + +"Fellow-scientists, it is my belief that we have witnessed a thing which +has occurred in perfection but once before in the knowledge of created +beings. It is a phenomenon of inconceivable importance and interest, +view it as one may, but its interest to us is vastly heightened by an +added knowledge of its nature which no scholar has heretofore possessed +or even suspected. This great marvel which we have just witnessed, +fellow-savants (it almost takes my breath away), is nothing less than the +transit of Venus!" + +Every scholar sprang to his feet pale with astonishment. Then ensued +tears, handshakings, frenzied embraces, and the most extravagant +jubilations of every sort. But by and by, as emotion began to retire +within bounds, and reflection to return to the front, the accomplished +Chief Inspector Lizard observed: + +"But how is this? Venus should traverse the sun's surface, not the +earth's." + +The arrow went home. It earned sorrow to the breast of every apostle of +learning there, for none could deny that this was a formidable criticism. +But tranquilly the venerable Duke crossed his limbs behind his ears and +said: + +"My friend has touched the marrow of our mighty discovery. Yes--all that +have lived before us thought a transit of Venus consisted of a flight +across the sun's face; they thought it, they maintained it, they honestly +believed it, simple hearts, and were justified in it by the limitations +of their knowledge; but to us has been granted the inestimable boon of +proving that the transit occurs across the earth's face, for we have SEEN +it!" + +The assembled wisdom sat in speechless adoration of this imperial +intellect. All doubts had instantly departed, like night before the +lightning. + +The Tumble-Bug had just intruded, unnoticed. He now came reeling forward +among the scholars, familiarly slapping first one and then another on the +shoulder, saying "Nice ('ic) nice old boy!" and smiling a smile of +elaborate content. Arrived at a good position for speaking, he put his +left arm akimbo with his knuckles planted in his hip just under the edge +of his cut-away coat, bent his right leg, placing his toe on the ground +and resting his heel with easy grace against his left shin, puffed out +his aldermanic stomach, opened his lips, leaned his right elbow on +Inspector Lizard's shoulder, and-- + +But the shoulder was indignantly withdrawn and the hard-handed son of +toil went to earth. He floundered a bit, but came up smiling, arranged +his attitude with the same careful detail as before, only choosing +Professor Dogtick's shoulder for a support, opened his lips and-- + +Went to earth again. He presently scrambled up once more, still smiling, +made a loose effort to brush the dust off his coat and legs, but a smart +pass of his hand missed entirely, and the force of the unchecked impulse +stewed him suddenly around, twisted his legs together, and projected him, +limber and sprawling, into the lap of the Lord Longlegs. Two or three +scholars sprang forward, flung the low creature head over heels into a +corner, and reinstated the patrician, smoothing his ruffled dignity with +many soothing and regretful speeches. Professor Bull Frog roared out: + +"No more of this, sirrah Tumble-Bug! Say your say and then get you about +your business with speed! Quick--what is your errand? Come move off a +trifle; you smell like a stable; what have you been at?" + +"Please ('ic!) please your worship I chanced to light upon a find. But +no m(e-uck!) matter 'bout that. There's b('ic !) been another find +which--beg pardon, your honors, what was that th('ic!) thing that ripped +by here first?" + +"It was the Vernal Equinox." + +"Inf('ic!)fernal equinox. 'At's all right. D('ic !) Dunno him. What's +other one?" + +"The transit of Venus. + +"G('ic !) Got me again. No matter. Las' one dropped something." + +"Ah, indeed! Good luck! Good news! Quick what is it?" + +"M('ic!) Mosey out 'n' see. It'll pay." + +No more votes were taken for four-and-twenty hours. Then the following +entry was made: + +"The commission went in a body to view the find. It was found to consist +of a hard, smooth, huge object with a rounded summit surmounted by a +short upright projection resembling a section of a cabbage stalk divided +transversely. This projection was not solid, but was a hollow cylinder +plugged with a soft woody substance unknown to our region--that is, it +had been so plugged, but unfortunately this obstruction had been +heedlessly removed by Norway Rat, Chief of the Sappers and Miners, before +our arrival. The vast object before us, so mysteriously conveyed from +the glittering domains of space, was found to be hollow and nearly filled +with a pungent liquid of a brownish hue, like rainwater that has stood +for some time. And such a spectacle as met our view! Norway Rat was +perched upon the summit engaged in thrusting his tail into the +cylindrical projection, drawing it out dripping, permitting the +struggling multitude of laborers to suck the end of it, then straightway +reinserting it and delivering the fluid to the mob as before. Evidently +this liquor had strangely potent qualities; for all that partook of it +were immediately exalted with great and pleasurable emotions, and went +staggering about singing ribald songs, embracing, fighting, dancing, +discharging irruptions of profanity, and defying all authority. Around +us struggled a massed and uncontrolled mob--uncontrolled and likewise +uncontrollable, for the whole army, down to the very sentinels, were mad +like the rest, by reason of the drink. We were seized upon by these +reckless creatures, and within the hour we, even we, were +undistinguishable from the rest--the demoralization was complete and +universal. In time the camp wore itself out with its orgies and sank +into a stolid and pitiable stupor, in whose mysterious bonds rank was +forgotten and strange bedfellows made, our eyes, at the resurrection, +being blasted and our souls petrified with the incredible spectacle of +that intolerable stinking scavenger, the Tumble-Bug, and the illustrious +patrician my Lord Grand Daddy, Duke of Longlegs, lying soundly steeped in +sleep, and clasped lovingly in each other's arms, the like whereof hath +not been seen in all the ages that tradition compasseth, and doubtless +none shall ever in this world find faith to master the belief of it save +only we that have beheld the damnable and unholy vision. Thus +inscrutable be the ways of God, whose will be done! + +"This day, by order, did the engineer-in-chief, Herr Spider, rig the +necessary tackle for the overturning of the vast reservoir, and so its +calamitous contents were discharged in a torrent upon the thirsty earth, +which drank it up, and now there is no more danger, we reserving but a +few drops for experiment and scrutiny, and to exhibit to the king and +subsequently preserve among the wonders of the museum. What this liquid +is has been determined. It is without question that fierce and most +destructive fluid called lightning. It was wrested, in its container, +from its storehouse in the clouds, by the resistless might of the flying +planet, and hurled at our feet as she sped by. An interesting discovery +here results. Which is, that lightning, kept to itself, is quiescent; it +is the assaulting contact of the thunderbolt that releases it from +captivity, ignites its awful fires, and so produces an instantaneous +combustion and explosion which spread disaster and desolation far and +wide in the earth." + +After another day devoted to rest and recovery, the expedition proceeded +upon its way. Some days later it went into camp in a pleasant part of +the plain, and the savants sallied forth to see what they might find. +Their reward was at hand. Professor Bull Frog discovered a strange tree, +and called his comrades. They inspected it with profound interest. It +was very tall and straight, and wholly devoid of bark, limbs, or foliage. +By triangulation Lord Longlegs determined its altitude; Herr Spider +measured its circumference at the base and computed the circumference at +its top by a mathematical demonstration based upon the warrant furnished +by the uniform degree of its taper upward. It was considered a very +extraordinary find; and since it was a tree of a hitherto unknown +species, Professor Woodlouse gave it a name of a learned sound, being +none other than that of Professor Bull Frog translated into the ancient +Mastodon language, for it had always been the custom with discoverers to +perpetuate their names and honor themselves by this sort of connection +with their discoveries. + +Now Professor Field-Mouse having placed his sensitive ear to the tree, +detected a rich, harmonious sound issuing from it. This surprising thing +was tested and enjoyed by each scholar in turn, and great was the +gladness and astonishment of all. Professor Woodlouse was requested to +add to and extend the tree's name so as to make it suggest the musical +quality it possessed--which he did, furnishing the addition Anthem +Singer, done into the Mastodon tongue. + +By this time Professor Snail was making some telescopic inspections. +He discovered a great number of these trees, extending in a single rank, +with wide intervals between, as far as his instrument would carry, both +southward and northward. He also presently discovered that all these +trees were bound together, near their tops, by fourteen great ropes, one +above another, which ropes were continuous, from tree to tree, as far as +his vision could reach. This was surprising. Chief Engineer Spider ran +aloft and soon reported that these ropes were simply a web hung thereby +some colossal member of his own species, for he could see its prey +dangling here and there from the strands, in the shape of mighty shreds +and rags that had a woven look about their texture and were no doubt the +discarded skins of prodigious insects which had been caught and eaten. +And then he ran along one of the ropes to make a closer inspection, but +felt a smart sudden burn on the soles of his feet, accompanied by a +paralyzing shock, wherefore he let go and swung himself to the earth by a +thread of his own spinning, and advised all to hurry at once to camp, +lest the monster should appear and get as much interested in the savants +as they were in him and his works. So they departed with speed, making +notes about the gigantic web as they went. And that evening the +naturalist of the expedition built a beautiful model of the colossal +spider, having no need to see it in order to do this, because he had +picked up a fragment of its vertebra by the tree, and so knew exactly +what the creature looked like and what its habits and its preferences +were by this simple evidence alone. He built it with a tail, teeth, +fourteen legs, and a snout, and said it ate grass, cattle, pebbles, and +dirt with equal enthusiasm. This animal was regarded as a very precious +addition to science. It was hoped a dead one might be found to stuff. +Professor Woodlouse thought that he and his brother scholars, by lying +hid and being quiet, might maybe catch a live one. He was advised to try +it. Which was all the attention that was paid to his suggestion. The +conference ended with the naming the monster after the naturalist, since +he, after God, had created it. + +"And improved it, mayhap," muttered the Tumble-Bug, who was intruding +again, according to his idle custom and his unappeasable curiosity. + +END OF PART FIRST + + + + +SOME LEARNED FABLES FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS + +PART SECOND + +HOW THE ANIMALS OF THE WOOD COMPLETED THEIR SCIENTIFIC LABORS + +A week later the expedition camped in the midst of a collection of +wonderful curiosities. These were a sort of vast caverns of stone that +rose singly and in bunches out of the plain by the side of the river +which they had first seen when they emerged from the forest. These +caverns stood in long, straight rows on opposite sides of broad aisles +that were bordered with single ranks of trees. The summit of each cavern +sloped sharply both ways. Several horizontal rows of great square holes, +obstructed by a thin, shiny, transparent substance, pierced the frontage +of each cavern. Inside were caverns within caverns; and one might ascend +and visit these minor compartments by means of curious winding ways +consisting of continuous regular terraces raised one above another. +There were many huge, shapeless objects in each compartment which were +considered to have been living creatures at one time, though now the thin +brown skin was shrunken and loose, and rattled when disturbed. Spiders +were here in great number, and their cobwebs, stretched in all directions +and wreathing the great skinny dead together, were a pleasant spectacle, +since they inspired with life and wholesome cheer a scene which would +otherwise have brought to the mind only a sense of forsakenness and +desolation. Information was sought of these spiders, but in vain. They +were of a different nationality from those with the expedition, and their +language seemed but a musical, meaningless jargon. They were a timid, +gentle race, but ignorant, and heathenish worshipers of unknown gods. +The expedition detailed a great detachment of missionaries to teach them +the true religion, and in a week's time a precious work had been wrought +among those darkened creatures, not three families being by that time at +peace with each other or having a settled belief in any system of +religion whatever. This encouraged the expedition to establish a colony +of missionaries there permanently, that the work of grace might go on. + +But let us not outrun our narrative. After close examination of the +fronts of the caverns, and much thinking and exchanging of theories, the +scientists determined the nature of these singular formations. They said +that each belonged mainly to the Old Red Sandstone period; that the +cavern fronts rose in innumerable and wonderfully regular strata high in +the air, each stratum about five frog-spans thick, and that in the +present discovery lay an overpowering refutation of all received geology; +for between every two layers of Old Red Sandstone reposed a thin layer of +decomposed limestone; so instead of there having been but one Old Red +Sandstone period there had certainly been not less than a hundred and +seventy-five! And by the same token it was plain that there had also +been a hundred and seventy-five floodings of the earth and depositings of +limestone strata! The unavoidable deduction from which pair of facts was +the overwhelming truth that the world, instead of being only two hundred +thousand years old, was older by millions upon millions of years! And +there was another curious thing: every stratum of Old Red Sandstone was +pierced and divided at mathematically regular intervals by vertical +strata of limestone. Up-shootings of igneous rock through fractures in +water formations were common; but here was the first instance where +water-formed rock had been so projected. It was a great and noble +discovery, and its value to science was considered to be inestimable. + +A critical examination of some of the lower strata demonstrated the +presence of fossil ants and tumble-bugs (the latter accompanied by their +peculiar goods), and with high gratification the fact was enrolled upon +the scientific record; for this was proof that these vulgar laborers +belonged to the first and lowest orders of created beings, though at the +same time there was something repulsive in the reflection that the +perfect and exquisite creature of the modern uppermost order owed its +origin to such ignominious beings through the mysterious law of +Development of Species. + +The Tumble-Bug, overhearing this discussion, said he was willing that the +parvenus of these new times should find what comfort they might in their +wise-drawn theories, since as far as he was concerned he was content to +be of the old first families and proud to point back to his place among +the old original aristocracy of the land. + +"Enjoy your mushroom dignity, stinking of the varnish of yesterday's +veneering, since you like it," said he; "suffice it for the Tumble-Bugs +that they come of a race that rolled their fragrant spheres down the +solemn aisles of antiquity, and left their imperishable works embalmed in +the Old Red Sandstone to proclaim it to the wasting centuries as they +file along the highway of Time!" + +"Oh, take a walk!" said the chief of the expedition, with derision. + +The summer passed, and winter approached. In and about many of the +caverns were what seemed to be inscriptions. Most of the scientists said +they were inscriptions, a few said they were not. The chief philologist, +Professor Woodlouse, maintained that they were writings, done in a +character utterly unknown to scholars, and in a language equally unknown. +He had early ordered his artists and draftsmen to make facsimiles of all +that were discovered; and had set himself about finding the key to the +hidden tongue. In this work he had followed the method which had always +been used by decipherers previously. That is to say, he placed a number +of copies of inscriptions before him and studied them both collectively +and in detail. To begin with, he placed the following copies together: + + THE AMERICAN HOTEL. MEALS AT ALL HOURS. + THE SHADES. NO SMOKING. + BOATS FOR HIRE CHEAP UNION PRAYER MEETING, 6 P.M. + BILLIARDS. THE WATERSIDE JOURNAL. + THE A1 BARBER SHOP. TELEGRAPH OFFICE. + KEEP OFF THE GRASS. TRY BRANDRETH'S PILLS. + COTTAGES FOR RENT DURING THE WATERING SEASON. + FOR SALE CHEAP. FOR SALE CHEAP. + FOR SALE CHEAP. FOR SALE CHEAP. + +At first it seemed to the professor that this was a sign-language, and +that each word was represented by a distinct sign; further examination +convinced him that it was a written language, and that every letter of +its alphabet was represented by a character of its own; and finally he +decided that it was a language which conveyed itself partly by letters, +and partly by signs or hieroglyphics. This conclusion was forced upon +him by the discovery of several specimens of the following nature: + +He observed that certain inscriptions were met with in greater frequency +than others. Such as "FOR SALE CHEAP"; "BILLIARDS"; "S. T.--1860--X"; +"KENO"; "ALE ON DRAUGHT." Naturally, then, these must be religious +maxims. But this idea was cast aside by and by, as the mystery of the +strange alphabet began to clear itself. In time, the professor was +enabled to translate several of the inscriptions with considerable +plausibility, though not to the perfect satisfaction of all the scholars. +Still, he made constant and encouraging progress. + +Finally a cavern was discovered with these inscriptions upon it: + + WATERSIDE MUSEUM. + Open at All Hours. + Admission 50 cents. + WONDERFUL COLLECTION OF + WAX-WORKS, ANCIENT FOSSILS, + ETC. + +Professor Woodlouse affirmed that the word "Museum" was equivalent to the +phrase "lumgath molo," or "Burial Place." Upon entering, the scientists +were well astonished. But what they saw may be best conveyed in the +language of their own official report: + +"Erect, in a row, were a sort of rigid great figures which struck us +instantly as belonging to the long extinct species of reptile called MAN, +described in our ancient records. This was a peculiarly gratifying +discovery, because of late times it has become fashionable to regard this +creature as a myth and a superstition, a work of the inventive +imaginations of our remote ancestors. But here, indeed, was Man, +perfectly preserved, in a fossil state. And this was his burial place, +as already ascertained by the inscription. And now it began to be +suspected that the caverns we had been inspecting had been his ancient +haunts in that old time that he roamed the earth--for upon the breast of +each of these tall fossils was an inscription in the character heretofore +noticed. One read, 'CAPTAIN KIDD THE PIRATE'; another, 'QUEEN VICTORIA'; +another, 'ABE LINCOLN'; another, 'GEORGE WASHINGTON,' etc. + +"With feverish interest we called for our ancient scientific records to +discover if perchance the description of Man there set down would tally +with the fossils before us. Professor Woodlouse read it aloud in its +quaint and musty phraseology, to wit: + +"'In ye time of our fathers Man still walked ye earth, as by tradition we +know. It was a creature of exceeding great size, being compassed about +with a loose skin, sometimes of one color, sometimes of many, the which +it was able to cast at will; which being done, the hind legs were +discovered to be armed with short claws like to a mole's but broader, and +ye forelegs with fingers of a curious slimness and a length much more +prodigious than a frog's, armed also with broad talons for scratching in +ye earth for its food. It had a sort of feathers upon its head such as +hath a rat, but longer, and a beak suitable for seeking its food by ye +smell thereof. When it was stirred with happiness, it leaked water from +its eyes; and when it suffered or was sad, it manifested it with a +horrible hellish cackling clamor that was exceeding dreadful to hear and +made one long that it might rend itself and perish, and so end its +troubles. Two Mans being together, they uttered noises at each other +like this: "Haw-haw-haw--dam good, dam good," together with other sounds +of more or less likeness to these, wherefore ye poets conceived that they +talked, but poets be always ready to catch at any frantic folly, God he +knows. Sometimes this creature goeth about with a long stick ye which it +putteth to its face and bloweth fire and smoke through ye same with a +sudden and most damnable bruit and noise that doth fright its prey to +death, and so seizeth it in its talons and walketh away to its habitat, +consumed with a most fierce and devilish joy.' + +"Now was the description set forth by our ancestors wonderfully indorsed +and confirmed by the fossils before us, as shall be seen. The specimen +marked 'Captain Kidd' was examined in detail. Upon its head and part of +its face was a sort of fur like that upon the tail of a horse. With +great labor its loose skin was removed, whereupon its body was discovered +to be of a polished white texture, thoroughly petrified. The straw it +had eaten, so many ages gone by, was still in its body, undigested--and +even in its legs. + +"Surrounding these fossils were objects that would mean nothing to the +ignorant, but to the eye of science they were a revelation. They laid +bare the secrets of dead ages. These musty Memorials told us when Man +lived, and what were his habits. For here, side by side with Man, were +the evidences that he had lived in the earliest ages of creation, the +companion of the other low orders of life that belonged to that forgotten +time. Here was the fossil nautilus that sailed the primeval seas; here +was the skeleton of the mastodon, the ichthyosaurus, the cave-bear, the +prodigious elk. Here, also, were the charred bones of some of these +extinct animals and of the young of Man's own species, split lengthwise, +showing that to his taste the marrow was a toothsome luxury. It was +plain that Man had robbed those bones of their contents, since no +tooth-mark of any beast was upon them albeit the Tumble-Bug intruded the +remark that 'no beast could mark a bone with its teeth, anyway.' Here +were proofs that Man had vague, groveling notions of art; for this fact +was conveyed by certain things marked with the untranslatable words, +'FLINT HATCHETS, KNIVES, ARROW--HEADS, AND BONE ORNAMENTS OF PRIMEVAL +MAN.' Some of these seemed to be rude weapons chipped out of flint, and +in a secret place was found some more in process of construction, with +this untranslatable legend, on a thin, flimsy material, lying by: + + "'Jones, if you don't want to be discharged from the Musseum, make + the next primeaveal weppons more careful--you couldn't even fool one + of these sleepy old syentific grannys from the Coledge with the last + ones. And mind you the animles you carved on some of the Bone + Ornaments is a blame sight too good for any primeaveal man that was + ever fooled.--Varnum, Manager.' + +"Back of the burial place was a mass of ashes, showing that Man always +had a feast at a funeral--else why the ashes in such a place; and +showing, also, that he believed in God and the immortality of the soil +--else why these solemn ceremonies? + +"To, sum up. We believe that Man had a written language. We know that +he indeed existed at one time, and is not a myth; also, that he was the +companion of the cave-bear, the mastodon, and other extinct species; that +he cooked and ate them and likewise the young of his own kind; also, that +he bore rude weapons, and knew something of art; that he imagined he had +a soul, and pleased himself with the fancy that it was immortal. But let +us not laugh; there may be creatures in existence to whom we and our +vanities and profundities may seem as ludicrous." + +END OF PART SECOND + + + + +SOME LEARNED FABLES FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS + +PART THIRD + +Near the margin of the great river the scientists presently found a huge, +shapely stone, with this inscription: + + "In 1847, in the spring, the river overflowed its banks and covered + the whole township. The depth was from two to six feet. More than + 900 head of cattle were lost, and many homes destroyed. The Mayor + ordered this memorial to be erected to perpetuate the event. God + spare us the repetition of it!" + +With infinite trouble, Professor Woodlouse succeeded in making a +translation of this inscription, which was sent home, and straightway an +enormous excitement was created about it. It confirmed, in a remarkable +way, certain treasured traditions of the ancients. The translation was +slightly marred by one or two untranslatable words, but these did not +impair the general clearness of the meaning. It is here presented: + + "One thousand eight hundred and forty-seven years ago, the (fires?) + descended and consumed the whole city. Only some nine hundred souls + were saved, all others destroyed. The (king?) commanded this stone + to be set up to . . . (untranslatable) . . . prevent the + repetition of it." + +This was the first successful and satisfactory translation that had been +made of the mysterious character let behind him by extinct man, and it +gave Professor Woodlouse such reputation that at once every seat of +learning in his native land conferred a degree of the most illustrious +grade upon him, and it was believed that if he had been a soldier and had +turned his splendid talents to the extermination of a remote tribe of +reptiles, the king would have ennobled him and made him rich. And this, +too, was the origin of that school of scientists called Manologists, +whose specialty is the deciphering of the ancient records of the extinct +bird termed Man. [For it is now decided that Man was a bird and not a +reptile.] But Professor Woodlouse began and remained chief of these, for +it was granted that no translations were ever so free from error as his. +Others made mistakes he seemed incapable of it. Many a memorial of the +lost race was afterward found, but none ever attained to the renown and +veneration achieved by the "Mayoritish Stone" it being so called from the +word "Mayor" in it, which, being translated "King," "Mayoritish Stone" +was but another way of saying "King Stone." + +Another time the expedition made a great "find." It was a vast round +flattish mass, ten frog-spans in diameter and five or six high. +Professor Snail put on his spectacles and examined it all around, and +then climbed up and inspected the top. He said: + +"The result of my perlustration and perscontation of this isoperimetrical +protuberance is a belief at it is one of those rare and wonderful +creation left by the Mound Builders. The fact that this one is +lamellibranchiate in its formation, simply adds to its interest as being +possibly of a different kind from any we read of in the records of +science, but yet in no manner marring its authenticity. Let the +megalophonous grasshopper sound a blast and summon hither the perfunctory +and circumforaneous Tumble-Bug, to the end that excavations may be made +and learning gather new treasures." + +Not a Tumble-Bug could be found on duty, so the Mound was excavated by a +working party of Ants. Nothing was discovered. This would have been a +great disappointment, had not the venerable Longlegs explained the +matter. He said: + +"It is now plain to me that the mysterious and forgotten race of Mound +Builders did not always erect these edifices as mausoleums, else in this +case, as in all previous cases, their skeletons would be found here, +along with the rude implements which the creatures used in life. Is not +this manifest?" + +"True! true!" from everybody. + +"Then we have made a discovery of peculiar value here; a discovery which +greatly extends our knowledge of this creature in place of diminishing +it; a discovery which will add luster to the achievements of this +expedition and win for us the commendations of scholars everywhere. +For the absence of the customary relics here means nothing less than +this: The Mound Builder, instead of being the ignorant, savage reptile we +have been taught to consider him, was a creature of cultivation and high +intelligence, capable of not only appreciating worthy achievements of the +great and noble of his species, but of commemorating them! +Fellow-scholars, this stately Mound is not a sepulcher, it is a monument!" + +A profound impression was produced by this. + +But it was interrupted by rude and derisive laughter--and the Tumble-Bug +appeared. + +"A monument!" quoth he. "A monument setup by a Mound Builder! Aye, so +it is! So it is, indeed, to the shrewd keen eye of science; but to an, +ignorant poor devil who has never seen a college, it is not a Monument, +strictly speaking, but is yet a most rich and noble property; and with +your worship's good permission I will proceed to manufacture it into +spheres of exceedings grace and--" + +The Tumble-Bug was driven away with stripes, and the draftsmen of the +expedition were set to making views of the Monument from different +standpoints, while Professor Woodlouse, in a frenzy of scientific zeal, +traveled all over it and all around it hoping to find an inscription. +But if there had ever been one, it had decayed or been removed by some +vandal as a relic. + +The views having been completed, it was now considered safe to load the +precious Monument itself upon the backs of four of the largest Tortoises +and send it home to the king's museum, which was done; and when it +arrived it was received with enormous Mat and escorted to its future +abiding-place by thousands of enthusiastic citizens, King Bullfrog XVI. +himself attending and condescending to sit enthroned upon it throughout +the progress. + +The growing rigor of the weather was now admonishing the scientists to +close their labors for the present, so they made preparations to journey +homeward. But even their last day among the Caverns bore fruit; for one +of the scholars found in an out-of-the-way corner of the Museum or +"Burial Place" a most strange and extraordinary thing. It was nothing +less than a double Man-Bird lashed together breast to breast by a natural +ligament, and labeled with the untranslatable words, "Siamese Twins." +The official report concerning this thing closed thus: + +"Wherefore it appears that there were in old times two distinct species +of this majestic fowl, the one being single and the other double. Nature +has a reason for all things. It is plain to the eye of science that the +Double-Man originally inhabited a region where dangers abounded; hence he +was paired together to the end that while one part slept the other might +watch; and likewise that, danger being discovered, there might always be +a double instead of a single power to oppose it. All honor to the +mystery-dispelling eye of godlike Science!" + +And near the Double Man-Bird was found what was plainly an ancient record +of his, marked upon numberless sheets of a thin white substance and bound +together. Almost the first glance that Professor Woodlouse threw into it +revealed this following sentence, which he instantly translated and laid +before the scientists, in a tremble, and it uplifted every soul there +with exultation and astonishment: + +"In truth it is believed by many that the lower animals reason and talk +together." + +When the great official report of the expedition appeared, the above +sentence bore this comment: + +"Then there are lower animals than Man! This remarkable passage can mean +nothing else. Man himself is extinct, but they may still exist. What +can they be? Where do they inhabit? One's enthusiasm bursts all bounds +in the contemplation of the brilliant field of discovery and +investigation here thrown open to science. We close our labors with the +humble prayer that your Majesty will immediately appoint a commission and +command it to rest not nor spare expense until the search for this +hitherto unsuspected race of the creatures of God shall be crowned with +success." + +The expedition then journeyed homeward after its long absence and its +faithful endeavors, and was received with a mighty ovation by the whole +grateful country. There were vulgar, ignorant carpers, of course, as +there always are and always will be; and naturally one of these was the +obscene Tumble-Bug. He said that all he had learned by his travels was +that science only needed a spoonful of supposition to build a mountain of +demonstrated fact out of; and that for the future he meant to be content +with the knowledge that nature had made free to all creatures and not go +prying into the august secrets of the Deity. + + + + + + +MY LATE SENATORIAL SECRETARYSHIP--[Written about 1867.] + +I am not a private secretary to a senator any more I now. I held the +berth two months in security and in great cheerfulness of spirit, but my +bread began to return from over the waters then--that is to say, my works +came back and revealed themselves. I judged it best to resign. The way +of it was this. My employer sent for me one morning tolerably early, +and, as soon as I had finished inserting some conundrums clandestinely +into his last great speech upon finance, I entered the presence. There +was something portentous in his appearance. His cravat was untied, his +hair was in a state of disorder, and his countenance bore about it the +signs of a suppressed storm. He held a package of letters in his tense +grasp, and I knew that the dreaded Pacific mail was in. He said: + +"I thought you were worthy of confidence." + +I said, "Yes, sir." + +He said, "I gave you a letter from certain of my constituents in the +State of Nevada, asking the establishment of a post-office at Baldwin's +Ranch, and told you to answer it, as ingeniously as you could, with +arguments which should persuade them that there was no real necessity for +as office at that place." + +I felt easier. "Oh, if that is all, sir, I did do that." + +"Yes, you did. I will read your answer for your own humiliation: + + 'WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 + 'Messrs. Smith, Jones, and others. + + 'GENTLEMEN: What the mischief do you suppose you want with a + post-office at Baldwin's Ranch? It would not do you any good. + If any letters came there, you couldn't read them, you know; and, + besides, such letters as ought to pass through, with money in them, + for other localities, would not be likely to get through, you must + perceive at once; and that would make trouble for us all. No, don't + bother about a post-office in your camp. I have your best interests + at heart, and feel that it would only be an ornamental folly. What + you want is a nice jail, you know--a nice, substantial jail and a + free school. These will be a lasting benefit to you. These will + make you really contented and happy. I will move in the matter at + once. + 'Very truly, etc., + Mark Twain, + 'For James W. N------, U. S. Senator.' + +"That is the way you answered that letter. Those people say they will +hang me, if I ever enter that district again; and I am perfectly +satisfied they will, too." + +"Well, sir, I did not know I was doing any harm. I only wanted to +convince them." + +"Ah. Well, you did convince them, I make no manner of doubt. Now, here +is another specimen. I gave you a petition from certain gentlemen of +Nevada, praying that I would get a bill through Congress incorporating +the Methodist Episcopal Church of the State of Nevada. I told you to +say, in reply, that the creation of such a law came more properly within +the province of the state legislature; and to endeavor to show them that, +in the present feebleness of the religious element in that new +commonwealth, the expediency of incorporating the church was +questionable. What did you write? + + "'WASHINGTON, Nov. 24. + + "'Rev. John Halifax and others. + + "'GENTLEMEN: You will have to go to the state legislature about that + speculation of yours--Congress don't know anything about religion. + But don't you hurry to go there, either; because this thing you + propose to do out in that new country isn't expedient--in fact, it + is ridiculous. Your religious people there are too feeble, in + intellect, in morality, in piety in everything, pretty much. You + had better drop this--you can't make it work. You can't issue stock + on an incorporation like that--or if you could, it would only keep + you in trouble all the time. The other denominations would abuse + it, and "bear" it, and "sell it short," and break it down. They + would do with it just as they would with one of your silver-mines + out there--they would try to make all the world believe it was + "wildcat." You ought not to do anything that is calculated to bring + a sacred thing into disrepute. You ought to be ashamed of + yourselves that is what I think about it. You close your petition + with the words: "And we will ever pray." I think you had better you + need to do it. + "'Very truly, etc., + "'MARK TWAIN, + "'For James W. N-----, U. S. Senator.' + + +"That luminous epistle finishes me with the religious element among my +constituents. But that my political murder might be made sure, some evil +instinct prompted me to hand you this memorial from the grave company of +elders composing the board of aldermen of the city of San Francisco, to +try your hand upon a, memorial praying that the city's right to the +water-lots upon the city front might be established by law of Congress. +I told you this was a dangerous matter to move in. I told you to write a +non-committal letter to the aldermen--an ambiguous letter--a letter that +should avoid, as far as possible, all real consideration and discussion +of the water-lot question. If there is any feeling left in you--any +shame--surely this letter you wrote, in obedience to that order, ought to +evoke it, when its words fall upon your ears: + + 'WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 + + 'The Honorable Board of Aldermen, etc. + + 'GENTLEMEN: George Washington, the revered Father of his Country, + is dead. His long and brilliant career is closed, alas! forever. + He was greatly respected in this section of the country, and his + untimely decease cast a gloom over the whole community. He died on + the 14th day of December, 1799. He passed peacefully away from the + scene of his honors and his great achievements, the most lamented + hero and the best beloved that ever earth hath yielded unto Death. + At such a time as this, you speak of water-lots! what a lot was his! + + 'What is fame! Fame is an accident. Sir Isaac Newton discovered + an apple falling to the ground--a trivial discovery, truly, and one + which a million men had made before him--but his parents were + influential, and so they tortured that small circumstance into + something wonderful, and, lo! the simple world took up the shout + and, in almost the twinkling of an eye, that man was famous. + Treasure these thoughts. + + 'Poesy, sweet poesy, who shall estimate what the world owes to + thee! + + "Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow-- + And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go." + + "Jack and Gill went up the hill + To draw a pail of water; + Jack fell down and broke his crown, + And Gill came tumbling after." + + 'For simplicity, elegance of diction, and freedom from immoral + tendencies, I regard those two poems in the light of gems. They + are suited to all grades of intelligence, to every sphere of life + --to the field, to the nursery, to the guild. Especially should + no Board of Aldermen be without them. + + 'Venerable fossils! write again. Nothing improves one so much as + friendly correspondence. Write again--and if there is anything in + this memorial of yours that refers to anything in particular, do + not be backward about explaining it. We shall always be happy to + hear you chirp. + 'Very truly, etc., + "'MARK TWAIN, + 'For James W. N-----, U. S. Senator.' + + +"That is an atrocious, a ruinous epistle! Distraction!" + +"Well, sir, I am really sorry if there is anything wrong about it--but +--but it appears to me to dodge the water-lot question." + +"Dodge the mischief! Oh!--but never mind. As long as destruction must +come now, let it be complete. Let it be complete--let this last of your +performances, which I am about to read, make a finality of it. I am a +ruined man. I had my misgivings when I gave you the letter from +Humboldt, asking that the post route from Indian Gulch to Shakespeare Gap +and intermediate points be changed partly to the old Mormon trail. But I +told you it was a delicate question, and warned you to deal with it +deftly--to answer it dubiously, and leave them a little in the dark. +And your fatal imbecility impelled you to make this disastrous reply. +I should think you would stop your ears, if you are not dead to all +shame: + + "'WASHINGTON, Nov. 30. + + "'Messes. Perkins, Wagner, et at. + + "'GENTLEMEN: It is a delicate question about this Indian trail, but, + handled with proper deftness and dubiousness, I doubt not we shall + succeed in some measure or otherwise, because the place where the + route leaves the Lassen Meadows, over beyond where those two Shawnee + chiefs, Dilapidated Vengeance and Biter-of-the-Clouds, were scalped + last winter, this being the favorite direction to some, but others + preferring something else in consequence of things, the Mormon trail + leaving Mosby's at three in the morning, and passing through Jaw + bone Flat to Blucher, and then down by Jug-Handle, the road passing + to the right of it, and naturally leaving it on the right, too, and + Dawson's on the left of the trail where it passes to the left of + said Dawson's and onward thence to Tomahawk, thus making the route + cheaper, easier of access to all who can get at it, and compassing + all the desirable objects so considered by others, and, therefore, + conferring the most good upon the greatest number, and, + consequently, I am encouraged to hope we shall. However, I shall be + ready, and happy, to afford you still further information upon the + subject, from time to time, as you may desire it and the Post-office + Department be enabled to furnish it to me. + "'Very truly, etc., + "'MARK TWAIN, + "'For James W. N-----, U. S. Senator.' + + +"There--now what do you think of that?" + +"Well, I don't know, sir. It--well, it appears to me--to be dubious +enough." + +"Du--leave the house! I am a ruined man. Those Humboldt savages never +will forgive me for tangling their brains up with this inhuman letter. +I have lost the respect of the Methodist Church, the board of aldermen--" + +"Well, I haven't anything to say about that, because I may have missed it +a little in their cases, but I was too many for the Baldwin's Ranch +people, General!" + +"Leave the house! Leave it forever and forever, too." + +I regarded that as a sort of covert intimation that my service could be +dispensed with, and so I resigned. I never will be a private secretary +to a senator again. You can't please that kind of people. They don't +know anything. They can't appreciate a party's efforts. + + + + + + +A FASHION ITEM--[Written about 1867.] + +At General G----'s reception the other night, the most fashionably +dressed lady was Mrs. G. C. She wore a pink satin dress, plain in front +but with a good deal of rake to it--to the train, I mean; it was said to +be two or three yards long. One could see it creeping along the floor +some little time after the woman was gone. Mrs. C. wore also a white +bodice, cut bias, with Pompadour sleeves, flounced with ruches; low neck, +with the inside handkerchief not visible, with white kid gloves. She had +on a pearl necklace, which glinted lonely, high up the midst of that +barren waste of neck and shoulders. Her hair was frizzled into a tangled +chaparral, forward of her ears, aft it was drawn together, and compactly +bound and plaited into a stump like a pony's tail, and furthermore was +canted upward at a sharp angle, and ingeniously supported by a red velvet +crupper, whose forward extremity was made fast with a half-hitch around a +hairpin on the top of her head. Her whole top hamper was neat and +becoming. She had a beautiful complexion when she first came, but it +faded out by degrees in an unaccountable way. However, it is not lost +for good. I found the most of it on my shoulder afterward. (I stood +near the door when she squeezed out with the throng.) There were other +ladies present, but I only took notes of one as a specimen. I would +gladly enlarge upon the subject were I able to do it justice. + + + + + + +RILEY-NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT + +One of the best men in Washington--or elsewhere--is RILEY, correspondent +of one of the great San Francisco dailies. + +Riley is full of humor, and has an unfailing vein of irony, which makes +his conversation to the last degree entertaining (as long as the remarks +are about somebody else). But notwithstanding the possession of these +qualities, which should enable a man to write a happy and an appetizing +letter, Riley's newspaper letters often display a more than earthly +solemnity, and likewise an unimaginative devotion to petrified facts, +which surprise and distress all men who know him in his unofficial +character. He explains this curious thing by saying that his employers +sent him to Washington to write facts, not fancy, and that several times +he has come near losing his situation by inserting humorous remarks +which, not being looked for at headquarters, and consequently not +understood, were thought to be dark and bloody speeches intended to +convey signals and warnings to murderous secret societies, or something +of that kind, and so were scratched out with a shiver and a prayer and +cast into the stove. Riley says that sometimes he is so afflicted with +a yearning to write a sparkling and absorbingly readable letter that he +simply cannot resist it, and so he goes to his den and revels in the +delight of untrammeled scribbling; and then, with suffering such as only +a mother can know, he destroys the pretty children of his fancy and +reduces his letter to the required dismal accuracy. Having seen Riley do +this very thing more than once, I know whereof I speak. Often I have +laughed with him over a happy passage, and grieved to see him plow his +pen through it. He would say, "I had to write that or die; and I've got +to scratch it out or starve. They wouldn't stand it, you know." + +I think Riley is about the most entertaining company I ever saw. We +lodged together in many places in Washington during the winter of '67-8, +moving comfortably from place to place, and attracting attention by +paying our board--a course which cannot fail to make a person conspicuous +in Washington. Riley would tell all about his trip to California in the +early days, by way of the Isthmus and the San Juan River; and about his +baking bread in San Francisco to gain a living, and setting up tenpins, +and practising law, and opening oysters, and delivering lectures, and +teaching French, and tending bar, and reporting for the newspapers, and +keeping dancing-schools, and interpreting Chinese in the courts--which +latter was lucrative, and Riley was doing handsomely and laying up a +little money when people began to find fault because his translations +were too "free," a thing for which Riley considered he ought not to be +held responsible, since he did not know a word of the Chinese tongue, and +only adopted interpreting as a means of gaining an honest livelihood. +Through the machinations of enemies he was removed from the position of +official interpreter, and a man put in his place who was familiar with +the Chinese language, but did not know any English. And Riley used to +tell about publishing a newspaper up in what is Alaska now, but was only +an iceberg then, with a population composed of bears, walruses, Indians, +and other animals; and how the iceberg got adrift at last, and left all +his paying subscribers behind, and as soon as the commonwealth floated +out of the jurisdiction of Russia the people rose and threw off their +allegiance and ran up the English flag, calculating to hook on and become +an English colony as they drifted along down the British Possessions; but +a land breeze and a crooked current carried them by, and they ran up the +Stars and Stripes and steered for California, missed the connection again +and swore allegiance to Mexico, but it wasn't any use; the anchors came +home every time, and away they went with the northeast trades drifting +off sideways toward the Sandwich Islands, whereupon they ran up the +Cannibal flag and had a grand human barbecue in honor of it, in which it +was noticed that the better a man liked a friend the better he enjoyed +him; and as soon as they got fairly within the tropics the weather got so +fearfully hot that the iceberg began to melt, and it got so sloppy under +foot that it was almost impossible for ladies to get about at all; and at +last, just as they came in sight of the islands, the melancholy remnant +of the once majestic iceberg canted first to one side and then to the +other, and then plunged under forever, carrying the national archives +along with it--and not only the archives and the populace, but some +eligible town lots which had increased in value as fast as they +diminished in size in the tropics, and which Riley could have sold at +thirty cents a pound and made himself rich if he could have kept the +province afloat ten hours longer and got her into port. + +Riley is very methodical, untiringly accommodating, never forgets +anything that is to be attended to, is a good son, a stanch friend, and a +permanent reliable enemy. He will put himself to any amount of trouble +to oblige a body, and therefore always has his hands full of things to be +done for the helpless and the shiftless. And he knows how to do nearly +everything, too. He is a man whose native benevolence is a well-spring +that never goes dry. He stands always ready to help whoever needs help, +as far as he is able--and not simply with his money, for that is a cheap +and common charity, but with hand and brain, and fatigue of limb and +sacrifice of time. This sort of men is rare. + +Riley has a ready wit, a quickness and aptness at selecting and applying +quotations, and a countenance that is as solemn and as blank as the back +side of a tombstone when he is delivering a particularly exasperating +joke. One night a negro woman was burned to death in a house next door +to us, and Riley said that our landlady would be oppressively emotional +at breakfast, because she generally made use of such opportunities as +offered, being of a morbidly sentimental turn, and so we should find it +best to let her talk along and say nothing back--it was the only way to +keep her tears out of the gravy. Riley said there never was a funeral in +the neighborhood but that the gravy was watery for a week. + +And, sure enough, at breakfast the landlady was down in the very sloughs +of woe--entirely brokenhearted. Everything she looked at reminded her of +that poor old negro woman, and so the buckwheat cakes made her sob, the +coffee forced a groan, and when the beefsteak came on she fetched a wail +that made our hair rise. Then she got to talking about deceased, and +kept up a steady drizzle till both of us were soaked through and through. +Presently she took a fresh breath and said, with a world of sobs: + +"Ah, to think of it, only to think of it!--the poor old faithful +creature. For she was so faithful. Would you believe it, she had been a +servant in that selfsame house and that selfsame family for twenty seven +years come Christmas, and never a cross word and never a lick! And, oh, +to think she should meet such a death at last!--a-sitting over the red +hot stove at three o'clock in the morning and went to sleep and fell on +it and was actually roasted! Not just frizzled up a bit, but literally +roasted to a crisp! Poor faithful creature, how she was cooked! I am +but a poor woman, but even if I have to scrimp to do it, I will put up a +tombstone over that lone sufferer's grave--and Mr. Riley if you would +have the goodness to think up a little epitaph to put on it which would +sort of describe the awful way in which she met her--" + +"Put it, 'Well done, good and faithful servant,'" said Riley, and never +smiled. + + + + + + +A FINE OLD MAN + +John Wagner, the oldest man in Buffalo--one hundred and four years old +--recently walked a mile and a half in two weeks. + +He is as cheerful and bright as any of these other old men that charge +around so persistently and tiresomely in the newspapers, and in every way +as remarkable. + +Last November he walked five blocks in a rainstorm, without any shelter +but an umbrella, and cast his vote for Grant, remarking that he had voted +for forty-seven presidents--which was a lie. + +His "second crop" of rich brown hair arrived from New York yesterday, and +he has a new set of teeth coming from Philadelphia. + +He is to be married next week to a girl one hundred and two years old, +who still takes in washing. + +They have been engaged eighty years, but their parents persistently +refused their consent until three days ago. + +John Wagner is two years older than the Rhode Island veteran, and yet has +never tasted a drop of liquor in his life--unless-unless you count +whisky. + + + + + + +SCIENCE V.S. LUCK--[Written about 1867.] + +At that time, in Kentucky (said the Hon. Mr. K-----); the law was very +strict against what is termed "games of chance." About a dozen of the +boys were detected playing "seven up" or "old sledge" for money, and the +grand jury found a true bill against them. Jim Sturgis was retained to +defend them when the case came up, of course. The more he studied over +the matter, and looked into the evidence, the plainer it was that he must +lose a case at last--there was no getting around that painful fact. +Those boys had certainly been betting money on a game of chance. Even +public sympathy was roused in behalf of Sturgis. People said it was a +pity to see him mar his successful career with a big prominent case like +this, which must go against him. + +But after several restless nights an inspired idea flashed upon Sturgis, +and he sprang out of bed delighted. He thought he saw his way through. +The next day he whispered around a little among his clients and a few +friends, and then when the case came up in court he acknowledged the +seven-up and the betting, and, as his sole defense, had the astounding +effrontery to put in the plea that old sledge was not a game of chance! +There was the broadest sort of a smile all over the faces of that +sophisticated audience. The judge smiled with the rest. But Sturgis +maintained a countenance whose earnestness was even severe. The opposite +counsel tried to ridicule him out of his position, and did not succeed. +The judge jested in a ponderous judicial way about the thing, but did not +move him. The matter was becoming grave. The judge lost a little of his +patience, and said the joke had gone far enough. Jim Sturgis said he +knew of no joke in the matter--his clients could not be punished for +indulging in what some people chose to consider a game of chance until it +was proven that it was a game of chance. Judge and counsel said that +would be an easy matter, and forthwith called Deacons Job, Peters, Burke, +and Johnson, and Dominies Wirt and Miggles, to testify; and they +unanimously and with strong feeling put down the legal quibble of Sturgis +by pronouncing that old sledge was a game of chance. + +"What do you call it now?" said the judge. + +"I call it a game of science!" retorted Sturgis; "and I'll prove it, +too!" + +They saw his little game. + +He brought in a cloud of witnesses, and produced an overwhelming mass of +testimony, to show that old sledge was not a game of chance but a game of +science. + +Instead of being the simplest case in the world, it had somehow turned +out to be an excessively knotty one. The judge scratched his head over +it awhile, and said there was no way of coming to a determination, +because just as many men could be brought into court who would testify on +one side as could be found to testify on the other. But he said he was +willing to do the fair thing by all parties, and would act upon any +suggestion Mr. Sturgis would make for the solution of the difficulty. + +Mr. Sturgis was on his feet in a second. + +"Impanel a jury of six of each, Luck versus Science. Give them candles +and a couple of decks of cards. Send them into the jury-room, and just +abide by the result!" + +There was no disputing the fairness of the proposition. The four deacons +and the two dominies were sworn in as the "chance" jurymen, and six +inveterate old seven-up professors were chosen to represent the "science" +side of the issue. They retired to the jury-room. + +In about two hours Deacon Peters sent into court to borrow three dollars +from a friend. [Sensation.] In about two hours more Dominie Miggles +sent into court to borrow a "stake" from a friend. [Sensation.] During +the next three or four hours the other dominie and the other deacons sent +into court for small loans. And still the packed audience waited, for it +was a prodigious occasion in Bull's Corners, and one in which every +father of a family was necessarily interested. + +The rest of the story can be told briefly. About daylight the jury came +in, and Deacon Job, the foreman, read the following: + + VERDICT: + + We, the jury in the case of the Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. John + Wheeler et al., have carefully considered the points of the case, + and tested the merits of the several theories advanced, and do + hereby unanimously decide that the game commonly known as old sledge + or seven-up is eminently a game of science and not of chance. In + demonstration whereof it is hereby and herein stated, iterated, + reiterated, set forth, and made manifest that, during the entire + night, the "chance" men never won a game or turned a jack, although + both feats were common and frequent to the opposition; and + furthermore, in support of this our verdict, we call attention to + the significant fact that the "chance" men are all busted, and the + "science" men have got the money. It is the deliberate opinion of + this jury, that the "chance" theory concerning seven-up is a + pernicious doctrine, and calculated to inflict untold suffering and + pecuniary loss upon any community that takes stock in it. + +"That is the way that seven-up came to be set apart and particularized in +the statute-books of Kentucky as being a game not of chance but of +science, and therefore not punishable under the law," said Mr. K-----. +"That verdict is of record, and holds good to this day." + + + + + + +THE LATE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN--[Written about 1870.] + +["Never put off till to-morrow what you can do day after to-morrow just +as well."--B. F.] + +This party was one of those persons whom they call Philosophers. He was +twins, being born simultaneously in two different houses in the city of +Boston. These houses remain unto this day, and have signs upon them +worded in accordance with the facts. The signs are considered well +enough to have, though not necessary, because the inhabitants point out +the two birthplaces to the stranger anyhow, and sometimes as often as +several times in the same day. The subject of this memoir was of a +vicious disposition, and early prostituted his talents to the invention +of maxims and aphorisms calculated to inflict suffering upon the rising +generation of all subsequent ages. His simplest acts, also, were +contrived with a view to their being held up for the emulation of boys +forever--boys who might otherwise have been happy. It was in this spirit +that he became the son of a soap-boiler, and probably for no other reason +than that the efforts of all future boys who tried to be anything might +be looked upon with suspicion unless they were the sons of soap-boilers. +With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would work +all day, and then sit up nights, and let on to be studying algebra by the +light of a smoldering fire, so that all other boys might have to do that +also, or else have Benjamin Franklin thrown up to them. Not satisfied +with these proceedings, he had a fashion of living wholly on bread and +water, and studying astronomy at meal-time--a thing which has brought +affliction to millions of boys since, whose fathers had read Franklin's +pernicious biography. + +His maxims were full of animosity toward boys. Nowadays a boy cannot +follow out a single natural instinct without tumbling over some of those +everlasting aphorisms and hearing from Franklin, on the spot. If he buys +two cents' worth of peanuts, his father says, "Remember what Franklin has +said, my son--'A grout a day's a penny a year"'; and the comfort is all +gone out of those peanuts. If he wants to spin his top when he has done +work, his father quotes, "Procrastination is the thief of time." If he +does a virtuous action, he never gets anything for it, because "Virtue is +its own reward." And that boy is hounded to death and robbed of his +natural rest, because Franklin, said once, in one of his inspired flights +of malignity: + + Early to bed and early to rise + Makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise. + +As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on +such terms. The sorrow that that maxim has cost me, through my parents, +experimenting on me with it, tongue cannot tell. The legitimate result is +my present state of general debility, indigence, and mental aberration. +My parents used to have me up before nine o'clock in the morning +sometimes when I was a boy. If they had let me take my natural rest +where would I have been now? Keeping store, no doubt, and respected by +all. + +And what an adroit old adventurer the subject of this memoir was! +In order to get a chance to fly his kite on Sunday he used to hang a key +on the string and let on to be fishing for lightning. And a guileless +public would go home chirping about the "wisdom" and the "genius" of the +hoary Sabbath-breaker. If anybody caught him playing "mumblepeg" by +himself, after the age of sixty, he would immediately appear to be +ciphering out how the grass grew--as if it was any of his business. +My grandfather knew him well, and he says Franklin was always +fixed--always ready. If a body, during his old age, happened on him +unexpectedly when he was catching flies, or making mud-pies, or sliding +on a cellar door, he would immediately look wise, and rip out a maxim, +and walk off with his nose in the air and his cap turned wrong side +before, trying to appear absent-minded and eccentric. He was a hard lot. + +He invented a stove that would smoke your head off in four hours by the +clock. One can see the almost devilish satisfaction he took in it by his +giving it his name. + +He was always proud of telling how he entered Philadelphia for the first +time, with nothing in the world but two shillings in his pocket and four +rolls of bread under his arm. But really, when you come to examine it +critically, it was nothing. Anybody could have done it. + +To the subject of this memoir belongs the honor of recommending the army +to go back to bows and arrows in place of bayonets and muskets. +He observed, with his customary force, that the bayonet was very well +under some circumstances, but that he doubted whether it could be used +with accuracy at a long range. + +Benjamin Franklin did a great many notable things for his country, +and made her young name to be honored in many lands as the mother of such +a son. It is not the idea of this memoir to ignore that or cover it up. +No; the simple idea of it is to snub those pretentious maxims of his, +which he worked up with a great show of originality out of truisms that +had become wearisome platitudes as early as the dispersion from Babel; +and also to snub his stove, and his military inspirations, his unseemly +endeavor to make himself conspicuous when he entered Philadelphia, and +his flying his kite and fooling away his time in all sorts of such ways +when he ought to have been foraging for soap-fat, or constructing +candles. I merely desired to do away with somewhat of the prevalent +calamitous idea among heads of families that Franklin acquired his great +genius by working for nothing, studying by moonlight, and getting up in +the night instead of waiting till morning like a Christian; and that this +program, rigidly inflicted, will make a Franklin of every father's fool. +It is time these gentlemen were finding out that these execrable +eccentricities of instinct and conduct are only the evidences of genius, +not the creators of it. I wish I had been the father of my parents long +enough to make them comprehend this truth, and thus prepare them to let +their son have an easier time of it. When I was a child I had to boil +soap, notwithstanding my father was wealthy, and I had to get up early +and study geometry at breakfast, and peddle my own poetry, and do +everything just as Franklin did, in the solemn hope that I would be a +Franklin some day. And here I am. + + + + + + +MR. BLOKE'S ITEM--[Written about 1865.] + +Our esteemed friend, Mr. John William Bloke, of Virginia City, walked +into the office where we are sub-editor at a late hour last night, with +an expression of profound and heartfelt suffering upon his countenance, +and, sighing heavily, laid the following item reverently upon the desk, +and walked slowly out again. He paused a moment at the door, and seemed +struggling to command his feelings sufficiently to enable him to speak, +and then, nodding his head toward his manuscript, ejaculated in a broken +voice, "Friend of mine--oh! how sad!" and burst into tears. We were so +moved at his distress that we did not think to call him back and endeavor +to comfort him until he was gone, and it was too late. The paper had +already gone to press, but knowing that our friend would consider the +publication of this item important, and cherishing the hope that to print +it would afford a melancholy satisfaction to his sorrowing heart, we +stopped, the press at once and inserted it in our columns: + + DISTRESSING ACCIDENT.--Last evening, about six o'clock, as Mr. + William Schuyler, an old and respectable citizen of South Park, was + leaving his residence to go down-town, as has been his usual custom + for many years with the exception only of a short interval in the + spring of 1850, during which he was confined to his bed by injuries + received in attempting to stop a runaway horse by thoughtlessly + placing himself directly in its wake and throwing up his hands and + shouting, which if he had done so even a single moment sooner, must + inevitably have frightened the animal still more instead of checking + its speed, although disastrous enough to himself as it was, and + rendered more melancholy and distressing by reason of the presence + of his wife's mother, who was there and saw the sad occurrence + notwithstanding it is at least likely, though not necessarily so, + that she should be reconnoitering in another direction when + incidents occur, not being vivacious and on the lookout, as a + general thing, but even the reverse, as her own mother is said to + have stated, who is no more, but died in the full hope of a glorious + resurrection, upwards of three years ago; aged eighty-six, being a + Christian woman and without guile, as it were, or property, in + consequence of the fire of 1849, which destroyed every single thing + she had in the world. But such is life. Let us all take warning by + this solemn occurrence, and let us endeavor so to conduct ourselves + that when we come to die we can do it. Let us place our hands upon + our heart, and say with earnestness and sincerity that from this day + forth we will beware of the intoxicating bowl.--'First Edition of + the Californian.' + +The head editor has been in here raising the mischief, and tearing his +hair and kicking the furniture about, and abusing me like a pickpocket. +He says that every time he leaves me in charge of the paper for half an +hour I get imposed upon by the first infant or the first idiot that comes +along. And he says that that distressing item of Mr. Bloke's is nothing +but a lot of distressing bash, and has no point to it, and no sense in +it, and no information in it, and that there was no sort of necessity for +stopping the press to publish it. + +Now all this comes of being good-hearted. If I had been as +unaccommodating and unsympathetic as some people, I would have told +Mr. Bloke that I wouldn't receive his communication at such a late hour; +but no, his snuffling distress touched my heart, and I jumped at the +chance of doing something to modify his misery. I never read his item to +see whether there was anything wrong about it, but hastily wrote the few +lines which preceded it, and sent it to the printers. And what has my +kindness done for me? It has done nothing but bring down upon me a storm +of abuse and ornamental blasphemy. + +Now I will read that item myself, and see if there is any foundation for +all this fuss. And if there is, the author of it shall hear from me. + +I have read it, and I am bound to admit that it seems a little mixed at a +first glance. However, I will peruse it once more. + +I have read it again, and it does really seem a good deal more mixed than +ever. + +I have read it over five times, but if I can get at the meaning of it I +wish I may get my just deserts. It won't bear analysis. There are +things about it which I cannot understand at all. It don't say whatever +became of William Schuyler. It just says enough about him to get one +interested in his career, and then drops him. Who is William Schuyler, +anyhow, and what part of South Park did he live in, and if he started +down-town at six o'clock, did he ever get there, and if he did, did +anything happen to him? Is he the individual that met with the +"distressing accident"? Considering the elaborate circumstantiality of +detail observable in the item, it seems to me that it ought to contain +more information than it does. On the contrary, it is obscure and not +only obscure, but utterly incomprehensible. Was the breaking of Mr. +Schuyler's leg, fifteen years ago, the "distressing accident" that +plunged Mr. Bloke into unspeakable grief, and caused him to come up here +at dead of night and stop our press to acquaint the world with the +circumstance? Or did the "distressing accident" consist in the +destruction of Schuyler's mother-in-law's property in early times? +Or did it consist in the death of that person herself three years ago +(albeit it does not appear that she died by accident)? In a word, what +did that "distressing accident" consist in? What did that driveling ass +of a Schuyler stand in the wake of a runaway horse for, with his shouting +and gesticulating, if he wanted to stop him? And how the mischief could +he get run over by a horse that had already passed beyond him? And what +are we to take "warning" by? And how is this extraordinary chapter of +incomprehensibilities going to be a "lesson" to us? And, above all, what +has the intoxicating "bowl" got to do with it, anyhow? It is not stated +that Schuyler drank, or that his wife drank, or that his mother-in-law +drank, or that the horse drank wherefore, then, the reference to the +intoxicating bowl? It does seem to me that if Mr. Bloke had let the +intoxicating bowl alone himself, he never would have got into so much +trouble about this exasperating imaginary accident. I have read this. +absurd item over and over again, with all its insinuating plausibility, +until my head swims; but I can make neither head nor tail of it. There +certainly seems to have been an accident of some kind or other, but it is +impossible to determine what the nature of it was, or who was the +sufferer by it. I do not like to do it, but I feel compelled to request +that the next time anything happens to one of Mr. Bloke's friends, he +will append such explanatory notes to his account of it as will enable me +to find out what sort of an accident it was and whom it happened to. I +had rather all his friends should die than that I should be driven to the +verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out the meaning of another such +production as the above. + + + + + + +A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE + + +CHAPTER I + +THE SECRET REVEALED. + +It was night. Stillness reigned in the grand old feudal castle of +Klugenstein. The year 1222 was drawing to a close. Far away up in the +tallest of the castle's towers a single light glimmered. A secret +council was being held there. The stern old lord of Klugenstein sat in +a chair of state meditating. Presently he, said, with a tender +accent: + +"My daughter!" + +A young man of noble presence, clad from head to heel in knightly mail, +answered: + +"Speak, father!" + +"My daughter, the time is come for the revealing of the mystery that hath +puzzled all your young life. Know, then, that it had its birth in the +matters which I shall now unfold. My brother Ulrich is the great Duke of +Brandenburgh. Our father, on his deathbed, decreed that if no son were +born to Ulrich, the succession should pass to my house, provided a son +were born to me. And further, in case no son, were born to either, but +only daughters, then the succession should pass to Ulrich's daughter, +if she proved stainless; if she did not, my daughter should succeed, +if she retained a blameless name. And so I, and my old wife here, prayed +fervently for the good boon of a son, but the prayer was vain. You were +born to us. I was in despair. I saw the mighty prize slipping from my +grasp, the splendid dream vanishing away. And I had been so hopeful! +Five years had Ulrich lived in wedlock, and yet his wife had borne no +heir of either sex. + +"'But hold,' I said, 'all is not lost.' A saving scheme had shot athwart +my brain. You were born at midnight. Only the leech, the nurse, and six +waiting-women knew your sex. I hanged them every one before an hour had +sped. Next morning all the barony went mad with rejoicing over the +proclamation that a son was born to Klugenstein, an heir to mighty +Brandenburgh! And well the secret has been kept. Your mother's own +sister nursed your infancy, and from that time forward we feared nothing. + +"When you were ten years old, a daughter was born to Ulrich. We grieved, +but hoped for good results from measles, or physicians, or other natural +enemies of infancy, but were always disappointed. She lived, she throve +--Heaven's malison upon her! But it is nothing. We are safe. For, +Ha-ha! have we not a son? And is not our son the future Duke? Our +well-beloved Conrad, is it not so?--for, woman of eight-and-twenty years +--as you are, my child, none other name than that hath ever fallen to you! + +"Now it hath come to pass that age hath laid its hand upon my brother, +and he waxes feeble. The cares of state do tax him sore. Therefore he +wills that you shall come to him and be already Duke--in act, though not +yet in name. Your servitors are ready--you journey forth to-night. + +"Now listen well. Remember every word I say. There is a law as old as +Germany that if any woman sit for a single instant in the great ducal +chair before she hath been absolutely crowned in presence of the people, +SHE SHALL DIE! So heed my words. Pretend humility. Pronounce your +judgments from the Premier's chair, which stands at the foot of the +throne. Do this until you are crowned and safe. It is not likely that +your sex will ever be discovered; but still it is the part of wisdom to +make all things as safe as may be in this treacherous earthly life." + +"Oh; my father, is it for this my life hath been a lie! Was it that I +might cheat my unoffending cousin of her rights? Spare me, father, +spare your child!" + +"What, huzzy! Is this my reward for the august fortune my brain has +wrought for thee? By the bones of my father, this puling sentiment of +thine but ill accords with my humor. + +"Betake thee to the Duke, instantly! And beware how thou meddlest with my +purpose!" + +Let this suffice, of the conversation. It is enough for us to know that +the prayers, the entreaties and the tears of the gentle-natured girl +availed nothing. They nor anything could move the stout old lord of +Klugenstein. And so, at last, with a heavy heart, the daughter saw the +castle gates close behind her, and found herself riding away in the +darkness surrounded by a knightly array of armed, vassals and a brave +following of servants. + +The old baron sat silent for many minutes after his daughter's departure, +and then he turned to his sad wife and said: + +"Dame, our matters seem speeding fairly. It is full three months since I +sent the shrewd and handsome Count Detzin on his devilish mission to my +brother's daughter Constance. If he fail, we are not wholly safe; but if +he do succeed, no power can bar our girl from being Duchess e'en though +ill-fortune should decree she never should be Duke!" + +"My heart is full of bodings, yet all may still be well." + +"Tush, woman! Leave the owls to croak. To bed with ye, and dream of +Brandenburgh and grandeur!" + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +FESTIVITY AND TEARS + +Six days after the occurrences related in the above chapter, the +brilliant capital of the Duchy of Brandenburgh was resplendent with +military pageantry, and noisy with the rejoicings of loyal multitudes; +for Conrad, the young heir to the crown, was come. The old Duke's, heart +was full of happiness, for Conrad's handsome person and graceful bearing +had won his love at once. The great halls of tie palace were thronged +with nobles, who welcomed Conrad bravely; and so bright and happy did all +things seem, that he felt his fears and sorrows passing away and giving +place to a comforting contentment. + +But in a remote apartment of the palace a scene of a different nature +was, transpiring. By a window stood the Duke's only child, the Lady +Constance. Her eyes were red and swollen, and full of tears. She was +alone. Presently she fell to weeping anew, and said aloud: + +"The villain Detzin is gone--has fled the dukedom! I could not believe +it at first, but alas! it is too true. And I loved him so. I dared to +love him though I knew the Duke my father would never let me wed him. +I loved him--but now I hate him! With all, my soul I hate him! Oh, what +is to become of me! I am lost, lost, lost! I shall go mad!" + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE PLOT THICKENS. + +Few months drifted by. All men published the praises of the young +Conrad's government and extolled the wisdom of his judgments, the +mercifulness of his sentences, and the modesty with which he bore himself +in his great office. The old Duke soon gave everything into his hands, +and sat apart and listened with proud satisfaction while his heir +delivered the decrees of the crown from the seat of the premier. +It seemed plain that one so loved and praised and honored of all men +as Conrad was, could not be otherwise than happy. But strange enough, +he was not. For he saw with dismay that the Princess Constance had begun +to love him! The love of, the rest of the world was happy fortune for +him, but this was freighted with danger! And he saw, moreover, that the +delighted Duke had discovered his daughter's passion likewise, and was +already dreaming of a marriage. Every day somewhat of the deep sadness +that had been in the princess' face faded away; every day hope and +animation beamed brighter from her eye; and by and by even vagrant smiles +visited the face that had been so troubled. + +Conrad was appalled. He bitterly cursed himself for having yielded to +the instinct that had made him seek the companionship of one of his own +sex when he was new and a stranger in the palace--when he was sorrowful +and yearned for a sympathy such as only women can give or feel. He now +began to avoid, his cousin. But this only made matters worse, for, +naturally enough, the more he avoided her, the more she cast herself in +his way. He marveled at this at first; and next it startled him. The +girl haunted him; she hunted him; she happened upon him at all times and +in all places, in the night as well as in the day. She seemed singularly +anxious. There was surely a mystery somewhere. + +This could not go on forever. All the world was talking about it. The +Duke was beginning to look perplexed. Poor Conrad was becoming a very +ghost through dread and dire distress. One day as he was emerging from a +private ante-room attached to the picture gallery, Constance confronted +him, and seizing both his hands, in hers, exclaimed: + +"Oh, why, do you avoid me? What have I done--what have I said, to lose +your kind opinion of me--for, surely I had it once? Conrad, do not +despise me, but pity a tortured heart? I cannot,--cannot hold the words +unspoken longer, lest they kill me--I LOVE you, CONRAD! There, despise +me if you must, but they would be uttered!" + +Conrad was speechless. Constance hesitated a moment, and then, +misinterpreting his silence, a wild gladness flamed in her eyes, and she +flung her arms about his neck and said: + +"You relent! you relent! You can love me--you will love me! Oh, say you +will, my own, my worshipped Conrad!'" + +"Conrad groaned aloud. A sickly pallor overspread his countenance, and +he trembled like an aspen. Presently, in desperation, he thrust the poor +girl from him, and cried: + +"You know not what you ask! It is forever and ever impossible!" And then +he fled like a criminal and left the princess stupefied with amazement. +A minute afterward she was crying and sobbing there, and Conrad was +crying and sobbing in his chamber. Both were in despair. Both save ruin +staring them in the face. + +By and by Constance rose slowly to her feet and moved away, saying: + +"To think that he was despising my love at the very moment that I thought +it was melting his cruel heart! I hate him! He spurned me--did this +man--he spurned me from him like a dog!" + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE AWFUL REVELATION. + +Time passed on. A settled sadness rested once more upon the countenance +of the good Duke's daughter. She and Conrad were seen together no more +now. The Duke grieved at this. But as the weeks wore away, Conrad's +color came back to his cheeks and his old-time vivacity to his eye, and +he administered the government with a clear and steadily ripening wisdom. + +Presently a strange whisper began to be heard about the palace. It grew +louder; it spread farther. The gossips of the city got hold-of it. It +swept the dukedom. And this is what the whisper said: + +"The Lady Constance hath given birth to a child!" + +When the lord of Klugenstein heard it, he swung his plumed helmet thrice +around his head and shouted: + +"Long live. Duke Conrad!--for lo, his crown is sure, from this day +forward! Detzin has done his errand well, and the good scoundrel shall +be rewarded!" + +And he spread, the tidings far and wide, and for eight-and-forty hours no +soul in all the barony but did dance and sing, carouse and illuminate, to +celebrate the great event, and all at proud and happy old Klugenstein's +expense. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE FRIGHTFUL CATASTROPHE. + +The trial was at hand. All the great lords and barons of Brandenburgh +were assembled in the Hall of Justice in the ducal palace. No space was +left unoccupied where there was room for a spectator to stand or sit. +Conrad, clad in purple and ermine, sat in the premier's chair, and on +either side sat the great judges of the realm. The old Duke had sternly +commanded that the trial of his daughter should proceed, without favor, +and then had taken to his bed broken-hearted. His days were numbered. +Poor Conrad had begged, as for his very life, that he might be spared the +misery of sitting in judgment upon his cousin's crime, but it did not +avail. + +The saddest heart in all that great assemblage was in Conrad's breast. + +The gladdest was in his father's. For, unknown to his daughter "Conrad," +the old Baron Klugenstein was come, and was among the crowd of nobles, +triumphant in the swelling fortunes of his house. + +After the heralds had made due proclamation and the other preliminaries +had followed, the venerable Lord Chief justice said: + +"Prisoner, stand forth!" + +The unhappy princess rose and stood unveiled before the vast multitude. +The Lord Chief Justice continued: + +"Most noble lady, before the great judges of this realm it hath been +charged and proven that out of holy wedlock your Grace hath given birth +unto a child; and by our ancient law the penalty is death, excepting in +one sole contingency, whereof his Grace the acting Duke, our good Lord +Conrad, will advertise you in his solemn sentence now; wherefore, give +heed." + +Conrad stretched forth the reluctant sceptre, and in the self-same moment +the womanly heart beneath his robe yearned pityingly toward the doomed +prisoner, and the tears came into his eyes. He opened his lips to speak, +but the Lord Chief Justice said quickly: + +"Not there, your Grace, not there! It is not lawful to pronounce +judgment upon any of the ducal line SAVE FROM THE DUCAL THRONE!" + +A shudder went to the heart of poor Conrad, and a tremor shook the iron +frame of his old father likewise. CONRAD HAD NOT BEEN CROWNED--dared he +profane the throne? He hesitated and turned pale with fear. But it must +be done. Wondering eyes were already upon him. They would be suspicious +eyes if he hesitated longer. He ascended the throne. Presently he +stretched forth the sceptre again, and said: + +"Prisoner, in the name of our sovereign lord, Ulrich, Duke of +Brandenburgh, I proceed to the solemn duty that hath devolved upon me. +Give heed to my words. By the ancient law of the land, except you +produce the partner of your guilt and deliver him up to the executioner, +you must surely die. Embrace this opportunity--save yourself while yet +you may. Name the father of your child!" + +A solemn hush fell upon the great court--a silence so profound that men +could hear their own hearts beat. Then the princess slowly turned, with +eyes gleaming with hate, and pointing her finger straight at Conrad, +said: + +"Thou art the man!" + +An appalling conviction of his helpless, hopeless peril struck a chill to +Conrad's heart like the chill of death itself. What power on earth could +save him! To disprove the charge, he must reveal that he was a woman; +and for an uncrowned woman to sit in the ducal chair was death! At one +and the same moment, he and his grim old father swooned and fell to, the +ground. + +[The remainder of this thrilling and eventful story will NOT be found in +this or any other publication, either now or at any future time.] + +The truth is, I have got my hero (or heroine) into such a particularly +close place, that I do not see how I am ever going to get him (or her) +out of it again--and therefore I will wash my hands of the whole +business, and leave that person to get out the best way that offers--or +else stay there. I thought it was going to be easy enough to straighten +out that little difficulty, but it looks different now. + + + + + + +PETITION CONCERNING COPYRIGHT + +TO THE HONORABLE THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES +IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED: + +Whereas, The Constitution guarantees equal rights to all, backed by the +Declaration of Independence; and + +Whereas, Under our laws, the right of property in real estate is +perpetual; and + +Whereas, Under our laws, the right of property in the literary result of +a citizen's intellectual labor is restricted to forty-two years; and + +Whereas, Forty-two years seems an exceedingly just and righteous term, +and a sufficiently long one for the retention of property; + +Therefore, Your petitioner, having the good of his country solely at +heart, humbly prays that "equal rights" and fair and equal treatment may +be meted out to all citizens, by the restriction of rights in all +property, real estate included, to the beneficent term of forty-two +years. Then shall all men bless your honorable body and be happy. And +for this will your petitioner ever pray. + MARK TWAIN. + + +A PARAGRAPH NOT ADDED TO THE PETITION + +The charming absurdity of restricting property-rights in books to +forty-two years sticks prominently out in the fact that hardly any man's +books ever live forty-two years, or even the half of it; and so, for the +sake of getting a shabby advantage of the heirs of about one Scott or +Burns or Milton in a hundred years, the lawmakers of the "Great" Republic +are content to leave that poor little pilfering edict upon the +statute-books. It is like an emperor lying in wait to rob a Phenix's +nest, and waiting the necessary century to get the chance. + + + + + + +AFTER-DINNER SPEECH + +[AT A FOURTH OF JULY GATHERING, IN LONDON, OF AMERICANS] + +MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I thank you for the compliment +which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it I will +not afflict you with many words. It is pleasant to celebrate in this +peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an experiment +which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and wrought out to +a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors. It has taken nearly +a hundred years to bring the English and Americans into kindly and +mutually appreciative relations, but I believe it has been accomplished +at last. It was a great step when the two last misunderstandings were +settled by arbitration instead of cannon. It is another great step when +England adopts our sewing-machines without claiming the invention--as +usual. It was another when they imported one of our sleeping-cars the +other day. And it warmed my heart more than I can tell, yesterday, when +I witnessed the spectacle of an Englishman ordering an American sherry +cobbler of his own free will and accord--and not only that but with a +great brain and a level head reminding the barkeeper not to forget the +strawberries. With a common origin, a common language, a common +literature, a common religion and--common drinks, what is longer needful +to the cementing of the two nations together in a permanent bond of +brotherhood? + +This is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land. A great and +glorious land, too--a land which has developed a Washington, a Franklin, +a William M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel C. +Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had its equal (in some +respects), and a United States Army which conquered sixty Indians in +eight months by tiring them out--which is much better than uncivilized +slaughter, God knows. We have a criminal jury system which is superior +to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty +of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read. +And I may observe that we have an insanity plea that would have saved +Cain. I think I can say,--and say with pride, that we have some +legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world. + +I refer with effusion to our railway system, which consents to let us +live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners. It only +destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and +twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and +unnecessary people at crossings. The companies seriously regretted the +killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for +some of them--voluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not +claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law against +a railway company. But, thank Heaven, the railway companies are +generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without compulsion. +I know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time. After an +accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old relative +of mine in a basket, with the remark, "Please state what figure you hold +him at--and return the basket." Now there couldn't be anything +friendlier than that. + +But I must not stand here and brag all night. However, you won't mind a +body bragging a little about his country on the fourth of July. It is a +fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle. I will say only one more word +of brag--and a hopeful one. It is this. We have a form of government +which gives each man a fair chance and no favor. With us no individual +is born with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in +contempt. Let such of us as are not dukes find our consolation in that. +And we may find hope for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is the +condition of our political morality to-day, England has risen up out of +a far fouler since the days when Charles I. ennobled courtesans and all +political place was a matter of bargain and sale. There is hope for us +yet. + + [At least the above is the speech which I was going to make, but our + minister, General Schenck, presided, and after the blessing, got up + and made a great long inconceivably dull harangue, and wound up by + saying that inasmuch as speech-making did not seem to exhilarate the + guests much, all further oratory would be dispensed with during the + evening, and we could just sit and talk privately to our + elbow-neighbors and have a good sociable time. It is known that in + consequence of that remark forty-four perfected speeches died in the + womb. The depression, the gloom, the solemnity that reigned over + the banquet from that time forth will be a lasting memory with many + that were there. By that one thoughtless remark General Schenck + lost forty-four of the best friends he had in England. More than + one said that night, "And this is the sort of person that is sent to + represent us in a great sister empire!"] + + + + + + +LIONIZING MURDERERS + +I had heard so much about the celebrated fortune-teller Madame-----, that +I went to see her yesterday. She has a dark complexion naturally, and +this effect is heightened by artificial aids which cost her nothing. +She wears curls--very black ones, and I had an impression that she gave +their native attractiveness a lift with rancid butter. She wears a +reddish check handkerchief, cast loosely around her neck, and it was +plain that her other one is slow getting back from the wash. I presume +she takes snuff. At any rate, something resembling it had lodged among +the hairs sprouting from her upper lip. I know she likes garlic--I knew +that as soon as she sighed. She looked at me searchingly for nearly a +minute, with her black eyes, and then said: + +"It is enough. Come!" + +She started down a very dark and dismal corridor--I stepping close after +her. Presently she stopped, and said that, as the way was so crooked and +dark, perhaps she had better get a light. But it seemed ungallant to +allow a woman to put herself to so much trouble for me, and so I said: + +"It is not worth while, madam. If you will heave another sigh, I think I +can follow it." + +So we got along all right. Arrived at her official and mysterious den, +she asked me to tell her the date of my birth, the exact hour of that +occurrence, and the color of my grandmother's hair. I answered as +accurately as I could. Then she said: + +"Young man, summon your fortitude--do not tremble. I am about to reveal +the past." + +"Information concerning the future would be, in a general way, more--" + +"Silence! You have had much trouble, some joy, some good fortune, some +bad. Your great grandfather was hanged." + +"That is a l--" + +"Silence! Hanged sir. But it was not his fault. He could not help it." + +"I am glad you do him justice." + +"Ah--grieve, rather, that the jury did. He was hanged. His star crosses +yours in the fourth division, fifth sphere. Consequently you will be +hanged also." + +"In view of this cheerful--" + +"I must have silence. Yours was not, in the beginning, a criminal +nature, but circumstances changed it. At the age of nine you stole +sugar. At the age of fifteen you stole money. At twenty you stole +horses. At twenty-five you committed arson. At thirty, hardened in +crime, you became an editor. You are now a public lecturer. Worse +things are in store for you. You will be sent to Congress. Next, to the +penitentiary. Finally, happiness will come again--all will be well--you +will be hanged." + +I was now in tears. It seemed hard enough to go to Congress; but to be +hanged--this was too sad, too dreadful. The woman seemed surprised at my +grief. I told her the thoughts that were in my mind. Then she comforted +me. + +"Why, man," she said, "hold up your head--you have nothing to grieve +about. Listen. + +--[In this paragraph the fortune-teller details the exact history of the +Pike-Brown assassination case in New Hampshire, from the succoring and +saving of the stranger Pike by the Browns, to the subsequent hanging and +coffining of that treacherous miscreant. She adds nothing, invents +nothing, exaggerates nothing (see any New England paper for November, +1869). This Pike-Brown case is selected merely as a type, to illustrate +a custom that prevails, not in New Hampshire alone, but in every state in +the Union--I mean the sentimental custom of visiting, petting, +glorifying, and snuffling over murderers like this Pike, from the day +they enter the jail under sentence of death until they swing from the +gallows. The following extract from the Temple Bar (1866) reveals the +fact that this custom is not confined to the United States.--"on December +31, 1841, a man named John Johnes, a shoemaker, murdered his sweetheart, +Mary Hallam, the daughter of a respectable laborer, at Mansfield, in the +county of Nottingham. He was executed on March 23, 1842. He was a man +of unsteady habits, and gave way to violent fits of passion. The girl +declined his addresses, and he said if he did not have her no one else +should. After he had inflicted the first wound, which was not +immediately fatal, she begged for her life, but seeing him resolved, +asked for time to pray. He said that he would pray for both, and +completed the crime. The wounds were inflicted by a shoemaker's knife, +and her throat was cut barbarously. After this he dropped on his knees +some time, and prayed God to have mercy on two unfortunate lovers. +He made no attempt to escape, and confessed the crime. After his +imprisonment he behaved in a most decorous manner; he won upon the good +opinion of the jail chaplain, and he was visited by the Bishop of +Lincoln. It does not appear that he expressed any contrition for the +crime, but seemed to pass away with triumphant certainty that he was +going to rejoin his victim in heaven. He was visited by some pious and +benevolent ladies of Nottingham, some of whom declared he was a child of +God, if ever there was one. One of the ladies sent him a while camellia +to wear at his execution."] + +"You will live in New Hampshire. In your sharp need and distress the +Brown family will succor you--such of them as Pike the assassin left +alive. They will be benefactors to you. When you shall have grown fat +upon their bounty, and are grateful and happy, you will desire to make +some modest return for these things, and so you will go to the house some +night and brain the whole family with an ax. You will rob the dead +bodies of your benefactors, and disburse your gains in riotous living +among the rowdies and courtesans of Boston. Then you will, be arrested, +tried, condemned to be hanged, thrown into prison. Now is your happy +day. You will be converted--you will be converted just as soon as +every effort to compass pardon, commutation, or reprieve has failed--and +then!--Why, then, every morning and every afternoon, the best and purest +young ladies of the village will assemble in your cell and sing hymns. +This will show that assassination is respectable. Then you will write a +touching letter, in which you will forgive all those recent Browns. This +will excite the public admiration. No public can withstand magnanimity. +Next, they will take you to the scaffold, with great eclat, at the head +of an imposing procession composed of clergymen, officials, citizens +generally, and young ladies walking pensively two and two, and bearing +bouquets and immortelles. You will mount the scaffold, and while the +great concourse stand uncovered in your presence, you will read your +sappy little speech which the minister has written for you. And then, in +the midst of a grand and impressive silence, they will swing you into +per--Paradise, my son. There will not be a dry eye on the ground. You +will be a hero! Not a rough there but will envy you. Not a rough there +but will resolve to emulate you. And next, a great procession will +follow you to the tomb--will weep over your remains--the young ladies +will sing again the hymns made dear by sweet associations connected with +the jail, and, as a last tribute of affection, respect, and appreciation +of your many sterling qualities, they will walk two and two around your +bier, and strew wreaths of flowers on it. And lo! you are canonized. +Think of it, son-ingrate, assassin, robber of the dead, drunken brawler +among thieves and harlots in the slums of Boston one month, and the pet +of the pure and innocent daughters of the land the next! A bloody and +hateful devil--a bewept, bewailed, and sainted martyr--all in a month! +Fool!--so noble a fortune, and yet you sit here grieving!" + +"No, madam," I said, "you do me wrong, you do, indeed. I am perfectly +satisfied. I did not know before that my great-grandfather was hanged, +but it is of no consequence. He has probably ceased to bother about it +by this time--and I have not commenced yet. I confess, madam, that I do +something in the way of editing and lecturing, but the other crimes you +mention have escaped my memory. Yet I must have committed them--you +would not deceive a stranger. But let the past be as it was, and let the +future be as it may--these are nothing. I have only cared for one thing. +I have always felt that I should be hanged some day, and somehow the +thought has annoyed me considerably; but if you can only assure me that I +shall be hanged in New Hampshire--" + +"Not a shadow of a doubt!" + +"Bless you, my benefactress!--excuse this embrace--you have removed a +great load from my breast. To be hanged in New Hampshire is happiness +--it leaves an honored name behind a man, and introduces him at once into +the best New Hampshire society in the other world." + +I then took leave of the fortune-teller. But, seriously, is it well to +glorify a murderous villain on the scaffold, as Pike was glorified in New +Hampshire? Is it well to turn the penalty for a bloody crime into a +reward? Is it just to do it? Is, it safe? + + + + + + +A NEW CRIME + +LEGISLATION NEEDED + +This country, during the last thirty or forty years, has produced some of +the most remarkable cases of insanity of which there is any mention in +history. For instance, there was the Baldwin case, in Ohio, twenty-two +years ago. Baldwin, from his boyhood up, had been of a vindictive, +malignant, quarrelsome nature. He put a boy's eye out once, and never +was heard upon any occasion to utter a regret for it. He did many such +things. But at last he did something that was serious. He called at a +house just after dark one evening, knocked, and when the occupant came to +the door, shot him dead, and then tried to escape, but was captured. +Two days before, he had wantonly insulted a helpless cripple, and the man +he afterward took swift vengeance upon with an assassin bullet had +knocked him down. Such was the Baldwin case. The trial was long and +exciting; the community was fearfully wrought up. Men said this +spiteful, bad-hearted villain had caused grief enough in his time, and +now he should satisfy the law. But they were mistaken; Baldwin was +insane when he did the deed--they had not thought of that. By the +argument of counsel it was shown that at half past ten in the morning on +the day of the murder, Baldwin became insane, and remained so for eleven +hours and a half exactly. This just covered the case comfortably, and he +was acquitted. Thus, if an unthinking and excited community had been +listened to instead of the arguments of counsel, a poor crazy creature +would have been held to a fearful responsibility for a mere freak of +madness. Baldwin went clear, and although his relatives and friends were +naturally incensed against the community for their injurious suspicions +and remarks, they said let it go for this time, and did not prosecute. +The Baldwins were very wealthy. This same Baldwin had momentary fits of +insanity twice afterward, and on both occasions killed people he had +grudges against. And on both these occasions the circumstances of the +killing were so aggravated, and the murders so seemingly heartless and +treacherous, that if Baldwin had not been insane he would have been +hanged without the shadow of a doubt. As it was, it required all his +political and family influence to get him clear in one of the cases, and +cost him not less than ten thousand dollars to get clear in the other. +One of these men he had notoriously been threatening to kill for twelve +years. The poor creature happened, by the merest piece of ill fortune, +to come along a dark alley at the very moment that Baldwin's insanity +came upon him, and so he was shot in the back with a gun loaded with +slugs. + +Take the case of Lynch Hackett, of Pennsylvania. Twice, in public, he +attacked a German butcher by the name of Bemis Feldner, with a cane, and +both times Feldner whipped him with his fists. Hackett was a vain, +wealthy, violent gentleman, who held his blood and family in high esteem, +and believed that a reverent respect was due to his great riches. He +brooded over the shame of his chastisement for two weeks, and then, in a +momentary fit of insanity, armed himself to the teeth, rode into town, +waited a couple of hours until he saw Feldner coming down the street with +his wife on his arm, and then, as the couple passed the doorway in which +he had partially concealed himself, he drove a knife into Feldner's neck, +killing him instantly. The widow caught the limp form and eased it to +the earth. Both were drenched with blood. Hackett jocosely remarked to +her that as a professional butcher's recent wife she could appreciate the +artistic neatness of the job that left her in condition to marry again, +in case she wanted to. This remark, and another which he made to a +friend, that his position in society made the killing of an obscure +citizen simply an "eccentricity" instead of a crime, were shown to be +evidences of insanity, and so Hackett escaped punishment. The jury were +hardly inclined to accept these as proofs at first, inasmuch as the +prisoner had never been insane before the murder, and under the +tranquilizing effect of the butchering had immediately regained his right +mind; but when the defense came to show that a third cousin of Hackett's +wife's stepfather was insane, and not only insane, but had a nose the +very counterpart of Hackett's, it was plain that insanity was hereditary +in the family, and Hackett had come by it by legitimate inheritance. + +Of course the jury then acquitted him. But it was a merciful providence +that Mrs. H.'s people had been afflicted as shown, else Hackett would +certainly have been hanged. + +However, it is not possible to recount all the marvelous cases of +insanity that have come under the public notice in the last thirty or +forty years. There was the Durgin case in New Jersey three years ago. +The servant girl, Bridget Durgin, at dead of night, invaded her +mistress's bedroom and carved the lady literally to pieces with a knife. +Then she dragged the body to the middle of the floor, and beat and banged +it with chairs and such things. Next she opened the feather beds, and +strewed the contents around, saturated everything with kerosene, and set +fire to the general wreck. She now took up the young child of the +murdered woman in her blood smeared hands and walked off, through the +snow, with no shoes on, to a neighbor's house a quarter of a mile off, +and told a string of wild, incoherent stories about some men coming and +setting fire to the house; and then she cried piteously, and without +seeming to think there was anything suggestive about the blood upon her +hands, her clothing, and the baby, volunteered the remark that she was +afraid those men had murdered her mistress! Afterward, by her own +confession and other testimony, it was proved that the mistress had +always been kind to the girl, consequently there was no revenge in the +murder; and it was also shown that the girl took nothing away from the +burning house, not even her own shoes, and consequently robbery was not +the motive. + +Now, the reader says, "Here comes that same old plea of insanity again." +But the reader has deceived himself this time. No such plea was offered +in her defense. The judge sentenced her, nobody persecuted the governor +with petitions for her pardon, and she was promptly hanged. + +There was that youth in Pennsylvania, whose curious confession was +published some years ago. It was simply a conglomeration of incoherent +drivel from beginning to end; and so was his lengthy speech on the +scaffold afterward. For a whole year he was haunted with a desire to +disfigure a certain young woman, so that no one would marry her. He did +not love her himself, and did not want to marry her, but he did not want +anybody else to do it. He would not go anywhere with her, and yet was +opposed to anybody else's escorting her. Upon one occasion he declined +to go to a wedding with her, and when she got other company, lay in wait +for the couple by the road, intending to make them go back or kill the +escort. After spending sleepless nights over his ruling desire for a +full year, he at last attempted its execution--that is, attempted to +disfigure the young woman. It was a success. It was permanent. In +trying to shoot her cheek (as she sat at the supper-table with her +parents and brothers and sisters) in such a manner as to mar its +comeliness, one of his bullets wandered a little out of the course, and +she dropped dead. To the very last moment of his life he bewailed the +ill luck that made her move her face just at the critical moment. And so +he died, apparently about half persuaded that somehow it was chiefly her +own fault that she got killed. This idiot was hanged. The plea, of +insanity was not offered. + +Insanity certainly is on the increase in the world, and crime is dying +out. There are no longer any murders--none worth mentioning, at any +rate. Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were +insane--but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a mate, it is +evidence that you are a lunatic. In these days, too, if a person of good +family and high social standing steals anything, they call it +kleptomania, and send him to the lunatic asylum. If a person of high +standing squanders his fortune in dissipation, and closes his career with +strychnine or a bullet, "Temporary Aberration" is what was the trouble +with him. + +Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common +that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal +case that comes before the courts? And is it not so cheap, and so +common, and often so trivial, that the reader smiles in derision when the +newspaper mentions it? + +And is it not curious to note how very often it wins acquittal for the +prisoner? Of late years it does not seem possible for a man to so +conduct himself, before killing another man, as not to be manifestly +insane. If he talks about the stars, he is insane. If he appears +nervous and uneasy an hour before the killing, he is insane. If he weeps +over a great grief, his friends shake their heads, and fear that he is +"not right." If, an hour after the murder, he seems ill at ease, +preoccupied, and excited, he is, unquestionably insane. + +Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against +insanity. There is where the true evil lies. + + + + + + +A CURIOUS DREAM + +CONTAINING A MORAL + +Night before last I had a singular dream. I seemed to be sitting on a +doorstep (in no particular city perhaps) ruminating, and the time of +night appeared to be about twelve or one o'clock. The weather was balmy +and delicious. There was no human sound in the air, not even a footstep. +There was no sound of any kind to emphasize the dead stillness, except +the occasional hollow barking of a dog in the distance and the fainter +answer of a further dog. Presently up the street I heard a bony +clack-clacking, and guessed it was the castanets of a serenading party. +In a minute more a tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and +moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework of +its person, swung by me with a stately stride and disappeared in the gray +gloom of the starlight. It had a broken and worm-eaten coffin on its +shoulder and a bundle of something in its hand. I knew what the +clack-clacking was then; it was this party's joints working together, +and his elbows knocking against his sides as he walked. I may say I was +surprised. Before I could collect my thoughts and enter upon any +speculations as to what this apparition might portend, I heard another +one coming for I recognized his clack-clack. He had two-thirds of a +coffin on his shoulder, and some foot and head boards under his arm. +I mightily wanted, to peer under his hood and speak to him, but when he +turned and smiled upon me with his cavernous sockets and his projecting +grin as he went by, I thought I would not detain him. He was hardly gone +when I heard the clacking again, and another one issued from the shadowy +half-light. This one was bending under a heavy gravestone, and dragging +a shabby coffin after him by a string. When he got to me he gave me a +steady look for a moment or two, and then rounded to and backed up to me, +saying: + +"Ease this down for a fellow, will you?" + +I eased the gravestone down till it rested on the ground, and in doing so +noticed that it bore the name of "John Baxter Copmanhurst," with "May, +1839," as the date of his death. Deceased sat wearily down by me, and +wiped his os frontis with his major maxillary--chiefly from former habit +I judged, for I could not see that he brought away any perspiration. + +"It is too bad, too bad," said he, drawing the remnant of the shroud +about him and leaning his jaw pensively on his hand. Then he put his +left foot up on his knee and fell to scratching his anklebone absently +with a rusty nail which he got out of his coffin. + +"What is too bad, friend?" + +"Oh, everything, everything. I almost wish I never had died." + +"You surprise me. Why do you say this? Has anything gone wrong? What +is the matter?" + +"Matter! Look at this shroud-rags. Look at this gravestone, all +battered up. Look at that disgraceful old coffin. All a man's property +going to ruin and destruction before his eyes, and ask him if anything is +wrong? Fire and brimstone!" + +"Calm yourself, calm yourself," I said. "It is too bad--it is certainly +too bad, but then I had not supposed that you would much mind such +matters situated as you are." + +"Well, my dear sir, I do mind them. My pride is hurt, and my comfort is +impaired--destroyed, I might say. I will state my case--I will put it to +you in such a way that you can comprehend it, if you will let me," said +the poor skeleton, tilting the hood of his shroud back, as if he were +clearing for action, and thus unconsciously giving himself a jaunty and +festive air very much at variance with the grave character of his +position in life--so to speak--and in prominent contrast with his +distressful mood. + +"Proceed," said I. + +"I reside in the shameful old graveyard a block or two above you here, +in this street--there, now, I just expected that cartilage would let go! +--third rib from the bottom, friend, hitch the end of it to my spine with +a string, if you have got such a thing about you, though a bit of silver +wire is a deal pleasanter, and more durable and becoming, if one keeps it +polished--to think of shredding out and going to pieces in this way, just +on account of the indifference and neglect of one's posterity!"--and the +poor ghost grated his teeth in a way that gave me a wrench and a shiver +--for the effect is mightily increased by the absence of muffling flesh +and cuticle. "I reside in that old graveyard, and have for these thirty +years; and I tell you things are changed since I first laid this old +tired frame there, and turned over, and stretched out for a long sleep, +with a delicious sense upon me of being done with bother, and grief, +and anxiety, and doubt, and fear, forever and ever, and listening with +comfortable and increasing satisfaction to the sexton's work, from the +startling clatter of his first spadeful on my coffin till it dulled away +to the faint patting that shaped the roof of my new home-delicious! My! +I wish you could try it to-night!" and out of my reverie deceased fetched +me a rattling slap with a bony hand. + +"Yes, sir, thirty years ago I laid me down there, and was happy. For it +was out in the country then--out in the breezy, flowery, grand old woods, +and the lazy winds gossiped with the leaves, and the squirrels capered +over us and around us, and the creeping things visited us, and the birds +filled the tranquil solitude with music. Ah, it was worth ten years of a +man's life to be dead then! Everything was pleasant. I was in a good +neighborhood, for all the dead people that lived near me belonged to the +best families in the city. Our posterity appeared to think the world of +us. They kept our graves in the very best condition; the fences were +always in faultless repair, head-boards were kept painted or whitewashed, +and were replaced with new ones as soon as they began to look rusty or +decayed; monuments were kept upright, railings intact and bright, the +rose-bushes and shrubbery trimmed, trained, and free from blemish, the +walks clean and smooth and graveled. But that day is gone by. Our +descendants have forgotten us. My grandson lives in a stately house +built with money made by these old hands of mine, and I sleep in a +neglected grave with invading vermin that gnaw my shroud to build them +nests withal! I and friends that lie with me founded and secured the +prosperity of this fine city, and the stately bantling of our loves +leaves us to rot in a dilapidated cemetery which neighbors curse and +strangers scoff at. See the difference between the old time and this +--for instance: Our graves are all caved in now; our head-boards have +rotted away and tumbled down; our railings reel this way and that, with +one foot in the air, after a fashion of unseemly levity; our monuments +lean wearily, and our gravestones bow their heads discouraged; there be +no adornments any more--no roses, nor shrubs, nor graveled walks, nor +anything that is a comfort to the eye; and even the paintless old board +fence that did make a show of holding us sacred from companionship with +beasts and the defilement of heedless feet, has tottered till it +overhangs the street, and only advertises the presence of our dismal +resting-place and invites yet more derision to it. And now we cannot +hide our poverty and tatters in the friendly woods, for the city has +stretched its withering arms abroad and taken us in, and all that remains +of the cheer of our old home is the cluster of lugubrious forest trees +that stand, bored and weary of a city life, with their feet in our +coffins, looking into the hazy distance and wishing they were there. +I tell you it is disgraceful! + +"You begin to comprehend--you begin to see how it is. While our +descendants are living sumptuously on our money, right around us in the +city, we have to fight hard to keep skull and bones together. Bless you, +there isn't a grave in our cemetery that doesn't leak not one. Every +time it rains in the night we have to climb out and roost in the trees +and sometimes we are wakened suddenly by the chilly water trickling down +the back of our necks. Then I tell you there is a general heaving up of +old graves and kicking over of old monuments, and scampering of old +skeletons for the trees! Bless me, if you had gone along there some such +nights after twelve you might have seen as many as fifteen of us roosting +on one limb, with our joints rattling drearily and the wind wheezing +through our ribs! Many a time we have perched there for three or four +dreary hours, and then come down, stiff and chilled through and drowsy, +and borrowed each other's skulls to bail out our graves with--if you will +glance up in my mouth now as I tilt my head back, you can see that my +head-piece is half full of old dry sediment how top-heavy and stupid it +makes me sometimes! Yes, sir, many a time if you had happened to come +along just before the dawn you'd have caught us bailing out the graves +and hanging our shrouds on the fence to dry. Why, I had an elegant +shroud stolen from there one morning--think a party by the name of Smith +took it, that resides in a plebeian graveyard over yonder--I think so +because the first time I ever saw him he hadn't anything on but a check +shirt, and the last time I saw him, which was at a social gathering in +the new cemetery, he was the best-dressed corpse in the company--and it +is a significant fact that he left when he saw me; and presently an old +woman from here missed her coffin--she generally took it with her when +she went anywhere, because she was liable to take cold and bring on the +spasmodic rheumatism that originally killed her if she exposed herself to +the night air much. She was named Hotchkiss--Anna Matilda Hotchkiss--you +might know her? She has two upper front teeth, is tall, but a good deal +inclined to stoop, one rib on the left side gone, has one shred of rusty +hair hanging from the left side of her head, and one little tuft just +above and a little forward of her right ear, has her underjaw wired on +one side where it had worked loose, small bone of left forearm gone--lost +in a fight has a kind of swagger in her gait and a 'gallus' way of going +with: her arms akimbo and her nostrils in the air has been pretty free +and easy, and is all damaged and battered up till she looks like a +queensware crate in ruins--maybe you have met her?" + +"God forbid!" I involuntarily ejaculated, for somehow I was not looking +for that form of question, and it caught me a little off my guard. But I +hastened to make amends for my rudeness, and say, "I simply meant I had +not had the honor--for I would not deliberately speak discourteously of a +friend of yours. You were saying that you were robbed--and it was a +shame, too--but it appears by what is left of the shroud you have on that +it was a costly one in its day. How did--" + +A most ghastly expression began to develop among the decayed features and +shriveled integuments of my guest's face, and I was beginning to grow +uneasy and distressed, when he told me he was only working up a deep, +sly smile, with a wink in it, to suggest that about the time he acquired +his present garment a ghost in a neighboring cemetery missed one. This +reassured me, but I begged him to confine himself to speech thenceforth, +because his facial expression was uncertain. Even with the most +elaborate care it was liable to miss fire. Smiling should especially be +avoided. What he might honestly consider a shining success was likely to +strike me in a very different light. I said I liked to see a skeleton +cheerful, even decorously playful, but I did not think smiling was a +skeleton's best hold. + +"Yes, friend," said the poor skeleton, "the facts are just as I have +given them to you. Two of these old graveyards--the one that I resided +in and one further along have been deliberately neglected by our +descendants of to-day until there is no occupying them any longer. Aside +from the osteological discomfort of it--and that is no light matter this +rainy weather--the present state of things is ruinous to property. We +have got to move or be content to see our effects wasted away and utterly +destroyed. + +"Now, you will hardly believe it, but it is true, nevertheless, that there +isn't a single coffin in good repair among all my acquaintance--now that +is an absolute fact. I do not refer to low people who come in a pine box +mounted on an express-wagon, but I am talking about your high-toned, +silver-mounted burial-case, your monumental sort, that travel under black +plumes at the head of a procession and have choice of cemetery lots +--I mean folks like the Jarvises, and the Bledsoes and Burlings, and such. +They are all about ruined. The most substantial people in our set, they +were. And now look at them--utterly used up and poverty-stricken. One +of the Bledsoes actually traded his monument to a late barkeeper for some +fresh shavings to put under his head. I tell you it speaks volumes, for +there is nothing a corpse takes so much pride in as his monument. He +loves to read the inscription. He comes after a while to believe what it +says himself, and then you may see him sitting on the fence night after +night enjoying it. Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a world +of good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he was +alive. I wish they were used more. Now I don't complain, but +confidentially I do think it was a little shabby in my descendants to +give me nothing but this old slab of a gravestone--and all the more that +there isn't a compliment on it. It used to have: + + 'GONE TO HIS JUST REWARD' + +on it, and I was proud when I first saw it, but by and by I noticed that +whenever an old friend of mine came along he would hook his chin on the +railing and pull a long face and read along down till he came to that, +and then he would chuckle to himself and walk off, looking satisfied and +comfortable. So I scratched it off to get rid of those fools. But a +dead man always takes a deal of pride in his monument. Yonder goes half +a dozen of the Jarvises now, with the family monument along. And +Smithers and some hired specters went by with his awhile ago. Hello, +Higgins, good-by, old friend! That's Meredith Higgins--died in '44 +--belongs to our set in the cemetery--fine old family--great-grand mother +was an Injun--I am on the most familiar terms with him he didn't hear me +was the reason he didn't answer me. And I am sorry, too, because I would +have liked to introduce you. You would admire him. He is the most +disjointed, sway-backed, and generally distorted old skeleton you ever +saw, but he is full of fun. When he laughs it sounds like rasping two +stones together, and he always starts it off with a cheery screech like +raking a nail across a window-pane. Hey, Jones! That is old Columbus +Jones--shroud cost four hundred dollars entire trousseau, including +monument, twenty-seven hundred. This was in the spring of '26. It was +enormous style for those days. Dead people came all the way from the +Alleghanies to see his things--the party that occupied the grave next to +mine remembers it well. Now do you see that individual going along with +a piece of a head-board under his arm, one leg-bone below his knee gone, +and not a thing in the world on? That is Barstow Dalhousie, and next to +Columbus Jones he was the most sumptuously outfitted person that ever +entered our cemetery. We are all leaving. We cannot tolerate the +treatment we are receiving at the hands of our descendants. They open +new cemeteries, but they leave us to our ignominy. They mend the +streets, but they never mend anything that is about us or belongs to us. +Look at that coffin of mine--yet I tell you in its day it was a piece of +furniture that would have attracted attention in any drawing-room in this +city. You may have it if you want it--I can't afford to repair it. +Put a new bottom in her, and part of a new top, and a bit of fresh lining +along the left side, and you'll find her about as comfortable as any +receptacle of her species you ever tried. No thanks no, don't mention it +you have been civil to me, and I would give you all the property I have +got before I would seem ungrateful. Now this winding-sheet is a kind of +a sweet thing in its way, if you would like to--No? Well, just as you +say, but I wished to be fair and liberal there's nothing mean about me. +Good-by, friend, I must be going. I may have a good way to go to-night +--don't know. I only know one thing for certain, and that is that I am +on the emigrant trail now, and I'll never sleep in that crazy old +cemetery again. I will travel till I fiend respectable quarters, if I +have to hoof it to New Jersey. All the boys are going. It was decided +in public conclave, last night, to emigrate, and by the time the sun +rises there won't be a bone left in our old habitations. Such cemeteries +may suit my surviving friends, but they do not suit the remains that have +the honor to make these remarks. My opinion is the general opinion. +If you doubt it, go and see how the departing ghosts upset things before +they started. They were almost riotous in their demonstrations of +distaste. Hello, here are some of the Bledsoes, and if you will give me +a lift with this tombstone I guess I will join company and jog along with +them--mighty respectable old family, the Bledsoes, and used to always +come out in six-horse hearses and all that sort of thing fifty years ago +when I walked these streets in daylight. Good-by, friend." + +And with his gravestone on his shoulder he joined the grisly procession, +dragging his damaged coffin after him, for notwithstanding he pressed it +upon me so earnestly, I utterly refused his hospitality. I suppose that +for as much as two hours these sad outcasts went clacking by, laden with +their dismal effects, and all that time I sat pitying them. One or two +of the youngest and least dilapidated among them inquired about midnight +trains on the railways, but the rest seemed unacquainted with that mode +of travel, and merely asked about common public roads to various towns +and cities, some of which are not on the map now, and vanished from it +and from the earth as much as thirty years ago, and some few of them +never had existed anywhere but on maps, and private ones in real-estate +agencies at that. And they asked about the condition of the cemeteries +in these towns and cities, and about the reputation the citizens bore as +to reverence for the dead. + +This whole matter interested me deeply, and likewise compelled my +sympathy for these homeless ones. And it all seeming real, and I not +knowing it was a dream, I mentioned to one shrouded wanderer an idea that +had entered my head to publish an account of this curious and very +sorrowful exodus, but said also that I could not describe it truthfully, +and just as it occurred, without seeming to trifle with a grave subject +and exhibit an irreverence for the dead that would shock and distress +their surviving friends. But this bland and stately remnant of a former +citizen leaned him far over my gate and whispered in my ear, and said: + +"Do not let that disturb you. The community that can stand such +graveyards as those we are emigrating from can stand anything a body can +say about the neglected and forsaken dead that lie in them." + +At that very moment a cock crowed, and the weird procession vanished and +left not a shred or a bone behind. I awoke, and found myself lying with +my head out of the bed and "sagging" downward considerably--a position +favorable to dreaming dreams with morals in them, maybe, but not poetry. + +NOTE.--The reader is assured that if the cemeteries in his town are kept +in good order, this Dream is not leveled at his town at all, but is +leveled particularly and venomously at the next town. + + + + + + +A TRUE STORY + +REPEATED WORD FOR WORD AS I HEARD IT--[Written about 1876] + +It was summer-time, and twilight. We were sitting on the porch of the +farmhouse, on the summit of the hill, and "Aunt Rachel" was sitting +respectfully below our level, on the steps-for she was our Servant, and +colored. She was of mighty frame and stature; she was sixty years old, +but her eye was undimmed and her strength unabated. She was a cheerful, +hearty soul, and it was no more trouble for her to laugh than it is for a +bird to sing. She was under fire now, as usual when the day was done. +That is to say, she was being chaffed without mercy, and was enjoying it. +She would let off peal after of laughter, and then sit with her face in +her hands and shake with throes of enjoyment which she could no longer +get breath enough to express. It such a moment as this a thought +occurred to me, and I said: + +"Aunt Rachel, how is it that you've lived sixty years and never had any +trouble?" + +She stopped quaking. She paused, and there was moment of silence. She +turned her face over her shoulder toward me, and said, without even a +smile her voice: + +"Misto C-----, is you in 'arnest?" + +It surprised me a good deal; and it sobered my manner and my speech, too. +I said: + +"Why, I thought--that is, I meant--why, you can't have had any trouble. +I've never heard you sigh, and never seen your eye when there wasn't a +laugh in it." + +She faced fairly around now, and was full earnestness. + +"Has I had any trouble? Misto C-----, I's gwyne to tell you, den I leave +it to you. I was bawn down 'mongst de slaves; I knows all 'bout slavery, +'case I ben one of 'em my own se'f. Well sah, my ole man--dat's my +husban'--he was lov an' kind to me, jist as kind as you is to yo' own +wife. An' we had chil'en--seven chil'en--an' loved dem chil'en jist de +same as you loves yo' chil'en. Dey was black, but de Lord can't make +chil'en so black but what dey mother loves 'em an' wouldn't give 'em up, +no, not for anything dat's in dis whole world. + +"Well, sah, I was raised in ole Fo'ginny, but mother she was raised in +Maryland; an' my souls she was turrible when she'd git started! My lan! +but she'd make de fur fly! When she'd git into dem tantrums, she always +had one word dat she said. She'd straighten herse'f up an' put her fists +in her hips an' say, 'I want you to understan' dat I wa'n't bawn in the +mash to be fool' by trash! I's one o' de ole Blue Hen's Chickens, I is!' +'Ca'se you see, dat's what folks dat's bawn in Maryland calls deyselves, +an' dey's proud of it. Well, dat was her word. I don't ever forgit it, +beca'se she said it so much, an' beca'se she said it one day when my +little Henry tore his wris' awful, and most busted 'is head, right up at +de top of his forehead, an' de niggers didn't fly aroun' fas' enough to +'tend to him. An' when dey talk' back at her, she up an' she says, +'Look-a-heah!' she says, 'I want you niggers to understan' dat I wa'n't +bawn in de mash be fool' by trash! I's one o' de ole Blue Hen's chickens, +I is!' an' den she clar' dat kitchen an' bandage' up de chile herse'f. +So I says dat word, too, when I's riled. + +"Well, bymeby my ole mistis say she's broke, an she got to sell all de +niggers on de place. An' when I heah dat dey gwyne to sell us all off at +oction in Richmon', oh, de good gracious! I know what dat mean!" + +Aunt Rachel had gradually risen, while she warmed to her subject, and now +she towered above us, black against the stars. + +"Dey put chains on us an' put us on a stan' as high as dis po'ch--twenty +foot high--an' all de people stood aroun', crowds 'an' crowds. An' dey'd +come up dah an' look at us all roun', an' squeeze our arm, an' make us +git up an' walk, an' den say, Dis one too ole,' or 'Dis one lame,' or +'Dis one don't 'mount to much.' An' dey sole my ole man, an' took him +away, an' dey begin to sell my chil'en an' take dem away, an' I begin to +cry; an' de man say, 'Shet up yo' damn blubberin',' an' hit me on de mouf +wid his han'. An' when de las' one was gone but my little Henry, I grab' +him clost up to my breas' so, an' I ris up an' says, 'You sha'nt take him +away,' I says; 'I'll kill de man dat tetch him!' I says. But my little +Henry whisper an' say 'I gwyne to run away, an' den I work an' buy yo' +freedom' Oh, bless de chile, he always so good! But dey got him--dey got +him, de men did; but I took and tear de clo'es mos' off of 'em an' beat +'em over de head wid my chain; an' dey give it to me too, but I didn't +mine dat. + +"Well, dah was my ole man gone, an' all my chil'en, all my seven chil'en +--an' six of 'em I hain't set eyes on ag'in to dis day, an' dat's +twenty-two year ago las' Easter. De man dat bought me b'long' in +Newbern, an' he took me dah. Well, bymeby de years roll on an' de waw +come. My marster he was a Confedrit colonel, an' I was his family's +cook. So when de Unions took dat town dey all run away an' lef' me all +by myse'f wid de other niggers in dat mons'us big house. So de big Union +officers move in dah, an' dey ask me would I cook for dem. 'Lord bless +you,' says I, 'dat what I's for.' + +"Dey wa'n't no small-fry officers, mine you, de was de biggest dey is; +an' de way dey made dem sojers mosey roun'! De Gen'l he tole me to boss +dat kitchen; an' he say, 'If anybody come meddlin' wid you, you jist make +'em walk chalk; don't you be afeared,' he say; 'you's 'mong frens now.' + +"Well, I thinks to myse'f, if my little Henry ever got a chance to run +away, he'd make to de Norf, o' course. So one day I comes in dah whar de +big officers was, in de parlor, an' I drops a kurtchy, so, an' I up an' +tole 'em 'bout my Henry, dey a-listenin' to my troubles jist de same as +if I was white folks; an' I says, 'What I come for is beca'se if he got +away and got up Norf whar you gemmen comes from, you might 'a' seen him, +maybe, an' could tell me so as I could fine him ag'in; he was very +little, an' he had a sk-yar on his lef' wris' an' at de top of his +forehead.' Den dey look mournful, an' de Gen'l says, 'How long sence you +los' him?' an' I say, 'Thirteen year. Den de Gen'l say, 'He wouldn't be +little no mo' now--he's a man!' + +"I never thought o' dat befo'! He was only dat little feller to me yit. +I never thought 'bout him growin' up an' bein' big. But I see it den. +None o' de gemmen had run acrost him, so dey couldn't do nothin' for me. +But all dat time, do' I didn't know it, my Henry was run off to de Norf, +years an' years, an' he was a barber, too, an' worked for hisse'f. An' +bymeby, when de waw come he ups an' he says: 'I's done barberin',' he +says, 'I's gwyne to fine my ole mammy, less'n she's dead.' So he sole +out an' went to whar dey was recruitin', an' hired hisse'f out to de +colonel for his servant an' den he went all froo de battles everywhah, +huntin' for his ole mammy; yes, indeedy, he'd hire to fust one officer +an' den another, tell he'd ransacked de whole Souf; but you see I didn't +know nuffin 'bout dis. How was I gwyne to know it? + +"Well, one night we had a big sojer ball; de sojers dah at Newbern was +always havin' balls an' carryin' on. Dey had 'em in my kitchen, heaps o' +times, 'ca'se it was so big. Mine you, I was down on sich doin's; +beca'se my place was wid de officers, an' it rasp me to have dem common +sojers cavortin' roun' in my kitchen like dat. But I alway' stood aroun' +an kep' things straight, I did; an' sometimes dey'd git my dander up, an' +den I'd make 'em clar dat kitchen mine I tell you! + +"Well, one night--it was a Friday night--dey comes a whole platoon f'm a +nigger ridgment da was on guard at de house--de house was head quarters, +you know-an' den I was jist a-bilin' mad? I was jist a-boomin'! I +swelled aroun', an swelled aroun'; I jist was a-itchin' for 'em to do +somefin for to start me. An' dey was a-waltzin' an a dancin'! my but dey +was havin' a time! an I jist a-swellin' an' a-swellin' up! Pooty soon, +'long comes sich a spruce young nigger a-sailin' down de room wid a +yaller wench roun' de wais'; an' roun an' roun' an roun' dey went, enough +to make a body drunk to look at 'em; an' when dey got abreas' o' me, dey +went to kin' o' balancin' aroun' fust on one leg an' den on t'other, an' +smilin' at my big red turban, an' makin' fun, an' I ups an' says 'Git +along wid you!--rubbage!' De young man's face kin' o' changed, all of a +sudden, for 'bout a second but den he went to smilin' ag'in, same as he +was befo'. Well, 'bout dis time, in comes some niggers dat played music +and b'long' to de ban', an' dey never could git along widout puttin' on +airs. An de very fust air dey put on dat night, I lit into em! Dey +laughed, an' dat made me wuss. De res' o' de niggers got to laughin', +an' den my soul alive but I was hot! My eye was jist a-blazin'! I jist +straightened myself up so--jist as I is now, plum to de ceilin', mos' +--an' I digs my fists into my hips, an' I says, 'Look-a-heah!' I says, 'I +want you niggers to understan' dat I wa'n't bawn in de mash to be fool' +by trash! I's one o' de ole Blue hen's Chickens, I is!'--an' den I see +dat young man stan' a-starin' an' stiff, lookin' kin' o' up at de ceilin' +like he fo'got somefin, an' couldn't 'member it no mo'. Well, I jist +march' on dem niggers--so, lookin' like a gen'l--an' dey jist cave' away +befo' me an' out at de do'. An' as dis young man a-goin' out, I heah him +say to another nigger, 'Jim,' he says, 'you go 'long an' tell de cap'n I +be on han' 'bout eight o'clock in de mawnin'; dey's somefin on my mine,' +he says; 'I don't sleep no mo' dis night. You go 'long,' he says, 'an' +leave me by my own se'f.' + +"Dis was 'bout one o'clock in de mawnin'. Well, 'bout seven, I was up +an' on han', gittin' de officers' breakfast. I was a-stoopin' down by de +stove jist so, same as if yo' foot was de stove--an' I'd opened de stove +do' wid my right han'--so, pushin' it back, jist as I pushes yo' foot +--an' I'd jist got de pan o' hot biscuits in my han' an' was 'bout to +raise up, when I see a black face come aroun' under mine, an' de eyes +a-lookin' up into mine, jist as I's a-lookin' up clost under yo' face +now; an' I jist stopped right dah, an' never budged! jist gazed an' gazed +so; an' de pan begin to tremble, an' all of a sudden I knowed! De pan +drop' on de flo' an' I grab his lef' han' an' shove back his sleeve--jist +so, as I's doin' to you--an' den I goes for his forehead an' push de hair +back so, an' 'Boy!' I says, 'if you an't my Henry, what is you doin' wid +dis welt on yo' wris' an' dat sk-yar on yo' forehead? De Lord God ob +heaven be praise', I got my own ag'in!' + + "Oh no' Misto C-----, I hain't had no trouble. An' no joy!" + + + + + + +THE SIAMESE TWINS--[Written about 1868.] + +I do not wish to write of the personal habits of these strange creatures +solely, but also of certain curious details of various kinds concerning +them, which, belonging only to their private life, have never crept into +print. Knowing the Twins intimately, I feel that I am peculiarly well +qualified for the task I have taken upon myself. + +The Siamese Twins are naturally tender and affectionate indisposition, +and have clung to each other with singular fidelity throughout a long and +eventful life. Even as children they were inseparable companions; and it +was noticed that they always seemed to prefer each other's society to +that of any other persons. They nearly always played together; and, so +accustomed was their mother to this peculiarity, that, whenever both of +them chanced to be lost, she usually only hunted for one of them +--satisfied that when she found that one she would find his brother +somewhere in the immediate neighborhood. And yet these creatures were +ignorant and unlettered-barbarians themselves and the offspring of +barbarians, who knew not the light of philosophy and science. What a +withering rebuke is this to our boasted civilization, with its +quarrelings, its wranglings, and its separations of brothers! + +As men, the Twins have not always lived in perfect accord; but still +there has always been a bond between them which made them unwilling to go +away from each other and dwell apart. They have even occupied the same +house, as a general thing, and it is believed that they have never failed +to even sleep together on any night since they were born. How surely do +the habits of a lifetime become second nature to us! The Twins always go +to bed at the same time; but Chang usually gets up about an hour before +his brother. By an understanding between themselves, Chang does all the +indoor work and Eng runs all the errands. This is because Eng likes to +go out; Chang's habits are sedentary. However, Chang always goes along. +Eng is a Baptist, but Chang is a Roman Catholic; still, to please his +brother, Chang consented to be baptized at the same time that Eng was, on +condition that it should not "count." During the war they were strong +partisans, and both fought gallantly all through the great struggle--Eng +on the Union side and Chang on the Confederate. They took each other +prisoners at Seven Oaks, but the proofs of capture were so evenly +balanced in favor of each, that a general army court had to be assembled +to determine which one was properly the captor and which the captive. +The jury was unable to agree for a long time; but the vexed question was +finally decided by agreeing to consider them both prisoners, and then +exchanging them. At one time Chang was convicted of disobedience of +orders, and sentenced to ten days in the guard-house, but Eng, in spite +of all arguments, felt obliged to share his imprisonment, notwithstanding +he himself was entirely innocent; and so, to save the blameless brother +from suffering, they had to discharge both from custody--the just reward +of faithfulness. + +Upon one occasion the brothers fell out about something, and Chang +knocked Eng down, and then tripped and fell on him, whereupon both +clinched and began to beat and gouge each other without mercy. The +bystanders interfered, and tried to separate them, but they could not do +it, and so allowed them to fight it out. In the end both were disabled, +and were carried to the hospital on one and the same shutter. + +Their ancient habit of going always together had its drawbacks when they +reached man's estate, and entered upon the luxury of courting. Both fell +in love with the same girl. Each tried to steal clandestine interviews +with her, but at the critical moment the other would always turn up. +By and by Eng saw, with distraction, that Chang had won the girl's +affections; and, from that day forth, he had to bear with the agony of +being a witness to all their dainty billing and cooing. But with a +magnanimity that did him infinite credit, he succumbed to his fate, and +gave countenance and encouragement to a state of things that bade fair to +sunder his generous heart-strings. He sat from seven every evening until +two in the morning, listening to the fond foolishness of the two lovers, +and to the concussion of hundreds of squandered kisses--for the privilege +of sharing only one of which he would have given his right hand. But he +sat patiently, and waited, and gaped, and yawned, and stretched, and +longed for two o'clock to come. And he took long walks with the lovers +on moonlight evenings--sometimes traversing ten miles, notwithstanding he +was usually suffering from rheumatism. He is an inveterate smoker; but +he could not smoke on these occasions, because the young lady was +painfully sensitive to the smell of tobacco. Eng cordially wanted them +married, and done with it; but although Chang often asked the momentous +question, the young lady could not gather sufficient courage to answer it +while Eng was by. However, on one occasion, after having walked some +sixteen miles, and sat up till nearly daylight, Eng dropped asleep, from +sheer exhaustion, and then the question was asked and answered. The +lovers were married. All acquainted with the circumstance applauded the +noble brother-in-law. His unwavering faithfulness was the theme of every +tongue. He had stayed by them all through their long and arduous +courtship; and when at last they were married, he lifted his hands above +their heads, and said with impressive unction, "Bless ye, my children, I +will never desert ye!" and he kept his word. Fidelity like this is all +too rare in this cold world. + +By and by Eng fell in love with his sister-in-law's sister, and married +her, and since that day they have all lived together, night and day, in +an exceeding sociability which is touching and beautiful to behold, and +is a scathing rebuke to our boasted civilization. + +The sympathy existing between these two brothers is so close and so +refined that the feelings, the impulses, the emotions of the one are +instantly experienced by the other. When one is sick, the other is sick; +when one feels pain, the other feels it; when one is angered, the other's +temper takes fire. We have already seen with what happy facility they +both fell in love with the same girl. Now Chang is bitterly opposed to +all forms of intemperance, on principle; but Eng is the reverse--for, +while these men's feelings and emotions are so closely wedded, their +reasoning faculties are unfettered; their thoughts are free. Chang +belongs to the Good Templars, and is a hard--working, enthusiastic +supporter of all temperance reforms. But, to his bitter distress, every +now and then Eng gets drunk, and, of course, that makes Chang drunk too. +This unfortunate thing has been a great sorrow to Chang, for it almost +destroys his usefulness in his favorite field of effort. As sure as he +is to head a great temperance procession Eng ranges up alongside of him, +prompt to the minute, and drunk as a lord; but yet no more dismally and +hopelessly drunk than his brother, who has not tasted a drop. And so the +two begin to hoot and yell, and throw mud and bricks at the Good +Templars; and, of course, they break up the procession. It would be +manifestly wrong to punish Chang for what Eng does, and, therefore, the +Good Templars accept the untoward situation, and suffer in silence and +sorrow. They have officially and deliberately examined into the matter, +and find Chang blameless. They have taken the two brothers and filled +Chang full of warm water and sugar and Eng full of whisky, and in +twenty-five minutes it was not possible to tell which was the drunkest. +Both were as drunk as loons--and on hot whisky punches, by the smell of +their breath. Yet all the while Chang's moral principles were unsullied, +his conscience clear; and so all just men were forced to confess that he +was not morally, but only physically, drunk. By every right and by every +moral evidence the man was strictly sober; and, therefore, it caused his +friends all the more anguish to see him shake hands with the pump and try +to wind his watch with his night-key. + +There is a moral in these solemn warnings--or, at least, a warning in +these solemn morals; one or the other. No matter, it is somehow. Let us +heed it; let us profit by it. + +I could say more of an instructive nature about these interesting beings, +but let what I have written suffice. + +Having forgotten to mention it sooner, I will remark in conclusion that +the ages of the Siamese Twins are respectively fifty-one and fifty-three +years. + + + + + + +SPEECH AT THE SCOTTISH BANQUET IN LONDON--[Written about 1872.] + +On the anniversary festival of the Scottish Corporation of London on +Monday evening, in response to the toast of "The Ladies," MARK TWAIN +replied. The following is his speech as reported in the London Observer: + +I am proud, indeed, of the distinction of being chosen to respond to this +especial toast, to 'The Ladies,' or to women if you please, for that is +the preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the older, and therefore +the more entitled to reverence [Laughter.] I have noticed that the +Bible, with that plain, blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous +characteristic of the Scriptures, is always particular to never refer to +even the illustrious mother of all mankind herself as a 'lady,' but +speaks of her as a woman, [Laughter.] It is odd, but you will find it is +so. I am peculiarly proud of this honor, because I think that the toast +to women is one which, by right and by every rule of gallantry, should +take precedence of all others--of the army, of the navy, of even royalty +itself perhaps, though the latter is not necessary in this day and in +this land, for the reason that, tacitly, you do drink a broad general +health to all good women when you drink the health of the Queen of +England and the Princess of Wales. [Loud cheers.] I have in mind a poem +just now which is familiar to you all, familiar to everybody. And what +an inspiration that was (and how instantly the present toast recalls the +verses to all our minds) when the most noble, the most gracious, the +purest, and sweetest of all poets says: + + "Woman! O woman!--er-- + Wom--" + +[Laughter.] However, you remember the lines; and you remember how +feelingly, how daintily, how almost imperceptibly the verses raise up +before you, feature by feature, the ideal of a true and perfect woman; +and how, as you contemplate the finished marvel, your homage grows into +worship of the intellect that could create so fair a thing out of mere +breath, mere words. And you call to mind now, as I speak, how the poet, +with stern fidelity to the history of all humanity, delivers this +beautiful child of his heart and his brain over to the trials and sorrows +that must come to all, sooner or later, that abide in the earth, and how +the pathetic story culminates in that apostrophe--so wild, so regretful, +so full of mournful retrospection. The lines run thus: + + "Alas!--alas!--a--alas! + ----Alas!--------alas!" + +--and so on. [Laughter.] I do not remember the rest; but, taken +together, it seems to me that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that +human genius has ever brought forth--[laughter]--and I feel that if I +were to talk hours I could not do my great theme completer or more +graceful justice than I have now done in simply quoting that poet's +matchless words. [Renewed laughter.] The phases of the womanly nature +are infinite in their variety. Take any type of woman, and you shall +find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to love. +And you shall find the whole joining you heart and hand. Who was more +patriotic than Joan of Arc? Who was braver? Who has given us a grander +instance of self-sacrificing devotion? Ah! you remember, you remember +well, what a throb of pain, what a great tidal wave of grief swept over +us all when Joan of Arc fell at Waterloo. [Much laughter.] Who does not +sorrow for the loss of Sappho, the sweet singer of Israel? [Laughter.] +Who among us does not miss the gentle ministrations, the softening +influences, the humble piety of Lucretia Borgia? [Laughter.] Who can +join in the heartless libel that says woman is extravagant in dress when +he can look back and call to mind our simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed +in her modification of the Highland costume. [Roars of laughter.] +Sir, women have been soldiers, women have been painters, women have been +poets. As long as language lives the name of Cleopatra will live. + +And, not because she conquered George III. [laughter]--but because she +wrote those divine lines: + + "Let dogs delight to bark and bite, + For God hath made them so." + +[More laughter.] The story of the world is adorned with the names of +illustrious ones of our own sex--some of them sons of St. Andrew, too +--Scott, Bruce, Burns, the warrior Wallace, Ben Nevis--[laughter]--the +gifted Ben Lomond, and the great new Scotchman, Ben Disraeli. [Great +laughter.] Out of the great plains of history tower whole mountain +ranges of sublime women--the Queen of Sheba, Josephine, Semiramis, Sairey +Gamp; the list is endless--[laughter]--but I will not call the mighty +roll, the names rise up in your own memories at the mere suggestion, +luminous with the glory of deeds that cannot die, hallowed by the loving +worship of the good and the true of all epochs and all climes. [Cheers.] +Suffice it for our pride and our honor that we in our day have added to +it such names as those of Grace Darling and Florence Nightingale. +[Cheers.] Woman is all that she should be-gentle, patient, long +suffering, trustful, unselfish, full of generous impulses. It is her +blessed mission to comfort the sorrowing, plead for the erring, encourage +the faint of purpose, succor the distressed, uplift the fallen, befriend +the friendless in a word, afford the healing of her sympathies and a home +in her heart for all the bruised and persecuted children of misfortune +that knock at its hospitable door. [Cheers.] And when I say, God bless +her, there is none among us who has known the ennobling affection of a +wife, or the steadfast devotion of a mother, but in his heart will say, +Amen! [Loud and prolonged cheering.] + +--[Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, at that time Prime Minister of England, had +just been elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University, and had made a +speech which gave rise to a world of discussion.] + + + + + + +A GHOST STORY + +I took a large room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose upper +stories had been wholly unoccupied for years until I came. The place had +long been given up to dust and cobwebs, to solitude and silence. +I seemed groping among the tombs and invading the privacy of the dead, +that first night I climbed up to my quarters. For the first time in my +life a superstitious dread came over me; and as I turned a dark angle of +the stairway and an invisible cobweb swung its slazy woof in my face and +clung there, I shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom. + +I was glad enough when I reached my room and locked out the mold and the +darkness. A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I sat down before +it with a comforting sense of relief. For two hours I sat there, +thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning +half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy, +to voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to once familiar +songs that nobody sings now. And as my reverie softened down to a sadder +and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail, +the angry beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil +patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until the +hurrying footsteps of the last belated straggler died away in the +distance and left no sound behind. + +The fire had burned low. A sense of loneliness crept over me. I arose +and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I +had to do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it +would be fatal to break. I covered up in bed, and lay listening to the +rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters, till they +lulled me to sleep. + +I slept profoundly, but how long I do not know. All at once I found +myself awake, and filled with a shuddering expectancy. All was still. +All but my own heart--I could hear it beat. Presently the bedclothes +began to slip away slowly toward the foot of the bed, as if some one were +pulling them! I could not stir; I could not speak. Still the blankets +slipped deliberately away, till my breast was uncovered. Then with a +great effort I seized them and drew them over my head. I waited, +listened, waited. Once more that steady pull began, and once more I lay +torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. At +last I roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their place and +held them with a strong grip. I waited. By and by I felt a faint tug, +and took a fresh grip. The tug strengthened to a steady strain--it grew +stronger and stronger. My hold parted, and for the third time the +blankets slid away. I groaned. An answering groan came from the foot of +the bed! Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. I was more dead +than alive. Presently I heard a heavy footstep in my room--the step of +an elephant, it seemed to me--it was not like anything human. But it was +moving from me--there was relief in that. I heard it approach the door +--pass out without moving bolt or lock--and wander away among the dismal +corridors, straining the floors and joists till they creaked again as it +passed--and then silence reigned once more. + +When my excitement had calmed, I said to myself, "This is a dream--simply +a hideous dream." And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced myself +that it was a dream, and then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips and I +was happy again. I got up and struck a light; and when I found that the +locks and bolts were just as I had left them, another soothing laugh +welled in my heart and rippled from my lips. I took my pipe and lit it, +and was just sitting down before the fire, when-down went the pipe out of +my nerveless fingers, the blood forsook my cheeks, and my placid +breathing was cut short with a gasp! In the ashes on the hearth, side by +side with my own bare footprint, was another, so vast that in comparison +mine was but an infant's! Then I had had a visitor, and the elephant +tread was explained. + +I put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. I lay a long +time, peering into the darkness, and listening.--Then I heard a grating +noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor; then +the throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my windows in response +to the concussion. In distant parts of the building I heard the muffled +slamming of doors. I heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps creeping in +and out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs. Sometimes these +noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard the +clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and listened while the +clanking grew nearer--while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking +each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle +upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. I heard +muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently; +and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I +became conscious that my chamber was invaded--that I was not alone. +I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. +Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling +directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and then dropped +--two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow. They, spattered, +liquidly, and felt warm. Intuition told me they had--turned to gouts of +blood as they fell--I needed no light to satisfy myself of that. Then I +saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white uplifted hands, floating +bodiless in the air--floating a moment and then disappearing. +The whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds, anal a solemn +stillness followed. I waited and listened. I felt that I must have +light or die. I was weak with fear. I slowly raised myself toward a +sitting posture, and my face came in contact with a clammy hand! +All strength went from me apparently, and I fell back like a stricken +invalid. Then I heard the rustle of a garment it seemed to pass to the +door and go out. + +When everything was still once more, I crept out of bed, sick and feeble, +and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged with a +hundred years. The light brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat +down and fell into a dreamy contemplation of that great footprint in the +ashes. By and by its outlines began to waver and grow dim. I glanced up +and the broad gas-flame was slowly wilting away. In the same moment I +heard that elephantine tread again. I noted its approach, nearer and +nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer the light waned. +The tread reached my very door and paused--the light had dwindled to a +sickly blue, and all things about me lay in a spectral twilight. The +door did not open, and yet I felt a faint gust of air fan my cheek, and +presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me. I watched +it with fascinated eyes. A pale glow stole over the Thing; gradually its +cloudy folds took shape--an arm appeared, then legs, then a body, and +last a great sad face looked out of the vapor. Stripped of its filmy +housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed +above me! + +All my misery vanished--for a child might know that no harm could come +with that benignant countenance. My cheerful spirits returned at once, +and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up brightly again. Never a +lonely outcast was so glad to welcome company as I was to greet the +friendly giant. I said: + +"Why, is it nobody but you? Do you know, I have been scared to death for +the last two or three hours? I am most honestly glad to see you. I wish +I had a chair--Here, here, don't try to sit down in that thing--" + +But it was too late. He was in it before I could stop him and down he +went--I never saw a chair shivered so in my life. + +"Stop, stop, you'll ruin ev--" + +Too late again. There was another crash, and another chair was resolved +into its original elements. + +"Confound it, haven't you got any judgment at' all? Do you want to ruin +all the furniture on the place? Here, here, you petrified fool--" + +But it was no use. Before I could arrest him he had sat down on the bed, +and it was a melancholy ruin. + +"Now what sort of a way is that to do? First you come lumbering about +the place bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry +me to death, and then when I overlook an indelicacy of costume which +would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a +respectable theater, and not even there if the nudity were of your sex, +you repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on. +And why will you? You damage yourself as much as you do me. You have +broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered up the floor with +chips of your hams till the place looks like a marble yard. You ought to +be ashamed of yourself--you are big enough to know better." + +"Well, I will not break any more furniture. But what am I to do? I have +not had a chance to sit down for a century." And the tears came into his +eyes. + +"Poor devil," I said, "I should not have been so harsh with you. And you +are an orphan, too, no doubt. But sit down on the floor here--nothing +else can stand your weight--and besides, we cannot be sociable with you +away up there above me; I want you down where I can perch on this high +counting-house stool and gossip with you face to face." So he sat down +on the floor, and lit a pipe which I gave him, threw one of my red +blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his head, helmet +fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfortable. Then he crossed +his ankles, while I renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honeycombed +bottoms of his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth. + +"What is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your +legs, that they are gouged up so?" + +"Infernal chilblains--I caught them clear up to the back of my head, +roosting out there under Newell's farm. But I love the place; I love it +as one loves his old home. There is no peace for me like the peace I +feel when I am there." + +We talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he looked +tired, and spoke of it. + +"Tired?" he said. "Well, I should think so. And now I will tell you all +about it, since you have treated me so well. I am the spirit of the +Petrified Man that lies across the street there in the museum. I am the +ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no peace, till they have +given that poor body burial again. Now what was the most natural thing +for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish? Terrify them into it! +haunt the place where the body lay! So I haunted the museum night after +night. I even got other spirits to help me. But it did no good, for +nobody ever came to the museum at midnight. Then it occurred to me to +come over the way and haunt this place a little. I felt that if I ever +got a hearing I must succeed, for I had the most efficient company that +perdition could furnish. Night after night we have shivered around +through these mildewed halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering, +tramping up and down stairs, till, to tell you the truth, I am almost +worn out. But when I saw a light in your room to-night I roused my +energies again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness. But I am +tired out--entirely fagged out. Give me, I beseech you, give me some +hope!" I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed: + +"This transcends everything! everything that ever did occur! Why you +poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing +--you have been haunting a plaster cast of yourself--the real Cardiff +Giant is in Albany!--[A fact. The original fraud was ingeniously and +fraudfully duplicated, and exhibited in New York as the "only genuine" +Cardiff Giant (to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real +colossus) at the very same time that the latter was drawing crowds at a +museum is Albany,]--Confound it, don't you know your own remains?" + +I never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable humiliation, +overspread a countenance before. + +The Petrified Man rose slowly to his feet, and said: + +"Honestly, is that true?" + +"As true as I am sitting here." + +He took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then stood +irresolute a moment (unconsciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands +where his pantaloons pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping +his chin on his breast); and finally said: + +"Well-I never felt so absurd before. The Petrified Man has sold +everybody else, and now the mean fraud has ended by selling its own +ghost! My son, if there is any charity left in your heart for a poor +friendless phantom like me, don't let this get out. Think how you would +feel if you had made such an ass of yourself." + +I heard his stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs and out +into the deserted street, and felt sorry that he was gone, poor fellow +--and sorrier still that he had carried off my red blanket and my +bath-tub. + + + + + + +THE CAPITOLINE VENUS + +CHAPTER I + +[Scene-An Artist's Studio in Rome.] + +"Oh, George, I do love you!" + +"Bless your dear heart, Mary, I know that--why is your father so +obdurate?" + +"George, he means well, but art is folly to him--he only understands +groceries. He thinks you would starve me." + +"Confound his wisdom--it savors of inspiration. Why am I not a +money-making bowelless grocer, instead of a divinely gifted sculptor +with nothing to eat?" + +"Do not despond, Georgy, dear--all his prejudices will fade away as soon +as you shall have acquired fifty thousand dol--" + +"Fifty thousand demons! Child, I am in arrears for my board!" + + + +CHAPTER II + +[Scene-A Dwelling in Rome.] + +"My dear sir, it is useless to talk. I haven't anything against you, but +I can't let my daughter marry a hash of love, art, and starvation--I +believe you have nothing else to offer." + +"Sir, I am poor, I grant you. But is fame nothing? The Hon. Bellamy +Foodle of Arkansas says that my new statue of America, is a clever piece +of sculpture, and he is satisfied that my name will one day be famous." + +"Bosh! What does that Arkansas ass know about it? Fame's nothing--the +market price of your marble scarecrow is the thing to look at. It took +you six months to chisel it, and you can't sell it for a hundred dollars. +No, sir! Show me fifty thousand dollars and you can have my daughter +--otherwise she marries young Simper. You have just six months to raise +the money in. Good morning, sir." + +"Alas! Woe is me!" + + + +CHAPTER III + +[ Scene-The Studio.] + +"Oh, John, friend of my boyhood, I am the unhappiest of men." + +"You're a simpleton!" + +"I have nothing left to love but my poor statue of America--and see, even +she has no sympathy for me in her cold marble countenance--so beautiful +and so heartless!" + +"You're a dummy!" + +"Oh, John!" + +Oh, fudge! Didn't you say you had six months to raise the money in?" + +"Don't deride my agony, John. If I had six centuries what good would it +do? How could it help a poor wretch without name, capital, or friends?" + +"Idiot! Coward! Baby! Six months to raise the money in--and five will +do!" + +"Are you insane?" + +"Six months--an abundance. Leave it to me. I'll raise it." + +"What do you mean, John? How on earth can you raise such a monstrous sum +for me?" + +"Will you let that be my business, and not meddle? Will you leave the +thing in my hands? Will you swear to submit to whatever I do? Will you +pledge me to find no fault with my actions?" + +"I am dizzy--bewildered--but I swear." + +John took up a hammer and deliberately smashed the nose of America! He +made another pass and two of her fingers fell to the floor--another, and +part of an ear came away--another, and a row of toes was mangled and +dismembered--another, and the left leg, from the knee down, lay a +fragmentary ruin! + +John put on his hat and departed. + +George gazed speechless upon the battered and grotesque nightmare before +him for the space of thirty seconds, and then wilted to the floor and +went into convulsions. + +John returned presently with a carriage, got the broken-hearted artist +and the broken-legged statue aboard, and drove off, whistling low and +tranquilly. + +He left the artist at his lodgings, and drove off and disappeared down +the Via Quirinalis with the statue. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +[Scene--The Studio.] + +"The six months will be up at two o'clock to-day! Oh, agony! My life is +blighted. I would that I were dead. I had no supper yesterday. I have +had no breakfast to-day. I dare not enter an eating-house. And hungry? +--don't mention it! My bootmaker duns me to death--my tailor duns me +--my landlord haunts me. I am miserable. I haven't seen John since that +awful day. She smiles on me tenderly when we meet in the great +thoroughfares, but her old flint of a father makes her look in the other +direction in short order. Now who is knocking at that door? Who is come +to persecute me? That malignant villain the bootmaker, I'll warrant. +Come in!" + +"Ah, happiness attend your highness--Heaven be propitious to your grace! +I have brought my lord's new boots--ah, say nothing about the pay, there +is no hurry, none in the world. Shall be proud if my noble lord will +continue to honor me with his custom--ah, adieu!" + +"Brought the boots himself! Don't wait his pay! Takes his leave with a +bow and a scrape fit to honor majesty withal! Desires a continuance of +my custom! Is the world coming to an end? Of all the--come in!" + +"Pardon, signore, but I have brought your new suit of clothes for--" + +"Come in!" + +"A thousand pardons for this intrusion, your worship. But I have +prepared the beautiful suite of rooms below for you--this wretched den is +but ill suited to--" + +"Come in!" + +"I have called to say that your credit at our bank, some time since +unfortunately interrupted, is entirely and most satisfactorily restored, +and we shall be most happy if you will draw upon us for any--" + +"COME IN!" + +"My noble boy, she is yours! She'll be here in a moment! Take her +--marry her--love her--be happy!--God bless you both! Hip, hip, hur--" + +"COME IN!!!!!" + +"Oh, George, my own darling, we are saved!" + +"Oh, Mary, my own darling, we are saved--but I'll swear I don't know why +nor how!" + + + +CHAPTER V + +[Scene-A Roman Cafe.] + +One of a group of American gentlemen reads and translates from the weekly +edition of 'Il Slangwhanger di Roma' as follows: + +WONDERFUL DISCOVERY--Some six months ago Signor John Smitthe, an American +gentleman now some years a resident of Rome, purchased for a trifle a +small piece of ground in the Campagna, just beyond the tomb of the Scipio +family, from the owner, a bankrupt relative of the Princess Borghese. +Mr. Smitthe afterward went to the Minister of the Public Records and had +the piece of ground transferred to a poor American artist named George +Arnold, explaining that he did it as payment and satisfaction for +pecuniary damage accidentally done by him long since upon property +belonging to Signor Arnold, and further observed that he would make +additional satisfaction by improving the ground for Signor A., at his own +charge and cost. Four weeks ago, while making some necessary excavations +upon the property, Signor Smitthe unearthed the most remarkable ancient +statue that has ever bees added to the opulent art treasures of Rome. +It was an exquisite figure of a woman, and though sadly stained by the +soil and the mold of ages, no eye can look unmoved upon its ravishing +beauty. The nose, the left leg from the knee down, an ear, and also the +toes of the right foot and two fingers of one of the hands were gone, +but otherwise the noble figure was in a remarkable state of preservation. +The government at once took military possession of the statue, and +appointed a commission of art-critics, antiquaries, and cardinal princes +of the church to assess its value and determine the remuneration that +must go to the owner of the ground in which it was found. The whole +affair was kept a profound secret until last night. In the mean time the +commission sat with closed doors and deliberated. Last night they +decided unanimously that the statue is a Venus, and the work of some +unknown but sublimely gifted artist of the third century before Christ. +They consider it the most faultless work of art the world has any +knowledge of. + +At midnight they held a final conference and, decided that the Venus was +worth the enormous sum of ten million francs! In accordance with Roman +law and Roman usage, the government being half-owner in all works of art +found in the Campagna, the State has naught to do but pay five million +francs to Mr. Arnold and take permanent possession of the beautiful +statue. This morning the Venus will be removed to the Capitol, there to +remain, and at noon the commission will wait upon Signor Arnold with His +Holiness the Pope's order upon the Treasury for the princely sum of five +million francs is gold! + +Chorus of Voices.--"Luck! It's no name for it!" + +Another Voice.--"Gentlemen, I propose that we immediately form an +American joint-stock company for the purchase of lands and excavations of +statues here, with proper connections in Wall Street to bull and bear the +stock." + +All.--"Agreed." + + + +CHAPTER VI + +[Scene--The Roman Capitol Ten Years Later.] + +"Dearest Mary, this is the most celebrated statue in the world. This is +the renowned 'Capitoline Venus' you've heard so much about. Here she is +with her little blemishes 'restored' (that is, patched) by the most noted +Roman artists--and the mere fact that they did the humble patching of so +noble a creation will make their names illustrious while the world +stands. How strange it seems this place! The day before I last stood +here, ten happy years ago, I wasn't a rich man bless your soul, I hadn't +a cent. And yet I had a good deal to do with making Rome mistress of +this grandest work of ancient art the world contains." + +"The worshiped, the illustrious Capitoline Venus--and what a sum she is +valued at! Ten millions of francs!" + +"Yes--now she is." + +"And oh, Georgy, how divinely beautiful she is!" + +"Ah, yes but nothing to what she was before that blessed John Smith broke +her leg and battered her nose. Ingenious Smith!--gifted Smith!--noble +Smith! Author of all our bliss! Hark! Do you know what that wheeze +means? Mary, that cub has got the whooping-cough. Will you never learn +to take care of the children!" + +THE END + + +The Capitoline Venus is still in the Capitol at Rome, and is still the +most charming and most illustrious work of ancient art the world can +boast of. But if ever it shall be your fortune to stand before it and go +into the customary ecstasies over it, don't permit this true and secret +history of its origin to mar your bliss--and when you read about a +gigantic Petrified man being dug up near Syracuse, in the State of New +York, or near any other place, keep your own counsel--and if the Barnum +that buried him there offers to sell to you at an enormous sum, don't you +buy. Send him to the Pope! + + +[NOTE.--The above sketch was written at the time the famous swindle of +the "Petrified Giant" was the sensation of the day in the United States] + + + + + + +SPEECH ON ACCIDENT INSURANCE + +DELIVERED IN HARTFORD, AT A DINNER TO CORNELIUS WALFORD, OF LONDON + +GENTLEMEN: I am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished +guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance center has +extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band of +brothers working sweetly hand in hand--the Colt's Arms Company making the +destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life insurance citizens +paying for the victims when they pass away, Mr. Batterson perpetuating +their memory with his stately monuments, and our fire-insurance comrades +taking care of their hereafter. I am glad to assist in welcoming our +guest first, because he is an Englishman, and I owe a heavy debt of +hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen; and secondly, because he +is in sympathy with insurance and has been the means of making may other +men cast their sympathies in the same direction. + +Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance +line of business--especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been +a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a +better man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a +kindlier aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their +horror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest--as an +advertisement. I do not seem to care for poetry any more. I do not care +for politics--even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now there +is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable. + +There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. I have seen an +entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon +of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in +their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my experience +of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a +freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his +remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. And I have seen +nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer's +face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden leg. + +I will remark here, by way of advertisement, that that noble charity +which we have named the HARTFORD ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY--[The +speaker is a director of the company named.]--is an institution which is +peculiarly to be depended upon. A man is bound to prosper who gives it +his custom. + +No man can take out a policy in it and not get crippled before the year +is out. Now there was one indigent man who had been disappointed so +often with other companies that he had grown disheartened, his appetite +left him, he ceased to smile--life was but a weariness. Three weeks ago +I got him to insure with us, and now he is the brightest, happiest spirit +in this land has a good steady income and a stylish suit of new bandages +every day, and travels around on a shutter. + +I will say, in conclusion, that my share of the welcome to our guest is +none the less hearty because I talk so much nonsense, and I know that I +can say the same for the rest of the speakers. + + + + + + +JOHN CHINAMAN IN NEW YORK + +As I passed along by one of those monster American tea stores in New +York, I found a Chinaman sitting before it acting in the capacity of a +sign. Everybody that passed by gave him a steady stare as long as their +heads would twist over their shoulders without dislocating their necks, +and a group had stopped to stare deliberately. + +Is it not a shame that we, who prate so much about civilization and +humanity, are content to degrade a fellow-being to such an office as +this? Is it not time for reflection when we find ourselves willing to +see in such a being matter for frivolous curiosity instead of regret and +grave reflection? Here was a poor creature whom hard fortune had exiled +from his natural home beyond the seas, and whose troubles ought to have +touched these idle strangers that thronged about him; but did it? +Apparently not. Men calling themselves the superior race, the race of +culture and of gentle blood, scanned his quaint Chinese hat, with peaked +roof and ball on top, and his long queue dangling down his back; his +short silken blouse, curiously frogged and figured (and, like the rest of +his raiment, rusty, dilapidated, and awkwardly put on); his blue cotton, +tight-legged pants, tied close around the ankles; and his clumsy +blunt-toed shoes with thick cork soles; and having so scanned him from +head to foot, cracked some unseemly joke about his outlandish attire or +his melancholy face, and passed on. In my heart I pitied the friendless +Mongol. I wondered what was passing behind his sad face, and what +distant scene his vacant eye was dreaming of. Were his thoughts with his +heart, ten thousand miles away, beyond the billowy wastes of the Pacific? +among the ricefields and the plumy palms of China? under the shadows of +remembered mountain peaks, or in groves of bloomy shrubs and strange +forest trees unknown to climes like ours? And now and then, rippling +among his visions and his dreams, did he hear familiar laughter and +half-forgotten voices, and did he catch fitful glimpses of the friendly +faces of a bygone time? A cruel fate it is, I said, that is befallen +this bronzed wanderer. In order that the group of idlers might be +touched at least by the words of the poor fellow, since the appeal of his +pauper dress and his dreary exile was lost upon them, I touched him on +the shoulder and said: + +"Cheer up--don't be downhearted. It is not America that treats you in +this way, it is merely one citizen, whose greed of gain has eaten the +humanity out of his heart. America has a broader hospitality for the +exiled and oppressed. America and Americans are always ready to help the +unfortunate. Money shall be raised--you shall go back to China you shall +see your friends again. What wages do they pay you here?" + +"Divil a cint but four dollars a week and find meself; but it's aisy, +barrin' the troublesome furrin clothes that's so expinsive." + +The exile remains at his post. The New York tea merchants who need +picturesque signs are not likely to run out of Chinamen. + + + + + + +HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER--[Written abort 1870.] + +I did not take temporary editorship of an agricultural paper without +misgivings. Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without +misgivings. But I was in circumstances that made the salary an object. +The regular editor of the paper was going off for a holiday, and I +accepted the terms he offered, and took his place. + +The sensation of being at work again was luxurious, and I wrought all the +week with unflagging pleasure. We went to press, and I waited a day with +some solicitude to see whether my effort was going to attract any notice. +As I left the office, toward sundown, a group of men and boys at the foot +of the stairs dispersed with one impulse, and gave me passageway, and I +heard one or two of them say: "That's him!" I was naturally pleased by +this incident. The next morning I found a similar group at the foot of +the stairs, and scattering couples and individuals standing here and +there in the street and over the way, watching me with interest. The +group separated and fell back as I approached, and I heard a man say, +"Look at his eye!" I pretended not to observe the notice I was +attracting, but secretly I was pleased with it, and was purposing to +write an account of it to my aunt. I went up the short flight of stairs, +and heard cheery voices and a ringing laugh as I drew near the door, +which I opened, and caught a glimpse of two young rural-looking men, +whose faces blanched and lengthened when they saw me, and then they both +plunged through the window with a great crash. I was surprised. + +In about half an hour an old gentleman, with a flowing beard and a fine +but rather austere face, entered, and sat down at my invitation. He +seemed to have something on his mind. He took off his hat and set it on +the floor, and got out of it a red silk handkerchief and a copy of our +paper. + +He put the paper on his lap, and while he polished his spectacles with +his handkerchief he said, "Are you the new editor?" + +I said I was. + +"Have you ever edited an agricultural paper before?" + +"No," I said; "this is my first attempt." + +"Very likely. Have you had any experience in agriculture practically?" + +"No; I believe I have not." + +"Some instinct told me so," said the old gentleman, putting on his +spectacles, and looking over them at me with asperity, while he folded +his paper into a convenient shape. "I wish to read you what must have +made me have that instinct. It was this editorial. Listen, and see if +it was you that wrote it: + + "'Turnips should never be pulled, it injures them. It is much + better to send a boy up and let him shake the tree.' + +"Now, what do you think of that? for I really suppose you wrote it?" + +"Think of it? Why, I think it is good. I think it is sense. I have no +doubt that every year millions and millions of bushels of turnips are +spoiled in this township alone by being pulled in a half-ripe condition, +when, if they had sent a boy up to shake the tree--" + +"Shake your grandmother! Turnips don't grow on trees!" + +"Oh, they don't, don't they? Well, who said they did? The language was +intended to be figurative, wholly figurative. Anybody that knows +anything will know that I meant that the boy should shake the vine." + +Then this old person got up and tore his paper all into small shreds, and +stamped on them, and broke several things with his cane, and said I did +not know as much as a cow; and then went--out and banged the door after +him, and, in short, acted in such a way that I fancied he was displeased +about something. But not knowing what the trouble was, I could not be +any help to him. + +Pretty soon after this a long, cadaverous creature, with lanky locks +hanging down to his shoulders, and a week's stubble bristling from the +hills and valleys of his face, darted within the door, and halted, +motionless, with finger on lip, and head and body bent in listening +attitude. No sound was heard. + +Still he listened. No sound. Then he turned the key in the door, and +came elaborately tiptoeing toward me till he was within long reaching +distance of me, when he stopped and, after scanning my face with intense +interest for a while, drew a folded copy of our paper from his bosom, and +said: + +"There, you wrote that. Read it to me--quick! Relieve me. I suffer." + +I read as follows; and as the sentences fell from my lips I could see the +relief come, I could see the drawn muscles relax, and the anxiety go out +of the face, and rest and peace steal over the features like the merciful +moonlight over a desolate landscape: + + The guano is a fine bird, but great care is necessary in rearing it. + It should not be imported earlier than June or later than September. + In the winter it should be kept in a warm place, where it can hatch + out its young. + + It is evident that we are to have a backward season for grain. + Therefore it will be well for the farmer to begin setting out his + corn-stalks and planting his buckwheat cakes in July instead of + August. + + Concerning the pumpkin. This berry is a favorite with the natives + of the interior of New England, who prefer it to the gooseberry for + the making of fruit-cake, and who likewise give it the preference + over the raspberry for feeding cows, as being more filling and fully + as satisfying. The pumpkin is the only esculent of the orange + family that will thrive in the North, except the gourd and one or + two varieties of the squash. But the custom of planting it in the + front yard with the shrubbery is fast going out of vogue, for it is + now generally conceded that, the pumpkin as a shade tree is a + failure. + + Now, as the warm weather approaches, and the ganders begin to + spawn-- + + +The excited listener sprang toward me to shake hands, and said: + +"There, there--that will do. I know I am all right now, because you have +read it just as I did, word, for word. But, stranger, when I first read +it this morning, I said to myself, I never, never believed it before, +notwithstanding my friends kept me under watch so strict, but now I +believe I am crazy; and with that I fetched a howl that you might have +heard two miles, and started out to kill somebody--because, you know, +I knew it would come to that sooner or later, and so I might as well +begin. I read one of them paragraphs over again, so as to be certain, +and then I burned my house down and started. I have crippled several +people, and have got one fellow up a tree, where I can get him if I want +him. But I thought I would call in here as I passed along and make the +thing perfectly certain; and now it is certain, and I tell you it is +lucky for the chap that is in the tree. I should have killed him sure, +as I went back. Good-by, sir, good-by; you have taken a great load off +my mind. My reason has stood the strain of one of your agricultural +articles, and I know that nothing can ever unseat it now. Good-by, sir." + +I felt a little uncomfortable about the cripplings and arsons this person +had been entertaining himself with, for I could not help feeling remotely +accessory to them. But these thoughts were quickly banished, for the +regular editor walked in! [I thought to myself, Now if you had gone to +Egypt as I recommended you to, I might have had a chance to get my hand +in; but you wouldn't do it, and here you are. I sort of expected you.] + +The editor was looking sad and perplexed and dejected. + +He surveyed the wreck which that old rioter and those two young farmers +had made, and then said "This is a sad business--a very sad business. +There is the mucilage-bottle broken, and six panes of glass, and a +spittoon, and two candlesticks. But that is not the worst. The +reputation of the paper is injured--and permanently, I fear. True, there +never was such a call for the paper before, and it never sold such a +large edition or soared to such celebrity; but does one want to be famous +for lunacy, and prosper upon the infirmities of his mind? My friend, as +I am an honest man, the street out here is full of people, and others are +roosting on the fences, waiting to get a glimpse of you, because they +think you are crazy. And well they might after reading your editorials. +They are a disgrace to journalism. Why, what put it into your head that +you could edit a paper of this nature? You do not seem to know the first +rudiments of agriculture. You speak of a furrow and a harrow as being +the same thing; you talk of the moulting season for cows; and you +recommend the domestication of the pole-cat on account of its playfulness +and its excellence as a ratter! Your remark that clams will lie quiet if +music be played to them was superfluous--entirely superfluous. Nothing +disturbs clams. Clams always lie quiet. Clams care nothing whatever +about music. Ah, heavens and earth, friend! if you had made the +acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have +graduated with higher honor than you could to-day. I never saw anything +like it. Your observation that the horse-chestnut as an article of +commerce is steadily gaining in favor is simply calculated to destroy +this journal. I want you to throw up your situation and go. I want no +more holiday--I could not enjoy it if I had it. Certainly not with you +in my chair. I would always stand in dread of what you might be going to +recommend next. It makes me lose all patience every time I think of your +discussing oyster-beds under the head of 'Landscape Gardening.' I want +you to go. Nothing on earth could persuade me to take another holiday. +Oh! why didn't you tell me you didn't know anything about agriculture?" + +"Tell you, you corn-stalk, you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower? It's +the first time I ever heard such an unfeeling remark. I tell you I have +been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the +first time I ever heard of a man's having to know anything in order to +edit a newspaper. You turnip! Who write the dramatic critiques for the +second-rate papers? Why, a parcel of promoted shoemakers and apprentice +apothecaries, who know just as much about good acting as I do about good +farming and no more. Who review the books? People who never wrote one. +Who do up the heavy leaders on finance? Parties who have had the largest +opportunities for knowing nothing about it. Who criticize the Indian +campaigns? Gentlemen who do not know a war-whoop from a wigwam, and who +never have had to run a foot-race with a tomahawk, or pluck arrows out of +the several members of their families to build the evening camp-fire +with. Who write the temperance appeals, and clamor about the flowing +bowl? Folks who will never draw another sober breath till they do it in +the grave. Who edit the agricultural papers, you--yam? Men, as a +general thing, who fail in the poetry line, yellow-colored novel line, +sensation, drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on +agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poorhouse. You try to tell +me anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it +from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger +the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven knows +if I had but been ignorant instead of cultivated, and impudent instead of +diffident, I could have made a name for myself in this cold, selfish +world. I take my leave, sir. Since I have been treated as you have +treated me, I am perfectly willing to go. But I have done my duty. I +have fulfilled my contract as far as I was permitted to do it. I said I +could make your paper of interest to all classes--and I have. I said I +could run your circulation up to twenty thousand copies, and if I had had +two more weeks I'd have done it. And I'd have given you the best class +of readers that ever an agricultural paper had--not a farmer in it, nor a +solitary individual who could tell a watermelon-tree from a peach-vine to +save his life. You are the loser by this rupture, not me, Pie-plant. +Adios." + +I then left. + + + + + + +THE PETRIFIED MAN + +Now, to show how really hard it is to foist a moral or a truth upon an +unsuspecting public through a burlesque without entirely and absurdly +missing one's mark, I will here set down two experiences of my own in +this thing. In the fall of 1862, in Nevada and California, the people +got to running wild about extraordinary petrifactions and other natural +marvels. One could scarcely pick up a paper without finding in it one or +two glorified discoveries of this kind. The mania was becoming a little +ridiculous. I was a brand-new local editor in Virginia City, and I felt +called upon to destroy this growing evil; we all have our benignant, +fatherly moods at one time or another, I suppose. I chose to kill the +petrifaction mania with a delicate, a very delicate satire. But maybe it +was altogether too delicate, for nobody ever perceived the satire part of +it at all. I put my scheme in the shape of the discovery of a remarkably +petrified man. + +I had had a temporary falling out with Mr.----, the new coroner and +justice of the peace of Humboldt, and thought I might as well touch him +up a little at the same time and make him ridiculous, and thus combine +pleasure with business. So I told, in patient, belief-compelling detail, +all about the finding of a petrified-man at Gravelly Ford (exactly a +hundred and twenty miles, over a breakneck mountain trail from where +---- lived); how all the savants of the immediate neighborhood had been to +examine it (it was notorious that there was not a living creature within +fifty miles of there, except a few starving Indians; some crippled +grasshoppers, and four or five buzzards out of meat and too feeble to get +away); how those savants all pronounced the petrified man to have been in +a state of complete petrifaction for over ten generations; and then, with +a seriousness that I ought to have been ashamed to assume, I stated that +as soon as Mr.----heard the news he summoned a jury, mounted his mule, +and posted off, with noble reverence for official duty, on that awful +five days' journey, through alkali, sage brush, peril of body, and +imminent starvation, to hold an inquest on this man that had been dead +and turned to everlasting stone for more than three hundred years! +And then, my hand being "in," so to speak, I went on, with the same +unflinching gravity, to state that the jury returned a verdict that +deceased came to his death from protracted exposure. This only moved me +to higher flights of imagination, and I said that the jury, with that +charity so characteristic of pioneers, then dug a grave, and were about +to give the petrified man Christian burial, when they found that for ages +a limestone sediment had been trickling down the face of the stone +against which he was sitting, and this stuff had run under him and +cemented him fast to the "bed-rock"; that the jury (they were all +silver-miners) canvassed the difficulty a moment, and then got out their +powder and fuse, and proceeded to drill a hole under him, in order to +blast him from his position, when Mr.----, "with that delicacy so +characteristic of him, forbade them, observing that it would be little +less than sacrilege to do such a thing." + +From beginning to end the "Petrified Man" squib was a string of roaring +absurdities, albeit they were told with an unfair pretense of truth that +even imposed upon me to some extent, and I was in some danger of +believing in my own fraud. But I really had no desire to deceive +anybody, and no expectation of doing it. I depended on the way the +petrified man was sitting to explain to the public that he was a swindle. +Yet I purposely mixed that up with other things, hoping to make it +obscure--and I did. I would describe the position of one foot, and then +say his right thumb was against the side of his nose; then talk about his +other foot, and presently come back and say the fingers of his right hand +were spread apart; then talk about the back of his head a little, and +return and say the left thumb was hooked into the right little finger; +then ramble off about something else, and by and by drift back again and +remark that the fingers of the left hand were spread like those of the +right. But I was too ingenious. I mixed it up rather too much; and so +all that description of the attitude, as a key to the humbuggery of the +article, was entirely lost, for nobody but me ever discovered and +comprehended the peculiar and suggestive position of the petrified man's +hands. + +As a satire on the petrifaction mania, or anything else, my petrified Man +was a disheartening failure; for everybody received him in innocent good +faith, and I was stunned to see the creature I had begotten to pull down +the wonder-business with, and bring derision upon it, calmly exalted to +the grand chief place in the list of the genuine marvels our Nevada had +produced. I was so disappointed at the curious miscarriage of my scheme, +that at first I was angry, and did not like to think about it; but by and +by, when the exchanges began to come in with the Petrified Man copied and +guilelessly glorified, I began to feel a soothing secret satisfaction; +and as my gentleman's field of travels broadened, and by the exchanges I +saw that he steadily and implacably penetrated territory after territory, +state after state, and land after land, till he swept the great globe and +culminated in sublime and unimpeached legitimacy in the august London +Lancet, my cup was full, and I said I was glad I had done it. I think +that for about eleven months, as nearly as I can remember, Mr.----'s +daily mail-bag continued to be swollen by the addition of half a bushel +of newspapers hailing from many climes with the Petrified Man in them, +marked around with a prominent belt of ink. I sent them to him. I did +it for spite, not for fun. + +He used to shovel them into his back yard and curse. And every day +during all those months the miners, his constituents (for miners never +quit joking a person when they get started), would call on him and ask if +he could tell them where they could get hold of a paper with the +Petrified Man in it. He could have accommodated a continent with them. +I hated-----in those days, and these things pacified me and pleased me. +I could not have gotten more real comfort out of him without killing him. + + + + + + +MY BLOODY MASSACRE + +The other burlesque I have referred to was my fine satire upon the +financial expedients of "cooking dividends," a thing which became +shamefully frequent on the Pacific coast for a while. Once more, in my +self-complacent simplicity I felt that the time had arrived for me to +rise up and be a reformer. I put this reformatory satire, in the shape +of a fearful "Massacre at Empire City." The San Francisco papers were +making a great outcry about the iniquity of the Daney Silver-Mining +Company, whose directors had declared a "cooked" or false dividend, for +the purpose of increasing the value of their stock, so that they could +sell out at a comfortable figure, and then scramble from under the +tumbling concern. And while abusing the Daney, those papers did not +forget to urge the public to get rid of all their silver stocks and +invest in, sound and safe San Francisco stocks, such as the Spring Valley +Water Company, etc. But right at this unfortunate juncture, behold the +Spring Valley cooked a dividend too! And so, under the insidious mask of +an invented "bloody massacre," I stole upon the public unawares with my +scathing satire upon the dividend cooking system. In about half a column +of imaginary human carnage I told how a citizen hard murdered his wife +and nine children, and then committed suicide. And I said slyly, at the +bottom, that the sudden madness of which this melancholy massacre was the +result had been brought about by his having allowed himself to be +persuaded by the California papers to sell his sound and lucrative Nevada +silver stocks, and buy into Spring Valley just in time to get cooked +along with that company's fancy dividend, and sink every cent he had in +the world. + +Ah, it was a deep, deep satire, and most ingeniously contrived. But I +made the horrible details so carefully and conscientiously interesting +that the public devoured them greedily, and wholly overlooked the +following distinctly stated facts, to wit: The murderer was perfectly +well known to every creature in the land as a bachelor, and consequently +he could not murder his wife and nine children; he murdered them "in his +splendid dressed-stone mansion just in the edge of the great pine forest +between Empire City and Dutch Nick's," when even the very pickled oysters +that came on our tables knew that there was not a "dressed-stone mansion" +in all Nevada Territory; also that, so far from there being a "great pine +forest between Empire City and Dutch Nick's," there wasn't a solitary +tree within fifteen miles of either place; and, finally, it was patent +and notorious that Empire City and Dutch Nick's were one and the same +place, and contained only six houses anyhow, and consequently there could +be no forest between them; and on top of all these absurdities I stated +that this diabolical murderer, after inflicting a wound upon himself that +the reader ought to have seen would kill an elephant in the twinkling of +an eye, jumped on his horse and rode four miles, waving his wife's +reeking scalp in the air, and thus performing entered Carson City with +tremendous eclat, and dropped dead in front of the chief saloon, the envy +and admiration of all beholders. + +Well, in all my life I never saw anything like the sensation that little +satire created. It was the talk of the town, it was the talk of the +territory. Most of the citizens dropped gently into it at breakfast, and +they never finished their meal. There was something about those minutely +faithful details that was a sufficing substitute for food. Few people +that were able to read took food that morning. Dan and I (Dan was my +reportorial associate) took our seats on either side of our customary +table in the "Eagle Restaurant," and, as I unfolded the shred they used +to call a napkin in that establishment, I saw at the next table two +stalwart innocents with that sort of vegetable dandruff sprinkled about +their clothing which was the sign and evidence that they were in from the +Truckee with a load of hay. The one facing me had the morning paper +folded to a long, narrow strip, and I knew, without any telling, that +that strip represented the column that contained my pleasant financial +satire. From the way he was excitedly mumbling, I saw that the heedless +son of a hay-mow was skipping with all his might, in order to get to the +bloody details as quickly as possible; and so he was missing the +guide-boards I had set up to warn him that the whole thing was a fraud. +Presently his eyes spread wide open, just as his jaws swung asunder to +take in a potato approaching it on a fork; the potato halted, the face +lit up redly, and the whole man was on fire with excitement. Then he +broke into a disjointed checking off of the particulars--his potato +cooling in mid-air meantime, and his mouth making a reach for it +occasionally; but always bringing up suddenly against a new and still +more direful performance of my hero. At last he looked his stunned and +rigid comrade impressively in the face, and said, with an expression of +concentrated awe: + +"Jim, he b'iled his baby, and he took the old 'oman's skelp. Cuss'd if I +want any breakfast!" + +And he laid his lingering potato reverently down, and he and his friend +departed from the restaurant empty but satisfied. + +He never got down to where the satire part of it began. Nobody ever did. +They found the thrilling particulars sufficient. To drop in with a poor +little moral at the fag-end of such a gorgeous massacre was like +following the expiring sun with a candle and hope to attract the world's +attention to it. + +The idea that anybody could ever take my massacre for a genuine +occurrence never once suggested itself to me, hedged about as it was by +all those telltale absurdities and impossibilities concerning the "great +pine forest," the "dressed-stone mansion," etc. But I found out then, +and never have forgotten since, that we never read the dull explanatory +surroundings of marvelously exciting things when we have no occasion to +suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is trying to defraud us; we +skip all that, and hasten to revel in the blood-curdling particulars and +be happy. + + + + + + + +THE UNDERTAKER'S CHAT + +"Now that corpse," said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of +deceased approvingly, was a brick-every way you took him he was a brick. +He was so real accommodating, and so modest-like and simple in his last +moments. Friends wanted metallic burial-case--nothing else would do. +I couldn't get it. There warn't going to be time--anybody could see +that. + +"Corpse said never mind, shake him up some kind of a box he could stretch +out in comfortable, he warn't particular 'bout the general style of it. +Said he went more on room than style, anyway in a last final container. + +"Friends wanted a silver door-plate on the coffin, signifying who he was +and wher' he was from. Now you know a fellow couldn't roust out such a +gaily thing as that in a little country-town like this. What did corpse +say? + +"Corpse said, whitewash his old canoe and dob his address and general +destination onto it with a blacking-brush and a stencil-plate, 'long with +a verse from some likely hymn or other, and pint him for the tomb, and +mark him C. O. D., and just let him flicker. He warn't distressed any +more than you be--on the contrary, just as ca,'m and collected as a +hearse-horse; said he judged that wher' he was going to a body would find +it considerable better to attract attention by a picturesque moral +character than a natty burial-case with a swell door-plate on it. + +"Splendid man, he was. I'd druther do for a corpse like that 'n any I've +tackled in seven year. There's some satisfaction in buryin' a man like +that. You feel that what you're doing is appreciated. Lord bless you, +so's he got planted before he sp'iled, he was perfectly satisfied; said +his relations meant well, perfectly well, but all them preparations was +bound to delay the thing more or less, and he didn't wish to be kept +layin' around. You never see such a clear head as what he had--and so +ca,'m and so cool. Jist a hunk of brains--that is what he was. +Perfectly awful. It was a ripping distance from one end of that man's +head to t'other. Often and over again he's had brain-fever a-raging in +one place, and the rest of the pile didn't know anything about it--didn't +affect it any more than an Injun Insurrection in Arizona affects the +Atlantic States. + +"Well, the relations they wanted a big funeral, but corpse said he was +down on flummery--didn,'t want any procession--fill the hearse full of +mourners, and get out a stern line and tow him behind. He was the most +down on style of any remains I ever struck. A beautiful, simpleminded +creature it was what he was, you can depend on that. He was just set on +having things the way he wanted them, and he took a solid comfort in +laying his little plans. He had me measure him and take a whole raft of +directions; then he had the minister stand up behind along box with a +table--cloth over it, to represent the coffin, and read his funeral +sermon, saying 'Angcore, angcore!' at the good places, and making him +scratch out every bit of brag about him, and all the hifalutin; and then +he made them trot out the choir, so's he could help them pick out the +tunes for the occasion, and he got them to sing 'Pop Goes the Weasel,' +because he'd always liked that tune when he was downhearted, and solemn +music made him sad; and when they sung that with tears in their eyes +(because they all loved him), and his relations grieving around, he just +laid there as happy as a bug, and trying to beat time and showing all +over how much he enjoyed it; and presently he got worked up and excited, +and tried to join in, for, mind you, he was pretty proud of his abilities +in the singing line; but the first time he opened his mouth and was just +going to spread himself his breath took a walk. + +"I never see a man snuffed out so sudden. Ah, it was a great loss--a, +powerful loss to this poor little one-horse town. Well, well, well, I +hain't got time to be palavering along here--got to nail on the lid and +mosey along with him; and if you'll just give me a lift we'll skeet him +into the hearse and meander along. Relations bound to have it so--don't +pay no attention to dying injunctions, minute a corpse's gone; but, if I +had my way, if I didn't respect his last wishes and tow him behind the +hearse I'll be cuss'd. I consider that whatever a corpse wants done for +his comfort is little enough matter, and a man hain't got no right to +deceive him or take advantage of him; and whatever a corpse trusts me to +do I'm a-going to do, you know, even if it's to stuff him and paint him +yaller and keep him for a keepsake--you hear me!" + +He cracked his whip and went lumbering away with his ancient ruin of a +hearse, and I continued my walk with a valuable lesson learned--that a +healthy and wholesome cheerfulness is not necessarily impossible to any +occupation. The lesson is likely to be lasting, for it will take many +months to obliterate the memory of the remarks and circumstances that +impressed it. + + + + + + +CONCERNING CHAMBERMAIDS + +Against all chambermaids, of whatsoever age or nationality, I launch the +curse of bachelordom! Because: + +They always put the pillows at the opposite end of the bed from the +gas-burner, so that while you read and smoke before sleeping (as is the +ancient and honored custom of bachelors), you have to hold your book +aloft, in an uncomfortable position, to keep the light from dazzling your +eyes. + +When they find the pillows removed to the other end of the bed in the +morning, they receive not the suggestion in a friendly spirit; but, +glorying in their absolute sovereignty, and unpitying your helplessness, +they make the bed just as it was originally, and gloat in secret over the +pang their tyranny will cause you. + +Always after that, when they find you have transposed the pillows, they +undo your work, and thus defy and seek to embitter the life that God has +given you. + +If they cannot get the light in an inconvenient position any other way, +they move the bed. + +If you pull your trunk out six inches from the wall, so that the lid will +stay up when you open it, they always shove that trunk back again. They +do it on purpose. + +If you want the spittoon in a certain spot, where it will be handy, they +don't, and so they move it. + +They always put your other boots into inaccessible places. They chiefly +enjoy depositing them as far under the bed as the wall will permit. It +is because this compels you to get down in an undignified attitude and +make wild sweeps for them in the dark with the bootjack, and swear. + +They always put the matchbox in some other place. They hunt up a new +place for it every day, and put up a bottle, or other perishable glass +thing, where the box stood before. This is to cause you to break that +glass thing, groping in the dark, and get yourself into trouble. + +They are for ever and ever moving the furniture. When you come in in the +night you can calculate on finding the bureau where the wardrobe was in +the morning. And when you go out in the morning, if you leave the +slop-bucket by the door and rocking-chair by the window, when you come in +at midnight or thereabout, you will fall over that rocking-chair, and you +will proceed toward the window and sit down in that slop-tub. This will +disgust you. They like that. + +No matter where you put anything, they are not going to let it stay +there. They will take it and move it the first chance they get. It is +their nature. And, besides, it gives them pleasure to be mean and +contrary this way. They would die if they couldn't be villains. + +They always save up all the old scraps of printed rubbish you throw on +the floor, and stack them up carefully on the table, and start the fire +with your valuable manuscripts. If there is any one particular old scrap +that you are more down on than any other, and which you are gradually +wearing your life out trying to get rid of, you may take all the pains +you possibly can in that direction, but it won't be of any use, because +they will always fetch that old scrap back and put it in the same old +place again every time. It does them good. + +And they use up more hair-oil than any six men. If charged with +purloining the same, they lie about it. What do they care about a +hereafter? Absolutely nothing. + +If you leave the key in the door for convenience' sake, they will carry +it down to the office and give it to the clerk. They do this under the +vile pretense of trying to protect your property from thieves; but +actually they do it because they want to make you tramp back down-stairs +after it when you come home tired, or put you to the trouble of sending a +waiter for it, which waiter will expect you to pay him something. In +which case I suppose the degraded creatures divide. + +They keep always trying to make your bed before you get up, thus +destroying your rest and inflicting agony upon you; but after you get up, +they don't come any more till next day. + +They do all the mean things they can think of, and they do them just out +of pure cussedness, and nothing else. + +Chambermaids are dead to every human instinct. + +If I can get a bill through the legislature abolishing chambermaids, I +mean to do it. + + + + + + +AURELIA'S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN--[Written about 1865.] + +The facts in the following case came to me by letter from a young lady +who lives in the beautiful city of San Jose; she is perfectly unknown to +me, and simply signs herself "Aurelia Maria," which may possibly be a +fictitious name. But no matter, the poor girl is almost heartbroken by +the misfortunes she has undergone, and so confused by the conflicting +counsels of misguided friends and insidious enemies that she does not +know what course to pursue in order to extricate herself from the web of +difficulties in which she seems almost hopelessly involved. In this +dilemma she turns to me for help, and supplicates for my guidance and +instruction with a moving eloquence that would touch the heart of a +statue. Hear her sad story: + +She says that when she was sixteen years old she met and loved, with all +the devotion of a passionate nature, a young man from New Jersey, named +Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers, who was some six years her senior. +They were engaged, with the free consent of their friends and relatives, +and for a time it seemed as if their career was destined to, be +characterized by an immunity from sorrow beyond the usual lot of +humanity. But at last the tide of fortune turned; young Caruthers became +infect with smallpox of the most virulent type, and when he recovered +from his illness his face was pitted like a waffle-mold, and his +comeliness gone forever. Aurelia thought to break off the engagement at +first, but pity for her unfortunate lover caused her to postpone the +marriage-day for a season, and give him another trial. + +The very day before the wedding was to have taken place, Breckinridge, +while absorbed in watching the flight of a balloon, walked into a well +and fractured one of his legs, and it had to be taken off above the knee. +Again Aurelia was moved to break the engagement, but again love +triumphed, and she set the day forward and gave him another chance to +reform. + +And again misfortune overtook the unhappy youth. He lost one arm by the +premature discharge of a Fourth of July cannon, and within three months +he got the other pulled out by a carding-machine. Aurelia's heart was +almost crushed by these latter calamities. She could not but be deeply +grieved to see her lover passing from her by piecemeal, feeling, as she +did, that he could not last forever under this disastrous process of +reduction, yet knowing of no way to stop its dreadful career, and in her +tearful despair she almost regretted, like brokers who hold on and lose, +that she had not taken him at first, before he had suffered such an +alarming depreciation. Still, her brave soul bore her up, and she +resolved to bear with her friend's unnatural disposition yet a little +longer. + +Again the wedding-day approached, and again disappointment overshadowed +it; Caruthers fell ill with the erysipelas, and lost the use of one of +his eyes entirely. The friends and relatives of the bride, considering +that she had already put up with more than could reasonably be expected +of her, now came forward and insisted that the match should be broken +off; but after wavering awhile, Aurelia, with a generous spirit which did +her credit, said she had reflected calmly upon the matter, and could not +discover that Breckinridge was to blame. + +So she extended the time once more, and he broke his other leg. + +It was a sad day for the poor girl when, she saw the surgeons reverently +bearing away the sack whose uses she had learned by previous experience, +and her heart told her the bitter truth that some more of her lover was +gone. She felt that the field of her affections was growing more and +more circumscribed every day, but once more she frowned down her +relatives and renewed her betrothal. + +Shortly before the time set for the nuptials another disaster occurred. +There was but one man scalped by the Owens River Indians last year. That +man was Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers of New Jersey. He was hurrying +home with happiness in his heart, when he lost his hair forever, and in +that hour of bitterness he almost cursed the mistaken mercy that had +spared his head. + +At last Aurelia is in serious perplexity as to what she ought to do. She +still loves her Breckinridge, she writes, with truly womanly feeling--she +still loves what is left of him but her parents are bitterly opposed to +the match, because he has no property and is disabled from working, and +she has not sufficient means to support both comfortably. "Now, what +should she do?" she asked with painful and anxious solicitude. + +It is a delicate question; it is one which involves the lifelong +happiness of a woman, and that of nearly two-thirds of a man, and I feel +that it would be assuming too great a responsibility to do more than make +a mere suggestion in the case. How would it do to build to him? If +Aurelia can afford the expense, let her furnish her mutilated lover with +wooden arms and wooden legs, and a glass eye and a wig, and give him +another show; give him ninety days, without grace, and if he does not +break his neck in the mean time, marry him and take the chances. It does +not seem to me that there is much risk, anyway, Aurelia, because if he +sticks to his singular propensity for damaging himself every time he sees +a good opportunity, his next experiment is bound to finish him, and then +you are safe, married or single. If married, the wooden legs and such +other valuables as he may possess revert to the widow, and you see you +sustain no actual loss save the cherished fragment of a noble but most +unfortunate husband, who honestly strove to do right, but whose +extraordinary instincts were against him. Try it, Maria. I have thought +the matter over carefully and well, and it is the only chance I see for +you. It would have been a happy conceit on the part of Caruthers if he +had started with his neck and broken that first; but since he has seen +fit to choose a different policy and string himself out as long as +possible, I do not think we ought to upbraid him for it if he has enjoyed +it. We must do the best we can under the circumstances, and try not to +feel exasperated at him. + + + + + + +"AFTER" JENKINS + +A grand affair of a ball--the Pioneers'--came off at the Occidental some +time ago. The following notes of the costumes worn by the belles of the +occasion may not be uninteresting to the general reader, and Jerkins may +get an idea therefrom: + +Mrs. W. M. was attired in an elegant 'pate de foie gras,' made expressly +for her, and was greatly admired. Miss S. had her hair done up. She was +the center of attraction for the envy of all the ladies. Mrs. G. W. was +tastefully dressed in a 'tout ensemble,' and was greeted with deafening +applause wherever she went. Mrs. C. N. was superbly arrayed in white kid +gloves. Her modest and engaging manner accorded well with the +unpretending simplicity of her costume and caused her to be regarded with +absorbing interest by every one. + +The charming Miss M. M. B. appeared in a thrilling waterfall, whose +exceeding grace and volume compelled the homage of pioneers and emigrants +alike. How beautiful she was! + +The queenly Mrs. L. R. was attractively attired in her new and beautiful +false teeth, and the 'bon jour' effect they naturally produced was +heightened by her enchanting and well-sustained smile. + +Miss R. P., with that repugnance to ostentation in dress which is so +peculiar to her, was attired in a simple white lace collar, fastened with +a neat pearl-button solitaire. The fine contrast between the sparkling +vivacity of her natural optic, and the steadfast attentiveness of her +placid glass eye, was the subject of general and enthusiastic remark. + +Miss C. L. B. had her fine nose elegantly enameled, and the easy grace +with which she blew it from time to time marked her as a cultivated and +accomplished woman of the world; its exquisitely modulated tone excited +the admiration of all who had the happiness to hear it. + + + + + + +ABOUT BARBERS + +All things change except barbers, the ways of barbers, and the +surroundings of barbers. These never change. What one experiences in a +barber's shop the first time he enters one is what he always experiences +in barbers' shops afterward till the end of his days. I got shaved this +morning as usual. A man approached the door from Jones Street as I +approached it from Main--a thing that always happens. I hurried up, but +it was of no use; he entered the door one little step ahead of me, and I +followed in on his heels and saw him take the only vacant chair, the one +presided over by the best barber. It always happens so. I sat down, +hoping that I might fall heir to the chair belonging to the better of the +remaining two barbers, for he had already begun combing his man's hair, +while his comrade was not yet quite done rubbing up and oiling his +customer's locks. I watched the probabilities with strong interest. +When I saw that No. 2 was gaining on No. 1 my interest grew to +solicitude. When No. 1 stopped a moment to make change on a bath ticket +for a new-comer, and lost ground in the race, my solicitude rose to +anxiety. When No. 1 caught up again, and both he and his comrade were +pulling the towels away and brushing the powder from their customers' +cheeks, and it was about an even thing which one would say "Next!" first, +my very breath stood still with the suspense. But when at the +culminating moment No. 1 stopped to pass a comb a couple of times through +his customer's eyebrows, I saw that he had lost the race by a single +instant, and I rose indignant and quitted the shop, to keep from falling +into the hands of No. 2; for I have none of that enviable firmness that +enables a man to look calmly into the eyes of a waiting barber and tell +him he will wait for his fellow-barber's chair. + +I stayed out fifteen minutes, and then went back, hoping for better luck. +Of course all the chairs were occupied now, and four men sat waiting, +silent, unsociable, distraught, and looking bored, as men always do who +are waiting their turn in a barber's shop. I sat down in one of the +iron-armed compartments of an old sofa, and put in the time far a while +reading the framed advertisements of all sorts of quack nostrums for +dyeing and coloring the hair. Then I read the greasy names on the +private bayrum bottles; read the names and noted the numbers on the +private shaving-cups in the pigeonholes; studied the stained and damaged +cheap prints on the walls, of battles, early Presidents, and voluptuous +recumbent sultanas, and the tiresome and everlasting young girl putting +her grandfather's spectacles on; execrated in my heart the cheerful +canary and the distracting parrot that few barbers' shops are without. +Finally, I searched out the least dilapidated of last year's illustrated +papers that littered the foul center-table, and conned their +unjustifiable misrepresentations of old forgotten events. + +At last my turn came. A voice said "Next!" and I surrendered to--No. 2, +of course. It always happens so. I said meekly that I was in a hurry, +and it affected him as strongly as if he had never heard it. He shoved +up my head, and put a napkin under it. He plowed his fingers into my +collar and fixed a towel there. He explored my hair with his claws and +suggested that it needed trimming. I said I did not want it trimmed. He +explored again and said it was pretty long for the present style--better +have a little taken off; it needed it behind especially. I said I had +had it cut only a week before. He yearned over it reflectively a moment, +and then asked with a disparaging manner, who cut it? I came back at him +promptly with a "You did!" I had him there. Then he fell to stirring up +his lather and regarding himself in the glass, stopping now and then to +get close and examine his chin critically or inspect a pimple. Then he +lathered one side of my face thoroughly, and was about to lather the +other, when a dog-fight attracted his attention, and he ran to the window +and stayed and saw it out, losing two shillings on the result in bets +with the other barbers, a thing which gave me great satisfaction. He +finished lathering, and then began to rub in the suds with his hand. + +He now began to sharpen his razor on an old suspender, and was delayed a +good deal on account of a controversy about a cheap masquerade ball he +had figured at the night before, in red cambric and bogus ermine, as some +kind of a king. He was so gratified with being chaffed about some damsel +whom he had smitten with his charms that he used every means to continue +the controversy by pretending to be annoyed at the chaffings of his +fellows. This matter begot more surveyings of himself in the glass, and +he put down his razor and brushed his hair with elaborate care, +plastering an inverted arch of it down on his forehead, accomplishing an +accurate "Part" behind, and brushing the two wings forward over his ears +with nice exactness. In the mean time the lather was drying on my face, +and apparently eating into my vitals. + +Now he began to shave, digging his fingers into my countenance to stretch +the skin and bundling and tumbling my head this way and that as +convenience in shaving demanded. As long as he was on the tough sides of +my face I did not suffer; but when he began to rake, and rip, and tug at +my chin, the tears came. He now made a handle of my nose, to assist him +shaving the corners of my upper lip, and it was by this bit of +circumstantial evidence that I discovered that a part of his duties in +the shop was to clean the kerosene-lamps. I had often wondered in an +indolent way whether the barbers did that, or whether it was the boss. + +About this time I was amusing myself trying to guess where he would be +most likely to cut me this time, but he got ahead of me, and sliced me on +the end of the chin before I had got my mind made up. He immediately +sharpened his razor--he might have done it before. I do not like a close +shave, and would not let him go over me a second time. I tried to get +him to put up his razor, dreading that he would make for the side of my +chin, my pet tender spot, a place which a razor cannot touch twice +without making trouble; but he said he only wanted to just smooth off one +little roughness, and in the same moment he slipped his razor along the +forbidden ground, and the dreaded pimple-signs of a close shave rose up +smarting and answered to the call. Now he soaked his towel in bay rum, +and slapped it all over my face nastily; slapped it over as if a human +being ever yet washed his face in that way. Then he dried it by slapping +with the dry part of the towel, as if a human being ever dried his face +in such a fashion; but a barber seldom rubs you like a Christian. Next +he poked bay ruin into the cut place with his towel, then choked the +wound with powdered starch, then soaked it with bay rum again, and would +have gone on soaking and powdering it forevermore, no doubt, if I had not +rebelled and begged off. He powdered my whole face now, straightened me +up, and began to plow my hair thoughtfully with his hands. Then he +suggested a shampoo, and said my hair needed it badly, very badly. +I observed that I shampooed it myself very thoroughly in the bath +yesterday. I "had him" again. He next recommended some of "Smith's Hair +Glorifier," and offered to sell me a bottle. I declined. He praised the +new perfume, "Jones's Delight of the Toilet," and proposed to sell me +some of that. I declined again. He tendered me a tooth-wash atrocity of +his own invention, and when I declined offered to trade knives with me. + +He returned to business after the miscarriage of this last enterprise, +sprinkled me all over, legs and all, greased my hair in defiance of my +protest against it, rubbed and scrubbed a good deal of it out by the +roots, and combed and brushed the rest, parting it behind, and plastering +the eternal inverted arch of hair down on my forehead, and then, while +combing my scant eyebrows and defiling them with pomade, strung out an +account of the achievements of a six-ounce black-and-tan terrier of his +till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five minutes too +late for the train. Then he snatched away the towel, brushed it lightly +about my face, passed his comb through my eyebrows once more, and gaily +sang out "Next!" + +This barber fell down and died of apoplexy two hours later. I am waiting +over a day for my revenge--I am going to attend his funeral. + + + + + + +"PARTY CRIES" IN IRELAND + +Belfast is a peculiarly religious community. This may be said of the +whole of the North of Ireland. About one-half of the people are +Protestants and the other half Catholics. Each party does all it can to +make its own doctrines popular and draw the affections of the irreligious +toward them. One hears constantly of the most touching instances of this +zeal. A week ago a vast concourse of Catholics assembled at Armagh to +dedicate a new Cathedral; and when they started home again the roadways +were lined with groups of meek and lowly Protestants who stoned them till +all the region round about was marked with blood. I thought that only +Catholics argued in that way, but it seems to be a mistake. + +Every man in the community is a missionary and carries a brick to +admonish the erring with. The law has tried to break this up, but not +with perfect success. It has decreed that irritating "party cries" shall +not be indulged in, and that persons uttering them shall be fined forty +shillings and costs. And so, in the police court reports every day, one +sees these fines recorded. Last week a girl of twelve years old was +fined the usual forty shillings and costs for proclaiming in the public +streets that she was "a Protestant." The usual cry is, "To hell with the +Pope!" or "To hell with the Protestants!" according to the utterer's +system of salvation. + +One of Belfast's local jokes was very good. It referred to the uniform +and inevitable fine of forty shillings and costs for uttering a party +cry--and it is no economical fine for a poor man, either, by the way. +They say that a policeman found a drunken man lying on the ground, up a +dark alley, entertaining himself with shouting, "To hell with!" "To hell +with!" The officer smelt a fine--informers get half. + +"What's that you say?" + +"To hell with!" + +"To hell with who? To hell with what?" + +"Ah, bedad, ye can finish it yourself--it's too expansive for me!" + +I think the seditious disposition, restrained by the economical instinct, +is finely put in that. + + + + + + +THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT RESIGNATION + +WASHINGTON, December, 1867. + +I have resigned. The government appears to go on much the same, but +there is a spoke out of its wheel, nevertheless. I was clerk of the +Senate Committee on Conchology, and I have thrown up the position. +I could see the plainest disposition on the part of the other members of +the government to debar me from having any voice in the counsels of the +nation, and so I could no longer hold office and retain my self-respect. +If I were to detail all the outrages that were heaped upon me during the +six days that I was connected with the government in an official +capacity, the narrative would fill a volume. They appointed me clerk of +that Committee on Conchology and then allowed me no amanuensis to play +billiards with. I would have borne that, lonesome as it was, if I had +met with that courtesy from the other members of the Cabinet which was my +due. But I did not. Whenever I observed that the head of a department +was pursuing a wrong course, I laid down everything and went and tried to +set him right, as it was my duty to do; and I never was thanked for it in +a single instance. I went, with the best intentions in the world, to the +Secretary of the Navy, and said: + +"Sir, I cannot see that Admiral Farragut is doing anything but +skirmishing around there in Europe, having a sort of picnic. Now, that +may be all very well, but it does not exhibit itself to me in that light. +If there is no fighting for him to do, let him come home. There is no +use in a man having a whole fleet for a pleasure excursion. It is too +expensive. Mind, I do not object to pleasure excursions for the naval +officers--pleasure excursions that are in reason--pleasure excursions +that are economical. Now, they might go down the Mississippi +on a raft--" + +You ought to have heard him storm! One would have supposed I had +committed a crime of some kind. But I didn't mind. I said it was cheap, +and full of republican simplicity, and perfectly safe. I said that, for +a tranquil pleasure excursion, there was nothing equal to a raft. + +Then the Secretary of the Navy asked me who I was; and when I told him I +was connected with the government, he wanted to know in what capacity. I +said that, without remarking upon the singularity of such a question, +coming, as it did, from a member of that same government, I would inform +him that I was clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology. Then there +was a fine storm! He finished by ordering me to leave the premises, and +give my attention strictly to my own business in future. My first +impulse was to get him removed. However, that would harm others besides +himself, and do me no real good, and so I let him stay. + +I went next to the Secretary of War, who was not inclined to see me at +all until he learned that I was connected with the government. If I had +not been on important business, I suppose I could not have got in. +I asked him for alight (he was smoking at the time), and then I told him +I had no fault to find with his defending the parole stipulations of +General Lee and his comrades in arms, but that I could not approve of his +method of fighting the Indians on the Plains. I said he fought too +scattering. He ought to get the Indians more together--get them together +in some convenient place, where he could have provisions enough for both +parties, and then have a general massacre. I said there was nothing so +convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve +of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and +education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they +are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may +recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him +some time or other. It undermines his constitution; it strikes at the +foundation of his being. "Sir," I said, "the time has come when +blood-curdling cruelty has become necessary. Inflict soap and a +spelling-book on every Indian that ravages the Plains, and let them die!" + +The Secretary of War asked me if I was a member of the Cabinet, and I +said I was. He inquired what position I held, and I said I was clerk of +the Senate Committee on Conchology. I was then ordered under arrest for +contempt of court, and restrained of my liberty for the best part of the +day. + +I almost resolved to be silent thenceforward, and let the Government get +along the best way it could. But duty called, and I obeyed. I called on +the Secretary of the Treasury. He said: + +"What will you have?" + +The question threw me off my guard. I said, "Rum punch." + +He said: "If you have got any business here, sir, state it--and in as few +words as possible." + +I then said that I was sorry he had seen fit to change the subject so +abruptly, because such conduct was very offensive to me; but under the +circumstances I would overlook the matter and come to the point. I now +went into an earnest expostulation with him upon the extravagant length +of his report. I said it was expensive, unnecessary, and awkwardly +constructed; there were no descriptive passages in it, no poetry, no +sentiment no heroes, no plot, no pictures--not even wood-cuts. Nobody +would read it, that was a clear case. I urged him not to ruin his +reputation by getting out a thing like that. If he ever hoped to succeed +in literature he must throw more variety into his writings. He must +beware of dry detail. I said that the main popularity of the almanac was +derived from its poetry and conundrums, and that a few conundrums +distributed around through his Treasury report would help the sale of it +more than all the internal revenue he could put into it. I said these +things in the kindest spirit, and yet the Secretary of the Treasury fell +into a violent passion. He even said I was an ass. He abused me in the +most vindictive manner, and said that if I came there again meddling with +his business he would throw me out of the window. I said I would take my +hat and go, if I could not be treated with the respect due to my office, +and I did go. It was just like a new author. They always think they +know more than anybody else when they are getting out their first book. +Nobody can tell them anything. + +During the whole time that I was connected with the government it seemed +as if I could not do anything in an official capacity without getting +myself into trouble. And yet I did nothing, attempted nothing, but what +I conceived to be for the good of my country. The sting of my wrongs may +have driven me to unjust and harmful conclusions, but it surely seemed to +me that the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of +the Treasury, and others of my confreres had conspired from the very +beginning to drive me from the Administration. I never attended but one +Cabinet meeting while I was connected with the government. That was +sufficient for me. The servant at the White House door did not seem +disposed to make way for me until I asked if the other members of the +Cabinet had arrived. He said they had, and I entered. They were all +there; but nobody offered me a seat. They stared at me as if I had been +an intruder. The President said: + +"Well, sir, who are you?" + +I handed him my card, and he read: "The HON. MARK TWAIN, Clerk of the +Senate Committee on Conchology." Then he looked at me from head to foot, +as if he had never heard of me before. The Secretary of the Treasury +said: + +"This is the meddlesome ass that came to recommend me to put poetry and +conundrums in my report, as if it were an almanac." + +The Secretary of War said: "It is the same visionary that came to me +yesterday with a scheme to educate a portion of the Indians to death, +and massacre the balance." + +The Secretary of the Navy said: "I recognize this youth as the person who +has been interfering with my business time and again during the week. He +is distressed about Admiral Farragut's using a whole fleet for a pleasure +excursion, as he terms it. His proposition about some insane pleasure +excursion on a raft is too absurd to repeat." + +I said: "Gentlemen, I perceive here a disposition to throw discredit +upon every act of my official career; I perceive, also, a disposition to +debar me from all voice in the counsels of the nation. No notice +whatever was sent to me to-day. It was only by the merest chance that I +learned that there was going to be a Cabinet meeting. But let these +things pass. All I wish to know is, is this a Cabinet meeting or is it +not?" + +The President said it was. + +"Then," I said, "let us proceed to business at once, and not fritter away +valuable time in unbecoming fault-findings with each other's official +conduct." + +The Secretary of State now spoke up, in his benignant way, and said, +"Young man, you are laboring under a mistake. The clerks of the +Congressional committees are not members of the Cabinet. Neither are the +doorkeepers of the Capitol, strange as it may seem. Therefore, much as +we could desire your more than human wisdom in our deliberations, we +cannot lawfully avail ourselves of it. The counsels of the nation must +proceed without you; if disaster follows, as follow full well it may, be +it balm to your sorrowing spirit that by deed and voice you did what in +you lay to avert it. You have my blessing. Farewell." + +These gentle words soothed my troubled breast, and I went away. But the +servants of a nation can know no peace. I had hardly reached my den in +the Capitol, and disposed my feet on the table like a representative, +when one of the Senators on the Conchological Committee came in in a +passion and said: + +"Where have you been all day?" + +I observed that, if that was anybody's affair but my own, I had been to a +Cabinet meeting. + +"To a Cabinet meeting? I would like to know what business you had at a +Cabinet meeting?" + +I said I went there to consult--allowing for the sake of argument that he +was in any wise concerned in the matter. He grew insolent then, and +ended by saying he had wanted me for three days past to copy a report on +bomb-shells, egg-shells, clamshells, and I don't know what all, connected +with conchology, and nobody had been able to find me. + +This was too much. This was the feather that broke the clerical camel's +back. I said, "Sir, do you suppose that I am going to work for six +dollars a day? If that is the idea, let me recommend the Senate +Committee on Conchology to hire somebody else. I am the slave of no +faction! Take back your degrading commission. Give me liberty, or give +me death!" + +From that hour I was no longer connected with the government. Snubbed by +the department, snubbed by the Cabinet, snubbed at last by the chairman +of a committee I was endeavoring to adorn, I yielded to persecution, cast +far from me the perils and seductions of my great office, and forsook my +bleeding country in the hour of her peril. + +But I had done the state some service, and I sent in my bill: + + The United States of America in account with + the Hon. Clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology, Dr. + To consultation with Secretary of War ............ $50 + To consultation with Secretary of Navy ........... $50 + To consultation with Secretary of the Treasury ... $50 + Cabinet consultation ...................No charge. + To mileage to and from Jerusalem, via Egypt, + Algiers, Gibraltar, and Cadiz, + 14,000 miles, at 20c. a mile ............. $2,800 + To salary as Clerk of Senate Committee + on Conchology, six days, at $6 per day ........... $36 + + Total .......................... $2,986 + +--[Territorial delegates charge mileage both ways, although they never go +back when they get here once. Why my mileage is denied me is more than I +can understand.] + +Not an item of this bill has been paid, except that trifle of thirty-six +dollars for clerkship salary. The Secretary of the Treasury, pursuing me +to the last, drew his pen through all the other items, and simply marked +in the margin "Not allowed." So, the dread alternative is embraced at +last. Repudiation has begun! The nation is lost. + +I am done with official life for the present. Let those clerks who are +willing to be imposed on remain. I know numbers of them in the +departments who are never informed when there is to be a Cabinet meeting, +whose advice is never asked about war, or finance, or commerce, by the +heads of the nation, any more than if they were not connected with the +government, and who actually stay in their offices day after day and +work! They know their importance to the nation, and they unconsciously +show it in their bearing, and the way they order their sustenance at the +restaurant--but they work. I know one who has to paste all sorts of +little scraps from the newspapers into a scrapbook--sometimes as many as +eight or ten scraps a day. He doesn't do it well, but he does it as well +as he can. It is very fatiguing. It is exhausting to the intellect. +Yet he only gets eighteen hundred dollars a year. With a brain like his, +that young man could amass thousands and thousands of dollars in some +other pursuit, if he chose to do it. But no--his heart is with his +country, and he will serve her as long as she has got a scrapbook left. +And I know clerks that don't know how to write very well, but such +knowledge as they possess they nobly lay at the feet of their country, +and toil on and suffer for twenty-five hundred dollars a year. What they +write has to be written over again by other clerks sometimes; but when a +man has done his best for his country, should his country complain? Then +there are clerks that have no clerkships, and are waiting, and waiting, +and waiting for a vacancy--waiting patiently for a chance to help their +country out--and while they, are waiting, they only get barely two +thousand dollars a year for it. It is sad it is very, very sad. When a +member of Congress has a friend who is gifted, but has no employment +wherein his great powers may be brought to bear, he confers him upon his +country, and gives him a clerkship in a department. And there that man +has to slave his life out, fighting documents for the benefit of a nation +that never thinks of him, never sympathizes with him--and all for two +thousand or three thousand dollars a year. When I shall have completed +my list of all the clerks in the several departments, with my statement +of what they have to do, and what they get for it, you will see that +there are not half enough clerks, and that what there are do not get half +enough pay. + + + + + + +HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF + +The following I find in a Sandwich Island paper which some friend has +sent me from that tranquil far-off retreat. The coincidence between my +own experience and that here set down by the late Mr. Benton is so +remarkable that I cannot forbear publishing and commenting upon the +paragraph. The Sandwich Island paper says: + +How touching is this tribute of the late Hon. T. H. Benton to his +mother's influence:--'My mother asked me never to use tobacco; I have +never touched it from that time to the present day. She asked me not to +gamble, and I have never gambled. I cannot tell who is losing in games +that are being played. She admonished me, too, against liquor-drinking, +and whatever capacity for endurance I have at present, and whatever +usefulness I may have attained through life, I attribute to having +complied with her pious and correct wishes. When I was seven years of +age she asked me not to drink, and then I made a resolution of total +abstinence; and that I have adhered to it through all time I owe to my +mother.' + +I never saw anything so curious. It is almost an exact epitome of my own +moral career--after simply substituting a grandmother for a mother. How +well I remember my grandmother's asking me not to use tobacco, good old +soul! She said, "You're at it again, are you, you whelp? Now don't ever +let me catch you chewing tobacco before breakfast again, or I lay I'll +blacksnake you within an inch of your life!" I have never touched it at +that hour of the morning from that time to the present day. + +She asked me not to gamble. She whispered and said, "Put up those wicked +cards this minute!--two pair and a jack, you numskull, and the other +fellow's got a flush!" + +I never have gambled from that day to this--never once--without a "cold +deck" in my pocket. I cannot even tell who is going to lose in games +that are being played unless I deal myself. + +When I was two years of age she asked me not to drink, and then I made a +resolution of total abstinence. That I have adhered to it and enjoyed +the beneficent effects of it through all time, I owe to my grandmother. +I have never drunk a drop from that day to this of any kind of water. + + + + + + +HONORED AS A CURIOSITY + +If you get into conversation with a stranger in Honolulu, and experience +that natural desire to know what sort of ground you are treading on by +finding out what manner of man your stranger is, strike out boldly and +address him as "Captain." Watch him narrowly, and if you see by his +countenance that you are on the wrong track, ask him where he preaches. +It is a safe bet that he is either a missionary or captain of a whaler. +I became personally acquainted with seventy-two captains and ninety-six +missionaries. The captains and ministers form one-half of the +population; the third fourth is composed of common Kanakas and mercantile +foreigners and their families; and the final fourth is made up of high +officers of the Hawaiian Government. And there are just about cats +enough for three apiece all around. + +A solemn stranger met me in the suburbs one day, and said: + +"Good morning, your reverence. Preach in the stone church yonder, no +doubt!" + +"No, I don't. I'm not a preacher." + +"Really, I beg your pardon, captain. I trust you had a good season. How +much oil--" + +"Oil! Why, what do you take me for? I'm not a whaler." + +"Oh! I beg a thousand pardons, your Excellency. Major-General in the +household troops, no doubt? Minister of the Interior, likely? Secretary +of War? First Gentleman of the Bedchamber? Commissioner of the Royal--" + +"Stuff, man! I'm not connected in any way with the government." + +"Bless my life! Then who the mischief are you? what the mischief are +you? and how the mischief did you get here? and where in thunder did you +come from?" + +"I'm only a private personage--an unassuming stranger--lately arrived +from America." + +"No! Not a missionary! not a whaler! not a member of his Majesty's +government! not even a Secretary of the Navy! Ah! Heaven! it is too +blissful to be true, alas! I do but dream. And yet that noble, honest +countenance--those oblique, ingenuous eyes--that massive head, incapable +of--of anything; your hand; give me your hand, bright waif. Excuse these +tears. For sixteen weary years I have yearned for a moment like this, +and--" + +Here his feelings were too much for him, and he swooned away. I pitied +this poor creature from the bottom of my heart. I was deeply moved. +I shed a few tears on him, and kissed him for his mother. I then took +what small change he had, and "shoved." + + + + + + +FIRST INTERVIEW WITH ARTEMUS WARD--[Written about 1870.] + +I had never seen him before. He brought letters of introduction from +mutual friends in San Francisco, and by invitation I breakfasted with +him. It was almost religion, there in the silver-mines, to precede such +a meal with whisky cocktails. Artemus, with the true cosmopolitan +instinct, always deferred to the customs of the country he was in, and so +he ordered three of those abominations. Hingston was present. I said I +would rather not drink a whisky cocktail. I said it would go right to my +head, and confuse me so that I would be in a helpless tangle in ten +minutes. I did not want to act like a lunatic before strangers. But +Artemus gently insisted, and I drank the treasonable mixture under +protest, and felt all the time that I was doing a thing I might be sorry +for. In a minute or two I began to imagine that my ideas were clouded. +I waited in great anxiety for the conversation to open, with a sort of +vague hope that my understanding would prove clear, after all, and my +misgivings groundless. + +Artemus dropped an unimportant remark or two, and then assumed a look of +superhuman earnestness, and made the following astounding speech. He +said: + +"Now there is one thing I ought to ask you about before I forget it. You +have been here in Silver land--here in Nevada--two or three years, and, +of course, your position on the daily press has made it necessary for you +to go down in the mines and examine them carefully in detail, and +therefore you know all about the silver-mining business. Now what I want +to get at is--is, well, the way the deposits of ore are made, you know. +For instance. Now, as I understand it, the vein which contains the +silver is sandwiched in between casings of granite, and runs along the +ground, and sticks up like a curb stone. Well, take a vein forty feet +thick, for example, or eighty, for that matter, or even a hundred--say +you go down on it with a shaft, straight down, you know, or with what you +call 'incline' maybe you go down five hundred feet, or maybe you don't go +down but two hundred--anyway, you go down, and all the time this vein +grows narrower, when the casings come nearer or approach each other, you +may say--that is, when they do approach, which, of course, they do not +always do, particularly in cases where the nature of the formation is +such that they stand apart wider than they otherwise would, and which +geology has failed to account for, although everything in that science +goes to prove that, all things being equal, it would if it did not, or +would not certainly if it did, and then, of course, they are. Do not you +think it is?" + +I said to myself: + +"Now I just knew how it would be--that whisky cocktail has done the +business for me; I don't understand any more than a clam." + +And then I said aloud: + +"I--I--that is--if you don't mind, would you--would you say that over +again? I ought--" + +"Oh, certainly, certainly! You see I am very unfamiliar with the +subject, and perhaps I don't present my case clearly, but I--" + +"No, no-no, no-you state it plain enough, but that cocktail has muddled +me a little. But I will no, I do understand for that matter; but I would +get the hang of it all the better if you went over it again-and I'll pay +better attention this time." + +He said; "Why, what I was after was this." + +[Here he became even more fearfully impressive than ever, and emphasized +each particular point by checking it off on his finger-ends.] + +"This vein, or lode, or ledge, or whatever you call it, runs along +between two layers of granite, just the same as if it were a sandwich. +Very well. Now suppose you go down on that, say a thousand feet, or +maybe twelve hundred (it don't really matter) before you drift, and then +you start your drifts, some of them across the ledge, and others along +the length of it, where the sulphurets--I believe they call them +sulphurets, though why they should, considering that, so far as I can +see, the main dependence of a miner does not so lie, as some suppose, but +in which it cannot be successfully maintained, wherein the same should +not continue, while part and parcel of the same ore not committed to +either in the sense referred to, whereas, under different circumstances, +the most inexperienced among us could not detect it if it were, or might +overlook it if it did, or scorn the very idea of such a thing, even +though it were palpably demonstrated as such. Am I not right?" + +I said, sorrowfully: "I feel ashamed of myself, Mr. Ward. I know I +ought to understand you perfectly well, but you see that treacherous +whisky cocktail has got into my head, and now I cannot understand even +the simplest proposition. I told you how it would be." + +"Oh, don't mind it, don't mind it; the fault was my own, no doubt--though +I did think it clear enough for--" + +"Don't say a word. Clear! Why, you stated it as clear as the sun to +anybody but an abject idiot; but it's that confounded cocktail that has +played the mischief." + +"No; now don't say that. I'll begin it all over again, and--" + +"Don't now--for goodness' sake, don't do anything of the kind, because I +tell you my head is in such a condition that I don't believe I could +understand the most trifling question a man could ask me. + +"Now don't you be afraid. I'll put it so plain this time that you can't +help but get the hang of it. We will begin at the very beginning." +[Leaning far across the table, with determined impressiveness wrought +upon his every feature, and fingers prepared to keep tally of each point +enumerated; and I, leaning forward with painful interest, resolved to +comprehend or perish.] "You know the vein, the ledge, the thing that +contains the metal, whereby it constitutes the medium between all other +forces, whether of present or remote agencies, so brought to bear in +favor of the former against the latter, or the latter against the former +or all, or both, or compromising the relative differences existing within +the radius whence culminate the several degrees of similarity to which--" + +I said: "Oh, hang my wooden head, it ain't any use!--it ain't any use to +try--I can't understand anything. The plainer you get it the more I +can't get the hang of it." + +I heard a suspicious noise behind me, and turned in time to see Hingston +dodging behind a newspaper, and quaking with a gentle ecstasy of +laughter. I looked at Ward again, and he had thrown off his dread +solemnity and was laughing also. Then I saw that I had been sold--that I +had been made a victim of a swindle in the way of a string of plausibly +worded sentences that didn't mean anything under the sun. Artemus Ward +was one of the best fellows in the world, and one of the most +companionable. It has been said that he was not fluent in conversation, +but, with the above experience in my mind, I differ. + + + + + + +CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS--[Written abort 1867.] + +I visited St. Louis lately, and on my way West, after changing cars at +Terre Haute, Indiana, a mild, benevolent-looking gentleman of about +forty-five, or maybe fifty, came in at one of the way-stations and sat +down beside me. We talked together pleasantly on various subjects for an +hour, perhaps, and I found him exceedingly intelligent and entertaining. +When he learned that I was from Washington, he immediately began to ask +questions about various public men, and about Congressional affairs; and +I saw very shortly that I was conversing with a man who was perfectly +familiar with the ins and outs of political life at the Capital, even to +the ways and manners, and customs of procedure of Senators and +Representatives in the Chambers of the national Legislature. Presently +two men halted near us for a single moment, and one said to the other: + +"Harris, if you'll do that for me, I'll never forget you, my boy." + +My new comrade's eye lighted pleasantly. The words had touched upon a +happy memory, I thought. Then his face settled into thoughtfulness +--almost into gloom. He turned to me and said, + +"Let me tell you a story; let me give you a secret chapter of my life +--a chapter that has never been referred to by me since its events +transpired. Listen patiently, and promise that you will not interrupt +me." + +I said I would not, and he related the following strange adventure, +speaking sometimes with animation, sometimes with melancholy, but always +with feeling and earnestness. + + + THE STRANGER'S NARRATIVE + +"On the 19th of December, 1853, I started from St. Louis on the evening +train bound for Chicago. There were only twenty-four passengers, all +told. There were no ladies and no children. We were in excellent +spirits, and pleasant acquaintanceships were soon formed. The journey +bade fair to be a happy one; and no individual in the party, I think, had +even the vaguest presentiment of the horrors we were soon to undergo. + +"At 11 P.m. it began to snow hard. Shortly after leaving the small +village of Welden, we entered upon that tremendous prairie solitude that +stretches its leagues on leagues of houseless dreariness far away toward +the jubilee Settlements. The winds, unobstructed by trees or hills, or +even vagrant rocks, whistled fiercely across the level desert, driving +the falling snow before it like spray from the crested waves of a stormy +sea. The snow was deepening fast; and we knew, by the diminished speed +of the train, that the engine was plowing through it with steadily +increasing difficulty. Indeed, it almost came to a dead halt sometimes, +in the midst of great drifts that piled themselves like colossal graves +across the track. Conversation began to flag. Cheerfulness gave place +to grave concern. The possibility of being imprisoned in the snow, on +the bleak prairie, fifty miles from any house, presented itself to every +mind, and extended its depressing influence over every spirit. + +"At two o'clock in the morning I was aroused out of an uneasy slumber by +the ceasing of all motion about me. The appalling truth flashed upon me +instantly--we were captives in a snow-drift! 'All hands to the rescue!' +Every man sprang to obey. Out into the wild night, the pitchy darkness, +the billowy snow, the driving storm, every soul leaped, with the +consciousness that a moment lost now might bring destruction to us all. +Shovels, hands, boards--anything, everything that could displace snow, +was brought into instant requisition. It was a weird picture, that small +company of frantic men fighting the banking snows, half in the blackest +shadow and half in the angry light of the locomotive's reflector. + +"One short hour sufficed to prove the utter uselessness of our efforts. +The storm barricaded the track with a dozen drifts while we dug one away. +And worse than this, it was discovered that the last grand charge the +engine had made upon the enemy had broken the fore-and-aft shaft of the +driving-wheel! With a free track before us we should still have been +helpless. We entered the car wearied with labor, and very sorrowful. +We gathered about the stoves, and gravely canvassed our situation. We +had no provisions whatever--in this lay our chief distress. We could not +freeze, for there was a good supply of wood in the tender. This was our +only comfort. The discussion ended at last in accepting the +disheartening decision of the conductor, viz., that it would be death for +any man to attempt to travel fifty miles on foot through snow like that. +We could not send for help, and even if we could it would not come. We +must submit, and await, as patiently as we might, succor or starvation! +I think the stoutest heart there felt a momentary chill when those words +were uttered. + +"Within the hour conversation subsided to a low murmur here and there +about the car, caught fitfully between the rising and falling of the +blast; the lamps grew dim; and the majority of the castaways settled +themselves among the flickering shadows to think--to forget the present, +if they could--to sleep, if they might. + +"The eternal night-it surely seemed eternal to us-wore its lagging hours +away at last, and the cold gray dawn broke in the east. As the light +grew stronger the passengers began to stir and give signs of life, one +after another, and each in turn pushed his slouched hat up from his +forehead, stretched his stiffened limbs, and glanced out of the windows +upon the cheerless prospect. It was cheer less, indeed!-not a living +thing visible anywhere, not a human habitation; nothing but a vast white +desert; uplifted sheets of snow drifting hither and thither before the +wind--a world of eddying flakes shutting out the firmament above. + +"All day we moped about the cars, saying little, thinking much. Another +lingering dreary night--and hunger. + +"Another dawning--another day of silence, sadness, wasting hunger, +hopeless watching for succor that could not come. A night of restless +slumber, filled with dreams of feasting--wakings distressed with the +gnawings of hunger. + +"The fourth day came and went--and the fifth! Five days of dreadful +imprisonment! A savage hunger looked out at every eye. There was in it +a sign of awful import--the foreshadowing of a something that was vaguely +shaping itself in every heart--a something which no tongue dared yet to +frame into words. + +"The sixth day passed--the seventh dawned upon as gaunt and haggard and +hopeless a company of men as ever stood in the shadow of death. It must +out now! That thing which had been growing up in every heart was ready +to leap from every lip at last! Nature had been taxed to the utmost--she +must yield. RICHARD H. GASTON of Minnesota, tall, cadaverous, and pale, +rose up. All knew what was coming. All prepared--every emotion, every +semblance of excitement--was smothered--only a calm, thoughtful +seriousness appeared in the eyes that were lately so wild. + +"'Gentlemen: It cannot be delayed longer! The time is at hand! We must +determine which of us shall die to furnish food for the rest!' + +"MR. JOHN J. WILLIAMS of Illinois rose and said: 'Gentlemen--I nominate +the Rev. James Sawyer of Tennessee.' + +"MR. Wm. R. ADAMS of Indiana said: 'I nominate Mr. Daniel Slote of New +York.' + +"MR. CHARLES J. LANGDON: 'I nominate Mr. Samuel A. Bowen of St. Louis.' + +"MR. SLOTE: 'Gentlemen--I desire to decline in favor of Mr. John A. Van +Nostrand, Jun., of New Jersey.' + +"MR. GASTON: 'If there be no objection, the gentleman's desire will be +acceded to.' + +"MR. VAN NOSTRAND objecting, the resignation of Mr. Slote was rejected. +The resignations of Messrs. Sawyer and Bowen were also offered, and +refused upon the same grounds. + +"MR. A. L. BASCOM of Ohio: 'I move that the nominations now close, and +that the House proceed to an election by ballot.' + +"MR. SAWYER: 'Gentlemen--I protest earnestly against these proceedings. +They are, in every way, irregular and unbecoming. I must beg to move +that they be dropped at once, and that we elect a chairman of the meeting +and proper officers to assist him, and then we can go on with the +business before us understandingly.' + +"MR. BELL of Iowa: 'Gentlemen--I object. This is no time to stand upon +forms and ceremonious observances. For more than seven days we have been +without food. Every moment we lose in idle discussion increases our +distress. I am satisfied with the nominations that have been made--every +gentleman present is, I believe--and I, for one, do not see why we should +not proceed at once to elect one or more of them. I wish to offer a +resolution--' + +"MR. GASTON: 'It would be objected to, and have to lie over one day under +the rules, thus bringing about the very delay you wish to avoid. The +gentleman from New Jersey--' + +"MR. VAN NOSTRAND: 'Gentlemen--I am a stranger among you; I have not +sought the distinction that has been conferred upon me, and I feel a +delicacy--' + +"MR. MORGAN Of Alabama (interrupting): 'I move the previous question.' + +"The motion was carried, and further debate shut off, of course. The +motion to elect officers was passed, and under it Mr. Gaston was chosen +chairman, Mr. Blake, secretary, Messrs. Holcomb, Dyer, and Baldwin a +committee on nominations, and Mr. R. M. Howland, purveyor, to assist the +committee in making selections. + +"A recess of half an hour was then taken, and some little caucusing +followed. At the sound of the gavel the meeting reassembled, and the +committee reported in favor of Messrs. George Ferguson of Kentucky, +Lucien Herrman of Louisiana, and W. Messick of Colorado as candidates. +The report was accepted. + +"MR. ROGERS of Missouri: 'Mr. President The report being properly before +the House now, I move to amend it by substituting for the name of Mr. +Herrman that of Mr. Lucius Harris of St. Louis, who is well and +honorably known to us all. I do not wish to be understood as casting the +least reflection upon the high character and standing of the gentleman +from Louisiana far from it. I respect and esteem him as much as any +gentleman here present possibly can; but none of us can be blind to the +fact that he has lost more flesh during the week that we have lain here +than any among us--none of us can be blind to the fact that the committee +has been derelict in its duty, either through negligence or a graver +fault, in thus offering for our suffrages a gentleman who, however pure +his own motives may be, has really less nutriment in him--' + +"THE CHAIR: 'The gentleman from Missouri will take his seat. The Chair +cannot allow the integrity of the committee to be questioned save by the +regular course, under the rules. What action will the House take upon +the gentleman's motion?' + +"MR. HALLIDAY of Virginia: 'I move to further amend the report by +substituting Mr. Harvey Davis of Oregon for Mr. Messick. It may be urged +by gentlemen that the hardships and privations of a frontier life have +rendered Mr. Davis tough; but, gentlemen, is this a time to cavil at +toughness? Is this a time to be fastidious concerning trifles? Is this +a time to dispute about matters of paltry significance? No, gentlemen, +bulk is what we desire--substance, weight, bulk--these are the supreme +requisites now--not talent, not genius, not education. I insist upon my +motion.' + +"MR. MORGAN (excitedly): 'Mr. Chairman--I do most strenuously object to +this amendment. The gentleman from Oregon is old, and furthermore is +bulky only in bone--not in flesh. I ask the gentleman from Virginia if +it is soup we want instead of solid sustenance? if he would delude us +with shadows? if he would mock our suffering with an Oregonian specter? +I ask him if he can look upon the anxious faces around him, if he can +gaze into our sad eyes, if he can listen to the beating of our expectant +hearts, and still thrust this famine-stricken fraud upon us? I ask him +if he can think of our desolate state, of our past sorrows, of our dark +future, and still unpityingly foist upon us this wreck, this ruin, this +tottering swindle, this gnarled and blighted and sapless vagabond from +Oregon's hospitable shores? Never!' [Applause.] + +"The amendment was put to vote, after a fiery debate, and lost. Mr. +Harris was substituted on the first amendment. The balloting then began. +Five ballots were held without a choice. On the sixth, Mr. Harris was +elected, all voting for him but himself. It was then moved that his +election should be ratified by acclamation, which was lost, in +consequence of his again voting against himself. + +"MR. RADWAY moved that the House now take up the remaining candidates, +and go into an election for breakfast. This was carried. + +"On the first ballot--there was a tie, half the members favoring one +candidate on account of his youth, and half favoring the other on account +of his superior size. The President gave the casting vote for the +latter, Mr. Messick. This decision created considerable dissatisfaction +among the friends of Mr. Ferguson, the defeated candidate, and there was +some talk of demanding a new ballot; but in the midst of it a motion to +adjourn was carried, and the meeting broke up at once. + +"The preparations for supper diverted the attention of the Ferguson +faction from the discussion of their grievance for a long time, and then, +when they would have taken it up again, the happy announcement that Mr. +Harris was ready drove all thought of it to the winds. + +"We improvised tables by propping up the backs of car-seats, and sat down +with hearts full of gratitude to the finest supper that had blessed our +vision for seven torturing days. How changed we were from what we had +been a few short hours before! Hopeless, sad-eyed misery, hunger, +feverish anxiety, desperation, then; thankfulness, serenity, joy too deep +for utterance now. That I know was the cheeriest hour of my eventful +life. The winds howled, and blew the snow wildly about our prison house, +but they were powerless to distress us any more. I liked Harris. He +might have been better done, perhaps, but I am free to say that no man +ever agreed with me better than Harris, or afforded me so large a degree +of satisfaction. Messick was very well, though rather high-flavored, +but for genuine nutritiousness and delicacy of fiber, give me Harris. +Messick had his good points--I will not attempt to deny it, nor do I wish +to do it but he was no more fitted for breakfast than a mummy would be, +sir--not a bit. Lean?--why, bless me!--and tough? Ah, he was very +tough! You could not imagine it--you could never imagine anything like +it." + +"Do you mean to tell me that--" + +"Do not interrupt me, please. After breakfast we elected a man by the +name of Walker, from Detroit, for supper. He was very good. I wrote his +wife so afterward. He was worthy of all praise. I shall always remember +Walker. He was a little rare, but very good. And then the next morning +we had Morgan of Alabama for breakfast. He was one of the finest men I +ever sat down to handsome, educated, refined, spoke several languages +fluently a perfect gentleman he was a perfect gentleman, and singularly +juicy. For supper we had that Oregon patriarch, and he was a fraud, +there is no question about it--old, scraggy, tough, nobody can picture +the reality. I finally said, gentlemen, you can do as you like, but I +will wait for another election. And Grimes of Illinois said, 'Gentlemen, +I will wait also. When you elect a man that has something to recommend +him, I shall be glad to join you again.' It soon became evident that +there was general dissatisfaction with Davis of Oregon, and so, to +preserve the good will that had prevailed so pleasantly since we had had +Harris, an election was called, and the result of it was that Baker of +Georgia was chosen. He was splendid! Well, well--after that we had +Doolittle, and Hawkins, and McElroy (there was some complaint about +McElroy, because he was uncommonly short and thin), and Penrod, and two +Smiths, and Bailey (Bailey had a wooden leg, which was clear loss, but he +was otherwise good), and an Indian boy, and an organ-grinder, and a +gentleman by the name of Buckminster--a poor stick of a vagabond that +wasn't any good for company and no account for breakfast. We were glad +we got him elected before relief came." + +"And so the blessed relief did come at last?" + +"Yes, it came one bright, sunny morning, just after election. John +Murphy was the choice, and there never was a better, I am willing to +testify; but John Murphy came home with us, in the train that came to +succor us, and lived to marry the widow Harris--" + +"Relict of--" + +"Relict of our first choice. He married her, and is happy and respected +and prosperous yet. Ah, it was like a novel, sir--it was like a romance. +This is my stopping-place, sir; I must bid you goodby. Any time that you +can make it convenient to tarry a day or two with me, I shall be glad to +have you. I like you, sir; I have conceived an affection for you. +I could like you as well as I liked Harris himself, sir. Good day, sir, +and a pleasant journey." + +He was gone. I never felt so stunned, so distressed, so bewildered in my +life. But in my soul I was glad he was gone. With all his gentleness of +manner and his soft voice, I shuddered whenever he turned his hungry eye +upon me; and when I heard that I had achieved his perilous affection, and +that I stood almost with the late Harris in his esteem, my heart fairly +stood still! + +I was bewildered beyond description. I did not doubt his word; I could +not question a single item in a statement so stamped with the earnestness +of truth as his; but its dreadful details overpowered me, and threw my +thoughts into hopeless confusion. I saw the conductor looking at me. +I said, "Who is that man?" + +"He was a member of Congress once, and a good one. But he got caught in +a snow-drift in the cars, and like to have been starved to death. He got +so frost-bitten and frozen up generally, and used up for want of +something to eat, that he was sick and out of his head two or three +months afterward. He is all right now, only he is a monomaniac, and when +he gets on that old subject he never stops till he has eat up that whole +car-load of people he talks about. He would have finished the crowd by +this time, only he had to get out here. He has got their names as pat as +A B C. When he gets them all eat up but himself, he always says: 'Then +the hour for the usual election for breakfast having arrived; and there +being no opposition, I was duly elected, after which, there being no +objections offered, I resigned. Thus I am here.'" + +I felt inexpressibly relieved to know that I had only been listening to +the harmless vagaries of a madman instead of the genuine experiences of a +bloodthirsty cannibal. + + + + + + +THE KILLING OF JULIUS CAESAR "LOCALIZED"--[Written about 1865.] + +Being the only true and reliable account ever published; taken from the +Roman "Daily Evening Fasces," of the date of that tremendous occurrence. + +Nothing in the world affords a newspaper reporter so much satisfaction as +gathering up the details of a bloody and mysterious murder and writing +them up with aggravating circumstantiality. He takes a living delight in +this labor of love--for such it is to him, especially if he knows that +all the other papers have gone to press, and his will be the only one +that will contain the dreadful intelligence. A feeling of regret has +often come over me that I was not reporting in Rome when Caesar was +killed--reporting on an evening paper, and the only one in the city, and +getting at least twelve hours ahead of the morning-paper boys with this +most magnificent "item" that ever fell to the lot of the craft. Other +events have happened as startling as this, but none that possessed so +peculiarly all the characteristics of the favorite "item" of the present +day, magnified into grandeur and sublimity by the high rank, fame, and +social and political standing of the actors in it. + +However, as I was not permitted to report Caesar's assassination in the +regular way, it has at least afforded me rare satisfaction to translate +the following able account of it from the original Latin of the Roman +Daily Evening Fasces of that date--second edition: + + +Our usually quiet city of Rome was thrown into a state of wild excitement +yesterday by the occurrence of one of those bloody affrays which sicken +the heart and fill the soul with fear, while they inspire all thinking +men with forebodings for the future of a city where human life is held so +cheaply and the gravest laws are so openly set at defiance. As the +result of that affray, it is our painful duty, as public journalists, to +record the death of one of our most esteemed citizens--a man whose name +is known wherever this paper circulates, and where fame it has been our +pleasure and our privilege to extend, and also to protect from the tongue +of slander and falsehood, to the best of our poor ability. We refer to +Mr. J. Caesar, the Emperor-elect. + +The facts of the case, as nearly as our reporter could determine them +from the conflicting statements of eye-witnesses, were about as +follows:-- The affair was an election row, of course. Nine-tenths of the +ghastly butcheries that disgrace the city nowadays grow out of the +bickerings and jealousies and animosities engendered by these accursed +elections. Rome would be the gainer by it if her very constables were +elected to serve a century; for in our experience we have never even been +able to choose a dog-pelter without celebrating the event with a dozen +knockdowns and a general cramming of the station-house with drunken +vagabonds overnight. It is said that when the immense majority for Caesar +at the polls in the market was declared the other day, and the crown was +offered to that gentleman, even his amazing unselfishness in refusing it +three times was not sufficient to save him from the whispered insults of +such men as Casca, of the Tenth Ward, and other hirelings of the +disappointed candidate, hailing mostly from the Eleventh and Thirteenth +and other outside districts, who were overheard speaking ironically and +contemptuously of Mr. Caesar's conduct upon that occasion. + +We are further informed that there are many among us who think they are +justified in believing that the assassination of Julius Caesar was a +put-up thing--a cut-and-dried arrangement, hatched by Marcus Brutus and a +lot of his hired roughs, and carried out only too faithfully according to +the program. Whether there be good grounds for this suspicion or not, we +leave to the people to judge for themselves, only asking that they will +read the following account of the sad occurrence carefully and +dispassionately before they render that judgment. + +The Senate was already in session, and Caesar was coming down the street +toward the capitol, conversing with some personal friends, and followed, +as usual, by a large number of citizens. Just as he was passing in front +of Demosthenes and Thucydides' drug store, he was observing casually to a +gentleman, who, our informant thinks, is a fortune-teller, that the Ides +of March were come. The reply was, "Yes, they are come, but not gone +yet." At this moment Artemidorus stepped up and passed the time of day, +and asked Caesar to read a schedule or a tract or something of the kind, +which he had brought for his perusal. Mr. Decius Brutus also said +something about an "humble suit" which he wanted read. Artexnidorus +begged that attention might be paid to his first, because it was of +personal consequence to Caesar. The latter replied that what concerned +himself should be read last, or words to that effect. Artemidorus begged +and beseeched him to read the paper instantly!--[Mark that: It is hinted +by William Shakespeare, who saw the beginning and the end of the +unfortunate affray, that this "schedule" was simply a note discovering to +Caesar that a plot was brewing to take his life.]--However, Caesar +shook him off, and refused to read any petition in the street. He then +entered the capitol, and the crowd followed him. + +About this time the following conversation was overheard, and we consider +that, taken in connection with the events which succeeded it, it bears an +appalling significance: Mr. Papilius Lena remarked to George W. Cassias +(commonly known as the "Nobby Boy of the Third Ward"), a bruiser in the +pay of the Opposition, that he hoped his enterprise to-day might thrive; +and when Cassias asked "What enterprise?" he only closed his left eye +temporarily and said with simulated indifference, "Fare you well," and +sauntered toward Caesar. Marcus Brutus, who is suspected of being the +ringleader of the band that killed Caesar, asked what it was that Lena +had said. Cassias told him, and added in a low tone, "I fear our purpose +is discovered." + +Brutus told his wretched accomplice to keep an eye on Lena, and a moment +after Cassias urged that lean and hungry vagrant, Casca, whose reputation +here is none of the best, to be sudden, for he feared prevention. He +then turned to Brutus, apparently much excited, and asked what should be +done, and swore that either he or Caesar would never turn back--he would +kill himself first. At this time Caesar was talking to some of the +back-country members about the approaching fall elections, and paying +little attention to what was going on around him. Billy Trebonius got +into conversation with the people's friend and Caesar's--Mark Antony--and +under some pretense or other got him away, and Brutus, Decius, Casca, +Cinna, Metellus Cimber, and others of the gang of infamous desperadoes +that infest Rome at present, closed around the doomed Caesar. Then +Metellus Cimber knelt down and begged that his brother might be recalled +from banishment, but Caesar rebuked him for his fawning conduct, and +refused to grant his petition. Immediately, at Cimber's request, first +Brutus and then Cassias begged for the return of the banished Publius; +but Caesar still refused. He said he could not be moved; that he was as +fixed as the North Star, and proceeded to speak in the most complimentary +terms of the firmness of that star and its steady character. Then he +said he was like it, and he believed he was the only man in the country +that was; therefore, since he was "constant" that Cimber should be +banished, he was also "constant" that he should stay banished, and he'd +be hanged if he didn't keep him so! + +Instantly seizing upon this shallow pretext for a fight, Casca sprang at +Caesar and struck him with a dirk, Caesar grabbing him by the arm with +his right hand, and launching a blow straight from the shoulder with his +left, that sent the reptile bleeding to the earth. He then backed up +against Pompey's statue, and squared himself to receive his assailants. +Cassias and Cimber and Cinna rushed, upon him with their daggers drawn, +and the former succeeded in inflicting a wound upon his body; but before +he could strike again, and before either of the others could strike at +all, Caesar stretched the three miscreants at his feet with as many blows +of his powerful fist. By this time the Senate was in an indescribable +uproar; the throng of citizens is the lobbies had blockaded the doors in +their frantic efforts to escape from the building, the sergeant-at-arms +and his assistants were struggling with the assassins, venerable senators +had cast aside their encumbering robes, and were leaping over benches and +flying down the aisles in wild confusion toward the shelter of the +committee-rooms, and a thousand voices were shouting "Po-lice! Po-lice!" +in discordant tones that rose above the frightful din like shrieking +winds above the roaring of a tempest. And amid it all great Caesar stood +with his back against the statue, like a lion at bay, and fought his +assailants weaponless and hand to hand, with the defiant bearing and the +unwavering courage which he had shown before on many a bloody field. +Billy Trebonius and Caius Legarius struck him with their daggers and +fell, as their brother-conspirators before them had fallen. But at last, +when Caesar saw his old friend Brutus step forward armed with a murderous +knife, it is said he seemed utterly overpowered with grief and amazement, +and, dropping his invincible left arm by his side, he hid his face in the +folds of his mantle and received the treacherous blow without an effort +to stay the hand that gave it. He only said, "Et tu, Brute?" and fell +lifeless on the marble pavement. + +We learn that the coat deceased had on when he was killed was the same +one he wore in his tent on the afternoon of the day he overcame the +Nervii, and that when it was removed from the corpse it was found to be +cut and gashed in no less than seven different places. There was nothing +in the pockets. It will be exhibited at the coroner's inquest, and will +be damning proof of the fact of the killing. These latter facts may be +relied on, as we get them from Mark Antony, whose position enables him to +learn every item of news connected with the one subject of absorbing +interest of-to-day. + +LATER: While the coroner was summoning a jury, Mark Antony and other +friends of the late Caesar got hold of the body, and lugged it off to the +Forum, and at last accounts Antony and Brutus were making speeches over +it and raising such a row among the people that, as we go to press, the +chief of police is satisfied there is going to be a riot, and is taking +measures accordingly. + + + + + + +THE WIDOW'S PROTEST + +One of the saddest things that ever came under my notice (said the +banker's clerk) was there in Corning during the war. Dan Murphy enlisted +as a private, and fought very bravely. The boys all liked him, and when +a wound by and by weakened him down till carrying a musket was too heavy +work for him, they clubbed together and fixed him up as a sutler. He +made money then, and sent it always to his wife to bank for him. She was +a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to keep money +when she got it. She didn't waste a penny. + +On the contrary, she began to get miserly as her bank-account grew. She +grieved to part with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her hard-working +life she had known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless, sick, and +without a dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of suffering +so again. Well, at last Dan died; and the boys, in testimony of their +esteem and respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs. Murphy to know if she +would like to have him embalmed and sent home; when you know the usual +custom was to dump a poor devil like him into a shallow hole, and then +inform his friends what had become of him. Mrs. Murphy jumped to the +conclusion that it would only cost two or three dollars to embalm her +dead husband, and so she telegraphed "Yes." It was at the "wake" that +the bill for embalming arrived and was presented to the widow. + +She uttered a wild, sad wail that pierced every heart, and said, +"Sivinty-foive dollars for stooffin' Dan, blister their sowls! Did thim +divils suppose I was goin' to stairt a Museim, that I'd be dalin' in such +expinsive curiassities !" + +The banker's clerk said there was not a dry eye in the house. + + + + + + +THE SCRIPTURAL PANORAMIST--[Written about 1866.] + +"There was a fellow traveling around in that country," said Mr. +Nickerson, "with a moral-religious show--a sort of scriptural panorama +--and he hired a wooden-headed old slab to play the piano for him. +After the first night's performance the showman says: + +"'My friend, you seem to know pretty much all the tunes there are, and +you worry along first rate. But then, didn't you notice that sometimes +last night the piece you happened to be playing was a little rough on the +proprieties, so to speak--didn't seem to jibe with the general gait of +the picture that was passing at the time, as it were--was a little +foreign to the subject, you know--as if you didn't either trump or follow +suit, you understand?' + +"'Well, no,' the fellow said; 'he hadn't noticed, but it might be; he had +played along just as it came handy.' + +"So they put it up that the simple old dummy was to keep his eye on the +panorama after that, and as soon as a stunning picture was reeled out he +was to fit it to a dot with a piece of music that would help the audience +to get the idea of the subject, and warm them up like a camp-meeting +revival. That sort of thing would corral their sympathies, the showman +said. + +"There was a big audience that night-mostly middle-aged and old people +who belong to the church, and took a strong interest in Bible matters, +and the balance were pretty much young bucks and heifers--they always +come out strong on panoramas, you know, because it gives them a chance to +taste one another's complexions in the dark. + +"Well, the showman began to swell himself up for his lecture, and the old +mud-Jobber tackled the piano and ran his fingers up and down once or +twice to see that she was all right, and the fellows behind the curtain +commenced to grind out the panorama. The showman balanced his weight on +his right foot, and propped his hands over his hips, and flung his eyes +over his shoulder at the scenery, and said: + +"'Ladies and gentlemen, the painting now before you illustrates the +beautiful and touching parable of the Prodigal Son. Observe the happy +expression just breaking over the features of the poor, suffering youth +--so worn and weary with his long march; note also the ecstasy beaming +from the uplifted countenance of the aged father, and the joy that +sparkles in the eyes of the excited group of youths and maidens, and +seems ready to burst into the welcoming chorus from their lips. The +lesson, my friends, is as solemn and instructive as the story is tender +and beautiful.' + +"The mud-Jobber was all ready, and when the second speech was finished, +struck up: + + "Oh, we'll all get blind drunk + When Johnny comes marching home! + +"Some of the people giggled, and some groaned a little. The showman +couldn't say a word; he looked at the pianist sharp, but he was all +lovely and serene--he didn't know there was anything out of gear. + +"The panorama moved on, and the showman drummed up his grit and started +in fresh. + +"'Ladies and gentlemen, the fine picture now unfolding itself to your +gaze exhibits one of the most notable events in Bible history--our +Saviour and His disciples upon the Sea of Galilee. How grand, how +awe-inspiring are the reflections which the subject invokes! What +sublimity of faith is revealed to us in this lesson from the sacred +writings! The Saviour rebukes the angry waves, and walks securely +upon the bosom of the deep!' + +"All around the house they were whispering, 'Oh, how lovely, how +beautiful!' and the orchestra let himself out again: + + "A life on the ocean wave, + And a home on the rolling deep! + +"There was a good deal of honest snickering turned on this time, and +considerable groaning, and one or two old deacons got up and went out. +The showman grated his teeth, and cursed the piano man to himself; but +the fellow sat there like a knot on a log, and seemed to think he was +doing first-rate. + +"After things got quiet the showman thought he would make one more +stagger at it, anyway, though his confidence was beginning to get mighty +shaky. The supes started the panorama grinding along again, and he says: + +"'Ladies and gentlemen, this exquisite painting represents the raising of +Lazarus from the dead by our Saviour. The subject has been handled with +marvelous skill by the artist, and such touching sweetness and tenderness +of expression has he thrown into it that I have known peculiarly +sensitive persons to be even affected to tears by looking at it. Observe +the half-confused, half-inquiring look upon the countenance of the +awakened Lazarus. Observe, also, the attitude and expression of the +Saviour, who takes him gently by the sleeve of his shroud with one hand, +while He points with the other toward the distant city.' + +"Before anybody could get off an opinion in the case the innocent old ass +at the piano struck up: + + "Come rise up, William Ri-i-ley, + And go along with me! + +"Whe-ew! All the solemn old flats got up in a huff to go, and everybody +else laughed till the windows rattled. + +"The showman went down and grabbed the orchestra and shook him up and +says: + +"'That lets you out, you know, you chowder-headed old clam. Go to the +doorkeeper and get your money, and cut your stick--vamose the ranch! +Ladies and gentlemen, circumstances over which I have no control compel +me prematurely to dismiss the house.'" + + + + + + +CURING A COLD--[Written about 1864] + +It is a good thing, perhaps, to write for the amusement of the public, +but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction, +their profit, their actual and tangible benefit. The latter is the sole +object of this article. If it prove the means of restoring to health one +solitary sufferer among my race, of lighting up once more the fire of +hope and joy in his faded eyes, or bringing back to his dead heart again +the quick, generous impulses of other days, I shall be amply rewarded for +my labor; my soul will be permeated with the sacred delight a Christian. +feels when he has done a good, unselfish deed. + +Having led a pure and blameless life, I am justified in believing that no +man who knows me will reject the suggestions I am about to make, out of +fear that I am trying to deceive him. Let the public do itself the honor +to read my experience in doctoring a cold, as herein set forth, and then +follow in my footsteps. + +When the White House was burned in Virginia City, I lost my home, my +happiness, my constitution, and my trunk. The loss of the two first +named articles was a matter of no great consequence, since a home without +a mother, or a sister, or a distant young female relative in it, to +remind you, by putting your soiled linen out of sight and taking your +boots down off the mantelpiece, that there are those who think about you +and care for you, is easily obtained. And I cared nothing for the loss +of my happiness, because, not being a poet, it could not be possible that +melancholy would abide with me long. But to lose a good constitution and +a better trunk were serious misfortunes. On the day of the fire my +constitution succumbed to a severe cold, caused by undue exertion in +getting ready to do something. I suffered to no purpose, too, because +the plan I was figuring at for the extinguishing of the fire was so +elaborate that I never got it completed until the middle of the following +week. + +The first time I began to sneeze, a friend told me to go and bathe my +feet in hot water and go to bed. I did so. Shortly afterward, another +friend advised me to get up and take a cold shower-bath. I did that +also. Within the hour, another friend assured me that it was policy to +"feed a cold and starve a fever." I had both. So I thought it best to +fill myself up for the cold, and then keep dark and let the fever starve +awhile. + +In a case of, this kind, I seldom do things by halves; I ate pretty +heartily; I conferred my custom upon a stranger who had just opened his +restaurant that morning; he waited near me in respectful silence until I +had finished feeding my cold, when he inquired if the people about +Virginia City were much afflicted with colds? I told him I thought they +were. He then went out and took in his sign. + +I started down toward the office, and on the way encountered another +bosom friend, who told me that a quart of salt-water, taken warm, would +come as near curing a cold as anything in the world. I hardly thought I +had room for it, but I tried it anyhow. The result was surprising. I +believed I had thrown up my immortal soul. + +Now, as I am giving my experience only for the benefit of those who are +troubled with the distemper I am writing about, I feel that they will see +the propriety of my cautioning them against following such portions of it +as proved inefficient with me, and acting upon this conviction, I warn +them against warm salt-water. It may be a good enough remedy, but I +think it is too severe. If I had another cold in the head, and there +were no course left me but to take either an earthquake or a quart of +warm saltwater, I would take my chances on the earthquake. + +After the storm which had been raging in my stomach had subsided, and no +more good Samaritans happening along, I went on borrowing handkerchiefs +again and blowing them to atoms, as had been my custom in the early +stages of my cold, until I came across a lady who had just arrived from +over the plains, and who said she had lived in a part of the country +where doctors were scarce, and had from necessity acquired considerable +skill in the treatment of simple "family complaints." I knew she must +have had much experience, for she appeared to be a hundred and fifty +years old. + +She mixed a decoction composed of molasses, aquafortis, turpentine, and +various other drugs, and instructed me to take a wine-glass full of it +every fifteen minutes. I never took but one dose; that was enough; it +robbed me of all moral principle, and awoke every unworthy impulse of my +nature. Under its malign influence my brain conceived miracles of +meanness, but my hands were too feeble to execute them; at that time, had +it not been that my strength had surrendered to a succession of assaults +from infallible remedies for my cold, I am satisfied that I would have +tried to rob the graveyard. Like most other people, I often feel mean, +and act accordingly; but until I took that medicine I had never reveled +in such supernatural depravity, and felt proud of it. At the end of two +days I was ready to go to doctoring again. I took a few more unfailing +remedies, and finally drove my cold from my head to my lungs. + +I got to coughing incessantly, and my voice fell below zero; I conversed +in a thundering bass, two octaves below my natural tone; I could only +compass my regular nightly repose by coughing myself down to a state of +utter exhaustion, and then the moment I began to talk in my sleep, my +discordant voice woke me up again. + +My case grew more and more serious every day. A Plain gin was +recommended; I took it. Then gin and molasses; I took that also. Then +gin and onions; I added the onions, and took all three. I detected no +particular result, however, except that I had acquired a breath like a +buzzard's. + +I found I had to travel for my health. I went to Lake Bigler with my +reportorial comrade, Wilson. It is gratifying to me to reflect that we +traveled in considerable style; we went in the Pioneer coach, and my +friend took all his baggage with him, consisting of two excellent silk +handkerchiefs and a daguerreotype of his grandmother. We sailed and +hunted and fished and danced all day, and I doctored my cough all night. +By managing in this way, I made out to improve every hour in the +twenty-four. But my disease continued to grow worse. + +A sheet-bath was recommended. I had never refused a remedy yet, and it +seemed poor policy to commence then; therefore I determined to take a +sheet-bath, notwithstanding I had no idea what sort of arrangement it +was. It was administered at midnight, and the weather was very frosty. +My breast and back were bared, and a sheet (there appeared to be a +thousand yards of it) soaked in ice-water, was wound around me until I +resembled a swab for a Columbiad. + +It is a cruel expedient. When the chilly rag touches one's warm flesh, +it makes him start with sudden violence, and gasp for breath just as men +do in the death-agony. It froze the marrow in my bones and stopped the +beating of my heart. I thought my time had come. + +Young Wilson said the circumstance reminded him of an anecdote about a +negro who was being baptized, and who slipped from the parson's grasp, +and came near being drowned. He floundered around, though, and finally +rose up out of the water considerably strangled and furiously angry, and +started ashore at once, spouting water like a whale, and remarking, with +great asperity, that "one o' dese days some gen'l'man's nigger gwyne to +get killed wid jis' such damn foolishness as dis!" + +Never take a sheet-bath-never. Next to meeting a lady acquaintance who, +for reasons best known to herself, don't see you when she looks at you, +and don't know you when she does see you, it is the most uncomfortable +thing in the world. + +But, as I was saying, when the sheet-bath failed to cure my cough, +a lady friend recommended the application of a mustard plaster to my +breast. I believe that would have cured me effectually, if it had not +been for young Wilson. When I went to bed, I put my mustard plaster +--which was a very gorgeous one, eighteen inches square--where I could +reach it when I was ready for it. But young Wilson got hungry in the +night, and here is food for the imagination. + +After sojourning a week at Lake Bigler, I went to Steamboat Springs, and, +besides the steam-baths, I took a lot of the vilest medicines that were +ever concocted. They would have cured me, but I had to go back to +Virginia City, where, notwithstanding the variety of new remedies I +absorbed every day, I managed to aggravate my disease by carelessness and +undue exposure. + +I finally concluded to visit San Francisco, and the, first day I got +there a lady at the hotel told me to drink a quart of whisky every +twenty-four hours, and a friend up-town recommended precisely the same +course. Each advised me to take a quart; that made half a gallon. I did +it, and still live. + +Now, with the kindest motives in the world, I offer for the consideration +of consumptive patients the variegated course of treatment I have lately +gone through. Let them try it; if it don't cure, it can't more than kill +them. + + + + + + +A CURIOUS PLEASURE EXCURSION + +--[Published at the time of the "Comet Scare" in the summer of 1874] + +[We have received the following advertisement, but, inasmuch as it +concerns a matter of deep and general interest, we feel fully justified +in inserting it in our reading-columns. We are confident that our +conduct in this regard needs only explanation, not apology.--Ed., N. Y. +Herald.] + + +ADVERTISEMENT + +This is to inform the public that in connection with Mr. Barnum I have +leased the comet for a term, of years; and I desire also to solicit the +public patronage in favor of a beneficial enterprise which we have in +view. + +We propose to fit up comfortable, and even luxurious, accommodations in +the comet for as many persons as will honor us with their patronage, and +make an extended excursion among the heavenly bodies. We shall prepare +1,000,000 state-rooms in the tail of the comet (with hot and cold water, +gas, looking-glass, parachute, umbrella, etc., in each), and shall +construct more if we meet with a sufficiently generous encouragement. +We shall have billiard-rooms, card-rooms, music-rooms, bowling-alleys and +many spacious theaters and free libraries; and on the main deck we +propose to have a driving park, with upward of 100,000 miles of roadway +in it. We shall publish daily newspapers also. + + + DEPARTURE OF THE COMET + +The comet will leave New York at 10 P.M. on the 20th inst., and +therefore it will be desirable that the passengers be on board by eight +at the latest, to avoid confusion in getting under way. It is not known +whether passports will be necessary or not, but it is deemed best that +passengers provide them, and so guard against all contingencies. No dogs +will be allowed on board. This rule has been made in deference to the +existing state of feeling regarding these animals, and will be strictly +adhered to. The safety of the passengers will in all ways be jealously +looked to. A substantial iron railing will be put up all around the +comet, and no one will be allowed to go to the edge and look over unless +accompanied by either my partner or myself. + + + THE POSTAL SERVICE + +will be of the completest character. Of course the telegraph, and the +telegraph only, will be employed; consequently friends occupying +state-rooms 20,000,000 and even 30,000,000 miles apart will be able to +send a message and receive a reply inside of eleven days. Night messages +will be half-rate. The whole of this vast postal system will be under +the personal superintendence of Mr. Hale of Maine. Meals served at all +hours. Meals served in staterooms charged extra. + +Hostility is not apprehended from any great planet, but we have thought +it best to err on the safe side, and therefore have provided a proper +number of mortars, siege-guns, and boarding-pikes. History shows that +small, isolated communities, such as the people of remote islands, are +prone to be hostile to strangers, and so the same may be the case with + + + THE INHABITANTS OF STARS + +of the tenth or twentieth magnitude. We shall in no case wantonly offend +the people of any star, but shall treat all alike with urbanity and +kindliness, never conducting ourselves toward an asteroid after a fashion +which we could not venture to assume toward Jupiter or Saturn. I repeat +that we shall not wantonly offend any star; but at the same time we shall +promptly resent any injury that may be done us, or any insolence offered +us, by parties or governments residing in any star in the firmament. +Although averse to the shedding of blood, we shall still hold this course +rigidly and fearlessly, not only toward single stars, but toward +constellations. We shall hope to leave a good impression of America +behind us in every nation we visit, from Venus to Uranus. And, at all +events, if we cannot inspire love we shall at least compel respect for +our country wherever we go. We shall take with us, free of charge, + + + A GREAT FORCE OF MISSIONARIES, + +and shed the true light upon all the celestial orbs which, physically +aglow, are yet morally in darkness. Sunday-schools will be established +wherever practicable. Compulsory education will also be introduced. + +The comet will visit Mars first, and proceed to Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, +and Saturn. Parties connected with the government of the District of +Columbia and with the former city government of New York, who may desire +to inspect the rings, will be allowed time and every facility. Every +star of prominent magnitude will be visited, and time allowed for +excursions to points of interest inland. + + + THE DOG STAR + +has been stricken from the program. Much time will be spent in the Great +Bear, and, indeed, in every constellation of importance. So, also, with +the Sun and Moon and the Milky Pay, otherwise the Gulf Stream of the +Skies. Clothing suitable for wear in the sun should be provided. Our +program has been so arranged that we shall seldom go more than +100,000,000 of miles at a time without stopping at some star. This will +necessarily make the stoppages frequent and preserve the interest of the +tourist. Baggage checked through to any point on the route. Parties +desiring to make only a part of the proposed tour, and thus save expense, +may stop over at any star they choose and wait for the return voyage. + +After visiting all the most celebrated stars and constellations in our +system and personally, inspecting the remotest sparks that even the most +powerful telescope can now detect in the firmament, we shall proceed with +good heart upon + + + A STUPENDOUS VOYAGE + +of discovery among the countless whirling worlds that make turmoil in the +mighty wastes of space that stretch their solemn solitudes, their +unimaginable vastness billions upon billions of miles away beyond the +farthest verge of telescopic vision, till by comparison the little +sparkling vault we used to gaze at on Earth shall seem like a remembered +phosphorescent flash of spangles which some tropical voyager's prow +stirred into life for a single instant, and which ten thousand miles of +phosphorescent seas and tedious lapse of time had since diminished to an +incident utterly trivial in his recollection. Children occupying seats +at the first table will be charged full fare. + + + FIRST-CLASS FARE + +from the Earth to Uranus, including visits to the Sun and Moon and all +the principal planets on the route, will be charged at the low rate of +$2 for every 50,000,000 miles of actual travel. A great reduction will +be made where parties wish to make the round trip. This comet is new and +in thorough repair and is now on her first voyage. She is confessedly +the fastest on the line. She makes 20,000,000 miles a day, with her +present facilities; but, with a picked American crew and good weather, +we are confident we can get 40,000,000 out of her. Still, we shall never +push her to a dangerous speed, and we shall rigidly prohibit racing with +other comets. Passengers desiring to diverge at any point or return will +be transferred to other comets. We make close connections at all +principal points with all reliable lines. Safety can be depended upon. +It is not to be denied that the heavens are infested with + + + OLD RAMSHACKLE COMETS + +that have not been inspected or overhauled in 10,000 years, and which +ought long ago to have been destroyed or turned into hail-barges, but +with these we have no connection whatever. Steerage passengers not +allowed abaft the main hatch. + +Complimentary round-trip tickets have been tendered to General Butler, +Mr. Shepherd, Mr. Richardson, and other eminent gentlemen, whose public +services have entitled them to the rest and relaxation of a voyage of +this kind. Parties desiring to make the round trip will have extra +accommodation. The entire voyage will be completed, and the passengers +landed in New York again, on the 14th of December, 1991. This is, at +least, forty years quicker than any other comet can do it in. Nearly all +the back-pay members contemplate making the round trip with us in case +their constituents will allow them a holiday. Every harmless amusement +will be allowed on board, but no pools permitted on the run of the comet +--no gambling of any kind. All fixed stars will be respected by us, but +such stars as seem, to need fixing we shall fix. If it makes trouble, we +shall be sorry, but firm. + +Mr. Coggia having leased his comet to us, she will no longer be called by +his name, but by my partner's. N. B.--Passengers by paying double fare +will be entitled to a share in all the new stars, suns, moons, comets, +meteors, and magazines of thunder and lightning we may discover. +Patent-medicine people will take notice that + + + WE CARRY BULLETIN-BOARDS + +and a paint-brush along for use in the constellations, and are open to +terms. Cremationists are reminded that we are going straight to--some +hot places--and are open to terms. To other parties our enterprise is a +pleasure excursion, but individually we mean business. We shall fly our +comet for all it is worth. + + + FOR FURTHER PARTICULARS, + +or for freight or passage, apply on board, or to my partner, but not to +me, since I do not take charge of the comet until she is under way. +It is necessary, at a time like this, that my mind should not be burdened +with small business details. + + MARK TWAIN. + + + + + + +RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR--[Written about 1870.] + +A few months ago I was nominated for Governor of the great state of New +York, to run against Mr. John T. Smith and Mr. Blank J. Blank on an +independent ticket. I somehow felt that I had one prominent advantage +over these gentlemen, and that was--good character. It was easy to see +by the newspapers that if ever they had known what it was to bear a good +name, that time had gone by. It was plain that in these latter years +they had become familiar with all manner of shameful crimes. But at the +very moment that I was exalting my advantage and joying in it in secret, +there was a muddy undercurrent of discomfort "riling" the deeps of my +happiness, and that was--the having to hear my name bandied about in +familiar connection with those of such people. I grew more and more +disturbed. Finally I wrote my grandmother about it. Her answer came +quick and sharp. She said: + + You have never done one single thing in all your life to be ashamed + of--not one. Look at the newspapers--look at them and comprehend + what sort of characters Messrs. Smith and Blank are, and then see + if you are willing to lower yourself to their level and enter a + public canvass with them. + +It was my very thought! I did not sleep a single moment that night. +But, after all, I could not recede. + +I was fully committed, and must go on with the fight. As I was looking +listlessly over the papers at breakfast I came across this paragraph, +and I may truly say I never was so confounded before. + + PERJURY.--Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a + candidate for Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to + be convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses in Wakawak, Cochin + China, in 1863, the intent of which perjury being to rob a poor + native widow and her helpless family of a meager plantain-patch, + their only stay and support in their bereavement and desolation. + Mr. Twain owes it to himself, as well as to the great people whose + suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up. Will he do it? + +I thought I should burst with amazement! Such a cruel, heartless charge! +I never had seen Cochin China! I never had heard of Wakawak! I didn't +know a plantain-patch from a kangaroo! I did not know what to do. I was +crazed and helpless. I let the day slip away without doing anything at +all. The next morning the same paper had this--nothing more: + + SIGNIFICANT.--Mr. Twain, it will be observed, is suggestively + silent about the Cochin China perjury. + +[Mem.--During the rest of the campaign this paper never referred to me in +any other way than as "the infamous perjurer Twain."] + +Next came the Gazette, with this: + + WANTED TO KNOW.--Will the new candidate for Governor deign to + explain to certain of his fellow-citizens (who are suffering to vote + for him!) the little circumstance of his cabin-mates in Montana + losing small valuables from time to time, until at last, these + things having been invariably found on Mr. Twain's person or in his + "trunk" (newspaper he rolled his traps in), they felt compelled to + give him a friendly admonition for his own good, and so tarred and + feathered him, and rode him on a rail; and then advised him to leave + a permanent vacuum in the place he usually occupied in the camp. + Will he do this? + +Could anything be more deliberately malicious than that? For I never was +in Montana in my life. + +[After this, this journal customarily spoke of me as, "Twain, the Montana +Thief."] + +I got to picking up papers apprehensively--much as one would lift a +desired blanket which he had some idea might have a rattlesnake under it. +One day this met my eye: + + THE LIE NAILED.--By the sworn affidavits of Michael O'Flanagan, + Esq., of the Five Points, and Mr. Snub Rafferty and Mr. Catty + Mulligan, of Water Street, it is established that Mr. Mark Twain's + vile statement that the lamented grandfather of our noble + standard-bearer, Blank J. Blank, was hanged for highway robbery, is + a brutal and gratuitous LIE, without a shadow of foundation in fact. + It is disheartening to virtuous men to see such shameful means + resorted to to achieve political success as the attacking of the + dead in their graves, and defiling their honored names with slander. + When we think of the anguish this miserable falsehood must cause the + innocent relatives and friends of the deceased, we are almost driven + to incite an outraged and insulted public to summary and unlawful + vengeance upon the traducer. But no! let us leave him to the agony + of a lacerated conscience (though if passion should get the better + of the public, and in its blind fury they should do the traducer + bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and + no court punish the perpetrators of the deed). + +The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bed +with despatch that night, and out at the back door also, while the +"outraged and insulted public" surged in the front way, breaking +furniture and windows in their righteous indignation as they came, +and taking off such property as they could carry when they went. +And yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and say that I never slandered +Mr. Blank's grandfather. More: I had never even heard of him or +mentioned him up to that day and date. + +[I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from always +referred to me afterward as "Twain, the Body-Snatcher."] + +The next newspaper article that attracted my attention was the following: + + A SWEET CANDIDATE.--Mr. Mark Twain, who was to make such a + blighting speech at the mass-meeting of the Independents last night, + didn't come to time! A telegram from his physician stated that he + had been knocked down by a runaway team, and his leg broken in two + places--sufferer lying in great agony, and so forth, and so forth, + and a lot more bosh of the same sort. And the Independents tried + hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge, and pretend that they did + not know what was the real reason of the absence of the abandoned + creature whom they denominate their standard-bearer. A certain man + was seen to reel into Mr. Twain's hotel last night in a state of + beastly intoxication. It is the imperative duty of the Independents + to prove that this besotted brute was not Mark Twain himself. We + have them at last! This is a case that admits of no shirking. The + voice of the people demands in thunder tones, "WHO WAS THAT MAN?" + +It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment, that it was +really my name that was coupled with this disgraceful suspicion. Three +long years had passed over my head since I had tasted ale, beer, wine or +liquor or any kind. + +[It shows what effect the times were having on me when I say that I saw +myself, confidently dubbed "Mr. Delirium Tremens Twain" in the next issue +of that journal without a pang--notwithstanding I knew that with +monotonous fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the very end.] + +By this time anonymous letters were getting to be an important part of my +mail matter. This form was common: + + How about that old woman you kiked of your premises which + was beging. POL. PRY. + +And this: + + There is things which you Have done which is unbeknowens to anybody + but me. You better trot out a few dots, to yours truly, or you'll + hear through the papers from + HANDY ANDY. + +This is about the idea. I could continue them till the reader was +surfeited, if desirable. + +Shortly the principal Republican journal "convicted" me of wholesale +bribery, and the leading Democratic paper "nailed" an aggravated case of +blackmailing to me. + +[In this way I acquired two additional names: "Twain the Filthy +Corruptionist" and "Twain the Loathsome Embracer."] + +By this time there had grown to be such a clamor for an "answer" to all +the dreadful charges that were laid to me that the editors and leaders of +my party said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent any +longer. As if to make their appeal the more imperative, the following +appeared in one of the papers the very next day: + + BEHOLD THE MAN!--The independent candidate still maintains silence. + Because he dare not speak. Every accusation against him has been + amply proved, and they have been indorsed and reindorsed by his own + eloquent silence, till at this day he stands forever convicted. + Look upon your candidate, Independents! Look upon the Infamous + Perjurer! the Montana Thief! the Body-Snatcher! Contemplate your + incarnate Delirium Tremens! your Filthy Corruptionist! your + Loathsome Embracer! Gaze upon him--ponder him well--and then say if + you can give your honest votes to a creature who has earned this + dismal array of titles by his hideous crimes, and dares not open his + mouth in denial of any one of them! + +There was no possible way of getting out of it, and so, in deep +humiliation, I set about preparing to "answer" a mass of baseless charges +and mean and wicked falsehoods. But I never finished the task, for the +very next morning a paper came out with a new horror, a fresh malignity, +and seriously charged me with burning a lunatic asylum with all its +inmates, because it obstructed the view from my house. This threw me +into a sort of panic. Then came the charge of poisoning my uncle to get +his property, with an imperative demand that the grave should be opened. +This drove me to the verge of distraction. On top of this I was accused +of employing toothless and incompetent old relatives to prepare the food +for the foundling' hospital when I warden. I was wavering--wavering. +And at last, as a due and fitting climax to the shameless persecution +that party rancor had inflicted upon me, nine little toddling children, +of all shades of color and degrees of raggedness, were taught to rush +onto the platform at a public meeting, and clasp me around the legs and +call me PA! + +I gave it up. I hauled down my colors and surrendered. I was not equal +to the requirements of a Gubernatorial campaign in the state of New York, +and so I sent in my withdrawal from the candidacy, and in bitterness of +spirit signed it, "Truly yours, once a decent man, but now + + "MARK TWAIN, LP., M.T., B.S., D.T., F.C., and L.E." + + + + + + +A MYSTERIOUS VISIT + + +The first notice that was taken of me when I "settled down" recently was +by a gentleman who said he was an assessor, and connected with the U. S. +Internal Revenue Department. I said I had never heard of his branch of +business before, but I was very glad to see him all the same. Would he +sit down? He sat down. I did not know anything particular to say, and +yet I felt that people who have arrived at the dignity of keeping house +must be conversational, must be easy and sociable in company. So, in +default of anything else to say, I asked him if he was opening his shop +in our neighborhood. + +He said he was. [I did not wish to appear ignorant, but I had hoped he +would mention what he had for sale.] + +I ventured to ask him "How was trade?" And he said "So-so." + +I then said we would drop in, and if we liked his house as well as any +other, we would give him our custom. + +He said he thought we would like his establishment well enough to confine +ourselves to it--said he never saw anybody who would go off and hunt up +another man in his line after trading with him once. + +That sounded pretty complacent, but barring that natural expression of +villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough. + +I do not know how it came about exactly, but gradually we appeared to +melt down and run together, conversationally speaking, and then +everything went along as comfortably as clockwork. + +We talked, and talked, and talked--at least I did; and we laughed, and +laughed, and laughed--at least he did. But all the time I had my +presence of mind about me--I had my native shrewdness turned on "full +head," as the engineers say. I was determined to find out all about his +business in spite of his obscure answers--and I was determined I would +have it out of him without his suspecting what I was at. I meant to trap +him with a deep, deep ruse. I would tell him all about my own business, +and he would naturally so warm to me during this seductive burst of +confidence that he would forget himself, and tell me all about his +affairs before he suspected what I was about. I thought to myself, My +son, you little know what an old fox you are dealing with. I said: + +"Now you never would guess what I made lecturing this winter and last +spring?" + +"No--don't believe I could, to save me. Let me see--let me see. About +two thousand dollars, maybe? But no; no, sir, I know you couldn't have +made that much. Say seventeen hundred, maybe?" + +"Ha! ha! I knew you couldn't. My lecturing receipts for last spring and +this winter were fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. What +do you think of that?" + +"Why, it is amazing-perfectly amazing. I will make a note of it. And +you say even this wasn't all?" + +"All! Why bless you, there was my income from the Daily Warwhoop for +four months--about--about--well, what should you say to about eight +thousand dollars, for instance?" + +"Say! Why, I should say I should like to see myself rolling in just such +another ocean of affluence. Eight thousand! I'll make a note of it. +Why man!--and on top of all this am I to understand that you had still +more income?" + +"Ha! ha! ha! Why, you're only in the suburbs of it, so to speak. +There's my book, The Innocents Abroad price $3.50 to $5, according to the +binding. Listen to me. Look me in the eye. During the last four months +and a half, saying nothing of sales before that, but just simply during +the four months and a half, we've sold ninety-five thousand copies of +that book. Ninety-five thousand! Think of it. Average four dollars a +copy, say. It's nearly four hundred thousand dollars, my son. I get +half." + +"The suffering Moses! I'll set that down. Fourteen-seven-fifty +--eight--two hundred. Total, say--well, upon my word, the grand total is +about two hundred and thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars! Is that +possible?" + +"Possible! If there's any mistake it's the other way. Two hundred and +fourteen thousand, cash, is my income for this year if I know how to +cipher." + +Then the gentleman got up to go. It came over me most uncomfortably that +maybe I had made my revelations for nothing, besides being flattered into +stretching them considerably by the stranger's astonished exclamations. +But no; at the last moment the gentleman handed me a large envelope, and +said it contained his advertisement; and that I would find out all about +his business in it; and that he would be happy to have my custom-would, +in fact, be proud to have the custom of a man of such prodigious income; +and that he used to think there were several wealthy men in the city, but +when they came to trade with him he discovered that they barely had +enough to live on; and that, in truth, it had been such a weary, weary +age since he had seen a rich man face to face, and talked to him, and +touched him with his hands, that he could hardly refrain from embracing +me--in fact, would esteem it a great favor if I would let him embrace me. + +This so pleased me that I did not try to resist, but allowed this +simple-hearted stranger to throw his arms about me and weep a few +tranquilizing tears down the back of my neck. Then he went his way. + +As soon as he was gone I opened his advertisement. I studied it +attentively for four minutes. I then called up the cook, and said: + +"Hold me while I faint! Let Marie turn the griddle-cakes." + +By and by, when I came to, I sent down to the rum-mill on the corner and +hired an artist by the week to sit up nights and curse that stranger, and +give me a lift occasionally in the daytime when I came to a hard place. + +Ah, what a miscreant he was! His "advertisement" was nothing in the +world but a wicked tax-return--a string of impertinent questions about +my private affairs, occupying the best part of four fools-cap pages of +fine print-questions, I may remark, gotten up with such marvelous +ingenuity that the oldest man in the world couldn't understand what the +most of them were driving at--questions, too, that were calculated to +make a man report about four times his actual income to keep from +swearing to a falsehood. I looked for a loophole, but there did not +appear to be any. Inquiry No. 1 covered my case as generously and as +amply as an umbrella could cover an ant-hill: + + What were your profits, during the past year, from any trade, + business, or vocation, wherever carried on? + +And that inquiry was backed up by thirteen others of an equally searching +nature, the most modest of which required information as to whether I had +committed any burglary or highway robbery, or, by any arson or other +secret source of emolument had acquired property which was not enumerated +in my statement of income as set opposite to inquiry No. 1. + +It was plain that that stranger had enabled me to make a goose of myself. +It was very, very plain; and so I went out and hired another artist. +By working on my vanity, the stranger had seduced me into declaring an +income of two hundred and fourteen thousand dollars. By law, one +thousand dollars of this was exempt from income tax--the only relief I +could see, and it was only a drop in the ocean. At the legal five per +cent., I must pay to the government the sum of ten thousand six hundred +and fifty dollars, income tax! + +[I may remark, in this place, that I did not do it.] + +I am acquainted with a very opulent man, whose house is a palace, whose +table is regal, whose outlays are enormous, yet a man who has no income, +as I have often noticed by the revenue returns; and to him I went for +advice in my distress. He took my dreadful exhibition of receipts, he +put on his glasses, he took his pen, and presto!--I was a pauper! It was +the neatest thing that ever was. He did it simply by deftly manipulating +the bill of "DEDUCTIONS." He set down my "State, national, and municipal +taxes" at so much; my "losses by shipwreck; fire, etc.," at so much; my +"losses on sales of real estate"--on "live stock sold"--on "payments for +rent of homestead"--on "repairs, improvements, interest"--on "previously +taxed salary as an officer of the United States army, navy, revenue +service," and other things. He got astonishing "deductions" out of each +and every one of these matters--each and every one of them. And when he +was done he handed me the paper, and I saw at a glance that during the +year my income, in the way of profits, had been one thousand two hundred +and fifty dollars and forty cents. + +"Now," said he, "the thousand dollars is exempt by law. What you want to +do is to go and swear this document in and pay tax on the two hundred and +fifty dollars." + +[While he was making this speech his little boy Willie lifted a +two-dollar greenback out of his vest pocket and vanished with it, and I +would wager; anything that if my stranger were to call on that little boy +to-morrow he would make a false return of his income.] + +"Do you," said I, "do you always work up the 'deductions' after this +fashion in your own case, sir?" + +"Well, I should say so! If it weren't for those eleven saving clauses +under the head of 'Deductions' I should be beggared every year to support +this hateful and wicked, this extortionate and tyrannical government." + +This gentleman stands away up among the very best of the solid men of the +city--the men of moral weight, of commercial integrity, of unimpeachable, +social spotlessness--and so I bowed to his example. I went down to the +revenue office, and under the accusing eyes of my old visitor I stood up +and swore to lie after lie, fraud after fraud, villainy after villainy, +till my soul was coated inches and inches thick with perjury, and my +self-respect gone for ever and ever. + +But what of it? It is nothing more than thousands of the richest and +proudest, and most respected, honored, and courted men in America do +every year. And so I don't care. I am not ashamed. I shall simply, +for the present, talk little and eschew fire-proof gloves, lest I fall +into certain dreadful habits irrevocably. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sketches New and Old, Complete +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR + +by Mark Twain + + + + +THE CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR AND OTHER WHIMSICAL SKETCHES + + +NOTE: + +Most of the sketches in this volume were taken from a series the author +wrote for The Galaxy from May, 1870, to April, 1871. The rest appeared +in The Buffalo Express. + + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + +THE CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR +A MEMORY +INTRODUCTORY TO "MEMORANDA". +ABOUT SMELLS +A COUPLE OF SAD EXPERIENCES +DAN MURPHY +THE "TOURNAMENT" IN A.D. 1870 +CURIOUS RELIC FOR SALE +A REMINISCENCE OF THE BACK SETTLEMENTS +A ROYAL COMPLIMENT +THE APPROACHING EPIDEMIC +THE TONE-IMPARTING COMMITTEE +OUR PRECIOUS LUNATIC +THE EUROPEAN WAR +THE WILD MAN INTERVIEWED +LAST WORDS OF GREAT MEN + + + + + +THE CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR + +As soon as I had learned to speak the language a little, I became greatly +interested in the people and the system of government. + +I found that the nation had at first tried universal suffrage pure and +simple, but had thrown that form aside because the result was not +satisfactory. It had seemed to deliver all power into the hands of the +ignorant and non-tax-paying classes; and of a necessity the responsible +offices were filled from these classes also. + +A remedy was sought. The people believed they had found it; not in the +destruction of universal suffrage, but in the enlargement of it. It was +an odd idea, and ingenious. You must understand, the constitution gave +every man a vote; therefore that vote was a vested right, and could not +be taken away. But the constitution did not say that certain individuals +might not be given two votes, or ten! So an amendatory clause was +inserted in a quiet way; a clause which authorised the enlargement of the +suffrage in certain cases to be specified by statute. To offer to +"limit" the suffrage might have made instant trouble; the offer to +"enlarge" it had a pleasant aspect. But of course the newspapers soon +began to suspect; and then out they came! It was found, however, that +for once--and for the first time in the history of the republic +--property, character, and intellect were able to wield a political +influence; for once, money, virtue, and intelligence took a vital and a +united interest in a political question; for once these powers went to +the "primaries" in strong force; for once the best men in the nation were +put forward as candidates for that parliament whose business it should be +to enlarge the suffrage. The weightiest half of the press quickly joined +forces with the new movement, and left the other half to rail about the +proposed "destruction of the liberties" of the bottom layer of society, +the hitherto governing class of the community. + +The victory was complete. The new law was framed and passed. Under it +every citizen, howsoever poor or ignorant, possessed one vote, +so universal suffrage still reigned; but if a man possessed a good +common-school education and no money, he had two votes; a high-school +education gave him four; if he had property like wise, to the value of +three thousand 'sacos,' he wielded one more vote; for every fifty +thousand 'sacos' a man added to his property, he was entitled to another +vote; a university education entitled a man to nine votes, even though he +owned no property. Therefore, learning being more prevalent and more +easily acquired than riches, educated men became a wholesome check upon +wealthy men, since they could outvote them. Learning goes usually with +uprightness, broad views, and humanity; so the learned voters, possessing +the balance of power, became the vigilant and efficient protectors of the +great lower rank of society. + +And now a curious thing developed itself--a sort of emulation, whose +object was voting power! Whereas formerly a man was honored only +according to the amount of money he possessed, his grandeur was measured +now by the number of votes he wielded. A man with only one vote was +conspicuously respectful to his neighbor who possessed three. And if he +was a man above the common-place, he was as conspicuously energetic in +his determination to acquire three for himself. This spirit of emulation +invaded all ranks. Votes based upon capital were commonly called +"mortal" votes, because they could be lost; those based upon learning +were called "immortal," because they were permanent, and because of their +customarily imperishable character they were naturally more valued than +the other sort. I say "customarily" for the reason that these votes were +not absolutely imperishable, since insanity could suspend them. + +Under this system, gambling and speculation almost ceased in the +republic. A man honoured as the possessor of great voting power could +not afford to risk the loss of it upon a doubtful chance. + +It was curious to observe the manners and customs which the enlargement +plan produced. Walking the street with a friend one day he delivered a +careless bow to a passer-by, and then remarked that that person possessed +only one vote and would probably never earn another; he was more +respectful to the next acquaintance he met; he explained that this salute +was a four-vote bow. I tried to "average" the importance of the people +he accosted after that, by the-nature of his bows, but my success was +only partial, because of the somewhat greater homage paid to the +immortals than to the mortals. My friend explained. He said there was +no law to regulate this thing, except that most powerful of all laws, +custom. Custom had created these varying bows, and in time they had +become easy and natural. At this moment he delivered himself of a very +profound salute, and then said, "Now there's a man who began life as a +shoemaker's apprentice, and without education; now he swings twenty-two +mortal votes and two immortal ones; he expects to pass a high-school +examination this year and climb a couple of votes higher among the +immortals; mighty valuable citizen." + +By and by my friend met a venerable personage, and not only made him a +most elaborate bow, but also took off his hat. I took off mine, too, +with a mysterious awe. I was beginning to be infected. + +"What grandee is that?" + +"That is our most illustrious astronomer. He hasn't any money, but is +fearfully learned. Nine immortals is his political weight! He would +swing a hundred and fifty votes if our system were perfect." + +"Is there any altitude of mere moneyed grandeur that you take off your +hat to?" + +"No. Nine immortal votes is the only power we uncover for that is, in +civil life. Very great officials receive that mark of homage, of +course." + +It was common to hear people admiringly mention men who had begun life on +the lower levels and in time achieved great voting-power. It was also +common to hear youths planning a future of ever so many votes for +themselves. I heard shrewd mammas speak of certain young men as good +"catches" because they possessed such-and-such a number of votes. I knew +of more than one case where an heiress was married to a youngster who had +but one vote; the argument being that he was gifted with such excellent +parts that in time he would acquire a good voting strength, and perhaps +in the long run be able to outvote his wife, if he had luck. + +Competitive examinations were the rule and in all official grades. I +remarked that the questions asked the candidates were wild, intricate, +and often required a sort of knowledge not needed in the office sought. + +"Can a fool or an ignoramus answer them?" asked the person I was talking +with. + +"Certainly not." + +"Well, you will not find any fools or ignoramuses among our officials." + +I felt rather cornered, but made shift to say: + +"But these questions cover a good deal more ground than is necessary." + +"No matter; if candidates can answer these it is tolerably fair evidence +that they can answer nearly any other question you choose to ask them." + +There were some things in Gondour which one could not shut his eyes to. +One was, that ignorance and incompetence had no place in the government. +Brains and property managed the state. A candidate for office must have +marked ability, education, and high character, or he stood no sort of +chance of election. If a hod-carrier possessed these, he could succeed; +but the mere fact that he was a hod-carrier could not elect him, as in +previous times. + +It was now a very great honour to be in the parliament or in office; +under the old system such distinction had only brought suspicion upon a +man and made him a helpless mark for newspaper contempt and scurrility. +Officials did not need to steal now, their salaries being vast in +comparison with the pittances paid in the days when parliaments were +created by hod-carriers, who viewed official salaries from a hod-carrying +point of view and compelled that view to be respected by their obsequious +servants. Justice was wisely and rigidly administered; for a judge, +after once reaching his place through the specified line of promotions, +was a permanency during good behaviour. He was not obliged to modify his +judgments according to the effect they might have upon the temper of a +reigning political party. + +The country was mainly governed by a ministry which went out with the +administration that created it. This was also the case with the chiefs +of the great departments. Minor officials ascended to their several +positions through well-earned promotions, and not by a jump from +gin-mills or the needy families and friends of members of parliament. +Good behaviour measured their terms of office. + +The head of the governments the Grand Caliph, was elected for a term of +twenty years. I questioned the wisdom of this. I was answered that he +could do no harm, since the ministry and the parliament governed the +land, and he was liable to impeachment for misconduct. This great office +had twice been ably filled by women, women as aptly fitted for it as some +of the sceptred queens of history. Members of the cabinet, under many +administrations, had been women. + +I found that the pardoning power was lodged in a court of pardons, +consisting of several great judges. Under the old regime, this important +power was vested in a single official, and he usually took care to have a +general jail delivery in time for the next election. + +I inquired about public schools. There were plenty of them, and of free +colleges too. I inquired about compulsory education. This was received +with a smile, and the remark: + +"When a man's child is able to make himself powerful and honoured +according to the amount of education he acquires, don't you suppose that +that parent will apply the compulsion himself? Our free schools and free +colleges require no law to fill them." + +There was a loving pride of country about this person's way of speaking +which annoyed me. I had long been unused to the sound of it in my own. +The Gondour national airs were forever dinning in my ears; therefore I +was glad to leave that country and come back to my dear native land, +where one never hears that sort of music. + + + + + + +A MEMORY, + +When I say that I never knew my austere father to be enamoured of but one +poem in all the long half century that he lived, persons who knew him +will easily believe me; when I say that I have never composed but one +poem in all the long third of a century that I have lived, persons who +know me will be sincerely grateful; and finally, when I say that the poem +which I composed was not the one which my father was enamoured of, +persons who may have known us both will not need to have this truth shot +into them with a mountain howitzer before they can receive it. My father +and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy--a sort of +armed neutrality so to speak. At irregular intervals this neutrality was +broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be candid enough to say that the +breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict +impartiality between us--which is to say, my father did the breaking, and +I did the suffering. As a general thing I was a backward, cautious, +unadventurous boy; but I once jumped off a two-story table; another time +I gave an elephant a "plug" of tobacco and retired without waiting for an +answer; and still another time I pretended to be talking in my sleep, and +got off a portion of a very wretched original conundrum in the hearing of +my father. Let us not pry into the result; it was of no consequence to +any one but me. + +But the poem I have referred to as attracting my father's attention and +achieving his favour was "Hiawatha." Some man who courted a sudden and +awful death presented him an early copy, and I never lost faith in my own +senses until I saw him sit down and go to reading it in cold blood--saw +him open the book, and heard him read these following lines, with the +same inflectionless judicial frigidity with which he always read his +charge to the jury, or administered an oath to a witness: + + "Take your bow, + O Hiawatha, + Take your arrows, jasper-headed, + Take your war-club, Puggawaugun, + And your mittens, Minjekahwan, + And your birch canoe for sailing, + And the oil of Mishe-Nama." + +Presently my father took out of his breast pocket an imposing "Warranty +Deed," and fixed his eyes upon it and dropped into meditation. I knew +what it was. A Texan lady and gentleman had given my half-brother, Orrin +Johnson, a handsome property in a town in the North, in gratitude to him +for having saved their lives by an act of brilliant heroism. + +By and by my father looked towards me and sighed. Then he said: + +"If I had such a son as this poet, here were a subject worthier than the +traditions of these Indians." + +"If you please, sir, where?" + +"In this deed." + +"Yes--in this very deed," said my father, throwing it on the table. +"There is more poetry, more romance, more sublimity, more splendid +imagery hidden away in that homely document than could be found in all +the traditions of all the savages that live." + +"Indeed, sir? Could I--could I get it out, sir? Could I compose the +poem, sir, do you think?" + +"You?" + +I wilted. + +Presently my father's face softened somewhat, and he said: + +"Go and try. But mind, curb folly. No poetry at the expense of truth. +Keep strictly to the facts." + +I said I would, and bowed myself out, and went upstairs. + +"Hiawatha" kept droning in my head--and so did my father's remarks about +the sublimity and romance hidden in my subject, and also his injunction +to beware of wasteful and exuberant fancy. I noticed, just here, that I +had heedlessly brought the deed away with me; now at this moment came to +me one of those rare moods of daring recklessness, such as I referred to +a while ago. Without another thought, and in plain defiance of the fact +that I knew my father meant me to write the romantic story of my +half-brother's adventure and subsequent good fortune, I ventured to heed +merely the letter of his remarks and ignore their spirit. I took the +stupid "Warranty Deed" itself and chopped it up into Hiawathian blank +verse without altering or leaving out three words, and without +transposing six. It required loads of courage to go downstairs and face +my father with my performance. I started three or four times before I +finally got my pluck to where it would stick. But at last I said I would +go down and read it to him if he threw me over the church for it. +I stood up to begin, and he told me to come closer. I edged up a little, +but still left as much neutral ground between us as I thought he would +stand. Then I began. It would be useless for me to try to tell what +conflicting emotions expressed themselves upon his face, nor how they +grew more and more intense, as I proceeded; nor how a fell darkness +descended upon his countenance, and he began to gag and swallow, and his +hands began to work and twitch, as I reeled off line after line, with the +strength ebbing out of me, and my legs trembling under me: + + THE STORY OF A GALLANT DEED + + THIS INDENTURE, made the tenth + Day of November, in the year + Of our Lord one thousand eight + Hundred six-and-fifty, + + Between Joanna S. E. Gray + And Philip Gray, her husband, + Of Salem City in the State + Of Texas, of the first part, + + And O. B. Johnson, of the town + Of Austin, ditto, WITNESSETH: + That said party of first part, + For and in consideration + + Of the sum of Twenty Thousand + Dollars, lawful money of + The U. S. of Americay, + To them in hand now paid by said + + Party of the second part, + The due receipt whereof is here-- + By confessed and acknowledg-ed + Having Granted, Bargained, Sold, Remised, + + Released and Aliened and Conveyed, + Confirmed, and by these presents do + Grant and Bargain, Sell, Remise, + Alien, Release, Convey, and Con-- + + Firm unto the said aforesaid + Party of the second part, + And to his heirs and assigns + Forever and ever ALL + + That certain lot or parcel of + LAND situate in city of + Dunkirk, County of Chautauqua, + And likewise furthermore in York State + + Bounded and described, to-wit, + As follows, herein, namely + BEGINNING at the distance of + A hundred two-and-forty feet, + + North-half-east, north-east-by north, + East-north-east and northerly + Of the northerly line of Mulligan street + On the westerly line of Brannigan street, + + And running thence due northerly + On Brannigan street 200 feet, + Thence at right angles westerly, + North-west-by-west-and-west-half-west, + + West-and-by-north, north-west-by-west, + About-- + +I kind of dodged, and the boot-jack broke the looking-glass. I could +have waited to see what became of the other missiles if I had wanted to, +but I took no interest in such things. + + + + + + +INTRODUCTORY TO "MEMORANDA" + +In taking upon myself the burden of editing a department in THE GALAXY +magazine, I have been actuated by a conviction that I was needed, almost +imperatively, in this particular field of literature. I have long felt +that while the magazine literature of the day had much to recommend it, +it yet lacked stability, solidity, weight. It seemed plain to me that +too much space was given to poetry and romance, and not enough to +statistics and agriculture. This defect it shall be my earnest endeavour +to remedy. If I succeed, the simple consciousness that I have done a +good deed will be a sufficient reward.**--[**Together with salary.] + +In this department of mine the public may always rely upon finding +exhaustive statistical tables concerning the finances of the country, +the ratio of births and deaths; the percentage of increase of population, +etc., etc.--in a word, everything in the realm of statistics that can +make existence bright and beautiful. + +Also, in my department will always be found elaborate condensations of +the Patent Office Reports, wherein a faithful endeavour will at all times +be made to strip the nutritious facts bare of that effulgence of +imagination and sublimity of diction which too often mar the excellence +of those great works.**--[** N. B.--No other magazine in the country +makes a specialty of the Patent Office Reports.] + +In my department will always be found ample excerpts from those able +dissertations upon Political Economy which I have for a long time been +contributing to a great metropolitan journal, and which, for reasons +utterly incomprehensible to me, another party has chosen to usurp the +credit of composing. + +And, finally, I call attention with pride to the fact that in my +department of the magazine the farmer will always find full market +reports, and also complete instructions about farming, even from the +grafting of the seed to the harrowing of the matured crop. I shall throw +a pathos into the subject of Agriculture that will surprise and delight +the world. + +Such is my programme; and I am persuaded that by adhering to it with +fidelity I shall succeed in materially changing the character of this +magazine. Therefore I am emboldened to ask the assistance and +encouragement of all whose sympathies are with Progress and Reform. + +In the other departments of the magazine will be found poetry, tales, and +other frothy trifles, and to these the reader can turn for relaxation +from time to time, and thus guard against overstraining the powers of his +mind. + M. T. + +P. S.--1. I have not sold out of the "Buffalo Express," and shall not; +neither shall I stop writing for it. This remark seems necessary in a +business point of view. + +2. These MEMORANDA are not a "humorous" department. I would not conduct +an exclusively and professedly humorous department for any one. I would +always prefer to have the privilege of printing a serious and sensible +remark, in case one occurred to me, without the reader's feeling obliged +to consider himself outraged. We cannot keep the same mood day after +day. I am liable, some day, to want to print my opinion on +jurisprudence, or Homeric poetry, or international law, and I shall do +it. It will be of small consequence to me whether the reader survive or +not. I shall never go straining after jokes when in a cheerless mood, so +long as the unhackneyed subject of international law is open to me. +I will leave all that straining to people who edit professedly and +inexorably "humorous" departments and publications. + +3. I have chosen the general title of MEMORANDA for this department +because it is plain and simple, and makes no fraudulent promises. I can +print under it statistics, hotel arrivals, or anything that comes handy, +without violating faith with the reader. + +4. Puns cannot be allowed a place in this department. Inoffensive +ignorance, benignant stupidity, and unostentatious imbecility will always +be welcomed and cheerfully accorded a corner, and even the feeblest +humour will be admitted, when we can do no better; but no circumstances, +however dismal, will ever be considered a sufficient excuse for the +admission of that last--and saddest evidence of intellectual poverty, the +Pun. + + + + + + +ABOUT SMELLS + +In a recent issue of the "Independent," the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, of +Brooklyn, has the following utterance on the subject of "Smells": + + I have a good Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in + church, and a working man should enter the door at the other end, + would smell him instantly. My friend is not to blame for the + sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer + for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch dog. The fact is, + if you, had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing up of the + common people with the uncommon, you would keep one-half of + Christendom sick at their stomach. If you are going to kill the + church thus with bad smells, I will have nothing to do with this + work of evangelization. + +We have reason to believe that there will be labouring men in heaven; and +also a number of negroes, and Esquimaux, and Terra del Fuegans, and +Arabs, and a few Indians, and possibly even some Spaniards and +Portuguese. All things are possible with God. We shall have all these +sorts of people in heaven; but, alas! in getting them we shall lose the +society of Dr. Talmage. Which is to say, we shall lose the company of +one who could give more real "tone" to celestial society than any other +contribution Brooklyn could furnish. And what would eternal happiness be +without the Doctor? Blissful, unquestionably--we know that well enough +but would it be 'distingue,' would it be 'recherche' without him? St. +Matthew without stockings or sandals; St. Jerome bare headed, and with a +coarse brown blanket robe dragging the ground; St. Sebastian with +scarcely any raiment at all--these we should see, and should enjoy seeing +them; but would we not miss a spike-tailed coat and kids, and turn away +regretfully, and say to parties from the Orient: "These are well enough, +but you ought to see Talmage of Brooklyn." I fear me that in the better +world we shall not even have Dr. Talmage's "good Christian friend." + +For if he were sitting under the glory of the Throne, and the keeper of +the keys admitted a Benjamin Franklin or other labouring man, that +"friend," with his fine natural powers infinitely augmented by +emancipation from hampering flesh, would detect him with a single sniff, +and immediately take his hat and ask to be excused. + +To all outward seeming, the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage is of the same +material as that used in the construction of his early predecessors in +the ministry; and yet one feels that there must be a difference somewhere +between him and the Saviour's first disciples. It may be because here, +in the nineteenth century, Dr. T. has had advantages which Paul and +Peter and the others could not and did not have. There was a lack of +polish about them, and a looseness of etiquette, and a want of +exclusiveness, which one cannot help noticing. They healed the very +beggars, and held intercourse with people of a villainous odour every +day. If the subject of these remarks had been chosen among the original +Twelve Apostles, he would not have associated with the rest, because he +could not have stood the fishy smell of some of his comrades who came +from around the Sea of Galilee. He would have resigned his commission +with some such remark as he makes in the extract quoted above: "Master, +if thou art going to kill the church thus with bad smells, I will have +nothing to do with this work of evangelization." He is a disciple, and +makes that remark to the Master; the only difference is, that he makes it +in the nineteenth instead of the first century. + +Is there a choir in Mr. T.'s church? And does it ever occur that they +have no better manners than to sing that hymn which is so suggestive of +labourers and mechanics: + + "Son of the Carpenter! receive + This humble work of mine?" + +Now, can it be possible that in a handful of centuries the Christian +character has fallen away from an imposing heroism that scorned even the +stake, the cross, and the axe, to a poor little effeminacy that withers +and wilts under an unsavoury smell? We are not prepared to believe so, +the reverend Doctor and his friend to the contrary notwithstanding. + + + + + + +A COUPLE OF SAD EXPERIENCES + +When I published a squib recently in which I said I was going to edit an +Agricultural Department in this magazine, I certainly did not desire to +deceive anybody. I had not the remotest desire to play upon any one's +confidence with a practical joke, for he is a pitiful creature indeed who +will degrade the dignity of his humanity to the contriving of the witless +inventions that go by that name. I purposely wrote the thing as absurdly +and as extravagantly as it could be written, in order to be sure and not +mislead hurried or heedless readers: for I spoke of launching a triumphal +barge upon a desert, and planting a tree of prosperity in a mine--a tree +whose fragrance should slake the thirst of the naked, and whose branches +should spread abroad till they washed the chorea of, etc., etc. I +thought that manifest lunacy like that would protect the reader. But to +make assurance absolute, and show that I did not and could not seriously +mean to attempt an Agricultural Department, I stated distinctly in my +postscript that I did not know anything about Agriculture. But alas! +right there is where I made my worst mistake--for that remark seems to +have recommended my proposed Agriculture more than anything else. It +lets a little light in on me, and I fancy I perceive that the farmers +feel a little bored, sometimes, by the oracular profundity of +agricultural editors who "know it all." In fact, one of my +correspondents suggests this (for that unhappy squib has deluged me with +letters about potatoes, and cabbages, and hominy, and vermicelli, and +maccaroni, and all the other fruits, cereals, and vegetables that ever +grew on earth; and if I get done answering questions about the best way +of raising these things before I go raving crazy, I shall be thankful, +and shall never write obscurely for fun any more). + +Shall I tell the real reason why I have unintentionally succeeded in +fooling so many people? It is because some of them only read a little of +the squib I wrote and jumped to the conclusion that it was serious, and +the rest did not read it at all, but heard of my agricultural venture at +second-hand. Those cases I could not guard against, of course. To write +a burlesque so wild that its pretended facts will not be accepted in +perfect good faith by somebody, is, very nearly an impossible thing to +do. It is because, in some instances, the reader is a person who never +tries to deceive anybody himself, and therefore is not expecting any one +to wantonly practise a deception upon him; and in this case the only +person dishonoured is the man who wrote the burlesque. In other +instances the "nub" or moral of the burlesque--if its object be to +enforce a truth--escapes notice in the superior glare of something in the +body of the burlesque itself. And very often this "moral" is tagged on +at the bottom, and the reader, not knowing that it is the key of the +whole thing and the only important paragraph in the article, tranquilly +turns up his nose at it and leaves it unread. One can deliver a satire +with telling force through the insidious medium of a travesty, if he is +careful not to overwhelm the satire with the extraneous interest of the +travesty, and so bury it from the reader's sight and leave him a joked +and defrauded victim, when the honest intent was to add to either his +knowledge or his wisdom. I have had a deal of experience in burlesques +and their unfortunate aptness to deceive the public, and this is why I +tried hard to make that agricultural one so broad and so perfectly +palpable that even a one-eyed potato could see it; and yet, as I speak +the solemn truth, it fooled one of the ablest agricultural editors in +America! + + + + + + +DAN MURPHY + +One of the saddest things that ever came under my notice (said the +banker's clerk) was there in Corning, during the war. Dan Murphy +enlisted as a private, and fought very bravely. The boys all liked him, +and when a wound by and by weakened him down till carrying a musket was +too heavy work for him, they clubbed together and fixed him up as a +sutler. He made money then, and sent it always to his wife to bank for +him. She was a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to +keep money when she got it. She didn't waste a penny. On the contrary, +she began to get miserly as her bank account grew. She grieved to part +with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her hard-working life she had +known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless, sick, and without a +dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of suffering so again. +Well, at last Dan died; and the boys, in testimony of their esteem and +respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs. Murphy to know if she would like to +have him embalmed and sent home, when you know the usual custom was to +dump a poor devil like him into a shallow hole, and then inform his +friends what had become of him. Mrs. Murphy jumped to the conclusion +that it would only cost two or three dollars to embalm her dead husband, +and so she telegraphed "Yes." It was at the "wake" that the bill for +embalming arrived and was presented to the widow. She uttered a wild, +sad wail, that pierced every heart, and said: "Sivinty-foive dollars for +stoofhn' Dan, blister their sowls! Did thim divils suppose I was goin' +to stairt a Museim, that I'd be dalin' in such expinsive curiassities!" + +The banker's clerk said there was not a dry eye in the house. + + + + + + +THE "TOURNAMENT" IN A. D. 1870 + +Lately there appeared an item to this effect, and the same went the +customary universal round of the press: + + A telegraph station has just been established upon the traditional + site of the Garden of Eden. + +As a companion to that, nothing fits so aptly and so perfectly as this: + + Brooklyn has revived the knightly tournament of the Middle Ages. + +It is hard to tell which is the most startling, the idea of that highest +achievement of human genius and intelligence, the telegraph, prating away +about the practical concerns of the world's daily life in the heart and +home of ancient indolence, ignorance, and savagery, or the idea of that +happiest expression of the brag, vanity, and mock-heroics of our +ancestors, the "tournament," coming out of its grave to flaunt its tinsel +trumpery and perform its "chivalrous" absurdities in the high noon of the +nineteenth century, and under the patronage of a great, broad-awake city +and an advanced civilisation. + +A "tournament" in Lynchburg is a thing easily within the comprehension of +the average mind; but no commonly gifted person can conceive of such a +spectacle in Brooklyn without straining his powers. Brooklyn is part and +parcel of the city of New York, and there is hardly romance enough in the +entire metropolis to re-supply a Virginia "knight" with "chivalry," in +case he happened to run out of it. Let the reader calmly and +dispassionately picture to himself "lists" in Brooklyn; heralds, +pursuivants, pages, garter king-at-arms--in Brooklyn; the marshalling of +the fantastic hosts of "chivalry" in slashed doublets, velvet trunks, +ruffles, and plumes--in Brooklyn; mounted on omnibus and livery-stable +patriarchs, promoted, and referred to in cold blood as "steeds," +"destriers," and "chargers," and divested of their friendly, humble names +these meek old "Jims" and "Bobs" and "Charleys," and renamed "Mohammed," +"Bucephalus," and "Saladin"--in Brooklyn; mounted thus, and armed with +swords and shields and wooden lances, and cased in paste board hauberks, +morions, greaves, and gauntlets, and addressed as "Sir" Smith, and "Sir" +Jones, and bearing such titled grandeurs as "The Disinherited Knight," +the "Knight of Shenandoah," the "Knight of the Blue Ridge," the "Knight +of Maryland," and the "Knight of the Secret Sorrow"--in Brooklyn; and at +the toot of the horn charging fiercely upon a helpless ring hung on a +post, and prodding at it in trepidly with their wooden sticks, and by and +by skewering it and cavorting back to the judges' stand covered with +glory this in Brooklyn; and each noble success like this duly and +promptly announced by an applauding toot from the herald's horn, and "the +band playing three bars of an old circus tune"--all in Brooklyn, in broad +daylight. And let the reader remember, and also add to his picture, as +follows, to wit: when the show was all over, the party who had shed the +most blood and overturned and hacked to pieces the most knights, or at +least had prodded the most muffin-rings, was accorded the ancient +privilege of naming and crowning the Queen of Love and Beauty--which +naming had in reality been done for, him by the "cut-and-dried" process, +and long in advance, by a committee of ladies, but the crowning he did in +person, though suffering from loss of blood, and then was taken to the +county hospital on a shutter to have his wounds dressed--these curious +things all occurring in Brooklyn, and no longer ago than one or two +yesterdays. It seems impossible, and yet it is true. + +This was doubtless the first appearance of the "tournament" up here among +the rolling-mills and factories, and will probably be the last. It will +be well to let it retire permanently to the rural districts of Virginia, +where, it is said, the fine mailed and plumed, noble-natured, +maiden-rescuing, wrong-redressing, adventure-seeking knight of romance is +accepted and believed in by the peasantry with pleasing simplicity, while +they reject with scorn the plain, unpolished verdict whereby history +exposes him as a braggart, a ruffian, a fantastic vagabond; and an +ignoramus. + +All romance aside, what shape would our admiration of the heroes of Ashby +de la Zouch be likely to take, in this practical age, if those worthies +were to rise up and come here and perform again the chivalrous deeds of +that famous passage of arms? Nothing but a New York jury and the +insanity plea could save them from hanging, from the amiable +Bois-Guilbert and the pleasant Front-de-Boeuf clear down to the nameless +ruffians that entered the riot with unpictured shields and did their +first murder and acquired their first claim to respect that day. The +doings of the so-called "chivalry" of the Middle Ages were absurd enough, +even when they were brutally and bloodily in earnest, and when their +surroundings of castles and donjons, savage landscapes and half-savage +peoples, were in keeping; but those doings gravely reproduced with tinsel +decorations and mock pageantry, by bucolic gentlemen with broomstick +lances, and with muffin-rings to represent the foe, and all in the midst +of the refinement and dignity of a carefully-developed modern +civilisation, is absurdity gone crazy. + +Now, for next exhibition, let us have a fine representation of one of +those chivalrous wholesale butcheries and burnings of Jewish women and +children, which the crusading heroes of romance used to indulge in in +their European homes, just before starting to the Holy Land, to seize and +take to their protection the Sepulchre and defend it from "pollution." + + + + + + +CURIOUS RELIC FOR SALE + + "For sale, for the benefit of the Fund for the Relief of the Widows + and Orphans of Deceased Firemen, a Curious Ancient Bedouin Pipe, + procured at the city of Endor in Palestine, and believed to have + once belonged to the justly-renowned Witch of Endor. Parties + desiring to examine this singular relic with a view to purchasing, + can do so by calling upon Daniel S.. 119 and 121 William street, New + York" + +As per advertisement in the "Herald." A curious old relic indeed, as I +had a good personal right to know. In a single instant of time, a long +drawn panorama of sights and scenes in the Holy Land flashed through my +memory--town and grove, desert, camp, and caravan clattering after each +other and disappearing, leaping me with a little of the surprised and +dizzy feeling which I have experienced at sundry times when a long +express train has overtaken me at some quiet curve and gone whizzing, car +by car, around the corner and out of sight. In that prolific instant I +saw again all the country from the Sea of Galilee and Nazareth clear to +Jerusalem, and thence over the hills of Judea and through the Vale of +Sharon to Joppa, down by the ocean. Leaving out unimportant stretches of +country and details of incident, I saw and experienced the following +described matters and things. Immediately three years fell away from my +age, and a vanished time was restored to me September, 1867. It was a +flaming Oriental day--this one that had come up out of the past and +brought along its actors, its stage-properties, and scenic effects--and +our party had just ridden through the squalid hive of human vermin which +still holds the ancient Biblical name of Endor; I was bringing up the +rear on my grave four-dollar steed, who was about beginning to compose +himself for his usual noon nap. My! only fifteen minutes before how the +black, mangy, nine-tenths naked, ten-tenths filthy, ignorant, bigoted, +besotted, hungry, lazy, malignant, screeching, crowding, struggling, +wailing, begging, cursing, hateful spawn of the original Witch had +swarmed out of the caves in the rocks and the holes and crevices in the +earth, and blocked our horses' way, besieged us, threw themselves in the +animals' path, clung to their manes, saddle-furniture, and tails, asking, +beseeching, demanding "bucksheesh! bucksheesh! BUCKSHEESH!" We had +rained small copper Turkish coins among them, as fugitives fling coats +and hats to pursuing wolves, and then had spurred our way through as they +stopped to scramble for the largess. I was fervently thankful when we +had gotten well up on the desolate hillside and outstripped them and left +them jawing and gesticulating in the rear. What a tempest had seemingly +gone roaring and crashing by me and left its dull thunders pulsing in my +ears! + +I was in the rear, as I was saying. Our pack-mules and Arabs were far +ahead, and Dan, Jack, Moult, Davis, Denny, Church, and Birch (these names +will do as well as any to represent the boys) were following close after +them. As my horse nodded to rest, I heard a sort of panting behind me, +and turned and saw that a tawny youth from the village had overtaken me +--a true remnant and representative of his ancestress the Witch--a +galvanised scurvy, wrought into the human shape and garnished with +ophthalmia and leprous scars--an airy creature with an invisible +shirt-front that reached below the pit of his stomach, and no other +clothing to speak of except a tobacco-pouch, an ammunition-pocket, and a +venerable gun, which was long enough to club any game with that came +within shooting distance, but far from efficient as an article of dress. + +I thought to myself, "Now this disease with a human heart in it is going +to shoot me." I smiled in derision at the idea of a Bedouin daring to +touch off his great-grandfather's rusty gun and getting his head blown +off for his pains. But then it occurred to me, in simple school-boy +language, "Suppose he should take deliberate aim and 'haul off' and fetch +me with the butt-end of it?" There was wisdom in that view of it, and I +stopped to parley. I found he was only a friendly villain who wanted a +trifle of bucksheesh, and after begging what he could get in that way, +was perfectly willing to trade off everything he had for more. I believe +he would have parted with his last shirt for bucksheesh if he had had +one. He was smoking the "humbliest" pipe I ever saw--a dingy, +funnel-shaped, red-clay thing, streaked and grimed with oil and tears of +tobacco, and with all the different kinds of dirt there are, and thirty +per cent. of them peculiar and indigenous to Endor and perdition. And +rank? I never smelt anything like it. It withered a cactus that stood +lifting its prickly hands aloft beside the trail. It even woke up my +horse. I said I would take that. It cost me a franc, a Russian kopek, +a brass button, and a slate pencil; and my spendthrift lavishness so won +upon the son of the desert that he passed over his pouch of most +unspeakably villainous tobacco to me as a free gift. What a pipe it was, +to be sure! It had a rude brass-wire cover to it, and a little coarse +iron chain suspended from the bowl, with an iron splinter attached to +loosen up the tobacco and pick your teeth with. The stem looked like the +half of a slender walking-stick with the bark on. + +I felt that this pipe had belonged to the original Witch of Endor as soon +as I saw it; and as soon as I smelt it, I knew it. Moreover, I asked the +Arab cub in good English if it was not so, and he answered in good Arabic +that it was. I woke up my horse and went my way, smoking. And presently +I said to myself reflectively, "If there is anything that could make a +man deliberately assault a dying cripple, I reckon may be an unexpected +whiff from this pipe would do it." I smoked along till I found I was +beginning to lie, and project murder, and steal my own things out of one +pocket and hide them in another; and then I put up my treasure, took off +my spurs and put them under my horse's tail, and shortly came tearing +through our caravan like a hurricane. + +From that time forward, going to Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan, +Bethany, Bethlehem, and everywhere, I loafed contentedly in the rear and +enjoyed my infamous pipe and revelled in imaginary villany. But at the +end of two weeks we turned our faces toward the sea and journeyed over +the Judean hills, and through rocky defiles, and among the scenes that +Samson knew in his youth, and by and by we touched level ground just at +night, and trotted off cheerily over the plain of Sharon. It was +perfectly jolly for three hours, and we whites crowded along together, +close after the chief Arab muleteer (all the pack-animals and the other +Arabs were miles in the rear), and we laughed, and chatted, and argued +hotly about Samson, and whether suicide was a sin or not, since Paul +speaks of Samson distinctly as being saved and in heaven. But by and by +the night air, and the duskiness, and the weariness of eight hours in the +saddle, began to tell, and conversation flagged and finally died out +utterly. The squeak-squeaking of the saddles grew very distinct; +occasionally somebody sighed, or started to hum a tune and gave it up; +now and then a horse sneezed. These things only emphasised the solemnity +and the stillness. Everybody got so listless that for once I and my +dreamer found ourselves in the lead. It was a glad, new sensation, and +I longed to keep the place forevermore. Every little stir in the dingy +cavalcade behind made me nervous. Davis and I were riding side by side, +right after the Arab. About 11 o'clock it had become really chilly, and +the dozing boys roused up and began to inquire how far it was to Ramlah +yet, and to demand that the Arab hurry along faster. I gave it up then, +and my heart sank within me, because of course they would come up to +scold the Arab. I knew I had to take the rear again. In my sorrow I +unconsciously took to my pipe, my only comfort. As I touched the match +to it the whole company came lumbering up and crowding my horse's rump +and flanks. A whiff of smoke drifted back over my shoulder, and-- + +"The suffering Moses!" + +"Whew!" + +"By George, who opened that graveyard?" + +"Boys, that Arab's been swallowing something dead!" + +Right away there was a gap behind us. Whiff after whiff sailed airily +back, and each one widened the breach. Within fifteen seconds the +barking, and gasping, and sneezing, and coughing of the boys, and their +angry abuse of the Arab guide, had dwindled to a murmur, and Davis and I +were alone with the leader. Davis did not know what the matter was, and +don't to this day. Occasionally he caught a faint film of the smoke and +fell to scolding at the Arab and wondering how long he had been decaying +in that way. Our boys kept on dropping back further and further, till at +last they were only in hearing, not in sight. And every time they +started gingerly forward to reconnoitre or shoot the Arab, as they +proposed to do--I let them get within good fair range of my relic (she +would carry seventy yards with wonderful precision), and then wafted a +whiff among them that sent them gasping and strangling to the rear again. +I kept my gun well charged and ready, and twice within the hour I decoyed +the boys right up to my horse's tail, and then with one malarious blast +emptied the saddles, almost. I never heard an Arab abused so in my life. +He really owed his preservation to me, because for one entire hour I +stood between him and certain death. The boys would have killed him if +they could have got by me. + +By and by, when the company were far in the rear, I put away my pipe +--I was getting fearfully dry and crisp about the gills and rather blown +with good diligent work--and spurred my animated trance up alongside the +Arab and stopped him and asked for water. He unslung his little +gourd-shaped earthenware jug, and I put it under my moustache and took a +long, glorious, satisfying draught. I was going to scour the mouth of +the jug a little, but I saw that I had brought the whole train together +once more by my delay, and that they were all anxious to drink too--and +would have been long ago if the Arab had not pretended that he was out of +water. So I hastened to pass the vessel to Davis. He took a mouthful, +and never said a word, but climbed off his horse and lay down calmly in +the road. I felt sorry for Davis. It was too late now, though, and Dan +was drinking. Dan got down too, and hunted for a soft place. I thought +I heard Dan say, "That Arab's friends ought to keep him in alcohol or +else take him out and bury him somewhere." All the boys took a drink and +climbed down. It is not well to go into further particulars. Let us +draw the curtain upon this act. + + .............................. + +Well, now, to think that after three changing years I should hear from +that curious old relic again, and see Dan advertising it for sale for the +benefit of a benevolent object. Dan is not treating that present right. +I gave that pipe to him for a keepsake. However, he probably finds that +it keeps away custom and interferes with business. It is the most +convincing inanimate object in all this part of the world, perhaps. Dan +and I were roommates in all that long "Quaker City" voyage, and whenever +I desired to have a little season of privacy I used to fire up on that +pipe and persuade Dan to go out; and he seldom waited to change his +clothes, either. In about a quarter, or from that to three-quarters of a +minute, he would be propping up the smoke-stack on the upper deck and +cursing. I wonder how the faithful old relic is going to sell? + + + + + + +A REMINISCENCE OF THE BACK SETTLEMENTS + +"Now that corpse [said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of the +deceased approvingly] was a brick--every way you took him he was a brick. +He was so real accommodating, and so modest-like and simple in his last +moments. Friends wanted metallic burial case--nothing else would do. +I couldn't get it. There warn't going to be time anybody could see that. +Corpse said never mind, shake him up some kind of a box he could stretch +out in comfortable, he warn't particular 'bout the general style of it. +Said he went more on room than style, any way, in the last final +container. Friends wanted a silver door-plate on the coffin, signifying +who he was and wher' he was from. Now you know a fellow couldn't roust +out such a gaily thing as that in a little country town like this. What +did corpse say? Corpse said, whitewash his old canoe and dob his address +and general destination onto it with a blacking brush and a stencil +plate, long with a verse from some likely hymn or other, and pint him for +the tomb, and mark him C. O. D., and just let him skip along. He warn't +distressed any more than you be--on the contrary just as carm and +collected as a hearse-horse; said he judged that wher' he was going to, +a body would find it considerable better to attract attention by a +picturesque moral character than a natty burial case with a swell +doorplate on it. Splendid man, he was. I'd druther do for a corpse like +that 'n any I've tackled in seven year. There's some satisfaction in +buryin' a man like that. You feel that what you're doing is appreciated. +Lord bless you, so's he got planted before he sp'iled, he was perfectly +satisfied; said his relations meant well, perfectly well, but all them +preparations was bound to delay the thing more or less, and he didn't +wish to be kept layin' round. You never see such a clear head as what he +had--and so carm and so cool. Just a hunk of brains that is what he was. +Perfectly awful. It was a ripping distance from one end of that man's +head to t'other. Often and over again he's had brain fever a-raging in +one place, and the rest of the pile didn't know anything about it--didn't +affect it any more than an Injun insurrection in Arizona affects the +Atlantic States. Well, the relations they wanted a big funeral, but +corpse said he was down on flummery--didn't want any procession--fill the +hearse full of mourners, and get out a stern line and tow him behind. +He was the most down on style of any remains I ever struck. A beautiful, +simple-minded creature--it was what he was, you can depend on that. He +was just set on having things the way he wanted them, and he took a solid +comfort in laying his little plans. He had me measure him and take a +whole raft of directions; then he had a minister stand up behind a long +box with a tablecloth over it and read his funeral sermon, saying +'Angcore, angcore!' at the good places, and making him scratch out every +bit of brag about him, and all the hifalutin; and then he made them trot +out the choir so's he could help them pick out the tunes for the +occasion, and he got them to sing 'Pop Goes the Weasel,' because he'd +always liked that tune when he was downhearted, and solemn music made him +sad; and when they sung that with tears in their eyes (because they all +loved him), and his relations grieving around, he just laid there as +happy as a bug, and trying to beat time and showing all over how much he +enjoyed it; and presently he got worked up and excited; and tried to join +in, for mind you he was pretty proud of his abilities in the singing +line; but the first time he opened his mouth and was just going to spread +himself, his breath took a walk. I never see a man snuffed out so +sudden. Ah, it was a great loss--it was a powerful loss to this poor +little one-horse town. Well, well, well, I hain't got time to be +palavering along here--got to nail on the lid and mosey along with' him; +and if you'll just give me a lift we'll skeet him into the hearse and +meander along. Relations bound to have it so--don't pay no attention to +dying injunctions, minute a corpse's gone; but if I had my way, if I +didn't respect his last wishes and tow him behind the hearse, I'll be +cuss'd. I consider that whatever a corpse wants done for his comfort is +a little enough matter, and a man hain't got no right to deceive him or +take advantage of him--and whatever a corpse trusts me to do I'm a-going +to do, you know, even if it's to stuff him and paint him yaller and keep +him for a keepsake--you hear me!" + +He cracked his whip and went lumbering away with his ancient ruin of a +hearse, and I continued my walk with a valuable lesson learned--that a +healthy and wholesome cheerfulness is not necessarily impossible to any +occupation. The lesson is likely to be lasting, for it will take many +months to obliterate the memory of the remarks and circumstances that +impressed it. + + + + + + +A ROYAL COMPLIMENT + + The latest report about the Spanish crown is, that it will now be + offered to Prince Alfonso, the second son of the King of Portugal, + who is but five years of age. The Spaniards have hunted through all + the nations of Europe for a King. They tried to get a Portuguese in + the person of Dom-Luis, who is an old ex-monarch; they tried to get + an Italian, in the person of Victor Emanuel's young son, the Duke of + Genoa; they tried to get a Spaniard, in the person of Espartero, who + is an octogenarian. Some of them desired a French Bourbon, + Montpensier; some of them a Spanish Bourbon, the Prince of Asturias; + some of them an English prince, one of the sons of Queen Victoria. + They have just tried to get the German Prince Leopold; but they have + thought it better to give him up than take a war along with him. + It is a long time since we first suggested to them to try an + American ruler. We can offer them a large number of able and + experienced sovereigns to pick from--men skilled in statesmanship, + versed in the science of government, and adepts in all the arts of + administration--men who could wear the crown with dignity and rule + the kingdom at a reasonable expense. + + There is not the least danger of Napoleon threatening them if they + take an American sovereign; in fact, we have no doubt he would be + pleased to support such a candidature. We are unwilling to mention + names--though we have a man in our eye whom we wish they had in + theirs.--New York Tribune. + +It would be but an ostentation of modesty to permit such a pointed +reference to myself to pass unnoticed. This is the second time that 'The +Tribune' (no doubt sincerely looking to the best interests of Spain and +the world at large) has done me the great and unusual honour to propose +me as a fit person to fill the Spanish throne. Why 'The Tribune' should +single me out in this way from the midst of a dozen Americans of higher +political prominence, is a problem which I cannot solve. Beyond a +somewhat intimate knowledge of Spanish history and a profound veneration +for its great names and illustrious deeds, I feel that I possess no merit +that should peculiarly recommend me to this royal distinction. I cannot +deny that Spanish history has always been mother's milk to me. I am +proud of every Spanish achievement, from Hernando Cortes's victory at +Thermopylae down to Vasco Nunez de Balboa's discovery of the Atlantic +ocean; and of every splendid Spanish name, from Don Quixote and the Duke +of Wellington down to Don Caesar de Bazan. However, these little graces +of erudition are of small consequence, being more showy than serviceable. + +In case the Spanish sceptre is pressed upon me--and the indications +unquestionably are that it will be--I shall feel it necessary to have +certain things set down and distinctly understood beforehand. For +instance: My salary must be paid quarterly in advance. In these +unsettled times it will not do to trust. If Isabella had adopted this +plan, she would be roosting on her ancestral throne to-day, for the +simple reason that her subjects never could have raised three months of a +royal salary in advance, and of course they could not have discharged her +until they had squared up with her. My salary must be paid in gold; when +greenbacks are fresh in a country, they are too fluctuating. My salary +has got to be put at the ruling market rate; I am not going to cut under +on the trade, and they are not going to trail me a long way from home and +then practise on my ignorance and play me for a royal North Adams +Chinaman, by any means. As I understand it, imported kings generally get +five millions a year and house-rent free. Young George of Greece gets +that. As the revenues only yield two millions, he has to take the +national note for considerable; but even with things in that sort of +shape he is better fixed than he was in Denmark, where he had to +eternally stand up because he had no throne to sit on, and had to give +bail for his board, because a royal apprentice gets no salary there while +he is learning his trade. England is the place for that. Fifty thousand +dollars a year Great Britain pays on each royal child that is born, and +this is increased from year to year as the child becomes more and more +indispensable to his country. Look at Prince Arthur. At first he only +got the usual birth-bounty; but now that he has got so that he can dance, +there is simply no telling what wages he gets. + +I should have to stipulate that the Spanish people wash more and +endeavour to get along with less quarantine. Do you know, Spain keeps +her ports fast locked against foreign traffic three-fourths of each year, +because one day she is scared about the cholera, and the next about the +plague, and next the measles, next the hooping cough, the hives, and the +rash? but she does not mind leonine leprosy and elephantiasis any more +than a great and enlightened civilisation minds freckles. Soap would +soon remove her anxious distress about foreign distempers. The reason +arable land is so scarce in Spain is because the people squander so much +of it on their persons, and then when they die it is improvidently buried +with them. + +I should feel obliged to stipulate that Marshal Serrano be reduced to the +rank of constable, or even roundsman. He is no longer fit to be City +Marshal. A man who refused to be king because he was too old and feeble, +is ill qualified to help sick people to the station-house when they are +armed and their form of delirium tremens is of the exuberant and +demonstrative kind. + +I should also require that a force be sent to chase the late Queen +Isabella out of France. Her presence there can work no advantage to +Spain, and she ought to be made to move at once; though, poor thing, she +has been chaste enough heretofore--for a Spanish woman. + +I should also require that-- + +I am at this moment authoritatively informed that "The Tribune" did not +mean me, after all. Very well, I do not care two cents. + + + + + + +THE APPROACHING EPIDEMIC + +One calamity to which the death of Mr. Dickens dooms this country has not +awakened the concern to which its gravity entitles it. We refer to the +fact that the nation is to be lectured to death and read to death all +next winter, by Tom, Dick, and Harry, with poor lamented Dickens for a +pretext. All the vagabonds who can spell will afflict the people with +"readings" from Pickwick and Copperfield, and all the insignificants who +have been ennobled by the notice of the great novelist or transfigured by +his smile will make a marketable commodity of it now, and turn the sacred +reminiscence to the practical use of procuring bread and butter. The +lecture rostrums will fairly swarm with these fortunates. Already the +signs of it are perceptible. Behold how the unclean creatures are +wending toward the dead lion and gathering to the feast: + +"Reminiscences of Dickens." A lecture. By John Smith, who heard him +read eight times. + +"Remembrances of Charles Dickens." A lecture. By John Jones, who saw +him once in a street car and twice in a barber shop. + +"Recollections of Mr. Dickens." A lecture. By John Brown, who gained a +wide fame by writing deliriously appreciative critiques and rhapsodies +upon the great author's public readings; and who shook hands with the +great author upon various occasions, and held converse with him several +times. + +"Readings from Dickens." By John White, who has the great delineator's +style and manner perfectly, having attended all his readings in this +country and made these things a study, always practising each reading +before retiring, and while it was hot from the great delineator's lips. +Upon this occasion Mr. W. will exhibit the remains of a cigar which he +saw Mr. Dickens smoke. This Relic is kept in a solid silver box made +purposely for it. + +"Sights and Sounds of the Great Novelist." A popular lecture. By John +Gray, who waited on his table all the time he was at the Grand Hotel, +New York, and still has in his possession and will exhibit to the +audience a fragment of the Last Piece of Bread which the lamented author +tasted in this country. + +"Heart Treasures of Precious Moments with Literature's Departed Monarch." +A lecture. By Miss Serena Amelia Tryphenia McSpadden, who still wears, +and will always wear, a glove upon the hand made sacred by the clasp of +Dickens. Only Death shall remove it. + +"Readings from Dickens." By Mrs. J. O'Hooligan Murphy, who washed for +him. + +"Familiar Talks with the Great Author." A narrative lecture. By John +Thomas, for two weeks his valet in America. + +And so forth, and so on. This isn't half the list. The man who has a +"Toothpick once used by Charles Dickens" will have to have a hearing; and +the man who "once rode in an omnibus with Charles Dickens;" and the lady +to whom Charles Dickens "granted the hospitalities of his umbrella during +a storm;" and the person who "possesses a hole which once belonged in a +handkerchief owned by Charles Dickens." Be patient and long-suffering, +good people, for even this does not fill up the measure of what you must +endure next winter. There is no creature in all this land who has had +any personal relations with the late Mr. Dickens, however slight or +trivial, but will shoulder his way to the rostrum and inflict his +testimony upon his helpless countrymen. To some people it is fatal to be +noticed by greatness. + + + + + + + +THE TONE-IMPARTING COMMITTEE + +I get old and ponderously respectable, only one thing will be able to +make me truly happy, and that will be to be put on the Venerable +Tone-Imparting committee of the city of New York, and have nothing to do +but sit on the platform, solemn and imposing, along with Peter Cooper, +Horace Greeley, etc., etc., and shed momentary fame at second hand on +obscure lecturers, draw public attention to lectures which would +otherwise clack eloquently to sounding emptiness, and subdue audiences +into respectful hearing of all sorts of unpopular and outlandish dogmas +and isms. That is what I desire for the cheer and gratification of my +gray hairs. Let me but sit up there with those fine relics of the Old +Red Sandstone Period and give Tone to an intellectual entertainment twice +a week, and be so reported, and my happiness will be complete. Those men +have been my envy for long, long time. And no memories of my life are so +pleasant as my reminiscence of their long and honorable career in the +Tone-imparting service. I can recollect that first time I ever saw them +on the platforms just as well as I can remember the events of yesterday. +Horace Greeley sat on the right, Peter Cooper on the left, and Thomas +Jefferson, Red Jacket, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock sat between +them. This was on the 22d of December, 1799, on the occasion of the +state' funeral of George Washington in New York. It was a great day, +that--a great day, and a very, very sad one. I remember that Broadway +was one mass of black crape from Castle Garden nearly up to where the +City Hall now stands. The next time I saw these gentlemen officiate was +at a ball given for the purpose of procuring money and medicines for the +sick and wounded soldiers and sailors. Horace Greeley occupied one side +of the platform on which the musicians were exalted, and Peter Cooper the +other. There were other Tone-imparters attendant upon the two chiefs, +but I have forgotten their names now. Horace Greeley, gray-haired and +beaming, was in sailor costume--white duck pants, blue shirt, open at the +breast, large neckerchief, loose as an ox-bow, and tied with a jaunty +sailor knot, broad turnover collar with star in the corner, shiny black +little tarpaulin hat roosting daintily far back on head, and flying two +gallant long ribbons. Slippers on ample feet, round spectacles on +benignant nose, and pitchfork in hand, completed Mr. Greeley, and made +him, in my boyish admiration, every inch a sailor, and worthy to be the +honored great-grandfather of the Neptune he was so ingeniously +representing. I shall never forget him. Mr. Cooper was dressed as a +general of militia, and was dismally and oppressively warlike. I +neglected to remark, in the proper place, that the soldiers and sailors +in whose aid the ball was given had just been sent in from Boston--this +was during the war of 1812. At the grand national reception of +Lafayette, in 1824, Horace Greeley sat on the right and Peter Cooper to +the left. The other Tone-imparters of the day are sleeping the sleep of +the just now. I was in the audience when Horace Greeley Peter Cooper, +and other chief citizens imparted tone to the great meetings in favor of +French liberty, in 1848. Then I never saw them any more until here +lately; but now that I am living tolerably near the city, I run down +every time I see it announced that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and +several other distinguished citizens will occupy seats on the platform;" +and next morning, when I read in the first paragraph of the phonographic +report that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and several other +distinguished citizens occupied seats on the platform," I say to myself, +"Thank God, I was present." Thus I have been enabled to see these +substantial old friends of mine sit on the platform and give tone to +lectures on anatomy, and lectures on agriculture, and lectures on +stirpiculture, and lectures on astronomy, on chemistry, on miscegenation, +on "Is Man Descended from the Kangaroo?" on veterinary matters, on all +kinds of religion, and several kinds of politics; and have seen them give +tone and grandeur to the Four-legged Girl, the Siamese Twins, the Great +Egyptian Sword Swallower, and the Old Original Jacobs. Whenever somebody +is to lecture on a subject not of general interest, I know that my +venerated Remains of the Old Red Sandstone Period will be on the +platform; whenever a lecturer is to appear whom nobody has heard of +before, nor will be likely to seek to see, I know that the real +benevolence of my old friends will be taken advantage of, and that they +will be on the platform (and in the bills) as an advertisement; and +whenever any new and obnoxious deviltry in philosophy, morals, or +politics is to be sprung upon the people, I know perfectly well that +these intrepid old heroes will be on the platform too, in the interest of +full and free discussion, and to crush down all narrower and less +generous souls with the solid dead weight of their awful respectability. +And let us all remember that while these inveterate and imperishable +presiders (if you please) appear on the platform every night in the year +as regularly as the volunteered piano from Steinway's or Chickering's, +and have bolstered up and given tone to a deal of questionable merit and +obscure emptiness in their time, they have also diversified this +inconsequential service by occasional powerful uplifting and upholding of +great progressive ideas which smaller men feared to meddle with or +countenance. + + + + + + +OUR PRECIOUS LUNATIC + +[From the Buffalo Express, Saturday, May 14, 1870.] + + New YORK, May 10. + +The Richardson-McFarland jury had been out one hour and fifty minutes. +A breathless silence brooded over court and auditory--a silence and a +stillness so absolute, notwithstanding the vast multitude of human beings +packed together there, that when some one far away among the throng under +the northeast balcony cleared his throat with a smothered little cough it +startled everybody uncomfortably, so distinctly did it grate upon the +pulseless air. At that imposing moment the bang of a door was heard, +then the shuffle of approaching feet, and then a sort of surging and +swaying disorder among the heads at the entrance from the jury-room told +them that the Twelve were coming. Presently all was silent again, and +the foreman of the jury rose and said: + +"Your Honor and Gentleman: We, the jury charged with the duty of +determining whether the prisoner at the bar, Daniel McFarland, has been +guilty of murder, in taking by surprise an unarmed man and shooting him +to death, or whether the prisoner is afflicted with a sad but +irresponsible insanity which at times can be cheered only by violent +entertainment with firearms, do find as follows, namely: + +"That the prisoner, Daniel McFarland, is insane as above described. +Because: + +"1. His great grandfather's stepfather was tainted with insanity, and +frequently killed people who were distasteful to him. Hence, insanity is +hereditary in the family. + +"2. For nine years the prisoner at the bar did not adequately support his +family. Strong circumstantial evidence of insanity. + +"3. For nine years he made of his home, as a general thing, a poor-house; +sometimes (but very rarely) a cheery, happy habitation; frequently the +den of a beery, drivelling, stupefied animal; but never, as far as +ascertained, the abiding place of a gentleman. These be evidences of +insanity. + +"4. He once took his young unmarried sister-in-law to the museum; while +there his hereditary insanity came upon him to such a degree that he +hiccupped and staggered; and afterward, on the way home, even made love +to the young girl he was protecting. These are the acts of a person not +in his right mind. + +"5. For a good while his sufferings were so great that he had to submit +to the inconvenience of having his wife give public readings for the +family support; and at times, when he handed these shameful earnings to +the barkeeper, his haughty soul was so torn with anguish that he could +hardly stand without leaning against something. At such times he has +been known to shed tears into his sustenance till it diluted to utter +inefficiency. Inattention of this nature is not the act of a Democrat +unafflicted in mind. + +"6. He never spared expense in making his wife comfortable during her +occasional confinements. Her father is able to testify to this. There +was always an element of unsoundness about the prisoner's generosities +that is very suggestive at this time and before this court. + +"7. Two years ago the prisoner came fearlessly up behind Richardson in +the dark, and shot him in the leg. The prisoner's brave and protracted +defiance of an adversity that for years had left him little to depend +upon for support but a wife who sometimes earned scarcely anything for +weeks at a time, is evidence that he would have appeared in front of +Richardson and shot him in the stomach if he had not been insane at the +time of the shooting. + +"8. Fourteen months ago the prisoner told Archibald Smith that he was +going to kill Richardson. This is insanity. + +"9. Twelve months ago he told Marshall P. Jones that he was going to kill +Richardson. Insanity. + +"10. Nine months ago he was lurking about Richardson's home in New +Jersey, and said he was going to kill Richardson. Insanity. + +"11. Seven months ago he showed a pistol to Seth Brown and said that that +was for Richardson. He said Brown testified that at that time it seemed +plain that something was the matter with McFarland, for he crossed the +street diagonally nine times in fifty yards, apparently without any +settled reason for doing so, and finally fell in the gutter and went to +sleep. He remarked at the time that McFarland acted strange--believed he +was insane. Upon hearing Brown's evidence, John W. Galen, M.D., affirmed +at once that McFarland was insane. + +"12. Five months ago, McFarland showed his customary pistol, in his +customary way, to his bed-fellow, Charles A. Dana, and told him he was +going to kill Richardson the first time an opportunity offered. Evidence +of insanity. + +"13. Five months and two weeks ago McFarland asked John Morgan the time +of day, and turned and walked rapidly away without waiting for an answer. +Almost indubitable evidence of insanity. And-- + +"14. It is remarkable that exactly one week after this circumstance, the +prisoner, Daniel McFarland, confronted Albert D. Richardson suddenly and +without warning, and shot him dead. This is manifest insanity. +Everything we know of the prisoner goes to show that if he had been sane +at the time, he would have shot his victim from behind. + +"15. There is an absolutely overwhelming mass of testimony to show that +an hour before the shooting, McFarland was ANXIOUS AND UNEASY, and that +five minutes after it he was EXCITED. Thus the accumulating conjectures +and evidences of insanity culminate in this sublime and unimpeachable +proof of it. Therefore-- + +"Your Honor and Gentlemen--We the jury pronounce the said Daniel McFarland +INNOCENT OF MURDER, BUT CALAMITOUSLY INSANE." + +The scene that ensued almost defies description. Hats, handkerchiefs and +bonnets were frantically waved above the massed heads in the courtroom, +and three tremendous cheers and a tiger told where the sympathies of the +court and people were. Then a hundred pursed lips were advanced to kiss +the liberated prisoner, and many a hand thrust out to give him a +congratulatory shake--but presto! with a maniac's own quickness and a +maniac's own fury the lunatic assassin of Richardson fell upon his +friends with teeth and nails, boots and office furniture, and the amazing +rapidity with which he broke heads and limbs, and rent and sundered +bodies, till nearly a hundred citizens were reduced to mere quivering +heaps of fleshy odds and ends and crimson rags, was like nothing in this +world but the exultant frenzy of a plunging, tearing, roaring devil of a +steam machine when it snatches a human being and spins him and whirls him +till he shreds away to nothingness like a "Four o'clock" before the +breath of a child. + +The destruction was awful. It is said that within the space of eight +minutes McFarland killed and crippled some six score persons and tore +down a large portion of the City Hall building, carrying away and casting +into Broadway six or seven marble columns fifty-four feet long and +weighing nearly two tons each. But he was finally captured and sent in +chains to the lunatic asylum for life. + +(By late telegrams it appears that this is a mistake.--Editor Express.) + +But the really curious part of this whole matter is yet to be told. And +that is, that McFarland's most intimate friends believe that the very +next time that it ever occurred to him that the insanity plea was not a +mere politic pretense, was when the verdict came in. They think that the +startling thought burst upon him then, that if twelve good and true men, +able to comprehend all the baseness of perjury, proclaimed under oath +that he was a lunatic, there was no gainsaying such evidence and that he +UNQUESTIONABLY WAS INSANE! + +Possibly that was really the way of it. It is dreadful to think that +maybe the most awful calamity that can befall a man, namely, loss of +reason, was precipitated upon this poor prisoner's head by a jury that +could have hanged him instead, and so done him a mercy and his country a +service. + + POSTSCRIPT-LATER + +May 11--I do not expect anybody to believe so astounding a thing, and yet +it is the solemn truth that instead of instantly sending the dangerous +lunatic to the insane asylum (which I naturally supposed they would do, +and so I prematurely said they had) the court has actually SET HIM AT +LIBERTY. Comment is unnecessary. M. T. + + + + + + +THE EUROPEAN WARS--[From the Buffalo Express, July 25, 1870.] + + First Day + THE EUROPEAN WAR!!! + + NO BATTLE YET!!! + HOSTILITIES IMMINENT!!! + TREMENDOUS EXCITEMENT. + AUSTRIA ARMING! + BERLIN, Tuesday. + +No battle has been fought yet. But hostilities may burst forth any week. + +There is tremendous excitement here over news from the front that two +companies of French soldiers are assembling there. + +It is rumoured that Austria is arming--what with, is not known. + + ....................... + + Second Day + THE EUROPEAN WAR + + NO BATTLE YET! + FIGHTING IMMINENT. + AWFUL EXCITEMENT. + RUSSIA SIDES WITH PRUSSIA! + ENGLAND NEUTRAL!! + AUSTRIA NOT ARMING. + BERLIN, Wednesday. + +No battle has been fought yet. However, all thoughtful men feel that the +land may be drenched with blood before the Summer is over. + +There is an awful excitement here over the rumour that two companies of +Prussian troops have concentrated on the border. German confidence +remains unshaken!! + +There is news to the effect that Russia espouses the cause of Prussia and +will bring 4,000,000 men to the field. + +England proclaims strict neutrality. + +The report that Austria is arming needs confirmation. + + ......................... + + Third Day + THE EUROPEAN WAR + + NO BATTLE YET! + BLOODSHED IMMINENT!! + ENORMOUS EXCITEMENT!! + INVASION OF PRUSSIA!! + INVASION OF FRANCE!! + RUSSIA SIDES WITH FRANCE. + ENGLAND STILL NEUTRAL! + FIRING HEARD! + THE EMPEROR TO TAKE COMMAND. + PARIS, Thursday. + +No battle has been fought yet. But Field Marshal McMahon telegraphs thus +to the Emperor: + +"If the Frinch army survoives until Christmas there'll be throuble. +Forninst this fact it would be sagacious if the divil wint the rounds of +his establishment to prepare for the occasion, and tuk the precaution to +warrum up the Prussian depairtment a bit agin the day. + MIKE." + +There is an enormous state of excitement here over news from the front to +the effect that yesterday France and Prussia were simultaneously invaded +by the two bodies of troops which lately assembled on the border. Both +armies conducted their invasions secretly and are now hunting around for +each other on opposite sides of the border. + +Russia espouses the cause of France. She will bring 200,000 men to the +field. + +England continues to remain neutral. + +Firing was heard yesterday in the direction of Blucherberg, and for a +while the excitement was intense. However the people reflected that the +country in that direction is uninhabitable, and impassable by anything +but birds, they became quiet again. + +The Emperor sends his troops to the field with immense enthusiasm. He +will lead them in person, when they return. + + ..................... + + Fourth Day + THE EUROPEAN WAR! + + NO BATTLE YET!! + THE TROOPS GROWING OLD! + BUT BITTER STRIFE IMMINENT! + PRODIGIOUS EXCITEMENT! + THE INVASIONS SUCCESSFULLY ACCOMPLISHED + AND THE INVADERS SAFE! + RUSSIA SIDES WITH BOTH SIDES + ENGLAND WILL FIGHT BOTH! + LONDON, Friday. + +No battle has been fought thus far, but a million impetuous soldiers are +gritting their teeth at each other across the border, and the most +serious fears entertained that if they do not die of old age first, there +will be bloodshed in this war yet. + +The prodigious patriotic excitement goes on. In Prussia, per Prussian +telegrams, though contradicted from France. In France, per French +telegrams, though contradicted from Prussia. + +The Prussian invasion of France was a magnificent success. The military +failed to find the French, but made good their return to Prussia without +the loss of a single man. The French invasion of Prussia is also +demonstrated to have been a brilliant and successful achievement. The +army failed to find the Prussians, but made good their return to the +Vaterland without bloodshed, after having invaded as much as they wanted +to. + +There is glorious news from Russia to the effect that she will side with +both sides. + +Also from England--she will fight both sides. + + .................... + +LONDON, Thursday evening. + +I rushed over too soon. I shall return home on Tuesday's steamer and +wait until the war begins. M. T. + + + + + + +THE WILD MAN INTERVIEWED +[From the Buffalo Express, September 18, 1869.] + +There has been so much talk about the mysterious "wild man" out there in +the West for some time, that I finally felt it was my duty to go out and +interview him. There was something peculiarly and touchingly romantic +about the creature and his strange actions, according to the newspaper +reports. He was represented as being hairy, long-armed, and of great +strength and stature; ugly and cumbrous; avoiding men, but appearing +suddenly and unexpectedly to women and children; going armed with a club, +but never molesting any creature, except sheep, or other prey; fond of +eating and drinking, and not particular about the quality, quantity, or +character of the beverages and edibles; living in the woods like a wild +beast, but never angry; moaning, and sometimes howling, but never +uttering articulate sounds. + +Such was "Old Shep" as the papers painted him. I felt that the story of +his life must be a sad one--a story of suffering, disappointment, and +exile--a story of man's inhumanity to man in some shape or other--and I +longed to persuade the secret from him. + + ..................... + +"Since you say you are a member of the press," said the wild man, "I am +willing to tell you all you wish to know. Bye and bye you will +comprehend why it is that I wish to unbosom myself to a newspaper man +when I have so studiously avoided conversation with other people. I will +now unfold my strange story. I was born with the world we live upon, +almost. I am the son of Cain." + +"What?" + +"I was present when the flood was announced." + +"Which?" + +"I am the father of the Wandering Jew." + +"Sir?" + +I moved out of range of his club, and went on taking notes, but keeping a +wary eye on him all the while. He smiled a melancholy smile and resumed: + +"When I glance back over the dreary waste of ages, I see many a +glimmering and mark that is familiar to my memory. And oh, the leagues +I have travelled! the things I have seen! the events I have helped to +emphasise! I was at the assassination of Caesar. I marched upon Mecca +with Mahomet. I was in the Crusades, and stood with Godfrey when he +planted the banner of the cross on the battlements of Jerusalem. I--" + +"One moment, please. Have you given these items to any other journal? +Can I--" + +"Silence. I was in the Pinta's shrouds with Columbus when America burst +upon his vision. I saw Charles I beheaded. I was in London when the +Gunpowder Plot was discovered. I was present at the trial of Warren +Hastings. I was on American soil when the battle of Lexington was fought +when the declaration was promulgated--when Cornwallis surrendered +--When Washington died. I entered Paris with Napoleon after Elba. I was +present when you mounted your guns and manned your fleets for the war of +1812--when the South fired upon Sumter--when Richmond fell--when the +President's life was taken. In all the ages I have helped to celebrate +the triumphs of genius, the achievements of arms, the havoc of storm, +fire, pestilence, famine." + +"Your career has been a stirring one. Might I ask how you came to locate +in these dull Kansas woods, when you have been so accustomed to +excitement during what I might term so protracted a period, not to put +too fine a point on it?" + +"Listen. Once I was the honoured servitor of the noble and illustrious" +(here he heaved a sigh, and passed his hairy hand across his eyes) "but +in these degenerate days I am become the slave of quack doctors and +newspapers. I am driven from pillar to post and hurried up and down, +sometimes with stencil-plate and paste-brush to defile the fences with +cabalistic legends, and sometimes in grotesque and extravagant character +at the behest of some driving journal. I attended to that Ocean Bank +robbery some weeks ago, when I was hardly rested from finishing up the +pow-wow about the completion of the Pacific Railroad; immediately I was +spirited off to do an atrocious, murder for the benefit of the New York +papers; next to attend the wedding of a patriarchal millionaire; next to +raise a hurrah about the great boat race; and then, just when I had begun +to hope that my old bones would have a rest, I am bundled off to this +howling wilderness to strip, and jibber, and be ugly and hairy, and pull +down fences and waylay sheep, and waltz around with a club, and play +'Wild Man' generally--and all to gratify the whim of a bedlam of crazy +newspaper scribblers? From one end of the continent to the other, I am +described as a gorilla, with a sort of human seeming about me--and all to +gratify this quill-driving scum of the earth!" + +"Poor old carpet bagger!" + +"I have been served infamously, often, in modern and semi-modern times. +I have been compelled by base men to create fraudulent history, and to +perpetrate all sorts of humbugs. I wrote those crazy Junius letters, I +moped in a French dungeon for fifteen years, and wore a ridiculous Iron +Mask; I poked around your Northern forests, among your vagabond Indians, +a solemn French idiot, personating the ghost of a dead Dauphin, that the +gaping world might wonder if we had 'a Bourbon among us'; I have played +sea-serpent off Nahant, and Woolly-Horse and What-is-it for the museums; +I have interviewed politicians for the Sun, worked up all manner of +miracles for the Herald, ciphered up election returns for the World, +and thundered Political Economy through the Tribune. I have done all the +extravagant things that the wildest invention could contrive, and done +them well, and this is my reward--playing Wild Man in Kansas without a +shirt!" + +"Mysterious being, a light dawns vaguely upon me--it grows apace--what +--what is your name." + +"SENSATION!" + +"Hence, horrible shape!" + +It spoke again: + +"Oh pitiless fate, my destiny hounds me once more. I am called. I go. +Alas, is there no rest for me?" + +In a moment the Wild Man's features seemed to soften and refine, and his +form to assume a more human grace and symmetry. His club changed to a +spade, and he shouldered it and started away sighing profoundly and +shedding tears. + +"Whither, poor shade?" + +"TO DIG UP THE BYRON FAMILY!" + +Such was the response that floated back upon the wind as the sad spirit +shook its ringlets to the breeze, flourished its shovel aloft, and +disappeared beyond the brow of the hill. + +All of which is in strict accordance with the facts. + + M. T. + + + + +LAST WORDS OF GREAT MEN--[From the Buffalo Express, September 11, 1889.] + + Marshal Neil's last words were: "L'armee fran-caise!" (The French + army.)--Exchange. + +What a sad thing it is to see a man close a grand career with a +plagiarism in his mouth. Napoleon's last words were: "Tete d'armee." +(Head of the army.) Neither of those remarks amounts to anything as +"last words," and reflect little credit upon the utterers. + +A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is +about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and +take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a +thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spirit +at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest +gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur. No--a man is apt to be too +much fagged and exhausted, both in body and mind, at such a time, to be +reliable; and maybe the very thing he wants to say, he cannot think of to +save him; and besides there are his weeping friends bothering around; +and worse than all as likely as not he may have to deliver his last gasp +before he is expecting to. A man cannot always expect to think of a +natty thing to say under such circumstances, and so it is pure egotistic +ostentation to put it off. There is hardly a case on record where a man +came to his last moment unprepared and said a good thing hardly a case +where a man trusted to that last moment and did not make a solemn botch +of it and go out of the world feeling absurd. + +Now there was Daniel Webster. Nobody could tell him anything. He was +not afraid. He could do something neat when the time came. And how did +it turn out? Why, his will had to be fixed over; and then all the +relations came; and first one thing and then another interfered, till at +last he only had a chance to say, "I still live," and up he went. + +Of course he didn't still live, because he died--and so he might as well +have kept his last words to himself as to have gone and made such a +failure of it as that. A week before that fifteen minutes of calm +reflection would have enabled that man to contrive some last words that +would have been a credit to himself and a comfort to his family for +generations to come. + +And there was John Quincy Adams. Relying on his splendid abilities and +his coolness in emergencies, he trusted to a happy hit at the last moment +to carry him through, and what was the result? Death smote him in the +House of Representatives, and he observed, casually, "This is the last of +earth." The last of earth! Why "the last of earth" when there was so +much more left? If he had said it was the last rose of summer or the +last run of shad, it would have had as much point in it. What he meant +to say was, "Adam was the first and Adams is the last of earth," but he +put it off a trifle too long, and so he had to go with that unmeaning +observation on his lips. + +And there we have Napoleon's "Tete d'armee." That don't mean anything. +Taken by itself, "Head of the army," is no more important than "Head of +the police." And yet that was a man who could have said a good thing if +he had barred out the doctor and studied over it a while. Marshal Neil, +with half a century at his disposal, could not dash off anything better +in his last moments than a poor plagiarism of another man's words, which +were not worth plagiarizing in the first place. "The French army." +Perfectly irrelevant--perfectly flat utterly pointless. But if he had +closed one eye significantly, and said, "The subscriber has made it +lively for the French army," and then thrown a little of the comic into +his last gasp, it would have been a thing to remember with satisfaction +all the rest of his life. I do wish our great men would quit saying +these flat things just at the moment they die. Let us have their +next-to-the-last words for a while, and see if we cannot patch up from +them something that will be more satisfactory. + +The public does not wish to be outraged in this way all the time. + +But when we come to call to mind the last words of parties who took the +trouble to make the proper preparation for the occasion, we immediately +notice a happy difference in the result. + +There was Chesterfield. Lord Chesterfield had laboured all his life to +build up the most shining reputation for affability and elegance of +speech and manners the world has ever seen. And could you suppose he +failed to appreciate the efficiency of characteristic "last words," in +the matter of seizing the successfully driven nail of such a reputation +and clinching on the other side for ever? Not he. He prepared himself. +He kept his eye on the clock and his finger on his pulse. He awaited his +chance. And at last, when he knew his time was come, he pretended to +think a new visitor had entered, and so, with the rattle in his throat +emphasised for dramatic effect, he said to the servant, "Shin around, +John, and get the gentleman a chair." And so he died, amid thunders of +applause. + +Next we have Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, the author of Poor Richard's +quaint sayings; Franklin the immortal axiom-builder, who used to sit up +at nights reducing the rankest old threadbare platitudes to crisp and +snappy maxims that had a nice, varnished, original look in their +regimentals; who said, "Virtue is its own reward;" who said, +"Procrastination is the thief of time;" who said, "Time and tide wait for +no man" and "Necessity is the mother of invention;" good old Franklin, +the Josh Billings of the eighteenth century--though, sooth to say, the +latter transcends him in proverbial originality as much as he falls short +of him in correctness of orthography. What sort of tactics did Franklin +pursue? He pondered over his last words for as much as two weeks, and +then when the time came, he said, "None but the brave deserve the fair," +and died happy. He could not have said a sweeter thing if he had lived +till he was an idiot. + +Byron made a poor business of it, and could not think of anything to say, +at the last moment but, "Augusta--sister--Lady Byron--tell Harriet +Beecher Stowe"--etc., etc.,--but Shakespeare was ready and said, "England +expects every man to do his duty!" and went off with splendid eclat. + +And there are other instances of sagacious preparation for a felicitous +closing remark. For instance: + +Joan of Arc said, "Tramp, tramp, tramp the boys are marching." + +Alexander the Great said, "Another of those Santa Cruz punches, if you +please." + +The Empress Josephine said, "Not for Jo-" and could get no further. + +Cleopatra said, "The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders." + +Sir Walter Raleigh said, "Executioner, can I take your whetstone a +moment, please?" though what for is not clear. + +John Smith said, "Alas, I am the last of my race." + +Queen Elizabeth said, "Oh, I would give my kingdom for one moment more +--I have forgotten my last words." + +And Red Jacket, the noblest Indian brave that ever wielded a tomahawk in +defence of a friendless and persecuted race, expired with these touching +words upon his lips, "Wawkawampanoosucwinnebayowallazvsagamoresa- +skatchewan." There was not a dry eye in the wigwam. + +Let not this lesson be lost upon our public men. Let them take a healthy +moment for preparation, and contrive some last words that shall be neat +and to the point. Let Louis Napoleon say, + +"I am content to follow my uncle--still, I do not wish to improve upon +his last word. Put me down for 'Tete d'armee.'" + +And Garret Davis, "Let me recite the unabridged dictionary." + +And H. G., "I desire, now, to say a few words on political economy." + +And Mr. Bergh, "Only take part of me at a time, if the load will be +fatiguing to the hearse horses." + +And Andrew Johnson, "I have been an alderman, Member of Congress, +Governor, Senator, Pres--adieu, you know the rest." + +And Seward., "Alas!-ka." + +And Grant, "O." + +All of which is respectfully submitted, with the most honorable +intentions. + M. T. + +P. S.--I am obliged to leave out the illustrations. The artist finds it +impossible to make a picture of people's last words. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Curious Republic of Gondour and +Other Whimsical Sketches, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +1601 + +by Mark Twain + + + MARK TWAIN'S + [Date, 1601] + + Conversation + As it was by the Social Fireside + in the Time of the Tudors + + +INTRODUCTION + +"Born irreverent," scrawled Mark Twain on a scratch pad, "--like all +other people I have ever known or heard of--I am hoping to remain so +while there are any reverent irreverences left to make fun of." +--[Holograph manuscript of Samuel L. Clemens, in the collection of the +F. J. Meine] + +Mark Twain was just as irreverent as he dared be, and 1601 reveals his +richest expression of sovereign contempt for overstuffed language, +genteel literature, and conventional idiocies. Later, when a magazine +editor apostrophized, "O that we had a Rabelais!" Mark impishly and +anonymously--submitted 1601; and that same editor, a praiser of Rabelais, +scathingly abused it and the sender. In this episode, as in many others, +Mark Twain, the "bad boy" of American literature, revealed his huge +delight in blasting the shams of contemporary hypocrisy. Too, there was +always the spirit of Tom Sawyer deviltry in Mark's make-up that prompted +him, as he himself boasted, to see how much holy indignation he could +stir up in the world. + + +WHO WROTE 1601? + +The correct and complete title of 1601, as first issued, was: [Date, +1601.] 'Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of +the Tudors.' For many years after its anonymous first issue in 1880, +its authorship was variously conjectured and widely disputed. In Boston, +William T. Ball, one of the leading theatrical critics during the late +90's, asserted that it was originally written by an English actor (name +not divulged) who gave it to him. Ball's original, it was said, looked +like a newspaper strip in the way it was printed, and may indeed have +been a proof pulled in some newspaper office. In St. Louis, William +Marion Reedy, editor of the St. Louis Mirror, had seen this famous tour +de force circulated in the early 80's in galley-proof form; he first +learned from Eugene Field that it was from the pen of Mark Twain. + +"Many people," said Reedy, "thought the thing was done by Field and +attributed, as a joke, to Mark Twain. Field had a perfect genius for +that sort of thing, as many extant specimens attest, and for that sort of +practical joke; but to my thinking the humor of the piece is too mellow +--not hard and bright and bitter--to be Eugene Field's." Reedy's opinion +hits off the fundamental difference between these two great humorists; +one half suspects that Reedy was thinking of Field's French Crisis. + +But Twain first claimed his bantling from the fog of anonymity in 1906, +in a letter addressed to Mr. Charles Orr, librarian of Case Library, +Cleveland. Said Clemens, in the course of his letter, dated July 30, +1906, from Dublin, New Hampshire: + +"The title of the piece is 1601. The piece is a supposititious +conversation which takes place in Queen Elizabeth's closet in that year, +between the Queen, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Sir Walter Raleigh, the Duchess +of Bilgewater, and one or two others, and is not, as John Hay mistakenly +supposes, a serious effort to bring back our literature and philosophy to +the sober and chaste Elizabeth's time; if there is a decent word findable +in it, it is because I overlooked it. I hasten to assure you that it is +not printed in my published writings." + + +TWITTING THE REV. JOSEPH TWICHELL + +The circumstances of how 1601 came to be written have since been +officially revealed by Albert Bigelow Paine in 'Mark Twain, +A Bibliography' (1912), and in the publication of Mark Twain's Notebook +(1935). + +1601 was written during the summer of 1876 when the Clemens family had +retreated to Quarry Farm in Elmira County, New York. Here Mrs. Clemens +enjoyed relief from social obligations, the children romped over the +countryside, and Mark retired to his octagonal study, which, perched high +on the hill, looked out upon the valley below. It was in the famous +summer of 1876, too, that Mark was putting the finishing touches to Tom +Sawyer. Before the close of the same year he had already begun work on +'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', published in 1885. It is +interesting to note the use of the title, the "Duke of Bilgewater," in +Huck Finn when the "Duchess of Bilgewater" had already made her +appearance in 1601. Sandwiched between his two great masterpieces, Tom +Sawyer and Huck Finn, the writing of 1601 was indeed a strange interlude. + +During this prolific period Mark wrote many minor items, most of them +rejected by Howells, and read extensively in one of his favorite books, +Pepys' Diary. Like many another writer Mark was captivated by Pepys' +style and spirit, and "he determined," says Albert Bigelow Paine in his +'Mark Twain, A Biography', "to try his hand on an imaginary record of +conversation and court manners of a bygone day, written in the phrase of +the period. The result was 'Fireside Conversation in the Time of Queen +Elizabeth', or as he later called it, '1601'. The 'conversation' +recorded by a supposed Pepys of that period, was written with all the +outspoken coarseness and nakedness of that rank day, when fireside +sociabilities were limited only to the loosened fancy, vocabulary, and +physical performance, and not by any bounds of convention." + +"It was written as a letter," continues Paine, "to that robust divine, +Rev. Joseph Twichell, who, unlike Howells, had no scruples about Mark's +'Elizabethan breadth of parlance.'" + +The Rev. Joseph Twichell, Mark's most intimate friend for over forty +years, was pastor of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church of Hartford, +which Mark facetiously called the "Church of the Holy Speculators," +because of its wealthy parishioners. Here Mark had first met "Joe" at a +social, and their meeting ripened into a glorious, life long friendship. +Twichell was a man of about Mark's own age, a profound scholar, a devout +Christian, "yet a man with an exuberant sense of humor, and a profound +understanding of the frailties of mankind." The Rev. Mr. Twichell +performed the marriage ceremony for Mark Twain and solemnized the births +of his children; "Joe," his friend, counseled him on literary as well as +personal matters for the remainder of Mark's life. It is important to +catch this brief glimpse of the man for whom this masterpiece was +written, for without it one can not fully understand the spirit in which +1601 was written, or the keen enjoyment which Mark and "Joe" derived from +it. + + +"SAVE ME ONE." + +The story of the first issue of 1601 is one of finesse, state diplomacy, +and surreptitious printing. + +The Rev. "Joe" Twichell, for whose delectation the piece had been +written, apparently had pocketed the document for four long years. Then, +in 1880, it came into the hands of John Hay, later Secretary of State, +presumably sent to him by Mark Twain. Hay pronounced the sketch a +masterpiece, and wrote immediately to his old Cleveland friend, Alexander +Gunn, prince of connoisseurs in art and literature. The following +correspondence reveals the fine diplomacy which made the name of John Hay +known throughout the world. + + + DEPARTMENT OF STATE + Washington + + June 21, 1880. +Dear Gunn: + +Are you in Cleveland for all this week? If you will say yes by return +mail, I have a masterpiece to submit to your consideration which is only +in my hands for a few days. + +Yours, very much worritted by the depravity of Christendom, + + Hay + + +The second letter discloses Hay's own high opinion of the effort and his +deep concern for its safety. + + + + June 24, 1880 +My dear Gunn: + +Here it is. It was written by Mark Twain in a serious effort to bring +back our literature and philosophy to the sober and chaste Elizabethan +standard. But the taste of the present day is too corrupt for anything +so classic. He has not yet been able even to find a publisher. The +Globe has not yet recovered from Downey's inroad, and they won't touch +it. + +I send it to you as one of the few lingering relics of that race of +appreciative critics, who know a good thing when they see it. + +Read it with reverence and gratitude and send it back to me; for Mark is +impatient to see once more his wandering offspring. + + Yours, + Hay. + + +In his third letter one can almost hear Hay's chuckle in the certainty +that his diplomatic, if somewhat wicked, suggestion would bear fruit. + + + Washington, D. C. + July 7, 1880 +My dear Gunn: + +I have your letter, and the proposition which you make to pull a few +proofs of the masterpiece is highly attractive, and of course highly +immoral. I cannot properly consent to it, and I am afraid the great many +would think I was taking an unfair advantage of his confidence. Please +send back the document as soon as you can, and if, in spite of my +prohibition, you take these proofs, save me one. + + Very truly yours, + John Hay. + + + +Thus was this Elizabethan dialogue poured into the moulds of cold type. +According to Merle Johnson, Mark Twain's bibliographer, it was issued in +pamphlet form, without wrappers or covers; there were 8 pages of text and +the pamphlet measured 7 by 8 1/2 inches. Only four copies are believed to +have been printed, one for Hay, one for Gunn, and two for Twain. + +"In the matter of humor," wrote Clemens, referring to Hay's delicious +notes, "what an unsurpassable touch John Hay had!" + + +HUMOR AT WEST POINT + +The first printing of 1601 in actual book form was "Donne at ye Academie +Press," in 1882, West Point, New York, under the supervision of Lieut. C. +E. S. Wood, then adjutant of the U. S. Military Academy. + +In 1882 Mark Twain and Joe Twichell visited their friend Lieut. Wood at +West Point, where they learned that Wood, as Adjutant, had under his +control a small printing establishment. On Mark's return to Hartford, +Wood received a letter asking if he would do Mark a great favor by +printing something he had written, which he did not care to entrust to +the ordinary printer. Wood replied that he would be glad to oblige. +On April 3, 1882, Mark sent the manuscript: + +"I enclose the original of 1603 [sic] as you suggest. I am afraid there +are errors in it, also, heedlessness in antiquated spelling--e's stuck on +often at end of words where they are not strickly necessary, etc..... +I would go through the manuscript but I am too much driven just now, and +it is not important anyway. I wish you would do me the kindness to make +any and all corrections that suggest themselves to you. + + "Sincerely yours, + "S. L. Clemens." + + +Charles Erskine Scott Wood recalled in a foreword, which he wrote for the +limited edition of 1601 issued by the Grabhorn Press, how he felt when he +first saw the original manuscript. "When I read it," writes Wood, +"I felt that the character of it would be carried a little better by a +printing which pretended to the eye that it was contemporaneous with the +pretended 'conversation.' + +"I wrote Mark that for literary effect I thought there should be a +species of forgery, though of course there was no effort to actually +deceive a scholar. Mark answered that I might do as I liked;--that his +only object was to secure a number of copies, as the demand for it was +becoming burdensome, but he would be very grateful for any interest I +brought to the doing. + +"Well, Tucker [foreman of the printing shop] and I soaked some handmade +linen paper in weak coffee, put it as a wet bundle into a warm room to +mildew, dried it to a dampness approved by Tucker and he printed the +'copy' on a hand press. I had special punches cut for such Elizabethan +abbreviations as the a, e, o and u, when followed by m or n--and for the +(commonly and stupidly pronounced ye). + +"The only editing I did was as to the spelling and a few old English +words introduced. The spelling, if I remember correctly, is mine, but +the text is exactly as written by Mark. I wrote asking his view of +making the spelling of the period and he was enthusiastic--telling me to +do whatever I thought best and he was greatly pleased with the result." + +Thus was printed in a de luxe edition of fifty copies the most curious +masterpiece of American humor, at one of America's most dignified +institutions, the United States Military Academy at West Point. + +"1601 was so be-praised by the archaeological scholars of a quarter of a +century ago," wrote Clemens in his letter to Charles Orr, "that I was +rather inordinately vain of it. At that time it had been privately +printed in several countries, among them Japan. A sumptuous edition on +large paper, rough-edged, was made by Lieut. C. E. S. Wood at West Point +--an edition of 50 copies--and distributed among popes and kings and such +people. In England copies of that issue were worth twenty guineas when I +was there six years ago, and none to be had." + + +FROM THE DEPTHS + +Mark Twain's irreverence should not be misinterpreted: it was an +irreverence which bubbled up from a deep, passionate insight into the +well-springs of human nature. In 1601, as in 'The Man That Corrupted +Hadleyburg,' and in 'The Mysterious Stranger,' he tore the masks off +human beings and left them cringing before the public view. With the +deftness of a master surgeon Clemens dealt with human emotions and +delighted in exposing human nature in the raw. + +The spirit and the language of the Fireside Conversation were rooted deep +in Mark Twain's nature and in his life, as C. E. S. Wood, who printed +1601 at West Point, has pertinently observed, + +"If I made a guess as to the intellectual ferment out of which 1601 rose +I would say that Mark's intellectual structure and subconscious graining +was from Anglo-Saxons as primitive as the common man of the Tudor period. +He came from the banks of the Mississippi--from the flatboatmen, pilots, +roustabouts, farmers and village folk of a rude, primitive people--as +Lincoln did. + +"He was finished in the mining camps of the West among stage drivers, +gamblers and the men of '49. The simple roughness of a frontier people +was in his blood and brain. + +"Words vulgar and offensive to other ears were a common language to him. +Anyone who ever knew Mark heard him use them freely, forcibly, +picturesquely in his unrestrained conversation. Such language is +forcible as all primitive words are. Refinement seems to make for +weakness--or let us say a cutting edge--but the old vulgar monosyllabic +words bit like the blow of a pioneer's ax--and Mark was like that. Then +I think 1601 came out of Mark's instinctive humor, satire and hatred of +puritanism. But there is more than this; with all its humor there is a +sense of real delight in what may be called obscenity for its own sake. +Whitman and the Bible are no more obscene than Nature herself--no more +obscene than a manure pile, out of which come roses and cherries. Every +word used in 1601 was used by our own rude pioneers as a part of their +vocabulary--and no word was ever invented by man with obscene intent, but +only as language to express his meaning. No act of nature is obscene in +itself--but when such words and acts are dragged in for an ulterior +purpose they become offensive, as everything out of place is offensive. +I think he delighted, too, in shocking--giving resounding slaps on what +Chaucer would quite simply call 'the bare erse.'" + +Quite aside from this Chaucerian "erse" slapping, Clemens had also a +semi-serious purpose, that of reproducing a past time as he saw it in +Shakespeare, Dekker, Jonson, and other writers of the Elizabethan era. +Fireside Conversation was an exercise in scholarship illumined by a keen +sense of character. It was made especially effective by the artistic +arrangement of widely-gathered material into a compressed picture of a +phase of the manners and even the minds of the men and women "in the +spacious times of great Elizabeth." + +Mark Twain made of 1601 a very smart and fascinating performance, carried +over almost to grotesqueness just to show it was not done for mere +delight in the frank naturalism of the functions with which it deals. +That Mark Twain had made considerable study of this frankness is apparent +from chapter four of 'A Yankee At King Arthur's Court,' where he refers +to the conversation at the famous Round Table thus: + +"Many of the terms used in the most matter-of-fact way by this great +assemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen of the land would have made +a Comanche blush. Indelicacy is too mild a term to convey the idea. +However, I had read Tom Jones and Roderick Random and other books of that +kind and knew that the highest and first ladies and gentlemen in England +had remained little or no cleaner in their talk, and in the morals and +conduct which such talk implies, clear up to one hundred years ago; in +fact clear into our own nineteenth century--in which century, broadly +speaking, the earliest samples of the real lady and the real gentleman +discoverable in English history,--or in European history, for that +matter--may be said to have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter +[Scott] instead of putting the conversation into the mouths of his +characters, had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? We +should have had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowena +which would embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to the unconsciously +indelicate all things are delicate." + +Mark Twain's interest in history and in the depiction of historical +periods and characters is revealed through his fondness for historical +reading in preference to fiction, and through his other historical +writings. Even in the hilarious, youthful days in San Francisco, Paine +reports that "Clemens, however, was never quite ready for sleep. Then, +as ever, he would prop himself up in bed, light his pipe, and lose +himself in English or French history until his sleep conquered." Paine +tells us, too, that Lecky's 'European Morals' was an old favorite. + +The notes to 'The Prince and the Pauper' show again how carefully Clemens +examined his historical background, and his interest in these materials. +Some of the more important sources are noted: Hume's 'History of +England', Timbs' 'Curiosities of London', J. Hammond Trumbull's 'Blue +Laws, True and False'. Apparently Mark Twain relished it, for as Bernard +DeVoto points out, "The book is always Mark Twain. Its parodies of Tudor +speech lapse sometimes into a callow satisfaction in that idiom--Mark +hugely enjoys his nathlesses and beshrews and marrys." The writing of +1601 foreshadows his fondness for this treatment. + + "Do you suppose the liberties and the Brawn of These States have to + do only with delicate lady-words? with gloved gentleman words" + Walt Whitman, 'An American Primer'. + +Although 1601 was not matched by any similar sketch in his published +works, it was representative of Mark Twain the man. He was no emaciated +literary tea-tosser. Bronzed and weatherbeaten son of the West, Mark was +a man's man, and that significant fact is emphasized by the several +phases of Mark's rich life as steamboat pilot, printer, miner, and +frontier journalist. + +On the Virginia City Enterprise Mark learned from editor R. M. Daggett +that "when it was necessary to call a man names, there were no expletives +too long or too expressive to be hurled in rapid succession to emphasize +the utter want of character of the man assailed.... There were +typesetters there who could hurl anathemas at bad copy which would have +frightened a Bengal tiger. The news editor could damn a mutilated +dispatch in twenty-four languages." + +In San Francisco in the sizzling sixties we catch a glimpse of Mark Twain +and his buddy, Steve Gillis, pausing in doorways to sing "The Doleful +Ballad of the Neglected Lover," an old piece of uncollected erotica. +One morning, when a dog began to howl, Steve awoke "to find his room-mate +standing in the door that opened out into a back garden, holding a big +revolver, his hand shaking with cold and excitement," relates Paine in +his Biography. + +"'Come here, Steve,' he said. 'I'm so chilled through I can't get a bead +on him.' + +"'Sam,' said Steve, 'don't shoot him. Just swear at him. You can easily +kill him at any range with your profanity.' + +"Steve Gillis declares that Mark Twain let go such a scorching, singeing +blast that the brute's owner sold him the next day for a Mexican hairless +dog." + +Nor did Mark's "geysers of profanity" cease spouting after these gay and +youthful days in San Francisco. With Clemens it may truly be said that +profanity was an art--a pyrotechnic art that entertained nations. + +"It was my duty to keep buttons on his shirts," recalled Katy Leary, +life-long housekeeper and friend in the Clemens menage, "and he'd swear +something terrible if I didn't. If he found a shirt in his drawer +without a button on, he'd take every single shirt out of that drawer and +throw them right out of the window, rain or shine--out of the bathroom +window they'd go. I used to look out every morning to see the +snowflakes--anything white. Out they'd fly.... Oh! he'd swear at +anything when he was on a rampage. He'd swear at his razor if it didn't +cut right, and Mrs. Clemens used to send me around to the bathroom door +sometimes to knock and ask him what was the matter. Well, I'd go and +knock; I'd say, 'Mrs. Clemens wants to know what's the matter.' And +then he'd say to me (kind of low) in a whisper like, 'Did she hear me +Katy?' 'Yes,' I'd say, 'every word.' Oh, well, he was ashamed then, he +was afraid of getting scolded for swearing like that, because Mrs. +Clemens hated swearing." But his swearing never seemed really bad to +Katy Leary, "It was sort of funny, and a part of him, somehow," she said. +"Sort of amusing it was--and gay--not like real swearing, 'cause he swore +like an angel." + +In his later years at Stormfield Mark loved to play his favorite +billiards. "It was sometimes a wonderful and fearsome thing to watch Mr. +Clemens play billiards," relates Elizabeth Wallace. "He loved the game, +and he loved to win, but he occasionally made a very bad stroke, and then +the varied, picturesque, and unorthodox vocabulary, acquired in his more +youthful years, was the only thing that gave him comfort. Gently, +slowly, with no profane inflexions of voice, but irresistibly as though +they had the headwaters of the Mississippi for their source, came this +stream of unholy adjectives and choice expletives." + +Mark's vocabulary ran the whole gamut of life itself. In Paris, in his +appearance in 1879 before the Stomach Club, a jolly lot of gay wags, +Mark's address, reports Paine, "obtained a wide celebrity among the clubs +of the world, though no line of it, not even its title, has ever found +its way into published literature." It is rumored to have been called +"Some Remarks on the Science of Onanism." + +In Berlin, Mark asked Henry W. Fisher to accompany him on an exploration +of the Berlin Royal Library, where the librarian, having learned that +Clemens had been the Kaiser's guest at dinner, opened the secret treasure +chests for the famous visitor. One of these guarded treasures was a +volume of grossly indecent verses by Voltaire, addressed to Frederick the +Great. "Too much is enough," Mark is reported to have said, when Fisher +translated some of the verses, "I would blush to remember any of these +stanzas except to tell Krafft-Ebing about them when I get to Vienna." +When Fisher had finished copying a verse for him Mark put it into his +pocket, saying, "Livy [Mark's wife, Olivia] is so busy mispronouncing +German these days she can't even attempt to get at this." + +In his letters, too, Howells observed, "He had the Southwestern, the +Lincolnian, the Elizabethan breadth of parlance, which I suppose one +ought not to call coarse without calling one's self prudish; and I was +often hiding away in discreet holes and corners the letters in which he +had loosed his bold fancy to stoop on rank suggestion; I could not bear +to burn them, and I could not, after the first reading, quite bear to +look at them. I shall best give my feeling on this point by saying that +in it he was Shakespearean." + + "With a nigger squat on her safety-valve" + John Hay, Pike County Ballads. + +"Is there any other explanation," asks Van Wyck Brooks, "'of his +Elizabethan breadth of parlance?' Mr. Howells confesses that he +sometimes blushed over Mark Twain's letters, that there were some which, +to the very day when he wrote his eulogy on his dead friend, he could not +bear to reread. Perhaps if he had not so insisted, in former years, +while going over Mark Twain's proofs, upon 'having that swearing out in +an instant,' he would never had had cause to suffer from his having +'loosed his bold fancy to stoop on rank suggestion.' Mark Twain's verbal +Rabelaisianism was obviously the expression of that vital sap which, not +having been permitted to inform his work, had been driven inward and left +thereto ferment. No wonder he was always indulging in orgies of +forbidden words. Consider the famous book, 1601, that fireside +conversation in the time of Queen Elizabeth: is there any obsolete verbal +indecency in the English language that Mark Twain has not painstakingly +resurrected and assembled there? He, whose blood was in constant ferment +and who could not contain within the narrow bonds that had been set for +him the roitous exuberance of his nature, had to have an escape-valve, +and he poured through it a fetid stream of meaningless obscenity--the +waste of a priceless psychic material!" Thus, Brooks lumps 1601 with +Mark Twain's "bawdry," and interprets it simply as another indication of +frustration. + + +FIGS FOR FIG LEAVES! + +Of course, the writing of such a piece as 1601 raised the question of +freedom of expression for the creative artist. + +Although little discussed at that time, it was a question which intensely +interested Mark, and for a fuller appreciation of Mark's position one +must keep in mind the year in which 1601 was written, 1876. There had +been nothing like it before in American literature; there had appeared no +Caldwells, no Faulkners, no Hemingways. Victorian England was gushing +Tennyson. In the United States polite letters was a cult of the Brahmins +of Boston, with William Dean Howells at the helm of the Atlantic. Louisa +May Alcott published Little Women in 1868-69, and Little Men in 1871. In +1873 Mark Twain led the van of the debunkers, scraping the gilt off the +lily in the Gilded Age. + +In 1880 Mark took a few pot shots at license in Art and Literature in his +Tramp Abroad, "I wonder why some things are? For instance, Art is +allowed as much indecent license to-day as in earlier times--but the +privileges of Literature in this respect have been sharply curtailed +within the past eighty or ninety years. Fielding and Smollet could +portray the beastliness of their day in the beastliest language; we have +plenty of foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are not allowed +to approach them very near, even with nice and guarded forms of speech. +But not so with Art. The brush may still deal freely with any subject; +however revolting or indelicate. It makes a body ooze sarcasm at every +pore, to go about Rome and Florence and see what this last generation has +been doing with the statues. These works, which had stood in innocent +nakedness for ages, are all fig-leaved now. Yes, every one of them. +Nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can help noticing +it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous. But the comical thing +about it all, is, that the fig-leaf is confined to cold and pallid +marble, which would be still cold and unsuggestive without this sham and +ostentatious symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blooded paintings which do +really need it have in no case been furnished with it. + +"At the door of the Ufizzi, in Florence, one is confronted by statues of +a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with accumulated grime--they +hardly suggest human beings--yet these ridiculous creatures have been +thoughtfully and conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious +generation. You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little gallery +that exists in the world.... and there, against the wall, without +obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the +vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses--Titian's Venus. It +isn't that she is naked and stretched out on a bed--no, it is the +attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I ventured to describe the +attitude, there would be a fine howl--but there the Venus lies, for +anybody to gloat over that wants to--and there she has a right to lie, +for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges. I saw young girls +stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gaze long and absorbedly +at her; I saw aged, infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic +interest. How I should like to describe her--just to see what a holy +indignation I could stir up in the world--just to hear the unreflecting +average man deliver himself about my grossness and coarseness, and all +that. + +"In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures of blood, carnage, +oozing brains, putrefaction--pictures portraying intolerable suffering +--pictures alive with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful +detail--and similar pictures are being put on the canvas every day and +publicly exhibited--without a growl from anybody--for they are innocent, +they are inoffensive, being works of art. But suppose a literary artist +ventured to go into a painstaking and elaborate description of one of +these grisly things--the critics would skin him alive. Well, let it go, +it cannot be helped; Art retains her privileges, Literature has lost +hers. Somebody else may cipher out the whys and the wherefores and the +consistencies of it--I haven't got time." + + +PROFESSOR SCENTS PORNOGRAPHY + +Unfortunately, 1601 has recently been tagged by Professor Edward +Wagenknecht as "the most famous piece of pornography in American +literature." Like many another uninformed, Prof. W. is like the little +boy who is shocked to see "naughty" words chalked on the back fence, +and thinks they are pornography. The initiated, after years of wading +through the mire, will recognize instantly the significant difference +between filthy filth and funny "filth." Dirt for dirt's sake is +something else again. Pornography, an eminent American jurist has +pointed out, is distinguished by the "leer of the sensualist." + +"The words which are criticised as dirty," observed justice John M. +Woolsey in the United States District Court of New York, lifting the ban +on Ulysses by James Joyce, "are old Saxon words known to almost all men +and, I venture, to many women, and are such words as would be naturally +and habitually used, I believe, by the types of folk whose life, physical +and mental, Joyce is seeking to describe." Neither was there +"pornographic intent," according to justice Woolsey, nor was Ulysses +obscene within the legal definition of that word. + +"The meaning of the word 'obscene,'" the Justice indicated, "as legally +defined by the courts is: tending to stir the sex impulses or to lead to +sexually impure and lustful thoughts. + +"Whether a particular book would tend to excite such impulses and +thoughts must be tested by the court's opinion as to its effect on a +person with average sex instincts--what the French would call 'l'homme +moyen sensuel'--who plays, in this branch of legal inquiry, the same role +of hypothetical reagent as does the 'reasonable man' in the law of torts +and 'the learned man in the art' on questions of invention in patent +law." + +Obviously, it is ridiculous to say that the "leer of the sensualist" +lurks in the pages of Mark Twain's 1601. + + +DROLL STORY + +"In a way," observed William Marion Reedy, "1601 is to Twain's whole +works what the 'Droll Stories' are to Balzac's. It is better than the +privately circulated ribaldry and vulgarity of Eugene Field; is, indeed, +an essay in a sort of primordial humor such as we find in Rabelais, or in +the plays of some of the lesser stars that drew their light from +Shakespeare's urn. It is humor or fun such as one expects, let us say, +from the peasants of Thomas Hardy, outside of Hardy's books. And, though +it be filthy, it yet hath a splendor of mere animalism of good spirits... +I would say it is scatalogical rather than erotic, save for one touch +toward the end. Indeed, it seems more of Rabelais than of Boccaccio or +Masuccio or Aretino--is brutally British rather than lasciviously +latinate, as to the subjects, but sumptuous as regards the language." + +Immediately upon first reading, John Hay, later Secretary of State, had +proclaimed 1601 a masterpiece. Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain's +biographer, likewise acknowledged its greatness, when he said, "1601 is a +genuine classic, as classics of that sort go. It is better than the +gross obscenities of Rabelais, and perhaps in some day to come, the taste +that justified Gargantua and the Decameron will give this literary +refugee shelter and setting among the more conventional writing of Mark +Twain. Human taste is a curious thing; delicacy is purely a matter of +environment and point of view." + +"It depends on who writes a thing whether it is coarse or not," wrote +Clemens in his notebook in 1879. "I built a conversation which could +have happened--I used words such as were used at that time--1601. I sent +it anonymously to a magazine, and how the editor abused it and the +sender!" + +But that man was a praiser of Rabelais and had been saying, 'O that we +had a Rabelais!' I judged that I could furnish him one. + +"Then I took it to one of the greatest, best and most learned of Divines +[Rev. Joseph H. Twichell] and read it to him. He came within an ace of +killing himself with laughter (for between you and me the thing was +dreadfully funny. I don't often write anything that I laugh at myself, +but I can hardly think of that thing without laughing). That old Divine +said it was a piece of the finest kind of literary art--and David Gray of +the Buffalo Courier said it ought to be printed privately and left behind +me when I died, and then my fame as a literary artist would last." + +FRANKLIN J. MEINE + + + + + +THE FIRST PRINTING + Verbatim Reprint + + +[Date, 1601.] + +CONVERSATION, AS IT WAS BY THE SOCIAL FIRESIDE, IN THE TIME OF THE +TUDORS. + +[Mem.--The following is supposed to be an extract from the diary of the +Pepys of that day, the same being Queen Elizabeth's cup-bearer. He is +supposed to be of ancient and noble lineage; that he despises these +literary canaille; that his soul consumes with wrath, to see the queen +stooping to talk with such; and that the old man feels that his nobility +is defiled by contact with Shakespeare, etc., and yet he has got to stay +there till her Majesty chooses to dismiss him.] + + + +YESTERNIGHT +toke her maiste ye queene a fantasie such as she sometimes hath, and had +to her closet certain that doe write playes, bokes, and such like, these +being my lord Bacon, his worship Sir Walter Ralegh, Mr. Ben Jonson, and +ye child Francis Beaumonte, which being but sixteen, hath yet turned his +hand to ye doing of ye Lattin masters into our Englishe tong, with grete +discretion and much applaus. Also came with these ye famous Shaxpur. A +righte straunge mixing truly of mighty blode with mean, ye more in +especial since ye queenes grace was present, as likewise these following, +to wit: Ye Duchess of Bilgewater, twenty-two yeres of age; ye Countesse +of Granby, twenty-six; her doter, ye Lady Helen, fifteen; as also these +two maides of honor, to-wit, ye Lady Margery Boothy, sixty-five, and ye +Lady Alice Dilberry, turned seventy, she being two yeres ye queenes +graces elder. + +I being her maites cup-bearer, had no choice but to remaine and beholde +rank forgot, and ye high holde converse wh ye low as uppon equal termes, +a grete scandal did ye world heare thereof. + +In ye heat of ye talk it befel yt one did breake wind, yielding an +exceding mightie and distresfull stink, whereat all did laugh full sore, +and then-- + +Ye Queene.--Verily in mine eight and sixty yeres have I not heard the +fellow to this fart. Meseemeth, by ye grete sound and clamour of it, it +was male; yet ye belly it did lurk behinde shoulde now fall lean and flat +against ye spine of him yt hath bene delivered of so stately and so waste +a bulk, where as ye guts of them yt doe quiff-splitters bear, stand +comely still and rounde. Prithee let ye author confess ye offspring. +Will my Lady Alice testify? + +Lady Alice.--Good your grace, an' I had room for such a thundergust +within mine ancient bowels, 'tis not in reason I coulde discharge ye same +and live to thank God for yt He did choose handmaid so humble whereby to +shew his power. Nay, 'tis not I yt have broughte forth this rich +o'ermastering fog, this fragrant gloom, so pray you seeke ye further. + +Ye Queene.--Mayhap ye Lady Margery hath done ye companie this favor? + +Lady Margery.--So please you madam, my limbs are feeble wh ye weighte and +drouth of five and sixty winters, and it behoveth yt I be tender unto +them. In ye good providence of God, an' I had contained this wonder, +forsoothe wolde I have gi'en 'ye whole evening of my sinking life to ye +dribbling of it forth, with trembling and uneasy soul, not launched it +sudden in its matchless might, taking mine own life with violence, +rending my weak frame like rotten rags. It was not I, your maisty. + +Ye Queene.--O' God's name, who hath favored us? Hath it come to pass yt +a fart shall fart itself? Not such a one as this, I trow. Young Master +Beaumont--but no; 'twould have wafted him to heaven like down of goose's +boddy. 'Twas not ye little Lady Helen--nay, ne'er blush, my child; +thoul't tickle thy tender maidenhedde with many a mousie-squeak before +thou learnest to blow a harricane like this. Wasn't you, my learned and +ingenious Jonson? + +Jonson.--So fell a blast hath ne'er mine ears saluted, nor yet a stench +so all-pervading and immortal. 'Twas not a novice did it, good your +maisty, but one of veteran experience--else hadde he failed of +confidence. In sooth it was not I. + +Ye Queene.--My lord Bacon? + +Lord Bacon.-Not from my leane entrailes hath this prodigy burst forth, so +please your grace. Naught doth so befit ye grete as grete performance; +and haply shall ye finde yt 'tis not from mediocrity this miracle hath +issued. + +[Tho' ye subjoct be but a fart, yet will this tedious sink of learning +pondrously phillosophize. Meantime did the foul and deadly stink pervade +all places to that degree, yt never smelt I ye like, yet dare I not to +leave ye presence, albeit I was like to suffocate.] + +Ye Queene.--What saith ye worshipful Master Shaxpur? + +Shaxpur.--In the great hand of God I stand and so proclaim mine +innocence. Though ye sinless hosts of heaven had foretold ye coming of +this most desolating breath, proclaiming it a work of uninspired man, its +quaking thunders, its firmament-clogging rottenness his own achievement +in due course of nature, yet had not I believed it; but had said the pit +itself hath furnished forth the stink, and heaven's artillery hath shook +the globe in admiration of it. + +[Then was there a silence, and each did turn him toward the worshipful +Sr Walter Ralegh, that browned, embattled, bloody swashbuckler, who +rising up did smile, and simpering say,] + +Sr W.--Most gracious maisty, 'twas I that did it, but indeed it was so +poor and frail a note, compared with such as I am wont to furnish, yt in +sooth I was ashamed to call the weakling mine in so august a presence. +It was nothing--less than nothing, madam--I did it but to clear my nether +throat; but had I come prepared, then had I delivered something worthy. +Bear with me, please your grace, till I can make amends. + +[Then delivered he himself of such a godless and rock-shivering blast +that all were fain to stop their ears, and following it did come so dense +and foul a stink that that which went before did seem a poor and trifling +thing beside it. Then saith he, feigning that he blushed and was +confused, I perceive that I am weak to-day, and cannot justice do unto my +powers; and sat him down as who should say, There, it is not much yet he +that hath an arse to spare, let him fellow that, an' he think he can. By +God, an' I were ye queene, I would e'en tip this swaggering braggart out +o' the court, and let him air his grandeurs and break his intolerable +wind before ye deaf and such as suffocation pleaseth.] + +Then fell they to talk about ye manners and customs of many peoples, and +Master Shaxpur spake of ye boke of ye sieur Michael de Montaine, wherein +was mention of ye custom of widows of Perigord to wear uppon ye +headdress, in sign of widowhood, a jewel in ye similitude of a man's +member wilted and limber, whereat ye queene did laugh and say widows in +England doe wear prickes too, but betwixt the thighs, and not wilted +neither, till coition hath done that office for them. Master Shaxpur did +likewise observe how yt ye sieur de Montaine hath also spoken of a +certain emperor of such mighty prowess that he did take ten maidenheddes +in ye compass of a single night, ye while his empress did entertain two +and twenty lusty knights between her sheetes, yet was not satisfied; +whereat ye merrie Countess Granby saith a ram is yet ye emperor's +superior, sith he wil tup above a hundred yewes 'twixt sun and sun; and +after, if he can have none more to shag, will masturbate until he hath +enrich'd whole acres with his seed. + +Then spake ye damned windmill, Sr Walter, of a people in ye uttermost +parts of America, yt capulate not until they be five and thirty yeres of +age, ye women being eight and twenty, and do it then but once in seven +yeres. + +Ye Queene.--How doth that like my little Lady Helen? Shall we send thee +thither and preserve thy belly? + +Lady Helen.--Please your highnesses grace, mine old nurse hath told me +there are more ways of serving God than by locking the thighs together; +yet am I willing to serve him yt way too, sith your highnesses grace hath +set ye ensample. + +Ye Queene.--God' wowndes a good answer, childe. + +Lady Alice.--Mayhap 'twill weaken when ye hair sprouts below ye navel. + +Lady Helen.--Nay, it sprouted two yeres syne; I can scarce more than +cover it with my hand now. + +Ye Queene.--Hear Ye that, my little Beaumonte? Have ye not a little +birde about ye that stirs at hearing tell of so sweete a neste? + +Beaumonte.--'Tis not insensible, illustrious madam; but mousing owls and +bats of low degree may not aspire to bliss so whelming and ecstatic as is +found in ye downy nests of birdes of Paradise. + +Ye Queene.--By ye gullet of God, 'tis a neat-turned compliment. With +such a tongue as thine, lad, thou'lt spread the ivory thighs of many a +willing maide in thy good time, an' thy cod-piece be as handy as thy +speeche. + +Then spake ye queene of how she met old Rabelais when she was turned of +fifteen, and he did tell her of a man his father knew that had a double +pair of bollocks, whereon a controversy followed as concerning the most +just way to spell the word, ye contention running high betwixt ye learned +Bacon and ye ingenious Jonson, until at last ye old Lady Margery, +wearying of it all, saith, 'Gentles, what mattereth it how ye shall spell +the word? I warrant Ye when ye use your bollocks ye shall not think of +it; and my Lady Granby, be ye content; let the spelling be, ye shall +enjoy the beating of them on your buttocks just the same, I trow. Before +I had gained my fourteenth year I had learnt that them that would explore +a cunt stop'd not to consider the spelling o't.' + +Sr W.--In sooth, when a shift's turned up, delay is meet for naught but +dalliance. Boccaccio hath a story of a priest that did beguile a maid +into his cell, then knelt him in a corner to pray for grace to be rightly +thankful for this tender maidenhead ye Lord had sent him; but ye abbot, +spying through ye key-hole, did see a tuft of brownish hair with fair +white flesh about it, wherefore when ye priest's prayer was done, his +chance was gone, forasmuch as ye little maid had but ye one cunt, and +that was already occupied to her content. + +Then conversed they of religion, and ye mightie work ye old dead Luther +did doe by ye grace of God. Then next about poetry, and Master Shaxpur +did rede a part of his King Henry IV., ye which, it seemeth unto me, +is not of ye value of an arsefull of ashes, yet they praised it bravely, +one and all. + +Ye same did rede a portion of his "Venus and Adonis," to their prodigious +admiration, whereas I, being sleepy and fatigued withal, did deme it but +paltry stuff, and was the more discomforted in that ye blody bucanier had +got his wind again, and did turn his mind to farting with such villain +zeal that presently I was like to choke once more. God damn this windy +ruffian and all his breed. I wolde that hell mighte get him. + +They talked about ye wonderful defense which old Sr. Nicholas Throgmorton +did make for himself before ye judges in ye time of Mary; which was +unlucky matter to broach, sith it fetched out ye quene with a 'Pity yt +he, having so much wit, had yet not enough to save his doter's +maidenhedde sound for her marriage-bed.' And ye quene did give ye damn'd +Sr. Walter a look yt made hym wince--for she hath not forgot he was her +own lover it yt olde day. There was silent uncomfortableness now; 'twas +not a good turn for talk to take, sith if ye queene must find offense in +a little harmless debauching, when pricks were stiff and cunts not loathe +to take ye stiffness out of them, who of this company was sinless; +behold, was not ye wife of Master Shaxpur four months gone with child +when she stood uppe before ye altar? Was not her Grace of Bilgewater +roger'd by four lords before she had a husband? Was not ye little Lady +Helen born on her mother's wedding-day? And, beholde, were not ye Lady +Alice and ye Lady Margery there, mouthing religion, whores from ye +cradle? + +In time came they to discourse of Cervantes, and of the new painter, +Rubens, that is beginning to be heard of. Fine words and dainty-wrought +phrases from the ladies now, one or two of them being, in other days, +pupils of that poor ass, Lille, himself; and I marked how that Jonson and +Shaxpur did fidget to discharge some venom of sarcasm, yet dared they not +in the presence, the queene's grace being ye very flower of ye Euphuists +herself. But behold, these be they yt, having a specialty, and admiring +it in themselves, be jealous when a neighbor doth essaye it, nor can +abide it in them long. Wherefore 'twas observable yt ye quene waxed +uncontent; and in time labor'd grandiose speeche out of ye mouth of Lady +Alice, who manifestly did mightily pride herself thereon, did quite +exhauste ye quene's endurance, who listened till ye gaudy speeche was +done, then lifted up her brows, and with vaste irony, mincing saith 'O +shit!' Whereat they alle did laffe, but not ye Lady Alice, yt olde +foolish bitche. + +Now was Sr. Walter minded of a tale he once did hear ye ingenious +Margrette of Navarre relate, about a maid, which being like to suffer +rape by an olde archbishoppe, did smartly contrive a device to save her +maidenhedde, and said to him, First, my lord, I prithee, take out thy +holy tool and piss before me; which doing, lo his member felle, and would +not rise again. + + + + + + + FOOTNOTES + To Frivolity + +The historical consistency of 1601 indicates that Twain must have given +the subject considerable thought. The author was careful to speak only +of men who conceivably might have been in the Virgin Queen's closet and +engaged in discourse with her. + + +THE CHARACTERS + +At this time (1601) Queen Elizabeth was 68 years old. She speaks of +having talked to "old Rabelais" in her youth. This might have been +possible as Rabelais died in 1552, when the Queen was 19 years old. + +Among those in the party were Shakespeare, at that time 37 years old; Ben +Jonson, 27; and Sir Walter Raleigh, 49. Beaumont at the time was 17, not +16. He was admitted as a member of the Inner Temple in 1600, and his +first translations, those from Ovid, were first published in 1602. +Therefore, if one were holding strictly to the year date, neither by age +nor by fame would Beaumont have been eligible to attend such a gathering +of august personages in the year 1601; but the point is unimportant. + + +THE ELIZABETHAN WRITERS + +In the Conversation Shakespeare speaks of Montaigne's Essays. These were +first published in 1580 and successive editions were issued in the years +following, the third volume being published in 1588. "In England +Montaigne was early popular. It was long supposed that the autograph of +Shakespeare in a copy of Florio's translation showed his study of the +Essays. The autograph has been disputed, but divers passages, and +especially one in The Tempest, show that at first or second hand the poet +was acquainted with the essayist." (Encyclopedia Brittanica.) + +The company at the Queen's fireside discoursed of Lilly (or Lyly), +English dramatist and novelist of the Elizabethan era, whose novel, +Euphues, published in two parts, 'Euphues', or the 'Anatomy of Wit' +(1579) and 'Euphues and His England' (1580) was a literary sensation. +It is said to have influenced literary style for more than a quarter of a +century, and traces of its influence are found in Shakespeare. (Columbia +Encyclopedia). + +The introduction of Ben Jonson into the party was wholly appropriate, +if one may call to witness some of Jonson's writings. The subject under +discussion was one that Jonson was acquainted with, in The Alchemist: + + +Act. I, Scene I, + +FACE: Believe't I will. + +SUBTLE: Thy worst. I fart at thee. + +DOL COMMON: Have you your wits? Why, gentlemen, for love---- + + +Act. 2, Scene I, + +SIR EPICURE MAMMON: ....and then my poets, the same that writ so subtly +of the fart, whom I shall entertain still for that subject and again in +Bartholomew Fair + +NIGHTENGALE: (sings a ballad) + Hear for your love, and buy for your money. + A delicate ballad o' the ferret and the coney. + A preservative again' the punk's evil. + Another goose-green starch, and the devil. + A dozen of divine points, and the godly garter + The fairing of good counsel, of an ell and three-quarters. + What is't you buy? + The windmill blown down by the witche's fart, + Or Saint George, that, O! did break the dragon's heart. + + +GOOD OLD ENGLISH CUSTOM + +That certain types of English society have not changed materially in +their freedom toward breaking wind in public can be noticed in some +comparatively recent literature. Frank Harris in My Life, Vol. 2, +Ch. XIII, tells of Lady Marriott, wife of a judge Advocate General, +being compelled to leave her own table, at which she was entertaining Sir +Robert Fowler, then the Lord Mayor of London, because of the suffocating +and nauseating odors there. He also tells of an instance in parliament, +and of a rather brilliant bon mot spoken upon that occasion. + +"While Fowler was speaking Finch-Hatton had shewn signs of restlessness; +towards the end of the speech he had moved some three yards away from the +Baronet. As soon as Fowler sat down Finch-Hatton sprang up holding his +handkerchief to his nose: + +"'Mr. Speaker,' he began, and was at once acknowledged by the Speaker, +for it was a maiden speech, and as such was entitled to precedence by the +courteous custom of the House, 'I know why the Right Honourable Member +from the City did not conclude his speech with a proposal. The only way +to conclude such a speech appropriately would be with a motion!'" + + +AEOLIAN CREPITATIONS + +But society had apparently degenerated sadly in modern times, and even in +the era of Elizabeth, for at an earlier date it was a serious--nay, +capital--offense to break wind in the presence of majesty. The Emperor +Claudius, hearing that one who had suppressed the urge while paying him +court had suffered greatly thereby, "intended to issue an edict, allowing +to all people the liberty of giving vent at table to any distension +occasioned by flatulence:" + +Martial, too (Book XII, Epigram LXXVII), tells of the embarrassment of +one who broke wind while praying in the Capitol, + +"One day, while standing upright, addressing his prayers to Jupiter, +Aethon farted in the Capitol. Men laughed, but the Father of the Gods, +offended, condemned the guilty one to dine at home for three nights. +Since that time, miserable Aethon, when he wishes to enter the Capitol, +goes first to Paterclius' privies and farts ten or twenty times. Yet, in +spite of this precautionary crepitation, he salutes Jove with constricted +buttocks." Martial also (Book IV, Epigram LXXX), ridicules a woman who +was subject to the habit, saying, + +"Your Bassa, Fabullus, has always a child at her side, calling it her +darling and her plaything; and yet--more wonder--she does not care for +children. What is the reason then. Bassa is apt to fart. (For which +she could blame the unsuspecting infant.)" + +The tale is told, too, of a certain woman who performed an aeolian +crepitation at a dinner attended by the witty Monsignieur Dupanloup, +Bishop of Orleans, and that when, to cover up her lapse, she began to +scrape her feet upon the floor, and to make similar noises, the Bishop +said, "Do not trouble to find a rhyme, Madam!" + +Nay, worthier names than those of any yet mentioned have discussed the +matter. Herodotus tells of one such which was the precursor to the fall +of an empire and a change of dynasty--that which Amasis discharges while +on horseback, and bids the envoy of Apries, King of Egypt, catch and +deliver to his royal master. Even the exact manner and posture of +Amasis, author of this insult, is described. + +St. Augustine (The City of God, XIV:24) cites the instance of a man who +could command his rear trumpet to sound at will, which his learned +commentator fortifies with the example of one who could do so in tune! + +Benjamin Franklin, in his "Letter to the Royal Academy of Brussels" has +canvassed suggested remedies for alleviating the stench attendant upon +these discharges: + +"My Prize Question therefore should be: To discover some Drug, wholesome +and--not disagreeable, to be mixed with our common food, or sauces, that +shall render the natural discharges of Wind from our Bodies not only +inoffensive, but agreeable as Perfumes. + +"That this is not a Chimerical Project & altogether impossible, may +appear from these considerations. That we already have some knowledge of +means capable of varying that smell. He that dines on stale Flesh, +especially with much Addition of Onions, shall be able to afford a stink +that no Company can tolerate; while he that has lived for some time on +Vegetables only, shall have that Breath so pure as to be insensible of +the most delicate Noses; and if he can manage so as to avoid the Report, +he may anywhere give vent to his Griefs, unnoticed. But as there are +many to whom an entire Vegetable Diet would be inconvenient, & as a +little quick Lime thrown into a Jakes will correct the amazing Quantity +of fetid Air arising from the vast Mass of putrid Matter contained in +such Places, and render it pleasing to the Smell, who knows but that a +little Powder of Lime (or some other equivalent) taken in our Food, or +perhaps a Glass of Lime Water drank at Dinner, may have the same Effect +on the Air produced in and issuing from our Bowels?" + +One curious commentary on the text is that Elizabeth should be so fond of +investigating into the authorship of the exhalation in question, when she +was inordinately fond of strong and sweet perfumes; in fact, she was +responsible for the tremendous increase in importations of scents into +England during her reign. + + +"YE BOKE OF YE SIEUR MICHAEL DE MONTAINE" + +There is a curious admixture of error and misunderstanding in this part +of the sketch. In the first place, the story is borrowed from Montaigne, +where it is told inaccurately, and then further corrupted in the telling. + +It was not the good widows of Perigord who wore the phallus upon their +coifs; it was the young married women, of the district near Montaigne's +home, who paraded it to view upon their foreheads, as a symbol, says our +essayist, "of the joy they derived therefrom." If they became widows, +they reversed its position, and covered it up with the rest of their +head-dress. + +The "emperor" mentioned was not an emperor; he was Procolus, a native of +Albengue, on the Genoese coast, who, with Bonosus, led the unsuccessful +rebellion in Gaul against Emperor Probus. Even so keen a commentator as +Cotton has failed to note the error. + +The empress (Montaigne does not say "his empress") was Messalina, third +wife of the Emperor Claudius, who was uncle of Caligula and foster-father +to Nero. Furthermore, in her case the charge is that she copulated with +twenty-five in a single night, and not twenty-two, as appears in the +text. Montaigne is right in his statistics, if original sources are +correct, whereas the author erred in transcribing the incident. + +As for Proculus, it has been noted that he was associated with Bonosus, +who was as renowned in the field of Bacchus as was Proculus in that of +Venus (Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire). The feat of +Proculus is told in his own words, in Vopiscus, (Hist. Augustine, p. 246) +where he recounts having captured one hundred Sarmatian virgins, and +unmaidened ten of them in one night, together with the happenings +subsequent thereto. + +Concerning Messalina, there appears to be no question but that she was a +nymphomaniac, and that, while Empress of Rome, she participated in some +fearful debaucheries. The question is what to believe, for much that we +have heard about her is almost certainly apocryphal. + +The author from whom Montaigne took his facts is the elder Pliny, who, +in his Natural History, Book X, Chapter 83, says, "Other animals become +sated with veneral pleasures; man hardly knows any satiety. Messalina, +the wife of Claudius Caesar, thinking this a palm quite worthy of an +empress, selected for the purpose of deciding the question, one of the +most notorious women who followed the profession of a hired prostitute; +and the empress outdid her, after continuous intercourse, night and day, +at the twenty-fifth embrace." + +But Pliny, notwithstanding his great attainments, was often a retailer of +stale gossip, and in like case was Aurelius Victor, another writer who +heaped much odium on her name. Again, there is a great hiatus in the +Annals of Tacitus, a true historian, at the period covering the earlier +days of the Empress; while Suetonius, bitter as he may be, is little more +than an anecdotist. Juvenal, another of her detractors, is a prejudiced +witness, for he started out to satirize female vice, and naturally aimed +at high places. Dio also tells of Messalina's misdeeds, but his work is +under the same limitations as that of Suetonius. Furthermore, none but +Pliny mentions the excess under consideration. + +However, "where there is much smoke there must be a little fire," and +based upon the superimposed testimony of the writers of the period, there +appears little doubt but that Messalina was a nymphomaniac, that she +prostituted herself in the public stews, naked, and with gilded nipples, +and that she did actually marry her chief adulterer, Silius, while +Claudius was absent at Ostia, and that the wedding was consummated in the +presence of a concourse of witnesses. This was "the straw that broke the +camel's back." Claudius hastened back to Rome, Silius was dispatched, +and Messalina, lacking the will-power to destroy herself, was killed when +an officer ran a sword through her abdomen, just as it appeared that +Claudius was about to relent. + + +"THEN SPAKE YE DAMNED WINDMILL, SIR WALTER" + +Raleigh is thoroughly in character here; this observation is quite in +keeping with the general veracity of his account of his travels in +Guiana, one of the most mendacious accounts of adventure ever told. +Naturally, the scholarly researches of Westermarck have failed to +discover this people; perhaps Lady Helen might best be protected among +the Jibaros of Ecuador, where the men marry when approaching forty. + +Ben Jonson in his Conversations observed "That Sr. W. Raughlye esteemed +more of fame than of conscience." + + +YE VIRGIN QUEENE + +Grave historians have debated for centuries the pretensions of Elizabeth +to the title, "The Virgin Queen," and it is utterly impossible to dispose +of the issue in a note. However, the weight of opinion appears to be in +the negative. Many and great were the difficulties attending the +marriage of a Protestant princess in those troublous times, and Elizabeth +finally announced that she would become wedded to the English nation, +and she wore a ring in token thereof until her death. However, more or +less open liaisons with Essex and Leicester, as well as a host of lesser +courtiers, her ardent temperament, and her imperious temper, are +indications that cannot be denied in determining any estimate upon the +point in question. + +Ben Jonson in his Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden +says, + +"Queen Elizabeth never saw herself after she became old in a true glass; +they painted her, and sometymes would vermillion her nose. She had +allwayes about Christmass evens set dice that threw sixes or five, and +she knew not they were other, to make her win and esteame herself +fortunate. That she had a membrana on her, which made her uncapable of +man, though for her delight she tried many. At the comming over of +Monsieur, there was a French Chirurgion who took in hand to cut it, yett +fear stayed her, and his death." + +It was a subject which again intrigued Clemens when he was abroad with +W. H. Fisher, whom Mark employed to "nose up" everything pertaining to +Queen Elizabeth's manly character. + + +"'BOCCACCIO HATH A STORY" + +The author does not pay any great compliment to Raleigh's memory here. +There is no such tale in all Boccaccio. The nearest related incident +forms the subject matter of Dineo's novel (the fourth) of the First day +of the Decameron. + + +OLD SR. NICHOLAS THROGMORTON + +The incident referred to appears to be Sir Nicholas Throgmorton's trial +for complicity in the attempt to make Lady Jane Grey Queen of England, +a charge of which he was acquitted. This so angered Queen Mary that she +imprisoned him in the Tower, and fined the jurors from one to two +thousand pounds each. Her action terrified succeeding juries, so that +Sir Nicholas's brother was condemned on no stronger evidence than that +which had failed to prevail before. While Sir Nicholas's defense may +have been brilliant, it must be admitted that the evidence was weak. +He was later released from the Tower, and under Elizabeth was one of a +group of commissioners sent by that princess into Scotland, to foment +trouble with Mary, Queen of Scots. When the attempt became known, +Elizabeth repudiated the acts of her agents, but Sir Nicholas, having +anticipated this possibility, had sufficient foresight to secure +endorsement of his plan by the Council, and so outwitted Elizabeth, who +was playing a two-faced role, and Cecil, one of the greatest statesmen +who ever held the post of principal minister. Perhaps it was this +incident to which the company referred, which might in part explain +Elizabeth's rejoinder. However, he had been restored to confidence ere +this, and had served as ambassador to France. + + +"TO SAVE HIS DOTER'S MAIDENHEDDE" + +Elizabeth Throckmorton (or Throgmorton), daughter of Sir Nicholas, was +one of Elizabeth's maids of honor. When it was learned that she had been +debauched by Raleigh, Sir Walter was recalled from his command at sea by +the Queen, and compelled to marry the girl. This was not "in that olde +daie," as the text has it, for it happened only eight years before the +date of this purported "conversation," when Elizabeth was sixty years +old. + + + + + + +PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY + +The various printings of 1601 reveal how Mark Twain's 'Fireside +Conversation' has become a part of the American printer's lore. But more +important, its many printings indicate that it has become a popular bit +of American folklore, particularly for men and women who have a feeling +for Mark Twain. Apparently it appeals to the typographer, who devotes to +it his worthy art, as well as to the job printer, who may pull a crudely +printed proof. The gay procession of curious printings of 1601 is unique +in the history of American printing. + +Indeed, the story of the various printings of 1601 is almost legendary. +In the days of the "jour." printer, so I am told, well-thumbed copies +were carried from print shop to print shop. For more than a quarter +century now it has been one of the chief sources of enjoyment for +printers' devils; and many a young rascal has learned about life from +this Fireside Conversation. It has been printed all over the country, +and if report is to be believed, in foreign countries as well. Because +of the many surreptitious and anonymous printings it is exceedingly +difficult, if not impossible, to compile a complete bibliography. Many +printings lack the name of the publisher, the printer, the place or date +of printing. In many instances some of the data, through the patient +questioning of fellow collectors, has been obtained and supplied. + + +1. [Date, 1601.] Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the +Time of the Tudors. + +DESCRIPTION: Pamphlet, pp. [ 1 ]-8, without wrappers or cover, measuring +7x8 inches. The title is Set in caps. and small caps. + +The excessively rare first printing, printed in Cleveland, 1880, at the +instance of Alexander Gunn, friend of John Hay. Only four copies are +believed to have been printed, of which, it is said now, the only known +copy is located in the Willard S. Morse collection. + + +2. Date 1601. Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the +time of the Tudors. + +(Mem.--The following is supposed to be an extract from the diary of the +Pepys of that day, the same being cup-bearer to Queen Elizabeth. It is +supposed that he is of ancient and noble lineage; that he despises these +literary canaille; that his soul consumes with wrath to see the Queen +stooping to talk with such; and that the old man feels his nobility +defiled by contact with Shakespeare, etc., and yet he has got to stay +there till Her Majesty chooses to dismiss him.) + +DESCRIPTION: Title as above, verso blank; pp. [i]-xi, text; verso p. xi +blank. About 8 x 10 inches, printed on handmade linen paper soaked in +weak coffee, wrappers. The title is set in caps and small caps. + +COLOPHON: at the foot of p. xi: Done Att Ye Academie Preffe; M DCCC LXXX +II. + +The privately printed West Point edition, the first printing of the text +authorized by Mark Twain, of which but fifty copies were printed. The +story of this printing is fully told in the Introduction. + + +3. Conversation As It Was By The Social Fire-side In The Time Of The +Tudors from Ye Diary of Ye Cupbearer to her Maisty Queen Elizabeth. +[design] Imprinted by Ye Puritan Press At Ye Sign of Ye Jolly Virgin +1601. + +DESCRIPTION: 2 blank leaves; p. [i] blank, p. [ii] fronds., p. [iii] +title [as above], p. [iv] "Mem.", pp. 1-[25] text, I blank leaf. 4 3/4 +by 6 1/4 inches, printed in a modern version of the Caxton black letter +type, on M.B.M. French handmade paper. The frontispiece, a woodcut by +A. E. Curtis, is a portrait of the cup-bearer. Bound in buff-grey +boards, buckram back. Cover title reads, in pale red ink, Caxton type, +Conversation As It Was By The Social Fire-side In The Time Of The Tudors. +[The Byway Press, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1901, 120 copies.] + +Probably the first published edition. + +Later, in 1916, a facsimile edition of this printing was published in +Chicago from plates. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of 1601, by Mark Twain + + + + + + +THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME IN CONNECTICUT + +by Mark Twain + + + +I was feeling blithe, almost jocund. I put a match to my cigar, and just +then the morning's mail was handed in. The first superscription I +glanced at was in a handwriting that sent a thrill of pleasure through +and through me. It was Aunt Mary's; and she was the person I loved and +honored most in all the world, outside of my own household. She had been +my boyhood's idol; maturity, which is fatal to so many enchantments, had +not been able to dislodge her from her pedestal; no, it had only +justified her right to be there, and placed her dethronement permanently +among the impossibilities. To show how strong her influence over me was, +I will observe that long after everybody else's "do-stop-smoking" had +ceased to affect me in the slightest degree, Aunt Mary could still stir +my torpid conscience into faint signs of life when she touched upon the +matter. But all things have their limit in this world. A happy day came +at last, when even Aunt Mary's words could no longer move me. I was not +merely glad to see that day arrive; I was more than glad--I was grateful; +for when its sun had set, the one alloy that was able to mar my enjoyment +of my aunt's society was gone. The remainder of her stay with us that +winter was in every way a delight. Of course she pleaded with me just as +earnestly as ever, after that blessed day, to quit my pernicious habit, +but to no purpose whatever; the moment she opened the subject I at once +became calmly, peacefully, contentedly indifferent--absolutely, +adamantinely indifferent. Consequently the closing weeks of that +memorable visit melted away as pleasantly as a dream, they were so +freighted for me with tranquil satisfaction. I could not have enjoyed my +pet vice more if my gentle tormentor had been a smoker herself, and an +advocate of the practice. Well, the sight of her handwriting reminded me +that I way getting very hungry to see her again. I easily guessed what I +should find in her letter. I opened it. Good! just as I expected; she +was coming! Coming this very day, too, and by the morning train; I might +expect her any moment. + +I said to myself, "I am thoroughly happy and content now. If my most +pitiless enemy could appear before me at this moment, I would freely +right any wrong I may have done him." + +Straightway the door opened, and a shriveled, shabby dwarf entered. He +was not more than two feet high. He seemed to be about forty years old. +Every feature and every inch of him was a trifle out of shape; and so, +while one could not put his finger upon any particular part and say, +"This is a conspicuous deformity," the spectator perceived that this +little person was a deformity as a whole--a vague, general, evenly +blended, nicely adjusted deformity. There was a fox-like cunning in the +face and the sharp little eyes, and also alertness and malice. And yet, +this vile bit of human rubbish seemed to bear a sort of remote and +ill-defined resemblance to me! It was dully perceptible in the mean +form, the countenance, and even the clothes, gestures, manner, and +attitudes of the creature. He was a farfetched, dim suggestion of a +burlesque upon me, a caricature of me in little. One thing about him +struck me forcibly and most unpleasantly: he was covered all over with a +fuzzy, greenish mold, such as one sometimes sees upon mildewed bread. +The sight of it was nauseating. + +He stepped along with a chipper air, and flung himself into a doll's +chair in a very free-and-easy way, without waiting to be asked. He +tossed his hat into the waste-basket. He picked up my old chalk pipe +from the floor, gave the stem a wipe or two on his knee, filled the bowl +from the tobacco-box at his side, and said to me in a tone of pert +command: + +"Gimme a match!" + +I blushed to the roots of my hair; partly with indignation, but mainly +because it somehow seemed to me that this whole performance was very like +an exaggeration of conduct which I myself had sometimes been guilty of in +my intercourse with familiar friends--but never, never with strangers, I +observed to myself. I wanted to kick the pygmy into the fire, but some +incomprehensible sense of being legally and legitimately under his +authority forced me to obey his order. He applied the match to the pipe, +took a contemplative whiff or two, and remarked, in an irritatingly +familiar way: + +"Seems to me it's devilish odd weather for this time of year." + +I flushed again, and in anger and humiliation as before; for the language +was hardly an exaggeration of some that I have uttered in my day, and +moreover was delivered in a tone of voice and with an exasperating drawl +that had the seeming of a deliberate travesty of my style. Now there is +nothing I am quite so sensitive about as a mocking imitation of my +drawling infirmity of speech. I spoke up sharply and said: + +"Look here, you miserable ash-cat! you will have to give a little more +attention to your manners, or I will throw you out of the window!" + +The manikin smiled a smile of malicious content and security, puffed a +whiff of smoke contemptuously toward me, and said, with a still more +elaborate drawl: + +"Come--go gently now; don't put on too many airs with your betters." + +This cool snub rasped me all over, but it seemed to subjugate me, too, +for a moment. The pygmy contemplated me awhile with his weasel eyes, +and then said, in a peculiarly sneering way: + +"You turned a tramp away from your door this morning." + +I said crustily: + +"Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn't. How do you know?" + +"Well, I know. It isn't any matter how I know." + +"Very well. Suppose I did turn a tramp away from the door--what of it?" + +"Oh, nothing; nothing in particular. Only you lied to him." + +"I didn't! That is, I--" + +"Yes, but you did; you lied to him." + +I felt a guilty pang--in truth, I had felt it forty times before that +tramp had traveled a block from my door--but still I resolved to make a +show of feeling slandered; so I said: + +"This is a baseless impertinence. I said to the tramp--" + +"There--wait. You were about to lie again. I know what you said to him. +You said the cook was gone down-town and there was nothing left from +breakfast. Two lies. You knew the cook was behind the door, and plenty +of provisions behind her." + +This astonishing accuracy silenced me; and it filled me with wondering +speculations, too, as to how this cub could have got his information. +Of course he could have culled the conversation from the tramp, but by +what sort of magic had he contrived to find out about the concealed cook? +Now the dwarf spoke again: + +"It was rather pitiful, rather small, in you to refuse to read that poor +young woman's manuscript the other day, and give her an opinion as to its +literary value; and she had come so far, too, and so hopefully. Now +wasn't it?" + +I felt like a cur! And I had felt so every time the thing had recurred +to my mind, I may as well confess. I flushed hotly and said: + +"Look here, have you nothing better to do than prowl around prying into +other people's business? Did that girl tell you that?" + +"Never mind whether she did or not. The main thing is, you did that +contemptible thing. And you felt ashamed of it afterward. Aha! you feel +ashamed of it now!" + +This was a sort of devilish glee. With fiery earnestness I responded: + +"I told that girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I could not consent +to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an individual's +verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high merit and lose +it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so open the +way for its infliction upon the world: I said that the great public was +the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort, +and therefore it must be best to lay it before that tribunal in the +outset, since in the end it must stand or fall by that mighty court's +decision anyway." + +"Yes, you said all that. So you did, you juggling, small-souled +shuffler! And yet when the happy hopefulness faded out of that poor +girl's face, when you saw her furtively slip beneath her shawl the scroll +she had so patiently and honestly scribbled at--so ashamed of her darling +now, so proud of it before--when you saw the gladness go out of her eyes +and the tears come there, when she crept away so humbly who had come +so--" + +"Oh, peace! peace! peace! Blister your merciless tongue, haven't all +these thoughts tortured me enough without your coming here to fetch them +back again!" + +Remorse! remorse! It seemed to me that it would eat the very heart out +of me! And yet that small fiend only sat there leering at me with joy +and contempt, and placidly chuckling. Presently he began to speak again. +Every sentence was an accusation, and every accusation a truth. Every +clause was freighted with sarcasm and derision, every slow-dropping word +burned like vitriol. The dwarf reminded me of times when I had flown at +my children in anger and punished them for faults which a little inquiry +would have taught me that others, and not they, had committed. +He reminded me of how I had disloyally allowed old friends to be traduced +in my hearing, and been too craven to utter a word in their defense. +He reminded me of many dishonest things which I had done; of many which I +had procured to be done by children and other irresponsible persons; of +some which I had planned, thought upon, and longed to do, and been kept +from the performance by fear of consequences only. With exquisite +cruelty he recalled to my mind, item by item, wrongs and unkindnesses I +had inflicted and humiliations I had put upon friends since dead, "who +died thinking of those injuries, maybe, and grieving over them," he +added, by way of poison to the stab. + +"For instance," said he, "take the case of your younger brother, when you +two were boys together, many a long year ago. He always lovingly trusted +in you with a fidelity that your manifold treacheries were not able to +shake. He followed you about like a dog, content to suffer wrong and +abuse if he might only be with you; patient under these injuries so long +as it was your hand that inflicted them. The latest picture you have of +him in health and strength must be such a comfort to you! You pledged +your honor that if he would let you blindfold him no harm should come to +him; and then, giggling and choking over the rare fun of the joke, you +led him to a brook thinly glazed with ice, and pushed him in; and how you +did laugh! Man, you will never forget the gentle, reproachful look he +gave you as he struggled shivering out, if you live a thousand years! +Oh! you see it now, you see it now!" + +"Beast, I have seen it a million times, and shall see it a million more! +and may you rot away piecemeal, and suffer till doomsday what I suffer +now, for bringing it back to me again!" + +The dwarf chuckled contentedly, and went on with his accusing history of +my career. I dropped into a moody, vengeful state, and suffered in +silence under the merciless lash. At last this remark of his gave me a +sudden rouse: + +"Two months ago, on a Tuesday, you woke up, away in the night, and fell +to thinking, with shame, about a peculiarly mean and pitiful act of yours +toward a poor ignorant Indian in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains in the +winter of eighteen hundred and--" + +"Stop a moment, devil! Stop! Do you mean to tell me that even my very +thoughts are not hidden from you?" + +"It seems to look like that. Didn't you think the thoughts I have just +mentioned?" + +"If I didn't, I wish I may never breathe again! Look here, friend--look +me in the eye. Who are you?" + +"Well, who do you think?" + +"I think you are Satan himself. I think you are the devil." + +"No." + +"No? Then who can you be?" + +"Would you really like to know?" + +"Indeed I would." + +"Well, I am your Conscience!" + +In an instant I was in a blaze of joy and exultation. I sprang at the +creature, roaring: + +"Curse you, I have wished a hundred million times that you were tangible, +and that I could get my hands on your throat once! Oh, but I will wreak +a deadly vengeance on--" + +Folly! Lightning does not move more quickly than my Conscience did! +He darted aloft so suddenly that in the moment my fingers clutched the +empty air he was already perched on the top of the high bookcase, with +his thumb at his nose in token of derision. I flung the poker at him, +and missed. I fired the bootjack. In a blind rage I flew from place to +place, and snatched and hurled any missile that came handy; the storm of +books, inkstands, and chunks of coal gloomed the air and beat about the +manikin's perch relentlessly, but all to no purpose; the nimble figure +dodged every shot; and not only that, but burst into a cackle of +sarcastic and triumphant laughter as I sat down exhausted. While I +puffed and gasped with fatigue and excitement, my Conscience talked to +this effect: + +"My good slave, you are curiously witless--no, I mean characteristically +so. In truth, you are always consistent, always yourself, always an ass. +Other wise it must have occurred to you that if you attempted this murder +with a sad heart and a heavy conscience, I would droop under the +burdening in influence instantly. Fool, I should have weighed a ton, and +could not have budged from the floor; but instead, you are so cheerfully +anxious to kill me that your conscience is as light as a feather; hence I +am away up here out of your reach. I can almost respect a mere ordinary +sort of fool; but you pah!" + +I would have given anything, then, to be heavyhearted, so that I could +get this person down from there and take his life, but I could no more be +heavy-hearted over such a desire than I could have sorrowed over its +accomplishment. So I could only look longingly up at my master, and rave +at the ill luck that denied me a heavy conscience the one only time that +I had ever wanted such a thing in my life. By and by I got to musing +over the hour's strange adventure, and of course my human curiosity began +to work. I set myself to framing in my mind some questions for this +fiend to answer. Just then one of my boys entered, leaving the door open +behind him, and exclaimed: + +"My! what has been going on here? The bookcase is all one riddle of--" + +I sprang up in consternation, and shouted: + +"Out of this! Hurry! jump! Fly! Shut the door! Quick, or my +Conscience will get away!" + +The door slammed to, and I locked it. I glanced up and was grateful, to +the bottom of my heart, to see that my owner was still my prisoner. I +said: + +"Hang you, I might have lost you! Children are the heedlessest +creatures. But look here, friend, the boy did not seem to notice you at +all; how is that?" + +"For a very good reason. I am invisible to all but you." + +I made a mental note of that piece of information with a good deal of +satisfaction. I could kill this miscreant now, if I got a chance, and no +one would know it. But this very reflection made me so lighthearted that +my Conscience could hardly keep his seat, but was like to float aloft +toward the ceiling like a toy balloon. I said, presently: + +"Come, my Conscience, let us be friendly. Let us fly a flag of truce for +a while. I am suffering to ask you some questions." + +"Very well. Begin." + +"Well, then, in the first place, why were you never visible to me +before?" + +"Because you never asked to see me before; that is, you never asked in +the right spirit and the proper form before. You were just in the right +spirit this time, and when you called for your most pitiless enemy I was +that person by a very large majority, though you did not suspect it." + +"Well, did that remark of mine turn you into flesh and blood?" + +"No. It only made me visible to you. I am unsubstantial, just as other +spirits are." + +This remark prodded me with a sharp misgiving. + +If he was unsubstantial, how was I going to kill him? But I dissembled, +and said persuasively: + +"Conscience, it isn't sociable of you to keep at such a distance. Come +down and take another smoke." + +This was answered with a look that was full of derision, and with this +observation added: + +"Come where you can get at me and kill me? The invitation is declined +with thanks." + +"All right," said I to myself; "so it seems a spirit can be killed, after +all; there will be one spirit lacking in this world, presently, or I lose +my guess." Then I said aloud: + +"Friend--" + +"There; wait a bit. I am not your friend. I am your enemy; I am not +your equal, I am your master, Call me 'my lord,' if you please. You are +too familiar." + +"I don't like such titles. I am willing to call you, sir. That is as +far as--" + +"We will have no argument about this. Just obey, that is all. Go on +with your chatter." + +"Very well, my lord--since nothing but my lord will suit you--I was going +to ask you how long you will be visible to me?" + +"Always!" + +I broke out with strong indignation: "This is simply an outrage. That is +what I think of it! You have dogged, and dogged, and dogged me, all the +days of my life, invisible. That was misery enough, now to have such a +looking thing as you tagging after me like another shadow all the rest of +my day is an intolerable prospect. You have my opinion my lord, make the +most of it." + +"My lad, there was never so pleased a conscience in this world as I was +when you made me visible. It gives me an inconceivable advantage. Now I +can look you straight in the eye, and call you names, and leer at you, +jeer at you, sneer at you; and you know what eloquence there is in +visible gesture and expression, more especially when the effect is +heightened by audible speech. I shall always address you henceforth in +your o-w-n s-n-i-v-e-l-i-n-g d-r-a-w-l--baby!" + +I let fly with the coal-hod. No result. My lord said: + +"Come, come! Remember the flag of truce!" + +"Ah, I forgot that. I will try to be civil; and you try it, too, for a +novelty. The idea of a civil conscience! It is a good joke; an +excellent joke. All the consciences I have ever heard of were nagging, +badgering, fault-finding, execrable savages! Yes; and always in a sweat +about some poor little insignificant trifle or other--destruction catch +the lot of them, I say! I would trade mine for the smallpox and seven +kinds of consumption, and be glad of the chance. Now tell me, why is it +that a conscience can't haul a man over the coals once, for an offense, +and then let him alone? Why is it that it wants to keep on pegging at +him, day and night and night and day, week in and week out, forever and +ever, about the same old thing? There is no sense in that, and no reason +in it. I think a conscience that will act like that is meaner than the +very dirt itself." + +"Well, WE like it; that suffices." + +"Do you do it with the honest intent to improve a man?" + +That question produced a sarcastic smile, and this reply: + +"No, sir. Excuse me. We do it simply because it is 'business.' It is +our trade. The purpose of it is to improve the man, but we are merely +disinterested agents. We are appointed by authority, and haven't +anything to say in the matter. We obey orders and leave the consequences +where they belong. But I am willing to admit this much: we do crowd the +orders a trifle when we get a chance, which is most of the time. +We enjoy it. We are instructed to remind a man a few times of an error; +and I don't mind acknowledging that we try to give pretty good measure. +And when we get hold of a man of a peculiarly sensitive nature, oh, but +we do haze him! I have consciences to come all the way from China and +Russia to see a person of that kind put through his paces, on a special +occasion. Why, I knew a man of that sort who had accidentally crippled a +mulatto baby; the news went abroad, and I wish you may never commit +another sin if the consciences didn't flock from all over the earth to +enjoy the fun and help his master exorcise him. That man walked the +floor in torture for forty-eight hours, without eating or sleeping, and +then blew his brains out. The child was perfectly well again in three +weeks." + +"Well, you are a precious crew, not to put it too strong. I think I +begin to see now why you have always been a trifle inconsistent with me. +In your anxiety to get all the juice you can out of a sin, you make a man +repent of it in three or four different ways. For instance, you found +fault with me for lying to that tramp, and I suffered over that. But it +was only yesterday that I told a tramp the square truth, to wit, that, +it being regarded as bad citizenship to encourage vagrancy, I would give +him nothing. What did you do then: Why, you made me say to myself, 'Ah, +it would have been so much kinder and more blameless to ease him off with +a little white lie, and send him away feeling that if he could not have +bread, the gentle treatment was at least something to be grateful for!' +Well, I suffered all day about that. Three days before I had fed a +tramp, and fed him freely, supposing it a virtuous act. Straight off you +said, 'Oh, false citizen, to have fed a tramp!' and I suffered as usual. +I gave a tramp work; you objected to it--after the contract was made, +of course; you never speak up beforehand. Next, I refused a tramp work; +you objected to that. Next, I proposed to kill a tramp; you kept me +awake all night, oozing remorse at every pore. Sure I was going to be +right this time, I sent the next tramp away with my benediction; and I +wish you may live as long as I do, if you didn't make me smart all night +again because I didn't kill him. Is there any way of satisfying that +malignant invention which is called a conscience?" + +"Ha, ha! this is luxury! Go on!" + +"But come, now, answer me that question. Is there any way?" + +"Well, none that I propose to tell you, my son. Ass! I don't care what +act you may turn your hand to, I can straightway whisper a word in your +ear and make you think you have committed a dreadful meanness. It is my +business--and my joy--to make you repent of everything you do. If I have +fooled away any opportunities it was not intentional; I beg to assure you +it was not intentional!" + +"Don't worry; you haven't missed a trick that I know of. I never did a +thing in all my life, virtuous or otherwise, that I didn't repent of in +twenty-four hours. In church last Sunday I listened to a charity sermon. +My first impulse was to give three hundred and fifty dollars; I repented +of that and reduced it a hundred; repented of that and reduced it another +hundred; repented of that and reduced it another hundred; repented of +that and reduced the remaining fifty to twenty-five; repented of that and +came down to fifteen; repented of that and dropped to two dollars and a +half; when the plate came around at last, I repented once more and +contributed ten cents. Well, when I got home, I did wish to goodness I +had that ten cents back again! You never did let me get through a +charity sermon without having something to sweat about." + +"Oh, and I never shall, I never shall. You can always depend on me." + +"I think so. Many and many's the restless night I've wanted to take you +by the neck. If I could only get hold of you now!" + +"Yes, no doubt. But I am not an ass; I am only the saddle of an ass. +But go on, go on. You entertain me more than I like to confess." + +I am glad of that. (You will not mind my lying a little, to keep in +practice.) Look here; not to be too personal, I think you are about the +shabbiest and most contemptible little shriveled-up reptile that can be +imagined. I am grateful enough that you are invisible to other people, +for I should die with shame to be seen with such a mildewed monkey of a +conscience as you are. Now if you were five or six feet high, and--" + +"Oh, come! who is to blame?" + +"I don't know." + +"Why, you are; nobody else." + +"Confound you, I wasn't consulted about your personal appearance." + +"I don't care, you had a good deal to do with it, nevertheless. When you +were eight or nine years old, I was seven feet high, and as pretty as a +picture." + +"I wish you had died young! So you have grown the wrong way, have you?" + +"Some of us grow one way and some the other. You had a large conscience +once; if you've a small conscience now I reckon there are reasons for it. +However, both of us are to blame, you and I. You see, you used to be +conscientious about a great many things; morbidly so, I may say. It was +a great many years ago. You probably do not remember it now. Well, +I took a great interest in my work, and I so enjoyed the anguish which +certain pet sins of yours afflicted you with that I kept pelting at you +until I rather overdid the matter. You began to rebel. Of course I +began to lose ground, then, and shrivel a little--diminish in stature, +get moldy, and grow deformed. The more I weakened, the more stubbornly +you fastened on to those particular sins; till at last the places on my +person that represent those vices became as callous as shark-skin. Take +smoking, for instance. I played that card a little too long, and I lost. +When people plead with you at this late day to quit that vice, that old +callous place seems to enlarge and cover me all over like a shirt of +mail. It exerts a mysterious, smothering effect; and presently I, your +faithful hater, your devoted Conscience, go sound asleep! Sound? It is +no name for it. I couldn't hear it thunder at such a time. You have +some few other vices--perhaps eighty, or maybe ninety--that affect me in +much the same way." + +"This is flattering; you must be asleep a good part of your time." + +"Yes, of late years. I should be asleep all the time but for the help I +get." + +"Who helps you?" + +"Other consciences. Whenever a person whose conscience I am acquainted +with tries to plead with you about the vices you are callous to, I get my +friend to give his client a pang concerning some villainy of his own, +and that shuts off his meddling and starts him off to hunt personal +consolation. My field of usefulness is about trimmed down to tramps, +budding authoresses, and that line of goods now; but don't you worry +--I'll harry you on theirs while they last! Just you put your trust in +me." + +"I think I can. But if you had only been good enough to mention these +facts some thirty years ago, I should have turned my particular attention +to sin, and I think that by this time I should not only have had you +pretty permanently asleep on the entire list of human vices, but reduced +to the size of a homeopathic pill, at that. That is about the style of +conscience I am pining for. If I only had you shrunk you down to a +homeopathic pill, and could get my hands on you, would I put you in a +glass case for a keepsake? No, sir. I would give you to a yellow dog! +That is where you ought to be--you and all your tribe. You are not fit +to be in society, in my opinion. Now another question. Do you know a +good many consciences in this section?" + +"Plenty of them." + +"I would give anything to see some of them! Could you bring them here? +And would they be visible to me?" + +"Certainly not." + +"I suppose I ought to have known that without asking. But no matter, you +can describe them. Tell me about my neighbor Thompson's conscience, +please." + +"Very well. I know him intimately; have known him many years. I knew +him when he was eleven feet high and of a faultless figure. But he is +very pasty and tough and misshapen now, and hardly ever interests himself +about anything. As to his present size--well, he sleeps in a cigar-box." + +"Likely enough. There are few smaller, meaner men in this region than +Hugh Thompson. Do you know Robinson's conscience?" + +"Yes. He is a shade under four and a half feet high; used to be a blond; +is a brunette now, but still shapely and comely." + +"Well, Robinson is a good fellow. Do you know Tom Smith's conscience?" + +"I have known him from childhood. He was thirteen inches high, and +rather sluggish, when he was two years old--as nearly all of us are at +that age. He is thirty-seven feet high now, and the stateliest figure in +America. His legs are still racked with growing-pains, but he has a good +time, nevertheless. Never sleeps. He is the most active and energetic +member of the New England Conscience Club; is president of it. Night and +day you can find him pegging away at Smith, panting with his labor, +sleeves rolled up, countenance all alive with enjoyment. He has got his +victim splendidly dragooned now. He can make poor Smith imagine that the +most innocent little thing he does is an odious sin; and then he sets to +work and almost tortures the soul out of him about it." + +"Smith is the noblest man in all this section, and the purest; and yet is +always breaking his heart because he cannot be good! Only a conscience +could find pleasure in heaping agony upon a spirit like that. Do you +know my aunt Mary's conscience?" + +"I have seen her at a distance, but am not acquainted with her. She +lives in the open air altogether, because no door is large enough to +admit her." + +"I can believe that. Let me see. Do you know the conscience of that +publisher who once stole some sketches of mine for a 'series' of his, and +then left me to pay the law expenses I had to incur in order to choke him +off?" + +"Yes. He has a wide fame. He was exhibited, a month ago, with some +other antiquities, for the benefit of a recent Member of the Cabinet's +conscience that was starving in exile. Tickets and fares were high, but +I traveled for nothing by pretending to be the conscience of an editor, +and got in for half-price by representing myself to be the conscience of +a clergyman. However, the publisher's conscience, which was to have been +the main feature of the entertainment, was a failure--as an exhibition. +He was there, but what of that? The management had provided a microscope +with a magnifying power of only thirty thousand diameters, and so nobody +got to see him, after all. There was great and general dissatisfaction, +of course, but--" + +Just here there was an eager footstep on the stair; I opened the door, +and my aunt Mary burst into the room. It was a joyful meeting and a +cheery bombardment of questions and answers concerning family matters +ensued. By and by my aunt said: + +"But I am going to abuse you a little now. You promised me, the day I +saw you last, that you would look after the needs of the poor family +around the corner as faithfully as I had done it myself. Well, I found +out by accident that you failed of your promise. Was that right?" + +In simple truth, I never had thought of that family a second time! And +now such a splintering pang of guilt shot through me! I glanced up at my +Conscience. Plainly, my heavy heart was affecting him. His body was +drooping forward; he seemed about to fall from the bookcase. My aunt +continued: + +"And think how you have neglected my poor protege at the almshouse, you +dear, hard-hearted promise-breaker!" I blushed scarlet, and my tongue +was tied. As the sense of my guilty negligence waxed sharper and +stronger, my Conscience began to sway heavily back and forth; and when my +aunt, after a little pause, said in a grieved tone, "Since you never once +went to see her, maybe it will not distress you now to know that that +poor child died, months ago, utterly friendless and forsaken!" +My Conscience could no longer bear up under the weight of my sufferings, +but tumbled headlong from his high perch and struck the floor with a +dull, leaden thump. He lay there writhing with pain and quaking with +apprehension, but straining every muscle in frantic efforts to get up. +In a fever of expectancy I sprang to the door, locked it, placed my back +against it, and bent a watchful gaze upon my struggling master. Already +my fingers were itching to begin their murderous work. + +"Oh, what can be the matter!" exclaimed by aunt, shrinking from me, and +following with her frightened eyes the direction of mine. My breath was +coming in short, quick gasps now, and my excitement was almost +uncontrollable. My aunt cried out: + +"Oh, do not look so! You appal me! Oh, what can the matter be? What is +it you see? Why do you stare so? Why do you work your fingers like +that?" + +"Peace, woman!" I said, in a hoarse whisper. "Look elsewhere; pay no +attention to me; it is nothing--nothing. I am often this way. It will +pass in a moment. It comes from smoking too much." + +My injured lord was up, wild-eyed with terror, and trying to hobble +toward the door. I could hardly breathe, I was so wrought up. My aunt +wrung her hands, and said: + +"Oh, I knew how it would be; I knew it would come to this at last! +Oh, I implore you to crush out that fatal habit while it may yet be time! +You must not, you shall not be deaf to my supplications longer!" +My struggling Conscience showed sudden signs of weariness! "Oh, promise +me you will throw off this hateful slavery of tobacco!" My Conscience +began to reel drowsily, and grope with his hands--enchanting spectacle! +"I beg you, I beseech you, I implore you! Your reason is deserting you! +There is madness in your eye! It flames with frenzy! Oh, hear me, hear +me, and be saved! See, I plead with you on my very knees!" As she sank +before me my Conscience reeled again, and then drooped languidly to the +floor, blinking toward me a last supplication for mercy, with heavy eyes. +"Oh, promise, or you are lost! Promise, and be redeemed! Promise! +Promise and live!" With a long-drawn sigh my conquered Conscience closed +his eyes and fell fast asleep! + +With an exultant shout I sprang past my aunt, and in an instant I had my +lifelong foe by the throat. After so many years of waiting and longing, +he was mine at last. I tore him to shreds and fragments. I rent the +fragments to bits. I cast the bleeding rubbish into the fire, and drew +into my nostrils the grateful incense of my burnt-offering. At last, and +forever, my Conscience was dead! + +I was a free man! I turned upon my poor aunt, who was almost petrified +with terror, and shouted: + +"Out of this with your paupers, your charities, your reforms, your +pestilent morals! You behold before you a man whose life-conflict is +done, whose soul is at peace; a man whose heart is dead to sorrow, dead +to suffering, dead to remorse; a man WITHOUT A CONSCIENCE! In my joy I +spare you, though I could throttle you and never feel a pang! Fly!" + +She fled. Since that day my life is all bliss. Bliss, unalloyed bliss. +Nothing in all the world could persuade me to have a conscience again. +I settled all my old outstanding scores, and began the world anew. +I killed thirty-eight persons during the first two weeks--all of them on +account of ancient grudges. I burned a dwelling that interrupted my +view. I swindled a widow and some orphans out of their last cow, which +is a very good one, though not thoroughbred, I believe. I have also +committed scores of crimes, of various kinds, and have enjoyed my work +exceedingly, whereas it would formerly have broken my heart and turned my +hair gray, I have no doubt. + +In conclusion, I wish to state, by way of advertisement, that medical +colleges desiring assorted tramps for scientific purposes, either by the +gross, by cord measurement, or per ton, will do well to examine the lot +in my cellar before purchasing elsewhere, as these were all selected and +prepared by myself, and can be had at a low rate, because I wish to +clear, out my stock and get ready for the spring trade. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Facts Concerning The Recent +Carnival Of Crime In Connecticut, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + + THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER + BY + MARK TWAIN + (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) + + + + + P R E F A C E + +MOST of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or +two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were +schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but +not from an individual--he is a combination of the characteristics of +three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of +architecture. + +The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children +and slaves in the West at the period of this story--that is to say, +thirty or forty years ago. + +Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and +girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, +for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what +they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, +and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in. + + THE AUTHOR. + +HARTFORD, 1876. + + + + T O M S A W Y E R + + + +CHAPTER I + +"TOM!" + +No answer. + +"TOM!" + +No answer. + +"What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!" + +No answer. + +The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the +room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or +never looked THROUGH them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her +state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not +service--she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. +She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but +still loud enough for the furniture to hear: + +"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll--" + +She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching +under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the +punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat. + +"I never did see the beat of that boy!" + +She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the +tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. +So she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and +shouted: + +"Y-o-u-u TOM!" + +There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to +seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight. + +"There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been doing in +there?" + +"Nothing." + +"Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What IS that +truck?" + +"I don't know, aunt." + +"Well, I know. It's jam--that's what it is. Forty times I've said if +you didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch." + +The switch hovered in the air--the peril was desperate-- + +"My! Look behind you, aunt!" + +The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger. The +lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and +disappeared over it. + +His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle +laugh. + +"Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks +enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old +fools is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks, +as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days, +and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how +long he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he +can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down +again and I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, +and that's the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile +the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for +us both, I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my +own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash +him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, +and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks. Well-a-well, man +that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the +Scripture says, and I reckon it's so. He'll play hookey this evening, * +and [* Southwestern for "afternoon"] I'll just be obleeged to make him +work, to-morrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work +Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more +than he hates anything else, and I've GOT to do some of my duty by him, +or I'll be the ruination of the child." + +Tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time. He got back home +barely in season to help Jim, the small colored boy, saw next-day's +wood and split the kindlings before supper--at least he was there in +time to tell his adventures to Jim while Jim did three-fourths of the +work. Tom's younger brother (or rather half-brother) Sid was already +through with his part of the work (picking up chips), for he was a +quiet boy, and had no adventurous, troublesome ways. + +While Tom was eating his supper, and stealing sugar as opportunity +offered, Aunt Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and +very deep--for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like +many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she +was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she +loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low +cunning. Said she: + +"Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn't it?" + +"Yes'm." + +"Powerful warm, warn't it?" + +"Yes'm." + +"Didn't you want to go in a-swimming, Tom?" + +A bit of a scare shot through Tom--a touch of uncomfortable suspicion. +He searched Aunt Polly's face, but it told him nothing. So he said: + +"No'm--well, not very much." + +The old lady reached out her hand and felt Tom's shirt, and said: + +"But you ain't too warm now, though." And it flattered her to reflect +that she had discovered that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing +that that was what she had in her mind. But in spite of her, Tom knew +where the wind lay, now. So he forestalled what might be the next move: + +"Some of us pumped on our heads--mine's damp yet. See?" + +Aunt Polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of +circumstantial evidence, and missed a trick. Then she had a new +inspiration: + +"Tom, you didn't have to undo your shirt collar where I sewed it, to +pump on your head, did you? Unbutton your jacket!" + +The trouble vanished out of Tom's face. He opened his jacket. His +shirt collar was securely sewed. + +"Bother! Well, go 'long with you. I'd made sure you'd played hookey +and been a-swimming. But I forgive ye, Tom. I reckon you're a kind of a +singed cat, as the saying is--better'n you look. THIS time." + +She was half sorry her sagacity had miscarried, and half glad that Tom +had stumbled into obedient conduct for once. + +But Sidney said: + +"Well, now, if I didn't think you sewed his collar with white thread, +but it's black." + +"Why, I did sew it with white! Tom!" + +But Tom did not wait for the rest. As he went out at the door he said: + +"Siddy, I'll lick you for that." + +In a safe place Tom examined two large needles which were thrust into +the lapels of his jacket, and had thread bound about them--one needle +carried white thread and the other black. He said: + +"She'd never noticed if it hadn't been for Sid. Confound it! sometimes +she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. I wish to +geeminy she'd stick to one or t'other--I can't keep the run of 'em. But +I bet you I'll lam Sid for that. I'll learn him!" + +He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very +well though--and loathed him. + +Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. +Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him +than a man's are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore +them down and drove them out of his mind for the time--just as men's +misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This +new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just +acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it undisturbed. +It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, +produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short +intervals in the midst of the music--the reader probably remembers how +to do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave +him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full +of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an +astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet--no doubt, as far as +strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with +the boy, not the astronomer. + +The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet. Presently Tom +checked his whistle. A stranger was before him--a boy a shade larger +than himself. A new-comer of any age or either sex was an impressive +curiosity in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg. This boy +was well dressed, too--well dressed on a week-day. This was simply +astounding. His cap was a dainty thing, his close-buttoned blue cloth +roundabout was new and natty, and so were his pantaloons. He had shoes +on--and it was only Friday. He even wore a necktie, a bright bit of +ribbon. He had a citified air about him that ate into Tom's vitals. The +more Tom stared at the splendid marvel, the higher he turned up his +nose at his finery and the shabbier and shabbier his own outfit seemed +to him to grow. Neither boy spoke. If one moved, the other moved--but +only sidewise, in a circle; they kept face to face and eye to eye all +the time. Finally Tom said: + +"I can lick you!" + +"I'd like to see you try it." + +"Well, I can do it." + +"No you can't, either." + +"Yes I can." + +"No you can't." + +"I can." + +"You can't." + +"Can!" + +"Can't!" + +An uncomfortable pause. Then Tom said: + +"What's your name?" + +"'Tisn't any of your business, maybe." + +"Well I 'low I'll MAKE it my business." + +"Well why don't you?" + +"If you say much, I will." + +"Much--much--MUCH. There now." + +"Oh, you think you're mighty smart, DON'T you? I could lick you with +one hand tied behind me, if I wanted to." + +"Well why don't you DO it? You SAY you can do it." + +"Well I WILL, if you fool with me." + +"Oh yes--I've seen whole families in the same fix." + +"Smarty! You think you're SOME, now, DON'T you? Oh, what a hat!" + +"You can lump that hat if you don't like it. I dare you to knock it +off--and anybody that'll take a dare will suck eggs." + +"You're a liar!" + +"You're another." + +"You're a fighting liar and dasn't take it up." + +"Aw--take a walk!" + +"Say--if you give me much more of your sass I'll take and bounce a +rock off'n your head." + +"Oh, of COURSE you will." + +"Well I WILL." + +"Well why don't you DO it then? What do you keep SAYING you will for? +Why don't you DO it? It's because you're afraid." + +"I AIN'T afraid." + +"You are." + +"I ain't." + +"You are." + +Another pause, and more eying and sidling around each other. Presently +they were shoulder to shoulder. Tom said: + +"Get away from here!" + +"Go away yourself!" + +"I won't." + +"I won't either." + +So they stood, each with a foot placed at an angle as a brace, and +both shoving with might and main, and glowering at each other with +hate. But neither could get an advantage. After struggling till both +were hot and flushed, each relaxed his strain with watchful caution, +and Tom said: + +"You're a coward and a pup. I'll tell my big brother on you, and he +can thrash you with his little finger, and I'll make him do it, too." + +"What do I care for your big brother? I've got a brother that's bigger +than he is--and what's more, he can throw him over that fence, too." +[Both brothers were imaginary.] + +"That's a lie." + +"YOUR saying so don't make it so." + +Tom drew a line in the dust with his big toe, and said: + +"I dare you to step over that, and I'll lick you till you can't stand +up. Anybody that'll take a dare will steal sheep." + +The new boy stepped over promptly, and said: + +"Now you said you'd do it, now let's see you do it." + +"Don't you crowd me now; you better look out." + +"Well, you SAID you'd do it--why don't you do it?" + +"By jingo! for two cents I WILL do it." + +The new boy took two broad coppers out of his pocket and held them out +with derision. Tom struck them to the ground. In an instant both boys +were rolling and tumbling in the dirt, gripped together like cats; and +for the space of a minute they tugged and tore at each other's hair and +clothes, punched and scratched each other's nose, and covered +themselves with dust and glory. Presently the confusion took form, and +through the fog of battle Tom appeared, seated astride the new boy, and +pounding him with his fists. "Holler 'nuff!" said he. + +The boy only struggled to free himself. He was crying--mainly from rage. + +"Holler 'nuff!"--and the pounding went on. + +At last the stranger got out a smothered "'Nuff!" and Tom let him up +and said: + +"Now that'll learn you. Better look out who you're fooling with next +time." + +The new boy went off brushing the dust from his clothes, sobbing, +snuffling, and occasionally looking back and shaking his head and +threatening what he would do to Tom the "next time he caught him out." +To which Tom responded with jeers, and started off in high feather, and +as soon as his back was turned the new boy snatched up a stone, threw +it and hit him between the shoulders and then turned tail and ran like +an antelope. Tom chased the traitor home, and thus found out where he +lived. He then held a position at the gate for some time, daring the +enemy to come outside, but the enemy only made faces at him through the +window and declined. At last the enemy's mother appeared, and called +Tom a bad, vicious, vulgar child, and ordered him away. So he went +away; but he said he "'lowed" to "lay" for that boy. + +He got home pretty late that night, and when he climbed cautiously in +at the window, he uncovered an ambuscade, in the person of his aunt; +and when she saw the state his clothes were in her resolution to turn +his Saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor became adamantine in +its firmness. + + + +CHAPTER II + +SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and +fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if +the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in +every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom +and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond +the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far +enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting. + +Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a +long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and +a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board +fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a +burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost +plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant +whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed +fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at +the gate with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from +the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom's eyes, before, but +now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at +the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there +waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling, +fighting, skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump was only +a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of +water under an hour--and even then somebody generally had to go after +him. Tom said: + +"Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some." + +Jim shook his head and said: + +"Can't, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an' git dis +water an' not stop foolin' roun' wid anybody. She say she spec' Mars +Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an' so she tole me go 'long an' 'tend +to my own business--she 'lowed SHE'D 'tend to de whitewashin'." + +"Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That's the way she always +talks. Gimme the bucket--I won't be gone only a a minute. SHE won't +ever know." + +"Oh, I dasn't, Mars Tom. Ole missis she'd take an' tar de head off'n +me. 'Deed she would." + +"SHE! She never licks anybody--whacks 'em over the head with her +thimble--and who cares for that, I'd like to know. She talks awful, but +talk don't hurt--anyways it don't if she don't cry. Jim, I'll give you +a marvel. I'll give you a white alley!" + +Jim began to waver. + +"White alley, Jim! And it's a bully taw." + +"My! Dat's a mighty gay marvel, I tell you! But Mars Tom I's powerful +'fraid ole missis--" + +"And besides, if you will I'll show you my sore toe." + +Jim was only human--this attraction was too much for him. He put down +his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing +interest while the bandage was being unwound. In another moment he was +flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was +whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field +with a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye. + +But Tom's energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had +planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys +would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and +they would make a world of fun of him for having to work--the very +thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth and +examined it--bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an +exchange of WORK, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an +hour of pure freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his +pocket, and gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark +and hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a +great, magnificent inspiration. + +He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in +sight presently--the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been +dreading. Ben's gait was the hop-skip-and-jump--proof enough that his +heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and +giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned +ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As +he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned +far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious +pomp and circumstance--for he was personating the Big Missouri, and +considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and +captain and engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself +standing on his own hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them: + +"Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!" The headway ran almost out, and he +drew up slowly toward the sidewalk. + +"Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!" His arms straightened and +stiffened down his sides. + +"Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow! +Chow!" His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles--for it was +representing a forty-foot wheel. + +"Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-lingling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!" +The left hand began to describe circles. + +"Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead +on the stabboard! Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow! +Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ow-ow! Get out that head-line! LIVELY now! +Come--out with your spring-line--what're you about there! Take a turn +round that stump with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now--let her +go! Done with the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! SH'T! S'H'T! SH'T!" +(trying the gauge-cocks). + +Tom went on whitewashing--paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben +stared a moment and then said: "Hi-YI! YOU'RE up a stump, ain't you!" + +No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then +he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as +before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom's mouth watered for the +apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said: + +"Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?" + +Tom wheeled suddenly and said: + +"Why, it's you, Ben! I warn't noticing." + +"Say--I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of +course you'd druther WORK--wouldn't you? Course you would!" + +Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said: + +"What do you call work?" + +"Why, ain't THAT work?" + +Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly: + +"Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom +Sawyer." + +"Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you LIKE it?" + +The brush continued to move. + +"Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get +a chance to whitewash a fence every day?" + +That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom +swept his brush daintily back and forth--stepped back to note the +effect--added a touch here and there--criticised the effect again--Ben +watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more +absorbed. Presently he said: + +"Say, Tom, let ME whitewash a little." + +Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind: + +"No--no--I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's +awful particular about this fence--right here on the street, you know +--but if it was the back fence I wouldn't mind and SHE wouldn't. Yes, +she's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very +careful; I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two +thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done." + +"No--is that so? Oh come, now--lemme just try. Only just a little--I'd +let YOU, if you was me, Tom." + +"Ben, I'd like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly--well, Jim wanted to +do it, but she wouldn't let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't +let Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was to tackle this +fence and anything was to happen to it--" + +"Oh, shucks, I'll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say--I'll give +you the core of my apple." + +"Well, here--No, Ben, now don't. I'm afeard--" + +"I'll give you ALL of it!" + +Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his +heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in +the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, +dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more +innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every +little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time +Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for +a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in +for a dead rat and a string to swing it with--and so on, and so on, +hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being +a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling +in wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, +part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a +spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, +a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six +fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a +dog-collar--but no dog--the handle of a knife, four pieces of +orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash. + +He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while--plenty of company +--and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out +of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village. + +Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He +had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it--namely, +that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only +necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great +and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have +comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, +and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And +this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers +or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or +climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in +England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles +on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them +considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, +that would turn it into work and then they would resign. + +The boy mused awhile over the substantial change which had taken place +in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to +report. + + + +CHAPTER III + +TOM presented himself before Aunt Polly, who was sitting by an open +window in a pleasant rearward apartment, which was bedroom, +breakfast-room, dining-room, and library, combined. The balmy summer +air, the restful quiet, the odor of the flowers, and the drowsing murmur +of the bees had had their effect, and she was nodding over her knitting +--for she had no company but the cat, and it was asleep in her lap. Her +spectacles were propped up on her gray head for safety. She had thought +that of course Tom had deserted long ago, and she wondered at seeing him +place himself in her power again in this intrepid way. He said: "Mayn't +I go and play now, aunt?" + +"What, a'ready? How much have you done?" + +"It's all done, aunt." + +"Tom, don't lie to me--I can't bear it." + +"I ain't, aunt; it IS all done." + +Aunt Polly placed small trust in such evidence. She went out to see +for herself; and she would have been content to find twenty per cent. +of Tom's statement true. When she found the entire fence whitewashed, +and not only whitewashed but elaborately coated and recoated, and even +a streak added to the ground, her astonishment was almost unspeakable. +She said: + +"Well, I never! There's no getting round it, you can work when you're +a mind to, Tom." And then she diluted the compliment by adding, "But +it's powerful seldom you're a mind to, I'm bound to say. Well, go 'long +and play; but mind you get back some time in a week, or I'll tan you." + +She was so overcome by the splendor of his achievement that she took +him into the closet and selected a choice apple and delivered it to +him, along with an improving lecture upon the added value and flavor a +treat took to itself when it came without sin through virtuous effort. +And while she closed with a happy Scriptural flourish, he "hooked" a +doughnut. + +Then he skipped out, and saw Sid just starting up the outside stairway +that led to the back rooms on the second floor. Clods were handy and +the air was full of them in a twinkling. They raged around Sid like a +hail-storm; and before Aunt Polly could collect her surprised faculties +and sally to the rescue, six or seven clods had taken personal effect, +and Tom was over the fence and gone. There was a gate, but as a general +thing he was too crowded for time to make use of it. His soul was at +peace, now that he had settled with Sid for calling attention to his +black thread and getting him into trouble. + +Tom skirted the block, and came round into a muddy alley that led by +the back of his aunt's cow-stable. He presently got safely beyond the +reach of capture and punishment, and hastened toward the public square +of the village, where two "military" companies of boys had met for +conflict, according to previous appointment. Tom was General of one of +these armies, Joe Harper (a bosom friend) General of the other. These +two great commanders did not condescend to fight in person--that being +better suited to the still smaller fry--but sat together on an eminence +and conducted the field operations by orders delivered through +aides-de-camp. Tom's army won a great victory, after a long and +hard-fought battle. Then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged, +the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the +necessary battle appointed; after which the armies fell into line and +marched away, and Tom turned homeward alone. + +As he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new +girl in the garden--a lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow hair +plaited into two long-tails, white summer frock and embroidered +pantalettes. The fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot. A +certain Amy Lawrence vanished out of his heart and left not even a +memory of herself behind. He had thought he loved her to distraction; +he had regarded his passion as adoration; and behold it was only a poor +little evanescent partiality. He had been months winning her; she had +confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the happiest and the proudest +boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time +she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is +done. + +He worshipped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she +had discovered him; then he pretended he did not know she was present, +and began to "show off" in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to +win her admiration. He kept up this grotesque foolishness for some +time; but by-and-by, while he was in the midst of some dangerous +gymnastic performances, he glanced aside and saw that the little girl +was wending her way toward the house. Tom came up to the fence and +leaned on it, grieving, and hoping she would tarry yet awhile longer. +She halted a moment on the steps and then moved toward the door. Tom +heaved a great sigh as she put her foot on the threshold. But his face +lit up, right away, for she tossed a pansy over the fence a moment +before she disappeared. + +The boy ran around and stopped within a foot or two of the flower, and +then shaded his eyes with his hand and began to look down street as if +he had discovered something of interest going on in that direction. +Presently he picked up a straw and began trying to balance it on his +nose, with his head tilted far back; and as he moved from side to side, +in his efforts, he edged nearer and nearer toward the pansy; finally +his bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he +hopped away with the treasure and disappeared round the corner. But +only for a minute--only while he could button the flower inside his +jacket, next his heart--or next his stomach, possibly, for he was not +much posted in anatomy, and not hypercritical, anyway. + +He returned, now, and hung about the fence till nightfall, "showing +off," as before; but the girl never exhibited herself again, though Tom +comforted himself a little with the hope that she had been near some +window, meantime, and been aware of his attentions. Finally he strode +home reluctantly, with his poor head full of visions. + +All through supper his spirits were so high that his aunt wondered +"what had got into the child." He took a good scolding about clodding +Sid, and did not seem to mind it in the least. He tried to steal sugar +under his aunt's very nose, and got his knuckles rapped for it. He said: + +"Aunt, you don't whack Sid when he takes it." + +"Well, Sid don't torment a body the way you do. You'd be always into +that sugar if I warn't watching you." + +Presently she stepped into the kitchen, and Sid, happy in his +immunity, reached for the sugar-bowl--a sort of glorying over Tom which +was wellnigh unbearable. But Sid's fingers slipped and the bowl dropped +and broke. Tom was in ecstasies. In such ecstasies that he even +controlled his tongue and was silent. He said to himself that he would +not speak a word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly +still till she asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and +there would be nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model +"catch it." He was so brimful of exultation that he could hardly hold +himself when the old lady came back and stood above the wreck +discharging lightnings of wrath from over her spectacles. He said to +himself, "Now it's coming!" And the next instant he was sprawling on +the floor! The potent palm was uplifted to strike again when Tom cried +out: + +"Hold on, now, what 'er you belting ME for?--Sid broke it!" + +Aunt Polly paused, perplexed, and Tom looked for healing pity. But +when she got her tongue again, she only said: + +"Umf! Well, you didn't get a lick amiss, I reckon. You been into some +other audacious mischief when I wasn't around, like enough." + +Then her conscience reproached her, and she yearned to say something +kind and loving; but she judged that this would be construed into a +confession that she had been in the wrong, and discipline forbade that. +So she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart. +Tom sulked in a corner and exalted his woes. He knew that in her heart +his aunt was on her knees to him, and he was morosely gratified by the +consciousness of it. He would hang out no signals, he would take notice +of none. He knew that a yearning glance fell upon him, now and then, +through a film of tears, but he refused recognition of it. He pictured +himself lying sick unto death and his aunt bending over him beseeching +one little forgiving word, but he would turn his face to the wall, and +die with that word unsaid. Ah, how would she feel then? And he pictured +himself brought home from the river, dead, with his curls all wet, and +his sore heart at rest. How she would throw herself upon him, and how +her tears would fall like rain, and her lips pray God to give her back +her boy and she would never, never abuse him any more! But he would lie +there cold and white and make no sign--a poor little sufferer, whose +griefs were at an end. He so worked upon his feelings with the pathos +of these dreams, that he had to keep swallowing, he was so like to +choke; and his eyes swam in a blur of water, which overflowed when he +winked, and ran down and trickled from the end of his nose. And such a +luxury to him was this petting of his sorrows, that he could not bear +to have any worldly cheeriness or any grating delight intrude upon it; +it was too sacred for such contact; and so, presently, when his cousin +Mary danced in, all alive with the joy of seeing home again after an +age-long visit of one week to the country, he got up and moved in +clouds and darkness out at one door as she brought song and sunshine in +at the other. + +He wandered far from the accustomed haunts of boys, and sought +desolate places that were in harmony with his spirit. A log raft in the +river invited him, and he seated himself on its outer edge and +contemplated the dreary vastness of the stream, wishing, the while, +that he could only be drowned, all at once and unconsciously, without +undergoing the uncomfortable routine devised by nature. Then he thought +of his flower. He got it out, rumpled and wilted, and it mightily +increased his dismal felicity. He wondered if she would pity him if she +knew? Would she cry, and wish that she had a right to put her arms +around his neck and comfort him? Or would she turn coldly away like all +the hollow world? This picture brought such an agony of pleasurable +suffering that he worked it over and over again in his mind and set it +up in new and varied lights, till he wore it threadbare. At last he +rose up sighing and departed in the darkness. + +About half-past nine or ten o'clock he came along the deserted street +to where the Adored Unknown lived; he paused a moment; no sound fell +upon his listening ear; a candle was casting a dull glow upon the +curtain of a second-story window. Was the sacred presence there? He +climbed the fence, threaded his stealthy way through the plants, till +he stood under that window; he looked up at it long, and with emotion; +then he laid him down on the ground under it, disposing himself upon +his back, with his hands clasped upon his breast and holding his poor +wilted flower. And thus he would die--out in the cold world, with no +shelter over his homeless head, no friendly hand to wipe the +death-damps from his brow, no loving face to bend pityingly over him +when the great agony came. And thus SHE would see him when she looked +out upon the glad morning, and oh! would she drop one little tear upon +his poor, lifeless form, would she heave one little sigh to see a bright +young life so rudely blighted, so untimely cut down? + +The window went up, a maid-servant's discordant voice profaned the +holy calm, and a deluge of water drenched the prone martyr's remains! + +The strangling hero sprang up with a relieving snort. There was a whiz +as of a missile in the air, mingled with the murmur of a curse, a sound +as of shivering glass followed, and a small, vague form went over the +fence and shot away in the gloom. + +Not long after, as Tom, all undressed for bed, was surveying his +drenched garments by the light of a tallow dip, Sid woke up; but if he +had any dim idea of making any "references to allusions," he thought +better of it and held his peace, for there was danger in Tom's eye. + +Tom turned in without the added vexation of prayers, and Sid made +mental note of the omission. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE sun rose upon a tranquil world, and beamed down upon the peaceful +village like a benediction. Breakfast over, Aunt Polly had family +worship: it began with a prayer built from the ground up of solid +courses of Scriptural quotations, welded together with a thin mortar of +originality; and from the summit of this she delivered a grim chapter +of the Mosaic Law, as from Sinai. + +Then Tom girded up his loins, so to speak, and went to work to "get +his verses." Sid had learned his lesson days before. Tom bent all his +energies to the memorizing of five verses, and he chose part of the +Sermon on the Mount, because he could find no verses that were shorter. +At the end of half an hour Tom had a vague general idea of his lesson, +but no more, for his mind was traversing the whole field of human +thought, and his hands were busy with distracting recreations. Mary +took his book to hear him recite, and he tried to find his way through +the fog: + +"Blessed are the--a--a--" + +"Poor"-- + +"Yes--poor; blessed are the poor--a--a--" + +"In spirit--" + +"In spirit; blessed are the poor in spirit, for they--they--" + +"THEIRS--" + +"For THEIRS. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom +of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they--they--" + +"Sh--" + +"For they--a--" + +"S, H, A--" + +"For they S, H--Oh, I don't know what it is!" + +"SHALL!" + +"Oh, SHALL! for they shall--for they shall--a--a--shall mourn--a--a-- +blessed are they that shall--they that--a--they that shall mourn, for +they shall--a--shall WHAT? Why don't you tell me, Mary?--what do you +want to be so mean for?" + +"Oh, Tom, you poor thick-headed thing, I'm not teasing you. I wouldn't +do that. You must go and learn it again. Don't you be discouraged, Tom, +you'll manage it--and if you do, I'll give you something ever so nice. +There, now, that's a good boy." + +"All right! What is it, Mary, tell me what it is." + +"Never you mind, Tom. You know if I say it's nice, it is nice." + +"You bet you that's so, Mary. All right, I'll tackle it again." + +And he did "tackle it again"--and under the double pressure of +curiosity and prospective gain he did it with such spirit that he +accomplished a shining success. Mary gave him a brand-new "Barlow" +knife worth twelve and a half cents; and the convulsion of delight that +swept his system shook him to his foundations. True, the knife would +not cut anything, but it was a "sure-enough" Barlow, and there was +inconceivable grandeur in that--though where the Western boys ever got +the idea that such a weapon could possibly be counterfeited to its +injury is an imposing mystery and will always remain so, perhaps. Tom +contrived to scarify the cupboard with it, and was arranging to begin +on the bureau, when he was called off to dress for Sunday-school. + +Mary gave him a tin basin of water and a piece of soap, and he went +outside the door and set the basin on a little bench there; then he +dipped the soap in the water and laid it down; turned up his sleeves; +poured out the water on the ground, gently, and then entered the +kitchen and began to wipe his face diligently on the towel behind the +door. But Mary removed the towel and said: + +"Now ain't you ashamed, Tom. You mustn't be so bad. Water won't hurt +you." + +Tom was a trifle disconcerted. The basin was refilled, and this time +he stood over it a little while, gathering resolution; took in a big +breath and began. When he entered the kitchen presently, with both eyes +shut and groping for the towel with his hands, an honorable testimony +of suds and water was dripping from his face. But when he emerged from +the towel, he was not yet satisfactory, for the clean territory stopped +short at his chin and his jaws, like a mask; below and beyond this line +there was a dark expanse of unirrigated soil that spread downward in +front and backward around his neck. Mary took him in hand, and when she +was done with him he was a man and a brother, without distinction of +color, and his saturated hair was neatly brushed, and its short curls +wrought into a dainty and symmetrical general effect. [He privately +smoothed out the curls, with labor and difficulty, and plastered his +hair close down to his head; for he held curls to be effeminate, and +his own filled his life with bitterness.] Then Mary got out a suit of +his clothing that had been used only on Sundays during two years--they +were simply called his "other clothes"--and so by that we know the +size of his wardrobe. The girl "put him to rights" after he had dressed +himself; she buttoned his neat roundabout up to his chin, turned his +vast shirt collar down over his shoulders, brushed him off and crowned +him with his speckled straw hat. He now looked exceedingly improved and +uncomfortable. He was fully as uncomfortable as he looked; for there +was a restraint about whole clothes and cleanliness that galled him. He +hoped that Mary would forget his shoes, but the hope was blighted; she +coated them thoroughly with tallow, as was the custom, and brought them +out. He lost his temper and said he was always being made to do +everything he didn't want to do. But Mary said, persuasively: + +"Please, Tom--that's a good boy." + +So he got into the shoes snarling. Mary was soon ready, and the three +children set out for Sunday-school--a place that Tom hated with his +whole heart; but Sid and Mary were fond of it. + +Sabbath-school hours were from nine to half-past ten; and then church +service. Two of the children always remained for the sermon +voluntarily, and the other always remained too--for stronger reasons. +The church's high-backed, uncushioned pews would seat about three +hundred persons; the edifice was but a small, plain affair, with a sort +of pine board tree-box on top of it for a steeple. At the door Tom +dropped back a step and accosted a Sunday-dressed comrade: + +"Say, Billy, got a yaller ticket?" + +"Yes." + +"What'll you take for her?" + +"What'll you give?" + +"Piece of lickrish and a fish-hook." + +"Less see 'em." + +Tom exhibited. They were satisfactory, and the property changed hands. +Then Tom traded a couple of white alleys for three red tickets, and +some small trifle or other for a couple of blue ones. He waylaid other +boys as they came, and went on buying tickets of various colors ten or +fifteen minutes longer. He entered the church, now, with a swarm of +clean and noisy boys and girls, proceeded to his seat and started a +quarrel with the first boy that came handy. The teacher, a grave, +elderly man, interfered; then turned his back a moment and Tom pulled a +boy's hair in the next bench, and was absorbed in his book when the boy +turned around; stuck a pin in another boy, presently, in order to hear +him say "Ouch!" and got a new reprimand from his teacher. Tom's whole +class were of a pattern--restless, noisy, and troublesome. When they +came to recite their lessons, not one of them knew his verses +perfectly, but had to be prompted all along. However, they worried +through, and each got his reward--in small blue tickets, each with a +passage of Scripture on it; each blue ticket was pay for two verses of +the recitation. Ten blue tickets equalled a red one, and could be +exchanged for it; ten red tickets equalled a yellow one; for ten yellow +tickets the superintendent gave a very plainly bound Bible (worth forty +cents in those easy times) to the pupil. How many of my readers would +have the industry and application to memorize two thousand verses, even +for a Dore Bible? And yet Mary had acquired two Bibles in this way--it +was the patient work of two years--and a boy of German parentage had +won four or five. He once recited three thousand verses without +stopping; but the strain upon his mental faculties was too great, and +he was little better than an idiot from that day forth--a grievous +misfortune for the school, for on great occasions, before company, the +superintendent (as Tom expressed it) had always made this boy come out +and "spread himself." Only the older pupils managed to keep their +tickets and stick to their tedious work long enough to get a Bible, and +so the delivery of one of these prizes was a rare and noteworthy +circumstance; the successful pupil was so great and conspicuous for +that day that on the spot every scholar's heart was fired with a fresh +ambition that often lasted a couple of weeks. It is possible that Tom's +mental stomach had never really hungered for one of those prizes, but +unquestionably his entire being had for many a day longed for the glory +and the eclat that came with it. + +In due course the superintendent stood up in front of the pulpit, with +a closed hymn-book in his hand and his forefinger inserted between its +leaves, and commanded attention. When a Sunday-school superintendent +makes his customary little speech, a hymn-book in the hand is as +necessary as is the inevitable sheet of music in the hand of a singer +who stands forward on the platform and sings a solo at a concert +--though why, is a mystery: for neither the hymn-book nor the sheet of +music is ever referred to by the sufferer. This superintendent was a +slim creature of thirty-five, with a sandy goatee and short sandy hair; +he wore a stiff standing-collar whose upper edge almost reached his +ears and whose sharp points curved forward abreast the corners of his +mouth--a fence that compelled a straight lookout ahead, and a turning +of the whole body when a side view was required; his chin was propped +on a spreading cravat which was as broad and as long as a bank-note, +and had fringed ends; his boot toes were turned sharply up, in the +fashion of the day, like sleigh-runners--an effect patiently and +laboriously produced by the young men by sitting with their toes +pressed against a wall for hours together. Mr. Walters was very earnest +of mien, and very sincere and honest at heart; and he held sacred +things and places in such reverence, and so separated them from worldly +matters, that unconsciously to himself his Sunday-school voice had +acquired a peculiar intonation which was wholly absent on week-days. He +began after this fashion: + +"Now, children, I want you all to sit up just as straight and pretty +as you can and give me all your attention for a minute or two. There +--that is it. That is the way good little boys and girls should do. I see +one little girl who is looking out of the window--I am afraid she +thinks I am out there somewhere--perhaps up in one of the trees making +a speech to the little birds. [Applausive titter.] I want to tell you +how good it makes me feel to see so many bright, clean little faces +assembled in a place like this, learning to do right and be good." And +so forth and so on. It is not necessary to set down the rest of the +oration. It was of a pattern which does not vary, and so it is familiar +to us all. + +The latter third of the speech was marred by the resumption of fights +and other recreations among certain of the bad boys, and by fidgetings +and whisperings that extended far and wide, washing even to the bases +of isolated and incorruptible rocks like Sid and Mary. But now every +sound ceased suddenly, with the subsidence of Mr. Walters' voice, and +the conclusion of the speech was received with a burst of silent +gratitude. + +A good part of the whispering had been occasioned by an event which +was more or less rare--the entrance of visitors: lawyer Thatcher, +accompanied by a very feeble and aged man; a fine, portly, middle-aged +gentleman with iron-gray hair; and a dignified lady who was doubtless +the latter's wife. The lady was leading a child. Tom had been restless +and full of chafings and repinings; conscience-smitten, too--he could +not meet Amy Lawrence's eye, he could not brook her loving gaze. But +when he saw this small new-comer his soul was all ablaze with bliss in +a moment. The next moment he was "showing off" with all his might +--cuffing boys, pulling hair, making faces--in a word, using every art +that seemed likely to fascinate a girl and win her applause. His +exaltation had but one alloy--the memory of his humiliation in this +angel's garden--and that record in sand was fast washing out, under +the waves of happiness that were sweeping over it now. + +The visitors were given the highest seat of honor, and as soon as Mr. +Walters' speech was finished, he introduced them to the school. The +middle-aged man turned out to be a prodigious personage--no less a one +than the county judge--altogether the most august creation these +children had ever looked upon--and they wondered what kind of material +he was made of--and they half wanted to hear him roar, and were half +afraid he might, too. He was from Constantinople, twelve miles away--so +he had travelled, and seen the world--these very eyes had looked upon +the county court-house--which was said to have a tin roof. The awe +which these reflections inspired was attested by the impressive silence +and the ranks of staring eyes. This was the great Judge Thatcher, +brother of their own lawyer. Jeff Thatcher immediately went forward, to +be familiar with the great man and be envied by the school. It would +have been music to his soul to hear the whisperings: + +"Look at him, Jim! He's a going up there. Say--look! he's a going to +shake hands with him--he IS shaking hands with him! By jings, don't you +wish you was Jeff?" + +Mr. Walters fell to "showing off," with all sorts of official +bustlings and activities, giving orders, delivering judgments, +discharging directions here, there, everywhere that he could find a +target. The librarian "showed off"--running hither and thither with his +arms full of books and making a deal of the splutter and fuss that +insect authority delights in. The young lady teachers "showed off" +--bending sweetly over pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting +pretty warning fingers at bad little boys and patting good ones +lovingly. The young gentlemen teachers "showed off" with small +scoldings and other little displays of authority and fine attention to +discipline--and most of the teachers, of both sexes, found business up +at the library, by the pulpit; and it was business that frequently had +to be done over again two or three times (with much seeming vexation). +The little girls "showed off" in various ways, and the little boys +"showed off" with such diligence that the air was thick with paper wads +and the murmur of scufflings. And above it all the great man sat and +beamed a majestic judicial smile upon all the house, and warmed himself +in the sun of his own grandeur--for he was "showing off," too. + +There was only one thing wanting to make Mr. Walters' ecstasy +complete, and that was a chance to deliver a Bible-prize and exhibit a +prodigy. Several pupils had a few yellow tickets, but none had enough +--he had been around among the star pupils inquiring. He would have given +worlds, now, to have that German lad back again with a sound mind. + +And now at this moment, when hope was dead, Tom Sawyer came forward +with nine yellow tickets, nine red tickets, and ten blue ones, and +demanded a Bible. This was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. Walters +was not expecting an application from this source for the next ten +years. But there was no getting around it--here were the certified +checks, and they were good for their face. Tom was therefore elevated +to a place with the Judge and the other elect, and the great news was +announced from headquarters. It was the most stunning surprise of the +decade, and so profound was the sensation that it lifted the new hero +up to the judicial one's altitude, and the school had two marvels to +gaze upon in place of one. The boys were all eaten up with envy--but +those that suffered the bitterest pangs were those who perceived too +late that they themselves had contributed to this hated splendor by +trading tickets to Tom for the wealth he had amassed in selling +whitewashing privileges. These despised themselves, as being the dupes +of a wily fraud, a guileful snake in the grass. + +The prize was delivered to Tom with as much effusion as the +superintendent could pump up under the circumstances; but it lacked +somewhat of the true gush, for the poor fellow's instinct taught him +that there was a mystery here that could not well bear the light, +perhaps; it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two +thousand sheaves of Scriptural wisdom on his premises--a dozen would +strain his capacity, without a doubt. + +Amy Lawrence was proud and glad, and she tried to make Tom see it in +her face--but he wouldn't look. She wondered; then she was just a grain +troubled; next a dim suspicion came and went--came again; she watched; +a furtive glance told her worlds--and then her heart broke, and she was +jealous, and angry, and the tears came and she hated everybody. Tom +most of all (she thought). + +Tom was introduced to the Judge; but his tongue was tied, his breath +would hardly come, his heart quaked--partly because of the awful +greatness of the man, but mainly because he was her parent. He would +have liked to fall down and worship him, if it were in the dark. The +Judge put his hand on Tom's head and called him a fine little man, and +asked him what his name was. The boy stammered, gasped, and got it out: + +"Tom." + +"Oh, no, not Tom--it is--" + +"Thomas." + +"Ah, that's it. I thought there was more to it, maybe. That's very +well. But you've another one I daresay, and you'll tell it to me, won't +you?" + +"Tell the gentleman your other name, Thomas," said Walters, "and say +sir. You mustn't forget your manners." + +"Thomas Sawyer--sir." + +"That's it! That's a good boy. Fine boy. Fine, manly little fellow. +Two thousand verses is a great many--very, very great many. And you +never can be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them; for +knowledge is worth more than anything there is in the world; it's what +makes great men and good men; you'll be a great man and a good man +yourself, some day, Thomas, and then you'll look back and say, It's all +owing to the precious Sunday-school privileges of my boyhood--it's all +owing to my dear teachers that taught me to learn--it's all owing to +the good superintendent, who encouraged me, and watched over me, and +gave me a beautiful Bible--a splendid elegant Bible--to keep and have +it all for my own, always--it's all owing to right bringing up! That is +what you will say, Thomas--and you wouldn't take any money for those +two thousand verses--no indeed you wouldn't. And now you wouldn't mind +telling me and this lady some of the things you've learned--no, I know +you wouldn't--for we are proud of little boys that learn. Now, no +doubt you know the names of all the twelve disciples. Won't you tell us +the names of the first two that were appointed?" + +Tom was tugging at a button-hole and looking sheepish. He blushed, +now, and his eyes fell. Mr. Walters' heart sank within him. He said to +himself, it is not possible that the boy can answer the simplest +question--why DID the Judge ask him? Yet he felt obliged to speak up +and say: + +"Answer the gentleman, Thomas--don't be afraid." + +Tom still hung fire. + +"Now I know you'll tell me," said the lady. "The names of the first +two disciples were--" + +"DAVID AND GOLIAH!" + +Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene. + + + +CHAPTER V + +ABOUT half-past ten the cracked bell of the small church began to +ring, and presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon. +The Sunday-school children distributed themselves about the house and +occupied pews with their parents, so as to be under supervision. Aunt +Polly came, and Tom and Sid and Mary sat with her--Tom being placed +next the aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the open +window and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible. The crowd +filed up the aisles: the aged and needy postmaster, who had seen better +days; the mayor and his wife--for they had a mayor there, among other +unnecessaries; the justice of the peace; the widow Douglass, fair, +smart, and forty, a generous, good-hearted soul and well-to-do, her +hill mansion the only palace in the town, and the most hospitable and +much the most lavish in the matter of festivities that St. Petersburg +could boast; the bent and venerable Major and Mrs. Ward; lawyer +Riverson, the new notable from a distance; next the belle of the +village, followed by a troop of lawn-clad and ribbon-decked young +heart-breakers; then all the young clerks in town in a body--for they +had stood in the vestibule sucking their cane-heads, a circling wall of +oiled and simpering admirers, till the last girl had run their gantlet; +and last of all came the Model Boy, Willie Mufferson, taking as heedful +care of his mother as if she were cut glass. He always brought his +mother to church, and was the pride of all the matrons. The boys all +hated him, he was so good. And besides, he had been "thrown up to them" +so much. His white handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket behind, as +usual on Sundays--accidentally. Tom had no handkerchief, and he looked +upon boys who had as snobs. + +The congregation being fully assembled, now, the bell rang once more, +to warn laggards and stragglers, and then a solemn hush fell upon the +church which was only broken by the tittering and whispering of the +choir in the gallery. The choir always tittered and whispered all +through service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, +but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago, +and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in +some foreign country. + +The minister gave out the hymn, and read it through with a relish, in +a peculiar style which was much admired in that part of the country. +His voice began on a medium key and climbed steadily up till it reached +a certain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost +word and then plunged down as if from a spring-board: + + Shall I be car-ri-ed toe the skies, on flow'ry BEDS of ease, + + Whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro' BLOODY seas? + +He was regarded as a wonderful reader. At church "sociables" he was +always called upon to read poetry; and when he was through, the ladies +would lift up their hands and let them fall helplessly in their laps, +and "wall" their eyes, and shake their heads, as much as to say, "Words +cannot express it; it is too beautiful, TOO beautiful for this mortal +earth." + +After the hymn had been sung, the Rev. Mr. Sprague turned himself into +a bulletin-board, and read off "notices" of meetings and societies and +things till it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack of +doom--a queer custom which is still kept up in America, even in cities, +away here in this age of abundant newspapers. Often, the less there is +to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it. + +And now the minister prayed. A good, generous prayer it was, and went +into details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the +church; for the other churches of the village; for the village itself; +for the county; for the State; for the State officers; for the United +States; for the churches of the United States; for Congress; for the +President; for the officers of the Government; for poor sailors, tossed +by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of +European monarchies and Oriental despotisms; for such as have the light +and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear +withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with +a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace +and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a +grateful harvest of good. Amen. + +There was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation sat +down. The boy whose history this book relates did not enjoy the prayer, +he only endured it--if he even did that much. He was restive all +through it; he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously +--for he was not listening, but he knew the ground of old, and the +clergyman's regular route over it--and when a little trifle of new +matter was interlarded, his ear detected it and his whole nature +resented it; he considered additions unfair, and scoundrelly. In the +midst of the prayer a fly had lit on the back of the pew in front of +him and tortured his spirit by calmly rubbing its hands together, +embracing its head with its arms, and polishing it so vigorously that +it seemed to almost part company with the body, and the slender thread +of a neck was exposed to view; scraping its wings with its hind legs +and smoothing them to its body as if they had been coat-tails; going +through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if it knew it was perfectly +safe. As indeed it was; for as sorely as Tom's hands itched to grab for +it they did not dare--he believed his soul would be instantly destroyed +if he did such a thing while the prayer was going on. But with the +closing sentence his hand began to curve and steal forward; and the +instant the "Amen" was out the fly was a prisoner of war. His aunt +detected the act and made him let it go. + +The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through +an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod +--and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone +and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be +hardly worth the saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after +church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew +anything else about the discourse. However, this time he was really +interested for a little while. The minister made a grand and moving +picture of the assembling together of the world's hosts at the +millennium when the lion and the lamb should lie down together and a +little child should lead them. But the pathos, the lesson, the moral of +the great spectacle were lost upon the boy; he only thought of the +conspicuousness of the principal character before the on-looking +nations; his face lit with the thought, and he said to himself that he +wished he could be that child, if it was a tame lion. + +Now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed. +Presently he bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. It was +a large black beetle with formidable jaws--a "pinchbug," he called it. +It was in a percussion-cap box. The first thing the beetle did was to +take him by the finger. A natural fillip followed, the beetle went +floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger +went into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helpless +legs, unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was +safe out of his reach. Other people uninterested in the sermon found +relief in the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodle +dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and +the quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle; +the drooping tail lifted and wagged. He surveyed the prize; walked +around it; smelt at it from a safe distance; walked around it again; +grew bolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip and made a +gingerly snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another; +began to enjoy the diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetle +between his paws, and continued his experiments; grew weary at last, +and then indifferent and absent-minded. His head nodded, and little by +little his chin descended and touched the enemy, who seized it. There +was a sharp yelp, a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a +couple of yards away, and lit on its back once more. The neighboring +spectators shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind +fans and handkerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy. The dog looked +foolish, and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart, +too, and a craving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began a +wary attack on it again; jumping at it from every point of a circle, +lighting with his fore-paws within an inch of the creature, making even +closer snatches at it with his teeth, and jerking his head till his +ears flapped again. But he grew tired once more, after a while; tried +to amuse himself with a fly but found no relief; followed an ant +around, with his nose close to the floor, and quickly wearied of that; +yawned, sighed, forgot the beetle entirely, and sat down on it. Then +there was a wild yelp of agony and the poodle went sailing up the +aisle; the yelps continued, and so did the dog; he crossed the house in +front of the altar; he flew down the other aisle; he crossed before the +doors; he clamored up the home-stretch; his anguish grew with his +progress, till presently he was but a woolly comet moving in its orbit +with the gleam and the speed of light. At last the frantic sufferer +sheered from its course, and sprang into its master's lap; he flung it +out of the window, and the voice of distress quickly thinned away and +died in the distance. + +By this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating with +suppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead standstill. The +discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all +possibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the gravest +sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of +unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor +parson had said a rarely facetious thing. It was a genuine relief to +the whole congregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction +pronounced. + +Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there +was some satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of +variety in it. He had but one marring thought; he was willing that the +dog should play with his pinchbug, but he did not think it was upright +in him to carry it off. + + + +CHAPTER VI + +MONDAY morning found Tom Sawyer miserable. Monday morning always found +him so--because it began another week's slow suffering in school. He +generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening +holiday, it made the going into captivity and fetters again so much +more odious. + +Tom lay thinking. Presently it occurred to him that he wished he was +sick; then he could stay home from school. Here was a vague +possibility. He canvassed his system. No ailment was found, and he +investigated again. This time he thought he could detect colicky +symptoms, and he began to encourage them with considerable hope. But +they soon grew feeble, and presently died wholly away. He reflected +further. Suddenly he discovered something. One of his upper front teeth +was loose. This was lucky; he was about to begin to groan, as a +"starter," as he called it, when it occurred to him that if he came +into court with that argument, his aunt would pull it out, and that +would hurt. So he thought he would hold the tooth in reserve for the +present, and seek further. Nothing offered for some little time, and +then he remembered hearing the doctor tell about a certain thing that +laid up a patient for two or three weeks and threatened to make him +lose a finger. So the boy eagerly drew his sore toe from under the +sheet and held it up for inspection. But now he did not know the +necessary symptoms. However, it seemed well worth while to chance it, +so he fell to groaning with considerable spirit. + +But Sid slept on unconscious. + +Tom groaned louder, and fancied that he began to feel pain in the toe. + +No result from Sid. + +Tom was panting with his exertions by this time. He took a rest and +then swelled himself up and fetched a succession of admirable groans. + +Sid snored on. + +Tom was aggravated. He said, "Sid, Sid!" and shook him. This course +worked well, and Tom began to groan again. Sid yawned, stretched, then +brought himself up on his elbow with a snort, and began to stare at +Tom. Tom went on groaning. Sid said: + +"Tom! Say, Tom!" [No response.] "Here, Tom! TOM! What is the matter, +Tom?" And he shook him and looked in his face anxiously. + +Tom moaned out: + +"Oh, don't, Sid. Don't joggle me." + +"Why, what's the matter, Tom? I must call auntie." + +"No--never mind. It'll be over by and by, maybe. Don't call anybody." + +"But I must! DON'T groan so, Tom, it's awful. How long you been this +way?" + +"Hours. Ouch! Oh, don't stir so, Sid, you'll kill me." + +"Tom, why didn't you wake me sooner? Oh, Tom, DON'T! It makes my +flesh crawl to hear you. Tom, what is the matter?" + +"I forgive you everything, Sid. [Groan.] Everything you've ever done +to me. When I'm gone--" + +"Oh, Tom, you ain't dying, are you? Don't, Tom--oh, don't. Maybe--" + +"I forgive everybody, Sid. [Groan.] Tell 'em so, Sid. And Sid, you +give my window-sash and my cat with one eye to that new girl that's +come to town, and tell her--" + +But Sid had snatched his clothes and gone. Tom was suffering in +reality, now, so handsomely was his imagination working, and so his +groans had gathered quite a genuine tone. + +Sid flew down-stairs and said: + +"Oh, Aunt Polly, come! Tom's dying!" + +"Dying!" + +"Yes'm. Don't wait--come quick!" + +"Rubbage! I don't believe it!" + +But she fled up-stairs, nevertheless, with Sid and Mary at her heels. +And her face grew white, too, and her lip trembled. When she reached +the bedside she gasped out: + +"You, Tom! Tom, what's the matter with you?" + +"Oh, auntie, I'm--" + +"What's the matter with you--what is the matter with you, child?" + +"Oh, auntie, my sore toe's mortified!" + +The old lady sank down into a chair and laughed a little, then cried a +little, then did both together. This restored her and she said: + +"Tom, what a turn you did give me. Now you shut up that nonsense and +climb out of this." + +The groans ceased and the pain vanished from the toe. The boy felt a +little foolish, and he said: + +"Aunt Polly, it SEEMED mortified, and it hurt so I never minded my +tooth at all." + +"Your tooth, indeed! What's the matter with your tooth?" + +"One of them's loose, and it aches perfectly awful." + +"There, there, now, don't begin that groaning again. Open your mouth. +Well--your tooth IS loose, but you're not going to die about that. +Mary, get me a silk thread, and a chunk of fire out of the kitchen." + +Tom said: + +"Oh, please, auntie, don't pull it out. It don't hurt any more. I wish +I may never stir if it does. Please don't, auntie. I don't want to stay +home from school." + +"Oh, you don't, don't you? So all this row was because you thought +you'd get to stay home from school and go a-fishing? Tom, Tom, I love +you so, and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart +with your outrageousness." By this time the dental instruments were +ready. The old lady made one end of the silk thread fast to Tom's tooth +with a loop and tied the other to the bedpost. Then she seized the +chunk of fire and suddenly thrust it almost into the boy's face. The +tooth hung dangling by the bedpost, now. + +But all trials bring their compensations. As Tom wended to school +after breakfast, he was the envy of every boy he met because the gap in +his upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and +admirable way. He gathered quite a following of lads interested in the +exhibition; and one that had cut his finger and had been a centre of +fascination and homage up to this time, now found himself suddenly +without an adherent, and shorn of his glory. His heart was heavy, and +he said with a disdain which he did not feel that it wasn't anything to +spit like Tom Sawyer; but another boy said, "Sour grapes!" and he +wandered away a dismantled hero. + +Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry +Finn, son of the town drunkard. Huckleberry was cordially hated and +dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless +and vulgar and bad--and because all their children admired him so, and +delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like +him. Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied +Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders +not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance. +Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown +men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat +was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat, +when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons +far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat +of the trousers bagged low and contained nothing, the fringed legs +dragged in the dirt when not rolled up. + +Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps +in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to +school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could +go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it +suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he +pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring +and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor +put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything +that goes to make life precious that boy had. So thought every +harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg. + +Tom hailed the romantic outcast: + +"Hello, Huckleberry!" + +"Hello yourself, and see how you like it." + +"What's that you got?" + +"Dead cat." + +"Lemme see him, Huck. My, he's pretty stiff. Where'd you get him ?" + +"Bought him off'n a boy." + +"What did you give?" + +"I give a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at the slaughter-house." + +"Where'd you get the blue ticket?" + +"Bought it off'n Ben Rogers two weeks ago for a hoop-stick." + +"Say--what is dead cats good for, Huck?" + +"Good for? Cure warts with." + +"No! Is that so? I know something that's better." + +"I bet you don't. What is it?" + +"Why, spunk-water." + +"Spunk-water! I wouldn't give a dern for spunk-water." + +"You wouldn't, wouldn't you? D'you ever try it?" + +"No, I hain't. But Bob Tanner did." + +"Who told you so!" + +"Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Johnny Baker, and Johnny +told Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben told a nigger, and +the nigger told me. There now!" + +"Well, what of it? They'll all lie. Leastways all but the nigger. I +don't know HIM. But I never see a nigger that WOULDN'T lie. Shucks! Now +you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck." + +"Why, he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the +rain-water was." + +"In the daytime?" + +"Certainly." + +"With his face to the stump?" + +"Yes. Least I reckon so." + +"Did he say anything?" + +"I don't reckon he did. I don't know." + +"Aha! Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame +fool way as that! Why, that ain't a-going to do any good. You got to go +all by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there's a +spunk-water stump, and just as it's midnight you back up against the +stump and jam your hand in and say: + + 'Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts, + Spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts,' + +and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then +turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody. +Because if you speak the charm's busted." + +"Well, that sounds like a good way; but that ain't the way Bob Tanner +done." + +"No, sir, you can bet he didn't, becuz he's the wartiest boy in this +town; and he wouldn't have a wart on him if he'd knowed how to work +spunk-water. I've took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way, +Huck. I play with frogs so much that I've always got considerable many +warts. Sometimes I take 'em off with a bean." + +"Yes, bean's good. I've done that." + +"Have you? What's your way?" + +"You take and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some +blood, and then you put the blood on one piece of the bean and take and +dig a hole and bury it 'bout midnight at the crossroads in the dark of +the moon, and then you burn up the rest of the bean. You see that piece +that's got the blood on it will keep drawing and drawing, trying to +fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to draw the +wart, and pretty soon off she comes." + +"Yes, that's it, Huck--that's it; though when you're burying it if you +say 'Down bean; off wart; come no more to bother me!' it's better. +That's the way Joe Harper does, and he's been nearly to Coonville and +most everywheres. But say--how do you cure 'em with dead cats?" + +"Why, you take your cat and go and get in the graveyard 'long about +midnight when somebody that was wicked has been buried; and when it's +midnight a devil will come, or maybe two or three, but you can't see +'em, you can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear 'em talk; +and when they're taking that feller away, you heave your cat after 'em +and say, 'Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, I'm +done with ye!' That'll fetch ANY wart." + +"Sounds right. D'you ever try it, Huck?" + +"No, but old Mother Hopkins told me." + +"Well, I reckon it's so, then. Becuz they say she's a witch." + +"Say! Why, Tom, I KNOW she is. She witched pap. Pap says so his own +self. He come along one day, and he see she was a-witching him, so he +took up a rock, and if she hadn't dodged, he'd a got her. Well, that +very night he rolled off'n a shed wher' he was a layin drunk, and broke +his arm." + +"Why, that's awful. How did he know she was a-witching him?" + +"Lord, pap can tell, easy. Pap says when they keep looking at you +right stiddy, they're a-witching you. Specially if they mumble. Becuz +when they mumble they're saying the Lord's Prayer backards." + +"Say, Hucky, when you going to try the cat?" + +"To-night. I reckon they'll come after old Hoss Williams to-night." + +"But they buried him Saturday. Didn't they get him Saturday night?" + +"Why, how you talk! How could their charms work till midnight?--and +THEN it's Sunday. Devils don't slosh around much of a Sunday, I don't +reckon." + +"I never thought of that. That's so. Lemme go with you?" + +"Of course--if you ain't afeard." + +"Afeard! 'Tain't likely. Will you meow?" + +"Yes--and you meow back, if you get a chance. Last time, you kep' me +a-meowing around till old Hays went to throwing rocks at me and says +'Dern that cat!' and so I hove a brick through his window--but don't +you tell." + +"I won't. I couldn't meow that night, becuz auntie was watching me, +but I'll meow this time. Say--what's that?" + +"Nothing but a tick." + +"Where'd you get him?" + +"Out in the woods." + +"What'll you take for him?" + +"I don't know. I don't want to sell him." + +"All right. It's a mighty small tick, anyway." + +"Oh, anybody can run a tick down that don't belong to them. I'm +satisfied with it. It's a good enough tick for me." + +"Sho, there's ticks a plenty. I could have a thousand of 'em if I +wanted to." + +"Well, why don't you? Becuz you know mighty well you can't. This is a +pretty early tick, I reckon. It's the first one I've seen this year." + +"Say, Huck--I'll give you my tooth for him." + +"Less see it." + +Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry +viewed it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said: + +"Is it genuwyne?" + +Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy. + +"Well, all right," said Huckleberry, "it's a trade." + +Tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been +the pinchbug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier +than before. + +When Tom reached the little isolated frame schoolhouse, he strode in +briskly, with the manner of one who had come with all honest speed. +He hung his hat on a peg and flung himself into his seat with +business-like alacrity. The master, throned on high in his great +splint-bottom arm-chair, was dozing, lulled by the drowsy hum of study. +The interruption roused him. + +"Thomas Sawyer!" + +Tom knew that when his name was pronounced in full, it meant trouble. + +"Sir!" + +"Come up here. Now, sir, why are you late again, as usual?" + +Tom was about to take refuge in a lie, when he saw two long tails of +yellow hair hanging down a back that he recognized by the electric +sympathy of love; and by that form was THE ONLY VACANT PLACE on the +girls' side of the schoolhouse. He instantly said: + +"I STOPPED TO TALK WITH HUCKLEBERRY FINN!" + +The master's pulse stood still, and he stared helplessly. The buzz of +study ceased. The pupils wondered if this foolhardy boy had lost his +mind. The master said: + +"You--you did what?" + +"Stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn." + +There was no mistaking the words. + +"Thomas Sawyer, this is the most astounding confession I have ever +listened to. No mere ferule will answer for this offence. Take off your +jacket." + +The master's arm performed until it was tired and the stock of +switches notably diminished. Then the order followed: + +"Now, sir, go and sit with the girls! And let this be a warning to you." + +The titter that rippled around the room appeared to abash the boy, but +in reality that result was caused rather more by his worshipful awe of +his unknown idol and the dread pleasure that lay in his high good +fortune. He sat down upon the end of the pine bench and the girl +hitched herself away from him with a toss of her head. Nudges and winks +and whispers traversed the room, but Tom sat still, with his arms upon +the long, low desk before him, and seemed to study his book. + +By and by attention ceased from him, and the accustomed school murmur +rose upon the dull air once more. Presently the boy began to steal +furtive glances at the girl. She observed it, "made a mouth" at him and +gave him the back of her head for the space of a minute. When she +cautiously faced around again, a peach lay before her. She thrust it +away. Tom gently put it back. She thrust it away again, but with less +animosity. Tom patiently returned it to its place. Then she let it +remain. Tom scrawled on his slate, "Please take it--I got more." The +girl glanced at the words, but made no sign. Now the boy began to draw +something on the slate, hiding his work with his left hand. For a time +the girl refused to notice; but her human curiosity presently began to +manifest itself by hardly perceptible signs. The boy worked on, +apparently unconscious. The girl made a sort of noncommittal attempt to +see, but the boy did not betray that he was aware of it. At last she +gave in and hesitatingly whispered: + +"Let me see it." + +Tom partly uncovered a dismal caricature of a house with two gable +ends to it and a corkscrew of smoke issuing from the chimney. Then the +girl's interest began to fasten itself upon the work and she forgot +everything else. When it was finished, she gazed a moment, then +whispered: + +"It's nice--make a man." + +The artist erected a man in the front yard, that resembled a derrick. +He could have stepped over the house; but the girl was not +hypercritical; she was satisfied with the monster, and whispered: + +"It's a beautiful man--now make me coming along." + +Tom drew an hour-glass with a full moon and straw limbs to it and +armed the spreading fingers with a portentous fan. The girl said: + +"It's ever so nice--I wish I could draw." + +"It's easy," whispered Tom, "I'll learn you." + +"Oh, will you? When?" + +"At noon. Do you go home to dinner?" + +"I'll stay if you will." + +"Good--that's a whack. What's your name?" + +"Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer." + +"That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me +Tom, will you?" + +"Yes." + +Now Tom began to scrawl something on the slate, hiding the words from +the girl. But she was not backward this time. She begged to see. Tom +said: + +"Oh, it ain't anything." + +"Yes it is." + +"No it ain't. You don't want to see." + +"Yes I do, indeed I do. Please let me." + +"You'll tell." + +"No I won't--deed and deed and double deed won't." + +"You won't tell anybody at all? Ever, as long as you live?" + +"No, I won't ever tell ANYbody. Now let me." + +"Oh, YOU don't want to see!" + +"Now that you treat me so, I WILL see." And she put her small hand +upon his and a little scuffle ensued, Tom pretending to resist in +earnest but letting his hand slip by degrees till these words were +revealed: "I LOVE YOU." + +"Oh, you bad thing!" And she hit his hand a smart rap, but reddened +and looked pleased, nevertheless. + +Just at this juncture the boy felt a slow, fateful grip closing on his +ear, and a steady lifting impulse. In that vise he was borne across the +house and deposited in his own seat, under a peppering fire of giggles +from the whole school. Then the master stood over him during a few +awful moments, and finally moved away to his throne without saying a +word. But although Tom's ear tingled, his heart was jubilant. + +As the school quieted down Tom made an honest effort to study, but the +turmoil within him was too great. In turn he took his place in the +reading class and made a botch of it; then in the geography class and +turned lakes into mountains, mountains into rivers, and rivers into +continents, till chaos was come again; then in the spelling class, and +got "turned down," by a succession of mere baby words, till he brought +up at the foot and yielded up the pewter medal which he had worn with +ostentation for months. + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his +ideas wandered. So at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. It +seemed to him that the noon recess would never come. The air was +utterly dead. There was not a breath stirring. It was the sleepiest of +sleepy days. The drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying +scholars soothed the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees. +Away off in the flaming sunshine, Cardiff Hill lifted its soft green +sides through a shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of +distance; a few birds floated on lazy wing high in the air; no other +living thing was visible but some cows, and they were asleep. Tom's +heart ached to be free, or else to have something of interest to do to +pass the dreary time. His hand wandered into his pocket and his face +lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know +it. Then furtively the percussion-cap box came out. He released the +tick and put him on the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed +with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it +was premature: for when he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned +him aside with a pin and made him take a new direction. + +Tom's bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as Tom had been, and +now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in an +instant. This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn +friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a +pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner. +The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were +interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit of +the tick. So he put Joe's slate on the desk and drew a line down the +middle of it from top to bottom. + +"Now," said he, "as long as he is on your side you can stir him up and +I'll let him alone; but if you let him get away and get on my side, +you're to leave him alone as long as I can keep him from crossing over." + +"All right, go ahead; start him up." + +The tick escaped from Tom, presently, and crossed the equator. Joe +harassed him awhile, and then he got away and crossed back again. This +change of base occurred often. While one boy was worrying the tick with +absorbing interest, the other would look on with interest as strong, +the two heads bowed together over the slate, and the two souls dead to +all things else. At last luck seemed to settle and abide with Joe. The +tick tried this, that, and the other course, and got as excited and as +anxious as the boys themselves, but time and again just as he would +have victory in his very grasp, so to speak, and Tom's fingers would be +twitching to begin, Joe's pin would deftly head him off, and keep +possession. At last Tom could stand it no longer. The temptation was +too strong. So he reached out and lent a hand with his pin. Joe was +angry in a moment. Said he: + +"Tom, you let him alone." + +"I only just want to stir him up a little, Joe." + +"No, sir, it ain't fair; you just let him alone." + +"Blame it, I ain't going to stir him much." + +"Let him alone, I tell you." + +"I won't!" + +"You shall--he's on my side of the line." + +"Look here, Joe Harper, whose is that tick?" + +"I don't care whose tick he is--he's on my side of the line, and you +sha'n't touch him." + +"Well, I'll just bet I will, though. He's my tick and I'll do what I +blame please with him, or die!" + +A tremendous whack came down on Tom's shoulders, and its duplicate on +Joe's; and for the space of two minutes the dust continued to fly from +the two jackets and the whole school to enjoy it. The boys had been too +absorbed to notice the hush that had stolen upon the school awhile +before when the master came tiptoeing down the room and stood over +them. He had contemplated a good part of the performance before he +contributed his bit of variety to it. + +When school broke up at noon, Tom flew to Becky Thatcher, and +whispered in her ear: + +"Put on your bonnet and let on you're going home; and when you get to +the corner, give the rest of 'em the slip, and turn down through the +lane and come back. I'll go the other way and come it over 'em the same +way." + +So the one went off with one group of scholars, and the other with +another. In a little while the two met at the bottom of the lane, and +when they reached the school they had it all to themselves. Then they +sat together, with a slate before them, and Tom gave Becky the pencil +and held her hand in his, guiding it, and so created another surprising +house. When the interest in art began to wane, the two fell to talking. +Tom was swimming in bliss. He said: + +"Do you love rats?" + +"No! I hate them!" + +"Well, I do, too--LIVE ones. But I mean dead ones, to swing round your +head with a string." + +"No, I don't care for rats much, anyway. What I like is chewing-gum." + +"Oh, I should say so! I wish I had some now." + +"Do you? I've got some. I'll let you chew it awhile, but you must give +it back to me." + +That was agreeable, so they chewed it turn about, and dangled their +legs against the bench in excess of contentment. + +"Was you ever at a circus?" said Tom. + +"Yes, and my pa's going to take me again some time, if I'm good." + +"I been to the circus three or four times--lots of times. Church ain't +shucks to a circus. There's things going on at a circus all the time. +I'm going to be a clown in a circus when I grow up." + +"Oh, are you! That will be nice. They're so lovely, all spotted up." + +"Yes, that's so. And they get slathers of money--most a dollar a day, +Ben Rogers says. Say, Becky, was you ever engaged?" + +"What's that?" + +"Why, engaged to be married." + +"No." + +"Would you like to?" + +"I reckon so. I don't know. What is it like?" + +"Like? Why it ain't like anything. You only just tell a boy you won't +ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that's +all. Anybody can do it." + +"Kiss? What do you kiss for?" + +"Why, that, you know, is to--well, they always do that." + +"Everybody?" + +"Why, yes, everybody that's in love with each other. Do you remember +what I wrote on the slate?" + +"Ye--yes." + +"What was it?" + +"I sha'n't tell you." + +"Shall I tell YOU?" + +"Ye--yes--but some other time." + +"No, now." + +"No, not now--to-morrow." + +"Oh, no, NOW. Please, Becky--I'll whisper it, I'll whisper it ever so +easy." + +Becky hesitating, Tom took silence for consent, and passed his arm +about her waist and whispered the tale ever so softly, with his mouth +close to her ear. And then he added: + +"Now you whisper it to me--just the same." + +She resisted, for a while, and then said: + +"You turn your face away so you can't see, and then I will. But you +mustn't ever tell anybody--WILL you, Tom? Now you won't, WILL you?" + +"No, indeed, indeed I won't. Now, Becky." + +He turned his face away. She bent timidly around till her breath +stirred his curls and whispered, "I--love--you!" + +Then she sprang away and ran around and around the desks and benches, +with Tom after her, and took refuge in a corner at last, with her +little white apron to her face. Tom clasped her about her neck and +pleaded: + +"Now, Becky, it's all done--all over but the kiss. Don't you be afraid +of that--it ain't anything at all. Please, Becky." And he tugged at her +apron and the hands. + +By and by she gave up, and let her hands drop; her face, all glowing +with the struggle, came up and submitted. Tom kissed the red lips and +said: + +"Now it's all done, Becky. And always after this, you know, you ain't +ever to love anybody but me, and you ain't ever to marry anybody but +me, ever never and forever. Will you?" + +"No, I'll never love anybody but you, Tom, and I'll never marry +anybody but you--and you ain't to ever marry anybody but me, either." + +"Certainly. Of course. That's PART of it. And always coming to school +or when we're going home, you're to walk with me, when there ain't +anybody looking--and you choose me and I choose you at parties, because +that's the way you do when you're engaged." + +"It's so nice. I never heard of it before." + +"Oh, it's ever so gay! Why, me and Amy Lawrence--" + +The big eyes told Tom his blunder and he stopped, confused. + +"Oh, Tom! Then I ain't the first you've ever been engaged to!" + +The child began to cry. Tom said: + +"Oh, don't cry, Becky, I don't care for her any more." + +"Yes, you do, Tom--you know you do." + +Tom tried to put his arm about her neck, but she pushed him away and +turned her face to the wall, and went on crying. Tom tried again, with +soothing words in his mouth, and was repulsed again. Then his pride was +up, and he strode away and went outside. He stood about, restless and +uneasy, for a while, glancing at the door, every now and then, hoping +she would repent and come to find him. But she did not. Then he began +to feel badly and fear that he was in the wrong. It was a hard struggle +with him to make new advances, now, but he nerved himself to it and +entered. She was still standing back there in the corner, sobbing, with +her face to the wall. Tom's heart smote him. He went to her and stood a +moment, not knowing exactly how to proceed. Then he said hesitatingly: + +"Becky, I--I don't care for anybody but you." + +No reply--but sobs. + +"Becky"--pleadingly. "Becky, won't you say something?" + +More sobs. + +Tom got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob from the top of an +andiron, and passed it around her so that she could see it, and said: + +"Please, Becky, won't you take it?" + +She struck it to the floor. Then Tom marched out of the house and over +the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day. Presently +Becky began to suspect. She ran to the door; he was not in sight; she +flew around to the play-yard; he was not there. Then she called: + +"Tom! Come back, Tom!" + +She listened intently, but there was no answer. She had no companions +but silence and loneliness. So she sat down to cry again and upbraid +herself; and by this time the scholars began to gather again, and she +had to hide her griefs and still her broken heart and take up the cross +of a long, dreary, aching afternoon, with none among the strangers +about her to exchange sorrows with. + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of +the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He +crossed a small "branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing +juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour +later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of +Cardiff Hill, and the schoolhouse was hardly distinguishable away off +in the valley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless +way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading +oak. There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had +even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was +broken by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a +woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense +of loneliness the more profound. The boy's soul was steeped in +melancholy; his feelings were in happy accord with his surroundings. He +sat long with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, +meditating. It seemed to him that life was but a trouble, at best, and +he more than half envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released; it must be +very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream forever and +ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the +grass and the flowers over the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve +about, ever any more. If he only had a clean Sunday-school record he +could be willing to go, and be done with it all. Now as to this girl. +What had he done? Nothing. He had meant the best in the world, and been +treated like a dog--like a very dog. She would be sorry some day--maybe +when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die TEMPORARILY! + +But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one +constrained shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift +insensibly back into the concerns of this life again. What if he turned +his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away--ever +so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seas--and never came +back any more! How would she feel then! The idea of being a clown +recurred to him now, only to fill him with disgust. For frivolity and +jokes and spotted tights were an offense, when they intruded themselves +upon a spirit that was exalted into the vague august realm of the +romantic. No, he would be a soldier, and return after long years, all +war-worn and illustrious. No--better still, he would join the Indians, +and hunt buffaloes and go on the warpath in the mountain ranges and the +trackless great plains of the Far West, and away in the future come +back a great chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint, and +prance into Sunday-school, some drowsy summer morning, with a +bloodcurdling war-whoop, and sear the eyeballs of all his companions +with unappeasable envy. But no, there was something gaudier even than +this. He would be a pirate! That was it! NOW his future lay plain +before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor. How his name would +fill the world, and make people shudder! How gloriously he would go +plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low, black-hulled racer, the +Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying at the fore! And at +the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear at the old village +and stalk into church, brown and weather-beaten, in his black velvet +doublet and trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson sash, his belt +bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass at his side, his +slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled, with the skull +and crossbones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy the whisperings, +"It's Tom Sawyer the Pirate!--the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main!" + +Yes, it was settled; his career was determined. He would run away from +home and enter upon it. He would start the very next morning. Therefore +he must now begin to get ready. He would collect his resources +together. He went to a rotten log near at hand and began to dig under +one end of it with his Barlow knife. He soon struck wood that sounded +hollow. He put his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively: + +"What hasn't come here, come! What's here, stay here!" + +Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took it +up and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides +were of shingles. In it lay a marble. Tom's astonishment was boundless! +He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said: + +"Well, that beats anything!" + +Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. The +truth was, that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he and +all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible. If you buried a +marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a +fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just +used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had +gathered themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they +had been separated. But now, this thing had actually and unquestionably +failed. Tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations. +He had many a time heard of this thing succeeding but never of its +failing before. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several +times before, himself, but could never find the hiding-places +afterward. He puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided +that some witch had interfered and broken the charm. He thought he +would satisfy himself on that point; so he searched around till he +found a small sandy spot with a little funnel-shaped depression in it. +He laid himself down and put his mouth close to this depression and +called-- + +"Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know! Doodle-bug, +doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!" + +The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a +second and then darted under again in a fright. + +"He dasn't tell! So it WAS a witch that done it. I just knowed it." + +He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he +gave up discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have +the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a +patient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to +his treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been +standing when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble +from his pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying: + +"Brother, go find your brother!" + +He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must +have fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more. The last +repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each +other. + +Just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green +aisles of the forest. Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned a +suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log, +disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword and a tin trumpet, and in +a moment had seized these things and bounded away, barelegged, with +fluttering shirt. He presently halted under a great elm, blew an +answering blast, and then began to tiptoe and look warily out, this way +and that. He said cautiously--to an imaginary company: + +"Hold, my merry men! Keep hid till I blow." + +Now appeared Joe Harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom. +Tom called: + +"Hold! Who comes here into Sherwood Forest without my pass?" + +"Guy of Guisborne wants no man's pass. Who art thou that--that--" + +"Dares to hold such language," said Tom, prompting--for they talked +"by the book," from memory. + +"Who art thou that dares to hold such language?" + +"I, indeed! I am Robin Hood, as thy caitiff carcase soon shall know." + +"Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? Right gladly will I dispute +with thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee!" + +They took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground, +struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful +combat, "two up and two down." Presently Tom said: + +"Now, if you've got the hang, go it lively!" + +So they "went it lively," panting and perspiring with the work. By and +by Tom shouted: + +"Fall! fall! Why don't you fall?" + +"I sha'n't! Why don't you fall yourself? You're getting the worst of +it." + +"Why, that ain't anything. I can't fall; that ain't the way it is in +the book. The book says, 'Then with one back-handed stroke he slew poor +Guy of Guisborne.' You're to turn around and let me hit you in the +back." + +There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received +the whack and fell. + +"Now," said Joe, getting up, "you got to let me kill YOU. That's fair." + +"Why, I can't do that, it ain't in the book." + +"Well, it's blamed mean--that's all." + +"Well, say, Joe, you can be Friar Tuck or Much the miller's son, and +lam me with a quarter-staff; or I'll be the Sheriff of Nottingham and +you be Robin Hood a little while and kill me." + +This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. Then +Tom became Robin Hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to +bleed his strength away through his neglected wound. And at last Joe, +representing a whole tribe of weeping outlaws, dragged him sadly forth, +gave his bow into his feeble hands, and Tom said, "Where this arrow +falls, there bury poor Robin Hood under the greenwood tree." Then he +shot the arrow and fell back and would have died, but he lit on a +nettle and sprang up too gaily for a corpse. + +The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off +grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern +civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss. +They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than +President of the United States forever. + + + +CHAPTER IX + +AT half-past nine, that night, Tom and Sid were sent to bed, as usual. +They said their prayers, and Sid was soon asleep. Tom lay awake and +waited, in restless impatience. When it seemed to him that it must be +nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten! This was despair. He +would have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was +afraid he might wake Sid. So he lay still, and stared up into the dark. +Everything was dismally still. By and by, out of the stillness, little, +scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. The ticking +of the clock began to bring itself into notice. Old beams began to +crack mysteriously. The stairs creaked faintly. Evidently spirits were +abroad. A measured, muffled snore issued from Aunt Polly's chamber. And +now the tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could +locate, began. Next the ghastly ticking of a deathwatch in the wall at +the bed's head made Tom shudder--it meant that somebody's days were +numbered. Then the howl of a far-off dog rose on the night air, and was +answered by a fainter howl from a remoter distance. Tom was in an +agony. At last he was satisfied that time had ceased and eternity +begun; he began to doze, in spite of himself; the clock chimed eleven, +but he did not hear it. And then there came, mingling with his +half-formed dreams, a most melancholy caterwauling. The raising of a +neighboring window disturbed him. A cry of "Scat! you devil!" and the +crash of an empty bottle against the back of his aunt's woodshed +brought him wide awake, and a single minute later he was dressed and +out of the window and creeping along the roof of the "ell" on all +fours. He "meow'd" with caution once or twice, as he went; then jumped +to the roof of the woodshed and thence to the ground. Huckleberry Finn +was there, with his dead cat. The boys moved off and disappeared in the +gloom. At the end of half an hour they were wading through the tall +grass of the graveyard. + +It was a graveyard of the old-fashioned Western kind. It was on a +hill, about a mile and a half from the village. It had a crazy board +fence around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of +the time, but stood upright nowhere. Grass and weeds grew rank over the +whole cemetery. All the old graves were sunken in, there was not a +tombstone on the place; round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over +the graves, leaning for support and finding none. "Sacred to the memory +of" So-and-So had been painted on them once, but it could no longer +have been read, on the most of them, now, even if there had been light. + +A faint wind moaned through the trees, and Tom feared it might be the +spirits of the dead, complaining at being disturbed. The boys talked +little, and only under their breath, for the time and the place and the +pervading solemnity and silence oppressed their spirits. They found the +sharp new heap they were seeking, and ensconced themselves within the +protection of three great elms that grew in a bunch within a few feet +of the grave. + +Then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time. The hooting +of a distant owl was all the sound that troubled the dead stillness. +Tom's reflections grew oppressive. He must force some talk. So he said +in a whisper: + +"Hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?" + +Huckleberry whispered: + +"I wisht I knowed. It's awful solemn like, AIN'T it?" + +"I bet it is." + +There was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter +inwardly. Then Tom whispered: + +"Say, Hucky--do you reckon Hoss Williams hears us talking?" + +"O' course he does. Least his sperrit does." + +Tom, after a pause: + +"I wish I'd said Mister Williams. But I never meant any harm. +Everybody calls him Hoss." + +"A body can't be too partic'lar how they talk 'bout these-yer dead +people, Tom." + +This was a damper, and conversation died again. + +Presently Tom seized his comrade's arm and said: + +"Sh!" + +"What is it, Tom?" And the two clung together with beating hearts. + +"Sh! There 'tis again! Didn't you hear it?" + +"I--" + +"There! Now you hear it." + +"Lord, Tom, they're coming! They're coming, sure. What'll we do?" + +"I dono. Think they'll see us?" + +"Oh, Tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. I wisht I hadn't +come." + +"Oh, don't be afeard. I don't believe they'll bother us. We ain't +doing any harm. If we keep perfectly still, maybe they won't notice us +at all." + +"I'll try to, Tom, but, Lord, I'm all of a shiver." + +"Listen!" + +The boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed. A muffled +sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard. + +"Look! See there!" whispered Tom. "What is it?" + +"It's devil-fire. Oh, Tom, this is awful." + +Some vague figures approached through the gloom, swinging an +old-fashioned tin lantern that freckled the ground with innumerable +little spangles of light. Presently Huckleberry whispered with a +shudder: + +"It's the devils sure enough. Three of 'em! Lordy, Tom, we're goners! +Can you pray?" + +"I'll try, but don't you be afeard. They ain't going to hurt us. 'Now +I lay me down to sleep, I--'" + +"Sh!" + +"What is it, Huck?" + +"They're HUMANS! One of 'em is, anyway. One of 'em's old Muff Potter's +voice." + +"No--'tain't so, is it?" + +"I bet I know it. Don't you stir nor budge. He ain't sharp enough to +notice us. Drunk, the same as usual, likely--blamed old rip!" + +"All right, I'll keep still. Now they're stuck. Can't find it. Here +they come again. Now they're hot. Cold again. Hot again. Red hot! +They're p'inted right, this time. Say, Huck, I know another o' them +voices; it's Injun Joe." + +"That's so--that murderin' half-breed! I'd druther they was devils a +dern sight. What kin they be up to?" + +The whisper died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the +grave and stood within a few feet of the boys' hiding-place. + +"Here it is," said the third voice; and the owner of it held the +lantern up and revealed the face of young Doctor Robinson. + +Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a +couple of shovels on it. They cast down their load and began to open +the grave. The doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave and came +and sat down with his back against one of the elm trees. He was so +close the boys could have touched him. + +"Hurry, men!" he said, in a low voice; "the moon might come out at any +moment." + +They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was +no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight +of mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck +upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or +two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid +with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the +ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid +face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered +with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a +large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then +said: + +"Now the cussed thing's ready, Sawbones, and you'll just out with +another five, or here she stays." + +"That's the talk!" said Injun Joe. + +"Look here, what does this mean?" said the doctor. "You required your +pay in advance, and I've paid you." + +"Yes, and you done more than that," said Injun Joe, approaching the +doctor, who was now standing. "Five years ago you drove me away from +your father's kitchen one night, when I come to ask for something to +eat, and you said I warn't there for any good; and when I swore I'd get +even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for +a vagrant. Did you think I'd forget? The Injun blood ain't in me for +nothing. And now I've GOT you, and you got to SETTLE, you know!" + +He was threatening the doctor, with his fist in his face, by this +time. The doctor struck out suddenly and stretched the ruffian on the +ground. Potter dropped his knife, and exclaimed: + +"Here, now, don't you hit my pard!" and the next moment he had +grappled with the doctor and the two were struggling with might and +main, trampling the grass and tearing the ground with their heels. +Injun Joe sprang to his feet, his eyes flaming with passion, snatched +up Potter's knife, and went creeping, catlike and stooping, round and +round about the combatants, seeking an opportunity. All at once the +doctor flung himself free, seized the heavy headboard of Williams' +grave and felled Potter to the earth with it--and in the same instant +the half-breed saw his chance and drove the knife to the hilt in the +young man's breast. He reeled and fell partly upon Potter, flooding him +with his blood, and in the same moment the clouds blotted out the +dreadful spectacle and the two frightened boys went speeding away in +the dark. + +Presently, when the moon emerged again, Injun Joe was standing over +the two forms, contemplating them. The doctor murmured inarticulately, +gave a long gasp or two and was still. The half-breed muttered: + +"THAT score is settled--damn you." + +Then he robbed the body. After which he put the fatal knife in +Potter's open right hand, and sat down on the dismantled coffin. Three +--four--five minutes passed, and then Potter began to stir and moan. His +hand closed upon the knife; he raised it, glanced at it, and let it +fall, with a shudder. Then he sat up, pushing the body from him, and +gazed at it, and then around him, confusedly. His eyes met Joe's. + +"Lord, how is this, Joe?" he said. + +"It's a dirty business," said Joe, without moving. + +"What did you do it for?" + +"I! I never done it!" + +"Look here! That kind of talk won't wash." + +Potter trembled and grew white. + +"I thought I'd got sober. I'd no business to drink to-night. But it's +in my head yet--worse'n when we started here. I'm all in a muddle; +can't recollect anything of it, hardly. Tell me, Joe--HONEST, now, old +feller--did I do it? Joe, I never meant to--'pon my soul and honor, I +never meant to, Joe. Tell me how it was, Joe. Oh, it's awful--and him +so young and promising." + +"Why, you two was scuffling, and he fetched you one with the headboard +and you fell flat; and then up you come, all reeling and staggering +like, and snatched the knife and jammed it into him, just as he fetched +you another awful clip--and here you've laid, as dead as a wedge til +now." + +"Oh, I didn't know what I was a-doing. I wish I may die this minute if +I did. It was all on account of the whiskey and the excitement, I +reckon. I never used a weepon in my life before, Joe. I've fought, but +never with weepons. They'll all say that. Joe, don't tell! Say you +won't tell, Joe--that's a good feller. I always liked you, Joe, and +stood up for you, too. Don't you remember? You WON'T tell, WILL you, +Joe?" And the poor creature dropped on his knees before the stolid +murderer, and clasped his appealing hands. + +"No, you've always been fair and square with me, Muff Potter, and I +won't go back on you. There, now, that's as fair as a man can say." + +"Oh, Joe, you're an angel. I'll bless you for this the longest day I +live." And Potter began to cry. + +"Come, now, that's enough of that. This ain't any time for blubbering. +You be off yonder way and I'll go this. Move, now, and don't leave any +tracks behind you." + +Potter started on a trot that quickly increased to a run. The +half-breed stood looking after him. He muttered: + +"If he's as much stunned with the lick and fuddled with the rum as he +had the look of being, he won't think of the knife till he's gone so +far he'll be afraid to come back after it to such a place by himself +--chicken-heart!" + +Two or three minutes later the murdered man, the blanketed corpse, the +lidless coffin, and the open grave were under no inspection but the +moon's. The stillness was complete again, too. + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE two boys flew on and on, toward the village, speechless with +horror. They glanced backward over their shoulders from time to time, +apprehensively, as if they feared they might be followed. Every stump +that started up in their path seemed a man and an enemy, and made them +catch their breath; and as they sped by some outlying cottages that lay +near the village, the barking of the aroused watch-dogs seemed to give +wings to their feet. + +"If we can only get to the old tannery before we break down!" +whispered Tom, in short catches between breaths. "I can't stand it much +longer." + +Huckleberry's hard pantings were his only reply, and the boys fixed +their eyes on the goal of their hopes and bent to their work to win it. +They gained steadily on it, and at last, breast to breast, they burst +through the open door and fell grateful and exhausted in the sheltering +shadows beyond. By and by their pulses slowed down, and Tom whispered: + +"Huckleberry, what do you reckon'll come of this?" + +"If Doctor Robinson dies, I reckon hanging'll come of it." + +"Do you though?" + +"Why, I KNOW it, Tom." + +Tom thought a while, then he said: + +"Who'll tell? We?" + +"What are you talking about? S'pose something happened and Injun Joe +DIDN'T hang? Why, he'd kill us some time or other, just as dead sure as +we're a laying here." + +"That's just what I was thinking to myself, Huck." + +"If anybody tells, let Muff Potter do it, if he's fool enough. He's +generally drunk enough." + +Tom said nothing--went on thinking. Presently he whispered: + +"Huck, Muff Potter don't know it. How can he tell?" + +"What's the reason he don't know it?" + +"Because he'd just got that whack when Injun Joe done it. D'you reckon +he could see anything? D'you reckon he knowed anything?" + +"By hokey, that's so, Tom!" + +"And besides, look-a-here--maybe that whack done for HIM!" + +"No, 'taint likely, Tom. He had liquor in him; I could see that; and +besides, he always has. Well, when pap's full, you might take and belt +him over the head with a church and you couldn't phase him. He says so, +his own self. So it's the same with Muff Potter, of course. But if a +man was dead sober, I reckon maybe that whack might fetch him; I dono." + +After another reflective silence, Tom said: + +"Hucky, you sure you can keep mum?" + +"Tom, we GOT to keep mum. You know that. That Injun devil wouldn't +make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to +squeak 'bout this and they didn't hang him. Now, look-a-here, Tom, less +take and swear to one another--that's what we got to do--swear to keep +mum." + +"I'm agreed. It's the best thing. Would you just hold hands and swear +that we--" + +"Oh no, that wouldn't do for this. That's good enough for little +rubbishy common things--specially with gals, cuz THEY go back on you +anyway, and blab if they get in a huff--but there orter be writing +'bout a big thing like this. And blood." + +Tom's whole being applauded this idea. It was deep, and dark, and +awful; the hour, the circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping +with it. He picked up a clean pine shingle that lay in the moonlight, +took a little fragment of "red keel" out of his pocket, got the moon on +his work, and painfully scrawled these lines, emphasizing each slow +down-stroke by clamping his tongue between his teeth, and letting up +the pressure on the up-strokes. [See next page.] + + "Huck Finn and + Tom Sawyer swears + they will keep mum + about This and They + wish They may Drop + down dead in Their + Tracks if They ever + Tell and Rot." + +Huckleberry was filled with admiration of Tom's facility in writing, +and the sublimity of his language. He at once took a pin from his lapel +and was going to prick his flesh, but Tom said: + +"Hold on! Don't do that. A pin's brass. It might have verdigrease on +it." + +"What's verdigrease?" + +"It's p'ison. That's what it is. You just swaller some of it once +--you'll see." + +So Tom unwound the thread from one of his needles, and each boy +pricked the ball of his thumb and squeezed out a drop of blood. In +time, after many squeezes, Tom managed to sign his initials, using the +ball of his little finger for a pen. Then he showed Huckleberry how to +make an H and an F, and the oath was complete. They buried the shingle +close to the wall, with some dismal ceremonies and incantations, and +the fetters that bound their tongues were considered to be locked and +the key thrown away. + +A figure crept stealthily through a break in the other end of the +ruined building, now, but they did not notice it. + +"Tom," whispered Huckleberry, "does this keep us from EVER telling +--ALWAYS?" + +"Of course it does. It don't make any difference WHAT happens, we got +to keep mum. We'd drop down dead--don't YOU know that?" + +"Yes, I reckon that's so." + +They continued to whisper for some little time. Presently a dog set up +a long, lugubrious howl just outside--within ten feet of them. The boys +clasped each other suddenly, in an agony of fright. + +"Which of us does he mean?" gasped Huckleberry. + +"I dono--peep through the crack. Quick!" + +"No, YOU, Tom!" + +"I can't--I can't DO it, Huck!" + +"Please, Tom. There 'tis again!" + +"Oh, lordy, I'm thankful!" whispered Tom. "I know his voice. It's Bull +Harbison." * + +[* If Mr. Harbison owned a slave named Bull, Tom would have spoken of +him as "Harbison's Bull," but a son or a dog of that name was "Bull +Harbison."] + +"Oh, that's good--I tell you, Tom, I was most scared to death; I'd a +bet anything it was a STRAY dog." + +The dog howled again. The boys' hearts sank once more. + +"Oh, my! that ain't no Bull Harbison!" whispered Huckleberry. "DO, Tom!" + +Tom, quaking with fear, yielded, and put his eye to the crack. His +whisper was hardly audible when he said: + +"Oh, Huck, IT S A STRAY DOG!" + +"Quick, Tom, quick! Who does he mean?" + +"Huck, he must mean us both--we're right together." + +"Oh, Tom, I reckon we're goners. I reckon there ain't no mistake 'bout +where I'LL go to. I been so wicked." + +"Dad fetch it! This comes of playing hookey and doing everything a +feller's told NOT to do. I might a been good, like Sid, if I'd a tried +--but no, I wouldn't, of course. But if ever I get off this time, I lay +I'll just WALLER in Sunday-schools!" And Tom began to snuffle a little. + +"YOU bad!" and Huckleberry began to snuffle too. "Consound it, Tom +Sawyer, you're just old pie, 'longside o' what I am. Oh, LORDY, lordy, +lordy, I wisht I only had half your chance." + +Tom choked off and whispered: + +"Look, Hucky, look! He's got his BACK to us!" + +Hucky looked, with joy in his heart. + +"Well, he has, by jingoes! Did he before?" + +"Yes, he did. But I, like a fool, never thought. Oh, this is bully, +you know. NOW who can he mean?" + +The howling stopped. Tom pricked up his ears. + +"Sh! What's that?" he whispered. + +"Sounds like--like hogs grunting. No--it's somebody snoring, Tom." + +"That IS it! Where 'bouts is it, Huck?" + +"I bleeve it's down at 'tother end. Sounds so, anyway. Pap used to +sleep there, sometimes, 'long with the hogs, but laws bless you, he +just lifts things when HE snores. Besides, I reckon he ain't ever +coming back to this town any more." + +The spirit of adventure rose in the boys' souls once more. + +"Hucky, do you das't to go if I lead?" + +"I don't like to, much. Tom, s'pose it's Injun Joe!" + +Tom quailed. But presently the temptation rose up strong again and the +boys agreed to try, with the understanding that they would take to +their heels if the snoring stopped. So they went tiptoeing stealthily +down, the one behind the other. When they had got to within five steps +of the snorer, Tom stepped on a stick, and it broke with a sharp snap. +The man moaned, writhed a little, and his face came into the moonlight. +It was Muff Potter. The boys' hearts had stood still, and their hopes +too, when the man moved, but their fears passed away now. They tiptoed +out, through the broken weather-boarding, and stopped at a little +distance to exchange a parting word. That long, lugubrious howl rose on +the night air again! They turned and saw the strange dog standing +within a few feet of where Potter was lying, and FACING Potter, with +his nose pointing heavenward. + +"Oh, geeminy, it's HIM!" exclaimed both boys, in a breath. + +"Say, Tom--they say a stray dog come howling around Johnny Miller's +house, 'bout midnight, as much as two weeks ago; and a whippoorwill +come in and lit on the banisters and sung, the very same evening; and +there ain't anybody dead there yet." + +"Well, I know that. And suppose there ain't. Didn't Gracie Miller fall +in the kitchen fire and burn herself terrible the very next Saturday?" + +"Yes, but she ain't DEAD. And what's more, she's getting better, too." + +"All right, you wait and see. She's a goner, just as dead sure as Muff +Potter's a goner. That's what the niggers say, and they know all about +these kind of things, Huck." + +Then they separated, cogitating. When Tom crept in at his bedroom +window the night was almost spent. He undressed with excessive caution, +and fell asleep congratulating himself that nobody knew of his +escapade. He was not aware that the gently-snoring Sid was awake, and +had been so for an hour. + +When Tom awoke, Sid was dressed and gone. There was a late look in the +light, a late sense in the atmosphere. He was startled. Why had he not +been called--persecuted till he was up, as usual? The thought filled +him with bodings. Within five minutes he was dressed and down-stairs, +feeling sore and drowsy. The family were still at table, but they had +finished breakfast. There was no voice of rebuke; but there were +averted eyes; there was a silence and an air of solemnity that struck a +chill to the culprit's heart. He sat down and tried to seem gay, but it +was up-hill work; it roused no smile, no response, and he lapsed into +silence and let his heart sink down to the depths. + +After breakfast his aunt took him aside, and Tom almost brightened in +the hope that he was going to be flogged; but it was not so. His aunt +wept over him and asked him how he could go and break her old heart so; +and finally told him to go on, and ruin himself and bring her gray +hairs with sorrow to the grave, for it was no use for her to try any +more. This was worse than a thousand whippings, and Tom's heart was +sorer now than his body. He cried, he pleaded for forgiveness, promised +to reform over and over again, and then received his dismissal, feeling +that he had won but an imperfect forgiveness and established but a +feeble confidence. + +He left the presence too miserable to even feel revengeful toward Sid; +and so the latter's prompt retreat through the back gate was +unnecessary. He moped to school gloomy and sad, and took his flogging, +along with Joe Harper, for playing hookey the day before, with the air +of one whose heart was busy with heavier woes and wholly dead to +trifles. Then he betook himself to his seat, rested his elbows on his +desk and his jaws in his hands, and stared at the wall with the stony +stare of suffering that has reached the limit and can no further go. +His elbow was pressing against some hard substance. After a long time +he slowly and sadly changed his position, and took up this object with +a sigh. It was in a paper. He unrolled it. A long, lingering, colossal +sigh followed, and his heart broke. It was his brass andiron knob! + +This final feather broke the camel's back. + + + +CHAPTER XI + +CLOSE upon the hour of noon the whole village was suddenly electrified +with the ghastly news. No need of the as yet undreamed-of telegraph; +the tale flew from man to man, from group to group, from house to +house, with little less than telegraphic speed. Of course the +schoolmaster gave holiday for that afternoon; the town would have +thought strangely of him if he had not. + +A gory knife had been found close to the murdered man, and it had been +recognized by somebody as belonging to Muff Potter--so the story ran. +And it was said that a belated citizen had come upon Potter washing +himself in the "branch" about one or two o'clock in the morning, and +that Potter had at once sneaked off--suspicious circumstances, +especially the washing which was not a habit with Potter. It was also +said that the town had been ransacked for this "murderer" (the public +are not slow in the matter of sifting evidence and arriving at a +verdict), but that he could not be found. Horsemen had departed down +all the roads in every direction, and the Sheriff "was confident" that +he would be captured before night. + +All the town was drifting toward the graveyard. Tom's heartbreak +vanished and he joined the procession, not because he would not a +thousand times rather go anywhere else, but because an awful, +unaccountable fascination drew him on. Arrived at the dreadful place, +he wormed his small body through the crowd and saw the dismal +spectacle. It seemed to him an age since he was there before. Somebody +pinched his arm. He turned, and his eyes met Huckleberry's. Then both +looked elsewhere at once, and wondered if anybody had noticed anything +in their mutual glance. But everybody was talking, and intent upon the +grisly spectacle before them. + +"Poor fellow!" "Poor young fellow!" "This ought to be a lesson to +grave robbers!" "Muff Potter'll hang for this if they catch him!" This +was the drift of remark; and the minister said, "It was a judgment; His +hand is here." + +Now Tom shivered from head to heel; for his eye fell upon the stolid +face of Injun Joe. At this moment the crowd began to sway and struggle, +and voices shouted, "It's him! it's him! he's coming himself!" + +"Who? Who?" from twenty voices. + +"Muff Potter!" + +"Hallo, he's stopped!--Look out, he's turning! Don't let him get away!" + +People in the branches of the trees over Tom's head said he wasn't +trying to get away--he only looked doubtful and perplexed. + +"Infernal impudence!" said a bystander; "wanted to come and take a +quiet look at his work, I reckon--didn't expect any company." + +The crowd fell apart, now, and the Sheriff came through, +ostentatiously leading Potter by the arm. The poor fellow's face was +haggard, and his eyes showed the fear that was upon him. When he stood +before the murdered man, he shook as with a palsy, and he put his face +in his hands and burst into tears. + +"I didn't do it, friends," he sobbed; "'pon my word and honor I never +done it." + +"Who's accused you?" shouted a voice. + +This shot seemed to carry home. Potter lifted his face and looked +around him with a pathetic hopelessness in his eyes. He saw Injun Joe, +and exclaimed: + +"Oh, Injun Joe, you promised me you'd never--" + +"Is that your knife?" and it was thrust before him by the Sheriff. + +Potter would have fallen if they had not caught him and eased him to +the ground. Then he said: + +"Something told me 't if I didn't come back and get--" He shuddered; +then waved his nerveless hand with a vanquished gesture and said, "Tell +'em, Joe, tell 'em--it ain't any use any more." + +Then Huckleberry and Tom stood dumb and staring, and heard the +stony-hearted liar reel off his serene statement, they expecting every +moment that the clear sky would deliver God's lightnings upon his head, +and wondering to see how long the stroke was delayed. And when he had +finished and still stood alive and whole, their wavering impulse to +break their oath and save the poor betrayed prisoner's life faded and +vanished away, for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to Satan and +it would be fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that. + +"Why didn't you leave? What did you want to come here for?" somebody +said. + +"I couldn't help it--I couldn't help it," Potter moaned. "I wanted to +run away, but I couldn't seem to come anywhere but here." And he fell +to sobbing again. + +Injun Joe repeated his statement, just as calmly, a few minutes +afterward on the inquest, under oath; and the boys, seeing that the +lightnings were still withheld, were confirmed in their belief that Joe +had sold himself to the devil. He was now become, to them, the most +balefully interesting object they had ever looked upon, and they could +not take their fascinated eyes from his face. + +They inwardly resolved to watch him nights, when opportunity should +offer, in the hope of getting a glimpse of his dread master. + +Injun Joe helped to raise the body of the murdered man and put it in a +wagon for removal; and it was whispered through the shuddering crowd +that the wound bled a little! The boys thought that this happy +circumstance would turn suspicion in the right direction; but they were +disappointed, for more than one villager remarked: + +"It was within three feet of Muff Potter when it done it." + +Tom's fearful secret and gnawing conscience disturbed his sleep for as +much as a week after this; and at breakfast one morning Sid said: + +"Tom, you pitch around and talk in your sleep so much that you keep me +awake half the time." + +Tom blanched and dropped his eyes. + +"It's a bad sign," said Aunt Polly, gravely. "What you got on your +mind, Tom?" + +"Nothing. Nothing 't I know of." But the boy's hand shook so that he +spilled his coffee. + +"And you do talk such stuff," Sid said. "Last night you said, 'It's +blood, it's blood, that's what it is!' You said that over and over. And +you said, 'Don't torment me so--I'll tell!' Tell WHAT? What is it +you'll tell?" + +Everything was swimming before Tom. There is no telling what might +have happened, now, but luckily the concern passed out of Aunt Polly's +face and she came to Tom's relief without knowing it. She said: + +"Sho! It's that dreadful murder. I dream about it most every night +myself. Sometimes I dream it's me that done it." + +Mary said she had been affected much the same way. Sid seemed +satisfied. Tom got out of the presence as quick as he plausibly could, +and after that he complained of toothache for a week, and tied up his +jaws every night. He never knew that Sid lay nightly watching, and +frequently slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow +listening a good while at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage +back to its place again. Tom's distress of mind wore off gradually and +the toothache grew irksome and was discarded. If Sid really managed to +make anything out of Tom's disjointed mutterings, he kept it to himself. + +It seemed to Tom that his schoolmates never would get done holding +inquests on dead cats, and thus keeping his trouble present to his +mind. Sid noticed that Tom never was coroner at one of these inquiries, +though it had been his habit to take the lead in all new enterprises; +he noticed, too, that Tom never acted as a witness--and that was +strange; and Sid did not overlook the fact that Tom even showed a +marked aversion to these inquests, and always avoided them when he +could. Sid marvelled, but said nothing. However, even inquests went out +of vogue at last, and ceased to torture Tom's conscience. + +Every day or two, during this time of sorrow, Tom watched his +opportunity and went to the little grated jail-window and smuggled such +small comforts through to the "murderer" as he could get hold of. The +jail was a trifling little brick den that stood in a marsh at the edge +of the village, and no guards were afforded for it; indeed, it was +seldom occupied. These offerings greatly helped to ease Tom's +conscience. + +The villagers had a strong desire to tar-and-feather Injun Joe and +ride him on a rail, for body-snatching, but so formidable was his +character that nobody could be found who was willing to take the lead +in the matter, so it was dropped. He had been careful to begin both of +his inquest-statements with the fight, without confessing the +grave-robbery that preceded it; therefore it was deemed wisest not +to try the case in the courts at present. + + + +CHAPTER XII + +ONE of the reasons why Tom's mind had drifted away from its secret +troubles was, that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest +itself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom had +struggled with his pride a few days, and tried to "whistle her down the +wind," but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father's +house, nights, and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she +should die! There was distraction in the thought. He no longer took an +interest in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone; there +was nothing but dreariness left. He put his hoop away, and his bat; +there was no joy in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to +try all manner of remedies on him. She was one of those people who are +infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of +producing health or mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in +these things. When something fresh in this line came out she was in a +fever, right away, to try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing, +but on anybody else that came handy. She was a subscriber for all the +"Health" periodicals and phrenological frauds; and the solemn ignorance +they were inflated with was breath to her nostrils. All the "rot" they +contained about ventilation, and how to go to bed, and how to get up, +and what to eat, and what to drink, and how much exercise to take, and +what frame of mind to keep one's self in, and what sort of clothing to +wear, was all gospel to her, and she never observed that her +health-journals of the current month customarily upset everything they +had recommended the month before. She was as simple-hearted and honest +as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. She gathered +together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed +with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with +"hell following after." But she never suspected that she was not an +angel of healing and the balm of Gilead in disguise, to the suffering +neighbors. + +The water treatment was new, now, and Tom's low condition was a +windfall to her. She had him out at daylight every morning, stood him +up in the woodshed and drowned him with a deluge of cold water; then +she scrubbed him down with a towel like a file, and so brought him to; +then she rolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets +till she sweated his soul clean and "the yellow stains of it came +through his pores"--as Tom said. + +Yet notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy +and pale and dejected. She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, +and plunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to +assist the water with a slim oatmeal diet and blister-plasters. She +calculated his capacity as she would a jug's, and filled him up every +day with quack cure-alls. + +Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase +filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must +be broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first +time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with +gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water +treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to Pain-killer. She +gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the +result. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again; +for the "indifference" was broken up. The boy could not have shown a +wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him. + +Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be +romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have +too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he +thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit pon that of +professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he +became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself +and quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no +misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the +bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, +but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a +crack in the sitting-room floor with it. + +One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow +cat came along, purring, eying the teaspoon avariciously, and begging +for a taste. Tom said: + +"Don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter." + +But Peter signified that he did want it. + +"You better make sure." + +Peter was sure. + +"Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't +anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't +blame anybody but your own self." + +Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the +Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then +delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging +against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. +Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of +enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming +his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again +spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time +to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a final mighty +hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the +flower-pots with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, +peering over her glasses; Tom lay on the floor expiring with laughter. + +"Tom, what on earth ails that cat?" + +"I don't know, aunt," gasped the boy. + +"Why, I never see anything like it. What did make him act so?" + +"Deed I don't know, Aunt Polly; cats always act so when they're having +a good time." + +"They do, do they?" There was something in the tone that made Tom +apprehensive. + +"Yes'm. That is, I believe they do." + +"You DO?" + +"Yes'm." + +The old lady was bending down, Tom watching, with interest emphasized +by anxiety. Too late he divined her "drift." The handle of the telltale +teaspoon was visible under the bed-valance. Aunt Polly took it, held it +up. Tom winced, and dropped his eyes. Aunt Polly raised him by the +usual handle--his ear--and cracked his head soundly with her thimble. + +"Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?" + +"I done it out of pity for him--because he hadn't any aunt." + +"Hadn't any aunt!--you numskull. What has that got to do with it?" + +"Heaps. Because if he'd had one she'd a burnt him out herself! She'd a +roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a +human!" + +Aunt Polly felt a sudden pang of remorse. This was putting the thing +in a new light; what was cruelty to a cat MIGHT be cruelty to a boy, +too. She began to soften; she felt sorry. Her eyes watered a little, +and she put her hand on Tom's head and said gently: + +"I was meaning for the best, Tom. And, Tom, it DID do you good." + +Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping +through his gravity. + +"I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter. +It done HIM good, too. I never see him get around so since--" + +"Oh, go 'long with you, Tom, before you aggravate me again. And you +try and see if you can't be a good boy, for once, and you needn't take +any more medicine." + +Tom reached school ahead of time. It was noticed that this strange +thing had been occurring every day latterly. And now, as usual of late, +he hung about the gate of the schoolyard instead of playing with his +comrades. He was sick, he said, and he looked it. He tried to seem to +be looking everywhere but whither he really was looking--down the road. +Presently Jeff Thatcher hove in sight, and Tom's face lighted; he gazed +a moment, and then turned sorrowfully away. When Jeff arrived, Tom +accosted him; and "led up" warily to opportunities for remark about +Becky, but the giddy lad never could see the bait. Tom watched and +watched, hoping whenever a frisking frock came in sight, and hating the +owner of it as soon as he saw she was not the right one. At last frocks +ceased to appear, and he dropped hopelessly into the dumps; he entered +the empty schoolhouse and sat down to suffer. Then one more frock +passed in at the gate, and Tom's heart gave a great bound. The next +instant he was out, and "going on" like an Indian; yelling, laughing, +chasing boys, jumping over the fence at risk of life and limb, throwing +handsprings, standing on his head--doing all the heroic things he could +conceive of, and keeping a furtive eye out, all the while, to see if +Becky Thatcher was noticing. But she seemed to be unconscious of it +all; she never looked. Could it be possible that she was not aware that +he was there? He carried his exploits to her immediate vicinity; came +war-whooping around, snatched a boy's cap, hurled it to the roof of the +schoolhouse, broke through a group of boys, tumbling them in every +direction, and fell sprawling, himself, under Becky's nose, almost +upsetting her--and she turned, with her nose in the air, and he heard +her say: "Mf! some people think they're mighty smart--always showing +off!" + +Tom's cheeks burned. He gathered himself up and sneaked off, crushed +and crestfallen. + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +TOM'S mind was made up now. He was gloomy and desperate. He was a +forsaken, friendless boy, he said; nobody loved him; when they found +out what they had driven him to, perhaps they would be sorry; he had +tried to do right and get along, but they would not let him; since +nothing would do them but to be rid of him, let it be so; and let them +blame HIM for the consequences--why shouldn't they? What right had the +friendless to complain? Yes, they had forced him to it at last: he +would lead a life of crime. There was no choice. + +By this time he was far down Meadow Lane, and the bell for school to +"take up" tinkled faintly upon his ear. He sobbed, now, to think he +should never, never hear that old familiar sound any more--it was very +hard, but it was forced on him; since he was driven out into the cold +world, he must submit--but he forgave them. Then the sobs came thick +and fast. + +Just at this point he met his soul's sworn comrade, Joe Harper +--hard-eyed, and with evidently a great and dismal purpose in his heart. +Plainly here were "two souls with but a single thought." Tom, wiping +his eyes with his sleeve, began to blubber out something about a +resolution to escape from hard usage and lack of sympathy at home by +roaming abroad into the great world never to return; and ended by +hoping that Joe would not forget him. + +But it transpired that this was a request which Joe had just been +going to make of Tom, and had come to hunt him up for that purpose. His +mother had whipped him for drinking some cream which he had never +tasted and knew nothing about; it was plain that she was tired of him +and wished him to go; if she felt that way, there was nothing for him +to do but succumb; he hoped she would be happy, and never regret having +driven her poor boy out into the unfeeling world to suffer and die. + +As the two boys walked sorrowing along, they made a new compact to +stand by each other and be brothers and never separate till death +relieved them of their troubles. Then they began to lay their plans. +Joe was for being a hermit, and living on crusts in a remote cave, and +dying, some time, of cold and want and grief; but after listening to +Tom, he conceded that there were some conspicuous advantages about a +life of crime, and so he consented to be a pirate. + +Three miles below St. Petersburg, at a point where the Mississippi +River was a trifle over a mile wide, there was a long, narrow, wooded +island, with a shallow bar at the head of it, and this offered well as +a rendezvous. It was not inhabited; it lay far over toward the further +shore, abreast a dense and almost wholly unpeopled forest. So Jackson's +Island was chosen. Who were to be the subjects of their piracies was a +matter that did not occur to them. Then they hunted up Huckleberry +Finn, and he joined them promptly, for all careers were one to him; he +was indifferent. They presently separated to meet at a lonely spot on +the river-bank two miles above the village at the favorite hour--which +was midnight. There was a small log raft there which they meant to +capture. Each would bring hooks and lines, and such provision as he +could steal in the most dark and mysterious way--as became outlaws. And +before the afternoon was done, they had all managed to enjoy the sweet +glory of spreading the fact that pretty soon the town would "hear +something." All who got this vague hint were cautioned to "be mum and +wait." + +About midnight Tom arrived with a boiled ham and a few trifles, +and stopped in a dense undergrowth on a small bluff overlooking the +meeting-place. It was starlight, and very still. The mighty river lay +like an ocean at rest. Tom listened a moment, but no sound disturbed the +quiet. Then he gave a low, distinct whistle. It was answered from under +the bluff. Tom whistled twice more; these signals were answered in the +same way. Then a guarded voice said: + +"Who goes there?" + +"Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main. Name your names." + +"Huck Finn the Red-Handed, and Joe Harper the Terror of the Seas." Tom +had furnished these titles, from his favorite literature. + +"'Tis well. Give the countersign." + +Two hoarse whispers delivered the same awful word simultaneously to +the brooding night: + +"BLOOD!" + +Then Tom tumbled his ham over the bluff and let himself down after it, +tearing both skin and clothes to some extent in the effort. There was +an easy, comfortable path along the shore under the bluff, but it +lacked the advantages of difficulty and danger so valued by a pirate. + +The Terror of the Seas had brought a side of bacon, and had about worn +himself out with getting it there. Finn the Red-Handed had stolen a +skillet and a quantity of half-cured leaf tobacco, and had also brought +a few corn-cobs to make pipes with. But none of the pirates smoked or +"chewed" but himself. The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main said it +would never do to start without some fire. That was a wise thought; +matches were hardly known there in that day. They saw a fire +smouldering upon a great raft a hundred yards above, and they went +stealthily thither and helped themselves to a chunk. They made an +imposing adventure of it, saying, "Hist!" every now and then, and +suddenly halting with finger on lip; moving with hands on imaginary +dagger-hilts; and giving orders in dismal whispers that if "the foe" +stirred, to "let him have it to the hilt," because "dead men tell no +tales." They knew well enough that the raftsmen were all down at the +village laying in stores or having a spree, but still that was no +excuse for their conducting this thing in an unpiratical way. + +They shoved off, presently, Tom in command, Huck at the after oar and +Joe at the forward. Tom stood amidships, gloomy-browed, and with folded +arms, and gave his orders in a low, stern whisper: + +"Luff, and bring her to the wind!" + +"Aye-aye, sir!" + +"Steady, steady-y-y-y!" + +"Steady it is, sir!" + +"Let her go off a point!" + +"Point it is, sir!" + +As the boys steadily and monotonously drove the raft toward mid-stream +it was no doubt understood that these orders were given only for +"style," and were not intended to mean anything in particular. + +"What sail's she carrying?" + +"Courses, tops'ls, and flying-jib, sir." + +"Send the r'yals up! Lay out aloft, there, half a dozen of ye +--foretopmaststuns'l! Lively, now!" + +"Aye-aye, sir!" + +"Shake out that maintogalans'l! Sheets and braces! NOW my hearties!" + +"Aye-aye, sir!" + +"Hellum-a-lee--hard a port! Stand by to meet her when she comes! Port, +port! NOW, men! With a will! Stead-y-y-y!" + +"Steady it is, sir!" + +The raft drew beyond the middle of the river; the boys pointed her +head right, and then lay on their oars. The river was not high, so +there was not more than a two or three mile current. Hardly a word was +said during the next three-quarters of an hour. Now the raft was +passing before the distant town. Two or three glimmering lights showed +where it lay, peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of +star-gemmed water, unconscious of the tremendous event that was happening. +The Black Avenger stood still with folded arms, "looking his last" upon +the scene of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing +"she" could see him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death +with dauntless heart, going to his doom with a grim smile on his lips. +It was but a small strain on his imagination to remove Jackson's Island +beyond eyeshot of the village, and so he "looked his last" with a +broken and satisfied heart. The other pirates were looking their last, +too; and they all looked so long that they came near letting the +current drift them out of the range of the island. But they discovered +the danger in time, and made shift to avert it. About two o'clock in +the morning the raft grounded on the bar two hundred yards above the +head of the island, and they waded back and forth until they had landed +their freight. Part of the little raft's belongings consisted of an old +sail, and this they spread over a nook in the bushes for a tent to +shelter their provisions; but they themselves would sleep in the open +air in good weather, as became outlaws. + +They built a fire against the side of a great log twenty or thirty +steps within the sombre depths of the forest, and then cooked some +bacon in the frying-pan for supper, and used up half of the corn "pone" +stock they had brought. It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that +wild, free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited +island, far from the haunts of men, and they said they never would +return to civilization. The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw +its ruddy glare upon the pillared tree-trunks of their forest temple, +and upon the varnished foliage and festooning vines. + +When the last crisp slice of bacon was gone, and the last allowance of +corn pone devoured, the boys stretched themselves out on the grass, +filled with contentment. They could have found a cooler place, but they +would not deny themselves such a romantic feature as the roasting +camp-fire. + +"AIN'T it gay?" said Joe. + +"It's NUTS!" said Tom. "What would the boys say if they could see us?" + +"Say? Well, they'd just die to be here--hey, Hucky!" + +"I reckon so," said Huckleberry; "anyways, I'm suited. I don't want +nothing better'n this. I don't ever get enough to eat, gen'ally--and +here they can't come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so." + +"It's just the life for me," said Tom. "You don't have to get up, +mornings, and you don't have to go to school, and wash, and all that +blame foolishness. You see a pirate don't have to do ANYTHING, Joe, +when he's ashore, but a hermit HE has to be praying considerable, and +then he don't have any fun, anyway, all by himself that way." + +"Oh yes, that's so," said Joe, "but I hadn't thought much about it, +you know. I'd a good deal rather be a pirate, now that I've tried it." + +"You see," said Tom, "people don't go much on hermits, nowadays, like +they used to in old times, but a pirate's always respected. And a +hermit's got to sleep on the hardest place he can find, and put +sackcloth and ashes on his head, and stand out in the rain, and--" + +"What does he put sackcloth and ashes on his head for?" inquired Huck. + +"I dono. But they've GOT to do it. Hermits always do. You'd have to do +that if you was a hermit." + +"Dern'd if I would," said Huck. + +"Well, what would you do?" + +"I dono. But I wouldn't do that." + +"Why, Huck, you'd HAVE to. How'd you get around it?" + +"Why, I just wouldn't stand it. I'd run away." + +"Run away! Well, you WOULD be a nice old slouch of a hermit. You'd be +a disgrace." + +The Red-Handed made no response, being better employed. He had +finished gouging out a cob, and now he fitted a weed stem to it, loaded +it with tobacco, and was pressing a coal to the charge and blowing a +cloud of fragrant smoke--he was in the full bloom of luxurious +contentment. The other pirates envied him this majestic vice, and +secretly resolved to acquire it shortly. Presently Huck said: + +"What does pirates have to do?" + +Tom said: + +"Oh, they have just a bully time--take ships and burn them, and get +the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there's +ghosts and things to watch it, and kill everybody in the ships--make +'em walk a plank." + +"And they carry the women to the island," said Joe; "they don't kill +the women." + +"No," assented Tom, "they don't kill the women--they're too noble. And +the women's always beautiful, too. + +"And don't they wear the bulliest clothes! Oh no! All gold and silver +and di'monds," said Joe, with enthusiasm. + +"Who?" said Huck. + +"Why, the pirates." + +Huck scanned his own clothing forlornly. + +"I reckon I ain't dressed fitten for a pirate," said he, with a +regretful pathos in his voice; "but I ain't got none but these." + +But the other boys told him the fine clothes would come fast enough, +after they should have begun their adventures. They made him understand +that his poor rags would do to begin with, though it was customary for +wealthy pirates to start with a proper wardrobe. + +Gradually their talk died out and drowsiness began to steal upon the +eyelids of the little waifs. The pipe dropped from the fingers of the +Red-Handed, and he slept the sleep of the conscience-free and the +weary. The Terror of the Seas and the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main +had more difficulty in getting to sleep. They said their prayers +inwardly, and lying down, since there was nobody there with authority +to make them kneel and recite aloud; in truth, they had a mind not to +say them at all, but they were afraid to proceed to such lengths as +that, lest they might call down a sudden and special thunderbolt from +heaven. Then at once they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge +of sleep--but an intruder came, now, that would not "down." It was +conscience. They began to feel a vague fear that they had been doing +wrong to run away; and next they thought of the stolen meat, and then +the real torture came. They tried to argue it away by reminding +conscience that they had purloined sweetmeats and apples scores of +times; but conscience was not to be appeased by such thin +plausibilities; it seemed to them, in the end, that there was no +getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only +"hooking," while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain +simple stealing--and there was a command against that in the Bible. So +they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, +their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing. +Then conscience granted a truce, and these curiously inconsistent +pirates fell peacefully to sleep. + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +WHEN Tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. He sat up and +rubbed his eyes and looked around. Then he comprehended. It was the +cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in +the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; +not a sound obtruded upon great Nature's meditation. Beaded dewdrops +stood upon the leaves and grasses. A white layer of ashes covered the +fire, and a thin blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air. Joe +and Huck still slept. + +Now, far away in the woods a bird called; another answered; presently +the hammering of a woodpecker was heard. Gradually the cool dim gray of +the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life +manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going to +work unfolded itself to the musing boy. A little green worm came +crawling over a dewy leaf, lifting two-thirds of his body into the air +from time to time and "sniffing around," then proceeding again--for he +was measuring, Tom said; and when the worm approached him, of its own +accord, he sat as still as a stone, with his hopes rising and falling, +by turns, as the creature still came toward him or seemed inclined to +go elsewhere; and when at last it considered a painful moment with its +curved body in the air and then came decisively down upon Tom's leg and +began a journey over him, his whole heart was glad--for that meant that +he was going to have a new suit of clothes--without the shadow of a +doubt a gaudy piratical uniform. Now a procession of ants appeared, +from nowhere in particular, and went about their labors; one struggled +manfully by with a dead spider five times as big as itself in its arms, +and lugged it straight up a tree-trunk. A brown spotted lady-bug +climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to +it and said, "Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, +your children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about it +--which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was +credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its +simplicity more than once. A tumblebug came next, heaving sturdily at +its ball, and Tom touched the creature, to see it shut its legs against +its body and pretend to be dead. The birds were fairly rioting by this +time. A catbird, the Northern mocker, lit in a tree over Tom's head, +and trilled out her imitations of her neighbors in a rapture of +enjoyment; then a shrill jay swept down, a flash of blue flame, and +stopped on a twig almost within the boy's reach, cocked his head to one +side and eyed the strangers with a consuming curiosity; a gray squirrel +and a big fellow of the "fox" kind came skurrying along, sitting up at +intervals to inspect and chatter at the boys, for the wild things had +probably never seen a human being before and scarcely knew whether to +be afraid or not. All Nature was wide awake and stirring, now; long +lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense foliage far and near, +and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the scene. + +Tom stirred up the other pirates and they all clattered away with a +shout, and in a minute or two were stripped and chasing after and +tumbling over each other in the shallow limpid water of the white +sandbar. They felt no longing for the little village sleeping in the +distance beyond the majestic waste of water. A vagrant current or a +slight rise in the river had carried off their raft, but this only +gratified them, since its going was something like burning the bridge +between them and civilization. + +They came back to camp wonderfully refreshed, glad-hearted, and +ravenous; and they soon had the camp-fire blazing up again. Huck found +a spring of clear cold water close by, and the boys made cups of broad +oak or hickory leaves, and felt that water, sweetened with such a +wildwood charm as that, would be a good enough substitute for coffee. +While Joe was slicing bacon for breakfast, Tom and Huck asked him to +hold on a minute; they stepped to a promising nook in the river-bank +and threw in their lines; almost immediately they had reward. Joe had +not had time to get impatient before they were back again with some +handsome bass, a couple of sun-perch and a small catfish--provisions +enough for quite a family. They fried the fish with the bacon, and were +astonished; for no fish had ever seemed so delicious before. They did +not know that the quicker a fresh-water fish is on the fire after he is +caught the better he is; and they reflected little upon what a sauce +open-air sleeping, open-air exercise, bathing, and a large ingredient +of hunger make, too. + +They lay around in the shade, after breakfast, while Huck had a smoke, +and then went off through the woods on an exploring expedition. They +tramped gayly along, over decaying logs, through tangled underbrush, +among solemn monarchs of the forest, hung from their crowns to the +ground with a drooping regalia of grape-vines. Now and then they came +upon snug nooks carpeted with grass and jeweled with flowers. + +They found plenty of things to be delighted with, but nothing to be +astonished at. They discovered that the island was about three miles +long and a quarter of a mile wide, and that the shore it lay closest to +was only separated from it by a narrow channel hardly two hundred yards +wide. They took a swim about every hour, so it was close upon the +middle of the afternoon when they got back to camp. They were too +hungry to stop to fish, but they fared sumptuously upon cold ham, and +then threw themselves down in the shade to talk. But the talk soon +began to drag, and then died. The stillness, the solemnity that brooded +in the woods, and the sense of loneliness, began to tell upon the +spirits of the boys. They fell to thinking. A sort of undefined longing +crept upon them. This took dim shape, presently--it was budding +homesickness. Even Finn the Red-Handed was dreaming of his doorsteps +and empty hogsheads. But they were all ashamed of their weakness, and +none was brave enough to speak his thought. + +For some time, now, the boys had been dully conscious of a peculiar +sound in the distance, just as one sometimes is of the ticking of a +clock which he takes no distinct note of. But now this mysterious sound +became more pronounced, and forced a recognition. The boys started, +glanced at each other, and then each assumed a listening attitude. +There was a long silence, profound and unbroken; then a deep, sullen +boom came floating down out of the distance. + +"What is it!" exclaimed Joe, under his breath. + +"I wonder," said Tom in a whisper. + +"'Tain't thunder," said Huckleberry, in an awed tone, "becuz thunder--" + +"Hark!" said Tom. "Listen--don't talk." + +They waited a time that seemed an age, and then the same muffled boom +troubled the solemn hush. + +"Let's go and see." + +They sprang to their feet and hurried to the shore toward the town. +They parted the bushes on the bank and peered out over the water. The +little steam ferryboat was about a mile below the village, drifting +with the current. Her broad deck seemed crowded with people. There were +a great many skiffs rowing about or floating with the stream in the +neighborhood of the ferryboat, but the boys could not determine what +the men in them were doing. Presently a great jet of white smoke burst +from the ferryboat's side, and as it expanded and rose in a lazy cloud, +that same dull throb of sound was borne to the listeners again. + +"I know now!" exclaimed Tom; "somebody's drownded!" + +"That's it!" said Huck; "they done that last summer, when Bill Turner +got drownded; they shoot a cannon over the water, and that makes him +come up to the top. Yes, and they take loaves of bread and put +quicksilver in 'em and set 'em afloat, and wherever there's anybody +that's drownded, they'll float right there and stop." + +"Yes, I've heard about that," said Joe. "I wonder what makes the bread +do that." + +"Oh, it ain't the bread, so much," said Tom; "I reckon it's mostly +what they SAY over it before they start it out." + +"But they don't say anything over it," said Huck. "I've seen 'em and +they don't." + +"Well, that's funny," said Tom. "But maybe they say it to themselves. +Of COURSE they do. Anybody might know that." + +The other boys agreed that there was reason in what Tom said, because +an ignorant lump of bread, uninstructed by an incantation, could not be +expected to act very intelligently when set upon an errand of such +gravity. + +"By jings, I wish I was over there, now," said Joe. + +"I do too" said Huck "I'd give heaps to know who it is." + +The boys still listened and watched. Presently a revealing thought +flashed through Tom's mind, and he exclaimed: + +"Boys, I know who's drownded--it's us!" + +They felt like heroes in an instant. Here was a gorgeous triumph; they +were missed; they were mourned; hearts were breaking on their account; +tears were being shed; accusing memories of unkindness to these poor +lost lads were rising up, and unavailing regrets and remorse were being +indulged; and best of all, the departed were the talk of the whole +town, and the envy of all the boys, as far as this dazzling notoriety +was concerned. This was fine. It was worth while to be a pirate, after +all. + +As twilight drew on, the ferryboat went back to her accustomed +business and the skiffs disappeared. The pirates returned to camp. They +were jubilant with vanity over their new grandeur and the illustrious +trouble they were making. They caught fish, cooked supper and ate it, +and then fell to guessing at what the village was thinking and saying +about them; and the pictures they drew of the public distress on their +account were gratifying to look upon--from their point of view. But +when the shadows of night closed them in, they gradually ceased to +talk, and sat gazing into the fire, with their minds evidently +wandering elsewhere. The excitement was gone, now, and Tom and Joe +could not keep back thoughts of certain persons at home who were not +enjoying this fine frolic as much as they were. Misgivings came; they +grew troubled and unhappy; a sigh or two escaped, unawares. By and by +Joe timidly ventured upon a roundabout "feeler" as to how the others +might look upon a return to civilization--not right now, but-- + +Tom withered him with derision! Huck, being uncommitted as yet, joined +in with Tom, and the waverer quickly "explained," and was glad to get +out of the scrape with as little taint of chicken-hearted homesickness +clinging to his garments as he could. Mutiny was effectually laid to +rest for the moment. + +As the night deepened, Huck began to nod, and presently to snore. Joe +followed next. Tom lay upon his elbow motionless, for some time, +watching the two intently. At last he got up cautiously, on his knees, +and went searching among the grass and the flickering reflections flung +by the camp-fire. He picked up and inspected several large +semi-cylinders of the thin white bark of a sycamore, and finally chose +two which seemed to suit him. Then he knelt by the fire and painfully +wrote something upon each of these with his "red keel"; one he rolled up +and put in his jacket pocket, and the other he put in Joe's hat and +removed it to a little distance from the owner. And he also put into the +hat certain schoolboy treasures of almost inestimable value--among them +a lump of chalk, an India-rubber ball, three fishhooks, and one of that +kind of marbles known as a "sure 'nough crystal." Then he tiptoed his +way cautiously among the trees till he felt that he was out of hearing, +and straightway broke into a keen run in the direction of the sandbar. + + + +CHAPTER XV + +A FEW minutes later Tom was in the shoal water of the bar, wading +toward the Illinois shore. Before the depth reached his middle he was +half-way over; the current would permit no more wading, now, so he +struck out confidently to swim the remaining hundred yards. He swam +quartering upstream, but still was swept downward rather faster than he +had expected. However, he reached the shore finally, and drifted along +till he found a low place and drew himself out. He put his hand on his +jacket pocket, found his piece of bark safe, and then struck through +the woods, following the shore, with streaming garments. Shortly before +ten o'clock he came out into an open place opposite the village, and +saw the ferryboat lying in the shadow of the trees and the high bank. +Everything was quiet under the blinking stars. He crept down the bank, +watching with all his eyes, slipped into the water, swam three or four +strokes and climbed into the skiff that did "yawl" duty at the boat's +stern. He laid himself down under the thwarts and waited, panting. + +Presently the cracked bell tapped and a voice gave the order to "cast +off." A minute or two later the skiff's head was standing high up, +against the boat's swell, and the voyage was begun. Tom felt happy in +his success, for he knew it was the boat's last trip for the night. At +the end of a long twelve or fifteen minutes the wheels stopped, and Tom +slipped overboard and swam ashore in the dusk, landing fifty yards +downstream, out of danger of possible stragglers. + +He flew along unfrequented alleys, and shortly found himself at his +aunt's back fence. He climbed over, approached the "ell," and looked in +at the sitting-room window, for a light was burning there. There sat +Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, and Joe Harper's mother, grouped together, +talking. They were by the bed, and the bed was between them and the +door. Tom went to the door and began to softly lift the latch; then he +pressed gently and the door yielded a crack; he continued pushing +cautiously, and quaking every time it creaked, till he judged he might +squeeze through on his knees; so he put his head through and began, +warily. + +"What makes the candle blow so?" said Aunt Polly. Tom hurried up. +"Why, that door's open, I believe. Why, of course it is. No end of +strange things now. Go 'long and shut it, Sid." + +Tom disappeared under the bed just in time. He lay and "breathed" +himself for a time, and then crept to where he could almost touch his +aunt's foot. + +"But as I was saying," said Aunt Polly, "he warn't BAD, so to say +--only mischEEvous. Only just giddy, and harum-scarum, you know. He +warn't any more responsible than a colt. HE never meant any harm, and +he was the best-hearted boy that ever was"--and she began to cry. + +"It was just so with my Joe--always full of his devilment, and up to +every kind of mischief, but he was just as unselfish and kind as he +could be--and laws bless me, to think I went and whipped him for taking +that cream, never once recollecting that I throwed it out myself +because it was sour, and I never to see him again in this world, never, +never, never, poor abused boy!" And Mrs. Harper sobbed as if her heart +would break. + +"I hope Tom's better off where he is," said Sid, "but if he'd been +better in some ways--" + +"SID!" Tom felt the glare of the old lady's eye, though he could not +see it. "Not a word against my Tom, now that he's gone! God'll take +care of HIM--never you trouble YOURself, sir! Oh, Mrs. Harper, I don't +know how to give him up! I don't know how to give him up! He was such a +comfort to me, although he tormented my old heart out of me, 'most." + +"The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away--Blessed be the name of +the Lord! But it's so hard--Oh, it's so hard! Only last Saturday my +Joe busted a firecracker right under my nose and I knocked him +sprawling. Little did I know then, how soon--Oh, if it was to do over +again I'd hug him and bless him for it." + +"Yes, yes, yes, I know just how you feel, Mrs. Harper, I know just +exactly how you feel. No longer ago than yesterday noon, my Tom took +and filled the cat full of Pain-killer, and I did think the cretur +would tear the house down. And God forgive me, I cracked Tom's head +with my thimble, poor boy, poor dead boy. But he's out of all his +troubles now. And the last words I ever heard him say was to reproach--" + +But this memory was too much for the old lady, and she broke entirely +down. Tom was snuffling, now, himself--and more in pity of himself than +anybody else. He could hear Mary crying, and putting in a kindly word +for him from time to time. He began to have a nobler opinion of himself +than ever before. Still, he was sufficiently touched by his aunt's +grief to long to rush out from under the bed and overwhelm her with +joy--and the theatrical gorgeousness of the thing appealed strongly to +his nature, too, but he resisted and lay still. + +He went on listening, and gathered by odds and ends that it was +conjectured at first that the boys had got drowned while taking a swim; +then the small raft had been missed; next, certain boys said the +missing lads had promised that the village should "hear something" +soon; the wise-heads had "put this and that together" and decided that +the lads had gone off on that raft and would turn up at the next town +below, presently; but toward noon the raft had been found, lodged +against the Missouri shore some five or six miles below the village +--and then hope perished; they must be drowned, else hunger would have +driven them home by nightfall if not sooner. It was believed that the +search for the bodies had been a fruitless effort merely because the +drowning must have occurred in mid-channel, since the boys, being good +swimmers, would otherwise have escaped to shore. This was Wednesday +night. If the bodies continued missing until Sunday, all hope would be +given over, and the funerals would be preached on that morning. Tom +shuddered. + +Mrs. Harper gave a sobbing good-night and turned to go. Then with a +mutual impulse the two bereaved women flung themselves into each +other's arms and had a good, consoling cry, and then parted. Aunt Polly +was tender far beyond her wont, in her good-night to Sid and Mary. Sid +snuffled a bit and Mary went off crying with all her heart. + +Aunt Polly knelt down and prayed for Tom so touchingly, so +appealingly, and with such measureless love in her words and her old +trembling voice, that he was weltering in tears again, long before she +was through. + +He had to keep still long after she went to bed, for she kept making +broken-hearted ejaculations from time to time, tossing unrestfully, and +turning over. But at last she was still, only moaning a little in her +sleep. Now the boy stole out, rose gradually by the bedside, shaded the +candle-light with his hand, and stood regarding her. His heart was full +of pity for her. He took out his sycamore scroll and placed it by the +candle. But something occurred to him, and he lingered considering. His +face lighted with a happy solution of his thought; he put the bark +hastily in his pocket. Then he bent over and kissed the faded lips, and +straightway made his stealthy exit, latching the door behind him. + +He threaded his way back to the ferry landing, found nobody at large +there, and walked boldly on board the boat, for he knew she was +tenantless except that there was a watchman, who always turned in and +slept like a graven image. He untied the skiff at the stern, slipped +into it, and was soon rowing cautiously upstream. When he had pulled a +mile above the village, he started quartering across and bent himself +stoutly to his work. He hit the landing on the other side neatly, for +this was a familiar bit of work to him. He was moved to capture the +skiff, arguing that it might be considered a ship and therefore +legitimate prey for a pirate, but he knew a thorough search would be +made for it and that might end in revelations. So he stepped ashore and +entered the woods. + +He sat down and took a long rest, torturing himself meanwhile to keep +awake, and then started warily down the home-stretch. The night was far +spent. It was broad daylight before he found himself fairly abreast the +island bar. He rested again until the sun was well up and gilding the +great river with its splendor, and then he plunged into the stream. A +little later he paused, dripping, upon the threshold of the camp, and +heard Joe say: + +"No, Tom's true-blue, Huck, and he'll come back. He won't desert. He +knows that would be a disgrace to a pirate, and Tom's too proud for +that sort of thing. He's up to something or other. Now I wonder what?" + +"Well, the things is ours, anyway, ain't they?" + +Pretty near, but not yet, Huck. The writing says they are if he ain't +back here to breakfast." + +"Which he is!" exclaimed Tom, with fine dramatic effect, stepping +grandly into camp. + +A sumptuous breakfast of bacon and fish was shortly provided, and as +the boys set to work upon it, Tom recounted (and adorned) his +adventures. They were a vain and boastful company of heroes when the +tale was done. Then Tom hid himself away in a shady nook to sleep till +noon, and the other pirates got ready to fish and explore. + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +AFTER dinner all the gang turned out to hunt for turtle eggs on the +bar. They went about poking sticks into the sand, and when they found a +soft place they went down on their knees and dug with their hands. +Sometimes they would take fifty or sixty eggs out of one hole. They +were perfectly round white things a trifle smaller than an English +walnut. They had a famous fried-egg feast that night, and another on +Friday morning. + +After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and +chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until +they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal +water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their +legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun. +And now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each +other's faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with +averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays, and finally gripping and +struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all +went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing, +sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath at one and the same time. + +When they were well exhausted, they would run out and sprawl on the +dry, hot sand, and lie there and cover themselves up with it, and by +and by break for the water again and go through the original +performance once more. Finally it occurred to them that their naked +skin represented flesh-colored "tights" very fairly; so they drew a +ring in the sand and had a circus--with three clowns in it, for none +would yield this proudest post to his neighbor. + +Next they got their marbles and played "knucks" and "ring-taw" and +"keeps" till that amusement grew stale. Then Joe and Huck had another +swim, but Tom would not venture, because he found that in kicking off +his trousers he had kicked his string of rattlesnake rattles off his +ankle, and he wondered how he had escaped cramp so long without the +protection of this mysterious charm. He did not venture again until he +had found it, and by that time the other boys were tired and ready to +rest. They gradually wandered apart, dropped into the "dumps," and fell +to gazing longingly across the wide river to where the village lay +drowsing in the sun. Tom found himself writing "BECKY" in the sand with +his big toe; he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his +weakness. But he wrote it again, nevertheless; he could not help it. He +erased it once more and then took himself out of temptation by driving +the other boys together and joining them. + +But Joe's spirits had gone down almost beyond resurrection. He was so +homesick that he could hardly endure the misery of it. The tears lay +very near the surface. Huck was melancholy, too. Tom was downhearted, +but tried hard not to show it. He had a secret which he was not ready +to tell, yet, but if this mutinous depression was not broken up soon, +he would have to bring it out. He said, with a great show of +cheerfulness: + +"I bet there's been pirates on this island before, boys. We'll explore +it again. They've hid treasures here somewhere. How'd you feel to light +on a rotten chest full of gold and silver--hey?" + +But it roused only faint enthusiasm, which faded out, with no reply. +Tom tried one or two other seductions; but they failed, too. It was +discouraging work. Joe sat poking up the sand with a stick and looking +very gloomy. Finally he said: + +"Oh, boys, let's give it up. I want to go home. It's so lonesome." + +"Oh no, Joe, you'll feel better by and by," said Tom. "Just think of +the fishing that's here." + +"I don't care for fishing. I want to go home." + +"But, Joe, there ain't such another swimming-place anywhere." + +"Swimming's no good. I don't seem to care for it, somehow, when there +ain't anybody to say I sha'n't go in. I mean to go home." + +"Oh, shucks! Baby! You want to see your mother, I reckon." + +"Yes, I DO want to see my mother--and you would, too, if you had one. +I ain't any more baby than you are." And Joe snuffled a little. + +"Well, we'll let the cry-baby go home to his mother, won't we, Huck? +Poor thing--does it want to see its mother? And so it shall. You like +it here, don't you, Huck? We'll stay, won't we?" + +Huck said, "Y-e-s"--without any heart in it. + +"I'll never speak to you again as long as I live," said Joe, rising. +"There now!" And he moved moodily away and began to dress himself. + +"Who cares!" said Tom. "Nobody wants you to. Go 'long home and get +laughed at. Oh, you're a nice pirate. Huck and me ain't cry-babies. +We'll stay, won't we, Huck? Let him go if he wants to. I reckon we can +get along without him, per'aps." + +But Tom was uneasy, nevertheless, and was alarmed to see Joe go +sullenly on with his dressing. And then it was discomforting to see +Huck eying Joe's preparations so wistfully, and keeping up such an +ominous silence. Presently, without a parting word, Joe began to wade +off toward the Illinois shore. Tom's heart began to sink. He glanced at +Huck. Huck could not bear the look, and dropped his eyes. Then he said: + +"I want to go, too, Tom. It was getting so lonesome anyway, and now +it'll be worse. Let's us go, too, Tom." + +"I won't! You can all go, if you want to. I mean to stay." + +"Tom, I better go." + +"Well, go 'long--who's hendering you." + +Huck began to pick up his scattered clothes. He said: + +"Tom, I wisht you'd come, too. Now you think it over. We'll wait for +you when we get to shore." + +"Well, you'll wait a blame long time, that's all." + +Huck started sorrowfully away, and Tom stood looking after him, with a +strong desire tugging at his heart to yield his pride and go along too. +He hoped the boys would stop, but they still waded slowly on. It +suddenly dawned on Tom that it was become very lonely and still. He +made one final struggle with his pride, and then darted after his +comrades, yelling: + +"Wait! Wait! I want to tell you something!" + +They presently stopped and turned around. When he got to where they +were, he began unfolding his secret, and they listened moodily till at +last they saw the "point" he was driving at, and then they set up a +war-whoop of applause and said it was "splendid!" and said if he had +told them at first, they wouldn't have started away. He made a plausible +excuse; but his real reason had been the fear that not even the secret +would keep them with him any very great length of time, and so he had +meant to hold it in reserve as a last seduction. + +The lads came gayly back and went at their sports again with a will, +chattering all the time about Tom's stupendous plan and admiring the +genius of it. After a dainty egg and fish dinner, Tom said he wanted to +learn to smoke, now. Joe caught at the idea and said he would like to +try, too. So Huck made pipes and filled them. These novices had never +smoked anything before but cigars made of grape-vine, and they "bit" +the tongue, and were not considered manly anyway. + +Now they stretched themselves out on their elbows and began to puff, +charily, and with slender confidence. The smoke had an unpleasant +taste, and they gagged a little, but Tom said: + +"Why, it's just as easy! If I'd a knowed this was all, I'd a learnt +long ago." + +"So would I," said Joe. "It's just nothing." + +"Why, many a time I've looked at people smoking, and thought well I +wish I could do that; but I never thought I could," said Tom. + +"That's just the way with me, hain't it, Huck? You've heard me talk +just that way--haven't you, Huck? I'll leave it to Huck if I haven't." + +"Yes--heaps of times," said Huck. + +"Well, I have too," said Tom; "oh, hundreds of times. Once down by the +slaughter-house. Don't you remember, Huck? Bob Tanner was there, and +Johnny Miller, and Jeff Thatcher, when I said it. Don't you remember, +Huck, 'bout me saying that?" + +"Yes, that's so," said Huck. "That was the day after I lost a white +alley. No, 'twas the day before." + +"There--I told you so," said Tom. "Huck recollects it." + +"I bleeve I could smoke this pipe all day," said Joe. "I don't feel +sick." + +"Neither do I," said Tom. "I could smoke it all day. But I bet you +Jeff Thatcher couldn't." + +"Jeff Thatcher! Why, he'd keel over just with two draws. Just let him +try it once. HE'D see!" + +"I bet he would. And Johnny Miller--I wish could see Johnny Miller +tackle it once." + +"Oh, don't I!" said Joe. "Why, I bet you Johnny Miller couldn't any +more do this than nothing. Just one little snifter would fetch HIM." + +"'Deed it would, Joe. Say--I wish the boys could see us now." + +"So do I." + +"Say--boys, don't say anything about it, and some time when they're +around, I'll come up to you and say, 'Joe, got a pipe? I want a smoke.' +And you'll say, kind of careless like, as if it warn't anything, you'll +say, 'Yes, I got my OLD pipe, and another one, but my tobacker ain't +very good.' And I'll say, 'Oh, that's all right, if it's STRONG +enough.' And then you'll out with the pipes, and we'll light up just as +ca'm, and then just see 'em look!" + +"By jings, that'll be gay, Tom! I wish it was NOW!" + +"So do I! And when we tell 'em we learned when we was off pirating, +won't they wish they'd been along?" + +"Oh, I reckon not! I'll just BET they will!" + +So the talk ran on. But presently it began to flag a trifle, and grow +disjointed. The silences widened; the expectoration marvellously +increased. Every pore inside the boys' cheeks became a spouting +fountain; they could scarcely bail out the cellars under their tongues +fast enough to prevent an inundation; little overflowings down their +throats occurred in spite of all they could do, and sudden retchings +followed every time. Both boys were looking very pale and miserable, +now. Joe's pipe dropped from his nerveless fingers. Tom's followed. +Both fountains were going furiously and both pumps bailing with might +and main. Joe said feebly: + +"I've lost my knife. I reckon I better go and find it." + +Tom said, with quivering lips and halting utterance: + +"I'll help you. You go over that way and I'll hunt around by the +spring. No, you needn't come, Huck--we can find it." + +So Huck sat down again, and waited an hour. Then he found it lonesome, +and went to find his comrades. They were wide apart in the woods, both +very pale, both fast asleep. But something informed him that if they +had had any trouble they had got rid of it. + +They were not talkative at supper that night. They had a humble look, +and when Huck prepared his pipe after the meal and was going to prepare +theirs, they said no, they were not feeling very well--something they +ate at dinner had disagreed with them. + +About midnight Joe awoke, and called the boys. There was a brooding +oppressiveness in the air that seemed to bode something. The boys +huddled themselves together and sought the friendly companionship of +the fire, though the dull dead heat of the breathless atmosphere was +stifling. They sat still, intent and waiting. The solemn hush +continued. Beyond the light of the fire everything was swallowed up in +the blackness of darkness. Presently there came a quivering glow that +vaguely revealed the foliage for a moment and then vanished. By and by +another came, a little stronger. Then another. Then a faint moan came +sighing through the branches of the forest and the boys felt a fleeting +breath upon their cheeks, and shuddered with the fancy that the Spirit +of the Night had gone by. There was a pause. Now a weird flash turned +night into day and showed every little grass-blade, separate and +distinct, that grew about their feet. And it showed three white, +startled faces, too. A deep peal of thunder went rolling and tumbling +down the heavens and lost itself in sullen rumblings in the distance. A +sweep of chilly air passed by, rustling all the leaves and snowing the +flaky ashes broadcast about the fire. Another fierce glare lit up the +forest and an instant crash followed that seemed to rend the tree-tops +right over the boys' heads. They clung together in terror, in the thick +gloom that followed. A few big rain-drops fell pattering upon the +leaves. + +"Quick! boys, go for the tent!" exclaimed Tom. + +They sprang away, stumbling over roots and among vines in the dark, no +two plunging in the same direction. A furious blast roared through the +trees, making everything sing as it went. One blinding flash after +another came, and peal on peal of deafening thunder. And now a +drenching rain poured down and the rising hurricane drove it in sheets +along the ground. The boys cried out to each other, but the roaring +wind and the booming thunder-blasts drowned their voices utterly. +However, one by one they straggled in at last and took shelter under +the tent, cold, scared, and streaming with water; but to have company +in misery seemed something to be grateful for. They could not talk, the +old sail flapped so furiously, even if the other noises would have +allowed them. The tempest rose higher and higher, and presently the +sail tore loose from its fastenings and went winging away on the blast. +The boys seized each others' hands and fled, with many tumblings and +bruises, to the shelter of a great oak that stood upon the river-bank. +Now the battle was at its highest. Under the ceaseless conflagration of +lightning that flamed in the skies, everything below stood out in +clean-cut and shadowless distinctness: the bending trees, the billowy +river, white with foam, the driving spray of spume-flakes, the dim +outlines of the high bluffs on the other side, glimpsed through the +drifting cloud-rack and the slanting veil of rain. Every little while +some giant tree yielded the fight and fell crashing through the younger +growth; and the unflagging thunder-peals came now in ear-splitting +explosive bursts, keen and sharp, and unspeakably appalling. The storm +culminated in one matchless effort that seemed likely to tear the island +to pieces, burn it up, drown it to the tree-tops, blow it away, and +deafen every creature in it, all at one and the same moment. It was a +wild night for homeless young heads to be out in. + +But at last the battle was done, and the forces retired with weaker +and weaker threatenings and grumblings, and peace resumed her sway. The +boys went back to camp, a good deal awed; but they found there was +still something to be thankful for, because the great sycamore, the +shelter of their beds, was a ruin, now, blasted by the lightnings, and +they were not under it when the catastrophe happened. + +Everything in camp was drenched, the camp-fire as well; for they were +but heedless lads, like their generation, and had made no provision +against rain. Here was matter for dismay, for they were soaked through +and chilled. They were eloquent in their distress; but they presently +discovered that the fire had eaten so far up under the great log it had +been built against (where it curved upward and separated itself from +the ground), that a handbreadth or so of it had escaped wetting; so +they patiently wrought until, with shreds and bark gathered from the +under sides of sheltered logs, they coaxed the fire to burn again. Then +they piled on great dead boughs till they had a roaring furnace, and +were glad-hearted once more. They dried their boiled ham and had a +feast, and after that they sat by the fire and expanded and glorified +their midnight adventure until morning, for there was not a dry spot to +sleep on, anywhere around. + +As the sun began to steal in upon the boys, drowsiness came over them, +and they went out on the sandbar and lay down to sleep. They got +scorched out by and by, and drearily set about getting breakfast. After +the meal they felt rusty, and stiff-jointed, and a little homesick once +more. Tom saw the signs, and fell to cheering up the pirates as well as +he could. But they cared nothing for marbles, or circus, or swimming, +or anything. He reminded them of the imposing secret, and raised a ray +of cheer. While it lasted, he got them interested in a new device. This +was to knock off being pirates, for a while, and be Indians for a +change. They were attracted by this idea; so it was not long before +they were stripped, and striped from head to heel with black mud, like +so many zebras--all of them chiefs, of course--and then they went +tearing through the woods to attack an English settlement. + +By and by they separated into three hostile tribes, and darted upon +each other from ambush with dreadful war-whoops, and killed and scalped +each other by thousands. It was a gory day. Consequently it was an +extremely satisfactory one. + +They assembled in camp toward supper-time, hungry and happy; but now a +difficulty arose--hostile Indians could not break the bread of +hospitality together without first making peace, and this was a simple +impossibility without smoking a pipe of peace. There was no other +process that ever they had heard of. Two of the savages almost wished +they had remained pirates. However, there was no other way; so with +such show of cheerfulness as they could muster they called for the pipe +and took their whiff as it passed, in due form. + +And behold, they were glad they had gone into savagery, for they had +gained something; they found that they could now smoke a little without +having to go and hunt for a lost knife; they did not get sick enough to +be seriously uncomfortable. They were not likely to fool away this high +promise for lack of effort. No, they practised cautiously, after +supper, with right fair success, and so they spent a jubilant evening. +They were prouder and happier in their new acquirement than they would +have been in the scalping and skinning of the Six Nations. We will +leave them to smoke and chatter and brag, since we have no further use +for them at present. + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +BUT there was no hilarity in the little town that same tranquil +Saturday afternoon. The Harpers, and Aunt Polly's family, were being +put into mourning, with great grief and many tears. An unusual quiet +possessed the village, although it was ordinarily quiet enough, in all +conscience. The villagers conducted their concerns with an absent air, +and talked little; but they sighed often. The Saturday holiday seemed a +burden to the children. They had no heart in their sports, and +gradually gave them up. + +In the afternoon Becky Thatcher found herself moping about the +deserted schoolhouse yard, and feeling very melancholy. But she found +nothing there to comfort her. She soliloquized: + +"Oh, if I only had a brass andiron-knob again! But I haven't got +anything now to remember him by." And she choked back a little sob. + +Presently she stopped, and said to herself: + +"It was right here. Oh, if it was to do over again, I wouldn't say +that--I wouldn't say it for the whole world. But he's gone now; I'll +never, never, never see him any more." + +This thought broke her down, and she wandered away, with tears rolling +down her cheeks. Then quite a group of boys and girls--playmates of +Tom's and Joe's--came by, and stood looking over the paling fence and +talking in reverent tones of how Tom did so-and-so the last time they +saw him, and how Joe said this and that small trifle (pregnant with +awful prophecy, as they could easily see now!)--and each speaker +pointed out the exact spot where the lost lads stood at the time, and +then added something like "and I was a-standing just so--just as I am +now, and as if you was him--I was as close as that--and he smiled, just +this way--and then something seemed to go all over me, like--awful, you +know--and I never thought what it meant, of course, but I can see now!" + +Then there was a dispute about who saw the dead boys last in life, and +many claimed that dismal distinction, and offered evidences, more or +less tampered with by the witness; and when it was ultimately decided +who DID see the departed last, and exchanged the last words with them, +the lucky parties took upon themselves a sort of sacred importance, and +were gaped at and envied by all the rest. One poor chap, who had no +other grandeur to offer, said with tolerably manifest pride in the +remembrance: + +"Well, Tom Sawyer he licked me once." + +But that bid for glory was a failure. Most of the boys could say that, +and so that cheapened the distinction too much. The group loitered +away, still recalling memories of the lost heroes, in awed voices. + +When the Sunday-school hour was finished, the next morning, the bell +began to toll, instead of ringing in the usual way. It was a very still +Sabbath, and the mournful sound seemed in keeping with the musing hush +that lay upon nature. The villagers began to gather, loitering a moment +in the vestibule to converse in whispers about the sad event. But there +was no whispering in the house; only the funereal rustling of dresses +as the women gathered to their seats disturbed the silence there. None +could remember when the little church had been so full before. There +was finally a waiting pause, an expectant dumbness, and then Aunt Polly +entered, followed by Sid and Mary, and they by the Harper family, all +in deep black, and the whole congregation, the old minister as well, +rose reverently and stood until the mourners were seated in the front +pew. There was another communing silence, broken at intervals by +muffled sobs, and then the minister spread his hands abroad and prayed. +A moving hymn was sung, and the text followed: "I am the Resurrection +and the Life." + +As the service proceeded, the clergyman drew such pictures of the +graces, the winning ways, and the rare promise of the lost lads that +every soul there, thinking he recognized these pictures, felt a pang in +remembering that he had persistently blinded himself to them always +before, and had as persistently seen only faults and flaws in the poor +boys. The minister related many a touching incident in the lives of the +departed, too, which illustrated their sweet, generous natures, and the +people could easily see, now, how noble and beautiful those episodes +were, and remembered with grief that at the time they occurred they had +seemed rank rascalities, well deserving of the cowhide. The +congregation became more and more moved, as the pathetic tale went on, +till at last the whole company broke down and joined the weeping +mourners in a chorus of anguished sobs, the preacher himself giving way +to his feelings, and crying in the pulpit. + +There was a rustle in the gallery, which nobody noticed; a moment +later the church door creaked; the minister raised his streaming eyes +above his handkerchief, and stood transfixed! First one and then +another pair of eyes followed the minister's, and then almost with one +impulse the congregation rose and stared while the three dead boys came +marching up the aisle, Tom in the lead, Joe next, and Huck, a ruin of +drooping rags, sneaking sheepishly in the rear! They had been hid in +the unused gallery listening to their own funeral sermon! + +Aunt Polly, Mary, and the Harpers threw themselves upon their restored +ones, smothered them with kisses and poured out thanksgivings, while +poor Huck stood abashed and uncomfortable, not knowing exactly what to +do or where to hide from so many unwelcoming eyes. He wavered, and +started to slink away, but Tom seized him and said: + +"Aunt Polly, it ain't fair. Somebody's got to be glad to see Huck." + +"And so they shall. I'm glad to see him, poor motherless thing!" And +the loving attentions Aunt Polly lavished upon him were the one thing +capable of making him more uncomfortable than he was before. + +Suddenly the minister shouted at the top of his voice: "Praise God +from whom all blessings flow--SING!--and put your hearts in it!" + +And they did. Old Hundred swelled up with a triumphant burst, and +while it shook the rafters Tom Sawyer the Pirate looked around upon the +envying juveniles about him and confessed in his heart that this was +the proudest moment of his life. + +As the "sold" congregation trooped out they said they would almost be +willing to be made ridiculous again to hear Old Hundred sung like that +once more. + +Tom got more cuffs and kisses that day--according to Aunt Polly's +varying moods--than he had earned before in a year; and he hardly knew +which expressed the most gratefulness to God and affection for himself. + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THAT was Tom's great secret--the scheme to return home with his +brother pirates and attend their own funerals. They had paddled over to +the Missouri shore on a log, at dusk on Saturday, landing five or six +miles below the village; they had slept in the woods at the edge of the +town till nearly daylight, and had then crept through back lanes and +alleys and finished their sleep in the gallery of the church among a +chaos of invalided benches. + +At breakfast, Monday morning, Aunt Polly and Mary were very loving to +Tom, and very attentive to his wants. There was an unusual amount of +talk. In the course of it Aunt Polly said: + +"Well, I don't say it wasn't a fine joke, Tom, to keep everybody +suffering 'most a week so you boys had a good time, but it is a pity +you could be so hard-hearted as to let me suffer so. If you could come +over on a log to go to your funeral, you could have come over and give +me a hint some way that you warn't dead, but only run off." + +"Yes, you could have done that, Tom," said Mary; "and I believe you +would if you had thought of it." + +"Would you, Tom?" said Aunt Polly, her face lighting wistfully. "Say, +now, would you, if you'd thought of it?" + +"I--well, I don't know. 'Twould 'a' spoiled everything." + +"Tom, I hoped you loved me that much," said Aunt Polly, with a grieved +tone that discomforted the boy. "It would have been something if you'd +cared enough to THINK of it, even if you didn't DO it." + +"Now, auntie, that ain't any harm," pleaded Mary; "it's only Tom's +giddy way--he is always in such a rush that he never thinks of +anything." + +"More's the pity. Sid would have thought. And Sid would have come and +DONE it, too. Tom, you'll look back, some day, when it's too late, and +wish you'd cared a little more for me when it would have cost you so +little." + +"Now, auntie, you know I do care for you," said Tom. + +"I'd know it better if you acted more like it." + +"I wish now I'd thought," said Tom, with a repentant tone; "but I +dreamt about you, anyway. That's something, ain't it?" + +"It ain't much--a cat does that much--but it's better than nothing. +What did you dream?" + +"Why, Wednesday night I dreamt that you was sitting over there by the +bed, and Sid was sitting by the woodbox, and Mary next to him." + +"Well, so we did. So we always do. I'm glad your dreams could take +even that much trouble about us." + +"And I dreamt that Joe Harper's mother was here." + +"Why, she was here! Did you dream any more?" + +"Oh, lots. But it's so dim, now." + +"Well, try to recollect--can't you?" + +"Somehow it seems to me that the wind--the wind blowed the--the--" + +"Try harder, Tom! The wind did blow something. Come!" + +Tom pressed his fingers on his forehead an anxious minute, and then +said: + +"I've got it now! I've got it now! It blowed the candle!" + +"Mercy on us! Go on, Tom--go on!" + +"And it seems to me that you said, 'Why, I believe that that door--'" + +"Go ON, Tom!" + +"Just let me study a moment--just a moment. Oh, yes--you said you +believed the door was open." + +"As I'm sitting here, I did! Didn't I, Mary! Go on!" + +"And then--and then--well I won't be certain, but it seems like as if +you made Sid go and--and--" + +"Well? Well? What did I make him do, Tom? What did I make him do?" + +"You made him--you--Oh, you made him shut it." + +"Well, for the land's sake! I never heard the beat of that in all my +days! Don't tell ME there ain't anything in dreams, any more. Sereny +Harper shall know of this before I'm an hour older. I'd like to see her +get around THIS with her rubbage 'bout superstition. Go on, Tom!" + +"Oh, it's all getting just as bright as day, now. Next you said I +warn't BAD, only mischeevous and harum-scarum, and not any more +responsible than--than--I think it was a colt, or something." + +"And so it was! Well, goodness gracious! Go on, Tom!" + +"And then you began to cry." + +"So I did. So I did. Not the first time, neither. And then--" + +"Then Mrs. Harper she began to cry, and said Joe was just the same, +and she wished she hadn't whipped him for taking cream when she'd +throwed it out her own self--" + +"Tom! The sperrit was upon you! You was a prophesying--that's what you +was doing! Land alive, go on, Tom!" + +"Then Sid he said--he said--" + +"I don't think I said anything," said Sid. + +"Yes you did, Sid," said Mary. + +"Shut your heads and let Tom go on! What did he say, Tom?" + +"He said--I THINK he said he hoped I was better off where I was gone +to, but if I'd been better sometimes--" + +"THERE, d'you hear that! It was his very words!" + +"And you shut him up sharp." + +"I lay I did! There must 'a' been an angel there. There WAS an angel +there, somewheres!" + +"And Mrs. Harper told about Joe scaring her with a firecracker, and +you told about Peter and the Painkiller--" + +"Just as true as I live!" + +"And then there was a whole lot of talk 'bout dragging the river for +us, and 'bout having the funeral Sunday, and then you and old Miss +Harper hugged and cried, and she went." + +"It happened just so! It happened just so, as sure as I'm a-sitting in +these very tracks. Tom, you couldn't told it more like if you'd 'a' +seen it! And then what? Go on, Tom!" + +"Then I thought you prayed for me--and I could see you and hear every +word you said. And you went to bed, and I was so sorry that I took and +wrote on a piece of sycamore bark, 'We ain't dead--we are only off +being pirates,' and put it on the table by the candle; and then you +looked so good, laying there asleep, that I thought I went and leaned +over and kissed you on the lips." + +"Did you, Tom, DID you! I just forgive you everything for that!" And +she seized the boy in a crushing embrace that made him feel like the +guiltiest of villains. + +"It was very kind, even though it was only a--dream," Sid soliloquized +just audibly. + +"Shut up, Sid! A body does just the same in a dream as he'd do if he +was awake. Here's a big Milum apple I've been saving for you, Tom, if +you was ever found again--now go 'long to school. I'm thankful to the +good God and Father of us all I've got you back, that's long-suffering +and merciful to them that believe on Him and keep His word, though +goodness knows I'm unworthy of it, but if only the worthy ones got His +blessings and had His hand to help them over the rough places, there's +few enough would smile here or ever enter into His rest when the long +night comes. Go 'long Sid, Mary, Tom--take yourselves off--you've +hendered me long enough." + +The children left for school, and the old lady to call on Mrs. Harper +and vanquish her realism with Tom's marvellous dream. Sid had better +judgment than to utter the thought that was in his mind as he left the +house. It was this: "Pretty thin--as long a dream as that, without any +mistakes in it!" + +What a hero Tom was become, now! He did not go skipping and prancing, +but moved with a dignified swagger as became a pirate who felt that the +public eye was on him. And indeed it was; he tried not to seem to see +the looks or hear the remarks as he passed along, but they were food +and drink to him. Smaller boys than himself flocked at his heels, as +proud to be seen with him, and tolerated by him, as if he had been the +drummer at the head of a procession or the elephant leading a menagerie +into town. Boys of his own size pretended not to know he had been away +at all; but they were consuming with envy, nevertheless. They would +have given anything to have that swarthy suntanned skin of his, and his +glittering notoriety; and Tom would not have parted with either for a +circus. + +At school the children made so much of him and of Joe, and delivered +such eloquent admiration from their eyes, that the two heroes were not +long in becoming insufferably "stuck-up." They began to tell their +adventures to hungry listeners--but they only began; it was not a thing +likely to have an end, with imaginations like theirs to furnish +material. And finally, when they got out their pipes and went serenely +puffing around, the very summit of glory was reached. + +Tom decided that he could be independent of Becky Thatcher now. Glory +was sufficient. He would live for glory. Now that he was distinguished, +maybe she would be wanting to "make up." Well, let her--she should see +that he could be as indifferent as some other people. Presently she +arrived. Tom pretended not to see her. He moved away and joined a group +of boys and girls and began to talk. Soon he observed that she was +tripping gayly back and forth with flushed face and dancing eyes, +pretending to be busy chasing schoolmates, and screaming with laughter +when she made a capture; but he noticed that she always made her +captures in his vicinity, and that she seemed to cast a conscious eye +in his direction at such times, too. It gratified all the vicious +vanity that was in him; and so, instead of winning him, it only "set +him up" the more and made him the more diligent to avoid betraying that +he knew she was about. Presently she gave over skylarking, and moved +irresolutely about, sighing once or twice and glancing furtively and +wistfully toward Tom. Then she observed that now Tom was talking more +particularly to Amy Lawrence than to any one else. She felt a sharp +pang and grew disturbed and uneasy at once. She tried to go away, but +her feet were treacherous, and carried her to the group instead. She +said to a girl almost at Tom's elbow--with sham vivacity: + +"Why, Mary Austin! you bad girl, why didn't you come to Sunday-school?" + +"I did come--didn't you see me?" + +"Why, no! Did you? Where did you sit?" + +"I was in Miss Peters' class, where I always go. I saw YOU." + +"Did you? Why, it's funny I didn't see you. I wanted to tell you about +the picnic." + +"Oh, that's jolly. Who's going to give it?" + +"My ma's going to let me have one." + +"Oh, goody; I hope she'll let ME come." + +"Well, she will. The picnic's for me. She'll let anybody come that I +want, and I want you." + +"That's ever so nice. When is it going to be?" + +"By and by. Maybe about vacation." + +"Oh, won't it be fun! You going to have all the girls and boys?" + +"Yes, every one that's friends to me--or wants to be"; and she glanced +ever so furtively at Tom, but he talked right along to Amy Lawrence +about the terrible storm on the island, and how the lightning tore the +great sycamore tree "all to flinders" while he was "standing within +three feet of it." + +"Oh, may I come?" said Grace Miller. + +"Yes." + +"And me?" said Sally Rogers. + +"Yes." + +"And me, too?" said Susy Harper. "And Joe?" + +"Yes." + +And so on, with clapping of joyful hands till all the group had begged +for invitations but Tom and Amy. Then Tom turned coolly away, still +talking, and took Amy with him. Becky's lips trembled and the tears +came to her eyes; she hid these signs with a forced gayety and went on +chattering, but the life had gone out of the picnic, now, and out of +everything else; she got away as soon as she could and hid herself and +had what her sex call "a good cry." Then she sat moody, with wounded +pride, till the bell rang. She roused up, now, with a vindictive cast +in her eye, and gave her plaited tails a shake and said she knew what +SHE'D do. + +At recess Tom continued his flirtation with Amy with jubilant +self-satisfaction. And he kept drifting about to find Becky and lacerate +her with the performance. At last he spied her, but there was a sudden +falling of his mercury. She was sitting cosily on a little bench behind +the schoolhouse looking at a picture-book with Alfred Temple--and so +absorbed were they, and their heads so close together over the book, +that they did not seem to be conscious of anything in the world besides. +Jealousy ran red-hot through Tom's veins. He began to hate himself for +throwing away the chance Becky had offered for a reconciliation. He +called himself a fool, and all the hard names he could think of. He +wanted to cry with vexation. Amy chatted happily along, as they walked, +for her heart was singing, but Tom's tongue had lost its function. He +did not hear what Amy was saying, and whenever she paused expectantly he +could only stammer an awkward assent, which was as often misplaced as +otherwise. He kept drifting to the rear of the schoolhouse, again and +again, to sear his eyeballs with the hateful spectacle there. He could +not help it. And it maddened him to see, as he thought he saw, that +Becky Thatcher never once suspected that he was even in the land of the +living. But she did see, nevertheless; and she knew she was winning her +fight, too, and was glad to see him suffer as she had suffered. + +Amy's happy prattle became intolerable. Tom hinted at things he had to +attend to; things that must be done; and time was fleeting. But in +vain--the girl chirped on. Tom thought, "Oh, hang her, ain't I ever +going to get rid of her?" At last he must be attending to those +things--and she said artlessly that she would be "around" when school +let out. And he hastened away, hating her for it. + +"Any other boy!" Tom thought, grating his teeth. "Any boy in the whole +town but that Saint Louis smarty that thinks he dresses so fine and is +aristocracy! Oh, all right, I licked you the first day you ever saw +this town, mister, and I'll lick you again! You just wait till I catch +you out! I'll just take and--" + +And he went through the motions of thrashing an imaginary boy +--pummelling the air, and kicking and gouging. "Oh, you do, do you? You +holler 'nough, do you? Now, then, let that learn you!" And so the +imaginary flogging was finished to his satisfaction. + +Tom fled home at noon. His conscience could not endure any more of +Amy's grateful happiness, and his jealousy could bear no more of the +other distress. Becky resumed her picture inspections with Alfred, but +as the minutes dragged along and no Tom came to suffer, her triumph +began to cloud and she lost interest; gravity and absent-mindedness +followed, and then melancholy; two or three times she pricked up her +ear at a footstep, but it was a false hope; no Tom came. At last she +grew entirely miserable and wished she hadn't carried it so far. When +poor Alfred, seeing that he was losing her, he did not know how, kept +exclaiming: "Oh, here's a jolly one! look at this!" she lost patience +at last, and said, "Oh, don't bother me! I don't care for them!" and +burst into tears, and got up and walked away. + +Alfred dropped alongside and was going to try to comfort her, but she +said: + +"Go away and leave me alone, can't you! I hate you!" + +So the boy halted, wondering what he could have done--for she had said +she would look at pictures all through the nooning--and she walked on, +crying. Then Alfred went musing into the deserted schoolhouse. He was +humiliated and angry. He easily guessed his way to the truth--the girl +had simply made a convenience of him to vent her spite upon Tom Sawyer. +He was far from hating Tom the less when this thought occurred to him. +He wished there was some way to get that boy into trouble without much +risk to himself. Tom's spelling-book fell under his eye. Here was his +opportunity. He gratefully opened to the lesson for the afternoon and +poured ink upon the page. + +Becky, glancing in at a window behind him at the moment, saw the act, +and moved on, without discovering herself. She started homeward, now, +intending to find Tom and tell him; Tom would be thankful and their +troubles would be healed. Before she was half way home, however, she +had changed her mind. The thought of Tom's treatment of her when she +was talking about her picnic came scorching back and filled her with +shame. She resolved to let him get whipped on the damaged +spelling-book's account, and to hate him forever, into the bargain. + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +TOM arrived at home in a dreary mood, and the first thing his aunt +said to him showed him that he had brought his sorrows to an +unpromising market: + +"Tom, I've a notion to skin you alive!" + +"Auntie, what have I done?" + +"Well, you've done enough. Here I go over to Sereny Harper, like an +old softy, expecting I'm going to make her believe all that rubbage +about that dream, when lo and behold you she'd found out from Joe that +you was over here and heard all the talk we had that night. Tom, I +don't know what is to become of a boy that will act like that. It makes +me feel so bad to think you could let me go to Sereny Harper and make +such a fool of myself and never say a word." + +This was a new aspect of the thing. His smartness of the morning had +seemed to Tom a good joke before, and very ingenious. It merely looked +mean and shabby now. He hung his head and could not think of anything +to say for a moment. Then he said: + +"Auntie, I wish I hadn't done it--but I didn't think." + +"Oh, child, you never think. You never think of anything but your own +selfishness. You could think to come all the way over here from +Jackson's Island in the night to laugh at our troubles, and you could +think to fool me with a lie about a dream; but you couldn't ever think +to pity us and save us from sorrow." + +"Auntie, I know now it was mean, but I didn't mean to be mean. I +didn't, honest. And besides, I didn't come over here to laugh at you +that night." + +"What did you come for, then?" + +"It was to tell you not to be uneasy about us, because we hadn't got +drownded." + +"Tom, Tom, I would be the thankfullest soul in this world if I could +believe you ever had as good a thought as that, but you know you never +did--and I know it, Tom." + +"Indeed and 'deed I did, auntie--I wish I may never stir if I didn't." + +"Oh, Tom, don't lie--don't do it. It only makes things a hundred times +worse." + +"It ain't a lie, auntie; it's the truth. I wanted to keep you from +grieving--that was all that made me come." + +"I'd give the whole world to believe that--it would cover up a power +of sins, Tom. I'd 'most be glad you'd run off and acted so bad. But it +ain't reasonable; because, why didn't you tell me, child?" + +"Why, you see, when you got to talking about the funeral, I just got +all full of the idea of our coming and hiding in the church, and I +couldn't somehow bear to spoil it. So I just put the bark back in my +pocket and kept mum." + +"What bark?" + +"The bark I had wrote on to tell you we'd gone pirating. I wish, now, +you'd waked up when I kissed you--I do, honest." + +The hard lines in his aunt's face relaxed and a sudden tenderness +dawned in her eyes. + +"DID you kiss me, Tom?" + +"Why, yes, I did." + +"Are you sure you did, Tom?" + +"Why, yes, I did, auntie--certain sure." + +"What did you kiss me for, Tom?" + +"Because I loved you so, and you laid there moaning and I was so sorry." + +The words sounded like truth. The old lady could not hide a tremor in +her voice when she said: + +"Kiss me again, Tom!--and be off with you to school, now, and don't +bother me any more." + +The moment he was gone, she ran to a closet and got out the ruin of a +jacket which Tom had gone pirating in. Then she stopped, with it in her +hand, and said to herself: + +"No, I don't dare. Poor boy, I reckon he's lied about it--but it's a +blessed, blessed lie, there's such a comfort come from it. I hope the +Lord--I KNOW the Lord will forgive him, because it was such +goodheartedness in him to tell it. But I don't want to find out it's a +lie. I won't look." + +She put the jacket away, and stood by musing a minute. Twice she put +out her hand to take the garment again, and twice she refrained. Once +more she ventured, and this time she fortified herself with the +thought: "It's a good lie--it's a good lie--I won't let it grieve me." +So she sought the jacket pocket. A moment later she was reading Tom's +piece of bark through flowing tears and saying: "I could forgive the +boy, now, if he'd committed a million sins!" + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THERE was something about Aunt Polly's manner, when she kissed Tom, +that swept away his low spirits and made him lighthearted and happy +again. He started to school and had the luck of coming upon Becky +Thatcher at the head of Meadow Lane. His mood always determined his +manner. Without a moment's hesitation he ran to her and said: + +"I acted mighty mean to-day, Becky, and I'm so sorry. I won't ever, +ever do that way again, as long as ever I live--please make up, won't +you?" + +The girl stopped and looked him scornfully in the face: + +"I'll thank you to keep yourself TO yourself, Mr. Thomas Sawyer. I'll +never speak to you again." + +She tossed her head and passed on. Tom was so stunned that he had not +even presence of mind enough to say "Who cares, Miss Smarty?" until the +right time to say it had gone by. So he said nothing. But he was in a +fine rage, nevertheless. He moped into the schoolyard wishing she were +a boy, and imagining how he would trounce her if she were. He presently +encountered her and delivered a stinging remark as he passed. She +hurled one in return, and the angry breach was complete. It seemed to +Becky, in her hot resentment, that she could hardly wait for school to +"take in," she was so impatient to see Tom flogged for the injured +spelling-book. If she had had any lingering notion of exposing Alfred +Temple, Tom's offensive fling had driven it entirely away. + +Poor girl, she did not know how fast she was nearing trouble herself. +The master, Mr. Dobbins, had reached middle age with an unsatisfied +ambition. The darling of his desires was, to be a doctor, but poverty +had decreed that he should be nothing higher than a village +schoolmaster. Every day he took a mysterious book out of his desk and +absorbed himself in it at times when no classes were reciting. He kept +that book under lock and key. There was not an urchin in school but was +perishing to have a glimpse of it, but the chance never came. Every boy +and girl had a theory about the nature of that book; but no two +theories were alike, and there was no way of getting at the facts in +the case. Now, as Becky was passing by the desk, which stood near the +door, she noticed that the key was in the lock! It was a precious +moment. She glanced around; found herself alone, and the next instant +she had the book in her hands. The title-page--Professor Somebody's +ANATOMY--carried no information to her mind; so she began to turn the +leaves. She came at once upon a handsomely engraved and colored +frontispiece--a human figure, stark naked. At that moment a shadow fell +on the page and Tom Sawyer stepped in at the door and caught a glimpse +of the picture. Becky snatched at the book to close it, and had the +hard luck to tear the pictured page half down the middle. She thrust +the volume into the desk, turned the key, and burst out crying with +shame and vexation. + +"Tom Sawyer, you are just as mean as you can be, to sneak up on a +person and look at what they're looking at." + +"How could I know you was looking at anything?" + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom Sawyer; you know you're +going to tell on me, and oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! I'll be +whipped, and I never was whipped in school." + +Then she stamped her little foot and said: + +"BE so mean if you want to! I know something that's going to happen. +You just wait and you'll see! Hateful, hateful, hateful!"--and she +flung out of the house with a new explosion of crying. + +Tom stood still, rather flustered by this onslaught. Presently he said +to himself: + +"What a curious kind of a fool a girl is! Never been licked in school! +Shucks! What's a licking! That's just like a girl--they're so +thin-skinned and chicken-hearted. Well, of course I ain't going to tell +old Dobbins on this little fool, because there's other ways of getting +even on her, that ain't so mean; but what of it? Old Dobbins will ask +who it was tore his book. Nobody'll answer. Then he'll do just the way +he always does--ask first one and then t'other, and when he comes to the +right girl he'll know it, without any telling. Girls' faces always tell +on them. They ain't got any backbone. She'll get licked. Well, it's a +kind of a tight place for Becky Thatcher, because there ain't any way +out of it." Tom conned the thing a moment longer, and then added: "All +right, though; she'd like to see me in just such a fix--let her sweat it +out!" + +Tom joined the mob of skylarking scholars outside. In a few moments +the master arrived and school "took in." Tom did not feel a strong +interest in his studies. Every time he stole a glance at the girls' +side of the room Becky's face troubled him. Considering all things, he +did not want to pity her, and yet it was all he could do to help it. He +could get up no exultation that was really worthy the name. Presently +the spelling-book discovery was made, and Tom's mind was entirely full +of his own matters for a while after that. Becky roused up from her +lethargy of distress and showed good interest in the proceedings. She +did not expect that Tom could get out of his trouble by denying that he +spilt the ink on the book himself; and she was right. The denial only +seemed to make the thing worse for Tom. Becky supposed she would be +glad of that, and she tried to believe she was glad of it, but she +found she was not certain. When the worst came to the worst, she had an +impulse to get up and tell on Alfred Temple, but she made an effort and +forced herself to keep still--because, said she to herself, "he'll tell +about me tearing the picture sure. I wouldn't say a word, not to save +his life!" + +Tom took his whipping and went back to his seat not at all +broken-hearted, for he thought it was possible that he had unknowingly +upset the ink on the spelling-book himself, in some skylarking bout--he +had denied it for form's sake and because it was custom, and had stuck +to the denial from principle. + +A whole hour drifted by, the master sat nodding in his throne, the air +was drowsy with the hum of study. By and by, Mr. Dobbins straightened +himself up, yawned, then unlocked his desk, and reached for his book, +but seemed undecided whether to take it out or leave it. Most of the +pupils glanced up languidly, but there were two among them that watched +his movements with intent eyes. Mr. Dobbins fingered his book absently +for a while, then took it out and settled himself in his chair to read! +Tom shot a glance at Becky. He had seen a hunted and helpless rabbit +look as she did, with a gun levelled at its head. Instantly he forgot +his quarrel with her. Quick--something must be done! done in a flash, +too! But the very imminence of the emergency paralyzed his invention. +Good!--he had an inspiration! He would run and snatch the book, spring +through the door and fly. But his resolution shook for one little +instant, and the chance was lost--the master opened the volume. If Tom +only had the wasted opportunity back again! Too late. There was no help +for Becky now, he said. The next moment the master faced the school. +Every eye sank under his gaze. There was that in it which smote even +the innocent with fear. There was silence while one might count ten +--the master was gathering his wrath. Then he spoke: "Who tore this book?" + +There was not a sound. One could have heard a pin drop. The stillness +continued; the master searched face after face for signs of guilt. + +"Benjamin Rogers, did you tear this book?" + +A denial. Another pause. + +"Joseph Harper, did you?" + +Another denial. Tom's uneasiness grew more and more intense under the +slow torture of these proceedings. The master scanned the ranks of +boys--considered a while, then turned to the girls: + +"Amy Lawrence?" + +A shake of the head. + +"Gracie Miller?" + +The same sign. + +"Susan Harper, did you do this?" + +Another negative. The next girl was Becky Thatcher. Tom was trembling +from head to foot with excitement and a sense of the hopelessness of +the situation. + +"Rebecca Thatcher" [Tom glanced at her face--it was white with terror] +--"did you tear--no, look me in the face" [her hands rose in appeal] +--"did you tear this book?" + +A thought shot like lightning through Tom's brain. He sprang to his +feet and shouted--"I done it!" + +The school stared in perplexity at this incredible folly. Tom stood a +moment, to gather his dismembered faculties; and when he stepped +forward to go to his punishment the surprise, the gratitude, the +adoration that shone upon him out of poor Becky's eyes seemed pay +enough for a hundred floggings. Inspired by the splendor of his own +act, he took without an outcry the most merciless flaying that even Mr. +Dobbins had ever administered; and also received with indifference the +added cruelty of a command to remain two hours after school should be +dismissed--for he knew who would wait for him outside till his +captivity was done, and not count the tedious time as loss, either. + +Tom went to bed that night planning vengeance against Alfred Temple; +for with shame and repentance Becky had told him all, not forgetting +her own treachery; but even the longing for vengeance had to give way, +soon, to pleasanter musings, and he fell asleep at last with Becky's +latest words lingering dreamily in his ear-- + +"Tom, how COULD you be so noble!" + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +VACATION was approaching. The schoolmaster, always severe, grew +severer and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the school to make a +good showing on "Examination" day. His rod and his ferule were seldom +idle now--at least among the smaller pupils. Only the biggest boys, and +young ladies of eighteen and twenty, escaped lashing. Mr. Dobbins' +lashings were very vigorous ones, too; for although he carried, under +his wig, a perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only reached middle +age, and there was no sign of feebleness in his muscle. As the great +day approached, all the tyranny that was in him came to the surface; he +seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in punishing the least +shortcomings. The consequence was, that the smaller boys spent their +days in terror and suffering and their nights in plotting revenge. They +threw away no opportunity to do the master a mischief. But he kept +ahead all the time. The retribution that followed every vengeful +success was so sweeping and majestic that the boys always retired from +the field badly worsted. At last they conspired together and hit upon a +plan that promised a dazzling victory. They swore in the sign-painter's +boy, told him the scheme, and asked his help. He had his own reasons +for being delighted, for the master boarded in his father's family and +had given the boy ample cause to hate him. The master's wife would go +on a visit to the country in a few days, and there would be nothing to +interfere with the plan; the master always prepared himself for great +occasions by getting pretty well fuddled, and the sign-painter's boy +said that when the dominie had reached the proper condition on +Examination Evening he would "manage the thing" while he napped in his +chair; then he would have him awakened at the right time and hurried +away to school. + +In the fulness of time the interesting occasion arrived. At eight in +the evening the schoolhouse was brilliantly lighted, and adorned with +wreaths and festoons of foliage and flowers. The master sat throned in +his great chair upon a raised platform, with his blackboard behind him. +He was looking tolerably mellow. Three rows of benches on each side and +six rows in front of him were occupied by the dignitaries of the town +and by the parents of the pupils. To his left, back of the rows of +citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon which were seated the +scholars who were to take part in the exercises of the evening; rows of +small boys, washed and dressed to an intolerable state of discomfort; +rows of gawky big boys; snowbanks of girls and young ladies clad in +lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their +grandmothers' ancient trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and +the flowers in their hair. All the rest of the house was filled with +non-participating scholars. + +The exercises began. A very little boy stood up and sheepishly +recited, "You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the +stage," etc.--accompanying himself with the painfully exact and +spasmodic gestures which a machine might have used--supposing the +machine to be a trifle out of order. But he got through safely, though +cruelly scared, and got a fine round of applause when he made his +manufactured bow and retired. + +A little shamefaced girl lisped, "Mary had a little lamb," etc., +performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and +sat down flushed and happy. + +Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into +the unquenchable and indestructible "Give me liberty or give me death" +speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the +middle of it. A ghastly stage-fright seized him, his legs quaked under +him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy of the +house but he had the house's silence, too, which was even worse than +its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom +struggled awhile and then retired, utterly defeated. There was a weak +attempt at applause, but it died early. + +"The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck" followed; also "The Assyrian Came +Down," and other declamatory gems. Then there were reading exercises, +and a spelling fight. The meagre Latin class recited with honor. The +prime feature of the evening was in order, now--original "compositions" +by the young ladies. Each in her turn stepped forward to the edge of +the platform, cleared her throat, held up her manuscript (tied with +dainty ribbon), and proceeded to read, with labored attention to +"expression" and punctuation. The themes were the same that had been +illuminated upon similar occasions by their mothers before them, their +grandmothers, and doubtless all their ancestors in the female line +clear back to the Crusades. "Friendship" was one; "Memories of Other +Days"; "Religion in History"; "Dream Land"; "The Advantages of +Culture"; "Forms of Political Government Compared and Contrasted"; +"Melancholy"; "Filial Love"; "Heart Longings," etc., etc. + +A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted +melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of "fine language"; +another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words +and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that +conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable +sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one +of them. No matter what the subject might be, a brain-racking effort +was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and +religious mind could contemplate with edification. The glaring +insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass the +banishment of the fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient +to-day; it never will be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps. +There is no school in all our land where the young ladies do not feel +obliged to close their compositions with a sermon; and you will find +that the sermon of the most frivolous and the least religious girl in +the school is always the longest and the most relentlessly pious. But +enough of this. Homely truth is unpalatable. + +Let us return to the "Examination." The first composition that was +read was one entitled "Is this, then, Life?" Perhaps the reader can +endure an extract from it: + + "In the common walks of life, with what delightful + emotions does the youthful mind look forward to some + anticipated scene of festivity! Imagination is busy + sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the + voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the + festive throng, 'the observed of all observers.' Her + graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes, is whirling + through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is + brightest, her step is lightest in the gay assembly. + + "In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by, + and the welcome hour arrives for her entrance into + the Elysian world, of which she has had such bright + dreams. How fairy-like does everything appear to + her enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming + than the last. But after a while she finds that + beneath this goodly exterior, all is vanity, the + flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates + harshly upon her ear; the ball-room has lost its + charms; and with wasted health and imbittered heart, + she turns away with the conviction that earthly + pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul!" + +And so forth and so on. There was a buzz of gratification from time to +time during the reading, accompanied by whispered ejaculations of "How +sweet!" "How eloquent!" "So true!" etc., and after the thing had closed +with a peculiarly afflicting sermon the applause was enthusiastic. + +Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the "interesting" +paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a "poem." Two +stanzas of it will do: + + "A MISSOURI MAIDEN'S FAREWELL TO ALABAMA + + "Alabama, good-bye! I love thee well! + But yet for a while do I leave thee now! + Sad, yes, sad thoughts of thee my heart doth swell, + And burning recollections throng my brow! + For I have wandered through thy flowery woods; + Have roamed and read near Tallapoosa's stream; + Have listened to Tallassee's warring floods, + And wooed on Coosa's side Aurora's beam. + + "Yet shame I not to bear an o'er-full heart, + Nor blush to turn behind my tearful eyes; + 'Tis from no stranger land I now must part, + 'Tis to no strangers left I yield these sighs. + Welcome and home were mine within this State, + Whose vales I leave--whose spires fade fast from me + And cold must be mine eyes, and heart, and tete, + When, dear Alabama! they turn cold on thee!" + +There were very few there who knew what "tete" meant, but the poem was +very satisfactory, nevertheless. + +Next appeared a dark-complexioned, black-eyed, black-haired young +lady, who paused an impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression, and +began to read in a measured, solemn tone: + + "A VISION + + "Dark and tempestuous was night. Around the + throne on high not a single star quivered; but + the deep intonations of the heavy thunder + constantly vibrated upon the ear; whilst the + terrific lightning revelled in angry mood + through the cloudy chambers of heaven, seeming + to scorn the power exerted over its terror by + the illustrious Franklin! Even the boisterous + winds unanimously came forth from their mystic + homes, and blustered about as if to enhance by + their aid the wildness of the scene. + + "At such a time, so dark, so dreary, for human + sympathy my very spirit sighed; but instead thereof, + + "'My dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter + and guide--My joy in grief, my second bliss + in joy,' came to my side. She moved like one of + those bright beings pictured in the sunny walks + of fancy's Eden by the romantic and young, a + queen of beauty unadorned save by her own + transcendent loveliness. So soft was her step, it + failed to make even a sound, and but for the + magical thrill imparted by her genial touch, as + other unobtrusive beauties, she would have glided + away un-perceived--unsought. A strange sadness + rested upon her features, like icy tears upon + the robe of December, as she pointed to the + contending elements without, and bade me contemplate + the two beings presented." + +This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with +a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took +the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest +effort of the evening. The mayor of the village, in delivering the +prize to the author of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it +was by far the most "eloquent" thing he had ever listened to, and that +Daniel Webster himself might well be proud of it. + +It may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in +which the word "beauteous" was over-fondled, and human experience +referred to as "life's page," was up to the usual average. + +Now the master, mellow almost to the verge of geniality, put his chair +aside, turned his back to the audience, and began to draw a map of +America on the blackboard, to exercise the geography class upon. But he +made a sad business of it with his unsteady hand, and a smothered +titter rippled over the house. He knew what the matter was, and set +himself to right it. He sponged out lines and remade them; but he only +distorted them more than ever, and the tittering was more pronounced. +He threw his entire attention upon his work, now, as if determined not +to be put down by the mirth. He felt that all eyes were fastened upon +him; he imagined he was succeeding, and yet the tittering continued; it +even manifestly increased. And well it might. There was a garret above, +pierced with a scuttle over his head; and down through this scuttle +came a cat, suspended around the haunches by a string; she had a rag +tied about her head and jaws to keep her from mewing; as she slowly +descended she curved upward and clawed at the string, she swung +downward and clawed at the intangible air. The tittering rose higher +and higher--the cat was within six inches of the absorbed teacher's +head--down, down, a little lower, and she grabbed his wig with her +desperate claws, clung to it, and was snatched up into the garret in an +instant with her trophy still in her possession! And how the light did +blaze abroad from the master's bald pate--for the sign-painter's boy +had GILDED it! + +That broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged. Vacation had come. + + NOTE:--The pretended "compositions" quoted in + this chapter are taken without alteration from a + volume entitled "Prose and Poetry, by a Western + Lady"--but they are exactly and precisely after + the schoolgirl pattern, and hence are much + happier than any mere imitations could be. + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +TOM joined the new order of Cadets of Temperance, being attracted by +the showy character of their "regalia." He promised to abstain from +smoking, chewing, and profanity as long as he remained a member. Now he +found out a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the +surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very +thing. Tom soon found himself tormented with a desire to drink and +swear; the desire grew to be so intense that nothing but the hope of a +chance to display himself in his red sash kept him from withdrawing +from the order. Fourth of July was coming; but he soon gave that up +--gave it up before he had worn his shackles over forty-eight hours--and +fixed his hopes upon old Judge Frazer, justice of the peace, who was +apparently on his deathbed and would have a big public funeral, since +he was so high an official. During three days Tom was deeply concerned +about the Judge's condition and hungry for news of it. Sometimes his +hopes ran high--so high that he would venture to get out his regalia +and practise before the looking-glass. But the Judge had a most +discouraging way of fluctuating. At last he was pronounced upon the +mend--and then convalescent. Tom was disgusted; and felt a sense of +injury, too. He handed in his resignation at once--and that night the +Judge suffered a relapse and died. Tom resolved that he would never +trust a man like that again. + +The funeral was a fine thing. The Cadets paraded in a style calculated +to kill the late member with envy. Tom was a free boy again, however +--there was something in that. He could drink and swear, now--but found +to his surprise that he did not want to. The simple fact that he could, +took the desire away, and the charm of it. + +Tom presently wondered to find that his coveted vacation was beginning +to hang a little heavily on his hands. + +He attempted a diary--but nothing happened during three days, and so +he abandoned it. + +The first of all the negro minstrel shows came to town, and made a +sensation. Tom and Joe Harper got up a band of performers and were +happy for two days. + +Even the Glorious Fourth was in some sense a failure, for it rained +hard, there was no procession in consequence, and the greatest man in +the world (as Tom supposed), Mr. Benton, an actual United States +Senator, proved an overwhelming disappointment--for he was not +twenty-five feet high, nor even anywhere in the neighborhood of it. + +A circus came. The boys played circus for three days afterward in +tents made of rag carpeting--admission, three pins for boys, two for +girls--and then circusing was abandoned. + +A phrenologist and a mesmerizer came--and went again and left the +village duller and drearier than ever. + +There were some boys-and-girls' parties, but they were so few and so +delightful that they only made the aching voids between ache the harder. + +Becky Thatcher was gone to her Constantinople home to stay with her +parents during vacation--so there was no bright side to life anywhere. + +The dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery. It was a very +cancer for permanency and pain. + +Then came the measles. + +During two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and its +happenings. He was very ill, he was interested in nothing. When he got +upon his feet at last and moved feebly down-town, a melancholy change +had come over everything and every creature. There had been a +"revival," and everybody had "got religion," not only the adults, but +even the boys and girls. Tom went about, hoping against hope for the +sight of one blessed sinful face, but disappointment crossed him +everywhere. He found Joe Harper studying a Testament, and turned sadly +away from the depressing spectacle. He sought Ben Rogers, and found him +visiting the poor with a basket of tracts. He hunted up Jim Hollis, who +called his attention to the precious blessing of his late measles as a +warning. Every boy he encountered added another ton to his depression; +and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom of +Huckleberry Finn and was received with a Scriptural quotation, his +heart broke and he crept home and to bed realizing that he alone of all +the town was lost, forever and forever. + +And that night there came on a terrific storm, with driving rain, +awful claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning. He covered his +head with the bedclothes and waited in a horror of suspense for his +doom; for he had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub was +about him. He believed he had taxed the forbearance of the powers above +to the extremity of endurance and that this was the result. It might +have seemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition to kill a bug with a +battery of artillery, but there seemed nothing incongruous about the +getting up such an expensive thunderstorm as this to knock the turf +from under an insect like himself. + +By and by the tempest spent itself and died without accomplishing its +object. The boy's first impulse was to be grateful, and reform. His +second was to wait--for there might not be any more storms. + +The next day the doctors were back; Tom had relapsed. The three weeks +he spent on his back this time seemed an entire age. When he got abroad +at last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared, remembering how +lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn he was. He drifted +listlessly down the street and found Jim Hollis acting as judge in a +juvenile court that was trying a cat for murder, in the presence of her +victim, a bird. He found Joe Harper and Huck Finn up an alley eating a +stolen melon. Poor lads! they--like Tom--had suffered a relapse. + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +AT last the sleepy atmosphere was stirred--and vigorously: the murder +trial came on in the court. It became the absorbing topic of village +talk immediately. Tom could not get away from it. Every reference to +the murder sent a shudder to his heart, for his troubled conscience and +fears almost persuaded him that these remarks were put forth in his +hearing as "feelers"; he did not see how he could be suspected of +knowing anything about the murder, but still he could not be +comfortable in the midst of this gossip. It kept him in a cold shiver +all the time. He took Huck to a lonely place to have a talk with him. +It would be some relief to unseal his tongue for a little while; to +divide his burden of distress with another sufferer. Moreover, he +wanted to assure himself that Huck had remained discreet. + +"Huck, have you ever told anybody about--that?" + +"'Bout what?" + +"You know what." + +"Oh--'course I haven't." + +"Never a word?" + +"Never a solitary word, so help me. What makes you ask?" + +"Well, I was afeard." + +"Why, Tom Sawyer, we wouldn't be alive two days if that got found out. +YOU know that." + +Tom felt more comfortable. After a pause: + +"Huck, they couldn't anybody get you to tell, could they?" + +"Get me to tell? Why, if I wanted that half-breed devil to drownd me +they could get me to tell. They ain't no different way." + +"Well, that's all right, then. I reckon we're safe as long as we keep +mum. But let's swear again, anyway. It's more surer." + +"I'm agreed." + +So they swore again with dread solemnities. + +"What is the talk around, Huck? I've heard a power of it." + +"Talk? Well, it's just Muff Potter, Muff Potter, Muff Potter all the +time. It keeps me in a sweat, constant, so's I want to hide som'ers." + +"That's just the same way they go on round me. I reckon he's a goner. +Don't you feel sorry for him, sometimes?" + +"Most always--most always. He ain't no account; but then he hain't +ever done anything to hurt anybody. Just fishes a little, to get money +to get drunk on--and loafs around considerable; but lord, we all do +that--leastways most of us--preachers and such like. But he's kind of +good--he give me half a fish, once, when there warn't enough for two; +and lots of times he's kind of stood by me when I was out of luck." + +"Well, he's mended kites for me, Huck, and knitted hooks on to my +line. I wish we could get him out of there." + +"My! we couldn't get him out, Tom. And besides, 'twouldn't do any +good; they'd ketch him again." + +"Yes--so they would. But I hate to hear 'em abuse him so like the +dickens when he never done--that." + +"I do too, Tom. Lord, I hear 'em say he's the bloodiest looking +villain in this country, and they wonder he wasn't ever hung before." + +"Yes, they talk like that, all the time. I've heard 'em say that if he +was to get free they'd lynch him." + +"And they'd do it, too." + +The boys had a long talk, but it brought them little comfort. As the +twilight drew on, they found themselves hanging about the neighborhood +of the little isolated jail, perhaps with an undefined hope that +something would happen that might clear away their difficulties. But +nothing happened; there seemed to be no angels or fairies interested in +this luckless captive. + +The boys did as they had often done before--went to the cell grating +and gave Potter some tobacco and matches. He was on the ground floor +and there were no guards. + +His gratitude for their gifts had always smote their consciences +before--it cut deeper than ever, this time. They felt cowardly and +treacherous to the last degree when Potter said: + +"You've been mighty good to me, boys--better'n anybody else in this +town. And I don't forget it, I don't. Often I says to myself, says I, +'I used to mend all the boys' kites and things, and show 'em where the +good fishin' places was, and befriend 'em what I could, and now they've +all forgot old Muff when he's in trouble; but Tom don't, and Huck +don't--THEY don't forget him, says I, 'and I don't forget them.' Well, +boys, I done an awful thing--drunk and crazy at the time--that's the +only way I account for it--and now I got to swing for it, and it's +right. Right, and BEST, too, I reckon--hope so, anyway. Well, we won't +talk about that. I don't want to make YOU feel bad; you've befriended +me. But what I want to say, is, don't YOU ever get drunk--then you won't +ever get here. Stand a litter furder west--so--that's it; it's a prime +comfort to see faces that's friendly when a body's in such a muck of +trouble, and there don't none come here but yourn. Good friendly +faces--good friendly faces. Git up on one another's backs and let me +touch 'em. That's it. Shake hands--yourn'll come through the bars, but +mine's too big. Little hands, and weak--but they've helped Muff Potter +a power, and they'd help him more if they could." + +Tom went home miserable, and his dreams that night were full of +horrors. The next day and the day after, he hung about the court-room, +drawn by an almost irresistible impulse to go in, but forcing himself +to stay out. Huck was having the same experience. They studiously +avoided each other. Each wandered away, from time to time, but the same +dismal fascination always brought them back presently. Tom kept his +ears open when idlers sauntered out of the court-room, but invariably +heard distressing news--the toils were closing more and more +relentlessly around poor Potter. At the end of the second day the +village talk was to the effect that Injun Joe's evidence stood firm and +unshaken, and that there was not the slightest question as to what the +jury's verdict would be. + +Tom was out late, that night, and came to bed through the window. He +was in a tremendous state of excitement. It was hours before he got to +sleep. All the village flocked to the court-house the next morning, for +this was to be the great day. Both sexes were about equally represented +in the packed audience. After a long wait the jury filed in and took +their places; shortly afterward, Potter, pale and haggard, timid and +hopeless, was brought in, with chains upon him, and seated where all +the curious eyes could stare at him; no less conspicuous was Injun Joe, +stolid as ever. There was another pause, and then the judge arrived and +the sheriff proclaimed the opening of the court. The usual whisperings +among the lawyers and gathering together of papers followed. These +details and accompanying delays worked up an atmosphere of preparation +that was as impressive as it was fascinating. + +Now a witness was called who testified that he found Muff Potter +washing in the brook, at an early hour of the morning that the murder +was discovered, and that he immediately sneaked away. After some +further questioning, counsel for the prosecution said: + +"Take the witness." + +The prisoner raised his eyes for a moment, but dropped them again when +his own counsel said: + +"I have no questions to ask him." + +The next witness proved the finding of the knife near the corpse. +Counsel for the prosecution said: + +"Take the witness." + +"I have no questions to ask him," Potter's lawyer replied. + +A third witness swore he had often seen the knife in Potter's +possession. + +"Take the witness." + +Counsel for Potter declined to question him. The faces of the audience +began to betray annoyance. Did this attorney mean to throw away his +client's life without an effort? + +Several witnesses deposed concerning Potter's guilty behavior when +brought to the scene of the murder. They were allowed to leave the +stand without being cross-questioned. + +Every detail of the damaging circumstances that occurred in the +graveyard upon that morning which all present remembered so well was +brought out by credible witnesses, but none of them were cross-examined +by Potter's lawyer. The perplexity and dissatisfaction of the house +expressed itself in murmurs and provoked a reproof from the bench. +Counsel for the prosecution now said: + +"By the oaths of citizens whose simple word is above suspicion, we +have fastened this awful crime, beyond all possibility of question, +upon the unhappy prisoner at the bar. We rest our case here." + +A groan escaped from poor Potter, and he put his face in his hands and +rocked his body softly to and fro, while a painful silence reigned in +the court-room. Many men were moved, and many women's compassion +testified itself in tears. Counsel for the defence rose and said: + +"Your honor, in our remarks at the opening of this trial, we +foreshadowed our purpose to prove that our client did this fearful deed +while under the influence of a blind and irresponsible delirium +produced by drink. We have changed our mind. We shall not offer that +plea." [Then to the clerk:] "Call Thomas Sawyer!" + +A puzzled amazement awoke in every face in the house, not even +excepting Potter's. Every eye fastened itself with wondering interest +upon Tom as he rose and took his place upon the stand. The boy looked +wild enough, for he was badly scared. The oath was administered. + +"Thomas Sawyer, where were you on the seventeenth of June, about the +hour of midnight?" + +Tom glanced at Injun Joe's iron face and his tongue failed him. The +audience listened breathless, but the words refused to come. After a +few moments, however, the boy got a little of his strength back, and +managed to put enough of it into his voice to make part of the house +hear: + +"In the graveyard!" + +"A little bit louder, please. Don't be afraid. You were--" + +"In the graveyard." + +A contemptuous smile flitted across Injun Joe's face. + +"Were you anywhere near Horse Williams' grave?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Speak up--just a trifle louder. How near were you?" + +"Near as I am to you." + +"Were you hidden, or not?" + +"I was hid." + +"Where?" + +"Behind the elms that's on the edge of the grave." + +Injun Joe gave a barely perceptible start. + +"Any one with you?" + +"Yes, sir. I went there with--" + +"Wait--wait a moment. Never mind mentioning your companion's name. We +will produce him at the proper time. Did you carry anything there with +you." + +Tom hesitated and looked confused. + +"Speak out, my boy--don't be diffident. The truth is always +respectable. What did you take there?" + +"Only a--a--dead cat." + +There was a ripple of mirth, which the court checked. + +"We will produce the skeleton of that cat. Now, my boy, tell us +everything that occurred--tell it in your own way--don't skip anything, +and don't be afraid." + +Tom began--hesitatingly at first, but as he warmed to his subject his +words flowed more and more easily; in a little while every sound ceased +but his own voice; every eye fixed itself upon him; with parted lips +and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of +time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale. The strain upon +pent emotion reached its climax when the boy said: + +"--and as the doctor fetched the board around and Muff Potter fell, +Injun Joe jumped with the knife and--" + +Crash! Quick as lightning the half-breed sprang for a window, tore his +way through all opposers, and was gone! + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +TOM was a glittering hero once more--the pet of the old, the envy of +the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village +paper magnified him. There were some that believed he would be +President, yet, if he escaped hanging. + +As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom +and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort +of conduct is to the world's credit; therefore it is not well to find +fault with it. + +Tom's days were days of splendor and exultation to him, but his nights +were seasons of horror. Injun Joe infested all his dreams, and always +with doom in his eye. Hardly any temptation could persuade the boy to +stir abroad after nightfall. Poor Huck was in the same state of +wretchedness and terror, for Tom had told the whole story to the lawyer +the night before the great day of the trial, and Huck was sore afraid +that his share in the business might leak out, yet, notwithstanding +Injun Joe's flight had saved him the suffering of testifying in court. +The poor fellow had got the attorney to promise secrecy, but what of +that? Since Tom's harassed conscience had managed to drive him to the +lawyer's house by night and wring a dread tale from lips that had been +sealed with the dismalest and most formidable of oaths, Huck's +confidence in the human race was well-nigh obliterated. + +Daily Muff Potter's gratitude made Tom glad he had spoken; but nightly +he wished he had sealed up his tongue. + +Half the time Tom was afraid Injun Joe would never be captured; the +other half he was afraid he would be. He felt sure he never could draw +a safe breath again until that man was dead and he had seen the corpse. + +Rewards had been offered, the country had been scoured, but no Injun +Joe was found. One of those omniscient and awe-inspiring marvels, a +detective, came up from St. Louis, moused around, shook his head, +looked wise, and made that sort of astounding success which members of +that craft usually achieve. That is to say, he "found a clew." But you +can't hang a "clew" for murder, and so after that detective had got +through and gone home, Tom felt just as insecure as he was before. + +The slow days drifted on, and each left behind it a slightly lightened +weight of apprehension. + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +THERE comes a time in every rightly-constructed boy's life when he has +a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. This +desire suddenly came upon Tom one day. He sallied out to find Joe +Harper, but failed of success. Next he sought Ben Rogers; he had gone +fishing. Presently he stumbled upon Huck Finn the Red-Handed. Huck +would answer. Tom took him to a private place and opened the matter to +him confidentially. Huck was willing. Huck was always willing to take a +hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no +capital, for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time +which is not money. "Where'll we dig?" said Huck. + +"Oh, most anywhere." + +"Why, is it hid all around?" + +"No, indeed it ain't. It's hid in mighty particular places, Huck +--sometimes on islands, sometimes in rotten chests under the end of a +limb of an old dead tree, just where the shadow falls at midnight; but +mostly under the floor in ha'nted houses." + +"Who hides it?" + +"Why, robbers, of course--who'd you reckon? Sunday-school +sup'rintendents?" + +"I don't know. If 'twas mine I wouldn't hide it; I'd spend it and have +a good time." + +"So would I. But robbers don't do that way. They always hide it and +leave it there." + +"Don't they come after it any more?" + +"No, they think they will, but they generally forget the marks, or +else they die. Anyway, it lays there a long time and gets rusty; and by +and by somebody finds an old yellow paper that tells how to find the +marks--a paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because it's +mostly signs and hy'roglyphics." + +"HyroQwhich?" + +"Hy'roglyphics--pictures and things, you know, that don't seem to mean +anything." + +"Have you got one of them papers, Tom?" + +"No." + +"Well then, how you going to find the marks?" + +"I don't want any marks. They always bury it under a ha'nted house or +on an island, or under a dead tree that's got one limb sticking out. +Well, we've tried Jackson's Island a little, and we can try it again +some time; and there's the old ha'nted house up the Still-House branch, +and there's lots of dead-limb trees--dead loads of 'em." + +"Is it under all of them?" + +"How you talk! No!" + +"Then how you going to know which one to go for?" + +"Go for all of 'em!" + +"Why, Tom, it'll take all summer." + +"Well, what of that? Suppose you find a brass pot with a hundred +dollars in it, all rusty and gray, or rotten chest full of di'monds. +How's that?" + +Huck's eyes glowed. + +"That's bully. Plenty bully enough for me. Just you gimme the hundred +dollars and I don't want no di'monds." + +"All right. But I bet you I ain't going to throw off on di'monds. Some +of 'em's worth twenty dollars apiece--there ain't any, hardly, but's +worth six bits or a dollar." + +"No! Is that so?" + +"Cert'nly--anybody'll tell you so. Hain't you ever seen one, Huck?" + +"Not as I remember." + +"Oh, kings have slathers of them." + +"Well, I don' know no kings, Tom." + +"I reckon you don't. But if you was to go to Europe you'd see a raft +of 'em hopping around." + +"Do they hop?" + +"Hop?--your granny! No!" + +"Well, what did you say they did, for?" + +"Shucks, I only meant you'd SEE 'em--not hopping, of course--what do +they want to hop for?--but I mean you'd just see 'em--scattered around, +you know, in a kind of a general way. Like that old humpbacked Richard." + +"Richard? What's his other name?" + +"He didn't have any other name. Kings don't have any but a given name." + +"No?" + +"But they don't." + +"Well, if they like it, Tom, all right; but I don't want to be a king +and have only just a given name, like a nigger. But say--where you +going to dig first?" + +"Well, I don't know. S'pose we tackle that old dead-limb tree on the +hill t'other side of Still-House branch?" + +"I'm agreed." + +So they got a crippled pick and a shovel, and set out on their +three-mile tramp. They arrived hot and panting, and threw themselves +down in the shade of a neighboring elm to rest and have a smoke. + +"I like this," said Tom. + +"So do I." + +"Say, Huck, if we find a treasure here, what you going to do with your +share?" + +"Well, I'll have pie and a glass of soda every day, and I'll go to +every circus that comes along. I bet I'll have a gay time." + +"Well, ain't you going to save any of it?" + +"Save it? What for?" + +"Why, so as to have something to live on, by and by." + +"Oh, that ain't any use. Pap would come back to thish-yer town some +day and get his claws on it if I didn't hurry up, and I tell you he'd +clean it out pretty quick. What you going to do with yourn, Tom?" + +"I'm going to buy a new drum, and a sure-'nough sword, and a red +necktie and a bull pup, and get married." + +"Married!" + +"That's it." + +"Tom, you--why, you ain't in your right mind." + +"Wait--you'll see." + +"Well, that's the foolishest thing you could do. Look at pap and my +mother. Fight! Why, they used to fight all the time. I remember, mighty +well." + +"That ain't anything. The girl I'm going to marry won't fight." + +"Tom, I reckon they're all alike. They'll all comb a body. Now you +better think 'bout this awhile. I tell you you better. What's the name +of the gal?" + +"It ain't a gal at all--it's a girl." + +"It's all the same, I reckon; some says gal, some says girl--both's +right, like enough. Anyway, what's her name, Tom?" + +"I'll tell you some time--not now." + +"All right--that'll do. Only if you get married I'll be more lonesomer +than ever." + +"No you won't. You'll come and live with me. Now stir out of this and +we'll go to digging." + +They worked and sweated for half an hour. No result. They toiled +another half-hour. Still no result. Huck said: + +"Do they always bury it as deep as this?" + +"Sometimes--not always. Not generally. I reckon we haven't got the +right place." + +So they chose a new spot and began again. The labor dragged a little, +but still they made progress. They pegged away in silence for some +time. Finally Huck leaned on his shovel, swabbed the beaded drops from +his brow with his sleeve, and said: + +"Where you going to dig next, after we get this one?" + +"I reckon maybe we'll tackle the old tree that's over yonder on +Cardiff Hill back of the widow's." + +"I reckon that'll be a good one. But won't the widow take it away from +us, Tom? It's on her land." + +"SHE take it away! Maybe she'd like to try it once. Whoever finds one +of these hid treasures, it belongs to him. It don't make any difference +whose land it's on." + +That was satisfactory. The work went on. By and by Huck said: + +"Blame it, we must be in the wrong place again. What do you think?" + +"It is mighty curious, Huck. I don't understand it. Sometimes witches +interfere. I reckon maybe that's what's the trouble now." + +"Shucks! Witches ain't got no power in the daytime." + +"Well, that's so. I didn't think of that. Oh, I know what the matter +is! What a blamed lot of fools we are! You got to find out where the +shadow of the limb falls at midnight, and that's where you dig!" + +"Then consound it, we've fooled away all this work for nothing. Now +hang it all, we got to come back in the night. It's an awful long way. +Can you get out?" + +"I bet I will. We've got to do it to-night, too, because if somebody +sees these holes they'll know in a minute what's here and they'll go +for it." + +"Well, I'll come around and maow to-night." + +"All right. Let's hide the tools in the bushes." + +The boys were there that night, about the appointed time. They sat in +the shadow waiting. It was a lonely place, and an hour made solemn by +old traditions. Spirits whispered in the rustling leaves, ghosts lurked +in the murky nooks, the deep baying of a hound floated up out of the +distance, an owl answered with his sepulchral note. The boys were +subdued by these solemnities, and talked little. By and by they judged +that twelve had come; they marked where the shadow fell, and began to +dig. Their hopes commenced to rise. Their interest grew stronger, and +their industry kept pace with it. The hole deepened and still deepened, +but every time their hearts jumped to hear the pick strike upon +something, they only suffered a new disappointment. It was only a stone +or a chunk. At last Tom said: + +"It ain't any use, Huck, we're wrong again." + +"Well, but we CAN'T be wrong. We spotted the shadder to a dot." + +"I know it, but then there's another thing." + +"What's that?". + +"Why, we only guessed at the time. Like enough it was too late or too +early." + +Huck dropped his shovel. + +"That's it," said he. "That's the very trouble. We got to give this +one up. We can't ever tell the right time, and besides this kind of +thing's too awful, here this time of night with witches and ghosts +a-fluttering around so. I feel as if something's behind me all the time; +and I'm afeard to turn around, becuz maybe there's others in front +a-waiting for a chance. I been creeping all over, ever since I got here." + +"Well, I've been pretty much so, too, Huck. They most always put in a +dead man when they bury a treasure under a tree, to look out for it." + +"Lordy!" + +"Yes, they do. I've always heard that." + +"Tom, I don't like to fool around much where there's dead people. A +body's bound to get into trouble with 'em, sure." + +"I don't like to stir 'em up, either. S'pose this one here was to +stick his skull out and say something!" + +"Don't Tom! It's awful." + +"Well, it just is. Huck, I don't feel comfortable a bit." + +"Say, Tom, let's give this place up, and try somewheres else." + +"All right, I reckon we better." + +"What'll it be?" + +Tom considered awhile; and then said: + +"The ha'nted house. That's it!" + +"Blame it, I don't like ha'nted houses, Tom. Why, they're a dern sight +worse'n dead people. Dead people might talk, maybe, but they don't come +sliding around in a shroud, when you ain't noticing, and peep over your +shoulder all of a sudden and grit their teeth, the way a ghost does. I +couldn't stand such a thing as that, Tom--nobody could." + +"Yes, but, Huck, ghosts don't travel around only at night. They won't +hender us from digging there in the daytime." + +"Well, that's so. But you know mighty well people don't go about that +ha'nted house in the day nor the night." + +"Well, that's mostly because they don't like to go where a man's been +murdered, anyway--but nothing's ever been seen around that house except +in the night--just some blue lights slipping by the windows--no regular +ghosts." + +"Well, where you see one of them blue lights flickering around, Tom, +you can bet there's a ghost mighty close behind it. It stands to +reason. Becuz you know that they don't anybody but ghosts use 'em." + +"Yes, that's so. But anyway they don't come around in the daytime, so +what's the use of our being afeard?" + +"Well, all right. We'll tackle the ha'nted house if you say so--but I +reckon it's taking chances." + +They had started down the hill by this time. There in the middle of +the moonlit valley below them stood the "ha'nted" house, utterly +isolated, its fences gone long ago, rank weeds smothering the very +doorsteps, the chimney crumbled to ruin, the window-sashes vacant, a +corner of the roof caved in. The boys gazed awhile, half expecting to +see a blue light flit past a window; then talking in a low tone, as +befitted the time and the circumstances, they struck far off to the +right, to give the haunted house a wide berth, and took their way +homeward through the woods that adorned the rearward side of Cardiff +Hill. + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +ABOUT noon the next day the boys arrived at the dead tree; they had +come for their tools. Tom was impatient to go to the haunted house; +Huck was measurably so, also--but suddenly said: + +"Lookyhere, Tom, do you know what day it is?" + +Tom mentally ran over the days of the week, and then quickly lifted +his eyes with a startled look in them-- + +"My! I never once thought of it, Huck!" + +"Well, I didn't neither, but all at once it popped onto me that it was +Friday." + +"Blame it, a body can't be too careful, Huck. We might 'a' got into an +awful scrape, tackling such a thing on a Friday." + +"MIGHT! Better say we WOULD! There's some lucky days, maybe, but +Friday ain't." + +"Any fool knows that. I don't reckon YOU was the first that found it +out, Huck." + +"Well, I never said I was, did I? And Friday ain't all, neither. I had +a rotten bad dream last night--dreampt about rats." + +"No! Sure sign of trouble. Did they fight?" + +"No." + +"Well, that's good, Huck. When they don't fight it's only a sign that +there's trouble around, you know. All we got to do is to look mighty +sharp and keep out of it. We'll drop this thing for to-day, and play. +Do you know Robin Hood, Huck?" + +"No. Who's Robin Hood?" + +"Why, he was one of the greatest men that was ever in England--and the +best. He was a robber." + +"Cracky, I wisht I was. Who did he rob?" + +"Only sheriffs and bishops and rich people and kings, and such like. +But he never bothered the poor. He loved 'em. He always divided up with +'em perfectly square." + +"Well, he must 'a' been a brick." + +"I bet you he was, Huck. Oh, he was the noblest man that ever was. +They ain't any such men now, I can tell you. He could lick any man in +England, with one hand tied behind him; and he could take his yew bow +and plug a ten-cent piece every time, a mile and a half." + +"What's a YEW bow?" + +"I don't know. It's some kind of a bow, of course. And if he hit that +dime only on the edge he would set down and cry--and curse. But we'll +play Robin Hood--it's nobby fun. I'll learn you." + +"I'm agreed." + +So they played Robin Hood all the afternoon, now and then casting a +yearning eye down upon the haunted house and passing a remark about the +morrow's prospects and possibilities there. As the sun began to sink +into the west they took their way homeward athwart the long shadows of +the trees and soon were buried from sight in the forests of Cardiff +Hill. + +On Saturday, shortly after noon, the boys were at the dead tree again. +They had a smoke and a chat in the shade, and then dug a little in +their last hole, not with great hope, but merely because Tom said there +were so many cases where people had given up a treasure after getting +down within six inches of it, and then somebody else had come along and +turned it up with a single thrust of a shovel. The thing failed this +time, however, so the boys shouldered their tools and went away feeling +that they had not trifled with fortune, but had fulfilled all the +requirements that belong to the business of treasure-hunting. + +When they reached the haunted house there was something so weird and +grisly about the dead silence that reigned there under the baking sun, +and something so depressing about the loneliness and desolation of the +place, that they were afraid, for a moment, to venture in. Then they +crept to the door and took a trembling peep. They saw a weed-grown, +floorless room, unplastered, an ancient fireplace, vacant windows, a +ruinous staircase; and here, there, and everywhere hung ragged and +abandoned cobwebs. They presently entered, softly, with quickened +pulses, talking in whispers, ears alert to catch the slightest sound, +and muscles tense and ready for instant retreat. + +In a little while familiarity modified their fears and they gave the +place a critical and interested examination, rather admiring their own +boldness, and wondering at it, too. Next they wanted to look up-stairs. +This was something like cutting off retreat, but they got to daring +each other, and of course there could be but one result--they threw +their tools into a corner and made the ascent. Up there were the same +signs of decay. In one corner they found a closet that promised +mystery, but the promise was a fraud--there was nothing in it. Their +courage was up now and well in hand. They were about to go down and +begin work when-- + +"Sh!" said Tom. + +"What is it?" whispered Huck, blanching with fright. + +"Sh! ... There! ... Hear it?" + +"Yes! ... Oh, my! Let's run!" + +"Keep still! Don't you budge! They're coming right toward the door." + +The boys stretched themselves upon the floor with their eyes to +knot-holes in the planking, and lay waiting, in a misery of fear. + +"They've stopped.... No--coming.... Here they are. Don't whisper +another word, Huck. My goodness, I wish I was out of this!" + +Two men entered. Each boy said to himself: "There's the old deaf and +dumb Spaniard that's been about town once or twice lately--never saw +t'other man before." + +"T'other" was a ragged, unkempt creature, with nothing very pleasant +in his face. The Spaniard was wrapped in a serape; he had bushy white +whiskers; long white hair flowed from under his sombrero, and he wore +green goggles. When they came in, "t'other" was talking in a low voice; +they sat down on the ground, facing the door, with their backs to the +wall, and the speaker continued his remarks. His manner became less +guarded and his words more distinct as he proceeded: + +"No," said he, "I've thought it all over, and I don't like it. It's +dangerous." + +"Dangerous!" grunted the "deaf and dumb" Spaniard--to the vast +surprise of the boys. "Milksop!" + +This voice made the boys gasp and quake. It was Injun Joe's! There was +silence for some time. Then Joe said: + +"What's any more dangerous than that job up yonder--but nothing's come +of it." + +"That's different. Away up the river so, and not another house about. +'Twon't ever be known that we tried, anyway, long as we didn't succeed." + +"Well, what's more dangerous than coming here in the daytime!--anybody +would suspicion us that saw us." + +"I know that. But there warn't any other place as handy after that +fool of a job. I want to quit this shanty. I wanted to yesterday, only +it warn't any use trying to stir out of here, with those infernal boys +playing over there on the hill right in full view." + +"Those infernal boys" quaked again under the inspiration of this +remark, and thought how lucky it was that they had remembered it was +Friday and concluded to wait a day. They wished in their hearts they +had waited a year. + +The two men got out some food and made a luncheon. After a long and +thoughtful silence, Injun Joe said: + +"Look here, lad--you go back up the river where you belong. Wait there +till you hear from me. I'll take the chances on dropping into this town +just once more, for a look. We'll do that 'dangerous' job after I've +spied around a little and think things look well for it. Then for +Texas! We'll leg it together!" + +This was satisfactory. Both men presently fell to yawning, and Injun +Joe said: + +"I'm dead for sleep! It's your turn to watch." + +He curled down in the weeds and soon began to snore. His comrade +stirred him once or twice and he became quiet. Presently the watcher +began to nod; his head drooped lower and lower, both men began to snore +now. + +The boys drew a long, grateful breath. Tom whispered: + +"Now's our chance--come!" + +Huck said: + +"I can't--I'd die if they was to wake." + +Tom urged--Huck held back. At last Tom rose slowly and softly, and +started alone. But the first step he made wrung such a hideous creak +from the crazy floor that he sank down almost dead with fright. He +never made a second attempt. The boys lay there counting the dragging +moments till it seemed to them that time must be done and eternity +growing gray; and then they were grateful to note that at last the sun +was setting. + +Now one snore ceased. Injun Joe sat up, stared around--smiled grimly +upon his comrade, whose head was drooping upon his knees--stirred him +up with his foot and said: + +"Here! YOU'RE a watchman, ain't you! All right, though--nothing's +happened." + +"My! have I been asleep?" + +"Oh, partly, partly. Nearly time for us to be moving, pard. What'll we +do with what little swag we've got left?" + +"I don't know--leave it here as we've always done, I reckon. No use to +take it away till we start south. Six hundred and fifty in silver's +something to carry." + +"Well--all right--it won't matter to come here once more." + +"No--but I'd say come in the night as we used to do--it's better." + +"Yes: but look here; it may be a good while before I get the right +chance at that job; accidents might happen; 'tain't in such a very good +place; we'll just regularly bury it--and bury it deep." + +"Good idea," said the comrade, who walked across the room, knelt down, +raised one of the rearward hearth-stones and took out a bag that +jingled pleasantly. He subtracted from it twenty or thirty dollars for +himself and as much for Injun Joe, and passed the bag to the latter, +who was on his knees in the corner, now, digging with his bowie-knife. + +The boys forgot all their fears, all their miseries in an instant. +With gloating eyes they watched every movement. Luck!--the splendor of +it was beyond all imagination! Six hundred dollars was money enough to +make half a dozen boys rich! Here was treasure-hunting under the +happiest auspices--there would not be any bothersome uncertainty as to +where to dig. They nudged each other every moment--eloquent nudges and +easily understood, for they simply meant--"Oh, but ain't you glad NOW +we're here!" + +Joe's knife struck upon something. + +"Hello!" said he. + +"What is it?" said his comrade. + +"Half-rotten plank--no, it's a box, I believe. Here--bear a hand and +we'll see what it's here for. Never mind, I've broke a hole." + +He reached his hand in and drew it out-- + +"Man, it's money!" + +The two men examined the handful of coins. They were gold. The boys +above were as excited as themselves, and as delighted. + +Joe's comrade said: + +"We'll make quick work of this. There's an old rusty pick over amongst +the weeds in the corner the other side of the fireplace--I saw it a +minute ago." + +He ran and brought the boys' pick and shovel. Injun Joe took the pick, +looked it over critically, shook his head, muttered something to +himself, and then began to use it. The box was soon unearthed. It was +not very large; it was iron bound and had been very strong before the +slow years had injured it. The men contemplated the treasure awhile in +blissful silence. + +"Pard, there's thousands of dollars here," said Injun Joe. + +"'Twas always said that Murrel's gang used to be around here one +summer," the stranger observed. + +"I know it," said Injun Joe; "and this looks like it, I should say." + +"Now you won't need to do that job." + +The half-breed frowned. Said he: + +"You don't know me. Least you don't know all about that thing. 'Tain't +robbery altogether--it's REVENGE!" and a wicked light flamed in his +eyes. "I'll need your help in it. When it's finished--then Texas. Go +home to your Nance and your kids, and stand by till you hear from me." + +"Well--if you say so; what'll we do with this--bury it again?" + +"Yes. [Ravishing delight overhead.] NO! by the great Sachem, no! +[Profound distress overhead.] I'd nearly forgot. That pick had fresh +earth on it! [The boys were sick with terror in a moment.] What +business has a pick and a shovel here? What business with fresh earth +on them? Who brought them here--and where are they gone? Have you heard +anybody?--seen anybody? What! bury it again and leave them to come and +see the ground disturbed? Not exactly--not exactly. We'll take it to my +den." + +"Why, of course! Might have thought of that before. You mean Number +One?" + +"No--Number Two--under the cross. The other place is bad--too common." + +"All right. It's nearly dark enough to start." + +Injun Joe got up and went about from window to window cautiously +peeping out. Presently he said: + +"Who could have brought those tools here? Do you reckon they can be +up-stairs?" + +The boys' breath forsook them. Injun Joe put his hand on his knife, +halted a moment, undecided, and then turned toward the stairway. The +boys thought of the closet, but their strength was gone. The steps came +creaking up the stairs--the intolerable distress of the situation woke +the stricken resolution of the lads--they were about to spring for the +closet, when there was a crash of rotten timbers and Injun Joe landed +on the ground amid the debris of the ruined stairway. He gathered +himself up cursing, and his comrade said: + +"Now what's the use of all that? If it's anybody, and they're up +there, let them STAY there--who cares? If they want to jump down, now, +and get into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes +--and then let them follow us if they want to. I'm willing. In my +opinion, whoever hove those things in here caught a sight of us and +took us for ghosts or devils or something. I'll bet they're running +yet." + +Joe grumbled awhile; then he agreed with his friend that what daylight +was left ought to be economized in getting things ready for leaving. +Shortly afterward they slipped out of the house in the deepening +twilight, and moved toward the river with their precious box. + +Tom and Huck rose up, weak but vastly relieved, and stared after them +through the chinks between the logs of the house. Follow? Not they. +They were content to reach ground again without broken necks, and take +the townward track over the hill. They did not talk much. They were too +much absorbed in hating themselves--hating the ill luck that made them +take the spade and the pick there. But for that, Injun Joe never would +have suspected. He would have hidden the silver with the gold to wait +there till his "revenge" was satisfied, and then he would have had the +misfortune to find that money turn up missing. Bitter, bitter luck that +the tools were ever brought there! + +They resolved to keep a lookout for that Spaniard when he should come +to town spying out for chances to do his revengeful job, and follow him +to "Number Two," wherever that might be. Then a ghastly thought +occurred to Tom. + +"Revenge? What if he means US, Huck!" + +"Oh, don't!" said Huck, nearly fainting. + +They talked it all over, and as they entered town they agreed to +believe that he might possibly mean somebody else--at least that he +might at least mean nobody but Tom, since only Tom had testified. + +Very, very small comfort it was to Tom to be alone in danger! Company +would be a palpable improvement, he thought. + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +THE adventure of the day mightily tormented Tom's dreams that night. +Four times he had his hands on that rich treasure and four times it +wasted to nothingness in his fingers as sleep forsook him and +wakefulness brought back the hard reality of his misfortune. As he lay +in the early morning recalling the incidents of his great adventure, he +noticed that they seemed curiously subdued and far away--somewhat as if +they had happened in another world, or in a time long gone by. Then it +occurred to him that the great adventure itself must be a dream! There +was one very strong argument in favor of this idea--namely, that the +quantity of coin he had seen was too vast to be real. He had never seen +as much as fifty dollars in one mass before, and he was like all boys +of his age and station in life, in that he imagined that all references +to "hundreds" and "thousands" were mere fanciful forms of speech, and +that no such sums really existed in the world. He never had supposed +for a moment that so large a sum as a hundred dollars was to be found +in actual money in any one's possession. If his notions of hidden +treasure had been analyzed, they would have been found to consist of a +handful of real dimes and a bushel of vague, splendid, ungraspable +dollars. + +But the incidents of his adventure grew sensibly sharper and clearer +under the attrition of thinking them over, and so he presently found +himself leaning to the impression that the thing might not have been a +dream, after all. This uncertainty must be swept away. He would snatch +a hurried breakfast and go and find Huck. Huck was sitting on the +gunwale of a flatboat, listlessly dangling his feet in the water and +looking very melancholy. Tom concluded to let Huck lead up to the +subject. If he did not do it, then the adventure would be proved to +have been only a dream. + +"Hello, Huck!" + +"Hello, yourself." + +Silence, for a minute. + +"Tom, if we'd 'a' left the blame tools at the dead tree, we'd 'a' got +the money. Oh, ain't it awful!" + +"'Tain't a dream, then, 'tain't a dream! Somehow I most wish it was. +Dog'd if I don't, Huck." + +"What ain't a dream?" + +"Oh, that thing yesterday. I been half thinking it was." + +"Dream! If them stairs hadn't broke down you'd 'a' seen how much dream +it was! I've had dreams enough all night--with that patch-eyed Spanish +devil going for me all through 'em--rot him!" + +"No, not rot him. FIND him! Track the money!" + +"Tom, we'll never find him. A feller don't have only one chance for +such a pile--and that one's lost. I'd feel mighty shaky if I was to see +him, anyway." + +"Well, so'd I; but I'd like to see him, anyway--and track him out--to +his Number Two." + +"Number Two--yes, that's it. I been thinking 'bout that. But I can't +make nothing out of it. What do you reckon it is?" + +"I dono. It's too deep. Say, Huck--maybe it's the number of a house!" + +"Goody! ... No, Tom, that ain't it. If it is, it ain't in this +one-horse town. They ain't no numbers here." + +"Well, that's so. Lemme think a minute. Here--it's the number of a +room--in a tavern, you know!" + +"Oh, that's the trick! They ain't only two taverns. We can find out +quick." + +"You stay here, Huck, till I come." + +Tom was off at once. He did not care to have Huck's company in public +places. He was gone half an hour. He found that in the best tavern, No. +2 had long been occupied by a young lawyer, and was still so occupied. +In the less ostentatious house, No. 2 was a mystery. The +tavern-keeper's young son said it was kept locked all the time, and he +never saw anybody go into it or come out of it except at night; he did +not know any particular reason for this state of things; had had some +little curiosity, but it was rather feeble; had made the most of the +mystery by entertaining himself with the idea that that room was +"ha'nted"; had noticed that there was a light in there the night before. + +"That's what I've found out, Huck. I reckon that's the very No. 2 +we're after." + +"I reckon it is, Tom. Now what you going to do?" + +"Lemme think." + +Tom thought a long time. Then he said: + +"I'll tell you. The back door of that No. 2 is the door that comes out +into that little close alley between the tavern and the old rattle trap +of a brick store. Now you get hold of all the door-keys you can find, +and I'll nip all of auntie's, and the first dark night we'll go there +and try 'em. And mind you, keep a lookout for Injun Joe, because he +said he was going to drop into town and spy around once more for a +chance to get his revenge. If you see him, you just follow him; and if +he don't go to that No. 2, that ain't the place." + +"Lordy, I don't want to foller him by myself!" + +"Why, it'll be night, sure. He mightn't ever see you--and if he did, +maybe he'd never think anything." + +"Well, if it's pretty dark I reckon I'll track him. I dono--I dono. +I'll try." + +"You bet I'll follow him, if it's dark, Huck. Why, he might 'a' found +out he couldn't get his revenge, and be going right after that money." + +"It's so, Tom, it's so. I'll foller him; I will, by jingoes!" + +"Now you're TALKING! Don't you ever weaken, Huck, and I won't." + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +THAT night Tom and Huck were ready for their adventure. They hung +about the neighborhood of the tavern until after nine, one watching the +alley at a distance and the other the tavern door. Nobody entered the +alley or left it; nobody resembling the Spaniard entered or left the +tavern door. The night promised to be a fair one; so Tom went home with +the understanding that if a considerable degree of darkness came on, +Huck was to come and "maow," whereupon he would slip out and try the +keys. But the night remained clear, and Huck closed his watch and +retired to bed in an empty sugar hogshead about twelve. + +Tuesday the boys had the same ill luck. Also Wednesday. But Thursday +night promised better. Tom slipped out in good season with his aunt's +old tin lantern, and a large towel to blindfold it with. He hid the +lantern in Huck's sugar hogshead and the watch began. An hour before +midnight the tavern closed up and its lights (the only ones +thereabouts) were put out. No Spaniard had been seen. Nobody had +entered or left the alley. Everything was auspicious. The blackness of +darkness reigned, the perfect stillness was interrupted only by +occasional mutterings of distant thunder. + +Tom got his lantern, lit it in the hogshead, wrapped it closely in the +towel, and the two adventurers crept in the gloom toward the tavern. +Huck stood sentry and Tom felt his way into the alley. Then there was a +season of waiting anxiety that weighed upon Huck's spirits like a +mountain. He began to wish he could see a flash from the lantern--it +would frighten him, but it would at least tell him that Tom was alive +yet. It seemed hours since Tom had disappeared. Surely he must have +fainted; maybe he was dead; maybe his heart had burst under terror and +excitement. In his uneasiness Huck found himself drawing closer and +closer to the alley; fearing all sorts of dreadful things, and +momentarily expecting some catastrophe to happen that would take away +his breath. There was not much to take away, for he seemed only able to +inhale it by thimblefuls, and his heart would soon wear itself out, the +way it was beating. Suddenly there was a flash of light and Tom came +tearing by him: "Run!" said he; "run, for your life!" + +He needn't have repeated it; once was enough; Huck was making thirty +or forty miles an hour before the repetition was uttered. The boys +never stopped till they reached the shed of a deserted slaughter-house +at the lower end of the village. Just as they got within its shelter +the storm burst and the rain poured down. As soon as Tom got his breath +he said: + +"Huck, it was awful! I tried two of the keys, just as soft as I could; +but they seemed to make such a power of racket that I couldn't hardly +get my breath I was so scared. They wouldn't turn in the lock, either. +Well, without noticing what I was doing, I took hold of the knob, and +open comes the door! It warn't locked! I hopped in, and shook off the +towel, and, GREAT CAESAR'S GHOST!" + +"What!--what'd you see, Tom?" + +"Huck, I most stepped onto Injun Joe's hand!" + +"No!" + +"Yes! He was lying there, sound asleep on the floor, with his old +patch on his eye and his arms spread out." + +"Lordy, what did you do? Did he wake up?" + +"No, never budged. Drunk, I reckon. I just grabbed that towel and +started!" + +"I'd never 'a' thought of the towel, I bet!" + +"Well, I would. My aunt would make me mighty sick if I lost it." + +"Say, Tom, did you see that box?" + +"Huck, I didn't wait to look around. I didn't see the box, I didn't +see the cross. I didn't see anything but a bottle and a tin cup on the +floor by Injun Joe; yes, I saw two barrels and lots more bottles in the +room. Don't you see, now, what's the matter with that ha'nted room?" + +"How?" + +"Why, it's ha'nted with whiskey! Maybe ALL the Temperance Taverns have +got a ha'nted room, hey, Huck?" + +"Well, I reckon maybe that's so. Who'd 'a' thought such a thing? But +say, Tom, now's a mighty good time to get that box, if Injun Joe's +drunk." + +"It is, that! You try it!" + +Huck shuddered. + +"Well, no--I reckon not." + +"And I reckon not, Huck. Only one bottle alongside of Injun Joe ain't +enough. If there'd been three, he'd be drunk enough and I'd do it." + +There was a long pause for reflection, and then Tom said: + +"Lookyhere, Huck, less not try that thing any more till we know Injun +Joe's not in there. It's too scary. Now, if we watch every night, we'll +be dead sure to see him go out, some time or other, and then we'll +snatch that box quicker'n lightning." + +"Well, I'm agreed. I'll watch the whole night long, and I'll do it +every night, too, if you'll do the other part of the job." + +"All right, I will. All you got to do is to trot up Hooper Street a +block and maow--and if I'm asleep, you throw some gravel at the window +and that'll fetch me." + +"Agreed, and good as wheat!" + +"Now, Huck, the storm's over, and I'll go home. It'll begin to be +daylight in a couple of hours. You go back and watch that long, will +you?" + +"I said I would, Tom, and I will. I'll ha'nt that tavern every night +for a year! I'll sleep all day and I'll stand watch all night." + +"That's all right. Now, where you going to sleep?" + +"In Ben Rogers' hayloft. He lets me, and so does his pap's nigger man, +Uncle Jake. I tote water for Uncle Jake whenever he wants me to, and +any time I ask him he gives me a little something to eat if he can +spare it. That's a mighty good nigger, Tom. He likes me, becuz I don't +ever act as if I was above him. Sometime I've set right down and eat +WITH him. But you needn't tell that. A body's got to do things when +he's awful hungry he wouldn't want to do as a steady thing." + +"Well, if I don't want you in the daytime, I'll let you sleep. I won't +come bothering around. Any time you see something's up, in the night, +just skip right around and maow." + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +THE first thing Tom heard on Friday morning was a glad piece of news +--Judge Thatcher's family had come back to town the night before. Both +Injun Joe and the treasure sunk into secondary importance for a moment, +and Becky took the chief place in the boy's interest. He saw her and +they had an exhausting good time playing "hi-spy" and "gully-keeper" +with a crowd of their school-mates. The day was completed and crowned +in a peculiarly satisfactory way: Becky teased her mother to appoint +the next day for the long-promised and long-delayed picnic, and she +consented. The child's delight was boundless; and Tom's not more +moderate. The invitations were sent out before sunset, and straightway +the young folks of the village were thrown into a fever of preparation +and pleasurable anticipation. Tom's excitement enabled him to keep +awake until a pretty late hour, and he had good hopes of hearing Huck's +"maow," and of having his treasure to astonish Becky and the picnickers +with, next day; but he was disappointed. No signal came that night. + +Morning came, eventually, and by ten or eleven o'clock a giddy and +rollicking company were gathered at Judge Thatcher's, and everything +was ready for a start. It was not the custom for elderly people to mar +the picnics with their presence. The children were considered safe +enough under the wings of a few young ladies of eighteen and a few +young gentlemen of twenty-three or thereabouts. The old steam ferryboat +was chartered for the occasion; presently the gay throng filed up the +main street laden with provision-baskets. Sid was sick and had to miss +the fun; Mary remained at home to entertain him. The last thing Mrs. +Thatcher said to Becky, was: + +"You'll not get back till late. Perhaps you'd better stay all night +with some of the girls that live near the ferry-landing, child." + +"Then I'll stay with Susy Harper, mamma." + +"Very well. And mind and behave yourself and don't be any trouble." + +Presently, as they tripped along, Tom said to Becky: + +"Say--I'll tell you what we'll do. 'Stead of going to Joe Harper's +we'll climb right up the hill and stop at the Widow Douglas'. She'll +have ice-cream! She has it most every day--dead loads of it. And she'll +be awful glad to have us." + +"Oh, that will be fun!" + +Then Becky reflected a moment and said: + +"But what will mamma say?" + +"How'll she ever know?" + +The girl turned the idea over in her mind, and said reluctantly: + +"I reckon it's wrong--but--" + +"But shucks! Your mother won't know, and so what's the harm? All she +wants is that you'll be safe; and I bet you she'd 'a' said go there if +she'd 'a' thought of it. I know she would!" + +The Widow Douglas' splendid hospitality was a tempting bait. It and +Tom's persuasions presently carried the day. So it was decided to say +nothing anybody about the night's programme. Presently it occurred to +Tom that maybe Huck might come this very night and give the signal. The +thought took a deal of the spirit out of his anticipations. Still he +could not bear to give up the fun at Widow Douglas'. And why should he +give it up, he reasoned--the signal did not come the night before, so +why should it be any more likely to come to-night? The sure fun of the +evening outweighed the uncertain treasure; and, boy-like, he determined +to yield to the stronger inclination and not allow himself to think of +the box of money another time that day. + +Three miles below town the ferryboat stopped at the mouth of a woody +hollow and tied up. The crowd swarmed ashore and soon the forest +distances and craggy heights echoed far and near with shoutings and +laughter. All the different ways of getting hot and tired were gone +through with, and by-and-by the rovers straggled back to camp fortified +with responsible appetites, and then the destruction of the good things +began. After the feast there was a refreshing season of rest and chat +in the shade of spreading oaks. By-and-by somebody shouted: + +"Who's ready for the cave?" + +Everybody was. Bundles of candles were procured, and straightway there +was a general scamper up the hill. The mouth of the cave was up the +hillside--an opening shaped like a letter A. Its massive oaken door +stood unbarred. Within was a small chamber, chilly as an ice-house, and +walled by Nature with solid limestone that was dewy with a cold sweat. +It was romantic and mysterious to stand here in the deep gloom and look +out upon the green valley shining in the sun. But the impressiveness of +the situation quickly wore off, and the romping began again. The moment +a candle was lighted there was a general rush upon the owner of it; a +struggle and a gallant defence followed, but the candle was soon +knocked down or blown out, and then there was a glad clamor of laughter +and a new chase. But all things have an end. By-and-by the procession +went filing down the steep descent of the main avenue, the flickering +rank of lights dimly revealing the lofty walls of rock almost to their +point of junction sixty feet overhead. This main avenue was not more +than eight or ten feet wide. Every few steps other lofty and still +narrower crevices branched from it on either hand--for McDougal's cave +was but a vast labyrinth of crooked aisles that ran into each other and +out again and led nowhere. It was said that one might wander days and +nights together through its intricate tangle of rifts and chasms, and +never find the end of the cave; and that he might go down, and down, +and still down, into the earth, and it was just the same--labyrinth +under labyrinth, and no end to any of them. No man "knew" the cave. +That was an impossible thing. Most of the young men knew a portion of +it, and it was not customary to venture much beyond this known portion. +Tom Sawyer knew as much of the cave as any one. + +The procession moved along the main avenue some three-quarters of a +mile, and then groups and couples began to slip aside into branch +avenues, fly along the dismal corridors, and take each other by +surprise at points where the corridors joined again. Parties were able +to elude each other for the space of half an hour without going beyond +the "known" ground. + +By-and-by, one group after another came straggling back to the mouth +of the cave, panting, hilarious, smeared from head to foot with tallow +drippings, daubed with clay, and entirely delighted with the success of +the day. Then they were astonished to find that they had been taking no +note of time and that night was about at hand. The clanging bell had +been calling for half an hour. However, this sort of close to the day's +adventures was romantic and therefore satisfactory. When the ferryboat +with her wild freight pushed into the stream, nobody cared sixpence for +the wasted time but the captain of the craft. + +Huck was already upon his watch when the ferryboat's lights went +glinting past the wharf. He heard no noise on board, for the young +people were as subdued and still as people usually are who are nearly +tired to death. He wondered what boat it was, and why she did not stop +at the wharf--and then he dropped her out of his mind and put his +attention upon his business. The night was growing cloudy and dark. Ten +o'clock came, and the noise of vehicles ceased, scattered lights began +to wink out, all straggling foot-passengers disappeared, the village +betook itself to its slumbers and left the small watcher alone with the +silence and the ghosts. Eleven o'clock came, and the tavern lights were +put out; darkness everywhere, now. Huck waited what seemed a weary long +time, but nothing happened. His faith was weakening. Was there any use? +Was there really any use? Why not give it up and turn in? + +A noise fell upon his ear. He was all attention in an instant. The +alley door closed softly. He sprang to the corner of the brick store. +The next moment two men brushed by him, and one seemed to have +something under his arm. It must be that box! So they were going to +remove the treasure. Why call Tom now? It would be absurd--the men +would get away with the box and never be found again. No, he would +stick to their wake and follow them; he would trust to the darkness for +security from discovery. So communing with himself, Huck stepped out +and glided along behind the men, cat-like, with bare feet, allowing +them to keep just far enough ahead not to be invisible. + +They moved up the river street three blocks, then turned to the left +up a cross-street. They went straight ahead, then, until they came to +the path that led up Cardiff Hill; this they took. They passed by the +old Welshman's house, half-way up the hill, without hesitating, and +still climbed upward. Good, thought Huck, they will bury it in the old +quarry. But they never stopped at the quarry. They passed on, up the +summit. They plunged into the narrow path between the tall sumach +bushes, and were at once hidden in the gloom. Huck closed up and +shortened his distance, now, for they would never be able to see him. +He trotted along awhile; then slackened his pace, fearing he was +gaining too fast; moved on a piece, then stopped altogether; listened; +no sound; none, save that he seemed to hear the beating of his own +heart. The hooting of an owl came over the hill--ominous sound! But no +footsteps. Heavens, was everything lost! He was about to spring with +winged feet, when a man cleared his throat not four feet from him! +Huck's heart shot into his throat, but he swallowed it again; and then +he stood there shaking as if a dozen agues had taken charge of him at +once, and so weak that he thought he must surely fall to the ground. He +knew where he was. He knew he was within five steps of the stile +leading into Widow Douglas' grounds. Very well, he thought, let them +bury it there; it won't be hard to find. + +Now there was a voice--a very low voice--Injun Joe's: + +"Damn her, maybe she's got company--there's lights, late as it is." + +"I can't see any." + +This was that stranger's voice--the stranger of the haunted house. A +deadly chill went to Huck's heart--this, then, was the "revenge" job! +His thought was, to fly. Then he remembered that the Widow Douglas had +been kind to him more than once, and maybe these men were going to +murder her. He wished he dared venture to warn her; but he knew he +didn't dare--they might come and catch him. He thought all this and +more in the moment that elapsed between the stranger's remark and Injun +Joe's next--which was-- + +"Because the bush is in your way. Now--this way--now you see, don't +you?" + +"Yes. Well, there IS company there, I reckon. Better give it up." + +"Give it up, and I just leaving this country forever! Give it up and +maybe never have another chance. I tell you again, as I've told you +before, I don't care for her swag--you may have it. But her husband was +rough on me--many times he was rough on me--and mainly he was the +justice of the peace that jugged me for a vagrant. And that ain't all. +It ain't a millionth part of it! He had me HORSEWHIPPED!--horsewhipped +in front of the jail, like a nigger!--with all the town looking on! +HORSEWHIPPED!--do you understand? He took advantage of me and died. But +I'll take it out of HER." + +"Oh, don't kill her! Don't do that!" + +"Kill? Who said anything about killing? I would kill HIM if he was +here; but not her. When you want to get revenge on a woman you don't +kill her--bosh! you go for her looks. You slit her nostrils--you notch +her ears like a sow!" + +"By God, that's--" + +"Keep your opinion to yourself! It will be safest for you. I'll tie +her to the bed. If she bleeds to death, is that my fault? I'll not cry, +if she does. My friend, you'll help me in this thing--for MY sake +--that's why you're here--I mightn't be able alone. If you flinch, I'll +kill you. Do you understand that? And if I have to kill you, I'll kill +her--and then I reckon nobody'll ever know much about who done this +business." + +"Well, if it's got to be done, let's get at it. The quicker the +better--I'm all in a shiver." + +"Do it NOW? And company there? Look here--I'll get suspicious of you, +first thing you know. No--we'll wait till the lights are out--there's +no hurry." + +Huck felt that a silence was going to ensue--a thing still more awful +than any amount of murderous talk; so he held his breath and stepped +gingerly back; planted his foot carefully and firmly, after balancing, +one-legged, in a precarious way and almost toppling over, first on one +side and then on the other. He took another step back, with the same +elaboration and the same risks; then another and another, and--a twig +snapped under his foot! His breath stopped and he listened. There was +no sound--the stillness was perfect. His gratitude was measureless. Now +he turned in his tracks, between the walls of sumach bushes--turned +himself as carefully as if he were a ship--and then stepped quickly but +cautiously along. When he emerged at the quarry he felt secure, and so +he picked up his nimble heels and flew. Down, down he sped, till he +reached the Welshman's. He banged at the door, and presently the heads +of the old man and his two stalwart sons were thrust from windows. + +"What's the row there? Who's banging? What do you want?" + +"Let me in--quick! I'll tell everything." + +"Why, who are you?" + +"Huckleberry Finn--quick, let me in!" + +"Huckleberry Finn, indeed! It ain't a name to open many doors, I +judge! But let him in, lads, and let's see what's the trouble." + +"Please don't ever tell I told you," were Huck's first words when he +got in. "Please don't--I'd be killed, sure--but the widow's been good +friends to me sometimes, and I want to tell--I WILL tell if you'll +promise you won't ever say it was me." + +"By George, he HAS got something to tell, or he wouldn't act so!" +exclaimed the old man; "out with it and nobody here'll ever tell, lad." + +Three minutes later the old man and his sons, well armed, were up the +hill, and just entering the sumach path on tiptoe, their weapons in +their hands. Huck accompanied them no further. He hid behind a great +bowlder and fell to listening. There was a lagging, anxious silence, +and then all of a sudden there was an explosion of firearms and a cry. + +Huck waited for no particulars. He sprang away and sped down the hill +as fast as his legs could carry him. + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +AS the earliest suspicion of dawn appeared on Sunday morning, Huck +came groping up the hill and rapped gently at the old Welshman's door. +The inmates were asleep, but it was a sleep that was set on a +hair-trigger, on account of the exciting episode of the night. A call +came from a window: + +"Who's there!" + +Huck's scared voice answered in a low tone: + +"Please let me in! It's only Huck Finn!" + +"It's a name that can open this door night or day, lad!--and welcome!" + +These were strange words to the vagabond boy's ears, and the +pleasantest he had ever heard. He could not recollect that the closing +word had ever been applied in his case before. The door was quickly +unlocked, and he entered. Huck was given a seat and the old man and his +brace of tall sons speedily dressed themselves. + +"Now, my boy, I hope you're good and hungry, because breakfast will be +ready as soon as the sun's up, and we'll have a piping hot one, too +--make yourself easy about that! I and the boys hoped you'd turn up and +stop here last night." + +"I was awful scared," said Huck, "and I run. I took out when the +pistols went off, and I didn't stop for three mile. I've come now becuz +I wanted to know about it, you know; and I come before daylight becuz I +didn't want to run across them devils, even if they was dead." + +"Well, poor chap, you do look as if you'd had a hard night of it--but +there's a bed here for you when you've had your breakfast. No, they +ain't dead, lad--we are sorry enough for that. You see we knew right +where to put our hands on them, by your description; so we crept along +on tiptoe till we got within fifteen feet of them--dark as a cellar +that sumach path was--and just then I found I was going to sneeze. It +was the meanest kind of luck! I tried to keep it back, but no use +--'twas bound to come, and it did come! I was in the lead with my pistol +raised, and when the sneeze started those scoundrels a-rustling to get +out of the path, I sung out, 'Fire boys!' and blazed away at the place +where the rustling was. So did the boys. But they were off in a jiffy, +those villains, and we after them, down through the woods. I judge we +never touched them. They fired a shot apiece as they started, but their +bullets whizzed by and didn't do us any harm. As soon as we lost the +sound of their feet we quit chasing, and went down and stirred up the +constables. They got a posse together, and went off to guard the river +bank, and as soon as it is light the sheriff and a gang are going to +beat up the woods. My boys will be with them presently. I wish we had +some sort of description of those rascals--'twould help a good deal. +But you couldn't see what they were like, in the dark, lad, I suppose?" + +"Oh yes; I saw them down-town and follered them." + +"Splendid! Describe them--describe them, my boy!" + +"One's the old deaf and dumb Spaniard that's ben around here once or +twice, and t'other's a mean-looking, ragged--" + +"That's enough, lad, we know the men! Happened on them in the woods +back of the widow's one day, and they slunk away. Off with you, boys, +and tell the sheriff--get your breakfast to-morrow morning!" + +The Welshman's sons departed at once. As they were leaving the room +Huck sprang up and exclaimed: + +"Oh, please don't tell ANYbody it was me that blowed on them! Oh, +please!" + +"All right if you say it, Huck, but you ought to have the credit of +what you did." + +"Oh no, no! Please don't tell!" + +When the young men were gone, the old Welshman said: + +"They won't tell--and I won't. But why don't you want it known?" + +Huck would not explain, further than to say that he already knew too +much about one of those men and would not have the man know that he +knew anything against him for the whole world--he would be killed for +knowing it, sure. + +The old man promised secrecy once more, and said: + +"How did you come to follow these fellows, lad? Were they looking +suspicious?" + +Huck was silent while he framed a duly cautious reply. Then he said: + +"Well, you see, I'm a kind of a hard lot,--least everybody says so, +and I don't see nothing agin it--and sometimes I can't sleep much, on +account of thinking about it and sort of trying to strike out a new way +of doing. That was the way of it last night. I couldn't sleep, and so I +come along up-street 'bout midnight, a-turning it all over, and when I +got to that old shackly brick store by the Temperance Tavern, I backed +up agin the wall to have another think. Well, just then along comes +these two chaps slipping along close by me, with something under their +arm, and I reckoned they'd stole it. One was a-smoking, and t'other one +wanted a light; so they stopped right before me and the cigars lit up +their faces and I see that the big one was the deaf and dumb Spaniard, +by his white whiskers and the patch on his eye, and t'other one was a +rusty, ragged-looking devil." + +"Could you see the rags by the light of the cigars?" + +This staggered Huck for a moment. Then he said: + +"Well, I don't know--but somehow it seems as if I did." + +"Then they went on, and you--" + +"Follered 'em--yes. That was it. I wanted to see what was up--they +sneaked along so. I dogged 'em to the widder's stile, and stood in the +dark and heard the ragged one beg for the widder, and the Spaniard +swear he'd spile her looks just as I told you and your two--" + +"What! The DEAF AND DUMB man said all that!" + +Huck had made another terrible mistake! He was trying his best to keep +the old man from getting the faintest hint of who the Spaniard might +be, and yet his tongue seemed determined to get him into trouble in +spite of all he could do. He made several efforts to creep out of his +scrape, but the old man's eye was upon him and he made blunder after +blunder. Presently the Welshman said: + +"My boy, don't be afraid of me. I wouldn't hurt a hair of your head +for all the world. No--I'd protect you--I'd protect you. This Spaniard +is not deaf and dumb; you've let that slip without intending it; you +can't cover that up now. You know something about that Spaniard that +you want to keep dark. Now trust me--tell me what it is, and trust me +--I won't betray you." + +Huck looked into the old man's honest eyes a moment, then bent over +and whispered in his ear: + +"'Tain't a Spaniard--it's Injun Joe!" + +The Welshman almost jumped out of his chair. In a moment he said: + +"It's all plain enough, now. When you talked about notching ears and +slitting noses I judged that that was your own embellishment, because +white men don't take that sort of revenge. But an Injun! That's a +different matter altogether." + +During breakfast the talk went on, and in the course of it the old man +said that the last thing which he and his sons had done, before going +to bed, was to get a lantern and examine the stile and its vicinity for +marks of blood. They found none, but captured a bulky bundle of-- + +"Of WHAT?" + +If the words had been lightning they could not have leaped with a more +stunning suddenness from Huck's blanched lips. His eyes were staring +wide, now, and his breath suspended--waiting for the answer. The +Welshman started--stared in return--three seconds--five seconds--ten +--then replied: + +"Of burglar's tools. Why, what's the MATTER with you?" + +Huck sank back, panting gently, but deeply, unutterably grateful. The +Welshman eyed him gravely, curiously--and presently said: + +"Yes, burglar's tools. That appears to relieve you a good deal. But +what did give you that turn? What were YOU expecting we'd found?" + +Huck was in a close place--the inquiring eye was upon him--he would +have given anything for material for a plausible answer--nothing +suggested itself--the inquiring eye was boring deeper and deeper--a +senseless reply offered--there was no time to weigh it, so at a venture +he uttered it--feebly: + +"Sunday-school books, maybe." + +Poor Huck was too distressed to smile, but the old man laughed loud +and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, +and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a-man's pocket, +because it cut down the doctor's bill like everything. Then he added: + +"Poor old chap, you're white and jaded--you ain't well a bit--no +wonder you're a little flighty and off your balance. But you'll come +out of it. Rest and sleep will fetch you out all right, I hope." + +Huck was irritated to think he had been such a goose and betrayed such +a suspicious excitement, for he had dropped the idea that the parcel +brought from the tavern was the treasure, as soon as he had heard the +talk at the widow's stile. He had only thought it was not the treasure, +however--he had not known that it wasn't--and so the suggestion of a +captured bundle was too much for his self-possession. But on the whole +he felt glad the little episode had happened, for now he knew beyond +all question that that bundle was not THE bundle, and so his mind was +at rest and exceedingly comfortable. In fact, everything seemed to be +drifting just in the right direction, now; the treasure must be still +in No. 2, the men would be captured and jailed that day, and he and Tom +could seize the gold that night without any trouble or any fear of +interruption. + +Just as breakfast was completed there was a knock at the door. Huck +jumped for a hiding-place, for he had no mind to be connected even +remotely with the late event. The Welshman admitted several ladies and +gentlemen, among them the Widow Douglas, and noticed that groups of +citizens were climbing up the hill--to stare at the stile. So the news +had spread. The Welshman had to tell the story of the night to the +visitors. The widow's gratitude for her preservation was outspoken. + +"Don't say a word about it, madam. There's another that you're more +beholden to than you are to me and my boys, maybe, but he don't allow +me to tell his name. We wouldn't have been there but for him." + +Of course this excited a curiosity so vast that it almost belittled +the main matter--but the Welshman allowed it to eat into the vitals of +his visitors, and through them be transmitted to the whole town, for he +refused to part with his secret. When all else had been learned, the +widow said: + +"I went to sleep reading in bed and slept straight through all that +noise. Why didn't you come and wake me?" + +"We judged it warn't worth while. Those fellows warn't likely to come +again--they hadn't any tools left to work with, and what was the use of +waking you up and scaring you to death? My three negro men stood guard +at your house all the rest of the night. They've just come back." + +More visitors came, and the story had to be told and retold for a +couple of hours more. + +There was no Sabbath-school during day-school vacation, but everybody +was early at church. The stirring event was well canvassed. News came +that not a sign of the two villains had been yet discovered. When the +sermon was finished, Judge Thatcher's wife dropped alongside of Mrs. +Harper as she moved down the aisle with the crowd and said: + +"Is my Becky going to sleep all day? I just expected she would be +tired to death." + +"Your Becky?" + +"Yes," with a startled look--"didn't she stay with you last night?" + +"Why, no." + +Mrs. Thatcher turned pale, and sank into a pew, just as Aunt Polly, +talking briskly with a friend, passed by. Aunt Polly said: + +"Good-morning, Mrs. Thatcher. Good-morning, Mrs. Harper. I've got a +boy that's turned up missing. I reckon my Tom stayed at your house last +night--one of you. And now he's afraid to come to church. I've got to +settle with him." + +Mrs. Thatcher shook her head feebly and turned paler than ever. + +"He didn't stay with us," said Mrs. Harper, beginning to look uneasy. +A marked anxiety came into Aunt Polly's face. + +"Joe Harper, have you seen my Tom this morning?" + +"No'm." + +"When did you see him last?" + +Joe tried to remember, but was not sure he could say. The people had +stopped moving out of church. Whispers passed along, and a boding +uneasiness took possession of every countenance. Children were +anxiously questioned, and young teachers. They all said they had not +noticed whether Tom and Becky were on board the ferryboat on the +homeward trip; it was dark; no one thought of inquiring if any one was +missing. One young man finally blurted out his fear that they were +still in the cave! Mrs. Thatcher swooned away. Aunt Polly fell to +crying and wringing her hands. + +The alarm swept from lip to lip, from group to group, from street to +street, and within five minutes the bells were wildly clanging and the +whole town was up! The Cardiff Hill episode sank into instant +insignificance, the burglars were forgotten, horses were saddled, +skiffs were manned, the ferryboat ordered out, and before the horror +was half an hour old, two hundred men were pouring down highroad and +river toward the cave. + +All the long afternoon the village seemed empty and dead. Many women +visited Aunt Polly and Mrs. Thatcher and tried to comfort them. They +cried with them, too, and that was still better than words. All the +tedious night the town waited for news; but when the morning dawned at +last, all the word that came was, "Send more candles--and send food." +Mrs. Thatcher was almost crazed; and Aunt Polly, also. Judge Thatcher +sent messages of hope and encouragement from the cave, but they +conveyed no real cheer. + +The old Welshman came home toward daylight, spattered with +candle-grease, smeared with clay, and almost worn out. He found Huck +still in the bed that had been provided for him, and delirious with +fever. The physicians were all at the cave, so the Widow Douglas came +and took charge of the patient. She said she would do her best by him, +because, whether he was good, bad, or indifferent, he was the Lord's, +and nothing that was the Lord's was a thing to be neglected. The +Welshman said Huck had good spots in him, and the widow said: + +"You can depend on it. That's the Lord's mark. He don't leave it off. +He never does. Puts it somewhere on every creature that comes from his +hands." + +Early in the forenoon parties of jaded men began to straggle into the +village, but the strongest of the citizens continued searching. All the +news that could be gained was that remotenesses of the cavern were +being ransacked that had never been visited before; that every corner +and crevice was going to be thoroughly searched; that wherever one +wandered through the maze of passages, lights were to be seen flitting +hither and thither in the distance, and shoutings and pistol-shots sent +their hollow reverberations to the ear down the sombre aisles. In one +place, far from the section usually traversed by tourists, the names +"BECKY & TOM" had been found traced upon the rocky wall with +candle-smoke, and near at hand a grease-soiled bit of ribbon. Mrs. +Thatcher recognized the ribbon and cried over it. She said it was the +last relic she should ever have of her child; and that no other memorial +of her could ever be so precious, because this one parted latest from +the living body before the awful death came. Some said that now and +then, in the cave, a far-away speck of light would glimmer, and then a +glorious shout would burst forth and a score of men go trooping down the +echoing aisle--and then a sickening disappointment always followed; the +children were not there; it was only a searcher's light. + +Three dreadful days and nights dragged their tedious hours along, and +the village sank into a hopeless stupor. No one had heart for anything. +The accidental discovery, just made, that the proprietor of the +Temperance Tavern kept liquor on his premises, scarcely fluttered the +public pulse, tremendous as the fact was. In a lucid interval, Huck +feebly led up to the subject of taverns, and finally asked--dimly +dreading the worst--if anything had been discovered at the Temperance +Tavern since he had been ill. + +"Yes," said the widow. + +Huck started up in bed, wild-eyed: + +"What? What was it?" + +"Liquor!--and the place has been shut up. Lie down, child--what a turn +you did give me!" + +"Only tell me just one thing--only just one--please! Was it Tom Sawyer +that found it?" + +The widow burst into tears. "Hush, hush, child, hush! I've told you +before, you must NOT talk. You are very, very sick!" + +Then nothing but liquor had been found; there would have been a great +powwow if it had been the gold. So the treasure was gone forever--gone +forever! But what could she be crying about? Curious that she should +cry. + +These thoughts worked their dim way through Huck's mind, and under the +weariness they gave him he fell asleep. The widow said to herself: + +"There--he's asleep, poor wreck. Tom Sawyer find it! Pity but somebody +could find Tom Sawyer! Ah, there ain't many left, now, that's got hope +enough, or strength enough, either, to go on searching." + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +NOW to return to Tom and Becky's share in the picnic. They tripped +along the murky aisles with the rest of the company, visiting the +familiar wonders of the cave--wonders dubbed with rather +over-descriptive names, such as "The Drawing-Room," "The Cathedral," +"Aladdin's Palace," and so on. Presently the hide-and-seek frolicking +began, and Tom and Becky engaged in it with zeal until the exertion +began to grow a trifle wearisome; then they wandered down a sinuous +avenue holding their candles aloft and reading the tangled web-work of +names, dates, post-office addresses, and mottoes with which the rocky +walls had been frescoed (in candle-smoke). Still drifting along and +talking, they scarcely noticed that they were now in a part of the cave +whose walls were not frescoed. They smoked their own names under an +overhanging shelf and moved on. Presently they came to a place where a +little stream of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying a limestone +sediment with it, had, in the slow-dragging ages, formed a laced and +ruffled Niagara in gleaming and imperishable stone. Tom squeezed his +small body behind it in order to illuminate it for Becky's +gratification. He found that it curtained a sort of steep natural +stairway which was enclosed between narrow walls, and at once the +ambition to be a discoverer seized him. Becky responded to his call, +and they made a smoke-mark for future guidance, and started upon their +quest. They wound this way and that, far down into the secret depths of +the cave, made another mark, and branched off in search of novelties to +tell the upper world about. In one place they found a spacious cavern, +from whose ceiling depended a multitude of shining stalactites of the +length and circumference of a man's leg; they walked all about it, +wondering and admiring, and presently left it by one of the numerous +passages that opened into it. This shortly brought them to a bewitching +spring, whose basin was incrusted with a frostwork of glittering +crystals; it was in the midst of a cavern whose walls were supported by +many fantastic pillars which had been formed by the joining of great +stalactites and stalagmites together, the result of the ceaseless +water-drip of centuries. Under the roof vast knots of bats had packed +themselves together, thousands in a bunch; the lights disturbed the +creatures and they came flocking down by hundreds, squeaking and +darting furiously at the candles. Tom knew their ways and the danger of +this sort of conduct. He seized Becky's hand and hurried her into the +first corridor that offered; and none too soon, for a bat struck +Becky's light out with its wing while she was passing out of the +cavern. The bats chased the children a good distance; but the fugitives +plunged into every new passage that offered, and at last got rid of the +perilous things. Tom found a subterranean lake, shortly, which +stretched its dim length away until its shape was lost in the shadows. +He wanted to explore its borders, but concluded that it would be best +to sit down and rest awhile, first. Now, for the first time, the deep +stillness of the place laid a clammy hand upon the spirits of the +children. Becky said: + +"Why, I didn't notice, but it seems ever so long since I heard any of +the others." + +"Come to think, Becky, we are away down below them--and I don't know +how far away north, or south, or east, or whichever it is. We couldn't +hear them here." + +Becky grew apprehensive. + +"I wonder how long we've been down here, Tom? We better start back." + +"Yes, I reckon we better. P'raps we better." + +"Can you find the way, Tom? It's all a mixed-up crookedness to me." + +"I reckon I could find it--but then the bats. If they put our candles +out it will be an awful fix. Let's try some other way, so as not to go +through there." + +"Well. But I hope we won't get lost. It would be so awful!" and the +girl shuddered at the thought of the dreadful possibilities. + +They started through a corridor, and traversed it in silence a long +way, glancing at each new opening, to see if there was anything +familiar about the look of it; but they were all strange. Every time +Tom made an examination, Becky would watch his face for an encouraging +sign, and he would say cheerily: + +"Oh, it's all right. This ain't the one, but we'll come to it right +away!" + +But he felt less and less hopeful with each failure, and presently +began to turn off into diverging avenues at sheer random, in desperate +hope of finding the one that was wanted. He still said it was "all +right," but there was such a leaden dread at his heart that the words +had lost their ring and sounded just as if he had said, "All is lost!" +Becky clung to his side in an anguish of fear, and tried hard to keep +back the tears, but they would come. At last she said: + +"Oh, Tom, never mind the bats, let's go back that way! We seem to get +worse and worse off all the time." + +"Listen!" said he. + +Profound silence; silence so deep that even their breathings were +conspicuous in the hush. Tom shouted. The call went echoing down the +empty aisles and died out in the distance in a faint sound that +resembled a ripple of mocking laughter. + +"Oh, don't do it again, Tom, it is too horrid," said Becky. + +"It is horrid, but I better, Becky; they might hear us, you know," and +he shouted again. + +The "might" was even a chillier horror than the ghostly laughter, it +so confessed a perishing hope. The children stood still and listened; +but there was no result. Tom turned upon the back track at once, and +hurried his steps. It was but a little while before a certain +indecision in his manner revealed another fearful fact to Becky--he +could not find his way back! + +"Oh, Tom, you didn't make any marks!" + +"Becky, I was such a fool! Such a fool! I never thought we might want +to come back! No--I can't find the way. It's all mixed up." + +"Tom, Tom, we're lost! we're lost! We never can get out of this awful +place! Oh, why DID we ever leave the others!" + +She sank to the ground and burst into such a frenzy of crying that Tom +was appalled with the idea that she might die, or lose her reason. He +sat down by her and put his arms around her; she buried her face in his +bosom, she clung to him, she poured out her terrors, her unavailing +regrets, and the far echoes turned them all to jeering laughter. Tom +begged her to pluck up hope again, and she said she could not. He fell +to blaming and abusing himself for getting her into this miserable +situation; this had a better effect. She said she would try to hope +again, she would get up and follow wherever he might lead if only he +would not talk like that any more. For he was no more to blame than +she, she said. + +So they moved on again--aimlessly--simply at random--all they could do +was to move, keep moving. For a little while, hope made a show of +reviving--not with any reason to back it, but only because it is its +nature to revive when the spring has not been taken out of it by age +and familiarity with failure. + +By-and-by Tom took Becky's candle and blew it out. This economy meant +so much! Words were not needed. Becky understood, and her hope died +again. She knew that Tom had a whole candle and three or four pieces in +his pockets--yet he must economize. + +By-and-by, fatigue began to assert its claims; the children tried to +pay attention, for it was dreadful to think of sitting down when time +was grown to be so precious, moving, in some direction, in any +direction, was at least progress and might bear fruit; but to sit down +was to invite death and shorten its pursuit. + +At last Becky's frail limbs refused to carry her farther. She sat +down. Tom rested with her, and they talked of home, and the friends +there, and the comfortable beds and, above all, the light! Becky cried, +and Tom tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his +encouragements were grown threadbare with use, and sounded like +sarcasms. Fatigue bore so heavily upon Becky that she drowsed off to +sleep. Tom was grateful. He sat looking into her drawn face and saw it +grow smooth and natural under the influence of pleasant dreams; and +by-and-by a smile dawned and rested there. The peaceful face reflected +somewhat of peace and healing into his own spirit, and his thoughts +wandered away to bygone times and dreamy memories. While he was deep in +his musings, Becky woke up with a breezy little laugh--but it was +stricken dead upon her lips, and a groan followed it. + +"Oh, how COULD I sleep! I wish I never, never had waked! No! No, I +don't, Tom! Don't look so! I won't say it again." + +"I'm glad you've slept, Becky; you'll feel rested, now, and we'll find +the way out." + +"We can try, Tom; but I've seen such a beautiful country in my dream. +I reckon we are going there." + +"Maybe not, maybe not. Cheer up, Becky, and let's go on trying." + +They rose up and wandered along, hand in hand and hopeless. They tried +to estimate how long they had been in the cave, but all they knew was +that it seemed days and weeks, and yet it was plain that this could not +be, for their candles were not gone yet. A long time after this--they +could not tell how long--Tom said they must go softly and listen for +dripping water--they must find a spring. They found one presently, and +Tom said it was time to rest again. Both were cruelly tired, yet Becky +said she thought she could go a little farther. She was surprised to +hear Tom dissent. She could not understand it. They sat down, and Tom +fastened his candle to the wall in front of them with some clay. +Thought was soon busy; nothing was said for some time. Then Becky broke +the silence: + +"Tom, I am so hungry!" + +Tom took something out of his pocket. + +"Do you remember this?" said he. + +Becky almost smiled. + +"It's our wedding-cake, Tom." + +"Yes--I wish it was as big as a barrel, for it's all we've got." + +"I saved it from the picnic for us to dream on, Tom, the way grown-up +people do with wedding-cake--but it'll be our--" + +She dropped the sentence where it was. Tom divided the cake and Becky +ate with good appetite, while Tom nibbled at his moiety. There was +abundance of cold water to finish the feast with. By-and-by Becky +suggested that they move on again. Tom was silent a moment. Then he +said: + +"Becky, can you bear it if I tell you something?" + +Becky's face paled, but she thought she could. + +"Well, then, Becky, we must stay here, where there's water to drink. +That little piece is our last candle!" + +Becky gave loose to tears and wailings. Tom did what he could to +comfort her, but with little effect. At length Becky said: + +"Tom!" + +"Well, Becky?" + +"They'll miss us and hunt for us!" + +"Yes, they will! Certainly they will!" + +"Maybe they're hunting for us now, Tom." + +"Why, I reckon maybe they are. I hope they are." + +"When would they miss us, Tom?" + +"When they get back to the boat, I reckon." + +"Tom, it might be dark then--would they notice we hadn't come?" + +"I don't know. But anyway, your mother would miss you as soon as they +got home." + +A frightened look in Becky's face brought Tom to his senses and he saw +that he had made a blunder. Becky was not to have gone home that night! +The children became silent and thoughtful. In a moment a new burst of +grief from Becky showed Tom that the thing in his mind had struck hers +also--that the Sabbath morning might be half spent before Mrs. Thatcher +discovered that Becky was not at Mrs. Harper's. + +The children fastened their eyes upon their bit of candle and watched +it melt slowly and pitilessly away; saw the half inch of wick stand +alone at last; saw the feeble flame rise and fall, climb the thin +column of smoke, linger at its top a moment, and then--the horror of +utter darkness reigned! + +How long afterward it was that Becky came to a slow consciousness that +she was crying in Tom's arms, neither could tell. All that they knew +was, that after what seemed a mighty stretch of time, both awoke out of +a dead stupor of sleep and resumed their miseries once more. Tom said +it might be Sunday, now--maybe Monday. He tried to get Becky to talk, +but her sorrows were too oppressive, all her hopes were gone. Tom said +that they must have been missed long ago, and no doubt the search was +going on. He would shout and maybe some one would come. He tried it; +but in the darkness the distant echoes sounded so hideously that he +tried it no more. + +The hours wasted away, and hunger came to torment the captives again. +A portion of Tom's half of the cake was left; they divided and ate it. +But they seemed hungrier than before. The poor morsel of food only +whetted desire. + +By-and-by Tom said: + +"SH! Did you hear that?" + +Both held their breath and listened. There was a sound like the +faintest, far-off shout. Instantly Tom answered it, and leading Becky +by the hand, started groping down the corridor in its direction. +Presently he listened again; again the sound was heard, and apparently +a little nearer. + +"It's them!" said Tom; "they're coming! Come along, Becky--we're all +right now!" + +The joy of the prisoners was almost overwhelming. Their speed was +slow, however, because pitfalls were somewhat common, and had to be +guarded against. They shortly came to one and had to stop. It might be +three feet deep, it might be a hundred--there was no passing it at any +rate. Tom got down on his breast and reached as far down as he could. +No bottom. They must stay there and wait until the searchers came. They +listened; evidently the distant shoutings were growing more distant! a +moment or two more and they had gone altogether. The heart-sinking +misery of it! Tom whooped until he was hoarse, but it was of no use. He +talked hopefully to Becky; but an age of anxious waiting passed and no +sounds came again. + +The children groped their way back to the spring. The weary time +dragged on; they slept again, and awoke famished and woe-stricken. Tom +believed it must be Tuesday by this time. + +Now an idea struck him. There were some side passages near at hand. It +would be better to explore some of these than bear the weight of the +heavy time in idleness. He took a kite-line from his pocket, tied it to +a projection, and he and Becky started, Tom in the lead, unwinding the +line as he groped along. At the end of twenty steps the corridor ended +in a "jumping-off place." Tom got down on his knees and felt below, and +then as far around the corner as he could reach with his hands +conveniently; he made an effort to stretch yet a little farther to the +right, and at that moment, not twenty yards away, a human hand, holding +a candle, appeared from behind a rock! Tom lifted up a glorious shout, +and instantly that hand was followed by the body it belonged to--Injun +Joe's! Tom was paralyzed; he could not move. He was vastly gratified +the next moment, to see the "Spaniard" take to his heels and get +himself out of sight. Tom wondered that Joe had not recognized his +voice and come over and killed him for testifying in court. But the +echoes must have disguised the voice. Without doubt, that was it, he +reasoned. Tom's fright weakened every muscle in his body. He said to +himself that if he had strength enough to get back to the spring he +would stay there, and nothing should tempt him to run the risk of +meeting Injun Joe again. He was careful to keep from Becky what it was +he had seen. He told her he had only shouted "for luck." + +But hunger and wretchedness rise superior to fears in the long run. +Another tedious wait at the spring and another long sleep brought +changes. The children awoke tortured with a raging hunger. Tom believed +that it must be Wednesday or Thursday or even Friday or Saturday, now, +and that the search had been given over. He proposed to explore another +passage. He felt willing to risk Injun Joe and all other terrors. But +Becky was very weak. She had sunk into a dreary apathy and would not be +roused. She said she would wait, now, where she was, and die--it would +not be long. She told Tom to go with the kite-line and explore if he +chose; but she implored him to come back every little while and speak +to her; and she made him promise that when the awful time came, he +would stay by her and hold her hand until all was over. + +Tom kissed her, with a choking sensation in his throat, and made a +show of being confident of finding the searchers or an escape from the +cave; then he took the kite-line in his hand and went groping down one +of the passages on his hands and knees, distressed with hunger and sick +with bodings of coming doom. + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +TUESDAY afternoon came, and waned to the twilight. The village of St. +Petersburg still mourned. The lost children had not been found. Public +prayers had been offered up for them, and many and many a private +prayer that had the petitioner's whole heart in it; but still no good +news came from the cave. The majority of the searchers had given up the +quest and gone back to their daily avocations, saying that it was plain +the children could never be found. Mrs. Thatcher was very ill, and a +great part of the time delirious. People said it was heartbreaking to +hear her call her child, and raise her head and listen a whole minute +at a time, then lay it wearily down again with a moan. Aunt Polly had +drooped into a settled melancholy, and her gray hair had grown almost +white. The village went to its rest on Tuesday night, sad and forlorn. + +Away in the middle of the night a wild peal burst from the village +bells, and in a moment the streets were swarming with frantic half-clad +people, who shouted, "Turn out! turn out! they're found! they're +found!" Tin pans and horns were added to the din, the population massed +itself and moved toward the river, met the children coming in an open +carriage drawn by shouting citizens, thronged around it, joined its +homeward march, and swept magnificently up the main street roaring +huzzah after huzzah! + +The village was illuminated; nobody went to bed again; it was the +greatest night the little town had ever seen. During the first half-hour +a procession of villagers filed through Judge Thatcher's house, seized +the saved ones and kissed them, squeezed Mrs. Thatcher's hand, tried to +speak but couldn't--and drifted out raining tears all over the place. + +Aunt Polly's happiness was complete, and Mrs. Thatcher's nearly so. It +would be complete, however, as soon as the messenger dispatched with +the great news to the cave should get the word to her husband. Tom lay +upon a sofa with an eager auditory about him and told the history of +the wonderful adventure, putting in many striking additions to adorn it +withal; and closed with a description of how he left Becky and went on +an exploring expedition; how he followed two avenues as far as his +kite-line would reach; how he followed a third to the fullest stretch of +the kite-line, and was about to turn back when he glimpsed a far-off +speck that looked like daylight; dropped the line and groped toward it, +pushed his head and shoulders through a small hole, and saw the broad +Mississippi rolling by! And if it had only happened to be night he would +not have seen that speck of daylight and would not have explored that +passage any more! He told how he went back for Becky and broke the good +news and she told him not to fret her with such stuff, for she was +tired, and knew she was going to die, and wanted to. He described how he +labored with her and convinced her; and how she almost died for joy when +she had groped to where she actually saw the blue speck of daylight; how +he pushed his way out at the hole and then helped her out; how they sat +there and cried for gladness; how some men came along in a skiff and Tom +hailed them and told them their situation and their famished condition; +how the men didn't believe the wild tale at first, "because," said they, +"you are five miles down the river below the valley the cave is in" +--then took them aboard, rowed to a house, gave them supper, made them +rest till two or three hours after dark and then brought them home. + +Before day-dawn, Judge Thatcher and the handful of searchers with him +were tracked out, in the cave, by the twine clews they had strung +behind them, and informed of the great news. + +Three days and nights of toil and hunger in the cave were not to be +shaken off at once, as Tom and Becky soon discovered. They were +bedridden all of Wednesday and Thursday, and seemed to grow more and +more tired and worn, all the time. Tom got about, a little, on +Thursday, was down-town Friday, and nearly as whole as ever Saturday; +but Becky did not leave her room until Sunday, and then she looked as +if she had passed through a wasting illness. + +Tom learned of Huck's sickness and went to see him on Friday, but +could not be admitted to the bedroom; neither could he on Saturday or +Sunday. He was admitted daily after that, but was warned to keep still +about his adventure and introduce no exciting topic. The Widow Douglas +stayed by to see that he obeyed. At home Tom learned of the Cardiff +Hill event; also that the "ragged man's" body had eventually been found +in the river near the ferry-landing; he had been drowned while trying +to escape, perhaps. + +About a fortnight after Tom's rescue from the cave, he started off to +visit Huck, who had grown plenty strong enough, now, to hear exciting +talk, and Tom had some that would interest him, he thought. Judge +Thatcher's house was on Tom's way, and he stopped to see Becky. The +Judge and some friends set Tom to talking, and some one asked him +ironically if he wouldn't like to go to the cave again. Tom said he +thought he wouldn't mind it. The Judge said: + +"Well, there are others just like you, Tom, I've not the least doubt. +But we have taken care of that. Nobody will get lost in that cave any +more." + +"Why?" + +"Because I had its big door sheathed with boiler iron two weeks ago, +and triple-locked--and I've got the keys." + +Tom turned as white as a sheet. + +"What's the matter, boy! Here, run, somebody! Fetch a glass of water!" + +The water was brought and thrown into Tom's face. + +"Ah, now you're all right. What was the matter with you, Tom?" + +"Oh, Judge, Injun Joe's in the cave!" + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +WITHIN a few minutes the news had spread, and a dozen skiff-loads of +men were on their way to McDougal's cave, and the ferryboat, well +filled with passengers, soon followed. Tom Sawyer was in the skiff that +bore Judge Thatcher. + +When the cave door was unlocked, a sorrowful sight presented itself in +the dim twilight of the place. Injun Joe lay stretched upon the ground, +dead, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if his longing +eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the light and the cheer +of the free world outside. Tom was touched, for he knew by his own +experience how this wretch had suffered. His pity was moved, but +nevertheless he felt an abounding sense of relief and security, now, +which revealed to him in a degree which he had not fully appreciated +before how vast a weight of dread had been lying upon him since the day +he lifted his voice against this bloody-minded outcast. + +Injun Joe's bowie-knife lay close by, its blade broken in two. The +great foundation-beam of the door had been chipped and hacked through, +with tedious labor; useless labor, too, it was, for the native rock +formed a sill outside it, and upon that stubborn material the knife had +wrought no effect; the only damage done was to the knife itself. But if +there had been no stony obstruction there the labor would have been +useless still, for if the beam had been wholly cut away Injun Joe could +not have squeezed his body under the door, and he knew it. So he had +only hacked that place in order to be doing something--in order to pass +the weary time--in order to employ his tortured faculties. Ordinarily +one could find half a dozen bits of candle stuck around in the crevices +of this vestibule, left there by tourists; but there were none now. The +prisoner had searched them out and eaten them. He had also contrived to +catch a few bats, and these, also, he had eaten, leaving only their +claws. The poor unfortunate had starved to death. In one place, near at +hand, a stalagmite had been slowly growing up from the ground for ages, +builded by the water-drip from a stalactite overhead. The captive had +broken off the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, +wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop +that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a +clock-tick--a dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop +was falling when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the +foundations of Rome were laid when Christ was crucified; when the +Conqueror created the British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the +massacre at Lexington was "news." It is falling now; it will still be +falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of +history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in the +thick night of oblivion. Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did +this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for +this flitting human insect's need? and has it another important object +to accomplish ten thousand years to come? No matter. It is many and +many a year since the hapless half-breed scooped out the stone to catch +the priceless drops, but to this day the tourist stares longest at that +pathetic stone and that slow-dropping water when he comes to see the +wonders of McDougal's cave. Injun Joe's cup stands first in the list of +the cavern's marvels; even "Aladdin's Palace" cannot rival it. + +Injun Joe was buried near the mouth of the cave; and people flocked +there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the farms and +hamlets for seven miles around; they brought their children, and all +sorts of provisions, and confessed that they had had almost as +satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the +hanging. + +This funeral stopped the further growth of one thing--the petition to +the governor for Injun Joe's pardon. The petition had been largely +signed; many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held, and a +committee of sappy women been appointed to go in deep mourning and wail +around the governor, and implore him to be a merciful ass and trample +his duty under foot. Injun Joe was believed to have killed five +citizens of the village, but what of that? If he had been Satan himself +there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names +to a pardon-petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently +impaired and leaky water-works. + +The morning after the funeral Tom took Huck to a private place to have +an important talk. Huck had learned all about Tom's adventure from the +Welshman and the Widow Douglas, by this time, but Tom said he reckoned +there was one thing they had not told him; that thing was what he +wanted to talk about now. Huck's face saddened. He said: + +"I know what it is. You got into No. 2 and never found anything but +whiskey. Nobody told me it was you; but I just knowed it must 'a' ben +you, soon as I heard 'bout that whiskey business; and I knowed you +hadn't got the money becuz you'd 'a' got at me some way or other and +told me even if you was mum to everybody else. Tom, something's always +told me we'd never get holt of that swag." + +"Why, Huck, I never told on that tavern-keeper. YOU know his tavern +was all right the Saturday I went to the picnic. Don't you remember you +was to watch there that night?" + +"Oh yes! Why, it seems 'bout a year ago. It was that very night that I +follered Injun Joe to the widder's." + +"YOU followed him?" + +"Yes--but you keep mum. I reckon Injun Joe's left friends behind him, +and I don't want 'em souring on me and doing me mean tricks. If it +hadn't ben for me he'd be down in Texas now, all right." + +Then Huck told his entire adventure in confidence to Tom, who had only +heard of the Welshman's part of it before. + +"Well," said Huck, presently, coming back to the main question, +"whoever nipped the whiskey in No. 2, nipped the money, too, I reckon +--anyways it's a goner for us, Tom." + +"Huck, that money wasn't ever in No. 2!" + +"What!" Huck searched his comrade's face keenly. "Tom, have you got on +the track of that money again?" + +"Huck, it's in the cave!" + +Huck's eyes blazed. + +"Say it again, Tom." + +"The money's in the cave!" + +"Tom--honest injun, now--is it fun, or earnest?" + +"Earnest, Huck--just as earnest as ever I was in my life. Will you go +in there with me and help get it out?" + +"I bet I will! I will if it's where we can blaze our way to it and not +get lost." + +"Huck, we can do that without the least little bit of trouble in the +world." + +"Good as wheat! What makes you think the money's--" + +"Huck, you just wait till we get in there. If we don't find it I'll +agree to give you my drum and every thing I've got in the world. I +will, by jings." + +"All right--it's a whiz. When do you say?" + +"Right now, if you say it. Are you strong enough?" + +"Is it far in the cave? I ben on my pins a little, three or four days, +now, but I can't walk more'n a mile, Tom--least I don't think I could." + +"It's about five mile into there the way anybody but me would go, +Huck, but there's a mighty short cut that they don't anybody but me +know about. Huck, I'll take you right to it in a skiff. I'll float the +skiff down there, and I'll pull it back again all by myself. You +needn't ever turn your hand over." + +"Less start right off, Tom." + +"All right. We want some bread and meat, and our pipes, and a little +bag or two, and two or three kite-strings, and some of these +new-fangled things they call lucifer matches. I tell you, many's +the time I wished I had some when I was in there before." + +A trifle after noon the boys borrowed a small skiff from a citizen who +was absent, and got under way at once. When they were several miles +below "Cave Hollow," Tom said: + +"Now you see this bluff here looks all alike all the way down from the +cave hollow--no houses, no wood-yards, bushes all alike. But do you see +that white place up yonder where there's been a landslide? Well, that's +one of my marks. We'll get ashore, now." + +They landed. + +"Now, Huck, where we're a-standing you could touch that hole I got out +of with a fishing-pole. See if you can find it." + +Huck searched all the place about, and found nothing. Tom proudly +marched into a thick clump of sumach bushes and said: + +"Here you are! Look at it, Huck; it's the snuggest hole in this +country. You just keep mum about it. All along I've been wanting to be +a robber, but I knew I'd got to have a thing like this, and where to +run across it was the bother. We've got it now, and we'll keep it +quiet, only we'll let Joe Harper and Ben Rogers in--because of course +there's got to be a Gang, or else there wouldn't be any style about it. +Tom Sawyer's Gang--it sounds splendid, don't it, Huck?" + +"Well, it just does, Tom. And who'll we rob?" + +"Oh, most anybody. Waylay people--that's mostly the way." + +"And kill them?" + +"No, not always. Hive them in the cave till they raise a ransom." + +"What's a ransom?" + +"Money. You make them raise all they can, off'n their friends; and +after you've kept them a year, if it ain't raised then you kill them. +That's the general way. Only you don't kill the women. You shut up the +women, but you don't kill them. They're always beautiful and rich, and +awfully scared. You take their watches and things, but you always take +your hat off and talk polite. They ain't anybody as polite as robbers +--you'll see that in any book. Well, the women get to loving you, and +after they've been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying and +after that you couldn't get them to leave. If you drove them out they'd +turn right around and come back. It's so in all the books." + +"Why, it's real bully, Tom. I believe it's better'n to be a pirate." + +"Yes, it's better in some ways, because it's close to home and +circuses and all that." + +By this time everything was ready and the boys entered the hole, Tom +in the lead. They toiled their way to the farther end of the tunnel, +then made their spliced kite-strings fast and moved on. A few steps +brought them to the spring, and Tom felt a shudder quiver all through +him. He showed Huck the fragment of candle-wick perched on a lump of +clay against the wall, and described how he and Becky had watched the +flame struggle and expire. + +The boys began to quiet down to whispers, now, for the stillness and +gloom of the place oppressed their spirits. They went on, and presently +entered and followed Tom's other corridor until they reached the +"jumping-off place." The candles revealed the fact that it was not +really a precipice, but only a steep clay hill twenty or thirty feet +high. Tom whispered: + +"Now I'll show you something, Huck." + +He held his candle aloft and said: + +"Look as far around the corner as you can. Do you see that? There--on +the big rock over yonder--done with candle-smoke." + +"Tom, it's a CROSS!" + +"NOW where's your Number Two? 'UNDER THE CROSS,' hey? Right yonder's +where I saw Injun Joe poke up his candle, Huck!" + +Huck stared at the mystic sign awhile, and then said with a shaky voice: + +"Tom, less git out of here!" + +"What! and leave the treasure?" + +"Yes--leave it. Injun Joe's ghost is round about there, certain." + +"No it ain't, Huck, no it ain't. It would ha'nt the place where he +died--away out at the mouth of the cave--five mile from here." + +"No, Tom, it wouldn't. It would hang round the money. I know the ways +of ghosts, and so do you." + +Tom began to fear that Huck was right. Misgivings gathered in his +mind. But presently an idea occurred to him-- + +"Lookyhere, Huck, what fools we're making of ourselves! Injun Joe's +ghost ain't a going to come around where there's a cross!" + +The point was well taken. It had its effect. + +"Tom, I didn't think of that. But that's so. It's luck for us, that +cross is. I reckon we'll climb down there and have a hunt for that box." + +Tom went first, cutting rude steps in the clay hill as he descended. +Huck followed. Four avenues opened out of the small cavern which the +great rock stood in. The boys examined three of them with no result. +They found a small recess in the one nearest the base of the rock, with +a pallet of blankets spread down in it; also an old suspender, some +bacon rind, and the well-gnawed bones of two or three fowls. But there +was no money-box. The lads searched and researched this place, but in +vain. Tom said: + +"He said UNDER the cross. Well, this comes nearest to being under the +cross. It can't be under the rock itself, because that sets solid on +the ground." + +They searched everywhere once more, and then sat down discouraged. +Huck could suggest nothing. By-and-by Tom said: + +"Lookyhere, Huck, there's footprints and some candle-grease on the +clay about one side of this rock, but not on the other sides. Now, +what's that for? I bet you the money IS under the rock. I'm going to +dig in the clay." + +"That ain't no bad notion, Tom!" said Huck with animation. + +Tom's "real Barlow" was out at once, and he had not dug four inches +before he struck wood. + +"Hey, Huck!--you hear that?" + +Huck began to dig and scratch now. Some boards were soon uncovered and +removed. They had concealed a natural chasm which led under the rock. +Tom got into this and held his candle as far under the rock as he +could, but said he could not see to the end of the rift. He proposed to +explore. He stooped and passed under; the narrow way descended +gradually. He followed its winding course, first to the right, then to +the left, Huck at his heels. Tom turned a short curve, by-and-by, and +exclaimed: + +"My goodness, Huck, lookyhere!" + +It was the treasure-box, sure enough, occupying a snug little cavern, +along with an empty powder-keg, a couple of guns in leather cases, two +or three pairs of old moccasins, a leather belt, and some other rubbish +well soaked with the water-drip. + +"Got it at last!" said Huck, ploughing among the tarnished coins with +his hand. "My, but we're rich, Tom!" + +"Huck, I always reckoned we'd get it. It's just too good to believe, +but we HAVE got it, sure! Say--let's not fool around here. Let's snake +it out. Lemme see if I can lift the box." + +It weighed about fifty pounds. Tom could lift it, after an awkward +fashion, but could not carry it conveniently. + +"I thought so," he said; "THEY carried it like it was heavy, that day +at the ha'nted house. I noticed that. I reckon I was right to think of +fetching the little bags along." + +The money was soon in the bags and the boys took it up to the cross +rock. + +"Now less fetch the guns and things," said Huck. + +"No, Huck--leave them there. They're just the tricks to have when we +go to robbing. We'll keep them there all the time, and we'll hold our +orgies there, too. It's an awful snug place for orgies." + +"What orgies?" + +"I dono. But robbers always have orgies, and of course we've got to +have them, too. Come along, Huck, we've been in here a long time. It's +getting late, I reckon. I'm hungry, too. We'll eat and smoke when we +get to the skiff." + +They presently emerged into the clump of sumach bushes, looked warily +out, found the coast clear, and were soon lunching and smoking in the +skiff. As the sun dipped toward the horizon they pushed out and got +under way. Tom skimmed up the shore through the long twilight, chatting +cheerily with Huck, and landed shortly after dark. + +"Now, Huck," said Tom, "we'll hide the money in the loft of the +widow's woodshed, and I'll come up in the morning and we'll count it +and divide, and then we'll hunt up a place out in the woods for it +where it will be safe. Just you lay quiet here and watch the stuff till +I run and hook Benny Taylor's little wagon; I won't be gone a minute." + +He disappeared, and presently returned with the wagon, put the two +small sacks into it, threw some old rags on top of them, and started +off, dragging his cargo behind him. When the boys reached the +Welshman's house, they stopped to rest. Just as they were about to move +on, the Welshman stepped out and said: + +"Hallo, who's that?" + +"Huck and Tom Sawyer." + +"Good! Come along with me, boys, you are keeping everybody waiting. +Here--hurry up, trot ahead--I'll haul the wagon for you. Why, it's not +as light as it might be. Got bricks in it?--or old metal?" + +"Old metal," said Tom. + +"I judged so; the boys in this town will take more trouble and fool +away more time hunting up six bits' worth of old iron to sell to the +foundry than they would to make twice the money at regular work. But +that's human nature--hurry along, hurry along!" + +The boys wanted to know what the hurry was about. + +"Never mind; you'll see, when we get to the Widow Douglas'." + +Huck said with some apprehension--for he was long used to being +falsely accused: + +"Mr. Jones, we haven't been doing nothing." + +The Welshman laughed. + +"Well, I don't know, Huck, my boy. I don't know about that. Ain't you +and the widow good friends?" + +"Yes. Well, she's ben good friends to me, anyway." + +"All right, then. What do you want to be afraid for?" + +This question was not entirely answered in Huck's slow mind before he +found himself pushed, along with Tom, into Mrs. Douglas' drawing-room. +Mr. Jones left the wagon near the door and followed. + +The place was grandly lighted, and everybody that was of any +consequence in the village was there. The Thatchers were there, the +Harpers, the Rogerses, Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, the minister, the editor, +and a great many more, and all dressed in their best. The widow +received the boys as heartily as any one could well receive two such +looking beings. They were covered with clay and candle-grease. Aunt +Polly blushed crimson with humiliation, and frowned and shook her head +at Tom. Nobody suffered half as much as the two boys did, however. Mr. +Jones said: + +"Tom wasn't at home, yet, so I gave him up; but I stumbled on him and +Huck right at my door, and so I just brought them along in a hurry." + +"And you did just right," said the widow. "Come with me, boys." + +She took them to a bedchamber and said: + +"Now wash and dress yourselves. Here are two new suits of clothes +--shirts, socks, everything complete. They're Huck's--no, no thanks, +Huck--Mr. Jones bought one and I the other. But they'll fit both of you. +Get into them. We'll wait--come down when you are slicked up enough." + +Then she left. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +HUCK said: "Tom, we can slope, if we can find a rope. The window ain't +high from the ground." + +"Shucks! what do you want to slope for?" + +"Well, I ain't used to that kind of a crowd. I can't stand it. I ain't +going down there, Tom." + +"Oh, bother! It ain't anything. I don't mind it a bit. I'll take care +of you." + +Sid appeared. + +"Tom," said he, "auntie has been waiting for you all the afternoon. +Mary got your Sunday clothes ready, and everybody's been fretting about +you. Say--ain't this grease and clay, on your clothes?" + +"Now, Mr. Siddy, you jist 'tend to your own business. What's all this +blow-out about, anyway?" + +"It's one of the widow's parties that she's always having. This time +it's for the Welshman and his sons, on account of that scrape they +helped her out of the other night. And say--I can tell you something, +if you want to know." + +"Well, what?" + +"Why, old Mr. Jones is going to try to spring something on the people +here to-night, but I overheard him tell auntie to-day about it, as a +secret, but I reckon it's not much of a secret now. Everybody knows +--the widow, too, for all she tries to let on she don't. Mr. Jones was +bound Huck should be here--couldn't get along with his grand secret +without Huck, you know!" + +"Secret about what, Sid?" + +"About Huck tracking the robbers to the widow's. I reckon Mr. Jones +was going to make a grand time over his surprise, but I bet you it will +drop pretty flat." + +Sid chuckled in a very contented and satisfied way. + +"Sid, was it you that told?" + +"Oh, never mind who it was. SOMEBODY told--that's enough." + +"Sid, there's only one person in this town mean enough to do that, and +that's you. If you had been in Huck's place you'd 'a' sneaked down the +hill and never told anybody on the robbers. You can't do any but mean +things, and you can't bear to see anybody praised for doing good ones. +There--no thanks, as the widow says"--and Tom cuffed Sid's ears and +helped him to the door with several kicks. "Now go and tell auntie if +you dare--and to-morrow you'll catch it!" + +Some minutes later the widow's guests were at the supper-table, and a +dozen children were propped up at little side-tables in the same room, +after the fashion of that country and that day. At the proper time Mr. +Jones made his little speech, in which he thanked the widow for the +honor she was doing himself and his sons, but said that there was +another person whose modesty-- + +And so forth and so on. He sprung his secret about Huck's share in the +adventure in the finest dramatic manner he was master of, but the +surprise it occasioned was largely counterfeit and not as clamorous and +effusive as it might have been under happier circumstances. However, +the widow made a pretty fair show of astonishment, and heaped so many +compliments and so much gratitude upon Huck that he almost forgot the +nearly intolerable discomfort of his new clothes in the entirely +intolerable discomfort of being set up as a target for everybody's gaze +and everybody's laudations. + +The widow said she meant to give Huck a home under her roof and have +him educated; and that when she could spare the money she would start +him in business in a modest way. Tom's chance was come. He said: + +"Huck don't need it. Huck's rich." + +Nothing but a heavy strain upon the good manners of the company kept +back the due and proper complimentary laugh at this pleasant joke. But +the silence was a little awkward. Tom broke it: + +"Huck's got money. Maybe you don't believe it, but he's got lots of +it. Oh, you needn't smile--I reckon I can show you. You just wait a +minute." + +Tom ran out of doors. The company looked at each other with a +perplexed interest--and inquiringly at Huck, who was tongue-tied. + +"Sid, what ails Tom?" said Aunt Polly. "He--well, there ain't ever any +making of that boy out. I never--" + +Tom entered, struggling with the weight of his sacks, and Aunt Polly +did not finish her sentence. Tom poured the mass of yellow coin upon +the table and said: + +"There--what did I tell you? Half of it's Huck's and half of it's mine!" + +The spectacle took the general breath away. All gazed, nobody spoke +for a moment. Then there was a unanimous call for an explanation. Tom +said he could furnish it, and he did. The tale was long, but brimful of +interest. There was scarcely an interruption from any one to break the +charm of its flow. When he had finished, Mr. Jones said: + +"I thought I had fixed up a little surprise for this occasion, but it +don't amount to anything now. This one makes it sing mighty small, I'm +willing to allow." + +The money was counted. The sum amounted to a little over twelve +thousand dollars. It was more than any one present had ever seen at one +time before, though several persons were there who were worth +considerably more than that in property. + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + +THE reader may rest satisfied that Tom's and Huck's windfall made a +mighty stir in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast a +sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. It was talked +about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the +citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. Every +"haunted" house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages was +dissected, plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for +hidden treasure--and not by boys, but men--pretty grave, unromantic +men, too, some of them. Wherever Tom and Huck appeared they were +courted, admired, stared at. The boys were not able to remember that +their remarks had possessed weight before; but now their sayings were +treasured and repeated; everything they did seemed somehow to be +regarded as remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of doing and +saying commonplace things; moreover, their past history was raked up +and discovered to bear marks of conspicuous originality. The village +paper published biographical sketches of the boys. + +The Widow Douglas put Huck's money out at six per cent., and Judge +Thatcher did the same with Tom's at Aunt Polly's request. Each lad had +an income, now, that was simply prodigious--a dollar for every week-day +in the year and half of the Sundays. It was just what the minister got +--no, it was what he was promised--he generally couldn't collect it. A +dollar and a quarter a week would board, lodge, and school a boy in +those old simple days--and clothe him and wash him, too, for that +matter. + +Judge Thatcher had conceived a great opinion of Tom. He said that no +commonplace boy would ever have got his daughter out of the cave. When +Becky told her father, in strict confidence, how Tom had taken her +whipping at school, the Judge was visibly moved; and when she pleaded +grace for the mighty lie which Tom had told in order to shift that +whipping from her shoulders to his own, the Judge said with a fine +outburst that it was a noble, a generous, a magnanimous lie--a lie that +was worthy to hold up its head and march down through history breast to +breast with George Washington's lauded Truth about the hatchet! Becky +thought her father had never looked so tall and so superb as when he +walked the floor and stamped his foot and said that. She went straight +off and told Tom about it. + +Judge Thatcher hoped to see Tom a great lawyer or a great soldier some +day. He said he meant to look to it that Tom should be admitted to the +National Military Academy and afterward trained in the best law school +in the country, in order that he might be ready for either career or +both. + +Huck Finn's wealth and the fact that he was now under the Widow +Douglas' protection introduced him into society--no, dragged him into +it, hurled him into it--and his sufferings were almost more than he +could bear. The widow's servants kept him clean and neat, combed and +brushed, and they bedded him nightly in unsympathetic sheets that had +not one little spot or stain which he could press to his heart and know +for a friend. He had to eat with a knife and fork; he had to use +napkin, cup, and plate; he had to learn his book, he had to go to +church; he had to talk so properly that speech was become insipid in +his mouth; whithersoever he turned, the bars and shackles of +civilization shut him in and bound him hand and foot. + +He bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then one day turned up +missing. For forty-eight hours the widow hunted for him everywhere in +great distress. The public were profoundly concerned; they searched +high and low, they dragged the river for his body. Early the third +morning Tom Sawyer wisely went poking among some old empty hogsheads +down behind the abandoned slaughter-house, and in one of them he found +the refugee. Huck had slept there; he had just breakfasted upon some +stolen odds and ends of food, and was lying off, now, in comfort, with +his pipe. He was unkempt, uncombed, and clad in the same old ruin of +rags that had made him picturesque in the days when he was free and +happy. Tom routed him out, told him the trouble he had been causing, +and urged him to go home. Huck's face lost its tranquil content, and +took a melancholy cast. He said: + +"Don't talk about it, Tom. I've tried it, and it don't work; it don't +work, Tom. It ain't for me; I ain't used to it. The widder's good to +me, and friendly; but I can't stand them ways. She makes me get up just +at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to +thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them +blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to any air +git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't set +down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I hain't slid on a +cellar-door for--well, it 'pears to be years; I got to go to church and +sweat and sweat--I hate them ornery sermons! I can't ketch a fly in +there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by +a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell--everything's +so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it." + +"Well, everybody does that way, Huck." + +"Tom, it don't make no difference. I ain't everybody, and I can't +STAND it. It's awful to be tied up so. And grub comes too easy--I don't +take no interest in vittles, that way. I got to ask to go a-fishing; I +got to ask to go in a-swimming--dern'd if I hain't got to ask to do +everything. Well, I'd got to talk so nice it wasn't no comfort--I'd got +to go up in the attic and rip out awhile, every day, to git a taste in +my mouth, or I'd a died, Tom. The widder wouldn't let me smoke; she +wouldn't let me yell, she wouldn't let me gape, nor stretch, nor +scratch, before folks--" [Then with a spasm of special irritation and +injury]--"And dad fetch it, she prayed all the time! I never see such a +woman! I HAD to shove, Tom--I just had to. And besides, that school's +going to open, and I'd a had to go to it--well, I wouldn't stand THAT, +Tom. Looky here, Tom, being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. It's +just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead +all the time. Now these clothes suits me, and this bar'l suits me, and +I ain't ever going to shake 'em any more. Tom, I wouldn't ever got into +all this trouble if it hadn't 'a' ben for that money; now you just take +my sheer of it along with your'n, and gimme a ten-center sometimes--not +many times, becuz I don't give a dern for a thing 'thout it's tollable +hard to git--and you go and beg off for me with the widder." + +"Oh, Huck, you know I can't do that. 'Tain't fair; and besides if +you'll try this thing just a while longer you'll come to like it." + +"Like it! Yes--the way I'd like a hot stove if I was to set on it long +enough. No, Tom, I won't be rich, and I won't live in them cussed +smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and +I'll stick to 'em, too. Blame it all! just as we'd got guns, and a +cave, and all just fixed to rob, here this dern foolishness has got to +come up and spile it all!" + +Tom saw his opportunity-- + +"Lookyhere, Huck, being rich ain't going to keep me back from turning +robber." + +"No! Oh, good-licks; are you in real dead-wood earnest, Tom?" + +"Just as dead earnest as I'm sitting here. But Huck, we can't let you +into the gang if you ain't respectable, you know." + +Huck's joy was quenched. + +"Can't let me in, Tom? Didn't you let me go for a pirate?" + +"Yes, but that's different. A robber is more high-toned than what a +pirate is--as a general thing. In most countries they're awful high up +in the nobility--dukes and such." + +"Now, Tom, hain't you always ben friendly to me? You wouldn't shet me +out, would you, Tom? You wouldn't do that, now, WOULD you, Tom?" + +"Huck, I wouldn't want to, and I DON'T want to--but what would people +say? Why, they'd say, 'Mph! Tom Sawyer's Gang! pretty low characters in +it!' They'd mean you, Huck. You wouldn't like that, and I wouldn't." + +Huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle. Finally +he said: + +"Well, I'll go back to the widder for a month and tackle it and see if +I can come to stand it, if you'll let me b'long to the gang, Tom." + +"All right, Huck, it's a whiz! Come along, old chap, and I'll ask the +widow to let up on you a little, Huck." + +"Will you, Tom--now will you? That's good. If she'll let up on some of +the roughest things, I'll smoke private and cuss private, and crowd +through or bust. When you going to start the gang and turn robbers?" + +"Oh, right off. We'll get the boys together and have the initiation +to-night, maybe." + +"Have the which?" + +"Have the initiation." + +"What's that?" + +"It's to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang's +secrets, even if you're chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody and +all his family that hurts one of the gang." + +"That's gay--that's mighty gay, Tom, I tell you." + +"Well, I bet it is. And all that swearing's got to be done at +midnight, in the lonesomest, awfulest place you can find--a ha'nted +house is the best, but they're all ripped up now." + +"Well, midnight's good, anyway, Tom." + +"Yes, so it is. And you've got to swear on a coffin, and sign it with +blood." + +"Now, that's something LIKE! Why, it's a million times bullier than +pirating. I'll stick to the widder till I rot, Tom; and if I git to be +a reg'lar ripper of a robber, and everybody talking 'bout it, I reckon +she'll be proud she snaked me in out of the wet." + + + +CONCLUSION + +SO endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a BOY, it +must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming +the history of a MAN. When one writes a novel about grown people, he +knows exactly where to stop--that is, with a marriage; but when he +writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can. + +Most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are +prosperous and happy. Some day it may seem worth while to take up the +story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women they +turned out to be; therefore it will be wisest not to reveal any of that +part of their lives at present. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +ALONZO FITZ AND OTHER STORIES + +by Mark Twain + + + +Contents: + The Loves Of Alonzo Fitz Clarence And Rosannah Ethelton + On The Decay Of The Art Of Lying + About Magnanimous-Incident Literature + The Grateful Poodle + The Benevolent Author + The Grateful Husband + Punch, Brothers, Punch + The Great Revolution In Pitcairn + The Canvasser's Tale + An Encounter With An Interviewer + Paris Notes + Legend Of Sagenfeld, In Germany + Speech On The Babies + Speech On The Weather + Concerning The American Language + Rogers + + + + + +THE LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON + + +It was well along in the forenoon of a bitter winter's day. The town of +Eastport, in the state of Maine, lay buried under a deep snow that was +newly fallen. The customary bustle in the streets was wanting. One +could look long distances down them and see nothing but a dead-white +emptiness, with silence to match. Of course I do not mean that you could +see the silence--no, you could only hear it. The sidewalks were merely +long, deep ditches, with steep snow walls on either side. Here and there +you might hear the faint, far scrape of a wooden shovel, and if you were +quick enough you might catch a glimpse of a distant black figure stooping +and disappearing in one of those ditches, and reappearing the next moment +with a motion which you would know meant the heaving out of a shovelful +of snow. But you needed to be quick, for that black figure would not +linger, but would soon drop that shovel and scud for the house, thrashing +itself with its arms to warm them. Yes, it was too venomously cold for +snow-shovelers or anybody else to stay out long. + +Presently the sky darkened; then the wind rose and began to blow in +fitful, vigorous gusts, which sent clouds of powdery snow aloft, and +straight ahead, and everywhere. Under the impulse of one of these gusts, +great white drifts banked themselves like graves across the streets; a +moment later another gust shifted them around the other way, driving a +fine spray of snow from their sharp crests, as the gale drives the spume +flakes from wave-crests at sea; a third gust swept that place as clean as +your hand, if it saw fit. This was fooling, this was play; but each and +all of the gusts dumped some snow into the sidewalk ditches, for that was +business. + +Alonzo Fitz Clarence was sitting in his snug and elegant little parlor, +in a lovely blue silk dressing-gown, with cuffs and facings of crimson +satin, elaborately quilted. The remains of his breakfast were before +him, and the dainty and costly little table service added a harmonious +charm to the grace, beauty, and richness of the fixed appointments of the +room. A cheery fire was blazing on the hearth. + +A furious gust of wind shook the windows, and a great wave of snow washed +against them with a drenching sound, so to speak. The handsome young +bachelor murmured: + +"That means, no going out to-day. Well, I am content. But what to do +for company? Mother is well enough, Aunt Susan is well enough; but +these, like the poor, I have with me always. On so grim a day as this, +one needs a new interest, a fresh element, to whet the dull edge of +captivity. That was very neatly said, but it doesn't mean anything. +One doesn't want the edge of captivity sharpened up, you know, but just +the reverse." + +He glanced at his pretty French mantel-clock. + +"That clock's wrong again. That clock hardly ever knows what time it is; +and when it does know, it lies about it--which amounts to the same thing. +Alfred!" + +There was no answer. + +"Alfred! . . . Good servant, but as uncertain as the clock." + +Alonzo touched an electric bell button in the wall. He waited a moment, +then touched it again; waited a few moments more, and said: + +"Battery out of order, no doubt. But now that I have started, I will +find out what time it is." He stepped to a speaking-tube in the wall, +blew its whistle, and called, "Mother!" and repeated it twice. + +"Well, that's no use. Mother's battery is out of order, too. Can't +raise anybody down-stairs--that is plain." + +He sat down at a rosewood desk, leaned his chin on the left-hand edge of +it and spoke, as if to the floor: "Aunt Susan!" + +A low, pleasant voice answered, "Is that you, Alonzo?' + +"Yes. I'm too lazy and comfortable to go downstairs; I am in extremity, +and I can't seem to scare up any help." + +"Dear me, what is the matter?" + +"Matter enough, I can tell you!" + +"Oh, don't keep me in suspense, dear! What is it?" + +"I want to know what time it is." + +"You abominable boy, what a turn you did give me! Is that all?" + +"All--on my honor. Calm yourself. Tell me the time, and receive my +blessing." + +"Just five minutes after nine. No charge--keep your blessing." + +"Thanks. It wouldn't have impoverished me, aunty, nor so enriched you +that you could live without other means." + +He got up, murmuring, "Just five minutes after nine," and faced his +clock. "Ah," said he, "you are doing better than usual. You are only +thirty-four minutes wrong. Let me see . . . let me see. . . . +Thirty-three and twenty-one are fifty-four; four times fifty-four are two +hundred and thirty-six. One off, leaves two hundred and thirty-five. +That's right." + +He turned the hands of his clock forward till they marked twenty-five +minutes to one, and said, "Now see if you can't keep right for a while +--else I'll raffle you!" + +He sat down at the desk again, and said, "Aunt Susan!" + +"Yes, dear." + +"Had breakfast?" + +"Yes, indeed, an hour ago." + +"Busy?" + +"No--except sewing. Why?" + +"Got any company?" + +"No, but I expect some at half past nine." + +"I wish I did. I'm lonesome. I want to talk to somebody." + +"Very well, talk to me." + +"But this is very private." + +"Don't be afraid--talk right along, there's nobody here but me." + +"I hardly know whether to venture or not, but--" + +"But what? Oh, don't stop there! You know you can trust me, Alonzo--you +know, you can." + +"I feel it, aunt, but this is very serious. It affects me deeply--me, +and all the family---even the whole community." + +"Oh, Alonzo, tell me! I will never breathe a word of it. What is it?" + +"Aunt, if I might dare--" + +"Oh, please go on! I love you, and feel for you. Tell me all. +Confide in me. What is it?" + +"The weather!" + +"Plague take the weather! I don't see how you can have the heart to +serve me so, Lon." + +"There, there, aunty dear, I'm sorry; I am, on my honor. I won't do it +again. Do you forgive me?" + +"Yes, since you seem so sincere about it, though I know I oughtn't to. +You will fool me again as soon as I have forgotten this time." + +"No, I won't, honor bright. But such weather, oh, such weather! You've +got to keep your spirits up artificially. It is snowy, and blowy, and +gusty, and bitter cold! How is the weather with you?" + +"Warm and rainy and melancholy. The mourners go about the streets with +their umbrellas running streams from the end of every whalebone. There's +an elevated double pavement of umbrellas, stretching down the sides of +the streets as far as I can see. I've got a fire for cheerfulness, and +the windows open to keep cool. But it is vain, it is useless: nothing +comes in but the balmy breath of December, with its burden of mocking +odors from the flowers that possess the realm outside, and rejoice in +their lawless profusion whilst the spirit of man is low, and flaunt their +gaudy splendors in his face while his soul is clothed in sackcloth and +ashes and his heart breaketh." + +Alonzo opened his lips to say, "You ought to print that, and get it +framed," but checked himself, for he heard his aunt speaking to some one +else. He went and stood at the window and looked out upon the wintry +prospect. The storm was driving the snow before it more furiously than +ever; window-shutters were slamming and banging; a forlorn dog, with +bowed head and tail withdrawn from service, was pressing his quaking body +against a windward wall for shelter and protection; a young girl was +plowing knee-deep through the drifts, with her face turned from the +blast, and the cape of her waterproof blowing straight rearward over her +head. Alonzo shuddered, and said with a sigh, "Better the slop, and the +sultry rain, and even the insolent flowers, than this!" + +He turned from the window, moved a step, and stopped in a listening +attitude. The faint, sweet notes of a familiar song caught his ear. He +remained there, with his head unconsciously bent forward, drinking in the +melody, stirring neither hand nor foot, hardly breathing. There was a +blemish in the execution of the song, but to Alonzo it seemed an added +charm instead of a defect. This blemish consisted of a marked flatting +of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh notes of the refrain or +chorus of the piece. When the music ended, Alonzo drew a deep breath, +and said, "Ah, I never have heard 'In the Sweet By-and-by' sung like that +before!" + +He stepped quickly to the desk, listened a moment, and said in a guarded, +confidential voice, "Aunty, who is this divine singer?" + +"She is the company I was expecting. Stays with me a month or two. +I will introduce you. Miss--" + +"For goodness' sake, wait a moment, Aunt Susan! You never stop to think +what you are about!" + +He flew to his bedchamber, and returned in a moment perceptibly changed +in his outward appearance, and remarking, snappishly: + +"Hang it, she would have introduced me to this angel in that sky-blue +dressing-gown with red-hot lapels! Women never think, when they get +a-going." + +He hastened and stood by the desk, and said eagerly, "Now, Aunty, I am +ready," and fell to smiling and bowing with all the persuasiveness and +elegance that were in him. + +"Very well. Miss Rosannah Ethelton, let me introduce to you my favorite +nephew, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence. There! You are both good people, and +I like you; so I am going to trust you together while I attend to a few +household affairs. Sit down, Rosannah; sit down, Alonzo. Good-by; I +sha'n't be gone long." + +Alonzo had been bowing and smiling all the while, and motioning imaginary +young ladies to sit down in imaginary chairs, but now he took a seat +himself, mentally saying, "Oh, this is luck! Let the winds blow now, and +the snow drive, and the heavens frown! Little I care!" + +While these young people chat themselves into an acquaintanceship, let us +take the liberty of inspecting the sweeter and fairer of the two. She +sat alone, at her graceful ease, in a richly furnished apartment which +was manifestly the private parlor of a refined and sensible lady, +if signs and symbols may go for anything. For instance, by a low, +comfortable chair stood a dainty, top-heavy workstand, whose summit was a +fancifully embroidered shallow basket, with varicolored crewels, and +other strings and odds and ends protruding from under the gaping lid and +hanging down in negligent profusion. On the floor lay bright shreds of +Turkey red, Prussian blue, and kindred fabrics, bits of ribbon, a spool +or two, a pair of scissors, and a roll or so of tinted silken stuffs. +On a luxurious sofa, upholstered with some sort of soft Indian goods +wrought in black and gold threads interwebbed with other threads not so +pronounced in color, lay a great square of coarse white stuff, upon whose +surface a rich bouquet of flowers was growing, under the deft cultivation +of the crochet-needle. The household cat was asleep on this work of art. +In a bay-window stood an easel with an unfinished picture on it, and a +palette and brushes on a chair beside it. There were books everywhere: +Robertson's Sermons, Tennyson, Moody and Sankey, Hawthorne, Rab and His +Friends, cook-books, prayer-books, pattern-books--and books about all +kinds of odious and exasperating pottery, of course. There was a piano, +with a deck-load of music, and more in a tender. There was a great +plenty of pictures on the walls, on the shelves of the mantelpiece, and +around generally; where coigns of vantage offered were statuettes, and +quaint and pretty gimcracks, and rare and costly specimens of peculiarly +devilish china. The bay-window gave upon a garden that was ablaze with +foreign and domestic flowers and flowering shrubs. + +But the sweet young girl was the daintiest thing these premises, within +or without, could offer for contemplation: delicately chiseled features, +of Grecian cast; her complexion the pure snow of a japonica that is +receiving a faint reflected enrichment from some scarlet neighbor of the +garden; great, soft blue eyes fringed with long, curving lashes; an +expression made up of the trustfulness of a child and the gentleness of +a fawn; a beautiful head crowned with its own prodigal gold; a lithe and +rounded figure, whose every attitude and movement was instinct with +native grace. + +Her dress and adornment were marked by that exquisite harmony that can +come only of a fine natural taste perfected by culture. Her gown was of +a simple magenta tulle, cut bias, traversed by three rows of light-blue +flounces, with the selvage edges turned up with ashes-of-roses chenille; +overdress of dark bay tarlatan with scarlet satin lambrequins; +corn-colored polonaise, en zanier, looped with mother-of-pearl buttons +and silver cord, and hauled aft and made fast by buff velvet lashings; +basque of lavender reps, picked out with valenciennes; low neck, short +sleeves; maroon velvet necktie edged with delicate pink silk; inside +handkerchief of some simple three-ply ingrain fabric of a soft saffron +tint; coral bracelets and locket-chain; coiffure of forget-me-nots and +lilies-of-the-valley massed around a noble calla. + +This was all; yet even in this subdued attire she was divinely beautiful. +Then what must she have been when adorned for the festival or the ball? + +All this time she had been busily chatting with Alonzo, unconscious of +our inspection. The minutes still sped, and still she talked. But by +and by she happened to look up, and saw the clock. A crimson blush sent +its rich flood through her cheeks, and she exclaimed: + +"There, good-by, Mr. Fitz Clarence; I must go now!" + +She sprang from her chair with such haste that she hardly heard the young +man's answering good-by. She stood radiant, graceful, beautiful, and +gazed, wondering, upon the accusing clock. Presently her pouting lips +parted, and she said: + +"Five minutes after eleven! Nearly two hours, and it did not seem twenty +minutes! Oh, dear, what will he think of me!" + +At the self-same moment Alonzo was staring at his clock. And presently +he said: + +"Twenty-five minutes to three! Nearly two hours, and I didn't believe it +was two minutes! Is it possible that this clock is humbugging again? +Miss Ethelton! Just one moment, please. Are you there yet?" + +"Yes, but be quick; I'm going right away." + +"Would you be so kind as to tell me what time it is?" + +The girl blushed again, murmured to herself, "It's right down cruel of +him to ask me!" and then spoke up and answered with admirably +counterfeited unconcern, "Five minutes after eleven." + +"Oh, thank you! You have to go, now, have you?" + +"I'm sorry." + +No reply. + +"Miss Ethelton!" + +"Well?" + +"You you're there yet, ain't you?" + +"Yes; but please hurry. What did you want to say?" + +"Well, I--well, nothing in particular. It's very lonesome here. It's +asking a great deal, I know, but would you mind talking with me again by +and by--that is, if it will not trouble you too much?" + +"I don't know but I'll think about it. I'll try." + +"Oh, thanks! Miss Ethelton! . . . Ah, me, she's gone, and here are +the black clouds and the whirling snow and the raging winds come again! +But she said good-by. She didn't say good morning, she said good-by! +. . . The clock was right, after all. What a lightning-winged +two hours it was!" + +He sat down, and gazed dreamily into his fire for a while, then heaved a +sigh and said: + +"How wonderful it is! Two little hours ago I was a free man, and now my +heart's in San Francisco!" + +About that time Rosannah Ethelton, propped in the window-seat of her +bedchamber, book in hand, was gazing vacantly out over the rainy seas +that washed the Golden Gate, and whispering to herself, "How different he +is from poor Burley, with his empty head and his single little antic +talent of mimicry!" + + +II + +Four weeks later Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley was entertaining a gay +luncheon company, in a sumptuous drawing-room on Telegraph Hill, with +some capital imitations of the voices and gestures of certain popular +actors and San Franciscan literary people and Bonanza grandees. He was +elegantly upholstered, and was a handsome fellow, barring a trifling cast +in his eye. He seemed very jovial, but nevertheless he kept his eye on +the door with an expectant and uneasy watchfulness. By and by a nobby +lackey appeared, and delivered a message to the mistress, who nodded her +head understandingly. That seemed to settle the thing for Mr. Burley; +his vivacity decreased little by little, and a dejected look began to +creep into one of his eyes and a sinister one into the other. + +The rest of the company departed in due time, leaving him with the +mistress, to whom he said: + +"There is no longer any question about it. She avoids me. She +continually excuses herself. If I could see her, if I could speak to her +only a moment, but this suspense--" + +"Perhaps her seeming avoidance is mere accident, Mr. Burley. Go to the +small drawing-room up-stairs and amuse yourself a moment. I will +despatch a household order that is on my mind, and then I will go to her +room. Without doubt she will be persuaded to see you." + +Mr. Burley went up-stairs, intending to go to the small drawing-room, but +as he was passing "Aunt Susan's" private parlor, the door of which stood +slightly ajar, he heard a joyous laugh which he recognized; so without +knock or announcement he stepped confidently in. But before he could +make his presence known he heard words that harrowed up his soul and +chilled his young blood, he heard a voice say: + +"Darling, it has come!" + +Then he heard Rosannah Ethelton, whose back was toward him, say: + +"So has yours, dearest!" + +He saw her bowed form bend lower; he heard her kiss something--not merely +once, but again and again! His soul raged within him. The heartbreaking +conversation went on: + +"Rosannah, I knew you must be beautiful, but this is dazzling, this is +blinding, this is intoxicating!" + +"Alonzo, it is such happiness to hear you say it. I know it is not true, +but I am so grateful to have you think it is, nevertheless! I knew you +must have a noble face, but the grace and majesty of the reality beggar +the poor creation of my fancy." + +Burley heard that rattling shower of kisses again. + +"Thank you, my Rosannah! The photograph flatters me, but you must not +allow yourself to think of that. Sweetheart?" + +"Yes, Alonzo." + +"I am so happy, Rosannah." + +"Oh, Alonzo, none that have gone before me knew what love was, none that +come after me will ever know what happiness is. I float in a gorgeous +cloud land, a boundless firmament of enchanted and bewildering ecstasy!" + +"Oh, my Rosannah! for you are mine, are you not?" + +"Wholly, oh, wholly yours, Alonzo, now and forever! All the day long, +and all through my nightly dreams, one song sings itself, and its sweet +burden is, 'Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Eastport, state +of Maine!'" + +"Curse him, I've got his address, anyway!" roared Burley, inwardly, and +rushed from the place. + +Just behind the unconscious Alonzo stood his mother, a picture of +astonishment. She was so muffled from head to heel in furs that nothing +of herself was visible but her eyes and nose. She was a good allegory of +winter, for she was powdered all over with snow. + +Behind the unconscious Rosannah stood "Aunt Susan," another picture of +astonishment. She was a good allegory of summer, for she was lightly +clad, and was vigorously cooling the perspiration on her face with a fan. + +Both of these women had tears of joy in their eyes. + +"Soho!" exclaimed Mrs. Fitz Clarence, "this explains why nobody has been +able to drag you out of your room for six weeks, Alonzo!" + +"So ho!" exclaimed Aunt Susan, "this explains why you have been a hermit +for the past six weeks, Rosannah!" + +The young couple were on their feet in an instant, abashed, and standing +like detected dealers in stolen goods awaiting judge Lynch's doom. + +"Bless you, my son! I am happy in your happiness. Come to your mother's +arms, Alonzo!" + +"Bless you, Rosannah, for my dear nephew's sake! Come to my arms!" + +Then was there a mingling of hearts and of tears of rejoicing on +Telegraph Hill and in Eastport Square. + +Servants were called by the elders, in both places. Unto one was given +the order, "Pile this fire high, with hickory wood, and bring me a +roasting-hot lemonade." + +Unto the other was given the order, "Put out this fire, and bring me two +palm-leaf fans and a pitcher of ice-water." + +Then the young people were dismissed, and the elders sat down to talk the +sweet surprise over and make the wedding plans. + +Some minutes before this Mr. Burley rushed from the mansion on Telegraph +Hill without meeting or taking formal leave of anybody. He hissed +through his teeth, in unconscious imitation of a popular favorite in +melodrama, "Him shall she never wed! I have sworn it! Ere great Nature +shall have doffed her winter's ermine to don the emerald gauds of spring, +she shall be mine!" + + +III + +Two weeks later. Every few hours, during same three or four days, a very +prim and devout-looking Episcopal clergyman, with a cast in his eye, had +visited Alonzo. According to his card, he was the Rev. Melton Hargrave, +of Cincinnati. He said he had retired from the ministry on account of +his health. If he had said on account of ill-health, he would probably +have erred, to judge by his wholesome looks and firm build. He was the +inventor of an improvement in telephones, and hoped to make his bread by +selling the privilege of using it. "At present," he continued, "a man +may go and tap a telegraph wire which is conveying a song or a concert +from one state to another, and he can attach his private telephone and +steal a hearing of that music as it passes along. My invention will stop +all that." + +"Well," answered Alonzo, "if the owner of the music could not miss what +was stolen, why should he care?" + +"He shouldn't care," said the Reverend. + +"Well?" said Alonzo, inquiringly. + +"Suppose," replied the Reverend, "suppose that, instead of music that was +passing along and being stolen, the burden of the wire was loving +endearments of the most private and sacred nature?" + +Alonzo shuddered from head to heel. "Sir, it is a priceless invention," +said he; "I must have it at any cost." + +But the invention was delayed somewhere on the road from Cincinnati, most +unaccountably. The impatient Alonzo could hardly wait. The thought of +Rosannah's sweet words being shared with him by some ribald thief was +galling to him. The Reverend came frequently and lamented the delay, and +told of measures he had taken to hurry things up. This was some little +comfort to Alonzo. + +One forenoon the Reverend ascended the stairs and knocked at Alonzo's +door. There was no response. He entered, glanced eagerly around, +closed the door softly, then ran to the telephone. The exquisitely soft +and remote strains of the "Sweet By-and-by" came floating through the +instrument. The singer was flatting, as usual, the five notes that +follow the first two in the chorus, when the Reverend interrupted her +with this word, in a voice which was an exact imitation of Alonzo's, with +just the faintest flavor of impatience added: + +"Sweetheart?" + +"Yes, Alonzo?" + +"Please don't sing that any more this week--try something modern." + +The agile step that goes with a happy heart was heard on the stairs, and +the Reverend, smiling diabolically, sought sudden refuge behind the heavy +folds of the velvet window-curtains. Alonzo entered and flew to the +telephone. Said he: + +"Rosannah, dear, shall we sing something together?" + +"Something modern?" asked she, with sarcastic bitterness. + +"Yes, if you prefer." + +"Sing it yourself, if you like!" + +This snappishness amazed and wounded the young man. He said: + +"Rosannah, that was not like you." + +"I suppose it becomes me as much as your very polite speech became you, +Mr. Fitz Clarence." + +"Mister Fitz Clarence! Rosannah, there was nothing impolite about my +speech." + +"Oh, indeed! Of course, then, I misunderstood you, and I most humbly beg +your pardon, ha-ha-ha! No doubt you said, 'Don't sing it any more +to-day.'" + +"Sing what any more to-day?" + +"The song you mentioned, of course, How very obtuse we are, all of a +sudden!" + +"I never mentioned any song." + +"Oh, you didn't?" + +"No, I didn't!" + +"I am compelled to remark that you did." + +"And I am obliged to reiterate that I didn't." + +"A second rudeness! That is sufficient, sir. I will never forgive you. +All is over between us." + +Then came a muffled sound of crying. Alonzo hastened to say: + +"Oh, Rosannah, unsay those words! There is some dreadful mystery here, +some hideous mistake. I am utterly earnest and sincere when I say I +never said anything about any song. I would not hurt you for the whole +world . . . . Rosannah, dear speak to me, won't you?" + +There was a pause; then Alonzo heard the girl's sobbings retreating, and +knew she had gone from the telephone. He rose with a heavy sigh, and +hastened from the room, saying to himself, "I will ransack the charity +missions and the haunts of the poor for my mother. She will persuade her +that I never meant to wound her." + +A minute later the Reverend was crouching over the telephone like a cat +that knoweth the ways of the prey. He had not very many minutes to wait. +A soft, repentant voice, tremulous with tears, said: + +"Alonzo, dear, I have been wrong. You could not have said so cruel a +thing. It must have been some one who imitated your voice in malice or +in jest." + +The Reverend coldly answered, in Alonzo's tones: + +"You have said all was over between us. So let it be. I spurn your +proffered repentance, and despise it!" + +Then he departed, radiant with fiendish triumph, to return no more with +his imaginary telephonic invention forever. + +Four hours afterward Alonzo arrived with his mother from her favorite +haunts of poverty and vice. They summoned the San Francisco household; +but there was no reply. They waited, and continued to wait, upon the +voiceless telephone. + +At length, when it was sunset in San Francisco, and three hours and a +half after dark in Eastport, an answer to the oft-repeated cry of +"Rosannah!" + +But, alas, it was Aunt Susan's voice that spake. She said: + +"I have been out all day; just got in. I will go and find her." + +The watchers waited two minutes--five minutes--ten minutes. Then came +these fatal words, in a frightened tone: + +"She is gone, and her baggage with her. To visit another friend, she +told the servants. But I found this note on the table in her room. +Listen: 'I am gone; seek not to trace me out; my heart is broken; you +will never see me more. Tell him I shall always think of him when I sing +my poor "Sweet By-and-by," but never of the unkind words he said about +it.' That is her note. Alonzo, Alonzo, what does it mean? What has +happened?" + +But Alonzo sat white and cold as the dead. His mother threw back the +velvet curtains and opened a window. The cold air refreshed the +sufferer, and he told his aunt his dismal story. Meantime his mother was +inspecting a card which had disclosed itself upon the floor when she cast +the curtains back. It read, "Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, San Francisco." + +"The miscreant!" shouted Alonzo, and rushed forth to seek the false +Reverend and destroy him; for the card explained everything, since in the +course of the lovers' mutual confessions they had told each other all +about all the sweethearts they had ever had, and thrown no end of mud at +their failings and foibles for lovers always do that. It has a +fascination that ranks next after billing and cooing. + + +IV + +During the next two months many things happened. It had early transpired +that Rosannah, poor suffering orphan, had neither returned to her +grandmother in Portland, Oregon, nor sent any word to her save a +duplicate of the woeful note she had left in the mansion on Telegraph +Hill. Whosoever was sheltering her--if she was still alive--had been +persuaded not to betray her whereabouts, without doubt; for all efforts +to find trace of her had failed. + +Did Alonzo give her up? Not he. He said to himself, "She will sing +that sweet song when she is sad; I shall find her." So he took his +carpet-sack and a portable telephone, and shook the snow of his native +city from his arctics, and went forth into the world. He wandered far +and wide and in many states. Time and again, strangers were astounded to +see a wasted, pale, and woe-worn man laboriously climb a telegraph-pole +in wintry and lonely places, perch sadly there an hour, with his ear at a +little box, then come sighing down, and wander wearily away. Sometimes +they shot at him, as peasants do at aeronauts, thinking him mad and +dangerous. Thus his clothes were much shredded by bullets and his person +grievously lacerated. But he bore it all patiently. + +In the beginning of his pilgrimage he used often to say, "Ah, if I could +but hear the 'Sweet By-and-by'!" But toward the end of it he used to +shed tears of anguish and say, "Ah, if I could but hear something else!" + +Thus a month and three weeks drifted by, and at last some humane people +seized him and confined him in a private mad-house in New York. He made +no moan, for his strength was all gone, and with it all heart and all +hope. The superintendent, in pity, gave up his own comfortable parlor +and bedchamber to him and nursed him with affectionate devotion. + +At the end of a week the patient was able to leave his bed for the first +time. He was lying, comfortably pillowed, on a sofa, listening to the +plaintive Miserere of the bleak March winds and the muffled sound of +tramping feet in the street below for it was about six in the evening, +and New York was going home from work. He had a bright fire and the +added cheer of a couple of student-lamps. So it was warm and snug +within, though bleak and raw without; it was light and bright within, +though outside it was as dark and dreary as if the world had been lit +with Hartford gas. Alonzo smiled feebly to think how his loving vagaries +had made him a maniac in the eyes of the world, and was proceeding to +pursue his line of thought further, when a faint, sweet strain, the very +ghost of sound, so remote and attenuated it seemed, struck upon his ear. +His pulses stood still; he listened with parted lips and bated breath. +The song flowed on--he waiting, listening, rising slowly and unconsciously +from his recumbent position. At last he exclaimed: + +"It is! it is she! Oh, the divine hated notes!" + +He dragged himself eagerly to the corner whence the sounds proceeded, +tore aside a curtain, and discovered a telephone. He bent over, and as +the last note died away he burst forthwith the exclamation: + +"Oh, thank Heaven, found at last! Speak tome, Rosannah, dearest! The +cruel mystery has been unraveled; it was the villain Burley who mimicked +my voice and wounded you with insolent speech!" + +There was a breathless pause, a waiting age to Alonzo; then a faint sound +came, framing itself into language: + +"Oh, say those precious words again, Alonzo!" + +"They are the truth, the veritable truth, my Rosannah, and you shall have +the proof, ample and abundant proof!" + +"Oh; Alonzo, stay by me! Leave me not for a moment! Let me feel that +you are near me! Tell me we shall never be parted more! Oh, this happy +hour, this blessed hour, this memorable hour!" + +"We will make record of it, my Rosannah; every year, as this dear hour +chimes from the clock, we will celebrate it with thanksgivings, all the +years of our life." + +"We will, we will, Alonzo!" + +"Four minutes after six, in the evening, my Rosannah, shall henceforth--" + +"Twenty-three minutes after twelve, afternoon shall--" + +"Why; Rosannah, darling, where are you?" + +"In Honolulu, Sandwich Islands. And where are you? Stay by me; do not +leave me for a moment. I cannot bear it. Are you at home?" + +"No, dear, I am in New York--a patient in the doctor's hands." + +An agonizing shriek came buzzing to Alonzo's ear, like the sharp buzzing +of a hurt gnat; it lost power in traveling five thousand miles. Alonzo +hastened to say: + +"Calm yourself, my child. It is nothing. Already I am getting well +under the sweet healing of your presence. Rosannah?" + +"Yes, Alonzo? Oh, how you terrified me! Say on." + +"Name the happy day, Rosannah!" + +There was a little pause. Then a diffident small voice replied, +"I blush--but it is with pleasure, it is with happiness. Would--would +you like to have it soon?" + +"This very night, Rosannah! Oh, let us risk no more delays. Let it be +now!--this very night, this very moment!" + +"Oh, you impatient creature! I have nobody here but my good old uncle, +a missionary for a generation, and now retired from service--nobody but +him and his wife. I would so dearly like it if your mother and your Aunt +Susan--" + +"Our mother and our Aunt Susan, my Rosannah." + +"Yes, our mother and our Aunt Susan--I am content to word it so if it +pleases you; I would so like to have them present." + +"So would I. Suppose you telegraph Aunt Susan. How long would it take +her to come?" + +"The steamer leaves San Francisco day after tomorrow. The passage is +eight days. She would be here the 31st of March." + +"Then name the 1st of April; do, Rosannah, dear." + +"Mercy, it would make us April fools, Alonzo!" + +"So we be the happiest ones that that day's suit looks down upon in the +whole broad expanse of the globe, why need we care? Call it the 1st of +April, dear." + +"Then the 1st of April at shall be, with all my heart!" + +"Oh, happiness! Name the hour, too, Rosannah." + +"I like the morning, it is so blithe. Will eight in the morning do, +Alonzo?" + +"The loveliest hour in the day--since it will make you mine." + +There was a feeble but frantic sound for some little time, as if +wool-upped, disembodied spirits were exchanging kisses; then Rosannah +said, "Excuse me just a moment, dear; I have an appointment, and am +called to meet it." + +The young girl sought a large parlor and took her place at a window which +looked out upon a beautiful scene. To the left one could view the +charming Nuuana Valley, fringed with its ruddy flush of tropical flowers +and its plumed and graceful cocoa palms; its rising foothills clothed in +the shining green of lemon, citron, and orange groves; its storied +precipice beyond, where the first Kamehameha drove his defeated foes over +to their destruction, a spot that had forgotten its grim history, no +doubt, for now it was smiling, as almost always at noonday, under the +glowing arches of a succession of rainbows. In front of the window one +could see the quaint town, and here and there a picturesque group of +dusky natives, enjoying the blistering weather; and far to the right lay +the restless ocean, tossing its white mane in the sunshine. + +Rosannah stood there, in her filmy white raiment, fanning her flushed and +heated face, waiting. A Kanaka boy, clothed in a damaged blue necktie +and part of a silk hat, thrust his head in at the door, and announced, +"'Frisco haole!" + +"Show him in," said the girl, straightening herself up and assuming a +meaning dignity. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley entered, clad from head to +heel in dazzling snow--that is to say, in the lightest and whitest of +Irish linen. He moved eagerly forward, but the girl made a gesture and +gave him a look which checked him suddenly. She said, coldly, "I am +here, as I promised. I believed your assertions, I yielded to your +importune lies, and said I would name the day. I name the 1st of April +--eight in the morning. NOW GO!" + +"Oh, my dearest, if the gratitude of a lifetime--" + +"Not a word. Spare me all sight of you, all communication with you, +until that hour. No--no supplications; I will have it so." + +When he was gone, she sank exhausted in a chair, for the long siege of +troubles she had undergone had wasted her strength. Presently she said, +"What a narrow escape! If the hour appointed had been an hour earlier +--Oh, horror, what an escape I have made! And to think I had come to +imagine I was loving this beguiling, this truthless, this treacherous +monster! Oh, he shall repent his villainy!" + +Let us now draw this history to a close, for little more needs to be +told. On the 2d of the ensuing April, the Honolulu Advertiser contained +this notice: + + MARRIED.--In this city, by telephone, yesterday morning,--at eight + o'clock, by Rev. Nathan Hays, assisted by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, of + New York, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, U. S., and + Miss Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon, U. S. Mrs. Susan + Howland, of San Francisco, a friend of the bride, was present, she + being the guest of the Rev. Mr. Hays and wife, uncle and aunt of the + bride. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, of San Francisco, was also + present but did not remain till the conclusion of the marriage + service. Captain Hawthorne's beautiful yacht, tastefully decorated, + was in waiting, and the happy bride and her friends immediately + departed on a bridal trip to Lahaina and Haleakala. + +The New York papers of the same date contained this notice: + + MARRIED.--In this city, yesterday, by telephone, at half-past two in + the morning, by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, assisted by Rev. Nathan Hays, + of Honolulu, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, and Miss + Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon. The parents and several + friends of the bridegroom were present, and enjoyed a sumptuous + breakfast and much festivity until nearly sunrise, and then departed + on a bridal trip to the Aquarium, the bridegroom's state of health + not admitting of a more extended journey. + +Toward the close of that memorable day Mr. and Mrs. Alonzo Fitz Clarence +were buried in sweet converse concerning the pleasures of their several +bridal tours, when suddenly the young wife exclaimed: "Oh, Lonny, I +forgot! I did what I said I would." + +"Did you, dear?" + +"Indeed, I did. I made him the April fool! And I told him so, too! +Ah, it was a charming surprise! There he stood, sweltering in a black +dress-suit, with the mercury leaking out of the top of the thermometer, +waiting to be married. You should have seen the look he gave when I +whispered it in his ear. Ah, his wickedness cost me many a heartache and +many a tear, but the score was all squared up, then. So the vengeful +feeling went right out of my heart, and I begged him to stay, and said I +forgave him everything. But he wouldn't. He said he would live to be +avenged; said he would make our lives a curse to us. But he can't, can +he, dear?" + +"Never in this world, my Rosannah!" + +Aunt Susan, the Oregonian grandmother, and the young couple and their +Eastport parents, are all happy at this writing, and likely to remain so. +Aunt Susan brought the bride from the islands, accompanied her across our +continent, and had the happiness of witnessing the rapturous meeting +between an adoring husband and wife who had never seen each other until +that moment. + +A word about the wretched Burley, whose wicked machinations came so near +wrecking the hearts and lives of our poor young friends, will be +sufficient. In a murderous attempt to seize a crippled and helpless +artisan who he fancied had done him some small offense, he fell into a +caldron of boiling oil and expired before he could be extinguished. + + + + + + +ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING + +ESSAY, FOR DISCUSSION, READ AT A MEETING OF THE HISTORICAL AND +ANTIQUARIAN CLUB OF HARTFORD, AND OFFERED FOR THE THIRTY-DOLLAR PRIZE. +NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.--[Did not take the prize] + +Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered +any decay or interruption--no, for the Lie, as a Virtue, a Principle, is +eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, +the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is +immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this Club remains. My +complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded +man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly +lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so +prostituted. In this veteran presence I naturally enter upon this scheme +with diffidence; it is like an old maid trying to teach nursery matters +to the mothers in Israel. It would not become me to criticize you, +gentlemen, who are nearly all my elders--and my superiors, in this thing +--and so, if I should here and there seem to do it, I trust it will in +most cases be more in a spirit of admiration than of fault-finding; +indeed, if this finest of the fine arts had everywhere received the +attention, encouragement, and conscientious practice and development +which this Club has devoted to it I should not need to utter this lament +or shed a single tear. I do not say this to flatter: I say it in a +spirit of just and appreciative recognition. + +[It had been my intention, at this point, to mention names and give +illustrative specimens, but indications observable about me admonished me +to beware of particulars and confine myself to generalities.] + +No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our +circumstances--the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without +saying. No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful and +diligent cultivation--therefore, it goes without saying that this one +ought to be taught in the public schools--at the fireside--even in the +newspapers. What chance has the ignorant, uncultivated liar against the +educated expert? What chance have I against Mr. Per-- against a lawyer? +Judicious lying is what the world needs. I sometimes think it were even +better and safer not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously. An +awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth. + +Now let us see what the philosophers say. Note that venerable proverb: +Children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction is plain +--adults and wise persons never speak it. Parkman, the historian, says, +"The principle of truth may itself be carried into an absurdity." In +another place in the same chapter he says, "The saying is old that truth +should not be spoken at all times; and those whom a sick conscience +worries into habitual violation of the maxim are imbeciles and +nuisances." It is strong language, but true. None of us could live with +an habitual truth-teller; but, thank goodness, none of us has to. An +habitual truth-teller is simply an impossible creature; he does not +exist; he never has existed. Of course there are people who think they +never lie, but it is not so--and this ignorance is one of the very things +that shame our so-called civilization. Everybody lies--every day; every +hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning; if he +keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude, will +convey deception--and purposely. Even in sermons--but that is a +platitude. + +In a far country where I once lived the ladies used to go around paying +calls, under the humane and kindly pretense of wanting to see each other; +and when they returned home, they would cry out with a glad voice, +saying, "We made sixteen calls and found fourteen of them out"--not +meaning that they found out anything against the fourteen--no, that was +only a colloquial phrase to signify that they were not at home--and their +manner of saying it--expressed their lively satisfaction in that fact. +Now, their pretense of wanting to see the fourteen--and the other two +whom they had been less lucky with--was that commonest and mildest form +of lying which is sufficiently described as a deflection from the truth. +Is it justifiable? Most certainly. It is beautiful, it is noble; for +its object is, not to reap profit, but to convey a pleasure to the +sixteen. The iron-souled truth-monger would plainly manifest, or even +utter the fact, that he didn't want to see those people--and he would be +an ass, and inflict a totally unnecessary pain. And next, those ladies +in that far country--but never mind, they had a thousand pleasant ways of +lying, that grew out of gentle impulses, and were a credit to their +intelligence and at honor to their hearts. Let the particulars go. + +The men in that far country were liars; every one. Their mere howdy-do +was a lie, because they didn't care how you did, except they were +undertakers. To the ordinary inquirer you lied in return; for you made +no conscientious diagnosis of your case, but answered at random, and +usually missed it considerably. You lied to the undertaker, and said +your health was failing--a wholly commendable lie, since it cost you +nothing and pleased the other man. If a stranger called and interrupted +you, you said with your hearty tongue, "I'm glad to see you," and said +with your heartier soul, "I wish you were with the cannibals and it was +dinner-time." When he went, you said regretfully, "Must you go?" and +followed it with a "Call again"; but you did no harm, for you did not +deceive anybody nor inflict any hurt, whereas the truth would have made +you both unhappy. + +I think that all this courteous lying is a sweet and loving art, and +should be cultivated. The highest perfection of politeness is only a +beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and +gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying. + +What I bemoan is the growing prevalence of the brutal truth. Let us do +what we can to eradicate it. An injurious truth has no merit over an +injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an +injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should +reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving. The man +who tells a lie to help a poor devil out of trouble is one of whom the +angels doubtless say, "Lo, here is an heroic soul who casts his own +welfare into jeopardy to succor his neighbor's; let us exalt this +magnanimous liar." + +An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same +degree, is an injurious truth--a fact which is recognized by the law of +libel. + +Among other common lies, we have the silent lie, the deception which one +conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate +truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak +no lie, they lie not at all. In that far country where I once lived, +there was a lovely spirit, a lady whose impulses were always high and +pure, and whose character answered to them. One day I was there at +dinner, and remarked, in a general way, that we are all liars. She was +amazed, and said, "Not all!" It was before "Pinafore's" time so I did +not make the response which would naturally follow in our day, but +frankly said, "Yes, all--we are all liars; there are no exceptions." +She looked almost offended, and said, "Why, do you include me?" +"Certainly," I said, "I think you even rank as an expert." She said, +"'Sh!--'sh! the children!" + +So the subject was changed in deference to the children's presence, and +we went on talking about other things. But as soon as the young people +were out of the way, the lady came warmly back to the matter and said, +"I have made it the rule of my life to never tell a lie; and I have never +departed from it in a single instance." I said, "I don't mean the least +harm or disrespect, but really you have been lying like smoke ever since +I've been sitting here. It has caused me a good deal of pain, because I +am not used to it." She required of me an instance--just a single +instance. So I said: + +"Well, here is the unfilled duplicate of the blank which the Oakland +hospital people sent to you by the hand of the sick-nurse when she came +here to nurse your little nephew through his dangerous illness. This +blank asks all manner of questions as to the conduct of that sick-nurse: +'Did she ever sleep on her watch? Did she ever forget to give the +medicine?' and so forth and so on. You are warned to be very careful and +explicit in your answers, for the welfare of the service requires that +the nurses be promptly fined or otherwise punished for derelictions. +You told me you were perfectly delighted with that nurse--that she had a +thousand perfections and only one fault: you found you never could depend +on her wrapping Johnny up half sufficiently while he waited in a chilly +chair for her to rearrange the warm bed. You filled up the duplicate of +this paper, and sent it back to the hospital by the hand of the nurse. +How did you answer this question--'Was the nurse at any time guilty of a +negligence which was likely to result in the patient's taking cold?' +Come--everything is decided by a bet here in California: ten dollars to +ten cents you lied when you answered that question." She said, "I +didn't; I left it blank!" "Just so--you have told a silent lie; you have +left it to be inferred that you had no fault to find in that matter." +She said, "Oh, was that a lie? And how could I mention her one single +fault, and she so good?--it would have been cruel." I said, "One ought +always to lie when one can do good by it; your impulse was right, but, +your judgment was crude; this comes of unintelligent practice. Now +observe the result of this inexpert deflection of yours. You know Mr. +Jones's Willie is lying very low with scarlet fever; well, your +recommendation was so enthusiastic that that girl is there nursing him, +and the worn-out family have all been trustingly sound asleep for the +last fourteen hours, leaving their darling with full confidence in those +fatal hands, because you, like young George Washington, have a reputa-- +However, if you are not going to have anything to do, I will come around +to-morrow and we'll attend the funeral together, for, of course, you'll +naturally feel a peculiar interest in Willie's case--as personal a one, +in fact, as the undertaker." + +But that was all lost. Before I was half-way through she was in a +carriage and making thirty miles an hour toward the Jones mansion to save +what was left of Willie and tell all she knew about the deadly nurse. +All of which was unnecessary, as Willie wasn't sick; I had been lying +myself. But that same day, all the same, she sent a line to the hospital +which filled up the neglected blank, and stated the facts, too, in the +squarest possible manner. + +Now, you see, this lady's fault was not in lying, but only in lying +injudiciously. She should have told the truth there, and made it up to +the nurse with a fraudulent compliment further along in the paper. She +could have said, "In one respect the sick-nurse is perfection--when she +is on watch, she never snores." Almost any little pleasant lie would +have taken the sting out of that troublesome but necessary expression of +the truth. + +Lying is universal we all do it; we all must do it. Therefore, the wise +thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, +judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for +others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, +humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and +graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, +with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as +being ashamed of our high calling. Then shall we be rid of the rank and +pestilent truth that is rotting the land; then shall we be great and good +and beautiful, and worthy dwellers in a world where even benign Nature +habitually lies, except when she promises execrable weather. Then--but +I am but a new and feeble student in this gracious art; I can not +instruct this Club. + +Joking aside, I think there is much need of wise examination into what +sorts of lies are best and wholesomest to be indulged, seeing we must all +lie and do all lie, and what sorts it may be best to avoid--and this is a +thing which I feel I can confidently put into the hands of this +experienced Club--a ripe body, who may be termed, in this regard, and +without undue flattery, Old Masters. + + + + + + +ABOUT MAGNANIMOUS-INCIDENT LITERATURE + +All my life, from boyhood up, I have had the habit of reading a certain +set of anecdotes, written in the quaint vein of The World's ingenious +Fabulist, for the lesson they taught me and the pleasure they gave me. +They lay always convenient to my hand, and whenever I thought meanly of +my kind I turned to them, and they banished that sentiment; whenever I +felt myself to be selfish, sordid, and ignoble I turned to them, and they +told me what to do to win back my self-respect. Many times I wished that +the charming anecdotes had not stopped with their happy climaxes, but had +continued the pleasing history of the several benefactors and +beneficiaries. This wish rose in my breast so persistently that at last +I determined to satisfy it by seeking out the sequels of those anecdotes +myself. So I set about it, and after great labor and tedious research +accomplished my task. I will lay the result before you, giving you each +anecdote in its turn, and following it with its sequel as I gathered it +through my investigations. + + + THE GRATEFUL POODLE + +One day a benevolent physician (who had read the books) having found a +stray poodle suffering from a broken leg, conveyed the poor creature to +his home, and after setting and bandaging the injured limb gave the +little outcast its liberty again, and thought no more about the matter. +But how great was his surprise, upon opening his door one morning, some +days later, to find the grateful poodle patiently waiting there, and in +its company another stray dog, one of whose legs, by some accident, had +been broken. The kind physician at once relieved the distressed animal, +nor did he forget to admire the inscrutable goodness and mercy of God, +who had been willing to use so humble an instrument as the poor outcast +poodle for the inculcating of, etc., etc., etc. + + + SEQUEL + +The next morning the benevolent physician found the two dogs, beaming +with gratitude, waiting at his door, and with them two other +dogs-cripples. The cripples were speedily healed, and the four went +their way, leaving the benevolent physician more overcome by pious wonder +than ever. The day passed, the morning came. There at the door sat now +the four reconstructed dogs, and with them four others requiring +reconstruction. This day also passed, and another morning came; and now +sixteen dogs, eight of them newly crippled, occupied the sidewalk, and +the people were going around. By noon the broken legs were all set, but +the pious wonder in the good physician's breast was beginning to get +mixed with involuntary profanity. The sun rose once more, and exhibited +thirty-two dogs, sixteen of them with broken legs, occupying the sidewalk +and half of the street; the human spectators took up the rest of the +room. The cries of the wounded, the songs of the healed brutes, and the +comments of the onlooking citizens made great and inspiring cheer, but +traffic was interrupted in that street. The good physician hired a +couple of assistant surgeons and got through his benevolent work before +dark, first taking the precaution to cancel his church-membership, so +that he might express himself with the latitude which the case required. + +But some things have their limits. When once more the morning dawned, +and the good physician looked out upon a massed and far-reaching +multitude of clamorous and beseeching dogs, he said, "I might as well +acknowledge it, I have been fooled by the books; they only tell the +pretty part of the story, and then stop. Fetch me the shotgun; this +thing has gone along far enough." + +He issued forth with his weapon, and chanced to step upon the tail of the +original poodle, who promptly bit him in the leg. Now the great and good +work which this poodle had been engaged in had engendered in him such a +mighty and augmenting enthusiasm as to turn his weak head at last and +drive him mad. A month later, when the benevolent physician lay in the +death-throes of hydrophobia, he called his weeping friends about him, and +said: + +"Beware of the books. They tell but half of the story. Whenever a poor +wretch asks you for help, and you feel a doubt as to what result may flow +from your benevolence, give yourself the benefit of the doubt and kill +the applicant." + +And so saying he turned his face to the wall and gave up the ghost. + + + + THE BENEVOLENT AUTHOR + +A poor and young literary beginner had tried in vain to get his +manuscripts accepted. At last, when the horrors of starvation were +staring him in the face, he laid his sad case before a celebrated author, +beseeching his counsel and assistance. This generous man immediately put +aside his own matters and proceeded to peruse one of the despised +manuscripts. Having completed his kindly task, he shook the poor young +man cordially by the hand, saying, "I perceive merit in this; come again +to me on Monday." At the time specified, the celebrated author, with a +sweet smile, but saying nothing, spread open a magazine which was damp +from the press. What was the poor young man's astonishment to discover +upon the printed page his own article. "How can I ever," said he, +falling upon his knees and bursting into tears, "testify my gratitude for +this noble conduct!" + +The celebrated author was the renowned Snodgrass; the poor young beginner +thus rescued from obscurity and starvation was the afterward equally +renowned Snagsby. Let this pleasing incident admonish us to turn a +charitable ear to all beginners that need help. + + SEQUEL + +The next week Snagsby was back with five rejected manuscripts. The +celebrated author was a little surprised, because in the books the young +struggler had needed but one lift, apparently. However, he plowed +through these papers, removing unnecessary flowers and digging up some +acres of adjective stumps, and then succeeded in getting two of the +articles accepted. + +A week or so drifted by, and the grateful Snagsby arrived with another +cargo. The celebrated author had felt a mighty glow of satisfaction +within himself the first time he had successfully befriended the poor +young struggler, and had compared himself with the generous people in the +books with high gratification; but he was beginning to suspect now that +he had struck upon something fresh in the noble-episode line. His +enthusiasm took a chill. Still, he could not bear to repulse this +struggling young author, who clung to him with such pretty simplicity and +trustfulness. + +Well, the upshot of it all was that the celebrated author presently found +himself permanently freighted with the poor young beginner. All his mild +efforts to unload this cargo went for nothing. He had to give daily +counsel, daily encouragement; he had to keep on procuring magazine +acceptances, and then revamping the manuscripts to make them presentable. +When the young aspirant got a start at last, he rode into sudden fame by +describing the celebrated author's private life with such a caustic humor +and such minuteness of blistering detail that the book sold a prodigious +edition, and broke the celebrated author's heart with mortification. +With his latest gasp he said, "Alas, the books deceived me; they do not +tell the whole story. Beware of the struggling young author, my friends. +Whom God sees fit to starve, let not man presumptuously rescue to his own +undoing." + + + + THE GRATEFUL HUSBAND + +One day a lady was driving through the principal street of a great city +with her little boy, when the horses took fright and dashed madly away, +hurling the coachman from his box and leaving the occupants of the +carnage paralyzed with terror. But a brave youth who was driving a +grocery-wagon threw himself before the plunging animals, and succeeded in +arresting their flight at the peril of his own.--[This is probably a +misprint.--M. T.]--The grateful lady took his number, and upon arriving +at her home she related the heroic act to her husband (who had read the +books), who listened with streaming eyes to the moving recital, and who, +after returning thanks, in conjunction with his restored loved ones, to +Him who suffereth not even a sparrow to fall to the ground unnoticed, +sent for the brave young person, and, placing a check for five hundred +dollars in his hand, said, "Take this as a reward for your noble act, +William Ferguson, and if ever you shall need a friend, remember that +Thompson McSpadden has a grateful heart." Let us learn from this that +a good deed cannot fail to benefit the doer, however humble he may be. + + SEQUEL + +William Ferguson called the next week and asked Mr. McSpadden to use his +influence to get him a higher employment, he feeling capable of better +things than driving a grocer's wagon. Mr. McSpadden got him an +underclerkship at a good salary. + +Presently William Ferguson's mother fell sick, and William--Well, to cut +the story short, Mr. McSpadden consented to take her into his house. +Before long she yearned for the society of her younger children; so Mary +and Julia were admitted also, and little Jimmy, their brother. Jimmy had +a pocket knife, and he wandered into the drawing-room with it one day, +alone, and reduced ten thousand dollars' worth of furniture to an +indeterminable value in rather less than three-quarters of an hour. +A day or two later he fell down-stairs and broke his neck, and seventeen +of his family's relatives came to the house to attend the funeral. This +made them acquainted, and they kept the kitchen occupied after that, and +likewise kept the McSpaddens busy hunting-up situations of various sorts +for them, and hunting up more when they wore these out. The old woman +drank a good deal and swore a good deal; but the grateful McSpaddens knew +it was their duty to reform her, considering what her son had done for +them, so they clave nobly to their generous task. William came often and +got decreasing sums of money, and asked for higher and more lucrative +employments--which the grateful McSpadden more or less promptly procured +for him. McSpadden consented also, after some demur, to fit William for +college; but when the first vacation came and the hero requested to be +sent to Europe for his health, the persecuted McSpadden rose against the +tyrant and revolted. He plainly and squarely refused. William +Ferguson's mother was so astounded that she let her gin-bottle drop, and +her profane lips refused to do their office. When she recovered she said +in a half-gasp, "Is this your gratitude? Where would your wife and boy +be now, but for my son?" + +William said, "Is this your gratitude? Did I save your wife's life or +not? Tell me that!" + +Seven relations swarmed in from the kitchen and each said, "And this is +his gratitude!" + +William's sisters stared, bewildered, and said, "And this is his grat--" +but were interrupted by their mother, who burst into tears and exclaimed, + +"To think that my sainted little Jimmy threw away his life in the service +of such a reptile!" + +Then the pluck of the revolutionary McSpadden rose to the occasion, and +he replied with fervor, "Out of my house, the whole beggarly tribe of +you! I was beguiled by the books, but shall never be beguiled again +--once is sufficient for me." And turning to William he shouted, "Yes, +you did save my, wife's life, and the next man that does it shall die in +his tracks!" + + +Not being a clergyman, I place my text at the end of my sermon instead of +at the beginning. Here it is, from Mr. Noah Brooks's Recollections of +President Lincoln in Scribners Monthly: + + J. H. Hackett, in his part of Falstaff, was an actor who gave Mr. + Lincoln great delight. With his usual desire to signify to others + his sense of obligation, Mr. Lincoln wrote a genial little note to + the actor expressing his pleasure at witnessing his performance. + Mr. Hackett, in reply, sent a book of some sort; perhaps it was one + of his own authorship. He also wrote several notes to the + President. One night, quite late, when the episode had passed out + of my mind, I went to the white House in answer to a message. + Passing into the President's office, I noticed, to my surprise, + Hackett sitting in the anteroom as if waiting for an audience. The + President asked me if any one was outside. On being told, he said, + half sadly, "Oh, I can't see him, I can't see him; I was in hopes he + had gone away." Then he added, "Now this just illustrates the + difficulty of having pleasant friends and acquaintances in this + place. You know how I liked Hackett as an actor, and how I wrote to + tell him so. He sent me that book, and there I thought the matter + would end. He is a master of his place in the profession, I + suppose, and well fixed in it; but just because we had a little + friendly correspondence, such as any two men might have, he wants + something. What do you suppose he wants?" I could not guess, and + Mr. Lincoln added, "well, he wants to be consul to London. Oh, + dear!" + +I will observe, in conclusion, that the William Ferguson incident +occurred, and within my personal knowledge--though I have changed the +nature of the details, to keep William from recognizing himself in it. + +All the readers of this article have in some sweet and gushing hour of +their lives played the role of Magnanimous-Incident hero. I wish I knew +how many there are among them who are willing to talk about that episode +and like to be reminded of the consequences that flowed from it. + + + + + + +PUNCH, BROTHERS, PUNCH + +Will the reader please to cast his eye over the following lines, and see +if he can discover anything harmful in them? + + Conductor, when you receive a fare, + Punch in the presence of the passenjare! + A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, + A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, + A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare, + Punch in the presence of the passenjare! + + CHORUS + + Punch, brothers! punch with care! + Punch in the presence of the passenjare! + + +I came across these jingling rhymes in a newspaper, a little while ago, +and read them a couple of times. They took instant and entire possession +of me. All through breakfast they went waltzing through my brain; and +when, at last, I rolled up my napkin, I could not tell whether I had +eaten anything or not. I had carefully laid out my day's work the day +before--thrilling tragedy in the novel which I am writing. I went to my +den to begin my deed of blood. I took up my pen, but all I could get it +to say was, "Punch in the presence of the passenjare." I fought hard for +an hour, but it was useless. My head kept humming, "A blue trip slip for +an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a six-cent fare," and so on and +so on, without peace or respite. The day's work was ruined--I could see +that plainly enough. I gave up and drifted down-town, and presently +discovered that my feet were keeping time to that relentless jingle. +When I could stand it no longer I altered my step. But it did no good; +those rhymes accommodated themselves to the new step and went on +harassing me just as before. I returned home, and suffered all the +afternoon; suffered all through an unconscious and unrefreshing dinner; +suffered, and cried, and jingled all through the evening; went to bed and +rolled, tossed, and jingled right along, the same as ever; got up at +midnight frantic, and tried to read; but there was nothing visible upon +the whirling page except "Punch! punch in the presence of the +passenjare." By sunrise I was out of my mind, and everybody marveled and +was distressed at the idiotic burden of my ravings--"Punch! oh, punch! +punch in the presence of the passenjare!" + +Two days later, on Saturday morning, I arose, a tottering wreck, and went +forth to fulfil an engagement with a valued friend, the Rev. Mr.------, +to walk to the Talcott Tower, ten miles distant. He stared at me, but +asked no questions. We started. Mr.------ talked, talked, talked as is +his wont. I said nothing; I heard nothing. At the end of a mile, +Mr.------ said "Mark, are you sick? I never saw a man look so haggard +and worn and absent-minded. Say something, do!" + +Drearily, without enthusiasm, I said: "Punch brothers, punch with care! +Punch in the presence of the passenjare!" + +My friend eyed me blankly, looked perplexed, they said: + +"I do not think I get your drift, Mark. Then does not seem to be any +relevancy in what you have said, certainly nothing sad; and yet--maybe it +was the way you said the words--I never heard anything that sounded so +pathetic. What is--" + +But I heard no more. I was already far away with my pitiless, +heartbreaking "blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, buff trip slip for +a six-cent fare, pink trip slip for a three-cent fare; punch in the +presence of the passenjare." I do not know what occurred during the +other nine miles. However, all of a sudden Mr.------ laid his hand on my +shoulder and shouted: + +"Oh, wake up! wake up! wake up! Don't sleep all day! Here we are at +the Tower, man! I have talked myself deaf and dumb and blind, and never +got a response. Just look at this magnificent autumn landscape! Look at +it! look at it! Feast your eye on it! You have traveled; you have seen +boaster landscapes elsewhere. Come, now, deliver an honest opinion. +What do you say to this?" + +I sighed wearily; and murmured: + +"A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent +fare, punch in the presence of the passenjare." + +Rev. Mr. ------ stood there, very grave, full of concern, apparently, and +looked long at me; then he said: + +"Mark, there is something about this that I cannot understand. Those are +about the same words you said before; there does not seem to be anything +in them, and yet they nearly break my heart when you say them. Punch in +the--how is it they go?" + +I began at the beginning and repeated all the lines. + +My friend's face lighted with interest. He said: + +"Why, what a captivating jingle it is! It is almost music. It flows +along so nicely. I have nearly caught the rhymes myself. Say them over +just once more, and then I'll have them, sure." + +I said them over. Then Mr. ------ said them. He made one little +mistake, which I corrected. The next time and the next he got them +right. Now a great burden seemed to tumble from my shoulders. That +torturing jingle departed out of my brain, and a grateful sense of rest +and peace descended upon me. I was light-hearted enough to sing; and I +did sing for half an hour, straight along, as we went jogging homeward. +Then my freed tongue found blessed speech again, and the pent talk of +many a weary hour began to gush and flow. It flowed on and on, joyously, +jubilantly, until the fountain was empty and dry. As I wrung my friend's +hand at parting, I said: + +"Haven't we had a royal good time! But now I remember, you haven't said +a word for two hours. Come, come, out with something!" + +The Rev. Mr.------ turned a lack-luster eye upon me, drew a deep sigh, +and said, without animation, without apparent consciousness: + +"Punch, brothers, punch with care! Punch in the presence of the +passenjare!" + +A pang shot through me as I said to myself, "Poor fellow, poor fellow! +he has got it, now." + +I did not see Mr.------ for two or three days after that. Then, on +Tuesday evening, he staggered into my presence and sank dejectedly into a +seat. He was pale, worn; he was a wreck. He lifted his faded eyes to my +face and said: + +"Ah, Mark, it was a ruinous investment that I made in those heartless +rhymes. They have ridden me like a nightmare, day and night, hour after +hour, to this very moment. Since I saw you I have suffered the torments +of the lost. Saturday evening I had a sudden call, by telegraph, and +took the night train for Boston. The occasion was the death of a valued +old friend who had requested that I should preach his funeral sermon. +I took my seat in the cars and set myself to framing the discourse. But +I never got beyond the opening paragraph; for then the train started and +the car-wheels began their 'clack, clack-clack-clack-clack! clack-clack! +--clack-clack-clack!' and right away those odious rhymes fitted +themselves to that accompaniment. For an hour I sat there and set a +syllable of those rhymes to every separate and distinct clack the +car-wheels made. Why, I was as fagged out, then, as if I had been +chopping wood all day. My skull was splitting with headache. It seemed +to me that I must go mad if I sat there any longer; so I undressed and +went to bed. I stretched myself out in my berth, and--well, you know +what the result was. The thing went right along, just the same. +'Clack-clack clack, a blue trip slip, clack-clack-clack, for an eight +cent fare; clack-clack-clack, a buff trip slip, clack clack-clack, for a +six-cent fare, and so on, and so on, and so on punch in the presence of +the passenjare!' Sleep? Not a single wink! I was almost a lunatic when +I got to Boston. Don't ask me about the funeral. I did the best I +could, but every solemn individual sentence was meshed and tangled and +woven in and out with 'Punch, brothers, punch with care, punch in the +presence of the passenjare.' And the most distressing thing was that my +delivery dropped into the undulating rhythm of those pulsing rhymes, and +I could actually catch absent-minded people nodding time to the swing of +it with their stupid heads. And, Mark, you may believe it or not, but +before I got through the entire assemblage were placidly bobbing their +heads in solemn unison, mourners, undertaker, and all. The moment I had +finished, I fled to the anteroom in a state bordering on frenzy. Of +course it would be my luck to find a sorrowing and aged maiden aunt of +the deceased there, who had arrived from Springfield too late to get into +the church. She began to sob, and said: + +"'Oh, oh, he is gone, he is gone, and I didn't see him before he died!' + +"'Yes!' I said, 'he is gone, he is gone, he is gone--oh, will this +suffering never cease!' + +"'You loved him, then! Oh, you too loved him!' + +"'Loved him! Loved who?' + +"'Why, my poor George! my poor nephew!' + +"'Oh--him! Yes--oh, yes, yes. Certainly--certainly. Punch--punch--oh, +this misery will kill me!' + +"'Bless you! bless you, sir, for these sweet words! I, too, suffer in +this dear loss. Were you present during his last moments?' + +"'Yes. I--whose last moments?' + +"'His. The dear departed's.' + +"'Yes! Oh, yes--yes--yes! I suppose so, I think so, I don't know! Oh, +certainly--I was there I was there!' + +"'Oh, what a privilege! what a precious privilege! And his last words +--oh, tell me, tell me his last words! What did he say?' + +"'He said--he said--oh, my head, my head, my head! He said--he said--he +never said anything but Punch, punch, punch in the presence of the +passenjare! Oh, leave me, madam! In the name of all that is generous, +leave me to my madness, my misery, my despair!--a buff trip slip for a +six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent fare--endu--rance can no +fur--ther go!--PUNCH in the presence of the passenjare!" + +My friend's hopeless eyes rested upon mine a pregnant minute, and then he +said impressively: + +"Mark, you do not say anything. You do not offer me any hope. But, ah +me, it is just as well--it is just as well. You could not do me any +good. The time has long gone by when words could comfort me. Something +tells me that my tongue is doomed to wag forever to the jigger of that +remorseless jingle. There--there it is coming on me again: a blue trip +slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a--" + +Thus murmuring faint and fainter, my friend sank into a peaceful trance +and forgot his sufferings in a blessed respite. + +How did I finally save him from an asylum? I took him to a neighboring +university and made him discharge the burden of his persecuting rhymes +into the eager ears of the poor, unthinking students. How is it with +them, now? The result is too sad to tell. Why did I write this article? +It was for a worthy, even a noble, purpose. It was to warn you, reader, +if you should came across those merciless rhymes, to avoid them--avoid +them as you would a pestilence. + + + + + + +THE GREAT REVOLUTION IN PITCAIRN + +Let me refresh the reader's memory a little. Nearly a hundred years ago +the crew of the British ship Bounty mutinied, set the captain and his +officers adrift upon the open sea, took possession of the ship, and +sailed southward. They procured wives for themselves among the natives +of Tahiti, then proceeded to a lonely little rock in mid-Pacific, called +Pitcairn's Island, wrecked the vessel, stripped her of everything that +might be useful to a new colony, and established themselves on shore. +Pitcairn's is so far removed from the track of commerce that it was many +years before another vessel touched there. It had always been considered +an uninhabited island; so when a ship did at last drop its anchor there, +in 1808, the captain was greatly surprised to find the place peopled. +Although the mutineers had fought among themselves, and gradually killed +each other off until only two or three of the original stock remained, +these tragedies had not occurred before a number of children had been +born; so in 1808 the island had a population of twenty-seven persons. +John Adams, the chief mutineer, still survived, and was to live many +years yet, as governor and patriarch of the flock. From being mutineer +and homicide, he had turned Christian and teacher, and his nation of +twenty-seven persons was now the purest and devoutest in Christendom. +Adams had long ago hoisted the British flag and constituted his island an +appanage of the British crown. + +To-day the population numbers ninety persons--sixteen men, nineteen +women, twenty-five boys, and thirty girls--all descendants of the +mutineers, all bearing the family names of those mutineers, and all +speaking English, and English only. The island stands high up out of the +sea, and has precipitous walls. It is about three-quarters of a mile +long, and in places is as much as half a mile wide. Such arable land as +it affords is held by the several families, according to a division made +many years ago. There is some live stock--goats, pigs, chickens, and +cats; but no dogs, and no large animals. There is one church-building +used also as a capitol, a schoolhouse, and a public library. The title +of the governor has been, for a generation or two, "Magistrate and Chief +Ruler, in subordination to her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain." It +was his province to make the laws, as well as execute them. His office +was elective; everybody over seventeen years old had a vote--no matter +about the sex. + +The sole occupations of the people were farming and fishing; their sole +recreation, religious services. There has never been a shop in the +island, nor any money. The habits and dress of the people have always +been primitive, and their laws simple to puerility. They have lived in a +deep Sabbath tranquillity, far from the world and its ambitions and +vexations, and neither knowing nor caring what was going on in the mighty +empires that lie beyond their limitless ocean solitudes. Once in three +or four years a ship touched there, moved them with aged news of bloody +battles, devastating epidemics, fallen thrones, and ruined dynasties, +then traded them some soap and flannel for some yams and breadfruit, and +sailed away, leaving them to retire into their peaceful dreams and pious +dissipations once more. + +On the 8th of last September, Admiral de Horsey, commander-in-chief of +the British fleet in the Pacific, visited Pitcairn's Island, and speaks +as follows in his official report to the admiralty: + + They have beans, carrots, turnips, cabbages, and a little maize; + pineapples, fig trees, custard-apples, and oranges; lemons, and + cocoanuts. Clothing is obtained alone from passing ships, in barter + for refreshments. There are no springs on the island, but as it + rains generally once a month they have plenty of water, although at + times in former years they have suffered from drought. No alcoholic + liquors, except for medicinal purposes, are used, and a drunkard is + unknown.... + + The necessary articles required by the islanders are best shown by + those we furnished in barter for refreshments: namely, flannel, + serge, drill, half-boots, combs, tobacco, and soap. They also stand + much in need of maps and slates for their school, and tools of any + kind are most acceptable. I caused them to be supplied from the + public stores with a Union jack: for display on the arrival of + ships, and a pit-saw, of which they were greatly in need. This, I + trust, will meet the approval of their lordships. If the munificent + people of England were only aware of the wants of this most + deserving little colony, they would not long go unsupplied.... + + Divine service is held every Sunday at 10.30 A.M. and at 3 P.M., + in the house built and used by John Adams for that purpose until he + died in 1829. It is conducted strictly in accordance with the + liturgy of the Church of England, by Mr. Simon Young, their selected + pastor, who is much respected. A Bible class is held every + Wednesday, when all who conveniently can attend. There is also a + general meeting for prayer on the first Friday in every month. + Family prayers are said in every house the first thing in the + morning and the last thing in the evening, and no food is partaken + of without asking God's blessing before and afterward. Of these + islanders' religious attributes no one can speak without deep + respect. A people whose greatest pleasure and privilege is to + commune in prayer with their God, and to join in hymns of praise, + and who are, moreover, cheerful, diligent, and probably freer from + vice than any other community, need no priest among them. + +Now I come to a sentence in the admiral's report which he dropped +carelessly from his pen, no doubt, and never gave the matter a second +thought. He little imagined what a freight of tragic prophecy it bore! +This is the sentence: + + One stranger, an American, has settled on the island--a doubtful + acquisition. + +A doubtful acquisition, indeed! Captain Ormsby, in the American ship +Hornet, touched at Pitcairn's nearly four months after the admiral's +visit, and from the facts which he gathered there we now know all about +that American. Let us put these facts together in historical form. The +American's name was Butterworth Stavely. As soon as he had become well +acquainted with all the people--and this took but a few days, of course +--he began to ingratiate himself with them by all the arts he could +command. He became exceedingly popular, and much looked up to; for one +of the first things he did was to forsake his worldly way of life, and +throw all his energies into religion. He was always reading his Bible, +or praying, or singing hymns, or asking blessings. In prayer, no one had +such "liberty" as he, no one could pray so long or so well. + +At last, when he considered the time to be ripe, he began secretly to sow +the seeds of discontent among the people. It was his deliberate purpose, +from the beginning, to subvert the government, but of course he kept that +to himself for a time. He used different arts with different +individuals. He awakened dissatisfaction in one quarter by calling +attention to the shortness of the Sunday services; he argued that there +should be three three-hour services on Sunday instead of only two. Many +had secretly held this opinion before; they now privately banded +themselves into a party to work for it. He showed certain of the women +that they were not allowed sufficient voice in the prayer-meetings; thus +another party was formed. No weapon was beneath his notice; he even +descended to the children, and awoke discontent in their breasts +because--as he discovered for them--they had not enough Sunday-school. +This created a third party. + +Now, as the chief of these parties, he found himself the strongest power +in the community. So he proceeded to his next move--a no less important +one than the impeachment of the chief magistrate, James Russell Nickoy; +a man of character and ability, and possessed of great wealth, he being +the owner of a house with a parlor to it, three acres and a half of +yam-land, and the only boat in Pitcairn's, a whaleboat; and, most +unfortunately, a pretext for this impeachment offered itself at just the +right time. + +One of the earliest and most precious laws of the island was the law +against trespass. It was held in great reverence, and was regarded as +the palladium of the people's liberties. About thirty years ago an +important case came before the courts under this law, in this wise: a +chicken belonging to Elizabeth Young (aged, at that time, fifty-eight, +a daughter of John Mills, one of the mutineers of the Bounty) trespassed +upon the grounds of Thursday October Christian (aged twenty-nine, a +grandson of Fletcher Christian, one of the mutineers). Christian killed +the chicken. According to the law, Christian could keep the chicken; or, +if he preferred, he could restore its remains to the owner and receive +damages in "produce" to an amount equivalent to the waste and injury +wrought by the trespasser. The court records set forth that "the said +Christian aforesaid did deliver the aforesaid remains to the said Eliza +beth Young, and did demand one bushel of yams in satisfaction of the +damage done." But Elizabeth Young considered the demand exorbitant; the +parties could not agree; therefore Christian brought suit in the courts. +He lost his case in the justice's court; at least, he was awarded only a +half-peck of yams, which he considered insufficient, and in the nature of +a defeat. He appealed. The case lingered several years in an ascending +grade of courts, and always resulted in decrees sustaining the original +verdict; and finally the thing got into the supreme court, and there it +stuck for twenty years. But last summer, even the supreme court managed +to arrive at a decision at last. Once more the original verdict was +sustained. Christian then said he was satisfied; but Stavely was +present, and whispered to him and to his lawyer, suggesting, "as a mere +form," that the original law be exhibited, in order to make sure that it +still existed. It seemed an odd idea, but an ingenious one. So the +demand was made. A messenger was sent to the magistrate's house; he +presently returned with the tidings that it had disappeared from among +the state archives. + +The court now pronounced its late decision void, since it had been made +under a law which had no actual existence. + +Great excitement ensued immediately. The news swept abroad over the +whole island that the palladium of the public liberties was lost--maybe +treasonably destroyed. Within thirty minutes almost the entire nation +were in the court-room--that is to say, the church. The impeachment of +the chief magistrate followed, upon Stavely's motion. The accused met +his misfortune with the dignity which became his great office. He did +not plead, or even argue; he offered the simple defense that he had not +meddled with the missing law; that he had kept the state archives in the +same candle-box that had been used as their depository from the +beginning; and that he was innocent of the removal or destruction of the +lost document. + +But nothing could save him; he was found guilty of misprision of treason, +and degraded from his office, and all his property was confiscated. + +The lamest part of the whole shameful matter was the reason suggested by +his enemies for his destruction of the law, to wit: that he did it to +favor Christian, because Christian was his cousin! Whereas Stavely was +the only individual in the entire nation who was not his cousin. The +reader must remember that all these people are the descendants of half a +dozen men; that the first children intermarried together and bore +grandchildren to the mutineers; that these grandchildren intermarried; +after them, great and great-great-grandchildren intermarried; so that +to-day everybody is blood kin to everybody. Moreover, the relationships +are wonderfully, even astoundingly, mixed up and complicated. A +stranger, for instance, says to an islander: + +"You speak of that young woman as your cousin; a while ago you called her +your aunt." + +"Well, she is my aunt, and my cousin, too. And also my stepsister, my +niece, my fourth cousin, my thirty-third cousin, my forty-second cousin, +my great-aunt, my grandmother, my widowed sister-in-law--and next week +she will be my wife." + +So the charge of nepotism against the chief magistrate was weak. But no +matter; weak or strong, it suited Stavely. Stavely was immediately +elected to the vacant magistracy, and, oozing reform from every pore, he +went vigorously to work. In no long time religious services raged +everywhere and unceasingly. By command, the second prayer of the Sunday +morning service, which had customarily endured some thirty-five or forty +minutes, and had pleaded for the world, first by continent and then by +national and tribal detail, was extended to an hour and a half, and made +to include supplications in behalf of the possible peoples in the several +planets. Everybody was pleased with this; everybody said, "Now this is +something like." By command, the usual three-hour sermons were doubled +in length. The nation came in a body to testify their gratitude to the +new magistrate. The old law forbidding cooking on the Sabbath was +extended to the prohibition of eating, also. By command, Sunday-school +was privileged to spread over into the week. The joy of all classes was +complete. In one short month the new magistrate had become the people's +idol! + +The time was ripe for this man's next move. He began, cautiously at +first, to poison the public mind against England. He took the chief +citizens aside, one by one, and conversed with them on this topic. +Presently he grew bolder, and spoke out. He said the nation owed it to +itself, to its honor, to its great traditions, to rise in its might and +throw off "this galling English yoke." + +But the simple islanders answered: + +"We had not noticed that it galled. How does it gall? England sends a +ship once in three or four years to give us soap and clothing, and things +which we sorely need and gratefully receive; but she never troubles us; +she lets us go our own way." + +"She lets you go your own way! So slaves have felt and spoken in all the +ages! This speech shows how fallen you are, how base, how brutalized you +have become, under this grinding tyranny! What! has all manly pride +forsaken you? Is liberty nothing? Are you content to be a mere +appendage to a foreign and hateful sovereignty, when you might rise up +and take your rightful place in the august family of nations, great, +free, enlightened, independent, the minion of no sceptered master, but +the arbiter of your own destiny, and a voice and a power in decreeing the +destinies of your sister-sovereignties of the world?" + +Speeches like this produced an effect by and by. Citizens began to feel +the English yoke; they did not know exactly how or whereabouts they felt +it, but they were perfectly certain they did feel it. They got to +grumbling a good deal, and chafing under their chains, and longing for +relief and release. They presently fell to hating the English flag, that +sign and symbol of their nation's degradation; they ceased to glance up +at it as they passed the capitol, but averted their eyes and grated their +teeth; and one morning, when it was found trampled into the mud at the +foot of the staff, they left it there, and no man put his hand to it to +hoist it again. A certain thing which was sure to happen sooner or later +happened now. Some of the chief citizens went to the magistrate by +night, and said: + +"We can endure this hated tyranny no longer. How can we cast it off?" + +"By a coup d'etat." + +"How?" + +"A coup d'etat. It is like this: everything is got ready, and at the +appointed moment I, as the official head of the nation, publicly and +solemnly proclaim its independence, and absolve it from allegiance to any +and all other powers whatsoever." + +"That sounds simple and easy. We can do that right away. Then what will +be the next thing to do?" + +"Seize all the defenses and public properties of all kinds, establish +martial law, put the army and navy on a war footing, and proclaim the +empire!" + +This fine program dazzled these innocents. They said: + +"This is grand--this is splendid; but will not England resist?" + +"Let her. This rock is a Gibraltar." + +"True. But about the empire? Do we need an empire and an emperor?" + +"What you need, my friends, is unification. Look at Germany; look at +Italy. They are unified. Unification is the thing. It makes living +dear. That constitutes progress. We must have a standing army and a +navy. Taxes follow, as a matter of course. All these things summed up +make grandeur. With unification and grandeur, what more can you want? +Very well--only the empire can confer these boons." + +So on the 8th day of December Pitcairn's Island was proclaimed a free and +independent nation; and on the same day the solemn coronation of +Butterworth I, Emperor of Pitcairn's Island, took place, amid great +rejoicings and festivities. The entire nation, with the exception of +fourteen persons, mainly little children, marched past the throne in +single file, with banners and music, the procession being upward of +ninety feet long; and some said it was as much as three-quarters of a +minute passing a given point. Nothing like it had ever been seen in the +history of the island before. Public enthusiasm was measureless. + +Now straightway imperial reforms began. Orders of nobility were +instituted. A minister of the navy was appointed, and the whale-boat put +in commission. A minister of war was created, and ordered to proceed at +once with the formation of a standing army. A first lord of the treasury +was named, and commanded to get up a taxation scheme, and also open +negotiations for treaties, offensive, defensive, and commercial, with +foreign powers. Some generals and admirals were appointed; also some +chamberlains, some equerries in waiting, and some lords of the +bedchamber. + +At this point all the material was used up. The Grand Duke of Galilee, +minister of war, complained that all the sixteen grown men in the empire +had been given great offices, and consequently would not consent to serve +in the ranks; wherefore his standing army was at a standstill. The +Marquis of Ararat, minister of the navy, made a similar complaint. He +said he was willing to steer the whale-boat himself, but he must have +somebody to man her. + +The emperor did the best he could in the circumstances: he took all the +boys above the age of ten years away from their mothers, and pressed them +into the army, thus constructing a corps of seventeen privates, officered +by one lieutenant-general and two major-generals. This pleased the +minister of war, but procured the enmity of all the mothers in the land; +for they said their precious ones must now find bloody graves in the +fields of war, and he would be answerable for it. Some of the more +heartbroken and unappeasable among them lay constantly wait for the +emperor and threw yams at him, unmindful of the body-guard. + +On account of the extreme scarcity of material, it was found necessary to +require the Duke of Bethany postmaster-general, to pull stroke-oar in the +navy and thus sit in the rear of a noble of lower degree namely, Viscount +Canaan, lord justice of the common pleas. This turned the Duke of +Bethany into tolerably open malcontent and a secret conspirator--a thing +which the emperor foresaw, but could not help. + +Things went from bad to worse. The emperor raised Nancy Peters to the +peerage on one day, and married her the next, notwithstanding, for +reasons of state, the cabinet had strenuously advised him to marry +Emmeline, eldest daughter of the Archbishop of Bethlehem. This caused +trouble in a powerful quarter--the church. The new empress secured the +support and friendship of two-thirds of the thirty-six grown women in the +nation by absorbing them into her court as maids of honor; but this made +deadly enemies of the remaining twelve. The families of the maids of +honor soon began to rebel, because there was nobody at home to keep +house. The twelve snubbed women refused to enter the imperial kitchen as +servants; so the empress had to require the Countess of Jericho and other +great court dames to fetch water, sweep the palace, and perform other +menial and equally distasteful services. This made bad blood in that +department. + +Everybody fell to complaining that the taxes levied for the support of +the army, the navy, and the rest of the imperial establishment were +intolerably burdensome, and were reducing the nation to beggary. The +emperor's reply--"Look--Look at Germany; look at Italy. Are you better +than they? and haven't you unification?"---did not satisfy them. They +said, "People can't eat unification, and we are starving. Agriculture +has ceased. Everybody is in the army, everybody is in the navy, +everybody is in the public service, standing around in a uniform, with +nothing whatever to do, nothing to eat, and nobody to till the fields--" + +"Look at Germany; look at Italy. It is the same there. Such is +unification, and there's no other way to get it--no other way to keep it +after you've got it," said the poor emperor always. + +But the grumblers only replied, "We can't stand the taxes--we can't stand +them." + +Now right on top of this the cabinet reported a national debt amounting +to upward of forty-five dollars--half a dollar to every individual in the +nation. And they proposed to fund something. They had heard that this +was always done in such emergencies. They proposed duties on exports; +also on imports. And they wanted to issue bonds; also paper money, +redeemable in yams and cabbages in fifty years. They said the pay of the +army and of the navy and of the whole governmental machine was far in +arrears, and unless something was done, and done immediately, national +bankruptcy must ensue, and possibly insurrection and revolution. The +emperor at once resolved upon a high-handed measure, and one of a nature +never before heard of in Pitcairn's Island. He went in state to the +church on Sunday morning, with the army at his back, and commanded the +minister of the treasury to take up a collection. + +That was the feather that broke the camel's back. First one citizen, and +then another, rose and refused to submit to this unheard-of outrage +--and each refusal was followed by the immediate confiscation of the +malcontent's property. This vigor soon stopped the refusals, and the +collection proceeded amid a sullen and ominous silence. As the emperor +withdrew with the troops, he said, "I will teach you who is master here." +Several persons shouted, "Down with unification!" They were at once +arrested and torn from the arms of their weeping friends by the soldiery. + +But in the mean time, as any prophet might have foreseen, a Social +Democrat had been developed. As the emperor stepped into the gilded +imperial wheelbarrow at the church door, the social democrat stabbed at +him fifteen or sixteen times with a harpoon, but fortunately with such a +peculiarly social democratic unprecision of aim as to do no damage. + +That very night the convulsion came. The nation rose as one man--though +forty-nine of the revolutionists were of the other sex. The infantry +threw down their pitchforks; the artillery cast aside their cocoanuts; +the navy revolted; the emperor was seized, and bound hand and foot in his +palace. He was very much depressed. He said: + +"I freed you from a grinding tyranny; I lifted you up out of your +degradation, and made you a nation among nations; I gave you a strong, +compact, centralized government; and, more than all, I gave you the +blessing of blessings--unification. I have done all this, and my reward +is hatred, insult, and these bonds. Take me; do with me as you will. +I here resign my crown and all my dignities, and gladly do I release +myself from their too heavy burden. For your sake I took them up; for +your sake I lay them down. The imperial jewel is no more; now bruise and +defile as ye will the useless setting." + +By a unanimous voice the people condemned the ex-emperor and the social +democrat to perpetual banishment from church services, or to perpetual +labor as galley-slaves in the whale-boat--whichever they might prefer. +The next day the nation assembled again, and rehoisted the British flag, +reinstated the British tyranny, reduced the nobility to the condition of +commoners again, and then straightway turned their diligent attention to +the weeding of the ruined and neglected yam patches, and the +rehabilitation of the old useful industries and the old healing and +solacing pieties. The ex-emperor restored the lost trespass law, and +explained that he had stolen it not to injure any one, but to further his +political projects. Therefore the nation gave the late chief magistrate +his office again, and also his alienated Property. + +Upon reflection, the ex-emperor and the social democrat chose perpetual +banishment from religious services in preference to perpetual labor as +galley slaves "with perpetual religious services," as they phrased it; +wherefore the people believed that the poor fellows' troubles had +unseated their reason, and so they judged it best to confine them for the +present. Which they did. + +Such is the history of Pitcairn's "doubtful acquisition." + + + + + + +THE CANVASSER'S TALE + +Poor, sad-eyed stranger! There was that about his humble mien, his tired +look, his decayed-gentility clothes, that almost reached the mustard, +seed of charity that still remained, remote and lonely, in the empty +vastness of my heart, notwithstanding I observed a portfolio under his +arm, and said to myself, Behold, Providence hath delivered his servant +into the hands of another canvasser. + +Well, these people always get one interested. Before I well knew how it +came about, this one was telling me his history, and I was all attention +and sympathy. He told it something like this: + +My parents died, alas, when I was a little, sinless child. My uncle +Ithuriel took me to his heart and reared me as his own. He was my only +relative in the wide world; but he was good and rich and generous. He +reared me in the lap of luxury. I knew no want that money could satisfy. + +In the fullness of time I was graduated, and went with two of my +servants--my chamberlain and my valet--to travel in foreign countries. +During four years I flitted upon careless wing amid the beauteous gardens +of the distant strand, if you will permit this form of speech in one +whose tongue was ever attuned to poesy; and indeed I so speak with +confidence, as one unto his kind, for I perceive by your eyes that you +too, sir, are gifted with the divine inflation. In those far lands I +reveled in the ambrosial food that fructifies the soul, the mind, the +heart. But of all things, that which most appealed to my inborn esthetic +taste was the prevailing custom there, among the rich, of making +collections of elegant and costly rarities, dainty objets de vertu, and +in an evil hour I tried to uplift my uncle Ithuriel to a plane of +sympathy with this exquisite employment. + +I wrote and told him of one gentleman's vast collection of shells; +another's noble collection of meerschaum pipes; another's elevating and +refining collection of undecipherable autographs; another's priceless +collection of old china; another's enchanting collection of +postage-stamps--and so forth and so on. Soon my letters yielded fruit. +My uncle began to look about for something to make a collection of. You +may know, perhaps, how fleetly a taste like this dilates. His soon +became a raging fever, though I knew it not. He began to neglect his +great pork business; presently he wholly retired and turned an elegant +leisure into a rabid search for curious things. His wealth was vast, and +he spared it not. First he tried cow-bells. He made a collection which +filled five large salons, and comprehended all the different sorts of +cow-bells that ever had been contrived, save one. That one--an antique, +and the only specimen extant--was possessed by another collector. My +uncle offered enormous sums for it, but the gentleman would not sell. +Doubtless you know what necessarily resulted. A true collector attaches +no value to a collection that is not complete. His great heart breaks, +he sells his hoard, he turns his mind to some field that seems +unoccupied. + +Thus did my uncle. He next tried brickbats. After piling up a vast and +intensely interesting collection, the former difficulty supervened; his +great heart broke again; he sold out his soul's idol to the retired +brewer who possessed the missing brick. Then he tried flint hatchets and +other implements of Primeval Man, but by and by discovered that the +factory where they were made was supplying other collectors as well as +himself. He tried Aztec inscriptions and stuffed whales--another +failure, after incredible labor and expense. When his collection seemed +at last perfect, a stuffed whale arrived from Greenland and an Aztec +inscription from the Cundurango regions of Central America that made all +former specimens insignificant. My uncle hastened to secure these noble +gems. He got the stuffed whale, but another collector got the +inscription. A real Cundurango, as possibly you know, is a possession of +such supreme value that, when once a collector gets it, he will rather +part with his family than with it. So my uncle sold out, and saw his +darlings go forth, never more to return; and his coal-black hair turned +white as snow in a single night. + +Now he waited, and thought. He knew another disappointment might kill +him. He was resolved that he would choose things next time that no other +man was collecting. He carefully made up his mind, and once more entered +the field-this time to make a collection of echoes. + +"Of what?" said I. + +Echoes, sir. His first purchase was an echo in Georgia that repeated +four times; his next was a six-repeater in Maryland; his next was a +thirteen-repeater in Maine; his next was a nine-repeater in Kansas; his +next was a twelve-repeater in Tennessee, which he got cheap, so to speak, +because it was out of repair, a portion of the crag which reflected it +having tumbled down. He believed he could repair it at a cost of a few +thousand dollars, and, by increasing the elevation with masonry, treble +the repeating capacity; but the architect who undertook the job had never +built an echo before, and so he utterly spoiled this one. Before he +meddled with it, it used to talk back like a mother-in-law, but now it +was only fit for the deaf-and-dumb asylum. Well, next he bought a lot of +cheap little double-barreled echoes, scattered around over various states +and territories; he got them at twenty per cent. off by taking the lot. +Next he bought a perfect Gatling-gun of an echo in Oregon, and it cost a +fortune, I can tell you. You may know, sir, that in the echo market the +scale of prices is cumulative, like the carat-scale in diamonds; in fact, +the same phraseology is used. A single-carat echo is worth but ten +dollars over and above the value of the land it is on; a two-carat or +double-barreled echo is worth thirty dollars; a five-carat is worth nine +hundred and fifty; a ten-carat is worth thirteen thousand. My uncle's +Oregon-echo, which he called the Great Pitt Echo, was a twenty-two carat +gem, and cost two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars--they threw the +land in, for it was four hundred miles from a settlement. + +Well, in the mean time my path was a path of roses. I was the accepted +suitor of the only and lovely daughter of an English earl, and was +beloved to distraction. In that dear presence I swam in seas of bliss. +The family were content, for it was known that I was sole heir to an +uncle held to be worth five millions of dollars. However, none of us +knew that my uncle had become a collector, at least in anything more than +a small way, for esthetic amusement. + +Now gathered the clouds above my unconscious head. That divine echo, +since known throughout the world as the Great Koh-i-noor, or Mountain of +Repetitions, was discovered. It was a sixty-five carat gem. You could +utter a word and it would talk back at you for fifteen minutes, when the +day was otherwise quiet. But behold, another fact came to light at the +same time: another echo-collector was in the field. The two rushed to +make the peerless purchase. The property consisted of a couple of small +hills with a shallow swale between, out yonder among the back settlements +of New York State. Both men arrived on the ground at the same time, and +neither knew the other was there. The echo was not all owned by one man; +a person by the name of Williamson Bolivar Jarvis owned the east hill, +and a person by the name of Harbison J. Bledso owned the west hill; the +swale between was the dividing-line. So while my uncle was buying +Jarvis's hill for three million two hundred and eighty-five thousand +dollars, the other party was buying Bledso's hill for a shade over three +million. + +Now, do you perceive the natural result? Why, the noblest collection of +echoes on earth was forever and ever incomplete, since it possessed but +the one-half of the king echo of the universe. Neither man was content +with this divided ownership, yet neither would sell to the other. There +were jawings, bickerings, heart-burnings. And at last that other +collector, with a malignity which only a collector can ever feel toward a +man and a brother, proceeded to cut down his hill! + +You see, as long as he could not have the echo, he was resolved that +nobody should have it. He would remove his hill, and then there would be +nothing to reflect my uncle's echo. My uncle remonstrated with him, but +the man said, "I own one end of this echo; I choose to kill my end; you +must take care of your own end yourself." + +Well, my uncle got an injunction put an him. The other man appealed and +fought it in a higher court. They carried it on up, clear to the Supreme +Court of the United States. It made no end of trouble there. Two of the +judges believed that an echo was personal property, because it was +impalpable to sight and touch, and yet was purchasable, salable, and +consequently taxable; two others believed that an echo was real estate, +because it was manifestly attached to the land, and was not removable +from place to place; other of the judges contended that an echo was not +property at all. + +It was finally decided that the echo was property; that the hills were +property; that the two men were separate and independent owners of the +two hills, but tenants in common in the echo; therefore defendant was at +full liberty to cut down his hill, since it belonged solely to him, but +must give bonds in three million dollars as indemnity for damages which +might result to my uncle's half of the echo. This decision also debarred +my uncle from using defendant's hill to reflect his part of the echo, +without defendant's consent; he must use only his own hill; if his part +of the echo would not go, under these circumstances, it was sad, of +course, but the court could find no remedy. The court also debarred +defendant from using my uncle's hill to reflect his end of the echo, +without consent. You see the grand result! Neither man would give +consent, and so that astonishing and most noble echo had to cease from +its great powers; and since that day that magnificent property is tied up +and unsalable. + +A week before my wedding-day, while I was still swimming in bliss and the +nobility were gathering from far and near to honor our espousals, came +news of my uncle's death, and also a copy of his will, making me his sole +heir. He was gone; alas, my dear benefactor was no more. The thought +surcharges my heart even at this remote day. I handed the will to the +earl; I could not read it for the blinding tears. The earl read it; then +he sternly said, "Sir, do you call this wealth?--but doubtless you do in +your inflated country. Sir, you are left sole heir to a vast collection +of echoes--if a thing can be called a collection that is scattered far +and wide over the huge length and breadth of the American continent; sir, +this is not all; you are head and ears in debt; there is not an echo in +the lot but has a mortgage on it; sir, I am not a hard man, but I must +look to my child's interest; if you had but one echo which you could +honestly call your own, if you had but one echo which was free from +incumbrance, so that you could retire to it with my child, and by humble, +painstaking industry cultivate and improve it, and thus wrest from it a +maintenance, I would not say you nay; but I cannot marry my child to a +beggar. Leave his side, my darling; go, sir, take your mortgage-ridden +echoes and quit my sight forever." + +My noble Celestine clung to me in tears, with loving arms, and swore she +would willingly, nay gladly, marry me, though I had not an echo in the +world. But it could not be. We were torn asunder, she to pine and die +within the twelvemonth, I to toil life's long journey sad and alone, +praying daily, hourly, for that release which shall join us together +again in that dear realm where the wicked cease from troubling and the +weary are at rest. Now, sir, if you will be so kind as to look at these +maps and plans in my portfolio, I am sure I can sell you an echo for less +money than any man in the trade. Now this one, which cost my uncle ten +dollars, thirty years ago, and is one of the sweetest things in Texas, I +will let you have for-- + +"Let me interrupt you," I said. "My friend, I have not had a moment's +respite from canvassers this day. I have bought a sewing-machine which I +did not want; I have bought a map which is mistaken in all its details; +I have bought a clock which will not go; I have bought a moth poison +which the moths prefer to any other beverage; I have bought no end of +useless inventions, and now I have had enough of this foolishness. +I would not have one of your echoes if you were even to give it to me. +I would not let it stay on the place. I always hate a man that tries to +sell me echoes. You see this gun? Now take your collection and move on; +let us not have bloodshed." + +But he only smiled a sad, sweet smile, and got out some more diagrams. +You know the result perfectly well, because you know that when you have +once opened the door to a canvasser, the trouble is done and you have got +to suffer defeat. + +I compromised with this man at the end of an intolerable hour. I bought +two double-barreled echoes in good condition, and he threw in another, +which he said was not salable because it only spoke German. He said, +"She was a perfect polyglot once, but somehow her palate got down." + + + + + + +AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER + +The nervous, dapper, "peart" young man took the chair I offered him, and +said he was connected with the Daily Thunderstorm, and added: + +"Hoping it's no harm, I've come to interview you." + +"Come to what?" + +"Interview you." + +"Ah! I see. Yes--yes. Um! Yes--yes." + +I was not feeling bright that morning. Indeed, my powers seemed a bit +under a cloud. However, I went to the bookcase, and when I had been +looking six or seven minutes I found I was obliged to refer to the young +man. I said: + +"How do you spell it?" + +"Spell what?" + +"Interview." + +"Oh, my goodness! what do you want to spell it for?" + +"I don't want to spell it; I want to see what it means." + +"Well, this is astonishing, I must say. I can tell you what it means, if +you--if you--" + +"Oh, all right! That will answer, and much obliged to you, too." + +"In, in, ter, ter, inter--" + +"Then you spell it with an h" + +Why certainly!" + +"Oh, that is what took me so long." + +"Why, my dear sir, what did you propose to spell it with?" + +"Well, I--I--hardly know. I had the Unabridged, and I was ciphering +around in the back end, hoping I might tree her among the pictures. +But it's a very old edition." + +"Why, my friend, they wouldn't have a picture of it in even the latest +e--- My dear sir, I beg your pardon, I mean no harm in the world, but you +do not look as--as--intelligent as I had expected you would. No harm +--I mean no harm at all." + +"Oh, don't mention it! It has often been said, and by people who would +not flatter and who could have no inducement to flatter, that I am quite +remarkable in that way. Yes--yes; they always speak of it with rapture." + +"I can easily imagine it. But about this interview. You know it is the +custom, now, to interview any man who has become notorious." + +"Indeed, I had not heard of it before. It must be very interesting. +What do you do it with?" + +"Ah, well--well--well--this is disheartening. It ought to be done with a +club in some cases; but customarily it consists in the interviewer asking +questions and the interviewed answering them. It is all the rage now. +Will you let me ask you certain questions calculated to bring out the +salient points of your public and private history?" + +"Oh, with pleasure--with pleasure. I have a very bad memory, but I hope +you will not mind that. That is to say, it is an irregular memory +--singularly irregular. Sometimes it goes in a gallop, and then again it +will be as much as a fortnight passing a given point. This is a great +grief to me." + +"Oh, it is no matter, so you will try to do the best you can." + +"I will. I will put my whole mind on it." + +"Thanks. Are you ready to begin?" + +"Ready." + +Q. How old are you? + +A. Nineteen, in June. + +Q. Indeed. I would have taken you to be thirty-five or six. Where were +you born? + +A. In Missouri. + +Q. When did you begin to write? + +A. In 1836. + +Q. Why, how could that be, if you are only nineteen now? + +A. I don't know. It does seem curious, somehow. + +Q. It does, indeed. Whom do you consider the most remarkable man you +ever met? + +A. Aaron Burr. + +Q. But you never could have met Aaron Burr, if you are only nineteen +years! + +A. Now, if you know more about me than I do, what do you ask me for? + +Q. Well, it was only a suggestion; nothing more. How did you happen to +meet Burr? + +A. Well, I happened to be at his funeral one day, and he asked me to +make less noise, and-- + +Q. But, good heavens! if you were at his funeral, he must have been +dead, and if he was dead how could he care whether you made a noise or +not? + +A. I don't know. He was always a particular kind of a man that way. + +Q. Still, I don't understand it at all, You say he spoke to you, and +that he was dead. + +A. I didn't say he was dead. + +Q. But wasn't he dead? + +A. Well, some said he was, some said he wasn't. + +Q. What did you think? + +A. Oh, it was none of my business! It wasn't any of my funeral. + +Q. Did you--However, we can never get this matter straight. Let me ask +about something else. What was the date of your birth? + +A. Monday, October 31, 1693. + +Q. What! Impossible! That would make you a hundred and eighty years +old. How do you account for that? + +A. I don't account for it at all. + +Q. But you said at first you were only nineteen, and now you make +yourself out to be one hundred and eighty. It is an awful discrepancy. + +A. Why, have you noticed that? (Shaking hands.) Many a time it has +seemed to me like a discrepancy, but somehow I couldn't make up my mind. +How quick you notice a thing! + +Q. Thank you for the compliment, as far as it goes. Had you, or have +you, any brothers or sisters? + +A. Eh! I--I--I think so--yes--but I don't remember. + +Q. Well, that is the most extraordinary statement I ever heard! + +A. Why, what makes you think that? + +Q. How could I think otherwise? Why, look here! Who is this a picture +of on the wall? Isn't that a brother of yours? + +A. Oh, yes, yes, yes! Now you remind me of it; that was a brother of +mine. That's William--Bill we called him. Poor old Bill! + +Q. Why? Is he dead, then? + +A. Ah! well, I suppose so. We never could tell. There was a great +mystery about it. + +Q. That is sad, very sad. He disappeared, then? + +A. Well, yes, in a sort of general way. We buried him. + +Q. Buried him! Buried him, without knowing whether he was dead or not? + +A. Oh, no! Not that. He was dead enough. + +Q. Well, I confess that I can't understand this. If you buried him, and +you knew he was dead + +A. No! no! We only thought he was. + +Q. Oh, I see! He came to life again? + +A. I bet he didn't. + +Q. Well, I never heard anything like this. Somebody was dead. Somebody +was buried. Now, where was the mystery? + +A. Ah! that's just it! That's it exactly. You see, we were twins +--defunct--and I--and we got mixed in the bathtub when we were only two +weeks old, and one of us was drowned. But we didn't know which. Some +think it was Bill. Some think it was me. + +Q. Well, that is remarkable. What do you think? + +A. Goodness knows! I would give whole worlds to know. This solemn, +this awful mystery has cast a gloom over my whole life. But I will tell +you a secret now, which I never have revealed to any creature before. +One of us had a peculiar mark--a large mole on the back of his left hand; +that was me. That child was the one that was drowned! + +Q. Very well, then, I don't see that there is any mystery about it, +after all. + +A. You don't? Well, I do. Anyway, I don't see how they could ever have +been such a blundering lot as to go and bury the wrong child. But, 'sh! +--don't mention it where the family can hear of it. Heaven knows they +have heartbreaking troubles enough without adding this. + +Q. Well, I believe I have got material enough for the present, and I am +very much obliged to you for the pains you have taken. But I was a good +deal interested in that account of Aaron Burr's funeral. Would you mind +telling me what particular circumstance it was that made you think Burr +was such a remarkable man? + +A. Oh! it was a mere trifle! Not one man in fifty would have noticed +it at all. When the sermon was over, and the procession all ready to +start for the cemetery, and the body all arranged nice in the hearse, he +said he wanted to take a last look at the scenery, and so he got up and +rode with the driver. + +Then the young man reverently withdrew. He was very pleasant company, +and I was sorry to see him go. + + + + + + +PARIS NOTES + +--[Crowded out of "A Tramp Abroad" to make room for more vital +statistics.--M. T.] + +The Parisian travels but little, he knows no language but his own, reads +no literature but his own, and consequently he is pretty narrow and +pretty self-sufficient. However, let us not be too sweeping; there are +Frenchmen who know languages not their own: these are the waiters. Among +the rest, they know English; that is, they know it on the European plan +--which is to say, they can speak it, but can't understand it. They +easily make themselves understood, but it is next to impossible to word +an English sentence in such away as to enable them to comprehend it. +They think they comprehend it; they pretend they do; but they don't. +Here is a conversation which I had with one of these beings; I wrote it +down at the time, in order to have it exactly correct. + +I. These are fine oranges. Where are they grown? + +He. More? Yes, I will bring them. + +I. No, do not bring any more; I only want to know where they are from +where they are raised. + +He. Yes? (with imperturbable mien and rising inflection.) + +I. Yes. Can you tell me what country they are from? + +He. Yes? (blandly, with rising inflection.) + +I. (disheartened). They are very nice. + +He. Good night. (Bows, and retires, quite satisfied with himself.) + +That young man could have become a good English scholar by taking the +right sort of pains, but he was French, and wouldn't do that. How +different is the case with our people; they utilize every means that +offers. There are some alleged French Protestants in Paris, and they +built a nice little church on one of the great avenues that lead away +from the Arch of Triumph, and proposed to listen to the correct thing, +preached in the correct way, there, in their precious French tongue, and +be happy. But their little game does not succeed. Our people are always +there ahead of them Sundays, and take up all the room. When the minister +gets up to preach, he finds his house full of devout foreigners, each +ready and waiting, with his little book in his hand--a morocco-bound +Testament, apparently. But only apparently; it is Mr. Bellows's +admirable and exhaustive little French-English dictionary, which in look +and binding and size is just like a Testament and those people are there +to study French. The building has been nicknamed "The Church of the +Gratis French Lesson." + +These students probably acquire more language than general information, +for I am told that a French sermon is like a French speech--it never +names a historical event, but only the date of it; if you are not up in +dates, you get left. A French speech is something like this: + + Comrades, citizens, brothers, noble parts of the only sublime and + perfect nation, let us not forget that the 21st January cast off our + chains; that the 10th August relieved us of the shameful presence of + foreign spies; that the 5th September was its own justification + before heaven and humanity; that the 18th Brumaire contained the + seeds of its own punishment; that the 14th July was the mighty voice + of liberty proclaiming the resurrection, the new day, and inviting + the oppressed peoples of the earth to look upon the divine face of + France and live; and let us here record our everlasting curse + against the man of the 2d December, and declare in thunder tones, + the native tones of France, that but for him there had been no 17th + March in history, no 12th October, no 19th January, no 22d April, + no 16th November, no 30th September, no 2d July, no 14th February, + no 29th June, no 15th August, no 31st May--that but for him, France + the pure, the grand, the peerless, had had a serene and vacant + almanac today! + +I have heard of one French sermon which closed in this odd yet eloquent +way: + + My hearers, we have sad cause to remember the man of the 13th + January. The results of the vast crime of the 13th January have + been in just proportion to the magnitude of the set itself. But for + it there had been no 30 November--sorrowful spectacle! The grisly + deed of the 16th June had not been done but for it, nor had the man + of the 16th June known existence; to it alone the 3d September was + due, also the fatal 12th October. Shall we, then, be grateful for + the 13th January, with its freight of death for you and me and all + that breathe? Yes, my friends, for it gave us also that which had + never come but for it, and it atone--the blessed 25th December. + +It may be well enough to explain, though in the case of many of my +readers this will hardly be necessary. The man of the 13th January is +Adam; the crime of that date was the eating of the apple; the sorrowful +spectacle of the 30th November was the expulsion from Eden; the grisly +deed of the 16th June was the murder of Abel; the act of the 3d September +was the beginning of the journey to the land of Nod; the 12th day of +October, the last mountain-tops disappeared under the flood. When you go +to church in France, you want to take your almanac with you--annotated. + + + + + + +LEGEND OF SAGENFELD, IN GERMANY + +--[Left out of "A Tramp Abroad" because its authenticity seemed doubtful, +and could not at that time be proved.--M. T.] + + +More than a thousand years ago this small district was a kingdom +--a little bit of a kingdom, a sort of dainty little toy kingdom, as one +might say. It was far removed from the jealousies, strifes, and turmoils +of that old warlike day, and so its life was a simple life, its people a +gentle and guileless race; it lay always in a deep dream of peace, a soft +Sabbath tranquillity; there was no malice, there was no envy, there was +no ambition, consequently there were no heart-burnings, there was no +unhappiness in the land. + +In the course of time the old king died and his little son Hubert came to +the throne. The people's love for him grew daily; he was so good and so +pure and so noble, that by and by his love became a passion, almost a +worship. Now at his birth the soothsayers had diligently studied the +stars and found something written in that shining book to this effect: + + In Hubert's fourteenth year a pregnant event will happen; the animal + whose singing shall sound sweetest in Hubert's ear shall save + Hubert's life. So long as the king and the nation shall honor this + animal's race for this good deed, the ancient dynasty shall not fail + of an heir, nor the nation know war or pestilence or poverty. But + beware an erring choice! + +All through the king's thirteenth year but one thing was talked of by the +soothsayers, the statesmen, the little parliament, and the general +people. That one thing was this: How is the last sentence of the +prophecy to be understood? What goes before seems to mean that the +saving animal will choose itself at the proper time; but the closing +sentence seems to mean that the king must choose beforehand, and say what +singer among the animals pleases him best, and that if he choose wisely +the chosen animal will save his life, his dynasty, his people, but that +if he should make "an erring choice"--beware! + +By the end of the year there were as many opinions about this matter as +there had been in the beginning; but a majority of the wise and the +simple were agreed that the safest plan would be for the little king to +make choice beforehand, and the earlier the better. So an edict was sent +forth commanding all persons who owned singing creatures to bring them to +the great hall of the palace in the morning of the first day of the new +year. This command was obeyed. When everything was in readiness for the +trial, the king made his solemn entry with the great officers of the +crown, all clothed in their robes of state. The king mounted his golden +throne and prepared to give judgment. But he presently said: + +"These creatures all sing at once; the noise is unendurable; no one can +choose in such a turmoil. Take them all away, and bring back one at a +time." + +This was done. One sweet warbler after another charmed the young king's +ear and was removed to make way for another candidate. The precious +minutes slipped by; among so many bewitching songsters he found it hard +to choose, and all the harder because the promised penalty for an error +was so terrible that it unsettled his judgment and made him afraid to +trust his own ears. He grew nervous and his face showed distress. His +ministers saw this, for they never took their eyes from him a moment. +Now they began to say in their hearts: + +"He has lost courage--the cool head is gone--he will err--he and his +dynasty and his people are doomed!" + +At the end of an hour the king sat silent awhile, and then said: + +"Bring back the linnet." + +The linnet trilled forth her jubilant music. In the midst of it the king +was about to uplift his scepter in sign of choice, but checked himself +and said: + +"But let us be sure. Bring back the thrush; let them sing together." + +The thrush was brought, and the two birds poured out their marvels of +song together. The king wavered, then his inclination began to settle +and strengthen--one could see it in his countenance. Hope budded in the +hearts of the old ministers, their pulses began to beat quicker, the +scepter began to rise slowly, when: There was a hideous interruption! +It was a sound like this--just at the door: + +"Waw . . . he! waw . . . he! waw-he!-waw +he!-waw-he!" + +Everybody was sorely startled--and enraged at himself for showing it. + +The next instant the dearest, sweetest, prettiest little peasant-maid of +nine years came tripping in, her brown eyes glowing with childish +eagerness; but when she saw that august company and those angry faces she +stopped and hung her head and put her poor coarse apron to her eyes. +Nobody gave her welcome, none pitied her. Presently she looked up +timidly through her tears, and said: + +"My lord the king, I pray you pardon me, for I meant no wrong. I have no +father and no mother, but I have a goat and a donkey, and they are all in +all to me. My goat gives me the sweetest milk, and when my dear good +donkey brays it seems to me there is no music like to it. So when my +lord the king's jester said the sweetest singer among all the animals +should save the crown and nation, and moved me to bring him here--" + +All the court burst into a rude laugh, and the child fled away crying, +without trying to finish her speech. The chief minister gave a private +order that she and her disastrous donkey be flogged beyond the precincts +of the palace and commanded to come within them no more. + +Then the trial of the birds was resumed. The two birds sang their best, +but the scepter lay motionless in the king's hand. Hope died slowly out +in the breasts of all. An hour went by; two hours, still no decision. +The day waned to its close, and the waiting multitudes outside the palace +grew crazed with anxiety and apprehension. The twilight came on, the +shadows fell deeper and deeper. The king and his court could no longer +see each other's faces. No one spoke--none called for lights. The great +trial had been made; it had failed; each and all wished to hide their +faces from the light and cover up their deep trouble in their own hearts. + +Finally-hark! A rich, full strain of the divinest melody streamed forth +from a remote part of the hall the nightingale's voice! + +"Up!" shouted the king, "let all the bells make proclamation to the +people, for the choice is made and we have not erred. King, dynasty, +and nation are saved. From henceforth let the nightingale be honored +throughout the land forever. And publish it among all the people that +whosoever shall insult a nightingale, or injure it, shall suffer death. +The king hath spoken." + +All that little world was drunk with joy. The castle and the city blazed +with bonfires all night long, the people danced and drank and sang; and +the triumphant clamor of the bells never ceased. + +From that day the nightingale was a sacred bird. Its song was heard in +every house; the poets wrote its praises; the painters painted it; its +sculptured image adorned every arch and turret and fountain and public +building. It was even taken into the king's councils; and no grave +matter of state was decided until the soothsayers had laid the thing +before the state nightingale and translated to the ministry what it was +that the bird had sung about it. + + +II + +The young king was very fond of the chase. When the summer was come he +rode forth with hawk and hound, one day, in a brilliant company of his +nobles. He got separated from them by and by, in a great forest, and +took what he imagined a neat cut, to find them again; but it was a +mistake. He rode on and on, hopefully at first, but with sinking courage +finally. Twilight came on, and still he was plunging through a lonely +and unknown land. Then came a catastrophe. In the dim light he forced +his horse through a tangled thicket overhanging a steep and rocky +declivity. When horse and rider reached the bottom, the former had a +broken neck and the latter a broken leg. The poor little king lay there +suffering agonies of pain, and each hour seemed a long month to him. +He kept his ear strained to hear any sound that might promise hope of +rescue; but he heard no voice, no sound of horn or bay of hound. So at +last he gave up all hope, and said, "Let death come, for come it must." + +Just then the deep, sweet song of a nightingale swept across the still +wastes of the night. + +"Saved!" the king said. "Saved! It is the sacred bird, and the prophecy +is come true. The gods themselves protected me from error in the +choice." + +He could hardly contain his joy; he could not word his gratitude. Every +few moments, now he thought he caught the sound of approaching succor. +But each time it was a disappointment; no succor came. The dull hours +drifted on. Still no help came--but still the sacred bird sang on. He +began to have misgivings about his choice, but he stifled them. Toward +dawn the bird ceased. The morning came, and with it thirst and hunger; +but no succor. The day waxed and waned. At last the king cursed the +nightingale. + +Immediately the song of the thrush came from out the wood. The king said +in his heart, "This was the true-bird--my choice was false--succor will +come now." + +But it did not come. Then he lay many hours insensible. When he came to +himself, a linnet was singing. He listened with apathy. His faith was +gone. "These birds," he said, "can bring no help; I and my house and my +people are doomed." He turned him about to die; for he was grown very +feeble from hunger and thirst and suffering, and felt that his end was +near. In truth, he wanted to die, and be released from pain. For long +hours he lay without thought or feeling or motion. Then his senses +returned. The dawn of the third morning was breaking. Ah, the world +seemed very beautiful to those worn eyes. Suddenly a great longing to +live rose up in the lad's heart, and from his soul welled a deep and +fervent prayer that Heaven would have mercy upon him and let him see his +home and his friends once more. In that instant a soft, a faint, a +far-off sound, but oh, how inexpressibly sweet to his waiting ear, came +floating out of the distance: + +"Waw . . . he! waw . . . he! waw-he!--waw-he!--waw-he!" + +"That, oh, that song is sweeter, a thousand times sweeter than the voice +of the nightingale, thrush, or linnet, for it brings not mere hope, but +certainty of succor; and now, indeed, am I saved! The sacred singer has +chosen itself, as the oracle intended; the prophecy is fulfilled, and my +life, my house, and my people are redeemed. The ass shall be sacred from +this day!" + +The divine music grew nearer and nearer, stronger and stronger and ever +sweeter and sweeter to the perishing sufferer's ear. Down the declivity +the docile little donkey wandered, cropping herbage and singing as he +went; and when at last he saw the dead horse and the wounded king, he +came and snuffed at them with simple and marveling curiosity. The king +petted him, and he knelt down as had been his wont when his little +mistress desired to mount. With great labor and pain the lad drew +himself upon the creature's back, and held himself there by aid of the +generous ears. The ass went singing forth from the place and carried the +king to the little peasant-maid's hut. She gave him her pallet for a +bed, refreshed him with goat's milk, and then flew to tell the great news +to the first scouting-party of searchers she might meet. + +The king got well. His first act was to proclaim the sacredness and +inviolability of the ass; his second was to add this particular ass to +his cabinet and make him chief minister of the crown; his third was to +have all the statues and effigies of nightingales throughout his kingdom +destroyed, and replaced by statues and effigies of the sacred donkey; +and, his fourth was to announce that when the little peasant maid should +reach her fifteenth year he would make her his queen and he kept his +word. + +Such is the legend. This explains why the moldering image of the ass +adorns all these old crumbling walls and arches; and it explains why, +during many centuries, an ass was always the chief minister in that royal +cabinet, just as is still the case in most cabinets to this day; and it +also explains why, in that little kingdom, during many centuries, all +great poems, all great speeches, all great books, all public solemnities, +and all royal proclamations, always began with these stirring words: + +"Waw . . . he! waw . . . he!--waw he! Waw-he!" + + + + + + +SPEECH ON THE BABIES + +AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE TO THEIR +FIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U. S. GRANT, NOVEMBER, 1879 + + The fifteenth regular toast was "The Babies--as they comfort us in + our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities." + +I like that. We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We +have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast +works down to the babies, we stand on common ground. It is a shame that +for a thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, +as if he didn't amount to anything. If you will stop and think a minute +--if you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married +life and recontemplate your first baby--you will remember that he +amounted to a great deal, and even something over. You soldiers all know +that when the little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to +hand in your resignation. He took entire command. You became his +lackey, his mere body servant, and you had to stand around, too. He was +not a commander who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or +anything else. You had to execute his order whether it was possible or +not. And there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, +and that was the double-quick. He treated you with every sort of +insolence and disrespect, and the bravest of you didn't dare to say a +word. You could face the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give +back blow for blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your +hair, and twisted your nose, you had to take it. When the thunders of +war were sounding in your ears you set your faces toward the batteries, +and advanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his +war-whoop you advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of the +chance, too. When he called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw +out any side remarks about certain services being unbecoming an officer +and a gentleman? No. You got up and got it. When he ordered his +pap-bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back? Not you. You went to +work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office as +to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was +right--three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the +colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those hiccoughs. I can taste +that stuff yet. And how many things you learned as you went along! +Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying +that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angels are +whispering to him. Very pretty, but too thin--simply wind on the +stomach, my friends. If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual +hour, two o'clock in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly and remark, +with a mental addition which would not improve a Sunday-school book much, +that that was the very thing you were about to propose yourself? Oh! +you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down +the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified +baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing! +--"Rock-a-by baby in the treetop," for instance. What a spectacle for an +Army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction for the neighbors, too; +for it is not everybody within a mile around that likes military music at +three in the morning. And when you had been keeping this sort of thing +up two or three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated that nothing +suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? ["Go on!"] You +simply went on until you dropped in the last ditch. The idea that a baby +doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front +yard full by itself. One baby can furnish more business than you and +your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, +irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please, you +can't make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one +baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for +twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there ain't any real +difference between triplets and an insurrection. + +Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance of +the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop! Fifty years +from now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it still +survive (and let us hope it may), will be floating over a Republic +numbering 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our +increase. Our present schooner of State will have grown into a political +leviathan--a Great Eastern. The cradled babies of to-day will be on +deck. Let them be well trained, for we are going to leave a big contract +on their hands. Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in +the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred +things, if we could know which ones they are. In one of them cradles the +unconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething--think of +it!--and putting in a world of dead earnest, unarticulated, but perfectly +justifiable profanity over it, too. In another the future renowned +astronomer is blinking at the shining Milky Way with but a languid +interest--poor little chap!--and wondering what has become of that other +one they call the wet-nurse. In another the future great historian is +lying--and doubtless will continue to lie until his earthly mission is +ended. In another the future President is busying himself with no +profounder problem of state than what the mischief has become of his hair +so early; and in a mighty array of other cradles there are now some +60,000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him occasion to +grapple with that same old problem a second time. And in still one +more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious +commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his +approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole +strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his +big toe into his mouth--an achievement which, meaning no disrespect, the +illustrious guest of this evening turned his entire attention to some +fifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a prophecy of the man, there +are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded. + + + + + + +SPEECH ON THE WEATHER + +AT THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY'S SEVENTY-FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, NEW YORK CITY + + The next toast was: "The Oldest Inhabitant--The Weather of New + England." + + Who can lose it and forget it? + Who can have it and regret it? + + Be interposes 'twixt us Twain. + Merchant of Venice. + + To this Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) replied as follows:-- + + +I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in +New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it +must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment and +learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted +to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take +their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. There is a sumptuous +variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's +admiration--and regret. The weather is always doing something there; +always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and +trying them on the people to see how they will go. But it gets through +more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have +counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of +four-and-twenty hours. It was I that made the fame and fortune of that +man that had that marvelous collection of weather on exhibition at the +Centennial, that so astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all +over the world and get specimens from all the climes. I said, "Don't you +do it; you come to New England on a favorable spring day." I told him +what we could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity. Well, he +came and he made his collection in four days. As to variety, why, he +confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never +heard of before. And as to quantity--well, after he had picked out and +discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather +enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to +deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor. The people of +New England are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some +things which they will not stand. Every year they kill a lot of poets +for writing about "Beautiful Spring." These are generally casual +visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and +cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. And so the +first thing they know the opportunity to inquire how they feel has +permanently gone by. Old Probabilities has a mighty reputation for +accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. You take up the +paper and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what to-day's +weather is going to be on the Pacific, down South, in the Middle States, +in the Wisconsin region. See him sail along in the joy and pride of his +power till he gets to New England, and then see his tail drop. He +doesn't know what the weather is going to be in New England. Well, he +mulls over it, and by and by he gets out something about like this: +Probable northeast to southwest minds, varying to the southward and +westward and eastward, and points between, high and low barometer +swapping around from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, +and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and +lightning. Then he jots down this postscript from his wandering mind, to +cover accidents: "But it is possible that the program may be wholly +changed in the mean time." Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New +England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one +thing certain about it: you are certain there is going to be plenty of +it--a perfect grand review; but you never can tell which end of the +procession is going to move first. You fix up for the drought; you leave +your umbrella in the house and sally out, and two to one you get drowned. +You make up your mind that the earthquake is due; you stand from under, +and take hold of something to steady yourself, and the first thing you +know you get struck by lightning. These are great disappointments; but +they can't be helped. The lightning there is peculiar; it is so +convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that +thing behind for you to tell whether--Well, you'd think it was something +valuable, and a Congressman had been there. And the thunder. When the +thunder begins to merely tune up and scrape and saw, and key up the +instruments for the performance, strangers say, "Why, what awful thunder +you have here!" But when the baton is raised and the real concert +begins, you'll find that stranger down in the cellar with his head in the +ash-barrel. Now as to the size of the weather in New England lengthways, +I mean. It is utterly disproportioned to the size of that little +country. Half the time, when it is packed as full as it can stick, you +will see that New England weather sticking out beyond the edges and +projecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighboring +states. She can't hold a tenth part of her weather. You can see cracks +all about where she has strained herself trying to do it. I could speak +volumes about the inhuman perversity of the New England weather, but I +will give but a single specimen. I like to hear rain on a tin roof. +So I covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that luxury. Well, +sir, do you think it ever rains on that tin? No, sir; skips it every +time. Mind, in this speech I have been trying merely to do honor to the +New England weather--no language could do it justice. But, after all, +there is at least one or two things about that weather (or, if you +please, effects produced, by it) which we residents would not like to +part with. If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still +have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its +bullying vagaries--the ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice +from the bottom to the top--ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; +when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dewdrops, and +the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond +plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns +all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and +flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again +with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and +green to gold--the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of +dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest +possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable +magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong. + + + + + + +CONCERNING THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE + +--[Being part of a chapter which was crowded out of "A Tramp Abroad."-- +M.T.] + +There was as Englishman in our compartment, and he complimented me on +--on what? But you would never guess. He complimented me on my English. +He said Americans in general did not speak the English language as +correctly as I did. I said I was obliged to him for his compliment, +since I knew he meant it for one, but that I was not fairly entitled to +it, for I did not speak English at all--I only spoke American. + +He laughed, and said it was a distinction without a difference. I said +no, the difference was not prodigious, but still it was considerable. +We fell into a friendly dispute over the matter. I put my case as well +as I could, and said: + +"The languages were identical several generations ago, but our changed +conditions and the spread of our people far to the south and far to the +west have made many alterations in our pronunciation, and have introduced +new words among us and changed the meanings of many old ones. English +people talk through their noses; we do not. We say know, English people +say nao; we say cow, the Briton says kaow; we--" + +"Oh, come! that is pure Yankee; everybody knows that." + +"Yes, it is pure Yankee; that is true. One cannot hear it in America +outside of the little corner called New England, which is Yankee land. +The English themselves planted it there, two hundred and fifty years ago, +and there it remains; it has never spread. But England talks through her +nose yet; the Londoner and the backwoods New-Englander pronounce 'know' +and 'cow' alike, and then the Briton unconsciously satirizes himself by +making fun of the Yankee's pronunciation." + +We argued this point at some length; nobody won; but no matter, the fact +remains Englishmen say nao and kaow for "know" and "cow," and that is +what the rustic inhabitant of a very small section of America does. + +"You conferred your 'a' upon New England, too, and there it remains; it +has not traveled out of the narrow limits of those six little states in +all these two hundred and fifty years. All England uses it, New +England's small population--say four millions--use it, but we have +forty-five millions who do not use it. You say 'glahs of wawtah,' so +does New England; at least, New England says 'glahs.' America at large +flattens the 'a', and says 'glass of water.' These sounds are pleasanter +than yours; you may think they are not right--well, in English they are +not right, but 'American' they are. You say 'flahsk' and 'bahsket,' and +'jackahss'; we say 'flask,' 'basket,' 'jackass'--sounding the 'a' as it +is in 'tallow,' 'fallow,' and so on. Up to as late as 1847 Mr. Webster's +Dictionary had the impudence to still pronounce 'basket' bahsket, when he +knew that outside of his little New England all America shortened the 'a' +and paid no attention to his English broadening of it. However, it called +itself an English Dictionary, so it was proper enough that it should +stick to English forms, perhaps. It still calls itself an English +Dictionary today, but it has quietly ceased to pronounce 'basket' as if +it were spelt 'bahsket.' In the American language the 'h' is respected; +the 'h' is not dropped or added improperly." + +"The same is the case in England--I mean among the educated classes, of +course." + +"Yes, that is true; but a nation's language is a very large matter. +It is not simply a manner of speech obtaining among the educated handful; +the manner obtaining among the vast uneducated multitude must be +considered also. Your uneducated masses speak English, you will not deny +that; our uneducated masses speak American it won't be fair for you to +deny that, for you can see, yourself, that when your stable-boy says, +'It isn't the 'unting that 'urts the 'orse, but the 'ammer, 'ammer, +'ammer on the 'ard 'ighway,' and our stable-boy makes the same remark +without suffocating a single h, these two people are manifestly talking +two different languages. But if the signs are to be trusted, even your +educated classes used to drop the 'h.' They say humble, now, and heroic, +and historic etc., but I judge that they used to drop those h's because +your writers still keep up the fashion of patting an before those words +instead of a. This is what Mr. Darwin might call a 'rudimentary' sign +that as an was justifiable once, and useful when your educated classes +used to say 'umble, and 'eroic, and 'istorical. Correct writers of the +American language do not put an before three words." + +The English gentleman had something to say upon this matter, but never +mind what he said--I'm not arguing his case. I have him at a +disadvantage, now. I proceeded: + +"In England you encourage an orator by exclaiming, 'H'yaah! 'yaah!' +We pronounce it heer in some sections, 'h'yer' in others, and so on; but +our whites do not say 'h'yaah,' pronouncing the a's like the a in ah. +I have heard English ladies say 'don't you'--making two separate and +distinct words of it; your Mr. Burnand has satirized it. But we always +say 'dontchu.' This is much better. Your ladies say, 'Oh, it's oful +nice!' Ours say, 'Oh, it's awful nice!' We say, 'Four hundred,' you say +'For'--as in the word or. Your clergymen speak of 'the Lawd,' ours of +'the Lord'; yours speak of 'the gawds of the heathen,' ours of 'the gods +of the heathen.' When you are exhausted, you say you are 'knocked up.' +We don't. When you say you will do a thing 'directly,' you mean +'immediately'; in the American language--generally speaking--the word +signifies 'after a little.' When you say 'clever,' you mean 'capable'; +with us the word used to mean 'accommodating,' but I don't know what it +means now. Your word 'stout' means 'fleshy'; our word 'stout' usually +means 'strong.' Your words 'gentleman' and 'lady' have a very restricted +meaning; with us they include the barmaid, butcher, burglar, harlot, and +horse-thief. You say, 'I haven't got any stockings on,' 'I haven't got +any memory,' 'I haven't got any money in my purse; we usually say, 'I +haven't any stockings on,' 'I haven't any memory!' 'I haven't any money +in my purse.' You say 'out of window'; we always put in a the. If one +asks 'How old is that man?' the Briton answers, 'He will be about forty'; +in the American language we should say, 'He is about forty.' However, +I won't tire you, sir; but if I wanted to, I could pile up differences +here until I not only convinced you that English and American are +separate languages, but that when I speak my native tongue in its utmost +purity an Englishman can't understand me at all." + +"I don't wish to flatter you, but it is about all I can do to understand +you now." + +That was a very pretty compliment, and it put us on the pleasantest terms +directly--I use the word in the English sense. + +[Later--1882. Esthetes in many of our schools are now beginning to teach +the pupils to broaden the 'a,' and to say "don't you," in the elegant +foreign way.] + + + + + + +ROGERS + +This Man Rogers happened upon me and introduced himself at the town +of -----, in the South of England, where I stayed awhile. His stepfather +had married a distant relative of mine who was afterward hanged; and so +he seemed to think a blood relationship existed between us. He came in +every day and sat down and talked. Of all the bland, serene human +curiosities I ever saw, I think he was the chiefest. He desired to look +at my new chimney-pot hat. I was very willing, for I thought he would +notice the name of the great Oxford Street hatter in it, and respect me +accordingly. But he turned it about with a sort of grave compassion, +pointed out two or three blemishes, and said that I, being so recently +arrived, could not be expected to know where to supply myself. Said he +would send me the address of his hatter. Then he said, "Pardon me," and +proceeded to cut a neat circle of red tissue paper; daintily notched the +edges of it; took the mucilage and pasted it in my hat so as to cover the +manufacturer's name. He said, "No one will know now where you got it. +I will send you a hat-tip of my hatter, and you can paste it over this +tissue circle." It was the calmest, coolest thing--I never admired a man +so much in my life. Mind, he did this while his own hat sat offensively +near our noses, on the table--an ancient extinguisher of the "slouch" +pattern, limp and shapeless with age, discolored by vicissitudes of the +weather, and banded by an equator of bear's grease that had stewed +through. + +Another time he examined my coat. I had no terrors, for over my tailor's +door was the legend, "By Special Appointment Tailor to H. R. H. the +Prince of Wales," etc. I did not know at the time that the most of the +tailor shops had the same sign out, and that whereas it takes nine +tailors to make an ordinary man, it takes a hundred and fifty to make a +prince. He was full of compassion for my coat. Wrote down the address +of his tailor for me. Did not tell me to mention my nom de plume and the +tailor would put his best work on my garment, as complimentary people +sometimes do, but said his tailor would hardly trouble himself for an +unknown person (unknown person, when I thought I was so celebrated in +England!--that was the cruelest cut), but cautioned me to mention his +name, and it would be all right. Thinking to be facetious, I said: + +"But he might sit up all night and injure his health." + +"Well, let him," said Rogers; "I've done enough for him, for him to show +some appreciation of it." + +I might as well have tried to disconcert a mummy with my facetiousness. +Said Rogers: "I get all my coats there--they're the only coats fit to be +seen in." + +I made one more attempt. I said, "I wish you had brought one with you +--I would like to look at it." + +"Bless your heart, haven't I got one on?--this article is Morgan's make." + +I examined it. The coat had been bought ready-made, of a Chatham Street +Jew, without any question--about 1848. It probably cost four dollars +when it was new. It was ripped, it was frayed, it was napless and +greasy. I could not resist showing him where it was ripped. It so +affected him that I was almost sorry I had done it. First he seemed +plunged into a bottomless abyss of grief. Then he roused himself, made +a feint with his hands as if waving off the pity of a nation, and said +--with what seemed to me a manufactured emotion--"No matter; no matter; +don't mind me; do not bother about it. I can get another." + +When he was thoroughly restored, so that he could examine the rip and +command his feelings, he said, ah, now he understood it--his servant must +have done it while dressing him that morning. + +His servant! There was something awe-inspiring in effrontery like this. + +Nearly every day he interested himself in some article of my clothing. +One would hardly have expected this sort of infatuation in a man who +always wore the same suit, and it a suit that seemed coeval with the +Conquest. + +It was an unworthy ambition, perhaps, but I did wish I could make this +man admire something about me or something I did--you would have felt the +same way. I saw my opportunity: I was about to return to London, and had +"listed" my soiled linen for the wash. It made quite an imposing +mountain in the corner of the room--fifty-four pieces. I hoped he would +fancy it was the accumulation of a single week. I took up the wash-list, +as if to see that it was all right, and then tossed it on the table, with +pretended forgetfulness. Sure enough, he took it up and ran his eye +along down to the grand total. Then he said, "You get off easy," and +laid it down again. + +His gloves were the saddest ruin, but he told me where I could get some +like them. His shoes would hardly hold walnuts without leaking, but he +liked to put his feet up on the mantelpiece and contemplate them. +He wore a dim glass breastpin, which he called a "morphylitic diamond" +--whatever that may mean--and said only two of them had ever been found +--the Emperor of China had the other one. + +Afterward, in London, it was a pleasure to me to see this fantastic +vagabond come marching into the lobby of the hotel in his grand-ducal +way, for he always had some new imaginary grandeur to develop--there was +nothing stale about him but his clothes. If he addressed me when +strangers were about, he always raised his voice a little and called me +"Sir Richard," or "General," or "Your Lordship"--and when people began to +stare and look deferential, he would fall to inquiring in a casual way +why I disappointed the Duke of Argyll the night before; and then remind +me of our engagement at the Duke of Westminster's for the following day. +I think that for the time being these things were realities to him. He +once came and invited me to go with him and spend the evening with the +Earl of Warwick at his town house. I said I had received no formal +invitation. He said that that was of no consequence, the Earl had no +formalities for him or his friends. I asked if I could go just as I was. +He said no, that would hardly do; evening dress was requisite at night in +any gentleman's house. He said he would wait while I dressed, and then +we would go to his apartments and I could take a bottle of champagne and +a cigar while he dressed. I was very willing to see how this enterprise +would turn out, so I dressed, and we started to his lodgings. He said if +I didn't mind we would walk. So we tramped some four miles through the +mud and fog, and finally found his "apartments"; they consisted of a +single room over a barber's shop in a back street. Two chairs, a small +table, an ancient valise, a wash-basin and pitcher (both on the floor +in a corner), an unmade bed, a fragment of a looking-glass, and a +flower-pot, with a perishing little rose geranium in it, which he called +a century plant, and said it had not bloomed now for upward of two +centuries--given to him by the late Lord Palmerston (been offered a +prodigious sum for it)--these were the contents of the room. Also a +brass candlestick and a part of a candle. Rogers lit the candle, and +told me to sit down and make myself at home. He said he hoped I was +thirsty, because he would surprise my palate with an article of champagne +that seldom got into a commoner's system; or would I prefer sherry, or +port? Said he had port in bottles that were swathed in stratified +cobwebs, every stratum representing a generation. And as for his +cigars--well, I should judge of them myself. Then he put his head out +at the door and called: + +"Sackville!" No answer. + +"Hi-Sackville!" No answer. + +"Now what the devil can have become of that butler? I never allow a +servant to--Oh, confound that idiot, he's got the keys. Can't get into +the other rooms without the keys." + +(I was just wondering at his intrepidity in still keeping up the delusion +of the champagne, and trying to imagine how he was going to get out of +the difficulty.) + +Now he stopped calling Sackville and began to call "Anglesy." But +Anglesy didn't come. He said, "This is the second time that that equerry +has been absent without leave. To-morrow I'll discharge him." Now he +began to whoop for "Thomas," but Thomas didn't answer. Then for +"Theodore," but no Theodore replied. + +"Well, I give it up," said Rogers. "The servants never expect me at this +hour, and so they're all off on a lark. Might get along without the +equerry and the page, but can't have any wine or cigars without the +butler, and can't dress without my valet." + +I offered to help him dress, but he would not hear of it; and besides, he +said he would not feel comfortable unless dressed by a practised hand. +However, he finally concluded that he was such old friends with the Earl +that it would not make any difference how he was dressed. So we took a +cab, he gave the driver some directions, and we started. By and by we +stopped before a large house and got out. I never had seen this man with +a collar on. He now stepped under a lamp and got a venerable paper +collar out of his coat pocket, along with a hoary cravat, and put them +on. He ascended the stoop, and entered. Presently he reappeared, +descended rapidly, and said: + +"Come--quick!" + +We hurried away, and turned the corner. + +"Now we're safe," he said, and took off his collar and cravat and +returned them to his pocket. + +"Made a mighty narrow escape," said he. + +"How?" said I. + +"B' George, the Countess was there!" + +"Well, what of that?--don't she know you?" + +"Know me? Absolutely worships me. I just did happen to catch a glimpse +of her before she saw me--and out I shot. Haven't seen her for two +months--to rush in on her without any warning might have been fatal. +She could not have stood it. I didn't know she was in town--thought she +was at the castle. Let me lean on you--just a moment--there; now I am +better--thank you; thank you ever so much. Lord bless me, what an +escape!" + +So I never got to call on the Earl, after all. But I marked the house +for future reference. It proved to be an ordinary family hotel, with +about a thousand plebeians roosting in it. + +In most things Rogers was by no means a fool. In some things it was +plain enough that he was a fool, but he certainly did not know it. +He was in the "deadest" earnest in these matters. He died at sea, last +summer, as the "Earl of Ramsgate." + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Alonzo Fitz and Other Stories +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +SOME RAMBLING NOTES OF AN IDLE EXCURSION + +by Mark Twain + + + +All the journeyings I had ever done had been purely in the way of +business. The pleasant May weather suggested a novelty namely, a trip +for pure recreation, the bread-and-butter element left out. The Reverend +said he would go, too; a good man, one of the best of men, although a +clergyman. By eleven at night we were in New Haven and on board the New +York boat. We bought our tickets, and then went wandering around here +and there, in the solid comfort of being free and idle, and of putting +distance between ourselves and the mails and telegraphs. + +After a while I went to my stateroom and undressed, but the night was too +enticing for bed. We were moving down the bay now, and it was pleasant +to stand at the window and take the cool night breeze and watch the +gliding lights on shore. Presently, two elderly men sat down under that +window and began a conversation. Their talk was properly no business of +mine, yet I was feeling friendly toward the world and willing to be +entertained. I soon gathered that they were brothers, that they were +from a small Connecticut village, and that the matter in hand concerned +the cemetery. Said one: + +"Now, John, we talked it all over amongst ourselves, and this is what +we've done. You see, everybody was a-movin' from the old buryin'-ground, +and our folks was 'most about left to theirselves, as you may say. They +was crowded, too, as you know; lot wa'n't big enough in the first place; +and last year, when Seth's wife died, we couldn't hardly tuck her in. +She sort o' overlaid Deacon Shorb's lot, and he soured on her, so to +speak, and on the rest of us, too. So we talked it over, and I was for a +lay out in the new simitery on the hill. They wa'n't unwilling, if it +was cheap. Well, the two best and biggest plots was No. 8 and No. 9 +--both of a size; nice comfortable room for twenty-six--twenty-six +full-growns, that is; but you reckon in children and other shorts, and +strike an everage, and I should say you might lay in thirty, or maybe +thirty-two or three, pretty genteel--no crowdin' to signify." + +"That's a plenty, William. Which one did you buy?" + +"Well, I'm a-comin' to that, John. You see, No. 8 was thirteen dollars, +No. 9 fourteen--" + +"I see. So's't you took No. 8." + +"You wait. I took No. 9. And I'll tell you for why. In the first +place, Deacon Shorb wanted it. Well, after the way he'd gone on about +Seth's wife overlappin' his prem'ses, I'd 'a' beat him out of that No. 9 +if I'd 'a' had to stand two dollars extra, let alone one. That's the way +I felt about it. Says I, what's a dollar, anyway? Life's on'y a +pilgrimage, says I; we ain't here for good, and we can't take it with us, +says I. So I just dumped it down, knowin' the Lord don't suffer a good +deed to go for nothin', and cal'latin' to take it out o' somebody in the +course o' trade. Then there was another reason, John. No. 9's a long +way the handiest lot in the simitery, and the likeliest for situation. +It lays right on top of a knoll in the dead center of the buryin' ground; +and you can see Millport from there, and Tracy's, and Hopper Mount, and a +raft o' farms, and so on. There ain't no better outlook from a +buryin'-plot in the state. Si Higgins says so, and I reckon he ought to +know. Well, and that ain't all. 'Course Shorb had to take No. 8; wa'n't +no help for 't. Now, No. 8 jines onto No. 9, but it's on the slope of +the hill, and every time it rains it 'll soak right down onto the Shorbs. +Si Higgins says 't when the deacon's time comes, he better take out fire +and marine insurance both on his remains." + +Here there was the sound of a low, placid, duplicate chuckle of +appreciation and satisfaction. + +"Now, John, here's a little rough draft of the ground that I've made on a +piece of paper. Up here in the left-hand corner we've bunched the +departed; took them from the old graveyard and stowed them one alongside +o' t'other, on a first-come-first-served plan, no partialities, with +Gran'ther Jones for a starter, on'y because it happened so, and windin' +up indiscriminate with Seth's twins. A little crowded towards the end of +the lay-out, maybe, but we reckoned 'twa'n't best to scatter the twins. +Well, next comes the livin'. Here, where it's marked A, we're goin' to +put Mariar and her family, when they're called; B, that's for Brother +Hosea and hisn; C, Calvin and tribe. What's left is these two lots +here--just the gem of the whole patch for general style and outlook; +they're for me and my folks, and you and yourn. Which of them would you +rather be buried in?" + +"I swan, you've took me mighty unexpected, William! It sort of started +the shivers. Fact is, I was thinkin' so busy about makin' things +comfortable for the others, I hadn't thought about being buried myself." + +"Life's on'y a fleetin' show, John, as the sayin' is. We've all got to +go, sooner or later. To go with a clean record's the main thing. Fact +is, it's the on'y thing worth strivin' for, John." + +"Yes, that's so, William, that's so; there ain't no getting around it. +Which of these lots would you recommend?" + +"Well, it depends, John. Are you particular about outlook?" + +"I don't say I am, William, I don't say I ain't. Reely, I don't know. +But mainly, I reckon, I'd set store by a south exposure." + +"That's easy fixed, John. They're both south exposure. They take the +sun, and the Shorbs get the shade." + +"How about site, William?" + +"D's a sandy sile, E's mostly loom." + +"You may gimme E, then; William; a sandy sile caves in, more or less, and +costs for repairs." + +"All right, set your name down here, John, under E. Now, if you don't +mind payin' me your share of the fourteen dollars, John, while we're on +the business, everything's fixed." + +After some Niggling and sharp bargaining the money was paid, and John +bade his brother good night and took his leave. There was silence for +some moments; then a soft chuckle welled up from the lonely William, and +he muttered: "I declare for 't, if I haven't made a mistake! It's D +that's mostly loom, not E. And John's booked for a sandy site after +all." + +There was another soft chuckle, and William departed to his rest also. + +The next day, in New York, was a hot one. Still we managed to get more +or less entertainment out of it. Toward the middle of the afternoon we +arrived on board the stanch steamship Bermuda, with bag and baggage, and +hunted for a shady place. It was blazing summer weather, until we were +half-way down the harbor. Then I buttoned my coat closely; half an hour +later I put on a spring overcoat and buttoned that. As we passed the +light-ship I added an ulster and tied a handkerchief around the collar to +hold it snug to my neck. So rapidly had the summer gone and winter come +again? + +By nightfall we were far out at sea, with no land in sight. No telegrams +could come here, no letters, no news. This was an uplifting thought. It +was still more uplifting to reflect that the millions of harassed people +on shore behind us were suffering just as usual. + +The next day brought us into the midst of the Atlantic solitudes--out of +smoke-colored sounding into fathomless deep blue; no ships visible +anywhere over the wide ocean; no company but Mother Carey's chickens +wheeling, darting, skimming the waves in the sun. There were some +seafaring men among the passengers, and conversation drifted into matter +concerning ships and sailors. One said that "true as the needle to the +pole" was a bad figure, since the needle seldom pointed to the pole. +He said a ship's compass was not faithful to any particular point, but +was the most fickle and treacherous of the servants of man. It was +forever changing. It changed every day in the year; consequently the +amount of the daily variation had to be ciphered out and allowance made +for it, else the mariner would go utterly astray. Another said there was +a vast fortune waiting for the genius who should invent a compass that +would not be affected by the local influences of an iron ship. He said +there was only one creature more fickle than a wooden ship's compass, +and that was the compass of an iron ship. Then came reference to the +well known fact that an experienced mariner can look at the compass of a +new iron vessel, thousands of mile from her birthplace, and tell which +way her head was pointing when she was in process of building. + +Now an ancient whale-ship master fell to talking about the sort of crews +they used to have in his early days. Said he: + +"Sometimes we'd have a batch of college students Queer lot. Ignorant? +Why, they didn't know the catheads from the main brace. But if you took +them for fools you'd get bit, sure. They'd learn more in a month than +another man would in a year. We had one, once, in the Mary Ann, that +came aboard with gold spectacles on. And besides, he was rigged out from +main truck to keelson in the nobbiest clothes that ever saw a fo'castle. +He had a chestful, too: cloaks, and broadcloth coats, and velvet vests; +everything swell, you know; and didn't the saltwater fix them out for +him? I guess not! Well, going to sea, the mate told him to go aloft and +help shake out the foreto'gallants'l. Up he shins to the foretop, with +his spectacles on, and in a minute down he comes again, looking insulted. +Says the mate, 'What did you come down for?' Says the chap, 'P'r'aps you +didn't notice that there ain't any ladders above there.' You see we +hadn't any shrouds above the foretop. The men bursted out in a laugh +such as I guess you never heard the like of. Next night, which was dark +and rainy, the mate ordered this chap to go aloft about something, and +I'm dummed if he didn't start up with an umbrella and a lantern! But no +matter; he made a mighty good sailor before the voyage was done, and we +had to hunt up something else to laugh at. Years afterwards, when I had +forgot all about him, I comes into Boston, mate of a ship, and was +loafing around town with the second mate, and it so happened that we +stepped into the Revere House, thinking maybe we would chance the +salt-horse in that big diningroom for a flyer, as the boys say. Some +fellows were talking just at our elbow, and one says, 'Yonder's the new +governor of Massachusetts--at that table over there with the ladies.' +We took a good look my mate and I, for we hadn't either of us ever see a +governor before. I looked and looked at that face and then all of a +sudden it popped on me! But didn't give any sign. Says I, 'Mate, I've a +notion to go over and shake hands with him.' Says he 'I think I see you +doing it, Tom.' Says I, 'Mate I'm a-going to do it.' Says he, 'Oh, yes, +I guess so. Maybe you don't want to bet you will, Tom?' Say I, 'I don't +mind going a V on it, mate.' Says he 'Put it up.' 'Up she goes,' says +I, planking the cash. This surprised him. But he covered it, and say. +pretty sarcastic, 'Hadn't you better take your grub with the governor and +the ladies, Tom?' Says I 'Upon second thoughts, I will.' Says he, 'Well +Tom, you aye a dum fool.' Says I, 'Maybe I am maybe I ain't; but the +main question is, do you wan to risk two and a half that I won't do it?' +'Make it a V,' says he. 'Done,' says I. I started, him a giggling and +slapping his hand on his thigh, he felt so good. I went over there and +leaned my knuckle: on the table a minute and looked the governor in the +face, and says I, 'Mr. Gardner, don't you know me? He stared, and I +stared, and he stared. Then all of a sudden he sings out, 'Tom Bowling, +by the holy poker! Ladies, it's old Tom Bowling, that you've heard me +talk about--shipmate of mine in the Mary Ann.' He rose up and shook +hands with me ever so hearty--I sort of glanced around and took a +realizing sense of my mate's saucer eyes--and then says the governor, +'Plant yourself, Tom, plant yourself; you can't cat your anchor again +till you've had a feed with me and the ladies!' I planted myself +alongside the governor, and canted my eye around toward my mate. Well, +sir, his dead-lights were bugged out like tompions; and his mouth stood +that wide open that you could have laid a ham in it without him noticing +it." + +There was great applause at the conclusion of the old captain's story; +then, after a moment's silence, a grave, pale young man said: + +"Had you ever met the governor before?" + +The old captain looked steadily at this inquirer awhile, and then got up +and walked aft without making any reply. One passenger after another +stole a furtive glance at the inquirer; but failed to make him out, and +so gave him up. It took some little work to get the talk-machinery to +running smoothly again after this derangement; but at length a +conversation sprang up about that important and jealously guarded +instrument, a ship's timekeeper, its exceeding delicate accuracy, and the +wreck and destruction that have sometimes resulted from its varying a few +seemingly trifling moments from the true time; then, in due course, my +comrade, the Reverend, got off on a yarn, with a fair wind and everything +drawing. It was a true story, too--about Captain Rounceville's shipwreck +--true in every detail. It was to this effect: + +Captain Rounceville's vessel was lost in mid-Atlantic, and likewise his +wife and his two little children. Captain Rounceville and seven seamen +escaped with life, but with little else. A small, rudely constructed +raft was to be their home for eight days. They had neither provisions +nor water. They had scarcely any clothing; no one had a coat but the +captain. This coat was changing hands all the time, for the weather was +very cold. Whenever a man became exhausted with the cold, they put the +coat on him and laid him down between two shipmates until the garment and +their bodies had warmed life into him again. Among the sailors was a +Portuguese who knew no English. He seemed to have no thought of his own +calamity, but was concerned only about the captain's bitter loss of wife +and children. By day he would look his dumb compassion in the captain's +face; and by night, in the darkness and the driving spray and rain, he +would seek out the captain and try to comfort him with caressing pats on +the shoulder. One day, when hunger and thirst were making their sure +inroad; upon the men's strength and spirits, a floating barrel was seen +at a distance. It seemed a great find, for doubtless it contained food +of some sort. A brave fellow swam to it, and after long and exhausting +effort got it to the raft. It was eagerly opened. It was a barrel of +magnesia! On the fifth day an onion was spied. A sailor swam off and +got it. Although perishing with hunger, he brought it in its integrity +and put it into the captain's hand. The history of the sea teaches +that among starving, shipwrecked men selfishness is rare, and a +wonder-compelling magnanimity the rule. The onion was equally divided +into eight parts, and eaten with deep thanksgivings. On the eighth day a +distant ship was sighted. Attempts were made to hoist an oar, with +Captain Rounceville's coat on it for a signal. There were many failures, +for the men were but skeletons now, and strengthless. At last success +was achieved, but the signal brought no help. The ship faded out of +sight and left despair behind her. By and by another ship appeared, and +passed so near that the castaways, every eye eloquent with gratitude, +made ready to welcome the boat that would be sent to save them. But this +ship also drove on, and left these men staring their unutterable surprise +and dismay into each other's ashen faces. Late in the day, still another +ship came up out of the distance, but the men noted with a pang that her +course was one which would not bring her nearer. Their remnant of life +was nearly spent; their lips and tongues were swollen, parched, cracked +with eight days' thirst; their bodies starved; and here was their last +chance gliding relentlessly from them; they would not be alive when the +next sun rose. For a day or two past the men had lost their voices, but +now Captain Rounceville whispered, "Let us pray." The Portuguese patted +him on the shoulder in sign of deep approval. All knelt at the base of +the oar that was waving the signal-coat aloft, and bowed their heads. The +sea was tossing; the sun rested, a red, rayless disk, on the sea-line in +the west. When the men presently raised their heads they would have +roared a hallelujah if they had had a voice--the ship's sails lay +wrinkled and flapping against her masts--she was going about! Here was +rescue at last, and in the very last instant of time that was left for +it. No, not rescue yet--only the imminent prospect of it. The red disk +sank under the sea, and darkness blotted out the ship. By and by came a +pleasant sound-oars moving in a boat's rowlocks. Nearer it came, and +nearer-within thirty steps, but nothing visible. Then a deep voice: +"Hol-lo!" The castaways could not answer; their swollen tongues refused +voice. The boat skirted round and round the raft, started away--the +agony of it!--returned, rested the oars, close at hand, listening, no +doubt. The deep voice again: "Hol-lo! Where are ye, shipmates?" Captain +Rounceville whispered to his men, saying: "Whisper your best, boys! now +--all at once!" So they sent out an eightfold whisper in hoarse concert: +"Here!", There was life in it if it succeeded; death if it failed. After +that supreme moment Captain Rounceville was conscious of nothing until he +came to himself on board the saving ship. Said the Reverend, concluding: + +"There was one little moment of time in which that raft could be visible +from that ship, and only one. If that one little fleeting moment had +passed unfruitful, those men's doom was sealed. As close as that does +God shave events foreordained from the beginning of the world. When the +sun reached the water's edge that day, the captain of that ship was +sitting on deck reading his prayer-book. The book fell; he stooped to +pick it up, and happened to glance at the sun. In that instant that +far-off raft appeared for a second against the red disk, its needlelike +oar and diminutive signal cut sharp and black against the bright surface, +and in the next instant was thrust away into the dusk again. But that +ship, that captain, and that pregnant instant had had their work +appointed for them in the dawn of time and could not fail of the +performance. The chronometer of God never errs!" + +There was deep, thoughtful silence for some moments. Then the grave, +pale young man said: + +"What is the chronometer of God?" + + + +II + +At dinner, six o'clock, the same people assembled whom we had talked with +on deck and seen at luncheon and breakfast this second day out, and at +dinner the evening before. That is to say, three journeying +ship-masters, a Boston merchant, and a returning Bermudian who had been +absent from his Bermuda thirteen years; these sat on the starboard side. +On the port side sat the Reverend in the seat of honor; the pale young +man next to him; I next; next to me an aged Bermudian, returning to his +sunny islands after an absence of twenty-seven years. Of course, our +captain was at the head of the table, the purser at the foot of it. A +small company, but small companies are pleasantest. + +No racks upon the table; the sky cloudless, the sun brilliant, the blue +sea scarcely ruffled; then what had become of the four married couples, +the three bachelors, and the active and obliging doctor from the rural +districts of Pennsylvania?--for all these were on deck when we sailed +down New York harbor. This is the explanation. I quote from my +note-book: + + Thursday, 3.30 P.M. Under way, passing the Battery. The large + party, of four married couples, three bachelors, and a cheery, + exhilarating doctor from the wilds of Pennsylvania, are evidently + traveling together. All but the doctor grouped in camp-chairs on + deck. + + Passing principal fort. The doctor is one of those people who has + an infallible preventive of seasickness; is flitting from friend to + friend administering it and saying, "Don't you be afraid; I know + this medicine; absolutely infallible; prepared under my own + supervision." Takes a dose himself, intrepidly. + + 4.15 P.M. Two of those ladies have struck their colors, + notwithstanding the "infallible." They have gone below. The other + two begin to show distress. + + 5 P.M. Exit one husband and one bachelor. These still had their + infallible in cargo when they started, but arrived at the + companionway without it. + + 5.10. Lady No. 3, two bachelors, and one married man have gone + below with their own opinion of the infallible. + + 5.20. Passing Quarantine Hulk. The infallible has done the + business for all the party except the Scotchman's wife and the + author of that formidable remedy. + + Nearing the Light-Ship. Exit the Scotchman's wife, head drooped on + stewardess's shoulder. + + Entering the open sea. Exit doctor! + + +The rout seems permanent; hence the smallness of the company at table +since the voyage began. Our captain is a grave, handsome Hercules of +thirty-five, with a brown hand of such majestic size that one cannot eat +for admiring it and wondering if a single kid or calf could furnish +material for gloving it. + +Conversation not general; drones along between couples. One catches a +sentence here and there. Like this, from Bermudian of thirteen years' +absence: "It is the nature of women to ask trivial, irrelevant, and +pursuing questions--questions that pursue you from a beginning in nothing +to a run-to-cover in nowhere." Reply of Bermudian of twenty-seven years' +absence: "Yes; and to think they have logical, analytical minds and +argumentative ability. You see 'em begin to whet up whenever they smell +argument in the air." Plainly these be philosophers. + +Twice since we left port our engines have stopped for a couple of minutes +at a time. Now they stop again. Says the pale young man, meditatively, +"There!--that engineer is sitting down to rest again." + +Grave stare from the captain, whose mighty jaws cease to work, and whose +harpooned potato stops in midair on its way to his open, paralyzed mouth. +Presently he says in measured tones, "Is it your idea that the engineer +of this ship propels her by a crank turned by his own hands?" + +The pale young man studies over this a moment, then lifts up his +guileless eyes, and says, "Don't he?" + +Thus gently falls the death-blow to further conversation, and the dinner +drags to its close in a reflective silence, disturbed by no sounds but +the murmurous wash of the sea and the subdued clash of teeth. + +After a smoke and a promenade on deck, where is no motion to discompose +our steps, we think of a game of whist. We ask the brisk and capable +stewardess from Ireland if there are any cards in the ship. + +"Bless your soul, dear, indeed there is. Not a whole pack, true for ye, +but not enough missing to signify." + +However, I happened by accident to bethink me of a new pack in a morocco +case, in my trunk, which I had placed there by mistake, thinking it to be +a flask of something. So a party of us conquered the tedium of the +evening with a few games and were ready for bed at six bells, mariner's +time, the signal for putting out the lights. + +There was much chat in the smoking-cabin on the upper deck after luncheon +to-day, mostly whaler yarns from those old sea-captains. Captain Tom +Bowling was garrulous. He had that garrulous attention to minor detail +which is born of secluded farm life or life at sea on long voyages, where +there is little to do and time no object. He would sail along till he +was right in the most exciting part of a yarn, and then say, "Well, as I +was saying, the rudder was fouled, ship driving before the gale, head-on, +straight for the iceberg, all hands holding their breath, turned to +stone, top-hamper giving 'way, sails blown to ribbons, first one stick +going, then another, boom! smash! crash! duck your head and stand from +under! when up comes Johnny Rogers, capstan-bar in hand, eyes a-blazing, +hair a-flying . . . no, 'twa'n't Johnny Rogers. . . lemme see . . +seems to me Johnny Rogers wa'n't along that voyage; he was along one +voyage, I know that mighty well, but somehow it seems to me that he +signed the articles for this voyage, but--but--whether he come along or +not, or got left, or something happened--" + +And so on and so on till the excitement all cooled down and nobody cared +whether the ship struck the iceberg or not. + +In the course of his talk he rambled into a criticism upon New England +degrees of merit in ship building. Said he, "You get a vessel built away +down Maine-way; Bath, for instance; what's the result? First thing you +do, you want to heave her down for repairs--that's the result! Well, +sir, she hain't been hove down a week till you can heave a dog through +her seams. You send that vessel to sea, and what's the result? She wets +her oakum the first trip! Leave it to any man if 'tain't so. Well, you +let our folks build you a vessel--down New Bedford-way. What's the +result? Well, sir, you might take that ship and heave her down, and keep +her hove down six months, and she'll never shed a tear!" + +Everybody, landsmen and all, recognized the descriptive neatness of that +figure, and applauded, which greatly pleased the old man. A moment +later, the meek eyes of the pale young fellow heretofore mentioned came +up slowly, rested upon the old man's face a moment, and the meek mouth +began to open. + +"Shet your head!" shouted the old mariner. + +It was a rather startling surprise to everybody, but it was effective in +the matter of its purpose. So the conversation flowed on instead of +perishing. + +There was some talk about the perils of the sea, and a landsman delivered +himself of the customary nonsense about the poor mariner wandering in far +oceans, tempest-tossed, pursued by dangers, every storm-blast and +thunderbolt in the home skies moving the friends by snug firesides to +compassion for that poor mariner, and prayers for his succor. Captain +Bowling put up with this for a while, and then burst out with a new view +of the matter. + +"Come, belay there! I have read this kind of rot all my life in poetry +and tales and such-like rubbage. Pity for the poor mariner! sympathy for +the poor mariner! All right enough, but not in the way the poetry puts +it. Pity for the mariner's wife! all right again, but not in the way the +poetry puts it. Look-a here! whose life's the safest in the whole world +The poor mariner's. You look at the statistics, you'll see. So don't +you fool away any sympathy on the poor mariner's dangers and privations +and sufferings. Leave that to the poetry muffs. Now you look at the +other side a minute. Here is Captain Brace, forty years old, been at sea +thirty. On his way now to take command of his ship and sail south from +Bermuda. Next week he'll be under way; easy times; comfortable quarters; +passengers, sociable company; just enough to do to keep his mind healthy +and not tire him; king over his ship, boss of everything and everybody; +thirty years' safety to learn him that his profession ain't a dangerous +one. Now you look back at his home. His wife's a feeble woman; she's a +stranger in New York; shut up in blazing hot or freezing cold lodgings, +according to the season; don't know anybody hardly; no company but her +lonesomeness and her thoughts; husband gone six months at a time. She +has borne eight children; five of them she has buried without her husband +ever setting eyes on them. She watches them all the long nights till +they died--he comfortable on the sea; she followed them to the grave she +heard the clods fall that broke her heart he comfortable on the sea; she +mourned at home, weeks and weeks, missing them every day and every hour +--he cheerful at sea, knowing nothing about it. Now look at it a minute +--turn it over in your mind and size it: five children born, she among +strangers, and him not by to hearten her; buried, and him not by to +comfort her; think of that! Sympathy for the poor mariner's perils is +rot; give it to his wife's hard lines, where it belongs! Poetry makes +out that all the wife worries about is the dangers her husband's running. +She's got substantialer things to worry over, I tell you. Poetry's +always pitying the poor mariner on account of his perils at sea; better a +blamed sight pity him for the nights he can't sleep for thinking of how +he had to leave his wife in her very birth pains, lonesome and +friendless, in the thick of disease and trouble and death. If there's +one thing that can make me madder than another, it's this sappy, damned +maritime poetry!" + +Captain Brace was a patient, gentle, seldom speaking man, with a pathetic +something in his bronzed face that had been a mystery up to this time, +but stood interpreted now since we had heard his story. He had voyaged +eighteen times to the Mediterranean, seven times to India, once to the +arctic pole in a discovery-ship, and "between times" had visited all the +remote seas and ocean corners of the globe. But he said that twelve +years ago, on account of his family, he "settled down," and ever +since then had ceased to roam. And what do you suppose was this +simple-hearted, lifelong wanderer's idea of settling down and ceasing to +roam? Why, the making of two five-month voyages a year between Surinam +and Boston for sugar and molasses! + +Among other talk to-day, it came out that whale-ships carry no doctor. +The captain adds the doctorship to his own duties. He not only gives +medicines, but sets broken limbs after notions of his own, or saws them +off and sears the stump when amputation seems best. The captain is +provided with a medicine-chest, with the medicines numbered instead of +named. A book of directions goes with this. It describes diseases and +symptoms, and says, "Give a teaspoonful of No. 9 once an hour," or "Give +ten grains of No. 12 every half-hour," etc. One of our sea-captains came +across a skipper in the North Pacific who was in a state of great +surprise and perplexity. Said he: + +"There's something rotten about this medicine-chest business. One of my +men was sick--nothing much the matter. I looked in the book: it said +give him a teaspoonful of No. 15. I went to the medicine-chest, and I +see I was out of No. 15. I judged I'd got to get up a combination +somehow that would fill the bill; so I hove into the fellow half a +teaspoonful of No. 8 and half a teaspoonful of No. 7, and I'll be hanged +if it didn't kill him in fifteen minutes! There's something about this +medicine-chest system that's too many for me!" + +There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain "Hurricane" +Jones, of the Pacific Ocean--peace to his ashes! Two or three of us +present had known him; I particularly well, for I had made four +sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was born in a +ship; he picked up what little education he had among his shipmates; +he began life in the forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the +captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty-five were spent at sea. +He had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all +climates. When a man has been fifty years at sea he necessarily knows +nothing of men, nothing of the world but its surface, nothing of the +world's thought, nothing of the world's learning but it's a B C, and that +blurred and distorted by the unfocused lenses of an untrained mind. Such +a man is only a gray and bearded child. That is what old Hurricane Jones +was--simply an innocent, lovable old infant. When his spirit was in +repose he was as sweet and gentle as a girl; when his wrath was up he was +a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely descriptive. He was +formidable in a fight, for he was of powerful build and dauntless +courage. He was frescoed from head to heel with pictures and mottoes +tattooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him one voyage when he +got his last vacant space tattooed; this vacant space was around his left +ankle. During three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle bare +and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out from a clouding +of India ink: "Virtue is its own R'd." (There was a lack of room.) He +was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fishwoman. He +considered swearing blameless, because sailors would not understand an +order unillumined by it. He was a profound biblical scholar--that is, he +thought he was. He believed everything in the Bible, but he had his own +methods of arriving at his beliefs. He was of the "advanced" school of +thinkers, and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all miracles, +somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of creation six +geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it, he was a +rather severe satire on modern scientific religionists. Such a man as I +have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and argument; one +knows that without being told it. + +One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did not know he was a +clergyman, since the passenger-list did not betray the fact. He took a +great liking to this Reverend Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great +deal; told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and +wove a glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that +was refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated +speech. One day the captain said, "Peters, do you ever read the Bible?" + +"Well--yes." + +"I judge it ain't often, by the way you say it. Now, you tackle it in +dead earnest once, and you'll find it 'll pay. Don't you get +discouraged, but hang right on. First, you won't understand it; but by +and by things will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn't lay it down +to eat." + +"Yes, I have heard that said." + +"And it's so, too. There ain't a book that begins with it. It lays over +'m all, Peters. There's some pretty tough things in it--there ain't any +getting around that--but you stick to them and think them out, and when +once you get on the inside everything's plain as day." + +"The miracles, too, captain?" + +"Yes, sir! the miracles, too. Every one of them. Now, there's that +business with the prophets of Baal; like enough that stumped you?" + +"Well, I don't know but--" + +"Own up now; it stumped you. Well, I don't wonder. You hadn't had any +experience in raveling such things out, and naturally it was too many for +you. Would you like to have me explain that thing to you, and show you +how to get at the meat of these matters?" + +"Indeed, I would, captain, if you don't mind." + +Then the captain proceeded as follows: "I'll do it with pleasure. First, +you see, I read and read, and thought and thought, till I got to +understand what sort of people they were in the old Bible times, and then +after that it was all clear and easy. Now this was the way I put it up, +concerning Isaac--[This is the captain's own mistake]--and the prophets +of Baal. There was some mighty sharp men among the public characters of +that old ancient day, and Isaac was one of them. Isaac had his failings +--plenty of them, too; it ain't for me to apologize for Isaac; he played +it on the prophets of Baal, and like enough he was justifiable, +considering the odds that was against him. No, all I say is, 'twa'n't +any miracle, and that I'll show you so's't you can see it yourself. + +"Well, times had been getting rougher and rougher for prophets--that is, +prophets of Isaac's denomination. There was four hundred and fifty +prophets of Baal in the community, and only one Presbyterian; that is, +if Isaac was a Presbyterian, which I reckon he was, but it don't say. +Naturally, the prophets of Baal took all the trade. Isaac was pretty +low-spirited, I reckon, but he was a good deal of a man, and no doubt he +went a-prophesying around, letting on to be doing a land-office business, +but 'twa'n't any use; he couldn't run any opposition to amount to +anything. By and by things got desperate with him; he sets his head to +work and thinks it all out, and then what does he do? Why, he begins to +throw out hints that the other parties are this and that and t'other +--nothing very definite, maybe, but just kind of undermining their +reputation in a quiet way. This made talk, of course, and finally got to +the king. The king asked Isaac what he meant by his talk. Says Isaac, +'Oh, nothing particular; only, can they pray-down fire from heaven on an +altar? It ain't much, maybe, your majesty, only can they do it? That's +the idea.' So the king was a good deal disturbed, and he went to the +prophets of Baal, and they said, pretty airy, that if he had an altar +ready, they were ready; and they intimated he better get it insured, too. + +"So next morning all the children of Israel and their parents and the +other people gathered themselves together. Well, here was that great +crowd of prophets of Baal packed together on one side, and Isaac walking +up and down all alone on the other, putting up his job. When time was +called, Isaac let on to be comfortable and indifferent; told the other +team to take the first innings. So they went at it, the whole four +hundred and fifty, praying around the altar, very hopeful, and doing +their level best. They prayed an hour--two hours--three hours--and so +on, plumb till noon. It wa'n't any use; they hadn't took a trick. Of +course they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and well they +might. Now, what would a magnanimous man do? Keep still, wouldn't he? +Of course. What did Isaac do? He graveled the prophets of Baal every +way he could think of. Says he, 'You don't speak up loud enough; your +god's asleep, like enough, or maybe he's taking a walk; you want to +holler, you know'--or words to that effect; I don't recollect the exact +language. Mind, I don't apologize for Isaac; he had his faults. + +"Well, the prophets of Baal prayed along the best they knew how all the +afternoon, and never raised, a spark. At last, about sundown, they were +all tuckered out, and they owned up and quit. + +"What does Isaac do now? He steps up and says to some friends of his +there, 'Pour four barrels of water on the altar!' Everybody was +astonished; for the other side had prayed at it dry, you know, and got +whitewashed. They poured it on. Says he, 'Heave on four more barrels.' +Then he says, 'Heave on four more.' Twelve barrels, you see, altogether. +The water ran all over the altar, and all down the sides, and filled up a +trench around it that would hold a couple of hogsheads-'measures,' it +says; I reckon it means about a hogshead. Some of the people were going +to put on their things and go, for they allowed he was crazy. They +didn't know Isaac. Isaac knelt down and began to pray; he strung along, +and strung along, about the heathen in distant lands, and about the +sister churches, and about the state and the country at large, and about +those that's in authority in the government, and all the usual program, +you know, till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about +something else, and then, all of a sudden, when nobody was noticing, he +outs with a match and rakes it on the under side of his leg, and pff! up +the whole thing blazes like a house afire! Twelve barrels of water? +Petroleum, sir, PETROLEUM! that's what it was!" + +"Petroleum, captain?" + +"Yes, sir, the country was full of it. Isaac knew all about that. +You read the Bible. Don't you worry about the tough places. They ain't +tough when you come to think them out and throw light on them. There +ain't a thing in the Bible but what is true; all you want is to go +prayerfully to work and cipher out how 'twas done." + +At eight o'clock on the third morning out from New York, land was +sighted. Away across the sunny waves one saw a faint dark stripe +stretched along under the horizon-or pretended to see it, for the credit +of his eyesight. Even the Reverend said he saw it, a thing which was +manifestly not so. But I never have seen any one who was morally strong +enough to confess that he could not see land when others claimed that +they could. + +By and by the Bermuda Islands were easily visible. The principal one lay +upon the water in the distance, a long, dull-colored body; scalloped with +slight hills and valleys. We could not go straight at it, but had to +travel all the way around it, sixteen miles from shore, because it is +fenced with an invisible coral reef. At last we sighted buoys, bobbing +here and there, and then we glided into a narrow channel among them, +"raised the reef," and came upon shoaling blue water that soon further +shoaled into pale green, with a surface scarcely rippled. Now came the +resurrection hour; the berths gave up their dead. Who are these pale +specters in plug-hats and silken flounces that file up the companionway +in melancholy procession and step upon the deck? These are they which +took the infallible preventive of seasickness in New York harbor and then +disappeared and were forgotten. Also there came two or three faces not +seen before until this moment. One's impulse is to ask, "Where did you +come aboard?" + +We followed the narrow channel a long time, with land on both sides--low +hills that might have been green and grassy, but had a faded look +instead. However, the land-locked water was lovely, at any rate, with +its glittering belts of blue and green where moderate soundings were, and +its broad splotches of rich brown where the rocks lay near the surface. +Everybody was feeling so well that even the grave, pale young man (who, +by a sort of kindly common consent, had come latterly to be referred to +as "The Ass") received frequent and friendly notice--which was right +enough, for there was no harm in him. + +At last we steamed between two island points whose rocky jaws allowed +only just enough room for the vessel's body, and now before us loomed +Hamilton on her clustered hillsides and summits, the whitest mass of +terraced architecture that exists in the world, perhaps. + +It was Sunday afternoon, and on the pier were gathered one or two hundred +Bermudians, half of them black, half of them white, and all of them +nobbily dressed, as the poet says. + +Several boats came off to the ship, bringing citizens. One of these +citizens was a faded, diminutive old gentleman, who approached our most +ancient passenger with a childlike joy in his twinkling eyes, halted +before him, folded his arms, and said, smiling with all his might and +with all the simple delight that was in him, "You don't know me, John! +Come, out with it now; you know you don't!" + +The ancient passenger scanned him perplexedly, scanned the napless, +threadbare costume of venerable fashion that had done Sunday service no +man knows how many years, contemplated the marvelous stovepipe hat of +still more ancient and venerable pattern, with its poor, pathetic old +stiff brim canted up "gallusly" in the wrong places, and said, with a +hesitation that indicated strong internal effort to "place" the gentle +old apparition, "Why . . . let me see . . . plague on it . . . +there's something about you that . . . er . . . er . . . but +I've been gone from Bermuda for twenty-seven years, and . . . hum, hum +. . . I don't seem to get at it, somehow, but there's something about +you that is just as familiar to me as--" + +"Likely it might be his hat," murmured the Ass, with innocent, +sympathetic interest. + +So the Reverend and I had at last arrived at Hamilton, the principal town +in the Bermuda Islands. A wonderfully white town; white as snow itself. +White as marble; white as flour. Yet looking like none of these, +exactly. Never mind, we said; we shall hit upon a figure by and by that +will describe this peculiar white. + +It was a town that was compacted together upon the sides and tops of a +cluster of small hills. Its outlying borders fringed off and thinned +away among the cedar forests, and there was no woody distance of curving +coast or leafy islet sleeping upon the dimpled, painted sea, but was +flecked with shining white points--half-concealed houses peeping out of +the foliage. The architecture of the town was mainly Spanish, inherited +from the colonists of two hundred and fifty years ago. Some +ragged-topped cocoa-palms, glimpsed here and there, gave the land +a tropical aspect. + +There was an ample pier of heavy masonry; upon this, under shelter, were +some thousands of barrels containing that product which has carried the +fame of Bermuda to many lands, the potato. With here and there an onion. +That last sentence is facetious; for they grow at least two onions in +Bermuda to one potato. The onion is the pride and joy of Bermuda. It is +her jewel, her gem of gems. In her conversation, her pulpit, her +literature, it is her most frequent and eloquent figure. In Bermuda +metaphor it stands for perfection--perfection absolute. + +The Bermudian weeping over the departed exhausts praise when he says, "He +was an onion!" The Bermudian extolling the living hero bankrupts +applause when he says, "He is an onion!" The Bermudian setting his son +upon the stage of life to dare and do for himself climaxes all counsel, +supplication, admonition, comprehends all ambition, when he says, "Be an +onion!" + +When parallel with the pier, and ten or fifteen steps outside it, we +anchored. It was Sunday, bright and sunny. The groups upon the pier +--men, youths, and boys-were whites and blacks in about equal proportion. +All were well and neatly dressed; many of them nattily, a few of them +very stylishly. One would have to travel far before he would find +another town of twelve thousand inhabitants that could represent itself +so respectably, in the matter of clothes, on a freight-pier, without +premeditation or effort. The women and young girls, black and white, who +occasionally passed by, were nicely clad, and many were elegantly and +fashionably so. The men did not affect summer clothing much, but the +girls and women did, and their white garments were good to look at, after +so many months of familiarity with somber colors. + +Around one isolated potato-barrel stood four young gentlemen, two black, +two white, becomingly dressed, each with the head of a slender cane +pressed against his teeth, and each with a foot propped up on the barrel. +Another young gentleman came up, looked longingly at the barrel, but saw +no rest for his foot there, and turned pensively away to seek another +barrel. He wandered here and there, but without result. Nobody sat upon +a barrel, as is the custom of the idle in other lands, yet all the +isolated barrels were humanly occupied. Whosoever had a foot to spare +put it on a barrel, if all the places on it were not already taken. The +habits of all peoples are determined by their circumstances. The +Bermudians lean upon barrels because of the scarcity of lamp-posts. + +Many citizens came on board and spoke eagerly to the officers--inquiring +about the Turco-Russian war news, I supposed. However, by listening +judiciously I found that this was not so. They said, "What is the price +of onions?" or, "How's onions?" Naturally enough this was their first +interest; but they dropped into the war the moment it was satisfied. + +We went ashore and found a novelty of a pleasant nature: there were no +hackmen, hacks, or omnibuses on the pier or about it anywhere, and nobody +offered his services to us, or molested us in any way. I said it was +like being in heaven. The Reverend rebukingly and rather pointedly +advised me to make the most of it, then. We knew of a boarding-house, +and what we needed now was somebody to pilot us to it. Presently a +little barefooted colored boy came along, whose raggedness was +conspicuously not Bermudian. His rear was so marvelously bepatched with +colored squares and triangles that one was half persuaded he had got it +out of an atlas. When the sun struck him right, he was as good to follow +as a lightning-bug. We hired him and dropped into his wake. He piloted +us through one picturesque street after another, and in due course +deposited us where we belonged. He charged nothing for his map, and but +a trifle for his services: so the Reverend doubled it. The little chap +received the money with a beaming applause in his eye which plainly said, +"This man's an onion!" + +We had brought no letters of introduction; our names had been misspelled +in the passenger-list; nobody knew whether we were honest folk or +otherwise. So we were expecting to have a good private time in case +there was nothing in our general aspect to close boarding-house doors +against us. We had no trouble. Bermuda has had but little experience of +rascals, and is not suspicious. We got large, cool, well-lighted rooms +on a second floor, overlooking a bloomy display of flowers and flowering +shrubscalia and annunciation lilies, lantanas, heliotrope, jasmine, +roses, pinks, double geraniums, oleanders, pomegranates, blue +morning-glories of a great size, and many plants that were unknown to me. + +We took a long afternoon walk, and soon found out that that exceedingly +white town was built of blocks of white coral. Bermuda is a coral +island, with a six-inch crust of soil on top of it, and every man has a +quarry on his own premises. Everywhere you go you see square recesses +cut into the hillsides, with perpendicular walls unmarred by crack or +crevice, and perhaps you fancy that a house grew out of the ground there, +and has been removed in a single piece from the mold. If you do, you +err. But the material for a house has been quarried there. They cut +right down through the coral, to any depth that is convenient--ten to +twenty feet--and take it out in great square blocks. This cutting is +done with a chisel that has a handle twelve or fifteen feet long, and is +used as one uses a crowbar when he is drilling a hole, or a dasher when +he is churning. Thus soft is this stone. Then with a common handsaw +they saw the great blocks into handsome, huge bricks that are two feet +long, a foot wide, and about six inches thick. These stand loosely piled +during a month to harden; then the work of building begins. + +The house is built of these blocks; it is roofed with broad coral slabs +an inch thick, whose edges lap upon each other, so that the roof looks +like a succession of shallow steps or terraces; the chimneys are built of +the coral blocks, and sawed into graceful and picturesque patterns; the +ground-floor veranda is paved with coral blocks; also the walk to the +gate; the fence is built of coral blocks--built in massive panels, with +broad capstones and heavy gate-posts, and the whole trimmed into easy +lines and comely shape with the saw. Then they put a hard coat of +whitewash, as thick as your thumb-nail, on the fence and all over the +house, roof, chimneys, and all; the sun comes out and shines on this +spectacle, and it is time for you to shut your unaccustomed eyes, lest +they be put out. It is the whitest white you can conceive of, and the +blindingest. A Bermuda house does not look like marble; it is a much +intenser white than that; and, besides, there is a dainty, indefinable +something else about its look that is not marble-like. We put in a great +deal of solid talk and reflection over this matter of trying to find a +figure that would describe the unique white of a Bermuda house, and we +contrived to hit upon it at last. It is exactly the white of the icing +of a cake, and has the same unemphasized and scarcely perceptible polish. +The white of marble is modest and retiring compared with it. + +After the house is cased in its hard scale of whitewash, not a crack, or +sign of a seam, or joining of the blocks is detectable, from base-stone +to chimney-top; the building looks as if it had been carved from a single +block of stone, and the doors and windows sawed out afterward. A white +marble house has a cold, tomb-like, unsociable look, and takes the +conversation out of a body and depresses him. Not so with a Bermuda +house. There is something exhilarating, even hilarious, about its vivid +whiteness when the sun plays upon it. If it be of picturesque shape and +graceful contour--and many of the Bermudian dwellings are--it will so +fascinate you that you will keep your eyes on it until they ache. One of +those clean-cut, fanciful chimneys--too pure and white for this world +--with one side glowing in the sun and the other touched with a soft +shadow, is an object that will charm one's gaze by the hour. I know of +no other country that has chimneys worthy to be gazed at and gloated +over. One of those snowy houses, half concealed and half glimpsed +through green foliage, is a pretty thing to see; and if it takes one by +surprise and suddenly, as he turns a sharp corner of a country road, it +will wring an exclamation from him, sure. + +Wherever you go, in town or country, you find those snowy houses, and +always with masses of bright-colored flowers about them, but with no +vines climbing their walls; vines cannot take hold of the smooth, hard +whitewash. Wherever you go, in the town or along the country roads, +among little potato farms and patches or expensive country-seats, these +stainless white dwellings, gleaming out from flowers and foliage, meet +you at every turn. The least little bit of a cottage is as white and +blemishless as the stateliest mansion. Nowhere is there dirt or stench, +puddle or hog-wallow, neglect, disorder, or lack of trimness and +neatness. The roads, the streets, the dwellings, the people, the +clothes--this neatness extends to everything that falls under the eye. +It is the tidiest country in the world. And very much the tidiest, too. + +Considering these things, the question came up, Where do the poor live? +No answer was arrived at. Therefore, we agreed to leave this conundrum +for future statesmen to wrangle over. + +What a bright and startling spectacle one of those blazing white country +palaces, with its brown-tinted window-caps and ledges, and green +shutters, and its wealth of caressing flowers and foliage, would be in +black London! And what a gleaming surprise it would be in nearly any +American city one could mention, too! + +Bermuda roads are made by cutting down a few inches into the solid white +coral--or a good many feet, where a hill intrudes itself--and smoothing +off the surface of the road-bed. It is a simple and easy process. The +grain of the coral is coarse and porous; the road-bed has the look of +being made of coarse white sugar. Its excessive cleanness and whiteness +are a trouble in one way: the sun is reflected into your eyes with such +energy as you walk along that you want to sneeze all the time. Old +Captain Tom Bowling found another difficulty. He joined us in our walk, +but kept wandering unrestfully to the roadside. Finally he explained. +Said he, "Well, I chew, you know, and the road's so plagued clean." + +We walked several miles that afternoon in the bewildering glare of the +sun, the white roads, and the white buildings. Our eyes got to paining +us a good deal. By and by a soothing, blessed twilight spread its cool +balm around. We looked up in pleased surprise and saw that it proceeded +from an intensely black negro who was going by. We answered his military +salute in the grateful gloom of his near presence, and then passed on +into the pitiless white glare again. + +The colored women whom we met usually bowed and spoke; so did the +children. The colored men commonly gave the military salute. They +borrow this fashion from the soldiers, no doubt; England has kept a +garrison here for generations. The younger men's custom of carrying +small canes is also borrowed from the soldiers, I suppose, who always +carry a cane, in Bermuda as everywhere else in Britain's broad dominions. + +The country roads curve and wind hither and thither in the delightfulest +way, unfolding pretty surprises at every turn: billowy masses of oleander +that seem to float out from behind distant projections like the pink +cloud-banks of sunset; sudden plunges among cottages and gardens, life +and activity, followed by as sudden plunges into the somber twilight and +stillness of the woods; flitting visions of white fortresses and beacon +towers pictured against the sky on remote hilltops; glimpses of shining +green sea caught for a moment through opening headlands, then lost again; +more woods and solitude; and by and by another turn lays bare, without +warning, the full sweep of the inland ocean, enriched with its bars of +soft color and graced with its wandering sails. + +Take any road you please, you may depend upon it you will not stay in it +half a mile. Your road is everything that a road ought to be: it is +bordered with trees, and with strange plants and flowers; it is shady and +pleasant, or sunny and still pleasant; it carries you by the prettiest +and peacefulest and most homelike of homes, and through stretches of +forest that lie in a deep hush sometimes, and sometimes are alive with +the music of birds; it curves always, which is a continual promise, +whereas straight roads reveal everything at a glance and kill interest. +Your road is all this, and yet you will not stay in it half a mile, for +the reason that little seductive, mysterious roads are always branching +out from it on either hand, and as these curve sharply also and hide what +is beyond, you cannot resist the temptation to desert your own chosen +road and explore them. You are usually paid for your trouble; +consequently, your walk inland always turns out to be one of the most +crooked, involved, purposeless, and interesting experiences a body can +imagine. There is enough of variety. Sometimes you are in the level +open, with marshes thick grown with flag-lances that are ten feet high on +the one hand, and potato and onion orchards on the other; next, you are +on a hilltop, with the ocean and the islands spread around you; presently +the road winds through a deep cut, shut in by perpendicular walls thirty +or forty feet high, marked with the oddest and abruptest stratum lines, +suggestive of sudden and eccentric old upheavals, and garnished with here +and there a clinging adventurous flower, and here and there a dangling +vine; and by and by your way is along the sea edge, and you may look down +a fathom or two through the transparent water and watch the diamond-like +flash and play of the light upon the rocks and sands on the bottom until +you are tired of it--if you are so constituted as to be able to get tired +of it. + +You may march the country roads in maiden meditation, fancy free, by +field and farm, for no dog will plunge out at you from unsuspected gate, +with breath-taking surprise of ferocious bark, notwithstanding it is a +Christian land and a civilized. We saw upward of a million cats in +Bermuda, but the people are very abstemious in the matter of dogs. Two +or three nights we prowled the country far and wide, and never once were +accosted by a dog. It is a great privilege to visit such a land. The +cats were no offense when properly distributed, but when piled they +obstructed travel. + +As we entered the edge of the town that Sunday afternoon, we stopped at a +cottage to get a drink of water. The proprietor, a middle-aged man with +a good face, asked us to sit down and rest. His dame brought chairs, and +we grouped ourselves in the shade of the trees by the door. Mr. Smith +--that was not his name, but it will answer--questioned us about ourselves +and our country, and we answered him truthfully, as a general thing, and +questioned him in return. It was all very simple and pleasant and +sociable. Rural, too; for there was a pig and a small donkey and a hen +anchored out, close at hand, by cords to their legs, on a spot that +purported to be grassy. Presently, a woman passed along, and although +she coldly said nothing she changed the drift of our talk. Said Smith: + +"She didn't look this way, you noticed? Well, she is our next neighbor +on one side, and there's another family that's our next neighbors on the +other side; but there's a general coolness all around now, and we don't +speak. Yet these three families, one generation and another, have lived +here side by side and been as friendly as weavers for a hundred and fifty +years, till about a year ago." + +"Why, what calamity could have been powerful enough to break up so old a +friendship?" + +"Well, it was too bad, but it couldn't be helped. It happened like this: +About a year or more ago, the rats got to pestering my place a good deal, +and I set up a steel trap in my back yard. Both of these neighbors run +considerable to cats, and so I warned them about the trap, because their +cats were pretty sociable around here nights, and they might get into +trouble without my intending it. Well, they shut up their cats for a +while, but you know how it is with people; they got careless, and sure +enough one night the trap took Mrs. Jones's principal tomcat into camp +and finished him up. In the morning Mrs. Jones comes here with the +corpse in her arms, and cries and takes on the same as if it was a child. +It was a cat by the name of Yelverton--Hector G. Yelverton--a troublesome +old rip, with no more principle than an Injun, though you couldn't make +her believe it. I said all a man could to comfort her, but no, nothing +would do but I must pay for him. Finally, I said I warn't investing in +cats now as much as I was, and with that she walked off in a huff, +carrying the remains with her. That closed our intercourse with the +Joneses. Mrs. Jones joined another church and took her tribe with her. +She said she would not hold fellowship with assassins. Well, by and by +comes Mrs. Brown's turn--she that went by here a minute ago. She had a +disgraceful old yellow cat that she thought as much of as if he was +twins, and one night he tried that trap on his neck, and it fitted him +so, and was so sort of satisfactory, that he laid down and curled up and +stayed with it. Such was the end of Sir John Baldwin." + +"Was that the name of the cat?" + +"The same. There's cats around here with names that would surprise you. +Maria" (to his wife), "what was that cat's name that eat a keg of +ratsbane by mistake over at Hooper's, and started home and got struck by +lightning and took the blind staggers and fell in the well and was 'most +drowned before they could fish him out?" + +"That was that colored Deacon Jackson's cat. I only remember the last +end of its name, which was Hold-The-Fort-For-I-Am-Coming Jackson." + +"Sho! that ain't the one. That's the one that eat up an entire box of +Seidlitz powders, and then hadn't any more judgment than to go and take a +drink. He was considered to be a great loss, but I never could see it. +Well, no matter about the names. Mrs. Brown wanted to be reasonable, but +Mrs. Jones wouldn't let her. She put her up to going to law for damages. +So to law she went, and had the face to claim seven shillings and +sixpence. It made a great stir. All the neighbors went to court. +Everybody took sides. It got hotter and hotter, and broke up all the +friendships for three hundred yards around friendships that had lasted +for generations and generations. + +"Well, I proved by eleven witnesses that the cat was of a low character +and very ornery, and warn't worth a canceled postage-stamp, anyway, +taking the average of cats here; but I lost the case. What could I +expect? The system is all wrong here, and is bound to make revolution +and bloodshed some day. You see, they give the magistrate a poor little +starvation salary, and then turn him loose on the public to gouge for +fees and costs to live on. What is the natural result? Why, he never +looks into the justice of a case--never once. All he looks at is which +client has got the money. So this one piled the fees and costs and +everything on to me. I could pay specie, don't you see? and he knew +mighty well that if he put the verdict on to Mrs. Brown, where it +belonged, he'd have to take his swag in currency." + +"Currency? Why, has Bermuda a currency?" + +"Yes--onions. And they were forty per cent. discount, too, then, because +the season had been over as much as three months. So I lost my case. +I had to pay for that cat. But the general trouble the case made was the +worst thing about it. Broke up so much good feeling. The neighbors +don't speak to each other now. Mrs. Brown had named a child after me. +But she changed its name right away. She is a Baptist. Well, in the +course of baptizing it over again it got drowned. I was hoping we might +get to be friendly again some time or other, but of course this drowning +the child knocked that all out of the question. It would have saved a +world of heartbreak and ill blood if she had named it dry." + +I knew by the sigh that this was honest. All this trouble and all this +destruction of confidence in the purity of the bench on account of a +seven-shilling lawsuit about a cat! Somehow, it seemed to "size" the +country. + +At this point we observed that an English flag had just been placed at +half-mast on a building a hundred yards away. I and my friends were busy +in an instant trying to imagine whose death, among the island +dignitaries, could command such a mark of respect as this. Then a +shudder shook them and me at the same moment, and I knew that we had +jumped to one and the same conclusion: "The governor has gone to England; +it is for the British admiral!" + +At this moment Mr. Smith noticed the flag. He said with emotion: + +"That's on a boarding-house. I judge there's a boarder dead." + +A dozen other flags within view went to half-mast. + +"It's a boarder, sure," said Smith. + +"But would they half-mast the flags here for a boarder, Mr. Smith?" + +"Why, certainly they would, if he was dead." + +That seemed to size the country again. + + + +IV + +The early twilight of a Sunday evening in Hamilton, Bermuda, is an +alluring time. There is just enough of whispering breeze, fragrance of +flowers, and sense of repose to raise one's thoughts heavenward; and just +enough amateur piano music to keep him reminded of the other place. +There are many venerable pianos in Hamilton, and they all play at +twilight. Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical +instruments--notably those of the violin--but it seems to set a piano's +teeth on edge. Most of the music in vogue there is the same that those +pianos prattled in their innocent infancy; and there is something very +pathetic about it when they go over it now, in their asthmatic second +childhood, dropping a note here and there where a tooth is gone. + +We attended evening service at the stately Episcopal church on the hill, +where five or six hundred people, half of them white and the other half +black, according to the usual Bermudian proportions; and all well +dressed--a thing which is also usual in Bermuda and to be confidently +expected. There was good music, which we heard, and doubtless--a good +sermon, but there was a wonderful deal of coughing, and so only the high +parts of the argument carried over it. As we came out, after service, +I overheard one young girl say to another: + +"Why, you don't mean to say you pay duty on gloves and laces! I only pay +postage; have them done up and sent in the Boston Advertiser." + +There are those that believe that the most difficult thing to create is +a woman who can comprehend that it is wrong to smuggle; and that an +impossible thing to create is a woman who will not smuggle, whether or +no, when she gets a chance. But these may be errors. + +We went wandering off toward the country, and were soon far down in the +lonely black depths of a road that was roofed over with the dense foliage +of a double rank of great cedars. There was no sound of any kind there; +it was perfectly still. And it was so dark that one could detect nothing +but somber outlines. We strode farther and farther down this tunnel, +cheering the way with chat. + +Presently the chat took this shape: "How insensibly the character of the +people and of a government makes its impress upon a stranger, and gives +him a sense of security or of insecurity without his taking deliberate +thought upon the matter or asking anybody a question! We have been in +this land half a day; we have seen none but honest faces; we have noted +the British flag flying, which means efficient government and good order; +so without inquiry we plunge unarmed and with perfect confidence into +this dismal place, which in almost any other country would swarm with +thugs and garroters--" + +'Sh! What was that? Stealthy footsteps! Low voices! We gasp, we close +up together, and wait. A vague shape glides out of the dusk and +confronts us. A voice speaks--demands money! + +"A shilling, gentlemen, if you please, to help build the new Methodist +church." + +Blessed sound! Holy sound! We contribute with thankful avidity to the +new Methodist church, and are happy to think how lucky it was that those +little colored Sunday-school scholars did not seize upon everything we +had with violence, before we recovered from our momentary helpless +condition. By the light of cigars we write down the names of weightier +philanthropists than ourselves on the contribution cards, and then pass +on into the farther darkness, saying, What sort of a government do they +call this, where they allow little black pious children, with +contribution cards, to plunge out upon peaceable strangers in the dark +and scare them to death? + +We prowled on several hours, sometimes by the seaside, sometimes inland, +and finally managed to get lost, which is a feat that requires talent in +Bermuda. I had on new shoes. They were No. 7's when I started, but were +not more than 5's now, and still diminishing. I walked two hours in +those shoes after that, before we reached home. Doubtless I could have +the reader's sympathy for the asking. Many people have never had the +headache or the toothache, and I am one of those myself; but every body +has worn tight shoes for two or three hours, and known the luxury of +taking them off in a retired place and seeing his feet swell up and +obscure the firmament. Once when I was a callow, bashful cub, I took a +plain, unsentimental country girl to a comedy one night. I had known her +a day; she seemed divine; I wore my new boots. At the end of the first +half-hour she said, "Why do you fidget so with your feet?" I said, "Did +I?" Then I put my attention there and kept still. At the end of another +half-hour she said, "Why do you say, 'Yes, oh yes!' and 'Ha, ha, oh, +certainly! very true!' to everything I say, when half the time those are +entirely irrelevant answers?" I blushed, and explained that I had been a +little absent-minded. At the end of another half-hour she said, "Please, +why do you grin so steadfastly at vacancy, and yet look so sad?" +I explained that I always did that when I was reflecting. An hour +passed, and then she turned and contemplated me with her earnest eyes and +said, "Why do you cry all the time?" I explained that very funny +comedies always made me cry. At last human nature surrendered, and I +secretly slipped my boots off. This was a mistake. I was not able to +get them on any more. It was a rainy night; there were no omnibuses +going our way; and as I walked home, burning up with shame, with the girl +on one arm and my boots under the other, I was an object worthy of some +compassion--especially in those moments of martyrdom when I had to pass +through the glare that fell upon the pavement from street-lamps. +Finally, this child of the forest said, "Where are your boots?" and being +taken unprepared, I put a fitting finish to the follies of the evening +with the stupid remark, "The higher classes do not wear them to the +theater." + +The Reverend had been an army chaplain during the war, and while we were +hunting for a road that would lead to Hamilton he told a story about two +dying soldiers which interested me in spite of my feet. He said that in +the Potomac hospitals rough pine coffins were furnished by government, +but that it was not always possible to keep up with the demand; so, when +a man died, if there was no coffin at hand he was buried without one. +One night, late, two soldiers lay dying in a ward. A man came in with a +coffin on his shoulder, and stood trying to make up his mind which of +these two poor fellows would be likely to need it first. Both of them +begged for it with their fading eyes--they were past talking. Then one +of them protruded a wasted hand from his blankets and made a feeble +beckoning sign with the fingers, to signify, "Be a good fellow; put it +under my bed, please." The man did it, and left. The lucky soldier +painfully turned himself in his bed until he faced the other warrior, +raised himself partly on his elbow, and began to work up a mysterious +expression of some kind in his face. Gradually, irksomely, but surely +and steadily, it developed, and at last it took definite form as a pretty +successful wink. The sufferer fell back exhausted with his labor, but +bathed in glory. Now entered a personal friend of No. 2, the despoiled +soldier. No. 2 pleaded with him with eloquent eyes, till presently he +understood, and removed the coffin from under No. 1's bed and put it +under No. 2's. No. 2 indicated his joy, and made some more signs; the +friend understood again, and put his arm under No. 2's shoulders and +lifted him partly up. Then the dying hero turned the dim exultation of +his eye upon No. 1, and began a slow and labored work with his hands; +gradually he lifted one hand up toward his face; it grew weak and dropped +back again; once more he made the effort, but failed again. He took a +rest; he gathered all the remnant of his strength, and this time he +slowly but surely carried his thumb to the side of his nose, spread the +gaunt fingers wide in triumph, and dropped back dead. That picture +sticks by me yet. The "situation" is unique. + +The next morning, at what seemed a very early hour, the little white +table-waiter appeared suddenly in my room and shot a single word out of +himself "Breakfast!" + +This was a remarkable boy in many ways. He was about eleven years old; +he had alert, intent black eyes; he was quick of movement; there was no +hesitation, no uncertainty about him anywhere; there was a military +decision in his lip, his manner, his speech, that was an astonishing +thing to see in a little chap like him; he wasted no words; his answers +always came so quick and brief that they seemed to be part of the +question that had been asked instead of a reply to it. When he stood at +table with his fly-brush, rigid, erect, his face set in a cast-iron +gravity, he was a statue till he detected a dawning want in somebody's +eye; then he pounced down, supplied it, and was instantly a statue again. +When he was sent to the kitchen for anything, he marched upright till he +got to the door; he turned hand-springs the rest of the way. + +"Breakfast!" + +I thought I would make one more effort to get some conversation out of +this being. + +"Have you called the Reverend, or are--" + +"Yes s'r!" + +"Is it early, or is--" + +"Eight-five." + +"Do you have to do all the 'chores,' or is there somebody to give +you a--" + +"Colored girl." + +"Is there only one parish in this island, or are there--" + +"Eight!" + +"Is the big church on the hill a parish church, or is it--" + +"Chapel-of-ease!" + +"Is taxation here classified into poll, parish, town, and--" + +"Don't know!" + +Before I could cudgel another question out of my head, he was below, +hand-springing across the back yard. He had slid down the balusters, +headfirst. I gave up trying to provoke a discussion with him. The +essential element of discussion had been left out of him; his answers +were so final and exact that they did not leave a doubt to hang +conversation on. I suspect that there is the making of a mighty man or a +mighty rascal in this boy--according to circumstances--but they are going +to apprentice him to a carpenter. It is the way the world uses its +opportunities. + +During this day and the next we took carriage drives about the island and +over to the town of St. George's, fifteen or twenty miles away. Such +hard, excellent roads to drive over are not to be found elsewhere out of +Europe. An intelligent young colored man drove us, and acted as +guide-book. In the edge of the town we saw five or six mountain-cabbage +palms (atrocious name!) standing in a straight row, and equidistant from +each other. These were not the largest or the tallest trees I have ever +seen, but they were the stateliest, the most majestic. That row of them +must be the nearest that nature has ever come to counterfeiting a +colonnade. These trees are all the same height, say sixty feet; the +trunks as gray as granite, with a very gradual and perfect taper; without +sign of branch or knot or flaw; the surface not looking like bark, but +like granite that has been dressed and not polished. Thus all the way up +the diminishing shaft for fifty feet; then it begins to take the +appearance of being closely wrapped, spool-fashion, with gray cord, or of +having been turned in a lathe. Above this point there is an outward +swell, and thence upward for six feet or more the cylinder is a bright, +fresh green, and is formed of wrappings like those of an ear of green +Indian corn. Then comes the great, spraying palm plume, also green. +Other palm trees always lean out of the perpendicular, or have a curve in +them. But the plumb-line could not detect a deflection in any individual +of this stately row; they stand as straight as the colonnade of Baalbec; +they have its great height, they have its gracefulness, they have its +dignity; in moonlight or twilight, and shorn of their plumes, they would +duplicate it. + +The birds we came across in the country were singularly tame; even that +wild creature, the quail, would pick around in the grass at ease while we +inspected it and talked about it at leisure. A small bird of the canary +species had to be stirred up with the butt-end of the whip before it +would move, and then it moved only a couple of feet. It is said that +even the suspicious flea is tame and sociable in Bermuda, and will allow +himself to be caught and caressed without misgivings. This should be +taken with allowance, for doubtless there is more or less brag about it. +In San Francisco they used to claim that their native flea could kick a +child over, as if it were a merit in a flea to be able to do that; as if +the knowledge of it trumpeted abroad ought to entice immigration. Such a +thing in nine cases out of ten would be almost sure to deter a thinking +man from coming. + +We saw no bugs or reptiles to speak of, and so I was thinking of saying +in print, in a general way, that there were none at all; but one night +after I had gone to bed, the Reverend came into my room carrying +something, and asked, "Is this your boot?" I said it was, and he said he +had met a spider going off with it. Next morning he stated that just at +dawn the same spider raised his window and was coming in to get a shirt, +but saw him and fled. + +I inquired, "Did he get the shirt?" + +"No." + +"How did you know it was a shirt he was after?" + +"I could see it in his eye." + +We inquired around, but could hear of no Bermudian spider capable of +doing these things. Citizens said that their largest spiders could not +more than spread their legs over an ordinary saucer, and that they had +always been considered honest. Here was testimony of a clergyman against +the testimony of mere worldlings--interested ones, too. On the whole, I +judged it best to lock up my things. + +Here and there on the country roads we found lemon, papaw, orange, lime, +and fig trees; also several sorts of palms, among them the cocoa, the +date, and the palmetto. We saw some bamboos forty feet high, with stems +as thick as a man's arm. Jungles of the mangrove tree stood up out of +swamps; propped on their interlacing roots as upon a tangle of stilts. +In drier places the noble tamarind sent down its grateful cloud of shade. +Here and there the blossomy tamarisk adorned the roadside. There was a +curious gnarled and twisted black tree, without a single leaf on it. +It might have passed itself off for a dead apple tree but for the fact +that it had a a star-like, red-hot flower sprinkled sparsely over its +person. It had the scattery red glow that a constellation might have +when glimpsed through smoked glass. It is possible that our +constellations have been so constructed as to be invisible through smoked +glass; if this is so it is a great mistake. + +We saw a tree that bears grapes, and just as calmly and unostentatiously +as a vine would do it. We saw an India-rubber tree, but out of season, +possibly, so there were no shoes on it, nor suspenders, nor anything that +a person would properly expect to find there. This gave it an +impressively fraudulent look. There was exactly one mahogany tree on the +island. I know this to be reliable, because I saw a man who said he had +counted it many a time and could not be mistaken. He was a man with a +harelip and a pure heart, and everybody said he was as true as steel. +Such men are all too few. + +One's eye caught near and far the pink cloud of the oleander and the +red blaze of the pomegranate blossom. In one piece of wild wood the +morning-glory vines had wrapped the trees to their very tops, and +decorated them all over with couples and clusters of great bluebells--a +fine and striking spectacle, at a little distance. But the dull cedar is +everywhere, and is the prevailing foliage. One does not appreciate how +dull it is until the varnished, bright green attire of the infrequent +lemon tree pleasantly intrudes its contrast. In one thing Bermuda is +eminently tropical--was in May, at least--the unbrilliant, slightly +faded, unrejoicing look of the landscape. For forests arrayed in a +blemishless magnificence of glowing green foliage that seems to exult in +its own existence and can move the beholder to an enthusiasm that will +make him either shout or cry, one must go to countries that have +malignant winters. + +We saw scores of colored farmers digging their crops of potatoes and +onions, their wives and children helping--entirely contented and +comfortable, if looks go for anything. We never met a man, or woman, or +child anywhere in this sunny island who seemed to be unprosperous, or +discontented, or sorry about anything. This sort of monotony became very +tiresome presently, and even something worse. The spectacle of an entire +nation groveling in contentment is an infuriating thing. We felt the +lack of something in this community--a vague, an indefinable, an elusive +something, and yet a lack. But after considerable thought we made out +what it was--tramps. Let them go there, right now, in a body. It is +utterly virgin soil. Passage is cheap. Every true patriot in America +will help buy tickets. Whole armies of these excellent beings can be +spared from our midst and our polls; they will find a delicious climate +and a green, kind-hearted people. There are potatoes and onions for all, +and a generous welcome for the first batch that arrives, and elegant +graves for the second. + +It was the Early Rose potato the people were digging. Later in the year +they have another crop, which they call the Garnet. We buy their +potatoes (retail) at fifteen dollars a barrel; and those colored farmers +buy ours for a song, and live on them. Havana might exchange cigars with +Connecticut in the same advantageous way, if she thought of it. + +We passed a roadside grocery with a sign up, "Potatoes Wanted." An +ignorant stranger, doubtless. He could not have gone thirty steps from +his place without finding plenty of them. + +In several fields the arrowroot crop was already sprouting. Bermuda used +to make a vast annual profit out of this staple before firearms came into +such general use. + +The island is not large. Somewhere in the interior a man ahead of us had +a very slow horse. I suggested that we had better go by him; but the +driver said the man had but a little way to go. I waited to see, +wondering how he could know. Presently the man did turn down another +road. I asked, "How did you know he would?" + +"Because I knew the man, and where he lived." + +I asked him, satirically, if he knew everybody in the island; he +answered, very simply, that he did. This gives a body's mind a good +substantial grip on the dimensions of the place. + +At the principal hotel at St. George's, a young girl, with a sweet, +serious face, said we could not be furnished with dinner, because we had +not been expected, and no preparation had been made. Yet it was still an +hour before dinner-time. We argued, she yielded not; we supplicated, she +was serene. The hotel had not been expecting an inundation of two +people, and so it seemed that we should have to go home dinnerless. +I said we were not very hungry a fish would do. My little maid answered, +it was not the market-day for fish. Things began to look serious; but +presently the boarder who sustained the hotel came in, and when the case +was laid before him he was cheerfully willing to divide. So we had much +pleasant chat at table about St. George's chief industry, the repairing +of damaged ships; and in between we had a soup that had something in it +that seemed to taste like the hereafter, but it proved to be only pepper +of a particularly vivacious kind. And we had an iron-clad chicken that +was deliciously cooked, but not in the right way. Baking was not the +thing to convince this sort. He ought to have been put through a +quartz-mill until the "tuck" was taken out of him, and then boiled till +we came again. We got a good deal of sport out of him, but not enough +sustenance to leave the victory on our side. No matter; we had potatoes +and a pie and a sociable good time. Then a ramble through the town, +which is a quaint one, with interesting, crooked streets, and narrow, +crooked lanes, with here and there a grain of dust. Here, as in +Hamilton, the dwellings had Venetian blinds of a very sensible pattern. +They were not double shutters, hinged at the sides, but a single broad +shutter, hinged at the top; you push it outward, from the bottom, and +fasten it at any angle required by the sun or desired by yourself. + +All about the island one sees great white scars on the hill-slopes. +These are dished spaces where the soil has been scraped off and the coral +exposed and glazed with hard whitewash. Some of these are a quarter-acre +in size. They catch and carry the rainfall to reservoirs; for the wells +are few and poor, and there are no natural springs and no brooks. + +They say that the Bermuda climate is mild and equable, with never any +snow or ice, and that one may be very comfortable in spring clothing the +year round, there. We had delightful and decided summer weather in May, +with a flaming sun that permitted the thinnest of raiment, and yet there +was a constant breeze; consequently we were never discomforted by heat. +At four or five in the afternoon the mercury began to go down, and then +it became necessary to change to thick garments. I went to St. George's +in the morning clothed in the thinnest of linen, and reached home at five +in the afternoon with two overcoats on. The nights are said to be always +cool and bracing. We had mosquito-nets, and the Reverend said the +mosquitoes persecuted him a good deal. I often heard him slapping and +banging at these imaginary creatures with as much zeal as if they had +been real. There are no mosquitoes in the Bermudas in May. + +The poet Thomas Moore spent several months in Bermuda more than seventy +years ago. He was sent out to be registrar of the admiralty. I am not +quite clear as to the function of a registrar of the admiralty of +Bermuda, but I think it is his duty to keep a record of all the admirals +born there. I will inquire into this. There was not much doing in +admirals, and Moore got tired and went away. A reverently preserved +souvenir of him is still one of the treasures of the islands: I gathered +the idea, vaguely, that it was a jug, but was persistently thwarted in +the twenty-two efforts I made to visit it. However, it was no matter, +for I found out afterward that it was only a chair. + +There are several "sights" in the Bermudas, of course, but they are +easily avoided. This is a great advantage--one cannot have it in Europe. +Bermuda is the right country for a jaded man to "loaf" in. There are no +harassments; the deep peace and quiet of the country sink into one's body +and bones and give his conscience a rest, and chloroform the legion of +invisible small devils that are always trying to whitewash his hair. +A good many Americans go there about the first of March and remain until +the early spring weeks have finished their villainies at home. + +The Bermudians are hoping soon to have telegraphic communication with the +world. But even after they shall have acquired this curse it will still +be a good country to go to for a vacation, for there are charming little +islets scattered about the inclosed sea where one could live secure from +interruption. The telegraph-boy would have to come in a boat, and one +could easily kill him while he was making his landing. + +We had spent four days in Bermuda--three bright ones out of doors and one +rainy one in the house, we being disappointed about getting a yacht for a +sail; and now our furlough was ended, and we entered into the ship again +and sailed homeward. + +We made the run home to New York quarantine in three days and five hours, +and could have gone right along up to the city if we had had a health +permit. But health permits are not granted after seven in the evening, +partly because a ship cannot be inspected and overhauled with exhaustive, +thoroughness except in daylight, and partly because health-officers are +liable to catch cold if they expose themselves to the night air. Still, +you can buy a permit after hours for five dollars extra, and the officer +will do the inspecting next week. Our ship and passengers lay under +expense and in humiliating captivity all night, under the very nose of +the little official reptile who is supposed to protect New York from +pestilence by his vigilant "inspections." This imposing rigor gave +everybody a solemn and awful idea of the beneficent watchfulness of our +government, and there were some who wondered if anything finer could be +found in other countries. + +In the morning we were all a-tiptoe to witness the intricate ceremony +of inspecting the ship. But it was a disappointing thing. The +health-officer's tug ranged alongside for a moment, our purser handed the +lawful three-dollar permit fee to the health-officer's bootblack, who +passed us a folded paper in a forked stick, and away we went. The entire +"inspection" did not occupy thirteen seconds. + +The health-officer's place is worth a hundred thousand dollars a year to +him. His system of inspection is perfect, and therefore cannot be +improved on; but it seems to me that his system of collecting his fees +might be amended. For a great ship to lie idle all night is a most +costly loss of time; for her passengers to have to do the same thing +works to them the same damage, with the addition of an amount of +exasperation and bitterness of soul that the spectacle of that +health-officer's ashes on a shovel could hardly sweeten. Now why would +it not be better and simpler to let the ships pass in unmolested, and the +fees and permits be exchanged once a year by post. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Rambling Notes of an Idle +Excursion, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +THE STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT + +by Mark Twain + + + +[Left out of A Tramp Abroad, because it was feared that some of the +particulars had been exaggerated, and that others were not true. Before +these suspicions had been proven groundless, the book had gone to press. +--M. T.] + + + +The following curious history was related to me by a chance railway +acquaintance. He was a gentleman more than seventy years of age, and his +thoroughly good and gentle face and earnest and sincere manner imprinted +the unmistakable stamp of truth upon every statement which fell from his +lips. He said: + +You know in what reverence the royal white elephant of Siam is held by +the people of that country. You know it is sacred to kings, only kings +may possess it, and that it is, indeed, in a measure even superior to +kings, since it receives not merely honor but worship. Very well; five +years ago, when the troubles concerning the frontier line arose between +Great Britain and Siam, it was presently manifest that Siam had been in +the wrong. Therefore every reparation was quickly made, and the British +representative stated that he was satisfied and the past should be +forgotten. This greatly relieved the King of Siam, and partly as a token +of gratitude, partly also, perhaps, to wipe out any little remaining +vestige of unpleasantness which England might feel toward him, he wished +to send the Queen a present--the sole sure way of propitiating an enemy, +according to Oriental ideas. This present ought not only to be a royal +one, but transcendently royal. Wherefore, what offering could be so meet +as that of a white elephant? My position in the Indian civil service was +such that I was deemed peculiarly worthy of the honor of conveying the +present to her Majesty. A ship was fitted out for me and my servants and +the officers and attendants of the elephant, and in due time I arrived in +New York harbor and placed my royal charge in admirable quarters in +Jersey City. It was necessary to remain awhile in order to recruit the +animal's health before resuming the voyage. + +All went well during a fortnight--then my calamities began. The white +elephant was stolen! I was called up at dead of night and informed of +this fearful misfortune. For some moments I was beside myself with +terror and anxiety; I was helpless. Then I grew calmer and collected my +faculties. I soon saw my course--for, indeed, there was but the one +course for an intelligent man to pursue. Late as it was, I flew to New +York and got a policeman to conduct me to the headquarters of the +detective force. Fortunately I arrived in time, though the chief of the +force, the celebrated Inspector Blunt was just on the point of leaving +for his home. He was a man of middle size and compact frame, and when he +was thinking deeply he had a way of kniting his brows and tapping his +forehead reflectively with his finger, which impressed you at once with +the conviction that you stood in the presence of a person of no common +order. The very sight of him gave me confidence and made me hopeful. +I stated my errand. It did not flurry him in the least; it had no more +visible effect upon his iron self-possession than if I had told him +somebody had stolen my dog. He motioned me to a seat, and said, calmly: + +"Allow me to think a moment, please." + +So saying, he sat down at his office table and leaned his head upon his +hand. Several clerks were at work at the other end of the room; the +scratching of their pens was all the sound I heard during the next six or +seven minutes. Meantime the inspector sat there, buried in thought. +Finally he raised his head, and there was that in the firm lines of his +face which showed me that his brain had done its work and his plan was +made. Said he--and his voice was low and impressive: + +"This is no ordinary case. Every step must be warily taken; each step +must be made sure before the next is ventured. And secrecy must be +observed--secrecy profound and absolute. Speak to no one about the +matter, not even the reporters. I will take care of them; I will see +that they get only what it may suit my ends to let them know." He +touched a bell; a youth appeared. "Alaric, tell the reporters to remain +for the present." The boy retired. "Now let us proceed to business--and +systematically. Nothing can be accomplished in this trade of mine +without strict and minute method." + +He took a pen and some paper. "Now--name of the elephant?" + +"Hassan Ben Ali Ben Selim Abdallah Mohammed Moist Alhammal +Jamsetjejeebhoy Dhuleep Sultan Ebu Bhudpoor." + +"Very well. Given name?" + +"Jumbo." + +"Very well. Place of birth?" + +"The capital city of Siam." + +"Parents living?" + +"No--dead." + +"Had they any other issue besides this one?" + +"None. He was an only child." + +"Very well. These matters are sufficient under that head. Now please +describe the elephant, and leave out no particular, however +insignificant--that is, insignificant from your point of view. To me in +my profession there are no insignificant particulars; they do not exist." + +I described he wrote. When I was done, he said: + +"Now listen. If I have made any mistakes, correct me." + +He read as follows: + +"Height, 19 feet; length from apex of forehead insertion of tail, 26 +feet; length of trunk, 16 feet; length of tail, 6 feet; total length, +including trunk, and tail, 48 feet; length of tusks, 9 feet; ears +keeping with these dimensions; footprint resembles the mark left when one +up-ends a barrel in the snow; the color of the elephant, a dull white; +has a hole the size of a plate in each ear for the insertion of jewelry +and possesses the habit in a remarkable degree of squirting water upon +spectators and of maltreating with his trunk not only such persons as he +is acquainted with, but even entire strangers; limps slightly with his +right hind leg, and has a small scar in his left armpit caused by a +former boil; had on, when stolen, a castle containing seats for fifteen +persons, and a gold-cloth saddle-blanket the size of an ordinary carpet." + +There were no mistakes. The inspector touched the bell, handed the +description to Alaric, and said: + +"Have fifty thousand copies of this printed at once and mailed to every +detective office and pawnbroker's shop on the continent." Alaric +retired. "There--so far, so good. Next, I must have a photograph of the +property." + +I gave him one. He examined it critically, and said: + +"It must do, since we can do no better; but he has his trunk curled up +and tucked into his mouth. That is unfortunate, and is calculated to +mislead, for of course he does not usually have it in that position." +He touched his bell. + +"Alaric, have fifty thousand copies of this photograph made the first +thing in the morning, and mail them with the descriptive circulars." + +Alaric retired to execute his orders. The inspector said: + +"It will be necessary to offer a reward, of course. Now as to the +amount?" + +"What sum would you suggest?" + +"To begin with, I should say--well, twenty-five thousand dollars. It is +an intricate and difficult business; there are a thousand avenues of +escape and opportunities of concealment. These thieves have friends and +pals everywhere--" + +"Bless me, do you know who they are?" + +The wary face, practised in concealing the thoughts and feelings within, +gave me no token, nor yet the replying words, so quietly uttered: + +"Never mind about that. I may, and I may not. We generally gather a +pretty shrewd inkling of who our man is by the manner of his work and the +size of the game he goes after. We are not dealing with a pickpocket or +a hall thief now, make up your mind to that. This property was not +'lifted' by a novice. But, as I was saying, considering the amount of +travel which will have to be done, and the diligence with which the +thieves will cover up their traces as they move along, twenty-five +thousand may be too small a sum to offer, yet I think it worth while to +start with that." + +So we determined upon that figure as a beginning. Then this man, whom +nothing escaped which could by any possibility be made to serve as a +clue, said: + +"There are cases in detective history to show that criminals have been +detected through peculiarities, in their appetites. Now, what does this +elephant eat, and how much?" + +"Well, as to what he eats--he will eat anything. He will eat a man, he +will eat a Bible--he will eat anything between a man and a Bible." + +"Good very good, indeed, but too general. Details are necessary--details +are the only valuable things in our trade. Very well--as to men. At one +meal--or, if you prefer, during one day--how man men will he eat, if +fresh?" + +"He would not care whether they were fresh or not; at a single meal he +would eat five ordinary men. + +"Very good; five men; we will put that down. What nationalities would he +prefer?" + +"He is indifferent about nationalities. He prefers acquaintances, but is +not prejudiced against strangers." + +"Very good. Now, as to Bibles. How many Bibles would he eat at a meal?" + +"He would eat an entire edition." + +"It is hardly succinct enough. Do you mean the ordinary octavo, or the +family illustrated?" + +"I think he would be indifferent to illustrations that is, I think he +would not value illustrations above simple letterpress." + +"No, you do not get my idea. I refer to bulk. The ordinary octavo Bible +weighs about two pound; and a half, while the great quarto with the +illustrations weighs ten or twelve. How many Dore Bibles would he eat at +a meal?" + +"If you knew this elephant, you could not ask. He would take what they +had." + +"Well, put it in dollars and cents, then. We must get at it somehow. +The Dore costs a hundred dollars a copy, Russia leather, beveled." + +"He would require about fifty thousand dollars worth--say an edition of +five hundred copies." + +"Now that is more exact. I will put that down. Very well; he likes men +and Bibles; so far, so good. What else will he eat? I want +particulars." + +"He will leave Bibles to eat bricks, he will leave bricks to eat bottles, +he will leave bottles to eat clothing, he will leave clothing to eat +cats, he will leave cats to eat oysters, he will leave oysters to eat +ham, he will leave ham to eat sugar, he will leave sugar to eat pie, he +will leave pie to eat potatoes, he will leave potatoes to eat bran; he +will leave bran to eat hay, he will leave hay to eat oats, he will leave +oats to eat rice, for he was mainly raised on it. There is nothing +whatever that he will not eat but European butter, and he would eat that +if he could taste it." + +"Very good. General quantity at a meal--say about--" + +"Well, anywhere from a quarter to half a ton." + +"And he drinks--" + +"Everything that is fluid. Milk, water, whisky, molasses, castor oil, +camphene, carbolic acid--it is no use to go into particulars; whatever +fluid occurs to you set it down. He will drink anything that is fluid, +except European coffee." + +"Very good. As to quantity?" + +"Put it down five to fifteen barrels--his thirst varies; his other +appetites do not." + +"These things are unusual. They ought to furnish quite good clues toward +tracing him." + +He touched the bell. + +"Alaric; summon Captain Burns." + +Burns appeared. Inspector Blunt unfolded the whole matter to him, detail +by detail. Then he said in the clear, decisive tones of a man whose +plans are clearly defined in his head and who is accustomed to command: + +"Captain Burns, detail Detectives Jones, Davis, Halsey, Bates, and +Hackett to shadow the elephant." + +"Yes, sir." + +"Detail Detectives Moses, Dakin, Murphy, Rogers, Tupper, Higgins, and +Bartholomew to shadow the thieves." + +"Yes, sir." + +"Place a strong guard--A guard of thirty picked men, with a relief of +thirty--over the place from whence the elephant was stolen, to keep +strict watch there night and day, and allow none to approach--except +reporters--without written authority from me." + +"Yes, sir." + +"Place detectives in plain clothes in the railway; steamship, and ferry +depots, and upon all roadways leading out of Jersey City, with orders to +search all suspicious persons." + +"Yes, sir." + +"Furnish all these men with photograph and accompanying description of +the elephant, and instruct them to search all trains and outgoing +ferryboats and other vessels." + +"Yes, sir." + +"If the elephant should be found, let him be seized, and the information +forwarded to me by telegraph." + +"Yes, sir." + +"Let me be informed at once if any clues should be found footprints of +the animal, or anything of that kind." + +"Yes, sir." + +"Get an order commanding the harbor police to patrol the frontages +vigilantly." + +"Yes, sir." + +"Despatch detectives in plain clothes over all the railways, north as far +as Canada, west as far as Ohio, south as far as Washington." + +"Yes, sir." + +"Place experts in all the telegraph offices to listen in to all messages; +and let them require that all cipher despatches be interpreted to them." + +"Yes, sir." + +"Let all these things be done with the utmost's secrecy--mind, the most +impenetrable secrecy." + +"Yes, sir." + +"Report to me promptly at the usual hour." + +"Yes, Sir." + +"Go!" + +"Yes, sir." + +He was gone. + +Inspector Blunt was silent and thoughtful a moment, while the fire in his +eye cooled down and faded out. Then he turned to me and said in a placid +voice: + +"I am not given to boasting, it is not my habit; but--we shall find the +elephant." + +I shook him warmly by the hand and thanked him; and I felt my thanks, +too. The more I had seen of the man the more I liked him and the more I +admired him and marveled over the mysterious wonders of his profession. +Then we parted for the night, and I went home with a far happier heart +than I had carried with me to his office. + + +II + +Next morning it was all in the newspapers, in the minutest detail. It +even had additions--consisting of Detective This, Detective That, and +Detective The Other's "Theory" as to how the robbery was done, who the +robbers were, and whither they had flown with their booty. There were +eleven of these theories, and they covered all the possibilities; and +this single fact shows what independent thinkers detectives are. No two +theories were alike, or even much resembled each other, save in one +striking particular, and in that one all the other eleven theories were +absolutely agreed. That was, that although the rear of my building was +torn out and the only door remained locked, the elephant had not been +removed through the rent, but by some other (undiscovered) outlet. +All agreed that the robbers had made that rent only to mislead the +detectives. That never would have occurred to me or to any other layman, +perhaps, but it had not deceived the detectives for a moment. Thus, what +I had supposed was the only thing that had no mystery about it was in +fact the very thing I had gone furthest astray in. The eleven theories +all named the supposed robbers, but no two named the same robbers; the +total number of suspected persons was thirty-seven. The various +newspaper accounts all closed with the most important opinion of all +--that of Chief Inspector Blunt. A portion of this statement read as +follows: + + The chief knows who the two principals are, namely, "Brick" Daffy + and "Red" McFadden. Ten days before the robbery was achieved he was + already aware that it was to be attempted, and had quietly proceeded + to shadow these two noted villains; but unfortunately on the night + in question their track was lost, and before it could be found again + the bird was flown--that is, the elephant. + + Daffy and McFadden are the boldest scoundrels in the profession; the + chief has reasons for believing that they are the men who stole the + stove out of the detective headquarters on a bitter night last + winter--in consequence of which the chief and every detective + present were in the hands of the physicians before morning, some + with frozen feet, others with frozen fingers, ears, and other + members. + +When I read the first half of that I was more astonished than ever at the +wonderful sagacity of this strange man. He not only saw everything in +the present with a clear eye, but even the future could not be hidden +from him. I was soon at his office, and said I could not help wishing he +had had those men arrested, and so prevented the trouble and loss; but +his reply was simple and unanswerable: + +"It is not our province to prevent crime, but to punish it. We cannot +punish it until it is committed." + +I remarked that the secrecy with which we had begun had been marred by +the newspapers; not only all our facts but all our plans and purposes had +been revealed; even all the suspected persons had been named; these would +doubtless disguise themselves now, or go into hiding. + +"Let them. They will find that when I am ready for them my hand will +descend upon them, in their secret places, as unerringly as the hand of +fate. As to the newspapers, we must keep in with them. Fame, +reputation, constant public mention--these are the detective's bread and +butter. He must publish his facts, else he will be supposed to have +none; he must publish his theory, for nothing is so strange or striking +as a detective's theory, or brings him so much wonderful respect; we must +publish our plans, for these the journals insist upon having, and we +could not deny them without offending. We must constantly show the +public what we are doing, or they will believe we are doing nothing. +It is much pleasanter to have a newspaper say, 'Inspector Blunt's +ingenious and extraordinary theory is as follows,' than to have it say +some harsh thing, or, worse still, some sarcastic one." + +"I see the force of what you say. But I noticed that in one part of your +remarks in the papers this morning you refused to reveal your opinion +upon a certain minor point." + +"Yes, we always do that; it has a good effect. Besides, I had not formed +any opinion on that point, anyway." + +I deposited a considerable sum of money with the inspector, to meet +current expenses, and sat down to wait for news. We were expecting the +telegrams to begin to arrive at any moment now. Meantime I reread the +newspapers and also our descriptive circular, and observed that our +twenty-five thousand dollars reward seemed to be offered only to +detectives. I said I thought it ought to be offered to anybody who would +catch the elephant. The inspector said: + +"It is the detectives who will find the elephant; hence the reward will +go to the right place. If other people found the animal, it would only +be by watching the detectives and taking advantage of clues and +indications stolen from them, and that would entitle the detectives to +the reward, after all. The proper office of a reward is to stimulate the +men who deliver up their time and their trained sagacities to this sort +of work, and not to confer benefits upon chance citizens who stumble upon +a capture without having earned the benefits by their own merits and +labors." + +This was reasonable enough, certainly. Now the telegraphic machine in +the corner began to click, and the following despatch was the result: + + FLOWER STATION, N. Y., 7.30 A.M. + Have got a clue. Found a succession of deep tracks across a farm + near here. Followed them two miles east without result; think + elephant went west. Shall now shadow him in that direction. + DARLEY, Detective. + +"Darley's one of the best men on the force," said the inspector. "We +shall hear from him again before long." + +Telegram No. 2 came: + + BARKER'S, N. J., 7.40 A.M. + Just arrived. Glass factory broken open here during night, and + eight hundred bottles taken. Only water in large quantity near here + is five miles distant. Shall strike for there. Elephant will be + thirsty. Bottles were empty. + DARLEY, Detective. + +"That promises well, too," said the inspector. + +"I told you the creature's appetites would not be bad clues." + +Telegram No. 3: + + TAYLORVILLE, L. I. 8.15 A.M. + A haystack near here disappeared during night. Probably eaten. + Have got a clue, and am off. + HUBBARD, Detective. + +"How he does move around!" said the inspector "I knew we had a difficult +job on hand, but we shall catch him yet." + + FLOWER STATION, N. Y., 9 A.M. + Shadowed the tracks three miles westward. Large, deep, and ragged. + Have just met a farmer who says they are not elephant-tracks. Says + they are holes where he dug up saplings for shade-trees when ground + was frozen last winter. Give me orders how to proceed. + DARLEY, Detective. + +"Aha! a confederate of the thieves! The thing, grows warm," said the +inspector. + +He dictated the following telegram to Darley: + + Arrest the man and force him to name his pals. Continue to follow + the tracks to the Pacific, if necessary. + Chief BLUNT. + +Next telegram: + + CONEY POINT, PA., 8.45 A.M. + Gas office broken open here during night and three month; unpaid gas + bills taken. Have got a clue and am away. + MURPHY, Detective. + +"Heavens!" said the inspector; "would he eat gas bills?" + +"Through ignorance--yes; but they cannot support life. At least, +unassisted." + +Now came this exciting telegram: + + IRONVILLE, N. Y., 9.30 A.M. + Just arrived. This village in consternation. Elephant passed + through here at five this morning. Some say he went east some say + west, some north, some south--but all say they did not wait to + notice, particularly. He killed a horse; have secure a piece of it + for a clue. Killed it with his trunk; from style of blow, think he + struck it left-handed. From position in which horse lies, think + elephant traveled northward along line Berkley Railway. Has four + and a half hours' start, but I move on his track at once. + HAWES, Detective + +I uttered exclamations of joy. The inspector was as self-contained as a +graven image. He calmly touched his bell. + +"Alaric, send Captain Burns here." + +Burns appeared. + +"How many men are ready for instant orders?" + +"Ninety-six, sir." + +"Send them north at once. Let them concentrate along the line of the +Berkley road north of Ironville." + +"Yes, sir." + +"Let them conduct their movements with the utmost secrecy. As fast as +others are at liberty, hold them for orders." + +"Yes, sir." + +"Go!" + +"Yes, sir." + +Presently came another telegram: + + SAGE CORNERS, N. Y., 10.30. + Just arrived. Elephant passed through here at 8.15. All escaped + from the town but a policeman. Apparently elephant did not strike + at policeman, but at the lamp-post. Got both. I have secured a + portion of the policeman as clue. + STUMM, Detective. + +"So the elephant has turned westward," said the inspector. "However, he +will not escape, for my men are scattered all over that region." + +The next telegram said: + + GLOVER'S, 11.15 +Just arrived. Village deserted, except sick and aged. Elephant passed +through three-quarters of an hour ago. The anti-temperance mass-meeting +was in session; he put his trunk in at a window and washed it out with +water from cistern. Some swallowed it--since dead; several drowned. +Detectives Cross and O'Shaughnessy were passing through town, but going +south--so missed elephant. Whole region for many miles around in terror +--people flying from their homes. Wherever they turn they meet elephant, +and many are killed. + BRANT, Detective. + +I could have shed tears, this havoc so distressed me. But the inspector +only said: + +"You see--we are closing in on him. He feels our presence; he has turned +eastward again." + +Yet further troublous news was in store for us. The telegraph brought +this: + + HOGANSPORT, 12.19. + Just arrived. Elephant passed through half an hour ago, creating + wildest fright and excitement. Elephant raged around streets; two + plumbers going by, killed one--other escaped. Regret general. + O'FLAHERTY, Detective. + +"Now he is right in the midst of my men," said the inspector. "Nothing +can save him." + +A succession of telegrams came from detectives who were scattered through +New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and who were following clues consisting of +ravaged barns, factories, and Sunday-school libraries, with high +hopes-hopes amounting to certainties, indeed. The inspector said: + +"I wish I could communicate with them and order them north, but that is +impossible. A detective only visits a telegraph office to send his +report; then he is off again, and you don't know where to put your hand +on him." + +Now came this despatch: + + BRIDGEPORT, CT., 12.15. + Barnum offers rate of $4,000 a year for exclusive privilege of using + elephant as traveling advertising medium from now till detectives + find him. Wants to paste circus-posters on him. Desires immediate + answer. + BOGGS, Detective. + +"That is perfectly absurd!" I exclaimed. + +"Of course it is," said the inspector. "Evidently Mr. Barnum, who thinks +he is so sharp, does not know me--but I know him." + +Then he dictated this answer to the despatch: + + Mr. Barnum's offer declined. Make it $7,000 or nothing. + Chief BLUNT. + +"There. We shall not have to wait long for an answer. Mr. Barnum is +not at home; he is in the telegraph office--it is his way when he has +business on hand. Inside of three--" + + Done.--P. T. BARNUM. + +So interrupted the clicking telegraphic instrument. Before I could make +a comment upon this extraordinary episode, the following despatch carried +my thoughts into another and very distressing channel: + + BOLIVIA, N. Y., 12.50. + Elephant arrived here from the south and passed through toward the + forest at 11.50, dispersing a funeral on the way, and diminishing + the mourners by two. Citizens fired some small cannon-balls into + him, and they fled. Detective Burke and I arrived ten minutes + later, from the north, but mistook some excavations for footprints, + and so lost a good deal of time; but at last we struck the right + trail and followed it to the woods. We then got down on our hands + and knees and continued to keep a sharp eye on the track, and so + shadowed it into the brush. Burke was in advance. Unfortunately + the animal had stopped to rest; therefore, Burke having his head + down, intent upon the track, butted up against the elephant's hind + legs before he was aware of his vicinity. Burke instantly arose to + his feet, seized the tail, and exclaimed joyfully, "I claim the + re--" but got no further, for a single blow of the huge trunk laid + the brave fellow's fragments low in death. I fled rearward, and the + elephant turned and shadowed me to the edge of the wood, making + tremendous speed, and I should inevitably have been lost, but that + the remains of the funeral providentially intervened again and + diverted his attention. I have just learned that nothing of that + funeral is now left; but this is no loss, for there is abundance of + material for another. Meantime, the elephant has disappeared again. + MULROONEY, Detective. + +We heard no news except from the diligent and confident detectives +scattered about New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia--who +were all following fresh and encouraging clues--until shortly after +2 P.M., when this telegram came: + + BAXTER CENTER, 2.15. + Elephant been here, plastered over with circus-bills, any broke up a + revival, striking down and damaging many who were on the point of + entering upon a better life. Citizens penned him up and established + a guard. When Detective Brown and I arrived, some time after, we + entered inclosure and proceeded to identify elephant by photograph + and description. All masks tallied exactly except one, which we + could not see--the boil-scar under armpit. To make sure, Brown + crept under to look, and was immediately brained--that is, head + crushed and destroyed, though nothing issued from debris. All fled + so did elephant, striking right and left with much effect. He + escaped, but left bold blood-track from cannon-wounds. Rediscovery + certain. He broke southward, through a dense forest. + BRENT, Detective. + +That was the last telegram. At nightfall a fog shut down which was so +dense that objects but three feet away could not be discerned. This +lasted all night. The ferry-boats and even the omnibuses had to stop +running. + + + +III + +Next morning the papers were as full of detective theories as before; +they had all our tragic facts in detail also, and a great many more which +they had received from their telegraphic correspondents. Column after +column was occupied, a third of its way down, with glaring head-lines, +which it made my heart sick to read. Their general tone was like this: + + THE WHITE ELEPHANT AT LARGE! HE MOVES UPON HIS FATAL MARCH WHOLE + VILLAGES DESERTED BY THEIR FRIGHT-STRICKEN OCCUPANTS! PALE TERROR + GOES BEFORE HIM, DEATH AND DEVASTATION FOLLOW AFTER! AFTER THESE, + THE DETECTIVES! BARNS DESTROYED, FACTORIES GUTTED, HARVESTS + DEVOURED, PUBLIC ASSEMBLAGES DISPERSED, ACCOMPANIED BY SCENES OF + CARNAGE IMPOSSIBLE TO DESCRIBE! THEORIES OF THIRTY-FOUR OF THE MOST + DISTINGUISHED DETECTIVES ON THE FORCES! THEORY OF CHIEF BLUNT! + +"There!" said Inspector Blunt, almost betrayed into excitement, "this is +magnificent! This is the greatest windfall that any detective +organization ever had. The fame of it will travel to the ends of the +earth, and endure to the end of time, and my name with it." + +But there was no joy for me. I felt as if I had committed all those red +crimes, and that the elephant was only my irresponsible agent. And how +the list had grown! In one place he had "interfered with an election and +killed five repeaters." He had followed this act with the destruction of +two pool fellows, named O'Donohue and McFlannigan, who had "found a +refuge in the home of the oppressed of all lands only the day before, and +were in the act of exercising for the first time the noble right of +American citizens at the polls, when stricken down by the relentless +hand of the Scourge of Siam." In another, he had "found a crazy +sensation-preacher preparing his next season's heroic attacks on the +dance, the theater, and other things which can't strike back, and had +stepped on him." And in still another place he had "killed a +lightning-rod agent." And so the list went on, growing redder and redder, +and more and more heartbreaking. Sixty persons had been killed, and two +hundred and forty wounded. All the accounts bore just testimony to the +activity and devotion of the detectives, and all closed with the remark +that "three hundred thousand citizen; and four detectives saw the dread +creature, and two of the latter he destroyed." + +I dreaded to hear the telegraphic instrument begin to click again. +By and by the messages began to pour in, but I was happily disappointed +in they nature. It was soon apparent that all trace of the elephant was +lost. The fog had enabled him to search out a good hiding-place +unobserved. Telegrams from the most absurdly distant points reported +that a dim vast mass had been glimpsed there through the fog at such and +such an hour, and was "undoubtedly the elephant." This dim vast mass had +been glimpsed in New Haven, in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, in interior +New York, in Brooklyn, and even in the city of New York itself! But in +all cases the dim vast mass had vanished quickly and left no trace. +Every detective of the large force scattered over this huge extent of +country sent his hourly report, and each and every one of them had a +clue, and was shadowing something, and was hot upon the heels of it. + +But the day passed without other result. + +The next day the same. + +The next just the same. + +The newspaper reports began to grow monotonous with facts that amounted +to nothing, clues which led to nothing, and theories which had nearly +exhausted the elements which surprise and delight and dazzle. + +By advice of the inspector I doubled the reward. + +Four more dull days followed. Then came a bitter blow to the poor, +hard-working detectives--the journalists declined to print their +theories, and coldly said, "Give us a rest." + +Two weeks after the elephant's disappearance I raised the reward to +seventy-five thousand dollars by the inspector's advice. It was a great +sum, but I felt that I would rather sacrifice my whole private fortune +than lose my credit with my government. Now that the detectives were in +adversity, the newspapers turned upon them, and began to fling the most +stinging sarcasms at them. This gave the minstrels an idea, and they +dressed themselves as detectives and hunted the elephant on the stage in +the most extravagant way. The caricaturists made pictures of detectives +scanning the country with spy-glasses, while the elephant, at their +backs, stole apples out of their pockets. And they made all sorts of +ridiculous pictures of the detective badge--you have seen that badge +printed in gold on the back of detective novels, no doubt it is a +wide-staring eye, with the legend, "WE NEVER SLEEP." When detectives +called for a drink, the would-be facetious barkeeper resurrected an +obsolete form of expression and said, "Will you have an eye-opener?" +All the air was thick with sarcasms. + +But there was one man who moved calm, untouched, unaffected, through it +all. It was that heart of oak, the chief inspector. His brave eye never +drooped, his serene confidence never wavered. He always said: + +"Let them rail on; he laughs best who laughs last." + +My admiration for the man grew into a species of worship. I was at his +side always. His office had become an unpleasant place to me, and now +became daily more and more so. Yet if he could endure it I meant to do +so also--at least, as long as I could. So I came regularly, and stayed +--the only outsider who seemed to be capable of it. Everybody wondered +how I could; and often it seemed to me that I must desert, but at such +times I looked into that calm and apparently unconscious face, and held +my ground. + +About three weeks after the elephant's disappearance I was about to say, +one morning, that I should have to strike my colors and retire, when the +great detective arrested the thought by proposing one more superb and +masterly move. + +This was to compromise with the robbers. The fertility of this man's +invention exceeded anything I have ever seen, and I have had a wide +intercourse with the world's finest minds. He said he was confident he +could compromise for one hundred thousand dollars and recover the +elephant. I said I believed I could scrape the amount together, but what +would become of the poor detectives who had worked so faithfully? He +said: + +"In compromises they always get half." + +This removed my only objection. So the inspector wrote two notes, in +this form: + + DEAR MADAM,--Your husband can make a large sum of money (and be + entirely protected from the law) by making an immediate, appointment + with me. Chief BLUNT. + +He sent one of these by his confidential messenger to the "reputed wife" +of Brick Duffy, and the other to the reputed wife of Red McFadden. + +Within the hour these offensive answers came: + + YE OWLD FOOL: brick Duffys bin ded 2 yere. + BRIDGET MAHONEY. + + CHIEF BAT,--Red McFadden is hung and in heving 18 month. Any Ass + but a detective know that. + MARY O'HOOLIGAN. + +"I had long suspected these facts," said the inspector; "this testimony +proves the unerring accuracy of my instinct." + +The moment one resource failed him he was ready with another. He +immediately wrote an advertisement for the morning papers, and I kept a +copy of it: + + A.--xWhlv. 242 ht. Tjnd--fz328wmlg. Ozpo,--2 m! 2m!. M! ogw. + +He said that if the thief was alive this would bring him to the usual +rendezvous. He further explained that the usual rendezvous was a glare +where all business affairs between detectives and criminals were +conducted. This meeting would take place at twelve the next night. + +We could do nothing till then, and I lost no time in getting out of the +office, and was grateful indeed for the privilege. + +At eleven the next night I brought one hundred thousand dollars in +bank-notes and put them into the chief's hands, and shortly afterward he +took his leave, with the brave old undimmed confidence in his eye. +An almost intolerable hour dragged to a close; then I heard his welcome +tread, and rose gasping and tottered to meet him. How his fine eyes +flamed with triumph! He said: + +"We've compromised! The jokers will sing a different tune to-morrow! +Follow me!" + +He took a lighted candle and strode down into the vast vaulted basement +where sixty detectives always slept, and where a score were now playing +cards to while the time. I followed close after him. He walked swiftly +down to the dim and remote end of the place, and just as I succumbed to +the pangs of suffocation and was swooning away he stumbled and fell over +the outlying members of a mighty object, and I heard him exclaim as he +went down: + +"Our noble profession is vindicated. Here is your elephant!" + +I was carried to the office above and restored with carbolic acid. The +whole detective force swarmed in, and such another season of triumphant +rejoicing ensued as I had never witnessed before. The reporters were +called, baskets of champagne were opened, toasts were drunk, the +handshakings and congratulations were continuous and enthusiastic. +Naturally the chief was the hero of the hour, and his happiness was so +complete and had been so patiently and worthily and bravely won that it +made me happy to see it, though I stood there a homeless beggar, my +priceless charge dead, and my position in my country's service lost to me +through what would always seem my fatally careless execution of a great +trust. Many an eloquent eye testified its deep admiration for the chief, +and many a detective's voice murmured, "Look at him--just the king of the +profession; only give him a clue, it's all he wants, and there ain't +anything hid that he can't find." The dividing of the fifty thousand +dollars made great pleasure; when it was finished the chief made a little +speech while he put his share in his pocket, in which he said, "Enjoy it, +boys, for you've earned it; and, more than that, you've earned for the +detective profession undying fame." + +A telegram arrived, which read: + + MONROE, MICH., 10 P.M. +First time I've struck a telegraph office in over three weeks. Have +followed those footprints, horseback, through the woods, a thousand miles +to here, and they get stronger and bigger and fresher every day. Don't +worry-inside of another week I'll have the elephant. This is dead sure. + DARLEY, Detective. + +The chief ordered three cheers for "Darley, one of the finest minds on +the force," and then commanded that he be telegraphed to come home and +receive his share of the reward. + +So ended that marvelous episode of the stolen elephant. The newspapers +were pleasant with praises once more, the next day, with one contemptible +exception. This sheet said, "Great is the detective! He may be a little +slow in finding a little thing like a mislaid elephant he may hunt him +all day and sleep with his rotting carcass all night for three weeks, but +he will find him at last if he can get the man who mislaid him to show +him the place!" + +Poor Hassan was lost to me forever. The cannonshots had wounded him +fatally, he had crept to that unfriendly place in the fog, and there, +surrounded by his enemies and in constant danger of detection, he had +wasted away with hunger and suffering till death gave him peace. + +The compromise cost me one hundred thousand dollars; my detective +expenses were forty-two thousand dollars more; I never applied for a +place again under my government; I am a ruined man and a wanderer on the +earth but my admiration for that man, whom I believe to be the greatest +detective the world has ever produced, remains undimmed to this day, and +will so remain unto the end. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Stolen White Elephant +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + + A TRAMP ABROAD + + By Mark Twain + (Samuel L. Clemens) + + First published in 1880 + + + * * * * * * + + + +CHAPTER I +[The Knighted Knave of Bergen] + +One day it occurred to me that it had been many years +since the world had been afforded the spectacle of a man +adventurous enough to undertake a journey through Europe +on foot. After much thought, I decided that I was +a person fitted to furnish to mankind this spectacle. +So I determined to do it. This was in March, 1878. + +I looked about me for the right sort of person to +accompany me in the capacity of agent, and finally +hired a Mr. Harris for this service. + +It was also my purpose to study art while in Europe. +Mr. Harris was in sympathy with me in this. He was as much +of an enthusiast in art as I was, and not less anxious +to learn to paint. I desired to learn the German language; +so did Harris. + +Toward the middle of April we sailed in the HOLSATIA, +Captain Brandt, and had a very peasant trip, indeed. + +After a brief rest at Hamburg, we made preparations for +a long pedestrian trip southward in the soft spring weather, +but at the last moment we changed the program, +for private reasons, and took the express-train. + +We made a short halt at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and found +it an interesting city. I would have liked to visit +the birthplace of Gutenburg, but it could not be done, +as no memorandum of the site of the house has been kept. +So we spent an hour in the Goethe mansion instead. +The city permits this house to belong to private parties, +instead of gracing and dignifying herself with the honor +of possessing and protecting it. + +Frankfort is one of the sixteen cities which have +the distinction of being the place where the following +incident occurred. Charlemagne, while chasing the Saxons +(as HE said), or being chased by them (as THEY said), +arrived at the bank of the river at dawn, in a fog. +The enemy were either before him or behind him; +but in any case he wanted to get across, very badly. +He would have given anything for a guide, but none was to +be had. Presently he saw a deer, followed by her young, +approach the water. He watched her, judging that she +would seek a ford, and he was right. She waded over, +and the army followed. So a great Frankish victory or +defeat was gained or avoided; and in order to commemorate +the episode, Charlemagne commanded a city to be built there, +which he named Frankfort--the ford of the Franks. +None of the other cities where this event happened were +named for it. This is good evidence that Frankfort was +the first place it occurred at. + +Frankfort has another distinction--it is the birthplace +of the German alphabet; or at least of the German word +for alphabet --BUCHSTABEN. They say that the first movable +types were made on birch sticks--BUCHSTABE--hence the name. + +I was taught a lesson in political economy in Frankfort. +I had brought from home a box containing a thousand +very cheap cigars. By way of experiment, I stepped +into a little shop in a queer old back street, took four +gaily decorated boxes of wax matches and three cigars, +and laid down a silver piece worth 48 cents. The man gave +me 43 cents change. + +In Frankfort everybody wears clean clothes, and I think we +noticed that this strange thing was the case in Hamburg, too, +and in the villages along the road. Even in the narrowest +and poorest and most ancient quarters of Frankfort neat +and clean clothes were the rule. The little children +of both sexes were nearly always nice enough to take into +a body's lap. And as for the uniforms of the soldiers, +they were newness and brightness carried to perfection. +One could never detect a smirch or a grain of dust +upon them. The street-car conductors and drivers wore +pretty uniforms which seemed to be just out of the bandbox, +and their manners were as fine as their clothes. + +In one of the shops I had the luck to stumble upon a book +which has charmed me nearly to death. It is entitled +THE LEGENDS OF THE RHINE FROM BASLE TO ROTTERDAM, +by F. J. Kiefer; translated by L. W. Garnham, B.A. + +All tourists MENTION the Rhine legends--in that sort of way +which quietly pretends that the mentioner has been familiar +with them all his life, and that the reader cannot possibly +be ignorant of them--but no tourist ever TELLS them. +So this little book fed me in a very hungry place; and I, +in my turn, intend to feed my reader, with one or two +little lunches from the same larder. I shall not mar +Garnharn's translation by meddling with its English; +for the most toothsome thing about it is its quaint +fashion of building English sentences on the German plan +--and punctuating them accordingly to no plan at all. + +In the chapter devoted to "Legends of Frankfort," +I find the following: + +"THE KNAVE OF BERGEN" + +"In Frankfort at the Romer was a great mask-ball, at +the coronation festival, and in the illuminated saloon, +the clanging music invited to dance, and splendidly +appeared the rich toilets and charms of the ladies, +and the festively costumed Princes and Knights. +All seemed pleasure, joy, and roguish gaiety, only one of the +numerous guests had a gloomy exterior; but exactly the black +armor in which he walked about excited general attention, +and his tall figure, as well as the noble propriety of +his movements, attracted especially the regards of the ladies. +Who the Knight was? Nobody could guess, for his Vizier +was well closed, and nothing made him recognizable. +Proud and yet modest he advanced to the Empress; bowed on +one knee before her seat, and begged for the favor of a +waltz with the Queen of the festival. And she allowed +his request. With light and graceful steps he danced +through the long saloon, with the sovereign who thought +never to have found a more dexterous and excellent dancer. +But also by the grace of his manner, and fine conversation +he knew to win the Queen, and she graciously accorded him +a second dance for which he begged, a third, and a fourth, +as well as others were not refused him. How all regarded +the happy dancer, how many envied him the high favor; +how increased curiosity, who the masked knight could be. + +"Also the Emperor became more and more excited with curiosity, +and with great suspense one awaited the hour, when according +to mask-law, each masked guest must make himself known. +This moment came, but although all other unmasked; +the secret knight still refused to allow his features +to be seen, till at last the Queen driven by curiosity, +and vexed at the obstinate refusal; commanded him to open +his Vizier. He opened it, and none of the high ladies +and knights knew him. But from the crowded spectators, +2 officials advanced, who recognized the black dancer, +and horror and terror spread in the saloon, as they said who +the supposed knight was. It was the executioner of Bergen. +But glowing with rage, the King commanded to seize the +criminal and lead him to death, who had ventured to dance, +with the queen; so disgraced the Empress, and insulted +the crown. The culpable threw himself at the Emperor, +and said-- + +"'Indeed I have heavily sinned against all noble guests +assembled here, but most heavily against you my sovereign +and my queen. The Queen is insulted by my haughtiness +equal to treason, but no punishment even blood, will not +be able to wash out the disgrace, which you have suffered +by me. Therefore oh King! allow me to propose a remedy, +to efface the shame, and to render it as if not done. +Draw your sword and knight me, then I will throw down +my gauntlet, to everyone who dares to speak disrespectfully +of my king.' + +"The Emperor was surprised at this bold proposal, +however it appeared the wisest to him; 'You are a knave +he replied after a moment's consideration, however your +advice is good, and displays prudence, as your offense +shows adventurous courage. Well then, and gave him the +knight-stroke so I raise you to nobility, who begged for +grace for your offense now kneels before me, rise as knight; +knavish you have acted, and Knave of Bergen shall you +be called henceforth, and gladly the Black knight rose; +three cheers were given in honor of the Emperor, +and loud cries of joy testified the approbation with +which the Queen danced still once with the Knave of Bergen." + + + +CHAPTER II +Heidelberg +[Landing a Monarch at Heidelberg] + +We stopped at a hotel by the railway-station. Next morning, +as we sat in my room waiting for breakfast to come up, +we got a good deal interested in something which was +going on over the way, in front of another hotel. +First, the personage who is called the PORTIER (who is +not the PORTER, but is a sort of first-mate of a hotel) +[1. See Appendix A] appeared at the door in a spick-and-span +new blue cloth uniform, decorated with shining brass buttons, +and with bands of gold lace around his cap and wristbands; +and he wore white gloves, too. He shed an official glance +upon the situation, and then began to give orders. +Two women-servants came out with pails and brooms +and brushes, and gave the sidewalk a thorough scrubbing; +meanwhile two others scrubbed the four marble steps +which led up to the door; beyond these we could see some +men-servants taking up the carpet of the grand staircase. +This carpet was carried away and the last grain of dust +beaten and banged and swept out of it; then brought back +and put down again. The brass stair-rods received an +exhaustive polishing and were returned to their places. +Now a troop of servants brought pots and tubs +of blooming plants and formed them into a beautiful +jungle about the door and the base of the staircase. +Other servants adorned all the balconies of the various +stories with flowers and banners; others ascended +to the roof and hoisted a great flag on a staff there. +Now came some more chamber-maids and retouched the sidewalk, +and afterward wiped the marble steps with damp cloths +and finished by dusting them off with feather brushes. +Now a broad black carpet was brought out and laid down the +marble steps and out across the sidewalk to the curbstone. +The PORTIER cast his eye along it, and found it was not +absolutely straight; he commanded it to be straightened; +the servants made the effort--made several efforts, +in fact--but the PORTIER was not satisfied. He finally +had it taken up, and then he put it down himself and got +it right. + +At this stage of the proceedings, a narrow bright +red carpet was unrolled and stretched from the top +of the marble steps to the curbstone, along the center +of the black carpet. This red path cost the PORTIER +more trouble than even the black one had done. But he +patiently fixed and refixed it until it was exactly right +and lay precisely in the middle of the black carpet. +In New York these performances would have gathered a mighty +crowd of curious and intensely interested spectators; +but here it only captured an audience of half a dozen +little boys who stood in a row across the pavement, +some with their school-knapsacks on their backs and their +hands in their pockets, others with arms full of bundles, +and all absorbed in the show. Occasionally one of them +skipped irreverently over the carpet and took up a position +on the other side. This always visibly annoyed the PORTIER. + +Now came a waiting interval. The landlord, in plain clothes, +and bareheaded, placed himself on the bottom marble step, +abreast the PORTIER, who stood on the other end of the +same steps; six or eight waiters, gloved, bareheaded, +and wearing their whitest linen, their whitest cravats, +and their finest swallow-tails, grouped themselves +about these chiefs, but leaving the carpetway clear. +Nobody moved or spoke any more but only waited. + +In a short time the shrill piping of a coming train was heard, +and immediately groups of people began to gather in the street. +Two or three open carriages arrived, and deposited some +maids of honor and some male officials at the hotel. +Presently another open carriage brought the Grand Duke +of Baden, a stately man in uniform, who wore the handsome +brass-mounted, steel-spiked helmet of the army on his head. +Last came the Empress of Germany and the Grand Duchess +of Baden in a closed carriage; these passed through the +low-bowing groups of servants and disappeared in the hotel, +exhibiting to us only the backs of their heads, and then +the show was over. + +It appears to be as difficult to land a monarch as it +is to launch a ship. + +But as to Heidelberg. The weather was growing pretty warm, +--very warm, in fact. So we left the valley and took +quarters at the Schloss Hotel, on the hill, above the Castle. + +Heidelberg lies at the mouth of a narrow gorge--a gorge +the shape of a shepherd's crook; if one looks up it he +perceives that it is about straight, for a mile and a half, +then makes a sharp curve to the right and disappears. +This gorge--along whose bottom pours the swift Neckar +--is confined between (or cloven through) a couple of long, +steep ridges, a thousand feet high and densely wooded +clear to their summits, with the exception of one section +which has been shaved and put under cultivation. +These ridges are chopped off at the mouth of the gorge +and form two bold and conspicuous headlands, with Heidelberg +nestling between them; from their bases spreads away +the vast dim expanse of the Rhine valley, and into this +expanse the Neckar goes wandering in shining curves and is +presently lost to view. + +Now if one turns and looks up the gorge once more, he will +see the Schloss Hotel on the right perched on a precipice +overlooking the Neckar--a precipice which is so sumptuously +cushioned and draped with foliage that no glimpse of the +rock appears. The building seems very airily situated. +It has the appearance of being on a shelf half-way up +the wooded mountainside; and as it is remote and isolated, +and very white, it makes a strong mark against the lofty +leafy rampart at its back. + +This hotel had a feature which was a decided novelty, +and one which might be adopted with advantage by any house +which is perched in a commanding situation. This feature +may be described as a series of glass-enclosed parlors +CLINGING TO THE OUTSIDE OF THE HOUSE, one against each +and every bed-chamber and drawing-room. They are like long, +narrow, high-ceiled bird-cages hung against the building. +My room was a corner room, and had two of these things, +a north one and a west one. + +From the north cage one looks up the Neckar gorge; +from the west one he looks down it. This last affords +the most extensive view, and it is one of the loveliest +that can be imagined, too. Out of a billowy upheaval of +vivid green foliage, a rifle-shot removed, rises the huge +ruin of Heidelberg Castle, [2. See Appendix B] with empty window +arches, +ivy-mailed battlements, moldering towers--the Lear of +inanimate nature--deserted, discrowned, beaten by the storms, +but royal still, and beautiful. It is a fine sight to see +the evening sunlight suddenly strike the leafy declivity +at the Castle's base and dash up it and drench it as with +a luminous spray, while the adjacent groves are in deep shadow. + +Behind the Castle swells a great dome-shaped hill, +forest-clad, and beyond that a nobler and loftier one. +The Castle looks down upon the compact brown-roofed town; +and from the town two picturesque old bridges span +the river. Now the view broadens; through the gateway +of the sentinel headlands you gaze out over the wide +Rhine plain, which stretches away, softly and richly tinted, +grows gradually and dreamily indistinct, and finally melts +imperceptibly into the remote horizon. + +I have never enjoyed a view which had such a serene +and satisfying charm about it as this one gives. + +The first night we were there, we went to bed and to +sleep early; but I awoke at the end of two or three hours, +and lay a comfortable while listening to the soothing +patter of the rain against the balcony windows. +I took it to be rain, but it turned out to be only the +murmur of the restless Neckar, tumbling over her dikes +and dams far below, in the gorge. I got up and went +into the west balcony and saw a wonderful sight. +Away down on the level under the black mass of the Castle, +the town lay, stretched along the river, its intricate +cobweb of streets jeweled with twinkling lights; +there were rows of lights on the bridges; these flung +lances of light upon the water, in the black shadows +of the arches; and away at the extremity of all this +fairy spectacle blinked and glowed a massed multitude +of gas-jets which seemed to cover acres of ground; +it was as if all the diamonds in the world had been spread +out there. I did not know before, that a half-mile +of sextuple railway-tracks could be made such an adornment. + +One thinks Heidelberg by day--with its surroundings +--is the last possibility of the beautiful; but when he +sees Heidelberg by night, a fallen Milky Way, with that +glittering railway constellation pinned to the border, +he requires time to consider upon the verdict. + +One never tires of poking about in the dense woods that +clothe all these lofty Neckar hills to their beguiling +and impressive charm in any country; but German legends +and fairy tales have given these an added charm. +They have peopled all that region with gnomes, and dwarfs, +and all sorts of mysterious and uncanny creatures. +At the time I am writing of, I had been reading so much +of this literature that sometimes I was not sure but I +was beginning to believe in the gnomes and fairies +as realities. + +One afternoon I got lost in the woods about a mile from +the hotel, and presently fell into a train of dreamy thought +about animals which talk, and kobolds, and enchanted folk, +and the rest of the pleasant legendary stuff; and so, +by stimulating my fancy, I finally got to imagining I +glimpsed small flitting shapes here and there down the +columned aisles of the forest. It was a place which was +peculiarly meet for the occasion. It was a pine wood, +with so thick and soft a carpet of brown needles that one's +footfall made no more sound than if he were treading +on wool; the tree-trunks were as round and straight +and smooth as pillars, and stood close together; +they were bare of branches to a point about twenty-five +feet above-ground, and from there upward so thick with +boughs that not a ray of sunlight could pierce through. +The world was bright with sunshine outside, but a deep +and mellow twilight reigned in there, and also a deep +silence so profound that I seemed to hear my own breathings. + +When I had stood ten minutes, thinking and imagining, +and getting my spirit in tune with the place, and in the +right mood to enjoy the supernatural, a raven suddenly +uttered a horse croak over my head. It made me start; +and then I was angry because I started. I looked up, +and the creature was sitting on a limb right over me, +looking down at me. I felt something of the same sense +of humiliation and injury which one feels when he finds +that a human stranger has been clandestinely inspecting +him in his privacy and mentally commenting upon him. +I eyed the raven, and the raven eyed me. Nothing was said +during some seconds. Then the bird stepped a little way +along his limb to get a better point of observation, +lifted his wings, stuck his head far down below his +shoulders toward me and croaked again--a croak with a +distinctly insulting expression about it. If he had +spoken in English he could not have said any more plainly +that he did say in raven, "Well, what do YOU want here?" +I felt as foolish as if I had been caught in some mean act +by a responsible being, and reproved for it. However, I +made no reply; I would not bandy words with a raven. +The adversary waited a while, with his shoulders still lifted, +his head thrust down between them, and his keen bright eye +fixed on me; then he threw out two or three more insults, +which I could not understand, further than that I +knew a portion of them consisted of language not used +in church. + +I still made no reply. Now the adversary raised his head +and called. There was an answering croak from a little +distance in the wood--evidently a croak of inquiry. +The adversary explained with enthusiasm, and the other raven +dropped everything and came. The two sat side by side +on the limb and discussed me as freely and offensively +as two great naturalists might discuss a new kind of bug. +The thing became more and more embarrassing. They called +in another friend. This was too much. I saw that they +had the advantage of me, and so I concluded to get out +of the scrape by walking out of it. They enjoyed my +defeat as much as any low white people could have done. +They craned their necks and laughed at me (for a raven +CAN laugh, just like a man), they squalled insulting remarks +after me as long as they could see me. They were nothing +but ravens--I knew that--what they thought of me could +be a matter of no consequence--and yet when even a raven +shouts after you, "What a hat!" "Oh, pull down your vest!" +and that sort of thing, it hurts you and humiliates you, +and there is no getting around it with fine reasoning and +pretty arguments. + +Animals talk to each other, of course. There can be no +question about that; but I suppose there are very few +people who can understand them. I never knew but one man +who could. I knew he could, however, because he told +me so himself. He was a middle-aged, simple-hearted +miner who had lived in a lonely corner of California, +among the woods and mountains, a good many years, +and had studied the ways of his only neighbors, the beasts +and the birds, until he believed he could accurately +translate any remark which they made. This was Jim Baker. +According to Jim Baker, some animals have only a +limited education, and some use only simple words, +and scarcely ever a comparison or a flowery figure; +whereas, certain other animals have a large vocabulary, +a fine command of language and a ready and fluent delivery; +consequently these latter talk a great deal; they like it; +they are so conscious of their talent, and they enjoy +"showing off." Baker said, that after long and careful +observation, he had come to the conclusion that the bluejays +were the best talkers he had found among birds and beasts. Said +he: + +"There's more TO a bluejay than any other creature. +He has got more moods, and more different kinds +of feelings than other creatures; and, mind you, +whatever a bluejay feels, he can put into language. +And no mere commonplace language, either, but rattling, +out-and-out book-talk--and bristling with metaphor, +too--just bristling! And as for command of language--why +YOU never see a bluejay get stuck for a word. No man +ever did. They just boil out of him! And another thing: +I've noticed a good deal, and there's no bird, or cow, +or anything that uses as good grammar as a bluejay. +You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat +does--but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat +get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, +and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. +Ignorant people think it's the NOISE which fighting +cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; +it's the sickening grammar they use. Now I've never heard +a jay use bad grammar but very seldom; and when they do, +they are as ashamed as a human; they shut right down +and leave. + +"You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure +--but he's got feathers on him, and don't belong to no church, +perhaps; but otherwise he is just as much human as you be. +And I'll tell you for why. A jay's gifts, and instincts, +and feelings, and interests, cover the whole ground. +A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman. +A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, +a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay +will go back on his solemnest promise. The sacredness +of an obligation is such a thing which you can't cram +into no bluejay's head. Now, on top of all this, +there's another thing; a jay can out-swear any gentleman +in the mines. You think a cat can swear. Well, a cat can; +but you give a bluejay a subject that calls for his +reserve-powers, and where is your cat? Don't talk to ME--I +know too much about this thing; in the one little particular +of scolding--just good, clean, out-and-out scolding +--a bluejay can lay over anything, human or divine. +Yes, sir, a jay is everything that a man is. A jay can cry, +a jay can laugh, a jay can feel shame, a jay can reason +and plan and discuss, a jay likes gossip and scandal, +a jay has got a sense of humor, a jay knows when he is +an ass just as well as you do--maybe better. If a jay +ain't human, he better take in his sign, that's all. +Now I'm going to tell you a perfectly true fact about +some bluejays." + + + +CHAPTER III +Baker's Bluejay Yarn +[What Stumped the Blue Jays] + +"When I first begun to understand jay language correctly, +there was a little incident happened here. Seven years ago, +the last man in this region but me moved away. There stands +his house--been empty ever since; a log house, with a plank +roof--just one big room, and no more; no ceiling--nothing +between the rafters and the floor. Well, one Sunday +morning I was sitting out here in front of my cabin, +with my cat, taking the sun, and looking at the blue hills, +and listening to the leaves rustling so lonely in the trees, +and thinking of the home away yonder in the states, +that I hadn't heard from in thirteen years, when a bluejay +lit on that house, with an acorn in his mouth, and says, +'Hello, I reckon I've struck something.' When he spoke, +the acorn dropped out of his mouth and rolled down the roof, +of course, but he didn't care; his mind was all on the +thing he had struck. It was a knot-hole in the roof. +He cocked his head to one side, shut one eye and put the +other one to the hole, like a possum looking down a jug; +then he glanced up with his bright eyes, gave a wink +or two with his wings--which signifies gratification, +you understand--and says, 'It looks like a hole, +it's located like a hole--blamed if I don't believe it IS +a hole!' + +"Then he cocked his head down and took another look; +he glances up perfectly joyful, this time; winks his wings +and his tail both, and says, 'Oh, no, this ain't no fat thing, +I reckon! If I ain't in luck! --Why it's a perfectly +elegant hole!' So he flew down and got that acorn, +and fetched it up and dropped it in, and was just tilting +his head back, with the heavenliest smile on his face, +when all of a sudden he was paralyzed into a listening +attitude and that smile faded gradually out of his +countenance like breath off'n a razor, and the queerest +look of surprise took its place. Then he says, 'Why, I +didn't hear it fall!' He cocked his eye at the hole again, +and took a long look; raised up and shook his head; +stepped around to the other side of the hole and took +another look from that side; shook his head again. +He studied a while, then he just went into the Details +--walked round and round the hole and spied into it from every +point of the compass. No use. Now he took a thinking +attitude on the comb of the roof and scratched the back +of his head with his right foot a minute, and finally says, +'Well, it's too many for ME, that's certain; must be +a mighty long hole; however, I ain't got no time to fool +around here, I got to "tend to business"; I reckon it's +all right--chance it, anyway.' + +"So he flew off and fetched another acorn and dropped +it in, and tried to flirt his eye to the hole quick +enough to see what become of it, but he was too late. +He held his eye there as much as a minute; then he raised +up and sighed, and says, 'Confound it, I don't seem +to understand this thing, no way; however, I'll tackle +her again.' He fetched another acorn, and done his level +best to see what become of it, but he couldn't. He says, +'Well, I never struck no such a hole as this before; +I'm of the opinion it's a totally new kind of a hole.' +Then he begun to get mad. He held in for a spell, +walking up and down the comb of the roof and shaking +his head and muttering to himself; but his feelings got +the upper hand of him, presently, and he broke loose +and cussed himself black in the face. I never see a bird +take on so about a little thing. When he got through he +walks to the hole and looks in again for half a minute; +then he says, 'Well, you're a long hole, and a deep hole, +and a mighty singular hole altogether--but I've started +in to fill you, and I'm damned if I DON'T fill you, if it +takes a hundred years!' + +"And with that, away he went. You never see a bird work +so since you was born. He laid into his work like a nigger, +and the way he hove acorns into that hole for about +two hours and a half was one of the most exciting and +astonishing spectacles I ever struck. He never stopped +to take a look anymore--he just hove 'em in and went +for more. Well, at last he could hardly flop his wings, +he was so tuckered out. He comes a-dropping down, once more, +sweating like an ice-pitcher, dropped his acorn in and says, +'NOW I guess I've got the bulge on you by this time!' +So he bent down for a look. If you'll believe me, +when his head come up again he was just pale with rage. +He says, 'I've shoveled acorns enough in there to keep +the family thirty years, and if I can see a sign of one +of 'em I wish I may land in a museum with a belly full +of sawdust in two minutes!' + +"He just had strength enough to crawl up on to the +comb and lean his back agin the chimbly, and then he +collected his impressions and begun to free his mind. +I see in a second that what I had mistook for profanity +in the mines was only just the rudiments, as you may say. + +"Another jay was going by, and heard him doing his devotions, +and stops to inquire what was up. The sufferer told him +the whole circumstance, and says, 'Now yonder's the hole, +and if you don't believe me, go and look for yourself.' +So this fellow went and looked, and comes back and says, +'How many did you say you put in there?' 'Not any less +than two tons,' says the sufferer. The other jay went +and looked again. He couldn't seem to make it out, so he +raised a yell, and three more jays come. They all examined +the hole, they all made the sufferer tell it over again, +then they all discussed it, and got off as many leather-headed +opinions about it as an average crowd of humans could +have done. + +"They called in more jays; then more and more, till pretty +soon this whole region 'peared to have a blue flush about it. +There must have been five thousand of them; and such +another jawing and disputing and ripping and cussing, +you never heard. Every jay in the whole lot put his +eye to the hole and delivered a more chuckle-headed +opinion about the mystery than the jay that went there +before him. They examined the house all over, too. +The door was standing half open, and at last one old jay +happened to go and light on it and look in. Of course, +that knocked the mystery galley-west in a second. +There lay the acorns, scattered all over the floor.. +He flopped his wings and raised a whoop. 'Come here!' +he says, 'Come here, everybody; hang'd if this fool hasn't +been trying to fill up a house with acorns!' They all came +a-swooping down like a blue cloud, and as each fellow +lit on the door and took a glance, the whole absurdity +of the contract that that first jay had tackled hit him +home and he fell over backward suffocating with laughter, +and the next jay took his place and done the same. + +"Well, sir, they roosted around here on the housetop +and the trees for an hour, and guffawed over that thing +like human beings. It ain't any use to tell me a bluejay +hasn't got a sense of humor, because I know better. +And memory, too. They brought jays here from all over +the United States to look down that hole, every summer +for three years. Other birds, too. And they could all +see the point except an owl that come from Nova Scotia +to visit the Yo Semite, and he took this thing in on +his way back. He said he couldn't see anything funny +in it. But then he was a good deal disappointed about +Yo Semite, too." + + + +CHAPTER IV +Student Life +[The Laborious Beer King] + +The summer semester was in full tide; consequently the +most frequent figure in and about Heidelberg was +the student. Most of the students were Germans, +of course, but the representatives of foreign lands +were very numerous. They hailed from every corner +of the globe--for instruction is cheap in Heidelberg, +and so is living, too. The Anglo-American Club, +composed of British and American students, had twenty-five +members, and there was still much material left to draw from. + +Nine-tenths of the Heidelberg students wore no badge +or uniform; the other tenth wore caps of various colors, +and belonged to social organizations called "corps." There +were five corps, each with a color of its own; there were +white caps, blue caps, and red, yellow, and green ones. +The famous duel-fighting is confined to the "corps" boys. +The "KNEIP" seems to be a specialty of theirs, too. +Kneips are held, now and then, to celebrate great occasions, +like the election of a beer king, for instance. +The solemnity is simple; the five corps assemble at night, +and at a signal they all fall loading themselves with beer, +out of pint-mugs, as fast as possible, and each man keeps +his own count--usually by laying aside a lucifer match +for each mud he empties. The election is soon decided. +When the candidates can hold no more, a count is instituted +and the one who has drank the greatest number of pints is +proclaimed king. I was told that the last beer king elected +by the corps--or by his own capabilities--emptied his mug +seventy-five times. No stomach could hold all that quantity +at one time, of course--but there are ways of frequently +creating a vacuum, which those who have been much at sea +will understand. + +One sees so many students abroad at all hours, that he +presently begins to wonder if they ever have any +working-hours. Some of them have, some of them haven't. +Each can choose for himself whether he will work or play; +for German university life is a very free life; +it seems to have no restraints. The student does not live +in the college buildings, but hires his own lodgings, +in any locality he prefers, and he takes his meals when +and where he pleases. He goes to bed when it suits him, +and does not get up at all unless he wants to. +He is not entered at the university for any particular +length of time; so he is likely to change about. +He passes no examinations upon entering college. +He merely pays a trifling fee of five or ten dollars, +receives a card entitling him to the privileges of +the university, and that is the end of it. He is now ready +for business--or play, as he shall prefer. If he elects +to work, he finds a large list of lectures to choose from. +He selects the subjects which he will study, and enters +his name for these studies; but he can skip attendance. + +The result of this system is, that lecture-courses upon +specialties of an unusual nature are often delivered +to very slim audiences, while those upon more practical +and every-day matters of education are delivered to very +large ones. I heard of one case where, day after day, +the lecturer's audience consisted of three students--and always +the same three. But one day two of them remained away. +The lecturer began as usual-- + +"Gentlemen," --then, without a smile, he corrected himself, +saying-- + +"Sir," --and went on with his discourse. + +It is said that the vast majority of the Heidelberg students +are hard workers, and make the most of their opportunities; +that they have no surplus means to spend in dissipation, +and no time to spare for frolicking. One lecture follows +right on the heels of another, with very little time +for the student to get out of one hall and into the next; +but the industrious ones manage it by going on a trot. +The professors assist them in the saving of their time +by being promptly in their little boxed-up pulpits when the +hours strike, and as promptly out again when the hour finishes. +I entered an empty lecture-room one day just before the +clock struck. The place had simple, unpainted pine desks +and benches for about two hundred persons. + +About a minute before the clock struck, a hundred +and fifty students swarmed in, rushed to their seats, +immediately spread open their notebooks and dipped their +pens in ink. When the clock began to strike, a burly +professor entered, was received with a round of applause, +moved swiftly down the center aisle, said "Gentlemen," +and began to talk as he climbed his pulpit steps; and by +the time he had arrived in his box and faced his audience, +his lecture was well under way and all the pens were going. +He had no notes, he talked with prodigious rapidity and +energy for an hour--then the students began to remind +him in certain well-understood ways that his time was up; +he seized his hat, still talking, proceeded swiftly down +his pulpit steps, got out the last word of his discourse +as he struck the floor; everybody rose respectfully, +and he swept rapidly down the aisle and disappeared. +An instant rush for some other lecture-room followed, +and in a minute I was alone with the empty benches +once more. + +Yes, without doubt, idle students are not the rule. +Out of eight hundred in the town, I knew the faces of only +about fifty; but these I saw everywhere, and daily. +They walked about the streets and the wooded hills, +they drove in cabs, they boated on the river, they sipped +beer and coffee, afternoons, in the Schloss gardens. +A good many of them wore colored caps of the corps. +They were finely and fashionably dressed, their manners +were quite superb, and they led an easy, careless, +comfortable life. If a dozen of them sat together and a lady +or a gentleman passed whom one of them knew and saluted, +they all rose to their feet and took off their caps. +The members of a corps always received a fellow-member +in this way, too; but they paid no attention to members +of other corps; they did not seem to see them. This was not +a discourtesy; it was only a part of the elaborate and rigid +corps etiquette. + +There seems to be no chilly distance existing between the +German students and the professor; but, on the contrary, +a companionable intercourse, the opposite of chilliness +and reserve. When the professor enters a beer-hall +in the evening where students are gathered together, +these rise up and take off their caps, and invite the old +gentleman to sit with them and partake. He accepts, +and the pleasant talk and the beer flow for an hour or two, +and by and by the professor, properly charged and comfortable, +gives a cordial good night, while the students stand +bowing and uncovered; and then he moves on his happy +way homeward with all his vast cargo of learning afloat +in his hold. Nobody finds fault or feels outraged; +no harm has been done. + +It seemed to be a part of corps etiquette to keep a dog +or so, too. I mean a corps dog--the common property of +the organization, like the corps steward or head servant; +then there are other dogs, owned by individuals. + +On a summer afternoon in the Castle gardens, I have +seen six students march solemnly into the grounds, +in single file, each carrying a bright Chinese parasol +and leading a prodigious dog by a string. It was a very +imposing spectacle. Sometimes there would be as many +dogs around the pavilion as students; and of all breeds +and of all degrees of beauty and ugliness. These dogs +had a rather dry time of it; for they were tied to the +benches and had no amusement for an hour or two at a time +except what they could get out of pawing at the gnats, +or trying to sleep and not succeeding. However, they got +a lump of sugar occasionally--they were fond of that. + +It seemed right and proper that students should indulge in dogs; +but everybody else had them, too--old men and young ones, +old women and nice young ladies. If there is one spectacle +that is unpleasanter than another, it is that of an +elegantly dressed young lady towing a dog by a string. +It is said to be the sign and symbol of blighted love. +It seems to me that some other way of advertising it might +be devised, which would be just as conspicuous and yet +not so trying to the proprieties. + +It would be a mistake to suppose that the easy-going +pleasure-seeking student carries an empty head. +Just the contrary. He has spent nine years in the gymnasium, +under a system which allowed him no freedom, but vigorously +compelled him to work like a slave. Consequently, he has +left the gymnasium with an education which is so extensive +and complete, that the most a university can do for it +is to perfect some of its profounder specialties. +It is said that when a pupil leaves the gymnasium, he not +only has a comprehensive education, but he KNOWS what he +knows--it is not befogged with uncertainty, it is burnt +into him so that it will stay. For instance, he does not +merely read and write Greek, but speaks it; the same with +the Latin. Foreign youth steer clear of the gymnasium; +its rules are too severe. They go to the university +to put a mansard roof on their whole general education; +but the German student already has his mansard roof, so he +goes there to add a steeple in the nature of some specialty, +such as a particular branch of law, or diseases of the eye, +or special study of the ancient Gothic tongues. +So this German attends only the lectures which belong +to the chosen branch, and drinks his beer and tows his dog +around and has a general good time the rest of the day. +He has been in rigid bondage so long that the large liberty +of the university life is just what he needs and likes +and thoroughly appreciates; and as it cannot last forever, +he makes the most of it while it does last, and so lays +up a good rest against the day that must see him put on +the chains once more and enter the slavery of official +or professional life. + + + +CHAPTER V +At the Students' Dueling-Ground +[Dueling by Wholesale] + +One day in the interest of science my agent obtained +permission to bring me to the students' dueling-place. We +crossed the river and drove up the bank a few hundred yards, +then turned to the left, entered a narrow alley, followed it +a hundred yards and arrived at a two-story public house; +we were acquainted with its outside aspect, for it was +visible from the hotel. We went upstairs and passed into +a large whitewashed apartment which was perhaps fifty feet +long by thirty feet wide and twenty or twenty-five high. +It was a well-lighted place. There was no carpet. +Across one end and down both sides of the room extended a row +of tables, and at these tables some fifty or seventy-five +students [1. See Appendix C] were sitting. + +Some of them were sipping wine, others were playing cards, +others chess, other groups were chatting together, +and many were smoking cigarettes while they waited for +the coming duels. Nearly all of them wore colored caps; +there were white caps, green caps, blue caps, red caps, +and bright-yellow ones; so, all the five corps were +present in strong force. In the windows at the vacant +end of the room stood six or eight, narrow-bladed swords +with large protecting guards for the hand, and outside +was a man at work sharpening others on a grindstone. +He understood his business; for when a sword left his hand +one could shave himself with it. + +It was observable that the young gentlemen neither bowed +to nor spoke with students whose caps differed in color +from their own. This did not mean hostility, but only an +armed neutrality. It was considered that a person could +strike harder in the duel, and with a more earnest interest, +if he had never been in a condition of comradeship with +his antagonist; therefore, comradeship between the corps +was not permitted. At intervals the presidents of the five +corps have a cold official intercourse with each other, +but nothing further. For example, when the regular +dueling-day of one of the corps approaches, its president +calls for volunteers from among the membership to +offer battle; three or more respond--but there must not +be less than three; the president lays their names before +the other presidents, with the request that they furnish +antagonists for these challengers from among their corps. +This is promptly done. It chanced that the present +occasion was the battle-day of the Red Cap Corps. +They were the challengers, and certain caps of other colors +had volunteered to meet them. The students fight duels +in the room which I have described, TWO DAYS IN EVERY WEEK +DURING SEVEN AND A HALF OR EIGHT MONTHS IN EVERY YEAR. +This custom had continued in Germany two hundred and fifty years. + + +To return to my narrative. A student in a white cap +met us and introduced us to six or eight friends of his +who also wore white caps, and while we stood conversing, +two strange-looking figures were led in from another room. +They were students panoplied for the duel. They were bareheaded; +their eyes were protected by iron goggles which projected +an inch or more, the leather straps of which bound +their ears flat against their heads were wound around +and around with thick wrappings which a sword could not +cut through; from chin to ankle they were padded thoroughly +against injury; their arms were bandaged and rebandaged, +layer upon layer, until they looked like solid black logs. +These weird apparitions had been handsome youths, +clad in fashionable attire, fifteen minutes before, +but now they did not resemble any beings one ever sees +unless in nightmares. They strode along, with their arms +projecting straight out from their bodies; they did +not hold them out themselves, but fellow-students walked +beside them and gave the needed support. + +There was a rush for the vacant end of the room, now, +and we followed and got good places. The combatants were +placed face to face, each with several members of his own +corps about him to assist; two seconds, well padded, +and with swords in their hands, took their stations; +a student belonging to neither of the opposing corps +placed himself in a good position to umpire the combat; +another student stood by with a watch and a memorandum-book +to keep record of the time and the number and nature of +the wounds; a gray-haired surgeon was present with his lint, +his bandages, and his instruments. After a moment's pause +the duelists saluted the umpire respectfully, then one +after another the several officials stepped forward, +gracefully removed their caps and saluted him also, +and returned to their places. Everything was ready now; +students stood crowded together in the foreground, +and others stood behind them on chairs and tables. +Every face was turned toward the center of attraction. + +The combatants were watching each other with alert eyes; +a perfect stillness, a breathless interest reigned. +I felt that I was going to see some wary work. But not so. +The instant the word was given, the two apparitions +sprang forward and began to rain blows down upon each +other with such lightning rapidity that I could not quite +tell whether I saw the swords or only flashes they made +in the air; the rattling din of these blows as they struck +steel or paddings was something wonderfully stirring, +and they were struck with such terrific force that I could +not understand why the opposing sword was not beaten +down under the assault. Presently, in the midst of the +sword-flashes, I saw a handful of hair skip into the air +as if it had lain loose on the victim's head and a breath +of wind had puffed it suddenly away. + +The seconds cried "Halt!" and knocked up the combatants' +swords with their own. The duelists sat down; a student +official stepped forward, examined the wounded head +and touched the place with a sponge once or twice; +the surgeon came and turned back the hair from the wound +--and revealed a crimson gash two or three inches long, +and proceeded to bind an oval piece of leather and a bunch +of lint over it; the tally-keeper stepped up and tallied +one for the opposition in his book. + +Then the duelists took position again; a small stream of +blood was flowing down the side of the injured man's head, +and over his shoulder and down his body to the floor, +but he did not seem to mind this. The word was given, +and they plunged at each other as fiercely as before; +once more the blows rained and rattled and flashed; +every few moments the quick-eyed seconds would notice +that a sword was bent--then they called "Halt!" struck up +the contending weapons, and an assisting student straightened +the bent one. + +The wonderful turmoil went on--presently a bright spark +sprung from a blade, and that blade broken in several pieces, +sent one of its fragments flying to the ceiling. +A new sword was provided and the fight proceeded. +The exercise was tremendous, of course, and in time +the fighters began to show great fatigue. They were +allowed to rest a moment, every little while; they got +other rests by wounding each other, for then they could +sit down while the doctor applied the lint and bandages. +The laws is that the battle must continue fifteen minutes +if the men can hold out; and as the pauses do not count, +this duel was protracted to twenty or thirty minutes, +I judged. At last it was decided that the men were too much +wearied to do battle longer. They were led away drenched +with crimson from head to foot. That was a good fight, +but it could not count, partly because it did not last +the lawful fifteen minutes (of actual fighting), and +partly because neither man was disabled by his wound. +It was a drawn battle, and corps law requires that drawn +battles shall be refought as soon as the adversaries are +well of their hurts. + +During the conflict, I had talked a little, now and then, +with a young gentleman of the White Cap Corps, and he +had mentioned that he was to fight next--and had also +pointed out his challenger, a young gentleman who was +leaning against the opposite wall smoking a cigarette +and restfully observing the duel then in progress. + +My acquaintanceship with a party to the coming contest +had the effect of giving me a kind of personal interest +in it; I naturally wished he might win, and it was +the reverse of pleasant to learn that he probably +would not, because, although he was a notable swordsman, +the challenger was held to be his superior. + +The duel presently began and in the same furious way +which had marked the previous one. I stood close by, +but could not tell which blows told and which did not, +they fell and vanished so like flashes of light. They all +seemed to tell; the swords always bent over the opponents' +heads, from the forehead back over the crown, and seemed +to touch, all the way; but it was not so--a protecting +blade, invisible to me, was always interposed between. +At the end of ten seconds each man had struck twelve +or fifteen blows, and warded off twelve or fifteen, +and no harm done; then a sword became disabled, and a short +rest followed whilst a new one was brought. Early in the +next round the White Corps student got an ugly wound on +the side of his head and gave his opponent one like it. +In the third round the latter received another bad wound +in the head, and the former had his under-lip divided. +After that, the White Corps student gave many severe wounds, +but got none of the consequence in return. At the end +of five minutes from the beginning of the duel the surgeon +stopped it; the challenging party had suffered such +injuries that any addition to them might be dangerous. +These injuries were a fearful spectacle, but are better +left undescribed. So, against expectation, my acquaintance +was the victor. + + + +CHAPTER VI +[A Sport that Sometimes Kills] + +The third duel was brief and bloody. The surgeon stopped +it when he saw that one of the men had received such bad +wounds that he could not fight longer without endangering +his life. + +The fourth duel was a tremendous encounter; but at the end +of five or six minutes the surgeon interfered once more: +another man so severely hurt as to render it unsafe to add +to his harms. I watched this engagement as I watched +the others--with rapt interest and strong excitement, +and with a shrink and a shudder for every blow that laid +open a cheek or a forehead; and a conscious paling of my +face when I occasionally saw a wound of a yet more shocking +nature inflicted. My eyes were upon the loser of this +duel when he got his last and vanquishing wound--it +was in his face and it carried away his--but no matter, +I must not enter into details. I had but a glance, and then +turned quickly, but I would not have been looking at all if I +had known what was coming. No, that is probably not true; +one thinks he would not look if he knew what was coming, +but the interest and the excitement are so powerful that +they would doubtless conquer all other feelings; and so, +under the fierce exhilaration of the clashing steel, +he would yield and look after all. Sometimes spectators +of these duels faint--and it does seem a very reasonable +thing to do, too. + +Both parties to this fourth duel were badly hurt so much +that the surgeon was at work upon them nearly or quite an +hour--a fact which is suggestive. But this waiting interval +was not wasted in idleness by the assembled students. +It was past noon, therefore they ordered their landlord, +downstairs, to send up hot beefsteaks, chickens, and such things, +and these they ate, sitting comfortable at the several tables, +whilst they chatted, disputed and laughed. The door to +the surgeon's room stood open, meantime, but the cutting, +sewing, splicing, and bandaging going on in there in +plain view did not seem to disturb anyone's appetite. +I went in and saw the surgeon labor awhile, but could +not enjoy; it was much less trying to see the wounds +given and received than to see them mended; the stir +and turmoil, and the music of the steel, were wanting +here--one's nerves were wrung by this grisly spectacle, +whilst the duel's compensating pleasurable thrill was lacking. + +Finally the doctor finished, and the men who were to fight +the closing battle of the day came forth. A good many +dinners were not completed, yet, but no matter, they could +be eaten cold, after the battle; therefore everybody +crowded forth to see. This was not a love duel, but a +"satisfaction" affair. These two students had quarreled, +and were here to settle it. They did not belong to any of +the corps, but they were furnished with weapons and armor, +and permitted to fight here by the five corps as a courtesy. +Evidently these two young men were unfamiliar with the +dueling ceremonies, though they were not unfamiliar with +the sword. When they were placed in position they thought +it was time to begin--and then did begin, too, and with +a most impetuous energy, without waiting for anybody +to give the word. This vastly amused the spectators, +and even broke down their studied and courtly gravity +and surprised them into laughter. Of course the seconds +struck up the swords and started the duel over again. +At the word, the deluge of blows began, but before long +the surgeon once more interfered--for the only reason +which ever permits him to interfere--and the day's +war was over. It was now two in the afternoon, and I +had been present since half past nine in the morning. +The field of battle was indeed a red one by this time; +but some sawdust soon righted that. There had been one +duel before I arrived. In it one of the men received +many injuries, while the other one escaped without +a scratch. + +I had seen the heads and faces of ten youths gashed +in every direction by the keen two-edged blades, and yet +had not seen a victim wince, nor heard a moan, or detected +any fleeting expression which confessed the sharp pain +the hurts were inflicting. This was good fortitude, +indeed. Such endurance is to be expected in savages +and prize-fighters, for they are born and educated to it; +but to find it in such perfection in these gently bred +and kindly natured young fellows is matter for surprise. +It was not merely under the excitement of the sword-play +that this fortitude was shown; it was shown in the surgeon's +room where an uninspiring quiet reigned, and where there +was no audience. The doctor's manipulations brought +out neither grimaces nor moans. And in the fights +it was observable that these lads hacked and slashed +with the same tremendous spirit, after they were covered +with streaming wounds, which they had shown in the beginning. + +The world in general looks upon the college duels as very +farcical affairs: true, but considering that the college +duel is fought by boys; that the swords are real swords; +and that the head and face are exposed, it seems to me +that it is a farce which had quite a grave side to it. +People laugh at it mainly because they think the student +is so covered up with armor that he cannot be hurt. +But it is not so; his eyes are ears are protected, +but the rest of his face and head are bare. He can not only +be badly wounded, but his life is in danger; and he would +sometimes lose it but for the interference of the surgeon. +It is not intended that his life shall be endangered. +Fatal accidents are possible, however. For instance, +the student's sword may break, and the end of it fly +up behind his antagonist's ear and cut an artery which +could not be reached if the sword remained whole. +This has happened, sometimes, and death has resulted +on the spot. Formerly the student's armpits were not +protected--and at that time the swords were pointed, +whereas they are blunt, now; so an artery in the armpit +was sometimes cut, and death followed. Then in the days +of sharp-pointed swords, a spectator was an occasional +victim--the end of a broken sword flew five or ten +feet and buried itself in his neck or his heart, +and death ensued instantly. The student duels in Germany +occasion two or three deaths every year, now, but this +arises only from the carelessness of the wounded men; +they eat or drink imprudently, or commit excesses in the +way of overexertion; inflammation sets in and gets such +a headway that it cannot be arrested. Indeed, there is +blood and pain and danger enough about the college duel +to entitle it to a considerable degree of respect. + +All the customs, all the laws, all the details, +pertaining to the student duel are quaint and naive. +The grave, precise, and courtly ceremony with which the +thing is conducted, invests it with a sort of antique charm. + +This dignity and these knightly graces suggest the tournament, +not the prize-fight. The laws are as curious as they +are strict. For instance, the duelist may step forward +from the line he is placed upon, if he chooses, but never +back of it. If he steps back of it, or even leans back, +it is considered that he did it to avoid a blow or contrive +an advantage; so he is dismissed from his corps in disgrace. +It would seem natural to step from under a descending +sword unconsciously, and against one's will and intent--yet +this unconsciousness is not allowed. Again: if under the +sudden anguish of a wound the receiver of it makes a grimace, +he falls some degrees in the estimation of his fellows; +his corps are ashamed of him: they call him "hare foot," +which is the German equivalent for chicken-hearted. + + + +CHAPTER VII +[How Bismark Fought] + +In addition to the corps laws, there are some corps +usages which have the force of laws. + +Perhaps the president of a corps notices that one of the +membership who is no longer an exempt--that is a freshman +--has remained a sophomore some little time without volunteering +to fight; some day, the president, instead of calling +for volunteers, will APPOINT this sophomore to measure +swords with a student of another corps; he is free +to decline--everybody says so--there is no compulsion. +This is all true--but I have not heard of any student +who DID decline; to decline and still remain in the corps +would make him unpleasantly conspicuous, and properly so, +since he knew, when he joined, that his main business, +as a member, would be to fight. No, there is no law +against declining--except the law of custom, which is +confessedly stronger than written law, everywhere. + +The ten men whose duels I had witnessed did not go away +when their hurts were dressed, as I had supposed they would, +but came back, one after another, as soon as they were free +of the surgeon, and mingled with the assemblage in the +dueling-room. The white-cap student who won the second +fight witnessed the remaining three, and talked with us +during the intermissions. He could not talk very well, +because his opponent's sword had cut his under-lip in two, +and then the surgeon had sewed it together and overlaid it +with a profusion of white plaster patches; neither could +he eat easily, still he contrived to accomplish a slow +and troublesome luncheon while the last duel was preparing. +The man who was the worst hurt of all played chess +while waiting to see this engagement. A good part of +his face was covered with patches and bandages, and all +the rest of his head was covered and concealed by them. +It is said that the student likes to appear on the street +and in other public places in this kind of array, +and that this predilection often keeps him out when +exposure to rain or sun is a positive danger for him. +Newly bandaged students are a very common spectacle +in the public gardens of Heidelberg. It is also said +that the student is glad to get wounds in the face, +because the scars they leave will show so well there; +and it is also said that these face wounds are so prized +that youths have even been known to pull them apart +from time to time and put red wine in them to make +them heal badly and leave as ugly a scar as possible. +It does not look reasonable, but it is roundly asserted +and maintained, nevertheless; I am sure of one thing--scars +are plenty enough in Germany, among the young men; +and very grim ones they are, too. They crisscross the face +in angry red welts, and are permanent and ineffaceable. +Some of these scars are of a very strange and dreadful aspect; +and the effect is striking when several such accent +the milder ones, which form a city map on a man's face; +they suggest the "burned district" then. We had often +noticed that many of the students wore a colored silk +band or ribbon diagonally across their breasts. +It transpired that this signifies that the wearer has +fought three duels in which a decision was reached--duels +in which he either whipped or was whipped--for drawn +battles do not count. [1] After a student has received +his ribbon, he is "free"; he can cease from fighting, +without reproach--except some one insult him; his president +cannot appoint him to fight; he can volunteer if he +wants to, or remain quiescent if he prefers to do so. +Statistics show that he does NOT prefer to remain quiescent. +They show that the duel has a singular fascination about +it somewhere, for these free men, so far from resting upon +the privilege of the badge, are always volunteering. +A corps student told me it was of record that Prince +Bismarck fought thirty-two of these duels in a single summer +term when he was in college. So he fought twenty-nine +after his badge had given him the right to retire from +the field. + +1. FROM MY DIARY.--Dined in a hotel a few miles up the Neckar, + in a room whose walls were hung all over with framed + portrait-groups of the Five Corps; some were recent, + but many antedated photography, and were pictured in + lithography--the dates ranged back to forty or fifty + years ago. Nearly every individual wore the ribbon across + his breast. In one portrait-group representing (as each + of these pictures did) an entire Corps, I took pains + to count the ribbons: there were twenty-seven members, + and twenty-one of them wore that significant badge. + +The statistics may be found to possess interest in +several particulars. Two days in every week are devoted +to dueling. The rule is rigid that there must be three +duels on each of these days; there are generally more, +but there cannot be fewer. There were six the day +I was present; sometimes there are seven or eight. +It is insisted that eight duels a week--four for each +of the two days--is too low an average to draw a +calculation from, but I will reckon from that basis, +preferring an understatement to an overstatement of the case. +This requires about four hundred and eighty or five hundred +duelists a year--for in summer the college term is about +three and a half months, and in winter it is four months +and sometimes longer. Of the seven hundred and fifty +students in the university at the time I am writing of, +only eighty belonged to the five corps, and it is only +these corps that do the dueling; occasionally other +students borrow the arms and battleground of the five corps +in order to settle a quarrel, but this does not happen +every dueling-day. [2] Consequently eighty youths furnish +the material for some two hundred and fifty duels a year. +This average gives six fights a year to each of the eighty. +This large work could not be accomplished if the badge-holders +stood upon their privilege and ceased to volunteer. + +2. They have to borrow the arms because they could not + get them elsewhere or otherwise. As I understand it, + the public authorities, all over Germany, allow the five + Corps to keep swords, but DO NOT ALLOW THEM TO USE THEM. + This is law is rigid; it is only the execution of it that + is lax. + +Of course, where there is so much fighting, the students +make it a point to keep themselves in constant practice +with the foil. One often sees them, at the tables in the +Castle grounds, using their whips or canes to illustrate +some new sword trick which they have heard about; +and between the duels, on the day whose history I +have been writing, the swords were not always idle; +every now and then we heard a succession of the keen +hissing sounds which the sword makes when it is being +put through its paces in the air, and this informed us +that a student was practicing. Necessarily, this unceasing +attention to the art develops an expert occasionally. +He becomes famous in his own university, his renown spreads +to other universities. He is invited to Goettingen, +to fight with a Goettingen expert; if he is victorious, +he will be invited to other colleges, or those colleges will +send their experts to him. Americans and Englishmen often +join one or another of the five corps. A year or two ago, +the principal Heidelberg expert was a big Kentuckian; +he was invited to the various universities and left +a wake of victory behind him all about Germany; +but at last a little student in Strasburg defeated him. +There was formerly a student in Heidelberg who had picked +up somewhere and mastered a peculiar trick of cutting up +under instead of cleaving down from above. While the trick +lasted he won in sixteen successive duels in his university; +but by that time observers had discovered what his charm was, +and how to break it, therefore his championship ceased. + +A rule which forbids social intercourse between members +of different corps is strict. In the dueling-house, in +the parks, on the street, and anywhere and everywhere that +the students go, caps of a color group themselves together. +If all the tables in a public garden were crowded +but one, and that one had two red-cap students at it +and ten vacant places, the yellow-caps, the blue-caps, +the white caps, and the green caps, seeking seats, +would go by that table and not seem to see it, nor seem +to be aware that there was such a table in the grounds. +The student by whose courtesy we had been enabled to visit +the dueling-place, wore the white cap--Prussian Corps. +He introduced us to many white caps, but to none of +another color. The corps etiquette extended even to us, +who were strangers, and required us to group with the white +corps only, and speak only with the white corps, while we +were their guests, and keep aloof from the caps of the +other colors. Once I wished to examine some of the swords, +but an American student said, "It would not be quite polite; +these now in the windows all have red hilts or blue; +they will bring in some with white hilts presently, +and those you can handle freely. "When a sword was broken +in the first duel, I wanted a piece of it; but its hilt +was the wrong color, so it was considered best and politest +to await a properer season. It was brought to me after +the room was cleared, and I will now make a "life-size" +sketch of it by tracing a line around it with my pen, +to show the width of the weapon. [Figure 1] The length of +these swords is about three feet, and they are quite heavy. +One's disposition to cheer, during the course of the +duels or at their close, was naturally strong, but corps +etiquette forbade any demonstrations of this sort. +However brilliant a contest or a victory might be, +no sign or sound betrayed that any one was moved. +A dignified gravity and repression were maintained at +all times. + +When the dueling was finished and we were ready to go, +the gentlemen of the Prussian Corps to whom we had been +introduced took off their caps in the courteous German way, +and also shook hands; their brethren of the same order +took off their caps and bowed, but without shaking hands; +the gentlemen of the other corps treated us just as +they would have treated white caps--they fell apart, +apparently unconsciously, and left us an unobstructed pathway, +but did not seem to see us or know we were there. +If we had gone thither the following week as guests of +another corps, the white caps, without meaning any offense, +would have observed the etiquette of their order and ignored +our presence. + +[How strangely are comedy and tragedy blended in this life! +I had not been home a full half-hour, after witnessing +those playful sham-duels, when circumstances made it +necessary for me to get ready immediately to assist +personally at a real one--a duel with no effeminate +limitation in the matter of results, but a battle +to the death. An account of it, in the next chapter, +will show the reader that duels between boys, for fun, +and duels between men in earnest, are very different affairs.] + + + +CHAPTER VIII +The Great French Duel +[I Second Gambetta in a Terrific Duel] + +Much as the modern French duel is ridiculed by certain +smart people, it is in reality one of the most dangerous +institutions of our day. Since it is always fought in the +open air, the combatants are nearly sure to catch cold. +M. Paul de Cassagnac, the most inveterate of the French +duelists, had suffered so often in this way that he is at +last a confirmed invalid; and the best physician in Paris +has expressed the opinion that if he goes on dueling for +fifteen or twenty years more--unless he forms the habit +of fighting in a comfortable room where damps and draughts +cannot intrude--he will eventually endanger his life. +This ought to moderate the talk of those people who are +so stubborn in maintaining that the French duel is the +most health-giving of recreations because of the open-air +exercise it affords. And it ought also to moderate that +foolish talk about French duelists and socialist-hated +monarchs being the only people who are immoral. + +But it is time to get at my subject. As soon as I heard +of the late fiery outbreak between M. Gambetta and M. Fourtou +in the French Assembly, I knew that trouble must follow. +I knew it because a long personal friendship with +M. Gambetta revealed to me the desperate and implacable +nature of the man. Vast as are his physical proportions, +I knew that the thirst for revenge would penetrate +to the remotest frontiers of his person. + +I did not wait for him to call on me, but went at once +to him. As I had expected, I found the brave fellow +steeped in a profound French calm. I say French calm, +because French calmness and English calmness have points +of difference. He was moving swiftly back and forth +among the debris of his furniture, now and then staving +chance fragments of it across the room with his foot; +grinding a constant grist of curses through his set teeth; +and halting every little while to deposit another handful +of his hair on the pile which he had been building of it on +the table. + +He threw his arms around my neck, bent me over his stomach +to his breast, kissed me on both cheeks, hugged me four +or five times, and then placed me in his own arm-chair. +As soon as I had got well again, we began business at once. + +I said I supposed he would wish me to act as his second, +and he said, "Of course." I said I must be allowed +to act under a French name, so that I might be shielded +from obloquy in my country, in case of fatal results. +He winced here, probably at the suggestion that dueling was +not regarded with respect in America. However, he agreed +to my requirement. This accounts for the fact that in all +the newspaper reports M. Gambetta's second was apparently +a Frenchman. + +First, we drew up my principal's will. I insisted upon this, +and stuck to my point. I said I had never heard of a man +in his right mind going out to fight a duel without +first making his will. He said he had never heard +of a man in his right mind doing anything of the kind. +When he had finished the will, he wished to proceed +to a choice of his "last words." He wanted to know +how the following words, as a dying exclamation, struck me: + +"I die for my God, for my country, for freedom of speech, +for progress, and the universal brotherhood of man!" + +I objected that this would require too lingering a death; +it was a good speech for a consumptive, but not suited +to the exigencies of the field of honor. We wrangled +over a good many ante-mortem outbursts, but I finally got +him to cut his obituary down to this, which he copied +into his memorandum-book, purposing to get it by heart: + +"I DIE THAT FRANCE MIGHT LIVE." + +I said that this remark seemed to lack relevancy; but he +said relevancy was a matter of no consequence in last words, +what you wanted was thrill. + +The next thing in order was the choice of weapons. +My principal said he was not feeling well, and would leave +that and the other details of the proposed meeting to me. +Therefore I wrote the following note and carried it to +M. Fourtou's friend: + +Sir: M. Gambetta accepts M. Fourtou's challenge, +and authorizes me to propose Plessis-Piquet as the place +of meeting; tomorrow morning at daybreak as the time; +and axes as the weapons. + +I am, sir, with great respect, + +Mark Twain. + +M. Fourtou's friend read this note, and shuddered. +Then he turned to me, and said, with a suggestion of +severity in his tone: + +"Have you considered, sir, what would be the inevitable +result of such a meeting as this?" + +"Well, for instance, what WOULD it be?" + +"Bloodshed!" + +"That's about the size of it," I said. "Now, if it is +a fair question, what was your side proposing to shed?" + +I had him there. He saw he had made a blunder, so he hastened +to explain it away. He said he had spoken jestingly. +Then he added that he and his principal would enjoy axes, +and indeed prefer them, but such weapons were barred +by the French code, and so I must change my proposal. + +I walked the floor, turning the thing over in my mind, +and finally it occurred to me that Gatling-guns at fifteen +paces would be a likely way to get a verdict on the field +of honor. So I framed this idea into a proposition. + +But it was not accepted. The code was in the way again. +I proposed rifles; then double-barreled shotguns; +then Colt's navy revolvers. These being all rejected, +I reflected awhile, and sarcastically suggested brickbats +at three-quarters of a mile. I always hate to fool away +a humorous thing on a person who has no perception of humor; +and it filled me with bitterness when this man went soberly +away to submit the last proposition to his principal. + +He came back presently and said his principal was charmed +with the idea of brickbats at three-quarters of a mile, +but must decline on account of the danger to disinterested +parties passing between them. Then I said: + +"Well, I am at the end of my string, now. Perhaps YOU +would be good enough to suggest a weapon? Perhaps you +have even had one in your mind all the time?" + +His countenance brightened, and he said with alacrity: + +"Oh, without doubt, monsieur!" + +So he fell to hunting in his pockets--pocket after pocket, +and he had plenty of them--muttering all the while, +"Now, what could I have done with them?" + +At last he was successful. He fished out of his vest pocket +a couple of little things which I carried to the light +and ascertained to be pistols. They were single-barreled +and silver-mounted, and very dainty and pretty. +I was not able to speak for emotion. I silently hung +one of them on my watch-chain, and returned the other. +My companion in crime now unrolled a postage-stamp +containing several cartridges, and gave me one of them. +I asked if he meant to signify by this that our men were +to be allowed but one shot apiece. He replied that the +French code permitted no more. I then begged him to go +and suggest a distance, for my mind was growing weak +and confused under the strain which had been put upon it. +He named sixty-five yards. I nearly lost my patience. +I said: + +"Sixty-five yards, with these instruments? Squirt-guns +would be deadlier at fifty. Consider, my friend, +you and I are banded together to destroy life, not make +it eternal." + +But with all my persuasions, all my arguments, I was only +able to get him to reduce the distance to thirty-five yards; +and even this concession he made with reluctance, +and said with a sigh, "I wash my hands of this slaughter; +on your head be it." + +There was nothing for me but to go home to my old +lion-heart and tell my humiliating story. When I entered, +M. Gambetta was laying his last lock of hair upon the altar. +He sprang toward me, exclaiming: + +"You have made the fatal arrangements--I see it in your eye!" + +"I have." + +His face paled a trifle, and he leaned upon the table +for support. He breathed thick and heavily for a moment +or two, so tumultuous were his feelings; then he hoarsely +whispered: + +"The weapon, the weapon! Quick! what is the weapon?" + +"This!" and I displayed that silver-mounted thing. +He cast but one glance at it, then swooned ponderously +to the floor. + +When he came to, he said mournfully: + +"The unnatural calm to which I have subjected myself +has told upon my nerves. But away with weakness! +I will confront my fate like a man and a Frenchman." + +He rose to his feet, and assumed an attitude which +for sublimity has never been approached by man, +and has seldom been surpassed by statues. Then he said, +in his deep bass tones: + +"Behold, I am calm, I am ready; reveal to me the distance." + +"Thirty-five yards." ... + +I could not lift him up, of course; but I rolled him over, +and poured water down his back. He presently came to, +and said: + +"Thirty-five yards--without a rest? But why ask? Since +murder was that man's intention, why should he palter +with small details? But mark you one thing: in my fall +the world shall see how the chivalry of France meets death." + +After a long silence he asked: + +"Was nothing said about that man's family standing +up with him, as an offset to my bulk? But no matter; +I would not stoop to make such a suggestion; if he is +not noble enough to suggest it himself, he is welcome +to this advantage, which no honorable man would take." + +He now sank into a sort of stupor of reflection, +which lasted some minutes; after which he broke silence with: + +"The hour--what is the hour fixed for the collision?" + +"Dawn, tomorrow." + +He seemed greatly surprised, and immediately said: + +"Insanity! I never heard of such a thing. Nobody is +abroad at such an hour." + +"That is the reason I named it. Do you mean to say you +want an audience?" + +"It is no time to bandy words. I am astonished that M. Fourtou +should ever have agreed to so strange an innovation. +Go at once and require a later hour." + +I ran downstairs, threw open the front door, and almost +plunged into the arms of M. Fourtou's second. He said: + +"I have the honor to say that my principal strenuously +objects to the hour chosen, and begs you will consent +to change it to half past nine." + +"Any courtesy, sir, which it is in our power to extend +is at the service of your excellent principal. We agree +to the proposed change of time." + +"I beg you to accept the thanks of my client." Then he +turned to a person behind him, and said, "You hear, M. Noir, +the hour is altered to half past nine." Whereupon +M. Noir bowed, expressed his thanks, and went away. +My accomplice continued: + +"If agreeable to you, your chief surgeons and ours shall +proceed to the field in the same carriage as is customary." + +"It is entirely agreeable to me, and I am obliged +to you for mentioning the surgeons, for I am afraid +I should not have thought of them. How many shall +I want? I supposed two or three will be enough?" + +"Two is the customary number for each party. I refer +to 'chief' surgeons; but considering the exalted positions +occupied by our clients, it will be well and decorous +that each of us appoint several consulting surgeons, +from among the highest in the profession. These will +come in their own private carriages. Have you engaged +a hearse?" + +"Bless my stupidity, I never thought of it! I will attend +to it right away. I must seem very ignorant to you; +but you must try to overlook that, because I have never +had any experience of such a swell duel as this before. +I have had a good deal to do with duels on the Pacific coast, +but I see now that they were crude affairs. A hearse--sho! +we used to leave the elected lying around loose, and let +anybody cord them up and cart them off that wanted to. +Have you anything further to suggest?" + +"Nothing, except that the head undertakers shall ride together, +as is usual. The subordinates and mutes will go on foot, +as is also usual. I will see you at eight o'clock +in the morning, and we will then arrange the order +of the procession. I have the honor to bid you a good day." + +I returned to my client, who said, "Very well; +at what hour is the engagement to begin?" + +"Half past nine." + +"Very good indeed.; Have you sent the fact to the newspapers?" + +"SIR! If after our long and intimate friendship you can +for a moment deem me capable of so base a treachery--" + +"Tut, tut! What words are these, my dear friend? Have I +wounded you? Ah, forgive me; I am overloading you with labor. +Therefore go on with the other details, and drop this +one from your list. The bloody-minded Fourtou will be +sure to attend to it. Or I myself--yes, to make certain, +I will drop a note to my journalistic friend, M. Noir--" + +"Oh, come to think of it, you may save yourself the trouble; +that other second has informed M. Noir." + +"H'm! I might have known it. It is just like that Fourtou, +who always wants to make a display." + +At half past nine in the morning the procession approached +the field of Plessis-Piquet in the following order: first +came our carriage--nobody in it but M. Gambetta and myself; +then a carriage containing M. Fourtou and his second; +then a carriage containing two poet-orators who did +not believe in God, and these had MS. funeral orations +projecting from their breast pockets; then a carriage +containing the head surgeons and their cases of instruments; +then eight private carriages containing consulting surgeons; +then a hack containing a coroner; then the two hearses; +then a carriage containing the head undertakers; +then a train of assistants and mutes on foot; and after +these came plodding through the fog a long procession +of camp followers, police, and citizens generally. +It was a noble turnout, and would have made a fine display +if we had had thinner weather. + +There was no conversation. I spoke several times to +my principal, but I judge he was not aware of it, for he +always referred to his note-book and muttered absently, +"I die that France might live." + +Arrived on the field, my fellow-second and I paced off +the thirty-five yards, and then drew lots for choice +of position. This latter was but an ornamental ceremony, +for all the choices were alike in such weather. +These preliminaries being ended, I went to my principal +and asked him if he was ready. He spread himself out +to his full width, and said in a stern voice, "Ready! Let +the batteries be charged." + +The loading process was done in the presence of duly +constituted witnesses. We considered it best to perform +this delicate service with the assistance of a lantern, +on account of the state of the weather. We now placed +our men. + +At this point the police noticed that the public had massed +themselves together on the right and left of the field; +they therefore begged a delay, while they should put +these poor people in a place of safety. + +The request was granted. + +The police having ordered the two multitudes to take +positions behind the duelists, we were once more ready. +The weather growing still more opaque, it was agreed between +myself and the other second that before giving the fatal +signal we should each deliver a loud whoop to enable +the combatants to ascertain each other's whereabouts. + +I now returned to my principal, and was distressed +to observe that he had lost a good deal of his spirit. +I tried my best to hearten him. I said, "Indeed, sir, +things are not as bad as they seem. Considering the character +of the weapons, the limited number of shots allowed, +the generous distance, the impenetrable solidity of the fog, +and the added fact that one of the combatants is one-eyed +and the other cross-eyed and near-sighted, it seems to me +that this conflict need not necessarily be fatal. There are +chances that both of you may survive. Therefore, cheer up; +do not be downhearted." + +This speech had so good an effect that my principal +immediately stretched forth his hand and said, "I am +myself again; give me the weapon." + +I laid it, all lonely and forlorn, in the center of the vast +solitude of his palm. He gazed at it and shuddered. +And still mournfully contemplating it, he murmured in a +broken voice: + +"Alas, it is not death I dread, but mutilation." + +I heartened him once more, and with such success that he +presently said, "Let the tragedy begin. Stand at my back; +do not desert me in this solemn hour, my friend." + +I gave him my promise. I now assisted him to point +his pistol toward the spot where I judged his adversary +to be standing, and cautioned him to listen well and +further guide himself by my fellow-second's whoop. +Then I propped myself against M. Gambetta's back, +and raised a rousing "Whoop-ee!" This was answered from +out the far distances of the fog, and I immediately shouted: + +"One--two--three--FIRE!" + +Two little sounds like SPIT! SPIT! broke upon my ear, +and in the same instant I was crushed to the earth under +a mountain of flesh. Bruised as I was, I was still able +to catch a faint accent from above, to this effect: + +"I die for... for ... perdition take it, +what IS it I die for? ... oh, yes--FRANCE! I die +that France may live!" + +The surgeons swarmed around with their probes in +their hands, and applied their microscopes to the whole +area of M. Gambetta's person, with the happy result of +finding nothing in the nature of a wound. Then a scene +ensued which was in every way gratifying and inspiriting. + +The two gladiators fell upon each other's neck, with floods +of proud and happy tears; that other second embraced me; +the surgeons, the orators, the undertakers, the police, +everybody embraced, everybody congratulated, everybody cried, +and the whole atmosphere was filled with praise and with +joy unspeakable. + +It seems to me then that I would rather be a hero +of a French duel than a crowned and sceptered monarch. + +When the commotion had somewhat subsided, the body +of surgeons held a consultation, and after a good deal +of debate decided that with proper care and nursing there +was reason to believe that I would survive my injuries. +My internal hurts were deemed the most serious, since it +was apparent that a broken rib had penetrated my left lung, +and that many of my organs had been pressed out so far +to one side or the other of where they belonged, that it +was doubtful if they would ever learn to perform their +functions in such remote and unaccustomed localities. +They then set my left arm in two places, pulled my right +hip into its socket again, and re-elevated my nose. +I was an object of great interest, and even admiration; +and many sincere and warm-hearted persons had themselves +introduced to me, and said they were proud to know +the only man who had been hurt in a French duel in +forty years. + +I was placed in an ambulance at the very head of the procession; +and thus with gratifying 'ECLAT I was marched into Paris, +the most conspicuous figure in that great spectacle, +and deposited at the hospital. + +The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred +upon me. However, few escape that distinction. + +Such is the true version of the most memorable private +conflict of the age. + +I have no complaints to make against any one. I acted +for myself, and I can stand the consequences. + +Without boasting, I think I may say I am not afraid +to stand before a modern French duelist, but as long +as I keep in my right mind I will never consent to stand +behind one again. + + + +CHAPTER IX +[What the Beautiful Maiden Said] + +One day we took the train and went down to Mannheim +to see "King Lear" played in German. It was a mistake. +We sat in our seats three whole hours and never understood +anything but the thunder and lightning; and even that +was reversed to suit German ideas, for the thunder came +first and the lightning followed after. + +The behavior of the audience was perfect. There were +no rustlings, or whisperings, or other little disturbances; +each act was listened to in silence, and the applauding +was done after the curtain was down. The doors opened at +half past four, the play began promptly at half past five, +and within two minutes afterward all who were coming were +in their seats, and quiet reigned. A German gentleman +in the train had said that a Shakespearian play was an +appreciated treat in Germany and that we should find the +house filled. It was true; all the six tiers were filled, +and remained so to the end--which suggested that it is +not only balcony people who like Shakespeare in Germany, +but those of the pit and gallery, too. + +Another time, we went to Mannheim and attended a shivaree +--otherwise an opera--the one called "Lohengrin." The +banging and slamming and booming and crashing were +something beyond belief. The racking and pitiless +pain of it remains stored up in my memory alongside +the memory of the time that I had my teeth fixed. +There were circumstances which made it necessary for me +to stay through the hour hours to the end, and I stayed; +but the recollection of that long, dragging, relentless season +of suffering is indestructible. To have to endure it +in silence, and sitting still, made it all the harder. +I was in a railed compartment with eight or ten strangers, +of the two sexes, and this compelled repression; +yet at times the pain was so exquisite that I could hardly +keep the tears back. At those times, as the howlings +and wailings and shrieking of the singers, and the ragings +and roarings and explosions of the vast orchestra rose +higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and fiercer +and fiercer, I could have cried if I had been alone. +Those strangers would not have been surprised to see +a man do such a thing who was being gradually skinned, +but they would have marveled at it here, and made remarks +about it no doubt, whereas there was nothing in the +present case which was an advantage over being skinned. +There was a wait of half an hour at the end of the first act, +and I could not trust myself to do it, for I felt that I +should desert to stay out. There was another wait +of half an hour toward nine o'clock, but I had gone +through so much by that time that I had no spirit left, +and so had no desire but to be let alone. + +I do not wish to suggest that the rest of the people there +were like me, for, indeed, they were not. Whether it +was that they naturally liked that noise, or whether it +was that they had learned to like it by getting used to it, +I did not at the time know; but they did like--this was +plain enough. While it was going on they sat and looked +as rapt and grateful as cats do when one strokes their backs; +and whenever the curtain fell they rose to their feet, +in one solid mighty multitude, and the air was snowed thick +with waving handkerchiefs, and hurricanes of applause +swept the place. This was not comprehensible to me. +Of course, there were many people there who were not +under compulsion to stay; yet the tiers were as full at +the close as they had been at the beginning. This showed +that the people liked it. + +It was a curious sort of a play. In the manner +of costumes and scenery it was fine and showy enough; +but there was not much action. That is to say, +there was not much really done, it was only talked about; +and always violently. It was what one might call a +narrative play. Everybody had a narrative and a grievance, +and none were reasonable about it, but all in an offensive +and ungovernable state. There was little of that sort +of customary thing where the tenor and the soprano stand +down by the footlights, warbling, with blended voices, +and keep holding out their arms toward each other and drawing +them back and spreading both hands over first one breast +and then the other with a shake and a pressure--no, +it was every rioter for himself and no blending. +Each sang his indictive narrative in turn, accompanied by +the whole orchestra of sixty instruments, and when this had +continued for some time, and one was hoping they might come +to an understanding and modify the noise, a great chorus +composed entirely of maniacs would suddenly break forth, +and then during two minutes, and sometimes three, I lived +over again all that I suffered the time the orphan asylum burned +down. + +We only had one brief little season of heaven and heaven's +sweet ecstasy and peace during all this long and diligent +and acrimonious reproduction of the other place. +This was while a gorgeous procession of people marched around +and around, in the third act, and sang the Wedding Chorus. +To my untutored ear that was music--almost divine music. +While my seared soul was steeped in the healing balm +of those gracious sounds, it seemed to me that I could +almost resuffer the torments which had gone before, +in order to be so healed again. There is where the deep +ingenuity of the operatic idea is betrayed. It deals so +largely in pain that its scattered delights are prodigiously +augmented by the contrasts. A pretty air in an opera is +prettier there than it could be anywhere else, I suppose, +just as an honest man in politics shines more than he +would elsewhere. + +I have since found out that there is nothing the Germans +like so much as an opera. They like it, not in a mild +and moderate way, but with their whole hearts. +This is a legitimate result of habit and education. +Our nation will like the opera, too, by and by, no doubt. +One in fifty of those who attend our operas likes +it already, perhaps, but I think a good many of the other +forty-nine go in order to learn to like it, and the +rest in order to be able to talk knowingly about it. +The latter usually hum the airs while they are being sung, +so that their neighbors may perceive that they have been +to operas before. The funerals of these do not occur +often enough. + +A gentle, old-maidish person and a sweet young girl +of seventeen sat right in front of us that night at the +Mannheim opera. These people talked, between the acts, +and I understood them, though I understood nothing +that was uttered on the distant stage. At first they +were guarded in their talk, but after they had heard +my agent and me conversing in English they dropped their +reserve and I picked up many of their little confidences; +no, I mean many of HER little confidences--meaning +the elder party--for the young girl only listened, +and gave assenting nods, but never said a word. How pretty +she was, and how sweet she was! I wished she would speak. +But evidently she was absorbed in her own thoughts, +her own young-girl dreams, and found a dearer pleasure +in silence. But she was not dreaming sleepy dreams--no, +she was awake, alive, alert, she could not sit still +a moment. She was an enchanting study. Her gown was +of a soft white silky stuff that clung to her round +young figure like a fish's skin, and it was rippled +over with the gracefulest little fringy films of lace; +she had deep, tender eyes, with long, curved lashes; +and she had peachy cheeks, and a dimpled chin, and such +a dear little rosebud of a mouth; and she was so dovelike, +so pure, and so gracious, so sweet and so bewitching. +For long hours I did mightily wish she would speak. +And at last she did; the red lips parted, and out leaps her +thought--and with such a guileless and pretty enthusiasm, +too: "Auntie, I just KNOW I've got five hundred fleas +on me!" + +That was probably over the average. Yes, it must have been +very much over the average. The average at that time +in the Grand Duchy of Baden was forty-five to a young +person (when alone), according to the official estimate +of the home secretary for that year; the average for older +people was shifty and indeterminable, for whenever a +wholesome young girl came into the presence of her elders +she immediately lowered their average and raised her own. +She became a sort of contribution-box. This dear young +thing in the theater had been sitting there unconsciously +taking up a collection. Many a skinny old being in our +neighborhood was the happier and the restfuler for her coming. + +In that large audience, that night, there were eight very +conspicuous people. These were ladies who had their hats +or bonnets on. What a blessed thing it would be if a lady +could make herself conspicuous in our theaters by wearing +her hat. It is not usual in Europe to allow ladies +and gentlemen to take bonnets, hats, overcoats, canes, +or umbrellas into the auditorium, but in Mannheim this +rule was not enforced because the audiences were largely +made up of people from a distance, and among these were +always a few timid ladies who were afraid that if they had +to go into an anteroom to get their things when the play +was over, they would miss their train. But the great mass +of those who came from a distance always ran the risk +and took the chances, preferring the loss of a train +to a breach of good manners and the discomfort of being +unpleasantly conspicuous during a stretch of three or four hours. + + + + +CHAPTER X +[How Wagner Operas Bang Along] + +Three or four hours. That is a long time to sit in one place, +whether one be conspicuous or not, yet some of Wagner's +operas bang along for six whole hours on a stretch! +But the people sit there and enjoy it all, and wish it +would last longer. A German lady in Munich told me +that a person could not like Wagner's music at first, +but must go through the deliberate process of learning +to like it--then he would have his sure reward; +for when he had learned to like it he would hunger +for it and never be able to get enough of it. She said +that six hours of Wagner was by no means too much. +She said that this composer had made a complete revolution +in music and was burying the old masters one by one. +And she said that Wagner's operas differed from all others +in one notable respect, and that was that they were not +merely spotted with music here and there, but were ALL music, +from the first strain to the last. This surprised me. +I said I had attended one of his insurrections, and found +hardly ANY music in it except the Wedding Chorus. +She said "Lohengrin" was noisier than Wagner's other operas, +but that if I would keep on going to see it I would find +by and by that it was all music, and therefore would +then enjoy it. I COULD have said, "But would you advise +a person to deliberately practice having a toothache +in the pit of his stomach for a couple of years in order +that he might then come to enjoy it?" But I reserved +that remark. + +This lady was full of the praises of the head-tenor +who had performed in a Wagner opera the night before, +and went on to enlarge upon his old and prodigious fame, +and how many honors had been lavished upon him by the +princely houses of Germany. Here was another surprise. +I had attended that very opera, in the person of my agent, +and had made close and accurate observations. So I +said: + +"Why, madam, MY experience warrants me in stating +that that tenor's voice is not a voice at all, +but only a shriek--the shriek of a hyena." + +"That is very true," she said; "he cannot sing now; +it is already many years that he has lost his voice, +but in other times he sang, yes, divinely! So whenever +he comes now, you shall see, yes, that the theater +will not hold the people. JAWOHL BEI GOTT! his voice +is WUNDERSCHOEN in that past time." + +I said she was discovering to me a kindly trait in the +Germans which was worth emulating. I said that over +the water we were not quite so generous; that with us, +when a singer had lost his voice and a jumper had lost +his legs, these parties ceased to draw. I said I had been +to the opera in Hanover, once, and in Mannheim once, +and in Munich (through my authorized agent) once, and this +large experience had nearly persuaded me that the Germans +PREFERRED singers who couldn't sing. This was not such +a very extravagant speech, either, for that burly Mannheim +tenor's praises had been the talk of all Heidelberg for +a week before his performance took place--yet his voice +was like the distressing noise which a nail makes when you +screech it across a window-pane. I said so to Heidelberg +friends the next day, and they said, in the calmest and +simplest way, that that was very true, but that in earlier +times his voice HAD been wonderfully fine. And the tenor +in Hanover was just another example of this sort. +The English-speaking German gentleman who went with me +to the opera there was brimming with enthusiasm over that tenor. +He said: + +"ACH GOTT! a great man! You shall see him. He is so celebrate +in all Germany--and he has a pension, yes, from the government. +He not obliged to sing now, only twice every year; +but if he not sing twice each year they take him his pension +away." + +Very well, we went. When the renowned old tenor appeared, +I got a nudge and an excited whisper: + +"Now you see him!" + +But the "celebrate" was an astonishing disappointment to me. +If he had been behind a screen I should have supposed +they were performing a surgical operation on him. +I looked at my friend--to my great surprise he seemed +intoxicated with pleasure, his eyes were dancing +with eager delight. When the curtain at last fell, +he burst into the stormiest applause, and kept it up--as +did the whole house--until the afflictive tenor had +come three times before the curtain to make his bow. +While the glowing enthusiast was swabbing the perspiration +from his face, I said: + +"I don't mean the least harm, but really, now, do you +think he can sing?" + +"Him? NO! GOTT IM HIMMEL, ABER, how he has been able to +sing twenty-five years ago?" [Then pensively.] "ACH, no, +NOW he not sing any more, he only cry. When he think +he sing, now, he not sing at all, no, he only make +like a cat which is unwell." + +Where and how did we get the idea that the Germans +are a stolid, phlegmatic race? In truth, they are +widely removed from that. They are warm-hearted, +emotional, impulsive, enthusiastic, their tears come +at the mildest touch, and it is not hard to move them +to laughter. They are the very children of impulse. +We are cold and self-contained, compared to the Germans. +They hug and kiss and cry and shout and dance and sing; +and where we use one loving, petting expressions they pour +out a score. Their language is full of endearing diminutives; +nothing that they love escapes the application of a petting +diminutive--neither the house, nor the dog, nor the horse, +nor the grandmother, nor any other creature, animate or +inanimate. + +In the theaters at Hanover, Hamburg, and Mannheim, +they had a wise custom. The moment the curtain went up, +the light in the body of the house went down. +The audience sat in the cool gloom of a deep twilight, +which greatly enhanced the glowing splendors of the stage. +It saved gas, too, and people were not sweated to death. + +When I saw "King Lear" played, nobody was allowed to see +a scene shifted; if there was nothing to be done but slide +a forest out of the way and expose a temple beyond, one did +not see that forest split itself in the middle and go +shrieking away, with the accompanying disenchanting spectacle +of the hands and heels of the impelling impulse--no, +the curtain was always dropped for an instant--one heard +not the least movement behind it--but when it went up, +the next instant, the forest was gone. Even when the +stage was being entirely reset, one heard no noise. +During the whole time that "King Lear" was playing +the curtain was never down two minutes at any one time. +The orchestra played until the curtain was ready to go up +for the first time, then they departed for the evening. +Where the stage waits never each two minutes there is no +occasion for music. I had never seen this two-minute +business between acts but once before, and that was when +the "Shaughraun" was played at Wallack's. + +I was at a concert in Munich one night, the people +were streaming in, the clock-hand pointed to seven, +the music struck up, and instantly all movement in +the body of the house ceased--nobody was standing, +or walking up the aisles, or fumbling with a seat, +the stream of incomers had suddenly dried up at its source. +I listened undisturbed to a piece of music that was fifteen +minutes long--always expecting some tardy ticket-holders +to come crowding past my knees, and being continuously and +pleasantly disappointed--but when the last note was struck, +here came the stream again. You see, they had made +those late comers wait in the comfortable waiting-parlor +from the time the music had begin until it was ended. + +It was the first time I had ever seen this sort of +criminals denied the privilege of destroying the comfort +of a house full of their betters. Some of these were +pretty fine birds, but no matter, they had to tarry +outside in the long parlor under the inspection of +a double rank of liveried footmen and waiting-maids +who supported the two walls with their backs and held +the wraps and traps of their masters and mistresses on their +arms. + +We had no footmen to hold our things, and it was not +permissible to take them into the concert-room; but there +were some men and women to take charge of them for us. +They gave us checks for them and charged a fixed price, +payable in advance--five cents. + +In Germany they always hear one thing at an opera +which has never yet been heard in America, perhaps--I +mean the closing strain of a fine solo or duet. +We always smash into it with an earthquake of applause. +The result is that we rob ourselves of the sweetest +part of the treat; we get the whiskey, but we don't get +the sugar in the bottom of the glass. + +Our way of scattering applause along through an act seems +to me to be better than the Mannheim way of saving it +all up till the act is ended. I do not see how an actor +can forget himself and portray hot passion before a cold +still audience. I should think he would feel foolish. +It is a pain to me to this day, to remember how that old +German Lear raged and wept and howled around the stage, +with never a response from that hushed house, never a +single outburst till the act was ended. To me there was +something unspeakably uncomfortable in the solemn dead +silences that always followed this old person's tremendous +outpourings of his feelings. I could not help putting +myself in his place--I thought I knew how sick and flat +he felt during those silences, because I remembered a case +which came under my observation once, and which--but I +will tell the incident: + +One evening on board a Mississippi steamboat, a boy of ten +years lay asleep in a berth--a long, slim-legged boy, +he was, encased in quite a short shirt; it was the first +time he had ever made a trip on a steamboat, and so he +was troubled, and scared, and had gone to bed with his +head filled with impending snaggings, and explosions, +and conflagrations, and sudden death. About ten o'clock +some twenty ladies were sitting around about the ladies' +saloon, quietly reading, sewing, embroidering, and so on, +and among them sat a sweet, benignant old dame with round +spectacles on her nose and her busy knitting-needles +in her hands. Now all of a sudden, into the midst of this +peaceful scene burst that slim-shanked boy in the brief shirt, +wild-eyed, erect-haired, and shouting, "Fire, fire! +JUMP AND RUN, THE BOAT'S AFIRE AND THERE AIN'T A MINUTE +TO LOSE!" All those ladies looked sweetly up and smiled, +nobody stirred, the old lady pulled her spectacles down, +looked over them, and said, gently: + +"But you mustn't catch cold, child. Run and put on +your breastpin, and then come and tell us all about it." + +It was a cruel chill to give to a poor little devil's +gushing vehemence. He was expecting to be a sort of +hero--the creator of a wild panic--and here everybody +sat and smiled a mocking smile, and an old woman made +fun of his bugbear. I turned and crept away--for I +was that boy--and never even cared to discover whether +I had dreamed the fire or actually seen it. + +I am told that in a German concert or opera, they hardly +ever encore a song; that though they may be dying to hear +it again, their good breeding usually preserves them +against requiring the repetition. + +Kings may encore; that is quite another matter; +it delights everybody to see that the King is pleased; +and as to the actor encored, his pride and gratification +are simply boundless. Still, there are circumstances +in which even a royal encore-- + +But it is better to illustrate. The King of Bavaria is +a poet, and has a poet's eccentricities--with the advantage +over all other poets of being able to gratify them, +no matter what form they may take. He is fond of opera, +but not fond of sitting in the presence of an audience; +therefore, it has sometimes occurred, in Munich, +that when an opera has been concluded and the players +were getting off their paint and finery, a command has +come to them to get their paint and finery on again. +Presently the King would arrive, solitary and alone, +and the players would begin at the beginning and do the +entire opera over again with only that one individual +in the vast solemn theater for audience. Once he took +an odd freak into his head. High up and out of sight, +over the prodigious stage of the court theater is a maze +of interlacing water-pipes, so pierced that in case +of fire, innumerable little thread-like streams of +water can be caused to descend; and in case of need, +this discharge can be augmented to a pouring flood. +American managers might want to make a note of that. +The King was sole audience. The opera proceeded, +it was a piece with a storm in it; the mimic thunder +began to mutter, the mimic wind began to wail and sough, +and the mimic rain to patter. The King's interest rose +higher and higher; it developed into enthusiasm. He cried +out: + +"It is very, very good, indeed! But I will have real +rain! Turn on the water!" + +The manager pleaded for a reversal of the command; said it +would ruin the costly scenery and the splendid costumes, +but the King cried: + +"No matter, no matter, I will have real rain! Turn +on the water!" + +So the real rain was turned on and began to descend in +gossamer lances to the mimic flower-beds and gravel walks +of the stage. The richly dressed actresses and actors +tripped about singing bravely and pretending not to mind it. +The King was delighted--his enthusiasm grew higher. +He cried out: + +"Bravo, bravo! More thunder! more lightning! turn +on more rain!" + +The thunder boomed, the lightning glared, the storm-winds raged, +the deluge poured down. The mimic royalty on the stage, +with their soaked satins clinging to their bodies, +slopped about ankle-deep in water, warbling their sweetest +and best, the fiddlers under the eaves of the state sawed +away for dear life, with the cold overflow spouting down +the backs of their necks, and the dry and happy King sat +in his lofty box and wore his gloves to ribbons applauding. + +"More yet!" cried the King; "more yet--let loose all +the thunder, turn on all the water! I will hang the man +that raises an umbrella!" + +When this most tremendous and effective storm that had +ever been produced in any theater was at last over, +the King's approbation was measureless. He cried: + +"Magnificent, magnificent! ENCORE! Do it again!" + +But the manager succeeded in persuading him to recall +the encore, and said the company would feel sufficiently +rewarded and complimented in the mere fact that the +encore was desired by his Majesty, without fatiguing +him with a repetition to gratify their own vanity. + +During the remainder of the act the lucky performers +were those whose parts required changes of dress; +the others were a soaked, bedraggled, and uncomfortable lot, +but in the last degree picturesque. The stage scenery +was ruined, trap-doors were so swollen that they wouldn't +work for a week afterward, the fine costumes were spoiled, +and no end of minor damages were done by that remarkable storm. + +It was royal idea--that storm--and royally carried out. +But observe the moderation of the King; he did not +insist upon his encore. If he had been a gladsome, +unreflecting American opera-audience, he probably would +have had his storm repeated and repeated until he drowned +all those people. + + + +CHAPTER XI +[I Paint a "Turner"] + +The summer days passed pleasantly in Heidelberg. +We had a skilled trainer, and under his instructions we +were getting our legs in the right condition for the +contemplated pedestrian tours; we were well satisfied +with the progress which we had made in the German language, +[1. See Appendix D for information concerning this +fearful tongue.] and more than satisfied with what we had +accomplished in art. We had had the best instructors in +drawing and painting in Germany--Haemmerling, Vogel, Mueller, +Dietz, and Schumann. Haemmerling taught us landscape-painting. +Vogel taught us figure-drawing, Mueller taught us to do +still-life, and Dietz and Schumann gave us a finishing +course in two specialties--battle-pieces and shipwrecks. +Whatever I am in Art I owe to these men. I have something +of the manner of each and all of them; but they all said that I +had also a manner of my own, and that it was conspicuous. +They said there was a marked individuality about my +style--insomuch that if I ever painted the commonest +type of a dog, I should be sure to throw a something +into the aspect of that dog which would keep him from +being mistaken for the creation of any other artist. +Secretly I wanted to believe all these kind sayings, +but I could not; I was afraid that my masters' +partiality for me, and pride in me, biased their judgment. +So I resolved to make a test. Privately, and unknown +to any one, I painted my great picture, "Heidelberg Castle +Illuminated"--my first really important work in oils--and +had it hung up in the midst of a wilderness of oil-pictures +in the Art Exhibition, with no name attached to it. To my +great gratification it was instantly recognized as mine. +All the town flocked to see it, and people even came from +neighboring localities to visit it. It made more stir than +any other work in the Exhibition. But the most gratifying +thing of all was, that chance strangers, passing through, +who had not heard of my picture, were not only drawn to it, +as by a lodestone, the moment they entered the gallery, +but always took it for a "Turner." + +Apparently nobody had ever done that. There were ruined +castles on the overhanging cliffs and crags all the way; +these were said to have their legends, like those on the Rhine, +and what was better still, they had never been in print. +There was nothing in the books about that lovely region; +it had been neglected by the tourist, it was virgin soil for +the literary pioneer. + +Meantime the knapsacks, the rough walking-suits and the stout +walking-shoes which we had ordered, were finished and brought +to us. A Mr. X and a young Mr. Z had agreed to go with us. +We went around one evening and bade good-by to our friends, +and afterward had a little farewell banquet at the hotel. +We got to bed early, for we wanted to make an early start, +so as to take advantage of the cool of the morning. + +We were out of bed at break of day, feeling fresh +and vigorous, and took a hearty breakfast, then plunged +down through the leafy arcades of the Castle grounds, +toward the town. What a glorious summer morning it was, +and how the flowers did pour out their fragrance, +and how the birds did sing! It was just the time for a +tramp through the woods and mountains. + +We were all dressed alike: broad slouch hats, to keep the +sun off; gray knapsacks; blue army shirts; blue overalls; +leathern gaiters buttoned tight from knee down to ankle; +high-quarter coarse shoes snugly laced. Each man had +an opera-glass, a canteen, and a guide-book case slung +over his shoulder, and carried an alpenstock in one hand +and a sun-umbrella in the other. Around our hats were +wound many folds of soft white muslin, with the ends +hanging and flapping down our backs--an idea brought +from the Orient and used by tourists all over Europe. +Harris carried the little watch-like machine called +a "pedometer," whose office is to keep count of a man's +steps and tell how far he has walked. Everybody stopped +to admire our costumes and give us a hearty "Pleasant march +to you!" + +When we got downtown I found that we could go by rail to +within five miles of Heilbronn. The train was just starting, +so we jumped aboard and went tearing away in splendid spirits. +It was agreed all around that we had done wisely, +because it would be just as enjoyable to walk DOWN the Neckar +as up it, and it could not be needful to walk both ways. +There were some nice German people in our compartment. +I got to talking some pretty private matters presently, +and Harris became nervous; so he nudged me and said: + +"Speak in German--these Germans may understand English." + +I did so, it was well I did; for it turned out that there +was not a German in that party who did not understand +English perfectly. It is curious how widespread our language +is in Germany. After a while some of those folks got out +and a German gentleman and his two young daughters got in. +I spoke in German of one of the latter several times, +but without result. Finally she said: + +"ICH VERSTEHE NUR DEUTCH UND ENGLISHE,"--or words to +that effect. That is, "I don't understand any language +but German and English." + +And sure enough, not only she but her father and sister +spoke English. So after that we had all the talk we wanted; +and we wanted a good deal, for they were agreeable people. +They were greatly interested in our customs; especially +the alpenstocks, for they had not seen any before. +They said that the Neckar road was perfectly level, so we +must be going to Switzerland or some other rugged country; +and asked us if we did not find the walking pretty fatiguing +in such warm weather. But we said no. + +We reached Wimpfen--I think it was Wimpfen--in about +three hours, and got out, not the least tired; found a +good hotel and ordered beer and dinner--then took +a stroll through the venerable old village. It was very +picturesque and tumble-down, and dirty and interesting. +It had queer houses five hundred years old in it, +and a military tower 115 feet high, which had stood there +more than ten centuries. I made a little sketch of it. +I kept a copy, but gave the original to the Burgomaster. +I think the original was better than the copy, because it +had more windows in it and the grass stood up better and had +a brisker look. There was none around the tower, though; +I composed the grass myself, from studies I made in a field +by Heidelberg in Haemmerling's time. The man on top, +looking at the view, is apparently too large, but I found +he could not be made smaller, conveniently. I wanted +him there, and I wanted him visible, so I thought out a +way to manage it; I composed the picture from two points +of view; the spectator is to observe the man from bout +where that flag is, and he must observe the tower itself +from the ground. This harmonizes the seeming discrepancy. +[Figure 2] + +Near an old cathedral, under a shed, were three crosses +of stone--moldy and damaged things, bearing life-size +stone figures. The two thieves were dressed in the fanciful +court costumes of the middle of the sixteenth century, +while the Saviour was nude, with the exception of a cloth +around the loins. + +We had dinner under the green trees in a garden belonging +to the hotel and overlooking the Neckar; then, after a smoke, +we went to bed. We had a refreshing nap, then got up +about three in the afternoon and put on our panoply. +As we tramped gaily out at the gate of the town, +we overtook a peasant's cart, partly laden with odds and +ends of cabbages and similar vegetable rubbish, and drawn +by a small cow and a smaller donkey yoked together. +It was a pretty slow concern, but it got us into Heilbronn +before dark--five miles, or possibly it was seven. + +We stopped at the very same inn which the famous old +robber-knight and rough fighter Goetz von Berlichingen, +abode in after he got out of captivity in the Square Tower +of Heilbronn between three hundred and fifty and four hundred +years ago. Harris and I occupied the same room which he +had occupied and the same paper had not quite peeled off +the walls yet. The furniture was quaint old carved stuff, +full four hundred years old, and some of the smells +were over a thousand. There was a hook in the wall, +which the landlord said the terrific old Goetz used to +hang his iron hand on when he took it off to go to bed. +This room was very large--it might be called immense +--and it was on the first floor; which means it was in +the second story, for in Europe the houses are so high +that they do not count the first story, else they +would get tired climbing before they got to the top. +The wallpaper was a fiery red, with huge gold figures in it, +well smirched by time, and it covered all the doors. +These doors fitted so snugly and continued the figures +of the paper so unbrokenly, that when they were closed +one had to go feeling and searching along the wall +to find them. There was a stove in the corner--one +of those tall, square, stately white porcelain things +that looks like a monument and keeps you thinking +of death when you ought to be enjoying your travels. +The windows looked out on a little alley, and over that +into a stable and some poultry and pig yards in the rear +of some tenement-houses. There were the customary two beds +in the room, one in one end, the other in the other, +about an old-fashioned brass-mounted, single-barreled +pistol-shot apart. They were fully as narrow as the usual +German bed, too, and had the German bed's ineradicable +habit of spilling the blankets on the floor every time +you forgot yourself and went to sleep. + +A round table as large as King Arthur's stood in the +center of the room; while the waiters were getting +ready to serve our dinner on it we all went out to see +the renowned clock on the front of the municipal buildings. + + + +CHAPTER XII +[What the Wives Saved] + +The RATHHAUS, or municipal building, is of the quaintest +and most picturesque Middle-Age architecture. It has a +massive portico and steps, before it, heavily balustraded, +and adorned with life-sized rusty iron knights in +complete armor. The clock-face on the front of the building +is very large and of curious pattern. Ordinarily, a gilded +angel strikes the hour on a big bell with a hammer; +as the striking ceases, a life-sized figure of Time raises +its hour-glass and turns it; two golden rams advance +and butt each other; a gilded cock lifts its wings; +but the main features are two great angels, who stand +on each side of the dial with long horns at their lips; +it was said that they blew melodious blasts on these +horns every hour--but they did not do it for us. +We were told, later, than they blew only at night, +when the town was still. + +Within the RATHHAUS were a number of huge wild boars' +heads, preserved, and mounted on brackets along the wall; +they bore inscriptions telling who killed them and how many +hundred years ago it was done. One room in the building +was devoted to the preservation of ancient archives. +There they showed us no end of aged documents; some were +signed by Popes, some by Tilly and other great generals, +and one was a letter written and subscribed by Goetz von +Berlichingen in Heilbronn in 1519 just after his release +from the Square Tower. + +This fine old robber-knight was a devoutly and sincerely +religious man, hospitable, charitable to the poor, +fearless in fight, active, enterprising, and possessed +of a large and generous nature. He had in him a +quality of being able to overlook moderate injuries, +and being able to forgive and forget mortal ones as +soon as he had soundly trounced the authors of them. +He was prompt to take up any poor devil's quarrel and risk +his neck to right him. The common folk held him dear, +and his memory is still green in ballad and tradition. +He used to go on the highway and rob rich wayfarers; +and other times he would swoop down from his high castle +on the hills of the Neckar and capture passing cargoes +of merchandise. In his memoirs he piously thanks the +Giver of all Good for remembering him in his needs and +delivering sundry such cargoes into his hands at times +when only special providences could have relieved him. +He was a doughty warrior and found a deep joy in battle. +In an assault upon a stronghold in Bavaria when he was +only twenty-three years old, his right hand was shot away, +but he was so interested in the fight that he did not +observe it for a while. He said that the iron hand +which was made for him afterward, and which he wore for +more than half a century, was nearly as clever a member +as the fleshy one had been. I was glad to get a facsimile +of the letter written by this fine old German Robin Hood, +though I was not able to read it. He was a better artist +with his sword than with his pen. + +We went down by the river and saw the Square Tower. +It was a very venerable structure, very strong, +and very ornamental. There was no opening near the ground. +They had to use a ladder to get into it, no doubt. + +We visited the principal church, also--a curious +old structure, with a towerlike spire adorned with all +sorts of grotesque images. The inner walls of the church +were placarded with large mural tablets of copper, +bearing engraved inscriptions celebrating the merits +of old Heilbronn worthies of two or three centuries ago, +and also bearing rudely painted effigies of themselves +and their families tricked out in the queer costumes of +those days. The head of the family sat in the foreground, +and beyond him extended a sharply receding and diminishing +row of sons; facing him sat his wife, and beyond +her extended a low row of diminishing daughters. +The family was usually large, but the perspective bad. + +Then we hired the hack and the horse which Goetz von +Berlichingen used to use, and drove several miles into +the country to visit the place called WEIBERTREU--Wife's +Fidelity I suppose it means. It was a feudal castle +of the Middle Ages. When we reached its neighborhood we +found it was beautifully situated, but on top of a mound, +or hill, round and tolerably steep, and about two hundred +feet high. Therefore, as the sun was blazing hot, +we did not climb up there, but took the place on trust, +and observed it from a distance while the horse leaned up +against a fence and rested. The place has no interest +except that which is lent it by its legend, which is +a very pretty one--to this effect: + +THE LEGEND + +In the Middle Ages, a couple of young dukes, brothers, +took opposite sides in one of the wars, the one fighting +for the Emperor, the other against him. One of them +owned the castle and village on top of the mound which I +have been speaking of, and in his absence his brother +came with his knights and soldiers and began a siege. +It was a long and tedious business, for the people +made a stubborn and faithful defense. But at last +their supplies ran out and starvation began its work; +more fell by hunger than by the missiles of the enemy. +They by and by surrendered, and begged for charitable terms. +But the beleaguering prince was so incensed against them +for their long resistance that he said he would spare none +but the women and children--all men should be put to the +sword without exception, and all their goods destroyed. +Then the women came and fell on their knees and begged for +the lives of their husbands. + +"No," said the prince, "not a man of them shall escape alive; +you yourselves shall go with your children into houseless +and friendless banishment; but that you may not starve +I grant you this one grace, that each woman may bear +with her from this place as much of her most valuable +property as she is able to carry." + +Very well, presently the gates swung open and out filed +those women carrying their HUSBANDS on their shoulders. +The besiegers, furious at the trick, rushed forward +to slaughter the men, but the Duke stepped between and +said: + +"No, put up your swords--a prince's word is inviolable." + +When we got back to the hotel, King Arthur's Round Table +was ready for us in its white drapery, and the head waiter +and his first assistant, in swallow-tails and white cravats, +brought in the soup and the hot plates at once. + +Mr. X had ordered the dinner, and when the wine came on, +he picked up a bottle, glanced at the label, and then turned +to the grave, the melancholy, the sepulchral head waiter +and said it was not the sort of wine he had asked for. +The head waiter picked up the bottle, cast his undertaker-eye +on it and said: + +"It is true; I beg pardon." Then he turned on his +subordinate and calmly said, "Bring another label." + +At the same time he slid the present label off with his hand +and laid it aside; it had been newly put on, its paste +was still wet. When the new label came, he put it on; +our French wine being now turned into German wine, +according to desire, the head waiter went blandly about his +other duties, as if the working of this sort of miracle +was a common and easy thing to him. + +Mr. X said he had not known, before, that there were +people honest enough to do this miracle in public, +but he was aware that thousands upon thousands of labels +were imported into America from Europe every year, +to enable dealers to furnish to their customers in a quiet +and inexpensive way all the different kinds of foreign +wines they might require. + +We took a turn around the town, after dinner, and found +it fully as interesting in the moonlight as it had been +in the daytime. The streets were narrow and roughly paved, +and there was not a sidewalk or a street-lamp anywhere. +The dwellings were centuries old, and vast enough for hotels. +They widened all the way up; the stories projected +further and further forward and aside as they ascended, +and the long rows of lighted windows, filled with little bits +of panes, curtained with figured white muslin and adorned +outside with boxes of flowers, made a pretty effect. +The moon was bright, and the light and shadow very strong; +and nothing could be more picturesque than those curving +streets, with their rows of huge high gables leaning +far over toward each other in a friendly gossiping way, +and the crowds below drifting through the alternating blots +of gloom and mellow bars of moonlight. Nearly everybody +was abroad, chatting, singing, romping, or massed in lazy +comfortable attitudes in the doorways. + +In one place there was a public building which was +fenced about with a thick, rusty chain, which sagged +from post to post in a succession of low swings. +The pavement, here, was made of heavy blocks of stone. +In the glare of the moon a party of barefooted children +were swinging on those chains and having a noisy good time. +They were not the first ones who have done that; +even their great-great-grandfathers had not been the first +to do it when they were children. The strokes of the bare +feet had worn grooves inches deep in the stone flags; +it had taken many generations of swinging children to +accomplish that. Everywhere in the town were the mold +and decay that go with antiquity, and evidence of it; +but I do not know that anything else gave us so vivid +a sense of the old age of Heilbronn as those footworn +grooves in the paving-stones. + + + +CHAPTER XIII +[My Long Crawl in the Dark] + +When we got back to the hotel I wound and set the +pedometer and put it in my pocket, for I was to carry +it next day and keep record of the miles we made. +The work which we had given the instrument to do during +the day which had just closed had not fatigued it perceptibly. + +We were in bed by ten, for we wanted to be up and away on +our tramp homeward with the dawn. I hung fire, but Harris +went to sleep at once. I hate a man who goes to sleep +at once; there is a sort of indefinable something about it +which is not exactly an insult, and yet is an insolence; +and one which is hard to bear, too. I lay there fretting +over this injury, and trying to go to sleep; but the harder +I tried, the wider awake I grew. I got to feeling very lonely +in the dark, with no company but an undigested dinner. +My mind got a start by and by, and began to consider the +beginning of every subject which has ever been thought of; +but it never went further than the beginning; it was touch +and go; it fled from topic to topic with a frantic speed. +At the end of an hour my head was in a perfect whirl and I +was dead tired, fagged out. + +The fatigue was so great that it presently began to make some +head against the nervous excitement; while imagining myself +wide awake, I would really doze into momentary unconsciousness, +and come suddenly out of it with a physical jerk which nearly +wrenched my joints apart--the delusion of the instant +being that I was tumbling backward over a precipice. +After I had fallen over eight or nine precipices and thus +found out that one half of my brain had been asleep eight +or nine times without the wide-awake, hard-working other +half suspecting it, the periodical unconsciousnesses +began to extend their spell gradually over more of my +brain-territory, and at last I sank into a drowse which +grew deeper and deeper and was doubtless just on the very +point of being a solid, blessed dreamless stupor, when--what was +that? + +My dulled faculties dragged themselves partly back to life +and took a receptive attitude. Now out of an immense, +a limitless distance, came a something which grew and grew, +and approached, and presently was recognizable as a sound +--it had rather seemed to be a feeling, before. This sound +was a mile away, now--perhaps it was the murmur of a storm; +and now it was nearer--not a quarter of a mile away; +was it the muffled rasping and grinding of distant +machinery? No, it came still nearer; was it the measured +tramp of a marching troop? But it came nearer still, +and still nearer--and at last it was right in the room: it +was merely a mouse gnawing the woodwork. So I had held my +breath all that time for such a trifle. + +Well, what was done could not be helped; I would go +to sleep at once and make up the lost time. That was +a thoughtless thought. Without intending it--hardly +knowing it--I fell to listening intently to that sound, +and even unconsciously counting the strokes of the mouse's +nutmeg-grater. Presently I was deriving exquisite suffering +from this employment, yet maybe I could have endured +it if the mouse had attended steadily to his work; +but he did not do that; he stopped every now and then, +and I suffered more while waiting and listening for +him to begin again than I did while he was gnawing. +Along at first I was mentally offering a reward +of five--six--seven--ten--dollars for that mouse; +but toward the last I was offering rewards which were +entirely beyond my means. I close-reefed my ears +--that is to say, I bent the flaps of them down and furled +them into five or six folds, and pressed them against +the hearing-orifice--but it did no good: the faculty +was so sharpened by nervous excitement that it was become +a microphone and could hear through the overlays without trouble. + + +My anger grew to a frenzy. I finally did what all persons +before me have done, clear back to Adam,--resolved to +throw something. I reached down and got my walking-shoes, +then sat up in bed and listened, in order to exactly locate +the noise. But I couldn't do it; it was as unlocatable +as a cricket's noise; and where one thinks that that is, +is always the very place where it isn't. So I presently +hurled a shoe at random, and with a vicious vigor. +It struck the wall over Harris's head and fell down on him; +I had not imagined I could throw so far. It woke Harris, +and I was glad of it until I found he was not angry; +then I was sorry. He soon went to sleep again, +which pleased me; but straightway the mouse began again, +which roused my temper once more. I did not want to wake +Harris a second time, but the gnawing continued until I +was compelled to throw the other shoe. This time I broke +a mirror--there were two in the room--I got the largest one, +of course. Harris woke again, but did not complain, +and I was sorrier than ever. I resolved that I would +suffer all possible torture before I would disturb him a +third time. + +The mouse eventually retired, and by and by I was sinking +to sleep, when a clock began to strike; I counted till +it was done, and was about to drowse again when another +clock began; I counted; then the two great RATHHAUS clock +angels began to send forth soft, rich, melodious blasts +from their long trumpets. I had never heard anything +that was so lovely, or weird, or mysterious--but when they +got to blowing the quarter-hours, they seemed to me to be +overdoing the thing. Every time I dropped off for the moment, +a new noise woke me. Each time I woke I missed my coverlet, +and had to reach down to the floor and get it again. + +At last all sleepiness forsook me. I recognized the fact +that I was hopelessly and permanently wide awake. +Wide awake, and feverish and thirsty. When I had lain +tossing there as long as I could endure it, it occurred +to me that it would be a good idea to dress and go out in +the great square and take a refreshing wash in the fountain, +and smoke and reflect there until the remnant of the night +was gone. + +I believed I could dress in the dark without waking Harris. +I had banished my shoes after the mouse, but my slippers +would do for a summer night. So I rose softly, and gradually +got on everything--down to one sock. I couldn't seem +to get on the track of that sock, any way I could fix it. +But I had to have it; so I went down on my hands and knees, +with one slipper on and the other in my hand, and began to +paw gently around and rake the floor, but with no success. +I enlarged my circle, and went on pawing and raking. +With every pressure of my knee, how the floor creaked! +and every time I chanced to rake against any article, +it seemed to give out thirty-five or thirty-six times +more noise than it would have done in the daytime. +In those cases I always stopped and held my breath till I +was sure Harris had not awakened--then I crept along again. +I moved on and on, but I could not find the sock; +I could not seem to find anything but furniture. +I could not remember that there was much furniture +in the room when I went to bed, but the place was alive +with it now --especially chairs--chairs everywhere +--had a couple of families moved in, in the mean time? And +I never could seem to GLANCE on one of those chairs, +but always struck it full and square with my head. +My temper rose, by steady and sure degrees, and as I +pawed on and on, I fell to making vicious comments under +my breath. + +Finally, with a venomous access of irritation, I said I +would leave without the sock; so I rose up and made straight +for the door--as I supposed--and suddenly confronted my +dim spectral image in the unbroken mirror. It startled +the breath out of me, for an instant; it also showed me +that I was lost, and had no sort of idea where I was. +When I realized this, I was so angry that I had to sit +down on the floor and take hold of something to keep +from lifting the roof off with an explosion of opinion. +If there had been only one mirror, it might possibly have +helped to locate me; but there were two, and two were as +bad as a thousand; besides, these were on opposite sides +of the room. I could see the dim blur of the windows, +but in my turned-around condition they were exactly +where they ought not to be, and so they only confused me +instead of helping me. + +I started to get up, and knocked down an umbrella; +it made a noise like a pistol-shot when it struck +that hard, slick, carpetless floor; I grated my teeth +and held my breath--Harris did not stir. I set the +umbrella slowly and carefully on end against the wall, +but as soon as I took my hand away, its heel slipped +from under it, and down it came again with another bang. +I shrunk together and listened a moment in silent fury +--no harm done, everything quiet. With the most painstaking +care and nicety, I stood the umbrella up once more, +took my hand away, and down it came again. + +I have been strictly reared, but if it had not been +so dark and solemn and awful there in that lonely, +vast room, I do believe I should have said something +then which could not be put into a Sunday-school book +without injuring the sale of it. If my reasoning powers +had not been already sapped dry by my harassments, +I would have known better than to try to set an umbrella +on end on one of those glassy German floors in the dark; +it can't be done in the daytime without four failures +to one success. I had one comfort, though--Harris was +yet still and silent--he had not stirred. + +The umbrella could not locate me--there were four +standing around the room, and all alike. I thought I +would feel along the wall and find the door in that way. +I rose up and began this operation, but raked down +a picture. It was not a large one, but it made noise +enough for a panorama. Harris gave out no sound, but I +felt that if I experimented any further with the pictures +I should be sure to wake him. Better give up trying to +get out. Yes, I would find King Arthur's Round Table once +more--I had already found it several times--and use it +for a base of departure on an exploring tour for my bed; +if I could find my bed I could then find my water pitcher; +I would quench my raging thirst and turn in. So I started +on my hands and knees, because I could go faster that way, +and with more confidence, too, and not knock down things. +By and by I found the table--with my head--rubbed the +bruise a little, then rose up and started, with hands +abroad and fingers spread, to balance myself. I found +a chair; then a wall; then another chair; then a sofa; +then an alpenstock, then another sofa; this confounded me, +for I had thought there was only one sofa. I hunted +up the table again and took a fresh start; found some +more chairs. + +It occurred to me, now, as it ought to have done before, +that as the table was round, it was therefore of no +value as a base to aim from; so I moved off once more, +and at random among the wilderness of chairs and sofas +--wandering off into unfamiliar regions, and presently knocked +a candlestick and knocked off a lamp, grabbed at the lamp +and knocked off a water pitcher with a rattling crash, +and thought to myself, "I've found you at last--I +judged I was close upon you." Harris shouted "murder," +and "thieves," and finished with "I'm absolutely drowned." + +The crash had roused the house. Mr. X pranced in, +in his long night-garment, with a candle, young Z after him +with another candle; a procession swept in at another door, +with candles and lanterns--landlord and two German guests +in their nightgowns and a chambermaid in hers. + +I looked around; I was at Harris's bed, a Sabbath-day's +journey from my own. There was only one sofa; it was against +the wall; there was only one chair where a body could get +at it--I had been revolving around it like a planet, +and colliding with it like a comet half the night. + +I explained how I had been employing myself, and why. +Then the landlord's party left, and the rest of us set +about our preparations for breakfast, for the dawn was +ready to break. I glanced furtively at my pedometer, +and found I had made 47 miles. But I did not care, for I +had come out for a pedestrian tour anyway. + + + +CHAPTER XIV +[Rafting Down the Neckar] + +When the landlord learned that I and my agents were artists, +our party rose perceptibly in his esteem; we rose still +higher when he learned that we were making a pedestrian +tour of Europe. + +He told us all about the Heidelberg road, and which +were the best places to avoid and which the best ones +to tarry at; he charged me less than cost for the things +I broke in the night; he put up a fine luncheon for us +and added to it a quantity of great light-green plums, +the pleasantest fruit in Germany; he was so anxious to do us +honor that he would not allow us to walk out of Heilbronn, +but called up Goetz von Berlichingen's horse and cab +and made us ride. + +I made a sketch of the turnout. It is not a Work, it is only +what artists call a "study"--a thing to make a finished +picture from. This sketch has several blemishes in it; +for instance, the wagon is not traveling as fast as the +horse is. This is wrong. Again, the person trying to get +out of the way is too small; he is out of perspective, +as we say. The two upper lines are not the horse's back, +they are the reigns; there seems to be a wheel missing +--this would be corrected in a finished Work, of course. +This thing flying out behind is not a flag, it is a curtain. +That other thing up there is the sun, but I didn't get +enough distance on it. I do not remember, now, what that +thing is that is in front of the man who is running, +but I think it is a haystack or a woman. This study +was exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1879, but did not +take any medal; they do not give medals for studies. +[Figure 3] + +We discharged the carriage at the bridge. The river was +full of logs--long, slender, barkless pine logs--and we +leaned on the rails of the bridge, and watched the men put +them together into rafts. These rafts were of a shape +and construction to suit the crookedness and extreme +narrowness of the Neckar. They were from fifty to one +hundred yards long, and they gradually tapered from a +nine-log breadth at their sterns, to a three-log breadth +at their bow-ends. The main part of the steering is done +at the bow, with a pole; the three-log breadth there +furnishes room for only the steersman, for these little logs +are not larger around than an average young lady's waist. +The connections of the several sections of the raft are +slack and pliant, so that the raft may be readily bent +into any sort of curve required by the shape of the river. + +The Neckar is in many places so narrow that a person +can throw a dog across it, if he has one; when it is +also sharply curved in such places, the raftsman has +to do some pretty nice snug piloting to make the turns. +The river is not always allowed to spread over its whole +bed--which is as much as thirty, and sometimes forty yards +wide--but is split into three equal bodies of water, +by stone dikes which throw the main volume, depth, and current +into the central one. In low water these neat narrow-edged +dikes project four or five inches above the surface, +like the comb of a submerged roof, but in high water +they are overflowed. A hatful of rain makes high water +in the Neckar, and a basketful produces an overflow. + +There are dikes abreast the Schloss Hotel, and the current +is violently swift at that point. I used to sit for hours +in my glass cage, watching the long, narrow rafts slip +along through the central channel, grazing the right-bank +dike and aiming carefully for the middle arch of the stone +bridge below; I watched them in this way, and lost all this +time hoping to see one of them hit the bridge-pier and wreck +itself sometime or other, but was always disappointed. +One was smashed there one morning, but I had just stepped +into my room a moment to light a pipe, so I lost it. + +While I was looking down upon the rafts that morning +in Heilbronn, the daredevil spirit of adventure came +suddenly upon me, and I said to my comrades: + +"_I_ am going to Heidelberg on a raft. Will you venture +with me?" + +Their faces paled a little, but they assented with as +good a grace as they could. Harris wanted to cable his +mother--thought it his duty to do that, as he was all +she had in this world--so, while he attended to this, +I went down to the longest and finest raft and hailed +the captain with a hearty "Ahoy, shipmate!" which put us +upon pleasant terms at once, and we entered upon business. +I said we were on a pedestrian tour to Heidelberg, +and would like to take passage with him. I said this +partly through young Z, who spoke German very well, +and partly through Mr. X, who spoke it peculiarly. I can +UNDERSTAND German as well as the maniac that invented it, +but I TALK it best through an interpreter. + +The captain hitched up his trousers, then shifted +his quid thoughtfully. Presently he said just what I +was expecting he would say--that he had no license +to carry passengers, and therefore was afraid the law +would be after him in case the matter got noised about +or any accident happened. So I CHARTERED the raft +and the crew and took all the responsibilities on myself. + +With a rattling song the starboard watch bent to their +work and hove the cable short, then got the anchor home, +and our bark moved off with a stately stride, and soon +was bowling along at about two knots an hour. + +Our party were grouped amidships. At first the talk was +a little gloomy, and ran mainly upon the shortness of life, +the uncertainty of it, the perils which beset it, and the +need and wisdom of being always prepared for the worst; +this shaded off into low-voiced references to the dangers +of the deep, and kindred matters; but as the gray east +began to redden and the mysterious solemnity and silence +of the dawn to give place to the joy-songs of the birds, +the talk took a cheerier tone, and our spirits began to +rise steadily. + +Germany, in the summer, is the perfection of the beautiful, +but nobody has understood, and realized, and enjoyed +the utmost possibilities of this soft and peaceful +beauty unless he has voyaged down the Neckar on a raft. +The motion of a raft is the needful motion; it is gentle, +and gliding, and smooth, and noiseless; it calms down +all feverish activities, it soothes to sleep all nervous +hurry and impatience; under its restful influence all the +troubles and vexations and sorrows that harass the mind +vanish away, and existence becomes a dream, a charm, +a deep and tranquil ecstasy. How it contrasts with hot +and perspiring pedestrianism, and dusty and deafening +railroad rush, and tedious jolting behind tired horses +over blinding white roads! + +We went slipping silently along, between the green and +fragrant banks, with a sense of pleasure and contentment +that grew, and grew, all the time. Sometimes the banks +were overhung with thick masses of willows that wholly +hid the ground behind; sometimes we had noble hills on +one hand, clothed densely with foliage to their tops, +and on the other hand open levels blazing with poppies, +or clothed in the rich blue of the corn-flower; +sometimes we drifted in the shadow of forests, and sometimes +along the margin of long stretches of velvety grass, +fresh and green and bright, a tireless charm to the eye. +And the birds!--they were everywhere; they swept back +and forth across the river constantly, and their jubilant +music was never stilled. + +It was a deep and satisfying pleasure to see the sun +create the new morning, and gradually, patiently, +lovingly, clothe it on with splendor after splendor, +and glory after glory, till the miracle was complete. +How different is this marvel observed from a raft, +from what it is when one observes it through the dingy +windows of a railway-station in some wretched village +while he munches a petrified sandwich and waits for the train. + + + +CHAPTER XV +Down the River +[Charming Waterside Pictures] + +Men and women and cattle were at work in the dewy fields +by this time. The people often stepped aboard the raft, +as we glided along the grassy shores, and gossiped with us +and with the crew for a hundred yards or so, then stepped +ashore again, refreshed by the ride. + +Only the men did this; the women were too busy. +The women do all kinds of work on the continent. They dig, +they hoe, they reap, they sow, they bear monstrous burdens +on their backs, they shove similar ones long distances +on wheelbarrows, they drag the cart when there is no dog +or lean cow to drag it--and when there is, they assist +the dog or cow. Age is no matter--the older the woman +the stronger she is, apparently. On the farm a woman's +duties are not defined--she does a little of everything; +but in the towns it is different, there she only does +certain things, the men do the rest. For instance, +a hotel chambermaid has nothing to do but make beds and +fires in fifty or sixty rooms, bring towels and candles, +and fetch several tons of water up several flights of stairs, +a hundred pounds at a time, in prodigious metal pitchers. +She does not have to work more than eighteen or twenty hours +a day, and she can always get down on her knees and scrub +the floors of halls and closets when she is tired and needs +a rest. + +As the morning advanced and the weather grew hot, we took +off our outside clothing and sat in a row along the edge +of the raft and enjoyed the scenery, with our sun-umbrellas +over our heads and our legs dangling in the water. +Every now and then we plunged in and had a swim. +Every projecting grassy cape had its joyous group +of naked children, the boys to themselves and the girls +to themselves, the latter usually in care of some motherly +dame who sat in the shade of a tree with her knitting. +The little boys swam out to us, sometimes, but the little +maids stood knee-deep in the water and stopped their splashing +and frolicking to inspect the raft with their innocent +eyes as it drifted by. Once we turned a corner suddenly +and surprised a slender girl of twelve years or upward, +just stepping into the water. She had not time to run, +but she did what answered just as well; she promptly +drew a lithe young willow bough athwart her white body +with one hand, and then contemplated us with a simple and +untroubled interest. Thus she stood while we glided by. +She was a pretty creature, and she and her willow bough +made a very pretty picture, and one which could not +offend the modesty of the most fastidious spectator. +Her white skin had a low bank of fresh green willows for +background and effective contrast--for she stood against +them--and above and out of them projected the eager faces +and white shoulders of two smaller girls. + +Toward noon we heard the inspiring cry: + +"Sail ho!" + +"Where away?" shouted the captain. + +"Three points off the weather bow!" + +We ran forward to see the vessel. It proved to be +a steamboat--for they had begun to run a steamer up +the Neckar, for the first time in May. She was a tug, +and one of a very peculiar build and aspect. I had +often watched her from the hotel, and wondered how she +propelled herself, for apparently she had no propeller +or paddles. She came churning along, now, making a deal +of noise of one kind or another, and aggravating it every +now and then by blowing a hoarse whistle. She had nine +keel-boats hitched on behind and following after her +in a long, slender rank. We met her in a narrow place, +between dikes, and there was hardly room for us both in the +cramped passage. As she went grinding and groaning by, +we perceived the secret of her moving impulse. She did +not drive herself up the river with paddles or propeller, +she pulled herself by hauling on a great chain. +This chain is laid in the bed of the river and is only +fastened at the two ends. It is seventy miles long. +It comes in over the boat's bow, passes around a drum, +and is payed out astern. She pulls on that chain, +and so drags herself up the river or down it. She has +neither bow or stern, strictly speaking, for she has a +long-bladed rudder on each end and she never turns around. +She uses both rudders all the time, and they are powerful +enough to enable her to turn to the right or the left +and steer around curves, in spite of the strong resistance +of the chain. I would not have believed that that impossible +thing could be done; but I saw it done, and therefore I +know that there is one impossible thing which CAN be done. +What miracle will man attempt next? + +We met many big keel-boats on their way up, using sails, +mule power, and profanity--a tedious and laborious business. +A wire rope led from the foretopmast to the file of mules +on the tow-path a hundred yards ahead, and by dint +of much banging and swearing and urging, the detachment +of drivers managed to get a speed of two or three miles +an hour out of the mules against the stiff current. +The Neckar has always been used as a canal, and thus +has given employment to a great many men and animals; +but now that this steamboat is able, with a small crew +and a bushel or so of coal, to take nine keel-boats farther +up the river in one hour than thirty men and thirty mules +can do it in two, it is believed that the old-fashioned +towing industry is on its death-bed. A second steamboat +began work in the Neckar three months after the first one +was put in service. [Figure 4] + +At noon we stepped ashore and bought some bottled beer +and got some chickens cooked, while the raft waited; +then we immediately put to sea again, and had our +dinner while the beer was cold and the chickens hot. +There is no pleasanter place for such a meal than a raft +that is gliding down the winding Neckar past green meadows +and wooded hills, and slumbering villages, and craggy +heights graced with crumbling towers and battlements. + +In one place we saw a nicely dressed German gentleman +without any spectacles. Before I could come to anchor +he had got underway. It was a great pity. I so wanted +to make a sketch of him. The captain comforted me +for my loss, however, by saying that the man was without +any doubt a fraud who had spectacles, but kept them +in his pocket in order to make himself conspicuous. + +Below Hassmersheim we passed Hornberg, Goetz von Berlichingen's +old castle. It stands on a bold elevation two hundred feet +above the surface of the river; it has high vine-clad walls +enclosing trees, and a peaked tower about seventy-five +feet high. The steep hillside, from the castle clear +down to the water's edge, is terraced, and clothed thick +with grape vines. This is like farming a mansard roof. +All the steeps along that part of the river which furnish +the proper exposure, are given up to the grape. That region +is a great producer of Rhine wines. The Germans are +exceedingly fond of Rhine wines; they are put up in tall, +slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. +One tells them from vinegar by the label. + +The Hornberg hill is to be tunneled, and the new railway +will pass under the castle. + +THE CAVE OF THE SPECTER + +Two miles below Hornberg castle is a cave in a low cliff, +which the captain of the raft said had once been occupied +by a beautiful heiress of Hornberg--the Lady Gertrude +--in the old times. It was seven hundred years ago. +She had a number of rich and noble lovers and one poor +and obscure one, Sir Wendel Lobenfeld. With the native +chuckleheadedness of the heroine of romance, she preferred +the poor and obscure lover. With the native sound judgment +of the father of a heroine of romance, the von Berlichingen +of that day shut his daughter up in his donjon keep, +or his oubliette, or his culverin, or some such place, +and resolved that she should stay there until she selected +a husband from among her rich and noble lovers. The latter +visited her and persecuted her with their supplications, +but without effect, for her heart was true to her poor +despised Crusader, who was fighting in the Holy Land. +Finally, she resolved that she would endure the attentions +of the rich lovers no longer; so one stormy night she escaped +and went down the river and hid herself in the cave on +the other side. Her father ransacked the country for her, +but found not a trace of her. As the days went by, +and still no tidings of her came, his conscience began +to torture him, and he caused proclamation to be made +that if she were yet living and would return, he would +oppose her no longer, she might marry whom she would. +The months dragged on, all hope forsook the old man, +he ceased from his customary pursuits and pleasures, +he devoted himself to pious works, and longed for the +deliverance of death. + +Now just at midnight, every night, the lost heiress stood +in the mouth of her cave, arrayed in white robes, and sang +a little love ballad which her Crusader had made for her. +She judged that if he came home alive the superstitious +peasants would tell him about the ghost that sang in the cave, +and that as soon as they described the ballad he would know +that none but he and she knew that song, therefore he would +suspect that she was alive, and would come and find her. +As time went on, the people of the region became sorely +distressed about the Specter of the Haunted Cave. +It was said that ill luck of one kind or another always +overtook any one who had the misfortune to hear that song. +Eventually, every calamity that happened thereabouts was +laid at the door of that music. Consequently, no boatmen +would consent to pass the cave at night; the peasants +shunned the place, even in the daytime. + +But the faithful girl sang on, night after night, +month after month, and patiently waited; her reward +must come at last. Five years dragged by, and still, +every night at midnight, the plaintive tones floated out +over the silent land, while the distant boatmen and peasants +thrust their fingers into their ears and shuddered out a prayer. + +And now came the Crusader home, bronzed and battle-scarred, +but bringing a great and splendid fame to lay at the feet +of his bride. The old lord of Hornberg received him as +his son, and wanted him to stay by him and be the comfort +and blessing of his age; but the tale of that young +girl's devotion to him and its pathetic consequences +made a changed man of the knight. He could not enjoy +his well-earned rest. He said his heart was broken, +he would give the remnant of his life to high deeds +in the cause of humanity, and so find a worthy death +and a blessed reunion with the brave true heart whose +love had more honored him than all his victories in war. + +When the people heard this resolve of his, they came and told +him there was a pitiless dragon in human disguise in the +Haunted Cave, a dread creature which no knight had yet been +bold enough to face, and begged him to rid the land of its +desolating presence. He said he would do it. They told +him about the song, and when he asked what song it was, +they said the memory of it was gone, for nobody had been +hardy enough to listen to it for the past four years and more. + +Toward midnight the Crusader came floating down the river +in a boat, with his trusty cross-bow in his hands. +He drifted silently through the dim reflections of the +crags and trees, with his intent eyes fixed upon the low +cliff which he was approaching. As he drew nearer, +he discerned the black mouth of the cave. Now--is that +a white figure? Yes. The plaintive song begins to well +forth and float away over meadow and river--the cross-bow +is slowly raised to position, a steady aim is taken, +the bolt flies straight to the mark--the figure sinks down, +still singing, the knight takes the wool out of his ears, +and recognizes the old ballad--too late! Ah, if he had +only not put the wool in his ears! + +The Crusader went away to the wars again, and presently +fell in battle, fighting for the Cross. Tradition says +that during several centuries the spirit of the unfortunate +girl sang nightly from the cave at midnight, but the music +carried no curse with it; and although many listened +for the mysterious sounds, few were favored, since only +those could hear them who had never failed in a trust. +It is believed that the singing still continues, but it is +known that nobody has heard it during the present century. + + + +CHAPTER XVI +An Ancient Legend of the Rhine +[The Lorelei] + +The last legend reminds one of the "Lorelei"--a legend +of the Rhine. There is a song called "The Lorelei." + +Germany is rich in folk-songs, and the words and airs of +several of them are peculiarly beautiful--but "The Lorelei" +is the people's favorite. I could not endure it at first, +but by and by it began to take hold of me, and now there +is no tune which I like so well. + +It is not possible that it is much known in America, else I +should have heard it there. The fact that I never heard +it there, is evidence that there are others in my country +who have fared likewise; therefore, for the sake of these, +I mean to print the words and music in this chapter. +And I will refresh the reader's memory by printing the legend +of the Lorelei, too. I have it by me in the LEGENDS OF +THE RHINE, done into English by the wildly gifted Garnham, +Bachelor of Arts. I print the legend partly to refresh +my own memory, too, for I have never read it before. + +THE LEGEND + +Lore (two syllables) was a water nymph who used to sit +on a high rock called the Ley or Lei (pronounced like our +word LIE) in the Rhine, and lure boatmen to destruction +in a furious rapid which marred the channel at that spot. +She so bewitched them with her plaintive songs and her +wonderful beauty that they forgot everything else to gaze +up at her, and so they presently drifted among the broken +reefs and were lost. + +In those old, old times, the Count Bruno lived in a great +castle near there with his son, the Count Hermann, a youth +of twenty. Hermann had heard a great deal about the +beautiful Lore, and had finally fallen very deeply in love +with her without having seen her. So he used to wander +to the neighborhood of the Lei, evenings, with his Zither +and "Express his Longing in low Singing," as Garnham says. +On one of these occasions, "suddenly there hovered around +the top of the rock a brightness of unequaled clearness +and color, which, in increasingly smaller circles thickened, +was the enchanting figure of the beautiful Lore. + +"An unintentional cry of Joy escaped the Youth, he let +his Zither fall, and with extended arms he called out +the name of the enigmatical Being, who seemed to stoop +lovingly to him and beckon to him in a friendly manner; +indeed, if his ear did not deceive him, she called his +name with unutterable sweet Whispers, proper to love. +Beside himself with delight the youth lost his Senses +and sank senseless to the earth." + +After that he was a changed person. He went dreaming about, +thinking only of his fairy and caring for naught else +in the world. "The old count saw with affliction this +changement in his son," whose cause he could not divine, +and tried to divert his mind into cheerful channels, +but to no purpose. Then the old count used authority. +He commanded the youth to betake himself to the camp. +Obedience was promised. Garnham says: + +"It was on the evening before his departure, as he +wished still once to visit the Lei and offer to the +Nymph of the Rhine his Sighs, the tones of his Zither, +and his Songs. He went, in his boat, this time accompanied +by a faithful squire, down the stream. The moon shed +her silvery light over the whole country; the steep +bank mountains appeared in the most fantastical shapes, +and the high oaks on either side bowed their Branches +on Hermann's passing. As soon as he approached the Lei, +and was aware of the surf-waves, his attendant was seized +with an inexpressible Anxiety and he begged permission +to land; but the Knight swept the strings of his Guitar +and sang: + +"Once I saw thee in dark night, In supernatural Beauty bright; +Of Light-rays, was the Figure wove, To share its light, +locked-hair strove. + +"Thy Garment color wave-dove By thy hand the sign of love, +Thy eyes sweet enchantment, Raying to me, oh! enchantment. + +"O, wert thou but my sweetheart, How willingly thy love +to part! With delight I should be bound To thy rocky +house in deep ground." + +That Hermann should have gone to that place at all, +was not wise; that he should have gone with such a song +as that in his mouth was a most serious mistake. The Lorelei +did not "call his name in unutterable sweet Whispers" +this time. No, that song naturally worked an instant +and thorough "changement" in her; and not only that, +but it stirred the bowels of the whole afflicted region +around about there--for-- + +"Scarcely had these tones sounded, everywhere there +began tumult and sound, as if voices above and below +the water. On the Lei rose flames, the Fairy stood above, +at that time, and beckoned with her right hand clearly +and urgently to the infatuated Knight, while with a staff +in her left hand she called the waves to her service. +They began to mount heavenward; the boat was upset, +mocking every exertion; the waves rose to the gunwale, +and splitting on the hard stones, the Boat broke into Pieces. +The youth sank into the depths, but the squire was thrown on +shore by a powerful wave." + +The bitterest things have been said about the Lorelei +during many centuries, but surely her conduct upon this +occasion entitles her to our respect. One feels drawn +tenderly toward her and is moved to forget her many crimes +and remember only the good deed that crowned and closed +her career. + +"The Fairy was never more seen; but her enchanting tones have +often been heard. In the beautiful, refreshing, still nights +of spring, when the moon pours her silver light over the Country, +the listening shipper hears from the rushing of the waves, +the echoing Clang of a wonderfully charming voice, +which sings a song from the crystal castle, and with sorrow +and fear he thinks on the young Count Hermann, seduced by the +Nymph." + +Here is the music, and the German words by Heinrich Heine. +This song has been a favorite in Germany for forty years, +and will remain a favorite always, maybe. [Figure 5] + +I have a prejudice against people who print things +in a foreign language and add no translation. +When I am the reader, and the author considers me +able to do the translating myself, he pays me quite +a nice compliment--but if he would do the translating +for me I would try to get along without the compliment. + +If I were at home, no doubt I could get a translation of +this poem, but I am abroad and can't; therefore I will make +a translation myself. It may not be a good one, for poetry +is out of my line, but it will serve my purpose--which is, +to give the unGerman young girl a jingle of words to hang +the tune on until she can get hold of a good version, +made by some one who is a poet and knows how to convey +a poetical thought from one language to another. + +THE LORELEI + +I cannot divine what it meaneth, +This haunting nameless pain: +A tale of the bygone ages +Keeps brooding through my brain: + +The faint air cools in the glooming, +And peaceful flows the Rhine, +The thirsty summits are drinking +The sunset's flooding wine; + +The loveliest maiden is sitting +High-throned in yon blue air, +Her golden jewels are shining, +She combs her golden hair; + +She combs with a comb that is golden, +And sings a weird refrain +That steeps in a deadly enchantment +The list'ner's ravished brain: + +The doomed in his drifting shallop, +Is tranced with the sad sweet tone, +He sees not the yawning breakers, +He sees but the maid alone: + +The pitiless billows engulf him!-- +So perish sailor and bark; +And this, with her baleful singing, +Is the Lorelei's gruesome work. + +I have a translation by Garnham, Bachelor of Arts, +in the LEGENDS OF THE RHINE, but it would not answer +the purpose I mentioned above, because the measure is too +nobly irregular; it don't fit the tune snugly enough; +in places it hangs over at the ends too far, and in other +places one runs out of words before he gets to the end +of a bar. Still, Garnham's translation has high merits, +and I am not dreaming of leaving it out of my book. +I believe this poet is wholly unknown in America and England; +I take peculiar pleasure in bringing him forward because I +consider that I discovered him: + +THE LORELEI + +Translated by L. W. Garnham, B.A. + +I do not know what it signifies. +That I am so sorrowful? +A fable of old Times so terrifies, +Leaves my heart so thoughtful. + +The air is cool and it darkens, +And calmly flows the Rhine; +The summit of the mountain hearkens +In evening sunshine line. + +The most beautiful Maiden entrances +Above wonderfully there, +Her beautiful golden attire glances, +She combs her golden hair. + +With golden comb so lustrous, +And thereby a song sings, +It has a tone so wondrous, +That powerful melody rings. + +The shipper in the little ship +It effects with woe sad might; +He does not see the rocky slip, +He only regards dreaded height. + +I believe the turbulent waves +Swallow the last shipper and boat; +She with her singing craves +All to visit her magic moat. + +No translation could be closer. He has got in all +the facts; and in their regular order, too. There is not +a statistic wanting. It is as succinct as an invoice. +That is what a translation ought to be; it should exactly +reflect the thought of the original. You can't SING "Above +wonderfully there," because it simply won't go to the tune, +without damaging the singer; but it is a most clingingly exact +translation of DORT OBEN WUNDERBAR--fits it like a blister. +Mr. Garnham's reproduction has other merits--a hundred +of them--but it is not necessary to point them out. +They will be detected. + +No one with a specialty can hope to have a monopoly of it. +Even Garnham has a rival. Mr. X had a small pamphlet +with him which he had bought while on a visit to Munich. +It was entitled A CATALOGUE OF PICTURES IN THE OLD PINACOTEK, +and was written in a peculiar kind of English. Here are +a few extracts: + +"It is not permitted to make use of the work +in question to a publication of the same contents +as well as to the pirated edition of it." + +"An evening landscape. In the foreground near a pond +and a group of white beeches is leading a footpath +animated by travelers." + +"A learned man in a cynical and torn dress holding an open +book in his hand." + +"St. Bartholomew and the Executioner with the knife +to fulfil the martyr." + +"Portrait of a young man. A long while this picture +was thought to be Bindi Altoviti's portrait; now somebody +will again have it to be the self-portrait of Raphael." + +"Susan bathing, surprised by the two old man. +In the background the lapidation of the condemned." + +("Lapidation" is good; it is much more elegant than +"stoning.") + +"St. Rochus sitting in a landscape with an angel who looks +at his plague-sore, whilst the dog the bread in his mouth +attents him." + +"Spring. The Goddess Flora, sitting. Behind her a fertile +valley perfused by a river." + +"A beautiful bouquet animated by May-bugs, etc." + +"A warrior in armor with a gypseous pipe in his hand leans +against a table and blows the smoke far away of himself." + +"A Dutch landscape along a navigable river which perfuses +it till to the background." + +"Some peasants singing in a cottage. A woman lets drink +a child out of a cup." + +"St. John's head as a boy--painted in fresco on a brick." +(Meaning a tile.) + +"A young man of the Riccio family, his hair cut off +right at the end, dressed in black with the same cap. +Attributed to Raphael, but the signation is false." + +"The Virgin holding the Infant. It is very painted +in the manner of Sassoferrato." + +"A Larder with greens and dead game animated by a cook-maid +and two kitchen-boys." + +However, the English of this catalogue is at least +as happy as that which distinguishes an inscription +upon a certain picture in Rome--to wit: + +"Revelations-View. St. John in Patterson's Island." + +But meanwhile the raft is moving on. + + + +CHAPTER XVII +[Why Germans Wear Spectacles] + +A mile or two above Eberbach we saw a peculiar ruin projecting +above the foliage which clothed the peak of a high and +very steep hill. This ruin consisted of merely a couple +of crumbling masses of masonry which bore a rude resemblance +to human faces; they leaned forward and touched foreheads, +and had the look of being absorbed in conversation. This ruin +had nothing very imposing or picturesque about it, and there +was no great deal of it, yet it was called the "Spectacular +Ruin." + +LEGEND OF THE "SPECTACULAR RUIN" + +The captain of the raft, who was as full of history as he +could stick, said that in the Middle Ages a most prodigious +fire-breathing dragon used to live in that region, +and made more trouble than a tax-collector. He was as long +as a railway-train, and had the customary impenetrable +green scales all over him. His breath bred pestilence +and conflagration, and his appetite bred famine. He ate +men and cattle impartially, and was exceedingly unpopular. +The German emperor of that day made the usual offer: +he would grant to the destroyer of the dragon, any one +solitary thing he might ask for; for he had a surplusage +of daughters, and it was customary for dragon-killers +to take a daughter for pay. + +So the most renowned knights came from the four corners +of the earth and retired down the dragon's throat one after +the other. A panic arose and spread. Heroes grew cautious. +The procession ceased. The dragon became more destructive +than ever. The people lost all hope of succor, and fled +to the mountains for refuge. + +At last Sir Wissenschaft, a poor and obscure knight, +out of a far country, arrived to do battle with the monster. +A pitiable object he was, with his armor hanging in rags +about him, and his strange-shaped knapsack strapped +upon his back. Everybody turned up their noses at him, +and some openly jeered him. But he was calm. He simply +inquired if the emperor's offer was still in force. +The emperor said it was--but charitably advised him to go +and hunt hares and not endanger so precious a life as his +in an attempt which had brought death to so many of the +world's most illustrious heroes. + +But this tramp only asked--"Were any of these heroes +men of science?" This raised a laugh, of course, +for science was despised in those days. But the tramp +was not in the least ruffled. He said he might be a +little in advance of his age, but no matter--science +would come to be honored, some time or other. He said +he would march against the dragon in the morning. +Out of compassion, then, a decent spear was offered him, +but he declined, and said, "spears were useless to men +of science." They allowed him to sup in the servants' +hall, and gave him a bed in the stables. + +When he started forth in the morning, thousands were +gathered to see. The emperor said: + +"Do not be rash, take a spear, and leave off your knapsack." + +But the tramp said: + +"It is not a knapsack," and moved straight on. + +The dragon was waiting and ready. He was breathing forth +vast volumes of sulphurous smoke and lurid blasts of flame. +The ragged knight stole warily to a good position, +then he unslung his cylindrical knapsack--which was simply +the common fire-extinguisher known to modern times +--and the first chance he got he turned on his hose and shot +the dragon square in the center of his cavernous mouth. +Out went the fires in an instant, and the dragon curled up +and died. + +This man had brought brains to his aid. He had reared +dragons from the egg, in his laboratory, he had watched +over them like a mother, and patiently studied them +and experimented upon them while they grew. Thus he had +found out that fire was the life principle of a dragon; +put out the dragon's fires and it could make steam +no longer, and must die. He could not put out a fire +with a spear, therefore he invented the extinguisher. +The dragon being dead, the emperor fell on the hero's neck +and said: + +"Deliverer, name your request," at the same time beckoning +out behind with his heel for a detachment of his daughters +to form and advance. But the tramp gave them no observance. +He simply said: + +"My request is, that upon me be conferred the monopoly +of the manufacture and sale of spectacles in Germany." + +The emperor sprang aside and exclaimed: + +"This transcends all the impudence I ever heard! A +modest demand, by my halidome! Why didn't you ask +for the imperial revenues at once, and be done with it?" + +But the monarch had given his word, and he kept it. +To everybody's surprise, the unselfish monopolist immediately +reduced the price of spectacles to such a degree that a +great and crushing burden was removed from the nation. +The emperor, to commemorate this generous act, and to +testify his appreciation of it, issued a decree commanding +everybody to buy this benefactor's spectacles and wear them, +whether they needed them or not. + +So originated the wide-spread custom of wearing +spectacles in Germany; and as a custom once established +in these old lands is imperishable, this one remains +universal in the empire to this day. Such is the legend +of the monopolist's once stately and sumptuous castle, +now called the "Spectacular Ruin." + +On the right bank, two or three miles below the Spectacular +Ruin, we passed by a noble pile of castellated buildings +overlooking the water from the crest of a lofty elevation. +A stretch of two hundred yards of the high front wall +was heavily draped with ivy, and out of the mass of +buildings within rose three picturesque old towers. +The place was in fine order, and was inhabited by a +family of princely rank. This castle had its legend, +too, but I should not feel justified in repeating +it because I doubted the truth of some of its minor details. + +Along in this region a multitude of Italian laborers +were blasting away the frontage of the hills to make +room for the new railway. They were fifty or a hundred +feet above the river. As we turned a sharp corner they +began to wave signals and shout warnings to us to look +out for the explosions. It was all very well to warn us, +but what could WE do? You can't back a raft upstream, +you can't hurry it downstream, you can't scatter out +to one side when you haven't any room to speak of, +you won't take to the perpendicular cliffs on the other +shore when they appear to be blasting there, too. +Your resources are limited, you see. There is simply +nothing for it but to watch and pray. + +For some hours we had been making three and a half or four +miles an hour and we were still making that. We had been +dancing right along until those men began to shout; +then for the next ten minutes it seemed to me that I had +never seen a raft go so slowly. When the first blast went +off we raised our sun-umbrellas and waited for the result. +No harm done; none of the stones fell in the water. +Another blast followed, and another and another. +Some of the rubbish fell in the water just astern +of us. + +We ran that whole battery of nine blasts in a row, and it +was certainly one of the most exciting and uncomfortable +weeks I ever spent, either aship or ashore. Of course +we frequently manned the poles and shoved earnestly +for a second or so, but every time one of those spurts +of dust and debris shot aloft every man dropped his pole +and looked up to get the bearings of his share of it. +It was very busy times along there for a while. +It appeared certain that we must perish, but even that was +not the bitterest thought; no, the abjectly unheroic nature +of the death--that was the sting--that and the bizarre +wording of the resulting obituary: "SHOT WITH A ROCK, +ON A RAFT." There would be no poetry written about it. +None COULD be written about it. Example: + +NOT by war's shock, or war's shaft,--SHOT, with a rock, +on a raft. + +No poet who valued his reputation would touch such a +theme as that. I should be distinguished as the only +"distinguished dead" who went down to the grave unsonneted, +in 1878. + +But we escaped, and I have never regretted it. +The last blast was peculiarly strong one, and after +the small rubbish was done raining around us and we +were just going to shake hands over our deliverance, +a later and larger stone came down amongst our little +group of pedestrians and wrecked an umbrella. It did +no other harm, but we took to the water just the same. + +It seems that the heavy work in the quarries and the +new railway gradings is done mainly by Italians. +That was a revelation. We have the notion in our country +that Italians never do heavy work at all, but confine +themselves to the lighter arts, like organ-grinding, +operatic singing, and assassination. We have blundered, +that is plain. + +All along the river, near every village, we saw little +station-houses for the future railway. They were +finished and waiting for the rails and business. +They were as trim and snug and pretty as they could be. +They were always of brick or stone; they were of graceful +shape, they had vines and flowers about them already, +and around them the grass was bright and green, +and showed that it was carefully looked after. They were +a decoration to the beautiful landscape, not an offense. +Wherever one saw a pile of gravel or a pile of broken stone, +it was always heaped as trimly and exactly as a new grave +or a stack of cannon-balls; nothing about those stations +or along the railroad or the wagon-road was allowed +to look shabby or be unornamental. The keeping a country +in such beautiful order as Germany exhibits, has a wise +practical side to it, too, for it keeps thousands of people +in work and bread who would otherwise be idle and mischievous. + +As the night shut down, the captain wanted to tie up, +but I thought maybe we might make Hirschhorn, so we went on. +Presently the sky became overcast, and the captain came +aft looking uneasy. He cast his eye aloft, then shook +his head, and said it was coming on to blow. My party +wanted to land at once--therefore I wanted to go on. +The captain said we ought to shorten sail anyway, +out of common prudence. Consequently, the larboard watch +was ordered to lay in his pole. It grew quite dark, +now, and the wind began to rise. It wailed through +the swaying branches of the trees, and swept our decks +in fitful gusts. Things were taking on an ugly look. +The captain shouted to the steersman on the forward +log: + +"How's she landing?" + +The answer came faint and hoarse from far forward: + +"Nor'-east-and-by-nor'--east-by-east, half-east, sir." + +"Let her go off a point!" + +"Aye-aye, sir!" + +"What water have you got?" + +"Shoal, sir. Two foot large, on the stabboard, +two and a half scant on the labboard!" + +"Let her go off another point!" + +"Aye-aye, sir!" + +"Forward, men, all of you! Lively, now! Stand by to crowd +her round the weather corner!" + +"Aye-aye, sir!" + +Then followed a wild running and trampling and hoarse shouting, +but the forms of the men were lost in the darkness and +the sounds were distorted and confused by the roaring +of the wind through the shingle-bundles. By this time +the sea was running inches high, and threatening every +moment to engulf the frail bark. Now came the mate, +hurrying aft, and said, close to the captain's ear, +in a low, agitated voice: + +"Prepare for the worst, sir--we have sprung a leak!" + +"Heavens! where?" + +"Right aft the second row of logs." + +"Nothing but a miracle can save us! Don't let the men know, +or there will be a panic and mutiny! Lay her in shore +and stand by to jump with the stern-line the moment +she touches. Gentlemen, I must look to you to second +my endeavors in this hour of peril. You have hats--go +forward and bail for your lives!" + +Down swept another mighty blast of wind, clothed in +spray and thick darkness. At such a moment as this, +came from away forward that most appalling of all cries +that are ever heard at sea: + +"MAN OVERBOARD!" + +The captain shouted: + +"Hard a-port! Never mind the man! Let him climb aboard +or wade ashore!" + +Another cry came down the wind: + +"Breakers ahead!" + +"Where away?" + +"Not a log's length off her port fore-foot!" + +We had groped our slippery way forward, and were now +bailing with the frenzy of despair, when we heard +the mate's terrified cry, from far aft: + +"Stop that dashed bailing, or we shall be aground!" + +But this was immediately followed by the glad shout: + +"Land aboard the starboard transom!" + +"Saved!" cried the captain. "Jump ashore and take a turn +around a tree and pass the bight aboard!" + +The next moment we were all on shore weeping and embracing +for joy, while the rain poured down in torrents. +The captain said he had been a mariner for forty years +on the Neckar, and in that time had seen storms to make +a man's cheek blanch and his pulses stop, but he had never, +never seen a storm that even approached this one. +How familiar that sounded! For I have been at sea a good +deal and have heard that remark from captains with a +frequency accordingly. + +We framed in our minds the usual resolution of thanks +and admiration and gratitude, and took the first +opportunity to vote it, and put it in writing and +present it to the captain, with the customary speech. +We tramped through the darkness and the drenching summer +rain full three miles, and reached "The Naturalist Tavern" +in the village of Hirschhorn just an hour before midnight, +almost exhausted from hardship, fatigue, and terror. +I can never forget that night. + +The landlord was rich, and therefore could afford to be +crusty and disobliging; he did not at all like being +turned out of his warm bed to open his house for us. +But no matter, his household got up and cooked a quick +supper for us, and we brewed a hot punch for ourselves, +to keep off consumption. After supper and punch we +had an hour's soothing smoke while we fought the naval +battle over again and voted the resolutions; then we +retired to exceedingly neat and pretty chambers upstairs +that had clean, comfortable beds in them with heirloom +pillowcases most elaborately and tastefully embroidered +by hand. + +Such rooms and beds and embroidered linen are as frequent +in German village inns as they are rare in ours. +Our villages are superior to German villages in +more merits, excellences, conveniences, and privileges +than I can enumerate, but the hotels do not belong in the list. + +"The Naturalist Tavern" was not a meaningless name; for all +the halls and all the rooms were lined with large glass +cases which were filled with all sorts of birds and animals, +glass-eyed, ably stuffed, and set up in the most natural +eloquent and dramatic attitudes. The moment we were abed, +the rain cleared away and the moon came out. I dozed off +to sleep while contemplating a great white stuffed owl +which was looking intently down on me from a high perch +with the air of a person who thought he had met me before, +but could not make out for certain. + +But young Z did not get off so easily. He said that as he was +sinking deliciously to sleep, the moon lifted away the shadows +and developed a huge cat, on a bracket, dead and stuffed, +but crouching, with every muscle tense, for a spring, +and with its glittering glass eyes aimed straight at him. +It made Z uncomfortable. He tried closing his own eyes, +but that did not answer, for a natural instinct kept +making him open them again to see if the cat was still +getting ready to launch at him--which she always was. +He tried turning his back, but that was a failure; +he knew the sinister eyes were on him still. So at +last he had to get up, after an hour or two of worry +and experiment, and set the cat out in the hall. So he won, +that time. + + + +CHAPTER XVIII +[The Kindly Courtesy of Germans] + +In the morning we took breakfast in the garden, +under the trees, in the delightful German summer fashion. +The air was filled with the fragrance of flowers +and wild animals; the living portion of the menagerie +of the "Naturalist Tavern" was all about us. There were +great cages populous with fluttering and chattering +foreign birds, and other great cages and greater wire pens, +populous with quadrupeds, both native and foreign. +There were some free creatures, too, and quite sociable +ones they were. White rabbits went loping about the place, +and occasionally came and sniffed at our shoes and shins; +a fawn, with a red ribbon on its neck, walked up and +examined us fearlessly; rare breeds of chickens and +doves begged for crumbs, and a poor old tailless raven +hopped about with a humble, shamefaced mein which said, +"Please do not notice my exposure--think how you would +feel in my circumstances, and be charitable." If he +was observed too much, he would retire behind something +and stay there until he judged the party's interest had +found another object. I never have seen another dumb +creature that was so morbidly sensitive. Bayard Taylor, +who could interpret the dim reasonings of animals, +and understood their moral natures better than most men, +would have found some way to make this poor old chap forget +his troubles for a while, but we have not his kindly art, +and so had to leave the raven to his griefs. + +After breakfast we climbed the hill and visited the ancient +castle of Hirschhorn, and the ruined church near it. +There were some curious old bas-reliefs leaning against +the inner walls of the church--sculptured lords of +Hirschhorn in complete armor, and ladies of Hirschhorn +in the picturesque court costumes of the Middle Ages. +These things are suffering damage and passing to decay, +for the last Hirschhorn has been dead two hundred years, +and there is nobody now who cares to preserve the family relics. +In the chancel was a twisted stone column, and the captain +told us a legend about it, of course, for in the matter +of legends he could not seem to restrain himself; but I +do not repeat his tale because there was nothing plausible +about it except that the Hero wrenched this column into its +present screw-shape with his hands --just one single wrench. +All the rest of the legend was doubtful. + +But Hirschhorn is best seen from a distance, down the river. +Then the clustered brown towers perched on the green hilltop, +and the old battlemented stone wall, stretching up and over +the grassy ridge and disappearing in the leafy sea beyond, +make a picture whose grace and beauty entirely satisfy +the eye. + +We descended from the church by steep stone stairways +which curved this way and that down narrow alleys +between the packed and dirty tenements of the village. +It was a quarter well stocked with deformed, leering, +unkempt and uncombed idiots, who held out hands or caps +and begged piteously. The people of the quarter were not +all idiots, of course, but all that begged seemed to be, +and were said to be. + +I was thinking of going by skiff to the next town, +Necharsteinach; so I ran to the riverside in advance of +the party and asked a man there if he had a boat to hire. +I suppose I must have spoken High German--Court German--I +intended it for that, anyway--so he did not understand me. +I turned and twisted my question around and about, +trying to strike that man's average, but failed. +He could not make out what I wanted. Now Mr. X arrived, +faced this same man, looked him in the eye, and emptied +this sentence on him, in the most glib and confident way: +"Can man boat get here?" + +The mariner promptly understood and promptly answered. +I can comprehend why he was able to understand that +particular sentence, because by mere accident all the +words in it except "get" have the same sound and the same +meaning in German that they have in English; but how he +managed to understand Mr. X's next remark puzzled me. +I will insert it, presently. X turned away a moment, +and I asked the mariner if he could not find a board, +and so construct an additional seat. I spoke in the +purest German, but I might as well have spoken in the +purest Choctaw for all the good it did. The man tried +his best to understand me; he tried, and kept on trying, +harder and harder, until I saw it was really of no use, +and said: + +"There, don't strain yourself--it is of no consequence." + +Then X turned to him and crisply said: + +"MACHEN SIE a flat board." + +I wish my epitaph may tell the truth about me if the man +did not answer up at once, and say he would go and borrow +a board as soon as he had lit the pipe which he was filling. + +We changed our mind about taking a boat, so we did not have +to go. I have given Mr. X's two remarks just as he made them. +Four of the five words in the first one were English, +and that they were also German was only accidental, +not intentional; three out of the five words in the second +remark were English, and English only, and the two German +ones did not mean anything in particular, in such a connection. + +X always spoke English to Germans, but his plan was +to turn the sentence wrong end first and upside down, +according to German construction, and sprinkle in a German +word without any essential meaning to it, here and there, +by way of flavor. Yet he always made himself understood. +He could make those dialect-speaking raftsmen understand +him, sometimes, when even young Z had failed with them; +and young Z was a pretty good German scholar. For one thing, +X always spoke with such confidence--perhaps that helped. +And possibly the raftsmen's dialect was what is called +PLATT-DEUTSCH, and so they found his English more familiar +to their ears than another man's German. Quite indifferent +students of German can read Fritz Reuter's charming +platt-Deutch tales with some little facility because many +of the words are English. I suppose this is the tongue +which our Saxon ancestors carried to England with them. +By and by I will inquire of some other philologist. + +However, in the mean time it had transpired that the men +employed to calk the raft had found that the leak was not +a leak at all, but only a crack between the logs--a crack +that belonged there, and was not dangerous, but had been +magnified into a leak by the disordered imagination of +the mate. Therefore we went aboard again with a good degree +of confidence, and presently got to sea without accident. +As we swam smoothly along between the enchanting shores, +we fell to swapping notes about manners and customs +in Germany and elsewhere. + +As I write, now, many months later, I perceive that each of us, +by observing and noting and inquiring, diligently and day +by day, had managed to lay in a most varied and opulent +stock of misinformation. But this is not surprising; +it is very difficult to get accurate details in any country. +For example, I had the idea once, in Heidelberg, +to find out all about those five student-corps. I started +with the White Cap corps. I began to inquire of this +and that and the other citizen, and here is what I found +out: + +1. It is called the Prussian Corps, because none +but Prussians are admitted to it. + +2. It is called the Prussian Corps for no particular reason. +It has simply pleased each corps to name itself after +some German state. + +3. It is not named the Prussian Corps at all, but only +the White Cap Corps. + +4. Any student can belong to it who is a German by birth. + +5. Any student can belong to it who is European by birth. + +6. Any European-born student can belong to it, except he +be a Frenchman. + +7. Any student can belong to it, no matter where he +was born. + +8. No student can belong to it who is not of noble blood. + +9. No student can belong to it who cannot show three full +generations of noble descent. + +10. Nobility is not a necessary qualification. + +11. No moneyless student can belong to it. + +12. Money qualification is nonsense--such a thing has +never been thought of. + +I got some of this information from students themselves +--students who did not belong to the corps. + +I finally went to headquarters--to the White Caps--where I +would have gone in the first place if I had been acquainted. +But even at headquarters I found difficulties; I perceived +that there were things about the White Cap Corps which +one member knew and another one didn't. It was natural; +for very few members of any organization know ALL that can +be known about it. I doubt there is a man or a woman +in Heidelberg who would not answer promptly and confidently +three out of every five questions about the White Cap Corps +which a stranger might ask; yet it is a very safe bet +that two of the three answers would be incorrect every time. + +There is one German custom which is universal--the bowing +courteously to strangers when sitting down at table or +rising up from it. This bow startles a stranger out of his +self-possession, the first time it occurs, and he is likely +to fall over a chair or something, in his embarrassment, +but it pleases him, nevertheless. One soon learns to expect +this bow and be on the lookout and ready to return it; +but to learn to lead off and make the initial bow +one's self is a difficult matter for a diffident man. +One thinks, "If I rise to go, and tender my box, +and these ladies and gentlemen take it into their heads +to ignore the custom of their nation, and not return it, +how shall I feel, in case I survive to feel anything." +Therefore he is afraid to venture. He sits out the dinner, +and makes the strangers rise first and originate the bowing. +A table d'ho^te dinner is a tedious affair for a man +who seldom touches anything after the three first courses; +therefore I used to do some pretty dreary waiting +because of my fears. It took me months to assure myself +that those fears were groundless, but I did assure myself +at last by experimenting diligently through my agent. +I made Harris get up and bow and leave; invariably his bow +was returned, then I got up and bowed myself and retired. + +Thus my education proceeded easily and comfortably for me, +but not for Harris. Three courses of a table d'ho^te +dinner were enough for me, but Harris preferred thirteen. + +Even after I had acquired full confidence, and no longer needed +the agent's help, I sometimes encountered difficulties. +Once at Baden-Baden I nearly lost a train because I could +not be sure that three young ladies opposite me at table +were Germans, since I had not heard them speak; they might +be American, they might be English, it was not safe to venture +a bow; but just as I had got that far with my thought, +one of them began a German remark, to my great relief +and gratitude; and before she got out her third word, +our bows had been delivered and graciously returned, +and we were off. + +There is a friendly something about the German character +which is very winning. When Harris and I were making +a pedestrian tour through the Black Forest, we stopped at +a little country inn for dinner one day; two young ladies +and a young gentleman entered and sat down opposite us. +They were pedestrians, too. Our knapsacks were strapped +upon our backs, but they had a sturdy youth along to carry +theirs for them. All parties were hungry, so there was +no talking. By and by the usual bows were exchanged, +and we separated. + +As we sat at a late breakfast in the hotel at Allerheiligen, +next morning, these young people and took places +near us without observing us; but presently they saw +us and at once bowed and smiled; not ceremoniously, +but with the gratified look of people who have found +acquaintances where they were expecting strangers. +Then they spoke of the weather and the roads. We also +spoke of the weather and the roads. Next, they said they +had had an enjoyable walk, notwithstanding the weather. +We said that that had been our case, too. Then they said +they had walked thirty English miles the day before, +and asked how many we had walked. I could not lie, so I +told Harris to do it. Harris told them we had made thirty +English miles, too. That was true; we had "made" them, +though we had had a little assistance here and there. + +After breakfast they found us trying to blast some +information out of the dumb hotel clerk about routes, +and observing that we were not succeeding pretty well, +they went and got their maps and things, and pointed +out and explained our course so clearly that even a New +York detective could have followed it. And when we +started they spoke out a hearty good-by and wished us +a pleasant journey. Perhaps they were more generous +with us than they might have been with native wayfarers +because we were a forlorn lot and in a strange land; +I don't know; I only know it was lovely to be treated so. + +Very well, I took an American young lady to one of the fine +balls in Baden-Baden, one night, and at the entrance-door +upstairs we were halted by an official--something about Miss +Jones's dress was not according to rule; I don't remember +what it was, now; something was wanting--her back hair, +or a shawl, or a fan, or a shovel, or something. +The official was ever so polite, and every so sorry, +but the rule was strict, and he could not let us in. +It was very embarrassing, for many eyes were on us. +But now a richly dressed girl stepped out of the ballroom, +inquired into the trouble, and said she could fix it in +a moment. She took Miss Jones to the robing-room, and soon +brought her back in regulation trim, and then we entered +the ballroom with this benefactress unchallenged. + +Being safe, now, I began to puzzle through my sincere +but ungrammatical thanks, when there was a sudden mutual +recognition --the benefactress and I had met at Allerheiligen. +Two weeks had not altered her good face, and plainly +her heart was in the right place yet, but there was such +a difference between these clothes and the clothes I +had seen her in before, when she was walking thirty miles +a day in the Black Forest, that it was quite natural +that I had failed to recognize her sooner. I had on MY +other suit, too, but my German would betray me to a person +who had heard it once, anyway. She brought her brother +and sister, and they made our way smooth for that evening. + +Well--months afterward, I was driving through the streets +of Munich in a cab with a German lady, one day, when she +said: + +"There, that is Prince Ludwig and his wife, walking along there." + +Everybody was bowing to them--cabmen, little children, +and everybody else--and they were returning all the bows +and overlooking nobody, when a young lady met them and made +a deep courtesy. + +"That is probably one of the ladies of the court," +said my German friend. + +I said: + +"She is an honor to it, then. I know her. I don't know +her name, but I know HER. I have known her at Allerheiligen +and Baden-Baden. She ought to be an Empress, but she +may be only a Duchess; it is the way things go in this way." + +If one asks a German a civil question, he will be quite +sure to get a civil answer. If you stop a German in the +street and ask him to direct you to a certain place, +he shows no sign of feeling offended. If the place be +difficult to find, ten to one the man will drop his own +matters and go with you and show you. + +In London, too, many a time, strangers have walked several +blocks with me to show me my way. + +There is something very real about this sort of politeness. +Quite often, in Germany, shopkeepers who could not furnish +me the article I wanted have sent one of their employees +with me to show me a place where it could be had. + + + +CHAPTER XIX +[The Deadly Jest of Dilsberg] + +However, I wander from the raft. We made the port +of Necharsteinach in good season, and went to the hotel +and ordered a trout dinner, the same to be ready +against our return from a two-hour pedestrian excursion +to the village and castle of Dilsberg, a mile distant, +on the other side of the river. I do not mean that we +proposed to be two hours making two miles--no, we meant +to employ most of the time in inspecting Dilsberg. + +For Dilsberg is a quaint place. It is most quaintly +and picturesquely situated, too. Imagine the beautiful +river before you; then a few rods of brilliant green sward +on its opposite shore; then a sudden hill--no preparatory +gently rising slopes, but a sort of instantaneous hill +--a hill two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet high, +as round as a bowl, with the same taper upward that an +inverted bowl has, and with about the same relation +of height to diameter that distinguishes a bowl of good +honest depth--a hill which is thickly clothed with +green bushes--a comely, shapely hill, rising abruptly +out of the dead level of the surrounding green plains, +visible from a great distance down the bends of the river, +and with just exactly room on the top of its head +for its steepled and turreted and roof-clustered cap +of architecture, which same is tightly jammed and compacted +within the perfectly round hoop of the ancient village wall. + +There is no house outside the wall on the whole hill, +or any vestige of a former house; all the houses are +inside the wall, but there isn't room for another one. +It is really a finished town, and has been finished +a very long time. There is no space between the wall +and the first circle of buildings; no, the village wall +is itself the rear wall of the first circle of buildings, +and the roofs jut a little over the wall and thus +furnish it with eaves. The general level of the massed +roofs is gracefully broken and relieved by the dominating +towers of the ruined castle and the tall spires of a +couple of churches; so, from a distance Dilsberg has +rather more the look of a king's crown than a cap. +That lofty green eminence and its quaint coronet form +quite a striking picture, you may be sure, in the flush +of the evening sun. + +We crossed over in a boat and began the ascent by a narrow, +steep path which plunged us at once into the leafy deeps +of the bushes. But they were not cool deeps by any means, +for the sun's rays were weltering hot and there was +little or no breeze to temper them. As we panted up +the sharp ascent, we met brown, bareheaded and barefooted +boys and girls, occasionally, and sometimes men; +they came upon us without warning, they gave us good day, +flashed out of sight in the bushes, and were gone as +suddenly and mysteriously as they had come. They were +bound for the other side of the river to work. This path +had been traveled by many generations of these people. +They have always gone down to the valley to earn their bread, +but they have always climbed their hill again to eat it, +and to sleep in their snug town. + +It is said that the Dilsbergers do not emigrate much; +they find that living up there above the world, in their +peaceful nest, is pleasanter than living down in the +troublous world. The seven hundred inhabitants are all +blood-kin to each other, too; they have always been blood-kin +to each other for fifteen hundred years; they are simply +one large family, and they like the home folks better than +they like strangers, hence they persistently stay at home. +It has been said that for ages Dilsberg has been merely +a thriving and diligent idiot-factory. I saw no idiots there, +but the captain said, "Because of late years the government +has taken to lugging them off to asylums and otherwheres; +and government wants to cripple the factory, too, and is +trying to get these Dilsbergers to marry out of the family, +but they don't like to." + +The captain probably imagined all this, as modern science +denies that the intermarrying of relatives deteriorates +the stock. + +Arrived within the wall, we found the usual village +sights and life. We moved along a narrow, crooked lane +which had been paved in the Middle Ages. A strapping, +ruddy girl was beating flax or some such stuff in a little +bit of a good-box of a barn, and she swung her flail +with a will--if it was a flail; I was not farmer enough +to know what she was at; a frowsy, barelegged girl was +herding half a dozen geese with a stick--driving them +along the lane and keeping them out of the dwellings; +a cooper was at work in a shop which I know he did not make +so large a thing as a hogshead in, for there was not room. +In the front rooms of dwellings girls and women were +cooking or spinning, and ducks and chickens were waddling +in and out, over the threshold, picking up chance crumbs +and holding pleasant converse; a very old and wrinkled man +sat asleep before his door, with his chin upon his breast +and his extinguished pipe in his lap; soiled children +were playing in the dirt everywhere along the lane, +unmindful of the sun. + +Except the sleeping old man, everybody was at work, +but the place was very still and peaceful, nevertheless; +so still that the distant cackle of the successful hen smote +upon the ear but little dulled by intervening sounds. +That commonest of village sights was lacking here--the +public pump, with its great stone tank or trough of +limpid water, and its group of gossiping pitcher-bearers; +for there is no well or fountain or spring on this tall hill; +cisterns of rain-water are used. + +Our alpenstocks and muslin tails compelled attention, +and as we moved through the village we gathered a considerable +procession of little boys and girls, and so went in some +state to the castle. It proved to be an extensive pile of +crumbling walls, arches, and towers, massive, properly grouped +for picturesque effect, weedy, grass-grown, and satisfactory. +The children acted as guides; they walked us along the top +of the highest walls, then took us up into a high tower +and showed us a wide and beautiful landscape, made up +of wavy distances of woody hills, and a nearer prospect +of undulating expanses of green lowlands, on the one hand, +and castle-graced crags and ridges on the other, +with the shining curves of the Neckar flowing between. +But the principal show, the chief pride of the children, +was the ancient and empty well in the grass-grown court +of the castle. Its massive stone curb stands up three +or four feet above-ground, and is whole and uninjured. +The children said that in the Middle Ages this well was +four hundred feet deep, and furnished all the village +with an abundant supply of water, in war and peace. +They said that in the old day its bottom was below the level +of the Neckar, hence the water-supply was inexhaustible. + +But there were some who believed it had never been a well +at all, and was never deeper than it is now--eighty feet; +that at that depth a subterranean passage branched from it +and descended gradually to a remote place in the valley, +where it opened into somebody's cellar or other hidden recess, +and that the secret of this locality is now lost. +Those who hold this belief say that herein lies the +explanation that Dilsberg, besieged by Tilly and many +a soldier before him, was never taken: after the longest +and closest sieges the besiegers were astonished to +perceive that the besieged were as fat and hearty as ever, +and were well furnished with munitions of war--therefore +it must be that the Dilsbergers had been bringing these +things in through the subterranean passage all the time. + +The children said that there was in truth a subterranean +outlet down there, and they would prove it. So they set +a great truss of straw on fire and threw it down the well, +while we leaned on the curb and watched the glowing +mass descend. It struck bottom and gradually burned out. +No smoke came up. The children clapped their hands and +said: + +"You see! Nothing makes so much smoke as burning straw--now +where did the smoke go to, if there is no subterranean outlet?" + +So it seemed quite evident that the subterranean outlet +indeed existed. But the finest thing within the ruin's +limits was a noble linden, which the children said was +four hundred years old, and no doubt it was. It had +a mighty trunk and a mighty spread of limb and foliage. +The limbs near the ground were nearly the thickness +of a barrel. + +That tree had witnessed the assaults of men in mail +--how remote such a time seems, and how ungraspable is the +fact that real men ever did fight in real armor!--and it +had seen the time when these broken arches and crumbling +battlements were a trim and strong and stately fortress, +fluttering its gay banners in the sun, and peopled with vigorous +humanity--how impossibly long ago that seems!--and here +it stands yet, and possibly may still be standing here, +sunning itself and dreaming its historical dreams, +when today shall have been joined to the days called "ancient." + +Well, we sat down under the tree to smoke, and the captain +delivered himself of his legend: + +THE LEGEND OF DILSBERG CASTLE + +It was to this effect. In the old times there was once +a great company assembled at the castle, and festivity +ran high. Of course there was a haunted chamber +in the castle, and one day the talk fell upon that. +It was said that whoever slept in it would not wake again +for fifty years. Now when a young knight named Conrad +von Geisberg heard this, he said that if the castle were +his he would destroy that chamber, so that no foolish +person might have the chance to bring so dreadful +a misfortune upon himself and afflict such as loved +him with the memory of it. Straightway, the company +privately laid their heads together to contrive some +way to get this superstitious young man to sleep in that chamber. + + +And they succeeded--in this way. They persuaded +his betrothed, a lovely mischievous young creature, +niece of the lord of the castle, to help them in their plot. +She presently took him aside and had speech with him. +She used all her persuasions, but could not shake him; +he said his belief was firm, that if he should sleep +there he would wake no more for fifty years, and it made +him shudder to think of it. Catharina began to weep. +This was a better argument; Conrad could not out against it. +He yielded and said she should have her wish if she would only +smile and be happy again. She flung her arms about his neck, +and the kisses she gave him showed that her thankfulness +and her pleasure were very real. Then she flew to tell +the company her success, and the applause she received +made her glad and proud she had undertaken her mission, +since all alone she had accomplished what the multitude had +failed in. + +At midnight, that night, after the usual feasting, +Conrad was taken to the haunted chamber and left there. +He fell asleep, by and by. + +When he awoke again and looked about him, his heart +stood still with horror! The whole aspect of the chamber +was changed. The walls were moldy and hung with +ancient cobwebs; the curtains and beddings were rotten; +the furniture was rickety and ready to fall to pieces. +He sprang out of bed, but his quaking knees sunk under +him and he fell to the floor. + +"This is the weakness of age," he said. + +He rose and sought his clothing. It was clothing no longer. +The colors were gone, the garments gave way in many places +while he was putting them on. He fled, shuddering, +into the corridor, and along it to the great hall. Here he +was met by a middle-aged stranger of a kind countenance, +who stopped and gazed at him with surprise. Conrad said: + +"Good sir, will you send hither the lord Ulrich?" + +The stranger looked puzzled a moment, then said: + +"The lord Ulrich?" + +"Yes--if you will be so good." + +The stranger called--"Wilhelm!" A young serving-man came, +and the stranger said to him: + +"Is there a lord Ulrich among the guests?" + +"I know none of the name, so please your honor." + +Conrad said, hesitatingly: + +"I did not mean a guest, but the lord of the castle, sir." + +The stranger and the servant exchanged wondering glances. +Then the former said: + +"I am the lord of the castle." + +"Since when, sir?" + +"Since the death of my father, the good lord Ulrich +more than forty years ago." + +Conrad sank upon a bench and covered his face with his +hands while he rocked his body to and fro and moaned. +The stranger said in a low voice to the servant: + +"I fear me this poor old creature is mad. Call some one." + +In a moment several people came, and grouped themselves about, +talking in whispers. Conrad looked up and scanned +the faces about him wistfully. + +Then he shook his head and said, in a grieved voice: + +"No, there is none among ye that I know. I am old and alone +in the world. They are dead and gone these many years +that cared for me. But sure, some of these aged ones I see +about me can tell me some little word or two concerning them." + +Several bent and tottering men and women came nearer +and answered his questions about each former friend +as he mentioned the names. This one they said had been +dead ten years, that one twenty, another thirty. +Each succeeding blow struck heavier and heavier. +At last the sufferer said: + +"There is one more, but I have not the courage to--O +my lost Catharina!" + +One of the old dames said: + +"Ah, I knew her well, poor soul. A misfortune overtook +her lover, and she died of sorrow nearly fifty years ago. +She lieth under the linden tree without the court." + +Conrad bowed his head and said: + +"Ah, why did I ever wake! And so she died of grief for me, +poor child. So young, so sweet, so good! She never wittingly +did a hurtful thing in all the little summer of her life. +Her loving debt shall be repaid--for I will die of grief +for her." + +His head drooped upon his breast. In the moment there +was a wild burst of joyous laughter, a pair of round +young arms were flung about Conrad's neck and a sweet +voice cried: + +"There, Conrad mine, thy kind words kill me--the farce +shall go no further! Look up, and laugh with us--'twas +all a jest!" + +And he did look up, and gazed, in a dazed wonderment +--for the disguises were stripped away, and the aged +men and women were bright and young and gay again. +Catharina's happy tongue ran on: + +"'Twas a marvelous jest, and bravely carried out. +They gave you a heavy sleeping-draught before you went +to bed, and in the night they bore you to a ruined chamber +where all had fallen to decay, and placed these rags +of clothing by you. And when your sleep was spent and you +came forth, two strangers, well instructed in their parts, +were here to meet you; and all we, your friends, +in our disguises, were close at hand, to see and hear, +you may be sure. Ah, 'twas a gallant jest! Come, now, +and make thee ready for the pleasures of the day. +How real was thy misery for the moment, thou poor lad! +Look up and have thy laugh, now!" + +He looked up, searched the merry faces about him +in a dreamy way, then sighed and said: + +"I am aweary, good strangers, I pray you lead me to her grave." + +All the smile vanished away, every cheek blanched, +Catharina sunk to the ground in a swoon. + +All day the people went about the castle with troubled faces, +and communed together in undertones. A painful hush +pervaded the place which had lately been so full of +cheery life. Each in his turn tried to arouse Conrad +out of his hallucination and bring him to himself; +but all the answer any got was a meek, bewildered stare, +and then the words: + +"Good stranger, I have no friends, all are at rest these +many years; ye speak me fair, ye mean me well, but I know +ye not; I am alone and forlorn in the world--prithee +lead me to her grave." + +During two years Conrad spent his days, from the +early morning till the night, under the linden tree, +mourning over the imaginary grave of his Catharina. +Catharina was the only company of the harmless madman. +He was very friendly toward her because, as he said, +in some ways she reminded him of his Catharina whom he had +lost "fifty years ago." He often said: + +"She was so gay, so happy-hearted--but you never smile; +and always when you think I am not looking, you cry." + +When Conrad died, they buried him under the linden, +according to his directions, so that he might rest +"near his poor Catharina." Then Catharina sat under +the linden alone, every day and all day long, a great +many years, speaking to no one, and never smiling; +and at last her long repentance was rewarded with death, +and she was buried by Conrad's side. + +Harris pleased the captain by saying it was good legend; +and pleased him further by adding: + +"Now that I have seen this mighty tree, vigorous with +its four hundred years, I feel a desire to believe +the legend for ITS sake; so I will humor the desire, +and consider that the tree really watches over those poor +hearts and feels a sort of human tenderness for them." + +We returned to Necharsteinach, plunged our hot heads +into the trough at the town pump, and then went to the +hotel and ate our trout dinner in leisurely comfort, +in the garden, with the beautiful Neckar flowing at our feet, +the quaint Dilsberg looming beyond, and the graceful +towers and battlements of a couple of medieval castles +(called the "Swallow's Nest" [1] and "The Brothers.") +assisting the rugged scenery of a bend of the river +down to our right. We got to sea in season to make the +eight-mile run to Heidelberg before the night shut down. +We sailed by the hotel in the mellow glow of sunset, +and came slashing down with the mad current into the narrow +passage between the dikes. I believed I could shoot the +bridge myself, and I went to the forward triplet of logs +and relieved the pilot of his pole and his responsibility. + +1. The seeker after information is referred to Appendix + E for our captain's legend of the "Swallow's Nest" + and "The Brothers." + +We went tearing along in a most exhilarating way, and I +performed the delicate duties of my office very well indeed +for a first attempt; but perceiving, presently, that I +really was going to shoot the bridge itself instead +of the archway under it, I judiciously stepped ashore. +The next moment I had my long-coveted desire: I saw +a raft wrecked. It hit the pier in the center and went +all to smash and scatteration like a box of matches +struck by lightning. + +I was the only one of our party who saw this grand sight; +the others were attitudinizing, for the benefit of the long +rank of young ladies who were promenading on the bank, +and so they lost it. But I helped to fish them out of +the river, down below the bridge, and then described it +to them as well as I could. + +They were not interested, though. They said they were +wet and felt ridiculous and did not care anything for +descriptions of scenery. The young ladies, and other people, +crowded around and showed a great deal of sympathy, +but that did not help matters; for my friends said they +did not want sympathy, they wanted a back alley and solitude. + + + +CHAPTER XX +[My Precious, Priceless Tear-Jug] + +Next morning brought good news--our trunks had arrived +from Hamburg at last. Let this be a warning to the reader. +The Germans are very conscientious, and this trait makes +them very particular. Therefore if you tell a German you +want a thing done immediately, he takes you at your word; +he thinks you mean what you say; so he does that thing +immediately--according to his idea of immediately +--which is about a week; that is, it is a week if it refers +to the building of a garment, or it is an hour and a half +if it refers to the cooking of a trout. Very well; if you +tell a German to send your trunk to you by "slow freight," +he takes you at your word; he sends it by "slow freight," +and you cannot imagine how long you will go on enlarging +your admiration of the expressiveness of that phrase +in the German tongue, before you get that trunk. +The hair on my trunk was soft and thick and youthful, +when I got it ready for shipment in Hamburg; it was baldheaded +when it reached Heidelberg. However, it was still sound, +that was a comfort, it was not battered in the least; +the baggagemen seemed to be conscientiously careful, +in Germany, of the baggage entrusted to their hands. +There was nothing now in the way of our departure, therefore we +set about our preparations. + +Naturally my chief solicitude was about my collection +of Ceramics. Of course I could not take it with me, +that would be inconvenient, and dangerous besides. +I took advice, but the best brick-a-brackers were divided +as to the wisest course to pursue; some said pack the +collection and warehouse it; others said try to get it +into the Grand Ducal Museum at Mannheim for safe keeping. +So I divided the collection, and followed the advice of +both parties. I set aside, for the Museum, those articles +which were the most frail and precious. + +Among these was my Etruscan tear-jug. I have made a little +sketch of it here; [Figure 6] that thing creeping up +the side is not a bug, it is a hole. I bought this +tear-jug of a dealer in antiquities for four hundred +and fifty dollars. It is very rare. The man said the +Etruscans used to keep tears or something in these things, +and that it was very hard to get hold of a broken one, now. +I also set aside my Henri II. plate. See sketch +from my pencil; [Figure 7] it is in the main correct, +though I think I have foreshortened one end of it a little +too much, perhaps. This is very fine and rare; the shape +is exceedingly beautiful and unusual. It has wonderful +decorations on it, but I am not able to reproduce them. +It cost more than the tear-jug, as the dealer said +there was not another plate just like it in the world. +He said there was much false Henri II ware around, +but that the genuineness of this piece was unquestionable. +He showed me its pedigree, or its history, if you please; +it was a document which traced this plate's movements +all the way down from its birth--showed who bought it, +from whom, and what he paid for it--from the first buyer +down to me, whereby I saw that it had gone steadily up +from thirty-five cents to seven hundred dollars. He said +that the whole Ceramic world would be informed that it +was now in my possession and would make a note of it, +with the price paid. [Figure 8] + +There were Masters in those days, but, alas--it is not so now. +Of course the main preciousness of this piece lies in its color; +it is that old sensuous, pervading, ramifying, interpolating, +transboreal blue which is the despair of modern art. +The little sketch which I have made of this gem cannot +and does not do it justice, since I have been obliged +to leave out the color. But I've got the expression, though. + +However, I must not be frittering away the reader's time +with these details. I did not intend to go into any +detail at all, at first, but it is the failing of the +true ceramiker, or the true devotee in any department +of brick-a-brackery, that once he gets his tongue or his +pen started on his darling theme, he cannot well stop +until he drops from exhaustion. He has no more sense +of the flight of time than has any other lover when talking +of his sweetheart. The very "marks" on the bottom +of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into +a gibbering ecstasy; and I could forsake a drowning +relative to help dispute about whether the stopple +of a departed Buon Retiro scent-bottle was genuine or spurious. + +Many people say that for a male person, bric-a-brac hunting +is about as robust a business as making doll-clothes, +or decorating Japanese pots with decalcomanie butterflies +would be, and these people fling mud at the elegant Englishman, +Byng, who wrote a book called THE BRIC-A-BRAC HUNTER, +and make fun of him for chasing around after what they choose +to call "his despicable trifles"; and for "gushing" over +these trifles; and for exhibiting his "deep infantile delight" +in what they call his "tuppenny collection of beggarly +trivialities"; and for beginning his book with a picture +of himself seated, in a "sappy, self-complacent attitude, +in the midst of his poor little ridiculous bric-a-brac junk +shop." + +It is easy to say these things; it is easy to revile us, +easy to despise us; therefore, let these people rail on; +they cannot feel as Byng and I feel--it is their loss, +not ours. For my part I am content to be a brick-a-bracker +and a ceramiker--more, I am proud to be so named. +I am proud to know that I lose my reason as immediately +in the presence of a rare jug with an illustrious mark +on the bottom of it, as if I had just emptied that jug. +Very well; I packed and stored a part of my collection, +and the rest of it I placed in the care of the Grand Ducal +Museum in Mannheim, by permission. My Old Blue China +Cat remains there yet. I presented it to that excellent +institution. + +I had but one misfortune with my things. An egg which I +had kept back from breakfast that morning, was broken +in packing. It was a great pity. I had shown it to the +best connoisseurs in Heidelberg, and they all said it +was an antique. We spent a day or two in farewell visits, +and then left for Baden-Baden. We had a pleasant +trip to it, for the Rhine valley is always lovely. +The only trouble was that the trip was too short. +If I remember rightly it only occupied a couple of hours, +therefore I judge that the distance was very little, +if any, over fifty miles. We quitted the train at Oos, +and walked the entire remaining distance to Baden-Baden, +with the exception of a lift of less than an hour which we +got on a passing wagon, the weather being exhaustingly warm. +We came into town on foot. + +One of the first persons we encountered, as we walked +up the street, was the Rev. Mr. ------, an old friend +from America--a lucky encounter, indeed, for his is +a most gentle, refined, and sensitive nature, and his +company and companionship are a genuine refreshment. +We knew he had been in Europe some time, but were not +at all expecting to run across him. Both parties burst +forth into loving enthusiasms, and Rev. Mr. ------said: + +"I have got a brimful reservoir of talk to pour out +on you, and an empty one ready and thirsting to receive +what you have got; we will sit up till midnight +and have a good satisfying interchange, for I leave +here early in the morning." We agreed to that, of course. + +I had been vaguely conscious, for a while, of a person +who was walking in the street abreast of us; I had glanced +furtively at him once or twice, and noticed that he +was a fine, large, vigorous young fellow, with an open, +independent countenance, faintly shaded with a pale +and even almost imperceptible crop of early down, +and that he was clothed from head to heel in cool and +enviable snow-white linen. I thought I had also noticed +that his head had a sort of listening tilt to it. +Now about this time the Rev. Mr. ------said: + +"The sidewalk is hardly wide enough for three, so I will +walk behind; but keep the talk going, keep the talk going, +there's no time to lose, and you may be sure I will do +my share." He ranged himself behind us, and straightway that +stately snow-white young fellow closed up to the sidewalk +alongside him, fetched him a cordial slap on the shoulder +with his broad palm, and sung out with a hearty cheeriness: + +"AMERICANS for two-and-a-half and the money up! HEY?" + +The Reverend winced, but said mildly: + +"Yes--we are Americans." + +"Lord love you, you can just bet that's what _I_ am, +every time! Put it there!" + +He held out his Sahara of his palm, and the Reverend laid +his diminutive hand in it, and got so cordial a shake +that we heard his glove burst under it. + +"Say, didn't I put you up right?" + +"Oh, yes." + +"Sho! I spotted you for MY kind the minute I heard +your clack. You been over here long?" + +"About four months. Have you been over long?" + +"LONG? Well, I should say so! Going on two YEARS, +by geeminy! Say, are you homesick?" + +"No, I can't say that I am. Are you?" + +"Oh, HELL, yes!" This with immense enthusiasm. + +The Reverend shrunk a little, in his clothes, and we +were aware, rather by instinct than otherwise, that he +was throwing out signals of distress to us; but we did +not interfere or try to succor him, for we were quite happy. + +The young fellow hooked his arm into the Reverend's, now, +with the confiding and grateful air of a waif who has +been longing for a friend, and a sympathetic ear, +and a chance to lisp once more the sweet accents of the +mother-tongue--and then he limbered up the muscles +of his mouth and turned himself loose--and with such a +relish! Some of his words were not Sunday-school words, +so I am obliged to put blanks where they occur. + +"Yes indeedy! If _I_ ain't an American there AIN'T +any Americans, that's all. And when I heard you fellows +gassing away in the good old American language, I'm ------ +if it wasn't all I could do to keep from hugging you! My +tongue's all warped with trying to curl it around these +------forsaken wind-galled nine-jointed German words here; +now I TELL you it's awful good to lay it over a Christian +word once more and kind of let the old taste soak it. +I'm from western New York. My name is Cholley Adams. +I'm a student, you know. Been here going on two years. +I'm learning to be a horse-doctor! I LIKE that part of it, +you know, but ------these people, they won't learn a fellow +in his own language, they make him learn in German; so before +I could tackle the horse-doctoring I had to tackle this +miserable language. + +"First off, I thought it would certainly give me +the botts, but I don't mind now. I've got it where the +hair's short, I think; and dontchuknow, they made me +learn Latin, too. Now between you and me, I wouldn't +give a ------for all the Latin that was ever jabbered; +and the first thing _I_ calculate to do when I get through, +is to just sit down and forget it. 'Twon't take me long, +and I don't mind the time, anyway. And I tell you what! +the difference between school-teaching over yonder and +school-teaching over here--sho! WE don't know anything +about it! Here you're got to peg and peg and peg and there +just ain't any let-up--and what you learn here, you've got +to KNOW, dontchuknow --or else you'll have one of these +------spavined, spectacles, ring-boned, knock-kneed old +professors in your hair. I've been here long ENOUGH, +and I'm getting blessed tired of it, mind I TELL you. +The old man wrote me that he was coming over in June, +and said he'd take me home in August, whether I was done +with my education or not, but durn him, he didn't come; +never said why; just sent me a hamper of Sunday-school +books, and told me to be good, and hold on a while. +I don't take to Sunday-school books, dontchuknow--I +don't hanker after them when I can get pie--but I +READ them, anyway, because whatever the old man tells +me to do, that's the thing that I'm a-going to DO, +or tear something, you know. I buckled in and read +all those books, because he wanted me to; but that kind +of thing don't excite ME, I like something HEARTY. +But I'm awful homesick. I'm homesick from ear-socket +to crupper, and from crupper to hock-joint; but it ain't +any use, I've got to stay here, till the old man drops +the rag and give the word--yes, SIR, right here in this +------country I've got to linger till the old man says +COME!--and you bet your bottom dollar, Johnny, it AIN'T +just as easy as it is for a cat to have twins!" + +At the end of this profane and cordial explosion he +fetched a prodigious "WHOOSH!" to relieve his lungs +and make recognition of the heat, and then he straightway +dived into his narrative again for "Johnny's" benefit, +beginning, "Well, ------it ain't any use talking, +some of those old American words DO have a kind +of a bully swing to them; a man can EXPRESS himself +with 'em--a man can get at what he wants to SAY, dontchuknow." + +When we reached our hotel and it seemed that he was +about to lose the Reverend, he showed so much sorrow, +and begged so hard and so earnestly that the Reverend's heart +was not hard enough to hold out against the pleadings +--so he went away with the parent-honoring student, like a +right Christian, and took supper with him in his lodgings, +and sat in the surf-beat of his slang and profanity +till near midnight, and then left him--left him pretty +well talked out, but grateful "clear down to his frogs," +as he expressed it. The Reverend said it had transpired +during the interview that "Cholley" Adams's father +was an extensive dealer in horses in western New York; +this accounted for Cholley's choice of a profession. +The Reverend brought away a pretty high opinion of +Cholley as a manly young fellow, with stuff in him for +a useful citizen; he considered him rather a rough gem, +but a gem, nevertheless. + + + +CHAPTER XXI +[Insolent Shopkeepers and Gabbling Americans] + +Baden-Baden sits in the lap of the hills, and the natural +and artificial beauties of the surroundings are combined +effectively and charmingly. The level strip of ground +which stretches through and beyond the town is laid +out in handsome pleasure grounds, shaded by noble trees +and adorned at intervals with lofty and sparkling +fountain-jets. Thrice a day a fine band makes music +in the public promenade before the Conversation House, +and in the afternoon and evening that locality is populous +with fashionably dressed people of both sexes, who march +back and forth past the great music-stand and look very +much bored, though they make a show of feeling otherwise. +It seems like a rather aimless and stupid existence. +A good many of these people are there for a real +purpose, however; they are racked with rheumatism, +and they are there to stew it out in the hot baths. +These invalids looked melancholy enough, limping about on +their canes and crutches, and apparently brooding over +all sorts of cheerless things. People say that Germany, +with her damp stone houses, is the home of rheumatism. +If that is so, Providence must have foreseen that it +would be so, and therefore filled the land with the +healing baths. Perhaps no other country is so generously +supplied with medicinal springs as Germany. Some of +these baths are good for one ailment, some for another; +and again, peculiar ailments are conquered by combining +the individual virtues of several different baths. +For instance, for some forms of disease, the patient drinks +the native hot water of Baden-Baden, with a spoonful +of salt from the Carlsbad springs dissolved in it. +That is not a dose to be forgotten right away. + +They don't SELL this hot water; no, you go into the +great Trinkhalle, and stand around, first on one foot +and then on the other, while two or three young girls +sit pottering at some sort of ladylike sewing-work +in your neighborhood and can't seem to see you --polite +as three-dollar clerks in government offices. + +By and by one of these rises painfully, and +"stretches"--stretches +fists and body heavenward till she raises her heels from +the floor, at the same time refreshing herself with a yawn +of such comprehensiveness that the bulk of her face disappears +behind her upper lip and one is able to see how she is +constructed inside--then she slowly closes her cavern, +brings down her fists and her heels, comes languidly forward, +contemplates you contemptuously, draws you a glass of hot water +and sets it down where you can get it by reaching for it. You +take it and say: + +"How much?"--and she returns you, with elaborate indifference, +a beggar's answer: + +"NACH BELIEBE" (what you please.) + +This thing of using the common beggar's trick and the common +beggar's shibboleth to put you on your liberality when you +were expecting a simple straightforward commercial transaction, +adds a little to your prospering sense of irritation. +You ignore her reply, and ask again: + +"How much?" + +--and she calmly, indifferently, repeats: + +"NACH BELIEBE." + +You are getting angry, but you are trying not to show it; +you resolve to keep on asking your question till she changes +her answer, or at least her annoyingly indifferent manner. +Therefore, if your case be like mine, you two fools +stand there, and without perceptible emotion of any kind, +or any emphasis on any syllable, you look blandly into each +other's eyes, and hold the following idiotic conversation: + +"How much?" + +"NACH BELIEBE." + +"How much?" + +"NACH BELIEBE." + +"How much?" + +"NACH BELIEBE." + +"How much?" + +"NACH BELIEBE." + +"How much?" + +"NACH BELIEBE." + +"How much?" + +"NACH BELIEBE." + +I do not know what another person would have done, +but at this point I gave up; that cast-iron indifference, +that tranquil contemptuousness, conquered me, and I struck +my colors. Now I knew she was used to receiving about a +penny from manly people who care nothing about the opinions +of scullery-maids, and about tuppence from moral cowards; +but I laid a silver twenty-five cent piece within her +reach and tried to shrivel her up with this sarcastic +speech: + +"If it isn't enough, will you stoop sufficiently from +your official dignity to say so?" + +She did not shrivel. Without deigning to look at me at all, +she languidly lifted the coin and bit it!--to see if it +was good. Then she turned her back and placidly waddled +to her former roost again, tossing the money into an open +till as she went along. She was victor to the last, +you see. + +I have enlarged upon the ways of this girl because they +are typical; her manners are the manners of a goodly +number of the Baden-Baden shopkeepers. The shopkeeper +there swindles you if he can, and insults you whether +he succeeds in swindling you or not. The keepers of +baths also take great and patient pains to insult you. +The frowsy woman who sat at the desk in the lobby +of the great Friederichsbad and sold bath tickets, +not only insulted me twice every day, with rigid fidelity +to her great trust, but she took trouble enough to cheat +me out of a shilling, one day, to have fairly entitled +her to ten. Baden-Baden's splendid gamblers are gone, +only her microscopic knaves remain. + +An English gentleman who had been living there +several years, said: + +"If you could disguise your nationality, you would not +find any insolence here. These shopkeepers detest the +English and despise the Americans; they are rude to both, +more especially to ladies of your nationality and mine. +If these go shopping without a gentleman or a man-servant, +they are tolerably sure to be subjected to petty insolences +--insolences of manner and tone, rather than word, +though words that are hard to bear are not always wanting. +I know of an instance where a shopkeeper tossed a coin back +to an American lady with the remark, snappishly uttered, +'We don't take French money here.' And I know of a case +where an English lady said to one of these shopkeepers, +'Don't you think you ask too much for this article?' +and he replied with the question, 'Do you think you are +obliged to buy it?' However, these people are not impolite +to Russians or Germans. And as to rank, they worship that, +for they have long been used to generals and nobles. +If you wish to see what abysses servility can descend, +present yourself before a Baden-Baden shopkeeper in the +character of a Russian prince." + +It is an inane town, filled with sham, and petty fraud, +and snobbery, but the baths are good. I spoke with +many people, and they were all agreed in that. I had +the twinges of rheumatism unceasingly during three years, +but the last one departed after a fortnight's bathing there, +and I have never had one since. I fully believe I left my +rheumatism in Baden-Baden. Baden-Baden is welcome to it. +It was little, but it was all I had to give. I would +have preferred to leave something that was catching, +but it was not in my power. + +There are several hot springs there, and during two +thousand years they have poured forth a never-diminishing +abundance of the healing water. This water is conducted +in pipe to the numerous bath-houses, and is reduced to +an endurable temperature by the addition of cold water. +The new Friederichsbad is a very large and beautiful building, +and in it one may have any sort of bath that has ever +been invented, and with all the additions of herbs and +drugs that his ailment may need or that the physician +of the establishment may consider a useful thing to put +into the water. You go there, enter the great door, +get a bow graduated to your style and clothes from the +gorgeous portier, and a bath ticket and an insult from +the frowsy woman for a quarter; she strikes a bell and a +serving-man conducts you down a long hall and shuts you +into a commodious room which has a washstand, a mirror, +a bootjack, and a sofa in it, and there you undress +at your leisure. + +The room is divided by a great curtain; you draw this +curtain aside, and find a large white marble bathtub, +with its rim sunk to the level of the floor, +and with three white marble steps leading down to it. +This tub is full of water which is as clear as crystal, +and is tempered to 28 degrees Re'aumur (about 95 degrees +Fahrenheit). Sunk into the floor, by the tub, is a covered +copper box which contains some warm towels and a sheet. +You look fully as white as an angel when you are stretched +out in that limpid bath. You remain in it ten minutes, +the first time, and afterward increase the duration from +day to day, till you reach twenty-five or thirty minutes. +There you stop. The appointments of the place are +so luxurious, the benefit so marked, the price so moderate, +and the insults so sure, that you very soon find yourself +adoring the Friederichsbad and infesting it. + +We had a plain, simple, unpretending, good hotel, +in Baden-Baden--the Ho^tel de France--and alongside my room +I had a giggling, cackling, chattering family who always +went to bed just two hours after me and always got up two +hours ahead of me. But this is common in German hotels; +the people generally go to bed long after eleven and get +up long before eight. The partitions convey sound +like a drum-head, and everybody knows it; but no matter, +a German family who are all kindness and consideration +in the daytime make apparently no effort to moderate +their noises for your benefit at night. They will sing, +laugh, and talk loudly, and bang furniture around in a most +pitiless way. If you knock on your wall appealingly, +they will quiet down and discuss the matter softly among +themselves for a moment--then, like the mice, they fall +to persecuting you again, and as vigorously as before. +They keep cruelly late and early hours, for such noisy folk. + +Of course, when one begins to find fault with foreign +people's ways, he is very likely to get a reminder to look +nearer home, before he gets far with it. I open my note-book +to see if I can find some more information of a valuable +nature about Baden-Baden, and the first thing I fall upon is +this: + +"BADEN-BADEN (no date). Lot of vociferous Americans +at breakfast this morning. Talking AT everybody, +while pretending to talk among themselves. On their +first travels, manifestly. Showing off. The usual +signs--airy, easy-going references to grand distances +and foreign places. 'Well GOOD-by, old fellow +--if I don't run across you in Italy, you hunt me up in +London before you sail.'" + +The next item which I find in my note-book is this one: + +"The fact that a band of 6,000 Indians are now murdering +our frontiersmen at their impudent leisure, and that we +are only able to send 1,200 soldiers against them, +is utilized here to discourage emigration to America. +The common people think the Indians are in New Jersey." + +This is a new and peculiar argument against keeping our army +down to a ridiculous figure in the matter of numbers. +It is rather a striking one, too. I have not distorted +the truth in saying that the facts in the above item, +about the army and the Indians, are made use of to +discourage emigration to America. That the common +people should be rather foggy in their geography, +and foggy as to the location of the Indians, is a matter +for amusement, maybe, but not of surprise. + +There is an interesting old cemetery in Baden-Baden, and +we spent several pleasant hours in wandering through it +and spelling out the inscriptions on the aged tombstones. +Apparently after a man has laid there a century or two, +and has had a good many people buried on top of him, +it is considered that his tombstone is not needed by him +any longer. I judge so from the fact that hundreds +of old gravestones have been removed from the graves +and placed against the inner walls of the cemetery. +What artists they had in the old times! They chiseled angels +and cherubs and devils and skeletons on the tombstones +in the most lavish and generous way--as to supply--but +curiously grotesque and outlandish as to form. It is not +always easy to tell which of the figures belong among +the blest and which of them among the opposite party. +But there was an inscription, in French, on one of those +old stones, which was quaint and pretty, and was plainly +not the work of any other than a poet. It was to this +effect: + + Here Reposes in God, Caroline de Clery, a Religieuse + of St. Denis aged 83 years--and blind. The light + was restored to her in Baden the 5th of January, 1839 + +We made several excursions on foot to the neighboring villages, +over winding and beautiful roads and through enchanting +woodland scenery. The woods and roads were similar to those +at Heidelberg, but not so bewitching. I suppose that roads +and woods which are up to the Heidelberg mark are rare in the +world. + +Once we wandered clear away to La Favorita Palace, +which is several miles from Baden-Baden. The grounds +about the palace were fine; the palace was a curiosity. +It was built by a Margravine in 1725, and remains as she +left it at her death. We wandered through a great many +of its rooms, and they all had striking peculiarities +of decoration. For instance, the walls of one room were +pretty completely covered with small pictures of the +Margravine in all conceivable varieties of fanciful costumes, +some of them male. + +The walls of another room were covered with grotesquely +and elaborately figured hand-wrought tapestry. +The musty ancient beds remained in the chambers, +and their quilts and curtains and canopies were decorated +with curious handwork, and the walls and ceilings frescoed +with historical and mythological scenes in glaring colors. +There was enough crazy and rotten rubbish in the building +to make a true brick-a-bracker green with envy. +A painting in the dining-hall verged upon the indelicate +--but then the Margravine was herself a trifle indelicate. + +It is in every way a wildly and picturesquely decorated house, +and brimful of interest as a reflection of the character +and tastes of that rude bygone time. + +In the grounds, a few rods from the palace, stands the +Margravine's chapel, just as she left it--a coarse +wooden structure, wholly barren of ornament. It is said +that the Margravine would give herself up to debauchery +and exceedingly fast living for several months at a time, +and then retire to this miserable wooden den and spend +a few months in repenting and getting ready for another +good time. She was a devoted Catholic, and was perhaps +quite a model sort of a Christian as Christians went then, +in high life. + +Tradition says she spent the last two years of her life in the +strange den I have been speaking of, after having indulged +herself in one final, triumphant, and satisfying spree. +She shut herself up there, without company, and without +even a servant, and so abjured and forsook the world. +In her little bit of a kitchen she did her own cooking; +she wore a hair shirt next the skin, and castigated herself +with whips--these aids to grace are exhibited there yet. +She prayed and told her beads, in another little room, +before a waxen Virgin niched in a little box against the wall; +she bedded herself like a slave. + +In another small room is an unpainted wooden table, +and behind it sit half-life-size waxen figures of the +Holy Family, made by the very worst artist that ever +lived, perhaps, and clothed in gaudy, flimsy drapery. +[1] The margravine used to bring her meals to this table +and DINE WITH THE HOLY FAMILY. What an idea that was! +What a grisly spectacle it must have been! Imagine it: +Those rigid, shock-headed figures, with corpsy complexions +and fish glass eyes, occupying one side of the table +in the constrained attitudes and dead fixedness that +distinguish all men that are born of wax, and this wrinkled, +smoldering old fire-eater occupying the other side, +mumbling her prayers and munching her sausages in the ghostly +stillness and shadowy indistinctness of a winter twilight. +It makes one feel crawly even to think of it. + +1. The Savior was represented as a lad of about fifteen + years of age. This figure had lost one eye. + +In this sordid place, and clothed, bedded, and fed like +a pauper, this strange princess lived and worshiped during +two years, and in it she died. Two or three hundred +years ago, this would have made the poor den holy ground; +and the church would have set up a miracle-factory there +and made plenty of money out of it. The den could be moved +into some portions of France and made a good property even now. + + + +CHAPTER XXII +[The Black Forest and Its Treasures] + +From Baden-Baden we made the customary trip into the +Black Forest. We were on foot most of the time. One cannot +describe those noble woods, nor the feeling with which they +inspire him. A feature of the feeling, however, is a deep +sense of contentment; another feature of it is a buoyant, +boyish gladness; and a third and very conspicuous feature +of it is one's sense of the remoteness of the work-day +world and his entire emancipation from it and its affairs. + +Those woods stretch unbroken over a vast region; +and everywhere they are such dense woods, and so still, +and so piney and fragrant. The stems of the trees are trim +and straight, and in many places all the ground is hidden +for miles under a thick cushion of moss of a vivid green color, +with not a decayed or ragged spot in its surface, and not +a fallen leaf or twig to mar its immaculate tidiness. +A rich cathedral gloom pervades the pillared aisles; +so the stray flecks of sunlight that strike a trunk +here and a bough yonder are strongly accented, +and when they strike the moss they fairly seem to burn. +But the weirdest effect, and the most enchanting is that +produced by the diffused light of the low afternoon sun; +no single ray is able to pierce its way in, then, but the +diffused light takes color from moss and foliage, +and pervades the place like a faint, greet-tinted mist, +the theatrical fire of fairyland. The suggestion of mystery +and the supernatural which haunts the forest at all times +is intensified by this unearthly glow. + +We found the Black Forest farmhouses and villages +all that the Black Forest stories have pictured them. +The first genuine specimen which we came upon was +the mansion of a rich farmer and member of the Common +Council of the parish or district. He was an important +personage in the land and so was his wife also, +of course. His daughter was the "catch" of the region, +and she may be already entering into immortality as the +heroine of one of Auerbach's novels, for all I know. +We shall see, for if he puts her in I shall recognize her +by her Black Forest clothes, and her burned complexion, +her plump figure, her fat hands, her dull expression, +her gentle spirit, her generous feet, her bonnetless head, +and the plaited tails of hemp-colored hair hanging down +her back. + +The house was big enough for a hotel; it was a hundred +feet long and fifty wide, and ten feet high, from ground +to eaves; but from the eaves to the comb of the mighty roof +was as much as forty feet, or maybe even more. This roof +was of ancient mud-colored straw thatch a foot thick, +and was covered all over, except in a few trifling spots, +with a thriving and luxurious growth of green vegetation, +mainly moss. The mossless spots were places where +repairs had been made by the insertion of bright new +masses of yellow straw. The eaves projected far down, +like sheltering, hospitable wings. Across the gable that +fronted the road, and about ten feet above the ground, +ran a narrow porch, with a wooden railing; a row of +small windows filled with very small panes looked upon +the porch. Above were two or three other little windows, +one clear up under the sharp apex of the roof. +Before the ground-floor door was a huge pile of manure. +The door of the second-story room on the side of the house +was open, and occupied by the rear elevation of a cow. +Was this probably the drawing-room? All of the front +half of the house from the ground up seemed to be +occupied by the people, the cows, and the chickens, +and all the rear half by draught-animals and hay. +But the chief feature, all around this house, was the big +heaps of manure. + +We became very familiar with the fertilizer in the Forest. +We fell unconsciously into the habit of judging of a man's +station in life by this outward and eloquent sign. +Sometimes we said, "Here is a poor devil, this is manifest." +When we saw a stately accumulation, we said, "Here is +a banker." When we encountered a country-seat surrounded +by an Alpine pomp of manure, we said, "Doubtless a duke +lives here." + +The importance of this feature has not been properly +magnified in the Black Forest stories. Manure is evidently +the Black-Forester's main treasure--his coin, his jewel, +his pride, his Old Master, his ceramics, his bric-a-brac, +his darling, his title to public consideration, +envy, veneration, and his first solicitude when he gets +ready to make his will. The true Black Forest novel, +if it is ever written, will be skeletoned somewhat in this way: + +SKELETON FOR A BLACK FOREST NOVEL + +Rich old farmer, named Huss. Has inherited great wealth +of manure, and by diligence has added to it. It is +double-starred in Baedeker. [1] The Black forest artist +paints it--his masterpiece. The king comes to see it. +Gretchen Huss, daughter and heiress. Paul Hoch, +young neighbor, suitor for Gretchen's hand--ostensibly; +he really wants the manure. Hoch has a good many cart-loads +of the Black Forest currency himself, and therefore is a +good catch; but he is sordid, mean, and without sentiment, +whereas Gretchen is all sentiment and poetry. +Hans Schmidt, young neighbor, full of sentiment, +full of poetry, loves Gretchen, Gretchen loves him. +But he has no manure. Old Huss forbids him in the house. +His heart breaks, he goes away to die in the woods, +far from the cruel world--for he says, bitterly, "What is man, +without manure?" + +1. When Baedeker's guide-books mention a thing and put + two stars (**) after it, it means well worth visiting. + M.T. + +[Interval of six months.] + +Paul Hoch comes to old Huss and says, "I am at last +as rich as you required--come and view the pile." +Old Huss views it and says, "It is sufficient--take +her and be happy,"--meaning Gretchen. + +[Interval of two weeks.] + +Wedding party assembled in old Huss's drawing-room. Hoch +placid and content, Gretchen weeping over her hard fate. +Enter old Huss's head bookkeeper. Huss says fiercely, +"I gave you three weeks to find out why your books +don't balance, and to prove that you are not a defaulter; +the time is up--find me the missing property or you go +to prison as a thief." Bookkeeper: "I have found it." +"Where?" Bookkeeper (sternly--tragically): "In the bridegroom's +pile!--behold the thief--see him blench and tremble!" +[Sensation.] Paul Hoch: Lost, lost!"--falls over the cow +in a swoon and is handcuffed. Gretchen: "Saved!" Falls +over the calf in a swoon of joy, but is caught in the arms +of Hans Schmidt, who springs in at that moment. Old Huss: +"What, you here, varlet? Unhand the maid and quit the place." +Hans (still supporting the insensible girl): "Never! Cruel +old man, know that I come with claims which even you +cannot despise." + +Huss: "What, YOU? name them." + +Hans: "Listen then. The world has forsaken me, I forsook +the world, I wandered in the solitude of the forest, +longing for death but finding none. I fed upon roots, +and in my bitterness I dug for the bitterest, +loathing the sweeter kind. Digging, three days agone, +I struck a manure mine!--a Golconda, a limitless Bonanza, +of solid manure! I can buy you ALL, and have mountain +ranges of manure left! Ha-ha, NOW thou smilest a smile!" +[Immense sensation.] Exhibition of specimens from the mine. +Old Huss (enthusiastically): "Wake her up, shake her up, +noble young man, she is yours!" Wedding takes place on +the spot; bookkeeper restored to his office and emoluments; +Paul Hoch led off to jail. The Bonanza king of the Black +Forest lives to a good old age, blessed with the love of his +wife and of his twenty-seven children, and the still sweeter +envy of everybody around. + +We took our noon meal of fried trout one day at the Plow Inn, +in a very pretty village (Ottenhoefen), and then went into +the public room to rest and smoke. There we found nine +or ten Black Forest grandees assembled around a table. +They were the Common Council of the parish. They had +gathered there at eight o'clock that morning to elect +a new member, and they had now been drinking beer four +hours at the new member's expense. They were men of fifty +or sixty years of age, with grave good-natured faces, +and were all dressed in the costume made familiar to us +by the Black Forest stories; broad, round-topped black felt +hats with the brims curled up all round; long red waistcoats +with large metal buttons, black alpaca coats with the +waists up between the shoulders. There were no speeches, +there was but little talk, there were no frivolities; +the Council filled themselves gradually, steadily, but surely, +with beer, and conducted themselves with sedate decorum, +as became men of position, men of influence, men of manure. + +We had a hot afternoon tramp up the valley, along the grassy +bank of a rushing stream of clear water, past farmhouses, +water-mills, and no end of wayside crucifixes and saints +and Virgins. These crucifixes, etc., are set up in +memory of departed friends, by survivors, and are almost +as frequent as telegraph-poles are in other lands. + +We followed the carriage-road, and had our usual luck; +we traveled under a beating sun, and always saw the shade +leave the shady places before we could get to them. +In all our wanderings we seldom managed to strike +a piece of road at its time for being shady. We had a +particularly hot time of it on that particular afternoon, +and with no comfort but what we could get out of the fact +that the peasants at work away up on the steep mountainsides +above our heads were even worse off than we were. +By and by it became impossible to endure the intolerable +glare and heat any longer; so we struck across the ravine +and entered the deep cool twilight of the forest, to hunt +for what the guide-book called the "old road." + +We found an old road, and it proved eventually to be the +right one, though we followed it at the time with the conviction +that it was the wrong one. If it was the wrong one there +could be no use in hurrying; therefore we did not hurry, +but sat down frequently on the soft moss and enjoyed +the restful quiet and shade of the forest solitudes. +There had been distractions in the carriage-road +--school-children, peasants, wagons, troops of +pedestrianizing students from all over Germany +--but we had the old road to ourselves. + +Now and then, while we rested, we watched the laborious +ant at his work. I found nothing new in him--certainly +nothing to change my opinion of him. It seems to me that +in the matter of intellect the ant must be a strangely +overrated bird. During many summers, now, I have watched him, +when I ought to have been in better business, and I have +not yet come across a living ant that seemed to have any +more sense than a dead one. I refer to the ordinary ant, +of course; I have had no experience of those wonderful +Swiss and African ones which vote, keep drilled armies, +hold slaves, and dispute about religion. Those particular +ants may be all that the naturalist paints them, +but I am persuaded that the average ant is a sham. +I admit his industry, of course; he is the hardest-working +creature in the world--when anybody is looking--but his +leather-headedness is the point I make against him. +He goes out foraging, he makes a capture, and then what +does he do? Go home? No--he goes anywhere but home. +He doesn't know where home is. His home may be only +three feet away--no matter, he can't find it. He makes +his capture, as I have said; it is generally something +which can be of no sort of use to himself or anybody else; +it is usually seven times bigger than it ought to be; +he hunts out the awkwardest place to take hold of it; +he lifts it bodily up in the air by main force, and starts; +not toward home, but in the opposite direction; not calmly +and wisely, but with a frantic haste which is wasteful +of his strength; he fetches up against a pebble, and instead +of going around it, he climbs over it backward dragging +his booty after him, tumbles down on the other side, +jumps up in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes, +moistens his hands, grabs his property viciously, yanks it +this way, then that, shoves it ahead of him a moment, +turns tail and lugs it after him another moment, gets madder +and madder, then presently hoists it into the air and goes +tearing away in an entirely new direction; comes to a weed; +it never occurs to him to go around it; no, he must climb it; +and he does climb it, dragging his worthless property +to the top--which is as bright a thing to do as it would +be for me to carry a sack of flour from Heidelberg to Paris +by way of Strasburg steeple; when he gets up there he +finds that that is not the place; takes a cursory glance +at the scenery and either climbs down again or tumbles down, +and starts off once more--as usual, in a new direction. +At the end of half an hour, he fetches up within six inches +of the place he started from and lays his burden down; +meantime he has been over all the ground for two yards around, +and climbed all the weeds and pebbles he came across. +Now he wipes the sweat from his brow, strokes his limbs, +and then marches aimlessly off, in as violently a hurry +as ever. He does not remember to have ever seen it before; +he looks around to see which is not the way home, grabs his +bundle and starts; he goes through the same adventures he +had before; finally stops to rest, and a friend comes along. +Evidently the friend remarks that a last year's grasshopper +leg is a very noble acquisition, and inquires where he +got it. Evidently the proprietor does not remember +exactly where he did get it, but thinks he got it "around +here somewhere." Evidently the friend contracts to help +him freight it home. Then, with a judgment peculiarly +antic (pun not intended), then take hold of opposite ends +of that grasshopper leg and begin to tug with all their +might in opposite directions. Presently they take a rest +and confer together. They decide that something is wrong, +they can't make out what. Then they go at it again, +just as before. Same result. Mutual recriminations follow. +Evidently each accuses the other of being an obstructionist. +They lock themselves together and chew each other's jaws +for a while; then they roll and tumble on the ground till +one loses a horn or a leg and has to haul off for repairs. +They make up and go to work again in the same old insane way, +but the crippled ant is at a disadvantage; tug as he may, +the other one drags off the booty and him at the end of it. +Instead of giving up, he hangs on, and gets his shins +bruised against every obstruction that comes in the way. +By and by, when that grasshopper leg has been dragged +all over the same old ground once more, it is finally +dumped at about the spot where it originally lay, +the two perspiring ants inspect it thoughtfully and decide +that dried grasshopper legs are a poor sort of property +after all, and then each starts off in a different +direction to see if he can't find an old nail or something +else that is heavy enough to afford entertainment and at +the same time valueless enough to make an ant want to own it. + +There in the Black Forest, on the mountainside, +I saw an ant go through with such a performance as this +with a dead spider of fully ten times his own weight. +The spider was not quite dead, but too far gone to resist. +He had a round body the size of a pea. The little ant +--observing that I was noticing--turned him on his back, +sunk his fangs into his throat, lifted him into the air and +started vigorously off with him, stumbling over little pebbles, +stepping on the spider's legs and tripping himself up, +dragging him backward, shoving him bodily ahead, dragging him +up stones six inches high instead of going around them, +climbing weeds twenty times his own height and jumping +from their summits--and finally leaving him in the middle +of the road to be confiscated by any other fool of an +ant that wanted him. I measured the ground which this +ass traversed, and arrived at the conclusion that what he +had accomplished inside of twenty minutes would constitute +some such job as this--relatively speaking--for a man; +to wit: to strap two eight-hundred-pound horses together, +carry them eighteen hundred feet, mainly over (not around) +boulders averaging six feet high, and in the course +of the journey climb up and jump from the top of one +precipice like Niagara, and three steeples, each a hundred +and twenty feet high; and then put the horses down, +in an exposed place, without anybody to watch them, +and go off to indulge in some other idiotic miracle for +vanity's sake. + +Science has recently discovered that the ant does not +lay up anything for winter use. This will knock him +out of literature, to some extent. He does not work, +except when people are looking, and only then when the +observer has a green, naturalistic look, and seems to be +taking notes. This amounts to deception, and will injure +him for the Sunday-schools. He has not judgment enough +to know what is good to eat from what isn't. This amounts +to ignorance, and will impair the world's respect for him. +He cannot stroll around a stump and find his way home again. +This amounts to idiocy, and once the damaging fact +is established, thoughtful people will cease to look +up to him, the sentimental will cease to fondle him. +His vaunted industry is but a vanity and of no effect, +since he never gets home with anything he starts with. +This disposes of the last remnant of his reputation +and wholly destroys his main usefulness as a moral agent, +since it will make the sluggard hesitate to go to him +any more. It is strange, beyond comprehension, that so +manifest a humbug as the ant has been able to fool so +many nations and keep it up so many ages without being +found out. + +The ant is strong, but we saw another strong thing, +where we had not suspected the presence of much muscular +power before. A toadstool--that vegetable which springs +to full growth in a single night--had torn loose and +lifted a matted mass of pine needles and dirt of twice +its own bulk into the air, and supported it there, +like a column supporting a shed. Ten thousand toadstools, +with the right purchase, could lift a man, I suppose. +But what good would it do? + +All our afternoon's progress had been uphill. About five +or half past we reached the summit, and all of a sudden +the dense curtain of the forest parted and we looked +down into a deep and beautiful gorge and out over a +wide panorama of wooded mountains with their summits +shining in the sun and their glade-furrowed sides dimmed +with purple shade. The gorge under our feet--called +Allerheiligen--afforded room in the grassy level at its +head for a cozy and delightful human nest, shut away +from the world and its botherations, and consequently +the monks of the old times had not failed to spy it out; +and here were the brown and comely ruins of their church +and convent to prove that priests had as fine an instinct +seven hundred years ago in ferreting out the choicest +nooks and corners in a land as priests have today. + +A big hotel crowds the ruins a little, now, and drives +a brisk trade with summer tourists. We descended +into the gorge and had a supper which would have been +very satisfactory if the trout had not been boiled. +The Germans are pretty sure to boil a trout or anything +else if left to their own devices. This is an argument +of some value in support of the theory that they were +the original colonists of the wild islands of the coast +of Scotland. A schooner laden with oranges was wrecked +upon one of those islands a few years ago, and the gentle +savages rendered the captain such willing assistance +that he gave them as many oranges as they wanted. +Next day he asked them how they liked them. They shook +their heads and said: + +"Baked, they were tough; and even boiled, they warn't +things for a hungry man to hanker after." + +We went down the glen after supper. It is beautiful--a +mixture of sylvan loveliness and craggy wildness. +A limpid torrent goes whistling down the glen, and toward +the foot of it winds through a narrow cleft between lofty +precipices and hurls itself over a succession of falls. +After one passes the last of these he has a backward +glimpse at the falls which is very pleasing--they rise +in a seven-stepped stairway of foamy and glittering cascades, +and make a picture which is as charming as it is unusual. + + + +CHAPTER XXIII +[Nicodemus Dodge and the Skeleton] + +We were satisfied that we could walk to Oppenau in +one day, now that we were in practice; so we set out +the next morning after breakfast determined to do it. +It was all the way downhill, and we had the loveliest +summer weather for it. So we set the pedometer and then +stretched away on an easy, regular stride, down through +the cloven forest, drawing in the fragrant breath +of the morning in deep refreshing draughts, and wishing +we might never have anything to do forever but walk +to Oppenau and keep on doing it and then doing it over again. + +Now, the true charm of pedestrianism does not lie +in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. +The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, +and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; +the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon +a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace +to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes +from the talk. It is no matter whether one talks wisdom +or nonsense, the case is the same, the bulk of the enjoyment +lies in the wagging of the gladsome jaw and the flapping +of the sympathetic ear. + +And what motley variety of subjects a couple of people will +casually rake over in the course of a day's tramp! There +being no constraint, a change of subject is always in order, +and so a body is not likely to keep pegging at a single +topic until it grows tiresome. We discussed everything +we knew, during the first fifteen or twenty minutes, +that morning, and then branched out into the glad, free, +boundless realm of the things we were not certain about. + +Harris said that if the best writer in the world once got +the slovenly habit of doubling up his "haves" he could +never get rid of it while he lived. That is to say, +if a man gets the habit of saying "I should have liked +to have known more about it" instead of saying simply +and sensibly, "I should have liked to know more about it," +that man's disease is incurable. Harris said that his sort +of lapse is to be found in every copy of every newspaper +that has ever been printed in English, and in almost all +of our books. He said he had observed it in Kirkham's +grammar and in Macaulay. Harris believed that milk-teeth +are commoner in men's mouths than those "doubled-up haves." [1] + +1. I do not know that there have not been moments in the + course of the present session when I should have been + very glad to have accepted the proposal of my noble friend, + and to have exchanged parts in some of our evenings + of work.--[From a Speech of the English Chancellor + of the Exchequer, August, 1879.] + +That changed the subject to dentistry. I said I believed +the average man dreaded tooth-pulling more than amputation, +and that he would yell quicker under the former operation +than he would under the latter. The philosopher Harris +said that the average man would not yell in either case +if he had an audience. Then he continued: + +"When our brigade first went into camp on the Potomac, +we used to be brought up standing, occasionally, by an +ear-splitting howl of anguish. That meant that a soldier +was getting a tooth pulled in a tent. But the surgeons +soon changed that; they instituted open-air dentistry. +There never was a howl afterward--that is, from the man +who was having the tooth pulled. At the daily dental +hour there would always be about five hundred soldiers +gathered together in the neighborhood of that dental chair +waiting to see the performance--and help; and the moment +the surgeon took a grip on the candidate's tooth and began +to lift, every one of those five hundred rascals would +clap his hand to his jaw and begin to hop around on one +leg and howl with all the lungs he had! It was enough +to raise your hair to hear that variegated and enormous +unanimous caterwaul burst out! With so big and so derisive +an audience as that, a suffer wouldn't emit a sound though +you pulled his head off. The surgeons said that pretty +often a patient was compelled to laugh, in the midst +of his pangs, but that had never caught one crying out, +after the open-air exhibition was instituted." + +Dental surgeons suggested doctors, doctors suggested death, +death suggested skeletons--and so, by a logical process +the conversation melted out of one of these subjects +and into the next, until the topic of skeletons raised up +Nicodemus Dodge out of the deep grave in my memory where he +had lain buried and forgotten for twenty-five years. +When I was a boy in a printing-office in Missouri, +a loose-jointed, long-legged, tow-headed, jeans-clad +countrified cub of about sixteen lounged in one day, +and without removing his hands from the depths +of his trousers pockets or taking off his faded ruin +of a slouch hat, whose broken rim hung limp and ragged +about his eyes and ears like a bug-eaten cabbage leaf, +stared indifferently around, then leaned his hip +against the editor's table, crossed his mighty brogans, +aimed at a distant fly from a crevice in his upper teeth, +laid him low, and said with composure: + +"Whar's the boss?" + +"I am the boss," said the editor, following this curious +bit of architecture wonderingly along up to its clock-face +with his eye. + +"Don't want anybody fur to learn the business, 'tain't likely?" + +"Well, I don't know. Would you like to learn it?" + +"Pap's so po' he cain't run me no mo', so I want to git +a show somers if I kin, 'taint no diffunce what--I'm strong +and hearty, and I don't turn my back on no kind of work, +hard nur soft." + +"Do you think you would like to learn the printing business?" + +"Well, I don't re'ly k'yer a durn what I DO learn, +so's I git a chance fur to make my way. I'd jist as soon +learn print'n's anything." + +"Can you read?" + +"Yes--middlin'." + +"Write?" + +"Well, I've seed people could lay over me thar." + +"Cipher?" + +"Not good enough to keep store, I don't reckon, +but up as fur as twelve-times-twelve I ain't no slouch. +'Tother side of that is what gits me." + +"Where is your home?" + +"I'm f'm old Shelby." + +"What's your father's religious denomination?" + +"Him? Oh, he's a blacksmith." + +"No, no--I don't mean his trade. What's his RELIGIOUS +DENOMINATION?" + +"OH--I didn't understand you befo'. He's a Freemason." + +"No, no, you don't get my meaning yet. What I mean is, +does he belong to any CHURCH?" + +"NOW you're talkin'! Couldn't make out what you was a-tryin' +to git through yo' head no way. B'long to a CHURCH! Why, +boss, he's ben the pizenest kind of Free-will Babtis' +for forty year. They ain't no pizener ones 'n what HE is. +Mighty good man, pap is. Everybody says that. If they +said any diffrunt they wouldn't say it whar _I_ wuz +--not MUCH they wouldn't." + +"What is your own religion?" + +"Well, boss, you've kind o' got me, there--and yit +you hain't got me so mighty much, nuther. I think 't +if a feller he'ps another feller when he's in trouble, +and don't cuss, and don't do no mean things, nur noth'n' +he ain' no business to do, and don't spell the Saviour's +name with a little g, he ain't runnin' no resks--he's +about as saift as he b'longed to a church." + +"But suppose he did spell it with a little g--what then?" + +"Well, if he done it a-purpose, I reckon he wouldn't +stand no chance--he OUGHTN'T to have no chance, anyway, +I'm most rotten certain 'bout that." + +"What is your name?" + +"Nicodemus Dodge." + +"I think maybe you'll do, Nicodemus. We'll give you +a trial, anyway." + +"All right." + +"When would you like to begin?" + +"Now." + +So, within ten minutes after we had first glimpsed this +nondescript he was one of us, and with his coat off +and hard at it. + +Beyond that end of our establishment which was furthest +from the street, was a deserted garden, pathless, +and thickly grown with the bloomy and villainous "jimpson" +weed and its common friend the stately sunflower. +In the midst of this mournful spot was a decayed and aged +little "frame" house with but one room, one window, and no +ceiling--it had been a smoke-house a generation before. +Nicodemus was given this lonely and ghostly den as a bedchamber. + +The village smarties recognized a treasure in Nicodemus, +right away--a butt to play jokes on. It was easy to see +that he was inconceivably green and confiding. George Jones +had the glory of perpetrating the first joke on him; +he gave him a cigar with a firecracker in it and winked +to the crowd to come; the thing exploded presently and swept +away the bulk of Nicodemus's eyebrows and eyelashes. +He simply said: + +"I consider them kind of seeg'yars dangersome,"--and +seemed to suspect nothing. The next evening Nicodemus +waylaid George and poured a bucket of ice-water over him. + +One day, while Nicodemus was in swimming, Tom McElroy +"tied" his clothes. Nicodemus made a bonfire of Tom's +by way of retaliation. + +A third joke was played upon Nicodemus a day or two later--he +walked up the middle aisle of the village church, Sunday night, +with a staring handbill pinned between his shoulders. +The joker spent the remainder of the night, after church, +in the cellar of a deserted house, and Nicodemus sat on +the cellar door till toward breakfast-time to make sure +that the prisoner remembered that if any noise was made, +some rough treatment would be the consequence. The cellar +had two feet of stagnant water in it, and was bottomed +with six inches of soft mud. + +But I wander from the point. It was the subject of +skeletons that brought this boy back to my recollection. +Before a very long time had elapsed, the village smarties +began to feel an uncomfortable consciousness of not having +made a very shining success out of their attempts on the +simpleton from "old Shelby." Experimenters grew scarce +and chary. Now the young doctor came to the rescue. +There was delight and applause when he proposed to scare +Nicodemus to death, and explained how he was going to do it. +He had a noble new skeleton--the skeleton of the late +and only local celebrity, Jimmy Finn, the village +drunkard--a grisly piece of property which he had bought +of Jimmy Finn himself, at auction, for fifty dollars, +under great competition, when Jimmy lay very sick in +the tan-yard a fortnight before his death. The fifty +dollars had gone promptly for whiskey and had considerably +hurried up the change of ownership in the skeleton. +The doctor would put Jimmy Finn's skeleton in Nicodemus's +bed! + +This was done--about half past ten in the evening. +About Nicodemus's usual bedtime--midnight--the village +jokers came creeping stealthily through the jimpson +weeds and sunflowers toward the lonely frame den. +They reached the window and peeped in. There sat the +long-legged pauper, on his bed, in a very short shirt, +and nothing more; he was dangling his legs contentedly +back and forth, and wheezing the music of "Camptown Races" +out of a paper-overlaid comb which he was pressing +against his mouth; by him lay a new jewsharp, a new top, +and solid india-rubber ball, a handful of painted marbles, +five pounds of "store" candy, and a well-gnawed slab of +gingerbread as big and as thick as a volume of sheet-music. +He had sold the skeleton to a traveling quack for three +dollars and was enjoying the result! + +Just as we had finished talking about skeletons and were +drifting into the subject of fossils, Harris and I heard +a shout, and glanced up the steep hillside. We saw men +and women standing away up there looking frightened, +and there was a bulky object tumbling and floundering +down the steep slope toward us. We got out of the way, +and when the object landed in the road it proved to be a boy. +He had tripped and fallen, and there was nothing for him +to do but trust to luck and take what might come. + +When one starts to roll down a place like that, there is +no stopping till the bottom is reached. Think of people +FARMING on a slant which is so steep that the best you can +say of it--if you want to be fastidiously accurate--is, +that it is a little steeper than a ladder and not quite +so steep as a mansard roof. But that is what they do. +Some of the little farms on the hillside opposite Heidelberg +were stood up "edgeways." The boy was wonderfully jolted up, +and his head was bleeding, from cuts which it had got from +small stones on the way. + +Harris and I gathered him up and set him on a stone, +and by that time the men and women had scampered down +and brought his cap. + +Men, women, and children flocked out from neighboring +cottages and joined the crowd; the pale boy was petted, +and stared at, and commiserated, and water was +brought for him to drink and bathe his bruises in. +And such another clatter of tongues! All who had seen +the catastrophe were describing it at once, and each +trying to talk louder than his neighbor; and one youth +of a superior genius ran a little way up the hill, +called attention, tripped, fell, rolled down among us, +and thus triumphantly showed exactly how the thing had been done. + + +Harris and I were included in all the descriptions; +how we were coming along; how Hans Gross shouted; +how we looked up startled; how we saw Peter coming like +a cannon-shot; how judiciously we got out of the way, +and let him come; and with what presence of mind we +picked him up and brushed him off and set him on a rock +when the performance was over. We were as much heroes +as anybody else, except Peter, and were so recognized; +we were taken with Peter and the populace to Peter's +mother's cottage, and there we ate bread and cheese, +and drank milk and beer with everybody, and had a most +sociable good time; and when we left we had a handshake +all around, and were receiving and shouting back LEB' +WOHL's until a turn in the road separated us from our +cordial and kindly new friends forever. + +We accomplished our undertaking. At half past eight +in the evening we stepped into Oppenau, just eleven +hours and a half out of Allerheiligen--one hundred +and forty-six miles. This is the distance by pedometer; +the guide-book and the Imperial Ordinance maps make +it only ten and a quarter--a surprising blunder, +for these two authorities are usually singularly accurate +in the matter of distances. + + + +CHAPTER XXIV +[I Protect the Empress of Germany] + +That was a thoroughly satisfactory walk--and the only +one we were ever to have which was all the way downhill. +We took the train next morning and returned to Baden-Baden +through fearful fogs of dust. Every seat was crowded, too; +for it was Sunday, and consequently everybody was taking +a "pleasure" excursion. Hot! the sky was an oven--and +a sound one, too, with no cracks in it to let in any air. +An odd time for a pleasure excursion, certainly! + +Sunday is the great day on the continent--the free day, +the happy day. One can break the Sabbath in a hundred +ways without committing any sin. + +We do not work on Sunday, because the commandment forbids it; +the Germans do not work on Sunday, because the commandment +forbids it. We rest on Sunday, because the commandment +requires it; the Germans rest on Sunday because the +commandment requires it. But in the definition +of the word "rest" lies all the difference. With us, +its Sunday meaning is, stay in the house and keep still; +with the Germans its Sunday and week-day meanings seem +to be the same--rest the TIRED PART, and never mind the +other parts of the frame; rest the tired part, and use +the means best calculated to rest that particular part. +Thus: If one's duties have kept him in the house all the week, +it will rest him to be out on Sunday; if his duties +have required him to read weighty and serious matter all +the week, it will rest him to read light matter on Sunday; +if his occupation has busied him with death and funerals +all the week, it will rest him to go to the theater Sunday +night and put in two or three hours laughing at a comedy; +if he is tired with digging ditches or felling trees +all the week, it will rest him to lie quiet in the house +on Sunday; if the hand, the arm, the brain, the tongue, +or any other member, is fatigued with inanition, +it is not to be rested by added a day's inanition; +but if a member is fatigued with exertion, inanition is +the right rest for it. Such is the way in which the Germans +seem to define the word "rest"; that is to say, they rest +a member by recreating, recuperating, restore its forces. +But our definition is less broad. We all rest alike +on Sunday--by secluding ourselves and keeping still, +whether that is the surest way to rest the most of us +or not. The Germans make the actors, the preachers, +etc., work on Sunday. We encourage the preachers, +the editors, the printers, etc., to work on Sunday, +and imagine that none of the sin of it falls upon us; +but I do not know how we are going to get around the fact +that if it is wrong for the printer to work at his trade +on Sunday it must be equally wrong for the preacher to +work at his, since the commandment has made no exception +in his favor. We buy Monday morning's paper and read it, +and thus encourage Sunday printing. But I shall never do +it again. + +The Germans remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy, +by abstaining from work, as commanded; we keep it +holy by abstaining from work, as commanded, and by +also abstaining from play, which is not commanded. +Perhaps we constructively BREAK the command to rest, +because the resting we do is in most cases only a name, +and not a fact. + +These reasonings have sufficed, in a measure, to mend +the rent in my conscience which I made by traveling to +Baden-Baden that Sunday. We arrived in time to furbish +up and get to the English church before services began. +We arrived in considerable style, too, for the landlord +had ordered the first carriage that could be found, +since there was no time to lose, and our coachman was +so splendidly liveried that we were probably mistaken +for a brace of stray dukes; why else were we honored +with a pew all to ourselves, away up among the very elect +at the left of the chancel? That was my first thought. +In the pew directly in front of us sat an elderly lady, +plainly and cheaply dressed; at her side sat a young +lady with a very sweet face, and she also was quite +simply dressed; but around us and about us were clothes +and jewels which it would do anybody's heart good to +worship in. + +I thought it was pretty manifest that the elderly lady +was embarrassed at finding herself in such a conspicuous +place arrayed in such cheap apparel; I began to feel sorry +for her and troubled about her. She tried to seem very busy +with her prayer-book and her responses, and unconscious +that she was out of place, but I said to myself, "She is +not succeeding--there is a distressed tremulousness +in her voice which betrays increasing embarrassment." +Presently the Savior's name was mentioned, and in her flurry +she lost her head completely, and rose and courtesied, +instead of making a slight nod as everybody else did. +The sympathetic blood surged to my temples and I turned and gave +those fine birds what I intended to be a beseeching look, +but my feelings got the better of me and changed it into +a look which said, "If any of you pets of fortune laugh +at this poor soul, you will deserve to be flayed for it." +Things went from bad to worse, and I shortly found myself +mentally taking the unfriended lady under my protection. +My mind was wholly upon her. I forgot all about the sermon. +Her embarrassment took stronger and stronger hold upon her; +she got to snapping the lid of her smelling-bottle--it +made a loud, sharp sound, but in her trouble she snapped +and snapped away, unconscious of what she was doing. +The last extremity was reached when the collection-plate +began its rounds; the moderate people threw in pennies, +the nobles and the rich contributed silver, but she laid +a twenty-mark gold piece upon the book-rest before her +with a sounding slap! I said to myself, "She has parted +with all her little hoard to buy the consideration of these +unpitying people--it is a sorrowful spectacle." I did not +venture to look around this time; but as the service closed, +I said to myself, "Let them laugh, it is their opportunity; +but at the door of this church they shall see her step +into our fine carriage with us, and our gaudy coachman +shall drive her home." + +Then she rose--and all the congregation stood while she +walked down the aisle. She was the Empress of Germany! + +No--she had not been so much embarrassed as I had supposed. +My imagination had got started on the wrong scent, and that +is always hopeless; one is sure, then, to go straight +on misinterpreting everything, clear through to the end. +The young lady with her imperial Majesty was a maid of +honor--and I had been taking her for one of her boarders, +all the time. + +This is the only time I have ever had an Empress under +my personal protection; and considering my inexperience, +I wonder I got through with it so well. I should have +been a little embarrassed myself if I had known earlier +what sort of a contract I had on my hands. + +We found that the Empress had been in Baden-Baden +several days. It is said that she never attends +any but the English form of church service. + +I lay abed and read and rested from my journey's fatigues +the remainder of that Sunday, but I sent my agent to represent +me at the afternoon service, for I never allow anything +to interfere with my habit of attending church twice every +Sunday. + +There was a vast crowd in the public grounds that night +to hear the band play the "Fremersberg." This piece tells +one of the old legends of the region; how a great noble +of the Middle Ages got lost in the mountains, and wandered +about with his dogs in a violent storm, until at last +the faint tones of a monastery bell, calling the monks +to a midnight service, caught his ear, and he followed +the direction the sounds came from and was saved. +A beautiful air ran through the music, without ceasing, +sometimes loud and strong, sometimes so soft that it +could hardly be distinguished--but it was always there; +it swung grandly along through the shrill whistling +of the storm-wind, the rattling patter of the rain, +and the boom and crash of the thunder; it wound soft +and low through the lesser sounds, the distant ones, +such as the throbbing of the convent bell, the melodious +winding of the hunter's horn, the distressed bayings +of his dogs, and the solemn chanting of the monks; +it rose again, with a jubilant ring, and mingled itself +with the country songs and dances of the peasants assembled +in the convent hall to cheer up the rescued huntsman +while he ate his supper. The instruments imitated all +these sounds with a marvelous exactness. More than one +man started to raise his umbrella when the storm burst +forth and the sheets of mimic rain came driving by; +it was hardly possible to keep from putting your hand +to your hat when the fierce wind began to rage and shriek; +and it was NOT possible to refrain from starting when +those sudden and charmingly real thunder-crashes were +let loose. + +I suppose the "Fremersberg" is a very low-grade music; +I know, indeed, that it MUST be low-grade music, because it +delighted me, warmed me, moved me, stirred me, uplifted me, +enraptured me, that I was full of cry all the time, +and mad with enthusiasm. My soul had never had such a +scouring out since I was born. The solemn and majestic +chanting of the monks was not done by instruments, +but by men's voices; and it rose and fell, and rose again +in that rich confusion of warring sounds, and pulsing bells, +and the stately swing of that ever-present enchanting air, +and it seemed to me that nothing but the very lowest +of low-grade music COULD be so divinely beautiful. +The great crowd which the "Fremersberg" had called out was +another evidence that it was low-grade music; for only +the few are educated up to a point where high-grade music +gives pleasure. I have never heard enough classic music +to be able to enjoy it. I dislike the opera because I want +to love it and can't. + +I suppose there are two kinds of music--one kind which +one feels, just as an oyster might, and another sort +which requires a higher faculty, a faculty which must +be assisted and developed by teaching. Yet if base music +gives certain of us wings, why should we want any other? +But we do. We want it because the higher and better +like it. We want it without giving it the necessary +time and trouble; so we climb into that upper tier, +that dress-circle, by a lie; we PRETEND we like it. +I know several of that sort of people--and I propose +to be one of them myself when I get home with my fine +European education. + +And then there is painting. What a red rag is to a bull, +Turner's "Slave Ship" was to me, before I studied art. +Mr. Ruskin is educated in art up to a point where that +picture throws him into as mad an ecstasy of pleasure +as it used to throw me into one of rage, last year, +when I was ignorant. His cultivation enables him--and me, +now--to see water in that glaring yellow mud, and natural +effects in those lurid explosions of mixed smoke and flame, +and crimson sunset glories; it reconciles him--and me, +now--to the floating of iron cable-chains and other +unfloatable things; it reconciles us to fishes swimming +around on top of the mud--I mean the water. The most of +the picture is a manifest impossibility--that is to say, +a lie; and only rigid cultivation can enable a man to find +truth in a lie. But it enabled Mr. Ruskin to do it, +and it has enabled me to do it, and I am thankful for it. +A Boston newspaper reporter went and took a look at the Slave +Ship floundering about in that fierce conflagration of reds +and yellows, and said it reminded him of a tortoise-shell +cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes. In my then +uneducated state, that went home to my non-cultivation, +and I thought here is a man with an unobstructed eye. +Mr. Ruskin would have said: This person is an ass. +That is what I would say, now. [1] + +1. Months after this was written, I happened into the National + Gallery in London, and soon became so fascinated with the + Turner pictures that I could hardly get away from the place. + I went there often, afterward, meaning to see the rest + of the gallery, but the Turner spell was too strong; + it could not be shaken off. However, the Turners + which attracted me most did not remind me of the Slave Ship. + +However, our business in Baden-Baden this time, +was to join our courier. I had thought it best +to hire one, as we should be in Italy, by and by, +and we did not know the language. Neither did he. +We found him at the hotel, ready to take charge of us. +I asked him if he was "all fixed." He said he was. +That was very true. He had a trunk, two small satchels, +and an umbrella. I was to pay him fifty-five dollars +a month and railway fares. On the continent the railway +fare on a trunk is about the same it is on a man. +Couriers do not have to pay any board and lodging. +This seems a great saving to the tourist--at first. +It does not occur to the tourist that SOMEBODY pays that +man's board and lodging. It occurs to him by and by, +however, in one of his lucid moments. + + + +CHAPTER XXV +[Hunted by the Little Chamois] + +Next morning we left in the train for Switzerland, +and reached Lucerne about ten o'clock at night. +The first discovery I made was that the beauty of the lake +had not been exaggerated. Within a day or two I made +another discovery. This was, that the lauded chamois +is not a wild goat; that it is not a horned animal; +that it is not shy; that it does not avoid human society; +and that there is no peril in hunting it. The chamois is +a black or brown creature no bigger than a mustard seed; +you do not have to go after it, it comes after you; +it arrives in vast herds and skips and scampers all over +your body, inside your clothes; thus it is not shy, +but extremely sociable; it is not afraid of man, on the +contrary, it will attack him; its bite is not dangerous, +but neither is it pleasant; its activity has not been +overstated --if you try to put your finger on it, +it will skip a thousand times its own length at one jump, +and no eye is sharp enough to see where it lights. +A great deal of romantic nonsense has been written +about the Swiss chamois and the perils of hunting it, +whereas the truth is that even women and children +hunt it, and fearlessly; indeed, everybody hunts it; +the hunting is going on all the time, day and night, +in bed and out of it. It is poetic foolishness to hunt +it with a gun; very few people do that; there is not +one man in a million who can hit it with a gun. +It is much easier to catch it than it is to shoot it, +and only the experienced chamois-hunter can do either. +Another common piece of exaggeration is that about the +"scarcity" of the chamois. It is the reverse of scarce. +Droves of one hundred million chamois are not unusual +in the Swiss hotels. Indeed, they are so numerous +as to be a great pest. The romancers always dress up +the chamois-hunter in a fanciful and picturesque costume, +whereas the best way to hunt this game is to do it without +any costume at all. The article of commerce called +chamois-skin is another fraud; nobody could skin a chamois, +it is too small. The creature is a humbug in every way, +and everything which has been written about it is +sentimental exaggeration. It was no pleasure to me to find +the chamois out, for he had been one of my pet illusions; +all my life it had been my dream to see him in his native +wilds some day, and engage in the adventurous sport +of chasing him from cliff to cliff. It is no pleasure +to me to expose him, now, and destroy the reader's delight +in him and respect for him, but still it must be done, +for when an honest writer discovers an imposition it +is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down +from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; +any other course would render him unworthy of the public +confidence. + +Lucerne is a charming place. It begins at the water's edge, +with a fringe of hotels, and scrambles up and spreads +itself over two or three sharp hills in a crowded, +disorderly, but picturesque way, offering to the eye +a heaped-up confusion of red roofs, quaint gables, +dormer windows, toothpick steeples, with here and there +a bit of ancient embattled wall bending itself over +the ridges, worm-fashion, and here and there an old square +tower of heavy masonry. And also here and there a town +clock with only one hand--a hand which stretches across +the dial and has no joint in it; such a clock helps out +the picture, but you cannot tell the time of day by it. +Between the curving line of hotels and the lake is a broad +avenue with lamps and a double rank of low shade trees. +The lake-front is walled with masonry like a pier, +and has a railing, to keep people from walking overboard. +All day long the vehicles dash along the avenue, and nurses, +children, and tourists sit in the shade of the trees, +or lean on the railing and watch the schools of fishes +darting about in the clear water, or gaze out over the lake +at the stately border of snow-hooded mountains peaks. +Little pleasure steamers, black with people, are coming +and going all the time; and everywhere one sees young +girls and young men paddling about in fanciful rowboats, +or skimming along by the help of sails when there is any wind. +The front rooms of the hotels have little railed balconies, +where one may take his private luncheon in calm, +cool comfort and look down upon this busy and pretty +scene and enjoy it without having to do any of the work +connected with it. + +Most of the people, both male and female, are in walking +costume, and carry alpenstocks. Evidently, it is not +considered safe to go about in Switzerland, even in town, +without an alpenstock. If the tourist forgets and +comes down to breakfast without his alpenstock he goes +back and gets it, and stands it up in the corner. +When his touring in Switzerland is finished, he does not +throw that broomstick away, but lugs it home with him, +to the far corners of the earth, although this costs him +more trouble and bother than a baby or a courier could. +You see, the alpenstock is his trophy; his name +is burned upon it; and if he has climbed a hill, +or jumped a brook, or traversed a brickyard with it, +he has the names of those places burned upon it, too. +Thus it is his regimental flag, so to speak, and bears +the record of his achievements. It is worth three francs +when he buys it, but a bonanza could not purchase it +after his great deeds have been inscribed upon it. +There are artisans all about Switzerland whose trade it is +to burn these things upon the alpenstock of the tourist. +And observe, a man is respected in Switzerland according +to his alpenstock. I found I could get no attention there, +while I carried an unbranded one. However, branding is +not expected, so I soon remedied that. The effect +upon the next detachment of tourists was very marked. +I felt repaid for my trouble. + +Half of the summer horde in Switzerland is made up of +English people; the other half is made up of many nationalities, +the Germans leading and the Americans coming next. +The Americans were not as numerous as I had expected +they would be. + +The seven-thirty table d'ho^te at the great Schweitzerhof +furnished a mighty array and variety of nationalities, +but it offered a better opportunity to observe costumes +than people, for the multitude sat at immensely long tables, +and therefore the faces were mainly seen in perspective; +but the breakfasts were served at small round tables, +and then if one had the fortune to get a table in the +midst of the assemblage he could have as many faces +to study as he could desire. We used to try to guess out +the nationalities, and generally succeeded tolerably well. +Sometimes we tried to guess people's names; but that was +a failure; that is a thing which probably requires a good +deal of practice. We presently dropped it and gave our +efforts to less difficult particulars. One morning I +said: + +"There is an American party." + +Harris said: + +"Yes--but name the state." + +I named one state, Harris named another. We agreed upon +one thing, however--that the young girl with the party +was very beautiful, and very tastefully dressed. +But we disagreed as to her age. I said she was eighteen, +Harris said she was twenty. The dispute between us +waxed warm, and I finally said, with a pretense of being +in earnest: + +"Well, there is one way to settle the matter--I will go +and ask her." + +Harris said, sarcastically, "Certainly, that is the thing +to do. All you need to do is to use the common formula +over here: go and say, 'I'm an American!' Of course she +will be glad to see you." + +Then he hinted that perhaps there was no great danger +of my venturing to speak to her. + +I said, "I was only talking--I didn't intend to approach her, +but I see that you do not know what an intrepid person +I am. I am not afraid of any woman that walks. +I will go and speak to this young girl." + +The thing I had in my mind was not difficult. +I meant to address her in the most respectful way and ask +her to pardon me if her strong resemblance to a former +acquaintance of mine was deceiving me; and when she should +reply that the name I mentioned was not the name she bore, +I meant to beg pardon again, most respectfully, and retire. +There would be no harm done. I walked to her table, +bowed to the gentleman, then turned to her and was about +to begin my little speech when she exclaimed: + +"I KNEW I wasn't mistaken--I told John it was you! +John said it probably wasn't, but I knew I was right. +I said you would recognize me presently and come over; +and I'm glad you did, for I shouldn't have felt much flattered +if you had gone out of this room without recognizing me. +Sit down, sit down--how odd it is--you are the last person I +was ever expecting to see again." + +This was a stupefying surprise. It took my wits +clear away, for an instant. However, we shook hands +cordially all around, and I sat down. But truly this +was the tightest place I ever was in. I seemed to vaguely +remember the girl's face, now, but I had no idea where I +had seen it before, or what named belonged with it. +I immediately tried to get up a diversion about Swiss scenery, +to keep her from launching into topics that might +betray that I did not know her, but it was of no use, +she went right along upon matters which interested her more: + +"Oh dear, what a night that was, when the sea washed +the forward boats away--do you remember it?" + +"Oh, DON'T I!" said I--but I didn't. I wished the sea +had washed the rudder and the smoke-stack and the captain +away--then I could have located this questioner. + +"And don't you remember how frightened poor Mary was, +and how she cried?" + +"Indeed I do!" said I. "Dear me, how it all comes back!" + +I fervently wished it WOULD come back--but my memory was +a blank. The wise way would have been to frankly own up; +but I could not bring myself to do that, after the young +girl had praised me so for recognizing her; so I went on, +deeper and deeper into the mire, hoping for a chance clue +but never getting one. The Unrecognizable continued, +with vivacity: + +"Do you know, George married Mary, after all?" + +"Why, no! Did he?" + +"Indeed he did. He said he did not believe she was half +as much to blame as her father was, and I thought he +was right. Didn't you?" + +"Of course he was. It was a perfectly plain case. +I always said so." + +"Why, no you didn't!--at least that summer." + +"Oh, no, not that summer. No, you are perfectly right +about that. It was the following winter that I said it." + +"Well, as it turned out, Mary was not in the least +to blame --it was all her father's fault--at least +his and old Darley's." + +It was necessary to say something--so I said: + +"I always regarded Darley as a troublesome old thing." + +"So he was, but then they always had a great affection +for him, although he had so many eccentricities. +You remember that when the weather was the least cold, +he would try to come into the house." + +I was rather afraid to proceed. Evidently Darley was not +a man--he must be some other kind of animal--possibly +a dog, maybe an elephant. However, tails are common +to all animals, so I ventured to say: + +"And what a tail he had!" + +"ONE! He had a thousand!" + +This was bewildering. I did not quite know what to say, +so I only said: + +"Yes, he WAS rather well fixed in the matter of tails." + +"For a negro, and a crazy one at that, I should say he was," +said she. + +It was getting pretty sultry for me. I said to myself, +"Is it possible she is going to stop there, and wait for +me to speak? If she does, the conversation is blocked. +A negro with a thousand tails is a topic which a person +cannot talk upon fluently and instructively without more +or less preparation. As to diving rashly into such a +vast subject--" + +But here, to my gratitude, she interrupted my thoughts +by saying: + +"Yes, when it came to tales of his crazy woes, there was +simply no end to them if anybody would listen. His own +quarters were comfortable enough, but when the weather +was cold, the family were sure to have his company--nothing +could keep him out of the house. But they always bore it +kindly because he had saved Tom's life, years before. +You remember Tom? + +"Oh, perfectly. Fine fellow he was, too." + +"Yes he was. And what a pretty little thing his child was!" + +"You may well say that. I never saw a prettier child." + +"I used to delight to pet it and dandle it and play +with it." + +"So did I." + +"You named it. What WAS that name? I can't call it +to mind." + +It appeared to me that the ice was getting pretty +thin, here. I would have given something to know +what the child's was. However, I had the good luck +to think of a name that would fit either sex--so I brought it +out: + +"I named it Frances." + +"From a relative, I suppose? But you named the one that died, +too--one that I never saw. What did you call that one?" + +I was out of neutral names, but as the child was dead +and she had never seen it, I thought I might risk a name +for it and trust to luck. Therefore I said: + +"I called that one Thomas Henry." + +She said, musingly: + +"That is very singular ... very singular." + +I sat still and let the cold sweat run down. I was +in a good deal of trouble, but I believed I could worry +through if she wouldn't ask me to name any more children. +I wondered where the lightning was going to strike next. +She was still ruminating over that last child's title, +but presently she said: + +"I have always been sorry you were away at the time--I +would have had you name my child." + +"YOUR child! Are you married?" + +"I have been married thirteen years." + +"Christened, you mean." + +`"No, married. The youth by your side is my son." + +"It seems incredible--even impossible. I do not mean +any harm by it, but would you mind telling me if you +are any over eighteen?--that is to say, will you tell +me how old you are?" + +"I was just nineteen the day of the storm we were +talking about. That was my birthday." + +That did not help matters, much, as I did not know +the date of the storm. I tried to think of some +non-committal thing to say, to keep up my end of the talk, +and render my poverty in the matter of reminiscences +as little noticeable as possible, but I seemed to be +about out of non-committal things. I was about to say, +"You haven't changed a bit since then"--but that was risky. +I thought of saying, "You have improved ever so much +since then"--but that wouldn't answer, of course. +I was about to try a shy at the weather, for a saving change, +when the girl slipped in ahead of me and said: + +"How I have enjoyed this talk over those happy old times +--haven't you?" + +"I never have spent such a half-hour in all my life before!" +said I, with emotion; and I could have added, with a +near approach to truth, "and I would rather be scalped +than spend another one like it." I was holily grateful +to be through with the ordeal, and was about to make +my good-bys and get out, when the girl said: + +"But there is one thing that is ever so puzzling to me." + +"Why, what is that?" + +"That dead child's name. What did you say it was?" + +Here was another balmy place to be in: I had forgotten the +child's name; I hadn't imagined it would be needed again. +However, I had to pretend to know, anyway, so I said: + +"Joseph William." + +The youth at my side corrected me, and said: + +"No, Thomas Henry." + +I thanked him--in words--and said, with trepidation: + +"O yes--I was thinking of another child that I named--I +have named a great many, and I get them confused--this +one was named Henry Thompson--" + +"Thomas Henry," calmly interposed the boy. + +I thanked him again--strictly in words--and stammered +out: + +"Thomas Henry--yes, Thomas Henry was the poor child's name. +I named him for Thomas--er--Thomas Carlyle, the great author, +you know--and Henry--er--er--Henry the Eight. The parents +were very grateful to have a child named Thomas Henry." + +"That makes it more singular than ever," murmured my +beautiful friend. + +"Does it? Why?" + +"Because when the parents speak of that child now, +they always call it Susan Amelia." + +That spiked my gun. I could not say anything. I was entirely +out of verbal obliquities; to go further would be to lie, +and that I would not do; so I simply sat still and suffered +--sat mutely and resignedly there, and sizzled--for I +was being slowly fried to death in my own blushes. +Presently the enemy laughed a happy laugh and said: + +"I HAVE enjoyed this talk over old times, but you have not. +I saw very soon that you were only pretending to know me, +and so as I had wasted a compliment on you in the beginning, +I made up my mind to punish you. And I have succeeded +pretty well. I was glad to see that you knew George and Tom +and Darley, for I had never heard of them before and therefore +could not be sure that you had; and I was glad to learn +the names of those imaginary children, too. One can get +quite a fund of information out of you if one goes at +it cleverly. Mary and the storm, and the sweeping away +of the forward boats, were facts--all the rest was fiction. +Mary was my sister; her full name was Mary ------. NOW +do you remember me?" + +"Yes," I said, "I do remember you now; and you are as +hard-headed as you were thirteen years ago in that ship, +else you wouldn't have punished me so. You haven't +change your nature nor your person, in any way at all; +you look as young as you did then, you are just as beautiful +as you were then, and you have transmitted a deal +of your comeliness to this fine boy. There--if that +speech moves you any, let's fly the flag of truce, +with the understanding that I am conquered and confess it." + +All of which was agreed to and accomplished, on the spot. +When I went back to Harris, I said: + +"Now you see what a person with talent and address can do." + +"Excuse me, I see what a person of colossal ignorance and +simplicity can do. The idea of your going and intruding +on a party of strangers, that way, and talking for half +an hour; why I never heard of a man in his right mind +doing such a thing before. What did you say to them?" + +I never said any harm. I merely asked the girl what her +name was." + +"I don't doubt it. Upon my word I don't. I think you +were capable of it. It was stupid in me to let you go +over there and make such an exhibition of yourself. +But you know I couldn't really believe you would do such +an inexcusable thing. What will those people think +of us? But how did you say it?--I mean the manner of it. +I hope you were not abrupt." + +"No, I was careful about that. I said, 'My friend and I +would like to know what your name is, if you don't mind.'" + +"No, that was not abrupt. There is a polish about it that +does you infinite credit. And I am glad you put me in; +that was a delicate attention which I appreciate at its +full value. What did she do?" + +"She didn't do anything in particular. She told me +her name." + +"Simply told you her name. Do you mean to say she did +not show any surprise?" + +"Well, now I come to think, she did show something; +maybe it was surprise; I hadn't thought of that--I took +it for gratification." + +"Oh, undoubtedly you were right; it must have been gratification; +it could not be otherwise than gratifying to be assaulted +by a stranger with such a question as that. Then what did you +do?" + +"I offered my hand and the party gave me a shake." + +"I saw it! I did not believe my own eyes, at the time. +Did the gentleman say anything about cutting your throat?" + +"No, they all seemed glad to see me, as far as I could judge." + +"And do you know, I believe they were. I think they said +to themselves, 'Doubtless this curiosity has got away from +his keeper--let us amuse ourselves with him.' There is +no other way of accounting for their facile docility. +You sat down. Did they ASK you to sit down?" + +"No, they did not ask me, but I suppose they did not think +of it." + +"You have an unerring instinct. What else did you do? +What did you talk about?" + +"Well, I asked the girl how old she was." + +"UNdoubtedly. Your delicacy is beyond praise. Go on, +go on--don't mind my apparent misery--I always look +so when I am steeped in a profound and reverent joy. +Go on--she told you her age?" + +"Yes, she told me her age, and all about her mother, +and her grandmother, and her other relations, and all +about herself." + +"Did she volunteer these statistics?" + +"No, not exactly that. I asked the questions and she +answered them." + +"This is divine. Go on--it is not possible that you +forgot to inquire into her politics?" + +"No, I thought of that. She is a democrat, her husband +is a republican, and both of them are Baptists." + +"Her husband? Is that child married?" + +"She is not a child. She is married, and that is her +husband who is there with her." + +"Has she any children." + +"Yes--seven and a half." + +"That is impossible." + +"No, she has them. She told me herself." + +"Well, but seven and a HALF? How do you make out the half? +Where does the half come in?" + +"There is a child which she had by another husband +--not this one but another one--so it is a stepchild, +and they do not count in full measure." + +"Another husband? Has she another husband?" + +"Yes, four. This one is number four." + +"I don't believe a word of it. It is impossible, +upon its face. Is that boy there her brother?" + +"No, that is her son. He is her youngest. He is not +as old as he looked; he is only eleven and a half." + +"These things are all manifestly impossible. This is a +wretched business. It is a plain case: they simply took +your measure, and concluded to fill you up. They seem +to have succeeded. I am glad I am not in the mess; +they may at least be charitable enough to think there +ain't a pair of us. Are they going to stay here long?" + +"No, they leave before noon." + +"There is one man who is deeply grateful for that. +How did you find out? You asked, I suppose?" + +"No, along at first I inquired into their plans, in a +general way, and they said they were going to be here +a week, and make trips round about; but toward the end +of the interview, when I said you and I would tour around +with them with pleasure, and offered to bring you over +and introduce you, they hesitated a little, and asked +if you were from the same establishment that I was. +I said you were, and then they said they had changed +their mind and considered it necessary to start at once +and visit a sick relative in Siberia." + +"Ah, me, you struck the summit! You struck the loftiest +altitude of stupidity that human effort has ever reached. +You shall have a monument of jackasses' skulls as high +as the Strasburg spire if you die before I do. +They wanted to know I was from the same 'establishment' +that you hailed from, did they? What did they mean by +'establishment'?" + +"I don't know; it never occurred to me to ask." + +"Well _I_ know-- they meant an asylum-- an IDIOT asylum, +do you understand? So they DO think there's a pair of us, +after all. Now what do you think of yourself?" + +"Well, I don't know. I didn't know I was doing any harm; +I didn't MEAN to do any harm. They were very nice people, +and they seemed to like me." + +Harris made some rude remarks and left for his bedroom +--to break some furniture, he said. He was a singularly +irascible man; any little thing would disturb his temper. + +I had been well scorched by the young woman, but no matter, +I took it out on Harris. One should always "get even" +in some way, else the sore place will go on hurting. + + + +CHAPTER XXVI +[The Nest of the Cuckoo-clock] + +The Hofkirche is celebrated for its organ concerts. +All summer long the tourists flock to that church about six +o'clock in the evening, and pay their franc, and listen +to the noise. They don't stay to hear all of it, but get up +and tramp out over the sounding stone floor, meeting late +comers who tramp in in a sounding and vigorous way. +This tramping back and forth is kept up nearly all the time, +and is accented by the continuous slamming of the door, +and the coughing and barking and sneezing of the crowd. +Meantime, the big organ is booming and crashing and +thundering away, doing its best to prove that it is +the biggest and best organ in Europe, and that a tight +little box of a church is the most favorable place +to average and appreciate its powers in. It is true, +there were some soft and merciful passages occasionally, +but the tramp-tramp of the tourists only allowed one to get +fitful glimpses of them, so to speak. Then right away +the organist would let go another avalanche. + +The commerce of Lucerne consists mainly in gimcrackery of the +souvenir sort; the shops are packed with Alpine crystals, +photographs of scenery, and wooden and ivory carvings. +I will not conceal the fact that miniature figures of the +Lion of Lucerne are to be had in them. Millions of them. +But they are libels upon him, every one of them. +There is a subtle something about the majestic pathos +of the original which the copyist cannot get. Even the sun +fails to get it; both the photographer and the carver give +you a dying lion, and that is all. The shape is right, +the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that +indescribable something which makes the Lion of Lucerne +the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world, +is wanting. + +The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low +cliff--for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. +His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. How head +is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, +his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France. +Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear +stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, +and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, +among the water-lilies. + +Around about are green trees and grass. The place is +a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise +and stir and confusion--and all this is fitting, for lions +do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals +in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. +The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, +but nowhere so impressive as where he is. + +Martyrdom is the luckiest fate that can befall some people. +Louis XVI did not die in his bed, consequently history is +very gentle with him; she is charitable toward his failings, +and she finds in him high virtues which are not usually +considered to be virtues when they are lodged in kings. +She makes him out to be a person with a meek and modest +spirit, the heart of a female saint, and a wrong head. +None of these qualities are kingly but the last. +Taken together they make a character which would have fared +harshly at the hands of history if its owner had had the ill +luck to miss martyrdom. With the best intentions to do +the right thing, he always managed to do the wrong one. +Moreover, nothing could get the female saint out of him. +He knew, well enough, that in national emergencies he must +not consider how he ought to act, as a man, but how he +ought to act as a king; so he honestly tried to sink +the man and be the king--but it was a failure, he only +succeeded in being the female saint. He was not instant +in season, but out of season. He could not be persuaded +to do a thing while it could do any good--he was iron, +he was adamant in his stubbornness then--but as soon as +the thing had reached a point where it would be positively +harmful to do it, do it he would, and nothing could +stop him. He did not do it because it would be harmful, +but because he hoped it was not yet too late to achieve +by it the good which it would have done if applied earlier. +His comprehension was always a train or two behindhand. +If a national toe required amputating, he could not see +that it needed anything more than poulticing; when others +saw that the mortification had reached the knee, he first +perceived that the toe needed cutting off--so he cut it off; +and he severed the leg at the knee when others saw that the +disease had reached the thigh. He was good, and honest, +and well meaning, in the matter of chasing national diseases, +but he never could overtake one. As a private man, +he would have been lovable; but viewed as a king, he was +strictly contemptible. + +His was a most unroyal career, but the most pitiable +spectacle in it was his sentimental treachery to his +Swiss guard on that memorable 10th of August, when he +allowed those heroes to be massacred in his cause, +and forbade them to shed the "sacred French blood" +purporting to be flowing in the veins of the red-capped +mob of miscreants that was raging around the palace. +He meant to be kingly, but he was only the female saint +once more. Some of his biographers think that upon this +occasion the spirit of Saint Louis had descended upon him. +It must have found pretty cramped quarters. If Napoleon +the First had stood in the shoes of Louis XVI that day, +instead of being merely a casual and unknown looker-on, +there would be no Lion of Lucerne, now, but there would +be a well-stocked Communist graveyard in Paris which would +answer just as well to remember the 10th of August by. + +Martyrdom made a saint of Mary Queen of Scots three +hundred years ago, and she has hardly lost all of her +saintship yet. Martyrdom made a saint of the trivial +and foolish Marie Antoinette, and her biographers still +keep her fragrant with the odor of sanctity to this day, +while unconsciously proving upon almost every page they write +that the only calamitous instinct which her husband lacked, +she supplied--the instinct to root out and get rid of +an honest, able, and loyal official, wherever she found him. +The hideous but beneficent French Revolution would have +been deferred, or would have fallen short of completeness, +or even might not have happened at all, if Marie +Antoinette had made the unwise mistake of not being born. +The world owes a great deal to the French Revolution, +and consequently to its two chief promoters, Louis the +Poor in Spirit and his queen. + +We did not buy any wooden images of the Lion, nor any ivory +or ebony or marble or chalk or sugar or chocolate ones, +or even any photographic slanders of him. The truth is, +these copies were so common, so universal, in the shops +and everywhere, that they presently became as intolerable +to the wearied eye as the latest popular melody usually +becomes to the harassed ear. In Lucerne, too, the wood +carvings of other sorts, which had been so pleasant to look +upon when one saw them occasionally at home, soon began +to fatigue us. We grew very tired of seeing wooden quails +and chickens picking and strutting around clock-faces, +and still more tired of seeing wooden images of the alleged +chamois skipping about wooden rocks, or lying upon them +in family groups, or peering alertly up from behind them. +The first day, I would have bought a hundred and fifty +of these clocks if I had the money--and I did buy three +--but on the third day the disease had run its course, +I had convalesced, and was in the market once more--trying +to sell. However, I had no luck; which was just as well, +for the things will be pretty enough, no doubt, when I get +them home. + +For years my pet aversion had been the cuckoo clock; +now here I was, at last, right in the creature's home; +so wherever I went that distressing "HOO'hoo! HOO'hoo! +HOO'hoo!" was always in my ears. For a nervous man, +this was a fine state of things. Some sounds are hatefuler +than others, but no sound is quite so inane, and silly, +and aggravating as the "HOO'hoo" of a cuckoo clock, I think. +I bought one, and am carrying it home to a certain person; +for I have always said that if the opportunity ever happened, +I would do that man an ill turn. What I meant, was, that I +would break one of his legs, or something of that sort; +but in Lucerne I instantly saw that I could impair his mind. +That would be more lasting, and more satisfactory every way. +So I bought the cuckoo clock; and if I ever get home +with it, he is "my meat," as they say in the mines. +I thought of another candidate--a book-reviewer whom +I could name if I wanted to--but after thinking +it over, I didn't buy him a clock. I couldn't injure +his mind. + +We visited the two long, covered wooden bridges which span +the green and brilliant Reuss just below where it goes +plunging and hurrahing out of the lake. These rambling, +sway-backed tunnels are very attractive things, with their +alcoved outlooks upon the lovely and inspiriting water. +They contain two or three hundred queer old pictures, +by old Swiss masters--old boss sign-painters, who flourished +before the decadence of art. + +The lake is alive with fishes, plainly visible to the eye, +for the water is very clear. The parapets in front of the +hotels were usually fringed with fishers of all ages. +One day I thought I would stop and see a fish caught. +The result brought back to my mind, very forcibly, +a circumstance which I had not thought of before for +twelve years. This one: + +THE MAN WHO PUT UP AT GADSBY'S + +When my odd friend Riley and I were newspaper correspondents +in Washington, in the winter of '67, we were coming down +Pennsylvania Avenue one night, near midnight, in a driving +storm of snow, when the flash of a street-lamp fell upon a man +who was eagerly tearing along in the opposite direction. +"This is lucky! You are Mr. Riley, ain't you?" + +Riley was the most self-possessed and solemnly deliberate +person in the republic. He stopped, looked his man +over from head to foot, and finally said: + +"I am Mr. Riley. Did you happen to be looking for me?" + +"That's just what I was doing," said the man, joyously, +"and it's the biggest luck in the world that I've found you. +My name is Lykins. I'm one of the teachers of the high +school--San Francisco. As soon as I heard the San Francisco +postmastership was vacant, I made up my mind to get it--and here +I am." + +"Yes," said Riley, slowly, "as you have remarked ... +Mr. Lykins ... here you are. And have you got it?" + +"Well, not exactly GOT it, but the next thing to it. +I've brought a petition, signed by the Superintendent +of Public Instruction, and all the teachers, and by more +than two hundred other people. Now I want you, if you'll +be so good, to go around with me to the Pacific delegation, +for I want to rush this thing through and get along home." + +"If the matter is so pressing, you will prefer that we +visit the delegation tonight," said Riley, in a voice +which had nothing mocking in it--to an unaccustomed ear. + +"Oh, tonight, by all means! I haven't got any time to +fool around. I want their promise before I go to bed +--I ain't the talking kind, I'm the DOING kind!" + +"Yes ... you've come to the right place for that. +When did you arrive?" + +"Just an hour ago." + +"When are you intending to leave?" + +"For New York tomorrow evening--for San Francisco +next morning." + +"Just so.... What are you going to do tomorrow?" + +"DO! Why, I've got to go to the President with the petition +and the delegation, and get the appointment, haven't I?" + +"Yes ... very true ... that is correct. And then what?" + +"Executive session of the Senate at 2 P.M.--got to get +the appointment confirmed--I reckon you'll grant that?" + +"Yes ... yes," said Riley, meditatively, "you are +right again. Then you take the train for New York in +the evening, and the steamer for San Francisco next morning?" + +"That's it--that's the way I map it out!" + +Riley considered a while, and then said: + +"You couldn't stay ... a day ... well, say two +days longer?" + +"Bless your soul, no! It's not my style. I ain't a man +to go fooling around--I'm a man that DOES things, +I tell you." + +The storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts. +Riley stood silent, apparently deep in a reverie, +during a minute or more, then he looked up and said: + +"Have you ever heard about that man who put up at Gadsby's, +once? ... But I see you haven't." + +He backed Mr. Lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him, +fastened him with his eye, like the Ancient Mariner, +and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly +and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably +in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted +by a wintry midnight tempest: + +"I will tell you about that man. It was in Jackson's time. +Gadsby's was the principal hotel, then. Well, this man +arrived from Tennessee about nine o'clock, one morning, +with a black coachman and a splendid four-horse carriage and +an elegant dog, which he was evidently fond of and proud of; +he drove up before Gadsby's, and the clerk and the landlord +and everybody rushed out to take charge of him, but he said, +'Never mind,' and jumped out and told the coachman +to wait--said he hadn't time to take anything to eat, +he only had a little claim against the government to collect, +would run across the way, to the Treasury, and fetch +the money, and then get right along back to Tennessee, +for he was in considerable of a hurry. + +"Well, about eleven o'clock that night he came back +and ordered a bed and told them to put the horses +up--said he would collect the claim in the morning. +This was in January, you understand--January, 1834 +--the 3d of January--Wednesday. + +"Well, on the 5th of February, he sold the fine carriage, +and bought a cheap second-hand one--said it would answer +just as well to take the money home in, and he didn't care +for style. + +"On the 11th of August he sold a pair of the fine horses +--said he'd often thought a pair was better than four, +to go over the rough mountain roads with where a body +had to be careful about his driving--and there wasn't +so much of his claim but he could lug the money home +with a pair easy enough. + +"On the 13th of December he sold another horse--said +two warn't necessary to drag that old light vehicle +with--in fact, one could snatch it along faster than +was absolutely necessary, now that it was good solid +winter weather and the roads in splendid condition. + +"On the 17th of February, 1835, he sold the old carriage +and bought a cheap second-hand buggy--said a buggy +was just the trick to skim along mushy, slushy early +spring roads with, and he had always wanted to try +a buggy on those mountain roads, anyway. + +"On the 1st August he sold the buggy and bought the +remains of an old sulky--said he just wanted to see +those green Tennesseans stare and gawk when they saw +him come a-ripping along in a sulky--didn't believe +they'd ever heard of a sulky in their lives. + +"Well, on the 29th of August he sold his colored +coachman--said he didn't need a coachman for a sulky +--wouldn't be room enough for two in it anyway--and, +besides, it wasn't every day that Providence sent a man +a fool who was willing to pay nine hundred dollars for +such a third-rate negro as that--been wanting to get +rid of the creature for years, but didn't like to THROW him away. + + +"Eighteen months later--that is to say, on the 15th +of February, 1837--he sold the sulky and bought +a saddle--said horseback-riding was what the doctor +had always recommended HIM to take, and dog'd if he +wanted to risk HIS neck going over those mountain roads +on wheels in the dead of winter, not if he knew himself. + +"On the 9th of April he sold the saddle--said he wasn't +going to risk HIS life with any perishable saddle-girth +that ever was made, over a rainy, miry April road, +while he could ride bareback and know and feel he was +safe--always HAD despised to ride on a saddle, anyway. + +"On the 24th of April he sold his horse--said 'I'm just +fifty-seven today, hale and hearty--it would be a PRETTY +howdy-do for me to be wasting such a trip as that and such +weather as this, on a horse, when there ain't anything +in the world so splendid as a tramp on foot through +the fresh spring woods and over the cheery mountains, +to a man that IS a man--and I can make my dog carry my +claim in a little bundle, anyway, when it's collected. +So tomorrow I'll be up bright and early, make my little +old collection, and mosey off to Tennessee, on my own +hind legs, with a rousing good-by to Gadsby's.' + +"On the 22d of June he sold his dog--said 'Dern a dog, +anyway, where you're just starting off on a rattling bully +pleasure tramp through the summer woods and hills--perfect +nuisance--chases the squirrels, barks at everything, +goes a-capering and splattering around in the fords +--man can't get any chance to reflect and enjoy nature +--and I'd a blamed sight ruther carry the claim myself, +it's a mighty sight safer; a dog's mighty uncertain +in a financial way--always noticed it--well, GOOD-by, +boys--last call--I'm off for Tennessee with a good +leg and a gay heart, early in the morning.'" + +There was a pause and a silence--except the noise +of the wind and the pelting snow. Mr. Lykins said, +impatiently: + +"Well?" + +Riley said: + +"Well,--that was thirty years ago." + +"Very well, very well--what of it?" + +"I'm great friends with that old patriarch. He comes +every evening to tell me good-by. I saw him an hour ago +--he's off for Tennessee early tomorrow morning--as usual; +said he calculated to get his claim through and be off +before night-owls like me have turned out of bed. +The tears were in his eyes, he was so glad he was going +to see his old Tennessee and his friends once more." + +Another silent pause. The stranger broke it: + +"Is that all?" + +"That is all." + +"Well, for the TIME of night, and the KIND of night, +it seems to me the story was full long enough. But what's +it all FOR?" + +"Oh, nothing in particular." + +"Well, where's the point of it?" + +"Oh, there isn't any particular point to it. Only, if you +are not in TOO much of a hurry to rush off to San Francisco +with that post-office appointment, Mr. Lykins, I'd advise +you to 'PUT UP AT GADSBY'S' for a spell, and take it easy. +Good-by. GOD bless you!" + +So saying, Riley blandly turned on his heel and left +the astonished school-teacher standing there, a musing +and motionless snow image shining in the broad glow +of the street-lamp. + +He never got that post-office. + +To go back to Lucerne and its fishers, I concluded, +after about nine hours' waiting, that the man who proposes +to tarry till he sees something hook one of those well-fed +and experienced fishes will find it wisdom to "put up +at Gadsby's" and take it easy. It is likely that a fish +has not been caught on that lake pier for forty years; +but no matter, the patient fisher watches his cork there +all the day long, just the same, and seems to enjoy it. +One may see the fisher-loafers just as thick and contented +and happy and patient all along the Seine at Paris, +but tradition says that the only thing ever caught there +in modern times is a thing they don't fish for at all--the +recent dog and the translated cat. + + + +CHAPTER XXVII +[I Spare an Awful Bore] + +Close by the Lion of Lucerne is what they call the +"Glacier Garden"--and it is the only one in the world. +It is on high ground. Four or five years ago, +some workmen who were digging foundations for a house +came upon this interesting relic of a long-departed age. +Scientific men perceived in it a confirmation of their +theories concerning the glacial period; so through +their persuasions the little tract of ground was bought +and permanently protected against being built upon. +The soil was removed, and there lay the rasped and guttered +track which the ancient glacier had made as it moved +along upon its slow and tedious journey. This track +was perforated by huge pot-shaped holes in the bed-rock, +formed by the furious washing-around in them of boulders +by the turbulent torrent which flows beneath all glaciers. +These huge round boulders still remain in the holes; +they and the walls of the holes are worn smooth by +the long-continued chafing which they gave each other +in those old days. It took a mighty force to churn +these big lumps of stone around in that vigorous way. +The neighboring country had a very different shape, +at that time--the valleys have risen up and become hills, +since, and the hills have become valleys. The boulders +discovered in the pots had traveled a great distance, +for there is no rock like them nearer than the distant +Rhone Glacier. + +For some days we were content to enjoy looking at the blue +lake Lucerne and at the piled-up masses of snow-mountains +that border it all around--an enticing spectacle, +this last, for there is a strange and fascinating beauty +and charm about a majestic snow-peak with the sun blazing +upon it or the moonlight softly enriching it--but finally +we concluded to try a bit of excursioning around on +a steamboat, and a dash on foot at the Rigi. Very well, +we had a delightful trip to Fluelen, on a breezy, sunny day. +Everybody sat on the upper deck, on benches, under an awning; +everybody talked, laughed, and exclaimed at the wonder scenery; +in truth, a trip on that lake is almost the perfection +of pleasuring. The mountains were a never-ceasing marvel. +Sometimes they rose straight up out of the lake, +and towered aloft and overshadowed our pygmy steamer +with their prodigious bulk in the most impressive way. +Not snow-clad mountains, these, yet they climbed high +enough toward the sky to meet the clouds and veil their +foreheads in them. They were not barren and repulsive, +but clothed in green, and restful and pleasant to the eye. +And they were so almost straight-up-and-down, sometimes, +that one could not imagine a man being able to keep +his footing upon such a surface, yet there are paths, +and the Swiss people go up and down them every day. + +Sometimes one of these monster precipices had the slight +inclination of the huge ship-houses in dockyards +--then high aloft, toward the sky, it took a little +stronger inclination, like that of a mansard roof--and +perched on this dizzy mansard one's eye detected little +things like martin boxes, and presently perceived that +these were the dwellings of peasants--an airy place +for a home, truly. And suppose a peasant should walk +in his sleep, or his child should fall out of the front +yard?--the friends would have a tedious long journey down +out of those cloud-heights before they found the remains. +And yet those far-away homes looked ever so seductive, +they were so remote from the troubled world, they dozed +in such an atmosphere of peace and dreams--surely no one +who has learned to live up there would ever want +to live on a meaner level. + +We swept through the prettiest little curving arms +of the lake, among these colossal green walls, +enjoying new delights, always, as the stately panorama +unfolded itself before us and rerolled and hid itself +behind us; and now and then we had the thrilling surprise +of bursting suddenly upon a tremendous white mass like the +distant and dominating Jungfrau, or some kindred giant, +looming head and shoulders above a tumbled waste of lesser Alps. + +Once, while I was hungrily taking in one of these surprises, +and doing my best to get all I possibly could of it while it +should last, I was interrupted by a young and care-free voice: + +"You're an American, I think--so'm I." + +He was about eighteen, or possibly nineteen; slender and +of medium height; open, frank, happy face; a restless +but independent eye; a snub nose, which had the air +of drawing back with a decent reserve from the silky +new-born mustache below it until it should be introduced; +a loosely hung jaw, calculated to work easily in the sockets. +He wore a low-crowned, narrow-brimmed straw hat, +with a broad blue ribbon around it which had a white +anchor embroidered on it in front; nobby short-tailed +coat, pantaloons, vest, all trim and neat and up with +the fashion; red-striped stockings, very low-quarter +patent-leather shoes, tied with black ribbon; blue ribbon +around his neck, wide-open collar; tiny diamond studs; +wrinkleless kids; projecting cuffs, fastened with large +oxidized silver sleeve-buttons, bearing the device +of a dog's face--English pug. He carries a slim cane, +surmounted with an English pug's head with red glass eyes. +Under his arm he carried a German grammar--Otto's. His hair +was short, straight, and smooth, and presently when he turned +his head a moment, I saw that it was nicely parted behind. +He took a cigarette out of a dainty box, stuck it into +a meerschaum holder which he carried in a morocco case, +and reached for my cigar. While he was lighting, I said: + +"Yes--I am an American." + +"I knew it--I can always tell them. What ship did you +come over in?" + +"HOLSATIA." + +"We came in the BATAVIA--Cunard, you know. What kind +of passage did you have?" + +"Tolerably rough." + +"So did we. Captain said he'd hardly ever seen it rougher. +Where are you from?" + +"New England." + +"So'm I. I'm from New Bloomfield. Anybody with you?" + +"Yes--a friend." + +"Our whole family's along. It's awful slow, going around +alone--don't you think so?" + +"Rather slow." + +"Ever been over here before?" + +"Yes." + +"I haven't. My first trip. But we've been all around--Paris +and everywhere. I'm to enter Harvard next year. +Studying German all the time, now. Can't enter till I +know German. I know considerable French--I get along +pretty well in Paris, or anywhere where they speak French. +What hotel are you stopping at?" + +"Schweitzerhof." + +"No! is that so? I never see you in the reception-room. +I go to the reception-room a good deal of the time, +because there's so many Americans there. I make lots +of acquaintances. I know an American as soon as I see +him--and so I speak to him and make his acquaintance. +I like to be always making acquaintances--don't you?" + +"Lord, yes!" + +"You see it breaks up a trip like this, first rate. +I never got bored on a trip like this, if I can +make acquaintances and have somebody to talk to. +But I think a trip like this would be an awful bore, +if a body couldn't find anybody to get acquainted with +and talk to on a trip like this. I'm fond of talking, +ain't you? + +"Passionately." + +"Have you felt bored, on this trip?" + +"Not all the time, part of it." + +"That's it!--you see you ought to go around and get acquainted, +and talk. That's my way. That's the way I always do--I +just go 'round, 'round, 'round and talk, talk, talk--I +never get bored. You been up the Rigi yet?" + +"No." + +"Going?" + +"I think so." + +"What hotel you going to stop at?" + +"I don't know. Is there more than one?" + +"Three. You stop at the Schreiber--you'll find it full +of Americans. What ship did you say you came over in?" + +"CITY OF ANTWERP." + +"German, I guess. You going to Geneva?" + +"Yes." + +"What hotel you going to stop at?" + +"Hotel de l''Ecu de G'en`eve." + +"Don't you do it! No Americans there! You stop at one +of those big hotels over the bridge--they're packed +full of Americans." + +"But I want to practice my Arabic." + +"Good gracious, do you speak Arabic?" + +"Yes--well enough to get along." + +"Why, hang it, you won't get along in Geneva--THEY don't +speak Arabic, they speak French. What hotel are you +stopping at here?" + +"Hotel Pension-Beaurivage." + +"Sho, you ought to stop at the Schweitzerhof. Didn't you +know the Schweitzerhof was the best hotel in Switzerland? +--look at your Baedeker." + +"Yes, I know--but I had an idea there warn't any +Americans there." + +"No Americans! Why, bless your soul, it's just alive with +them! I'm in the great reception-room most all the time. +I make lots of acquaintances there. Not as many as I did +at first, because now only the new ones stop in there +--the others go right along through. Where are you from?" + +"Arkansaw." + +"Is that so? I'm from New England--New Bloomfield's my town +when I'm at home. I'm having a mighty good time today, +ain't you?" + +"Divine." + +"That's what I call it. I like this knocking around, +loose and easy, and making acquaintances and talking. +I know an American, soon as I see him; so I go and speak +to him and make his acquaintance. I ain't ever bored, +on a trip like this, if I can make new acquaintances and talk. +I'm awful fond of talking when I can get hold of the right +kind of a person, ain't you?" + +"I prefer it to any other dissipation." + +"That's my notion, too. Now some people like to take +a book and sit down and read, and read, and read, or moon +around yawping at the lake or these mountains and things, +but that ain't my way; no, sir, if they like it, let 'em do it, +I don't object; but as for me, talking's what _I_ like. +You been up the Rigi?" + +"Yes." + +"What hotel did you stop at?" + +"Schreiber." + +"That's the place!--I stopped there too. FULL of Americans, +WASN'T it? It always is--always is. That's what they say. +Everybody says that. What ship did you come over in?" + +"VILLE DE PARIS." + +"French, I reckon. What kind of a passage did ... excuse me +a minute, there's some Americans I haven't seen before." + +And away he went. He went uninjured, too--I had the murderous +impulse to harpoon him in the back with my alpenstock, +but as I raised the weapon the disposition left me; +I found I hadn't the heart to kill him, he was such +a joyous, innocent, good-natured numbskull. + +Half an hour later I was sitting on a bench inspecting, +with strong interest, a noble monolith which we were +skimming by--a monolith not shaped by man, but by Nature's +free great hand--a massy pyramidal rock eighty feet high, +devised by Nature ten million years ago against the day +when a man worthy of it should need it for his monument. +The time came at last, and now this grand remembrancer +bears Schiller's name in huge letters upon its face. +Curiously enough, this rock was not degraded or defiled +in any way. It is said that two years ago a stranger let +himself down from the top of it with ropes and pulleys, +and painted all over it, in blue letters bigger than those in +Schiller's name, these words: + +"Try Sozodont;" "Buy Sun Stove Polish;" "Helmbold's Buchu;" +"Try Benzaline for the Blood." + +He was captured and it turned out that he was an American. +Upon his trial the judge said to him: + +"You are from a land where any insolent that wants to is +privileged to profane and insult Nature, and, through her, +Nature's God, if by so doing he can put a sordid penny +in his pocket. But here the case is different. Because you +are a foreigner and ignorant, I will make your sentence light; +if you were a native I would deal strenuously with you. +Hear and obey: --You will immediately remove every trace +of your offensive work from the Schiller monument; you pay +a fine of ten thousand francs; you will suffer two years' +imprisonment at hard labor; you will then be horsewhipped, +tarred and feathered, deprived of your ears, ridden on a +rail to the confines of the canton, and banished forever. +The severest penalties are omitted in your case--not as +a grace to you, but to that great republic which had the +misfortune to give you birth." + +The steamer's benches were ranged back to back across +the deck. My back hair was mingling innocently with +the back hair of a couple of ladies. Presently they +were addressed by some one and I overheard this conversation: + +"You are Americans, I think? So'm I." + +"Yes--we are Americans." + +"I knew it--I can always tell them. What ship did you +come over in?" + +"CITY OF CHESTER." + +"Oh, yes--Inman line. We came in the BATAVIA--Cunard +you know. What kind of a passage did you have?" + +"Pretty fair." + +"That was luck. We had it awful rough. Captain said +he'd hardly seen it rougher. Where are you from?" + +"New Jersey." + +"So'm I. No--I didn't mean that; I'm from New England. +New Bloomfield's my place. These your children?--belong +to both of you?" + +"Only to one of us; they are mine; my friend is not married." + +"Single, I reckon? So'm I. Are you two ladies traveling alone?" + +"No--my husband is with us." + +"Our whole family's along. It's awful slow, going around +alone--don't you think so?" + +"I suppose it must be." + +"Hi, there's Mount Pilatus coming in sight again. +Named after Pontius Pilate, you know, that shot the apple +off of William Tell's head. Guide-book tells all about it, +they say. I didn't read it--an American told me. I don't +read when I'm knocking around like this, having a good time. +Did you ever see the chapel where William Tell used +to preach?" + +"I did not know he ever preached there." + +"Oh, yes, he did. That American told me so. He don't +ever shut up his guide-book. He knows more about this lake +than the fishes in it. Besides, they CALL it 'Tell's +Chapel'--you know that yourself. You ever been over here +before?" + +"Yes." + +"I haven't. It's my first trip. But we've been all around +--Paris and everywhere. I'm to enter Harvard next year. +Studying German all the time now. Can't enter till I +know German. This book's Otto's grammar. It's a mighty +good book to get the ICH HABE GEHABT HABEN's out of. +But I don't really study when I'm knocking around this way. +If the notion takes me, I just run over my little +old ICH HABE GEHABT, DU HAST GEHABT, ER HAT GEHABT, +WIR HABEN GEHABT, IHR HABEN GEHABT, SIE HABEN GEHABT +--kind of 'Now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep' fashion, you know, +and after that, maybe I don't buckle to it for three days. +It's awful undermining to the intellect, German is; +you want to take it in small doses, or first you know +your brains all run together, and you feel them sloshing +around in your head same as so much drawn butter. +But French is different; FRENCH ain't anything. I ain't +any more afraid of French than a tramp's afraid of pie; I can +rattle off my little J'AI, TU AS, IL A, and the rest of it, +just as easy as a-b-c. I get along pretty well in Paris, +or anywhere where they speak French. What hotel are you +stopping at?" + +"The Schweitzerhof." + +"No! is that so? I never see you in the big reception-room. +I go in there a good deal of the time, because there's +so many Americans there. I make lots of acquaintances. +You been up the Rigi yet?" + +"No." + +"Going?" + +"We think of it." + +"What hotel you going to stop at?" + +"I don't know." + +"Well, then you stop at the Schreiber--it's full of Americans. +What ship did you come over in?" + +"CITY OF CHESTER." + +"Oh, yes, I remember I asked you that before. But I +always ask everybody what ship they came over in, and so +sometimes I forget and ask again. You going to Geneva?" + +"Yes." + +"What hotel you going to stop at?" + +"We expect to stop in a pension." + +"I don't hardly believe you'll like that; there's very few +Americans in the pensions. What hotel are you stopping +at here?" + +"The Schweitzerhof." + +"Oh, yes. I asked you that before, too. But I always +ask everybody what hotel they're stopping at, and so I've +got my head all mixed up with hotels. But it makes talk, +and I love to talk. It refreshes me up so--don't it +you--on a trip like this?" + +"Yes--sometimes." + +"Well, it does me, too. As long as I'm talking I never +feel bored--ain't that the way with you?" + +"Yes--generally. But there are exception to the rule." + +"Oh, of course. _I_ don't care to talk to everybody, MYSELF. +If a person starts in to jabber-jabber-jabber about scenery, +and history, and pictures, and all sorts of tiresome things, +I get the fan-tods mighty soon. I say 'Well, I must be going +now--hope I'll see you again'--and then I take a walk. Where you +from?" + +"New Jersey." + +"Why, bother it all, I asked you THAT before, too. +Have you seen the Lion of Lucerne?" + +"Not yet." + +"Nor I, either. But the man who told me about +Mount Pilatus says it's one of the things to see. +It's twenty-eight feet long. It don't seem reasonable, +but he said so, anyway. He saw it yesterday; said it +was dying, then, so I reckon it's dead by this time. +But that ain't any matter, of course they'll stuff it. +Did you say the children are yours--or HERS?" + +"Mine." + +"Oh, so you did. Are you going up the ... no, I asked +you that. What ship ... no, I asked you that, too. +What hotel are you ... no, you told me that. +Let me see ... um .... Oh, what kind of voy ... no, +we've been over that ground, too. Um ... um ... well, +I believe that is all. BONJOUR--I am very glad to have +made your acquaintance, ladies. GUTEN TAG." + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII +[The Jodel and Its Native Wilds] + +The Rigi-Kulm is an imposing Alpine mass, six thousand +feet high, which stands by itself, and commands a mighty +prospect of blue lakes, green valleys, and snowy mountains +--a compact and magnificent picture three hundred miles +in circumference. The ascent is made by rail, or horseback, +or on foot, as one may prefer. I and my agent panoplied +ourselves in walking-costume, one bright morning, +and started down the lake on the steamboat; we got ashore +at the village of Waeggis; three-quarters of an hour distant +from Lucerne. This village is at the foot of the mountain. + +We were soon tramping leisurely up the leafy mule-path, +and then the talk began to flow, as usual. It was +twelve o'clock noon, and a breezy, cloudless day; +the ascent was gradual, and the glimpses, from under +the curtaining boughs, of blue water, and tiny sailboats, +and beetling cliffs, were as charming as glimpses of dreamland. +All the circumstances were perfect--and the anticipations, +too, for we should soon be enjoying, for the first time, +that wonderful spectacle, an Alpine sunrise--the object +of our journey. There was (apparently) no real need +for hurry, for the guide-book made the walking-distance +from Waeggis to the summit only three hours and a quarter. +I say "apparently," because the guide-book had already +fooled us once--about the distance from Allerheiligen +to Oppenau--and for aught I knew it might be getting ready +to fool us again. We were only certain as to the altitudes +--we calculated to find out for ourselves how many hours +it is from the bottom to the top. The summit is six +thousand feet above the sea, but only forty-five hundred +feet above the lake. When we had walked half an hour, +we were fairly into the swing and humor of the undertaking, +so we cleared for action; that is to say, we got a boy whom +we met to carry our alpenstocks and satchels and overcoats +and things for us; that left us free for business. +I suppose we must have stopped oftener to stretch out +on the grass in the shade and take a bit of a smoke +than this boy was used to, for presently he asked if it +had been our idea to hire him by the job, or by the year? +We told him he could move along if he was in a hurry. +He said he wasn't in such a very particular hurry, +but he wanted to get to the top while he was young. +We told him to clear out, then, and leave the things at +the uppermost hotel and say we should be along presently. +He said he would secure us a hotel if he could, but if they +were all full he would ask them to build another one +and hurry up and get the paint and plaster dry against +we arrived. Still gently chaffing us, he pushed ahead, +up the trail, and soon disappeared. By six o'clock we +were pretty high up in the air, and the view of lake +and mountains had greatly grown in breadth and interest. +We halted awhile at a little public house, where we +had bread and cheese and a quart or two of fresh milk, +out on the porch, with the big panorama all before us--and +then moved on again. + +Ten minutes afterward we met a hot, red-faced man plunging +down the mountain, making mighty strides, swinging his +alpenstock ahead of him, and taking a grip on the ground +with its iron point to support these big strides. +He stopped, fanned himself with his hat, swabbed the +perspiration from his face and neck with a red handkerchief, +panted a moment or two, and asked how far to Waeggis. +I said three hours. He looked surprised, and said: + +"Why, it seems as if I could toss a biscuit into the lake +from here, it's so close by. Is that an inn, there?" + +I said it was. + +"Well," said he, "I can't stand another three hours, +I've had enough today; I'll take a bed there." + +I asked: + +"Are we nearly to the top?" + +"Nearly to the TOP? Why, bless your soul, you haven't +really started, yet." + +I said we would put up at the inn, too. So we turned +back and ordered a hot supper, and had quite a jolly +evening of it with this Englishman. + +The German landlady gave us neat rooms and nice beds, +and when I and my agent turned in, it was with the resolution +to be up early and make the utmost of our first Alpine sunrise. +But of course we were dead tired, and slept like policemen; +so when we awoke in the morning and ran to the window it +was already too late, because it was half past eleven. +It was a sharp disappointment. However, we ordered +breakfast and told the landlady to call the Englishman, +but she said he was already up and off at daybreak--and +swearing like mad about something or other. We could not +find out what the matter was. He had asked the landlady +the altitude of her place above the level of the lake, +and she told him fourteen hundred and ninety-five feet. +That was all that was said; then he lost his temper. +He said that between ------fools and guide-books, a man +could acquire ignorance enough in twenty-four hours in a +country like this to last him a year. Harris believed +our boy had been loading him up with misinformation; +and this was probably the case, for his epithet described +that boy to a dot. + +We got under way about the turn of noon, and pulled out +for the summit again, with a fresh and vigorous step. +When we had gone about two hundred yards, and stopped +to rest, I glanced to the left while I was lighting my pipe, +and in the distance detected a long worm of black smoke +crawling lazily up the steep mountain. Of course that was +the locomotive. We propped ourselves on our elbows at once, +to gaze, for we had never seen a mountain railway yet. +Presently we could make out the train. It seemed incredible +that that thing should creep straight up a sharp slant +like the roof of a house--but there it was, and it was doing +that very miracle. + +In the course of a couple hours we reached a fine breezy +altitude where the little shepherd huts had big stones +all over their roofs to hold them down to the earth when +the great storms rage. The country was wild and rocky +about here, but there were plenty of trees, plenty of moss, +and grass. + +Away off on the opposite shore of the lake we could +see some villages, and now for the first time we could +observe the real difference between their proportions +and those of the giant mountains at whose feet they slept. +When one is in one of those villages it seems spacious, +and its houses seem high and not out of proportion to the +mountain that overhands them--but from our altitude, +what a change! The mountains were bigger and grander +than ever, as they stood there thinking their solemn +thoughts with their heads in the drifting clouds, +but the villages at their feet--when the painstaking +eye could trace them up and find them--were so reduced, +almost invisible, and lay so flat against the ground, +that the exactest simile I can devise is to compare +them to ant-deposits of granulated dirt overshadowed +by the huge bulk of a cathedral. The steamboats skimming +along under the stupendous precipices were diminished +by distance to the daintiest little toys, the sailboats +and rowboats to shallops proper for fairies that keep +house in the cups of lilies and ride to court on the backs +of bumblebees. + +Presently we came upon half a dozen sheep nibbling grass +in the spray of a stream of clear water that sprang +from a rock wall a hundred feet high, and all at once +our ears were startled with a melodious "Lul ... +l ... l l l llul-lul-LAhee-o-o-o!" pealing joyously +from a near but invisible source, and recognized that we +were hearing for the first time the famous Alpine JODEL +in its own native wilds. And we recognized, also, +that it was that sort of quaint commingling of baritone +and falsetto which at home we call "Tyrolese warbling." + +The jodeling (pronounced yOdling--emphasis on the O) +continued, and was very pleasant and inspiriting to hear. +Now the jodeler appeared--a shepherd boy of sixteen +--and in our gladness and gratitude we gave him a franc +to jodel some more. So he jodeled and we listened. +We moved on, presently, and he generously jodeled us +out of sight. After about fifteen minutes we came across +another shepherd boy who was jodeling, and gave him half +a franc to keep it up. He also jodeled us out of sight. +After that, we found a jodeler every ten minutes; +we gave the first one eight cents, the second one +six cents, the third one four, the fourth one a penny, +contributed nothing to Nos. 5, 6, and 7, and during +the remainder of the day hired the rest of the jodelers, +at a franc apiece, not to jodel any more. There is somewhat +too much of the jodeling in the Alps. + +About the middle of the afternoon we passed through +a prodigious natural gateway called the Felsenthor, +formed by two enormous upright rocks, with a third lying +across the top. There was a very attractive little +hotel close by, but our energies were not conquered yet, +so we went on. + +Three hours afterward we came to the railway-track. It +was planted straight up the mountain with the slant +of a ladder that leans against a house, and it seemed +to us that man would need good nerves who proposed +to travel up it or down it either. + +During the latter part of the afternoon we cooled our +roasting interiors with ice-cold water from clear streams, +the only really satisfying water we had tasted since we +left home, for at the hotels on the continent they +merely give you a tumbler of ice to soak your water in, +and that only modifies its hotness, doesn't make it cold. +Water can only be made cold enough for summer comfort by +being prepared in a refrigerator or a closed ice-pitcher. +Europeans say ice-water impairs digestion. How do they +know?--they never drink any. + +At ten minutes past six we reached the Kaltbad station, +where there is a spacious hotel with great verandas which +command a majestic expanse of lake and mountain scenery. +We were pretty well fagged out, now, but as we did +not wish to miss the Alpine sunrise, we got through our +dinner as quickly as possible and hurried off to bed. +It was unspeakably comfortable to stretch our weary limbs +between the cool, damp sheets. And how we did sleep!--for +there is no opiate like Alpine pedestrianism. + +In the morning we both awoke and leaped out of bed at the +same instant and ran and stripped aside the window-curtains; +but we suffered a bitter disappointment again: it +was already half past three in the afternoon. + +We dressed sullenly and in ill spirits, each accusing +the other of oversleeping. Harris said if we had brought +the courier along, as we ought to have done, we should +not have missed these sunrises. I said he knew very well +that one of us would have to sit up and wake the courier; +and I added that we were having trouble enough to take +care of ourselves, on this climb, without having to take +care of a courier besides. + +During breakfast our spirits came up a little, since we +found by this guide-book that in the hotels on the summit +the tourist is not left to trust to luck for his sunrise, +but is roused betimes by a man who goes through the halls +with a great Alpine horn, blowing blasts that would +raise the dead. And there was another consoling thing: +the guide-book said that up there on the summit the guests +did not wait to dress much, but seized a red bed blanket +and sailed out arrayed like an Indian. This was good; +this would be romantic; two hundred and fifty people +grouped on the windy summit, with their hair flying and +their red blankets flapping, in the solemn presence of the +coming sun, would be a striking and memorable spectacle. +So it was good luck, not ill luck, that we had missed +those other sunrises. + +We were informed by the guide-book that we were now +3,228 feet above the level of the lake--therefore +full two-thirds of our journey had been accomplished. +We got away at a quarter past four, P.M.; a hundred yards +above the hotel the railway divided; one track went +straight up the steep hill, the other one turned square +off to the right, with a very slight grade. We took +the latter, and followed it more than a mile, turned a +rocky corner, and came in sight of a handsome new hotel. +If we had gone on, we should have arrived at the summit, +but Harris preferred to ask a lot of questions--as usual, +of a man who didn't know anything--and he told us to go +back and follow the other route. We did so. We could ill +afford this loss of time. + +We climbed and climbed; and we kept on climbing; we reached about +forty summits, but there was always another one just ahead. +It came on to rain, and it rained in dead earnest. +We were soaked through and it was bitter cold. Next a +smoky fog of clouds covered the whole region densely, +and we took to the railway-ties to keep from getting lost. +Sometimes we slopped along in a narrow path on the left-hand +side of the track, but by and by when the fog blew as aside +a little and we saw that we were treading the rampart +of a precipice and that our left elbows were projecting +over a perfectly boundless and bottomless vacancy, +we gasped, and jumped for the ties again. + +The night shut down, dark and drizzly and cold. +About eight in the evening the fog lifted and showed us +a well-worn path which led up a very steep rise to the left. +We took it, and as soon as we had got far enough from the +railway to render the finding it again an impossibility, +the fog shut down on us once more. + +We were in a bleak, unsheltered place, now, and had +to trudge right along, in order to keep warm, though we +rather expected to go over a precipice, sooner or later. +About nine o'clock we made an important discovery +--that we were not in any path. We groped around a while +on our hands and knees, but we could not find it; +so we sat down in the mud and the wet scant grass to wait. + +We were terrified into this by being suddenly confronted +with a vast body which showed itself vaguely for an instant +and in the next instant was smothered in the fog again. +It was really the hotel we were after, monstrously magnified +by the fog, but we took it for the face of a precipice, +and decided not to try to claw up it. + +We sat there an hour, with chattering teeth and quivering bodies, +and quarreled over all sorts of trifles, but gave most +of our attention to abusing each other for the stupidity +of deserting the railway-track. We sat with our backs +to the precipice, because what little wind there was +came from that quarter. At some time or other the fog +thinned a little; we did not know when, for we were facing +the empty universe and the thinness could not show; +but at last Harris happened to look around, and there stood +a huge, dim, spectral hotel where the precipice had been. +One could faintly discern the windows and chimneys, +and a dull blur of lights. Our first emotion was deep, +unutterable gratitude, our next was a foolish rage, +born of the suspicion that possibly the hotel had been +visible three-quarters of an hour while we sat there +in those cold puddles quarreling. + +Yes, it was the Rigi-Kulm hotel--the one that occupies +the extreme summit, and whose remote little sparkle +of lights we had often seen glinting high aloft among +the stars from our balcony away down yonder in Lucerne. +The crusty portier and the crusty clerks gave us the surly +reception which their kind deal out in prosperous times, +but by mollifying them with an extra display of obsequiousness +and servility we finally got them to show us to the room +which our boy had engaged for us. + +We got into some dry clothing, and while our supper was +preparing we loafed forsakenly through a couple of vast +cavernous drawing-rooms, one of which had a stove in it. +This stove was in a corner, and densely walled around +with people. We could not get near the fire, so we moved +at large in the artic spaces, among a multitude of people +who sat silent, smileless, forlorn, and shivering--thinking +what fools they were to come, perhaps. There were some +Americans and some Germans, but one could see that the +great majority were English. + +We lounged into an apartment where there was a great crowd, +to see what was going on. It was a memento-magazine. +The tourists were eagerly buying all sorts and styles of +paper-cutters, marked "Souvenir of the Rigi," with handles +made of the little curved horn of the ostensible chamois; +there were all manner of wooden goblets and such things, +similarly marked. I was going to buy a paper-cutter, but I +believed I could remember the cold comfort of the Rigi-Kulm +without it, so I smothered the impulse. + +Supper warmed us, and we went immediately to bed--but first, +as Mr. Baedeker requests all tourists to call his attention +to any errors which they may find in his guide-books, I +dropped him a line to inform him he missed it by just +about three days. I had previously informed him of his +mistake about the distance from Allerheiligen to Oppenau, +and had also informed the Ordnance Depart of the German +government of the same error in the imperial maps. +I will add, here, that I never got any answer to those letters, +or any thanks from either of those sources; and, what is still +more discourteous, these corrections have not been made, +either in the maps or the guide-books. But I will write +again when I get time, for my letters may have miscarried. + +We curled up in the clammy beds, and went to sleep without +rocking. +We were so sodden with fatigue that we never stirred nor +turned over till the blooming blasts of the Alpine horn +aroused us. It may well be imagined that we did not lose +any time. We snatched on a few odds and ends of clothing, +cocooned ourselves in the proper red blankets, and plunged +along the halls and out into the whistling wind bareheaded. +We saw a tall wooden scaffolding on the very peak +of the summit, a hundred yards away, and made for it. +We rushed up the stairs to the top of this scaffolding, +and stood there, above the vast outlying world, with hair +flying and ruddy blankets waving and cracking in the fierce +breeze. + +"Fifteen minutes too late, at last!" said Harris, +in a vexed voice. "The sun is clear above the horizon." + +"No matter," I said, "it is a most magnificent spectacle, +and we will see it do the rest of its rising anyway." + +In a moment we were deeply absorbed in the marvel before us, +and dead to everything else. The great cloud-barred disk +of the sun stood just above a limitless expanse of tossing +white-caps--so to speak--a billowy chaos of massy mountain +domes and peaks draped in imperishable snow, and flooded +with an opaline glory of changing and dissolving splendors, +while through rifts in a black cloud-bank above the sun, +radiating lances of diamond dust shot to the zenith. +The cloven valleys of the lower world swam in a tinted +mist which veiled the ruggedness of their crags and ribs +and ragged forests, and turned all the forbidding region +into a soft and rich and sensuous paradise. + +We could not speak. We could hardly breathe. +We could only gaze in drunken ecstasy and drink in it. +Presently Harris exclaimed: + +"Why--nation, it's going DOWN!" + +Perfectly true. We had missed the MORNING hornblow, +and slept all day. This was stupefying. + +Harris said: + +"Look here, the sun isn't the spectacle--it's US--stacked +up here on top of this gallows, in these idiotic blankets, +and two hundred and fifty well-dressed men and women down +here gawking up at us and not caring a straw whether the sun +rises or sets, as long as they've got such a ridiculous +spectacle as this to set down in their memorandum-books. +They seem to be laughing their ribs loose, and there's +one girl there at appears to be going all to pieces. +I never saw such a man as you before. I think you are +the very last possibility in the way of an ass." + +"What have _I_ done?" I answered, with heat. + +"What have you done? You've got up at half past seven +o'clock in the evening to see the sun rise, that's what +you've done." + +"And have you done any better, I'd like to know? I've +always used to get up with the lark, till I came under +the petrifying influence of your turgid intellect." + +"YOU used to get up with the lark--Oh, no doubt +--you'll get up with the hangman one of these days. +But you ought to be ashamed to be jawing here like this, +in a red blanket, on a forty-foot scaffold on top +of the Alps. And no end of people down here to boot; +this isn't any place for an exhibition of temper." + +And so the customary quarrel went on. When the sun +was fairly down, we slipped back to the hotel in the +charitable gloaming, and went to bed again. We had +encountered the horn-blower on the way, and he had tried +to collect compensation, not only for announcing the sunset, +which we did see, but for the sunrise, which we had +totally missed; but we said no, we only took our solar +rations on the "European plan"--pay for what you get. +He promised to make us hear his horn in the morning, +if we were alive. + + + +CHAPTER XXIX +[Looking West for Sunrise] + +He kept his word. We heard his horn and instantly got up. +It was dark and cold and wretched. As I fumbled around +for the matches, knocking things down with my quaking hands, +I wished the sun would rise in the middle of the day, +when it was warm and bright and cheerful, and one +wasn't sleepy. We proceeded to dress by the gloom of a +couple sickly candles, but we could hardly button anything, +our hands shook so. I thought of how many happy people +there were in Europe, Asia, and America, and everywhere, +who were sleeping peacefully in their beds, and did not +have to get up and see the Rigi sunrise--people who did +not appreciate their advantage, as like as not, but would +get up in the morning wanting more boons of Providence. +While thinking these thoughts I yawned, in a rather ample way, +and my upper teeth got hitched on a nail over the door, +and while I was mounting a chair to free myself, Harris drew +the window-curtain, and said: + +"Oh, this is luck! We shan't have to go out at all +--yonder are the mountains, in full view." + +That was glad news, indeed. It made us cheerful right away. +One could see the grand Alpine masses dimly outlined +against the black firmament, and one or two faint stars +blinking through rifts in the night. Fully clothed, +and wrapped in blankets, and huddled ourselves up, +by the window, with lighted pipes, and fell into chat, +while we waited in exceeding comfort to see how an Alpine +sunrise was going to look by candlelight. By and by +a delicate, spiritual sort of effulgence spread itself +by imperceptible degrees over the loftiest altitudes of +the snowy wastes--but there the effort seemed to stop. +I said, presently: + +"There is a hitch about this sunrise somewhere. +It doesn't seem to go. What do you reckon is the matter +with it?" + +"I don't know. It appears to hang fire somewhere. +I never saw a sunrise act like that before. Can it be +that the hotel is playing anything on us?" + +"Of course not. The hotel merely has a property interest +in the sun, it has nothing to do with the management of it. +It is a precarious kind of property, too; a succession +of total eclipses would probably ruin this tavern. +Now what can be the matter with this sunrise?" + +Harris jumped up and said: + +"I've got it! I know what's the matter with it! We've +been looking at the place where the sun SET last night!" + +"It is perfectly true! Why couldn't you have thought of +that sooner? Now we've lost another one! And all through +your blundering. It was exactly like you to light a pipe +and sit down to wait for the sun to rise in the west." + +"It was exactly like me to find out the mistake, too. +You never would have found it out. I find out all the mistakes." + +"You make them all, too, else your most valuable faculty +would be wasted on you. But don't stop to quarrel, +now--maybe we are not too late yet." + +But we were. The sun was well up when we got to the +exhibition-ground. + +On our way up we met the crowd returning--men and women +dressed in all sorts of queer costumes, and exhibiting +all degrees of cold and wretchedness in their gaits +and countenances. A dozen still remained on the ground +when we reached there, huddled together about the scaffold +with their backs to the bitter wind. They had their red +guide-books open at the diagram of the view, and were +painfully picking out the several mountains and trying +to impress their names and positions on their memories. +It was one of the saddest sights I ever saw. + +Two sides of this place were guarded by railings, +to keep people from being blown over the precipices. +The view, looking sheer down into the broad valley, +eastward, from this great elevation--almost a perpendicular +mile--was very quaint and curious. Counties, towns, +hilly ribs and ridges, wide stretches of green meadow, +great forest tracts, winding streams, a dozen blue lakes, +a block of busy steamboats--we saw all this little +world in unique circumstantiality of detail--saw it +just as the birds see it--and all reduced to the smallest +of scales and as sharply worked out and finished as a +steel engraving. The numerous toy villages, with tiny +spires projecting out of them, were just as the children +might have left them when done with play the day before; +the forest tracts were diminished to cushions of moss; +one or two big lakes were dwarfed to ponds, the smaller +ones to puddles--though they did not look like puddles, +but like blue teardrops which had fallen and lodged +in slight depressions, conformable to their shapes, +among the moss-beds and the smooth levels of dainty +green farm-land; the microscopic steamboats glided along, +as in a city reservoir, taking a mighty time to cover +the distance between ports which seemed only a yard apart; +and the isthmus which separated two lakes looked as if +one might stretch out on it and lie with both elbows +in the water, yet we knew invisible wagons were toiling +across it and finding the distance a tedious one. +This beautiful miniature world had exactly the appearance +of those "relief maps" which reproduce nature precisely, +with the heights and depressions and other details graduated +to a reduced scale, and with the rocks, trees, lakes, +etc., colored after nature. + +I believed we could walk down to Waeggis or Vitznau +in a day, but I knew we could go down by rail in about +an hour, so I chose the latter method. I wanted to see +what it was like, anyway. The train came along about +the middle of the afternoon, and an odd thing it was. +The locomotive-boiler stood on end, and it and the whole +locomotive were tilted sharply backward. There were +two passenger-cars, roofed, but wide open all around. +These cars were not tilted back, but the seats were; +this enables the passenger to sit level while going down a +steep incline. + +There are three railway-tracks; the central one is cogged; +the "lantern wheel" of the engine grips its way along +these cogs, and pulls the train up the hill or retards its +motion on the down trip. About the same speed--three miles +an hour--is maintained both ways. Whether going up or down, +the locomotive is always at the lower end of the train. +It pushes in the one case, braces back in the other. +The passenger rides backward going up, and faces forward +going down. + +We got front seats, and while the train moved along +about fifty yards on level ground, I was not the +least frightened; but now it started abruptly downstairs, +and I caught my breath. And I, like my neighbors, +unconsciously held back all I could, and threw my weight +to the rear, but, of course, that did no particular good. +I had slidden down the balusters when I was a boy, +and thought nothing of it, but to slide down the balusters +in a railway-train is a thing to make one's flesh creep. +Sometimes we had as much as ten yards of almost level +ground, and this gave us a few full breaths in comfort; +but straightway we would turn a corner and see a long steep +line of rails stretching down below us, and the comfort +was at an end. One expected to see the locomotive pause, +or slack up a little, and approach this plunge cautiously, +but it did nothing of the kind; it went calmly on, and went +it reached the jumping-off place it made a sudden bow, +and went gliding smoothly downstairs, untroubled by +the circumstances. + +It was wildly exhilarating to slide along the edge of +the precipices, after this grisly fashion, and look straight +down upon that far-off valley which I was describing a while ago. + + +There was no level ground at the Kaltbad station; +the railbed was as steep as a roof; I was curious +to see how the stop was going to be managed. +But it was very simple; the train came sliding down, +and when it reached the right spot it just stopped--that +was all there was "to it"--stopped on the steep incline, +and when the exchange of passengers and baggage had +been made, it moved off and went sliding down again. +The train can be stopped anywhere, at a moment's notice. + +There was one curious effect, which I need not take the +trouble to describe--because I can scissor a description +of it out of the railway company's advertising pamphlet, +and save my ink: + +"On the whole tour, particularly at the Descent, we undergo +an optical illusion which often seems to be incredible. +All the shrubs, fir trees, stables, houses, etc., seem to be bent +in a slanting direction, as by an immense pressure of air. +They are all standing awry, so much awry that the chalets +and cottages of the peasants seem to be tumbling down. +It is the consequence of the steep inclination of the line. +Those who are seated in the carriage do not observe that they +are doing down a declivity of twenty to twenty-five degrees +(their seats being adapted to this course of proceeding +and being bent down at their backs). They mistake their +carriage and its horizontal lines for a proper measure +of the normal plain, and therefore all the objects outside +which really are in a horizontal position must show a +disproportion of twenty to twenty-five degrees declivity, +in regard to the mountain." + +By the time one reaches Kaltbad, he has acquired confidence +in the railway, and he now ceases to try to ease the +locomotive by holding back. Thenceforth he smokes his +pipe in serenity, and gazes out upon the magnificent +picture below and about him with unfettered enjoyment. +There is nothing to interrupt the view or the breeze; +it is like inspecting the world on the wing. However--to be +exact--there is one place where the serenity lapses for a while; +this is while one is crossing the Schnurrtobel Bridge, +a frail structure which swings its gossamer frame down +through the dizzy air, over a gorge, like a vagrant +spider-strand. + +One has no difficulty in remembering his sins while +the train is creeping down this bridge; and he repents +of them, too; though he sees, when he gets to Vitznau, +that he need not have done it, the bridge was perfectly safe. + +So ends the eventual trip which we made to the Rigi-Kulm +to see an Alpine sunrise. + + + +CHAPTER XXX +[Harris Climbs Mountains for Me] + +An hour's sail brought us to Lucerne again. I judged +it best to go to bed and rest several days, for I knew +that the man who undertakes to make the tour of Europe +on foot must take care of himself. + +Thinking over my plans, as mapped out, I perceived that +they did not take in the Furka Pass, the Rhone Glacier, +the Finsteraarhorn, the Wetterhorn, etc. I immediately +examined the guide-book to see if these were important, +and found they were; in fact, a pedestrian tour of Europe +could not be complete without them. Of course that decided +me at once to see them, for I never allow myself to do +things by halves, or in a slurring, slipshod way. + +I called in my agent and instructed him to go without delay +and make a careful examination of these noted places, +on foot, and bring me back a written report of the result, +for insertion in my book. I instructed him to go to Hospenthal +as quickly as possible, and make his grand start from there; +to extend his foot expedition as far as the Giesbach fall, +and return to me from thence by diligence or mule. +I told him to take the courier with him. + +He objected to the courier, and with some show of reason, +since he was about to venture upon new and untried ground; +but I thought he might as well learn how to take care of +the courier now as later, therefore I enforced my point. +I said that the trouble, delay, and inconvenience +of traveling with a courier were balanced by the deep +respect which a courier's presence commands, and I must +insist that as much style be thrown into my journeys +as possible. + +So the two assumed complete mountaineering costumes +and departed. A week later they returned, pretty well +used up, and my agent handed me the following + +Official Report + +OF A VISIT TO THE FURKA REGION. BY H. HARRIS, AGENT + +About seven o'clock in the morning, with perfectly +fine weather, we started from Hospenthal, and arrived at +the MAISON on the Furka in a little under QUATRE hours. +The want of variety in the scenery from Hospenthal made +the KAHKAHPONEEKA wearisome; but let none be discouraged; +no one can fail to be completely R'ECOMPENS'EE for +his fatigue, when he sees, for the first time, the monarch +of the Oberland, the tremendous Finsteraarhorn. A moment +before all was dullness, but a PAS further has placed us +on the summit of the Furka; and exactly in front of us, +at a HOPOW of only fifteen miles, this magnificent mountain +lifts its snow-wreathed precipices into the deep blue sky. +The inferior mountains on each side of the pass form +a sort of frame for the picture of their dread lord, +and close in the view so completely that no other prominent +feature in the Oberland is visible from this BONG-A-BONG; +nothing withdraws the attention from the solitary grandeur +of the Finsteraarhorn and the dependent spurs which form +the abutments of the central peak. + +With the addition of some others, who were also bound +for the Grimsel, we formed a large XHVLOJ as we descended +the STEG which winds round the shoulder of a mountain +toward the Rhone Glacier. We soon left the path and took +to the ice; and after wandering amongst the crevices UN PEU, +to admire the wonders of these deep blue caverns, and hear +the rushing of waters through their subglacial channels, +we struck out a course toward L'AUTRE CO^T'E and crossed +the glacier successfully, a little above the cave from +which the infant Rhone takes its first bound from under +the grand precipice of ice. Half a mile below this +we began to climb the flowery side of the Meienwand. +One of our party started before the rest, but the HITZE +was so great, that we found IHM quite exhausted, +and lying at full length in the shade of a large GESTEIN. +We sat down with him for a time, for all felt the heat +exceedingly in the climb up this very steep BOLWOGGOLY, +and then we set out again together, and arrived at last +near the Dead Man's Lake, at the foot of the Sidelhorn. +This lonely spot, once used for an extempore burying-place, +after a sanguinary BATTUE between the French and Austrians, +is the perfection of desolation; there is nothing in sight +to mark the hand of man, except the line of weather-beaten +whitened posts, set up to indicate the direction of the pass +in the OWDAWAKK of winter. Near this point the footpath joins +the wider track, which connects the Grimsel with the head +of the Rhone SCHNAWP; this has been carefully constructed, +and leads with a tortuous course among and over LES PIERRES, +down to the bank of the gloomy little SWOSH-SWOSH, which +almost washes against the walls of the Grimsel Hospice. +We arrived a little before four o'clock at the end +of our day's journey, hot enough to justify the step, +taking by most of the PARTIE, of plunging into the crystal +water of the snow-fed lake. + +The next afternoon we started for a walk up the Unteraar glacier, +with the intention of, at all events, getting as far +as the HUETTE which is used as a sleeping-place by most +of those who cross the Strahleck Pass to Grindelwald. +We got over the tedious collection of stones and DE'BRIS +which covers the PIED of the GLETCHER, and had walked +nearly three hours from the Grimsel, when, just as +we were thinking of crossing over to the right, +to climb the cliffs at the foot of the hut, the clouds, +which had for some time assumed a threatening appearance, +suddenly dropped, and a huge mass of them, driving toward +us from the Finsteraarhorn, poured down a deluge of +HABOOLONG and hail. Fortunately, we were not far from +a very large glacier-table; it was a huge rock balanced +on a pedestal of ice high enough to admit of our all +creeping under it for GOWKARAK. A stream of PUCKITTYPUKK +had furrowed a course for itself in the ice at its base, +and we were obliged to stand with one FUSS on each side +of this, and endeavor to keep ourselves CHAUD by cutting +steps in the steep bank of the pedestal, so as to get +a higher place for standing on, as the WASSER rose rapidly +in its trench. A very cold BZZZZZZZZEEE accompanied +the storm, and made our position far from pleasant; +and presently came a flash of BLITZEN, apparently in the +middle of our little party, with an instantaneous clap +of YOKKY, sounding like a large gun fired close to our ears; +the effect was startling; but in a few seconds our attention +was fixed by the roaring echoes of the thunder against +the tremendous mountains which completely surrounded us. +This was followed by many more bursts, none of WELCHE, +however, was so dangerously near; and after waiting a long +DEMI-hour in our icy prison, we sallied out to talk through +a HABOOLONG which, though not so heavy as before, was quite +enough to give us a thorough soaking before our arrival at the +Hospice. + +The Grimsel is CERTAINEMENT a wonderful place; situated at +the bottom of a sort of huge crater, the sides of which +are utterly savage GEBIRGE, composed of barren rocks +which cannot even support a single pine ARBRE, and afford +only scanty food for a herd of GMWKWLLOLP, it looks as +if it must be completely BEGRABEN in the winter snows. +Enormous avalanches fall against it every spring, +sometimes covering everything to the depth of thirty +or forty feet; and, in spite of walls four feet thick, +and furnished with outside shutters, the two men who stay here +when the VOYAGEURS are snugly quartered in their distant homes +can tell you that the snow sometimes shakes the house to its +foundations. + +Next morning the HOGGLEBUMGULLUP still continued bad, +but we made up our minds to go on, and make the best of it. +Half an hour after we started, the REGEN thickened unpleasantly, +and we attempted to get shelter under a projecting rock, +but being far to NASS already to make standing at all +AGRE'ABLE, we pushed on for the Handeck, consoling ourselves +with the reflection that from the furious rushing +of the river Aar at our side, we should at all events +see the celebrated WASSERFALL in GRANDE PERFECTION. +Nor were we NAPPERSOCKET in our expectation; the water +was roaring down its leap of two hundred and fifty feet +in a most magnificent frenzy, while the trees which cling +to its rocky sides swayed to and fro in the violence of the +hurricane which it brought down with it; even the stream, +which falls into the main cascade at right angles, +and TOUTEFOIS forms a beautiful feature in the scene, +was now swollen into a raging torrent; and the violence +of this "meeting of the waters," about fifty feet below +the frail bridge where we stood, was fearfully grand. +While we were looking at it, GLUECKLICHEWEISE a gleam +of sunshine came out, and instantly a beautiful rainbow +was formed by the spray, and hung in mid-air suspended over +the awful gorge. + +On going into the CHALET above the fall, we were +informed that a BRUECKE had broken down near Guttanen, +and that it would be impossible to proceed for some time; +accordingly we were kept in our drenched condition for +EIN STUNDE, when some VOYAGEURS arrived from Meiringen, +and told us that there had been a trifling accident, +ABER that we could now cross. On arriving at the spot, +I was much inclined to suspect that the whole story was a ruse +to make us SLOWWK and drink the more at the Handeck Inn, +for only a few planks had been carried away, and though +there might perhaps have been some difficulty with mules, +the gap was certainly not larger than a MMBGLX might cross +with a very slight leap. Near Guttanen the HABOOLONG +happily ceased, and we had time to walk ourselves tolerably +dry before arriving at Reichenback, WO we enjoyed a good DINE' +at the Hotel des Alps. + +Next morning we walked to Rosenlaui, the BEAU ID'EAL +of Swiss scenery, where we spent the middle of the day +in an excursion to the glacier. This was more beautiful +than words can describe, for in the constant progress +of the ice it has changed the form of its extremity +and formed a vast cavern, as blue as the sky above, +and rippled like a frozen ocean. A few steps cut +in the WHOOPJAMBOREEHOO enabled us to walk completely +under this, and feast our eyes upon one of the loveliest +objects in creation. The glacier was all around divided +by numberless fissures of the same exquisite color, +and the finest wood-ERDBEEREN were growing in abundance +but a few yards from the ice. The inn stands in a CHARMANT +spot close to the C^OTE DE LA RIVIE`RE, which, lower down, +forms the Reichenbach fall, and embosomed in the richest +of pine woods, while the fine form of the Wellhorn +looking down upon it completes the enchanting BOPPLE. +In the afternoon we walked over the Great Scheideck +to Grindelwald, stopping to pay a visit to the Upper +glacier by the way; but we were again overtaken by bad +HOGGLEBUMGULLUP and arrived at the hotel in a SOLCHE +a state that the landlord's wardrobe was in great request. + +The clouds by this time seemed to have done their worst, +for a lovely day succeeded, which we determined to devote +to an ascent of the Faulhorn. We left Grindelwald just as +a thunder-storm was dying away, and we hoped to find GUTEN +WETTER up above; but the rain, which had nearly ceased, +began again, and we were struck by the rapidly increasing +FROID as we ascended. Two-thirds of the way up were +completed when the rain was exchanged for GNILLIC, +with which the BODEN was thickly covered, and before we +arrived at the top the GNILLIC and mist became so thick +that we could not see one another at more than twenty +POOPOO distance, and it became difficult to pick our way over +the rough and thickly covered ground. Shivering with cold, +we turned into bed with a double allowance of clothes, +and slept comfortably while the wind howled AUTOUR DE +LA MAISON; when I awoke, the wall and the window looked +equally dark, but in another hour I found I could just +see the form of the latter; so I jumped out of bed, +and forced it open, though with great difficulty from +the frost and the quantities of GNILLIC heaped up against it. + +A row of huge icicles hung down from the edge of the roof, +and anything more wintry than the whole ANBLICK could +not well be imagined; but the sudden appearance of the +great mountains in front was so startling that I felt no +inclination to move toward bed again. The snow which had +collected upon LA FENE^TRE had increased the FINSTERNISS +ODER DER DUNKELHEIT, so that when I looked out I was +surprised to find that the daylight was considerable, +and that the BALRAGOOMAH would evidently rise before long. +Only the brightest of LES E'TOILES were still shining; +the sky was cloudless overhead, though small curling +mists lay thousands of feet below us in the valleys, +wreathed around the feet of the mountains, and adding +to the splendor of their lofty summits. We were soon +dressed and out of the house, watching the gradual approach +of dawn, thoroughly absorbed in the first near view +of the Oberland giants, which broke upon us unexpectedly +after the intense obscurity of the evening before. +"KABAUGWAKKO SONGWASHEE KUM WETTERHORN SNAWPO!" cried some one, +as that grand summit gleamed with the first rose of dawn; +and in a few moments the double crest of the Schreckhorn +followed its example; peak after peak seemed warmed +with life, the Jungfrau blushed even more beautifully +than her neighbors, and soon, from the Wetterhorn in the +east to the Wildstrubel in the west, a long row of fires +glowed upon mighty altars, truly worthy of the gods. +The WLGW was very severe; our sleeping-place could +hardly be DISTINGUEE' from the snow around it, which had +fallen to a depth of a FLIRK during the past evening, +and we heartily enjoyed a rough scramble EN BAS to the +Giesbach falls, where we soon found a warm climate. +At noon the day before Grindelwald the thermometer could +not have stood at less than 100 degrees Fahr. in the sun; +and in the evening, judging from the icicles formed, +and the state of the windows, there must have been at least +twelve DINGBLATTER of frost, thus giving a change of 80 +degrees during a few hours. + +I said: + +"You have done well, Harris; this report is concise, +compact, well expressed; the language is crisp, +the descriptions are vivid and not needlessly elaborated; +your report goes straight to the point, attends strictly +to business, and doesn't fool around. It is in many +ways an excellent document. But it has a fault--it +is too learned, it is much too learned. What is 'DINGBLATTER'? + +"'DINGBLATTER' is a Fiji word meaning 'degrees.'" + +"You knew the English of it, then?" + +"Oh, yes." + +"What is 'GNILLIC'? + +"That is the Eskimo term for 'snow.'" + +"So you knew the English for that, too?" + +"Why, certainly." + +"What does 'MMBGLX' stand for?" + +"That is Zulu for 'pedestrian.'" + +"'While the form of the Wellhorn looking down upon it +completes the enchanting BOPPLE.' What is 'BOPPLE'?" + +"'Picture.' It's Choctaw." + +"What is 'SCHNAWP'?" + +"'Valley.' That is Choctaw, also." + +"What is 'BOLWOGGOLY'?" + +"That is Chinese for 'hill.'" + +"'KAHKAHPONEEKA'?" + +"'Ascent.' Choctaw." + +"'But we were again overtaken by bad HOGGLEBUMGULLUP.' +What does 'HOGGLEBUMGULLUP' mean?" + +"That is Chinese for 'weather.'" + +"Is 'HOGGLEBUMGULLUP' better than the English word? Is +it any more descriptive?" + +"No, it means just the same." + +"And 'DINGBLATTER' and 'GNILLIC,' and 'BOPPLE,' +and 'SCHNAWP'--are they better than the English words?" + +"No, they mean just what the English ones do." + +"Then why do you use them? Why have you used all this +Chinese and Choctaw and Zulu rubbish?" + +"Because I didn't know any French but two or three words, +and I didn't know any Latin or Greek at all." + +"That is nothing. Why should you want to use foreign words, +anyhow?" + +"They adorn my page. They all do it." + +"Who is 'all'?" + +"Everybody. Everybody that writes elegantly. Anybody has +a right to that wants to." + +"I think you are mistaken." I then proceeded in the following +scathing manner. "When really learned men write books +for other learned men to read, they are justified in using +as many learned words as they please--their audience +will understand them; but a man who writes a book for the +general public to read is not justified in disfiguring +his pages with untranslated foreign expressions. +It is an insolence toward the majority of the purchasers, +for it is a very frank and impudent way of saying, +'Get the translations made yourself if you want them, +this book is not written for the ignorant classes.' There are +men who know a foreign language so well and have used it +so long in their daily life that they seem to discharge whole +volleys of it into their English writings unconsciously, +and so they omit to translate, as much as half the time. +That is a great cruelty to nine out of ten of the +man's readers. What is the excuse for this? The writer +would say he only uses the foreign language where the +delicacy of his point cannot be conveyed in English. +Very well, then he writes his best things for the tenth man, +and he ought to warn the nine other not to buy his book. +However, the excuse he offers is at least an excuse; +but there is another set of men who are like YOU; +they know a WORD here and there, of a foreign language, +or a few beggarly little three-word phrases, filched from +the back of the Dictionary, and these are continually +peppering into their literature, with a pretense of +knowing that language--what excuse can they offer? The +foreign words and phrases which they use have their exact +equivalents in a nobler language--English; yet they think +they 'adorn their page' when they say STRASSE for street, +and BAHNHOF for railway-station, and so on--flaunting +these fluttering rags of poverty in the reader's face +and imagining he will be ass enough to take them for the +sign of untold riches held in reserve. I will let your +'learning' remain in your report; you have as much right, +I suppose, to 'adorn your page' with Zulu and Chinese +and Choctaw rubbish as others of your sort have to adorn +theirs with insolent odds and ends smouched from half +a dozen learned tongues whose A-B ABS they don't even know." + +When the musing spider steps upon the red-hot shovel, +he first exhibits a wild surprise, then he shrivels up. +Similar was the effect of these blistering words upon the +tranquil and unsuspecting Agent. I can be dreadfully rough +on a person when the mood takes me. + + + +CHAPTER XXXI +[Alp-scaling by Carriage] + +We now prepared for a considerable walk--from Lucerne +to Interlaken, over the Bruenig Pass. But at the last moment +the weather was so good that I changed my mind and hired +a four-horse carriage. It was a huge vehicle, roomy, as easy +in its motion as a palanquin, and exceedingly comfortable. + +We got away pretty early in the morning, after a hot breakfast, +and went bowling over a hard, smooth road, through the summer +loveliness of Switzerland, with near and distant lakes +and mountains before and about us for the entertainment +of the eye, and the music of multitudinous birds to charm +the ear. Sometimes there was only the width of the road +between the imposing precipices on the right and the clear +cool water on the left with its shoals of uncatchable +fish skimming about through the bars of sun and shadow; +and sometimes, in place of the precipices, the grassy land +stretched away, in an apparently endless upward slant, +and was dotted everywhere with snug little chalets, +the peculiarly captivating cottage of Switzerland. + +The ordinary chalet turns a broad, honest gable end +to the road, and its ample roof hovers over the home +in a protecting, caressing way, projecting its sheltering +eaves far outward. The quaint windows are filled with +little panes, and garnished with white muslin curtains, +and brightened with boxes of blooming flowers. +Across the front of the house, and up the spreading eaves +and along the fanciful railings of the shallow porch, +are elaborate carvings--wreaths, fruits, arabesques, +verses from Scripture, names, dates, etc. The building +is wholly of wood, reddish brown in tint, a very +pleasing color. It generally has vines climbing over it. +Set such a house against the fresh green of the hillside, +and it looks ever so cozy and inviting and picturesque, +and is a decidedly graceful addition to the landscape. + +One does not find out what a hold the chalet has taken +upon him, until he presently comes upon a new house +--a house which is aping the town fashions of Germany +and France, a prim, hideous, straight-up-and-down thing, +plastered all over on the outside to look like stone, +and altogether so stiff, and formal, and ugly, and forbidding, +and so out of tune with the gracious landscape, and so deaf +and dumb and dead to the poetry of its surroundings, +that it suggests an undertaker at a picnic, a corpse at +a wedding, a puritan in Paradise. + +In the course of the morning we passed the spot where Pontius +Pilate is said to have thrown himself into the lake. +The legend goes that after the Crucifixion his conscience +troubled him, and he fled from Jerusalem and wandered +about the earth, weary of life and a prey to tortures of +the mind. Eventually, he hid himself away, on the heights +of Mount Pilatus, and dwelt alone among the clouds and +crags for years; but rest and peace were still denied him, +so he finally put an end to his misery by drowning himself. + +Presently we passed the place where a man of better odor +was born. This was the children's friend, Santa Claus, +or St. Nicholas. There are some unaccountable reputations +in the world. This saint's is an instance. He has +ranked for ages as the peculiar friend of children, +yet it appears he was not much of a friend to his own. +He had ten of them, and when fifty years old he left them, +and sought out as dismal a refuge from the world as possible, +and became a hermit in order that he might reflect upon +pious themes without being disturbed by the joyous and other +noises from the nursery, doubtless. + +Judging by Pilate and St. Nicholas, there exists no rule +for the construction of hermits; they seem made out of all +kinds of material. But Pilate attended to the matter of +expiating his sin while he was alive, whereas St. Nicholas +will probably have to go on climbing down sooty chimneys, +Christmas eve, forever, and conferring kindness on other +people's children, to make up for deserting his own. +His bones are kept in a church in a village (Sachseln) +which we visited, and are naturally held in great reverence. +His portrait is common in the farmhouses of the region, +but is believed by many to be but an indifferent likeness. +During his hermit life, according to legend, he partook +of the bread and wine of the communion once a month, +but all the rest of the month he fasted. + +A constant marvel with us, as we sped along the bases +of the steep mountains on this journey, was, not that +avalanches occur, but that they are not occurring all +the time. One does not understand why rocks and landslides +do not plunge down these declivities daily. A landslip +occurred three quarters of a century ago, on the route +from Arth to Brunnen, which was a formidable thing. +A mass of conglomerate two miles long, a thousand feet broad, +and a hundred feet thick, broke away from a cliff three +thousand feet high and hurled itself into the valley below, +burying four villages and five hundred people, as in a grave. + +We had such a beautiful day, and such endless pictures +of limpid lakes, and green hills and valleys, +and majestic mountains, and milky cataracts dancing +down the steeps and gleaming in the sun, that we could +not help feeling sweet toward all the world; so we tried +to drink all the milk, and eat all the grapes and apricots +and berries, and buy all the bouquets of wild flowers +which the little peasant boys and girls offered for sale; +but we had to retire from this contract, for it was too heavy. + +At short distances--and they were entirely too short--all +along the road, were groups of neat and comely children, +with their wares nicely and temptingly set forth +in the grass under the shade trees, and as soon as we +approached they swarmed into the road, holding out their +baskets and milk bottles, and ran beside the carriage, +barefoot and bareheaded, and importuned us to buy. +They seldom desisted early, but continued to run and +insist--beside the wagon while they could, and behind +it until they lost breath. Then they turned and chased +a returning carriage back to their trading-post again. +After several hours of this, without any intermission, +it becomes almost annoying. I do not know what we +should have done without the returning carriages to draw +off the pursuit. However, there were plenty of these, +loaded with dusty tourists and piled high with luggage. +Indeed, from Lucerne to Interlaken we had the spectacle, +among other scenery, of an unbroken procession of +fruit-peddlers and tourists carriages. + +Our talk was mostly anticipatory of what we should see +on the down-grade of the Bruenig, by and by, after we +should pass the summit. All our friends in Lucerne had +said that to look down upon Meiringen, and the rushing +blue-gray river Aar, and the broad level green valley; +and across at the mighty Alpine precipices that rise +straight up to the clouds out of that valley; and up +at the microscopic chalets perched upon the dizzy eaves +of those precipices and winking dimly and fitfully +through the drifting veil of vapor; and still up and up, +at the superb Oltschiback and the other beautiful cascades +that leap from those rugged heights, robed in powdery spray, +ruffled with foam, and girdled with rainbows--to look upon +these things, they say, was to look upon the last possibility +of the sublime and the enchanting. Therefore, as I say, +we talked mainly of these coming wonders; if we were conscious +of any impatience, it was to get there in favorable season; +if we felt any anxiety, it was that the day might +remain perfect, and enable us to see those marvels at their best. + + +As we approached the Kaiserstuhl, a part of the harness gave way. + +We were in distress for a moment, but only a moment. +It was the fore-and-aft gear that was broken--the thing +that leads aft from the forward part of the horse and is +made fast to the thing that pulls the wagon. In America +this would have been a heavy leathern strap; but, all over +the continent it is nothing but a piece of rope the size +of your little finger--clothes-line is what it is. +Cabs use it, private carriages, freight-carts and wagons, +all sorts of vehicles have it. In Munich I afterward saw +it used on a long wagon laden with fifty-four half-barrels +of beer; I had before noticed that the cabs in Heidelberg +used it--not new rope, but rope that had been in use +since Abraham's time --and I had felt nervous, sometimes, +behind it when the cab was tearing down a hill. But I +had long been accustomed to it now, and had even become +afraid of the leather strap which belonged in its place. +Our driver got a fresh piece of clothes-line out of his +locker and repaired the break in two minutes. + +So much for one European fashion. Every country has its +own ways. It may interest the reader to know how they "put +horses to" on the continent. The man stands up the horses +on each side of the thing that projects from the front end +of the wagon, and then throws the tangled mess of gear +forward through a ring, and hauls it aft, and passes the +other thing through the other ring and hauls it aft on the +other side of the other horse, opposite to the first one, +after crossing them and bringing the loose end back, +and then buckles the other thing underneath the horse, +and takes another thing and wraps it around the thing I spoke +of before, and puts another thing over each horse's head, +with broad flappers to it to keep the dust out of his eyes, +and puts the iron thing in his mouth for him to grit his +teeth on, uphill, and brings the ends of these things aft +over his back, after buckling another one around under +his neck to hold his head up, and hitching another thing +on a thing that goes over his shoulders to keep his head +up when he is climbing a hill, and then takes the slack +of the thing which I mentioned a while ago, and fetches it +aft and makes it fast to the thing that pulls the wagon, +and hands the other things up to the driver to steer with. +I never have buckled up a horse myself, but I do not think +we do it that way. + +We had four very handsome horses, and the driver was very proud +of his turnout. He would bowl along on a reasonable trot, +on the highway, but when he entered a village he did it on +a furious run, and accompanied it with a frenzy of ceaseless +whip-crackings that sounded like volleys of musketry. +He tore through the narrow streets and around the sharp +curves like a moving earthquake, showering his volleys +as he went, and before him swept a continuous tidal wave +of scampering children, ducks, cats, and mothers clasping +babies which they had snatched out of the way of the +coming destruction; and as this living wave washed aside, +along the walls, its elements, being safe, forgot their fears +and turned their admiring gaze upon that gallant driver +till he thundered around the next curve and was lost to sight. + +He was a great man to those villagers, with his gaudy +clothes and his terrific ways. Whenever he stopped +to have his cattle watered and fed with loaves of bread, +the villagers stood around admiring him while he +swaggered about, the little boys gazed up at his face with +humble homage, and the landlord brought out foaming mugs +of beer and conversed proudly with him while he drank. +Then he mounted his lofty box, swung his explosive whip, +and away he went again, like a storm. I had not seen +anything like this before since I was a boy, and the +stage used to flourish the village with the dust flying +and the horn tooting. + +When we reached the base of the Kaiserstuhl, we took +two more horses; we had to toil along with difficulty +for an hour and a half or two hours, for the ascent +was not very gradual, but when we passed the backbone +and approached the station, the driver surpassed all +his previous efforts in the way of rush and clatter. +He could not have six horses all the time, so he made +the most of his chance while he had it. + +Up to this point we had been in the heart of the William +Tell region. The hero is not forgotten, by any means, +or held in doubtful veneration. His wooden image, +with his bow drawn, above the doors of taverns, was a +frequent feature of the scenery. + +About noon we arrived at the foot of the Bruenig Pass, +and made a two-hour stop at the village hotel, another of +those clean, pretty, and thoroughly well-kept inns which are +such an astonishment to people who are accustomed to hotels +of a dismally different pattern in remote country-towns. +There was a lake here, in the lap of the great mountains, +the green slopes that rose toward the lower crags +were graced with scattered Swiss cottages nestling +among miniature farms and gardens, and from out a leafy +ambuscade in the upper heights tumbled a brawling cataract. + +Carriage after carriage, laden with tourists and trunks, +arrived, and the quiet hotel was soon populous. +We were early at the table d'ho^te and saw the people +all come in. There were twenty-five, perhaps. They were +of various nationalities, but we were the only Americans. +Next to me sat an English bride, and next to her sat her +new husband, whom she called "Neddy," though he was big +enough and stalwart enough to be entitled to his full name. +They had a pretty little lovers' quarrel over what wine +they should have. Neddy was for obeying the guide-book +and taking the wine of the country; but the bride said: + +"What, that nahsty stuff!" + +"It isn't nahsty, pet, it's quite good." + +"It IS nahsty." + +"No, it ISN'T nahsty." + +"It's Oful nahsty, Neddy, and I shahn't drink it." + +Then the question was, what she must have. She said he +knew very well that she never drank anything but champagne. + +She added: + +"You know very well papa always has champagne on his table, +and I've always been used to it." + +Neddy made a playful pretense of being distressed about +the expense, and this amused her so much that she nearly +exhausted herself with laughter--and this pleased HIM +so much that he repeated his jest a couple of times, +and added new and killing varieties to it. When the bride +finally recovered, she gave Neddy a love-box on the arm +with her fan, and said with arch severity: + +"Well, you would HAVE me--nothing else would do +--so you'll have to make the best of a bad bargain. +DO order the champagne, I'm Oful dry." + +So with a mock groan which made her laugh again, +Neddy ordered the champagne. + +The fact that this young woman had never moistened +the selvedge edge of her soul with a less plebeian +tipple than champagne, had a marked and subduing effect +on Harris. He believed she belonged to the royal family. +But I had my doubts. + +We heard two or three different languages spoken by +people at the table and guessed out the nationalities +of most of the guests to our satisfaction, but we +failed with an elderly gentleman and his wife and a +young girl who sat opposite us, and with a gentleman +of about thirty-five who sat three seats beyond Harris. +We did not hear any of these speak. But finally the +last-named gentleman left while we were not noticing, +but we looked up as he reached the far end of the table. +He stopped there a moment, and made his toilet with a +pocket comb. So he was a German; or else he had lived +in German hotels long enough to catch the fashion. +When the elderly couple and the young girl rose to leave, +they bowed respectfully to us. So they were Germans, too. +This national custom is worth six of the other one, +for export. + +After dinner we talked with several Englishmen, and they +inflamed our desire to a hotter degree than ever, +to see the sights of Meiringen from the heights of +the Bruenig Pass. They said the view was marvelous, +and that one who had seen it once could never forget it. +They also spoke of the romantic nature of the road over +the pass, and how in one place it had been cut through +a flank of the solid rock, in such a way that the mountain +overhung the tourist as he passed by; and they furthermore +said that the sharp turns in the road and the abruptness +of the descent would afford us a thrilling experience, +for we should go down in a flying gallop and seem to be +spinning around the rings of a whirlwind, like a drop +of whiskey descending the spirals of a corkscrew. +I got all the information out of these gentlemen that we +could need; and then, to make everything complete, I asked +them if a body could get hold of a little fruit and milk +here and there, in case of necessity. They threw up their +hands in speechless intimation that the road was simply paved +with refreshment-peddlers. We were impatient to get away, +now, and the rest of our two-hour stop rather dragged. +But finally the set time arrived and we began the ascent. +Indeed it was a wonderful road. It was smooth, and compact, +and clean, and the side next the precipices was guarded +all along by dressed stone posts about three feet high, +placed at short distances apart. The road could not have +been better built if Napoleon the First had built it. +He seems to have been the introducer of the sort of roads +which Europe now uses. All literature which describes +life as it existed in England, France, and Germany up +to the close of the last century, is filled with pictures +of coaches and carriages wallowing through these three +countries in mud and slush half-wheel deep; but after +Napoleon had floundered through a conquered kingdom he +generally arranged things so that the rest of the world +could follow dry-shod. + +We went on climbing, higher and higher, and curving hither +and thither, in the shade of noble woods, and with a rich +variety and profusion of wild flowers all about us; +and glimpses of rounded grassy backbones below us occupied +by trim chalets and nibbling sheep, and other glimpses +of far lower altitudes, where distance diminished the +chalets to toys and obliterated the sheep altogether; +and every now and then some ermined monarch of the Alps +swung magnificently into view for a moment, then drifted +past an intervening spur and disappeared again. + +It was an intoxicating trip altogether; the exceeding +sense of satisfaction that follows a good dinner added +largely to the enjoyment; the having something especial +to look forward to and muse about, like the approaching +grandeurs of Meiringen, sharpened the zest. Smoking was +never so good before, solid comfort was never solider; +we lay back against the thick cushions silent, meditative, +steeped in felicity. + +I rubbed my eyes, opened them, and started. I had been +dreaming I was at sea, and it was a thrilling surprise to wake +up and find land all around me. It took me a couple seconds +to "come to," as you may say; then I took in the situation. +The horses were drinking at a trough in the edge of a town, +the driver was taking beer, Harris was snoring at my side, +the courier, with folded arms and bowed head, was sleeping +on the box, two dozen barefooted and bareheaded children +were gathered about the carriage, with their hands +crossed behind, gazing up with serious and innocent +admiration at the dozing tourists baking there in the sun. +Several small girls held night-capped babies nearly +as big as themselves in their arms, and even these fat +babies seemed to take a sort of sluggish interest in us. + +We had slept an hour and a half and missed all the scenery! +I did not need anybody to tell me that. If I had been +a girl, I could have cursed for vexation. As it was, +I woke up the agent and gave him a piece of my mind. +Instead of being humiliated, he only upbraided me for being +so wanting in vigilance. He said he had expected to improve +his mind by coming to Europe, but a man might travel to the +ends of the earth with me and never see anything, for I +was manifestly endowed with the very genius of ill luck. +He even tried to get up some emotion about that poor courier, +who never got a chance to see anything, on account of +my heedlessness. But when I thought I had borne about +enough of this kind of talk, I threatened to make Harris +tramp back to the summit and make a report on that scenery, +and this suggestion spiked his battery. + +We drove sullenly through Brienz, dead to the seductions +of its bewildering array of Swiss carvings and the +clamorous HOO-hooing of its cuckoo clocks, and had not +entirely recovered our spirits when we rattled across +a bridge over the rushing blue river and entered the +pretty town of Interlaken. It was just about sunset, +and we had made the trip from Lucerne in ten hours. + + + +CHAPTER XXXII +[The Jungfrau, the Bride, and the Piano] + +We located ourselves at the Jungfrau Hotel, one of those +huge establishments which the needs of modern travel +have created in every attractive spot on the continent. +There was a great gathering at dinner, and, as usual, +one heard all sorts of languages. + +The table d'ho^te was served by waitresses dressed +in the quaint and comely costume of the Swiss peasants. +This consists of a simple gros de laine, trimmed with ashes +of roses, with overskirt of scare bleu ventre saint gris, +cut bias on the off-side, with facings of petit polonaise +and narrow insertions of pa^te de foie gras backstitched +to the mise en sce`ne in the form of a jeu d'esprit. It gives +to the wearer a singularly piquant and alluring aspect. + +One of these waitresses, a woman of forty, +had side-whiskers reaching half-way down her jaws. +They were two fingers broad, dark in color, pretty thick, +and the hairs were an inch long. One sees many women on +the continent with quite conspicuous mustaches, but this +was the only woman I saw who had reached the dignity of whiskers. + + +After dinner the guests of both sexes distributed themselves +about the front porches and the ornamental grounds belonging +to the hotel, to enjoy the cool air; but, as the twilight +deepened toward darkness, they gathered themselves together +in that saddest and solemnest and most constrained of +all places, the great blank drawing-room which is the chief +feature of all continental summer hotels. There they +grouped themselves about, in couples and threes, and mumbled +in bated voices, and looked timid and homeless and forlorn. + +There was a small piano in this room, a clattery, wheezy, +asthmatic thing, certainly the very worst miscarriage +in the way of a piano that the world has seen. In turn, +five or six dejected and homesick ladies approached +it doubtingly, gave it a single inquiring thump, and retired +with the lockjaw. But the boss of that instrument was +to come, nevertheless; and from my own country--from Arkansaw. + +She was a brand-new bride, innocent, girlish, happy in herself +and her grave and worshiping stripling of a husband; she was +about eighteen, just out of school, free from affections, +unconscious of that passionless multitude around her; +and the very first time she smote that old wreck one +recognized that it had met its destiny. Her stripling +brought an armful of aged sheet-music from their room +--for this bride went "heeled," as you might say--and bent +himself lovingly over and got ready to turn the pages. + +The bride fetched a swoop with her fingers from one end +of the keyboard to the other, just to get her bearings, +as it were, and you could see the congregation set their teeth +with the agony of it. Then, without any more preliminaries, +she turned on all the horrors of the "Battle of Prague," +that venerable shivaree, and waded chin-deep in the blood +of the slain. She made a fair and honorable average +of two false notes in every five, but her soul was in arms +and she never stopped to correct. The audience stood it +with pretty fair grit for a while, but when the cannonade +waxed hotter and fiercer, and the discord average +rose to four in five, the procession began to move. +A few stragglers held their ground ten minutes longer, +but when the girl began to wring the true inwardness out +of the "cries of the wounded," they struck their colors +and retired in a kind of panic. + +There never was a completer victory; I was the only +non-combatant left on the field. I would not have +deserted my countrywoman anyhow, but indeed I had no +desires in that direction. None of us like mediocrity, +but we all reverence perfection. This girl's music +was perfection in its way; it was the worst music that +had ever been achieved on our planet by a mere human being. + +I moved up close, and never lost a strain. When she +got through, I asked her to play it again. She did it +with a pleased alacrity and a heightened enthusiasm. +She made it ALL discords, this time. She got an amount +of anguish into the cries of the wounded that shed a new +light on human suffering. She was on the war-path all +the evening. All the time, crowds of people gathered on +the porches and pressed their noses against the windows +to look and marvel, but the bravest never ventured in. +The bride went off satisfied and happy with her young fellow, +when her appetite was finally gorged, and the tourists +swarmed in again. + +What a change has come over Switzerland, and in fact +all Europe, during this century! Seventy or eighty years +ago Napoleon was the only man in Europe who could really +be called a traveler; he was the only man who had devoted +his attention to it and taken a powerful interest in it; +he was the only man who had traveled extensively; +but now everybody goes everywhere; and Switzerland, +and many other regions which were unvisited and unknown +remotenesses a hundred years ago, are in our days +a buzzing hive of restless strangers every summer. +But I digress. + +In the morning, when we looked out of our windows, +we saw a wonderful sight. Across the valley, +and apparently quite neighborly and close at hand, +the giant form of the Jungfrau rose cold and white into +the clear sky, beyond a gateway in the nearer highlands. +It reminded me, somehow, of one of those colossal billows +which swells suddenly up beside one's ship, at sea, +sometimes, with its crest and shoulders snowy white, and the +rest of its noble proportions streaked downward with creamy foam. + + +I took out my sketch-book and made a little picture +of the Jungfrau, merely to get the shape. [Figure 9] + +I do not regard this as one of my finished works, in fact I +do not rank it among my Works at all; it is only a study; +it is hardly more than what one might call a sketch. +Other artists have done me the grace to admire it; but I +am severe in my judgments of my own pictures, and this +one does not move me. + +It was hard to believe that that lofty wooded rampart on +the left which so overtops the Jungfrau was not actually +the higher of the two, but it was not, of course. +It is only two or three thousand feet high, and of course +has no snow upon it in summer, whereas the Jungfrau is not +much shorter of fourteen thousand feet high and therefore +that lowest verge of snow on her side, which seems nearly +down to the valley level, is really about seven thousand feet +higher up in the air than the summit of that wooded rampart. +It is the distance that makes the deception. The wooded +height is but four or five miles removed from us, +but the Jungfrau is four or five times that distance away. + +Walking down the street of shops, in the fore-noon, I +was attracted by a large picture, carved, frame and all, +from a single block of chocolate-colored wood. +There are people who know everything. Some of these had +told us that continental shopkeepers always raise their +prices on English and Americans. Many people had told +us it was expensive to buy things through a courier, +whereas I had supposed it was just the reverse. +When I saw this picture, I conjectured that it was worth +more than the friend I proposed to buy it for would +like to pay, but still it was worth while to inquire; +so I told the courier to step in and ask the price, as if he +wanted it for himself; I told him not to speak in English, +and above all not to reveal the fact that he was a courier. +Then I moved on a few yards, and waited. + +The courier came presently and reported the price. +I said to myself, "It is a hundred francs too much," +and so dismissed the matter from my mind. But in +the afternoon I was passing that place with Harris, +and the picture attracted me again. We stepped in, +to see how much higher broken German would raise the price. +The shopwoman named a figure just a hundred francs lower +than the courier had named. This was a pleasant surprise. +I said I would take it. After I had given directions as to +where it was to be shipped, the shopwoman said, appealingly: + +"If you please, do not let your courier know you bought it." + +This was an unexpected remark. I said: + +"What makes you think I have a courier?" + +"Ah, that is very simple; he told me himself." + +"He was very thoughtful. But tell me--why did you charge +him more than you are charging me?" + +"That is very simple, also: I do not have to pay you +a percentage." + +"Oh, I begin to see. You would have had to pay the courier +a percentage." + +"Undoubtedly. The courier always has his percentage. +In this case it would have been a hundred francs." + +"Then the tradesman does not pay a part of it +--the purchaser pays all of it?" + +"There are occasions when the tradesman and the courier +agree upon a price which is twice or thrice the value of +the article, then the two divide, and both get a percentage." + +"I see. But it seems to me that the purchaser does +all the paying, even then." + +"Oh, to be sure! It goes without saying." + +"But I have bought this picture myself; therefore why +shouldn't the courier know it?" + +The woman exclaimed, in distress: + +"Ah, indeed it would take all my little profit! He would +come and demand his hundred francs, and I should have +to pay." + +"He has not done the buying. You could refuse." + +"I could not dare to refuse. He would never bring +travelers here again. More than that, he would denounce me +to the other couriers, they would divert custom from me, +and my business would be injured." + +I went away in a thoughtful frame of mind. I began to see why +a courier could afford to work for fifty-five dollars a month +and his fares. A month or two later I was able to understand +why a courier did not have to pay any board and lodging, +and why my hotel bills were always larger when I had him +with me than when I left him behind, somewhere, for a few days. + +Another thing was also explained, now, apparently. +In one town I had taken the courier to the bank to do +the translating when I drew some money. I had sat +in the reading-room till the transaction was finished. +Then a clerk had brought the money to me in person, +and had been exceedingly polite, even going so far as to +precede me to the door and holding it open for me and bow +me out as if I had been a distinguished personage. +It was a new experience. Exchange had been in my favor +ever since I had been in Europe, but just that one time. +I got simply the face of my draft, and no extra francs, +whereas I had expected to get quite a number of them. +This was the first time I had ever used the courier at +the bank. I had suspected something then, and as long +as he remained with me afterward I managed bank matters +by myself. + +Still, if I felt that I could afford the tax, I would +never travel without a courier, for a good courier is +a convenience whose value cannot be estimated in dollars +and cents. Without him, travel is a bitter harassment, +a purgatory of little exasperating annoyances, a ceaseless +and pitiless punishment--I mean to an irascible man +who has no business capacity and is confused by details. + +Without a courier, travel hasn't a ray of pleasure +in it, anywhere; but with him it is a continuous and +unruffled delight. He is always at hand, never has to be +sent for; if your bell is not answered promptly--and it +seldom is--you have only to open the door and speak, +the courier will hear, and he will have the order attended +to or raise an insurrection. You tell him what day +you will start, and whither you are going--leave all +the rest to him. You need not inquire about trains, +or fares, or car changes, or hotels, or anything else. +At the proper time he will put you in a cab or an omnibus, +and drive you to the train or the boat; he has packed your +luggage and transferred it, he has paid all the bills. +Other people have preceded you half an hour to scramble +for impossible places and lose their tempers, but you can +take your time; the courier has secured your seats for you, +and you can occupy them at your leisure. + +At the station, the crowd mash one another to pulp in the +effort to get the weigher's attention to their trunks; +they dispute hotly with these tyrants, who are cool +and indifferent; they get their baggage billets, at last, +and then have another squeeze and another rage over the +disheartening business of trying to get them recorded and +paid for, and still another over the equally disheartening +business of trying to get near enough to the ticket +office to buy a ticket; and now, with their tempers gone +to the dogs, they must stand penned up and packed together, +laden with wraps and satchels and shawl-straps, with the +weary wife and babies, in the waiting-room, till the doors +are thrown open--and then all hands make a grand final +rush to the train, find it full, and have to stand on +the platform and fret until some more cars are put on. +They are in a condition to kill somebody by this time. +Meantime, you have been sitting in your car, smoking, +and observing all this misery in the extremest comfort. + +On the journey the guard is polite and watchful--won't +allow anybody to get into your compartment--tells them +you are just recovering from the small-pox and do not +like to be disturbed. For the courier has made everything +right with the guard. At way-stations the courier comes +to your compartment to see if you want a glass of water, +or a newspaper, or anything; at eating-stations he sends +luncheon out to you, while the other people scramble +and worry in the dining-rooms. If anything breaks about +the car you are in, and a station-master proposes to pack +you and your agent into a compartment with strangers, +the courier reveals to him confidentially that you are +a French duke born deaf and dumb, and the official comes +and makes affable signs that he has ordered a choice car +to be added to the train for you. + +At custom-houses the multitude file tediously through, +hot and irritated, and look on while the officers +burrow into the trunks and make a mess of everything; +but you hand your keys to the courier and sit still. +Perhaps you arrive at your destination in a rain-storm +at ten at night--you generally do. The multitude +spend half an hour verifying their baggage and getting +it transferred to the omnibuses; but the courier puts +you into a vehicle without a moment's loss of time, +and when you reach your hotel you find your rooms have been +secured two or three days in advance, everything is ready, +you can go at once to bed. Some of those other people will +have to drift around to two or three hotels, in the rain, +before they find accommodations. + +I have not set down half of the virtues that are +vested in a good courier, but I think I have set down +a sufficiency of them to show that an irritable man +who can afford one and does not employ him is not a +wise economist. My courier was the worst one in Europe, +yet he was a good deal better than none at all. +It could not pay him to be a better one than he was, +because I could not afford to buy things through him. +He was a good enough courier for the small amount he +got out of his service. Yes, to travel with a courier +is bliss, to travel without one is the reverse. + +I have had dealings with some very bad couriers; but I have also +had dealings with one who might fairly be called perfection. +He was a young Polander, named Joseph N. Verey. He spoke +eight languages, and seemed to be equally at home in all +of them; he was shrewd, prompt, posted, and punctual; +he was fertile in resources, and singularly gifted in +the matter of overcoming difficulties; he not only knew +how to do everything in his line, but he knew the best ways +and the quickest; he was handy with children and invalids; +all his employer needed to do was to take life easy +and leave everything to the courier. His address is, +care of Messrs. Gay & Son, Strand, London; he was formerly +a conductor of Gay's tourist parties. Excellent couriers +are somewhat rare; if the reader is about to travel, +he will find it to his advantage to make a note of this one. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII +[We Climb Far--by Buggy] + +The beautiful Giesbach Fall is near Interlaken, on the +other side of the lake of Brienz, and is illuminated +every night with those gorgeous theatrical fires whose +name I cannot call just at this moment. This was said +to be a spectacle which the tourist ought by no means +to miss. I was strongly tempted, but I could not go +there with propriety, because one goes in a boat. +The task which I had set myself was to walk over Europe +on foot, not skim over it in a boat. I had made a tacit +contract with myself; it was my duty to abide by it. +I was willing to make boat trips for pleasure, but I could +not conscientiously make them in the way of business. + +It cost me something of a pang to lose that fine sight, +but I lived down the desire, and gained in my self-respect +through the triumph. I had a finer and a grander sight, +however, where I was. This was the mighty dome of the Jungfrau +softly outlined against the sky and faintly silvered by +the starlight. There was something subduing in the influence +of that silent and solemn and awful presence; one seemed +to meet the immutable, the indestructible, the eternal, +face to face, and to feel the trivial and fleeting nature +of his own existence the more sharply by the contrast. +One had the sense of being under the brooding contemplation +of a spirit, not an inert mass of rocks and ice--a spirit +which had looked down, through the slow drift of the ages, +upon a million vanished races of men, and judged them; +and would judge a million more--and still be there, +watching, unchanged and unchangeable, after all life +should be gone and the earth have become a vacant desolation. + +While I was feeling these things, I was groping, +without knowing it, toward an understanding of what the +spell is which people find in the Alps, and in no other +mountains--that strange, deep, nameless influence, which, +once felt, cannot be forgotten--once felt, leaves always +behind it a restless longing to feel it again--a longing +which is like homesickness; a grieving, haunting yearning +which will plead, implore, and persecute till it has its will. +I met dozens of people, imaginative and unimaginative, +cultivated and uncultivated, who had come from far countries +and roamed through the Swiss Alps year after year--they +could not explain why. They had come first, they said, +out of idle curiosity, because everybody talked about it; +they had come since because they could not help it, and they +should keep on coming, while they lived, for the same reason; +they had tried to break their chains and stay away, +but it was futile; now, they had no desire to break them. +Others came nearer formulating what they felt; they said they +could find perfect rest and peace nowhere else when they +were troubled: all frets and worries and chafings sank to +sleep in the presence of the benignant serenity of the Alps; +the Great Spirit of the Mountain breathed his own peace +upon their hurt minds and sore hearts, and healed them; +they could not think base thoughts or do mean and sordid +things here, before the visible throne of God. + +Down the road a piece was a Kursaal--whatever that may be +--and we joined the human tide to see what sort of enjoyment +it might afford. It was the usual open-air concert, +in an ornamental garden, with wines, beer, milk, whey, +grapes, etc.--the whey and the grapes being necessaries +of life to certain invalids whom physicians cannot repair, +and who only continue to exist by the grace of whey +or grapes. One of these departed spirits told me, +in a sad and lifeless way, that there is no way for him +to live but by whey, and dearly, dearly loved whey, +he didn't know whey he did, but he did. After making +this pun he died--that is the whey it served him. + +Some other remains, preserved from decomposition +by the grape system, told me that the grapes were of +a peculiar breed, highly medicinal in their nature, +and that they were counted out and administered by the +grape-doctors as methodically as if they were pills. +The new patient, if very feeble, began with one grape +before breakfast, took three during breakfast, a couple +between meals, five at luncheon, three in the afternoon, +seven at dinner, four for supper, and part of a grape +just before going to bed, by way of a general regulator. +The quantity was gradually and regularly increased, +according to the needs and capacities of the patient, +until by and by you would find him disposing of his one +grape per second all the day long, and his regular barrel +per day. + +He said that men cured in this way, and enabled to discard +the grape system, never afterward got over the habit +of talking as if they were dictating to a slow amanuensis, +because they always made a pause between each two words +while they sucked the substance out of an imaginary grape. +He said these were tedious people to talk with. +He said that men who had been cured by the other process +were easily distinguished from the rest of mankind +because they always tilted their heads back, between every +two words, and swallowed a swig of imaginary whey. +He said it was an impressive thing to observe two men, +who had been cured by the two processes, engaged in +conversation--said their pauses and accompanying movements +were so continuous and regular that a stranger would think +himself in the presence of a couple of automatic machines. +One finds out a great many wonderful things, by traveling, +if he stumbles upon the right person. + +I did not remain long at the Kursaal; the music was +good enough, but it seemed rather tame after the cyclone +of that Arkansaw expert. Besides, my adventurous spirit +had conceived a formidable enterprise--nothing less +than a trip from Interlaken, by the Gemmi and Visp, +clear to Zermatt, on foot! So it was necessary to plan +the details, and get ready for an early start. The courier +(this was not the one I have just been speaking of) +thought that the portier of the hotel would be able +to tell us how to find our way. And so it turned out. +He showed us the whole thing, on a relief-map, and we could +see our route, with all its elevations and depressions, +its villages and its rivers, as clearly as if we were sailing +over it in a balloon. A relief-map is a great thing. +The portier also wrote down each day's journey and the +nightly hotel on a piece of paper, and made our course +so plain that we should never be able to get lost without +high-priced outside help. + +I put the courier in the care of a gentleman who was +going to Lausanne, and then we went to bed, after laying +out the walking-costumes and putting them into condition +for instant occupation in the morning. + +However, when we came down to breakfast at 8 A.M., it +looked so much like rain that I hired a two-horse top-buggy +for the first third of the journey. For two or three hours +we jogged along the level road which skirts the beautiful +lake of Thun, with a dim and dreamlike picture of watery +expanses and spectral Alpine forms always before us, +veiled in a mellowing mist. Then a steady downpour +set in, and hid everything but the nearest objects. +We kept the rain out of our faces with umbrellas, and away +from our bodies with the leather apron of the buggy; +but the driver sat unsheltered and placidly soaked the weather +in and seemed to like it. We had the road to ourselves, +and I never had a pleasanter excursion. + +The weather began to clear while we were driving up +a valley called the Kienthal, and presently a vast black +cloud-bank in front of us dissolved away and uncurtained +the grand proportions and the soaring loftiness of the +Blumis Alp. It was a sort of breath-taking surprise; +for we had not supposed there was anything behind +that low-hung blanket of sable cloud but level valley. +What we had been mistaking for fleeting glimpses of sky +away aloft there, were really patches of the Blumis's +snowy crest caught through shredded rents in the drifting +pall of vapor. + +We dined in the inn at Frutigen, and our driver ought +to have dined there, too, but he would not have had +time to dine and get drunk both, so he gave his mind +to making a masterpiece of the latter, and succeeded. +A German gentleman and his two young-lady daughters had +been taking their nooning at the inn, and when they left, +just ahead of us, it was plain that their driver was +as drunk as ours, and as happy and good-natured, too, +which was saying a good deal. These rascals overflowed +with attentions and information for their guests, and with +brotherly love for each other. They tied their reins, +and took off their coats and hats, so that they might +be able to give unencumbered attention to conversation +and to the gestures necessary for its illustration. + +The road was smooth; it led up and over and down a continual +succession of hills; but it was narrow, the horses were +used to it, and could not well get out of it anyhow; +so why shouldn't the drivers entertain themselves and us? +The noses of our horses projected sociably into the rear +of the forward carriage, and as we toiled up the long +hills our driver stood up and talked to his friend, +and his friend stood up and talked back to him, with his +rear to the scenery. When the top was reached and we +went flying down the other side, there was no change in +the program. I carry in my memory yet the picture of that +forward driver, on his knees on his high seat, resting his +elbows on its back, and beaming down on his passengers, +with happy eye, and flying hair, and jolly red face, +and offering his card to the old German gentleman while he +praised his hack and horses, and both teams were whizzing +down a long hill with nobody in a position to tell whether +we were bound to destruction or an undeserved safety. + +Toward sunset we entered a beautiful green valley dotted +with chalets, a cozy little domain hidden away from the busy +world in a cloistered nook among giant precipices topped +with snowy peaks that seemed to float like islands above +the curling surf of the sea of vapor that severed them from +the lower world. Down from vague and vaporous heights, +little ruffled zigzag milky currents came crawling, +and found their way to the verge of one of those tremendous +overhanging walls, whence they plunged, a shaft of silver, +shivered to atoms in mid-descent and turned to an air puff +of luminous dust. Here and there, in grooved depressions +among the snowy desolations of the upper altitudes, +one glimpsed the extremity of a glacier, with its sea-green +and honeycombed battlements of ice. + +Up the valley, under a dizzy precipice, nestled the +village of Kandersteg, our halting-place for the night. +We were soon there, and housed in the hotel. But the waning +day had such an inviting influence that we did not remain +housed many moments, but struck out and followed a roaring +torrent of ice-water up to its far source in a sort of +little grass-carpeted parlor, walled in all around by vast +precipices and overlooked by clustering summits of ice. +This was the snuggest little croquet-ground imaginable; +it was perfectly level, and not more than a mile long +by half a mile wide. The walls around it were so gigantic, +and everything about it was on so mighty a scale that it +was belittled, by contrast, to what I have likened it +to--a cozy and carpeted parlor. It was so high above +the Kandersteg valley that there was nothing between it +and the snowy-peaks. I had never been in such intimate +relations with the high altitudes before; the snow-peaks +had always been remote and unapproachable grandeurs, +hitherto, but now we were hob-a-nob--if one may use +such a seemingly irreverent expression about creations +so august as these. + +We could see the streams which fed the torrent we +had followed issuing from under the greenish ramparts +of glaciers; but two or three of these, instead of flowing +over the precipices, sank down into the rock and sprang +in big jets out of holes in the mid-face of the walls. + +The green nook which I have been describing is called +the Gasternthal. The glacier streams gather and flow through +it in a broad and rushing brook to a narrow cleft between +lofty precipices; here the rushing brook becomes a mad torrent +and goes booming and thundering down toward Kandersteg, +lashing and thrashing its way over and among monster boulders, +and hurling chance roots and logs about like straws. +There was no lack of cascades along this route. +The path by the side of the torrent was so narrow +that one had to look sharp, when he heard a cow-bell, +and hunt for a place that was wide enough to accommodate +a cow and a Christian side by side, and such places were +not always to be had at an instant's notice. The cows +wear church-bells, and that is a good idea in the cows, +for where that torrent is, you couldn't hear an ordinary +cow-bell any further than you could hear the ticking of a watch. + +I needed exercise, so I employed my agent in setting +stranded logs and dead trees adrift, and I sat on a +boulder and watched them go whirling and leaping head +over heels down the boiling torrent. It was a wonderfully +exhilarating spectacle. When I had had enough exercise, +I made the agent take some, by running a race with one +of those logs. I made a trifle by betting on the log. + +After dinner we had a walk up and down the Kandersteg valley, +in the soft gloaming, with the spectacle of the dying lights +of day playing about the crests and pinnacles of the still +and solemn upper realm for contrast, and text for talk. +There were no sounds but the dulled complaining of the +torrent and the occasional tinkling of a distant bell. +The spirit of the place was a sense of deep, pervading peace; +one might dream his life tranquilly away there, and not miss +it or mind it when it was gone. + +The summer departed with the sun, and winter came with +the stars. It grew to be a bitter night in that little hotel, +backed up against a precipice that had no visible top to it, +but we kept warm, and woke in time in the morning to find +that everybody else had left for Gemmi three hours before +--so our little plan of helping that German family (principally +the old man) over the pass, was a blocked generosity. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV +[The World's Highest Pig Farm] + +We hired the only guide left, to lead us on our way. +He was over seventy, but he could have given me nine-tenths +of his strength and still had all his age entitled him to. +He shouldered our satchels, overcoats, and alpenstocks, +and we set out up the steep path. It was hot work. +The old man soon begged us to hand over our coats +and waistcoats to him to carry, too, and we did it; +one could not refuse so little a thing to a poor old man +like that; he should have had them if he had been a hundred +and fifty. + +When we began that ascent, we could see a microscopic +chalet perched away up against heaven on what seemed +to be the highest mountain near us. It was on our right, +across the narrow head of the valley. But when we got +up abreast it on its own level, mountains were towering +high above on every hand, and we saw that its altitude +was just about that of the little Gasternthal which we had +visited the evening before. Still it seemed a long way up +in the air, in that waste and lonely wilderness of rocks. +It had an unfenced grass-plot in front of it which seemed +about as big as a billiard-table, and this grass-plot +slanted so sharply downward, and was so brief, and ended +so exceedingly soon at the verge of the absolute precipice, +that it was a shuddery thing to think of a person's venturing +to trust his foot on an incline so situated at all. +Suppose a man stepped on an orange peel in that yard; +there would be nothing for him to seize; nothing could +keep him from rolling; five revolutions would bring him +to the edge, and over he would go. What a frightful distance +he would fall!--for there are very few birds that fly +as high as his starting-point. He would strike and bounce, +two or three times, on his way down, but this would be +no advantage to him. I would as soon taking an airing +on the slant of a rainbow as in such a front yard. +I would rather, in fact, for the distance down would be about +the same, and it is pleasanter to slide than to bounce. +I could not see how the peasants got up to that chalet +--the region seemed too steep for anything but a balloon. + +As we strolled on, climbing up higher and higher, we were +continually bringing neighboring peaks into view and lofty +prominence which had been hidden behind lower peaks before; +so by and by, while standing before a group of these giants, +we looked around for the chalet again; there it was, +away down below us, apparently on an inconspicuous ridge +in the valley! It was as far below us, now, as it had been +above us when we were beginning the ascent. + +After a while the path led us along a railed precipice, +and we looked over--far beneath us was the snug parlor again, +the little Gasternthal, with its water jets spouting +from the face of its rock walls. We could have dropped +a stone into it. We had been finding the top of the world +all along--and always finding a still higher top stealing +into view in a disappointing way just ahead; when we looked +down into the Gasternthal we felt pretty sure that we +had reached the genuine top at last, but it was not so; +there were much higher altitudes to be scaled yet. +We were still in the pleasant shade of forest trees, +we were still in a region which was cushioned with beautiful +mosses and aglow with the many-tinted luster of innumerable +wild flowers. + +We found, indeed, more interest in the wild flowers +than in anything else. We gathered a specimen or two +of every kind which we were unacquainted with; so we +had sumptuous bouquets. But one of the chief interests +lay in chasing the seasons of the year up the mountain, +and determining them by the presence of flowers and +berries which we were acquainted with. For instance, +it was the end of August at the level of the sea; +in the Kandersteg valley at the base of the pass, +we found flowers which would not be due at the sea-level +for two or three weeks; higher up, we entered October, +and gathered fringed gentians. I made no notes, and have +forgotten the details, but the construction of the floral +calendar was very entertaining while it lasted. + +In the high regions we found rich store of the splendid +red flower called the Alpine rose, but we did not find +any examples of the ugly Swiss favorite called Edelweiss. +Its name seems to indicate that it is a noble flower +and that it is white. It may be noble enough, +but it is not attractive, and it is not white. +The fuzzy blossom is the color of bad cigar ashes, +and appears to be made of a cheap quality of gray plush. +It has a noble and distant way of confining itself to the +high altitudes, but that is probably on account of its looks; +it apparently has no monopoly of those upper altitudes, +however, for they are sometimes intruded upon by some +of the loveliest of the valley families of wild flowers. +Everybody in the Alps wears a sprig of Edelweiss in his hat. +It is the native's pet, and also the tourist's. + +All the morning, as we loafed along, having a good time, +other pedestrians went staving by us with vigorous strides, +and with the intent and determined look of men who were +walking for a wager. These wore loose knee-breeches, long +yarn stockings, and hobnailed high-laced walking-shoes. +They were gentlemen who would go home to England or Germany +and tell how many miles they had beaten the guide-book +every day. But I doubted if they ever had much real fun, +outside of the mere magnificent exhilaration of the +tramp through the green valleys and the breezy heights; +for they were almost always alone, and even the finest +scenery loses incalculably when there is no one to enjoy +it with. + +All the morning an endless double procession of mule-mounted +tourists filed past us along the narrow path--the one +procession going, the other coming. We had taken +a good deal of trouble to teach ourselves the kindly +German custom of saluting all strangers with doffed hat, +and we resolutely clung to it, that morning, although it +kept us bareheaded most of the time and was not always +responded to. Still we found an interest in the thing, +because we naturally liked to know who were English +and Americans among the passers-by. All continental +natives responded of course; so did some of the English +and Americans, but, as a general thing, these two races +gave no sign. Whenever a man or a woman showed us +cold neglect, we spoke up confidently in our own tongue +and asked for such information as we happened to need, +and we always got a reply in the same language. +The English and American folk are not less kindly than +other races, they are only more reserved, and that comes +of habit and education. In one dreary, rocky waste, +away above the line of vegetation, we met a procession +of twenty-five mounted young men, all from America. +We got answering bows enough from these, of course, +for they were of an age to learn to do in Rome as Rome does, +without much effort. + +At one extremity of this patch of desolation, overhung by bare +and forbidding crags which husbanded drifts of everlasting +snow in their shaded cavities, was a small stretch +of thin and discouraged grass, and a man and a family +of pigs were actually living here in some shanties. +Consequently this place could be really reckoned as +"property"; it had a money value, and was doubtless taxed. +I think it must have marked the limit of real estate +in this world. It would be hard to set a money value +upon any piece of earth that lies between that spot +and the empty realm of space. That man may claim the +distinction of owning the end of the world, for if there +is any definite end to the world he has certainly found it. + +From here forward we moved through a storm-swept +and smileless desolation. All about us rose gigantic +masses, crags, and ramparts of bare and dreary rock, +with not a vestige or semblance of plant or tree or +flower anywhere, or glimpse of any creature that had life. +The frost and the tempests of unnumbered ages had battered +and hacked at these cliffs, with a deathless energy, +destroying them piecemeal; so all the region about +their bases was a tumbled chaos of great fragments +which had been split off and hurled to the ground. +Soiled and aged banks of snow lay close about our path. +The ghastly desolation of the place was as tremendously +complete as if Dor'e had furnished the working-plans +for it. But every now and then, through the stern +gateways around us we caught a view of some neighboring +majestic dome, sheathed with glittering ice, and displaying +its white purity at an elevation compared to which +ours was groveling and plebeian, and this spectacle +always chained one's interest and admiration at once, +and made him forget there was anything ugly in the world. + +I have just said that there was nothing but death +and desolation in these hideous places, but I forgot. +In the most forlorn and arid and dismal one of all, +where the racked and splintered debris was thickest, +where the ancient patches of snow lay against the very path, +where the winds blew bitterest and the general aspect was +mournfulest and dreariest, and furthest from any suggestion +of cheer or hope, I found a solitary wee forget-me-not +flourishing away, not a droop about it anywhere, +but holding its bright blue star up with the prettiest +and gallantest air in the world, the only happy spirit, +the only smiling thing, in all that grisly desert. +She seemed to say, "Cheer up!--as long as we are here, +let us make the best of it." I judged she had earned +a right to a more hospitable place; so I plucked her up +and sent her to America to a friend who would respect +her for the fight she had made, all by her small self, +to make a whole vast despondent Alpine desolation stop +breaking its heart over the unalterable, and hold up its +head and look at the bright side of things for once. + +We stopped for a nooning at a strongly built little inn +called the Schwarenbach. It sits in a lonely spot among +the peaks, where it is swept by the trailing fringes +of the cloud-rack, and is rained on, and snowed on, +and pelted and persecuted by the storms, nearly every day +of its life. It was the only habitation in the whole +Gemmi Pass. + +Close at hand, now, was a chance for a blood-curdling +Alpine adventure. Close at hand was the snowy mass +of the Great Altels cooling its topknot in the sky +and daring us to an ascent. I was fired with the idea, +and immediately made up my mind to procure the necessary +guides, ropes, etc., and undertake it. I instructed +Harris to go to the landlord of the inn and set him +about our preparations. Meantime, I went diligently +to work to read up and find out what this much-talked-of +mountain-climbing was like, and how one should go about +it--for in these matters I was ignorant. I opened +Mr. Hinchliff's SUMMER MONTHS AMONG THE ALPS (published +1857), and selected his account of his ascent of Monte Rosa. + +It began: + + "It is very difficult to free the mind from excitement + on the evening before a grand expedition--" + +I saw that I was too calm; so I walked the room a while +and worked myself into a high excitement; but the book's +next remark --that the adventurer must get up at two +in the morning--came as near as anything to flatting it +all out again. However, I reinforced it, and read on, +about how Mr. Hinchliff dressed by candle-light and was "soon +down among the guides, who were bustling about in the passage, +packing provisions, and making every preparation for the start"; +and how he glanced out into the cold clear night and saw that-- + +"The whole sky was blazing with stars, larger and brighter +than they appear through the dense atmosphere breathed +by inhabitants of the lower parts of the earth. +They seemed actually suspended from the dark vault +of heaven, and their gentle light shed a fairylike gleam +over the snow-fields around the foot of the Matterhorn, +which raised its stupendous pinnacle on high, penetrating to +the heart of the Great Bear, and crowning itself with a +diadem of his magnificent stars. Not a sound disturbed +the deep tranquillity of the night, except the distant +roar of streams which rush from the high plateau of the +St. Theodule glacier, and fall headlong over precipitous +rocks till they lose themselves in the mazes of +the Gorner glacier." + +He took his hot toast and coffee, and then about +half past three his caravan of ten men filed away +from the Riffel Hotel, and began the steep climb. +At half past five he happened to turn around, and "beheld +the glorious spectacle of the Matterhorn, just touched +by the rosy-fingered morning, and looking like a huge +pyramid of fire rising out of the barren ocean of ice +and rock around it." Then the Breithorn and the Dent +Blanche caught the radiant glow; but "the intervening +mass of Monte Rosa made it necessary for us to climb many +long hours before we could hope to see the sun himself, +yet the whole air soon grew warmer after the splendid +birth of the day." + +He gazed at the lofty crown of Monte Rosa and the wastes +of snow that guarded its steep approaches, and the chief +guide delivered the opinion that no man could conquer +their awful heights and put his foot upon that summit. +But the adventurers moved steadily on, nevertheless. + +They toiled up, and up, and still up; they passed +the Grand Plateau; then toiled up a steep shoulder +of the mountain, clinging like flies to its rugged face; +and now they were confronted by a tremendous wall from +which great blocks of ice and snow were evidently in the +habit of falling. They turned aside to skirt this wall, +and gradually ascended until their way was barred by a "maze +of gigantic snow crevices,"--so they turned aside again, +and "began a long climb of sufficient steepness to make +a zigzag course necessary." + +Fatigue compelled them to halt frequently, for a moment +or two. At one of these halts somebody called out, +"Look at Mont Blanc!" and "we were at once made aware +of the very great height we had attained by actually seeing +the monarch of the Alps and his attendant satellites +right over the top of the Breithorn, itself at least +14,000 feet high!" + +These people moved in single file, and were all tied +to a strong rope, at regular distances apart, so that if +one of them slipped on those giddy heights, the others +could brace themselves on their alpenstocks and save him +from darting into the valley, thousands of feet below. +By and by they came to an ice-coated ridge which was tilted +up at a sharp angle, and had a precipice on one side of it. +They had to climb this, so the guide in the lead cut +steps in the ice with his hatchet, and as fast as he +took his toes out of one of these slight holes, the toes +of the man behind him occupied it. + +"Slowly and steadily we kept on our way over this dangerous +part of the ascent, and I dare say it was fortunate for +some of us that attention was distracted from the head +by the paramount necessity of looking after the feet; +FOR, WHILE ON THE LEFT THE INCLINE OF ICE WAS SO STEEP +THAT IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANY MAN TO SAVE HIMSELF +IN CASE OF A SLIP, UNLESS THE OTHERS COULD HOLD HIM UP, +ON THE RIGHT WE MIGHT DROP A PEBBLE FROM THE HAND OVER +PRECIPICES OF UNKNOWN EXTENT DOWN UPON THE TREMENDOUS +GLACIER BELOW. + +"Great caution, therefore, was absolutely necessary, +and in this exposed situation we were attacked by all +the fury of that grand enemy of aspirants to Monte +Rosa--a severe and bitterly cold wind from the north. +The fine powdery snow was driven past us in the clouds, +penetrating the interstices of our clothes, and the pieces +of ice which flew from the blows of Peter's ax were +whisked into the air, and then dashed over the precipice. +We had quite enough to do to prevent ourselves from being +served in the same ruthless fashion, and now and then, +in the more violent gusts of wind, were glad to stick our +alpenstocks into the ice and hold on hard." + +Having surmounted this perilous steep, they sat down and +took a brief rest with their backs against a sheltering +rock and their heels dangling over a bottomless abyss; +then they climbed to the base of another ridge--a more +difficult and dangerous one still: + +"The whole of the ridge was exceedingly narrow, and the +fall on each side desperately steep, but the ice in some +of these intervals between the masses of rock assumed +the form of a mere sharp edge, almost like a knife; +these places, though not more than three or four short +paces in length, looked uncommonly awkward; but, like the +sword leading true believers to the gates of Paradise, +they must needs be passed before we could attain to +the summit of our ambition. These were in one or two +places so narrow, that in stepping over them with toes +well turned out for greater security, ONE END OF THE +FOOT PROJECTED OVER THE AWFUL PRECIPICE ON THE RIGHT, +WHILE THE OTHER WAS ON THE BEGINNING OF THE ICE SLOPE ON +THE LEFT, WHICH WAS SCARCELY LESS STEEP THAN THE ROCKS. +On these occasions Peter would take my hand, and each +of us stretching as far as we could, he was thus enabled +to get a firm footing two paces or rather more from me, +whence a spring would probably bring him to the rock +on the other side; then, turning around, he called +to me to come, and, taking a couple of steps carefully, +I was met at the third by his outstretched hand ready +to clasp mine, and in a moment stood by his side. +The others followed in much the same fashion. Once my +right foot slipped on the side toward the precipice, +but I threw out my left arm in a moment so that it caught +the icy edge under my armpit as I fell, and supported +me considerably; at the same instant I cast my eyes +down the side on which I had slipped, and contrived +to plant my right foot on a piece of rock as large as a +cricket-ball, which chanced to protrude through the ice, +on the very edge of the precipice. Being thus anchored +fore and aft, as it were, I believe I could easily have +recovered myself, even if I had been alone, though it must +be confessed the situation would have been an awful one; +as it was, however, a jerk from Peter settled the matter +very soon, and I was on my legs all right in an instant. +The rope is an immense help in places of this kind." + +Now they arrived at the base of a great knob or dome +veneered with ice and powdered with snow--the utmost, +summit, the last bit of solidity between them and the hollow +vault of heaven. They set to work with their hatchets, +and were soon creeping, insectlike, up its surface, with their +heels projecting over the thinnest kind of nothingness, +thickened up a little with a few wandering shreds and +films of cloud moving in a lazy procession far below. +Presently, one man's toe-hold broke and he fell! There he +dangled in mid-air at the end of the rope, like a spider, +till his friends above hauled him into place again. + +A little bit later, the party stood upon the wee pedestal +of the very summit, in a driving wind, and looked out +upon the vast green expanses of Italy and a shoreless +ocean of billowy Alps. + +When I had read thus far, Harris broke into the room +in a noble excitement and said the ropes and the guides +were secured, and asked if I was ready. I said I +believed I wouldn't ascend the Altels this time. +I said Alp-climbing was a different thing from what I had +supposed it was, and so I judged we had better study its +points a little more before we went definitely into it. +But I told him to retain the guides and order them to +follow us to Zermatt, because I meant to use them there. +I said I could feel the spirit of adventure beginning +to stir in me, and was sure that the fell fascination +of Alp-climbing would soon be upon me. I said he could +make up his mind to it that we would do a deed before we +were a week older which would make the hair of the timid +curl with fright. + +This made Harris happy, and filled him with ambitious +anticipations. He went at once to tell the guides to +follow us to Zermatt and bring all their paraphernalia +with them. + + + +CHAPTER XXXV +[Swindling the Coroner] + +A great and priceless thing is a new interest! How +it takes possession of a man! how it clings to him, +how it rides him! I strode onward from the Schwarenbach +hostelry a changed man, a reorganized personality. +I walked into a new world, I saw with new eyes. +I had been looking aloft at the giant show-peaks only as +things to be worshiped for their grandeur and magnitude, +and their unspeakable grace of form; I looked up at +them now, as also things to be conquered and climbed. +My sense of their grandeur and their noble beauty +was neither lost nor impaired; I had gained a new +interest in the mountains without losing the old ones. +I followed the steep lines up, inch by inch, with my eye, +and noted the possibility or impossibility of following +them with my feet. When I saw a shining helmet of ice +projecting above the clouds, I tried to imagine I saw +files of black specks toiling up it roped together with a +gossamer thread. + +We skirted the lonely little lake called the Daubensee, +and presently passed close by a glacier on the right +--a thing like a great river frozen solid in its flow +and broken square off like a wall at its mouth. +I had never been so near a glacier before. + +Here we came upon a new board shanty, and found some men +engaged in building a stone house; so the Schwarenbach was +soon to have a rival. We bought a bottle or so of beer here; +at any rate they called it beer, but I knew by the price +that it was dissolved jewelry, and I perceived by the +taste that dissolved jewelry is not good stuff to drink. + +We were surrounded by a hideous desolation. We stepped +forward to a sort of jumping-off place, and were confronted +by a startling contrast: we seemed to look down into fairyland. +Two or three thousand feet below us was a bright green level, +with a pretty town in its midst, and a silvery stream +winding among the meadows; the charming spot was walled +in on all sides by gigantic precipices clothed with pines; +and over the pines, out of the softened distances, +rose the snowy domes and peaks of the Monte Rosa region. +How exquisitely green and beautiful that little valley +down there was! The distance was not great enough to +obliterate details, it only made them little, and mellow, +and dainty, like landscapes and towns seen through the +wrong end of a spy-glass. + +Right under us a narrow ledge rose up out of the valley, +with a green, slanting, bench-shaped top, and grouped +about upon this green-baize bench were a lot of black +and white sheep which looked merely like oversized worms. +The bench seemed lifted well up into our neighborhood, +but that was a deception--it was a long way down to it. + +We began our descent, now, by the most remarkable road I +have ever seen. It wound its corkscrew curves down the face +of the colossal precipice--a narrow way, with always +the solid rock wall at one elbow, and perpendicular +nothingness at the other. We met an everlasting procession +of guides, porters, mules, litters, and tourists climbing +up this steep and muddy path, and there was no room +to spare when you had to pass a tolerably fat mule. +I always took the inside, when I heard or saw the +mule coming, and flattened myself against the wall. +I preferred the inside, of course, but I should have had +to take it anyhow, because the mule prefers the outside. +A mule's preference--on a precipice--is a thing to +be respected. Well, his choice is always the outside. +His life is mostly devoted to carrying bulky panniers +and packages which rest against his body--therefore he +is habituated to taking the outside edge of mountain paths, +to keep his bundles from rubbing against rocks or banks +on the other. When he goes into the passenger business he +absurdly clings to his old habit, and keeps one leg of his +passenger always dangling over the great deeps of the lower +world while that passenger's heart is in the highlands, +so to speak. More than once I saw a mule's hind foot +cave over the outer edge and send earth and rubbish into +the bottom abyss; and I noticed that upon these occasions +the rider, whether male or female, looked tolerably unwell. + +There was one place where an eighteen-inch breadth of +light masonry had been added to the verge of the path, +and as there was a very sharp turn here, a panel of fencing +had been set up there at some time, as a protection. +This panel was old and gray and feeble, and the light +masonry had been loosened by recent rains. A young +American girl came along on a mule, and in making the turn +the mule's hind foot caved all the loose masonry and one +of the fence-posts overboard; the mule gave a violent lurch +inboard to save himself, and succeeded in the effort, +but that girl turned as white as the snows of Mont Blanc +for a moment. + +The path was simply a groove cut into the face of +the precipice; there was a four-foot breadth of solid rock +under the traveler, and four-foot breadth of solid rock +just above his head, like the roof of a narrow porch; +he could look out from this gallery and see a sheer +summitless and bottomless wall of rock before him, +across a gorge or crack a biscuit's toss in width +--but he could not see the bottom of his own precipice +unless he lay down and projected his nose over the edge. +I did not do this, because I did not wish to soil my clothes. + +Every few hundred yards, at particularly bad places, +one came across a panel or so of plank fencing; but they +were always old and weak, and they generally leaned +out over the chasm and did not make any rash promises +to hold up people who might need support. There was one +of these panels which had only its upper board left; +a pedestrianizing English youth came tearing down the path, +was seized with an impulse to look over the precipice, +and without an instant's thought he threw his weight +upon that crazy board. It bent outward a foot! I never +made a gasp before that came so near suffocating me. +The English youth's face simply showed a lively surprise, +but nothing more. He went swinging along valleyward again, +as if he did not know he had just swindled a coroner by the +closest kind of a shave. + +The Alpine litter is sometimes like a cushioned box +made fast between the middles of two long poles, +and sometimes it is a chair with a back to it and a support +for the feet. It is carried by relays of strong porters. +The motion is easier than that of any other conveyance. +We met a few men and a great many ladies in litters; +it seemed to me that most of the ladies looked pale +and nauseated; their general aspect gave me the idea +that they were patiently enduring a horrible suffering. +As a rule, they looked at their laps, and left the scenery +to take care of itself. + +But the most frightened creature I saw, was a led horse +that overtook us. Poor fellow, he had been born and reared +in the grassy levels of the Kandersteg valley and had +never seen anything like this hideous place before. +Every few steps he would stop short, glance wildly out from +the dizzy height, and then spread his red nostrils wide +and pant as violently as if he had been running a race; +and all the while he quaked from head to heel as with +a palsy. He was a handsome fellow, and he made a fine +statuesque picture of terror, but it was pitiful to see +him suffer so. + +This dreadful path has had its tragedy. Baedeker, with his +customary over-terseness, begins and ends the tale thus: + +"The descent on horseback should be avoided. +In 1861 a Comtesse d'Herlincourt fell from her saddle +over the precipice and was killed on the spot." + +We looked over the precipice there, and saw the monument +which commemorates the event. It stands in the bottom +of the gorge, in a place which has been hollowed out of +the rock to protect it from the torrent and the storms. +Our old guide never spoke but when spoken to, and then +limited himself to a syllable or two, but when we asked +him about this tragedy he showed a strong interest +in the matter. He said the Countess was very pretty, +and very young--hardly out of her girlhood, in fact. +She was newly married, and was on her bridal tour. +The young husband was riding a little in advance; one guide +was leading the husband's horse, another was leading the +bride's. + +The old man continued: + +"The guide that was leading the husband's horse happened +to glance back, and there was that poor young thing sitting +up staring out over the precipice; and her face began +to bend downward a little, and she put up her two hands +slowly and met it--so,--and put them flat against her +eyes--so--and then she sank out of the saddle, with a +sharp shriek, and one caught only the flash of a dress, +and it was all over." + +Then after a pause: + +"Ah, yes, that guide saw these things--yes, he saw them all. +He saw them all, just as I have told you." + +After another pause: + +"Ah, yes, he saw them all. My God, that was ME. +I was that guide!" + +This had been the one event of the old man's life; so one +may be sure he had forgotten no detail connected with it. +We listened to all he had to say about what was done and what +happened and what was said after the sorrowful occurrence, +and a painful story it was. + +When we had wound down toward the valley until we were about +on the last spiral of the corkscrew, Harris's hat blew +over the last remaining bit of precipice--a small cliff +a hundred or hundred and fifty feet high--and sailed down +toward a steep slant composed of rough chips and fragments +which the weather had flaked away from the precipices. +We went leisurely down there, expecting to find it without +any trouble, but we had made a mistake, as to that. +We hunted during a couple of hours--not because the old +straw hat was valuable, but out of curiosity to find out +how such a thing could manage to conceal itself in open +ground where there was nothing left for it to hide behind. +When one is reading in bed, and lays his paper-knife down, +he cannot find it again if it is smaller than a saber; +that hat was as stubborn as any paper-knife could have been, +and we finally had to give it up; but we found a fragment +that had once belonged to an opera-glass, and by digging +around and turning over the rocks we gradually collected +all the lenses and the cylinders and the various odds +and ends that go to making up a complete opera-glass. +We afterward had the thing reconstructed, and the owner +can have his adventurous lost-property by submitting +proofs and paying costs of rehabilitation. We had hopes +of finding the owner there, distributed around amongst +the rocks, for it would have made an elegant paragraph; +but we were disappointed. Still, we were far from +being disheartened, for there was a considerable area +which we had not thoroughly searched; we were satisfied he +was there, somewhere, so we resolved to wait over a day at +Leuk and come back and get him. + +Then we sat down to polish off the perspiration and +arrange about what we would do with him when we got him. +Harris was for contributing him to the British Museum; +but I was for mailing him to his widow. That is the difference +between Harris and me: Harris is all for display, I am +all for the simple right, even though I lose money by it. +Harris argued in favor of his proposition against mine, +I argued in favor of mine and against his. The discussion +warmed into a dispute; the dispute warmed into a quarrel. +I finally said, very decidedly: + +"My mind is made up. He goes to the widow." + +Harris answered sharply: + +"And MY mind is made up. He goes to the Museum." + +I said, calmly: + +"The museum may whistle when it gets him." + +Harris retorted: + +"The widow may save herself the trouble of whistling, +for I will see that she never gets him." + +After some angry bandying of epithets, I said: + +"It seems to me that you are taking on a good many airs +about these remains. I don't quite see what YOU'VE got +to say about them?" + +"I? I've got ALL to say about them. They'd never have +been thought of if I hadn't found their opera-glass. The +corpse belongs to me, and I'll do as I please with him." + +I was leader of the Expedition, and all discoveries +achieved by it naturally belonged to me. I was entitled +to these remains, and could have enforced my right; +but rather than have bad blood about the matter, +I said we would toss up for them. I threw heads and won, +but it was a barren victory, for although we spent all +the next day searching, we never found a bone. I cannot +imagine what could ever have become of that fellow. + +The town in the valley is called Leuk or Leukerbad. +We pointed our course toward it, down a verdant slope +which was adorned with fringed gentians and other flowers, +and presently entered the narrow alleys of the outskirts +and waded toward the middle of the town through liquid +"fertilizer." They ought to either pave that village or +organize a ferry. + +Harris's body was simply a chamois-pasture; his person +was populous with the little hungry pests; his skin, +when he stripped, was splotched like a scarlet-fever patient's; +so, when we were about to enter one of the Leukerbad inns, +and he noticed its sign, "Chamois Hotel," he refused +to stop there. He said the chamois was plentiful enough, +without hunting up hotels where they made a specialty of it. +I was indifferent, for the chamois is a creature that will +neither bite me nor abide with me; but to calm Harris, +we went to the Ho^tel des Alpes. + +At the table d'ho^te, we had this, for an incident. +A very grave man--in fact his gravity amounted to solemnity, +and almost to austerity--sat opposite us and he was +"tight," but doing his best to appear sober. He took up +a CORKED bottle of wine, tilted it over his glass awhile, +then set it out of the way, with a contented look, and went +on with his dinner. + +Presently he put his glass to his mouth, and of course +found it empty. He looked puzzled, and glanced furtively +and suspiciously out of the corner of his eye at a +benignant and unconscious old lady who sat at his right. +Shook his head, as much as to say, "No, she couldn't have +done it." He tilted the corked bottle over his glass again, +meantime searching around with his watery eye to see +if anybody was watching him. He ate a few mouthfuls, +raised his glass to his lips, and of course it was +still empty. He bent an injured and accusing side-glance +upon that unconscious old lady, which was a study to see. +She went on eating and gave no sign. He took up his glass +and his bottle, with a wise private nod of his head, +and set them gravely on the left-hand side of his plate +--poured himself another imaginary drink--went to work +with his knife and fork once more--presently lifted +his glass with good confidence, and found it empty, +as usual. + +This was almost a petrifying surprise. He straightened +himself up in his chair and deliberately and sorrowfully +inspected the busy old ladies at his elbows, first one and +then the other. At last he softly pushed his plate away, +set his glass directly in front of him, held on to it +with his left hand, and proceeded to pour with his right. +This time he observed that nothing came. He turned the +bottle clear upside down; still nothing issued from it; +a plaintive look came into his face, and he said, as if +to himself, + +"'IC! THEY'VE GOT IT ALL!" Then he set the bottle down, +resignedly, and took the rest of his dinner dry. + +It was at that table d'ho^te, too, that I had under inspection +the largest lady I have ever seen in private life. +She was over seven feet high, and magnificently proportioned. +What had first called my attention to her, was my stepping +on an outlying flange of her foot, and hearing, from up +toward the ceiling, a deep "Pardon, m'sieu, but you encroach!" + +That was when we were coming through the hall, and the place +was dim, and I could see her only vaguely. The thing +which called my attention to her the second time was, +that at a table beyond ours were two very pretty girls, +and this great lady came in and sat down between them +and me and blotted out my view. She had a handsome face, +and she was very finely formed--perfected formed, +I should say. But she made everybody around her look trivial +and commonplace. Ladies near her looked like children, +and the men about her looked mean. They looked like failures; +and they looked as if they felt so, too. She sat with +her back to us. I never saw such a back in my life. +I would have so liked to see the moon rise over it. +The whole congregation waited, under one pretext or another, +till she finished her dinner and went out; they wanted to see +her at full altitude, and they found it worth tarrying for. +She filled one's idea of what an empress ought to be, +when she rose up in her unapproachable grandeur and moved +superbly out of that place. + +We were not at Leuk in time to see her at her heaviest weight. +She had suffered from corpulence and had come there to get +rid of her extra flesh in the baths. Five weeks of soaking +--five uninterrupted hours of it every day--had accomplished +her purpose and reduced her to the right proportions. + +Those baths remove fat, and also skin-diseases. The +patients remain in the great tanks for hours at a time. +A dozen gentlemen and ladies occupy a tank together, +and amuse themselves with rompings and various games. +They have floating desks and tables, and they read or lunch +or play chess in water that is breast-deep. The tourist +can step in and view this novel spectacle if he chooses. +There's a poor-box, and he will have to contribute. +There are several of these big bathing-houses, and you can +always tell when you are near one of them by the romping +noises and shouts of laughter that proceed from it. +The water is running water, and changes all the time, +else a patient with a ringworm might take the bath with only +a partial success, since, while he was ridding himself of +the ringworm, he might catch the itch. + +The next morning we wandered back up the green valley, +leisurely, with the curving walls of those bare and +stupendous precipices rising into the clouds before us. +I had never seen a clean, bare precipice stretching up +five thousand feet above me before, and I never shall +expect to see another one. They exist, perhaps, but not +in places where one can easily get close to them. +This pile of stone is peculiar. From its base to the +soaring tops of its mighty towers, all its lines and +all its details vaguely suggest human architecture. +There are rudimentary bow-windows, cornices, chimneys, +demarcations of stories, etc. One could sit and stare up +there and study the features and exquisite graces of this +grand structure, bit by bit, and day after day, and never +weary his interest. The termination, toward the town, +observed in profile, is the perfection of shape. +It comes down out of the clouds in a succession of rounded, +colossal, terracelike projections--a stairway for the gods; +at its head spring several lofty storm-scarred towers, +one after another, with faint films of vapor curling +always about them like spectral banners. If there were +a king whose realms included the whole world, here would +be the place meet and proper for such a monarch. He would +only need to hollow it out and put in the electric light. +He could give audience to a nation at a time under its roof. + +Our search for those remains having failed, we inspected with +a glass the dim and distant track of an old-time avalanche +that once swept down from some pine-grown summits behind +the town and swept away the houses and buried the people; +then we struck down the road that leads toward the Rhone, +to see the famous Ladders. These perilous things are +built against the perpendicular face of a cliff two or +three hundred feet high. The peasants, of both sexes, +were climbing up and down them, with heavy loads on +their backs. I ordered Harris to make the ascent, so I +could put the thrill and horror of it in my book, and he +accomplished the feat successfully, though a subagent, +for three francs, which I paid. It makes me shudder yet +when I think of what I felt when I was clinging there +between heaven and earth in the person of that proxy. +At times the world swam around me, and I could hardly keep +from letting go, so dizzying was the appalling danger. +Many a person would have given up and descended, but I stuck +to my task, and would not yield until I had accomplished it. +I felt a just pride in my exploit, but I would not +have repeated it for the wealth of the world. I shall +break my neck yet with some such foolhardy performance, +for warnings never seem to have any lasting effect on me. +When the people of the hotel found that I had been +climbing those crazy Ladders, it made me an object of +considerable attention. + +Next morning, early, we drove to the Rhone valley and took +the train for Visp. There we shouldered our knapsacks +and things, and set out on foot, in a tremendous rain, +up the winding gorge, toward Zermatt. Hour after hour we +slopped along, by the roaring torrent, and under noble +Lesser Alps which were clothed in rich velvety green +all the way up and had little atomy Swiss homes perched +upon grassy benches along their mist-dimmed heights. + +The rain continued to pour and the torrent to boom, and we +continued to enjoy both. At the one spot where this torrent +tossed its white mane highest, and thundered loudest, +and lashed the big boulders fiercest, the canton had done +itself the honor to build the flimsiest wooden bridge +that exists in the world. While we were walking over it, +along with a party of horsemen, I noticed that even +the larger raindrops made it shake. I called Harris's +attention to it, and he noticed it, too. It seemed +to me that if I owned an elephant that was a keepsake, +and I thought a good deal of him, I would think twice +before I would ride him over that bridge. + +We climbed up to the village of St. Nicholas, about half +past four in the afternoon, waded ankle-deep through +the fertilizer-juice, and stopped at a new and nice hotel +close by the little church. We stripped and went to bed, +and sent our clothes down to be baked. And the horde +of soaked tourists did the same. That chaos of clothing +got mixed in the kitchen, and there were consequences. +I did not get back the same drawers I sent down, when our +things came up at six-fifteen; I got a pair on a new plan. +They were merely a pair of white ruffle-cuffed absurdities, +hitched together at the top with a narrow band, and they did +not come quite down to my knees. They were pretty enough, +but they made me feel like two people, and disconnected +at that. The man must have been an idiot that got himself +up like that, to rough it in the Swiss mountains. +The shirt they brought me was shorter than the drawers, +and hadn't any sleeves to it--at least it hadn't anything +more than what Mr. Darwin would call "rudimentary" sleeves; +these had "edging" around them, but the bosom was +ridiculously plain. The knit silk undershirt they brought +me was on a new plan, and was really a sensible thing; +it opened behind, and had pockets in it to put your +shoulder-blades in; but they did not seem to fit mine, +and so I found it a sort of uncomfortable garment. +They gave my bobtail coat to somebody else, and sent me +an ulster suitable for a giraffe. I had to tie my collar on, +because there was no button behind on that foolish little shirt +which I described a while ago. + +When I was dressed for dinner at six-thirty, I was too loose +in some places and too tight in others, and altogether I +felt slovenly and ill-conditioned. However, the people +at the table d'ho^te were no better off than I was; +they had everybody's clothes but their own on. A long +stranger recognized his ulster as soon as he saw the tail +of it following me in, but nobody claimed my shirt or +my drawers, though I described them as well as I was able. +I gave them to the chambermaid that night when I went +to bed, and she probably found the owner, for my own +things were on a chair outside my door in the morning. + +There was a lovable English clergyman who did +not get to the table d'ho^te at all. His breeches +had turned up missing, and without any equivalent. +He said he was not more particular than other people, +but he had noticed that a clergyman at dinner without +any breeches was almost sure to excite remark. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI +[The Fiendish Fun of Alp-climbing] + +We did not oversleep at St. Nicholas. The church-bell +began to ring at four-thirty in the morning, and from +the length of time it continued to ring I judged that it +takes the Swiss sinner a good while to get the invitation +through his head. Most church-bells in the world +are of poor quality, and have a harsh and rasping +sound which upsets the temper and produces much sin, +but the St. Nicholas bell is a good deal the worst one +that has been contrived yet, and is peculiarly maddening +in its operation. Still, it may have its right and its +excuse to exist, for the community is poor and not every +citizen can afford a clock, perhaps; but there cannot be +any excuse for our church-bells at home, for their is no +family in America without a clock, and consequently there +is no fair pretext for the usual Sunday medley of dreadful +sounds that issues from our steeples. There is much more +profanity in America on Sunday than is all in the other six +days of the week put together, and it is of a more bitter +and malignant character than the week-day profanity, too. +It is produced by the cracked-pot clangor of the cheap +church-bells. + +We build our churches almost without regard to cost; +we rear an edifice which is an adornment to the town, and we +gild it, and fresco it, and mortgage it, and do everything +we can think of to perfect it, and then spoil it all by +putting a bell on it which afflicts everybody who hears it, +giving some the headache, others St. Vitus's dance, +and the rest the blind staggers. + +An American village at ten o'clock on a summer Sunday is +the quietest and peacefulest and holiest thing in nature; +but it is a pretty different thing half an hour later. +Mr. Poe's poem of the "Bells" stands incomplete to this day; +but it is well enough that it is so, for the public reciter +or "reader" who goes around trying to imitate the sounds +of the various sorts of bells with his voice would find +himself "up a stump" when he got to the church-bell +--as Joseph Addison would say. The church is always trying +to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea +to reform itself a little, by way of example. It is still +clinging to one or two things which were useful once, +but which are not useful now, neither are they ornamental. +One is the bell-ringing to remind a clock-caked town +that it is church-time, and another is the reading from +the pulpit of a tedious list of "notices" which everybody +who is interested has already read in the newspaper. +The clergyman even reads the hymn through--a relic +of an ancient time when hymn-books are scarce and costly; +but everybody has a hymn-book, now, and so the public reading +is no longer necessary. It is not merely unnecessary, +it is generally painful; for the average clergyman could +not fire into his congregation with a shotgun and hit a worse +reader than himself, unless the weapon scattered shamefully. +I am not meaning to be flippant and irreverent, I am only +meaning to be truthful. The average clergyman, in all +countries and of all denominations, is a very bad reader. +One would think he would at least learn how to read +the Lord's Prayer, by and by, but it is not so. He races +through it as if he thought the quicker he got it in, +the sooner it would be answered. A person who does not +appreciate the exceeding value of pauses, and does not know +how to measure their duration judiciously, cannot render +the grand simplicity and dignity of a composition like +that effectively. + +We took a tolerably early breakfast, and tramped off +toward Zermatt through the reeking lanes of the village, +glad to get away from that bell. By and by we had a fine +spectacle on our right. It was the wall-like butt end of a +huge glacier, which looked down on us from an Alpine height +which was well up in the blue sky. It was an astonishing +amount of ice to be compacted together in one mass. +We ciphered upon it and decided that it was not less than +several hundred feet from the base of the wall of solid +ice to the top of it--Harris believed it was really +twice that. We judged that if St. Paul's, St. Peter's, +the Great Pyramid, the Strasburg Cathedral and the Capitol +in Washington were clustered against that wall, a man +sitting on its upper edge could not hang his hat on the top +of any one of them without reaching down three or four +hundred feet--a thing which, of course, no man could do. + +To me, that mighty glacier was very beautiful. I did +not imagine that anybody could find fault with it; but I +was mistaken. Harris had been snarling for several days. +He was a rabid Protestant, and he was always saying: + +"In the Protestant cantons you never see such poverty +and dirt and squalor as you do in this Catholic one; +you never see the lanes and alleys flowing with foulness; +you never see such wretched little sties of houses; +you never see an inverted tin turnip on top of a church +for a dome; and as for a church-bell, why, you never hear +a church-bell at all." + +All this morning he had been finding fault, straight along. +First it was with the mud. He said, "It ain't muddy in a +Protestant canton when it rains." Then it was with the dogs: +"They don't have those lop-eared dogs in a Protestant canton." +Then it was with the roads: "They don't leave the roads +to make themselves in a Protestant canton, the people make +them--and they make a road that IS a road, too." Next it +was the goats: "You never see a goat shedding tears +in a Protestant canton--a goat, there, is one of the +cheerfulest objects in nature." Next it was the chamois: +"You never see a Protestant chamois act like one of these +--they take a bite or two and go; but these fellows camp +with you and stay." Then it was the guide-boards: "In +a Protestant canton you couldn't get lost if you wanted to, +but you never see a guide-board in a Catholic canton." +Next, "You never see any flower-boxes in the windows, +here--never anything but now and then a cat--a torpid one; +but you take a Protestant canton: windows perfectly lovely +with flowers--and as for cats, there's just acres of them. +These folks in this canton leave a road to make itself, +and then fine you three francs if you 'trot' over it +--as if a horse could trot over such a sarcasm of a road." +Next about the goiter: "THEY talk about goiter!--I haven't +seen a goiter in this whole canton that I couldn't put +in a hat." + +He had growled at everything, but I judged it would puzzle +him to find anything the matter with this majestic glacier. +I intimated as much; but he was ready, and said with surly +discontent: "You ought to see them in the Protestant cantons." + +This irritated me. But I concealed the feeling, and asked: + +"What is the matter with this one?" + +"Matter? Why, it ain't in any kind of condition. +They never take any care of a glacier here. The moraine +has been spilling gravel around it, and got it all dirty." + +"Why, man, THEY can't help that." + +"THEY? You're right. That is, they WON'T. They could +if they wanted to. You never see a speck of dirt +on a Protestant glacier. Look at the Rhone glacier. +It is fifteen miles long, and seven hundred feet think. +If this was a Protestant glacier you wouldn't see it looking +like this, I can tell you." + +"That is nonsense. What would they do with it?" + +"They would whitewash it. They always do." + +I did not believe a word of this, but rather than have +trouble I let it go; for it is a waste of breath to argue +with a bigot. I even doubted if the Rhone glacier WAS +in a Protestant canton; but I did not know, so I could +not make anything by contradicting a man who would +probably put me down at once with manufactured evidence. + +About nine miles from St. Nicholas we crossed a bridge +over the raging torrent of the Visp, and came to a log +strip of flimsy fencing which was pretending to secure +people from tumbling over a perpendicular wall forty feet +high and into the river. Three children were approaching; +one of them, a little girl, about eight years old, +was running; when pretty close to us she stumbled and fell, +and her feet shot under the rail of the fence and for a +moment projected over the stream. It gave us a sharp shock, +for we thought she was gone, sure, for the ground slanted +steeply, and to save herself seemed a sheer impossibility; +but she managed to scramble up, and ran by us laughing. + +We went forward and examined the place and saw the long +tracks which her feet had made in the dirt when they +darted over the verge. If she had finished her trip she +would have struck some big rocks in the edge of the water, +and then the torrent would have snatched her downstream +among the half-covered boulders and she would have been +pounded to pulp in two minutes. We had come exceedingly +near witnessing her death. + +And now Harris's contrary nature and inborn selfishness +were striking manifested. He has no spirit of self-denial. +He began straight off, and continued for an hour, +to express his gratitude that the child was not destroyed. +I never saw such a man. That was the kind of person he was; +just so HE was gratified, he never cared anything about +anybody else. I had noticed that trait in him, over and +over again. Often, of course, it was mere heedlessness, +mere want of reflection. Doubtless this may have been +the case in most instances, but it was not the less hard +to bar on that account--and after all, its bottom, +its groundwork, was selfishness. There is no avoiding +that conclusion. In the instance under consideration, +I did think the indecency of running on in that way might +occur to him; but no, the child was saved and he was glad, +that was sufficient--he cared not a straw for MY feelings, +or my loss of such a literary plum, snatched from my +very mouth at the instant it was ready to drop into it. +His selfishness was sufficient to place his own gratification +in being spared suffering clear before all concern for me, +his friend. Apparently, he did not once reflect upon the +valuable details which would have fallen like a windfall +to me: fishing the child out--witnessing the surprise of +the family and the stir the thing would have made among the +peasants--then a Swiss funeral--then the roadside monument, +to be paid for by us and have our names mentioned in it. +And we should have gone into Baedeker and been immortal. +I was silent. I was too much hurt to complain. If he could +act so, and be so heedless and so frivolous at such a time, +and actually seem to glory in it, after all I had done for him, +I would have cut my hand off before I would let him see +that I was wounded. + +We were approaching Zermatt; consequently, we were +approaching the renowned Matterhorn. A month before, +this mountain had been only a name to us, but latterly +we had been moving through a steadily thickening double +row of pictures of it, done in oil, water, chromo, wood, +steel, copper, crayon, and photography, and so it had at +length become a shape to us--and a very distinct, decided, +and familiar one, too. We were expecting to recognize +that mountain whenever or wherever we should run across it. +We were not deceived. The monarch was far away when we +first saw him, but there was no such thing as mistaking him. +He has the rare peculiarity of standing by himself; +he is peculiarly steep, too, and is also most oddly shaped. +He towers into the sky like a colossal wedge, with the +upper third of its blade bent a little to the left. +The broad base of this monster wedge is planted upon +a grand glacier-paved Alpine platform whose elevation +is ten thousand feet above sea-level; as the wedge itself +is some five thousand feet high, it follows that its +apex is about fifteen thousand feet above sea-level. +So the whole bulk of this stately piece of rock, this +sky-cleaving monolith, is above the line of eternal snow. +Yet while all its giant neighbors have the look of being +built of solid snow, from their waists up, the Matterhorn +stands black and naked and forbidding, the year round, +or merely powdered or streaked with white in places, +for its sides are so steep that the snow cannot stay there. +Its strange form, its august isolation, and its majestic +unkinship with its own kind, make it--so to speak--the Napoleon +of the mountain world. "Grand, gloomy, and peculiar," +is a phrase which fits it as aptly as it fitted the great +captain. + +Think of a monument a mile high, standing on a pedestal +two miles high! This is what the Matterhorn is--a monument. +Its office, henceforth, for all time, will be to keep +watch and ward over the secret resting-place of the young +Lord Douglas, who, in 1865, was precipitated from the +summit over a precipice four thousand feet high, and never +seen again. No man ever had such a monument as this before; +the most imposing of the world's other monuments are +but atoms compared to it; and they will perish, and their +places will pass from memory, but this will remain. [1] + +1. The accident which cost Lord Douglas his life (see + Chapter xii) also cost the lives of three other men. + These three fell four-fifths of a mile, and their bodies + were afterward found, lying side by side, upon a glacier, + whence they were borne to Zermatt and buried in the +churchyard. + The remains of Lord Douglas have never been found. + The secret of his sepulture, like that of Moses, must remain + a mystery always. + +A walk from St. Nicholas to Zermatt is a wonderful experience. +Nature is built on a stupendous plan in that region. +One marches continually between walls that are piled +into the skies, with their upper heights broken into +a confusion of sublime shapes that gleam white and cold +against the background of blue; and here and there one +sees a big glacier displaying its grandeurs on the top +of a precipice, or a graceful cascade leaping and flashing +down the green declivities. There is nothing tame, +or cheap, or trivial--it is all magnificent. That short +valley is a picture-gallery of a notable kind, for it +contains no mediocrities; from end to end the Creator +has hung it with His masterpieces. + +We made Zermatt at three in the afternoon, nine hours out +from St. Nicholas. Distance, by guide-book, twelve miles; +by pedometer seventy-two. We were in the heart and home +of the mountain-climbers, now, as all visible things +testified. The snow-peaks did not hold themselves aloof, +in aristocratic reserve; they nestled close around, +in a friendly, sociable way; guides, with the ropes and +axes and other implements of their fearful calling slung +about their persons, roosted in a long line upon a stone +wall in front of the hotel, and waited for customers; +sun-burnt climbers, in mountaineering costume, and followed +by their guides and porters, arrived from time to time, +from breakneck expeditions among the peaks and glaciers +of the High Alps; male and female tourists, on mules, +filed by, in a continuous procession, hotelward-bound from +wild adventures which would grow in grandeur very time +they were described at the English or American fireside, +and at last outgrow the possible itself. + +We were not dreaming; this was not a make-believe home +of the Alp-climber, created by our heated imaginations; +no, for here was Mr. Girdlestone himself, the famous +Englishman who hunts his way to the most formidable Alpine +summits without a guide. I was not equal to imagining +a Girdlestone; it was all I could do to even realize him, +while looking straight at him at short range. I would rather +face whole Hyde Parks of artillery than the ghastly forms +of death which he has faced among the peaks and precipices +of the mountains. There is probably no pleasure equal +to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is +a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can +find pleasure in it. I have not jumped to this conclusion; +I have traveled to it per gravel-train, so to speak. +I have thought the thing all out, and am quite sure I +am right. A born climber's appetite for climbing is hard +to satisfy; when it comes upon him he is like a starving +man with a feast before him; he may have other business +on hand, but it must wait. Mr. Girdlestone had had +his usual summer holiday in the Alps, and had spent it +in his usual way, hunting for unique chances to break +his neck; his vacation was over, and his luggage packed +for England, but all of a sudden a hunger had come upon +him to climb the tremendous Weisshorn once more, for he +had heard of a new and utterly impossible route up it. +His baggage was unpacked at once, and now he and a friend, +laden with knapsacks, ice-axes, coils of rope, and canteens +of milk, were just setting out. They would spend +the night high up among the snows, somewhere, and get +up at two in the morning and finish the enterprise. +I had a strong desire to go with them, but forced it down +--a feat which Mr. Girdlestone, with all his fortitude, +could not do. + +Even ladies catch the climbing mania, and are unable to +throw it off. A famous climber, of that sex, had attempted +the Weisshorn a few days before our arrival, and she +and her guides had lost their way in a snow-storm high up +among the peaks and glaciers and been forced to wander +around a good while before they could find a way down. +When this lady reached the bottom, she had been on her +feet twenty-three hours! + +Our guides, hired on the Gemmi, were already at Zermatt +when we reached there. So there was nothing to interfere +with our getting up an adventure whenever we should +choose the time and the object. I resolved to devote +my first evening in Zermatt to studying up the subject +of Alpine climbing, by way of preparation. + +I read several books, and here are some of the things +I found out. One's shoes must be strong and heavy, +and have pointed hobnails in them. The alpenstock +must be of the best wood, for if it should break, +loss of life might be the result. One should carry an ax, +to cut steps in the ice with, on the great heights. +There must be a ladder, for there are steep bits of rock +which can be surmounted with this instrument--or this +utensil--but could not be surmounted without it; +such an obstruction has compelled the tourist to waste +hours hunting another route, when a ladder would have +saved him all trouble. One must have from one hundred +and fifty to five hundred feet of strong rope, to be used +in lowering the party down steep declivities which are +too steep and smooth to be traversed in any other way. +One must have a steel hook, on another rope--a very +useful thing; for when one is ascending and comes to a low +bluff which is yet too high for the ladder, he swings +this rope aloft like a lasso, the hook catches at the top +of the bluff, and then the tourist climbs the rope, +hand over hand--being always particular to try and forget +that if the hook gives way he will never stop falling +till he arrives in some part of Switzerland where they +are not expecting him. Another important thing--there +must be a rope to tie the whole party together with, +so that if one falls from a mountain or down a bottomless +chasm in a glacier, the others may brace back on the rope +and save him. One must have a silk veil, to protect +his face from snow, sleet, hail and gale, and colored +goggles to protect his eyes from that dangerous enemy, +snow-blindness. Finally, there must be some porters, +to carry provisions, wine and scientific instruments, +and also blanket bags for the party to sleep in. + +I closed my readings with a fearful adventure which +Mr. Whymper once had on the Matterhorn when he was prowling +around alone, five thousand feet above the town of Breil. +He was edging his way gingerly around the corner of a +precipice where the upper edge of a sharp declivity +of ice-glazed snow joined it. This declivity swept +down a couple of hundred feet, into a gully which curved +around and ended at a precipice eight hundred feet high, +overlooking a glacier. His foot slipped, and he fell. + +He says: + +"My knapsack brought my head down first, and I pitched into +some rocks about a dozen feet below; they caught something, +and tumbled me off the edge, head over heels, into the gully; +the baton was dashed from my hands, and I whirled downward +in a series of bounds, each longer than the last; now over ice, +now into rocks, striking my head four or five times, +each time with increased force. The last bound sent me +spinning through the air in a leap of fifty or sixty feet, +from one side of the gully to the other, and I struck +the rocks, luckily, with the whole of my left side. +They caught my clothes for a moment, and I fell back on +to the snow with motion arrested. My head fortunately +came the right side up, and a few frantic catches brought +me to a halt, in the neck of the gully and on the verge +of the precipice. Baton, hat, and veil skimmed by +and disappeared, and the crash of the rocks--which I had +started--as they fell on to the glacier, told how narrow +had been the escape from utter destruction. As it was, +I fell nearly two hundred feet in seven or eight bounds. +Ten feet more would have taken me in one gigantic leaps +of eight hundred feet on to the glacier below. + +"The situation was sufficiently serious. The rocks could +not be let go for a moment, and the blood was spurting +out of more than twenty cuts. The most serious ones were +in the head, and I vainly tried to close them with one hand, +while holding on with the other. It was useless; +the blood gushed out in blinding jets at each pulsation. +At last, in a moment of inspiration, I kicked out a big +lump of snow and struck it as plaster on my head. +The idea was a happy one, and the flow of blood diminished. +Then, scrambling up, I got, not a moment too soon, to a +place of safety, and fainted away. The sun was setting +when consciousness returned, and it was pitch-dark before +the Great Staircase was descended; but by a combination +of luck and care, the whole four thousand seven hundred +feet of descent to Breil was accomplished without a slip, +or once missing the way." + +His wounds kept him abed some days. Then he got up +and climbed that mountain again. That is the way with +a true Alp-climber; the more fun he has, the more he wants. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII +[Our Imposing Column Starts Upward] + +After I had finished my readings, I was no longer myself; +I was tranced, uplifted, intoxicated, by the almost +incredible perils and adventures I had been following +my authors through, and the triumphs I had been sharing +with them. I sat silent some time, then turned to Harris +and said: + +"My mind is made up." + +Something in my tone struck him: and when he glanced +at my eye and read what was written there, his face +paled perceptibly. He hesitated a moment, then said: + +"Speak." + +I answered, with perfect calmness: + +"I will ascend the Riffelberg." + +If I had shot my poor friend he could not have fallen from +his chair more suddenly. If I had been his father he could +not have pleaded harder to get me to give up my purpose. +But I turned a deaf ear to all he said. When he perceived +at last that nothing could alter my determination, +he ceased to urge, and for a while the deep silence was +broken only by his sobs. I sat in marble resolution, +with my eyes fixed upon vacancy, for in spirit I was already +wrestling with the perils of the mountains, and my friend +sat gazing at me in adoring admiration through his tears. +At last he threw himself upon me in a loving embrace and +exclaimed in broken tones: + +"Your Harris will never desert you. We will die together." + +I cheered the noble fellow with praises, and soon his +fears were forgotten and he was eager for the adventure. +He wanted to summon the guides at once and leave at +two in the morning, as he supposed the custom was; +but I explained that nobody was looking at that hour; +and that the start in the dark was not usually made from +the village but from the first night's resting-place +on the mountain side. I said we would leave the village +at 3 or 4 P.M. on the morrow; meantime he could notify +the guides, and also let the public know of the attempt +which we proposed to make. + +I went to bed, but not to sleep. No man can sleep when he +is about to undertake one of these Alpine exploits. +I tossed feverishly all night long, and was glad enough +when I heard the clock strike half past eleven and knew it +was time to get up for dinner. I rose, jaded and rusty, +and went to the noon meal, where I found myself the center +of interest and curiosity; for the news was already abroad. +It is not easy to eat calmly when you are a lion; but it is +very pleasant, nevertheless. + +As usual, at Zermatt, when a great ascent is about to +be undertaken, everybody, native and foreign, laid aside +his own projects and took up a good position to observe +the start. The expedition consisted of 198 persons, +including the mules; or 205, including the cows. +As follows: + +CHIEFS OF SERVICE SUBORDINATES + +Myself 1 Veterinary Surgeon Mr. Harris 1 Butler 17 +Guides 12 Waiters 4 Surgeons 1 Footman 1 Geologist 1 +Barber 1 Botanist 1 Head Cook 3 Chaplains 9 Assistants +15 Barkeepers 1 Confectionery Artist 1 Latinist + +TRANSPORTATION, ETC. + +27 Porters 3 Coarse Washers and Ironers 44 Mules 1 Fine +ditto 44 Muleteers 7 Cows 2 Milkers + +Total, 154 men, 51 animals. Grand Total, 205. + +RATIONS, ETC. APPARATUS + +16 Cases Hams 25 Spring Mattresses 2 Barrels Flour 2 +Hair ditto 22 Barrels Whiskey Bedding for same 1 Barrel +Sugar 2 Mosquito-nets 1 Keg Lemons 29 Tents 2,000 Cigars +Scientific Instruments 1 Barrel Pies 97 Ice-axes 1 Ton +of Pemmican 5 Cases Dynamite 143 Pair Crutches 7 Cans +Nitroglycerin 2 Barrels Arnica 22 40-foot Ladders 1 Bale +of Lint 2 Miles of Rope 27 Kegs Paregoric 154 Umbrellas + +It was full four o'clock in the afternoon before my cavalcade +was entirely ready. At that hour it began to move. +In point of numbers and spectacular effect, it was the most +imposing expedition that had ever marched from Zermatt. + +I commanded the chief guide to arrange the men and animals +in single file, twelve feet apart, and lash them all +together on a strong rope. He objected that the first +two miles was a dead level, with plenty of room, and that +the rope was never used except in very dangerous places. +But I would not listen to that. My reading had taught +me that many serious accidents had happened in the Alps +simply from not having the people tied up soon enough; +I was not going to add one to the list. The guide then +obeyed my order. + +When the procession stood at ease, roped together, +and ready to move, I never saw a finer sight. It was 3,122 +feet long--over half a mile; every man and me was on foot, +and had on his green veil and his blue goggles, and his +white rag around his hat, and his coil of rope over one +shoulder and under the other, and his ice-ax in his belt, +and carried his alpenstock in his left hand, his umbrella +(closed) in his right, and his crutches slung at his back. +The burdens of the pack-mules and the horns of the cows +were decked with the Edelweiss and the Alpine rose. + +I and my agent were the only persons mounted. We were +in the post of danger in the extreme rear, and tied +securely to five guides apiece. Our armor-bearers carried +our ice-axes, alpenstocks, and other implements for us. +We were mounted upon very small donkeys, as a measure +of safety; in time of peril we could straighten our legs +and stand up, and let the donkey walk from under. +Still, I cannot recommend this sort of animal--at least +for excursions of mere pleasure--because his ears interrupt +the view. I and my agent possessed the regulation +mountaineering costumes, but concluded to leave them behind. +Out of respect for the great numbers of tourists of both +sexes who would be assembled in front of the hotels +to see us pass, and also out of respect for the many +tourists whom we expected to encounter on our expedition, +we decided to make the ascent in evening dress. + +We watered the caravan at the cold stream which rushes +down a trough near the end of the village, and soon +afterward left the haunts of civilization behind us. +About half past five o'clock we arrived at a bridge which +spans the Visp, and after throwing over a detachment to see +if it was safe, the caravan crossed without accident. +The way now led, by a gentle ascent, carpeted with +fresh green grass, to the church at Winkelmatten. +Without stopping to examine this edifice, I executed +a flank movement to the right and crossed the bridge +over the Findelenbach, after first testing its strength. +Here I deployed to the right again, and presently entered +an inviting stretch of meadowland which was unoccupied save +by a couple of deserted huts toward the furthest extremity. +These meadows offered an excellent camping-place. We +pitched our tents, supped, established a proper grade, +recorded the events of the day, and then went to bed. + +We rose at two in the morning and dressed by candle-light. It +was a dismal and chilly business. A few stars were shining, +but the general heavens were overcast, and the great shaft +of the Matterhorn was draped in a cable pall of clouds. +The chief guide advised a delay; he said he feared it +was going to rain. We waited until nine o'clock, and then +got away in tolerably clear weather. + +Our course led up some terrific steeps, densely wooded with +larches and cedars, and traversed by paths which the rains +had guttered and which were obstructed by loose stones. +To add to the danger and inconvenience, we were constantly +meeting returning tourists on foot and horseback, +and as constantly being crowded and battered by ascending +tourists who were in a hurry and wanted to get by. + +Our troubles thickened. About the middle of the afternoon +the seventeen guides called a halt and held a consultation. +After consulting an hour they said their first suspicion +remained intact--that is to say, they believed they +were lost. I asked if they did not KNOW it? No, they said, +they COULDN'T absolutely know whether they were lost or not, +because none of them had ever been in that part of the +country before. They had a strong instinct that they +were lost, but they had no proofs--except that they +did not know where they were. They had met no tourists +for some time, and they considered that a suspicious sign. + +Plainly we were in an ugly fix. The guides were naturally +unwilling to go alone and seek a way out of the difficulty; +so we all went together. For better security we moved +slow and cautiously, for the forest was very dense. +We did not move up the mountain, but around it, hoping to +strike across the old trail. Toward nightfall, when we +were about tired out, we came up against a rock as big +as a cottage. This barrier took all the remaining spirit +out of the men, and a panic of fear and despair ensued. +They moaned and wept, and said they should never see +their homes and their dear ones again. Then they began +to upbraid me for bringing them upon this fatal expedition. +Some even muttered threats against me. + +Clearly it was no time to show weakness. So I made +a speech in which I said that other Alp-climbers had been +in as perilous a position as this, and yet by courage +and perseverance had escaped. I promised to stand by them, +I promised to rescue them. I closed by saying we had plenty +of provisions to maintain us for quite a siege--and did they +suppose Zermatt would allow half a mile of men and mules +to mysteriously disappear during any considerable time, +right above their noses, and make no inquiries? No, +Zermatt would send out searching-expeditions and we should be +saved. + +This speech had a great effect. The men pitched the tents +with some little show of cheerfulness, and we were snugly +under cover when the night shut down. I now reaped +the reward of my wisdom in providing one article which is +not mentioned in any book of Alpine adventure but this. +I refer to the paregoric. But for that beneficent drug, +would have not one of those men slept a moment during that +fearful night. But for that gentle persuader they must +have tossed, unsoothed, the night through; for the whiskey +was for me. Yes, they would have risen in the morning +unfitted for their heavy task. As it was, everybody slept +but my agent and me--only we and the barkeepers. +I would not permit myself to sleep at such a time. +I considered myself responsible for all those lives. +I meant to be on hand and ready, in case of avalanches +up there, but I did not know it then. + +We watched the weather all through that awful night, +and kept an eye on the barometer, to be prepared for +the least change. There was not the slightest change +recorded by the instrument, during the whole time. +Words cannot describe the comfort that that friendly, +hopeful, steadfast thing was to me in that season +of trouble. It was a defective barometer, and had no hand +but the stationary brass pointer, but I did not know that +until afterward. If I should be in such a situation again, +I should not wish for any barometer but that one. + +All hands rose at two in the morning and took breakfast, +and as soon as it was light we roped ourselves together +and went at that rock. For some time we tried the hook-rope +and other means of scaling it, but without success--that is, +without perfect success. The hook caught once, and Harris +started up it hand over hand, but the hold broke and if +there had not happened to be a chaplain sitting underneath +at the time, Harris would certainly have been crippled. +As it was, it was the chaplain. He took to his crutches, +and I ordered the hook-rope to be laid aside. +It was too dangerous an implement where so many people +are standing around. + +We were puzzled for a while; then somebody thought of +the ladders. One of these was leaned against the rock, +and the men went up it tied together in couples. +Another ladder was sent up for use in descending. +At the end of half an hour everybody was over, and that rock +was conquered. We gave our first grand shout of triumph. +But the joy was short-lived, for somebody asked how we were +going to get the animals over. + +This was a serious difficulty; in fact, it was an impossibility. +The courage of the men began to waver immediately; once more +we were threatened with a panic. But when the danger +was most imminent, we were saved in a mysterious way. +A mule which had attracted attention from the beginning +by its disposition to experiment, tried to eat a five-pound +can of nitroglycerin. This happened right alongside +the rock. The explosion threw us all to the ground, +and covered us with dirt and debris; it frightened +us extremely, too, for the crash it made was deafening, +and the violence of the shock made the ground tremble. +However, we were grateful, for the rock was gone. +Its place was occupied by a new cellar, about thirty +feet across, by fifteen feet deep. The explosion was +heard as far as Zermatt; and an hour and a half afterward, +many citizens of that town were knocked down and quite +seriously injured by descending portions of mule meat, +frozen solid. This shows, better than any estimate +in figures, how high the experimenter went. + +We had nothing to do, now, but bridge the cellar and proceed +on our way. With a cheer the men went at their work. +I attended to the engineering, myself. I appointed a strong +detail to cut down trees with ice-axes and trim them for +piers to support the bridge. This was a slow business, +for ice-axes are not good to cut wood with. I caused +my piers to be firmly set up in ranks in the cellar, +and upon them I laid six of my forty-foot ladders, +side by side, and laid six more on top of them. +Upon this bridge I caused a bed of boughs to be spread, +and on top of the boughs a bed of earth six inches deep. +I stretched ropes upon either side to serve as railings, +and then my bridge was complete. A train of elephants +could have crossed it in safety and comfort. By nightfall +the caravan was on the other side and the ladders were +taken up. + +Next morning we went on in good spirits for a while, +though our way was slow and difficult, by reason of the +steep and rocky nature of the ground and the thickness +of the forest; but at last a dull despondency crept into +the men's faces and it was apparent that not only they, +but even the guides, were now convinced that we were lost. +The fact that we still met no tourists was a circumstance +that was but too significant. Another thing seemed to +suggest that we were not only lost, but very badly lost; +for there must surely be searching-parties on the road +before this time, yet we had seen no sign of them. + +Demoralization was spreading; something must be done, +and done quickly, too. Fortunately, I am not unfertile +in expedients. I contrived one now which commended itself +to all, for it promised well. I took three-quarters +of a mile of rope and fastened one end of it around +the waist of a guide, and told him to go find the road, +while the caravan waited. I instructed him to guide himself +back by the rope, in case of failure; in case of success, +he was to give the rope a series of violent jerks, +whereupon the Expedition would go to him at once. +He departed, and in two minutes had disappeared among +the trees. I payed out the rope myself, while everybody +watched the crawling thing with eager eyes. The rope +crept away quite slowly, at times, at other times with +some briskness. Twice or thrice we seemed to get the signal, +and a shout was just ready to break from the men's lips +when they perceived it was a false alarm. But at last, +when over half a mile of rope had slidden away, it stopped +gliding and stood absolutely still--one minute--two +minutes--three--while we held our breath and watched. + +Was the guide resting? Was he scanning the country from +some high point? Was he inquiring of a chance mountaineer? +Stop,--had he fainted from excess of fatigue and anxiety? + +This thought gave us a shock. I was in the very first act +of detailing an Expedition to succor him, when the cord +was assailed with a series of such frantic jerks that I +could hardly keep hold of it. The huzza that went up, +then, was good to hear. "Saved! saved!" was the word +that rang out, all down the long rank of the caravan. + +We rose up and started at once. We found the route to be +good enough for a while, but it began to grow difficult, +by and by, and this feature steadily increased. When we +judged we had gone half a mile, we momently expected +to see the guide; but no, he was not visible anywhere; +neither was he waiting, for the rope was still moving, +consequently he was doing the same. This argued that he +had not found the road, yet, but was marching to it +with some peasant. There was nothing for us to do but +plod along--and this we did. At the end of three hours +we were still plodding. This was not only mysterious, +but exasperating. And very fatiguing, too; for we had +tried hard, along at first, to catch up with the guide, +but had only fagged ourselves, in vain; for although he +was traveling slowly he was yet able to go faster than the +hampered caravan over such ground. + +At three in the afternoon we were nearly dead with +exhaustion--and still the rope was slowly gliding out. +The murmurs against the guide had been growing steadily, +and at last they were become loud and savage. +A mutiny ensued. The men refused to proceed. They declared +that we had been traveling over and over the same ground +all day, in a kind of circle. They demanded that our +end of the rope be made fast to a tree, so as to halt +the guide until we could overtake him and kill him. +This was not an unreasonable requirement, so I gave the order. + +As soon as the rope was tied, the Expedition moved +forward with that alacrity which the thirst for +vengeance usually inspires. But after a tiresome march +of almost half a mile, we came to a hill covered thick +with a crumbly rubbish of stones, and so steep that no +man of us all was now in a condition to climb it. +Every attempt failed, and ended in crippling somebody. +Within twenty minutes I had five men on crutches. +Whenever a climber tried to assist himself by the rope, +it yielded and let him tumble backward. The frequency +of this result suggested an idea to me. I ordered +the caravan to 'bout face and form in marching order; +I then made the tow-rope fast to the rear mule, and gave +the command: + +"Mark time--by the right flank--forward--march!" + +The procession began to move, to the impressive strains +of a battle-chant, and I said to myself, "Now, if the rope +don't break I judge THIS will fetch that guide into the camp." +I watched the rope gliding down the hill, and presently +when I was all fixed for triumph I was confronted +by a bitter disappointment; there was no guide tied +to the rope, it was only a very indignant old black ram. +The fury of the baffled Expedition exceeded all bounds. +They even wanted to wreak their unreasoning vengeance on this +innocent dumb brute. But I stood between them and their prey, +menaced by a bristling wall of ice-axes and alpenstocks, +and proclaimed that there was but one road to this murder, +and it was directly over my corpse. Even as I spoke I +saw that my doom was sealed, except a miracle supervened +to divert these madmen from their fell purpose. I see +the sickening wall of weapons now; I see that advancing +host as I saw it then, I see the hate in those cruel eyes; +I remember how I drooped my head upon my breast, +I feel again the sudden earthquake shock in my rear, +administered by the very ram I was sacrificing myself to save; +I hear once more the typhoon of laughter that burst from +the assaulting column as I clove it from van to rear +like a Sepoy shot from a Rodman gun. + +I was saved. Yes, I was saved, and by the merciful instinct +of ingratitude which nature had planted in the breast +of that treacherous beast. The grace which eloquence +had failed to work in those men's hearts, had been wrought +by a laugh. The ram was set free and my life was spared. + +We lived to find out that that guide had deserted us as soon +as he had placed a half-mile between himself and us. +To avert suspicion, he had judged it best that the line +should continue to move; so he caught that ram, and at +the time that he was sitting on it making the rope fast +to it, we were imagining that he was lying in a swoon, +overcome by fatigue and distress. When he allowed the ram +to get up it fell to plunging around, trying to rid itself +of the rope, and this was the signal which we had risen +up with glad shouts to obey. We had followed this ram +round and round in a circle all day--a thing which was +proven by the discovery that we had watered the Expedition +seven times at one and same spring in seven hours. +As expert a woodman as I am, I had somehow failed to notice +this until my attention was called to it by a hog. +This hog was always wallowing there, and as he was the +only hog we saw, his frequent repetition, together with +his unvarying similarity to himself, finally caused me +to reflect that he must be the same hog, and this led +me to the deduction that this must be the same spring, +also--which indeed it was. + +I made a note of this curious thing, as showing +in a striking manner the relative difference between +glacial action and the action of the hog. It is now +a well-established fact that glaciers move; I consider +that my observations go to show, with equal conclusiveness, +that a hog in a spring does not move. I shall be glad +to receive the opinions of other observers upon this point. + +To return, for an explanatory moment, to that guide, +and then I shall be done with him. After leaving the ram +tied to the rope, he had wandered at large a while, +and then happened to run across a cow. Judging that +a cow would naturally know more than a guide, he took +her by the tail, and the result justified his judgment. +She nibbled her leisurely way downhill till it was near +milking-time, then she struck for home and towed him +into Zermatt. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII +[I Conquer the Gorner Grat] + +We went into camp on that wild spot to which that ram +had brought us. The men were greatly fatigued. +Their conviction that we were lost was forgotten in the cheer +of a good supper, and before the reaction had a chance +to set in, I loaded them up with paregoric and put them to bed. + +Next morning I was considering in my mind our desperate +situation and trying to think of a remedy, when Harris +came to me with a Baedeker map which showed conclusively +that the mountain we were on was still in Switzerland--yes, +every part of it was in Switzerland. So we were not lost, +after all. This was an immense relief; it lifted the weight +of two such mountains from my breast. I immediately +had the news disseminated and the map was exhibited. +The effect was wonderful. As soon as the men saw with +their own eyes that they knew where they were, and that it +was only the summit that was lost and not themselves, +they cheered up instantly and said with one accord, +let the summit take care of itself. + +Our distresses being at an end, I now determined to rest +the men in camp and give the scientific department of the +Expedition a chance. First, I made a barometric observation, +to get our altitude, but I could not perceive that there +was any result. I knew, by my scientific reading, +that either thermometers or barometers ought to be boiled, +to make them accurate; I did not know which it was, +so I boiled them both. There was still no result; +so I examined these instruments and discovered that they +possessed radical blemishes: the barometer had no hand +but the brass pointer and the ball of the thermometer was +stuffed with tin-foil. I might have boiled those things +to rags, and never found out anything. + +I hunted up another barometer; it was new and perfect. +I boiled it half an hour in a pot of bean soup which +the cooks were making. The result was unexpected: the +instrument was not affecting at all, but there was such +a strong barometer taste to the soup that the head cook, +who was a most conscientious person, changed its name +in the bill of fare. The dish was so greatly liked by all, +that I ordered the cook to have barometer soup every day. +It was believed that the barometer might eventually +be injured, but I did not care for that. I had demonstrated +to my satisfaction that it could not tell how high +a mountain was, therefore I had no real use for it. +Changes in the weather I could take care of without it; +I did not wish to know when the weather was going to be good, +what I wanted to know was when it was going to be bad, +and this I could find out from Harris's corns. Harris had +had his corns tested and regulated at the government +observatory in Heidelberg, and one could depend upon them +with confidence. So I transferred the new barometer to +the cooking department, to be used for the official mess. +It was found that even a pretty fair article of soup could +be made from the defective barometer; so I allowed that one +to be transferred to the subordinate mess. + +I next boiled the thermometer, and got a most excellent result; +the mercury went up to about 200 degrees Fahrenheit. +In the opinion of the other scientists of the Expedition, +this seemed to indicate that we had attained the extraordinary +altitude of two hundred thousand feet above sea-level. +Science places the line of eternal snow at about ten thousand +feet above sea-level. There was no snow where we were, +consequently it was proven that the eternal snow-line +ceases somewhere above the ten-thousand-foot level and +does not begin any more. This was an interesting fact, +and one which had not been observed by any observer before. +It was as valuable as interesting, too, since it would open +up the deserted summits of the highest Alps to population +and agriculture. It was a proud thing to be where we were, +yet it caused us a pang to reflect that but for that ram we +might just as well been two hundred thousand feet higher. + +The success of my last experiment induced me to try an +experiment with my photographic apparatus. I got it out, +and boiled one of my cameras, but the thing was a failure; +it made the wood swell up and burst, and I could not see +that the lenses were any better than they were before. + +I now concluded to boil a guide. It might improve him, +it could not impair his usefulness. But I was not +allowed to proceed. Guides have no feeling for science, +and this one would not consent to be made uncomfortable +in its interest. + +In the midst of my scientific work, one of those +needless accidents happened which are always occurring +among the ignorant and thoughtless. A porter shot +at a chamois and missed it and crippled the Latinist. +This was not a serious matter to me, for a Latinist's +duties are as well performed on crutches as otherwise +--but the fact remained that if the Latinist had not +happened to be in the way a mule would have got +that load. That would have been quite another matter, +for when it comes down to a question of value there is +a palpable difference between a Latinist and a mule. +I could not depend on having a Latinist in the right +place every time; so, to make things safe, I ordered +that in the future the chamois must not be hunted within +limits of the camp with any other weapon than the forefinger. + +My nerves had hardly grown quiet after this affair when +they got another shake-up--one which utterly unmanned +me for a moment: a rumor swept suddenly through the camp +that one of the barkeepers had fallen over a precipice! + +However, it turned out that it was only a chaplain. +I had laid in an extra force of chaplains, purposely to +be prepared for emergencies like this, but by some +unaccountable oversight had come away rather short-handed +in the matter of barkeepers. + +On the following morning we moved on, well refreshed and in +good spirits. I remember this day with peculiar pleasure, +because it saw our road restored to us. Yes, we found +our road again, and in quite an extraordinary way. +We had plodded along some two hours and a half, when we came +up against a solid mass of rock about twenty feet high. +I did not need to be instructed by a mule this time. +I was already beginning to know more than any mule in +the Expedition. I at once put in a blast of dynamite, +and lifted that rock out of the way. But to my surprise +and mortification, I found that there had been a chalet +on top of it. + +I picked up such members of the family as fell in my vicinity, +and subordinates of my corps collected the rest. +None of these poor people were injured, happily, but they +were much annoyed. I explained to the head chaleteer +just how the thing happened, and that I was only searching +for the road, and would certainly have given him timely +notice if I had known he was up there. I said I had +meant no harm, and hoped I had not lowered myself in +his estimation by raising him a few rods in the air. +I said many other judicious things, and finally when I +offered to rebuild his chalet, and pay for the breakages, +and throw in the cellar, he was mollified and satisfied. +He hadn't any cellar at all, before; he would not have +as good a view, now, as formerly, but what he had lost +in view he had gained in cellar, by exact measurement. +He said there wasn't another hole like that in the mountains +--and he would have been right if the late mule had not tried +to eat up the nitroglycerin. + +I put a hundred and sixteen men at work, and they rebuilt +the chalet from its own debris in fifteen minutes. +It was a good deal more picturesque than it was before, +too. The man said we were now on the Feil-Stutz, above +the Schwegmatt--information which I was glad to get, +since it gave us our position to a degree of particularity +which we had not been accustomed to for a day or so. +We also learned that we were standing at the foot +of the Riffelberg proper, and that the initial chapter +of our work was completed. + +We had a fine view, from here, of the energetic Visp, +as it makes its first plunge into the world from under a huge +arch of solid ice, worn through the foot-wall of the great +Gorner Glacier; and we could also see the Furggenbach, +which is the outlet of the Furggen Glacier. + +The mule-road to the summit of the Riffelberg passed right +in front of the chalet, a circumstance which we almost +immediately noticed, because a procession of tourists was +filing along it pretty much all the time. [1] The chaleteer's +business consisted in furnishing refreshments to tourists. +My blast had interrupted this trade for a few minutes, +by breaking all the bottles on the place; but I gave +the man a lot of whiskey to sell for Alpine champagne, +and a lot of vinegar which would answer for Rhine wine, +consequently trade was soon as brisk as ever. + +1. "Pretty much" may not be elegant English, but it is + high time it was. There is no elegant word or phrase + which means just what it means.--M.T. + +Leaving the Expedition outside to rest, I quartered myself +in the chalet, with Harris, proposing to correct my journals +and scientific observations before continuing the ascent. +I had hardly begun my work when a tall, slender, vigorous +American youth of about twenty-three, who was on his +way down the mountain, entered and came toward me with +that breeze self-complacency which is the adolescent's +idea of the well-bred ease of the man of the world. +His hair was short and parted accurately in the middle, +and he had all the look of an American person who would +be likely to begin his signature with an initial, +and spell his middle name out. He introduced himself, +smiling a smirky smile borrowed from the courtiers +of the stage, extended a fair-skinned talon, and while +he gripped my hand in it he bent his body forward +three times at the hips, as the stage courtier does, +and said in the airiest and most condescending +and patronizing way--I quite remember his exact language: + +"Very glad to make your acquaintance, 'm sure; very glad indeed, +assure you. I've read all your little efforts and greatly +admired them, and when I heard you were here, I ..." + +I indicated a chair, and he sat down. This grandee was +the grandson of an American of considerable note in his day, +and not wholly forgotten yet--a man who came so near +being a great man that he was quite generally accounted +one while he lived. + +I slowly paced the floor, pondering scientific problems, +and heard this conversation: + +GRANDSON. First visit to Europe? + +HARRIS. Mine? Yes. + +G.S. (With a soft reminiscent sigh suggestive of bygone +joys that may be tasted in their freshness but once.) +Ah, I know what it is to you. A first visit!--ah, +the romance of it! I wish I could feel it again. + +H. Yes, I find it exceeds all my dreams. It is enchantment. +I go... + +G.S. (With a dainty gesture of the hand signifying "Spare +me your callow enthusiasms, good friend.") Yes, _I_ know, +I know; you go to cathedrals, and exclaim; and you drag +through league-long picture-galleries and exclaim; and you +stand here, and there, and yonder, upon historic ground, +and continue to exclaim; and you are permeated with +your first crude conceptions of Art, and are proud +and happy. Ah, yes, proud and happy--that expresses it. +Yes-yes, enjoy it--it is right--it is an innocent revel. + +H. And you? Don't you do these things now? + +G.S. I! Oh, that is VERY good! My dear sir, when you +are as old a traveler as I am, you will not ask such +a question as that. _I_ visit the regulation gallery, +moon around the regulation cathedral, do the worn round +of the regulation sights, YET?--Excuse me! + +H. Well, what DO you do, then? + +G.S. Do? I flit--and flit--for I am ever on the wing--but I +avoid the herd. Today I am in Paris, tomorrow in Berlin, +anon in Rome; but you would look for me in vain in the +galleries of the Louvre or the common resorts of the +gazers in those other capitals. If you would find me, +you must look in the unvisited nooks and corners where +others never think of going. One day you will find me +making myself at home in some obscure peasant's cabin, +another day you will find me in some forgotten castle +worshiping some little gem or art which the careless eye +has overlooked and which the unexperienced would despise; +again you will find me as guest in the inner sanctuaries +of palaces while the herd is content to get a hurried +glimpse of the unused chambers by feeing a servant. + +H. You are a GUEST in such places? + +G.S. And a welcoming one. + +H. It is surprising. How does it come? + +G.S. My grandfather's name is a passport to all the courts +in Europe. I have only to utter that name and every +door is open to me. I flit from court to court at my +own free will and pleasure, and am always welcome. +I am as much at home in the palaces of Europe as you are +among your relatives. I know every titled person in Europe, +I think. I have my pockets full of invitations all the time. +I am under promise to go to Italy, where I am to be the +guest of a succession of the noblest houses in the land. +In Berlin my life is a continued round of gaiety in the +imperial palace. It is the same, wherever I go. + +H. It must be very pleasant. But it must make Boston +seem a little slow when you are at home. + +G.S. Yes, of course it does. But I don't go home much. +There's no life there--little to feed a man's higher nature. +Boston's very narrow, you know. She doesn't know it, and you +couldn't convince her of it--so I say nothing when I'm +there: where's the use? Yes, Boston is very narrow, but she +has such a good opinion of herself that she can't see it. +A man who has traveled as much as I have, and seen as much +of the world, sees it plain enough, but he can't cure it, +you know, so the best is to leave it and seek a sphere +which is more in harmony with his tastes and culture. +I run across there, one a year, perhaps, when I have +nothing important on hand, but I'm very soon back again. +I spend my time in Europe. + +H. I see. You map out your plans and ... + +G.S. No, excuse me. I don't map out any plans. I simply +follow the inclination of the day. I am limited by no ties, +no requirements, I am not bound in any way. I am too old +a traveler to hamper myself with deliberate purposes. +I am simply a traveler--an inveterate traveler--a man of +the world, in a word--I can call myself by no other name. +I do not say, "I am going here, or I am going there"--I +say nothing at all, I only act. For instance, next week +you may find me the guest of a grandee of Spain, or you +may find me off for Venice, or flitting toward Dresden. +I shall probably go to Egypt presently; friends will say +to friends, "He is at the Nile cataracts"--and at that +very moment they will be surprised to learn that I'm away +off yonder in India somewhere. I am a constant surprise +to people. They are always saying, "Yes, he was in Jerusalem +when we heard of him last, but goodness knows where he +is now." + +Presently the Grandson rose to leave--discovered he +had an appointment with some Emperor, perhaps. He did +his graces over again: gripped me with one talon, +at arm's-length, pressed his hat against his stomach +with the other, bent his body in the middle three times, +murmuring: + +"Pleasure, 'm sure; great pleasure, 'm sure. Wish you +much success." + +Then he removed his gracious presence. It is a great +and solemn thing to have a grandfather. + +I have not purposed to misrepresent this boy in any way, +for what little indignation he excited in me soon +passed and left nothing behind it but compassion. +One cannot keep up a grudge against a vacuum. +I have tried to repeat this lad's very words; +if I have failed anywhere I have at least not failed +to reproduce the marrow and meaning of what he said. +He and the innocent chatterbox whom I met on the Swiss +lake are the most unique and interesting specimens of +Young America I came across during my foreign tramping. +I have made honest portraits of them, not caricatures. +The Grandson of twenty-three referred to himself five +or six times as an "old traveler," and as many as three +times (with a serene complacency which was maddening) +as a "man of the world." There was something very delicious +about his leaving Boston to her "narrowness," unreproved +and uninstructed. + +I formed the caravan in marching order, presently, +and after riding down the line to see that it was +properly roped together, gave the command to proceed. +In a little while the road carried us to open, grassy land. +We were above the troublesome forest, now, and had an +uninterrupted view, straight before us, of our summit +--the summit of the Riffelberg. + +We followed the mule-road, a zigzag course, now to the right, +now to the left, but always up, and always crowded and +incommoded by going and coming files of reckless tourists +who were never, in a single instance, tied together. +I was obliged to exert the utmost care and caution, +for in many places the road was not two yards wide, +and often the lower side of it sloped away in slanting +precipices eight and even nine feet deep. I had to +encourage the men constantly, to keep them from giving +way to their unmanly fears. + +We might have made the summit before night, but for a +delay caused by the loss of an umbrella. I was allowing +the umbrella to remain lost, but the men murmured, +and with reason, for in this exposed region we stood +in peculiar need of protection against avalanches; +so I went into camp and detached a strong party to go +after the missing article. + +The difficulties of the next morning were severe, +but our courage was high, for our goal was near. +At noon we conquered the last impediment--we stood +at last upon the summit, and without the loss of a +single man except the mule that ate the glycerin. +Our great achievement was achieved--the possibility of +the impossible was demonstrated, and Harris and I walked +proudly into the great dining-room of the Riffelberg +Hotel and stood our alpenstocks up in the corner. + +Yes, I had made the grand ascent; but it was a mistake +to do it in evening dress. The plug hats were battered, +the swallow-tails were fluttering rags, mud added no grace, +the general effect was unpleasant and even disreputable. + +There were about seventy-five tourists at the hotel +--mainly ladies and little children--and they gave us +an admiring welcome which paid us for all our privations +and sufferings. The ascent had been made, and the names +and dates now stand recorded on a stone monument there +to prove it to all future tourists. + +I boiled a thermometer and took an altitude, with a most +curious result: THE SUMMIT WAS NOT AS HIGH AS THE POINT ON +THE MOUNTAINSIDE WHERE I HAD TAKEN THE FIRST ALTITUDE. +Suspecting that I had made an important discovery, +I prepared to verify it. There happened to be a still +higher summit (called the Gorner Grat), above the hotel, +and notwithstanding the fact that it overlooks a glacier +from a dizzy height, and that the ascent is difficult +and dangerous, I resolved to venture up there and boil +a thermometer. So I sent a strong party, with some +borrowed hoes, in charge of two chiefs of service, to dig +a stairway in the soil all the way up, and this I ascended, +roped to the guides. This breezy height was the summit +proper--so I accomplished even more than I had originally +purposed to do. This foolhardy exploit is recorded on +another stone monument. + +I boiled my thermometer, and sure enough, this spot, +which purported to be two thousand feet higher than the +locality of the hotel, turned out to be nine thousand +feet LOWER. Thus the fact was clearly demonstrated that, +ABOVE A CERTAIN POINT, THE HIGHER A POINT SEEMS TO BE, +THE LOWER IT ACTUALLY IS. Our ascent itself was a +great achievement, but this contribution to science was +an inconceivably greater matter. + +Cavilers object that water boils at a lower and lower +temperature the higher and higher you go, and hence the +apparent anomaly. I answer that I do not base my theory +upon what the boiling water does, but upon what a boiled +thermometer says. You can't go behind the thermometer. + +I had a magnificent view of Monte Rosa, and apparently +all the rest of the Alpine world, from that high place. +All the circling horizon was piled high with a mighty +tumult of snowy crests. One might have imagined he +saw before him the tented camps of a beleaguering host +of Brobdingnagians. + +But lonely, conspicuous, and superb, rose that wonderful +upright wedge, the Matterhorn. Its precipitous sides were +powdered over with snow, and the upper half hidden in thick +clouds which now and then dissolved to cobweb films and gave +brief glimpses of the imposing tower as through a veil. +[2] A little later the Matterhorn took to himself the +semblance of a volcano; he was stripped naked to his apex +--around this circled vast wreaths of white cloud which strung +slowly out and streamed away slantwise toward the sun, +a twenty-mile stretch of rolling and tumbling vapor, +and looking just as if it were pouring out of a crater. +Later again, one of the mountain's sides was clean and clear, +and another side densely clothed from base to summit in +thick smokelike cloud which feathered off and flew around +the shaft's sharp edge like the smoke around the corners of +a burning building. The Matterhorn is always experimenting, +and always gets up fine effects, too. In the sunset, +when all the lower world is palled in gloom, it points +toward heaven out of the pervading blackness like a finger +of fire. In the sunrise--well, they say it is very fine +in the sunrise. + +2. NOTE.--I had the very unusual luck to catch one little + momentary glimpse of the Matterhorn wholly unencumbered + by clouds. I leveled my photographic apparatus at it + without the loss of an instant, and should have got + an elegant picture if my donkey had not interfered. + It was my purpose to draw this photograph all by myself + for my book, but was obliged to put the mountain part + of it into the hands of the professional artist because + I found I could not do landscape well. + +Authorities agree that there is no such tremendous "layout" +of snowy Alpine magnitude, grandeur, and sublimity to be +seen from any other accessible point as the tourist may see +from the summit of the Riffelberg. Therefore, let the +tourist rope himself up and go there; for I have shown +that with nerve, caution, and judgment, the thing can be done. + +I wish to add one remark, here--in parentheses, so to speak +--suggested by the word "snowy," which I have just used. +We have all seen hills and mountains and levels with snow +on them, and so we think we know all the aspects and +effects produced by snow. But indeed we do not until +we have seen the Alps. Possibly mass and distance add +something--at any rate, something IS added. Among other +noticeable things, there is a dazzling, intense whiteness +about the distant Alpine snow, when the sun is on it, +which one recognizes as peculiar, and not familiar to +the eye. The snow which one is accustomed to has a tint +to it--painters usually give it a bluish cast--but there +is no perceptible tint to the distant Alpine snow when it +is trying to look its whitest. As to the unimaginable +splendor of it when the sun is blazing down on it--well, +it simply IS unimaginable. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX +[We Travel by Glacier] + +A guide-book is a queer thing. The reader has just seen +what a man who undertakes the great ascent from Zermatt +to the Riffelberg Hotel must experience. Yet Baedeker +makes these strange statements concerning this matter: + +1. Distance--3 hours. +2. The road cannot be mistaken. +3. Guide unnecessary. +4. Distance from Riffelberg Hotel to the Gorner Grat, + one hour and a half. +5. Ascent simple and easy. Guide unnecessary. +6. Elevation of Zermatt above sea-level, 5,315 feet. +7. Elevation of Riffelberg Hotel above sea-level, + 8,429 feet. +8. Elevation of the Gorner Grat above sea-level, 10,289 feet. + +I have pretty effectually throttled these errors by sending +him the following demonstrated facts: + +1. Distance from Zermatt to Riffelberg Hotel, 7 days. +2. The road CAN be mistaken. If I am the first that did it, + I want the credit of it, too. +3. Guides ARE necessary, for none but a native can read + those finger-boards. +4. The estimate of the elevation of the several localities + above sea-level is pretty correct--for Baedeker. + He only misses it about a hundred and eighty or ninety + thousand feet. + +I found my arnica invaluable. My men were suffering +excruciatingly, from the friction of sitting down so much. +During two or three days, not one of them was able to do +more than lie down or walk about; yet so effective was +the arnica, that on the fourth all were able to sit up. +I consider that, more than to anything else, I owe the +success of our great undertaking to arnica and paregoric. + +My men are being restored to health and strength, +my main perplexity, now, was how to get them down +the mountain again. I was not willing to expose the +brave fellows to the perils, fatigues, and hardships +of that fearful route again if it could be helped. +First I thought of balloons; but, of course, I had to +give that idea up, for balloons were not procurable. +I thought of several other expedients, but upon +consideration discarded them, for cause. But at last +I hit it. I was aware that the movement of glaciers +is an established fact, for I had read it in Baedeker; +so I resolved to take passage for Zermatt on the great +Gorner Glacier. + +Very good. The next thing was, how to get down the +glacier comfortably--for the mule-road to it was long, +and winding, and wearisome. I set my mind at work, +and soon thought out a plan. One looks straight down +upon the vast frozen river called the Gorner Glacier, +from the Gorner Grat, a sheer precipice twelve hundred +feet high. We had one hundred and fifty-four umbrellas +--and what is an umbrella but a parachute? + +I mentioned this noble idea to Harris, with enthusiasm, +and was about to order the Expedition to form on the +Gorner Grat, with their umbrellas, and prepare for +flight by platoons, each platoon in command of a guide, +when Harris stopped me and urged me not to be too hasty. +He asked me if this method of descending the Alps had +ever been tried before. I said no, I had not heard +of an instance. Then, in his opinion, it was a matter +of considerable gravity; in his opinion it would not be +well to send the whole command over the cliff at once; +a better way would be to send down a single individual, +first, and see how he fared. + +I saw the wisdom in this idea instantly. I said as much, +and thanked my agent cordially, and told him to take +his umbrella and try the thing right away, and wave +his hat when he got down, if he struck in a soft place, +and then I would ship the rest right along. + +Harris was greatly touched with this mark of confidence, +and said so, in a voice that had a perceptible tremble in it; +but at the same time he said he did not feel himself worthy +of so conspicuous a favor; that it might cause jealousy +in the command, for there were plenty who would not hesitate +to say he had used underhanded means to get the appointment, +whereas his conscience would bear him witness that he +had not sought it at all, nor even, in his secret heart, +desired it. + +I said these words did him extreme credit, but that he must not +throw away the imperishable distinction of being the first man +to descend an Alp per parachute, simply to save the feelings +of some envious underlings. No, I said, he MUST accept +the appointment--it was no longer an invitation, it was a +command. + +He thanked me with effusion, and said that putting +the thing in this form removed every objection. +He retired, and soon returned with his umbrella, his eye +flaming with gratitude and his cheeks pallid with joy. +Just then the head guide passed along. Harris's expression +changed to one of infinite tenderness, and he said: + +"That man did me a cruel injury four days ago, and I +said in my heart he should live to perceive and confess +that the only noble revenge a man can take upon his enemy +is to return good for evil. I resign in his favor. +Appoint him." + +I threw my arms around the generous fellow and said: + +"Harris, you are the noblest soul that lives. You shall +not regret this sublime act, neither shall the world +fail to know of it. You shall have opportunity far +transcending this one, too, if I live--remember that." + +I called the head guide to me and appointed him on +the spot. But the thing aroused no enthusiasm in him. +He did not take to the idea at all. + +He said: + +"Tie myself to an umbrella and jump over the Gorner +Grat! Excuse me, there are a great many pleasanter roads +to the devil than that." + +Upon a discussion of the subject with him, it appeared that he +considered the project distinctly and decidedly dangerous. +I was not convinced, yet I was not willing to try the +experiment in any risky way--that is, in a way that might +cripple the strength and efficiency of the Expedition. +I was about at my wits' end when it occurred to me to try +it on the Latinist. + +He was called in. But he declined, on the plea +of inexperience, diffidence in public, lack of curiosity, +and I didn't know what all. Another man declined +on account of a cold in the head; thought he ought +to avoid exposure. Another could not jump well--never +COULD jump well--did not believe he could jump so far +without long and patient practice. Another was afraid it +was going to rain, and his umbrella had a hole in it. +Everybody had an excuse. The result was what the reader +has by this time guessed: the most magnificent idea +that was ever conceived had to be abandoned, from sheer +lack of a person with enterprise enough to carry it out. +Yes, I actually had to give that thing up--while doubtless +I should live to see somebody use it and take all the credit from +me. + +Well, I had to go overland--there was no other way. +I marched the Expedition down the steep and tedious mule-path +and took up as good a position as I could upon the middle +of the glacier--because Baedeker said the middle part +travels the fastest. As a measure of economy, however, +I put some of the heavier baggage on the shoreward parts, +to go as slow freight. + +I waited and waited, but the glacier did not move. +Night was coming on, the darkness began to gather--still we +did not budge. It occurred to me then, that there might +be a time-table in Baedeker; it would be well to find out +the hours of starting. I called for the book--it could not +be found. Bradshaw would certainly contain a time-table; +but no Bradshaw could be found. + +Very well, I must make the best of the situation. So I +pitched the tents, picketed the animals, milked the cows, +had supper, paregoricked the men, established the watch, +and went to bed--with orders to call me as soon as we came +in sight of Zermatt. + +I awoke about half past ten next morning, and looked around. +We hadn't budged a peg! At first I could not understand it; +then it occurred to me that the old thing must be aground. +So I cut down some trees and rigged a spar on the starboard +and another on the port side, and fooled away upward of +three hours trying to spar her off. But it was no use. +She was half a mile wide and fifteen or twenty miles long, +and there was no telling just whereabouts she WAS aground. +The men began to show uneasiness, too, and presently they +came flying to me with ashy faces, saying she had sprung +a leak. + +Nothing but my cool behavior at this critical time saved us +from another panic. I order them to show me the place. +They led me to a spot where a huge boulder lay in a deep +pool of clear and brilliant water. It did look like +a pretty bad leak, but I kept that to myself. I made +a pump and set the men to work to pump out the glacier. +We made a success of it. I perceived, then, that it was not +a leak at all. This boulder had descended from a precipice +and stopped on the ice in the middle of the glacier, +and the sun had warmed it up, every day, and consequently +it had melted its way deeper and deeper into the ice, +until at last it reposed, as we had found it, in a deep +pool of the clearest and coldest water. + +Presently Baedeker was found again, and I hunted eagerly +for the time-table. There was none. The book simply said +the glacier was moving all the time. This was satisfactory, +so I shut up the book and chose a good position to view +the scenery as we passed along. I stood there some time +enjoying the trip, but at last it occurred to me that we did +not seem to be gaining any on the scenery. I said to myself, +"This confounded old thing's aground again, sure,"--and +opened Baedeker to see if I could run across any remedy +for these annoying interruptions. I soon found a sentence +which threw a dazzling light upon the matter. It said, +"The Gorner Glacier travels at an average rate of a little +less than an inch a day." I have seldom felt so outraged. +I have seldom had my confidence so wantonly betrayed. +I made a small calculation: One inch a day, say thirty +feet a year; estimated distance to Zermatt, three and +one-eighteenth miles. Time required to go by glacier, +A LITTLE OVER FIVE HUNDRED YEARS! I said to myself, "I can +WALK it quicker--and before I will patronize such a fraud +as this, I will do it." + +When I revealed to Harris the fact that the passenger part +of this glacier--the central part--the lightning-express part, +so to speak--was not due in Zermatt till the summer +of 2378, and that the baggage, coming along the slow edge, +would not arrive until some generations later, he burst +out with: + +"That is European management, all over! An inch a day--think +of that! Five hundred years to go a trifle over three miles! +But I am not a bit surprised. It's a Catholic glacier. +You can tell by the look of it. And the management." + +I said, no, I believed nothing but the extreme end of it +was in a Catholic canton. + +"Well, then, it's a government glacier," said Harris. +"It's all the same. Over here the government runs +everything--so everything's slow; slow, and ill-managed. But +with us, everything's done by private enterprise--and then +there ain't much lolling around, you can depend on it. +I wish Tom Scott could get his hands on this torpid old +slab once--you'd see it take a different gait from this." + +I said I was sure he would increase the speed, if there +was trade enough to justify it. + +"He'd MAKE trade," said Harris. "That's the difference +between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, +individuals do. Tom Scott would take all the trade; +in two years Gorner stock would go to two hundred, +and inside of two more you would see all the other glaciers +under the hammer for taxes." After a reflective pause, +Harris added, "A little less than an inch a day; a little +less than an INCH, mind you. Well, I'm losing my reverence +for glaciers." + +I was feeling much the same way myself. I have traveled +by canal-boat, ox-wagon, raft, and by the Ephesus and +Smyrna railway; but when it comes down to good solid +honest slow motion, I bet my money on the glacier. +As a means of passenger transportation, I consider +the glacier a failure; but as a vehicle of slow freight, +I think she fills the bill. In the matter of putting +the fine shades on that line of business, I judge she +could teach the Germans something. + +I ordered the men to break camp and prepare for the land +journey to Zermatt. At this moment a most interesting +find was made; a dark object, bedded in the glacial ice, +was cut out with the ice-axes, and it proved to be a piece +of the undressed skin of some animal--a hair trunk, perhaps; +but a close inspection disabled the hair-trunk theory, +and further discussion and examination exploded it +entirely--that is, in the opinion of all the scientists +except the one who had advanced it. This one clung +to his theory with affectionate fidelity characteristic +of originators of scientific theories, and afterward won +many of the first scientists of the age to his view, +by a very able pamphlet which he wrote, entitled, "Evidences +going to show that the hair trunk, in a wild state, +belonged to the early glacial period, and roamed the wastes +of chaos in the company with the cave-bear, primeval man, +and the other Ooelitics of the Old Silurian family." + +Each of our scientists had a theory of his own, and put +forward an animal of his own as a candidate for the skin. +I sided with the geologist of the Expedition in the +belief that this patch of skin had once helped to cover +a Siberian elephant, in some old forgotten age--but we +divided there, the geologist believing that this discovery +proved that Siberia had formerly been located where +Switzerland is now, whereas I held the opinion that it +merely proved that the primeval Swiss was not the dull +savage he is represented to have been, but was a being +of high intellectual development, who liked to go to the +menagerie. + +We arrived that evening, after many hardships and adventures, +in some fields close to the great ice-arch where the mad +Visp boils and surges out from under the foot of the +great Gorner Glacier, and here we camped, our perils over +and our magnificent undertaking successfully completed. +We marched into Zermatt the next day, and were received +with the most lavish honors and applause. A document, +signed and sealed by the authorities, was given to me +which established and endorsed the fact that I had made +the ascent of the Riffelberg. This I wear around my neck, +and it will be buried with me when I am no more. + + + +CHAPTER XL +[Piteous Relics at Chamonix] + +I am not so ignorant about glacial movement, now, as I +was when I took passage on the Gorner Glacier. +I have "read up" since. I am aware that these vast +bodies of ice do not travel at the same rate of speed; +while the Gorner Glacier makes less than an inch a day, +the Unter-Aar Glacier makes as much as eight; and still +other glaciers are said to go twelve, sixteen, and even +twenty inches a day. One writer says that the slowest +glacier travels twenty-give feet a year, and the fastest +four hundred. + +What is a glacier? It is easy to say it looks like a +frozen river which occupies the bed of a winding gorge +or gully between mountains. But that gives no notion +of its vastness. For it is sometimes six hundred +feet thick, and we are not accustomed to rivers six hundred +feet deep; no, our rivers are six feet, twenty feet, +and sometimes fifty feet deep; we are not quite able +to grasp so large a fact as an ice-river six hundred feet deep. + +The glacier's surface is not smooth and level, but has +deep swales and swelling elevations, and sometimes has +the look of a tossing sea whose turbulent billows were +frozen hard in the instant of their most violent motion; +the glacier's surface is not a flawless mass, but is a river +with cracks or crevices, some narrow, some gaping wide. +Many a man, the victim of a slip or a misstep, has plunged +down on of these and met his death. Men have been +fished out of them alive; but it was when they did not +go to a great depth; the cold of the great depths would +quickly stupefy a man, whether he was hurt or unhurt. +These cracks do not go straight down; one can seldom see +more than twenty to forty feet down them; consequently men +who have disappeared in them have been sought for, +in the hope that they had stopped within helping distance, +whereas their case, in most instances, had really been +hopeless from the beginning. + +In 1864 a party of tourists was descending Mont Blanc, +and while picking their way over one of the mighty glaciers +of that lofty region, roped together, as was proper, +a young porter disengaged himself from the line and +started across an ice-bridge which spanned a crevice. +It broke under him with a crash, and he disappeared. +The others could not see how deep he had gone, so it might +be worthwhile to try and rescue him. A brave young guide +named Michel Payot volunteered. + +Two ropes were made fast to his leather belt and he bore +the end of a third one in his hand to tie to the victim +in case he found him. He was lowered into the crevice, +he descended deeper and deeper between the clear blue +walls of solid ice, he approached a bend in the crack +and disappeared under it. Down, and still down, he went, +into this profound grave; when he had reached a depth +of eighty feet he passed under another bend in the crack, +and thence descended eighty feet lower, as between +perpendicular precipices. Arrived at this stage of one +hundred and sixty feet below the surface of the glacier, +he peered through the twilight dimness and perceived +that the chasm took another turn and stretched away at +a steep slant to unknown deeps, for its course was lost +in darkness. What a place that was to be in--especially +if that leather belt should break! The compression +of the belt threatened to suffocate the intrepid fellow; +he called to his friends to draw him up, but could not make +them hear. They still lowered him, deeper and deeper. +Then he jerked his third cord as vigorously as he could; +his friends understood, and dragged him out of those icy jaws +of death. + +Then they attached a bottle to a cord and sent it down +two hundred feet, but it found no bottom. It came up +covered with congelations--evidence enough that even if +the poor porter reached the bottom with unbroken bones, +a swift death from cold was sure, anyway. + +A glacier is a stupendous, ever-progressing, resistless plow. +It pushes ahead of its masses of boulders which are +packed together, and they stretch across the gorge, +right in front of it, like a long grave or a long, +sharp roof. This is called a moraine. It also shoves +out a moraine along each side of its course. + +Imposing as the modern glaciers are, they are not so +huge as were some that once existed. For instance, +Mr. Whymper says: + +"At some very remote period the Valley of Aosta was occupied +by a vast glacier, which flowed down its entire length from +Mont Blanc to the plain of Piedmont, remained stationary, +or nearly so, at its mouth for many centuries, and deposited +there enormous masses of debris. The length of this +glacier exceeded EIGHTY MILES, and it drained a basin +twenty-five to thirty-five miles across, bounded by the +highest mountains in the Alps. The great peaks rose +several thousand feet above the glaciers, and then, as now, +shattered by sun and frost, poured down their showers of +rocks and stones, in witness of which there are the immense +piles of angular fragments that constitute the moraines of Ivrea. + +"The moraines around Ivrea are of extraordinary dimensions. +That which was on the left bank of the glacier is +about THIRTEEN MILES long, and in some places rises +to a height of TWO THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FEET +above the floor of the valley! The terminal moraines +(those which are pushed in front of the glaciers) +cover something like twenty square miles of country. +At the mouth of the Valley of Aosta, the thickness of +the glacier must have been at least TWO THOUSAND feet, +and its width, at that part, FIVE MILES AND A QUARTER." + +It is not easy to get at a comprehension of a mass of ice +like that. If one could cleave off the butt end of such +a glacier--an oblong block two or three miles wide +by five and a quarter long and two thousand feet thick +--he could completely hide the city of New York under it, +and Trinity steeple would only stick up into it relatively +as far as a shingle-nail would stick up into the bottom +of a Saratoga trunk. + +"The boulders from Mont Blanc, upon the plain below Ivrea, +assure us that the glacier which transported them existed +for a prodigious length of time. Their present distance from +the cliffs from which they were derived is about 420,000 feet, +and if we assume that they traveled at the rate of 400 feet +per annum, their journey must have occupied them no less +than 1,055 years! In all probability they did not travel so +fast." + +Glaciers are sometimes hurried out of their characteristic +snail-pace. A marvelous spectacle is presented then. +Mr. Whymper refers to a case which occurred in Iceland +in 1721: + +"It seems that in the neighborhood of the mountain Kotlugja, +large bodies of water formed underneath, or within +the glaciers (either on account of the interior heat of +the earth, or from other causes), and at length acquired +irresistible power, tore the glaciers from their mooring on +the land, and swept them over every obstacle into the sea. +Prodigious masses of ice were thus borne for a distance +of about ten miles over land in the space of a few hours; +and their bulk was so enormous that they covered the sea +for seven miles from the shore, and remained aground +in six hundred feet of water! The denudation of the land +was upon a grand scale. All superficial accumulations were +swept away, and the bedrock was exposed. It was described, +in graphic language, how all irregularities and depressions +were obliterated, and a smooth surface of several miles' +area laid bare, and that this area had the appearance +of having been PLANED BY A PLANE." + +The account translated from the Icelandic says that the +mountainlike ruins of this majestic glacier so covered +the sea that as far as the eye could reach no open water +was discoverable, even from the highest peaks. A monster +wall or barrier of ice was built across a considerable +stretch of land, too, by this strange irruption: + +"One can form some idea of the altitude of this barrier +of ice when it is mentioned that from Hofdabrekka farm, +which lies high up on a fjeld, one could not see +Hjorleifshofdi opposite, which is a fell six hundred and +forty feet in height; but in order to do so had to clamber +up a mountain slope east of Hofdabrekka twelve hundred feet +high." + +These things will help the reader to understand why it is +that a man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel +tolerably insignificant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers +together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man +and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only +remain within the influence of their sublime presence long +enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work. + +The Alpine glaciers move--that is granted, now, by everybody. +But there was a time when people scoffed at the idea; +they said you might as well expect leagues of solid rock +to crawl along the ground as expect leagues of ice to do it. +But proof after proof as furnished, and the finally the +world had to believe. + +The wise men not only said the glacier moved, but they +timed its movement. They ciphered out a glacier's gait, +and then said confidently that it would travel just +so far in so many years. There is record of a striking +and curious example of the accuracy which may be attained +in these reckonings. + +In 1820 the ascent of Mont Blanc was attempted by a Russian +and two Englishmen, with seven guides. They had reached +a prodigious altitude, and were approaching the summit, +when an avalanche swept several of the party down a +sharp slope of two hundred feet and hurled five of them +(all guides) into one of the crevices of a glacier. +The life of one of the five was saved by a long barometer +which was strapped to his back--it bridged the crevice +and suspended him until help came. The alpenstock +or baton of another saved its owner in a similar way. +Three men were lost--Pierre Balmat, Pierre Carrier, +and Auguste Tairraz. They had been hurled down into the +fathomless great deeps of the crevice. + +Dr. Forbes, the English geologist, had made frequent visits +to the Mont Blanc region, and had given much attention +to the disputed question of the movement of glaciers. +During one of these visits he completed his estimates +of the rate of movement of the glacier which had swallowed +up the three guides, and uttered the prediction that the +glacier would deliver up its dead at the foot of the +mountain thirty-five years from the time of the accident, +or possibly forty. + +A dull, slow journey--a movement imperceptible to any eye +--but it was proceeding, nevertheless, and without cessation. +It was a journey which a rolling stone would make in a +few seconds--the lofty point of departure was visible +from the village below in the valley. + +The prediction cut curiously close to the truth; +forty-one years after the catastrophe, the remains +were cast forth at the foot of the glacier. + +I find an interesting account of the matter in the +HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC, by Stephen d'Arve. I will +condense this account, as follows: + +On the 12th of August, 1861, at the hour of the close of mass, +a guide arrived out of breath at the mairie of Chamonix, +and bearing on his shoulders a very lugubrious burden. +It was a sack filled with human remains which he had gathered +from the orifice of a crevice in the Glacier des Bossons. +He conjectured that these were remains of the victims +of the catastrophe of 1820, and a minute inquest, +immediately instituted by the local authorities, +soon demonstrated the correctness of his supposition. +The contents of the sack were spread upon a long table, +and officially inventoried, as follows: + +Portions of three human skulls. Several tufts of black and +blonde hair. A human jaw, furnished with fine white teeth. +A forearm and hand, all the fingers of the latter intact. +The flesh was white and fresh, and both the arm and hand +preserved a degree of flexibility in the articulations. + +The ring-finger had suffered a slight abrasion, and the +stain of the blood was still visible and unchanged after +forty-one years. A left foot, the flesh white and fresh. + +Along with these fragments were portions of waistcoats, hats, +hobnailed shoes, and other clothing; a wing of a pigeon, +with black feathers; a fragment of an alpenstock; +a tin lantern; and lastly, a boiled leg of mutton, +the only flesh among all the remains that exhaled an +unpleasant odor. The guide said that the mutton had no +odor when he took it from the glacier; an hour's exposure +to the sun had already begun the work of decomposition upon it. + +Persons were called for, to identify these poor pathetic relics, +and a touching scene ensured. Two men were still living +who had witnessed the grim catastrophe of nearly half +a century before--Marie Couttet (saved by his baton) +and Julien Davouassoux (saved by the barometer). These aged +men entered and approached the table. Davouassoux, more than +eighty years old, contemplated the mournful remains mutely +and with a vacant eye, for his intelligence and his memory +were torpid with age; but Couttet's faculties were still +perfect at seventy-two, and he exhibited strong emotion. He +said: + +"Pierre Balmat was fair; he wore a straw hat. This bit of skull, +with the tuft of blond hair, was his; this is his hat. +Pierre Carrier was very dark; this skull was his, and this +felt hat. This is Balmat's hand, I remember it so well!" +and the old man bent down and kissed it reverently, +then closed his fingers upon it in an affectionate grasp, +crying out, "I could never have dared to believe that +before quitting this world it would be granted me to +press once more the hand of one of those brave comrades, +the hand of my good friend Balmat." + +There is something weirdly pathetic about the picture +of that white-haired veteran greeting with his loving +handshake this friend who had been dead forty years. +When these hands had met last, they were alike in the +softness and freshness of youth; now, one was brown and +wrinkled and horny with age, while the other was still +as young and fair and blemishless as if those forty years +had come and gone in a single moment, leaving no mark +of their passage. Time had gone on, in the one case; +it had stood still in the other. A man who has not seen +a friend for a generation, keeps him in mind always as he +saw him last, and is somehow surprised, and is also shocked, +to see the aging change the years have wrought when he +sees him again. Marie Couttet's experience, in finding +his friend's hand unaltered from the image of it which he +had carried in his memory for forty years, is an experience +which stands alone in the history of man, perhaps. + +Couttet identified other relics: + +"This hat belonged to Auguste Tairraz. He carried +the cage of pigeons which we proposed to set free upon +the summit. Here is the wing of one of those pigeons. +And here is the fragment of my broken baton; it was by +grace of that baton that my life was saved. Who could +have told me that I should one day have the satisfaction +to look again upon this bit of wood that supported me above +the grave that swallowed up my unfortunate companions!" + +No portions of the body of Tairraz, other than a piece +of the skull, had been found. A diligent search was made, +but without result. However, another search was +instituted a year later, and this had better success. +Many fragments of clothing which had belonged to the lost +guides were discovered; also, part of a lantern, and a +green veil with blood-stains on it. But the interesting +feature was this: + +One of the searchers came suddenly upon a sleeved arm +projecting from a crevice in the ice-wall, with the hand +outstretched as if offering greeting! "The nails of this white +hand were still rosy, and the pose of the extended fingers +seemed to express an eloquent welcome to the long-lost light of +day." + +The hand and arm were alone; there was no trunk. +After being removed from the ice the flesh-tints quickly +faded out and the rosy nails took on the alabaster +hue of death. This was the third RIGHT hand found; +therefore, all three of the lost men were accounted for, +beyond cavil or question. + +Dr. Hamel was the Russian gentleman of the party which +made the ascent at the time of the famous disaster. +He left Chamonix as soon as he conveniently could after +the descent; and as he had shown a chilly indifference +about the calamity, and offered neither sympathy nor +assistance to the widows and orphans, he carried with +him the cordial execrations of the whole community. +Four months before the first remains were found, +a Chamonix guide named Balmat--a relative of one of +the lost men--was in London, and one day encountered +a hale old gentleman in the British Museum, who said: + +"I overheard your name. Are you from Chamonix, +Monsieur Balmat?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Haven't they found the bodies of my three guides, +yet? I am Dr. Hamel." + +"Alas, no, monsieur." + +"Well, you'll find them, sooner or later." + +"Yes, it is the opinion of Dr. Forbes and Mr. Tyndall, +that the glacier will sooner or later restore to us the +remains of the unfortunate victims." + +"Without a doubt, without a doubt. And it will be a great +thing for Chamonix, in the matter of attracting tourists. +You can get up a museum with those remains that will draw!" + +This savage idea has not improved the odor of Dr. Hamel's +name in Chamonix by any means. But after all, the man +was sound on human nature. His idea was conveyed +to the public officials of Chamonix, and they gravely +discussed it around the official council-table. They +were only prevented from carrying it into execution by +the determined opposition of the friends and descendants +of the lost guides, who insisted on giving the remains +Christian burial, and succeeded in their purpose. + +A close watch had to be kept upon all the poor remnants +and fragments, to prevent embezzlement. A few accessory +odds and ends were sold. Rags and scraps of the coarse +clothing were parted with at the rate equal to about +twenty dollars a yard; a piece of a lantern and one or +two other trifles brought nearly their weight in gold; +and an Englishman offered a pound sterling for a single +breeches-button. + + + +CHAPTER XLI +[The Fearful Disaster of 1865] + +One of the most memorable of all the Alpine catastrophes +was that of July, 1865, on the Matterhorn--already +sighted referred to, a few pages back. The details +of it are scarcely known in America. To the vast +majority of readers they are not known at all. +Mr. Whymper's account is the only authentic one. +I will import the chief portion of it into this book, +partly because of its intrinsic interest, and partly +because it gives such a vivid idea of what the perilous +pastime of Alp-climbing is. This was Mr. Whymper's +NINTH attempt during a series of years, to vanquish +that steep and stubborn pillar or rock; it succeeded, +the other eight were failures. No man had ever accomplished +the ascent before, though the attempts had been numerous. + +MR. WHYMPER'S NARRATIVE + +We started from Zermatt on the 13th of July, at half +past five, on a brilliant and perfectly cloudless morning. +We were eight in number--Croz (guide), old Peter +Taugwalder (guide) and his two sons; Lord F. Douglas, +Mr. Hadow, Rev. Mr. Hudson, and I. To insure steady +motion, one tourist and one native walked together. +The youngest Taugwalder fell to my share. The wine-bags +also fell to my lot to carry, and throughout the day, +after each drink, I replenished them secretly with water, +so that at the next halt they were found fuller than +before! This was considered a good omen, and little short +of miraculous. + +On the first day we did not intend to ascend to any +great height, and we mounted, accordingly, very leisurely. +Before twelve o'clock we had found a good position +for the tent, at a height of eleven thousand feet. +We passed the remaining hours of daylight--some basking +in the sunshine, some sketching, some collecting; +Hudson made tea, I coffee, and at length we retired, +each one to his blanket bag. + +We assembled together before dawn on the 14th +and started directly it was light enough to move. +One of the young Taugwalders returned to Zermatt. +In a few minutes we turned the rib which had intercepted +the view of the eastern face from our tent platform. +The whole of this great slope was now revealed, rising for +three thousand feet like a huge natural staircase. +Some parts were more, and others were less easy, but we +were not once brought to a halt by any serious impediment, +for when an obstruction was met in front it could always +be turned to the right or to the left. For the greater part +of the way there was no occasion, indeed, for the rope, +and sometimes Hudson led, sometimes myself. At six-twenty we +had attained a height of twelve thousand eight hundred feet, +and halted for half an hour; we then continued the ascent +without a break until nine-fifty-five, when we stopped +for fifty minutes, at a height of fourteen thousand feet. + +We had now arrived at the foot of that part which, seen from +the Riffelberg, seems perpendicular or overhanging. +We could no longer continue on the eastern side. For a little +distance we ascended by snow upon the ARE^TE--that is, +the ridge--then turned over to the right, or northern side. +The work became difficult, and required caution. In some places +there was little to hold; the general slope of the mountain +was LESS than forty degrees, and snow had accumulated in, +and had filled up, the interstices of the rock-face, leaving +only occasional fragments projecting here and there. +These were at times covered with a thin film of ice. +It was a place which any fair mountaineer might pass +in safety. We bore away nearly horizontally for about four +hundred feet, then ascended directly toward the summit +for about sixty feet, then doubled back to the ridge +which descends toward Zermatt. A long stride round +a rather awkward corner brought us to snow once more. +That last doubt vanished! The Matterhorn was ours! Nothing +but two hundred feet of easy snow remained to be surmounted. + +The higher we rose, the more intense became the excitement. +The slope eased off, at length we could be detached, +and Croz and I, dashed away, ran a neck-and-neck race, +which ended in a dead heat. At 1:40 P.M., the world was at +our feet, and the Matterhorn was conquered! + +The others arrived. Croz now took the tent-pole, and +planted it in the highest snow. "Yes," we said, "there is +the flag-staff, but where is the flag?" "Here it is," +he answered, pulling off his blouse and fixing it to the stick. +It made a poor flag, and there was no wind to float it out, +yet it was seen all around. They saw it at Zermatt--at +the Riffel--in the Val Tournanche... . + +We remained on the summit for one hour-- + +One crowded hour of glorious life. + +It passed away too quickly, and we began to prepare +for the descent. + +Hudson and I consulted as to the best and safest arrangement +of the party. We agreed that it was best for Croz +to go first, and Hadow second; Hudson, who was almost +equal to a guide in sureness of foot, wished to be third; +Lord Douglas was placed next, and old Peter, the strongest +of the remainder, after him. I suggested to Hudson +that we should attach a rope to the rocks on our arrival +at the difficult bit, and hold it as we descended, +as an additional protection. He approved the idea, +but it was not definitely decided that it should be done. +The party was being arranged in the above order while I +was sketching the summit, and they had finished, +and were waiting for me to be tied in line, when some one +remembered that our names had not been left in a bottle. +They requested me to write them down, and moved off +while it was being done. + +A few minutes afterward I tied myself to young Peter, +ran down after the others, and caught them just as they +were commencing the descent of the difficult part. +Great care was being taken. Only one man was moving at a time; +when he was firmly planted the next advanced, and so on. +They had not, however, attached the additional rope +to rocks, and nothing was said about it. The suggestion +was not made for my own sake, and I am not sure that it +ever occurred to me again. For some little distance we +two followed the others, detached from them, and should +have continued so had not Lord Douglas asked me, about 3 +P.M., to tie on to old Peter, as he feared, he said, +that Taugwalder would not be able to hold his ground if a +slip occurred. + +A few minutes later, a sharp-eyed lad ran into the Monte +Rosa Hotel, at Zermatt, saying that he had seen an avalanche +fall from the summit of the Matterhorn onto the Matterhorn +glacier. The boy was reproved for telling idle stories; +he was right, nevertheless, and this was what he saw. + +Michel Croz had laid aside his ax, and in order to give +Mr. Hadow greater security, was absolutely taking +hold of his legs, and putting his feet, one by one, +into their proper positions. As far as I know, no one +was actually descending. I cannot speak with certainty, +because the two leading men were partially hidden +from my sight by an intervening mass of rock, but it +is my belief, from the movements of their shoulders, +that Croz, having done as I said, was in the act +of turning round to go down a step or two himself; +at this moment Mr. Hadow slipped, fell against him, +and knocked him over. I heard one startled exclamation +from Croz, then saw him and Mr. Hadow flying downward; +in another moment Hudson was dragged from his steps, +and Lord Douglas immediately after him. All this was the +work of a moment. Immediately we heard Croz's exclamation, +old Peter and I planted ourselves as firmly as the rocks +would permit; the rope was taut between us, and the jerk +came on us both as on one man. We held; but the rope +broke midway between Taugwalder and Lord Francis Douglas. +For a few seconds we saw our unfortunate companions sliding +downward on their backs, and spreading out their hands, +endeavoring to save themselves. They passed from our +sight uninjured, disappeared one by one, and fell from the +precipice to precipice onto the Matterhorn glacier below, +a distance of nearly four thousand feet in height. +From the moment the rope broke it was impossible to help them. +So perished our comrades! + +For more than two hours afterward I thought almost every +moment that the next would be my last; for the Taugwalders, +utterly unnerved, were not only incapable of giving assistance, +but were in such a state that a slip might have been +expected from them at any moment. After a time we were able +to do that which should have been done at first, and fixed +rope to firm rocks, in addition to being tied together. +These ropes were cut from time to time, and were left behind. +Even with their assurance the men were afraid to proceed, +and several times old Peter turned, with ashy face +and faltering limbs, and said, with terrible emphasis, +"I CANNOT!" + +About 6 P.M., we arrived at the snow upon the ridge +descending toward Zermatt, and all peril was over. +We frequently looked, but in vain, for traces of our +unfortunate companions; we bent over the ridge and cried +to them, but no sound returned. Convinced at last that +they were neither within sight nor hearing, we ceased +from our useless efforts; and, too cast down for speech, +silently gathered up our things, and the little effects +of those who were lost, and then completed the descent. + +---------- + +Such is Mr. Whymper's graphic and thrilling narrative. +Zermatt gossip darkly hints that the elder Taugwalder +cut the rope, when the accident occurred, in order +to preserve himself from being dragged into the abyss; +but Mr. Whymper says that the ends of the rope showed +no evidence of cutting, but only of breaking. He adds +that if Taugwalder had had the disposition to cut the rope, +he would not have had time to do it, the accident was so +sudden and unexpected. + +Lord Douglas' body has never been found. It probably +lodged upon some inaccessible shelf in the face of the +mighty precipice. Lord Douglas was a youth of nineteen. +The three other victims fell nearly four thousand feet, +and their bodies lay together upon the glacier when found +by Mr. Whymper and the other searchers the next morning. +Their graves are beside the little church in Zermatt. + + + +CHAPTER XLII +[Chillon has a Nice, Roomy Dungeon] + +Switzerland is simply a large, humpy, solid rock, +with a thin skin of grass stretched over it. Consequently, +they do not dig graves, they blast them out with power +and fuse. They cannot afford to have large graveyards, +the grass skin is too circumscribed and too valuable. +It is all required for the support of the living. + +The graveyard in Zermatt occupies only about one-eighth +of an acre. The graves are sunk in the living rock, and are +very permanent; but occupation of them is only temporary; +the occupant can only stay till his grave is needed +by a later subject, he is removed, then, for they do not +bury one body on top of another. As I understand it, +a family owns a grave, just as it owns a house. A man dies +and leaves his house to his son--and at the same time, +this dead father succeeds to his own father's grave. +He moves out of the house and into the grave, and his +predecessor moves out of the grave and into the cellar +of the chapel. I saw a black box lying in the churchyard, +with skull and cross-bones painted on it, and was told that +this was used in transferring remains to the cellar. + +In that cellar the bones and skulls of several hundred of +former citizens were compactly corded up. They made a pile +eighteen feet long, seven feet high, and eight feet wide. +I was told that in some of the receptacles of this kind +in the Swiss villages, the skulls were all marked, +and if a man wished to find the skulls of his ancestors +for several generations back, he could do it by these marks, +preserved in the family records. + +An English gentleman who had lived some years in this region, +said it was the cradle of compulsory education. +But he said that the English idea that compulsory +education would reduce bastardy and intemperance was an +error--it has not that effect. He said there was more +seduction in the Protestant than in the Catholic cantons, +because the confessional protected the girls. I wonder +why it doesn't protect married women in France and Spain? + +This gentleman said that among the poorer peasants in the Valais, +it was common for the brothers in a family to cast lots +to determine which of them should have the coveted privilege +of marrying, and his brethren--doomed bachelors--heroically +banded themselves together to help support the new family. + +We left Zermatt in a wagon--and in a rain-storm, too +--for St. Nicholas about ten o'clock one morning. +Again we passed between those grass-clad prodigious cliffs, +specked with wee dwellings peeping over at us from +velvety green walls ten and twelve hundred feet high. +It did not seem possible that the imaginary chamois +even could climb those precipices. Lovers on opposite +cliffs probably kiss through a spy-glass, and correspond +with a rifle. + +In Switzerland the farmer's plow is a wide shovel, +which scrapes up and turns over the thin earthy skin of his +native rock--and there the man of the plow is a hero. +Now here, by our St. Nicholas road, was a grave, and it +had a tragic story. A plowman was skinning his farm +one morning--not the steepest part of it, but still +a steep part--that is, he was not skinning the front +of his farm, but the roof of it, near the eaves--when he +absent-mindedly let go of the plow-handles to moisten +his hands, in the usual way; he lost his balance and fell +out of his farm backward; poor fellow, he never touched +anything till he struck bottom, fifteen hundred feet below. +[1] We throw a halo of heroism around the life of the +soldier and the sailor, because of the deadly dangers they +are facing all the time. But we are not used to looking +upon farming as a heroic occupation. This is because we +have not lived in Switzerland. + +1. This was on a Sunday.--M.T. + +From St. Nicholas we struck out for Visp--or Vispach--on foot. +The rain-storms had been at work during several days, +and had done a deal of damage in Switzerland and Savoy. +We came to one place where a stream had changed its +course and plunged down a mountain in a new place, +sweeping everything before it. Two poor but precious farms +by the roadside were ruined. One was washed clear away, +and the bed-rock exposed; the other was buried out of sight +under a tumbled chaos of rocks, gravel, mud, and rubbish. +The resistless might of water was well exemplified. +Some saplings which had stood in the way were bent to the ground, +stripped clean of their bark, and buried under rocky debris. +The road had been swept away, too. + +In another place, where the road was high up on the mountain's +face, and its outside edge protected by flimsy masonry, +we frequently came across spots where this masonry had +carved off and left dangerous gaps for mules to get over; +and with still more frequency we found the masonry +slightly crumbled, and marked by mule-hoofs, thus showing +that there had been danger of an accident to somebody. +When at last we came to a badly ruptured bit of masonry, +with hoof-prints evidencing a desperate struggle +to regain the lost foothold, I looked quite hopefully +over the dizzy precipice. But there was nobody down there. + +They take exceedingly good care of their rivers in Switzerland +and other portions of Europe. They wall up both banks +with slanting solid stone masonry--so that from end +to end of these rivers the banks look like the wharves +at St. Louis and other towns on the Mississippi River. + +It was during this walk from St. Nicholas, in the shadow +of the majestic Alps, that we came across some little +children amusing themselves in what seemed, at first, +a most odd and original way--but it wasn't; it was in +simply a natural and characteristic way. They were roped +together with a string, they had mimic alpenstocks and +ice-axes, and were climbing a meek and lowly manure-pile +with a most blood-curdling amount of care and caution. +The "guide" at the head of the line cut imaginary steps, +in a laborious and painstaking way, and not a monkey +budged till the step above was vacated. If we had waited +we should have witnessed an imaginary accident, no doubt; +and we should have heard the intrepid band hurrah when they +made the summit and looked around upon the "magnificent view," +and seen them throw themselves down in exhausted attitudes +for a rest in that commanding situation. + +In Nevada I used to see the children play at silver-mining. +Of course, the great thing was an accident in a mine, +and there were two "star" parts; that of the man +who fell down the mimic shaft, and that of the daring +hero who was lowered into the depths to bring him up. +I knew one small chap who always insisted on playing +BOTH of these parts--and he carried his point. +He would tumble into the shaft and die, and then come +to the surface and go back after his own remains. + +It is the smartest boy that gets the hero part everywhere; +he is head guide in Switzerland, head miner in Nevada, +head bull-fighter in Spain, etc.; but I knew a preacher's son, +seven years old, who once selected a part for himself compared +to which those just mentioned are tame and unimpressive. +Jimmy's father stopped him from driving imaginary +horse-cars one Sunday--stopped him from playing captain +of an imaginary steamboat next Sunday--stopped him +from leading an imaginary army to battle the following +Sunday--and so on. Finally the little fellow said: + +"I've tried everything, and they won't any of them do. +What CAN I play?" + +"I hardly know, Jimmy; but you MUST play only things +that are suitable to the Sabbath-day." + +Next Sunday the preacher stepped softly to a back-room +door to see if the children were rightly employed. +He peeped in. A chair occupied the middle of the room, +and on the back of it hung Jimmy's cap; one of his little +sisters took the cap down, nibbled at it, then passed it +to another small sister and said, "Eat of this fruit, +for it is good." The Reverend took in the situation--alas, +they were playing the Expulsion from Eden! Yet he found +one little crumb of comfort. He said to himself, "For once +Jimmy has yielded the chief role--I have been wronging him, +I did not believe there was so much modesty in him; +I should have expected him to be either Adam or Eve." +This crumb of comfort lasted but a very little while; +he glanced around and discovered Jimmy standing in an +imposing attitude in a corner, with a dark and deadly frown +on his face. What that meant was very plain--HE WAS +IMPERSONATING THE DEITY! Think of the guileless sublimity of +that idea. + +We reached Vispach at 8 P.M., only about seven hours +out from St. Nicholas. So we must have made fully +a mile and a half an hour, and it was all downhill, +too, and very muddy at that. We stayed all night at +the Ho^tel de Soleil; I remember it because the landlady, +the portier, the waitress, and the chambermaid were not +separate persons, but were all contained in one neat and +chipper suit of spotless muslin, and she was the prettiest +young creature I saw in all that region. She was the +landlord's daughter. And I remember that the only native +match to her I saw in all Europe was the young daughter +of the landlord of a village inn in the Black Forest. +Why don't more people in Europe marry and keep hotel? + +Next morning we left with a family of English friends +and went by train to Brevet, and thence by boat across +the lake to Ouchy (Lausanne). + +Ouchy is memorable to me, not on account of its beautiful +situation and lovely surroundings--although these would +make it stick long in one's memory--but as the place +where _I_ caught the London TIMES dropping into humor. +It was NOT aware of it, though. It did not do it on purpose. +An English friend called my attention to this lapse, +and cut out the reprehensible paragraph for me. Think of +encountering a grin like this on the face of that grim +journal: + +ERRATUM.--We are requested by Reuter's Telegram Company +to correct an erroneous announcement made in their Brisbane +telegram of the 2d inst., published in our impression of the 5th +inst., stating that "Lady Kennedy had given birth to twins, +the eldest being a son." The Company explain that the message +they received contained the words "Governor of Queensland, +TWINS FIRST SON." Being, however, subsequently informed +that Sir Arthur Kennedy was unmarried and that there +must be some mistake, a telegraphic repetition was at +once demanded. It has been received today (11th inst.) +and shows that the words really telegraphed by Reuter's +agent were "Governor Queensland TURNS FIRST SOD," +alluding to the Maryborough-Gympic Railway in course +of construction. The words in italics were mutilated by +the telegraph in transmission from Australia, and reaching +the company in the form mentioned above gave rise to the mistake. + + +I had always had a deep and reverent compassion +for the sufferings of the "prisoner of Chillon," +whose story Byron had told in such moving verse; so I took +the steamer and made pilgrimage to the dungeons of the +Castle of Chillon, to see the place where poor Bonnivard +endured his dreary captivity three hundred years ago. +I am glad I did that, for it took away some of the pain +I was feeling on the prisoner's account. His dungeon +was a nice, cool, roomy place, and I cannot see why he +should have been dissatisfied with it. If he had been +imprisoned in a St. Nicholas private dwelling, where the +fertilizer prevails, and the goat sleeps with the guest, +and the chickens roost on him and the cow comes in and +bothers him when he wants to muse, it would have been +another matter altogether; but he surely could not have +had a very cheerless time of it in that pretty dungeon. +It has romantic window-slits that let in generous bars +of light, and it has tall, noble columns, carved apparently +from the living rock; and what is more, they are written +all over with thousands of names; some of them--like +Byron's and Victor Hugo's--of the first celebrity. +Why didn't he amuse himself reading these names? Then +there are the couriers and tourists--swarms of them every +day--what was to hinder him from having a good time +with them? I think Bonnivard's sufferings have been overrated. + +Next, we took the train and went to Martigny, on the way +to Mont Blanc. Next morning we started, about eight +o'clock, on foot. We had plenty of company, in the way +of wagon-loads and mule-loads of tourists--and dust. +This scattering procession of travelers was perhaps a +mile long. The road was uphill--interminable uphill--and +tolerably steep. The weather was blisteringly hot, +and the man or woman who had to sit on a creeping mule, +or in a crawling wagon, and broil in the beating sun, +was an object to be pitied. We could dodge among the bushes, +and have the relief of shade, but those people could not. +They paid for a conveyance, and to get their money's worth +they rode. + +We went by the way of the Te^te Noir, and after we +reached high ground there was no lack of fine scenery. +In one place the road was tunneled through a shoulder +of the mountain; from there one looked down into a gorge +with a rushing torrent in it, and on every hand was a +charming view of rocky buttresses and wooded heights. +There was a liberal allowance of pretty waterfalls, too, +on the Te^te Noir route. + +About half an hour before we reached the village of +Argentie`re a vast dome of snow with the sun blazing on it +drifted into view and framed itself in a strong V-shaped +gateway of the mountains, and we recognized Mont Blanc, +the "monarch of the Alps." With every step, after that, +this stately dome rose higher and higher into the blue sky, +and at last seemed to occupy the zenith. + +Some of Mont Blanc's neighbors--bare, light-brown, steeplelike +rocks--were very peculiarly shaped. Some were whittled +to a sharp point, and slightly bent at the upper end, +like a lady's finger; one monster sugar-loaf resembled +a bishop's hat; it was too steep to hold snow on its sides, +but had some in the division. + +While we were still on very high ground, and before +the descent toward Argentie`re began, we looked up +toward a neighboring mountain-top, and saw exquisite +prismatic colors playing about some white clouds which +were so delicate as to almost resemble gossamer webs. +The faint pinks and greens were peculiarly beautiful; +none of the colors were deep, they were the lightest shades. +They were bewitching commingled. We sat down to study and +enjoy this singular spectacle. The tints remained during +several minutes--fitting, changing, melting into each other; +paling almost away for a moment, then reflushing--a shifting, +restless, unstable succession of soft opaline gleams, +shimmering over that air film of white cloud, and turning +it into a fabric dainty enough to clothe an angel with. + +By and by we perceived what those super-delicate colors, +and their continuous play and movement, reminded us of; +it is what one sees in a soap-bubble that is drifting along, +catching changes of tint from the objects it passes. +A soap-bubble is the most beautiful thing, and the +most exquisite, in nature; that lovely phantom fabric +in the sky was suggestive of a soap-bubble split open, +and spread out in the sun. I wonder how much it would take +to buy a soap-bubble, if there was only one in the world? +One could buy a hatful of Koh-i-Noors with the same money, +no doubt. + +We made the tramp from Martigny to Argentie`re in eight hours. +We beat all the mules and wagons; we didn't usually do that. +We hired a sort of open baggage-wagon for the trip down +the valley to Chamonix, and then devoted an hour to dining. +This gave the driver time to get drunk. He had a friend +with him, and this friend also had had time to get drunk. + +When we drove off, the driver said all the tourists had +arrived and gone by while we were at dinner; "but," said he, +impressively, "be not disturbed by that--remain tranquil--give +yourselves no uneasiness--their dust rises far before us +--rest you tranquil, leave all to me--I am the king of drivers. +Behold!" + +Down came his whip, and away we clattered. I never had such +a shaking up in my life. The recent flooding rains had +washed the road clear away in places, but we never stopped, +we never slowed down for anything. We tore right along, +over rocks, rubbish, gullies, open fields--sometimes with +one or two wheels on the ground, but generally with none. +Every now and then that calm, good-natured madman would +bend a majestic look over his shoulder at us and say, +"Ah, you perceive? It is as I have said --I am the +king of drivers." Every time we just missed going +to destruction, he would say, with tranquil happiness, +"Enjoy it, gentlemen, it is very rare, it is very unusual +--it is given to few to ride with the king of drivers +--and observe, it is as I have said, _I_ am he." + +He spoke in French, and punctuated with hiccoughs. +His friend was French, too, but spoke in German--using +the same system of punctuation, however. The friend +called himself the "Captain of Mont Blanc," and wanted us +to make the ascent with him. He said he had made more +ascents than any other man--forty seven--and his brother +had made thirty-seven. His brother was the best guide +in the world, except himself--but he, yes, observe him +well--he was the "Captain of Mont Blanc"--that title +belonged to none other. + +The "king" was as good as his word--he overtook that long +procession of tourists and went by it like a hurricane. +The result was that we got choicer rooms at the hotel +in Chamonix than we should have done if his majesty +had been a slower artist--or rather, if he hadn't most +providentially got drunk before he left Argentie`re. + + + +CHAPTER XLIII +[My Poor Sick Friend Disappointed] + +Everybody was out-of-doors; everybody was in the +principal street of the village--not on the sidewalks, +but all over the street; everybody was lounging, loafing, +chatting, waiting, alert, expectant, interested--for it +was train-time. That is to say, it was diligence-time +--the half-dozen big diligences would soon be arriving +from Geneva, and the village was interested, in many ways, +in knowing how many people were coming and what sort of +folk they might be. It was altogether the livest-looking +street we had seen in any village on the continent. + +The hotel was by the side of a booming torrent, whose music +was loud and strong; we could not see this torrent, for it +was dark, now, but one could locate it without a light. +There was a large enclosed yard in front of the hotel, +and this was filled with groups of villagers waiting to see +the diligences arrive, or to hire themselves to excursionists +for the morrow. A telescope stood in the yard, with its +huge barrel canted up toward the lustrous evening star. +The long porch of the hotel was populous with tourists, +who sat in shawls and wraps under the vast overshadowing +bulk of Mont Blanc, and gossiped or meditated. + +Never did a mountain seem so close; its big sides seemed +at one's very elbow, and its majestic dome, and the lofty +cluster of slender minarets that were its neighbors, +seemed to be almost over one's head. It was night +in the streets, and the lamps were sparkling everywhere; +the broad bases and shoulders of the mountains were in +a deep gloom, but their summits swam in a strange rich +glow which was really daylight, and yet had a mellow +something about it which was very different from the hard +white glare of the kind of daylight I was used to. +Its radiance was strong and clear, but at the same time +it was singularly soft, and spiritual, and benignant. +No, it was not our harsh, aggressive, realistic daylight; +it seemed properer to an enchanted land--or to heaven. + +I had seen moonlight and daylight together before, but I +had not seen daylight and black night elbow to elbow before. +At least I had not seen the daylight resting upon an object +sufficiently close at hand, before, to make the contrast +startling and at war with nature. + +The daylight passed away. Presently the moon rose up +behind some of those sky-piercing fingers or pinnacles +of bare rock of which I have spoken--they were a little +to the left of the crest of Mont Blanc, and right over +our heads--but she couldn't manage to climb high +enough toward heaven to get entirely above them. +She would show the glittering arch of her upper third, +occasionally, and scrape it along behind the comblike row; +sometimes a pinnacle stood straight up, like a statuette +of ebony, against that glittering white shield, then seemed +to glide out of it by its own volition and power, +and become a dim specter, while the next pinnacle glided +into its place and blotted the spotless disk with the black +exclamation-point of its presence. The top of one pinnacle +took the shapely, clean-cut form of a rabbit's head, +in the inkiest silhouette, while it rested against the moon. +The unillumined peaks and minarets, hovering vague and +phantom-like above us while the others were painfully +white and strong with snow and moonlight, made a peculiar effect. + + +But when the moon, having passed the line of pinnacles, +was hidden behind the stupendous white swell of Mont Blanc, +the masterpiece of the evening was flung on the canvas. +A rich greenish radiance sprang into the sky from behind +the mountain, and in this same airy shreds and ribbons of vapor +floated about, and being flushed with that strange tint, +went waving to and fro like pale green flames. After a while, +radiating bars--vast broadening fan-shaped shadows--grew up +and stretched away to the zenith from behind the mountain. +It was a spectacle to take one's breath, for the wonder of it, +and the sublimity. + +Indeed, those mighty bars of alternate light and shadow +streaming up from behind that dark and prodigious form +and occupying the half of the dull and opaque heavens, +was the most imposing and impressive marvel I had ever +looked upon. There is no simile for it, for nothing +is like it. If a child had asked me what it was, +I should have said, "Humble yourself, in this presence, +it is the glory flowing from the hidden head of the Creator." +One falls shorter of the truth than that, sometimes, +in trying to explain mysteries to the little people. +I could have found out the cause of this awe-compelling +miracle by inquiring, for it is not infrequent at Mont +Blanc,--but I did not wish to know. We have not the +reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, +because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we +gained by prying into the matter. + +We took a walk down street, a block or two, and a +place where four streets met and the principal shops +were clustered, found the groups of men in the roadway +thicker than ever--for this was the Exchange of Chamonix. +These men were in the costumes of guides and porters, +and were there to be hired. + +The office of that great personage, the Guide-in-Chief +of the Chamonix Guild of Guides, was near by. This guild +is a close corporation, and is governed by strict laws. +There are many excursion routes, some dangerous and +some not, some that can be made safely without a guide, +and some that cannot. The bureau determines these things. +Where it decides that a guide is necessary, you are +forbidden to go without one. Neither are you allowed to be +a victim of extortion: the law states what you are to pay. +The guides serve in rotation; you cannot select the man +who is to take your life into his hands, you must take +the worst in the lot, if it is his turn. A guide's fee +ranges all the way up from a half-dollar (for some trifling +excursion of a few rods) to twenty dollars, according to +the distance traversed and the nature of the ground. +A guide's fee for taking a person to the summit of Mont +Blanc and back, is twenty dollars--and he earns it. +The time employed is usually three days, and there is +enough early rising in it to make a man far more "healthy +and wealthy and wise" than any one man has any right to be. +The porter's fee for the same trip is ten dollars. +Several fools--no, I mean several tourists--usually go together, +and divide up the expense, and thus make it light; +for if only one f--tourist, I mean--went, he would have +to have several guides and porters, and that would make the +matter costly. + +We went into the Chief's office. There were maps +of mountains on the walls; also one or two lithographs +of celebrated guides, and a portrait of the scientist +De Saussure. + +In glass cases were some labeled fragments of boots +and batons, and other suggestive relics and remembrances +of casualties on Mount Blanc. In a book was a record of all +the ascents which have ever been made, beginning with Nos. +1 and 2--being those of Jacques Balmat and De Saussure, +in 1787, and ending with No. 685, which wasn't cold yet. +In fact No. 685 was standing by the official table waiting +to receive the precious official diploma which should prove +to his German household and to his descendants that he had once +been indiscreet enough to climb to the top of Mont Blanc. +He looked very happy when he got his document; in fact, +he spoke up and said he WAS happy. + +I tried to buy a diploma for an invalid friend at home +who had never traveled, and whose desire all his life has +been to ascend Mont Blanc, but the Guide-in-Chief rather +insolently refused to sell me one. I was very much offended. +I said I did not propose to be discriminated against on +the account of my nationality; that he had just sold +a diploma to this German gentleman, and my money was +a good as his; I would see to it that he couldn't keep +his shop for Germans and deny his produce to Americans; +I would have his license taken away from him at the dropping +of a handkerchief; if France refused to break him, I would +make an international matter of it and bring on a war; +the soil should be drenched with blood; and not only that, +but I would set up an opposition show and sell diplomas +at half price. + +For two cents I would have done these things, too; +but nobody offered me two cents. I tried to move that +German's feelings, but it could not be done; he would +not give me his diploma, neither would he sell it to me. +I TOLD him my friend was sick and could not come himself, +but he said he did not care a VERDAMMTES PFENNIG, +he wanted his diploma for himself--did I suppose he was +going to risk his neck for that thing and then give it +to a sick stranger? Indeed he wouldn't, so he wouldn't. +I resolved, then, that I would do all I could to injure +Mont Blanc. + +In the record-book was a list of all the fatal accidents +which happened on the mountain. It began with the one +in 1820 when the Russian Dr. Hamel's three guides were +lost in a crevice of the glacier, and it recorded the +delivery of the remains in the valley by the slow-moving +glacier forty-one years later. The latest catastrophe +bore the date 1877. + +We stepped out and roved about the village awhile. +In front of the little church was a monument to the memory +of the bold guide Jacques Balmat, the first man who ever +stood upon the summit of Mont Blanc. He made that wild +trip solitary and alone. He accomplished the ascent +a number of times afterward. A stretch of nearly half +a century lay between his first ascent and his last one. +At the ripe old age of seventy-two he was climbing +around a corner of a lofty precipice of the Pic du +Midi--nobody with him--when he slipped and fell. +So he died in the harness. + +He had grown very avaricious in his old age, and used to go +off stealthily to hunt for non-existent and impossible +gold among those perilous peaks and precipices. +He was on a quest of that kind when he lost his life. +There was a statue to him, and another to De Saussure, +in the hall of our hotel, and a metal plate on the door +of a room upstairs bore an inscription to the effect +that that room had been occupied by Albert Smith. +Balmat and De Saussure discovered Mont Blanc--so to +speak--but it was Smith who made it a paying property. +His articles in BLACKWOOD and his lectures on Mont Blanc +in London advertised it and made people as anxious to see it +as if it owed them money. + +As we strolled along the road we looked up and saw a red +signal-light glowing in the darkness of the mountainside. +It seemed but a trifling way up--perhaps a hundred yards, +a climb of ten minutes. It was a lucky piece of sagacity +in us that we concluded to stop a man whom we met and get +a light for our pipes from him instead of continuing the climb +to that lantern to get a light, as had been our purpose. +The man said that that lantern was on the Grands Mulets, +some sixty-five hundred feet above the valley! I know +by our Riffelberg experience, that it would have taken us +a good part of a week to go up there. I would sooner not +smoke at all, than take all that trouble for a light. + +Even in the daytime the foreshadowing effect of this +mountain's close proximity creates curious deceptions. +For instance, one sees with the naked eye a cabin up +there beside the glacier, and a little above and beyond +he sees the spot where that red light was located; +he thinks he could throw a stone from the one place to +the other. But he couldn't, for the difference between +the two altitudes is more than three thousand feet. +It looks impossible, from below, that this can be true, +but it is true, nevertheless. + +While strolling around, we kept the run of the moon all +the time, and we still kept an eye on her after we got back +to the hotel portico. I had a theory that the gravitation +of refraction, being subsidiary to atmospheric compensation, +the refrangibility of the earth's surface would emphasize +this effect in regions where great mountain ranges occur, +and possibly so even-handed impact the odic and idyllic +forces together, the one upon the other, as to prevent +the moon from rising higher than 12,200 feet above +sea-level. This daring theory had been received with frantic +scorn by some of my fellow-scientists, and with an eager +silence by others. Among the former I may mention +Prof. H----y; and among the latter Prof. T----l. Such +is professional jealousy; a scientist will never show +any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself. +There is no feeling of brotherhood among these people. +Indeed, they always resent it when I call them brother. +To show how far their ungenerosity can carry them, I will +state that I offered to let Prof. H----y publish my great +theory as his own discovery; I even begged him to do it; +I even proposed to print it myself as his theory. +Instead of thanking me, he said that if I tried to +fasten that theory on him he would sue me for slander. +I was going to offer it to Mr. Darwin, whom I understood +to be a man without prejudices, but it occurred to me +that perhaps he would not be interested in it since it did +not concern heraldry. + +But I am glad now, that I was forced to father my intrepid +theory myself, for, on the night of which I am writing, +it was triumphantly justified and established. Mont Blanc +is nearly sixteen thousand feet high; he hid the moon utterly; +near him is a peak which is 12,216 feet high; the moon slid +along behind the pinnacles, and when she approached that +one I watched her with intense interest, for my reputation +as a scientist must stand or fall by its decision. +I cannot describe the emotions which surged like tidal +waves through my breast when I saw the moon glide behind +that lofty needle and pass it by without exposing more +than two feet four inches of her upper rim above it; +I was secure, then. I knew she could rise no higher, +and I was right. She sailed behind all the peaks and +never succeeded in hoisting her disk above a single one +of them. + +While the moon was behind one of those sharp fingers, +its shadow was flung athwart the vacant heavens +--a long, slanting, clean-cut, dark ray--with a streaming +and energetic suggestion of FORCE about it, such as the +ascending jet of water from a powerful fire-engine affords. +It was curious to see a good strong shadow of an earthly +object cast upon so intangible a field as the atmosphere. + +We went to bed, at last, and went quickly to sleep, but I +woke up, after about three hours, with throbbing temples, +and a head which was physically sore, outside and in. +I was dazed, dreamy, wretched, seedy, unrefreshed. +I recognized the occasion of all this: it was that torrent. +In the mountain villages of Switzerland, and along the roads, +one has always the roar of the torrent in his ears. +He imagines it is music, and he thinks poetic things +about it; he lies in his comfortable bed and is lulled +to sleep by it. But by and by he begins to notice +that his head is very sore--he cannot account for it; +in solitudes where the profoundest silence reigns, +he notices a sullen, distant, continuous roar in his ears, +which is like what he would experience if he had sea-shells +pressed against them--he cannot account for it; he is +drowsy and absent-minded; there is no tenacity to his mind, +he cannot keep hold of a thought and follow it out; +if he sits down to write, his vocabulary is empty, +no suitable words will come, he forgets what he started to do, +and remains there, pen in hand, head tilted up, eyes closed, +listening painfully to the muffled roar of a distant train +in his ears; in his soundest sleep the strain continues, +he goes on listening, always listening intently, anxiously, +and wakes at last, harassed, irritable, unrefreshed. +He cannot manage to account for these things. +Day after day he feels as if he had spent his nights +in a sleeping-car. It actually takes him weeks to find +out that it is those persecuting torrents that have been +making all the mischief. It is time for him to get out +of Switzerland, then, for as soon as he has discovered +the cause, the misery is magnified several fold. The roar +of the torrent is maddening, then, for his imagination +is assisting; the physical pain it inflicts is exquisite. +When he finds he is approaching one of those streams, +his dread is so lively that he is disposed to fly the track +and avoid the implacable foe. + +Eight or nine months after the distress of the torrents +had departed from me, the roar and thunder of the +streets of Paris brought it all back again. I moved +to the sixth story of the hotel to hunt for peace. +About midnight the noises dulled away, and I was +sinking to sleep, when I heard a new and curious sound; +I listened: evidently some joyous lunatic was softly +dancing a "double shuffle" in the room over my head. +I had to wait for him to get through, of course. Five long, +long minutes he smoothly shuffled away--a pause followed, +then something fell with a thump on the floor. +I said to myself "There--he is pulling off his boots +--thank heavens he is done." Another slight pause--he went +to shuffling again! I said to myself, "Is he trying to see +what he can do with only one boot on?" Presently came +another pause and another thump on the floor. I said +"Good, he has pulled off his other boot--NOW he is done." +But he wasn't. The next moment he was shuffling again. +I said, "Confound him, he is at it in his slippers!" +After a little came that same old pause, and right after +it that thump on the floor once more. I said, "Hang him, +he had on TWO pair of boots!" For an hour that magician +went on shuffling and pulling off boots till he had shed +as many as twenty-five pair, and I was hovering on the verge +of lunacy. I got my gun and stole up there. The fellow +was in the midst of an acre of sprawling boots, and he had +a boot in his hand, shuffling it--no, I mean POLISHING it. +The mystery was explained. He hadn't been dancing. +He was the "Boots" of the hotel, and was attending +to business. + + + +CHAPTER XLIV +[I Scale Mont Blanc--by Telescope] + +After breakfast, that next morning in Chamonix, we went +out in the yard and watched the gangs of excursioning +tourists arriving and departing with their mules and guides +and porters; then we took a look through the telescope +at the snowy hump of Mont Blanc. It was brilliant +with sunshine, and the vast smooth bulge seemed hardly +five hundred yards away. With the naked eye we could +dimly make out the house at the Pierre Pointue, which is +located by the side of the great glacier, and is more +than three thousand feet above the level of the valley; +but with the telescope we could see all its details. +While I looked, a woman rode by the house on a mule, and I +saw her with sharp distinctness; I could have described +her dress. I saw her nod to the people of the house, +and rein up her mule, and put her hand up to shield +her eyes from the sun. I was not used to telescopes; +in fact, I had never looked through a good one before; +it seemed incredible to me that this woman could be +so far away. I was satisfied that I could see all +these details with my naked eye; but when I tried it, +that mule and those vivid people had wholly vanished, +and the house itself was become small and vague. I tried +the telescope again, and again everything was vivid. +The strong black shadows of the mule and the woman were +flung against the side of the house, and I saw the mule's +silhouette wave its ears. + +The telescopulist--or the telescopulariat--I do not know +which is right--said a party were making a grand ascent, +and would come in sight on the remote upper heights, +presently; so we waited to observe this performance. +Presently I had a superb idea. I wanted to stand with +a party on the summit of Mont Blanc, merely to be able +to say I had done it, and I believed the telescope +could set me within seven feet of the uppermost man. +The telescoper assured me that it could. I then asked +him how much I owed him for as far as I had got? He said, +one franc. I asked him how much it would cost to make +the entire ascent? Three francs. I at once determined +to make the entire ascent. But first I inquired +if there was any danger? He said no--not by telescope; +said he had taken a great many parties to the summit, +and never lost a man. I asked what he would charge to let +my agent go with me, together with such guides and porters +as might be necessary. He said he would let Harris go +for two francs; and that unless we were unusually timid, +he should consider guides and porters unnecessary; +it was not customary to take them, when going by telescope, +for they were rather an encumbrance than a help. +He said that the party now on the mountain were approaching +the most difficult part, and if we hurried we should +overtake them within ten minutes, and could then join them +and have the benefit of their guides and porters without +their knowledge, and without expense to us. + +I then said we would start immediately. I believe I +said it calmly, though I was conscious of a shudder +and of a paling cheek, in view of the nature of the +exploit I was so unreflectingly engaged in. But the old +daredevil spirit was upon me, and I said that as I +had committed myself I would not back down; I would +ascend Mont Blanc if it cost me my life. I told the man +to slant his machine in the proper direction and let us be off. + +Harris was afraid and did not want to go, but I heartened +him up and said I would hold his hand all the way; so he +gave his consent, though he trembled a little at first. +I took a last pathetic look upon the pleasant summer scene +about me, then boldly put my eye to the glass and prepared +to mount among the grim glaciers and the everlasting snows. + +We took our way carefully and cautiously across the great +Glacier des Bossons, over yawning and terrific crevices +and among imposing crags and buttresses of ice which were +fringed with icicles of gigantic proportions. The desert +of ice that stretched far and wide about us was wild and +desolate beyond description, and the perils which beset us +were so great that at times I was minded to turn back. +But I pulled my pluck together and pushed on. + +We passed the glacier safely and began to mount +the steeps beyond, with great alacrity. When we +were seven minutes out from the starting-point, we +reached an altitude where the scene took a new aspect; +an apparently limitless continent of gleaming snow was +tilted heavenward before our faces. As my eye followed +that awful acclivity far away up into the remote skies, +it seemed to me that all I had ever seen before of sublimity +and magnitude was small and insignificant compared to this. + +We rested a moment, and then began to mount with speed. +Within three minutes we caught sight of the party ahead of us, +and stopped to observe them. They were toiling up a long, +slanting ridge of snow--twelve persons, roped together some +fifteen feet apart, marching in single file, and strongly +marked against the clear blue sky. One was a woman. +We could see them lift their feet and put them down; +we saw them swing their alpenstocks forward in unison, +like so many pendulums, and then bear their weight +upon them; we saw the lady wave her handkerchief. +They dragged themselves upward in a worn and weary way, +for they had been climbing steadily from the Grand Mulets, +on the Glacier des Dossons, since three in the morning, +and it was eleven, now. We saw them sink down in the +snow and rest, and drink something from a bottle. +After a while they moved on, and as they approached the final +short dash of the home-stretch we closed up on them and +joined them. + +Presently we all stood together on the summit! What a view +was spread out below! Away off under the northwestern horizon +rolled the silent billows of the Farnese Oberland, their snowy +crests glinting softly in the subdued lights of distance; +in the north rose the giant form of the Wobblehorn, +draped from peak to shoulder in sable thunder-clouds; +beyond him, to the right, stretched the grand processional +summits of the Cisalpine Cordillera, drowned in a +sensuous haze; to the east loomed the colossal masses +of the Yodelhorn, the Fuddelhorn, and the Dinnerhorn, +their cloudless summits flashing white and cold in the sun; +beyond them shimmered the faint far line of the Ghauts +of Jubbelpore and the Aigulles des Alleghenies; in the +south towered the smoking peak of Popocatapetl and the +unapproachable altitudes of the peerless Scrabblehorn; +in the west-south the stately range of the Himalayas +lay dreaming in a purple gloom; and thence all around +the curving horizon the eye roved over a troubled sea +of sun-kissed Alps, and noted, here and there, the noble +proportions and the soaring domes of the Bottlehorn, +and the Saddlehorn, and the Shovelhorn, and the Powderhorn, +all bathed in the glory of noon and mottled with softly +gliding blots, the shadows flung from drifting clouds. + +Overcome by the scene, we all raised a triumphant, +tremendous shout, in unison. A startled man at my elbow +said: + +"Confound you, what do you yell like that for, right here +in the street?" + +That brought me down to Chamonix, like a flirt. +I gave that man some spiritual advice and disposed of him, +and then paid the telescope man his full fee, and said +that we were charmed with the trip and would remain down, +and not reascend and require him to fetch us down by telescope. +This pleased him very much, for of course we could have +stepped back to the summit and put him to the trouble +of bringing us home if we wanted to. + +I judged we could get diplomas, now, anyhow; so we +went after them, but the Chief Guide put us off, +with one pretext or another, during all the time we stayed +in Chamonix, and we ended by never getting them at all. +So much for his prejudice against people's nationality. +However, we worried him enough to make him remember +us and our ascent for some time. He even said, once, +that he wished there was a lunatic asylum in Chamonix. +This shows that he really had fears that we were going +to drive him mad. It was what we intended to do, +but lack of time defeated it. + +I cannot venture to advise the reader one way or the other, +as to ascending Mont Blanc. I say only this: if he is at +all timid, the enjoyments of the trip will hardly make up +for the hardships and sufferings he will have to endure. +But, if he has good nerve, youth, health, and a bold, +firm will, and could leave his family comfortably provided +for in case the worst happened, he would find the ascent +a wonderful experience, and the view from the top a vision +to dream about, and tell about, and recall with exultation +all the days of his life. + +While I do not advise such a person to attempt the ascent, +I do not advise him against it. But if he elects to attempt it, +let him be warily careful of two things: chose a calm, +clear day; and do not pay the telescope man in advance. +There are dark stories of his getting advance payers on +the summit and then leaving them there to rot. + +A frightful tragedy was once witnessed through the +Chamonix telescopes. Think of questions and answers +like these, on an inquest: + +CORONER. You saw deceased lose his life? + +WITNESS. I did. + +C. Where was he, at the time? + +W. Close to the summit of Mont Blanc. + +C. Where were you? + +W. In the main street of Chamonix. + +C. What was the distance between you? + +W. A LITTLE OVER FIVE MILES, as the bird flies. + +This accident occurred in 1866, a year and a month after the +disaster on the Matterhorn. Three adventurous English gentlemen, +[1] of great experience in mountain-climbing, made up their +minds to ascend Mont Blanc without guides or porters. +All endeavors to dissuade them from their project failed. +Powerful telescopes are numerous in Chamonix. These huge +brass tubes, mounted on their scaffoldings and pointed +skyward from every choice vantage-ground, have the +formidable look of artillery, and give the town the general +aspect of getting ready to repel a charge of angels. +The reader may easily believe that the telescopes +had plenty of custom on that August morning in 1866, +for everybody knew of the dangerous undertaking which was +on foot, and all had fears that misfortune would result. +All the morning the tubes remained directed toward the +mountain heights, each with its anxious group around it; +but the white deserts were vacant. + +1. Sir George Young and his brothers James and Albert. + +At last, toward eleven o'clock, the people who were +looking through the telescopes cried out "There they +are!"--and sure enough, far up, on the loftiest terraces +of the Grand Plateau, the three pygmies appeared, +climbing with remarkable vigor and spirit. They disappeared +in the "Corridor," and were lost to sight during an hour. +Then they reappeared, and were presently seen standing together +upon the extreme summit of Mont Blanc. So, all was well. +They remained a few minutes on that highest point of land +in Europe, a target for all the telescopes, and were then +seen to begin descent. Suddenly all three vanished. +An instant after, they appeared again, TWO THOUSAND FEET +BELOW! + +Evidently, they had tripped and been shot down an almost +perpendicular slope of ice to a point where it joined +the border of the upper glacier. Naturally, the distant +witness supposed they were now looking upon three corpses; +so they could hardly believe their eyes when they presently saw +two of the men rise to their feet and bend over the third. +During two hours and a half they watched the two busying +themselves over the extended form of their brother, +who seemed entirely inert. Chamonix's affairs stood still; +everybody was in the street, all interest was centered +upon what was going on upon that lofty and isolated stage +five miles away. Finally the two--one of them walking +with great difficulty--were seen to begin descent, +abandoning the third, who was no doubt lifeless. +Their movements were followed, step by step, until they +reached the "Corridor" and disappeared behind its ridge. +Before they had had time to traverse the "Corridor" +and reappear, twilight was come, and the power of the +telescope was at an end. + +The survivors had a most perilous journey before +them in the gathering darkness, for they must get +down to the Grands Mulets before they would find +a safe stopping-place--a long and tedious descent, +and perilous enough even in good daylight. The oldest +guides expressed the opinion that they could not succeed; +that all the chances were that they would lose their lives. + +Yet those brave men did succeed. They reached the Grands +Mulets in safety. Even the fearful shock which their nerves +had sustained was not sufficient to overcome their coolness +and courage. It would appear from the official account +that they were threading their way down through those +dangers from the closing in of twilight until two o'clock +in the morning, or later, because the rescuing party from +Chamonix reached the Grand Mulets about three in the morning +and moved thence toward the scene of the disaster under +the leadership of Sir George Young, "who had only just arrived." + +After having been on his feet twenty-four hours, +in the exhausting work of mountain-climbing, Sir George +began the reascent at the head of the relief party +of six guides, to recover the corpse of his brother. +This was considered a new imprudence, as the number +was too few for the service required. Another relief +party presently arrived at the cabin on the Grands +Mulets and quartered themselves there to await events. +Ten hours after Sir George's departure toward the summit, +this new relief were still scanning the snowy altitudes +above them from their own high perch among the ice +deserts ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, +but the whole forenoon had passed without a glimpse of any +living thing appearing up there. + +This was alarming. Half a dozen of their number set out, +then early in the afternoon, to seek and succor Sir George +and his guides. The persons remaining at the cabin saw +these disappear, and then ensued another distressing wait. +Four hours passed, without tidings. Then at five +o'clock another relief, consisting of three guides, +set forward from the cabin. They carried food and +cordials for the refreshment of their predecessors; +they took lanterns with them, too; night was coming on, +and to make matters worse, a fine, cold rain had begun +to fall. + +At the same hour that these three began their dangerous ascent, +the official Guide-in-Chief of the Mont Blanc region +undertook the dangerous descent to Chamonix, all alone, +to get reinforcements. However, a couple of hours later, +at 7 P.M., the anxious solicitude came to an end, +and happily. A bugle note was heard, and a cluster +of black specks was distinguishable against the snows +of the upper heights. The watchers counted these specks +eagerly--fourteen--nobody was missing. An hour and a half +later they were all safe under the roof of the cabin. +They had brought the corpse with them. Sir George Young +tarried there but a few minutes, and then began the long +and troublesome descent from the cabin to Chamonix. +He probably reached there about two or three o'clock +in the morning, after having been afoot among the rocks +and glaciers during two days and two nights. His endurance +was equal to his daring. + +The cause of the unaccountable delay of Sir George and +the relief parties among the heights where the disaster +had happened was a thick fog--or, partly that and partly +the slow and difficult work of conveying the dead body +down the perilous steeps. + +The corpse, upon being viewed at the inquest, showed +no bruises, and it was some time before the surgeons +discovered that the neck was broken. One of the surviving +brothers had sustained some unimportant injuries, +but the other had suffered no hurt at all. How these men +could fall two thousand feet, almost perpendicularly, +and live afterward, is a most strange and unaccountable thing. + +A great many women have made the ascent of Mont Blanc. +An English girl, Miss Stratton, conceived the daring idea, +two or three years ago, of attempting the ascent in the +middle of winter. She tried it--and she succeeded. +Moreover, she froze two of her fingers on the way up, +she fell in love with her guide on the summit, +and she married him when she got to the bottom again. +There is nothing in romance, in the way of a striking +"situation," which can beat this love scene in midheaven +on an isolated ice-crest with the thermometer at zero +and an Artic gale blowing. + +The first woman who ascended Mont Blanc was a girl aged +twenty-two--Mlle. Maria Paradis--1809. Nobody was +with her but her sweetheart, and he was not a guide. +The sex then took a rest for about thirty years, +when a Mlle. d'Angeville made the ascent --1838. In +Chamonix I picked up a rude old lithograph of that day +which pictured her "in the act." + +However, I value it less as a work of art than as a +fashion-plate. Miss d'Angeville put on a pair of men's +pantaloons to climb it, which was wise; but she cramped +their utility by adding her petticoat, which was idiotic. + +One of the mournfulest calamities which men's disposition +to climb dangerous mountains has resulted in, +happened on Mont Blanc in September 1870. M. D'Arve +tells the story briefly in his HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC. +In the next chapter I will copy its chief features. + + + +CHAPTER XLV +A Catastrophe Which Cost Eleven Lives +[Perished at the Verge of Safety] + +On the 5th of September, 1870, a caravan of eleven persons +departed from Chamonix to make the ascent of Mont Blanc. +Three of the party were tourists; Messrs. Randall and Bean, +Americans, and Mr. George Corkindale, a Scotch gentleman; +there were three guides and five porters. The cabin +on the Grands Mulets was reached that day; the ascent +was resumed early the next morning, September 6th. +The day was fine and clear, and the movements of the party +were observed through the telescopes of Chamonix; at two +o'clock in the afternoon they were seen to reach the summit. +A few minutes later they were seen making the first steps +of the descent; then a cloud closed around them and hid +them from view. + +Eight hours passed, the cloud still remained, night came, +no one had returned to the Grands Mulets. Sylvain Couttet, +keeper of the cabin there, suspected a misfortune, +and sent down to the valley for help. A detachment of +guides went up, but by the time they had made the tedious +trip and reached the cabin, a raging storm had set in. +They had to wait; nothing could be attempted in such +a tempest. + +The wild storm lasted MORE THAN A WEEK, without ceasing; +but on the 17th, Couttet, with several guides, left the +cabin and succeeded in making the ascent. In the snowy +wastes near the summit they came upon five bodies, +lying upon their sides in a reposeful attitude which +suggested that possibly they had fallen asleep there, +while exhausted with fatigue and hunger and benumbed with cold, +and never knew when death stole upon them. Couttet moved +a few steps further and discovered five more bodies. +The eleventh corpse--that of a porter--was not found, +although diligent search was made for it. + +In the pocket of Mr. Bean, one of the Americans, was found +a note-book in which had been penciled some sentences +which admit us, in flesh and spirit, as it were, to the +presence of these men during their last hours of life, +and to the grisly horrors which their fading vision looked +upon and their failing consciousness took cognizance of: + +TUESDAY, SEPT. 6. I have made the ascent of Mont Blanc, +with ten persons--eight guides, and Mr. Corkindale +and Mr. Randall. We reached the summit at half past 2. +Immediately after quitting it, we were enveloped in clouds +of snow. We passed the night in a grotto hollowed +in the snow, which afforded us but poor shelter, and I +was ill all night. + +SEPT. 7--MORNING. The cold is excessive. The snow falls +heavily and without interruption. The guides take no rest. + +EVENING. My Dear Hessie, we have been two days on +Mont Blanc, in the midst of a terrible hurricane of snow, +we have lost our way, and are in a hole scooped in the snow, +at an altitude of 15,000 feet. I have no longer any hope +of descending. + +They had wandered around, and around, in the blinding +snow-storm, hopelessly lost, in a space only a hundred +yards square; and when cold and fatigue vanquished them +at last, they scooped their cave and lay down there +to die by inches, UNAWARE THAT FIVE STEPS MORE WOULD HAVE +BROUGHT THEM INTO THE TRUTH PATH. They were so near +to life and safety as that, and did not suspect it. +The thought of this gives the sharpest pang that the tragic +story conveys. + +The author of the HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC introduced +the closing sentences of Mr. Bean's pathetic record thus: + +"Here the characters are large and unsteady; the hand +which traces them is become chilled and torpid; +but the spirit survives, and the faith and resignation +of the dying man are expressed with a sublime simplicity." + +Perhaps this note-book will be found and sent to you. +We have nothing to eat, my feet are already frozen, +and I am exhausted; I have strength to write only a few +words more. I have left means for C's education; I know +you will employ them wisely. I die with faith in God, +and with loving thoughts of you. Farewell to all. +We shall meet again, in Heaven. ... I think of +you always. + +It is the way of the Alps to deliver death to their victims +with a merciful swiftness, but here the rule failed. +These men suffered the bitterest death that has been +recorded in the history of those mountains, freighted as +that history is with grisly tragedies. + + + +CHAPTER XLVI +[Meeting a Hog on a Precipice] + +Mr. Harris and I took some guides and porters and ascended +to the Ho^tel des Pyramides, which is perched on the +high moraine which borders the Glacier des Bossons. +The road led sharply uphill, all the way, through grass +and flowers and woods, and was a pleasant walk, +barring the fatigue of the climb. + +From the hotel we could view the huge glacier at very +close range. After a rest we followed down a path +which had been made in the steep inner frontage +of the moraine, and stepped upon the glacier itself. +One of the shows of the place was a tunnel-like cavern, +which had been hewn in the glacier. The proprietor +of this tunnel took candles and conducted us into it. +It was three or four feet wide and about six feet high. +Its walls of pure and solid ice emitted a soft and rich +blue light that produced a lovely effect, and suggested +enchanted caves, and that sort of thing. When we had +proceeded some yards and were entering darkness, we turned +about and had a dainty sunlit picture of distant woods +and heights framed in the strong arch of the tunnel and seen +through the tender blue radiance of the tunnel's atmosphere. + +The cavern was nearly a hundred yards long, and when we +reached its inner limit the proprietor stepped into a branch +tunnel with his candles and left us buried in the bowels +of the glacier, and in pitch-darkness. We judged his +purpose was murder and robbery; so we got out our matches +and prepared to sell our lives as dearly as possible +by setting the glacier on fire if the worst came to the +worst--but we soon perceived that this man had changed +his mind; he began to sing, in a deep, melodious voice, +and woke some curious and pleasing echoes. By and by he +came back and pretended that that was what he had gone +behind there for. We believed as much of that as we wanted to. + +Thus our lives had been once more in imminent peril, +but by the exercise of the swift sagacity and cool courage +which had saved us so often, we had added another escape +to the long list. The tourist should visit that ice-cavern, +by all means, for it is well worth the trouble; but I would +advise him to go only with a strong and well-armed force. +I do not consider artillery necessary, yet it would not be +unadvisable to take it along, if convenient. The journey, +going and coming, is about three miles and a half, three of +which are on level ground. We made it in less than a day, +but I would counsel the unpracticed--if not pressed +for time--to allow themselves two. Nothing is gained +in the Alps by over-exertion; nothing is gained by crowding +two days' work into one for the poor sake of being able +to boast of the exploit afterward. It will be found +much better, in the long run, to do the thing in two days, +and then subtract one of them from the narrative. +This saves fatigue, and does not injure the narrative. +All the more thoughtful among the Alpine tourists +do this. + +We now called upon the Guide-in-Chief, and asked for a squadron +of guides and porters for the ascent of the Montanvert. +This idiot glared at us, and said: + +"You don't need guides and porters to go to the Montanvert." + +"What do we need, then?" + +"Such as YOU?--an ambulance!" + +I was so stung by this brutal remark that I took +my custom elsewhere. + +Betimes, next morning, we had reached an altitude of five +thousand feet above the level of the sea. Here we camped +and breakfasted. There was a cabin there--the spot is +called the Caillet--and a spring of ice-cold water. +On the door of the cabin was a sign, in French, to the effect +that "One may here see a living chamois for fifty centimes." +We did not invest; what we wanted was to see a dead one. + +A little after noon we ended the ascent and arrived at the +new hotel on the Montanvert, and had a view of six miles, +right up the great glacier, the famous Mer de Glace. +At this point it is like a sea whose deep swales and long, +rolling swells have been caught in mid-movement and +frozen solid; but further up it is broken up into wildly +tossing billows of ice. + +We descended a ticklish path in the steep side of the moraine, +and invaded the glacier. There were tourists of both +sexes scattered far and wide over it, everywhere, and it +had the festive look of a skating-rink. + +The Empress Josephine came this far, once. She ascended +the Montanvert in 1810--but not alone; a small army +of men preceded her to clear the path--and carpet it, +perhaps--and she followed, under the protection +of SIXTY-EIGHT guides. + +Her successor visited Chamonix later, but in far different style. + +It was seven weeks after the first fall of the Empire, +and poor Marie Louise, ex-Empress was a fugitive. +She came at night, and in a storm, with only two attendants, +and stood before a peasant's hut, tired, bedraggled, +soaked with rain, "the red print of her lost crown still +girdling her brow," and implored admittance--and was +refused! A few days before, the adulations and applauses +of a nation were sounding in her ears, and now she was come to +this! + +We crossed the Mer de Glace in safety, but we had misgivings. +The crevices in the ice yawned deep and blue and mysterious, +and it made one nervous to traverse them. The huge +round waves of ice were slippery and difficult to climb, +and the chances of tripping and sliding down them and +darting into a crevice were too many to be comfortable. + +In the bottom of a deep swale between two of the biggest +of the ice-waves, we found a fraud who pretended +to be cutting steps to insure the safety of tourists. +He was "soldiering" when we came upon him, but he hopped +up and chipped out a couple of steps about big enough +for a cat, and charged us a franc or two for it. +Then he sat down again, to doze till the next party +should come along. He had collected blackmail from two +or three hundred people already, that day, but had not +chipped out ice enough to impair the glacier perceptibly. +I have heard of a good many soft sinecures, but it seems +to me that keeping toll-bridge on a glacier is the softest +one I have encountered yet. + +That was a blazing hot day, and it brought a persistent +and persecuting thirst with it. What an unspeakable luxury +it was to slake that thirst with the pure and limpid +ice-water of the glacier! Down the sides of every great rib +of pure ice poured limpid rills in gutters carved by their +own attrition; better still, wherever a rock had lain, +there was now a bowl-shaped hole, with smooth white sides +and bottom of ice, and this bowl was brimming with water +of such absolute clearness that the careless observer would +not see it at all, but would think the bowl was empty. +These fountains had such an alluring look that I often +stretched myself out when I was not thirsty and dipped my +face in and drank till my teeth ached. Everywhere among +the Swiss mountains we had at hand the blessing--not +to be found in Europe EXCEPT in the mountains--of water +capable of quenching thirst. Everywhere in the Swiss +highlands brilliant little rills of exquisitely cold water +went dancing along by the roadsides, and my comrade and I +were always drinking and always delivering our deep gratitude. + +But in Europe everywhere except in the mountains, the water +is flat and insipid beyond the power of words to describe. +It is served lukewarm; but no matter, ice could not help it; +it is incurably flat, incurably insipid. It is only good +to wash with; I wonder it doesn't occur to the average +inhabitant to try it for that. In Europe the people +say contemptuously, "Nobody drinks water here." Indeed, +they have a sound and sufficient reason. In many places +they even have what may be called prohibitory reasons. +In Paris and Munich, for instance, they say, "Don't drink +the water, it is simply poison." + +Either America is healthier than Europe, notwithstanding her +"deadly" indulgence in ice-water, or she does not keep +the run of her death-rate as sharply as Europe does. +I think we do keep up the death statistics accurately; +and if we do, our cities are healthier than the cities +of Europe. Every month the German government tabulates +the death-rate of the world and publishes it. I scrap-booked +these reports during several months, and it was curious +to see how regular and persistently each city repeated +its same death-rate month after month. The tables might +as well have been stereotyped, they varied so little. +These tables were based upon weekly reports showing the +average of deaths in each 1,000 population for a year. +Munich was always present with her 33 deaths in each +1,000 of her population (yearly average), Chicago was +as constant with her 15 or 17, Dublin with her 48--and +so on. + +Only a few American cities appear in these tables, but they +are scattered so widely over the country that they furnish +a good general average of CITY health in the United States; +and I think it will be granted that our towns and villages +are healthier than our cities. + +Here is the average of the only American cities reported +in the German tables: + +Chicago, deaths in 1,000 population annually, +16; Philadelphia, 18; St. Louis, 18; San Francisco, +19; New York (the Dublin of America), 23. + +See how the figures jump up, as soon as one arrives +at the transatlantic list: + +Paris, 27; Glasgow, 27; London, 28; Vienna, 28; +Augsburg, 28; Braunschweig, 28; K"onigsberg, 29; +Cologne, 29; Dresden, 29; Hamburg, 29; Berlin, 30; +Bombay, 30; Warsaw, 31; Breslau, 31; Odessa, 32; +Munich, 33; Strasburg, 33, Pesth, 35; Cassel, 35; +Lisbon, 36; Liverpool, 36; Prague, 37; Madras, 37; +Bucharest, 39; St. Petersburg, 40; Trieste, 40; +Alexandria (Egypt), 43; Dublin, 48; Calcutta, 55. + +Edinburgh is as healthy as New York--23; but there +is no CITY in the entire list which is healthier, +except Frankfort-on-the-Main--20. But Frankfort is not +as healthy as Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, or Philadelphia. + + +Perhaps a strict average of the world might develop the fact +that where one in 1,000 of America's population dies, +two in 1,000 of the other populations of the earth succumb. + +I do not like to make insinuations, but I do think +the above statistics darkly suggest that these people +over here drink this detestable water "on the sly." + +We climbed the moraine on the opposite side of the glacier, +and then crept along its sharp ridge a hundred yards or so, +in pretty constant danger of a tumble to the glacier below. +The fall would have been only one hundred feet, but it +would have closed me out as effectually as one thousand, +therefore I respected the distance accordingly, and was +glad when the trip was done. A moraine is an ugly thing +to assault head-first. At a distance it looks like an endless +grave of fine sand, accurately shaped and nicely smoothed; +but close by, it is found to be made mainly of rough +boulders of all sizes, from that of a man's head to that of +a cottage. + +By and by we came to the Mauvais Pas, or the Villainous Road, +to translate it feelingly. It was a breakneck path +around the face of a precipice forty or fifty feet high, +and nothing to hang on to but some iron railings. +I got along, slowly, safely, and uncomfortably, and finally +reached the middle. My hopes began to rise a little, +but they were quickly blighted; for there I met a hog--a +long-nosed, bristly fellow, that held up his snout +and worked his nostrils at me inquiringly. A hog on +a pleasure excursion in Switzerland--think of it! It is +striking and unusual; a body might write a poem about it. +He could not retreat, if he had been disposed to do it. +It would have been foolish to stand upon our dignity +in a place where there was hardly room to stand upon +our feet, so we did nothing of the sort. There were +twenty or thirty ladies and gentlemen behind us; we all +turned about and went back, and the hog followed behind. +The creature did not seem set up by what he had done; +he had probably done it before. + +We reached the restaurant on the height called the Chapeau +at four in the afternoon. It was a memento-factory, and +the stock was large, cheap, and varied. I bought the usual +paper-cutter to remember the place by, and had Mont Blanc, +the Mauvais Pas, and the rest of the region branded on +my alpenstock; then we descended to the valley and walked +home without being tied together. This was not dangerous, +for the valley was five miles wide, and quite level. + +We reached the hotel before nine o'clock. Next +morning we left for Geneva on top of the diligence, +under shelter of a gay awning. If I remember rightly, +there were more than twenty people up there. +It was so high that the ascent was made by ladder. +The huge vehicle was full everywhere, inside and out. +Five other diligences left at the same time, all full. +We had engaged our seats two days beforehand, to make sure, +and paid the regulation price, five dollars each; but the +rest of the company were wiser; they had trusted Baedeker, +and waited; consequently some of them got their seats +for one or two dollars. Baedeker knows all about hotels, +railway and diligence companies, and speaks his mind freely. +He is a trustworthy friend of the traveler. + +We never saw Mont Blanc at his best until we were many +miles away; then he lifted his majestic proportions +high into the heavens, all white and cold and solemn, +and made the rest of the world seem little and plebeian, +and cheap and trivial. + +As he passed out of sight at last, an old Englishman +settled himself in his seat and said: + +"Well, I am satisfied, I have seen the principal features +of Swiss scenery--Mont Blanc and the goiter--now for home!" + + + +CHAPTER XLVII +[Queer European Manners] + +We spent a few pleasant restful days at Geneva, +that delightful city where accurate time-pieces are made +for all the rest of the world, but whose own clocks +never give the correct time of day by any accident. + +Geneva is filled with pretty shops, and the shops are +filled with the most enticing gimacrackery, but if one +enters one of these places he is at once pounced upon, +and followed up, and so persecuted to buy this, that, +and the other thing, that he is very grateful to get +out again, and is not at all apt to repeat his experiment. +The shopkeepers of the smaller sort, in Geneva, +are as troublesome and persistent as are the salesmen +of that monster hive in Paris, the Grands Magasins du +Louvre--an establishment where ill-mannered pestering, +pursuing, and insistence have been reduced to a science. + +In Geneva, prices in the smaller shops are very elastic +--that is another bad feature. I was looking in at a window +at a very pretty string of beads, suitable for a child. +I was only admiring them; I had no use for them; I hardly +ever wear beads. The shopwoman came out and offered +them to me for thirty-five francs. I said it was cheap, +but I did not need them. + +"Ah, but monsieur, they are so beautiful!" + +I confessed it, but said they were not suitable for one +of my age and simplicity of character. She darted in and +brought them out and tried to force them into my hands, +saying: + +"Ah, but only see how lovely they are! Surely monsieur will +take them; monsieur shall have them for thirty francs. +There, I have said it--it is a loss, but one must live." + +I dropped my hands, and tried to move her to respect +my unprotected situation. But no, she dangled the beads +in the sun before my face, exclaiming, "Ah, monsieur +CANNOT resist them!" She hung them on my coat button, +folded her hand resignedly, and said: "Gone,--and for +thirty francs, the lovely things--it is incredible!--but +the good God will sanctify the sacrifice to me." + +I removed them gently, returned them, and walked away, +shaking my head and smiling a smile of silly embarrassment +while the passers-by halted to observe. The woman leaned +out of her door, shook the beads, and screamed after me: + +"Monsieur shall have them for twenty-eight!" + +I shook my head. + +"Twenty-seven! It is a cruel loss, it is ruin +--but take them, only take them." + +I still retreated, still wagging my head. + +"MON DIEU, they shall even go for twenty-six! There, +I have said it. Come!" + +I wagged another negative. A nurse and a little English girl +had been near me, and were following me, now. The shopwoman +ran to the nurse, thrust the beads into her hands, and said: + +"Monsieur shall have them for twenty-five! Take them +to the hotel--he shall send me the money tomorrow +--next day--when he likes." Then to the child: "When thy +father sends me the money, come thou also, my angel, +and thou shall have something oh so pretty!" + +I was thus providentially saved. The nurse refused +the beads squarely and firmly, and that ended the matter. + +The "sights" of Geneva are not numerous. I made one +attempt to hunt up the houses once inhabited by those +two disagreeable people, Rousseau and Calvin, but I had +no success. Then I concluded to go home. I found it was +easier to propose to do that than to do it; for that town +is a bewildering place. I got lost in a tangle of narrow +and crooked streets, and stayed lost for an hour or two. +Finally I found a street which looked somewhat familiar, +and said to myself, "Now I am at home, I judge." But I +was wrong; this was "HELL street." Presently I found +another place which had a familiar look, and said to myself, +"Now I am at home, sure." It was another error. This was +"PURGATORY street." After a little I said, "NOW I've got the +right place, anyway ... no, this is 'PARADISE street'; +I'm further from home than I was in the beginning." +Those were queer names--Calvin was the author of them, +likely. "Hell" and "Purgatory" fitted those two streets +like a glove, but the "Paradise" appeared to be sarcastic. + +I came out on the lake-front, at last, and then I knew +where I was. I was walking along before the glittering +jewelry shops when I saw a curious performance. +A lady passed by, and a trim dandy lounged across the walk +in such an apparently carefully timed way as to bring +himself exactly in front of her when she got to him; +he made no offer to step out of the way; he did not apologize; +he did not even notice her. She had to stop still and let +him lounge by. I wondered if he had done that piece +of brutality purposely. He strolled to a chair and seated +himself at a small table; two or three other males were +sitting at similar tables sipping sweetened water. +I waited; presently a youth came by, and this fellow got +up and served him the same trick. Still, it did not seem +possible that any one could do such a thing deliberately. +To satisfy my curiosity I went around the block, and, +sure enough, as I approached, at a good round speed, he got +up and lounged lazily across my path, fouling my course +exactly at the right moment to receive all my weight. +This proved that his previous performances had not +been accidental, but intentional. + +I saw that dandy's curious game played afterward, in Paris, +but not for amusement; not with a motive of any sort, indeed, +but simply from a selfish indifference to other people's +comfort and rights. One does not see it as frequently +in Paris as he might expect to, for there the law says, +in effect, "It is the business of the weak to get out of +the way of the strong." We fine a cabman if he runs over +a citizen; Paris fines the citizen for being run over. +At least so everybody says--but I saw something which +caused me to doubt; I saw a horseman run over an old woman +one day--the police arrested him and took him away. +That looked as if they meant to punish him. + +It will not do for me to find merit in American manners +--for are they not the standing butt for the jests +of critical and polished Europe? Still, I must venture +to claim one little matter of superiority in our manners; +a lady may traverse our streets all day, going and coming +as she chooses, and she will never be molested by any man; +but if a lady, unattended, walks abroad in the streets +of London, even at noonday, she will be pretty likely +to be accosted and insulted--and not by drunken sailors, +but by men who carry the look and wear the dress of gentlemen. +It is maintained that these people are not gentlemen, +but are a lower sort, disguised as gentlemen. The case +of Colonel Valentine Baker obstructs that argument, +for a man cannot become an officer in the British army +except he hold the rank of gentleman. This person, +finding himself alone in a railway compartment with +an unprotected girl--but it is an atrocious story, +and doubtless the reader remembers it well enough. +London must have been more or less accustomed to Bakers, +and the ways of Bakers, else London would have been +offended and excited. Baker was "imprisoned"--in a parlor; +and he could not have been more visited, or more overwhelmed +with attentions, if he had committed six murders and then +--while the gallows was preparing--"got religion"--after +the manner of the holy Charles Peace, of saintly memory. +Arkansaw--it seems a little indelicate to be trumpeting forth +our own superiorities, and comparisons are always odious, +but still--Arkansaw would certainly have hanged Baker. +I do not say she would have tried him first, but she would have +hanged him, anyway. + +Even the most degraded woman can walk our streets unmolested, +her sex and her weakness being her sufficient protection. +She will encounter less polish than she would in the +old world, but she will run across enough humanity to make +up for it. + +The music of a donkey awoke us early in the morning, +and we rose up and made ready for a pretty formidable +walk--to Italy; but the road was so level that we took +the train.. We lost a good deal of time by this, but it +was no matter, we were not in a hurry. We were four +hours going to Chamb`ery. The Swiss trains go upward +of three miles an hour, in places, but they are quite safe. + +That aged French town of Chamb`ery was as quaint and crooked +as Heilbronn. A drowsy reposeful quiet reigned in the back +streets which made strolling through them very pleasant, +barring the almost unbearable heat of the sun. +In one of these streets, which was eight feet wide, +gracefully curved, and built up with small antiquated houses, +I saw three fat hogs lying asleep, and a boy (also asleep) +taking care of them. From queer old-fashioned windows +along the curve projected boxes of bright flowers, and over +the edge of one of these boxes hung the head and shoulders +of a cat--asleep. The five sleeping creatures were the +only living things visible in that street. There was not +a sound; absolute stillness prevailed. It was Sunday; +one is not used to such dreamy Sundays on the continent. +In our part of the town it was different that night. +A regiment of brown and battered soldiers had arrived home +from Algiers, and I judged they got thirsty on the way. +They sang and drank till dawn, in the pleasant open air. + +We left for Turin at ten the next morning by a railway which +was profusely decorated with tunnels. We forgot to take +a lantern along, consequently we missed all the scenery. +Our compartment was full. A ponderous tow-headed Swiss woman, +who put on many fine-lady airs, but was evidently more +used to washing linen than wearing it, sat in a corner +seat and put her legs across into the opposite one, +propping them intermediately with her up-ended valise. +In the seat thus pirated, sat two Americans, greatly incommoded +by that woman's majestic coffin-clad feet. One of them +begged, politely, to remove them. She opened her wide eyes +and gave him a stare, but answered nothing. By and by he +proferred his request again, with great respectfulness. +She said, in good English, and in a deeply offended tone, +that she had paid her passage and was not going to be +bullied out of her "rights" by ill-bred foreigners, +even if she was alone and unprotected. + +"But I have rights, also, madam. My ticket entitles me +to a seat, but you are occupying half of it." + +"I will not talk with you, sir. What right have you +to speak to me? I do not know you. One would know +you came from a land where there are no gentlemen. +No GENTLEMAN would treat a lady as you have treated me." + +"I come from a region where a lady would hardly give me +the same provocation." + +"You have insulted me, sir! You have intimated that I am +not a lady--and I hope I am NOT one, after the pattern +of your country." + +"I beg that you will give yourself no alarm on that head, +madam; but at the same time I must insist--always +respectfully--that you let me have my seat." + +Here the fragile laundress burst into tears and sobs. + +"I never was so insulted before! Never, never! It +is shameful, it is brutal, it is base, to bully and abuse +an unprotected lady who has lost the use of her limbs +and cannot put her feet to the floor without agony!" + +"Good heavens, madam, why didn't you say that at first! I +offer a thousand pardons. And I offer them most sincerely. +I did not know--I COULD not know--anything was the matter. +You are most welcome to the seat, and would have been +from the first if I had only known. I am truly sorry it +all happened, I do assure you." + +But he couldn't get a word of forgiveness out of her. +She simply sobbed and sniffed in a subdued but wholly +unappeasable way for two long hours, meantime crowding +the man more than ever with her undertaker-furniture +and paying no sort of attention to his frequent and +humble little efforts to do something for her comfort. +Then the train halted at the Italian line and she hopped +up and marched out of the car with as firm a leg as any +washerwoman of all her tribe! And how sick I was, to see +how she had fooled me. + +Turin is a very fine city. In the matter of roominess +it transcends anything that was ever dreamed of before, +I fancy. It sits in the midst of a vast dead-level, and one +is obliged to imagine that land may be had for the asking, +and no taxes to pay, so lavishly do they use it. +The streets are extravagantly wide, the paved squares +are prodigious, the houses are huge and handsome, +and compacted into uniform blocks that stretch away as +straight as an arrow, into the distance. The sidewalks +are about as wide as ordinary European STREETS, and are +covered over with a double arcade supported on great stone +piers or columns. One walks from one end to the other +of these spacious streets, under shelter all the time, +and all his course is lined with the prettiest of shops +and the most inviting dining-houses. + +There is a wide and lengthy court, glittering with the +most wickedly enticing shops, which is roofed with glass, +high aloft overhead, and paved with soft-toned marbles +laid in graceful figures; and at night when the place +is brilliant with gas and populous with a sauntering +and chatting and laughing multitude of pleasure-seekers, +it is a spectacle worth seeing. + +Everything is on a large scale; the public buildings, +for instance--and they are architecturally imposing, +too, as well as large. The big squares have big bronze +monuments in them. At the hotel they gave us rooms +that were alarming, for size, and parlor to match. +It was well the weather required no fire in the parlor, +for I think one might as well have tried to warm a park. +The place would have a warm look, though, in any weather, +for the window-curtains were of red silk damask, +and the walls were covered with the same fire-hued +goods--so, also, were the four sofas and the brigade +of chairs. The furniture, the ornaments, the chandeliers, +the carpets, were all new and bright and costly. +We did not need a parlor at all, but they said it belonged +to the two bedrooms and we might use it if we chose. +Since it was to cost nothing, we were not averse to using it, +of course. + +Turin must surely read a good deal, for it has more +book-stores to the square rod than any other town I +know of. And it has its own share of military folk. +The Italian officers' uniforms are very much the most +beautiful I have ever seen; and, as a general thing, +the men in them were as handsome as the clothes. They were +not large men, but they had fine forms, fine features, +rich olive complexions, and lustrous black eyes. + +For several weeks I had been culling all the information +I could about Italy, from tourists. The tourists were +all agreed upon one thing--one must expect to be cheated +at every turn by the Italians. I took an evening walk +in Turin, and presently came across a little Punch and Judy +show in one of the great squares. Twelve or fifteen +people constituted the audience. This miniature theater +was not much bigger than a man's coffin stood on end; +the upper part was open and displayed a tinseled +parlor--a good-sized handkerchief would have answered +for a drop-curtain; the footlights consisted of a couple +of candle-ends an inch long; various manikins the size +of dolls appeared on the stage and made long speeches at +each other, gesticulating a good deal, and they generally +had a fight before they got through. They were worked +by strings from above, and the illusion was not perfect, +for one saw not only the strings but the brawny hand +that manipulated them--and the actors and actresses all +talked in the same voice, too. The audience stood in front +of the theater, and seemed to enjoy the performance heartily. + +When the play was done, a youth in his shirt-sleeves started +around with a small copper saucer to make a collection. +I did not know how much to put in, but thought I would +be guided by my predecessors. Unluckily, I only had two +of these, and they did not help me much because they +did not put in anything. I had no Italian money, +so I put in a small Swiss coin worth about ten cents. +The youth finished his collection trip and emptied +the result on the stage; he had some very animated talk +with the concealed manager, then he came working his +way through the little crowd--seeking me, I thought. +I had a mind to slip away, but concluded I wouldn't; +I would stand my ground, and confront the villainy, +whatever it was. The youth stood before me and held +up that Swiss coin, sure enough, and said something. +I did not understand him, but I judged he was requiring +Italian money of me. The crowd gathered close, +to listen. I was irritated, and said--in English, +of course: + +"I know it's Swiss, but you'll take that or none. +I haven't any other." + +He tried to put the coin in my hand, and spoke again. +I drew my hand away, and said: + +"NO, sir. I know all about you people. You can't play +any of your fraudful tricks on me. If there is a discount +on that coin, I am sorry, but I am not going to make +it good. I noticed that some of the audience didn't pay +you anything at all. You let them go, without a word, +but you come after me because you think I'm a stranger +and will put up with an extortion rather than have a scene. +But you are mistaken this time--you'll take that Swiss +money or none." + +The youth stood there with the coin in his fingers, +nonplused and bewildered; of course he had not understood +a word. An English-speaking Italian spoke up, now, and said: + +"You are misunderstanding the boy. He does not mean any harm. +He did not suppose you gave him so much money purposely, +so he hurried back to return you the coin lest you +might get away before you discovered your mistake. +Take it, and give him a penny--that will make everything +smooth again." + +I probably blushed, then, for there was occasion. +Through the interpreter I begged the boy's pardon, +but I nobly refused to take back the ten cents. I said +I was accustomed to squandering large sums in that way +--it was the kind of person I was. Then I retired to make +a note to the effect that in Italy persons connected +with the drama do not cheat. + +The episode with the showman reminds me of a dark chapter +in my history. I once robbed an aged and blind beggar-woman +of four dollars--in a church. It happened this way. +When I was out with the Innocents Abroad, the ship +stopped in the Russian port of Odessa and I went ashore, +with others, to view the town. I got separated from the rest, +and wandered about alone, until late in the afternoon, +when I entered a Greek church to see what it was like. +When I was ready to leave, I observed two wrinkled old +women standing stiffly upright against the inner wall, +near the door, with their brown palms open to receive alms. +I contributed to the nearer one, and passed out. +I had gone fifty yards, perhaps, when it occurred to me +that I must remain ashore all night, as I had heard +that the ship's business would carry her away at four +o'clock and keep her away until morning. It was a little +after four now. I had come ashore with only two pieces +of money, both about the same size, but differing largely +in value--one was a French gold piece worth four dollars, +the other a Turkish coin worth two cents and a half. +With a sudden and horrified misgiving, I put my hand in +my pocket, now, and sure enough, I fetched out that Turkish +penny! + +Here was a situation. A hotel would require pay in +advance --I must walk the street all night, and perhaps +be arrested as a suspicious character. There was but one +way out of the difficulty--I flew back to the church, +and softly entered. There stood the old woman yet, +and in the palm of the nearest one still lay my gold piece. +I was grateful. I crept close, feeling unspeakably mean; +I got my Turkish penny ready, and was extending a trembling +hand to make the nefarious exchange, when I heard a cough +behind me. I jumped back as if I had been accused, +and stood quaking while a worshiper entered and passed up +the aisle. + +I was there a year trying to steal that money; that is, +it seemed a year, though, of course, it must have been +much less. The worshipers went and came; there were hardly +ever three in the church at once, but there was always one +or more. Every time I tried to commit my crime somebody +came in or somebody started out, and I was prevented; +but at last my opportunity came; for one moment there +was nobody in the church but the two beggar-women and me. +I whipped the gold piece out of the poor old pauper's palm +and dropped my Turkish penny in its place. Poor old thing, +she murmured her thanks--they smote me to the heart. +Then I sped away in a guilty hurry, and even when I was a mile +from the church I was still glancing back, every moment, +to see if I was being pursued. + +That experience has been of priceless value and benefit +to me; for I resolved then, that as long as I lived I +would never again rob a blind beggar-woman in a church; +and I have always kept my word. The most permanent lessons +in morals are those which come, not of booky teaching, +but of experience. + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII +[Beauty of Women--and of Old Masters] + +In Milan we spent most of our time in the vast and +beautiful Arcade or Gallery, or whatever it is called. +Blocks of tall new buildings of the most sumptuous sort, +rich with decoration and graced with statues, the streets +between these blocks roofed over with glass at a great height, +the pavements all of smooth and variegated marble, +arranged in tasteful patterns--little tables all over these +marble streets, people sitting at them, eating, drinking, +or smoking--crowds of other people strolling by--such +is the Arcade. I should like to live in it all the time. +The windows of the sumptuous restaurants stand open, +and one breakfasts there and enjoys the passing show. + +We wandered all over the town, enjoying whatever was going +on in the streets. We took one omnibus ride, and as I +did not speak Italian and could not ask the price, I held +out some copper coins to the conductor, and he took two. +Then he went and got his tariff card and showed me that he +had taken only the right sum. So I made a note--Italian +omnibus conductors do not cheat. + +Near the Cathedral I saw another instance of probity. +An old man was peddling dolls and toy fans. Two small +American children and one gave the old man a franc +and three copper coins, and both started away; but they +were called back, and the franc and one of the coppers +were restored to them. Hence it is plain that in Italy, +parties connected with the drama and the omnibus and the toy +interests do not cheat. + +The stocks of goods in the shops were not extensive, generally. +In the vestibule of what seemed to be a clothing store, +we saw eight or ten wooden dummies grouped together, +clothed in woolen business suits and each marked with its price. +One suit was marked forty-five francs--nine dollars. +Harris stepped in and said he wanted a suit like that. +Nothing easier: the old merchant dragged in the dummy, +brushed him off with a broom, stripped him, and shipped +the clothes to the hotel. He said he did not keep two +suits of the same kind in stock, but manufactured a second +when it was needed to reclothe the dummy. + +In another quarter we found six Italians engaged +in a violent quarrel. They danced fiercely about, +gesticulating with their heads, their arms, their legs, +their whole bodies; they would rush forward occasionally +with a sudden access of passion and shake their fists +in each other's very faces. We lost half an hour there, +waiting to help cord up the dead, but they finally embraced +each other affectionately, and the trouble was over. +The episode was interesting, but we could not have afforded +all the time to it if we had known nothing was going +to come of it but a reconciliation. Note made--in Italy, +people who quarrel cheat the spectator. + +We had another disappointment afterward. We approached +a deeply interested crowd, and in the midst of it +found a fellow wildly chattering and gesticulating +over a box on the ground which was covered with a piece +of old blanket. Every little while he would bend down +and take hold of the edge of the blanket with the extreme +tips of his fingertips, as if to show there was no +deception--chattering away all the while--but always, +just as I was expecting to see a wonder feat of legerdemain, +he would let go the blanket and rise to explain further. +However, at last he uncovered the box and got out a spoon +with a liquid in it, and held it fair and frankly around, +for people to see that it was all right and he was taking +no advantage--his chatter became more excited than ever. +I supposed he was going to set fire to the liquid and +swallow it, so I was greatly wrought up and interested. +I got a cent ready in one hand and a florin in the other, +intending to give him the former if he survived and the +latter if he killed himself--for his loss would be my gain +in a literary way, and I was willing to pay a fair price +for the item --but this impostor ended his intensely +moving performance by simply adding some powder to the +liquid and polishing the spoon! Then he held it aloft, +and he could not have shown a wilder exultation if he +had achieved an immortal miracle. The crowd applauded +in a gratified way, and it seemed to me that history +speaks the truth when it says these children of the south +are easily entertained. + +We spent an impressive hour in the noble cathedral, where long +shafts of tinted light were cleaving through the solemn +dimness from the lofty windows and falling on a pillar here, +a picture there, and a kneeling worshiper yonder. +The organ was muttering, censers were swinging, candles were +glinting on the distant altar and robed priests were +filing silently past them; the scene was one to sweep all +frivolous thoughts away and steep the soul in a holy calm. +A trim young American lady paused a yard or two from me, +fixed her eyes on the mellow sparks flecking the far-off altar, +bent her head reverently a moment, then straightened up, +kicked her train into the air with her heel, caught it +deftly in her hand, and marched briskly out. + +We visited the picture-galleries and the other regulation +"sights" +of Milan--not because I wanted to write about them again, +but to see if I had learned anything in twelve years. +I afterward visited the great galleries of Rome and +Florence for the same purpose. I found I had learned +one thing. When I wrote about the Old Masters before, +I said the copies were better than the originals. +That was a mistake of large dimensions. The Old Masters +were still unpleasing to me, but they were truly divine +contrasted with the copies. The copy is to the original +as the pallid, smart, inane new wax-work group is to +the vigorous, earnest, dignified group of living men +and women whom it professes to duplicate. There is a +mellow richness, a subdued color, in the old pictures, +which is to the eye what muffled and mellowed sound +is to the ear. That is the merit which is most loudly +praised in the old picture, and is the one which the copy +most conspicuously lacks, and which the copyist must +not hope to compass. It was generally conceded by the +artists with whom I talked, that that subdued splendor, +that mellow richness, is imparted to the picture by AGE. +Then why should we worship the Old Master for it, +who didn't impart it, instead of worshiping Old Time, +who did? Perhaps the picture was a clanging bell, +until Time muffled it and sweetened it. + +In conversation with an artist in Venice, I asked: "What +is it that people see in the Old Masters? I have been in the +Doge's palace and I saw several acres of very bad drawing, +very bad perspective, and very incorrect proportions. +Paul Veronese's dogs to not resemble dogs; all the horses +look like bladders on legs; one man had a RIGHT leg on +the left side of his body; in the large picture where +the Emperor (Barbarossa?) is prostrate before the Pope, +there are three men in the foreground who are over +thirty feet high, if one may judge by the size of a +kneeling little boy in the center of the foreground; +and according to the same scale, the Pope is seven feet +high and the Doge is a shriveled dwarf of four feet." + +The artist said: + +"Yes, the Old Masters often drew badly; they did not +care much for truth and exactness in minor details; +but after all, in spite of bad drawing, bad perspective, +bad proportions, and a choice of subjects which no longer +appeal to people as strongly as they did three hundred +years ago, there is a SOMETHING about their pictures +which is divine--a something which is above and beyond +the art of any epoch since--a something which would be +the despair of artists but that they never hope or expect +to attain it, and therefore do not worry about it." + +That is what he said--and he said what he believed; +and not only believed, but felt. + +Reasoning--especially reasoning, without technical +knowledge--must be put aside, in cases of this kind. +It cannot assist the inquirer. It will lead him, +in the most logical progression, to what, in the eyes +of artists, would be a most illogical conclusion. +Thus: bad drawing, bad proportion, bad perspective, +indifference to truthful detail, color which gets its +merit from time, and not from the artist--these things +constitute the Old Master; conclusion, the Old Master +was a bad painter, the Old Master was not an Old Master +at all, but an Old Apprentice. Your friend the artist +will grant your premises, but deny your conclusion; +he will maintain that notwithstanding this formidable +list of confessed defects, there is still a something +that is divine and unapproachable about the Old Master, +and that there is no arguing the fact away by any system of +reasoning whatsoever. + +I can believe that. There are women who have an +indefinable charm in their faces which makes them +beautiful to their intimates, but a cold stranger +who tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty +would fail. He would say to one of these women: This +chin is too short, this nose is too long, this forehead +is too high, this hair is too red, this complexion is +too pallid, the perspective of the entire composition +is incorrect; conclusion, the woman is not beautiful. +But her nearest friend might say, and say truly, +"Your premises are right, your logic is faultless, +but your conclusion is wrong, nevertheless; she is an Old +Master--she is beautiful, but only to such as know her; +it is a beauty which cannot be formulated, but it is there, just +the same." + +I found more pleasure in contemplating the Old Masters +this time than I did when I was in Europe in former years, +but still it was a calm pleasure; there was nothing +overheated about it. When I was in Venice before, +I think I found no picture which stirred me much, +but this time there were two which enticed me to the Doge's +palace day after day, and kept me there hours at a time. +One of these was Tintoretto's three-acre picture in the +Great Council Chamber. When I saw it twelve years ago I +was not strongly attracted to it--the guide told me it +was an insurrection in heaven--but this was an error. + +The movement of this great work is very fine. There are +ten thousand figures, and they are all doing something. +There is a wonderful "go" to the whole composition. +Some of the figures are driving headlong downward, +with clasped hands, others are swimming through the +cloud-shoals--some on their faces, some on their backs--great +processions of bishops, martyrs, and angels are pouring swiftly +centerward from various outlying directions--everywhere +is enthusiastic joy, there is rushing movement everywhere. +There are fifteen or twenty figures scattered here and there, +with books, but they cannot keep their attention on +their reading--they offer the books to others, but no +one wishes to read, now. The Lion of St. Mark is there +with his book; St. Mark is there with his pen uplifted; +he and the Lion are looking each other earnestly in the face, +disputing about the way to spell a word--the Lion +looks up in rapt admiration while St. Mark spells. +This is wonderfully interpreted by the artist. +It is the master-stroke of this imcomparable painting. +[Figure 10] + +I visited the place daily, and never grew tired of +looking at that grand picture. As I have intimated, +the movement is almost unimaginable vigorous; the figures +are singing, hosannahing, and many are blowing trumpets. +So vividly is noise suggested, that spectators who become +absorbed in the picture almost always fall to shouting +comments in each other's ears, making ear-trumpets of their +curved hands, fearing they may not otherwise be heard. +One often sees a tourist, with the eloquent tears pouring +down his cheeks, funnel his hands at his wife's ear, +and hears him roar through them, "OH, TO BE THERE AND +AT REST!" + +None but the supremely great in art can produce effects +like these with the silent brush. + +Twelve years ago I could not have appreciated this picture. +One year ago I could not have appreciated it. My study +of Art in Heidelberg has been a noble education to me. +All that I am today in Art, I owe to that. + +The other great work which fascinated me was Bassano's +immortal Hair Trunk. This is in the Chamber of the Council +of Ten. It is in one of the three forty-foot pictures +which decorate the walls of the room. The composition +of this picture is beyond praise. The Hair Trunk is not +hurled at the stranger's head--so to speak--as the chief +feature of an immortal work so often is; no, it is +carefully guarded from prominence, it is subordinated, +it is restrained, it is most deftly and cleverly held +in reserve, it is most cautiously and ingeniously led up to, +by the master, and consequently when the spectator reaches +it at last, he is taken unawares, he is unprepared, +and it bursts upon him with a stupefying surprise. + +One is lost in wonder at all the thought and care which +this elaborate planning must have cost. A general glance +at the picture could never suggest that there was a hair +trunk in it; the Hair Trunk is not mentioned in the title +even--which is, "Pope Alexander III. and the Doge Ziani, +the Conqueror of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa"; +you see, the title is actually utilized to help +divert attention from the Trunk; thus, as I say, +nothing suggests the presence of the Trunk, by any hint, +yet everything studiedly leads up to it, step by step. +Let us examine into this, and observe the exquisitely +artful artlessness of the plan. + +At the extreme left end of the picture are a couple of women, +one of them with a child looking over her shoulder at +a wounded man sitting with bandaged head on the ground. +These people seem needless, but no, they are there +for a purpose; one cannot look at them without seeing +the gorgeous procession of grandees, bishops, halberdiers, +and banner-bearers which is passing along behind them; +one cannot see the procession without feeling the curiosity +to follow it and learn whither it is going; it leads him +to the Pope, in the center of the picture, who is talking +with the bonnetless Doge--talking tranquilly, too, +although within twelve feet of them a man is beating a drum, +and not far from the drummer two persons are blowing horns, +and many horsemen are plunging and rioting about--indeed, +twenty-two feet of this great work is all a deep and +happy holiday serenity and Sunday-school procession, +and then we come suddenly upon eleven and one-half feet +of turmoil and racket and insubordination. This latter +state of things is not an accident, it has its purpose. +But for it, one would linger upon the Pope and the Doge, +thinking them to be the motive and supreme feature of +the picture; whereas one is drawn along, almost unconsciously, +to see what the trouble is about. Now at the very END +of this riot, within four feet of the end of the picture, +and full thirty-six feet from the beginning of it, +the Hair Trunk bursts with an electrifying suddenness +upon the spectator, in all its matchless perfection, +and the great master's triumph is sweeping and complete. +From that moment no other thing in those forty feet of canvas +has any charm; one sees the Hair Trunk, and the Hair Trunk +only--and to see it is to worship it. Bassano even placed +objects in the immediate vicinity of the Supreme Feature +whose pretended purpose was to divert attention from it yet +a little longer and thus delay and augment the surprise; +for instance, to the right of it he has placed a stooping +man with a cap so red that it is sure to hold the eye +for a moment--to the left of it, some six feet away, +he has placed a red-coated man on an inflated horse, +and that coat plucks your eye to that locality the next +moment--then, between the Trunk and the red horseman he +has intruded a man, naked to his waist, who is carrying +a fancy flour-sack on the middle of his back instead +of on his shoulder--this admirable feat interests you, +of course--keeps you at bay a little longer, like a sock +or a jacket thrown to the pursuing wolf--but at last, +in spite of all distractions and detentions, the eye +of even the most dull and heedless spectator is sure +to fall upon the World's Masterpiece, and in that +moment he totters to his chair or leans upon his guide +for support. + +Descriptions of such a work as this must necessarily +be imperfect, yet they are of value. The top of the Trunk +is arched; the arch is a perfect half-circle, in the Roman +style of architecture, for in the then rapid decadence +of Greek art, the rising influence of Rome was already +beginning to be felt in the art of the Republic. +The Trunk is bound or bordered with leather all around +where the lid joins the main body. Many critics consider +this leather too cold in tone; but I consider this +its highest merit, since it was evidently made so to +emphasize by contrast the impassioned fervor of the hasp. +The highlights in this part of the work are cleverly managed, +the MOTIF is admirably subordinated to the ground tints, +and the technique is very fine. The brass nail-heads +are in the purest style of the early Renaissance. +The strokes, here, are very firm and bold--every nail-head +is a portrait. The handle on the end of the Trunk has +evidently been retouched--I think, with a piece of chalk +--but one can still see the inspiration of the Old Master +in the tranquil, almost too tranquil, hang of it. The hair +of this Trunk is REAL hair--so to speak--white in patched, +brown in patches. The details are finely worked out; +the repose proper to hair in a recumbent and inactive +attitude is charmingly expressed. There is a feeling +about this part of the work which lifts it to the highest +altitudes of art; the sense of sordid realism vanishes +away--one recognizes that there is SOUL here. + +View this Trunk as you will, it is a gem, it is a marvel, +it is a miracle. Some of the effects are very daring, +approaching even to the boldest flights of the rococo, +the sirocco, and the Byzantine schools--yet the master's hand +never falters--it moves on, calm, majestic, confident--and, +with that art which conceals art, it finally casts over +the TOUT ENSEMBLE, by mysterious methods of its own, +a subtle something which refines, subdues, etherealizes the +arid components and endures them with the deep charm +and gracious witchery of poesy. + +Among the art-treasures of Europe there are pictures +which approach the Hair Trunk--there are two which may +be said to equal it, possibly--but there is none that +surpasses it. So perfect is the Hair Trunk that it moves +even persons who ordinarily have no feeling for art. +When an Erie baggagemaster saw it two years ago, he could +hardly keep from checking it; and once when a customs +inspector was brought into its presence, he gazed upon +it in silent rapture for some moments, then slowly +and unconsciously placed one hand behind him with the +palm uppermost, and got out his chalk with the other. +These facts speak for themselves. + + + +CHAPTER XLIX +[Hanged with a Golden Rope] + +One lingers about the Cathedral a good deal, in Venice. +There is a strong fascination about it--partly because +it is so old, and partly because it is so ugly. +Too many of the world's famous buildings fail of one +chief virtue--harmony; they are made up of a methodless +mixture of the ugly and the beautiful; this is bad; +it is confusing, it is unrestful. One has a sense +of uneasiness, of distress, without knowing why. But one +is calm before St. Mark's, one is calm in the cellar; +for its details are masterfully ugly, no misplaced +and impertinent beauties are intruded anywhere; and the +consequent result is a grand harmonious whole, of soothing, +entrancing, tranquilizing, soul-satisfying ugliness. +One's admiration of a perfect thing always grows, +never declines; and this is the surest evidence to him +that it IS perfect. St. Mark's is perfect. To me it +soon grew to be so nobly, so augustly ugly, that it was +difficult to stay away from it, even for a little while. +Every time its squat domes disappeared from my view, +I had a despondent feeling; whenever they reappeared, +I felt an honest rapture--I have not known any happier hours +than those I daily spent in front of Florian's, looking +across the Great Square at it. Propped on its long row +of low thick-legged columns, its back knobbed with domes, +it seemed like a vast warty bug taking a meditative walk. + +St. Mark's is not the oldest building in the world, of course, +but it seems the oldest, and looks the oldest--especially inside. + +When the ancient mosaics in its walls become damaged, +they are repaired but not altered; the grotesque old +pattern is preserved. Antiquity has a charm of its own, +and to smarten it up would only damage it. One day I +was sitting on a red marble bench in the vestibule looking +up at an ancient piece of apprentice-work, in mosaic, +illustrative of the command to "multiply and replenish +the earth." The Cathedral itself had seemed very old; +but this picture was illustrating a period in history +which made the building seem young by comparison. +But I presently found an antique which was older than either +the battered Cathedral or the date assigned to the piece +of history; it was a spiral-shaped fossil as large as +the crown of a hat; it was embedded in the marble bench, +and had been sat upon by tourists until it was worn smooth. +Contrasted with the inconceivable antiquity of this +modest fossil, those other things were flippantly +modern--jejune--mere matters of day-before-yesterday. +The sense of the oldness of the Cathedral vanished away +under the influence of this truly venerable presence. + +St. Mark's is monumental; it is an imperishable remembrancer +of the profound and simply piety of the Middle Ages. +Whoever could ravish a column from a pagan temple, +did it and contributed his swag to this Christian one. +So this fane is upheld by several hundred acquisitions +procured in that peculiar way. In our day it would be +immoral to go on the highway to get bricks for a church, +but it was no sin in the old times. St. Mark's was itself +the victim of a curious robbery once. The thing is set +down in the history of Venice, but it might be smuggled +into the Arabian Nights and not seem out of place +there: + +Nearly four hundred and fifty years ago, a Candian +named Stammato, in the suite of a prince of the house +of Este, was allowed to view the riches of St. Mark's. +His sinful eye was dazzled and he hid himself behind +an altar, with an evil purpose in his heart, but a priest +discovered him and turned him out. Afterward he got +in again--by false keys, this time. He went there, +night after night, and worked hard and patiently, all alone, +overcoming difficulty after difficulty with his toil, +and at last succeeded in removing a great brick of the marble +paneling which walled the lower part of the treasury; +this block he fixed so that he could take it out and put +it in at will. After that, for weeks, he spent all +his midnights in his magnificent mine, inspecting it +in security, gloating over its marvels at his leisure, +and always slipping back to his obscure lodgings before dawn, +with a duke's ransom under his cloak. He did not need +to grab, haphazard, and run--there was no hurry. +He could make deliberate and well-considered selections; +he could consult his esthetic tastes. One comprehends +how undisturbed he was, and how safe from any danger +of interruption, when it is stated that he even carried off +a unicorn's horn--a mere curiosity--which would not pass +through the egress entire, but had to be sawn in two +--a bit of work which cost him hours of tedious labor. +He continued to store up his treasures at home until his +occupation lost the charm of novelty and became monotonous; +then he ceased from it, contented. Well he might be; +for his collection, raised to modern values, represented nearly +fifty million dollars! + +He could have gone home much the richest citizen of his country, +and it might have been years before the plunder was missed; +but he was human--he could not enjoy his delight alone, +he must have somebody to talk about it with. So he +exacted a solemn oath from a Candian noble named Crioni, +then led him to his lodgings and nearly took his breath +away with a sight of his glittering hoard. He detected +a look in his friend's face which excited his suspicion, +and was about to slip a stiletto into him when Crioni +saved himself by explaining that that look was only +an expression of supreme and happy astonishment. +Stammato made Crioni a present of one of the state's +principal jewels--a huge carbuncle, which afterward +figured in the Ducal cap of state--and the pair parted. +Crioni went at once to the palace, denounced the criminal, +and handed over the carbuncle as evidence. +Stammato was arrested, tried, and condemned, with the +old-time Venetian promptness. He was hanged between +the two great columns in the Piazza--with a gilded rope, +out of compliment to his love of gold, perhaps. He got +no good of his booty at all--it was ALL recovered. + +In Venice we had a luxury which very seldom fell to our lot +on the continent--a home dinner with a private family. +If one could always stop with private families, +when traveling, Europe would have a charm which it +now lacks. As it is, one must live in the hotels, +of course, and that is a sorrowful business. +A man accustomed to American food and American domestic +cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe; +but I think he would gradually waste away, and eventually die. + +He would have to do without his accustomed morning meal. +That is too formidable a change altogether; he would +necessarily suffer from it. He could get the shadow, +the sham, the base counterfeit of that meal; but it would +do him no good, and money could not buy the reality. + +To particularize: the average American's simplest and +commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak; +well, in Europe, coffee is an unknown beverage. You can +get what the European hotel-keeper thinks is coffee, but it +resembles the real thing as hypocrisy resembles holiness. +It is a feeble, characterless, uninspiring sort of stuff, +and almost as undrinkable as if it had been made in an +American hotel. The milk used for it is what the French +call "Christian" milk--milk which has been baptized. + +After a few months' acquaintance with European "coffee," +one's mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins +to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted +layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream, +after all, and a thing which never existed. + +Next comes the European bread--fair enough, good enough, +after a fashion, but cold; cold and tough, and unsympathetic; +and never any change, never any variety--always the same +tiresome thing. + +Next, the butter--the sham and tasteless butter; no salt +in it, and made of goodness knows what. + +Then there is the beefsteak. They have it in Europe, but they +don't know how to cook it. Neither will they cut it right. +It comes on the table in a small, round pewter platter. +It lies in the center of this platter, in a bordering +bed of grease-soaked potatoes; it is the size, shape, +and thickness of a man's hand with the thumb and fingers +cut off. It is a little overdone, is rather dry, +it tastes pretty insipidly, it rouses no enthusiasm. + +Imagine a poor exile contemplating that inert thing; +and imagine an angel suddenly sweeping down out of a better +land and setting before him a mighty porterhouse steak an +inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; +dusted with a fragrant pepper; enriched with little +melting bits of butter of the most unimpeachable freshness +and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling +out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; +a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing +an outlying district of this ample county of beefsteak; +the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the +tenderloin still in its place; and imagine that the angel +also adds a great cup of American home-made coffee, +with a cream a-froth on top, some real butter, firm and +yellow and fresh, some smoking hot-biscuits, a plate +of hot buckwheat cakes, with transparent syrup--could +words describe the gratitude of this exile? + +The European dinner is better than the European breakfast, +but it has its faults and inferiorities; it does not satisfy. +He comes to the table eager and hungry; he swallows his +soup--there is an undefinable lack about it somewhere; +thinks the fish is going to be the thing he wants +--eats it and isn't sure; thinks the next dish is perhaps +the one that will hit the hungry place--tries it, +and is conscious that there was a something wanting +about it, also. And thus he goes on, from dish to dish, +like a boy after a butterfly which just misses getting +caught every time it alights, but somehow doesn't get caught +after all; and at the end the exile and the boy have fared +about alike; the one is full, but grievously unsatisfied, +the other has had plenty of exercise, plenty of interest, +and a fine lot of hopes, but he hasn't got any butterfly. +There is here and there an American who will say he can remember +rising from a European table d'ho^te perfectly satisfied; +but we must not overlook the fact that there is also here +and there an American who will lie. + +The number of dishes is sufficient; but then it is such +a monotonous variety of UNSTRIKING dishes. It is an inane +dead-level of "fair-to-middling." There is nothing to +ACCENT it. Perhaps if the roast of mutton or of beef--a big, +generous one--were brought on the table and carved in full +view of the client, that might give the right sense of +earnestness and reality to the thing; but they don't do that, +they pass the sliced meat around on a dish, and so you +are perfectly calm, it does not stir you in the least. +Now a vast roast turkey, stretched on the broad of his back, +with his heels in the air and the rich juices oozing +from his fat sides ... but I may as well stop there, +for they would not know how to cook him. They can't +even cook a chicken respectably; and as for carving it, +they do that with a hatchet. + +This is about the customary table d'ho^te bill in summer: + +Soup (characterless). + +Fish--sole, salmon, or whiting--usually tolerably good. + +Roast--mutton or beef--tasteless--and some last year's potatoes. + +A pa^te, or some other made dish--usually good--"considering." + +One vegetable--brought on in state, and all alone--usually +insipid lentils, or string-beans, or indifferent asparagus. + +Roast chicken, as tasteless as paper. + +Lettuce-salad--tolerably good. + +Decayed strawberries or cherries. + +Sometimes the apricots and figs are fresh, but this is +no advantage, as these fruits are of no account anyway. + +The grapes are generally good, and sometimes there +is a tolerably good peach, by mistake. + +The variations of the above bill are trifling. After a +fortnight one discovers that the variations are only apparent, +not real; in the third week you get what you had the first, +and in the fourth the week you get what you had the second. +Three or four months of this weary sameness will kill +the robustest appetite. + +It has now been many months, at the present writing, +since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon +have one--a modest, private affair, all to myself. +I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill +of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me, +and be hot when I arrive--as follows: + +Radishes. Baked apples, with cream +Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs. +American coffee, with real cream. +American butter. +Fried chicken, Southern style. +Porter-house steak. +Saratoga potatoes. +Broiled chicken, American style. +Hot biscuits, Southern style. +Hot wheat-bread, Southern style. +Hot buckwheat cakes. +American toast. Clear maple syrup. +Virginia bacon, broiled. +Blue points, on the half shell. +Cherry-stone clams. +San Francisco mussels, steamed. +Oyster soup. Clam Soup. +Philadelphia Terapin soup. +Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style. +Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad. +Baltimore perch. +Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas. +Lake trout, from Tahoe. +Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans. +Black bass from the Mississippi. +American roast beef. +Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style. +Cranberry sauce. Celery. +Roast wild turkey. Woodcock. +Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore. +Prairie liens, from Illinois. +Missouri partridges, broiled. +'Possum. Coon. +Boston bacon and beans. +Bacon and greens, Southern style. +Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips. +Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus. +Butter beans. Sweet potatoes. +Lettuce. Succotash. String beans. +Mashed potatoes. Catsup. +Boiled potatoes, in their skins. +New potatoes, minus the skins. +Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot. +Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes. +Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper. +Green corn, on the ear. +Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style. +Hot hoe-cake, Southern style. +Hot egg-bread, Southern style. +Hot light-bread, Southern style. +Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk. +Apple dumplings, with real cream. +Apple pie. Apple fritters. +Apple puffs, Southern style. +Peach cobbler, Southern style +Peach pie. American mince pie. +Pumpkin pie. Squash pie. +All sorts of American pastry. + +Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries which +are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more +liberal way. Ice-water--not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, +but in the sincere and capable refrigerator. + +Americans intending to spend a year or so in European hotels +will do well to copy this bill and carry it along. They will +find it an excellent thing to get up an appetite with, +in the dispiriting presence of the squalid table d'ho^te. + +Foreigners cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any more than we +can enjoy theirs. It is not strange; for tastes are made, +not born. I might glorify my bill of fare until I was tired; +but after all, the Scotchman would shake his head and say, +"Where's your haggis?" and the Fijian would sigh and say, +"Where's your missionary?" + +I have a neat talent in matters pertaining to nourishment. +This has met with professional recognition. I have often +furnished recipes for cook-books. Here are some designs +for pies and things, which I recently prepared for a +friend's projected cook-book, but as I forgot to furnish +diagrams and perspectives, they had to be left out, +of course. + +RECIPE FOR AN ASH-CAKE + +Take a lot of water and add to it a lot of coarse +Indian-meal and about a quarter of a lot of salt. +Mix well together, knead into the form of a "pone," and let +the pone stand awhile--not on its edge, but the other way. +Rake away a place among the embers, lay it there, +and cover it an inch deep with hot ashes. When it +is done, remove it; blow off all the ashes but one layer; +butter that one and eat. + +N.B.--No household should ever be without this talisman. +It has been noticed that tramps never return for another +ash-cake. + +---------- + +RECIPE FOR NEW ENGLISH PIE + +To make this excellent breakfast dish, proceed as +follows: Take a sufficiency of water and a sufficiency +of flour, and construct a bullet-proof dough. +Work this into the form of a disk, with the edges turned +up some three-fourths of an inch. Toughen and kiln-dry +in a couple days in a mild but unvarying temperature. +Construct a cover for this redoubt in the same way and +of the same material. Fill with stewed dried apples; +aggravate with cloves, lemon-peel, and slabs of citron; +add two portions of New Orleans sugars, then solder +on the lid and set in a safe place till it petrifies. +Serve cold at breakfast and invite your enemy. + +---------- + +RECIPE FOR GERMAN COFFEE + +Take a barrel of water and bring it to a boil; rub a chicory +berry against a coffee berry, then convey the former +into the water. Continue the boiling and evaporation +until the intensity of the flavor and aroma of the coffee +and chicory has been diminished to a proper degree; +then set aside to cool. Now unharness the remains of a +once cow from the plow, insert them in a hydraulic press, +and when you shall have acquired a teaspoon of that +pale-blue juice which a German superstition regards +as milk, modify the malignity of its strength in a bucket +of tepid water and ring up the breakfast. Mix the +beverage in a cold cup, partake with moderation, and keep +a wet rag around your head to guard against over-excitement. + +---------- + +TO CARVE FOWLS IN THE GERMAN FASHION + +Use a club, and avoid the joints. + + + +CHAPTER L +[Titian Bad and Titian Good] + +I wonder why some things are? For instance, Art is allowed +as much indecent license today as in earlier times +--but the privileges of Literature in this respect have been +sharply curtailed within the past eighty or ninety years. +Fielding and Smollett could portray the beastliness +of their day in the beastliest language; we have plenty +of foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are +not allowed to approach them very near, even with nice +and guarded forms of speech. But not so with Art. +The brush may still deal freely with any subject, +however revolting or indelicate. It makes a body ooze +sarcasm at every pore, to go about Rome and Florence and see +what this last generation has been doing with the statues. +These works, which had stood in innocent nakedness for ages, +are all fig-leaved now. Yes, every one of them. +Nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can +help noticing it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous. +But the comical thing about it all, is, that the fig-leaf +is confined to cold and pallid marble, which would be still +cold and unsuggestive without this sham and ostentatious +symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blood paintings which do +really need it have in no case been furnished with it. + +At the door of the Uffizzi, in Florence, one is confronted +by statues of a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with +accumulated grime--they hardly suggest human beings +--yet these ridiculous creatures have been thoughtfully and +conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious generation. +You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little +gallery that exists in the world--the Tribune--and there, +against the wall, without obstructing rag or leaf, +you may look your fill upon the foulest, the vilest, +the obscenest picture the world possesses--Titian's Venus. +It isn't that she is naked and stretched out on a bed--no, +it is the attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I +ventured to describe that attitude, there would be a fine +howl--but there the Venus lies, for anybody to gloat +over that wants to--and there she has a right to lie, +for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges. +I saw young girls stealing furtive glances at her; I saw +young men gaze long and absorbedly at her; I saw aged, +infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest. +How I should like to describe her--just to see what a holy +indignation I could stir up in the world--just to hear +the unreflecting average man deliver himself about my +grossness and coarseness, and all that. The world says +that no worded description of a moving spectacle is +a hundredth part as moving as the same spectacle seen +with one's own eyes--yet the world is willing to let its +son and its daughter and itself look at Titian's beast, +but won't stand a description of it in words. +Which shows that the world is not as consistent as it +might be. + +There are pictures of nude women which suggest no impure +thought--I am well aware of that. I am not railing +at such. What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that +Titian's Venus is very far from being one of that sort. +Without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it +was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong. +In truth, it is too strong for any place but a public +Art Gallery. Titian has two Venuses in the Tribune; +persons who have seen them will easily remember which one I am +referring to. + +In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures +of blood, carnage, oozing brains, putrefaction--pictures +portraying intolerable suffering--pictures alive +with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful +detail--and similar pictures are being put on the canvas +every day and publicly exhibited--without a growl from +anybody--for they are innocent, they are inoffensive, +being works of art. But suppose a literary artist ventured +to go into a painstaking and elaborate description +of one of these grisly things--the critics would skin +him alive. Well, let it go, it cannot be helped; +Art retains her privileges, Literature has lost hers. +Somebody else may cipher out the whys and the wherefores +and the consistencies of it--I haven't got time. + +Titian's Venus defiles and disgraces the Tribune, there is +no softening that fact, but his "Moses" glorifies it. +The simple truthfulness of its noble work wins the heart +and the applause of every visitor, be he learned or ignorant. +After wearying one's self with the acres of stuffy, +sappy, expressionless babies that populate the canvases +of the Old Masters of Italy, it is refreshing to stand +before this peerless child and feel that thrill which tells +you you are at last in the presence of the real thing. +This is a human child, this is genuine. You have seen him +a thousand times--you have seen him just as he is here +--and you confess, without reserve, that Titian WAS a Master. +The doll-faces of other painted babes may mean one thing, +they may mean another, but with the "Moses" the case +is different. The most famous of all the art-critics +has said, "There is no room for doubt, here--plainly this +child is in trouble." + +I consider that the "Moses" has no equal among the works +of the Old Masters, except it be the divine Hair Trunk +of Bassano. I feel sure that if all the other Old Masters +were lost and only these two preserved, the world would +be the gainer by it. + +My sole purpose in going to Florence was to see this +immortal "Moses," and by good fortune I was just in time, +for they were already preparing to remove it to a more +private and better-protected place because a fashion +of robbing the great galleries was prevailing in Europe +at the time. + +I got a capable artist to copy the picture; Pannemaker, +the engraver of Dor'e's books, engraved it for me, +and I have the pleasure of laying it before the reader +in this volume. + +We took a turn to Rome and some other Italian cities +--then to Munich, and thence to Paris--partly for exercise, +but mainly because these things were in our projected program, +and it was only right that we should be faithful to it. + +From Paris I branched out and walked through Holland and Belgium, +procuring an occasional lift by rail or canal when tired, +and I had a tolerably good time of it "by and large." +I worked Spain and other regions through agents to save +time and shoe-leather. + +We crossed to England, and then made the homeward +passage in the Cunarder GALLIA, a very fine ship. +I was glad to get home--immeasurably glad; so glad, +in fact, that it did not seem possible that anything +could ever get me out of the country again. I had not +enjoyed a pleasure abroad which seemed to me to compare +with the pleasure I felt in seeing New York harbor again. +Europe has many advantages which we have not, but they +do not compensate for a good many still more valuable +ones which exist nowhere but in our own country. +Then we are such a homeless lot when we are over +there! So are Europeans themselves, for the matter. +They live in dark and chilly vast tombs--costly enough, +maybe, but without conveniences. To be condemned to live +as the average European family lives would make life +a pretty heavy burden to the average American family. + +On the whole, I think that short visits to Europe are +better for us than long ones. The former preserve us from +becoming Europeanized; they keep our pride of country intact, +and at the same time they intensify our affection for our +country and our people; whereas long visits have the effect +of dulling those feelings--at least in the majority +of cases. I think that one who mixes much with Americans +long resident abroad must arrive at this conclusion. + + + + + +APPENDIX ---------- + +Nothing gives such weight and dignity to a book +as an Appendix. HERODOTUS + + + +APPENDIX A +The Portier + +Omar Khay'am, the poet-prophet of Persia, writing more +than eight hundred years ago, has said: + +"In the four parts of the earth are many that are able +to write learned books, many that are able to lead armies, +and many also that are able to govern kingdoms and empires; +but few there be that can keep a hotel." + +A word about the European hotel PORTIER. He is a most +admirable invention, a most valuable convenience. +He always wears a conspicuous uniform; he can always +be found when he is wanted, for he sticks closely to +his post at the front door; he is as polite as a duke; +he speaks from four to ten languages; he is your surest +help and refuge in time of trouble or perplexity. +He is not the clerk, he is not the landlord; he ranks above +the clerk, and represents the landlord, who is seldom seen. +Instead of going to the clerk for information, as we do at home, +you go to the portier. It is the pride of our average +hotel clerk to know nothing whatever; it is the pride +of the portier to know everything. You ask the portier +at what hours the trains leave--he tells you instantly; +or you ask him who is the best physician in town; or what +is the hack tariff; or how many children the mayor has; +or what days the galleries are open, and whether a permit +is required, and where you are to get it, and what you +must pay for it; or when the theaters open and close, +what the plays are to be, and the price of seats; +or what is the newest thing in hats; or how the bills +of mortality average; or "who struck Billy Patterson." +It does not matter what you ask him: in nine cases +out of ten he knows, and in the tenth case he will find +out for you before you can turn around three times. +There is nothing he will not put his hand to. Suppose you +tell him you wish to go from Hamburg to Peking by the way +of Jericho, and are ignorant of routes and prices +--the next morning he will hand you a piece of paper with +the whole thing worked out on it to the last detail. +Before you have been long on European soil, you find +yourself still SAYING you are relying on Providence, +but when you come to look closer you will see that in reality +you are relying on the portier. He discovers what is +puzzling you, or what is troubling you, or what your need is, +before you can get the half of it out, and he promptly says, +"Leave that to me." Consequently, you easily drift into +the habit of leaving everything to him. There is a certain +embarrassment about applying to the average American +hotel clerk, a certain hesitancy, a sense of insecurity +against rebuff; but you feel no embarrassment in your +intercourse with the portier; he receives your propositions +with an enthusiasm which cheers, and plunges into their +accomplishment with an alacrity which almost inebriates. +The more requirements you can pile upon him, the better he +likes it. Of course the result is that you cease from doing +anything for yourself. He calls a hack when you want one; +puts you into it; tells the driver whither to take you; +receives you like a long-lost child when you return; +sends you about your business, does all the quarreling +with the hackman himself, and pays him his money out +of his own pocket. He sends for your theater tickets, +and pays for them; he sends for any possible article +you can require, be it a doctor, an elephant, or a +postage stamp; and when you leave, at last, you will +find a subordinate seated with the cab-driver who will +put you in your railway compartment, buy your tickets, +have your baggage weighed, bring you the printed tags, +and tell you everything is in your bill and paid for. +At home you get such elaborate, excellent, and willing +service as this only in the best hotels of our large cities; +but in Europe you get it in the mere back country-towns just +as well. + +What is the secret of the portier's devotion? It is +very simple: he gets FEES, AND NO SALARY. His fee +is pretty closely regulated, too. If you stay a week, +you give him five marks--a dollar and a quarter, or about +eighteen cents a day. If you stay a month, you reduce +this average somewhat. If you stay two or three months +or longer, you cut it down half, or even more than half. +If you stay only one day, you give the portier a mark. + +The head waiter's fee is a shade less than the portier's; +the Boots, who not only blacks your boots and brushes +your clothes, but is usually the porter and handles your +baggage, gets a somewhat smaller fee than the head waiter; +the chambermaid's fee ranks below that of the Boots. +You fee only these four, and no one else. A German +gentleman told me that when he remained a week in a hotel, +he gave the portier five marks, the head waiter four, +the Boots three, and the chambermaid two; and if he +stayed three months he divided ninety marks among them, +in about the above proportions. Ninety marks make +$22.50. + +None of these fees are ever paid until you leave the hotel, +though it be a year--except one of these four servants +should go away in the mean time; in that case he will +be sure to come and bid you good-by and give you the +opportunity to pay him what is fairly coming to him. +It is considered very bad policy to fee a servant while you +are still to remain longer in the hotel, because if you +gave him too little he might neglect you afterward, +and if you gave him too much he might neglect somebody +else to attend to you. It is considered best to keep his +expectations "on a string" until your stay is concluded. + +I do not know whether hotel servants in New York get any +wages or not, but I do know that in some of the hotels there +the feeing system in vogue is a heavy burden. The waiter +expects a quarter at breakfast--and gets it. You have +a different waiter at luncheon, and so he gets a quarter. +Your waiter at dinner is another stranger--consequently +he gets a quarter. The boy who carries your satchel +to your room and lights your gas fumbles around and hangs +around significantly, and you fee him to get rid of him. +Now you may ring for ice-water; and ten minutes later +for a lemonade; and ten minutes afterward, for a cigar; +and by and by for a newspaper--and what is the result? Why, +a new boy has appeared every time and fooled and fumbled +around until you have paid him something. Suppose you +boldly put your foot down, and say it is the hotel's +business to pay its servants? You will have to ring your +bell ten or fifteen times before you get a servant there; +and when he goes off to fill your order you will grow old +and infirm before you see him again. You may struggle nobly +for twenty-four hours, maybe, if you are an adamantine +sort of person, but in the mean time you will have been +so wretchedly served, and so insolently, that you will +haul down your colors, and go to impoverishing yourself +with fees. + +It seems to me that it would be a happy idea to import +the European feeing system into America. I believe it +would result in getting even the bells of the Philadelphia +hotels answered, and cheerful service rendered. + +The greatest American hotels keep a number of clerks +and a cashier, and pay them salaries which mount up +to a considerable total in the course of a year. +The great continental hotels keep a cashier on a trifling +salary, and a portier WHO PAYS THE HOTEL A SALARY. +By the latter system both the hotel and the public +save money and are better served than by our system. +One of our consuls told me that a portier of a great Berlin +hotel paid five thousand dollars a year for his position, +and yet cleared six thousand dollars for himself. +The position of portier in the chief hotels of Saratoga, +Long Branch, New York, and similar centers of resort, +would be one which the holder could afford to pay even more +than five thousand dollars for, perhaps. + +When we borrowed the feeing fashion from Europe a dozen +years ago, the salary system ought to have been discontinued, +of course. We might make this correction now, I should think. +And we might add the portier, too. Since I first began +to study the portier, I have had opportunities to observe +him in the chief cities of Germany, Switzerland, and Italy; +and the more I have seen of him the more I have wished +that he might be adopted in America, and become there, +as he is in Europe, the stranger's guardian angel. + +Yes, what was true eight hundred years ago, is just +as true today: "Few there be that can keep a hotel." +Perhaps it is because the landlords and their subordinates +have in too many cases taken up their trade without first +learning it. In Europe the trade of hotel-keeper is taught. +The apprentice begins at the bottom of the ladder +and masters the several grades one after the other. +Just as in our country printing-offices the apprentice +first learns how to sweep out and bring water; +then learns to "roll"; then to sort "pi"; then to set type; +and finally rounds and completes his education with +job-work and press-work; so the landlord-apprentice serves +as call-boy; then as under-waiter; then as a parlor waiter; +then as head waiter, in which position he often has +to make out all the bills; then as clerk or cashier; +then as portier. His trade is learned now, and by and +by he will assume the style and dignity of landlord, +and be found conducting a hotel of his own. + +Now in Europe, the same as in America, when a man has +kept a hotel so thoroughly well during a number of years +as to give it a great reputation, he has his reward. +He can live prosperously on that reputation. He can let +his hotel run down to the last degree of shabbiness and +yet have it full of people all the time. For instance, +there is the Ho^tel de Ville, in Milan. It swarms with mice +and fleas, and if the rest of the world were destroyed +it could furnish dirt enough to start another one with. +The food would create an insurrection in a poorhouse; +and yet if you go outside to get your meals that hotel +makes up its loss by overcharging you on all sorts +of trifles--and without making any denials or excuses +about it, either. But the Ho^tel de Ville's old excellent +reputation still keeps its dreary rooms crowded with travelers +who would be elsewhere if they had only some wise friend +to warn them. + + + +APPENDIX B +Heidelberg Castle + +Heidelberg Castle must have been very beautiful before +the French battered and bruised and scorched it two hundred +years ago. The stone is brown, with a pinkish tint, +and does not seem to stain easily. The dainty and elaborate +ornamentation upon its two chief fronts is as delicately +carved as if it had been intended for the interior of a +drawing-room rather than for the outside of a house. +Many fruit and flower clusters, human heads and grim +projecting lions' heads are still as perfect in every detail +as if they were new. But the statues which are ranked +between the windows have suffered. These are life-size +statues of old-time emperors, electors, and similar +grandees, clad in mail and bearing ponderous swords. +Some have lost an arm, some a head, and one poor fellow +is chopped off at the middle. There is a saying that if +a stranger will pass over the drawbridge and walk across +the court to the castle front without saying anything, +he can made a wish and it will be fulfilled. But they +say that the truth of this thing has never had a chance +to be proved, for the reason that before any stranger can +walk from the drawbridge to the appointed place, the beauty +of the palace front will extort an exclamation of delight from +him. + +A ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective. +This one could not have been better placed. It stands +upon a commanding elevation, it is buried in green words, +there is no level ground about it, but, on the contrary, +there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks +down through shining leaves into profound chasms and +abysses where twilight reigns and the sun cannot intrude. +Nature knows how to garnish a ruin to get the best effect. +One of these old towers is split down the middle, and one +half has tumbled aside. It tumbled in such a way as to +establish itself in a picturesque attitude. Then all it +lacked was a fitting drapery, and Nature has furnished that; +she has robed the rugged mass in flowers and verdure, +and made it a charm to the eye. The standing half +exposes its arched and cavernous rooms to you, like open, +toothless mouths; there, too, the vines and flowers have +done their work of grace. The rear portion of the tower +has not been neglected, either, but is clothed with a +clinging garment of polished ivy which hides the wounds +and stains of time. Even the top is not left bare, but is +crowned with a flourishing group of trees and shrubs. +Misfortune has done for this old tower what it has done +for the human character sometimes--improved it. + +A gentleman remarked, one day, that it might have been +fine to live in the castle in the day of its prime, +but that we had one advantage which its vanished +inhabitants lacked--the advantage of having a charming +ruin to visit and muse over. But that was a hasty idea. +Those people had the advantage of US. They had the fine +castle to live in, and they could cross the Rhine valley +and muse over the stately ruin of Trifels besides. +The Trifels people, in their day, five hundred years ago, +could go and muse over majestic ruins that have vanished, +now, to the last stone. There have always been ruins, +no doubt; and there have always been pensive people to sigh +over them, and asses to scratch upon them their names +and the important date of their visit. Within a hundred +years after Adam left Eden, the guide probably gave +the usual general flourish with his hand and said: "Place +where the animals were named, ladies and gentlemen; +place where the tree of the forbidden fruit stood; +exact spot where Adam and Eve first met; and here, +ladies and gentlemen, adorned and hallowed by the names +and addresses of three generations of tourists, we have +the crumbling remains of Cain's altar--fine old ruin!" +Then, no doubt, he taxed them a shekel apiece and let +them go. + +An illumination of Heidelberg Castle is one of the +sights of Europe. The Castle's picturesque shape; +its commanding situation, midway up the steep and +wooded mountainside; its vast size--these features combine +to make an illumination a most effective spectacle. +It is necessarily an expensive show, and consequently +rather infrequent. Therefore whenever one of these exhibitions +is to take place, the news goes about in the papers and +Heidelberg is sure to be full of people on that night. +I and my agent had one of these opportunities, and improved it. + +About half past seven on the appointed evening we +crossed the lower bridge, with some American students, +in a pouring rain, and started up the road which borders +the Neunheim side of the river. This roadway was densely +packed with carriages and foot-passengers; the former +of all ages, and the latter of all ages and both sexes. +This black and solid mass was struggling painfully onward, +through the slop, the darkness, and the deluge. +We waded along for three-quarters of a mile, and finally +took up a position in an unsheltered beer-garden directly +opposite the Castle. We could not SEE the Castle--or +anything else, for that matter--but we could dimly +discern the outlines of the mountain over the way, +through the pervading blackness, and knew whereabouts +the Castle was located. We stood on one of the hundred +benches in the garden, under our umbrellas; the other +ninety-nine were occupied by standing men and women, +and they also had umbrellas. All the region round about, +and up and down the river-road, was a dense wilderness of +humanity hidden under an unbroken pavement of carriage tops +and umbrellas. Thus we stood during two drenching hours. +No rain fell on my head, but the converging whalebone +points of a dozen neighboring umbrellas poured little +cooling steams of water down my neck, and sometimes into +my ears, and thus kept me from getting hot and impatient. +I had the rheumatism, too, and had heard that this was +good for it. Afterward, however, I was led to believe +that the water treatment is NOT good for rheumatism. +There were even little girls in that dreadful place. +A men held one in his arms, just in front of me, for as much +as an hour, with umbrella-drippings soaking into her clothing +all the time. + +In the circumstances, two hours was a good while for us +to have to wait, but when the illumination did at last come, +we felt repaid. It came unexpectedly, of course--things +always do, that have been long looked and longed for. +With a perfectly breath-taking suddenness several mast +sheaves of varicolored rockets were vomited skyward out +of the black throats of the Castle towers, accompanied by +a thundering crash of sound, and instantly every detail of +the prodigious ruin stood revealed against the mountainside +and glowing with an almost intolerable splendor of fire +and color. For some little time the whole building was +a blinding crimson mass, the towers continued to spout +thick columns of rockets aloft, and overhead the sky +was radiant with arrowy bolts which clove their way to +the zenith, paused, curved gracefully downward, then burst +into brilliant fountain-sprays of richly colored sparks. +The red fires died slowly down, within the Castle, +and presently the shell grew nearly black outside; +the angry glare that shone out through the broken arches +and innumerable sashless windows, now, reproduced the +aspect which the Castle must have borne in the old time +when the French spoilers saw the monster bonfire which +they had made there fading and spoiling toward extinction. + +While we still gazed and enjoyed, the ruin was suddenly +enveloped in rolling and rumbling volumes of vaporous +green fire; then in dazzling purple ones; then a mixture +of many colors followed, then drowned the great fabric +in its blended splendors. Meantime the nearest bridge +had been illuminated, and from several rafts anchored +in the river, meteor showers of rockets, Roman candles, +bombs, serpents, and Catharine wheels were being discharged +in wasteful profusion into the sky--a marvelous sight indeed +to a person as little used to such spectacles as I was. +For a while the whole region about us seemed as bright as day, +and yet the rain was falling in torrents all the time. +The evening's entertainment presently closed, and we +joined the innumerable caravan of half-drowned strangers, +and waded home again. + +The Castle grounds are very ample and very beautiful; +and as they joined the Hotel grounds, with no fences +to climb, but only some nobly shaded stone stairways +to descend, we spent a part of nearly every day in +idling through their smooth walks and leafy groves. +There was an attractive spot among the trees where were +a great many wooden tables and benches; and there one could +sit in the shade and pretend to sip at his foamy beaker +of beer while he inspected the crowd. I say pretend, +because I only pretended to sip, without really sipping. +That is the polite way; but when you are ready to go, +you empty the beaker at a draught. There was a brass band, +and it furnished excellent music every afternoon. +Sometimes so many people came that every seat was occupied, +every table filled. And never a rough in the assemblage--all +nicely dressed fathers and mothers, young gentlemen +and ladies and children; and plenty of university +students and glittering officers; with here and there +a gray professor, or a peaceful old lady with her knitting; +and always a sprinkling of gawky foreigners. +Everybody had his glass of beer before him, or his cup +of coffee, or his bottle of wine, or his hot cutlet +and potatoes; young ladies chatted, or fanned themselves, +or wrought at their crocheting or embroidering; +the students fed sugar to their dogs, or discussed duels, +or illustrated new fencing tricks with their little canes; +and everywhere was comfort and enjoyment, and everywhere +peace and good-will to men. The trees were jubilant +with birds, and the paths with rollicking children. +One could have a seat in that place and plenty of music, +any afternoon, for about eight cents, or a family ticket +for the season for two dollars. + +For a change, when you wanted one, you could stroll +to the Castle, and burrow among its dungeons, or climb +about its ruined towers, or visit its interior shows--the +great Heidelberg Tun, for instance. Everybody has heard +of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it, +no doubt. It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some +traditions say it holds eighteen thousand bottles, and other +traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels. +I think it likely that one of these statements is +a mistake, and the other is a lie. However, the mere +matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, +since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty, +history says. An empty cask the size of a cathedral could +excite but little emotion in me. I do not see any wisdom +in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in, +when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, +free of expense. What could this cask have been +built for? The more one studies over that, the more +uncertain and unhappy he becomes. Some historians say +that thirty couples, some say thirty thousand couples, +can dance on the head of this cask at the same time. +Even this does not seem to me to account for the building +of it. It does not even throw light on it. A profound +and scholarly Englishman--a specialist--who had made +the great Heidelberg Tun his sole study for fifteen years, +told me he had at last satisfied himself that the ancients +built it to make German cream in. He said that the average +German cow yielded from one to two and half teaspoons of milk, +when she was not worked in the plow or the hay-wagon +more than eighteen or nineteen hours a day. This milk +was very sweet and good, and a beautiful transparent +bluish tint; but in order to get cream from it in the +most economical way, a peculiar process was necessary. +Now he believed that the habit of the ancients was to collect +several milkings in a teacup, pour it into the Great Tun, +fill up with water, and then skim off the cream from +time to time as the needs of the German Empire demanded. + +This began to look reasonable. It certainly began +to account for the German cream which I had encountered +and marveled over in so many hotels and restaurants. +But a thought struck me-- + +"Why did not each ancient dairyman take his own teacup +of milk and his own cask of water, and mix them, +without making a government matter of it?' + +"Where could he get a cask large enough to contain +the right proportion of water?" + +Very true. It was plain that the Englishman had studied +the matter from all sides. Still I thought I might catch +him on one point; so I asked him why the modern empire +did not make the nation's cream in the Heidelberg Tun, +instead of leaving it to rot away unused. But he answered +as one prepared-- + +"A patient and diligent examination of the modern German cream +had satisfied me that they do not use the Great Tun now, +because they have got a BIGGER one hid away somewhere. +Either that is the case or they empty the spring milkings +into the mountain torrents and then skim the Rhine +all summer." + +There is a museum of antiquities in the Castle, and among +its most treasured relics are ancient manuscripts connected +with German history. There are hundreds of these, +and their dates stretch back through many centuries. +One of them is a decree signed and sealed by the hand +of a successor of Charlemagne, in the year 896. +A signature made by a hand which vanished out of this life +near a thousand years ago, is a more impressive thing than +even a ruined castle. Luther's wedding-ring was shown me; +also a fork belonging to a time anterior to our era, +and an early bootjack. And there was a plaster cast +of the head of a man who was assassinated about sixty +years ago. The stab-wounds in the face were duplicated +with unpleasant fidelity. One or two real hairs +still remained sticking in the eyebrows of the cast. +That trifle seemed to almost change the counterfeit into +a corpse. + +There are many aged portraits--some valuable, some worthless; +some of great interest, some of none at all. I bought a +couple--one a gorgeous duke of the olden time, and the other +a comely blue-eyed damsel, a princess, maybe. I bought +them to start a portrait-gallery of my ancestors with. +I paid a dollar and a half for the duke and a half +for the princess. One can lay in ancestors at even +cheaper rates than these, in Europe, if he will mouse +among old picture shops and look out for chances. + + + +APPENDIX C +The College Prison + +It seems that the student may break a good many of the public +laws without having to answer to the public authorities. +His case must come before the University for trial +and punishment. If a policeman catches him in an unlawful +act and proceeds to arrest him, the offender proclaims that +he is a student, and perhaps shows his matriculation card, +whereupon the officer asks for his address, then goes +his way, and reports the matter at headquarters. If the +offense is one over which the city has no jurisdiction, +the authorities report the case officially to the University, +and give themselves no further concern about it. +The University court send for the student, listen to +the evidence, and pronounce judgment. The punishment +usually inflicted is imprisonment in the University prison. +As I understand it, a student's case is often tried +without his being present at all. Then something +like this happens: A constable in the service of the +University visits the lodgings of the said student, +knocks, is invited to come in, does so, and says politely-- + +"If you please, I am here to conduct you to prison." + +"Ah," says the student, "I was not expecting it. +What have I been doing?" + +"Two weeks ago the public peace had the honor to be +disturbed by you." + +"It is true; I had forgotten it. Very well: I have been +complained of, tried, and found guilty--is that it?" + +"Exactly. You are sentenced to two days' solitary confinement +in the College prison, and I am sent to fetch you." + +STUDENT. "O, I can't go today." + +OFFICER. "If you please--why?" + +STUDENT. "Because I've got an engagement." + +OFFICER. "Tomorrow, then, perhaps?" + +STUDENT. "No, I am going to the opera, tomorrow." + +OFFICER. "Could you come Friday?" + +STUDENT. (Reflectively.) "Let me see--Friday--Friday. +I don't seem to have anything on hand Friday." + +OFFICER. "Then, if you please, I will expect you on Friday." + +STUDENT. "All right, I'll come around Friday." + +OFFICER. "Thank you. Good day, sir." + +STUDENT. "Good day." + +So on Friday the student goes to the prison of his +own accord, and is admitted. + +It is questionable if the world's criminal history can +show a custom more odd than this. Nobody knows, now, +how it originated. There have always been many noblemen +among the students, and it is presumed that all students +are gentlemen; in the old times it was usual to mar +the convenience of such folk as little as possible; +perhaps this indulgent custom owes its origin to this. + +One day I was listening to some conversation upon this +subject when an American student said that for some time he +had been under sentence for a slight breach of the peace +and had promised the constable that he would presently +find an unoccupied day and betake himself to prison. +I asked the young gentleman to do me the kindness to go +to jail as soon as he conveniently could, so that I might +try to get in there and visit him, and see what college +captivity was like. He said he would appoint the very +first day he could spare. + +His confinement was to endure twenty-four hours. He shortly +chose his day, and sent me word. I started immediately. +When I reached the University Place, I saw two gentlemen +talking together, and, as they had portfolios under +their arms, I judged they were tutors or elderly students; +so I asked them in English to show me the college jail. +I had learned to take it for granted that anybody in Germany +who knows anything, knows English, so I had stopped +afflicting people with my German. These gentlemen seemed +a trifle amused--and a trifle confused, too--but one +of them said he would walk around the corner with me +and show me the place. He asked me why I wanted to get +in there, and I said to see a friend--and for curiosity. +He doubted if I would be admitted, but volunteered to put +in a word or two for me with the custodian. + +He rang the bell, a door opened, and we stepped into a paved +way and then up into a small living-room, where we were +received by a hearty and good-natured German woman of fifty. +She threw up her hands with a surprised "ACH GOTT, +HERR PROFESSOR!" and exhibited a mighty deference for my +new acquaintance. By the sparkle in her eye I judged +she was a good deal amused, too. The "Herr Professor" +talked to her in German, and I understood enough of it +to know that he was bringing very plausible reasons to bear +for admitting me. They were successful. So the Herr +Professor received my earnest thanks and departed. +The old dame got her keys, took me up two or three flights +of stairs, unlocked a door, and we stood in the presence +of the criminal. Then she went into a jolly and eager +description of all that had occurred downstairs, and what +the Herr Professor had said, and so forth and so on. +Plainly, she regarded it as quite a superior joke that I had +waylaid a Professor and employed him in so odd a service. +But I wouldn't have done it if I had known he was a Professor; +therefore my conscience was not disturbed. + +Now the dame left us to ourselves. The cell was not a roomy one; +still it was a little larger than an ordinary prison cell. +It had a window of good size, iron-grated; a small stove; +two wooden chairs; two oaken tables, very old and +most elaborately carved with names, mottoes, faces, +armorial bearings, etc.--the work of several generations +of imprisoned students; and a narrow wooden bedstead +with a villainous straw mattress, but no sheets, pillows, +blankets, or coverlets--for these the student must furnish +at his own cost if he wants them. There was no carpet, of +course. + +The ceiling was completely covered with names, dates, +and monograms, done with candle-smoke. The walls were +thickly covered with pictures and portraits (in profile), +some done with ink, some with soot, some with a pencil, +and some with red, blue, and green chalks; and whenever +an inch or two of space had remained between the pictures, +the captives had written plaintive verses, or names +and dates. I do not think I was ever in a more elaborately +frescoed apartment. + +Against the wall hung a placard containing the prison laws. +I made a note of one or two of these. For instance: +The prisoner must pay, for the "privilege" of entering, +a sum equivalent to 20 cents of our money; for the privilege +of leaving, when his term had expired, 20 cents; for every +day spent in the prison, 12 cents; for fire and light, +12 cents a day. The jailer furnishes coffee, mornings, +for a small sum; dinners and suppers may be ordered +from outside if the prisoner chooses--and he is allowed +to pay for them, too. + +Here and there, on the walls, appeared the names +of American students, and in one place the American +arms and motto were displayed in colored chalks. + +With the help of my friend I translated many of the inscriptions. + +Some of them were cheerful, others the reverse. +I will give the reader a few specimens: + +"In my tenth semester (my best one), I am cast here +through the complaints of others. Let those who follow +me take warning." + +"III TAGE OHNE GRUND ANGEBLICH AUS NEUGIERDE." Which is to say, +he had a curiosity to know what prison life was like; +so he made a breach in some law and got three days for it. +It is more than likely that he never had the same +curiosity again. + +(TRANSLATION.) "E. Glinicke, four days for being too eager +a spectator of a row." + +"F. Graf Bismarck--27-29, II, '74." Which means that +Count Bismarck, son of the great statesman, was a prisoner +two days in 1874. + +(TRANSLATION.) "R. Diergandt--for Love--4 days." +Many people in this world have caught it heavier than +for the same indiscretion. + +This one is terse. I translate: + +"Four weeks for MISINTERPRETED GALLANTRY." I wish +the sufferer had explained a little more fully. +A four-week term is a rather serious matter. + +There were many uncomplimentary references, on the walls, +to a certain unpopular dignitary. One sufferer had got +three days for not saluting him. Another had "here two days +slept and three nights lain awake," on account of this +same "Dr. K." In one place was a picture of Dr. K. hanging +on a gallows. + +Here and there, lonesome prisoners had eased the heavy time +by altering the records left by predecessors. Leaving the +name standing, and the date and length of the captivity, +they had erased the description of the misdemeanor, +and written in its place, in staring capitals, "FOR THEFT!" +or "FOR MURDER!" or some other gaudy crime. In one place, +all by itself, stood this blood-curdling word: + +"Rache!" [1] + +1. "Revenge!" + +There was no name signed, and no date. It was an +inscription well calculated to pique curiosity. +One would greatly like to know the nature of the wrong +that had been done, and what sort of vengeance was wanted, +and whether the prisoner ever achieved it or not. +But there was no way of finding out these things. + +Occasionally, a name was followed simply by the remark, +"II days, for disturbing the peace," and without comment +upon the justice or injustice of the sentence. + +In one place was a hilarious picture of a student of the +green cap corps with a bottle of champagne in each hand; +and below was the legend: "These make an evil fate endurable." + +There were two prison cells, and neither had space left on +walls or ceiling for another name or portrait or picture. +The inside surfaces of the two doors were completely +covered with CARTES DE VISITE of former prisoners, +ingeniously let into the wood and protected from dirt +and injury by glass. + +I very much wanted one of the sorry old tables which +the prisoners had spent so many years in ornamenting +with their pocket-knives, but red tape was in the way. +The custodian could not sell one without an order from +a superior; and that superior would have to get it from +HIS superior; and this one would have to get it from +a higher one--and so on up and up until the faculty +should sit on the matter and deliver final judgment. +The system was right, and nobody could find fault with it; +but it did not seem justifiable to bother so many people, +so I proceeded no further. It might have cost me more than +I could afford, anyway; for one of those prison tables, +which was at the time in a private museum in Heidelberg, +was afterward sold at auction for two hundred and fifty dollars. +It was not worth more than a dollar, or possibly a dollar +and half, before the captive students began their work +on it. Persons who saw it at the auction said it was +so curiously and wonderfully carved that it was worth +the money that was paid for it. + +Among them many who have tasted the college prison's +dreary hospitality was a lively young fellow from one +of the Southern states of America, whose first year's +experience of German university life was rather peculiar. +The day he arrived in Heidelberg he enrolled his name +on the college books, and was so elated with the fact +that his dearest hope had found fruition and he was +actually a student of the old and renowned university, +that he set to work that very night to celebrate the event +by a grand lark in company with some other students. +In the course of his lark he managed to make a wide +breach in one of the university's most stringent laws. +Sequel: before noon, next day, he was in the college +prison--booked for three months. The twelve long weeks +dragged slowly by, and the day of deliverance came at last. +A great crowd of sympathizing fellow-students received +him with a rousing demonstration as he came forth, +and of course there was another grand lark--in the course +of which he managed to make a wide breach of the CITY'S +most stringent laws. Sequel: before noon, next day, +he was safe in the city lockup--booked for three months. +This second tedious captivity drew to an end in the course +of time, and again a great crowd of sympathizing fellow +students gave him a rousing reception as he came forth; +but his delight in his freedom was so boundless that he +could not proceed soberly and calmly, but must go hopping +and skipping and jumping down the sleety street from sheer +excess of joy. Sequel: he slipped and broke his leg, +and actually lay in the hospital during the next three +months! + +When he at last became a free man again, he said he believed +he would hunt up a brisker seat of learning; the Heidelberg +lectures might be good, but the opportunities of attending +them were too rare, the educational process too slow; +he said he had come to Europe with the idea that the +acquirement of an education was only a matter of time, +but if he had averaged the Heidelberg system correctly, +it was rather a matter of eternity. + + + +APPENDIX D +The Awful German Language + +A little learning makes the whole world kin. + --Proverbs xxxii, 7. + +I went often to look at the collection of curiosities +in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper +of it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language. +He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a while +he said my German was very rare, possibly a "unique"; +and wanted to add it to his museum. + +If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, +he would also have known that it would break any +collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard at +work on our German during several weeks at that time, +and although we had made good progress, it had been +accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, +for three of our teachers had died in the mean time. +A person who has not studied German can form no idea +of what a perplexing language it is. + +Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod +and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. +One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most +helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured +a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid +the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, +he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make +careful note of the following EXCEPTIONS." He runs his +eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the +rule than instances of it. So overboard he goes again, +to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand. +Such has been, and continues to be, my experience. +Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing +"cases" where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant +preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with +an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground +from under me. For instance, my book inquires after +a certain bird--(it is always inquiring after things +which are of no sort of no consequence to anybody): "Where +is the bird?" Now the answer to this question--according +to the book--is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith +shop on account of the rain. Of course no bird would +do that, but then you must stick to the book. Very well, +I begin to cipher out the German for that answer. I begin +at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea. +I say to myself, "REGEN (rain) is masculine--or maybe it +is feminine--or possibly neuter--it is too much trouble +to look now. Therefore, it is either DER (the) Regen, +or DIE (the) Regen, or DAS (the) Regen, according to which +gender it may turn out to be when I look. In the interest +of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it +is masculine. Very well--then THE rain is DER Regen, +if it is simply in the quiescent state of being MENTIONED, +without enlargement or discussion--Nominative case; +but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general +way on the ground, it is then definitely located, +it is DOING SOMETHING--that is, RESTING (which is one +of the German grammar's ideas of doing something), and +this throws the rain into the Dative case, and makes it +DEM Regen. However, this rain is not resting, but is +doing something ACTIVELY,--it is falling--to interfere +with the bird, likely--and this indicates MOVEMENT, +which has the effect of sliding it into the Accusative case +and changing DEM Regen into DEN Regen." Having completed +the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up +confidently and state in German that the bird is staying +in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) DEN Regen." +Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark +that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a sentence, +it ALWAYS throws that subject into the GENITIVE case, +regardless of consequences--and therefore this bird stayed in +the blacksmith shop "wegen DES Regens." + +N.B.--I was informed, later, by a higher authority, +that there was an "exception" which permits one to say "wegen +DEN Regen" in certain peculiar and complex circumstances, +but that this exception is not extended to anything +BUT rain. + +There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. +An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime +and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; +it contains all the ten parts of speech--not in regular order, +but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed +by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any +dictionary--six or seven words compacted into one, +without joint or seam--that is, without hyphens; +it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, +each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and +there extra parentheses, making pens with pens: finally, +all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together +between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed +in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other +in the middle of the last line of it--AFTER WHICH COMES +THE VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man +has been talking about; and after the verb--merely by way +of ornament, as far as I can make out--the writer shovels +in "HABEN SIND GEWESEN GEHABT HAVEN GEWORDEN SEIN," +or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. +I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the +flourish to a man's signature--not necessary, but pretty. +German books are easy enough to read when you hold them +before the looking-glass or stand on your head--so as +to reverse the construction--but I think that to learn +to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing +which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner. + +Yet even the German books are not entirely free from attacks +of the Parenthesis distemper--though they are usually so mild +as to cover only a few lines, and therefore when you at +last get down to the verb it carries some meaning to your +mind because you are able to remember a good deal of what +has gone before. Now here is a sentence from a popular +and excellent German novel--which a slight parenthesis +in it. I will make a perfectly literal translation, +and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens +for the assistance of the reader--though in the original +there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader +is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he +can: + +"But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered- +now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed) +government counselor's wife MET," etc., etc. [1] + +1. Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide + gehuellten jetz sehr ungenirt nach der neusten mode + gekleideten Regierungsrathin begegnet. + +That is from THE OLD MAMSELLE'S SECRET, by Mrs. Marlitt. +And that sentence is constructed upon the most approved +German model. You observe how far that verb is from +the reader's base of operations; well, in a German +newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page; +and I have heard that sometimes after stringing along the +exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two, +they get in a hurry and have to go to press without getting +to the verb at all. Of course, then, the reader is left +in a very exhausted and ignorant state. + +We have the Parenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one +may see cases of it every day in our books and newspapers: +but with us it is the mark and sign of an unpracticed +writer or a cloudy intellect, whereas with the Germans +it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced pen +and of the presence of that sort of luminous intellectual +fog which stands for clearness among these people. +For surely it is NOT clearness--it necessarily can't +be clearness. Even a jury would have penetration enough +to discover that. A writer's ideas must be a good +deal confused, a good deal out of line and sequence, +when he starts out to say that a man met a counselor's +wife in the street, and then right in the midst of this +so simple undertaking halts these approaching people +and makes them stand still until he jots down an inventory +of the woman's dress. That is manifestly absurd. +It reminds a person of those dentists who secure your instant +and breathless interest in a tooth by taking a grip on it +with the forceps, and then stand there and drawl through +a tedious anecdote before they give the dreaded jerk. +Parentheses in literature and dentistry are in bad taste. + +The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they +make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it +at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the OTHER +HALF at the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything +more confusing than that? These things are called +"separable verbs." The German grammar is blistered +all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two +portions of one of them are spread apart, the better +the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. +A favorite one is REISTE AB--which means departed. +Here is an example which I culled from a novel and reduced +to English: + +"The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his +mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom +his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, +with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich +brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale +from the terror and excitement of the past evening, +but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again +upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than +life itself, PARTED." + +However, it is not well to dwell too much on the +separable verbs. One is sure to lose his temper early; +and if he sticks to the subject, and will not be warned, +it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it. +Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance +in this language, and should have been left out. +For instance, the same sound, SIE, means YOU, and it means SHE, +and it means HER, and it means IT, and it means THEY, +and it means THEM. Think of the ragged poverty of a +language which has to make one word do the work of six--and +a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. +But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing +which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. +This explains why, whenever a person says SIE to me, +I generally try to kill him, if a stranger. + +Now observe the Adjective. Here was a case where simplicity +would have been an advantage; therefore, for no other reason, +the inventor of this language complicated it all he could. +When we wish to speak of our "good friend or friends," +in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one form and have +no trouble or hard feeling about it; but with the German +tongue it is different. When a German gets his hands +on an adjective, he declines it, and keeps on declining +it until the common sense is all declined out of it. +It is as bad as Latin. He says, for instance: + +SINGULAR + +Nominative--Mein gutER Freund, my good friend. +Genitives--MeinES GutEN FreundES, of my good friend. +Dative--MeinEM gutEN Freund, to my good friend. +Accusative--MeinEN gutEN Freund, my good friend. + +PLURAL + +N.--MeinE gutEN FreundE, my good friends. G.--MeinER gutEN +FreundE, of my good friends. D.--MeinEN gutEN FreundEN, +to my good friends. A.--MeinE gutEN FreundE, my good friends. + +Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize +those variations, and see how soon he will be elected. +One might better go without friends in Germany than take +all this trouble about them. I have shown what a bother +it is to decline a good (male) friend; well this is +only a third of the work, for there is a variety of new +distortions of the adjective to be learned when the object +is feminine, and still another when the object is neuter. +Now there are more adjectives in this language than there +are black cats in Switzerland, and they must all be as +elaborately declined as the examples above suggested. +Difficult?--troublesome?--these words cannot describe it. +I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of +his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks +than one German adjective. + +The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure +in complicating it in every way he could think of. +For instance, if one is casually referring to a house, +HAUS, or a horse, PFERD, or a dog, HUND, he spells these +words as I have indicated; but if he is referring to them +in the Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary +E and spells them HAUSE, PFERDE, HUNDE. So, as an added +E often signifies the plural, as the S does with us, +the new student is likely to go on for a month making +twins out of a Dative dog before he discovers his mistake; +and on the other hand, many a new student who could ill +afford loss, has bought and paid for two dogs and only +got one of them, because he ignorantly bought that dog +in the Dative singular when he really supposed he was +talking plural--which left the law on the seller's side, +of course, by the strict rules of grammar, and therefore +a suit for recovery could not lie. + +In German, all the Nouns begin with a capital letter. +Now that is a good idea; and a good idea, in this language, +is necessarily conspicuous from its lonesomeness. I consider +this capitalizing of nouns a good idea, because by reason +of it you are almost always able to tell a noun the minute +you see it. You fall into error occasionally, because you +mistake the name of a person for the name of a thing, +and waste a good deal of time trying to dig a meaning +out of it. German names almost always do mean something, +and this helps to deceive the student. I translated +a passage one day, which said that "the infuriated tigress +broke loose and utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest" +(Tannenwald). When I was girding up my loins to doubt this, +I found out that Tannenwald in this instance was a +man's name. + +Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system +in the distribution; so the gender of each must be +learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. +To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. +In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. +Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, +and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it +looks in print--I translate this from a conversation +in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books: + +"Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip? + +"Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen. + +"Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English +maiden? + +"Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera." + +To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds +are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, +dogs are male, cats are female--tomcats included, of course; +a person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, +and body are of the male sex, and his head is male +or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, +and NOT according to the sex of the individual who wears +it--for in Germany all the women either male heads or +sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, +hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, +ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience +haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language +probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay. + +Now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in +Germany a man may THINK he is a man, but when he comes to look +into the matter closely, he is bound to have his doubts; +he finds that in sober truth he is a most ridiculous mixture; +and if he ends by trying to comfort himself with the +thought that he can at least depend on a third of this +mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second +thought will quickly remind him that in this respect +he is no better off than any woman or cow in the land. + +In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor +of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) +is not--which is unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex; +she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish +is HE, his scales are SHE, but a fishwife is neither. +To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description; +that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse. +A German speaks of an Englishman as the ENGLAENDER; to change +the sex, he adds INN, and that stands for Englishwoman +--ENGLAENDERINN. That seems descriptive enough, but still +it is not exact enough for a German; so he precedes the +word with that article which indicates that the creature +to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die +Englaenderinn,"--which means "the she-Englishwoman." +I consider that that person is over-described. + +Well, after the student has learned the sex of a great +number of nouns, he is still in a difficulty, because he +finds it impossible to persuade his tongue to refer +to things as "he" and "she," and "him" and "her," which +it has been always accustomed to refer to it as "it." +When he even frames a German sentence in his mind, +with the hims and hers in the right places, and then works +up his courage to the utterance-point, it is no use +--the moment he begins to speak his tongue files the track +and all those labored males and females come out as "its." +And even when he is reading German to himself, he always +calls those things "it," where as he ought to read in this way: + +TALE OF THE FISHWIFE AND ITS SAD FATE [2] + +2. I capitalize the nouns, in the German (and + ancient English) fashion. + +It is a bleak Day. Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail, +how he rattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along, +and of the Mud, how deep he is! Ah the poor Fishwife, +it is stuck fast in the Mire; it has dropped its Basket +of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the Scales +as it seized some of the falling Creatures; and one Scale +has even got into its Eye. and it cannot get her out. +It opens its Mouth to cry for Help; but if any Sound comes +out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the Storm. +And now a Tomcat has got one of the Fishes and she +will surely escape with him. No, she bites off a Fin, +she holds her in her Mouth--will she swallow her? No, +the Fishwife's brave Mother-dog deserts his Puppies and +rescues the Fin--which he eats, himself, as his Reward. +O, horror, the Lightning has struck the Fish-basket; +he sets him on Fire; see the Flame, how she licks the +doomed Utensil with her red and angry Tongue; now she +attacks the helpless Fishwife's Foot--she burns him up, +all but the big Toe, and even SHE is partly consumed; +and still she spreads, still she waves her fiery Tongues; +she attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys IT; she attacks +its Hand and destroys HER also; she attacks the Fishwife's Leg +and destroys HER also; she attacks its Body and consumes HIM; +she wreathes herself about its Heart and IT is consumed; +next about its Breast, and in a Moment SHE is a Cinder; +now she reaches its Neck--He goes; now its Chin +--IT goes; now its Nose--SHE goes. In another Moment, +except Help come, the Fishwife will be no more. +Time presses--is there none to succor and save? Yes! Joy, +joy, with flying Feet the she-Englishwoman comes! But alas, +the generous she-Female is too late: where now is +the fated Fishwife? It has ceased from its Sufferings, +it has gone to a better Land; all that is left of it +for its loved Ones to lament over, is this poor smoldering +Ash-heap. Ah, woeful, woeful Ash-heap! Let us take him +up tenderly, reverently, upon the lowly Shovel, and bear +him to his long Rest, with the Prayer that when he rises +again it will be a Realm where he will have one good square +responsible Sex, and have it all to himself, instead of +having a mangy lot of assorted Sexes scattered all over him +in Spots. + +---------- + +There, now, the reader can see for himself that this pronoun +business is a very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue. +I suppose that in all languages the similarities of look +and sound between words which have no similarity in meaning +are a fruitful source of perplexity to the foreigner. +It is so in our tongue, and it is notably the case in +the German. Now there is that troublesome word VERMAEHLT: +to me it has so close a resemblance--either real or +fancied--to three or four other words, that I never know +whether it means despised, painted, suspected, or married; +until I look in the dictionary, and then I find it means +the latter. There are lots of such words and they are +a great torment. To increase the difficulty there are +words which SEEM to resemble each other, and yet do not; +but they make just as much trouble as if they did. +For instance, there is the word VERMIETHEN (to let, +to lease, to hire); and the word VERHEIRATHEN (another way +of saying to marry). I heard of an Englishman who knocked +at a man's door in Heidelberg and proposed, in the best +German he could command, to "verheirathen" that house. +Then there are some words which mean one thing when you +emphasize the first syllable, but mean something very +different if you throw the emphasis on the last syllable. +For instance, there is a word which means a runaway, +or the act of glancing through a book, according to the +placing of the emphasis; and another word which signifies +to ASSOCIATE with a man, or to AVOID him, according to +where you put the emphasis--and you can generally depend +on putting it in the wrong place and getting into trouble. + +There are some exceedingly useful words in this language. +SCHLAG, for example; and ZUG. There are three-quarters +of a column of SCHLAGS in the dictionary, and a column +and a half of ZUGS. The word SCHLAG means Blow, Stroke, +Dash, Hit, Shock, Clap, Slap, Time, Bar, Coin, Stamp, Kind, +Sort, Manner, Way, Apoplexy, Wood-cutting, Enclosure, +Field, Forest-clearing. This is its simple and EXACT +meaning--that is to say, its restricted, its fettered meaning; +but there are ways by which you can set it free, +so that it can soar away, as on the wings of the morning, +and never be at rest. You can hang any word you please +to its tail, and make it mean anything you want to. +You can begin with SCHLAG-ADER, which means artery, +and you can hang on the whole dictionary, word by word, +clear through the alphabet to SCHLAG-WASSER, which means +bilge-water--and including SCHLAG-MUTTER, which means +mother-in-law. + +Just the same with ZUG. Strictly speaking, ZUG means Pull, +Tug, Draught, Procession, March, Progress, Flight, Direction, +Expedition, Train, Caravan, Passage, Stroke, Touch, Line, +Flourish, Trait of Character, Feature, Lineament, Chess-move, +Organ-stop, Team, Whiff, Bias, Drawer, Propensity, Inhalation, +Disposition: but that thing which it does NOT mean--when +all its legitimate pennants have been hung on, has not been +discovered yet. + +One cannot overestimate the usefulness of SCHLAG and ZUG. +Armed just with these two, and the word ALSO, what cannot +the foreigner on German soil accomplish? The German word +ALSO is the equivalent of the English phrase "You know," +and does not mean anything at all--in TALK, though it +sometimes does in print. Every time a German opens his +mouth an ALSO falls out; and every time he shuts it he bites +one in two that was trying to GET out. + +Now, the foreigner, equipped with these three noble words, +is master of the situation. Let him talk right along, +fearlessly; let him pour his indifferent German forth, +and when he lacks for a word, let him heave a SCHLAG into +the vacuum; all the chances are that it fits it like a plug, +but if it doesn't let him promptly heave a ZUG after it; +the two together can hardly fail to bung the hole; but if, +by a miracle, they SHOULD fail, let him simply say ALSO! +and this will give him a moment's chance to think of the +needful word. In Germany, when you load your conversational +gun it is always best to throw in a SCHLAG or two and a ZUG +or two, because it doesn't make any difference how much +the rest of the charge may scatter, you are bound to bag +something with THEM. Then you blandly say ALSO, and load +up again. Nothing gives such an air of grace and elegance +and unconstraint to a German or an English conversation +as to scatter it full of "Also's" or "You knows." + +In my note-book I find this entry: + +July 1.--In the hospital yesterday, a word of thirteen +syllables was successfully removed from a patient--a +North German from near Hamburg; but as most unfortunately +the surgeons had opened him in the wrong place, under the +impression that he contained a panorama, he died. +The sad event has cast a gloom over the whole community. + +That paragraph furnishes a text for a few remarks about +one of the most curious and notable features of my +subject--the length of German words. Some German words +are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these +examples: + +Freundschaftsbezeigungen. + +Dilettantenaufdringlichkeiten. + +Stadtverordnetenversammlungen. + +These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. +And they are not rare; one can open a German newspaper +at any time and see them marching majestically across +the page--and if he has any imagination he can see +the banners and hear the music, too. They impart +a martial thrill to the meekest subject. I take a +great interest in these curiosities. Whenever I come +across a good one, I stuff it and put it in my museum. +In this way I have made quite a valuable collection. +When I get duplicates, I exchange with other collectors, +and thus increase the variety of my stock. Here rare +some specimens which I lately bought at an auction sale +of the effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter: + +Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen. + +Alterthumswissenschaften. + +Kinderbewahrungsanstalten. + +Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen. + +Wiedererstellungbestrebungen. + +Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen. + +Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes +stretching across the printed page, it adorns and ennobles +that literary landscape--but at the same time it is a great +distress to the new student, for it blocks up his way; +he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it, or tunnel +through it. So he resorts to the dictionary for help, +but there is no help there. The dictionary must draw +the line somewhere--so it leaves this sort of words out. +And it is right, because these long things are hardly +legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, +and the inventor of them ought to have been killed. +They are compound words with the hyphens left out. +The various words used in building them are in the dictionary, +but in a very scattered condition; so you can hunt +the materials out, one by one, and get at the meaning +at last, but it is a tedious and harassing business. +I have tried this process upon some of the above examples. +"Freundshaftsbezeigungen" seems to be "Friendship demonstrations," +which is only a foolish and clumsy way of saying "demonstrations +of friendship." "Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen" seems +to be "Independencedeclarations," which is no improvement +upon "Declarations of Independence," so far as I can see. +"Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen" seems to be +"General-statesrepresentativesmeetings," as nearly as I +can get at it--a mere rhythmical, gushy euphemism for +"meetings of the legislature," I judge. We used to have +a good deal of this sort of crime in our literature, +but it has gone out now. We used to speak of a things as a +"never-to-be-forgotten" circumstance, instead of cramping +it into the simple and sufficient word "memorable" and then +going calmly about our business as if nothing had happened. +In those days we were not content to embalm the thing +and bury it decently, we wanted to build a monument over it. + +But in our newspapers the compounding-disease lingers +a little to the present day, but with the hyphens left out, +in the German fashion. This is the shape it takes: +instead of saying "Mr. Simmons, clerk of the county and +district courts, was in town yesterday," the new form put +it thus: "Clerk of the County and District Courts Simmons +was in town yesterday." This saves neither time nor ink, +and has an awkward sound besides. One often sees a remark +like this in our papers: "MRS. Assistant District Attorney +Johnson returned to her city residence yesterday for the season." +That is a case of really unjustifiable compounding; +because it not only saves no time or trouble, but confers +a title on Mrs. Johnson which she has no right to. +But these little instances are trifles indeed, contrasted +with the ponderous and dismal German system of piling +jumbled compounds together. I wish to submit the following +local item, from a Mannheim journal, by way of illustration: + +"In the daybeforeyesterdayshortlyaftereleveno'clock Night, +the inthistownstandingtavern called 'The Wagoner' was downburnt. +When the fire to the onthedownburninghouseresting Stork's +Nest reached, flew the parent Storks away. But when +the bytheraging, firesurrounded Nest ITSELF caught Fire, +straightway plunged the quickreturning Mother-Stork into +the Flames and died, her Wings over her young ones outspread." + +Even the cumbersome German construction is not able to +take the pathos out of that picture--indeed, it somehow +seems to strengthen it. This item is dated away back +yonder months ago. I could have used it sooner, but I +was waiting to hear from the Father-stork. I am still waiting. + +"ALSO!" If I had not shown that the German is a +difficult language, I have at least intended to do so. +I have heard of an American student who was asked how he +was getting along with his German, and who answered +promptly: "I am not getting along at all. I have worked +at it hard for three level months, and all I have got +to show for it is one solitary German phrase--'ZWEI GLAS'" +(two glasses of beer). He paused for a moment, reflectively; +then added with feeling: "But I've got that SOLID!" + +And if I have not also shown that German is a harassing +and infuriating study, my execution has been at fault, +and not my intent. I heard lately of a worn and sorely +tried American student who used to fly to a certain German +word for relief when he could bear up under his aggravations +no longer--the only word whose sound was sweet and +precious to his ear and healing to his lacerated spirit. +This was the word DAMIT. It was only the SOUND that +helped him, not the meaning; [3] and so, at last, when he +learned that the emphasis was not on the first syllable, +his only stay and support was gone, and he faded away +and died. + +3. It merely means, in its general sense, "herewith." + +I think that a description of any loud, stirring, +tumultuous episode must be tamer in German than in English. +Our descriptive words of this character have such +a deep, strong, resonant sound, while their German +equivalents do seem so thin and mild and energyless. +Boom, burst, crash, roar, storm, bellow, blow, thunder, +explosion; howl, cry, shout, yell, groan; battle, hell. +These are magnificent words; the have a force and magnitude +of sound befitting the things which they describe. +But their German equivalents would be ever so nice to sing +the children to sleep with, or else my awe-inspiring ears +were made for display and not for superior usefulness +in analyzing sounds. Would any man want to die in a +battle which was called by so tame a term as a SCHLACHT? +Or would not a consumptive feel too much bundled up, +who was about to go out, in a shirt-collar and a seal-ring, +into a storm which the bird-song word GEWITTER was employed +to describe? And observe the strongest of the several +German equivalents for explosion--AUSBRUCH. Our word +Toothbrush is more powerful than that. It seems to me +that the Germans could do worse than import it into their +language to describe particularly tremendous explosions with. +The German word for hell--Hoelle--sounds more like HELLY +than anything else; therefore, how necessary chipper, +frivolous, and unimpressive it is. If a man were told +in German to go there, could he really rise to thee +dignity of feeling insulted? + +Having pointed out, in detail, the several vices of +this language, I now come to the brief and pleasant task +of pointing out its virtues. The capitalizing of the nouns +I have already mentioned. But far before this virtue stands +another--that of spelling a word according to the sound of it. +After one short lesson in the alphabet, the student can tell +how any German word is pronounced without having to ask; +whereas in our language if a student should inquire of us, +"What does B, O, W, spell?" we should be obliged to reply, +"Nobody can tell what it spells when you set if off by itself; +you can only tell by referring to the context and finding +out what it signifies--whether it is a thing to shoot +arrows with, or a nod of one's head, or the forward end of a +boat." + +There are some German words which are singularly +and powerfully effective. For instance, those which +describe lowly, peaceful, and affectionate home life; +those which deal with love, in any and all forms, +from mere kindly feeling and honest good will toward +the passing stranger, clear up to courtship; those which +deal with outdoor Nature, in its softest and loveliest +aspects--with meadows and forests, and birds and flowers, +the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and the moonlight +of peaceful winter nights; in a word, those which deal with +any and all forms of rest, repose, and peace; those also +which deal with the creatures and marvels of fairyland; +and lastly and chiefly, in those words which express pathos, +is the language surpassingly rich and affective. There are +German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry. +That shows that the SOUND of the words is correct--it +interprets the meanings with truth and with exactness; +and so the ear is informed, and through the ear, the heart. + +The Germans do not seem to be afraid to repeat a word +when it is the right one. They repeat it several times, +if they choose. That is wise. But in English, when we +have used a word a couple of times in a paragraph, +we imagine we are growing tautological, and so we are weak +enough to exchange it for some other word which only +approximates exactness, to escape what we wrongly fancy +is a greater blemish. Repetition may be bad, but surely +inexactness is worse. + +----------- + +There are people in the world who will take a great +deal of trouble to point out the faults in a religion +or a language, and then go blandly about their business +without suggesting any remedy. I am not that kind +of person. I have shown that the German language +needs reforming. Very well, I am ready to reform it. +At least I am ready to make the proper suggestions. +Such a course as this might be immodest in another; but I +have devoted upward of nine full weeks, first and last, +to a careful and critical study of this tongue, and thus +have acquired a confidence in my ability to reform it +which no mere superficial culture could have conferred +upon me. + +In the first place, I would leave out the Dative case. +It confuses the plurals; and, besides, nobody ever knows +when he is in the Dative case, except he discover it +by accident--and then he does not know when or where it +was that he got into it, or how long he has been in it, +or how he is going to get out of it again. The Dative case +is but an ornamental folly--it is better to discard it. + +In the next place, I would move the Verb further up +to the front. You may load up with ever so good a Verb, +but I notice that you never really bring down a subject +with it at the present German range--you only cripple it. +So I insist that this important part of speech should be +brought forward to a position where it may be easily seen +with the naked eye. + +Thirdly, I would import some strong words from the English +tongue--to swear with, and also to use in describing +all sorts of vigorous things in a vigorous ways. [4] + +4. "Verdammt," and its variations and enlargements, + are words which have plenty of meaning, but the SOUNDS + are so mild and ineffectual that German ladies can use + them without sin. German ladies who could not be induced + to commit a sin by any persuasion or compulsion, promptly rip + out one of these harmless little words when they tear their + dresses or don't like the soup. It sounds about as wicked + as our "My gracious." German ladies are constantly saying, + "Ach! Gott!" "Mein Gott!" "Gott in Himmel!" "Herr Gott" + "Der Herr Jesus!" etc. They think our ladies have the + same custom, perhaps; for I once heard a gentle and lovely + old German lady say to a sweet young American girl: + "The two languages are so alike--how pleasant that is; + we say 'Ach! Gott!' you say 'Goddamn.'" + +Fourthly, I would reorganizes the sexes, and distribute +them accordingly to the will of the creator. This as +a tribute of respect, if nothing else. + +Fifthly, I would do away with those great long +compounded words; or require the speaker to deliver +them in sections, with intermissions for refreshments. +To wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas are +more easily received and digested when they come one at +a time than when they come in bulk. Intellectual food +is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial +to take it with a spoon than with a shovel. + +Sixthly, I would require a speaker to stop when he is done, +and not hang a string of those useless "haven sind gewesen +gehabt haben geworden seins" to the end of his oration. +This sort of gewgaws undignify a speech, instead of adding +a grace. They are, therefore, an offense, and should +be discarded. + +Seventhly, I would discard the Parenthesis. Also the reparenthesis, +the re-reparenthesis, and the re-re-re-re-re-reparentheses, +and likewise the final wide-reaching all-enclosing +king-parenthesis. I would require every individual, +be he high or low, to unfold a plain straightforward tale, +or else coil it and sit on it and hold his peace. +Infractions of this law should be punishable with death. + +And eighthly, and last, I would retain ZUG and SCHLAG, +with their pendants, and discard the rest of the vocabulary. +This would simplify the language. + +I have now named what I regard as the most necessary +and important changes. These are perhaps all I could +be expected to name for nothing; but there are other +suggestions which I can and will make in case my proposed +application shall result in my being formally employed +by the government in the work of reforming the language. + +My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person +ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) +in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German +in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the +latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. +If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently +and reverently set aside among the dead languages, +for only the dead have time to learn it. + +A FOURTH OF JULY ORATION IN THE GERMAN TONGUE, DELIVERED AT +A BANQUET OF THE ANGLO-AMERICAN CLUB OF STUDENTS BY THE +AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK + +Gentlemen: Since I arrived, a month ago, in this +old wonderland, this vast garden of Germany, my English +tongue has so often proved a useless piece of baggage +to me, and so troublesome to carry around, in a country +where they haven't the checking system for luggage, that I +finally set to work, and learned the German language. +Also! Es freut mich dass dies so ist, denn es muss, +in ein hauptsaechlich degree, hoeflich sein, dass man +auf ein occasion like this, sein Rede in die Sprache des +Landes worin he boards, aussprechen soll. Dafuer habe ich, +aus reinische Verlegenheit--no, Vergangenheit--no, I +mean Hoflichkeit--aus reinishe Hoflichkeit habe ich +resolved to tackle this business in the German language, +um Gottes willen! Also! Sie muessen so freundlich sein, +und verzeih mich die interlarding von ein oder zwei +Englischer Worte, hie und da, denn ich finde dass die +deutsche is not a very copious language, and so when +you've really got anything to say, you've got to draw +on a language that can stand the strain. + +Wenn haber man kann nicht meinem Rede Verstehen, so werde +ich ihm spaeter dasselbe uebersetz, wenn er solche Dienst +verlangen wollen haben werden sollen sein haette. (I don't +know what wollen haben werden sollen sein haette means, +but I notice they always put it at the end of a German +sentence--merely for general literary gorgeousness, +I suppose.) + +This is a great and justly honored day--a day which is +worthy of the veneration in which it is held by the true +patriots of all climes and nationalities--a day which +offers a fruitful theme for thought and speech; und meinem +Freunde--no, meinEN FreundEN--meinES FreundES--well, +take your choice, they're all the same price; I don't +know which one is right--also! ich habe gehabt haben +worden gewesen sein, as Goethe says in his Paradise +Lost--ich--ich--that is to say--ich--but let us change cars. + +Also! Die Anblich so viele Grossbrittanischer und Amerikanischer +hier zusammengetroffen in Bruderliche concord, ist zwar +a welcome and inspiriting spectacle. And what has moved you +to it? Can the terse German tongue rise to the expression of +this impulse? Is it Freundschaftsbezeigungenstadtverordneten- +versammlungenfamilieneigenthuemlichkeiten? Nein, +o nein! This is a crisp and noble word, but it fails +to pierce the marrow of the impulse which has gathered +this friendly meeting and produced diese Anblick--eine +Anblich welche ist gut zu sehen--gut fuer die Augen +in a foreign land and a far country--eine Anblick solche +als in die gewoehnliche Heidelberger phrase nennt man ein +"schoenes Aussicht!" Ja, freilich natuerlich wahrscheinlich +ebensowohl! Also! Die Aussicht auf dem Koenigsstuhl +mehr groesser ist, aber geistlische sprechend nicht so +schoen, lob' Gott! Because sie sind hier zusammengetroffen, +in Bruderlichem concord, ein grossen Tag zu feirn, +whose high benefits were not for one land and one locality, +but have conferred a measure of good upon all lands +that know liberty today, and love it. Hundert Jahre +vorueber, waren die Englaender und die Amerikaner Feinde; +aber heut sind sie herzlichen Freunde, Gott sei Dank! +May this good-fellowship endure; may these banners here +blended in amity so remain; may they never any more wave +over opposing hosts, or be stained with blood which +was kindred, is kindred, and always will be kindred, +until a line drawn upon a map shall be able to say: +"THIS bars the ancestral blood from flowing in the veins +of the descendant!" + + + +APPENDIX E +Legend of the Castles + +Called the "Swallow's Nest" and "The Brothers," +as Condensed from the Captain's Tale + +In the neighborhood of three hundred years ago the Swallow's +Nest and the larger castle between it and Neckarsteinach +were owned and occupied by two old knights who were +twin brothers, and bachelors. They had no relatives. +They were very rich. They had fought through the wars +and retired to private life--covered with honorable scars. +They were honest, honorable men in their dealings, +but the people had given them a couple of nicknames which +were very suggestive--Herr Givenaught and Herr Heartless. +The old knights were so proud of these names that if +a burgher called them by their right ones they would +correct them. + +The most renowned scholar in Europe, at the time, was the +Herr Doctor Franz Reikmann, who lived in Heidelberg. +All Germany was proud of the venerable scholar, who lived +in the simplest way, for great scholars are always poor. +He was poor, as to money, but very rich in his sweet +young daughter Hildegarde and his library. He had been +all his life collecting his library, book and book, +and he lived it as a miser loves his hoarded gold. +He said the two strings of his heart were rooted, +the one in his daughter, the other in his books; and that +if either were severed he must die. Now in an evil hour, +hoping to win a marriage portion for his child, this simple +old man had entrusted his small savings to a sharper to be +ventured in a glittering speculation. But that was not +the worst of it: he signed a paper--without reading it. +That is the way with poets and scholars; they always sign +without reading. This cunning paper made him responsible +for heaps of things. The rest was that one night he +found himself in debt to the sharper eight thousand +pieces of gold!--an amount so prodigious that it simply +stupefied him to think of it. It was a night of woe in +that house. + +"I must part with my library--I have nothing else. +So perishes one heartstring," said the old man. + +"What will it bring, father?" asked the girl. + +"Nothing! It is worth seven hundred pieces of gold; +but by auction it will go for little or nothing." + +"Then you will have parted with the half of your heart +and the joy of your life to no purpose, since so mighty +of burden of debt will remain behind." + +"There is no help for it, my child. Our darlings must +pass under the hammer. We must pay what we can." + +"My father, I have a feeling that the dear Virgin will +come to our help. Let us not lose heart." + +"She cannot devise a miracle that will turn NOTHING into +eight thousand gold pieces, and lesser help will bring +us little peace." + +"She can do even greater things, my father. She will +save us, I know she will." + +Toward morning, while the old man sat exhausted and asleep +in his chair where he had been sitting before his books +as one who watches by his beloved dead and prints the +features on his memory for a solace in the aftertime +of empty desolation, his daughter sprang into the room +and gently woke him, saying-- + +"My presentiment was true! She will save us. +Three times has she appeared to me in my dreams, and said, +'Go to the Herr Givenaught, go to the Herr Heartless, +ask them to come and bid.' There, did I not tell you she +would save us, the thrice blessed Virgin!" + +Sad as the old man was, he was obliged to laugh. + +"Thou mightest as well appeal to the rocks their +castles stand upon as to the harder ones that lie +in those men's breasts, my child. THEY bid on books +writ in the learned tongues!--they can scarce read their own." + +But Hildegarde's faith was in no wise shaken. +Bright and early she was on her way up the Neckar road, +as joyous as a bird. + +Meantime Herr Givenaught and Herr Heartless were having +an early breakfast in the former's castle--the Sparrow's +Nest--and flavoring it with a quarrel; for although +these twins bore a love for each other which almost +amounted to worship, there was one subject upon which they +could not touch without calling each other hard names +--and yet it was the subject which they oftenest touched upon. + +"I tell you," said Givenaught, "you will beggar yourself +yet with your insane squanderings of money upon +what you choose to consider poor and worthy objects. +All these years I have implored you to stop this foolish +custom and husband your means, but all in vain. +You are always lying to me about these secret benevolences, +but you never have managed to deceive me yet. Every time +a poor devil has been set upon his feet I have detected +your hand in it--incorrigible ass!" + +"Every time you didn't set him on his feet yourself, +you mean. Where I give one unfortunate a little private lift, +you do the same for a dozen. The idea of YOUR swelling +around the country and petting yourself with the nickname +of Givenaught--intolerable humbug! Before I would be +such a fraud as that, I would cut my right hand off. +Your life is a continual lie. But go on, I have tried MY +best to save you from beggaring yourself by your riotous +charities--now for the thousandth time I wash my hands +of the consequences. A maundering old fool! that's +what you are." + +"And you a blethering old idiot!" roared Givenaught, +springing up. + +"I won't stay in the presence of a man who has no more +delicacy than to call me such names. Mannerless swine!" + +So saying, Herr Heartless sprang up in a passion. +But some lucky accident intervened, as usual, to change +the subject, and the daily quarrel ended in the customary +daily living reconciliation. The gray-headed old +eccentrics parted, and Herr Heartless walked off to his +own castle. + +Half an hour later, Hildegarde was standing in the presence +of Herr Givenaught. He heard her story, and said-- + +"I am sorry for you, my child, but I am very poor, +I care nothing for bookish rubbish, I shall not be there." + +He said the hard words kindly, but they nearly broke poor +Hildegarde's heart, nevertheless. When she was gone +the old heartbreaker muttered, rubbing his hands-- + +"It was a good stroke. I have saved my brother's pocket +this time, in spite of him. Nothing else would have +prevented his rushing off to rescue the old scholar, +the pride of Germany, from his trouble. The poor child +won't venture near HIM after the rebuff she has received +from his brother the Givenaught." + +But he was mistaken. The Virgin had commanded, +and Hildegarde would obey. She went to Herr Heartless +and told her story. But he said coldly-- + +"I am very poor, my child, and books are nothing to me. +I wish you well, but I shall not come." + +When Hildegarde was gone, he chuckled and said-- + +"How my fool of a soft-headed soft-hearted brother would +rage if he knew how cunningly I have saved his pocket. +How he would have flown to the old man's rescue! But the +girl won't venture near him now." + +When Hildegarde reached home, her father asked her how she +had prospered. She said-- + +"The Virgin has promised, and she will keep her word; +but not in the way I thought. She knows her own ways, +and they are best." + +The old man patted her on the head, and smiled a doubting +smile, but he honored her for her brave faith, nevertheless. + +II + +Next day the people assembled in the great hall +of the Ritter tavern, to witness the auction--for +the proprietor had said the treasure of Germany's most +honored son should be bartered away in no meaner place. +Hildegarde and her father sat close to the books, +silent and sorrowful, and holding each other's hands. +There was a great crowd of people present. The bidding began-- + +"How much for this precious library, just as it stands, +all complete?" called the auctioneer. + +"Fifty pieces of gold!" + +"A hundred!" + +"Two hundred." + +"Three!" + +"Four!" + +"Five hundred!" + +"Five twenty-five." + +A brief pause. + +"Five forty!" + +A longer pause, while the auctioneer redoubled his persuasions. + +"Five-forty-five!" + +A heavy drag--the auctioneer persuaded, pleaded, +implored--it was useless, everybody remained silent-- + +"Well, then--going, going--one--two--" + +"Five hundred and fifty!" + +This in a shrill voice, from a bent old man, all hung +with rags, and with a green patch over his left eye. +Everybody in his vicinity turned and gazed at him. +It was Givenaught in disguise. He was using a disguised +voice, too. + +"Good!" cried the auctioneer. "Going, going--one--two--" + +"Five hundred and sixty!" + +This, in a deep, harsh voice, from the midst of the +crowd at the other end of the room. The people near +by turned, and saw an old man, in a strange costume, +supporting himself on crutches. He wore a long white beard, +and blue spectacles. It was Herr Heartless, in disguise, +and using a disguised voice. + +"Good again! Going, going--one--" + +"Six hundred!" + +Sensation. The crowd raised a cheer, and some one +cried out, "Go it, Green-patch!" This tickled the audience +and a score of voices shouted, "Go it, Green-patch!" + +"Going--going--going--third and last call--one--two--" + +"Seven hundred!" + +"Huzzah!--well done, Crutches!" cried a voice. The crowd +took it up, and shouted altogether, "Well done, Crutches!" + +"Splendid, gentlemen! you are doing magnificently. +Going, going--" + +"A thousand!" + +"Three cheers for Green-patch! Up and at him, Crutches!" + +"Going--going--" + +"Two thousand!" + +And while the people cheered and shouted, "Crutches" muttered, +"Who can this devil be that is fighting so to get these +useless books?--But no matter, he sha'n't have them. +The pride of Germany shall have his books if it beggars +me to buy them for him." + +"Going, going, going--" + +"Three thousand!" + +"Come, everybody--give a rouser for Green-patch!" + +And while they did it, "Green-patch" muttered, "This cripple +is plainly a lunatic; but the old scholar shall have +his books, nevertheless, though my pocket sweat for it." + +"Going--going--" + +"Four thousand!" + +"Huzza!" + +"Five thousand!" + +"Huzza!" + +"Six thousand!" + +"Huzza!" + +"Seven thousand!" + +"Huzza!" + +"EIGHT thousand!" + +"We are saved, father! I told you the Holy Virgin +would keep her word!" "Blessed be her sacred name!" +said the old scholar, with emotion. The crowd roared, +"Huzza, huzza, huzza--at him again, Green-patch!" + +"Going--going--" + +"TEN thousand!" As Givenaught shouted this, his excitement +was so great that he forgot himself and used his +natural voice. He brother recognized it, and muttered, +under cover of the storm of cheers-- + +"Aha, you are there, are you, besotted old fool? Take +the books, I know what you'll do with them!" + +So saying, he slipped out of the place and the auction was +at an end. Givenaught shouldered his way to Hildegarde, +whispered a word in her ear, and then he also vanished. +The old scholar and his daughter embraced, and the former said, +"Truly the Holy Mother has done more than she promised, +child, for she has give you a splendid marriage portion +--think of it, two thousand pieces of gold!" + +"And more still," cried Hildegarde, "for she has give +you back your books; the stranger whispered me that he +would none of them--'the honored son of Germany must +keep them,' so he said. I would I might have asked +his name and kissed his hand and begged his blessing; +but he was Our Lady's angel, and it is not meet that we +of earth should venture speech with them that dwell above." + + + +APPENDIX F +German Journals + +The daily journals of Hamburg, Frankfort, Baden, Munich, +and Augsburg are all constructed on the same general plan. +I speak of these because I am more familiar with them +than with any other German papers. They contain no +"editorials" whatever; no "personals"--and this is rather +a merit than a demerit, perhaps; no funny-paragraph column; +no police-court reports; no reports of proceedings +of higher courts; no information about prize-fights +or other dog-fights, horse-races, walking-machines, +yachting-contents, rifle-matches, or other sporting +matters of any sort; no reports of banquet speeches; +no department of curious odds and ends of floating fact +and gossip; no "rumors" about anything or anybody; +no prognostications or prophecies about anything or anybody; +no lists of patents granted or sought, or any reference +to such things; no abuse of public officials, big or little, +or complaints against them, or praises of them; no religious +columns Saturdays, no rehash of cold sermons Mondays; +no "weather indications"; no "local item" unveiling of +what is happening in town--nothing of a local nature, +indeed, is mentioned, beyond the movements of some prince, +or the proposed meeting of some deliberative body. + +After so formidable a list of what one can't find +in a German daily, the question may well be asked, +What CAN be found in it? It is easily answered: A child's +handful of telegrams, mainly about European national and +international political movements; letter-correspondence about +the same things; market reports. There you have it. +That is what a German daily is made of. A German +daily is the slowest and saddest and dreariest of the +inventions of man. Our own dailies infuriate the reader, +pretty often; the German daily only stupefies him. +Once a week the German daily of the highest class lightens +up its heavy columns--that is, it thinks it lightens +them up--with a profound, an abysmal, book criticism; +a criticism which carries you down, down, down into +the scientific bowels of the subject--for the German +critic is nothing if not scientific--and when you come +up at last and scent the fresh air and see the bonny +daylight once more, you resolve without a dissenting voice +that a book criticism is a mistaken way to lighten up +a German daily. Sometimes, in place of the criticism, +the first-class daily gives you what it thinks is a gay +and chipper essay--about ancient Grecian funeral customs, +or the ancient Egyptian method of tarring a mummy, +or the reasons for believing that some of the peoples +who existed before the flood did not approve of cats. +These are not unpleasant subjects; they are not +uninteresting subjects; they are even exciting subjects +--until one of these massive scientists gets hold of them. +He soon convinces you that even these matters can +be handled in such a way as to make a person low-spirited. + +As I have said, the average German daily is made up +solely of correspondences--a trifle of it by telegraph, +the rest of it by mail. Every paragraph has the side-head, +"London," "Vienna," or some other town, and a date. +And always, before the name of the town, is placed a letter +or a sign, to indicate who the correspondent is, so that +the authorities can find him when they want to hang him. +Stars, crosses, triangles, squares, half-moons, suns +--such are some of the signs used by correspondents. + +Some of the dailies move too fast, others too slowly. +For instance, my Heidelberg daily was always twenty-four +hours old when it arrived at the hotel; but one of my +Munich evening papers used to come a full twenty-four hours +before it was due. + +Some of the less important dailies give one a tablespoonful +of a continued story every day; it is strung across +the bottom of the page, in the French fashion. +By subscribing for the paper for five years I judge that +a man might succeed in getting pretty much all of the story. + +If you ask a citizen of Munich which is the best Munich +daily journal, he will always tell you that there is +only one good Munich daily, and that it is published +in Augsburg, forty or fifty miles away. It is like saying +that the best daily paper in New York is published out +in New Jersey somewhere. Yes, the Augsburg ALLGEMEINE +ZEITUNG is "the best Munich paper," and it is the one I +had in my mind when I was describing a "first-class +German daily" above. The entire paper, opened out, is not +quite as large as a single page of the New York HERALD. +It is printed on both sides, of course; but in such large +type that its entire contents could be put, in HERALD type, +upon a single page of the HERALD--and there would still +be room enough on the page for the ZEITUNG's "supplement" +and some portion of the ZEITUNG's next day's contents. + +Such is the first-class daily. The dailies actually printed +in Munich are all called second-class by the public. +If you ask which is the best of these second-class +papers they say there is no difference; one is as good +as another. I have preserved a copy of one of them; +it is called the MUENCHENER TAGES-ANZEIGER, and bears +date January 25, 1879. Comparisons are odious, +but they need not be malicious; and without any malice +I wish to compare this journals of other countries. +I know of no other way to enable the reader to "size" +the thing. + +A column of an average daily paper in America contains +from 1,800 to 2,500 words; the reading-matter in a +single issue consists of from 25,000 to 50,000 words. +The reading-matter in my copy of the Munich journal +consists of a total of 1,654 words --for I counted them. +That would be nearly a column of one of our dailies. +A single issue of the bulkiest daily newspaper in the +world--the London TIMES--often contains 100,000 words +of reading-matter. Considering that the DAILY ANZEIGER +issues the usual twenty-six numbers per month, the reading +matter in a single number of the London TIMES would keep it +in "copy" two months and a half. + +The ANZEIGER is an eight-page paper; its page is one +inch wider and one inch longer than a foolscap page; +that is to say, the dimensions of its page are somewhere +between those of a schoolboy's slate and a lady's +pocket handkerchief. One-fourth of the first page is +taken up with the heading of the journal; this gives it +a rather top-heavy appearance; the rest of the first page +is reading-matter; all of the second page is reading-matter; +the other six pages are devoted to advertisements. + +The reading-matter is compressed into two hundred +and five small-pica lines, and is lighted up with eight +pica headlines. The bill of fare is as follows: First, +under a pica headline, to enforce attention and respect, +is a four-line sermon urging mankind to remember that, +although they are pilgrims here below, they are yet heirs +of heaven; and that "When they depart from earth they soar +to heaven." Perhaps a four-line sermon in a Saturday paper +is the sufficient German equivalent of the eight or ten +columns of sermons which the New-Yorkers get in their +Monday morning papers. The latest news (two days old) +follows the four-line sermon, under the pica headline +"Telegrams"--these are "telegraphed" with a pair of +scissors out of the AUGSBURGER ZEITUNG of the day before. +These telegrams consist of fourteen and two-thirds lines +from Berlin, fifteen lines from Vienna, and two and five-eights +lines from Calcutta. Thirty-three small-pica lines news +in a daily journal in a King's Capital of one hundred and +seventy thousand inhabitants is surely not an overdose. +Next we have the pica heading, "News of the Day," +under which the following facts are set forth: Prince +Leopold is going on a visit to Vienna, six lines; +Prince Arnulph is coming back from Russia, two lines; +the Landtag will meet at ten o'clock in the morning and +consider an election law, three lines and one word over; +a city government item, five and one-half lines; +prices of tickets to the proposed grand Charity Ball, +twenty-three lines--for this one item occupies almost +one-fourth of the entire first page; there is to be +a wonderful Wagner concert in Frankfurt-on-the-Main, +with an orchestra of one hundred and eight instruments, +seven and one-half lines. That concludes the first page. +Eighty-five lines, altogether, on that page, +including three headlines. About fifty of those lines, +as one perceives, deal with local matters; so the reporters +are not overworked. + +Exactly one-half of the second page is occupied with +an opera criticism, fifty-three lines (three of them +being headlines), and "Death Notices," ten lines. + +The other half of the second page is made up of two +paragraphs under the head of "Miscellaneous News." +One of these paragraphs tells about a quarrel between the Czar +of Russia and his eldest son, twenty-one and a half lines; +and the other tells about the atrocious destruction of a +peasant child by its parents, forty lines, or one-fifth +of the total of the reading-matter contained in the paper. + +Consider what a fifth part of the reading-matter of an American +daily paper issued in a city of one hundred and seventy +thousand inhabitants amounts to! Think what a mass it is. +Would any one suppose I could so snugly tuck away such a +mass in a chapter of this book that it would be difficult +to find it again in the reader lost his place? Surely not. +I will translate that child-murder word for word, +to give the reader a realizing sense of what a fifth +part of the reading-matter of a Munich daily actually +is when it comes under measurement of the eye: + +"From Oberkreuzberg, January 21st, the DONAU ZEITUNG +receives a long account of a crime, which we shortened +as follows: In Rametuach, a village near Eppenschlag, +lived a young married couple with two children, one of which, +a boy aged five, was born three years before the marriage. +For this reason, and also because a relative at Iggensbach +had bequeathed M400 ($100) to the boy, the heartless +father considered him in the way; so the unnatural +parents determined to sacrifice him in the cruelest +possible manner. They proceeded to starve him slowly +to death, meantime frightfully maltreating him--as the +village people now make known, when it is too late. +The boy was shut in a hole, and when people passed +by he cried, and implored them to give him bread. +His long-continued tortures and deprivations destroyed +him at last, on the third of January. The sudden (sic) +death of the child created suspicion, the more so as the +body was immediately clothed and laid upon the bier. +Therefore the coroner gave notice, and an inquest was held +on the 6th. What a pitiful spectacle was disclosed then! +The body was a complete skeleton. The stomach and intestines +were utterly empty; they contained nothing whatsoever. +The flesh on the corpse was not as thick as the back of +a knife, and incisions in it brought not one drop of blood. +There was not a piece of sound skin the size of a dollar +on the whole body; wounds, scars, bruises, discolored +extravasated blood, everywhere--even on the soles of +the feet there were wounds. The cruel parents asserted +that the boy had been so bad that they had been obliged +to use severe punishments, and that he finally fell over +a bench and broke his neck. However, they were arrested +two weeks after the inquest and put in the prison at Deggendorf." + +Yes, they were arrested "two weeks after the inquest." +What a home sound that has. That kind of police briskness +rather more reminds me of my native land than German +journalism does. + +I think a German daily journal doesn't do any good to +speak of, but at the same time it doesn't do any harm. +That is a very large merit, and should not be lightly +weighted nor lightly thought of. + +The German humorous papers are beautifully printed upon +fine paper, and the illustrations are finely drawn, +finely engraved, and are not vapidly funny, but deliciously so. +So also, generally speaking, are the two or three terse +sentences which accompany the pictures. I remember one +of these pictures: A most dilapidated tramp is ruefully +contemplating some coins which lie in his open palm. +He says: "Well, begging is getting played out. Only about +five marks ($1.25) for the whole day; many an official +makes more!" And I call to mind a picture of a commercial +traveler who is about to unroll his samples: + +MERCHANT (pettishly).--NO, don't. I don't want to buy anything! + +DRUMMER.--If you please, I was only going to show you-- + +MERCHANT.--But I don't wish to see them! + +DRUMMER (after a pause, pleadingly).--But do you you mind +letting ME look at them! I haven't seen them for three weeks! + + +End of Project Gutenberg's A Tramp Abroad, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER + +by Mark Twain + + + + +Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, to Lord Cromwell, on the birth of the +Prince of Wales (afterward Edward VI.). + +From the National Manuscripts preserved by the British Government. + +Ryght honorable, Salutem in Christo Jesu, and Syr here ys no lesse joynge +and rejossynge in thes partees for the byrth of our prynce, hoom we +hungurde for so longe, then ther was (I trow), inter vicinos att the +byrth of S. J. Baptyste, as thys berer, Master Erance, can telle you. +Gode gyffe us alle grace, to yelde dew thankes to our Lorde Gode, Gode of +Inglonde, for verely He hathe shoyd Hym selff Gode of Inglonde, or rather +an Inglyssh Gode, yf we consydyr and pondyr welle alle Hys procedynges +with us from tyme to tyme. He hath over cumme alle our yllnesse with Hys +excedynge goodnesse, so that we are now moor then compellyd to serve Hym, +seke Hys glory, promott Hys wurde, yf the Devylle of alle Devylles be +natt in us. We have now the stooppe of vayne trustes ande the stey of +vayne expectations; lett us alle pray for hys preservatione. Ande I for +my partt wylle wyssh that hys Grace allways have, and evyn now from the +begynynge, Governares, Instructores and offyceres of ryght jugmente, ne +optimum ingenium non optima educatione deprevetur. + +Butt whatt a grett fowlle am I! So, whatt devotione shoyth many tymys +butt lytelle dyscretione! Ande thus the Gode of Inglonde be ever with +you in alle your procedynges. + +The 19 of October. + +Youres, H. L. B. of Wurcestere, now att Hartlebury. + +Yf you wolde excytt thys berere to be moore hartye ayen the abuse of +ymagry or mor forwarde to promotte the veryte, ytt myght doo goode. Natt +that ytt came of me, butt of your selffe, etc. + +(Addressed) To the Ryght Honorable Loorde P. Sealle hys synguler gode +Lorde. + + + +To those good-mannered and agreeable children Susie and Clara Clemens +this book is affectionately inscribed by their father. + + + +I will set down a tale as it was told to me by one who had it of his +father, which latter had it of HIS father, this last having in like +manner had it of HIS father--and so on, back and still back, three +hundred years and more, the fathers transmitting it to the sons and so +preserving it. It may be history, it may be only a legend, a tradition. +It may have happened, it may not have happened: but it COULD have +happened. It may be that the wise and the learned believed it in the old +days; it may be that only the unlearned and the simple loved it and +credited it. + + + + +Contents. + +I. The birth of the Prince and the Pauper. +II. Tom's early life. +III. Tom's meeting with the Prince. +IV. The Prince's troubles begin. +V. Tom as a patrician. +VI. Tom receives instructions. +VII. Tom's first royal dinner. +VIII. The question of the Seal. +IX. The river pageant. +X. The Prince in the toils. +XI. At Guildhall. +XII. The Prince and his deliverer. +XIII. The disappearance of the Prince. +XIV. 'Le Roi est mort--vive le Roi.' +XV. Tom as King. +XVI. The state dinner. +XVII. Foo-foo the First. +XVIII. The Prince with the tramps. +XIX. The Prince with the peasants. +XX. The Prince and the hermit. +XXI. Hendon to the rescue. +XXII. A victim of treachery. +XXIII. The Prince a prisoner. +XXIV. The escape. +XXV. Hendon Hall. +XXVI. Disowned. +XXVII. In prison. +XXVIII. The sacrifice. +XXIX. To London. +XXX. Tom's progress. +XXXI. The Recognition procession. +XXXII. Coronation Day. +XXXIII. Edward as King. +Conclusion. Justice and Retribution. +Notes. + + + + 'The quality of mercy . . . is twice bless'd; + It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes; + 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes + The thron-ed monarch better than his crown'. + Merchant of Venice. + + + + +Chapter I. The birth of the Prince and the Pauper. + +In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second +quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the +name of Canty, who did not want him. On the same day another English +child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him. +All England wanted him too. England had so longed for him, and hoped for +him, and prayed God for him, that, now that he was really come, the +people went nearly mad for joy. Mere acquaintances hugged and kissed +each other and cried. Everybody took a holiday, and high and low, rich +and poor, feasted and danced and sang, and got very mellow; and they kept +this up for days and nights together. By day, London was a sight to see, +with gay banners waving from every balcony and housetop, and splendid +pageants marching along. By night, it was again a sight to see, with its +great bonfires at every corner, and its troops of revellers making merry +around them. There was no talk in all England but of the new baby, +Edward Tudor, Prince of Wales, who lay lapped in silks and satins, +unconscious of all this fuss, and not knowing that great lords and ladies +were tending him and watching over him--and not caring, either. But +there was no talk about the other baby, Tom Canty, lapped in his poor +rags, except among the family of paupers whom he had just come to trouble +with his presence. + + + +Chapter II. Tom's early life. + +Let us skip a number of years. + +London was fifteen hundred years old, and was a great town--for that day. +It had a hundred thousand inhabitants--some think double as many. The +streets were very narrow, and crooked, and dirty, especially in the part +where Tom Canty lived, which was not far from London Bridge. The houses +were of wood, with the second story projecting over the first, and the +third sticking its elbows out beyond the second. The higher the houses +grew, the broader they grew. They were skeletons of strong criss-cross +beams, with solid material between, coated with plaster. The beams were +painted red or blue or black, according to the owner's taste, and this +gave the houses a very picturesque look. The windows were small, glazed +with little diamond-shaped panes, and they opened outward, on hinges, +like doors. + +The house which Tom's father lived in was up a foul little pocket called +Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane. It was small, decayed, and rickety, +but it was packed full of wretchedly poor families. Canty's tribe +occupied a room on the third floor. The mother and father had a sort of +bedstead in the corner; but Tom, his grandmother, and his two sisters, +Bet and Nan, were not restricted--they had all the floor to themselves, +and might sleep where they chose. There were the remains of a blanket or +two, and some bundles of ancient and dirty straw, but these could not +rightly be called beds, for they were not organised; they were kicked +into a general pile, mornings, and selections made from the mass at +night, for service. + +Bet and Nan were fifteen years old--twins. They were good-hearted girls, +unclean, clothed in rags, and profoundly ignorant. Their mother was like +them. But the father and the grandmother were a couple of fiends. They +got drunk whenever they could; then they fought each other or anybody +else who came in the way; they cursed and swore always, drunk or sober; +John Canty was a thief, and his mother a beggar. They made beggars of +the children, but failed to make thieves of them. Among, but not of, the +dreadful rabble that inhabited the house, was a good old priest whom the +King had turned out of house and home with a pension of a few farthings, +and he used to get the children aside and teach them right ways secretly. +Father Andrew also taught Tom a little Latin, and how to read and write; +and would have done the same with the girls, but they were afraid of the +jeers of their friends, who could not have endured such a queer +accomplishment in them. + +All Offal Court was just such another hive as Canty's house. Drunkenness, +riot and brawling were the order, there, every night and nearly all night +long. Broken heads were as common as hunger in that place. Yet little +Tom was not unhappy. He had a hard time of it, but did not know it. It +was the sort of time that all the Offal Court boys had, therefore he +supposed it was the correct and comfortable thing. When he came home +empty-handed at night, he knew his father would curse him and thrash him +first, and that when he was done the awful grandmother would do it all +over again and improve on it; and that away in the night his starving +mother would slip to him stealthily with any miserable scrap or crust she +had been able to save for him by going hungry herself, notwithstanding +she was often caught in that sort of treason and soundly beaten for it by +her husband. + +No, Tom's life went along well enough, especially in summer. He only +begged just enough to save himself, for the laws against mendicancy were +stringent, and the penalties heavy; so he put in a good deal of his time +listening to good Father Andrew's charming old tales and legends about +giants and fairies, dwarfs and genii, and enchanted castles, and gorgeous +kings and princes. His head grew to be full of these wonderful things, +and many a night as he lay in the dark on his scant and offensive straw, +tired, hungry, and smarting from a thrashing, he unleashed his +imagination and soon forgot his aches and pains in delicious picturings +to himself of the charmed life of a petted prince in a regal palace. One +desire came in time to haunt him day and night: it was to see a real +prince, with his own eyes. He spoke of it once to some of his Offal +Court comrades; but they jeered him and scoffed him so unmercifully that +he was glad to keep his dream to himself after that. + +He often read the priest's old books and got him to explain and enlarge +upon them. His dreamings and readings worked certain changes in him, +by-and-by. His dream-people were so fine that he grew to lament his shabby +clothing and his dirt, and to wish to be clean and better clad. He went +on playing in the mud just the same, and enjoying it, too; but, instead +of splashing around in the Thames solely for the fun of it, he began to +find an added value in it because of the washings and cleansings it +afforded. + +Tom could always find something going on around the Maypole in Cheapside, +and at the fairs; and now and then he and the rest of London had a chance +to see a military parade when some famous unfortunate was carried +prisoner to the Tower, by land or boat. One summer's day he saw poor Anne +Askew and three men burned at the stake in Smithfield, and heard an +ex-Bishop preach a sermon to them which did not interest him. Yes, Tom's +life was varied and pleasant enough, on the whole. + +By-and-by Tom's reading and dreaming about princely life wrought such a +strong effect upon him that he began to ACT the prince, unconsciously. +His speech and manners became curiously ceremonious and courtly, to the +vast admiration and amusement of his intimates. But Tom's influence +among these young people began to grow now, day by day; and in time he +came to be looked up to, by them, with a sort of wondering awe, as a +superior being. He seemed to know so much! and he could do and say such +marvellous things! and withal, he was so deep and wise! Tom's remarks, +and Tom's performances, were reported by the boys to their elders; and +these, also, presently began to discuss Tom Canty, and to regard him as a +most gifted and extraordinary creature. Full-grown people brought their +perplexities to Tom for solution, and were often astonished at the wit +and wisdom of his decisions. In fact he was become a hero to all who +knew him except his own family--these, only, saw nothing in him. + +Privately, after a while, Tom organised a royal court! He was the +prince; his special comrades were guards, chamberlains, equerries, lords +and ladies in waiting, and the royal family. Daily the mock prince was +received with elaborate ceremonials borrowed by Tom from his romantic +readings; daily the great affairs of the mimic kingdom were discussed in +the royal council, and daily his mimic highness issued decrees to his +imaginary armies, navies, and viceroyalties. + +After which, he would go forth in his rags and beg a few farthings, eat +his poor crust, take his customary cuffs and abuse, and then stretch +himself upon his handful of foul straw, and resume his empty grandeurs in +his dreams. + +And still his desire to look just once upon a real prince, in the flesh, +grew upon him, day by day, and week by week, until at last it absorbed +all other desires, and became the one passion of his life. + +One January day, on his usual begging tour, he tramped despondently up +and down the region round about Mincing Lane and Little East Cheap, hour +after hour, bare-footed and cold, looking in at cook-shop windows and +longing for the dreadful pork-pies and other deadly inventions displayed +there--for to him these were dainties fit for the angels; that is, +judging by the smell, they were--for it had never been his good luck to +own and eat one. There was a cold drizzle of rain; the atmosphere was +murky; it was a melancholy day. At night Tom reached home so wet and +tired and hungry that it was not possible for his father and grandmother +to observe his forlorn condition and not be moved--after their fashion; +wherefore they gave him a brisk cuffing at once and sent him to bed. For +a long time his pain and hunger, and the swearing and fighting going on +in the building, kept him awake; but at last his thoughts drifted away to +far, romantic lands, and he fell asleep in the company of jewelled and +gilded princelings who live in vast palaces, and had servants salaaming +before them or flying to execute their orders. And then, as usual, he +dreamed that HE was a princeling himself. + +All night long the glories of his royal estate shone upon him; he moved +among great lords and ladies, in a blaze of light, breathing perfumes, +drinking in delicious music, and answering the reverent obeisances of the +glittering throng as it parted to make way for him, with here a smile, +and there a nod of his princely head. + +And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about +him, his dream had had its usual effect--it had intensified the +sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold. Then came bitterness, and +heart-break, and tears. + + + +Chapter III. Tom's meeting with the Prince. + +Tom got up hungry, and sauntered hungry away, but with his thoughts busy +with the shadowy splendours of his night's dreams. He wandered here and +there in the city, hardly noticing where he was going, or what was +happening around him. People jostled him, and some gave him rough +speech; but it was all lost on the musing boy. By-and-by he found +himself at Temple Bar, the farthest from home he had ever travelled in +that direction. He stopped and considered a moment, then fell into his +imaginings again, and passed on outside the walls of London. The Strand +had ceased to be a country-road then, and regarded itself as a street, +but by a strained construction; for, though there was a tolerably compact +row of houses on one side of it, there were only some scattered great +buildings on the other, these being palaces of rich nobles, with ample +and beautiful grounds stretching to the river--grounds that are now +closely packed with grim acres of brick and stone. + +Tom discovered Charing Village presently, and rested himself at the +beautiful cross built there by a bereaved king of earlier days; then +idled down a quiet, lovely road, past the great cardinal's stately +palace, toward a far more mighty and majestic palace beyond--Westminster. +Tom stared in glad wonder at the vast pile of masonry, the wide-spreading +wings, the frowning bastions and turrets, the huge stone gateway, with +its gilded bars and its magnificent array of colossal granite lions, and +other the signs and symbols of English royalty. Was the desire of his +soul to be satisfied at last? Here, indeed, was a king's palace. Might +he not hope to see a prince now--a prince of flesh and blood, if Heaven +were willing? + +At each side of the gilded gate stood a living statue--that is to say, an +erect and stately and motionless man-at-arms, clad from head to heel in +shining steel armour. At a respectful distance were many country folk, +and people from the city, waiting for any chance glimpse of royalty that +might offer. Splendid carriages, with splendid people in them and +splendid servants outside, were arriving and departing by several other +noble gateways that pierced the royal enclosure. + +Poor little Tom, in his rags, approached, and was moving slowly and +timidly past the sentinels, with a beating heart and a rising hope, when +all at once he caught sight through the golden bars of a spectacle that +almost made him shout for joy. Within was a comely boy, tanned and brown +with sturdy outdoor sports and exercises, whose clothing was all of +lovely silks and satins, shining with jewels; at his hip a little +jewelled sword and dagger; dainty buskins on his feet, with red heels; +and on his head a jaunty crimson cap, with drooping plumes fastened with +a great sparkling gem. Several gorgeous gentlemen stood near--his +servants, without a doubt. Oh! he was a prince--a prince, a living +prince, a real prince--without the shadow of a question; and the prayer +of the pauper-boy's heart was answered at last. + +Tom's breath came quick and short with excitement, and his eyes grew big +with wonder and delight. Everything gave way in his mind instantly to +one desire: that was to get close to the prince, and have a good, +devouring look at him. Before he knew what he was about, he had his face +against the gate-bars. The next instant one of the soldiers snatched him +rudely away, and sent him spinning among the gaping crowd of country +gawks and London idlers. The soldier said,-- + +"Mind thy manners, thou young beggar!" + +The crowd jeered and laughed; but the young prince sprang to the gate +with his face flushed, and his eyes flashing with indignation, and cried +out,-- + +"How dar'st thou use a poor lad like that? How dar'st thou use the King +my father's meanest subject so? Open the gates, and let him in!" + +You should have seen that fickle crowd snatch off their hats then. You +should have heard them cheer, and shout, "Long live the Prince of Wales!" + +The soldiers presented arms with their halberds, opened the gates, and +presented again as the little Prince of Poverty passed in, in his +fluttering rags, to join hands with the Prince of Limitless Plenty. + +Edward Tudor said-- + +"Thou lookest tired and hungry: thou'st been treated ill. Come with +me." + +Half a dozen attendants sprang forward to--I don't know what; interfere, +no doubt. But they were waved aside with a right royal gesture, and they +stopped stock still where they were, like so many statues. Edward took +Tom to a rich apartment in the palace, which he called his cabinet. By +his command a repast was brought such as Tom had never encountered before +except in books. The prince, with princely delicacy and breeding, sent +away the servants, so that his humble guest might not be embarrassed by +their critical presence; then he sat near by, and asked questions while +Tom ate. + +"What is thy name, lad?" + +"Tom Canty, an' it please thee, sir." + +"'Tis an odd one. Where dost live?" + +"In the city, please thee, sir. Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane." + +"Offal Court! Truly 'tis another odd one. Hast parents?" + +"Parents have I, sir, and a grand-dam likewise that is but indifferently +precious to me, God forgive me if it be offence to say it--also twin +sisters, Nan and Bet." + +"Then is thy grand-dam not over kind to thee, I take it?" + +"Neither to any other is she, so please your worship. She hath a wicked +heart, and worketh evil all her days." + +"Doth she mistreat thee?" + +"There be times that she stayeth her hand, being asleep or overcome with +drink; but when she hath her judgment clear again, she maketh it up to me +with goodly beatings." + +A fierce look came into the little prince's eyes, and he cried out-- + +"What! Beatings?" + +"Oh, indeed, yes, please you, sir." + +"BEATINGS!--and thou so frail and little. Hark ye: before the night +come, she shall hie her to the Tower. The King my father"-- + +"In sooth, you forget, sir, her low degree. The Tower is for the great +alone." + +"True, indeed. I had not thought of that. I will consider of her +punishment. Is thy father kind to thee?" + +"Not more than Gammer Canty, sir." + +"Fathers be alike, mayhap. Mine hath not a doll's temper. He smiteth +with a heavy hand, yet spareth me: he spareth me not always with his +tongue, though, sooth to say. How doth thy mother use thee?" + +"She is good, sir, and giveth me neither sorrow nor pain of any sort. +And Nan and Bet are like to her in this." + +"How old be these?" + +"Fifteen, an' it please you, sir." + +"The Lady Elizabeth, my sister, is fourteen, and the Lady Jane Grey, my +cousin, is of mine own age, and comely and gracious withal; but my sister +the Lady Mary, with her gloomy mien and--Look you: do thy sisters forbid +their servants to smile, lest the sin destroy their souls?" + +"They? Oh, dost think, sir, that THEY have servants?" + +The little prince contemplated the little pauper gravely a moment, then +said-- + +"And prithee, why not? Who helpeth them undress at night? Who attireth +them when they rise?" + +"None, sir. Would'st have them take off their garment, and sleep +without--like the beasts?" + +"Their garment! Have they but one?" + +"Ah, good your worship, what would they do with more? Truly they have +not two bodies each." + +"It is a quaint and marvellous thought! Thy pardon, I had not meant to +laugh. But thy good Nan and thy Bet shall have raiment and lackeys enow, +and that soon, too: my cofferer shall look to it. No, thank me not; +'tis nothing. Thou speakest well; thou hast an easy grace in it. Art +learned?" + +"I know not if I am or not, sir. The good priest that is called Father +Andrew taught me, of his kindness, from his books." + +"Know'st thou the Latin?" + +"But scantly, sir, I doubt." + +"Learn it, lad: 'tis hard only at first. The Greek is harder; but +neither these nor any tongues else, I think, are hard to the Lady +Elizabeth and my cousin. Thou should'st hear those damsels at it! But +tell me of thy Offal Court. Hast thou a pleasant life there?" + +"In truth, yes, so please you, sir, save when one is hungry. There be +Punch-and-Judy shows, and monkeys--oh such antic creatures! and so +bravely dressed!--and there be plays wherein they that play do shout and +fight till all are slain, and 'tis so fine to see, and costeth but a +farthing--albeit 'tis main hard to get the farthing, please your +worship." + +"Tell me more." + +"We lads of Offal Court do strive against each other with the cudgel, +like to the fashion of the 'prentices, sometimes." + +The prince's eyes flashed. Said he-- + +"Marry, that would not I mislike. Tell me more." + +"We strive in races, sir, to see who of us shall be fleetest." + +"That would I like also. Speak on." + +"In summer, sir, we wade and swim in the canals and in the river, and +each doth duck his neighbour, and splatter him with water, and dive and +shout and tumble and--" + +"'Twould be worth my father's kingdom but to enjoy it once! Prithee go +on." + +"We dance and sing about the Maypole in Cheapside; we play in the sand, +each covering his neighbour up; and times we make mud pastry--oh the +lovely mud, it hath not its like for delightfulness in all the world!--we +do fairly wallow in the mud, sir, saving your worship's presence." + +"Oh, prithee, say no more, 'tis glorious! If that I could but clothe me +in raiment like to thine, and strip my feet, and revel in the mud once, +just once, with none to rebuke me or forbid, meseemeth I could forego the +crown!" + +"And if that I could clothe me once, sweet sir, as thou art clad--just +once--" + +"Oho, would'st like it? Then so shall it be. Doff thy rags, and don +these splendours, lad! It is a brief happiness, but will be not less +keen for that. We will have it while we may, and change again before any +come to molest." + +A few minutes later the little Prince of Wales was garlanded with Tom's +fluttering odds and ends, and the little Prince of Pauperdom was tricked +out in the gaudy plumage of royalty. The two went and stood side by side +before a great mirror, and lo, a miracle: there did not seem to have been +any change made! They stared at each other, then at the glass, then at +each other again. At last the puzzled princeling said-- + +"What dost thou make of this?" + +"Ah, good your worship, require me not to answer. It is not meet that +one of my degree should utter the thing." + +"Then will _I_ utter it. Thou hast the same hair, the same eyes, the +same voice and manner, the same form and stature, the same face and +countenance that I bear. Fared we forth naked, there is none could say +which was you, and which the Prince of Wales. And, now that I am clothed +as thou wert clothed, it seemeth I should be able the more nearly to feel +as thou didst when the brute soldier--Hark ye, is not this a bruise upon +your hand?" + +"Yes; but it is a slight thing, and your worship knoweth that the poor +man-at-arms--" + +"Peace! It was a shameful thing and a cruel!" cried the little prince, +stamping his bare foot. "If the King--Stir not a step till I come again! +It is a command!" + +In a moment he had snatched up and put away an article of national +importance that lay upon a table, and was out at the door and flying +through the palace grounds in his bannered rags, with a hot face and +glowing eyes. As soon as he reached the great gate, he seized the bars, +and tried to shake them, shouting-- + +"Open! Unbar the gates!" + +The soldier that had maltreated Tom obeyed promptly; and as the prince +burst through the portal, half-smothered with royal wrath, the soldier +fetched him a sounding box on the ear that sent him whirling to the +roadway, and said-- + +"Take that, thou beggar's spawn, for what thou got'st me from his +Highness!" + +The crowd roared with laughter. The prince picked himself out of the +mud, and made fiercely at the sentry, shouting-- + +"I am the Prince of Wales, my person is sacred; and thou shalt hang for +laying thy hand upon me!" + +The soldier brought his halberd to a present-arms and said mockingly-- + +"I salute your gracious Highness." Then angrily--"Be off, thou crazy +rubbish!" + +Here the jeering crowd closed round the poor little prince, and hustled +him far down the road, hooting him, and shouting-- + +"Way for his Royal Highness! Way for the Prince of Wales!" + + + +Chapter IV. The Prince's troubles begin. + +After hours of persistent pursuit and persecution, the little prince was +at last deserted by the rabble and left to himself. As long as he had +been able to rage against the mob, and threaten it royally, and royally +utter commands that were good stuff to laugh at, he was very +entertaining; but when weariness finally forced him to be silent, he was +no longer of use to his tormentors, and they sought amusement elsewhere. +He looked about him, now, but could not recognise the locality. He was +within the city of London--that was all he knew. He moved on, aimlessly, +and in a little while the houses thinned, and the passers-by were +infrequent. He bathed his bleeding feet in the brook which flowed then +where Farringdon Street now is; rested a few moments, then passed on, and +presently came upon a great space with only a few scattered houses in it, +and a prodigious church. He recognised this church. Scaffoldings were +about, everywhere, and swarms of workmen; for it was undergoing elaborate +repairs. The prince took heart at once--he felt that his troubles were +at an end, now. He said to himself, "It is the ancient Grey Friars' +Church, which the king my father hath taken from the monks and given for +a home for ever for poor and forsaken children, and new-named it Christ's +Church. Right gladly will they serve the son of him who hath done so +generously by them--and the more that that son is himself as poor and as +forlorn as any that be sheltered here this day, or ever shall be." + +He was soon in the midst of a crowd of boys who were running, jumping, +playing at ball and leap-frog, and otherwise disporting themselves, and +right noisily, too. They were all dressed alike, and in the fashion +which in that day prevailed among serving-men and 'prentices{1}--that is +to say, each had on the crown of his head a flat black cap about the size +of a saucer, which was not useful as a covering, it being of such scanty +dimensions, neither was it ornamental; from beneath it the hair fell, +unparted, to the middle of the forehead, and was cropped straight around; +a clerical band at the neck; a blue gown that fitted closely and hung as +low as the knees or lower; full sleeves; a broad red belt; bright yellow +stockings, gartered above the knees; low shoes with large metal buckles. +It was a sufficiently ugly costume. + +The boys stopped their play and flocked about the prince, who said with +native dignity-- + +"Good lads, say to your master that Edward Prince of Wales desireth +speech with him." + +A great shout went up at this, and one rude fellow said-- + +"Marry, art thou his grace's messenger, beggar?" + +The prince's face flushed with anger, and his ready hand flew to his hip, +but there was nothing there. There was a storm of laughter, and one boy +said-- + +"Didst mark that? He fancied he had a sword--belike he is the prince +himself." + +This sally brought more laughter. Poor Edward drew himself up proudly +and said-- + +"I am the prince; and it ill beseemeth you that feed upon the king my +father's bounty to use me so." + +This was vastly enjoyed, as the laughter testified. The youth who had +first spoken, shouted to his comrades-- + +"Ho, swine, slaves, pensioners of his grace's princely father, where be +your manners? Down on your marrow bones, all of ye, and do reverence to +his kingly port and royal rags!" + +With boisterous mirth they dropped upon their knees in a body and did +mock homage to their prey. The prince spurned the nearest boy with his +foot, and said fiercely-- + +"Take thou that, till the morrow come and I build thee a gibbet!" + +Ah, but this was not a joke--this was going beyond fun. The laughter +ceased on the instant, and fury took its place. A dozen shouted-- + +"Hale him forth! To the horse-pond, to the horse-pond! Where be the +dogs? Ho, there, Lion! ho, Fangs!" + +Then followed such a thing as England had never seen before--the sacred +person of the heir to the throne rudely buffeted by plebeian hands, and +set upon and torn by dogs. + +As night drew to a close that day, the prince found himself far down in +the close-built portion of the city. His body was bruised, his hands +were bleeding, and his rags were all besmirched with mud. He wandered on +and on, and grew more and more bewildered, and so tired and faint he +could hardly drag one foot after the other. He had ceased to ask +questions of anyone, since they brought him only insult instead of +information. He kept muttering to himself, "Offal Court--that is the +name; if I can but find it before my strength is wholly spent and I drop, +then am I saved--for his people will take me to the palace and prove that +I am none of theirs, but the true prince, and I shall have mine own +again." And now and then his mind reverted to his treatment by those +rude Christ's Hospital boys, and he said, "When I am king, they shall not +have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books; for a full +belly is little worth where the mind is starved, and the heart. I will +keep this diligently in my remembrance, that this day's lesson be not +lost upon me, and my people suffer thereby; for learning softeneth the +heart and breedeth gentleness and charity." {1} + +The lights began to twinkle, it came on to rain, the wind rose, and a raw +and gusty night set in. The houseless prince, the homeless heir to the +throne of England, still moved on, drifting deeper into the maze of +squalid alleys where the swarming hives of poverty and misery were massed +together. + +Suddenly a great drunken ruffian collared him and said-- + +"Out to this time of night again, and hast not brought a farthing home, I +warrant me! If it be so, an' I do not break all the bones in thy lean +body, then am I not John Canty, but some other." + +The prince twisted himself loose, unconsciously brushed his profaned +shoulder, and eagerly said-- + +"Oh, art HIS father, truly? Sweet heaven grant it be so--then wilt thou +fetch him away and restore me!" + +"HIS father? I know not what thou mean'st; I but know I am THY father, +as thou shalt soon have cause to--" + +"Oh, jest not, palter not, delay not!--I am worn, I am wounded, I can +bear no more. Take me to the king my father, and he will make thee rich +beyond thy wildest dreams. Believe me, man, believe me!--I speak no lie, +but only the truth!--put forth thy hand and save me! I am indeed the +Prince of Wales!" + +The man stared down, stupefied, upon the lad, then shook his head and +muttered-- + +"Gone stark mad as any Tom o' Bedlam!"--then collared him once more, and +said with a coarse laugh and an oath, "But mad or no mad, I and thy +Gammer Canty will soon find where the soft places in thy bones lie, or +I'm no true man!" + +With this he dragged the frantic and struggling prince away, and +disappeared up a front court followed by a delighted and noisy swarm of +human vermin. + + + +Chapter V. Tom as a patrician. + +Tom Canty, left alone in the prince's cabinet, made good use of his +opportunity. He turned himself this way and that before the great +mirror, admiring his finery; then walked away, imitating the prince's +high-bred carriage, and still observing results in the glass. Next he +drew the beautiful sword, and bowed, kissing the blade, and laying it +across his breast, as he had seen a noble knight do, by way of salute to +the lieutenant of the Tower, five or six weeks before, when delivering +the great lords of Norfolk and Surrey into his hands for captivity. Tom +played with the jewelled dagger that hung upon his thigh; he examined the +costly and exquisite ornaments of the room; he tried each of the +sumptuous chairs, and thought how proud he would be if the Offal Court +herd could only peep in and see him in his grandeur. He wondered if they +would believe the marvellous tale he should tell when he got home, or if +they would shake their heads, and say his overtaxed imagination had at +last upset his reason. + +At the end of half an hour it suddenly occurred to him that the prince +was gone a long time; then right away he began to feel lonely; very soon +he fell to listening and longing, and ceased to toy with the pretty +things about him; he grew uneasy, then restless, then distressed. +Suppose some one should come, and catch him in the prince's clothes, and +the prince not there to explain. Might they not hang him at once, and +inquire into his case afterward? He had heard that the great were prompt +about small matters. His fear rose higher and higher; and trembling he +softly opened the door to the antechamber, resolved to fly and seek the +prince, and, through him, protection and release. Six gorgeous +gentlemen-servants and two young pages of high degree, clothed like +butterflies, sprang to their feet and bowed low before him. He stepped +quickly back and shut the door. He said-- + +"Oh, they mock at me! They will go and tell. Oh! why came I here to +cast away my life?" + +He walked up and down the floor, filled with nameless fears, listening, +starting at every trifling sound. Presently the door swung open, and a +silken page said-- + +"The Lady Jane Grey." + +The door closed and a sweet young girl, richly clad, bounded toward him. +But she stopped suddenly, and said in a distressed voice-- + +"Oh, what aileth thee, my lord?" + +Tom's breath was nearly failing him; but he made shift to stammer out-- + +"Ah, be merciful, thou! In sooth I am no lord, but only poor Tom Canty +of Offal Court in the city. Prithee let me see the prince, and he will +of his grace restore to me my rags, and let me hence unhurt. Oh, be thou +merciful, and save me!" + +By this time the boy was on his knees, and supplicating with his eyes and +uplifted hands as well as with his tongue. The young girl seemed +horror-stricken. She cried out-- + +"O my lord, on thy knees?--and to ME!" + +Then she fled away in fright; and Tom, smitten with despair, sank down, +murmuring-- + +"There is no help, there is no hope. Now will they come and take me." + +Whilst he lay there benumbed with terror, dreadful tidings were speeding +through the palace. The whisper--for it was whispered always--flew from +menial to menial, from lord to lady, down all the long corridors, from +story to story, from saloon to saloon, "The prince hath gone mad, the +prince hath gone mad!" Soon every saloon, every marble hall, had its +groups of glittering lords and ladies, and other groups of dazzling +lesser folk, talking earnestly together in whispers, and every face had +in it dismay. Presently a splendid official came marching by these +groups, making solemn proclamation-- + +"IN THE NAME OF THE KING! + +Let none list to this false and foolish matter, upon pain of death, nor +discuss the same, nor carry it abroad. In the name of the King!" + +The whisperings ceased as suddenly as if the whisperers had been stricken +dumb. + +Soon there was a general buzz along the corridors, of "The prince! See, +the prince comes!" + +Poor Tom came slowly walking past the low-bowing groups, trying to bow in +return, and meekly gazing upon his strange surroundings with bewildered +and pathetic eyes. Great nobles walked upon each side of him, making him +lean upon them, and so steady his steps. Behind him followed the +court-physicians and some servants. + +Presently Tom found himself in a noble apartment of the palace and heard +the door close behind him. Around him stood those who had come with him. +Before him, at a little distance, reclined a very large and very fat man, +with a wide, pulpy face, and a stern expression. His large head was very +grey; and his whiskers, which he wore only around his face, like a frame, +were grey also. His clothing was of rich stuff, but old, and slightly +frayed in places. One of his swollen legs had a pillow under it, and was +wrapped in bandages. There was silence now; and there was no head there +but was bent in reverence, except this man's. This stern-countenanced +invalid was the dread Henry VIII. He said--and his face grew gentle as +he began to speak-- + +"How now, my lord Edward, my prince? Hast been minded to cozen me, the +good King thy father, who loveth thee, and kindly useth thee, with a +sorry jest?" + +Poor Tom was listening, as well as his dazed faculties would let him, to +the beginning of this speech; but when the words 'me, the good King' fell +upon his ear, his face blanched, and he dropped as instantly upon his +knees as if a shot had brought him there. Lifting up his hands, he +exclaimed-- + +"Thou the KING? Then am I undone indeed!" + +This speech seemed to stun the King. His eyes wandered from face to face +aimlessly, then rested, bewildered, upon the boy before him. Then he +said in a tone of deep disappointment-- + +"Alack, I had believed the rumour disproportioned to the truth; but I +fear me 'tis not so." He breathed a heavy sigh, and said in a gentle +voice, "Come to thy father, child: thou art not well." + +Tom was assisted to his feet, and approached the Majesty of England, +humble and trembling. The King took the frightened face between his +hands, and gazed earnestly and lovingly into it awhile, as if seeking +some grateful sign of returning reason there, then pressed the curly head +against his breast, and patted it tenderly. Presently he said-- + +"Dost not know thy father, child? Break not mine old heart; say thou +know'st me. Thou DOST know me, dost thou not?" + +"Yea: thou art my dread lord the King, whom God preserve!" + +"True, true--that is well--be comforted, tremble not so; there is none +here would hurt thee; there is none here but loves thee. Thou art better +now; thy ill dream passeth--is't not so? Thou wilt not miscall thyself +again, as they say thou didst a little while agone?" + +"I pray thee of thy grace believe me, I did but speak the truth, most +dread lord; for I am the meanest among thy subjects, being a pauper born, +and 'tis by a sore mischance and accident I am here, albeit I was therein +nothing blameful. I am but young to die, and thou canst save me with one +little word. Oh speak it, sir!" + +"Die? Talk not so, sweet prince--peace, peace, to thy troubled heart +--thou shalt not die!" + +Tom dropped upon his knees with a glad cry-- + +"God requite thy mercy, O my King, and save thee long to bless thy land!" +Then springing up, he turned a joyful face toward the two lords in +waiting, and exclaimed, "Thou heard'st it! I am not to die: the King +hath said it!" There was no movement, save that all bowed with grave +respect; but no one spoke. He hesitated, a little confused, then turned +timidly toward the King, saying, "I may go now?" + +"Go? Surely, if thou desirest. But why not tarry yet a little? Whither +would'st go?" + +Tom dropped his eyes, and answered humbly-- + +"Peradventure I mistook; but I did think me free, and so was I moved to +seek again the kennel where I was born and bred to misery, yet which +harboureth my mother and my sisters, and so is home to me; whereas these +pomps and splendours whereunto I am not used--oh, please you, sir, to let +me go!" + +The King was silent and thoughtful a while, and his face betrayed a +growing distress and uneasiness. Presently he said, with something of +hope in his voice-- + +"Perchance he is but mad upon this one strain, and hath his wits unmarred +as toucheth other matter. God send it may be so! We will make trial." + +Then he asked Tom a question in Latin, and Tom answered him lamely in the +same tongue. The lords and doctors manifested their gratification also. +The King said-- + +"'Twas not according to his schooling and ability, but showeth that his +mind is but diseased, not stricken fatally. How say you, sir?" + +The physician addressed bowed low, and replied-- + +"It jumpeth with my own conviction, sire, that thou hast divined aright." + +The King looked pleased with this encouragement, coming as it did from so +excellent authority, and continued with good heart-- + +"Now mark ye all: we will try him further." + +He put a question to Tom in French. Tom stood silent a moment, +embarrassed by having so many eyes centred upon him, then said +diffidently-- + +"I have no knowledge of this tongue, so please your majesty." + +The King fell back upon his couch. The attendants flew to his +assistance; but he put them aside, and said-- + +"Trouble me not--it is nothing but a scurvy faintness. Raise me! There, +'tis sufficient. Come hither, child; there, rest thy poor troubled head +upon thy father's heart, and be at peace. Thou'lt soon be well: 'tis +but a passing fantasy. Fear thou not; thou'lt soon be well." Then he +turned toward the company: his gentle manner changed, and baleful +lightnings began to play from his eyes. He said-- + +"List ye all! This my son is mad; but it is not permanent. Over-study +hath done this, and somewhat too much of confinement. Away with his +books and teachers! see ye to it. Pleasure him with sports, beguile him +in wholesome ways, so that his health come again." He raised himself +higher still, and went on with energy, "He is mad; but he is my son, and +England's heir; and, mad or sane, still shall he reign! And hear ye +further, and proclaim it: whoso speaketh of this his distemper worketh +against the peace and order of these realms, and shall to the gallows! +. . . Give me to drink--I burn: this sorrow sappeth my strength. . . . +There, take away the cup. . . . Support me. There, that is well. Mad, +is he? Were he a thousand times mad, yet is he Prince of Wales, and I the +King will confirm it. This very morrow shall he be installed in his +princely dignity in due and ancient form. Take instant order for it, my +lord Hertford." + +One of the nobles knelt at the royal couch, and said-- + +"The King's majesty knoweth that the Hereditary Great Marshal of England +lieth attainted in the Tower. It were not meet that one attainted--" + +"Peace! Insult not mine ears with his hated name. Is this man to live +for ever? Am I to be baulked of my will? Is the prince to tarry +uninstalled, because, forsooth, the realm lacketh an Earl Marshal free of +treasonable taint to invest him with his honours? No, by the splendour of +God! Warn my Parliament to bring me Norfolk's doom before the sun rise +again, else shall they answer for it grievously!" {1} + +Lord Hertford said-- + +"The King's will is law;" and, rising, returned to his former place. + +Gradually the wrath faded out of the old King's face, and he said-- + +"Kiss me, my prince. There . . . what fearest thou? Am I not thy loving +father?" + +"Thou art good to me that am unworthy, O mighty and gracious lord: that +in truth I know. But--but--it grieveth me to think of him that is to +die, and--" + +"Ah, 'tis like thee, 'tis like thee! I know thy heart is still the same, +even though thy mind hath suffered hurt, for thou wert ever of a gentle +spirit. But this duke standeth between thee and thine honours: I will +have another in his stead that shall bring no taint to his great office. +Comfort thee, my prince: trouble not thy poor head with this matter." + +"But is it not I that speed him hence, my liege? How long might he not +live, but for me?" + +"Take no thought of him, my prince: he is not worthy. Kiss me once +again, and go to thy trifles and amusements; for my malady distresseth +me. I am aweary, and would rest. Go with thine uncle Hertford and thy +people, and come again when my body is refreshed." + +Tom, heavy-hearted, was conducted from the presence, for this last +sentence was a death-blow to the hope he had cherished that now he would +be set free. Once more he heard the buzz of low voices exclaiming, "The +prince, the prince comes!" + +His spirits sank lower and lower as he moved between the glittering files +of bowing courtiers; for he recognised that he was indeed a captive now, +and might remain for ever shut up in this gilded cage, a forlorn and +friendless prince, except God in his mercy take pity on him and set him +free. + +And, turn where he would, he seemed to see floating in the air the +severed head and the remembered face of the great Duke of Norfolk, the +eyes fixed on him reproachfully. + +His old dreams had been so pleasant; but this reality was so dreary! + + + +Chapter VI. Tom receives instructions. + +Tom was conducted to the principal apartment of a noble suite, and made +to sit down--a thing which he was loth to do, since there were elderly +men and men of high degree about him. He begged them to be seated also, +but they only bowed their thanks or murmured them, and remained standing. +He would have insisted, but his 'uncle' the Earl of Hertford whispered in +his ear-- + +"Prithee, insist not, my lord; it is not meet that they sit in thy +presence." + +The Lord St. John was announced, and after making obeisance to Tom, he +said-- + +"I come upon the King's errand, concerning a matter which requireth +privacy. Will it please your royal highness to dismiss all that attend +you here, save my lord the Earl of Hertford?" + +Observing that Tom did not seem to know how to proceed, Hertford +whispered him to make a sign with his hand, and not trouble himself to +speak unless he chose. When the waiting gentlemen had retired, Lord St. +John said-- + +"His majesty commandeth, that for due and weighty reasons of state, the +prince's grace shall hide his infirmity in all ways that be within his +power, till it be passed and he be as he was before. To wit, that he +shall deny to none that he is the true prince, and heir to England's +greatness; that he shall uphold his princely dignity, and shall receive, +without word or sign of protest, that reverence and observance which unto +it do appertain of right and ancient usage; that he shall cease to speak +to any of that lowly birth and life his malady hath conjured out of the +unwholesome imaginings of o'er-wrought fancy; that he shall strive with +diligence to bring unto his memory again those faces which he was wont to +know--and where he faileth he shall hold his peace, neither betraying by +semblance of surprise or other sign that he hath forgot; that upon +occasions of state, whensoever any matter shall perplex him as to the +thing he should do or the utterance he should make, he shall show nought +of unrest to the curious that look on, but take advice in that matter of +the Lord Hertford, or my humble self, which are commanded of the King to +be upon this service and close at call, till this commandment be +dissolved. Thus saith the King's majesty, who sendeth greeting to your +royal highness, and prayeth that God will of His mercy quickly heal you +and have you now and ever in His holy keeping." + +The Lord St. John made reverence and stood aside. Tom replied +resignedly-- + +"The King hath said it. None may palter with the King's command, or fit +it to his ease, where it doth chafe, with deft evasions. The King shall +be obeyed." + +Lord Hertford said-- + +"Touching the King's majesty's ordainment concerning books and such like +serious matters, it may peradventure please your highness to ease your +time with lightsome entertainment, lest you go wearied to the banquet and +suffer harm thereby." + +Tom's face showed inquiring surprise; and a blush followed when he saw +Lord St. John's eyes bent sorrowfully upon him. His lordship said-- + +"Thy memory still wrongeth thee, and thou hast shown surprise--but suffer +it not to trouble thee, for 'tis a matter that will not bide, but depart +with thy mending malady. My Lord of Hertford speaketh of the city's +banquet which the King's majesty did promise, some two months flown, your +highness should attend. Thou recallest it now?" + +"It grieves me to confess it had indeed escaped me," said Tom, in a +hesitating voice; and blushed again. + +At this moment the Lady Elizabeth and the Lady Jane Grey were announced. +The two lords exchanged significant glances, and Hertford stepped quickly +toward the door. As the young girls passed him, he said in a low voice-- + +"I pray ye, ladies, seem not to observe his humours, nor show surprise +when his memory doth lapse--it will grieve you to note how it doth stick +at every trifle." + +Meantime Lord St. John was saying in Tom's ear-- + +"Please you, sir, keep diligently in mind his majesty's desire. Remember +all thou canst--SEEM to remember all else. Let them not perceive that +thou art much changed from thy wont, for thou knowest how tenderly thy +old play-fellows bear thee in their hearts and how 'twould grieve them. +Art willing, sir, that I remain?--and thine uncle?" + +Tom signified assent with a gesture and a murmured word, for he was +already learning, and in his simple heart was resolved to acquit himself +as best he might, according to the King's command. + +In spite of every precaution, the conversation among the young people +became a little embarrassing at times. More than once, in truth, Tom was +near to breaking down and confessing himself unequal to his tremendous +part; but the tact of the Princess Elizabeth saved him, or a word from +one or the other of the vigilant lords, thrown in apparently by chance, +had the same happy effect. Once the little Lady Jane turned to Tom and +dismayed him with this question,-- + +"Hast paid thy duty to the Queen's majesty to-day, my lord?" + +Tom hesitated, looked distressed, and was about to stammer out something +at hazard, when Lord St. John took the word and answered for him with the +easy grace of a courtier accustomed to encounter delicate difficulties +and to be ready for them-- + +"He hath indeed, madam, and she did greatly hearten him, as touching his +majesty's condition; is it not so, your highness?" + +Tom mumbled something that stood for assent, but felt that he was getting +upon dangerous ground. Somewhat later it was mentioned that Tom was to +study no more at present, whereupon her little ladyship exclaimed-- + +"'Tis a pity, 'tis a pity! Thou wert proceeding bravely. But bide thy +time in patience: it will not be for long. Thou'lt yet be graced with +learning like thy father, and make thy tongue master of as many languages +as his, good my prince." + +"My father!" cried Tom, off his guard for the moment. "I trow he cannot +speak his own so that any but the swine that kennel in the styes may tell +his meaning; and as for learning of any sort soever--" + +He looked up and encountered a solemn warning in my Lord St. John's eyes. + +He stopped, blushed, then continued low and sadly: "Ah, my malady +persecuteth me again, and my mind wandereth. I meant the King's grace no +irreverence." + +"We know it, sir," said the Princess Elizabeth, taking her 'brother's' +hand between her two palms, respectfully but caressingly; "trouble not +thyself as to that. The fault is none of thine, but thy distemper's." + +"Thou'rt a gentle comforter, sweet lady," said Tom, gratefully, "and my +heart moveth me to thank thee for't, an' I may be so bold." + +Once the giddy little Lady Jane fired a simple Greek phrase at Tom. The +Princess Elizabeth's quick eye saw by the serene blankness of the +target's front that the shaft was overshot; so she tranquilly delivered a +return volley of sounding Greek on Tom's behalf, and then straightway +changed the talk to other matters. + +Time wore on pleasantly, and likewise smoothly, on the whole. Snags and +sandbars grew less and less frequent, and Tom grew more and more at his +ease, seeing that all were so lovingly bent upon helping him and +overlooking his mistakes. When it came out that the little ladies were +to accompany him to the Lord Mayor's banquet in the evening, his heart +gave a bound of relief and delight, for he felt that he should not be +friendless, now, among that multitude of strangers; whereas, an hour +earlier, the idea of their going with him would have been an +insupportable terror to him. + +Tom's guardian angels, the two lords, had had less comfort in the +interview than the other parties to it. They felt much as if they were +piloting a great ship through a dangerous channel; they were on the alert +constantly, and found their office no child's play. Wherefore, at last, +when the ladies' visit was drawing to a close and the Lord Guilford +Dudley was announced, they not only felt that their charge had been +sufficiently taxed for the present, but also that they themselves were +not in the best condition to take their ship back and make their anxious +voyage all over again. So they respectfully advised Tom to excuse +himself, which he was very glad to do, although a slight shade of +disappointment might have been observed upon my Lady Jane's face when she +heard the splendid stripling denied admittance. + +There was a pause now, a sort of waiting silence which Tom could not +understand. He glanced at Lord Hertford, who gave him a sign--but he +failed to understand that also. The ready Elizabeth came to the rescue +with her usual easy grace. She made reverence and said-- + +"Have we leave of the prince's grace my brother to go?" + +Tom said-- + +"Indeed your ladyships can have whatsoever of me they will, for the +asking; yet would I rather give them any other thing that in my poor +power lieth, than leave to take the light and blessing of their presence +hence. Give ye good den, and God be with ye!" Then he smiled inwardly at +the thought, "'Tis not for nought I have dwelt but among princes in my +reading, and taught my tongue some slight trick of their broidered and +gracious speech withal!" + +When the illustrious maidens were gone, Tom turned wearily to his keepers +and said-- + +"May it please your lordships to grant me leave to go into some corner +and rest me?" + +Lord Hertford said-- + +"So please your highness, it is for you to command, it is for us to obey. +That thou should'st rest is indeed a needful thing, since thou must +journey to the city presently." + +He touched a bell, and a page appeared, who was ordered to desire the +presence of Sir William Herbert. This gentleman came straightway, and +conducted Tom to an inner apartment. Tom's first movement there was to +reach for a cup of water; but a silk-and-velvet servitor seized it, +dropped upon one knee, and offered it to him on a golden salver. + +Next the tired captive sat down and was going to take off his buskins, +timidly asking leave with his eye, but another silk-and-velvet +discomforter went down upon his knees and took the office from him. He +made two or three further efforts to help himself, but being promptly +forestalled each time, he finally gave up, with a sigh of resignation and +a murmured "Beshrew me, but I marvel they do not require to breathe for +me also!" Slippered, and wrapped in a sumptuous robe, he laid himself +down at last to rest, but not to sleep, for his head was too full of +thoughts and the room too full of people. He could not dismiss the +former, so they stayed; he did not know enough to dismiss the latter, so +they stayed also, to his vast regret--and theirs. + + +Tom's departure had left his two noble guardians alone. They mused a +while, with much head-shaking and walking the floor, then Lord St. John +said-- + +"Plainly, what dost thou think?" + +"Plainly, then, this. The King is near his end; my nephew is mad--mad +will mount the throne, and mad remain. God protect England, since she +will need it!" + +"Verily it promiseth so, indeed. But . . . have you no misgivings as to +. . . as to . . ." + +The speaker hesitated, and finally stopped. He evidently felt that he +was upon delicate ground. Lord Hertford stopped before him, looked into +his face with a clear, frank eye, and said-- + +"Speak on--there is none to hear but me. Misgivings as to what?" + +"I am full loth to word the thing that is in my mind, and thou so near to +him in blood, my lord. But craving pardon if I do offend, seemeth it not +strange that madness could so change his port and manner?--not but that +his port and speech are princely still, but that they DIFFER, in one +unweighty trifle or another, from what his custom was aforetime. Seemeth +it not strange that madness should filch from his memory his father's +very lineaments; the customs and observances that are his due from such +as be about him; and, leaving him his Latin, strip him of his Greek and +French? My lord, be not offended, but ease my mind of its disquiet and +receive my grateful thanks. It haunteth me, his saying he was not the +prince, and so--" + +"Peace, my lord, thou utterest treason! Hast forgot the King's command? +Remember I am party to thy crime if I but listen." + +St. John paled, and hastened to say-- + +"I was in fault, I do confess it. Betray me not, grant me this grace out +of thy courtesy, and I will neither think nor speak of this thing more. +Deal not hardly with me, sir, else am I ruined." + +"I am content, my lord. So thou offend not again, here or in the ears of +others, it shall be as though thou hadst not spoken. But thou need'st +not have misgivings. He is my sister's son; are not his voice, his face, +his form, familiar to me from his cradle? Madness can do all the odd +conflicting things thou seest in him, and more. Dost not recall how that +the old Baron Marley, being mad, forgot the favour of his own countenance +that he had known for sixty years, and held it was another's; nay, even +claimed he was the son of Mary Magdalene, and that his head was made of +Spanish glass; and, sooth to say, he suffered none to touch it, lest by +mischance some heedless hand might shiver it? Give thy misgivings +easement, good my lord. This is the very prince--I know him well--and +soon will be thy king; it may advantage thee to bear this in mind, and +more dwell upon it than the other." + +After some further talk, in which the Lord St. John covered up his +mistake as well as he could by repeated protests that his faith was +thoroughly grounded now, and could not be assailed by doubts again, the +Lord Hertford relieved his fellow-keeper, and sat down to keep watch and +ward alone. He was soon deep in meditation, and evidently the longer he +thought, the more he was bothered. By-and-by he began to pace the floor +and mutter. + +"Tush, he MUST be the prince! Will any he in all the land maintain there +can be two, not of one blood and birth, so marvellously twinned? And +even were it so, 'twere yet a stranger miracle that chance should cast +the one into the other's place. Nay, 'tis folly, folly, folly!" + +Presently he said-- + +"Now were he impostor and called himself prince, look you THAT would be +natural; that would be reasonable. But lived ever an impostor yet, who, +being called prince by the king, prince by the court, prince by all, +DENIED his dignity and pleaded against his exaltation? NO! By the soul +of St. Swithin, no! This is the true prince, gone mad!" + + + +Chapter VII. Tom's first royal dinner. + +Somewhat after one in the afternoon, Tom resignedly underwent the ordeal +of being dressed for dinner. He found himself as finely clothed as +before, but everything different, everything changed, from his ruff to +his stockings. He was presently conducted with much state to a spacious +and ornate apartment, where a table was already set for one. Its +furniture was all of massy gold, and beautified with designs which +well-nigh made it priceless, since they were the work of Benvenuto. The +room was half-filled with noble servitors. A chaplain said grace, and +Tom was about to fall to, for hunger had long been constitutional with +him, but was interrupted by my lord the Earl of Berkeley, who fastened a +napkin about his neck; for the great post of Diaperers to the Prince of +Wales was hereditary in this nobleman's family. Tom's cupbearer was +present, and forestalled all his attempts to help himself to wine. The +Taster to his highness the Prince of Wales was there also, prepared to +taste any suspicious dish upon requirement, and run the risk of being +poisoned. He was only an ornamental appendage at this time, and was +seldom called upon to exercise his function; but there had been times, +not many generations past, when the office of taster had its perils, and +was not a grandeur to be desired. Why they did not use a dog or a +plumber seems strange; but all the ways of royalty are strange. My Lord +d'Arcy, First Groom of the Chamber, was there, to do goodness knows what; +but there he was--let that suffice. The Lord Chief Butler was there, and +stood behind Tom's chair, overseeing the solemnities, under command of +the Lord Great Steward and the Lord Head Cook, who stood near. Tom had +three hundred and eighty-four servants beside these; but they were not +all in that room, of course, nor the quarter of them; neither was Tom +aware yet that they existed. + +All those that were present had been well drilled within the hour to +remember that the prince was temporarily out of his head, and to be +careful to show no surprise at his vagaries. These 'vagaries' were soon +on exhibition before them; but they only moved their compassion and their +sorrow, not their mirth. It was a heavy affliction to them to see the +beloved prince so stricken. + +Poor Tom ate with his fingers mainly; but no one smiled at it, or even +seemed to observe it. He inspected his napkin curiously, and with deep +interest, for it was of a very dainty and beautiful fabric, then said +with simplicity-- + +"Prithee, take it away, lest in mine unheedfulness it be soiled." + +The Hereditary Diaperer took it away with reverent manner, and without +word or protest of any sort. + +Tom examined the turnips and the lettuce with interest, and asked what +they were, and if they were to be eaten; for it was only recently that +men had begun to raise these things in England in place of importing them +as luxuries from Holland. {1} His question was answered with grave +respect, and no surprise manifested. When he had finished his dessert, +he filled his pockets with nuts; but nobody appeared to be aware of it, +or disturbed by it. But the next moment he was himself disturbed by it, +and showed discomposure; for this was the only service he had been +permitted to do with his own hands during the meal, and he did not doubt +that he had done a most improper and unprincely thing. At that moment +the muscles of his nose began to twitch, and the end of that organ to +lift and wrinkle. This continued, and Tom began to evince a growing +distress. He looked appealingly, first at one and then another of the +lords about him, and tears came into his eyes. They sprang forward with +dismay in their faces, and begged to know his trouble. Tom said with +genuine anguish-- + +"I crave your indulgence: my nose itcheth cruelly. What is the custom +and usage in this emergence? Prithee, speed, for 'tis but a little time +that I can bear it." + +None smiled; but all were sore perplexed, and looked one to the other in +deep tribulation for counsel. But behold, here was a dead wall, and +nothing in English history to tell how to get over it. The Master of +Ceremonies was not present: there was no one who felt safe to venture +upon this uncharted sea, or risk the attempt to solve this solemn +problem. Alas! there was no Hereditary Scratcher. Meantime the tears +had overflowed their banks, and begun to trickle down Tom's cheeks. His +twitching nose was pleading more urgently than ever for relief. At last +nature broke down the barriers of etiquette: Tom lifted up an inward +prayer for pardon if he was doing wrong, and brought relief to the +burdened hearts of his court by scratching his nose himself. + +His meal being ended, a lord came and held before him a broad, shallow, +golden dish with fragrant rosewater in it, to cleanse his mouth and +fingers with; and my lord the Hereditary Diaperer stood by with a napkin +for his use. Tom gazed at the dish a puzzled moment or two, then raised +it to his lips, and gravely took a draught. Then he returned it to the +waiting lord, and said-- + +"Nay, it likes me not, my lord: it hath a pretty flavour, but it wanteth +strength." + +This new eccentricity of the prince's ruined mind made all the hearts +about him ache; but the sad sight moved none to merriment. + +Tom's next unconscious blunder was to get up and leave the table just +when the chaplain had taken his stand behind his chair, and with uplifted +hands, and closed, uplifted eyes, was in the act of beginning the +blessing. Still nobody seemed to perceive that the prince had done a +thing unusual. + +By his own request our small friend was now conducted to his private +cabinet, and left there alone to his own devices. Hanging upon hooks in +the oaken wainscoting were the several pieces of a suit of shining steel +armour, covered all over with beautiful designs exquisitely inlaid in +gold. This martial panoply belonged to the true prince--a recent present +from Madam Parr the Queen. Tom put on the greaves, the gauntlets, the +plumed helmet, and such other pieces as he could don without assistance, +and for a while was minded to call for help and complete the matter, but +bethought him of the nuts he had brought away from dinner, and the joy it +would be to eat them with no crowd to eye him, and no Grand Hereditaries +to pester him with undesired services; so he restored the pretty things +to their several places, and soon was cracking nuts, and feeling almost +naturally happy for the first time since God for his sins had made him a +prince. When the nuts were all gone, he stumbled upon some inviting +books in a closet, among them one about the etiquette of the English +court. This was a prize. He lay down upon a sumptuous divan, and +proceeded to instruct himself with honest zeal. Let us leave him there +for the present. + + + +Chapter VIII. The question of the Seal. + +About five o'clock Henry VIII. awoke out of an unrefreshing nap, and +muttered to himself, "Troublous dreams, troublous dreams! Mine end is now +at hand: so say these warnings, and my failing pulses do confirm it." +Presently a wicked light flamed up in his eye, and he muttered, "Yet will +not I die till HE go before." + +His attendants perceiving that he was awake, one of them asked his +pleasure concerning the Lord Chancellor, who was waiting without. + +"Admit him, admit him!" exclaimed the King eagerly. + +The Lord Chancellor entered, and knelt by the King's couch, saying-- + +"I have given order, and, according to the King's command, the peers of +the realm, in their robes, do now stand at the bar of the House, where, +having confirmed the Duke of Norfolk's doom, they humbly wait his +majesty's further pleasure in the matter." + +The King's face lit up with a fierce joy. Said he-- + +"Lift me up! In mine own person will I go before my Parliament, and with +mine own hand will I seal the warrant that rids me of--" + +His voice failed; an ashen pallor swept the flush from his cheeks; and +the attendants eased him back upon his pillows, and hurriedly assisted +him with restoratives. Presently he said sorrowfully-- + +"Alack, how have I longed for this sweet hour! and lo, too late it +cometh, and I am robbed of this so coveted chance. But speed ye, speed +ye! let others do this happy office sith 'tis denied to me. I put my +Great Seal in commission: choose thou the lords that shall compose it, +and get ye to your work. Speed ye, man! Before the sun shall rise and +set again, bring me his head that I may see it." + +"According to the King's command, so shall it be. Will't please your +majesty to order that the Seal be now restored to me, so that I may forth +upon the business?" + +"The Seal? Who keepeth the Seal but thou?" + +"Please your majesty, you did take it from me two days since, saying it +should no more do its office till your own royal hand should use it upon +the Duke of Norfolk's warrant." + +"Why, so in sooth I did: I do remember . . . What did I with it?. . . I +am very feeble . . . So oft these days doth my memory play the traitor +with me . . . 'Tis strange, strange--" + +The King dropped into inarticulate mumblings, shaking his grey head +weakly from time to time, and gropingly trying to recollect what he had +done with the Seal. At last my Lord Hertford ventured to kneel and offer +information-- + +"Sire, if that I may be so bold, here be several that do remember with me +how that you gave the Great Seal into the hands of his highness the +Prince of Wales to keep against the day that--" + +"True, most true!" interrupted the King. "Fetch it! Go: time flieth!" + +Lord Hertford flew to Tom, but returned to the King before very long, +troubled and empty-handed. He delivered himself to this effect-- + +"It grieveth me, my lord the King, to bear so heavy and unwelcome +tidings; but it is the will of God that the prince's affliction abideth +still, and he cannot recall to mind that he received the Seal. So came I +quickly to report, thinking it were waste of precious time, and little +worth withal, that any should attempt to search the long array of +chambers and saloons that belong unto his royal high--" + +A groan from the King interrupted the lord at this point. After a little +while his majesty said, with a deep sadness in his tone-- + +"Trouble him no more, poor child. The hand of God lieth heavy upon him, +and my heart goeth out in loving compassion for him, and sorrow that I +may not bear his burden on mine old trouble-weighted shoulders, and so +bring him peace." + +He closed his eyes, fell to mumbling, and presently was silent. After a +time he opened his eyes again, and gazed vacantly around until his glance +rested upon the kneeling Lord Chancellor. Instantly his face flushed with +wrath-- + +"What, thou here yet! By the glory of God, an' thou gettest not about +that traitor's business, thy mitre shall have holiday the morrow for lack +of a head to grace withal!" + +The trembling Chancellor answered-- + +"Good your Majesty, I cry you mercy! I but waited for the Seal." + +"Man, hast lost thy wits? The small Seal which aforetime I was wont to +take with me abroad lieth in my treasury. And, since the Great Seal hath +flown away, shall not it suffice? Hast lost thy wits? Begone! And hark +ye--come no more till thou do bring his head." + +The poor Chancellor was not long in removing himself from this dangerous +vicinity; nor did the commission waste time in giving the royal assent to +the work of the slavish Parliament, and appointing the morrow for the +beheading of the premier peer of England, the luckless Duke of Norfolk. +{1} + + + +Chapter IX. The river pageant. + +At nine in the evening the whole vast river-front of the palace was +blazing with light. The river itself, as far as the eye could reach +citywards, was so thickly covered with watermen's boats and with +pleasure-barges, all fringed with coloured lanterns, and gently agitated +by the waves, that it resembled a glowing and limitless garden of flowers +stirred to soft motion by summer winds. The grand terrace of stone steps +leading down to the water, spacious enough to mass the army of a German +principality upon, was a picture to see, with its ranks of royal +halberdiers in polished armour, and its troops of brilliantly costumed +servitors flitting up and down, and to and fro, in the hurry of +preparation. + +Presently a command was given, and immediately all living creatures +vanished from the steps. Now the air was heavy with the hush of suspense +and expectancy. As far as one's vision could carry, he might see the +myriads of people in the boats rise up, and shade their eyes from the +glare of lanterns and torches, and gaze toward the palace. + +A file of forty or fifty state barges drew up to the steps. They were +richly gilt, and their lofty prows and sterns were elaborately carved. +Some of them were decorated with banners and streamers; some with +cloth-of-gold and arras embroidered with coats-of-arms; others with +silken flags that had numberless little silver bells fastened to them, +which shook out tiny showers of joyous music whenever the breezes +fluttered them; others of yet higher pretensions, since they belonged to +nobles in the prince's immediate service, had their sides picturesquely +fenced with shields gorgeously emblazoned with armorial bearings. Each +state barge was towed by a tender. Besides the rowers, these tenders +carried each a number of men-at-arms in glossy helmet and breastplate, +and a company of musicians. + +The advance-guard of the expected procession now appeared in the great +gateway, a troop of halberdiers. 'They were dressed in striped hose of +black and tawny, velvet caps graced at the sides with silver roses, and +doublets of murrey and blue cloth, embroidered on the front and back with +the three feathers, the prince's blazon, woven in gold. Their halberd +staves were covered with crimson velvet, fastened with gilt nails, and +ornamented with gold tassels. Filing off on the right and left, they +formed two long lines, extending from the gateway of the palace to the +water's edge. A thick rayed cloth or carpet was then unfolded, and laid +down between them by attendants in the gold-and-crimson liveries of the +prince. This done, a flourish of trumpets resounded from within. A +lively prelude arose from the musicians on the water; and two ushers with +white wands marched with a slow and stately pace from the portal. They +were followed by an officer bearing the civic mace, after whom came +another carrying the city's sword; then several sergeants of the city +guard, in their full accoutrements, and with badges on their sleeves; +then the Garter King-at-arms, in his tabard; then several Knights of the +Bath, each with a white lace on his sleeve; then their esquires; then the +judges, in their robes of scarlet and coifs; then the Lord High +Chancellor of England, in a robe of scarlet, open before, and purfled +with minever; then a deputation of aldermen, in their scarlet cloaks; and +then the heads of the different civic companies, in their robes of state. +Now came twelve French gentlemen, in splendid habiliments, consisting +of pourpoints of white damask barred with gold, short mantles of +crimson velvet lined with violet taffeta, and carnation coloured +hauts-de-chausses, and took their way down the steps. They were of the +suite of the French ambassador, and were followed by twelve cavaliers of +the suite of the Spanish ambassador, clothed in black velvet, unrelieved +by any ornament. Following these came several great English nobles with +their attendants.' + +There was a flourish of trumpets within; and the Prince's uncle, the +future great Duke of Somerset, emerged from the gateway, arrayed in a +'doublet of black cloth-of-gold, and a cloak of crimson satin flowered +with gold, and ribanded with nets of silver.' He turned, doffed his +plumed cap, bent his body in a low reverence, and began to step backward, +bowing at each step. A prolonged trumpet-blast followed, and a +proclamation, "Way for the high and mighty the Lord Edward, Prince of +Wales!" High aloft on the palace walls a long line of red tongues of +flame leapt forth with a thunder-crash; the massed world on the river +burst into a mighty roar of welcome; and Tom Canty, the cause and hero of +it all, stepped into view and slightly bowed his princely head. + +He was 'magnificently habited in a doublet of white satin, with a +front-piece of purple cloth-of-tissue, powdered with diamonds, and edged +with ermine. Over this he wore a mantle of white cloth-of-gold, pounced +with the triple-feathered crest, lined with blue satin, set with pearls +and precious stones, and fastened with a clasp of brilliants. About his +neck hung the order of the Garter, and several princely foreign orders;' +and wherever light fell upon him jewels responded with a blinding flash. +O Tom Canty, born in a hovel, bred in the gutters of London, familiar +with rags and dirt and misery, what a spectacle is this! + + + +Chapter X. The Prince in the toils. + +We left John Canty dragging the rightful prince into Offal Court, with a +noisy and delighted mob at his heels. There was but one person in it who +offered a pleading word for the captive, and he was not heeded; he was +hardly even heard, so great was the turmoil. The Prince continued to +struggle for freedom, and to rage against the treatment he was suffering, +until John Canty lost what little patience was left in him, and raised +his oaken cudgel in a sudden fury over the Prince's head. The single +pleader for the lad sprang to stop the man's arm, and the blow descended +upon his own wrist. Canty roared out-- + +"Thou'lt meddle, wilt thou? Then have thy reward." + +His cudgel crashed down upon the meddler's head: there was a groan, a +dim form sank to the ground among the feet of the crowd, and the next +moment it lay there in the dark alone. The mob pressed on, their +enjoyment nothing disturbed by this episode. + +Presently the Prince found himself in John Canty's abode, with the door +closed against the outsiders. By the vague light of a tallow candle +which was thrust into a bottle, he made out the main features of the +loathsome den, and also the occupants of it. Two frowsy girls and a +middle-aged woman cowered against the wall in one corner, with the aspect +of animals habituated to harsh usage, and expecting and dreading it now. +From another corner stole a withered hag with streaming grey hair and +malignant eyes. John Canty said to this one-- + +"Tarry! There's fine mummeries here. Mar them not till thou'st enjoyed +them: then let thy hand be heavy as thou wilt. Stand forth, lad. Now +say thy foolery again, an thou'st not forgot it. Name thy name. Who art +thou?" + +The insulted blood mounted to the little prince's cheek once more, and he +lifted a steady and indignant gaze to the man's face and said-- + +"'Tis but ill-breeding in such as thou to command me to speak. I tell +thee now, as I told thee before, I am Edward, Prince of Wales, and none +other." + +The stunning surprise of this reply nailed the hag's feet to the floor +where she stood, and almost took her breath. She stared at the Prince in +stupid amazement, which so amused her ruffianly son, that he burst into a +roar of laughter. But the effect upon Tom Canty's mother and sisters was +different. Their dread of bodily injury gave way at once to distress of +a different sort. They ran forward with woe and dismay in their faces, +exclaiming-- + +"Oh, poor Tom, poor lad!" + +The mother fell on her knees before the Prince, put her hands upon his +shoulders, and gazed yearningly into his face through her rising tears. +Then she said-- + +"Oh, my poor boy! Thy foolish reading hath wrought its woeful work at +last, and ta'en thy wit away. Ah! why did'st thou cleave to it when I so +warned thee 'gainst it? Thou'st broke thy mother's heart." + +The Prince looked into her face, and said gently-- + +"Thy son is well, and hath not lost his wits, good dame. Comfort thee: +let me to the palace where he is, and straightway will the King my father +restore him to thee." + +"The King thy father! Oh, my child! unsay these words that be freighted +with death for thee, and ruin for all that be near to thee. Shake of +this gruesome dream. Call back thy poor wandering memory. Look upon me. +Am not I thy mother that bore thee, and loveth thee?" + +The Prince shook his head and reluctantly said-- + +"God knoweth I am loth to grieve thy heart; but truly have I never looked +upon thy face before." + +The woman sank back to a sitting posture on the floor, and, covering her +eyes with her hands, gave way to heart-broken sobs and wailings. + +"Let the show go on!" shouted Canty. "What, Nan!--what, Bet! mannerless +wenches! will ye stand in the Prince's presence? Upon your knees, ye +pauper scum, and do him reverence!" + +He followed this with another horse-laugh. The girls began to plead +timidly for their brother; and Nan said-- + +"An thou wilt but let him to bed, father, rest and sleep will heal his +madness: prithee, do." + +"Do, father," said Bet; "he is more worn than is his wont. To-morrow +will he be himself again, and will beg with diligence, and come not empty +home again." + +This remark sobered the father's joviality, and brought his mind to +business. He turned angrily upon the Prince, and said-- + +"The morrow must we pay two pennies to him that owns this hole; two +pennies, mark ye--all this money for a half-year's rent, else out of this +we go. Show what thou'st gathered with thy lazy begging." + +The Prince said-- + +"Offend me not with thy sordid matters. I tell thee again I am the +King's son." + +A sounding blow upon the Prince's shoulder from Canty's broad palm sent +him staggering into goodwife Canty's arms, who clasped him to her breast, +and sheltered him from a pelting rain of cuffs and slaps by interposing +her own person. The frightened girls retreated to their corner; but the +grandmother stepped eagerly forward to assist her son. The Prince sprang +away from Mrs. Canty, exclaiming-- + +"Thou shalt not suffer for me, madam. Let these swine do their will upon +me alone." + +This speech infuriated the swine to such a degree that they set about +their work without waste of time. Between them they belaboured the boy +right soundly, and then gave the girls and their mother a beating for +showing sympathy for the victim. + +"Now," said Canty, "to bed, all of ye. The entertainment has tired me." + +The light was put out, and the family retired. As soon as the snorings +of the head of the house and his mother showed that they were asleep, the +young girls crept to where the Prince lay, and covered him tenderly from +the cold with straw and rags; and their mother crept to him also, and +stroked his hair, and cried over him, whispering broken words of comfort +and compassion in his ear the while. She had saved a morsel for him to +eat, also; but the boy's pains had swept away all appetite--at least for +black and tasteless crusts. He was touched by her brave and costly +defence of him, and by her commiseration; and he thanked her in very +noble and princely words, and begged her to go to her sleep and try to +forget her sorrows. And he added that the King his father would not let +her loyal kindness and devotion go unrewarded. This return to his +'madness' broke her heart anew, and she strained him to her breast again +and again, and then went back, drowned in tears, to her bed. + +As she lay thinking and mourning, the suggestion began to creep into her +mind that there was an undefinable something about this boy that was +lacking in Tom Canty, mad or sane. She could not describe it, she could +not tell just what it was, and yet her sharp mother-instinct seemed to +detect it and perceive it. What if the boy were really not her son, +after all? Oh, absurd! She almost smiled at the idea, spite of her +griefs and troubles. No matter, she found that it was an idea that would +not 'down,' but persisted in haunting her. It pursued her, it harassed +her, it clung to her, and refused to be put away or ignored. At last she +perceived that there was not going to be any peace for her until she +should devise a test that should prove, clearly and without question, +whether this lad was her son or not, and so banish these wearing and +worrying doubts. Ah, yes, this was plainly the right way out of the +difficulty; therefore she set her wits to work at once to contrive that +test. But it was an easier thing to propose than to accomplish. She +turned over in her mind one promising test after another, but was obliged +to relinquish them all--none of them were absolutely sure, absolutely +perfect; and an imperfect one could not satisfy her. Evidently she was +racking her head in vain--it seemed manifest that she must give the +matter up. While this depressing thought was passing through her mind, +her ear caught the regular breathing of the boy, and she knew he had +fallen asleep. And while she listened, the measured breathing was broken +by a soft, startled cry, such as one utters in a troubled dream. This +chance occurrence furnished her instantly with a plan worth all her +laboured tests combined. She at once set herself feverishly, but +noiselessly, to work to relight her candle, muttering to herself, "Had I +but seen him THEN, I should have known! Since that day, when he was +little, that the powder burst in his face, he hath never been startled of +a sudden out of his dreams or out of his thinkings, but he hath cast his +hand before his eyes, even as he did that day; and not as others would do +it, with the palm inward, but always with the palm turned outward--I have +seen it a hundred times, and it hath never varied nor ever failed. Yes, +I shall soon know, now!" + +By this time she had crept to the slumbering boy's side, with the candle, +shaded, in her hand. She bent heedfully and warily over him, scarcely +breathing in her suppressed excitement, and suddenly flashed the light in +his face and struck the floor by his ear with her knuckles. The +sleeper's eyes sprang wide open, and he cast a startled stare about him +--but he made no special movement with his hands. + +The poor woman was smitten almost helpless with surprise and grief; but +she contrived to hide her emotions, and to soothe the boy to sleep again; +then she crept apart and communed miserably with herself upon the +disastrous result of her experiment. She tried to believe that her Tom's +madness had banished this habitual gesture of his; but she could not do +it. "No," she said, "his HANDS are not mad; they could not unlearn so +old a habit in so brief a time. Oh, this is a heavy day for me!" + +Still, hope was as stubborn now as doubt had been before; she could not +bring herself to accept the verdict of the test; she must try the thing +again--the failure must have been only an accident; so she startled the +boy out of his sleep a second and a third time, at intervals--with the +same result which had marked the first test; then she dragged herself to +bed, and fell sorrowfully asleep, saying, "But I cannot give him up--oh +no, I cannot, I cannot--he MUST be my boy!" + +The poor mother's interruptions having ceased, and the Prince's pains +having gradually lost their power to disturb him, utter weariness at last +sealed his eyes in a profound and restful sleep. Hour after hour slipped +away, and still he slept like the dead. Thus four or five hours passed. +Then his stupor began to lighten. Presently, while half asleep and half +awake, he murmured-- + +"Sir William!" + +After a moment-- + +"Ho, Sir William Herbert! Hie thee hither, and list to the strangest +dream that ever . . . Sir William! dost hear? Man, I did think me +changed to a pauper, and . . . Ho there! Guards! Sir William! What! is +there no groom of the chamber in waiting? Alack! it shall go hard with--" + +"What aileth thee?" asked a whisper near him. "Who art thou calling?" + +"Sir William Herbert. Who art thou?" + +"I? Who should I be, but thy sister Nan? Oh, Tom, I had forgot! Thou'rt +mad yet--poor lad, thou'rt mad yet: would I had never woke to know it +again! But prithee master thy tongue, lest we be all beaten till we +die!" + +The startled Prince sprang partly up, but a sharp reminder from his +stiffened bruises brought him to himself, and he sank back among his foul +straw with a moan and the ejaculation-- + +"Alas! it was no dream, then!" + +In a moment all the heavy sorrow and misery which sleep had banished were +upon him again, and he realised that he was no longer a petted prince in +a palace, with the adoring eyes of a nation upon him, but a pauper, an +outcast, clothed in rags, prisoner in a den fit only for beasts, and +consorting with beggars and thieves. + +In the midst of his grief he began to be conscious of hilarious noises +and shoutings, apparently but a block or two away. The next moment there +were several sharp raps at the door; John Canty ceased from snoring and +said-- + +"Who knocketh? What wilt thou?" + +A voice answered-- + +"Know'st thou who it was thou laid thy cudgel on?" + +"No. Neither know I, nor care." + +"Belike thou'lt change thy note eftsoons. An thou would save thy neck, +nothing but flight may stead thee. The man is this moment delivering up +the ghost. 'Tis the priest, Father Andrew!" + +"God-a-mercy!" exclaimed Canty. He roused his family, and hoarsely +commanded, "Up with ye all and fly--or bide where ye are and perish!" + +Scarcely five minutes later the Canty household were in the street and +flying for their lives. John Canty held the Prince by the wrist, and +hurried him along the dark way, giving him this caution in a low voice-- + +"Mind thy tongue, thou mad fool, and speak not our name. I will choose +me a new name, speedily, to throw the law's dogs off the scent. Mind thy +tongue, I tell thee!" + +He growled these words to the rest of the family-- + +"If it so chance that we be separated, let each make for London Bridge; +whoso findeth himself as far as the last linen-draper's shop on the +bridge, let him tarry there till the others be come, then will we flee +into Southwark together." + +At this moment the party burst suddenly out of darkness into light; and +not only into light, but into the midst of a multitude of singing, +dancing, and shouting people, massed together on the river frontage. +There was a line of bonfires stretching as far as one could see, up and +down the Thames; London Bridge was illuminated; Southwark Bridge +likewise; the entire river was aglow with the flash and sheen of coloured +lights; and constant explosions of fireworks filled the skies with an +intricate commingling of shooting splendours and a thick rain of dazzling +sparks that almost turned night into day; everywhere were crowds of +revellers; all London seemed to be at large. + +John Canty delivered himself of a furious curse and commanded a retreat; +but it was too late. He and his tribe were swallowed up in that swarming +hive of humanity, and hopelessly separated from each other in an instant. +We are not considering that the Prince was one of his tribe; Canty still +kept his grip upon him. The Prince's heart was beating high with hopes +of escape, now. A burly waterman, considerably exalted with liquor, +found himself rudely shoved by Canty in his efforts to plough through the +crowd; he laid his great hand on Canty's shoulder and said-- + +"Nay, whither so fast, friend? Dost canker thy soul with sordid business +when all that be leal men and true make holiday?" + +"Mine affairs are mine own, they concern thee not," answered Canty, +roughly; "take away thy hand and let me pass." + +"Sith that is thy humour, thou'lt NOT pass, till thou'st drunk to the +Prince of Wales, I tell thee that," said the waterman, barring the way +resolutely. + +"Give me the cup, then, and make speed, make speed!" + +Other revellers were interested by this time. They cried out-- + +"The loving-cup, the loving-cup! make the sour knave drink the +loving-cup, else will we feed him to the fishes." + +So a huge loving-cup was brought; the waterman, grasping it by one of its +handles, and with the other hand bearing up the end of an imaginary +napkin, presented it in due and ancient form to Canty, who had to grasp +the opposite handle with one of his hands and take off the lid with the +other, according to ancient custom. {1} This left the Prince hand-free +for a second, of course. He wasted no time, but dived among the forest +of legs about him and disappeared. In another moment he could not have +been harder to find, under that tossing sea of life, if its billows had +been the Atlantic's and he a lost sixpence. + +He very soon realised this fact, and straightway busied himself about his +own affairs without further thought of John Canty. He quickly realised +another thing, too. To wit, that a spurious Prince of Wales was being +feasted by the city in his stead. He easily concluded that the pauper +lad, Tom Canty, had deliberately taken advantage of his stupendous +opportunity and become a usurper. + +Therefore there was but one course to pursue--find his way to the +Guildhall, make himself known, and denounce the impostor. He also made +up his mind that Tom should be allowed a reasonable time for spiritual +preparation, and then be hanged, drawn and quartered, according to the +law and usage of the day in cases of high treason. + + + +Chapter XI. At Guildhall. + +The royal barge, attended by its gorgeous fleet, took its stately way +down the Thames through the wilderness of illuminated boats. The air was +laden with music; the river banks were beruffled with joy-flames; the +distant city lay in a soft luminous glow from its countless invisible +bonfires; above it rose many a slender spire into the sky, incrusted with +sparkling lights, wherefore in their remoteness they seemed like jewelled +lances thrust aloft; as the fleet swept along, it was greeted from the +banks with a continuous hoarse roar of cheers and the ceaseless flash and +boom of artillery. + +To Tom Canty, half buried in his silken cushions, these sounds and this +spectacle were a wonder unspeakably sublime and astonishing. To his +little friends at his side, the Princess Elizabeth and the Lady Jane +Grey, they were nothing. + +Arrived at the Dowgate, the fleet was towed up the limpid Walbrook (whose +channel has now been for two centuries buried out of sight under acres of +buildings) to Bucklersbury, past houses and under bridges populous with +merry-makers and brilliantly lighted, and at last came to a halt in a +basin where now is Barge Yard, in the centre of the ancient city of +London. Tom disembarked, and he and his gallant procession crossed +Cheapside and made a short march through the Old Jewry and Basinghall +Street to the Guildhall. + +Tom and his little ladies were received with due ceremony by the Lord +Mayor and the Fathers of the City, in their gold chains and scarlet robes +of state, and conducted to a rich canopy of state at the head of the +great hall, preceded by heralds making proclamation, and by the Mace and +the City Sword. The lords and ladies who were to attend upon Tom and his +two small friends took their places behind their chairs. + +At a lower table the Court grandees and other guests of noble degree were +seated, with the magnates of the city; the commoners took places at a +multitude of tables on the main floor of the hall. From their lofty +vantage-ground the giants Gog and Magog, the ancient guardians of the +city, contemplated the spectacle below them with eyes grown familiar to +it in forgotten generations. There was a bugle-blast and a proclamation, +and a fat butler appeared in a high perch in the leftward wall, followed +by his servitors bearing with impressive solemnity a royal baron of beef, +smoking hot and ready for the knife. + +After grace, Tom (being instructed) rose--and the whole house with him +--and drank from a portly golden loving-cup with the Princess Elizabeth; +from her it passed to the Lady Jane, and then traversed the general +assemblage. So the banquet began. + +By midnight the revelry was at its height. Now came one of those +picturesque spectacles so admired in that old day. A description of it +is still extant in the quaint wording of a chronicler who witnessed it: + +'Space being made, presently entered a baron and an earl appareled after +the Turkish fashion in long robes of bawdkin powdered with gold; hats on +their heads of crimson velvet, with great rolls of gold, girded with two +swords, called scimitars, hanging by great bawdricks of gold. Next came +yet another baron and another earl, in two long gowns of yellow satin, +traversed with white satin, and in every bend of white was a bend of +crimson satin, after the fashion of Russia, with furred hats of gray on +their heads; either of them having an hatchet in their hands, and boots +with pykes' (points a foot long), 'turned up. And after them came a +knight, then the Lord High Admiral, and with him five nobles, in doublets +of crimson velvet, voyded low on the back and before to the cannell-bone, +laced on the breasts with chains of silver; and over that, short cloaks +of crimson satin, and on their heads hats after the dancers' fashion, +with pheasants' feathers in them. These were appareled after the fashion +of Prussia. The torchbearers, which were about an hundred, were +appareled in crimson satin and green, like Moors, their faces black. +Next came in a mommarye. Then the minstrels, which were disguised, +danced; and the lords and ladies did wildly dance also, that it was a +pleasure to behold.' + +And while Tom, in his high seat, was gazing upon this 'wild' dancing, +lost in admiration of the dazzling commingling of kaleidoscopic colours +which the whirling turmoil of gaudy figures below him presented, the +ragged but real little Prince of Wales was proclaiming his rights and his +wrongs, denouncing the impostor, and clamouring for admission at the +gates of Guildhall! The crowd enjoyed this episode prodigiously, and +pressed forward and craned their necks to see the small rioter. +Presently they began to taunt him and mock at him, purposely to goad him +into a higher and still more entertaining fury. Tears of mortification +sprang to his eyes, but he stood his ground and defied the mob right +royally. Other taunts followed, added mockings stung him, and he +exclaimed-- + +"I tell ye again, you pack of unmannerly curs, I am the Prince of Wales! +And all forlorn and friendless as I be, with none to give me word of +grace or help me in my need, yet will not I be driven from my ground, but +will maintain it!" + +"Though thou be prince or no prince, 'tis all one, thou be'st a gallant +lad, and not friendless neither! Here stand I by thy side to prove it; +and mind I tell thee thou might'st have a worser friend than Miles Hendon +and yet not tire thy legs with seeking. Rest thy small jaw, my child; I +talk the language of these base kennel-rats like to a very native." + +The speaker was a sort of Don Caesar de Bazan in dress, aspect, and +bearing. He was tall, trim-built, muscular. His doublet and trunks were +of rich material, but faded and threadbare, and their gold-lace +adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged; the +plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and +disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron +sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of the +camp. The speech of this fantastic figure was received with an explosion +of jeers and laughter. Some cried, "'Tis another prince in disguise!" +"'Ware thy tongue, friend: belike he is dangerous!" "Marry, he looketh +it--mark his eye!" "Pluck the lad from him--to the horse-pond wi' the +cub!" + +Instantly a hand was laid upon the Prince, under the impulse of this +happy thought; as instantly the stranger's long sword was out and the +meddler went to the earth under a sounding thump with the flat of it. +The next moment a score of voices shouted, "Kill the dog! Kill him! +Kill him!" and the mob closed in on the warrior, who backed himself +against a wall and began to lay about him with his long weapon like a +madman. His victims sprawled this way and that, but the mob-tide poured +over their prostrate forms and dashed itself against the champion with +undiminished fury. His moments seemed numbered, his destruction certain, +when suddenly a trumpet-blast sounded, a voice shouted, "Way for the +King's messenger!" and a troop of horsemen came charging down upon the +mob, who fled out of harm's reach as fast as their legs could carry them. +The bold stranger caught up the Prince in his arms, and was soon far away +from danger and the multitude. + +Return we within the Guildhall. Suddenly, high above the jubilant roar +and thunder of the revel, broke the clear peal of a bugle-note. There +was instant silence--a deep hush; then a single voice rose--that of the +messenger from the palace--and began to pipe forth a proclamation, the +whole multitude standing listening. + +The closing words, solemnly pronounced, were-- + +"The King is dead!" + +The great assemblage bent their heads upon their breasts with one accord; +remained so, in profound silence, a few moments; then all sank upon their +knees in a body, stretched out their hands toward Tom, and a mighty shout +burst forth that seemed to shake the building-- + +"Long live the King!" + +Poor Tom's dazed eyes wandered abroad over this stupefying spectacle, and +finally rested dreamily upon the kneeling princesses beside him, a +moment, then upon the Earl of Hertford. A sudden purpose dawned in his +face. He said, in a low tone, at Lord Hertford's ear-- + +"Answer me truly, on thy faith and honour! Uttered I here a command, the +which none but a king might hold privilege and prerogative to utter, +would such commandment be obeyed, and none rise up to say me nay?" + +"None, my liege, in all these realms. In thy person bides the majesty of +England. Thou art the king--thy word is law." + +Tom responded, in a strong, earnest voice, and with great animation-- + +"Then shall the king's law be law of mercy, from this day, and never more +be law of blood! Up from thy knees and away! To the Tower, and say the +King decrees the Duke of Norfolk shall not die!" {1} + +The words were caught up and carried eagerly from lip to lip far and wide +over the hall, and as Hertford hurried from the presence, another +prodigious shout burst forth-- + +"The reign of blood is ended! Long live Edward, King of England!" + + + +Chapter XII. The Prince and his deliverer. + +As soon as Miles Hendon and the little prince were clear of the mob, they +struck down through back lanes and alleys toward the river. Their way +was unobstructed until they approached London Bridge; then they ploughed +into the multitude again, Hendon keeping a fast grip upon the Prince's +--no, the King's--wrist. The tremendous news was already abroad, and the +boy learned it from a thousand voices at once--"The King is dead!" The +tidings struck a chill to the heart of the poor little waif, and sent a +shudder through his frame. He realised the greatness of his loss, and +was filled with a bitter grief; for the grim tyrant who had been such a +terror to others had always been gentle with him. The tears sprang to +his eyes and blurred all objects. For an instant he felt himself the +most forlorn, outcast, and forsaken of God's creatures--then another cry +shook the night with its far-reaching thunders: "Long live King Edward +the Sixth!" and this made his eyes kindle, and thrilled him with pride to +his fingers' ends. "Ah," he thought, "how grand and strange it seems--I +AM KING!" + +Our friends threaded their way slowly through the throngs upon the +bridge. This structure, which had stood for six hundred years, and had +been a noisy and populous thoroughfare all that time, was a curious +affair, for a closely packed rank of stores and shops, with family +quarters overhead, stretched along both sides of it, from one bank of the +river to the other. The Bridge was a sort of town to itself; it had its +inn, its beer-houses, its bakeries, its haberdasheries, its food markets, +its manufacturing industries, and even its church. It looked upon the +two neighbours which it linked together--London and Southwark--as being +well enough as suburbs, but not otherwise particularly important. It was +a close corporation, so to speak; it was a narrow town, of a single +street a fifth of a mile long, its population was but a village +population and everybody in it knew all his fellow-townsmen intimately, +and had known their fathers and mothers before them--and all their little +family affairs into the bargain. It had its aristocracy, of course--its +fine old families of butchers, and bakers, and what-not, who had occupied +the same old premises for five or six hundred years, and knew the great +history of the Bridge from beginning to end, and all its strange legends; +and who always talked bridgy talk, and thought bridgy thoughts, and lied +in a long, level, direct, substantial bridgy way. It was just the sort +of population to be narrow and ignorant and self-conceited. Children were +born on the Bridge, were reared there, grew to old age, and finally died +without ever having set a foot upon any part of the world but London +Bridge alone. Such people would naturally imagine that the mighty and +interminable procession which moved through its street night and day, +with its confused roar of shouts and cries, its neighings and bellowing +and bleatings and its muffled thunder-tramp, was the one great thing in +this world, and themselves somehow the proprietors of it. And so they +were, in effect--at least they could exhibit it from their windows, and +did--for a consideration--whenever a returning king or hero gave it a +fleeting splendour, for there was no place like it for affording a long, +straight, uninterrupted view of marching columns. + +Men born and reared upon the Bridge found life unendurably dull and inane +elsewhere. History tells of one of these who left the Bridge at the age +of seventy-one and retired to the country. But he could only fret and +toss in his bed; he could not go to sleep, the deep stillness was so +painful, so awful, so oppressive. When he was worn out with it, at last, +he fled back to his old home, a lean and haggard spectre, and fell +peacefully to rest and pleasant dreams under the lulling music of the +lashing waters and the boom and crash and thunder of London Bridge. + +In the times of which we are writing, the Bridge furnished 'object +lessons' in English history for its children--namely, the livid and +decaying heads of renowned men impaled upon iron spikes atop of its +gateways. But we digress. + +Hendon's lodgings were in the little inn on the Bridge. As he neared the +door with his small friend, a rough voice said-- + +"So, thou'rt come at last! Thou'lt not escape again, I warrant thee; and +if pounding thy bones to a pudding can teach thee somewhat, thou'lt not +keep us waiting another time, mayhap"--and John Canty put out his hand to +seize the boy. + +Miles Hendon stepped in the way and said-- + +"Not too fast, friend. Thou art needlessly rough, methinks. What is the +lad to thee?" + +"If it be any business of thine to make and meddle in others' affairs, he +is my son." + +"'Tis a lie!" cried the little King, hotly. + +"Boldly said, and I believe thee, whether thy small headpiece be sound or +cracked, my boy. But whether this scurvy ruffian be thy father or no, +'tis all one, he shall not have thee to beat thee and abuse, according to +his threat, so thou prefer to bide with me." + +"I do, I do--I know him not, I loathe him, and will die before I will go +with him." + +"Then 'tis settled, and there is nought more to say." + +"We will see, as to that!" exclaimed John Canty, striding past Hendon to +get at the boy; "by force shall he--" + +"If thou do but touch him, thou animated offal, I will spit thee like a +goose!" said Hendon, barring the way and laying his hand upon his sword +hilt. Canty drew back. "Now mark ye," continued Hendon, "I took this +lad under my protection when a mob of such as thou would have mishandled +him, mayhap killed him; dost imagine I will desert him now to a worser +fate?--for whether thou art his father or no--and sooth to say, I think +it is a lie--a decent swift death were better for such a lad than life in +such brute hands as thine. So go thy ways, and set quick about it, for I +like not much bandying of words, being not over-patient in my nature." + +John Canty moved off, muttering threats and curses, and was swallowed +from sight in the crowd. Hendon ascended three flights of stairs to his +room, with his charge, after ordering a meal to be sent thither. It was +a poor apartment, with a shabby bed and some odds and ends of old +furniture in it, and was vaguely lighted by a couple of sickly candles. +The little King dragged himself to the bed and lay down upon it, almost +exhausted with hunger and fatigue. He had been on his feet a good part +of a day and a night (for it was now two or three o'clock in the +morning), and had eaten nothing meantime. He murmured drowsily-- + +"Prithee call me when the table is spread," and sank into a deep sleep +immediately. + +A smile twinkled in Hendon's eye, and he said to himself-- + +"By the mass, the little beggar takes to one's quarters and usurps one's +bed with as natural and easy a grace as if he owned them--with never a +by-your-leave or so-please-it-you, or anything of the sort. In his +diseased ravings he called himself the Prince of Wales, and bravely doth +he keep up the character. Poor little friendless rat, doubtless his mind +has been disordered with ill-usage. Well, I will be his friend; I have +saved him, and it draweth me strongly to him; already I love the +bold-tongued little rascal. How soldier-like he faced the smutty rabble +and flung back his high defiance! And what a comely, sweet and gentle +face he hath, now that sleep hath conjured away its troubles and its +griefs. I will teach him; I will cure his malady; yea, I will be his +elder brother, and care for him and watch over him; and whoso would shame +him or do him hurt may order his shroud, for though I be burnt for it he +shall need it!" + +He bent over the boy and contemplated him with kind and pitying interest, +tapping the young cheek tenderly and smoothing back the tangled curls +with his great brown hand. A slight shiver passed over the boy's form. +Hendon muttered-- + +"See, now, how like a man it was to let him lie here uncovered and fill +his body with deadly rheums. Now what shall I do? 'twill wake him to +take him up and put him within the bed, and he sorely needeth sleep." + +He looked about for extra covering, but finding none, doffed his doublet +and wrapped the lad in it, saying, "I am used to nipping air and scant +apparel, 'tis little I shall mind the cold!"--then walked up and down the +room, to keep his blood in motion, soliloquising as before. + +"His injured mind persuades him he is Prince of Wales; 'twill be odd to +have a Prince of Wales still with us, now that he that WAS the prince is +prince no more, but king--for this poor mind is set upon the one fantasy, +and will not reason out that now it should cast by the prince and call +itself the king. . . If my father liveth still, after these seven years +that I have heard nought from home in my foreign dungeon, he will welcome +the poor lad and give him generous shelter for my sake; so will my good +elder brother, Arthur; my other brother, Hugh--but I will crack his crown +an HE interfere, the fox-hearted, ill-conditioned animal! Yes, thither +will we fare--and straightway, too." + +A servant entered with a smoking meal, disposed it upon a small deal +table, placed the chairs, and took his departure, leaving such cheap +lodgers as these to wait upon themselves. The door slammed after him, +and the noise woke the boy, who sprang to a sitting posture, and shot a +glad glance about him; then a grieved look came into his face and he +murmured to himself, with a deep sigh, "Alack, it was but a dream, woe is +me!" Next he noticed Miles Hendon's doublet--glanced from that to +Hendon, comprehended the sacrifice that had been made for him, and said, +gently-- + +"Thou art good to me, yes, thou art very good to me. Take it and put it +on--I shall not need it more." + +Then he got up and walked to the washstand in the corner and stood there, +waiting. Hendon said in a cheery voice-- + +"We'll have a right hearty sup and bite, now, for everything is savoury +and smoking hot, and that and thy nap together will make thee a little +man again, never fear!" + +The boy made no answer, but bent a steady look, that was filled with +grave surprise, and also somewhat touched with impatience, upon the tall +knight of the sword. Hendon was puzzled, and said-- + +"What's amiss?" + +"Good sir, I would wash me." + +"Oh, is that all? Ask no permission of Miles Hendon for aught thou +cravest. Make thyself perfectly free here, and welcome, with all that +are his belongings." + +Still the boy stood, and moved not; more, he tapped the floor once or +twice with his small impatient foot. Hendon was wholly perplexed. Said +he-- + +"Bless us, what is it?" + +"Prithee pour the water, and make not so many words!" + +Hendon, suppressing a horse-laugh, and saying to himself, "By all the +saints, but this is admirable!" stepped briskly forward and did the small +insolent's bidding; then stood by, in a sort of stupefaction, until the +command, "Come--the towel!" woke him sharply up. He took up a towel, +from under the boy's nose, and handed it to him without comment. He now +proceeded to comfort his own face with a wash, and while he was at it his +adopted child seated himself at the table and prepared to fall to. +Hendon despatched his ablutions with alacrity, then drew back the other +chair and was about to place himself at table, when the boy said, +indignantly-- + +"Forbear! Wouldst sit in the presence of the King?" + +This blow staggered Hendon to his foundations. He muttered to himself, +"Lo, the poor thing's madness is up with the time! It hath changed with +the great change that is come to the realm, and now in fancy is he KING! +Good lack, I must humour the conceit, too--there is no other way--faith, +he would order me to the Tower, else!" + +And pleased with this jest, he removed the chair from the table, took his +stand behind the King, and proceeded to wait upon him in the courtliest +way he was capable of. + +While the King ate, the rigour of his royal dignity relaxed a little, and +with his growing contentment came a desire to talk. He said--"I think +thou callest thyself Miles Hendon, if I heard thee aright?" + +"Yes, Sire," Miles replied; then observed to himself, "If I MUST humour +the poor lad's madness, I must 'Sire' him, I must 'Majesty' him, I must +not go by halves, I must stick at nothing that belongeth to the part I +play, else shall I play it ill and work evil to this charitable and +kindly cause." + +The King warmed his heart with a second glass of wine, and said--"I would +know thee--tell me thy story. Thou hast a gallant way with thee, and a +noble--art nobly born?" + +"We are of the tail of the nobility, good your Majesty. My father is a +baronet--one of the smaller lords by knight service {2}--Sir Richard +Hendon of Hendon Hall, by Monk's Holm in Kent." + +"The name has escaped my memory. Go on--tell me thy story." + +"'Tis not much, your Majesty, yet perchance it may beguile a short +half-hour for want of a better. My father, Sir Richard, is very rich, +and of a most generous nature. My mother died whilst I was yet a boy. I +have two brothers: Arthur, my elder, with a soul like to his father's; +and Hugh, younger than I, a mean spirit, covetous, treacherous, vicious, +underhanded--a reptile. Such was he from the cradle; such was he ten +years past, when I last saw him--a ripe rascal at nineteen, I being +twenty then, and Arthur twenty-two. There is none other of us but the +Lady Edith, my cousin--she was sixteen then--beautiful, gentle, good, the +daughter of an earl, the last of her race, heiress of a great fortune and +a lapsed title. My father was her guardian. I loved her and she loved +me; but she was betrothed to Arthur from the cradle, and Sir Richard +would not suffer the contract to be broken. Arthur loved another maid, +and bade us be of good cheer and hold fast to the hope that delay and +luck together would some day give success to our several causes. Hugh +loved the Lady Edith's fortune, though in truth he said it was herself he +loved--but then 'twas his way, alway, to say the one thing and mean the +other. But he lost his arts upon the girl; he could deceive my father, +but none else. My father loved him best of us all, and trusted and +believed him; for he was the youngest child, and others hated him--these +qualities being in all ages sufficient to win a parent's dearest love; +and he had a smooth persuasive tongue, with an admirable gift of lying +--and these be qualities which do mightily assist a blind affection to +cozen itself. I was wild--in troth I might go yet farther and say VERY +wild, though 'twas a wildness of an innocent sort, since it hurt none but +me, brought shame to none, nor loss, nor had in it any taint of crime or +baseness, or what might not beseem mine honourable degree. + +"Yet did my brother Hugh turn these faults to good account--he seeing +that our brother Arthur's health was but indifferent, and hoping the +worst might work him profit were I swept out of the path--so--but 'twere +a long tale, good my liege, and little worth the telling. Briefly, then, +this brother did deftly magnify my faults and make them crimes; ending +his base work with finding a silken ladder in mine apartments--conveyed +thither by his own means--and did convince my father by this, and +suborned evidence of servants and other lying knaves, that I was minded +to carry off my Edith and marry with her in rank defiance of his will. + +"Three years of banishment from home and England might make a soldier and +a man of me, my father said, and teach me some degree of wisdom. I +fought out my long probation in the continental wars, tasting sumptuously +of hard knocks, privation, and adventure; but in my last battle I was +taken captive, and during the seven years that have waxed and waned since +then, a foreign dungeon hath harboured me. Through wit and courage I won +to the free air at last, and fled hither straight; and am but just +arrived, right poor in purse and raiment, and poorer still in knowledge +of what these dull seven years have wrought at Hendon Hall, its people +and belongings. So please you, sir, my meagre tale is told." + +"Thou hast been shamefully abused!" said the little King, with a flashing +eye. "But I will right thee--by the cross will I! The King hath said +it." + +Then, fired by the story of Miles's wrongs, he loosed his tongue and +poured the history of his own recent misfortunes into the ears of his +astonished listener. When he had finished, Miles said to himself-- + +"Lo, what an imagination he hath! Verily, this is no common mind; else, +crazed or sane, it could not weave so straight and gaudy a tale as this +out of the airy nothings wherewith it hath wrought this curious romaunt. +Poor ruined little head, it shall not lack friend or shelter whilst I +bide with the living. He shall never leave my side; he shall be my pet, +my little comrade. And he shall be cured!--ay, made whole and sound +--then will he make himself a name--and proud shall I be to say, 'Yes, he +is mine--I took him, a homeless little ragamuffin, but I saw what was in +him, and I said his name would be heard some day--behold him, observe +him--was I right?'" + +The King spoke--in a thoughtful, measured voice-- + +"Thou didst save me injury and shame, perchance my life, and so my crown. +Such service demandeth rich reward. Name thy desire, and so it be within +the compass of my royal power, it is thine." + +This fantastic suggestion startled Hendon out of his reverie. He was +about to thank the King and put the matter aside with saying he had only +done his duty and desired no reward, but a wiser thought came into his +head, and he asked leave to be silent a few moments and consider the +gracious offer--an idea which the King gravely approved, remarking that +it was best to be not too hasty with a thing of such great import. + +Miles reflected during some moments, then said to himself, "Yes, that is +the thing to do--by any other means it were impossible to get at it--and +certes, this hour's experience has taught me 'twould be most wearing and +inconvenient to continue it as it is. Yes, I will propose it; 'twas a +happy accident that I did not throw the chance away." Then he dropped +upon one knee and said-- + +"My poor service went not beyond the limit of a subject's simple duty, +and therefore hath no merit; but since your Majesty is pleased to hold it +worthy some reward, I take heart of grace to make petition to this +effect. Near four hundred years ago, as your grace knoweth, there being +ill blood betwixt John, King of England, and the King of France, it was +decreed that two champions should fight together in the lists, and so +settle the dispute by what is called the arbitrament of God. These two +kings, and the Spanish king, being assembled to witness and judge the +conflict, the French champion appeared; but so redoubtable was he, that +our English knights refused to measure weapons with him. So the matter, +which was a weighty one, was like to go against the English monarch by +default. Now in the Tower lay the Lord de Courcy, the mightiest arm in +England, stripped of his honours and possessions, and wasting with long +captivity. Appeal was made to him; he gave assent, and came forth +arrayed for battle; but no sooner did the Frenchman glimpse his huge +frame and hear his famous name but he fled away, and the French king's +cause was lost. King John restored De Courcy's titles and possessions, +and said, 'Name thy wish and thou shalt have it, though it cost me half +my kingdom;' whereat De Courcy, kneeling, as I do now, made answer, +'This, then, I ask, my liege; that I and my successors may have and hold +the privilege of remaining covered in the presence of the kings of +England, henceforth while the throne shall last.' The boon was granted, +as your Majesty knoweth; and there hath been no time, these four hundred +years, that that line has failed of an heir; and so, even unto this day, +the head of that ancient house still weareth his hat or helm before the +King's Majesty, without let or hindrance, and this none other may do. {3} +Invoking this precedent in aid of my prayer, I beseech the King to grant +to me but this one grace and privilege--to my more than sufficient +reward--and none other, to wit: that I and my heirs, for ever, may SIT +in the presence of the Majesty of England!" + +"Rise, Sir Miles Hendon, Knight," said the King, gravely--giving the +accolade with Hendon's sword--"rise, and seat thyself. Thy petition is +granted. Whilst England remains, and the crown continues, the privilege +shall not lapse." + +His Majesty walked apart, musing, and Hendon dropped into a chair at +table, observing to himself, "'Twas a brave thought, and hath wrought me +a mighty deliverance; my legs are grievously wearied. An I had not +thought of that, I must have had to stand for weeks, till my poor lad's +wits are cured." After a little, he went on, "And so I am become a +knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows! A most odd and strange +position, truly, for one so matter-of-fact as I. I will not laugh--no, +God forbid, for this thing which is so substanceless to me is REAL to +him. And to me, also, in one way, it is not a falsity, for it reflects +with truth the sweet and generous spirit that is in him." After a pause: +"Ah, what if he should call me by my fine title before folk!--there'd be +a merry contrast betwixt my glory and my raiment! But no matter, let him +call me what he will, so it please him; I shall be content." + + + +Chapter XIII. The disappearance of the Prince. + +A heavy drowsiness presently fell upon the two comrades. The King said-- + +"Remove these rags"--meaning his clothing. + +Hendon disapparelled the boy without dissent or remark, tucked him up in +bed, then glanced about the room, saying to himself, ruefully, "He hath +taken my bed again, as before--marry, what shall _I_ do?" The little +King observed his perplexity, and dissipated it with a word. He said, +sleepily-- + +"Thou wilt sleep athwart the door, and guard it." In a moment more he +was out of his troubles, in a deep slumber. + +"Dear heart, he should have been born a king!" muttered Hendon, +admiringly; "he playeth the part to a marvel." + +Then he stretched himself across the door, on the floor, saying +contentedly-- + +"I have lodged worse for seven years; 'twould be but ill gratitude to Him +above to find fault with this." + +He dropped asleep as the dawn appeared. Toward noon he rose, uncovered +his unconscious ward--a section at a time--and took his measure with a +string. The King awoke, just as he had completed his work, complained of +the cold, and asked what he was doing. + +"'Tis done, now, my liege," said Hendon; "I have a bit of business +outside, but will presently return; sleep thou again--thou needest it. +There--let me cover thy head also--thou'lt be warm the sooner." + +The King was back in dreamland before this speech was ended. Miles +slipped softly out, and slipped as softly in again, in the course of +thirty or forty minutes, with a complete second-hand suit of boy's +clothing, of cheap material, and showing signs of wear; but tidy, and +suited to the season of the year. He seated himself, and began to +overhaul his purchase, mumbling to himself-- + +"A longer purse would have got a better sort, but when one has not the +long purse one must be content with what a short one may do-- + +"'There was a woman in our town, In our town did dwell--' + +"He stirred, methinks--I must sing in a less thunderous key; 'tis not +good to mar his sleep, with this journey before him, and he so wearied +out, poor chap . . . This garment--'tis well enough--a stitch here and +another one there will set it aright. This other is better, albeit a +stitch or two will not come amiss in it, likewise . . . THESE be very +good and sound, and will keep his small feet warm and dry--an odd new +thing to him, belike, since he has doubtless been used to foot it bare, +winters and summers the same . . . Would thread were bread, seeing one +getteth a year's sufficiency for a farthing, and such a brave big needle +without cost, for mere love. Now shall I have the demon's own time to +thread it!" + +And so he had. He did as men have always done, and probably always will +do, to the end of time--held the needle still, and tried to thrust the +thread through the eye, which is the opposite of a woman's way. Time and +time again the thread missed the mark, going sometimes on one side of the +needle, sometimes on the other, sometimes doubling up against the shaft; +but he was patient, having been through these experiences before, when he +was soldiering. He succeeded at last, and took up the garment that had +lain waiting, meantime, across his lap, and began his work. + +"The inn is paid--the breakfast that is to come, included--and there is +wherewithal left to buy a couple of donkeys and meet our little costs for +the two or three days betwixt this and the plenty that awaits us at +Hendon Hall-- + +"'She loved her hus--' + +"Body o' me! I have driven the needle under my nail! . . . It matters +little--'tis not a novelty--yet 'tis not a convenience, neither . . .We +shall be merry there, little one, never doubt it! Thy troubles will +vanish there, and likewise thy sad distemper-- + +"'She loved her husband dearilee, But another man--' + +"These be noble large stitches!"--holding the garment up and viewing it +admiringly--"they have a grandeur and a majesty that do cause these small +stingy ones of the tailor-man to look mightily paltry and plebeian-- + +"'She loved her husband dearilee, But another man he loved she,--' + +"Marry, 'tis done--a goodly piece of work, too, and wrought with +expedition. Now will I wake him, apparel him, pour for him, feed him, +and then will we hie us to the mart by the Tabard Inn in Southwark and +--be pleased to rise, my liege!--he answereth not--what ho, my liege!--of a +truth must I profane his sacred person with a touch, sith his slumber is +deaf to speech. What!" + +He threw back the covers--the boy was gone! + +He stared about him in speechless astonishment for a moment; noticed for +the first time that his ward's ragged raiment was also missing; then he +began to rage and storm and shout for the innkeeper. At that moment a +servant entered with the breakfast. + +"Explain, thou limb of Satan, or thy time is come!" roared the man of +war, and made so savage a spring toward the waiter that this latter could +not find his tongue, for the instant, for fright and surprise. "Where is +the boy?" + +In disjointed and trembling syllables the man gave the information +desired. + +"You were hardly gone from the place, your worship, when a youth came +running and said it was your worship's will that the boy come to you +straight, at the bridge-end on the Southwark side. I brought him hither; +and when he woke the lad and gave his message, the lad did grumble some +little for being disturbed 'so early,' as he called it, but straightway +trussed on his rags and went with the youth, only saying it had been +better manners that your worship came yourself, not sent a stranger--and +so--" + +"And so thou'rt a fool!--a fool and easily cozened--hang all thy breed! +Yet mayhap no hurt is done. Possibly no harm is meant the boy. I will +go fetch him. Make the table ready. Stay! the coverings of the bed were +disposed as if one lay beneath them--happened that by accident?" + +"I know not, good your worship. I saw the youth meddle with them--he +that came for the boy." + +"Thousand deaths! 'Twas done to deceive me--'tis plain 'twas done to +gain time. Hark ye! Was that youth alone?" + +"All alone, your worship." + +"Art sure?" + +"Sure, your worship." + +"Collect thy scattered wits--bethink thee--take time, man." + +After a moment's thought, the servant said-- + +"When he came, none came with him; but now I remember me that as the two +stepped into the throng of the Bridge, a ruffian-looking man plunged out +from some near place; and just as he was joining them--" + +"What THEN?--out with it!" thundered the impatient Hendon, interrupting. + +"Just then the crowd lapped them up and closed them in, and I saw no +more, being called by my master, who was in a rage because a joint that +the scrivener had ordered was forgot, though I take all the saints to +witness that to blame ME for that miscarriage were like holding the +unborn babe to judgment for sins com--" + +"Out of my sight, idiot! Thy prating drives me mad! Hold! Whither art +flying? Canst not bide still an instant? Went they toward Southwark?" + +"Even so, your worship--for, as I said before, as to that detestable +joint, the babe unborn is no whit more blameless than--" + +"Art here YET! And prating still! Vanish, lest I throttle thee!" The +servitor vanished. Hendon followed after him, passed him, and plunged +down the stairs two steps at a stride, muttering, "'Tis that scurvy +villain that claimed he was his son. I have lost thee, my poor little +mad master--it is a bitter thought--and I had come to love thee so! No! +by book and bell, NOT lost! Not lost, for I will ransack the land till I +find thee again. Poor child, yonder is his breakfast--and mine, but I +have no hunger now; so, let the rats have it--speed, speed! that is the +word!" As he wormed his swift way through the noisy multitudes upon the +Bridge he several times said to himself--clinging to the thought as if it +were a particularly pleasing one--"He grumbled, but he WENT--he went, +yes, because he thought Miles Hendon asked it, sweet lad--he would ne'er +have done it for another, I know it well." + + + +Chapter XIV. 'Le Roi est mort--vive le Roi.' + +Toward daylight of the same morning, Tom Canty stirred out of a heavy +sleep and opened his eyes in the dark. He lay silent a few moments, +trying to analyse his confused thoughts and impressions, and get some +sort of meaning out of them; then suddenly he burst out in a rapturous +but guarded voice-- + +"I see it all, I see it all! Now God be thanked, I am indeed awake at +last! Come, joy! vanish, sorrow! Ho, Nan! Bet! kick off your straw and +hie ye hither to my side, till I do pour into your unbelieving ears the +wildest madcap dream that ever the spirits of night did conjure up to +astonish the soul of man withal! . . . Ho, Nan, I say! Bet!" + +A dim form appeared at his side, and a voice said-- + +"Wilt deign to deliver thy commands?" + +"Commands? . . . O, woe is me, I know thy voice! Speak thou--who am I?" + +"Thou? In sooth, yesternight wert thou the Prince of Wales; to-day art +thou my most gracious liege, Edward, King of England." + +Tom buried his head among his pillows, murmuring plaintively-- + +"Alack, it was no dream! Go to thy rest, sweet sir--leave me to my +sorrows." + +Tom slept again, and after a time he had this pleasant dream. He thought +it was summer, and he was playing, all alone, in the fair meadow called +Goodman's Fields, when a dwarf only a foot high, with long red whiskers +and a humped back, appeared to him suddenly and said, "Dig by that +stump." He did so, and found twelve bright new pennies--wonderful +riches! Yet this was not the best of it; for the dwarf said-- + +"I know thee. Thou art a good lad, and a deserving; thy distresses shall +end, for the day of thy reward is come. Dig here every seventh day, and +thou shalt find always the same treasure, twelve bright new pennies. +Tell none--keep the secret." + +Then the dwarf vanished, and Tom flew to Offal Court with his prize, +saying to himself, "Every night will I give my father a penny; he will +think I begged it, it will glad his heart, and I shall no more be beaten. +One penny every week the good priest that teacheth me shall have; mother, +Nan, and Bet the other four. We be done with hunger and rags, now, done +with fears and frets and savage usage." + +In his dream he reached his sordid home all out of breath, but with eyes +dancing with grateful enthusiasm; cast four of his pennies into his +mother's lap and cried out-- + +"They are for thee!--all of them, every one!--for thee and Nan and Bet +--and honestly come by, not begged nor stolen!" + +The happy and astonished mother strained him to her breast and exclaimed-- + +"It waxeth late--may it please your Majesty to rise?" + +Ah! that was not the answer he was expecting. The dream had snapped +asunder--he was awake. + +He opened his eyes--the richly clad First Lord of the Bedchamber was +kneeling by his couch. The gladness of the lying dream faded away--the +poor boy recognised that he was still a captive and a king. The room was +filled with courtiers clothed in purple mantles--the mourning colour--and +with noble servants of the monarch. Tom sat up in bed and gazed out from +the heavy silken curtains upon this fine company. + +The weighty business of dressing began, and one courtier after another +knelt and paid his court and offered to the little King his condolences +upon his heavy loss, whilst the dressing proceeded. In the beginning, a +shirt was taken up by the Chief Equerry in Waiting, who passed it to the +First Lord of the Buckhounds, who passed it to the Second Gentleman of +the Bedchamber, who passed it to the Head Ranger of Windsor Forest, who +passed it to the Third Groom of the Stole, who passed it to the +Chancellor Royal of the Duchy of Lancaster, who passed it to the Master +of the Wardrobe, who passed it to Norroy King-at-Arms, who passed it to +the Constable of the Tower, who passed it to the Chief Steward of the +Household, who passed it to the Hereditary Grand Diaperer, who passed it +to the Lord High Admiral of England, who passed it to the Archbishop of +Canterbury, who passed it to the First Lord of the Bedchamber, who took +what was left of it and put it on Tom. Poor little wondering chap, it +reminded him of passing buckets at a fire. + +Each garment in its turn had to go through this slow and solemn process; +consequently Tom grew very weary of the ceremony; so weary that he felt +an almost gushing gratefulness when he at last saw his long silken hose +begin the journey down the line and knew that the end of the matter was +drawing near. But he exulted too soon. The First Lord of the Bedchamber +received the hose and was about to encase Tom's legs in them, when a +sudden flush invaded his face and he hurriedly hustled the things back +into the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury with an astounded look and +a whispered, "See, my lord!" pointing to a something connected with the +hose. The Archbishop paled, then flushed, and passed the hose to the +Lord High Admiral, whispering, "See, my lord!" The Admiral passed the +hose to the Hereditary Grand Diaperer, and had hardly breath enough in +his body to ejaculate, "See, my lord!" The hose drifted backward along +the line, to the Chief Steward of the Household, the Constable of the +Tower, Norroy King-at-Arms, the Master of the Wardrobe, the Chancellor +Royal of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Third Groom of the Stole, the Head +Ranger of Windsor Forest, the Second Gentleman of the Bedchamber, the +First Lord of the Buckhounds,--accompanied always with that amazed and +frightened "See! see!"--till they finally reached the hands of the Chief +Equerry in Waiting, who gazed a moment, with a pallid face, upon what had +caused all this dismay, then hoarsely whispered, "Body of my life, a tag +gone from a truss-point!--to the Tower with the Head Keeper of the King's +Hose!"--after which he leaned upon the shoulder of the First Lord of the +Buckhounds to regather his vanished strength whilst fresh hose, without +any damaged strings to them, were brought. + +But all things must have an end, and so in time Tom Canty was in a +condition to get out of bed. The proper official poured water, the +proper official engineered the washing, the proper official stood by with +a towel, and by-and-by Tom got safely through the purifying stage and was +ready for the services of the Hairdresser-royal. When he at length +emerged from this master's hands, he was a gracious figure and as pretty +as a girl, in his mantle and trunks of purple satin, and purple-plumed +cap. He now moved in state toward his breakfast-room, through the midst +of the courtly assemblage; and as he passed, these fell back, leaving his +way free, and dropped upon their knees. + +After breakfast he was conducted, with regal ceremony, attended by his +great officers and his guard of fifty Gentlemen Pensioners bearing gilt +battle-axes, to the throne-room, where he proceeded to transact business +of state. His 'uncle,' Lord Hertford, took his stand by the throne, to +assist the royal mind with wise counsel. + +The body of illustrious men named by the late King as his executors +appeared, to ask Tom's approval of certain acts of theirs--rather a form, +and yet not wholly a form, since there was no Protector as yet. The +Archbishop of Canterbury made report of the decree of the Council of +Executors concerning the obsequies of his late most illustrious Majesty, +and finished by reading the signatures of the Executors, to wit: the +Archbishop of Canterbury; the Lord Chancellor of England; William Lord +St. John; John Lord Russell; Edward Earl of Hertford; John Viscount +Lisle; Cuthbert Bishop of Durham-- + +Tom was not listening--an earlier clause of the document was puzzling +him. At this point he turned and whispered to Lord Hertford-- + +"What day did he say the burial hath been appointed for?" + +"The sixteenth of the coming month, my liege." + +"'Tis a strange folly. Will he keep?" + +Poor chap, he was still new to the customs of royalty; he was used to +seeing the forlorn dead of Offal Court hustled out of the way with a very +different sort of expedition. However, the Lord Hertford set his mind at +rest with a word or two. + +A secretary of state presented an order of the Council appointing the +morrow at eleven for the reception of the foreign ambassadors, and +desired the King's assent. + +Tom turned an inquiring look toward Hertford, who whispered-- + +"Your Majesty will signify consent. They come to testify their royal +masters' sense of the heavy calamity which hath visited your Grace and +the realm of England." + +Tom did as he was bidden. Another secretary began to read a preamble +concerning the expenses of the late King's household, which had amounted +to 28,000 pounds during the preceding six months--a sum so vast that it +made Tom Canty gasp; he gasped again when the fact appeared that 20,000 +pounds of this money was still owing and unpaid; {4} and once more when +it appeared that the King's coffers were about empty, and his twelve +hundred servants much embarrassed for lack of the wages due them. Tom +spoke out, with lively apprehension-- + +"We be going to the dogs, 'tis plain. 'Tis meet and necessary that we +take a smaller house and set the servants at large, sith they be of no +value but to make delay, and trouble one with offices that harass the +spirit and shame the soul, they misbecoming any but a doll, that hath nor +brains nor hands to help itself withal. I remember me of a small house +that standeth over against the fish-market, by Billingsgate--" + +A sharp pressure upon Tom's arm stopped his foolish tongue and sent a +blush to his face; but no countenance there betrayed any sign that this +strange speech had been remarked or given concern. + +A secretary made report that forasmuch as the late King had provided in +his will for conferring the ducal degree upon the Earl of Hertford and +raising his brother, Sir Thomas Seymour, to the peerage, and likewise +Hertford's son to an earldom, together with similar aggrandisements to +other great servants of the Crown, the Council had resolved to hold a +sitting on the 16th of February for the delivering and confirming of +these honours, and that meantime, the late King not having granted, in +writing, estates suitable to the support of these dignities, the Council, +knowing his private wishes in that regard, had thought proper to grant to +Seymour '500 pound lands,' and to Hertford's son '800 pound lands, and +300 pound of the next bishop's lands which should fall vacant,'--his +present Majesty being willing. {5} + +Tom was about to blurt out something about the propriety of paying the +late King's debts first, before squandering all this money, but a timely +touch upon his arm, from the thoughtful Hertford, saved him this +indiscretion; wherefore he gave the royal assent, without spoken comment, +but with much inward discomfort. While he sat reflecting a moment over +the ease with which he was doing strange and glittering miracles, a happy +thought shot into his mind: why not make his mother Duchess of Offal +Court, and give her an estate? But a sorrowful thought swept it +instantly away: he was only a king in name, these grave veterans and +great nobles were his masters; to them his mother was only the creature +of a diseased mind; they would simply listen to his project with +unbelieving ears, then send for the doctor. + +The dull work went tediously on. Petitions were read, and proclamations, +patents, and all manner of wordy, repetitious, and wearisome papers +relating to the public business; and at last Tom sighed pathetically and +murmured to himself, "In what have I offended, that the good God should +take me away from the fields and the free air and the sunshine, to shut +me up here and make me a king and afflict me so?" Then his poor muddled +head nodded a while and presently drooped to his shoulder; and the +business of the empire came to a standstill for want of that august +factor, the ratifying power. Silence ensued around the slumbering child, +and the sages of the realm ceased from their deliberations. + +During the forenoon, Tom had an enjoyable hour, by permission of his +keepers, Hertford and St. John, with the Lady Elizabeth and the little +Lady Jane Grey; though the spirits of the princesses were rather subdued +by the mighty stroke that had fallen upon the royal house; and at the end +of the visit his 'elder sister'--afterwards the 'Bloody Mary' of history +--chilled him with a solemn interview which had but one merit in his eyes, +its brevity. He had a few moments to himself, and then a slim lad of +about twelve years of age was admitted to his presence, whose clothing, +except his snowy ruff and the laces about his wrists, was of black, +--doublet, hose, and all. He bore no badge of mourning but a knot of +purple ribbon on his shoulder. He advanced hesitatingly, with head bowed +and bare, and dropped upon one knee in front of Tom. Tom sat still and +contemplated him soberly a moment. Then he said-- + +"Rise, lad. Who art thou. What wouldst have?" + +The boy rose, and stood at graceful ease, but with an aspect of concern +in his face. He said-- + +"Of a surety thou must remember me, my lord. I am thy whipping-boy." + +"My WHIPPING-boy?" + +"The same, your Grace. I am Humphrey--Humphrey Marlow." + +Tom perceived that here was someone whom his keepers ought to have posted +him about. The situation was delicate. What should he do?--pretend he +knew this lad, and then betray by his every utterance that he had never +heard of him before? No, that would not do. An idea came to his relief: +accidents like this might be likely to happen with some frequency, now +that business urgencies would often call Hertford and St. John from his +side, they being members of the Council of Executors; therefore perhaps +it would be well to strike out a plan himself to meet the requirements of +such emergencies. Yes, that would be a wise course--he would practise on +this boy, and see what sort of success he might achieve. So he stroked +his brow perplexedly a moment or two, and presently said-- + +"Now I seem to remember thee somewhat--but my wit is clogged and dim with +suffering--" + +"Alack, my poor master!" ejaculated the whipping-boy, with feeling; +adding, to himself, "In truth 'tis as they said--his mind is gone--alas, +poor soul! But misfortune catch me, how am I forgetting! They said one +must not seem to observe that aught is wrong with him." + +"'Tis strange how my memory doth wanton with me these days," said Tom. +"But mind it not--I mend apace--a little clue doth often serve to bring +me back again the things and names which had escaped me. (And not they, +only, forsooth, but e'en such as I ne'er heard before--as this lad shall +see.) Give thy business speech." + +"'Tis matter of small weight, my liege, yet will I touch upon it, an' it +please your Grace. Two days gone by, when your Majesty faulted thrice in +your Greek--in the morning lessons,--dost remember it?" + +"Y-e-s--methinks I do. (It is not much of a lie--an' I had meddled with +the Greek at all, I had not faulted simply thrice, but forty times.) +Yes, I do recall it, now--go on." + +"The master, being wroth with what he termed such slovenly and doltish +work, did promise that he would soundly whip me for it--and--" + +"Whip THEE!" said Tom, astonished out of his presence of mind. "Why +should he whip THEE for faults of mine?" + +"Ah, your Grace forgetteth again. He always scourgeth me when thou dost +fail in thy lessons." + +"True, true--I had forgot. Thou teachest me in private--then if I fail, +he argueth that thy office was lamely done, and--" + +"Oh, my liege, what words are these? I, the humblest of thy servants, +presume to teach THEE?" + +"Then where is thy blame? What riddle is this? Am I in truth gone mad, +or is it thou? Explain--speak out." + +"But, good your Majesty, there's nought that needeth simplifying.--None +may visit the sacred person of the Prince of Wales with blows; wherefore, +when he faulteth, 'tis I that take them; and meet it is and right, for +that it is mine office and my livelihood." {1} + +Tom stared at the tranquil boy, observing to himself, "Lo, it is a +wonderful thing,--a most strange and curious trade; I marvel they have +not hired a boy to take my combings and my dressings for me--would heaven +they would!--an' they will do this thing, I will take my lashings in mine +own person, giving God thanks for the change." Then he said aloud-- + +"And hast thou been beaten, poor friend, according to the promise?" + +"No, good your Majesty, my punishment was appointed for this day, and +peradventure it may be annulled, as unbefitting the season of mourning +that is come upon us; I know not, and so have made bold to come hither +and remind your Grace about your gracious promise to intercede in my +behalf--" + +"With the master? To save thee thy whipping?" + +"Ah, thou dost remember!" + +"My memory mendeth, thou seest. Set thy mind at ease--thy back shall go +unscathed--I will see to it." + +"Oh, thanks, my good lord!" cried the boy, dropping upon his knee again. +"Mayhap I have ventured far enow; and yet--" + +Seeing Master Humphrey hesitate, Tom encouraged him to go on, saying he +was "in the granting mood." + +"Then will I speak it out, for it lieth near my heart. Sith thou art no +more Prince of Wales but King, thou canst order matters as thou wilt, +with none to say thee nay; wherefore it is not in reason that thou wilt +longer vex thyself with dreary studies, but wilt burn thy books and turn +thy mind to things less irksome. Then am I ruined, and mine orphan +sisters with me!" + +"Ruined? Prithee how?" + +"My back is my bread, O my gracious liege! if it go idle, I starve. An' +thou cease from study mine office is gone thou'lt need no whipping-boy. +Do not turn me away!" + +Tom was touched with this pathetic distress. He said, with a right royal +burst of generosity-- + +"Discomfort thyself no further, lad. Thine office shall be permanent in +thee and thy line for ever." Then he struck the boy a light blow on the +shoulder with the flat of his sword, exclaiming, "Rise, Humphrey Marlow, +Hereditary Grand Whipping-Boy to the Royal House of England! Banish +sorrow--I will betake me to my books again, and study so ill that they +must in justice treble thy wage, so mightily shall the business of thine +office be augmented." + +The grateful Humphrey responded fervidly-- + +"Thanks, O most noble master, this princely lavishness doth far surpass +my most distempered dreams of fortune. Now shall I be happy all my days, +and all the house of Marlow after me." + +Tom had wit enough to perceive that here was a lad who could be useful to +him. He encouraged Humphrey to talk, and he was nothing loath. He was +delighted to believe that he was helping in Tom's 'cure'; for always, as +soon as he had finished calling back to Tom's diseased mind the various +particulars of his experiences and adventures in the royal school-room +and elsewhere about the palace, he noticed that Tom was then able to +'recall' the circumstances quite clearly. At the end of an hour Tom +found himself well freighted with very valuable information concerning +personages and matters pertaining to the Court; so he resolved to draw +instruction from this source daily; and to this end he would give order +to admit Humphrey to the royal closet whenever he might come, provided +the Majesty of England was not engaged with other people. Humphrey had +hardly been dismissed when my Lord Hertford arrived with more trouble for +Tom. + +He said that the Lords of the Council, fearing that some overwrought +report of the King's damaged health might have leaked out and got abroad, +they deemed it wise and best that his Majesty should begin to dine in +public after a day or two--his wholesome complexion and vigorous step, +assisted by a carefully guarded repose of manner and ease and grace of +demeanour, would more surely quiet the general pulse--in case any evil +rumours HAD gone about--than any other scheme that could be devised. + +Then the Earl proceeded, very delicately, to instruct Tom as to the +observances proper to the stately occasion, under the rather thin +disguise of 'reminding' him concerning things already known to him; but +to his vast gratification it turned out that Tom needed very little help +in this line--he had been making use of Humphrey in that direction, for +Humphrey had mentioned that within a few days he was to begin to dine in +public; having gathered it from the swift-winged gossip of the Court. +Tom kept these facts to himself, however. + +Seeing the royal memory so improved, the Earl ventured to apply a few +tests to it, in an apparently casual way, to find out how far its +amendment had progressed. The results were happy, here and there, in +spots--spots where Humphrey's tracks remained--and on the whole my lord +was greatly pleased and encouraged. So encouraged was he, indeed, that +he spoke up and said in a quite hopeful voice-- + +"Now am I persuaded that if your Majesty will but tax your memory yet a +little further, it will resolve the puzzle of the Great Seal--a loss +which was of moment yesterday, although of none to-day, since its term of +service ended with our late lord's life. May it please your Grace to make +the trial?" + +Tom was at sea--a Great Seal was something which he was totally +unacquainted with. After a moment's hesitation he looked up innocently +and asked-- + +"What was it like, my lord?" + +The Earl started, almost imperceptibly, muttering to himself, "Alack, his +wits are flown again!--it was ill wisdom to lead him on to strain them" +--then he deftly turned the talk to other matters, with the purpose of +sweeping the unlucky seal out of Tom's thoughts--a purpose which easily +succeeded. + + + +Chapter XV. Tom as King. + +The next day the foreign ambassadors came, with their gorgeous trains; +and Tom, throned in awful state, received them. The splendours of the +scene delighted his eye and fired his imagination at first, but the +audience was long and dreary, and so were most of the addresses +--wherefore, what began as a pleasure grew into weariness and home-sickness +by-and-by. Tom said the words which Hertford put into his mouth from +time to time, and tried hard to acquit himself satisfactorily, but he was +too new to such things, and too ill at ease to accomplish more than a +tolerable success. He looked sufficiently like a king, but he was ill +able to feel like one. He was cordially glad when the ceremony was +ended. + +The larger part of his day was 'wasted'--as he termed it, in his own +mind--in labours pertaining to his royal office. Even the two hours +devoted to certain princely pastimes and recreations were rather a burden +to him than otherwise, they were so fettered by restrictions and +ceremonious observances. However, he had a private hour with his +whipping-boy which he counted clear gain, since he got both entertainment +and needful information out of it. + +The third day of Tom Canty's kingship came and went much as the others +had done, but there was a lifting of his cloud in one way--he felt less +uncomfortable than at first; he was getting a little used to his +circumstances and surroundings; his chains still galled, but not all the +time; he found that the presence and homage of the great afflicted and +embarrassed him less and less sharply with every hour that drifted over +his head. + +But for one single dread, he could have seen the fourth day approach +without serious distress--the dining in public; it was to begin that day. +There were greater matters in the programme--for on that day he would +have to preside at a council which would take his views and commands +concerning the policy to be pursued toward various foreign nations +scattered far and near over the great globe; on that day, too, Hertford +would be formally chosen to the grand office of Lord Protector; other +things of note were appointed for that fourth day, also; but to Tom they +were all insignificant compared with the ordeal of dining all by himself +with a multitude of curious eyes fastened upon him and a multitude of +mouths whispering comments upon his performance,--and upon his mistakes, +if he should be so unlucky as to make any. + +Still, nothing could stop that fourth day, and so it came. It found poor +Tom low-spirited and absent-minded, and this mood continued; he could not +shake it off. The ordinary duties of the morning dragged upon his hands, +and wearied him. Once more he felt the sense of captivity heavy upon +him. + +Late in the forenoon he was in a large audience-chamber, conversing with +the Earl of Hertford and dully awaiting the striking of the hour +appointed for a visit of ceremony from a considerable number of great +officials and courtiers. + +After a little while, Tom, who had wandered to a window and become +interested in the life and movement of the great highway beyond the +palace gates--and not idly interested, but longing with all his heart to +take part in person in its stir and freedom--saw the van of a hooting and +shouting mob of disorderly men, women, and children of the lowest and +poorest degree approaching from up the road. + +"I would I knew what 'tis about!" he exclaimed, with all a boy's +curiosity in such happenings. + +"Thou art the King!" solemnly responded the Earl, with a reverence. +"Have I your Grace's leave to act?" + +"O blithely, yes! O gladly, yes!" exclaimed Tom excitedly, adding to +himself with a lively sense of satisfaction, "In truth, being a king is +not all dreariness--it hath its compensations and conveniences." + +The Earl called a page, and sent him to the captain of the guard with the +order-- + +"Let the mob be halted, and inquiry made concerning the occasion of its +movement. By the King's command!" + +A few seconds later a long rank of the royal guards, cased in flashing +steel, filed out at the gates and formed across the highway in front of +the multitude. A messenger returned, to report that the crowd were +following a man, a woman, and a young girl to execution for crimes +committed against the peace and dignity of the realm. + +Death--and a violent death--for these poor unfortunates! The thought +wrung Tom's heart-strings. The spirit of compassion took control of him, +to the exclusion of all other considerations; he never thought of the +offended laws, or of the grief or loss which these three criminals had +inflicted upon their victims; he could think of nothing but the scaffold +and the grisly fate hanging over the heads of the condemned. His concern +made him even forget, for the moment, that he was but the false shadow of +a king, not the substance; and before he knew it he had blurted out the +command-- + +"Bring them here!" + +Then he blushed scarlet, and a sort of apology sprung to his lips; but +observing that his order had wrought no sort of surprise in the Earl or +the waiting page, he suppressed the words he was about to utter. The +page, in the most matter-of-course way, made a profound obeisance and +retired backwards out of the room to deliver the command. Tom +experienced a glow of pride and a renewed sense of the compensating +advantages of the kingly office. He said to himself, "Truly it is like +what I was used to feel when I read the old priest's tales, and did +imagine mine own self a prince, giving law and command to all, saying 'Do +this, do that,' whilst none durst offer let or hindrance to my will." + +Now the doors swung open; one high-sounding title after another was +announced, the personages owning them followed, and the place was quickly +half-filled with noble folk and finery. But Tom was hardly conscious of +the presence of these people, so wrought up was he and so intensely +absorbed in that other and more interesting matter. He seated himself +absently in his chair of state, and turned his eyes upon the door with +manifestations of impatient expectancy; seeing which, the company forbore +to trouble him, and fell to chatting a mixture of public business and +court gossip one with another. + +In a little while the measured tread of military men was heard +approaching, and the culprits entered the presence in charge of an +under-sheriff and escorted by a detail of the king's guard. The civil +officer knelt before Tom, then stood aside; the three doomed persons +knelt, also, and remained so; the guard took position behind Tom's chair. +Tom scanned the prisoners curiously. Something about the dress or +appearance of the man had stirred a vague memory in him. "Methinks I +have seen this man ere now . . . but the when or the where fail me"--such +was Tom's thought. Just then the man glanced quickly up and quickly +dropped his face again, not being able to endure the awful port of +sovereignty; but the one full glimpse of the face which Tom got was +sufficient. He said to himself: "Now is the matter clear; this is the +stranger that plucked Giles Witt out of the Thames, and saved his life, +that windy, bitter, first day of the New Year--a brave good deed--pity he +hath been doing baser ones and got himself in this sad case . . . I have +not forgot the day, neither the hour; by reason that an hour after, upon +the stroke of eleven, I did get a hiding by the hand of Gammer Canty +which was of so goodly and admired severity that all that went before or +followed after it were but fondlings and caresses by comparison." + +Tom now ordered that the woman and the girl be removed from the presence +for a little time; then addressed himself to the under-sheriff, saying-- + +"Good sir, what is this man's offence?" + +The officer knelt, and answered-- + +"So please your Majesty, he hath taken the life of a subject by poison." + +Tom's compassion for the prisoner, and admiration of him as the daring +rescuer of a drowning boy, experienced a most damaging shock. + +"The thing was proven upon him?" he asked. + +"Most clearly, sire." + +Tom sighed, and said-- + +"Take him away--he hath earned his death. 'Tis a pity, for he was a +brave heart--na--na, I mean he hath the LOOK of it!" + +The prisoner clasped his hands together with sudden energy, and wrung +them despairingly, at the same time appealing imploringly to the 'King' +in broken and terrified phrases-- + +"O my lord the King, an' thou canst pity the lost, have pity upon me! I +am innocent--neither hath that wherewith I am charged been more than but +lamely proved--yet I speak not of that; the judgment is gone forth +against me and may not suffer alteration; yet in mine extremity I beg a +boon, for my doom is more than I can bear. A grace, a grace, my lord the +King! in thy royal compassion grant my prayer--give commandment that I be +hanged!" + +Tom was amazed. This was not the outcome he had looked for. + +"Odds my life, a strange BOON! Was it not the fate intended thee?" + +"O good my liege, not so! It is ordered that I be BOILED ALIVE!" + +The hideous surprise of these words almost made Tom spring from his +chair. As soon as he could recover his wits he cried out-- + +"Have thy wish, poor soul! an' thou had poisoned a hundred men thou +shouldst not suffer so miserable a death." + +The prisoner bowed his face to the ground and burst into passionate +expressions of gratitude--ending with-- + +"If ever thou shouldst know misfortune--which God forefend!--may thy +goodness to me this day be remembered and requited!" + +Tom turned to the Earl of Hertford, and said-- + +"My lord, is it believable that there was warrant for this man's +ferocious doom?" + +"It is the law, your Grace--for poisoners. In Germany coiners be boiled +to death in OIL--not cast in of a sudden, but by a rope let down into the +oil by degrees, and slowly; first the feet, then the legs, then--" + +"O prithee no more, my lord, I cannot bear it!" cried Tom, covering his +eyes with his hands to shut out the picture. "I beseech your good +lordship that order be taken to change this law--oh, let no more poor +creatures be visited with its tortures." + +The Earl's face showed profound gratification, for he was a man of +merciful and generous impulses--a thing not very common with his class in +that fierce age. He said-- + +"These your Grace's noble words have sealed its doom. History will +remember it to the honour of your royal house." + +The under-sheriff was about to remove his prisoner; Tom gave him a sign +to wait; then he said-- + +"Good sir, I would look into this matter further. The man has said his +deed was but lamely proved. Tell me what thou knowest." + +"If the King's grace please, it did appear upon the trial that this man +entered into a house in the hamlet of Islington where one lay sick--three +witnesses say it was at ten of the clock in the morning, and two say it +was some minutes later--the sick man being alone at the time, and +sleeping--and presently the man came forth again and went his way. The +sick man died within the hour, being torn with spasms and retchings." + +"Did any see the poison given? Was poison found?" + +"Marry, no, my liege." + +"Then how doth one know there was poison given at all?" + +"Please your Majesty, the doctors testified that none die with such +symptoms but by poison." + +Weighty evidence, this, in that simple age. Tom recognised its +formidable nature, and said-- + +"The doctor knoweth his trade--belike they were right. The matter hath +an ill-look for this poor man." + +"Yet was not this all, your Majesty; there is more and worse. Many +testified that a witch, since gone from the village, none know whither, +did foretell, and speak it privately in their ears, that the sick man +WOULD DIE BY POISON--and more, that a stranger would give it--a stranger +with brown hair and clothed in a worn and common garb; and surely this +prisoner doth answer woundily to the bill. Please your Majesty to give +the circumstance that solemn weight which is its due, seeing it was +FORETOLD." + +This was an argument of tremendous force in that superstitious day. Tom +felt that the thing was settled; if evidence was worth anything, this +poor fellow's guilt was proved. Still he offered the prisoner a chance, +saying-- + +"If thou canst say aught in thy behalf, speak." + +"Nought that will avail, my King. I am innocent, yet cannot I make it +appear. I have no friends, else might I show that I was not in Islington +that day; so also might I show that at that hour they name I was above a +league away, seeing I was at Wapping Old Stairs; yea more, my King, for I +could show, that whilst they say I was TAKING life, I was SAVING it. A +drowning boy--" + +"Peace! Sheriff, name the day the deed was done!" + +"At ten in the morning, or some minutes later, the first day of the New +Year, most illustrious--" + +"Let the prisoner go free--it is the King's will!" + +Another blush followed this unregal outburst, and he covered his +indecorum as well as he could by adding-- + +"It enrageth me that a man should be hanged upon such idle, hare-brained +evidence!" + +A low buzz of admiration swept through the assemblage. It was not +admiration of the decree that had been delivered by Tom, for the +propriety or expediency of pardoning a convicted poisoner was a thing +which few there would have felt justified in either admitting or +admiring--no, the admiration was for the intelligence and spirit which +Tom had displayed. Some of the low-voiced remarks were to this effect-- + +"This is no mad king--he hath his wits sound." + +"How sanely he put his questions--how like his former natural self was +this abrupt imperious disposal of the matter!" + +"God be thanked, his infirmity is spent! This is no weakling, but a +king. He hath borne himself like to his own father." + +The air being filled with applause, Tom's ear necessarily caught a little +of it. The effect which this had upon him was to put him greatly at his +ease, and also to charge his system with very gratifying sensations. + +However, his juvenile curiosity soon rose superior to these pleasant +thoughts and feelings; he was eager to know what sort of deadly mischief +the woman and the little girl could have been about; so, by his command, +the two terrified and sobbing creatures were brought before him. + +"What is it that these have done?" he inquired of the sheriff. + +"Please your Majesty, a black crime is charged upon them, and clearly +proven; wherefore the judges have decreed, according to the law, that +they be hanged. They sold themselves to the devil--such is their crime." + +Tom shuddered. He had been taught to abhor people who did this wicked +thing. Still, he was not going to deny himself the pleasure of feeding +his curiosity for all that; so he asked-- + +"Where was this done?--and when?" + +"On a midnight in December, in a ruined church, your Majesty." + +Tom shuddered again. + +"Who was there present?" + +"Only these two, your grace--and THAT OTHER." + +"Have these confessed?" + +"Nay, not so, sire--they do deny it." + +"Then prithee, how was it known?" + +"Certain witness did see them wending thither, good your Majesty; this +bred the suspicion, and dire effects have since confirmed and justified +it. In particular, it is in evidence that through the wicked power so +obtained, they did invoke and bring about a storm that wasted all the +region round about. Above forty witnesses have proved the storm; and +sooth one might have had a thousand, for all had reason to remember it, +sith all had suffered by it." + +"Certes this is a serious matter." Tom turned this dark piece of +scoundrelism over in his mind a while, then asked-- + +"Suffered the woman also by the storm?" + +Several old heads among the assemblage nodded their recognition of the +wisdom of this question. The sheriff, however, saw nothing consequential +in the inquiry; he answered, with simple directness-- + +"Indeed did she, your Majesty, and most righteously, as all aver. Her +habitation was swept away, and herself and child left shelterless." + +"Methinks the power to do herself so ill a turn was dearly bought. She +had been cheated, had she paid but a farthing for it; that she paid her +soul, and her child's, argueth that she is mad; if she is mad she knoweth +not what she doth, therefore sinneth not." + +The elderly heads nodded recognition of Tom's wisdom once more, and one +individual murmured, "An' the King be mad himself, according to report, +then is it a madness of a sort that would improve the sanity of some I +wot of, if by the gentle providence of God they could but catch it." + +"What age hath the child?" asked Tom. + +"Nine years, please your Majesty." + +"By the law of England may a child enter into covenant and sell itself, +my lord?" asked Tom, turning to a learned judge. + +"The law doth not permit a child to make or meddle in any weighty matter, +good my liege, holding that its callow wit unfitteth it to cope with the +riper wit and evil schemings of them that are its elders. The DEVIL may +buy a child, if he so choose, and the child agree thereto, but not an +Englishman--in this latter case the contract would be null and void." + +"It seemeth a rude unchristian thing, and ill contrived, that English law +denieth privileges to Englishmen to waste them on the devil!" cried Tom, +with honest heat. + +This novel view of the matter excited many smiles, and was stored away in +many heads to be repeated about the Court as evidence of Tom's +originality as well as progress toward mental health. + +The elder culprit had ceased from sobbing, and was hanging upon Tom's +words with an excited interest and a growing hope. Tom noticed this, and +it strongly inclined his sympathies toward her in her perilous and +unfriended situation. Presently he asked-- + +"How wrought they to bring the storm?" + +"BY PULLING OFF THEIR STOCKINGS, sire." + +This astonished Tom, and also fired his curiosity to fever heat. He said, +eagerly-- + +"It is wonderful! Hath it always this dread effect?" + +"Always, my liege--at least if the woman desire it, and utter the needful +words, either in her mind or with her tongue." + +Tom turned to the woman, and said with impetuous zeal-- + +"Exert thy power--I would see a storm!" + +There was a sudden paling of cheeks in the superstitious assemblage, and +a general, though unexpressed, desire to get out of the place--all of +which was lost upon Tom, who was dead to everything but the proposed +cataclysm. Seeing a puzzled and astonished look in the woman's face, he +added, excitedly-- + +"Never fear--thou shalt be blameless. More--thou shalt go free--none +shall touch thee. Exert thy power." + +"Oh, my lord the King, I have it not--I have been falsely accused." + +"Thy fears stay thee. Be of good heart, thou shalt suffer no harm. Make +a storm--it mattereth not how small a one--I require nought great or +harmful, but indeed prefer the opposite--do this and thy life is spared +--thou shalt go out free, with thy child, bearing the King's pardon, and +safe from hurt or malice from any in the realm." + +The woman prostrated herself, and protested, with tears, that she had no +power to do the miracle, else she would gladly win her child's life +alone, and be content to lose her own, if by obedience to the King's +command so precious a grace might be acquired. + +Tom urged--the woman still adhered to her declarations. Finally he said-- + +"I think the woman hath said true. An' MY mother were in her place and +gifted with the devil's functions, she had not stayed a moment to call +her storms and lay the whole land in ruins, if the saving of my forfeit +life were the price she got! It is argument that other mothers are made +in like mould. Thou art free, goodwife--thou and thy child--for I do +think thee innocent. NOW thou'st nought to fear, being pardoned--pull +off thy stockings!--an' thou canst make me a storm, thou shalt be rich!" + +The redeemed creature was loud in her gratitude, and proceeded to obey, +whilst Tom looked on with eager expectancy, a little marred by +apprehension; the courtiers at the same time manifesting decided +discomfort and uneasiness. The woman stripped her own feet and her +little girl's also, and plainly did her best to reward the King's +generosity with an earthquake, but it was all a failure and a +disappointment. Tom sighed, and said-- + +"There, good soul, trouble thyself no further, thy power is departed out +of thee. Go thy way in peace; and if it return to thee at any time, +forget me not, but fetch me a storm." {13} + + + +Chapter XVI. The State Dinner. + +The dinner hour drew near--yet strangely enough, the thought brought but +slight discomfort to Tom, and hardly any terror. The morning's +experiences had wonderfully built up his confidence; the poor little +ash-cat was already more wonted to his strange garret, after four days' +habit, than a mature person could have become in a full month. A child's +facility in accommodating itself to circumstances was never more +strikingly illustrated. + +Let us privileged ones hurry to the great banqueting-room and have a +glance at matters there whilst Tom is being made ready for the imposing +occasion. It is a spacious apartment, with gilded pillars and pilasters, +and pictured walls and ceilings. At the door stand tall guards, as rigid +as statues, dressed in rich and picturesque costumes, and bearing +halberds. In a high gallery which runs all around the place is a band of +musicians and a packed company of citizens of both sexes, in brilliant +attire. In the centre of the room, upon a raised platform, is Tom's +table. Now let the ancient chronicler speak: + +"A gentleman enters the room bearing a rod, and along with him another +bearing a tablecloth, which, after they have both kneeled three times +with the utmost veneration, he spreads upon the table, and after kneeling +again they both retire; then come two others, one with the rod again, the +other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread; when they have kneeled as +the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they too +retire with the same ceremonies performed by the first; at last come two +nobles, richly clothed, one bearing a tasting-knife, who, after +prostrating themselves three times in the most graceful manner, approach +and rub the table with bread and salt, with as much awe as if the King +had been present." {6} + +So end the solemn preliminaries. Now, far down the echoing corridors we +hear a bugle-blast, and the indistinct cry, "Place for the King! Way for +the King's most excellent majesty!" These sounds are momently repeated +--they grow nearer and nearer--and presently, almost in our faces, the +martial note peals and the cry rings out, "Way for the King!" At this +instant the shining pageant appears, and files in at the door, with a +measured march. Let the chronicler speak again:-- + +"First come Gentlemen, Barons, Earls, Knights of the Garter, all richly +dressed and bareheaded; next comes the Chancellor, between two, one of +which carries the royal sceptre, the other the Sword of State in a red +scabbard, studded with golden fleurs-de-lis, the point upwards; next +comes the King himself--whom, upon his appearing, twelve trumpets and +many drums salute with a great burst of welcome, whilst all in the +galleries rise in their places, crying 'God save the King!' After him +come nobles attached to his person, and on his right and left march his +guard of honour, his fifty Gentlemen Pensioners, with gilt battle-axes." + +This was all fine and pleasant. Tom's pulse beat high, and a glad light +was in his eye. He bore himself right gracefully, and all the more so +because he was not thinking of how he was doing it, his mind being +charmed and occupied with the blithe sights and sounds about him--and +besides, nobody can be very ungraceful in nicely-fitting beautiful +clothes after he has grown a little used to them--especially if he is for +the moment unconscious of them. Tom remembered his instructions, and +acknowledged his greeting with a slight inclination of his plumed head, +and a courteous "I thank ye, my good people." + +He seated himself at table, without removing his cap; and did it without +the least embarrassment; for to eat with one's cap on was the one +solitary royal custom upon which the kings and the Cantys met upon common +ground, neither party having any advantage over the other in the matter +of old familiarity with it. The pageant broke up and grouped itself +picturesquely, and remained bareheaded. + +Now to the sound of gay music the Yeomen of the Guard entered,--"the +tallest and mightiest men in England, they being carefully selected in +this regard"--but we will let the chronicler tell about it:-- + +"The Yeomen of the Guard entered, bareheaded, clothed in scarlet, with +golden roses upon their backs; and these went and came, bringing in each +turn a course of dishes, served in plate. These dishes were received by +a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed upon the +table, while the taster gave to each guard a mouthful to eat of the +particular dish he had brought, for fear of any poison." + +Tom made a good dinner, notwithstanding he was conscious that hundreds of +eyes followed each morsel to his mouth and watched him eat it with an +interest which could not have been more intense if it had been a deadly +explosive and was expected to blow him up and scatter him all about the +place. He was careful not to hurry, and equally careful not to do +anything whatever for himself, but wait till the proper official knelt +down and did it for him. He got through without a mistake--flawless and +precious triumph. + +When the meal was over at last and he marched away in the midst of his +bright pageant, with the happy noises in his ears of blaring bugles, +rolling drums, and thundering acclamations, he felt that if he had seen +the worst of dining in public it was an ordeal which he would be glad to +endure several times a day if by that means he could but buy himself free +from some of the more formidable requirements of his royal office. + + + +Chapter XVII. Foo-foo the First. + +Miles Hendon hurried along toward the Southwark end of the bridge, +keeping a sharp look-out for the persons he sought, and hoping and +expecting to overtake them presently. He was disappointed in this, +however. By asking questions, he was enabled to track them part of the +way through Southwark; then all traces ceased, and he was perplexed as to +how to proceed. Still, he continued his efforts as best he could during +the rest of the day. Nightfall found him leg-weary, half-famished, and +his desire as far from accomplishment as ever; so he supped at the Tabard +Inn and went to bed, resolved to make an early start in the morning, and +give the town an exhaustive search. As he lay thinking and planning, he +presently began to reason thus: The boy would escape from the ruffian, +his reputed father, if possible; would he go back to London and seek his +former haunts? No, he would not do that, he would avoid recapture. +What, then, would he do? Never having had a friend in the world, or a +protector, until he met Miles Hendon, he would naturally try to find that +friend again, provided the effort did not require him to go toward London +and danger. He would strike for Hendon Hall, that is what he would do, +for he knew Hendon was homeward bound and there he might expect to find +him. Yes, the case was plain to Hendon--he must lose no more time in +Southwark, but move at once through Kent, toward Monk's Holm, searching +the wood and inquiring as he went. Let us return to the vanished little +King now. + +The ruffian whom the waiter at the inn on the bridge saw 'about to join' +the youth and the King did not exactly join them, but fell in close +behind them and followed their steps. He said nothing. His left arm was +in a sling, and he wore a large green patch over his left eye; he limped +slightly, and used an oaken staff as a support. The youth led the King a +crooked course through Southwark, and by-and-by struck into the high road +beyond. The King was irritated, now, and said he would stop here--it was +Hendon's place to come to him, not his to go to Hendon. He would not +endure such insolence; he would stop where he was. The youth said-- + +"Thou'lt tarry here, and thy friend lying wounded in the wood yonder? So +be it, then." + +The King's manner changed at once. He cried out-- + +"Wounded? And who hath dared to do it? But that is apart; lead on, lead +on! Faster, sirrah! Art shod with lead? Wounded, is he? Now though +the doer of it be a duke's son he shall rue it!" + +It was some distance to the wood, but the space was speedily traversed. +The youth looked about him, discovered a bough sticking in the ground, +with a small bit of rag tied to it, then led the way into the forest, +watching for similar boughs and finding them at intervals; they were +evidently guides to the point he was aiming at. By-and-by an open place +was reached, where were the charred remains of a farm-house, and near +them a barn which was falling to ruin and decay. There was no sign of +life anywhere, and utter silence prevailed. The youth entered the barn, +the King following eagerly upon his heels. No one there! The King shot a +surprised and suspicious glance at the youth, and asked-- + +"Where is he?" + +A mocking laugh was his answer. The King was in a rage in a moment; he +seized a billet of wood and was in the act of charging upon the youth +when another mocking laugh fell upon his ear. It was from the lame +ruffian who had been following at a distance. The King turned and said +angrily-- + +"Who art thou? What is thy business here?" + +"Leave thy foolery," said the man, "and quiet thyself. My disguise is +none so good that thou canst pretend thou knowest not thy father through +it." + +"Thou art not my father. I know thee not. I am the King. If thou hast +hid my servant, find him for me, or thou shalt sup sorrow for what thou +hast done." + +John Canty replied, in a stern and measured voice-- + +"It is plain thou art mad, and I am loath to punish thee; but if thou +provoke me, I must. Thy prating doth no harm here, where there are no +ears that need to mind thy follies; yet it is well to practise thy tongue +to wary speech, that it may do no hurt when our quarters change. I have +done a murder, and may not tarry at home--neither shalt thou, seeing I +need thy service. My name is changed, for wise reasons; it is Hobbs +--John Hobbs; thine is Jack--charge thy memory accordingly. Now, then, +speak. Where is thy mother? Where are thy sisters? They came not to +the place appointed--knowest thou whither they went?" + +The King answered sullenly-- + +"Trouble me not with these riddles. My mother is dead; my sisters are in +the palace." + +The youth near by burst into a derisive laugh, and the King would have +assaulted him, but Canty--or Hobbs, as he now called himself--prevented +him, and said-- + +"Peace, Hugo, vex him not; his mind is astray, and thy ways fret him. +Sit thee down, Jack, and quiet thyself; thou shalt have a morsel to eat, +anon." + +Hobbs and Hugo fell to talking together, in low voices, and the King +removed himself as far as he could from their disagreeable company. He +withdrew into the twilight of the farther end of the barn, where he found +the earthen floor bedded a foot deep with straw. He lay down here, drew +straw over himself in lieu of blankets, and was soon absorbed in +thinking. He had many griefs, but the minor ones were swept almost into +forgetfulness by the supreme one, the loss of his father. To the rest of +the world the name of Henry VIII. brought a shiver, and suggested an ogre +whose nostrils breathed destruction and whose hand dealt scourgings and +death; but to this boy the name brought only sensations of pleasure; the +figure it invoked wore a countenance that was all gentleness and +affection. He called to mind a long succession of loving passages +between his father and himself, and dwelt fondly upon them, his unstinted +tears attesting how deep and real was the grief that possessed his heart. +As the afternoon wasted away, the lad, wearied with his troubles, sank +gradually into a tranquil and healing slumber. + +After a considerable time--he could not tell how long--his senses +struggled to a half-consciousness, and as he lay with closed eyes vaguely +wondering where he was and what had been happening, he noted a murmurous +sound, the sullen beating of rain upon the roof. A snug sense of comfort +stole over him, which was rudely broken, the next moment, by a chorus of +piping cackles and coarse laughter. It startled him disagreeably, and he +unmuffled his head to see whence this interruption proceeded. A grim and +unsightly picture met his eye. A bright fire was burning in the middle +of the floor, at the other end of the barn; and around it, and lit +weirdly up by the red glare, lolled and sprawled the motliest company of +tattered gutter-scum and ruffians, of both sexes, he had ever read or +dreamed of. There were huge stalwart men, brown with exposure, +long-haired, and clothed in fantastic rags; there were middle-sized +youths, of truculent countenance, and similarly clad; there were blind +mendicants, with patched or bandaged eyes; crippled ones, with wooden +legs and crutches; diseased ones, with running sores peeping from +ineffectual wrappings; there was a villain-looking pedlar with his pack; +a knife-grinder, a tinker, and a barber-surgeon, with the implements of +their trades; some of the females were hardly-grown girls, some were at +prime, some were old and wrinkled hags, and all were loud, brazen, +foul-mouthed; and all soiled and slatternly; there were three sore-faced +babies; there were a couple of starveling curs, with strings about their +necks, whose office was to lead the blind. + +The night was come, the gang had just finished feasting, an orgy was +beginning; the can of liquor was passing from mouth to mouth. A general +cry broke forth-- + +"A song! a song from the Bat and Dick and Dot-and-go-One!" + +One of the blind men got up, and made ready by casting aside the patches +that sheltered his excellent eyes, and the pathetic placard which recited +the cause of his calamity. Dot-and-go-One disencumbered himself of his +timber leg and took his place, upon sound and healthy limbs, beside his +fellow-rascal; then they roared out a rollicking ditty, and were +reinforced by the whole crew, at the end of each stanza, in a rousing +chorus. By the time the last stanza was reached, the half-drunken +enthusiasm had risen to such a pitch, that everybody joined in and sang +it clear through from the beginning, producing a volume of villainous +sound that made the rafters quake. These were the inspiring words:-- + +'Bien Darkman's then, Bouse Mort and Ken, The bien Coves bings awast, On +Chates to trine by Rome Coves dine For his long lib at last. Bing'd out +bien Morts and toure, and toure, Bing out of the Rome vile bine, And +toure the Cove that cloy'd your duds, Upon the Chates to trine.' (From +'The English Rogue.' London, 1665.) + +Conversation followed; not in the thieves' dialect of the song, for that +was only used in talk when unfriendly ears might be listening. In the +course of it, it appeared that 'John Hobbs' was not altogether a new +recruit, but had trained in the gang at some former time. His later +history was called for, and when he said he had 'accidentally' killed a +man, considerable satisfaction was expressed; when he added that the man +was a priest, he was roundly applauded, and had to take a drink with +everybody. Old acquaintances welcomed him joyously, and new ones were +proud to shake him by the hand. He was asked why he had 'tarried away so +many months.' He answered-- + +"London is better than the country, and safer, these late years, the laws +be so bitter and so diligently enforced. An' I had not had that +accident, I had stayed there. I had resolved to stay, and never more +venture country-wards--but the accident has ended that." + +He inquired how many persons the gang numbered now. The 'ruffler,' or +chief, answered-- + +"Five and twenty sturdy budges, bulks, files, clapperdogeons and +maunders, counting the dells and doxies and other morts. {7} Most are +here, the rest are wandering eastward, along the winter lay. We follow at +dawn." + +"I do not see the Wen among the honest folk about me. Where may he be?" + +"Poor lad, his diet is brimstone, now, and over hot for a delicate taste. +He was killed in a brawl, somewhere about midsummer." + +"I sorrow to hear that; the Wen was a capable man, and brave." + +"That was he, truly. Black Bess, his dell, is of us yet, but absent on +the eastward tramp; a fine lass, of nice ways and orderly conduct, none +ever seeing her drunk above four days in the seven." + +"She was ever strict--I remember it well--a goodly wench and worthy all +commendation. Her mother was more free and less particular; a +troublesome and ugly-tempered beldame, but furnished with a wit above the +common." + +"We lost her through it. Her gift of palmistry and other sorts of +fortune-telling begot for her at last a witch's name and fame. The law +roasted her to death at a slow fire. It did touch me to a sort of +tenderness to see the gallant way she met her lot--cursing and reviling +all the crowd that gaped and gazed around her, whilst the flames licked +upward toward her face and catched her thin locks and crackled about her +old gray head--cursing them! why an' thou should'st live a thousand years +thoud'st never hear so masterful a cursing. Alack, her art died with +her. There be base and weakling imitations left, but no true blasphemy." + +The Ruffler sighed; the listeners sighed in sympathy; a general +depression fell upon the company for a moment, for even hardened outcasts +like these are not wholly dead to sentiment, but are able to feel a +fleeting sense of loss and affliction at wide intervals and under +peculiarly favouring circumstances--as in cases like to this, for +instance, when genius and culture depart and leave no heir. However, a +deep drink all round soon restored the spirits of the mourners. + +"Have any others of our friends fared hardly?" asked Hobbs. + +"Some--yes. Particularly new comers--such as small husbandmen turned +shiftless and hungry upon the world because their farms were taken from +them to be changed to sheep ranges. They begged, and were whipped at the +cart's tail, naked from the girdle up, till the blood ran; then set in +the stocks to be pelted; they begged again, were whipped again, and +deprived of an ear; they begged a third time--poor devils, what else +could they do?--and were branded on the cheek with a red-hot iron, then +sold for slaves; they ran away, were hunted down, and hanged. 'Tis a +brief tale, and quickly told. Others of us have fared less hardly. Stand +forth, Yokel, Burns, and Hodge--show your adornments!" + +These stood up and stripped away some of their rags, exposing their +backs, criss-crossed with ropy old welts left by the lash; one turned up +his hair and showed the place where a left ear had once been; another +showed a brand upon his shoulder--the letter V--and a mutilated ear; the +third said-- + +"I am Yokel, once a farmer and prosperous, with loving wife and kids--now +am I somewhat different in estate and calling; and the wife and kids are +gone; mayhap they are in heaven, mayhap in--in the other place--but the +kindly God be thanked, they bide no more in ENGLAND! My good old +blameless mother strove to earn bread by nursing the sick; one of these +died, the doctors knew not how, so my mother was burnt for a witch, +whilst my babes looked on and wailed. English law!--up, all, with your +cups!--now all together and with a cheer!--drink to the merciful English +law that delivered HER from the English hell! Thank you, mates, one and +all. I begged, from house to house--I and the wife--bearing with us the +hungry kids--but it was crime to be hungry in England--so they stripped +us and lashed us through three towns. Drink ye all again to the merciful +English law!--for its lash drank deep of my Mary's blood and its blessed +deliverance came quick. She lies there, in the potter's field, safe from +all harms. And the kids--well, whilst the law lashed me from town to +town, they starved. Drink, lads--only a drop--a drop to the poor kids, +that never did any creature harm. I begged again--begged, for a crust, +and got the stocks and lost an ear--see, here bides the stump; I begged +again, and here is the stump of the other to keep me minded of it. And +still I begged again, and was sold for a slave--here on my cheek under +this stain, if I washed it off, ye might see the red S the branding-iron +left there! A SLAVE! Do you understand that word? An English SLAVE! +--that is he that stands before ye. I have run from my master, and when I +am found--the heavy curse of heaven fall on the law of the land that hath +commanded it!--I shall hang!" {1} + +A ringing voice came through the murky air-- + +"Thou shalt NOT!--and this day the end of that law is come!" + +All turned, and saw the fantastic figure of the little King approaching +hurriedly; as it emerged into the light and was clearly revealed, a +general explosion of inquiries broke out-- + +"Who is it? WHAT is it? Who art thou, manikin?" + +The boy stood unconfused in the midst of all those surprised and +questioning eyes, and answered with princely dignity-- + +"I am Edward, King of England." + +A wild burst of laughter followed, partly of derision and partly of +delight in the excellence of the joke. The King was stung. He said +sharply-- + +"Ye mannerless vagrants, is this your recognition of the royal boon I +have promised?" + +He said more, with angry voice and excited gesture, but it was lost in a +whirlwind of laughter and mocking exclamations. 'John Hobbs' made +several attempts to make himself heard above the din, and at last +succeeded--saying-- + +"Mates, he is my son, a dreamer, a fool, and stark mad--mind him not--he +thinketh he IS the King." + +"I AM the King," said Edward, turning toward him, "as thou shalt know to +thy cost, in good time. Thou hast confessed a murder--thou shalt swing +for it." + +"THOU'LT betray me?--THOU? An' I get my hands upon thee--" + +"Tut-tut!" said the burley Ruffler, interposing in time to save the King, +and emphasising this service by knocking Hobbs down with his fist, "hast +respect for neither Kings NOR Rufflers? An' thou insult my presence so +again, I'll hang thee up myself." Then he said to his Majesty, "Thou +must make no threats against thy mates, lad; and thou must guard thy +tongue from saying evil of them elsewhere. BE King, if it please thy mad +humour, but be not harmful in it. Sink the title thou hast uttered--'tis +treason; we be bad men in some few trifling ways, but none among us is so +base as to be traitor to his King; we be loving and loyal hearts, in that +regard. Note if I speak truth. Now--all together: 'Long live Edward, +King of England!'" + +"LONG LIVE EDWARD, KING OF ENGLAND!" + +The response came with such a thundergust from the motley crew that the +crazy building vibrated to the sound. The little King's face lighted +with pleasure for an instant, and he slightly inclined his head, and said +with grave simplicity-- + +"I thank you, my good people." + +This unexpected result threw the company into convulsions of merriment. +When something like quiet was presently come again, the Ruffler said, +firmly, but with an accent of good nature-- + +"Drop it, boy, 'tis not wise, nor well. Humour thy fancy, if thou must, +but choose some other title." + +A tinker shrieked out a suggestion-- + +"Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!" + +The title 'took,' at once, every throat responded, and a roaring shout +went up, of-- + +"Long live Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!" followed by +hootings, cat-calls, and peals of laughter. + +"Hale him forth, and crown him!" + +"Robe him!" + +"Sceptre him!" + +"Throne him!" + +These and twenty other cries broke out at once! and almost before the +poor little victim could draw a breath he was crowned with a tin basin, +robed in a tattered blanket, throned upon a barrel, and sceptred with the +tinker's soldering-iron. Then all flung themselves upon their knees +about him and sent up a chorus of ironical wailings, and mocking +supplications, whilst they swabbed their eyes with their soiled and +ragged sleeves and aprons-- + +"Be gracious to us, O sweet King!" + +"Trample not upon thy beseeching worms, O noble Majesty!" + +"Pity thy slaves, and comfort them with a royal kick!" + +"Cheer us and warm us with thy gracious rays, O flaming sun of +sovereignty!" + +"Sanctify the ground with the touch of thy foot, that we may eat the dirt +and be ennobled!" + +"Deign to spit upon us, O Sire, that our children's children may tell of +thy princely condescension, and be proud and happy for ever!" + +But the humorous tinker made the 'hit' of the evening and carried off the +honours. Kneeling, he pretended to kiss the King's foot, and was +indignantly spurned; whereupon he went about begging for a rag to paste +over the place upon his face which had been touched by the foot, saying +it must be preserved from contact with the vulgar air, and that he should +make his fortune by going on the highway and exposing it to view at the +rate of a hundred shillings a sight. He made himself so killingly funny +that he was the envy and admiration of the whole mangy rabble. + +Tears of shame and indignation stood in the little monarch's eyes; and +the thought in his heart was, "Had I offered them a deep wrong they could +not be more cruel--yet have I proffered nought but to do them a kindness +--and it is thus they use me for it!" + + + +Chapter XVIII. The Prince with the tramps. + +The troop of vagabonds turned out at early dawn, and set forward on their +march. There was a lowering sky overhead, sloppy ground under foot, and +a winter chill in the air. All gaiety was gone from the company; some +were sullen and silent, some were irritable and petulant, none were +gentle-humoured, all were thirsty. + +The Ruffler put 'Jack' in Hugo's charge, with some brief instructions, +and commanded John Canty to keep away from him and let him alone; he also +warned Hugo not to be too rough with the lad. + +After a while the weather grew milder, and the clouds lifted somewhat. +The troop ceased to shiver, and their spirits began to improve. They +grew more and more cheerful, and finally began to chaff each other and +insult passengers along the highway. This showed that they were awaking +to an appreciation of life and its joys once more. The dread in which +their sort was held was apparent in the fact that everybody gave them the +road, and took their ribald insolences meekly, without venturing to talk +back. They snatched linen from the hedges, occasionally in full view of +the owners, who made no protest, but only seemed grateful that they did +not take the hedges, too. + +By-and-by they invaded a small farmhouse and made themselves at home +while the trembling farmer and his people swept the larder clean to +furnish a breakfast for them. They chucked the housewife and her +daughters under the chin whilst receiving the food from their hands, and +made coarse jests about them, accompanied with insulting epithets and +bursts of horse-laughter. They threw bones and vegetables at the farmer +and his sons, kept them dodging all the time, and applauded uproariously +when a good hit was made. They ended by buttering the head of one of the +daughters who resented some of their familiarities. When they took their +leave they threatened to come back and burn the house over the heads of +the family if any report of their doings got to the ears of the +authorities. + +About noon, after a long and weary tramp, the gang came to a halt behind +a hedge on the outskirts of a considerable village. An hour was allowed +for rest, then the crew scattered themselves abroad to enter the village +at different points to ply their various trades--'Jack' was sent with +Hugo. They wandered hither and thither for some time, Hugo watching for +opportunities to do a stroke of business, but finding none--so he finally +said-- + +"I see nought to steal; it is a paltry place. Wherefore we will beg." + +"WE, forsooth! Follow thy trade--it befits thee. But _I_ will not beg." + +"Thou'lt not beg!" exclaimed Hugo, eyeing the King with surprise. +"Prithee, since when hast thou reformed?" + +"What dost thou mean?" + +"Mean? Hast thou not begged the streets of London all thy life?" + +"I? Thou idiot!" + +"Spare thy compliments--thy stock will last the longer. Thy father says +thou hast begged all thy days. Mayhap he lied. Peradventure you will +even make so bold as to SAY he lied," scoffed Hugo. + +"Him YOU call my father? Yes, he lied." + +"Come, play not thy merry game of madman so far, mate; use it for thy +amusement, not thy hurt. An' I tell him this, he will scorch thee finely +for it." + +"Save thyself the trouble. I will tell him." + +"I like thy spirit, I do in truth; but I do not admire thy judgment. +Bone-rackings and bastings be plenty enow in this life, without going out +of one's way to invite them. But a truce to these matters; _I_ believe +your father. I doubt not he can lie; I doubt not he DOTH lie, upon +occasion, for the best of us do that; but there is no occasion here. A +wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for nought. But +come; sith it is thy humour to give over begging, wherewithal shall we +busy ourselves? With robbing kitchens?" + +The King said, impatiently-- + +"Have done with this folly--you weary me!" + +Hugo replied, with temper-- + +"Now harkee, mate; you will not beg, you will not rob; so be it. But I +will tell you what you WILL do. You will play decoy whilst _I_ beg. +Refuse, an' you think you may venture!" + +The King was about to reply contemptuously, when Hugo said, interrupting-- + +"Peace! Here comes one with a kindly face. Now will I fall down in a +fit. When the stranger runs to me, set you up a wail, and fall upon your +knees, seeming to weep; then cry out as all the devils of misery were in +your belly, and say, 'Oh, sir, it is my poor afflicted brother, and we be +friendless; o' God's name cast through your merciful eyes one pitiful +look upon a sick, forsaken, and most miserable wretch; bestow one little +penny out of thy riches upon one smitten of God and ready to perish!' +--and mind you, keep you ON wailing, and abate not till we bilk him of his +penny, else shall you rue it." + +Then immediately Hugo began to moan, and groan, and roll his eyes, and +reel and totter about; and when the stranger was close at hand, down he +sprawled before him, with a shriek, and began to writhe and wallow in the +dirt, in seeming agony. + +"O, dear, O dear!" cried the benevolent stranger, "O poor soul, poor +soul, how he doth suffer! There--let me help thee up." + +"O noble sir, forbear, and God love you for a princely gentleman--but it +giveth me cruel pain to touch me when I am taken so. My brother there +will tell your worship how I am racked with anguish when these fits be +upon me. A penny, dear sir, a penny, to buy a little food; then leave me +to my sorrows." + +"A penny! thou shalt have three, thou hapless creature"--and he fumbled +in his pocket with nervous haste and got them out. "There, poor lad, take +them and most welcome. Now come hither, my boy, and help me carry thy +stricken brother to yon house, where--" + +"I am not his brother," said the King, interrupting. + +"What! not his brother?" + +"Oh, hear him!" groaned Hugo, then privately ground his teeth. "He denies +his own brother--and he with one foot in the grave!" + +"Boy, thou art indeed hard of heart, if this is thy brother. For shame! +--and he scarce able to move hand or foot. If he is not thy brother, who +is he, then?" + +"A beggar and a thief! He has got your money and has picked your pocket +likewise. An' thou would'st do a healing miracle, lay thy staff over his +shoulders and trust Providence for the rest." + +But Hugo did not tarry for the miracle. In a moment he was up and off +like the wind, the gentleman following after and raising the hue and cry +lustily as he went. The King, breathing deep gratitude to Heaven for his +own release, fled in the opposite direction, and did not slacken his pace +until he was out of harm's reach. He took the first road that offered, +and soon put the village behind him. He hurried along, as briskly as he +could, during several hours, keeping a nervous watch over his shoulder +for pursuit; but his fears left him at last, and a grateful sense of +security took their place. He recognised, now, that he was hungry, and +also very tired. So he halted at a farmhouse; but when he was about to +speak, he was cut short and driven rudely away. His clothes were against +him. + +He wandered on, wounded and indignant, and was resolved to put himself in +the way of like treatment no more. But hunger is pride's master; so, as +the evening drew near, he made an attempt at another farmhouse; but here +he fared worse than before; for he was called hard names and was promised +arrest as a vagrant except he moved on promptly. + +The night came on, chilly and overcast; and still the footsore monarch +laboured slowly on. He was obliged to keep moving, for every time he sat +down to rest he was soon penetrated to the bone with the cold. All his +sensations and experiences, as he moved through the solemn gloom and the +empty vastness of the night, were new and strange to him. At intervals +he heard voices approach, pass by, and fade into silence; and as he saw +nothing more of the bodies they belonged to than a sort of formless +drifting blur, there was something spectral and uncanny about it all that +made him shudder. Occasionally he caught the twinkle of a light--always +far away, apparently--almost in another world; if he heard the tinkle of +a sheep's bell, it was vague, distant, indistinct; the muffled lowing of +the herds floated to him on the night wind in vanishing cadences, a +mournful sound; now and then came the complaining howl of a dog over +viewless expanses of field and forest; all sounds were remote; they made +the little King feel that all life and activity were far removed from +him, and that he stood solitary, companionless, in the centre of a +measureless solitude. + +He stumbled along, through the gruesome fascinations of this new +experience, startled occasionally by the soft rustling of the dry leaves +overhead, so like human whispers they seemed to sound; and by-and-by he +came suddenly upon the freckled light of a tin lantern near at hand. He +stepped back into the shadows and waited. The lantern stood by the open +door of a barn. The King waited some time--there was no sound, and +nobody stirring. He got so cold, standing still, and the hospitable barn +looked so enticing, that at last he resolved to risk everything and +enter. He started swiftly and stealthily, and just as he was crossing the +threshold he heard voices behind him. He darted behind a cask, within +the barn, and stooped down. Two farm-labourers came in, bringing the +lantern with them, and fell to work, talking meanwhile. Whilst they +moved about with the light, the King made good use of his eyes and took +the bearings of what seemed to be a good-sized stall at the further end +of the place, purposing to grope his way to it when he should be left to +himself. He also noted the position of a pile of horse blankets, midway +of the route, with the intent to levy upon them for the service of the +crown of England for one night. + +By-and-by the men finished and went away, fastening the door behind them +and taking the lantern with them. The shivering King made for the +blankets, with as good speed as the darkness would allow; gathered them +up, and then groped his way safely to the stall. Of two of the blankets +he made a bed, then covered himself with the remaining two. He was a +glad monarch, now, though the blankets were old and thin, and not quite +warm enough; and besides gave out a pungent horsey odour that was almost +suffocatingly powerful. + +Although the King was hungry and chilly, he was also so tired and +so drowsy that these latter influences soon began to get the +advantage of the former, and he presently dozed off into a state of +semi-consciousness. Then, just as he was on the point of losing himself +wholly, he distinctly felt something touch him! He was broad awake in a +moment, and gasping for breath. The cold horror of that mysterious touch +in the dark almost made his heart stand still. He lay motionless, and +listened, scarcely breathing. But nothing stirred, and there was no +sound. He continued to listen, and wait, during what seemed a long time, +but still nothing stirred, and there was no sound. So he began to drop +into a drowse once more, at last; and all at once he felt that mysterious +touch again! It was a grisly thing, this light touch from this noiseless +and invisible presence; it made the boy sick with ghostly fears. What +should he do? That was the question; but he did not know how to answer +it. Should he leave these reasonably comfortable quarters and fly from +this inscrutable horror? But fly whither? He could not get out of the +barn; and the idea of scurrying blindly hither and thither in the dark, +within the captivity of the four walls, with this phantom gliding after +him, and visiting him with that soft hideous touch upon cheek or shoulder +at every turn, was intolerable. But to stay where he was, and endure +this living death all night--was that better? No. What, then, was there +left to do? Ah, there was but one course; he knew it well--he must put +out his hand and find that thing! + +It was easy to think this; but it was hard to brace himself up to try it. +Three times he stretched his hand a little way out into the dark, +gingerly; and snatched it suddenly back, with a gasp--not because it had +encountered anything, but because he had felt so sure it was just GOING +to. But the fourth time, he groped a little further, and his hand +lightly swept against something soft and warm. This petrified him, +nearly, with fright; his mind was in such a state that he could imagine +the thing to be nothing else than a corpse, newly dead and still warm. +He thought he would rather die than touch it again. But he thought this +false thought because he did not know the immortal strength of human +curiosity. In no long time his hand was tremblingly groping again +--against his judgment, and without his consent--but groping persistently +on, just the same. It encountered a bunch of long hair; he shuddered, +but followed up the hair and found what seemed to be a warm rope; +followed up the rope and found an innocent calf!--for the rope was not a +rope at all, but the calf's tail. + +The King was cordially ashamed of himself for having gotten all that +fright and misery out of so paltry a matter as a slumbering calf; but he +need not have felt so about it, for it was not the calf that frightened +him, but a dreadful non-existent something which the calf stood for; and +any other boy, in those old superstitious times, would have acted and +suffered just as he had done. + +The King was not only delighted to find that the creature was only a +calf, but delighted to have the calf's company; for he had been feeling +so lonesome and friendless that the company and comradeship of even this +humble animal were welcome. And he had been so buffeted, so rudely +entreated by his own kind, that it was a real comfort to him to feel that +he was at last in the society of a fellow-creature that had at least a +soft heart and a gentle spirit, whatever loftier attributes might be +lacking. So he resolved to waive rank and make friends with the calf. + +While stroking its sleek warm back--for it lay near him and within easy +reach--it occurred to him that this calf might be utilised in more ways +than one. Whereupon he re-arranged his bed, spreading it down close to +the calf; then he cuddled himself up to the calf's back, drew the covers +up over himself and his friend, and in a minute or two was as warm and +comfortable as he had ever been in the downy couches of the regal palace +of Westminster. + +Pleasant thoughts came at once; life took on a cheerfuller seeming. He +was free of the bonds of servitude and crime, free of the companionship +of base and brutal outlaws; he was warm; he was sheltered; in a word, he +was happy. The night wind was rising; it swept by in fitful gusts that +made the old barn quake and rattle, then its forces died down at +intervals, and went moaning and wailing around corners and projections +--but it was all music to the King, now that he was snug and comfortable: +let it blow and rage, let it batter and bang, let it moan and wail, he +minded it not, he only enjoyed it. He merely snuggled the closer to his +friend, in a luxury of warm contentment, and drifted blissfully out of +consciousness into a deep and dreamless sleep that was full of serenity +and peace. The distant dogs howled, the melancholy kine complained, and +the winds went on raging, whilst furious sheets of rain drove along the +roof; but the Majesty of England slept on, undisturbed, and the calf did +the same, it being a simple creature, and not easily troubled by storms +or embarrassed by sleeping with a king. + + + +Chapter XIX. The Prince with the peasants. + +When the King awoke in the early morning, he found that a wet but +thoughtful rat had crept into the place during the night and made a cosy +bed for itself in his bosom. Being disturbed now, it scampered away. +The boy smiled, and said, "Poor fool, why so fearful? I am as forlorn as +thou. 'Twould be a sham in me to hurt the helpless, who am myself so +helpless. Moreover, I owe you thanks for a good omen; for when a king +has fallen so low that the very rats do make a bed of him, it surely +meaneth that his fortunes be upon the turn, since it is plain he can no +lower go." + +He got up and stepped out of the stall, and just then he heard the sound +of children's voices. The barn door opened and a couple of little girls +came in. As soon as they saw him their talking and laughing ceased, and +they stopped and stood still, gazing at him with strong curiosity; they +presently began to whisper together, then they approached nearer, and +stopped again to gaze and whisper. By-and-by they gathered courage and +began to discuss him aloud. One said-- + +"He hath a comely face." + +The other added-- + +"And pretty hair." + +"But is ill clothed enow." + +"And how starved he looketh." + +They came still nearer, sidling shyly around and about him, examining him +minutely from all points, as if he were some strange new kind of animal, +but warily and watchfully the while, as if they half feared he might be a +sort of animal that would bite, upon occasion. Finally they halted +before him, holding each other's hands for protection, and took a good +satisfying stare with their innocent eyes; then one of them plucked up +all her courage and inquired with honest directness-- + +"Who art thou, boy?" + +"I am the King," was the grave answer. + +The children gave a little start, and their eyes spread themselves wide +open and remained so during a speechless half minute. Then curiosity +broke the silence-- + +"The KING? What King?" + +"The King of England." + +The children looked at each other--then at him--then at each other again +--wonderingly, perplexedly; then one said-- + +"Didst hear him, Margery?--he said he is the King. Can that be true?" + +"How can it be else but true, Prissy? Would he say a lie? For look you, +Prissy, an' it were not true, it WOULD be a lie. It surely would be. +Now think on't. For all things that be not true, be lies--thou canst +make nought else out of it." + +It was a good tight argument, without a leak in it anywhere; and it left +Prissy's half-doubts not a leg to stand on. She considered a moment, +then put the King upon his honour with the simple remark-- + +"If thou art truly the King, then I believe thee." + +"I am truly the King." + +This settled the matter. His Majesty's royalty was accepted without +further question or discussion, and the two little girls began at once to +inquire into how he came to be where he was, and how he came to be so +unroyally clad, and whither he was bound, and all about his affairs. It +was a mighty relief to him to pour out his troubles where they would not +be scoffed at or doubted; so he told his tale with feeling, forgetting +even his hunger for the time; and it was received with the deepest and +tenderest sympathy by the gentle little maids. But when he got down to +his latest experiences and they learned how long he had been without +food, they cut him short and hurried him away to the farmhouse to find a +breakfast for him. + +The King was cheerful and happy now, and said to himself, "When I am come +to mine own again, I will always honour little children, remembering how +that these trusted me and believed in me in my time of trouble; whilst +they that were older, and thought themselves wiser, mocked at me and held +me for a liar." + +The children's mother received the King kindly, and was full of pity; for +his forlorn condition and apparently crazed intellect touched her womanly +heart. She was a widow, and rather poor; consequently she had seen +trouble enough to enable her to feel for the unfortunate. She imagined +that the demented boy had wandered away from his friends or keepers; so +she tried to find out whence he had come, in order that she might take +measures to return him; but all her references to neighbouring towns and +villages, and all her inquiries in the same line went for nothing--the +boy's face, and his answers, too, showed that the things she was talking +of were not familiar to him. He spoke earnestly and simply about court +matters, and broke down, more than once, when speaking of the late King +'his father'; but whenever the conversation changed to baser topics, he +lost interest and became silent. + +The woman was mightily puzzled; but she did not give up. As she +proceeded with her cooking, she set herself to contriving devices to +surprise the boy into betraying his real secret. She talked about +cattle--he showed no concern; then about sheep--the same result: so her +guess that he had been a shepherd boy was an error; she talked about +mills; and about weavers, tinkers, smiths, trades and tradesmen of all +sorts; and about Bedlam, and jails, and charitable retreats: but no +matter, she was baffled at all points. Not altogether, either; for she +argued that she had narrowed the thing down to domestic service. Yes, +she was sure she was on the right track, now; he must have been a house +servant. So she led up to that. But the result was discouraging. The +subject of sweeping appeared to weary him; fire-building failed to stir +him; scrubbing and scouring awoke no enthusiasm. The goodwife touched, +with a perishing hope, and rather as a matter of form, upon the subject +of cooking. To her surprise, and her vast delight, the King's face +lighted at once! Ah, she had hunted him down at last, she thought; and +she was right proud, too, of the devious shrewdness and tact which had +accomplished it. + +Her tired tongue got a chance to rest, now; for the King's, inspired by +gnawing hunger and the fragrant smells that came from the sputtering pots +and pans, turned itself loose and delivered itself up to such an eloquent +dissertation upon certain toothsome dishes, that within three minutes the +woman said to herself, "Of a truth I was right--he hath holpen in a +kitchen!" Then he broadened his bill of fare, and discussed it with such +appreciation and animation, that the goodwife said to herself, "Good +lack! how can he know so many dishes, and so fine ones withal? For these +belong only upon the tables of the rich and great. Ah, now I see! ragged +outcast as he is, he must have served in the palace before his reason +went astray; yes, he must have helped in the very kitchen of the King +himself! I will test him." + +Full of eagerness to prove her sagacity, she told the King to mind the +cooking a moment--hinting that he might manufacture and add a dish or +two, if he chose; then she went out of the room and gave her children a +sign to follow after. The King muttered-- + +"Another English king had a commission like to this, in a bygone time--it +is nothing against my dignity to undertake an office which the great +Alfred stooped to assume. But I will try to better serve my trust than +he; for he let the cakes burn." + +The intent was good, but the performance was not answerable to it, for +this King, like the other one, soon fell into deep thinkings concerning +his vast affairs, and the same calamity resulted--the cookery got burned. +The woman returned in time to save the breakfast from entire destruction; +and she promptly brought the King out of his dreams with a brisk and +cordial tongue-lashing. Then, seeing how troubled he was over his +violated trust, she softened at once, and was all goodness and gentleness +toward him. + +The boy made a hearty and satisfying meal, and was greatly refreshed and +gladdened by it. It was a meal which was distinguished by this curious +feature, that rank was waived on both sides; yet neither recipient of the +favour was aware that it had been extended. The goodwife had intended to +feed this young tramp with broken victuals in a corner, like any other +tramp or like a dog; but she was so remorseful for the scolding she had +given him, that she did what she could to atone for it by allowing him to +sit at the family table and eat with his betters, on ostensible terms of +equality with them; and the King, on his side, was so remorseful for +having broken his trust, after the family had been so kind to him, that +he forced himself to atone for it by humbling himself to the family +level, instead of requiring the woman and her children to stand and wait +upon him, while he occupied their table in the solitary state due to his +birth and dignity. It does us all good to unbend sometimes. This good +woman was made happy all the day long by the applauses which she got out +of herself for her magnanimous condescension to a tramp; and the King was +just as self-complacent over his gracious humility toward a humble +peasant woman. + +When breakfast was over, the housewife told the King to wash up the +dishes. This command was a staggerer, for a moment, and the King came +near rebelling; but then he said to himself, "Alfred the Great watched +the cakes; doubtless he would have washed the dishes too--therefore will +I essay it." + +He made a sufficiently poor job of it; and to his surprise too, for the +cleaning of wooden spoons and trenchers had seemed an easy thing to do. +It was a tedious and troublesome piece of work, but he finished it at +last. He was becoming impatient to get away on his journey now; however, +he was not to lose this thrifty dame's society so easily. She furnished +him some little odds and ends of employment, which he got through with +after a fair fashion and with some credit. Then she set him and the +little girls to paring some winter apples; but he was so awkward at this +service that she retired him from it and gave him a butcher knife to +grind. Afterwards she kept him carding wool until he began to think he +had laid the good King Alfred about far enough in the shade for the +present in the matter of showy menial heroisms that would read +picturesquely in story-books and histories, and so he was half-minded to +resign. And when, just after the noonday dinner, the goodwife gave him a +basket of kittens to drown, he did resign. At least he was just going to +resign--for he felt that he must draw the line somewhere, and it seemed +to him that to draw it at kitten-drowning was about the right thing--when +there was an interruption. The interruption was John Canty--with a +peddler's pack on his back--and Hugo. + +The King discovered these rascals approaching the front gate before they +had had a chance to see him; so he said nothing about drawing the line, +but took up his basket of kittens and stepped quietly out the back way, +without a word. He left the creatures in an out-house, and hurried on, +into a narrow lane at the rear. + + + +Chapter XX. The Prince and the hermit. + +The high hedge hid him from the house, now; and so, under the impulse of +a deadly fright, he let out all his forces and sped toward a wood in the +distance. He never looked back until he had almost gained the shelter of +the forest; then he turned and descried two figures in the distance. +That was sufficient; he did not wait to scan them critically, but hurried +on, and never abated his pace till he was far within the twilight depths +of the wood. Then he stopped; being persuaded that he was now tolerably +safe. He listened intently, but the stillness was profound and solemn +--awful, even, and depressing to the spirits. At wide intervals his +straining ear did detect sounds, but they were so remote, and hollow, and +mysterious, that they seemed not to be real sounds, but only the moaning +and complaining ghosts of departed ones. So the sounds were yet more +dreary than the silence which they interrupted. + +It was his purpose, in the beginning, to stay where he was the rest of +the day; but a chill soon invaded his perspiring body, and he was at last +obliged to resume movement in order to get warm. He struck straight +through the forest, hoping to pierce to a road presently, but he was +disappointed in this. He travelled on and on; but the farther he went, +the denser the wood became, apparently. The gloom began to thicken, +by-and-by, and the King realised that the night was coming on. It made +him shudder to think of spending it in such an uncanny place; so he tried +to hurry faster, but he only made the less speed, for he could not now +see well enough to choose his steps judiciously; consequently he kept +tripping over roots and tangling himself in vines and briers. + +And how glad he was when at last he caught the glimmer of a light! He +approached it warily, stopping often to look about him and listen. It +came from an unglazed window-opening in a shabby little hut. He heard a +voice, now, and felt a disposition to run and hide; but he changed his +mind at once, for this voice was praying, evidently. He glided to the +one window of the hut, raised himself on tiptoe, and stole a glance +within. The room was small; its floor was the natural earth, beaten hard +by use; in a corner was a bed of rushes and a ragged blanket or two; near +it was a pail, a cup, a basin, and two or three pots and pans; there was +a short bench and a three-legged stool; on the hearth the remains of a +faggot fire were smouldering; before a shrine, which was lighted by a +single candle, knelt an aged man, and on an old wooden box at his side +lay an open book and a human skull. The man was of large, bony frame; +his hair and whiskers were very long and snowy white; he was clothed in a +robe of sheepskins which reached from his neck to his heels. + +"A holy hermit!" said the King to himself; "now am I indeed fortunate." + +The hermit rose from his knees; the King knocked. A deep voice +responded-- + +"Enter!--but leave sin behind, for the ground whereon thou shalt stand is +holy!" + +The King entered, and paused. The hermit turned a pair of gleaming, +unrestful eyes upon him, and said-- + +"Who art thou?" + +"I am the King," came the answer, with placid simplicity. + +"Welcome, King!" cried the hermit, with enthusiasm. Then, bustling about +with feverish activity, and constantly saying, "Welcome, welcome," he +arranged his bench, seated the King on it, by the hearth, threw some +faggots on the fire, and finally fell to pacing the floor with a nervous +stride. + +"Welcome! Many have sought sanctuary here, but they were not worthy, and +were turned away. But a King who casts his crown away, and despises the +vain splendours of his office, and clothes his body in rags, to devote +his life to holiness and the mortification of the flesh--he is worthy, he +is welcome!--here shall he abide all his days till death come." The King +hastened to interrupt and explain, but the hermit paid no attention to +him--did not even hear him, apparently, but went right on with his talk, +with a raised voice and a growing energy. "And thou shalt be at peace +here. None shall find out thy refuge to disquiet thee with supplications +to return to that empty and foolish life which God hath moved thee to +abandon. Thou shalt pray here; thou shalt study the Book; thou shalt +meditate upon the follies and delusions of this world, and upon the +sublimities of the world to come; thou shalt feed upon crusts and herbs, +and scourge thy body with whips, daily, to the purifying of thy soul. +Thou shalt wear a hair shirt next thy skin; thou shalt drink water only; +and thou shalt be at peace; yes, wholly at peace; for whoso comes to seek +thee shall go his way again, baffled; he shall not find thee, he shall +not molest thee." + +The old man, still pacing back and forth, ceased to speak aloud, and +began to mutter. The King seized this opportunity to state his case; and +he did it with an eloquence inspired by uneasiness and apprehension. But +the hermit went on muttering, and gave no heed. And still muttering, he +approached the King and said impressively-- + +"'Sh! I will tell you a secret!" He bent down to impart it, but checked +himself, and assumed a listening attitude. After a moment or two he went +on tiptoe to the window-opening, put his head out, and peered around in +the gloaming, then came tiptoeing back again, put his face close down to +the King's, and whispered-- + +"I am an archangel!" + +The King started violently, and said to himself, "Would God I were with +the outlaws again; for lo, now am I the prisoner of a madman!" His +apprehensions were heightened, and they showed plainly in his face. In a +low excited voice the hermit continued-- + +"I see you feel my atmosphere! There's awe in your face! None may be in +this atmosphere and not be thus affected; for it is the very atmosphere +of heaven. I go thither and return, in the twinkling of an eye. I was +made an archangel on this very spot, it is five years ago, by angels sent +from heaven to confer that awful dignity. Their presence filled this +place with an intolerable brightness. And they knelt to me, King! yes, +they knelt to me! for I was greater than they. I have walked in the +courts of heaven, and held speech with the patriarchs. Touch my hand--be +not afraid--touch it. There--now thou hast touched a hand which has been +clasped by Abraham and Isaac and Jacob! For I have walked in the golden +courts; I have seen the Deity face to face!" He paused, to give this +speech effect; then his face suddenly changed, and he started to his feet +again saying, with angry energy, "Yes, I am an archangel; A MERE +ARCHANGEL!--I that might have been pope! It is verily true. I was told +it from heaven in a dream, twenty years ago; ah, yes, I was to be pope! +--and I SHOULD have been pope, for Heaven had said it--but the King +dissolved my religious house, and I, poor obscure unfriended monk, was +cast homeless upon the world, robbed of my mighty destiny!" Here he began +to mumble again, and beat his forehead in futile rage, with his fist; now +and then articulating a venomous curse, and now and then a pathetic +"Wherefore I am nought but an archangel--I that should have been pope!" + +So he went on, for an hour, whilst the poor little King sat and suffered. +Then all at once the old man's frenzy departed, and he became all +gentleness. His voice softened, he came down out of his clouds, and fell +to prattling along so simply and so humanly, that he soon won the King's +heart completely. The old devotee moved the boy nearer to the fire and +made him comfortable; doctored his small bruises and abrasions with a +deft and tender hand; and then set about preparing and cooking a supper +--chatting pleasantly all the time, and occasionally stroking the lad's +cheek or patting his head, in such a gently caressing way that in a +little while all the fear and repulsion inspired by the archangel were +changed to reverence and affection for the man. + +This happy state of things continued while the two ate the supper; then, +after a prayer before the shrine, the hermit put the boy to bed, in a +small adjoining room, tucking him in as snugly and lovingly as a mother +might; and so, with a parting caress, left him and sat down by the fire, +and began to poke the brands about in an absent and aimless way. +Presently he paused; then tapped his forehead several times with his +fingers, as if trying to recall some thought which had escaped from his +mind. Apparently he was unsuccessful. Now he started quickly up, and +entered his guest's room, and said-- + +"Thou art King?" + +"Yes," was the response, drowsily uttered. + +"What King?" + +"Of England." + +"Of England? Then Henry is gone!" + +"Alack, it is so. I am his son." + +A black frown settled down upon the hermit's face, and he clenched his +bony hands with a vindictive energy. He stood a few moments, breathing +fast and swallowing repeatedly, then said in a husky voice-- + +"Dost know it was he that turned us out into the world houseless and +homeless?" + +There was no response. The old man bent down and scanned the boy's +reposeful face and listened to his placid breathing. "He sleeps--sleeps +soundly;" and the frown vanished away and gave place to an expression of +evil satisfaction. A smile flitted across the dreaming boy's features. +The hermit muttered, "So--his heart is happy;" and he turned away. He +went stealthily about the place, seeking here and there for something; +now and then halting to listen, now and then jerking his head around and +casting a quick glance toward the bed; and always muttering, always +mumbling to himself. At last he found what he seemed to want--a rusty +old butcher knife and a whetstone. Then he crept to his place by the +fire, sat himself down, and began to whet the knife softly on the stone, +still muttering, mumbling, ejaculating. The winds sighed around the +lonely place, the mysterious voices of the night floated by out of the +distances. The shining eyes of venturesome mice and rats peered out at +the old man from cracks and coverts, but he went on with his work, rapt, +absorbed, and noted none of these things. + +At long intervals he drew his thumb along the edge of his knife, and +nodded his head with satisfaction. "It grows sharper," he said; "yes, it +grows sharper." + +He took no note of the flight of time, but worked tranquilly on, +entertaining himself with his thoughts, which broke out occasionally in +articulate speech-- + +"His father wrought us evil, he destroyed us--and is gone down into the +eternal fires! Yes, down into the eternal fires! He escaped us--but it +was God's will, yes it was God's will, we must not repine. But he hath +not escaped the fires! No, he hath not escaped the fires, the consuming, +unpitying, remorseless fires--and THEY are everlasting!" + +And so he wrought, and still wrought--mumbling, chuckling a low rasping +chuckle at times--and at times breaking again into words-- + +"It was his father that did it all. I am but an archangel; but for him I +should be pope!" + +The King stirred. The hermit sprang noiselessly to the bedside, and went +down upon his knees, bending over the prostrate form with his knife +uplifted. The boy stirred again; his eyes came open for an instant, but +there was no speculation in them, they saw nothing; the next moment his +tranquil breathing showed that his sleep was sound once more. + +The hermit watched and listened, for a time, keeping his position and +scarcely breathing; then he slowly lowered his arms, and presently crept +away, saying,-- + +"It is long past midnight; it is not best that he should cry out, lest by +accident someone be passing." + +He glided about his hovel, gathering a rag here, a thong there, and +another one yonder; then he returned, and by careful and gentle handling +he managed to tie the King's ankles together without waking him. Next he +essayed to tie the wrists; he made several attempts to cross them, but +the boy always drew one hand or the other away, just as the cord was +ready to be applied; but at last, when the archangel was almost ready to +despair, the boy crossed his hands himself, and the next moment they were +bound. Now a bandage was passed under the sleeper's chin and brought up +over his head and tied fast--and so softly, so gradually, and so deftly +were the knots drawn together and compacted, that the boy slept +peacefully through it all without stirring. + + + +Chapter XXI. Hendon to the rescue. + +The old man glided away, stooping, stealthy, cat-like, and brought the +low bench. He seated himself upon it, half his body in the dim and +flickering light, and the other half in shadow; and so, with his craving +eyes bent upon the slumbering boy, he kept his patient vigil there, +heedless of the drift of time, and softly whetted his knife, and mumbled +and chuckled; and in aspect and attitude he resembled nothing so much as +a grizzly, monstrous spider, gloating over some hapless insect that lay +bound and helpless in his web. + +After a long while, the old man, who was still gazing,--yet not seeing, +his mind having settled into a dreamy abstraction,--observed, on a +sudden, that the boy's eyes were open! wide open and staring!--staring up +in frozen horror at the knife. The smile of a gratified devil crept over +the old man's face, and he said, without changing his attitude or his +occupation-- + +"Son of Henry the Eighth, hast thou prayed?" + +The boy struggled helplessly in his bonds, and at the same time forced a +smothered sound through his closed jaws, which the hermit chose to +interpret as an affirmative answer to his question. + +"Then pray again. Pray the prayer for the dying!" + +A shudder shook the boy's frame, and his face blenched. Then he +struggled again to free himself--turning and twisting himself this way +and that; tugging frantically, fiercely, desperately--but uselessly--to +burst his fetters; and all the while the old ogre smiled down upon him, +and nodded his head, and placidly whetted his knife; mumbling, from time +to time, "The moments are precious, they are few and precious--pray the +prayer for the dying!" + +The boy uttered a despairing groan, and ceased from his struggles, +panting. The tears came, then, and trickled, one after the other, down +his face; but this piteous sight wrought no softening effect upon the +savage old man. + +The dawn was coming now; the hermit observed it, and spoke up sharply, +with a touch of nervous apprehension in his voice-- + +"I may not indulge this ecstasy longer! The night is already gone. It +seems but a moment--only a moment; would it had endured a year! Seed of +the Church's spoiler, close thy perishing eyes, an' thou fearest to look +upon--" + +The rest was lost in inarticulate mutterings. The old man sank upon his +knees, his knife in his hand, and bent himself over the moaning boy. + +Hark! There was a sound of voices near the cabin--the knife dropped from +the hermit's hand; he cast a sheepskin over the boy and started up, +trembling. The sounds increased, and presently the voices became rough +and angry; then came blows, and cries for help; then a clatter of swift +footsteps, retreating. Immediately came a succession of thundering +knocks upon the cabin door, followed by-- + +"Hullo-o-o! Open! And despatch, in the name of all the devils!" + +Oh, this was the blessedest sound that had ever made music in the King's +ears; for it was Miles Hendon's voice! + +The hermit, grinding his teeth in impotent rage, moved swiftly out of the +bedchamber, closing the door behind him; and straightway the King heard a +talk, to this effect, proceeding from the 'chapel':-- + +"Homage and greeting, reverend sir! Where is the boy--MY boy?" + +"What boy, friend?" + +"What boy! Lie me no lies, sir priest, play me no deceptions!--I am not +in the humour for it. Near to this place I caught the scoundrels who I +judged did steal him from me, and I made them confess; they said he was +at large again, and they had tracked him to your door. They showed me +his very footprints. Now palter no more; for look you, holy sir, an' +thou produce him not--Where is the boy?" + +"O good sir, peradventure you mean the ragged regal vagrant that tarried +here the night. If such as you take an interest in such as he, know, +then, that I have sent him of an errand. He will be back anon." + +"How soon? How soon? Come, waste not the time--cannot I overtake him? +How soon will he be back?" + +"Thou need'st not stir; he will return quickly." + +"So be it, then. I will try to wait. But stop!--YOU sent him of an +errand?--you! Verily this is a lie--he would not go. He would pull thy +old beard, an' thou didst offer him such an insolence. Thou hast lied, +friend; thou hast surely lied! He would not go for thee, nor for any +man." + +"For any MAN--no; haply not. But I am not a man." + +"WHAT! Now o' God's name what art thou, then?" + +"It is a secret--mark thou reveal it not. I am an archangel!" + +There was a tremendous ejaculation from Miles Hendon--not altogether +unprofane--followed by-- + +"This doth well and truly account for his complaisance! Right well I +knew he would budge nor hand nor foot in the menial service of any +mortal; but, lord, even a king must obey when an archangel gives the word +o' command! Let me--'sh! What noise was that?" + +All this while the little King had been yonder, alternately quaking with +terror and trembling with hope; and all the while, too, he had thrown all +the strength he could into his anguished moanings, constantly expecting +them to reach Hendon's ear, but always realising, with bitterness, that +they failed, or at least made no impression. So this last remark of his +servant came as comes a reviving breath from fresh fields to the dying; +and he exerted himself once more, and with all his energy, just as the +hermit was saying-- + +"Noise? I heard only the wind." + +"Mayhap it was. Yes, doubtless that was it. I have been hearing it +faintly all the--there it is again! It is not the wind! What an odd +sound! Come, we will hunt it out!" + +Now the King's joy was nearly insupportable. His tired lungs did their +utmost--and hopefully, too--but the sealed jaws and the muffling +sheepskin sadly crippled the effort. Then the poor fellow's heart sank, +to hear the hermit say-- + +"Ah, it came from without--I think from the copse yonder. Come, I will +lead the way." + +The King heard the two pass out, talking; heard their footsteps die +quickly away--then he was alone with a boding, brooding, awful silence. + +It seemed an age till he heard the steps and voices approaching again +--and this time he heard an added sound,--the trampling of hoofs, +apparently. Then he heard Hendon say-- + +"I will not wait longer. I CANNOT wait longer. He has lost his way in +this thick wood. Which direction took he? Quick--point it out to me." + +"He--but wait; I will go with thee." + +"Good--good! Why, truly thou art better than thy looks. Marry I do not +think there's not another archangel with so right a heart as thine. Wilt +ride? Wilt take the wee donkey that's for my boy, or wilt thou fork thy +holy legs over this ill-conditioned slave of a mule that I have provided +for myself?--and had been cheated in too, had he cost but the indifferent +sum of a month's usury on a brass farthing let to a tinker out of work." + +"No--ride thy mule, and lead thine ass; I am surer on mine own feet, and +will walk." + +"Then prithee mind the little beast for me while I take my life in my +hands and make what success I may toward mounting the big one." + +Then followed a confusion of kicks, cuffs, tramplings and plungings, +accompanied by a thunderous intermingling of volleyed curses, and finally +a bitter apostrophe to the mule, which must have broken its spirit, for +hostilities seemed to cease from that moment. + +With unutterable misery the fettered little King heard the voices and +footsteps fade away and die out. All hope forsook him, now, for the +moment, and a dull despair settled down upon his heart. "My only friend +is deceived and got rid of," he said; "the hermit will return and--" He +finished with a gasp; and at once fell to struggling so frantically with +his bonds again, that he shook off the smothering sheepskin. + +And now he heard the door open! The sound chilled him to the marrow +--already he seemed to feel the knife at his throat. Horror made him close +his eyes; horror made him open them again--and before him stood John +Canty and Hugo! + +He would have said "Thank God!" if his jaws had been free. + +A moment or two later his limbs were at liberty, and his captors, each +gripping him by an arm, were hurrying him with all speed through the +forest. + + + +Chapter XXII. A victim of treachery. + +Once more 'King Foo-foo the First' was roving with the tramps and +outlaws, a butt for their coarse jests and dull-witted railleries, and +sometimes the victim of small spitefulness at the hands of Canty and Hugo +when the Ruffler's back was turned. None but Canty and Hugo really +disliked him. Some of the others liked him, and all admired his pluck +and spirit. During two or three days, Hugo, in whose ward and charge the +King was, did what he covertly could to make the boy uncomfortable; and +at night, during the customary orgies, he amused the company by putting +small indignities upon him--always as if by accident. Twice he stepped +upon the King's toes--accidentally--and the King, as became his royalty, +was contemptuously unconscious of it and indifferent to it; but the third +time Hugo entertained himself in that way, the King felled him to the +ground with a cudgel, to the prodigious delight of the tribe. Hugo, +consumed with anger and shame, sprang up, seized a cudgel, and came at +his small adversary in a fury. Instantly a ring was formed around the +gladiators, and the betting and cheering began. But poor Hugo stood no +chance whatever. His frantic and lubberly 'prentice-work found but a +poor market for itself when pitted against an arm which had been trained +by the first masters of Europe in single-stick, quarter-staff, and every +art and trick of swordsmanship. The little King stood, alert but at +graceful ease, and caught and turned aside the thick rain of blows with a +facility and precision which set the motley on-lookers wild with +admiration; and every now and then, when his practised eye detected an +opening, and a lightning-swift rap upon Hugo's head followed as a result, +the storm of cheers and laughter that swept the place was something +wonderful to hear. At the end of fifteen minutes, Hugo, all battered, +bruised, and the target for a pitiless bombardment of ridicule, slunk +from the field; and the unscathed hero of the fight was seized and borne +aloft upon the shoulders of the joyous rabble to the place of honour +beside the Ruffler, where with vast ceremony he was crowned King of the +Game-Cocks; his meaner title being at the same time solemnly cancelled +and annulled, and a decree of banishment from the gang pronounced against +any who should thenceforth utter it. + +All attempts to make the King serviceable to the troop had failed. He had +stubbornly refused to act; moreover, he was always trying to escape. He +had been thrust into an unwatched kitchen, the first day of his return; +he not only came forth empty-handed, but tried to rouse the housemates. +He was sent out with a tinker to help him at his work; he would not work; +moreover, he threatened the tinker with his own soldering-iron; and +finally both Hugo and the tinker found their hands full with the mere +matter of keeping his from getting away. He delivered the thunders of +his royalty upon the heads of all who hampered his liberties or tried to +force him to service. He was sent out, in Hugo's charge, in company with +a slatternly woman and a diseased baby, to beg; but the result was not +encouraging--he declined to plead for the mendicants, or be a party to +their cause in any way. + +Thus several days went by; and the miseries of this tramping life, and +the weariness and sordidness and meanness and vulgarity of it, became +gradually and steadily so intolerable to the captive that he began at +last to feel that his release from the hermit's knife must prove only a +temporary respite from death, at best. + +But at night, in his dreams, these things were forgotten, and he was on +his throne, and master again. This, of course, intensified the +sufferings of the awakening--so the mortifications of each succeeding +morning of the few that passed between his return to bondage and the +combat with Hugo, grew bitterer and bitterer, and harder and harder to +bear. + +The morning after that combat, Hugo got up with a heart filled with +vengeful purposes against the King. He had two plans, in particular. +One was to inflict upon the lad what would be, to his proud spirit and +'imagined' royalty, a peculiar humiliation; and if he failed to +accomplish this, his other plan was to put a crime of some kind upon the +King, and then betray him into the implacable clutches of the law. + +In pursuance of the first plan, he purposed to put a 'clime' upon the +King's leg; rightly judging that that would mortify him to the last and +perfect degree; and as soon as the clime should operate, he meant to get +Canty's help, and FORCE the King to expose his leg in the highway and beg +for alms. 'Clime' was the cant term for a sore, artificially created. +To make a clime, the operator made a paste or poultice of unslaked lime, +soap, and the rust of old iron, and spread it upon a piece of leather, +which was then bound tightly upon the leg. This would presently fret off +the skin, and make the flesh raw and angry-looking; blood was then rubbed +upon the limb, which, being fully dried, took on a dark and repulsive +colour. Then a bandage of soiled rags was put on in a cleverly careless +way which would allow the hideous ulcer to be seen, and move the +compassion of the passer-by. {8} + +Hugo got the help of the tinker whom the King had cowed with the +soldering-iron; they took the boy out on a tinkering tramp, and as soon +as they were out of sight of the camp they threw him down and the tinker +held him while Hugo bound the poultice tight and fast upon his leg. + +The King raged and stormed, and promised to hang the two the moment the +sceptre was in his hand again; but they kept a firm grip upon him and +enjoyed his impotent struggling and jeered at his threats. This +continued until the poultice began to bite; and in no long time its work +would have been perfected, if there had been no interruption. But there +was; for about this time the 'slave' who had made the speech denouncing +England's laws, appeared on the scene, and put an end to the enterprise, +and stripped off the poultice and bandage. + +The King wanted to borrow his deliverer's cudgel and warm the jackets of +the two rascals on the spot; but the man said no, it would bring trouble +--leave the matter till night; the whole tribe being together, then, the +outside world would not venture to interfere or interrupt. He marched +the party back to camp and reported the affair to the Ruffler, who +listened, pondered, and then decided that the King should not be again +detailed to beg, since it was plain he was worthy of something higher and +better--wherefore, on the spot he promoted him from the mendicant rank +and appointed him to steal! + +Hugo was overjoyed. He had already tried to make the King steal, and +failed; but there would be no more trouble of that sort, now, for of +course the King would not dream of defying a distinct command delivered +directly from head-quarters. So he planned a raid for that very +afternoon, purposing to get the King in the law's grip in the course of +it; and to do it, too, with such ingenious strategy, that it should seem +to be accidental and unintentional; for the King of the Game-Cocks was +popular now, and the gang might not deal over-gently with an unpopular +member who played so serious a treachery upon him as the delivering him +over to the common enemy, the law. + +Very well. All in good time Hugo strolled off to a neighbouring village +with his prey; and the two drifted slowly up and down one street after +another, the one watching sharply for a sure chance to achieve his evil +purpose, and the other watching as sharply for a chance to dart away and +get free of his infamous captivity for ever. + +Both threw away some tolerably fair-looking opportunities; for both, in +their secret hearts, were resolved to make absolutely sure work this +time, and neither meant to allow his fevered desires to seduce him into +any venture that had much uncertainty about it. + +Hugo's chance came first. For at last a woman approached who carried a +fat package of some sort in a basket. Hugo's eyes sparkled with sinful +pleasure as he said to himself, "Breath o' my life, an' I can but put +THAT upon him, 'tis good-den and God keep thee, King of the Game-Cocks!" +He waited and watched--outwardly patient, but inwardly consuming with +excitement--till the woman had passed by, and the time was ripe; then +said, in a low voice-- + +"Tarry here till I come again," and darted stealthily after the prey. + +The King's heart was filled with joy--he could make his escape, now, if +Hugo's quest only carried him far enough away. + +But he was to have no such luck. Hugo crept behind the woman, snatched +the package, and came running back, wrapping it in an old piece of +blanket which he carried on his arm. The hue and cry was raised in a +moment, by the woman, who knew her loss by the lightening of her burden, +although she had not seen the pilfering done. Hugo thrust the bundle +into the King's hands without halting, saying-- + +"Now speed ye after me with the rest, and cry 'Stop thief!' but mind ye +lead them astray!" + +The next moment Hugo turned a corner and darted down a crooked alley--and +in another moment or two he lounged into view again, looking innocent and +indifferent, and took up a position behind a post to watch results. + +The insulted King threw the bundle on the ground; and the blanket fell +away from it just as the woman arrived, with an augmenting crowd at her +heels; she seized the King's wrist with one hand, snatched up her bundle +with the other, and began to pour out a tirade of abuse upon the boy +while he struggled, without success, to free himself from her grip. + +Hugo had seen enough--his enemy was captured and the law would get him, +now--so he slipped away, jubilant and chuckling, and wended campwards, +framing a judicious version of the matter to give to the Ruffler's crew +as he strode along. + +The King continued to struggle in the woman's strong grasp, and now and +then cried out in vexation-- + +"Unhand me, thou foolish creature; it was not I that bereaved thee of thy +paltry goods." + +The crowd closed around, threatening the King and calling him names; a +brawny blacksmith in leather apron, and sleeves rolled to his elbows, +made a reach for him, saying he would trounce him well, for a lesson; but +just then a long sword flashed in the air and fell with convincing force +upon the man's arm, flat side down, the fantastic owner of it remarking +pleasantly, at the same time-- + +"Marry, good souls, let us proceed gently, not with ill blood and +uncharitable words. This is matter for the law's consideration, not +private and unofficial handling. Loose thy hold from the boy, goodwife." + +The blacksmith averaged the stalwart soldier with a glance, then went +muttering away, rubbing his arm; the woman released the boy's wrist +reluctantly; the crowd eyed the stranger unlovingly, but prudently closed +their mouths. The King sprang to his deliverer's side, with flushed +cheeks and sparkling eyes, exclaiming-- + +"Thou hast lagged sorely, but thou comest in good season, now, Sir Miles; +carve me this rabble to rags!" + + + +Chapter XXIII. The Prince a prisoner. + +Hendon forced back a smile, and bent down and whispered in the King's +ear-- + +"Softly, softly, my prince, wag thy tongue warily--nay, suffer it not to +wag at all. Trust in me--all shall go well in the end." Then he added to +himself: "SIR Miles! Bless me, I had totally forgot I was a knight! +Lord, how marvellous a thing it is, the grip his memory doth take upon +his quaint and crazy fancies! . . . An empty and foolish title is mine, +and yet it is something to have deserved it; for I think it is more +honour to be held worthy to be a spectre-knight in his Kingdom of Dreams +and Shadows, than to be held base enough to be an earl in some of the +REAL kingdoms of this world." + +The crowd fell apart to admit a constable, who approached and was about +to lay his hand upon the King's shoulder, when Hendon said-- + +"Gently, good friend, withhold your hand--he shall go peaceably; I am +responsible for that. Lead on, we will follow." + +The officer led, with the woman and her bundle; Miles and the King +followed after, with the crowd at their heels. The King was inclined to +rebel; but Hendon said to him in a low voice-- + +"Reflect, Sire--your laws are the wholesome breath of your own royalty; +shall their source resist them, yet require the branches to respect them? +Apparently one of these laws has been broken; when the King is on his +throne again, can it ever grieve him to remember that when he was +seemingly a private person he loyally sank the king in the citizen and +submitted to its authority?" + +"Thou art right; say no more; thou shalt see that whatsoever the King of +England requires a subject to suffer, under the law, he will himself +suffer while he holdeth the station of a subject." + +When the woman was called upon to testify before the justice of the +peace, she swore that the small prisoner at the bar was the person who +had committed the theft; there was none able to show the contrary, so the +King stood convicted. The bundle was now unrolled, and when the contents +proved to be a plump little dressed pig, the judge looked troubled, +whilst Hendon turned pale, and his body was thrilled with an electric +shiver of dismay; but the King remained unmoved, protected by his +ignorance. The judge meditated, during an ominous pause, then turned to +the woman, with the question-- + +"What dost thou hold this property to be worth?" + +The woman courtesied and replied-- + +"Three shillings and eightpence, your worship--I could not abate a penny +and set forth the value honestly." + +The justice glanced around uncomfortably upon the crowd, then nodded to +the constable, and said-- + +"Clear the court and close the doors." + +It was done. None remained but the two officials, the accused, the +accuser, and Miles Hendon. This latter was rigid and colourless, and on +his forehead big drops of cold sweat gathered, broke and blended +together, and trickled down his face. The judge turned to the woman +again, and said, in a compassionate voice-- + +"'Tis a poor ignorant lad, and mayhap was driven hard by hunger, for +these be grievous times for the unfortunate; mark you, he hath not an +evil face--but when hunger driveth--Good woman! dost know that when one +steals a thing above the value of thirteenpence ha'penny the law saith he +shall HANG for it?" + +The little King started, wide-eyed with consternation, but controlled +himself and held his peace; but not so the woman. She sprang to her +feet, shaking with fright, and cried out-- + +"Oh, good lack, what have I done! God-a-mercy, I would not hang the poor +thing for the whole world! Ah, save me from this, your worship--what +shall I do, what CAN I do?" + +The justice maintained his judicial composure, and simply said-- + +"Doubtless it is allowable to revise the value, since it is not yet writ +upon the record." + +"Then in God's name call the pig eightpence, and heaven bless the day +that freed my conscience of this awesome thing!" + +Miles Hendon forgot all decorum in his delight; and surprised the King +and wounded his dignity, by throwing his arms around him and hugging him. +The woman made her grateful adieux and started away with her pig; and +when the constable opened the door for her, he followed her out into the +narrow hall. The justice proceeded to write in his record book. Hendon, +always alert, thought he would like to know why the officer followed the +woman out; so he slipped softly into the dusky hall and listened. He +heard a conversation to this effect-- + +"It is a fat pig, and promises good eating; I will buy it of thee; here +is the eightpence." + +"Eightpence, indeed! Thou'lt do no such thing. It cost me three +shillings and eightpence, good honest coin of the last reign, that old +Harry that's just dead ne'er touched or tampered with. A fig for thy +eightpence!" + +"Stands the wind in that quarter? Thou wast under oath, and so swore +falsely when thou saidst the value was but eightpence. Come straightway +back with me before his worship, and answer for the crime!--and then the +lad will hang." + +"There, there, dear heart, say no more, I am content. Give me the +eightpence, and hold thy peace about the matter." + +The woman went off crying: Hendon slipped back into the court room, and +the constable presently followed, after hiding his prize in some +convenient place. The justice wrote a while longer, then read the King a +wise and kindly lecture, and sentenced him to a short imprisonment in the +common jail, to be followed by a public flogging. The astounded King +opened his mouth, and was probably going to order the good judge to be +beheaded on the spot; but he caught a warning sign from Hendon, and +succeeded in closing his mouth again before he lost anything out of it. +Hendon took him by the hand, now, made reverence to the justice, and the +two departed in the wake of the constable toward the jail. The moment +the street was reached, the inflamed monarch halted, snatched away his +hand, and exclaimed-- + +"Idiot, dost imagine I will enter a common jail ALIVE?" + +Hendon bent down and said, somewhat sharply-- + +"WILL you trust in me? Peace! and forbear to worsen our chances with +dangerous speech. What God wills, will happen; thou canst not hurry it, +thou canst not alter it; therefore wait, and be patient--'twill be time +enow to rail or rejoice when what is to happen has happened." {1} + + + +Chapter XXIV. The escape. + +The short winter day was nearly ended. The streets were deserted, save +for a few random stragglers, and these hurried straight along, with the +intent look of people who were only anxious to accomplish their errands +as quickly as possible, and then snugly house themselves from the rising +wind and the gathering twilight. They looked neither to the right nor to +the left; they paid no attention to our party, they did not even seem to +see them. Edward the Sixth wondered if the spectacle of a king on his way +to jail had ever encountered such marvellous indifference before. +By-and-by the constable arrived at a deserted market-square, and +proceeded to cross it. When he had reached the middle of it, Hendon +laid his hand upon his arm, and said in a low voice-- + +"Bide a moment, good sir, there is none in hearing, and I would say a +word to thee." + +"My duty forbids it, sir; prithee hinder me not, the night comes on." + +"Stay, nevertheless, for the matter concerns thee nearly. Turn thy back +a moment and seem not to see: LET THIS POOR LAD ESCAPE." + +"This to me, sir! I arrest thee in--" + +"Nay, be not too hasty. See thou be careful and commit no foolish +error"--then he shut his voice down to a whisper, and said in the man's +ear--"the pig thou hast purchased for eightpence may cost thee thy neck, +man!" + +The poor constable, taken by surprise, was speechless, at first, then +found his tongue and fell to blustering and threatening; but Hendon was +tranquil, and waited with patience till his breath was spent; then said-- + +"I have a liking to thee, friend, and would not willingly see thee come +to harm. Observe, I heard it all--every word. I will prove it to thee." +Then he repeated the conversation which the officer and the woman had had +together in the hall, word for word, and ended with-- + +"There--have I set it forth correctly? Should not I be able to set it +forth correctly before the judge, if occasion required?" + +The man was dumb with fear and distress, for a moment; then he rallied, +and said with forced lightness-- + +"'Tis making a mighty matter, indeed, out of a jest; I but plagued the +woman for mine amusement." + +"Kept you the woman's pig for amusement?" + +The man answered sharply-- + +"Nought else, good sir--I tell thee 'twas but a jest." + +"I do begin to believe thee," said Hendon, with a perplexing mixture of +mockery and half-conviction in his tone; "but tarry thou here a moment +whilst I run and ask his worship--for nathless, he being a man +experienced in law, in jests, in--" + +He was moving away, still talking; the constable hesitated, fidgeted, +spat out an oath or two, then cried out-- + +"Hold, hold, good sir--prithee wait a little--the judge! Why, man, he +hath no more sympathy with a jest than hath a dead corpse!--come, and we +will speak further. Ods body! I seem to be in evil case--and all for an +innocent and thoughtless pleasantry. I am a man of family; and my wife +and little ones--List to reason, good your worship: what wouldst thou +of me?" + +"Only that thou be blind and dumb and paralytic whilst one may count a +hundred thousand--counting slowly," said Hendon, with the expression of a +man who asks but a reasonable favour, and that a very little one. + +"It is my destruction!" said the constable despairingly. "Ah, be +reasonable, good sir; only look at this matter, on all its sides, and see +how mere a jest it is--how manifestly and how plainly it is so. And even +if one granted it were not a jest, it is a fault so small that e'en the +grimmest penalty it could call forth would be but a rebuke and warning +from the judge's lips." + +Hendon replied with a solemnity which chilled the air about him-- + +"This jest of thine hath a name, in law,--wot you what it is?" + +"I knew it not! Peradventure I have been unwise. I never dreamed it had +a name--ah, sweet heaven, I thought it was original." + +"Yes, it hath a name. In the law this crime is called Non compos mentis +lex talionis sic transit gloria mundi." + +"Ah, my God!" + +"And the penalty is death!" + +"God be merciful to me a sinner!" + +"By advantage taken of one in fault, in dire peril, and at thy mercy, +thou hast seized goods worth above thirteenpence ha'penny, paying but a +trifle for the same; and this, in the eye of the law, is constructive +barratry, misprision of treason, malfeasance in office, ad hominem +expurgatis in statu quo--and the penalty is death by the halter, without +ransom, commutation, or benefit of clergy." + +"Bear me up, bear me up, sweet sir, my legs do fail me! Be thou +merciful--spare me this doom, and I will turn my back and see nought that +shall happen." + +"Good! now thou'rt wise and reasonable. And thou'lt restore the pig?" + +"I will, I will indeed--nor ever touch another, though heaven send it and +an archangel fetch it. Go--I am blind for thy sake--I see nothing. I +will say thou didst break in and wrest the prisoner from my hands by +force. It is but a crazy, ancient door--I will batter it down myself +betwixt midnight and the morning." + +"Do it, good soul, no harm will come of it; the judge hath a loving +charity for this poor lad, and will shed no tears and break no jailer's +bones for his escape." + + + +Chapter XXV. Hendon Hall. + +As soon as Hendon and the King were out of sight of the constable, his +Majesty was instructed to hurry to a certain place outside the town, and +wait there, whilst Hendon should go to the inn and settle his account. +Half an hour later the two friends were blithely jogging eastward on +Hendon's sorry steeds. The King was warm and comfortable, now, for he +had cast his rags and clothed himself in the second-hand suit which +Hendon had bought on London Bridge. + +Hendon wished to guard against over-fatiguing the boy; he judged that +hard journeys, irregular meals, and illiberal measures of sleep would be +bad for his crazed mind; whilst rest, regularity, and moderate exercise +would be pretty sure to hasten its cure; he longed to see the stricken +intellect made well again and its diseased visions driven out of the +tormented little head; therefore he resolved to move by easy stages +toward the home whence he had so long been banished, instead of obeying +the impulse of his impatience and hurrying along night and day. + +When he and the King had journeyed about ten miles, they reached a +considerable village, and halted there for the night, at a good inn. +The former relations were resumed; Hendon stood behind the King's chair, +while he dined, and waited upon him; undressed him when he was ready for +bed; then took the floor for his own quarters, and slept athwart the +door, rolled up in a blanket. + +The next day, and the day after, they jogged lazily along talking over +the adventures they had met since their separation, and mightily enjoying +each other's narratives. Hendon detailed all his wide wanderings in +search of the King, and described how the archangel had led him a fool's +journey all over the forest, and taken him back to the hut, finally, when +he found he could not get rid of him. Then--he said--the old man went +into the bedchamber and came staggering back looking broken-hearted, and +saying he had expected to find that the boy had returned and laid down in +there to rest, but it was not so. Hendon had waited at the hut all day; +hope of the King's return died out, then, and he departed upon the quest +again. + +"And old Sanctum Sanctorum WAS truly sorry your highness came not back," +said Hendon; "I saw it in his face." + +"Marry I will never doubt THAT!" said the King--and then told his own +story; after which, Hendon was sorry he had not destroyed the archangel. + +During the last day of the trip, Hendon's spirits were soaring. His +tongue ran constantly. He talked about his old father, and his brother +Arthur, and told of many things which illustrated their high and generous +characters; he went into loving frenzies over his Edith, and was so +glad-hearted that he was even able to say some gentle and brotherly +things about Hugh. He dwelt a deal on the coming meeting at Hendon Hall; +what a surprise it would be to everybody, and what an outburst of +thanksgiving and delight there would be. + +It was a fair region, dotted with cottages and orchards, and the road led +through broad pasture lands whose receding expanses, marked with gentle +elevations and depressions, suggested the swelling and subsiding +undulations of the sea. In the afternoon the returning prodigal made +constant deflections from his course to see if by ascending some hillock +he might not pierce the distance and catch a glimpse of his home. At +last he was successful, and cried out excitedly-- + +"There is the village, my Prince, and there is the Hall close by! You may +see the towers from here; and that wood there--that is my father's park. +Ah, NOW thou'lt know what state and grandeur be! A house with seventy +rooms--think of that!--and seven and twenty servants! A brave lodging +for such as we, is it not so? Come, let us speed--my impatience will not +brook further delay." + +All possible hurry was made; still, it was after three o'clock before the +village was reached. The travellers scampered through it, Hendon's +tongue going all the time. "Here is the church--covered with the same +ivy--none gone, none added." "Yonder is the inn, the old Red Lion,--and +yonder is the market-place." "Here is the Maypole, and here the pump +--nothing is altered; nothing but the people, at any rate; ten years make a +change in people; some of these I seem to know, but none know me." So +his chat ran on. The end of the village was soon reached; then the +travellers struck into a crooked, narrow road, walled in with tall +hedges, and hurried briskly along it for half a mile, then passed into a +vast flower garden through an imposing gateway, whose huge stone pillars +bore sculptured armorial devices. A noble mansion was before them. + +"Welcome to Hendon Hall, my King!" exclaimed Miles. "Ah, 'tis a great +day! My father and my brother, and the Lady Edith will be so mad with +joy that they will have eyes and tongue for none but me in the first +transports of the meeting, and so thou'lt seem but coldly welcomed--but +mind it not; 'twill soon seem otherwise; for when I say thou art my ward, +and tell them how costly is my love for thee, thou'lt see them take thee +to their breasts for Miles Hendon's sake, and make their house and hearts +thy home for ever after!" + +The next moment Hendon sprang to the ground before the great door, helped +the King down, then took him by the hand and rushed within. A few steps +brought him to a spacious apartment; he entered, seated the King with +more hurry than ceremony, then ran toward a young man who sat at a +writing-table in front of a generous fire of logs. + +"Embrace me, Hugh," he cried, "and say thou'rt glad I am come again! and +call our father, for home is not home till I shall touch his hand, and +see his face, and hear his voice once more!" + +But Hugh only drew back, after betraying a momentary surprise, and bent a +grave stare upon the intruder--a stare which indicated somewhat of +offended dignity, at first, then changed, in response to some inward +thought or purpose, to an expression of marvelling curiosity, mixed with +a real or assumed compassion. Presently he said, in a mild voice-- + +"Thy wits seem touched, poor stranger; doubtless thou hast suffered +privations and rude buffetings at the world's hands; thy looks and dress +betoken it. Whom dost thou take me to be?" + +"Take thee? Prithee for whom else than whom thou art? I take thee to be +Hugh Hendon," said Miles, sharply. + +The other continued, in the same soft tone-- + +"And whom dost thou imagine thyself to be?" + +"Imagination hath nought to do with it! Dost thou pretend thou knowest +me not for thy brother Miles Hendon?" + +An expression of pleased surprise flitted across Hugh's face, and he +exclaimed-- + +"What! thou art not jesting? can the dead come to life? God be praised +if it be so! Our poor lost boy restored to our arms after all these +cruel years! Ah, it seems too good to be true, it IS too good to be +true--I charge thee, have pity, do not trifle with me! Quick--come to +the light--let me scan thee well!" + +He seized Miles by the arm, dragged him to the window, and began to +devour him from head to foot with his eyes, turning him this way and +that, and stepping briskly around him and about him to prove him from all +points of view; whilst the returned prodigal, all aglow with gladness, +smiled, laughed, and kept nodding his head and saying-- + +"Go on, brother, go on, and fear not; thou'lt find nor limb nor feature +that cannot bide the test. Scour and scan me to thy content, my good old +Hugh--I am indeed thy old Miles, thy same old Miles, thy lost brother, +is't not so? Ah, 'tis a great day--I SAID 'twas a great day! Give me +thy hand, give me thy cheek--lord, I am like to die of very joy!" + +He was about to throw himself upon his brother; but Hugh put up his hand +in dissent, then dropped his chin mournfully upon his breast, saying with +emotion-- + +"Ah, God of his mercy give me strength to bear this grievous +disappointment!" + +Miles, amazed, could not speak for a moment; then he found his tongue, +and cried out-- + +"WHAT disappointment? Am I not thy brother?" + +Hugh shook his head sadly, and said-- + +"I pray heaven it may prove so, and that other eyes may find the +resemblances that are hid from mine. Alack, I fear me the letter spoke +but too truly." + +"What letter?" + +"One that came from over sea, some six or seven years ago. It said my +brother died in battle." + +"It was a lie! Call thy father--he will know me." + +"One may not call the dead." + +"Dead?" Miles's voice was subdued, and his lips trembled. "My father +dead!--oh, this is heavy news. Half my new joy is withered now. Prithee +let me see my brother Arthur--he will know me; he will know me and +console me." + +"He, also, is dead." + +"God be merciful to me, a stricken man! Gone,--both gone--the worthy +taken and the worthless spared, in me! Ah! I crave your mercy!--do not +say the Lady Edith--" + +"Is dead? No, she lives." + +"Then, God be praised, my joy is whole again! Speed thee, brother--let +her come to me! An' SHE say I am not myself--but she will not; no, no, +SHE will know me, I were a fool to doubt it. Bring her--bring the old +servants; they, too, will know me." + +"All are gone but five--Peter, Halsey, David, Bernard, and Margaret." + +So saying, Hugh left the room. Miles stood musing a while, then began to +walk the floor, muttering-- + +"The five arch-villains have survived the two-and-twenty leal and honest +--'tis an odd thing." + +He continued walking back and forth, muttering to himself; he had +forgotten the King entirely. By-and-by his Majesty said gravely, and +with a touch of genuine compassion, though the words themselves were +capable of being interpreted ironically-- + +"Mind not thy mischance, good man; there be others in the world whose +identity is denied, and whose claims are derided. Thou hast company." + +"Ah, my King," cried Hendon, colouring slightly, "do not thou condemn me +--wait, and thou shalt see. I am no impostor--she will say it; you shall +hear it from the sweetest lips in England. I an impostor? Why, I know +this old hall, these pictures of my ancestors, and all these things that +are about us, as a child knoweth its own nursery. Here was I born and +bred, my lord; I speak the truth; I would not deceive thee; and should +none else believe, I pray thee do not THOU doubt me--I could not bear +it." + +"I do not doubt thee," said the King, with a childlike simplicity and +faith. + +"I thank thee out of my heart!" exclaimed Hendon with a fervency which +showed that he was touched. The King added, with the same gentle +simplicity-- + +"Dost thou doubt ME?" + +A guilty confusion seized upon Hendon, and he was grateful that the door +opened to admit Hugh, at that moment, and saved him the necessity of +replying. + +A beautiful lady, richly clothed, followed Hugh, and after her came +several liveried servants. The lady walked slowly, with her head bowed +and her eyes fixed upon the floor. The face was unspeakably sad. Miles +Hendon sprang forward, crying out-- + +"Oh, my Edith, my darling--" + +But Hugh waved him back, gravely, and said to the lady-- + +"Look upon him. Do you know him?" + +At the sound of Miles's voice the woman had started slightly, and her +cheeks had flushed; she was trembling now. She stood still, during an +impressive pause of several moments; then slowly lifted up her head and +looked into Hendon's eyes with a stony and frightened gaze; the blood +sank out of her face, drop by drop, till nothing remained but the grey +pallor of death; then she said, in a voice as dead as the face, "I know +him not!" and turned, with a moan and a stifled sob, and tottered out of +the room. + +Miles Hendon sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. +After a pause, his brother said to the servants-- + +"You have observed him. Do you know him?" + +They shook their heads; then the master said-- + +"The servants know you not, sir. I fear there is some mistake. You have +seen that my wife knew you not." + +"Thy WIFE!" In an instant Hugh was pinned to the wall, with an iron grip +about his throat. "Oh, thou fox-hearted slave, I see it all! Thou'st +writ the lying letter thyself, and my stolen bride and goods are its +fruit. There--now get thee gone, lest I shame mine honourable +soldiership with the slaying of so pitiful a mannikin!" + +Hugh, red-faced, and almost suffocated, reeled to the nearest chair, and +commanded the servants to seize and bind the murderous stranger. They +hesitated, and one of them said-- + +"He is armed, Sir Hugh, and we are weaponless." + +"Armed! What of it, and ye so many? Upon him, I say!" + +But Miles warned them to be careful what they did, and added-- + +"Ye know me of old--I have not changed; come on, an' it like you." + +This reminder did not hearten the servants much; they still held back. + +"Then go, ye paltry cowards, and arm yourselves and guard the doors, +whilst I send one to fetch the watch!" said Hugh. He turned at the +threshold, and said to Miles, "You'll find it to your advantage to offend +not with useless endeavours at escape." + +"Escape? Spare thyself discomfort, an' that is all that troubles thee. +For Miles Hendon is master of Hendon Hall and all its belongings. He +will remain--doubt it not." + + + +Chapter XXVI. Disowned. + +The King sat musing a few moments, then looked up and said-- + +"'Tis strange--most strange. I cannot account for it." + +"No, it is not strange, my liege. I know him, and this conduct is but +natural. He was a rascal from his birth." + +"Oh, I spake not of HIM, Sir Miles." + +"Not of him? Then of what? What is it that is strange?" + +"That the King is not missed." + +"How? Which? I doubt I do not understand." + +"Indeed? Doth it not strike you as being passing strange that the land +is not filled with couriers and proclamations describing my person and +making search for me? Is it no matter for commotion and distress that +the Head of the State is gone; that I am vanished away and lost?" + +"Most true, my King, I had forgot." Then Hendon sighed, and muttered to +himself, "Poor ruined mind--still busy with its pathetic dream." + +"But I have a plan that shall right us both--I will write a paper, in +three tongues--Latin, Greek and English--and thou shalt haste away with +it to London in the morning. Give it to none but my uncle, the Lord +Hertford; when he shall see it, he will know and say I wrote it. Then he +will send for me." + +"Might it not be best, my Prince, that we wait here until I prove myself +and make my rights secure to my domains? I should be so much the better +able then to--" + +The King interrupted him imperiously-- + +"Peace! What are thy paltry domains, thy trivial interests, contrasted +with matters which concern the weal of a nation and the integrity of a +throne?" Then, he added, in a gentle voice, as if he were sorry for his +severity, "Obey, and have no fear; I will right thee, I will make thee +whole--yes, more than whole. I shall remember, and requite." + +So saying, he took the pen, and set himself to work. Hendon contemplated +him lovingly a while, then said to himself-- + +"An' it were dark, I should think it WAS a king that spoke; there's no +denying it, when the humour's upon on him he doth thunder and lighten +like your true King; now where got he that trick? See him scribble and +scratch away contentedly at his meaningless pot-hooks, fancying them to +be Latin and Greek--and except my wit shall serve me with a lucky device +for diverting him from his purpose, I shall be forced to pretend to post +away to-morrow on this wild errand he hath invented for me." + +The next moment Sir Miles's thoughts had gone back to the recent episode. +So absorbed was he in his musings, that when the King presently handed +him the paper which he had been writing, he received it and pocketed it +without being conscious of the act. "How marvellous strange she acted," +he muttered. "I think she knew me--and I think she did NOT know me. +These opinions do conflict, I perceive it plainly; I cannot reconcile +them, neither can I, by argument, dismiss either of the two, or even +persuade one to outweigh the other. The matter standeth simply thus: +she MUST have known my face, my figure, my voice, for how could it be +otherwise? Yet she SAID she knew me not, and that is proof perfect, for +she cannot lie. But stop--I think I begin to see. Peradventure he hath +influenced her, commanded her, compelled her to lie. That is the +solution. The riddle is unriddled. She seemed dead with fear--yes, she +was under his compulsion. I will seek her; I will find her; now that he +is away, she will speak her true mind. She will remember the old times +when we were little playfellows together, and this will soften her heart, +and she will no more betray me, but will confess me. There is no +treacherous blood in her--no, she was always honest and true. She has +loved me, in those old days--this is my security; for whom one has loved, +one cannot betray." + +He stepped eagerly toward the door; at that moment it opened, and the +Lady Edith entered. She was very pale, but she walked with a firm step, +and her carriage was full of grace and gentle dignity. Her face was as +sad as before. + +Miles sprang forward, with a happy confidence, to meet her, but she +checked him with a hardly perceptible gesture, and he stopped where he +was. She seated herself, and asked him to do likewise. Thus simply did +she take the sense of old comradeship out of him, and transform him into +a stranger and a guest. The surprise of it, the bewildering +unexpectedness of it, made him begin to question, for a moment, if he WAS +the person he was pretending to be, after all. The Lady Edith said-- + +"Sir, I have come to warn you. The mad cannot be persuaded out of their +delusions, perchance; but doubtless they may be persuaded to avoid +perils. I think this dream of yours hath the seeming of honest truth to +you, and therefore is not criminal--but do not tarry here with it; for +here it is dangerous." She looked steadily into Miles's face a moment, +then added, impressively, "It is the more dangerous for that you ARE much +like what our lost lad must have grown to be if he had lived." + +"Heavens, madam, but I AM he!" + +"I truly think you think it, sir. I question not your honesty in that; I +but warn you, that is all. My husband is master in this region; his +power hath hardly any limit; the people prosper or starve, as he wills. +If you resembled not the man whom you profess to be, my husband might bid +you pleasure yourself with your dream in peace; but trust me, I know him +well; I know what he will do; he will say to all that you are but a mad +impostor, and straightway all will echo him." She bent upon Miles that +same steady look once more, and added: "If you WERE Miles Hendon, and he +knew it and all the region knew it--consider what I am saying, weigh it +well--you would stand in the same peril, your punishment would be no less +sure; he would deny you and denounce you, and none would be bold enough +to give you countenance." + +"Most truly I believe it," said Miles, bitterly. "The power that can +command one life-long friend to betray and disown another, and be obeyed, +may well look to be obeyed in quarters where bread and life are on the +stake and no cobweb ties of loyalty and honour are concerned." + +A faint tinge appeared for a moment in the lady's cheek, and she dropped +her eyes to the floor; but her voice betrayed no emotion when she +proceeded-- + +"I have warned you--I must still warn you--to go hence. This man will +destroy you, else. He is a tyrant who knows no pity. I, who am his +fettered slave, know this. Poor Miles, and Arthur, and my dear guardian, +Sir Richard, are free of him, and at rest: better that you were with +them than that you bide here in the clutches of this miscreant. Your +pretensions are a menace to his title and possessions; you have assaulted +him in his own house: you are ruined if you stay. Go--do not hesitate. +If you lack money, take this purse, I beg of you, and bribe the servants +to let you pass. Oh, be warned, poor soul, and escape while you may." + +Miles declined the purse with a gesture, and rose up and stood before +her. + +"Grant me one thing," he said. "Let your eyes rest upon mine, so that I +may see if they be steady. There--now answer me. Am I Miles Hendon?" + +"No. I know you not." + +"Swear it!" + +The answer was low, but distinct-- + +"I swear." + +"Oh, this passes belief!" + +"Fly! Why will you waste the precious time? Fly, and save yourself." + +At that moment the officers burst into the room, and a violent struggle +began; but Hendon was soon overpowered and dragged away. The King was +taken also, and both were bound and led to prison. + + + +Chapter XXVII. In prison. + +The cells were all crowded; so the two friends were chained in a large +room where persons charged with trifling offences were commonly kept. +They had company, for there were some twenty manacled and fettered +prisoners here, of both sexes and of varying ages,--an obscene and noisy +gang. The King chafed bitterly over the stupendous indignity thus put +upon his royalty, but Hendon was moody and taciturn. He was pretty +thoroughly bewildered; he had come home, a jubilant prodigal, expecting +to find everybody wild with joy over his return; and instead had got the +cold shoulder and a jail. The promise and the fulfilment differed so +widely that the effect was stunning; he could not decide whether it was +most tragic or most grotesque. He felt much as a man might who had +danced blithely out to enjoy a rainbow, and got struck by lightning. + +But gradually his confused and tormenting thoughts settled down into some +sort of order, and then his mind centred itself upon Edith. He turned +her conduct over, and examined it in all lights, but he could not make +anything satisfactory out of it. Did she know him--or didn't she know +him? It was a perplexing puzzle, and occupied him a long time; but he +ended, finally, with the conviction that she did know him, and had +repudiated him for interested reasons. He wanted to load her name with +curses now; but this name had so long been sacred to him that he found he +could not bring his tongue to profane it. + +Wrapped in prison blankets of a soiled and tattered condition, Hendon and +the King passed a troubled night. For a bribe the jailer had furnished +liquor to some of the prisoners; singing of ribald songs, fighting, +shouting, and carousing was the natural consequence. At last, a while +after midnight, a man attacked a woman and nearly killed her by beating +her over the head with his manacles before the jailer could come to the +rescue. The jailer restored peace by giving the man a sound clubbing +about the head and shoulders--then the carousing ceased; and after that, +all had an opportunity to sleep who did not mind the annoyance of the +moanings and groanings of the two wounded people. + +During the ensuing week, the days and nights were of a monotonous +sameness as to events; men whose faces Hendon remembered more or less +distinctly, came, by day, to gaze at the 'impostor' and repudiate and +insult him; and by night the carousing and brawling went on with +symmetrical regularity. However, there was a change of incident at last. +The jailer brought in an old man, and said to him-- + +"The villain is in this room--cast thy old eyes about and see if thou +canst say which is he." + +Hendon glanced up, and experienced a pleasant sensation for the first +time since he had been in the jail. He said to himself, "This is Blake +Andrews, a servant all his life in my father's family--a good honest +soul, with a right heart in his breast. That is, formerly. But none are +true now; all are liars. This man will know me--and will deny me, too, +like the rest." + +The old man gazed around the room, glanced at each face in turn, and +finally said-- + +"I see none here but paltry knaves, scum o' the streets. Which is he?" + +The jailer laughed. + +"Here," he said; "scan this big animal, and grant me an opinion." + +The old man approached, and looked Hendon over, long and earnestly, then +shook his head and said-- + +"Marry, THIS is no Hendon--nor ever was!" + +"Right! Thy old eyes are sound yet. An' I were Sir Hugh, I would take +the shabby carle and--" + +The jailer finished by lifting himself a-tip-toe with an imaginary +halter, at the same time making a gurgling noise in his throat suggestive +of suffocation. The old man said, vindictively-- + +"Let him bless God an' he fare no worse. An' _I_ had the handling o' the +villain he should roast, or I am no true man!" + +The jailer laughed a pleasant hyena laugh, and said-- + +"Give him a piece of thy mind, old man--they all do it. Thou'lt find it +good diversion." + +Then he sauntered toward his ante-room and disappeared. The old man +dropped upon his knees and whispered-- + +"God be thanked, thou'rt come again, my master! I believed thou wert +dead these seven years, and lo, here thou art alive! I knew thee the +moment I saw thee; and main hard work it was to keep a stony countenance +and seem to see none here but tuppenny knaves and rubbish o' the streets. +I am old and poor, Sir Miles; but say the word and I will go forth and +proclaim the truth though I be strangled for it." + +"No," said Hendon; "thou shalt not. It would ruin thee, and yet help but +little in my cause. But I thank thee, for thou hast given me back +somewhat of my lost faith in my kind." + +The old servant became very valuable to Hendon and the King; for he +dropped in several times a day to 'abuse' the former, and always smuggled +in a few delicacies to help out the prison bill of fare; he also +furnished the current news. Hendon reserved the dainties for the King; +without them his Majesty might not have survived, for he was not able to +eat the coarse and wretched food provided by the jailer. Andrews was +obliged to confine himself to brief visits, in order to avoid suspicion; +but he managed to impart a fair degree of information each time +--information delivered in a low voice, for Hendon's benefit, and +interlarded with insulting epithets delivered in a louder voice for the +benefit of other hearers. + +So, little by little, the story of the family came out. Arthur had been +dead six years. This loss, with the absence of news from Hendon, +impaired the father's health; he believed he was going to die, and he +wished to see Hugh and Edith settled in life before he passed away; but +Edith begged hard for delay, hoping for Miles's return; then the letter +came which brought the news of Miles's death; the shock prostrated Sir +Richard; he believed his end was very near, and he and Hugh insisted upon +the marriage; Edith begged for and obtained a month's respite, then +another, and finally a third; the marriage then took place by the +death-bed of Sir Richard. It had not proved a happy one. It was +whispered about the country that shortly after the nuptials the bride +found among her husband's papers several rough and incomplete drafts of +the fatal letter, and had accused him of precipitating the marriage--and +Sir Richard's death, too--by a wicked forgery. Tales of cruelty to the +Lady Edith and the servants were to be heard on all hands; and since the +father's death Sir Hugh had thrown off all soft disguises and become a +pitiless master toward all who in any way depended upon him and his +domains for bread. + +There was a bit of Andrew's gossip which the King listened to with a +lively interest-- + +"There is rumour that the King is mad. But in charity forbear to say _I_ +mentioned it, for 'tis death to speak of it, they say." + +His Majesty glared at the old man and said-- + +"The King is NOT mad, good man--and thou'lt find it to thy advantage to +busy thyself with matters that nearer concern thee than this seditious +prattle." + +"What doth the lad mean?" said Andrews, surprised at this brisk assault +from such an unexpected quarter. Hendon gave him a sign, and he did not +pursue his question, but went on with his budget-- + +"The late King is to be buried at Windsor in a day or two--the 16th of +the month--and the new King will be crowned at Westminster the 20th." + +"Methinks they must needs find him first," muttered his Majesty; then +added, confidently, "but they will look to that--and so also shall I." + +"In the name of--" + +But the old man got no further--a warning sign from Hendon checked his +remark. He resumed the thread of his gossip-- + +"Sir Hugh goeth to the coronation--and with grand hopes. He confidently +looketh to come back a peer, for he is high in favour with the Lord +Protector." + +"What Lord Protector?" asked his Majesty. + +"His Grace the Duke of Somerset." + +"What Duke of Somerset?" + +"Marry, there is but one--Seymour, Earl of Hertford." + +The King asked sharply-- + +"Since when is HE a duke, and Lord Protector?" + +"Since the last day of January." + +"And prithee who made him so?" + +"Himself and the Great Council--with help of the King." + +His Majesty started violently. "The KING!" he cried. "WHAT king, good +sir?" + +"What king, indeed! (God-a-mercy, what aileth the boy?) Sith we have but +one, 'tis not difficult to answer--his most sacred Majesty King Edward +the Sixth--whom God preserve! Yea, and a dear and gracious little urchin +is he, too; and whether he be mad or no--and they say he mendeth daily +--his praises are on all men's lips; and all bless him, likewise, and offer +prayers that he may be spared to reign long in England; for he began +humanely with saving the old Duke of Norfolk's life, and now is he bent +on destroying the cruellest of the laws that harry and oppress the +people." + +This news struck his Majesty dumb with amazement, and plunged him into so +deep and dismal a reverie that he heard no more of the old man's gossip. +He wondered if the 'little urchin' was the beggar-boy whom he left +dressed in his own garments in the palace. It did not seem possible that +this could be, for surely his manners and speech would betray him if he +pretended to be the Prince of Wales--then he would be driven out, and +search made for the true prince. Could it be that the Court had set up +some sprig of the nobility in his place? No, for his uncle would not +allow that--he was all-powerful and could and would crush such a +movement, of course. The boy's musings profited him nothing; the more he +tried to unriddle the mystery the more perplexed he became, the more his +head ached, and the worse he slept. His impatience to get to London grew +hourly, and his captivity became almost unendurable. + +Hendon's arts all failed with the King--he could not be comforted; but a +couple of women who were chained near him succeeded better. Under their +gentle ministrations he found peace and learned a degree of patience. He +was very grateful, and came to love them dearly and to delight in the +sweet and soothing influence of their presence. He asked them why they +were in prison, and when they said they were Baptists, he smiled, and +inquired-- + +"Is that a crime to be shut up for in a prison? Now I grieve, for I +shall lose ye--they will not keep ye long for such a little thing." + +They did not answer; and something in their faces made him uneasy. He +said, eagerly-- + +"You do not speak; be good to me, and tell me--there will be no other +punishment? Prithee tell me there is no fear of that." + +They tried to change the topic, but his fears were aroused, and he +pursued it-- + +"Will they scourge thee? No, no, they would not be so cruel! Say they +would not. Come, they WILL not, will they?" + +The women betrayed confusion and distress, but there was no avoiding an +answer, so one of them said, in a voice choked with emotion-- + +"Oh, thou'lt break our hearts, thou gentle spirit!--God will help us to +bear our--" + +"It is a confession!" the King broke in. "Then they WILL scourge thee, +the stony-hearted wretches! But oh, thou must not weep, I cannot bear +it. Keep up thy courage--I shall come to my own in time to save thee +from this bitter thing, and I will do it!" + +When the King awoke in the morning, the women were gone. + +"They are saved!" he said, joyfully; then added, despondently, "but woe +is me!--for they were my comforters." + +Each of them had left a shred of ribbon pinned to his clothing, in token +of remembrance. He said he would keep these things always; and that soon +he would seek out these dear good friends of his and take them under his +protection. + +Just then the jailer came in with some subordinates, and commanded that +the prisoners be conducted to the jail-yard. The King was overjoyed--it +would be a blessed thing to see the blue sky and breathe the fresh air +once more. He fretted and chafed at the slowness of the officers, but +his turn came at last, and he was released from his staple and ordered to +follow the other prisoners with Hendon. + +The court or quadrangle was stone-paved, and open to the sky. The +prisoners entered it through a massive archway of masonry, and were +placed in file, standing, with their backs against the wall. A rope was +stretched in front of them, and they were also guarded by their officers. +It was a chill and lowering morning, and a light snow which had fallen +during the night whitened the great empty space and added to the general +dismalness of its aspect. Now and then a wintry wind shivered through the +place and sent the snow eddying hither and thither. + +In the centre of the court stood two women, chained to posts. A glance +showed the King that these were his good friends. He shuddered, and said +to himself, "Alack, they are not gone free, as I had thought. To think +that such as these should know the lash!--in England! Ay, there's the +shame of it--not in Heathennesse, Christian England! They will be +scourged; and I, whom they have comforted and kindly entreated, must look +on and see the great wrong done; it is strange, so strange, that I, the +very source of power in this broad realm, am helpless to protect them. +But let these miscreants look well to themselves, for there is a day +coming when I will require of them a heavy reckoning for this work. For +every blow they strike now, they shall feel a hundred then." + +A great gate swung open, and a crowd of citizens poured in. They flocked +around the two women, and hid them from the King's view. A clergyman +entered and passed through the crowd, and he also was hidden. The King +now heard talking, back and forth, as if questions were being asked and +answered, but he could not make out what was said. Next there was a deal +of bustle and preparation, and much passing and repassing of officials +through that part of the crowd that stood on the further side of the +women; and whilst this proceeded a deep hush gradually fell upon the +people. + +Now, by command, the masses parted and fell aside, and the King saw a +spectacle that froze the marrow in his bones. Faggots had been piled +about the two women, and a kneeling man was lighting them! + +The women bowed their heads, and covered their faces with their hands; +the yellow flames began to climb upward among the snapping and crackling +faggots, and wreaths of blue smoke to stream away on the wind; the +clergyman lifted his hands and began a prayer--just then two young girls +came flying through the great gate, uttering piercing screams, and threw +themselves upon the women at the stake. Instantly they were torn away by +the officers, and one of them was kept in a tight grip, but the other +broke loose, saying she would die with her mother; and before she could +be stopped she had flung her arms about her mother's neck again. She was +torn away once more, and with her gown on fire. Two or three men held +her, and the burning portion of her gown was snatched off and thrown +flaming aside, she struggling all the while to free herself, and saying +she would be alone in the world, now; and begging to be allowed to die +with her mother. Both the girls screamed continually, and fought for +freedom; but suddenly this tumult was drowned under a volley of +heart-piercing shrieks of mortal agony--the King glanced from the frantic +girls to the stake, then turned away and leaned his ashen face against +the wall, and looked no more. He said, "That which I have seen, in that +one little moment, will never go out from my memory, but will abide +there; and I shall see it all the days, and dream of it all the nights, +till I die. Would God I had been blind!" + +Hendon was watching the King. He said to himself, with satisfaction, +"His disorder mendeth; he hath changed, and groweth gentler. If he had +followed his wont, he would have stormed at these varlets, and said he +was King, and commanded that the women be turned loose unscathed. Soon +his delusion will pass away and be forgotten, and his poor mind will be +whole again. God speed the day!" + +That same day several prisoners were brought in to remain over night, who +were being conveyed, under guard, to various places in the kingdom, to +undergo punishment for crimes committed. The King conversed with these +--he had made it a point, from the beginning, to instruct himself for the +kingly office by questioning prisoners whenever the opportunity offered +--and the tale of their woes wrung his heart. One of them was a poor +half-witted woman who had stolen a yard or two of cloth from a weaver +--she was to be hanged for it. Another was a man who had been accused of +stealing a horse; he said the proof had failed, and he had imagined that +he was safe from the halter; but no--he was hardly free before he was +arraigned for killing a deer in the King's park; this was proved against +him, and now he was on his way to the gallows. There was a tradesman's +apprentice whose case particularly distressed the King; this youth said +he found a hawk, one evening, that had escaped from its owner, and he +took it home with him, imagining himself entitled to it; but the court +convicted him of stealing it, and sentenced him to death. + +The King was furious over these inhumanities, and wanted Hendon to break +jail and fly with him to Westminster, so that he could mount his throne +and hold out his sceptre in mercy over these unfortunate people and save +their lives. "Poor child," sighed Hendon, "these woeful tales have +brought his malady upon him again; alack, but for this evil hap, he would +have been well in a little time." + +Among these prisoners was an old lawyer--a man with a strong face and a +dauntless mien. Three years past, he had written a pamphlet against the +Lord Chancellor, accusing him of injustice, and had been punished for it +by the loss of his ears in the pillory, and degradation from the bar, and +in addition had been fined 3,000 pounds and sentenced to imprisonment for +life. Lately he had repeated his offence; and in consequence was now +under sentence to lose WHAT REMAINED OF HIS EARS, pay a fine of 5,000 +pounds, be branded on both cheeks, and remain in prison for life. + +"These be honourable scars," he said, and turned back his grey hair and +showed the mutilated stubs of what had once been his ears. + +The King's eye burned with passion. He said-- + +"None believe in me--neither wilt thou. But no matter--within the +compass of a month thou shalt be free; and more, the laws that have +dishonoured thee, and shamed the English name, shall be swept from the +statute books. The world is made wrong; kings should go to school to +their own laws, at times, and so learn mercy." {1} + + + +Chapter XXVIII. The sacrifice. + +Meantime Miles was growing sufficiently tired of confinement and +inaction. But now his trial came on, to his great gratification, and he +thought he could welcome any sentence provided a further imprisonment +should not be a part of it. But he was mistaken about that. He was in a +fine fury when he found himself described as a 'sturdy vagabond' and +sentenced to sit two hours in the stocks for bearing that character and +for assaulting the master of Hendon Hall. His pretensions as to +brothership with his prosecutor, and rightful heirship to the Hendon +honours and estates, were left contemptuously unnoticed, as being not +even worth examination. + +He raged and threatened on his way to punishment, but it did no good; he +was snatched roughly along by the officers, and got an occasional cuff, +besides, for his irreverent conduct. + +The King could not pierce through the rabble that swarmed behind; so he +was obliged to follow in the rear, remote from his good friend and +servant. The King had been nearly condemned to the stocks himself for +being in such bad company, but had been let off with a lecture and a +warning, in consideration of his youth. When the crowd at last halted, +he flitted feverishly from point to point around its outer rim, hunting a +place to get through; and at last, after a deal of difficulty and delay, +succeeded. There sat his poor henchman in the degrading stocks, the +sport and butt of a dirty mob--he, the body servant of the King of +England! Edward had heard the sentence pronounced, but he had not +realised the half that it meant. His anger began to rise as the sense of +this new indignity which had been put upon him sank home; it jumped to +summer heat, the next moment, when he saw an egg sail through the air and +crush itself against Hendon's cheek, and heard the crowd roar its +enjoyment of the episode. He sprang across the open circle and +confronted the officer in charge, crying-- + +"For shame! This is my servant--set him free! I am the--" + +"Oh, peace!" exclaimed Hendon, in a panic, "thou'lt destroy thyself. +Mind him not, officer, he is mad." + +"Give thyself no trouble as to the matter of minding him, good man, I +have small mind to mind him; but as to teaching him somewhat, to that I +am well inclined." He turned to a subordinate and said, "Give the little +fool a taste or two of the lash, to mend his manners." + +"Half a dozen will better serve his turn," suggested Sir Hugh, who had +ridden up, a moment before, to take a passing glance at the proceedings. + +The King was seized. He did not even struggle, so paralysed was he with +the mere thought of the monstrous outrage that was proposed to be +inflicted upon his sacred person. History was already defiled with the +record of the scourging of an English king with whips--it was an +intolerable reflection that he must furnish a duplicate of that shameful +page. He was in the toils, there was no help for him; he must either +take this punishment or beg for its remission. Hard conditions; he would +take the stripes--a king might do that, but a king could not beg. + +But meantime, Miles Hendon was resolving the difficulty. "Let the child +go," said he; "ye heartless dogs, do ye not see how young and frail he +is? Let him go--I will take his lashes." + +"Marry, a good thought--and thanks for it," said Sir Hugh, his face +lighting with a sardonic satisfaction. "Let the little beggar go, and +give this fellow a dozen in his place--an honest dozen, well laid on." +The King was in the act of entering a fierce protest, but Sir Hugh +silenced him with the potent remark, "Yes, speak up, do, and free thy +mind--only, mark ye, that for each word you utter he shall get six +strokes the more." + +Hendon was removed from the stocks, and his back laid bare; and whilst +the lash was applied the poor little King turned away his face and +allowed unroyal tears to channel his cheeks unchecked. "Ah, brave good +heart," he said to himself, "this loyal deed shall never perish out of my +memory. I will not forget it--and neither shall THEY!" he added, with +passion. Whilst he mused, his appreciation of Hendon's magnanimous +conduct grew to greater and still greater dimensions in his mind, and so +also did his gratefulness for it. Presently he said to himself, "Who +saves his prince from wounds and possible death--and this he did for me +--performs high service; but it is little--it is nothing--oh, less than +nothing!--when 'tis weighed against the act of him who saves his prince +from SHAME!" + +Hendon made no outcry under the scourge, but bore the heavy blows with +soldierly fortitude. This, together with his redeeming the boy by taking +his stripes for him, compelled the respect of even that forlorn and +degraded mob that was gathered there; and its gibes and hootings died +away, and no sound remained but the sound of the falling blows. The +stillness that pervaded the place, when Hendon found himself once more in +the stocks, was in strong contrast with the insulting clamour which had +prevailed there so little a while before. The King came softly to +Hendon's side, and whispered in his ear-- + +"Kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for One who is higher +than kings hath done that for thee; but a king can confirm thy nobility +to men." He picked up the scourge from the ground, touched Hendon's +bleeding shoulders lightly with it, and whispered, "Edward of England +dubs thee Earl!" + +Hendon was touched. The water welled to his eyes, yet at the same time +the grisly humour of the situation and circumstances so undermined his +gravity that it was all he could do to keep some sign of his inward mirth +from showing outside. To be suddenly hoisted, naked and gory, from the +common stocks to the Alpine altitude and splendour of an Earldom, seemed +to him the last possibility in the line of the grotesque. He said to +himself, "Now am I finely tinselled, indeed! The spectre-knight of the +Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows is become a spectre-earl--a dizzy flight +for a callow wing! An' this go on, I shall presently be hung like a very +maypole with fantastic gauds and make-believe honours. But I shall value +them, all valueless as they are, for the love that doth bestow them. +Better these poor mock dignities of mine, that come unasked, from a clean +hand and a right spirit, than real ones bought by servility from grudging +and interested power." + +The dreaded Sir Hugh wheeled his horse about, and as he spurred away, the +living wall divided silently to let him pass, and as silently closed +together again. And so remained; nobody went so far as to venture a +remark in favour of the prisoner, or in compliment to him; but no matter +--the absence of abuse was a sufficient homage in itself. A late comer +who was not posted as to the present circumstances, and who delivered a +sneer at the 'impostor,' and was in the act of following it with a dead +cat, was promptly knocked down and kicked out, without any words, and +then the deep quiet resumed sway once more. + + + +Chapter XXIX. To London. + +When Hendon's term of service in the stocks was finished, he was released +and ordered to quit the region and come back no more. His sword was +restored to him, and also his mule and his donkey. He mounted and rode +off, followed by the King, the crowd opening with quiet respectfulness to +let them pass, and then dispersing when they were gone. + +Hendon was soon absorbed in thought. There were questions of high import +to be answered. What should he do? Whither should he go? Powerful help +must be found somewhere, or he must relinquish his inheritance and remain +under the imputation of being an impostor besides. Where could he hope +to find this powerful help? Where, indeed! It was a knotty question. +By-and-by a thought occurred to him which pointed to a possibility--the +slenderest of slender possibilities, certainly, but still worth +considering, for lack of any other that promised anything at all. He +remembered what old Andrews had said about the young King's goodness and +his generous championship of the wronged and unfortunate. Why not go and +try to get speech of him and beg for justice? Ah, yes, but could so +fantastic a pauper get admission to the august presence of a monarch? +Never mind--let that matter take care of itself; it was a bridge that +would not need to be crossed till he should come to it. He was an old +campaigner, and used to inventing shifts and expedients: no doubt he +would be able to find a way. Yes, he would strike for the capital. +Maybe his father's old friend Sir Humphrey Marlow would help him--'good +old Sir Humphrey, Head Lieutenant of the late King's kitchen, or stables, +or something'--Miles could not remember just what or which. Now that he +had something to turn his energies to, a distinctly defined object to +accomplish, the fog of humiliation and depression which had settled down +upon his spirits lifted and blew away, and he raised his head and looked +about him. He was surprised to see how far he had come; the village was +away behind him. The King was jogging along in his wake, with his head +bowed; for he, too, was deep in plans and thinkings. A sorrowful +misgiving clouded Hendon's new-born cheerfulness: would the boy be +willing to go again to a city where, during all his brief life, he had +never known anything but ill-usage and pinching want? But the question +must be asked; it could not be avoided; so Hendon reined up, and called +out-- + +"I had forgotten to inquire whither we are bound. Thy commands, my +liege!" + +"To London!" + +Hendon moved on again, mightily contented with the answer--but astounded +at it too. + +The whole journey was made without an adventure of importance. But it +ended with one. About ten o'clock on the night of the 19th of February +they stepped upon London Bridge, in the midst of a writhing, struggling +jam of howling and hurrahing people, whose beer-jolly faces stood out +strongly in the glare from manifold torches--and at that instant the +decaying head of some former duke or other grandee tumbled down between +them, striking Hendon on the elbow and then bounding off among the +hurrying confusion of feet. So evanescent and unstable are men's works in +this world!--the late good King is but three weeks dead and three days in +his grave, and already the adornments which he took such pains to select +from prominent people for his noble bridge are falling. A citizen +stumbled over that head, and drove his own head into the back of somebody +in front of him, who turned and knocked down the first person that came +handy, and was promptly laid out himself by that person's friend. It was +the right ripe time for a free fight, for the festivities of the morrow +--Coronation Day--were already beginning; everybody was full of strong +drink and patriotism; within five minutes the free fight was occupying a +good deal of ground; within ten or twelve it covered an acre of so, and +was become a riot. By this time Hendon and the King were hopelessly +separated from each other and lost in the rush and turmoil of the roaring +masses of humanity. And so we leave them. + + + +Chapter XXX. Tom's progress. + +Whilst the true King wandered about the land poorly clad, poorly fed, +cuffed and derided by tramps one while, herding with thieves and +murderers in a jail another, and called idiot and impostor by all +impartially, the mock King Tom Canty enjoyed quite a different +experience. + +When we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a bright side +for him. This bright side went on brightening more and more every day: +in a very little while it was become almost all sunshine and +delightfulness. He lost his fears; his misgivings faded out and died; +his embarrassments departed, and gave place to an easy and confident +bearing. He worked the whipping-boy mine to ever-increasing profit. + +He ordered my Lady Elizabeth and my Lady Jane Grey into his presence when +he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when he was done with them, +with the air of one familiarly accustomed to such performances. It no +longer confused him to have these lofty personages kiss his hand at +parting. + +He came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and dressed +with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning. It came to be a proud +pleasure to march to dinner attended by a glittering procession of +officers of state and gentlemen-at-arms; insomuch, indeed, that he +doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms, and made them a hundred. He +liked to hear the bugles sounding down the long corridors, and the +distant voices responding, "Way for the King!" + +He even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council, and seeming +to be something more than the Lord Protector's mouthpiece. He liked to +receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains, and listen to the +affectionate messages they brought from illustrious monarchs who called +him brother. O happy Tom Canty, late of Offal Court! + +He enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more: he found his four +hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled them. The +adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music to his ears. He +remained kind and gentle, and a sturdy and determined champion of all +that were oppressed, and he made tireless war upon unjust laws: yet upon +occasion, being offended, he could turn upon an earl, or even a duke, and +give him a look that would make him tremble. Once, when his royal +'sister,' the grimly holy Lady Mary, set herself to reason with him +against the wisdom of his course in pardoning so many people who would +otherwise be jailed, or hanged, or burned, and reminded him that their +august late father's prisons had sometimes contained as high as sixty +thousand convicts at one time, and that during his admirable reign he had +delivered seventy-two thousand thieves and robbers over to death by the +executioner, {9} the boy was filled with generous indignation, and +commanded her to go to her closet, and beseech God to take away the stone +that was in her breast, and give her a human heart. + +Did Tom Canty never feel troubled about the poor little rightful prince +who had treated him so kindly, and flown out with such hot zeal to avenge +him upon the insolent sentinel at the palace-gate? Yes; his first royal +days and nights were pretty well sprinkled with painful thoughts about +the lost prince, and with sincere longings for his return, and happy +restoration to his native rights and splendours. But as time wore on, +and the prince did not come, Tom's mind became more and more occupied +with his new and enchanting experiences, and by little and little the +vanished monarch faded almost out of his thoughts; and finally, when he +did intrude upon them at intervals, he was become an unwelcome spectre, +for he made Tom feel guilty and ashamed. + +Tom's poor mother and sisters travelled the same road out of his mind. +At first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to see them, but +later, the thought of their coming some day in their rags and dirt, and +betraying him with their kisses, and pulling him down from his lofty +place, and dragging him back to penury and degradation and the slums, +made him shudder. At last they ceased to trouble his thoughts almost +wholly. And he was content, even glad: for, whenever their mournful and +accusing faces did rise before him now, they made him feel more +despicable than the worms that crawl. + +At midnight of the 19th of February, Tom Canty was sinking to sleep in +his rich bed in the palace, guarded by his loyal vassals, and surrounded +by the pomps of royalty, a happy boy; for tomorrow was the day appointed +for his solemn crowning as King of England. At that same hour, Edward, +the true king, hungry and thirsty, soiled and draggled, worn with travel, +and clothed in rags and shreds--his share of the results of the riot--was +wedged in among a crowd of people who were watching with deep interest +certain hurrying gangs of workmen who streamed in and out of Westminster +Abbey, busy as ants: they were making the last preparation for the royal +coronation. + + + +Chapter XXXI. The Recognition procession. + +When Tom Canty awoke the next morning, the air was heavy with a +thunderous murmur: all the distances were charged with it. It was music +to him; for it meant that the English world was out in its strength to +give loyal welcome to the great day. + +Presently Tom found himself once more the chief figure in a wonderful +floating pageant on the Thames; for by ancient custom the 'recognition +procession' through London must start from the Tower, and he was bound +thither. + +When he arrived there, the sides of the venerable fortress seemed +suddenly rent in a thousand places, and from every rent leaped a red +tongue of flame and a white gush of smoke; a deafening explosion +followed, which drowned the shoutings of the multitude, and made the +ground tremble; the flame-jets, the smoke, and the explosions, were +repeated over and over again with marvellous celerity, so that in a few +moments the old Tower disappeared in the vast fog of its own smoke, all +but the very top of the tall pile called the White Tower; this, with its +banners, stood out above the dense bank of vapour as a mountain-peak +projects above a cloud-rack. + +Tom Canty, splendidly arrayed, mounted a prancing war-steed, whose rich +trappings almost reached to the ground; his 'uncle,' the Lord Protector +Somerset, similarly mounted, took place in his rear; the King's Guard +formed in single ranks on either side, clad in burnished armour; after +the Protector followed a seemingly interminable procession of resplendent +nobles attended by their vassals; after these came the lord mayor and the +aldermanic body, in crimson velvet robes, and with their gold chains +across their breasts; and after these the officers and members of all the +guilds of London, in rich raiment, and bearing the showy banners of the +several corporations. Also in the procession, as a special guard of +honour through the city, was the Ancient and Honourable Artillery +Company--an organisation already three hundred years old at that time, +and the only military body in England possessing the privilege (which it +still possesses in our day) of holding itself independent of the commands +of Parliament. It was a brilliant spectacle, and was hailed with +acclamations all along the line, as it took its stately way through the +packed multitudes of citizens. The chronicler says, 'The King, as he +entered the city, was received by the people with prayers, welcomings, +cries, and tender words, and all signs which argue an earnest love of +subjects toward their sovereign; and the King, by holding up his glad +countenance to such as stood afar off, and most tender language to those +that stood nigh his Grace, showed himself no less thankful to receive the +people's goodwill than they to offer it. To all that wished him well, he +gave thanks. To such as bade "God save his Grace," he said in return, +"God save you all!" and added that "he thanked them with all his heart." +Wonderfully transported were the people with the loving answers and +gestures of their King.' + +In Fenchurch Street a 'fair child, in costly apparel,' stood on a stage +to welcome his Majesty to the city. The last verse of his greeting was +in these words-- + +'Welcome, O King! as much as hearts can think; Welcome, again, as much as +tongue can tell,--Welcome to joyous tongues, and hearts that will not +shrink: God thee preserve, we pray, and wish thee ever well.' + +The people burst forth in a glad shout, repeating with one voice what the +child had said. Tom Canty gazed abroad over the surging sea of eager +faces, and his heart swelled with exultation; and he felt that the one +thing worth living for in this world was to be a king, and a nation's +idol. Presently he caught sight, at a distance, of a couple of his +ragged Offal Court comrades--one of them the lord high admiral in his +late mimic court, the other the first lord of the bedchamber in the same +pretentious fiction; and his pride swelled higher than ever. Oh, if they +could only recognise him now! What unspeakable glory it would be, if +they could recognise him, and realise that the derided mock king of the +slums and back alleys was become a real King, with illustrious dukes and +princes for his humble menials, and the English world at his feet! But +he had to deny himself, and choke down his desire, for such a recognition +might cost more than it would come to: so he turned away his head, and +left the two soiled lads to go on with their shoutings and glad +adulations, unsuspicious of whom it was they were lavishing them upon. + +Every now and then rose the cry, "A largess! a largess!" and Tom +responded by scattering a handful of bright new coins abroad for the +multitude to scramble for. + +The chronicler says, 'At the upper end of Gracechurch Street, before the +sign of the Eagle, the city had erected a gorgeous arch, beneath which +was a stage, which stretched from one side of the street to the other. +This was an historical pageant, representing the King's immediate +progenitors. There sat Elizabeth of York in the midst of an immense +white rose, whose petals formed elaborate furbelows around her; by her +side was Henry VII., issuing out of a vast red rose, disposed in the same +manner: the hands of the royal pair were locked together, and the +wedding-ring ostentatiously displayed. From the red and white roses +proceeded a stem, which reached up to a second stage, occupied by Henry +VIII., issuing from a red and white rose, with the effigy of the new +King's mother, Jane Seymour, represented by his side. One branch sprang +from this pair, which mounted to a third stage, where sat the effigy of +Edward VI. himself, enthroned in royal majesty; and the whole pageant was +framed with wreaths of roses, red and white.' + +This quaint and gaudy spectacle so wrought upon the rejoicing people, +that their acclamations utterly smothered the small voice of the child +whose business it was to explain the thing in eulogistic rhymes. But Tom +Canty was not sorry; for this loyal uproar was sweeter music to him than +any poetry, no matter what its quality might be. Whithersoever Tom +turned his happy young face, the people recognised the exactness of his +effigy's likeness to himself, the flesh and blood counterpart; and new +whirlwinds of applause burst forth. + +The great pageant moved on, and still on, under one triumphal arch after +another, and past a bewildering succession of spectacular and symbolical +tableaux, each of which typified and exalted some virtue, or talent, or +merit, of the little King's. 'Throughout the whole of Cheapside, from +every penthouse and window, hung banners and streamers; and the richest +carpets, stuffs, and cloth-of-gold tapestried the streets--specimens of +the great wealth of the stores within; and the splendour of this +thoroughfare was equalled in the other streets, and in some even +surpassed.' + +"And all these wonders and these marvels are to welcome me--me!" murmured +Tom Canty. + +The mock King's cheeks were flushed with excitement, his eyes were +flashing, his senses swam in a delirium of pleasure. At this point, just +as he was raising his hand to fling another rich largess, he caught sight +of a pale, astounded face, which was strained forward out of the second +rank of the crowd, its intense eyes riveted upon him. A sickening +consternation struck through him; he recognised his mother! and up flew +his hand, palm outward, before his eyes--that old involuntary gesture, +born of a forgotten episode, and perpetuated by habit. In an instant +more she had torn her way out of the press, and past the guards, and was +at his side. She embraced his leg, she covered it with kisses, she +cried, "O my child, my darling!" lifting toward him a face that was +transfigured with joy and love. The same instant an officer of the +King's Guard snatched her away with a curse, and sent her reeling back +whence she came with a vigorous impulse from his strong arm. The words +"I do not know you, woman!" were falling from Tom Canty's lips when this +piteous thing occurred; but it smote him to the heart to see her treated +so; and as she turned for a last glimpse of him, whilst the crowd was +swallowing her from his sight, she seemed so wounded, so broken-hearted, +that a shame fell upon him which consumed his pride to ashes, and +withered his stolen royalty. His grandeurs were stricken valueless: +they seemed to fall away from him like rotten rags. + +The procession moved on, and still on, through ever augmenting splendours +and ever augmenting tempests of welcome; but to Tom Canty they were as if +they had not been. He neither saw nor heard. Royalty had lost its grace +and sweetness; its pomps were become a reproach. Remorse was eating his +heart out. He said, "Would God I were free of my captivity!" + +He had unconsciously dropped back into the phraseology of the first days +of his compulsory greatness. + +The shining pageant still went winding like a radiant and interminable +serpent down the crooked lanes of the quaint old city, and through the +huzzaing hosts; but still the King rode with bowed head and vacant eyes, +seeing only his mother's face and that wounded look in it. + +"Largess, largess!" The cry fell upon an unheeding ear. + +"Long live Edward of England!" It seemed as if the earth shook with the +explosion; but there was no response from the King. He heard it only as +one hears the thunder of the surf when it is blown to the ear out of a +great distance, for it was smothered under another sound which was still +nearer, in his own breast, in his accusing conscience--a voice which kept +repeating those shameful words, "I do not know you, woman!" + +The words smote upon the King's soul as the strokes of a funeral bell +smite upon the soul of a surviving friend when they remind him of secret +treacheries suffered at his hands by him that is gone. + +New glories were unfolded at every turning; new wonders, new marvels, +sprang into view; the pent clamours of waiting batteries were released; +new raptures poured from the throats of the waiting multitudes: but the +King gave no sign, and the accusing voice that went moaning through his +comfortless breast was all the sound he heard. + +By-and-by the gladness in the faces of the populace changed a little, and +became touched with a something like solicitude or anxiety: an abatement +in the volume of the applause was observable too. The Lord Protector was +quick to notice these things: he was as quick to detect the cause. He +spurred to the King's side, bent low in his saddle, uncovered, and said-- + +"My liege, it is an ill time for dreaming. The people observe thy +downcast head, thy clouded mien, and they take it for an omen. Be +advised: unveil the sun of royalty, and let it shine upon these boding +vapours, and disperse them. Lift up thy face, and smile upon the +people." + +So saying, the Duke scattered a handful of coins to right and left, then +retired to his place. The mock King did mechanically as he had been +bidden. His smile had no heart in it, but few eyes were near enough or +sharp enough to detect that. The noddings of his plumed head as he +saluted his subjects were full of grace and graciousness; the largess +which he delivered from his hand was royally liberal: so the people's +anxiety vanished, and the acclamations burst forth again in as mighty a +volume as before. + +Still once more, a little before the progress was ended, the Duke was +obliged to ride forward, and make remonstrance. He whispered-- + +"O dread sovereign! shake off these fatal humours; the eyes of the world +are upon thee." Then he added with sharp annoyance, "Perdition catch +that crazy pauper! 'twas she that hath disturbed your Highness." + +The gorgeous figure turned a lustreless eye upon the Duke, and said in a +dead voice-- + +"She was my mother!" + +"My God!" groaned the Protector as he reined his horse backward to his +post, "the omen was pregnant with prophecy. He is gone mad again!" + + + +Chapter XXXII. Coronation Day. + +Let us go backward a few hours, and place ourselves in Westminster Abbey, +at four o'clock in the morning of this memorable Coronation Day. We are +not without company; for although it is still night, we find the +torch-lighted galleries already filling up with people who are well +content to sit still and wait seven or eight hours till the time shall +come for them to see what they may not hope to see twice in their lives +--the coronation of a King. Yes, London and Westminster have been astir +ever since the warning guns boomed at three o'clock, and already crowds +of untitled rich folk who have bought the privilege of trying to find +sitting-room in the galleries are flocking in at the entrances reserved +for their sort. + +The hours drag along tediously enough. All stir has ceased for some +time, for every gallery has long ago been packed. We may sit, now, and +look and think at our leisure. We have glimpses, here and there and +yonder, through the dim cathedral twilight, of portions of many galleries +and balconies, wedged full with other people, the other portions of these +galleries and balconies being cut off from sight by intervening pillars +and architectural projections. We have in view the whole of the great +north transept--empty, and waiting for England's privileged ones. We see +also the ample area or platform, carpeted with rich stuffs, whereon the +throne stands. The throne occupies the centre of the platform, and is +raised above it upon an elevation of four steps. Within the seat of the +throne is enclosed a rough flat rock--the stone of Scone--which many +generations of Scottish kings sat on to be crowned, and so it in time +became holy enough to answer a like purpose for English monarchs. Both +the throne and its footstool are covered with cloth of gold. + +Stillness reigns, the torches blink dully, the time drags heavily. But at +last the lagging daylight asserts itself, the torches are extinguished, +and a mellow radiance suffuses the great spaces. All features of the +noble building are distinct now, but soft and dreamy, for the sun is +lightly veiled with clouds. + +At seven o'clock the first break in the drowsy monotony occurs; for on +the stroke of this hour the first peeress enters the transept, clothed +like Solomon for splendour, and is conducted to her appointed place by an +official clad in satins and velvets, whilst a duplicate of him gathers up +the lady's long train, follows after, and, when the lady is seated, +arranges the train across her lap for her. He then places her footstool +according to her desire, after which he puts her coronet where it will be +convenient to her hand when the time for the simultaneous coroneting of +the nobles shall arrive. + +By this time the peeresses are flowing in in a glittering stream, and the +satin-clad officials are flitting and glinting everywhere, seating them +and making them comfortable. The scene is animated enough now. There is +stir and life, and shifting colour everywhere. After a time, quiet +reigns again; for the peeresses are all come and are all in their places, +a solid acre or such a matter, of human flowers, resplendent in +variegated colours, and frosted like a Milky Way with diamonds. There +are all ages here: brown, wrinkled, white-haired dowagers who are able to +go back, and still back, down the stream of time, and recall the crowning +of Richard III. and the troublous days of that old forgotten age; and +there are handsome middle-aged dames; and lovely and gracious young +matrons; and gentle and beautiful young girls, with beaming eyes and +fresh complexions, who may possibly put on their jewelled coronets +awkwardly when the great time comes; for the matter will be new to them, +and their excitement will be a sore hindrance. Still, this may not +happen, for the hair of all these ladies has been arranged with a special +view to the swift and successful lodging of the crown in its place when +the signal comes. + +We have seen that this massed array of peeresses is sown thick with +diamonds, and we also see that it is a marvellous spectacle--but now we +are about to be astonished in earnest. About nine, the clouds suddenly +break away and a shaft of sunshine cleaves the mellow atmosphere, and +drifts slowly along the ranks of ladies; and every rank it touches flames +into a dazzling splendour of many-coloured fires, and we tingle to our +finger-tips with the electric thrill that is shot through us by the +surprise and the beauty of the spectacle! Presently a special envoy from +some distant corner of the Orient, marching with the general body of +foreign ambassadors, crosses this bar of sunshine, and we catch our +breath, the glory that streams and flashes and palpitates about him is so +overpowering; for he is crusted from head to heel with gems, and his +slightest movement showers a dancing radiance all around him. + +Let us change the tense for convenience. The time drifted along--one +hour--two hours--two hours and a half; then the deep booming of artillery +told that the King and his grand procession had arrived at last; so the +waiting multitude rejoiced. All knew that a further delay must follow, +for the King must be prepared and robed for the solemn ceremony; but this +delay would be pleasantly occupied by the assembling of the peers of the +realm in their stately robes. These were conducted ceremoniously to +their seats, and their coronets placed conveniently at hand; and +meanwhile the multitude in the galleries were alive with interest, for +most of them were beholding for the first time, dukes, earls, and barons, +whose names had been historical for five hundred years. When all were +finally seated, the spectacle from the galleries and all coigns of +vantage was complete; a gorgeous one to look upon and to remember. + +Now the robed and mitred great heads of the church, and their attendants, +filed in upon the platform and took their appointed places; these were +followed by the Lord Protector and other great officials, and these again +by a steel-clad detachment of the Guard. + +There was a waiting pause; then, at a signal, a triumphant peal of music +burst forth, and Tom Canty, clothed in a long robe of cloth of gold, +appeared at a door, and stepped upon the platform. The entire multitude +rose, and the ceremony of the Recognition ensued. + +Then a noble anthem swept the Abbey with its rich waves of sound; and +thus heralded and welcomed, Tom Canty was conducted to the throne. The +ancient ceremonies went on, with impressive solemnity, whilst the +audience gazed; and as they drew nearer and nearer to completion, Tom +Canty grew pale, and still paler, and a deep and steadily deepening woe +and despondency settled down upon his spirits and upon his remorseful +heart. + +At last the final act was at hand. The Archbishop of Canterbury lifted +up the crown of England from its cushion and held it out over the +trembling mock-King's head. In the same instant a rainbow-radiance +flashed along the spacious transept; for with one impulse every +individual in the great concourse of nobles lifted a coronet and poised +it over his or her head--and paused in that attitude. + +A deep hush pervaded the Abbey. At this impressive moment, a startling +apparition intruded upon the scene--an apparition observed by none in the +absorbed multitude, until it suddenly appeared, moving up the great +central aisle. It was a boy, bareheaded, ill shod, and clothed in coarse +plebeian garments that were falling to rags. He raised his hand with a +solemnity which ill comported with his soiled and sorry aspect, and +delivered this note of warning-- + +"I forbid you to set the crown of England upon that forfeited head. I am +the King!" + +In an instant several indignant hands were laid upon the boy; but in the +same instant Tom Canty, in his regal vestments, made a swift step +forward, and cried out in a ringing voice-- + +"Loose him and forbear! He IS the King!" + +A sort of panic of astonishment swept the assemblage, and they partly +rose in their places and stared in a bewildered way at one another and at +the chief figures in this scene, like persons who wondered whether they +were awake and in their senses, or asleep and dreaming. The Lord +Protector was as amazed as the rest, but quickly recovered himself, and +exclaimed in a voice of authority-- + +"Mind not his Majesty, his malady is upon him again--seize the vagabond!" + +He would have been obeyed, but the mock-King stamped his foot and cried +out-- + +"On your peril! Touch him not, he is the King!" + +The hands were withheld; a paralysis fell upon the house; no one moved, +no one spoke; indeed, no one knew how to act or what to say, in so +strange and surprising an emergency. While all minds were struggling to +right themselves, the boy still moved steadily forward, with high port +and confident mien; he had never halted from the beginning; and while the +tangled minds still floundered helplessly, he stepped upon the platform, +and the mock-King ran with a glad face to meet him; and fell on his knees +before him and said-- + +"Oh, my lord the King, let poor Tom Canty be first to swear fealty to +thee, and say, 'Put on thy crown and enter into thine own again!'" + +The Lord Protector's eye fell sternly upon the new-comer's face; but +straightway the sternness vanished away, and gave place to an expression +of wondering surprise. This thing happened also to the other great +officers. They glanced at each other, and retreated a step by a common +and unconscious impulse. The thought in each mind was the same: "What a +strange resemblance!" + +The Lord Protector reflected a moment or two in perplexity, then he said, +with grave respectfulness-- + +"By your favour, sir, I desire to ask certain questions which--" + +"I will answer them, my lord." + +The Duke asked him many questions about the Court, the late King, the +prince, the princesses--the boy answered them correctly and without +hesitating. He described the rooms of state in the palace, the late +King's apartments, and those of the Prince of Wales. + +It was strange; it was wonderful; yes, it was unaccountable--so all said +that heard it. The tide was beginning to turn, and Tom Canty's hopes to +run high, when the Lord Protector shook his head and said-- + +"It is true it is most wonderful--but it is no more than our lord the +King likewise can do." This remark, and this reference to himself as +still the King, saddened Tom Canty, and he felt his hopes crumbling from +under him. "These are not PROOFS," added the Protector. + +The tide was turning very fast now, very fast indeed--but in the wrong +direction; it was leaving poor Tom Canty stranded on the throne, and +sweeping the other out to sea. The Lord Protector communed with himself +--shook his head--the thought forced itself upon him, "It is perilous to +the State and to us all, to entertain so fateful a riddle as this; it +could divide the nation and undermine the throne." He turned and said-- + +"Sir Thomas, arrest this--No, hold!" His face lighted, and he confronted +the ragged candidate with this question-- + +"Where lieth the Great Seal? Answer me this truly, and the riddle is +unriddled; for only he that was Prince of Wales CAN so answer! On so +trivial a thing hang a throne and a dynasty!" + +It was a lucky thought, a happy thought. That it was so considered by +the great officials was manifested by the silent applause that shot from +eye to eye around their circle in the form of bright approving glances. +Yes, none but the true prince could dissolve the stubborn mystery of the +vanished Great Seal--this forlorn little impostor had been taught his +lesson well, but here his teachings must fail, for his teacher himself +could not answer THAT question--ah, very good, very good indeed; now we +shall be rid of this troublesome and perilous business in short order! +And so they nodded invisibly and smiled inwardly with satisfaction, and +looked to see this foolish lad stricken with a palsy of guilty confusion. +How surprised they were, then, to see nothing of the sort happen--how +they marvelled to hear him answer up promptly, in a confident and +untroubled voice, and say-- + +"There is nought in this riddle that is difficult." Then, without so +much as a by-your-leave to anybody, he turned and gave this command, with +the easy manner of one accustomed to doing such things: "My Lord St. +John, go you to my private cabinet in the palace--for none knoweth the +place better than you--and, close down to the floor, in the left corner +remotest from the door that opens from the ante-chamber, you shall find +in the wall a brazen nail-head; press upon it and a little jewel-closet +will fly open which not even you do know of--no, nor any soul else in +all the world but me and the trusty artisan that did contrive it for me. +The first thing that falleth under your eye will be the Great Seal--fetch +it hither." + +All the company wondered at this speech, and wondered still more to see +the little mendicant pick out this peer without hesitancy or apparent +fear of mistake, and call him by name with such a placidly convincing air +of having known him all his life. The peer was almost surprised into +obeying. He even made a movement as if to go, but quickly recovered his +tranquil attitude and confessed his blunder with a blush. Tom Canty +turned upon him and said, sharply-- + +"Why dost thou hesitate? Hast not heard the King's command? Go!" + +The Lord St. John made a deep obeisance--and it was observed that it was +a significantly cautious and non-committal one, it not being delivered at +either of the kings, but at the neutral ground about half-way between the +two--and took his leave. + +Now began a movement of the gorgeous particles of that official group +which was slow, scarcely perceptible, and yet steady and persistent--a +movement such as is observed in a kaleidoscope that is turned slowly, +whereby the components of one splendid cluster fall away and join +themselves to another--a movement which, little by little, in the present +case, dissolved the glittering crowd that stood about Tom Canty and +clustered it together again in the neighbourhood of the new-comer. Tom +Canty stood almost alone. Now ensued a brief season of deep suspense and +waiting--during which even the few faint hearts still remaining near Tom +Canty gradually scraped together courage enough to glide, one by one, +over to the majority. So at last Tom Canty, in his royal robes and +jewels, stood wholly alone and isolated from the world, a conspicuous +figure, occupying an eloquent vacancy. + +Now the Lord St. John was seen returning. As he advanced up the +mid-aisle the interest was so intense that the low murmur of conversation +in the great assemblage died out and was succeeded by a profound hush, a +breathless stillness, through which his footfalls pulsed with a dull and +distant sound. Every eye was fastened upon him as he moved along. He +reached the platform, paused a moment, then moved toward Tom Canty with a +deep obeisance, and said-- + +"Sire, the Seal is not there!" + +A mob does not melt away from the presence of a plague-patient with more +haste than the band of pallid and terrified courtiers melted away from +the presence of the shabby little claimant of the Crown. In a moment he +stood all alone, without friend or supporter, a target upon which was +concentrated a bitter fire of scornful and angry looks. The Lord +Protector called out fiercely-- + +"Cast the beggar into the street, and scourge him through the town--the +paltry knave is worth no more consideration!" + +Officers of the guard sprang forward to obey, but Tom Canty waved them +off and said-- + +"Back! Whoso touches him perils his life!" + +The Lord Protector was perplexed in the last degree. He said to the Lord +St. John-- + +"Searched you well?--but it boots not to ask that. It doth seem passing +strange. Little things, trifles, slip out of one's ken, and one does not +think it matter for surprise; but how so bulky a thing as the Seal of +England can vanish away and no man be able to get track of it again--a +massy golden disk--" + +Tom Canty, with beaming eyes, sprang forward and shouted-- + +"Hold, that is enough! Was it round?--and thick?--and had it letters and +devices graved upon it?--yes? Oh, NOW I know what this Great Seal is +that there's been such worry and pother about. An' ye had described it to +me, ye could have had it three weeks ago. Right well I know where it +lies; but it was not I that put it there--first." + +"Who, then, my liege?" asked the Lord Protector. + +"He that stands there--the rightful King of England. And he shall tell +you himself where it lies--then you will believe he knew it of his own +knowledge. Bethink thee, my King--spur thy memory--it was the last, the +very LAST thing thou didst that day before thou didst rush forth from the +palace, clothed in my rags, to punish the soldier that insulted me." + +A silence ensued, undisturbed by a movement or a whisper, and all eyes +were fixed upon the new-comer, who stood, with bent head and corrugated +brow, groping in his memory among a thronging multitude of valueless +recollections for one single little elusive fact, which, found, would +seat him upon a throne--unfound, would leave him as he was, for good and +all--a pauper and an outcast. Moment after moment passed--the moments +built themselves into minutes--still the boy struggled silently on, and +gave no sign. But at last he heaved a sigh, shook his head slowly, and +said, with a trembling lip and in a despondent voice-- + +"I call the scene back--all of it--but the Seal hath no place in it." He +paused, then looked up, and said with gentle dignity, "My lords and +gentlemen, if ye will rob your rightful sovereign of his own for lack of +this evidence which he is not able to furnish, I may not stay ye, being +powerless. But--" + +"Oh, folly, oh, madness, my King!" cried Tom Canty, in a panic, "wait! +--think! Do not give up!--the cause is not lost! Nor SHALL be, neither! +List to what I say--follow every word--I am going to bring that morning +back again, every hap just as it happened. We talked--I told you of my +sisters, Nan and Bet--ah, yes, you remember that; and about mine old +grandam--and the rough games of the lads of Offal Court--yes, you +remember these things also; very well, follow me still, you shall recall +everything. You gave me food and drink, and did with princely courtesy +send away the servants, so that my low breeding might not shame me before +them--ah, yes, this also you remember." + +As Tom checked off his details, and the other boy nodded his head in +recognition of them, the great audience and the officials stared in +puzzled wonderment; the tale sounded like true history, yet how could +this impossible conjunction between a prince and a beggar-boy have come +about? Never was a company of people so perplexed, so interested, and so +stupefied, before. + +"For a jest, my prince, we did exchange garments. Then we stood before a +mirror; and so alike were we that both said it seemed as if there had +been no change made--yes, you remember that. Then you noticed that the +soldier had hurt my hand--look! here it is, I cannot yet even write with +it, the fingers are so stiff. At this your Highness sprang up, vowing +vengeance upon that soldier, and ran towards the door--you passed a +table--that thing you call the Seal lay on that table--you snatched it up +and looked eagerly about, as if for a place to hide it--your eye caught +sight of--" + +"There, 'tis sufficient!--and the good God be thanked!" exclaimed the +ragged claimant, in a mighty excitement. "Go, my good St. John--in an +arm-piece of the Milanese armour that hangs on the wall, thou'lt find the +Seal!" + +"Right, my King! right!" cried Tom Canty; "NOW the sceptre of England is +thine own; and it were better for him that would dispute it that he had +been born dumb! Go, my Lord St. John, give thy feet wings!" + +The whole assemblage was on its feet now, and well-nigh out of its mind +with uneasiness, apprehension, and consuming excitement. On the floor +and on the platform a deafening buzz of frantic conversation burst forth, +and for some time nobody knew anything or heard anything or was +interested in anything but what his neighbour was shouting into his ear, +or he was shouting into his neighbour's ear. Time--nobody knew how much +of it--swept by unheeded and unnoted. At last a sudden hush fell upon +the house, and in the same moment St. John appeared upon the platform, +and held the Great Seal aloft in his hand. Then such a shout went up-- + +"Long live the true King!" + +For five minutes the air quaked with shouts and the crash of musical +instruments, and was white with a storm of waving handkerchiefs; and +through it all a ragged lad, the most conspicuous figure in England, +stood, flushed and happy and proud, in the centre of the spacious +platform, with the great vassals of the kingdom kneeling around him. + +Then all rose, and Tom Canty cried out-- + +"Now, O my King, take these regal garments back, and give poor Tom, thy +servant, his shreds and remnants again." + +The Lord Protector spoke up-- + +"Let the small varlet be stripped and flung into the Tower." + +But the new King, the true King, said-- + +"I will not have it so. But for him I had not got my crown again--none +shall lay a hand upon him to harm him. And as for thee, my good uncle, +my Lord Protector, this conduct of thine is not grateful toward this poor +lad, for I hear he hath made thee a duke"--the Protector blushed--"yet he +was not a king; wherefore what is thy fine title worth now? To-morrow +you shall sue to me, THROUGH HIM, for its confirmation, else no duke, but +a simple earl, shalt thou remain." + +Under this rebuke, his Grace the Duke of Somerset retired a little from +the front for the moment. The King turned to Tom, and said kindly--"My +poor boy, how was it that you could remember where I hid the Seal when I +could not remember it myself?" + +"Ah, my King, that was easy, since I used it divers days." + +"Used it--yet could not explain where it was?" + +"I did not know it was THAT they wanted. They did not describe it, your +Majesty." + +"Then how used you it?" + +The red blood began to steal up into Tom's cheeks, and he dropped his +eyes and was silent. + +"Speak up, good lad, and fear nothing," said the King. "How used you the +Great Seal of England?" + +Tom stammered a moment, in a pathetic confusion, then got it out-- + +"To crack nuts with!" + +Poor child, the avalanche of laughter that greeted this nearly swept him +off his feet. But if a doubt remained in any mind that Tom Canty was not +the King of England and familiar with the august appurtenances of +royalty, this reply disposed of it utterly. + +Meantime the sumptuous robe of state had been removed from Tom's +shoulders to the King's, whose rags were effectually hidden from sight +under it. Then the coronation ceremonies were resumed; the true King was +anointed and the crown set upon his head, whilst cannon thundered the +news to the city, and all London seemed to rock with applause. + + + +Chapter XXXIII. Edward as King. + +Miles Hendon was picturesque enough before he got into the riot on London +Bridge--he was more so when he got out of it. He had but little money +when he got in, none at all when he got out. The pickpockets had +stripped him of his last farthing. + +But no matter, so he found his boy. Being a soldier, he did not go at +his task in a random way, but set to work, first of all, to arrange his +campaign. + +What would the boy naturally do? Where would he naturally go? Well +--argued Miles--he would naturally go to his former haunts, for that is the +instinct of unsound minds, when homeless and forsaken, as well as of +sound ones. Whereabouts were his former haunts? His rags, taken +together with the low villain who seemed to know him and who even claimed +to be his father, indicated that his home was in one or another of the +poorest and meanest districts of London. Would the search for him be +difficult, or long? No, it was likely to be easy and brief. He would +not hunt for the boy, he would hunt for a crowd; in the centre of a big +crowd or a little one, sooner or later, he should find his poor little +friend, sure; and the mangy mob would be entertaining itself with +pestering and aggravating the boy, who would be proclaiming himself King, +as usual. Then Miles Hendon would cripple some of those people, and +carry off his little ward, and comfort and cheer him with loving words, +and the two would never be separated any more. + +So Miles started on his quest. Hour after hour he tramped through back +alleys and squalid streets, seeking groups and crowds, and finding no end +of them, but never any sign of the boy. This greatly surprised him, but +did not discourage him. To his notion, there was nothing the matter with +his plan of campaign; the only miscalculation about it was that the +campaign was becoming a lengthy one, whereas he had expected it to be +short. + +When daylight arrived, at last, he had made many a mile, and canvassed +many a crowd, but the only result was that he was tolerably tired, rather +hungry and very sleepy. He wanted some breakfast, but there was no way +to get it. To beg for it did not occur to him; as to pawning his sword, +he would as soon have thought of parting with his honour; he could spare +some of his clothes--yes, but one could as easily find a customer for a +disease as for such clothes. + +At noon he was still tramping--among the rabble which followed after the +royal procession, now; for he argued that this regal display would +attract his little lunatic powerfully. He followed the pageant through +all its devious windings about London, and all the way to Westminster and +the Abbey. He drifted here and there amongst the multitudes that were +massed in the vicinity for a weary long time, baffled and perplexed, and +finally wandered off, thinking, and trying to contrive some way to better +his plan of campaign. By-and-by, when he came to himself out of his +musings, he discovered that the town was far behind him and that the day +was growing old. He was near the river, and in the country; it was a +region of fine rural seats--not the sort of district to welcome clothes +like his. + +It was not at all cold; so he stretched himself on the ground in the lee +of a hedge to rest and think. Drowsiness presently began to settle upon +his senses; the faint and far-off boom of cannon was wafted to his ear, +and he said to himself, "The new King is crowned," and straightway fell +asleep. He had not slept or rested, before, for more than thirty hours. +He did not wake again until near the middle of the next morning. + +He got up, lame, stiff, and half famished, washed himself in the river, +stayed his stomach with a pint or two of water, and trudged off toward +Westminster, grumbling at himself for having wasted so much time. Hunger +helped him to a new plan, now; he would try to get speech with old Sir +Humphrey Marlow and borrow a few marks, and--but that was enough of a +plan for the present; it would be time enough to enlarge it when this +first stage should be accomplished. + +Toward eleven o'clock he approached the palace; and although a host of +showy people were about him, moving in the same direction, he was not +inconspicuous--his costume took care of that. He watched these people's +faces narrowly, hoping to find a charitable one whose possessor might be +willing to carry his name to the old lieutenant--as to trying to get into +the palace himself, that was simply out of the question. + +Presently our whipping-boy passed him, then wheeled about and scanned his +figure well, saying to himself, "An' that is not the very vagabond his +Majesty is in such a worry about, then am I an ass--though belike I was +that before. He answereth the description to a rag--that God should make +two such would be to cheapen miracles by wasteful repetition. I would I +could contrive an excuse to speak with him." + +Miles Hendon saved him the trouble; for he turned about, then, as a man +generally will when somebody mesmerises him by gazing hard at him from +behind; and observing a strong interest in the boy's eyes, he stepped +toward him and said-- + +"You have just come out from the palace; do you belong there?" + +"Yes, your worship." + +"Know you Sir Humphrey Marlow?" + +The boy started, and said to himself, "Lord! mine old departed father!" +Then he answered aloud, "Right well, your worship." + +"Good--is he within?" + +"Yes," said the boy; and added, to himself, "within his grave." + +"Might I crave your favour to carry my name to him, and say I beg to say +a word in his ear?" + +"I will despatch the business right willingly, fair sir." + +"Then say Miles Hendon, son of Sir Richard, is here without--I shall be +greatly bounden to you, my good lad." + +The boy looked disappointed. "The King did not name him so," he said to +himself; "but it mattereth not, this is his twin brother, and can give +his Majesty news of t'other Sir-Odds-and-Ends, I warrant." So he said to +Miles, "Step in there a moment, good sir, and wait till I bring you +word." + +Hendon retired to the place indicated--it was a recess sunk in the palace +wall, with a stone bench in it--a shelter for sentinels in bad weather. +He had hardly seated himself when some halberdiers, in charge of an +officer, passed by. The officer saw him, halted his men, and commanded +Hendon to come forth. He obeyed, and was promptly arrested as a +suspicious character prowling within the precincts of the palace. Things +began to look ugly. Poor Miles was going to explain, but the officer +roughly silenced him, and ordered his men to disarm him and search him. + +"God of his mercy grant that they find somewhat," said poor Miles; "I +have searched enow, and failed, yet is my need greater than theirs." + +Nothing was found but a document. The officer tore it open, and Hendon +smiled when he recognised the 'pot-hooks' made by his lost little friend +that black day at Hendon Hall. The officer's face grew dark as he read +the English paragraph, and Miles blenched to the opposite colour as he +listened. + +"Another new claimant of the Crown!" cried the officer. "Verily they +breed like rabbits, to-day. Seize the rascal, men, and see ye keep him +fast whilst I convey this precious paper within and send it to the King." + +He hurried away, leaving the prisoner in the grip of the halberdiers. + +"Now is my evil luck ended at last," muttered Hendon, "for I shall dangle +at a rope's end for a certainty, by reason of that bit of writing. And +what will become of my poor lad!--ah, only the good God knoweth." + +By-and-by he saw the officer coming again, in a great hurry; so he +plucked his courage together, purposing to meet his trouble as became a +man. The officer ordered the men to loose the prisoner and return his +sword to him; then bowed respectfully, and said-- + +"Please you, sir, to follow me." + +Hendon followed, saying to himself, "An' I were not travelling to death +and judgment, and so must needs economise in sin, I would throttle this +knave for his mock courtesy." + +The two traversed a populous court, and arrived at the grand entrance of +the palace, where the officer, with another bow, delivered Hendon into +the hands of a gorgeous official, who received him with profound respect +and led him forward through a great hall, lined on both sides with rows +of splendid flunkeys (who made reverential obeisance as the two passed +along, but fell into death-throes of silent laughter at our stately +scarecrow the moment his back was turned), and up a broad staircase, +among flocks of fine folk, and finally conducted him into a vast room, +clove a passage for him through the assembled nobility of England, then +made a bow, reminded him to take his hat off, and left him standing in +the middle of the room, a mark for all eyes, for plenty of indignant +frowns, and for a sufficiency of amused and derisive smiles. + +Miles Hendon was entirely bewildered. There sat the young King, under a +canopy of state, five steps away, with his head bent down and aside, +speaking with a sort of human bird of paradise--a duke, maybe. Hendon +observed to himself that it was hard enough to be sentenced to death in +the full vigour of life, without having this peculiarly public +humiliation added. He wished the King would hurry about it--some of the +gaudy people near by were becoming pretty offensive. At this moment the +King raised his head slightly, and Hendon caught a good view of his face. +The sight nearly took his breath away!--He stood gazing at the fair young +face like one transfixed; then presently ejaculated-- + +"Lo, the Lord of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows on his throne!" + +He muttered some broken sentences, still gazing and marvelling; then +turned his eyes around and about, scanning the gorgeous throng and the +splendid saloon, murmuring, "But these are REAL--verily these are REAL +--surely it is not a dream." + +He stared at the King again--and thought, "IS it a dream . . . or IS he +the veritable Sovereign of England, and not the friendless poor Tom o' +Bedlam I took him for--who shall solve me this riddle?" + +A sudden idea flashed in his eye, and he strode to the wall, gathered up +a chair, brought it back, planted it on the floor, and sat down in it! + +A buzz of indignation broke out, a rough hand was laid upon him and a +voice exclaimed-- + +"Up, thou mannerless clown! would'st sit in the presence of the King?" + +The disturbance attracted his Majesty's attention, who stretched forth +his hand and cried out-- + +"Touch him not, it is his right!" + +The throng fell back, stupefied. The King went on-- + +"Learn ye all, ladies, lords, and gentlemen, that this is my trusty and +well-beloved servant, Miles Hendon, who interposed his good sword and +saved his prince from bodily harm and possible death--and for this he is +a knight, by the King's voice. Also learn, that for a higher service, in +that he saved his sovereign stripes and shame, taking these upon himself, +he is a peer of England, Earl of Kent, and shall have gold and lands meet +for the dignity. More--the privilege which he hath just exercised is his +by royal grant; for we have ordained that the chiefs of his line shall +have and hold the right to sit in the presence of the Majesty of England +henceforth, age after age, so long as the crown shall endure. Molest him +not." + +Two persons, who, through delay, had only arrived from the country during +this morning, and had now been in this room only five minutes, stood +listening to these words and looking at the King, then at the scarecrow, +then at the King again, in a sort of torpid bewilderment. These were Sir +Hugh and the Lady Edith. But the new Earl did not see them. He was +still staring at the monarch, in a dazed way, and muttering-- + +"Oh, body o' me! THIS my pauper! This my lunatic! This is he whom _I_ +would show what grandeur was, in my house of seventy rooms and +seven-and-twenty servants! This is he who had never known aught but rags +for raiment, kicks for comfort, and offal for diet! This is he whom _I_ +adopted and would make respectable! Would God I had a bag to hide my head +in!" + +Then his manners suddenly came back to him, and he dropped upon his +knees, with his hands between the King's, and swore allegiance and did +homage for his lands and titles. Then he rose and stood respectfully +aside, a mark still for all eyes--and much envy, too. + +Now the King discovered Sir Hugh, and spoke out with wrathful voice and +kindling eye-- + +"Strip this robber of his false show and stolen estates, and put him +under lock and key till I have need of him." + +The late Sir Hugh was led away. + +There was a stir at the other end of the room, now; the assemblage fell +apart, and Tom Canty, quaintly but richly clothed, marched down, between +these living walls, preceded by an usher. He knelt before the King, who +said-- + +"I have learned the story of these past few weeks, and am well pleased +with thee. Thou hast governed the realm with right royal gentleness and +mercy. Thou hast found thy mother and thy sisters again? Good; they +shall be cared for--and thy father shall hang, if thou desire it and the +law consent. Know, all ye that hear my voice, that from this day, they +that abide in the shelter of Christ's Hospital and share the King's +bounty shall have their minds and hearts fed, as well as their baser +parts; and this boy shall dwell there, and hold the chief place in its +honourable body of governors, during life. And for that he hath been a +king, it is meet that other than common observance shall be his due; +wherefore note this his dress of state, for by it he shall be known, and +none shall copy it; and wheresoever he shall come, it shall remind the +people that he hath been royal, in his time, and none shall deny him his +due of reverence or fail to give him salutation. He hath the throne's +protection, he hath the crown's support, he shall be known and called by +the honourable title of the King's Ward." + +The proud and happy Tom Canty rose and kissed the King's hand, and was +conducted from the presence. He did not waste any time, but flew to his +mother, to tell her and Nan and Bet all about it and get them to help him +enjoy the great news. {1} + + + +Conclusion. Justice and retribution. + +When the mysteries were all cleared up, it came out, by confession of +Hugh Hendon, that his wife had repudiated Miles by his command, that day +at Hendon Hall--a command assisted and supported by the perfectly +trustworthy promise that if she did not deny that he was Miles Hendon, +and stand firmly to it, he would have her life; whereupon she said, "Take +it!"--she did not value it--and she would not repudiate Miles; then the +husband said he would spare her life but have Miles assassinated! This +was a different matter; so she gave her word and kept it. + +Hugh was not prosecuted for his threats or for stealing his brother's +estates and title, because the wife and brother would not testify against +him--and the former would not have been allowed to do it, even if she had +wanted to. Hugh deserted his wife and went over to the continent, where +he presently died; and by-and-by the Earl of Kent married his relict. +There were grand times and rejoicings at Hendon village when the couple +paid their first visit to the Hall. + +Tom Canty's father was never heard of again. + +The King sought out the farmer who had been branded and sold as a slave, +and reclaimed him from his evil life with the Ruffler's gang, and put him +in the way of a comfortable livelihood. + +He also took that old lawyer out of prison and remitted his fine. He +provided good homes for the daughters of the two Baptist women whom he +saw burned at the stake, and roundly punished the official who laid the +undeserved stripes upon Miles Hendon's back. + +He saved from the gallows the boy who had captured the stray falcon, and +also the woman who had stolen a remnant of cloth from a weaver; but he +was too late to save the man who had been convicted of killing a deer in +the royal forest. + +He showed favour to the justice who had pitied him when he was supposed +to have stolen a pig, and he had the gratification of seeing him grow in +the public esteem and become a great and honoured man. + +As long as the King lived he was fond of telling the story of his +adventures, all through, from the hour that the sentinel cuffed him away +from the palace gate till the final midnight when he deftly mixed himself +into a gang of hurrying workmen and so slipped into the Abbey and climbed +up and hid himself in the Confessor's tomb, and then slept so long, next +day, that he came within one of missing the Coronation altogether. He +said that the frequent rehearsing of the precious lesson kept him strong +in his purpose to make its teachings yield benefits to his people; and +so, whilst his life was spared he should continue to tell the story, and +thus keep its sorrowful spectacles fresh in his memory and the springs of +pity replenished in his heart. + +Miles Hendon and Tom Canty were favourites of the King, all through his +brief reign, and his sincere mourners when he died. The good Earl of Kent +had too much sense to abuse his peculiar privilege; but he exercised it +twice after the instance we have seen of it before he was called from +this world--once at the accession of Queen Mary, and once at the +accession of Queen Elizabeth. A descendant of his exercised it at the +accession of James I. Before this one's son chose to use the privilege, +near a quarter of a century had elapsed, and the 'privilege of the Kents' +had faded out of most people's memories; so, when the Kent of that day +appeared before Charles I. and his court and sat down in the sovereign's +presence to assert and perpetuate the right of his house, there was a +fine stir indeed! But the matter was soon explained, and the right +confirmed. The last Earl of the line fell in the wars of the +Commonwealth fighting for the King, and the odd privilege ended with him. + +Tom Canty lived to be a very old man, a handsome, white-haired old +fellow, of grave and benignant aspect. As long as he lasted he was +honoured; and he was also reverenced, for his striking and peculiar +costume kept the people reminded that 'in his time he had been royal;' +so, wherever he appeared the crowd fell apart, making way for him, and +whispering, one to another, "Doff thy hat, it is the King's Ward!"--and +so they saluted, and got his kindly smile in return--and they valued it, +too, for his was an honourable history. + +Yes, King Edward VI. lived only a few years, poor boy, but he lived them +worthily. More than once, when some great dignitary, some gilded vassal +of the crown, made argument against his leniency, and urged that some law +which he was bent upon amending was gentle enough for its purpose, and +wrought no suffering or oppression which any one need mightily mind, the +young King turned the mournful eloquence of his great compassionate eyes +upon him and answered-- + +"What dost THOU know of suffering and oppression? I and my people know, +but not thou." + +The reign of Edward VI. was a singularly merciful one for those harsh +times. Now that we are taking leave of him, let us try to keep this in +our minds, to his credit. + + + + +FOOTNOTES AND TWAIN'S NOTES + +{1} For Mark Twain's note see below under the relevant chapter heading. + +{2} He refers to the order of baronets, or baronettes; the barones +minores, as distinct from the parliamentary barons--not, it need hardly +be said, to the baronets of later creation. + +{3} The lords of Kingsale, descendants of De Courcy, still enjoy this +curious privilege. + +{4} Hume. + +{5} Ib. + +{6} Leigh Hunt's 'The Town,' p.408, quotation from an early tourist. + +{7} Canting terms for various kinds of thieves, beggars and vagabonds, +and their female companions. + +{8} From 'The English Rogue.' London, 1665. + +{9} Hume's England. + +{10} See Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws, True and False, p. 11. + + + +NOTE 1, Chapter IV. Christ's Hospital Costume. + +It is most reasonable to regard the dress as copied from the costume of +the citizens of London of that period, when long blue coats were the +common habit of apprentices and serving-men, and yellow stockings were +generally worn; the coat fits closely to the body, but has loose sleeves, +and beneath is worn a sleeveless yellow under-coat; around the waist is a +red leathern girdle; a clerical band around the neck, and a small flat +black cap, about the size of a saucer, completes the costume.--Timbs' +Curiosities of London. + + + +NOTE 2, Chapter IV. + +It appears that Christ's Hospital was not originally founded as a SCHOOL; +its object was to rescue children from the streets, to shelter, feed, +clothe them.--Timbs' Curiosities of London. + + + +NOTE 3, Chapter V. The Duke of Norfolk's Condemnation commanded. + +The King was now approaching fast towards his end; and fearing lest +Norfolk should escape him, he sent a message to the Commons, by which he +desired them to hasten the Bill, on pretence that Norfolk enjoyed the +dignity of Earl Marshal, and it was necessary to appoint another, who +might officiate at the ensuing ceremony of installing his son Prince of +Wales.--Hume's History of England, vol. iii. p. 307. + + + +NOTE 4, Chapter VII. + +It was not till the end of this reign (Henry VIII.) that any salads, +carrots, turnips, or other edible roots were produced in England. The +little of these vegetables that was used was formerly imported from +Holland and Flanders. Queen Catherine, when she wanted a salad, was +obliged to despatch a messenger thither on purpose.--Hume's History of +England, vol. iii. p. 314. + + + +NOTE 5, Chapter VIII. Attainder of Norfolk. + +The House of Peers, without examining the prisoner, without trial or +evidence, passed a Bill of Attainder against him and sent it down to the +Commons . . . The obsequious Commons obeyed his (the King's) directions; +and the King, having affixed the Royal assent to the Bill by +commissioners, issued orders for the execution of Norfolk on the morning +of January 29 (the next day).--Hume's History of England, vol iii. p 306. + + + +NOTE 6, Chapter X. The Loving-cup. + +The loving-cup, and the peculiar ceremonies observed in drinking from it, +are older than English history. It is thought that both are Danish +importations. As far back as knowledge goes, the loving-cup has always +been drunk at English banquets. Tradition explains the ceremonies in +this way. In the rude ancient times it was deemed a wise precaution to +have both hands of both drinkers employed, lest while the pledger pledged +his love and fidelity to the pledgee, the pledgee take that opportunity +to slip a dirk into him! + + + +NOTE 7, Chapter XI. The Duke of Norfolk's narrow Escape. + +Had Henry VIII. survived a few hours longer, his order for the duke's +execution would have been carried into effect. 'But news being carried to +the Tower that the King himself had expired that night, the lieutenant +deferred obeying the warrant; and it was not thought advisable by the +Council to begin a new reign by the death of the greatest nobleman in the +kingdom, who had been condemned by a sentence so unjust and tyrannical.' +--Hume's History of England, vol. iii, p. 307. + + + +NOTE 8, Chapter XIV. The Whipping-boy. + +James I. and Charles II. had whipping-boys, when they were little +fellows, to take their punishment for them when they fell short in their +lessons; so I have ventured to furnish my small prince with one, for my +own purposes. + + + +NOTES to Chapter XV. + +Character of Hertford. + +The young King discovered an extreme attachment to his uncle, who was, in +the main, a man of moderation and probity.--Hume's History of England, +vol. iii, p324. + +But if he (the Protector) gave offence by assuming too much state, he +deserves great praise on account of the laws passed this session, by +which the rigour of former statutes was much mitigated, and some security +given to the freedom of the constitution. All laws were repealed which +extended the crime of treason beyond the statute of the twenty-fifth of +Edward III.; all laws enacted during the late reign extending the crime +of felony; all the former laws against Lollardy or heresy, together with +the statute of the Six Articles. None were to be accused for words, but +within a month after they were spoken. By these repeals several of the +most rigorous laws that ever had passed in England were annulled; and +some dawn, both of civil and religious liberty, began to appear to the +people. A repeal also passed of that law, the destruction of all laws, +by which the King's proclamation was made of equal force with a statute. +--Ibid. vol. iii. p. 339. + + + +Boiling to Death. + +In the reign of Henry VIII. poisoners were, by Act of Parliament, +condemned to be BOILED TO DEATH. This Act was repealed in the following +reign. + +In Germany, even in the seventeenth century, this horrible punishment was +inflicted on coiners and counterfeiters. Taylor, the Water Poet, +describes an execution he witnessed in Hamburg in 1616. The judgment +pronounced against a coiner of false money was that he should 'BE BOILED +TO DEATH IN OIL; not thrown into the vessel at once, but with a pulley or +rope to be hanged under the armpits, and then let down into the oil BY +DEGREES; first the feet, and next the legs, and so to boil his flesh from +his bones alive.'--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws, True and False, +p. 13. + + + +The Famous Stocking Case. + +A woman and her daughter, NINE YEARS OLD, were hanged in Huntingdon for +selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm by pulling off +their stockings!--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws, True and False, p. +20. + + + +NOTE 10, Chapter XVII. Enslaving. + +So young a King and so ignorant a peasant were likely to make mistakes; +and this is an instance in point. This peasant was suffering from this +law BY ANTICIPATION; the King was venting his indignation against a law +which was not yet in existence; for this hideous statute was to have +birth in this little King's OWN REIGN. However, we know, from the +humanity of his character, that it could never have been suggested by +him. + + + +NOTES to Chapter XXIII. Death for Trifling Larcenies. + +When Connecticut and New Haven were framing their first codes, larceny +above the value of twelve pence was a capital crime in England--as it had +been since the time of Henry I.--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws, +True and False, p. 17. + +The curious old book called The English Rogue makes the limit thirteen +pence ha'penny: death being the portion of any who steal a thing 'above +the value of thirteen pence ha'penny.' + + + +NOTES to Chapter XXVII. + +From many descriptions of larceny the law expressly took away the benefit +of clergy: to steal a horse, or a HAWK, or woollen cloth from the +weaver, was a hanging matter. So it was to kill a deer from the King's +forest, or to export sheep from the kingdom.--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's +Blue Laws, True and False, p.13. + +William Prynne, a learned barrister, was sentenced (long after Edward +VI.'s time) to lose both his ears in the pillory, to degradation from the +bar, a fine of 3,000 pounds, and imprisonment for life. Three years +afterwards he gave new offence to Laud by publishing a pamphlet against +the hierarchy. He was again prosecuted, and was sentenced to lose WHAT +REMAINED OF HIS EARS, to pay a fine of 5,000 pounds, to be BRANDED ON +BOTH HIS CHEEKS with the letters S. L. (for Seditious Libeller), and to +remain in prison for life. The severity of this sentence was equalled by +the savage rigour of its execution.--Ibid. p. 12. + + + +NOTES to Chapter XXXIII. + +Christ's Hospital, or Bluecoat School, 'the noblest institution in the +world.' + +The ground on which the Priory of the Grey Friars stood was conferred by +Henry VIII. on the Corporation of London (who caused the institution +there of a home for poor boys and girls). Subsequently, Edward VI. caused +the old Priory to be properly repaired, and founded within it that noble +establishment called the Bluecoat School, or Christ's Hospital, for the +EDUCATION and maintenance of orphans and the children of indigent persons +. . . Edward would not let him (Bishop Ridley) depart till the letter was +written (to the Lord Mayor), and then charged him to deliver it himself, +and signify his special request and commandment that no time might be +lost in proposing what was convenient, and apprising him of the +proceedings. The work was zealously undertaken, Ridley himself engaging +in it; and the result was the founding of Christ's Hospital for the +education of poor children. (The King endowed several other charities at +the same time.) "Lord God," said he, "I yield Thee most hearty thanks +that Thou hast given me life thus long to finish this work to the glory +of Thy name!" That innocent and most exemplary life was drawing rapidly +to its close, and in a few days he rendered up his spirit to his Creator, +praying God to defend the realm from Papistry.--J. Heneage Jesse's +London: its Celebrated Characters and Places. + +In the Great Hall hangs a large picture of King Edward VI. seated on his +throne, in a scarlet and ermined robe, holding the sceptre in his left +hand, and presenting with the other the Charter to the kneeling Lord +Mayor. By his side stands the Chancellor, holding the seals, and next to +him are other officers of state. Bishop Ridley kneels before him with +uplifted hands, as if supplicating a blessing on the event; whilst the +Aldermen, etc., with the Lord Mayor, kneel on both sides, occupying the +middle ground of the picture; and lastly, in front, are a double row of +boys on one side and girls on the other, from the master and matron down +to the boy and girl who have stepped forward from their respective rows, +and kneel with raised hands before the King.--Timbs' Curiosities of +London, p. 98. + +Christ's Hospital, by ancient custom, possesses the privilege of +addressing the Sovereign on the occasion of his or her coming into the +City to partake of the hospitality of the Corporation of London.--Ibid. + +The Dining Hall, with its lobby and organ-gallery, occupies the entire +storey, which is 187 feet long, 51 feet wide, and 47 feet high; it is lit +by nine large windows, filled with stained glass on the south side; and +is, next to Westminster Hall, the noblest room in the metropolis. Here +the boys, now about 800 in number, dine; and here are held the 'Suppings +in Public,' to which visitors are admitted by tickets issued by the +Treasurer and by the Governors of Christ's Hospital. The tables are laid +with cheese in wooden bowls, beer in wooden piggins, poured from leathern +jacks, and bread brought in large baskets. The official company enter; +the Lord Mayor, or President, takes his seat in a state chair made of oak +from St. Catherine's Church, by the Tower; a hymn is sung, accompanied by +the organ; a 'Grecian,' or head boy, reads the prayers from the pulpit, +silence being enforced by three drops of a wooden hammer. After prayer +the supper commences, and the visitors walk between the tables. At its +close the 'trade-boys' take up the baskets, bowls, jacks, piggins, and +candlesticks, and pass in procession, the bowing to the Governors being +curiously formal. This spectacle was witnessed by Queen Victoria and +Prince Albert in 1845. + +Among the more eminent Bluecoat boys are Joshua Barnes, editor of +Anacreon and Euripides; Jeremiah Markland, the eminent critic, +particularly in Greek Literature; Camden, the antiquary; Bishop +Stillingfleet; Samuel Richardson, the novelist; Thomas Mitchell, the +translator of Aristophanes; Thomas Barnes, many years editor of the +London Times; Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and Leigh Hunt. + +No boy is admitted before he is seven years old, or after he is nine; and +no boy can remain in the school after he is fifteen, King's boys and +'Grecians' alone excepted. There are about 500 Governors, at the head of +whom are the Sovereign and the Prince of Wales. The qualification for a +Governor is payment of 500 pounds.--Ibid. + + +GENERAL NOTE. + + +One hears much about the 'hideous Blue Laws of Connecticut,' and is +accustomed to shudder piously when they are mentioned. There are people +in America--and even in England!--who imagine that they were a very +monument of malignity, pitilessness, and inhumanity; whereas in reality +they were about the first SWEEPING DEPARTURE FROM JUDICIAL ATROCITY which +the 'civilised' world had seen. This humane and kindly Blue Law Code, of +two hundred and forty years ago, stands all by itself, with ages of +bloody law on the further side of it, and a century and three-quarters of +bloody English law on THIS side of it. + +There has never been a time--under the Blue Laws or any other--when above +FOURTEEN crimes were punishable by death in Connecticut. But in England, +within the memory of men who are still hale in body and mind, TWO HUNDRED +AND TWENTY-THREE crimes were punishable by death! {10} These facts are +worth knowing--and worth thinking about, too. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prince and The Pauper, Complete +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI + +BY MARK TWAIN + + + +THE 'BODY OF THE NATION' + +BUT the basin of the Mississippi is the BODY OF THE NATION. All the +other parts are but members, important in themselves, yet more important +in their relations to this. Exclusive of the Lake basin and of 300,000 +square miles in Texas and New Mexico, which in many aspects form a part +of it, this basin contains about 1,250,000 square miles. In extent it +is the second great valley of the world, being exceeded only by that of +the Amazon. The valley of the frozen Obi approaches it in extent; that +of La Plata comes next in space, and probably in habitable capacity, +having about eight-ninths of its area; then comes that of the Yenisei, +with about seven-ninths; the Lena, Amoor, Hoang-ho, Yang-tse-kiang, and +Nile, five-ninths; the Ganges, less than one-half; the Indus, less than +one-third; the Euphrates, one-fifth; the Rhine, one-fifteenth. It +exceeds in extent the whole of Europe, exclusive of Russia, Norway, and +Sweden. IT WOULD CONTAIN AUSTRIA FOUR TIMES, GERMANY OR SPAIN FIVE +TIMES, FRANCE SIX TIMES, THE BRITISH ISLANDS OR ITALY TEN TIMES. +Conceptions formed from the river-basins of Western Europe are rudely +shocked when we consider the extent of the valley of the Mississippi; +nor are those formed from the sterile basins of the great rivers of +Siberia, the lofty plateaus of Central Asia, or the mighty sweep of the +swampy Amazon more adequate. Latitude, elevation, and rainfall all +combine to render every part of the Mississippi Valley capable of +supporting a dense population. AS A DWELLING-PLACE FOR CIVILIZED MAN IT +IS BY FAR THE FIRST UPON OUR GLOBE. + +EDITOR'S TABLE, HARPER'S MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 1863 + + + +Chapter 1 The River and Its History + +THE Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is not a commonplace +river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable. Considering the +Missouri its main branch, it is the longest river in the world--four +thousand three hundred miles. It seems safe to say that it is also the +crookedest river in the world, since in one part of its journey it uses +up one thousand three hundred miles to cover the same ground that the +crow would fly over in six hundred and seventy-five. It discharges three +times as much water as the St. Lawrence, twenty-five times as much as +the Rhine, and three hundred and thirty-eight times as much as the +Thames. No other river has so vast a drainage-basin: it draws its water +supply from twenty-eight States and Territories; from Delaware, on the +Atlantic seaboard, and from all the country between that and Idaho on +the Pacific slope--a spread of forty-five degrees of longitude. The +Mississippi receives and carries to the Gulf water from fifty-four +subordinate rivers that are navigable by steamboats, and from some +hundreds that are navigable by flats and keels. The area of its +drainage-basin is as great as the combined areas of England, Wales, +Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Italy, and +Turkey; and almost all this wide region is fertile; the Mississippi +valley, proper, is exceptionally so. + +It is a remarkable river in this: that instead of widening toward its +mouth, it grows narrower; grows narrower and deeper. From the junction +of the Ohio to a point half way down to the sea, the width averages a +mile in high water: thence to the sea the width steadily diminishes, +until, at the 'Passes,' above the mouth, it is but little over half a +mile. At the junction of the Ohio the Mississippi's depth is eighty- +seven feet; the depth increases gradually, reaching one hundred and +twenty-nine just above the mouth. + +The difference in rise and fall is also remarkable--not in the upper, +but in the lower river. The rise is tolerably uniform down to Natchez +(three hundred and sixty miles above the mouth)--about fifty feet. But +at Bayou La Fourche the river rises only twenty-four feet; at New +Orleans only fifteen, and just above the mouth only two and one half. + +An article in the New Orleans 'Times-Democrat,' based upon reports of +able engineers, states that the river annually empties four hundred and +six million tons of mud into the Gulf of Mexico--which brings to mind +Captain Marryat's rude name for the Mississippi--'the Great Sewer.' This +mud, solidified, would make a mass a mile square and two hundred and +forty-one feet high. + +The mud deposit gradually extends the land--but only gradually; it has +extended it not quite a third of a mile in the two hundred years which +have elapsed since the river took its place in history. The belief of +the scientific people is, that the mouth used to be at Baton Rouge, +where the hills cease, and that the two hundred miles of land between +there and the Gulf was built by the river. This gives us the age of that +piece of country, without any trouble at all--one hundred and twenty +thousand years. Yet it is much the youthfullest batch of country that +lies around there anywhere. + +The Mississippi is remarkable in still another way--its disposition to +make prodigious jumps by cutting through narrow necks of land, and thus +straightening and shortening itself. More than once it has shortened +itself thirty miles at a single jump! These cut-offs have had curious +effects: they have thrown several river towns out into the rural +districts, and built up sand bars and forests in front of them. The town +of Delta used to be three miles below Vicksburg: a recent cutoff has +radically changed the position, and Delta is now TWO MILES ABOVE +Vicksburg. + +Both of these river towns have been retired to the country by that cut- +off. A cut-off plays havoc with boundary lines and jurisdictions: for +instance, a man is living in the State of Mississippi to-day, a cut-off +occurs to-night, and to-morrow the man finds himself and his land over +on the other side of the river, within the boundaries and subject to the +laws of the State of Louisiana! Such a thing, happening in the upper +river in the old times, could have transferred a slave from Missouri to +Illinois and made a free man of him. + +The Mississippi does not alter its locality by cut-offs alone: it is +always changing its habitat BODILY--is always moving bodily SIDEWISE. At +Hard Times, La., the river is two miles west of the region it used to +occupy. As a result, the original SITE of that settlement is not now in +Louisiana at all, but on the other side of the river, in the State of +Mississippi. NEARLY THE WHOLE OF THAT ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED MILES +OF OLD MISSISSIPPI RIVER WHICH LA SALLE FLOATED DOWN IN HIS CANOES, TWO +HUNDRED YEARS AGO, IS GOOD SOLID DRY GROUND NOW. The river lies to the +right of it, in places, and to the left of it in other places. + +Although the Mississippi's mud builds land but slowly, down at the +mouth, where the Gulfs billows interfere with its work, it builds fast +enough in better protected regions higher up: for instance, Prophet's +Island contained one thousand five hundred acres of land thirty years +ago; since then the river has added seven hundred acres to it. + +But enough of these examples of the mighty stream's eccentricities for +the present--I will give a few more of them further along in the book. + +Let us drop the Mississippi's physical history, and say a word about its +historical history--so to speak. We can glance briefly at its slumbrous +first epoch in a couple of short chapters; at its second and wider-awake +epoch in a couple more; at its flushest and widest-awake epoch in a good +many succeeding chapters; and then talk about its comparatively tranquil +present epoch in what shall be left of the book. + +The world and the books are so accustomed to use, and over-use, the word +'new' in connection with our country, that we early get and permanently +retain the impression that there is nothing old about it. We do of +course know that there are several comparatively old dates in American +history, but the mere figures convey to our minds no just idea, no +distinct realization, of the stretch of time which they represent. To +say that De Soto, the first white man who ever saw the Mississippi +River, saw it in 1542, is a remark which states a fact without +interpreting it: it is something like giving the dimensions of a sunset +by astronomical measurements, and cataloguing the colors by their +scientific names;--as a result, you get the bald fact of the sunset, but +you don't see the sunset. It would have been better to paint a picture +of it. + +The date 1542, standing by itself, means little or nothing to us; but +when one groups a few neighboring historical dates and facts around it, +he adds perspective and color, and then realizes that this is one of the +American dates which is quite respectable for age. + +For instance, when the Mississippi was first seen by a white man, less +than a quarter of a century had elapsed since Francis I.'s defeat at +Pavia; the death of Raphael; the death of Bayard, SANS PEUR ET SANS +REPROCHE; the driving out of the Knights-Hospitallers from Rhodes by the +Turks; and the placarding of the Ninety-Five Propositions,--the act +which began the Reformation. When De Soto took his glimpse of the +river, Ignatius Loyola was an obscure name; the order of the Jesuits was +not yet a year old; Michael Angelo's paint was not yet dry on the Last +Judgment in the Sistine Chapel; Mary Queen of Scots was not yet born, +but would be before the year closed. Catherine de Medici was a child; +Elizabeth of England was not yet in her teens; Calvin, Benvenuto +Cellini, and the Emperor Charles V. were at the top of their fame, and +each was manufacturing history after his own peculiar fashion; Margaret +of Navarre was writing the 'Heptameron' and some religious books,--the +first survives, the others are forgotten, wit and indelicacy being +sometimes better literature preservers than holiness; lax court morals +and the absurd chivalry business were in full feather, and the joust and +the tournament were the frequent pastime of titled fine gentlemen who +could fight better than they could spell, while religion was the passion +of their ladies, and classifying their offspring into children of full +rank and children by brevet their pastime. In fact, all around, religion +was in a peculiarly blooming condition: the Council of Trent was being +called; the Spanish Inquisition was roasting, and racking, and burning, +with a free hand; elsewhere on the continent the nations were being +persuaded to holy living by the sword and fire; in England, Henry VIII. +had suppressed the monasteries, burnt Fisher and another bishop or two, +and was getting his English reformation and his harem effectively +started. When De Soto stood on the banks of the Mississippi, it was +still two years before Luther's death; eleven years before the burning +of Servetus; thirty years before the St. Bartholomew slaughter; Rabelais +was not yet published; 'Don Quixote' was not yet written; Shakespeare +was not yet born; a hundred long years must still elapse before +Englishmen would hear the name of Oliver Cromwell. + +Unquestionably the discovery of the Mississippi is a datable fact which +considerably mellows and modifies the shiny newness of our country, and +gives her a most respectable outside-aspect of rustiness and antiquity. + +De Soto merely glimpsed the river, then died and was buried in it by his +priests and soldiers. One would expect the priests and the soldiers to +multiply the river's dimensions by ten--the Spanish custom of the day-- +and thus move other adventurers to go at once and explore it. On the +contrary, their narratives when they reached home, did not excite that +amount of curiosity. The Mississippi was left unvisited by whites during +a term of years which seems incredible in our energetic days. One may +'sense' the interval to his mind, after a fashion, by dividing it up in +this way: After De Soto glimpsed the river, a fraction short of a +quarter of a century elapsed, and then Shakespeare was born; lived a +trifle more than half a century, then died; and when he had been in his +grave considerably more than half a century, the SECOND white man saw +the Mississippi. In our day we don't allow a hundred and thirty years to +elapse between glimpses of a marvel. If somebody should discover a +creek in the county next to the one that the North Pole is in, Europe +and America would start fifteen costly expeditions thither: one to +explore the creek, and the other fourteen to hunt for each other. + +For more than a hundred and fifty years there had been white settlements +on our Atlantic coasts. These people were in intimate communication +with the Indians: in the south the Spaniards were robbing, +slaughtering, enslaving and converting them; higher up, the English were +trading beads and blankets to them for a consideration, and throwing in +civilization and whiskey, 'for lagniappe;' and in Canada the French were +schooling them in a rudimentary way, missionarying among them, and +drawing whole populations of them at a time to Quebec, and later to +Montreal, to buy furs of them. Necessarily, then, these various +clusters of whites must have heard of the great river of the far west; +and indeed, they did hear of it vaguely,--so vaguely and indefinitely, +that its course, proportions, and locality were hardly even guessable. +The mere mysteriousness of the matter ought to have fired curiosity and +compelled exploration; but this did not occur. Apparently nobody +happened to want such a river, nobody needed it, nobody was curious +about it; so, for a century and a half the Mississippi remained out of +the market and undisturbed. When De Soto found it, he was not hunting +for a river, and had no present occasion for one; consequently he did +not value it or even take any particular notice of it. + +But at last La Salle the Frenchman conceived the idea of seeking out +that river and exploring it. It always happens that when a man seizes +upon a neglected and important idea, people inflamed with the same +notion crop up all around. It happened so in this instance. + +Naturally the question suggests itself, Why did these people want the +river now when nobody had wanted it in the five preceding generations? +Apparently it was because at this late day they thought they had +discovered a way to make it useful; for it had come to be believed that +the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of California, and therefore +afforded a short cut from Canada to China. Previously the supposition +had been that it emptied into the Atlantic, or Sea of Virginia. + + + + + +Chapter 2 The River and Its Explorers + +LA SALLE himself sued for certain high privileges, and they were +graciously accorded him by Louis XIV of inflated memory. Chief among +them was the privilege to explore, far and wide, and build forts, and +stake out continents, and hand the same over to the king, and pay the +expenses himself; receiving, in return, some little advantages of one +sort or another; among them the monopoly of buffalo hides. He spent +several years and about all of his money, in making perilous and painful +trips between Montreal and a fort which he had built on the Illinois, +before he at last succeeded in getting his expedition in such a shape +that he could strike for the Mississippi. + +And meantime other parties had had better fortune. In 1673 Joliet the +merchant, and Marquette the priest, crossed the country and reached the +banks of the Mississippi. They went by way of the Great Lakes; and from +Green Bay, in canoes, by way of Fox River and the Wisconsin. Marquette +had solemnly contracted, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, that +if the Virgin would permit him to discover the great river, he would +name it Conception, in her honor. He kept his word. In that day, all +explorers traveled with an outfit of priests. De Soto had twenty-four +with him. La Salle had several, also. The expeditions were often out of +meat, and scant of clothes, but they always had the furniture and other +requisites for the mass; they were always prepared, as one of the quaint +chroniclers of the time phrased it, to 'explain hell to the savages.' + +On the 17th of June, 1673, the canoes of Joliet and Marquette and their +five subordinates reached the junction of the Wisconsin with the +Mississippi. Mr. Parkman says: 'Before them a wide and rapid current +coursed athwart their way, by the foot of lofty heights wrapped thick in +forests.' He continues: 'Turning southward, they paddled down the +stream, through a solitude unrelieved by the faintest trace of man.' + +A big cat-fish collided with Marquette's canoe, and startled him; and +reasonably enough, for he had been warned by the Indians that he was on +a foolhardy journey, and even a fatal one, for the river contained a +demon 'whose roar could be heard at a great distance, and who would +engulf them in the abyss where he dwelt.' I have seen a Mississippi cat- +fish that was more than six feet long, and weighed two hundred and fifty +pounds; and if Marquette's fish was the fellow to that one, he had a +fair right to think the river's roaring demon was come. + +'At length the buffalo began to appear, grazing in herds on the great +prairies which then bordered the river; and Marquette describes the +fierce and stupid look of the old bulls as they stared at the intruders +through the tangled mane which nearly blinded them.' + +The voyagers moved cautiously: 'Landed at night and made a fire to cook +their evening meal; then extinguished it, embarked again, paddled some +way farther, and anchored in the stream, keeping a man on the watch till +morning.' + +They did this day after day and night after night; and at the end of two +weeks they had not seen a human being. The river was an awful solitude, +then. And it is now, over most of its stretch. + +But at the close of the fortnight they one day came upon the footprints +of men in the mud of the western bank--a Robinson Crusoe experience +which carries an electric shiver with it yet, when one stumbles on it in +print. They had been warned that the river Indians were as ferocious +and pitiless as the river demon, and destroyed all comers without +waiting for provocation; but no matter, Joliet and Marquette struck into +the country to hunt up the proprietors of the tracks. They found them, +by and by, and were hospitably received and well treated--if to be +received by an Indian chief who has taken off his last rag in order to +appear at his level best is to be received hospitably; and if to be +treated abundantly to fish, porridge, and other game, including dog, and +have these things forked into one's mouth by the ungloved fingers of +Indians is to be well treated. In the morning the chief and six hundred +of his tribesmen escorted the Frenchmen to the river and bade them a +friendly farewell. + +On the rocks above the present city of Alton they found some rude and +fantastic Indian paintings, which they describe. A short distance below +'a torrent of yellow mud rushed furiously athwart the calm blue current +of the Mississippi, boiling and surging and sweeping in its course logs, +branches, and uprooted trees.' This was the mouth of the Missouri, 'that +savage river,' which 'descending from its mad career through a vast +unknown of barbarism, poured its turbid floods into the bosom of its +gentle sister.' + +By and by they passed the mouth of the Ohio; they passed cane-brakes; +they fought mosquitoes; they floated along, day after day, through the +deep silence and loneliness of the river, drowsing in the scant shade of +makeshift awnings, and broiling with the heat; they encountered and +exchanged civilities with another party of Indians; and at last they +reached the mouth of the Arkansas (about a month out from their +starting-point), where a tribe of war-whooping savages swarmed out to +meet and murder them; but they appealed to the Virgin for help; so in +place of a fight there was a feast, and plenty of pleasant palaver and +fol-de-rol. + +They had proved to their satisfaction, that the Mississippi did not +empty into the Gulf of California, or into the Atlantic. They believed +it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico. They turned back, now, and carried +their great news to Canada. + +But belief is not proof. It was reserved for La Salle to furnish the +proof. He was provokingly delayed, by one misfortune after another, but +at last got his expedition under way at the end of the year 1681. In +the dead of winter he and Henri de Tonty, son of Lorenzo Tonty, who +invented the tontine, his lieutenant, started down the Illinois, with a +following of eighteen Indians brought from New England, and twenty-three +Frenchmen. They moved in procession down the surface of the frozen +river, on foot, and dragging their canoes after them on sledges. + +At Peoria Lake they struck open water, and paddled thence to the +Mississippi and turned their prows southward. They plowed through the +fields of floating ice, past the mouth of the Missouri; past the mouth +of the Ohio, by-and-by; 'and, gliding by the wastes of bordering swamp, +landed on the 24th of February near the Third Chickasaw Bluffs,' where +they halted and built Fort Prudhomme. + +'Again,' says Mr. Parkman, 'they embarked; and with every stage of their +adventurous progress, the mystery of this vast new world was more and +more unveiled. More and more they entered the realms of spring. The +hazy sunlight, the warm and drowsy air, the tender foliage, the opening +flowers, betokened the reviving life of nature.' + +Day by day they floated down the great bends, in the shadow of the dense +forests, and in time arrived at the mouth of the Arkansas. First, they +were greeted by the natives of this locality as Marquette had before +been greeted by them--with the booming of the war drum and the flourish +of arms. The Virgin composed the difficulty in Marquette's case; the +pipe of peace did the same office for La Salle. The white man and the +red man struck hands and entertained each other during three days. +Then, to the admiration of the savages, La Salle set up a cross with the +arms of France on it, and took possession of the whole country for the +king--the cool fashion of the time--while the priest piously consecrated +the robbery with a hymn. The priest explained the mysteries of the faith +'by signs,' for the saving of the savages; thus compensating them with +possible possessions in Heaven for the certain ones on earth which they +had just been robbed of. And also, by signs, La Salle drew from these +simple children of the forest acknowledgments of fealty to Louis the +Putrid, over the water. Nobody smiled at these colossal ironies. + +These performances took place on the site of the future town of +Napoleon, Arkansas, and there the first confiscation-cross was raised on +the banks of the great river. Marquette's and Joliet's voyage of +discovery ended at the same spot--the site of the future town of +Napoleon. When De Soto took his fleeting glimpse of the river, away back +in the dim early days, he took it from that same spot--the site of the +future town of Napoleon, Arkansas. Therefore, three out of the four +memorable events connected with the discovery and exploration of the +mighty river, occurred, by accident, in one and the same place. It is a +most curious distinction, when one comes to look at it and think about +it. France stole that vast country on that spot, the future Napoleon; +and by and by Napoleon himself was to give the country back again!--make +restitution, not to the owners, but to their white American heirs. + +The voyagers journeyed on, touching here and there; 'passed the sites, +since become historic, of Vicksburg and Grand Gulf,' and visited an +imposing Indian monarch in the Teche country, whose capital city was a +substantial one of sun-baked bricks mixed with straw--better houses than +many that exist there now. The chiefs house contained an audience room +forty feet square; and there he received Tonty in State, surrounded by +sixty old men clothed in white cloaks. There was a temple in the town, +with a mud wall about it ornamented with skulls of enemies sacrificed to +the sun. + +The voyagers visited the Natchez Indians, near the site of the present +city of that name, where they found a 'religious and political +despotism, a privileged class descended from the sun, a temple and a +sacred fire.' It must have been like getting home again; it was home +with an advantage, in fact, for it lacked Louis XIV. + +A few more days swept swiftly by, and La Salle stood in the shadow of +his confiscating cross, at the meeting of the waters from Delaware, and +from Itaska, and from the mountain ranges close upon the Pacific, with +the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, his task finished, his prodigy +achieved. Mr. Parkman, in closing his fascinating narrative, thus sums +up: + +'On that day, the realm of France received on parchment a stupendous +accession. The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of the +Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of +the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of +the Rocky Mountains--a region of savannas and forests, sun-cracked +deserts and grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a +thousand warlike tribes, passed beneath the scepter of the Sultan of +Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half +a mile.' + + + + +Chapter 3 Frescoes from the Past + +APPARENTLY the river was ready for business, now. But no, the +distribution of a population along its banks was as calm and deliberate +and time-devouring a process as the discovery and exploration had been. + +Seventy years elapsed, after the exploration, before the river's borders +had a white population worth considering; and nearly fifty more before +the river had a commerce. Between La Salle's opening of the river and +the time when it may be said to have become the vehicle of anything like +a regular and active commerce, seven sovereigns had occupied the throne +of England, America had become an independent nation, Louis XIV. and +Louis XV. had rotted and died, the French monarchy had gone down in the +red tempest of the revolution, and Napoleon was a name that was +beginning to be talked about. Truly, there were snails in those days. + +The river's earliest commerce was in great barges--keelboats, +broadhorns. They floated and sailed from the upper rivers to New +Orleans, changed cargoes there, and were tediously warped and poled back +by hand. A voyage down and back sometimes occupied nine months. In time +this commerce increased until it gave employment to hordes of rough and +hardy men; rude, uneducated, brave, suffering terrific hardships with +sailor-like stoicism; heavy drinkers, coarse frolickers in moral sties +like the Natchez-under-the-hill of that day, heavy fighters, reckless +fellows, every one, elephantinely jolly, foul-witted, profane; prodigal +of their money, bankrupt at the end of the trip, fond of barbaric +finery, prodigious braggarts; yet, in the main, honest, trustworthy, +faithful to promises and duty, and often picturesquely magnanimous. + +By and by the steamboat intruded. Then for fifteen or twenty years, +these men continued to run their keelboats down-stream, and the steamers +did all of the upstream business, the keelboatmen selling their boats in +New Orleans, and returning home as deck passengers in the steamers. + +But after a while the steamboats so increased in number and in speed +that they were able to absorb the entire commerce; and then keelboating +died a permanent death. The keelboatman became a deck hand, or a mate, +or a pilot on the steamer; and when steamer-berths were not open to him, +he took a berth on a Pittsburgh coal-flat, or on a pine-raft constructed +in the forests up toward the sources of the Mississippi. + +In the heyday of the steamboating prosperity, the river from end to end +was flaked with coal-fleets and timber rafts, all managed by hand, and +employing hosts of the rough characters whom I have been trying to +describe. I remember the annual processions of mighty rafts that used +to glide by Hannibal when I was a boy,--an acre or so of white, sweet- +smelling boards in each raft, a crew of two dozen men or more, three or +four wigwams scattered about the raft's vast level space for storm- +quarters,--and I remember the rude ways and the tremendous talk of their +big crews, the ex-keelboatmen and their admiringly patterning +successors; for we used to swim out a quarter or third of a mile and get +on these rafts and have a ride. + +By way of illustrating keelboat talk and manners, and that now-departed +and hardly-remembered raft-life, I will throw in, in this place, a +chapter from a book which I have been working at, by fits and starts, +during the past five or six years, and may possibly finish in the course +of five or six more. The book is a story which details some passages in +the life of an ignorant village boy, Huck Finn, son of the town drunkard +of my time out west, there. He has run away from his persecuting +father, and from a persecuting good widow who wishes to make a nice, +truth-telling, respectable boy of him; and with him a slave of the +widow's has also escaped. They have found a fragment of a lumber raft +(it is high water and dead summer time), and are floating down the river +by night, and hiding in the willows by day,--bound for Cairo,--whence +the negro will seek freedom in the heart of the free States. But in a +fog, they pass Cairo without knowing it. By and by they begin to suspect +the truth, and Huck Finn is persuaded to end the dismal suspense by +swimming down to a huge raft which they have seen in the distance ahead +of them, creeping aboard under cover of the darkness, and gathering the +needed information by eavesdropping:-- + +But you know a young person can't wait very well when he is impatient to +find a thing out. We talked it over, and by and by Jim said it was such +a black night, now, that it wouldn't be no risk to swim down to the big +raft and crawl aboard and listen--they would talk about Cairo, because +they would be calculating to go ashore there for a spree, maybe, or +anyway they would send boats ashore to buy whiskey or fresh meat or +something. Jim had a wonderful level head, for a nigger: he could most +always start a good plan when you wanted one. + +I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river, and struck +out for the raft's light. By and by, when I got down nearly to her, I +eased up and went slow and cautious. But everything was all right-- +nobody at the sweeps. So I swum down along the raft till I was most +abreast the camp fire in the middle, then I crawled aboard and inched +along and got in amongst some bundles of shingles on the weather side of +the fire. There was thirteen men there--they was the watch on deck of +course. And a mighty rough-looking lot, too. They had a jug, and tin +cups, and they kept the jug moving. One man was singing--roaring, you +may say; and it wasn't a nice song--for a parlor anyway. He roared +through his nose, and strung out the last word of every line very long. +When he was done they all fetched a kind of Injun war-whoop, and then +another was sung. It begun:-- + +'There was a woman in our towdn, In our towdn did dwed'l (dwell,) She +loved her husband dear-i-lee, But another man twyste as wed'l. + +Singing too, riloo, riloo, riloo, Ri-too, riloo, rilay - - - e, She +loved her husband dear-i-lee, But another man twyste as wed'l. + +And so on--fourteen verses. It was kind of poor, and when he was going +to start on the next verse one of them said it was the tune the old cow +died on; and another one said, 'Oh, give us a rest.' And another one +told him to take a walk. They made fun of him till he got mad and +jumped up and begun to cuss the crowd, and said he could lame any thief +in the lot. + +They was all about to make a break for him, but the biggest man there +jumped up and says-- + +'Set whar you are, gentlemen. Leave him to me; he's my meat.' + +Then he jumped up in the air three times and cracked his heels together +every time. He flung off a buckskin coat that was all hung with +fringes, and says, 'You lay thar tell the chawin-up's done;' and flung +his hat down, which was all over ribbons, and says, 'You lay thar tell +his sufferin's is over.' + +Then he jumped up in the air and cracked his heels together again and +shouted out-- + +'Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper- +bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!--Look at me! I'm the +man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, +dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to +the small-pox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen +alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust +health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing! I +split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder +when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my +strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music +to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!--and lay low and hold your +breath, for I'm bout to turn myself loose!' + +All the time he was getting this off, he was shaking his head and +looking fierce, and kind of swelling around in a little circle, tucking +up his wrist-bands, and now and then straightening up and beating his +breast with his fist, saying, 'Look at me, gentlemen!' When he got +through, he jumped up and cracked his heels together three times, and +let off a roaring 'Whoo-oop! I'm the bloodiest son of a wildcat that +lives!' + +Then the man that had started the row tilted his old slouch hat down +over his right eye; then he bent stooping forward, with his back sagged +and his south end sticking out far, and his fists a-shoving out and +drawing in in front of him, and so went around in a little circle about +three times, swelling himself up and breathing hard. Then he +straightened, and jumped up and cracked his heels together three times, +before he lit again (that made them cheer), and he begun to shout like +this-- + +'Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of sorrow's a- +coming! Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my powers a-working! whoo- +oop! I'm a child of sin, don't let me get a start! Smoked glass, here, +for all! Don't attempt to look at me with the naked eye, gentlemen! +When I'm playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of +latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales! I scratch +my head with the lightning, and purr myself to sleep with the thunder! +When I'm cold, I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in it; when I'm hot I +fan myself with an equinoctial storm; when I'm thirsty I reach up and +suck a cloud dry like a sponge; when I range the earth hungry, famine +follows in my tracks! Whoo-oop! Bow your neck and spread! I put my hand +on the sun's face and make it night in the earth; I bite a piece out of +the moon and hurry the seasons; I shake myself and crumble the +mountains! Contemplate me through leather--don't use the naked eye! I'm +the man with a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels! The massacre of +isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments, the destruction +of nationalities the serious business of my life! The boundless vastness +of the great American desert is my enclosed property, and I bury my dead +on my own premises!' He jumped up and cracked his heels together three +times before he lit (they cheered him again), and as he come down he +shouted out: 'Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the pet child of +calamity's a-coming! ' + +Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing again--the first +one--the one they called Bob; next, the Child of Calamity chipped in +again, bigger than ever; then they both got at it at the same time, +swelling round and round each other and punching their fists most into +each other's faces, and whooping and jawing like Injuns; then Bob called +the Child names, and the Child called him names back again: next, Bob +called him a heap rougher names and the Child come back at him with the +very worst kind of language; next, Bob knocked the Child's hat off, and +the Child picked it up and kicked Bob's ribbony hat about six foot; Bob +went and got it and said never mind, this warn't going to be the last of +this thing, because he was a man that never forgot and never forgive, +and so the Child better look out, for there was a time a-coming, just as +sure as he was a living man, that he would have to answer to him with +the best blood in his body. The Child said no man was willinger than he +was for that time to come, and he would give Bob fair warning, now, +never to cross his path again, for he could never rest till he had waded +in his blood, for such was his nature, though he was sparing him now on +account of his family, if he had one. + +Both of them was edging away in different directions, growling and +shaking their heads and going on about what they was going to do; but a +little black-whiskered chap skipped up and says-- + +'Come back here, you couple of chicken-livered cowards, and I'll thrash +the two of ye!' + +And he done it, too. He snatched them, he jerked them this way and +that, he booted them around, he knocked them sprawling faster than they +could get up. Why, it warn't two minutes till they begged like dogs-- +and how the other lot did yell and laugh and clap their hands all the +way through, and shout 'Sail in, Corpse-Maker!' 'Hi! at him again, Child +of Calamity!' 'Bully for you, little Davy!' Well, it was a perfect pow- +wow for a while. Bob and the Child had red noses and black eyes when +they got through. Little Davy made them own up that they were sneaks and +cowards and not fit to eat with a dog or drink with a nigger; then Bob +and the Child shook hands with each other, very solemn, and said they +had always respected each other and was willing to let bygones be +bygones. So then they washed their faces in the river; and just then +there was a loud order to stand by for a crossing, and some of them went +forward to man the sweeps there, and the rest went aft to handle the +after-sweeps. + +I laid still and waited for fifteen minutes, and had a smoke out of a +pipe that one of them left in reach; then the crossing was finished, and +they stumped back and had a drink around and went to talking and singing +again. Next they got out an old fiddle, and one played and another +patted juba, and the rest turned themselves loose on a regular old- +fashioned keel-boat break-down. They couldn't keep that up very long +without getting winded, so by and by they settled around the jug again. + +They sung 'jolly, jolly raftman's the life for me,' with a musing +chorus, and then they got to talking about differences betwixt hogs, and +their different kind of habits; and next about women and their different +ways: and next about the best ways to put out houses that was afire; +and next about what ought to be done with the Injuns; and next about +what a king had to do, and how much he got; and next about how to make +cats fight; and next about what to do when a man has fits; and next +about differences betwixt clear-water rivers and muddy-water ones. The +man they called Ed said the muddy Mississippi water was wholesomer to +drink than the clear water of the Ohio; he said if you let a pint of +this yaller Mississippi water settle, you would have about a half to +three-quarters of an inch of mud in the bottom, according to the stage +of the river, and then it warn't no better than Ohio water--what you +wanted to do was to keep it stirred up--and when the river was low, keep +mud on hand to put in and thicken the water up the way it ought to be. + +The Child of Calamity said that was so; he said there was nutritiousness +in the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi water could grow corn in +his stomach if he wanted to. He says-- + +'You look at the graveyards; that tells the tale. Trees won't grow +worth chucks in a Cincinnati graveyard, but in a Sent Louis graveyard +they grow upwards of eight hundred foot high. It's all on account of the +water the people drunk before they laid up. A Cincinnati corpse don't +richen a soil any.' + +And they talked about how Ohio water didn't like to mix with Mississippi +water. Ed said if you take the Mississippi on a rise when the Ohio is +low, you'll find a wide band of clear water all the way down the east +side of the Mississippi for a hundred mile or more, and the minute you +get out a quarter of a mile from shore and pass the line, it is all +thick and yaller the rest of the way across. Then they talked about how +to keep tobacco from getting moldy, and from that they went into ghosts +and told about a lot that other folks had seen; but Ed says-- + +'Why don't you tell something that you've seen yourselves? Now let me +have a say. Five years ago I was on a raft as big as this, and right +along here it was a bright moonshiny night, and I was on watch and boss +of the stabboard oar forrard, and one of my pards was a man named Dick +Allbright, and he come along to where I was sitting, forrard--gaping and +stretching, he was--and stooped down on the edge of the raft and washed +his face in the river, and come and set down by me and got out his pipe, +and had just got it filled, when he looks up and says-- + +'"Why looky-here," he says, "ain't that Buck Miller's place, over yander +in the bend." + +'"Yes," says I, "it is--why." He laid his pipe down and leant his head +on his hand, and says-- + +'"I thought we'd be furder down." I says-- + +'"I thought it too, when I went off watch"--we was standing six hours on +and six off--"but the boys told me," I says, "that the raft didn't seem +to hardly move, for the last hour," says I, "though she's a slipping +along all right, now," says I. He give a kind of a groan, and says-- + +'"I've seed a raft act so before, along here," he says, "'pears to me +the current has most quit above the head of this bend durin' the last +two years," he says. + +'Well, he raised up two or three times, and looked away off and around +on the water. That started me at it, too. A body is always doing what +he sees somebody else doing, though there mayn't be no sense in it. +Pretty soon I see a black something floating on the water away off to +stabboard and quartering behind us. I see he was looking at it, too. I +says-- + +'"What's that?" He says, sort of pettish,-- + +'"Tain't nothing but an old empty bar'l." + +'"An empty bar'l!" says I, "why," says I, "a spy-glass is a fool to your +eyes. How can you tell it's an empty bar'l?" He says-- + +'"I don't know; I reckon it ain't a bar'l, but I thought it might be," +says he. + +'"Yes," I says, "so it might be, and it might be anything else, too; a +body can't tell nothing about it, such a distance as that," I says. + +'We hadn't nothing else to do, so we kept on watching it. By and by I +says-- + +'"Why looky-here, Dick Allbright, that thing's a-gaining on us, I +believe." + +'He never said nothing. The thing gained and gained, and I judged it +must be a dog that was about tired out. Well, we swung down into the +crossing, and the thing floated across the bright streak of the +moonshine, and, by George, it was bar'l. Says I-- + +'"Dick Allbright, what made you think that thing was a bar'l, when it +was a half a mile off," says I. Says he-- + +'"I don't know." Says I-- + +'"You tell me, Dick Allbright." He says-- + +'"Well, I knowed it was a bar'l; I've seen it before; lots has seen it; +they says it's a haunted bar'l." + +'I called the rest of the watch, and they come and stood there, and I +told them what Dick said. It floated right along abreast, now, and +didn't gain any more. It was about twenty foot off. Some was for having +it aboard, but the rest didn't want to. Dick Allbright said rafts that +had fooled with it had got bad luck by it. The captain of the watch +said he didn't believe in it. He said he reckoned the bar'l gained on us +because it was in a little better current than what we was. He said it +would leave by and by. + +'So then we went to talking about other things, and we had a song, and +then a breakdown; and after that the captain of the watch called for +another song; but it was clouding up, now, and the bar'l stuck right +thar in the same place, and the song didn't seem to have much warm-up to +it, somehow, and so they didn't finish it, and there warn't any cheers, +but it sort of dropped flat, and nobody said anything for a minute. Then +everybody tried to talk at once, and one chap got off a joke, but it +warn't no use, they didn't laugh, and even the chap that made the joke +didn't laugh at it, which ain't usual. We all just settled down glum, +and watched the bar'l, and was oneasy and oncomfortable. Well, sir, it +shut down black and still, and then the wind begin to moan around, and +next the lightning begin to play and the thunder to grumble. And pretty +soon there was a regular storm, and in the middle of it a man that was +running aft stumbled and fell and sprained his ankle so that he had to +lay up. This made the boys shake their heads. And every time the +lightning come, there was that bar'l with the blue lights winking around +it. We was always on the look-out for it. But by and by, towards dawn, +she was gone. When the day come we couldn't see her anywhere, and we +warn't sorry, neither. + +'But next night about half-past nine, when there was songs and high +jinks going on, here she comes again, and took her old roost on the +stabboard side. There warn't no more high jinks. Everybody got solemn; +nobody talked; you couldn't get anybody to do anything but set around +moody and look at the bar'l. It begun to cloud up again. When the watch +changed, the off watch stayed up, 'stead of turning in. The storm ripped +and roared around all night, and in the middle of it another man tripped +and sprained his ankle, and had to knock off. The bar'l left towards +day, and nobody see it go. + +'Everybody was sober and down in the mouth all day. I don't mean the +kind of sober that comes of leaving liquor alone--not that. They was +quiet, but they all drunk more than usual--not together--but each man +sidled off and took it private, by himself. + +'After dark the off watch didn't turn in; nobody sung, nobody talked; +the boys didn't scatter around, neither; they sort of huddled together, +forrard; and for two hours they set there, perfectly still, looking +steady in the one direction, and heaving a sigh once in a while. And +then, here comes the bar'l again. She took up her old place. She staid +there all night; nobody turned in. The storm come on again, after +midnight. It got awful dark; the rain poured down; hail, too; the +thunder boomed and roared and bellowed; the wind blowed a hurricane; and +the lightning spread over everything in big sheets of glare, and showed +the whole raft as plain as day; and the river lashed up white as milk as +far as you could see for miles, and there was that bar'l jiggering +along, same as ever. The captain ordered the watch to man the after +sweeps for a crossing, and nobody would go--no more sprained ankles for +them, they said. They wouldn't even walk aft. Well then, just then the +sky split wide open, with a crash, and the lightning killed two men of +the after watch, and crippled two more. Crippled them how, says you? +Why, sprained their ankles! + +'The bar'l left in the dark betwixt lightnings, towards dawn. Well, not +a body eat a bite at breakfast that morning. After that the men loafed +around, in twos and threes, and talked low together. But none of them +herded with Dick Allbright. They all give him the cold shake. If he +come around where any of the men was, they split up and sidled away. +They wouldn't man the sweeps with him. The captain had all the skiffs +hauled up on the raft, alongside of his wigwam, and wouldn't let the +dead men be took ashore to be planted; he didn't believe a man that got +ashore would come back; and he was right. + +'After night come, you could see pretty plain that there was going to be +trouble if that bar'l come again; there was such a muttering going on. A +good many wanted to kill Dick Allbright, because he'd seen the bar'l on +other trips, and that had an ugly look. Some wanted to put him ashore. +Some said, let's all go ashore in a pile, if the bar'l comes again. + +'This kind of whispers was still going on, the men being bunched +together forrard watching for the bar'l, when, lo and behold you, here +she comes again. Down she comes, slow and steady, and settles into her +old tracks. You could a heard a pin drop. Then up comes the captain, +and says:-- + +'"Boys, don't be a pack of children and fools; I don't want this bar'l +to be dogging us all the way to Orleans, and YOU don't; well, then, +how's the best way to stop it? Burn it up,--that's the way. I'm going +to fetch it aboard," he says. And before anybody could say a word, in he +went. + +'He swum to it, and as he come pushing it to the raft, the men spread to +one side. But the old man got it aboard and busted in the head, and +there was a baby in it! Yes, sir, a stark naked baby. It was Dick +Allbright's baby; he owned up and said so. + +'"Yes," he says, a-leaning over it, "yes, it is my own lamented darling, +my poor lost Charles William Allbright deceased," says he,--for he could +curl his tongue around the bulliest words in the language when he was a +mind to, and lay them before you without a jint started, anywheres. +Yes, he said he used to live up at the head of this bend, and one night +he choked his child, which was crying, not intending to kill it,--which +was prob'ly a lie,--and then he was scared, and buried it in a bar'l, +before his wife got home, and off he went, and struck the northern trail +and went to rafting; and this was the third year that the bar'l had +chased him. He said the bad luck always begun light, and lasted till +four men was killed, and then the bar'l didn't come any more after that. +He said if the men would stand it one more night,--and was a-going on +like that,--but the men had got enough. They started to get out a boat +to take him ashore and lynch him, but he grabbed the little child all of +a sudden and jumped overboard with it hugged up to his breast and +shedding tears, and we never see him again in this life, poor old +suffering soul, nor Charles William neither.' + +'WHO was shedding tears?' says Bob; 'was it Allbright or the baby?' + +'Why, Allbright, of course; didn't I tell you the baby was dead. Been +dead three years--how could it cry?' + +'Well, never mind how it could cry--how could it KEEP all that time?' +says Davy. 'You answer me that.' + +'I don't know how it done it,' says Ed. 'It done it though--that's all +I know about it.' + +'Say--what did they do with the bar'l?' says the Child of Calamity. + +'Why, they hove it overboard, and it sunk like a chunk of lead.' + +'Edward, did the child look like it was choked?' says one. + +'Did it have its hair parted?' says another. + +'What was the brand on that bar'l, Eddy?' says a fellow they called +Bill. + +'Have you got the papers for them statistics, Edmund?' says Jimmy. + +'Say, Edwin, was you one of the men that was killed by the lightning.' +says Davy. + +'Him? O, no, he was both of 'em,' says Bob. Then they all haw-hawed. + +'Say, Edward, don't you reckon you'd better take a pill? You look bad-- +don't you feel pale?' says the Child of Calamity. + +'O, come, now, Eddy,' says Jimmy, 'show up; you must a kept part of that +bar'l to prove the thing by. Show us the bunghole--do--and we'll all +believe you.' + +'Say, boys,' says Bill, 'less divide it up. Thar's thirteen of us. I +can swaller a thirteenth of the yarn, if you can worry down the rest.' + +Ed got up mad and said they could all go to some place which he ripped +out pretty savage, and then walked off aft cussing to himself, and they +yelling and jeering at him, and roaring and laughing so you could hear +them a mile. + +'Boys, we'll split a watermelon on that,' says the Child of Calamity; +and he come rummaging around in the dark amongst the shingle bundles +where I was, and put his hand on me. I was warm and soft and naked; so +he says 'Ouch!' and jumped back. + +'Fetch a lantern or a chunk of fire here, boys--there's a snake here as +big as a cow!' + +So they run there with a lantern and crowded up and looked in on me. + +'Come out of that, you beggar!' says one. + +'Who are you?' says another. + +'What are you after here? Speak up prompt, or overboard you go. + +'Snake him out, boys. Snatch him out by the heels.' + +I began to beg, and crept out amongst them trembling. They looked me +over, wondering, and the Child of Calamity says-- + +'A cussed thief! Lend a hand and less heave him overboard!' + +'No,' says Big Bob, 'less get out the paint-pot and paint him a sky blue +all over from head to heel, and then heave him over!' + +'Good, that 's it. Go for the paint, Jimmy.' + +When the paint come, and Bob took the brush and was just going to begin, +the others laughing and rubbing their hands, I begun to cry, and that +sort of worked on Davy, and he says-- + +''Vast there! He 's nothing but a cub. 'I'll paint the man that +tetches him!' + +So I looked around on them, and some of them grumbled and growled, and +Bob put down the paint, and the others didn't take it up. + +'Come here to the fire, and less see what you're up to here,' says Davy. +'Now set down there and give an account of yourself. How long have you +been aboard here?' + +'Not over a quarter of a minute, sir,' says I. + +'How did you get dry so quick?' + +'I don't know, sir. I'm always that way, mostly.' + +'Oh, you are, are you. What's your name?' + +I warn't going to tell my name. I didn't know what to say, so I just +says-- + +'Charles William Allbright, sir.' + +Then they roared--the whole crowd; and I was mighty glad I said that, +because maybe laughing would get them in a better humor. + +When they got done laughing, Davy says-- + +'It won't hardly do, Charles William. You couldn't have growed this +much in five year, and you was a baby when you come out of the bar'l, +you know, and dead at that. Come, now, tell a straight story, and +nobody'll hurt you, if you ain't up to anything wrong. What IS your +name?' + +'Aleck Hopkins, sir. Aleck James Hopkins.' + +'Well, Aleck, where did you come from, here?' + +'From a trading scow. She lays up the bend yonder. I was born on her. +Pap has traded up and down here all his life; and he told me to swim off +here, because when you went by he said he would like to get some of you +to speak to a Mr. Jonas Turner, in Cairo, and tell him--' + +'Oh, come!' + +'Yes, sir; it's as true as the world; Pap he says--' + +'Oh, your grandmother!' + +They all laughed, and I tried again to talk, but they broke in on me and +stopped me. + +'Now, looky-here,' says Davy; 'you're scared, and so you talk wild. +Honest, now, do you live in a scow, or is it a lie?' + +'Yes, sir, in a trading scow. She lays up at the head of the bend. But +I warn't born in her. It's our first trip.' + +'Now you're talking! What did you come aboard here, for? To steal?' + +'No, sir, I didn't.--It was only to get a ride on the raft. All boys +does that.' + +'Well, I know that. But what did you hide for?' + +'Sometimes they drive the boys off.' + +'So they do. They might steal. Looky-here; if we let you off this +time, will you keep out of these kind of scrapes hereafter?' + +''Deed I will, boss. You try me.' + +'All right, then. You ain't but little ways from shore. Overboard with +you, and don't you make a fool of yourself another time this way.--Blast +it, boy, some raftsmen would rawhide you till you were black and blue!' + +I didn't wait to kiss good-bye, but went overboard and broke for shore. +When Jim come along by and by, the big raft was away out of sight around +the point. I swum out and got aboard, and was mighty glad to see home +again. + + +The boy did not get the information he was after, but his adventure has +furnished the glimpse of the departed raftsman and keelboatman which I +desire to offer in this place. + +I now come to a phase of the Mississippi River life of the flush times +of steamboating, which seems to me to warrant full examination--the +marvelous science of piloting, as displayed there. I believe there has +been nothing like it elsewhere in the world. + + + + +Chapter 4 The Boys' Ambition + +WHEN I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades +in our village{footnote [1. Hannibal, Missouri]} on the west bank of the +Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient +ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient. When a circus +came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first negro +minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that +kind of life; now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, +God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in +its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained. + +Once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upward from St. Louis, and +another downward from Keokuk. Before these events, the day was glorious +with expectancy; after them, the day was a dead and empty thing. Not +only the boys, but the whole village, felt this. After all these years I +can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then: the white +town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's morning; the streets empty, +or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water +Street stores, with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against the +wall, chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep--with +shingle-shavings enough around to show what broke them down; a sow and a +litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk, doing a good business in +watermelon rinds and seeds; two or three lonely little freight piles +scattered about the 'levee;' a pile of 'skids' on the slope of the +stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow +of them; two or three wood flats at the head of the wharf, but nobody to +listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them; the great +Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its +mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the dense forest away on the +other side; the 'point' above the town, and the 'point' below, bounding +the river-glimpse and turning it into a sort of sea, and withal a very +still and brilliant and lonely one. Presently a film of dark smoke +appears above one of those remote 'points;' instantly a negro drayman, +famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry, 'S-t-e- +a-m-boat a-comin'!' and the scene changes! The town drunkard stirs, the +clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays follows, every house and +store pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling the dead +town is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men, boys, all go hurrying from +many quarters to a common center, the wharf. Assembled there, the people +fasten their eyes upon the coming boat as upon a wonder they are seeing +for the first time. And the boat IS rather a handsome sight, too. She +is long and sharp and trim and pretty; she has two tall, fancy-topped +chimneys, with a gilded device of some kind swung between them; a +fanciful pilot-house, a glass and 'gingerbread', perched on top of the +'texas' deck behind them; the paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture +or with gilded rays above the boat's name; the boiler deck, the +hurricane deck, and the texas deck are fenced and ornamented with clean +white railings; there is a flag gallantly flying from the jack-staff; +the furnace doors are open and the fires glaring bravely; the upper +decks are black with passengers; the captain stands by the big bell, +calm, imposing, the envy of all; great volumes of the blackest smoke are +rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys--a husbanded grandeur created +with a bit of pitch pine just before arriving at a town; the crew are +grouped on the forecastle; the broad stage is run far out over the port +bow, and an envied deckhand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a +coil of rope in his hand; the pent steam is screaming through the gauge- +cocks, the captain lifts his hand, a bell rings, the wheels stop; then +they turn back, churning the water to foam, and the steamer is at rest. +Then such a scramble as there is to get aboard, and to get ashore, and +to take in freight and to discharge freight, all at one and the same +time; and such a yelling and cursing as the mates facilitate it all +with! Ten minutes later the steamer is under way again, with no flag on +the jack-staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys. After ten +more minutes the town is dead again, and the town drunkard asleep by the +skids once more. + +My father was a justice of the peace, and I supposed he possessed the +power of life and death over all men and could hang anybody that +offended him. This was distinction enough for me as a general thing; +but the desire to be a steamboatman kept intruding, nevertheless. I +first wanted to be a cabin-boy, so that I could come out with a white +apron on and shake a tablecloth over the side, where all my old comrades +could see me; later I thought I would rather be the deckhand who stood +on the end of the stage-plank with the coil of rope in his hand, because +he was particularly conspicuous. But these were only day-dreams,--they +were too heavenly to be contemplated as real possibilities. By and by +one of our boys went away. He was not heard of for a long time. At last +he turned up as apprentice engineer or 'striker' on a steamboat. This +thing shook the bottom out of all my Sunday-school teachings. That boy +had been notoriously worldly, and I just the reverse; yet he was exalted +to this eminence, and I left in obscurity and misery. There was nothing +generous about this fellow in his greatness. He would always manage to +have a rusty bolt to scrub while his boat tarried at our town, and he +would sit on the inside guard and scrub it, where we could all see him +and envy him and loathe him. And whenever his boat was laid up he would +come home and swell around the town in his blackest and greasiest +clothes, so that nobody could help remembering that he was a +steamboatman; and he used all sorts of steamboat technicalities in his +talk, as if he were so used to them that he forgot common people could +not understand them. He would speak of the 'labboard' side of a horse in +an easy, natural way that would make one wish he was dead. And he was +always talking about 'St. Looy' like an old citizen; he would refer +casually to occasions when he 'was coming down Fourth Street,' or when +he was 'passing by the Planter's House,' or when there was a fire and he +took a turn on the brakes of 'the old Big Missouri;' and then he would +go on and lie about how many towns the size of ours were burned down +there that day. Two or three of the boys had long been persons of +consideration among us because they had been to St. Louis once and had a +vague general knowledge of its wonders, but the day of their glory was +over now. They lapsed into a humble silence, and learned to disappear +when the ruthless 'cub'-engineer approached. This fellow had money, +too, and hair oil. Also an ignorant silver watch and a showy brass watch +chain. He wore a leather belt and used no suspenders. If ever a youth +was cordially admired and hated by his comrades, this one was. No girl +could withstand his charms. He 'cut out' every boy in the village. When +his boat blew up at last, it diffused a tranquil contentment among us +such as we had not known for months. But when he came home the next +week, alive, renowned, and appeared in church all battered up and +bandaged, a shining hero, stared at and wondered over by everybody, it +seemed to us that the partiality of Providence for an undeserving +reptile had reached a point where it was open to criticism. + +This creature's career could produce but one result, and it speedily +followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister's son +became an engineer. The doctor's and the post-master's sons became 'mud +clerks;' the wholesale liquor dealer's son became a barkeeper on a boat; +four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge, +became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even +in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary--from a hundred +and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay. +Two months of his wages would pay a preacher's salary for a year. Now +some of us were left disconsolate. We could not get on the river--at +least our parents would not let us. + +So by and by I ran away. I said I never would come home again till I +was a pilot and could come in glory. But somehow I could not manage it. +I went meekly aboard a few of the boats that lay packed together like +sardines at the long St. Louis wharf, and very humbly inquired for the +pilots, but got only a cold shoulder and short words from mates and +clerks. I had to make the best of this sort of treatment for the time +being, but I had comforting daydreams of a future when I should be a +great and honored pilot, with plenty of money, and could kill some of +these mates and clerks and pay for them. + + + + +Chapter 5 I Want to be a Cub-pilot + +MONTHS afterward the hope within me struggled to a reluctant death, and +I found myself without an ambition. But I was ashamed to go home. I was +in Cincinnati, and I set to work to map out a new career. I had been +reading about the recent exploration of the river Amazon by an +expedition sent out by our government. It was said that the expedition, +owing to difficulties, had not thoroughly explored a part of the country +lying about the head-waters, some four thousand miles from the mouth of +the river. It was only about fifteen hundred miles from Cincinnati to +New Orleans, where I could doubtless get a ship. I had thirty dollars +left; I would go and complete the exploration of the Amazon. This was +all the thought I gave to the subject. I never was great in matters of +detail. I packed my valise, and took passage on an ancient tub called +the 'Paul Jones,' for New Orleans. For the sum of sixteen dollars I had +the scarred and tarnished splendors of 'her' main saloon principally to +myself, for she was not a creature to attract the eye of wiser +travelers. + +When we presently got under way and went poking down the broad Ohio, I +became a new being, and the subject of my own admiration. I was a +traveler! A word never had tasted so good in my mouth before. I had an +exultant sense of being bound for mysterious lands and distant climes +which I never have felt in so uplifting a degree since. I was in such a +glorified condition that all ignoble feelings departed out of me, and I +was able to look down and pity the untraveled with a compassion that had +hardly a trace of contempt in it. Still, when we stopped at villages and +wood-yards, I could not help lolling carelessly upon the railings of the +boiler deck to enjoy the envy of the country boys on the bank. If they +did not seem to discover me, I presently sneezed to attract their +attention, or moved to a position where they could not help seeing me. +And as soon as I knew they saw me I gaped and stretched, and gave other +signs of being mightily bored with traveling. + +I kept my hat off all the time, and stayed where the wind and the sun +could strike me, because I wanted to get the bronzed and weather-beaten +look of an old traveler. Before the second day was half gone I +experienced a joy which filled me with the purest gratitude; for I saw +that the skin had begun to blister and peel off my face and neck. I +wished that the boys and girls at home could see me now. + +We reached Louisville in time--at least the neighborhood of it. We stuck +hard and fast on the rocks in the middle of the river, and lay there +four days. I was now beginning to feel a strong sense of being a part +of the boat's family, a sort of infant son to the captain and younger +brother to the officers. There is no estimating the pride I took in this +grandeur, or the affection that began to swell and grow in me for those +people. I could not know how the lordly steamboatman scorns that sort +of presumption in a mere landsman. I particularly longed to acquire the +least trifle of notice from the big stormy mate, and I was on the alert +for an opportunity to do him a service to that end. It came at last. +The riotous powwow of setting a spar was going on down on the +forecastle, and I went down there and stood around in the way--or mostly +skipping out of it--till the mate suddenly roared a general order for +somebody to bring him a capstan bar. I sprang to his side and said: +'Tell me where it is--I'll fetch it!' + +If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic service for the Emperor +of Russia, the monarch could not have been more astounded than the mate +was. He even stopped swearing. He stood and stared down at me. It took +him ten seconds to scrape his disjointed remains together again. Then he +said impressively: 'Well, if this don't beat hell!' and turned to his +work with the air of a man who had been confronted with a problem too +abstruse for solution. + +I crept away, and courted solitude for the rest of the day. I did not go +to dinner; I stayed away from supper until everybody else had finished. +I did not feel so much like a member of the boat's family now as before. +However, my spirits returned, in installments, as we pursued our way +down the river. I was sorry I hated the mate so, because it was not in +(young) human nature not to admire him. He was huge and muscular, his +face was bearded and whiskered all over; he had a red woman and a blue +woman tattooed on his right arm,--one on each side of a blue anchor with +a red rope to it; and in the matter of profanity he was sublime. When +he was getting out cargo at a landing, I was always where I could see +and hear. He felt all the majesty of his great position, and made the +world feel it, too. When he gave even the simplest order, he discharged +it like a blast of lightning, and sent a long, reverberating peal of +profanity thundering after it. I could not help contrasting the way in +which the average landsman would give an order, with the mate's way of +doing it. If the landsman should wish the gang-plank moved a foot +farther forward, he would probably say: 'James, or William, one of you +push that plank forward, please;' but put the mate in his place and he +would roar out: 'Here, now, start that gang-plank for'ard! Lively, now! +WHAT're you about! Snatch it! SNATCH it! There! there! Aft again! aft +again! don't you hear me. Dash it to dash! are you going to SLEEP over +it! 'VAST heaving. 'Vast heaving, I tell you! Going to heave it clear +astern? WHERE're you going with that barrel! FOR'ARD with it 'fore I +make you swallow it, you dash-dash-dash-DASHED split between a tired +mud-turtle and a crippled hearse-horse!' + +I wished I could talk like that. + +When the soreness of my adventure with the mate had somewhat worn off, I +began timidly to make up to the humblest official connected with the +boat--the night watchman. He snubbed my advances at first, but I +presently ventured to offer him a new chalk pipe; and that softened him. +So he allowed me to sit with him by the big bell on the hurricane deck, +and in time he melted into conversation. He could not well have helped +it, I hung with such homage on his words and so plainly showed that I +felt honored by his notice. He told me the names of dim capes and +shadowy islands as we glided by them in the solemnity of the night, +under the winking stars, and by and by got to talking about himself. He +seemed over-sentimental for a man whose salary was six dollars a week-- +or rather he might have seemed so to an older person than I. But I drank +in his words hungrily, and with a faith that might have moved mountains +if it had been applied judiciously. What was it to me that he was soiled +and seedy and fragrant with gin? What was it to me that his grammar was +bad, his construction worse, and his profanity so void of art that it +was an element of weakness rather than strength in his conversation? He +was a wronged man, a man who had seen trouble, and that was enough for +me. As he mellowed into his plaintive history his tears dripped upon the +lantern in his lap, and I cried, too, from sympathy. He said he was the +son of an English nobleman--either an earl or an alderman, he could not +remember which, but believed was both; his father, the nobleman, loved +him, but his mother hated him from the cradle; and so while he was still +a little boy he was sent to 'one of them old, ancient colleges'--he +couldn't remember which; and by and by his father died and his mother +seized the property and 'shook' him as he phrased it. After his mother +shook him, members of the nobility with whom he was acquainted used +their influence to get him the position of 'loblolly-boy in a ship;' and +from that point my watchman threw off all trammels of date and locality +and branched out into a narrative that bristled all along with +incredible adventures; a narrative that was so reeking with bloodshed +and so crammed with hair-breadth escapes and the most engaging and +unconscious personal villainies, that I sat speechless, enjoying, +shuddering, wondering, worshipping. + +It was a sore blight to find out afterwards that he was a low, vulgar, +ignorant, sentimental, half-witted humbug, an untraveled native of the +wilds of Illinois, who had absorbed wildcat literature and appropriated +its marvels, until in time he had woven odds and ends of the mess into +this yarn, and then gone on telling it to fledglings like me, until he +had come to believe it himself. + + + + +Chapter 6 A Cub-pilot's Experience + +WHAT with lying on the rocks four days at Louisville, and some other +delays, the poor old 'Paul Jones' fooled away about two weeks in making +the voyage from Cincinnati to New Orleans. This gave me a chance to get +acquainted with one of the pilots, and he taught me how to steer the +boat, and thus made the fascination of river life more potent than ever +for me. + +It also gave me a chance to get acquainted with a youth who had taken +deck passage--more's the pity; for he easily borrowed six dollars of me +on a promise to return to the boat and pay it back to me the day after +we should arrive. But he probably died or forgot, for he never came. It +was doubtless the former, since he had said his parents were wealthy, +and he only traveled deck passage because it was cooler.{footnote [1. +'Deck' Passage, i.e. steerage passage.]} + +I soon discovered two things. One was that a vessel would not be likely +to sail for the mouth of the Amazon under ten or twelve years; and the +other was that the nine or ten dollars still left in my pocket would not +suffice for so imposing an exploration as I had planned, even if I could +afford to wait for a ship. Therefore it followed that I must contrive a +new career. The 'Paul Jones' was now bound for St. Louis. I planned a +siege against my pilot, and at the end of three hard days he +surrendered. He agreed to teach me the Mississippi River from New +Orleans to St. Louis for five hundred dollars, payable out of the first +wages I should receive after graduating. I entered upon the small +enterprise of 'learning' twelve or thirteen hundred miles of the great +Mississippi River with the easy confidence of my time of life. If I had +really known what I was about to require of my faculties, I should not +have had the courage to begin. I supposed that all a pilot had to do +was to keep his boat in the river, and I did not consider that that +could be much of a trick, since it was so wide. + +The boat backed out from New Orleans at four in the afternoon, and it +was 'our watch' until eight. Mr. Bixby, my chief, 'straightened her +up,' plowed her along past the sterns of the other boats that lay at the +Levee, and then said, 'Here, take her; shave those steamships as close +as you'd peel an apple.' I took the wheel, and my heart-beat fluttered +up into the hundreds; for it seemed to me that we were about to scrape +the side off every ship in the line, we were so close. I held my breath +and began to claw the boat away from the danger; and I had my own +opinion of the pilot who had known no better than to get us into such +peril, but I was too wise to express it. In half a minute I had a wide +margin of safety intervening between the 'Paul Jones' and the ships; and +within ten seconds more I was set aside in disgrace, and Mr. Bixby was +going into danger again and flaying me alive with abuse of my cowardice. +I was stung, but I was obliged to admire the easy confidence with which +my chief loafed from side to side of his wheel, and trimmed the ships so +closely that disaster seemed ceaselessly imminent. When he had cooled a +little he told me that the easy water was close ashore and the current +outside, and therefore we must hug the bank, up-stream, to get the +benefit of the former, and stay well out, down-stream, to take advantage +of the latter. In my own mind I resolved to be a down-stream pilot and +leave the up-streaming to people dead to prudence. + +Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention to certain things. Said he, +'This is Six-Mile Point.' I assented. It was pleasant enough +information, but I could not see the bearing of it. I was not conscious +that it was a matter of any interest to me. Another time he said, 'This +is Nine-Mile Point.' Later he said, 'This is Twelve-Mile Point.' They +were all about level with the water's edge; they all looked about alike +to me; they were monotonously unpicturesque. I hoped Mr. Bixby would +change the subject. But no; he would crowd up around a point, hugging +the shore with affection, and then say: 'The slack water ends here, +abreast this bunch of China-trees; now we cross over.' So he crossed +over. He gave me the wheel once or twice, but I had no luck. I either +came near chipping off the edge of a sugar plantation, or I yawed too +far from shore, and so dropped back into disgrace again and got abused. + +The watch was ended at last, and we took supper and went to bed. At +midnight the glare of a lantern shone in my eyes, and the night watchman +said-- + +'Come! turn out!' + +And then he left. I could not understand this extraordinary procedure; +so I presently gave up trying to, and dozed off to sleep. Pretty soon +the watchman was back again, and this time he was gruff. I was annoyed. +I said:-- + +'What do you want to come bothering around here in the middle of the +night for. Now as like as not I'll not get to sleep again to-night.' + +The watchman said-- + +'Well, if this an't good, I'm blest.' + +The 'off-watch' was just turning in, and I heard some brutal laughter +from them, and such remarks as 'Hello, watchman! an't the new cub turned +out yet? He's delicate, likely. Give him some sugar in a rag and send +for the chambermaid to sing rock-a-by-baby to him.' + +About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene. Something like a minute +later I was climbing the pilot-house steps with some of my clothes on +and the rest in my arms. Mr. Bixby was close behind, commenting. Here +was something fresh--this thing of getting up in the middle of the night +to go to work. It was a detail in piloting that had never occurred to me +at all. I knew that boats ran all night, but somehow I had never +happened to reflect that somebody had to get up out of a warm bed to run +them. I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as I had +imagined it was; there was something very real and work-like about this +new phase of it. + +It was a rather dingy night, although a fair number of stars were out. +The big mate was at the wheel, and he had the old tub pointed at a star +and was holding her straight up the middle of the river. The shores on +either hand were not much more than half a mile apart, but they seemed +wonderfully far away and ever so vague and indistinct. The mate said:-- + +'We've got to land at Jones's plantation, sir.' + +The vengeful spirit in me exulted. I said to myself, I wish you joy of +your job, Mr. Bixby; you'll have a good time finding Mr. Jones's +plantation such a night as this; and I hope you never WILL find it as +long as you live. + +Mr. Bixby said to the mate:-- + +'Upper end of the plantation, or the lower?' + +'Upper.' + +'I can't do it. The stumps there are out of water at this stage: It's +no great distance to the lower, and you'll have to get along with that.' + +'All right, sir. If Jones don't like it he'll have to lump it, I +reckon.' + +And then the mate left. My exultation began to cool and my wonder to +come up. Here was a man who not only proposed to find this plantation +on such a night, but to find either end of it you preferred. I +dreadfully wanted to ask a question, but I was carrying about as many +short answers as my cargo-room would admit of, so I held my peace. All I +desired to ask Mr. Bixby was the simple question whether he was ass +enough to really imagine he was going to find that plantation on a night +when all plantations were exactly alike and all the same color. But I +held in. I used to have fine inspirations of prudence in those days. + +Mr. Bixby made for the shore and soon was scraping it, just the same as +if it had been daylight. And not only that, but singing-- + +'Father in heaven, the day is declining,' etc. + +It seemed to me that I had put my life in the keeping of a peculiarly +reckless outcast. Presently he turned on me and said:-- + +'What's the name of the first point above New Orleans?' + +I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I +didn't know. + +'Don't KNOW?' + +This manner jolted me. I was down at the foot again, in a moment. But I +had to say just what I had said before. + +'Well, you're a smart one,' said Mr. Bixby. 'What's the name of the +NEXT point?' + +Once more I didn't know. + +'Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of ANY point or place I +told you.' + +I studied a while and decided that I couldn't. + +'Look here! What do you start out from, above Twelve-Mile Point, to +cross over?' + +'I--I--don't know.' + +'You--you--don't know?' mimicking my drawling manner of speech. 'What DO +you know?' + +'I--I--nothing, for certain.' + +'By the great Caesar's ghost, I believe you! You're the stupidest +dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of +you being a pilot--you! Why, you don't know enough to pilot a cow down +a lane.' + +Oh, but his wrath was up! He was a nervous man, and he shuffled from +one side of his wheel to the other as if the floor was hot. He would +boil a while to himself, and then overflow and scald me again. + +'Look here! What do you suppose I told you the names of those points +for?' + +I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the devil of temptation +provoked me to say:-- + +'Well--to--to--be entertaining, I thought.' + +This was a red rag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he was +crossing the river at the time) that I judge it made him blind, because +he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of course the traders +sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as +Mr. Bixby was: because he was brim full, and here were subjects who +would TALK BACK. He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such +an irruption followed as I never had heard before. The fainter and +farther away the scowmen's curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted +his voice and the weightier his adjectives grew. When he closed the +window he was empty. You could have drawn a seine through his system and +not caught curses enough to disturb your mother with. Presently he said +to me in the gentlest way-- + +'My boy, you must get a little memorandum book, and every time I tell +you a thing, put it down right away. There's only one way to be a +pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know +it just like A B C.' + +That was a dismal revelation to me; for my memory was never loaded with +anything but blank cartridges. However, I did not feel discouraged +long. I judged that it was best to make some allowances, for doubtless +Mr. Bixby was 'stretching.' Presently he pulled a rope and struck a few +strokes on the big bell. The stars were all gone now, and the night was +as black as ink. I could hear the wheels churn along the bank, but I was +not entirely certain that I could see the shore. The voice of the +invisible watchman called up from the hurricane deck-- + +'What's this, sir?' + +'Jones's plantation.' + +I said to myself, I wish I might venture to offer a small bet that it +isn't. But I did not chirp. I only waited to see. Mr. Bixby handled the +engine bells, and in due time the boat's nose came to the land, a torch +glowed from the forecastle, a man skipped ashore, a darky's voice on the +bank said, 'Gimme de k'yarpet-bag, Mars' Jones,' and the next moment we +were standing up the river again, all serene. I reflected deeply +awhile, and then said--but not aloud--'Well, the finding of that +plantation was the luckiest accident that ever happened; but it couldn't +happen again in a hundred years.' And I fully believed it was an +accident, too. + +By the time we had gone seven or eight hundred miles up the river, I had +learned to be a tolerably plucky up-stream steersman, in daylight, and +before we reached St. Louis I had made a trifle of progress in night- +work, but only a trifle. I had a note-book that fairly bristled with the +names of towns, 'points,' bars, islands, bends, reaches, etc.; but the +information was to be found only in the notebook--none of it was in my +head. It made my heart ache to think I had only got half of the river +set down; for as our watch was four hours off and four hours on, day and +night, there was a long four-hour gap in my book for every time I had +slept since the voyage began. + +My chief was presently hired to go on a big New Orleans boat, and I +packed my satchel and went with him. She was a grand affair. When I +stood in her pilot-house I was so far above the water that I seemed +perched on a mountain; and her decks stretched so far away, fore and +aft, below me, that I wondered how I could ever have considered the +little 'Paul Jones' a large craft. There were other differences, too. +The 'Paul Jones's' pilot-house was a cheap, dingy, battered rattle-trap, +cramped for room: but here was a sumptuous glass temple; room enough to +have a dance in; showy red and gold window-curtains; an imposing sofa; +leather cushions and a back to the high bench where visiting pilots sit, +to spin yarns and 'look at the river;' bright, fanciful 'cuspadores' +instead of a broad wooden box filled with sawdust; nice new oil-cloth on +the floor; a hospitable big stove for winter; a wheel as high as my +head, costly with inlaid work; a wire tiller-rope; bright brass knobs +for the bells; and a tidy, white-aproned, black 'texas-tender,' to bring +up tarts and ices and coffee during mid-watch, day and night. Now this +was 'something like,' and so I began to take heart once more to believe +that piloting was a romantic sort of occupation after all. The moment we +were under way I began to prowl about the great steamer and fill myself +with joy. She was as clean and as dainty as a drawing-room; when I +looked down her long, gilded saloon, it was like gazing through a +splendid tunnel; she had an oil-picture, by some gifted sign-painter, on +every stateroom door; she glittered with no end of prism-fringed +chandeliers; the clerk's office was elegant, the bar was marvelous, and +the bar-keeper had been barbered and upholstered at incredible cost. The +boiler deck (i.e. the second story of the boat, so to speak) was as +spacious as a church, it seemed to me; so with the forecastle; and there +was no pitiful handful of deckhands, firemen, and roustabouts down +there, but a whole battalion of men. The fires were fiercely glaring +from a long row of furnaces, and over them were eight huge boilers! This +was unutterable pomp. The mighty engines--but enough of this. I had +never felt so fine before. And when I found that the regiment of natty +servants respectfully 'sir'd' me, my satisfaction was complete. + + + + +Chapter 7 A Daring Deed + +WHEN I returned to the pilot-house St. Louis was gone and I was lost. +Here was a piece of river which was all down in my book, but I could +make neither head nor tail of it: you understand, it was turned around. +I had seen it when coming up-stream, but I had never faced about to see +how it looked when it was behind me. My heart broke again, for it was +plain that I had got to learn this troublesome river BOTH WAYS. + +The pilot-house was full of pilots, going down to 'look at the river.' +What is called the 'upper river' (the two hundred miles between St. +Louis and Cairo, where the Ohio comes in) was low; and the Mississippi +changes its channel so constantly that the pilots used to always find it +necessary to run down to Cairo to take a fresh look, when their boats +were to lie in port a week; that is, when the water was at a low stage. +A deal of this 'looking at the river' was done by poor fellows who +seldom had a berth, and whose only hope of getting one lay in their +being always freshly posted and therefore ready to drop into the shoes +of some reputable pilot, for a single trip, on account of such pilot's +sudden illness, or some other necessity. And a good many of them +constantly ran up and down inspecting the river, not because they ever +really hoped to get a berth, but because (they being guests of the boat) +it was cheaper to 'look at the river' than stay ashore and pay board. In +time these fellows grew dainty in their tastes, and only infested boats +that had an established reputation for setting good tables. All visiting +pilots were useful, for they were always ready and willing, winter or +summer, night or day, to go out in the yawl and help buoy the channel or +assist the boat's pilots in any way they could. They were likewise +welcome because all pilots are tireless talkers, when gathered together, +and as they talk only about the river they are always understood and are +always interesting. Your true pilot cares nothing about anything on +earth but the river, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride +of kings. + +We had a fine company of these river-inspectors along, this trip. There +were eight or ten; and there was abundance of room for them in our great +pilot-house. Two or three of them wore polished silk hats, elaborate +shirt-fronts, diamond breast-pins, kid gloves, and patent-leather boots. +They were choice in their English, and bore themselves with a dignity +proper to men of solid means and prodigious reputation as pilots. The +others were more or less loosely clad, and wore upon their heads tall +felt cones that were suggestive of the days of the Commonwealth. + +I was a cipher in this august company, and felt subdued, not to say +torpid. I was not even of sufficient consequence to assist at the wheel +when it was necessary to put the tiller hard down in a hurry; the guest +that stood nearest did that when occasion required--and this was pretty +much all the time, because of the crookedness of the channel and the +scant water. I stood in a corner; and the talk I listened to took the +hope all out of me. One visitor said to another-- + +'Jim, how did you run Plum Point, coming up?' + +'It was in the night, there, and I ran it the way one of the boys on the +"Diana" told me; started out about fifty yards above the wood pile on +the false point, and held on the cabin under Plum Point till I raised +the reef--quarter less twain--then straightened up for the middle bar +till I got well abreast the old one-limbed cotton-wood in the bend, then +got my stern on the cotton-wood and head on the low place above the +point, and came through a-booming--nine and a half.' + +'Pretty square crossing, an't it?' + +'Yes, but the upper bar 's working down fast.' + +Another pilot spoke up and said-- + +'I had better water than that, and ran it lower down; started out from +the false point--mark twain--raised the second reef abreast the big snag +in the bend, and had quarter less twain.' + +One of the gorgeous ones remarked-- + +'I don't want to find fault with your leadsmen, but that's a good deal +of water for Plum Point, it seems to me.' + +There was an approving nod all around as this quiet snub dropped on the +boaster and 'settled' him. And so they went on talk-talk-talking. +Meantime, the thing that was running in my mind was, 'Now if my ears +hear aright, I have not only to get the names of all the towns and +islands and bends, and so on, by heart, but I must even get up a warm +personal acquaintanceship with every old snag and one-limbed cotton-wood +and obscure wood pile that ornaments the banks of this river for twelve +hundred miles; and more than that, I must actually know where these +things are in the dark, unless these guests are gifted with eyes that +can pierce through two miles of solid blackness; I wish the piloting +business was in Jericho and I had never thought of it.' + +At dusk Mr. Bixby tapped the big bell three times (the signal to land), +and the captain emerged from his drawing-room in the forward end of the +texas, and looked up inquiringly. Mr. Bixby said-- + +'We will lay up here all night, captain.' + +'Very well, sir.' + +That was all. The boat came to shore and was tied up for the night. It +seemed to me a fine thing that the pilot could do as he pleased, without +asking so grand a captain's permission. I took my supper and went +immediately to bed, discouraged by my day's observations and +experiences. My late voyage's note-booking was but a confusion of +meaningless names. It had tangled me all up in a knot every time I had +looked at it in the daytime. I now hoped for respite in sleep; but no, +it reveled all through my head till sunrise again, a frantic and +tireless nightmare. + +Next morning I felt pretty rusty and low-spirited. We went booming +along, taking a good many chances, for we were anxious to 'get out of +the river' (as getting out to Cairo was called) before night should +overtake us. But Mr. Bixby's partner, the other pilot, presently +grounded the boat, and we lost so much time in getting her off that it +was plain that darkness would overtake us a good long way above the +mouth. This was a great misfortune, especially to certain of our +visiting pilots, whose boats would have to wait for their return, no +matter how long that might be. It sobered the pilot-house talk a good +deal. Coming up-stream, pilots did not mind low water or any kind of +darkness; nothing stopped them but fog. But down-stream work was +different; a boat was too nearly helpless, with a stiff current pushing +behind her; so it was not customary to run down-stream at night in low +water. + +There seemed to be one small hope, however: if we could get through the +intricate and dangerous Hat Island crossing before night, we could +venture the rest, for we would have plainer sailing and better water. +But it would be insanity to attempt Hat Island at night. So there was a +deal of looking at watches all the rest of the day, and a constant +ciphering upon the speed we were making; Hat Island was the eternal +subject; sometimes hope was high and sometimes we were delayed in a bad +crossing, and down it went again. For hours all hands lay under the +burden of this suppressed excitement; it was even communicated to me, +and I got to feeling so solicitous about Hat Island, and under such an +awful pressure of responsibility, that I wished I might have five +minutes on shore to draw a good, full, relieving breath, and start over +again. We were standing no regular watches. Each of our pilots ran such +portions of the river as he had run when coming up-stream, because of +his greater familiarity with it; but both remained in the pilot house +constantly. + +An hour before sunset, Mr. Bixby took the wheel and Mr. W----stepped +aside. For the next thirty minutes every man held his watch in his hand +and was restless, silent, and uneasy. At last somebody said, with a +doomful sigh-- + +'Well, yonder's Hat Island--and we can't make it.' All the watches +closed with a snap, everybody sighed and muttered something about its +being 'too bad, too bad--ah, if we could only have got here half an hour +sooner!' and the place was thick with the atmosphere of disappointment. +Some started to go out, but loitered, hearing no bell-tap to land. The +sun dipped behind the horizon, the boat went on. Inquiring looks passed +from one guest to another; and one who had his hand on the door-knob and +had turned it, waited, then presently took away his hand and let the +knob turn back again. We bore steadily down the bend. More looks were +exchanged, and nods of surprised admiration--but no words. Insensibly +the men drew together behind Mr. Bixby, as the sky darkened and one or +two dim stars came out. The dead silence and sense of waiting became +oppressive. Mr. Bixby pulled the cord, and two deep, mellow notes from +the big bell floated off on the night. Then a pause, and one more note +was struck. The watchman's voice followed, from the hurricane deck-- + +'Labboard lead, there! Stabboard lead!' + +The cries of the leadsmen began to rise out of the distance, and were +gruffly repeated by the word-passers on the hurricane deck. + +'M-a-r-k three!.... M-a-r-k three!.... Quarter-less three! .... Half +twain! .... Quarter twain! .... M-a-r-k twain! .... Quarter-less--' + +Mr. Bixby pulled two bell-ropes, and was answered by faint jinglings far +below in the engine room, and our speed slackened. The steam began to +whistle through the gauge-cocks. The cries of the leadsmen went on--and +it is a weird sound, always, in the night. Every pilot in the lot was +watching now, with fixed eyes, and talking under his breath. Nobody was +calm and easy but Mr. Bixby. He would put his wheel down and stand on a +spoke, and as the steamer swung into her (to me) utterly invisible +marks--for we seemed to be in the midst of a wide and gloomy sea--he +would meet and fasten her there. Out of the murmur of half-audible talk, +one caught a coherent sentence now and then--such as-- + +'There; she's over the first reef all right!' + +After a pause, another subdued voice-- + +'Her stern's coming down just exactly right, by George!' + +'Now she's in the marks; over she goes!' + +Somebody else muttered-- + +'Oh, it was done beautiful--BEAUTIFUL!' + +Now the engines were stopped altogether, and we drifted with the +current. Not that I could see the boat drift, for I could not, the +stars being all gone by this time. This drifting was the dismalest work; +it held one's heart still. Presently I discovered a blacker gloom than +that which surrounded us. It was the head of the island. We were +closing right down upon it. We entered its deeper shadow, and so +imminent seemed the peril that I was likely to suffocate; and I had the +strongest impulse to do SOMETHING, anything, to save the vessel. But +still Mr. Bixby stood by his wheel, silent, intent as a cat, and all the +pilots stood shoulder to shoulder at his back. + +'She'll not make it!' somebody whispered. + +The water grew shoaler and shoaler, by the leadsman's cries, till it was +down to-- + +'Eight-and-a-half!.... E-i-g-h-t feet!.... E-i-g-h-t feet!.... Seven- +and--' + +Mr. Bixby said warningly through his speaking tube to the engineer-- + +'Stand by, now!' + +'Aye-aye, sir!' + +'Seven-and-a-half! Seven feet! Six-and--' + +We touched bottom! Instantly Mr. Bixby set a lot of bells ringing, +shouted through the tube, 'NOW, let her have it--every ounce you've +got!' then to his partner, 'Put her hard down! snatch her! snatch her!' +The boat rasped and ground her way through the sand, hung upon the apex +of disaster a single tremendous instant, and then over she went! And +such a shout as went up at Mr. Bixby's back never loosened the roof of a +pilot-house before! + +There was no more trouble after that. Mr. Bixby was a hero that night; +and it was some little time, too, before his exploit ceased to be talked +about by river men. + +Fully to realize the marvelous precision required in laying the great +steamer in her marks in that murky waste of water, one should know that +not only must she pick her intricate way through snags and blind reefs, +and then shave the head of the island so closely as to brush the +overhanging foliage with her stern, but at one place she must pass +almost within arm's reach of a sunken and invisible wreck that would +snatch the hull timbers from under her if she should strike it, and +destroy a quarter of a million dollars' worth of steam-boat and cargo in +five minutes, and maybe a hundred and fifty human lives into the +bargain. + +The last remark I heard that night was a compliment to Mr. Bixby, +uttered in soliloquy and with unction by one of our guests. He said-- + +'By the Shadow of Death, but he's a lightning pilot!' + + + + +Chapter 8 Perplexing Lessons + +At the end of what seemed a tedious while, I had managed to pack my head +full of islands, towns, bars, 'points,' and bends; and a curiously +inanimate mass of lumber it was, too. However, inasmuch as I could shut +my eyes and reel off a good long string of these names without leaving +out more than ten miles of river in every fifty, I began to feel that I +could take a boat down to New Orleans if I could make her skip those +little gaps. But of course my complacency could hardly get start enough +to lift my nose a trifle into the air, before Mr. Bixby would think of +something to fetch it down again. One day he turned on me suddenly with +this settler-- + +'What is the shape of Walnut Bend?' + +He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of protoplasm. I +reflected respectfully, and then said I didn't know it had any +particular shape. My gunpowdery chief went off with a bang, of course, +and then went on loading and firing until he was out of adjectives. + +I had learned long ago that he only carried just so many rounds of +ammunition, and was sure to subside into a very placable and even +remorseful old smooth-bore as soon as they were all gone. That word +'old' is merely affectionate; he was not more than thirty-four. I +waited. By and by he said-- + +'My boy, you've got to know the SHAPE of the river perfectly. It is all +there is left to steer by on a very dark night. Everything else is +blotted out and gone. But mind you, it hasn't the same shape in the +night that it has in the day-time.' + +'How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?' + +'How do you follow a hall at home in the dark. Because you know the +shape of it. You can't see it.' + +'Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling +variations of shape in the banks of this interminable river as well as I +know the shape of the front hall at home?' + +'On my honor, you've got to know them BETTER than any man ever did know +the shapes of the halls in his own house.' + +'I wish I was dead!' + +'Now I don't want to discourage you, but--' + +'Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now as another time.' + +'You see, this has got to be learned; there isn't any getting around it. +A clear starlight night throws such heavy shadows that if you didn't +know the shape of a shore perfectly you would claw away from every bunch +of timber, because you would take the black shadow of it for a solid +cape; and you see you would be getting scared to death every fifteen +minutes by the watch. You would be fifty yards from shore all the time +when you ought to be within fifty feet of it. You can't see a snag in +one of those shadows, but you know exactly where it is, and the shape of +the river tells you when you are coming to it. Then there's your pitch- +dark night; the river is a very different shape on a pitch-dark night +from what it is on a starlight night. All shores seem to be straight +lines, then, and mighty dim ones, too; and you'd RUN them for straight +lines only you know better. You boldly drive your boat right into what +seems to be a solid, straight wall (you knowing very well that in +reality there is a curve there), and that wall falls back and makes way +for you. Then there's your gray mist. You take a night when there's one +of these grisly, drizzly, gray mists, and then there isn't any +particular shape to a shore. A gray mist would tangle the head of the +oldest man that ever lived. Well, then, different kinds of MOONLIGHT +change the shape of the river in different ways. You see--' + +'Oh, don't say any more, please! Have I got to learn the shape of the +river according to all these five hundred thousand different ways? If I +tried to carry all that cargo in my head it would make me stoop- +shouldered.' + +'NO! you only learn THE shape of the river, and you learn it with such +absolute certainty that you can always steer by the shape that's IN YOUR +HEAD, and never mind the one that's before your eyes.' + +'Very well, I'll try it; but after I have learned it can I depend on it. +Will it keep the same form and not go fooling around?' + +Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W---- came in to take the watch, and +he said-- + +'Bixby, you'll have to look out for President's Island and all that +country clear away up above the Old Hen and Chickens. The banks are +caving and the shape of the shores changing like everything. Why, you +wouldn't know the point above 40. You can go up inside the old sycamore- +snag, now.{footnote [1. It may not be necessary, but still it can do no +harm to explain that 'inside' means between the snag and the shore.-- +M.T.]} + +So that question was answered. Here were leagues of shore changing +shape. My spirits were down in the mud again. Two things seemed pretty +apparent to me. One was, that in order to be a pilot a man had got to +learn more than any one man ought to be allowed to know; and the other +was, that he must learn it all over again in a different way every +twenty-four hours. + +That night we had the watch until twelve. Now it was an ancient river +custom for the two pilots to chat a bit when the watch changed. While +the relieving pilot put on his gloves and lit his cigar, his partner, +the retiring pilot, would say something like this-- + +'I judge the upper bar is making down a little at Hale's Point; had +quarter twain with the lower lead and mark twain {footnote [Two fathoms. +'Quarter twain' is two-and-a-quarter fathoms, thirteen-and-a-half feet. +'Mark three' is three fathoms.]} with the other.' + +'Yes, I thought it was making down a little, last trip. Meet any boats?' + +'Met one abreast the head of 21, but she was away over hugging the bar, +and I couldn't make her out entirely. I took her for the "Sunny South"- +-hadn't any skylights forward of the chimneys.' + +And so on. And as the relieving pilot took the wheel his +partner{footnote ['Partner' is a technical term for 'the other pilot'.]} +would mention that we were in such-and-such a bend, and say we were +abreast of such-and-such a man's wood-yard or plantation. This was +courtesy; I supposed it was necessity. But Mr. W---- came on watch full +twelve minutes late on this particular night,--a tremendous breach of +etiquette; in fact, it is the unpardonable sin among pilots. So Mr. +Bixby gave him no greeting whatever, but simply surrendered the wheel +and marched out of the pilot-house without a word. I was appalled; it +was a villainous night for blackness, we were in a particularly wide and +blind part of the river, where there was no shape or substance to +anything, and it seemed incredible that Mr. Bixby should have left that +poor fellow to kill the boat trying to find out where he was. But I +resolved that I would stand by him any way. He should find that he was +not wholly friendless. So I stood around, and waited to be asked where +we were. But Mr. W---- plunged on serenely through the solid firmament +of black cats that stood for an atmosphere, and never opened his mouth. +Here is a proud devil, thought I; here is a limb of Satan that would +rather send us all to destruction than put himself under obligations to +me, because I am not yet one of the salt of the earth and privileged to +snub captains and lord it over everything dead and alive in a steamboat. +I presently climbed up on the bench; I did not think it was safe to go +to sleep while this lunatic was on watch. + +However, I must have gone to sleep in the course of time, because the +next thing I was aware of was the fact that day was breaking, Mr. W---- +gone, and Mr. Bixby at the wheel again. So it was four o'clock and all +well--but me; I felt like a skinful of dry bones and all of them trying +to ache at once. + +Mr. Bixby asked me what I had stayed up there for. I confessed that it +was to do Mr. W---- a benevolence,--tell him where he was. It took five +minutes for the entire preposterousness of the thing to filter into Mr. +Bixby's system, and then I judge it filled him nearly up to the chin; +because he paid me a compliment--and not much of a one either. He said, + +'Well, taking you by-and-large, you do seem to be more different kinds +of an ass than any creature I ever saw before. What did you suppose he +wanted to know for?' + +I said I thought it might be a convenience to him. + +'Convenience D-nation! Didn't I tell you that a man's got to know the +river in the night the same as he'd know his own front hall?' + +'Well, I can follow the front hall in the dark if I know it IS the front +hall; but suppose you set me down in the middle of it in the dark and +not tell me which hall it is; how am I to know?' + +'Well you've GOT to, on the river!' + +'All right. Then I'm glad I never said anything to Mr. W---- ' + +'I should say so. Why, he'd have slammed you through the window and +utterly ruined a hundred dollars' worth of window-sash and stuff.' + +I was glad this damage had been saved, for it would have made me +unpopular with the owners. They always hated anybody who had the name +of being careless, and injuring things. + +I went to work now to learn the shape of the river; and of all the +eluding and ungraspable objects that ever I tried to get mind or hands +on, that was the chief. I would fasten my eyes upon a sharp, wooded +point that projected far into the river some miles ahead of me, and go +to laboriously photographing its shape upon my brain; and just as I was +beginning to succeed to my satisfaction, we would draw up toward it and +the exasperating thing would begin to melt away and fold back into the +bank! If there had been a conspicuous dead tree standing upon the very +point of the cape, I would find that tree inconspicuously merged into +the general forest, and occupying the middle of a straight shore, when I +got abreast of it! No prominent hill would stick to its shape long +enough for me to make up my mind what its form really was, but it was as +dissolving and changeful as if it had been a mountain of butter in the +hottest corner of the tropics. Nothing ever had the same shape when I +was coming downstream that it had borne when I went up. I mentioned +these little difficulties to Mr. Bixby. He said-- + +'That's the very main virtue of the thing. If the shapes didn't change +every three seconds they wouldn't be of any use. Take this place where +we are now, for instance. As long as that hill over yonder is only one +hill, I can boom right along the way I'm going; but the moment it splits +at the top and forms a V, I know I've got to scratch to starboard in a +hurry, or I'll bang this boat's brains out against a rock; and then the +moment one of the prongs of the V swings behind the other, I've got to +waltz to larboard again, or I'll have a misunderstanding with a snag +that would snatch the keelson out of this steamboat as neatly as if it +were a sliver in your hand. If that hill didn't change its shape on bad +nights there would be an awful steamboat grave-yard around here inside +of a year.' + +It was plain that I had got to learn the shape of the river in all the +different ways that could be thought of,--upside down, wrong end first, +inside out, fore-and-aft, and 'thortships,'--and then know what to do on +gray nights when it hadn't any shape at all. So I set about it. In the +course of time I began to get the best of this knotty lesson, and my +self-complacency moved to the front once more. Mr. Bixby was all fixed, +and ready to start it to the rear again. He opened on me after this +fashion-- + +'How much water did we have in the middle crossing at Hole-in-the-Wall, +trip before last?' + +I considered this an outrage. I said-- + +'Every trip, down and up, the leadsmen are singing through that tangled +place for three-quarters of an hour on a stretch. How do you reckon I +can remember such a mess as that?' + +'My boy, you've got to remember it. You've got to remember the exact +spot and the exact marks the boat lay in when we had the shoalest water, +in everyone of the five hundred shoal places between St. Louis and New +Orleans; and you mustn't get the shoal soundings and marks of one trip +mixed up with the shoal soundings and marks of another, either, for +they're not often twice alike. You must keep them separate.' + +When I came to myself again, I said-- + +'When I get so that I can do that, I'll be able to raise the dead, and +then I won't have to pilot a steamboat to make a living. I want to +retire from this business. I want a slush-bucket and a brush; I'm only +fit for a roustabout. I haven't got brains enough to be a pilot; and if +I had I wouldn't have strength enough to carry them around, unless I +went on crutches.' + +'Now drop that! When I say I'll learn {footnote ['Teach' is not in the +river vocabulary.]} a man the river, I mean it. And you can depend on +it, I'll learn him or kill him.' + + + + +Chapter 9 Continued Perplexities + +THERE was no use in arguing with a person like this. I promptly put +such a strain on my memory that by and by even the shoal water and the +countless crossing-marks began to stay with me. But the result was just +the same. I never could more than get one knotty thing learned before +another presented itself. Now I had often seen pilots gazing at the +water and pretending to read it as if it were a book; but it was a book +that told me nothing. A time came at last, however, when Mr. Bixby +seemed to think me far enough advanced to bear a lesson on water- +reading. So he began-- + +'Do you see that long slanting line on the face of the water? Now, +that's a reef. Moreover, it's a bluff reef. There is a solid sand-bar +under it that is nearly as straight up and down as the side of a house. +There is plenty of water close up to it, but mighty little on top of it. +If you were to hit it you would knock the boat's brains out. Do you see +where the line fringes out at the upper end and begins to fade away?' + +'Yes, sir.' + +'Well, that is a low place; that is the head of the reef. You can climb +over there, and not hurt anything. Cross over, now, and follow along +close under the reef--easy water there--not much current.' + +I followed the reef along till I approached the fringed end. Then Mr. +Bixby said-- + +'Now get ready. Wait till I give the word. She won't want to mount the +reef; a boat hates shoal water. Stand by--wait--WAIT--keep her well in +hand. NOW cramp her down! Snatch her! snatch her!' + +He seized the other side of the wheel and helped to spin it around until +it was hard down, and then we held it so. The boat resisted, and refused +to answer for a while, and next she came surging to starboard, mounted +the reef, and sent a long, angry ridge of water foaming away from her +bows. + +'Now watch her; watch her like a cat, or she'll get away from you. When +she fights strong and the tiller slips a little, in a jerky, greasy sort +of way, let up on her a trifle; it is the way she tells you at night +that the water is too shoal; but keep edging her up, little by little, +toward the point. You are well up on the bar, now; there is a bar under +every point, because the water that comes down around it forms an eddy +and allows the sediment to sink. Do you see those fine lines on the +face of the water that branch out like the ribs of a fan. Well, those +are little reefs; you want to just miss the ends of them, but run them +pretty close. Now look out--look out! Don't you crowd that slick, +greasy-looking place; there ain't nine feet there; she won't stand it. +She begins to smell it; look sharp, I tell you! Oh blazes, there you +go! Stop the starboard wheel! Quick! Ship up to back! Set her back! + +The engine bells jingled and the engines answered promptly, shooting +white columns of steam far aloft out of the 'scape pipes, but it was too +late. The boat had 'smelt' the bar in good earnest; the foamy ridges +that radiated from her bows suddenly disappeared, a great dead swell +came rolling forward and swept ahead of her, she careened far over to +larboard, and went tearing away toward the other shore as if she were +about scared to death. We were a good mile from where we ought to have +been, when we finally got the upper hand of her again. + +During the afternoon watch the next day, Mr. Bixby asked me if I knew +how to run the next few miles. I said-- + +'Go inside the first snag above the point, outside the next one, start +out from the lower end of Higgins's wood-yard, make a square crossing +and--' + +'That's all right. I'll be back before you close up on the next point.' + +But he wasn't. He was still below when I rounded it and entered upon a +piece of river which I had some misgivings about. I did not know that +he was hiding behind a chimney to see how I would perform. I went gaily +along, getting prouder and prouder, for he had never left the boat in my +sole charge such a length of time before. I even got to 'setting' her +and letting the wheel go, entirely, while I vaingloriously turned my +back and inspected the stem marks and hummed a tune, a sort of easy +indifference which I had prodigiously admired in Bixby and other great +pilots. Once I inspected rather long, and when I faced to the front +again my heart flew into my mouth so suddenly that if I hadn't clapped +my teeth together I should have lost it. One of those frightful bluff +reefs was stretching its deadly length right across our bows! My head +was gone in a moment; I did not know which end I stood on; I gasped and +could not get my breath; I spun the wheel down with such rapidity that +it wove itself together like a spider's web; the boat answered and +turned square away from the reef, but the reef followed her! I fled, and +still it followed, still it kept--right across my bows! I never looked +to see where I was going, I only fled. The awful crash was imminent--why +didn't that villain come! If I committed the crime of ringing a bell, I +might get thrown overboard. But better that than kill the boat. So in +blind desperation I started such a rattling 'shivaree' down below as +never had astounded an engineer in this world before, I fancy. Amidst +the frenzy of the bells the engines began to back and fill in a furious +way, and my reason forsook its throne--we were about to crash into the +woods on the other side of the river. Just then Mr. Bixby stepped calmly +into view on the hurricane deck. My soul went out to him in gratitude. +My distress vanished; I would have felt safe on the brink of Niagara, +with Mr. Bixby on the hurricane deck. He blandly and sweetly took his +tooth-pick out of his mouth between his fingers, as if it were a cigar-- +we were just in the act of climbing an overhanging big tree, and the +passengers were scudding astern like rats--and lifted up these commands +to me ever so gently-- + +'Stop the starboard. Stop the larboard. Set her back on both.' + +The boat hesitated, halted, pressed her nose among the boughs a critical +instant, then reluctantly began to back away. + +'Stop the larboard. Come ahead on it. Stop the starboard. Come ahead +on it. Point her for the bar.' + +I sailed away as serenely as a summer's morning Mr. Bixby came in and +said, with mock simplicity-- + +'When you have a hail, my boy, you ought to tap the big bell three times +before you land, so that the engineers can get ready.' + +I blushed under the sarcasm, and said I hadn't had any hail. + +'Ah! Then it was for wood, I suppose. The officer of the watch will +tell you when he wants to wood up.' + +I went on consuming and said I wasn't after wood. + +'Indeed? Why, what could you want over here in the bend, then? Did you +ever know of a boat following a bend up-stream at this stage of the +river?' + +'No sir,--and I wasn't trying to follow it. I was getting away from a +bluff reef.' + +'No, it wasn't a bluff reef; there isn't one within three miles of where +you were.' + +'But I saw it. It was as bluff as that one yonder.' + +'Just about. Run over it!' + +'Do you give it as an order?' + +'Yes. Run over it.' + +'If I don't, I wish I may die.' + +'All right; I am taking the responsibility.' I was just as anxious to +kill the boat, now, as I had been to save her before. I impressed my +orders upon my memory, to be used at the inquest, and made a straight +break for the reef. As it disappeared under our bows I held my breath; +but we slid over it like oil. + +'Now don't you see the difference? It wasn't anything but a WIND reef. +The wind does that.' + +'So I see. But it is exactly like a bluff reef. How am I ever going to +tell them apart?' + +'I can't tell you. It is an instinct. By and by you will just +naturally KNOW one from the other, but you never will be able to explain +why or how you know them apart' + +It turned out to be true. The face of the water, in time, became a +wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to the uneducated +passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its +most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. +And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new +story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there +was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could +leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip, +thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing. There +never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one whose interest +was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparkingly renewed with every +reperusal. The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a peculiar +sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare occasions when he did +not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot that was an ITALICIZED +passage; indeed, it was more than that, it was a legend of the largest +capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it; +for it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that could tear the +life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated. It is the faintest +and simplest expression the water ever makes, and the most hideous to a +pilot's eye. In truth, the passenger who could not read this book saw +nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it painted by the sun and +shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye these were not pictures +at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading-matter. + +Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know +every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I +knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But +I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be +restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had +gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain +wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A +broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance +the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came +floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay +sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, +tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy +flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful +circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our +left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this +forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like +silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a +single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor +that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected +images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and +near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every +passing moment, with new marvels of coloring. + +I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The +world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home. +But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the +glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight +wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether +to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should +have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it, +inwardly, after this fashion: This sun means that we are going to have +wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small +thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef +which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it +keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling 'boils' show a +dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in +the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is +shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest +is the 'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very +best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead +tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then +how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night +without the friendly old landmark. + +No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the +value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it +could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since +those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely +flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a 'break' that ripples +above some deadly disease. Are not all her visible charms sown thick +with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he +ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her +professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to +himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or +lost most by learning his trade? + + + + +Chapter 10 Completing My Education + +WHOSOEVER has done me the courtesy to read my chapters which have +preceded this may possibly wonder that I deal so minutely with piloting +as a science. It was the prime purpose of those chapters; and I am not +quite done yet. I wish to show, in the most patient and painstaking way, +what a wonderful science it is. Ship channels are buoyed and lighted, +and therefore it is a comparatively easy undertaking to learn to run +them; clear-water rivers, with gravel bottoms, change their channels +very gradually, and therefore one needs to learn them but once; but +piloting becomes another matter when you apply it to vast streams like +the Mississippi and the Missouri, whose alluvial banks cave and change +constantly, whose snags are always hunting up new quarters, whose +sandbars are never at rest, whose channels are for ever dodging and +shirking, and whose obstructions must be confronted in all nights and +all weathers without the aid of a single light-house or a single buoy; +for there is neither light nor buoy to be found anywhere in all this +three or four thousand miles of villainous river.{footnote [True at the +time referred to; not true now (1882).]} I feel justified in enlarging +upon this great science for the reason that I feel sure no one has ever +yet written a paragraph about it who had piloted a steamboat himself, +and so had a practical knowledge of the subject. If the theme were +hackneyed, I should be obliged to deal gently with the reader; but since +it is wholly new, I have felt at liberty to take up a considerable +degree of room with it. + +When I had learned the name and position of every visible feature of the +river; when I had so mastered its shape that I could shut my eyes and +trace it from St. Louis to New Orleans; when I had learned to read the +face of the water as one would cull the news from the morning paper; and +finally, when I had trained my dull memory to treasure up an endless +array of soundings and crossing-marks, and keep fast hold of them, I +judged that my education was complete: so I got to tilting my cap to +the side of my head, and wearing a tooth-pick in my mouth at the wheel. +Mr. Bixby had his eye on these airs. One day he said-- + +'What is the height of that bank yonder, at Burgess's?' + +'How can I tell, sir. It is three-quarters of a mile away.' + +'Very poor eye--very poor. Take the glass.' + +I took the glass, and presently said--'I can't tell. I suppose that that +bank is about a foot and a half high.' + +'Foot and a half! That's a six-foot bank. How high was the bank along +here last trip?' + +'I don't know; I never noticed.' + +'You didn't? Well, you must always do it hereafter.' + +'Why?' + +'Because you'll have to know a good many things that it tells you. For +one thing, it tells you the stage of the river--tells you whether +there's more water or less in the river along here than there was last +trip.' + +'The leads tell me that.' I rather thought I had the advantage of him +there. + +'Yes, but suppose the leads lie? The bank would tell you so, and then +you'd stir those leadsmen up a bit. There was a ten-foot bank here last +trip, and there is only a six-foot bank now. What does that signify?' + +'That the river is four feet higher than it was last trip.' + +'Very good. Is the river rising or falling?' + +'Rising.' + +'No it ain't.' + +'I guess I am right, sir. Yonder is some drift-wood floating down the +stream.' + +'A rise starts the drift-wood, but then it keeps on floating a while +after the river is done rising. Now the bank will tell you about this. +Wait till you come to a place where it shelves a little. Now here; do +you see this narrow belt of fine sediment That was deposited while the +water was higher. You see the driftwood begins to strand, too. The bank +helps in other ways. Do you see that stump on the false point?' + +'Ay, ay, sir.' + +'Well, the water is just up to the roots of it. You must make a note of +that.' + +'Why?' + +'Because that means that there's seven feet in the chute of 103.' + +'But 103 is a long way up the river yet.' + +'That's where the benefit of the bank comes in. There is water enough +in 103 NOW, yet there may not be by the time we get there; but the bank +will keep us posted all along. You don't run close chutes on a falling +river, up-stream, and there are precious few of them that you are +allowed to run at all down-stream. There's a law of the United States +against it. The river may be rising by the time we get to 103, and in +that case we'll run it. We are drawing--how much?' + +'Six feet aft,--six and a half forward.' + +'Well, you do seem to know something.' + +'But what I particularly want to know is, if I have got to keep up an +everlasting measuring of the banks of this river, twelve hundred miles, +month in and month out?' + +'Of course!' + +My emotions were too deep for words for a while. Presently I said--' + +And how about these chutes. Are there many of them?' + +'I should say so. I fancy we shan't run any of the river this trip as +you've ever seen it run before--so to speak. If the river begins to +rise again, we'll go up behind bars that you've always seen standing out +of the river, high and dry like the roof of a house; we'll cut across +low places that you've never noticed at all, right through the middle of +bars that cover three hundred acres of river; we'll creep through cracks +where you've always thought was solid land; we'll dart through the woods +and leave twenty-five miles of river off to one side; we'll see the +hind-side of every island between New Orleans and Cairo.' + +'Then I've got to go to work and learn just as much more river as I +already know.' + +'Just about twice as much more, as near as you can come at it.' + +'Well, one lives to find out. I think I was a fool when I went into +this business.' + +'Yes, that is true. And you are yet. But you'll not be when you've +learned it.' + +'Ah, I never can learn it.' + +'I will see that you DO.' + +By and by I ventured again-- + +'Have I got to learn all this thing just as I know the rest of the +river--shapes and all--and so I can run it at night?' + +'Yes. And you've got to have good fair marks from one end of the river +to the other, that will help the bank tell you when there is water +enough in each of these countless places--like that stump, you know. +When the river first begins to rise, you can run half a dozen of the +deepest of them; when it rises a foot more you can run another dozen; +the next foot will add a couple of dozen, and so on: so you see you have +to know your banks and marks to a dead moral certainty, and never get +them mixed; for when you start through one of those cracks, there's no +backing out again, as there is in the big river; you've got to go +through, or stay there six months if you get caught on a falling river. +There are about fifty of these cracks which you can't run at all except +when the river is brim full and over the banks.' + +'This new lesson is a cheerful prospect.' + +'Cheerful enough. And mind what I've just told you; when you start into +one of those places you've got to go through. They are too narrow to +turn around in, too crooked to back out of, and the shoal water is +always up at the head; never elsewhere. And the head of them is always +likely to be filling up, little by little, so that the marks you reckon +their depth by, this season, may not answer for next.' + +'Learn a new set, then, every year?' + +'Exactly. Cramp her up to the bar! What are you standing up through +the middle of the river for?' + +The next few months showed me strange things. On the same day that we +held the conversation above narrated, we met a great rise coming down +the river. The whole vast face of the stream was black with drifting +dead logs, broken boughs, and great trees that had caved in and been +washed away. It required the nicest steering to pick one's way through +this rushing raft, even in the day-time, when crossing from point to +point; and at night the difficulty was mightily increased; every now and +then a huge log, lying deep in the water, would suddenly appear right +under our bows, coming head-on; no use to try to avoid it then; we could +only stop the engines, and one wheel would walk over that log from one +end to the other, keeping up a thundering racket and careening the boat +in a way that was very uncomfortable to passengers. Now and then we +would hit one of these sunken logs a rattling bang, dead in the center, +with a full head of steam, and it would stun the boat as if she had hit +a continent. Sometimes this log would lodge, and stay right across our +nose, and back the Mississippi up before it; we would have to do a +little craw-fishing, then, to get away from the obstruction. We often +hit WHITE logs, in the dark, for we could not see them till we were +right on them; but a black log is a pretty distinct object at night. A +white snag is an ugly customer when the daylight is gone. + +Of course, on the great rise, down came a swarm of prodigious timber- +rafts from the head waters of the Mississippi, coal barges from +Pittsburgh, little trading scows from everywhere, and broad-horns from +'Posey County,' Indiana, freighted with 'fruit and furniture'--the usual +term for describing it, though in plain English the freight thus +aggrandized was hoop-poles and pumpkins. Pilots bore a mortal hatred to +these craft; and it was returned with usury. The law required all such +helpless traders to keep a light burning, but it was a law that was +often broken. All of a sudden, on a murky night, a light would hop up, +right under our bows, almost, and an agonized voice, with the backwoods +'whang' to it, would wail out-- + +'Whar'n the ---- you goin' to! Cain't you see nothin', you dash-dashed +aig-suckin', sheep-stealin', one-eyed son of a stuffed monkey!' + +Then for an instant, as we whistled by, the red glare from our furnaces +would reveal the scow and the form of the gesticulating orator as if +under a lightning-flash, and in that instant our firemen and deck-hands +would send and receive a tempest of missiles and profanity, one of our +wheels would walk off with the crashing fragments of a steering-oar, and +down the dead blackness would shut again. And that flatboatman would be +sure to go into New Orleans and sue our boat, swearing stoutly that he +had a light burning all the time, when in truth his gang had the lantern +down below to sing and lie and drink and gamble by, and no watch on +deck. Once, at night, in one of those forest-bordered crevices (behind +an island) which steamboatmen intensely describe with the phrase 'as +dark as the inside of a cow,' we should have eaten up a Posey County +family, fruit, furniture, and all, but that they happened to be fiddling +down below, and we just caught the sound of the music in time to sheer +off, doing no serious damage, unfortunately, but coming so near it that +we had good hopes for a moment. These people brought up their lantern, +then, of course; and as we backed and filled to get away, the precious +family stood in the light of it--both sexes and various ages--and cursed +us till everything turned blue. Once a coalboatman sent a bullet through +our pilot-house, when we borrowed a steering oar of him in a very narrow +place. + + + + +Chapter 11 The River Rises + +DURING this big rise these small-fry craft were an intolerable nuisance. +We were running chute after chute,--a new world to me,--and if there was +a particularly cramped place in a chute, we would be pretty sure to meet +a broad-horn there; and if he failed to be there, we would find him in a +still worse locality, namely, the head of the chute, on the shoal water. +And then there would be no end of profane cordialities exchanged. + +Sometimes, in the big river, when we would be feeling our way cautiously +along through a fog, the deep hush would suddenly be broken by yells and +a clamor of tin pans, and all in instant a log raft would appear vaguely +through the webby veil, close upon us; and then we did not wait to swap +knives, but snatched our engine bells out by the roots and piled on all +the steam we had, to scramble out of the way! One doesn't hit a rock or +a solid log craft with a steamboat when he can get excused. + +You will hardly believe it, but many steamboat clerks always carried a +large assortment of religious tracts with them in those old departed +steamboating days. Indeed they did. Twenty times a day we would be +cramping up around a bar, while a string of these small-fry rascals were +drifting down into the head of the bend away above and beyond us a +couple of miles. Now a skiff would dart away from one of them, and come +fighting its laborious way across the desert of water. It would 'ease +all,' in the shadow of our forecastle, and the panting oarsmen would +shout, 'Gimme a pa-a-per!' as the skiff drifted swiftly astern. The +clerk would throw over a file of New Orleans journals. If these were +picked up without comment, you might notice that now a dozen other +skiffs had been drifting down upon us without saying anything. You +understand, they had been waiting to see how No. 1 was going to fare. +No. 1 making no comment, all the rest would bend to their oars and come +on, now; and as fast as they came the clerk would heave over neat +bundles of religious tracts, tied to shingles. The amount of hard +swearing which twelve packages of religious literature will command when +impartially divided up among twelve raftsmen's crews, who have pulled a +heavy skiff two miles on a hot day to get them, is simply incredible. + +As I have said, the big rise brought a new world under my vision. By the +time the river was over its banks we had forsaken our old paths and were +hourly climbing over bars that had stood ten feet out of water before; +we were shaving stumpy shores, like that at the foot of Madrid Bend, +which I had always seen avoided before; we were clattering through +chutes like that of 82, where the opening at the foot was an unbroken +wall of timber till our nose was almost at the very spot. Some of these +chutes were utter solitudes. The dense, untouched forest overhung both +banks of the crooked little crack, and one could believe that human +creatures had never intruded there before. The swinging grape-vines, the +grassy nooks and vistas glimpsed as we swept by, the flowering creepers +waving their red blossoms from the tops of dead trunks, and all the +spendthrift richness of the forest foliage, were wasted and thrown away +there. The chutes were lovely places to steer in; they were deep, +except at the head; the current was gentle; under the 'points' the water +was absolutely dead, and the invisible banks so bluff that where the +tender willow thickets projected you could bury your boat's broadside in +them as you tore along, and then you seemed fairly to fly. + +Behind other islands we found wretched little farms, and wretcheder +little log-cabins; there were crazy rail fences sticking a foot or two +above the water, with one or two jeans-clad, chills-racked, yellow-faced +male miserables roosting on the top-rail, elbows on knees, jaws in +hands, grinding tobacco and discharging the result at floating chips +through crevices left by lost teeth; while the rest of the family and +the few farm-animals were huddled together in an empty wood-flat riding +at her moorings close at hand. In this flat-boat the family would have +to cook and eat and sleep for a lesser or greater number of days (or +possibly weeks), until the river should fall two or three feet and let +them get back to their log-cabin and their chills again--chills being a +merciful provision of an all-wise Providence to enable them to take +exercise without exertion. And this sort of watery camping out was a +thing which these people were rather liable to be treated to a couple of +times a year: by the December rise out of the Ohio, and the June rise +out of the Mississippi. And yet these were kindly dispensations, for +they at least enabled the poor things to rise from the dead now and +then, and look upon life when a steamboat went by. They appreciated the +blessing, too, for they spread their mouths and eyes wide open and made +the most of these occasions. Now what COULD these banished creatures +find to do to keep from dying of the blues during the low-water season! + +Once, in one of these lovely island chutes, we found our course +completely bridged by a great fallen tree. This will serve to show how +narrow some of the chutes were. The passengers had an hour's recreation +in a virgin wilderness, while the boat-hands chopped the bridge away; +for there was no such thing as turning back, you comprehend. + +From Cairo to Baton Rouge, when the river is over its banks, you have no +particular trouble in the night, for the thousand-mile wall of dense +forest that guards the two banks all the way is only gapped with a farm +or wood-yard opening at intervals, and so you can't 'get out of the +river' much easier than you could get out of a fenced lane; but from +Baton Rouge to New Orleans it is a different matter. The river is more +than a mile wide, and very deep--as much as two hundred feet, in places. +Both banks, for a good deal over a hundred miles, are shorn of their +timber and bordered by continuous sugar plantations, with only here and +there a scattering sapling or row of ornamental China-trees. The timber +is shorn off clear to the rear of the plantations, from two to four +miles. When the first frost threatens to come, the planters snatch off +their crops in a hurry. When they have finished grinding the cane, they +form the refuse of the stalks (which they call BAGASSE) into great piles +and set fire to them, though in other sugar countries the bagasse is +used for fuel in the furnaces of the sugar mills. Now the piles of damp +bagasse burn slowly, and smoke like Satan's own kitchen. + +An embankment ten or fifteen feet high guards both banks of the +Mississippi all the way down that lower end of the river, and this +embankment is set back from the edge of the shore from ten to perhaps a +hundred feet, according to circumstances; say thirty or forty feet, as a +general thing. Fill that whole region with an impenetrable gloom of +smoke from a hundred miles of burning bagasse piles, when the river is +over the banks, and turn a steamboat loose along there at midnight and +see how she will feel. And see how you will feel, too! You find +yourself away out in the midst of a vague dim sea that is shoreless, +that fades out and loses itself in the murky distances; for you cannot +discern the thin rib of embankment, and you are always imagining you see +a straggling tree when you don't. The plantations themselves are +transformed by the smoke, and look like a part of the sea. All through +your watch you are tortured with the exquisite misery of uncertainty. +You hope you are keeping in the river, but you do not know. All that you +are sure about is that you are likely to be within six feet of the bank +and destruction, when you think you are a good half-mile from shore. And +you are sure, also, that if you chance suddenly to fetch up against the +embankment and topple your chimneys overboard, you will have the small +comfort of knowing that it is about what you were expecting to do. One +of the great Vicksburg packets darted out into a sugar plantation one +night, at such a time, and had to stay there a week. But there was no +novelty about it; it had often been done before. + +I thought I had finished this chapter, but I wish to add a curious +thing, while it is in my mind. It is only relevant in that it is +connected with piloting. There used to be an excellent pilot on the +river, a Mr. X., who was a somnambulist. It was said that if his mind +was troubled about a bad piece of river, he was pretty sure to get up +and walk in his sleep and do strange things. He was once fellow-pilot +for a trip or two with George Ealer, on a great New Orleans passenger +packet. During a considerable part of the first trip George was uneasy, +but got over it by and by, as X. seemed content to stay in his bed when +asleep. Late one night the boat was approaching Helena, Arkansas; the +water was low, and the crossing above the town in a very blind and +tangled condition. X. had seen the crossing since Ealer had, and as the +night was particularly drizzly, sullen, and dark, Ealer was considering +whether he had not better have X. called to assist in running the place, +when the door opened and X. walked in. Now on very dark nights, light is +a deadly enemy to piloting; you are aware that if you stand in a lighted +room, on such a night, you cannot see things in the street to any +purpose; but if you put out the lights and stand in the gloom you can +make out objects in the street pretty well. So, on very dark nights, +pilots do not smoke; they allow no fire in the pilot-house stove if +there is a crack which can allow the least ray to escape; they order the +furnaces to be curtained with huge tarpaulins and the sky-lights to be +closely blinded. Then no light whatever issues from the boat. The +undefinable shape that now entered the pilot-house had Mr. X.'s voice. +This said-- + +'Let me take her, George; I've seen this place since you have, and it is +so crooked that I reckon I can run it myself easier than I could tell +you how to do it.' + +'It is kind of you, and I swear _I_ am willing. I haven't got another +drop of perspiration left in me. I have been spinning around and around +the wheel like a squirrel. It is so dark I can't tell which way she is +swinging till she is coming around like a whirligig.' + +So Ealer took a seat on the bench, panting and breathless. The black +phantom assumed the wheel without saying anything, steadied the waltzing +steamer with a turn or two, and then stood at ease, coaxing her a little +to this side and then to that, as gently and as sweetly as if the time +had been noonday. When Ealer observed this marvel of steering, he wished +he had not confessed! He stared, and wondered, and finally said-- + +'Well, I thought I knew how to steer a steamboat, but that was another +mistake of mine.' + +X. said nothing, but went serenely on with his work. He rang for the +leads; he rang to slow down the steam; he worked the boat carefully and +neatly into invisible marks, then stood at the center of the wheel and +peered blandly out into the blackness, fore and aft, to verify his +position; as the leads shoaled more and more, he stopped the engines +entirely, and the dead silence and suspense of 'drifting' followed when +the shoalest water was struck, he cracked on the steam, carried her +handsomely over, and then began to work her warily into the next system +of shoal marks; the same patient, heedful use of leads and engines +followed, the boat slipped through without touching bottom, and entered +upon the third and last intricacy of the crossing; imperceptibly she +moved through the gloom, crept by inches into her marks, drifted +tediously till the shoalest water was cried, and then, under a +tremendous head of steam, went swinging over the reef and away into deep +water and safety! + +Ealer let his long-pent breath pour out in a great, relieving sigh, and +said-- + +'That's the sweetest piece of piloting that was ever done on the +Mississippi River! I wouldn't believed it could be done, if I hadn't +seen it.' + +There was no reply, and he added-- + +'Just hold her five minutes longer, partner, and let me run down and get +a cup of coffee.' + +A minute later Ealer was biting into a pie, down in the 'texas,' and +comforting himself with coffee. Just then the night watchman happened +in, and was about to happen out again, when he noticed Ealer and +exclaimed-- + +'Who is at the wheel, sir?' + +'X.' + +'Dart for the pilot-house, quicker than lightning!' + +The next moment both men were flying up the pilot-house companion way, +three steps at a jump! Nobody there! The great steamer was whistling +down the middle of the river at her own sweet will! The watchman shot +out of the place again; Ealer seized the wheel, set an engine back with +power, and held his breath while the boat reluctantly swung away from a +'towhead' which she was about to knock into the middle of the Gulf of +Mexico! + +By and by the watchman came back and said-- + +'Didn't that lunatic tell you he was asleep, when he first came up +here?' + +'NO.' + +'Well, he was. I found him walking along on top of the railings just as +unconcerned as another man would walk a pavement; and I put him to bed; +now just this minute there he was again, away astern, going through that +sort of tight-rope deviltry the same as before.' + +'Well, I think I'll stay by, next time he has one of those fits. But I +hope he'll have them often. You just ought to have seen him take this +boat through Helena crossing. I never saw anything so gaudy before. And +if he can do such gold-leaf, kid-glove, diamond-breastpin piloting when +he is sound asleep, what COULDN'T he do if he was dead!' + + + + +Chapter 12 Sounding + +WHEN the river is very low, and one's steamboat is 'drawing all the +water' there is in the channel,--or a few inches more, as was often the +case in the old times,--one must be painfully circumspect in his +piloting. We used to have to 'sound' a number of particularly bad places +almost every trip when the river was at a very low stage. + +Sounding is done in this way. The boat ties up at the shore, just above +the shoal crossing; the pilot not on watch takes his 'cub' or steersman +and a picked crew of men (sometimes an officer also), and goes out in +the yawl--provided the boat has not that rare and sumptuous luxury, a +regularly-devised 'sounding-boat'--and proceeds to hunt for the best +water, the pilot on duty watching his movements through a spy-glass, +meantime, and in some instances assisting by signals of the boat's +whistle, signifying 'try higher up' or 'try lower down;' for the surface +of the water, like an oil-painting, is more expressive and intelligible +when inspected from a little distance than very close at hand. The +whistle signals are seldom necessary, however; never, perhaps, except +when the wind confuses the significant ripples upon the water's surface. +When the yawl has reached the shoal place, the speed is slackened, the +pilot begins to sound the depth with a pole ten or twelve feet long, and +the steersman at the tiller obeys the order to 'hold her up to +starboard;' or, 'let her fall off to larboard;'{footnote [The term +'larboard' is never used at sea now, to signify the left hand; but was +always used on the river in my time]} or 'steady--steady as you go.' + +When the measurements indicate that the yawl is approaching the shoalest +part of the reef, the command is given to 'ease all!' Then the men stop +rowing and the yawl drifts with the current. The next order is, 'Stand +by with the buoy!' The moment the shallowest point is reached, the +pilot delivers the order, 'Let go the buoy!' and over she goes. If the +pilot is not satisfied, he sounds the place again; if he finds better +water higher up or lower down, he removes the buoy to that place. Being +finally satisfied, he gives the order, and all the men stand their oars +straight up in the air, in line; a blast from the boat's whistle +indicates that the signal has been seen; then the men 'give way' on +their oars and lay the yawl alongside the buoy; the steamer comes +creeping carefully down, is pointed straight at the buoy, husbands her +power for the coming struggle, and presently, at the critical moment, +turns on all her steam and goes grinding and wallowing over the buoy and +the sand, and gains the deep water beyond. Or maybe she doesn't; maybe +she 'strikes and swings.' Then she has to while away several hours (or +days) sparring herself off. + +Sometimes a buoy is not laid at all, but the yawl goes ahead, hunting +the best water, and the steamer follows along in its wake. Often there +is a deal of fun and excitement about sounding, especially if it is a +glorious summer day, or a blustering night. But in winter the cold and +the peril take most of the fun out of it. + +A buoy is nothing but a board four or five feet long, with one end +turned up; it is a reversed school-house bench, with one of the supports +left and the other removed. It is anchored on the shoalest part of the +reef by a rope with a heavy stone made fast to the end of it. But for +the resistance of the turned-up end of the reversed bench, the current +would pull the buoy under water. At night, a paper lantern with a +candle in it is fastened on top of the buoy, and this can be seen a mile +or more, a little glimmering spark in the waste of blackness. + +Nothing delights a cub so much as an opportunity to go out sounding. +There is such an air of adventure about it; often there is danger; it is +so gaudy and man-of-war-like to sit up in the stern-sheets and steer a +swift yawl; there is something fine about the exultant spring of the +boat when an experienced old sailor crew throw their souls into the +oars; it is lovely to see the white foam stream away from the bows; +there is music in the rush of the water; it is deliciously exhilarating, +in summer, to go speeding over the breezy expanses of the river when the +world of wavelets is dancing in the sun. It is such grandeur, too, to +the cub, to get a chance to give an order; for often the pilot will +simply say, 'Let her go about!' and leave the rest to the cub, who +instantly cries, in his sternest tone of command, 'Ease starboard! +Strong on the larboard! Starboard give way! With a will, men!' The cub +enjoys sounding for the further reason that the eyes of the passengers +are watching all the yawl's movements with absorbing interest if the +time be daylight; and if it be night he knows that those same wondering +eyes are fastened upon the yawl's lantern as it glides out into the +gloom and dims away in the remote distance. + +One trip a pretty girl of sixteen spent her time in our pilot-house with +her uncle and aunt, every day and all day long. I fell in love with +her. So did Mr. Thornburg's cub, Tom G----. Tom and I had been bosom +friends until this time; but now a coolness began to arise. I told the +girl a good many of my river adventures, and made myself out a good deal +of a hero; Tom tried to make himself appear to be a hero, too, and +succeeded to some extent, but then he always had a way of embroidering. +However, virtue is its own reward, so I was a barely perceptible trifle +ahead in the contest. About this time something happened which promised +handsomely for me: the pilots decided to sound the crossing at the head +of 21. This would occur about nine or ten o'clock at night, when the +passengers would be still up; it would be Mr. Thornburg's watch, +therefore my chief would have to do the sounding. We had a perfect love +of a sounding-boat--long, trim, graceful, and as fleet as a greyhound; +her thwarts were cushioned; she carried twelve oarsmen; one of the mates +was always sent in her to transmit orders to her crew, for ours was a +steamer where no end of 'style' was put on. + +We tied up at the shore above 21, and got ready. It was a foul night, +and the river was so wide, there, that a landsman's uneducated eyes +could discern no opposite shore through such a gloom. The passengers +were alert and interested; everything was satisfactory. As I hurried +through the engine-room, picturesquely gotten up in storm toggery, I met +Tom, and could not forbear delivering myself of a mean speech-- + +'Ain't you glad YOU don't have to go out sounding?' + +Tom was passing on, but he quickly turned, and said-- + +'Now just for that, you can go and get the sounding-pole yourself. I was +going after it, but I'd see you in Halifax, now, before I'd do it.' + +'Who wants you to get it? I don't. It's in the sounding-boat.' + +'It ain't, either. It's been new-painted; and it's been up on the +ladies' cabin guards two days, drying.' + +I flew back, and shortly arrived among the crowd of watching and +wondering ladies just in time to hear the command: + +'Give way, men!' + +I looked over, and there was the gallant sounding-boat booming away, the +unprincipled Tom presiding at the tiller, and my chief sitting by him +with the sounding-pole which I had been sent on a fool's errand to +fetch. Then that young girl said to me-- + +'Oh, how awful to have to go out in that little boat on such a night! Do +you think there is any danger?' + +I would rather have been stabbed. I went off, full of venom, to help in +the pilot-house. By and by the boat's lantern disappeared, and after an +interval a wee spark glimmered upon the face of the water a mile away. +Mr. Thornburg blew the whistle, in acknowledgment, backed the steamer +out, and made for it. We flew along for a while, then slackened steam +and went cautiously gliding toward the spark. Presently Mr. Thornburg +exclaimed-- + +'Hello, the buoy-lantern's out!' + +He stopped the engines. A moment or two later he said-- + +'Why, there it is again!' + +So he came ahead on the engines once more, and rang for the leads. +Gradually the water shoaled up, and then began to deepen again! Mr. +Thornburg muttered-- + +'Well, I don't understand this. I believe that buoy has drifted off the +reef. Seems to be a little too far to the left. No matter, it is safest +to run over it anyhow.' + +So, in that solid world of darkness we went creeping down on the light. +Just as our bows were in the act of plowing over it, Mr. Thornburg +seized the bell-ropes, rang a startling peal, and exclaimed-- + +'My soul, it's the sounding-boat!' + +A sudden chorus of wild alarms burst out far below--a pause--and then +the sound of grinding and crashing followed. Mr. Thornburg exclaimed-- + +'There! the paddle-wheel has ground the sounding-boat to lucifer +matches! Run! See who is killed!' + +I was on the main deck in the twinkling of an eye. My chief and the +third mate and nearly all the men were safe. They had discovered their +danger when it was too late to pull out of the way; then, when the great +guards overshadowed them a moment later, they were prepared and knew +what to do; at my chiefs order they sprang at the right instant, seized +the guard, and were hauled aboard. The next moment the sounding-yawl +swept aft to the wheel and was struck and splintered to atoms. Two of +the men and the cub Tom, were missing--a fact which spread like wildfire +over the boat. The passengers came flocking to the forward gangway, +ladies and all, anxious-eyed, white-faced, and talked in awed voices of +the dreadful thing. And often and again I heard them say, 'Poor fellows! +poor boy, poor boy!' + +By this time the boat's yawl was manned and away, to search for the +missing. Now a faint call was heard, off to the left. The yawl had +disappeared in the other direction. Half the people rushed to one side +to encourage the swimmer with their shouts; the other half rushed the +other way to shriek to the yawl to turn about. By the callings, the +swimmer was approaching, but some said the sound showed failing +strength. The crowd massed themselves against the boiler-deck railings, +leaning over and staring into the gloom; and every faint and fainter cry +wrung from them such words as, 'Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow! is there +no way to save him?' + +But still the cries held out, and drew nearer, and presently the voice +said pluckily-- + +'I can make it! Stand by with a rope!' + +What a rousing cheer they gave him! The chief mate took his stand in +the glare of a torch-basket, a coil of rope in his hand, and his men +grouped about him. The next moment the swimmer's face appeared in the +circle of light, and in another one the owner of it was hauled aboard, +limp and drenched, while cheer on cheer went up. It was that devil Tom. + +The yawl crew searched everywhere, but found no sign of the two men. +They probably failed to catch the guard, tumbled back, and were struck +by the wheel and killed. Tom had never jumped for the guard at all, but +had plunged head-first into the river and dived under the wheel. It was +nothing; I could have done it easy enough, and I said so; but everybody +went on just the same, making a wonderful to do over that ass, as if he +had done something great. That girl couldn't seem to have enough of +that pitiful 'hero' the rest of the trip; but little I cared; I loathed +her, any way. + +The way we came to mistake the sounding-boat's lantern for the buoy- +light was this. My chief said that after laying the buoy he fell away +and watched it till it seemed to be secure; then he took up a position a +hundred yards below it and a little to one side of the steamer's course, +headed the sounding-boat up-stream, and waited. Having to wait some +time, he and the officer got to talking; he looked up when he judged +that the steamer was about on the reef; saw that the buoy was gone, but +supposed that the steamer had already run over it; he went on with his +talk; he noticed that the steamer was getting very close on him, but +that was the correct thing; it was her business to shave him closely, +for convenience in taking him aboard; he was expecting her to sheer off, +until the last moment; then it flashed upon him that she was trying to +run him down, mistaking his lantern for the buoy-light; so he sang out, +'Stand by to spring for the guard, men!' and the next instant the jump +was made. + + + + +Chapter 13 A Pilot's Needs + +BUT I am wandering from what I was intending to do, that is, make +plainer than perhaps appears in the previous chapters, some of the +peculiar requirements of the science of piloting. First of all, there is +one faculty which a pilot must incessantly cultivate until he has +brought it to absolute perfection. Nothing short of perfection will do. +That faculty is memory. He cannot stop with merely thinking a thing is +so and so; he must know it; for this is eminently one of the 'exact' +sciences. With what scorn a pilot was looked upon, in the old times, if +he ever ventured to deal in that feeble phrase 'I think,' instead of the +vigorous one 'I know!' One cannot easily realize what a tremendous +thing it is to know every trivial detail of twelve hundred miles of +river and know it with absolute exactness. If you will take the longest +street in New York, and travel up and down it, conning its features +patiently until you know every house and window and door and lamp-post +and big and little sign by heart, and know them so accurately that you +can instantly name the one you are abreast of when you are set down at +random in that street in the middle of an inky black night, you will +then have a tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of a +pilot's knowledge who carries the Mississippi River in his head. And +then if you will go on until you know every street crossing, the +character, size, and position of the crossing-stones, and the varying +depth of mud in each of those numberless places, you will have some idea +of what the pilot must know in order to keep a Mississippi steamer out +of trouble. Next, if you will take half of the signs in that long +street, and CHANGE THEIR PLACES once a month, and still manage to know +their new positions accurately on dark nights, and keep up with these +repeated changes without making any mistakes, you will understand what +is required of a pilot's peerless memory by the fickle Mississippi. + +I think a pilot's memory is about the most wonderful thing in the world. +To know the Old and New Testaments by heart, and be able to recite them +glibly, forward or backward, or begin at random anywhere in the book and +recite both ways and never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant +mass of knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot's +massed knowledge of the Mississippi and his marvelous facility in the +handling of it. I make this comparison deliberately, and believe I am +not expanding the truth when I do it. Many will think my figure too +strong, but pilots will not. + +And how easily and comfortably the pilot's memory does its work; how +placidly effortless is its way; how UNCONSCIOUSLY it lays up its vast +stores, hour by hour, day by day, and never loses or mislays a single +valuable package of them all! Take an instance. Let a leadsman cry, +'Half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain!' until it +become as monotonous as the ticking of a clock; let conversation be +going on all the time, and the pilot be doing his share of the talking, +and no longer consciously listening to the leadsman; and in the midst of +this endless string of half twains let a single 'quarter twain!' be +interjected, without emphasis, and then the half twain cry go on again, +just as before: two or three weeks later that pilot can describe with +precision the boat's position in the river when that quarter twain was +uttered, and give you such a lot of head-marks, stern-marks, and side- +marks to guide you, that you ought to be able to take the boat there and +put her in that same spot again yourself! The cry of 'quarter twain' did +not really take his mind from his talk, but his trained faculties +instantly photographed the bearings, noted the change of depth, and laid +up the important details for future reference without requiring any +assistance from him in the matter. If you were walking and talking with +a friend, and another friend at your side kept up a monotonous +repetition of the vowel sound A, for a couple of blocks, and then in the +midst interjected an R, thus, A, A, A, A, A, R, A, A, A, etc., and gave +the R no emphasis, you would not be able to state, two or three weeks +afterward, that the R had been put in, nor be able to tell what objects +you were passing at the moment it was done. But you could if your +memory had been patiently and laboriously trained to do that sort of +thing mechanically. + +Give a man a tolerably fair memory to start with, and piloting will +develop it into a very colossus of capability. But ONLY IN THE MATTERS +IT IS DAILY DRILLED IN. A time would come when the man's faculties could +not help noticing landmarks and soundings, and his memory could not help +holding on to them with the grip of a vise; but if you asked that same +man at noon what he had had for breakfast, it would be ten chances to +one that he could not tell you. Astonishing things can be done with the +human memory if you will devote it faithfully to one particular line of +business. + +At the time that wages soared so high on the Missouri River, my chief, +Mr. Bixby, went up there and learned more than a thousand miles of that +stream with an ease and rapidity that were astonishing. When he had seen +each division once in the daytime and once at night, his education was +so nearly complete that he took out a 'daylight' license; a few trips +later he took out a full license, and went to piloting day and night-- +and he ranked A 1, too. + +Mr. Bixby placed me as steersman for a while under a pilot whose feats +of memory were a constant marvel to me. However, his memory was born in +him, I think, not built. For instance, somebody would mention a name. +Instantly Mr. Brown would break in-- + +'Oh, I knew HIM. Sallow-faced, red-headed fellow, with a little scar on +the side of his throat, like a splinter under the flesh. He was only in +the Southern trade six months. That was thirteen years ago. I made a +trip with him. There was five feet in the upper river then; the "Henry +Blake" grounded at the foot of Tower Island drawing four and a half; the +"George Elliott" unshipped her rudder on the wreck of the "Sunflower"--' + +'Why, the "Sunflower" didn't sink until--' + +'I know when she sunk; it was three years before that, on the 2nd of +December; Asa Hardy was captain of her, and his brother John was first +clerk; and it was his first trip in her, too; Tom Jones told me these +things a week afterward in New Orleans; he was first mate of the +"Sunflower." Captain Hardy stuck a nail in his foot the 6th of July of +the next year, and died of the lockjaw on the 15th. His brother died +two years after 3rd of March,--erysipelas. I never saw either of the +Hardys,--they were Alleghany River men,--but people who knew them told +me all these things. And they said Captain Hardy wore yarn socks winter +and summer just the same, and his first wife's name was Jane Shook--she +was from New England--and his second one died in a lunatic asylum. It +was in the blood. She was from Lexington, Kentucky. Name was Horton +before she was married.' + +And so on, by the hour, the man's tongue would go. He could NOT forget +any thing. It was simply impossible. The most trivial details remained +as distinct and luminous in his head, after they had lain there for +years, as the most memorable events. His was not simply a pilot's +memory; its grasp was universal. If he were talking about a trifling +letter he had received seven years before, he was pretty sure to deliver +you the entire screed from memory. And then without observing that he +was departing from the true line of his talk, he was more than likely to +hurl in a long-drawn parenthetical biography of the writer of that +letter; and you were lucky indeed if he did not take up that writer's +relatives, one by one, and give you their biographies, too. + +Such a memory as that is a great misfortune. To it, all occurrences are +of the same size. Its possessor cannot distinguish an interesting +circumstance from an uninteresting one. As a talker, he is bound to +clog his narrative with tiresome details and make himself an +insufferable bore. Moreover, he cannot stick to his subject. He picks +up every little grain of memory he discerns in his way, and so is led +aside. Mr. Brown would start out with the honest intention of telling +you a vastly funny anecdote about a dog. He would be 'so full of laugh' +that he could hardly begin; then his memory would start with the dog's +breed and personal appearance; drift into a history of his owner; of his +owner's family, with descriptions of weddings and burials that had +occurred in it, together with recitals of congratulatory verses and +obituary poetry provoked by the same: then this memory would recollect +that one of these events occurred during the celebrated 'hard winter' of +such and such a year, and a minute description of that winter would +follow, along with the names of people who were frozen to death, and +statistics showing the high figures which pork and hay went up to. Pork +and hay would suggest corn and fodder; corn and fodder would suggest +cows and horses; cows and horses would suggest the circus and certain +celebrated bare-back riders; the transition from the circus to the +menagerie was easy and natural; from the elephant to equatorial Africa +was but a step; then of course the heathen savages would suggest +religion; and at the end of three or four hours' tedious jaw, the watch +would change, and Brown would go out of the pilot-house muttering +extracts from sermons he had heard years before about the efficacy of +prayer as a means of grace. And the original first mention would be all +you had learned about that dog, after all this waiting and hungering. + +A pilot must have a memory; but there are two higher qualities which he +must also have. He must have good and quick judgment and decision, and +a cool, calm courage that no peril can shake. Give a man the merest +trifle of pluck to start with, and by the time he has become a pilot he +cannot be unmanned by any danger a steamboat can get into; but one +cannot quite say the same for judgment. Judgment is a matter of brains, +and a man must START with a good stock of that article or he will never +succeed as a pilot. + +The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady all the time, but it +does not reach a high and satisfactory condition until some time after +the young pilot has been 'standing his own watch,' alone and under the +staggering weight of all the responsibilities connected with the +position. When an apprentice has become pretty thoroughly acquainted +with the river, he goes clattering along so fearlessly with his +steamboat, night or day, that he presently begins to imagine that it is +HIS courage that animates him; but the first time the pilot steps out +and leaves him to his own devices he finds out it was the other man's. +He discovers that the article has been left out of his own cargo +altogether. The whole river is bristling with exigencies in a moment; he +is not prepared for them; he does not know how to meet them; all his +knowledge forsakes him; and within fifteen minutes he is as white as a +sheet and scared almost to death. Therefore pilots wisely train these +cubs by various strategic tricks to look danger in the face a little +more calmly. A favorite way of theirs is to play a friendly swindle upon +the candidate. + +Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once, and for years afterward I used +to blush even in my sleep when I thought of it. I had become a good +steersman; so good, indeed, that I had all the work to do on our watch, +night and day; Mr. Bixby seldom made a suggestion to me; all he ever did +was to take the wheel on particularly bad nights or in particularly bad +crossings, land the boat when she needed to be landed, play gentleman of +leisure nine-tenths of the watch, and collect the wages. The lower river +was about bank-full, and if anybody had questioned my ability to run any +crossing between Cairo and New Orleans without help or instruction, I +should have felt irreparably hurt. The idea of being afraid of any +crossing in the lot, in the DAY-TIME, was a thing too preposterous for +contemplation. Well, one matchless summer's day I was bowling down the +bend above island 66, brimful of self-conceit and carrying my nose as +high as a giraffe's, when Mr. Bixby said-- + +'I am going below a while. I suppose you know the next crossing?' + +This was almost an affront. It was about the plainest and simplest +crossing in the whole river. One couldn't come to any harm, whether he +ran it right or not; and as for depth, there never had been any bottom +there. I knew all this, perfectly well. + +'Know how to RUN it? Why, I can run it with my eyes shut.' + +'How much water is there in it?' + +'Well, that is an odd question. I couldn't get bottom there with a +church steeple.' + +'You think so, do you?' + +The very tone of the question shook my confidence. That was what Mr. +Bixby was expecting. He left, without saying anything more. I began to +imagine all sorts of things. Mr. Bixby, unknown to me, of course, sent +somebody down to the forecastle with some mysterious instructions to the +leadsmen, another messenger was sent to whisper among the officers, and +then Mr. Bixby went into hiding behind a smoke-stack where he could +observe results. Presently the captain stepped out on the hurricane +deck; next the chief mate appeared; then a clerk. Every moment or two a +straggler was added to my audience; and before I got to the head of the +island I had fifteen or twenty people assembled down there under my +nose. I began to wonder what the trouble was. As I started across, the +captain glanced aloft at me and said, with a sham uneasiness in his +voice-- + +'Where is Mr. Bixby?' + +'Gone below, sir.' + +But that did the business for me. My imagination began to construct +dangers out of nothing, and they multiplied faster than I could keep the +run of them. All at once I imagined I saw shoal water ahead! The wave +of coward agony that surged through me then came near dislocating every +joint in me. All my confidence in that crossing vanished. I seized the +bell-rope; dropped it, ashamed; seized it again; dropped it once more; +clutched it tremblingly one again, and pulled it so feebly that I could +hardly hear the stroke myself. Captain and mate sang out instantly, and +both together-- + +'Starboard lead there! and quick about it!' + +This was another shock. I began to climb the wheel like a squirrel; but +I would hardly get the boat started to port before I would see new +dangers on that side, and away I would spin to the other; only to find +perils accumulating to starboard, and be crazy to get to port again. +Then came the leadsman's sepulchral cry-- + +'D-e-e-p four!' + +Deep four in a bottomless crossing! The terror of it took my breath +away. + +'M-a-r-k three!... M-a-r-k three... Quarter less three!... Half twain!' + +This was frightful! I seized the bell-ropes and stopped the engines. + +'Quarter twain! Quarter twain! MARK twain!' + +I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do. I was quaking +from head to foot, and I could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck +out so far. + +'Quarter LESS twain! Nine and a HALF!' + +We were DRAWING nine! My hands were in a nerveless flutter. I could not +ring a bell intelligibly with them. I flew to the speaking-tube and +shouted to the engineer-- + +'Oh, Ben, if you love me, BACK her! Quick, Ben! Oh, back the immortal +SOUL out of her!' + +I heard the door close gently. I looked around, and there stood Mr. +Bixby, smiling a bland, sweet smile. Then the audience on the hurricane +deck sent up a thundergust of humiliating laughter. I saw it all, now, +and I felt meaner than the meanest man in human history. I laid in the +lead, set the boat in her marks, came ahead on the engines, and said-- + +'It was a fine trick to play on an orphan, WASN'T it? I suppose I'll +never hear the last of how I was ass enough to heave the lead at the +head of 66.' + +'Well, no, you won't, maybe. In fact I hope you won't; for I want you +to learn something by that experience. Didn't you KNOW there was no +bottom in that crossing?' + +'Yes, sir, I did.' + +'Very well, then. You shouldn't have allowed me or anybody else to +shake your confidence in that knowledge. Try to remember that. And +another thing: when you get into a dangerous place, don't turn coward. +That isn't going to help matters any.' + +It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly learned. Yet about the +hardest part of it was that for months I so often had to hear a phrase +which I had conceived a particular distaste for. It was, 'Oh, Ben, if +you love me, back her!' + + + + +Chapter 14 Rank and Dignity of Piloting + +IN my preceding chapters I have tried, by going into the minutiae of the +science of piloting, to carry the reader step by step to a comprehension +of what the science consists of; and at the same time I have tried to +show him that it is a very curious and wonderful science, too, and very +worthy of his attention. If I have seemed to love my subject, it is no +surprising thing, for I loved the profession far better than any I have +followed since, and I took a measureless pride in it. The reason is +plain: a pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely +independent human being that lived in the earth. Kings are but the +hampered servants of parliament and people; parliaments sit in chains +forged by their constituency; the editor of a newspaper cannot be +independent, but must work with one hand tied behind him by party and +patrons, and be content to utter only half or two-thirds of his mind; no +clergyman is a free man and may speak the whole truth, regardless of his +parish's opinions; writers of all kinds are manacled servants of the +public. We write frankly and fearlessly, but then we 'modify' before we +print. In truth, every man and woman and child has a master, and +worries and frets in servitude; but in the day I write of, the +Mississippi pilot had none. The captain could stand upon the hurricane +deck, in the pomp of a very brief authority, and give him five or six +orders while the vessel backed into the stream, and then that skipper's +reign was over. The moment that the boat was under way in the river, +she was under the sole and unquestioned control of the pilot. He could +do with her exactly as he pleased, run her when and whither he chose, +and tie her up to the bank whenever his judgment said that that course +was best. His movements were entirely free; he consulted no one, he +received commands from nobody, he promptly resented even the merest +suggestions. Indeed, the law of the United States forbade him to listen +to commands or suggestions, rightly considering that the pilot +necessarily knew better how to handle the boat than anybody could tell +him. So here was the novelty of a king without a keeper, an absolute +monarch who was absolute in sober truth and not by a fiction of words. I +have seen a boy of eighteen taking a great steamer serenely into what +seemed almost certain destruction, and the aged captain standing mutely +by, filled with apprehension but powerless to interfere. His +interference, in that particular instance, might have been an excellent +thing, but to permit it would have been to establish a most pernicious +precedent. It will easily be guessed, considering the pilot's boundless +authority, that he was a great personage in the old steamboating days. +He was treated with marked courtesy by the captain and with marked +deference by all the officers and servants; and this deferential spirit +was quickly communicated to the passengers, too. I think pilots were +about the only people I ever knew who failed to show, in some degree, +embarrassment in the presence of traveling foreign princes. But then, +people in one's own grade of life are not usually embarrassing objects. + +By long habit, pilots came to put all their wishes in the form of +commands. It 'gravels' me, to this day, to put my will in the weak shape +of a request, instead of launching it in the crisp language of an order. +In those old days, to load a steamboat at St. Louis, take her to New +Orleans and back, and discharge cargo, consumed about twenty-five days, +on an average. Seven or eight of these days the boat spent at the +wharves of St. Louis and New Orleans, and every soul on board was hard +at work, except the two pilots; they did nothing but play gentleman up +town, and receive the same wages for it as if they had been on duty. The +moment the boat touched the wharf at either city, they were ashore; and +they were not likely to be seen again till the last bell was ringing and +everything in readiness for another voyage. + +When a captain got hold of a pilot of particularly high reputation, he +took pains to keep him. When wages were four hundred dollars a month on +the Upper Mississippi, I have known a captain to keep such a pilot in +idleness, under full pay, three months at a time, while the river was +frozen up. And one must remember that in those cheap times four hundred +dollars was a salary of almost inconceivable splendor. Few men on shore +got such pay as that, and when they did they were mightily looked up to. +When pilots from either end of the river wandered into our small +Missouri village, they were sought by the best and the fairest, and +treated with exalted respect. Lying in port under wages was a thing +which many pilots greatly enjoyed and appreciated; especially if they +belonged in the Missouri River in the heyday of that trade (Kansas +times), and got nine hundred dollars a trip, which was equivalent to +about eighteen hundred dollars a month. Here is a conversation of that +day. A chap out of the Illinois River, with a little stern-wheel tub, +accosts a couple of ornate and gilded Missouri River pilots-- + +'Gentlemen, I've got a pretty good trip for the upcountry, and shall +want you about a month. How much will it be?' + +'Eighteen hundred dollars apiece.' + +'Heavens and earth! You take my boat, let me have your wages, and I'll +divide!' + +I will remark, in passing, that Mississippi steamboatmen were important +in landsmen's eyes (and in their own, too, in a degree) according to the +dignity of the boat they were on. For instance, it was a proud thing to +be of the crew of such stately craft as the 'Aleck Scott' or the 'Grand +Turk.' Negro firemen, deck hands, and barbers belonging to those boats +were distinguished personages in their grade of life, and they were well +aware of that fact too. A stalwart darkey once gave offense at a negro +ball in New Orleans by putting on a good many airs. Finally one of the +managers bustled up to him and said-- + +'Who IS you, any way? Who is you? dat's what I wants to know!' + +The offender was not disconcerted in the least, but swelled himself up +and threw that into his voice which showed that he knew he was not +putting on all those airs on a stinted capital. + +'Who IS I? Who IS I? I let you know mighty quick who I is! I want you +niggers to understan' dat I fires de middle do'{footnote [Door]} on de +"Aleck Scott!"' + +That was sufficient. + +The barber of the 'Grand Turk' was a spruce young negro, who aired his +importance with balmy complacency, and was greatly courted by the circle +in which he moved. The young colored population of New Orleans were much +given to flirting, at twilight, on the banquettes of the back streets. +Somebody saw and heard something like the following, one evening, in one +of those localities. A middle-aged negro woman projected her head +through a broken pane and shouted (very willing that the neighbors +should hear and envy), 'You Mary Ann, come in de house dis minute! +Stannin' out dah foolin' 'long wid dat low trash, an' heah's de barber +offn de "Gran' Turk" wants to conwerse wid you!' + +My reference, a moment ago, to the fact that a pilot's peculiar official +position placed him out of the reach of criticism or command, brings +Stephen W---- naturally to my mind. He was a gifted pilot, a good +fellow, a tireless talker, and had both wit and humor in him. He had a +most irreverent independence, too, and was deliciously easy-going and +comfortable in the presence of age, official dignity, and even the most +august wealth. He always had work, he never saved a penny, he was a +most persuasive borrower, he was in debt to every pilot on the river, +and to the majority of the captains. He could throw a sort of splendor +around a bit of harum-scarum, devil-may-care piloting, that made it +almost fascinating--but not to everybody. He made a trip with good old +Captain Y----once, and was 'relieved' from duty when the boat got to New +Orleans. Somebody expressed surprise at the discharge. Captain Y---- +shuddered at the mere mention of Stephen. Then his poor, thin old voice +piped out something like this:-- + +'Why, bless me! I wouldn't have such a wild creature on my boat for the +world--not for the whole world! He swears, he sings, he whistles, he +yells--I never saw such an Injun to yell. All times of the night--it +never made any difference to him. He would just yell that way, not for +anything in particular, but merely on account of a kind of devilish +comfort he got out of it. I never could get into a sound sleep but he +would fetch me out of bed, all in a cold sweat, with one of those +dreadful war-whoops. A queer being--very queer being; no respect for +anything or anybody. Sometimes he called me "Johnny." And he kept a +fiddle, and a cat. He played execrably. This seemed to distress the +cat, and so the cat would howl. Nobody could sleep where that man--and +his family--was. And reckless. There never was anything like it. Now +you may believe it or not, but as sure as I am sitting here, he brought +my boat a-tilting down through those awful snags at Chicot under a +rattling head of steam, and the wind a-blowing like the very nation, at +that! My officers will tell you so. They saw it. And, sir, while he +was a-tearing right down through those snags, and I a-shaking in my +shoes and praying, I wish I may never speak again if he didn't pucker up +his mouth and go to WHISTLING! Yes, sir; whistling "Buffalo gals, can't +you come out tonight, can't you come out to-night, can't you come out +to-night;" and doing it as calmly as if we were attending a funeral and +weren't related to the corpse. And when I remonstrated with him about +it, he smiled down on me as if I was his child, and told me to run in +the house and try to be good, and not be meddling with my superiors!' + +Once a pretty mean captain caught Stephen in New Orleans out of work and +as usual out of money. He laid steady siege to Stephen, who was in a +very 'close place,' and finally persuaded him to hire with him at one +hundred and twenty-five dollars per month, just half wages, the captain +agreeing not to divulge the secret and so bring down the contempt of all +the guild upon the poor fellow. But the boat was not more than a day +out of New Orleans before Stephen discovered that the captain was +boasting of his exploit, and that all the officers had been told. +Stephen winced, but said nothing. About the middle of the afternoon the +captain stepped out on the hurricane deck, cast his eye around, and +looked a good deal surprised. He glanced inquiringly aloft at Stephen, +but Stephen was whistling placidly, and attending to business. The +captain stood around a while in evident discomfort, and once or twice +seemed about to make a suggestion; but the etiquette of the river taught +him to avoid that sort of rashness, and so he managed to hold his peace. +He chafed and puzzled a few minutes longer, then retired to his +apartments. But soon he was out again, and apparently more perplexed +than ever. Presently he ventured to remark, with deference-- + +'Pretty good stage of the river now, ain't it, sir?' + +'Well, I should say so! Bank-full IS a pretty liberal stage.' + +'Seems to be a good deal of current here.' + +'Good deal don't describe it! It's worse than a mill-race.' + +'Isn't it easier in toward shore than it is out here in the middle?' + +'Yes, I reckon it is; but a body can't be too careful with a steamboat. +It's pretty safe out here; can't strike any bottom here, you can depend +on that.' + +The captain departed, looking rueful enough. At this rate, he would +probably die of old age before his boat got to St. Louis. Next day he +appeared on deck and again found Stephen faithfully standing up the +middle of the river, fighting the whole vast force of the Mississippi, +and whistling the same placid tune. This thing was becoming serious. In +by the shore was a slower boat clipping along in the easy water and +gaining steadily; she began to make for an island chute; Stephen stuck +to the middle of the river. Speech was WRUNG from the captain. +He said-- + +'Mr. W----, don't that chute cut off a good deal of distance?' + +'I think it does, but I don't know.' + +'Don't know! Well, isn't there water enough in it now to go through?' + +'I expect there is, but I am not certain.' + +'Upon my word this is odd! Why, those pilots on that boat yonder are +going to try it. Do you mean to say that you don't know as much as they +do?' + +'THEY! Why, THEY are two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar pilots! But don't you +be uneasy; I know as much as any man can afford to know for a hundred +and twenty-five!' + +The captain surrendered. + +Five minutes later Stephen was bowling through the chute and showing the +rival boat a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar pair of heels. + + + + +Chapter 15 The Pilots' Monopoly + +ONE day, on board the 'Aleck Scott,' my chief, Mr. Bixby, was crawling +carefully through a close place at Cat Island, both leads going, and +everybody holding his breath. The captain, a nervous, apprehensive man, +kept still as long as he could, but finally broke down and shouted from +the hurricane deck-- + +'For gracious' sake, give her steam, Mr. Bixby! give her steam! She'll +never raise the reef on this headway!' + +For all the effect that was produced upon Mr. Bixby, one would have +supposed that no remark had been made. But five minutes later, when the +danger was past and the leads laid in, he burst instantly into a +consuming fury, and gave the captain the most admirable cursing I ever +listened to. No bloodshed ensued; but that was because the captain's +cause was weak; for ordinarily he was not a man to take correction +quietly. + +Having now set forth in detail the nature of the science of piloting, +and likewise described the rank which the pilot held among the +fraternity of steamboatmen, this seems a fitting place to say a few +words about an organization which the pilots once formed for the +protection of their guild. It was curious and noteworthy in this, that +it was perhaps the compactest, the completest, and the strongest +commercial organization ever formed among men. + +For a long time wages had been two hundred and fifty dollars a month; +but curiously enough, as steamboats multiplied and business increased, +the wages began to fall little by little. It was easy to discover the +reason of this. Too many pilots were being 'made.' It was nice to have +a 'cub,' a steersman, to do all the hard work for a couple of years, +gratis, while his master sat on a high bench and smoked; all pilots and +captains had sons or nephews who wanted to be pilots. By and by it came +to pass that nearly every pilot on the river had a steersman. When a +steersman had made an amount of progress that was satisfactory to any +two pilots in the trade, they could get a pilot's license for him by +signing an application directed to the United States Inspector. Nothing +further was needed; usually no questions were asked, no proofs of +capacity required. + +Very well, this growing swarm of new pilots presently began to undermine +the wages, in order to get berths. Too late--apparently--the knights of +the tiller perceived their mistake. Plainly, something had to be done, +and quickly; but what was to be the needful thing. A close +organization. Nothing else would answer. To compass this seemed an +impossibility; so it was talked, and talked, and then dropped. It was +too likely to ruin whoever ventured to move in the matter. But at last +about a dozen of the boldest--and some of them the best--pilots on the +river launched themselves into the enterprise and took all the chances. +They got a special charter from the legislature, with large powers, +under the name of the Pilots' Benevolent Association; elected their +officers, completed their organization, contributed capital, put +'association' wages up to two hundred and fifty dollars at once--and +then retired to their homes, for they were promptly discharged from +employment. But there were two or three unnoticed trifles in their by- +laws which had the seeds of propagation in them. For instance, all idle +members of the association, in good standing, were entitled to a pension +of twenty-five dollars per month. This began to bring in one straggler +after another from the ranks of the new-fledged pilots, in the dull +(summer) season. Better have twenty-five dollars than starve; the +initiation fee was only twelve dollars, and no dues required from the +unemployed. + +Also, the widows of deceased members in good standing could draw twenty- +five dollars per month, and a certain sum for each of their children. +Also, the said deceased would be buried at the association's expense. +These things resurrected all the superannuated and forgotten pilots in +the Mississippi Valley. They came from farms, they came from interior +villages, they came from everywhere. They came on crutches, on drays, +in ambulances,--any way, so they got there. They paid in their twelve +dollars, and straightway began to draw out twenty-five dollars a month, +and calculate their burial bills. + +By and by, all the useless, helpless pilots, and a dozen first-class +ones, were in the association, and nine-tenths of the best pilots out of +it and laughing at it. It was the laughing-stock of the whole river. +Everybody joked about the by-law requiring members to pay ten per cent. +of their wages, every month, into the treasury for the support of the +association, whereas all the members were outcast and tabooed, and no +one would employ them. Everybody was derisively grateful to the +association for taking all the worthless pilots out of the way and +leaving the whole field to the excellent and the deserving; and +everybody was not only jocularly grateful for that, but for a result +which naturally followed, namely, the gradual advance of wages as the +busy season approached. Wages had gone up from the low figure of one +hundred dollars a month to one hundred and twenty-five, and in some +cases to one hundred and fifty; and it was great fun to enlarge upon the +fact that this charming thing had been accomplished by a body of men not +one of whom received a particle of benefit from it. Some of the jokers +used to call at the association rooms and have a good time chaffing the +members and offering them the charity of taking them as steersmen for a +trip, so that they could see what the forgotten river looked like. +However, the association was content; or at least it gave no sign to the +contrary. Now and then it captured a pilot who was 'out of luck,' and +added him to its list; and these later additions were very valuable, for +they were good pilots; the incompetent ones had all been absorbed +before. As business freshened, wages climbed gradually up to two +hundred and fifty dollars--the association figure--and became firmly +fixed there; and still without benefiting a member of that body, for no +member was hired. The hilarity at the association's expense burst all +bounds, now. There was no end to the fun which that poor martyr had to +put up with. + +However, it is a long lane that has no turning. Winter approached, +business doubled and trebled, and an avalanche of Missouri, Illinois and +Upper Mississippi River boats came pouring down to take a chance in the +New Orleans trade. All of a sudden pilots were in great demand, and +were correspondingly scarce. The time for revenge was come. It was a +bitter pill to have to accept association pilots at last, yet captains +and owners agreed that there was no other way. But none of these +outcasts offered! So there was a still bitterer pill to be swallowed: +they must be sought out and asked for their services. Captain ---- was +the first man who found it necessary to take the dose, and he had been +the loudest derider of the organization. He hunted up one of the best of +the association pilots and said-- + +'Well, you boys have rather got the best of us for a little while, so +I'll give in with as good a grace as I can. I've come to hire you; get +your trunk aboard right away. I want to leave at twelve o'clock.' + +'I don't know about that. Who is your other pilot?' + +'I've got I. S----. Why?' + +'I can't go with him. He don't belong to the association.' + +'What!' + +'It's so.' + +'Do you mean to tell me that you won't turn a wheel with one of the very +best and oldest pilots on the river because he don't belong to your +association?' + +'Yes, I do.' + +'Well, if this isn't putting on airs! I supposed I was doing you a +benevolence; but I begin to think that I am the party that wants a favor +done. Are you acting under a law of the concern?' + +'Yes.' + +'Show it to me.' + +So they stepped into the association rooms, and the secretary soon +satisfied the captain, who said-- + +'Well, what am I to do? I have hired Mr. S---- for the entire season.' + +'I will provide for you,' said the secretary. 'I will detail a pilot to +go with you, and he shall be on board at twelve o'clock.' + +'But if I discharge S----, he will come on me for the whole season's +wages.' + +'Of course that is a matter between you and Mr. S----, captain. We +cannot meddle in your private affairs.' + +The captain stormed, but to no purpose. In the end he had to discharge +S----, pay him about a thousand dollars, and take an association pilot +in his place. The laugh was beginning to turn the other way now. Every +day, thenceforward, a new victim fell; every day some outraged captain +discharged a non-association pet, with tears and profanity, and +installed a hated association man in his berth. In a very little while, +idle non-associationists began to be pretty plenty, brisk as business +was, and much as their services were desired. The laugh was shifting to +the other side of their mouths most palpably. These victims, together +with the captains and owners, presently ceased to laugh altogether, and +began to rage about the revenge they would take when the passing +business 'spurt' was over. + +Soon all the laughers that were left were the owners and crews of boats +that had two non-association pilots. But their triumph was not very +long-lived. For this reason: It was a rigid rule of the association that +its members should never, under any circumstances whatever, give +information about the channel to any 'outsider.' By this time about +half the boats had none but association pilots, and the other half had +none but outsiders. At the first glance one would suppose that when it +came to forbidding information about the river these two parties could +play equally at that game; but this was not so. At every good-sized town +from one end of the river to the other, there was a 'wharf-boat' to land +at, instead of a wharf or a pier. Freight was stored in it for +transportation; waiting passengers slept in its cabins. Upon each of +these wharf-boats the association's officers placed a strong box +fastened with a peculiar lock which was used in no other service but +one--the United States mail service. It was the letter-bag lock, a +sacred governmental thing. By dint of much beseeching the government had +been persuaded to allow the association to use this lock. Every +association man carried a key which would open these boxes. That key, or +rather a peculiar way of holding it in the hand when its owner was asked +for river information by a stranger--for the success of the St. Louis +and New Orleans association had now bred tolerably thriving branches in +a dozen neighboring steamboat trades--was the association man's sign and +diploma of membership; and if the stranger did not respond by producing +a similar key and holding it in a certain manner duly prescribed, his +question was politely ignored. From the association's secretary each +member received a package of more or less gorgeous blanks, printed like +a billhead, on handsome paper, properly ruled in columns; a bill-head +worded something like this-- + + STEAMER GREAT REPUBLIC. + + JOHN SMITH MASTER + + PILOTS, JOHN JONES AND THOMAS BROWN. + + + ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- + + + | CROSSINGS. | SOUNDINGS. | MARKS. | REMARKS. | + + + ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- + + +These blanks were filled up, day by day, as the voyage progressed, and +deposited in the several wharf-boat boxes. For instance, as soon as the +first crossing, out from St. Louis, was completed, the items would be +entered upon the blank, under the appropriate headings, thus-- + +'St. Louis. Nine and a half (feet). Stern on court-house, head on dead +cottonwood above wood-yard, until you raise the first reef, then pull up +square.' Then under head of Remarks: 'Go just outside the wrecks; this +is important. New snag just where you straighten down; go above it.' + +The pilot who deposited that blank in the Cairo box (after adding to it +the details of every crossing all the way down from St. Louis) took out +and read half a dozen fresh reports (from upward-bound steamers) +concerning the river between Cairo and Memphis, posted himself +thoroughly, returned them to the box, and went back aboard his boat +again so armed against accident that he could not possibly get his boat +into trouble without bringing the most ingenious carelessness to his +aid. + +Imagine the benefits of so admirable a system in a piece of river twelve +or thirteen hundred miles long, whose channel was shifting every day! +The pilot who had formerly been obliged to put up with seeing a shoal +place once or possibly twice a month, had a hundred sharp eyes to watch +it for him, now, and bushels of intelligent brains to tell him how to +run it. His information about it was seldom twenty-four hours old. If +the reports in the last box chanced to leave any misgivings on his mind +concerning a treacherous crossing, he had his remedy; he blew his steam- +whistle in a peculiar way as soon as he saw a boat approaching; the +signal was answered in a peculiar way if that boat's pilots were +association men; and then the two steamers ranged alongside and all +uncertainties were swept away by fresh information furnished to the +inquirer by word of mouth and in minute detail. + +The first thing a pilot did when he reached New Orleans or St. Louis was +to take his final and elaborate report to the association parlors and +hang it up there,--after which he was free to visit his family. In these +parlors a crowd was always gathered together, discussing changes in the +channel, and the moment there was a fresh arrival, everybody stopped +talking till this witness had told the newest news and settled the +latest uncertainty. Other craftsmen can 'sink the shop,' sometimes, and +interest themselves in other matters. Not so with a pilot; he must +devote himself wholly to his profession and talk of nothing else; for it +would be small gain to be perfect one day and imperfect the next. He has +no time or words to waste if he would keep 'posted.' + +But the outsiders had a hard time of it. No particular place to meet +and exchange information, no wharf-boat reports, none but chance and +unsatisfactory ways of getting news. The consequence was that a man +sometimes had to run five hundred miles of river on information that was +a week or ten days old. At a fair stage of the river that might have +answered; but when the dead low water came it was destructive. + +Now came another perfectly logical result. The outsiders began to +ground steamboats, sink them, and get into all sorts of trouble, whereas +accidents seemed to keep entirely away from the association men. +Wherefore even the owners and captains of boats furnished exclusively +with outsiders, and previously considered to be wholly independent of +the association and free to comfort themselves with brag and laughter, +began to feel pretty uncomfortable. Still, they made a show of keeping +up the brag, until one black day when every captain of the lot was +formally ordered to immediately discharge his outsiders and take +association pilots in their stead. And who was it that had the dashing +presumption to do that? Alas, it came from a power behind the throne +that was greater than the throne itself. It was the underwriters! + +It was no time to 'swap knives.' Every outsider had to take his trunk +ashore at once. Of course it was supposed that there was collusion +between the association and the underwriters, but this was not so. The +latter had come to comprehend the excellence of the 'report' system of +the association and the safety it secured, and so they had made their +decision among themselves and upon plain business principles. + +There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in the camp of the +outsiders now. But no matter, there was but one course for them to +pursue, and they pursued it. They came forward in couples and groups, +and proffered their twelve dollars and asked for membership. They were +surprised to learn that several new by-laws had been long ago added. For +instance, the initiation fee had been raised to fifty dollars; that sum +must be tendered, and also ten per cent. of the wages which the +applicant had received each and every month since the founding of the +association. In many cases this amounted to three or four hundred +dollars. Still, the association would not entertain the application +until the money was present. Even then a single adverse vote killed the +application. Every member had to vote 'Yes' or 'No' in person and before +witnesses; so it took weeks to decide a candidacy, because many pilots +were so long absent on voyages. However, the repentant sinners scraped +their savings together, and one by one, by our tedious voting process, +they were added to the fold. A time came, at last, when only about ten +remained outside. They said they would starve before they would apply. +They remained idle a long while, because of course nobody could venture +to employ them. + +By and by the association published the fact that upon a certain date +the wages would be raised to five hundred dollars per month. All the +branch associations had grown strong, now, and the Red River one had +advanced wages to seven hundred dollars a month. Reluctantly the ten +outsiders yielded, in view of these things, and made application. There +was another new by-law, by this time, which required them to pay dues +not only on all the wages they had received since the association was +born, but also on what they would have received if they had continued at +work up to the time of their application, instead of going off to pout +in idleness. It turned out to be a difficult matter to elect them, but +it was accomplished at last. The most virulent sinner of this batch had +stayed out and allowed 'dues' to accumulate against him so long that he +had to send in six hundred and twenty-five dollars with his application. + +The association had a good bank account now, and was very strong. There +was no longer an outsider. A by-law was added forbidding the reception +of any more cubs or apprentices for five years; after which time a +limited number would be taken, not by individuals, but by the +association, upon these terms: the applicant must not be less than +eighteen years old, and of respectable family and good character; he +must pass an examination as to education, pay a thousand dollars in +advance for the privilege of becoming an apprentice, and must remain +under the commands of the association until a great part of the +membership (more than half, I think) should be willing to sign his +application for a pilot's license. + +All previously-articled apprentices were now taken away from their +masters and adopted by the association. The president and secretary +detailed them for service on one boat or another, as they chose, and +changed them from boat to boat according to certain rules. If a pilot +could show that he was in infirm health and needed assistance, one of +the cubs would be ordered to go with him. + +The widow and orphan list grew, but so did the association's financial +resources. The association attended its own funerals in state, and paid +for them. When occasion demanded, it sent members down the river upon +searches for the bodies of brethren lost by steamboat accidents; a +search of this kind sometimes cost a thousand dollars. + +The association procured a charter and went into the insurance business, +also. It not only insured the lives of its members, but took risks on +steamboats. + +The organization seemed indestructible. It was the tightest monopoly in +the world. By the United States law, no man could become a pilot unless +two duly licensed pilots signed his application; and now there was +nobody outside of the association competent to sign. Consequently the +making of pilots was at an end. Every year some would die and others +become incapacitated by age and infirmity; there would be no new ones to +take their places. In time, the association could put wages up to any +figure it chose; and as long as it should be wise enough not to carry +the thing too far and provoke the national government into amending the +licensing system, steamboat owners would have to submit, since there +would be no help for it. + +The owners and captains were the only obstruction that lay between the +association and absolute power; and at last this one was removed. +Incredible as it may seem, the owners and captains deliberately did it +themselves. When the pilots' association announced, months beforehand, +that on the first day of September, 1861, wages would be advanced to +five hundred dollars per month, the owners and captains instantly put +freights up a few cents, and explained to the farmers along the river +the necessity of it, by calling their attention to the burdensome rate +of wages about to be established. It was a rather slender argument, but +the farmers did not seem to detect it. It looked reasonable to them that +to add five cents freight on a bushel of corn was justifiable under the +circumstances, overlooking the fact that this advance on a cargo of +forty thousand sacks was a good deal more than necessary to cover the +new wages. + +So, straightway the captains and owners got up an association of their +own, and proposed to put captains' wages up to five hundred dollars, +too, and move for another advance in freights. It was a novel idea, but +of course an effect which had been produced once could be produced +again. The new association decreed (for this was before all the +outsiders had been taken into the pilots' association) that if any +captain employed a non-association pilot, he should be forced to +discharge him, and also pay a fine of five hundred dollars. Several of +these heavy fines were paid before the captains' organization grew +strong enough to exercise full authority over its membership; but that +all ceased, presently. The captains tried to get the pilots to decree +that no member of their corporation should serve under a non-association +captain; but this proposition was declined. The pilots saw that they +would be backed up by the captains and the underwriters anyhow, and so +they wisely refrained from entering into entangling alliances. + +As I have remarked, the pilots' association was now the compactest +monopoly in the world, perhaps, and seemed simply indestructible. And +yet the days of its glory were numbered. First, the new railroad +stretching up through Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky, to Northern +railway centers, began to divert the passenger travel from the steamers; +next the war came and almost entirely annihilated the steamboating +industry during several years, leaving most of the pilots idle, and the +cost of living advancing all the time; then the treasurer of the St. +Louis association put his hand into the till and walked off with every +dollar of the ample fund; and finally, the railroads intruding +everywhere, there was little for steamers to do, when the war was over, +but carry freights; so straightway some genius from the Atlantic coast +introduced the plan of towing a dozen steamer cargoes down to New +Orleans at the tail of a vulgar little tug-boat; and behold, in the +twinkling of an eye, as it were, the association and the noble science +of piloting were things of the dead and pathetic past! + + + + +Chapter 16 Racing Days + +IT was always the custom for the boats to leave New Orleans between four +and five o'clock in the afternoon. From three o'clock onward they would +be burning rosin and pitch pine (the sign of preparation), and so one +had the picturesque spectacle of a rank, some two or three miles long, +of tall, ascending columns of coal-black smoke; a colonnade which +supported a sable roof of the same smoke blended together and spreading +abroad over the city. Every outward-bound boat had its flag flying at +the jack-staff, and sometimes a duplicate on the verge staff astern. Two +or three miles of mates were commanding and swearing with more than +usual emphasis; countless processions of freight barrels and boxes were +spinning athwart the levee and flying aboard the stage-planks, belated +passengers were dodging and skipping among these frantic things, hoping +to reach the forecastle companion way alive, but having their doubts +about it; women with reticules and bandboxes were trying to keep up with +husbands freighted with carpet-sacks and crying babies, and making a +failure of it by losing their heads in the whirl and roar and general +distraction; drays and baggage-vans were clattering hither and thither +in a wild hurry, every now and then getting blocked and jammed together, +and then during ten seconds one could not see them for the profanity, +except vaguely and dimly; every windlass connected with every forehatch, +from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping +up a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the +half-naked crews of perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring +such songs as 'De Las' Sack! De Las' Sack!'--inspired to unimaginable +exaltation by the chaos of turmoil and racket that was driving everybody +else mad. By this time the hurricane and boiler decks of the steamers +would be packed and black with passengers. The 'last bells' would begin +to clang, all down the line, and then the powwow seemed to double; in a +moment or two the final warning came,--a simultaneous din of Chinese +gongs, with the cry, 'All dat ain't goin', please to git asho'!'--and +behold, the powwow quadrupled! People came swarming ashore, overturning +excited stragglers that were trying to swarm aboard. One more moment +later a long array of stage-planks was being hauled in, each with its +customary latest passenger clinging to the end of it with teeth, nails, +and everything else, and the customary latest procrastinator making a +wild spring shoreward over his head. + +Now a number of the boats slide backward into the stream, leaving wide +gaps in the serried rank of steamers. Citizens crowd the decks of boats +that are not to go, in order to see the sight. Steamer after steamer +straightens herself up, gathers all her strength, and presently comes +swinging by, under a tremendous head of steam, with flag flying, black +smoke rolling, and her entire crew of firemen and deck-hands (usually +swarthy negroes) massed together on the forecastle, the best 'voice' in +the lot towering from the midst (being mounted on the capstan), waving +his hat or a flag, and all roaring a mighty chorus, while the parting +cannons boom and the multitudinous spectators swing their hats and +huzza! Steamer after steamer falls into line, and the stately procession +goes winging its flight up the river. + +In the old times, whenever two fast boats started out on a race, with a +big crowd of people looking on, it was inspiring to hear the crews sing, +especially if the time were night-fall, and the forecastle lit up with +the red glare of the torch-baskets. Racing was royal fun. The public +always had an idea that racing was dangerous; whereas the opposite was +the case--that is, after the laws were passed which restricted each boat +to just so many pounds of steam to the square inch. No engineer was ever +sleepy or careless when his heart was in a race. He was constantly on +the alert, trying gauge-cocks and watching things. The dangerous place +was on slow, plodding boats, where the engineers drowsed around and +allowed chips to get into the 'doctor' and shut off the water supply +from the boilers. + +In the 'flush times' of steamboating, a race between two notoriously +fleet steamers was an event of vast importance. The date was set for it +several weeks in advance, and from that time forward, the whole +Mississippi Valley was in a state of consuming excitement. Politics and +the weather were dropped, and people talked only of the coming race. As +the time approached, the two steamers 'stripped' and got ready. Every +encumbrance that added weight, or exposed a resisting surface to wind or +water, was removed, if the boat could possibly do without it. The +'spars,' and sometimes even their supporting derricks, were sent ashore, +and no means left to set the boat afloat in case she got aground. When +the 'Eclipse' and the 'A. L. Shotwell' ran their great race many years +ago, it was said that pains were taken to scrape the gilding off the +fanciful device which hung between the 'Eclipse's' chimneys, and that +for that one trip the captain left off his kid gloves and had his head +shaved. But I always doubted these things. + +If the boat was known to make her best speed when drawing five and a +half feet forward and five feet aft, she was carefully loaded to that +exact figure--she wouldn't enter a dose of homoeopathic pills on her +manifest after that. Hardly any passengers were taken, because they not +only add weight but they never will 'trim boat.' They always run to the +side when there is anything to see, whereas a conscientious and +experienced steamboatman would stick to the center of the boat and part +his hair in the middle with a spirit level. + +No way-freights and no way-passengers were allowed, for the racers would +stop only at the largest towns, and then it would be only 'touch and +go.' Coal flats and wood flats were contracted for beforehand, and these +were kept ready to hitch on to the flying steamers at a moment's +warning. Double crews were carried, so that all work could be quickly +done. + +The chosen date being come, and all things in readiness, the two great +steamers back into the stream, and lie there jockeying a moment, and +apparently watching each other's slightest movement, like sentient +creatures; flags drooping, the pent steam shrieking through safety- +valves, the black smoke rolling and tumbling from the chimneys and +darkening all the air. People, people everywhere; the shores, the house- +tops, the steamboats, the ships, are packed with them, and you know that +the borders of the broad Mississippi are going to be fringed with +humanity thence northward twelve hundred miles, to welcome these racers. + +Presently tall columns of steam burst from the 'scape-pipes of both +steamers, two guns boom a good-bye, two red-shirted heroes mounted on +capstans wave their small flags above the massed crews on the +forecastles, two plaintive solos linger on the air a few waiting +seconds, two mighty choruses burst forth--and here they come! Brass +bands bray Hail Columbia, huzza after huzza thunders from the shores, +and the stately creatures go whistling by like the wind. + +Those boats will never halt a moment between New Orleans and St. Louis, +except for a second or two at large towns, or to hitch thirty-cord wood- +boats alongside. You should be on board when they take a couple of +those wood-boats in tow and turn a swarm of men into each; by the time +you have wiped your glasses and put them on, you will be wondering what +has become of that wood. + +Two nicely matched steamers will stay in sight of each other day after +day. They might even stay side by side, but for the fact that pilots are +not all alike, and the smartest pilots will win the race. If one of the +boats has a 'lightning' pilot, whose 'partner' is a trifle his inferior, +you can tell which one is on watch by noting whether that boat has +gained ground or lost some during each four-hour stretch. The shrewdest +pilot can delay a boat if he has not a fine genius for steering. +Steering is a very high art. One must not keep a rudder dragging across +a boat's stem if he wants to get up the river fast. + +There is a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was +on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left +port in. But of course this was at rare intervals. Ferryboats used to +lose valuable trips because their passengers grew old and died, waiting +for us to get by. This was at still rarer intervals. I had the +documents for these occurrences, but through carelessness they have been +mislaid. This boat, the 'John J. Roe,' was so slow that when she finally +sunk in Madrid Bend, it was five years before the owners heard of it. +That was always a confusing fact to me, but it is according to the +record, any way. She was dismally slow; still, we often had pretty +exciting times racing with islands, and rafts, and such things. One +trip, however, we did rather well. We went to St. Louis in sixteen +days. But even at this rattling gait I think we changed watches three +times in Fort Adams reach, which is five miles long. A 'reach' is a +piece of straight river, and of course the current drives through such a +place in a pretty lively way. + +That trip we went to Grand Gulf, from New Orleans, in four days (three +hundred and forty miles); the 'Eclipse' and 'Shotwell' did it in one. +We were nine days out, in the chute of 63 (seven hundred miles); the +'Eclipse' and 'Shotwell' went there in two days. Something over a +generation ago, a boat called the 'J. M. White' went from New Orleans to +Cairo in three days, six hours, and forty-four minutes. In 1853 the +'Eclipse' made the same trip in three days, three hours, and twenty +minutes.{footnote [Time disputed. Some authorities add 1 hour and 16 +minutes to this.]} In 1870 the 'R. E. Lee' did it in three days and ONE +hour. This last is called the fastest trip on record. I will try to show +that it was not. For this reason: the distance between New Orleans and +Cairo, when the 'J. M. White' ran it, was about eleven hundred and six +miles; consequently her average speed was a trifle over fourteen miles +per hour. In the 'Eclipse's' day the distance between the two ports had +become reduced to one thousand and eighty miles; consequently her +average speed was a shade under fourteen and three-eighths miles per +hour. In the 'R. E. Lee's' time the distance had diminished to about one +thousand and thirty miles; consequently her average was about fourteen +and one-eighth miles per hour. Therefore the 'Eclipse's' was +conspicuously the fastest time that has ever been made. + + + + THE RECORD OF SOME FAMOUS + + TRIPS + + (From Commodore Rollingpin's Almanack.) + + + FAST TIME ON THE WESTERN WATERS + + + + FROM NEW ORLEANS TO NATCHEZ--268 MILES + + D. H. M. + 1814 Orleans made the run in 6 6 40 + 1814 Comet " " 5 10 + 1815 Enterprise " " 4 11 20 + 1817 Washington " " 4 + 1817 Shelby " " 3 20 + 1818 Paragon " " 3 8 + 1828 Tecumseh " " 3 1 20 + 1834 Tuscarora " " 1 21 + 1838 Natchez " " 1 17 + 1840 Ed. Shippen " " 1 8 + 1842 Belle of the West " 1 18 + 1844 Sultana " " 19 45 + 1851 Magnolia " " 19 50 + 1853 A. L. Shotwell " " 19 49 + 1853 Southern Belle " " 20 3 + 1853 Princess (No. 4) " 20 26 + 1853 Eclipse " " 19 47 + 1855 Princess (New) " " 18 53 + 1855 Natchez (New) " " 17 30 + 1856 Princess (New) " " 17 30 + 1870 Natchez " " 17 17 + 1870 R. E. Lee " " 17 11 + + + FROM NEW ORLEANS TO CAIRO--1,024 MILES + + D. H. M. + 1844 J. M. White made the run in 3 6 44 + 1852 Reindeer " " 3 12 45 + 1853 Eclipse " " 3 4 4 + 1853 A. L. Shotwell " " 3 3 40 + 1869 Dexter " " 3 6 20 + 1870 Natchez " " 3 4 34 + 1870 R. E. Lee " " 3 1 + + + FROM NEW ORLEANS TO LOUISVILLE--1,440 MILES + + D. H. M. + 1815 Enterprise made the run in 25 2 40 + 1817 Washington " " 25 + 1817. Shelby " " 20 4 20 + 1818 Paragon " " 18 10 + 1828 Tecumseh " " 8 4 + 1834 Tuscarora " " 7 16 + 1837 Gen. Brown " " 6 22 + 1837 Randolph " " 6 22 + 1837 Empress " " 6 17 + 1837 Sultana " " 6 15 + 1840 Ed. Shippen " " 5 14 + 1842 Belle of the West " 6 14 + 1843 Duke of Orleans" " 5 23 + 1844 Sultana " " 5 12 + 1849 Bostona " " 5 8 + 1851 Belle Key " " 3 4 23 + 1852 Reindeer " " 4 20 45 + 1852 Eclipse " " 4 19 + 1853 A. L. Shotwell " " 4 10 20 + 1853 Eclipse " " 4 9 30 + + + FROM NEW ORLEANS TO DONALDSONVILLE--78 MILES + + H. M. + 1852 A. L. Shotwell made the run in 5 42 + 1852 Eclipse " " 5 42 + 1854 Sultana " " 4 51 + 1860 Atlantic " " 5 11 + 1860 Gen. Quitman " " 5 6 + 1865 Ruth " " 4 43 + 1870 R. E. Lee " " 4 59 + + + FROM NEW ORLEANS TO ST. LOUIS--1,218 MILES + + D. H. M. + 1844 J. M. White made the run in 3 23 9 + 1849 Missouri " " 4 19 + 1869 Dexter " " 4 9 + 1870 Natchez " " 3 21 58 + 1870 R. E. Lee " " 3 18 14 + + + FROM LOUISVILLE TO CINCINNATI--141 MILES + + D. H. M. + 1819 Gen. Pike made the run in 1 16 + 1819 Paragon " " 1 14 20 + 1822 Wheeling Packet " " 1 10 + 1837 Moselle " " 12 + 1843 Duke of Orleans " " 12 + 1843 Congress " " 12 20 + 1846 Ben Franklin (No. 6) " 11 45 + 1852 Alleghaney " " 10 38 + 1852 Pittsburgh " " 10 23 + 1853 Telegraph No. 3 " " 9 52 + + + FROM LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS--750 MILES + + D. H. M. + 1843 Congress made the run in 2 1 + 1854 Pike " " 1 23 + 1854 Northerner " " 1 22 30 + 1855 Southemer " " 1 19 + + + FROM CINCINNATI TO PITTSBURGH--490 MILES + + D. H. + 1850 Telegraph No. 2 made the run in 1 17 + 1851 Buckeye State " " 1 16 + 1852 Pittsburgh " " 1 15 + + + FROM ST. LOUIS TO ALTON--30 MILES + + D. M. + 1853 Altona made the run in 1 35 + 1876 Golden Eagle " " 1 37 + 1876 War Eagle " " 1 37 + + + MISCELLANEOUS RUNS + +In June, 1859, the St. Louis and Keokuk Packet, City of Louisiana, +made the run from St. Louis to Keokuk (214 miles) in 16 hours +and 20 minutes, the best time on record. + +In 1868 the steamer Hawkeye State, of the Northern Packet Company, +made the run from St. Louis to St. Paul (800 miles) in 2 days and 20 hours. +Never was beaten. + +In 1853 the steamer Polar Star made the run from St. Louis to St. Joseph, +on the Missouri River, in 64 hours. In July, 1856, the steamer Jas. +H. Lucas, Andy Wineland, Master, made the same run in 60 hours +and 57 minutes. The distance between the ports is 600 miles, +and when the difficulties of navigating the turbulent Missouri +are taken into consideration, the performance of the Lucas +deserves especial mention. + + THE RUN OF THE ROBERT E. LEE + +The time made by the R. E. Lee from New Orleans to St. Louis +in 1870, in her famous race with the Natchez, is the best +on record, and, inasmuch as the race created a national interest, +we give below her time table from port to port. + +Left New Orleans, Thursday, June 30th, 1870, at 4 o'clock +and 55 minutes, p.m.; reached + + D. H. M. + Carrollton 27{half} + Harry Hills 1 00{half} + Red Church 1 39 + Bonnet Carre 2 38 + College Point 3 50{half} + Donaldsonville 4 59 + Plaquemine 7 05{half} + Baton Rouge 8 25 + Bayou Sara 10 26 + Red River 12 56 + Stamps 13 56 + Bryaro 15 51{half} + Hinderson's 16 29 + Natchez 17 11 + Cole's Creek 19 21 + Waterproof 18 53 + Rodney 20 45 + St. Joseph 21 02 + Grand Gulf 22 06 + Hard Times 22 18 + Half Mile below Warrenton 1 + Vicksburg 1 38 + Milliken's Bend 1 2 37 + Bailey's 1 3 48 + Lake Providence 1 5 47 + Greenville 1 10 55 + Napoleon 1 16 22 + White River 1 16 56 + Australia 1 19 + Helena 1 23 25 + Half Mile Below St. Francis 2 + Memphis 2 6 9 + Foot of Island 37 2 9 + Foot of Island 26 2 13 30 + Tow-head, Island 14 2 17 23 + New Madrid 2 19 50 + Dry Bar No. 10 2 20 37 + Foot of Island 8 2 21 25 + Upper Tow-head--Lucas Bend 3 + Cairo 3 1 + St. Louis 3 18 14 + +The Lee landed at St. Louis at 11.25 A.M., on July 4th, 1870--6 hours +and 36 minutes ahead of the Natchez. The officers of the Natchez claimed +7 hours and 1 minute stoppage on account of fog and repairing machinery. +The R. E. Lee was commanded by Captain John W. Cannon, and the Natchez +was in charge of that veteran Southern boatman, Captain Thomas P. +Leathers. + + + + + +Chapter 17 Cut-offs and Stephen + +THESE dry details are of importance in one particular. They give me an +opportunity of introducing one of the Mississippi's oddest +peculiarities,--that of shortening its length from time to time. If you +will throw a long, pliant apple-paring over your shoulder, it will +pretty fairly shape itself into an average section of the Mississippi +River; that is, the nine or ten hundred miles stretching from Cairo, +Illinois, southward to New Orleans, the same being wonderfully crooked, +with a brief straight bit here and there at wide intervals. The two +hundred-mile stretch from Cairo northward to St. Louis is by no means so +crooked, that being a rocky country which the river cannot cut much. + +The water cuts the alluvial banks of the 'lower' river into deep +horseshoe curves; so deep, indeed, that in some places if you were to +get ashore at one extremity of the horseshoe and walk across the neck, +half or three quarters of a mile, you could sit down and rest a couple +of hours while your steamer was coming around the long elbow, at a speed +of ten miles an hour, to take you aboard again. When the river is rising +fast, some scoundrel whose plantation is back in the country, and +therefore of inferior value, has only to watch his chance, cut a little +gutter across the narrow neck of land some dark night, and turn the +water into it, and in a wonderfully short time a miracle has happened: +to wit, the whole Mississippi has taken possession of that little ditch, +and placed the countryman's plantation on its bank (quadrupling its +value), and that other party's formerly valuable plantation finds itself +away out yonder on a big island; the old watercourse around it will soon +shoal up, boats cannot approach within ten miles of it, and down goes +its value to a fourth of its former worth. Watches are kept on those +narrow necks, at needful times, and if a man happens to be caught +cutting a ditch across them, the chances are all against his ever having +another opportunity to cut a ditch. + +Pray observe some of the effects of this ditching business. Once there +was a neck opposite Port Hudson, Louisiana, which was only half a mile +across, in its narrowest place. You could walk across there in fifteen +minutes; but if you made the journey around the cape on a raft, you +traveled thirty-five miles to accomplish the same thing. In 1722 the +river darted through that neck, deserted its old bed, and thus shortened +itself thirty-five miles. In the same way it shortened itself twenty- +five miles at Black Hawk Point in 1699. Below Red River Landing, +Raccourci cut-off was made (forty or fifty years ago, I think). This +shortened the river twenty-eight miles. In our day, if you travel by +river from the southernmost of these three cut-offs to the northernmost, +you go only seventy miles. To do the same thing a hundred and seventy- +six years ago, one had to go a hundred and fifty-eight miles!-- +shortening of eighty-eight miles in that trifling distance. At some +forgotten time in the past, cut-offs were made above Vidalia, Louisiana; +at island 92; at island 84; and at Hale's Point. These shortened the +river, in the aggregate, seventy-seven miles. + +Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have been made at +Hurricane Island; at island 100; at Napoleon, Arkansas; at Walnut Bend; +and at Council Bend. These shortened the river, in the aggregate, +sixty-seven miles. In my own time a cut-off was made at American Bend, +which shortened the river ten miles or more. + +Therefore, the Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve +hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago. It +was eleven hundred and eighty after the cut-off of 1722. It was one +thousand and forty after the American Bend cut-off. It has lost sixty- +seven miles since. Consequently its length is only nine hundred and +seventy-three miles at present. + +Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and +'let on' to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had +occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the +far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is +here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue +from! Nor 'development of species,' either! Glacial epochs are great +things, but they are vague--vague. Please observe:-- + +In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi +has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average +of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm +person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic +Silurian Period,' just a million years ago next November, the Lower +Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand +miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. +And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty- +two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three- +quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets +together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a +mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. +One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling +investment of fact. + +When the water begins to flow through one of those ditches I have been +speaking of, it is time for the people thereabouts to move. The water +cleaves the banks away like a knife. By the time the ditch has become +twelve or fifteen feet wide, the calamity is as good as accomplished, +for no power on earth can stop it now. When the width has reached a +hundred yards, the banks begin to peel off in slices half an acre wide. +The current flowing around the bend traveled formerly only five miles an +hour; now it is tremendously increased by the shortening of the +distance. I was on board the first boat that tried to go through the +cut-off at American Bend, but we did not get through. It was toward +midnight, and a wild night it was--thunder, lightning, and torrents of +rain. It was estimated that the current in the cut-off was making about +fifteen or twenty miles an hour; twelve or thirteen was the best our +boat could do, even in tolerably slack water, therefore perhaps we were +foolish to try the cut-off. However, Mr. Brown was ambitious, and he +kept on trying. The eddy running up the bank, under the 'point,' was +about as swift as the current out in the middle; so we would go flying +up the shore like a lightning express train, get on a big head of steam, +and 'stand by for a surge' when we struck the current that was whirling +by the point. But all our preparations were useless. The instant the +current hit us it spun us around like a top, the water deluged the +forecastle, and the boat careened so far over that one could hardly keep +his feet. The next instant we were away down the river, clawing with +might and main to keep out of the woods. We tried the experiment four +times. I stood on the forecastle companion way to see. It was +astonishing to observe how suddenly the boat would spin around and turn +tail the moment she emerged from the eddy and the current struck her +nose. The sounding concussion and the quivering would have been about +the same if she had come full speed against a sand-bank. Under the +lightning flashes one could see the plantation cabins and the goodly +acres tumble into the river; and the crash they made was not a bad +effort at thunder. Once, when we spun around, we only missed a house +about twenty feet, that had a light burning in the window; and in the +same instant that house went overboard. Nobody could stay on our +forecastle; the water swept across it in a torrent every time we plunged +athwart the current. At the end of our fourth effort we brought up in +the woods two miles below the cut-off; all the country there was +overflowed, of course. A day or two later the cut-off was three-quarters +of a mile wide, and boats passed up through it without much difficulty, +and so saved ten miles. + +The old Raccourci cut-off reduced the river's length twenty-eight miles. +There used to be a tradition connected with it. It was said that a boat +came along there in the night and went around the enormous elbow the +usual way, the pilots not knowing that the cut-off had been made. It was +a grisly, hideous night, and all shapes were vague and distorted. The +old bend had already begun to fill up, and the boat got to running away +from mysterious reefs, and occasionally hitting one. The perplexed +pilots fell to swearing, and finally uttered the entirely unnecessary +wish that they might never get out of that place. As always happens in +such cases, that particular prayer was answered, and the others +neglected. So to this day that phantom steamer is still butting around +in that deserted river, trying to find her way out. More than one grave +watchman has sworn to me that on drizzly, dismal nights, he has glanced +fearfully down that forgotten river as he passed the head of the island, +and seen the faint glow of the specter steamer's lights drifting through +the distant gloom, and heard the muffled cough of her 'scape-pipes and +the plaintive cry of her leadsmen. + +In the absence of further statistics, I beg to close this chapter with +one more reminiscence of 'Stephen.' + +Most of the captains and pilots held Stephen's note for borrowed sums, +ranging from two hundred and fifty dollars upward. Stephen never paid +one of these notes, but he was very prompt and very zealous about +renewing them every twelve months. + +Of course there came a time, at last, when Stephen could no longer +borrow of his ancient creditors; so he was obliged to lie in wait for +new men who did not know him. Such a victim was good-hearted, simple +natured young Yates (I use a fictitious name, but the real name began, +as this one does, with a Y). Young Yates graduated as a pilot, got a +berth, and when the month was ended and he stepped up to the clerk's +office and received his two hundred and fifty dollars in crisp new +bills, Stephen was there! His silvery tongue began to wag, and in a very +little while Yates's two hundred and fifty dollars had changed hands. +The fact was soon known at pilot headquarters, and the amusement and +satisfaction of the old creditors were large and generous. But innocent +Yates never suspected that Stephen's promise to pay promptly at the end +of the week was a worthless one. Yates called for his money at the +stipulated time; Stephen sweetened him up and put him off a week. He +called then, according to agreement, and came away sugar-coated again, +but suffering under another postponement. So the thing went on. Yates +haunted Stephen week after week, to no purpose, and at last gave it up. +And then straightway Stephen began to haunt Yates! Wherever Yates +appeared, there was the inevitable Stephen. And not only there, but +beaming with affection and gushing with apologies for not being able to +pay. By and by, whenever poor Yates saw him coming, he would turn and +fly, and drag his company with him, if he had company; but it was of no +use; his debtor would run him down and corner him. Panting and red- +faced, Stephen would come, with outstretched hands and eager eyes, +invade the conversation, shake both of Yates's arms loose in their +sockets, and begin-- + +'My, what a race I've had! I saw you didn't see me, and so I clapped on +all steam for fear I'd miss you entirely. And here you are! there, just +stand so, and let me look at you! just the same old noble countenance.' +[To Yates's friend:] 'Just look at him! LOOK at him! Ain't it just GOOD +to look at him! AIN'T it now? Ain't he just a picture! SOME call him +a picture; I call him a panorama! That's what he is--an entire panorama. +And now I'm reminded! How I do wish I could have seen you an hour +earlier! For twenty-four hours I've been saving up that two hundred and +fifty dollars for you; been looking for you everywhere. I waited at the +Planter's from six yesterday evening till two o'clock this morning, +without rest or food; my wife says, "Where have you been all night?" I +said, "This debt lies heavy on my mind." She says, "In all my days I +never saw a man take a debt to heart the way you do." I said, "It's my +nature; how can I change it?" She says, "Well, do go to bed and get some +rest." I said, "Not till that poor, noble young man has got his money." +So I set up all night, and this morning out I shot, and the first man I +struck told me you had shipped on the "Grand Turk" and gone to New +Orleans. Well, sir, I had to lean up against a building and cry. So +help me goodness, I couldn't help it. The man that owned the place come +out cleaning up with a rag, and said he didn't like to have people cry +against his building, and then it seemed to me that the whole world had +turned against me, and it wasn't any use to live any more; and coming +along an hour ago, suffering no man knows what agony, I met Jim Wilson +and paid him the two hundred and fifty dollars on account; and to think +that here you are, now, and I haven't got a cent! But as sure as I am +standing here on this ground on this particular brick,--there, I've +scratched a mark on the brick to remember it by,--I'll borrow that money +and pay it over to you at twelve o'clock sharp, tomorrow! Now, stand +so; let me look at you just once more.' + +And so on. Yates's life became a burden to him. He could not escape +his debtor and his debtor's awful sufferings on account of not being +able to pay. He dreaded to show himself in the street, lest he should +find Stephen lying in wait for him at the corner. + +Bogart's billiard saloon was a great resort for pilots in those days. +They met there about as much to exchange river news as to play. One +morning Yates was there; Stephen was there, too, but kept out of sight. +But by and by, when about all the pilots had arrived who were in town, +Stephen suddenly appeared in the midst, and rushed for Yates as for a +long-lost brother. + +'OH, I am so glad to see you! Oh my soul, the sight of you is such a +comfort to my eyes! Gentlemen, I owe all of you money; among you I owe +probably forty thousand dollars. I want to pay it; I intend to pay it +every last cent of it. You all know, without my telling you, what +sorrow it has cost me to remain so long under such deep obligations to +such patient and generous friends; but the sharpest pang I suffer--by +far the sharpest--is from the debt I owe to this noble young man here; +and I have come to this place this morning especially to make the +announcement that I have at last found a method whereby I can pay off +all my debts! And most especially I wanted HIM to be here when I +announced it. Yes, my faithful friend,--my benefactor, I've found the +method! I've found the method to pay off all my debts, and you'll get +your money!' Hope dawned in Yates's eye; then Stephen, beaming +benignantly, and placing his hand upon Yates's head, added, 'I am going +to pay them off in alphabetical order!' + +Then he turned and disappeared. The full significance of Stephen's +'method' did not dawn upon the perplexed and musing crowd for some two +minutes; and then Yates murmured with a sigh-- + +'Well, the Y's stand a gaudy chance. He won't get any further than the +C's in THIS world, and I reckon that after a good deal of eternity has +wasted away in the next one, I'll still be referred to up there as "that +poor, ragged pilot that came here from St. Louis in the early days!" + + + + +Chapter 18 I Take a Few Extra Lessons + +DURING the two or two and a half years of my apprenticeship, I served +under many pilots, and had experience of many kinds of steamboatmen and +many varieties of steamboats; for it was not always convenient for Mr. +Bixby to have me with him, and in such cases he sent me with somebody +else. I am to this day profiting somewhat by that experience; for in +that brief, sharp schooling, I got personally and familiarly acquainted +with about all the different types of human nature that are to be found +in fiction, biography, or history. The fact is daily borne in upon me, +that the average shore-employment requires as much as forty years to +equip a man with this sort of an education. When I say I am still +profiting by this thing, I do not mean that it has constituted me a +judge of men--no, it has not done that; for judges of men are born, not +made. My profit is various in kind and degree; but the feature of it +which I value most is the zest which that early experience has given to +my later reading. When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or +biography, I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the +reason that I have known him before--met him on the river. + +The figure that comes before me oftenest, out of the shadows of that +vanished time, is that of Brown, of the steamer 'Pennsylvania'--the man +referred to in a former chapter, whose memory was so good and tiresome. +He was a middle-aged, long, slim, bony, smooth-shaven, horse-faced, +ignorant, stingy, malicious, snarling, fault hunting, mote-magnifying +tyrant. I early got the habit of coming on watch with dread at my heart. +No matter how good a time I might have been having with the off-watch +below, and no matter how high my spirits might be when I started aloft, +my soul became lead in my body the moment I approached the pilot-house. + +I still remember the first time I ever entered the presence of that man. +The boat had backed out from St. Louis and was 'straightening down;' I +ascended to the pilot-house in high feather, and very proud to be semi- +officially a member of the executive family of so fast and famous a +boat. Brown was at the wheel. I paused in the middle of the room, all +fixed to make my bow, but Brown did not look around. I thought he took a +furtive glance at me out of the corner of his eye, but as not even this +notice was repeated, I judged I had been mistaken. By this time he was +picking his way among some dangerous 'breaks' abreast the woodyards; +therefore it would not be proper to interrupt him; so I stepped softly +to the high bench and took a seat. + +There was silence for ten minutes; then my new boss turned and inspected +me deliberately and painstakingly from head to heel for about--as it +seemed to me--a quarter of an hour. After which he removed his +countenance and I saw it no more for some seconds; then it came around +once more, and this question greeted me-- + +'Are you Horace Bigsby's cub?' + +'Yes, sir.' + +After this there was a pause and another inspection. Then-- + +'What's your name?' + +I told him. He repeated it after me. It was probably the only thing he +ever forgot; for although I was with him many months he never addressed +himself to me in any other way than 'Here!' and then his command +followed. + +'Where was you born?' + +'In Florida, Missouri.' + +A pause. Then-- + +'Dern sight better staid there!' + +By means of a dozen or so of pretty direct questions, he pumped my +family history out of me. + +The leads were going now, in the first crossing. This interrupted the +inquest. When the leads had been laid in, he resumed-- + +'How long you been on the river?' + +I told him. After a pause-- + +'Where'd you get them shoes?' + +I gave him the information. + +'Hold up your foot!' + +I did so. He stepped back, examined the shoe minutely and +contemptuously, scratching his head thoughtfully, tilting his high +sugar-loaf hat well forward to facilitate the operation, then +ejaculated, 'Well, I'll be dod derned!' and returned to his wheel. + +What occasion there was to be dod derned about it is a thing which is +still as much of a mystery to me now as it was then. It must have been +all of fifteen minutes--fifteen minutes of dull, homesick silence-- +before that long horse-face swung round upon me again--and then, what a +change! It was as red as fire, and every muscle in it was working. Now +came this shriek-- + +'Here!--You going to set there all day?' + +I lit in the middle of the floor, shot there by the electric suddenness +of the surprise. As soon as I could get my voice I said, +apologetically:--'I have had no orders, sir.' + +'You've had no ORDERS! My, what a fine bird we are! We must have +ORDERS! Our father was a GENTLEMAN--owned slaves--and we've been to +SCHOOL. Yes, WE are a gentleman, TOO, and got to have ORDERS! ORDERS, +is it? ORDERS is what you want! Dod dern my skin, I'LL learn you to +swell yourself up and blow around here about your dod-derned ORDERS! +G'way from the wheel!' (I had approached it without knowing it.) + +I moved back a step or two, and stood as in a dream, all my senses +stupefied by this frantic assault. + +'What you standing there for? Take that ice-pitcher down to the texas- +tender-come, move along, and don't you be all day about it!' + +The moment I got back to the pilot-house, Brown said-- + +'Here! What was you doing down there all this time?' + +'I couldn't find the texas-tender; I had to go all the way to the +pantry.' + +'Derned likely story! Fill up the stove.' + +I proceeded to do so. He watched me like a cat. Presently he shouted-- + +'Put down that shovel! Deadest numskull I ever saw--ain't even got +sense enough to load up a stove.' + +All through the watch this sort of thing went on. Yes, and the +subsequent watches were much like it, during a stretch of months. As I +have said, I soon got the habit of coming on duty with dread. The moment +I was in the presence, even in the darkest night, I could feel those +yellow eyes upon me, and knew their owner was watching for a pretext to +spit out some venom on me. Preliminarily he would say-- + +'Here! Take the wheel.' + +Two minutes later-- + +'WHERE in the nation you going to? Pull her down! pull her down!' + +After another moment-- + +'Say! You going to hold her all day? Let her go--meet her! meet her!' + +Then he would jump from the bench, snatch the wheel from me, and meet +her himself, pouring out wrath upon me all the time. + +George Ritchie was the other pilot's cub. He was having good times now; +for his boss, George Ealer, was as kindhearted as Brown wasn't. Ritchie +had steeled for Brown the season before; consequently he knew exactly +how to entertain himself and plague me, all by the one operation. +Whenever I took the wheel for a moment on Ealer's watch, Ritchie would +sit back on the bench and play Brown, with continual ejaculations of +'Snatch her! snatch her! Derndest mud-cat I ever saw!' 'Here! Where +you going NOW? Going to run over that snag?' 'Pull her DOWN! Don't you +hear me? Pull her DOWN!' 'There she goes! JUST as I expected! I TOLD +you not to cramp that reef. G'way from the wheel!' + +So I always had a rough time of it, no matter whose watch it was; and +sometimes it seemed to me that Ritchie's good-natured badgering was +pretty nearly as aggravating as Brown's dead-earnest nagging. + +I often wanted to kill Brown, but this would not answer. A cub had to +take everything his boss gave, in the way of vigorous comment and +criticism; and we all believed that there was a United States law making +it a penitentiary offense to strike or threaten a pilot who was on duty. +However, I could IMAGINE myself killing Brown; there was no law against +that; and that was the thing I used always to do the moment I was abed. +Instead of going over my river in my mind as was my duty, I threw +business aside for pleasure, and killed Brown. I killed Brown every +night for months; not in old, stale, commonplace ways, but in new and +picturesque ones;--ways that were sometimes surprising for freshness of +design and ghastliness of situation and environment. + +Brown was ALWAYS watching for a pretext to find fault; and if he could +find no plausible pretext, he would invent one. He would scold you for +shaving a shore, and for not shaving it; for hugging a bar, and for not +hugging it; for 'pulling down' when not invited, and for not pulling +down when not invited; for firing up without orders, and for waiting FOR +orders. In a word, it was his invariable rule to find fault with +EVERYTHING you did; and another invariable rule of his was to throw all +his remarks (to you) into the form of an insult. + +One day we were approaching New Madrid, bound down and heavily laden. +Brown was at one side of the wheel, steering; I was at the other, +standing by to 'pull down' or 'shove up.' He cast a furtive glance at +me every now and then. I had long ago learned what that meant; viz., he +was trying to invent a trap for me. I wondered what shape it was going +to take. By and by he stepped back from the wheel and said in his usual +snarly way-- + +'Here!--See if you've got gumption enough to round her to.' + +This was simply BOUND to be a success; nothing could prevent it; for he +had never allowed me to round the boat to before; consequently, no +matter how I might do the thing, he could find free fault with it. He +stood back there with his greedy eye on me, and the result was what +might have been foreseen: I lost my head in a quarter of a minute, and +didn't know what I was about; I started too early to bring the boat +around, but detected a green gleam of joy in Brown's eye, and corrected +my mistake; I started around once more while too high up, but corrected +myself again in time; I made other false moves, and still managed to +save myself; but at last I grew so confused and anxious that I tumbled +into the very worst blunder of all--I got too far down before beginning +to fetch the boat around. Brown's chance was come. + +His face turned red with passion; he made one bound, hurled me across +the house with a sweep of his arm, spun the wheel down, and began to +pour out a stream of vituperation upon me which lasted till he was out +of breath. In the course of this speech he called me all the different +kinds of hard names he could think of, and once or twice I thought he +was even going to swear--but he didn't this time. 'Dod dern' was the +nearest he ventured to the luxury of swearing, for he had been brought +up with a wholesome respect for future fire and brimstone. + +That was an uncomfortable hour; for there was a big audience on the +hurricane deck. When I went to bed that night, I killed Brown in +seventeen different ways--all of them new. + + + + +Chapter 19 Brown and I Exchange Compliments + +Two trips later, I got into serious trouble. Brown was steering; I was +'pulling down.' My younger brother appeared on the hurricane deck, and +shouted to Brown to stop at some landing or other a mile or so below. +Brown gave no intimation that he had heard anything. But that was his +way: he never condescended to take notice of an under clerk. The wind +was blowing; Brown was deaf (although he always pretended he wasn't), +and I very much doubted if he had heard the order. If I had two heads, I +would have spoken; but as I had only one, it seemed judicious to take +care of it; so I kept still. + +Presently, sure enough, we went sailing by that plantation. Captain +Klinefelter appeared on the deck, and said-- + +'Let her come around, sir, let her come around. Didn't Henry tell you to +land here?' + +'NO, sir!' + +'I sent him up to do, it.' + +'He did come up; and that's all the good it done, the dod-derned fool. +He never said anything.' + +'Didn't YOU hear him?' asked the captain of me. + +Of course I didn't want to be mixed up in this business, but there was +no way to avoid it; so I said-- + +'Yes, sir.' + +I knew what Brown's next remark would be, before he uttered it; it was-- + +'Shut your mouth! you never heard anything of the kind.' + +I closed my mouth according to instructions. An hour later, Henry +entered the pilot-house, unaware of what had been going on. He was a +thoroughly inoffensive boy, and I was sorry to see him come, for I knew +Brown would have no pity on him. Brown began, straightway-- + +'Here! why didn't you tell me we'd got to land at that plantation?' + +'I did tell you, Mr. Brown.' + +'It's a lie!' + +I said-- + +'You lie, yourself. He did tell you.' + +Brown glared at me in unaffected surprise; and for as much as a moment +he was entirely speechless; then he shouted to me-- + +'I'll attend to your case in half a minute!' then to Henry, 'And you +leave the pilot-house; out with you!' + +It was pilot law, and must be obeyed. The boy started out, and even had +his foot on the upper step outside the door, when Brown, with a sudden +access of fury, picked up a ten-pound lump of coal and sprang after him; +but I was between, with a heavy stool, and I hit Brown a good honest +blow which stretched-him out. + +I had committed the crime of crimes--I had lifted my hand against a +pilot on duty! I supposed I was booked for the penitentiary sure, and +couldn't be booked any surer if I went on and squared my long account +with this person while I had the chance; consequently I stuck to him and +pounded him with my fists a considerable time--I do not know how long, +the pleasure of it probably made it seem longer than it really was;--but +in the end he struggled free and jumped up and sprang to the wheel: a +very natural solicitude, for, all this time, here was this steamboat +tearing down the river at the rate of fifteen miles an hour and nobody +at the helm! However, Eagle Bend was two miles wide at this bank-full +stage, and correspondingly long and deep; and the boat was steering +herself straight down the middle and taking no chances. Still, that was +only luck--a body MIGHT have found her charging into the woods. + +Perceiving, at a glance, that the 'Pennsylvania' was in no danger, Brown +gathered up the big spy-glass, war-club fashion, and ordered me out of +the pilot-house with more than Comanche bluster. But I was not afraid of +him now; so, instead of going, I tarried, and criticized his grammar; I +reformed his ferocious speeches for him, and put them into good English, +calling his attention to the advantage of pure English over the bastard +dialect of the Pennsylvanian collieries whence he was extracted. He +could have done his part to admiration in a cross-fire of mere +vituperation, of course; but he was not equipped for this species of +controversy; so he presently laid aside his glass and took the wheel, +muttering and shaking his head; and I retired to the bench. The racket +had brought everybody to the hurricane deck, and I trembled when I saw +the old captain looking up from the midst of the crowd. I said to +myself, 'Now I AM done for!'--For although, as a rule, he was so +fatherly and indulgent toward the boat's family, and so patient of minor +shortcomings, he could be stern enough when the fault was worth it. + +I tried to imagine what he WOULD do to a cub pilot who had been guilty +of such a crime as mine, committed on a boat guard-deep with costly +freight and alive with passengers. Our watch was nearly ended. I +thought I would go and hide somewhere till I got a chance to slide +ashore. So I slipped out of the pilot-house, and down the steps, and +around to the texas door--and was in the act of gliding within, when the +captain confronted me! I dropped my head, and he stood over me in +silence a moment or two, then said impressively-- + +'Follow me.' + +I dropped into his wake; he led the way to his parlor in the forward end +of the texas. We were alone, now. He closed the after door; then moved +slowly to the forward one and closed that. He sat down; I stood before +him. He looked at me some little time, then said-- + +'So you have been fighting Mr. Brown?' + +I answered meekly-- + +'Yes, sir.' + +'Do you know that that is a very serious matter?' + +'Yes, sir.' + +'Are you aware that this boat was plowing down the river fully five +minutes with no one at the wheel?' + +'Yes, sir.' + +'Did you strike him first?' + +'Yes, sir.' + +'What with?' + +'A stool, sir.' + +'Hard?' + +'Middling, sir.' + +'Did it knock him down?' + +'He--he fell, sir.' + +'Did you follow it up? Did you do anything further?' + +'Yes, sir.' + +'What did you do?' + +'Pounded him, sir.' + +'Pounded him?' + +'Yes, sir.' + +'Did you pound him much?--that is, severely?' + +'One might call it that, sir, maybe.' + +'I'm deuced glad of it! Hark ye, never mention that I said that. You +have been guilty of a great crime; and don't you ever be guilty of it +again, on this boat. BUT--lay for him ashore! Give him a good sound +thrashing, do you hear? I'll pay the expenses. Now go--and mind you, +not a word of this to anybody. Clear out with you!--you've been guilty +of a great crime, you whelp!' + +I slid out, happy with the sense of a close shave and a mighty +deliverance; and I heard him laughing to himself and slapping his fat +thighs after I had closed his door. + +When Brown came off watch he went straight to the captain, who was +talking with some passengers on the boiler deck, and demanded that I be +put ashore in New Orleans--and added-- + +'I'll never turn a wheel on this boat again while that cub stays.' + +The captain said-- + +'But he needn't come round when you are on watch, Mr. Brown. + +'I won't even stay on the same boat with him. One of us has got to go +ashore.' + +'Very well,' said the captain, 'let it be yourself;' and resumed his +talk with the passengers. + +During the brief remainder of the trip, I knew how an emancipated slave +feels; for I was an emancipated slave myself. While we lay at landings, +I listened to George Ealer's flute; or to his readings from his two +bibles, that is to say, Goldsmith and Shakespeare; or I played chess +with him--and would have beaten him sometimes, only he always took back +his last move and ran the game out differently. + + + + +Chapter 20 A Catastrophe + +WE lay three days in New Orleans, but the captain did not succeed in +finding another pilot; so he proposed that I should stand a daylight +watch, and leave the night watches to George Ealer. But I was afraid; I +had never stood a watch of any sort by myself, and I believed I should +be sure to get into trouble in the head of some chute, or ground the +boat in a near cut through some bar or other. Brown remained in his +place; but he would not travel with me. So the captain gave me an order +on the captain of the 'A. T. Lacey,' for a passage to St. Louis, and +said he would find a new pilot there and my steersman's berth could then +be resumed. The 'Lacey' was to leave a couple of days after the +'Pennsylvania.' + +The night before the 'Pennsylvania' left, Henry and I sat chatting on a +freight pile on the levee till midnight. The subject of the chat, +mainly, was one which I think we had not exploited before--steamboat +disasters. One was then on its way to us, little as we suspected it; +the water which was to make the steam which should cause it, was washing +past some point fifteen hundred miles up the river while we talked;--but +it would arrive at the right time and the right place. We doubted if +persons not clothed with authority were of much use in cases of disaster +and attendant panic; still, they might be of SOME use; so we decided +that if a disaster ever fell within our experience we would at least +stick to the boat, and give such minor service as chance might throw in +the way. Henry remembered this, afterward, when the disaster came, and +acted accordingly. + +The 'Lacey' started up the river two days behind the 'Pennsylvania.' We +touched at Greenville, Mississippi, a couple of days out, and somebody +shouted-- + +'The "Pennsylvania" is blown up at Ship Island, and a hundred and fifty +lives lost!' + +At Napoleon, Arkansas, the same evening, we got an extra, issued by a +Memphis paper, which gave some particulars. It mentioned my brother, and +said he was not hurt. + +Further up the river we got a later extra. My brother was again +mentioned; but this time as being hurt beyond help. We did not get full +details of the catastrophe until we reached Memphis. This is the +sorrowful story-- + +It was six o'clock on a hot summer morning. The 'Pennsylvania' was +creeping along, north of Ship Island, about sixty miles below Memphis on +a half-head of steam, towing a wood-flat which was fast being emptied. +George Ealer was in the pilot-house-alone, I think; the second engineer +and a striker had the watch in the engine room; the second mate had the +watch on deck; George Black, Mr. Wood, and my brother, clerks, were +asleep, as were also Brown and the head engineer, the carpenter, the +chief mate, and one striker; Captain Klinefelter was in the barber's +chair, and the barber was preparing to shave him. There were a good +many cabin passengers aboard, and three or four hundred deck passengers +--so it was said at the time--and not very many of them were astir. The +wood being nearly all out of the flat now, Ealer rang to 'come ahead' +full steam, and the next moment four of the eight boilers exploded with +a thunderous crash, and the whole forward third of the boat was hoisted +toward the sky! The main part of the mass, with the chimneys, dropped +upon the boat again, a mountain of riddled and chaotic rubbish--and +then, after a little, fire broke out. + +Many people were flung to considerable distances, and fell in the river; +among these were Mr. Wood and my brother, and the carpenter. The +carpenter was still stretched upon his mattress when he struck the water +seventy-five feet from the boat. Brown, the pilot, and George Black, +chief clerk, were never seen or heard of after the explosion. The +barber's chair, with Captain Klinefelter in it and unhurt, was left with +its back overhanging vacancy--everything forward of it, floor and all, +had disappeared; and the stupefied barber, who was also unhurt, stood +with one toe projecting over space, still stirring his lather +unconsciously, and saying, not a word. + +When George Ealer saw the chimneys plunging aloft in front of him, he +knew what the matter was; so he muffled his face in the lapels of his +coat, and pressed both hands there tightly to keep this protection in +its place so that no steam could get to his nose or mouth. He had ample +time to attend to these details while he was going up and returning. He +presently landed on top of the unexploded boilers, forty feet below the +former pilot-house, accompanied by his wheel and a rain of other stuff, +and enveloped in a cloud of scalding steam. All of the many who breathed +that steam, died; none escaped. But Ealer breathed none of it. He made +his way to the free air as quickly as he could; and when the steam +cleared away he returned and climbed up on the boilers again, and +patiently hunted out each and every one of his chessmen and the several +joints of his flute. + +By this time the fire was beginning to threaten. Shrieks and groans +filled the air. A great many persons had been scalded, a great many +crippled; the explosion had driven an iron crowbar through one man's +body--I think they said he was a priest. He did not die at once, and his +sufferings were very dreadful. A young French naval cadet, of fifteen, +son of a French admiral, was fearfully scalded, but bore his tortures +manfully. Both mates were badly scalded, but they stood to their posts, +nevertheless. They drew the wood-boat aft, and they and the captain +fought back the frantic herd of frightened immigrants till the wounded +could be brought there and placed in safety first. + +When Mr. Wood and Henry fell in the water, they struck out for shore, +which was only a few hundred yards away; but Henry presently said he +believed he was not hurt (what an unaccountable error!), and therefore +would swim back to the boat and help save the wounded. So they parted, +and Henry returned. + +By this time the fire was making fierce headway, and several persons who +were imprisoned under the ruins were begging piteously for help. All +efforts to conquer the fire proved fruitless; so the buckets were +presently thrown aside and the officers fell-to with axes and tried to +cut the prisoners out. A striker was one of the captives; he said he was +not injured, but could not free himself; and when he saw that the fire +was likely to drive away the workers, he begged that some one would +shoot him, and thus save him from the more dreadful death. The fire did +drive the axmen away, and they had to listen, helpless, to this poor +fellow's supplications till the flames ended his miseries. + +The fire drove all into the wood-flat that could be accommodated there; +it was cut adrift, then, and it and the burning steamer floated down the +river toward Ship Island. They moored the flat at the head of the +island, and there, unsheltered from the blazing sun, the half-naked +occupants had to remain, without food or stimulants, or help for their +hurts, during the rest of the day. A steamer came along, finally, and +carried the unfortunates to Memphis, and there the most lavish +assistance was at once forthcoming. By this time Henry was insensible. +The physicians examined his injuries and saw that they were fatal, and +naturally turned their main attention to patients who could be saved. + +Forty of the wounded were placed upon pallets on the floor of a great +public hall, and among these was Henry. There the ladies of Memphis +came every day, with flowers, fruits, and dainties and delicacies of all +kinds, and there they remained and nursed the wounded. All the +physicians stood watches there, and all the medical students; and the +rest of the town furnished money, or whatever else was wanted. And +Memphis knew how to do all these things well; for many a disaster like +the 'Pennsylvania's' had happened near her doors, and she was +experienced, above all other cities on the river, in the gracious office +of the Good Samaritan' + +The sight I saw when I entered that large hall was new and strange to +me. Two long rows of prostrate forms--more than forty, in all--and every +face and head a shapeless wad of loose raw cotton. It was a gruesome +spectacle. I watched there six days and nights, and a very melancholy +experience it was. There was one daily incident which was peculiarly +depressing: this was the removal of the doomed to a chamber apart. It +was done in order that the MORALE of the other patients might not be +injuriously affected by seeing one of their number in the death-agony. +The fated one was always carried out with as little stir as possible, +and the stretcher was always hidden from sight by a wall of assistants; +but no matter: everybody knew what that cluster of bent forms, with its +muffled step and its slow movement meant; and all eyes watched it +wistfully, and a shudder went abreast of it like a wave. + +I saw many poor fellows removed to the 'death-room,' and saw them no +more afterward. But I saw our chief mate carried thither more than +once. His hurts were frightful, especially his scalds. He was clothed +in linseed oil and raw cotton to his waist, and resembled nothing human. +He was often out of his mind; and then his pains would make him rave and +shout and sometimes shriek. Then, after a period of dumb exhaustion, +his disordered imagination would suddenly transform the great apartment +into a forecastle, and the hurrying throng of nurses into the crew; and +he would come to a sitting posture and shout, 'Hump yourselves, HUMP +yourselves, you petrifactions, snail-bellies, pall-bearers! going to be +all DAY getting that hatful of freight out?' and supplement this +explosion with a firmament-obliterating irruption or profanity which +nothing could stay or stop till his crater was empty. And now and then +while these frenzies possessed him, he would tear off handfuls of the +cotton and expose his cooked flesh to view. It was horrible. It was bad +for the others, of course--this noise and these exhibitions; so the +doctors tried to give him morphine to quiet him. But, in his mind or +out of it, he would not take it. He said his wife had been killed by +that treacherous drug, and he would die before he would take it. He +suspected that the doctors were concealing it in his ordinary medicines +and in his water--so he ceased from putting either to his lips. Once, +when he had been without water during two sweltering days, he took the +dipper in his hand, and the sight of the limpid fluid, and the misery of +his thirst, tempted him almost beyond his strength; but he mastered +himself and threw it away, and after that he allowed no more to be +brought near him. Three times I saw him carried to the death-room, +insensible and supposed to be dying; but each time he revived, cursed +his attendants, and demanded to be taken back. He lived to be mate of a +steamboat again. + +But he was the only one who went to the death-room and returned alive. +Dr. Peyton, a principal physician, and rich in all the attributes that +go to constitute high and flawless character, did all that educated +judgment and trained skill could do for Henry; but, as the newspapers +had said in the beginning, his hurts were past help. On the evening of +the sixth day his wandering mind busied itself with matters far away, +and his nerveless fingers 'picked at his coverlet.' His hour had struck; +we bore him to the death-room, poor boy. + + + + +Chapter 21 A Section in My Biography + +IN due course I got my license. I was a pilot now, full fledged. I +dropped into casual employments; no misfortunes resulting, intermittent +work gave place to steady and protracted engagements. Time drifted +smoothly and prosperously on, and I supposed--and hoped--that I was +going to follow the river the rest of my days, and die at the wheel when +my mission was ended. But by and by the war came, commerce was +suspended, my occupation was gone. + +I had to seek another livelihood. So I became a silver miner in Nevada; +next, a newspaper reporter; next, a gold miner, in California; next, a +reporter in San Francisco; next, a special correspondent in the Sandwich +Islands; next, a roving correspondent in Europe and the East; next, an +instructional torch-bearer on the lecture platform; and, finally, I +became a scribbler of books, and an immovable fixture among the other +rocks of New England. + +In so few words have I disposed of the twenty-one slow-drifting years +that have come and gone since I last looked from the windows of a pilot- +house. + +Let us resume, now. + + + + +Chapter 22 I Return to My Muttons + +AFTER twenty-one years' absence, I felt a very strong desire to see the +river again, and the steamboats, and such of the boys as might be left; +so I resolved to go out there. I enlisted a poet for company, and a +stenographer to 'take him down,' and started westward about the middle +of April. + +As I proposed to make notes, with a view to printing, I took some +thought as to methods of procedure. I reflected that if I were +recognized, on the river, I should not be as free to go and come, talk, +inquire, and spy around, as I should be if unknown; I remembered that it +was the custom of steamboatmen in the old times to load up the confiding +stranger with the most picturesque and admirable lies, and put the +sophisticated friend off with dull and ineffectual facts: so I +concluded, that, from a business point of view, it would be an advantage +to disguise our party with fictitious names. The idea was certainly +good, but it bred infinite bother; for although Smith, Jones, and +Johnson are easy names to remember when there is no occasion to remember +them, it is next to impossible to recollect them when they are wanted. +How do criminals manage to keep a brand-new ALIAS in mind? This is a +great mystery. I was innocent; and yet was seldom able to lay my hand +on my new name when it was needed; and it seemed to me that if I had had +a crime on my conscience to further confuse me, I could never have kept +the name by me at all. + +We left per Pennsylvania Railroad, at 8 A.M. April 18. + +'EVENING. Speaking of dress. Grace and picturesqueness drop gradually +out of it as one travels away from New York.' + +I find that among my notes. It makes no difference which direction you +take, the fact remains the same. Whether you move north, south, east, or +west, no matter: you can get up in the morning and guess how far you +have come, by noting what degree of grace and picturesqueness is by that +time lacking in the costumes of the new passengers,--I do not mean of +the women alone, but of both sexes. It may be that CARRIAGE is at the +bottom of this thing; and I think it is; for there are plenty of ladies +and gentlemen in the provincial cities whose garments are all made by +the best tailors and dressmakers of New York; yet this has no +perceptible effect upon the grand fact: the educated eye never mistakes +those people for New-Yorkers. No, there is a godless grace, and snap, +and style about a born and bred New-Yorker which mere clothing cannot +effect. + +'APRIL 19. This morning, struck into the region of full goatees-- +sometimes accompanied by a mustache, but only occasionally.' + +It was odd to come upon this thick crop of an obsolete and uncomely +fashion; it was like running suddenly across a forgotten acquaintance +whom you had supposed dead for a generation. The goatee extends over a +wide extent of country; and is accompanied by an iron-clad belief in +Adam and the biblical history of creation, which has not suffered from +the assaults of the scientists. + +'AFTERNOON. At the railway stations the loafers carry BOTH hands in +their breeches pockets; it was observable, heretofore, that one hand was +sometimes out of doors,--here, never. This is an important fact in +geography.' + +If the loafers determined the character of a country, it would be still +more important, of course. + +'Heretofore, all along, the station-loafer has been often observed to +scratch one shin with the other foot; here, these remains of activity +are wanting. This has an ominous look.' + +By and by, we entered the tobacco-chewing region. Fifty years ago, the +tobacco-chewing region covered the Union. It is greatly restricted now. + +Next, boots began to appear. Not in strong force, however. Later--away +down the Mississippi--they became the rule. They disappeared from other +sections of the Union with the mud; no doubt they will disappear from +the river villages, also, when proper pavements come in. + +We reached St. Louis at ten o'clock at night. At the counter of the +hotel I tendered a hurriedly-invented fictitious name, with a miserable +attempt at careless ease. The clerk paused, and inspected me in the +compassionate way in which one inspects a respectable person who is +found in doubtful circumstances; then he said-- + +'It's all right; I know what sort of a room you want. Used to clerk at +the St. James, in New York.' + +An unpromising beginning for a fraudulent career. We started to the +supper room, and met two other men whom I had known elsewhere. How odd +and unfair it is: wicked impostors go around lecturing under my NOM DE +GUERRE and nobody suspects them; but when an honest man attempts an +imposture, he is exposed at once. + +One thing seemed plain: we must start down the river the next day, if +people who could not be deceived were going to crop up at this rate: an +unpalatable disappointment, for we had hoped to have a week in St. +Louis. The Southern was a good hotel, and we could have had a +comfortable time there. It is large, and well conducted, and its +decorations do not make one cry, as do those of the vast Palmer House, +in Chicago. True, the billiard-tables were of the Old Silurian Period, +and the cues and balls of the Post-Pliocene; but there was refreshment +in this, not discomfort; for there is rest and healing in the +contemplation of antiquities. + +The most notable absence observable in the billiard-room, was the +absence of the river man. If he was there he had taken in his sign, he +was in disguise. I saw there none of the swell airs and graces, and +ostentatious displays of money, and pompous squanderings of it, which +used to distinguish the steamboat crowd from the dry-land crowd in the +bygone days, in the thronged billiard-rooms of St. Louis. In those +times, the principal saloons were always populous with river men; given +fifty players present, thirty or thirty-five were likely to be from the +river. But I suspected that the ranks were thin now, and the +steamboatmen no longer an aristocracy. Why, in my time they used to +call the 'barkeep' Bill, or Joe, or Tom, and slap him on the shoulder; I +watched for that. But none of these people did it. Manifestly a glory +that once was had dissolved and vanished away in these twenty-one years. + +When I went up to my room, I found there the young man called Rogers, +crying. Rogers was not his name; neither was Jones, Brown, Dexter, +Ferguson, Bascom, nor Thompson; but he answered to either of these that +a body found handy in an emergency; or to any other name, in fact, if he +perceived that you meant him. He said-- + +'What is a person to do here when he wants a drink of water?--drink this +slush?' + +'Can't you drink it?' + +'I could if I had some other water to wash it with.' + +Here was a thing which had not changed; a score of years had not +affected this water's mulatto complexion in the least; a score of +centuries would succeed no better, perhaps. It comes out of the +turbulent, bank-caving Missouri, and every tumblerful of it holds nearly +an acre of land in solution. I got this fact from the bishop of the +diocese. If you will let your glass stand half an hour, you can separate +the land from the water as easy as Genesis; and then you will find them +both good: the one good to eat, the other good to drink. The land is +very nourishing, the water is thoroughly wholesome. The one appeases +hunger; the other, thirst. But the natives do not take them separately, +but together, as nature mixed them. When they find an inch of mud in the +bottom of a glass, they stir it up, and then take the draught as they +would gruel. It is difficult for a stranger to get used to this batter, +but once used to it he will prefer it to water. This is really the +case. It is good for steamboating, and good to drink; but it is +worthless for all other purposes, except baptizing. + +Next morning, we drove around town in the rain. The city seemed but +little changed. It WAS greatly changed, but it did not seem so; because +in St. Louis, as in London and Pittsburgh, you can't persuade a new +thing to look new; the coal smoke turns it into an antiquity the moment +you take your hand off it. The place had just about doubled its size, +since I was a resident of it, and was now become a city of 400,000 +inhabitants; still, in the solid business parts, it looked about as it +had looked formerly. Yet I am sure there is not as much smoke in St. +Louis now as there used to be. The smoke used to bank itself in a dense +billowy black canopy over the town, and hide the sky from view. This +shelter is very much thinner now; still, there is a sufficiency of smoke +there, I think. I heard no complaint. + +However, on the outskirts changes were apparent enough; notably in +dwelling-house architecture. The fine new homes are noble and beautiful +and modern. They stand by themselves, too, with green lawns around +them; whereas the dwellings of a former day are packed together in +blocks, and are all of one pattern, with windows all alike, set in an +arched frame-work of twisted stone; a sort of house which was handsome +enough when it was rarer. + +There was another change--the Forest Park. This was new to me. It is +beautiful and very extensive, and has the excellent merit of having been +made mainly by nature. There are other parks, and fine ones, notably +Tower Grove and the Botanical Gardens; for St. Louis interested herself +in such improvements at an earlier day than did the most of our cities. + +The first time I ever saw St. Louis, I could have bought it for six +million dollars, and it was the mistake of my life that I did not do it. +It was bitter now to look abroad over this domed and steepled +metropolis, this solid expanse of bricks and mortar stretching away on +every hand into dim, measure-defying distances, and remember that I had +allowed that opportunity to go by. Why I should have allowed it to go +by seems, of course, foolish and inexplicable to-day, at a first glance; +yet there were reasons at the time to justify this course. + +A Scotchman, Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, writing some forty-five or +fifty years ago, said--'The streets are narrow, ill paved and ill +lighted.' Those streets are narrow still, of course; many of them are +ill paved yet; but the reproach of ill lighting cannot be repeated, now. +The 'Catholic New Church' was the only notable building then, and Mr. +Murray was confidently called upon to admire it, with its 'species of +Grecian portico, surmounted by a kind of steeple, much too diminutive in +its proportions, and surmounted by sundry ornaments' which the +unimaginative Scotchman found himself 'quite unable to describe;' and +therefore was grateful when a German tourist helped him out with the +exclamation--'By ---, they look exactly like bed-posts!' St. Louis is +well equipped with stately and noble public buildings now, and the +little church, which the people used to be so proud of, lost its +importance a long time ago. Still, this would not surprise Mr. Murray, +if he could come back; for he prophesied the coming greatness of St. +Louis with strong confidence. + +The further we drove in our inspection-tour, the more sensibly I +realized how the city had grown since I had seen it last; changes in +detail became steadily more apparent and frequent than at first, too: +changes uniformly evidencing progress, energy, prosperity. + +But the change of changes was on the 'levee.' This time, a departure +from the rule. Half a dozen sound-asleep steamboats where I used to see +a solid mile of wide-awake ones! This was melancholy, this was woeful. +The absence of the pervading and jocund steamboatman from the billiard- +saloon was explained. He was absent because he is no more. His +occupation is gone, his power has passed away, he is absorbed into the +common herd, he grinds at the mill, a shorn Samson and inconspicuous. +Half a dozen lifeless steamboats, a mile of empty wharves, a negro +fatigued with whiskey stretched asleep, in a wide and soundless vacancy, +where the serried hosts of commerce used to contend!{footnote [Capt. +Marryat, writing forty-five years ago says: 'St. Louis has 20,000 +inhabitants. THE RIVER ABREAST OF THE TOWN IS CROWDED WITH STEAMBOATS, +LYING IN TWO OR THREE TIERS.']} Here was desolation, indeed. + +'The old, old sea, as one in tears, Comes murmuring, with foamy lips, +And knocking at the vacant piers, Calls for his long-lost multitude of +ships.' + +The towboat and the railroad had done their work, and done it well and +completely. The mighty bridge, stretching along over our heads, had +done its share in the slaughter and spoliation. Remains of former +steamboatmen told me, with wan satisfaction, that the bridge doesn't +pay. Still, it can be no sufficient compensation to a corpse, to know +that the dynamite that laid him out was not of as good quality as it had +been supposed to be. + +The pavements along the river front were bad: the sidewalks were rather +out of repair; there was a rich abundance of mud. All this was familiar +and satisfying; but the ancient armies of drays, and struggling throngs +of men, and mountains of freight, were gone; and Sabbath reigned in +their stead. The immemorial mile of cheap foul doggeries remained, but +business was dull with them; the multitudes of poison-swilling Irishmen +had departed, and in their places were a few scattering handfuls of +ragged negroes, some drinking, some drunk, some nodding, others asleep. +St. Louis is a great and prosperous and advancing city; but the river- +edge of it seems dead past resurrection. + +Mississippi steamboating was born about 1812; at the end of thirty +years, it had grown to mighty proportions; and in less than thirty more, +it was dead! A strangely short life for so majestic a creature. Of +course it is not absolutely dead, neither is a crippled octogenarian who +could once jump twenty-two feet on level ground; but as contrasted with +what it was in its prime vigor, Mississippi steamboating may be called +dead. + +It killed the old-fashioned keel-boating, by reducing the freight-trip +to New Orleans to less than a week. The railroads have killed the +steamboat passenger traffic by doing in two or three days what the +steamboats consumed a week in doing; and the towing-fleets have killed +the through-freight traffic by dragging six or seven steamer-loads of +stuff down the river at a time, at an expense so trivial that steamboat +competition was out of the question. + +Freight and passenger way-traffic remains to the steamers. This is in +the hands--along the two thousand miles of river between St. Paul and +New Orleans---of two or three close corporations well fortified with +capital; and by able and thoroughly business-like management and system, +these make a sufficiency of money out of what is left of the once +prodigious steamboating industry. I suppose that St. Louis and New +Orleans have not suffered materially by the change, but alas for the +wood-yard man! + +He used to fringe the river all the way; his close-ranked merchandise +stretched from the one city to the other, along the banks, and he sold +uncountable cords of it every year for cash on the nail; but all the +scattering boats that are left burn coal now, and the seldomest +spectacle on the Mississippi to-day is a wood-pile. Where now is the +once wood-yard man? + + + + +Chapter 23 Traveling Incognito + +MY idea was, to tarry a while in every town between St. Louis and New +Orleans. To do this, it would be necessary to go from place to place by +the short packet lines. It was an easy plan to make, and would have +been an easy one to follow, twenty years ago--but not now. There are +wide intervals between boats, these days. + +I wanted to begin with the interesting old French settlements of St. +Genevieve and Kaskaskia, sixty miles below St. Louis. There was only one +boat advertised for that section--a Grand Tower packet. Still, one boat +was enough; so we went down to look at her. She was a venerable rack- +heap, and a fraud to boot; for she was playing herself for personal +property, whereas the good honest dirt was so thickly caked all over her +that she was righteously taxable as real estate. There are places in New +England where her hurricane deck would be worth a hundred and fifty +dollars an acre. The soil on her forecastle was quite good--the new crop +of wheat was already springing from the cracks in protected places. The +companionway was of a dry sandy character, and would have been well +suited for grapes, with a southern exposure and a little subsoiling. +The soil of the boiler deck was thin and rocky, but good enough for +grazing purposes. A colored boy was on watch here--nobody else visible. +We gathered from him that this calm craft would go, as advertised, 'if +she got her trip;' if she didn't get it, she would wait for it. + +'Has she got any of her trip?' + +'Bless you, no, boss. She ain't unloadened, yit. She only come in dis +mawnin'.' + +He was uncertain as to when she might get her trip, but thought it might +be to-morrow or maybe next day. This would not answer at all; so we had +to give up the novelty of sailing down the river on a farm. We had one +more arrow in our quiver: a Vicksburg packet, the 'Gold Dust,' was to +leave at 5 P.M. We took passage in her for Memphis, and gave up the idea +of stopping off here and there, as being impracticable. She was neat, +clean, and comfortable. We camped on the boiler deck, and bought some +cheap literature to kill time with. The vender was a venerable Irishman +with a benevolent face and a tongue that worked easily in the socket, +and from him we learned that he had lived in St. Louis thirty-four years +and had never been across the river during that period. Then he wandered +into a very flowing lecture, filled with classic names and allusions, +which was quite wonderful for fluency until the fact became rather +apparent that this was not the first time, nor perhaps the fiftieth, +that the speech had been delivered. He was a good deal of a character, +and much better company than the sappy literature he was selling. A +random remark, connecting Irishmen and beer, brought this nugget of +information out of him-- + +They don't drink it, sir. They can't drink it, sir. Give an Irishman +lager for a month, and he's a dead man. An Irishman is lined with +copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is +the saving of him, sir.' + +At eight o'clock, promptly, we backed out and crossed the river. As we +crept toward the shore, in the thick darkness, a blinding glory of white +electric light burst suddenly from our forecastle, and lit up the water +and the warehouses as with a noon-day glare. Another big change, this-- +no more flickering, smoky, pitch-dripping, ineffectual torch-baskets, +now: their day is past. Next, instead of calling out a score of hands +to man the stage, a couple of men and a hatful of steam lowered it from +the derrick where it was suspended, launched it, deposited it in just +the right spot, and the whole thing was over and done with before a mate +in the olden time could have got his profanity-mill adjusted to begin +the preparatory services. Why this new and simple method of handling the +stages was not thought of when the first steamboat was built, is a +mystery which helps one to realize what a dull-witted slug the average +human being is. + +We finally got away at two in the morning, and when I turned out at six, +we were rounding to at a rocky point where there was an old stone +warehouse--at any rate, the ruins of it; two or three decayed dwelling- +houses were near by, in the shelter of the leafy hills; but there were +no evidences of human or other animal life to be seen. I wondered if I +had forgotten the river; for I had no recollection whatever of this +place; the shape of the river, too, was unfamiliar; there was nothing in +sight, anywhere, that I could remember ever having seen before. I was +surprised, disappointed, and annoyed. + +We put ashore a well-dressed lady and gentleman, and two well-dressed, +lady-like young girls, together with sundry Russia-leather bags. A +strange place for such folk! No carriage was waiting. The party moved +off as if they had not expected any, and struck down a winding country +road afoot. + +But the mystery was explained when we got under way again; for these +people were evidently bound for a large town which lay shut in behind a +tow-head (i.e., new island) a couple of miles below this landing. I +couldn't remember that town; I couldn't place it, couldn't call its +name. So I lost part of my temper. I suspected that it might be St. +Genevieve--and so it proved to be. Observe what this eccentric river +had been about: it had built up this huge useless tow-head directly in +front of this town, cut off its river communications, fenced it away +completely, and made a 'country' town of it. It is a fine old place, +too, and deserved a better fate. It was settled by the French, and is a +relic of a time when one could travel from the mouths of the Mississippi +to Quebec and be on French territory and under French rule all the way. + +Presently I ascended to the hurricane deck and cast a longing glance +toward the pilot-house. + + + + +Chapter 24 My Incognito is Exploded + +AFTER a close study of the face of the pilot on watch, I was satisfied +that I had never seen him before; so I went up there. The pilot +inspected me; I re-inspected the pilot. These customary preliminaries +over, I sat down on the high bench, and he faced about and went on with +his work. Every detail of the pilot-house was familiar to me, with one +exception,--a large-mouthed tube under the breast-board. I puzzled over +that thing a considerable time; then gave up and asked what it was for. + +'To hear the engine-bells through.' + +It was another good contrivance which ought to have been invented half a +century sooner. So I was thinking, when the pilot asked-- + +'Do you know what this rope is for?' + +I managed to get around this question, without committing myself. + +'Is this the first time you were ever in a pilot-house?' + +I crept under that one. + +'Where are you from?' + +'New England.' + +'First time you have ever been West?' + +I climbed over this one. + +'If you take an interest in such things, I can tell you what all these +things are for.' + +I said I should like it. + +'This,' putting his hand on a backing-bell rope, 'is to sound the fire- +alarm; this,' putting his hand on a go-ahead bell, 'is to call the +texas-tender; this one,' indicating the whistle-lever, 'is to call the +captain'--and so he went on, touching one object after another, and +reeling off his tranquil spool of lies. + +I had never felt so like a passenger before. I thanked him, with +emotion, for each new fact, and wrote it down in my note-book. The pilot +warmed to his opportunity, and proceeded to load me up in the good old- +fashioned way. At times I was afraid he was going to rupture his +invention; but it always stood the strain, and he pulled through all +right. He drifted, by easy stages, into revealments of the river's +marvelous eccentricities of one sort and another, and backed them up +with some pretty gigantic illustrations. For instance-- + +'Do you see that little boulder sticking out of the water yonder? well, +when I first came on the river, that was a solid ridge of rock, over +sixty feet high and two miles long. All washed away but that.' [This +with a sigh.] + +I had a mighty impulse to destroy him, but it seemed to me that killing, +in any ordinary way, would be too good for him. + +Once, when an odd-looking craft, with a vast coal-scuttle slanting aloft +on the end of a beam, was steaming by in the distance, he indifferently +drew attention to it, as one might to an object grown wearisome through +familiarity, and observed that it was an 'alligator boat.' + +'An alligator boat? What's it for?' + +'To dredge out alligators with.' + +'Are they so thick as to be troublesome?' + +'Well, not now, because the Government keeps them down. But they used to +be. Not everywhere; but in favorite places, here and there, where the +river is wide and shoal-like Plum Point, and Stack Island, and so on-- +places they call alligator beds.' + +'Did they actually impede navigation?' + +'Years ago, yes, in very low water; there was hardly a trip, then, that +we didn't get aground on alligators.' + +It seemed to me that I should certainly have to get out my tomahawk. +However, I restrained myself and said-- + +'It must have been dreadful.' + +'Yes, it was one of the main difficulties about piloting. It was so hard +to tell anything about the water; the damned things shift around so-- +never lie still five minutes at a time. You can tell a wind-reef, +straight off, by the look of it; you can tell a break; you can tell a +sand-reef--that's all easy; but an alligator reef doesn't show up, worth +anything. Nine times in ten you can't tell where the water is; and when +you do see where it is, like as not it ain't there when YOU get there, +the devils have swapped around so, meantime. Of course there were some +few pilots that could judge of alligator water nearly as well as they +could of any other kind, but they had to have natural talent for it; it +wasn't a thing a body could learn, you had to be born with it. Let me +see: there was Ben Thornburg, and Beck Jolly, and Squire Bell, and +Horace Bixby, and Major Downing, and John Stevenson, and Billy Gordon, +and Jim Brady, and George Ealer, and Billy Youngblood--all A 1 alligator +pilots. THEY could tell alligator water as far as another Christian +could tell whiskey. Read it?--Ah, COULDN'T they, though! I only wish I +had as many dollars as they could read alligator water a mile and a half +off. Yes, and it paid them to do it, too. A good alligator pilot could +always get fifteen hundred dollars a month. Nights, other people had to +lay up for alligators, but those fellows never laid up for alligators; +they never laid up for anything but fog. They could SMELL the best +alligator water it was said; I don't know whether it was so or not, and +I think a body's got his hands full enough if he sticks to just what he +knows himself, without going around backing up other people's say-so's, +though there's a plenty that ain't backward about doing it, as long as +they can roust out something wonderful to tell. Which is not the style +of Robert Styles, by as much as three fathom--maybe quarter-LESS.' + +[My! Was this Rob Styles?--This mustached and stately figure?-A slim +enough cub, in my time. How he has improved in comeliness in five-and- +twenty year and in the noble art of inflating his facts.] After these +musings, I said aloud-- + +'I should think that dredging out the alligators wouldn't have done much +good, because they could come back again right away.' + +'If you had had as much experience of alligators as I have, you wouldn't +talk like that. You dredge an alligator once and he's CONVINCED. It's +the last you hear of HIM. He wouldn't come back for pie. If there's one +thing that an alligator is more down on than another, it's being +dredged. Besides, they were not simply shoved out of the way; the most +of the scoopful were scooped aboard; they emptied them into the hold; +and when they had got a trip, they took them to Orleans to the +Government works.' + +'What for?' + +'Why, to make soldier-shoes out of their hides. All the Government shoes +are made of alligator hide. It makes the best shoes in the world. They +last five years, and they won't absorb water. The alligator fishery is +a Government monopoly. All the alligators are Government property--just +like the live-oaks. You cut down a live-oak, and Government fines you +fifty dollars; you kill an alligator, and up you go for misprision of +treason--lucky duck if they don't hang you, too. And they will, if +you're a Democrat. The buzzard is the sacred bird of the South, and you +can't touch him; the alligator is the sacred bird of the Government, and +you've got to let him alone.' + +'Do you ever get aground on the alligators now?' + +'Oh, no! it hasn't happened for years.' + +'Well, then, why do they still keep the alligator boats in service?' + +'Just for police duty--nothing more. They merely go up and down now and +then. The present generation of alligators know them as easy as a +burglar knows a roundsman; when they see one coming, they break camp and +go for the woods.' + +After rounding-out and finishing-up and polishing-off the alligator +business, he dropped easily and comfortably into the historical vein, +and told of some tremendous feats of half-a-dozen old-time steamboats of +his acquaintance, dwelling at special length upon a certain +extraordinary performance of his chief favorite among this distinguished +fleet--and then adding-- + +'That boat was the "Cyclone,"--last trip she ever made--she sunk, that +very trip--captain was Tom Ballou, the most immortal liar that ever I +struck. He couldn't ever seem to tell the truth, in any kind of +weather. Why, he would make you fairly shudder. He WAS the most +scandalous liar! I left him, finally; I couldn't stand it. The proverb +says, "like master, like man;" and if you stay with that kind of a man, +you'll come under suspicion by and by, just as sure as you live. He +paid first-class wages; but said I, What's wages when your reputation's +in danger? So I let the wages go, and froze to my reputation. And I've +never regretted it. Reputation's worth everything, ain't it? That's the +way I look at it. He had more selfish organs than any seven men in the +world--all packed in the stern-sheets of his skull, of course, where +they belonged. They weighed down the back of his head so that it made +his nose tilt up in the air. People thought it was vanity, but it +wasn't, it was malice. If you only saw his foot, you'd take him to be +nineteen feet high, but he wasn't; it was because his foot was out of +drawing. He was intended to be nineteen feet high, no doubt, if his foot +was made first, but he didn't get there; he was only five feet ten. +That's what he was, and that's what he is. You take the lies out of +him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out +of him, and he'll disappear. That "Cyclone" was a rattler to go, and +the sweetest thing to steer that ever walked the waters. Set her +amidships, in a big river, and just let her go; it was all you had to +do. She would hold herself on a star all night, if you let her alone. +You couldn't ever feel her rudder. It wasn't any more labor to steer +her than it is to count the Republican vote in a South Carolina +election. One morning, just at daybreak, the last trip she ever made, +they took her rudder aboard to mend it; I didn't know anything about it; +I backed her out from the wood-yard and went a-weaving down the river +all serene. When I had gone about twenty-three miles, and made four +horribly crooked crossings--' + +'Without any rudder?' + +'Yes--old Capt. Tom appeared on the roof and began to find fault with me +for running such a dark night--' + +'Such a DARK NIGHT ?--Why, you said--' + +'Never mind what I said,--'twas as dark as Egypt now, though pretty soon +the moon began to rise, and--' + +'You mean the SUN--because you started out just at break of--look here! +Was this BEFORE you quitted the captain on account of his lying, or--' + +'It was before--oh, a long time before. And as I was saying, he--' + +'But was this the trip she sunk, or was--' + +'Oh, no!--months afterward. And so the old man, he--' + +'Then she made TWO last trips, because you said--' + +He stepped back from the wheel, swabbing away his perspiration, and +said-- + +'Here!' (calling me by name), 'YOU take her and lie a while--you're +handier at it than I am. Trying to play yourself for a stranger and an +innocent!--why, I knew you before you had spoken seven words; and I made +up my mind to find out what was your little game. It was to DRAW ME OUT. +Well, I let you, didn't I? Now take the wheel and finish the watch; and +next time play fair, and you won't have to work your passage.' + +Thus ended the fictitious-name business. And not six hours out from St. +Louis! but I had gained a privilege, any way, for I had been itching to +get my hands on the wheel, from the beginning. I seemed to have +forgotten the river, but I hadn't forgotten how to steer a steamboat, +nor how to enjoy it, either. + + + + +Chapter 25 From Cairo to Hickman + +THE scenery, from St. Louis to Cairo--two hundred miles--is varied and +beautiful. The hills were clothed in the fresh foliage of spring now, +and were a gracious and worthy setting for the broad river flowing +between. Our trip began auspiciously, with a perfect day, as to breeze +and sunshine, and our boat threw the miles out behind her with +satisfactory despatch. + +We found a railway intruding at Chester, Illinois; Chester has also a +penitentiary now, and is otherwise marching on. At Grand Tower, too, +there was a railway; and another at Cape Girardeau. The former town gets +its name from a huge, squat pillar of rock, which stands up out of the +water on the Missouri side of the river--a piece of nature's fanciful +handiwork--and is one of the most picturesque features of the scenery of +that region. For nearer or remoter neighbors, the Tower has the Devil's +Bake Oven--so called, perhaps, because it does not powerfully resemble +anybody else's bake oven; and the Devil's Tea Table--this latter a great +smooth-surfaced mass of rock, with diminishing wine-glass stem, perched +some fifty or sixty feet above the river, beside a beflowered and +garlanded precipice, and sufficiently like a tea-table to answer for +anybody, Devil or Christian. Away down the river we have the Devil's +Elbow and the Devil's Race-course, and lots of other property of his +which I cannot now call to mind. + +The Town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier place than it had been in +old times, but it seemed to need some repairs here and there, and a new +coat of whitewash all over. Still, it was pleasant to me to see the old +coat once more. 'Uncle' Mumford, our second officer, said the place had +been suffering from high water, and consequently was not looking its +best now. But he said it was not strange that it didn't waste white- +wash on itself, for more lime was made there, and of a better quality, +than anywhere in the West; and added--'On a dairy farm you never can get +any milk for your coffee, nor any sugar for it on a sugar plantation; +and it is against sense to go to a lime town to hunt for white-wash.' In +my own experience I knew the first two items to be true; and also that +people who sell candy don't care for candy; therefore there was +plausibility in Uncle Mumford's final observation that 'people who make +lime run more to religion than whitewash.' Uncle Mumford said, further, +that Grand Tower was a great coaling center and a prospering place. + +Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside, and makes a handsome +appearance. There is a great Jesuit school for boys at the foot of the +town by the river. Uncle Mumford said it had as high a reputation for +thoroughness as any similar institution in Missouri! There was another +college higher up on an airy summit--a bright new edifice, picturesquely +and peculiarly towered and pinnacled--a sort of gigantic casters, with +the cruets all complete. Uncle Mumford said that Cape Girardeau was the +Athens of Missouri, and contained several colleges besides those already +mentioned; and all of them on a religious basis of one kind or another. +He directed my attention to what he called the 'strong and pervasive +religious look of the town,' but I could not see that it looked more +religious than the other hill towns with the same slope and built of the +same kind of bricks. Partialities often make people see more than really +exists. + +Uncle Mumford has been thirty years a mate on the river. He is a man of +practical sense and a level head; has observed; has had much experience +of one sort and another; has opinions; has, also, just a perceptible +dash of poetry in his composition, an easy gift of speech, a thick growl +in his voice, and an oath or two where he can get at them when the +exigencies of his office require a spiritual lift. He is a mate of the +blessed old-time kind; and goes gravely damning around, when there is +work to the fore, in a way to mellow the ex-steamboatman's heart with +sweet soft longings for the vanished days that shall come no more. 'GIT +up there you! Going to be all day? Why d'n't you SAY you was petrified +in your hind legs, before you shipped!' + +He is a steady man with his crew; kind and just, but firm; so they like +him, and stay with him. He is still in the slouchy garb of the old +generation of mates; but next trip the Anchor Line will have him in +uniform--a natty blue naval uniform, with brass buttons, along with all +the officers of the line--and then he will be a totally different style +of scenery from what he is now. + +Uniforms on the Mississippi! It beats all the other changes put +together, for surprise. Still, there is another surprise--that it was +not made fifty years ago. It is so manifestly sensible, that it might +have been thought of earlier, one would suppose. During fifty years, out +there, the innocent passenger in need of help and information, has been +mistaking the mate for the cook, and the captain for the barber--and +being roughly entertained for it, too. But his troubles are ended now. +And the greatly improved aspect of the boat's staff is another advantage +achieved by the dress-reform period. + +Steered down the bend below Cape Girardeau. They used to call it +'Steersman's Bend;' plain sailing and plenty of water in it, always; +about the only place in the Upper River that a new cub was allowed to +take a boat through, in low water. + +Thebes, at the head of the Grand Chain, and Commerce at the foot of it, +were towns easily rememberable, as they had not undergone conspicuous +alteration. Nor the Chain, either--in the nature of things; for it is a +chain of sunken rocks admirably arranged to capture and kill steamboats +on bad nights. A good many steamboat corpses lie buried there, out of +sight; among the rest my first friend the 'Paul Jones;' she knocked her +bottom out, and went down like a pot, so the historian told me--Uncle +Mumford. He said she had a gray mare aboard, and a preacher. To me, +this sufficiently accounted for the disaster; as it did, of course, to +Mumford, who added-- + +'But there are many ignorant people who would scoff at such a matter, +and call it superstition. But you will always notice that they are +people who have never traveled with a gray mare and a preacher. I went +down the river once in such company. We grounded at Bloody Island; we +grounded at Hanging Dog; we grounded just below this same Commerce; we +jolted Beaver Dam Rock; we hit one of the worst breaks in the +'Graveyard' behind Goose Island; we had a roustabout killed in a fight; +we burnt a boiler; broke a shaft; collapsed a flue; and went into Cairo +with nine feet of water in the hold--may have been more, may have been +less. I remember it as if it were yesterday. The men lost their heads +with terror. They painted the mare blue, in sight of town, and threw +the preacher overboard, or we should not have arrived at all. The +preacher was fished out and saved. He acknowledged, himself, that he had +been to blame. I remember it all, as if it were yesterday.' + +That this combination--of preacher and gray mare--should breed calamity, +seems strange, and at first glance unbelievable; but the fact is +fortified by so much unassailable proof that to doubt is to dishonor +reason. I myself remember a case where a captain was warned by numerous +friends against taking a gray mare and a preacher with him, but +persisted in his purpose in spite of all that could be said; and the +same day--it may have been the next, and some say it was, though I think +it was the same day--he got drunk and fell down the hatchway, and was +borne to his home a corpse. This is literally true. + +No vestige of Hat Island is left now; every shred of it is washed away. +I do not even remember what part of the river it used to be in, except +that it was between St. Louis and Cairo somewhere. It was a bad region-- +all around and about Hat Island, in early days. A farmer who lived on +the Illinois shore there, said that twenty-nine steamboats had left +their bones strung along within sight from his house. Between St. Louis +and Cairo the steamboat wrecks average one to the mile;--two hundred +wrecks, altogether. + +I could recognize big changes from Commerce down. Beaver Dam Rock was +out in the middle of the river now, and throwing a prodigious 'break;' +it used to be close to the shore, and boats went down outside of it. A +big island that used to be away out in mid-river, has retired to the +Missouri shore, and boats do not go near it any more. The island called +Jacket Pattern is whittled down to a wedge now, and is booked for early +destruction. Goose Island is all gone but a little dab the size of a +steamboat. The perilous 'Graveyard,' among whose numberless wrecks we +used to pick our way so slowly and gingerly, is far away from the +channel now, and a terror to nobody. One of the islands formerly called +the Two Sisters is gone entirely; the other, which used to lie close to +the Illinois shore, is now on the Missouri side, a mile away; it is +joined solidly to the shore, and it takes a sharp eye to see where the +seam is--but it is Illinois ground yet, and the people who live on it +have to ferry themselves over and work the Illinois roads and pay +Illinois taxes: singular state of things! + +Near the mouth of the river several islands were missing--washed away. +Cairo was still there--easily visible across the long, flat point upon +whose further verge it stands; but we had to steam a long way around to +get to it. Night fell as we were going out of the 'Upper River' and +meeting the floods of the Ohio. We dashed along without anxiety; for +the hidden rock which used to lie right in the way has moved up stream a +long distance out of the channel; or rather, about one county has gone +into the river from the Missouri point, and the Cairo point has 'made +down' and added to its long tongue of territory correspondingly. The +Mississippi is a just and equitable river; it never tumbles one man's +farm overboard without building a new farm just like it for that man's +neighbor. This keeps down hard feelings. + +Going into Cairo, we came near killing a steamboat which paid no +attention to our whistle and then tried to cross our bows. By doing some +strong backing, we saved him; which was a great loss, for he would have +made good literature. + +Cairo is a brisk town now; and is substantially built, and has a city +look about it which is in noticeable contrast to its former estate, as +per Mr. Dickens's portrait of it. However, it was already building with +bricks when I had seen it last--which was when Colonel (now General) +Grant was drilling his first command there. Uncle Mumford says the +libraries and Sunday-schools have done a good work in Cairo, as well as +the brick masons. Cairo has a heavy railroad and river trade, and her +situation at the junction of the two great rivers is so advantageous +that she cannot well help prospering. + +When I turned out, in the morning, we had passed Columbus, Kentucky, and +were approaching Hickman, a pretty town, perched on a handsome hill. +Hickman is in a rich tobacco region, and formerly enjoyed a great and +lucrative trade in that staple, collecting it there in her warehouses +from a large area of country and shipping it by boat; but Uncle Mumford +says she built a railway to facilitate this commerce a little more, and +he thinks it facilitated it the wrong way--took the bulk of the trade +out of her hands by 'collaring it along the line without gathering it at +her doors.' + + + + +Chapter 26 Under Fire + +TALK began to run upon the war now, for we were getting down into the +upper edge of the former battle-stretch by this time. Columbus was just +behind us, so there was a good deal said about the famous battle of +Belmont. Several of the boat's officers had seen active service in the +Mississippi war-fleet. I gathered that they found themselves sadly out +of their element in that kind of business at first, but afterward got +accustomed to it, reconciled to it, and more or less at home in it. One +of our pilots had his first war experience in the Belmont fight, as a +pilot on a boat in the Confederate service. I had often had a curiosity +to know how a green hand might feel, in his maiden battle, perched all +solitary and alone on high in a pilot house, a target for Tom, Dick and +Harry, and nobody at his elbow to shame him from showing the white +feather when matters grew hot and perilous around him; so, to me his +story was valuable--it filled a gap for me which all histories had left +till that time empty. + + +THE PILOT'S FIRST BATTLE + + +He said-- + +It was the 7th of November. The fight began at seven in the morning. I +was on the 'R. H. W. Hill.' Took over a load of troops from Columbus. +Came back, and took over a battery of artillery. My partner said he was +going to see the fight; wanted me to go along. I said, no, I wasn't +anxious, I would look at it from the pilot-house. He said I was a +coward, and left. + +That fight was an awful sight. General Cheatham made his men strip +their coats off and throw them in a pile, and said, 'Now follow me to +hell or victory!' I heard him say that from the pilot-house; and then +he galloped in, at the head of his troops. Old General Pillow, with his +white hair, mounted on a white horse, sailed in, too, leading his troops +as lively as a boy. By and by the Federals chased the rebels back, and +here they came! tearing along, everybody for himself and Devil take the +hindmost! and down under the bank they scrambled, and took shelter. I +was sitting with my legs hanging out of the pilot-house window. All at +once I noticed a whizzing sound passing my ear. Judged it was a bullet. +I didn't stop to think about anything, I just tilted over backwards and +landed on the floor, and staid there. The balls came booming around. +Three cannon-balls went through the chimney; one ball took off the +corner of the pilot-house; shells were screaming and bursting all +around. Mighty warm times--I wished I hadn't come. I lay there on the +pilot-house floor, while the shots came faster and faster. I crept in +behind the big stove, in the middle of the pilot-house. Presently a +minie-ball came through the stove, and just grazed my head, and cut my +hat. I judged it was time to go away from there. The captain was on +the roof with a red-headed major from Memphis--a fine-looking man. I +heard him say he wanted to leave here, but 'that pilot is killed.' I +crept over to the starboard side to pull the bell to set her back; +raised up and took a look, and I saw about fifteen shot holes through +the window panes; had come so lively I hadn't noticed them. I glanced +out on the water, and the spattering shot were like a hailstorm. I +thought best to get out of that place. I went down the pilot-house guy, +head first--not feet first but head first--slid down--before I struck +the deck, the captain said we must leave there. So I climbed up the guy +and got on the floor again. About that time, they collared my partner +and were bringing him up to the pilot-house between two soldiers. +Somebody had said I was killed. He put his head in and saw me on the +floor reaching for the backing bells. He said, 'Oh, hell, he ain't +shot,' and jerked away from the men who had him by the collar, and ran +below. We were there until three o'clock in the afternoon, and then got +away all right. + +The next time I saw my partner, I said, 'Now, come out, be honest, and +tell me the truth. Where did you go when you went to see that battle?' +He says, 'I went down in the hold.' + +All through that fight I was scared nearly to death. I hardly knew +anything, I was so frightened; but you see, nobody knew that but me. +Next day General Polk sent for me, and praised me for my bravery and +gallant conduct. I never said anything, I let it go at that. I judged +it wasn't so, but it was not for me to contradict a general officer. + +Pretty soon after that I was sick, and used up, and had to go off to the +Hot Springs. When there, I got a good many letters from commanders +saying they wanted me to come back. I declined, because I wasn't well +enough or strong enough; but I kept still, and kept the reputation I had +made. + +A plain story, straightforwardly told; but Mumford told me that that +pilot had 'gilded that scare of his, in spots;' that his subsequent +career in the war was proof of it. + +We struck down through the chute of Island No. 8, and I went below and +fell into conversation with a passenger, a handsome man, with easy +carriage and an intelligent face. We were approaching Island No. 10, a +place so celebrated during the war. This gentleman's home was on the +main shore in its neighborhood. I had some talk with him about the war +times; but presently the discourse fell upon 'feuds,' for in no part of +the South has the vendetta flourished more briskly, or held out longer +between warring families, than in this particular region. This gentleman +said-- + +'There's been more than one feud around here, in old times, but I reckon +the worst one was between the Darnells and the Watsons. Nobody don't +know now what the first quarrel was about, it's so long ago; the +Darnells and the Watsons don't know, if there's any of them living, +which I don't think there is. Some says it was about a horse or a cow-- +anyway, it was a little matter; the money in it wasn't of no +consequence--none in the world--both families was rich. The thing could +have been fixed up, easy enough; but no, that wouldn't do. Rough words +had been passed; and so, nothing but blood could fix it up after that. +That horse or cow, whichever it was, cost sixty years of killing and +crippling! Every year or so somebody was shot, on one side or the other; +and as fast as one generation was laid out, their sons took up the feud +and kept it a-going. And it's just as I say; they went on shooting each +other, year in and year out--making a kind of a religion of it, you see +--till they'd done forgot, long ago, what it was all about. Wherever a +Darnell caught a Watson, or a Watson caught a Darnell, one of 'em was +going to get hurt--only question was, which of them got the drop on the +other. They'd shoot one another down, right in the presence of the +family. They didn't hunt for each other, but when they happened to meet, +they puffed and begun. Men would shoot boys, boys would shoot men. A +man shot a boy twelve years old--happened on him in the woods, and +didn't give him no chance. If he HAD 'a' given him a chance, the boy'd +'a' shot him. Both families belonged to the same church (everybody +around here is religious); through all this fifty or sixty years' fuss, +both tribes was there every Sunday, to worship. They lived each side of +the line, and the church was at a landing called Compromise. Half the +church and half the aisle was in Kentucky, the other half in Tennessee. +Sundays you'd see the families drive up, all in their Sunday clothes, +men, women, and children, and file up the aisle, and set down, quiet and +orderly, one lot on the Tennessee side of the church and the other on +the Kentucky side; and the men and boys would lean their guns up against +the wall, handy, and then all hands would join in with the prayer and +praise; though they say the man next the aisle didn't kneel down, along +with the rest of the family; kind of stood guard. I don't know; never +was at that church in my life; but I remember that that's what used to +be said. + +'Twenty or twenty-five years ago, one of the feud families caught a +young man of nineteen out and killed him. Don't remember whether it was +the Darnells and Watsons, or one of the other feuds; but anyway, this +young man rode up--steamboat laying there at the time--and the first +thing he saw was a whole gang of the enemy. He jumped down behind a +wood-pile, but they rode around and begun on him, he firing back, and +they galloping and cavorting and yelling and banging away with all their +might. Think he wounded a couple of them; but they closed in on him and +chased him into the river; and as he swum along down stream, they +followed along the bank and kept on shooting at him; and when he struck +shore he was dead. Windy Marshall told me about it. He saw it. He was +captain of the boat. + +'Years ago, the Darnells was so thinned out that the old man and his two +sons concluded they'd leave the country. They started to take steamboat +just above No. 10; but the Watsons got wind of it; and they arrived just +as the two young Darnells was walking up the companion-way with their +wives on their arms. The fight begun then, and they never got no +further--both of them killed. After that, old Darnell got into trouble +with the man that run the ferry, and the ferry-man got the worst of it-- +and died. But his friends shot old Darnell through and through--filled +him full of bullets, and ended him.' + +The country gentleman who told me these things had been reared in ease +and comfort, was a man of good parts, and was college bred. His loose +grammar was the fruit of careless habit, not ignorance. This habit among +educated men in the West is not universal, but it is prevalent-- +prevalent in the towns, certainly, if not in the cities; and to a degree +which one cannot help noticing, and marveling at. I heard a Westerner +who would be accounted a highly educated man in any country, say 'never +mind, it DON'T MAKE NO DIFFERENCE, anyway.' A life-long resident who was +present heard it, but it made no impression upon her. She was able to +recall the fact afterward, when reminded of it; but she confessed that +the words had not grated upon her ear at the time--a confession which +suggests that if educated people can hear such blasphemous grammar, from +such a source, and be unconscious of the deed, the crime must be +tolerably common--so common that the general ear has become dulled by +familiarity with it, and is no longer alert, no longer sensitive to such +affronts. + +No one in the world speaks blemishless grammar; no one has ever written +it--NO one, either in the world or out of it (taking the Scriptures for +evidence on the latter point); therefore it would not be fair to exact +grammatical perfection from the peoples of the Valley; but they and all +other peoples may justly be required to refrain from KNOWINGLY and +PURPOSELY debauching their grammar. + +I found the river greatly changed at Island No. 10. The island which I +remembered was some three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide, +heavily timbered, and lay near the Kentucky shore--within two hundred +yards of it, I should say. Now, however, one had to hunt for it with a +spy-glass. Nothing was left of it but an insignificant little tuft, and +this was no longer near the Kentucky shore; it was clear over against +the opposite shore, a mile away. In war times the island had been an +important place, for it commanded the situation; and, being heavily +fortified, there was no getting by it. It lay between the upper and +lower divisions of the Union forces, and kept them separate, until a +junction was finally effected across the Missouri neck of land; but the +island being itself joined to that neck now, the wide river is without +obstruction. + +In this region the river passes from Kentucky into Tennessee, back into +Missouri, then back into Kentucky, and thence into Tennessee again. So a +mile or two of Missouri sticks over into Tennessee. + +The town of New Madrid was looking very unwell; but otherwise unchanged +from its former condition and aspect. Its blocks of frame-houses were +still grouped in the same old flat plain, and environed by the same old +forests. It was as tranquil as formerly, and apparently had neither +grown nor diminished in size. It was said that the recent high water +had invaded it and damaged its looks. This was surprising news; for in +low water the river bank is very high there (fifty feet), and in my day +an overflow had always been considered an impossibility. This present +flood of 1882 Will doubtless be celebrated in the river's history for +several generations before a deluge of like magnitude shall be seen. It +put all the unprotected low lands under water, from Cairo to the mouth; +it broke down the levees in a great many places, on both sides of the +river; and in some regions south, when the flood was at its highest, the +Mississippi was SEVENTY MILES wide! a number of lives were lost, and the +destruction of property was fearful. The crops were destroyed, houses +washed away, and shelterless men and cattle forced to take refuge on +scattering elevations here and there in field and forest, and wait in +peril and suffering until the boats put in commission by the national +and local governments and by newspaper enterprise could come and rescue +them. The properties of multitudes of people were under water for +months, and the poorer ones must have starved by the hundred if succor +had not been promptly afforded.{footnote [For a detailed and interesting +description of the great flood, written on board of the New Orleans +TIMES-DEMOCRAT'S relief-boat, see Appendix A]} The water had been +falling during a considerable time now, yet as a rule we found the banks +still under water. + + + + +Chapter 27 Some Imported Articles + +WE met two steamboats at New Madrid. Two steamboats in sight at once! +an infrequent spectacle now in the lonesome Mississippi. The loneliness +of this solemn, stupendous flood is impressive--and depressing. League +after league, and still league after league, it pours its chocolate tide +along, between its solid forest walls, its almost untenanted shores, +with seldom a sail or a moving object of any kind to disturb the surface +and break the monotony of the blank, watery solitude; and so the day +goes, the night comes, and again the day--and still the same, night +after night and day after day--majestic, unchanging sameness of +serenity, repose, tranquillity, lethargy, vacancy--symbol of eternity, +realization of the heaven pictured by priest and prophet, and longed for +by the good and thoughtless! + +Immediately after the war of 1812, tourists began to come to America, +from England; scattering ones at first, then a sort of procession of +them--a procession which kept up its plodding, patient march through the +land during many, many years. Each tourist took notes, and went home and +published a book--a book which was usually calm, truthful, reasonable, +kind; but which seemed just the reverse to our tender-footed +progenitors. A glance at these tourist-books shows us that in certain of +its aspects the Mississippi has undergone no change since those +strangers visited it, but remains to-day about as it was then. The +emotions produced in those foreign breasts by these aspects were not all +formed on one pattern, of course; they HAD to be various, along at +first, because the earlier tourists were obliged to originate their +emotions, whereas in older countries one can always borrow emotions from +one's predecessors. And, mind you, emotions are among the toughest +things in the world to manufacture out of whole cloth; it is easier to +manufacture seven facts than one emotion. Captain Basil Hall. R.N., +writing fifty-five years ago, says-- + + +'Here I caught the first glimpse of the object I had so long wished to +behold, and felt myself amply repaid at that moment for all the trouble +I had experienced in coming so far; and stood looking at the river +flowing past till it was too dark to distinguish anything. But it was +not till I had visited the same spot a dozen times, that I came to a +right comprehension of the grandeur of the scene.' + + +Following are Mrs. Trollope's emotions. She is writing a few months +later in the same year, 1827, and is coming in at the mouth of the +Mississippi-- + + +'The first indication of our approach to land was the appearance of this +mighty river pouring forth its muddy mass of waters, and mingling with +the deep blue of the Mexican Gulf. I never beheld a scene so utterly +desolate as this entrance of the Mississippi. Had Dante seen it, he +might have drawn images of another Borgia from its horrors. One only +object rears itself above the eddying waters; this is the mast of a +vessel long since wrecked in attempting to cross the bar, and it still +stands, a dismal witness of the destruction that has been, and a boding +prophet of that which is to come.' + + +Emotions of Hon. Charles Augustus Murray (near St. Louis), seven years +later-- + + +'It is only when you ascend the mighty current for fifty or a hundred +miles, and use the eye of imagination as well as that of nature, that +you begin to understand all his might and majesty. You see him +fertilizing a boundless valley, bearing along in his course the trophies +of his thousand victories over the shattered forest--here carrying away +large masses of soil with all their growth, and there forming islands, +destined at some future period to be the residence of man; and while +indulging in this prospect, it is then time for reflection to suggest +that the current before you has flowed through two or three thousand +miles, and has yet to travel one thousand three hundred more before +reaching its ocean destination.' + + +Receive, now, the emotions of Captain Marryat, R.N. author of the sea +tales, writing in 1837, three years after Mr. Murray-- + + +'Never, perhaps, in the records of nations, was there an instance of a +century of such unvarying and unmitigated crime as is to be collected +from the history of the turbulent and blood-stained Mississippi. The +stream itself appears as if appropriate for the deeds which have been +committed. It is not like most rivers, beautiful to the sight, +bestowing fertility in its course; not one that the eye loves to dwell +upon as it sweeps along, nor can you wander upon its banks, or trust +yourself without danger to its stream. It is a furious, rapid, +desolating torrent, loaded with alluvial soil; and few of those who are +received into its waters ever rise again, {footnote [There was a foolish +superstition of some little prevalence in that day, that the Mississippi +would neither buoy up a swimmer, nor permit a drowned person's body to +rise to the surface.]} or can support themselves long upon its surface +without assistance from some friendly log. It contains the coarsest and +most uneatable of fish, such as the cat-fish and such genus, and as you +descend, its banks are occupied with the fetid alligator, while the +panther basks at its edge in the cane-brakes, almost impervious to man. +Pouring its impetuous waters through wild tracks covered with trees of +little value except for firewood, it sweeps down whole forests in its +course, which disappear in tumultuous confusion, whirled away by the +stream now loaded with the masses of soil which nourished their roots, +often blocking up and changing for a time the channel of the river, +which, as if in anger at its being opposed, inundates and devastates the +whole country round; and as soon as it forces its way through its former +channel, plants in every direction the uprooted monarchs of the forest +(upon whose branches the bird will never again perch, or the raccoon, +the opossum, or the squirrel climb) as traps to the adventurous +navigators of its waters by steam, who, borne down upon these concealed +dangers which pierce through the planks, very often have not time to +steer for and gain the shore before they sink to the bottom. There are +no pleasing associations connected with the great common sewer of the +Western America, which pours out its mud into the Mexican Gulf, +polluting the clear blue sea for many miles beyond its mouth. It is a +river of desolation; and instead of reminding you, like other beautiful +rivers, of an angel which has descended for the benefit of man, you +imagine it a devil, whose energies have been only overcome by the +wonderful power of steam.' + + +It is pretty crude literature for a man accustomed to handling a pen; +still, as a panorama of the emotions sent weltering through this noted +visitor's breast by the aspect and traditions of the 'great common +sewer,' it has a value. A value, though marred in the matter of +statistics by inaccuracies; for the catfish is a plenty good enough fish +for anybody, and there are no panthers that are 'impervious to man.' + + +Later still comes Alexander Mackay, of the Middle Temple, Barrister at +Law, with a better digestion, and no catfish dinner aboard, and feels as +follows-- + + +'The Mississippi! It was with indescribable emotions that I first felt +myself afloat upon its waters. How often in my schoolboy dreams, and in +my waking visions afterwards, had my imagination pictured to itself the +lordly stream, rolling with tumultuous current through the boundless +region to which it has given its name, and gathering into itself, in its +course to the ocean, the tributary waters of almost every latitude in +the temperate zone! Here it was then in its reality, and I, at length, +steaming against its tide. I looked upon it with that reverence with +which everyone must regard a great feature of external nature.' + + +So much for the emotions. The tourists, one and all, remark upon the +deep, brooding loneliness and desolation of the vast river. Captain +Basil Hall, who saw it at flood-stage, says-- + + +'Sometimes we passed along distances of twenty or thirty miles without +seeing a single habitation. An artist, in search of hints for a +painting of the deluge, would here have found them in abundance.' + + +The first shall be last, etc. just two hundred years ago, the old +original first and gallantest of all the foreign tourists, pioneer, head +of the procession, ended his weary and tedious discovery-voyage down the +solemn stretches of the great river--La Salle, whose name will last as +long as the river itself shall last. We quote from Mr. Parkman-- + + +'And now they neared their journey's end. On the sixth of April, the +river divided itself into three broad channels. La Salle followed that +of the west, and D'Autray that of the east; while Tonty took the middle +passage. As he drifted down the turbid current, between the low and +marshy shores, the brackish water changed to brine, and the breeze grew +fresh with the salt breath of the sea. Then the broad bosom of the great +Gulf opened on his sight, tossing its restless billows, limitless, +voiceless, lonely as when born of chaos, without a sail, without a sign +of life.' + + +Then, on a spot of solid ground, La Salle reared a column 'bearing the +arms of France; the Frenchmen were mustered under arms; and while the +New England Indians and their squaws looked on in wondering silence, +they chanted the TE DEUM, THE EXAUDIAT, and the DOMINE SALVUM FAC +REGEM.' + +Then, whilst the musketry volleyed and rejoicing shouts burst forth, the +victorious discoverer planted the column, and made proclamation in a +loud voice, taking formal possession of the river and the vast countries +watered by it, in the name of the King. The column bore this +inscription-- + + +LOUIS LE GRAND, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, REGNE; LE NEUVIEME AVRIL, +1682. + + +New Orleans intended to fittingly celebrate, this present year, the +bicentennial anniversary of this illustrious event; but when the time +came, all her energies and surplus money were required in other +directions, for the flood was upon the land then, making havoc and +devastation everywhere. + + + + +Chapter 28 Uncle Mumford Unloads + +ALL day we swung along down the river, and had the stream almost wholly +to ourselves. Formerly, at such a stage of the water, we should have +passed acres of lumber rafts, and dozens of big coal barges; also +occasional little trading-scows, peddling along from farm to farm, with +the peddler's family on board; possibly, a random scow, bearing a humble +Hamlet and Co. on an itinerant dramatic trip. But these were all +absent. Far along in the day, we saw one steamboat; just one, and no +more. She was lying at rest in the shade, within the wooded mouth of the +Obion River. The spy-glass revealed the fact that she was named for me +--or HE was named for me, whichever you prefer. As this was the first +time I had ever encountered this species of honor, it seems excusable to +mention it, and at the same time call the attention of the authorities +to the tardiness of my recognition of it. + +Noted a big change in the river, at Island 21. It was a very large +island, and used to be out toward mid-stream; but it is joined fast to +the main shore now, and has retired from business as an island. + +As we approached famous and formidable Plum Point, darkness fell, but +that was nothing to shudder about--in these modern times. For now the +national government has turned the Mississippi into a sort of two- +thousand-mile torchlight procession. In the head of every crossing, and +in the foot of every crossing, the government has set up a clear-burning +lamp. You are never entirely in the dark, now; there is always a beacon +in sight, either before you, or behind you, or abreast. One might almost +say that lamps have been squandered there. Dozens of crossings are +lighted which were not shoal when they were created, and have never been +shoal since; crossings so plain, too, and also so straight, that a +steamboat can take herself through them without any help, after she has +been through once. Lamps in such places are of course not wasted; it is +much more convenient and comfortable for a pilot to hold on them than on +a spread of formless blackness that won't stay still; and money is saved +to the boat, at the same time, for she can of course make more miles +with her rudder amidships than she can with it squared across her stern +and holding her back. + +But this thing has knocked the romance out of piloting, to a large +extent. It, and some other things together, have knocked all the romance +out of it. For instance, the peril from snags is not now what it once +was. The government's snag-boats go patrolling up and down, in these +matter-of-fact days, pulling the river's teeth; they have rooted out all +the old clusters which made many localities so formidable; and they +allow no new ones to collect. Formerly, if your boat got away from you, +on a black night, and broke for the woods, it was an anxious time with +you; so was it also, when you were groping your way through solidified +darkness in a narrow chute; but all that is changed now--you flash out +your electric light, transform night into day in the twinkling of an +eye, and your perils and anxieties are at an end. Horace Bixby and +George Ritchie have charted the crossings and laid out the courses by +compass; they have invented a lamp to go with the chart, and have +patented the whole. With these helps, one may run in the fog now, with +considerable security, and with a confidence unknown in the old days. + +With these abundant beacons, the banishment of snags, plenty of daylight +in a box and ready to be turned on whenever needed, and a chart and +compass to fight the fog with, piloting, at a good stage of water, is +now nearly as safe and simple as driving stage, and is hardly more than +three times as romantic. + +And now in these new days, these days of infinite change, the Anchor +Line have raised the captain above the pilot by giving him the bigger +wages of the two. This was going far, but they have not stopped there. +They have decreed that the pilot shall remain at his post, and stand his +watch clear through, whether the boat be under way or tied up to the +shore. We, that were once the aristocrats of the river, can't go to bed +now, as we used to do, and sleep while a hundred tons of freight are +lugged aboard; no, we must sit in the pilot-house; and keep awake, too. +Verily we are being treated like a parcel of mates and engineers. The +Government has taken away the romance of our calling; the Company has +taken away its state and dignity. + +Plum Point looked as it had always looked by night, with the exception +that now there were beacons to mark the crossings, and also a lot of +other lights on the Point and along its shore; these latter glinting +from the fleet of the United States River Commission, and from a village +which the officials have built on the land for offices and for the +employees of the service. The military engineers of the Commission have +taken upon their shoulders the job of making the Mississippi over again +--a job transcended in size by only the original job of creating it. They +are building wing-dams here and there, to deflect the current; and dikes +to confine it in narrower bounds; and other dikes to make it stay there; +and for unnumbered miles along the Mississippi, they are felling the +timber-front for fifty yards back, with the purpose of shaving the bank +down to low-water mark with the slant of a house roof, and ballasting it +with stones; and in many places they have protected the wasting shores +with rows of piles. One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver-- +not aloud, but to himself--that ten thousand River Commissions, with the +mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, +cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, +and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar +its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, +and laugh at. But a discreet man will not put these things into spoken +words; for the West Point engineers have not their superiors anywhere; +they know all that can be known of their abstruse science; and so, since +they conceive that they can fetter and handcuff that river and boss him, +it is but wisdom for the unscientific man to keep still, lie low, and +wait till they do it. Captain Eads, with his jetties, has done a work +at the mouth of the Mississippi which seemed clearly impossible; so we +do not feel full confidence now to prophesy against like +impossibilities. Otherwise one would pipe out and say the Commission +might as well bully the comets in their courses and undertake to make +them behave, as try to bully the Mississippi into right and reasonable +conduct. + +I consulted Uncle Mumford concerning this and cognate matters; and I +give here the result, stenographically reported, and therefore to be +relied on as being full and correct; except that I have here and there +left out remarks which were addressed to the men, such as 'where in +blazes are you going with that barrel now?' and which seemed to me to +break the flow of the written statement, without compensating by adding +to its information or its clearness. Not that I have ventured to strike +out all such interjections; I have removed only those which were +obviously irrelevant; wherever one occurred which I felt any question +about, I have judged it safest to let it remain. + + +UNCLE MUMFORD'S IMPRESSIONS + + +Uncle Mumford said-- + +'As long as I have been mate of a steamboat--thirty years--I have +watched this river and studied it. Maybe I could have learnt more about +it at West Point, but if I believe it I wish I may be WHAT ARE YOU +SUCKING YOUR FINGERS THERE FOR ?--COLLAR THAT KAG OF NAILS! Four years +at West Point, and plenty of books and schooling, will learn a man a +good deal, I reckon, but it won't learn him the river. You turn one of +those little European rivers over to this Commission, with its hard +bottom and clear water, and it would just be a holiday job for them to +wall it, and pile it, and dike it, and tame it down, and boss it around, +and make it go wherever they wanted it to, and stay where they put it, +and do just as they said, every time. But this ain't that kind of a +river. They have started in here with big confidence, and the best +intentions in the world; but they are going to get left. What does +Ecclesiastes vii. 13 say? Says enough to knock THEIR little game +galley-west, don't it? Now you look at their methods once. There at +Devil's Island, in the Upper River, they wanted the water to go one way, +the water wanted to go another. So they put up a stone wall. But what +does the river care for a stone wall? When it got ready, it just bulged +through it. Maybe they can build another that will stay; that is, up +there--but not down here they can't. Down here in the Lower River, they +drive some pegs to turn the water away from the shore and stop it from +slicing off the bank; very well, don't it go straight over and cut +somebody else's bank? Certainly. Are they going to peg all the banks? +Why, they could buy ground and build a new Mississippi cheaper. They are +pegging Bulletin Tow-head now. It won't do any good. If the river has +got a mortgage on that island, it will foreclose, sure, pegs or no pegs. +Away down yonder, they have driven two rows of piles straight through +the middle of a dry bar half a mile long, which is forty foot out of the +water when the river is low. What do you reckon that is for? If I know, +I wish I may land in-HUMP YOURSELF, YOU SON OF AN UNDERTAKER!--OUT WITH +THAT COAL-OIL, NOW, LIVELY, LIVELY! And just look at what they are +trying to do down there at Milliken's Bend. There's been a cut-off in +that section, and Vicksburg is left out in the cold. It's a country +town now. The river strikes in below it; and a boat can't go up to the +town except in high water. Well, they are going to build wing-dams in +the bend opposite the foot of 103, and throw the water over and cut off +the foot of the island and plow down into an old ditch where the river +used to be in ancient times; and they think they can persuade the water +around that way, and get it to strike in above Vicksburg, as it used to +do, and fetch the town back into the world again. That is, they are +going to take this whole Mississippi, and twist it around and make it +run several miles UP STREAM. Well you've got to admire men that deal in +ideas of that size and can tote them around without crutches; but you +haven't got to believe they can DO such miracles, have you! And yet you +ain't absolutely obliged to believe they can't. I reckon the safe way, +where a man can afford it, is to copper the operation, and at the same +time buy enough property in Vicksburg to square you up in case they win. +Government is doing a deal for the Mississippi, now--spending loads of +money on her. When there used to be four thousand steamboats and ten +thousand acres of coal-barges, and rafts and trading scows, there wasn't +a lantern from St. Paul to New Orleans, and the snags were thicker than +bristles on a hog's back; and now when there's three dozen steamboats +and nary barge or raft, Government has snatched out all the snags, and +lit up the shores like Broadway, and a boat's as safe on the river as +she'd be in heaven. And I reckon that by the time there ain't any boats +left at all, the Commission will have the old thing all reorganized, and +dredged out, and fenced in, and tidied up, to a degree that will make +navigation just simply perfect, and absolutely safe and profitable; and +all the days will be Sundays, and all the mates will be Sunday-school +su-WHAT-IN-THE-NATION-YOU-FOOLING-AROUND-THERE-FOR, YOU SONS OF +UNRIGHTEOUSNESS, HEIRS OF PERDITION! GOING TO BE A YEAR GETTING THAT +HOGSHEAD ASHORE?' + + +During our trip to New Orleans and back, we had many conversations with +river men, planters, journalists, and officers of the River Commission-- +with conflicting and confusing results. To wit:-- + +1. Some believed in the Commission's scheme to arbitrarily and +permanently confine (and thus deepen) the channel, preserve threatened +shores, etc. + +2. Some believed that the Commission's money ought to be spent only on +building and repairing the great system of levees. + +3. Some believed that the higher you build your levee, the higher the +river's bottom will rise; and that consequently the levee system is a +mistake. + +4. Some believed in the scheme to relieve the river, in flood-time, by +turning its surplus waters off into Lake Borgne, etc. + +5. Some believed in the scheme of northern lake-reservoirs to replenish +the Mississippi in low-water seasons. + +Wherever you find a man down there who believes in one of these theories +you may turn to the next man and frame your talk upon the hypothesis +that he does not believe in that theory; and after you have had +experience, you do not take this course doubtfully, or hesitatingly, but +with the confidence of a dying murderer--converted one, I mean. For you +will have come to know, with a deep and restful certainty, that you are +not going to meet two people sick of the same theory, one right after +the other. No, there will always be one or two with the other diseases +along between. And as you proceed, you will find out one or two other +things. You will find out that there is no distemper of the lot but is +contagious; and you cannot go where it is without catching it. You may +vaccinate yourself with deterrent facts as much as you please--it will +do no good; it will seem to 'take,' but it doesn't; the moment you rub +against any one of those theorists, make up your mind that it is time to +hang out your yellow flag. + +Yes, you are his sure victim: yet his work is not all to your hurt-- +only part of it; for he is like your family physician, who comes and +cures the mumps, and leaves the scarlet-fever behind. If your man is a +Lake-Borgne-relief theorist, for instance, he will exhale a cloud of +deadly facts and statistics which will lay you out with that disease, +sure; but at the same time he will cure you of any other of the five +theories that may have previously got into your system. + +I have had all the five; and had them 'bad;' but ask me not, in mournful +numbers, which one racked me hardest, or which one numbered the biggest +sick list, for I do not know. In truth, no one can answer the latter +question. Mississippi Improvement is a mighty topic, down yonder. Every +man on the river banks, south of Cairo, talks about it every day, during +such moments as he is able to spare from talking about the war; and each +of the several chief theories has its host of zealous partisans; but, as +I have said, it is not possible to determine which cause numbers the +most recruits. + +All were agreed upon one point, however: if Congress would make a +sufficient appropriation, a colossal benefit would result. Very well; +since then the appropriation has been made--possibly a sufficient one, +certainly not too large a one. Let us hope that the prophecy will be +amply fulfilled. + +One thing will be easily granted by the reader; that an opinion from Mr. +Edward Atkinson, upon any vast national commercial matter, comes as near +ranking as authority, as can the opinion of any individual in the Union. +What he has to say about Mississippi River Improvement will be found in +the Appendix.{footnote [See Appendix B.]} + +Sometimes, half a dozen figures will reveal, as with a lightning-flash, +the importance of a subject which ten thousand labored words, with the +same purpose in view, had left at last but dim and uncertain. Here is a +case of the sort--paragraph from the 'Cincinnati Commercial'-- + + +'The towboat "Jos. B. Williams" is on her way to New Orleans with a tow +of thirty-two barges, containing six hundred thousand bushels (seventy- +six pounds to the bushel) of coal exclusive of her own fuel, being the +largest tow ever taken to New Orleans or anywhere else in the world. +Her freight bill, at 3 cents a bushel, amounts to $18,000. It would take +eighteen hundred cars, of three hundred and thirty-three bushels to the +car, to transport this amount of coal. At $10 per ton, or $100 per car, +which would be a fair price for the distance by rail, the freight bill +would amount to $180,000, or $162,000 more by rail than by river. The +tow will be taken from Pittsburg to New Orleans in fourteen or fifteen +days. It would take one hundred trains of eighteen cars to the train to +transport this one tow of six hundred thousand bushels of coal, and even +if it made the usual speed of fast freight lines, it would take one +whole summer to put it through by rail.' + + +When a river in good condition can enable one to save $162,000 and a +whole summer's time, on a single cargo, the wisdom of taking measures to +keep the river in good condition is made plain to even the uncommercial +mind. + + + + +Chapter 29 A Few Specimen Bricks + +WE passed through the Plum Point region, turned Craighead's Point, and +glided unchallenged by what was once the formidable Fort Pillow, +memorable because of the massacre perpetrated there during the war. +Massacres are sprinkled with some frequency through the histories of +several Christian nations, but this is almost the only one that can be +found in American history; perhaps it is the only one which rises to a +size correspondent to that huge and somber title. We have the 'Boston +Massacre,' where two or three people were killed; but we must bunch +Anglo-Saxon history together to find the fellow to the Fort Pillow +tragedy; and doubtless even then we must travel back to the days and the +performances of Coeur de Lion, that fine 'hero,' before we accomplish +it. + +More of the river's freaks. In times past, the channel used to strike +above Island 37, by Brandywine Bar, and down towards Island 39. +Afterward, changed its course and went from Brandywine down through +Vogelman's chute in the Devil's Elbow, to Island 39--part of this course +reversing the old order; the river running UP four or five miles, +instead of down, and cutting off, throughout, some fifteen miles of +distance. This in 1876. All that region is now called Centennial +Island. + +There is a tradition that Island 37 was one of the principal abiding +places of the once celebrated 'Murel's Gang.' This was a colossal +combination of robbers, horse-thieves, negro-stealers, and +counterfeiters, engaged in business along the river some fifty or sixty +years ago. While our journey across the country towards St. Louis was in +progress we had had no end of Jesse James and his stirring history; for +he had just been assassinated by an agent of the Governor of Missouri, +and was in consequence occupying a good deal of space in the newspapers. +Cheap histories of him were for sale by train boys. According to these, +he was the most marvelous creature of his kind that had ever existed. It +was a mistake. Murel was his equal in boldness; in pluck; in rapacity; +in cruelty, brutality, heartlessness, treachery, and in general and +comprehensive vileness and shamelessness; and very much his superior in +some larger aspects. James was a retail rascal; Murel, wholesale. +James's modest genius dreamed of no loftier flight than the planning of +raids upon cars, coaches, and country banks; Murel projected negro +insurrections and the capture of New Orleans; and furthermore, on +occasion, this Murel could go into a pulpit and edify the congregation. +What are James and his half-dozen vulgar rascals compared with this +stately old-time criminal, with his sermons, his meditated insurrections +and city-captures, and his majestic following of ten hundred men, sworn +to do his evil will! + +Here is a paragraph or two concerning this big operator, from a now +forgotten book which was published half a century ago-- + +He appears to have been a most dexterous as well as consummate villain. +When he traveled, his usual disguise was that of an itinerant preacher; +and it is said that his discourses were very 'soul-moving'--interesting +the hearers so much that they forgot to look after their horses, which +were carried away by his confederates while he was preaching. But the +stealing of horses in one State, and selling them in another, was but a +small portion of their business; the most lucrative was the enticing +slaves to run away from their masters, that they might sell them in +another quarter. This was arranged as follows; they would tell a negro +that if he would run away from his master, and allow them to sell him, +he should receive a portion of the money paid for him, and that upon his +return to them a second time they would send him to a free State, where +he would be safe. The poor wretches complied with this request, hoping +to obtain money and freedom; they would be sold to another master, and +run away again, to their employers; sometimes they would be sold in this +manner three or four times, until they had realized three or four +thousand dollars by them; but as, after this, there was fear of +detection, the usual custom was to get rid of the only witness that +could be produced against them, which was the negro himself, by +murdering him, and throwing his body into the Mississippi. Even if it +was established that they had stolen a negro, before he was murdered, +they were always prepared to evade punishment; for they concealed the +negro who had run away, until he was advertised, and a reward offered to +any man who would catch him. An advertisement of this kind warrants the +person to take the property, if found. And then the negro becomes a +property in trust, when, therefore, they sold the negro, it only became +a breach of trust, not stealing; and for a breach of trust, the owner of +the property can only have redress by a civil action, which was useless, +as the damages were never paid. It may be inquired, how it was that +Murel escaped Lynch law under such circumstances This will be easily +understood when it is stated that he had MORE THAN A THOUSAND SWORN +CONFEDERATES, all ready at a moment's notice to support any of the gang +who might be in trouble. The names of all the principal confederates of +Murel were obtained from himself, in a manner which I shall presently +explain. The gang was composed of two classes: the Heads or Council, as +they were called, who planned and concerted, but seldom acted; they +amounted to about four hundred. The other class were the active agents, +and were termed strikers, and amounted to about six hundred and fifty. +These were the tools in the hands of the others; they ran all the risk, +and received but a small portion of the money; they were in the power of +the leaders of the gang, who would sacrifice them at any time by handing +them over to justice, or sinking their bodies in the Mississippi. The +general rendezvous of this gang of miscreants was on the Arkansas side +of the river, where they concealed their negroes in the morasses and +cane-brakes. + +The depredations of this extensive combination were severely felt; but +so well were their plans arranged, that although Murel, who was always +active, was everywhere suspected, there was no proof to be obtained. It +so happened, however, that a young man of the name of Stewart, who was +looking after two slaves which Murel had decoyed away, fell in with him +and obtained his confidence, took the oath, and was admitted into the +gang as one of the General Council. By this means all was discovered; +for Stewart turned traitor, although he had taken the oath, and having +obtained every information, exposed the whole concern, the names of all +the parties, and finally succeeded in bringing home sufficient evidence +against Murel, to procure his conviction and sentence to the +Penitentiary (Murel was sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment); so +many people who were supposed to be honest, and bore a respectable name +in the different States, were found to be among the list of the Grand +Council as published by Stewart, that every attempt was made to throw +discredit upon his assertions--his character was vilified, and more than +one attempt was made to assassinate him. He was obliged to quit the +Southern States in consequence. It is, however, now well ascertained to +have been all true; and although some blame Mr. Stewart for having +violated his oath, they no longer attempt to deny that his revelations +were correct. I will quote one or two portions of Murel's confessions to +Mr. Stewart, made to him when they were journeying together. I ought to +have observed, that the ultimate intentions of Murel and his associates +were, by his own account, on a very extended scale; having no less an +object in view than RAISING THE BLACKS AGAINST THE WHITES, TAKING +POSSESSION OF, AND PLUNDERING NEW ORLEANS, AND MAKING THEMSELVES +POSSESSORS OF THE TERRITORY. The following are a few extracts:-- + +'I collected all my friends about New Orleans at one of our friends' +houses in that place, and we sat in council three days before we got all +our plans to our notion; we then determined to undertake the rebellion +at every hazard, and make as many friends as we could for that purpose. +Every man's business being assigned him, I started to Natchez on foot, +having sold my horse in New Orleans,--with the intention of stealing +another after I started. I walked four days, and no opportunity offered +for me to get a horse. The fifth day, about twelve, I had become tired, +and stopped at a creek to get some water and rest a little. While I was +sitting on a log, looking down the road the way that I had come, a man +came in sight riding on a good-looking horse. The very moment I saw +him, I was determined to have his horse, if he was in the garb of a +traveler. He rode up, and I saw from his equipage that he was a +traveler. I arose and drew an elegant rifle pistol on him and ordered +him to dismount. He did so, and I took his horse by the bridle and +pointed down the creek, and ordered him to walk before me. He went a +few hundred yards and stopped. I hitched his horse, and then made him +undress himself, all to his shirt and drawers, and ordered him to turn +his back to me. He said, 'If you are determined to kill me, let me have +time to pray before I die,' I told him I had no time to hear him pray. +He turned around and dropped on his knees, and I shot him through the +back of the head. I ripped open his belly and took out his entrails, and +sunk him in the creek. I then searched his pockets, and found four +hundred dollars and thirty-seven cents, and a number of papers that I +did not take time to examine. I sunk the pocket-book and papers and his +hat, in the creek. His boots were brand-new, and fitted me genteelly; +and I put them on and sunk my old shoes in the creek, to atone for them. +I rolled up his clothes and put them into his portmanteau, as they were +brand-new cloth of the best quality. I mounted as fine a horse as ever +I straddled, and directed my course for Natchez in much better style +than I had been for the last five days. + +'Myself and a fellow by the name of Crenshaw gathered four good horses +and started for Georgia. We got in company with a young South +Carolinian just before we got to Cumberland Mountain, and Crenshaw soon +knew all about his business. He had been to Tennessee to buy a drove of +hogs, but when he got there pork was dearer than he calculated, and he +declined purchasing. We concluded he was a prize. Crenshaw winked at +me; I understood his idea. Crenshaw had traveled the road before, but I +never had; we had traveled several miles on the mountain, when he passed +near a great precipice; just before we passed it Crenshaw asked me for +my whip, which had a pound of lead in the butt; I handed it to him, and +he rode up by the side of the South Carolinian, and gave him a blow on +the side of the head and tumbled him from his horse; we lit from our +horses and fingered his pockets; we got twelve hundred and sixty-two +dollars. Crenshaw said he knew a place to hide him, and he gathered him +under his arms, and I by his feet, and conveyed him to a deep crevice in +the brow of the precipice, and tumbled him into it, and he went out of +sight; we then tumbled in his saddle, and took his horse with us, which +was worth two hundred dollars. + +'We were detained a few days, and during that time our friend went to a +little village in the neighborhood and saw the negro advertised (a negro +in our possession), and a description of the two men of whom he had been +purchased, and giving his suspicions of the men. It was rather squally +times, but any port in a storm: we took the negro that night on the bank +of a creek which runs by the farm of our friend, and Crenshaw shot him +through the head. We took out his entrails and sunk him in the creek. + +'He had sold the other negro the third time on Arkansaw River for +upwards of five hundred dollars; and then stole him and delivered him +into the hand of his friend, who conducted him to a swamp, and veiled +the tragic scene, and got the last gleanings and sacred pledge of +secrecy; as a game of that kind will not do unless it ends in a mystery +to all but the fraternity. He sold the negro, first and last, for nearly +two thousand dollars, and then put him for ever out of the reach of all +pursuers; and they can never graze him unless they can find the negro; +and that they cannot do, for his carcass has fed many a tortoise and +catfish before this time, and the frogs have sung this many a long day +to the silent repose of his skeleton.' + +We were approaching Memphis, in front of which city, and witnessed by +its people, was fought the most famous of the river battles of the Civil +War. Two men whom I had served under, in my river days, took part in +that fight: Mr. Bixby, head pilot of the Union fleet, and Montgomery, +Commodore of the Confederate fleet. Both saw a great deal of active +service during the war, and achieved high reputations for pluck and +capacity. + +As we neared Memphis, we began to cast about for an excuse to stay with +the 'Gold Dust' to the end of her course--Vicksburg. We were so +pleasantly situated, that we did not wish to make a change. I had an +errand of considerable importance to do at Napoleon, Arkansas, but +perhaps I could manage it without quitting the 'Gold Dust.' I said as +much; so we decided to stick to present quarters. + +The boat was to tarry at Memphis till ten the next morning. It is a +beautiful city, nobly situated on a commanding bluff overlooking the +river. The streets are straight and spacious, though not paved in a way +to incite distempered admiration. No, the admiration must be reserved +for the town's sewerage system, which is called perfect; a recent +reform, however, for it was just the other way, up to a few years ago--a +reform resulting from the lesson taught by a desolating visitation of +the yellow-fever. In those awful days the people were swept off by +hundreds, by thousands; and so great was the reduction caused by flight +and by death together, that the population was diminished three-fourths, +and so remained for a time. Business stood nearly still, and the streets +bore an empty Sunday aspect. + +Here is a picture of Memphis, at that disastrous time, drawn by a German +tourist who seems to have been an eye-witness of the scenes which he +describes. It is from Chapter VII, of his book, just published, in +Leipzig, 'Mississippi-Fahrten, von Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg.'-- + +'In August the yellow-fever had reached its extremest height. Daily, +hundreds fell a sacrifice to the terrible epidemic. The city was become +a mighty graveyard, two-thirds of the population had deserted the place, +and only the poor, the aged and the sick, remained behind, a sure prey +for the insidious enemy. The houses were closed: little lamps burned in +front of many--a sign that here death had entered. Often, several lay +dead in a single house; from the windows hung black crape. The stores +were shut up, for their owners were gone away or dead. + +'Fearful evil! In the briefest space it struck down and swept away even +the most vigorous victim. A slight indisposition, then an hour of +fever, then the hideous delirium, then--the Yellow Death! On the street +corners, and in the squares, lay sick men, suddenly overtaken by the +disease; and even corpses, distorted and rigid. Food failed. Meat +spoiled in a few hours in the fetid and pestiferous air, and turned +black. + +'Fearful clamors issue from many houses; then after a season they cease, +and all is still: noble, self-sacrificing men come with the coffin, +nail it up, and carry it away, to the graveyard. In the night stillness +reigns. Only the physicians and the hearses hurry through the streets; +and out of the distance, at intervals, comes the muffled thunder of the +railway train, which with the speed of the wind, and as if hunted by +furies, flies by the pest-ridden city without halting.' + +But there is life enough there now. The population exceeds forty +thousand and is augmenting, and trade is in a flourishing condition. We +drove about the city; visited the park and the sociable horde of +squirrels there; saw the fine residences, rose-clad and in other ways +enticing to the eye; and got a good breakfast at the hotel. + +A thriving place is the Good Samaritan City of the Mississippi: has a +great wholesale jobbing trade; foundries, machine shops; and +manufactories of wagons, carriages, and cotton-seed oil; and is shortly +to have cotton mills and elevators. + +Her cotton receipts reached five hundred thousand bales last year--an +increase of sixty thousand over the year before. Out from her healthy +commercial heart issue five trunk lines of railway; and a sixth is being +added. + +This is a very different Memphis from the one which the vanished and +unremembered procession of foreign tourists used to put into their books +long time ago. In the days of the now forgotten but once renowned and +vigorously hated Mrs. Trollope, Memphis seems to have consisted mainly +of one long street of log-houses, with some outlying cabins sprinkled +around rearward toward the woods; and now and then a pig, and no end of +mud. That was fifty-five years ago. She stopped at the hotel. Plainly +it was not the one which gave us our breakfast. She says-- + +'The table was laid for fifty persons, and was nearly full. They ate in +perfect silence, and with such astonishing rapidity that their dinner +was over literally before ours was begun; the only sounds heard were +those produced by the knives and forks, with the unceasing chorus of +coughing, ETC.' + +'Coughing, etc.' The 'etc.' stands for an unpleasant word there, a +word which she does not always charitably cover up, but sometimes +prints. You will find it in the following description of a steamboat +dinner which she ate in company with a lot of aristocratic planters; +wealthy, well-born, ignorant swells they were, tinselled with the usual +harmless military and judicial titles of that old day of cheap shams and +windy pretense-- + +'The total want of all the usual courtesies of the table; the voracious +rapidity with which the viands were seized and devoured; the strange +uncouth phrases and pronunciation; the loathsome spitting, from the +contamination of which it was absolutely impossible to protect our +dresses; the frightful manner of feeding with their knives, till the +whole blade seemed to enter into the mouth; and the still more frightful +manner of cleaning the teeth afterward with a pocket knife, soon forced +us to feel that we were not surrounded by the generals, colonels, and +majors of the old world; and that the dinner hour was to be anything +rather than an hour of enjoyment.' + + + + +Chapter 30 Sketches by the Way + +IT was a big river, below Memphis; banks brimming full, everywhere, and +very frequently more than full, the waters pouring out over the land, +flooding the woods and fields for miles into the interior; and in +places, to a depth of fifteen feet; signs, all about, of men's hard work +gone to ruin, and all to be done over again, with straitened means and a +weakened courage. A melancholy picture, and a continuous one;--hundreds +of miles of it. Sometimes the beacon lights stood in water three feet +deep, in the edge of dense forests which extended for miles without +farm, wood-yard, clearing, or break of any kind; which meant that the +keeper of the light must come in a skiff a great distance to discharge +his trust,--and often in desperate weather. Yet I was told that the work +is faithfully performed, in all weathers; and not always by men, +sometimes by women, if the man is sick or absent. The Government +furnishes oil, and pays ten or fifteen dollars a month for the lighting +and tending. A Government boat distributes oil and pays wages once a +month. + +The Ship Island region was as woodsy and tenantless as ever. The island +has ceased to be an island; has joined itself compactly to the main +shore, and wagons travel, now, where the steamboats used to navigate. +No signs left of the wreck of the 'Pennsylvania.' Some farmer will turn +up her bones with his plow one day, no doubt, and be surprised. + +We were getting down now into the migrating negro region. These poor +people could never travel when they were slaves; so they make up for the +privation now. They stay on a plantation till the desire to travel +seizes them; then they pack up, hail a steamboat, and clear out. Not +for any particular place; no, nearly any place will answer; they only +want to be moving. The amount of money on hand will answer the rest of +the conundrum for them. If it will take them fifty miles, very well; let +it be fifty. If not, a shorter flight will do. + +During a couple of days, we frequently answered these hails. Sometimes +there was a group of high-water-stained, tumble-down cabins, populous +with colored folk, and no whites visible; with grassless patches of dry +ground here and there; a few felled trees, with skeleton cattle, mules, +and horses, eating the leaves and gnawing the bark--no other food for +them in the flood-wasted land. Sometimes there was a single lonely +landing-cabin; near it the colored family that had hailed us; little and +big, old and young, roosting on the scant pile of household goods; these +consisting of a rusty gun, some bed-ticks, chests, tinware, stools, a +crippled looking-glass, a venerable arm-chair, and six or eight base- +born and spiritless yellow curs, attached to the family by strings. They +must have their dogs; can't go without their dogs. Yet the dogs are +never willing; they always object; so, one after another, in ridiculous +procession, they are dragged aboard; all four feet braced and sliding +along the stage, head likely to be pulled off; but the tugger marching +determinedly forward, bending to his work, with the rope over his +shoulder for better purchase. Sometimes a child is forgotten and left on +the bank; but never a dog. + +The usual river-gossip going on in the pilot-house. Island No. 63--an +island with a lovely 'chute,' or passage, behind it in the former times. +They said Jesse Jamieson, in the 'Skylark,' had a visiting pilot with +him one trip--a poor old broken-down, superannuated fellow--left him at +the wheel, at the foot of 63, to run off the watch. The ancient mariner +went up through the chute, and down the river outside; and up the chute +and down the river again; and yet again and again; and handed the boat +over to the relieving pilot, at the end of three hours of honest +endeavor, at the same old foot of the island where he had originally +taken the wheel! A darkey on shore who had observed the boat go by, +about thirteen times, said, 'clar to gracious, I wouldn't be s'prised if +dey's a whole line o' dem Sk'ylarks!' + +Anecdote illustrative of influence of reputation in the changing of +opinion. The 'Eclipse' was renowned for her swiftness. One day she +passed along; an old darkey on shore, absorbed in his own matters, did +not notice what steamer it was. Presently someone asked-- + +'Any boat gone up?' + +'Yes, sah.' + +'Was she going fast?' + +'Oh, so-so--loafin' along.' + +'Now, do you know what boat that was?' + +'No, sah.' + +'Why, uncle, that was the "Eclipse."' + +'No! Is dat so? Well, I bet it was--cause she jes' went by here a- +SPARKLIN'!' + +Piece of history illustrative of the violent style of some of the people +down along here, During the early weeks of high water, A's fence rails +washed down on B's ground, and B's rails washed up in the eddy and +landed on A's ground. A said, 'Let the thing remain so; I will use your +rails, and you use mine.' But B objected--wouldn't have it so. One +day, A came down on B's ground to get his rails. B said, 'I'll kill +you!' and proceeded for him with his revolver. A said, 'I'm not armed.' +So B, who wished to do only what was right, threw down his revolver; +then pulled a knife, and cut A's throat all around, but gave his +principal attention to the front, and so failed to sever the jugular. +Struggling around, A managed to get his hands on the discarded revolver, +and shot B dead with it--and recovered from his own injuries. + +Further gossip;--after which, everybody went below to get afternoon +coffee, and left me at the wheel, alone, Something presently reminded me +of our last hour in St. Louis, part of which I spent on this boat's +hurricane deck, aft. I was joined there by a stranger, who dropped into +conversation with me--a brisk young fellow, who said he was born in a +town in the interior of Wisconsin, and had never seen a steamboat until +a week before. Also said that on the way down from La Crosse he had +inspected and examined his boat so diligently and with such passionate +interest that he had mastered the whole thing from stem to rudder-blade. +Asked me where I was from. I answered, New England. 'Oh, a Yank!' said +he; and went chatting straight along, without waiting for assent or +denial. He immediately proposed to take me all over the boat and tell me +the names of her different parts, and teach me their uses. Before I +could enter protest or excuse, he was already rattling glibly away at +his benevolent work; and when I perceived that he was misnaming the +things, and inhospitably amusing himself at the expense of an innocent +stranger from a far country, I held my peace, and let him have his way. +He gave me a world of misinformation; and the further he went, the wider +his imagination expanded, and the more he enjoyed his cruel work of +deceit. Sometimes, after palming off a particularly fantastic and +outrageous lie upon me, he was so 'full of laugh' that he had to step +aside for a minute, upon one pretext or another, to keep me from +suspecting. I staid faithfully by him until his comedy was finished. +Then he remarked that he had undertaken to 'learn' me all about a +steamboat, and had done it; but that if he had overlooked anything, just +ask him and he would supply the lack. 'Anything about this boat that you +don't know the name of or the purpose of, you come to me and I'll tell +you.' I said I would, and took my departure; disappeared, and approached +him from another quarter, whence he could not see me. There he sat, all +alone, doubling himself up and writhing this way and that, in the throes +of unappeasable laughter. He must have made himself sick; for he was not +publicly visible afterward for several days. Meantime, the episode +dropped out of my mind. + +The thing that reminded me of it now, when I was alone at the wheel, was +the spectacle of this young fellow standing in the pilot-house door, +with the knob in his hand, silently and severely inspecting me. I don't +know when I have seen anybody look so injured as he did. He did not say +anything--simply stood there and looked; reproachfully looked and +pondered. Finally he shut the door, and started away; halted on the +texas a minute; came slowly back and stood in the door again, with that +grieved look in his face; gazed upon me awhile in meek rebuke, then +said-- + +'You let me learn you all about a steamboat, didn't you?' + +'Yes,' I confessed. + +'Yes, you did--DIDN'T you?' + +'Yes.' + +'You are the feller that--that--' + +Language failed. Pause--impotent struggle for further words--then he +gave it up, choked out a deep, strong oath, and departed for good. +Afterward I saw him several times below during the trip; but he was +cold--would not look at me. Idiot, if he had not been in such a sweat +to play his witless practical joke upon me, in the beginning, I would +have persuaded his thoughts into some other direction, and saved him +from committing that wanton and silly impoliteness. + +I had myself called with the four o'clock watch, mornings, for one +cannot see too many summer sunrises on the Mississippi. They are +enchanting. First, there is the eloquence of silence; for a deep hush +broods everywhere. Next, there is the haunting sense of loneliness, +isolation, remoteness from the worry and bustle of the world. The dawn +creeps in stealthily; the solid walls of black forest soften to gray, +and vast stretches of the river open up and reveal themselves; the water +is glass-smooth, gives off spectral little wreaths of white mist, there +is not the faintest breath of wind, nor stir of leaf; the tranquillity +is profound and infinitely satisfying. Then a bird pipes up, another +follows, and soon the pipings develop into a jubilant riot of music. +You see none of the birds; you simply move through an atmosphere of song +which seems to sing itself. When the light has become a little +stronger, you have one of the fairest and softest pictures imaginable. +You have the intense green of the massed and crowded foliage near by; +you see it paling shade by shade in front of you; upon the next +projecting cape, a mile off or more, the tint has lightened to the +tender young green of spring; the cape beyond that one has almost lost +color, and the furthest one, miles away under the horizon, sleeps upon +the water a mere dim vapor, and hardly separable from the sky above it +and about it. And all this stretch of river is a mirror, and you have +the shadowy reflections of the leafage and the curving shores and the +receding capes pictured in it. Well, that is all beautiful; soft and +rich and beautiful; and when the sun gets well up, and distributes a +pink flush here and a powder of gold yonder and a purple haze where it +will yield the best effect, you grant that you have seen something that +is worth remembering. + +We had the Kentucky Bend country in the early morning--scene of a +strange and tragic accident in the old times, Captain Poe had a small +stern-wheel boat, for years the home of himself and his wife. One night +the boat struck a snag in the head of Kentucky Bend, and sank with +astonishing suddenness; water already well above the cabin floor when +the captain got aft. So he cut into his wife's state-room from above +with an ax; she was asleep in the upper berth, the roof a flimsier one +than was supposed; the first blow crashed down through the rotten boards +and clove her skull. + +This bend is all filled up now--result of a cut-off; and the same agent +has taken the great and once much-frequented Walnut Bend, and set it +away back in a solitude far from the accustomed track of passing +steamers. + +Helena we visited, and also a town I had not heard of before, it being +of recent birth--Arkansas City. It was born of a railway; the Little +Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railroad touches the river there. We +asked a passenger who belonged there what sort of a place it was. +'Well,' said he, after considering, and with the air of one who wishes +to take time and be accurate, 'It's a hell of a place.' A description +which was photographic for exactness. There were several rows and +clusters of shabby frame-houses, and a supply of mud sufficient to +insure the town against a famine in that article for a hundred years; +for the overflow had but lately subsided. There were stagnant ponds in +the streets, here and there, and a dozen rude scows were scattered +about, lying aground wherever they happened to have been when the waters +drained off and people could do their visiting and shopping on foot once +more. Still, it is a thriving place, with a rich country behind it, an +elevator in front of it, and also a fine big mill for the manufacture of +cotton-seed oil. I had never seen this kind of a mill before. + +Cotton-seed was comparatively valueless in my time; but it is worth $12 +or $13 a ton now, and none of it is thrown away. The oil made from it is +colorless, tasteless, and almost if not entirely odorless. It is +claimed that it can, by proper manipulation, be made to resemble and +perform the office of any and all oils, and be produced at a cheaper +rate than the cheapest of the originals. Sagacious people shipped it to +Italy, doctored it, labeled it, and brought it back as olive oil. This +trade grew to be so formidable that Italy was obliged to put a +prohibitory impost upon it to keep it from working serious injury to her +oil industry. + +Helena occupies one of the prettiest situations on the Mississippi. Her +perch is the last, the southernmost group of hills which one sees on +that side of the river. In its normal condition it is a pretty town; +but the flood (or possibly the seepage) had lately been ravaging it; +whole streets of houses had been invaded by the muddy water, and the +outsides of the buildings were still belted with a broad stain extending +upwards from the foundations. Stranded and discarded scows lay all +about; plank sidewalks on stilts four feet high were still standing; the +board sidewalks on the ground level were loose and ruinous,--a couple of +men trotting along them could make a blind man think a cavalry charge +was coming; everywhere the mud was black and deep, and in many places +malarious pools of stagnant water were standing. A Mississippi +inundation is the next most wasting and desolating infliction to a fire. + +We had an enjoyable time here, on this sunny Sunday: two full hours' +liberty ashore while the boat discharged freight. In the back streets +but few white people were visible, but there were plenty of colored +folk--mainly women and girls; and almost without exception upholstered +in bright new clothes of swell and elaborate style and cut--a glaring +and hilarious contrast to the mournful mud and the pensive puddles. + +Helena is the second town in Arkansas, in point of population--which is +placed at five thousand. The country about it is exceptionally +productive. Helena has a good cotton trade; handles from forty to sixty +thousand bales annually; she has a large lumber and grain commerce; has +a foundry, oil mills, machine shops and wagon factories--in brief has +$1,000,000 invested in manufacturing industries. She has two railways, +and is the commercial center of a broad and prosperous region. Her gross +receipts of money, annually, from all sources, are placed by the New +Orleans 'Times-Democrat' at $4,000,000. + + + + +Chapter 31 A Thumb-print and What Came of It + +WE were approaching Napoleon, Arkansas. So I began to think about my +errand there. Time, noonday; and bright and sunny. This was bad--not +best, anyway; for mine was not (preferably) a noonday kind of errand. +The more I thought, the more that fact pushed itself upon me--now in one +form, now in another. Finally, it took the form of a distinct question: +is it good common sense to do the errand in daytime, when, by a little +sacrifice of comfort and inclination, you can have night for it, and no +inquisitive eyes around. This settled it. Plain question and plain +answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities. + +I got my friends into my stateroom, and said I was sorry to create +annoyance and disappointment, but that upon reflection it really seemed +best that we put our luggage ashore and stop over at Napoleon. Their +disapproval was prompt and loud; their language mutinous. Their main +argument was one which has always been the first to come to the surface, +in such cases, since the beginning of time: 'But you decided and AGREED +to stick to this boat, etc.; as if, having determined to do an unwise +thing, one is thereby bound to go ahead and make TWO unwise things of +it, by carrying out that determination. + +I tried various mollifying tactics upon them, with reasonably good +success: under which encouragement, I increased my efforts; and, to show +them that I had not created this annoying errand, and was in no way to +blame for it, I presently drifted into its history--substantially as +follows: + +Toward the end of last year, I spent a few months in Munich, Bavaria. In +November I was living in Fraulein Dahlweiner's PENSION, 1a, Karlstrasse; +but my working quarters were a mile from there, in the house of a widow +who supported herself by taking lodgers. She and her two young children +used to drop in every morning and talk German to me--by request. One +day, during a ramble about the city, I visited one of the two +establishments where the Government keeps and watches corpses until the +doctors decide that they are permanently dead, and not in a trance +state. It was a grisly place, that spacious room. There were thirty-six +corpses of adults in sight, stretched on their backs on slightly slanted +boards, in three long rows--all of them with wax-white, rigid faces, and +all of them wrapped in white shrouds. Along the sides of the room were +deep alcoves, like bay windows; and in each of these lay several marble- +visaged babes, utterly hidden and buried under banks of fresh flowers, +all but their faces and crossed hands. Around a finger of each of these +fifty still forms, both great and small, was a ring; and from the ring a +wire led to the ceiling, and thence to a bell in a watch-room yonder, +where, day and night, a watchman sits always alert and ready to spring +to the aid of any of that pallid company who, waking out of death, shall +make a movement--for any, even the slightest, movement will twitch the +wire and ring that fearful bell. I imagined myself a death-sentinel +drowsing there alone, far in the dragging watches of some wailing, gusty +night, and having in a twinkling all my body stricken to quivering jelly +by the sudden clamor of that awful summons! So I inquired about this +thing; asked what resulted usually? if the watchman died, and the +restored corpse came and did what it could to make his last moments +easy. But I was rebuked for trying to feed an idle and frivolous +curiosity in so solemn and so mournful a place; and went my way with a +humbled crest. + +Next morning I was telling the widow my adventure, when she exclaimed-- + +'Come with me! I have a lodger who shall tell you all you want to know. +He has been a night-watchman there.' + +He was a living man, but he did not look it. He was abed, and had his +head propped high on pillows; his face was wasted and colorless, his +deep-sunken eyes were shut; his hand, lying on his breast, was talon- +like, it was so bony and long-fingered. The widow began her introduction +of me. The man's eyes opened slowly, and glittered wickedly out from +the twilight of their caverns; he frowned a black frown; he lifted his +lean hand and waved us peremptorily away. But the widow kept straight +on, till she had got out the fact that I was a stranger and an American. +The man's face changed at once; brightened, became even eager--and the +next moment he and I were alone together. + +I opened up in cast-iron German; he responded in quite flexible English; +thereafter we gave the German language a permanent rest. + +This consumptive and I became good friends. I visited him every day, +and we talked about everything. At least, about everything but wives +and children. Let anybody's wife or anybody's child be mentioned, and +three things always followed: the most gracious and loving and tender +light glimmered in the man's eyes for a moment; faded out the next, and +in its place came that deadly look which had flamed there the first time +I ever saw his lids unclose; thirdly, he ceased from speech, there and +then for that day; lay silent, abstracted, and absorbed; apparently +heard nothing that I said; took no notice of my good-byes, and plainly +did not know, by either sight or hearing, when I left the room. + +When I had been this Karl Ritter's daily and sole intimate during two +months, he one day said, abruptly-- + +'I will tell you my story.' + +A DYING MAN S CONFESSION + +Then he went on as follows:-- + +I have never given up, until now. But now I have given up. I am going +to die. I made up my mind last night that it must be, and very soon, +too. You say you are going to revisit your river, by-and-bye, when you +find opportunity. Very well; that, together with a certain strange +experience which fell to my lot last night, determines me to tell you my +history--for you will see Napoleon, Arkansas; and for my sake you will +stop there, and do a certain thing for me--a thing which you will +willingly undertake after you shall have heard my narrative. + +Let us shorten the story wherever we can, for it will need it, being +long. You already know how I came to go to America, and how I came to +settle in that lonely region in the South. But you do not know that I +had a wife. My wife was young, beautiful, loving, and oh, so divinely +good and blameless and gentle! And our little girl was her mother in +miniature. It was the happiest of happy households. + +One night--it was toward the close of the war--I woke up out of a sodden +lethargy, and found myself bound and gagged, and the air tainted with +chloroform! I saw two men in the room, and one was saying to the other, +in a hoarse whisper, 'I told her I would, if she made a noise, and as +for the child--' + +The other man interrupted in a low, half-crying voice-- + +'You said we'd only gag them and rob them, not hurt them; or I wouldn't +have come.' + +'Shut up your whining; had to change the plan when they waked up; you +done all you could to protect them, now let that satisfy you; come, help +rummage.' + +Both men were masked, and wore coarse, ragged 'nigger' clothes; they had +a bull's-eye lantern, and by its light I noticed that the gentler robber +had no thumb on his right hand. They rummaged around my poor cabin for a +moment; the head bandit then said, in his stage whisper-- + +'It's a waste of time--he shall tell where it's hid. Undo his gag, and +revive him up.' + +The other said-- + +'All right--provided no clubbing.' + +'No clubbing it is, then--provided he keeps still.' + +They approached me; just then there was a sound outside; a sound of +voices and trampling hoofs; the robbers held their breath and listened; +the sounds came slowly nearer and nearer; then came a shout-- + +'HELLO, the house! Show a light, we want water.' + +'The captain's voice, by G--!' said the stage-whispering ruffian, and +both robbers fled by the way of the back door, shutting off their +bull's-eye as they ran. + +The strangers shouted several times more, then rode by--there seemed to +be a dozen of the horses--and I heard nothing more. + +I struggled, but could not free myself from my bonds. I tried to speak, +but the gag was effective; I could not make a sound. I listened for my +wife's voice and my child's--listened long and intently, but no sound +came from the other end of the room where their bed was. This silence +became more and more awful, more and more ominous, every moment. Could +you have endured an hour of it, do you think? Pity me, then, who had to +endure three. Three hours--? it was three ages! Whenever the clock +struck, it seemed as if years had gone by since I had heard it last. +All this time I was struggling in my bonds; and at last, about dawn, I +got myself free, and rose up and stretched my stiff limbs. I was able +to distinguish details pretty well. The floor was littered with things +thrown there by the robbers during their search for my savings. The +first object that caught my particular attention was a document of mine +which I had seen the rougher of the two ruffians glance at and then cast +away. It had blood on it! I staggered to the other end of the room. Oh, +poor unoffending, helpless ones, there they lay, their troubles ended, +mine begun! + +Did I appeal to the law--I? Does it quench the pauper's thirst if the +King drink for him? Oh, no, no, no--I wanted no impertinent +interference of the law. Laws and the gallows could not pay the debt +that was owing to me! Let the laws leave the matter in my hands, and +have no fears: I would find the debtor and collect the debt. How +accomplish this, do you say? How accomplish it, and feel so sure about +it, when I had neither seen the robbers' faces, nor heard their natural +voices, nor had any idea who they might be? Nevertheless, I WAS sure-- +quite sure, quite confident. I had a clue--a clue which you would not +have valued--a clue which would not have greatly helped even a +detective, since he would lack the secret of how to apply it. I shall +come to that, presently--you shall see. Let us go on, now, taking things +in their due order. There was one circumstance which gave me a slant in +a definite direction to begin with: Those two robbers were manifestly +soldiers in tramp disguise; and not new to military service, but old in +it--regulars, perhaps; they did not acquire their soldierly attitude, +gestures, carriage, in a day, nor a month, nor yet in a year. So I +thought, but said nothing. And one of them had said, 'the captain's +voice, by G--!'--the one whose life I would have. Two miles away, +several regiments were in camp, and two companies of U.S. cavalry. When +I learned that Captain Blakely, of Company C had passed our way, that +night, with an escort, I said nothing, but in that company I resolved to +seek my man. In conversation I studiously and persistently described +the robbers as tramps, camp followers; and among this class the people +made useless search, none suspecting the soldiers but me. + +Working patiently, by night, in my desolated home, I made a disguise for +myself out of various odds and ends of clothing; in the nearest village +I bought a pair of blue goggles. By-and-bye, when the military camp +broke up, and Company C was ordered a hundred miles north, to Napoleon, +I secreted my small hoard of money in my belt, and took my departure in +the night. When Company C arrived in Napoleon, I was already there. Yes, +I was there, with a new trade--fortune-teller. Not to seem partial, I +made friends and told fortunes among all the companies garrisoned there; +but I gave Company C the great bulk of my attentions. I made myself +limitlessly obliging to these particular men; they could ask me no +favor, put upon me no risk, which I would decline. I became the willing +butt of their jokes; this perfected my popularity; I became a favorite. + +I early found a private who lacked a thumb--what joy it was to me! And +when I found that he alone, of all the company, had lost a thumb, my +last misgiving vanished; I was SURE I was on the right track. This +man's name was Kruger, a German. There were nine Germans in the company. +I watched, to see who might be his intimates; but he seemed to have no +especial intimates. But I was his intimate; and I took care to make the +intimacy grow. Sometimes I so hungered for my revenge that I could +hardly restrain myself from going on my knees and begging him to point +out the man who had murdered my wife and child; but I managed to bridle +my tongue. I bided my time, and went on telling fortunes, as +opportunity offered. + +My apparatus was simple: a little red paint and a bit of white paper. I +painted the ball of the client's thumb, took a print of it on the paper, +studied it that night, and revealed his fortune to him next day. What +was my idea in this nonsense? It was this: When I was a youth, I knew +an old Frenchman who had been a prison-keeper for thirty years, and he +told me that there was one thing about a person which never changed, +from the cradle to the grave--the lines in the ball of the thumb; and he +said that these lines were never exactly alike in the thumbs of any two +human beings. In these days, we photograph the new criminal, and hang +his picture in the Rogues' Gallery for future reference; but that +Frenchman, in his day, used to take a print of the ball of a new +prisoner's thumb and put that away for future reference. He always said +that pictures were no good--future disguises could make them useless; +'The thumb's the only sure thing,' said he; 'you can't disguise that.' +And he used to prove his theory, too, on my friends and acquaintances; +it always succeeded. + +I went on telling fortunes. Every night I shut myself in, all alone, +and studied the day's thumb-prints with a magnifying-glass. Imagine the +devouring eagerness with which I pored over those mazy red spirals, with +that document by my side which bore the right-hand thumb-and-finger- +marks of that unknown murderer, printed with the dearest blood--to me-- +that was ever shed on this earth! And many and many a time I had to +repeat the same old disappointed remark, 'will they NEVER correspond!' + +But my reward came at last. It was the print of the thumb of the forty- +third man of Company C whom I had experimented on--Private Franz Adler. +An hour before, I did not know the murderer's name, or voice, or figure, +or face, or nationality; but now I knew all these things! I believed I +might feel sure; the Frenchman's repeated demonstrations being so good a +warranty. Still, there was a way to MAKE sure. I had an impression of +Kruger's left thumb. In the morning I took him aside when he was off +duty; and when we were out of sight and hearing of witnesses, I said, +impressively-- + +'A part of your fortune is so grave, that I thought it would be better +for you if I did not tell it in public. You and another man, whose +fortune I was studying last night,--Private Adler,--have been murdering +a woman and a child! You are being dogged: within five days both of you +will be assassinated.' + +He dropped on his knees, frightened out of his wits; and for five +minutes he kept pouring out the same set of words, like a demented +person, and in the same half-crying way which was one of my memories of +that murderous night in my cabin-- + +'I didn't do it; upon my soul I didn't do it; and I tried to keep HIM +from doing it; I did, as God is my witness. He did it alone.' + +This was all I wanted. And I tried to get rid of the fool; but no, he +clung to me, imploring me to save him from the assassin. He said-- + +'I have money--ten thousand dollars--hid away, the fruit of loot and +thievery; save me--tell me what to do, and you shall have it, every +penny. Two-thirds of it is my cousin Adler's; but you can take it all. +We hid it when we first came here. But I hid it in a new place +yesterday, and have not told him--shall not tell him. I was going to +desert, and get away with it all. It is gold, and too heavy to carry +when one is running and dodging; but a woman who has been gone over the +river two days to prepare my way for me is going to follow me with it; +and if I got no chance to describe the hiding-place to her I was going +to slip my silver watch into her hand, or send it to her, and she would +understand. There's a piece of paper in the back of the case, which +tells it all. Here, take the watch--tell me what to do!' + +He was trying to press his watch upon me, and was exposing the paper and +explaining it to me, when Adler appeared on the scene, about a dozen +yards away. I said to poor Kruger-- + +'Put up your watch, I don't want it. You shan't come to any harm. Go, +now; I must tell Adler his fortune. Presently I will tell you how to +escape the assassin; meantime I shall have to examine your thumbmark +again. Say nothing to Adler about this thing--say nothing to anybody.' + +He went away filled with fright and gratitude, poor devil. I told Adler +a long fortune--purposely so long that I could not finish it; promised +to come to him on guard, that night, and tell him the really important +part of it--the tragical part of it, I said--so must be out of reach of +eavesdroppers. They always kept a picket-watch outside the town--mere +discipline and ceremony--no occasion for it, no enemy around. + +Toward midnight I set out, equipped with the countersign, and picked my +way toward the lonely region where Adler was to keep his watch. It was +so dark that I stumbled right on a dim figure almost before I could get +out a protecting word. The sentinel hailed and I answered, both at the +same moment. I added, 'It's only me--the fortune-teller.' Then I slipped +to the poor devil's side, and without a word I drove my dirk into his +heart! YA WOHL, laughed I, it WAS the tragedy part of his fortune, +indeed! As he fell from his horse, he clutched at me, and my blue +goggles remained in his hand; and away plunged the beast dragging him, +with his foot in the stirrup. + +I fled through the woods, and made good my escape, leaving the accusing +goggles behind me in that dead man's hand. + +This was fifteen or sixteen years ago. Since then I have wandered +aimlessly about the earth, sometimes at work, sometimes idle; sometimes +with money, sometimes with none; but always tired of life, and wishing +it was done, for my mission here was finished, with the act of that +night; and the only pleasure, solace, satisfaction I had, in all those +tedious years, was in the daily reflection, 'I have killed him!' + +Four years ago, my health began to fail. I had wandered into Munich, in +my purposeless way. Being out of money, I sought work, and got it; did +my duty faithfully about a year, and was then given the berth of night +watchman yonder in that dead-house which you visited lately. The place +suited my mood. I liked it. I liked being with the dead--liked being +alone with them. I used to wander among those rigid corpses, and peer +into their austere faces, by the hour. The later the time, the more +impressive it was; I preferred the late time. Sometimes I turned the +lights low: this gave perspective, you see; and the imagination could +play; always, the dim receding ranks of the dead inspired one with weird +and fascinating fancies. Two years ago--I had been there a year then--I +was sitting all alone in the watch-room, one gusty winter's night, +chilled, numb, comfortless; drowsing gradually into unconsciousness; the +sobbing of the wind and the slamming of distant shutters falling fainter +and fainter upon my dulling ear each moment, when sharp and suddenly +that dead-bell rang out a blood-curdling alarum over my head! The shock +of it nearly paralyzed me; for it was the first time I had ever heard +it. + +I gathered myself together and flew to the corpse-room. About midway +down the outside rank, a shrouded figure was sitting upright, wagging +its head slowly from one side to the other--a grisly spectacle! Its side +was toward me. I hurried to it and peered into its face. Heavens, it +was Adler! + +Can you divine what my first thought was? Put into words, it was this: +'It seems, then, you escaped me once: there will be a different result +this time!' + +Evidently this creature was suffering unimaginable terrors. Think what +it must have been to wake up in the midst of that voiceless hush, and, +look out over that grim congregation of the dead! What gratitude shone +in his skinny white face when he saw a living form before him! And how +the fervency of this mute gratitude was augmented when his eyes fell +upon the life-giving cordials which I carried in my hands! Then imagine +the horror which came into this pinched face when I put the cordials +behind me, and said mockingly-- + +'Speak up, Franz Adler--call upon these dead. Doubtless they will +listen and have pity; but here there is none else that will.' + +He tried to speak, but that part of the shroud which bound his jaws, +held firm and would not let him. He tried to lift imploring hands, but +they were crossed upon his breast and tied. I said-- + +'Shout, Franz Adler; make the sleepers in the distant streets hear you +and bring help. Shout--and lose no time, for there is little to lose. +What, you cannot? That is a pity; but it is no matter--it does not +always bring help. When you and your cousin murdered a helpless woman +and child in a cabin in Arkansas--my wife, it was, and my child!--they +shrieked for help, you remember; but it did no good; you remember that +it did no good, is it not so? Your teeth chatter--then why cannot you +shout? Loosen the bandages with your hands--then you can. Ah, I see-- +your hands are tied, they cannot aid you. How strangely things repeat +themselves, after long years; for MY hands were tied, that night, you +remember? Yes, tied much as yours are now--how odd that is. I could +not pull free. It did not occur to you to untie me; it does not occur to +me to untie you. Sh--! there's a late footstep. It is coming this way. +Hark, how near it is! One can count the footfalls--one--two--three. +There--it is just outside. Now is the time! Shout, man, shout!--it is +the one sole chance between you and eternity! Ah, you see you have +delayed too long--it is gone by. There--it is dying out. It is gone! +Think of it--reflect upon it--you have heard a human footstep for the +last time. How curious it must be, to listen to so common a sound as +that, and know that one will never hear the fellow to it again.' + +Oh, my friend, the agony in that shrouded face was ecstasy to see! I +thought of a new torture, and applied it--assisting myself with a trifle +of lying invention-- + +'That poor Kruger tried to save my wife and child, and I did him a +grateful good turn for it when the time came. I persuaded him to rob +you; and I and a woman helped him to desert, and got him away in +safety.' A look as of surprise and triumph shone out dimly through the +anguish in my victim's face. I was disturbed, disquieted. I said-- + +'What, then--didn't he escape?' + +A negative shake of the head. + +'No? What happened, then?' + +The satisfaction in the shrouded face was still plainer. The man tried +to mumble out some words--could not succeed; tried to express something +with his obstructed hands--failed; paused a moment, then feebly tilted +his head, in a meaning way, toward the corpse that lay nearest him. + +'Dead?' I asked. 'Failed to escape?--caught in the act and shot?' + +Negative shake of the head. + +'How, then?' + +Again the man tried to do something with his hands. I watched closely, +but could not guess the intent. I bent over and watched still more +intently. He had twisted a thumb around and was weakly punching at his +breast with it. 'Ah--stabbed, do you mean?' + +Affirmative nod, accompanied by a spectral smile of such peculiar +devilishness, that it struck an awakening light through my dull brain, +and I cried-- + +'Did I stab him, mistaking him for you?--for that stroke was meant for +none but you.' + +The affirmative nod of the re-dying rascal was as joyous as his failing +strength was able to put into its expression. + +'O, miserable, miserable me, to slaughter the pitying soul that, stood a +friend to my darlings when they were helpless, and would have saved them +if he could! miserable, oh, miserable, miserable me!' + +I fancied I heard the muffled gurgle of a, mocking laugh. I took my face +out of my hands, and saw my enemy sinking back upon his inclined board. + +He was a satisfactory long time dying. He had a wonderful vitality, an +astonishing constitution. Yes, he was a pleasant long time at it. I got +a chair and a newspaper, and sat down by him and read. Occasionally I +took a sip of brandy. This was necessary, on account of the cold. But +I did it partly because I saw, that along at first, whenever I reached +for the bottle, he thought I was going to give him some. I read aloud: +mainly imaginary accounts of people snatched from the grave's threshold +and restored to life and vigor by a few spoonsful of liquor and a warm +bath. Yes, he had a long, hard death of it--three hours and six +minutes, from the time he rang his bell. + +It is believed that in all these eighteen years that have elapsed since +the institution of the corpse-watch, no shrouded occupant of the +Bavarian dead-houses has ever rung its bell. Well, it is a harmless +belief. Let it stand at that. + +The chill of that death-room had penetrated my bones. It revived and +fastened upon me the disease which had been afflicting me, but which, up +to that night, had been steadily disappearing. That man murdered my +wife and my child; and in three days hence he will have added me to his +list. No matter--God! how delicious the memory of it!--I caught him +escaping from his grave, and thrust him back into it. + +After that night, I was confined to my bed for a week; but as soon as I +could get about, I went to the dead-house books and got the number of +the house which Adler had died in. A wretched lodging-house, it was. It +was my idea that he would naturally have gotten hold of Kruger's +effects, being his cousin; and I wanted to get Kruger's watch, if I +could. But while I was sick, Adler's things had been sold and +scattered, all except a few old letters, and some odds and ends of no +value. However, through those letters, I traced out a son of Kruger's, +the only relative left. He is a man of thirty now, a shoemaker by trade, +and living at No. 14 Konigstrasse, Mannheim--widower, with several small +children. Without explaining to him why, I have furnished two-thirds of +his support, ever since. + +Now, as to that watch--see how strangely things happen! I traced it +around and about Germany for more than a year, at considerable cost in +money and vexation; and at last I got it. Got it, and was unspeakably +glad; opened it, and found nothing in it! Why, I might have known that +that bit of paper was not going to stay there all this time. Of course +I gave up that ten thousand dollars then; gave it up, and dropped it out +of my mind: and most sorrowfully, for I had wanted it for Kruger's son. + +Last night, when I consented at last that I must die, I began to make +ready. I proceeded to burn all useless papers; and sure enough, from a +batch of Adler's, not previously examined with thoroughness, out dropped +that long-desired scrap! I recognized it in a moment. Here it is--I +will translate it: + +'Brick livery stable, stone foundation, middle of town, corner of +Orleans and Market. Corner toward Court-house. Third stone, fourth row. +Stick notice there, saying how many are to come.' + + +There--take it, and preserve it. Kruger explained that that stone was +removable; and that it was in the north wall of the foundation, fourth +row from the top, and third stone from the west. The money is secreted +behind it. He said the closing sentence was a blind, to mislead in case +the paper should fall into wrong hands. It probably performed that +office for Adler. + +Now I want to beg that when you make your intended journey down the +river, you will hunt out that hidden money, and send it to Adam Kruger, +care of the Mannheim address which I have mentioned. It will make a +rich man of him, and I shall sleep the sounder in my grave for knowing +that I have done what I could for the son of the man who tried to save +my wife and child--albeit my hand ignorantly struck him down, whereas +the impulse of my heart would have been to shield and serve him. + + + + +Chapter 32 The Disposal of a Bonanza + +'SUCH was Ritter's narrative,' said I to my two friends. There was a +profound and impressive silence, which lasted a considerable time; then +both men broke into a fusillade of exciting and admiring ejaculations +over the strange incidents of the tale; and this, along with a rattling +fire of questions, was kept up until all hands were about out of breath. +Then my friends began to cool down, and draw off, under shelter of +occasional volleys, into silence and abysmal reverie. For ten minutes +now, there was stillness. Then Rogers said dreamily-- + +'Ten thousand dollars.' + +Adding, after a considerable pause-- + +'Ten thousand. It is a heap of money.' + +Presently the poet inquired-- + +'Are you going to send it to him right away?' + +'Yes,' I said. 'It is a queer question.' + +No reply. After a little, Rogers asked, hesitatingly: + +'ALL of it?--That is--I mean--' + +'Certainly, all of it.' + +I was going to say more, but stopped--was stopped by a train of thought +which started up in me. Thompson spoke, but my mind was absent, and I +did not catch what he said. But I heard Rogers answer-- + +'Yes, it seems so to me. It ought to be quite sufficient; for I don't +see that he has done anything.' + +Presently the poet said-- + +'When you come to look at it, it is more than sufficient. Just look at +it--five thousand dollars! Why, he couldn't spend it in a lifetime! And +it would injure him, too; perhaps ruin him--you want to look at that. In +a little while he would throw his last away, shut up his shop, maybe +take to drinking, maltreat his motherless children, drift into other +evil courses, go steadily from bad to worse--' + +'Yes, that's it,' interrupted Rogers, fervently, 'I've seen it a hundred +times--yes, more than a hundred. You put money into the hands of a man +like that, if you want to destroy him, that's all; just put money into +his hands, it's all you've got to do; and if it don't pull him down, and +take all the usefulness out of him, and all the self-respect and +everything, then I don't know human nature--ain't that so, Thompson? +And even if we were to give him a THIRD of it; why, in less than six +months--' + +'Less than six WEEKS, you'd better say!' said I, warming up and breaking +in. 'Unless he had that three thousand dollars in safe hands where he +couldn't touch it, he would no more last you six weeks than--' + +'Of COURSE he wouldn't,' said Thompson; 'I've edited books for that kind +of people; and the moment they get their hands on the royalty--maybe +it's three thousand, maybe it's two thousand--' + +'What business has that shoemaker with two thousand dollars, I should +like to know?' broke in Rogers, earnestly. 'A man perhaps perfectly +contented now, there in Mannheim, surrounded by his own class, eating +his bread with the appetite which laborious industry alone can give, +enjoying his humble life, honest, upright, pure in heart; and BLEST!-- +yes, I say blest! blest above all the myriads that go in silk attire and +walk the empty artificial round of social folly--but just you put that +temptation before him once! just you lay fifteen hundred dollars before +a man like that, and say--' + +'Fifteen hundred devils!' cried I, 'FIVE hundred would rot his +principles, paralyze his industry, drag him to the rumshop, thence to +the gutter, thence to the almshouse, thence to ----' + +'WHY put upon ourselves this crime, gentlemen?' interrupted the poet +earnestly and appealingly. 'He is happy where he is, and AS he is. +Every sentiment of honor, every sentiment of charity, every sentiment of +high and sacred benevolence warns us, beseeches us, commands us to leave +him undisturbed. That is real friendship, that is true friendship. We +could follow other courses that would be more showy; but none that would +be so truly kind and wise, depend upon it.' + +After some further talk, it became evident that each of us, down in his +heart, felt some misgivings over this settlement of the matter. It was +manifest that we all felt that we ought to send the poor shoemaker +SOMETHING. There was long and thoughtful discussion of this point; and +we finally decided to send him a chromo. + +Well, now that everything seemed to be arranged satisfactorily to +everybody concerned, a new trouble broke out: it transpired that these +two men were expecting to share equally in the money with me. That was +not my idea. I said that if they got half of it between them they might +consider themselves lucky. Rogers said-- + +'Who would have had ANY if it hadn't been for me? I flung out the first +hint--but for that it would all have gone to the shoemaker.' + +Thompson said that he was thinking of the thing himself at the very +moment that Rogers had originally spoken. + +I retorted that the idea would have occurred to me plenty soon enough, +and without anybody's help. I was slow about thinking, maybe, but I was +sure. + +This matter warmed up into a quarrel; then into a fight; and each man +got pretty badly battered. As soon as I had got myself mended up after +a fashion, I ascended to the hurricane deck in a pretty sour humor. I +found Captain McCord there, and said, as pleasantly as my humor would +permit-- + +'I have come to say good-bye, captain. I wish to go ashore at +Napoleon.' + +'Go ashore where?' + +'Napoleon.' + +The captain laughed; but seeing that I was not in a jovial mood, stopped +that and said-- + +'But are you serious?' + +'Serious? I certainly am.' + +The captain glanced up at the pilot-house and said-- + +'He wants to get off at Napoleon!' + +'Napoleon ?' + +'That's what he says.' + +'Great Caesar's ghost!' + +Uncle Mumford approached along the deck. The captain said-- + +'Uncle, here's a friend of yours wants to get off at Napoleon!' + +'Well, by ---?' + +I said-- + +'Come, what is all this about? Can't a man go ashore at Napoleon if he +wants to?' + +'Why, hang it, don't you know? There ISN'T any Napoleon any more. +Hasn't been for years and years. The Arkansas River burst through it, +tore it all to rags, and emptied it into the Mississippi!' + +'Carried the WHOLE town away?-banks, churches, jails, newspaper-offices, +court-house, theater, fire department, livery stable EVERYTHING ?' + +'Everything. just a fifteen-minute job.' or such a matter. Didn't +leave hide nor hair, shred nor shingle of it, except the fag-end of a +shanty and one brick chimney. This boat is paddling along right now, +where the dead-center of that town used to be; yonder is the brick +chimney-all that's left of Napoleon. These dense woods on the right used +to be a mile back of the town. Take a look behind you--up-stream--now +you begin to recognize this country, don't you?' + +'Yes, I do recognize it now. It is the most wonderful thing I ever +heard of; by a long shot the most wonderful--and unexpected.' + +Mr. Thompson and Mr. Rogers had arrived, meantime, with satchels and +umbrellas, and had silently listened to the captain's news. Thompson put +a half-dollar in my hand and said softly-- + +'For my share of the chromo.' + +Rogers followed suit. + +Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Mississippi rolling between +unpeopled shores and straight over the spot where I used to see a good +big self-complacent town twenty years ago. Town that was county-seat of +a great and important county; town with a big United States marine +hospital; town of innumerable fights--an inquest every day; town where I +had used to know the prettiest girl, and the most accomplished in the +whole Mississippi Valley; town where we were handed the first printed +news of the 'Pennsylvania's' mournful disaster a quarter of a century +ago; a town no more--swallowed up, vanished, gone to feed the fishes; +nothing left but a fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney! + + + + +Chapter 33 Refreshments and Ethics + +IN regard to Island 74, which is situated not far from the former +Napoleon, a freak of the river here has sorely perplexed the laws of men +and made them a vanity and a jest. When the State of Arkansas was +chartered, she controlled 'to the center of the river'--a most unstable +line. The State of Mississippi claimed 'to the channel'--another shifty +and unstable line. No. 74 belonged to Arkansas. By and by a cut-off +threw this big island out of Arkansas, and yet not within Mississippi. +'Middle of the river' on one side of it, 'channel' on the other. That +is as I understand the problem. Whether I have got the details right or +wrong, this FACT remains: that here is this big and exceedingly valuable +island of four thousand acres, thrust out in the cold, and belonging to +neither the one State nor the other; paying taxes to neither, owing +allegiance to neither. One man owns the whole island, and of right is +'the man without a country.' + +Island 92 belongs to Arkansas. The river moved it over and joined it to +Mississippi. A chap established a whiskey shop there, without a +Mississippi license, and enriched himself upon Mississippi custom under +Arkansas protection (where no license was in those days required). + +We glided steadily down the river in the usual privacy--steamboat or +other moving thing seldom seen. Scenery as always: stretch upon stretch +of almost unbroken forest, on both sides of the river; soundless +solitude. Here and there a cabin or two, standing in small openings on +the gray and grassless banks--cabins which had formerly stood a quarter +or half-mile farther to the front, and gradually been pulled farther and +farther back as the shores caved in. As at Pilcher's Point, for +instance, where the cabins had been moved back three hundred yards in +three months, so we were told; but the caving banks had already caught +up with them, and they were being conveyed rearward once more. + +Napoleon had but small opinion of Greenville, Mississippi, in the old +times; but behold, Napoleon is gone to the cat-fishes, and here is +Greenville full of life and activity, and making a considerable flourish +in the Valley; having three thousand inhabitants, it is said, and doing +a gross trade of $2,500,000 annually. A growing town. + +There was much talk on the boat about the Calhoun Land Company, an +enterprise which is expected to work wholesome results. Colonel Calhoun, +a grandson of the statesman, went to Boston and formed a syndicate which +purchased a large tract of land on the river, in Chicot County, +Arkansas--some ten thousand acres--for cotton-growing. The purpose is to +work on a cash basis: buy at first hands, and handle their own product; +supply their negro laborers with provisions and necessaries at a +trifling profit, say 8 or 10 per cent.; furnish them comfortable +quarters, etc., and encourage them to save money and remain on the +place. If this proves a financial success, as seems quite certain, they +propose to establish a banking-house in Greenville, and lend money at an +unburdensome rate of interest--6 per cent. is spoken of. + +The trouble heretofore has been--I am quoting remarks of planters and +steamboatmen--that the planters, although owning the land, were without +cash capital; had to hypothecate both land and crop to carry on the +business. Consequently, the commission dealer who furnishes the money +takes some risk and demands big interest--usually 10 per cent., and +2{half} per cent. for negotiating the loan. The planter has also to buy +his supplies through the same dealer, paying commissions and profits. +Then when he ships his crop, the dealer adds his commissions, insurance, +etc. So, taking it by and large, and first and last, the dealer's share +of that crop is about 25 per cent.'{footnote ['But what can the State do +where the people are under subjection to rates of interest ranging from +18 to 30 per cent., and are also under the necessity of purchasing their +crops in advance even of planting, at these rates, for the privilege of +purchasing all their supplies at 100 per cent. profit?'--EDWARD +ATKINSON.]} + +A cotton-planter's estimate of the average margin of profit on planting, +in his section: One man and mule will raise ten acres of cotton, giving +ten bales cotton, worth, say, $500; cost of producing, say $350; net +profit, $150, or $15 per acre. There is also a profit now from the +cotton-seed, which formerly had little value--none where much +transportation was necessary. In sixteen hundred pounds crude cotton +four hundred are lint, worth, say, ten cents a pound; and twelve hundred +pounds of seed, worth $12 or $13 per ton. Maybe in future even the +stems will not be thrown away. Mr. Edward Atkinson says that for each +bale of cotton there are fifteen hundred pounds of stems, and that these +are very rich in phosphate of lime and potash; that when ground and +mixed with ensilage or cotton-seed meal (which is too rich for use as +fodder in large quantities), the stem mixture makes a superior food, +rich in all the elements needed for the production of milk, meat, and +bone. Heretofore the stems have been considered a nuisance. + +Complaint is made that the planter remains grouty toward the former +slave, since the war; will have nothing but a chill business relation +with him, no sentiment permitted to intrude, will not keep a 'store' +himself, and supply the negro's wants and thus protect the negro's +pocket and make him able and willing to stay on the place and an +advantage to him to do it, but lets that privilege to some thrifty +Israelite, who encourages the thoughtless negro and wife to buy all +sorts of things which they could do without--buy on credit, at big +prices, month after month, credit based on the negro's share of the +growing crop; and at the end of the season, the negro's share belongs to +the Israelite,' the negro is in debt besides, is discouraged, +dissatisfied, restless, and both he and the planter are injured; for he +will take steamboat and migrate, and the planter must get a stranger in +his place who does not know him, does not care for him, will fatten the +Israelite a season, and follow his predecessor per steamboat. + +It is hoped that the Calhoun Company will show, by its humane and +protective treatment of its laborers, that its method is the most +profitable for both planter and negro; and it is believed that a general +adoption of that method will then follow. + +And where so many are saying their say, shall not the barkeeper testify? +He is thoughtful, observant, never drinks; endeavors to earn his salary, +and WOULD earn it if there were custom enough. He says the people along +here in Mississippi and Louisiana will send up the river to buy +vegetables rather than raise them, and they will come aboard at the +landings and buy fruits of the barkeeper. Thinks they 'don't know +anything but cotton;' believes they don't know how to raise vegetables +and fruit--'at least the most of them.' Says 'a nigger will go to H for +a watermelon' ('H' is all I find in the stenographer's report--means +Halifax probably, though that seems a good way to go for a watermelon). +Barkeeper buys watermelons for five cents up the river, brings them down +and sells them for fifty. 'Why does he mix such elaborate and +picturesque drinks for the nigger hands on the boat?' Because they +won't have any other. 'They want a big drink; don't make any difference +what you make it of, they want the worth of their money. You give a +nigger a plain gill of half-a-dollar brandy for five cents--will he +touch it? No. Ain't size enough to it. But you put up a pint of all +kinds of worthless rubbish, and heave in some red stuff to make it +beautiful--red's the main thing--and he wouldn't put down that glass to +go to a circus.' All the bars on this Anchor Line are rented and owned +by one firm. They furnish the liquors from their own establishment, and +hire the barkeepers 'on salary.' Good liquors? Yes, on some of the +boats, where there are the kind of passengers that want it and can pay +for it. On the other boats? No. Nobody but the deck hands and firemen +to drink it. 'Brandy? Yes, I've got brandy, plenty of it; but you +don't want any of it unless you've made your will.' It isn't as it used +to be in the old times. Then everybody traveled by steamboat, everybody +drank, and everybody treated everybody else. 'Now most everybody goes by +railroad, and the rest don't drink.' In the old times the barkeeper +owned the bar himself, 'and was gay and smarty and talky and all jeweled +up, and was the toniest aristocrat on the boat; used to make $2,000 on a +trip. A father who left his son a steamboat bar, left him a fortune. Now +he leaves him board and lodging; yes, and washing, if a shirt a trip +will do. Yes, indeedy, times are changed. Why, do you know, on the +principal line of boats on the Upper Mississippi, they don't have any +bar at all! Sounds like poetry, but it's the petrified truth.' + + + + +Chapter 34 Tough Yarns + +STACK ISLAND. I remembered Stack Island; also Lake Providence, +Louisiana--which is the first distinctly Southern-looking town you come +to, downward-bound; lies level and low, shade-trees hung with venerable +gray beards of Spanish moss; 'restful, pensive, Sunday aspect about the +place,' comments Uncle Mumford, with feeling--also with truth. + +A Mr. H. furnished some minor details of fact concerning this region +which I would have hesitated to believe if I had not known him to be a +steamboat mate. He was a passenger of ours, a resident of Arkansas +City, and bound to Vicksburg to join his boat, a little Sunflower +packet. He was an austere man, and had the reputation of being +singularly unworldly, for a river man. Among other things, he said that +Arkansas had been injured and kept back by generations of exaggerations +concerning the mosquitoes here. One may smile, said he, and turn the +matter off as being a small thing; but when you come to look at the +effects produced, in the way of discouragement of immigration, and +diminished values of property, it was quite the opposite of a small +thing, or thing in any wise to be coughed down or sneered at. These +mosquitoes had been persistently represented as being formidable and +lawless; whereas 'the truth is, they are feeble, insignificant in size, +diffident to a fault, sensitive'--and so on, and so on; you would have +supposed he was talking about his family. But if he was soft on the +Arkansas mosquitoes, he was hard enough on the mosquitoes of Lake +Providence to make up for it--'those Lake Providence colossi,' as he +finely called them. He said that two of them could whip a dog, and that +four of them could hold a man down; and except help come, they would +kill him--'butcher him,' as he expressed it. Referred in a sort of +casual way--and yet significant way--to 'the fact that the life policy +in its simplest form is unknown in Lake Providence--they take out a +mosquito policy besides.' He told many remarkable things about those +lawless insects. Among others, said he had seen them try to vote. +Noticing that this statement seemed to be a good deal of a strain on us, +he modified it a little: said he might have been mistaken, as to that +particular, but knew he had seen them around the polls 'canvassing.' + +There was another passenger--friend of H.'s--who backed up the harsh +evidence against those mosquitoes, and detailed some stirring adventures +which he had had with them. The stories were pretty sizable, merely +pretty sizable; yet Mr. H. was continually interrupting with a cold, +inexorable 'Wait--knock off twenty-five per cent. of that; now go on;' +or, 'Wait--you are getting that too strong; cut it down, cut it down-- +you get a leetle too much costumery on to your statements: always dress +a fact in tights, never in an ulster;' or, 'Pardon, once more: if you +are going to load anything more on to that statement, you want to get a +couple of lighters and tow the rest, because it's drawing all the water +there is in the river already; stick to facts--just stick to the cold +facts; what these gentlemen want for a book is the frozen truth--ain't +that so, gentlemen?' He explained privately that it was necessary to +watch this man all the time, and keep him within bounds; it would not do +to neglect this precaution, as he, Mr. H., 'knew to his sorrow.' Said +he, 'I will not deceive you; he told me such a monstrous lie once, that +it swelled my left ear up, and spread it so that I was actually not able +to see out around it; it remained so for months, and people came miles +to see me fan myself with it.' + + + + +Chapter 35 Vicksburg During the Trouble + +WE used to plow past the lofty hill-city, Vicksburg, down-stream; but we +cannot do that now. A cut-off has made a country town of it, like +Osceola, St. Genevieve, and several others. There is currentless water +--also a big island--in front of Vicksburg now. You come down the river +the other side of the island, then turn and come up to the town; that +is, in high water: in low water you can't come up, but must land some +distance below it. + +Signs and scars still remain, as reminders of Vicksburg's tremendous war +experiences; earthworks, trees crippled by the cannon balls, cave- +refuges in the clay precipices, etc. The caves did good service during +the six weeks' bombardment of the city--May 8 to July 4, 1863. They +were used by the non-combatants--mainly by the women and children; not +to live in constantly, but to fly to for safety on occasion. They were +mere holes, tunnels, driven into the perpendicular clay bank, then +branched Y shape, within the hill. Life in Vicksburg, during the six +weeks was perhaps--but wait; here are some materials out of which to +reproduce it:-- + +Population, twenty-seven thousand soldiers and three thousand non- +combatants; the city utterly cut off from the world--walled solidly in, +the frontage by gunboats, the rear by soldiers and batteries; hence, no +buying and selling with the outside; no passing to and fro; no God- +speeding a parting guest, no welcoming a coming one; no printed acres of +world-wide news to be read at breakfast, mornings--a tedious dull +absence of such matter, instead; hence, also, no running to see +steamboats smoking into view in the distance up or down, and plowing +toward the town--for none came, the river lay vacant and undisturbed; no +rush and turmoil around the railway station, no struggling over +bewildered swarms of passengers by noisy mobs of hackmen--all quiet +there; flour two hundred dollars a barrel, sugar thirty, corn ten +dollars a bushel, bacon five dollars a pound, rum a hundred dollars a +gallon; other things in proportion: consequently, no roar and racket of +drays and carriages tearing along the streets; nothing for them to do, +among that handful of non-combatants of exhausted means; at three +o'clock in the morning, silence; silence so dead that the measured tramp +of a sentinel can be heard a seemingly impossible distance; out of +hearing of this lonely sound, perhaps the stillness is absolute: all in +a moment come ground-shaking thunder-crashes of artillery, the sky is +cobwebbed with the crisscrossing red lines streaming from soaring bomb- +shells, and a rain of iron fragments descends upon the city; descends +upon the empty streets: streets which are not empty a moment later, but +mottled with dim figures of frantic women and children scurrying from +home and bed toward the cave dungeons--encouraged by the humorous grim +soldiery, who shout 'Rats, to your holes!' and laugh. + +The cannon-thunder rages, shells scream and crash overhead, the iron +rain pours down, one hour, two hours, three, possibly six, then stops; +silence follows, but the streets are still empty; the silence continues; +by-and-bye a head projects from a cave here and there and yonder, and +reconnoitres, cautiously; the silence still continuing, bodies follow +heads, and jaded, half smothered creatures group themselves about, +stretch their cramped limbs, draw in deep draughts of the grateful fresh +air, gossip with the neighbors from the next cave; maybe straggle off +home presently, or take a lounge through the town, if the stillness +continues; and will scurry to the holes again, by-and-bye, when the war- +tempest breaks forth once more. + +There being but three thousand of these cave-dwellers--merely the +population of a village--would they not come to know each other, after a +week or two, and familiarly; insomuch that the fortunate or unfortunate +experiences of one would be of interest to all? + +Those are the materials furnished by history. From them might not +almost anybody reproduce for himself the life of that time in Vicksburg? +Could you, who did not experience it, come nearer to reproducing it to +the imagination of another non-participant than could a Vicksburger who +did experience it? It seems impossible; and yet there are reasons why +it might not really be. When one makes his first voyage in a ship, it +is an experience which multitudinously bristles with striking novelties; +novelties which are in such sharp contrast with all this person's former +experiences that they take a seemingly deathless grip upon his +imagination and memory. By tongue or pen he can make a landsman live +that strange and stirring voyage over with him; make him see it all and +feel it all. But if he wait? If he make ten voyages in succession--what +then? Why, the thing has lost color, snap, surprise; and has become +commonplace. The man would have nothing to tell that would quicken a +landsman's pulse. + +Years ago, I talked with a couple of the Vicksburg non-combatants--a man +and his wife. Left to tell their story in their own way, those people +told it without fire, almost without interest. + +A week of their wonderful life there would have made their tongues +eloquent for ever perhaps; but they had six weeks of it, and that wore +the novelty all out; they got used to being bomb-shelled out of home and +into the ground; the matter became commonplace. After that, the +possibility of their ever being startlingly interesting in their talks +about it was gone. What the man said was to this effect:-- + +'It got to be Sunday all the time. Seven Sundays in the week--to us, +anyway. We hadn't anything to do, and time hung heavy. Seven Sundays, +and all of them broken up at one time or another, in the day or in the +night, by a few hours of the awful storm of fire and thunder and iron. +At first we used to shin for the holes a good deal faster than we did +afterwards. The first time, I forgot the children, and Maria fetched +them both along. When she was all safe in the cave she fainted. Two or +three weeks afterwards, when she was running for the holes, one morning, +through a shell-shower, a big shell burst near her, and covered her all +over with dirt, and a piece of the iron carried away her game-bag of +false hair from the back of her head. Well, she stopped to get that +game-bag before she shoved along again! Was getting used to things +already, you see. We all got so that we could tell a good deal about +shells; and after that we didn't always go under shelter if it was a +light shower. Us men would loaf around and talk; and a man would say, +'There she goes!' and name the kind of shell it was from the sound of +it, and go on talking--if there wasn't any danger from it. If a shell +was bursting close over us, we stopped talking and stood still;-- +uncomfortable, yes, but it wasn't safe to move. When it let go, we went +on talking again, if nobody hurt--maybe saying, 'That was a ripper!' or +some such commonplace comment before we resumed; or, maybe, we would see +a shell poising itself away high in the air overhead. In that case, +every fellow just whipped out a sudden, 'See you again, gents!' and +shoved. Often and often I saw gangs of ladies promenading the streets, +looking as cheerful as you please, and keeping an eye canted up watching +the shells; and I've seen them stop still when they were uncertain about +what a shell was going to do, and wait and make certain; and after that +they sa'ntered along again, or lit out for shelter, according to the +verdict. Streets in some towns have a litter of pieces of paper, and +odds and ends of one sort or another lying around. Ours hadn't; they +had IRON litter. Sometimes a man would gather up all the iron fragments +and unbursted shells in his neighborhood, and pile them into a kind of +monument in his front yard--a ton of it, sometimes. No glass left; +glass couldn't stand such a bombardment; it was all shivered out. +Windows of the houses vacant--looked like eye-holes in a skull. WHOLE +panes were as scarce as news. + +'We had church Sundays. Not many there, along at first; but by-and-bye +pretty good turnouts. I've seen service stop a minute, and everybody +sit quiet--no voice heard, pretty funeral-like then--and all the more so +on account of the awful boom and crash going on outside and overhead; +and pretty soon, when a body could be heard, service would go on again. +Organs and church-music mixed up with a bombardment is a powerful queer +combination--along at first. Coming out of church, one morning, we had +an accident--the only one that happened around me on a Sunday. I was +just having a hearty handshake with a friend I hadn't seen for a while, +and saying, 'Drop into our cave to-night, after bombardment; we've got +hold of a pint of prime wh--.' Whiskey, I was going to say, you know, +but a shell interrupted. A chunk of it cut the man's arm off, and left +it dangling in my hand. And do you know the thing that is going to +stick the longest in my memory, and outlast everything else, little and +big, I reckon, is the mean thought I had then? It was 'the whiskey IS +SAVED.' And yet, don't you know, it was kind of excusable; because it +was as scarce as diamonds, and we had only just that little; never had +another taste during the siege. + +'Sometimes the caves were desperately crowded, and always hot and close. +Sometimes a cave had twenty or twenty-five people packed into it; no +turning-room for anybody; air so foul, sometimes, you couldn't have made +a candle burn in it. A child was born in one of those caves one night, +Think of that; why, it was like having it born in a trunk. + +'Twice we had sixteen people in our cave; and a number of times we had a +dozen. Pretty suffocating in there. We always had eight; eight +belonged there. Hunger and misery and sickness and fright and sorrow, +and I don't know what all, got so loaded into them that none of them +were ever rightly their old selves after the siege. They all died but +three of us within a couple of years. One night a shell burst in front +of the hole and caved it in and stopped it up. It was lively times, for +a while, digging out. Some of us came near smothering. After that we +made two openings--ought to have thought of it at first. + +'Mule meat. No, we only got down to that the last day or two. Of course +it was good; anything is good when you are starving. + +This man had kept a diary during--six weeks? No, only the first six +days. The first day, eight close pages; the second, five; the third, +one--loosely written; the fourth, three or four lines; a line or two the +fifth and sixth days; seventh day, diary abandoned; life in terrific +Vicksburg having now become commonplace and matter of course. + +The war history of Vicksburg has more about it to interest the general +reader than that of any other of the river-towns. It is full of variety, +full of incident, full of the picturesque. Vicksburg held out longer +than any other important river-town, and saw warfare in all its phases, +both land and water--the siege, the mine, the assault, the repulse, the +bombardment, sickness, captivity, famine. + +The most beautiful of all the national cemeteries is here. Over the +great gateway is this inscription:-- + +"HERE REST IN PEACE 16,600 WHO DIED FOR THEIR COUNTRY IN THE YEARS 1861 +TO 1865" + +The grounds are nobly situated; being very high and commanding a wide +prospect of land and river. They are tastefully laid out in broad +terraces, with winding roads and paths; and there is profuse adornment +in the way of semi-tropical shrubs and flowers,' and in one part is a +piece of native wild-wood, left just as it grew, and, therefore, perfect +in its charm. Everything about this cemetery suggests the hand of the +national Government. The Government's work is always conspicuous for +excellence, solidity, thoroughness, neatness. The Government does its +work well in the first place, and then takes care of it. + +By winding-roads--which were often cut to so great a depth between +perpendicular walls that they were mere roofless tunnels--we drove out a +mile or two and visited the monument which stands upon the scene of the +surrender of Vicksburg to General Grant by General Pemberton. Its metal +will preserve it from the hackings and chippings which so defaced its +predecessor, which was of marble; but the brick foundations are +crumbling, and it will tumble down by-and-bye. It overlooks a +picturesque region of wooded hills and ravines; and is not unpicturesque +itself, being well smothered in flowering weeds. The battered remnant of +the marble monument has been removed to the National Cemetery. + +On the road, a quarter of a mile townward, an aged colored man showed +us, with pride, an unexploded bomb-shell which has lain in his yard +since the day it fell there during the siege. + +'I was a-stannin' heah, an' de dog was a-stannin' heah; de dog he went +for de shell, gwine to pick a fuss wid it; but I didn't; I says, "Jes' +make you'seff at home heah; lay still whah you is, or bust up de place, +jes' as you's a mind to, but I's got business out in de woods, I has!"' + +Vicksburg is a town of substantial business streets and pleasant +residences; it commands the commerce of the Yazoo and Sunflower Rivers; +is pushing railways in several directions, through rich agricultural +regions, and has a promising future of prosperity and importance. + +Apparently, nearly all the river towns, big and little, have made up +their minds that they must look mainly to railroads for wealth and +upbuilding, henceforth. They are acting upon this idea. The signs are, +that the next twenty years will bring about some noteworthy changes in +the Valley, in the direction of increased population and wealth, and in +the intellectual advancement and the liberalizing of opinion which go +naturally with these. And yet, if one may judge by the past, the river +towns will manage to find and use a chance, here and there, to cripple +and retard their progress. They kept themselves back in the days of +steamboating supremacy, by a system of wharfage-dues so stupidly graded +as to prohibit what may be called small RETAIL traffic in freights and +passengers. Boats were charged such heavy wharfage that they could not +afford to land for one or two passengers or a light lot of freight. +Instead of encouraging the bringing of trade to their doors, the towns +diligently and effectively discouraged it. They could have had many +boats and low rates; but their policy rendered few boats and high rates +compulsory. It was a policy which extended--and extends--from New +Orleans to St. Paul. + +We had a strong desire to make a trip up the Yazoo and the Sunflower--an +interesting region at any time, but additionally interesting at this +time, because up there the great inundation was still to be seen in +force--but we were nearly sure to have to wait a day or more for a New +Orleans boat on our return; so we were obliged to give up the project. + +Here is a story which I picked up on board the boat that night. I insert +it in this place merely because it is a good story, not because it +belongs here--for it doesn't. It was told by a passenger--a college +professor--and was called to the surface in the course of a general +conversation which began with talk about horses, drifted into talk about +astronomy, then into talk about the lynching of the gamblers in +Vicksburg half a century ago, then into talk about dreams and +superstitions; and ended, after midnight, in a dispute over free trade +and protection. + + + + +Chapter 36 The Professor's Yarn + +IT was in the early days. I was not a college professor then. I was a +humble-minded young land-surveyor, with the world before me--to survey, +in case anybody wanted it done. I had a contract to survey a route for +a great mining-ditch in California, and I was on my way thither, by sea +--a three or four weeks' voyage. There were a good many passengers, but +I had very little to say to them; reading and dreaming were my passions, +and I avoided conversation in order to indulge these appetites. There +were three professional gamblers on board--rough, repulsive fellows. I +never had any talk with them, yet I could not help seeing them with some +frequency, for they gambled in an upper-deck stateroom every day and +night, and in my promenades I often had glimpses of them through their +door, which stood a little ajar to let out the surplus tobacco smoke and +profanity. They were an evil and hateful presence, but I had to put up +with it, of course, + +There was one other passenger who fell under my eye a good deal, for he +seemed determined to be friendly with me, and I could not have gotten +rid of him without running some chance of hurting his feelings, and I +was far from wishing to do that. Besides, there was something engaging +in his countrified simplicity and his beaming good-nature. The first +time I saw this Mr. John Backus, I guessed, from his clothes and his +looks, that he was a grazier or farmer from the backwoods of some +western State--doubtless Ohio--and afterward when he dropped into his +personal history and I discovered that he WAS a cattle-raiser from +interior Ohio, I was so pleased with my own penetration that I warmed +toward him for verifying my instinct. + +He got to dropping alongside me every day, after breakfast, to help me +make my promenade; and so, in the course of time, his easy-working jaw +had told me everything about his business, his prospects, his family, +his relatives, his politics--in fact everything that concerned a Backus, +living or dead. And meantime I think he had managed to get out of me +everything I knew about my trade, my tribe, my purposes, my prospects, +and myself. He was a gentle and persuasive genius, and this thing +showed it; for I was not given to talking about my matters. I said +something about triangulation, once; the stately word pleased his ear; +he inquired what it meant; I explained; after that he quietly and +inoffensively ignored my name, and always called me Triangle. + +What an enthusiast he was in cattle! At the bare name of a bull or a +cow, his eye would light and his eloquent tongue would turn itself +loose. As long as I would walk and listen, he would walk and talk; he +knew all breeds, he loved all breeds, he caressed them all with his +affectionate tongue. I tramped along in voiceless misery whilst the +cattle question was up; when I could endure it no longer, I used to +deftly insert a scientific topic into the conversation; then my eye +fired and his faded; my tongue fluttered, his stopped; life was a joy to +me, and a sadness to him. + +One day he said, a little hesitatingly, and with somewhat of diffidence-- + +'Triangle, would you mind coming down to my stateroom a minute, and have +a little talk on a certain matter?' + +I went with him at once. Arrived there, he put his head out, glanced up +and down the saloon warily, then closed the door and locked it. He sat +down on the sofa, and he said-- + +'I'm a-going to make a little proposition to you, and if it strikes you +favorable, it'll be a middling good thing for both of us. You ain't +a-going out to Californy for fun, nuther am I--it's business, ain't that +so? Well, you can do me a good turn, and so can I you, if we see fit. +I've raked and scraped and saved, a considerable many years, and I've +got it all here.' He unlocked an old hair trunk, tumbled a chaos of +shabby clothes aside, and drew a short stout bag into view for a moment, +then buried it again and relocked the trunk. Dropping his voice to a +cautious low tone, he continued, 'She's all there--a round ten thousand +dollars in yellow-boys; now this is my little idea: What I don't know +about raising cattle, ain't worth knowing. There's mints of money in it, +in Californy. Well, I know, and you know, that all along a line that 's +being surveyed, there 's little dabs of land that they call "gores," +that fall to the surveyor free gratis for nothing. All you've got to +do, on your side, is to survey in such a way that the "gores" will fall +on good fat land, then you turn 'em over to me, I stock 'em with cattle, +in rolls the cash, I plank out your share of the dollars regular, right +along, and--' + +I was sorry to wither his blooming enthusiasm, but it could not be +helped. I interrupted, and said severely-- + +'I am not that kind of a surveyor. Let us change the subject, Mr. +Backus.' + +It was pitiful to see his confusion and hear his awkward and shamefaced +apologies. I was as much distressed as he was--especially as he seemed +so far from having suspected that there was anything improper in his +proposition. So I hastened to console him and lead him on to forget his +mishap in a conversational orgy about cattle and butchery. We were lying +at Acapulco; and, as we went on deck, it happened luckily that the crew +were just beginning to hoist some beeves aboard in slings. Backus's +melancholy vanished instantly, and with it the memory of his late +mistake. + +'Now only look at that!' cried he; 'My goodness, Triangle, what WOULD +they say to it in OHIO. Wouldn't their eyes bug out, to see 'em handled +like that?--wouldn't they, though?' + +All the passengers were on deck to look--even the gamblers--and Backus +knew them all, and had afflicted them all with his pet topic. As I moved +away, I saw one of the gamblers approach and accost him; then another of +them; then the third. I halted; waited; watched; the conversation +continued between the four men; it grew earnest; Backus drew gradually +away; the gamblers followed, and kept at his elbow. I was uncomfortable. +However, as they passed me presently, I heard Backus say, with a tone of +persecuted annoyance-- + +'But it ain't any use, gentlemen; I tell you again, as I've told you a +half a dozen times before, I warn't raised to it, and I ain't a-going to +resk it.' + +I felt relieved. 'His level head will be his sufficient protection,' I +said to myself. + +During the fortnight's run from Acapulco to San Francisco I several +times saw the gamblers talking earnestly with Backus, and once I threw +out a gentle warning to him. He chuckled comfortably and said-- + +'Oh, yes! they tag around after me considerable--want me to play a +little, just for amusement, they say--but laws-a-me, if my folks have +told me once to look out for that sort of live-stock, they've told me a +thousand times, I reckon.' + +By-and-bye, in due course, we were approaching San Francisco. It was an +ugly black night, with a strong wind blowing, but there was not much +sea. I was on deck, alone. Toward ten I started below. A figure issued +from the gamblers' den, and disappeared in the darkness. I experienced a +shock, for I was sure it was Backus. I flew down the companion-way, +looked about for him, could not find him, then returned to the deck just +in time to catch a glimpse of him as he re-entered that confounded nest +of rascality. Had he yielded at last? I feared it. What had he gone +below for?--His bag of coin? Possibly. I drew near the door, full of +bodings. It was a-crack, and I glanced in and saw a sight that made me +bitterly wish I had given my attention to saving my poor cattle-friend, +instead of reading and dreaming my foolish time away. He was gambling. +Worse still, he was being plied with champagne, and was already showing +some effect from it. He praised the 'cider,' as he called it, and said +now that he had got a taste of it he almost believed he would drink it +if it was spirits, it was so good and so ahead of anything he had ever +run across before. Surreptitious smiles, at this, passed from one rascal +to another, and they filled all the glasses, and whilst Backus honestly +drained his to the bottom they pretended to do the same, but threw the +wine over their shoulders. + +I could not bear the scene, so I wandered forward and tried to interest +myself in the sea and the voices of the wind. But no, my uneasy spirit +kept dragging me back at quarter-hour intervals; and always I saw Backus +drinking his wine--fairly and squarely, and the others throwing theirs +away. It was the painfullest night I ever spent. + +The only hope I had was that we might reach our anchorage with speed-- +that would break up the game. I helped the ship along all I could with +my prayers. At last we went booming through the Golden Gate, and my +pulses leaped for joy. I hurried back to that door and glanced in. +Alas, there was small room for hope--Backus's eyes were heavy and +bloodshot, his sweaty face was crimson, his speech maudlin and thick, +his body sawed drunkenly about with the weaving motion of the ship. He +drained another glass to the dregs, whilst the cards were being dealt. + +He took his hand, glanced at it, and his dull eyes lit up for a moment. +The gamblers observed it, and showed their gratification by hardly +perceptible signs. + +'How many cards?' + +'None!' said Backus. + +One villain--named Hank Wiley--discarded one card, the others three +each. The betting began. Heretofore the bets had been trifling--a +dollar or two; but Backus started off with an eagle now, Wiley hesitated +a moment, then 'saw it' and 'went ten dollars better.' The other two +threw up their hands. + +Backus went twenty better. Wiley said-- + +'I see that, and go you a hundred better!' then smiled and reached for +the money. + +'Let it alone,' said Backus, with drunken gravity. + +'What! you mean to say you're going to cover it?' + +'Cover it? Well, I reckon I am--and lay another hundred on top of it, +too.' + +He reached down inside his overcoat and produced the required sum. + +'Oh, that's your little game, is it? I see your raise, and raise it +five hundred!' said Wiley. + +'Five hundred better.' said the foolish bull-driver, and pulled out the +amount and showered it on the pile. The three conspirators hardly tried +to conceal their exultation. + +All diplomacy and pretense were dropped now, and the sharp exclamations +came thick and fast, and the yellow pyramid grew higher and higher. At +last ten thousand dollars lay in view. Wiley cast a bag of coin on the +table, and said with mocking gentleness-- + +'Five thousand dollars better, my friend from the rural districts--what +do you say NOW?' + +'I CALL you!' said Backus, heaving his golden shot-bag on the pile. +'What have you got?' + +'Four kings, you d--d fool!' and Wiley threw down his cards and +surrounded the stakes with his arms. + +'Four ACES, you ass!' thundered Backus, covering his man with a cocked +revolver. 'I'M A PROFESSIONAL GAMBLER MYSELF, AND I'VE BEEN LAYING FOR +YOU DUFFERS ALL THIS VOYAGE!' + +Down went the anchor, rumbledy-dum-dum! and the long trip was ended. + +Well--well, it is a sad world. One of the three gamblers was Backus's +'pal.' It was he that dealt the fateful hands. According to an +understanding with the two victims, he was to have given Backus four +queens, but alas, he didn't. + +A week later, I stumbled upon Backus--arrayed in the height of fashion-- +in Montgomery Street. He said, cheerily, as we were parting-- + +'Ah, by-the-way, you needn't mind about those gores. I don't really +know anything about cattle, except what I was able to pick up in a +week's apprenticeship over in Jersey just before we sailed. My cattle- +culture and cattle-enthusiasm have served their turn--I shan't need them +any more.' + +Next day we reluctantly parted from the 'Gold Dust' and her officers, +hoping to see that boat and all those officers again, some day. A thing +which the fates were to render tragically impossible! + + + + +Chapter 37 The End of the 'Gold Dust' + +FOR, three months later, August 8, while I was writing one of these +foregoing chapters, the New York papers brought this telegram-- + +A TERRIBLE DISASTER. + +SEVENTEEN PERSONS KILLED BY AN EXPLOSION ON THE STEAMER 'GOLD DUST.' + +'NASHVILLE, Aug. 7.--A despatch from Hickman, Ky., says-- + +'The steamer "Gold Dust" exploded her boilers at three o'clock to-day, +just after leaving Hickman. Forty-seven persons were scalded and +seventeen are missing. The boat was landed in the eddy just above the +town, and through the exertions of the citizens the cabin passengers, +officers, and part of the crew and deck passengers were taken ashore and +removed to the hotels and residences. Twenty-four of the injured were +lying in Holcomb's dry-goods store at one time, where they received +every attention before being removed to more comfortable places.' + +A list of the names followed, whereby it appeared that of the seventeen +dead, one was the barkeeper; and among the forty-seven wounded, were the +captain, chief mate, second mate, and second and third clerks; also Mr. +Lem S. Gray, pilot, and several members of the crew. + +In answer to a private telegram, we learned that none of these was +severely hurt, except Mr. Gray. Letters received afterward confirmed +this news, and said that Mr. Gray was improving and would get well. +Later letters spoke less hopefully of his case; and finally came one +announcing his death. A good man, a most companionable and manly man, +and worthy of a kindlier fate. + + + + +Chapter 38 The House Beautiful + +WE took passage in a Cincinnati boat for New Orleans; or on a Cincinnati +boat--either is correct; the former is the eastern form of putting it, +the latter the western. + +Mr. Dickens declined to agree that the Mississippi steamboats were +'magnificent,' or that they were 'floating palaces,'--terms which had +always been applied to them; terms which did not over-express the +admiration with which the people viewed them. + +Mr. Dickens's position was unassailable, possibly; the people's position +was certainly unassailable. If Mr. Dickens was comparing these boats +with the crown jewels; or with the Taj, or with the Matterhorn; or with +some other priceless or wonderful thing which he had seen, they were not +magnificent--he was right. The people compared them with what they had +seen; and, thus measured, thus judged, the boats were magnificent--the +term was the correct one, it was not at all too strong. The people were +as right as was Mr. Dickens. The steamboats were finer than anything on +shore. Compared with superior dwelling-houses and first-class hotels in +the Valley, they were indubitably magnificent, they were 'palaces.' To a +few people living in New Orleans and St. Louis, they were not +magnificent, perhaps; not palaces; but to the great majority of those +populations, and to the entire populations spread over both banks +between Baton Rouge and St. Louis, they were palaces; they tallied with +the citizen's dream of what magnificence was, and satisfied it. + +Every town and village along that vast stretch of double river-frontage +had a best dwelling, finest dwelling, mansion,--the home of its +wealthiest and most conspicuous citizen. It is easy to describe it: +large grassy yard, with paling fence painted white--in fair repair; +brick walk from gate to door; big, square, two-story 'frame' house, +painted white and porticoed like a Grecian temple--with this difference, +that the imposing fluted columns and Corinthian capitals were a pathetic +sham, being made of white pine, and painted; iron knocker; brass door +knob--discolored, for lack of polishing. Within, an uncarpeted hall, of +planed boards; opening out of it, a parlor, fifteen feet by fifteen--in +some instances five or ten feet larger; ingrain carpet; mahogany center- +table; lamp on it, with green-paper shade--standing on a gridiron, so to +speak, made of high-colored yarns, by the young ladies of the house, and +called a lamp-mat; several books, piled and disposed, with cast-iron +exactness, according to an inherited and unchangeable plan; among them, +Tupper, much penciled; also, 'Friendship's Offering,' and 'Affection's +Wreath,' with their sappy inanities illustrated in die-away mezzotints; +also, Ossian; 'Alonzo and Melissa:' maybe 'Ivanhoe:' also 'Album,' full +of original 'poetry' of the Thou-hast-wounded-the-spirit-that-loved-thee +breed; two or three goody-goody works--'Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,' +etc.; current number of the chaste and innocuous Godey's 'Lady's Book,' +with painted fashion-plate of wax-figure women with mouths all alike-- +lips and eyelids the same size--each five-foot woman with a two-inch +wedge sticking from under her dress and letting-on to be half of her +foot. Polished air-tight stove (new and deadly invention), with pipe +passing through a board which closes up the discarded good old +fireplace. On each end of the wooden mantel, over the fireplace, a +large basket of peaches and other fruits, natural size, all done in +plaster, rudely, or in wax, and painted to resemble the originals--which +they don't. Over middle of mantel, engraving--Washington Crossing the +Delaware; on the wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and- +lightning crewels by one of the young ladies--work of art which would +have made Washington hesitate about crossing, if he could have foreseen +what advantage was going to be taken of it. Piano--kettle in disguise-- +with music, bound and unbound, piled on it, and on a stand near by: +Battle of Prague; Bird Waltz; Arkansas Traveler; Rosin the Bow; +Marseilles Hymn; On a Lone Barren Isle (St. Helena); The Last Link is +Broken; She wore a Wreath of Roses the Night when last we met; Go, +forget me, Why should Sorrow o'er that Brow a Shadow fling; Hours there +were to Memory Dearer; Long, Long Ago; Days of Absence; A Life on the +Ocean Wave, a Home on the Rolling Deep; Bird at Sea; and spread open on +the rack, where the plaintive singer has left it, RO-holl on, silver +MOO-hoon, guide the TRAV-el-lerr his WAY, etc. Tilted pensively against +the piano, a guitar--guitar capable of playing the Spanish Fandango by +itself, if you give it a start. Frantic work of art on the wall--pious +motto, done on the premises, sometimes in colored yarns, sometimes in +faded grasses: progenitor of the 'God Bless Our Home' of modern +commerce. Framed in black moldings on the wall, other works of arts, +conceived and committed on the premises, by the young ladies; being grim +black-and-white crayons; landscapes, mostly: lake, solitary sail-boat, +petrified clouds, pre-geological trees on shore, anthracite precipice; +name of criminal conspicuous in the corner. Lithograph, Napoleon +Crossing the Alps. Lithograph, The Grave at St. Helena. Steel-plates, +Trumbull's Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Sally from Gibraltar. Copper- +plates, Moses Smiting the Rock, and Return of the Prodigal Son. In big +gilt frame, slander of the family in oil: papa holding a book +('Constitution of the United States'); guitar leaning against mamma, +blue ribbons fluttering from its neck; the young ladies, as children, in +slippers and scalloped pantelettes, one embracing toy horse, the other +beguiling kitten with ball of yarn, and both simpering up at mamma, who +simpers back. These persons all fresh, raw, and red--apparently skinned. +Opposite, in gilt frame, grandpa and grandma, at thirty and twenty-two, +stiff, old-fashioned, high-collared, puff-sleeved, glaring pallidly out +from a background of solid Egyptian night. Under a glass French clock +dome, large bouquet of stiff flowers done in corpsy-white wax. +Pyramidal what-not in the corner, the shelves occupied chiefly with +bric-a-brac of the period, disposed with an eye to best effect: shell, +with the Lord's Prayer carved on it; another shell--of the long-oval +sort, narrow, straight orifice, three inches long, running from end to +end--portrait of Washington carved on it; not well done; the shell had +Washington's mouth, originally--artist should have built to that. These +two are memorials of the long-ago bridal trip to New Orleans and the +French Market. Other bric-a-brac: Californian 'specimens'--quartz, with +gold wart adhering; old Guinea-gold locket, with circlet of ancestral +hair in it; Indian arrow-heads, of flint; pair of bead moccasins, from +uncle who crossed the Plains; three 'alum' baskets of various colors-- +being skeleton-frame of wire, clothed-on with cubes of crystallized alum +in the rock-candy style--works of art which were achieved by the young +ladies; their doubles and duplicates to be found upon all what-nots in +the land; convention of desiccated bugs and butterflies pinned to a +card; painted toy-dog, seated upon bellows-attachment--drops its under +jaw and squeaks when pressed upon; sugar-candy rabbit--limbs and +features merged together, not strongly defined; pewter presidential- +campaign medal; miniature card-board wood-sawyer, to be attached to the +stove-pipe and operated by the heat; small Napoleon, done in wax; +spread-open daguerreotypes of dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, and +friends, in all attitudes but customary ones; no templed portico at +back, and manufactured landscape stretching away in the distance--that +came in later, with the photograph; all these vague figures lavishly +chained and ringed--metal indicated and secured from doubt by stripes +and splashes of vivid gold bronze; all of them too much combed, too much +fixed up; and all of them uncomfortable in inflexible Sunday-clothes of +a pattern which the spectator cannot realize could ever have been in +fashion; husband and wife generally grouped together--husband sitting, +wife standing, with hand on his shoulder--and both preserving, all these +fading years, some traceable effect of the daguerreotypist's brisk 'Now +smile, if you please!' Bracketed over what-not--place of special +sacredness--an outrage in water-color, done by the young niece that came +on a visit long ago, and died. Pity, too; for she might have repented of +this in time. Horse-hair chairs, horse-hair sofa which keeps sliding +from under you. Window shades, of oil stuff, with milk-maids and ruined +castles stenciled on them in fierce colors. Lambrequins dependent from +gaudy boxings of beaten tin, gilded. Bedrooms with rag carpets; +bedsteads of the 'corded' sort, with a sag in the middle, the cords +needing tightening; snuffy feather-bed--not aired often enough; cane- +seat chairs, splint-bottomed rocker; looking-glass on wall, school-slate +size, veneered frame; inherited bureau; wash-bowl and pitcher, possibly +--but not certainly; brass candlestick, tallow candle, snuffers. Nothing +else in the room. Not a bathroom in the house; and no visitor likely to +come along who has ever seen one. + +That was the residence of the principal citizen, all the way from the +suburbs of New Orleans to the edge of St. Louis. When he stepped aboard +a big fine steamboat, he entered a new and marvelous world: chimney-tops +cut to counterfeit a spraying crown of plumes--and maybe painted red; +pilot-house, hurricane deck, boiler-deck guards, all garnished with +white wooden filigree work of fanciful patterns; gilt acorns topping the +derricks; gilt deer-horns over the big bell; gaudy symbolical picture on +the paddle-box, possibly; big roomy boiler-deck, painted blue, and +furnished with Windsor armchairs; inside, a far-receding snow-white +'cabin;' porcelain knob and oil-picture on every stateroom door; curving +patterns of filigree-work touched up with gilding, stretching overhead +all down the converging vista; big chandeliers every little way, each an +April shower of glittering glass-drops; lovely rainbow-light falling +everywhere from the colored glazing of the skylights; the whole a long- +drawn, resplendent tunnel, a bewildering and soul-satisfying spectacle! +In the ladies' cabin a pink and white Wilton carpet, as soft as mush, +and glorified with a ravishing pattern of gigantic flowers. Then the +Bridal Chamber--the animal that invented that idea was still alive and +unhanged, at that day--Bridal Chamber whose pretentious flummery was +necessarily overawing to the now tottering intellect of that hosannahing +citizen. Every state-room had its couple of cozy clean bunks, and +perhaps a looking-glass and a snug closet; and sometimes there was even +a washbowl and pitcher, and part of a towel which could be told from +mosquito netting by an expert--though generally these things were +absent, and the shirt-sleeved passengers cleansed themselves at a long +row of stationary bowls in the barber shop, where were also public +towels, public combs, and public soap. + +Take the steamboat which I have just described, and you have her in her +highest and finest, and most pleasing, and comfortable, and satisfactory +estate. Now cake her over with a layer of ancient and obdurate dirt, +and you have the Cincinnati steamer awhile ago referred to. Not all +over--only inside; for she was ably officered in all departments except +the steward's. + +But wash that boat and repaint her, and she would be about the +counterpart of the most complimented boat of the old flush times: for +the steamboat architecture of the West has undergone no change; neither +has steamboat furniture and ornamentation undergone any. + + + + +Chapter 39 Manufactures and Miscreants + +WHERE the river, in the Vicksburg region, used to be corkscrewed, it is +now comparatively straight--made so by cut-off; a former distance of +seventy miles is reduced to thirty-five. It is a change which threw +Vicksburg's neighbor, Delta, Louisiana, out into the country and ended +its career as a river town. Its whole river-frontage is now occupied by +a vast sand-bar, thickly covered with young trees--a growth which will +magnify itself into a dense forest by-and-bye, and completely hide the +exiled town. + +In due time we passed Grand Gulf and Rodney, of war fame, and reached +Natchez, the last of the beautiful hill-cities--for Baton Rouge, yet to +come, is not on a hill, but only on high ground. Famous Natchez-under- +the-hill has not changed notably in twenty years; in outward aspect-- +judging by the descriptions of the ancient procession of foreign +tourists--it has not changed in sixty; for it is still small, +straggling, and shabby. It had a desperate reputation, morally, in the +old keel-boating and early steamboating times--plenty of drinking, +carousing, fisticuffing, and killing there, among the riff-raff of the +river, in those days. But Natchez-on-top-of-the-hill is attractive; has +always been attractive. Even Mrs. Trollope (1827) had to confess its +charms: + +'At one or two points the wearisome level line is relieved by bluffs, as +they call the short intervals of high ground. The town of Natchez is +beautifully situated on one of those high spots. The contrast that its +bright green hill forms with the dismal line of black forest that +stretches on every side, the abundant growth of the pawpaw, palmetto and +orange, the copious variety of sweet-scented flowers that flourish +there, all make it appear like an oasis in the desert. Natchez is the +furthest point to the north at which oranges ripen in the open air, or +endure the winter without shelter. With the exception of this sweet +spot, I thought all the little towns and villages we passed wretched- +looking in the extreme.' + +Natchez, like her near and far river neighbors, has railways now, and is +adding to them--pushing them hither and thither into all rich outlying +regions that are naturally tributary to her. And like Vicksburg and New +Orleans, she has her ice-factory: she makes thirty tons of ice a day. +In Vicksburg and Natchez, in my time, ice was jewelry; none but the rich +could wear it. But anybody and everybody can have it now. I visited one +of the ice-factories in New Orleans, to see what the polar regions might +look like when lugged into the edge of the tropics. But there was +nothing striking in the aspect of the place. It was merely a spacious +house, with some innocent steam machinery in one end of it and some big +porcelain pipes running here and there. No, not porcelain--they merely +seemed to be; they were iron, but the ammonia which was being breathed +through them had coated them to the thickness of your hand with solid +milk-white ice. It ought to have melted; for one did not require winter +clothing in that atmosphere: but it did not melt; the inside of the +pipe was too cold. + +Sunk into the floor were numberless tin boxes, a foot square and two +feet long, and open at the top end. These were full of clear water; and +around each box, salt and other proper stuff was packed; also, the +ammonia gases were applied to the water in some way which will always +remain a secret to me, because I was not able to understand the process. +While the water in the boxes gradually froze, men gave it a stir or two +with a stick occasionally--to liberate the air-bubbles, I think. Other +men were continually lifting out boxes whose contents had become hard +frozen. They gave the box a single dip into a vat of boiling water, to +melt the block of ice free from its tin coffin, then they shot the block +out upon a platform car, and it was ready for market. These big blocks +were hard, solid, and crystal-clear. In certain of them, big bouquets of +fresh and brilliant tropical flowers had been frozen-in; in others, +beautiful silken-clad French dolls, and other pretty objects. These +blocks were to be set on end in a platter, in the center of dinner- +tables, to cool the tropical air; and also to be ornamental, for the +flowers and things imprisoned in them could be seen as through plate +glass. I was told that this factory could retail its ice, by wagon, +throughout New Orleans, in the humblest dwelling-house quantities, at +six or seven dollars a ton, and make a sufficient profit. This being the +case, there is business for ice-factories in the North; for we get ice +on no such terms there, if one take less than three hundred and fifty +pounds at a delivery. + +The Rosalie Yarn Mill, of Natchez, has a capacity of 6,000 spindles and +160 looms, and employs 100 hands. The Natchez Cotton Mills Company +began operations four years ago in a two-story building of 50 x 190 +feet, with 4,000 spindles and 128 looms; capital $105,000, all +subscribed in the town. Two years later, the same stockholders increased +their capital to $225,000; added a third story to the mill, increased +its length to 317 feet; added machinery to increase the capacity to +10,300 spindles and 304 looms. The company now employ 250 operatives, +many of whom are citizens of Natchez. 'The mill works 5,000 bales of +cotton annually and manufactures the best standard quality of brown +shirtings and sheetings and drills, turning out 5,000,000 yards of these +goods per year.'{footnote [New Orleans Times-Democrat, 26 Aug, 1882.]} A +close corporation--stock held at $5,000 per share, but none in the +market. + +The changes in the Mississippi River are great and strange, yet were to +be expected; but I was not expecting to live to see Natchez and these +other river towns become manufacturing strongholds and railway centers. + +Speaking of manufactures reminds me of a talk upon that topic which I +heard--which I overheard--on board the Cincinnati boat. I awoke out of a +fretted sleep, with a dull confusion of voices in my ears. I listened-- +two men were talking; subject, apparently, the great inundation. I +looked out through the open transom. The two men were eating a late +breakfast; sitting opposite each other; nobody else around. They closed +up the inundation with a few words--having used it, evidently, as a mere +ice-breaker and acquaintanceship-breeder--then they dropped into +business. It soon transpired that they were drummers--one belonging in +Cincinnati, the other in New Orleans. Brisk men, energetic of movement +and speech; the dollar their god, how to get it their religion. + +'Now as to this article,' said Cincinnati, slashing into the ostensible +butter and holding forward a slab of it on his knife-blade, 'it's from +our house; look at it--smell of it--taste it. Put any test on it you +want to. Take your own time--no hurry--make it thorough. There now-- +what do you say? butter, ain't it. Not by a thundering sight--it's +oleomargarine! Yes, sir, that's what it is--oleomargarine. You can't +tell it from butter; by George, an EXPERT can't. It's from our house. +We supply most of the boats in the West; there's hardly a pound of +butter on one of them. We are crawling right along--JUMPING right along +is the word. We are going to have that entire trade. Yes, and the hotel +trade, too. You are going to see the day, pretty soon, when you can't +find an ounce of butter to bless yourself with, in any hotel in the +Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, outside of the biggest cities. Why, we are +turning out oleomargarine NOW by the thousands of tons. And we can sell +it so dirt-cheap that the whole country has GOT to take it--can't get +around it you see. Butter don't stand any show--there ain't any chance +for competition. Butter's had its DAY--and from this out, butter goes to +the wall. There's more money in oleomargarine than--why, you can't +imagine the business we do. I've stopped in every town from Cincinnati +to Natchez; and I've sent home big orders from every one of them.' + +And so-forth and so-on, for ten minutes longer, in the same fervid +strain. Then New Orleans piped up and said-- + +Yes, it's a first-rate imitation, that's a certainty; but it ain't the +only one around that's first-rate. For instance, they make olive-oil out +of cotton-seed oil, nowadays, so that you can't tell them apart.' + +'Yes, that's so,' responded Cincinnati, 'and it was a tip-top business +for a while. They sent it over and brought it back from France and +Italy, with the United States custom-house mark on it to indorse it for +genuine, and there was no end of cash in it; but France and Italy broke +up the game--of course they naturally would. Cracked on such a rattling +impost that cotton-seed olive-oil couldn't stand the raise; had to hang +up and quit.' + +'Oh, it DID, did it? You wait here a minute.' + +Goes to his state-room, brings back a couple of long bottles, and takes +out the corks--says: + +'There now, smell them, taste them, examine the bottles, inspect the +labels. One of 'm's from Europe, the other's never been out of this +country. One's European olive-oil, the other's American cotton-seed +olive-oil. Tell 'm apart? 'Course you can't. Nobody can. People that +want to, can go to the expense and trouble of shipping their oils to +Europe and back--it's their privilege; but our firm knows a trick worth +six of that. We turn out the whole thing--clean from the word go--in our +factory in New Orleans: labels, bottles, oil, everything. Well, no, +not labels: been buying them abroad--get them dirt-cheap there. You +see, there's just one little wee speck, essence, or whatever it is, in a +gallon of cotton-seed oil, that give it a smell, or a flavor, or +something--get that out, and you're all right--perfectly easy then to +turn the oil into any kind of oil you want to, and there ain't anybody +that can detect the true from the false. Well, we know how to get that +one little particle out--and we're the only firm that does. And we turn +out an olive-oil that is just simply perfect--undetectable! We are doing +a ripping trade, too--as I could easily show you by my order-book for +this trip. Maybe you'll butter everybody's bread pretty soon, but we'll +cotton-seed his salad for him from the Gulf to Canada, and that's a +dead-certain thing.' + +Cincinnati glowed and flashed with admiration. The two scoundrels +exchanged business-cards, and rose. As they left the table, Cincinnati +said-- + +'But you have to have custom-house marks, don't you? How do you manage +that?' + +I did not catch the answer. + +We passed Port Hudson, scene of two of the most terrific episodes of the +war--the night-battle there between Farragut's fleet and the Confederate +land batteries, April 14th, 1863; and the memorable land battle, two +months later, which lasted eight hours--eight hours of exceptionally +fierce and stubborn fighting--and ended, finally, in the repulse of the +Union forces with great slaughter. + + + + +Chapter 40 Castles and Culture + +BATON ROUGE was clothed in flowers, like a bride--no, much more so; like +a greenhouse. For we were in the absolute South now--no modifications, +no compromises, no half-way measures. The magnolia-trees in the Capitol +grounds were lovely and fragrant, with their dense rich foliage and huge +snow-ball blossoms. The scent of the flower is very sweet, but you want +distance on it, because it is so powerful. They are not good bedroom +blossoms--they might suffocate one in his sleep. We were certainly in +the South at last; for here the sugar region begins, and the +plantations--vast green levels, with sugar-mill and negro quarters +clustered together in the middle distance--were in view. And there was +a tropical sun overhead and a tropical swelter in the air. + +And at this point, also, begins the pilot's paradise: a wide river hence +to New Orleans, abundance of water from shore to shore, and no bars, +snags, sawyers, or wrecks in his road. + +Sir Walter Scott is probably responsible for the Capitol building; for +it is not conceivable that this little sham castle would ever have been +built if he had not run the people mad, a couple of generations ago, +with his medieval romances. The South has not yet recovered from the +debilitating influence of his books. Admiration of his fantastic heroes +and their grotesque 'chivalry' doings and romantic juvenilities still +survives here, in an atmosphere in which is already perceptible the +wholesome and practical nineteenth-century smell of cotton-factories and +locomotives; and traces of its inflated language and other windy +humbuggeries survive along with it. It is pathetic enough, that a +whitewashed castle, with turrets and things--materials all ungenuine +within and without, pretending to be what they are not--should ever have +been built in this otherwise honorable place; but it is much more +pathetic to see this architectural falsehood undergoing restoration and +perpetuation in our day, when it would have been so easy to let dynamite +finish what a charitable fire began, and then devote this restoration- +money to the building of something genuine. + +Baton Rouge has no patent on imitation castles, however, and no monopoly +of them. Here is a picture from the advertisement of the 'Female +Institute' of Columbia; Tennessee. The following remark is from the +same advertisement-- + +'The Institute building has long been famed as a model of striking and +beautiful architecture. Visitors are charmed with its resemblance to +the old castles of song and story, with its towers, turreted walls, and +ivy-mantled porches.' + +Keeping school in a castle is a romantic thing; as romantic as keeping +hotel in a castle. + +By itself the imitation castle is doubtless harmless, and well enough; +but as a symbol and breeder and sustainer of maudlin Middle-Age +romanticism here in the midst of the plainest and sturdiest and +infinitely greatest and worthiest of all the centuries the world has +seen, it is necessarily a hurtful thing and a mistake. + +Here is an extract from the prospectus of a Kentucky 'Female College.' +Female college sounds well enough; but since the phrasing it in that +unjustifiable way was done purely in the interest of brevity, it seems +to me that she-college would have been still better--because shorter, +and means the same thing: that is, if either phrase means anything at +all-- + +'The president is southern by birth, by rearing, by education, and by +sentiment; the teachers are all southern in sentiment, and with the +exception of those born in Europe were born and raised in the south. +Believing the southern to be the highest type of civilization this +continent has seen, the young ladies are trained according to the +southern ideas of delicacy, refinement, womanhood, religion, and +propriety; hence we offer a first-class female college for the south and +solicit southern patronage.' + +{footnote (long one) [Illustrations of it thoughtlessly omitted by the +advertiser: + +KNOXVILLE, Tenn., October 19.--This morning a few minutes after ten +o'clock, General Joseph A. Mabry, Thomas O'Connor, and Joseph A. Mabry, +Jr., were killed in a shooting affray. The difficulty began yesterday +afternoon by General Mabry attacking Major O'Connor and threatening to +kill him. This was at the fair grounds, and O'Connor told Mabry that it +was not the place to settle their difficulties. Mabry then told O'Connor +he should not live. It seems that Mabry was armed and O'Connor was not. +The cause of the difficulty was an old feud about the transfer of some +property from Mabry to O'Connor. Later in the afternoon Mabry sent word +to O'Connor that he would kill him on sight. This morning Major O'Connor +was standing in the door of the Mechanics' National Bank, of which he +was president. General Mabry and another gentleman walked down Gay +Street on the opposite side from the bank. O'Connor stepped into the +bank, got a shot gun, took deliberate aim at General Mabry and fired. +Mabry fell dead, being shot in the left side. As he fell O'Connor fired +again, the shot taking effect in Mabry's thigh. O'Connor then reached +into the bank and got another shot gun. About this time Joseph A. Mabry, +Jr., son of General Mabry, came rushing down the street, unseen by +O'Connor until within forty feet, when the young man fired a pistol, the +shot taking effect in O'Connor's right breast, passing through the body +near the heart. The instant Mabry shot, O'Connor turned and fired, the +load taking effect in young Mabry's right breast and side. Mabry fell +pierced with twenty buckshot, and almost instantly O'Connor fell dead +without a struggle. Mabry tried to rise, but fell back dead. The whole +tragedy occurred within two minutes, and neither of the three spoke +after he was shot. General Mabry had about thirty buckshot in his body. +A bystander was painfully wounded in the thigh with a buckshot, and +another was wounded in the arm. Four other men had their clothing +pierced by buckshot. The affair caused great excitement, and Gay Street +was thronged with thousands of people. General Mabry and his son Joe +were acquitted only a few days ago of the murder of Moses Lusby and Don +Lusby, father and son, whom they killed a few weeks ago. Will Mabry was +killed by Don Lusby last Christmas. Major Thomas O'Connor was President +of the Mechanics' National Bank here, and was the wealthiest man in the +State.--ASSOCIATED PRESS TELEGRAM. + +One day last month, Professor Sharpe, of the Somerville, Tenn., Female +College, 'a quiet and gentlemanly man,' was told that his brother-in- +law, a Captain Burton, had threatened to kill him. Burton, t seems, had +already killed one man and driven his knife into another. The Professor +armed himself with a double-barreled shot gun, started out in search of +his brother-in-law, found him playing billiards in a saloon, and blew +his brains out. The 'Memphis Avalanche' reports that the Professor's +course met with pretty general approval in the community; knowing that +the law was powerless, in the actual condition of public sentiment, to +protect him, he protected himself. + +About the same time, two young men in North Carolina quarreled about a +girl, and 'hostile messages' were exchanged. Friends tried to reconcile +them, but had their labor for their pains. On the 24th the young men met +in the public highway. One of them had a heavy club in his hand, the +other an ax. The man with the club fought desperately for his life, but +it was a hopeless fight from the first. A well-directed blow sent his +club whirling out of his grasp, and the next moment he was a dead man. + +About the same time, two 'highly connected' young Virginians, clerks in +a hardware store at Charlottesville, while 'skylarking,' came to blows. +Peter Dick threw pepper in Charles Roads's eyes; Roads demanded an +apology; Dick refused to give it, and it was agreed that a duel was +inevitable, but a difficulty arose; the parties had no pistols, and it +was too late at night to procure them. One of them suggested that +butcher-knives would answer the purpose, and the other accepted the +suggestion; the result was that Roads fell to the floor with a gash in +his abdomen that may or may not prove fatal. If Dick has been arrested, +the news has not reached us. He 'expressed deep regret,' and we are told +by a Staunton correspondent of the PHILADELPHIA PRESS that 'every effort +has been made to hush the matter up.'--EXTRACTS FROM THE PUBLIC +JOURNALS.]} + + +What, warder, ho! the man that can blow so complacent a blast as that, +probably blows it from a castle. + +From Baton Rouge to New Orleans, the great sugar plantations border both +sides of the river all the way, and stretch their league-wide levels +back to the dim forest-walls of bearded cypress in the rear. Shores +lonely no longer. Plenty of dwellings all the way, on both banks-- +standing so close together, for long distances, that the broad river +lying between the two rows, becomes a sort of spacious street. A most +home-like and happy-looking region. And now and then you see a pillared +and porticoed great manor-house, embowered in trees. Here is testimony +of one or two of the procession of foreign tourists that filed along +here half a century ago. Mrs. Trollope says-- + +'The unbroken flatness of the banks of the Mississippi continued +unvaried for many miles above New Orleans; but the graceful and +luxuriant palmetto, the dark and noble ilex, and the bright orange, were +everywhere to be seen, and it was many days before we were weary of +looking at them.' + +Captain Basil Hall-- + +'The district of country which lies adjacent to the Mississippi, in the +lower parts of Louisiana, is everywhere thickly peopled by sugar +planters, whose showy houses, gay piazzas, trig gardens, and numerous +slave-villages, all clean and neat, gave an exceedingly thriving air to +the river scenery. + +All the procession paint the attractive picture in the same way. The +descriptions of fifty years ago do not need to have a word changed in +order to exactly describe the same region as it appears to-day--except +as to the 'trigness' of the houses. The whitewash is gone from the negro +cabins now; and many, possibly most, of the big mansions, once so +shining white, have worn out their paint and have a decayed, neglected +look. It is the blight of the war. Twenty-one years ago everything was +trim and trig and bright along the 'coast,' just as it had been in 1827, +as described by those tourists. + +Unfortunate tourists! People humbugged them with stupid and silly lies, +and then laughed at them for believing and printing the same. They told +Mrs. Trollope that the alligators--or crocodiles, as she calls them-- +were terrible creatures; and backed up the statement with a blood- +curdling account of how one of these slandered reptiles crept into a +squatter cabin one night, and ate up a woman and five children. The +woman, by herself, would have satisfied any ordinarily-impossible +alligator; but no, these liars must make him gorge the five children +besides. One would not imagine that jokers of this robust breed would be +sensitive--but they were. It is difficult, at this day, to understand, +and impossible to justify, the reception which the book of the grave, +honest, intelligent, gentle, manly, charitable, well-meaning Capt. Basil +Hall got. + + + + +Chapter 41 The Metropolis of the South + +THE approaches to New Orleans were familiar; general aspects were +unchanged. When one goes flying through London along a railway propped +in the air on tall arches, he may inspect miles of upper bedrooms +through the open windows, but the lower half of the houses is under his +level and out of sight. Similarly, in high-river stage, in the New +Orleans region, the water is up to the top of the enclosing levee-rim, +the flat country behind it lies low--representing the bottom of a dish-- +and as the boat swims along, high on the flood, one looks down upon the +houses and into the upper windows. There is nothing but that frail +breastwork of earth between the people and destruction. + +The old brick salt-warehouses clustered at the upper end of the city +looked as they had always looked; warehouses which had had a kind of +Aladdin's lamp experience, however, since I had seen them; for when the +war broke out the proprietor went to bed one night leaving them packed +with thousands of sacks of vulgar salt, worth a couple of dollars a +sack, and got up in the morning and found his mountain of salt turned +into a mountain of gold, so to speak, so suddenly and to so dizzy a +height had the war news sent up the price of the article. + +The vast reach of plank wharves remained unchanged, and there were as +many ships as ever: but the long array of steamboats had vanished; not +altogether, of course, but not much of it was left. + +The city itself had not changed--to the eye. It had greatly increased +in spread and population, but the look of the town was not altered. The +dust, waste-paper-littered, was still deep in the streets; the deep, +trough-like gutters alongside the curbstones were still half full of +reposeful water with a dusty surface; the sidewalks were still--in the +sugar and bacon region--encumbered by casks and barrels and hogsheads; +the great blocks of austerely plain commercial houses were as dusty- +looking as ever. + +Canal Street was finer, and more attractive and stirring than formerly, +with its drifting crowds of people, its several processions of hurrying +street-cars, and--toward evening--its broad second-story verandas +crowded with gentlemen and ladies clothed according to the latest mode. + +Not that there is any 'architecture' in Canal Street: to speak in +broad, general terms, there is no architecture in New Orleans, except in +the cemeteries. It seems a strange thing to say of a wealthy, far- +seeing, and energetic city of a quarter of a million inhabitants, but it +is true. There is a huge granite U.S. Custom-house--costly enough, +genuine enough, but as a decoration it is inferior to a gasometer. It +looks like a state prison. But it was built before the war. +Architecture in America may be said to have been born since the war. New +Orleans, I believe, has had the good luck--and in a sense the bad luck-- +to have had no great fire in late years. It must be so. If the +opposite had been the case, I think one would be able to tell the 'burnt +district' by the radical improvement in its architecture over the old +forms. One can do this in Boston and Chicago. The 'burnt district' of +Boston was commonplace before the fire; but now there is no commercial +district in any city in the world that can surpass it--or perhaps even +rival it--in beauty, elegance, and tastefulness. + +However, New Orleans has begun--just this moment, as one may say. When +completed, the new Cotton Exchange will be a stately and beautiful +building; massive, substantial, full of architectural graces; no shams +or false pretenses or uglinesses about it anywhere. To the city, it will +be worth many times its cost, for it will breed its species. What has +been lacking hitherto, was a model to build toward; something to educate +eye and taste; a SUGGESTER, so to speak. + +The city is well outfitted with progressive men--thinking, sagacious, +long-headed men. The contrast between the spirit of the city and the +city's architecture is like the contrast between waking and sleep. +Apparently there is a 'boom' in everything but that one dead feature. +The water in the gutters used to be stagnant and slimy, and a potent +disease-breeder; but the gutters are flushed now, two or three times a +day, by powerful machinery; in many of the gutters the water never +stands still, but has a steady current. Other sanitary improvements +have been made; and with such effect that New Orleans claims to be +(during the long intervals between the occasional yellow-fever assaults) +one of the healthiest cities in the Union. There's plenty of ice now +for everybody, manufactured in the town. It is a driving place +commercially, and has a great river, ocean, and railway business. At +the date of our visit, it was the best lighted city in the Union, +electrically speaking. The New Orleans electric lights were more +numerous than those of New York, and very much better. One had this +modified noonday not only in Canal and some neighboring chief streets, +but all along a stretch of five miles of river frontage. There are good +clubs in the city now--several of them but recently organized--and +inviting modern-style pleasure resorts at West End and Spanish Fort. +The telephone is everywhere. One of the most notable advances is in +journalism. The newspapers, as I remember them, were not a striking +feature. Now they are. Money is spent upon them with a free hand. They +get the news, let it cost what it may. The editorial work is not hack- +grinding, but literature. As an example of New Orleans journalistic +achievement, it may be mentioned that the 'Times-Democrat' of August 26, +1882, contained a report of the year's business of the towns of the +Mississippi Valley, from New Orleans all the way to St. Paul--two +thousand miles. That issue of the paper consisted of forty pages; seven +columns to the page; two hundred and eighty columns in all; fifteen +hundred words to the column; an aggregate of four hundred and twenty +thousand words. That is to say, not much short of three times as many +words as there are in this book. One may with sorrow contrast this with +the architecture of New Orleans. + +I have been speaking of public architecture only. The domestic article +in New Orleans is reproachless, notwithstanding it remains as it always +was. All the dwellings are of wood--in the American part of the town, I +mean--and all have a comfortable look. Those in the wealthy quarter are +spacious; painted snow-white usually, and generally have wide verandas, +or double-verandas, supported by ornamental columns. These mansions +stand in the center of large grounds, and rise, garlanded with roses, +out of the midst of swelling masses of shining green foliage and many- +colored blossoms. No houses could well be in better harmony with their +surroundings, or more pleasing to the eye, or more home-like and +comfortable-looking. + +One even becomes reconciled to the cistern presently; this is a mighty +cask, painted green, and sometimes a couple of stories high, which is +propped against the house-corner on stilts. There is a mansion-and- +brewery suggestion about the combination which seems very incongruous at +first. But the people cannot have wells, and so they take rain-water. +Neither can they conveniently have cellars, or graves,{footnote [The +Israelites are buried in graves--by permission, I take it, not +requirement; but none else, except the destitute, who are buried at +public expense. The graves are but three or four feet deep.]} the town +being built upon 'made' ground; so they do without both, and few of the +living complain, and none of the others. + + + + +Chapter 42 Hygiene and Sentiment + +THEY bury their dead in vaults, above the ground. These vaults have a +resemblance to houses--sometimes to temples; are built of marble, +generally; are architecturally graceful and shapely; they face the walks +and driveways of the cemetery; and when one moves through the midst of a +thousand or so of them and sees their white roofs and gables stretching +into the distance on every hand, the phrase 'city of the dead' has all +at once a meaning to him. Many of the cemeteries are beautiful, and are +kept in perfect order. When one goes from the levee or the business +streets near it, to a cemetery, he observes to himself that if those +people down there would live as neatly while they are alive as they do +after they are dead, they would find many advantages in it; and besides, +their quarter would be the wonder and admiration of the business world. +Fresh flowers, in vases of water, are to be seen at the portals of many +of the vaults: placed there by the pious hands of bereaved parents and +children, husbands and wives, and renewed daily. A milder form of +sorrow finds its inexpensive and lasting remembrancer in the coarse and +ugly but indestructible 'immortelle'--which is a wreath or cross or some +such emblem, made of rosettes of black linen, with sometimes a yellow +rosette at the conjunction of the cross's bars--kind of sorrowful +breast-pin, so to say. The immortelle requires no attention: you just +hang it up, and there you are; just leave it alone, it will take care of +your grief for you, and keep it in mind better than you can; stands +weather first-rate, and lasts like boiler-iron. + +On sunny days, pretty little chameleons--gracefullest of legged +reptiles--creep along the marble fronts of the vaults, and catch flies. +Their changes of color--as to variety--are not up to the creature's +reputation. They change color when a person comes along and hangs up an +immortelle; but that is nothing: any right-feeling reptile would do +that. + +I will gradually drop this subject of graveyards. I have been trying +all I could to get down to the sentimental part of it, but I cannot +accomplish it. I think there is no genuinely sentimental part to it. +It is all grotesque, ghastly, horrible. Graveyards may have been +justifiable in the bygone ages, when nobody knew that for every dead +body put into the ground, to glut the earth and the plant-roots, and the +air with disease-germs, five or fifty, or maybe a hundred persons must +die before their proper time; but they are hardly justifiable now, when +even the children know that a dead saint enters upon a century-long +career of assassination the moment the earth closes over his corpse. It +is a grim sort of a thought. The relics of St. Anne, up in Canada, have +now, after nineteen hundred years, gone to curing the sick by the dozen. +But it is merest matter-of-course that these same relics, within a +generation after St. Anne's death and burial, MADE several thousand +people sick. Therefore these miracle-performances are simply +compensation, nothing more. St. Anne is somewhat slow pay, for a Saint, +it is true; but better a debt paid after nineteen hundred years, and +outlawed by the statute of limitations, than not paid at all; and most +of the knights of the halo do not pay at all. Where you find one that +pays--like St. Anne--you find a hundred and fifty that take the benefit +of the statute. And none of them pay any more than the principal of what +they owe--they pay none of the interest either simple or compound. A +Saint can never QUITE return the principal, however; for his dead body +KILLS people, whereas his relics HEAL only--they never restore the dead +to life. That part of the account is always left unsettled. + +'Dr. F. Julius Le Moyne, after fifty years of medical practice, wrote: +"The inhumation of human bodies, dead from infectious diseases, results +in constantly loading the atmosphere, and polluting the waters, with not +only the germs that rise from simply putrefaction, but also with the +SPECIFIC germs of the diseases from which death resulted." + +'The gases (from buried corpses) will rise to the surface through eight +or ten feet of gravel, just as coal-gas will do, and there is +practically no limit to their power of escape. + +'During the epidemic in New Orleans in 1853, Dr. E. H. Barton reported +that in the Fourth District the mortality was four hundred and fifty-two +per thousand--more than double that of any other. In this district were +three large cemeteries, in which during the previous year more than +three thousand bodies had been buried. In other districts the proximity +of cemeteries seemed to aggravate the disease. + +'In 1828 Professor Bianchi demonstrated how the fearful reappearance of +the plague at Modena was caused by excavations in ground where, THREE +HUNDRED YEARS PREVIOUSLY, the victims of the pestilence had been buried. +Mr. Cooper, in explaining the causes of some epidemics, remarks that the +opening of the plague burial-grounds at Eyam resulted in an immediate +outbreak of disease.'--NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, NO. 3, VOL. 135. + +In an address before the Chicago Medical Society, in advocacy of +cremation, Dr. Charles W. Purdy made some striking comparisons to show +what a burden is laid upon society by the burial of the dead:-- + +'One and one-fourth times more money is expended annually in funerals in +the United States than the Government expends for public-school +purposes. Funerals cost this country in 1880 enough money to pay the +liabilities of all the commercial failures in the United States during +the same year, and give each bankrupt a capital of $8,630 with which to +resume business. Funerals cost annually more money than the value of the +combined gold and silver yield of the United States in the year 1880! +These figures do not include the sums invested in burial-grounds and +expended in tombs and monuments, nor the loss from depreciation of +property in the vicinity of cemeteries.' + +For the rich, cremation would answer as well as burial; for the +ceremonies connected with it could be made as costly and ostentatious as +a Hindu suttee; while for the poor, cremation would be better than +burial, because so cheap {footnote [Four or five dollars is the minimum +cost.]}--so cheap until the poor got to imitating the rich, which they +would do by-and-bye. The adoption of cremation would relieve us of a +muck of threadbare burial-witticisms; but, on the other hand, it would +resurrect a lot of mildewed old cremation-jokes that have had a rest for +two thousand years. + +I have a colored acquaintance who earns his living by odd jobs and heavy +manual labor. He never earns above four hundred dollars in a year, and +as he has a wife and several young children, the closest scrimping is +necessary to get him through to the end of the twelve months debtless. +To such a man a funeral is a colossal financial disaster. While I was +writing one of the preceding chapters, this man lost a little child. He +walked the town over with a friend, trying to find a coffin that was +within his means. He bought the very cheapest one he could find, plain +wood, stained. It cost him twenty-six dollars. It would have cost less +than four, probably, if it had been built to put something useful into. +He and his family will feel that outlay a good many months. + + + + +Chapter 43 The Art of Inhumation + +ABOUT the same time, I encountered a man in the street, whom I had not +seen for six or seven years; and something like this talk followed. I +said-- + +'But you used to look sad and oldish; you don't now. Where did you get +all this youth and bubbling cheerfulness? Give me the address.' + +He chuckled blithely, took off his shining tile, pointed to a notched +pink circlet of paper pasted into its crown, with something lettered on +it, and went on chuckling while I read, 'J. B----, UNDERTAKER.' Then he +clapped his hat on, gave it an irreverent tilt to leeward, and cried +out-- + +'That's what's the matter! It used to be rough times with me when you +knew me--insurance-agency business, you know; mighty irregular. Big +fire, all right--brisk trade for ten days while people scared; after +that, dull policy-business till next fire. Town like this don't have +fires often enough--a fellow strikes so many dull weeks in a row that he +gets discouraged. But you bet you, this is the business! People don't +wait for examples to die. No, sir, they drop off right along--there +ain't any dull spots in the undertaker line. I just started in with two +or three little old coffins and a hired hearse, and now look at the +thing! I've worked up a business here that would satisfy any man, don't +care who he is. Five years ago, lodged in an attic; live in a swell +house now, with a mansard roof, and all the modern inconveniences.' + +'Does a coffin pay so well. Is there much profit on a coffin?' + +'Go-way! How you talk!' Then, with a confidential wink, a dropping of +the voice, and an impressive laying of his hand on my arm; 'Look here; +there's one thing in this world which isn't ever cheap. That's a coffin. +There's one thing in this world which a person don't ever try to jew you +down on. That's a coffin. There's one thing in this world which a +person don't say--"I'll look around a little, and if I find I can't do +better I'll come back and take it." That's a coffin. There's one thing +in this world which a person won't take in pine if he can go walnut; and +won't take in walnut if he can go mahogany; and won't take in mahogany +if he can go an iron casket with silver door-plate and bronze handles. +That's a coffin. And there's one thing in this world which you don't +have to worry around after a person to get him to pay for. And that's a +coffin. Undertaking?--why it's the dead-surest business in Christendom, +and the nobbiest. + +'Why, just look at it. A rich man won't have anything but your very +best; and you can just pile it on, too--pile it on and sock it to him-- +he won't ever holler. And you take in a poor man, and if you work him +right he'll bust himself on a single lay-out. Or especially a woman. +F'r instance: Mrs. O'Flaherty comes in--widow--wiping her eyes and kind +of moaning. Unhandkerchiefs one eye, bats it around tearfully over the +stock; says-- + +'"And fhat might ye ask for that wan?" + +'"Thirty-nine dollars, madam," says I. + +'"It 's a foine big price, sure, but Pat shall be buried like a +gintleman, as he was, if I have to work me fingers off for it. I'll have +that wan, sor." + +'"Yes, madam," says I, "and it is a very good one, too; not costly, to +be sure, but in this life we must cut our garment to our clothes, as the +saying is." And as she starts out, I heave in, kind of casually, "This +one with the white satin lining is a beauty, but I am afraid--well, +sixty-five dollars is a rather--rather--but no matter, I felt obliged to +say to Mrs. O'Shaughnessy--" + +'"D'ye mane to soy that Bridget O'Shaughnessy bought the mate to that +joo-ul box to ship that dhrunken divil to Purgatory in?" + +'"Yes, madam." + +'"Then Pat shall go to heaven in the twin to it, if it takes the last +rap the O'Flaherties can raise; and moind you, stick on some extras, +too, and I'll give ye another dollar." + +'And as I lay-in with the livery stables, of course I don't forget to +mention that Mrs. O'Shaughnessy hired fifty-four dollars' worth of hacks +and flung as much style into Dennis's funeral as if he had been a duke +or an assassin. And of course she sails in and goes the O'Shaughnessy +about four hacks and an omnibus better. That used to be, but that's all +played now; that is, in this particular town. The Irish got to piling +up hacks so, on their funerals, that a funeral left them ragged and +hungry for two years afterward; so the priest pitched in and broke it +all up. He don't allow them to have but two hacks now, and sometimes +only one.' + +'Well,' said I, 'if you are so light-hearted and jolly in ordinary +times, what must you be in an epidemic?' + +He shook his head. + +'No, you're off, there. We don't like to see an epidemic. An epidemic +don't pay. Well, of course I don't mean that, exactly; but it don't pay +in proportion to the regular thing. Don't it occur to you, why?' + +No. + +'Think.' + +'I can't imagine. What is it?' + +'It's just two things.' + +'Well, what are they?' + +'One's Embamming.' + +'And what's the other?' + +'Ice.' + +'How is that?' + +'Well, in ordinary times, a person dies, and we lay him up in ice; one +day two days, maybe three, to wait for friends to come. Takes a lot of +it--melts fast. We charge jewelry rates for that ice, and war-prices +for attendance. Well, don't you know, when there's an epidemic, they +rush 'em to the cemetery the minute the breath's out. No market for ice +in an epidemic. Same with Embamming. You take a family that's able to +embam, and you've got a soft thing. You can mention sixteen different +ways to do it--though there AIN'T only one or two ways, when you come +down to the bottom facts of it--and they'll take the highest-priced way, +every time. It's human nature--human nature in grief. It don't reason, +you see. Time being, it don't care a dam. All it wants is physical +immortality for deceased, and they're willing to pay for it. All you've +got to do is to just be ca'm and stack it up--they'll stand the racket. +Why, man, you can take a defunct that you couldn't GIVE away; and get +your embamming traps around you and go to work; and in a couple of hours +he is worth a cool six hundred--that's what HE'S worth. There ain't +anything equal to it but trading rats for di'monds in time of famine. +Well, don't you see, when there's an epidemic, people don't wait to +embam. No, indeed they don't; and it hurts the business like hell-th, as +we say--hurts it like hell-th, HEALTH, see?--Our little joke in the +trade. Well, I must be going. Give me a call whenever you need any--I +mean, when you're going by, sometime.' + +In his joyful high spirits, he did the exaggerating himself, if any has +been done. I have not enlarged on him. + +With the above brief references to inhumation, let us leave the subject. +As for me, I hope to be cremated. I made that remark to my pastor once, +who said, with what he seemed to think was an impressive manner-- + +'I wouldn't worry about that, if I had your chances.' Much he knew about +it--the family all so opposed to it. + + + + +Chapter 44 City Sights + +THE old French part of New Orleans--anciently the Spanish part--bears no +resemblance to the American end of the city: the American end which lies +beyond the intervening brick business-center. The houses are massed in +blocks; are austerely plain and dignified; uniform of pattern, with here +and there a departure from it with pleasant effect; all are plastered on +the outside, and nearly all have long, iron-railed verandas running +along the several stories. Their chief beauty is the deep, warm, +varicolored stain with which time and the weather have enriched the +plaster. It harmonizes with all the surroundings, and has as natural a +look of belonging there as has the flush upon sunset clouds. This +charming decoration cannot be successfully imitated; neither is it to be +found elsewhere in America. + +The iron railings are a specialty, also. The pattern is often +exceedingly light and dainty, and airy and graceful--with a large cipher +or monogram in the center, a delicate cobweb of baffling, intricate +forms, wrought in steel. The ancient railings are hand-made, and are +now comparatively rare and proportionately valuable. They are become +BRIC-A-BRAC. + +The party had the privilege of idling through this ancient quarter of +New Orleans with the South's finest literary genius, the author of 'the +Grandissimes.' In him the South has found a masterly delineator of its +interior life and its history. In truth, I find by experience, that the +untrained eye and vacant mind can inspect it, and learn of it, and judge +of it, more clearly and profitably in his books than by personal contact +with it. + +With Mr. Cable along to see for you, and describe and explain and +illuminate, a jog through that old quarter is a vivid pleasure. And you +have a vivid sense as of unseen or dimly seen things--vivid, and yet +fitful and darkling; you glimpse salient features, but lose the fine +shades or catch them imperfectly through the vision of the imagination: +a case, as it were, of ignorant near-sighted stranger traversing the rim +of wide vague horizons of Alps with an inspired and enlightened long- +sighted native. + +We visited the old St. Louis Hotel, now occupied by municipal offices. +There is nothing strikingly remarkable about it; but one can say of it +as of the Academy of Music in New York, that if a broom or a shovel has +ever been used in it there is no circumstantial evidence to back up the +fact. It is curious that cabbages and hay and things do not grow in the +Academy of Music; but no doubt it is on account of the interruption of +the light by the benches, and the impossibility of hoeing the crop +except in the aisles. The fact that the ushers grow their buttonhole- +bouquets on the premises shows what might be done if they had the right +kind of an agricultural head to the establishment. + +We visited also the venerable Cathedral, and the pretty square in front +of it; the one dim with religious light, the other brilliant with the +worldly sort, and lovely with orange-trees and blossomy shrubs; then we +drove in the hot sun through the wilderness of houses and out on to the +wide dead level beyond, where the villas are, and the water wheels to +drain the town, and the commons populous with cows and children; passing +by an old cemetery where we were told lie the ashes of an early pirate; +but we took him on trust, and did not visit him. He was a pirate with a +tremendous and sanguinary history; and as long as he preserved +unspotted, in retirement, the dignity of his name and the grandeur of +his ancient calling, homage and reverence were his from high and low; +but when at last he descended into politics and became a paltry +alderman, the public 'shook' him, and turned aside and wept. When he +died, they set up a monument over him; and little by little he has come +into respect again; but it is respect for the pirate, not the alderman. +To-day the loyal and generous remember only what he was, and charitably +forget what he became. + +Thence, we drove a few miles across a swamp, along a raised shell road, +with a canal on one hand and a dense wood on the other; and here and +there, in the distance, a ragged and angular-limbed and moss-bearded +cypress, top standing out, clear cut against the sky, and as quaint of +form as the apple-trees in Japanese pictures--such was our course and +the surroundings of it. There was an occasional alligator swimming +comfortably along in the canal, and an occasional picturesque colored +person on the bank, flinging his statue-rigid reflection upon the still +water and watching for a bite. + +And by-and-bye we reached the West End, a collection of hotels of the +usual light summer-resort pattern, with broad verandas all around, and +the waves of the wide and blue Lake Pontchartrain lapping the +thresholds. We had dinner on a ground-veranda over the water--the chief +dish the renowned fish called the pompano, delicious as the less +criminal forms of sin. + +Thousands of people come by rail and carriage to West End and to Spanish +Fort every evening, and dine, listen to the bands, take strolls in the +open air under the electric lights, go sailing on the lake, and +entertain themselves in various and sundry other ways. + +We had opportunities on other days and in other places to test the +pompano. Notably, at an editorial dinner at one of the clubs in the +city. He was in his last possible perfection there, and justified his +fame. In his suite was a tall pyramid of scarlet cray-fish--large ones; +as large as one's thumb--delicate, palatable, appetizing. Also deviled +whitebait; also shrimps of choice quality; and a platter of small soft- +shell crabs of a most superior breed. The other dishes were what one +might get at Delmonico's, or Buckingham Palace; those I have spoken of +can be had in similar perfection in New Orleans only, I suppose. + +In the West and South they have a new institution--the Broom Brigade. It +is composed of young ladies who dress in a uniform costume, and go +through the infantry drill, with broom in place of musket. It is a very +pretty sight, on private view. When they perform on the stage of a +theater, in the blaze of colored fires, it must be a fine and +fascinating spectacle. I saw them go through their complex manual with +grace, spirit, and admirable precision. I saw them do everything which a +human being can possibly do with a broom, except sweep. I did not see +them sweep. But I know they could learn. What they have already learned +proves that. And if they ever should learn, and should go on the war- +path down Tchoupitoulas or some of those other streets around there, +those thoroughfares would bear a greatly improved aspect in a very few +minutes. But the girls themselves wouldn't; so nothing would be really +gained, after all. + +The drill was in the Washington Artillery building. In this building we +saw many interesting relics of the war. Also a fine oil-painting +representing Stonewall Jackson's last interview with General Lee. Both +men are on horseback. Jackson has just ridden up, and is accosting Lee. +The picture is very valuable, on account of the portraits, which are +authentic. But, like many another historical picture, it means nothing +without its label. And one label will fit it as well as another-- + +First Interview between Lee and Jackson. + +Last Interview between Lee and Jackson. + +Jackson Introducing Himself to Lee. + +Jackson Accepting Lee's Invitation to Dinner. + +Jackson Declining Lee's Invitation to Dinner--with Thanks. + +Jackson Apologizing for a Heavy Defeat. + +Jackson Reporting a Great Victory. + +Jackson Asking Lee for a Match. + +It tells ONE story, and a sufficient one; for it says quite plainly and +satisfactorily, 'Here are Lee and Jackson together.' The artist would +have made it tell that this is Lee and Jackson's last interview if he +could have done it. But he couldn't, for there wasn't any way to do it. +A good legible label is usually worth, for information, a ton of +significant attitude and expression in a historical picture. In Rome, +people with fine sympathetic natures stand up and weep in front of the +celebrated 'Beatrice Cenci the Day before her Execution.' It shows what +a label can do. If they did not know the picture, they would inspect it +unmoved, and say, 'Young girl with hay fever; young girl with her head +in a bag.' + +I found the half-forgotten Southern intonations and elisions as pleasing +to my ear as they had formerly been. A Southerner talks music. At least +it is music to me, but then I was born in the South. The educated +Southerner has no use for an r, except at the beginning of a word. He +says 'honah,' and 'dinnah,' and 'Gove'nuh,' and 'befo' the waw,' and so +on. The words may lack charm to the eye, in print, but they have it to +the ear. When did the r disappear from Southern speech, and how did it +come to disappear? The custom of dropping it was not borrowed from the +North, nor inherited from England. Many Southerners--most Southerners-- +put a y into occasional words that begin with the k sound. For instance, +they say Mr. K'yahtah (Carter) and speak of playing k'yahds or of riding +in the k'yahs. And they have the pleasant custom--long ago fallen into +decay in the North--of frequently employing the respectful 'Sir.' +Instead of the curt Yes, and the abrupt No, they say 'Yes, Suh', 'No, +Suh.' + +But there are some infelicities. Such as 'like' for 'as,' and the +addition of an 'at' where it isn't needed. I heard an educated gentleman +say, 'Like the flag-officer did.' His cook or his butler would have +said, 'Like the flag-officer done.' You hear gentlemen say, 'Where have +you been at?' And here is the aggravated form--heard a ragged street +Arab say it to a comrade: 'I was a-ask'n' Tom whah you was a-sett'n' +at.' The very elect carelessly say 'will' when they mean 'shall'; and +many of them say, 'I didn't go to do it,' meaning 'I didn't mean to do +it.' The Northern word 'guess'--imported from England, where it used to +be common, and now regarded by satirical Englishmen as a Yankee +original--is but little used among Southerners. They say 'reckon.' They +haven't any 'doesn't' in their language; they say 'don't' instead. The +unpolished often use 'went' for 'gone.' It is nearly as bad as the +Northern 'hadn't ought.' This reminds me that a remark of a very +peculiar nature was made here in my neighborhood (in the North) a few +days ago: 'He hadn't ought to have went.' How is that? Isn't that a +good deal of a triumph? One knows the orders combined in this half- +breed's architecture without inquiring: one parent Northern, the other +Southern. To-day I heard a schoolmistress ask, 'Where is John gone?' +This form is so common--so nearly universal, in fact--that if she had +used 'whither' instead of 'where,' I think it would have sounded like an +affectation. + +We picked up one excellent word--a word worth traveling to New Orleans +to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word--'lagniappe.' They +pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish--so they said. We discovered it at +the head of a column of odds and ends in the Picayune, the first day; +heard twenty people use it the second; inquired what it meant the third; +adopted it and got facility in swinging it the fourth. It has a +restricted meaning, but I think the people spread it out a little when +they choose. It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a 'baker's +dozen.' It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure. The custom +originated in the Spanish quarter of the city. When a child or a servant +buys something in a shop--or even the mayor or the governor, for aught I +know--he finishes the operation by saying-- + +'Give me something for lagniappe.' + +The shopman always responds; gives the child a bit of licorice-root, +gives the servant a cheap cigar or a spool of thread, gives the +governor--I don't know what he gives the governor; support, likely. + +When you are invited to drink, and this does occur now and then in New +Orleans--and you say, 'What, again?--no, I've had enough;' the other +party says, 'But just this one time more--this is for lagniappe.' When +the beau perceives that he is stacking his compliments a trifle too +high, and sees by the young lady's countenance that the edifice would +have been better with the top compliment left off, he puts his 'I beg +pardon--no harm intended,' into the briefer form of 'Oh, that's for +lagniappe.' If the waiter in the restaurant stumbles and spills a gill +of coffee down the back of your neck, he says 'For lagniappe, sah,' and +gets you another cup without extra charge. + + + + +Chapter 45 Southern Sports + +IN the North one hears the war mentioned, in social conversation, once a +month; sometimes as often as once a week; but as a distinct subject for +talk, it has long ago been relieved of duty. There are sufficient +reasons for this. Given a dinner company of six gentlemen to-day, it +can easily happen that four of them--and possibly five--were not in the +field at all. So the chances are four to two, or five to one, that the +war will at no time during the evening become the topic of conversation; +and the chances are still greater that if it become the topic it will +remain so but a little while. If you add six ladies to the company, you +have added six people who saw so little of the dread realities of the +war that they ran out of talk concerning them years ago, and now would +soon weary of the war topic if you brought it up. + +The case is very different in the South. There, every man you meet was +in the war; and every lady you meet saw the war. The war is the great +chief topic of conversation. The interest in it is vivid and constant; +the interest in other topics is fleeting. Mention of the war will wake +up a dull company and set their tongues going, when nearly any other +topic would fail. In the South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they +date from it. All day long you hear things 'placed' as having happened +since the waw; or du'in' the waw; or befo' the waw; or right aftah the +waw; or 'bout two yeahs or five yeahs or ten yeahs befo' the waw or +aftah the waw. It shows how intimately every individual was visited, in +his own person, by that tremendous episode. It gives the inexperienced +stranger a better idea of what a vast and comprehensive calamity +invasion is than he can ever get by reading books at the fireside. + +At a club one evening, a gentleman turned to me and said, in an aside-- + +'You notice, of course, that we are nearly always talking about the war. +It isn't because we haven't anything else to talk about, but because +nothing else has so strong an interest for us. And there is another +reason: In the war, each of us, in his own person, seems to have sampled +all the different varieties of human experience; as a consequence, you +can't mention an outside matter of any sort but it will certainly remind +some listener of something that happened during the war--and out he +comes with it. Of course that brings the talk back to the war. You may +try all you want to, to keep other subjects before the house, and we may +all join in and help, but there can be but one result: the most random +topic would load every man up with war reminiscences, and shut him up, +too; and talk would be likely to stop presently, because you can't talk +pale inconsequentialities when you've got a crimson fact or fancy in +your head that you are burning to fetch out.' + +The poet was sitting some little distance away; and presently he began +to speak--about the moon. + +The gentleman who had been talking to me remarked in an 'aside:' 'There, +the moon is far enough from the seat of war, but you will see that it +will suggest something to somebody about the war; in ten minutes from +now the moon, as a topic, will be shelved.' + +The poet was saying he had noticed something which was a surprise to +him; had had the impression that down here, toward the equator, the +moonlight was much stronger and brighter than up North; had had the +impression that when he visited New Orleans, many years ago, the moon-- + +Interruption from the other end of the room-- + +'Let me explain that. Reminds me of an anecdote. Everything is changed +since the war, for better or for worse; but you'll find people down here +born grumblers, who see no change except the change for the worse. +There was an old negro woman of this sort. A young New-Yorker said in +her presence, "What a wonderful moon you have down here!" She sighed +and said, "Ah, bless yo' heart, honey, you ought to seen dat moon befo' +de waw!"' + +The new topic was dead already. But the poet resurrected it, and gave +it a new start. + +A brief dispute followed, as to whether the difference between Northern +and Southern moonlight really existed or was only imagined. Moonlight +talk drifted easily into talk about artificial methods of dispelling +darkness. Then somebody remembered that when Farragut advanced upon +Port Hudson on a dark night--and did not wish to assist the aim of the +Confederate gunners--he carried no battle-lanterns, but painted the +decks of his ships white, and thus created a dim but valuable light, +which enabled his own men to grope their way around with considerable +facility. At this point the war got the floor again--the ten minutes not +quite up yet. + +I was not sorry, for war talk by men who have been in a war is always +interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is +likely to be dull. + +We went to a cockpit in New Orleans on a Saturday afternoon. I had never +seen a cock-fight before. There were men and boys there of all ages and +all colors, and of many languages and nationalities. But I noticed one +quite conspicuous and surprising absence: the traditional brutal faces. +There were no brutal faces. With no cock-fighting going on, you could +have played the gathering on a stranger for a prayer-meeting; and after +it began, for a revival--provided you blindfolded your stranger--for the +shouting was something prodigious. + +A negro and a white man were in the ring; everybody else outside. The +cocks were brought in in sacks; and when time was called, they were +taken out by the two bottle-holders, stroked, caressed, poked toward +each other, and finally liberated. The big black cock plunged instantly +at the little gray one and struck him on the head with his spur. The +gray responded with spirit. Then the Babel of many-tongued shoutings +broke out, and ceased not thenceforth. When the cocks had been fighting +some little time, I was expecting them momently to drop dead, for both +were blind, red with blood, and so exhausted that they frequently fell +down. Yet they would not give up, neither would they die. The negro and +the white man would pick them up every few seconds, wipe them off, blow +cold water on them in a fine spray, and take their heads in their mouths +and hold them there a moment--to warm back the perishing life perhaps; I +do not know. Then, being set down again, the dying creatures would +totter gropingly about, with dragging wings, find each other, strike a +guesswork blow or two, and fall exhausted once more. + +I did not see the end of the battle. I forced myself to endure it as +long as I could, but it was too pitiful a sight; so I made frank +confession to that effect, and we retired. We heard afterward that the +black cock died in the ring, and fighting to the last. + +Evidently there is abundant fascination about this 'sport' for such as +have had a degree of familiarity with it. I never saw people enjoy +anything more than this gathering enjoyed this fight. The case was the +same with old gray-heads and with boys of ten. They lost themselves in +frenzies of delight. The 'cocking-main' is an inhuman sort of +entertainment, there is no question about that; still, it seems a much +more respectable and far less cruel sport than fox-hunting--for the +cocks like it; they experience, as well as confer enjoyment; which is +not the fox's case. + +We assisted--in the French sense--at a mule race, one day. I believe I +enjoyed this contest more than any other mule there. I enjoyed it more +than I remember having enjoyed any other animal race I ever saw. The +grand-stand was well filled with the beauty and the chivalry of New +Orleans. That phrase is not original with me. It is the Southern +reporter's. He has used it for two generations. He uses it twenty times +a day, or twenty thousand times a day; or a million times a day-- +according to the exigencies. He is obliged to use it a million times a +day, if he have occasion to speak of respectable men and women that +often; for he has no other phrase for such service except that single +one. He never tires of it; it always has a fine sound to him. There is a +kind of swell medieval bulliness and tinsel about it that pleases his +gaudy barbaric soul. If he had been in Palestine in the early times, we +should have had no references to 'much people' out of him. No, he would +have said 'the beauty and the chivalry of Galilee' assembled to hear the +Sermon on the Mount. It is likely that the men and women of the South +are sick enough of that phrase by this time, and would like a change, +but there is no immediate prospect of their getting it. + +The New Orleans editor has a strong, compact, direct, unflowery style; +wastes no words, and does not gush. Not so with his average +correspondent. In the Appendix I have quoted a good letter, penned by a +trained hand; but the average correspondent hurls a style which differs +from that. For instance-- + +The 'Times-Democrat' sent a relief-steamer up one of the bayous, last +April. This steamer landed at a village, up there somewhere, and the +Captain invited some of the ladies of the village to make a short trip +with him. They accepted and came aboard, and the steamboat shoved out up +the creek. That was all there was 'to it.' And that is all that the +editor of the 'Times-Democrat' would have got out of it. There was +nothing in the thing but statistics, and he would have got nothing else +out of it. He would probably have even tabulated them, partly to secure +perfect clearness of statement, and partly to save space. But his +special correspondent knows other methods of handling statistics. He +just throws off all restraint and wallows in them-- + +'On Saturday, early in the morning, the beauty of the place graced our +cabin, and proud of her fair freight the gallant little boat glided up +the bayou.' + +Twenty-two words to say the ladies came aboard and the boat shoved out +up the creek, is a clean waste of ten good words, and is also +destructive of compactness of statement. + +The trouble with the Southern reporter is--Women. They unsettle him; +they throw him off his balance. He is plain, and sensible, and +satisfactory, until a woman heaves in sight. Then he goes all to +pieces; his mind totters, he becomes flowery and idiotic. From reading +the above extract, you would imagine that this student of Sir Walter +Scott is an apprentice, and knows next to nothing about handling a pen. +On the contrary, he furnishes plenty of proofs, in his long letter, that +he knows well enough how to handle it when the women are not around to +give him the artificial-flower complaint. For instance-- + +'At 4 o'clock ominous clouds began to gather in the south-east, and +presently from the Gulf there came a blow which increased in severity +every moment. It was not safe to leave the landing then, and there was a +delay. The oaks shook off long tresses of their mossy beards to the +tugging of the wind, and the bayou in its ambition put on miniature +waves in mocking of much larger bodies of water. A lull permitted a +start, and homewards we steamed, an inky sky overhead and a heavy wind +blowing. As darkness crept on, there were few on board who did not wish +themselves nearer home.' + +There is nothing the matter with that. It is good description, +compactly put. Yet there was great temptation, there, to drop into +lurid writing. + +But let us return to the mule. Since I left him, I have rummaged around +and found a full report of the race. In it I find confirmation of the +theory which I broached just now--namely, that the trouble with the +Southern reporter is Women: Women, supplemented by Walter Scott and his +knights and beauty and chivalry, and so on. This is an excellent report, +as long as the women stay out of it. But when they intrude, we have this +frantic result-- + +'It will be probably a long time before the ladies' stand presents such +a sea of foam-like loveliness as it did yesterday. The New Orleans +women are always charming, but never so much so as at this time of the +year, when in their dainty spring costumes they bring with them a +breath of balmy freshness and an odor of sanctity unspeakable. The stand +was so crowded with them that, walking at their feet and seeing no +possibility of approach, many a man appreciated as he never did before +the Peri's feeling at the Gates of Paradise, and wondered what was the +priceless boon that would admit him to their sacred presence. Sparkling +on their white-robed breasts or shoulders were the colors of their +favorite knights, and were it not for the fact that the doughty heroes +appeared on unromantic mules, it would have been easy to imagine one of +King Arthur's gala-days.' + +There were thirteen mules in the first heat; all sorts of mules, they +were; all sorts of complexions, gaits, dispositions, aspects. Some were +handsome creatures, some were not; some were sleek, some hadn't had +their fur brushed lately; some were innocently gay and frisky; some were +full of malice and all unrighteousness; guessing from looks, some of +them thought the matter on hand was war, some thought it was a lark, the +rest took it for a religious occasion. And each mule acted according to +his convictions. The result was an absence of harmony well compensated +by a conspicuous presence of variety--variety of a picturesque and +entertaining sort. + +All the riders were young gentlemen in fashionable society. If the +reader has been wondering why it is that the ladies of New Orleans +attend so humble an orgy as a mule-race, the thing is explained now. It +is a fashion-freak; all connected with it are people of fashion. + +It is great fun, and cordially liked. The mule-race is one of the +marked occasions of the year. It has brought some pretty fast mules to +the front. One of these had to be ruled out, because he was so fast that +he turned the thing into a one-mule contest, and robbed it of one of its +best features--variety. But every now and then somebody disguises him +with a new name and a new complexion, and rings him in again. + +The riders dress in full jockey costumes of bright-colored silks, +satins, and velvets. + +The thirteen mules got away in a body, after a couple of false starts, +and scampered off with prodigious spirit. As each mule and each rider +had a distinct opinion of his own as to how the race ought to be run, +and which side of the track was best in certain circumstances, and how +often the track ought to be crossed, and when a collision ought to be +accomplished, and when it ought to be avoided, these twenty-six +conflicting opinions created a most fantastic and picturesque confusion, +and the resulting spectacle was killingly comical. + +Mile heat; time 2:22. Eight of the thirteen mules distanced. I had a bet +on a mule which would have won if the procession had been reversed. The +second heat was good fun; and so was the 'consolation race for beaten +mules,' which followed later; but the first heat was the best in that +respect. + +I think that much the most enjoyable of all races is a steamboat race; +but, next to that, I prefer the gay and joyous mule-rush. Two red-hot +steamboats raging along, neck-and-neck, straining every nerve--that is +to say, every rivet in the boilers--quaking and shaking and groaning +from stem to stern, spouting white steam from the pipes, pouring black +smoke from the chimneys, raining down sparks, parting the river into +long breaks of hissing foam--this is sport that makes a body's very +liver curl with enjoyment. A horse-race is pretty tame and colorless in +comparison. Still, a horse-race might be well enough, in its way, +perhaps, if it were not for the tiresome false starts. But then, nobody +is ever killed. At least, nobody was ever killed when I was at a horse- +race. They have been crippled, it is true; but this is little to the +purpose. + + + + +Chapter 46 Enchantments and Enchanters + +THE largest annual event in New Orleans is a something which we arrived +too late to sample--the Mardi-Gras festivities. I saw the procession of +the Mystic Crew of Comus there, twenty-four years ago--with knights and +nobles and so on, clothed in silken and golden Paris-made +gorgeousnesses, planned and bought for that single night's use; and in +their train all manner of giants, dwarfs, monstrosities, and other +diverting grotesquerie--a startling and wonderful sort of show, as it +filed solemnly and silently down the street in the light of its smoking +and flickering torches; but it is said that in these latter days the +spectacle is mightily augmented, as to cost, splendor, and variety. +There is a chief personage--'Rex;' and if I remember rightly, neither +this king nor any of his great following of subordinates is known to any +outsider. All these people are gentlemen of position and consequence; +and it is a proud thing to belong to the organization; so the mystery in +which they hide their personality is merely for romance's sake, and not +on account of the police. + +Mardi-Gras is of course a relic of the French and Spanish occupation; +but I judge that the religious feature has been pretty well knocked out +of it now. Sir Walter has got the advantage of the gentlemen of the cowl +and rosary, and he will stay. His medieval business, supplemented by +the monsters and the oddities, and the pleasant creatures from fairy- +land, is finer to look at than the poor fantastic inventions and +performances of the reveling rabble of the priest's day, and serves +quite as well, perhaps, to emphasize the day and admonish men that the +grace-line between the worldly season and the holy one is reached. + +This Mardi-Gras pageant was the exclusive possession of New Orleans +until recently. But now it has spread to Memphis and St. Louis and +Baltimore. It has probably reached its limit. It is a thing which could +hardly exist in the practical North; would certainly last but a very +brief time; as brief a time as it would last in London. For the soul of +it is the romantic, not the funny and the grotesque. Take away the +romantic mysteries, the kings and knights and big-sounding titles, and +Mardi-Gras would die, down there in the South. The very feature that +keeps it alive in the South--girly-girly romance--would kill it in the +North or in London. Puck and Punch, and the press universal, would fall +upon it and make merciless fun of it, and its first exhibition would be +also its last. + +Against the crimes of the French Revolution and of Bonaparte may be set +two compensating benefactions: the Revolution broke the chains of the +ANCIEN REGIME and of the Church, and made of a nation of abject slaves a +nation of freemen; and Bonaparte instituted the setting of merit above +birth, and also so completely stripped the divinity from royalty, that +whereas crowned heads in Europe were gods before, they are only men, +since, and can never be gods again, but only figureheads, and answerable +for their acts like common clay. Such benefactions as these compensate +the temporary harm which Bonaparte and the Revolution did, and leave the +world in debt to them for these great and permanent services to liberty, +humanity, and progress. + +Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by his single +might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it back; sets the +world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms +of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government; with the +sillinesses and emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham +chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society. He did +measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other +individual that ever wrote. Most of the world has now outlived good +part of these harms, though by no means all of them; but in our South +they flourish pretty forcefully still. Not so forcefully as half a +generation ago, perhaps, but still forcefully. There, the genuine and +wholesome civilization of the nineteenth century is curiously confused +and commingled with the Walter Scott Middle-Age sham civilization; and +so you have practical, common-sense, progressive ideas, and progressive +works; mixed up with the duel, the inflated speech, and the jejune +romanticism of an absurd past that is dead, and out of charity ought to +be buried. But for the Sir Walter disease, the character of the +Southerner--or Southron, according to Sir Walter's starchier way of +phrasing it--would be wholly modern, in place of modern and medieval +mixed, and the South would be fully a generation further advanced than +it is. It was Sir Walter that made every gentleman in the South a Major +or a Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was he, +also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations. For it +was he that created rank and caste down there, and also reverence for +rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them. Enough is laid on +slavery, without fathering upon it these creations and contributions of +Sir Walter. + +Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it +existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the +war. It seems a little harsh toward a dead man to say that we never +should have had any war but for Sir Walter; and yet something of a +plausible argument might, perhaps, be made in support of that wild +proposition. The Southerner of the American Revolution owned slaves; so +did the Southerner of the Civil War: but the former resembles the latter +as an Englishman resembles a Frenchman. The change of character can be +traced rather more easily to Sir Walter's influence than to that of any +other thing or person. + +One may observe, by one or two signs, how deeply that influence +penetrated, and how strongly it holds. If one take up a Northern or +Southern literary periodical of forty or fifty years ago, he will find +it filled with wordy, windy, flowery 'eloquence,' romanticism, +sentimentality--all imitated from Sir Walter, and sufficiently badly +done, too--innocent travesties of his style and methods, in fact. This +sort of literature being the fashion in both sections of the country, +there was opportunity for the fairest competition; and as a consequence, +the South was able to show as many well-known literary names, +proportioned to population, as the North could. + +But a change has come, and there is no opportunity now for a fair +competition between North and South. For the North has thrown out that +old inflated style, whereas the Southern writer still clings to it-- +clings to it and has a restricted market for his wares, as a +consequence. There is as much literary talent in the South, now, as ever +there was, of course; but its work can gain but slight currency under +present conditions; the authors write for the past, not the present; +they use obsolete forms, and a dead language. But when a Southerner of +genius writes modern English, his book goes upon crutches no longer, but +upon wings; and they carry it swiftly all about America and England, and +through the great English reprint publishing houses of Germany--as +witness the experience of Mr. Cable and Uncle Remus, two of the very few +Southern authors who do not write in the Southern style. Instead of +three or four widely-known literary names, the South ought to have a +dozen or two--and will have them when Sir Walter's time is out. + +A curious exemplification of the power of a single book for good or harm +is shown in the effects wrought by 'Don Quixote' and those wrought by +'Ivanhoe.' The first swept the world's admiration for the medieval +chivalry-silliness out of existence; and the other restored it. As far +as our South is concerned, the good work done by Cervantes is pretty +nearly a dead letter, so effectually has Scott's pernicious work +undermined it. + + + + +Chapter 47 Uncle Remus and Mr. Cable + +MR. JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS ('Uncle Remus') was to arrive from Atlanta at +seven o'clock Sunday morning; so we got up and received him. We were +able to detect him among the crowd of arrivals at the hotel-counter by +his correspondence with a description of him which had been furnished us +from a trustworthy source. He was said to be undersized, red-haired, and +somewhat freckled. He was the only man in the party whose outside +tallied with this bill of particulars. He was said to be very shy. He +is a shy man. Of this there is no doubt. It may not show on the +surface, but the shyness is there. After days of intimacy one wonders +to see that it is still in about as strong force as ever. There is a +fine and beautiful nature hidden behind it, as all know who have read +the Uncle Remus book; and a fine genius, too, as all know by the same +sign. I seem to be talking quite freely about this neighbor; but in +talking to the public I am but talking to his personal friends, and +these things are permissible among friends. + +He deeply disappointed a number of children who had flocked eagerly to +Mr. Cable's house to get a glimpse of the illustrious sage and oracle of +the nation's nurseries. They said-- + +'Why, he 's white!' + +They were grieved about it. So, to console them, the book was brought, +that they might hear Uncle Remus's Tar-Baby story from the lips of Uncle +Remus himself--or what, in their outraged eyes, was left of him. But it +turned out that he had never read aloud to people, and was too shy to +venture the attempt now. Mr. Cable and I read from books of ours, to +show him what an easy trick it was; but his immortal shyness was proof +against even this sagacious strategy, so we had to read about Brer +Rabbit ourselves. + +Mr. Harris ought to be able to read the negro dialect better than +anybody else, for in the matter of writing it he is the only master the +country has produced. Mr. Cable is the only master in the writing of +French dialects that the country has produced; and he reads them in +perfection. It was a great treat to hear him read about Jean-ah +Poquelin, and about Innerarity and his famous 'pigshoo' representing +'Louisihanna RIF-fusing to Hanter the Union,' along with passages of +nicely-shaded German dialect from a novel which was still in manuscript. + +It came out in conversation, that in two different instances Mr. Cable +got into grotesque trouble by using, in his books, next-to-impossible +French names which nevertheless happened to be borne by living and +sensitive citizens of New Orleans. His names were either inventions or +were borrowed from the ancient and obsolete past, I do not now remember +which; but at any rate living bearers of them turned up, and were a good +deal hurt at having attention directed to themselves and their affairs +in so excessively public a manner. + +Mr. Warner and I had an experience of the same sort when we wrote the +book called 'The Gilded Age.' There is a character in it called +'Sellers.' I do not remember what his first name was, in the beginning; +but anyway, Mr. Warner did not like it, and wanted it improved. He asked +me if I was able to imagine a person named 'Eschol Sellers.' Of course I +said I could not, without stimulants. He said that away out West, once, +he had met, and contemplated, and actually shaken hands with a man +bearing that impossible name--'Eschol Sellers.' He added-- + +'It was twenty years ago; his name has probably carried him off before +this; and if it hasn't, he will never see the book anyhow. We will +confiscate his name. The name you are using is common, and therefore +dangerous; there are probably a thousand Sellerses bearing it, and the +whole horde will come after us; but Eschol Sellers is a safe name--it is +a rock.' + +So we borrowed that name; and when the book had been out about a week, +one of the stateliest and handsomest and most aristocratic looking white +men that ever lived, called around, with the most formidable libel suit +in his pocket that ever--well, in brief, we got his permission to +suppress an edition of ten million {footnote [Figures taken from memory, +and probably incorrect. Think it was more.]} copies of the book and +change that name to 'Mulberry Sellers' in future editions. + + + + +Chapter 48 Sugar and Postage + +ONE day, on the street, I encountered the man whom, of all men, I most +wished to see--Horace Bixby; formerly pilot under me--or rather, over +me--now captain of the great steamer 'City of Baton Rouge,' the latest +and swiftest addition to the Anchor Line. The same slender figure, the +same tight curls, the same springy step, the same alertness, the same +decision of eye and answering decision of hand, the same erect military +bearing; not an inch gained or lost in girth, not an ounce gained or +lost in weight, not a hair turned. It is a curious thing, to leave a man +thirty-five years old, and come back at the end of twenty-one years and +find him still only thirty-five. I have not had an experience of this +kind before, I believe. There were some crow's-feet, but they counted +for next to nothing, since they were inconspicuous. + +His boat was just in. I had been waiting several days for her, +purposing to return to St. Louis in her. The captain and I joined a +party of ladies and gentlemen, guests of Major Wood, and went down the +river fifty-four miles, in a swift tug, to ex-Governor Warmouth's sugar +plantation. Strung along below the city, were a number of decayed, ram- +shackly, superannuated old steamboats, not one of which had I ever seen +before. They had all been built, and worn out, and thrown aside, since I +was here last. This gives one a realizing sense of the frailness of a +Mississippi boat and the briefness of its life. + +Six miles below town a fat and battered brick chimney, sticking above +the magnolias and live-oaks, was pointed out as the monument erected by +an appreciative nation to celebrate the battle of New Orleans--Jackson's +victory over the British, January 8, 1815. The war had ended, the two +nations were at peace, but the news had not yet reached New Orleans. If +we had had the cable telegraph in those days, this blood would not have +been spilt, those lives would not have been wasted; and better still, +Jackson would probably never have been president. We have gotten over +the harms done us by the war of 1812, but not over some of those done us +by Jackson's presidency. + +The Warmouth plantation covers a vast deal of ground, and the +hospitality of the Warmouth mansion is graduated to the same large +scale. We saw steam-plows at work, here, for the first time. The +traction engine travels about on its own wheels, till it reaches the +required spot; then it stands still and by means of a wire rope pulls +the huge plow toward itself two or three hundred yards across the field, +between the rows of cane. The thing cuts down into the black mold a foot +and a half deep. The plow looks like a fore-and-aft brace of a Hudson +river steamer, inverted. When the negro steersman sits on one end of it, +that end tilts down near the ground, while the other sticks up high in +air. This great see-saw goes rolling and pitching like a ship at sea, +and it is not every circus rider that could stay on it. + +The plantation contains two thousand six hundred acres; six hundred and +fifty are in cane; and there is a fruitful orange grove of five thousand +trees. The cane is cultivated after a modern and intricate scientific +fashion, too elaborate and complex for me to attempt to describe; but it +lost $40,000 last year. I forget the other details. However, this +year's crop will reach ten or twelve hundred tons of sugar, consequently +last year's loss will not matter. These troublesome and expensive +scientific methods achieve a yield of a ton and a half and from that to +two tons, to the acre; which is three or four times what the yield of an +acre was in my time. + +The drainage-ditches were everywhere alive with little crabs-- +'fiddlers.' One saw them scampering sidewise in every direction +whenever they heard a disturbing noise. Expensive pests, these crabs; +for they bore into the levees, and ruin them. + +The great sugar-house was a wilderness of tubs and tanks and vats and +filters, pumps, pipes, and machinery. The process of making sugar is +exceedingly interesting. First, you heave your cane into the +centrifugals and grind out the juice; then run it through the +evaporating pan to extract the fiber; then through the bone-filter to +remove the alcohol; then through the clarifying tanks to discharge the +molasses; then through the granulating pipe to condense it; then through +the vacuum pan to extract the vacuum. It is now ready for market. I +have jotted these particulars down from memory. The thing looks simple +and easy. Do not deceive yourself. To make sugar is really one of the +most difficult things in the world. And to make it right, is next to +impossible. If you will examine your own supply every now and then for a +term of years, and tabulate the result, you will find that not two men +in twenty can make sugar without getting sand into it. + +We could have gone down to the mouth of the river and visited Captain +Eads' great work, the 'jetties,' where the river has been compressed +between walls, and thus deepened to twenty-six feet; but it was voted +useless to go, since at this stage of the water everything would be +covered up and invisible. + +We could have visited that ancient and singular burg, 'Pilot-town,' +which stands on stilts in the water--so they say; where nearly all +communication is by skiff and canoe, even to the attending of weddings +and funerals; and where the littlest boys and girls are as handy with +the oar as unamphibious children are with the velocipede. + +We could have done a number of other things; but on account of limited +time, we went back home. The sail up the breezy and sparkling river was +a charming experience, and would have been satisfyingly sentimental and +romantic but for the interruptions of the tug's pet parrot, whose +tireless comments upon the scenery and the guests were always this- +worldly, and often profane. He had also a superabundance of the +discordant, ear-splitting, metallic laugh common to his breed--a +machine-made laugh, a Frankenstein laugh, with the soul left out of it. +He applied it to every sentimental remark, and to every pathetic song. +He cackled it out with hideous energy after 'Home again, home again from +a foreign shore,' and said he 'wouldn't give a damn for a tug-load of +such rot.' Romance and sentiment cannot long survive this sort of +discouragement; so the singing and talking presently ceased; which so +delighted the parrot that he cursed himself hoarse for joy. + +Then the male members of the party moved to the forecastle, to smoke and +gossip. There were several old steamboatmen along, and I learned from +them a great deal of what had been happening to my former river friends +during my long absence. I learned that a pilot whom I used to steer for +is become a spiritualist, and for more than fifteen years has been +receiving a letter every week from a deceased relative, through a New +York spiritualist medium named Manchester--postage graduated by +distance: from the local post-office in Paradise to New York, five +dollars; from New York to St. Louis, three cents. I remember Mr. +Manchester very well. I called on him once, ten years ago, with a couple +of friends, one of whom wished to inquire after a deceased uncle. This +uncle had lost his life in a peculiarly violent and unusual way, half a +dozen years before: a cyclone blew him some three miles and knocked a +tree down with him which was four feet through at the butt and sixty- +five feet high. He did not survive this triumph. At the seance just +referred to, my friend questioned his late uncle, through Mr. +Manchester, and the late uncle wrote down his replies, using Mr. +Manchester's hand and pencil for that purpose. The following is a fair +example of the questions asked, and also of the sloppy twaddle in the +way of answers, furnished by Manchester under the pretense that it came +from the specter. If this man is not the paltriest fraud that lives, I +owe him an apology-- + +QUESTION. Where are you? + +ANSWER. In the spirit world. + +Q. Are you happy? + +A. Very happy. Perfectly happy. + +Q. How do you amuse yourself? + +A. Conversation with friends, and other spirits. + +Q. What else? + +A. Nothing else. Nothing else is necessary. + +Q. What do you talk about? + +A. About how happy we are; and about friends left behind in the earth, +and how to influence them for their good. + +Q. When your friends in the earth all get to the spirit land, what shall +you have to talk about then?--nothing but about how happy you all are? + +No reply. It is explained that spirits will not answer frivolous +questions. + +Q. How is it that spirits that are content to spend an eternity in +frivolous employments, and accept it as happiness, are so fastidious +about frivolous questions upon the subject? + +No reply. + +Q. Would you like to come back? + +A. No. + +Q. Would you say that under oath? + +A. Yes. + +Q. What do you eat there? + +A. We do not eat. + +Q. What do you drink? + +A. We do not drink. + +Q. What do you smoke? + +A. We do not smoke. + +Q. What do you read? + +A. We do not read. + +Q. Do all the good people go to your place? + +A. Yes. + +Q. You know my present way of life. Can you suggest any additions to +it, in the way of crime, that will reasonably insure my going to some +other place. + +A. No reply. + +Q. When did you die? + +A. I did not die, I passed away. + +Q. Very well, then, when did you pass away? How long have you been in +the spirit land? + +A. We have no measurements of time here. + +Q. Though you may be indifferent and uncertain as to dates and times in +your present condition and environment, this has nothing to do with your +former condition. You had dates then. One of these is what I ask for. +You departed on a certain day in a certain year. Is not this true? + +A. Yes. + +Q. Then name the day of the month. + +(Much fumbling with pencil, on the part of the medium, accompanied by +violent spasmodic jerkings of his head and body, for some little time. +Finally, explanation to the effect that spirits often forget dates, such +things being without importance to them.) + +Q. Then this one has actually forgotten the date of its translation to +the spirit land? + +This was granted to be the case. + +Q. This is very curious. Well, then, what year was it? + +(More fumbling, jerking, idiotic spasms, on the part of the medium. +Finally, explanation to the effect that the spirit has forgotten the +year.) + +Q. This is indeed stupendous. Let me put one more question, one last +question, to you, before we part to meet no more;--for even if I fail to +avoid your asylum, a meeting there will go for nothing as a meeting, +since by that time you will easily have forgotten me and my name: did +you die a natural death, or were you cut off by a catastrophe? + +A. (After long hesitation and many throes and spasms.) NATURAL DEATH. + +This ended the interview. My friend told the medium that when his +relative was in this poor world, he was endowed with an extraordinary +intellect and an absolutely defectless memory, and it seemed a great +pity that he had not been allowed to keep some shred of these for his +amusement in the realms of everlasting contentment, and for the +amazement and admiration of the rest of the population there. + +This man had plenty of clients--has plenty yet. He receives letters +from spirits located in every part of the spirit world, and delivers +them all over this country through the United States mail. These letters +are filled with advice--advice from 'spirits' who don't know as much as +a tadpole--and this advice is religiously followed by the receivers. +One of these clients was a man whom the spirits (if one may thus +plurally describe the ingenious Manchester) were teaching how to +contrive an improved railway car-wheel. It is coarse employment for a +spirit, but it is higher and wholesomer activity than talking for ever +about 'how happy we are.' + + + + +Chapter 49 Episodes in Pilot Life + +IN the course of the tug-boat gossip, it came out that out of every five +of my former friends who had quitted the river, four had chosen farming +as an occupation. Of course this was not because they were peculiarly +gifted, agriculturally, and thus more likely to succeed as farmers than +in other industries: the reason for their choice must be traced to some +other source. Doubtless they chose farming because that life is private +and secluded from irruptions of undesirable strangers--like the pilot- +house hermitage. And doubtless they also chose it because on a thousand +nights of black storm and danger they had noted the twinkling lights of +solitary farm-houses, as the boat swung by, and pictured to themselves +the serenity and security and coziness of such refuges at such times, +and so had by-and-bye come to dream of that retired and peaceful life as +the one desirable thing to long for, anticipate, earn, and at last +enjoy. + +But I did not learn that any of these pilot-farmers had astonished +anybody with their successes. Their farms do not support them: they +support their farms. The pilot-farmer disappears from the river +annually, about the breaking of spring, and is seen no more till next +frost. Then he appears again, in damaged homespun, combs the hayseed out +of his hair, and takes a pilot-house berth for the winter. In this way +he pays the debts which his farming has achieved during the agricultural +season. So his river bondage is but half broken; he is still the +river's slave the hardest half of the year. + +One of these men bought a farm, but did not retire to it. He knew a +trick worth two of that. He did not propose to pauperize his farm by +applying his personal ignorance to working it. No, he put the farm into +the hands of an agricultural expert to be worked on shares--out of every +three loads of corn the expert to have two and the pilot the third. But +at the end of the season the pilot received no corn. The expert +explained that his share was not reached. The farm produced only two +loads. + +Some of the pilots whom I had known had had adventures--the outcome +fortunate, sometimes, but not in all cases. Captain Montgomery, whom I +had steered for when he was a pilot, commanded the Confederate fleet in +the great battle before Memphis; when his vessel went down, he swam +ashore, fought his way through a squad of soldiers, and made a gallant +and narrow escape. He was always a cool man; nothing could disturb his +serenity. Once when he was captain of the 'Crescent City,' I was +bringing the boat into port at New Orleans, and momently expecting +orders from the hurricane deck, but received none. I had stopped the +wheels, and there my authority and responsibility ceased. It was +evening--dim twilight--the captain's hat was perched upon the big bell, +and I supposed the intellectual end of the captain was in it, but such +was not the case. The captain was very strict; therefore I knew better +than to touch a bell without orders. My duty was to hold the boat +steadily on her calamitous course, and leave the consequences to take +care of themselves--which I did. So we went plowing past the sterns of +steamboats and getting closer and closer--the crash was bound to come +very soon--and still that hat never budged; for alas, the captain was +napping in the texas.... Things were becoming exceedingly nervous and +uncomfortable. It seemed to me that the captain was not going to appear +in time to see the entertainment. But he did. Just as we were walking +into the stern of a steamboat, he stepped out on deck, and said, with +heavenly serenity, 'Set her back on both'--which I did; but a trifle +late, however, for the next moment we went smashing through that other +boat's flimsy outer works with a most prodigious racket. The captain +never said a word to me about the matter afterwards, except to remark +that I had done right, and that he hoped I would not hesitate to act in +the same way again in like circumstances. + +One of the pilots whom I had known when I was on the river had died a +very honorable death. His boat caught fire, and he remained at the +wheel until he got her safe to land. Then he went out over the breast- +board with his clothing in flames, and was the last person to get +ashore. He died from his injuries in the course of two or three hours, +and his was the only life lost. + +The history of Mississippi piloting affords six or seven instances of +this sort of martyrdom, and half a hundred instances of escapes from a +like fate which came within a second or two of being fatally too late; +BUT THERE IS NO INSTANCE OF A PILOT DESERTING HIS POST TO SAVE HIS LIFE +WHILE BY REMAINING AND SACRIFICING IT HE MIGHT SECURE OTHER LIVES FROM +DESTRUCTION. It is well worth while to set down this noble fact, and +well worth while to put it in italics, too. + +The 'cub' pilot is early admonished to despise all perils connected with +a pilot's calling, and to prefer any sort of death to the deep dishonor +of deserting his post while there is any possibility of his being useful +in it. And so effectively are these admonitions inculcated, that even +young and but half-tried pilots can be depended upon to stick to the +wheel, and die there when occasion requires. In a Memphis graveyard is +buried a young fellow who perished at the wheel a great many years ago, +in White River, to save the lives of other men. He said to the captain +that if the fire would give him time to reach a sand bar, some distance +away, all could be saved, but that to land against the bluff bank of the +river would be to insure the loss of many lives. He reached the bar and +grounded the boat in shallow water; but by that time the flames had +closed around him, and in escaping through them he was fatally burned. +He had been urged to fly sooner, but had replied as became a pilot to +reply-- + +'I will not go. If I go, nobody will be saved; if I stay, no one will +be lost but me. I will stay.' + +There were two hundred persons on board, and no life was lost but the +pilot's. There used to be a monument to this young fellow, in that +Memphis graveyard. While we tarried in Memphis on our down trip, I +started out to look for it, but our time was so brief that I was obliged +to turn back before my object was accomplished. + +The tug-boat gossip informed me that Dick Kennet was dead--blown up, +near Memphis, and killed; that several others whom I had known had +fallen in the war--one or two of them shot down at the wheel; that +another and very particular friend, whom I had steered many trips for, +had stepped out of his house in New Orleans, one night years ago, to +collect some money in a remote part of the city, and had never been seen +again--was murdered and thrown into the river, it was thought; that Ben +Thornburgh was dead long ago; also his wild 'cub' whom I used to quarrel +with, all through every daylight watch. A heedless, reckless creature +he was, and always in hot water, always in mischief. An Arkansas +passenger brought an enormous bear aboard, one day, and chained him to a +life-boat on the hurricane deck. Thornburgh's 'cub' could not rest till +he had gone there and unchained the bear, to 'see what he would do.' He +was promptly gratified. The bear chased him around and around the deck, +for miles and miles, with two hundred eager faces grinning through the +railings for audience, and finally snatched off the lad's coat-tail and +went into the texas to chew it. The off-watch turned out with alacrity, +and left the bear in sole possession. He presently grew lonesome, and +started out for recreation. He ranged the whole boat--visited every part +of it, with an advance guard of fleeing people in front of him and a +voiceless vacancy behind him; and when his owner captured him at last, +those two were the only visible beings anywhere; everybody else was in +hiding, and the boat was a solitude. + +I was told that one of my pilot friends fell dead at the wheel, from +heart disease, in 1869. The captain was on the roof at the time. He saw +the boat breaking for the shore; shouted, and got no answer; ran up, and +found the pilot lying dead on the floor. + +Mr. Bixby had been blown up, in Madrid bend; was not injured, but the +other pilot was lost. + +George Ritchie had been blown up near Memphis--blown into the river from +the wheel, and disabled. The water was very cold; he clung to a cotton +bale--mainly with his teeth--and floated until nearly exhausted, when he +was rescued by some deck hands who were on a piece of the wreck. They +tore open the bale and packed him in the cotton, and warmed the life +back into him, and got him safe to Memphis. He is one of Bixby's pilots +on the 'Baton Rouge' now. + +Into the life of a steamboat clerk, now dead, had dropped a bit of +romance--somewhat grotesque romance, but romance nevertheless. When I +knew him he was a shiftless young spendthrift, boisterous, goodhearted, +full of careless generosities, and pretty conspicuously promising to +fool his possibilities away early, and come to nothing. In a Western +city lived a rich and childless old foreigner and his wife; and in their +family was a comely young girl--sort of friend, sort of servant. The +young clerk of whom I have been speaking--whose name was not George +Johnson, but who shall be called George Johnson for the purposes of this +narrative--got acquainted with this young girl, and they sinned; and the +old foreigner found them out, and rebuked them. Being ashamed, they +lied, and said they were married; that they had been privately married. +Then the old foreigner's hurt was healed, and he forgave and blessed +them. After that, they were able to continue their sin without +concealment. By-and-bye the foreigner's wife died; and presently he +followed after her. Friends of the family assembled to mourn; and among +the mourners sat the two young sinners. The will was opened and +solemnly read. It bequeathed every penny of that old man's great wealth +to MRS. GEORGE JOHNSON! + +And there was no such person. The young sinners fled forth then, and +did a very foolish thing: married themselves before an obscure Justice +of the Peace, and got him to antedate the thing. That did no sort of +good. The distant relatives flocked in and exposed the fraudful date +with extreme suddenness and surprising ease, and carried off the +fortune, leaving the Johnsons very legitimately, and legally, and +irrevocably chained together in honorable marriage, but with not so much +as a penny to bless themselves withal. Such are the actual facts; and +not all novels have for a base so telling a situation. + + + + +Chapter 50 The 'Original Jacobs' + +WE had some talk about Captain Isaiah Sellers, now many years dead. He +was a fine man, a high-minded man, and greatly respected both ashore and +on the river. He was very tall, well built, and handsome; and in his +old age--as I remember him--his hair was as black as an Indian's, and +his eye and hand were as strong and steady and his nerve and judgment as +firm and clear as anybody's, young or old, among the fraternity of +pilots. He was the patriarch of the craft; he had been a keelboat pilot +before the day of steamboats; and a steamboat pilot before any other +steamboat pilot, still surviving at the time I speak of, had ever turned +a wheel. Consequently his brethren held him in the sort of awe in which +illustrious survivors of a bygone age are always held by their +associates. He knew how he was regarded, and perhaps this fact added +some trifle of stiffening to his natural dignity, which had been +sufficiently stiff in its original state. + +He left a diary behind him; but apparently it did not date back to his +first steamboat trip, which was said to be 1811, the year the first +steamboat disturbed the waters of the Mississippi. At the time of his +death a correspondent of the 'St. Louis Republican' culled the following +items from the diary-- + +'In February, 1825, he shipped on board the steamer "Rambler," at +Florence, Ala., and made during that year three trips to New Orleans and +back--this on the "Gen. Carrol," between Nashville and New Orleans. It +was during his stay on this boat that Captain Sellers introduced the tap +of the bell as a signal to heave the lead, previous to which time it was +the custom for the pilot to speak to the men below when soundings were +wanted. The proximity of the forecastle to the pilot-house, no doubt, +rendered this an easy matter; but how different on one of our palaces of +the present day. + +'In 1827 we find him on board the "President," a boat of two hundred and +eighty-five tons burden, and plying between Smithland and New Orleans. +Thence he joined the "Jubilee" in 1828, and on this boat he did his +first piloting in the St. Louis trade; his first watch extending from +Herculaneum to St. Genevieve. On May 26, 1836, he completed and left +Pittsburgh in charge of the steamer "Prairie," a boat of four hundred +tons, and the first steamer with a STATE-ROOM CABIN ever seen at St. +Louis. In 1857 he introduced the signal for meeting boats, and which +has, with some slight change, been the universal custom of this day; in +fact, is rendered obligatory by act of Congress. + +'As general items of river history, we quote the following marginal +notes from his general log-- + +'In March, 1825, Gen. Lafayette left New Orleans for St. Louis on the +low-pressure steamer "Natchez." + +'In January, 1828, twenty-one steamers left the New Orleans wharf to +celebrate the occasion of Gen. Jackson's visit to that city. + +'In 1830 the "North American" made the run from New Orleans to Memphis +in six days--best time on record to that date. It has since been made in +two days and ten hours. + +'In 1831 the Red River cut-off formed. + +'In 1832 steamer "Hudson" made the run from White River to Helena, a +distance of seventy-five miles, in twelve hours. This was the source of +much talk and speculation among parties directly interested. + +'In 1839 Great Horseshoe cut-off formed. + +'Up to the present time, a term of thirty-five years, we ascertain, by +reference to the diary, he has made four hundred and sixty round trips +to New Orleans, which gives a distance of one million one hundred and +four thousand miles, or an average of eighty-six miles a day.' + +Whenever Captain Sellers approached a body of gossiping pilots, a chill +fell there, and talking ceased. For this reason: whenever six pilots +were gathered together, there would always be one or two newly fledged +ones in the lot, and the elder ones would be always 'showing off' before +these poor fellows; making them sorrowfully feel how callow they were, +how recent their nobility, and how humble their degree, by talking +largely and vaporously of old-time experiences on the river; always +making it a point to date everything back as far as they could, so as to +make the new men feel their newness to the sharpest degree possible, and +envy the old stagers in the like degree. And how these complacent +baldheads WOULD swell, and brag, and lie, and date back--ten, fifteen, +twenty years,--and how they did enjoy the effect produced upon the +marveling and envying youngsters! + +And perhaps just at this happy stage of the proceedings, the stately +figure of Captain Isaiah Sellers, that real and only genuine Son of +Antiquity, would drift solemnly into the midst. Imagine the size of the +silence that would result on the instant. And imagine the feelings of +those bald-heads, and the exultation of their recent audience when the +ancient captain would begin to drop casual and indifferent remarks of a +reminiscent nature--about islands that had disappeared, and cutoffs that +had been made, a generation before the oldest bald-head in the company +had ever set his foot in a pilot-house! + +Many and many a time did this ancient mariner appear on the scene in the +above fashion, and spread disaster and humiliation around him. If one +might believe the pilots, he always dated his islands back to the misty +dawn of river history; and he never used the same island twice; and +never did he employ an island that still existed, or give one a name +which anybody present was old enough to have heard of before. If you +might believe the pilots, he was always conscientiously particular about +little details; never spoke of 'the State of Mississippi,' for instance +--no, he would say, 'When the State of Mississippi was where Arkansas now +is,' and would never speak of Louisiana or Missouri in a general way, +and leave an incorrect impression on your mind--no, he would say, 'When +Louisiana was up the river farther,' or 'When Missouri was on the +Illinois side.' + +The old gentleman was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to +jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the +river, and sign them 'MARK TWAIN,' and give them to the 'New Orleans +Picayune.' They related to the stage and condition of the river, and +were accurate and valuable; and thus far, they contained no poison. But +in speaking of the stage of the river to-day, at a given point, the +captain was pretty apt to drop in a little remark about this being the +first time he had seen the water so high or so low at that particular +point for forty-nine years; and now and then he would mention Island So- +and-so, and follow it, in parentheses, with some such observation as +'disappeared in 1807, if I remember rightly.' In these antique +interjections lay poison and bitterness for the other old pilots, and +they used to chaff the 'Mark Twain' paragraphs with unsparing mockery. + +It so chanced that one of these paragraphs--{footnote [The original MS. +of it, in the captain's own hand, has been sent to me from New Orleans. +It reads as follows-- + +VICKSBURG May 4, 1859. + +'My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans: The water is +higher this far up than it has been since 8. My opinion is that the +water will be feet deep in Canal street before the first of next June. +Mrs. Turner's plantation at the head of Big Black Island is all under +water, and it has not been since 1815. + +'I. Sellers.']} + +became the text for my first newspaper article. I burlesqued it +broadly, very broadly, stringing my fantastics out to the extent of +eight hundred or a thousand words. I was a 'cub' at the time. I showed +my performance to some pilots, and they eagerly rushed it into print in +the 'New Orleans True Delta.' It was a great pity; for it did nobody +any worthy service, and it sent a pang deep into a good man's heart. +There was no malice in my rubbish; but it laughed at the captain. It +laughed at a man to whom such a thing was new and strange and dreadful. +I did not know then, though I do now, that there is no suffering +comparable with that which a private person feels when he is for the +first time pilloried in print. + +Captain Sellers did me the honor to profoundly detest me from that day +forth. When I say he did me the honor, I am not using empty words. It +was a very real honor to be in the thoughts of so great a man as Captain +Sellers, and I had wit enough to appreciate it and be proud of it. It +was distinction to be loved by such a man; but it was a much greater +distinction to be hated by him, because he loved scores of people; but +he didn't sit up nights to hate anybody but me. + +He never printed another paragraph while he lived, and he never again +signed 'Mark Twain' to anything. At the time that the telegraph brought +the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new +journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient +mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it +was in his hands--a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found +in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I +have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say. + +The captain had an honorable pride in his profession and an abiding love +for it. He ordered his monument before he died, and kept it near him +until he did die. It stands over his grave now, in Bellefontaine +cemetery, St. Louis. It is his image, in marble, standing on duty at the +pilot wheel; and worthy to stand and confront criticism, for it +represents a man who in life would have stayed there till he burned to a +cinder, if duty required it. + +The finest thing we saw on our whole Mississippi trip, we saw as we +approached New Orleans in the steam-tug. This was the curving frontage +of the crescent city lit up with the white glare of five miles of +electric lights. It was a wonderful sight, and very beautiful. + + + + +Chapter 51 Reminiscences + +WE left for St. Louis in the 'City of Baton Rouge,' on a delightfully +hot day, but with the main purpose of my visit but lamely accomplished. +I had hoped to hunt up and talk with a hundred steamboatmen, but got so +pleasantly involved in the social life of the town that I got nothing +more than mere five-minute talks with a couple of dozen of the craft. + +I was on the bench of the pilot-house when we backed out and +'straightened up' for the start--the boat pausing for a 'good ready,' in +the old-fashioned way, and the black smoke piling out of the chimneys +equally in the old-fashioned way. Then we began to gather momentum, and +presently were fairly under way and booming along. It was all as natural +and familiar--and so were the shoreward sights--as if there had been no +break in my river life. There was a 'cub,' and I judged that he would +take the wheel now; and he did. Captain Bixby stepped into the pilot- +house. Presently the cub closed up on the rank of steamships. He made +me nervous, for he allowed too much water to show between our boat and +the ships. I knew quite well what was going to happen, because I could +date back in my own life and inspect the record. The captain looked on, +during a silent half-minute, then took the wheel himself, and crowded +the boat in, till she went scraping along within a hand-breadth of the +ships. It was exactly the favor which he had done me, about a quarter +of a century before, in that same spot, the first time I ever steamed +out of the port of New Orleans. It was a very great and sincere pleasure +to me to see the thing repeated--with somebody else as victim. + +We made Natchez (three hundred miles) in twenty-two hours and a half-- +much the swiftest passage I have ever made over that piece of water. + +The next morning I came on with the four o'clock watch, and saw Ritchie +successfully run half a dozen crossings in a fog, using for his guidance +the marked chart devised and patented by Bixby and himself. This +sufficiently evidenced the great value of the chart. + +By and by, when the fog began to clear off, I noticed that the +reflection of a tree in the smooth water of an overflowed bank, six +hundred yards away, was stronger and blacker than the ghostly tree +itself. The faint spectral trees, dimly glimpsed through the shredding +fog, were very pretty things to see. + +We had a heavy thunder-storm at Natchez, another at Vicksburg, and still +another about fifty miles below Memphis. They had an old-fashioned +energy which had long been unfamiliar to me. This third storm was +accompanied by a raging wind. We tied up to the bank when we saw the +tempest coming, and everybody left the pilot-house but me. The wind bent +the young trees down, exposing the pale underside of the leaves; and +gust after gust followed, in quick succession, thrashing the branches +violently up and down, and to this side and that, and creating swift +waves of alternating green and white according to the side of the leaf +that was exposed, and these waves raced after each other as do their +kind over a wind-tossed field of oats. No color that was visible +anywhere was quite natural--all tints were charged with a leaden tinge +from the solid cloud-bank overhead. The river was leaden; all distances +the same; and even the far-reaching ranks of combing white-caps were +dully shaded by the dark, rich atmosphere through which their swarming +legions marched. The thunder-peals were constant and deafening; +explosion followed explosion with but inconsequential intervals between, +and the reports grew steadily sharper and higher-keyed, and more trying +to the ear; the lightning was as diligent as the thunder, and produced +effects which enchanted the eye and sent electric ecstasies of mixed +delight and apprehension shivering along every nerve in the body in +unintermittent procession. The rain poured down in amazing volume; the +ear-splitting thunder-peals broke nearer and nearer; the wind increased +in fury and began to wrench off boughs and tree-tops and send them +sailing away through space; the pilot-house fell to rocking and +straining and cracking and surging, and I went down in the hold to see +what time it was. + +People boast a good deal about Alpine thunderstorms; but the storms +which I have had the luck to see in the Alps were not the equals of some +which I have seen in the Mississippi Valley. I may not have seen the +Alps do their best, of course, and if they can beat the Mississippi, I +don't wish to. + +On this up trip I saw a little towhead (infant island) half a mile long, +which had been formed during the past nineteen years. Since there was so +much time to spare that nineteen years of it could be devoted to the +construction of a mere towhead, where was the use, originally, in +rushing this whole globe through in six days? It is likely that if more +time had been taken, in the first place, the world would have been made +right, and this ceaseless improving and repairing would not be necessary +now. But if you hurry a world or a house, you are nearly sure to find +out by and by that you have left out a towhead, or a broom-closet, or +some other little convenience, here and there, which has got to be +supplied, no matter how much expense and vexation it may cost. + +We had a succession of black nights, going up the river, and it was +observable that whenever we landed, and suddenly inundated the trees +with the intense sunburst of the electric light, a certain curious +effect was always produced: hundreds of birds flocked instantly out from +the masses of shining green foliage, and went careering hither and +thither through the white rays, and often a song-bird tuned up and fell +to singing. We judged that they mistook this superb artificial day for +the genuine article. We had a delightful trip in that thoroughly well- +ordered steamer, and regretted that it was accomplished so speedily. By +means of diligence and activity, we managed to hunt out nearly all the +old friends. One was missing, however; he went to his reward, whatever +it was, two years ago. But I found out all about him. His case helped +me to realize how lasting can be the effect of a very trifling +occurrence. When he was an apprentice-blacksmith in our village, and I a +schoolboy, a couple of young Englishmen came to the town and sojourned a +while; and one day they got themselves up in cheap royal finery and did +the Richard III swordfight with maniac energy and prodigious powwow, in +the presence of the village boys. This blacksmith cub was there, and +the histrionic poison entered his bones. This vast, lumbering, +ignorant, dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and irrecoverably. He +disappeared, and presently turned up in St. Louis. I ran across him +there, by and by. He was standing musing on a street corner, with his +left hand on his hip, the thumb of his right supporting his chin, face +bowed and frowning, slouch hat pulled down over his forehead--imagining +himself to be Othello or some such character, and imagining that the +passing crowd marked his tragic bearing and were awestruck. + +I joined him, and tried to get him down out of the clouds, but did not +succeed. However, he casually informed me, presently, that he was a +member of the Walnut Street theater company--and he tried to say it with +indifference, but the indifference was thin, and a mighty exultation +showed through it. He said he was cast for a part in Julius Caesar, for +that night, and if I should come I would see him. IF I should come! I +said I wouldn't miss it if I were dead. + +I went away stupefied with astonishment, and saying to myself, 'How +strange it is! WE always thought this fellow a fool; yet the moment he +comes to a great city, where intelligence and appreciation abound, the +talent concealed in this shabby napkin is at once discovered, and +promptly welcomed and honored.' + +But I came away from the theater that night disappointed and offended; +for I had had no glimpse of my hero, and his name was not in the bills. +I met him on the street the next morning, and before I could speak, he +asked-- + +'Did you see me?' + +'No, you weren't there.' + +He looked surprised and disappointed. He said-- + +'Yes, I was. Indeed I was. I was a Roman soldier.' + +'Which one?' + +'Why didn't you see them Roman soldiers that stood back there in a rank, +and sometimes marched in procession around the stage?' + +'Do you mean the Roman army?--those six sandaled roustabouts in +nightshirts, with tin shields and helmets, that marched around treading +on each other's heels, in charge of a spider-legged consumptive dressed +like themselves?' + +'That's it! that's it! I was one of them Roman soldiers. I was the next +to the last one. A half a year ago I used to always be the last one; +but I've been promoted.' + +Well, they told me that that poor fellow remained a Roman soldier to the +last--a matter of thirty-four years. Sometimes they cast him for a +'speaking part,' but not an elaborate one. He could be trusted to go +and say, 'My lord, the carriage waits,' but if they ventured to add a +sentence or two to this, his memory felt the strain and he was likely to +miss fire. Yet, poor devil, he had been patiently studying the part of +Hamlet for more than thirty years, and he lived and died in the belief +that some day he would be invited to play it! + +And this is what came of that fleeting visit of those young Englishmen +to our village such ages and ages ago! What noble horseshoes this man +might have made, but for those Englishmen; and what an inadequate Roman +soldier he DID make! + +A day or two after we reached St. Louis, I was walking along Fourth +Street when a grizzly-headed man gave a sort of start as he passed me, +then stopped, came back, inspected me narrowly, with a clouding brow, +and finally said with deep asperity-- + +'Look here, HAVE YOU GOT THAT DRINK YET?' + +A maniac, I judged, at first. But all in a flash I recognized him. I +made an effort to blush that strained every muscle in me, and answered +as sweetly and winningly as ever I knew how-- + +'Been a little slow, but am just this minute closing in on the place +where they keep it. Come in and help.' + +He softened, and said make it a bottle of champagne and he was +agreeable. He said he had seen my name in the papers, and had put all +his affairs aside and turned out, resolved to find me or die; and make +me answer that question satisfactorily, or kill me; though the most of +his late asperity had been rather counterfeit than otherwise. + +This meeting brought back to me the St. Louis riots of about thirty +years ago. I spent a week there, at that time, in a boarding-house, and +had this young fellow for a neighbor across the hall. We saw some of +the fightings and killings; and by and by we went one night to an armory +where two hundred young men had met, upon call, to be armed and go forth +against the rioters, under command of a military man. We drilled till +about ten o'clock at night; then news came that the mob were in great +force in the lower end of the town, and were sweeping everything before +them. Our column moved at once. It was a very hot night, and my musket +was very heavy. We marched and marched; and the nearer we approached the +seat of war, the hotter I grew and the thirstier I got. I was behind my +friend; so, finally, I asked him to hold my musket while I dropped out +and got a drink. Then I branched off and went home. I was not feeling +any solicitude about him of course, because I knew he was so well armed, +now, that he could take care of himself without any trouble. If I had +had any doubts about that, I would have borrowed another musket for him. +I left the city pretty early the next morning, and if this grizzled man +had not happened to encounter my name in the papers the other day in St. +Louis, and felt moved to seek me out, I should have carried to my grave +a heart-torturing uncertainty as to whether he ever got out of the riots +all right or not. I ought to have inquired, thirty years ago; I know +that. And I would have inquired, if I had had the muskets; but, in the +circumstances, he seemed better fixed to conduct the investigations than +I was. + +One Monday, near the time of our visit to St. Louis, the 'Globe- +Democrat' came out with a couple of pages of Sunday statistics, whereby +it appeared that 119,448 St. Louis people attended the morning and +evening church services the day before, and 23,102 children attended +Sunday-school. Thus 142,550 persons, out of the city's total of 400,000 +population, respected the day religious-wise. I found these statistics, +in a condensed form, in a telegram of the Associated Press, and +preserved them. They made it apparent that St. Louis was in a higher +state of grace than she could have claimed to be in my time. But now +that I canvass the figures narrowly, I suspect that the telegraph +mutilated them. It cannot be that there are more than 150,000 Catholics +in the town; the other 250,000 must be classified as Protestants. Out +of these 250,000, according to this questionable telegram, only 26,362 +attended church and Sunday-school, while out of the 150,000 Catholics, +116,188 went to church and Sunday-school. + + + + +Chapter 52 A Burning Brand + +ALL at once the thought came into my mind, 'I have not sought out Mr. +Brown.' + +Upon that text I desire to depart from the direct line of my subject, +and make a little excursion. I wish to reveal a secret which I have +carried with me nine years, and which has become burdensome. + +Upon a certain occasion, nine years ago, I had said, with strong +feeling, 'If ever I see St. Louis again, I will seek out Mr. Brown, the +great grain merchant, and ask of him the privilege of shaking him by the +hand.' + +The occasion and the circumstances were as follows. A friend of mine, a +clergyman, came one evening and said-- + +'I have a most remarkable letter here, which I want to read to you, +if I can do it without breaking down. I must preface it with some +explanations, however. The letter is written by an ex-thief and +ex-vagabond of the lowest origin and basest rearing, a man all stained with +crime and steeped in ignorance; but, thank God, with a mine of pure gold +hidden away in him, as you shall see. His letter is written to a burglar +named Williams, who is serving a nine-year term in a certain State +prison, for burglary. Williams was a particularly daring burglar, and +plied that trade during a number of years; but he was caught at last and +jailed, to await trial in a town where he had broken into a house at +night, pistol in hand, and forced the owner to hand over to him $8,000 +in government bonds. Williams was not a common sort of person, by any +means; he was a graduate of Harvard College, and came of good New +England stock. His father was a clergyman. While lying in jail, his +health began to fail, and he was threatened with consumption. This fact, +together with the opportunity for reflection afforded by solitary +confinement, had its effect--its natural effect. He fell into serious +thought; his early training asserted itself with power, and wrought with +strong influence upon his mind and heart. He put his old life behind +him, and became an earnest Christian. Some ladies in the town heard of +this, visited him, and by their encouraging words supported him in his +good resolutions and strengthened him to continue in his new life. The +trial ended in his conviction and sentence to the State prison for the +term of nine years, as I have before said. In the prison he became +acquainted with the poor wretch referred to in the beginning of my talk, +Jack Hunt, the writer of the letter which I am going to read. You will +see that the acquaintanceship bore fruit for Hunt. When Hunt's time was +out, he wandered to St. Louis; and from that place he wrote his letter +to Williams. The letter got no further than the office of the prison +warden, of course; prisoners are not often allowed to receive letters +from outside. The prison authorities read this letter, but did not +destroy it. They had not the heart to do it. They read it to several +persons, and eventually it fell into the hands of those ladies of whom I +spoke a while ago. The other day I came across an old friend of mine--a +clergyman--who had seen this letter, and was full of it. The mere +remembrance of it so moved him that he could not talk of it without his +voice breaking. He promised to get a copy of it for me; and here it is +--an exact copy, with all the imperfections of the original preserved. It +has many slang expressions in it--thieves' argot--but their meaning has +been interlined, in parentheses, by the prison authorities'-- + +St. Louis, June 9th 1872. + +Mr. W---- friend Charlie if i may call you so: i no you are surprised +to get a letter from me, but i hope you won't be mad at my writing to +you. i want to tell you my thanks for the way you talked to me when i +was in prison--it has led me to try and be a better man; i guess you +thought i did not cair for what you said, & at the first go off I +didn't, but i noed you was a man who had don big work with good men & +want no sucker, nor want gasing & all the boys knod it. + +I used to think at nite what you said, & for it i nocked off swearing +months before my time was up, for i saw it want no good, nohow--the day +my time was up you told me if i would shake the cross (QUIT STEALING) & +live on the square for months, it would be the best job i ever done in +my life. The state agent give me a ticket to here, & on the car i +thought more of what you said to me, but didn't make up my mind. When +we got to Chicago on the cars from there to here, I pulled off an old +woman's leather; (ROBBED HER OF HER POCKETBOOK) i hadn't no more than +got it off when i wished i hadn't done it, for awhile before that i made +up my mind to be a square bloke, for months on your word, but forgot it +when i saw the leather was a grip (EASY TO GET)--but i kept clos to her +& when she got out of the cars at a way place i said, marm have you lost +anything. & she tumbled (DISCOVERED) her leather was off (GONE)--is this +it says i, giving it to her--well if you aint honest, says she, but i +hadn't got cheak enough to stand that sort of talk, so i left her in a +hurry. When i got here i had $1 and 25 cents left & i didn't get no work +for 3 days as i aint strong enough for roust about on a steam bote (FOR +A DECK HAND)--The afternoon of the 3rd day I spent my last 10 cts for +moons (LARGE, ROUND SEA-BISCUIT) & cheese & i felt pretty rough & was +thinking i would have to go on the dipe (PICKING POCKETS) again, when i +thought of what you once said about a fellows calling on the Lord when +he was in hard luck, & i thought i would try it once anyhow, but when i +tryed it i got stuck on the start, & all i could get off wos, Lord give +a poor fellow a chance to square it for 3 months for Christ's sake, +amen; & i kept a thinking, of it over and over as i went along--about an +hour after that i was in 4th St. & this is what happened & is the cause +of my being where i am now & about which i will tell you before i get +done writing. As i was walking along herd a big noise & saw a horse +running away with a carriage with 2 children in it, & I grabed up a +peace of box cover from the side walk & run in the middle of the street, +& when the horse came up i smashed him over the head as hard as i could +drive--the bord split to peces & the horse checked up a little & I +grabbed the reigns & pulled his head down until he stopped--the +gentleman what owned him came running up & soon as he saw the children +were all rite, he shook hands with me and gave me a $50 green back, & my +asking the Lord to help me come into my head, & i was so thunderstruck i +couldn't drop the reigns nor say nothing--he saw something was up, & +coming back to me said, my boy are you hurt? & the thought come into my +head just then to ask him for work; & i asked him to take back the bill +and give me a job--says he, jump in here & lets talk about it, but keep +the money--he asked me if i could take care of horses & i said yes, for +i used to hang round livery stables & often would help clean & drive +horses, he told me he wanted a man for that work, & would give me $16 a +month & bord me. You bet i took that chance at once. that nite in my +little room over the stable i sat a long time thinking over my past life +& of what had just happened & i just got down on my nees & thanked the +Lord for the job & to help me to square it, & to bless you for putting +me up to it, & the next morning i done it again & got me some new togs +(CLOTHES) & a bible for i made up my mind after what the Lord had done +for me i would read the bible every nite and morning, & ask him to keep +an eye on me. When I had been there about a week Mr. Brown (that's his +name) came in my room one nite and saw me reading the bible--he asked me +if i was a Christian & i told him no--he asked me how it was i read the +bible instead of papers & books--Well Charlie i thought i had better +give him a square deal in the start, so i told him all about my being in +prison & about you, & how i had almost done give up looking for work & +how the Lord got me the job when I asked him; & the only way i had to +pay him back was to read the bible & square it, & i asked him to give me +a chance for 3 months--he talked to me like a father for a long time, & +told me i could stay & then i felt better than ever i had done in my +life, for i had given Mr. Brown a fair start with me & now i didn't fear +no one giving me a back cap (EXPOSING HIS PAST LIFE) & running me off +the job--the next morning he called me into the library & gave me +another square talk, & advised me to study some every day, & he would +help me one or 2 hours every nite, & he gave me a Arithmetic, a spelling +book, a Geography & a writing book, & he hers me every nite--he lets me +come into the house to prayers every morning, & got me put in a bible +class in the Sunday School which i likes very much for it helps me to +understand my bible better. + +Now, Charlie the 3 months on the square are up 2 months ago, & as you +said, it is the best job i ever did in my life, & i commenced another of +the same sort right away, only it is to God helping me to last a +lifetime Charlie--i wrote this letter to tell you I do think God has +forgiven my sins & herd your prayers, for you told me you should pray +for me--i no i love to read his word & tell him all my troubles & he +helps me i know for i have plenty of chances to steal but i don't feel +to as i once did & now i take more pleasure in going to church than to +the theater & that wasnt so once--our minister and others often talk +with me & a month ago they wanted me to join the church, but I said no, +not now, i may be mistaken in my feelings, i will wait awhile, but now i +feel that God has called me & on the first Sunday in July i will join +the church--dear friend i wish i could write to you as i feel, but i +cant do it yet--you no i learned to read and write while prisons & i +aint got well enough along to write as i would talk; i no i aint spelled +all the words rite in this & lots of other mistakes but you will excuse +it i no, for you no i was brought up in a poor house until i run away, & +that i never new who my father and mother was & i dont no my right name, +& i hope you wont be mad at me, but i have as much rite to one name as +another & i have taken your name, for you wont use it when you get out i +no, & you are the man i think most of in the world; so i hope you wont +be mad--I am doing well, i put $10 a month in bank with $25 of the $50-- +if you ever want any or all of it let me know, & it is yours. i wish you +would let me send you some now. I send you with this a receipt for a +year of Littles Living Age, i didn't know what you would like & i told +Mr. Brown & he said he thought you would like it--i wish i was nere you +so i could send you chuck (REFRESHMENTS) on holidays; it would spoil +this weather from here, but i will send you a box next thanksgiving any +way--next week Mr. Brown takes me into his store as lite porter & will +advance me as soon as i know a little more--he keeps a big granary +store, wholesale--i forgot to tell you of my mission school, sunday +school class--the school is in the sunday afternoon, i went out two +sunday afternoons, and picked up seven kids (LITTLE BOYS) & got them to +come in. two of them new as much as i did & i had them put in a class +where they could learn something. i dont no much myself, but as these +kids cant read i get on nicely with them. i make sure of them by going +after them every Sunday hour before school time, I also got 4 girls to +come. tell Mack and Harry about me, if they will come out here when +their time is up i will get them jobs at once. i hope you will excuse +this long letter & all mistakes, i wish i could see you for i cant write +as i would talk--i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good--i was +afraid when you was bleeding you would die--give my respects to all the +boys and tell them how i am doing--i am doing well and every one here +treats me as kind as they can--Mr. Brown is going to write to you +sometime--i hope some day you will write to me, this letter is from your +very true friend + +C---- W---- + +who you know as Jack Hunt. + +I send you Mr. Brown's card. Send my letter to him. + +Here was true eloquence; irresistible eloquence; and without a single +grace or ornament to help it out. I have seldom been so deeply stirred +by any piece of writing. The reader of it halted, all the way through, +on a lame and broken voice; yet he had tried to fortify his feelings by +several private readings of the letter before venturing into company +with it. He was practising upon me to see if there was any hope of his +being able to read the document to his prayer-meeting with anything like +a decent command over his feelings. The result was not promising. +However, he determined to risk it; and did. He got through tolerably +well; but his audience broke down early, and stayed in that condition to +the end. + +The fame of the letter spread through the town. A brother minister came +and borrowed the manuscript, put it bodily into a sermon, preached the +sermon to twelve hundred people on a Sunday morning, and the letter +drowned them in their own tears. Then my friend put it into a sermon and +went before his Sunday morning congregation with it. It scored another +triumph. The house wept as one individual. + +My friend went on summer vacation up into the fishing regions of our +northern British neighbors, and carried this sermon with him, since he +might possibly chance to need a sermon. He was asked to preach, one day. +The little church was full. Among the people present were the late Dr. +J. G. Holland, the late Mr. Seymour of the 'New York Times,' Mr. Page, +the philanthropist and temperance advocate, and, I think, Senator Frye, +of Maine. The marvelous letter did its wonted work; all the people were +moved, all the people wept; the tears flowed in a steady stream down Dr. +Holland's cheeks, and nearly the same can be said with regard to all who +were there. Mr. Page was so full of enthusiasm over the letter that he +said he would not rest until he made pilgrimage to that prison, and had +speech with the man who had been able to inspire a fellow-unfortunate to +write so priceless a tract. + +Ah, that unlucky Page!--and another man. If they had only been in +Jericho, that letter would have rung through the world and stirred all +the hearts of all the nations for a thousand years to come, and nobody +might ever have found out that it was the confoundedest, brazenest, +ingeniousest piece of fraud and humbuggery that was ever concocted to +fool poor confiding mortals with! + +The letter was a pure swindle, and that is the truth. And take it by and +large, it was without a compeer among swindles. It was perfect, it was +rounded, symmetrical, complete, colossal! + +The reader learns it at this point; but we didn't learn it till some +miles and weeks beyond this stage of the affair. My friend came back +from the woods, and he and other clergymen and lay missionaries began +once more to inundate audiences with their tears and the tears of said +audiences; I begged hard for permission to print the letter in a +magazine and tell the watery story of its triumphs; numbers of people +got copies of the letter, with permission to circulate them in writing, +but not in print; copies were sent to the Sandwich Islands and other far +regions. + +Charles Dudley Warner was at church, one day, when the worn letter was +read and wept over. At the church door, afterward, he dropped a +peculiarly cold iceberg down the clergyman's back with the question-- + +'Do you know that letter to be genuine?' + +It was the first suspicion that had ever been voiced; but it had that +sickening effect which first-uttered suspicions against one's idol +always have. Some talk followed-- + +'Why--what should make you suspect that it isn't genuine?' + +'Nothing that I know of, except that it is too neat, and compact, and +fluent, and nicely put together for an ignorant person, an unpractised +hand. I think it was done by an educated man.' + +The literary artist had detected the literary machinery. If you will +look at the letter now, you will detect it yourself--it is observable in +every line. + +Straightway the clergyman went off, with this seed of suspicion +sprouting in him, and wrote to a minister residing in that town where +Williams had been jailed and converted; asked for light; and also asked +if a person in the literary line (meaning me) might be allowed to print +the letter and tell its history. He presently received this answer-- + +Rev. ---- ---- + +MY DEAR FRIEND,--In regard to that 'convict's letter' there can be no +doubt as to its genuineness. 'Williams,' to whom it was written, lay in +our jail and professed to have been converted, and Rev. Mr. ----, the +chaplain, had great faith in the genuineness of the change--as much as +one can have in any such case. + +The letter was sent to one of our ladies, who is a Sunday-school +teacher,--sent either by Williams himself, or the chaplain of the +State's prison, probably. She has been greatly annoyed in having so +much publicity, lest it might seem a breach of confidence, or be an +injury to Williams. In regard to its publication, I can give no +permission; though if the names and places were omitted, and especially +if sent out of the country, I think you might take the responsibility +and do it. + +It is a wonderful letter, which no Christian genius, much less one +unsanctified, could ever have written. As showing the work of grace in +a human heart, and in a very degraded and wicked one, it proves its own +origin and reproves our weak faith in its power to cope with any form of +wickedness. + +'Mr. Brown' of St. Louis, some one said, was a Hartford man. Do all whom +you send from Hartford serve their Master as well? + +P.S.--Williams is still in the State's prison, serving out a long +sentence--of nine years, I think. He has been sick and threatened with +consumption, but I have not inquired after him lately. This lady that I +speak of corresponds with him, I presume, and will be quite sure to look +after him. + +This letter arrived a few days after it was written--and up went Mr. +Williams's stock again. Mr. Warner's low-down suspicion was laid in the +cold, cold grave, where it apparently belonged. It was a suspicion based +upon mere internal evidence, anyway; and when you come to internal +evidence, it's a big field and a game that two can play at: as witness +this other internal evidence, discovered by the writer of the note above +quoted, that 'it is a wonderful letter--which no Christian genius, much +less one unsanctified, could ever have written.' + +I had permission now to print--provided I suppressed names and places +and sent my narrative out of the country. So I chose an Australian +magazine for vehicle, as being far enough out of the country, and set +myself to work on my article. And the ministers set the pumps going +again, with the letter to work the handles. + +But meantime Brother Page had been agitating. He had not visited the +penitentiary, but he had sent a copy of the illustrious letter to the +chaplain of that institution, and accompanied it with--apparently +inquiries. He got an answer, dated four days later than that other +Brother's reassuring epistle; and before my article was complete, it +wandered into my hands. The original is before me, now, and I here +append it. It is pretty well loaded with internal evidence of the most +solid description-- + +STATE'S PRISON, CHAPLAIN'S OFFICE, July 11, 1873. + +DEAR BRO. PAGE,--Herewith please find the letter kindly loaned me. I am +afraid its genuineness cannot be established. It purports to be +addressed to some prisoner here. No such letter ever came to a prisoner +here. All letters received are carefully read by officers of the prison +before they go into the hands of the convicts, and any such letter could +not be forgotten. Again, Charles Williams is not a Christian man, but a +dissolute, cunning prodigal, whose father is a minister of the gospel. +His name is an assumed one. I am glad to have made your acquaintance. I +am preparing a lecture upon life seen through prison bars, and should +like to deliver the same in your vicinity. + +And so ended that little drama. My poor article went into the fire; for +whereas the materials for it were now more abundant and infinitely +richer than they had previously been, there were parties all around me, +who, although longing for the publication before, were a unit for +suppression at this stage and complexion of the game. They said: 'Wait +--the wound is too fresh, yet.' All the copies of the famous letter +except mine disappeared suddenly; and from that time onward, the +aforetime same old drought set in in the churches. As a rule, the town +was on a spacious grin for a while, but there were places in it where +the grin did not appear, and where it was dangerous to refer to the +ex-convict's letter. + +A word of explanation. 'Jack Hunt,' the professed writer of the letter, +was an imaginary person. The burglar Williams--Harvard graduate, son of +a minister--wrote the letter himself, to himself: got it smuggled out +of the prison; got it conveyed to persons who had supported and +encouraged him in his conversion--where he knew two things would happen: +the genuineness of the letter would not be doubted or inquired into; and +the nub of it would be noticed, and would have valuable effect--the +effect, indeed, of starting a movement to get Mr. Williams pardoned out +of prison. + +That 'nub' is so ingeniously, so casually, flung in, and immediately +left there in the tail of the letter, undwelt upon, that an indifferent +reader would never suspect that it was the heart and core of the +epistle, if he even took note of it at all, This is the 'nub'-- + +'i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good--I WAS AFRAID WHEN YOU +WAS BLEEDING YOU WOULD DIE--give my respects,' etc. + +That is all there is of it--simply touch and go--no dwelling upon it. +Nevertheless it was intended for an eye that would be swift to see it; +and it was meant to move a kind heart to try to effect the liberation of +a poor reformed and purified fellow lying in the fell grip of +consumption. + +When I for the first time heard that letter read, nine years ago, I felt +that it was the most remarkable one I had ever encountered. And it so +warmed me toward Mr. Brown of St. Louis that I said that if ever I +visited that city again, I would seek out that excellent man and kiss +the hem of his garment if it was a new one. Well, I visited St. Louis, +but I did not hunt for Mr. Brown; for, alas! the investigations of long +ago had proved that the benevolent Brown, like 'Jack Hunt,' was not a +real person, but a sheer invention of that gifted rascal, Williams-- +burglar, Harvard graduate, son of a clergyman. + + + + +Chapter 53 My Boyhood's Home + +WE took passage in one of the fast boats of the St. Louis and St. Paul +Packet Company, and started up the river. + +When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the Missouri River, it was +twenty-two or twenty-three miles above St. Louis, according to the +estimate of pilots; the wear and tear of the banks have moved it down +eight miles since then; and the pilots say that within five years the +river will cut through and move the mouth down five miles more, which +will bring it within ten miles of St. Louis. + +About nightfall we passed the large and flourishing town of Alton, +Illinois; and before daylight next morning the town of Louisiana, +Missouri, a sleepy village in my day, but a brisk railway center now; +however, all the towns out there are railway centers now. I could not +clearly recognize the place. This seemed odd to me, for when I retired +from the rebel army in '61 I retired upon Louisiana in good order; at +least in good enough order for a person who had not yet learned how to +retreat according to the rules of war, and had to trust to native +genius. It seemed to me that for a first attempt at a retreat it was not +badly done. I had done no advancing in all that campaign that was at +all equal to it. + +There was a railway bridge across the river here well sprinkled with +glowing lights, and a very beautiful sight it was. + +At seven in the morning we reached Hannibal, Missouri, where my boyhood +was spent. I had had a glimpse of it fifteen years ago, and another +glimpse six years earlier, but both were so brief that they hardly +counted. The only notion of the town that remained in my mind was the +memory of it as I had known it when I first quitted it twenty-nine years +ago. That picture of it was still as clear and vivid to me as a +photograph. I stepped ashore with the feeling of one who returns out of +a dead-and-gone generation. I had a sort of realizing sense of what the +Bastille prisoners must have felt when they used to come out and look +upon Paris after years of captivity, and note how curiously the familiar +and the strange were mixed together before them. I saw the new houses-- +saw them plainly enough--but they did not affect the older picture in my +mind, for through their solid bricks and mortar I saw the vanished +houses, which had formerly stood there, with perfect distinctness. + +It was Sunday morning, and everybody was abed yet. So I passed through +the vacant streets, still seeing the town as it was, and not as it is, +and recognizing and metaphorically shaking hands with a hundred familiar +objects which no longer exist; and finally climbed Holiday's Hill to get +a comprehensive view. The whole town lay spread out below me then, and I +could mark and fix every locality, every detail. Naturally, I was a +good deal moved. I said, 'Many of the people I once knew in this +tranquil refuge of my childhood are now in heaven; some, I trust, are in +the other place.' The things about me and before me made me feel like a +boy again--convinced me that I was a boy again, and that I had simply +been dreaming an unusually long dream; but my reflections spoiled all +that; for they forced me to say, 'I see fifty old houses down yonder, +into each of which I could enter and find either a man or a woman who +was a baby or unborn when I noticed those houses last, or a grandmother +who was a plump young bride at that time.' + +From this vantage ground the extensive view up and down the river, and +wide over the wooded expanses of Illinois, is very beautiful--one of the +most beautiful on the Mississippi, I think; which is a hazardous remark +to make, for the eight hundred miles of river between St. Louis and St. +Paul afford an unbroken succession of lovely pictures. It may be that +my affection for the one in question biases my judgment in its favor; I +cannot say as to that. No matter, it was satisfyingly beautiful to me, +and it had this advantage over all the other friends whom I was about to +greet again: it had suffered no change; it was as young and fresh and +comely and gracious as ever it had been; whereas, the faces of the +others would be old, and scarred with the campaigns of life, and marked +with their griefs and defeats, and would give me no upliftings of +spirit. + +An old gentleman, out on an early morning walk, came along, and we +discussed the weather, and then drifted into other matters. I could not +remember his face. He said he had been living here twenty-eight years. +So he had come after my time, and I had never seen him before. I asked +him various questions; first about a mate of mine in Sunday school--what +became of him? + +'He graduated with honor in an Eastern college, wandered off into the +world somewhere, succeeded at nothing, passed out of knowledge and +memory years ago, and is supposed to have gone to the dogs.' + +'He was bright, and promised well when he was a boy.' + +'Yes, but the thing that happened is what became of it all.' + +I asked after another lad, altogether the brightest in our village +school when I was a boy. + +'He, too, was graduated with honors, from an Eastern college; but life +whipped him in every battle, straight along, and he died in one of the +Territories, years ago, a defeated man.' + +I asked after another of the bright boys. + +'He is a success, always has been, always will be, I think.' + +I inquired after a young fellow who came to the town to study for one of +the professions when I was a boy. + +'He went at something else before he got through--went from medicine to +law, or from law to medicine--then to some other new thing; went away +for a year, came back with a young wife; fell to drinking, then to +gambling behind the door; finally took his wife and two young children +to her father's, and went off to Mexico; went from bad to worse, and +finally died there, without a cent to buy a shroud, and without a friend +to attend the funeral.' + +'Pity, for he was the best-natured, and most cheery and hopeful young +fellow that ever was.' + +I named another boy. + +'Oh, he is all right. Lives here yet; has a wife and children, and is +prospering.' + +Same verdict concerning other boys. + +I named three school-girls. + +'The first two live here, are married and have children; the other is +long ago dead--never married.' + +I named, with emotion, one of my early sweethearts. + +'She is all right. Been married three times; buried two husbands, +divorced from the third, and I hear she is getting ready to marry an old +fellow out in Colorado somewhere. She's got children scattered around +here and there, most everywheres.' + +The answer to several other inquiries was brief and simple-- + +'Killed in the war.' + +I named another boy. + +'Well, now, his case is curious! There wasn't a human being in this +town but knew that that boy was a perfect chucklehead; perfect dummy; +just a stupid ass, as you may say. Everybody knew it, and everybody said +it. Well, if that very boy isn't the first lawyer in the State of +Missouri to-day, I'm a Democrat!' + +'Is that so?' + +'It's actually so. I'm telling you the truth.' + +'How do you account for it?' + +'Account for it? There ain't any accounting for it, except that if you +send a damned fool to St. Louis, and you don't tell them he's a damned +fool they'll never find it out. There's one thing sure--if I had a +damned fool I should know what to do with him: ship him to St. Louis-- +it's the noblest market in the world for that kind of property. Well, +when you come to look at it all around, and chew at it and think it +over, don't it just bang anything you ever heard of?' + +'Well, yes, it does seem to. But don't you think maybe it was the +Hannibal people who were mistaken about the boy, and not the St. Louis +people' + +'Oh, nonsense! The people here have known him from the very cradle-- +they knew him a hundred times better than the St. Louis idiots could +have known him. No, if you have got any damned fools that you want to +realize on, take my advice--send them to St. Louis.' + +I mentioned a great number of people whom I had formerly known. Some +were dead, some were gone away, some had prospered, some had come to +naught; but as regarded a dozen or so of the lot, the answer was +comforting: + +'Prosperous--live here yet--town littered with their children.' + +I asked about Miss ----. + +Died in the insane asylum three or four years ago--never was out of it +from the time she went in; and was always suffering, too; never got a +shred of her mind back.' + +If he spoke the truth, here was a heavy tragedy, indeed. Thirty-six +years in a madhouse, that some young fools might have some fun! I was a +small boy, at the time; and I saw those giddy young ladies come +tiptoeing into the room where Miss ---- sat reading at midnight by a +lamp. The girl at the head of the file wore a shroud and a doughface, +she crept behind the victim, touched her on the shoulder, and she looked +up and screamed, and then fell into convulsions. She did not recover +from the fright, but went mad. In these days it seems incredible that +people believed in ghosts so short a time ago. But they did. + +After asking after such other folk as I could call to mind, I finally +inquired about MYSELF: + +'Oh, he succeeded well enough--another case of damned fool. If they'd +sent him to St. Louis, he'd have succeeded sooner.' + +It was with much satisfaction that I recognized the wisdom of having +told this candid gentleman, in the beginning, that my name was Smith. + + + + +Chapter 54 Past and Present + +Being left to myself, up there, I went on picking out old houses in the +distant town, and calling back their former inmates out of the moldy +past. Among them I presently recognized the house of the father of Lem +Hackett (fictitious name). It carried me back more than a generation in +a moment, and landed me in the midst of a time when the happenings of +life were not the natural and logical results of great general laws, but +of special orders, and were freighted with very precise and distinct +purposes--partly punitive in intent, partly admonitory; and usually +local in application. + +When I was a small boy, Lem Hackett was drowned--on a Sunday. He fell +out of an empty flat-boat, where he was playing. Being loaded with sin, +he went to the bottom like an anvil. He was the only boy in the village +who slept that night. We others all lay awake, repenting. We had not +needed the information, delivered from the pulpit that evening, that +Lem's was a case of special judgment--we knew that, already. There was +a ferocious thunder-storm, that night, and it raged continuously until +near dawn. The winds blew, the windows rattled, the rain swept along the +roof in pelting sheets, and at the briefest of intervals the inky +blackness of the night vanished, the houses over the way glared out +white and blinding for a quivering instant, then the solid darkness shut +down again and a splitting peal of thunder followed, which seemed to +rend everything in the neighborhood to shreds and splinters. I sat up in +bed quaking and shuddering, waiting for the destruction of the world, +and expecting it. To me there was nothing strange or incongruous in +heaven's making such an uproar about Lem Hackett. Apparently it was the +right and proper thing to do. Not a doubt entered my mind that all the +angels were grouped together, discussing this boy's case and observing +the awful bombardment of our beggarly little village with satisfaction +and approval. There was one thing which disturbed me in the most serious +way; that was the thought that this centering of the celestial interest +on our village could not fail to attract the attention of the observers +to people among us who might otherwise have escaped notice for years. I +felt that I was not only one of those people, but the very one most +likely to be discovered. That discovery could have but one result: I +should be in the fire with Lem before the chill of the river had been +fairly warmed out of him. I knew that this would be only just and fair. +I was increasing the chances against myself all the time, by feeling a +secret bitterness against Lem for having attracted this fatal attention +to me, but I could not help it--this sinful thought persisted in +infesting my breast in spite of me. Every time the lightning glared I +caught my breath, and judged I was gone. In my terror and misery, I +meanly began to suggest other boys, and mention acts of theirs which +were wickeder than mine, and peculiarly needed punishment--and I tried +to pretend to myself that I was simply doing this in a casual way, and +without intent to divert the heavenly attention to them for the purpose +of getting rid of it myself. With deep sagacity I put these mentions +into the form of sorrowing recollections and left-handed sham- +supplications that the sins of those boys might be allowed to pass +unnoticed--'Possibly they may repent.' 'It is true that Jim Smith broke +a window and lied about it--but maybe he did not mean any harm. And +although Tom Holmes says more bad words than any other boy in the +village, he probably intends to repent--though he has never said he +would. And whilst it is a fact that John Jones did fish a little on +Sunday, once, he didn't really catch anything but only just one small +useless mud-cat; and maybe that wouldn't have been so awful if he had +thrown it back--as he says he did, but he didn't. Pity but they would +repent of these dreadful things--and maybe they will yet.' + +But while I was shamefully trying to draw attention to these poor chaps +--who were doubtless directing the celestial attention to me at the same +moment, though I never once suspected that--I had heedlessly left my +candle burning. It was not a time to neglect even trifling precautions. +There was no occasion to add anything to the facilities for attracting +notice to me--so I put the light out. + +It was a long night to me, and perhaps the most distressful one I ever +spent. I endured agonies of remorse for sins which I knew I had +committed, and for others which I was not certain about, yet was sure +that they had been set down against me in a book by an angel who was +wiser than I and did not trust such important matters to memory. It +struck me, by and by, that I had been making a most foolish and +calamitous mistake, in one respect: doubtless I had not only made my own +destruction sure by directing attention to those other boys, but had +already accomplished theirs!--Doubtless the lightning had stretched them +all dead in their beds by this time! The anguish and the fright which +this thought gave me made my previous sufferings seem trifling by +comparison. + +Things had become truly serious. I resolved to turn over a new leaf +instantly; I also resolved to connect myself with the church the next +day, if I survived to see its sun appear. I resolved to cease from sin +in all its forms, and to lead a high and blameless life for ever after. +I would be punctual at church and Sunday-school; visit the sick; carry +baskets of victuals to the poor (simply to fulfil the regulation +conditions, although I knew we had none among us so poor but they would +smash the basket over my head for my pains); I would instruct other boys +in right ways, and take the resulting trouncings meekly; I would subsist +entirely on tracts; I would invade the rum shop and warn the drunkard-- +and finally, if I escaped the fate of those who early become too good to +live, I would go for a missionary. + +The storm subsided toward daybreak, and I dozed gradually to sleep with +a sense of obligation to Lem Hackett for going to eternal suffering in +that abrupt way, and thus preventing a far more dreadful disaster--my +own loss. + +But when I rose refreshed, by and by, and found that those other boys +were still alive, I had a dim sense that perhaps the whole thing was a +false alarm; that the entire turmoil had been on Lem's account and +nobody's else. The world looked so bright and safe that there did not +seem to be any real occasion to turn over a new leaf. I was a little +subdued, during that day, and perhaps the next; after that, my purpose +of reforming slowly dropped out of my mind, and I had a peaceful, +comfortable time again, until the next storm. + +That storm came about three weeks later; and it was the most +unaccountable one, to me, that I had ever experienced; for on the +afternoon of that day, 'Dutchy' was drowned. Dutchy belonged to our +Sunday-school. He was a German lad who did not know enough to come in +out of the rain; but he was exasperatingly good, and had a prodigious +memory. One Sunday he made himself the envy of all the youth and the +talk of all the admiring village, by reciting three thousand verses of +Scripture without missing a word; then he went off the very next day and +got drowned. + +Circumstances gave to his death a peculiar impressiveness. We were all +bathing in a muddy creek which had a deep hole in it, and in this hole +the coopers had sunk a pile of green hickory hoop poles to soak, some +twelve feet under water. We were diving and 'seeing who could stay under +longest.' We managed to remain down by holding on to the hoop poles. +Dutchy made such a poor success of it that he was hailed with laughter +and derision every time his head appeared above water. At last he seemed +hurt with the taunts, and begged us to stand still on the bank and be +fair with him and give him an honest count--'be friendly and kind just +this once, and not miscount for the sake of having the fun of laughing +at him.' Treacherous winks were exchanged, and all said 'All right, +Dutchy--go ahead, we'll play fair.' + +Dutchy plunged in, but the boys, instead of beginning to count, followed +the lead of one of their number and scampered to a range of blackberry +bushes close by and hid behind it. They imagined Dutchy's humiliation, +when he should rise after a superhuman effort and find the place silent +and vacant, nobody there to applaud. They were 'so full of laugh' with +the idea, that they were continually exploding into muffled cackles. +Time swept on, and presently one who was peeping through the briers, +said, with surprise-- + +'Why, he hasn't come up, yet!' + +The laughing stopped. + +'Boys, it 's a splendid dive,' said one. + +'Never mind that,' said another, 'the joke on him is all the better for +it.' + +There was a remark or two more, and then a pause. Talking ceased, and +all began to peer through the vines. Before long, the boys' faces began +to look uneasy, then anxious, then terrified. Still there was no +movement of the placid water. Hearts began to beat fast, and faces to +turn pale. We all glided out, silently, and stood on the bank, our +horrified eyes wandering back and forth from each other's countenances +to the water. + +'Somebody must go down and see!' + +Yes, that was plain; but nobody wanted that grisly task. + +'Draw straws!' + +So we did--with hands which shook so, that we hardly knew what we were +about. The lot fell to me, and I went down. The water was so muddy I +could not see anything, but I felt around among the hoop poles, and +presently grasped a limp wrist which gave me no response--and if it had +I should not have known it, I let it go with such a frightened +suddenness. + +The boy had been caught among the hoop poles and entangled there, +helplessly. I fled to the surface and told the awful news. Some of us +knew that if the boy were dragged out at once he might possibly be +resuscitated, but we never thought of that. We did not think of +anything; we did not know what to do, so we did nothing--except that the +smaller lads cried, piteously, and we all struggled frantically into our +clothes, putting on anybody's that came handy, and getting them wrong- +side-out and upside-down, as a rule. Then we scurried away and gave the +alarm, but none of us went back to see the end of the tragedy. We had a +more important thing to attend to: we all flew home, and lost not a +moment in getting ready to lead a better life. + +The night presently closed down. Then came on that tremendous and +utterly unaccountable storm. I was perfectly dazed; I could not +understand it. It seemed to me that there must be some mistake. The +elements were turned loose, and they rattled and banged and blazed away +in the most blind and frantic manner. All heart and hope went out of +me, and the dismal thought kept floating through my brain, 'If a boy who +knows three thousand verses by heart is not satisfactory, what chance is +there for anybody else?' + +Of course I never questioned for a moment that the storm was on Dutchy's +account, or that he or any other inconsequential animal was worthy of +such a majestic demonstration from on high; the lesson of it was the +only thing that troubled me; for it convinced me that if Dutchy, with +all his perfections, was not a delight, it would be vain for me to turn +over a new leaf, for I must infallibly fall hopelessly short of that +boy, no matter how hard I might try. Nevertheless I did turn it over--a +highly educated fear compelled me to do that--but succeeding days of +cheerfulness and sunshine came bothering around, and within a month I +had so drifted backward that again I was as lost and comfortable as +ever. + +Breakfast time approached while I mused these musings and called these +ancient happenings back to mind; so I got me back into the present and +went down the hill. + +On my way through town to the hotel, I saw the house which was my home +when I was a boy. At present rates, the people who now occupy it are of +no more value than I am; but in my time they would have been worth not +less than five hundred dollars apiece. They are colored folk. + +After breakfast, I went out alone again, intending to hunt up some of +the Sunday-schools and see how this generation of pupils might compare +with their progenitors who had sat with me in those places and had +probably taken me as a model--though I do not remember as to that now. +By the public square there had been in my day a shabby little brick +church called the 'Old Ship of Zion,' which I had attended as a Sunday- +school scholar; and I found the locality easily enough, but not the old +church; it was gone, and a trig and rather hilarious new edifice was in +its place. The pupils were better dressed and better looking than were +those of my time; consequently they did not resemble their ancestors; +and consequently there was nothing familiar to me in their faces. Still, +I contemplated them with a deep interest and a yearning wistfulness, and +if I had been a girl I would have cried; for they were the offspring, +and represented, and occupied the places, of boys and girls some of whom +I had loved to love, and some of whom I had loved to hate, but all of +whom were dear to me for the one reason or the other, so many years gone +by--and, Lord, where be they now! + +I was mightily stirred, and would have been grateful to be allowed to +remain unmolested and look my fill; but a bald-summited superintendent +who had been a tow-headed Sunday-school mate of mine on that spot in the +early ages, recognized me, and I talked a flutter of wild nonsense to +those children to hide the thoughts which were in me, and which could +not have been spoken without a betrayal of feeling that would have been +recognized as out of character with me. + +Making speeches without preparation is no gift of mine; and I was +resolved to shirk any new opportunity, but in the next and larger +Sunday-school I found myself in the rear of the assemblage; so I was +very willing to go on the platform a moment for the sake of getting a +good look at the scholars. On the spur of the moment I could not recall +any of the old idiotic talks which visitors used to insult me with when +I was a pupil there; and I was sorry for this, since it would have given +me time and excuse to dawdle there and take a long and satisfying look +at what I feel at liberty to say was an array of fresh young comeliness +not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same size. As I talked +merely to get a chance to inspect; and as I strung out the random +rubbish solely to prolong the inspection, I judged it but decent to +confess these low motives, and I did so. + +If the Model Boy was in either of these Sunday-schools, I did not see +him. The Model Boy of my time--we never had but the one--was perfect: +perfect in manners, perfect in dress, perfect in conduct, perfect in +filial piety, perfect in exterior godliness; but at bottom he was a +prig; and as for the contents of his skull, they could have changed +place with the contents of a pie and nobody would have been the worse +off for it but the pie. This fellow's reproachlessness was a standing +reproach to every lad in the village. He was the admiration of all the +mothers, and the detestation of all their sons. I was told what became +of him, but as it was a disappointment to me, I will not enter into +details. He succeeded in life. + + +Chapter 55 A Vendetta and Other Things + +DURING my three days' stay in the town, I woke up every morning with the +impression that I was a boy--for in my dreams the faces were all young +again, and looked as they had looked in the old times--but I went to bed +a hundred years old, every night--for meantime I had been seeing those +faces as they are now. + +Of course I suffered some surprises, along at first, before I had become +adjusted to the changed state of things. I met young ladies who did not +seem to have changed at all; but they turned out to be the daughters of +the young ladies I had in mind--sometimes their grand-daughters. When +you are told that a stranger of fifty is a grandmother, there is nothing +surprising about it; but if, on the contrary, she is a person whom you +knew as a little girl, it seems impossible. You say to yourself, 'How +can a little girl be a grandmother.' It takes some little time to accept +and realize the fact that while you have been growing old, your friends +have not been standing still, in that matter. + +I noticed that the greatest changes observable were with the women, not +the men. I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly; but +their wives had grown old. These were good women; it is very wearing to +be good. + +There was a saddler whom I wished to see; but he was gone. Dead, these +many years, they said. Once or twice a day, the saddler used to go +tearing down the street, putting on his coat as he went; and then +everybody knew a steamboat was coming. Everybody knew, also, that John +Stavely was not expecting anybody by the boat--or any freight, either; +and Stavely must have known that everybody knew this, still it made no +difference to him; he liked to seem to himself to be expecting a hundred +thousand tons of saddles by this boat, and so he went on all his life, +enjoying being faithfully on hand to receive and receipt for those +saddles, in case by any miracle they should come. A malicious Quincy +paper used always to refer to this town, in derision as 'Stavely's +Landing.' Stavely was one of my earliest admirations; I envied him his +rush of imaginary business, and the display he was able to make of it, +before strangers, as he went flying down the street struggling with his +fluttering coat. + +But there was a carpenter who was my chiefest hero. He was a mighty +liar, but I did not know that; I believed everything he said. He was a +romantic, sentimental, melodramatic fraud, and his bearing impressed me +with awe. I vividly remember the first time he took me into his +confidence. He was planing a board, and every now and then he would +pause and heave a deep sigh; and occasionally mutter broken sentences-- +confused and not intelligible--but out of their midst an ejaculation +sometimes escaped which made me shiver and did me good: one was, 'O +God, it is his blood!' I sat on the tool-chest and humbly and +shudderingly admired him; for I judged he was full of crime. At last he +said in a low voice-- + +'My little friend, can you keep a secret?' + +I eagerly said I could. + +'A dark and dreadful one?' + +I satisfied him on that point. + +'Then I will tell you some passages in my history; for oh, I MUST +relieve my burdened soul, or I shall die!' + +He cautioned me once more to be 'as silent as the grave;' then he told +me he was a 'red-handed murderer.' He put down his plane, held his hands +out before him, contemplated them sadly, and said-- + +'Look--with these hands I have taken the lives of thirty human beings!' + +The effect which this had upon me was an inspiration to him, and he +turned himself loose upon his subject with interest and energy. He left +generalizing, and went into details,--began with his first murder; +described it, told what measures he had taken to avert suspicion; then +passed to his second homicide, his third, his fourth, and so on. He had +always done his murders with a bowie-knife, and he made all my hairs +rise by suddenly snatching it out and showing it to me. + +At the end of this first seance I went home with six of his fearful +secrets among my freightage, and found them a great help to my dreams, +which had been sluggish for a while back. I sought him again and again, +on my Saturday holidays; in fact I spent the summer with him--all of it +which was valuable to me. His fascinations never diminished, for he +threw something fresh and stirring, in the way of horror, into each +successive murder. He always gave names, dates, places--everything. +This by and by enabled me to note two things: that he had killed his +victims in every quarter of the globe, and that these victims were +always named Lynch. The destruction of the Lynches went serenely on, +Saturday after Saturday, until the original thirty had multiplied to +sixty--and more to be heard from yet; then my curiosity got the better +of my timidity, and I asked how it happened that these justly punished +persons all bore the same name. + +My hero said he had never divulged that dark secret to any living being; +but felt that he could trust me, and therefore he would lay bare before +me the story of his sad and blighted life. He had loved one 'too fair +for earth,' and she had reciprocated 'with all the sweet affection of +her pure and noble nature.' But he had a rival, a 'base hireling' named +Archibald Lynch, who said the girl should be his, or he would 'dye his +hands in her heart's best blood.' The carpenter, 'innocent and happy in +love's young dream,' gave no weight to the threat, but led his 'golden- +haired darling to the altar,' and there, the two were made one; there +also, just as the minister's hands were stretched in blessing over their +heads, the fell deed was done--with a knife--and the bride fell a corpse +at her husband's feet. And what did the husband do? He plucked forth +that knife, and kneeling by the body of his lost one, swore to +'consecrate his life to the extermination of all the human scum that +bear the hated name of Lynch.' + +That was it. He had been hunting down the Lynches and slaughtering +them, from that day to this--twenty years. He had always used that same +consecrated knife; with it he had murdered his long array of Lynches, +and with it he had left upon the forehead of each victim a peculiar +mark--a cross, deeply incised. Said he-- + +'The cross of the Mysterious Avenger is known in Europe, in America, in +China, in Siam, in the Tropics, in the Polar Seas, in the deserts of +Asia, in all the earth. Wherever in the uttermost parts of the globe, a +Lynch has penetrated, there has the Mysterious Cross been seen, and +those who have seen it have shuddered and said, "It is his mark, he has +been here." You have heard of the Mysterious Avenger--look upon him, for +before you stands no less a person! But beware--breathe not a word to +any soul. Be silent, and wait. Some morning this town will flock aghast +to view a gory corpse; on its brow will be seen the awful sign, and men +will tremble and whisper, "He has been here--it is the Mysterious +Avenger's mark!" You will come here, but I shall have vanished; you will +see me no more.' + +This ass had been reading the 'Jibbenainosay,' no doubt, and had had his +poor romantic head turned by it; but as I had not yet seen the book +then, I took his inventions for truth, and did not suspect that he was a +plagiarist. + +However, we had a Lynch living in the town; and the more I reflected +upon his impending doom, the more I could not sleep. It seemed my plain +duty to save him, and a still plainer and more important duty to get +some sleep for myself, so at last I ventured to go to Mr. Lynch and tell +him what was about to happen to him--under strict secrecy. I advised him +to 'fly,' and certainly expected him to do it. But he laughed at me; and +he did not stop there; he led me down to the carpenter's shop, gave the +carpenter a jeering and scornful lecture upon his silly pretensions, +slapped his face, made him get down on his knees and beg--then went off +and left me to contemplate the cheap and pitiful ruin of what, in my +eyes, had so lately been a majestic and incomparable hero. The carpenter +blustered, flourished his knife, and doomed this Lynch in his usual +volcanic style, the size of his fateful words undiminished; but it was +all wasted upon me; he was a hero to me no longer, but only a poor, +foolish, exposed humbug. I was ashamed of him, and ashamed of myself; I +took no further interest in him, and never went to his shop any more. +He was a heavy loss to me, for he was the greatest hero I had ever +known. The fellow must have had some talent; for some of his imaginary +murders were so vividly and dramatically described that I remember all +their details yet. + +The people of Hannibal are not more changed than is the town. It is no +longer a village; it is a city, with a mayor, and a council, and water- +works, and probably a debt. It has fifteen thousand people, is a +thriving and energetic place, and is paved like the rest of the west and +south--where a well-paved street and a good sidewalk are things so +seldom seen, that one doubts them when he does see them. The customary +half-dozen railways center in Hannibal now, and there is a new depot +which cost a hundred thousand dollars. In my time the town had no +specialty, and no commercial grandeur; the daily packet usually landed a +passenger and bought a catfish, and took away another passenger and a +hatful of freight; but now a huge commerce in lumber has grown up and a +large miscellaneous commerce is one of the results. A deal of money +changes hands there now. + +Bear Creek--so called, perhaps, because it was always so particularly +bare of bears--is hidden out of sight now, under islands and continents +of piled lumber, and nobody but an expert can find it. I used to get +drowned in it every summer regularly, and be drained out, and inflated +and set going again by some chance enemy; but not enough of it is +unoccupied now to drown a person in. It was a famous breeder of chills +and fever in its day. I remember one summer when everybody in town had +this disease at once. Many chimneys were shaken down, and all the +houses were so racked that the town had to be rebuilt. The chasm or +gorge between Lover's Leap and the hill west of it is supposed by +scientists to have been caused by glacial action. This is a mistake. + +There is an interesting cave a mile or two below Hannibal, among the +bluffs. I would have liked to revisit it, but had not time. In my time +the person who then owned it turned it into a mausoleum for his +daughter, aged fourteen. The body of this poor child was put into a +copper cylinder filled with alcohol, and this was suspended in one of +the dismal avenues of the cave. The top of the cylinder was removable; +and it was said to be a common thing for the baser order of tourists to +drag the dead face into view and examine it and comment upon it. + + + + +Chapter 56 A Question of Law + +THE slaughter-house is gone from the mouth of Bear Creek and so is the +small jail (or 'calaboose') which once stood in its neighborhood. A +citizen asked, 'Do you remember when Jimmy Finn, the town drunkard, was +burned to death in the calaboose?' + +Observe, now, how history becomes defiled, through lapse of time and the +help of the bad memories of men. Jimmy Finn was not burned in the +calaboose, but died a natural death in a tan vat, of a combination of +delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion. When I say natural death, I +mean it was a natural death for Jimmy Finn to die. The calaboose victim +was not a citizen; he was a poor stranger, a harmless whiskey-sodden +tramp. I know more about his case than anybody else; I knew too much of +it, in that bygone day, to relish speaking of it. That tramp was +wandering about the streets one chilly evening, with a pipe in his +mouth, and begging for a match; he got neither matches nor courtesy; on +the contrary, a troop of bad little boys followed him around and amused +themselves with nagging and annoying him. I assisted; but at last, some +appeal which the wayfarer made for forbearance, accompanying it with a +pathetic reference to his forlorn and friendless condition, touched such +sense of shame and remnant of right feeling as were left in me, and I +went away and got him some matches, and then hied me home and to bed, +heavily weighted as to conscience, and unbuoyant in spirit. An hour or +two afterward, the man was arrested and locked up in the calaboose by +the marshal--large name for a constable, but that was his title. At two +in the morning, the church bells rang for fire, and everybody turned +out, of course--I with the rest. The tramp had used his matches +disastrously: he had set his straw bed on fire, and the oaken sheathing +of the room had caught. When I reached the ground, two hundred men, +women, and children stood massed together, transfixed with horror, and +staring at the grated windows of the jail. Behind the iron bars, and +tugging frantically at them, and screaming for help, stood the tramp; he +seemed like a black object set against a sun, so white and intense was +the light at his back. That marshal could not be found, and he had the +only key. A battering-ram was quickly improvised, and the thunder of its +blows upon the door had so encouraging a sound that the spectators broke +into wild cheering, and believed the merciful battle won. But it was not +so. The timbers were too strong; they did not yield. It was said that +the man's death-grip still held fast to the bars after he was dead; and +that in this position the fires wrapped him about and consumed him. As +to this, I do not know. What was seen after I recognized the face that +was pleading through the bars was seen by others, not by me. + +I saw that face, so situated, every night for a long time afterward; and +I believed myself as guilty of the man's death as if I had given him the +matches purposely that he might burn himself up with them. I had not a +doubt that I should be hanged if my connection with this tragedy were +found out. The happenings and the impressions of that time are burnt +into my memory, and the study of them entertains me as much now as they +themselves distressed me then. If anybody spoke of that grisly matter, I +was all ears in a moment, and alert to hear what might be said, for I +was always dreading and expecting to find out that I was suspected; and +so fine and so delicate was the perception of my guilty conscience, that +it often detected suspicion in the most purposeless remarks, and in +looks, gestures, glances of the eye which had no significance, but which +sent me shivering away in a panic of fright, just the same. And how sick +it made me when somebody dropped, howsoever carelessly and barren of +intent, the remark that 'murder will out!' For a boy of ten years, I was +carrying a pretty weighty cargo. + +All this time I was blessedly forgetting one thing--the fact that I was +an inveterate talker in my sleep. But one night I awoke and found my +bed-mate--my younger brother--sitting up in bed and contemplating me by +the light of the moon. I said-- + +'What is the matter?' + +'You talk so much I can't sleep.' + +I came to a sitting posture in an instant, with my kidneys in my throat +and my hair on end. + +'What did I say. Quick--out with it--what did I say?' + +'Nothing much.' + +'It's a lie--you know everything.' + +'Everything about what?' + +'You know well enough. About THAT.' + +'About WHAT?--I don't know what you are talking about. I think you are +sick or crazy or something. But anyway, you're awake, and I'll get to +sleep while I've got a chance.' + +He fell asleep and I lay there in a cold sweat, turning this new terror +over in the whirling chaos which did duty as my mind. The burden of my +thought was, How much did I divulge? How much does he know?--what a +distress is this uncertainty! But by and by I evolved an idea--I would +wake my brother and probe him with a supposititious case. I shook him +up, and said-- + +'Suppose a man should come to you drunk--' + +'This is foolish--I never get drunk.' + +'I don't mean you, idiot--I mean the man. Suppose a MAN should come to +you drunk, and borrow a knife, or a tomahawk, or a pistol, and you +forgot to tell him it was loaded, and--' + +'How could you load a tomahawk?' + +'I don't mean the tomahawk, and I didn't say the tomahawk; I said the +pistol. Now don't you keep breaking in that way, because this is +serious. There's been a man killed.' + +'What! in this town?' + +'Yes, in this town.' + +'Well, go on--I won't say a single word.' + +'Well, then, suppose you forgot to tell him to be careful with it, +because it was loaded, and he went off and shot himself with that +pistol--fooling with it, you know, and probably doing it by accident, +being drunk. Well, would it be murder?' + +'No--suicide.' + +'No, no. I don't mean HIS act, I mean yours: would you be a murderer +for letting him have that pistol?' + +After deep thought came this answer-- + +'Well, I should think I was guilty of something--maybe murder--yes, +probably murder, but I don't quite know.' + +This made me very uncomfortable. However, it was not a decisive +verdict. I should have to set out the real case--there seemed to be no +other way. But I would do it cautiously, and keep a watch out for +suspicious effects. I said-- + +'I was supposing a case, but I am coming to the real one now. Do you +know how the man came to be burned up in the calaboose?' + +'No.' + +'Haven't you the least idea?' + +'Not the least.' + +'Wish you may die in your tracks if you have?' + +'Yes, wish I may die in my tracks.' + +'Well, the way of it was this. The man wanted some matches to light his +pipe. A boy got him some. The man set fire to the calaboose with those +very matches, and burnt himself up.' + +'Is that so?' + +'Yes, it is. Now, is that boy a murderer, do you think?' + +'Let me see. The man was drunk?' + +'Yes, he was drunk.' + +'Very drunk?' + +'Yes.' + +'And the boy knew it?' + +'Yes, he knew it.' + +There was a long pause. Then came this heavy verdict-- + +'If the man was drunk, and the boy knew it, the boy murdered that man. +This is certain.' + +Faint, sickening sensations crept along all the fibers of my body, and I +seemed to know how a person feels who hears his death sentence +pronounced from the bench. I waited to hear what my brother would say +next. I believed I knew what it would be, and I was right. He said-- + +'I know the boy.' + +I had nothing to say; so I said nothing. I simply shuddered. Then he +added-- + +'Yes, before you got half through telling about the thing, I knew +perfectly well who the boy was; it was Ben Coontz!' + +I came out of my collapse as one who rises from the dead. I said, with +admiration-- + +'Why, how in the world did you ever guess it?' + +'You told it in your sleep.' + +I said to myself, 'How splendid that is! This is a habit which must be +cultivated.' + +My brother rattled innocently on-- + +'When you were talking in your sleep, you kept mumbling something about +"matches," which I couldn't make anything out of; but just now, when you +began to tell me about the man and the calaboose and the matches, I +remembered that in your sleep you mentioned Ben Coontz two or three +times; so I put this and that together, you see, and right away I knew +it was Ben that burnt that man up.' + +I praised his sagacity effusively. Presently he asked-- + +'Are you going to give him up to the law?' + +'No,' I said; 'I believe that this will be a lesson to him. I shall keep +an eye on him, of course, for that is but right; but if he stops where +he is and reforms, it shall never be said that I betrayed him.' + +'How good you are!' + +'Well, I try to be. It is all a person can do in a world like this.' + +And now, my burden being shifted to other shoulders, my terrors soon +faded away. + +The day before we left Hannibal, a curious thing fell under my notice-- +the surprising spread which longitudinal time undergoes there. I learned +it from one of the most unostentatious of men--the colored coachman of a +friend of mine, who lives three miles from town. He was to call for me +at the Park Hotel at 7.30 P.M., and drive me out. But he missed it +considerably--did not arrive till ten. He excused himself by saying-- + +'De time is mos' an hour en a half slower in de country en what it is in +de town; you'll be in plenty time, boss. Sometimes we shoves out early +for church, Sunday, en fetches up dah right plum in de middle er de +sermon. Diffunce in de time. A body can't make no calculations 'bout +it.' + +I had lost two hours and a half; but I had learned a fact worth four. + + + + +Chapter 57 An Archangel + +FROM St. Louis northward there are all the enlivening signs of the +presence of active, energetic, intelligent, prosperous, practical +nineteenth-century populations. The people don't dream, they work. The +happy result is manifest all around in the substantial outside aspect of +things, and the suggestions of wholesome life and comfort that +everywhere appear. + +Quincy is a notable example--a brisk, handsome, well-ordered city; and +now, as formerly, interested in art, letters, and other high things. + +But Marion City is an exception. Marion City has gone backwards in a +most unaccountable way. This metropolis promised so well that the +projectors tacked 'city' to its name in the very beginning, with full +confidence; but it was bad prophecy. When I first saw Marion City, +thirty-five years ago, it contained one street, and nearly or quite six +houses. It contains but one house now, and this one, in a state of ruin, +is getting ready to follow the former five into the river. Doubtless +Marion City was too near to Quincy. It had another disadvantage: it +was situated in a flat mud bottom, below high-water mark, whereas Quincy +stands high up on the slope of a hill. + +In the beginning Quincy had the aspect and ways of a model New England +town: and these she has yet: broad, clean streets, trim, neat dwellings +and lawns, fine mansions, stately blocks of commercial buildings. And +there are ample fair-grounds, a well kept park, and many attractive +drives; library, reading-rooms, a couple of colleges, some handsome and +costly churches, and a grand court-house, with grounds which occupy a +square. The population of the city is thirty thousand. There are some +large factories here, and manufacturing, of many sorts, is done on a +great scale. + +La Grange and Canton are growing towns, but I missed Alexandria; was +told it was under water, but would come up to blow in the summer. + +Keokuk was easily recognizable. I lived there in 1857--an extraordinary +year there in real-estate matters. The 'boom' was something wonderful. +Everybody bought, everybody sold--except widows and preachers; they +always hold on; and when the tide ebbs, they get left. Anything in the +semblance of a town lot, no matter how situated, was salable, and at a +figure which would still have been high if the ground had been sodded +with greenbacks. + +The town has a population of fifteen thousand now, and is progressing +with a healthy growth. It was night, and we could not see details, for +which we were sorry, for Keokuk has the reputation of being a beautiful +city. It was a pleasant one to live in long ago, and doubtless has +advanced, not retrograded, in that respect. + +A mighty work which was in progress there in my day is finished now. +This is the canal over the Rapids. It is eight miles long, three +hundred feet wide, and is in no place less than six feet deep. Its +masonry is of the majestic kind which the War Department usually deals +in, and will endure like a Roman aqueduct. The work cost four or five +millions. + +After an hour or two spent with former friends, we started up the river +again. Keokuk, a long time ago, was an occasional loafing-place of that +erratic genius, Henry Clay Dean. I believe I never saw him but once; but +he was much talked of when I lived there. This is what was said of him-- + +He began life poor and without education. But he educated himself--on +the curbstones of Keokuk. He would sit down on a curbstone with his +book, careless or unconscious of the clatter of commerce and the tramp +of the passing crowds, and bury himself in his studies by the hour, +never changing his position except to draw in his knees now and then to +let a dray pass unobstructed; and when his book was finished, its +contents, however abstruse, had been burnt into his memory, and were his +permanent possession. In this way he acquired a vast hoard of all sorts +of learning, and had it pigeon-holed in his head where he could put his +intellectual hand on it whenever it was wanted. + +His clothes differed in no respect from a 'wharf-rat's,' except that +they were raggeder, more ill-assorted and inharmonious (and therefore +more extravagantly picturesque), and several layers dirtier. Nobody +could infer the master-mind in the top of that edifice from the edifice +itself. + +He was an orator--by nature in the first place, and later by the +training of experience and practice. When he was out on a canvass, his +name was a lodestone which drew the farmers to his stump from fifty +miles around. His theme was always politics. He used no notes, for a +volcano does not need notes. In 1862, a son of Keokuk's late +distinguished citizen, Mr. Claggett, gave me this incident concerning +Dean-- + +The war feeling was running high in Keokuk (in '61), and a great mass +meeting was to be held on a certain day in the new Athenaeum. A +distinguished stranger was to address the house. After the building had +been packed to its utmost capacity with sweltering folk of both sexes, +the stage still remained vacant--the distinguished stranger had failed +to connect. The crowd grew impatient, and by and by indignant and +rebellious. About this time a distressed manager discovered Dean on a +curb-stone, explained the dilemma to him, took his book away from him, +rushed him into the building the back way, and told him to make for the +stage and save his country. + +Presently a sudden silence fell upon the grumbling audience, and +everybody's eyes sought a single point--the wide, empty, carpetless +stage. A figure appeared there whose aspect was familiar to hardly a +dozen persons present. It was the scarecrow Dean--in foxy shoes, down at +the heels; socks of odd colors, also 'down;' damaged trousers, relics of +antiquity, and a world too short, exposing some inches of naked ankle; +an unbuttoned vest, also too short, and exposing a zone of soiled and +wrinkled linen between it and the waistband; shirt bosom open; long +black handkerchief, wound round and round the neck like a bandage; bob- +tailed blue coat, reaching down to the small of the back, with sleeves +which left four inches of forearm unprotected; small, stiff-brimmed +soldier-cap hung on a corner of the bump of--whichever bump it was. +This figure moved gravely out upon the stage and, with sedate and +measured step, down to the front, where it paused, and dreamily +inspected the house, saying no word. The silence of surprise held its +own for a moment, then was broken by a just audible ripple of merriment +which swept the sea of faces like the wash of a wave. The figure +remained as before, thoughtfully inspecting. Another wave started-- +laughter, this time. It was followed by another, then a third--this +last one boisterous. + +And now the stranger stepped back one pace, took off his soldier-cap, +tossed it into the wing, and began to speak, with deliberation, nobody +listening, everybody laughing and whispering. The speaker talked on +unembarrassed, and presently delivered a shot which went home, and +silence and attention resulted. He followed it quick and fast, with +other telling things; warmed to his work and began to pour his words +out, instead of dripping them; grew hotter and hotter, and fell to +discharging lightnings and thunder--and now the house began to break +into applause, to which the speaker gave no heed, but went hammering +straight on; unwound his black bandage and cast it away, still +thundering; presently discarded the bob tailed coat and flung it aside, +firing up higher and higher all the time; finally flung the vest after +the coat; and then for an untimed period stood there, like another +Vesuvius, spouting smoke and flame, lava and ashes, raining pumice-stone +and cinders, shaking the moral earth with intellectual crash upon crash, +explosion upon explosion, while the mad multitude stood upon their feet +in a solid body, answering back with a ceaseless hurricane of cheers, +through a thrashing snowstorm of waving handkerchiefs. + +'When Dean came,' said Claggett, 'the people thought he was an escaped +lunatic; but when he went, they thought he was an escaped archangel.' + +Burlington, home of the sparkling Burdette, is another hill city; and +also a beautiful one; unquestionably so; a fine and flourishing city, +with a population of twenty-five thousand, and belted with busy +factories of nearly every imaginable description. It was a very sober +city, too--for the moment--for a most sobering bill was pending; a bill +to forbid the manufacture, exportation, importation, purchase, sale, +borrowing, lending, stealing, drinking, smelling, or possession, by +conquest, inheritance, intent, accident, or otherwise, in the State of +Iowa, of each and every deleterious beverage known to the human race, +except water. This measure was approved by all the rational people in +the State; but not by the bench of Judges. + +Burlington has the progressive modern city's full equipment of devices +for right and intelligent government; including a paid fire department, +a thing which the great city of New Orleans is without, but still +employs that relic of antiquity, the independent system. + +In Burlington, as in all these Upper-River towns, one breathes a +go-ahead atmosphere which tastes good in the nostrils. An opera-house has +lately been built there which is in strong contrast with the shabby dens +which usually do duty as theaters in cities of Burlington's size. + +We had not time to go ashore in Muscatine, but had a daylight view of it +from the boat. I lived there awhile, many years ago, but the place, +now, had a rather unfamiliar look; so I suppose it has clear outgrown +the town which I used to know. In fact, I know it has; for I remember it +as a small place--which it isn't now. But I remember it best for a +lunatic who caught me out in the fields, one Sunday, and extracted a +butcher-knife from his boot and proposed to carve me up with it, unless +I acknowledged him to be the only son of the Devil. I tried to +compromise on an acknowledgment that he was the only member of the +family I had met; but that did not satisfy him; he wouldn't have any +half-measures; I must say he was the sole and only son of the Devil--he +whetted his knife on his boot. It did not seem worth while to make +trouble about a little thing like that; so I swung round to his view of +the matter and saved my skin whole. Shortly afterward, he went to visit +his father; and as he has not turned up since, I trust he is there yet. + +And I remember Muscatine--still more pleasantly--for its summer sunsets. +I have never seen any, on either side of the ocean, that equaled them. +They used the broad smooth river as a canvas, and painted on it every +imaginable dream of color, from the mottled daintinesses and delicacies +of the opal, all the way up, through cumulative intensities, to blinding +purple and crimson conflagrations which were enchanting to the eye, but +sharply tried it at the same time. All the Upper Mississippi region has +these extraordinary sunsets as a familiar spectacle. It is the true +Sunset Land: I am sure no other country can show so good a right to the +name. The sunrises are also said to be exceedingly fine. I do not know. + + + + +Chapter 58 On the Upper River + +THE big towns drop in, thick and fast, now: and between stretch +processions of thrifty farms, not desolate solitude. Hour by hour, the +boat plows deeper and deeper into the great and populous North-west; and +with each successive section of it which is revealed, one's surprise and +respect gather emphasis and increase. Such a people, and such +achievements as theirs, compel homage. This is an independent race who +think for themselves, and who are competent to do it, because they are +educated and enlightened; they read, they keep abreast of the best and +newest thought, they fortify every weak place in their land with a +school, a college, a library, and a newspaper; and they live under law. +Solicitude for the future of a race like this is not in order. + +This region is new; so new that it may be said to be still in its +babyhood. By what it has accomplished while still teething, one may +forecast what marvels it will do in the strength of its maturity. It is +so new that the foreign tourist has not heard of it yet; and has not +visited it. For sixty years, the foreign tourist has steamed up and down +the river between St. Louis and New Orleans, and then gone home and +written his book, believing he had seen all of the river that was worth +seeing or that had anything to see. In not six of all these books is +there mention of these Upper River towns--for the reason that the five +or six tourists who penetrated this region did it before these towns +were projected. The latest tourist of them all (1878) made the same old +regulation trip--he had not heard that there was anything north of St. +Louis. + +Yet there was. There was this amazing region, bristling with great +towns, projected day before yesterday, so to speak, and built next +morning. A score of them number from fifteen hundred to five thousand +people. Then we have Muscatine, ten thousand; Winona, ten thousand; +Moline, ten thousand; Rock Island, twelve thousand; La Crosse, twelve +thousand; Burlington, twenty-five thousand; Dubuque, twenty-five +thousand; Davenport, thirty thousand; St. Paul, fifty-eight thousand, +Minneapolis, sixty thousand and upward. + +The foreign tourist has never heard of these; there is no note of them +in his books. They have sprung up in the night, while he slept. So new +is this region, that I, who am comparatively young, am yet older than it +is. When I was born, St. Paul had a population of three persons, +Minneapolis had just a third as many. The then population of Minneapolis +died two years ago; and when he died he had seen himself undergo an +increase, in forty years, of fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and +ninety-nine persons. He had a frog's fertility. + +I must explain that the figures set down above, as the population of St. +Paul and Minneapolis, are several months old. These towns are far +larger now. In fact, I have just seen a newspaper estimate which gives +the former seventy-one thousand, and the latter seventy-eight thousand. +This book will not reach the public for six or seven months yet; none of +the figures will be worth much then. + +We had a glimpse of Davenport, which is another beautiful city, crowning +a hill--a phrase which applies to all these towns; for they are all +comely, all well built, clean, orderly, pleasant to the eye, and +cheering to the spirit; and they are all situated upon hills. Therefore +we will give that phrase a rest. The Indians have a tradition that +Marquette and Joliet camped where Davenport now stands, in 1673. The +next white man who camped there, did it about a hundred and seventy +years later--in 1834. Davenport has gathered its thirty thousand people +within the past thirty years. She sends more children to her schools +now, than her whole population numbered twenty-three years ago. She has +the usual Upper River quota of factories, newspapers, and institutions +of learning; she has telephones, local telegraphs, an electric alarm, +and an admirable paid fire department, consisting of six hook and ladder +companies, four steam fire engines, and thirty churches. Davenport is +the official residence of two bishops--Episcopal and Catholic. + +Opposite Davenport is the flourishing town of Rock Island, which lies at +the foot of the Upper Rapids. A great railroad bridge connects the two +towns--one of the thirteen which fret the Mississippi and the pilots, +between St. Louis and St. Paul. + +The charming island of Rock Island, three miles long and half a mile +wide, belongs to the United States, and the Government has turned it +into a wonderful park, enhancing its natural attractions by art, and +threading its fine forests with many miles of drives. Near the center of +the island one catches glimpses, through the trees, of ten vast stone +four-story buildings, each of which covers an acre of ground. These are +the Government workshops; for the Rock Island establishment is a +national armory and arsenal. + +We move up the river--always through enchanting scenery, there being no +other kind on the Upper Mississippi--and pass Moline, a center of vast +manufacturing industries; and Clinton and Lyons, great lumber centers; +and presently reach Dubuque, which is situated in a rich mineral region. +The lead mines are very productive, and of wide extent. Dubuque has a +great number of manufacturing establishments; among them a plow factory +which has for customers all Christendom in general. At least so I was +told by an agent of the concern who was on the boat. He said-- + +'You show me any country under the sun where they really know how to +plow, and if I don't show you our mark on the plow they use, I'll eat +that plow; and I won't ask for any Woostershyre sauce to flavor it up +with, either.' + +All this part of the river is rich in Indian history and traditions. +Black Hawk's was once a puissant name hereabouts; as was Keokuk's, +further down. A few miles below Dubuque is the Tete de Mort--Death's- +head rock, or bluff--to the top of which the French drove a band of +Indians, in early times, and cooped them up there, with death for a +certainty, and only the manner of it matter of choice--to starve, or +jump off and kill themselves. Black Hawk adopted the ways of the white +people, toward the end of his life; and when he died he was buried, near +Des Moines, in Christian fashion, modified by Indian custom; that is to +say, clothed in a Christian military uniform, and with a Christian cane +in his hand, but deposited in the grave in a sitting posture. Formerly, +a horse had always been buried with a chief. The substitution of the +cane shows that Black Hawk's haughty nature was really humbled, and he +expected to walk when he got over. + +We noticed that above Dubuque the water of the Mississippi was olive- +green--rich and beautiful and semi-transparent, with the sun on it. Of +course the water was nowhere as clear or of as fine a complexion as it +is in some other seasons of the year; for now it was at flood stage, and +therefore dimmed and blurred by the mud manufactured from caving banks. + +The majestic bluffs that overlook the river, along through this region, +charm one with the grace and variety of their forms, and the soft beauty +of their adornment. The steep verdant slope, whose base is at the +water's edge is topped by a lofty rampart of broken, turreted rocks, +which are exquisitely rich and mellow in color--mainly dark browns and +dull greens, but splashed with other tints. And then you have the +shining river, winding here and there and yonder, its sweep interrupted +at intervals by clusters of wooded islands threaded by silver channels; +and you have glimpses of distant villages, asleep upon capes; and of +stealthy rafts slipping along in the shade of the forest walls; and of +white steamers vanishing around remote points. And it is all as tranquil +and reposeful as dreamland, and has nothing this-worldly about it-- +nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon. + +Until the unholy train comes tearing along--which it presently does, +ripping the sacred solitude to rags and tatters with its devil's +warwhoop and the roar and thunder of its rushing wheels--and straightway +you are back in this world, and with one of its frets ready to hand for +your entertainment: for you remember that this is the very road whose +stock always goes down after you buy it, and always goes up again as +soon as you sell it. It makes me shudder to this day, to remember that +I once came near not getting rid of my stock at all. It must be an awful +thing to have a railroad left on your hands. + +The locomotive is in sight from the deck of the steamboat almost the +whole way from St. Louis to St. Paul--eight hundred miles. These +railroads have made havoc with the steamboat commerce. The clerk of our +boat was a steamboat clerk before these roads were built. In that day +the influx of population was so great, and the freight business so +heavy, that the boats were not able to keep up with the demands made +upon their carrying capacity; consequently the captains were very +independent and airy--pretty 'biggity,' as Uncle Remus would say. The +clerk nut-shelled the contrast between the former time and the present, +thus-- + +'Boat used to land--captain on hurricane roof--mighty stiff and +straight--iron ramrod for a spine--kid gloves, plug tile, hair parted +behind--man on shore takes off hat and says-- + +'"Got twenty-eight tons of wheat, cap'n--be great favor if you can take +them." + +'Captain says-- + +'"'ll take two of them"--and don't even condescend to look at him. + +'But nowadays the captain takes off his old slouch, and smiles all the +way around to the back of his ears, and gets off a bow which he hasn't +got any ramrod to interfere with, and says-- + +'"Glad to see you, Smith, glad to see you--you're looking well--haven't +seen you looking so well for years--what you got for us?" + +'"Nuth'n", says Smith; and keeps his hat on, and just turns his back and +goes to talking with somebody else. + +'Oh, yes, eight years ago, the captain was on top; but it's Smith's turn +now. Eight years ago a boat used to go up the river with every stateroom +full, and people piled five and six deep on the cabin floor; and a solid +deck-load of immigrants and harvesters down below, into the bargain. To +get a first-class stateroom, you'd got to prove sixteen quarterings of +nobility and four hundred years of descent, or be personally acquainted +with the nigger that blacked the captain's boots. But it's all changed +now; plenty staterooms above, no harvesters below--there's a patent +self-binder now, and they don't have harvesters any more; they've gone +where the woodbine twineth--and they didn't go by steamboat, either; +went by the train.' + +Up in this region we met massed acres of lumber rafts coming down--but +not floating leisurely along, in the old-fashioned way, manned with +joyous and reckless crews of fiddling, song-singing, whiskey-drinking, +breakdown-dancing rapscallions; no, the whole thing was shoved swiftly +along by a powerful stern-wheeler, modern fashion, and the small crews +were quiet, orderly men, of a sedate business aspect, with not a +suggestion of romance about them anywhere. + +Along here, somewhere, on a black night, we ran some exceedingly narrow +and intricate island-chutes by aid of the electric light. Behind was +solid blackness--a crackless bank of it; ahead, a narrow elbow of water, +curving between dense walls of foliage that almost touched our bows on +both sides; and here every individual leaf, and every individual ripple +stood out in its natural color, and flooded with a glare as of noonday +intensified. The effect was strange, and fine, and very striking. + +We passed Prairie du Chien, another of Father Marquette's camping- +places; and after some hours of progress through varied and beautiful +scenery, reached La Crosse. Here is a town of twelve or thirteen +thousand population, with electric lighted streets, and with blocks of +buildings which are stately enough, and also architecturally fine +enough, to command respect in any city. It is a choice town, and we made +satisfactory use of the hour allowed us, in roaming it over, though the +weather was rainier than necessary. + + + + +Chapter 59 Legends and Scenery + +WE added several passengers to our list, at La Crosse; among others an +old gentleman who had come to this north-western region with the early +settlers, and was familiar with every part of it. Pardonably proud of +it, too. He said-- + +'You'll find scenery between here and St. Paul that can give the Hudson +points. You'll have the Queen's Bluff--seven hundred feet high, and +just as imposing a spectacle as you can find anywheres; and Trempeleau +Island, which isn't like any other island in America, I believe, for it +is a gigantic mountain, with precipitous sides, and is full of Indian +traditions, and used to be full of rattlesnakes; if you catch the sun +just right there, you will have a picture that will stay with you. And +above Winona you'll have lovely prairies; and then come the Thousand +Islands, too beautiful for anything; green? why you never saw foliage so +green, nor packed so thick; it's like a thousand plush cushions afloat +on a looking-glass--when the water 's still; and then the monstrous +bluffs on both sides of the river--ragged, rugged, dark-complected--just +the frame that's wanted; you always want a strong frame, you know, to +throw up the nice points of a delicate picture and make them stand out.' + +The old gentleman also told us a touching Indian legend or two--but not +very powerful ones. + +After this excursion into history, he came back to the scenery, and +described it, detail by detail, from the Thousand Islands to St. Paul; +naming its names with such facility, tripping along his theme with such +nimble and confident ease, slamming in a three-ton word, here and there, +with such a complacent air of 't isn't-anything,-I-can-do-it-any-time-I- +want-to, and letting off fine surprises of lurid eloquence at such +judicious intervals, that I presently began to suspect-- + +But no matter what I began to suspect. Hear him-- + +'Ten miles above Winona we come to Fountain City, nestling sweetly at +the feet of cliffs that lift their awful fronts, Jovelike, toward the +blue depths of heaven, bathing them in virgin atmospheres that have +known no other contact save that of angels' wings. + +'And next we glide through silver waters, amid lovely and stupendous +aspects of nature that attune our hearts to adoring admiration, about +twelve miles, and strike Mount Vernon, six hundred feet high, with +romantic ruins of a once first-class hotel perched far among the cloud +shadows that mottle its dizzy heights--sole remnant of once-flourishing +Mount Vernon, town of early days, now desolate and utterly deserted. + +'And so we move on. Past Chimney Rock we fly--noble shaft of six +hundred feet; then just before landing at Minnieska our attention is +attracted by a most striking promontory rising over five hundred feet-- +the ideal mountain pyramid. Its conic shape--thickly-wooded surface +girding its sides, and its apex like that of a cone, cause the spectator +to wonder at nature's workings. From its dizzy heights superb views of +the forests, streams, bluffs, hills and dales below and beyond for miles +are brought within its focus. What grander river scenery can be +conceived, as we gaze upon this enchanting landscape, from the uppermost +point of these bluffs upon the valleys below? The primeval wildness and +awful loneliness of these sublime creations of nature and nature's God, +excite feelings of unbounded admiration, and the recollection of which +can never be effaced from the memory, as we view them in any direction. + +'Next we have the Lion's Head and the Lioness's Head, carved by nature's +hand, to adorn and dominate the beauteous stream; and then anon the +river widens, and a most charming and magnificent view of the valley +before us suddenly bursts upon our vision; rugged hills, clad with +verdant forests from summit to base, level prairie lands, holding in +their lap the beautiful Wabasha, City of the Healing Waters, puissant +foe of Bright's disease, and that grandest conception of nature's works, +incomparable Lake Pepin--these constitute a picture whereon the +tourist's eye may gaze uncounted hours, with rapture unappeased and +unappeasable. + +'And so we glide along; in due time encountering those majestic domes, +the mighty Sugar Loaf, and the sublime Maiden's Rock--which latter, +romantic superstition has invested with a voice; and oft-times as the +birch canoe glides near, at twilight, the dusky paddler fancies he hears +the soft sweet music of the long-departed Winona, darling of Indian song +and story. + +'Then Frontenac looms upon our vision, delightful resort of jaded summer +tourists; then progressive Red Wing; and Diamond Bluff, impressive and +preponderous in its lone sublimity; then Prescott and the St. Croix; and +anon we see bursting upon us the domes and steeples of St. Paul, giant +young chief of the North, marching with seven-league stride in the van +of progress, banner-bearer of the highest and newest civilization, +carving his beneficent way with the tomahawk of commercial enterprise, +sounding the warwhoop of Christian culture, tearing off the reeking +scalp of sloth and superstition to plant there the steam-plow and the +school-house--ever in his front stretch arid lawlessness, ignorance, +crime, despair; ever in his wake bloom the jail, the gallows, and the +pulpit; and ever--' + +'Have you ever traveled with a panorama?' + +'I have formerly served in that capacity.' + +My suspicion was confirmed. + +'Do you still travel with it?' + +'No, she is laid up till the fall season opens. I am helping now to +work up the materials for a Tourist's Guide which the St. Louis and St. +Paul Packet Company are going to issue this summer for the benefit of +travelers who go by that line.' + +'When you were talking of Maiden's Rock, you spoke of the long-departed +Winona, darling of Indian song and story. Is she the maiden of the +rock?--and are the two connected by legend?' + +'Yes, and a very tragic and painful one. Perhaps the most celebrated, +as well as the most pathetic, of all the legends of the Mississippi.' + +We asked him to tell it. He dropped out of his conversational vein and +back into his lecture-gait without an effort, and rolled on as follows-- + +'A little distance above Lake City is a famous point known as Maiden's +Rock, which is not only a picturesque spot, but is full of romantic +interest from the event which gave it its name, Not many years ago this +locality was a favorite resort for the Sioux Indians on account of the +fine fishing and hunting to be had there, and large numbers of them were +always to be found in this locality. Among the families which used to +resort here, was one belonging to the tribe of Wabasha. We-no-na +(first-born) was the name of a maiden who had plighted her troth to a +lover belonging to the same band. But her stern parents had promised +her hand to another, a famous warrior, and insisted on her wedding him. +The day was fixed by her parents, to her great grief. She appeared to +accede to the proposal and accompany them to the rock, for the purpose +of gathering flowers for the feast. On reaching the rock, We-no-na ran +to its summit and standing on its edge upbraided her parents who were +below, for their cruelty, and then singing a death-dirge, threw herself +from the precipice and dashed them in pieces on the rock below.' + +'Dashed who in pieces--her parents?' + +'Yes.' + +'Well, it certainly was a tragic business, as you say. And moreover, +there is a startling kind of dramatic surprise about it which I was not +looking for. It is a distinct improvement upon the threadbare form of +Indian legend. There are fifty Lover's Leaps along the Mississippi from +whose summit disappointed Indian girls have jumped, but this is the only +jump in the lot hat turned out in the right and satisfactory way. What +became of Winona?' + +'She was a good deal jarred up and jolted: but she got herself together +and disappeared before the coroner reached the fatal spot; and 'tis said +she sought and married her true love, and wandered with him to some +distant clime, where she lived happy ever after, her gentle spirit +mellowed and chastened by the romantic incident which had so early +deprived her of the sweet guidance of a mother's love and a father's +protecting arm, and thrown her, all unfriended, upon the cold charity of +a censorious world.' + +I was glad to hear the lecturer's description of the scenery, for it +assisted my appreciation of what I saw of it, and enabled me to imagine +such of it as we lost by the intrusion of night. + +As the lecturer remarked, this whole region is blanketed with Indian +tales and traditions. But I reminded him that people usually merely +mention this fact--doing it in a way to make a body's mouth water--and +judiciously stopped there. Why? Because the impression left, was that +these tales were full of incident and imagination--a pleasant impression +which would be promptly dissipated if the tales were told. I showed him +a lot of this sort of literature which I had been collecting, and he +confessed that it was poor stuff, exceedingly sorry rubbish; and I +ventured to add that the legends which he had himself told us were of +this character, with the single exception of the admirable story of +Winona. He granted these facts, but said that if I would hunt up Mr. +Schoolcraft's book, published near fifty years ago, and now doubtless +out of print, I would find some Indian inventions in it that were very +far from being barren of incident and imagination; that the tales in +Hiawatha were of this sort, and they came from Schoolcraft's book; and +that there were others in the same book which Mr. Longfellow could have +turned into verse with good effect. For instance, there was the legend +of 'The Undying Head.' He could not tell it, for many of the details had +grown dim in his memory; but he would recommend me to find it and +enlarge my respect for the Indian imagination. He said that this tale, +and most of the others in the book, were current among the Indians along +this part of the Mississippi when he first came here; and that the +contributors to Schoolcraft's book had got them directly from Indian +lips, and had written them down with strict exactness, and without +embellishments of their own. + +I have found the book. The lecturer was right. There are several +legends in it which confirm what he said. I will offer two of them-- +'The Undying Head,' and 'Peboan and Seegwun, an Allegory of the +Seasons.' The latter is used in Hiawatha; but it is worth reading in the +original form, if only that one may see how effective a genuine poem can +be without the helps and graces of poetic measure and rhythm-- + +PEBOAN AND SEEGWUN. + +An old man was sitting alone in his lodge, by the side of a frozen +stream. It was the close of winter, and his fire was almost out, He +appeared very old and very desolate. His locks were white with age, and +he trembled in every joint. Day after day passed in solitude, and he +heard nothing but the sound of the tempest, sweeping before it the new- +fallen snow. + +One day, as his fire was just dying, a handsome young man approached and +entered his dwelling. His cheeks were red with the blood of youth, his +eyes sparkled with animation, and a smile played upon his lips. He +walked with a light and quick step. His forehead was bound with a +wreath of sweet grass, in place of a warrior's frontlet, and he carried +a bunch of flowers in his hand. + +'Ah, my son,' said the old man, 'I am happy to see you. Come in. Come +and tell me of your adventures, and what strange lands you have been to +see. Let us pass the night together. I will tell you of my prowess and +exploits, and what I can perform. You shall do the same, and we will +amuse ourselves.' + +He then drew from his sack a curiously wrought antique pipe, and having +filled it with tobacco, rendered mild by a mixture of certain leaves, +handed it to his guest. When this ceremony was concluded they began to +speak. + +'I blow my breath,' said the old man, 'and the stream stands still. The +water becomes stiff and hard as clear stone.' + +'I breathe,' said the young man, 'and flowers spring up over the plain.' + +'I shake my locks,' retorted the old man, 'and snow covers the land. The +leaves fall from the trees at my command, and my breath blows them away. +The birds get up from the water, and fly to a distant land. The animals +hide themselves from my breath, and the very ground becomes as hard as +flint.' + +'I shake my ringlets,' rejoined the young man, 'and warm showers of soft +rain fall upon the earth. The plants lift up their heads out of the +earth, like the eyes of children glistening with delight. My voice +recalls the birds. The warmth of my breath unlocks the streams. Music +fills the groves wherever I walk, and all nature rejoices.' + +At length the sun began to rise. A gentle warmth came over the place. +The tongue of the old man became silent. The robin and bluebird began to +sing on the top of the lodge. The stream began to murmur by the door, +and the fragrance of growing herbs and flowers came softly on the vernal +breeze. + +Daylight fully revealed to the young man the character of his +entertainer. When he looked upon him, he had the icy visage of +Peboan.{footnote [Winter.]} Streams began to flow from his eyes. As the +sun increased, he grew less and less in stature, and anon had melted +completely away. Nothing remained on the place of his lodge-fire but the +miskodeed,{footnote [The trailing arbutus.]} a small white flower, with +a pink border, which is one of the earliest species of northern plants. + +'The Undying Head' is a rather long tale, but it makes up in weird +conceits, fairy-tale prodigies, variety of incident, and energy of +movement, for what it lacks in brevity.{footnote [See appendix D.]} + + + + +Chapter 60 Speculations and Conclusions + +WE reached St. Paul, at the head of navigation of the Mississippi, and +there our voyage of two thousand miles from New Orleans ended. It is +about a ten-day trip by steamer. It can probably be done quicker by +rail. I judge so because I know that one may go by rail from St. Louis +to Hannibal--a distance of at least a hundred and twenty miles--in seven +hours. This is better than walking; unless one is in a hurry. + +The season being far advanced when we were in New Orleans, the roses and +magnolia blossoms were falling; but here in St. Paul it was the snow, In +New Orleans we had caught an occasional withering breath from over a +crater, apparently; here in St. Paul we caught a frequent benumbing one +from over a glacier, apparently. + + +But I wander from my theme. St. Paul is a wonderful town. It is put +together in solid blocks of honest brick and stone, and has the air of +intending to stay. Its post-office was established thirty-six years +ago; and by and by, when the postmaster received a letter, he carried it +to Washington, horseback, to inquire what was to be done with it. Such +is the legend. Two frame houses were built that year, and several +persons were added to the population. A recent number of the leading St. +Paul paper, the 'Pioneer Press,' gives some statistics which furnish a +vivid contrast to that old state of things, to wit: Population, autumn +of the present year (1882), 71,000; number of letters handled, first +half of the year, 1,209,387; number of houses built during three- +quarters of the year, 989; their cost, $3,186,000. The increase of +letters over the corresponding six months of last year was fifty per +cent. Last year the new buildings added to the city cost above +$4,500,000. St. Paul's strength lies in her commerce--I mean his +commerce. He is a manufacturing city, of course--all the cities of that +region are--but he is peculiarly strong in the matter of commerce. Last +year his jobbing trade amounted to upwards of $52,000,000. + +He has a custom-house, and is building a costly capitol to replace the +one recently burned--for he is the capital of the State. He has churches +without end; and not the cheap poor kind, but the kind that the rich +Protestant puts up, the kind that the poor Irish 'hired-girl' delights +to erect. What a passion for building majestic churches the Irish +hired-girl has. It is a fine thing for our architecture but too often we +enjoy her stately fanes without giving her a grateful thought. In fact, +instead of reflecting that 'every brick and every stone in this +beautiful edifice represents an ache or a pain, and a handful of sweat, +and hours of heavy fatigue, contributed by the back and forehead and +bones of poverty,' it is our habit to forget these things entirely, and +merely glorify the mighty temple itself, without vouchsafing one +praiseful thought to its humble builder, whose rich heart and withered +purse it symbolizes. + +This is a land of libraries and schools. St. Paul has three public +libraries, and they contain, in the aggregate, some forty thousand +books. He has one hundred and sixteen school-houses, and pays out more +than seventy thousand dollars a year in teachers' salaries. + +There is an unusually fine railway station; so large is it, in fact, +that it seemed somewhat overdone, in the matter of size, at first; but +at the end of a few months it was perceived that the mistake was +distinctly the other way. The error is to be corrected. + +The town stands on high ground; it is about seven hundred feet above the +sea level. It is so high that a wide view of river and lowland is +offered from its streets. + +It is a very wonderful town indeed, and is not finished yet. All the +streets are obstructed with building material, and this is being +compacted into houses as fast as possible, to make room for more--for +other people are anxious to build, as soon as they can get the use of +the streets to pile up their bricks and stuff in. + +How solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest pioneer of +civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, +never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never +the missionary--but always whiskey! Such is the case. Look history +over; you will see. The missionary comes after the whiskey--I mean he +arrives after the whiskey has arrived; next comes the poor immigrant, +with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the trader; next, the miscellaneous +rush; next, the gambler, the desperado, the highwayman, and all their +kindred in sin of both sexes; and next, the smart chap who has bought up +an old grant that covers all the land; this brings the lawyer tribe; the +vigilance committee brings the undertaker. All these interests bring the +newspaper; the newspaper starts up politics and a railroad; all hands +turn to and build a church and a jail--and behold, civilization is +established for ever in the land. But whiskey, you see, was the van- +leader in this beneficent work. It always is. It was like a foreigner-- +and excusable in a foreigner--to be ignorant of this great truth, and +wander off into astronomy to borrow a symbol. But if he had been +conversant with the facts, he would have said-- + +Westward the Jug of Empire takes its way. + +This great van-leader arrived upon the ground which St. Paul now +occupies, in June 1837. Yes, at that date, Pierre Parrant, a Canadian, +built the first cabin, uncorked his jug, and began to sell whiskey to +the Indians. The result is before us. + +All that I have said of the newness, briskness, swift progress, wealth, +intelligence, fine and substantial architecture, and general slash and +go, and energy of St. Paul, will apply to his near neighbor, +Minneapolis--with the addition that the latter is the bigger of the two +cities. + +These extraordinary towns were ten miles apart, a few months ago, but +were growing so fast that they may possibly be joined now, and getting +along under a single mayor. At any rate, within five years from now +there will be at least such a substantial ligament of buildings +stretching between them and uniting them that a stranger will not be +able to tell where the one Siamese twin leaves off and the other begins. +Combined, they will then number a population of two hundred and fifty +thousand, if they continue to grow as they are now growing. Thus, this +center of population at the head of Mississippi navigation, will then +begin a rivalry as to numbers, with that center of population at the +foot of it--New Orleans. + +Minneapolis is situated at the falls of St. Anthony, which stretch +across the river, fifteen hundred feet, and have a fall of eighty-two +feet--a waterpower which, by art, has been made of inestimable value, +business-wise, though somewhat to the damage of the Falls as a +spectacle, or as a background against which to get your photograph +taken. + +Thirty flouring-mills turn out two million barrels of the very choicest +of flour every year; twenty sawmills produce two hundred million feet of +lumber annually; then there are woolen mills, cotton mills, paper and +oil mills; and sash, nail, furniture, barrel, and other factories, +without number, so to speak. The great flouring-mills here and at St. +Paul use the 'new process' and mash the wheat by rolling, instead of +grinding it. + +Sixteen railroads meet in Minneapolis, and sixty-five passenger trains +arrive and depart daily. In this place, as in St. Paul, journalism +thrives. Here there are three great dailies, ten weeklies, and three +monthlies. + +There is a university, with four hundred students--and, better still, +its good efforts are not confined to enlightening the one sex. There are +sixteen public schools, with buildings which cost $500,000; there are +six thousand pupils and one hundred and twenty-eight teachers. There are +also seventy churches existing, and a lot more projected. The banks +aggregate a capital of $3,000,000, and the wholesale jobbing trade of +the town amounts to $50,000,000 a year. + +Near St. Paul and Minneapolis are several points of interest--Fort +Snelling, a fortress occupying a river-bluff a hundred feet high; the +falls of Minnehaha, White-bear Lake, and so forth. The beautiful falls +of Minnehaha are sufficiently celebrated--they do not need a lift from +me, in that direction. The White-bear Lake is less known. It is a +lovely sheet of water, and is being utilized as a summer resort by the +wealth and fashion of the State. It has its club-house, and its hotel, +with the modern improvements and conveniences; its fine summer +residences; and plenty of fishing, hunting, and pleasant drives. There +are a dozen minor summer resorts around about St. Paul and Minneapolis, +but the White-bear Lake is the resort. Connected with White-bear Lake is +a most idiotic Indian legend. I would resist the temptation to print it +here, if I could, but the task is beyond my strength. The guide-book +names the preserver of the legend, and compliments his 'facile pen.' +Without further comment or delay then, let us turn the said facile pen +loose upon the reader-- + +A LEGEND OF WHITE-BEAR LAKE. + +Every spring, for perhaps a century, or as long as there has been a +nation of red men, an island in the middle of White-bear Lake has been +visited by a band of Indians for the purpose of making maple sugar. + +Tradition says that many springs ago, while upon this island, a young +warrior loved and wooed the daughter of his chief, and it is said, also, +the maiden loved the warrior. He had again and again been refused her +hand by her parents, the old chief alleging that he was no brave, and +his old consort called him a woman! + +The sun had again set upon the 'sugar-bush,' and the bright moon rose +high in the bright blue heavens, when the young warrior took down his +flute and went out alone, once more to sing the story of his love, the +mild breeze gently moved the two gay feathers in his head-dress, and as +he mounted on the trunk of a leaning tree, the damp snow fell from his +feet heavily. As he raised his flute to his lips, his blanket slipped +from his well-formed shoulders, and lay partly on the snow beneath. He +began his weird, wild love-song, but soon felt that he was cold, and as +he reached back for his blanket, some unseen hand laid it gently on his +shoulders; it was the hand of his love, his guardian angel. She took her +place beside him, and for the present they were happy; for the Indian +has a heart to love, and in this pride he is as noble as in his own +freedom, which makes him the child of the forest. As the legend runs, a +large white-bear, thinking, perhaps, that polar snows and dismal winter +weather extended everywhere, took up his journey southward. He at length +approached the northern shore of the lake which now bears his name, +walked down the bank and made his way noiselessly through the deep heavy +snow toward the island. It was the same spring ensuing that the lovers +met. They had left their first retreat, and were now seated among the +branches of a large elm which hung far over the lake. (The same tree is +still standing, and excites universal curiosity and interest.) For fear +of being detected, they talked almost in a whisper, and now, that they +might get back to camp in good time and thereby avoid suspicion, they +were just rising to return, when the maiden uttered a shriek which was +heard at the camp, and bounding toward the young brave, she caught his +blanket, but missed the direction of her foot and fell, bearing the +blanket with her into the great arms of the ferocious monster. Instantly +every man, woman, and child of the band were upon the bank, but all +unarmed. Cries and wailings went up from every mouth. What was to be +done'? In the meantime this white and savage beast held the breathless +maiden in his huge grasp, and fondled with his precious prey as if he +were used to scenes like this. One deafening yell from the lover +warrior is heard above the cries of hundreds of his tribe, and dashing +away to his wigwam he grasps his faithful knife, returns almost at a +single bound to the scene of fear and fright, rushes out along the +leaning tree to the spot where his treasure fell, and springing with the +fury of a mad panther, pounced upon his prey. The animal turned, and +with one stroke of his huge paw brought the lovers heart to heart, but +the next moment the warrior, with one plunge of the blade of his knife, +opened the crimson sluices of death, and the dying bear relaxed his +hold. + +That night there was no more sleep for the band or the lovers, and as +the young and the old danced about the carcass of the dead monster, the +gallant warrior was presented with another plume, and ere another moon +had set he had a living treasure added to his heart. Their children for +many years played upon the skin of the white-bear--from which the lake +derives its name--and the maiden and the brave remembered long the +fearful scene and rescue that made them one, for Kis-se-me-pa and Ka-go- +ka could never forget their fearful encounter with the huge monster that +came so near sending them to the happy hunting-ground. + +It is a perplexing business. First, she fell down out of the tree--she +and the blanket; and the bear caught her and fondled her--her and the +blanket; then she fell up into the tree again--leaving the blanket; +meantime the lover goes war-whooping home and comes back 'heeled,' +climbs the tree, jumps down on the bear, the girl jumps down after him-- +apparently, for she was up the tree--resumes her place in the bear's +arms along with the blanket, the lover rams his knife into the bear, and +saves--whom, the blanket? No--nothing of the sort. You get yourself all +worked up and excited about that blanket, and then all of a sudden, just +when a happy climax seems imminent you are let down flat--nothing saved +but the girl. Whereas, one is not interested in the girl; she is not the +prominent feature of the legend. Nevertheless, there you are left, and +there you must remain; for if you live a thousand years you will never +know who got the blanket. A dead man could get up a better legend than +this one. I don't mean a fresh dead man either; I mean a man that's been +dead weeks and weeks. + +We struck the home-trail now, and in a few hours were in that +astonishing Chicago--a city where they are always rubbing the lamp, and +fetching up the genii, and contriving and achieving new impossibilities. +It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with +Chicago--she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She +is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you +passed through the last time. The Pennsylvania road rushed us to New +York without missing schedule time ten minutes anywhere on the route; +and there ended one of the most enjoyable five-thousand-mile journeys I +have ever had the good fortune to make. + + + + +APPENDIX A + +(FROM THE NEW ORLEANS TIMES DEMOCRAT OF MARCH 29, 1882.) + +VOYAGE OF THE TIMES-DEMOCRAT'S RELIEF BOAT THROUGH THE INUNDATED REGIONS + +IT was nine o'clock Thursday morning when the 'Susie' left the +Mississippi and entered Old River, or what is now called the mouth of +the Red. Ascending on the left, a flood was pouring in through and over +the levees on the Chandler plantation, the most northern point in Pointe +Coupee parish. The water completely covered the place, although the +levees had given way but a short time before. The stock had been +gathered in a large flat-boat, where, without food, as we passed, the +animals were huddled together, waiting for a boat to tow them off. On +the right-hand side of the river is Turnbull's Island, and on it is a +large plantation which formerly was pronounced one of the most fertile +in the State. The water has hitherto allowed it to go scot-free in usual +floods, but now broad sheets of water told only where fields were. The +top of the protecting levee could be seen here and there, but nearly all +of it was submerged. + +The trees have put on a greener foliage since the water has poured in, +and the woods look bright and fresh, but this pleasant aspect to the eye +is neutralized by the interminable waste of water. We pass mile after +mile, and it is nothing but trees standing up to their branches in +water. A water-turkey now and again rises and flies ahead into the long +avenue of silence. A pirogue sometimes flits from the bushes and +crosses the Red River on its way out to the Mississippi, but the sad- +faced paddlers never turn their heads to look at our boat. The puffing +of the boat is music in this gloom, which affects one most curiously. It +is not the gloom of deep forests or dark caverns, but a peculiar kind of +solemn silence and impressive awe that holds one perforce to its +recognition. We passed two negro families on a raft tied up in the +willows this morning. They were evidently of the well-to-do class, as +they had a supply of meal and three or four hogs with them. Their rafts +were about twenty feet square, and in front of an improvised shelter +earth had been placed, on which they built their fire. + +The current running down the Atchafalaya was very swift, the Mississippi +showing a predilection in that direction, which needs only to be seen to +enforce the opinion of that river's desperate endeavors to find a short +way to the Gulf. Small boats, skiffs, pirogues, etc., are in great +demand, and many have been stolen by piratical negroes, who take them +where they will bring the greatest price. From what was told me by Mr. +C. P. Ferguson, a planter near Red River Landing, whose place has just +gone under, there is much suffering in the rear of that place. The +negroes had given up all thoughts of a crevasse there, as the upper +levee had stood so long, and when it did come they were at its mercy. +On Thursday a number were taken out of trees and off of cabin roofs and +brought in, many yet remaining. + +One does not appreciate the sight of earth until he has traveled through +a flood. At sea one does not expect or look for it, but here, with +fluttering leaves, shadowy forest aisles, house-tops barely visible, it +is expected. In fact a grave-yard, if the mounds were above water, +would be appreciated. The river here is known only because there is an +opening in the trees, and that is all. It is in width, from Fort Adams +on the left bank of the Mississippi to the bank of Rapides Parish, a +distance of about sixty miles. A large portion of this was under +cultivation, particularly along the Mississippi and back of the Red. +When Red River proper was entered, a strong current was running directly +across it, pursuing the same direction as that of the Mississippi. + +After a run of some hours, Black River was reached. Hardly was it +entered before signs of suffering became visible. All the willows along +the banks were stripped of their leaves. One man, whom your +correspondent spoke to, said that he had had one hundred and fifty head +of cattle and one hundred head of hogs. At the first appearance of water +he had started to drive them to the high lands of Avoyelles, thirty-five +miles off, but he lost fifty head of the beef cattle and sixty hogs. +Black River is quite picturesque, even if its shores are under water. A +dense growth of ash, oak, gum, and hickory make the shores almost +impenetrable, and where one can get a view down some avenue in the +trees, only the dim outlines of distant trunks can be barely +distinguished in the gloom. + +A few miles up this river, the depth of water on the banks was fully +eight feet, and on all sides could be seen, still holding against the +strong current, the tops of cabins. Here and there one overturned was +surrounded by drift-wood, forming the nucleus of possibly some future +island. + +In order to save coal, as it was impossible to get that fuel at any +point to be touched during the expedition, a look-out was kept for a +wood-pile. On rounding a point a pirogue, skilfully paddled by a youth, +shot out, and in its bow was a girl of fifteen, of fair face, beautiful +black eyes, and demure manners. The boy asked for a paper, which was +thrown to him, and the couple pushed their tiny craft out into the swell +of the boat. + +Presently a little girl, not certainly over twelve years, paddled out in +the smallest little canoe and handled it with all the deftness of an old +voyageur. The little one looked more like an Indian than a white child, +and laughed when asked if she were afraid. She had been raised in a +pirogue and could go anywhere. She was bound out to pick willow leaves +for the stock, and she pointed to a house near by with water three +inches deep on the floors. At its back door was moored a raft about +thirty feet square, with a sort of fence built upon it, and inside of +this some sixteen cows and twenty hogs were standing. The family did +not complain, except on account of losing their stock, and promptly +brought a supply of wood in a flat. + +From this point to the Mississippi River, fifteen miles, there is not a +spot of earth above water, and to the westward for thirty-five miles +there is nothing but the river's flood. Black River had risen during +Thursday, the 23rd, 1{three-quarters} inches, and was going up at night +still. As we progress up the river habitations become more frequent, but +are yet still miles apart. Nearly all of them are deserted, and the +out-houses floated off. To add to the gloom, almost every living thing +seems to have departed, and not a whistle of a bird nor the bark of the +squirrel can be heard in this solitude. Sometimes a morose gar will +throw his tail aloft and disappear in the river, but beyond this +everything is quiet--the quiet of dissolution. Down the river floats now +a neatly whitewashed hen-house, then a cluster of neatly split fence- +rails, or a door and a bloated carcass, solemnly guarded by a pair of +buzzards, the only bird to be seen, which feast on the carcass as it +bears them along. A picture-frame in which there was a cheap lithograph +of a soldier on horseback, as it floated on told of some hearth invaded +by the water and despoiled of this ornament. + +At dark, as it was not prudent to run, a place alongside the woods was +hunted and to a tall gum-tree the boat was made fast for the night. + +A pretty quarter of the moon threw a pleasant light over forest and +river, making a picture that would be a delightful piece of landscape +study, could an artist only hold it down to his canvas. The motion of +the engines had ceased, the puffing of the escaping steam was stilled, +and the enveloping silence closed upon us, and such silence it was! +Usually in a forest at night one can hear the piping of frogs, the hum +of insects, or the dropping of limbs; but here nature was dumb. The dark +recesses, those aisles into this cathedral, gave forth no sound, and +even the ripplings of the current die away. + +At daylight Friday morning all hands were up, and up the Black we +started. The morning was a beautiful one, and the river, which is +remarkably straight, put on its loveliest garb. The blossoms of the haw +perfumed the air deliciously, and a few birds whistled blithely along +the banks. The trees were larger, and the forest seemed of older growth +than below. More fields were passed than nearer the mouth, but the same +scene presented itself--smoke-houses drifting out in the pastures, negro +quarters anchored in confusion against some oak, and the modest +residence just showing its eaves above water. The sun came up in a +glory of carmine, and the trees were brilliant in their varied shades of +green. Not a foot of soil is to be seen anywhere, and the water is +apparently growing deeper and deeper, for it reaches up to the branches +of the largest trees. All along, the bordering willows have been denuded +of leaves, showing how long the people have been at work gathering this +fodder for their animals. An old man in a pirogue was asked how the +willow leaves agreed with his cattle. He stopped in his work, and with +an ominous shake of his head replied: 'Well, sir, it 's enough to keep +warmth in their bodies and that's all we expect, but it's hard on the +hogs, particularly the small ones. They is dropping off powerful fast. +But what can you do? It 's all we've got.' + +At thirty miles above the mouth of Black River the water extends from +Natchez on the Mississippi across to the pine hills of Louisiana, a +distance of seventy-three miles, and there is hardly a spot that is not +ten feet under it. The tendency of the current up the Black is toward +the west. In fact, so much is this the case, the waters of Red River +have been driven down from toward the Calcasieu country, and the waters +of the Black enter the Red some fifteen miles above the mouth of the +former, a thing never before seen by even the oldest steamboatmen. The +water now in sight of us is entirely from the Mississippi. + +Up to Trinity, or rather Troy, which is but a short distance below, the +people have nearly all moved out, those remaining having enough for +their present personal needs. Their cattle, though, are suffering and +dying off quite fast, as the confinement on rafts and the food they get +breeds disease. + +After a short stop we started, and soon came to a section where there +were many open fields and cabins thickly scattered about. Here were seen +more pictures of distress. On the inside of the houses the inmates had +built on boxes a scaffold on which they placed the furniture. The bed- +posts were sawed off on top, as the ceiling was not more than four feet +from the improvised floor. The buildings looked very insecure, and +threatened every moment to float off. Near the houses were cattle +standing breast high in the water, perfectly impassive. They did not +move in their places, but stood patiently waiting for help to come. The +sight was a distressing one, and the poor creatures will be sure to die +unless speedily rescued. Cattle differ from horses in this peculiar +quality. A horse, after finding no relief comes, will swim off in +search of food, whereas a beef will stand in its tracks until with +exhaustion it drops in the water and drowns. + +At half-past twelve o'clock a hail was given from a flat-boat inside the +line of the bank. Rounding to we ran alongside, and General York +stepped aboard. He was just then engaged in getting off stock, and +welcomed the 'Times-Democrat' boat heartily, as he said there was much +need for her. He said that the distress was not exaggerated in the +least. People were in a condition it was difficult even for one to +imagine. The water was so high there was great danger of their houses +being swept away. It had already risen so high that it was approaching +the eaves, and when it reaches this point there is always imminent risk +of their being swept away. If this occurs, there will be great loss of +life. The General spoke of the gallant work of many of the people in +their attempts to save their stock, but thought that fully twenty-five +per cent. had perished. Already twenty-five hundred people had received +rations from Troy, on Black River, and he had towed out a great many +cattle, but a very great quantity remained and were in dire need. The +water was now eighteen inches higher than in 1874, and there was no land +between Vidalia and the hills of Catahoula. + +At two o'clock the 'Susie' reached Troy, sixty-five miles above the +mouth of Black River. Here on the left comes in Little River; just +beyond that the Ouachita, and on the right the Tensas. These three +rivers form the Black River. Troy, or a portion of it, is situated on +and around three large Indian mounds, circular in shape, which rise +above the present water about twelve feet. They are about one hundred +and fifty feet in diameter, and are about two hundred yards apart. The +houses are all built between these mounds, and hence are all flooded to +a depth of eighteen inches on their floors. + +These elevations, built by the aborigines, hundreds of years ago, are +the only points of refuge for miles. When we arrived we found them +crowded with stock, all of which was thin and hardly able to stand up. +They were mixed together, sheep, hogs, horses, mules, and cattle. One of +these mounds has been used for many years as the grave-yard, and to-day +we saw attenuated cows lying against the marble tomb-stones, chewing +their cud in contentment, after a meal of corn furnished by General +York. Here, as below, the remarkable skill of the women and girls in +the management of the smaller pirogues was noticed. Children were +paddling about in these most ticklish crafts with all the nonchalance of +adepts. + +General York has put into operation a perfect system in regard to +furnishing relief. He makes a personal inspection of the place where it +is asked, sees what is necessary to be done, and then, having two boats +chartered, with flats, sends them promptly to the place, when the cattle +are loaded and towed to the pine hills and uplands of Catahoula. He has +made Troy his headquarters, and to this point boats come for their +supply of feed for cattle. On the opposite side of Little River, which +branches to the left out of Black, and between it and the Ouachita, is +situated the town of Trinity, which is hourly threatened with +destruction. It is much lower than Troy, and the water is eight and nine +feet deep in the houses. A strong current sweeps through it, and it is +remarkable that all of its houses have not gone before. The residents of +both Troy and Trinity have been cared for, yet some of their stock have +to be furnished with food. + +As soon as the 'Susie' reached Troy, she was turned over to General +York, and placed at his disposition to carry out the work of relief more +rapidly. Nearly all her supplies were landed on one of the mounds to +lighten her, and she was headed down stream to relieve those below. At +Tom Hooper's place, a few miles from Troy, a large flat, with about +fifty head of stock on board, was taken in tow. The animals were fed, +and soon regained some strength. To-day we go on Little River, where the +suffering is greatest. + +DOWN BLACK RIVER + +Saturday Evening, March 25. + +We started down Black River quite early, under the direction of General +York, to bring out what stock could be reached. Going down river a flat +in tow was left in a central locality, and from there men poled her back +in the rear of plantations, picking up the animals wherever found. In +the loft of a gin-house there were seventeen head found, and after a +gangway was built they were led down into the flat without difficulty. +Taking a skiff with the General, your reporter was pulled up to a little +house of two rooms, in which the water was standing two feet on the +floors. In one of the large rooms were huddled the horses and cows of +the place, while in the other the Widow Taylor and her son were seated +on a scaffold raised on the floor. One or two dug-outs were drifting +about in the roam ready to be put in service at any time. When the flat +was brought up, the side of the house was cut away as the only means of +getting the animals out, and the cattle were driven on board the boat. +General York, in this as in every case, inquired if the family desired +to leave, informing them that Major Burke, of 'The Times-Democrat,' has +sent the 'Susie' up for that purpose. Mrs. Taylor said she thanked +Major Burke, but she would try and hold out. The remarkable tenacity of +the people here to their homes is beyond all comprehension. Just below, +at a point sixteen miles from Troy, information was received that the +house of Mr. Tom Ellis was in danger, and his family were all in it. We +steamed there immediately, and a sad picture was presented. Looking out +of the half of the window left above water, was Mrs. Ellis, who is in +feeble health, whilst at the door were her seven children, the oldest +not fourteen years. One side of the house was given up to the work +animals, some twelve head, besides hogs. In the next room the family +lived, the water coming within two inches of the bed-rail. The stove was +below water, and the cooking was done on a fire on top of it. The house +threatened to give way at any moment: one end of it was sinking, and, in +fact, the building looked a mere shell. As the boat rounded to, Mr. +Ellis came out in a dug-out, and General York told him that he had come +to his relief; that 'The Times-Democrat' boat was at his service, and +would remove his family at once to the hills, and on Monday a flat would +take out his stock, as, until that time, they would be busy. +Notwithstanding the deplorable situation himself and family were in, Mr. +Ellis did not want to leave. He said he thought he would wait until +Monday, and take the risk of his house falling. The children around the +door looked perfectly contented, seeming to care little for the danger +they were in. These are but two instances of the many. After weeks of +privation and suffering, people still cling to their houses and leave +only when there is not room between the water and the ceiling to build a +scaffold on which to stand. It seemed to be incomprehensible, yet the +love for the old place was stronger than that for safety. + +After leaving the Ellis place, the next spot touched at was the Oswald +place. Here the flat was towed alongside the gin-house where there were +fifteen head standing in water; and yet, as they stood on scaffolds, +their heads were above the top of the entrance. It was found impossible +to get them out without cutting away a portion of the front; and so axes +were brought into requisition and a gap made. After much labor the +horses and mules were securely placed on the flat. + +At each place we stop there are always three, four, or more dug-outs +arriving, bringing information of stock in other places in need. +Notwithstanding the fact that a great many had driven a part of their +stock to the hills some time ago, there yet remains a large quantity, +which General York, who is working with indomitable energy, will get +landed in the pine hills by Tuesday. + +All along Black River the 'Susie' has been visited by scores of +planters, whose tales are the repetition of those already heard of +suffering and loss. An old planter, who has lived on the river since +1844, said there never was such a rise, and he was satisfied more than +one quarter of the stock has been lost. Luckily the people cared first +for their work stock, and when they could find it horses and mules were +housed in a place of safety. The rise which still continues, and was two +inches last night, compels them to get them out to the hills; hence it +is that the work of General York is of such a great value. From daylight +to late at night he is going this way and that, cheering by his kindly +words and directing with calm judgment what is to be done. One +unpleasant story, of a certain merchant in New Orleans, is told all +along the river. It appears for some years past the planters have been +dealing with this individual, and many of them had balances in his +hands. When the overflow came they wrote for coffee, for meal, and, in +fact, for such little necessities as were required. No response to these +letters came, and others were written, and yet these old customers, with +plantations under water, were refused even what was necessary to sustain +life. It is needless to say he is not popular now on Back River. + +The hills spoken of as the place of refuge for the people and stock on +Black River are in Catahoula parish, twenty-four miles from Black River. + +After filling the flat with cattle we took on board the family of T. S. +Hooper, seven in number, who could not longer remain in their dwelling, +and we are now taking them up Little River to the hills. + +THE FLOOD STILL RISING + +Troy: March 27, 1882, noon. + +The flood here is rising about three and a half inches every twenty-four +hours, and rains have set in which will increase this. General York +feels now that our efforts ought to be directed towards saving life, as +the increase of the water has jeopardized many houses. We intend to go +up the Tensas in a few minutes, and then we will return and go down +Black River to take off families. There is a lack of steam +transportation here to meet the emergency. The General has three boats +chartered, with flats in tow, but the demand for these to tow out stock +is greater than they can meet with promptness. All are working night +and day, and the 'Susie' hardly stops for more than an hour anywhere. +The rise has placed Trinity in a dangerous plight, and momentarily it is +expected that some of the houses will float off. Troy is a little +higher, yet all are in the water. Reports have come in that a woman and +child have been washed away below here, and two cabins floated off. +Their occupants are the same who refused to come off day before +yesterday. One would not believe the utter passiveness of the people. + +As yet no news has been received of the steamer 'Delia,' which is +supposed to be the one sunk in yesterday's storm on Lake Catahoula. She +is due here now, but has not arrived. Even the mail here is most +uncertain, and this I send by skiff to Natchez to get it to you. It is +impossible to get accurate data as to past crops, etc., as those who +know much about the matter have gone, and those who remain are not well +versed in the production of this section. + +General York desires me to say that the amount of rations formerly sent +should be duplicated and sent at once. It is impossible to make any +estimate, for the people are fleeing to the hills, so rapid is the rise. +The residents here are in a state of commotion that can only be +appreciated when seen, and complete demoralization has set in, + +If rations are drawn for any particular section hereabouts, they would +not be certain to be distributed, so everything should be sent to Troy +as a center, and the General will have it properly disposed of. He has +sent for one hundred tents, and, if all go to the hills who are in +motion now, two hundred will be required. + + + + +APPENDIX B + +THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER COMMISSION + +THE condition of this rich valley of the Lower Mississippi, immediately +after and since the war, constituted one of the disastrous effects of +war most to be deplored. Fictitious property in slaves was not only +righteously destroyed, but very much of the work which had depended upon +the slave labor was also destroyed or greatly impaired, especially the +levee system. + +It might have been expected by those who have not investigated the +subject, that such important improvements as the construction and +maintenance of the levees would have been assumed at once by the several +States. But what can the State do where the people are under subjection +to rates of interest ranging from 18 to 30 per cent., and are also under +the necessity of pledging their crops in advance even of planting, at +these rates, for the privilege of purchasing all of their supplies at +100 per cent. profit? + +It has needed but little attention to make it perfectly obvious that the +control of the Mississippi River, if undertaken at all, must be +undertaken by the national government, and cannot be compassed by +States. The river must be treated as a unit; its control cannot be +compassed under a divided or separate system of administration. + +Neither are the States especially interested competent to combine among +themselves for the necessary operations. The work must begin far up the +river; at least as far as Cairo, if not beyond; and must be conducted +upon a consistent general plan throughout the course of the river. + +It does not need technical or scientific knowledge to comprehend the +elements of the case if one will give a little time and attention to the +subject, and when a Mississippi River commission has been constituted, +as the existing commission is, of thoroughly able men of different walks +in life, may it not be suggested that their verdict in the case should +be accepted as conclusive, so far as any a priori theory of construction +or control can be considered conclusive? + +It should be remembered that upon this board are General Gilmore, +General Comstock, and General Suter, of the United States Engineers; +Professor Henry Mitchell (the most competent authority on the question +of hydrography), of the United States Coast Survey; B. B. Harrod, the +State Engineer of Louisiana; Jas. B. Eads, whose success with the +jetties at New Orleans is a warrant of his competency, and Judge Taylor, +of Indiana. + +It would be presumption on the part of any single man, however skilled, +to contest the judgment of such a board as this. + +The method of improvement proposed by the commission is at once in +accord with the results of engineering experience and with observations +of nature where meeting our wants. As in nature the growth of trees and +their proneness where undermined to fall across the slope and support +the bank secures at some points a fair depth of channel and some degree +of permanence, so in the project of the engineer the use of timber and +brush and the encouragement of forest growth are the main features. It +is proposed to reduce the width where excessive by brushwood dykes, at +first low, but raised higher and higher as the mud of the river settles +under their shelter, and finally slope them back at the angle upon which +willows will grow freely. In this work there are many details connected +with the forms of these shelter dykes, their arrangements so as to +present a series of settling basins, etc., a description of which would +only complicate the conception. Through the larger part of the river +works of contraction will not be required, but nearly all the banks on +the concave side of the beds must be held against the wear of the +stream, and much of the opposite banks defended at critical points. The +works having in view this conservative object may be generally +designated works of revetment; and these also will be largely of +brushwood, woven in continuous carpets, or twined into wire-netting. +This veneering process has been successfully employed on the Missouri +River; and in some cases they have so covered themselves with sediments, +and have become so overgrown with willows, that they may be regarded as +permanent. In securing these mats rubble-stone is to be used in small +quantities, and in some instances the dressed slope between high and low +river will have to be more or less paved with stone. + +Any one who has been on the Rhine will have observed operations not +unlike those to which we have just referred; and, indeed, most of the +rivers of Europe flowing among their own alluvia have required similar +treatment in the interest of navigation and agriculture. + +The levee is the crowning work of bank revetment, although not +necessarily in immediate connection. It may be set back a short +distance from the revetted bank; but it is, in effect, the requisite +parapet. The flood river and the low river cannot be brought into +register, and compelled to unite in the excavation of a single permanent +channel, without a complete control of all the stages; and even the +abnormal rise must be provided against, because this would endanger the +levee, and once in force behind the works of revetment would tear them +also away. + +Under the general principle that the local slope of a river is the +result and measure of the resistance of its bed, it is evident that a +narrow and deep stream should have less slope, because it has less +frictional surface in proportion to capacity; i.e., less perimeter in +proportion to area of cross section. The ultimate effect of levees and +revetments confining the floods and bringing all the stages of the river +into register is to deepen the channel and let down the slope. The first +effect of the levees is to raise the surface; but this, by inducing +greater velocity of flow, inevitably causes an enlargement of section, +and if this enlargement is prevented from being made at the expense of +the banks, the bottom must give way and the form of the waterway be so +improved as to admit this flow with less rise. The actual experience +with levees upon the Mississippi River, with no attempt to hold the +banks, has been favorable, and no one can doubt, upon the evidence +furnished in the reports of the commission, that if the earliest levees +had been accompanied by revetment of banks, and made complete, we should +have to-day a river navigable at low water, and an adjacent country safe +from inundation. + +Of course it would be illogical to conclude that the constrained river +can ever lower its flood slope so as to make levees unnecessary, but it +is believed that, by this lateral constraint, the river as a conduit may +be so improved in form that even those rare floods which result from the +coincident rising of many tributaries will find vent without destroying +levees of ordinary height. That the actual capacity of a channel through +alluvium depends upon its service during floods has been often shown, +but this capacity does not include anomalous, but recurrent, floods. + +It is hardly worth while to consider the projects for relieving the +Mississippi River floods by creating new outlets, since these +sensational propositions have commended themselves only to unthinking +minds, and have no support among engineers. Were the river bed cast- +iron, a resort to openings for surplus waters might be a necessity; but +as the bottom is yielding, and the best form of outlet is a single deep +channel, as realizing the least ratio of perimeter to area of cross +section, there could not well be a more unphilosophical method of +treatment than the multiplication of avenues of escape. + +In the foregoing statement the attempt has been made to condense in as +limited a space as the importance of the subject would permit, the +general elements of the problem, and the general features of the +proposed method of improvement which has been adopted by the Mississippi +River Commission. + +The writer cannot help feeling that it is somewhat presumptuous on his +part to attempt to present the facts relating to an enterprise which +calls for the highest scientific skill; but it is a matter which +interests every citizen of the United States, and is one of the methods +of reconstruction which ought to be approved. It is a war claim which +implies no private gain, and no compensation except for one of the cases +of destruction incident to war, which may well be repaired by the people +of the whole country. + +EDWARD ATKINSON. + +Boston: April 14, 1882. + + + + +APPENDIX C + +RECEPTION OF CAPTAIN BASIL HALL'S BOOK IN THE UNITED STATES + +HAVING now arrived nearly at the end of our travels, I am induced, ere I +conclude, again to mention what I consider as one of the most remarkable +traits in the national character of the Americans; namely, their +exquisite sensitiveness and soreness respecting everything said or +written concerning them. Of this, perhaps, the most remarkable example I +can give is the effect produced on nearly every class of readers by the +appearance of Captain Basil Hall's 'Travels in North America.' In fact, +it was a sort of moral earthquake, and the vibration it occasioned +through the nerves of the republic, from one corner of the Union to the +other, was by no means over when I left the country in July 1831, a +couple of years after the shock. + +I was in Cincinnati when these volumes came out, but it was not till +July 1830, that I procured a copy of them. One bookseller to whom I +applied told me that he had had a few copies before he understood the +nature of the work, but that, after becoming acquainted with it, nothing +should induce him to sell another. Other persons of his profession +must, however, have been less scrupulous; for the book was read in city, +town, village, and hamlet, steamboat, and stage-coach, and a sort of +war-whoop was sent forth perfectly unprecedented in my recollection upon +any occasion whatever. + +An ardent desire for approbation, and a delicate sensitiveness under +censure, have always, I believe, been considered as amiable traits of +character; but the condition into which the appearance of Captain Hall's +work threw the republic shows plainly that these feelings, if carried to +excess, produce a weakness which amounts to imbecility. + +It was perfectly astonishing to hear men who, on other subjects, were of +some judgment, utter their opinions upon this. I never heard of any +instance in which the commonsense generally found in national criticism +was so overthrown by passion. I do not speak of the want of justice, and +of fair and liberal interpretation: these, perhaps, were hardly to be +expected. Other nations have been called thin-skinned, but the citizens +of the Union have, apparently, no skins at all; they wince if a breeze +blows over them, unless it be tempered with adulation. It was not, +therefore, very surprising that the acute and forcible observations of a +traveler they knew would be listened to should be received testily. The +extraordinary features of the business were, first, the excess of the +rage into which they lashed themselves; and, secondly, the puerility of +the inventions by which they attempted to account for the severity with +which they fancied they had been treated. + +Not content with declaring that the volumes contained no word of truth, +from beginning to end (which is an assertion I heard made very nearly as +often as they were mentioned), the whole country set to work to discover +the causes why Captain Hall had visited the United States, and why he +had published his book. + +I have heard it said with as much precision and gravity as if the +statement had been conveyed by an official report, that Captain Hall had +been sent out by the British Government expressly for the purpose of +checking the growing admiration of England for the Government of the +United States,--that it was by a commission from the treasury he had +come, and that it was only in obedience to orders that he had found +anything to object to. + +I do not give this as the gossip of a coterie; I am persuaded that it is +the belief of a very considerable portion of the country. So deep is the +conviction of this singular people that they cannot be seen without +being admired, that they will not admit the possibility that any one +should honestly and sincerely find aught to disapprove in them or their +country. + +The American Reviews are, many of them, I believe, well known in +England; I need not, therefore, quote them here, but I sometimes +wondered that they, none of them, ever thought of translating Obadiah's +curse into classic American; if they had done so, on placing (he, Basil +Hall) between brackets, instead of (he, Obadiah) it would have saved +them a world of trouble. + +I can hardly describe the curiosity with which I sat down at length to +peruse these tremendous volumes; still less can I do justice to my +surprise at their contents. To say that I found not one exaggerated +statement throughout the work is by no means saying enough. It is +impossible for any one who knows the country not to see that Captain +Hall earnestly sought out things to admire and commend. When he praises, +it is with evident pleasure; and when he finds fault, it is with evident +reluctance and restraint, excepting where motives purely patriotic urge +him to state roundly what it is for the benefit of his country should be +known. + +In fact, Captain Hall saw the country to the greatest possible +advantage. Furnished, of course, with letters of introduction to the +most distinguished individuals, and with the still more influential +recommendation of his own reputation, he was received in full drawing- +room style and state from one end of the Union to the other. He saw the +country in full dress, and had little or no opportunity of judging of it +unhouselled, unanointed, unannealed, with all its imperfections on its +head, as I and my family too often had. + +Captain Hall had certainly excellent opportunities of making himself +acquainted with the form of the government and the laws; and of +receiving, moreover, the best oral commentary upon them, in conversation +with the most distinguished citizens. Of these opportunities he made +excellent use; nothing important met his eye which did not receive that +sort of analytical attention which an experienced and philosophical +traveler alone can give. This has made his volumes highly interesting +and valuable; but I am deeply persuaded, that were a man of equal +penetration to visit the United States with no other means of becoming +acquainted with the national character than the ordinary working-day +intercourse of life, he would conceive an infinitely lower idea of the +moral atmosphere of the country than Captain Hall appears to have done; +and the internal conviction on my mind is strong, that if Captain Hall +had not placed a firm restraint on himself, he must have given +expression to far deeper indignation than any he has uttered against +many points in the American character, with which he shows from other +circumstances that he was well acquainted. His rule appears to have been +to state just so much of the truth as would leave on the mind of his +readers a correct impression, at the least cost of pain to the sensitive +folks he was writing about. He states his own opinions and feelings, and +leaves it to be inferred that he has good grounds for adopting them; but +he spares the Americans the bitterness which a detail of the +circumstances would have produced. + +If any one chooses to say that some wicked antipathy to twelve millions +of strangers is the origin of my opinion, I must bear it; and were the +question one of mere idle speculation, I certainly would not court the +abuse I must meet for stating it. But it is not so. + +. . . . . . . + +The candor which he expresses, and evidently feels, they mistake for +irony, or totally distrust; his unwillingness to give pain to persons +from whom he has received kindness, they scornfully reject as +affectation, and although they must know right well, in their own secret +hearts, how infinitely more they lay at his mercy than he has chosen to +betray; they pretend, even to themselves, that he has exaggerated the +bad points of their character and institutions; whereas, the truth is, +that he has let them off with a degree of tenderness which may be quite +suitable for him to exercise, however little merited; while, at the same +time, he has most industriously magnified their merits, whenever he +could possibly find anything favorable. + + + + +APPENDIX D + +THE UNDYING HEAD + +IN a remote part of the North lived a man and his sister, who had never +seen a human being. Seldom, if ever, had the man any cause to go from +home; for, as his wants demanded food, he had only to go a little +distance from the lodge, and there, in some particular spot, place his +arrows, with their barbs in the ground. Telling his sister where they +had been placed, every morning she would go in search, and never fail of +finding each stuck through the heart of a deer. She had then only to +drag them into the lodge and prepare their food. Thus she lived till she +attained womanhood, when one day her brother, whose name was Iamo, said +to her: 'Sister, the time is at hand when you will be ill. Listen to +my advice. If you do not, it will probably be the cause of my death. +Take the implements with which we kindle our fires. Go some distance +from our lodge and build a separate fire. When you are in want of food, +I will tell you where to find it. You must cook for yourself, and I will +for myself. When you are ill, do not attempt to come near the lodge, or +bring any of the utensils you use. Be sure always to fasten to your +belt the implements you need, for you do not know when the time will +come. As for myself, I must do the best I can.' His sister promised to +obey him in all he had said. + +Shortly after, her brother had cause to go from home. She was alone in +her lodge, combing her hair. She had just untied the belt to which the +implements were fastened, when suddenly the event, to which her brother +had alluded, occurred. She ran out of the lodge, but in her haste forgot +the belt. Afraid to return, she stood for some time thinking. Finally, +she decided to enter the lodge and get it. For, thought she, my brother +is not at home, and I will stay but a moment to catch hold of it. She +went back. Running in suddenly, she caught hold of it, and was coming +out when her brother came in sight. He knew what was the matter. 'Oh,' +he said, 'did I not tell you to take care. But now you have killed me.' +She was going on her way, but her brother said to her, 'What can you do +there now. The accident has happened. Go in, and stay where you have +always stayed. And what will become of you? You have killed me.' + +He then laid aside his hunting-dress and accoutrements, and soon after +both his feet began to turn black, so that he could not move. Still he +directed his sister where to place the arrows, that she might always +have food. The inflammation continued to increase, and had now reached +his first rib; and he said: 'Sister, my end is near. You must do as I +tell you. You see my medicine-sack, and my war-club tied to it. It +contains all my medicines, and my war-plumes, and my paints of all +colors. As soon as the inflammation reaches my breast, you will take my +war-club. It has a sharp point, and you will cut off my head. When it is +free from my body, take it, place its neck in the sack, which you must +open at one end. Then hang it up in its former place. Do not forget my +bow and arrows. One of the last you will take to procure food. The +remainder, tie in my sack, and then hang it up, so that I can look +towards the door. Now and then I will speak to you, but not often.' His +sister again promised to obey. + +In a little time his breast was affected. 'Now,' said he, 'take the +club and strike off my head.' She was afraid, but he told her to muster +courage. 'Strike,' said he, and a smile was on his face. Mustering all +her courage, she gave the blow and cut off the head. 'Now,' said the +head, 'place me where I told you.' And fearfully she obeyed it in all +its commands. Retaining its animation, it looked around the lodge as +usual, and it would command its sister to go in such places as it +thought would procure for her the flesh of different animals she needed. +One day the head said: 'The time is not distant when I shall be freed +from this situation, and I shall have to undergo many sore evils. So the +superior manito decrees, and I must bear all patiently.' In this +situation we must leave the head. + +In a certain part of the country was a village inhabited by a numerous +and warlike band of Indians. In this village was a family of ten young +men--brothers. It was in the spring of the year that the youngest of +these blackened his face and fasted. His dreams were propitious. Having +ended his fast, he went secretly for his brothers at night, so that none +in the village could overhear or find out the direction they intended to +go. Though their drum was heard, yet that was a common occurrence. +Having ended the usual formalities, he told how favorable his dreams +were, and that he had called them together to know if they would +accompany him in a war excursion. They all answered they would. The +third brother from the eldest, noted for his oddities, coming up with +his war-club when his brother had ceased speaking, jumped up. 'Yes,' +said he, 'I will go, and this will be the way I will treat those I am +going to fight;' and he struck the post in the center of the lodge, and +gave a yell. The others spoke to him, saying: 'Slow, slow, Mudjikewis, +when you are in other people's lodges.' So he sat down. Then, in turn, +they took the drum, and sang their songs, and closed with a feast. The +youngest told them not to whisper their intention to their wives, but +secretly to prepare for their journey. They all promised obedience, and +Mudjikewis was the first to say so. + +The time for their departure drew near. Word was given to assemble on a +certain night, when they would depart immediately. Mudjikewis was loud +in his demands for his moccasins. Several times his wife asked him the +reason. 'Besides,' said she, 'you have a good pair on.' 'Quick, +quick,' said he, 'since you must know, we are going on a war excursion; +so be quick.' He thus revealed the secret. That night they met and +started. The snow was on the ground, and they traveled all night, lest +others should follow them. When it was daylight, the leader took snow +and made a ball of it, then tossing it into the air, he said: 'It was in +this way I saw snow fall in a dream, so that I could not be tracked.' +And he told them to keep close to each other for fear of losing +themselves, as the snow began to fall in very large flakes. Near as they +walked, it was with difficulty they could see each other. The snow +continued falling all that day and the following night, so it was +impossible to track them. + +They had now walked for several days, and Mudjikewis was always in the +rear. One day, running suddenly forward, he gave the SAW-SAW- +QUAN,{footnote [War-whoop.]} and struck a tree with his war-club, and it +broke into pieces as if struck with lightning. 'Brothers,' said he, +'this will be the way I will serve those we are going to fight.' The +leader answered, 'Slow, slow, Mudjikewis, the one I lead you to is not +to be thought of so lightly.' Again he fell back and thought to +himself: 'What! what! who can this be he is leading us to?' He felt +fearful and was silent. Day after day they traveled on, till they came +to an extensive plain, on the borders of which human bones were +bleaching in the sun. The leader spoke: 'They are the bones of those +who have gone before us. None has ever yet returned to tell the sad tale +of their fate.' Again Mudjikewis became restless, and, running forward, +gave the accustomed yell. Advancing to a large rock which stood above +the ground, he struck it, and it fell to pieces. 'See, brothers,' said +he, 'thus will I treat those whom we are going to fight.' 'Still, +still,' once more said the leader; 'he to whom I am leading you is not +to be compared to the rock.' + +Mudjikewis fell back thoughtful, saying to himself: 'I wonder who this +can be that he is going to attack;' and he was afraid. Still they +continued to see the remains of former warriors, who had been to the +place where they were now going, some of whom had retreated as far back +as the place where they first saw the bones, beyond which no one had +ever escaped. At last they came to a piece of rising ground, from which +they plainly distinguished, sleeping on a distant mountain, a mammoth +bear. + +The distance between them was very great, but the size of the animal +caused him to be plainly seen. 'There,' said the leader, 'it is he to +whom I am leading you; here our troubles will commence, for he is a +mishemokwa and a manito. It is he who has that we prize so dearly (i.e. +wampum), to obtain which, the warriors whose bones we saw, sacrificed +their lives. You must not be fearful: be manly. We shall find him +asleep.' Then the leader went forward and touched the belt around the +animal's neck. 'This,' said he, 'is what we must get. It contains the +wampum.' Then they requested the eldest to try and slip the belt over +the bear's head, who appeared to be fast asleep, as he was not in the +least disturbed by the attempt to obtain the belt. All their efforts +were in vain, till it came to the one next the youngest. He tried, and +the belt moved nearly over the monster's head, but he could get it no +farther. Then the youngest one, and the leader, made his attempt, and +succeeded. Placing it on the back of the oldest, he said, 'Now we must +run,' and off they started. When one became fatigued with its weight, +another would relieve him. Thus they ran till they had passed the bones +of all former warriors, and were some distance beyond, when looking +back, they saw the monster slowly rising. He stood some time before he +missed his wampum. Soon they heard his tremendous howl, like distant +thunder, slowly filling all the sky; and then they heard him speak and +say, 'Who can it be that has dared to steal my wampum? earth is not so +large but that I can find them;' and he descended from the hill in +pursuit. As if convulsed, the earth shook with every jump he made. Very +soon he approached the party. They, however, kept the belt, exchanging +it from one to another, and encouraging each other; but he gained on +them fast. 'Brothers,' said the leader, 'has never any one of you, when +fasting, dreamed of some friendly spirit who would aid you as a +guardian?' A dead silence followed. 'Well,' said he, 'fasting, I +dreamed of being in danger of instant death, when I saw a small lodge, +with smoke curling from its top. An old man lived in it, and I dreamed +he helped me; and may it be verified soon,' he said, running forward and +giving the peculiar yell, and a howl as if the sounds came from the +depths of his stomach, and what is called CHECAUDUM. Getting upon a +piece of rising ground, behold! a lodge, with smoke curling from its +top, appeared. This gave them all new strength, and they ran forward +and entered it. The leader spoke to the old man who sat in the lodge, +saying, 'Nemesho, help us; we claim your protection, for the great bear +will kill us.' 'Sit down and eat, my grandchildren,' said the old man. +'Who is a great manito?' said he. 'There is none but me; but let me +look,' and he opened the door of the lodge, when, lo! at a little +distance he saw the enraged animal coming on, with slow but powerful +leaps. He closed the door. 'Yes,' said he, 'he is indeed a great +manito: my grandchildren, you will be the cause of my losing my life; +you asked my protection, and I granted it; so now, come what may, I will +protect you. When the bear arrives at the door, you must run out of the +other door of the lodge.' Then putting his hand to the side of the +lodge where he sat, he brought out a bag which he opened. Taking out two +small black dogs, he placed them before him. 'These are the ones I use +when I fight,' said he; and he commenced patting with both hands the +sides of one of them, and he began to swell out, so that he soon filled +the lodge by his bulk; and he had great strong teeth. When he attained +his full size he growled, and from that moment, as from instinct, he +jumped out at the door and met the bear, who in another leap would have +reached the lodge. A terrible combat ensued. The skies rang with the +howls of the fierce monsters. The remaining dog soon took the field. +The brothers, at the onset, took the advice of the old man, and escaped +through the opposite side of the lodge. They had not proceeded far +before they heard the dying cry of one of the dogs, and soon after of +the other. 'Well,' said the leader, 'the old man will share their fate: +so run; he will soon be after us.' They started with fresh vigor, for +they had received food from the old man: but very soon the bear came in +sight, and again was fast gaining upon them. Again the leader asked the +brothers if they could do nothing for their safety. All were silent. +The leader, running forward, did as before. 'I dreamed,' he cried, +'that, being in great trouble, an old man helped me who was a manito; we +shall soon see his lodge.' Taking courage, they still went on. After +going a short distance they saw the lodge of the old manito. They +entered immediately and claimed his protection, telling him a manito was +after them. The old man, setting meat before them, said: 'Eat! who is a +manito? there is no manito but me; there is none whom I fear;' and the +earth trembled as the monster advanced. The old man opened the door and +saw him coming. He shut it slowly, and said: 'Yes, my grandchildren, +you have brought trouble upon me.' Procuring his medicine-sack, he took +out his small war-clubs of black stone, and told the young men to run +through the other side of the lodge. As he handled the clubs, they +became very large, and the old man stepped out just as the bear reached +the door. Then striking him with one of the clubs, it broke in pieces; +the bear stumbled. Renewing the attempt with the other war-club, that +also was broken, but the bear fell senseless. Each blow the old man gave +him sounded like a clap of thunder, and the howls of the bear ran along +till they filled the heavens. + +The young men had now run some distance, when they looked back. They +could see that the bear was recovering from the blows. First he moved +his paws, and soon they saw him rise on his feet. The old man shared +the fate of the first, for they now heard his cries as he was torn in +pieces. Again the monster was in pursuit, and fast overtaking them. Not +yet discouraged, the young men kept on their way; but the bear was now +so close, that the leader once more applied to his brothers, but they +could do nothing. 'Well,' said he, 'my dreams will soon be exhausted; +after this I have but one more.' He advanced, invoking his guardian +spirit to aid him. 'Once,' said he, 'I dreamed that, being sorely +pressed, I came to a large lake, on the shore of which was a canoe, +partly out of water, having ten paddles all in readiness. Do not fear,' +he cried, 'we shall soon get it.' And so it was, even as he had said. +Coming to the lake, they saw the canoe with ten paddles, and immediately +they embarked. Scarcely had they reached the center of the lake, when +they saw the bear arrive at its borders. Lifting himself on his hind +legs, he looked all around. Then he waded into the water; then losing +his footing he turned back, and commenced making the circuit of the +lake. Meantime the party remained stationary in the center to watch his +movements. He traveled all around, till at last he came to the place +from whence he started. Then he commenced drinking up the water, and +they saw the current fast setting in towards his open mouth. The leader +encouraged them to paddle hard for the opposite shore. When only a short +distance from land, the current had increased so much, that they were +drawn back by it, and all their efforts to reach it were in vain. + +Then the leader again spoke, telling them to meet their fates manfully. +'Now is the time, Mudjikewis,' said he, 'to show your prowess. Take +courage and sit at the bow of the canoe; and when it approaches his +mouth, try what effect your club will have on his head.' He obeyed, and +stood ready to give the blow; while the leader, who steered, directed +the canoe for the open mouth of the monster. + +Rapidly advancing, they were just about to enter his mouth, when +Mudjikewis struck him a tremendous blow on the head, and gave the SAW- +SAW-QUAN. The bear's limbs doubled under him, and he fell, stunned by +the blow. But before Mudjikewis could renew it, the monster disgorged +all the water he had drank, with a force which sent the canoe with great +velocity to the opposite shore. Instantly leaving the canoe, again they +fled, and on they went till they were completely exhausted. The earth +again shook, and soon they saw the monster hard after them. Their +spirits drooped, and they felt discouraged. The leader exerted himself, +by actions and words, to cheer them up; and once more he asked them if +they thought of nothing, or could do nothing for their rescue; and, as +before, all were silent. 'Then,' he said, 'this is the last time I can +apply to my guardian spirit. Now, if we do not succeed, our fates are +decided.' He ran forward, invoking his spirit with great earnestness, +and gave the yell. 'We shall soon arrive,' said he to his brothers, 'at +the place where my last guardian spirit dwells. In him I place great +confidence. Do not, do not be afraid, or your limbs will be fear-bound. +We shall soon reach his lodge. Run, run,' he cried. + +Returning now to Iamo, he had passed all the time in the same condition +we had left him, the head directing his sister, in order to procure +food, where to place the magic arrows, and speaking at long intervals. +One day the sister saw the eyes of the head brighten, as if with +pleasure. At last it spoke. 'Oh, sister,' it said, 'in what a pitiful +situation you have been the cause of placing me! Soon, very soon, a +party of young men will arrive and apply to me for aid; but alas! How +can I give what I would have done with so much pleasure? Nevertheless, +take two arrows, and place them where you have been in the habit of +placing the others, and have meat prepared and cooked before they +arrive. When you hear them coming and calling on my name, go out and +say, "Alas! it is long ago that an accident befell him. I was the cause +of it." If they still come near, ask them in, and set meat before them. +And now you must follow my directions strictly. When the bear is near, +go out and meet him. You will take my medicine-sack, bows and arrows, +and my head. You must then untie the sack, and spread out before you my +paints of all colors, my war-eagle feathers, my tufts of dried hair, and +whatever else it contains. As the bear approaches, you will take all +these articles, one by one, and say to him, "This is my deceased +brother's paint," and so on with all the other articles, throwing each +of them as far as you can. The virtues contained in them will cause him +to totter; and, to complete his destruction, you will take my head, and +that too you will cast as far off as you can, crying aloud, "See, this +is my deceased brother's head." He will then fall senseless. By this +time the young men will have eaten, and you will call them to your +assistance. You must then cut the carcass into pieces, yes, into small +pieces, and scatter them to the four winds; for, unless you do this, he +will again revive.' She promised that all should be done as he said. +She had only time to prepare the meat, when the voice of the leader was +heard calling upon Iamo for aid. The woman went out and said as her +brother had directed. But the war party being closely pursued, came up +to the lodge. She invited them in, and placed the meat before them. +While they were eating, they heard the bear approaching. Untying the +medicine-sack and taking the head, she had all in readiness for his +approach. When he came up she did as she had been told; and, before she +had expended the paints and feathers, the bear began to totter, but, +still advancing, came close to the woman. Saying as she was commanded, +she then took the head, and cast it as far from her as she could. As it +rolled along the ground, the blood, excited by the feelings of the head +in this terrible scene, gushed from the nose and mouth. The bear, +tottering, soon fell with a tremendous noise. Then she cried for help, +and the young men came rushing out, having partially regained their +strength and spirits. + +Mudjikewis, stepping up, gave a yell and struck him a blow upon the +head. This he repeated, till it seemed like a mass of brains, while the +others, as quick as possible, cut him into very small pieces, which they +then scattered in every direction. While thus employed, happening to +look around where they had thrown the meat, wonderful to behold, they +saw starting up and turning off in every direction small black bears, +such as are seen at the present day. The country was soon overspread +with these black animals. And it was from this monster that the present +race of bears derived their origin. + +Having thus overcome their pursuer, they returned to the lodge. In the +meantime, the woman, gathering the implements she had used, and the +head, placed them again in the sack. But the head did not speak again, +probably from its great exertion to overcome the monster. + +Having spent so much time and traversed so vast a country in their +flight, the young men gave up the idea of ever returning to their own +country, and game being plenty, they determined to remain where they now +were. One day they moved off some distance from the lodge for the +purpose of hunting, having left the wampum with the woman. They were +very successful, and amused themselves, as all young men do when alone, +by talking and jesting with each other. One of them spoke and said, 'We +have all this sport to ourselves; let us go and ask our sister if she +will not let us bring the head to this place, as it is still alive. It +may be pleased to hear us talk, and be in our company. In the meantime +take food to our sister.' They went and requested the head. She told +them to take it, and they took it to their hunting-grounds, and tried to +amuse it, but only at times did they see its eyes beam with pleasure. +One day, while busy in their encampment, they were unexpectedly attacked +by unknown Indians. The skirmish was long contested and bloody; many of +their foes were slain, but still they were thirty to one. The young men +fought desperately till they were all killed. The attacking party then +retreated to a height of ground, to muster their men, and to count the +number of missing and slain. One of their young men had stayed away, +and, in endeavoring to overtake them, came to the place where the head +was hung up. Seeing that alone retain animation, he eyed it for some +time with fear and surprise. However, he took it down and opened the +sack, and was much pleased to see the beautiful feathers, one of which +he placed on his head. + +Starting off, it waved gracefully over him till he reached his party, +when he threw down the head and sack, and told them how he had found it, +and that the sack was full of paints and feathers. They all looked at +the head and made sport of it. Numbers of the young men took the paint +and painted themselves, and one of the party took the head by the hair +and said-- + +'Look, you ugly thing, and see your paints on the faces of warriors.' + +But the feathers were so beautiful, that numbers of them also placed +them on their heads. Then again they used all kinds of indignity to the +head, for which they were in turn repaid by the death of those who had +used the feathers. Then the chief commanded them to throw away all +except the head. 'We will see,' said he, 'when we get home, what we can +do with it. We will try to make it shut its eyes.' + +When they reached their homes they took it to the council-lodge, and +hung it up before the fire, fastening it with raw hide soaked, which +would shrink and become tightened by the action of the fire. 'We will +then see,' they said, 'if we cannot make it shut its eyes.' + +Meantime, for several days, the sister had been waiting for the young +men to bring back the head; till, at last, getting impatient, she went +in search of it. The young men she found lying within short distances +of each other, dead, and covered with wounds. Various other bodies lay +scattered in different directions around them. She searched for the head +and sack, but they were nowhere to be found. She raised her voice and +wept, and blackened her face. Then she walked in different directions, +till she came to the place from whence the head had been taken. Then +she found the magic bow and arrows, where the young men, ignorant of +their qualities, had left them. She thought to herself that she would +find her brother's head, and came to a piece of rising ground, and there +saw some of his paints and feathers. These she carefully put up, and +hung upon the branch of a tree till her return. + +At dusk she arrived at the first lodge of a very extensive village. Here +she used a charm, common among Indians when they wish to meet with a +kind reception. On applying to the old man and woman of the lodge, she +was kindly received. She made known her errand. The old man promised to +aid her, and told her the head was hung up before the council-fire, and +that the chiefs of the village, with their young men, kept watch over it +continually. The former are considered as manitoes. She said she only +wished to see it, and would be satisfied if she could only get to the +door of the lodge. She knew she had not sufficient power to take it by +force. 'Come with me,' said the Indian, 'I will take you there.' They +went, and they took their seats near the door. The council-lodge was +filled with warriors, amusing themselves with games, and constantly +keeping up a fire to smoke the head, as they said, to make dry meat. +They saw the head move, and not knowing what to make of it, one spoke +and said: 'Ha! ha! It is beginning to feel the effects of the smoke.' +The sister looked up from the door, and her eyes met those of her +brother, and tears rolled down the cheeks of the head. 'Well,' said the +chief, 'I thought we would make you do something at last. Look! look at +it--shedding tears,' said he to those around him; and they all laughed +and passed their jokes upon it. The chief, looking around, and +observing the woman, after some time said to the man who came with her: +'Who have you got there? I have never seen that woman before in our +village.' 'Yes,' replied the man, 'you have seen her; she is a relation +of mine, and seldom goes out. She stays at my lodge, and asked me to +allow her to come with me to this place.' In the center of the lodge sat +one of those young men who are always forward, and fond of boasting and +displaying themselves before others. 'Why,' said he, 'I have seen her +often, and it is to this lodge I go almost every night to court her.' +All the others laughed and continued their games. The young man did not +know he was telling a lie to the woman's advantage, who by that means +escaped. + +She returned to the man's lodge, and immediately set out for her own +country. Coming to the spot where the bodies of her adopted brothers +lay, she placed them together, their feet toward the east. Then taking +an ax which she had, she cast it up into the air, crying out, 'Brothers, +get up from under it, or it will fall on you.' This she repeated three +times, and the third time the brothers all arose and stood on their +feet. + +Mudjikewis commenced rubbing his eyes and stretching himself. 'Why,' +said he, 'I have overslept myself.' 'No, indeed,' said one of the +others, 'do you not know we were all killed, and that it is our sister +who has brought us to life?' The young men took the bodies of their +enemies and burned them. Soon after, the woman went to procure wives for +them, in a distant country, they knew not where; but she returned with +ten young women, which she gave to the ten young men, beginning with the +eldest. Mudjikewis stepped to and fro, uneasy lest he should not get +the one he liked. But he was not disappointed, for she fell to his lot. +And they were well matched, for she was a female magician. They then all +moved into a very large lodge, and their sister told them that the women +must now take turns in going to her brother's head every night, trying +to untie it. They all said they would do so with pleasure. The eldest +made the first attempt, and with a rushing noise she fled through the +air. + +Toward daylight she returned. She had been unsuccessful, as she +succeeded in untying only one of the knots. All took their turns +regularly, and each one succeeded in untying only one knot each time. +But when the youngest went, she commenced the work as soon as she +reached the lodge; although it had always been occupied, still the +Indians never could see any one. For ten nights now, the smoke had not +ascended, but filled the lodge and drove them out. This last night they +were all driven out, and the young woman carried off the head. + +The young people and the sister heard the young woman coming high +through the air, and they heard her saying: 'Prepare the body of our +brother.' And as soon as they heard it, they went to a small lodge +where the black body of Iamo lay. His sister commenced cutting the neck +part, from which the neck had been severed. She cut so deep as to cause +it to bleed; and the others who were present, by rubbing the body and +applying medicines, expelled the blackness. In the meantime, the one +who brought it, by cutting the neck of the head, caused that also to +bleed. + +As soon as she arrived, they placed that close to the body, and, by aid +of medicines and various other means, succeeded in restoring Iamo to all +his former beauty and manliness. All rejoiced in the happy termination +of their troubles, and they had spent some time joyfully together, when +Iamo said: 'Now I will divide the wampum,' and getting the belt which +contained it, he commenced with the eldest, giving it in equal portions. +But the youngest got the most splendid and beautiful, as the bottom of +the belt held the richest and rarest. + +They were told that, since they had all once died, and were restored to +life, they were no longer mortal, but spirits, and they were assigned +different stations in the invisible world. Only Mudjikewis's place was, +however, named. He was to direct the west wind, hence generally called +Kebeyun, there to remain for ever. They were commanded, as they had it +in their power, to do good to the inhabitants of the earth, and, +forgetting their sufferings in procuring the wampum, to give all things +with a liberal hand. And they were also commanded that it should also be +held by them sacred; those grains or shells of the pale hue to be +emblematic of peace, while those of the darker hue would lead to evil +and war. + +The spirits then, amid songs and shouts, took their flight to their +respective abodes on high; while Iamo, with his sister Iamoqua, +descended into the depths below. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life On The Mississippi, Complete +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +HUCKLEBERRY FINN + +By Mark Twain + + + +NOTICE + +PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; +persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons +attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. + +BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR, Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance. + + + + +EXPLANATORY + +IN this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro +dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the +ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. +The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; +but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of +personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. + +I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would +suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not +succeeding. + +THE AUTHOR. + + + + + +HUCKLEBERRY FINN + +Scene: The Mississippi Valley Time: Forty to fifty years ago + + + +CHAPTER I. + +YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The +Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made +by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which +he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never +seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or +the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly--Tom's Aunt Polly, she is--and +Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is +mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before. + +Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money +that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six +thousand dollars apiece--all gold. It was an awful sight of money when +it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at +interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round +--more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took +me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough +living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and +decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no +longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, +and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he +was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back +to the widow and be respectable. So I went back. + +The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she +called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. +She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat +and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced +again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. +When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to +wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the +victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them,--that +is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds +and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of +swaps around, and the things go better. + +After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the +Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by +she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then +I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead +people. + +Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she +wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must +try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They +get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was +a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, +being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a +thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course that +was all right, because she done it herself. + +Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, +had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a +spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then +the widow made her ease up. I couldn't stood it much longer. Then for +an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, +"Don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry;" and "Don't scrunch up like +that, Huckleberry--set up straight;" and pretty soon she would say, +"Don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry--why don't you try to +behave?" Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I +was there. She got mad then, but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was +to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn't particular. She +said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn't say it for the +whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, +I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my +mind I wouldn't try for it. But I never said so, because it would only +make trouble, and wouldn't do no good. + +Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good +place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all +day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn't think much +of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would +go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about +that, because I wanted him and me to be together. + +Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. By +and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody +was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle, and put it +on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to +think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I +most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled +in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing +about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about +somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper +something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the +cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of +a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's +on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in +its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. I got so +down-hearted and scared I did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a +spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in +the candle; and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn't +need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch +me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. +I got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast +every time; and then I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to +keep witches away. But I hadn't no confidence. You do that when you've +lost a horseshoe that you've found, instead of nailing it up over the +door, but I hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad +luck when you'd killed a spider. + +I set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; +for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn't +know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock away off in the town go +boom--boom--boom--twelve licks; and all still again--stiller than ever. +Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees +--something was a stirring. I set still and listened. Directly I could +just barely hear a "me-yow! me-yow!" down there. That was good! Says I, +"me-yow! me-yow!" as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and +scrambled out of the window on to the shed. Then I slipped down to the +ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was Tom +Sawyer waiting for me. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +WE went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of +the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our +heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a +noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson's big nigger, +named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty +clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his +neck out about a minute, listening. Then he says: + +"Who dah?" + +He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right +between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes +and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close +together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I +dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right +between my shoulders. Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch. Well, +I've noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the quality, +or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy--if you +are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all +over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says: + +"Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn' hear sumf'n. +Well, I know what I's gwyne to do: I's gwyne to set down here and listen +tell I hears it agin." + +So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back up +against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched +one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into +my eyes. But I dasn't scratch. Then it begun to itch on the inside. +Next I got to itching underneath. I didn't know how I was going to set +still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it +seemed a sight longer than that. I was itching in eleven different +places now. I reckoned I couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer, but I +set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim begun to breathe +heavy; next he begun to snore--and then I was pretty soon comfortable +again. + +Tom he made a sign to me--kind of a little noise with his mouth--and we +went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off Tom +whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. But I said +no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out I +warn't in. Then Tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip +in the kitchen and get some more. I didn't want him to try. I said Jim +might wake up and come. But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there +and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay. +Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do +Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play +something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was +so still and lonesome. + +As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence, +and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of +the house. Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off of his head and hung it on +a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake. +Afterwards Jim said the witches be witched him and put him in a trance, +and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again, +and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And next time Jim told +it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that, every time +he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode +him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all +over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he +wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to +hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in +that country. Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and +look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. Niggers is always talking +about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was +talking and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in +and say, "Hm! What you know 'bout witches?" and that nigger was corked +up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-center piece +round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give to +him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and +fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but +he never told what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all +around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that +five-center piece; but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had +his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck +up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches. + +Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down +into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where +there was sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so +fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and +awful still and grand. We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben +Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we +unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the +big scar on the hillside, and went ashore. + +We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the +secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest +part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our hands +and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. +Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall +where you wouldn't a noticed that there was a hole. We went along a +narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, +and there we stopped. Tom says: + +"Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. +Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name +in blood." + +Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote +the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band, and +never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in +the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family +must do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed +them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band. +And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he +did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be killed. And if +anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his +throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered +all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never +mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot +forever. + +Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it +out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of +pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had it. + +Some thought it would be good to kill the FAMILIES of boys that told the +secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it +in. Then Ben Rogers says: + +"Here's Huck Finn, he hain't got no family; what you going to do 'bout +him?" + +"Well, hain't he got a father?" says Tom Sawyer. + +"Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days. He +used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen +in these parts for a year or more." + +They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said +every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be +fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to +do--everybody was stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry; but +all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson--they +could kill her. Everybody said: + +"Oh, she'll do. That's all right. Huck can come in." + +Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and +I made my mark on the paper. + +"Now," says Ben Rogers, "what's the line of business of this Gang?" + +"Nothing only robbery and murder," Tom said. + +"But who are we going to rob?--houses, or cattle, or--" + +"Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery; it's burglary," +says Tom Sawyer. "We ain't burglars. That ain't no sort of style. We +are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, +and kill the people and take their watches and money." + +"Must we always kill the people?" + +"Oh, certainly. It's best. Some authorities think different, but mostly +it's considered best to kill them--except some that you bring to the cave +here, and keep them till they're ransomed." + +"Ransomed? What's that?" + +"I don't know. But that's what they do. I've seen it in books; and so +of course that's what we've got to do." + +"But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?" + +"Why, blame it all, we've GOT to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the +books? Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, +and get things all muddled up?" + +"Oh, that's all very fine to SAY, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are +these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them? +--that's the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is?" + +"Well, I don't know. But per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed, +it means that we keep them till they're dead." + +"Now, that's something LIKE. That'll answer. Why couldn't you said that +before? We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death; and a bothersome +lot they'll be, too--eating up everything, and always trying to get +loose." + +"How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there's a guard +over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?" + +"A guard! Well, that IS good. So somebody's got to set up all night and +never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that's +foolishness. Why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they +get here?" + +"Because it ain't in the books so--that's why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you +want to do things regular, or don't you?--that's the idea. Don't you +reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing +to do? Do you reckon YOU can learn 'em anything? Not by a good deal. +No, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way." + +"All right. I don't mind; but I say it's a fool way, anyhow. Say, do we +kill the women, too?" + +"Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on. Kill +the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You +fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them; and +by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any +more." + +"Well, if that's the way I'm agreed, but I don't take no stock in it. +Mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows +waiting to be ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers. +But go ahead, I ain't got nothing to say." + +Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was +scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't +want to be a robber any more. + +So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him +mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom +give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet +next week, and rob somebody and kill some people. + +Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted +to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it +on Sunday, and that settled the thing. They agreed to get together and +fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer first +captain and Jo Harper second captain of the Gang, and so started home. + +I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was +breaking. My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was +dog-tired. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +WELL, I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson on +account of my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned +off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I would +behave awhile if I could. Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and +prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and +whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn't so. I tried it. +Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn't any good to me without +hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't +make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but +she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out +no way. + +I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it. I +says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't +Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork? Why can't the widow get +back her silver snuffbox that was stole? Why can't Miss Watson fat up? +No, says I to my self, there ain't nothing in it. I went and told the +widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it +was "spiritual gifts." This was too many for me, but she told me what +she meant--I must help other people, and do everything I could for other +people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself. +This was including Miss Watson, as I took it. I went out in the woods +and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no +advantage about it--except for the other people; so at last I reckoned I +wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go. Sometimes the +widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make a +body's mouth water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and +knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there was two +Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the +widow's Providence, but if Miss Watson's got him there warn't no help for +him any more. I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the +widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was a-going to +be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant, +and so kind of low-down and ornery. + +Pap he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable +for me; I didn't want to see him no more. He used to always whale me +when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take to +the woods most of the time when he was around. Well, about this time he +was found in the river drownded, about twelve mile above town, so people +said. They judged it was him, anyway; said this drownded man was just +his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair, which was all like +pap; but they couldn't make nothing out of the face, because it had been +in the water so long it warn't much like a face at all. They said he was +floating on his back in the water. They took him and buried him on the +bank. But I warn't comfortable long, because I happened to think of +something. I knowed mighty well that a drownded man don't float on his +back, but on his face. So I knowed, then, that this warn't pap, but a +woman dressed up in a man's clothes. So I was uncomfortable again. I +judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though I wished he +wouldn't. + +We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All +the boys did. We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but +only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging +down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market, but +we never hived any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs "ingots," and he +called the turnips and stuff "julery," and we would go to the cave and +powwow over what we had done, and how many people we had killed and +marked. But I couldn't see no profit in it. One time Tom sent a boy to +run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan (which was +the sign for the Gang to get together), and then he said he had got +secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish +merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two +hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand "sumter" +mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard +of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called +it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. He said we must slick up our +swords and guns, and get ready. He never could go after even a +turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, +though they was only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them +till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more than +what they was before. I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of +Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I +was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the +word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn't no +Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants. It +warn't anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class at +that. We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we +never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a +rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher +charged in, and made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see no +di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them +there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and +things. I said, why couldn't we see them, then? He said if I warn't so +ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without +asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was +hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we +had enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole +thing into an infant Sunday-school, just out of spite. I said, all +right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom +Sawyer said I was a numskull. + +"Why," said he, "a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would +hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as +tall as a tree and as big around as a church." + +"Well," I says, "s'pose we got some genies to help US--can't we lick the +other crowd then?" + +"How you going to get them?" + +"I don't know. How do THEY get them?" + +"Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come +tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke +a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. They +don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and belting +a Sunday-school superintendent over the head with it--or any other man." + +"Who makes them tear around so?" + +"Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs the +lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. If he tells +them to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill it full +of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's daughter +from China for you to marry, they've got to do it--and they've got to do +it before sun-up next morning, too. And more: they've got to waltz that +palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand." + +"Well," says I, "I think they are a pack of flat-heads for not keeping +the palace themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that. And what's +more--if I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I would +drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp." + +"How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you'd HAVE to come when he rubbed it, +whether you wanted to or not." + +"What! and I as high as a tree and as big as a church? All right, then; +I WOULD come; but I lay I'd make that man climb the highest tree there +was in the country." + +"Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don't seem to +know anything, somehow--perfect saphead." + +I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I +would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron +ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like +an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't no +use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was +only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs +and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks +of a Sunday-school. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +WELL, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter +now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and +write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six +times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any +further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in +mathematics, anyway. + +At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it. +Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got next +day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to school the +easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, +too, and they warn't so raspy on me. Living in a house and sleeping in a +bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather I used +to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a rest to +me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new +ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow but sure, +and doing very satisfactory. She said she warn't ashamed of me. + +One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. I +reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left shoulder +and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me, and +crossed me off. She says, "Take your hands away, Huckleberry; what a mess +you are always making!" The widow put in a good word for me, but that +warn't going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that well enough. I +started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and wondering +where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be. There is +ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one of them +kind; so I never tried to do anything, but just poked along low-spirited +and on the watch-out. + +I went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go +through the high board fence. There was an inch of new snow on the +ground, and I seen somebody's tracks. They had come up from the quarry +and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden +fence. It was funny they hadn't come in, after standing around so. I +couldn't make it out. It was very curious, somehow. I was going to +follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first. I didn't +notice anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in the left +boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil. + +I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I looked over my +shoulder every now and then, but I didn't see nobody. I was at Judge +Thatcher's as quick as I could get there. He said: + +"Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your +interest?" + +"No, sir," I says; "is there some for me?" + +"Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in last night--over a hundred and fifty +dollars. Quite a fortune for you. You had better let me invest it along +with your six thousand, because if you take it you'll spend it." + +"No, sir," I says, "I don't want to spend it. I don't want it at all +--nor the six thousand, nuther. I want you to take it; I want to give it +to you--the six thousand and all." + +He looked surprised. He couldn't seem to make it out. He says: + +"Why, what can you mean, my boy?" + +I says, "Don't you ask me no questions about it, please. You'll take it +--won't you?" + +He says: + +"Well, I'm puzzled. Is something the matter?" + +"Please take it," says I, "and don't ask me nothing--then I won't have to +tell no lies." + +He studied a while, and then he says: + +"Oho-o! I think I see. You want to SELL all your property to me--not +give it. That's the correct idea." + +Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says: + +"There; you see it says 'for a consideration.' That means I have bought +it of you and paid you for it. Here's a dollar for you. Now you sign +it." + +So I signed it, and left. + +Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which had +been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic +with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed +everything. So I went to him that night and told him pap was here again, +for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know was, what he +was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got out his hair-ball and +said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the +floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. Jim tried +it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. Jim got +down on his knees, and put his ear against it and listened. But it +warn't no use; he said it wouldn't talk. He said sometimes it wouldn't +talk without money. I told him I had an old slick counterfeit quarter +that warn't no good because the brass showed through the silver a little, +and it wouldn't pass nohow, even if the brass didn't show, because it was +so slick it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it every time. (I +reckoned I wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I got from the judge.) I +said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball would take it, +because maybe it wouldn't know the difference. Jim smelt it and bit it +and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hair-ball would think it +was good. He said he would split open a raw Irish potato and stick the +quarter in between and keep it there all night, and next morning you +couldn't see no brass, and it wouldn't feel greasy no more, and so +anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hair-ball. Well, +I knowed a potato would do that before, but I had forgot it. + +Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down and listened again. +This time he said the hair-ball was all right. He said it would tell my +whole fortune if I wanted it to. I says, go on. So the hair-ball talked +to Jim, and Jim told it to me. He says: + +"Yo' ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he +spec he'll go 'way, en den agin he spec he'll stay. De bes' way is to +res' easy en let de ole man take his own way. Dey's two angels hoverin' +roun' 'bout him. One uv 'em is white en shiny, en t'other one is black. +De white one gits him to go right a little while, den de black one sail +in en bust it all up. A body can't tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him +at de las'. But you is all right. You gwyne to have considable trouble +in yo' life, en considable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en +sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well +agin. Dey's two gals flyin' 'bout you in yo' life. One uv 'em's light +en t'other one is dark. One is rich en t'other is po'. You's gwyne to +marry de po' one fust en de rich one by en by. You wants to keep 'way +fum de water as much as you kin, en don't run no resk, 'kase it's down in +de bills dat you's gwyne to git hung." + +When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap--his +own self! + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +I HAD shut the door to. Then I turned around and there he was. I used +to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. I reckoned I was +scared now, too; but in a minute I see I was mistaken--that is, after the +first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched, he being so +unexpected; but right away after I see I warn't scared of him worth +bothring about. + +He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and +greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he +was behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up +whiskers. There warn't no color in his face, where his face showed; it +was white; not like another man's white, but a white to make a body sick, +a white to make a body's flesh crawl--a tree-toad white, a fish-belly +white. As for his clothes--just rags, that was all. He had one ankle +resting on t'other knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his +toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was laying +on the floor--an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid. + +I stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair +tilted back a little. I set the candle down. I noticed the window was +up; so he had clumb in by the shed. He kept a-looking me all over. By +and by he says: + +"Starchy clothes--very. You think you're a good deal of a big-bug, DON'T +you?" + +"Maybe I am, maybe I ain't," I says. + +"Don't you give me none o' your lip," says he. "You've put on +considerable many frills since I been away. I'll take you down a peg +before I get done with you. You're educated, too, they say--can read and +write. You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he +can't? I'LL take it out of you. Who told you you might meddle with such +hifalut'n foolishness, hey?--who told you you could?" + +"The widow. She told me." + +"The widow, hey?--and who told the widow she could put in her shovel +about a thing that ain't none of her business?" + +"Nobody never told her." + +"Well, I'll learn her how to meddle. And looky here--you drop that +school, you hear? I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs +over his own father and let on to be better'n what HE is. You lemme +catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? Your mother +couldn't read, and she couldn't write, nuther, before she died. None of +the family couldn't before THEY died. I can't; and here you're +a-swelling yourself up like this. I ain't the man to stand it--you hear? +Say, lemme hear you read." + +I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the +wars. When I'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack +with his hand and knocked it across the house. He says: + +"It's so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now looky +here; you stop that putting on frills. I won't have it. I'll lay for +you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I'll tan you good. +First you know you'll get religion, too. I never see such a son." + +He took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and +says: + +"What's this?" + +"It's something they give me for learning my lessons good." + +He tore it up, and says: + +"I'll give you something better--I'll give you a cowhide." + +He set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and then he says: + +"AIN'T you a sweet-scented dandy, though? A bed; and bedclothes; and a +look'n'-glass; and a piece of carpet on the floor--and your own father +got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard. I never see such a son. I +bet I'll take some o' these frills out o' you before I'm done with you. +Why, there ain't no end to your airs--they say you're rich. Hey?--how's +that?" + +"They lie--that's how." + +"Looky here--mind how you talk to me; I'm a-standing about all I can +stand now--so don't gimme no sass. I've been in town two days, and I +hain't heard nothing but about you bein' rich. I heard about it away +down the river, too. That's why I come. You git me that money +to-morrow--I want it." + +"I hain't got no money." + +"It's a lie. Judge Thatcher's got it. You git it. I want it." + +"I hain't got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge Thatcher; he'll tell +you the same." + +"All right. I'll ask him; and I'll make him pungle, too, or I'll know +the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket? I want it." + +"I hain't got only a dollar, and I want that to--" + +"It don't make no difference what you want it for--you just shell it +out." + +He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was +going down town to get some whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all day. +When he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed me +for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when I +reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me +to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me +if I didn't drop that. + +Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bullyragged +him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then +he swore he'd make the law force him. + +The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from +him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had +just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts mustn't +interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he'd druther +not take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow +had to quit on the business. + +That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He said he'd cowhide me +till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him. I +borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got +drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying +on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; +then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed +him again for a week. But he said HE was satisfied; said he was boss of +his son, and he'd make it warm for HIM. + +When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him. +So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and +had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just +old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked to him about +temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a +fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new +leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge +would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him +for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he'd +been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said +he believed it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down +was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And +when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says: + +"Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it. +There's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's +the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and'll die before +he'll go back. You mark them words--don't forget I said them. It's a +clean hand now; shake it--don't be afeard." + +So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The +judge's wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge--made +his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something +like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was +the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and +clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his +new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old +time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and +rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most +froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. And when they come +to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could +navigate it. + +The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform +the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +WELL, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went +for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he +went for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched me a couple of +times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him +or outrun him most of the time. I didn't want to go to school much +before, but I reckoned I'd go now to spite pap. That law trial was a +slow business--appeared like they warn't ever going to get started on +it; so every now and then I'd borrow two or three dollars off of the +judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. Every time he got money +he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town; and +every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suited--this kind +of thing was right in his line. + +He got to hanging around the widow's too much and so she told him at last +that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him. +Well, WASN'T he mad? He said he would show who was Huck Finn's boss. So +he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me +up the river about three mile in a skiff, and crossed over to the +Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old +log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if +you didn't know where it was. + +He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. +We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key +under his head nights. He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon, and we +fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. Every little while he +locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and +traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and +had a good time, and licked me. The widow she found out where I was by +and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but pap drove +him off with the gun, and it warn't long after that till I was used to +being where I was, and liked it--all but the cowhide part. + +It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking +and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and +my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever got +to like it so well at the widow's, where you had to wash, and eat on a +plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever +bothering over a book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the +time. I didn't want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing, because +the widow didn't like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn't +no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it +all around. + +But by and by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and I couldn't stand +it. I was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking +me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days. It was dreadful +lonesome. I judged he had got drowned, and I wasn't ever going to get +out any more. I was scared. I made up my mind I would fix up some way +to leave there. I had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but I +couldn't find no way. There warn't a window to it big enough for a dog +to get through. I couldn't get up the chimbly; it was too narrow. The +door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pap was pretty careful not to leave a +knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; I reckon I had hunted +the place over as much as a hundred times; well, I was most all the time +at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. But this +time I found something at last; I found an old rusty wood-saw without any +handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. +I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed +against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep +the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. I +got under the table and raised the blanket, and went to work to saw a +section of the big bottom log out--big enough to let me through. Well, +it was a good long job, but I was getting towards the end of it when I +heard pap's gun in the woods. I got rid of the signs of my work, and +dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap come in. + +Pap warn't in a good humor--so he was his natural self. He said he was +down town, and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned +he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on +the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge +Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people allowed there'd be +another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my +guardian, and they guessed it would win this time. This shook me up +considerable, because I didn't want to go back to the widow's any more +and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. Then the old man +got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, +and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any, +and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, +including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names +of, and so called them what's-his-name when he got to them, and went +right along with his cussing. + +He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch +out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place +six or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till they +dropped and they couldn't find me. That made me pretty uneasy again, but +only for a minute; I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got that +chance. + +The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. +There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, +ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two +newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. I toted up a load, and went +back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. I thought it all +over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and +take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn't stay in one +place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and +hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor +the widow couldn't ever find me any more. I judged I would saw out and +leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would. I got +so full of it I didn't notice how long I was staying till the old man +hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or drownded. + +I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While +I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of +warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town, +and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body +would a thought he was Adam--he was just all mud. Whenever his liquor +begun to work he most always went for the govment, this time he says: + +"Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like. +Here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him--a +man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and +all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son +raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for HIM +and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call THAT +govment! That ain't all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher +up and helps him to keep me out o' my property. Here's what the law +does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up'ards, and +jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in +clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. They call that govment! A man can't +get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to +just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I TOLD 'em so; I told +old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what I +said. Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never come +a-near it agin. Them's the very words. I says look at my hat--if you +call it a hat--but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till +it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like +my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe. Look at it, says I +--such a hat for me to wear--one of the wealthiest men in this town if I +could git my rights. + +"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. +There was a free nigger there from Ohio--a mulatter, most as white as a +white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the +shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine +clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a +silver-headed cane--the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And +what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could +talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the +wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me +out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day, and +I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get +there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where +they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin. +Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot +for all me --I'll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the cool +way of that nigger--why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't +shoved him out o' the way. I says to the people, why ain't this nigger +put up at auction and sold?--that's what I want to know. And what do you +reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in +the State six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. There, +now--that's a specimen. They call that a govment that can't sell a free +nigger till he's been in the State six months. Here's a govment that +calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a +govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before it +can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free +nigger, and--" + +Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was +taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and +barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of +language--mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the +tub some, too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the cabin +considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one +shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot +all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it warn't good +judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking +out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a +body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and +held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had +ever done previous. He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard +old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too; +but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe. + +After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for +two drunks and one delirium tremens. That was always his word. I judged +he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the key, +or saw myself out, one or t'other. He drank and drank, and tumbled down +on his blankets by and by; but luck didn't run my way. He didn't go +sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned and moaned and thrashed around +this way and that for a long time. At last I got so sleepy I couldn't +keep my eyes open all I could do, and so before I knowed what I was about +I was sound asleep, and the candle burning. + +I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an +awful scream and I was up. There was pap looking wild, and skipping +around every which way and yelling about snakes. He said they was +crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say +one had bit him on the cheek--but I couldn't see no snakes. He started +and run round and round the cabin, hollering "Take him off! take him off! +he's biting me on the neck!" I never see a man look so wild in the eyes. +Pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he rolled +over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and +striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming and saying +there was devils a-hold of him. He wore out by and by, and laid still a +while, moaning. Then he laid stiller, and didn't make a sound. I could +hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed +terrible still. He was laying over by the corner. By and by he raised up +part way and listened, with his head to one side. He says, very low: + +"Tramp--tramp--tramp; that's the dead; tramp--tramp--tramp; they're +coming after me; but I won't go. Oh, they're here! don't touch me +--don't! hands off--they're cold; let go. Oh, let a poor devil alone!" + +Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him +alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the +old pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying. I could +hear him through the blanket. + +By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he +see me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place with a +clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill me, +and then I couldn't come for him no more. I begged, and told him I was +only Huck; but he laughed SUCH a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, +and kept on chasing me up. Once when I turned short and dodged under his +arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I +thought I was gone; but I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and +saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his +back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. +He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and +then he would see who was who. + +So he dozed off pretty soon. By and by I got the old split-bottom chair +and clumb up as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down the +gun. I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, then I +laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down +behind it to wait for him to stir. And how slow and still the time did +drag along. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +"GIT up! What you 'bout?" + +I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was. It +was after sun-up, and I had been sound asleep. Pap was standing over me +looking sour and sick, too. He says: + +"What you doin' with this gun?" + +I judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says: + +"Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him." + +"Why didn't you roust me out?" + +"Well, I tried to, but I couldn't; I couldn't budge you." + +"Well, all right. Don't stand there palavering all day, but out with you +and see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast. I'll be along in a +minute." + +He unlocked the door, and I cleared out up the river-bank. I noticed +some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of +bark; so I knowed the river had begun to rise. I reckoned I would have +great times now if I was over at the town. The June rise used to be +always luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins here comes +cordwood floating down, and pieces of log rafts--sometimes a dozen logs +together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the +wood-yards and the sawmill. + +I went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and t'other one out for +what the rise might fetch along. Well, all at once here comes a canoe; +just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high +like a duck. I shot head-first off of the bank like a frog, clothes and +all on, and struck out for the canoe. I just expected there'd be +somebody laying down in it, because people often done that to fool folks, +and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they'd raise up and +laugh at him. But it warn't so this time. It was a drift-canoe sure +enough, and I clumb in and paddled her ashore. Thinks I, the old man +will be glad when he sees this--she's worth ten dollars. But when I +got to shore pap wasn't in sight yet, and as I was running her into a +little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and willows, I struck +another idea: I judged I'd hide her good, and then, 'stead of taking to +the woods when I run off, I'd go down the river about fifty mile and camp +in one place for good, and not have such a rough time tramping on foot. + +It was pretty close to the shanty, and I thought I heard the old man +coming all the time; but I got her hid; and then I out and looked around +a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path a piece just +drawing a bead on a bird with his gun. So he hadn't seen anything. + +When he got along I was hard at it taking up a "trot" line. He abused me +a little for being so slow; but I told him I fell in the river, and that +was what made me so long. I knowed he would see I was wet, and then he +would be asking questions. We got five catfish off the lines and went +home. + +While we laid off after breakfast to sleep up, both of us being about +wore out, I got to thinking that if I could fix up some way to keep pap +and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing +than trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me; you +see, all kinds of things might happen. Well, I didn't see no way for a +while, but by and by pap raised up a minute to drink another barrel of +water, and he says: + +"Another time a man comes a-prowling round here you roust me out, you +hear? That man warn't here for no good. I'd a shot him. Next time you +roust me out, you hear?" + +Then he dropped down and went to sleep again; but what he had been saying +give me the very idea I wanted. I says to myself, I can fix it now so +nobody won't think of following me. + +About twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank. The river +was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the rise. +By and by along comes part of a log raft--nine logs fast together. We +went out with the skiff and towed it ashore. Then we had dinner. +Anybody but pap would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catch +more stuff; but that warn't pap's style. Nine logs was enough for one +time; he must shove right over to town and sell. So he locked me in and +took the skiff, and started off towing the raft about half-past three. I +judged he wouldn't come back that night. I waited till I reckoned he had +got a good start; then I out with my saw, and went to work on that log +again. Before he was t'other side of the river I was out of the hole; +him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder. + +I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and +shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then I done the same +with the side of bacon; then the whisky-jug. I took all the coffee and +sugar there was, and all the ammunition; I took the wadding; I took the +bucket and gourd; I took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two +blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot. I took fish-lines and +matches and other things--everything that was worth a cent. I cleaned +out the place. I wanted an axe, but there wasn't any, only the one out +at the woodpile, and I knowed why I was going to leave that. I fetched +out the gun, and now I was done. + +I had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and dragging +out so many things. So I fixed that as good as I could from the outside +by scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and the +sawdust. Then I fixed the piece of log back into its place, and put two +rocks under it and one against it to hold it there, for it was bent up at +that place and didn't quite touch ground. If you stood four or five foot +away and didn't know it was sawed, you wouldn't never notice it; and +besides, this was the back of the cabin, and it warn't likely anybody +would go fooling around there. + +It was all grass clear to the canoe, so I hadn't left a track. I +followed around to see. I stood on the bank and looked out over the +river. All safe. So I took the gun and went up a piece into the woods, +and was hunting around for some birds when I see a wild pig; hogs soon +went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie farms. +I shot this fellow and took him into camp. + +I took the axe and smashed in the door. I beat it and hacked it +considerable a-doing it. I fetched the pig in, and took him back nearly +to the table and hacked into his throat with the axe, and laid him down +on the ground to bleed; I say ground because it was ground--hard packed, +and no boards. Well, next I took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks +in it--all I could drag--and I started it from the pig, and dragged it +to the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in, and +down it sunk, out of sight. You could easy see that something had been +dragged over the ground. I did wish Tom Sawyer was there; I knowed he +would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy +touches. Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as +that. + +Well, last I pulled out some of my hair, and blooded the axe good, and +stuck it on the back side, and slung the axe in the corner. Then I took +up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket (so he couldn't drip) +till I got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into the +river. Now I thought of something else. So I went and got the bag of +meal and my old saw out of the canoe, and fetched them to the house. I +took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom +of it with the saw, for there warn't no knives and forks on the place +--pap done everything with his clasp-knife about the cooking. Then I +carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the +willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five mile wide and +full of rushes--and ducks too, you might say, in the season. There was a +slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles +away, I don't know where, but it didn't go to the river. The meal sifted +out and made a little track all the way to the lake. I dropped pap's +whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident. +Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it wouldn't +leak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again. + +It was about dark now; so I dropped the canoe down the river under some +willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. I made +fast to a willow; then I took a bite to eat, and by and by laid down in +the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. I says to myself, they'll +follow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then drag the +river for me. And they'll follow that meal track to the lake and go +browsing down the creek that leads out of it to find the robbers that +killed me and took the things. They won't ever hunt the river for +anything but my dead carcass. They'll soon get tired of that, and won't +bother no more about me. All right; I can stop anywhere I want to. +Jackson's Island is good enough for me; I know that island pretty well, +and nobody ever comes there. And then I can paddle over to town nights, +and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson's Island's the place. + +I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed I was asleep. When I +woke up I didn't know where I was for a minute. I set up and looked +around, a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and +miles across. The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs +that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from +shore. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and SMELT late. +You know what I mean--I don't know the words to put it in. + +I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start +when I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty soon I +made it out. It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from +oars working in rowlocks when it's a still night. I peeped out through +the willow branches, and there it was--a skiff, away across the water. I +couldn't tell how many was in it. It kept a-coming, and when it was +abreast of me I see there warn't but one man in it. Think's I, maybe +it's pap, though I warn't expecting him. He dropped below me with the +current, and by and by he came a-swinging up shore in the easy water, and +he went by so close I could a reached out the gun and touched him. Well, +it WAS pap, sure enough--and sober, too, by the way he laid his oars. + +I didn't lose no time. The next minute I was a-spinning down stream soft +but quick in the shade of the bank. I made two mile and a half, and then +struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river, +because pretty soon I would be passing the ferry landing, and people +might see me and hail me. I got out amongst the driftwood, and then laid +down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. I laid there, and had +a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky; not a +cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back +in the moonshine; I never knowed it before. And how far a body can hear +on the water such nights! I heard people talking at the ferry landing. +I heard what they said, too--every word of it. One man said it was +getting towards the long days and the short nights now. T'other one said +THIS warn't one of the short ones, he reckoned--and then they laughed, +and he said it over again, and they laughed again; then they waked up +another fellow and told him, and laughed, but he didn't laugh; he ripped +out something brisk, and said let him alone. The first fellow said he +'lowed to tell it to his old woman--she would think it was pretty good; +but he said that warn't nothing to some things he had said in his time. +I heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock, and he hoped daylight +wouldn't wait more than about a week longer. After that the talk got +further and further away, and I couldn't make out the words any more; but +I could hear the mumble, and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a +long ways off. + +I was away below the ferry now. I rose up, and there was Jackson's +Island, about two mile and a half down stream, heavy timbered and +standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like +a steamboat without any lights. There warn't any signs of the bar at the +head--it was all under water now. + +It didn't take me long to get there. I shot past the head at a ripping +rate, the current was so swift, and then I got into the dead water and +landed on the side towards the Illinois shore. I run the canoe into a +deep dent in the bank that I knowed about; I had to part the willow +branches to get in; and when I made fast nobody could a seen the canoe +from the outside. + +I went up and set down on a log at the head of the island, and looked out +on the big river and the black driftwood and away over to the town, three +mile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling. A monstrous +big lumber-raft was about a mile up stream, coming along down, with a +lantern in the middle of it. I watched it come creeping down, and when +it was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man say, "Stern oars, +there! heave her head to stabboard!" I heard that just as plain as if +the man was by my side. + +There was a little gray in the sky now; so I stepped into the woods, and +laid down for a nap before breakfast. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE sun was up so high when I waked that I judged it was after eight +o'clock. I laid there in the grass and the cool shade thinking about +things, and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. I could +see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all +about, and gloomy in there amongst them. There was freckled places on +the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the +freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze +up there. A couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very +friendly. + +I was powerful lazy and comfortable--didn't want to get up and cook +breakfast. Well, I was dozing off again when I thinks I hears a deep +sound of "boom!" away up the river. I rouses up, and rests on my elbow +and listens; pretty soon I hears it again. I hopped up, and went and +looked out at a hole in the leaves, and I see a bunch of smoke laying on +the water a long ways up--about abreast the ferry. And there was the +ferryboat full of people floating along down. I knowed what was the +matter now. "Boom!" I see the white smoke squirt out of the ferryboat's +side. You see, they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my +carcass come to the top. + +I was pretty hungry, but it warn't going to do for me to start a fire, +because they might see the smoke. So I set there and watched the +cannon-smoke and listened to the boom. The river was a mile wide there, +and it always looks pretty on a summer morning--so I was having a good +enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if I only had a bite to +eat. Well, then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in +loaves of bread and float them off, because they always go right to the +drownded carcass and stop there. So, says I, I'll keep a lookout, and if +any of them's floating around after me I'll give them a show. I changed +to the Illinois edge of the island to see what luck I could have, and I +warn't disappointed. A big double loaf come along, and I most got it +with a long stick, but my foot slipped and she floated out further. Of +course I was where the current set in the closest to the shore--I knowed +enough for that. But by and by along comes another one, and this time I +won. I took out the plug and shook out the little dab of quicksilver, +and set my teeth in. It was "baker's bread"--what the quality eat; none +of your low-down corn-pone. + +I got a good place amongst the leaves, and set there on a log, munching +the bread and watching the ferry-boat, and very well satisfied. And then +something struck me. I says, now I reckon the widow or the parson or +somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and +done it. So there ain't no doubt but there is something in that thing +--that is, there's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson +prays, but it don't work for me, and I reckon it don't work for only just +the right kind. + +I lit a pipe and had a good long smoke, and went on watching. The +ferryboat was floating with the current, and I allowed I'd have a chance +to see who was aboard when she come along, because she would come in +close, where the bread did. When she'd got pretty well along down +towards me, I put out my pipe and went to where I fished out the bread, +and laid down behind a log on the bank in a little open place. Where the +log forked I could peep through. + +By and by she come along, and she drifted in so close that they could a +run out a plank and walked ashore. Most everybody was on the boat. Pap, +and Judge Thatcher, and Bessie Thatcher, and Jo Harper, and Tom Sawyer, +and his old Aunt Polly, and Sid and Mary, and plenty more. Everybody was +talking about the murder, but the captain broke in and says: + +"Look sharp, now; the current sets in the closest here, and maybe he's +washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water's edge. I +hope so, anyway." + +"I didn't hope so. They all crowded up and leaned over the rails, nearly +in my face, and kept still, watching with all their might. I could see +them first-rate, but they couldn't see me. Then the captain sung out: + +"Stand away!" and the cannon let off such a blast right before me that it +made me deef with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke, and I +judged I was gone. If they'd a had some bullets in, I reckon they'd a +got the corpse they was after. Well, I see I warn't hurt, thanks to +goodness. The boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder +of the island. I could hear the booming now and then, further and +further off, and by and by, after an hour, I didn't hear it no more. The +island was three mile long. I judged they had got to the foot, and was +giving it up. But they didn't yet a while. They turned around the foot +of the island and started up the channel on the Missouri side, under +steam, and booming once in a while as they went. I crossed over to that +side and watched them. When they got abreast the head of the island they +quit shooting and dropped over to the Missouri shore and went home to the +town. + +I knowed I was all right now. Nobody else would come a-hunting after me. +I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick +woods. I made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things under +so the rain couldn't get at them. I catched a catfish and haggled him +open with my saw, and towards sundown I started my camp fire and had +supper. Then I set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast. + +When it was dark I set by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty well +satisfied; but by and by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and set +on the bank and listened to the current swashing along, and counted the +stars and drift logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed; +there ain't no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can't +stay so, you soon get over it. + +And so for three days and nights. No difference--just the same thing. +But the next day I went exploring around down through the island. I was +boss of it; it all belonged to me, so to say, and I wanted to know all +about it; but mainly I wanted to put in the time. I found plenty +strawberries, ripe and prime; and green summer grapes, and green +razberries; and the green blackberries was just beginning to show. They +would all come handy by and by, I judged. + +Well, I went fooling along in the deep woods till I judged I warn't far +from the foot of the island. I had my gun along, but I hadn't shot +nothing; it was for protection; thought I would kill some game nigh home. +About this time I mighty near stepped on a good-sized snake, and it went +sliding off through the grass and flowers, and I after it, trying to get +a shot at it. I clipped along, and all of a sudden I bounded right on to +the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking. + +My heart jumped up amongst my lungs. I never waited for to look further, +but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as fast as ever +I could. Every now and then I stopped a second amongst the thick leaves +and listened, but my breath come so hard I couldn't hear nothing else. I +slunk along another piece further, then listened again; and so on, and so +on. If I see a stump, I took it for a man; if I trod on a stick and +broke it, it made me feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two +and I only got half, and the short half, too. + +When I got to camp I warn't feeling very brash, there warn't much sand in +my craw; but I says, this ain't no time to be fooling around. So I got +all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight, and I +put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last +year's camp, and then clumb a tree. + +I reckon I was up in the tree two hours; but I didn't see nothing, I +didn't hear nothing--I only THOUGHT I heard and seen as much as a +thousand things. Well, I couldn't stay up there forever; so at last I +got down, but I kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time. +All I could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast. + +By the time it was night I was pretty hungry. So when it was good and +dark I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the +Illinois bank--about a quarter of a mile. I went out in the woods and +cooked a supper, and I had about made up my mind I would stay there all +night when I hear a PLUNKETY-PLUNK, PLUNKETY-PLUNK, and says to myself, +horses coming; and next I hear people's voices. I got everything into +the canoe as quick as I could, and then went creeping through the woods +to see what I could find out. I hadn't got far when I hear a man say: + +"We better camp here if we can find a good place; the horses is about +beat out. Let's look around." + +I didn't wait, but shoved out and paddled away easy. I tied up in the +old place, and reckoned I would sleep in the canoe. + +I didn't sleep much. I couldn't, somehow, for thinking. And every time +I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck. So the sleep didn't do +me no good. By and by I says to myself, I can't live this way; I'm +a-going to find out who it is that's here on the island with me; I'll +find it out or bust. Well, I felt better right off. + +So I took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two, and then +let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows. The moon was shining, +and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day. I poked +along well on to an hour, everything still as rocks and sound asleep. +Well, by this time I was most down to the foot of the island. A little +ripply, cool breeze begun to blow, and that was as good as saying the +night was about done. I give her a turn with the paddle and brung her +nose to shore; then I got my gun and slipped out and into the edge of the +woods. I sat down there on a log, and looked out through the leaves. I +see the moon go off watch, and the darkness begin to blanket the river. +But in a little while I see a pale streak over the treetops, and knowed +the day was coming. So I took my gun and slipped off towards where I had +run across that camp fire, stopping every minute or two to listen. But I +hadn't no luck somehow; I couldn't seem to find the place. But by and +by, sure enough, I catched a glimpse of fire away through the trees. I +went for it, cautious and slow. By and by I was close enough to have a +look, and there laid a man on the ground. It most give me the fantods. +He had a blanket around his head, and his head was nearly in the fire. I +set there behind a clump of bushes in about six foot of him, and kept my +eyes on him steady. It was getting gray daylight now. Pretty soon he +gapped and stretched himself and hove off the blanket, and it was Miss +Watson's Jim! I bet I was glad to see him. I says: + +"Hello, Jim!" and skipped out. + +He bounced up and stared at me wild. Then he drops down on his knees, +and puts his hands together and says: + +"Doan' hurt me--don't! I hain't ever done no harm to a ghos'. I alwuz +liked dead people, en done all I could for 'em. You go en git in de +river agin, whah you b'longs, en doan' do nuffn to Ole Jim, 'at 'uz awluz +yo' fren'." + +Well, I warn't long making him understand I warn't dead. I was ever so +glad to see Jim. I warn't lonesome now. I told him I warn't afraid of +HIM telling the people where I was. I talked along, but he only set +there and looked at me; never said nothing. Then I says: + +"It's good daylight. Le's get breakfast. Make up your camp fire good." + +"What's de use er makin' up de camp fire to cook strawbries en sich +truck? But you got a gun, hain't you? Den we kin git sumfn better den +strawbries." + +"Strawberries and such truck," I says. "Is that what you live on?" + +"I couldn' git nuffn else," he says. + +"Why, how long you been on the island, Jim?" + +"I come heah de night arter you's killed." + +"What, all that time?" + +"Yes--indeedy." + +"And ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat?" + +"No, sah--nuffn else." + +"Well, you must be most starved, ain't you?" + +"I reck'n I could eat a hoss. I think I could. How long you ben on de +islan'?" + +"Since the night I got killed." + +"No! W'y, what has you lived on? But you got a gun. Oh, yes, you got a +gun. Dat's good. Now you kill sumfn en I'll make up de fire." + +So we went over to where the canoe was, and while he built a fire in a +grassy open place amongst the trees, I fetched meal and bacon and coffee, +and coffee-pot and frying-pan, and sugar and tin cups, and the nigger was +set back considerable, because he reckoned it was all done with +witchcraft. I catched a good big catfish, too, and Jim cleaned him with +his knife, and fried him. + +When breakfast was ready we lolled on the grass and eat it smoking hot. +Jim laid it in with all his might, for he was most about starved. Then +when we had got pretty well stuffed, we laid off and lazied. By and by +Jim says: + +"But looky here, Huck, who wuz it dat 'uz killed in dat shanty ef it +warn't you?" + +Then I told him the whole thing, and he said it was smart. He said Tom +Sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what I had. Then I says: + +"How do you come to be here, Jim, and how'd you get here?" + +He looked pretty uneasy, and didn't say nothing for a minute. Then he +says: + +"Maybe I better not tell." + +"Why, Jim?" + +"Well, dey's reasons. But you wouldn' tell on me ef I uz to tell you, +would you, Huck?" + +"Blamed if I would, Jim." + +"Well, I b'lieve you, Huck. I--I RUN OFF." + +"Jim!" + +"But mind, you said you wouldn' tell--you know you said you wouldn' tell, +Huck." + +"Well, I did. I said I wouldn't, and I'll stick to it. Honest INJUN, I +will. People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for +keeping mum--but that don't make no difference. I ain't a-going to tell, +and I ain't a-going back there, anyways. So, now, le's know all about +it." + +"Well, you see, it 'uz dis way. Ole missus--dat's Miss Watson--she pecks +on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she +wouldn' sell me down to Orleans. But I noticed dey wuz a nigger trader +roun' de place considable lately, en I begin to git oneasy. Well, one +night I creeps to de do' pooty late, en de do' warn't quite shet, en I +hear old missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans, but +she didn' want to, but she could git eight hund'd dollars for me, en it +'uz sich a big stack o' money she couldn' resis'. De widder she try to +git her to say she wouldn' do it, but I never waited to hear de res'. I +lit out mighty quick, I tell you. + +"I tuck out en shin down de hill, en 'spec to steal a skift 'long de sho' +som'ers 'bove de town, but dey wuz people a-stirring yit, so I hid in de +ole tumble-down cooper-shop on de bank to wait for everybody to go 'way. +Well, I wuz dah all night. Dey wuz somebody roun' all de time. 'Long +'bout six in de mawnin' skifts begin to go by, en 'bout eight er nine +every skift dat went 'long wuz talkin' 'bout how yo' pap come over to de +town en say you's killed. Dese las' skifts wuz full o' ladies en genlmen +a-goin' over for to see de place. Sometimes dey'd pull up at de sho' en +take a res' b'fo' dey started acrost, so by de talk I got to know all +'bout de killin'. I 'uz powerful sorry you's killed, Huck, but I ain't +no mo' now. + +"I laid dah under de shavin's all day. I 'uz hungry, but I warn't +afeard; bekase I knowed ole missus en de widder wuz goin' to start to de +camp-meet'n' right arter breakfas' en be gone all day, en dey knows I +goes off wid de cattle 'bout daylight, so dey wouldn' 'spec to see me +roun' de place, en so dey wouldn' miss me tell arter dark in de evenin'. +De yuther servants wouldn' miss me, kase dey'd shin out en take holiday +soon as de ole folks 'uz out'n de way. + +"Well, when it come dark I tuck out up de river road, en went 'bout two +mile er more to whah dey warn't no houses. I'd made up my mine 'bout +what I's agwyne to do. You see, ef I kep' on tryin' to git away afoot, +de dogs 'ud track me; ef I stole a skift to cross over, dey'd miss dat +skift, you see, en dey'd know 'bout whah I'd lan' on de yuther side, en +whah to pick up my track. So I says, a raff is what I's arter; it doan' +MAKE no track. + +"I see a light a-comin' roun' de p'int bymeby, so I wade' in en shove' a +log ahead o' me en swum more'n half way acrost de river, en got in +'mongst de drift-wood, en kep' my head down low, en kinder swum agin de +current tell de raff come along. Den I swum to de stern uv it en tuck +a-holt. It clouded up en 'uz pooty dark for a little while. So I clumb +up en laid down on de planks. De men 'uz all 'way yonder in de middle, +whah de lantern wuz. De river wuz a-risin', en dey wuz a good current; +so I reck'n'd 'at by fo' in de mawnin' I'd be twenty-five mile down de +river, en den I'd slip in jis b'fo' daylight en swim asho', en take to +de woods on de Illinois side. + +"But I didn' have no luck. When we 'uz mos' down to de head er de islan' +a man begin to come aft wid de lantern, I see it warn't no use fer to +wait, so I slid overboard en struck out fer de islan'. Well, I had a +notion I could lan' mos' anywhers, but I couldn't--bank too bluff. I 'uz +mos' to de foot er de islan' b'fo' I found' a good place. I went into de +woods en jedged I wouldn' fool wid raffs no mo', long as dey move de +lantern roun' so. I had my pipe en a plug er dog-leg, en some matches in +my cap, en dey warn't wet, so I 'uz all right." + +"And so you ain't had no meat nor bread to eat all this time? Why didn't +you get mud-turkles?" + +"How you gwyne to git 'm? You can't slip up on um en grab um; en how's a +body gwyne to hit um wid a rock? How could a body do it in de night? En +I warn't gwyne to show mysef on de bank in de daytime." + +"Well, that's so. You've had to keep in the woods all the time, of +course. Did you hear 'em shooting the cannon?" + +"Oh, yes. I knowed dey was arter you. I see um go by heah--watched um +thoo de bushes." + +Some young birds come along, flying a yard or two at a time and lighting. +Jim said it was a sign it was going to rain. He said it was a sign when +young chickens flew that way, and so he reckoned it was the same way when +young birds done it. I was going to catch some of them, but Jim wouldn't +let me. He said it was death. He said his father laid mighty sick once, +and some of them catched a bird, and his old granny said his father would +die, and he did. + +And Jim said you mustn't count the things you are going to cook for +dinner, because that would bring bad luck. The same if you shook the +table-cloth after sundown. And he said if a man owned a beehive and that +man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or +else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. Jim said bees +wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that, because I had tried +them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me. + +I had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them. Jim +knowed all kinds of signs. He said he knowed most everything. I said it +looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so I asked him if +there warn't any good-luck signs. He says: + +"Mighty few--an' DEY ain't no use to a body. What you want to know when +good luck's a-comin' for? Want to keep it off?" And he said: "Ef you's +got hairy arms en a hairy breas', it's a sign dat you's agwyne to be +rich. Well, dey's some use in a sign like dat, 'kase it's so fur ahead. +You see, maybe you's got to be po' a long time fust, en so you might git +discourage' en kill yo'sef 'f you didn' know by de sign dat you gwyne to +be rich bymeby." + +"Have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, Jim?" + +"What's de use to ax dat question? Don't you see I has?" + +"Well, are you rich?" + +"No, but I ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich agin. Wunst I had foteen +dollars, but I tuck to specalat'n', en got busted out." + +"What did you speculate in, Jim?" + +"Well, fust I tackled stock." + +"What kind of stock?" + +"Why, live stock--cattle, you know. I put ten dollars in a cow. But I +ain' gwyne to resk no mo' money in stock. De cow up 'n' died on my +han's." + +"So you lost the ten dollars." + +"No, I didn't lose it all. I on'y los' 'bout nine of it. I sole de hide +en taller for a dollar en ten cents." + +"You had five dollars and ten cents left. Did you speculate any more?" + +"Yes. You know that one-laigged nigger dat b'longs to old Misto Bradish? +Well, he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo' +dollars mo' at de en' er de year. Well, all de niggers went in, but dey +didn't have much. I wuz de on'y one dat had much. So I stuck out for +mo' dan fo' dollars, en I said 'f I didn' git it I'd start a bank mysef. +Well, o' course dat nigger want' to keep me out er de business, bekase he +says dey warn't business 'nough for two banks, so he say I could put in +my five dollars en he pay me thirty-five at de en' er de year. + +"So I done it. Den I reck'n'd I'd inves' de thirty-five dollars right +off en keep things a-movin'. Dey wuz a nigger name' Bob, dat had ketched +a wood-flat, en his marster didn' know it; en I bought it off'n him en +told him to take de thirty-five dollars when de en' er de year come; but +somebody stole de wood-flat dat night, en nex day de one-laigged nigger +say de bank's busted. So dey didn' none uv us git no money." + +"What did you do with the ten cents, Jim?" + +"Well, I 'uz gwyne to spen' it, but I had a dream, en de dream tole me to +give it to a nigger name' Balum--Balum's Ass dey call him for short; he's +one er dem chuckleheads, you know. But he's lucky, dey say, en I see I +warn't lucky. De dream say let Balum inves' de ten cents en he'd make a +raise for me. Well, Balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church he +hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po' len' to de Lord, en boun' +to git his money back a hund'd times. So Balum he tuck en give de ten +cents to de po', en laid low to see what wuz gwyne to come of it." + +"Well, what did come of it, Jim?" + +"Nuffn never come of it. I couldn' manage to k'leck dat money no way; en +Balum he couldn'. I ain' gwyne to len' no mo' money 'dout I see de +security. Boun' to git yo' money back a hund'd times, de preacher says! +Ef I could git de ten CENTS back, I'd call it squah, en be glad er de +chanst." + +"Well, it's all right anyway, Jim, long as you're going to be rich again +some time or other." + +"Yes; en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns mysef, en I's wuth +eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'." + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +I WANTED to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island +that I'd found when I was exploring; so we started and soon got to it, +because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile +wide. + +This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foot +high. We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep and +the bushes so thick. We tramped and clumb around all over it, and by and +by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the side +towards Illinois. The cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched +together, and Jim could stand up straight in it. It was cool in there. +Jim was for putting our traps in there right away, but I said we didn't +want to be climbing up and down there all the time. + +Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps +in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island, +and they would never find us without dogs. And, besides, he said them +little birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want the things to +get wet? + +So we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up abreast the cavern, and +lugged all the traps up there. Then we hunted up a place close by to +hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. We took some fish off of +the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner. + +The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one +side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a +good place to build a fire on. So we built it there and cooked dinner. + +We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there. +We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern. Pretty soon +it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right +about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, +and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer +storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and +lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a +little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of +wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the +leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set +the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, +when it was just about the bluest and blackest--FST! it was as bright as +glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away +off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see +before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let +go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down +the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels +down stairs--where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you +know. + +"Jim, this is nice," I says. "I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but +here. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread." + +"Well, you wouldn't a ben here 'f it hadn't a ben for Jim. You'd a ben +down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too; dat +you would, honey. Chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do de +birds, chile." + +The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at +last it was over the banks. The water was three or four foot deep on the +island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom. On that side it was +a good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it was the same old +distance across--a half a mile--because the Missouri shore was just a +wall of high bluffs. + +Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe, It was mighty cool +and shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside. We +went winding in and out amongst the trees, and sometimes the vines hung +so thick we had to back away and go some other way. Well, on every old +broken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things; and +when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame, on +account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your hand +on them if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtles--they would +slide off in the water. The ridge our cavern was in was full of them. +We could a had pets enough if we'd wanted them. + +One night we catched a little section of a lumber raft--nice pine planks. +It was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the +top stood above water six or seven inches--a solid, level floor. We +could see saw-logs go by in the daylight sometimes, but we let them go; +we didn't show ourselves in daylight. + +Another night when we was up at the head of the island, just before +daylight, here comes a frame-house down, on the west side. She was a +two-story, and tilted over considerable. We paddled out and got aboard +--clumb in at an upstairs window. But it was too dark to see yet, so we +made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight. + +The light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island. Then we +looked in at the window. We could make out a bed, and a table, and two +old chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor, and there was +clothes hanging against the wall. There was something laying on the +floor in the far corner that looked like a man. So Jim says: + +"Hello, you!" + +But it didn't budge. So I hollered again, and then Jim says: + +"De man ain't asleep--he's dead. You hold still--I'll go en see." + +He went, and bent down and looked, and says: + +"It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He's ben shot in de back. +I reck'n he's ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan' look +at his face--it's too gashly." + +I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he +needn't done it; I didn't want to see him. There was heaps of old greasy +cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and a +couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the +ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal. There was two +old dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some women's underclothes +hanging against the wall, and some men's clothing, too. We put the lot +into the canoe--it might come good. There was a boy's old speckled straw +hat on the floor; I took that, too. And there was a bottle that had had +milk in it, and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. We would a took +the bottle, but it was broke. There was a seedy old chest, and an old +hair trunk with the hinges broke. They stood open, but there warn't +nothing left in them that was any account. The way things was scattered +about we reckoned the people left in a hurry, and warn't fixed so as to +carry off most of their stuff. + +We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and a +bran-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow +candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty +old bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and +beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet +and some nails, and a fishline as thick as my little finger with some +monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar, +and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label on +them; and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable good curry-comb, and +Jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg. The straps was +broke off of it, but, barring that, it was a good enough leg, though it +was too long for me and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn't find the +other one, though we hunted all around. + +And so, take it all around, we made a good haul. When we was ready to +shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was pretty +broad day; so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the +quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good ways +off. I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down most a half +a mile doing it. I crept up the dead water under the bank, and hadn't no +accidents and didn't see nobody. We got home all safe. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +AFTER breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he +come to be killed, but Jim didn't want to. He said it would fetch bad +luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha'nt us; he said a man +that warn't buried was more likely to go a-ha'nting around than one that +was planted and comfortable. That sounded pretty reasonable, so I didn't +say no more; but I couldn't keep from studying over it and wishing I +knowed who shot the man, and what they done it for. + +We rummaged the clothes we'd got, and found eight dollars in silver sewed +up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat. Jim said he reckoned the +people in that house stole the coat, because if they'd a knowed the money +was there they wouldn't a left it. I said I reckoned they killed him, +too; but Jim didn't want to talk about that. I says: + +"Now you think it's bad luck; but what did you say when I fetched in the +snake-skin that I found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday? +You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin +with my hands. Well, here's your bad luck! We've raked in all this +truck and eight dollars besides. I wish we could have some bad luck like +this every day, Jim." + +"Never you mind, honey, never you mind. Don't you git too peart. It's +a-comin'. Mind I tell you, it's a-comin'." + +It did come, too. It was a Tuesday that we had that talk. Well, after +dinner Friday we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the +ridge, and got out of tobacco. I went to the cavern to get some, and +found a rattlesnake in there. I killed him, and curled him up on the +foot of Jim's blanket, ever so natural, thinking there'd be some fun when +Jim found him there. Well, by night I forgot all about the snake, and +when Jim flung himself down on the blanket while I struck a light the +snake's mate was there, and bit him. + +He jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the +varmint curled up and ready for another spring. I laid him out in a +second with a stick, and Jim grabbed pap's whisky-jug and begun to pour +it down. + +He was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel. That all +comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave +a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it. Jim told +me to chop off the snake's head and throw it away, and then skin the body +and roast a piece of it. I done it, and he eat it and said it would help +cure him. He made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist, +too. He said that that would help. Then I slid out quiet and throwed +the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for I warn't going to let Jim +find out it was all my fault, not if I could help it. + +Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head +and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself he went +to sucking at the jug again. His foot swelled up pretty big, and so did +his leg; but by and by the drunk begun to come, and so I judged he was +all right; but I'd druther been bit with a snake than pap's whisky. + +Jim was laid up for four days and nights. Then the swelling was all gone +and he was around again. I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take a-holt +of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it. +Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time. And he said that +handling a snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to +the end of it yet. He said he druther see the new moon over his left +shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake-skin in his +hand. Well, I was getting to feel that way myself, though I've always +reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of +the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker +done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got +drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, and spread himself out so that he +was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways +between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but +I didn't see it. Pap told me. But anyway it all come of looking at the +moon that way, like a fool. + +Well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks +again; and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the big hooks +with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as a +man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds. +We couldn't handle him, of course; he would a flung us into Illinois. We +just set there and watched him rip and tear around till he drownded. We +found a brass button in his stomach and a round ball, and lots of +rubbage. We split the ball open with the hatchet, and there was a spool +in it. Jim said he'd had it there a long time, to coat it over so and +make a ball of it. It was as big a fish as was ever catched in the +Mississippi, I reckon. Jim said he hadn't ever seen a bigger one. He +would a been worth a good deal over at the village. They peddle out such +a fish as that by the pound in the market-house there; everybody buys +some of him; his meat's as white as snow and makes a good fry. + +Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a +stirring up some way. I said I reckoned I would slip over the river and +find out what was going on. Jim liked that notion; but he said I must go +in the dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over and said, couldn't I +put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl? That was a good +notion, too. So we shortened up one of the calico gowns, and I turned up +my trouser-legs to my knees and got into it. Jim hitched it behind with +the hooks, and it was a fair fit. I put on the sun-bonnet and tied it +under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like +looking down a joint of stove-pipe. Jim said nobody would know me, even +in the daytime, hardly. I practiced around all day to get the hang of +the things, and by and by I could do pretty well in them, only Jim said I +didn't walk like a girl; and he said I must quit pulling up my gown to +get at my britches-pocket. I took notice, and done better. + +I started up the Illinois shore in the canoe just after dark. + +I started across to the town from a little below the ferry-landing, and +the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town. I tied +up and started along the bank. There was a light burning in a little +shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time, and I wondered who had +took up quarters there. I slipped up and peeped in at the window. There +was a woman about forty year old in there knitting by a candle that was +on a pine table. I didn't know her face; she was a stranger, for you +couldn't start a face in that town that I didn't know. Now this was +lucky, because I was weakening; I was getting afraid I had come; people +might know my voice and find me out. But if this woman had been in such +a little town two days she could tell me all I wanted to know; so I +knocked at the door, and made up my mind I wouldn't forget I was a girl. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +"COME in," says the woman, and I did. She says: "Take a cheer." + +I done it. She looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says: + +"What might your name be?" + +"Sarah Williams." + +"Where 'bouts do you live? In this neighborhood?' + +"No'm. In Hookerville, seven mile below. I've walked all the way and +I'm all tired out." + +"Hungry, too, I reckon. I'll find you something." + +"No'm, I ain't hungry. I was so hungry I had to stop two miles below +here at a farm; so I ain't hungry no more. It's what makes me so late. +My mother's down sick, and out of money and everything, and I come to +tell my uncle Abner Moore. He lives at the upper end of the town, she +says. I hain't ever been here before. Do you know him?" + +"No; but I don't know everybody yet. I haven't lived here quite two +weeks. It's a considerable ways to the upper end of the town. You better +stay here all night. Take off your bonnet." + +"No," I says; "I'll rest a while, I reckon, and go on. I ain't afeared +of the dark." + +She said she wouldn't let me go by myself, but her husband would be in by +and by, maybe in a hour and a half, and she'd send him along with me. +Then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up the +river, and her relations down the river, and about how much better off +they used to was, and how they didn't know but they'd made a mistake +coming to our town, instead of letting well alone--and so on and so on, +till I was afeard I had made a mistake coming to her to find out what was +going on in the town; but by and by she dropped on to pap and the murder, +and then I was pretty willing to let her clatter right along. She told +about me and Tom Sawyer finding the six thousand dollars (only she got it +ten) and all about pap and what a hard lot he was, and what a hard lot I +was, and at last she got down to where I was murdered. I says: + +"Who done it? We've heard considerable about these goings on down in +Hookerville, but we don't know who 'twas that killed Huck Finn." + +"Well, I reckon there's a right smart chance of people HERE that'd like +to know who killed him. Some think old Finn done it himself." + +"No--is that so?" + +"Most everybody thought it at first. He'll never know how nigh he come +to getting lynched. But before night they changed around and judged it +was done by a runaway nigger named Jim." + +"Why HE--" + +I stopped. I reckoned I better keep still. She run on, and never +noticed I had put in at all: + +"The nigger run off the very night Huck Finn was killed. So there's a +reward out for him--three hundred dollars. And there's a reward out for +old Finn, too--two hundred dollars. You see, he come to town the morning +after the murder, and told about it, and was out with 'em on the +ferryboat hunt, and right away after he up and left. Before night they +wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see. Well, next day they found +out the nigger was gone; they found out he hadn't ben seen sence ten +o'clock the night the murder was done. So then they put it on him, you +see; and while they was full of it, next day, back comes old Finn, and +went boo-hooing to Judge Thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all +over Illinois with. The judge gave him some, and that evening he got +drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty +hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them. Well, he hain't +come back sence, and they ain't looking for him back till this thing +blows over a little, for people thinks now that he killed his boy and +fixed things so folks would think robbers done it, and then he'd get +Huck's money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit. People +do say he warn't any too good to do it. Oh, he's sly, I reckon. If he +don't come back for a year he'll be all right. You can't prove anything +on him, you know; everything will be quieted down then, and he'll walk in +Huck's money as easy as nothing." + +"Yes, I reckon so, 'm. I don't see nothing in the way of it. Has +everybody quit thinking the nigger done it?" + +"Oh, no, not everybody. A good many thinks he done it. But they'll get +the nigger pretty soon now, and maybe they can scare it out of him." + +"Why, are they after him yet?" + +"Well, you're innocent, ain't you! Does three hundred dollars lay around +every day for people to pick up? Some folks think the nigger ain't far +from here. I'm one of them--but I hain't talked it around. A few days +ago I was talking with an old couple that lives next door in the log +shanty, and they happened to say hardly anybody ever goes to that island +over yonder that they call Jackson's Island. Don't anybody live there? +says I. No, nobody, says they. I didn't say any more, but I done some +thinking. I was pretty near certain I'd seen smoke over there, about the +head of the island, a day or two before that, so I says to myself, like +as not that nigger's hiding over there; anyway, says I, it's worth the +trouble to give the place a hunt. I hain't seen any smoke sence, so I +reckon maybe he's gone, if it was him; but husband's going over to see +--him and another man. He was gone up the river; but he got back to-day, +and I told him as soon as he got here two hours ago." + +I had got so uneasy I couldn't set still. I had to do something with my +hands; so I took up a needle off of the table and went to threading it. +My hands shook, and I was making a bad job of it. When the woman stopped +talking I looked up, and she was looking at me pretty curious and smiling +a little. I put down the needle and thread, and let on to be interested +--and I was, too--and says: + +"Three hundred dollars is a power of money. I wish my mother could get +it. Is your husband going over there to-night?" + +"Oh, yes. He went up-town with the man I was telling you of, to get a +boat and see if they could borrow another gun. They'll go over after +midnight." + +"Couldn't they see better if they was to wait till daytime?" + +"Yes. And couldn't the nigger see better, too? After midnight he'll +likely be asleep, and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up +his camp fire all the better for the dark, if he's got one." + +"I didn't think of that." + +The woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and I didn't feel a bit +comfortable. Pretty soon she says" + +"What did you say your name was, honey?" + +"M--Mary Williams." + +Somehow it didn't seem to me that I said it was Mary before, so I didn't +look up--seemed to me I said it was Sarah; so I felt sort of cornered, +and was afeared maybe I was looking it, too. I wished the woman would +say something more; the longer she set still the uneasier I was. But now +she says: + +"Honey, I thought you said it was Sarah when you first come in?" + +"Oh, yes'm, I did. Sarah Mary Williams. Sarah's my first name. Some +calls me Sarah, some calls me Mary." + +"Oh, that's the way of it?" + +"Yes'm." + +I was feeling better then, but I wished I was out of there, anyway. I +couldn't look up yet. + +Well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor +they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned the +place, and so forth and so on, and then I got easy again. She was right +about the rats. You'd see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner +every little while. She said she had to have things handy to throw at +them when she was alone, or they wouldn't give her no peace. She showed +me a bar of lead twisted up into a knot, and said she was a good shot +with it generly, but she'd wrenched her arm a day or two ago, and didn't +know whether she could throw true now. But she watched for a chance, and +directly banged away at a rat; but she missed him wide, and said "Ouch!" +it hurt her arm so. Then she told me to try for the next one. I wanted +to be getting away before the old man got back, but of course I didn't +let on. I got the thing, and the first rat that showed his nose I let +drive, and if he'd a stayed where he was he'd a been a tolerable sick +rat. She said that was first-rate, and she reckoned I would hive the +next one. She went and got the lump of lead and fetched it back, and +brought along a hank of yarn which she wanted me to help her with. I +held up my two hands and she put the hank over them, and went on talking +about her and her husband's matters. But she broke off to say: + +"Keep your eye on the rats. You better have the lead in your lap, +handy." + +So she dropped the lump into my lap just at that moment, and I clapped my +legs together on it and she went on talking. But only about a minute. +Then she took off the hank and looked me straight in the face, and very +pleasant, and says: + +"Come, now, what's your real name?" + +"Wh--what, mum?" + +"What's your real name? Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob?--or what is it?" + +I reckon I shook like a leaf, and I didn't know hardly what to do. But I +says: + +"Please to don't poke fun at a poor girl like me, mum. If I'm in the way +here, I'll--" + +"No, you won't. Set down and stay where you are. I ain't going to hurt +you, and I ain't going to tell on you, nuther. You just tell me your +secret, and trust me. I'll keep it; and, what's more, I'll help you. +So'll my old man if you want him to. You see, you're a runaway +'prentice, that's all. It ain't anything. There ain't no harm in it. +You've been treated bad, and you made up your mind to cut. Bless you, +child, I wouldn't tell on you. Tell me all about it now, that's a good +boy." + +So I said it wouldn't be no use to try to play it any longer, and I would +just make a clean breast and tell her everything, but she musn't go back +on her promise. Then I told her my father and mother was dead, and the +law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty mile back +from the river, and he treated me so bad I couldn't stand it no longer; +he went away to be gone a couple of days, and so I took my chance and +stole some of his daughter's old clothes and cleared out, and I had been +three nights coming the thirty miles. I traveled nights, and hid +daytimes and slept, and the bag of bread and meat I carried from home +lasted me all the way, and I had a-plenty. I said I believed my uncle +Abner Moore would take care of me, and so that was why I struck out for +this town of Goshen. + +"Goshen, child? This ain't Goshen. This is St. Petersburg. Goshen's +ten mile further up the river. Who told you this was Goshen?" + +"Why, a man I met at daybreak this morning, just as I was going to turn +into the woods for my regular sleep. He told me when the roads forked I +must take the right hand, and five mile would fetch me to Goshen." + +"He was drunk, I reckon. He told you just exactly wrong." + +"Well, he did act like he was drunk, but it ain't no matter now. I got +to be moving along. I'll fetch Goshen before daylight." + +"Hold on a minute. I'll put you up a snack to eat. You might want it." + +So she put me up a snack, and says: + +"Say, when a cow's laying down, which end of her gets up first? Answer +up prompt now--don't stop to study over it. Which end gets up first?" + +"The hind end, mum." + +"Well, then, a horse?" + +"The for'rard end, mum." + +"Which side of a tree does the moss grow on?" + +"North side." + +"If fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with +their heads pointed the same direction?" + +"The whole fifteen, mum." + +"Well, I reckon you HAVE lived in the country. I thought maybe you was +trying to hocus me again. What's your real name, now?" + +"George Peters, mum." + +"Well, try to remember it, George. Don't forget and tell me it's +Elexander before you go, and then get out by saying it's George Elexander +when I catch you. And don't go about women in that old calico. You do a +girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe. Bless you, child, +when you set out to thread a needle don't hold the thread still and fetch +the needle up to it; hold the needle still and poke the thread at it; +that's the way a woman most always does, but a man always does t'other +way. And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tiptoe +and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss +your rat about six or seven foot. Throw stiff-armed from the shoulder, +like there was a pivot there for it to turn on, like a girl; not from the +wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side, like a boy. And, mind +you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees +apart; she don't clap them together, the way you did when you catched the +lump of lead. Why, I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the +needle; and I contrived the other things just to make certain. Now trot +along to your uncle, Sarah Mary Williams George Elexander Peters, and if +you get into trouble you send word to Mrs. Judith Loftus, which is me, +and I'll do what I can to get you out of it. Keep the river road all the +way, and next time you tramp take shoes and socks with you. The river +road's a rocky one, and your feet'll be in a condition when you get to +Goshen, I reckon." + +I went up the bank about fifty yards, and then I doubled on my tracks and +slipped back to where my canoe was, a good piece below the house. I +jumped in, and was off in a hurry. I went up-stream far enough to make +the head of the island, and then started across. I took off the +sun-bonnet, for I didn't want no blinders on then. When I was about the +middle I heard the clock begin to strike, so I stops and listens; the +sound come faint over the water but clear--eleven. When I struck the +head of the island I never waited to blow, though I was most winded, but +I shoved right into the timber where my old camp used to be, and started +a good fire there on a high and dry spot. + +Then I jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place, a mile and a half +below, as hard as I could go. I landed, and slopped through the timber +and up the ridge and into the cavern. There Jim laid, sound asleep on +the ground. I roused him out and says: + +"Git up and hump yourself, Jim! There ain't a minute to lose. They're +after us!" + +Jim never asked no questions, he never said a word; but the way he worked +for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared. By that time +everything we had in the world was on our raft, and she was ready to be +shoved out from the willow cove where she was hid. We put out the camp +fire at the cavern the first thing, and didn't show a candle outside +after that. + +I took the canoe out from the shore a little piece, and took a look; but +if there was a boat around I couldn't see it, for stars and shadows ain't +good to see by. Then we got out the raft and slipped along down in the +shade, past the foot of the island dead still--never saying a word. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +IT must a been close on to one o'clock when we got below the island at +last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. If a boat was to come +along we was going to take to the canoe and break for the Illinois shore; +and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever thought to put the +gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to eat. We was in +ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things. It warn't good +judgment to put EVERYTHING on the raft. + +If the men went to the island I just expect they found the camp fire I +built, and watched it all night for Jim to come. Anyways, they stayed +away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn't no +fault of mine. I played it as low down on them as I could. + +When the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a towhead in a +big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with +the hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there +had been a cave-in in the bank there. A tow-head is a sandbar that has +cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth. + +We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the Illinois +side, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place, so we +warn't afraid of anybody running across us. We laid there all day, and +watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and +up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. I told Jim all +about the time I had jabbering with that woman; and Jim said she was a +smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn't set down +and watch a camp fire--no, sir, she'd fetch a dog. Well, then, I said, +why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog? Jim said he bet she +did think of it by the time the men was ready to start, and he believed +they must a gone up-town to get a dog and so they lost all that time, or +else we wouldn't be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen mile below the +village--no, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. So I said +I didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us as long as they +didn't. + +When it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of the +cottonwood thicket, and looked up and down and across; nothing in sight; +so Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam +to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things dry. +Jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the +level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of reach +of steamboat waves. Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of +dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for to hold it +to its place; this was to build a fire on in sloppy weather or chilly; +the wigwam would keep it from being seen. We made an extra steering-oar, +too, because one of the others might get broke on a snag or something. +We fixed up a short forked stick to hang the old lantern on, because we +must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat coming +down-stream, to keep from getting run over; but we wouldn't have to light +it for up-stream boats unless we see we was in what they call a +"crossing"; for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being still +a little under water; so up-bound boats didn't always run the channel, +but hunted easy water. + +This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current +that was making over four mile an hour. We catched fish and talked, and +we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of +solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking +up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't +often that we laughed--only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had +mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us +at all--that night, nor the next, nor the next. + +Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides, +nothing but just a shiny bed of lights; not a house could you see. The +fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. +In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand +people in St. Louis, but I never believed it till I see that wonderful +spread of lights at two o'clock that still night. There warn't a sound +there; everybody was asleep. + +Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o'clock at some little +village, and buy ten or fifteen cents' worth of meal or bacon or other +stuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn't roosting +comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when +you get a chance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy +find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. I never see +pap when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to +say, anyway. + +Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a +watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of +that kind. Pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things if you was +meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn't anything +but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. Jim said +he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the +best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list +and say we wouldn't borrow them any more--then he reckoned it wouldn't be +no harm to borrow the others. So we talked it over all one night, +drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to +drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. But +towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to +drop crabapples and p'simmons. We warn't feeling just right before that, +but it was all comfortable now. I was glad the way it come out, too, +because crabapples ain't ever good, and the p'simmons wouldn't be ripe +for two or three months yet. + +We shot a water-fowl now and then that got up too early in the morning or +didn't go to bed early enough in the evening. Take it all round, we +lived pretty high. + +The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a +power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid +sheet. We stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself. +When the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, +and high, rocky bluffs on both sides. By and by says I, "Hel-LO, Jim, +looky yonder!" It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. We +was drifting straight down for her. The lightning showed her very +distinct. She was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above water, +and you could see every little chimbly-guy clean and clear, and a chair +by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it, when +the flashes come. + +Well, it being away in the night and stormy, and all so mysterious-like, +I felt just the way any other boy would a felt when I see that wreck +laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. I +wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what there +was there. So I says: + +"Le's land on her, Jim." + +But Jim was dead against it at first. He says: + +"I doan' want to go fool'n 'long er no wrack. We's doin' blame' well, en +we better let blame' well alone, as de good book says. Like as not dey's +a watchman on dat wrack." + +"Watchman your grandmother," I says; "there ain't nothing to watch but +the texas and the pilot-house; and do you reckon anybody's going to resk +his life for a texas and a pilot-house such a night as this, when it's +likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?" Jim couldn't +say nothing to that, so he didn't try. "And besides," I says, "we might +borrow something worth having out of the captain's stateroom. Seegars, I +bet you--and cost five cents apiece, solid cash. Steamboat captains is +always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and THEY don't care a cent +what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it. Stick a candle in +your pocket; I can't rest, Jim, till we give her a rummaging. Do you +reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn't. +He'd call it an adventure--that's what he'd call it; and he'd land on +that wreck if it was his last act. And wouldn't he throw style into it? +--wouldn't he spread himself, nor nothing? Why, you'd think it was +Christopher C'lumbus discovering Kingdom-Come. I wish Tom Sawyer WAS +here." + +Jim he grumbled a little, but give in. He said we mustn't talk any more +than we could help, and then talk mighty low. The lightning showed us +the wreck again just in time, and we fetched the stabboard derrick, and +made fast there. + +The deck was high out here. We went sneaking down the slope of it to +labboard, in the dark, towards the texas, feeling our way slow with our +feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so +dark we couldn't see no sign of them. Pretty soon we struck the forward +end of the skylight, and clumb on to it; and the next step fetched us in +front of the captain's door, which was open, and by Jimminy, away down +through the texas-hall we see a light! and all in the same second we seem +to hear low voices in yonder! + +Jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to come +along. I says, all right, and was going to start for the raft; but just +then I heard a voice wail out and say: + +"Oh, please don't, boys; I swear I won't ever tell!" + +Another voice said, pretty loud: + +"It's a lie, Jim Turner. You've acted this way before. You always want +more'n your share of the truck, and you've always got it, too, because +you've swore 't if you didn't you'd tell. But this time you've said it +jest one time too many. You're the meanest, treacherousest hound in this +country." + +By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was just a-biling with +curiosity; and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn't back out now, and so +I won't either; I'm a-going to see what's going on here. So I dropped on +my hands and knees in the little passage, and crept aft in the dark till +there warn't but one stateroom betwixt me and the cross-hall of the +texas. Then in there I see a man stretched on the floor and tied hand +and foot, and two men standing over him, and one of them had a dim +lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol. This one kept +pointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor, and saying: + +"I'd LIKE to! And I orter, too--a mean skunk!" + +The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, "Oh, please don't, Bill; I +hain't ever goin' to tell." + +And every time he said that the man with the lantern would laugh and say: + +"'Deed you AIN'T! You never said no truer thing 'n that, you bet you." +And once he said: "Hear him beg! and yit if we hadn't got the best of +him and tied him he'd a killed us both. And what FOR? Jist for noth'n. +Jist because we stood on our RIGHTS--that's what for. But I lay you +ain't a-goin' to threaten nobody any more, Jim Turner. Put UP that +pistol, Bill." + +Bill says: + +"I don't want to, Jake Packard. I'm for killin' him--and didn't he kill +old Hatfield jist the same way--and don't he deserve it?" + +"But I don't WANT him killed, and I've got my reasons for it." + +"Bless yo' heart for them words, Jake Packard! I'll never forgit you +long's I live!" says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering. + +Packard didn't take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on a nail +and started towards where I was there in the dark, and motioned Bill to +come. I crawfished as fast as I could about two yards, but the boat +slanted so that I couldn't make very good time; so to keep from getting +run over and catched I crawled into a stateroom on the upper side. The +man came a-pawing along in the dark, and when Packard got to my +stateroom, he says: + +"Here--come in here." + +And in he come, and Bill after him. But before they got in I was up in +the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there, with +their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. I couldn't see them, +but I could tell where they was by the whisky they'd been having. I was +glad I didn't drink whisky; but it wouldn't made much difference anyway, +because most of the time they couldn't a treed me because I didn't +breathe. I was too scared. And, besides, a body COULDN'T breathe and +hear such talk. They talked low and earnest. Bill wanted to kill +Turner. He says: + +"He's said he'll tell, and he will. If we was to give both our shares to +him NOW it wouldn't make no difference after the row and the way we've +served him. Shore's you're born, he'll turn State's evidence; now you +hear ME. I'm for putting him out of his troubles." + +"So'm I," says Packard, very quiet. + +"Blame it, I'd sorter begun to think you wasn't. Well, then, that's all +right. Le's go and do it." + +"Hold on a minute; I hain't had my say yit. You listen to me. +Shooting's good, but there's quieter ways if the thing's GOT to be done. +But what I say is this: it ain't good sense to go court'n around after a +halter if you can git at what you're up to in some way that's jist as +good and at the same time don't bring you into no resks. Ain't that so?" + +"You bet it is. But how you goin' to manage it this time?" + +"Well, my idea is this: we'll rustle around and gather up whatever +pickins we've overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and hide +the truck. Then we'll wait. Now I say it ain't a-goin' to be more'n two +hours befo' this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river. See? +He'll be drownded, and won't have nobody to blame for it but his own +self. I reckon that's a considerble sight better 'n killin' of him. I'm +unfavorable to killin' a man as long as you can git aroun' it; it ain't +good sense, it ain't good morals. Ain't I right?" + +"Yes, I reck'n you are. But s'pose she DON'T break up and wash off?" + +"Well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see, can't we?" + +"All right, then; come along." + +So they started, and I lit out, all in a cold sweat, and scrambled +forward. It was dark as pitch there; but I said, in a kind of a coarse +whisper, "Jim !" and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a +moan, and I says: + +"Quick, Jim, it ain't no time for fooling around and moaning; there's a +gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don't hunt up their boat and set +her drifting down the river so these fellows can't get away from the +wreck there's one of 'em going to be in a bad fix. But if we find their +boat we can put ALL of 'em in a bad fix--for the sheriff 'll get 'em. +Quick--hurry! I'll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard. +You start at the raft, and--" + +"Oh, my lordy, lordy! RAF'? Dey ain' no raf' no mo'; she done broke +loose en gone I--en here we is!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +WELL, I catched my breath and most fainted. Shut up on a wreck with such +a gang as that! But it warn't no time to be sentimentering. We'd GOT to +find that boat now--had to have it for ourselves. So we went a-quaking +and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was, too--seemed a +week before we got to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim said he didn't +believe he could go any further--so scared he hadn't hardly any strength +left, he said. But I said, come on, if we get left on this wreck we are +in a fix, sure. So on we prowled again. We struck for the stern of the +texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along forwards on the skylight, +hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the edge of the skylight was in +the water. When we got pretty close to the cross-hall door there was the +skiff, sure enough! I could just barely see her. I felt ever so +thankful. In another second I would a been aboard of her, but just then +the door opened. One of the men stuck his head out only about a couple +of foot from me, and I thought I was gone; but he jerked it in again, and +says: + +"Heave that blame lantern out o' sight, Bill!" + +He flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and +set down. It was Packard. Then Bill HE come out and got in. Packard +says, in a low voice: + +"All ready--shove off!" + +I couldn't hardly hang on to the shutters, I was so weak. But Bill says: + +"Hold on--'d you go through him?" + +"No. Didn't you?" + +"No. So he's got his share o' the cash yet." + +"Well, then, come along; no use to take truck and leave money." + +"Say, won't he suspicion what we're up to?" + +"Maybe he won't. But we got to have it anyway. Come along." + +So they got out and went in. + +The door slammed to because it was on the careened side; and in a half +second I was in the boat, and Jim come tumbling after me. I out with my +knife and cut the rope, and away we went! + +We didn't touch an oar, and we didn't speak nor whisper, nor hardly even +breathe. We went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the +paddle-box, and past the stern; then in a second or two more we was a +hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up, every last +sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it. + +When we was three or four hundred yards down-stream we see the lantern +show like a little spark at the texas door for a second, and we knowed by +that that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to +understand that they was in just as much trouble now as Jim Turner was. + +Then Jim manned the oars, and we took out after our raft. Now was the +first time that I begun to worry about the men--I reckon I hadn't had +time to before. I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for +murderers, to be in such a fix. I says to myself, there ain't no telling +but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would I like +it? So says I to Jim: + +"The first light we see we'll land a hundred yards below it or above it, +in a place where it's a good hiding-place for you and the skiff, and then +I'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for that +gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when their +time comes." + +But that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it begun to storm again, and +this time worse than ever. The rain poured down, and never a light +showed; everybody in bed, I reckon. We boomed along down the river, +watching for lights and watching for our raft. After a long time the +rain let up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering, +and by and by a flash showed us a black thing ahead, floating, and we +made for it. + +It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again. We +seen a light now away down to the right, on shore. So I said I would go +for it. The skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole +there on the wreck. We hustled it on to the raft in a pile, and I told +Jim to float along down, and show a light when he judged he had gone +about two mile, and keep it burning till I come; then I manned my oars +and shoved for the light. As I got down towards it three or four more +showed--up on a hillside. It was a village. I closed in above the shore +light, and laid on my oars and floated. As I went by I see it was a +lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double-hull ferryboat. I skimmed +around for the watchman, a-wondering whereabouts he slept; and by and by +I found him roosting on the bitts forward, with his head down between his +knees. I gave his shoulder two or three little shoves, and begun to cry. + +He stirred up in a kind of a startlish way; but when he see it was only +me he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says: + +"Hello, what's up? Don't cry, bub. What's the trouble?" + +I says: + +"Pap, and mam, and sis, and--" + +Then I broke down. He says: + +"Oh, dang it now, DON'T take on so; we all has to have our troubles, and +this 'n 'll come out all right. What's the matter with 'em?" + +"They're--they're--are you the watchman of the boat?" + +"Yes," he says, kind of pretty-well-satisfied like. "I'm the captain and +the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head deck-hand; and +sometimes I'm the freight and passengers. I ain't as rich as old Jim +Hornback, and I can't be so blame' generous and good to Tom, Dick, and +Harry as what he is, and slam around money the way he does; but I've told +him a many a time 't I wouldn't trade places with him; for, says I, a +sailor's life's the life for me, and I'm derned if I'D live two mile out +o' town, where there ain't nothing ever goin' on, not for all his +spondulicks and as much more on top of it. Says I--" + +I broke in and says: + +"They're in an awful peck of trouble, and--" + +"WHO is?" + +"Why, pap and mam and sis and Miss Hooker; and if you'd take your +ferryboat and go up there--" + +"Up where? Where are they?" + +"On the wreck." + +"What wreck?" + +"Why, there ain't but one." + +"What, you don't mean the Walter Scott?" + +"Yes." + +"Good land! what are they doin' THERE, for gracious sakes?" + +"Well, they didn't go there a-purpose." + +"I bet they didn't! Why, great goodness, there ain't no chance for 'em +if they don't git off mighty quick! Why, how in the nation did they ever +git into such a scrape?" + +"Easy enough. Miss Hooker was a-visiting up there to the town--" + +"Yes, Booth's Landing--go on." + +"She was a-visiting there at Booth's Landing, and just in the edge of the +evening she started over with her nigger woman in the horse-ferry to stay +all night at her friend's house, Miss What-you-may-call-her I disremember +her name--and they lost their steering-oar, and swung around and went +a-floating down, stern first, about two mile, and saddle-baggsed on the +wreck, and the ferryman and the nigger woman and the horses was all lost, +but Miss Hooker she made a grab and got aboard the wreck. Well, about an +hour after dark we come along down in our trading-scow, and it was so +dark we didn't notice the wreck till we was right on it; and so WE +saddle-baggsed; but all of us was saved but Bill Whipple--and oh, he WAS +the best cretur !--I most wish 't it had been me, I do." + +"My George! It's the beatenest thing I ever struck. And THEN what did +you all do?" + +"Well, we hollered and took on, but it's so wide there we couldn't make +nobody hear. So pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help +somehow. I was the only one that could swim, so I made a dash for it, and +Miss Hooker she said if I didn't strike help sooner, come here and hunt +up her uncle, and he'd fix the thing. I made the land about a mile +below, and been fooling along ever since, trying to get people to do +something, but they said, 'What, in such a night and such a current? +There ain't no sense in it; go for the steam ferry.' Now if you'll go +and--" + +"By Jackson, I'd LIKE to, and, blame it, I don't know but I will; but who +in the dingnation's a-going' to PAY for it? Do you reckon your pap--" + +"Why THAT'S all right. Miss Hooker she tole me, PARTICULAR, that her +uncle Hornback--" + +"Great guns! is HE her uncle? Looky here, you break for that light over +yonder-way, and turn out west when you git there, and about a quarter of +a mile out you'll come to the tavern; tell 'em to dart you out to Jim +Hornback's, and he'll foot the bill. And don't you fool around any, +because he'll want to know the news. Tell him I'll have his niece all +safe before he can get to town. Hump yourself, now; I'm a-going up +around the corner here to roust out my engineer." + +I struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner I went back +and got into my skiff and bailed her out, and then pulled up shore in the +easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among some +woodboats; for I couldn't rest easy till I could see the ferryboat start. +But take it all around, I was feeling ruther comfortable on accounts of +taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would a done it. I +wished the widow knowed about it. I judged she would be proud of me for +helping these rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead beats is the +kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in. + +Well, before long here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, sliding along +down! A kind of cold shiver went through me, and then I struck out for +her. She was very deep, and I see in a minute there warn't much chance +for anybody being alive in her. I pulled all around her and hollered a +little, but there wasn't any answer; all dead still. I felt a little bit +heavy-hearted about the gang, but not much, for I reckoned if they could +stand it I could. + +Then here comes the ferryboat; so I shoved for the middle of the river on +a long down-stream slant; and when I judged I was out of eye-reach I laid +on my oars, and looked back and see her go and smell around the wreck for +Miss Hooker's remainders, because the captain would know her uncle +Hornback would want them; and then pretty soon the ferryboat give it up +and went for the shore, and I laid into my work and went a-booming down +the river. + +It did seem a powerful long time before Jim's light showed up; and when +it did show it looked like it was a thousand mile off. By the time I got +there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the east; so we +struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the skiff, and turned in +and slept like dead people. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +BY and by, when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole +off of the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all +sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and three +boxes of seegars. We hadn't ever been this rich before in neither of our +lives. The seegars was prime. We laid off all the afternoon in the +woods talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good time. +I told Jim all about what happened inside the wreck and at the ferryboat, +and I said these kinds of things was adventures; but he said he didn't +want no more adventures. He said that when I went in the texas and he +crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone he nearly died, +because he judged it was all up with HIM anyway it could be fixed; for if +he didn't get saved he would get drownded; and if he did get saved, +whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward, and +then Miss Watson would sell him South, sure. Well, he was right; he was +most always right; he had an uncommon level head for a nigger. + +I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such, and +how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each +other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, 'stead +of mister; and Jim's eyes bugged out, and he was interested. He says: + +"I didn' know dey was so many un um. I hain't hearn 'bout none un um, +skasely, but ole King Sollermun, onless you counts dem kings dat's in a +pack er k'yards. How much do a king git?" + +"Get?" I says; "why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want +it; they can have just as much as they want; everything belongs to them." + +"AIN' dat gay? En what dey got to do, Huck?" + +"THEY don't do nothing! Why, how you talk! They just set around." + +"No; is dat so?" + +"Of course it is. They just set around--except, maybe, when there's a +war; then they go to the war. But other times they just lazy around; or +go hawking--just hawking and sp--Sh!--d' you hear a noise?" + +We skipped out and looked; but it warn't nothing but the flutter of a +steamboat's wheel away down, coming around the point; so we come back. + +"Yes," says I, "and other times, when things is dull, they fuss with the +parlyment; and if everybody don't go just so he whacks their heads off. +But mostly they hang round the harem." + +"Roun' de which?" + +"Harem." + +"What's de harem?" + +"The place where he keeps his wives. Don't you know about the harem? +Solomon had one; he had about a million wives." + +"Why, yes, dat's so; I--I'd done forgot it. A harem's a bo'd'n-house, I +reck'n. Mos' likely dey has rackety times in de nussery. En I reck'n de +wives quarrels considable; en dat 'crease de racket. Yit dey say +Sollermun de wises' man dat ever live'. I doan' take no stock in dat. +Bekase why: would a wise man want to live in de mids' er sich a +blim-blammin' all de time? No--'deed he wouldn't. A wise man 'ud take +en buil' a biler-factry; en den he could shet DOWN de biler-factry when +he want to res'." + +"Well, but he WAS the wisest man, anyway; because the widow she told me +so, her own self." + +"I doan k'yer what de widder say, he WARN'T no wise man nuther. He had +some er de dad-fetchedes' ways I ever see. Does you know 'bout dat chile +dat he 'uz gwyne to chop in two?" + +"Yes, the widow told me all about it." + +"WELL, den! Warn' dat de beatenes' notion in de worl'? You jes' take en +look at it a minute. Dah's de stump, dah--dat's one er de women; heah's +you--dat's de yuther one; I's Sollermun; en dish yer dollar bill's de +chile. Bofe un you claims it. What does I do? Does I shin aroun' +mongs' de neighbors en fine out which un you de bill DO b'long to, en +han' it over to de right one, all safe en soun', de way dat anybody dat +had any gumption would? No; I take en whack de bill in TWO, en give half +un it to you, en de yuther half to de yuther woman. Dat's de way +Sollermun was gwyne to do wid de chile. Now I want to ast you: what's +de use er dat half a bill?--can't buy noth'n wid it. En what use is a +half a chile? I wouldn' give a dern for a million un um." + +"But hang it, Jim, you've clean missed the point--blame it, you've missed +it a thousand mile." + +"Who? Me? Go 'long. Doan' talk to me 'bout yo' pints. I reck'n I +knows sense when I sees it; en dey ain' no sense in sich doin's as dat. +De 'spute warn't 'bout a half a chile, de 'spute was 'bout a whole chile; +en de man dat think he kin settle a 'spute 'bout a whole chile wid a half +a chile doan' know enough to come in out'n de rain. Doan' talk to me +'bout Sollermun, Huck, I knows him by de back." + +"But I tell you you don't get the point." + +"Blame de point! I reck'n I knows what I knows. En mine you, de REAL +pint is down furder--it's down deeper. It lays in de way Sollermun was +raised. You take a man dat's got on'y one or two chillen; is dat man +gwyne to be waseful o' chillen? No, he ain't; he can't 'ford it. HE +know how to value 'em. But you take a man dat's got 'bout five million +chillen runnin' roun' de house, en it's diffunt. HE as soon chop a chile +in two as a cat. Dey's plenty mo'. A chile er two, mo' er less, warn't +no consekens to Sollermun, dad fatch him!" + +I never see such a nigger. If he got a notion in his head once, there +warn't no getting it out again. He was the most down on Solomon of any +nigger I ever see. So I went to talking about other kings, and let +Solomon slide. I told about Louis Sixteenth that got his head cut off in +France long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that would a +been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died +there. + +"Po' little chap." + +"But some says he got out and got away, and come to America." + +"Dat's good! But he'll be pooty lonesome--dey ain' no kings here, is +dey, Huck?" + +"No." + +"Den he cain't git no situation. What he gwyne to do?" + +"Well, I don't know. Some of them gets on the police, and some of them +learns people how to talk French." + +"Why, Huck, doan' de French people talk de same way we does?" + +"NO, Jim; you couldn't understand a word they said--not a single word." + +"Well, now, I be ding-busted! How do dat come?" + +"I don't know; but it's so. I got some of their jabber out of a book. +S'pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy--what would you +think?" + +"I wouldn' think nuff'n; I'd take en bust him over de head--dat is, if he +warn't white. I wouldn't 'low no nigger to call me dat." + +"Shucks, it ain't calling you anything. It's only saying, do you know +how to talk French?" + +"Well, den, why couldn't he SAY it?" + +"Why, he IS a-saying it. That's a Frenchman's WAY of saying it." + +"Well, it's a blame ridicklous way, en I doan' want to hear no mo' 'bout +it. Dey ain' no sense in it." + +"Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?" + +"No, a cat don't." + +"Well, does a cow?" + +"No, a cow don't, nuther." + +"Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?" + +"No, dey don't." + +"It's natural and right for 'em to talk different from each other, ain't +it?" + +"Course." + +"And ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different +from US?" + +"Why, mos' sholy it is." + +"Well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a FRENCHMAN to talk +different from us? You answer me that." + +"Is a cat a man, Huck?" + +"No." + +"Well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man. Is a cow a +man?--er is a cow a cat?" + +"No, she ain't either of them." + +"Well, den, she ain't got no business to talk like either one er the +yuther of 'em. Is a Frenchman a man?" + +"Yes." + +"WELL, den! Dad blame it, why doan' he TALK like a man? You answer me +DAT!" + +I see it warn't no use wasting words--you can't learn a nigger to argue. +So I quit. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +WE judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom +of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what we was +after. We would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the +Ohio amongst the free States, and then be out of trouble. + +Well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and we made for a towhead +to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog; but when I paddled +ahead in the canoe, with the line to make fast, there warn't anything but +little saplings to tie to. I passed the line around one of them right on +the edge of the cut bank, but there was a stiff current, and the raft +come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she +went. I see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and scared I +couldn't budge for most a half a minute it seemed to me--and then there +warn't no raft in sight; you couldn't see twenty yards. I jumped into +the canoe and run back to the stern, and grabbed the paddle and set her +back a stroke. But she didn't come. I was in such a hurry I hadn't +untied her. I got up and tried to untie her, but I was so excited my +hands shook so I couldn't hardly do anything with them. + +As soon as I got started I took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right +down the towhead. That was all right as far as it went, but the towhead +warn't sixty yards long, and the minute I flew by the foot of it I shot +out into the solid white fog, and hadn't no more idea which way I was +going than a dead man. + +Thinks I, it won't do to paddle; first I know I'll run into the bank or a +towhead or something; I got to set still and float, and yet it's mighty +fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a time. I +whooped and listened. Away down there somewheres I hears a small whoop, +and up comes my spirits. I went tearing after it, listening sharp to +hear it again. The next time it come I see I warn't heading for it, but +heading away to the right of it. And the next time I was heading away to +the left of it--and not gaining on it much either, for I was flying +around, this way and that and t'other, but it was going straight ahead +all the time. + +I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the +time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops +that was making the trouble for me. Well, I fought along, and directly I +hears the whoop BEHIND me. I was tangled good now. That was somebody +else's whoop, or else I was turned around. + +I throwed the paddle down. I heard the whoop again; it was behind me +yet, but in a different place; it kept coming, and kept changing its +place, and I kept answering, till by and by it was in front of me again, +and I knowed the current had swung the canoe's head down-stream, and I +was all right if that was Jim and not some other raftsman hollering. I +couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog, for nothing don't look +natural nor sound natural in a fog. + +The whooping went on, and in about a minute I come a-booming down on a +cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed me +off to the left and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared, +the currrent was tearing by them so swift. + +In another second or two it was solid white and still again. I set +perfectly still then, listening to my heart thump, and I reckon I didn't +draw a breath while it thumped a hundred. + +I just give up then. I knowed what the matter was. That cut bank was an +island, and Jim had gone down t'other side of it. It warn't no towhead +that you could float by in ten minutes. It had the big timber of a +regular island; it might be five or six miles long and more than half a +mile wide. + +I kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, I reckon. I +was floating along, of course, four or five miles an hour; but you don't +ever think of that. No, you FEEL like you are laying dead still on the +water; and if a little glimpse of a snag slips by you don't think to +yourself how fast YOU'RE going, but you catch your breath and think, my! +how that snag's tearing along. If you think it ain't dismal and lonesome +out in a fog that way by yourself in the night, you try it once--you'll +see. + +Next, for about a half an hour, I whoops now and then; at last I hears +the answer a long ways off, and tries to follow it, but I couldn't do it, +and directly I judged I'd got into a nest of towheads, for I had little +dim glimpses of them on both sides of me--sometimes just a narrow channel +between, and some that I couldn't see I knowed was there because I'd hear +the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung +over the banks. Well, I warn't long loosing the whoops down amongst the +towheads; and I only tried to chase them a little while, anyway, because +it was worse than chasing a Jack-o'-lantern. You never knowed a sound +dodge around so, and swap places so quick and so much. + +I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times, to +keep from knocking the islands out of the river; and so I judged the raft +must be butting into the bank every now and then, or else it would get +further ahead and clear out of hearing--it was floating a little faster +than what I was. + +Well, I seemed to be in the open river again by and by, but I couldn't +hear no sign of a whoop nowheres. I reckoned Jim had fetched up on a +snag, maybe, and it was all up with him. I was good and tired, so I laid +down in the canoe and said I wouldn't bother no more. I didn't want to +go to sleep, of course; but I was so sleepy I couldn't help it; so I +thought I would take jest one little cat-nap. + +But I reckon it was more than a cat-nap, for when I waked up the stars +was shining bright, the fog was all gone, and I was spinning down a big +bend stern first. First I didn't know where I was; I thought I was +dreaming; and when things began to come back to me they seemed to come up +dim out of last week. + +It was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and the thickest kind +of timber on both banks; just a solid wall, as well as I could see by the +stars. I looked away down-stream, and seen a black speck on the water. +I took after it; but when I got to it it warn't nothing but a couple of +sawlogs made fast together. Then I see another speck, and chased that; +then another, and this time I was right. It was the raft. + +When I got to it Jim was setting there with his head down between his +knees, asleep, with his right arm hanging over the steering-oar. The +other oar was smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves and +branches and dirt. So she'd had a rough time. + +I made fast and laid down under Jim's nose on the raft, and began to gap, +and stretch my fists out against Jim, and says: + +"Hello, Jim, have I been asleep? Why didn't you stir me up?" + +"Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En you ain' dead--you ain' +drownded--you's back agin? It's too good for true, honey, it's too +good for true. Lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o' you. No, you ain' +dead! you's back agin, 'live en soun', jis de same ole Huck--de same ole +Huck, thanks to goodness!" + +"What's the matter with you, Jim? You been a-drinking?" + +"Drinkin'? Has I ben a-drinkin'? Has I had a chance to be a-drinkin'?" + +"Well, then, what makes you talk so wild?" + +"How does I talk wild?" + +"HOW? Why, hain't you been talking about my coming back, and all that +stuff, as if I'd been gone away?" + +"Huck--Huck Finn, you look me in de eye; look me in de eye. HAIN'T you +ben gone away?" + +"Gone away? Why, what in the nation do you mean? I hain't been gone +anywheres. Where would I go to?" + +"Well, looky here, boss, dey's sumf'n wrong, dey is. Is I ME, or who IS +I? Is I heah, or whah IS I? Now dat's what I wants to know." + +"Well, I think you're here, plain enough, but I think you're a +tangle-headed old fool, Jim." + +"I is, is I? Well, you answer me dis: Didn't you tote out de line in de +canoe fer to make fas' to de tow-head?" + +"No, I didn't. What tow-head? I hain't see no tow-head." + +"You hain't seen no towhead? Looky here, didn't de line pull loose en de +raf' go a-hummin' down de river, en leave you en de canoe behine in de +fog?" + +"What fog?" + +"Why, de fog!--de fog dat's been aroun' all night. En didn't you whoop, +en didn't I whoop, tell we got mix' up in de islands en one un us got +los' en t'other one was jis' as good as los', 'kase he didn' know whah he +wuz? En didn't I bust up agin a lot er dem islands en have a turrible +time en mos' git drownded? Now ain' dat so, boss--ain't it so? You +answer me dat." + +"Well, this is too many for me, Jim. I hain't seen no fog, nor no +islands, nor no troubles, nor nothing. I been setting here talking with +you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and I reckon +I done the same. You couldn't a got drunk in that time, so of course +you've been dreaming." + +"Dad fetch it, how is I gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes?" + +"Well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn't any of it +happen." + +"But, Huck, it's all jis' as plain to me as--" + +"It don't make no difference how plain it is; there ain't nothing in it. +I know, because I've been here all the time." + +Jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but set there studying +over it. Then he says: + +"Well, den, I reck'n I did dream it, Huck; but dog my cats ef it ain't de +powerfullest dream I ever see. En I hain't ever had no dream b'fo' dat's +tired me like dis one." + +"Oh, well, that's all right, because a dream does tire a body like +everything sometimes. But this one was a staving dream; tell me all +about it, Jim." + +So Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as it +happened, only he painted it up considerable. Then he said he must start +in and "'terpret" it, because it was sent for a warning. He said the +first towhead stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the +current was another man that would get us away from him. The whoops was +warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn't try +hard to make out to understand them they'd just take us into bad luck, +'stead of keeping us out of it. The lot of towheads was troubles we was +going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks, +but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them, we +would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river, +which was the free States, and wouldn't have no more trouble. + +It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got on to the raft, but it was +clearing up again now. + +"Oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim," I +says; "but what does THESE things stand for?" + +It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar. You could +see them first-rate now. + +Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash +again. He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't +seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right +away. But when he did get the thing straightened around he looked at me +steady without ever smiling, and says: + +"What do dey stan' for? I'se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out +wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos' +broke bekase you wuz los', en I didn' k'yer no' mo' what become er me en +de raf'. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun', de +tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo' foot, I's so +thankful. En all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv +ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is TRASH; en trash is what people is +dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em ashamed." + +Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without +saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean +I could almost kissed HIS foot to get him to take it back. + +It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble +myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it +afterwards, neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't +done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +WE slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a +monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession. She had +four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty +men, likely. She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open +camp fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end. There was a +power of style about her. It AMOUNTED to something being a raftsman on +such a craft as that. + +We went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded up and got +hot. The river was very wide, and was walled with solid timber on both +sides; you couldn't see a break in it hardly ever, or a light. We talked +about Cairo, and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it. I +said likely we wouldn't, because I had heard say there warn't but about a +dozen houses there, and if they didn't happen to have them lit up, how +was we going to know we was passing a town? Jim said if the two big +rivers joined together there, that would show. But I said maybe we might +think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old +river again. That disturbed Jim--and me too. So the question was, what +to do? I said, paddle ashore the first time a light showed, and tell +them pap was behind, coming along with a trading-scow, and was a green +hand at the business, and wanted to know how far it was to Cairo. Jim +thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and waited. + +There warn't nothing to do now but to look out sharp for the town, and +not pass it without seeing it. He said he'd be mighty sure to see it, +because he'd be a free man the minute he seen it, but if he missed it +he'd be in a slave country again and no more show for freedom. Every +little while he jumps up and says: + +"Dah she is?" + +But it warn't. It was Jack-o'-lanterns, or lightning bugs; so he set +down again, and went to watching, same as before. Jim said it made him +all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. Well, I can +tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, +because I begun to get it through my head that he WAS most free--and who +was to blame for it? Why, ME. I couldn't get that out of my conscience, +no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn't rest; I couldn't +stay still in one place. It hadn't ever come home to me before, what +this thing was that I was doing. But now it did; and it stayed with me, +and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out to myself that I +warn't to blame, because I didn't run Jim off from his rightful owner; +but it warn't no use, conscience up and says, every time, "But you knowed +he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told +somebody." That was so--I couldn't get around that noway. That was +where it pinched. Conscience says to me, "What had poor Miss Watson done +to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and +never say one single word? What did that poor old woman do to you that +you could treat her so mean? Why, she tried to learn you your book, she +tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way +she knowed how. THAT'S what she done." + +I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead. I +fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and Jim was +fidgeting up and down past me. We neither of us could keep still. Every +time he danced around and says, "Dah's Cairo!" it went through me like a +shot, and I thought if it WAS Cairo I reckoned I would die of +miserableness. + +Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was +saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he +would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he +got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to +where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two +children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an +Ab'litionist to go and steal them. + +It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn't ever dared to talk such +talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in him the +minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the old saying, +"Give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ell." Thinks I, this is what +comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger, which I had as good as +helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would +steal his children--children that belonged to a man I didn't even know; a +man that hadn't ever done me no harm. + +I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. My +conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says +to it, "Let up on me--it ain't too late yet--I'll paddle ashore at the +first light and tell." I felt easy and happy and light as a feather +right off. All my troubles was gone. I went to looking out sharp for a +light, and sort of singing to myself. By and by one showed. Jim sings +out: + +"We's safe, Huck, we's safe! Jump up and crack yo' heels! Dat's de good +ole Cairo at las', I jis knows it!" + +I says: + +"I'll take the canoe and go and see, Jim. It mightn't be, you know." + +He jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom for +me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as I shoved off, he says: + +"Pooty soon I'll be a-shout'n' for joy, en I'll say, it's all on accounts +o' Huck; I's a free man, en I couldn't ever ben free ef it hadn' ben for +Huck; Huck done it. Jim won't ever forgit you, Huck; you's de bes' fren' +Jim's ever had; en you's de ONLY fren' ole Jim's got now." + +I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, +it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. I went along slow +then, and I warn't right down certain whether I was glad I started or +whether I warn't. When I was fifty yards off, Jim says: + +"Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his +promise to ole Jim." + +Well, I just felt sick. But I says, I GOT to do it--I can't get OUT of +it. Right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns, and +they stopped and I stopped. One of them says: + +"What's that yonder?" + +"A piece of a raft," I says. + +"Do you belong on it?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Any men on it?" + +"Only one, sir." + +"Well, there's five niggers run off to-night up yonder, above the head of +the bend. Is your man white or black?" + +I didn't answer up prompt. I tried to, but the words wouldn't come. I +tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but I warn't man +enough--hadn't the spunk of a rabbit. I see I was weakening; so I just +give up trying, and up and says: + +"He's white." + +"I reckon we'll go and see for ourselves." + +"I wish you would," says I, "because it's pap that's there, and maybe +you'd help me tow the raft ashore where the light is. He's sick--and so +is mam and Mary Ann." + +"Oh, the devil! we're in a hurry, boy. But I s'pose we've got to. Come, +buckle to your paddle, and let's get along." + +I buckled to my paddle and they laid to their oars. When we had made a +stroke or two, I says: + +"Pap'll be mighty much obleeged to you, I can tell you. Everybody goes +away when I want them to help me tow the raft ashore, and I can't do it +by myself." + +"Well, that's infernal mean. Odd, too. Say, boy, what's the matter with +your father?" + +"It's the--a--the--well, it ain't anything much." + +They stopped pulling. It warn't but a mighty little ways to the raft +now. One says: + +"Boy, that's a lie. What IS the matter with your pap? Answer up square +now, and it'll be the better for you." + +"I will, sir, I will, honest--but don't leave us, please. It's the--the +--Gentlemen, if you'll only pull ahead, and let me heave you the +headline, you won't have to come a-near the raft--please do." + +"Set her back, John, set her back!" says one. They backed water. "Keep +away, boy--keep to looard. Confound it, I just expect the wind has +blowed it to us. Your pap's got the small-pox, and you know it precious +well. Why didn't you come out and say so? Do you want to spread it all +over?" + +"Well," says I, a-blubbering, "I've told everybody before, and they just +went away and left us." + +"Poor devil, there's something in that. We are right down sorry for you, +but we--well, hang it, we don't want the small-pox, you see. Look here, +I'll tell you what to do. Don't you try to land by yourself, or you'll +smash everything to pieces. You float along down about twenty miles, and +you'll come to a town on the left-hand side of the river. It will be +long after sun-up then, and when you ask for help you tell them your +folks are all down with chills and fever. Don't be a fool again, and let +people guess what is the matter. Now we're trying to do you a kindness; +so you just put twenty miles between us, that's a good boy. It wouldn't +do any good to land yonder where the light is--it's only a wood-yard. +Say, I reckon your father's poor, and I'm bound to say he's in pretty +hard luck. Here, I'll put a twenty-dollar gold piece on this board, and +you get it when it floats by. I feel mighty mean to leave you; but my +kingdom! it won't do to fool with small-pox, don't you see?" + +"Hold on, Parker," says the other man, "here's a twenty to put on the +board for me. Good-bye, boy; you do as Mr. Parker told you, and you'll +be all right." + +"That's so, my boy--good-bye, good-bye. If you see any runaway niggers +you get help and nab them, and you can make some money by it." + +"Good-bye, sir," says I; "I won't let no runaway niggers get by me if I +can help it." + +They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I +knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no use for me to +try to learn to do right; a body that don't get STARTED right when he's +little ain't got no show--when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to +back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I +thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s'pose you'd a done right +and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, +I'd feel bad--I'd feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, +what's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right +and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was +stuck. I couldn't answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn't bother no more +about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time. + +I went into the wigwam; Jim warn't there. I looked all around; he warn't +anywhere. I says: + +"Jim!" + +"Here I is, Huck. Is dey out o' sight yit? Don't talk loud." + +He was in the river under the stern oar, with just his nose out. I told +him they were out of sight, so he come aboard. He says: + +"I was a-listenin' to all de talk, en I slips into de river en was gwyne +to shove for sho' if dey come aboard. Den I was gwyne to swim to de raf' +agin when dey was gone. But lawsy, how you did fool 'em, Huck! Dat WUZ +de smartes' dodge! I tell you, chile, I'spec it save' ole Jim--ole Jim +ain't going to forgit you for dat, honey." + +Then we talked about the money. It was a pretty good raise--twenty +dollars apiece. Jim said we could take deck passage on a steamboat now, +and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go in the free States. +He said twenty mile more warn't far for the raft to go, but he wished we +was already there. + +Towards daybreak we tied up, and Jim was mighty particular about hiding +the raft good. Then he worked all day fixing things in bundles, and +getting all ready to quit rafting. + +That night about ten we hove in sight of the lights of a town away down +in a left-hand bend. + +I went off in the canoe to ask about it. Pretty soon I found a man out +in the river with a skiff, setting a trot-line. I ranged up and says: + +"Mister, is that town Cairo?" + +"Cairo? no. You must be a blame' fool." + +"What town is it, mister?" + +"If you want to know, go and find out. If you stay here botherin' around +me for about a half a minute longer you'll get something you won't want." + +I paddled to the raft. Jim was awful disappointed, but I said never +mind, Cairo would be the next place, I reckoned. + +We passed another town before daylight, and I was going out again; but it +was high ground, so I didn't go. No high ground about Cairo, Jim said. +I had forgot it. We laid up for the day on a towhead tolerable close to +the left-hand bank. I begun to suspicion something. So did Jim. I +says: + +"Maybe we went by Cairo in the fog that night." + +He says: + +"Doan' le's talk about it, Huck. Po' niggers can't have no luck. I +awluz 'spected dat rattlesnake-skin warn't done wid its work." + +"I wish I'd never seen that snake-skin, Jim--I do wish I'd never laid +eyes on it." + +"It ain't yo' fault, Huck; you didn' know. Don't you blame yo'self 'bout +it." + +When it was daylight, here was the clear Ohio water inshore, sure enough, +and outside was the old regular Muddy! So it was all up with Cairo. + +We talked it all over. It wouldn't do to take to the shore; we couldn't +take the raft up the stream, of course. There warn't no way but to wait +for dark, and start back in the canoe and take the chances. So we slept +all day amongst the cottonwood thicket, so as to be fresh for the work, +and when we went back to the raft about dark the canoe was gone! + +We didn't say a word for a good while. There warn't anything to say. We +both knowed well enough it was some more work of the rattlesnake-skin; so +what was the use to talk about it? It would only look like we was +finding fault, and that would be bound to fetch more bad luck--and keep +on fetching it, too, till we knowed enough to keep still. + +By and by we talked about what we better do, and found there warn't no +way but just to go along down with the raft till we got a chance to buy a +canoe to go back in. We warn't going to borrow it when there warn't +anybody around, the way pap would do, for that might set people after us. + +So we shoved out after dark on the raft. + +Anybody that don't believe yet that it's foolishness to handle a +snake-skin, after all that that snake-skin done for us, will believe +it now if they read on and see what more it done for us. + +The place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying up at shore. But we +didn't see no rafts laying up; so we went along during three hours and +more. Well, the night got gray and ruther thick, which is the next +meanest thing to fog. You can't tell the shape of the river, and you +can't see no distance. It got to be very late and still, and then along +comes a steamboat up the river. We lit the lantern, and judged she would +see it. Up-stream boats didn't generly come close to us; they go out and +follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the reefs; but nights like +this they bull right up the channel against the whole river. + +We could hear her pounding along, but we didn't see her good till she was +close. She aimed right for us. Often they do that and try to see how +close they can come without touching; sometimes the wheel bites off a +sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs, and thinks he's +mighty smart. Well, here she comes, and we said she was going to try and +shave us; but she didn't seem to be sheering off a bit. She was a big +one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking like a black cloud with +rows of glow-worms around it; but all of a sudden she bulged out, big and +scary, with a long row of wide-open furnace doors shining like red-hot +teeth, and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right over us. There +was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the engines, a powwow +of cussing, and whistling of steam--and as Jim went overboard on one side +and I on the other, she come smashing straight through the raft. + +I dived--and I aimed to find the bottom, too, for a thirty-foot wheel had +got to go over me, and I wanted it to have plenty of room. I could +always stay under water a minute; this time I reckon I stayed under a +minute and a half. Then I bounced for the top in a hurry, for I was +nearly busting. I popped out to my armpits and blowed the water out of +my nose, and puffed a bit. Of course there was a booming current; and of +course that boat started her engines again ten seconds after she stopped +them, for they never cared much for raftsmen; so now she was churning +along up the river, out of sight in the thick weather, though I could +hear her. + +I sung out for Jim about a dozen times, but I didn't get any answer; so I +grabbed a plank that touched me while I was "treading water," and struck +out for shore, shoving it ahead of me. But I made out to see that the +drift of the current was towards the left-hand shore, which meant that I +was in a crossing; so I changed off and went that way. + +It was one of these long, slanting, two-mile crossings; so I was a good +long time in getting over. I made a safe landing, and clumb up the bank. +I couldn't see but a little ways, but I went poking along over rough +ground for a quarter of a mile or more, and then I run across a big +old-fashioned double log-house before I noticed it. I was going to rush +by and get away, but a lot of dogs jumped out and went to howling and +barking at me, and I knowed better than to move another peg. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +IN about a minute somebody spoke out of a window without putting his head +out, and says: + +"Be done, boys! Who's there?" + +I says: + +"It's me." + +"Who's me?" + +"George Jackson, sir." + +"What do you want?" + +"I don't want nothing, sir. I only want to go along by, but the dogs +won't let me." + +"What are you prowling around here this time of night for--hey?" + +"I warn't prowling around, sir, I fell overboard off of the steamboat." + +"Oh, you did, did you? Strike a light there, somebody. What did you say +your name was?" + +"George Jackson, sir. I'm only a boy." + +"Look here, if you're telling the truth you needn't be afraid--nobody'll +hurt you. But don't try to budge; stand right where you are. Rouse out +Bob and Tom, some of you, and fetch the guns. George Jackson, is there +anybody with you?" + +"No, sir, nobody." + +I heard the people stirring around in the house now, and see a light. +The man sung out: + +"Snatch that light away, Betsy, you old fool--ain't you got any sense? +Put it on the floor behind the front door. Bob, if you and Tom are +ready, take your places." + +"All ready." + +"Now, George Jackson, do you know the Shepherdsons?" + +"No, sir; I never heard of them." + +"Well, that may be so, and it mayn't. Now, all ready. Step forward, +George Jackson. And mind, don't you hurry--come mighty slow. If there's +anybody with you, let him keep back--if he shows himself he'll be shot. +Come along now. Come slow; push the door open yourself--just enough to +squeeze in, d' you hear?" + +I didn't hurry; I couldn't if I'd a wanted to. I took one slow step at a +time and there warn't a sound, only I thought I could hear my heart. The +dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed a little behind me. +When I got to the three log doorsteps I heard them unlocking and +unbarring and unbolting. I put my hand on the door and pushed it a +little and a little more till somebody said, "There, that's enough--put +your head in." I done it, but I judged they would take it off. + +The candle was on the floor, and there they all was, looking at me, and +me at them, for about a quarter of a minute: Three big men with guns +pointed at me, which made me wince, I tell you; the oldest, gray and +about sixty, the other two thirty or more--all of them fine and handsome +--and the sweetest old gray-headed lady, and back of her two young women +which I couldn't see right well. The old gentleman says: + +"There; I reckon it's all right. Come in." + +As soon as I was in the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it +and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and +they all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor, and +got together in a corner that was out of the range of the front windows +--there warn't none on the side. They held the candle, and took a good +look at me, and all said, "Why, HE ain't a Shepherdson--no, there ain't +any Shepherdson about him." Then the old man said he hoped I wouldn't +mind being searched for arms, because he didn't mean no harm by it--it +was only to make sure. So he didn't pry into my pockets, but only felt +outside with his hands, and said it was all right. He told me to make +myself easy and at home, and tell all about myself; but the old lady +says: + +"Why, bless you, Saul, the poor thing's as wet as he can be; and don't +you reckon it may be he's hungry?" + +"True for you, Rachel--I forgot." + +So the old lady says: + +"Betsy" (this was a nigger woman), "you fly around and get him something +to eat as quick as you can, poor thing; and one of you girls go and wake +up Buck and tell him--oh, here he is himself. Buck, take this little +stranger and get the wet clothes off from him and dress him up in some of +yours that's dry." + +Buck looked about as old as me--thirteen or fourteen or along there, +though he was a little bigger than me. He hadn't on anything but a +shirt, and he was very frowzy-headed. He came in gaping and digging one +fist into his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other one. +He says: + +"Ain't they no Shepherdsons around?" + +They said, no, 'twas a false alarm. + +"Well," he says, "if they'd a ben some, I reckon I'd a got one." + +They all laughed, and Bob says: + +"Why, Buck, they might have scalped us all, you've been so slow in +coming." + +"Well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right I'm always kept down; I +don't get no show." + +"Never mind, Buck, my boy," says the old man, "you'll have show enough, +all in good time, don't you fret about that. Go 'long with you now, and +do as your mother told you." + +When we got up-stairs to his room he got me a coarse shirt and a +roundabout and pants of his, and I put them on. While I was at it he +asked me what my name was, but before I could tell him he started to tell +me about a bluejay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods day +before yesterday, and he asked me where Moses was when the candle went +out. I said I didn't know; I hadn't heard about it before, no way. + +"Well, guess," he says. + +"How'm I going to guess," says I, "when I never heard tell of it before?" + +"But you can guess, can't you? It's just as easy." + +"WHICH candle?" I says. + +"Why, any candle," he says. + +"I don't know where he was," says I; "where was he?" + +"Why, he was in the DARK! That's where he was!" + +"Well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?" + +"Why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see? Say, how long are you +going to stay here? You got to stay always. We can just have booming +times--they don't have no school now. Do you own a dog? I've got a +dog--and he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in. Do +you like to comb up Sundays, and all that kind of foolishness? You bet I +don't, but ma she makes me. Confound these ole britches! I reckon I'd +better put 'em on, but I'd ruther not, it's so warm. Are you all ready? +All right. Come along, old hoss." + +Cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and buttermilk--that is what they +had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever I've come +across yet. Buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes, except the +nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young women. They all smoked +and talked, and I eat and talked. The young women had quilts around +them, and their hair down their backs. They all asked me questions, and +I told them how pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm +down at the bottom of Arkansaw, and my sister Mary Ann run off and got +married and never was heard of no more, and Bill went to hunt them and he +warn't heard of no more, and Tom and Mort died, and then there warn't +nobody but just me and pap left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing, +on account of his troubles; so when he died I took what there was left, +because the farm didn't belong to us, and started up the river, deck +passage, and fell overboard; and that was how I come to be here. So they +said I could have a home there as long as I wanted it. Then it was most +daylight and everybody went to bed, and I went to bed with Buck, and when +I waked up in the morning, drat it all, I had forgot what my name was. +So I laid there about an hour trying to think, and when Buck waked up I +says: + +"Can you spell, Buck?" + +"Yes," he says. + +"I bet you can't spell my name," says I. + +"I bet you what you dare I can," says he. + +"All right," says I, "go ahead." + +"G-e-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n--there now," he says. + +"Well," says I, "you done it, but I didn't think you could. It ain't no +slouch of a name to spell--right off without studying." + +I set it down, private, because somebody might want ME to spell it next, +and so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was used to +it. + +It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too. I hadn't seen +no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much +style. It didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one +with a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, the same as houses in +town. There warn't no bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed; but heaps +of parlors in towns has beds in them. There was a big fireplace that was +bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring +water on them and scrubbing them with another brick; sometimes they wash +them over with red water-paint that they call Spanish-brown, same as they +do in town. They had big brass dog-irons that could hold up a saw-log. +There was a clock on the middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a +town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in +the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swinging +behind it. It was beautiful to hear that clock tick; and sometimes when +one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in +good shape, she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she +got tuckered out. They wouldn't took any money for her. + +Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made +out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. By one of the parrots +was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other; and when you +pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn't open their mouths nor look +different nor interested. They squeaked through underneath. There was a +couple of big wild-turkey-wing fans spread out behind those things. On +the table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery +basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it, +which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is, but +they warn't real because you could see where pieces had got chipped off +and showed the white chalk, or whatever it was, underneath. + +This table had a cover made out of beautiful oilcloth, with a red and +blue spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. It +come all the way from Philadelphia, they said. There was some books, +too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. One was a +big family Bible full of pictures. One was Pilgrim's Progress, about a +man that left his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it +now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough. Another was +Friendship's Offering, full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but I didn't +read the poetry. Another was Henry Clay's Speeches, and another was Dr. +Gunn's Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was +sick or dead. There was a hymn book, and a lot of other books. And +there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound, too--not bagged +down in the middle and busted, like an old basket. + +They had pictures hung on the walls--mainly Washingtons and Lafayettes, +and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called "Signing the +Declaration." There was some that they called crayons, which one of the +daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen +years old. They was different from any pictures I ever see before +--blacker, mostly, than is common. One was a woman in a slim black dress, +belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle +of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, +and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black +slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on +her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down +her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the +picture it said "Shall I Never See Thee More Alas." Another one was a +young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, +and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was +crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her +other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "I Shall +Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas." There was one where a young +lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her +cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing wax +showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to +it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "And Art Thou +Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas." These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but +I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a +little they always give me the fan-tods. Everybody was sorry she died, +because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body +could see by what she had done what they had lost. But I reckoned that +with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard. She +was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took +sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to +live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. It was a +picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a +bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and +looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had +two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, +and two more reaching up towards the moon--and the idea was to see which +pair would look best, and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as I +was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept +this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her +birthday come they hung flowers on it. Other times it was hid with a +little curtain. The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice +sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery, +seemed to me. + +This young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste +obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the +Presbyterian Observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head. +It was very good poetry. This is what she wrote about a boy by the name +of Stephen Dowling Bots that fell down a well and was drownded: + +ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC'D + +And did young Stephen sicken, And did young Stephen die? And did the sad +hearts thicken, And did the mourners cry? + +No; such was not the fate of Young Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad +hearts round him thickened, 'Twas not from sickness' shots. + +No whooping-cough did rack his frame, Nor measles drear with spots; Not +these impaired the sacred name Of Stephen Dowling Bots. + +Despised love struck not with woe That head of curly knots, Nor stomach +troubles laid him low, Young Stephen Dowling Bots. + +O no. Then list with tearful eye, Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul +did from this cold world fly By falling down a well. + +They got him out and emptied him; Alas it was too late; His spirit was +gone for to sport aloft In the realms of the good and great. + +If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was +fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could a done by and by. Buck +said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't ever have to +stop to think. He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't +find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down +another one, and go ahead. She warn't particular; she could write about +anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful. +Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on +hand with her "tribute" before he was cold. She called them tributes. +The neighbors said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the +undertaker--the undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and +then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name, which was +Whistler. She warn't ever the same after that; she never complained, but +she kinder pined away and did not live long. Poor thing, many's the time +I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out +her poor old scrap-book and read in it when her pictures had been +aggravating me and I had soured on her a little. I liked all that +family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between +us. Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was +alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some +about her now she was gone; so I tried to sweat out a verse or two +myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go somehow. They kept Emmeline's +room trim and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked +to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there. The old +lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers, +and she sewed there a good deal and read her Bible there mostly. + +Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on +the windows: white, with pictures painted on them of castles with vines +all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. There was a little +old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever +so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing "The Last Link is Broken" and +play "The Battle of Prague" on it. The walls of all the rooms was +plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was +whitewashed on the outside. + +It was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and +floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day, +and it was a cool, comfortable place. Nothing couldn't be better. And +warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it too! + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +COL. GRANGERFORD was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over; +and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that's +worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas said, +and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town; +and pap he always said it, too, though he warn't no more quality than a +mudcat himself. Col. Grangerford was very tall and very slim, and had a +darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres; he was clean +shaved every morning all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind +of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy +eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they +seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. His +forehead was high, and his hair was black and straight and hung to his +shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put +on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so +white it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on Sundays he wore a blue +tail-coat with brass buttons on it. He carried a mahogany cane with a +silver head to it. There warn't no frivolishness about him, not a bit, +and he warn't ever loud. He was as kind as he could be--you could feel +that, you know, and so you had confidence. Sometimes he smiled, and it +was good to see; but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, +and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you +wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was +afterwards. He didn't ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners +--everybody was always good-mannered where he was. Everybody loved to have +him around, too; he was sunshine most always--I mean he made it seem +like good weather. When he turned into a cloudbank it was awful dark for +half a minute, and that was enough; there wouldn't nothing go wrong again +for a week. + +When him and the old lady come down in the morning all the family got up +out of their chairs and give them good-day, and didn't set down again +till they had set down. Then Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where the +decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and he +held it in his hand and waited till Tom's and Bob's was mixed, and then +they bowed and said, "Our duty to you, sir, and madam;" and THEY bowed +the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank, all +three, and Bob and Tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the +mite of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and give +it to me and Buck, and we drank to the old people too. + +Bob was the oldest and Tom next--tall, beautiful men with very broad +shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. They +dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and +wore broad Panama hats. + +Then there was Miss Charlotte; she was twenty-five, and tall and proud +and grand, but as good as she could be when she warn't stirred up; but +when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks, like +her father. She was beautiful. + +So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a different kind. She was +gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty. + +Each person had their own nigger to wait on them--Buck too. My nigger +had a monstrous easy time, because I warn't used to having anybody do +anything for me, but Buck's was on the jump most of the time. + +This was all there was of the family now, but there used to be more +--three sons; they got killed; and Emmeline that died. + +The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers. +Sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or +fifteen mile around, and stay five or six days, and have such junketings +round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods +daytimes, and balls at the house nights. These people was mostly +kinfolks of the family. The men brought their guns with them. It was a +handsome lot of quality, I tell you. + +There was another clan of aristocracy around there--five or six families +--mostly of the name of Shepherdson. They was as high-toned and well +born and rich and grand as the tribe of Grangerfords. The Shepherdsons +and Grangerfords used the same steamboat landing, which was about two +mile above our house; so sometimes when I went up there with a lot of our +folks I used to see a lot of the Shepherdsons there on their fine horses. + +One day Buck and me was away out in the woods hunting, and heard a horse +coming. We was crossing the road. Buck says: + +"Quick! Jump for the woods!" + +We done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. Pretty +soon a splendid young man come galloping down the road, setting his horse +easy and looking like a soldier. He had his gun across his pommel. I +had seen him before. It was young Harney Shepherdson. I heard Buck's +gun go off at my ear, and Harney's hat tumbled off from his head. He +grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid. But we +didn't wait. We started through the woods on a run. The woods warn't +thick, so I looked over my shoulder to dodge the bullet, and twice I seen +Harney cover Buck with his gun; and then he rode away the way he come--to +get his hat, I reckon, but I couldn't see. We never stopped running till +we got home. The old gentleman's eyes blazed a minute--'twas pleasure, +mainly, I judged--then his face sort of smoothed down, and he says, +kind of gentle: + +"I don't like that shooting from behind a bush. Why didn't you step into +the road, my boy?" + +"The Shepherdsons don't, father. They always take advantage." + +Miss Charlotte she held her head up like a queen while Buck was telling +his tale, and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. The two young +men looked dark, but never said nothing. Miss Sophia she turned pale, +but the color come back when she found the man warn't hurt. + +Soon as I could get Buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by +ourselves, I says: + +"Did you want to kill him, Buck?" + +"Well, I bet I did." + +"What did he do to you?" + +"Him? He never done nothing to me." + +"Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?" + +"Why, nothing--only it's on account of the feud." + +"What's a feud?" + +"Why, where was you raised? Don't you know what a feud is?" + +"Never heard of it before--tell me about it." + +"Well," says Buck, "a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another +man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills HIM; then the +other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the COUSINS +chip in--and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more +feud. But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time." + +"Has this one been going on long, Buck?" + +"Well, I should RECKON! It started thirty year ago, or som'ers along +there. There was trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle +it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man +that won the suit--which he would naturally do, of course. Anybody +would." + +"What was the trouble about, Buck?--land?" + +"I reckon maybe--I don't know." + +"Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?" + +"Laws, how do I know? It was so long ago." + +"Don't anybody know?" + +"Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but they +don't know now what the row was about in the first place." + +"Has there been many killed, Buck?" + +"Yes; right smart chance of funerals. But they don't always kill. Pa's +got a few buckshot in him; but he don't mind it 'cuz he don't weigh much, +anyway. Bob's been carved up some with a bowie, and Tom's been hurt once +or twice." + +"Has anybody been killed this year, Buck?" + +"Yes; we got one and they got one. 'Bout three months ago my cousin Bud, +fourteen year old, was riding through the woods on t'other side of the +river, and didn't have no weapon with him, which was blame' foolishness, +and in a lonesome place he hears a horse a-coming behind him, and sees +old Baldy Shepherdson a-linkin' after him with his gun in his hand and +his white hair a-flying in the wind; and 'stead of jumping off and taking +to the brush, Bud 'lowed he could out-run him; so they had it, nip and +tuck, for five mile or more, the old man a-gaining all the time; so at +last Bud seen it warn't any use, so he stopped and faced around so as to +have the bullet holes in front, you know, and the old man he rode up and +shot him down. But he didn't git much chance to enjoy his luck, for +inside of a week our folks laid HIM out." + +"I reckon that old man was a coward, Buck." + +"I reckon he WARN'T a coward. Not by a blame' sight. There ain't a +coward amongst them Shepherdsons--not a one. And there ain't no cowards +amongst the Grangerfords either. Why, that old man kep' up his end in a +fight one day for half an hour against three Grangerfords, and come out +winner. They was all a-horseback; he lit off of his horse and got behind +a little woodpile, and kep' his horse before him to stop the bullets; but +the Grangerfords stayed on their horses and capered around the old man, +and peppered away at him, and he peppered away at them. Him and his +horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled, but the Grangerfords had +to be FETCHED home--and one of 'em was dead, and another died the next +day. No, sir; if a body's out hunting for cowards he don't want to fool +away any time amongst them Shepherdsons, becuz they don't breed any of +that KIND." + +Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody +a-horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them +between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The +Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching--all about +brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a +good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a +powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and +preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to me +to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet. + +About an hour after dinner everybody was dozing around, some in their +chairs and some in their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull. Buck and a +dog was stretched out on the grass in the sun sound asleep. I went up to +our room, and judged I would take a nap myself. I found that sweet Miss +Sophia standing in her door, which was next to ours, and she took me in +her room and shut the door very soft, and asked me if I liked her, and I +said I did; and she asked me if I would do something for her and not tell +anybody, and I said I would. Then she said she'd forgot her Testament, +and left it in the seat at church between two other books, and would I +slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to her, and not say nothing to +nobody. I said I would. So I slid out and slipped off up the road, and +there warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there +warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in +summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go +to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different. + +Says I to myself, something's up; it ain't natural for a girl to be in +such a sweat about a Testament. So I give it a shake, and out drops a +little piece of paper with "HALF-PAST TWO" wrote on it with a pencil. I +ransacked it, but couldn't find anything else. I couldn't make anything +out of that, so I put the paper in the book again, and when I got home +and upstairs there was Miss Sophia in her door waiting for me. She +pulled me in and shut the door; then she looked in the Testament till she +found the paper, and as soon as she read it she looked glad; and before a +body could think she grabbed me and give me a squeeze, and said I was the +best boy in the world, and not to tell anybody. She was mighty red in +the face for a minute, and her eyes lighted up, and it made her powerful +pretty. I was a good deal astonished, but when I got my breath I asked +her what the paper was about, and she asked me if I had read it, and I +said no, and she asked me if I could read writing, and I told her "no, +only coarse-hand," and then she said the paper warn't anything but a +book-mark to keep her place, and I might go and play now. + +I went off down to the river, studying over this thing, and pretty soon I +noticed that my nigger was following along behind. When we was out of +sight of the house he looked back and around a second, and then comes +a-running, and says: + +"Mars Jawge, if you'll come down into de swamp I'll show you a whole +stack o' water-moccasins." + +Thinks I, that's mighty curious; he said that yesterday. He oughter know +a body don't love water-moccasins enough to go around hunting for them. +What is he up to, anyway? So I says: + +"All right; trot ahead." + +I followed a half a mile; then he struck out over the swamp, and waded +ankle deep as much as another half-mile. We come to a little flat piece +of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines, and +he says: + +"You shove right in dah jist a few steps, Mars Jawge; dah's whah dey is. +I's seed 'm befo'; I don't k'yer to see 'em no mo'." + +Then he slopped right along and went away, and pretty soon the trees hid +him. I poked into the place a-ways and come to a little open patch as +big as a bedroom all hung around with vines, and found a man laying there +asleep--and, by jings, it was my old Jim! + +I waked him up, and I reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to him +to see me again, but it warn't. He nearly cried he was so glad, but he +warn't surprised. Said he swum along behind me that night, and heard me +yell every time, but dasn't answer, because he didn't want nobody to pick +HIM up and take him into slavery again. Says he: + +"I got hurt a little, en couldn't swim fas', so I wuz a considable ways +behine you towards de las'; when you landed I reck'ned I could ketch up +wid you on de lan' 'dout havin' to shout at you, but when I see dat house +I begin to go slow. I 'uz off too fur to hear what dey say to you--I wuz +'fraid o' de dogs; but when it 'uz all quiet agin I knowed you's in de +house, so I struck out for de woods to wait for day. Early in de mawnin' +some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de fields, en dey tuk me en +showed me dis place, whah de dogs can't track me on accounts o' de water, +en dey brings me truck to eat every night, en tells me how you's a-gitt'n +along." + +"Why didn't you tell my Jack to fetch me here sooner, Jim?" + +"Well, 'twarn't no use to 'sturb you, Huck, tell we could do sumfn--but +we's all right now. I ben a-buyin' pots en pans en vittles, as I got a +chanst, en a-patchin' up de raf' nights when--" + +"WHAT raft, Jim?" + +"Our ole raf'." + +"You mean to say our old raft warn't smashed all to flinders?" + +"No, she warn't. She was tore up a good deal--one en' of her was; but +dey warn't no great harm done, on'y our traps was mos' all los'. Ef we +hadn' dive' so deep en swum so fur under water, en de night hadn' ben so +dark, en we warn't so sk'yerd, en ben sich punkin-heads, as de sayin' is, +we'd a seed de raf'. But it's jis' as well we didn't, 'kase now she's +all fixed up agin mos' as good as new, en we's got a new lot o' stuff, in +de place o' what 'uz los'." + +"Why, how did you get hold of the raft again, Jim--did you catch her?" + +"How I gwyne to ketch her en I out in de woods? No; some er de niggers +foun' her ketched on a snag along heah in de ben', en dey hid her in a +crick 'mongst de willows, en dey wuz so much jawin' 'bout which un 'um +she b'long to de mos' dat I come to heah 'bout it pooty soon, so I ups en +settles de trouble by tellin' 'um she don't b'long to none uv um, but to +you en me; en I ast 'm if dey gwyne to grab a young white genlman's +propaty, en git a hid'n for it? Den I gin 'm ten cents apiece, en dey +'uz mighty well satisfied, en wisht some mo' raf's 'ud come along en make +'m rich agin. Dey's mighty good to me, dese niggers is, en whatever I +wants 'm to do fur me I doan' have to ast 'm twice, honey. Dat Jack's a +good nigger, en pooty smart." + +"Yes, he is. He ain't ever told me you was here; told me to come, and +he'd show me a lot of water-moccasins. If anything happens HE ain't +mixed up in it. He can say he never seen us together, and it 'll be the +truth." + +I don't want to talk much about the next day. I reckon I'll cut it +pretty short. I waked up about dawn, and was a-going to turn over and go +to sleep again when I noticed how still it was--didn't seem to be anybody +stirring. That warn't usual. Next I noticed that Buck was up and gone. +Well, I gets up, a-wondering, and goes down stairs--nobody around; +everything as still as a mouse. Just the same outside. Thinks I, what +does it mean? Down by the wood-pile I comes across my Jack, and says: + +"What's it all about?" + +Says he: + +"Don't you know, Mars Jawge?" + +"No," says I, "I don't." + +"Well, den, Miss Sophia's run off! 'deed she has. She run off in de +night some time--nobody don't know jis' when; run off to get married to +dat young Harney Shepherdson, you know--leastways, so dey 'spec. De +fambly foun' it out 'bout half an hour ago--maybe a little mo'--en' I +TELL you dey warn't no time los'. Sich another hurryin' up guns en +hosses YOU never see! De women folks has gone for to stir up de +relations, en ole Mars Saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode up de river +road for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him 'fo' he kin git acrost +de river wid Miss Sophia. I reck'n dey's gwyne to be mighty rough +times." + +"Buck went off 'thout waking me up." + +"Well, I reck'n he DID! Dey warn't gwyne to mix you up in it. Mars Buck +he loaded up his gun en 'lowed he's gwyne to fetch home a Shepherdson or +bust. Well, dey'll be plenty un 'm dah, I reck'n, en you bet you he'll +fetch one ef he gits a chanst." + +I took up the river road as hard as I could put. By and by I begin to +hear guns a good ways off. When I came in sight of the log store and the +woodpile where the steamboats lands I worked along under the trees and +brush till I got to a good place, and then I clumb up into the forks of a +cottonwood that was out of reach, and watched. There was a wood-rank +four foot high a little ways in front of the tree, and first I was going +to hide behind that; but maybe it was luckier I didn't. + +There was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open +place before the log store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at a +couple of young chaps that was behind the wood-rank alongside of the +steamboat landing; but they couldn't come it. Every time one of them +showed himself on the river side of the woodpile he got shot at. The two +boys was squatting back to back behind the pile, so they could watch both +ways. + +By and by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling. They started +riding towards the store; then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady +bead over the wood-rank, and drops one of them out of his saddle. All +the men jumped off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started +to carry him to the store; and that minute the two boys started on the +run. They got half way to the tree I was in before the men noticed. +Then the men see them, and jumped on their horses and took out after +them. They gained on the boys, but it didn't do no good, the boys had +too good a start; they got to the woodpile that was in front of my tree, +and slipped in behind it, and so they had the bulge on the men again. +One of the boys was Buck, and the other was a slim young chap about +nineteen years old. + +The men ripped around awhile, and then rode away. As soon as they was +out of sight I sung out to Buck and told him. He didn't know what to +make of my voice coming out of the tree at first. He was awful +surprised. He told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the men +come in sight again; said they was up to some devilment or other +--wouldn't be gone long. I wished I was out of that tree, but I dasn't +come down. Buck begun to cry and rip, and 'lowed that him and his cousin +Joe (that was the other young chap) would make up for this day yet. He +said his father and his two brothers was killed, and two or three of the +enemy. Said the Shepherdsons laid for them in ambush. Buck said his +father and brothers ought to waited for their relations--the Shepherdsons +was too strong for them. I asked him what was become of young Harney and +Miss Sophia. He said they'd got across the river and was safe. I was +glad of that; but the way Buck did take on because he didn't manage to +kill Harney that day he shot at him--I hain't ever heard anything like +it. + +All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns--the men had +slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their +horses! The boys jumped for the river--both of them hurt--and as they +swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and +singing out, "Kill them, kill them!" It made me so sick I most fell out +of the tree. I ain't a-going to tell ALL that happened--it would make me +sick again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn't ever come ashore that +night to see such things. I ain't ever going to get shut of them--lots +of times I dream about them. + +I stayed in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down. +Sometimes I heard guns away off in the woods; and twice I seen little +gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns; so I reckoned the +trouble was still a-going on. I was mighty downhearted; so I made up my +mind I wouldn't ever go anear that house again, because I reckoned I was +to blame, somehow. I judged that that piece of paper meant that Miss +Sophia was to meet Harney somewheres at half-past two and run off; and I +judged I ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way +she acted, and then maybe he would a locked her up, and this awful mess +wouldn't ever happened. + +When I got down out of the tree I crept along down the river bank a +piece, and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and +tugged at them till I got them ashore; then I covered up their faces, and +got away as quick as I could. I cried a little when I was covering up +Buck's face, for he was mighty good to me. + +It was just dark now. I never went near the house, but struck through +the woods and made for the swamp. Jim warn't on his island, so I tramped +off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows, red-hot to +jump aboard and get out of that awful country. The raft was gone! My +souls, but I was scared! I couldn't get my breath for most a minute. +Then I raised a yell. A voice not twenty-five foot from me says: + +"Good lan'! is dat you, honey? Doan' make no noise." + +It was Jim's voice--nothing ever sounded so good before. I run along the +bank a piece and got aboard, and Jim he grabbed me and hugged me, he was +so glad to see me. He says: + +"Laws bless you, chile, I 'uz right down sho' you's dead agin. Jack's +been heah; he say he reck'n you's ben shot, kase you didn' come home no +mo'; so I's jes' dis minute a startin' de raf' down towards de mouf er de +crick, so's to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon as Jack comes +agin en tells me for certain you IS dead. Lawsy, I's mighty glad to git +you back again, honey." + +I says: + +"All right--that's mighty good; they won't find me, and they'll think +I've been killed, and floated down the river--there's something up there +that 'll help them think so--so don't you lose no time, Jim, but just +shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can." + +I never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in the +middle of the Mississippi. Then we hung up our signal lantern, and +judged that we was free and safe once more. I hadn't had a bite to eat +since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and +pork and cabbage and greens--there ain't nothing in the world so good +when it's cooked right--and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a +good time. I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was +Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn't no home like a +raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a +raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +TWO or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum by, +they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. Here is the way we put +in the time. It was a monstrous big river down there--sometimes a mile +and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as +night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up--nearly always in +the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and +willows, and hid the raft with them. Then we set out the lines. Next we +slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; +then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep, +and watched the daylight come. Not a sound anywheres--perfectly still +--just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs +a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking away over the water, +was a kind of dull line--that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't +make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness +spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black +any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever +so far away--trading scows, and such things; and long black streaks +--rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, +it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by and by you could see a +streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's +a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak +look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the +east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log-cabin in the edge +of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a +woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through +it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from +over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods +and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead +fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next +you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the +song-birds just going it! + +A little smoke couldn't be noticed now, so we would take some fish off of +the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. And afterwards we would watch the +lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by lazy off +to sleep. Wake up by and by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see +a steamboat coughing along up-stream, so far off towards the other side +you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was a stern-wheel or +side-wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn't be nothing to hear nor +nothing to see--just solid lonesomeness. Next you'd see a raft sliding +by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping, because they're +most always doing it on a raft; you'd see the axe flash and come down +--you don't hear nothing; you see that axe go up again, and by the time +it's above the man's head then you hear the K'CHUNK!--it had took all +that time to come over the water. So we would put in the day, lazying +around, listening to the stillness. Once there was a thick fog, and the +rafts and things that went by was beating tin pans so the steamboats +wouldn't run over them. A scow or a raft went by so close we could hear +them talking and cussing and laughing--heard them plain; but we couldn't +see no sign of them; it made you feel crawly; it was like spirits +carrying on that way in the air. Jim said he believed it was spirits; +but I says: + +"No; spirits wouldn't say, 'Dern the dern fog.'" + +Soon as it was night out we shoved; when we got her out to about the +middle we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted +her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and +talked about all kinds of things--we was always naked, day and night, +whenever the mosquitoes would let us--the new clothes Buck's folks made +for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn't go much on +clothes, nohow. + +Sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest +time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a +spark--which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on the water +you could see a spark or two--on a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe +you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. +It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled +with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and +discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he +allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would +have took too long to MAKE so many. Jim said the moon could a LAID them; +well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it, +because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. +We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim +allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest. + +Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the +dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of +her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful +pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and +her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by and by her +waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the +raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't +tell how long, except maybe frogs or something. + +After midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or three +hours the shores was black--no more sparks in the cabin windows. These +sparks was our clock--the first one that showed again meant morning was +coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away. + +One morning about daybreak I found a canoe and crossed over a chute to +the main shore--it was only two hundred yards--and paddled about a mile +up a crick amongst the cypress woods, to see if I couldn't get some +berries. Just as I was passing a place where a kind of a cowpath crossed +the crick, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as +they could foot it. I thought I was a goner, for whenever anybody was +after anybody I judged it was ME--or maybe Jim. I was about to dig out +from there in a hurry, but they was pretty close to me then, and sung out +and begged me to save their lives--said they hadn't been doing nothing, +and was being chased for it--said there was men and dogs a-coming. They +wanted to jump right in, but I says: + +"Don't you do it. I don't hear the dogs and horses yet; you've got time +to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways; then you +take to the water and wade down to me and get in--that'll throw the dogs +off the scent." + +They done it, and soon as they was aboard I lit out for our towhead, and +in about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away off, +shouting. We heard them come along towards the crick, but couldn't see +them; they seemed to stop and fool around a while; then, as we got +further and further away all the time, we couldn't hardly hear them at +all; by the time we had left a mile of woods behind us and struck the +river, everything was quiet, and we paddled over to the towhead and hid +in the cottonwoods and was safe. + +One of these fellows was about seventy or upwards, and had a bald head +and very gray whiskers. He had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a +greasy blue woollen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed +into his boot-tops, and home-knit galluses--no, he only had one. He had +an old long-tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung over +his arm, and both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking carpet-bags. + +The other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery. After +breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing that come out +was that these chaps didn't know one another. + +"What got you into trouble?" says the baldhead to t'other chap. + +"Well, I'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth--and +it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it--but I +stayed about one night longer than I ought to, and was just in the act of +sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side of town, and you +told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off. So I +told you I was expecting trouble myself, and would scatter out WITH you. +That's the whole yarn--what's yourn? + +"Well, I'd ben a-running' a little temperance revival thar 'bout a week, +and was the pet of the women folks, big and little, for I was makin' it +mighty warm for the rummies, I TELL you, and takin' as much as five or +six dollars a night--ten cents a head, children and niggers free--and +business a-growin' all the time, when somehow or another a little report +got around last night that I had a way of puttin' in my time with a +private jug on the sly. A nigger rousted me out this mornin', and told +me the people was getherin' on the quiet with their dogs and horses, and +they'd be along pretty soon and give me 'bout half an hour's start, and +then run me down if they could; and if they got me they'd tar and feather +me and ride me on a rail, sure. I didn't wait for no breakfast--I warn't +hungry." + +"Old man," said the young one, "I reckon we might double-team it +together; what do you think?" + +"I ain't undisposed. What's your line--mainly?" + +"Jour printer by trade; do a little in patent medicines; theater-actor +--tragedy, you know; take a turn to mesmerism and phrenology when there's a +chance; teach singing-geography school for a change; sling a lecture +sometimes--oh, I do lots of things--most anything that comes handy, so it +ain't work. What's your lay?" + +"I've done considerble in the doctoring way in my time. Layin' on o' +hands is my best holt--for cancer and paralysis, and sich things; and I +k'n tell a fortune pretty good when I've got somebody along to find out +the facts for me. Preachin's my line, too, and workin' camp-meetin's, +and missionaryin' around." + +Nobody never said anything for a while; then the young man hove a sigh +and says: + +"Alas!" + +"What 're you alassin' about?" says the bald-head. + +"To think I should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded +down into such company." And he begun to wipe the corner of his eye with +a rag. + +"Dern your skin, ain't the company good enough for you?" says the +baldhead, pretty pert and uppish. + +"Yes, it IS good enough for me; it's as good as I deserve; for who +fetched me so low when I was so high? I did myself. I don't blame YOU, +gentlemen--far from it; I don't blame anybody. I deserve it all. Let +the cold world do its worst; one thing I know--there's a grave somewhere +for me. The world may go on just as it's always done, and take everything +from me--loved ones, property, everything; but it can't take that. +Some day I'll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart +will be at rest." He went on a-wiping. + +"Drot your pore broken heart," says the baldhead; "what are you heaving +your pore broken heart at US f'r? WE hain't done nothing." + +"No, I know you haven't. I ain't blaming you, gentlemen. I brought +myself down--yes, I did it myself. It's right I should suffer--perfectly +right--I don't make any moan." + +"Brought you down from whar? Whar was you brought down from?" + +"Ah, you would not believe me; the world never believes--let it pass +--'tis no matter. The secret of my birth--" + +"The secret of your birth! Do you mean to say--" + +"Gentlemen," says the young man, very solemn, "I will reveal it to you, +for I feel I may have confidence in you. By rights I am a duke!" + +Jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that; and I reckon mine did, too. +Then the baldhead says: "No! you can't mean it?" + +"Yes. My great-grandfather, eldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater, fled +to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure +air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father +dying about the same time. The second son of the late duke seized the +titles and estates--the infant real duke was ignored. I am the lineal +descendant of that infant--I am the rightful Duke of Bridgewater; and +here am I, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by +the cold world, ragged, worn, heart-broken, and degraded to the +companionship of felons on a raft!" + +Jim pitied him ever so much, and so did I. We tried to comfort him, but +he said it warn't much use, he couldn't be much comforted; said if we was +a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most anything +else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how. He said we ought to +bow when we spoke to him, and say "Your Grace," or "My Lord," or "Your +Lordship"--and he wouldn't mind it if we called him plain +"Bridgewater," which, he said, was a title anyway, and not a name; and +one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little thing for him +he wanted done. + +Well, that was all easy, so we done it. All through dinner Jim stood +around and waited on him, and says, "Will yo' Grace have some o' dis or +some o' dat?" and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to +him. + +But the old man got pretty silent by and by--didn't have much to say, and +didn't look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on +around that duke. He seemed to have something on his mind. So, along in +the afternoon, he says: + +"Looky here, Bilgewater," he says, "I'm nation sorry for you, but you +ain't the only person that's had troubles like that." + +"No?" + +"No you ain't. You ain't the only person that's ben snaked down +wrongfully out'n a high place." + +"Alas!" + +"No, you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth." And, +by jings, HE begins to cry. + +"Hold! What do you mean?" + +"Bilgewater, kin I trust you?" says the old man, still sort of sobbing. + +"To the bitter death!" He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it, +and says, "That secret of your being: speak!" + +"Bilgewater, I am the late Dauphin!" + +You bet you, Jim and me stared this time. Then the duke says: + +"You are what?" + +"Yes, my friend, it is too true--your eyes is lookin' at this very moment +on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the +Sixteen and Marry Antonette." + +"You! At your age! No! You mean you're the late Charlemagne; you must +be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least." + +"Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung +these gray hairs and this premature balditude. Yes, gentlemen, you see +before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin', exiled, trampled-on, +and sufferin' rightful King of France." + +Well, he cried and took on so that me and Jim didn't know hardly what to +do, we was so sorry--and so glad and proud we'd got him with us, too. So +we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort HIM. +But he said it warn't no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all +could do him any good; though he said it often made him feel easier and +better for a while if people treated him according to his rights, and got +down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him "Your Majesty," +and waited on him first at meals, and didn't set down in his presence +till he asked them. So Jim and me set to majestying him, and doing this +and that and t'other for him, and standing up till he told us we might +set down. This done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and +comfortable. But the duke kind of soured on him, and didn't look a bit +satisfied with the way things was going; still, the king acted real +friendly towards him, and said the duke's great-grandfather and all the +other Dukes of Bilgewater was a good deal thought of by HIS father, and +was allowed to come to the palace considerable; but the duke stayed huffy +a good while, till by and by the king says: + +"Like as not we got to be together a blamed long time on this h-yer raft, +Bilgewater, and so what's the use o' your bein' sour? It 'll only make +things oncomfortable. It ain't my fault I warn't born a duke, it ain't +your fault you warn't born a king--so what's the use to worry? Make the +best o' things the way you find 'em, says I--that's my motto. This ain't +no bad thing that we've struck here--plenty grub and an easy life--come, +give us your hand, duke, and le's all be friends." + +The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it. It took away +all the uncomfortableness and we felt mighty good over it, because it +would a been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft; +for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be +satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others. + +It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no +kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I +never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way; +then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. If they +wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn't no objections, 'long as +it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't no use to tell Jim, so I +didn't tell him. If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt +that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them +have their own way. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +THEY asked us considerable many questions; wanted to know what we covered +up the raft that way for, and laid by in the daytime instead of running +--was Jim a runaway nigger? Says I: + +"Goodness sakes! would a runaway nigger run SOUTH?" + +No, they allowed he wouldn't. I had to account for things some way, so I +says: + +"My folks was living in Pike County, in Missouri, where I was born, and +they all died off but me and pa and my brother Ike. Pa, he 'lowed he'd +break up and go down and live with Uncle Ben, who's got a little +one-horse place on the river, forty-four mile below Orleans. Pa was +pretty poor, and had some debts; so when he'd squared up there warn't +nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger, Jim. That warn't enough +to take us fourteen hundred mile, deck passage nor no other way. Well, +when the river rose pa had a streak of luck one day; he ketched this +piece of a raft; so we reckoned we'd go down to Orleans on it. Pa's luck +didn't hold out; a steamboat run over the forrard corner of the raft one +night, and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel; Jim and me +come up all right, but pa was drunk, and Ike was only four years old, so +they never come up no more. Well, for the next day or two we had +considerable trouble, because people was always coming out in skiffs and +trying to take Jim away from me, saying they believed he was a runaway +nigger. We don't run daytimes no more now; nights they don't bother us." + +The duke says: + +"Leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we +want to. I'll think the thing over--I'll invent a plan that'll fix it. +We'll let it alone for to-day, because of course we don't want to go by +that town yonder in daylight--it mightn't be healthy." + +Towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain; the heat +lightning was squirting around low down in the sky, and the leaves was +beginning to shiver--it was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see +that. So the duke and the king went to overhauling our wigwam, to see +what the beds was like. My bed was a straw tick better than Jim's, which +was a corn-shuck tick; there's always cobs around about in a shuck tick, +and they poke into you and hurt; and when you roll over the dry shucks +sound like you was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves; it makes such a +rustling that you wake up. Well, the duke allowed he would take my bed; +but the king allowed he wouldn't. He says: + +"I should a reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you that +a corn-shuck bed warn't just fitten for me to sleep on. Your Grace 'll +take the shuck bed yourself." + +Jim and me was in a sweat again for a minute, being afraid there was +going to be some more trouble amongst them; so we was pretty glad when +the duke says: + +"'Tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of +oppression. Misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; I yield, I +submit; 'tis my fate. I am alone in the world--let me suffer; can bear +it." + +We got away as soon as it was good and dark. The king told us to stand +well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we +got a long ways below the town. We come in sight of the little bunch of +lights by and by--that was the town, you know--and slid by, about a half +a mile out, all right. When we was three-quarters of a mile below we +hoisted up our signal lantern; and about ten o'clock it come on to rain +and blow and thunder and lighten like everything; so the king told us to +both stay on watch till the weather got better; then him and the duke +crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night. It was my watch +below till twelve, but I wouldn't a turned in anyway if I'd had a bed, +because a body don't see such a storm as that every day in the week, not +by a long sight. My souls, how the wind did scream along! And every +second or two there'd come a glare that lit up the white-caps for a half +a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain, +and the trees thrashing around in the wind; then comes a H-WHACK!--bum! +bum! bumble-umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bum--and the thunder would go rumbling +and grumbling away, and quit--and then RIP comes another flash and +another sockdolager. The waves most washed me off the raft sometimes, +but I hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind. We didn't have no trouble +about snags; the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant +that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or +that and miss them. + +I had the middle watch, you know, but I was pretty sleepy by that time, +so Jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me; he was always +mighty good that way, Jim was. I crawled into the wigwam, but the king +and the duke had their legs sprawled around so there warn't no show for +me; so I laid outside--I didn't mind the rain, because it was warm, and +the waves warn't running so high now. About two they come up again, +though, and Jim was going to call me; but he changed his mind, because he +reckoned they warn't high enough yet to do any harm; but he was mistaken +about that, for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper +and washed me overboard. It most killed Jim a-laughing. He was the +easiest nigger to laugh that ever was, anyway. + +I took the watch, and Jim he laid down and snored away; and by and by the +storm let up for good and all; and the first cabin-light that showed I +rousted him out, and we slid the raft into hiding quarters for the day. + +The king got out an old ratty deck of cards after breakfast, and him and +the duke played seven-up a while, five cents a game. Then they got tired +of it, and allowed they would "lay out a campaign," as they called it. +The duke went down into his carpet-bag, and fetched up a lot of little +printed bills and read them out loud. One bill said, "The celebrated Dr. +Armand de Montalban, of Paris," would "lecture on the Science of +Phrenology" at such and such a place, on the blank day of blank, at ten +cents admission, and "furnish charts of character at twenty-five cents +apiece." The duke said that was HIM. In another bill he was the +"world-renowned Shakespearian tragedian, Garrick the Younger, of Drury +Lane, London." In other bills he had a lot of other names and done other +wonderful things, like finding water and gold with a "divining-rod," +"dissipating witch spells," and so on. By and by he says: + +"But the histrionic muse is the darling. Have you ever trod the boards, +Royalty?" + +"No," says the king. + +"You shall, then, before you're three days older, Fallen Grandeur," says +the duke. "The first good town we come to we'll hire a hall and do the +sword fight in Richard III. and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. +How does that strike you?" + +"I'm in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, Bilgewater; but, you +see, I don't know nothing about play-actin', and hain't ever seen much of +it. I was too small when pap used to have 'em at the palace. Do you +reckon you can learn me?" + +"Easy!" + +"All right. I'm jist a-freezn' for something fresh, anyway. Le's +commence right away." + +So the duke he told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was, and +said he was used to being Romeo, so the king could be Juliet. + +"But if Juliet's such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my white +whiskers is goin' to look oncommon odd on her, maybe." + +"No, don't you worry; these country jakes won't ever think of that. +Besides, you know, you'll be in costume, and that makes all the +difference in the world; Juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight +before she goes to bed, and she's got on her night-gown and her ruffled +nightcap. Here are the costumes for the parts." + +He got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was meedyevil +armor for Richard III. and t'other chap, and a long white cotton +nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match. The king was satisfied; so +the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid +spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same time, to show +how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the king and told him +to get his part by heart. + +There was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and +after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run +in daylight without it being dangersome for Jim; so he allowed he would +go down to the town and fix that thing. The king allowed he would go, +too, and see if he couldn't strike something. We was out of coffee, so +Jim said I better go along with them in the canoe and get some. + +When we got there there warn't nobody stirring; streets empty, and +perfectly dead and still, like Sunday. We found a sick nigger sunning +himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warn't too young or +too sick or too old was gone to camp-meeting, about two mile back in the +woods. The king got the directions, and allowed he'd go and work that +camp-meeting for all it was worth, and I might go, too. + +The duke said what he was after was a printing-office. We found it; a +little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter shop--carpenters and +printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. It was a dirty, +littered-up place, and had ink marks, and handbills with pictures of +horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls. The duke shed +his coat and said he was all right now. So me and the king lit out for +the camp-meeting. + +We got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping, for it was a most +awful hot day. There was as much as a thousand people there from twenty +mile around. The woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched +everywheres, feeding out of the wagon-troughs and stomping to keep off +the flies. There was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with +branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of +watermelons and green corn and such-like truck. + +The preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was +bigger and held crowds of people. The benches was made out of outside +slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into +for legs. They didn't have no backs. The preachers had high platforms to +stand on at one end of the sheds. The women had on sun-bonnets; and some +had linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the young ones +had on calico. Some of the young men was barefooted, and some of the +children didn't have on any clothes but just a tow-linen shirt. Some of +the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks was courting on +the sly. + +The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn. He lined +out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it, +there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he +lined out two more for them to sing--and so on. The people woke up more +and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some begun to +groan, and some begun to shout. Then the preacher begun to preach, and +begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of the platform +and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with +his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with +all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his Bible and +spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, +"It's the brazen serpent in the wilderness! Look upon it and live!" And +people would shout out, "Glory!--A-a-MEN!" And so he went on, and the +people groaning and crying and saying amen: + +"Oh, come to the mourners' bench! come, black with sin! (AMEN!) come, +sick and sore! (AMEN!) come, lame and halt and blind! (AMEN!) come, pore +and needy, sunk in shame! (A-A-MEN!) come, all that's worn and soiled and +suffering!--come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart! come +in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse is free, the door +of heaven stands open--oh, enter in and be at rest!" (A-A-MEN! GLORY, +GLORY HALLELUJAH!) + +And so on. You couldn't make out what the preacher said any more, on +account of the shouting and crying. Folks got up everywheres in the +crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners' bench, +with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had +got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and +flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild. + +Well, the first I knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him +over everybody; and next he went a-charging up on to the platform, and +the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. He +told them he was a pirate--been a pirate for thirty years out in the +Indian Ocean--and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in +a fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to +goodness he'd been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat +without a cent, and he was glad of it; it was the blessedest thing that +ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the +first time in his life; and, poor as he was, he was going to start right +off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean, and put in the rest of his +life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he could do it +better than anybody else, being acquainted with all pirate crews in that +ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get there without +money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced a pirate he +would say to him, "Don't you thank me, don't you give me no credit; it +all belongs to them dear people in Pokeville camp-meeting, natural +brothers and benefactors of the race, and that dear preacher there, the +truest friend a pirate ever had!" + +And then he busted into tears, and so did everybody. Then somebody sings +out, "Take up a collection for him, take up a collection!" Well, a half +a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, "Let HIM pass the +hat around!" Then everybody said it, the preacher too. + +So the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes, +and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so +good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the +prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would +up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he +always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or +six times--and he was invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted him to +live in their houses, and said they'd think it was an honor; but he said +as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he couldn't do no good, and +besides he was in a sweat to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to +work on the pirates. + +When we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had +collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents. And then he had +fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a +wagon when he was starting home through the woods. The king said, take +it all around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the missionarying +line. He said it warn't no use talking, heathens don't amount to shucks +alongside of pirates to work a camp-meeting with. + +The duke was thinking HE'D been doing pretty well till the king come to +show up, but after that he didn't think so so much. He had set up and +printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printing-office--horse +bills--and took the money, four dollars. And he had got in ten +dollars' worth of advertisements for the paper, which he said he would +put in for four dollars if they would pay in advance--so they done it. +The price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took in three +subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them paying him in +advance; they were going to pay in cordwood and onions as usual, but he +said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as +he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash. He set up a little +piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of his own head--three +verses--kind of sweet and saddish--the name of it was, "Yes, crush, cold +world, this breaking heart"--and he left that all set up and ready to +print in the paper, and didn't charge nothing for it. Well, he took in +nine dollars and a half, and said he'd done a pretty square day's work +for it. + +Then he showed us another little job he'd printed and hadn't charged for, +because it was for us. It had a picture of a runaway nigger with a +bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and "$200 reward" under it. The +reading was all about Jim, and just described him to a dot. It said he +run away from St. Jacques' plantation, forty mile below New Orleans, last +winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send him +back he could have the reward and expenses. + +"Now," says the duke, "after to-night we can run in the daytime if we +want to. Whenever we see anybody coming we can tie Jim hand and foot +with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we +captured him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a steamboat, so +we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to +get the reward. Handcuffs and chains would look still better on Jim, but +it wouldn't go well with the story of us being so poor. Too much like +jewelry. Ropes are the correct thing--we must preserve the unities, as +we say on the boards." + +We all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldn't be no trouble +about running daytimes. We judged we could make miles enough that night +to get out of the reach of the powwow we reckoned the duke's work in the +printing office was going to make in that little town; then we could boom +right along if we wanted to. + +We laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten o'clock; +then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn't hoist our +lantern till we was clear out of sight of it. + +When Jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says: + +"Huck, does you reck'n we gwyne to run acrost any mo' kings on dis trip?" + +"No," I says, "I reckon not." + +"Well," says he, "dat's all right, den. I doan' mine one er two kings, +but dat's enough. Dis one's powerful drunk, en de duke ain' much +better." + +I found Jim had been trying to get him to talk French, so he could hear +what it was like; but he said he had been in this country so long, and +had so much trouble, he'd forgot it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +IT was after sun-up now, but we went right on and didn't tie up. The +king and the duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty; but after +they'd jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them up a good deal. +After breakfast the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft, and +pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his legs dangle +in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and went to +getting his Romeo and Juliet by heart. When he had got it pretty good +him and the duke begun to practice it together. The duke had to learn +him over and over again how to say every speech; and he made him sigh, +and put his hand on his heart, and after a while he said he done it +pretty well; "only," he says, "you mustn't bellow out ROMEO! that way, +like a bull--you must say it soft and sick and languishy, so--R-o-o-meo! +that is the idea; for Juliet's a dear sweet mere child of a girl, you +know, and she doesn't bray like a jackass." + +Well, next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke made out of +oak laths, and begun to practice the sword fight--the duke called himself +Richard III.; and the way they laid on and pranced around the raft was +grand to see. But by and by the king tripped and fell overboard, and +after that they took a rest, and had a talk about all kinds of adventures +they'd had in other times along the river. + +After dinner the duke says: + +"Well, Capet, we'll want to make this a first-class show, you know, so I +guess we'll add a little more to it. We want a little something to +answer encores with, anyway." + +"What's onkores, Bilgewater?" + +The duke told him, and then says: + +"I'll answer by doing the Highland fling or the sailor's hornpipe; and +you--well, let me see--oh, I've got it--you can do Hamlet's soliloquy." + +"Hamlet's which?" + +"Hamlet's soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in Shakespeare. +Ah, it's sublime, sublime! Always fetches the house. I haven't got it +in the book--I've only got one volume--but I reckon I can piece it out +from memory. I'll just walk up and down a minute, and see if I can call +it back from recollection's vaults." + +So he went to marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horrible every +now and then; then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would squeeze +his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan; next he would +sigh, and next he'd let on to drop a tear. It was beautiful to see him. +By and by he got it. He told us to give attention. Then he strikes a +most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and his arms stretched +away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky; and then he +begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth; and after that, all through +his speech, he howled, and spread around, and swelled up his chest, and +just knocked the spots out of any acting ever I see before. This is the +speech--I learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it to the king: + +To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so +long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to +Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the +innocent sleep, Great nature's second course, And makes us rather sling +the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of. +There's the respect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I +would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The +oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The law's delay, and the +quietus which his pangs might take, In the dead waste and middle of the +night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But that +the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, Breathes +forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of resolution, like +the poor cat i' the adage, Is sicklied o'er with care, And all the clouds +that lowered o'er our housetops, With this regard their currents turn +awry, And lose the name of action. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be +wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble +jaws, But get thee to a nunnery--go! + +Well, the old man he liked that speech, and he mighty soon got it so he +could do it first-rate. It seemed like he was just born for it; and when +he had his hand in and was excited, it was perfectly lovely the way he +would rip and tear and rair up behind when he was getting it off. + +The first chance we got the duke he had some showbills printed; and after +that, for two or three days as we floated along, the raft was a most +uncommon lively place, for there warn't nothing but sword fighting and +rehearsing--as the duke called it--going on all the time. One morning, +when we was pretty well down the State of Arkansaw, we come in sight of a +little one-horse town in a big bend; so we tied up about three-quarters +of a mile above it, in the mouth of a crick which was shut in like a +tunnel by the cypress trees, and all of us but Jim took the canoe and +went down there to see if there was any chance in that place for our +show. + +We struck it mighty lucky; there was going to be a circus there that +afternoon, and the country people was already beginning to come in, in +all kinds of old shackly wagons, and on horses. The circus would leave +before night, so our show would have a pretty good chance. The duke he +hired the courthouse, and we went around and stuck up our bills. They +read like this: + +Shaksperean Revival ! ! ! +Wonderful Attraction! +For One Night Only! + +The world renowned tragedians, David Garrick the Younger, of Drury Lane +Theatre London, and Edmund Kean the elder, of the Royal Haymarket +Theatre, Whitechapel, Pudding Lane, Piccadilly, London, and the Royal +Continental Theatres, in their sublime Shaksperean Spectacle entitled + +TheBalcony Scene in Romeo and Juliet ! ! ! + +Romeo...................Mr. Garrick +Juliet..................Mr. Kean + +Assisted by the whole strength of the company! +New costumes, new scenes, new appointments! +Also: The thrilling, masterly, and blood-curdling +Broad-sword conflict In Richard III. ! ! ! + +Richard III.............Mr. Garrick +Richmond................Mr. Kean + +Also: (by special request) Hamlet's Immortal Soliloquy ! ! +By The Illustrious Kean! Done by him 300 consecutive nights in Paris! +For One Night Only, On account of imperative European engagements! +Admission 25 cents; children and servants, 10 cents. + +Then we went loafing around town. The stores and houses was most all +old, shackly, dried up frame concerns that hadn't ever been painted; they +was set up three or four foot above ground on stilts, so as to be out of +reach of the water when the river was over-flowed. The houses had little +gardens around them, but they didn't seem to raise hardly anything in +them but jimpson-weeds, and sunflowers, and ash piles, and old curled-up +boots and shoes, and pieces of bottles, and rags, and played-out tinware. +The fences was made of different kinds of boards, nailed on at different +times; and they leaned every which way, and had gates that didn't generly +have but one hinge--a leather one. Some of the fences had been +white-washed some time or another, but the duke said it was in Clumbus' +time, like enough. There was generly hogs in the garden, and people +driving them out. + +All the stores was along one street. They had white domestic awnings in +front, and the country people hitched their horses to the awning-posts. +There was empty drygoods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on +them all day long, whittling them with their Barlow knives; and chawing +tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretching--a mighty ornery lot. +They generly had on yellow straw hats most as wide as an umbrella, but +didn't wear no coats nor waistcoats, they called one another Bill, and +Buck, and Hank, and Joe, and Andy, and talked lazy and drawly, and used +considerable many cuss words. There was as many as one loafer leaning up +against every awning-post, and he most always had his hands in his +britches-pockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a chaw of +tobacco or scratch. What a body was hearing amongst them all the time +was: + +"Gimme a chaw 'v tobacker, Hank." + +"Cain't; I hain't got but one chaw left. Ask Bill." + +Maybe Bill he gives him a chaw; maybe he lies and says he ain't got none. +Some of them kinds of loafers never has a cent in the world, nor a chaw +of tobacco of their own. They get all their chawing by borrowing; they +say to a fellow, "I wisht you'd len' me a chaw, Jack, I jist this minute +give Ben Thompson the last chaw I had"--which is a lie pretty much +everytime; it don't fool nobody but a stranger; but Jack ain't no +stranger, so he says: + +"YOU give him a chaw, did you? So did your sister's cat's grandmother. +You pay me back the chaws you've awready borry'd off'n me, Lafe Buckner, +then I'll loan you one or two ton of it, and won't charge you no back +intrust, nuther." + +"Well, I DID pay you back some of it wunst." + +"Yes, you did--'bout six chaws. You borry'd store tobacker and paid back +nigger-head." + +Store tobacco is flat black plug, but these fellows mostly chaws the +natural leaf twisted. When they borrow a chaw they don't generly cut it +off with a knife, but set the plug in between their teeth, and gnaw with +their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in two; +then sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it when +it's handed back, and says, sarcastic: + +"Here, gimme the CHAW, and you take the PLUG." + +All the streets and lanes was just mud; they warn't nothing else BUT mud +--mud as black as tar and nigh about a foot deep in some places, and two +or three inches deep in ALL the places. The hogs loafed and grunted +around everywheres. You'd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs come +lazying along the street and whollop herself right down in the way, where +folks had to walk around her, and she'd stretch out and shut her eyes and +wave her ears whilst the pigs was milking her, and look as happy as if +she was on salary. And pretty soon you'd hear a loafer sing out, "Hi! SO +boy! sick him, Tige!" and away the sow would go, squealing most horrible, +with a dog or two swinging to each ear, and three or four dozen more +a-coming; and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing +out of sight, and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. Then +they'd settle back again till there was a dog fight. There couldn't +anything wake them up all over, and make them happy all over, like a dog +fight--unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting +fire to him, or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to +death. + +On the river front some of the houses was sticking out over the bank, and +they was bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in, The people had +moved out of them. The bank was caved away under one corner of some +others, and that corner was hanging over. People lived in them yet, but +it was dangersome, because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house +caves in at a time. Sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep +will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the +river in one summer. Such a town as that has to be always moving back, +and back, and back, because the river's always gnawing at it. + +The nearer it got to noon that day the thicker and thicker was the wagons +and horses in the streets, and more coming all the time. Families +fetched their dinners with them from the country, and eat them in the +wagons. There was considerable whisky drinking going on, and I seen +three fights. By and by somebody sings out: + +"Here comes old Boggs!--in from the country for his little old monthly +drunk; here he comes, boys!" + +All the loafers looked glad; I reckoned they was used to having fun out +of Boggs. One of them says: + +"Wonder who he's a-gwyne to chaw up this time. If he'd a-chawed up all +the men he's ben a-gwyne to chaw up in the last twenty year he'd have +considerable ruputation now." + +Another one says, "I wisht old Boggs 'd threaten me, 'cuz then I'd know I +warn't gwyne to die for a thousan' year." + +Boggs comes a-tearing along on his horse, whooping and yelling like an +Injun, and singing out: + +"Cler the track, thar. I'm on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is +a-gwyne to raise." + +He was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over fifty year +old, and had a very red face. Everybody yelled at him and laughed at him +and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he'd attend to them and lay +them out in their regular turns, but he couldn't wait now because he'd +come to town to kill old Colonel Sherburn, and his motto was, "Meat +first, and spoon vittles to top off on." + +He see me, and rode up and says: + +"Whar'd you come f'm, boy? You prepared to die?" + +Then he rode on. I was scared, but a man says: + +"He don't mean nothing; he's always a-carryin' on like that when he's +drunk. He's the best naturedest old fool in Arkansaw--never hurt nobody, +drunk nor sober." + +Boggs rode up before the biggest store in town, and bent his head down so +he could see under the curtain of the awning and yells: + +"Come out here, Sherburn! Come out and meet the man you've swindled. +You're the houn' I'm after, and I'm a-gwyne to have you, too!" + +And so he went on, calling Sherburn everything he could lay his tongue +to, and the whole street packed with people listening and laughing and +going on. By and by a proud-looking man about fifty-five--and he was a +heap the best dressed man in that town, too--steps out of the store, and +the crowd drops back on each side to let him come. He says to Boggs, +mighty ca'm and slow--he says: + +"I'm tired of this, but I'll endure it till one o'clock. Till one +o'clock, mind--no longer. If you open your mouth against me only once +after that time you can't travel so far but I will find you." + +Then he turns and goes in. The crowd looked mighty sober; nobody +stirred, and there warn't no more laughing. Boggs rode off blackguarding +Sherburn as loud as he could yell, all down the street; and pretty soon +back he comes and stops before the store, still keeping it up. Some men +crowded around him and tried to get him to shut up, but he wouldn't; they +told him it would be one o'clock in about fifteen minutes, and so he MUST +go home--he must go right away. But it didn't do no good. He cussed +away with all his might, and throwed his hat down in the mud and rode +over it, and pretty soon away he went a-raging down the street again, +with his gray hair a-flying. Everybody that could get a chance at him +tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they could lock him up +and get him sober; but it warn't no use--up the street he would tear +again, and give Sherburn another cussing. By and by somebody says: + +"Go for his daughter!--quick, go for his daughter; sometimes he'll listen +to her. If anybody can persuade him, she can." + +So somebody started on a run. I walked down street a ways and stopped. +In about five or ten minutes here comes Boggs again, but not on his +horse. He was a-reeling across the street towards me, bare-headed, with +a friend on both sides of him a-holt of his arms and hurrying him along. +He was quiet, and looked uneasy; and he warn't hanging back any, but was +doing some of the hurrying himself. Somebody sings out: + +"Boggs!" + +I looked over there to see who said it, and it was that Colonel Sherburn. +He was standing perfectly still in the street, and had a pistol raised in +his right hand--not aiming it, but holding it out with the barrel tilted +up towards the sky. The same second I see a young girl coming on the +run, and two men with her. Boggs and the men turned round to see who +called him, and when they see the pistol the men jumped to one side, and +the pistol-barrel come down slow and steady to a level--both barrels +cocked. Boggs throws up both of his hands and says, "O Lord, don't +shoot!" Bang! goes the first shot, and he staggers back, clawing at the +air--bang! goes the second one, and he tumbles backwards on to the +ground, heavy and solid, with his arms spread out. That young girl +screamed out and comes rushing, and down she throws herself on her +father, crying, and saying, "Oh, he's killed him, he's killed him!" The +crowd closed up around them, and shouldered and jammed one another, with +their necks stretched, trying to see, and people on the inside trying to +shove them back and shouting, "Back, back! give him air, give him air!" + +Colonel Sherburn he tossed his pistol on to the ground, and turned around +on his heels and walked off. + +They took Boggs to a little drug store, the crowd pressing around just +the same, and the whole town following, and I rushed and got a good place +at the window, where I was close to him and could see in. They laid him +on the floor and put one large Bible under his head, and opened another +one and spread it on his breast; but they tore open his shirt first, and +I seen where one of the bullets went in. He made about a dozen long +gasps, his breast lifting the Bible up when he drawed in his breath, and +letting it down again when he breathed it out--and after that he laid +still; he was dead. Then they pulled his daughter away from him, +screaming and crying, and took her off. She was about sixteen, and very +sweet and gentle looking, but awful pale and scared. + +Well, pretty soon the whole town was there, squirming and scrouging and +pushing and shoving to get at the window and have a look, but people that +had the places wouldn't give them up, and folks behind them was saying +all the time, "Say, now, you've looked enough, you fellows; 'tain't right +and 'tain't fair for you to stay thar all the time, and never give nobody +a chance; other folks has their rights as well as you." + +There was considerable jawing back, so I slid out, thinking maybe there +was going to be trouble. The streets was full, and everybody was +excited. Everybody that seen the shooting was telling how it happened, +and there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellows, +stretching their necks and listening. One long, lanky man, with long +hair and a big white fur stovepipe hat on the back of his head, and a +crooked-handled cane, marked out the places on the ground where Boggs +stood and where Sherburn stood, and the people following him around from +one place to t'other and watching everything he done, and bobbing their +heads to show they understood, and stooping a little and resting their +hands on their thighs to watch him mark the places on the ground with his +cane; and then he stood up straight and stiff where Sherburn had stood, +frowning and having his hat-brim down over his eyes, and sung out, +"Boggs!" and then fetched his cane down slow to a level, and says "Bang!" +staggered backwards, says "Bang!" again, and fell down flat on his back. +The people that had seen the thing said he done it perfect; said it was +just exactly the way it all happened. Then as much as a dozen people got +out their bottles and treated him. + +Well, by and by somebody said Sherburn ought to be lynched. In about a +minute everybody was saying it; so away they went, mad and yelling, and +snatching down every clothes-line they come to to do the hanging with. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +THEY swarmed up towards Sherburn's house, a-whooping and raging like +Injuns, and everything had to clear the way or get run over and tromped +to mush, and it was awful to see. Children was heeling it ahead of the +mob, screaming and trying to get out of the way; and every window along +the road was full of women's heads, and there was nigger boys in every +tree, and bucks and wenches looking over every fence; and as soon as the +mob would get nearly to them they would break and skaddle back out of +reach. Lots of the women and girls was crying and taking on, scared most +to death. + +They swarmed up in front of Sherburn's palings as thick as they could jam +together, and you couldn't hear yourself think for the noise. It was a +little twenty-foot yard. Some sung out "Tear down the fence! tear down +the fence!" Then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and smashing, +and down she goes, and the front wall of the crowd begins to roll in like +a wave. + +Just then Sherburn steps out on to the roof of his little front porch, +with a double-barrel gun in his hand, and takes his stand, perfectly ca'm +and deliberate, not saying a word. The racket stopped, and the wave +sucked back. + +Sherburn never said a word--just stood there, looking down. The +stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable. Sherburn run his eye slow +along the crowd; and wherever it struck the people tried a little to +out-gaze him, but they couldn't; they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky. +Then pretty soon Sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the +kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that's got sand +in it. + +Then he says, slow and scornful: + +"The idea of YOU lynching anybody! It's amusing. The idea of you +thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a MAN! Because you're brave +enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along +here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a +MAN? Why, a MAN'S safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind--as +long as it's daytime and you're not behind him. + +"Do I know you? I know you clear through was born and raised in the +South, and I've lived in the North; so I know the average all around. +The average man's a coward. In the North he lets anybody walk over him +that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it. +In the South one man all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men in +the daytime, and robbed the lot. Your newspapers call you a brave people +so much that you think you are braver than any other people--whereas +you're just AS brave, and no braver. Why don't your juries hang +murderers? Because they're afraid the man's friends will shoot them in +the back, in the dark--and it's just what they WOULD do. + +"So they always acquit; and then a MAN goes in the night, with a hundred +masked cowards at his back and lynches the rascal. Your mistake is, that +you didn't bring a man with you; that's one mistake, and the other is +that you didn't come in the dark and fetch your masks. You brought PART +of a man--Buck Harkness, there--and if you hadn't had him to start you, +you'd a taken it out in blowing. + +"You didn't want to come. The average man don't like trouble and danger. +YOU don't like trouble and danger. But if only HALF a man--like Buck +Harkness, there--shouts 'Lynch him! lynch him!' you're afraid to back +down--afraid you'll be found out to be what you are--COWARDS--and so +you raise a yell, and hang yourselves on to that half-a-man's coat-tail, +and come raging up here, swearing what big things you're going to do. +The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is--a mob; they +don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's +borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any +MAN at the head of it is BENEATH pitifulness. Now the thing for YOU to +do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. If any real +lynching's going to be done it will be done in the dark, Southern +fashion; and when they come they'll bring their masks, and fetch a MAN +along. Now LEAVE--and take your half-a-man with you"--tossing his gun up +across his left arm and cocking it when he says this. + +The crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart, and went tearing +off every which way, and Buck Harkness he heeled it after them, looking +tolerable cheap. I could a stayed if I wanted to, but I didn't want to. + +I went to the circus and loafed around the back side till the watchman +went by, and then dived in under the tent. I had my twenty-dollar gold +piece and some other money, but I reckoned I better save it, because +there ain't no telling how soon you are going to need it, away from home +and amongst strangers that way. You can't be too careful. I ain't +opposed to spending money on circuses when there ain't no other way, but +there ain't no use in WASTING it on them. + +It was a real bully circus. It was the splendidest sight that ever was +when they all come riding in, two and two, a gentleman and lady, side by +side, the men just in their drawers and undershirts, and no shoes nor +stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs easy and comfortable +--there must a been twenty of them--and every lady with a lovely +complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking just like a gang of real +sure-enough queens, and dressed in clothes that cost millions of dollars, +and just littered with diamonds. It was a powerful fine sight; I never +see anything so lovely. And then one by one they got up and stood, and +went a-weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and graceful, the men +looking ever so tall and airy and straight, with their heads bobbing and +skimming along, away up there under the tent-roof, and every lady's +rose-leafy dress flapping soft and silky around her hips, and she looking +like the most loveliest parasol. + +And then faster and faster they went, all of them dancing, first one foot +out in the air and then the other, the horses leaning more and more, and +the ringmaster going round and round the center-pole, cracking his whip +and shouting "Hi!--hi!" and the clown cracking jokes behind him; and by +and by all hands dropped the reins, and every lady put her knuckles on +her hips and every gentleman folded his arms, and then how the horses did +lean over and hump themselves! And so one after the other they all +skipped off into the ring, and made the sweetest bow I ever see, and then +scampered out, and everybody clapped their hands and went just about +wild. + +Well, all through the circus they done the most astonishing things; and +all the time that clown carried on so it most killed the people. The +ringmaster couldn't ever say a word to him but he was back at him quick +as a wink with the funniest things a body ever said; and how he ever +COULD think of so many of them, and so sudden and so pat, was what I +couldn't noway understand. Why, I couldn't a thought of them in a year. +And by and by a drunk man tried to get into the ring--said he wanted to +ride; said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was. They argued +and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and the whole show +come to a standstill. Then the people begun to holler at him and make +fun of him, and that made him mad, and he begun to rip and tear; so that +stirred up the people, and a lot of men begun to pile down off of the +benches and swarm towards the ring, saying, "Knock him down! throw him +out!" and one or two women begun to scream. So, then, the ringmaster he +made a little speech, and said he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance, +and if the man would promise he wouldn't make no more trouble he would +let him ride if he thought he could stay on the horse. So everybody +laughed and said all right, and the man got on. The minute he was on, the +horse begun to rip and tear and jump and cavort around, with two circus +men hanging on to his bridle trying to hold him, and the drunk man +hanging on to his neck, and his heels flying in the air every jump, and +the whole crowd of people standing up shouting and laughing till tears +rolled down. And at last, sure enough, all the circus men could do, the +horse broke loose, and away he went like the very nation, round and round +the ring, with that sot laying down on him and hanging to his neck, with +first one leg hanging most to the ground on one side, and then t'other +one on t'other side, and the people just crazy. It warn't funny to me, +though; I was all of a tremble to see his danger. But pretty soon he +struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, a-reeling this way and +that; and the next minute he sprung up and dropped the bridle and stood! +and the horse a-going like a house afire too. He just stood up there, +a-sailing around as easy and comfortable as if he warn't ever drunk in his +life--and then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them. He shed +them so thick they kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed +seventeen suits. And, then, there he was, slim and handsome, and dressed +the gaudiest and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse with +his whip and made him fairly hum--and finally skipped off, and made his +bow and danced off to the dressing-room, and everybody just a-howling +with pleasure and astonishment. + +Then the ringmaster he see how he had been fooled, and he WAS the sickest +ringmaster you ever see, I reckon. Why, it was one of his own men! He +had got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on to nobody. +Well, I felt sheepish enough to be took in so, but I wouldn't a been in +that ringmaster's place, not for a thousand dollars. I don't know; there +may be bullier circuses than what that one was, but I never struck them +yet. Anyways, it was plenty good enough for ME; and wherever I run across +it, it can have all of MY custom every time. + +Well, that night we had OUR show; but there warn't only about twelve +people there--just enough to pay expenses. And they laughed all the +time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the +show was over, but one boy which was asleep. So the duke said these +Arkansaw lunkheads couldn't come up to Shakespeare; what they wanted was +low comedy--and maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he +reckoned. He said he could size their style. So next morning he got +some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drawed off +some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village. The bills said: + +AT THE COURT HOUSE! FOR 3 NIGHTS ONLY! +The World-Renowned Tragedians +DAVID GARRICK THE YOUNGER! +AND EDMUND KEAN THE ELDER! +Of the London and +Continental Theatres, +In their Thrilling Tragedy of +THE KING'S CAMELEOPARD, +OR THE ROYAL NONESUCH ! ! ! +Admission 50 cents. + +Then at the bottom was the biggest line of all, which said: + +LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED. + +"There," says he, "if that line don't fetch them, I don't know Arkansaw!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +WELL, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage and a +curtain and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house was +jam full of men in no time. When the place couldn't hold no more, the +duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come on to the +stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and +praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that +ever was; and so he went on a-bragging about the tragedy, and about +Edmund Kean the Elder, which was to play the main principal part in it; +and at last when he'd got everybody's expectations up high enough, he +rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come a-prancing out +on all fours, naked; and he was painted all over, ring-streaked-and- +striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a rainbow. And--but never +mind the rest of his outfit; it was just wild, but it was awful funny. +The people most killed themselves laughing; and when the king got done +capering and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and +stormed and haw-hawed till he come back and done it over again, and after +that they made him do it another time. Well, it would make a cow laugh to +see the shines that old idiot cut. + +Then the duke he lets the curtain down, and bows to the people, and says +the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more, on accounts of +pressing London engagements, where the seats is all sold already for it +in Drury Lane; and then he makes them another bow, and says if he has +succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he will be deeply +obleeged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to come +and see it. + +Twenty people sings out: + +"What, is it over? Is that ALL?" + +The duke says yes. Then there was a fine time. Everybody sings out, +"Sold!" and rose up mad, and was a-going for that stage and them +tragedians. But a big, fine looking man jumps up on a bench and shouts: + +"Hold on! Just a word, gentlemen." They stopped to listen. "We are +sold--mighty badly sold. But we don't want to be the laughing stock of +this whole town, I reckon, and never hear the last of this thing as long +as we live. NO. What we want is to go out of here quiet, and talk this +show up, and sell the REST of the town! Then we'll all be in the same +boat. Ain't that sensible?" ("You bet it is!--the jedge is right!" +everybody sings out.) "All right, then--not a word about any sell. Go +along home, and advise everybody to come and see the tragedy." + +Next day you couldn't hear nothing around that town but how splendid that +show was. House was jammed again that night, and we sold this crowd the +same way. When me and the king and the duke got home to the raft we all +had a supper; and by and by, about midnight, they made Jim and me back +her out and float her down the middle of the river, and fetch her in and +hide her about two mile below town. + +The third night the house was crammed again--and they warn't new-comers +this time, but people that was at the show the other two nights. I stood +by the duke at the door, and I see that every man that went in had his +pockets bulging, or something muffled up under his coat--and I see it +warn't no perfumery, neither, not by a long sight. I smelt sickly eggs +by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things; and if I know the +signs of a dead cat being around, and I bet I do, there was sixty-four of +them went in. I shoved in there for a minute, but it was too various for +me; I couldn't stand it. Well, when the place couldn't hold no more +people the duke he give a fellow a quarter and told him to tend door for +him a minute, and then he started around for the stage door, I after him; +but the minute we turned the corner and was in the dark he says: + +"Walk fast now till you get away from the houses, and then shin for the +raft like the dickens was after you!" + +I done it, and he done the same. We struck the raft at the same time, +and in less than two seconds we was gliding down stream, all dark and +still, and edging towards the middle of the river, nobody saying a word. +I reckoned the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the audience, +but nothing of the sort; pretty soon he crawls out from under the wigwam, +and says: + +"Well, how'd the old thing pan out this time, duke?" He hadn't been +up-town at all. + +We never showed a light till we was about ten mile below the village. +Then we lit up and had a supper, and the king and the duke fairly laughed +their bones loose over the way they'd served them people. The duke says: + +"Greenhorns, flatheads! I knew the first house would keep mum and let +the rest of the town get roped in; and I knew they'd lay for us the third +night, and consider it was THEIR turn now. Well, it IS their turn, and +I'd give something to know how much they'd take for it. I WOULD just +like to know how they're putting in their opportunity. They can turn it +into a picnic if they want to--they brought plenty provisions." + +Them rapscallions took in four hundred and sixty-five dollars in that +three nights. I never see money hauled in by the wagon-load like that +before. By and by, when they was asleep and snoring, Jim says: + +"Don't it s'prise you de way dem kings carries on, Huck?" + +"No," I says, "it don't." + +"Why don't it, Huck?" + +"Well, it don't, because it's in the breed. I reckon they're all alike," + +"But, Huck, dese kings o' ourn is reglar rapscallions; dat's jist what +dey is; dey's reglar rapscallions." + +"Well, that's what I'm a-saying; all kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur +as I can make out." + +"Is dat so?" + +"You read about them once--you'll see. Look at Henry the Eight; this 'n +'s a Sunday-school Superintendent to HIM. And look at Charles Second, +and Louis Fourteen, and Louis Fifteen, and James Second, and Edward +Second, and Richard Third, and forty more; besides all them Saxon +heptarchies that used to rip around so in old times and raise Cain. My, +you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He WAS a +blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head +next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was +ordering up eggs. 'Fetch up Nell Gwynn,' he says. They fetch her up. +Next morning, 'Chop off her head!' And they chop it off. 'Fetch up Jane +Shore,' he says; and up she comes, Next morning, 'Chop off her head'--and +they chop it off. 'Ring up Fair Rosamun.' Fair Rosamun answers the +bell. Next morning, 'Chop off her head.' And he made every one of them +tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a +thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and +called it Domesday Book--which was a good name and stated the case. You +don't know kings, Jim, but I know them; and this old rip of ourn is one +of the cleanest I've struck in history. Well, Henry he takes a notion he +wants to get up some trouble with this country. How does he go at it +--give notice?--give the country a show? No. All of a sudden he heaves +all the tea in Boston Harbor overboard, and whacks out a declaration of +independence, and dares them to come on. That was HIS style--he never +give anybody a chance. He had suspicions of his father, the Duke of +Wellington. Well, what did he do? Ask him to show up? No--drownded +him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat. S'pose people left money laying +around where he was--what did he do? He collared it. S'pose he +contracted to do a thing, and you paid him, and didn't set down there and +see that he done it--what did he do? He always done the other thing. +S'pose he opened his mouth--what then? If he didn't shut it up powerful +quick he'd lose a lie every time. That's the kind of a bug Henry was; +and if we'd a had him along 'stead of our kings he'd a fooled that town a +heap worse than ourn done. I don't say that ourn is lambs, because they +ain't, when you come right down to the cold facts; but they ain't nothing +to THAT old ram, anyway. All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to +make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. +It's the way they're raised." + +"But dis one do SMELL so like de nation, Huck." + +"Well, they all do, Jim. We can't help the way a king smells; history +don't tell no way." + +"Now de duke, he's a tolerble likely man in some ways." + +"Yes, a duke's different. But not very different. This one's a middling +hard lot for a duke. When he's drunk there ain't no near-sighted man +could tell him from a king." + +"Well, anyways, I doan' hanker for no mo' un um, Huck. Dese is all I kin +stan'." + +"It's the way I feel, too, Jim. But we've got them on our hands, and we +got to remember what they are, and make allowances. Sometimes I wish we +could hear of a country that's out of kings." + +What was the use to tell Jim these warn't real kings and dukes? It +wouldn't a done no good; and, besides, it was just as I said: you +couldn't tell them from the real kind. + +I went to sleep, and Jim didn't call me when it was my turn. He often +done that. When I waked up just at daybreak he was sitting there with +his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. I +didn't take notice nor let on. I knowed what it was about. He was +thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low +and homesick; because he hadn't ever been away from home before in his +life; and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white +folks does for their'n. It don't seem natural, but I reckon it's so. He +was often moaning and mourning that way nights, when he judged I was +asleep, and saying, "Po' little 'Lizabeth! po' little Johnny! it's mighty +hard; I spec' I ain't ever gwyne to see you no mo', no mo'!" He was a +mighty good nigger, Jim was. + +But this time I somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young +ones; and by and by he says: + +"What makes me feel so bad dis time 'uz bekase I hear sumpn over yonder +on de bank like a whack, er a slam, while ago, en it mine me er de time I +treat my little 'Lizabeth so ornery. She warn't on'y 'bout fo' year ole, +en she tuck de sk'yarlet fever, en had a powful rough spell; but she got +well, en one day she was a-stannin' aroun', en I says to her, I says: + +"'Shet de do'.' + +"She never done it; jis' stood dah, kiner smilin' up at me. It make me +mad; en I says agin, mighty loud, I says: + +"'Doan' you hear me? Shet de do'!' + +"She jis stood de same way, kiner smilin' up. I was a-bilin'! I says: + +"'I lay I MAKE you mine!' + +"En wid dat I fetch' her a slap side de head dat sont her a-sprawlin'. +Den I went into de yuther room, en 'uz gone 'bout ten minutes; en when I +come back dah was dat do' a-stannin' open YIT, en dat chile stannin' mos' +right in it, a-lookin' down and mournin', en de tears runnin' down. My, +but I WUZ mad! I was a-gwyne for de chile, but jis' den--it was a do' +dat open innerds--jis' den, 'long come de wind en slam it to, behine de +chile, ker-BLAM!--en my lan', de chile never move'! My breff mos' hop +outer me; en I feel so--so--I doan' know HOW I feel. I crope out, all +a-tremblin', en crope aroun' en open de do' easy en slow, en poke my head +in behine de chile, sof' en still, en all uv a sudden I says POW! jis' as +loud as I could yell. SHE NEVER BUDGE! Oh, Huck, I bust out a-cryin' en +grab her up in my arms, en say, 'Oh, de po' little thing! De Lord God +Amighty fogive po' ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as +long's he live!' Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, Huck, plumb deef en +dumb--en I'd ben a-treat'n her so!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +NEXT day, towards night, we laid up under a little willow towhead out in +the middle, where there was a village on each side of the river, and the +duke and the king begun to lay out a plan for working them towns. Jim he +spoke to the duke, and said he hoped it wouldn't take but a few hours, +because it got mighty heavy and tiresome to him when he had to lay all +day in the wigwam tied with the rope. You see, when we left him all +alone we had to tie him, because if anybody happened on to him all by +himself and not tied it wouldn't look much like he was a runaway nigger, +you know. So the duke said it WAS kind of hard to have to lay roped all +day, and he'd cipher out some way to get around it. + +He was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon struck it. He dressed +Jim up in King Lear's outfit--it was a long curtain-calico gown, and a +white horse-hair wig and whiskers; and then he took his theater paint and +painted Jim's face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead, dull, +solid blue, like a man that's been drownded nine days. Blamed if he +warn't the horriblest looking outrage I ever see. Then the duke took and +wrote out a sign on a shingle so: + +Sick Arab--but harmless when not out of his head. + +And he nailed that shingle to a lath, and stood the lath up four or five +foot in front of the wigwam. Jim was satisfied. He said it was a sight +better than lying tied a couple of years every day, and trembling all +over every time there was a sound. The duke told him to make himself +free and easy, and if anybody ever come meddling around, he must hop out +of the wigwam, and carry on a little, and fetch a howl or two like a wild +beast, and he reckoned they would light out and leave him alone. Which +was sound enough judgment; but you take the average man, and he wouldn't +wait for him to howl. Why, he didn't only look like he was dead, he +looked considerable more than that. + +These rapscallions wanted to try the Nonesuch again, because there was so +much money in it, but they judged it wouldn't be safe, because maybe the +news might a worked along down by this time. They couldn't hit no +project that suited exactly; so at last the duke said he reckoned he'd +lay off and work his brains an hour or two and see if he couldn't put up +something on the Arkansaw village; and the king he allowed he would drop +over to t'other village without any plan, but just trust in Providence to +lead him the profitable way--meaning the devil, I reckon. We had all +bought store clothes where we stopped last; and now the king put his'n +on, and he told me to put mine on. I done it, of course. The king's +duds was all black, and he did look real swell and starchy. I never +knowed how clothes could change a body before. Why, before, he looked +like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when he'd take off his +new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and +good and pious that you'd say he had walked right out of the ark, and +maybe was old Leviticus himself. Jim cleaned up the canoe, and I got my +paddle ready. There was a big steamboat laying at the shore away up +under the point, about three mile above the town--been there a couple +of hours, taking on freight. Says the king: + +"Seein' how I'm dressed, I reckon maybe I better arrive down from St. +Louis or Cincinnati, or some other big place. Go for the steamboat, +Huckleberry; we'll come down to the village on her." + +I didn't have to be ordered twice to go and take a steamboat ride. I +fetched the shore a half a mile above the village, and then went scooting +along the bluff bank in the easy water. Pretty soon we come to a nice +innocent-looking young country jake setting on a log swabbing the sweat +off of his face, for it was powerful warm weather; and he had a couple of +big carpet-bags by him. + +"Run her nose in shore," says the king. I done it. "Wher' you bound +for, young man?" + +"For the steamboat; going to Orleans." + +"Git aboard," says the king. "Hold on a minute, my servant 'll he'p you +with them bags. Jump out and he'p the gentleman, Adolphus"--meaning me, +I see. + +I done so, and then we all three started on again. The young chap was +mighty thankful; said it was tough work toting his baggage such weather. +He asked the king where he was going, and the king told him he'd come +down the river and landed at the other village this morning, and now he +was going up a few mile to see an old friend on a farm up there. The +young fellow says: + +"When I first see you I says to myself, 'It's Mr. Wilks, sure, and he +come mighty near getting here in time.' But then I says again, 'No, I +reckon it ain't him, or else he wouldn't be paddling up the river.' You +AIN'T him, are you?" + +"No, my name's Blodgett--Elexander Blodgett--REVEREND Elexander Blodgett, +I s'pose I must say, as I'm one o' the Lord's poor servants. But still +I'm jist as able to be sorry for Mr. Wilks for not arriving in time, all +the same, if he's missed anything by it--which I hope he hasn't." + +"Well, he don't miss any property by it, because he'll get that all +right; but he's missed seeing his brother Peter die--which he mayn't +mind, nobody can tell as to that--but his brother would a give anything +in this world to see HIM before he died; never talked about nothing else +all these three weeks; hadn't seen him since they was boys together--and +hadn't ever seen his brother William at all--that's the deef and dumb +one--William ain't more than thirty or thirty-five. Peter and George +were the only ones that come out here; George was the married brother; +him and his wife both died last year. Harvey and William's the only ones +that's left now; and, as I was saying, they haven't got here in time." + +"Did anybody send 'em word?" + +"Oh, yes; a month or two ago, when Peter was first took; because Peter +said then that he sorter felt like he warn't going to get well this time. +You see, he was pretty old, and George's g'yirls was too young to be much +company for him, except Mary Jane, the red-headed one; and so he was +kinder lonesome after George and his wife died, and didn't seem to care +much to live. He most desperately wanted to see Harvey--and William, +too, for that matter--because he was one of them kind that can't bear to +make a will. He left a letter behind for Harvey, and said he'd told in +it where his money was hid, and how he wanted the rest of the property +divided up so George's g'yirls would be all right--for George didn't +leave nothing. And that letter was all they could get him to put a pen +to." + +"Why do you reckon Harvey don't come? Wher' does he live?" + +"Oh, he lives in England--Sheffield--preaches there--hasn't ever been in +this country. He hasn't had any too much time--and besides he mightn't a +got the letter at all, you know." + +"Too bad, too bad he couldn't a lived to see his brothers, poor soul. +You going to Orleans, you say?" + +"Yes, but that ain't only a part of it. I'm going in a ship, next +Wednesday, for Ryo Janeero, where my uncle lives." + +"It's a pretty long journey. But it'll be lovely; wisht I was a-going. +Is Mary Jane the oldest? How old is the others?" + +"Mary Jane's nineteen, Susan's fifteen, and Joanna's about fourteen +--that's the one that gives herself to good works and has a hare-lip." + + +"Poor things! to be left alone in the cold world so." + +"Well, they could be worse off. Old Peter had friends, and they ain't +going to let them come to no harm. There's Hobson, the Babtis' preacher; +and Deacon Lot Hovey, and Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford, and Levi +Bell, the lawyer; and Dr. Robinson, and their wives, and the widow +Bartley, and--well, there's a lot of them; but these are the ones that +Peter was thickest with, and used to write about sometimes, when he wrote +home; so Harvey 'll know where to look for friends when he gets here." + +Well, the old man went on asking questions till he just fairly emptied +that young fellow. Blamed if he didn't inquire about everybody and +everything in that blessed town, and all about the Wilkses; and about +Peter's business--which was a tanner; and about George's--which was a +carpenter; and about Harvey's--which was a dissentering minister; and so +on, and so on. Then he says: + +"What did you want to walk all the way up to the steamboat for?" + +"Because she's a big Orleans boat, and I was afeard she mightn't stop +there. When they're deep they won't stop for a hail. A Cincinnati boat +will, but this is a St. Louis one." + +"Was Peter Wilks well off?" + +"Oh, yes, pretty well off. He had houses and land, and it's reckoned he +left three or four thousand in cash hid up som'ers." + +"When did you say he died?" + +"I didn't say, but it was last night." + +"Funeral to-morrow, likely?" + +"Yes, 'bout the middle of the day." + +"Well, it's all terrible sad; but we've all got to go, one time or +another. So what we want to do is to be prepared; then we're all right." + +"Yes, sir, it's the best way. Ma used to always say that." + +When we struck the boat she was about done loading, and pretty soon she +got off. The king never said nothing about going aboard, so I lost my +ride, after all. When the boat was gone the king made me paddle up +another mile to a lonesome place, and then he got ashore and says: + +"Now hustle back, right off, and fetch the duke up here, and the new +carpet-bags. And if he's gone over to t'other side, go over there and +git him. And tell him to git himself up regardless. Shove along, now." + +I see what HE was up to; but I never said nothing, of course. When I got +back with the duke we hid the canoe, and then they set down on a log, and +the king told him everything, just like the young fellow had said it +--every last word of it. And all the time he was a-doing it he tried to +talk like an Englishman; and he done it pretty well, too, for a slouch. +I can't imitate him, and so I ain't a-going to try to; but he really done +it pretty good. Then he says: + +"How are you on the deef and dumb, Bilgewater?" + +The duke said, leave him alone for that; said he had played a deef and +dumb person on the histronic boards. So then they waited for a +steamboat. + +About the middle of the afternoon a couple of little boats come along, +but they didn't come from high enough up the river; but at last there was +a big one, and they hailed her. She sent out her yawl, and we went +aboard, and she was from Cincinnati; and when they found we only wanted +to go four or five mile they was booming mad, and gave us a cussing, and +said they wouldn't land us. But the king was ca'm. He says: + +"If gentlemen kin afford to pay a dollar a mile apiece to be took on and +put off in a yawl, a steamboat kin afford to carry 'em, can't it?" + +So they softened down and said it was all right; and when we got to the +village they yawled us ashore. About two dozen men flocked down when +they see the yawl a-coming, and when the king says: + +"Kin any of you gentlemen tell me wher' Mr. Peter Wilks lives?" they give +a glance at one another, and nodded their heads, as much as to say, "What +d' I tell you?" Then one of them says, kind of soft and gentle: + +"I'm sorry sir, but the best we can do is to tell you where he DID live +yesterday evening." + +Sudden as winking the ornery old cretur went an to smash, and fell up +against the man, and put his chin on his shoulder, and cried down his +back, and says: + +"Alas, alas, our poor brother--gone, and we never got to see him; oh, +it's too, too hard!" + +Then he turns around, blubbering, and makes a lot of idiotic signs to the +duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn't drop a carpet-bag and bust out +a-crying. If they warn't the beatenest lot, them two frauds, that ever I +struck. + +Well, the men gathered around and sympathized with them, and said all +sorts of kind things to them, and carried their carpet-bags up the hill +for them, and let them lean on them and cry, and told the king all about +his brother's last moments, and the king he told it all over again on his +hands to the duke, and both of them took on about that dead tanner like +they'd lost the twelve disciples. Well, if ever I struck anything like +it, I'm a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +THE news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people +tearing down on the run from every which way, some of them putting on +their coats as they come. Pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, +and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier march. The windows and +dooryards was full; and every minute somebody would say, over a fence: + +"Is it THEM?" + +And somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say: + +"You bet it is." + +When we got to the house the street in front of it was packed, and the +three girls was standing in the door. Mary Jane WAS red-headed, but that +don't make no difference, she was most awful beautiful, and her face and +her eyes was all lit up like glory, she was so glad her uncles was come. +The king he spread his arms, and Mary Jane she jumped for them, and the +hare-lip jumped for the duke, and there they HAD it! Everybody most, +leastways women, cried for joy to see them meet again at last and have +such good times. + +Then the king he hunched the duke private--I see him do it--and then he +looked around and see the coffin, over in the corner on two chairs; so +then him and the duke, with a hand across each other's shoulder, and +t'other hand to their eyes, walked slow and solemn over there, everybody +dropping back to give them room, and all the talk and noise stopping, +people saying "Sh!" and all the men taking their hats off and drooping +their heads, so you could a heard a pin fall. And when they got there +they bent over and looked in the coffin, and took one sight, and then +they bust out a-crying so you could a heard them to Orleans, most; and +then they put their arms around each other's necks, and hung their chins +over each other's shoulders; and then for three minutes, or maybe four, I +never see two men leak the way they done. And, mind you, everybody was +doing the same; and the place was that damp I never see anything like it. +Then one of them got on one side of the coffin, and t'other on t'other +side, and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin, and +let on to pray all to themselves. Well, when it come to that it worked +the crowd like you never see anything like it, and everybody broke down +and went to sobbing right out loud--the poor girls, too; and every woman, +nearly, went up to the girls, without saying a word, and kissed them, +solemn, on the forehead, and then put their hand on their head, and +looked up towards the sky, with the tears running down, and then busted +out and went off sobbing and swabbing, and give the next woman a show. I +never see anything so disgusting. + +Well, by and by the king he gets up and comes forward a little, and works +himself up and slobbers out a speech, all full of tears and flapdoodle +about its being a sore trial for him and his poor brother to lose the +diseased, and to miss seeing diseased alive after the long journey of +four thousand mile, but it's a trial that's sweetened and sanctified to +us by this dear sympathy and these holy tears, and so he thanks them out +of his heart and out of his brother's heart, because out of their mouths +they can't, words being too weak and cold, and all that kind of rot and +slush, till it was just sickening; and then he blubbers out a pious +goody-goody Amen, and turns himself loose and goes to crying fit to bust. + +And the minute the words were out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd +struck up the doxolojer, and everybody joined in with all their might, +and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church letting +out. Music is a good thing; and after all that soul-butter and hogwash I +never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully. + +Then the king begins to work his jaw again, and says how him and his +nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the family +would take supper here with them this evening, and help set up with the +ashes of the diseased; and says if his poor brother laying yonder could +speak he knows who he would name, for they was names that was very dear +to him, and mentioned often in his letters; and so he will name the same, +to wit, as follows, vizz.:--Rev. Mr. Hobson, and Deacon Lot Hovey, and +Mr. Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford, and Levi Bell, and Dr. Robinson, +and their wives, and the widow Bartley. + +Rev. Hobson and Dr. Robinson was down to the end of the town a-hunting +together--that is, I mean the doctor was shipping a sick man to t'other +world, and the preacher was pinting him right. Lawyer Bell was away up +to Louisville on business. But the rest was on hand, and so they all +come and shook hands with the king and thanked him and talked to him; and +then they shook hands with the duke and didn't say nothing, but just kept +a-smiling and bobbing their heads like a passel of sapheads whilst he +made all sorts of signs with his hands and said "Goo-goo--goo-goo-goo" +all the time, like a baby that can't talk. + +So the king he blattered along, and managed to inquire about pretty much +everybody and dog in town, by his name, and mentioned all sorts of little +things that happened one time or another in the town, or to George's +family, or to Peter. And he always let on that Peter wrote him the +things; but that was a lie: he got every blessed one of them out of that +young flathead that we canoed up to the steamboat. + +Then Mary Jane she fetched the letter her father left behind, and the +king he read it out loud and cried over it. It give the dwelling-house +and three thousand dollars, gold, to the girls; and it give the tanyard +(which was doing a good business), along with some other houses and land +(worth about seven thousand), and three thousand dollars in gold to +Harvey and William, and told where the six thousand cash was hid down +cellar. So these two frauds said they'd go and fetch it up, and have +everything square and above-board; and told me to come with a candle. We +shut the cellar door behind us, and when they found the bag they spilt it +out on the floor, and it was a lovely sight, all them yaller-boys. My, +the way the king's eyes did shine! He slaps the duke on the shoulder and +says: + +"Oh, THIS ain't bully nor noth'n! Oh, no, I reckon not! Why, Billy, it +beats the Nonesuch, DON'T it?" + +The duke allowed it did. They pawed the yaller-boys, and sifted them +through their fingers and let them jingle down on the floor; and the king +says: + +"It ain't no use talkin'; bein' brothers to a rich dead man and +representatives of furrin heirs that's got left is the line for you and +me, Bilge. Thish yer comes of trust'n to Providence. It's the best way, +in the long run. I've tried 'em all, and ther' ain't no better way." + +Most everybody would a been satisfied with the pile, and took it on +trust; but no, they must count it. So they counts it, and it comes out +four hundred and fifteen dollars short. Says the king: + +"Dern him, I wonder what he done with that four hundred and fifteen +dollars?" + +They worried over that awhile, and ransacked all around for it. Then the +duke says: + +"Well, he was a pretty sick man, and likely he made a mistake--I reckon +that's the way of it. The best way's to let it go, and keep still about +it. We can spare it." + +"Oh, shucks, yes, we can SPARE it. I don't k'yer noth'n 'bout that--it's +the COUNT I'm thinkin' about. We want to be awful square and open and +above-board here, you know. We want to lug this h-yer money up stairs +and count it before everybody--then ther' ain't noth'n suspicious. But +when the dead man says ther's six thous'n dollars, you know, we don't +want to--" + +"Hold on," says the duke. "Le's make up the deffisit," and he begun to +haul out yaller-boys out of his pocket. + +"It's a most amaz'n' good idea, duke--you HAVE got a rattlin' clever head +on you," says the king. "Blest if the old Nonesuch ain't a heppin' us +out agin," and HE begun to haul out yaller-jackets and stack them up. + +It most busted them, but they made up the six thousand clean and clear. + +"Say," says the duke, "I got another idea. Le's go up stairs and count +this money, and then take and GIVE IT TO THE GIRLS." + +"Good land, duke, lemme hug you! It's the most dazzling idea 'at ever a +man struck. You have cert'nly got the most astonishin' head I ever see. +Oh, this is the boss dodge, ther' ain't no mistake 'bout it. Let 'em +fetch along their suspicions now if they want to--this 'll lay 'em out." + +When we got up-stairs everybody gethered around the table, and the king +he counted it and stacked it up, three hundred dollars in a pile--twenty +elegant little piles. Everybody looked hungry at it, and licked their +chops. Then they raked it into the bag again, and I see the king begin +to swell himself up for another speech. He says: + +"Friends all, my poor brother that lays yonder has done generous by them +that's left behind in the vale of sorrers. He has done generous by these +yer poor little lambs that he loved and sheltered, and that's left +fatherless and motherless. Yes, and we that knowed him knows that he +would a done MORE generous by 'em if he hadn't ben afeard o' woundin' his +dear William and me. Now, WOULDN'T he? Ther' ain't no question 'bout it +in MY mind. Well, then, what kind o' brothers would it be that 'd stand +in his way at sech a time? And what kind o' uncles would it be that 'd +rob--yes, ROB--sech poor sweet lambs as these 'at he loved so at sech a +time? If I know William--and I THINK I do--he--well, I'll jest ask him." +He turns around and begins to make a lot of signs to the duke with his +hands, and the duke he looks at him stupid and leather-headed a while; +then all of a sudden he seems to catch his meaning, and jumps for the +king, goo-gooing with all his might for joy, and hugs him about fifteen +times before he lets up. Then the king says, "I knowed it; I reckon THAT +'ll convince anybody the way HE feels about it. Here, Mary Jane, Susan, +Joanner, take the money--take it ALL. It's the gift of him that lays +yonder, cold but joyful." + +Mary Jane she went for him, Susan and the hare-lip went for the duke, and +then such another hugging and kissing I never see yet. And everybody +crowded up with the tears in their eyes, and most shook the hands off of +them frauds, saying all the time: + +"You DEAR good souls!--how LOVELY!--how COULD you!" + +Well, then, pretty soon all hands got to talking about the diseased +again, and how good he was, and what a loss he was, and all that; and +before long a big iron-jawed man worked himself in there from outside, +and stood a-listening and looking, and not saying anything; and nobody +saying anything to him either, because the king was talking and they was +all busy listening. The king was saying--in the middle of something he'd +started in on-- + +"--they bein' partickler friends o' the diseased. That's why they're +invited here this evenin'; but tomorrow we want ALL to come--everybody; +for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it's fitten that +his funeral orgies sh'd be public." + +And so he went a-mooning on and on, liking to hear himself talk, and +every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again, till the duke +he couldn't stand it no more; so he writes on a little scrap of paper, +"OBSEQUIES, you old fool," and folds it up, and goes to goo-gooing and +reaching it over people's heads to him. The king he reads it and puts it +in his pocket, and says: + +"Poor William, afflicted as he is, his HEART'S aluz right. Asks me to +invite everybody to come to the funeral--wants me to make 'em all +welcome. But he needn't a worried--it was jest what I was at." + +Then he weaves along again, perfectly ca'm, and goes to dropping in his +funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he done before. And +when he done it the third time he says: + +"I say orgies, not because it's the common term, because it ain't +--obsequies bein' the common term--but because orgies is the right term. +Obsequies ain't used in England no more now--it's gone out. We say +orgies now in England. Orgies is better, because it means the thing +you're after more exact. It's a word that's made up out'n the Greek +ORGO, outside, open, abroad; and the Hebrew JEESUM, to plant, cover up; +hence inTER. So, you see, funeral orgies is an open er public funeral." + +He was the WORST I ever struck. Well, the iron-jawed man he laughed +right in his face. Everybody was shocked. Everybody says, "Why, +DOCTOR!" and Abner Shackleford says: + +"Why, Robinson, hain't you heard the news? This is Harvey Wilks." + +The king he smiled eager, and shoved out his flapper, and says: + +"Is it my poor brother's dear good friend and physician? I--" + +"Keep your hands off of me!" says the doctor. "YOU talk like an +Englishman, DON'T you? It's the worst imitation I ever heard. YOU Peter +Wilks's brother! You're a fraud, that's what you are!" + +Well, how they all took on! They crowded around the doctor and tried to +quiet him down, and tried to explain to him and tell him how Harvey 'd +showed in forty ways that he WAS Harvey, and knowed everybody by name, +and the names of the very dogs, and begged and BEGGED him not to hurt +Harvey's feelings and the poor girl's feelings, and all that. But it +warn't no use; he stormed right along, and said any man that pretended to +be an Englishman and couldn't imitate the lingo no better than what he +did was a fraud and a liar. The poor girls was hanging to the king and +crying; and all of a sudden the doctor ups and turns on THEM. He says: + +"I was your father's friend, and I'm your friend; and I warn you as a +friend, and an honest one that wants to protect you and keep you out of +harm and trouble, to turn your backs on that scoundrel and have nothing +to do with him, the ignorant tramp, with his idiotic Greek and Hebrew, as +he calls it. He is the thinnest kind of an impostor--has come here with +a lot of empty names and facts which he picked up somewheres, and you +take them for PROOFS, and are helped to fool yourselves by these foolish +friends here, who ought to know better. Mary Jane Wilks, you know me for +your friend, and for your unselfish friend, too. Now listen to me; turn +this pitiful rascal out--I BEG you to do it. Will you?" + +Mary Jane straightened herself up, and my, but she was handsome! She +says: + +"HERE is my answer." She hove up the bag of money and put it in the +king's hands, and says, "Take this six thousand dollars, and invest for +me and my sisters any way you want to, and don't give us no receipt for +it." + +Then she put her arm around the king on one side, and Susan and the +hare-lip done the same on the other. Everybody clapped their hands and +stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his +head and smiled proud. The doctor says: + +"All right; I wash MY hands of the matter. But I warn you all that a +time 's coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this +day." And away he went. + +"All right, doctor," says the king, kinder mocking him; "we'll try and +get 'em to send for you;" which made them all laugh, and they said it was +a prime good hit. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +WELL, when they was all gone the king he asks Mary Jane how they was off +for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for +Uncle William, and she'd give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was a +little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and +sleep on a cot; and up garret was a little cubby, with a pallet in it. +The king said the cubby would do for his valley--meaning me. + +So Mary Jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was plain +but nice. She said she'd have her frocks and a lot of other traps took +out of her room if they was in Uncle Harvey's way, but he said they +warn't. The frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a +curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor. There was an old +hair trunk in one corner, and a guitar-box in another, and all sorts of +little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls brisken up a room +with. The king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for +these fixings, and so don't disturb them. The duke's room was pretty +small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby. + +That night they had a big supper, and all them men and women was there, +and I stood behind the king and the duke's chairs and waited on them, and +the niggers waited on the rest. Mary Jane she set at the head of the +table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, +and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried +chickens was--and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to +force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop, +and said so--said "How DO you get biscuits to brown so nice?" and "Where, +for the land's sake, DID you get these amaz'n pickles?" and all that kind +of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you +know. + +And when it was all done me and the hare-lip had supper in the kitchen +off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up +the things. The hare-lip she got to pumping me about England, and blest +if I didn't think the ice was getting mighty thin sometimes. She says: + +"Did you ever see the king?" + +"Who? William Fourth? Well, I bet I have--he goes to our church." I +knowed he was dead years ago, but I never let on. So when I says he goes +to our church, she says: + +"What--regular?" + +"Yes--regular. His pew's right over opposite ourn--on t'other side the +pulpit." + +"I thought he lived in London?" + +"Well, he does. Where WOULD he live?" + +"But I thought YOU lived in Sheffield?" + +I see I was up a stump. I had to let on to get choked with a chicken +bone, so as to get time to think how to get down again. Then I says: + +"I mean he goes to our church regular when he's in Sheffield. That's +only in the summer time, when he comes there to take the sea baths." + +"Why, how you talk--Sheffield ain't on the sea." + +"Well, who said it was?" + +"Why, you did." + +"I DIDN'T nuther." + +"You did!" + +"I didn't." + +"You did." + +"I never said nothing of the kind." + +"Well, what DID you say, then?" + +"Said he come to take the sea BATHS--that's what I said." + +"Well, then, how's he going to take the sea baths if it ain't on the +sea?" + +"Looky here," I says; "did you ever see any Congress-water?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, did you have to go to Congress to get it?" + +"Why, no." + +"Well, neither does William Fourth have to go to the sea to get a sea +bath." + +"How does he get it, then?" + +"Gets it the way people down here gets Congress-water--in barrels. There +in the palace at Sheffield they've got furnaces, and he wants his water +hot. They can't bile that amount of water away off there at the sea. +They haven't got no conveniences for it." + +"Oh, I see, now. You might a said that in the first place and saved +time." + +When she said that I see I was out of the woods again, and so I was +comfortable and glad. Next, she says: + +"Do you go to church, too?" + +"Yes--regular." + +"Where do you set?" + +"Why, in our pew." + +"WHOSE pew?" + +"Why, OURN--your Uncle Harvey's." + +"His'n? What does HE want with a pew?" + +"Wants it to set in. What did you RECKON he wanted with it?" + +"Why, I thought he'd be in the pulpit." + +Rot him, I forgot he was a preacher. I see I was up a stump again, so I +played another chicken bone and got another think. Then I says: + +"Blame it, do you suppose there ain't but one preacher to a church?" + +"Why, what do they want with more?" + +"What!--to preach before a king? I never did see such a girl as you. +They don't have no less than seventeen." + +"Seventeen! My land! Why, I wouldn't set out such a string as that, not +if I NEVER got to glory. It must take 'em a week." + +"Shucks, they don't ALL of 'em preach the same day--only ONE of 'em." + +"Well, then, what does the rest of 'em do?" + +"Oh, nothing much. Loll around, pass the plate--and one thing or +another. But mainly they don't do nothing." + +"Well, then, what are they FOR?" + +"Why, they're for STYLE. Don't you know nothing?" + +"Well, I don't WANT to know no such foolishness as that. How is servants +treated in England? Do they treat 'em better 'n we treat our niggers?" + +"NO! A servant ain't nobody there. They treat them worse than dogs." + +"Don't they give 'em holidays, the way we do, Christmas and New Year's +week, and Fourth of July?" + +"Oh, just listen! A body could tell YOU hain't ever been to England by +that. Why, Hare-l--why, Joanna, they never see a holiday from year's end +to year's end; never go to the circus, nor theater, nor nigger shows, nor +nowheres." + +"Nor church?" + +"Nor church." + +"But YOU always went to church." + +Well, I was gone up again. I forgot I was the old man's servant. But +next minute I whirled in on a kind of an explanation how a valley was +different from a common servant and HAD to go to church whether he wanted +to or not, and set with the family, on account of its being the law. But +I didn't do it pretty good, and when I got done I see she warn't +satisfied. She says: + +"Honest injun, now, hain't you been telling me a lot of lies?" + +"Honest injun," says I. + +"None of it at all?" + +"None of it at all. Not a lie in it," says I. + +"Lay your hand on this book and say it." + +I see it warn't nothing but a dictionary, so I laid my hand on it and +said it. So then she looked a little better satisfied, and says: + +"Well, then, I'll believe some of it; but I hope to gracious if I'll +believe the rest." + +"What is it you won't believe, Joe?" says Mary Jane, stepping in with +Susan behind her. "It ain't right nor kind for you to talk so to him, +and him a stranger and so far from his people. How would you like to be +treated so?" + +"That's always your way, Maim--always sailing in to help somebody before +they're hurt. I hain't done nothing to him. He's told some stretchers, +I reckon, and I said I wouldn't swallow it all; and that's every bit and +grain I DID say. I reckon he can stand a little thing like that, can't +he?" + +"I don't care whether 'twas little or whether 'twas big; he's here in our +house and a stranger, and it wasn't good of you to say it. If you was in +his place it would make you feel ashamed; and so you oughtn't to say a +thing to another person that will make THEM feel ashamed." + +"Why, Maim, he said--" + +"It don't make no difference what he SAID--that ain't the thing. The +thing is for you to treat him KIND, and not be saying things to make him +remember he ain't in his own country and amongst his own folks." + +I says to myself, THIS is a girl that I'm letting that old reptle rob her +of her money! + +Then Susan SHE waltzed in; and if you'll believe me, she did give +Hare-lip hark from the tomb! + +Says I to myself, and this is ANOTHER one that I'm letting him rob her of +her money! + +Then Mary Jane she took another inning, and went in sweet and lovely +again--which was her way; but when she got done there warn't hardly +anything left o' poor Hare-lip. So she hollered. + +"All right, then," says the other girls; "you just ask his pardon." + +She done it, too; and she done it beautiful. She done it so beautiful it +was good to hear; and I wished I could tell her a thousand lies, so she +could do it again. + +I says to myself, this is ANOTHER one that I'm letting him rob her of her +money. And when she got through they all jest laid theirselves out to +make me feel at home and know I was amongst friends. I felt so ornery +and low down and mean that I says to myself, my mind's made up; I'll hive +that money for them or bust. + +So then I lit out--for bed, I said, meaning some time or another. When I +got by myself I went to thinking the thing over. I says to myself, shall +I go to that doctor, private, and blow on these frauds? No--that won't +do. He might tell who told him; then the king and the duke would make it +warm for me. Shall I go, private, and tell Mary Jane? No--I dasn't do +it. Her face would give them a hint, sure; they've got the money, and +they'd slide right out and get away with it. If she was to fetch in help +I'd get mixed up in the business before it was done with, I judge. No; +there ain't no good way but one. I got to steal that money, somehow; and +I got to steal it some way that they won't suspicion that I done it. +They've got a good thing here, and they ain't a-going to leave till +they've played this family and this town for all they're worth, so I'll +find a chance time enough. I'll steal it and hide it; and by and by, when +I'm away down the river, I'll write a letter and tell Mary Jane where +it's hid. But I better hive it tonight if I can, because the doctor +maybe hasn't let up as much as he lets on he has; he might scare them out +of here yet. + +So, thinks I, I'll go and search them rooms. Upstairs the hall was dark, +but I found the duke's room, and started to paw around it with my hands; +but I recollected it wouldn't be much like the king to let anybody else +take care of that money but his own self; so then I went to his room and +begun to paw around there. But I see I couldn't do nothing without a +candle, and I dasn't light one, of course. So I judged I'd got to do the +other thing--lay for them and eavesdrop. About that time I hears their +footsteps coming, and was going to skip under the bed; I reached for it, +but it wasn't where I thought it would be; but I touched the curtain that +hid Mary Jane's frocks, so I jumped in behind that and snuggled in +amongst the gowns, and stood there perfectly still. + +They come in and shut the door; and the first thing the duke done was to +get down and look under the bed. Then I was glad I hadn't found the bed +when I wanted it. And yet, you know, it's kind of natural to hide under +the bed when you are up to anything private. They sets down then, and +the king says: + +"Well, what is it? And cut it middlin' short, because it's better for us +to be down there a-whoopin' up the mournin' than up here givin' 'em a +chance to talk us over." + +"Well, this is it, Capet. I ain't easy; I ain't comfortable. That +doctor lays on my mind. I wanted to know your plans. I've got a notion, +and I think it's a sound one." + +"What is it, duke?" + +"That we better glide out of this before three in the morning, and clip +it down the river with what we've got. Specially, seeing we got it so +easy--GIVEN back to us, flung at our heads, as you may say, when of +course we allowed to have to steal it back. I'm for knocking off and +lighting out." + +That made me feel pretty bad. About an hour or two ago it would a been a +little different, but now it made me feel bad and disappointed, The king +rips out and says: + +"What! And not sell out the rest o' the property? March off like a +passel of fools and leave eight or nine thous'n' dollars' worth o' +property layin' around jest sufferin' to be scooped in?--and all good, +salable stuff, too." + +The duke he grumbled; said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn't want +to go no deeper--didn't want to rob a lot of orphans of EVERYTHING they +had. + +"Why, how you talk!" says the king. "We sha'n't rob 'em of nothing at +all but jest this money. The people that BUYS the property is the +suff'rers; because as soon 's it's found out 'at we didn't own it--which +won't be long after we've slid--the sale won't be valid, and it 'll all +go back to the estate. These yer orphans 'll git their house back agin, +and that's enough for THEM; they're young and spry, and k'n easy earn a +livin'. THEY ain't a-goin to suffer. Why, jest think--there's thous'n's +and thous'n's that ain't nigh so well off. Bless you, THEY ain't got +noth'n' to complain of." + +Well, the king he talked him blind; so at last he give in, and said all +right, but said he believed it was blamed foolishness to stay, and that +doctor hanging over them. But the king says: + +"Cuss the doctor! What do we k'yer for HIM? Hain't we got all the fools +in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?" + +So they got ready to go down stairs again. The duke says: + +"I don't think we put that money in a good place." + +That cheered me up. I'd begun to think I warn't going to get a hint of +no kind to help me. The king says: + +"Why?" + +"Because Mary Jane 'll be in mourning from this out; and first you know +the nigger that does up the rooms will get an order to box these duds up +and put 'em away; and do you reckon a nigger can run across money and not +borrow some of it?" + +"Your head's level agin, duke," says the king; and he comes a-fumbling +under the curtain two or three foot from where I was. I stuck tight to +the wall and kept mighty still, though quivery; and I wondered what them +fellows would say to me if they catched me; and I tried to think what I'd +better do if they did catch me. But the king he got the bag before I +could think more than about a half a thought, and he never suspicioned I +was around. They took and shoved the bag through a rip in the straw tick +that was under the feather-bed, and crammed it in a foot or two amongst +the straw and said it was all right now, because a nigger only makes up +the feather-bed, and don't turn over the straw tick only about twice a +year, and so it warn't in no danger of getting stole now. + +But I knowed better. I had it out of there before they was half-way down +stairs. I groped along up to my cubby, and hid it there till I could get +a chance to do better. I judged I better hide it outside of the house +somewheres, because if they missed it they would give the house a good +ransacking: I knowed that very well. Then I turned in, with my clothes +all on; but I couldn't a gone to sleep if I'd a wanted to, I was in such +a sweat to get through with the business. By and by I heard the king and +the duke come up; so I rolled off my pallet and laid with my chin at the +top of my ladder, and waited to see if anything was going to happen. But +nothing did. + +So I held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn't +begun yet; and then I slipped down the ladder. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +I CREPT to their doors and listened; they was snoring. So I tiptoed +along, and got down stairs all right. There warn't a sound anywheres. I +peeped through a crack of the dining-room door, and see the men that was +watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. The door was open +into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in +both rooms. I passed along, and the parlor door was open; but I see there +warn't nobody in there but the remainders of Peter; so I shoved on by; +but the front door was locked, and the key wasn't there. Just then I +heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind me. I run in the +parlor and took a swift look around, and the only place I see to hide the +bag was in the coffin. The lid was shoved along about a foot, showing +the dead man's face down in there, with a wet cloth over it, and his +shroud on. I tucked the money-bag in under the lid, just down beyond +where his hands was crossed, which made me creep, they was so cold, and +then I run back across the room and in behind the door. + +The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the coffin, very soft, and +kneeled down and looked in; then she put up her handkerchief, and I see +she begun to cry, though I couldn't hear her, and her back was to me. I +slid out, and as I passed the dining-room I thought I'd make sure them +watchers hadn't seen me; so I looked through the crack, and everything +was all right. They hadn't stirred. + +I slipped up to bed, feeling ruther blue, on accounts of the thing +playing out that way after I had took so much trouble and run so much +resk about it. Says I, if it could stay where it is, all right; because +when we get down the river a hundred mile or two I could write back to +Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again and get it; but that ain't the +thing that's going to happen; the thing that's going to happen is, the +money 'll be found when they come to screw on the lid. Then the king 'll +get it again, and it 'll be a long day before he gives anybody another +chance to smouch it from him. Of course I WANTED to slide down and get it +out of there, but I dasn't try it. Every minute it was getting earlier +now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin to stir, and I +might get catched--catched with six thousand dollars in my hands that +nobody hadn't hired me to take care of. I don't wish to be mixed up in +no such business as that, I says to myself. + +When I got down stairs in the morning the parlor was shut up, and the +watchers was gone. There warn't nobody around but the family and the +widow Bartley and our tribe. I watched their faces to see if anything +had been happening, but I couldn't tell. + +Towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man, and they +set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then +set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till the +hall and the parlor and the dining-room was full. I see the coffin lid +was the way it was before, but I dasn't go to look in under it, with +folks around. + +Then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats +in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour the +people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead +man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very +still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to +their eyes and keeping their heads bent, and sobbing a little. There +warn't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and +blowing noses--because people always blows them more at a funeral than +they do at other places except church. + +When the place was packed full the undertaker he slid around in his black +gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and +getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable, and making no +more sound than a cat. He never spoke; he moved people around, he +squeezed in late ones, he opened up passageways, and done it with nods, +and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. +He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see; and there +warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham. + +They had borrowed a melodeum--a sick one; and when everything was ready a +young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and +colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one +that had a good thing, according to my notion. Then the Reverend Hobson +opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most +outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard; it was only +one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right +along; the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and wait--you +couldn't hear yourself think. It was right down awkward, and nobody +didn't seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that +long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, +"Don't you worry--just depend on me." Then he stooped down and begun to +glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's heads. +So he glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and more +outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides +of the room, he disappears down cellar. Then in about two seconds we +heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or +two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn +talk where he left off. In a minute or two here comes this undertaker's +back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided and +glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his +mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher, +over the people's heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, "HE HAD +A RAT!" Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his +place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because +naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that don't cost +nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up +to and liked. There warn't no more popular man in town than what that +undertaker was. + +Well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome; and +then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage, and at +last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the +coffin with his screw-driver. I was in a sweat then, and watched him +pretty keen. But he never meddled at all; just slid the lid along as soft +as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was! I didn't +know whether the money was in there or not. So, says I, s'pose somebody +has hogged that bag on the sly?--now how do I know whether to write to +Mary Jane or not? S'pose she dug him up and didn't find nothing, what +would she think of me? Blame it, I says, I might get hunted up and +jailed; I'd better lay low and keep dark, and not write at all; the +thing's awful mixed now; trying to better it, I've worsened it a hundred +times, and I wish to goodness I'd just let it alone, dad fetch the whole +business! + +They buried him, and we come back home, and I went to watching faces +again--I couldn't help it, and I couldn't rest easy. But nothing come +of it; the faces didn't tell me nothing. + +The king he visited around in the evening, and sweetened everybody up, +and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his +congregation over in England would be in a sweat about him, so he must +hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave for home. He was +very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody; they wished he could +stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn't be done. And he +said of course him and William would take the girls home with them; and +that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed +and amongst their own relations; and it pleased the girls, too--tickled +them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world; and told +him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they would be ready. Them poor +things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting +fooled and lied to so, but I didn't see no safe way for me to chip in and +change the general tune. + +Well, blamed if the king didn't bill the house and the niggers and all +the property for auction straight off--sale two days after the funeral; +but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to. + +So the next day after the funeral, along about noon-time, the girls' joy +got the first jolt. A couple of nigger traders come along, and the king +sold them the niggers reasonable, for three-day drafts as they called it, +and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their +mother down the river to Orleans. I thought them poor girls and them +niggers would break their hearts for grief; they cried around each other, +and took on so it most made me down sick to see it. The girls said they +hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the +town. I can't ever get it out of my memory, the sight of them poor +miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's necks and crying; +and I reckon I couldn't a stood it all, but would a had to bust out and +tell on our gang if I hadn't knowed the sale warn't no account and the +niggers would be back home in a week or two. + +The thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many come out +flatfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the +children that way. It injured the frauds some; but the old fool he +bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and I tell you +the duke was powerful uneasy. + +Next day was auction day. About broad day in the morning the king and +the duke come up in the garret and woke me up, and I see by their look +that there was trouble. The king says: + +"Was you in my room night before last?" + +"No, your majesty"--which was the way I always called him when nobody but +our gang warn't around. + +"Was you in there yisterday er last night?" + +"No, your majesty." + +"Honor bright, now--no lies." + +"Honor bright, your majesty, I'm telling you the truth. I hain't been +a-near your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the duke and showed it +to you." + +The duke says: + +"Have you seen anybody else go in there?" + +"No, your grace, not as I remember, I believe." + +"Stop and think." + +I studied awhile and see my chance; then I says: + +"Well, I see the niggers go in there several times." + +Both of them gave a little jump, and looked like they hadn't ever +expected it, and then like they HAD. Then the duke says: + +"What, all of them?" + +"No--leastways, not all at once--that is, I don't think I ever see them +all come OUT at once but just one time." + +"Hello! When was that?" + +"It was the day we had the funeral. In the morning. It warn't early, +because I overslept. I was just starting down the ladder, and I see +them." + +"Well, go on, GO on! What did they do? How'd they act?" + +"They didn't do nothing. And they didn't act anyway much, as fur as I +see. They tiptoed away; so I seen, easy enough, that they'd shoved in +there to do up your majesty's room, or something, s'posing you was up; +and found you WARN'T up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the way +of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn't already waked you up." + +"Great guns, THIS is a go!" says the king; and both of them looked pretty +sick and tolerable silly. They stood there a-thinking and scratching +their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy +chuckle, and says: + +"It does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand. They let on to +be SORRY they was going out of this region! And I believed they WAS +sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. Don't ever tell ME any more +that a nigger ain't got any histrionic talent. Why, the way they played +that thing it would fool ANYBODY. In my opinion, there's a fortune in +'em. If I had capital and a theater, I wouldn't want a better lay-out +than that--and here we've gone and sold 'em for a song. Yes, and ain't +privileged to sing the song yet. Say, where IS that song--that draft?" + +"In the bank for to be collected. Where WOULD it be?" + +"Well, THAT'S all right then, thank goodness." + +Says I, kind of timid-like: + +"Is something gone wrong?" + +The king whirls on me and rips out: + +"None o' your business! You keep your head shet, and mind y'r own +affairs--if you got any. Long as you're in this town don't you forgit +THAT--you hear?" Then he says to the duke, "We got to jest swaller it +and say noth'n': mum's the word for US." + +As they was starting down the ladder the duke he chuckles again, and +says: + +"Quick sales AND small profits! It's a good business--yes." + +The king snarls around on him and says: + +"I was trying to do for the best in sellin' 'em out so quick. If the +profits has turned out to be none, lackin' considable, and none to carry, +is it my fault any more'n it's yourn?" + +"Well, THEY'D be in this house yet and we WOULDN'T if I could a got my +advice listened to." + +The king sassed back as much as was safe for him, and then swapped around +and lit into ME again. He give me down the banks for not coming and +TELLING him I see the niggers come out of his room acting that way--said +any fool would a KNOWED something was up. And then waltzed in and cussed +HIMSELF awhile, and said it all come of him not laying late and taking +his natural rest that morning, and he'd be blamed if he'd ever do it +again. So they went off a-jawing; and I felt dreadful glad I'd worked it +all off on to the niggers, and yet hadn't done the niggers no harm by it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +BY and by it was getting-up time. So I come down the ladder and started +for down-stairs; but as I come to the girls' room the door was open, and +I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she'd +been packing things in it--getting ready to go to England. But she had +stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, +crying. I felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would. I went in +there and says: + +"Miss Mary Jane, you can't a-bear to see people in trouble, and I can't +--most always. Tell me about it." + +So she done it. And it was the niggers--I just expected it. She said +the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her; she didn't +know HOW she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the +children warn't ever going to see each other no more--and then busted out +bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands, and says: + +"Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain't EVER going to see each other any +more!" + +"But they WILL--and inside of two weeks--and I KNOW it!" says I. + +Laws, it was out before I could think! And before I could budge she +throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it AGAIN, say it AGAIN, +say it AGAIN! + +I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close place. +I asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient +and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a +person that's had a tooth pulled out. So I went to studying it out. I +says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is +in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain't had no +experience, and can't say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and +yet here's a case where I'm blest if it don't look to me like the truth +is better and actuly SAFER than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and +think it over some time or other, it's so kind of strange and unregular. +I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I'm a-going +to chance it; I'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem +most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see +where you'll go to. Then I says: + +"Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little ways where you +could go and stay three or four days?" + +"Yes; Mr. Lothrop's. Why?" + +"Never mind why yet. If I'll tell you how I know the niggers will see +each other again inside of two weeks--here in this house--and PROVE how I +know it--will you go to Mr. Lothrop's and stay four days?" + +"Four days!" she says; "I'll stay a year!" + +"All right," I says, "I don't want nothing more out of YOU than just your +word--I druther have it than another man's kiss-the-Bible." She smiled +and reddened up very sweet, and I says, "If you don't mind it, I'll shut +the door--and bolt it." + +Then I come back and set down again, and says: + +"Don't you holler. Just set still and take it like a man. I got to tell +the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it's a bad kind, +and going to be hard to take, but there ain't no help for it. These +uncles of yourn ain't no uncles at all; they're a couple of frauds +--regular dead-beats. There, now we're over the worst of it, you can stand +the rest middling easy." + +It jolted her up like everything, of course; but I was over the shoal +water now, so I went right along, her eyes a-blazing higher and higher +all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck +that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she +flung herself on to the king's breast at the front door and he kissed her +sixteen or seventeen times--and then up she jumps, with her face afire +like sunset, and says: + +"The brute! Come, don't waste a minute--not a SECOND--we'll have them +tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!" + +Says I: + +"Cert'nly. But do you mean BEFORE you go to Mr. Lothrop's, or--" + +"Oh," she says, "what am I THINKING about!" she says, and set right down +again. "Don't mind what I said--please don't--you WON'T, now, WILL you?" +Laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that I said I would +die first. "I never thought, I was so stirred up," she says; "now go on, +and I won't do so any more. You tell me what to do, and whatever you say +I'll do it." + +"Well," I says, "it's a rough gang, them two frauds, and I'm fixed so I +got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not--I +druther not tell you why; and if you was to blow on them this town would +get me out of their claws, and I'd be all right; but there'd be another +person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble. Well, we got +to save HIM, hain't we? Of course. Well, then, we won't blow on them." + +Saying them words put a good idea in my head. I see how maybe I could +get me and Jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave. +But I didn't want to run the raft in the daytime without anybody aboard +to answer questions but me; so I didn't want the plan to begin working +till pretty late to-night. I says: + +"Miss Mary Jane, I'll tell you what we'll do, and you won't have to stay +at Mr. Lothrop's so long, nuther. How fur is it?" + +"A little short of four miles--right out in the country, back here." + +"Well, that 'll answer. Now you go along out there, and lay low till +nine or half-past to-night, and then get them to fetch you home again +--tell them you've thought of something. If you get here before eleven put +a candle in this window, and if I don't turn up wait TILL eleven, and +THEN if I don't turn up it means I'm gone, and out of the way, and safe. +Then you come out and spread the news around, and get these beats +jailed." + +"Good," she says, "I'll do it." + +"And if it just happens so that I don't get away, but get took up along +with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand, and +you must stand by me all you can." + +"Stand by you! indeed I will. They sha'n't touch a hair of your head!" +she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said +it, too. + +"If I get away I sha'n't be here," I says, "to prove these rapscallions +ain't your uncles, and I couldn't do it if I WAS here. I could swear +they was beats and bummers, that's all, though that's worth something. +Well, there's others can do that better than what I can, and they're +people that ain't going to be doubted as quick as I'd be. I'll tell you +how to find them. Gimme a pencil and a piece of paper. There--'Royal +Nonesuch, Bricksville.' Put it away, and don't lose it. When the court +wants to find out something about these two, let them send up to +Bricksville and say they've got the men that played the Royal Nonesuch, +and ask for some witnesses--why, you'll have that entire town down here +before you can hardly wink, Miss Mary. And they'll come a-biling, too." + +I judged we had got everything fixed about right now. So I says: + +"Just let the auction go right along, and don't worry. Nobody don't have +to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction on +accounts of the short notice, and they ain't going out of this till they +get that money; and the way we've fixed it the sale ain't going to count, +and they ain't going to get no money. It's just like the way it was with +the niggers--it warn't no sale, and the niggers will be back before +long. Why, they can't collect the money for the NIGGERS yet--they're in +the worst kind of a fix, Miss Mary." + +"Well," she says, "I'll run down to breakfast now, and then I'll start +straight for Mr. Lothrop's." + +"'Deed, THAT ain't the ticket, Miss Mary Jane," I says, "by no manner of +means; go BEFORE breakfast." + +"Why?" + +"What did you reckon I wanted you to go at all for, Miss Mary?" + +"Well, I never thought--and come to think, I don't know. What was it?" + +"Why, it's because you ain't one of these leather-face people. I don't +want no better book than what your face is. A body can set down and read +it off like coarse print. Do you reckon you can go and face your uncles +when they come to kiss you good-morning, and never--" + +"There, there, don't! Yes, I'll go before breakfast--I'll be glad to. +And leave my sisters with them?" + +"Yes; never mind about them. They've got to stand it yet a while. They +might suspicion something if all of you was to go. I don't want you to +see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town; if a neighbor was to +ask how is your uncles this morning your face would tell something. No, +you go right along, Miss Mary Jane, and I'll fix it with all of them. +I'll tell Miss Susan to give your love to your uncles and say you've went +away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change, or to see a +friend, and you'll be back to-night or early in the morning." + +"Gone to see a friend is all right, but I won't have my love given to +them." + +"Well, then, it sha'n't be." It was well enough to tell HER so--no harm +in it. It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it's the +little things that smooths people's roads the most, down here below; it +would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn't cost nothing. Then I +says: "There's one more thing--that bag of money." + +"Well, they've got that; and it makes me feel pretty silly to think HOW +they got it." + +"No, you're out, there. They hain't got it." + +"Why, who's got it?" + +"I wish I knowed, but I don't. I HAD it, because I stole it from them; +and I stole it to give to you; and I know where I hid it, but I'm afraid +it ain't there no more. I'm awful sorry, Miss Mary Jane, I'm just as +sorry as I can be; but I done the best I could; I did honest. I come +nigh getting caught, and I had to shove it into the first place I come +to, and run--and it warn't a good place." + +"Oh, stop blaming yourself--it's too bad to do it, and I won't allow it +--you couldn't help it; it wasn't your fault. Where did you hide it?" + +I didn't want to set her to thinking about her troubles again; and I +couldn't seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that +corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach. So +for a minute I didn't say nothing; then I says: + +"I'd ruther not TELL you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you don't +mind letting me off; but I'll write it for you on a piece of paper, and +you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop's, if you want to. Do you +reckon that 'll do?" + +"Oh, yes." + +So I wrote: "I put it in the coffin. It was in there when you was +crying there, away in the night. I was behind the door, and I was mighty +sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane." + +It made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by +herself in the night, and them devils laying there right under her own +roof, shaming her and robbing her; and when I folded it up and give it to +her I see the water come into her eyes, too; and she shook me by the +hand, hard, and says: + +"GOOD-bye. I'm going to do everything just as you've told me; and if I +don't ever see you again, I sha'n't ever forget you and I'll think of +you a many and a many a time, and I'll PRAY for you, too!"--and she was +gone. + +Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she'd take a job that was more +nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same--she was just that +kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion--there +warn't no back-down to her, I judge. You may say what you want to, but +in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my +opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it ain't +no flattery. And when it comes to beauty--and goodness, too--she lays +over them all. I hain't ever seen her since that time that I see her go +out of that door; no, I hain't ever seen her since, but I reckon I've +thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she +would pray for me; and if ever I'd a thought it would do any good for me +to pray for HER, blamed if I wouldn't a done it or bust. + +Well, Mary Jane she lit out the back way, I reckon; because nobody see +her go. When I struck Susan and the hare-lip, I says: + +"What's the name of them people over on t'other side of the river that +you all goes to see sometimes?" + +They says: + +"There's several; but it's the Proctors, mainly." + +"That's the name," I says; "I most forgot it. Well, Miss Mary Jane she +told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurry--one of +them's sick." + +"Which one?" + +"I don't know; leastways, I kinder forget; but I thinks it's--" + +"Sakes alive, I hope it ain't HANNER?" + +"I'm sorry to say it," I says, "but Hanner's the very one." + +"My goodness, and she so well only last week! Is she took bad?" + +"It ain't no name for it. They set up with her all night, Miss Mary Jane +said, and they don't think she'll last many hours." + +"Only think of that, now! What's the matter with her?" + +I couldn't think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I says: + +"Mumps." + +"Mumps your granny! They don't set up with people that's got the mumps." + +"They don't, don't they? You better bet they do with THESE mumps. These +mumps is different. It's a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said." + +"How's it a new kind?" + +"Because it's mixed up with other things." + +"What other things?" + +"Well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and +yaller janders, and brain-fever, and I don't know what all." + +"My land! And they call it the MUMPS?" + +"That's what Miss Mary Jane said." + +"Well, what in the nation do they call it the MUMPS for?" + +"Why, because it IS the mumps. That's what it starts with." + +"Well, ther' ain't no sense in it. A body might stump his toe, and take +pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains +out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull +up and say, 'Why, he stumped his TOE.' Would ther' be any sense in that? +NO. And ther' ain't no sense in THIS, nuther. Is it ketching?" + +"Is it KETCHING? Why, how you talk. Is a HARROW catching--in the dark? +If you don't hitch on to one tooth, you're bound to on another, ain't +you? And you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole +harrow along, can you? Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow, +as you may say--and it ain't no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you come to +get it hitched on good." + +"Well, it's awful, I think," says the hare-lip. "I'll go to Uncle Harvey +and--" + +"Oh, yes," I says, "I WOULD. Of COURSE I would. I wouldn't lose no +time." + +"Well, why wouldn't you?" + +"Just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. Hain't your uncles +obleegd to get along home to England as fast as they can? And do you +reckon they'd be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that +journey by yourselves? YOU know they'll wait for you. So fur, so good. +Your uncle Harvey's a preacher, ain't he? Very well, then; is a PREACHER +going to deceive a steamboat clerk? is he going to deceive a SHIP CLERK? +--so as to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard? Now YOU know he +ain't. What WILL he do, then? Why, he'll say, 'It's a great pity, but +my church matters has got to get along the best way they can; for my +niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus-unum mumps, and so it's +my bounden duty to set down here and wait the three months it takes to +show on her if she's got it.' But never mind, if you think it's best to +tell your uncle Harvey--" + +"Shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good +times in England whilst we was waiting to find out whether Mary Jane's +got it or not? Why, you talk like a muggins." + +"Well, anyway, maybe you'd better tell some of the neighbors." + +"Listen at that, now. You do beat all for natural stupidness. Can't you +SEE that THEY'D go and tell? Ther' ain't no way but just to not tell +anybody at ALL." + +"Well, maybe you're right--yes, I judge you ARE right." + +"But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she's gone out a while, +anyway, so he won't be uneasy about her?" + +"Yes, Miss Mary Jane she wanted you to do that. She says, 'Tell them to +give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss, and say I've run over +the river to see Mr.'--Mr.--what IS the name of that rich family your +uncle Peter used to think so much of?--I mean the one that--" + +"Why, you must mean the Apthorps, ain't it?" + +"Of course; bother them kind of names, a body can't ever seem to remember +them, half the time, somehow. Yes, she said, say she has run over for to +ask the Apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house, +because she allowed her uncle Peter would ruther they had it than anybody +else; and she's going to stick to them till they say they'll come, and +then, if she ain't too tired, she's coming home; and if she is, she'll be +home in the morning anyway. She said, don't say nothing about the +Proctors, but only about the Apthorps--which 'll be perfectly true, +because she is going there to speak about their buying the house; I know +it, because she told me so herself." + +"All right," they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and give +them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message. + +Everything was all right now. The girls wouldn't say nothing because +they wanted to go to England; and the king and the duke would ruther Mary +Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of Doctor +Robinson. I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neat--I +reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn't a done it no neater himself. Of course he +would a throwed more style into it, but I can't do that very handy, not +being brung up to it. + +Well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the end +of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man +he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there longside of the +auctioneer, and chipping in a little Scripture now and then, or a little +goody-goody saying of some kind, and the duke he was around goo-gooing +for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself generly. + +But by and by the thing dragged through, and everything was sold +--everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. So they'd got +to work that off--I never see such a girafft as the king was for wanting +to swallow EVERYTHING. Well, whilst they was at it a steamboat landed, +and in about two minutes up comes a crowd a-whooping and yelling and +laughing and carrying on, and singing out: + +"HERE'S your opposition line! here's your two sets o' heirs to old Peter +Wilks--and you pays your money and you takes your choice!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + + +THEY was fetching a very nice-looking old gentleman along, and a +nice-looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling. And, my souls, +how the people yelled and laughed, and kept it up. But I didn't see no +joke about it, and I judged it would strain the duke and the king some to +see any. I reckoned they'd turn pale. But no, nary a pale did THEY +turn. The duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just went +a goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that's googling out +buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful +on them new-comers like it give him the stomach-ache in his very heart to +think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. Oh, he done +it admirable. Lots of the principal people gethered around the king, to +let him see they was on his side. That old gentleman that had just come +looked all puzzled to death. Pretty soon he begun to speak, and I see +straight off he pronounced LIKE an Englishman--not the king's way, though +the king's WAS pretty good for an imitation. I can't give the old gent's +words, nor I can't imitate him; but he turned around to the crowd, and +says, about like this: + +"This is a surprise to me which I wasn't looking for; and I'll +acknowledge, candid and frank, I ain't very well fixed to meet it and +answer it; for my brother and me has had misfortunes; he's broke his arm, +and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night in the night +by a mistake. I am Peter Wilks' brother Harvey, and this is his brother +William, which can't hear nor speak--and can't even make signs to amount +to much, now't he's only got one hand to work them with. We are who we +say we are; and in a day or two, when I get the baggage, I can prove it. +But up till then I won't say nothing more, but go to the hotel and wait." + +So him and the new dummy started off; and the king he laughs, and +blethers out: + +"Broke his arm--VERY likely, AIN'T it?--and very convenient, too, for a +fraud that's got to make signs, and ain't learnt how. Lost their +baggage! That's MIGHTY good!--and mighty ingenious--under the +CIRCUMSTANCES!" + +So he laughed again; and so did everybody else, except three or four, or +maybe half a dozen. One of these was that doctor; another one was a +sharp-looking gentleman, with a carpet-bag of the old-fashioned kind made +out of carpet-stuff, that had just come off of the steamboat and was +talking to him in a low voice, and glancing towards the king now and then +and nodding their heads--it was Levi Bell, the lawyer that was gone up to +Louisville; and another one was a big rough husky that come along and +listened to all the old gentleman said, and was listening to the king +now. And when the king got done this husky up and says: + +"Say, looky here; if you are Harvey Wilks, when'd you come to this town?" + +"The day before the funeral, friend," says the king. + +"But what time o' day?" + +"In the evenin'--'bout an hour er two before sundown." + +"HOW'D you come?" + +"I come down on the Susan Powell from Cincinnati." + +"Well, then, how'd you come to be up at the Pint in the MORNIN'--in a +canoe?" + +"I warn't up at the Pint in the mornin'." + +"It's a lie." + +Several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an +old man and a preacher. + +"Preacher be hanged, he's a fraud and a liar. He was up at the Pint that +mornin'. I live up there, don't I? Well, I was up there, and he was up +there. I see him there. He come in a canoe, along with Tim Collins and +a boy." + +The doctor he up and says: + +"Would you know the boy again if you was to see him, Hines?" + +"I reckon I would, but I don't know. Why, yonder he is, now. I know him +perfectly easy." + +It was me he pointed at. The doctor says: + +"Neighbors, I don't know whether the new couple is frauds or not; but if +THESE two ain't frauds, I am an idiot, that's all. I think it's our duty +to see that they don't get away from here till we've looked into this +thing. Come along, Hines; come along, the rest of you. We'll take these +fellows to the tavern and affront them with t'other couple, and I reckon +we'll find out SOMETHING before we get through." + +It was nuts for the crowd, though maybe not for the king's friends; so we +all started. It was about sundown. The doctor he led me along by the +hand, and was plenty kind enough, but he never let go my hand. + +We all got in a big room in the hotel, and lit up some candles, and +fetched in the new couple. First, the doctor says: + +"I don't wish to be too hard on these two men, but I think they're +frauds, and they may have complices that we don't know nothing about. If +they have, won't the complices get away with that bag of gold Peter Wilks +left? It ain't unlikely. If these men ain't frauds, they won't object +to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove they're +all right--ain't that so?" + +Everybody agreed to that. So I judged they had our gang in a pretty +tight place right at the outstart. But the king he only looked +sorrowful, and says: + +"Gentlemen, I wish the money was there, for I ain't got no disposition to +throw anything in the way of a fair, open, out-and-out investigation o' +this misable business; but, alas, the money ain't there; you k'n send and +see, if you want to." + +"Where is it, then?" + +"Well, when my niece give it to me to keep for her I took and hid it +inside o' the straw tick o' my bed, not wishin' to bank it for the few +days we'd be here, and considerin' the bed a safe place, we not bein' +used to niggers, and suppos'n' 'em honest, like servants in England. The +niggers stole it the very next mornin' after I had went down stairs; and +when I sold 'em I hadn't missed the money yit, so they got clean away +with it. My servant here k'n tell you 'bout it, gentlemen." + +The doctor and several said "Shucks!" and I see nobody didn't altogether +believe him. One man asked me if I see the niggers steal it. I said no, +but I see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and I never +thought nothing, only I reckoned they was afraid they had waked up my +master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them. That +was all they asked me. Then the doctor whirls on me and says: + +"Are YOU English, too?" + +I says yes; and him and some others laughed, and said, "Stuff!" + +Well, then they sailed in on the general investigation, and there we had +it, up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody never said a word about +supper, nor ever seemed to think about it--and so they kept it up, and +kept it up; and it WAS the worst mixed-up thing you ever see. They made +the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell his'n; and +anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would a SEEN that the old +gentleman was spinning truth and t'other one lies. And by and by they +had me up to tell what I knowed. The king he give me a left-handed look +out of the corner of his eye, and so I knowed enough to talk on the right +side. I begun to tell about Sheffield, and how we lived there, and all +about the English Wilkses, and so on; but I didn't get pretty fur till +the doctor begun to laugh; and Levi Bell, the lawyer, says: + +"Set down, my boy; I wouldn't strain myself if I was you. I reckon you +ain't used to lying, it don't seem to come handy; what you want is +practice. You do it pretty awkward." + +I didn't care nothing for the compliment, but I was glad to be let off, +anyway. + +The doctor he started to say something, and turns and says: + +"If you'd been in town at first, Levi Bell--" The king broke in and +reached out his hand, and says: + +"Why, is this my poor dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so often +about?" + +The lawyer and him shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked pleased, +and they talked right along awhile, and then got to one side and talked +low; and at last the lawyer speaks up and says: + +"That 'll fix it. I'll take the order and send it, along with your +brother's, and then they'll know it's all right." + +So they got some paper and a pen, and the king he set down and twisted +his head to one side, and chawed his tongue, and scrawled off something; +and then they give the pen to the duke--and then for the first time the +duke looked sick. But he took the pen and wrote. So then the lawyer +turns to the new old gentleman and says: + +"You and your brother please write a line or two and sign your names." + +The old gentleman wrote, but nobody couldn't read it. The lawyer looked +powerful astonished, and says: + +"Well, it beats ME"--and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket, +and examined them, and then examined the old man's writing, and then THEM +again; and then says: "These old letters is from Harvey Wilks; and +here's THESE two handwritings, and anybody can see they didn't write +them" (the king and the duke looked sold and foolish, I tell you, to see +how the lawyer had took them in), "and here's THIS old gentleman's hand +writing, and anybody can tell, easy enough, HE didn't write them--fact +is, the scratches he makes ain't properly WRITING at all. Now, here's +some letters from--" + +The new old gentleman says: + +"If you please, let me explain. Nobody can read my hand but my brother +there--so he copies for me. It's HIS hand you've got there, not mine." + +"WELL!" says the lawyer, "this IS a state of things. I've got some of +William's letters, too; so if you'll get him to write a line or so we can +com--" + +"He CAN'T write with his left hand," says the old gentleman. "If he +could use his right hand, you would see that he wrote his own letters and +mine too. Look at both, please--they're by the same hand." + +The lawyer done it, and says: + +"I believe it's so--and if it ain't so, there's a heap stronger +resemblance than I'd noticed before, anyway. Well, well, well! I +thought we was right on the track of a solution, but it's gone to grass, +partly. But anyway, one thing is proved--THESE two ain't either of 'em +Wilkses"--and he wagged his head towards the king and the duke. + +Well, what do you think? That muleheaded old fool wouldn't give in THEN! +Indeed he wouldn't. Said it warn't no fair test. Said his brother +William was the cussedest joker in the world, and hadn't tried to write +--HE see William was going to play one of his jokes the minute he put the +pen to paper. And so he warmed up and went warbling right along till he +was actuly beginning to believe what he was saying HIMSELF; but pretty +soon the new gentleman broke in, and says: + +"I've thought of something. Is there anybody here that helped to lay out +my br--helped to lay out the late Peter Wilks for burying?" + +"Yes," says somebody, "me and Ab Turner done it. We're both here." + +Then the old man turns towards the king, and says: + +"Perhaps this gentleman can tell me what was tattooed on his breast?" + +Blamed if the king didn't have to brace up mighty quick, or he'd a +squshed down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under, it took him +so sudden; and, mind you, it was a thing that was calculated to make most +ANYBODY sqush to get fetched such a solid one as that without any notice, +because how was HE going to know what was tattooed on the man? He +whitened a little; he couldn't help it; and it was mighty still in there, +and everybody bending a little forwards and gazing at him. Says I to +myself, NOW he'll throw up the sponge--there ain't no more use. Well, +did he? A body can't hardly believe it, but he didn't. I reckon he +thought he'd keep the thing up till he tired them people out, so they'd +thin out, and him and the duke could break loose and get away. Anyway, +he set there, and pretty soon he begun to smile, and says: + +"Mf! It's a VERY tough question, AIN'T it! YES, sir, I k'n tell you +what's tattooed on his breast. It's jest a small, thin, blue arrow +--that's what it is; and if you don't look clost, you can't see it. NOW +what do you say--hey?" + +Well, I never see anything like that old blister for clean out-and-out +cheek. + +The new old gentleman turns brisk towards Ab Turner and his pard, and his +eye lights up like he judged he'd got the king THIS time, and says: + +"There--you've heard what he said! Was there any such mark on Peter +Wilks' breast?" + +Both of them spoke up and says: + +"We didn't see no such mark." + +"Good!" says the old gentleman. "Now, what you DID see on his breast was +a small dim P, and a B (which is an initial he dropped when he was +young), and a W, with dashes between them, so: P--B--W"--and he marked +them that way on a piece of paper. "Come, ain't that what you saw?" + +Both of them spoke up again, and says: + +"No, we DIDN'T. We never seen any marks at all." + +Well, everybody WAS in a state of mind now, and they sings out: + +"The whole BILIN' of 'm 's frauds! Le's duck 'em! le's drown 'em! le's +ride 'em on a rail!" and everybody was whooping at once, and there was a +rattling powwow. But the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells, and +says: + +"Gentlemen--gentleMEN! Hear me just a word--just a SINGLE word--if you +PLEASE! There's one way yet--let's go and dig up the corpse and look." + +That took them. + +"Hooray!" they all shouted, and was starting right off; but the lawyer +and the doctor sung out: + +"Hold on, hold on! Collar all these four men and the boy, and fetch THEM +along, too!" + +"We'll do it!" they all shouted; "and if we don't find them marks we'll +lynch the whole gang!" + +I WAS scared, now, I tell you. But there warn't no getting away, you +know. They gripped us all, and marched us right along, straight for the +graveyard, which was a mile and a half down the river, and the whole town +at our heels, for we made noise enough, and it was only nine in the +evening. + +As we went by our house I wished I hadn't sent Mary Jane out of town; +because now if I could tip her the wink she'd light out and save me, and +blow on our dead-beats. + +Well, we swarmed along down the river road, just carrying on like +wildcats; and to make it more scary the sky was darking up, and the +lightning beginning to wink and flitter, and the wind to shiver amongst +the leaves. This was the most awful trouble and most dangersome I ever +was in; and I was kinder stunned; everything was going so different from +what I had allowed for; stead of being fixed so I could take my own time +if I wanted to, and see all the fun, and have Mary Jane at my back to +save me and set me free when the close-fit come, here was nothing in the +world betwixt me and sudden death but just them tattoo-marks. If they +didn't find them-- + +I couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn't think +about nothing else. It got darker and darker, and it was a beautiful +time to give the crowd the slip; but that big husky had me by the wrist +--Hines--and a body might as well try to give Goliar the slip. He dragged +me right along, he was so excited, and I had to run to keep up. + +When they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it +like an overflow. And when they got to the grave they found they had +about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody hadn't +thought to fetch a lantern. But they sailed into digging anyway by the +flicker of the lightning, and sent a man to the nearest house, a half a +mile off, to borrow one. + +So they dug and dug like everything; and it got awful dark, and the rain +started, and the wind swished and swushed along, and the lightning come +brisker and brisker, and the thunder boomed; but them people never took +no notice of it, they was so full of this business; and one minute you +could see everything and every face in that big crowd, and the shovelfuls +of dirt sailing up out of the grave, and the next second the dark wiped +it all out, and you couldn't see nothing at all. + +At last they got out the coffin and begun to unscrew the lid, and then +such another crowding and shouldering and shoving as there was, to +scrouge in and get a sight, you never see; and in the dark, that way, it +was awful. Hines he hurt my wrist dreadful pulling and tugging so, and I +reckon he clean forgot I was in the world, he was so excited and panting. + +All of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare, and +somebody sings out: + +"By the living jingo, here's the bag of gold on his breast!" + +Hines let out a whoop, like everybody else, and dropped my wrist and give +a big surge to bust his way in and get a look, and the way I lit out and +shinned for the road in the dark there ain't nobody can tell. + +I had the road all to myself, and I fairly flew--leastways, I had it all +to myself except the solid dark, and the now-and-then glares, and the +buzzing of the rain, and the thrashing of the wind, and the splitting of +the thunder; and sure as you are born I did clip it along! + +When I struck the town I see there warn't nobody out in the storm, so I +never hunted for no back streets, but humped it straight through the main +one; and when I begun to get towards our house I aimed my eye and set it. +No light there; the house all dark--which made me feel sorry and +disappointed, I didn't know why. But at last, just as I was sailing by, +FLASH comes the light in Mary Jane's window! and my heart swelled up +sudden, like to bust; and the same second the house and all was behind me +in the dark, and wasn't ever going to be before me no more in this world. +She WAS the best girl I ever see, and had the most sand. + +The minute I was far enough above the town to see I could make the +towhead, I begun to look sharp for a boat to borrow, and the first time +the lightning showed me one that wasn't chained I snatched it and shoved. +It was a canoe, and warn't fastened with nothing but a rope. The towhead +was a rattling big distance off, away out there in the middle of the +river, but I didn't lose no time; and when I struck the raft at last I +was so fagged I would a just laid down to blow and gasp if I could +afforded it. But I didn't. As I sprung aboard I sung out: + +"Out with you, Jim, and set her loose! Glory be to goodness, we're shut +of them!" + +Jim lit out, and was a-coming for me with both arms spread, he was so +full of joy; but when I glimpsed him in the lightning my heart shot up in +my mouth and I went overboard backwards; for I forgot he was old King +Lear and a drownded A-rab all in one, and it most scared the livers and +lights out of me. But Jim fished me out, and was going to hug me and +bless me, and so on, he was so glad I was back and we was shut of the +king and the duke, but I says: + +"Not now; have it for breakfast, have it for breakfast! Cut loose and +let her slide!" + +So in two seconds away we went a-sliding down the river, and it DID seem +so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river, and +nobody to bother us. I had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack +my heels a few times--I couldn't help it; but about the third crack I +noticed a sound that I knowed mighty well, and held my breath and +listened and waited; and sure enough, when the next flash busted out over +the water, here they come!--and just a-laying to their oars and making +their skiff hum! It was the king and the duke. + +So I wilted right down on to the planks then, and give up; and it was all +I could do to keep from crying. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + +WHEN they got aboard the king went for me, and shook me by the collar, +and says: + +"Tryin' to give us the slip, was ye, you pup! Tired of our company, +hey?" + +I says: + +"No, your majesty, we warn't--PLEASE don't, your majesty!" + +"Quick, then, and tell us what WAS your idea, or I'll shake the insides +out o' you!" + +"Honest, I'll tell you everything just as it happened, your majesty. The +man that had a-holt of me was very good to me, and kept saying he had a +boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry to see a boy +in such a dangerous fix; and when they was all took by surprise by +finding the gold, and made a rush for the coffin, he lets go of me and +whispers, 'Heel it now, or they'll hang ye, sure!' and I lit out. It +didn't seem no good for ME to stay--I couldn't do nothing, and I didn't +want to be hung if I could get away. So I never stopped running till I +found the canoe; and when I got here I told Jim to hurry, or they'd catch +me and hang me yet, and said I was afeard you and the duke wasn't alive +now, and I was awful sorry, and so was Jim, and was awful glad when we +see you coming; you may ask Jim if I didn't." + +Jim said it was so; and the king told him to shut up, and said, "Oh, yes, +it's MIGHTY likely!" and shook me up again, and said he reckoned he'd +drownd me. But the duke says: + +"Leggo the boy, you old idiot! Would YOU a done any different? Did you +inquire around for HIM when you got loose? I don't remember it." + +So the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and everybody in +it. But the duke says: + +"You better a blame' sight give YOURSELF a good cussing, for you're the +one that's entitled to it most. You hain't done a thing from the start +that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and cheeky with that +imaginary blue-arrow mark. That WAS bright--it was right down bully; and +it was the thing that saved us. For if it hadn't been for that they'd a +jailed us till them Englishmen's baggage come--and then--the +penitentiary, you bet! But that trick took 'em to the graveyard, and the +gold done us a still bigger kindness; for if the excited fools hadn't let +go all holts and made that rush to get a look we'd a slept in our cravats +to-night--cravats warranted to WEAR, too--longer than WE'D need 'em." + +They was still a minute--thinking; then the king says, kind of +absent-minded like: + +"Mf! And we reckoned the NIGGERS stole it!" + +That made me squirm! + +"Yes," says the duke, kinder slow and deliberate and sarcastic, "WE did." + +After about a half a minute the king drawls out: + +"Leastways, I did." + +The duke says, the same way: + +"On the contrary, I did." + +The king kind of ruffles up, and says: + +"Looky here, Bilgewater, what'r you referrin' to?" + +The duke says, pretty brisk: + +"When it comes to that, maybe you'll let me ask, what was YOU referring +to?" + +"Shucks!" says the king, very sarcastic; "but I don't know--maybe you was +asleep, and didn't know what you was about." + +The duke bristles up now, and says: + +"Oh, let UP on this cussed nonsense; do you take me for a blame' fool? +Don't you reckon I know who hid that money in that coffin?" + +"YES, sir! I know you DO know, because you done it yourself!" + +"It's a lie!"--and the duke went for him. The king sings out: + +"Take y'r hands off!--leggo my throat!--I take it all back!" + +The duke says: + +"Well, you just own up, first, that you DID hide that money there, +intending to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig it +up, and have it all to yourself." + +"Wait jest a minute, duke--answer me this one question, honest and fair; +if you didn't put the money there, say it, and I'll b'lieve you, and take +back everything I said." + +"You old scoundrel, I didn't, and you know I didn't. There, now!" + +"Well, then, I b'lieve you. But answer me only jest this one more--now +DON'T git mad; didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide +it?" + +The duke never said nothing for a little bit; then he says: + +"Well, I don't care if I DID, I didn't DO it, anyway. But you not only +had it in mind to do it, but you DONE it." + +"I wisht I never die if I done it, duke, and that's honest. I won't say +I warn't goin' to do it, because I WAS; but you--I mean somebody--got in +ahead o' me." + +"It's a lie! You done it, and you got to SAY you done it, or--" + +The king began to gurgle, and then he gasps out: + +"'Nough!--I OWN UP!" + +I was very glad to hear him say that; it made me feel much more easier +than what I was feeling before. So the duke took his hands off and says: + +"If you ever deny it again I'll drown you. It's WELL for you to set +there and blubber like a baby--it's fitten for you, after the way you've +acted. I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything +--and I a-trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. You ought +to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled on to a lot +of poor niggers, and you never say a word for 'em. It makes me feel +ridiculous to think I was soft enough to BELIEVE that rubbage. Cuss you, +I can see now why you was so anxious to make up the deffisit--you wanted +to get what money I'd got out of the Nonesuch and one thing or another, +and scoop it ALL!" + +The king says, timid, and still a-snuffling: + +"Why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffisit; it warn't me." + +"Dry up! I don't want to hear no more out of you!" says the duke. "And +NOW you see what you GOT by it. They've got all their own money back, +and all of OURN but a shekel or two BESIDES. G'long to bed, and don't +you deffersit ME no more deffersits, long 's YOU live!" + +So the king sneaked into the wigwam and took to his bottle for comfort, +and before long the duke tackled HIS bottle; and so in about a half an +hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got the +lovinger they got, and went off a-snoring in each other's arms. They +both got powerful mellow, but I noticed the king didn't get mellow enough +to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money-bag again. That +made me feel easy and satisfied. Of course when they got to snoring we +had a long gabble, and I told Jim everything. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + +WE dasn't stop again at any town for days and days; kept right along down +the river. We was down south in the warm weather now, and a mighty long +ways from home. We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them, +hanging down from the limbs like long, gray beards. It was the first I +ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. So +now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun to work +the villages again. + +First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough for +them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a +dancing-school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo +does; so the first prance they made the general public jumped in and +pranced them out of town. Another time they tried to go at yellocution; +but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a +solid good cussing, and made them skip out. They tackled missionarying, +and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of +everything; but they couldn't seem to have no luck. So at last they got +just about dead broke, and laid around the raft as she floated along, +thinking and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a +time, and dreadful blue and desperate. + +And at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in +the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time. +Jim and me got uneasy. We didn't like the look of it. We judged they +was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. We turned it over +and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into +somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money +business, or something. So then we was pretty scared, and made up an +agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such +actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold +shake and clear out and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we hid +the raft in a good, safe place about two mile below a little bit of a +shabby village named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore and told us +all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if +anybody had got any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. ("House to rob, +you MEAN," says I to myself; "and when you get through robbing it you'll +come back here and wonder what has become of me and Jim and the raft--and +you'll have to take it out in wondering.") And he said if he warn't back +by midday the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come +along. + +So we stayed where we was. The duke he fretted and sweated around, and +was in a mighty sour way. He scolded us for everything, and we couldn't +seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing. +Something was a-brewing, sure. I was good and glad when midday come and +no king; we could have a change, anyway--and maybe a chance for THE +chance on top of it. So me and the duke went up to the village, and +hunted around there for the king, and by and by we found him in the back +room of a little low doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers +bullyragging him for sport, and he a-cussing and a-threatening with all +his might, and so tight he couldn't walk, and couldn't do nothing to +them. The duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun +to sass back, and the minute they was fairly at it I lit out and shook +the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deer, +for I see our chance; and I made up my mind that it would be a long day +before they ever see me and Jim again. I got down there all out of +breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out: + +"Set her loose, Jim! we're all right now!" + +But there warn't no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. Jim was +gone! I set up a shout--and then another--and then another one; and run +this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn't no +use--old Jim was gone. Then I set down and cried; I couldn't help it. +But I couldn't set still long. Pretty soon I went out on the road, +trying to think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and +asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says: + +"Yes." + +"Whereabouts?" says I. + +"Down to Silas Phelps' place, two mile below here. He's a runaway +nigger, and they've got him. Was you looking for him?" + +"You bet I ain't! I run across him in the woods about an hour or two +ago, and he said if I hollered he'd cut my livers out--and told me to lay +down and stay where I was; and I done it. Been there ever since; afeard +to come out." + +"Well," he says, "you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got him. +He run off f'm down South, som'ers." + +"It's a good job they got him." + +"Well, I RECKON! There's two hunderd dollars reward on him. It's like +picking up money out'n the road." + +"Yes, it is--and I could a had it if I'd been big enough; I see him +FIRST. Who nailed him?" + +"It was an old fellow--a stranger--and he sold out his chance in him for +forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait. Think +o' that, now! You bet I'D wait, if it was seven year." + +"That's me, every time," says I. "But maybe his chance ain't worth no +more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap. Maybe there's something ain't +straight about it." + +"But it IS, though--straight as a string. I see the handbill myself. It +tells all about him, to a dot--paints him like a picture, and tells the +plantation he's frum, below NewrLEANS. No-sirree-BOB, they ain't no +trouble 'bout THAT speculation, you bet you. Say, gimme a chaw tobacker, +won't ye?" + +I didn't have none, so he left. I went to the raft, and set down in the +wigwam to think. But I couldn't come to nothing. I thought till I wore +my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble. After all +this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it +was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because +they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him +a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty +dollars. + +Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a +slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd GOT to be a slave, +and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss +Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion for two things: +she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for +leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if +she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd +make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced. +And then think of ME! It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a +nigger to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from that +town again I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That's +just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to +take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide, it ain't no +disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this the +more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down +and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden +that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and +letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up +there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that +hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's +always on the lookout, and ain't a-going to allow no such miserable +doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks +I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up +somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't so +much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, "There was the +Sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done it they'd a +learnt you there that people that acts as I'd been acting about that +nigger goes to everlasting fire." + +It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I +couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I +kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It +warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I +knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't +right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing +double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was +holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY +I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that +nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was +a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie--I found that out. + +So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. +At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter--and then +see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a +feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece +of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote: + +Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below +Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the +reward if you send. + +HUCK FINN. + +I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever +felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it +straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking +how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost +and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our +trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day +and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we +a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I +couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the +other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of +calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I +come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up +there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me +honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how +good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling +the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was +the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he's got +now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper. + +It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was +a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and +I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then +says to myself: + +"All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up. + +It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them +stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole +thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which +was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a +starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I +could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I +was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog. + +Then I set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over some +considerable many ways in my mind; and at last fixed up a plan that +suited me. So then I took the bearings of a woody island that was down +the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark I crept out with my +raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in. I slept the +night through, and got up before it was light, and had my breakfast, and +put on my store clothes, and tied up some others and one thing or another +in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for shore. I landed below +where I judged was Phelps's place, and hid my bundle in the woods, and +then filled up the canoe with water, and loaded rocks into her and sunk +her where I could find her again when I wanted her, about a quarter of a +mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the bank. + +Then I struck up the road, and when I passed the mill I see a sign on it, +"Phelps's Sawmill," and when I come to the farm-houses, two or three +hundred yards further along, I kept my eyes peeled, but didn't see nobody +around, though it was good daylight now. But I didn't mind, because I +didn't want to see nobody just yet--I only wanted to get the lay of the +land. According to my plan, I was going to turn up there from the +village, not from below. So I just took a look, and shoved along, +straight for town. Well, the very first man I see when I got there was +the duke. He was sticking up a bill for the Royal Nonesuch--three-night +performance--like that other time. They had the cheek, them frauds! I +was right on him before I could shirk. He looked astonished, and says: + +"Hel-LO! Where'd YOU come from?" Then he says, kind of glad and eager, +"Where's the raft?--got her in a good place?" + +I says: + +"Why, that's just what I was going to ask your grace." + +Then he didn't look so joyful, and says: + +"What was your idea for asking ME?" he says. + +"Well," I says, "when I see the king in that doggery yesterday I says to +myself, we can't get him home for hours, till he's soberer; so I went +a-loafing around town to put in the time and wait. A man up and offered +me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch a +sheep, and so I went along; but when we was dragging him to the boat, and +the man left me a-holt of the rope and went behind him to shove him +along, he was too strong for me and jerked loose and run, and we after +him. We didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase him all over the +country till we tired him out. We never got him till dark; then we +fetched him over, and I started down for the raft. When I got there and +see it was gone, I says to myself, 'They've got into trouble and had to +leave; and they've took my nigger, which is the only nigger I've got in +the world, and now I'm in a strange country, and ain't got no property no +more, nor nothing, and no way to make my living;' so I set down and +cried. I slept in the woods all night. But what DID become of the raft, +then?--and Jim--poor Jim!" + +"Blamed if I know--that is, what's become of the raft. That old fool had +made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery +the loafers had matched half-dollars with him and got every cent but what +he'd spent for whisky; and when I got him home late last night and found +the raft gone, we said, 'That little rascal has stole our raft and shook +us, and run off down the river.'" + +"I wouldn't shake my NIGGER, would I?--the only nigger I had in the +world, and the only property." + +"We never thought of that. Fact is, I reckon we'd come to consider him +OUR nigger; yes, we did consider him so--goodness knows we had trouble +enough for him. So when we see the raft was gone and we flat broke, +there warn't anything for it but to try the Royal Nonesuch another shake. +And I've pegged along ever since, dry as a powder-horn. Where's that ten +cents? Give it here." + +I had considerable money, so I give him ten cents, but begged him to +spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the +money I had, and I hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday. He never +said nothing. The next minute he whirls on me and says: + +"Do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? We'd skin him if he done +that!" + +"How can he blow? Hain't he run off?" + +"No! That old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the money's +gone." + +"SOLD him?" I says, and begun to cry; "why, he was MY nigger, and that +was my money. Where is he?--I want my nigger." + +"Well, you can't GET your nigger, that's all--so dry up your blubbering. +Looky here--do you think YOU'D venture to blow on us? Blamed if I think +I'd trust you. Why, if you WAS to blow on us--" + +He stopped, but I never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before. +I went on a-whimpering, and says: + +"I don't want to blow on nobody; and I ain't got no time to blow, nohow. +I got to turn out and find my nigger." + +He looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his bills fluttering on +his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up his forehead. At last he says: + +"I'll tell you something. We got to be here three days. If you'll +promise you won't blow, and won't let the nigger blow, I'll tell you +where to find him." + +So I promised, and he says: + +"A farmer by the name of Silas Ph--" and then he stopped. You see, he +started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped that way, and begun to +study and think again, I reckoned he was changing his mind. And so he +was. He wouldn't trust me; he wanted to make sure of having me out of the +way the whole three days. So pretty soon he says: + +"The man that bought him is named Abram Foster--Abram G. Foster--and he +lives forty mile back here in the country, on the road to Lafayette." + +"All right," I says, "I can walk it in three days. And I'll start this +very afternoon." + +"No you wont, you'll start NOW; and don't you lose any time about it, +neither, nor do any gabbling by the way. Just keep a tight tongue in +your head and move right along, and then you won't get into trouble with +US, d'ye hear?" + +That was the order I wanted, and that was the one I played for. I wanted +to be left free to work my plans. + +"So clear out," he says; "and you can tell Mr. Foster whatever you want +to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim IS your nigger--some idiots +don't require documents--leastways I've heard there's such down South +here. And when you tell him the handbill and the reward's bogus, maybe +he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting +'em out. Go 'long now, and tell him anything you want to; but mind you +don't work your jaw any BETWEEN here and there." + +So I left, and struck for the back country. I didn't look around, but I +kinder felt like he was watching me. But I knowed I could tire him out +at that. I went straight out in the country as much as a mile before I +stopped; then I doubled back through the woods towards Phelps'. I +reckoned I better start in on my plan straight off without fooling +around, because I wanted to stop Jim's mouth till these fellows could get +away. I didn't want no trouble with their kind. I'd seen all I wanted +to of them, and wanted to get entirely shut of them. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + +WHEN I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny; +the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint +dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and +like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers +the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits +whispering--spirits that's been dead ever so many years--and you always +think they're talking about YOU. As a general thing it makes a body wish +HE was dead, too, and done with it all. + +Phelps' was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations, and they +all look alike. A rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile made out of +logs sawed off and up-ended in steps, like barrels of a different length, +to climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand on when they are +going to jump on to a horse; some sickly grass-patches in the big yard, +but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed +off; big double log-house for the white folks--hewed logs, with the +chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud-stripes been +whitewashed some time or another; round-log kitchen, with a big broad, +open but roofed passage joining it to the house; log smoke-house back of +the kitchen; three little log nigger-cabins in a row t'other side the +smoke-house; one little hut all by itself away down against the back +fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side; ash-hopper and +big kettle to bile soap in by the little hut; bench by the kitchen door, +with bucket of water and a gourd; hound asleep there in the sun; more +hounds asleep round about; about three shade trees away off in a corner; +some currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence; +outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch; then the cotton +fields begins, and after the fields the woods. + +I went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper, and +started for the kitchen. When I got a little ways I heard the dim hum of +a spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again; and then +I knowed for certain I wished I was dead--for that IS the lonesomest +sound in the whole world. + +I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting +to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for +I'd noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth if +I left it alone. + +When I got half-way, first one hound and then another got up and went for +me, and of course I stopped and faced them, and kept still. And such +another powwow as they made! In a quarter of a minute I was a kind of a +hub of a wheel, as you may say--spokes made out of dogs--circle of +fifteen of them packed together around me, with their necks and noses +stretched up towards me, a-barking and howling; and more a-coming; you +could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywheres. + +A nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling-pin in her +hand, singing out, "Begone YOU Tige! you Spot! begone sah!" and she +fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling, +and then the rest followed; and the next second half of them come back, +wagging their tails around me, and making friends with me. There ain't +no harm in a hound, nohow. + +And behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger +boys without anything on but tow-linen shirts, and they hung on to their +mother's gown, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way +they always do. And here comes the white woman running from the house, +about forty-five or fifty year old, bareheaded, and her spinning-stick in +her hand; and behind her comes her little white children, acting the same +way the little niggers was going. She was smiling all over so she could +hardly stand--and says: + +"It's YOU, at last!--AIN'T it?" + +I out with a "Yes'm" before I thought. + +She grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands and +shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over; and +she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, "You don't +look as much like your mother as I reckoned you would; but law sakes, I +don't care for that, I'm so glad to see you! Dear, dear, it does seem +like I could eat you up! Children, it's your cousin Tom!--tell him +howdy." + +But they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and +hid behind her. So she run on: + +"Lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away--or did you get +your breakfast on the boat?" + +I said I had got it on the boat. So then she started for the house, +leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after. When we got +there she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set herself down on +a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says: + +"Now I can have a GOOD look at you; and, laws-a-me, I've been hungry for +it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it's come at last! +We been expecting you a couple of days and more. What kep' you?--boat +get aground?" + +"Yes'm--she--" + +"Don't say yes'm--say Aunt Sally. Where'd she get aground?" + +I didn't rightly know what to say, because I didn't know whether the boat +would be coming up the river or down. But I go a good deal on instinct; +and my instinct said she would be coming up--from down towards Orleans. +That didn't help me much, though; for I didn't know the names of bars +down that way. I see I'd got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the +one we got aground on--or--Now I struck an idea, and fetched it out: + +"It warn't the grounding--that didn't keep us back but a little. We +blowed out a cylinder-head." + +"Good gracious! anybody hurt?" + +"No'm. Killed a nigger." + +"Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago +last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old +Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man. And I +think he died afterwards. He was a Baptist. Your uncle Silas knowed a +family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well. Yes, I remember +now, he DID die. Mortification set in, and they had to amputate him. +But it didn't save him. Yes, it was mortification--that was it. He +turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection. +They say he was a sight to look at. Your uncle's been up to the town +every day to fetch you. And he's gone again, not more'n an hour ago; +he'll be back any minute now. You must a met him on the road, didn't +you?--oldish man, with a--" + +"No, I didn't see nobody, Aunt Sally. The boat landed just at daylight, +and I left my baggage on the wharf-boat and went looking around the town +and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get here too +soon; and so I come down the back way." + +"Who'd you give the baggage to?" + +"Nobody." + +"Why, child, it 'll be stole!" + +"Not where I hid it I reckon it won't," I says. + +"How'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat?" + +It was kinder thin ice, but I says: + +"The captain see me standing around, and told me I better have something +to eat before I went ashore; so he took me in the texas to the officers' +lunch, and give me all I wanted." + +I was getting so uneasy I couldn't listen good. I had my mind on the +children all the time; I wanted to get them out to one side and pump them +a little, and find out who I was. But I couldn't get no show, Mrs. +Phelps kept it up and run on so. Pretty soon she made the cold chills +streak all down my back, because she says: + +"But here we're a-running on this way, and you hain't told me a word +about Sis, nor any of them. Now I'll rest my works a little, and you +start up yourn; just tell me EVERYTHING--tell me all about 'm all every +one of 'm; and how they are, and what they're doing, and what they told +you to tell me; and every last thing you can think of." + +Well, I see I was up a stump--and up it good. Providence had stood by me +this fur all right, but I was hard and tight aground now. I see it +warn't a bit of use to try to go ahead--I'd got to throw up my hand. So +I says to myself, here's another place where I got to resk the truth. I +opened my mouth to begin; but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the +bed, and says: + +"Here he comes! Stick your head down lower--there, that'll do; you can't +be seen now. Don't you let on you're here. I'll play a joke on him. +Children, don't you say a word." + +I see I was in a fix now. But it warn't no use to worry; there warn't +nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready to stand from +under when the lightning struck. + +I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in; then +the bed hid him. Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him, and says: + +"Has he come?" + +"No," says her husband. + +"Good-NESS gracious!" she says, "what in the warld can have become of +him?" + +"I can't imagine," says the old gentleman; "and I must say it makes me +dreadful uneasy." + +"Uneasy!" she says; "I'm ready to go distracted! He MUST a come; and +you've missed him along the road. I KNOW it's so--something tells me +so." + +"Why, Sally, I COULDN'T miss him along the road--YOU know that." + +"But oh, dear, dear, what WILL Sis say! He must a come! You must a +missed him. He--" + +"Oh, don't distress me any more'n I'm already distressed. I don't know +what in the world to make of it. I'm at my wit's end, and I don't mind +acknowledging 't I'm right down scared. But there's no hope that he's +come; for he COULDN'T come and me miss him. Sally, it's terrible--just +terrible--something's happened to the boat, sure!" + +"Why, Silas! Look yonder!--up the road!--ain't that somebody coming?" + +He sprung to the window at the head of the bed, and that give Mrs. Phelps +the chance she wanted. She stooped down quick at the foot of the bed and +give me a pull, and out I come; and when he turned back from the window +there she stood, a-beaming and a-smiling like a house afire, and I +standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside. The old gentleman stared, and +says: + +"Why, who's that?" + +"Who do you reckon 't is?" + +"I hain't no idea. Who IS it?" + +"It's TOM SAWYER!" + +By jings, I most slumped through the floor! But there warn't no time to +swap knives; the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook, and kept on +shaking; and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and +cry; and then how they both did fire off questions about Sid, and Mary, +and the rest of the tribe. + +But if they was joyful, it warn't nothing to what I was; for it was like +being born again, I was so glad to find out who I was. Well, they froze +to me for two hours; and at last, when my chin was so tired it couldn't +hardly go any more, I had told them more about my family--I mean the +Sawyer family--than ever happened to any six Sawyer families. And I +explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder-head at the mouth of +White River, and it took us three days to fix it. Which was all right, +and worked first-rate; because THEY didn't know but what it would take +three days to fix it. If I'd a called it a bolthead it would a done just +as well. + +Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty +uncomfortable all up the other. Being Tom Sawyer was easy and +comfortable, and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by I hear a +steamboat coughing along down the river. Then I says to myself, s'pose +Tom Sawyer comes down on that boat? And s'pose he steps in here any +minute, and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep +quiet? + +Well, I couldn't HAVE it that way; it wouldn't do at all. I must go up +the road and waylay him. So I told the folks I reckoned I would go up to +the town and fetch down my baggage. The old gentleman was for going +along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself, and I +druther he wouldn't take no trouble about me. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + +SO I started for town in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see a wagon +coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited till +he come along. I says "Hold on!" and it stopped alongside, and his mouth +opened up like a trunk, and stayed so; and he swallowed two or three +times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says: + +"I hain't ever done you no harm. You know that. So, then, what you want +to come back and ha'nt ME for?" + +I says: + +"I hain't come back--I hain't been GONE." + +When he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he warn't quite +satisfied yet. He says: + +"Don't you play nothing on me, because I wouldn't on you. Honest injun, +you ain't a ghost?" + +"Honest injun, I ain't," I says. + +"Well--I--I--well, that ought to settle it, of course; but I can't +somehow seem to understand it no way. Looky here, warn't you ever +murdered AT ALL?" + +"No. I warn't ever murdered at all--I played it on them. You come in +here and feel of me if you don't believe me." + +So he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see me again +he didn't know what to do. And he wanted to know all about it right off, +because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him where +he lived. But I said, leave it alone till by and by; and told his driver +to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and I told him the kind of a +fix I was in, and what did he reckon we better do? He said, let him +alone a minute, and don't disturb him. So he thought and thought, and +pretty soon he says: + +"It's all right; I've got it. Take my trunk in your wagon, and let on +it's your'n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the +house about the time you ought to; and I'll go towards town a piece, and +take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you; +and you needn't let on to know me at first." + +I says: + +"All right; but wait a minute. There's one more thing--a thing that +NOBODY don't know but me. And that is, there's a nigger here that I'm +a-trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is JIM--old Miss Watson's +Jim." + +He says: + +"What! Why, Jim is--" + +He stopped and went to studying. I says: + +"I know what you'll say. You'll say it's dirty, low-down business; but +what if it is? I'm low down; and I'm a-going to steal him, and I want +you keep mum and not let on. Will you?" + +His eye lit up, and he says: + +"I'll HELP you steal him!" + +Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most +astonishing speech I ever heard--and I'm bound to say Tom Sawyer fell +considerable in my estimation. Only I couldn't believe it. Tom Sawyer a +NIGGER-STEALER! + +"Oh, shucks!" I says; "you're joking." + +"I ain't joking, either." + +"Well, then," I says, "joking or no joking, if you hear anything said +about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that YOU don't know +nothing about him, and I don't know nothing about him." + +Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his way +and I drove mine. But of course I forgot all about driving slow on +accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so I got home a heap too +quick for that length of a trip. The old gentleman was at the door, and +he says: + +"Why, this is wonderful! Whoever would a thought it was in that mare to +do it? I wish we'd a timed her. And she hain't sweated a hair--not a +hair. It's wonderful. Why, I wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that +horse now--I wouldn't, honest; and yet I'd a sold her for fifteen +before, and thought 'twas all she was worth." + +That's all he said. He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see. +But it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer, he was a +preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the +plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church +and schoolhouse, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was +worth it, too. There was plenty other farmer-preachers like that, and +done the same way, down South. + +In about half an hour Tom's wagon drove up to the front stile, and Aunt +Sally she see it through the window, because it was only about fifty +yards, and says: + +"Why, there's somebody come! I wonder who 'tis? Why, I do believe it's +a stranger. Jimmy" (that's one of the children) "run and tell Lize to +put on another plate for dinner." + +Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger +don't come EVERY year, and so he lays over the yaller-fever, for +interest, when he does come. Tom was over the stile and starting for the +house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we was all +bunched in the front door. Tom had his store clothes on, and an +audience--and that was always nuts for Tom Sawyer. In them circumstances +it warn't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was +suitable. He warn't a boy to meeky along up that yard like a sheep; no, +he come ca'm and important, like the ram. When he got a-front of us he +lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box +that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them, and +says: + +"Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume?" + +"No, my boy," says the old gentleman, "I'm sorry to say 't your driver +has deceived you; Nichols's place is down a matter of three mile more. +Come in, come in." + +Tom he took a look back over his shoulder, and says, "Too late--he's out +of sight." + +"Yes, he's gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner with +us; and then we'll hitch up and take you down to Nichols's." + +"Oh, I CAN'T make you so much trouble; I couldn't think of it. I'll walk +--I don't mind the distance." + +"But we won't LET you walk--it wouldn't be Southern hospitality to do it. +Come right in." + +"Oh, DO," says Aunt Sally; "it ain't a bit of trouble to us, not a bit in +the world. You must stay. It's a long, dusty three mile, and we can't +let you walk. And, besides, I've already told 'em to put on another +plate when I see you coming; so you mustn't disappoint us. Come right in +and make yourself at home." + +So Tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome, and let himself be +persuaded, and come in; and when he was in he said he was a stranger from +Hicksville, Ohio, and his name was William Thompson--and he made another +bow. + +Well, he run on, and on, and on, making up stuff about Hicksville and +everybody in it he could invent, and I getting a little nervious, and +wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape; and at last, +still talking along, he reached over and kissed Aunt Sally right on the +mouth, and then settled back again in his chair comfortable, and was +going on talking; but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her +hand, and says: + +"You owdacious puppy!" + +He looked kind of hurt, and says: + +"I'm surprised at you, m'am." + +"You're s'rp--Why, what do you reckon I am? I've a good notion to take +and--Say, what do you mean by kissing me?" + +He looked kind of humble, and says: + +"I didn't mean nothing, m'am. I didn't mean no harm. I--I--thought +you'd like it." + +"Why, you born fool!" She took up the spinning stick, and it looked like +it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it. "What +made you think I'd like it?" + +"Well, I don't know. Only, they--they--told me you would." + +"THEY told you I would. Whoever told you's ANOTHER lunatic. I never +heard the beat of it. Who's THEY?" + +"Why, everybody. They all said so, m'am." + +It was all she could do to hold in; and her eyes snapped, and her fingers +worked like she wanted to scratch him; and she says: + +"Who's 'everybody'? Out with their names, or ther'll be an idiot short." + +He got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and says: + +"I'm sorry, and I warn't expecting it. They told me to. They all told +me to. They all said, kiss her; and said she'd like it. They all said +it--every one of them. But I'm sorry, m'am, and I won't do it no more +--I won't, honest." + +"You won't, won't you? Well, I sh'd RECKON you won't!" + +"No'm, I'm honest about it; I won't ever do it again--till you ask me." + +"Till I ASK you! Well, I never see the beat of it in my born days! I +lay you'll be the Methusalem-numskull of creation before ever I ask you +--or the likes of you." + +"Well," he says, "it does surprise me so. I can't make it out, somehow. +They said you would, and I thought you would. But--" He stopped and +looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye +somewheres, and fetched up on the old gentleman's, and says, "Didn't YOU +think she'd like me to kiss her, sir?" + +"Why, no; I--I--well, no, I b'lieve I didn't." + +Then he looks on around the same way to me, and says: + +"Tom, didn't YOU think Aunt Sally 'd open out her arms and say, 'Sid +Sawyer--'" + +"My land!" she says, breaking in and jumping for him, "you impudent young +rascal, to fool a body so--" and was going to hug him, but he fended her +off, and says: + +"No, not till you've asked me first." + +So she didn't lose no time, but asked him; and hugged him and kissed him +over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he took +what was left. And after they got a little quiet again she says: + +"Why, dear me, I never see such a surprise. We warn't looking for YOU at +all, but only Tom. Sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him." + +"It's because it warn't INTENDED for any of us to come but Tom," he says; +"but I begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me come, too; +so, coming down the river, me and Tom thought it would be a first-rate +surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me to by and by +tag along and drop in, and let on to be a stranger. But it was a +mistake, Aunt Sally. This ain't no healthy place for a stranger to +come." + +"No--not impudent whelps, Sid. You ought to had your jaws boxed; I +hain't been so put out since I don't know when. But I don't care, I +don't mind the terms--I'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to +have you here. Well, to think of that performance! I don't deny it, I +was most putrified with astonishment when you give me that smack." + +We had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the +kitchen; and there was things enough on that table for seven families +--and all hot, too; none of your flabby, tough meat that's laid in a +cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold +cannibal in the morning. Uncle Silas he asked a pretty long blessing +over it, but it was worth it; and it didn't cool it a bit, neither, the +way I've seen them kind of interruptions do lots of times. There was a +considerable good deal of talk all the afternoon, and me and Tom was on +the lookout all the time; but it warn't no use, they didn't happen to say +nothing about any runaway nigger, and we was afraid to try to work up to +it. But at supper, at night, one of the little boys says: + +"Pa, mayn't Tom and Sid and me go to the show?" + +"No," says the old man, "I reckon there ain't going to be any; and you +couldn't go if there was; because the runaway nigger told Burton and me +all about that scandalous show, and Burton said he would tell the people; +so I reckon they've drove the owdacious loafers out of town before this +time." + +So there it was!--but I couldn't help it. Tom and me was to sleep in the +same room and bed; so, being tired, we bid good-night and went up to bed +right after supper, and clumb out of the window and down the +lightning-rod, and shoved for the town; for I didn't believe anybody was +going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so if I didn't hurry up +and give them one they'd get into trouble sure. + +On the road Tom he told me all about how it was reckoned I was murdered, +and how pap disappeared pretty soon, and didn't come back no more, and +what a stir there was when Jim run away; and I told Tom all about our +Royal Nonesuch rapscallions, and as much of the raft voyage as I had time +to; and as we struck into the town and up through the--here comes a +raging rush of people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, +and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let +them go by; and as they went by I see they had the king and the duke +astraddle of a rail--that is, I knowed it WAS the king and the duke, +though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing +in the world that was human--just looked like a couple of monstrous big +soldier-plumes. Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for +them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn't ever feel any +hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to +see. Human beings CAN be awful cruel to one another. + +We see we was too late--couldn't do no good. We asked some stragglers +about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent; +and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of +his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and the house +rose up and went for them. + +So we poked along back home, and I warn't feeling so brash as I was +before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow--though I +hadn't done nothing. But that's always the way; it don't make no +difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got +no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that +didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him. +It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet +ain't no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + +WE stopped talking, and got to thinking. By and by Tom says: + +"Looky here, Huck, what fools we are to not think of it before! I bet I +know where Jim is." + +"No! Where?" + +"In that hut down by the ash-hopper. Why, looky here. When we was at +dinner, didn't you see a nigger man go in there with some vittles?" + +"Yes." + +"What did you think the vittles was for?" + +"For a dog." + +"So 'd I. Well, it wasn't for a dog." + +"Why?" + +"Because part of it was watermelon." + +"So it was--I noticed it. Well, it does beat all that I never thought +about a dog not eating watermelon. It shows how a body can see and don't +see at the same time." + +"Well, the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in, and he locked it +again when he came out. He fetched uncle a key about the time we got up +from table--same key, I bet. Watermelon shows man, lock shows prisoner; +and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation, +and where the people's all so kind and good. Jim's the prisoner. All +right--I'm glad we found it out detective fashion; I wouldn't give +shucks for any other way. Now you work your mind, and study out a plan +to steal Jim, and I will study out one, too; and we'll take the one we +like the best." + +What a head for just a boy to have! If I had Tom Sawyer's head I +wouldn't trade it off to be a duke, nor mate of a steamboat, nor clown in +a circus, nor nothing I can think of. I went to thinking out a plan, but +only just to be doing something; I knowed very well where the right plan +was going to come from. Pretty soon Tom says: + +"Ready?" + +"Yes," I says. + +"All right--bring it out." + +"My plan is this," I says. "We can easy find out if it's Jim in there. +Then get up my canoe to-morrow night, and fetch my raft over from the +island. Then the first dark night that comes steal the key out of the +old man's britches after he goes to bed, and shove off down the river on +the raft with Jim, hiding daytimes and running nights, the way me and Jim +used to do before. Wouldn't that plan work?" + +"WORK? Why, cert'nly it would work, like rats a-fighting. But it's too +blame' simple; there ain't nothing TO it. What's the good of a plan that +ain't no more trouble than that? It's as mild as goose-milk. Why, Huck, +it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory." + +I never said nothing, because I warn't expecting nothing different; but I +knowed mighty well that whenever he got HIS plan ready it wouldn't have +none of them objections to it. + +And it didn't. He told me what it was, and I see in a minute it was +worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as +mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. So I was satisfied, and +said we would waltz in on it. I needn't tell what it was here, because I +knowed it wouldn't stay the way, it was. I knowed he would be changing +it around every which way as we went along, and heaving in new +bullinesses wherever he got a chance. And that is what he done. + +Well, one thing was dead sure, and that was that Tom Sawyer was in +earnest, and was actuly going to help steal that nigger out of slavery. +That was the thing that was too many for me. Here was a boy that was +respectable and well brung up; and had a character to lose; and folks at +home that had characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and +knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was, +without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this +business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before +everybody. I COULDN'T understand it no way at all. It was outrageous, +and I knowed I ought to just up and tell him so; and so be his true +friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was and save himself. +And I DID start to tell him; but he shut me up, and says: + +"Don't you reckon I know what I'm about? Don't I generly know what I'm +about?" + +"Yes." + +"Didn't I SAY I was going to help steal the nigger?" + +"Yes." + +"WELL, then." + +That's all he said, and that's all I said. It warn't no use to say any +more; because when he said he'd do a thing, he always done it. But I +couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing; so I just let +it go, and never bothered no more about it. If he was bound to have it +so, I couldn't help it. + +When we got home the house was all dark and still; so we went on down to +the hut by the ash-hopper for to examine it. We went through the yard so +as to see what the hounds would do. They knowed us, and didn't make no +more noise than country dogs is always doing when anything comes by in +the night. When we got to the cabin we took a look at the front and the +two sides; and on the side I warn't acquainted with--which was the north +side--we found a square window-hole, up tolerable high, with just one +stout board nailed across it. I says: + +"Here's the ticket. This hole's big enough for Jim to get through if we +wrench off the board." + +Tom says: + +"It's as simple as tit-tat-toe, three-in-a-row, and as easy as playing +hooky. I should HOPE we can find a way that's a little more complicated +than THAT, Huck Finn." + +"Well, then," I says, "how 'll it do to saw him out, the way I done +before I was murdered that time?" + +"That's more LIKE," he says. "It's real mysterious, and troublesome, and +good," he says; "but I bet we can find a way that's twice as long. There +ain't no hurry; le's keep on looking around." + +Betwixt the hut and the fence, on the back side, was a lean-to that +joined the hut at the eaves, and was made out of plank. It was as long +as the hut, but narrow--only about six foot wide. The door to it was at +the south end, and was padlocked. Tom he went to the soap-kettle and +searched around, and fetched back the iron thing they lift the lid with; +so he took it and prized out one of the staples. The chain fell down, +and we opened the door and went in, and shut it, and struck a match, and +see the shed was only built against a cabin and hadn't no connection with +it; and there warn't no floor to the shed, nor nothing in it but some old +rusty played-out hoes and spades and picks and a crippled plow. The +match went out, and so did we, and shoved in the staple again, and the +door was locked as good as ever. Tom was joyful. He says; + +"Now we're all right. We'll DIG him out. It 'll take about a week!" + +Then we started for the house, and I went in the back door--you only have +to pull a buckskin latch-string, they don't fasten the doors--but that +warn't romantical enough for Tom Sawyer; no way would do him but he must +climb up the lightning-rod. But after he got up half way about three +times, and missed fire and fell every time, and the last time most busted +his brains out, he thought he'd got to give it up; but after he was +rested he allowed he would give her one more turn for luck, and this time +he made the trip. + +In the morning we was up at break of day, and down to the nigger cabins +to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed Jim--if it WAS +Jim that was being fed. The niggers was just getting through breakfast +and starting for the fields; and Jim's nigger was piling up a tin pan +with bread and meat and things; and whilst the others was leaving, the +key come from the house. + +This nigger had a good-natured, chuckle-headed face, and his wool was all +tied up in little bunches with thread. That was to keep witches off. He +said the witches was pestering him awful these nights, and making him see +all kinds of strange things, and hear all kinds of strange words and +noises, and he didn't believe he was ever witched so long before in his +life. He got so worked up, and got to running on so about his troubles, +he forgot all about what he'd been a-going to do. So Tom says: + +"What's the vittles for? Going to feed the dogs?" + +The nigger kind of smiled around gradually over his face, like when you +heave a brickbat in a mud-puddle, and he says: + +"Yes, Mars Sid, A dog. Cur'us dog, too. Does you want to go en look at +'im?" + +"Yes." + +I hunched Tom, and whispers: + +"You going, right here in the daybreak? THAT warn't the plan." + +"No, it warn't; but it's the plan NOW." + +So, drat him, we went along, but I didn't like it much. When we got in +we couldn't hardly see anything, it was so dark; but Jim was there, sure +enough, and could see us; and he sings out: + +"Why, HUCK! En good LAN'! ain' dat Misto Tom?" + +I just knowed how it would be; I just expected it. I didn't know nothing +to do; and if I had I couldn't a done it, because that nigger busted in +and says: + +"Why, de gracious sakes! do he know you genlmen?" + +We could see pretty well now. Tom he looked at the nigger, steady and +kind of wondering, and says: + +"Does WHO know us?" + +"Why, dis-yer runaway nigger." + +"I don't reckon he does; but what put that into your head?" + +"What PUT it dar? Didn' he jis' dis minute sing out like he knowed you?" + +Tom says, in a puzzled-up kind of way: + +"Well, that's mighty curious. WHO sung out? WHEN did he sing out? WHAT +did he sing out?" And turns to me, perfectly ca'm, and says, "Did YOU +hear anybody sing out?" + +Of course there warn't nothing to be said but the one thing; so I says: + +"No; I ain't heard nobody say nothing." + +Then he turns to Jim, and looks him over like he never see him before, +and says: + +"Did you sing out?" + +"No, sah," says Jim; "I hain't said nothing, sah." + +"Not a word?" + +"No, sah, I hain't said a word." + +"Did you ever see us before?" + +"No, sah; not as I knows on." + +So Tom turns to the nigger, which was looking wild and distressed, and +says, kind of severe: + +"What do you reckon's the matter with you, anyway? What made you think +somebody sung out?" + +"Oh, it's de dad-blame' witches, sah, en I wisht I was dead, I do. Dey's +awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos' kill me, dey sk'yers me so. Please to +don't tell nobody 'bout it sah, er ole Mars Silas he'll scole me; 'kase +he say dey AIN'T no witches. I jis' wish to goodness he was heah now +--DEN what would he say! I jis' bet he couldn' fine no way to git aroun' +it DIS time. But it's awluz jis' so; people dat's SOT, stays sot; dey +won't look into noth'n'en fine it out f'r deyselves, en when YOU fine it +out en tell um 'bout it, dey doan' b'lieve you." + +Tom give him a dime, and said we wouldn't tell nobody; and told him to +buy some more thread to tie up his wool with; and then looks at Jim, and +says: + +"I wonder if Uncle Silas is going to hang this nigger. If I was to catch +a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away, I wouldn't give him up, +I'd hang him." And whilst the nigger stepped to the door to look at the +dime and bite it to see if it was good, he whispers to Jim and says: + +"Don't ever let on to know us. And if you hear any digging going on +nights, it's us; we're going to set you free." + +Jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it; then the nigger +come back, and we said we'd come again some time if the nigger wanted us +to; and he said he would, more particular if it was dark, because the +witches went for him mostly in the dark, and it was good to have folks +around then. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + +IT would be most an hour yet till breakfast, so we left and struck down +into the woods; because Tom said we got to have SOME light to see how to +dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble; what +we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox-fire, and +just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place. We +fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set down to rest, and Tom +says, kind of dissatisfied: + +"Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be. +And so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan. There +ain't no watchman to be drugged--now there OUGHT to be a watchman. There +ain't even a dog to give a sleeping-mixture to. And there's Jim chained +by one leg, with a ten-foot chain, to the leg of his bed: why, all you +got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain. And Uncle +Silas he trusts everybody; sends the key to the punkin-headed nigger, and +don't send nobody to watch the nigger. Jim could a got out of that +window-hole before this, only there wouldn't be no use trying to travel +with a ten-foot chain on his leg. Why, drat it, Huck, it's the stupidest +arrangement I ever see. You got to invent ALL the difficulties. Well, we +can't help it; we got to do the best we can with the materials we've got. +Anyhow, there's one thing--there's more honor in getting him out +through a lot of difficulties and dangers, where there warn't one of them +furnished to you by the people who it was their duty to furnish them, and +you had to contrive them all out of your own head. Now look at just that +one thing of the lantern. When you come down to the cold facts, we +simply got to LET ON that a lantern's resky. Why, we could work with a +torchlight procession if we wanted to, I believe. Now, whilst I think of +it, we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of the first chance we +get." + +"What do we want of a saw?" + +"What do we WANT of a saw? Hain't we got to saw the leg of Jim's bed +off, so as to get the chain loose?" + +"Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain +off." + +"Well, if that ain't just like you, Huck Finn. You CAN get up the +infant-schooliest ways of going at a thing. Why, hain't you ever read +any books at all?--Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto Chelleeny, +nor Henri IV., nor none of them heroes? Who ever heard of getting a +prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that? No; the way all the +best authorities does is to saw the bed-leg in two, and leave it just so, +and swallow the sawdust, so it can't be found, and put some dirt and +grease around the sawed place so the very keenest seneskal can't see no +sign of it's being sawed, and thinks the bed-leg is perfectly sound. +Then, the night you're ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she goes; slip +off your chain, and there you are. Nothing to do but hitch your rope +ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the moat +--because a rope ladder is nineteen foot too short, you know--and there's +your horses and your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and fling you +across a saddle, and away you go to your native Langudoc, or Navarre, or +wherever it is. It's gaudy, Huck. I wish there was a moat to this cabin. +If we get time, the night of the escape, we'll dig one." + +I says: + +"What do we want of a moat when we're going to snake him out from under +the cabin?" + +But he never heard me. He had forgot me and everything else. He had his +chin in his hand, thinking. Pretty soon he sighs and shakes his head; +then sighs again, and says: + +"No, it wouldn't do--there ain't necessity enough for it." + +"For what?" I says. + +"Why, to saw Jim's leg off," he says. + +"Good land!" I says; "why, there ain't NO necessity for it. And what +would you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?" + +"Well, some of the best authorities has done it. They couldn't get the +chain off, so they just cut their hand off and shoved. And a leg would +be better still. But we got to let that go. There ain't necessity +enough in this case; and, besides, Jim's a nigger, and wouldn't +understand the reasons for it, and how it's the custom in Europe; so +we'll let it go. But there's one thing--he can have a rope ladder; we +can tear up our sheets and make him a rope ladder easy enough. And we +can send it to him in a pie; it's mostly done that way. And I've et +worse pies." + +"Why, Tom Sawyer, how you talk," I says; "Jim ain't got no use for a rope +ladder." + +"He HAS got use for it. How YOU talk, you better say; you don't know +nothing about it. He's GOT to have a rope ladder; they all do." + +"What in the nation can he DO with it?" + +"DO with it? He can hide it in his bed, can't he?" That's what they all +do; and HE'S got to, too. Huck, you don't ever seem to want to do +anything that's regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the +time. S'pose he DON'T do nothing with it? ain't it there in his bed, for +a clew, after he's gone? and don't you reckon they'll want clews? Of +course they will. And you wouldn't leave them any? That would be a +PRETTY howdy-do, WOULDN'T it! I never heard of such a thing." + +"Well," I says, "if it's in the regulations, and he's got to have it, all +right, let him have it; because I don't wish to go back on no +regulations; but there's one thing, Tom Sawyer--if we go to tearing up +our sheets to make Jim a rope ladder, we're going to get into trouble +with Aunt Sally, just as sure as you're born. Now, the way I look at it, +a hickry-bark ladder don't cost nothing, and don't waste nothing, and is +just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick, as any rag +ladder you can start; and as for Jim, he ain't had no experience, and so +he don't care what kind of a--" + +"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, if I was as ignorant as you I'd keep still +--that's what I'D do. Who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a +hickry-bark ladder? Why, it's perfectly ridiculous." + +"Well, all right, Tom, fix it your own way; but if you'll take my advice, +you'll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothesline." + +He said that would do. And that gave him another idea, and he says: + +"Borrow a shirt, too." + +"What do we want of a shirt, Tom?" + +"Want it for Jim to keep a journal on." + +"Journal your granny--JIM can't write." + +"S'pose he CAN'T write--he can make marks on the shirt, can't he, if we +make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron +barrel-hoop?" + +"Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better +one; and quicker, too." + +"PRISONERS don't have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull pens +out of, you muggins. They ALWAYS make their pens out of the hardest, +toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or something like +that they can get their hands on; and it takes them weeks and weeks and +months and months to file it out, too, because they've got to do it by +rubbing it on the wall. THEY wouldn't use a goose-quill if they had it. +It ain't regular." + +"Well, then, what'll we make him the ink out of?" + +"Many makes it out of iron-rust and tears; but that's the common sort and +women; the best authorities uses their own blood. Jim can do that; and +when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to +let the world know where he's captivated, he can write it on the bottom +of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window. The Iron Mask +always done that, and it's a blame' good way, too." + +"Jim ain't got no tin plates. They feed him in a pan." + +"That ain't nothing; we can get him some." + +"Can't nobody READ his plates." + +"That ain't got anything to DO with it, Huck Finn. All HE'S got to do is +to write on the plate and throw it out. You don't HAVE to be able to +read it. Why, half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes on +a tin plate, or anywhere else." + +"Well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?" + +"Why, blame it all, it ain't the PRISONER'S plates." + +"But it's SOMEBODY'S plates, ain't it?" + +"Well, spos'n it is? What does the PRISONER care whose--" + +He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing. So we +cleared out for the house. + +Along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the +clothes-line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went +down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. I called it borrowing, +because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it warn't +borrowing, it was stealing. He said we was representing prisoners; and +prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody +don't blame them for it, either. It ain't no crime in a prisoner to +steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said; it's his right; and +so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to +steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves +out of prison with. He said if we warn't prisoners it would be a very +different thing, and nobody but a mean, ornery person would steal when he +warn't a prisoner. So we allowed we would steal everything there was +that come handy. And yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, +when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger-patch and eat it; and he made +me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it was for. +Tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we NEEDED. Well, +I says, I needed the watermelon. But he said I didn't need it to get out +of prison with; there's where the difference was. He said if I'd a +wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal +with, it would a been all right. So I let it go at that, though I +couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if I got to set +down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that every time I +see a chance to hog a watermelon. + +Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was settled +down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then Tom he +carried the sack into the lean-to whilst I stood off a piece to keep +watch. By and by he come out, and we went and set down on the woodpile +to talk. He says: + +"Everything's all right now except tools; and that's easy fixed." + +"Tools?" I says. + +"Yes." + +"Tools for what?" + +"Why, to dig with. We ain't a-going to GNAW him out, are we?" + +"Ain't them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a +nigger out with?" I says. + +He turns on me, looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says: + +"Huck Finn, did you EVER hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels, and +all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with? Now +I want to ask you--if you got any reasonableness in you at all--what kind +of a show would THAT give him to be a hero? Why, they might as well lend +him the key and done with it. Picks and shovels--why, they wouldn't +furnish 'em to a king." + +"Well, then," I says, "if we don't want the picks and shovels, what do we +want?" + +"A couple of case-knives." + +"To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?" + +"Yes." + +"Confound it, it's foolish, Tom." + +"It don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the RIGHT way--and +it's the regular way. And there ain't no OTHER way, that ever I heard +of, and I've read all the books that gives any information about these +things. They always dig out with a case-knife--and not through dirt, mind +you; generly it's through solid rock. And it takes them weeks and weeks +and weeks, and for ever and ever. Why, look at one of them prisoners in +the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that +dug himself out that way; how long was HE at it, you reckon?" + +"I don't know." + +"Well, guess." + +"I don't know. A month and a half." + +"THIRTY-SEVEN YEAR--and he come out in China. THAT'S the kind. I wish +the bottom of THIS fortress was solid rock." + +"JIM don't know nobody in China." + +"What's THAT got to do with it? Neither did that other fellow. But +you're always a-wandering off on a side issue. Why can't you stick to +the main point?" + +"All right--I don't care where he comes out, so he COMES out; and Jim +don't, either, I reckon. But there's one thing, anyway--Jim's too old to +be dug out with a case-knife. He won't last." + +"Yes he will LAST, too. You don't reckon it's going to take thirty-seven +years to dig out through a DIRT foundation, do you?" + +"How long will it take, Tom?" + +"Well, we can't resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn't take +very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans. He'll +hear Jim ain't from there. Then his next move will be to advertise Jim, +or something like that. So we can't resk being as long digging him out +as we ought to. By rights I reckon we ought to be a couple of years; but +we can't. Things being so uncertain, what I recommend is this: that we +really dig right in, as quick as we can; and after that, we can LET ON, +to ourselves, that we was at it thirty-seven years. Then we can snatch +him out and rush him away the first time there's an alarm. Yes, I reckon +that 'll be the best way." + +"Now, there's SENSE in that," I says. "Letting on don't cost nothing; +letting on ain't no trouble; and if it's any object, I don't mind letting +on we was at it a hundred and fifty year. It wouldn't strain me none, +after I got my hand in. So I'll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of +case-knives." + +"Smouch three," he says; "we want one to make a saw out of." + +"Tom, if it ain't unregular and irreligious to sejest it," I says, +"there's an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the +weather-boarding behind the smoke-house." + +He looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says: + +"It ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck. Run along and smouch +the knives--three of them." So I done it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + +AS soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the +lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our pile +of fox-fire, and went to work. We cleared everything out of the way, +about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log. Tom said we +was right behind Jim's bed now, and we'd dig in under it, and when we got +through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole +there, because Jim's counter-pin hung down most to the ground, and you'd +have to raise it up and look under to see the hole. So we dug and dug +with the case-knives till most midnight; and then we was dog-tired, and +our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn't see we'd done anything +hardly. At last I says: + +"This ain't no thirty-seven year job; this is a thirty-eight year job, +Tom Sawyer." + +He never said nothing. But he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped +digging, and then for a good little while I knowed that he was thinking. +Then he says: + +"It ain't no use, Huck, it ain't a-going to work. If we was prisoners it +would, because then we'd have as many years as we wanted, and no hurry; +and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while they was +changing watches, and so our hands wouldn't get blistered, and we could +keep it up right along, year in and year out, and do it right, and the +way it ought to be done. But WE can't fool along; we got to rush; we +ain't got no time to spare. If we was to put in another night this way +we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well--couldn't +touch a case-knife with them sooner." + +"Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?" + +"I'll tell you. It ain't right, and it ain't moral, and I wouldn't like +it to get out; but there ain't only just the one way: we got to dig him +out with the picks, and LET ON it's case-knives." + +"NOW you're TALKING!" I says; "your head gets leveler and leveler all +the time, Tom Sawyer," I says. "Picks is the thing, moral or no moral; +and as for me, I don't care shucks for the morality of it, nohow. When I +start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a Sunday-school book, I +ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's done. What I want is my +nigger; or what I want is my watermelon; or what I want is my +Sunday-school book; and if a pick's the handiest thing, that's the thing +I'm a-going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that Sunday-school +book out with; and I don't give a dead rat what the authorities thinks +about it nuther." + +"Well," he says, "there's excuse for picks and letting-on in a case like +this; if it warn't so, I wouldn't approve of it, nor I wouldn't stand by +and see the rules broke--because right is right, and wrong is wrong, and +a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows +better. It might answer for YOU to dig Jim out with a pick, WITHOUT any +letting on, because you don't know no better; but it wouldn't for me, +because I do know better. Gimme a case-knife." + +He had his own by him, but I handed him mine. He flung it down, and +says: + +"Gimme a CASE-KNIFE." + +I didn't know just what to do--but then I thought. I scratched around +amongst the old tools, and got a pickaxe and give it to him, and he took +it and went to work, and never said a word. + +He was always just that particular. Full of principle. + +So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about, and +made the fur fly. We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as long +as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it. +When I got up stairs I looked out at the window and see Tom doing his +level best with the lightning-rod, but he couldn't come it, his hands was +so sore. At last he says: + +"It ain't no use, it can't be done. What you reckon I better do? Can't +you think of no way?" + +"Yes," I says, "but I reckon it ain't regular. Come up the stairs, and +let on it's a lightning-rod." + +So he done it. + +Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house, +for to make some pens for Jim out of, and six tallow candles; and I hung +around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance, and stole three tin +plates. Tom says it wasn't enough; but I said nobody wouldn't ever see +the plates that Jim throwed out, because they'd fall in the dog-fennel +and jimpson weeds under the window-hole--then we could tote them back and +he could use them over again. So Tom was satisfied. Then he says: + +"Now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to Jim." + +"Take them in through the hole," I says, "when we get it done." + +He only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard +of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying. By and by he said +he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn't no need to decide +on any of them yet. Said we'd got to post Jim first. + +That night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took +one of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and heard +Jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn't wake him. Then we +whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a half +the job was done. We crept in under Jim's bed and into the cabin, and +pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over Jim awhile, +and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up gentle +and gradual. He was so glad to see us he most cried; and called us +honey, and all the pet names he could think of; and was for having us +hunt up a cold-chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right away, +and clearing out without losing any time. But Tom he showed him how +unregular it would be, and set down and told him all about our plans, and +how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm; and not +to be the least afraid, because we would see he got away, SURE. So Jim +he said it was all right, and we set there and talked over old times +awhile, and then Tom asked a lot of questions, and when Jim told him +Uncle Silas come in every day or two to pray with him, and Aunt Sally +come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat, and both of +them was kind as they could be, Tom says: + +"NOW I know how to fix it. We'll send you some things by them." + +I said, "Don't do nothing of the kind; it's one of the most jackass ideas +I ever struck;" but he never paid no attention to me; went right on. It +was his way when he'd got his plans set. + +So he told Jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie and other +large things by Nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the +lookout, and not be surprised, and not let Nat see him open them; and we +would put small things in uncle's coat-pockets and he must steal them +out; and we would tie things to aunt's apron-strings or put them in her +apron-pocket, if we got a chance; and told him what they would be and +what they was for. And told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with +his blood, and all that. He told him everything. Jim he couldn't see no +sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed +better than him; so he was satisfied, and said he would do it all just as +Tom said. + +Jim had plenty corn-cob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good +sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to bed, +with hands that looked like they'd been chawed. Tom was in high spirits. +He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the most +intellectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep +it up all the rest of our lives and leave Jim to our children to get out; +for he believed Jim would come to like it better and better the more he +got used to it. He said that in that way it could be strung out to as +much as eighty year, and would be the best time on record. And he said +it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it. + +In the morning we went out to the woodpile and chopped up the brass +candlestick into handy sizes, and Tom put them and the pewter spoon in +his pocket. Then we went to the nigger cabins, and while I got Nat's +notice off, Tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a +corn-pone that was in Jim's pan, and we went along with Nat to see how it +would work, and it just worked noble; when Jim bit into it it most mashed +all his teeth out; and there warn't ever anything could a worked better. +Tom said so himself. Jim he never let on but what it was only just a +piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into bread, +you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his +fork into it in three or four places first. + +And whilst we was a-standing there in the dimmish light, here comes a +couple of the hounds bulging in from under Jim's bed; and they kept on +piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warn't hardly room in +there to get your breath. By jings, we forgot to fasten that lean-to +door! The nigger Nat he only just hollered "Witches" once, and keeled +over on to the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was +dying. Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of Jim's meat, and +the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back +again and shut the door, and I knowed he'd fixed the other door too. +Then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and +asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again. He raised up, +and blinked his eyes around, and says: + +"Mars Sid, you'll say I's a fool, but if I didn't b'lieve I see most a +million dogs, er devils, er some'n, I wisht I may die right heah in dese +tracks. I did, mos' sholy. Mars Sid, I FELT um--I FELT um, sah; dey was +all over me. Dad fetch it, I jis' wisht I could git my han's on one er +dem witches jis' wunst--on'y jis' wunst--it's all I'd ast. But mos'ly I +wisht dey'd lemme 'lone, I does." + +Tom says: + +"Well, I tell you what I think. What makes them come here just at this +runaway nigger's breakfast-time? It's because they're hungry; that's the +reason. You make them a witch pie; that's the thing for YOU to do." + +"But my lan', Mars Sid, how's I gwyne to make 'm a witch pie? I doan' +know how to make it. I hain't ever hearn er sich a thing b'fo'." + +"Well, then, I'll have to make it myself." + +"Will you do it, honey?--will you? I'll wusshup de groun' und' yo' foot, +I will!" + +"All right, I'll do it, seeing it's you, and you've been good to us and +showed us the runaway nigger. But you got to be mighty careful. When we +come around, you turn your back; and then whatever we've put in the pan, +don't you let on you see it at all. And don't you look when Jim unloads +the pan--something might happen, I don't know what. And above all, don't +you HANDLE the witch-things." + +"HANNEL 'm, Mars Sid? What IS you a-talkin' 'bout? I wouldn' lay de +weight er my finger on um, not f'r ten hund'd thous'n billion dollars, I +wouldn't." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. + +THAT was all fixed. So then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile in +the back yard, where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of +bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched +around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as well as +we could, to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it full +of flour and started for breakfast, and found a couple of shingle-nails +that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and +sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in Aunt +Sally's apron-pocket which was hanging on a chair, and t'other we stuck +in the band of Uncle Silas's hat, which was on the bureau, because we +heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger's +house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and Tom dropped the +pewter spoon in Uncle Silas's coat-pocket, and Aunt Sally wasn't come +yet, so we had to wait a little while. + +And when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldn't hardly wait +for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand +and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the other, +and says: + +"I've hunted high and I've hunted low, and it does beat all what HAS +become of your other shirt." + +My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard +piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the +road with a cough, and was shot across the table, and took one of the +children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry +out of him the size of a warwhoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around +the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for +about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would a sold out +for half price if there was a bidder. But after that we was all right +again--it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold. +Uncle Silas he says: + +"It's most uncommon curious, I can't understand it. I know perfectly +well I took it OFF, because--" + +"Because you hain't got but one ON. Just LISTEN at the man! I know you +took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering memory, +too, because it was on the clo's-line yesterday--I see it there myself. +But it's gone, that's the long and the short of it, and you'll just have +to change to a red flann'l one till I can get time to make a new one. +And it 'll be the third I've made in two years. It just keeps a body on +the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do manage to DO with 'm +all is more'n I can make out. A body 'd think you WOULD learn to take +some sort of care of 'em at your time of life." + +"I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But it oughtn't to be +altogether my fault, because, you know, I don't see them nor have nothing +to do with them except when they're on me; and I don't believe I've ever +lost one of them OFF of me." + +"Well, it ain't YOUR fault if you haven't, Silas; you'd a done it if you +could, I reckon. And the shirt ain't all that's gone, nuther. Ther's a +spoon gone; and THAT ain't all. There was ten, and now ther's only nine. +The calf got the shirt, I reckon, but the calf never took the spoon, +THAT'S certain." + +"Why, what else is gone, Sally?" + +"Ther's six CANDLES gone--that's what. The rats could a got the candles, +and I reckon they did; I wonder they don't walk off with the whole place, +the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it; and if +they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair, Silas--YOU'D never find it +out; but you can't lay the SPOON on the rats, and that I know." + +"Well, Sally, I'm in fault, and I acknowledge it; I've been remiss; but I +won't let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes." + +"Oh, I wouldn't hurry; next year 'll do. Matilda Angelina Araminta +PHELPS!" + +Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the +sugar-bowl without fooling around any. Just then the nigger woman steps +on to the passage, and says: + +"Missus, dey's a sheet gone." + +"A SHEET gone! Well, for the land's sake!" + +"I'll stop up them holes to-day," says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful. + +"Oh, DO shet up!--s'pose the rats took the SHEET? WHERE'S it gone, +Lize?" + +"Clah to goodness I hain't no notion, Miss' Sally. She wuz on de +clo'sline yistiddy, but she done gone: she ain' dah no mo' now." + +"I reckon the world IS coming to an end. I NEVER see the beat of it in +all my born days. A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can--" + +"Missus," comes a young yaller wench, "dey's a brass cannelstick miss'n." + +"Cler out from here, you hussy, er I'll take a skillet to ye!" + +Well, she was just a-biling. I begun to lay for a chance; I reckoned I +would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. She +kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and +everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas, looking +kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. She stopped, +with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, I wished I was in +Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long, because she says: + +"It's JUST as I expected. So you had it in your pocket all the time; and +like as not you've got the other things there, too. How'd it get there?" + +"I reely don't know, Sally," he says, kind of apologizing, "or you know I +would tell. I was a-studying over my text in Acts Seventeen before +breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put +my Testament in, and it must be so, because my Testament ain't in; but +I'll go and see; and if the Testament is where I had it, I'll know I +didn't put it in, and that will show that I laid the Testament down and +took up the spoon, and--" + +"Oh, for the land's sake! Give a body a rest! Go 'long now, the whole +kit and biling of ye; and don't come nigh me again till I've got back my +peace of mind." + +I'd a heard her if she'd a said it to herself, let alone speaking it out; +and I'd a got up and obeyed her if I'd a been dead. As we was passing +through the setting-room the old man he took up his hat, and the +shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and +laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out. Tom +see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says: + +"Well, it ain't no use to send things by HIM no more, he ain't reliable." +Then he says: "But he done us a good turn with the spoon, anyway, +without knowing it, and so we'll go and do him one without HIM knowing +it--stop up his rat-holes." + +There was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole +hour, but we done the job tight and good and shipshape. Then we heard +steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid; and here comes the +old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t'other, +looking as absent-minded as year before last. He went a mooning around, +first to one rat-hole and then another, till he'd been to them all. Then +he stood about five minutes, picking tallow-drip off of his candle and +thinking. Then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs, saying: + +"Well, for the life of me I can't remember when I done it. I could show +her now that I warn't to blame on account of the rats. But never mind +--let it go. I reckon it wouldn't do no good." + +And so he went on a-mumbling up stairs, and then we left. He was a +mighty nice old man. And always is. + +Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said +we'd got to have it; so he took a think. When he had ciphered it out he +told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the spoon-basket +till we see Aunt Sally coming, and then Tom went to counting the spoons +and laying them out to one side, and I slid one of them up my sleeve, and +Tom says: + +"Why, Aunt Sally, there ain't but nine spoons YET." + +She says: + +"Go 'long to your play, and don't bother me. I know better, I counted 'm +myself." + +"Well, I've counted them twice, Aunty, and I can't make but nine." + +She looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count--anybody +would. + +"I declare to gracious ther' AIN'T but nine!" she says. "Why, what in +the world--plague TAKE the things, I'll count 'm again." + +So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she +says: + +"Hang the troublesome rubbage, ther's TEN now!" and she looked huffy and +bothered both. But Tom says: + +"Why, Aunty, I don't think there's ten." + +"You numskull, didn't you see me COUNT 'm?" + +"I know, but--" + +"Well, I'll count 'm AGAIN." + +So I smouched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time. Well, +she WAS in a tearing way--just a-trembling all over, she was so mad. But +she counted and counted till she got that addled she'd start to count in +the basket for a spoon sometimes; and so, three times they come out +right, and three times they come out wrong. Then she grabbed up the +basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galley-west; +and she said cle'r out and let her have some peace, and if we come +bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner she'd skin us. So we +had the odd spoon, and dropped it in her apron-pocket whilst she was +a-giving us our sailing orders, and Jim got it all right, along with her +shingle nail, before noon. We was very well satisfied with this +business, and Tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took, because +he said NOW she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike again to save +her life; and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right if she DID; and +said that after she'd about counted her head off for the next three days +he judged she'd give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to +ever count them any more. + +So we put the sheet back on the line that night, and stole one out of her +closet; and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a couple of +days till she didn't know how many sheets she had any more, and she +didn't CARE, and warn't a-going to bullyrag the rest of her soul out +about it, and wouldn't count them again not to save her life; she druther +die first. + +So we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and +the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up +counting; and as to the candlestick, it warn't no consequence, it would +blow over by and by. + +But that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with that pie. We fixed +it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it done at +last, and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day; and we had to +use up three wash-pans full of flour before we got through, and we got +burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with the smoke; +because, you see, we didn't want nothing but a crust, and we couldn't +prop it up right, and she would always cave in. But of course we thought +of the right way at last--which was to cook the ladder, too, in the +pie. So then we laid in with Jim the second night, and tore up the sheet +all in little strings and twisted them together, and long before daylight +we had a lovely rope that you could a hung a person with. We let on it +took nine months to make it. + +And in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn't go into +the pie. Being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope enough +for forty pies if we'd a wanted them, and plenty left over for soup, or +sausage, or anything you choose. We could a had a whole dinner. + +But we didn't need it. All we needed was just enough for the pie, +and so we throwed the rest away. We didn't cook none of the pies in the +wash-pan--afraid the solder would melt; but Uncle Silas he had a noble +brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged +to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from +England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower or one of them early +ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things +that was valuable, not on account of being any account, because they +warn't, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked her +out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the first pies, +because we didn't know how, but she come up smiling on the last one. We +took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals, and loaded her +up with rag rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down the lid, and put +hot embers on top, and stood off five foot, with the long handle, cool +and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned out a pie that was a +satisfaction to look at. But the person that et it would want to fetch a +couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if that rope ladder wouldn't +cramp him down to business I don't know nothing what I'm talking about, +and lay him in enough stomach-ache to last him till next time, too. + +Nat didn't look when we put the witch pie in Jim's pan; and we put the +three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles; and so Jim +got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself he busted into +the pie and hid the rope ladder inside of his straw tick, and scratched +some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the window-hole. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + +MAKING them pens was a distressid tough job, and so was the saw; and Jim +allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all. That's the +one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. But he had to have +it; Tom said he'd GOT to; there warn't no case of a state prisoner not +scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms. + +"Look at Lady Jane Grey," he says; "look at Gilford Dudley; look at old +Northumberland! Why, Huck, s'pose it IS considerble trouble?--what you +going to do?--how you going to get around it? Jim's GOT to do his +inscription and coat of arms. They all do." + +Jim says: + +"Why, Mars Tom, I hain't got no coat o' arm; I hain't got nuffn but dish +yer ole shirt, en you knows I got to keep de journal on dat." + +"Oh, you don't understand, Jim; a coat of arms is very different." + +"Well," I says, "Jim's right, anyway, when he says he ain't got no coat +of arms, because he hain't." + +"I reckon I knowed that," Tom says, "but you bet he'll have one before he +goes out of this--because he's going out RIGHT, and there ain't going to +be no flaws in his record." + +So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, Jim +a-making his'n out of the brass and I making mine out of the spoon, Tom +set to work to think out the coat of arms. By and by he said he'd struck +so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take, but there was one +which he reckoned he'd decide on. He says: + +"On the scutcheon we'll have a bend OR in the dexter base, a saltire +MURREY in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under +his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron VERT in a chief +engrailed, and three invected lines on a field AZURE, with the nombril +points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger, SABLE, +with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister; and a couple of +gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, MAGGIORE FRETTA, MINORE +OTTO. Got it out of a book--means the more haste the less speed." + +"Geewhillikins," I says, "but what does the rest of it mean?" + +"We ain't got no time to bother over that," he says; "we got to dig in +like all git-out." + +"Well, anyway," I says, "what's SOME of it? What's a fess?" + +"A fess--a fess is--YOU don't need to know what a fess is. I'll show him +how to make it when he gets to it." + +"Shucks, Tom," I says, "I think you might tell a person. What's a bar +sinister?" + +"Oh, I don't know. But he's got to have it. All the nobility does." + +That was just his way. If it didn't suit him to explain a thing to you, +he wouldn't do it. You might pump at him a week, it wouldn't make no +difference. + +He'd got all that coat of arms business fixed, so now he started in to +finish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan out a +mournful inscription--said Jim got to have one, like they all done. He +made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and read them off, so: + +1. Here a captive heart busted. 2. Here a poor prisoner, forsook by the +world and friends, fretted his sorrowful life. 3. Here a lonely heart +broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest, after thirty-seven years of +solitary captivity. 4. Here, homeless and friendless, after thirty-seven +years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger, natural son of +Louis XIV. + +Tom's voice trembled whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down. +When he got done he couldn't no way make up his mind which one for Jim to +scrabble on to the wall, they was all so good; but at last he allowed he +would let him scrabble them all on. Jim said it would take him a year to +scrabble such a lot of truck on to the logs with a nail, and he didn't +know how to make letters, besides; but Tom said he would block them out +for him, and then he wouldn't have nothing to do but just follow the +lines. Then pretty soon he says: + +"Come to think, the logs ain't a-going to do; they don't have log walls +in a dungeon: we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock. We'll fetch a +rock." + +Jim said the rock was worse than the logs; he said it would take him such +a pison long time to dig them into a rock he wouldn't ever get out. But +Tom said he would let me help him do it. Then he took a look to see how +me and Jim was getting along with the pens. It was most pesky tedious +hard work and slow, and didn't give my hands no show to get well of the +sores, and we didn't seem to make no headway, hardly; so Tom says: + +"I know how to fix it. We got to have a rock for the coat of arms and +mournful inscriptions, and we can kill two birds with that same rock. +There's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we'll smouch it, and +carve the things on it, and file out the pens and the saw on it, too." + +It warn't no slouch of an idea; and it warn't no slouch of a grindstone +nuther; but we allowed we'd tackle it. It warn't quite midnight yet, so +we cleared out for the mill, leaving Jim at work. We smouched the +grindstone, and set out to roll her home, but it was a most nation tough +job. Sometimes, do what we could, we couldn't keep her from falling over, +and she come mighty near mashing us every time. Tom said she was going +to get one of us, sure, before we got through. We got her half way; and +then we was plumb played out, and most drownded with sweat. We see it +warn't no use; we got to go and fetch Jim So he raised up his bed and +slid the chain off of the bed-leg, and wrapt it round and round his neck, +and we crawled out through our hole and down there, and Jim and me laid +into that grindstone and walked her along like nothing; and Tom +superintended. He could out-superintend any boy I ever see. He knowed +how to do everything. + +Our hole was pretty big, but it warn't big enough to get the grindstone +through; but Jim he took the pick and soon made it big enough. Then Tom +marked out them things on it with the nail, and set Jim to work on them, +with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt from the rubbage in the +lean-to for a hammer, and told him to work till the rest of his candle +quit on him, and then he could go to bed, and hide the grindstone under +his straw tick and sleep on it. Then we helped him fix his chain back on +the bed-leg, and was ready for bed ourselves. But Tom thought of +something, and says: + +"You got any spiders in here, Jim?" + +"No, sah, thanks to goodness I hain't, Mars Tom." + +"All right, we'll get you some." + +"But bless you, honey, I doan' WANT none. I's afeard un um. I jis' 's +soon have rattlesnakes aroun'." + +Tom thought a minute or two, and says: + +"It's a good idea. And I reckon it's been done. It MUST a been done; it +stands to reason. Yes, it's a prime good idea. Where could you keep +it?" + +"Keep what, Mars Tom?" + +"Why, a rattlesnake." + +"De goodness gracious alive, Mars Tom! Why, if dey was a rattlesnake to +come in heah I'd take en bust right out thoo dat log wall, I would, wid +my head." + +Why, Jim, you wouldn't be afraid of it after a little. You could tame +it." + +"TAME it!" + +"Yes--easy enough. Every animal is grateful for kindness and petting, +and they wouldn't THINK of hurting a person that pets them. Any book +will tell you that. You try--that's all I ask; just try for two or three +days. Why, you can get him so in a little while that he'll love you; and +sleep with you; and won't stay away from you a minute; and will let you +wrap him round your neck and put his head in your mouth." + +"PLEASE, Mars Tom--DOAN' talk so! I can't STAN' it! He'd LET me shove +his head in my mouf--fer a favor, hain't it? I lay he'd wait a pow'ful +long time 'fo' I AST him. En mo' en dat, I doan' WANT him to sleep wid +me." + +"Jim, don't act so foolish. A prisoner's GOT to have some kind of a dumb +pet, and if a rattlesnake hain't ever been tried, why, there's more glory +to be gained in your being the first to ever try it than any other way +you could ever think of to save your life." + +"Why, Mars Tom, I doan' WANT no sich glory. Snake take 'n bite Jim's +chin off, den WHAH is de glory? No, sah, I doan' want no sich doin's." + +"Blame it, can't you TRY? I only WANT you to try--you needn't keep it up +if it don't work." + +"But de trouble all DONE ef de snake bite me while I's a tryin' him. +Mars Tom, I's willin' to tackle mos' anything 'at ain't onreasonable, but +ef you en Huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for me to tame, I's gwyne to +LEAVE, dat's SHORE." + +"Well, then, let it go, let it go, if you're so bull-headed about it. We +can get you some garter-snakes, and you can tie some buttons on their +tails, and let on they're rattlesnakes, and I reckon that 'll have to +do." + +"I k'n stan' DEM, Mars Tom, but blame' 'f I couldn' get along widout um, +I tell you dat. I never knowed b'fo' 't was so much bother and trouble +to be a prisoner." + +"Well, it ALWAYS is when it's done right. You got any rats around here?" + +"No, sah, I hain't seed none." + +"Well, we'll get you some rats." + +"Why, Mars Tom, I doan' WANT no rats. Dey's de dadblamedest creturs to +'sturb a body, en rustle roun' over 'im, en bite his feet, when he's +tryin' to sleep, I ever see. No, sah, gimme g'yarter-snakes, 'f I's got +to have 'm, but doan' gimme no rats; I hain' got no use f'r um, skasely." + +"But, Jim, you GOT to have 'em--they all do. So don't make no more fuss +about it. Prisoners ain't ever without rats. There ain't no instance of +it. And they train them, and pet them, and learn them tricks, and they +get to be as sociable as flies. But you got to play music to them. You +got anything to play music on?" + +"I ain' got nuffn but a coase comb en a piece o' paper, en a juice-harp; +but I reck'n dey wouldn' take no stock in a juice-harp." + +"Yes they would. THEY don't care what kind of music 'tis. A jews-harp's +plenty good enough for a rat. All animals like music--in a prison they +dote on it. Specially, painful music; and you can't get no other kind +out of a jews-harp. It always interests them; they come out to see +what's the matter with you. Yes, you're all right; you're fixed very +well. You want to set on your bed nights before you go to sleep, and +early in the mornings, and play your jews-harp; play 'The Last Link is +Broken'--that's the thing that 'll scoop a rat quicker 'n anything else; +and when you've played about two minutes you'll see all the rats, and the +snakes, and spiders, and things begin to feel worried about you, and +come. And they'll just fairly swarm over you, and have a noble good +time." + +"Yes, DEY will, I reck'n, Mars Tom, but what kine er time is JIM havin'? +Blest if I kin see de pint. But I'll do it ef I got to. I reck'n I +better keep de animals satisfied, en not have no trouble in de house." + +Tom waited to think it over, and see if there wasn't nothing else; and +pretty soon he says: + +"Oh, there's one thing I forgot. Could you raise a flower here, do you +reckon?" + +"I doan know but maybe I could, Mars Tom; but it's tolable dark in heah, +en I ain' got no use f'r no flower, nohow, en she'd be a pow'ful sight o' +trouble." + +"Well, you try it, anyway. Some other prisoners has done it." + +"One er dem big cat-tail-lookin' mullen-stalks would grow in heah, Mars +Tom, I reck'n, but she wouldn't be wuth half de trouble she'd coss." + +"Don't you believe it. We'll fetch you a little one and you plant it in +the corner over there, and raise it. And don't call it mullen, call it +Pitchiola--that's its right name when it's in a prison. And you want to +water it with your tears." + +"Why, I got plenty spring water, Mars Tom." + +"You don't WANT spring water; you want to water it with your tears. It's +the way they always do." + +"Why, Mars Tom, I lay I kin raise one er dem mullen-stalks twyste wid +spring water whiles another man's a START'N one wid tears." + +"That ain't the idea. You GOT to do it with tears." + +"She'll die on my han's, Mars Tom, she sholy will; kase I doan' skasely +ever cry." + +So Tom was stumped. But he studied it over, and then said Jim would have +to worry along the best he could with an onion. He promised he would go +to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in Jim's coffee-pot, in the +morning. Jim said he would "jis' 's soon have tobacker in his coffee;" +and found so much fault with it, and with the work and bother of raising +the mullen, and jews-harping the rats, and petting and flattering up the +snakes and spiders and things, on top of all the other work he had to do +on pens, and inscriptions, and journals, and things, which made it more +trouble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he +ever undertook, that Tom most lost all patience with him; and said he was +just loadened down with more gaudier chances than a prisoner ever had in +the world to make a name for himself, and yet he didn't know enough to +appreciate them, and they was just about wasted on him. So Jim he was +sorry, and said he wouldn't behave so no more, and then me and Tom shoved +for bed. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + +IN the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and +fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we +had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it +in a safe place under Aunt Sally's bed. But while we was gone for +spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps found +it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, +and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was +a-standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing what +they could to keep off the dull times for her. So she took and dusted us +both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another +fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn't the +likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. +I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was. + +We got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and +caterpillars, and one thing or another; and we like to got a hornet's +nest, but we didn't. The family was at home. We didn't give it right +up, but stayed with them as long as we could; because we allowed we'd +tire them out or they'd got to tire us out, and they done it. Then we +got allycumpain and rubbed on the places, and was pretty near all right +again, but couldn't set down convenient. And so we went for the snakes, +and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and house-snakes, and put them in a +bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was supper-time, and a +rattling good honest day's work: and hungry?--oh, no, I reckon not! And +there warn't a blessed snake up there when we went back--we didn't half +tie the sack, and they worked out somehow, and left. But it didn't +matter much, because they was still on the premises somewheres. So we +judged we could get some of them again. No, there warn't no real +scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell. You'd see +them dripping from the rafters and places every now and then; and they +generly landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of +the time where you didn't want them. Well, they was handsome and +striped, and there warn't no harm in a million of them; but that never +made no difference to Aunt Sally; she despised snakes, be the breed what +they might, and she couldn't stand them no way you could fix it; and +every time one of them flopped down on her, it didn't make no difference +what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and light out. I +never see such a woman. And you could hear her whoop to Jericho. You +couldn't get her to take a-holt of one of them with the tongs. And if +she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble out and lift a +howl that you would think the house was afire. She disturbed the old man +so that he said he could most wish there hadn't ever been no snakes +created. Why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the +house for as much as a week Aunt Sally warn't over it yet; she warn't +near over it; when she was setting thinking about something you could +touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right +out of her stockings. It was very curious. But Tom said all women was +just so. He said they was made that way for some reason or other. + +We got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way, and she +allowed these lickings warn't nothing to what she would do if we ever +loaded up the place again with them. I didn't mind the lickings, because +they didn't amount to nothing; but I minded the trouble we had to lay in +another lot. But we got them laid in, and all the other things; and you +never see a cabin as blithesome as Jim's was when they'd all swarm out +for music and go for him. Jim didn't like the spiders, and the spiders +didn't like Jim; and so they'd lay for him, and make it mighty warm for +him. And he said that between the rats and the snakes and the grindstone +there warn't no room in bed for him, skasely; and when there was, a body +couldn't sleep, it was so lively, and it was always lively, he said, +because THEY never all slept at one time, but took turn about, so when +the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck, and when the rats turned in +the snakes come on watch, so he always had one gang under him, in his +way, and t'other gang having a circus over him, and if he got up to hunt +a new place the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over. +He said if he ever got out this time he wouldn't ever be a prisoner +again, not for a salary. + +Well, by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape. The +shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit Jim he would +get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink was fresh; the +pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the +grindstone; the bed-leg was sawed in two, and we had et up the sawdust, +and it give us a most amazing stomach-ache. We reckoned we was all going +to die, but didn't. It was the most undigestible sawdust I ever see; and +Tom said the same. But as I was saying, we'd got all the work done now, +at last; and we was all pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly Jim. The +old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to +come and get their runaway nigger, but hadn't got no answer, because +there warn't no such plantation; so he allowed he would advertise Jim in +the St. Louis and New Orleans papers; and when he mentioned the St. Louis +ones it give me the cold shivers, and I see we hadn't no time to lose. +So Tom said, now for the nonnamous letters. + +"What's them?" I says. + +"Warnings to the people that something is up. Sometimes it's done one +way, sometimes another. But there's always somebody spying around that +gives notice to the governor of the castle. When Louis XVI. was going to +light out of the Tooleries a servant-girl done it. It's a very good way, +and so is the nonnamous letters. We'll use them both. And it's usual +for the prisoner's mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in, +and he slides out in her clothes. We'll do that, too." + +"But looky here, Tom, what do we want to WARN anybody for that +something's up? Let them find it out for themselves--it's their +lookout." + +"Yes, I know; but you can't depend on them. It's the way they've acted +from the very start--left us to do EVERYTHING. They're so confiding and +mullet-headed they don't take notice of nothing at all. So if we don't +GIVE them notice there won't be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us, +and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape 'll go off +perfectly flat; won't amount to nothing--won't be nothing TO it." + +"Well, as for me, Tom, that's the way I'd like." + +"Shucks!" he says, and looked disgusted. So I says: + +"But I ain't going to make no complaint. Any way that suits you suits +me. What you going to do about the servant-girl?" + +"You'll be her. You slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook that +yaller girl's frock." + +"Why, Tom, that 'll make trouble next morning; because, of course, she +prob'bly hain't got any but that one." + +"I know; but you don't want it but fifteen minutes, to carry the +nonnamous letter and shove it under the front door." + +"All right, then, I'll do it; but I could carry it just as handy in my +own togs." + +"You wouldn't look like a servant-girl THEN, would you?" + +"No, but there won't be nobody to see what I look like, ANYWAY." + +"That ain't got nothing to do with it. The thing for us to do is just to +do our DUTY, and not worry about whether anybody SEES us do it or not. +Hain't you got no principle at all?" + +"All right, I ain't saying nothing; I'm the servant-girl. Who's Jim's +mother?" + +"I'm his mother. I'll hook a gown from Aunt Sally." + +"Well, then, you'll have to stay in the cabin when me and Jim leaves." + +"Not much. I'll stuff Jim's clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed +to represent his mother in disguise, and Jim 'll take the nigger woman's +gown off of me and wear it, and we'll all evade together. When a +prisoner of style escapes it's called an evasion. It's always called so +when a king escapes, f'rinstance. And the same with a king's son; it +don't make no difference whether he's a natural one or an unnatural one." + +So Tom he wrote the nonnamous letter, and I smouched the yaller wench's +frock that night, and put it on, and shoved it under the front door, the +way Tom told me to. It said: + +Beware. Trouble is brewing. Keep a sharp lookout. UNKNOWN FRIEND. + +Next night we stuck a picture, which Tom drawed in blood, of a skull and +crossbones on the front door; and next night another one of a coffin on +the back door. I never see a family in such a sweat. They couldn't a +been worse scared if the place had a been full of ghosts laying for them +behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air. If a +door banged, Aunt Sally she jumped and said "ouch!" if anything fell, she +jumped and said "ouch!" if you happened to touch her, when she warn't +noticing, she done the same; she couldn't face noway and be satisfied, +because she allowed there was something behind her every time--so she was +always a-whirling around sudden, and saying "ouch," and before she'd got +two-thirds around she'd whirl back again, and say it again; and she was +afraid to go to bed, but she dasn't set up. So the thing was working +very well, Tom said; he said he never see a thing work more satisfactory. +He said it showed it was done right. + +So he said, now for the grand bulge! So the very next morning at the +streak of dawn we got another letter ready, and was wondering what we +better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they was going to +have a nigger on watch at both doors all night. Tom he went down the +lightning-rod to spy around; and the nigger at the back door was asleep, +and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come back. This letter said: + +Don't betray me, I wish to be your friend. There is a desprate gang of +cut-throats from over in the Indian Territory going to steal your runaway +nigger to-night, and they have been trying to scare you so as you will +stay in the house and not bother them. I am one of the gang, but have +got religgion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again, and will +betray the helish design. They will sneak down from northards, along the +fence, at midnight exact, with a false key, and go in the nigger's cabin +to get him. I am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if I see any +danger; but stead of that I will BA like a sheep soon as they get in and +not blow at all; then whilst they are getting his chains loose, you slip +there and lock them in, and can kill them at your leasure. Don't do +anything but just the way I am telling you; if you do they will suspicion +something and raise whoop-jamboreehoo. I do not wish any reward but to +know I have done the right thing. UNKNOWN FRIEND. + + + + +CHAPTER XL. + +WE was feeling pretty good after breakfast, and took my canoe and went +over the river a-fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a +look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to supper, +and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn't know which end they +was standing on, and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done +supper, and wouldn't tell us what the trouble was, and never let on a +word about the new letter, but didn't need to, because we knowed as much +about it as anybody did, and as soon as we was half up stairs and her +back was turned we slid for the cellar cupboard and loaded up a good +lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed, and got up about +half-past eleven, and Tom put on Aunt Sally's dress that he stole and +was going to start with the lunch, but says: + +"Where's the butter?" + +"I laid out a hunk of it," I says, "on a piece of a corn-pone." + +"Well, you LEFT it laid out, then--it ain't here." + +"We can get along without it," I says. + +"We can get along WITH it, too," he says; "just you slide down cellar and +fetch it. And then mosey right down the lightning-rod and come along. +I'll go and stuff the straw into Jim's clothes to represent his mother in +disguise, and be ready to BA like a sheep and shove soon as you get +there." + +So out he went, and down cellar went I. The hunk of butter, big as a +person's fist, was where I had left it, so I took up the slab of +corn-pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started up stairs very +stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right, but here comes Aunt +Sally with a candle, and I clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my +hat on my head, and the next second she see me; and she says: + +"You been down cellar?" + +"Yes'm." + +"What you been doing down there?" + +"Noth'n." + +"NOTH'N!" + +"No'm." + +"Well, then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night?" + +"I don't know 'm." + +"You don't KNOW? Don't answer me that way. Tom, I want to know what you +been DOING down there." + +"I hain't been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally, I hope to gracious if I +have." + +I reckoned she'd let me go now, and as a generl thing she would; but I +s'pose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat +about every little thing that warn't yard-stick straight; so she says, +very decided: + +"You just march into that setting-room and stay there till I come. You +been up to something you no business to, and I lay I'll find out what it +is before I'M done with you." + +So she went away as I opened the door and walked into the setting-room. +My, but there was a crowd there! Fifteen farmers, and every one of them +had a gun. I was most powerful sick, and slunk to a chair and set down. +They was setting around, some of them talking a little, in a low voice, +and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but trying to look like they warn't; +but I knowed they was, because they was always taking off their hats, and +putting them on, and scratching their heads, and changing their seats, +and fumbling with their buttons. I warn't easy myself, but I didn't take +my hat off, all the same. + +I did wish Aunt Sally would come, and get done with me, and lick me, if +she wanted to, and let me get away and tell Tom how we'd overdone this +thing, and what a thundering hornet's-nest we'd got ourselves into, so we +could stop fooling around straight off, and clear out with Jim before +these rips got out of patience and come for us. + +At last she come and begun to ask me questions, but I COULDN'T answer +them straight, I didn't know which end of me was up; because these men +was in such a fidget now that some was wanting to start right NOW and lay +for them desperadoes, and saying it warn't but a few minutes to midnight; +and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the +sheep-signal; and here was Aunty pegging away at the questions, and me +a-shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks I was that scared; +and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt +and run down my neck and behind my ears; and pretty soon, when one of +them says, "I'M for going and getting in the cabin FIRST and right NOW, +and catching them when they come," I most dropped; and a streak of butter +come a-trickling down my forehead, and Aunt Sally she see it, and turns +white as a sheet, and says: + +"For the land's sake, what IS the matter with the child? He's got the +brain-fever as shore as you're born, and they're oozing out!" + +And everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes the +bread and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and hugged me, +and says: + +"Oh, what a turn you did give me! and how glad and grateful I am it ain't +no worse; for luck's against us, and it never rains but it pours, and +when I see that truck I thought we'd lost you, for I knowed by the color +and all it was just like your brains would be if--Dear, dear, whyd'nt you +TELL me that was what you'd been down there for, I wouldn't a cared. Now +cler out to bed, and don't lemme see no more of you till morning!" + +I was up stairs in a second, and down the lightning-rod in another one, +and shinning through the dark for the lean-to. I couldn't hardly get my +words out, I was so anxious; but I told Tom as quick as I could we must +jump for it now, and not a minute to lose--the house full of men, yonder, +with guns! + +His eyes just blazed; and he says: + +"No!--is that so? AIN'T it bully! Why, Huck, if it was to do over +again, I bet I could fetch two hundred! If we could put it off till--" + +"Hurry! HURRY!" I says. "Where's Jim?" + +"Right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him. He's +dressed, and everything's ready. Now we'll slide out and give the +sheep-signal." + +But then we heard the tramp of men coming to the door, and heard them +begin to fumble with the pad-lock, and heard a man say: + +"I TOLD you we'd be too soon; they haven't come--the door is locked. +Here, I'll lock some of you into the cabin, and you lay for 'em in the +dark and kill 'em when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece, +and listen if you can hear 'em coming." + +So in they come, but couldn't see us in the dark, and most trod on us +whilst we was hustling to get under the bed. But we got under all right, +and out through the hole, swift but soft--Jim first, me next, and Tom +last, which was according to Tom's orders. Now we was in the lean-to, +and heard trampings close by outside. So we crept to the door, and Tom +stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn't make out +nothing, it was so dark; and whispered and said he would listen for the +steps to get further, and when he nudged us Jim must glide out first, and +him last. So he set his ear to the crack and listened, and listened, and +listened, and the steps a-scraping around out there all the time; and at +last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathing, and +not making the least noise, and slipped stealthy towards the fence in +Injun file, and got to it all right, and me and Jim over it; but Tom's +britches catched fast on a splinter on the top rail, and then he hear the +steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and +made a noise; and as he dropped in our tracks and started somebody sings +out: + +"Who's that? Answer, or I'll shoot!" + +But we didn't answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved. Then there +was a rush, and a BANG, BANG, BANG! and the bullets fairly whizzed around +us! We heard them sing out: + +"Here they are! They've broke for the river! After 'em, boys, and turn +loose the dogs!" + +So here they come, full tilt. We could hear them because they wore boots +and yelled, but we didn't wear no boots and didn't yell. We was in the +path to the mill; and when they got pretty close on to us we dodged into +the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind them. They'd had +all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn't scare off the robbers; but by this +time somebody had let them loose, and here they come, making powwow +enough for a million; but they was our dogs; so we stopped in our tracks +till they catched up; and when they see it warn't nobody but us, and no +excitement to offer them, they only just said howdy, and tore right ahead +towards the shouting and clattering; and then we up-steam again, and +whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck +up through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled +for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn't make no more +noise than we was obleeged to. Then we struck out, easy and comfortable, +for the island where my raft was; and we could hear them yelling and +barking at each other all up and down the bank, till we was so far away +the sounds got dim and died out. And when we stepped on to the raft I +says: + +"NOW, old Jim, you're a free man again, and I bet you won't ever be a +slave no more." + +"En a mighty good job it wuz, too, Huck. It 'uz planned beautiful, en it +'uz done beautiful; en dey ain't NOBODY kin git up a plan dat's mo' +mixed-up en splendid den what dat one wuz." + +We was all glad as we could be, but Tom was the gladdest of all because +he had a bullet in the calf of his leg. + +When me and Jim heard that we didn't feel so brash as what we did before. +It was hurting him considerable, and bleeding; so we laid him in the +wigwam and tore up one of the duke's shirts for to bandage him, but he +says: + +"Gimme the rags; I can do it myself. Don't stop now; don't fool around +here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the sweeps, and set +her loose! Boys, we done it elegant!--'deed we did. I wish WE'D a had +the handling of Louis XVI., there wouldn't a been no 'Son of Saint Louis, +ascend to heaven!' wrote down in HIS biography; no, sir, we'd a whooped +him over the BORDER--that's what we'd a done with HIM--and done it just +as slick as nothing at all, too. Man the sweeps--man the sweeps!" + +But me and Jim was consulting--and thinking. And after we'd thought a +minute, I says: + +"Say it, Jim." + +So he says: + +"Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz HIM dat 'uz +bein' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, 'Go on +en save me, nemmine 'bout a doctor f'r to save dis one?' Is dat like +Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You BET he wouldn't! WELL, den, is +JIM gywne to say it? No, sah--I doan' budge a step out'n dis place 'dout +a DOCTOR, not if it's forty year!" + +I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he'd say what he did say--so +it was all right now, and I told Tom I was a-going for a doctor. He +raised considerable row about it, but me and Jim stuck to it and wouldn't +budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself; but +we wouldn't let him. Then he give us a piece of his mind, but it didn't +do no good. + +So when he sees me getting the canoe ready, he says: + +"Well, then, if you re bound to go, I'll tell you the way to do when you +get to the village. Shut the door and blindfold the doctor tight and +fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a purse full +of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around the back +alleys and everywheres in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe, +in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him and take his +chalk away from him, and don't give it back to him till you get him back +to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again. +It's the way they all do." + +So I said I would, and left, and Jim was to hide in the woods when he see +the doctor coming till he was gone again. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + +THE doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking old man when I got +him up. I told him me and my brother was over on Spanish Island hunting +yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and about +midnight he must a kicked his gun in his dreams, for it went off and shot +him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say +nothing about it, nor let anybody know, because we wanted to come home +this evening and surprise the folks. + +"Who is your folks?" he says. + +"The Phelpses, down yonder." + +"Oh," he says. And after a minute, he says: + +"How'd you say he got shot?" + +"He had a dream," I says, "and it shot him." + +"Singular dream," he says. + +So he lit up his lantern, and got his saddle-bags, and we started. But +when he sees the canoe he didn't like the look of her--said she was big +enough for one, but didn't look pretty safe for two. I says: + +"Oh, you needn't be afeard, sir, she carried the three of us easy +enough." + +"What three?" + +"Why, me and Sid, and--and--and THE GUNS; that's what I mean." + +"Oh," he says. + +But he put his foot on the gunnel and rocked her, and shook his head, and +said he reckoned he'd look around for a bigger one. But they was all +locked and chained; so he took my canoe, and said for me to wait till he +come back, or I could hunt around further, or maybe I better go down home +and get them ready for the surprise if I wanted to. But I said I didn't; +so I told him just how to find the raft, and then he started. + +I struck an idea pretty soon. I says to myself, spos'n he can't fix that +leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail, as the saying is? spos'n it +takes him three or four days? What are we going to do?--lay around there +till he lets the cat out of the bag? No, sir; I know what I'LL do. I'll +wait, and when he comes back if he says he's got to go any more I'll get +down there, too, if I swim; and we'll take and tie him, and keep him, and +shove out down the river; and when Tom's done with him we'll give him +what it's worth, or all we got, and then let him get ashore. + +So then I crept into a lumber-pile to get some sleep; and next time I +waked up the sun was away up over my head! I shot out and went for the +doctor's house, but they told me he'd gone away in the night some time or +other, and warn't back yet. Well, thinks I, that looks powerful bad for +Tom, and I'll dig out for the island right off. So away I shoved, and +turned the corner, and nearly rammed my head into Uncle Silas's stomach! +He says: + +"Why, TOM! Where you been all this time, you rascal?" + +"I hain't been nowheres," I says, "only just hunting for the runaway +nigger--me and Sid." + +"Why, where ever did you go?" he says. "Your aunt's been mighty uneasy." + +"She needn't," I says, "because we was all right. We followed the men +and the dogs, but they outrun us, and we lost them; but we thought we +heard them on the water, so we got a canoe and took out after them and +crossed over, but couldn't find nothing of them; so we cruised along +up-shore till we got kind of tired and beat out; and tied up the canoe +and went to sleep, and never waked up till about an hour ago; then we +paddled over here to hear the news, and Sid's at the post-office to see +what he can hear, and I'm a-branching out to get something to eat for us, +and then we're going home." + +So then we went to the post-office to get "Sid"; but just as I +suspicioned, he warn't there; so the old man he got a letter out of the +office, and we waited awhile longer, but Sid didn't come; so the old man +said, come along, let Sid foot it home, or canoe it, when he got done +fooling around--but we would ride. I couldn't get him to let me stay and +wait for Sid; and he said there warn't no use in it, and I must come +along, and let Aunt Sally see we was all right. + +When we got home Aunt Sally was that glad to see me she laughed and cried +both, and hugged me, and give me one of them lickings of hern that don't +amount to shucks, and said she'd serve Sid the same when he come. + +And the place was plum full of farmers and farmers' wives, to dinner; and +such another clack a body never heard. Old Mrs. Hotchkiss was the worst; +her tongue was a-going all the time. She says: + +"Well, Sister Phelps, I've ransacked that-air cabin over, an' I b'lieve +the nigger was crazy. I says to Sister Damrell--didn't I, Sister +Damrell?--s'I, he's crazy, s'I--them's the very words I said. You all +hearn me: he's crazy, s'I; everything shows it, s'I. Look at that-air +grindstone, s'I; want to tell ME't any cretur 't's in his right mind 's a +goin' to scrabble all them crazy things onto a grindstone, s'I? Here +sich 'n' sich a person busted his heart; 'n' here so 'n' so pegged along +for thirty-seven year, 'n' all that--natcherl son o' Louis somebody, 'n' +sich everlast'n rubbage. He's plumb crazy, s'I; it's what I says in the +fust place, it's what I says in the middle, 'n' it's what I says last 'n' +all the time--the nigger's crazy--crazy 's Nebokoodneezer, s'I." + +"An' look at that-air ladder made out'n rags, Sister Hotchkiss," says old +Mrs. Damrell; "what in the name o' goodness COULD he ever want of--" + +"The very words I was a-sayin' no longer ago th'n this minute to Sister +Utterback, 'n' she'll tell you so herself. Sh-she, look at that-air rag +ladder, sh-she; 'n' s'I, yes, LOOK at it, s'I--what COULD he a-wanted of +it, s'I. Sh-she, Sister Hotchkiss, sh-she--" + +"But how in the nation'd they ever GIT that grindstone IN there, ANYWAY? +'n' who dug that-air HOLE? 'n' who--" + +"My very WORDS, Brer Penrod! I was a-sayin'--pass that-air sasser o' +m'lasses, won't ye?--I was a-sayin' to Sister Dunlap, jist this minute, +how DID they git that grindstone in there, s'I. Without HELP, mind you +--'thout HELP! THAT'S wher 'tis. Don't tell ME, s'I; there WUZ help, +s'I; 'n' ther' wuz a PLENTY help, too, s'I; ther's ben a DOZEN a-helpin' +that nigger, 'n' I lay I'd skin every last nigger on this place but I'D +find out who done it, s'I; 'n' moreover, s'I--" + +"A DOZEN says you!--FORTY couldn't a done every thing that's been done. +Look at them case-knife saws and things, how tedious they've been made; +look at that bed-leg sawed off with 'm, a week's work for six men; look +at that nigger made out'n straw on the bed; and look at--" + +"You may WELL say it, Brer Hightower! It's jist as I was a-sayin' to +Brer Phelps, his own self. S'e, what do YOU think of it, Sister +Hotchkiss, s'e? Think o' what, Brer Phelps, s'I? Think o' that bed-leg +sawed off that a way, s'e? THINK of it, s'I? I lay it never sawed +ITSELF off, s'I--somebody SAWED it, s'I; that's my opinion, take it or +leave it, it mayn't be no 'count, s'I, but sich as 't is, it's my +opinion, s'I, 'n' if any body k'n start a better one, s'I, let him DO it, +s'I, that's all. I says to Sister Dunlap, s'I--" + +"Why, dog my cats, they must a ben a house-full o' niggers in there every +night for four weeks to a done all that work, Sister Phelps. Look at +that shirt--every last inch of it kivered over with secret African writ'n +done with blood! Must a ben a raft uv 'm at it right along, all the +time, amost. Why, I'd give two dollars to have it read to me; 'n' as for +the niggers that wrote it, I 'low I'd take 'n' lash 'm t'll--" + +"People to HELP him, Brother Marples! Well, I reckon you'd THINK so if +you'd a been in this house for a while back. Why, they've stole +everything they could lay their hands on--and we a-watching all the time, +mind you. They stole that shirt right off o' the line! and as for that +sheet they made the rag ladder out of, ther' ain't no telling how many +times they DIDN'T steal that; and flour, and candles, and candlesticks, +and spoons, and the old warming-pan, and most a thousand things that I +disremember now, and my new calico dress; and me and Silas and my Sid and +Tom on the constant watch day AND night, as I was a-telling you, and not +a one of us could catch hide nor hair nor sight nor sound of them; and +here at the last minute, lo and behold you, they slides right in under +our noses and fools us, and not only fools US but the Injun Territory +robbers too, and actuly gets AWAY with that nigger safe and sound, and +that with sixteen men and twenty-two dogs right on their very heels at +that very time! I tell you, it just bangs anything I ever HEARD of. +Why, SPERITS couldn't a done better and been no smarter. And I reckon +they must a BEEN sperits--because, YOU know our dogs, and ther' ain't no +better; well, them dogs never even got on the TRACK of 'm once! You +explain THAT to me if you can!--ANY of you!" + +"Well, it does beat--" + +"Laws alive, I never--" + +"So help me, I wouldn't a be--" + +"HOUSE-thieves as well as--" + +"Goodnessgracioussakes, I'd a ben afeard to live in sich a--" + +"'Fraid to LIVE!--why, I was that scared I dasn't hardly go to bed, or +get up, or lay down, or SET down, Sister Ridgeway. Why, they'd steal the +very--why, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a fluster I was +in by the time midnight come last night. I hope to gracious if I warn't +afraid they'd steal some o' the family! I was just to that pass I didn't +have no reasoning faculties no more. It looks foolish enough NOW, in the +daytime; but I says to myself, there's my two poor boys asleep, 'way up +stairs in that lonesome room, and I declare to goodness I was that uneasy +'t I crep' up there and locked 'em in! I DID. And anybody would. +Because, you know, when you get scared that way, and it keeps running on, +and getting worse and worse all the time, and your wits gets to addling, +and you get to doing all sorts o' wild things, and by and by you think to +yourself, spos'n I was a boy, and was away up there, and the door ain't +locked, and you--" She stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she +turned her head around slow, and when her eye lit on me--I got up and +took a walk. + +Says I to myself, I can explain better how we come to not be in that room +this morning if I go out to one side and study over it a little. So I +done it. But I dasn't go fur, or she'd a sent for me. And when it was +late in the day the people all went, and then I come in and told her the +noise and shooting waked up me and "Sid," and the door was locked, and we +wanted to see the fun, so we went down the lightning-rod, and both of us +got hurt a little, and we didn't never want to try THAT no more. And +then I went on and told her all what I told Uncle Silas before; and then +she said she'd forgive us, and maybe it was all right enough anyway, and +about what a body might expect of boys, for all boys was a pretty +harum-scarum lot as fur as she could see; and so, as long as no harm +hadn't come of it, she judged she better put in her time being grateful +we was alive and well and she had us still, stead of fretting over what +was past and done. So then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and +dropped into a kind of a brown study; and pretty soon jumps up, and says: + +"Why, lawsamercy, it's most night, and Sid not come yet! What HAS become +of that boy?" + +I see my chance; so I skips up and says: + +"I'll run right up to town and get him," I says. + +"No you won't," she says. "You'll stay right wher' you are; ONE'S enough +to be lost at a time. If he ain't here to supper, your uncle 'll go." + +Well, he warn't there to supper; so right after supper uncle went. + +He come back about ten a little bit uneasy; hadn't run across Tom's +track. Aunt Sally was a good DEAL uneasy; but Uncle Silas he said there +warn't no occasion to be--boys will be boys, he said, and you'll see this +one turn up in the morning all sound and right. So she had to be +satisfied. But she said she'd set up for him a while anyway, and keep a +light burning so he could see it. + +And then when I went up to bed she come up with me and fetched her +candle, and tucked me in, and mothered me so good I felt mean, and like I +couldn't look her in the face; and she set down on the bed and talked +with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy Sid was, and didn't +seem to want to ever stop talking about him; and kept asking me every now +and then if I reckoned he could a got lost, or hurt, or maybe drownded, +and might be laying at this minute somewheres suffering or dead, and she +not by him to help him, and so the tears would drip down silent, and I +would tell her that Sid was all right, and would be home in the morning, +sure; and she would squeeze my hand, or maybe kiss me, and tell me to say +it again, and keep on saying it, because it done her good, and she was in +so much trouble. And when she was going away she looked down in my eyes +so steady and gentle, and says: + +"The door ain't going to be locked, Tom, and there's the window and the +rod; but you'll be good, WON'T you? And you won't go? For MY sake." + +Laws knows I WANTED to go bad enough to see about Tom, and was all +intending to go; but after that I wouldn't a went, not for kingdoms. + +But she was on my mind and Tom was on my mind, so I slept very restless. +And twice I went down the rod away in the night, and slipped around +front, and see her setting there by her candle in the window with her +eyes towards the road and the tears in them; and I wished I could do +something for her, but I couldn't, only to swear that I wouldn't never do +nothing to grieve her any more. And the third time I waked up at dawn, +and slid down, and she was there yet, and her candle was most out, and +her old gray head was resting on her hand, and she was asleep. + + + + +CHAPTER XLII. + +THE old man was uptown again before breakfast, but couldn't get no track +of Tom; and both of them set at the table thinking, and not saying +nothing, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold, and not +eating anything. And by and by the old man says: + +"Did I give you the letter?" + +"What letter?" + +"The one I got yesterday out of the post-office." + +"No, you didn't give me no letter." + +"Well, I must a forgot it." + +So he rummaged his pockets, and then went off somewheres where he had +laid it down, and fetched it, and give it to her. She says: + +"Why, it's from St. Petersburg--it's from Sis." + +I allowed another walk would do me good; but I couldn't stir. But before +she could break it open she dropped it and run--for she see something. +And so did I. It was Tom Sawyer on a mattress; and that old doctor; and +Jim, in HER calico dress, with his hands tied behind him; and a lot of +people. I hid the letter behind the first thing that come handy, and +rushed. She flung herself at Tom, crying, and says: + +"Oh, he's dead, he's dead, I know he's dead!" + +And Tom he turned his head a little, and muttered something or other, +which showed he warn't in his right mind; then she flung up her hands, +and says: + +"He's alive, thank God! And that's enough!" and she snatched a kiss of +him, and flew for the house to get the bed ready, and scattering orders +right and left at the niggers and everybody else, as fast as her tongue +could go, every jump of the way. + +I followed the men to see what they was going to do with Jim; and the old +doctor and Uncle Silas followed after Tom into the house. The men was +very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang Jim for an example to all the +other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be trying to run away like +Jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a whole family +scared most to death for days and nights. But the others said, don't do +it, it wouldn't answer at all; he ain't our nigger, and his owner would +turn up and make us pay for him, sure. So that cooled them down a +little, because the people that's always the most anxious for to hang a +nigger that hain't done just right is always the very ones that ain't the +most anxious to pay for him when they've got their satisfaction out of +him. + +They cussed Jim considerble, though, and give him a cuff or two side the +head once in a while, but Jim never said nothing, and he never let on to +know me, and they took him to the same cabin, and put his own clothes on +him, and chained him again, and not to no bed-leg this time, but to a big +staple drove into the bottom log, and chained his hands, too, and both +legs, and said he warn't to have nothing but bread and water to eat after +this till his owner come, or he was sold at auction because he didn't +come in a certain length of time, and filled up our hole, and said a +couple of farmers with guns must stand watch around about the cabin every +night, and a bulldog tied to the door in the daytime; and about this time +they was through with the job and was tapering off with a kind of generl +good-bye cussing, and then the old doctor comes and takes a look, and +says: + +"Don't be no rougher on him than you're obleeged to, because he ain't a +bad nigger. When I got to where I found the boy I see I couldn't cut the +bullet out without some help, and he warn't in no condition for me to +leave to go and get help; and he got a little worse and a little worse, +and after a long time he went out of his head, and wouldn't let me come +a-nigh him any more, and said if I chalked his raft he'd kill me, and no +end of wild foolishness like that, and I see I couldn't do anything at +all with him; so I says, I got to have HELP somehow; and the minute I +says it out crawls this nigger from somewheres and says he'll help, and +he done it, too, and done it very well. Of course I judged he must be a +runaway nigger, and there I WAS! and there I had to stick right straight +along all the rest of the day and all night. It was a fix, I tell you! +I had a couple of patients with the chills, and of course I'd of liked to +run up to town and see them, but I dasn't, because the nigger might get +away, and then I'd be to blame; and yet never a skiff come close enough +for me to hail. So there I had to stick plumb until daylight this +morning; and I never see a nigger that was a better nuss or faithfuller, +and yet he was risking his freedom to do it, and was all tired out, too, +and I see plain enough he'd been worked main hard lately. I liked the +nigger for that; I tell you, gentlemen, a nigger like that is worth a +thousand dollars--and kind treatment, too. I had everything I needed, +and the boy was doing as well there as he would a done at home--better, +maybe, because it was so quiet; but there I WAS, with both of 'm on my +hands, and there I had to stick till about dawn this morning; then some +men in a skiff come by, and as good luck would have it the nigger was +setting by the pallet with his head propped on his knees sound asleep; so +I motioned them in quiet, and they slipped up on him and grabbed him and +tied him before he knowed what he was about, and we never had no trouble. +And the boy being in a kind of a flighty sleep, too, we muffled the oars +and hitched the raft on, and towed her over very nice and quiet, and the +nigger never made the least row nor said a word from the start. He ain't +no bad nigger, gentlemen; that's what I think about him." + +Somebody says: + +"Well, it sounds very good, doctor, I'm obleeged to say." + +Then the others softened up a little, too, and I was mighty thankful to +that old doctor for doing Jim that good turn; and I was glad it was +according to my judgment of him, too; because I thought he had a good +heart in him and was a good man the first time I see him. Then they all +agreed that Jim had acted very well, and was deserving to have some +notice took of it, and reward. So every one of them promised, right out +and hearty, that they wouldn't cuss him no more. + +Then they come out and locked him up. I hoped they was going to say he +could have one or two of the chains took off, because they was rotten +heavy, or could have meat and greens with his bread and water; but they +didn't think of it, and I reckoned it warn't best for me to mix in, but I +judged I'd get the doctor's yarn to Aunt Sally somehow or other as soon +as I'd got through the breakers that was laying just ahead of me +--explanations, I mean, of how I forgot to mention about Sid being shot +when I was telling how him and me put in that dratted night paddling +around hunting the runaway nigger. + +But I had plenty time. Aunt Sally she stuck to the sick-room all day and +all night, and every time I see Uncle Silas mooning around I dodged him. + +Next morning I heard Tom was a good deal better, and they said Aunt Sally +was gone to get a nap. So I slips to the sick-room, and if I found him +awake I reckoned we could put up a yarn for the family that would wash. +But he was sleeping, and sleeping very peaceful, too; and pale, not +fire-faced the way he was when he come. So I set down and laid for him +to wake. In about half an hour Aunt Sally comes gliding in, and there I +was, up a stump again! She motioned me to be still, and set down by me, +and begun to whisper, and said we could all be joyful now, because all +the symptoms was first-rate, and he'd been sleeping like that for ever so +long, and looking better and peacefuller all the time, and ten to one +he'd wake up in his right mind. + +So we set there watching, and by and by he stirs a bit, and opened his +eyes very natural, and takes a look, and says: + +"Hello!--why, I'm at HOME! How's that? Where's the raft?" + +"It's all right," I says. + +"And JIM?" + +"The same," I says, but couldn't say it pretty brash. But he never +noticed, but says: + +"Good! Splendid! NOW we're all right and safe! Did you tell Aunty?" + +I was going to say yes; but she chipped in and says: "About what, Sid?" + +"Why, about the way the whole thing was done." + +"What whole thing?" + +"Why, THE whole thing. There ain't but one; how we set the runaway +nigger free--me and Tom." + +"Good land! Set the run--What IS the child talking about! Dear, dear, +out of his head again!" + +"NO, I ain't out of my HEAD; I know all what I'm talking about. We DID +set him free--me and Tom. We laid out to do it, and we DONE it. And we +done it elegant, too." He'd got a start, and she never checked him up, +just set and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and I see it +warn't no use for ME to put in. "Why, Aunty, it cost us a power of work +--weeks of it--hours and hours, every night, whilst you was all asleep. +And we had to steal candles, and the sheet, and the shirt, and your +dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and case-knives, and the warming-pan, +and the grindstone, and flour, and just no end of things, and you can't +think what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and +one thing or another, and you can't think HALF the fun it was. And we +had to make up the pictures of coffins and things, and nonnamous letters +from the robbers, and get up and down the lightning-rod, and dig the hole +into the cabin, and made the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a +pie, and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket--" + +"Mercy sakes!" + +"--and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on, for company for +Jim; and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat that +you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come before we +was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us and let drive +at us, and I got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let them go +by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested in us, but went for the +most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for the raft, and was all +safe, and Jim was a free man, and we done it all by ourselves, and WASN'T +it bully, Aunty!" + +"Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days! So it was YOU, +you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble, and turned +everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death. I've +as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out o' you this very +minute. To think, here I've been, night after night, a--YOU just get +well once, you young scamp, and I lay I'll tan the Old Harry out o' both +o' ye!" + +But Tom, he WAS so proud and joyful, he just COULDN'T hold in, and his +tongue just WENT it--she a-chipping in, and spitting fire all along, and +both of them going it at once, like a cat convention; and she says: + +"WELL, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it NOW, for mind I tell +you if I catch you meddling with him again--" + +"Meddling with WHO?" Tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised. + +"With WHO? Why, the runaway nigger, of course. Who'd you reckon?" + +Tom looks at me very grave, and says: + +"Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? Hasn't he got away?" + +"HIM?" says Aunt Sally; "the runaway nigger? 'Deed he hasn't. They've +got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on bread and +water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or sold!" + +Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and +shutting like gills, and sings out to me: + +"They hain't no RIGHT to shut him up! SHOVE!--and don't you lose a +minute. Turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur +that walks this earth!" + +"What DOES the child mean?" + +"I mean every word I SAY, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, I'LL go. +I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old Miss Watson +died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him +down the river, and SAID so; and she set him free in her will." + +"Then what on earth did YOU want to set him free for, seeing he was +already free?" + +"Well, that IS a question, I must say; and just like women! Why, I +wanted the ADVENTURE of it; and I'd a waded neck-deep in blood to +--goodness alive, AUNT POLLY!" + +If she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as +sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never! + +Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried +over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it +was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. And I peeped out, and in +a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there +looking across at Tom over her spectacles--kind of grinding him into the +earth, you know. And then she says: + +"Yes, you BETTER turn y'r head away--I would if I was you, Tom." + +"Oh, deary me!" says Aunt Sally; "IS he changed so? Why, that ain't TOM, +it's Sid; Tom's--Tom's--why, where is Tom? He was here a minute ago." + +"You mean where's Huck FINN--that's what you mean! I reckon I hain't +raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I SEE +him. That WOULD be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that bed, +Huck Finn." + +So I done it. But not feeling brash. + +Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest-looking persons I ever see +--except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in and they told it +all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't +know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting +sermon that night that gave him a rattling ruputation, because the oldest +man in the world couldn't a understood it. So Tom's Aunt Polly, she told +all about who I was, and what; and I had to up and tell how I was in such +a tight place that when Mrs. Phelps took me for Tom Sawyer--she chipped +in and says, "Oh, go on and call me Aunt Sally, I'm used to it now, and +'tain't no need to change"--that when Aunt Sally took me for Tom Sawyer I +had to stand it--there warn't no other way, and I knowed he wouldn't +mind, because it would be nuts for him, being a mystery, and he'd make an +adventure out of it, and be perfectly satisfied. And so it turned out, +and he let on to be Sid, and made things as soft as he could for me. + +And his Aunt Polly she said Tom was right about old Miss Watson setting +Jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, Tom Sawyer had gone and took +all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free! and I couldn't +ever understand before, until that minute and that talk, how he COULD +help a body set a nigger free with his bringing-up. + +Well, Aunt Polly she said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom and +SID had come all right and safe, she says to herself: + +"Look at that, now! I might have expected it, letting him go off that +way without anybody to watch him. So now I got to go and trapse all the +way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that creetur's +up to THIS time, as long as I couldn't seem to get any answer out of you +about it." + +"Why, I never heard nothing from you," says Aunt Sally. + +"Well, I wonder! Why, I wrote you twice to ask you what you could mean +by Sid being here." + +"Well, I never got 'em, Sis." + +Aunt Polly she turns around slow and severe, and says: + +"You, Tom!" + +"Well--WHAT?" he says, kind of pettish. + +"Don t you what ME, you impudent thing--hand out them letters." + +"What letters?" + +"THEM letters. I be bound, if I have to take a-holt of you I'll--" + +"They're in the trunk. There, now. And they're just the same as they +was when I got them out of the office. I hain't looked into them, I +hain't touched them. But I knowed they'd make trouble, and I thought if +you warn't in no hurry, I'd--" + +"Well, you DO need skinning, there ain't no mistake about it. And I +wrote another one to tell you I was coming; and I s'pose he--" + +"No, it come yesterday; I hain't read it yet, but IT'S all right, I've +got that one." + +I wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't, but I reckoned maybe it +was just as safe to not to. So I never said nothing. + + + + +CHAPTER THE LAST + +THE first time I catched Tom private I asked him what was his idea, time +of the evasion?--what it was he'd planned to do if the evasion worked all +right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before? +And he said, what he had planned in his head from the start, if we got +Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river on the raft, and +have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about +his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat, in style, and +pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all the +niggers around, and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight +procession and a brass-band, and then he would be a hero, and so would +we. But I reckoned it was about as well the way it was. + +We had Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and Uncle +Silas and Aunt Sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse Tom, +they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up prime, and give him +all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do. And we had him +up to the sick-room, and had a high talk; and Tom give Jim forty dollars +for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so good, and Jim +was pleased most to death, and busted out, and says: + +"DAH, now, Huck, what I tell you?--what I tell you up dah on Jackson +islan'? I TOLE you I got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it; en I +TOLE you I ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich AGIN; en it's come +true; en heah she is! DAH, now! doan' talk to ME--signs is SIGNS, mine I +tell you; en I knowed jis' 's well 'at I 'uz gwineter be rich agin as I's +a-stannin' heah dis minute!" + +And then Tom he talked along and talked along, and says, le's all three +slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go for +howling adventures amongst the Injuns, over in the Territory, for a +couple of weeks or two; and I says, all right, that suits me, but I ain't +got no money for to buy the outfit, and I reckon I couldn't get none from +home, because it's likely pap's been back before now, and got it all away +from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up. + +"No, he hain't," Tom says; "it's all there yet--six thousand dollars and +more; and your pap hain't ever been back since. Hadn't when I come away, +anyhow." + +Jim says, kind of solemn: + +"He ain't a-comin' back no mo', Huck." + +I says: + +"Why, Jim?" + +"Nemmine why, Huck--but he ain't comin' back no mo." + +But I kept at him; so at last he says: + +"Doan' you 'member de house dat was float'n down de river, en dey wuz a +man in dah, kivered up, en I went in en unkivered him and didn' let you +come in? Well, den, you kin git yo' money when you wants it, kase dat +wuz him." + +Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard +for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't +nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a +knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and +ain't a-going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the +Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me +and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, +Complete, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT + +by + +MARK TWAIN +(Samuel L. Clemens) + + + +PREFACE + +The ungentle laws and customs touched upon in this tale are +historical, and the episodes which are used to illustrate them +are also historical. It is not pretended that these laws and +customs existed in England in the sixth century; no, it is only +pretended that inasmuch as they existed in the English and other +civilizations of far later times, it is safe to consider that it is +no libel upon the sixth century to suppose them to have been in +practice in that day also. One is quite justified in inferring +that whatever one of these laws or customs was lacking in that +remote time, its place was competently filled by a worse one. + +The question as to whether there is such a thing as divine right +of kings is not settled in this book. It was found too difficult. +That the executive head of a nation should be a person of lofty +character and extraordinary ability, was manifest and indisputable; +that none but the Deity could select that head unerringly, was +also manifest and indisputable; that the Deity ought to make that +selection, then, was likewise manifest and indisputable; consequently, +that He does make it, as claimed, was an unavoidable deduction. +I mean, until the author of this book encountered the Pompadour, +and Lady Castlemaine, and some other executive heads of that kind; +these were found so difficult to work into the scheme, that it +was judged better to take the other tack in this book (which +must be issued this fall), and then go into training and settle +the question in another book. It is, of course, a thing which +ought to be settled, and I am not going to have anything particular +to do next winter anyway. + +MARK TWAIN + + + + +A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT + + + + +A WORD OF EXPLANATION + +It was in Warwick Castle that I came across the curious stranger +whom I am going to talk about. He attracted me by three things: +his candid simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, +and the restfulness of his company--for he did all the talking. +We fell together, as modest people will, in the tail of the herd +that was being shown through, and he at once began to say things +which interested me. As he talked along, softly, pleasantly, +flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly out of this world +and time, and into some remote era and old forgotten country; +and so he gradually wove such a spell about me that I seemed +to move among the specters and shadows and dust and mold of a gray +antiquity, holding speech with a relic of it! Exactly as I would +speak of my nearest personal friends or enemies, or my most familiar +neighbors, he spoke of Sir Bedivere, Sir Bors de Ganis, Sir Launcelot +of the Lake, Sir Galahad, and all the other great names of the +Table Round--and how old, old, unspeakably old and faded and dry +and musty and ancient he came to look as he went on! Presently +he turned to me and said, just as one might speak of the weather, +or any other common matter-- + +"You know about transmigration of souls; do you know about +transposition of epochs--and bodies?" + +I said I had not heard of it. He was so little interested--just +as when people speak of the weather--that he did not notice +whether I made him any answer or not. There was half a moment +of silence, immediately interrupted by the droning voice of the +salaried cicerone: + +"Ancient hauberk, date of the sixth century, time of King Arthur +and the Round Table; said to have belonged to the knight Sir Sagramor +le Desirous; observe the round hole through the chain-mail in +the left breast; can't be accounted for; supposed to have been +done with a bullet since invention of firearms--perhaps maliciously +by Cromwell's soldiers." + +My acquaintance smiled--not a modern smile, but one that must +have gone out of general use many, many centuries ago--and muttered +apparently to himself: + +"Wit ye well, _I saw it done_." Then, after a pause, added: +"I did it myself." + +By the time I had recovered from the electric surprise of this +remark, he was gone. + +All that evening I sat by my fire at the Warwick Arms, steeped +in a dream of the olden time, while the rain beat upon the windows, +and the wind roared about the eaves and corners. From time to +time I dipped into old Sir Thomas Malory's enchanting book, and +fed at its rich feast of prodigies and adventures, breathed in +the fragrance of its obsolete names, and dreamed again. Midnight +being come at length, I read another tale, for a nightcap--this +which here follows, to wit: + +HOW SIR LAUNCELOT SLEW TWO GIANTS, AND MADE A CASTLE FREE + + Anon withal came there upon him two great giants, + well armed, all save the heads, with two horrible + clubs in their hands. Sir Launcelot put his shield + afore him, and put the stroke away of the one + giant, and with his sword he clave his head asunder. + When his fellow saw that, he ran away as he were + wood [*demented], for fear of the horrible strokes, + and Sir Launcelot after him with all his might, + and smote him on the shoulder, and clave him to + the middle. Then Sir Launcelot went into the hall, + and there came afore him three score ladies and + damsels, and all kneeled unto him, and thanked + God and him of their deliverance. For, sir, said + they, the most part of us have been here this + seven year their prisoners, and we have worked all + manner of silk works for our meat, and we are all + great gentle-women born, and blessed be the time, + knight, that ever thou wert born; for thou hast + done the most worship that ever did knight in the + world, that will we bear record, and we all pray + you to tell us your name, that we may tell our + friends who delivered us out of prison. Fair + damsels, he said, my name is Sir Launcelot du + Lake. And so he departed from them and betaught + them unto God. And then he mounted upon his + horse, and rode into many strange and wild + countries, and through many waters and valleys, + and evil was he lodged. And at the last by + fortune him happened against a night to come to + a fair courtilage, and therein he found an old + gentle-woman that lodged him with a good-will, + and there he had good cheer for him and his horse. + And when time was, his host brought him into a + fair garret over the gate to his bed. There + Sir Launcelot unarmed him, and set his harness + by him, and went to bed, and anon he fell on + sleep. So, soon after there came one on + horseback, and knocked at the gate in great + haste. And when Sir Launcelot heard this he rose + up, and looked out at the window, and saw by the + moonlight three knights come riding after that + one man, and all three lashed on him at once + with swords, and that one knight turned on them + knightly again and defended him. Truly, said + Sir Launcelot, yonder one knight shall I help, + for it were shame for me to see three knights + on one, and if he be slain I am partner of his + death. And therewith he took his harness and + went out at a window by a sheet down to the four + knights, and then Sir Launcelot said on high, + Turn you knights unto me, and leave your + fighting with that knight. And then they all + three left Sir Kay, and turned unto Sir Launcelot, + and there began great battle, for they alight + all three, and strake many strokes at Sir + Launcelot, and assailed him on every side. Then + Sir Kay dressed him for to have holpen Sir + Launcelot. Nay, sir, said he, I will none of + your help, therefore as ye will have my help + let me alone with them. Sir Kay for the pleasure + of the knight suffered him for to do his will, + and so stood aside. And then anon within six + strokes Sir Launcelot had stricken them to the earth. + + And then they all three cried, Sir Knight, we + yield us unto you as man of might matchless. As + to that, said Sir Launcelot, I will not take + your yielding unto me, but so that ye yield + you unto Sir Kay the seneschal, on that covenant + I will save your lives and else not. Fair knight, + said they, that were we loath to do; for as for + Sir Kay we chased him hither, and had overcome + him had ye not been; therefore, to yield us unto + him it were no reason. Well, as to that, said + Sir Launcelot, advise you well, for ye may + choose whether ye will die or live, for an ye be + yielden, it shall be unto Sir Kay. Fair knight, + then they said, in saving our lives we will do + as thou commandest us. Then shall ye, said Sir + Launcelot, on Whitsunday next coming go unto the + court of King Arthur, and there shall ye yield + you unto Queen Guenever, and put you all three + in her grace and mercy, and say that Sir Kay + sent you thither to be her prisoners. On the morn + Sir Launcelot arose early, and left Sir Kay + sleeping; and Sir Launcelot took Sir Kay's armor + and his shield and armed him, and so he went to + the stable and took his horse, and took his leave + of his host, and so he departed. Then soon after + arose Sir Kay and missed Sir Launcelot; and + then he espied that he had his armor and his + horse. Now by my faith I know well that he will + grieve some of the court of King Arthur; for on + him knights will be bold, and deem that it is I, + and that will beguile them; and because of his + armor and shield I am sure I shall ride in peace. + And then soon after departed Sir Kay, and + thanked his host. + + +As I laid the book down there was a knock at the door, and my +stranger came in. I gave him a pipe and a chair, and made him +welcome. I also comforted him with a hot Scotch whisky; gave him +another one; then still another--hoping always for his story. +After a fourth persuader, he drifted into it himself, in a quite +simple and natural way: + + + +THE STRANGER'S HISTORY + +I am an American. I was born and reared in Hartford, in the State +of Connecticut--anyway, just over the river, in the country. So +I am a Yankee of the Yankees--and practical; yes, and nearly +barren of sentiment, I suppose--or poetry, in other words. My +father was a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor, and I was +both, along at first. Then I went over to the great arms factory +and learned my real trade; learned all there was to it; learned +to make everything: guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, all +sorts of labor-saving machinery. Why, I could make anything +a body wanted--anything in the world, it didn't make any difference +what; and if there wasn't any quick new-fangled way to make a thing, +I could invent one--and do it as easy as rolling off a log. I became +head superintendent; had a couple of thousand men under me. + +Well, a man like that is a man that is full of fight--that goes +without saying. With a couple of thousand rough men under one, +one has plenty of that sort of amusement. I had, anyway. At last +I met my match, and I got my dose. It was during a misunderstanding +conducted with crowbars with a fellow we used to call Hercules. +He laid me out with a crusher alongside the head that made everything +crack, and seemed to spring every joint in my skull and made it +overlap its neighbor. Then the world went out in darkness, and +I didn't feel anything more, and didn't know anything at all +--at least for a while. + +When I came to again, I was sitting under an oak tree, on the +grass, with a whole beautiful and broad country landscape all +to myself--nearly. Not entirely; for there was a fellow on a horse, +looking down at me--a fellow fresh out of a picture-book. He was +in old-time iron armor from head to heel, with a helmet on his +head the shape of a nail-keg with slits in it; and he had a shield, +and a sword, and a prodigious spear; and his horse had armor on, +too, and a steel horn projecting from his forehead, and gorgeous +red and green silk trappings that hung down all around him like +a bedquilt, nearly to the ground. + +"Fair sir, will ye just?" said this fellow. + +"Will I which?" + +"Will ye try a passage of arms for land or lady or for--" + +"What are you giving me?" I said. "Get along back to your circus, +or I'll report you." + +Now what does this man do but fall back a couple of hundred yards +and then come rushing at me as hard as he could tear, with his +nail-keg bent down nearly to his horse's neck and his long spear +pointed straight ahead. I saw he meant business, so I was up +the tree when he arrived. + +He allowed that I was his property, the captive of his spear. +There was argument on his side--and the bulk of the advantage +--so I judged it best to humor him. We fixed up an agreement +whereby I was to go with him and he was not to hurt me. I came +down, and we started away, I walking by the side of his horse. +We marched comfortably along, through glades and over brooks which +I could not remember to have seen before--which puzzled me and +made me wonder--and yet we did not come to any circus or sign of +a circus. So I gave up the idea of a circus, and concluded he was +from an asylum. But we never came to an asylum--so I was up +a stump, as you may say. I asked him how far we were from Hartford. +He said he had never heard of the place; which I took to be a lie, +but allowed it to go at that. At the end of an hour we saw a +far-away town sleeping in a valley by a winding river; and beyond +it on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers and turrets, +the first I had ever seen out of a picture. + +"Bridgeport?" said I, pointing. + +"Camelot," said he. + + +My stranger had been showing signs of sleepiness. He caught +himself nodding, now, and smiled one of those pathetic, obsolete +smiles of his, and said: + +"I find I can't go on; but come with me, I've got it all written +out, and you can read it if you like." + +In his chamber, he said: "First, I kept a journal; then by and by, +after years, I took the journal and turned it into a book. How +long ago that was!" + +He handed me his manuscript, and pointed out the place where +I should begin: + +"Begin here--I've already told you what goes before." He was +steeped in drowsiness by this time. As I went out at his door +I heard him murmur sleepily: "Give you good den, fair sir." + +I sat down by my fire and examined my treasure. The first part +of it--the great bulk of it--was parchment, and yellow with age. +I scanned a leaf particularly and saw that it was a palimpsest. +Under the old dim writing of the Yankee historian appeared traces +of a penmanship which was older and dimmer still--Latin words +and sentences: fragments from old monkish legends, evidently. +I turned to the place indicated by my stranger and began to read +--as follows: + + + + +THE TALE OF THE LOST LAND + + + + +CHAPTER I + +CAMELOT + +"Camelot--Camelot," said I to myself. "I don't seem to remember +hearing of it before. Name of the asylum, likely." + +It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream, +and as lonesome as Sunday. The air was full of the smell of +flowers, and the buzzing of insects, and the twittering of birds, +and there were no people, no wagons, there was no stir of life, +nothing going on. The road was mainly a winding path with hoof-prints +in it, and now and then a faint trace of wheels on either side in +the grass--wheels that apparently had a tire as broad as one's hand. + +Presently a fair slip of a girl, about ten years old, with a cataract +of golden hair streaming down over her shoulders, came along. +Around her head she wore a hoop of flame-red poppies. It was as +sweet an outfit as ever I saw, what there was of it. She walked +indolently along, with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in her +innocent face. The circus man paid no attention to her; didn't +even seem to see her. And she--she was no more startled at his +fantastic make-up than if she was used to his like every day of +her life. She was going by as indifferently as she might have gone +by a couple of cows; but when she happened to notice me, _then_ +there was a change! Up went her hands, and she was turned to stone; +her mouth dropped open, her eyes stared wide and timorously, she +was the picture of astonished curiosity touched with fear. And +there she stood gazing, in a sort of stupefied fascination, till +we turned a corner of the wood and were lost to her view. That +she should be startled at me instead of at the other man, was too +many for me; I couldn't make head or tail of it. And that she +should seem to consider me a spectacle, and totally overlook her +own merits in that respect, was another puzzling thing, and a +display of magnanimity, too, that was surprising in one so young. +There was food for thought here. I moved along as one in a dream. + +As we approached the town, signs of life began to appear. At +intervals we passed a wretched cabin, with a thatched roof, and +about it small fields and garden patches in an indifferent state of +cultivation. There were people, too; brawny men, with long, coarse, +uncombed hair that hung down over their faces and made them look +like animals. They and the women, as a rule, wore a coarse +tow-linen robe that came well below the knee, and a rude sort of +sandal, and many wore an iron collar. The small boys and girls +were always naked; but nobody seemed to know it. All of these +people stared at me, talked about me, ran into the huts and fetched +out their families to gape at me; but nobody ever noticed that +other fellow, except to make him humble salutation and get no +response for their pains. + +In the town were some substantial windowless houses of stone +scattered among a wilderness of thatched cabins; the streets were +mere crooked alleys, and unpaved; troops of dogs and nude children +played in the sun and made life and noise; hogs roamed and rooted +contentedly about, and one of them lay in a reeking wallow in +the middle of the main thoroughfare and suckled her family. +Presently there was a distant blare of military music; it came +nearer, still nearer, and soon a noble cavalcade wound into view, +glorious with plumed helmets and flashing mail and flaunting banners +and rich doublets and horse-cloths and gilded spearheads; and +through the muck and swine, and naked brats, and joyous dogs, and +shabby huts, it took its gallant way, and in its wake we followed. +Followed through one winding alley and then another,--and climbing, +always climbing--till at last we gained the breezy height where +the huge castle stood. There was an exchange of bugle blasts; +then a parley from the walls, where men-at-arms, in hauberk and +morion, marched back and forth with halberd at shoulder under +flapping banners with the rude figure of a dragon displayed upon +them; and then the great gates were flung open, the drawbridge +was lowered, and the head of the cavalcade swept forward under +the frowning arches; and we, following, soon found ourselves in +a great paved court, with towers and turrets stretching up into +the blue air on all the four sides; and all about us the dismount +was going on, and much greeting and ceremony, and running to and +fro, and a gay display of moving and intermingling colors, and +an altogether pleasant stir and noise and confusion. + + + +CHAPTER II + +KING ARTHUR'S COURT + +The moment I got a chance I slipped aside privately and touched +an ancient common looking man on the shoulder and said, in an +insinuating, confidential way: + +"Friend, do me a kindness. Do you belong to the asylum, or are +you just on a visit or something like that?" + +He looked me over stupidly, and said: + +"Marry, fair sir, me seemeth--" + +"That will do," I said; "I reckon you are a patient." + +I moved away, cogitating, and at the same time keeping an eye +out for any chance passenger in his right mind that might come +along and give me some light. I judged I had found one, presently; +so I drew him aside and said in his ear: + +"If I could see the head keeper a minute--only just a minute--" + +"Prithee do not let me." + +"Let you _what_?" + +"_Hinder_ me, then, if the word please thee better. Then he went +on to say he was an under-cook and could not stop to gossip, +though he would like it another time; for it would comfort his +very liver to know where I got my clothes. As he started away he +pointed and said yonder was one who was idle enough for my purpose, +and was seeking me besides, no doubt. This was an airy slim boy +in shrimp-colored tights that made him look like a forked carrot, +the rest of his gear was blue silk and dainty laces and ruffles; +and he had long yellow curls, and wore a plumed pink satin cap +tilted complacently over his ear. By his look, he was good-natured; +by his gait, he was satisfied with himself. He was pretty enough +to frame. He arrived, looked me over with a smiling and impudent +curiosity; said he had come for me, and informed me that he was a page. + +"Go 'long," I said; "you ain't more than a paragraph." + +It was pretty severe, but I was nettled. However, it never phazed +him; he didn't appear to know he was hurt. He began to talk and +laugh, in happy, thoughtless, boyish fashion, as we walked along, +and made himself old friends with me at once; asked me all sorts +of questions about myself and about my clothes, but never waited +for an answer--always chattered straight ahead, as if he didn't +know he had asked a question and wasn't expecting any reply, until +at last he happened to mention that he was born in the beginning +of the year 513. + +It made the cold chills creep over me! I stopped and said, +a little faintly: + +"Maybe I didn't hear you just right. Say it again--and say it +slow. What year was it?" + +"513." + +"513! You don't look it! Come, my boy, I am a stranger and +friendless; be honest and honorable with me. Are you in your +right mind?" + +He said he was. + +"Are these other people in their right minds?" + +He said they were. + +"And this isn't an asylum? I mean, it isn't a place where they +cure crazy people?" + +He said it wasn't. + +"Well, then," I said, "either I am a lunatic, or something just +as awful has happened. Now tell me, honest and true, where am I?" + +"IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT." + +I waited a minute, to let that idea shudder its way home, +and then said: + +"And according to your notions, what year is it now?" + +"528--nineteenth of June." + +I felt a mournful sinking at the heart, and muttered: "I shall +never see my friends again--never, never again. They will not +be born for more than thirteen hundred years yet." + +I seemed to believe the boy, I didn't know why. _Something_ in me +seemed to believe him--my consciousness, as you may say; but my +reason didn't. My reason straightway began to clamor; that was +natural. I didn't know how to go about satisfying it, because +I knew that the testimony of men wouldn't serve--my reason would +say they were lunatics, and throw out their evidence. But all +of a sudden I stumbled on the very thing, just by luck. I knew +that the only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the +sixth century occurred on the 21st of June, A.D. 528, O.S., and +began at 3 minutes after 12 noon. I also knew that no total eclipse +of the sun was due in what to _me_ was the present year--i.e., 1879. +So, if I could keep my anxiety and curiosity from eating the heart +out of me for forty-eight hours, I should then find out for certain +whether this boy was telling me the truth or not. + +Wherefore, being a practical Connecticut man, I now shoved this +whole problem clear out of my mind till its appointed day and hour +should come, in order that I might turn all my attention to the +circumstances of the present moment, and be alert and ready to +make the most out of them that could be made. One thing at a time, +is my motto--and just play that thing for all it is worth, even +if it's only two pair and a jack. I made up my mind to two things: +if it was still the nineteenth century and I was among lunatics +and couldn't get away, I would presently boss that asylum or know +the reason why; and if, on the other hand, it was really the sixth +century, all right, I didn't want any softer thing: I would boss +the whole country inside of three months; for I judged I would +have the start of the best-educated man in the kingdom by a matter +of thirteen hundred years and upward. I'm not a man to waste +time after my mind's made up and there's work on hand; so I said +to the page: + +"Now, Clarence, my boy--if that might happen to be your name +--I'll get you to post me up a little if you don't mind. What is +the name of that apparition that brought me here?" + +"My master and thine? That is the good knight and great lord +Sir Kay the Seneschal, foster brother to our liege the king." + +"Very good; go on, tell me everything." + +He made a long story of it; but the part that had immediate interest +for me was this: He said I was Sir Kay's prisoner, and that +in the due course of custom I would be flung into a dungeon and +left there on scant commons until my friends ransomed me--unless +I chanced to rot, first. I saw that the last chance had the best +show, but I didn't waste any bother about that; time was too +precious. The page said, further, that dinner was about ended +in the great hall by this time, and that as soon as the sociability +and the heavy drinking should begin, Sir Kay would have me in and +exhibit me before King Arthur and his illustrious knights seated at +the Table Round, and would brag about his exploit in capturing +me, and would probably exaggerate the facts a little, but it +wouldn't be good form for me to correct him, and not over safe, +either; and when I was done being exhibited, then ho for the +dungeon; but he, Clarence, would find a way to come and see me every +now and then, and cheer me up, and help me get word to my friends. + +Get word to my friends! I thanked him; I couldn't do less; and +about this time a lackey came to say I was wanted; so Clarence +led me in and took me off to one side and sat down by me. + +Well, it was a curious kind of spectacle, and interesting. It was +an immense place, and rather naked--yes, and full of loud contrasts. +It was very, very lofty; so lofty that the banners depending from +the arched beams and girders away up there floated in a sort of +twilight; there was a stone-railed gallery at each end, high up, +with musicians in the one, and women, clothed in stunning colors, +in the other. The floor was of big stone flags laid in black and +white squares, rather battered by age and use, and needing repair. +As to ornament, there wasn't any, strictly speaking; though on +the walls hung some huge tapestries which were probably taxed +as works of art; battle-pieces, they were, with horses shaped like +those which children cut out of paper or create in gingerbread; +with men on them in scale armor whose scales are represented by +round holes--so that the man's coat looks as if it had been done +with a biscuit-punch. There was a fireplace big enough to camp in; +and its projecting sides and hood, of carved and pillared stonework, +had the look of a cathedral door. Along the walls stood men-at-arms, +in breastplate and morion, with halberds for their only weapon +--rigid as statues; and that is what they looked like. + +In the middle of this groined and vaulted public square was an oaken +table which they called the Table Round. It was as large as +a circus ring; and around it sat a great company of men dressed +in such various and splendid colors that it hurt one's eyes to look +at them. They wore their plumed hats, right along, except that +whenever one addressed himself directly to the king, he lifted +his hat a trifle just as he was beginning his remark. + +Mainly they were drinking--from entire ox horns; but a few were +still munching bread or gnawing beef bones. There was about +an average of two dogs to one man; and these sat in expectant +attitudes till a spent bone was flung to them, and then they went +for it by brigades and divisions, with a rush, and there ensued +a fight which filled the prospect with a tumultuous chaos of +plunging heads and bodies and flashing tails, and the storm of +howlings and barkings deafened all speech for the time; but that +was no matter, for the dog-fight was always a bigger interest +anyway; the men rose, sometimes, to observe it the better and bet +on it, and the ladies and the musicians stretched themselves out +over their balusters with the same object; and all broke into +delighted ejaculations from time to time. In the end, the winning +dog stretched himself out comfortably with his bone between his +paws, and proceeded to growl over it, and gnaw it, and grease +the floor with it, just as fifty others were already doing; and the +rest of the court resumed their previous industries and entertainments. + +As a rule, the speech and behavior of these people were gracious +and courtly; and I noticed that they were good and serious listeners +when anybody was telling anything--I mean in a dog-fightless +interval. And plainly, too, they were a childlike and innocent lot; +telling lies of the stateliest pattern with a most gentle and +winning naivety, and ready and willing to listen to anybody else's +lie, and believe it, too. It was hard to associate them with +anything cruel or dreadful; and yet they dealt in tales of blood +and suffering with a guileless relish that made me almost forget +to shudder. + +I was not the only prisoner present. There were twenty or more. +Poor devils, many of them were maimed, hacked, carved, in a frightful +way; and their hair, their faces, their clothing, were caked with +black and stiffened drenchings of blood. They were suffering +sharp physical pain, of course; and weariness, and hunger and +thirst, no doubt; and at least none had given them the comfort +of a wash, or even the poor charity of a lotion for their wounds; +yet you never heard them utter a moan or a groan, or saw them show +any sign of restlessness, or any disposition to complain. The +thought was forced upon me: "The rascals--_they_ have served other +people so in their day; it being their own turn, now, they were +not expecting any better treatment than this; so their philosophical +bearing is not an outcome of mental training, intellectual fortitude, +reasoning; it is mere animal training; they are white Indians." + + + +CHAPTER III + +KNIGHTS OF THE TABLE ROUND + +Mainly the Round Table talk was monologues--narrative accounts +of the adventures in which these prisoners were captured and their +friends and backers killed and stripped of their steeds and armor. +As a general thing--as far as I could make out--these murderous +adventures were not forays undertaken to avenge injuries, nor to +settle old disputes or sudden fallings out; no, as a rule they were +simply duels between strangers--duels between people who had never +even been introduced to each other, and between whom existed no +cause of offense whatever. Many a time I had seen a couple of boys, +strangers, meet by chance, and say simultaneously, "I can lick you," +and go at it on the spot; but I had always imagined until now that +that sort of thing belonged to children only, and was a sign and +mark of childhood; but here were these big boobies sticking to it +and taking pride in it clear up into full age and beyond. Yet there +was something very engaging about these great simple-hearted +creatures, something attractive and lovable. There did not seem +to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait +a fish-hook with; but you didn't seem to mind that, after a little, +because you soon saw that brains were not needed in a society +like that, and indeed would have marred it, hindered it, spoiled +its symmetry--perhaps rendered its existence impossible. + +There was a fine manliness observable in almost every face; and +in some a certain loftiness and sweetness that rebuked your +belittling criticisms and stilled them. A most noble benignity +and purity reposed in the countenance of him they called Sir Galahad, +and likewise in the king's also; and there was majesty and greatness +in the giant frame and high bearing of Sir Launcelot of the Lake. + +There was presently an incident which centered the general interest +upon this Sir Launcelot. At a sign from a sort of master of +ceremonies, six or eight of the prisoners rose and came forward +in a body and knelt on the floor and lifted up their hands toward +the ladies' gallery and begged the grace of a word with the queen. +The most conspicuously situated lady in that massed flower-bed +of feminine show and finery inclined her head by way of assent, +and then the spokesman of the prisoners delivered himself and his +fellows into her hands for free pardon, ransom, captivity, or death, +as she in her good pleasure might elect; and this, as he said, he +was doing by command of Sir Kay the Seneschal, whose prisoners +they were, he having vanquished them by his single might and +prowess in sturdy conflict in the field. + +Surprise and astonishment flashed from face to face all over +the house; the queen's gratified smile faded out at the name of +Sir Kay, and she looked disappointed; and the page whispered in +my ear with an accent and manner expressive of extravagant derision-- + +"Sir _Kay_, forsooth! Oh, call me pet names, dearest, call me +a marine! In twice a thousand years shall the unholy invention +of man labor at odds to beget the fellow to this majestic lie!" + +Every eye was fastened with severe inquiry upon Sir Kay. But he +was equal to the occasion. He got up and played his hand like +a major--and took every trick. He said he would state the case +exactly according to the facts; he would tell the simple +straightforward tale, without comment of his own; "and then," +said he, "if ye find glory and honor due, ye will give it unto him +who is the mightiest man of his hands that ever bare shield or +strake with sword in the ranks of Christian battle--even him that +sitteth there!" and he pointed to Sir Launcelot. Ah, he fetched +them; it was a rattling good stroke. Then he went on and told +how Sir Launcelot, seeking adventures, some brief time gone by, +killed seven giants at one sweep of his sword, and set a hundred +and forty-two captive maidens free; and then went further, still +seeking adventures, and found him (Sir Kay) fighting a desperate +fight against nine foreign knights, and straightway took the battle +solely into his own hands, and conquered the nine; and that night +Sir Launcelot rose quietly, and dressed him in Sir Kay's armor and +took Sir Kay's horse and gat him away into distant lands, and +vanquished sixteen knights in one pitched battle and thirty-four +in another; and all these and the former nine he made to swear +that about Whitsuntide they would ride to Arthur's court and yield +them to Queen Guenever's hands as captives of Sir Kay the Seneschal, +spoil of his knightly prowess; and now here were these half dozen, +and the rest would be along as soon as they might be healed of +their desperate wounds. + +Well, it was touching to see the queen blush and smile, and look +embarrassed and happy, and fling furtive glances at Sir Launcelot +that would have got him shot in Arkansas, to a dead certainty. + +Everybody praised the valor and magnanimity of Sir Launcelot; and +as for me, I was perfectly amazed, that one man, all by himself, +should have been able to beat down and capture such battalions +of practiced fighters. I said as much to Clarence; but this mocking +featherhead only said: + +"An Sir Kay had had time to get another skin of sour wine into him, +ye had seen the accompt doubled." + +I looked at the boy in sorrow; and as I looked I saw the cloud of +a deep despondency settle upon his countenance. I followed the +direction of his eye, and saw that a very old and white-bearded +man, clothed in a flowing black gown, had risen and was standing +at the table upon unsteady legs, and feebly swaying his ancient +head and surveying the company with his watery and wandering eye. +The same suffering look that was in the page's face was observable +in all the faces around--the look of dumb creatures who know that +they must endure and make no moan. + +"Marry, we shall have it again," sighed the boy; "that same old +weary tale that he hath told a thousand times in the same words, +and that he _will_ tell till he dieth, every time he hath gotten his +barrel full and feeleth his exaggeration-mill a-working. Would +God I had died or I saw this day!" + +"Who is it?" + +"Merlin, the mighty liar and magician, perdition singe him for +the weariness he worketh with his one tale! But that men fear +him for that he hath the storms and the lightnings and all the +devils that be in hell at his beck and call, they would have dug +his entrails out these many years ago to get at that tale and +squelch it. He telleth it always in the third person, making +believe he is too modest to glorify himself--maledictions light +upon him, misfortune be his dole! Good friend, prithee call me +for evensong." + +The boy nestled himself upon my shoulder and pretended to go +to sleep. The old man began his tale; and presently the lad was +asleep in reality; so also were the dogs, and the court, the lackeys, +and the files of men-at-arms. The droning voice droned on; a soft +snoring arose on all sides and supported it like a deep and subdued +accompaniment of wind instruments. Some heads were bowed upon +folded arms, some lay back with open mouths that issued unconscious +music; the flies buzzed and bit, unmolested, the rats swarmed +softly out from a hundred holes, and pattered about, and made +themselves at home everywhere; and one of them sat up like a +squirrel on the king's head and held a bit of cheese in its hands +and nibbled it, and dribbled the crumbs in the king's face with +naive and impudent irreverence. It was a tranquil scene, and +restful to the weary eye and the jaded spirit. + +This was the old man's tale. He said: + +"Right so the king and Merlin departed, and went until an hermit +that was a good man and a great leech. So the hermit searched +all his wounds and gave him good salves; so the king was there +three days, and then were his wounds well amended that he might +ride and go, and so departed. And as they rode, Arthur said, +I have no sword. No force* [*Footnote from M.T.: No matter.], +said Merlin, hereby is a sword that shall be yours and I may. +So they rode till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water +and broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm +clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand. +Lo, said Merlin, yonder is that sword that I spake of. With that +they saw a damsel going upon the lake. What damsel is that? +said Arthur. That is the Lady of the lake, said Merlin; and within +that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any on earth, +and richly beseen, and this damsel will come to you anon, and then +speak ye fair to her that she will give you that sword. Anon +withal came the damsel unto Arthur and saluted him, and he her +again. Damsel, said Arthur, what sword is that, that yonder +the arm holdeth above the water? I would it were mine, for I have +no sword. Sir Arthur King, said the damsel, that sword is mine, +and if ye will give me a gift when I ask it you, ye shall have it. +By my faith, said Arthur, I will give you what gift ye will ask. +Well, said the damsel, go ye into yonder barge and row yourself +to the sword, and take it and the scabbard with you, and I will ask +my gift when I see my time. So Sir Arthur and Merlin alight, and +tied their horses to two trees, and so they went into the ship, +and when they came to the sword that the hand held, Sir Arthur +took it up by the handles, and took it with him. And the arm +and the hand went under the water; and so they came unto the land +and rode forth. And then Sir Arthur saw a rich pavilion. What +signifieth yonder pavilion? It is the knight's pavilion, said +Merlin, that ye fought with last, Sir Pellinore, but he is out, +he is not there; he hath ado with a knight of yours, that hight +Egglame, and they have fought together, but at the last Egglame +fled, and else he had been dead, and he hath chased him even +to Carlion, and we shall meet with him anon in the highway. That +is well said, said Arthur, now have I a sword, now will I wage +battle with him, and be avenged on him. Sir, ye shall not so, +said Merlin, for the knight is weary of fighting and chasing, so +that ye shall have no worship to have ado with him; also, he will +not lightly be matched of one knight living; and therefore it is my +counsel, let him pass, for he shall do you good service in short +time, and his sons, after his days. Also ye shall see that day +in short space ye shall be right glad to give him your sister +to wed. When I see him, I will do as ye advise me, said Arthur. +Then Sir Arthur looked on the sword, and liked it passing well. +Whether liketh you better, said Merlin, the sword or the scabbard? +Me liketh better the sword, said Arthur. Ye are more unwise, +said Merlin, for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword, for while +ye have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood, be ye +never so sore wounded; therefore, keep well the scabbard always +with you. So they rode into Carlion, and by the way they met with +Sir Pellinore; but Merlin had done such a craft that Pellinore saw +not Arthur, and he passed by without any words. I marvel, said +Arthur, that the knight would not speak. Sir, said Merlin, he saw +you not; for and he had seen you ye had not lightly departed. So +they came unto Carlion, whereof his knights were passing glad. +And when they heard of his adventures they marveled that he would +jeopard his person so alone. But all men of worship said it was +merry to be under such a chieftain that would put his person in +adventure as other poor knights did." + + + +CHAPTER IV + +SIR DINADAN THE HUMORIST + +It seemed to me that this quaint lie was most simply and beautifully +told; but then I had heard it only once, and that makes a difference; +it was pleasant to the others when it was fresh, no doubt. + +Sir Dinadan the Humorist was the first to awake, and he soon roused +the rest with a practical joke of a sufficiently poor quality. +He tied some metal mugs to a dog's tail and turned him loose, +and he tore around and around the place in a frenzy of fright, +with all the other dogs bellowing after him and battering and +crashing against everything that came in their way and making +altogether a chaos of confusion and a most deafening din and +turmoil; at which every man and woman of the multitude laughed +till the tears flowed, and some fell out of their chairs and +wallowed on the floor in ecstasy. It was just like so many children. +Sir Dinadan was so proud of his exploit that he could not keep +from telling over and over again, to weariness, how the immortal +idea happened to occur to him; and as is the way with humorists +of his breed, he was still laughing at it after everybody else had +got through. He was so set up that he concluded to make a speech +--of course a humorous speech. I think I never heard so many old +played-out jokes strung together in my life. He was worse than +the minstrels, worse than the clown in the circus. It seemed +peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen hundred years before I was +born, and listen again to poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had +given me the dry gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred years +afterwards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such thing +as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at these antiquities +--but then they always do; I had noticed that, centuries later. +However, of course the scoffer didn't laugh--I mean the boy. No, +he scoffed; there wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff at. He said +the most of Sir Dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest were +petrified. I said "petrified" was good; as I believed, myself, +that the only right way to classify the majestic ages of some of +those jokes was by geologic periods. But that neat idea hit +the boy in a blank place, for geology hadn't been invented yet. +However, I made a note of the remark, and calculated to educate +the commonwealth up to it if I pulled through. It is no use +to throw a good thing away merely because the market isn't ripe yet. + +Now Sir Kay arose and began to fire up on his history-mill with me +for fuel. It was time for me to feel serious, and I did. Sir Kay +told how he had encountered me in a far land of barbarians, who +all wore the same ridiculous garb that I did--a garb that was a work +of enchantment, and intended to make the wearer secure from hurt +by human hands. However he had nullified the force of the +enchantment by prayer, and had killed my thirteen knights in +a three hours' battle, and taken me prisoner, sparing my life +in order that so strange a curiosity as I was might be exhibited +to the wonder and admiration of the king and the court. He spoke +of me all the time, in the blandest way, as "this prodigious giant," +and "this horrible sky-towering monster," and "this tusked and +taloned man-devouring ogre", and everybody took in all this bosh +in the naivest way, and never smiled or seemed to notice that +there was any discrepancy between these watered statistics and me. +He said that in trying to escape from him I sprang into the top of +a tree two hundred cubits high at a single bound, but he dislodged +me with a stone the size of a cow, which "all-to brast" the most +of my bones, and then swore me to appear at Arthur's court for +sentence. He ended by condemning me to die at noon on the 21st; +and was so little concerned about it that he stopped to yawn before +he named the date. + +I was in a dismal state by this time; indeed, I was hardly enough +in my right mind to keep the run of a dispute that sprung up as +to how I had better be killed, the possibility of the killing being +doubted by some, because of the enchantment in my clothes. And yet +it was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slop-shops. +Still, I was sane enough to notice this detail, to wit: many of +the terms used in the most matter-of-fact way by this great +assemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen in the land would +have made a Comanche blush. Indelicacy is too mild a term to convey +the idea. However, I had read "Tom Jones," and "Roderick Random," +and other books of that kind, and knew that the highest and first +ladies and gentlemen in England had remained little or no cleaner +in their talk, and in the morals and conduct which such talk +implies, clear up to a hundred years ago; in fact clear into our +own nineteenth century--in which century, broadly speaking, +the earliest samples of the real lady and real gentleman discoverable +in English history--or in European history, for that matter--may be +said to have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter, instead +of putting the conversations into the mouths of his characters, +had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? We should +have had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowena +which would embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to the +unconsciously indelicate all things are delicate. King Arthur's +people were not aware that they were indecent and I had presence +of mind enough not to mention it. + +They were so troubled about my enchanted clothes that they were +mightily relieved, at last, when old Merlin swept the difficulty +away for them with a common-sense hint. He asked them why they +were so dull--why didn't it occur to them to strip me. In half a +minute I was as naked as a pair of tongs! And dear, dear, to think +of it: I was the only embarrassed person there. Everybody discussed +me; and did it as unconcernedly as if I had been a cabbage. +Queen Guenever was as naively interested as the rest, and said +she had never seen anybody with legs just like mine before. It was +the only compliment I got--if it was a compliment. + +Finally I was carried off in one direction, and my perilous clothes +in another. I was shoved into a dark and narrow cell in a dungeon, +with some scant remnants for dinner, some moldy straw for a bed, +and no end of rats for company. + + + +CHAPTER V + +AN INSPIRATION + +I was so tired that even my fears were not able to keep me awake long. + +When I next came to myself, I seemed to have been asleep a very +long time. My first thought was, "Well, what an astonishing dream +I've had! I reckon I've waked only just in time to keep from +being hanged or drowned or burned or something.... I'll nap again +till the whistle blows, and then I'll go down to the arms factory +and have it out with Hercules." + +But just then I heard the harsh music of rusty chains and bolts, +a light flashed in my eyes, and that butterfly, Clarence, stood +before me! I gasped with surprise; my breath almost got away from me. + +"What!" I said, "you here yet? Go along with the rest of +the dream! scatter!" + +But he only laughed, in his light-hearted way, and fell to making +fun of my sorry plight. + +"All right," I said resignedly, "let the dream go on; I'm in no hurry." + +"Prithee what dream?" + +"What dream? Why, the dream that I am in Arthur's court--a person +who never existed; and that I am talking to you, who are nothing +but a work of the imagination." + +"Oh, la, indeed! and is it a dream that you're to be burned +to-morrow? Ho-ho--answer me that!" + +The shock that went through me was distressing. I now began +to reason that my situation was in the last degree serious, dream +or no dream; for I knew by past experience of the lifelike intensity +of dreams, that to be burned to death, even in a dream, would be +very far from being a jest, and was a thing to be avoided, by any +means, fair or foul, that I could contrive. So I said beseechingly: + +"Ah, Clarence, good boy, only friend I've got,--for you _are_ my +friend, aren't you?--don't fail me; help me to devise some way +of escaping from this place!" + +"Now do but hear thyself! Escape? Why, man, the corridors are +in guard and keep of men-at-arms." + +"No doubt, no doubt. But how many, Clarence? Not many, I hope?" + +"Full a score. One may not hope to escape." After a pause +--hesitatingly: "and there be other reasons--and weightier." + +"Other ones? What are they?" + +"Well, they say--oh, but I daren't, indeed daren't!" + +"Why, poor lad, what is the matter? Why do you blench? Why do +you tremble so?" + +"Oh, in sooth, there is need! I do want to tell you, but--" + +"Come, come, be brave, be a man--speak out, there's a good lad!" + +He hesitated, pulled one way by desire, the other way by fear; +then he stole to the door and peeped out, listening; and finally +crept close to me and put his mouth to my ear and told me his +fearful news in a whisper, and with all the cowering apprehension +of one who was venturing upon awful ground and speaking of things +whose very mention might be freighted with death. + +"Merlin, in his malice, has woven a spell about this dungeon, and +there bides not the man in these kingdoms that would be desperate +enough to essay to cross its lines with you! Now God pity me, +I have told it! Ah, be kind to me, be merciful to a poor boy who +means thee well; for an thou betray me I am lost!" + +I laughed the only really refreshing laugh I had had for some time; +and shouted: + +"Merlin has wrought a spell! _Merlin_, forsooth! That cheap old +humbug, that maundering old ass? Bosh, pure bosh, the silliest bosh +in the world! Why, it does seem to me that of all the childish, +idiotic, chuckle-headed, chicken-livered superstitions that ev +--oh, damn Merlin!" + +But Clarence had slumped to his knees before I had half finished, +and he was like to go out of his mind with fright. + +"Oh, beware! These are awful words! Any moment these walls +may crumble upon us if you say such things. Oh call them back +before it is too late!" + +Now this strange exhibition gave me a good idea and set me to +thinking. If everybody about here was so honestly and sincerely +afraid of Merlin's pretended magic as Clarence was, certainly +a superior man like me ought to be shrewd enough to contrive +some way to take advantage of such a state of things. I went +on thinking, and worked out a plan. Then I said: + +"Get up. Pull yourself together; look me in the eye. Do you +know why I laughed?" + +"No--but for our blessed Lady's sake, do it no more." + +"Well, I'll tell you why I laughed. Because I'm a magician myself." + +"Thou!" The boy recoiled a step, and caught his breath, for +the thing hit him rather sudden; but the aspect which he took +on was very, very respectful. I took quick note of that; it +indicated that a humbug didn't need to have a reputation in this +asylum; people stood ready to take him at his word, without that. +I resumed. + +"I've know Merlin seven hundred years, and he--" + +"Seven hun--" + +"Don't interrupt me. He has died and come alive again thirteen +times, and traveled under a new name every time: Smith, Jones, +Robinson, Jackson, Peters, Haskins, Merlin--a new alias every +time he turns up. I knew him in Egypt three hundred years ago; +I knew him in India five hundred years ago--he is always blethering +around in my way, everywhere I go; he makes me tired. He don't +amount to shucks, as a magician; knows some of the old common +tricks, but has never got beyond the rudiments, and never will. +He is well enough for the provinces--one-night stands and that +sort of thing, you know--but dear me, _he_ oughtn't to set up for +an expert--anyway not where there's a real artist. Now look here, +Clarence, I am going to stand your friend, right along, and in +return you must be mine. I want you to do me a favor. I want +you to get word to the king that I am a magician myself--and the +Supreme Grand High-yu-Muck-amuck and head of the tribe, at that; +and I want him to be made to understand that I am just quietly +arranging a little calamity here that will make the fur fly in these +realms if Sir Kay's project is carried out and any harm comes +to me. Will you get that to the king for me?" + +The poor boy was in such a state that he could hardly answer me. +It was pitiful to see a creature so terrified, so unnerved, so +demoralized. But he promised everything; and on my side he made +me promise over and over again that I would remain his friend, and +never turn against him or cast any enchantments upon him. Then +he worked his way out, staying himself with his hand along the +wall, like a sick person. + +Presently this thought occurred to me: how heedless I have been! +When the boy gets calm, he will wonder why a great magician like me +should have begged a boy like him to help me get out of this place; +he will put this and that together, and will see that I am a humbug. + +I worried over that heedless blunder for an hour, and called myself +a great many hard names, meantime. But finally it occurred to me +all of a sudden that these animals didn't reason; that _they_ never +put this and that together; that all their talk showed that they +didn't know a discrepancy when they saw it. I was at rest, then. + +But as soon as one is at rest, in this world, off he goes on +something else to worry about. It occurred to me that I had made +another blunder: I had sent the boy off to alarm his betters with +a threat--I intending to invent a calamity at my leisure; now +the people who are the readiest and eagerest and willingest to +swallow miracles are the very ones who are hungriest to see you +perform them; suppose I should be called on for a sample? Suppose +I should be asked to name my calamity? Yes, I had made a blunder; +I ought to have invented my calamity first. "What shall I do? +what can I say, to gain a little time?" I was in trouble again; +in the deepest kind of trouble... + +"There's a footstep!--they're coming. If I had only just a moment +to think.... Good, I've got it. I'm all right." + +You see, it was the eclipse. It came into my mind in the nick +of time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one of those people, played +an eclipse as a saving trump once, on some savages, and I saw my +chance. I could play it myself, now, and it wouldn't be any +plagiarism, either, because I should get it in nearly a thousand +years ahead of those parties. + +Clarence came in, subdued, distressed, and said: + +"I hasted the message to our liege the king, and straightway he +had me to his presence. He was frighted even to the marrow, +and was minded to give order for your instant enlargement, and +that you be clothed in fine raiment and lodged as befitted one so +great; but then came Merlin and spoiled all; for he persuaded +the king that you are mad, and know not whereof you speak; and +said your threat is but foolishness and idle vaporing. They +disputed long, but in the end, Merlin, scoffing, said, 'Wherefore +hath he not _named_ his brave calamity? Verily it is because he +cannot.' This thrust did in a most sudden sort close the king's +mouth, and he could offer naught to turn the argument; and so, +reluctant, and full loth to do you the discourtesy, he yet prayeth +you to consider his perplexed case, as noting how the matter stands, +and name the calamity--if so be you have determined the nature +of it and the time of its coming. Oh, prithee delay not; to delay +at such a time were to double and treble the perils that already +compass thee about. Oh, be thou wise--name the calamity!" + +I allowed silence to accumulate while I got my impressiveness +together, and then said: + +"How long have I been shut up in this hole?" + +"Ye were shut up when yesterday was well spent. It is 9 of +the morning now." + +"No! Then I have slept well, sure enough. Nine in the morning +now! And yet it is the very complexion of midnight, to a shade. +This is the 20th, then?" + +"The 20th--yes." + +"And I am to be burned alive to-morrow." The boy shuddered. + +"At what hour?" + +"At high noon." + +"Now then, I will tell you what to say." I paused, and stood over +that cowering lad a whole minute in awful silence; then, in a voice +deep, measured, charged with doom, I began, and rose by dramatically +graded stages to my colossal climax, which I delivered in as sublime +and noble a way as ever I did such a thing in my life: "Go back +and tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole world +in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he +shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack +of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish +and die, to the last man!" + +I had to carry the boy out myself, he sunk into such a collapse. +I handed him over to the soldiers, and went back. + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE ECLIPSE + +In the stillness and the darkness, realization soon began to +supplement knowledge. The mere knowledge of a fact is pale; but +when you come to _realize_ your fact, it takes on color. It is +all the difference between hearing of a man being stabbed to +the heart, and seeing it done. In the stillness and the darkness, +the knowledge that I was in deadly danger took to itself deeper +and deeper meaning all the time; a something which was realization +crept inch by inch through my veins and turned me cold. + +But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, +as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there +comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness +along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for +himself, if anything can be done. When my rally came, it came with +a bound. I said to myself that my eclipse would be sure to save me, +and make me the greatest man in the kingdom besides; and straightway +my mercury went up to the top of the tube, and my solicitudes +all vanished. I was as happy a man as there was in the world. +I was even impatient for to-morrow to come, I so wanted to gather +in that great triumph and be the center of all the nation's wonder +and reverence. Besides, in a business way it would be the making +of me; I knew that. + +Meantime there was one thing which had got pushed into the background +of my mind. That was the half-conviction that when the nature +of my proposed calamity should be reported to those superstitious +people, it would have such an effect that they would want to +compromise. So, by and by when I heard footsteps coming, that +thought was recalled to me, and I said to myself, "As sure as +anything, it's the compromise. Well, if it is good, all right, +I will accept; but if it isn't, I mean to stand my ground and play +my hand for all it is worth." + +The door opened, and some men-at-arms appeared. The leader said: + +"The stake is ready. Come!" + +The stake! The strength went out of me, and I almost fell down. +It is hard to get one's breath at such a time, such lumps come into +one's throat, and such gaspings; but as soon as I could speak, I said: + +"But this is a mistake--the execution is to-morrow." + +"Order changed; been set forward a day. Haste thee!" + +I was lost. There was no help for me. I was dazed, stupefied; +I had no command over myself, I only wandered purposely about, +like one out of his mind; so the soldiers took hold of me, and +pulled me along with them, out of the cell and along the maze of +underground corridors, and finally into the fierce glare of daylight +and the upper world. As we stepped into the vast enclosed court +of the castle I got a shock; for the first thing I saw was the stake, +standing in the center, and near it the piled fagots and a monk. +On all four sides of the court the seated multitudes rose rank +above rank, forming sloping terraces that were rich with color. +The king and the queen sat in their thrones, the most conspicuous +figures there, of course. + +To note all this, occupied but a second. The next second Clarence +had slipped from some place of concealment and was pouring news +into my ear, his eyes beaming with triumph and gladness. He said: + +"Tis through _me_ the change was wrought! And main hard have I worked +to do it, too. But when I revealed to them the calamity in store, +and saw how mighty was the terror it did engender, then saw I also +that this was the time to strike! Wherefore I diligently pretended, +unto this and that and the other one, that your power against the sun +could not reach its full until the morrow; and so if any would save +the sun and the world, you must be slain to-day, while your +enchantments are but in the weaving and lack potency. Odsbodikins, +it was but a dull lie, a most indifferent invention, but you should +have seen them seize it and swallow it, in the frenzy of their +fright, as it were salvation sent from heaven; and all the while +was I laughing in my sleeve the one moment, to see them so cheaply +deceived, and glorifying God the next, that He was content to let +the meanest of His creatures be His instrument to the saving of +thy life. Ah how happy has the matter sped! You will not need +to do the sun a _real_ hurt--ah, forget not that, on your soul forget +it not! Only make a little darkness--only the littlest little +darkness, mind, and cease with that. It will be sufficient. They +will see that I spoke falsely,--being ignorant, as they will fancy +--and with the falling of the first shadow of that darkness you +shall see them go mad with fear; and they will set you free and +make you great! Go to thy triumph, now! But remember--ah, good +friend, I implore thee remember my supplication, and do the blessed +sun no hurt. For _my_ sake, thy true friend." + +I choked out some words through my grief and misery; as much as +to say I would spare the sun; for which the lad's eyes paid me back +with such deep and loving gratitude that I had not the heart +to tell him his good-hearted foolishness had ruined me and sent me +to my death. + +As the soldiers assisted me across the court the stillness was +so profound that if I had been blindfold I should have supposed +I was in a solitude instead of walled in by four thousand people. +There was not a movement perceptible in those masses of humanity; +they were as rigid as stone images, and as pale; and dread sat +upon every countenance. This hush continued while I was being +chained to the stake; it still continued while the fagots were +carefully and tediously piled about my ankles, my knees, my thighs, +my body. Then there was a pause, and a deeper hush, if possible, +and a man knelt down at my feet with a blazing torch; the multitude +strained forward, gazing, and parting slightly from their seats +without knowing it; the monk raised his hands above my head, and +his eyes toward the blue sky, and began some words in Latin; in +this attitude he droned on and on, a little while, and then stopped. +I waited two or three moments; then looked up; he was standing +there petrified. With a common impulse the multitude rose slowly +up and stared into the sky. I followed their eyes, as sure as guns, +there was my eclipse beginning! The life went boiling through +my veins; I was a new man! The rim of black spread slowly into +the sun's disk, my heart beat higher and higher, and still the +assemblage and the priest stared into the sky, motionless. I knew +that this gaze would be turned upon me, next. When it was, I was +ready. I was in one of the most grand attitudes I ever struck, +with my arm stretched up pointing to the sun. It was a noble +effect. You could _see_ the shudder sweep the mass like a wave. +Two shouts rang out, one close upon the heels of the other: + +"Apply the torch!" + +"I forbid it!" + +The one was from Merlin, the other from the king. Merlin started +from his place--to apply the torch himself, I judged. I said: + +"Stay where you are. If any man moves--even the king--before +I give him leave, I will blast him with thunder, I will consume +him with lightnings!" + +The multitude sank meekly into their seats, and I was just expecting +they would. Merlin hesitated a moment or two, and I was on pins +and needles during that little while. Then he sat down, and I took +a good breath; for I knew I was master of the situation now. +The king said: + +"Be merciful, fair sir, and essay no further in this perilous matter, +lest disaster follow. It was reported to us that your powers could +not attain unto their full strength until the morrow; but--" + +"Your Majesty thinks the report may have been a lie? It _was_ a lie." + +That made an immense effect; up went appealing hands everywhere, +and the king was assailed with a storm of supplications that +I might be bought off at any price, and the calamity stayed. +The king was eager to comply. He said: + +"Name any terms, reverend sir, even to the halving of my kingdom; +but banish this calamity, spare the sun!" + +My fortune was made. I would have taken him up in a minute, but +I couldn't stop an eclipse; the thing was out of the question. So +I asked time to consider. The king said: + +"How long--ah, how long, good sir? Be merciful; look, it groweth +darker, moment by moment. Prithee how long?" + +"Not long. Half an hour--maybe an hour." + +There were a thousand pathetic protests, but I couldn't shorten up +any, for I couldn't remember how long a total eclipse lasts. I was +in a puzzled condition, anyway, and wanted to think. Something +was wrong about that eclipse, and the fact was very unsettling. +If this wasn't the one I was after, how was I to tell whether this +was the sixth century, or nothing but a dream? Dear me, if I could +only prove it was the latter! Here was a glad new hope. If the boy +was right about the date, and this was surely the 20th, it _wasn't_ +the sixth century. I reached for the monk's sleeve, in considerable +excitement, and asked him what day of the month it was. + +Hang him, he said it was the _twenty-first_! It made me turn cold +to hear him. I begged him not to make any mistake about it; but +he was sure; he knew it was the 21st. So, that feather-headed +boy had botched things again! The time of the day was right +for the eclipse; I had seen that for myself, in the beginning, +by the dial that was near by. Yes, I was in King Arthur's court, +and I might as well make the most out of it I could. + +The darkness was steadily growing, the people becoming more and +more distressed. I now said: + +"I have reflected, Sir King. For a lesson, I will let this darkness +proceed, and spread night in the world; but whether I blot out +the sun for good, or restore it, shall rest with you. These are +the terms, to wit: You shall remain king over all your dominions, +and receive all the glories and honors that belong to the kingship; +but you shall appoint me your perpetual minister and executive, +and give me for my services one per cent of such actual increase +of revenue over and above its present amount as I may succeed +in creating for the state. If I can't live on that, I sha'n't ask +anybody to give me a lift. Is it satisfactory?" + +There was a prodigious roar of applause, and out of the midst +of it the king's voice rose, saying: + +"Away with his bonds, and set him free! and do him homage, high +and low, rich and poor, for he is become the king's right hand, +is clothed with power and authority, and his seat is upon the highest +step of the throne! Now sweep away this creeping night, and bring +the light and cheer again, that all the world may bless thee." + +But I said: + +"That a common man should be shamed before the world, is nothing; +but it were dishonor to the _king_ if any that saw his minister naked +should not also see him delivered from his shame. If I might ask +that my clothes be brought again--" + +"They are not meet," the king broke in. "Fetch raiment of another +sort; clothe him like a prince!" + +My idea worked. I wanted to keep things as they were till the +eclipse was total, otherwise they would be trying again to get +me to dismiss the darkness, and of course I couldn't do it. Sending +for the clothes gained some delay, but not enough. So I had to make +another excuse. I said it would be but natural if the king should +change his mind and repent to some extent of what he had done +under excitement; therefore I would let the darkness grow a while, +and if at the end of a reasonable time the king had kept his mind +the same, the darkness should be dismissed. Neither the king nor +anybody else was satisfied with that arrangement, but I had +to stick to my point. + +It grew darker and darker and blacker and blacker, while I struggled +with those awkward sixth-century clothes. It got to be pitch dark, +at last, and the multitude groaned with horror to feel the cold +uncanny night breezes fan through the place and see the stars +come out and twinkle in the sky. At last the eclipse was total, +and I was very glad of it, but everybody else was in misery; which +was quite natural. I said: + +"The king, by his silence, still stands to the terms." Then +I lifted up my hands--stood just so a moment--then I said, with +the most awful solemnity: "Let the enchantment dissolve and +pass harmless away!" + +There was no response, for a moment, in that deep darkness and +that graveyard hush. But when the silver rim of the sun pushed +itself out, a moment or two later, the assemblage broke loose with +a vast shout and came pouring down like a deluge to smother me +with blessings and gratitude; and Clarence was not the last of +the wash, to be sure. + + + +CHAPTER VII + +MERLIN'S TOWER + +Inasmuch as I was now the second personage in the Kingdom, as far +as political power and authority were concerned, much was made +of me. My raiment was of silks and velvets and cloth of gold, +and by consequence was very showy, also uncomfortable. But habit +would soon reconcile me to my clothes; I was aware of that. I was +given the choicest suite of apartments in the castle, after +the king's. They were aglow with loud-colored silken hangings, +but the stone floors had nothing but rushes on them for a carpet, +and they were misfit rushes at that, being not all of one breed. +As for conveniences, properly speaking, there weren't any. I mean +_little_ conveniences; it is the little conveniences that make +the real comfort of life. The big oaken chairs, graced with rude +carvings, were well enough, but that was the stopping place. +There was no soap, no matches, no looking-glass--except a metal +one, about as powerful as a pail of water. And not a chromo. +I had been used to chromos for years, and I saw now that without +my suspecting it a passion for art had got worked into the fabric +of my being, and was become a part of me. It made me homesick +to look around over this proud and gaudy but heartless barrenness +and remember that in our house in East Hartford, all unpretending +as it was, you couldn't go into a room but you would find an +insurance-chromo, or at least a three-color God-Bless-Our-Home +over the door; and in the parlor we had nine. But here, even in +my grand room of state, there wasn't anything in the nature of +a picture except a thing the size of a bedquilt, which was either +woven or knitted (it had darned places in it), and nothing in it +was the right color or the right shape; and as for proportions, +even Raphael himself couldn't have botched them more formidably, +after all his practice on those nightmares they call his "celebrated +Hampton Court cartoons." Raphael was a bird. We had several +of his chromos; one was his "Miraculous Draught of Fishes," where +he puts in a miracle of his own--puts three men into a canoe which +wouldn't have held a dog without upsetting. I always admired +to study R.'s art, it was so fresh and unconventional. + +There wasn't even a bell or a speaking-tube in the castle. I had +a great many servants, and those that were on duty lolled in the +anteroom; and when I wanted one of them I had to go and call for him. +There was no gas, there were no candles; a bronze dish half full +of boarding-house butter with a blazing rag floating in it was +the thing that produced what was regarded as light. A lot of +these hung along the walls and modified the dark, just toned it +down enough to make it dismal. If you went out at night, your +servants carried torches. There were no books, pens, paper or +ink, and no glass in the openings they believed to be windows. +It is a little thing--glass is--until it is absent, then it becomes +a big thing. But perhaps the worst of all was, that there wasn't +any sugar, coffee, tea, or tobacco. I saw that I was just another +Robinson Crusoe cast away on an uninhabited island, with no society +but some more or less tame animals, and if I wanted to make life +bearable I must do as he did--invent, contrive, create, reorganize +things; set brain and hand to work, and keep them busy. Well, +that was in my line. + +One thing troubled me along at first--the immense interest which +people took in me. Apparently the whole nation wanted a look +at me. It soon transpired that the eclipse had scared the British +world almost to death; that while it lasted the whole country, +from one end to the other, was in a pitiable state of panic, and +the churches, hermitages, and monkeries overflowed with praying +and weeping poor creatures who thought the end of the world was +come. Then had followed the news that the producer of this awful +event was a stranger, a mighty magician at Arthur's court; that he +could have blown out the sun like a candle, and was just going +to do it when his mercy was purchased, and he then dissolved +his enchantments, and was now recognized and honored as the man +who had by his unaided might saved the globe from destruction and +its peoples from extinction. Now if you consider that everybody +believed that, and not only believed it, but never even dreamed +of doubting it, you will easily understand that there was not +a person in all Britain that would not have walked fifty miles +to get a sight of me. Of course I was all the talk--all other +subjects were dropped; even the king became suddenly a person of +minor interest and notoriety. Within twenty-four hours the +delegations began to arrive, and from that time onward for a fortnight +they kept coming. The village was crowded, and all the countryside. +I had to go out a dozen times a day and show myself to these +reverent and awe-stricken multitudes. It came to be a great burden, +as to time and trouble, but of course it was at the same time +compensatingly agreeable to be so celebrated and such a center +of homage. It turned Brer Merlin green with envy and spite, which +was a great satisfaction to me. But there was one thing I couldn't +understand--nobody had asked for an autograph. I spoke to Clarence +about it. By George! I had to explain to him what it was. Then +he said nobody in the country could read or write but a few dozen +priests. Land! think of that. + +There was another thing that troubled me a little. Those multitudes +presently began to agitate for another miracle. That was natural. +To be able to carry back to their far homes the boast that they +had seen the man who could command the sun, riding in the heavens, +and be obeyed, would make them great in the eyes of their neighbors, +and envied by them all; but to be able to also say they had seen +him work a miracle themselves--why, people would come a distance +to see _them_. The pressure got to be pretty strong. There was +going to be an eclipse of the moon, and I knew the date and hour, +but it was too far away. Two years. I would have given a good +deal for license to hurry it up and use it now when there was +a big market for it. It seemed a great pity to have it wasted so, +and come lagging along at a time when a body wouldn't have any +use for it, as like as not. If it had been booked for only a month +away, I could have sold it short; but, as matters stood, I couldn't +seem to cipher out any way to make it do me any good, so I gave up +trying. Next, Clarence found that old Merlin was making himself +busy on the sly among those people. He was spreading a report that +I was a humbug, and that the reason I didn't accommodate the people +with a miracle was because I couldn't. I saw that I must do +something. I presently thought out a plan. + +By my authority as executive I threw Merlin into prison--the same +cell I had occupied myself. Then I gave public notice by herald +and trumpet that I should be busy with affairs of state for +a fortnight, but about the end of that time I would take a moment's +leisure and blow up Merlin's stone tower by fires from heaven; +in the meantime, whoso listened to evil reports about me, let him +beware. Furthermore, I would perform but this one miracle at +this time, and no more; if it failed to satisfy and any murmured, +I would turn the murmurers into horses, and make them useful. +Quiet ensued. + +I took Clarence into my confidence, to a certain degree, and we +went to work privately. I told him that this was a sort of miracle +that required a trifle of preparation, and that it would be sudden +death to ever talk about these preparations to anybody. That made +his mouth safe enough. Clandestinely we made a few bushels of +first-rate blasting powder, and I superintended my armorers while +they constructed a lightning-rod and some wires. This old stone +tower was very massive--and rather ruinous, too, for it was Roman, +and four hundred years old. Yes, and handsome, after a rude +fashion, and clothed with ivy from base to summit, as with a shirt +of scale mail. It stood on a lonely eminence, in good view from +the castle, and about half a mile away. + +Working by night, we stowed the powder in the tower--dug stones +out, on the inside, and buried the powder in the walls themselves, +which were fifteen feet thick at the base. We put in a peck +at a time, in a dozen places. We could have blown up the Tower +of London with these charges. When the thirteenth night was come +we put up our lightning-rod, bedded it in one of the batches of +powder, and ran wires from it to the other batches. Everybody +had shunned that locality from the day of my proclamation, but +on the morning of the fourteenth I thought best to warn the people, +through the heralds, to keep clear away--a quarter of a mile away. +Then added, by command, that at some time during the twenty-four +hours I would consummate the miracle, but would first give a brief +notice; by flags on the castle towers if in the daytime, by +torch-baskets in the same places if at night. + +Thunder-showers had been tolerably frequent of late, and I was +not much afraid of a failure; still, I shouldn't have cared for +a delay of a day or two; I should have explained that I was busy +with affairs of state yet, and the people must wait. + +Of course, we had a blazing sunny day--almost the first one without +a cloud for three weeks; things always happen so. I kept secluded, +and watched the weather. Clarence dropped in from time to time +and said the public excitement was growing and growing all the +time, and the whole country filling up with human masses as far +as one could see from the battlements. At last the wind sprang up +and a cloud appeared--in the right quarter, too, and just at +nightfall. For a little while I watched that distant cloud spread +and blacken, then I judged it was time for me to appear. I ordered +the torch-baskets to be lit, and Merlin liberated and sent to me. +A quarter of an hour later I ascended the parapet and there found +the king and the court assembled and gazing off in the darkness +toward Merlin's Tower. Already the darkness was so heavy that +one could not see far; these people and the old turrets, being +partly in deep shadow and partly in the red glow from the great +torch-baskets overhead, made a good deal of a picture. + +Merlin arrived in a gloomy mood. I said: + +"You wanted to burn me alive when I had not done you any harm, +and latterly you have been trying to injure my professional +reputation. Therefore I am going to call down fire and blow up +your tower, but it is only fair to give you a chance; now if you +think you can break my enchantments and ward off the fires, step +to the bat, it's your innings." + +"I can, fair sir, and I will. Doubt it not." + +He drew an imaginary circle on the stones of the roof, and burnt +a pinch of powder in it, which sent up a small cloud of aromatic +smoke, whereat everybody fell back and began to cross themselves +and get uncomfortable. Then he began to mutter and make passes +in the air with his hands. He worked himself up slowly and +gradually into a sort of frenzy, and got to thrashing around with +his arms like the sails of a windmill. By this time the storm had +about reached us; the gusts of wind were flaring the torches and +making the shadows swash about, the first heavy drops of rain +were falling, the world abroad was black as pitch, the lightning +began to wink fitfully. Of course, my rod would be loading itself +now. In fact, things were imminent. So I said: + +"You have had time enough. I have given you every advantage, +and not interfered. It is plain your magic is weak. It is only +fair that I begin now." + +I made about three passes in the air, and then there was an awful +crash and that old tower leaped into the sky in chunks, along +with a vast volcanic fountain of fire that turned night to noonday, +and showed a thousand acres of human beings groveling on the ground +in a general collapse of consternation. Well, it rained mortar and +masonry the rest of the week. This was the report; but probably +the facts would have modified it. + +It was an effective miracle. The great bothersome temporary +population vanished. There were a good many thousand tracks +in the mud the next morning, but they were all outward bound. +If I had advertised another miracle I couldn't have raised an +audience with a sheriff. + +Merlin's stock was flat. The king wanted to stop his wages; he +even wanted to banish him, but I interfered. I said he would be +useful to work the weather, and attend to small matters like that, +and I would give him a lift now and then when his poor little +parlor-magic soured on him. There wasn't a rag of his tower left, +but I had the government rebuild it for him, and advised him +to take boarders; but he was too high-toned for that. And as for +being grateful, he never even said thank you. He was a rather +hard lot, take him how you might; but then you couldn't fairly +expect a man to be sweet that had been set back so. + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE BOSS + +To be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing; but to have +the on-looking world consent to it is a finer. The tower episode +solidified my power, and made it impregnable. If any were perchance +disposed to be jealous and critical before that, they experienced +a change of heart, now. There was not any one in the kingdom +who would have considered it good judgment to meddle with my matters. + +I was fast getting adjusted to my situation and circumstances. +For a time, I used to wake up, mornings, and smile at my "dream," +and listen for the Colt's factory whistle; but that sort of thing +played itself out, gradually, and at last I was fully able to realize +that I was actually living in the sixth century, and in Arthur's +court, not a lunatic asylum. After that, I was just as much +at home in that century as I could have been in any other; and +as for preference, I wouldn't have traded it for the twentieth. +Look at the opportunities here for a man of knowledge, brains, +pluck, and enterprise to sail in and grow up with the country. +The grandest field that ever was; and all my own; not a competitor; +not a man who wasn't a baby to me in acquirements and capacities; +whereas, what would I amount to in the twentieth century? I should +be foreman of a factory, that is about all; and could drag a seine +down street any day and catch a hundred better men than myself. + +What a jump I had made! I couldn't keep from thinking about it, +and contemplating it, just as one does who has struck oil. There +was nothing back of me that could approach it, unless it might be +Joseph's case; and Joseph's only approached it, it didn't equal +it, quite. For it stands to reason that as Joseph's splendid +financial ingenuities advantaged nobody but the king, the general +public must have regarded him with a good deal of disfavor, whereas +I had done my entire public a kindness in sparing the sun, and was +popular by reason of it. + +I was no shadow of a king; I was the substance; the king himself +was the shadow. My power was colossal; and it was not a mere +name, as such things have generally been, it was the genuine +article. I stood here, at the very spring and source of the second +great period of the world's history; and could see the trickling +stream of that history gather and deepen and broaden, and roll +its mighty tides down the far centuries; and I could note the +upspringing of adventurers like myself in the shelter of its long +array of thrones: De Montforts, Gavestons, Mortimers, Villierses; +the war-making, campaign-directing wantons of France, and Charles +the Second's scepter-wielding drabs; but nowhere in the procession +was my full-sized fellow visible. I was a Unique; and glad to know +that that fact could not be dislodged or challenged for thirteen +centuries and a half, for sure. Yes, in power I was equal to +the king. At the same time there was another power that was +a trifle stronger than both of us put together. That was the Church. +I do not wish to disguise that fact. I couldn't, if I wanted to. +But never mind about that, now; it will show up, in its proper +place, later on. It didn't cause me any trouble in the beginning +--at least any of consequence. + +Well, it was a curious country, and full of interest. And the +people! They were the quaintest and simplest and trustingest race; +why, they were nothing but rabbits. It was pitiful for a person +born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble +and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church +and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor +king and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honor +the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! +Why, dear me, _any_ kind of royalty, howsoever modified, _any_ kind +of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you +are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably +never find it out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody +else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race +to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones +without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people +that have always figured as its aristocracies--a company of monarchs +and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and +obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions. + +The most of King Arthur's British nation were slaves, pure and +simple, and bore that name, and wore the iron collar on their +necks; and the rest were slaves in fact, but without the name; +they imagined themselves men and freemen, and called themselves +so. The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one +object, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble; +to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might +be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that +they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and +jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, +be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures +of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves +the gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got were +cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took +even this sort of attention as an honor. + +Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to observe +and examine. I had mine, the king and his people had theirs. +In both cases they flowed in ruts worn deep by time and habit, +and the man who should have proposed to divert them by reason +and argument would have had a long contract on his hands. For +instance, those people had inherited the idea that all men without +title and a long pedigree, whether they had great natural gifts +and acquirements or hadn't, were creatures of no more consideration +than so many animals, bugs, insects; whereas I had inherited the idea +that human daws who can consent to masquerade in the peacock-shams +of inherited dignities and unearned titles, are of no good but +to be laughed at. The way I was looked upon was odd, but it was +natural. You know how the keeper and the public regard the elephant +in the menagerie: well, that is the idea. They are full of +admiration of his vast bulk and his prodigious strength; they +speak with pride of the fact that he can do a hundred marvels +which are far and away beyond their own powers; and they speak +with the same pride of the fact that in his wrath he is able +to drive a thousand men before him. But does that make him one +of _them_? No; the raggedest tramp in the pit would smile at +the idea. He couldn't comprehend it; couldn't take it in; couldn't +in any remote way conceive of it. Well, to the king, the nobles, +and all the nation, down to the very slaves and tramps, I was +just that kind of an elephant, and nothing more. I was admired, +also feared; but it was as an animal is admired and feared. +The animal is not reverenced, neither was I; I was not even +respected. I had no pedigree, no inherited title; so in the king's +and nobles' eyes I was mere dirt; the people regarded me with +wonder and awe, but there was no reverence mixed with it; through +the force of inherited ideas they were not able to conceive of +anything being entitled to that except pedigree and lordship. +There you see the hand of that awful power, the Roman Catholic +Church. In two or three little centuries it had converted a nation +of men to a nation of worms. Before the day of the Church's +supremacy in the world, men were men, and held their heads up, +and had a man's pride and spirit and independence; and what +of greatness and position a person got, he got mainly by achievement, +not by birth. But then the Church came to the front, with an axe +to grind; and she was wise, subtle, and knew more than one way +to skin a cat--or a nation; she invented "divine right of kings," +and propped it all around, brick by brick, with the Beatitudes +--wrenching them from their good purpose to make them fortify +an evil one; she preached (to the commoner) humility, obedience +to superiors, the beauty of self-sacrifice; she preached (to the +commoner) meekness under insult; preached (still to the commoner, +always to the commoner) patience, meanness of spirit, non-resistance +under oppression; and she introduced heritable ranks and +aristocracies, and taught all the Christian populations of the earth +to bow down to them and worship them. Even down to my birth-century +that poison was still in the blood of Christendom, and the best +of English commoners was still content to see his inferiors +impudently continuing to hold a number of positions, such as +lordships and the throne, to which the grotesque laws of his country +did not allow him to aspire; in fact, he was not merely contented +with this strange condition of things, he was even able to persuade +himself that he was proud of it. It seems to show that there isn't +anything you can't stand, if you are only born and bred to it. +Of course that taint, that reverence for rank and title, had been +in our American blood, too--I know that; but when I left America +it had disappeared--at least to all intents and purposes. The +remnant of it was restricted to the dudes and dudesses. When +a disease has worked its way down to that level, it may fairly +be said to be out of the system. + +But to return to my anomalous position in King Arthur's kingdom. +Here I was, a giant among pigmies, a man among children, a master +intelligence among intellectual moles: by all rational measurement +the one and only actually great man in that whole British world; +and yet there and then, just as in the remote England of my +birth-time, the sheep-witted earl who could claim long descent +from a king's leman, acquired at second-hand from the slums of +London, was a better man than I was. Such a personage was fawned +upon in Arthur's realm and reverently looked up to by everybody, +even though his dispositions were as mean as his intelligence, +and his morals as base as his lineage. There were times when +_he_ could sit down in the king's presence, but I couldn't. I could +have got a title easily enough, and that would have raised me +a large step in everybody's eyes; even in the king's, the giver +of it. But I didn't ask for it; and I declined it when it was +offered. I couldn't have enjoyed such a thing with my notions; +and it wouldn't have been fair, anyway, because as far back as +I could go, our tribe had always been short of the bar sinister. +I couldn't have felt really and satisfactorily fine and proud +and set-up over any title except one that should come from the nation +itself, the only legitimate source; and such an one I hoped to win; +and in the course of years of honest and honorable endeavor, I did +win it and did wear it with a high and clean pride. This title +fell casually from the lips of a blacksmith, one day, in a village, +was caught up as a happy thought and tossed from mouth to mouth +with a laugh and an affirmative vote; in ten days it had swept +the kingdom, and was become as familiar as the king's name. I was +never known by any other designation afterward, whether in the +nation's talk or in grave debate upon matters of state at the +council-board of the sovereign. This title, translated into modern +speech, would be THE BOSS. Elected by the nation. That suited me. +And it was a pretty high title. There were very few THE'S, and +I was one of them. If you spoke of the duke, or the earl, or +the bishop, how could anybody tell which one you meant? But if +you spoke of The King or The Queen or The Boss, it was different. + +Well, I liked the king, and as king I respected him--respected +the office; at least respected it as much as I was capable of +respecting any unearned supremacy; but as MEN I looked down upon +him and his nobles--privately. And he and they liked me, and +respected my office; but as an animal, without birth or sham title, +they looked down upon me--and were not particularly private about it, +either. I didn't charge for my opinion about them, and they didn't +charge for their opinion about me: the account was square, the +books balanced, everybody was satisfied. + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE TOURNAMENT + +They were always having grand tournaments there at Camelot; and +very stirring and picturesque and ridiculous human bull-fights +they were, too, but just a little wearisome to the practical mind. +However, I was generally on hand--for two reasons: a man must +not hold himself aloof from the things which his friends and his +community have at heart if he would be liked--especially as +a statesman; and both as business man and statesman I wanted +to study the tournament and see if I couldn't invent an improvement +on it. That reminds me to remark, in passing, that the very first +official thing I did, in my administration--and it was on the very +first day of it, too--was to start a patent office; for I knew +that a country without a patent office and good patent laws was +just a crab, and couldn't travel any way but sideways or backways. + +Things ran along, a tournament nearly every week; and now and then +the boys used to want me to take a hand--I mean Sir Launcelot and +the rest--but I said I would by and by; no hurry yet, and too much +government machinery to oil up and set to rights and start a-going. + +We had one tournament which was continued from day to day during +more than a week, and as many as five hundred knights took part +in it, from first to last. They were weeks gathering. They came +on horseback from everywhere; from the very ends of the country, +and even from beyond the sea; and many brought ladies, and all +brought squires and troops of servants. It was a most gaudy and +gorgeous crowd, as to costumery, and very characteristic of the +country and the time, in the way of high animal spirits, innocent +indecencies of language, and happy-hearted indifference to morals. +It was fight or look on, all day and every day; and sing, gamble, +dance, carouse half the night every night. They had a most noble +good time. You never saw such people. Those banks of beautiful +ladies, shining in their barbaric splendors, would see a knight +sprawl from his horse in the lists with a lanceshaft the thickness +of your ankle clean through him and the blood spouting, and instead +of fainting they would clap their hands and crowd each other for a +better view; only sometimes one would dive into her handkerchief, +and look ostentatiously broken-hearted, and then you could lay +two to one that there was a scandal there somewhere and she was +afraid the public hadn't found it out. + +The noise at night would have been annoying to me ordinarily, but +I didn't mind it in the present circumstances, because it kept me +from hearing the quacks detaching legs and arms from the day's +cripples. They ruined an uncommon good old cross-cut saw for me, +and broke the saw-buck, too, but I let it pass. And as for my +axe--well, I made up my mind that the next time I lent an axe +to a surgeon I would pick my century. + +I not only watched this tournament from day to day, but detailed +an intelligent priest from my Department of Public Morals and +Agriculture, and ordered him to report it; for it was my purpose +by and by, when I should have gotten the people along far enough, +to start a newspaper. The first thing you want in a new country, +is a patent office; then work up your school system; and after that, +out with your paper. A newspaper has its faults, and plenty of them, +but no matter, it's hark from the tomb for a dead nation, and don't +you forget it. You can't resurrect a dead nation without it; there +isn't any way. So I wanted to sample things, and be finding out +what sort of reporter-material I might be able to rake together out +of the sixth century when I should come to need it. + +Well, the priest did very well, considering. He got in all +the details, and that is a good thing in a local item: you see, +he had kept books for the undertaker-department of his church +when he was younger, and there, you know, the money's in the details; +the more details, the more swag: bearers, mutes, candles, prayers +--everything counts; and if the bereaved don't buy prayers enough +you mark up your candles with a forked pencil, and your bill +shows up all right. And he had a good knack at getting in the +complimentary thing here and there about a knight that was likely +to advertise--no, I mean a knight that had influence; and he also +had a neat gift of exaggeration, for in his time he had kept door +for a pious hermit who lived in a sty and worked miracles. + +Of course this novice's report lacked whoop and crash and lurid +description, and therefore wanted the true ring; but its antique +wording was quaint and sweet and simple, and full of the fragrances +and flavors of the time, and these little merits made up in a measure +for its more important lacks. Here is an extract from it: + + Then Sir Brian de les Isles and Grummore Grummorsum, + knights of the castle, encountered with Sir Aglovale and + Sir Tor, and Sir Tor smote down Sir Grummore Grummorsum + to the earth. Then came Sir Carados of the dolorous + tower, and Sir Turquine, knights of the castle, and + there encountered with them Sir Percivale de Galis + and Sir Lamorak de Galis, that were two brethren, and + there encountered Sir Percivale with Sir Carados, and + either brake their spears unto their hands, and then + Sir Turquine with Sir Lamorak, and either of them smote + down other, horse and all, to the earth, and either + parties rescued other and horsed them again. And Sir + Arnold, and Sir Gauter, knights of the castle, + encountered with Sir Brandiles and Sir Kay, and these + four knights encountered mightily, and brake their + spears to their hands. Then came Sir Pertolope from + the castle, and there encountered with him Sir Lionel, + and there Sir Pertolope the green knight smote down Sir + Lionel, brother to Sir Launcelot. All this was marked + by noble heralds, who bare him best, and their names. + Then Sir Bleobaris brake his spear upon Sir Gareth, + but of that stroke Sir Bleobaris fell to the earth. + When Sir Galihodin saw that, he bad Sir Gareth keep him, + and Sir Gareth smote him to the earth. Then Sir Galihud + gat a spear to avenge his brother, and in the same wise + Sir Gareth served him, and Sir Dinadan and his brother + La Cote Male Taile, and Sir Sagramore le Disirous, and + Sir Dodinas le Savage; all these he bare down with one + spear. When King Aswisance of Ireland saw Sir Gareth + fare so he marvelled what he might be, that one time + seemed green, and another time, at his again coming, + he seemed blue. And thus at every course that he rode + to and fro he changed his color, so that there might + neither king nor knight have ready cognizance of him. + Then Sir Agwisance the King of Ireland encountered + with Sir Gareth, and there Sir Gareth smote him from + his horse, saddle and all. And then came King Carados + of Scotland, and Sir Gareth smote him down horse and + man. And in the same wise he served King Uriens of the + land of Gore. And then there came in Six Bagdemagus, + and Sir Gareth smote him down horse and man to the + earth. And Bagdemagus's son Meliganus brake a spear + upon Sir Gareth mightily and knightly. And then Sir + Galahault the noble prince cried on high, Knight with + the many colors, well hast thou justed; now make thee + ready that I may just with thee. Sir Gareth heard him, + and he gat a great spear, and so they encountered + together, and there the prince brake his spear; but Sir + Gareth smote him upon the left side of the helm, that + he reeled here and there, and he had fallen down had not + his men recovered him. Truly, said King Arthur, that + knight with the many colors is a good knight. Wherefore + the king called unto him Sir Launcelot, and prayed him + to encounter with that knight. Sir, said Launcelot, I + may as well find in my heart for to forbear him at + this time, for he hath had travail enough this day, and + when a good knight doth so well upon some day, it is + no good knight's part to let him of his worship, and, + namely, when he seeth a knight hath done so great + labour; for peradventure, said Sir Launcelot, his + quarrel is here this day, and peradventure he is best + beloved with this lady of all that be here, for I see + well he paineth himself and enforceth him to do great + deeds, and therefore, said Sir Launcelot, as for me, + this day he shall have the honour; though it lay in my + power to put him from it, I would not. + +There was an unpleasant little episode that day, which for reasons +of state I struck out of my priest's report. You will have noticed +that Garry was doing some great fighting in the engagement. When +I say Garry I mean Sir Gareth. Garry was my private pet name +for him; it suggests that I had a deep affection for him, and that +was the case. But it was a private pet name only, and never spoken +aloud to any one, much less to him; being a noble, he would not +have endured a familiarity like that from me. Well, to proceed: +I sat in the private box set apart for me as the king's minister. +While Sir Dinadan was waiting for his turn to enter the lists, +he came in there and sat down and began to talk; for he was always +making up to me, because I was a stranger and he liked to have +a fresh market for his jokes, the most of them having reached that +stage of wear where the teller has to do the laughing himself while +the other person looks sick. I had always responded to his efforts +as well as I could, and felt a very deep and real kindness for him, +too, for the reason that if by malice of fate he knew the one +particular anecdote which I had heard oftenest and had most hated +and most loathed all my life, he had at least spared it me. It was +one which I had heard attributed to every humorous person who +had ever stood on American soil, from Columbus down to Artemus Ward. +It was about a humorous lecturer who flooded an ignorant audience +with the killingest jokes for an hour and never got a laugh; and +then when he was leaving, some gray simpletons wrung him gratefully +by the hand and said it had been the funniest thing they had ever +heard, and "it was all they could do to keep from laughin' right +out in meetin'." That anecdote never saw the day that it was +worth the telling; and yet I had sat under the telling of it +hundreds and thousands and millions and billions of times, and +cried and cursed all the way through. Then who can hope to know +what my feelings were, to hear this armor-plated ass start in on +it again, in the murky twilight of tradition, before the dawn of +history, while even Lactantius might be referred to as "the late +Lactantius," and the Crusades wouldn't be born for five hundred +years yet? Just as he finished, the call-boy came; so, haw-hawing +like a demon, he went rattling and clanking out like a crate of +loose castings, and I knew nothing more. It was some minutes +before I came to, and then I opened my eyes just in time to see +Sir Gareth fetch him an awful welt, and I unconsciously out with +the prayer, "I hope to gracious he's killed!" But by ill-luck, +before I had got half through with the words, Sir Gareth crashed +into Sir Sagramor le Desirous and sent him thundering over his +horse's crupper, and Sir Sagramor caught my remark and thought +I meant it for _him_. + +Well, whenever one of those people got a thing into his head, +there was no getting it out again. I knew that, so I saved my +breath, and offered no explanations. As soon as Sir Sagramor +got well, he notified me that there was a little account to settle +between us, and he named a day three or four years in the future; +place of settlement, the lists where the offense had been given. +I said I would be ready when he got back. You see, he was going +for the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grail +now and then. It was a several years' cruise. They always put in +the long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious way, +though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, +and I don't think any of them actually expected to find it, or +would have known what to do with it if he _had_ run across it. +You see, it was just the Northwest Passage of that day, as you may +say; that was all. Every year expeditions went out holy grailing, +and next year relief expeditions went out to hunt for _them_. There +was worlds of reputation in it, but no money. Why, they actually +wanted _me_ to put in! Well, I should smile. + + + +CHAPTER X + +BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION + +The Round Table soon heard of the challenge, and of course it was +a good deal discussed, for such things interested the boys. +The king thought I ought now to set forth in quest of adventures, +so that I might gain renown and be the more worthy to meet +Sir Sagramor when the several years should have rolled away. +I excused myself for the present; I said it would take me three +or four years yet to get things well fixed up and going smoothly; +then I should be ready; all the chances were that at the end of +that time Sir Sagramor would still be out grailing, so no valuable +time would be lost by the postponement; I should then have been +in office six or seven years, and I believed my system and machinery +would be so well developed that I could take a holiday without +its working any harm. + +I was pretty well satisfied with what I had already accomplished. +In various quiet nooks and corners I had the beginnings of all +sorts of industries under way--nuclei of future vast factories, +the iron and steel missionaries of my future civilization. In these +were gathered together the brightest young minds I could find, +and I kept agents out raking the country for more, all the time. +I was training a crowd of ignorant folk into experts--experts +in every sort of handiwork and scientific calling. These nurseries +of mine went smoothly and privately along undisturbed in their +obscure country retreats, for nobody was allowed to come into their +precincts without a special permit--for I was afraid of the Church. + +I had started a teacher-factory and a lot of Sunday-schools the +first thing; as a result, I now had an admirable system of graded +schools in full blast in those places, and also a complete variety +of Protestant congregations all in a prosperous and growing +condition. Everybody could be any kind of a Christian he wanted +to; there was perfect freedom in that matter. But I confined public +religious teaching to the churches and the Sunday-schools, permitting +nothing of it in my other educational buildings. I could have +given my own sect the preference and made everybody a Presbyterian +without any trouble, but that would have been to affront a law +of human nature: spiritual wants and instincts are as various in +the human family as are physical appetites, complexions, and +features, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he is +equipped with the religious garment whose color and shape and +size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, +angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it; and, +besides, I was afraid of a united Church; it makes a mighty power, +the mightiest conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into +selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to +human liberty and paralysis to human thought. + +All mines were royal property, and there were a good many of them. +They had formerly been worked as savages always work mines--holes +grubbed in the earth and the mineral brought up in sacks of hide by +hand, at the rate of a ton a day; but I had begun to put the mining +on a scientific basis as early as I could. + +Yes, I had made pretty handsome progress when Sir Sagramor's +challenge struck me. + +Four years rolled by--and then! Well, you would never imagine +it in the world. Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in +safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect +government. An earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect +earthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, the +despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease +of life perpetual. But as a perishable perfect man must die, and +leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an +earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is +the worst form that is possible. + +My works showed what a despot could do with the resources of +a kingdom at his command. Unsuspected by this dark land, I had +the civilization of the nineteenth century booming under its very +nose! It was fenced away from the public view, but there it was, +a gigantic and unassailable fact--and to be heard from, yet, if +I lived and had luck. There it was, as sure a fact and as substantial +a fact as any serene volcano, standing innocent with its smokeless +summit in the blue sky and giving no sign of the rising hell in its +bowels. My schools and churches were children four years before; +they were grown-up now; my shops of that day were vast factories +now; where I had a dozen trained men then, I had a thousand now; +where I had one brilliant expert then, I had fifty now. I stood +with my hand on the cock, so to speak, ready to turn it on and +flood the midnight world with light at any moment. But I was not +going to do the thing in that sudden way. It was not my policy. +The people could not have stood it; and, moreover, I should have +had the Established Roman Catholic Church on my back in a minute. + +No, I had been going cautiously all the while. I had had confidential +agents trickling through the country some time, whose office was +to undermine knighthood by imperceptible degrees, and to gnaw +a little at this and that and the other superstition, and so prepare +the way gradually for a better order of things. I was turning on +my light one-candle-power at a time, and meant to continue to do so. + +I had scattered some branch schools secretly about the kingdom, +and they were doing very well. I meant to work this racket more +and more, as time wore on, if nothing occurred to frighten me. +One of my deepest secrets was my West Point--my military academy. +I kept that most jealously out of sight; and I did the same with my +naval academy which I had established at a remote seaport. Both +were prospering to my satisfaction. + +Clarence was twenty-two now, and was my head executive, my right +hand. He was a darling; he was equal to anything; there wasn't +anything he couldn't turn his hand to. Of late I had been training +him for journalism, for the time seemed about right for a start +in the newspaper line; nothing big, but just a small weekly for +experimental circulation in my civilization-nurseries. He took +to it like a duck; there was an editor concealed in him, sure. +Already he had doubled himself in one way; he talked sixth century +and wrote nineteenth. His journalistic style was climbing, +steadily; it was already up to the back settlement Alabama mark, +and couldn't be told from the editorial output of that region +either by matter or flavor. + +We had another large departure on hand, too. This was a telegraph +and a telephone; our first venture in this line. These wires were +for private service only, as yet, and must be kept private until +a riper day should come. We had a gang of men on the road, working +mainly by night. They were stringing ground wires; we were afraid +to put up poles, for they would attract too much inquiry. Ground +wires were good enough, in both instances, for my wires were +protected by an insulation of my own invention which was perfect. +My men had orders to strike across country, avoiding roads, and +establishing connection with any considerable towns whose lights +betrayed their presence, and leaving experts in charge. Nobody +could tell you how to find any place in the kingdom, for nobody +ever went intentionally to any place, but only struck it by +accident in his wanderings, and then generally left it without +thinking to inquire what its name was. At one time and another +we had sent out topographical expeditions to survey and map the +kingdom, but the priests had always interfered and raised trouble. +So we had given the thing up, for the present; it would be poor +wisdom to antagonize the Church. + +As for the general condition of the country, it was as it had been +when I arrived in it, to all intents and purposes. I had made +changes, but they were necessarily slight, and they were not +noticeable. Thus far, I had not even meddled with taxation, +outside of the taxes which provided the royal revenues. I had +systematized those, and put the service on an effective and +righteous basis. As a result, these revenues were already quadrupled, +and yet the burden was so much more equably distributed than +before, that all the kingdom felt a sense of relief, and the praises +of my administration were hearty and general. + +Personally, I struck an interruption, now, but I did not mind it, +it could not have happened at a better time. Earlier it could +have annoyed me, but now everything was in good hands and swimming +right along. The king had reminded me several times, of late, that +the postponement I had asked for, four years before, had about +run out now. It was a hint that I ought to be starting out to seek +adventures and get up a reputation of a size to make me worthy +of the honor of breaking a lance with Sir Sagramor, who was still +out grailing, but was being hunted for by various relief expeditions, +and might be found any year, now. So you see I was expecting +this interruption; it did not take me by surprise. + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE YANKEE IN SEARCH OF ADVENTURES + +There never was such a country for wandering liars; and they were +of both sexes. Hardly a month went by without one of these tramps +arriving; and generally loaded with a tale about some princess or +other wanting help to get her out of some far-away castle where +she was held in captivity by a lawless scoundrel, usually a giant. +Now you would think that the first thing the king would do after +listening to such a novelette from an entire stranger, would be +to ask for credentials--yes, and a pointer or two as to locality +of castle, best route to it, and so on. But nobody ever thought +of so simple and common-sense a thing at that. No, everybody +swallowed these people's lies whole, and never asked a question +of any sort or about anything. Well, one day when I was not +around, one of these people came along--it was a she one, this +time--and told a tale of the usual pattern. Her mistress was +a captive in a vast and gloomy castle, along with forty-four other +young and beautiful girls, pretty much all of them princesses; +they had been languishing in that cruel captivity for twenty-six +years; the masters of the castle were three stupendous brothers, +each with four arms and one eye--the eye in the center of the +forehead, and as big as a fruit. Sort of fruit not mentioned; +their usual slovenliness in statistics. + +Would you believe it? The king and the whole Round Table were +in raptures over this preposterous opportunity for adventure. +Every knight of the Table jumped for the chance, and begged for it; +but to their vexation and chagrin the king conferred it upon me, +who had not asked for it at all. + +By an effort, I contained my joy when Clarence brought me the news. +But he--he could not contain his. His mouth gushed delight and +gratitude in a steady discharge--delight in my good fortune, +gratitude to the king for this splendid mark of his favor for me. +He could keep neither his legs nor his body still, but pirouetted +about the place in an airy ecstasy of happiness. + +On my side, I could have cursed the kindness that conferred upon +me this benefaction, but I kept my vexation under the surface +for policy's sake, and did what I could to let on to be glad. +Indeed, I _said_ I was glad. And in a way it was true; I was as +glad as a person is when he is scalped. + +Well, one must make the best of things, and not waste time with +useless fretting, but get down to business and see what can be +done. In all lies there is wheat among the chaff; I must get at +the wheat in this case: so I sent for the girl and she came. She +was a comely enough creature, and soft and modest, but, if signs +went for anything, she didn't know as much as a lady's watch. I said: + +"My dear, have you been questioned as to particulars?" + +She said she hadn't. + +"Well, I didn't expect you had, but I thought I would ask, to make +sure; it's the way I've been raised. Now you mustn't take it +unkindly if I remind you that as we don't know you, we must go +a little slow. You may be all right, of course, and we'll hope +that you are; but to take it for granted isn't business. _You_ +understand that. I'm obliged to ask you a few questions; just +answer up fair and square, and don't be afraid. Where do you +live, when you are at home?" + +"In the land of Moder, fair sir." + +"Land of Moder. I don't remember hearing of it before. +Parents living?" + +"As to that, I know not if they be yet on live, sith it is many +years that I have lain shut up in the castle." + +"Your name, please?" + +"I hight the Demoiselle Alisande la Carteloise, an it please you." + +"Do you know anybody here who can identify you?" + +"That were not likely, fair lord, I being come hither now for +the first time." + +"Have you brought any letters--any documents--any proofs that +you are trustworthy and truthful?" + +"Of a surety, no; and wherefore should I? Have I not a tongue, +and cannot I say all that myself?" + +"But _your_ saying it, you know, and somebody else's saying it, +is different." + +"Different? How might that be? I fear me I do not understand." + +"Don't _understand_? Land of--why, you see--you see--why, great Scott, +can't you understand a little thing like that? Can't you understand +the difference between your--_why_ do you look so innocent and idiotic!" + +"I? In truth I know not, but an it were the will of God." + +"Yes, yes, I reckon that's about the size of it. Don't mind my +seeming excited; I'm not. Let us change the subject. Now as +to this castle, with forty-five princesses in it, and three ogres +at the head of it, tell me--where is this harem?" + +"Harem?" + +"The _castle_, you understand; where is the castle?" + +"Oh, as to that, it is great, and strong, and well beseen, and +lieth in a far country. Yes, it is many leagues." + +"_How_ many?" + +"Ah, fair sir, it were woundily hard to tell, they are so many, +and do so lap the one upon the other, and being made all in the +same image and tincted with the same color, one may not know +the one league from its fellow, nor how to count them except +they be taken apart, and ye wit well it were God's work to do +that, being not within man's capacity; for ye will note--" + +"Hold on, hold on, never mind about the distance; _whereabouts_ +does the castle lie? What's the direction from here?" + +"Ah, please you sir, it hath no direction from here; by reason +that the road lieth not straight, but turneth evermore; wherefore +the direction of its place abideth not, but is some time under +the one sky and anon under another, whereso if ye be minded that +it is in the east, and wend thitherward, ye shall observe that +the way of the road doth yet again turn upon itself by the space +of half a circle, and this marvel happing again and yet again and +still again, it will grieve you that you had thought by vanities +of the mind to thwart and bring to naught the will of Him that +giveth not a castle a direction from a place except it pleaseth +Him, and if it please Him not, will the rather that even all castles +and all directions thereunto vanish out of the earth, leaving the +places wherein they tarried desolate and vacant, so warning His +creatures that where He will He will, and where He will not He--" + +"Oh, that's all right, that's all right, give us a rest; never mind +about the direction, _hang_ the direction--I beg pardon, I beg +a thousand pardons, I am not well to-day; pay no attention when +I soliloquize, it is an old habit, an old, bad habit, and hard +to get rid of when one's digestion is all disordered with eating +food that was raised forever and ever before he was born; good +land! a man can't keep his functions regular on spring chickens +thirteen hundred years old. But come--never mind about that; +let's--have you got such a thing as a map of that region about +you? Now a good map--" + +"Is it peradventure that manner of thing which of late the unbelievers +have brought from over the great seas, which, being boiled in oil, +and an onion and salt added thereto, doth--" + +"What, a map? What are you talking about? Don't you know what +a map is? There, there, never mind, don't explain, I hate +explanations; they fog a thing up so that you can't tell anything +about it. Run along, dear; good-day; show her the way, Clarence." + +Oh, well, it was reasonably plain, now, why these donkeys didn't +prospect these liars for details. It may be that this girl had +a fact in her somewhere, but I don't believe you could have sluiced +it out with a hydraulic; nor got it with the earlier forms of +blasting, even; it was a case for dynamite. Why, she was a perfect +ass; and yet the king and his knights had listened to her as if +she had been a leaf out of the gospel. It kind of sizes up the +whole party. And think of the simple ways of this court: this +wandering wench hadn't any more trouble to get access to the king +in his palace than she would have had to get into the poorhouse +in my day and country. In fact, he was glad to see her, glad +to hear her tale; with that adventure of hers to offer, she was +as welcome as a corpse is to a coroner. + +Just as I was ending-up these reflections, Clarence came back. +I remarked upon the barren result of my efforts with the girl; +hadn't got hold of a single point that could help me to find +the castle. The youth looked a little surprised, or puzzled, +or something, and intimated that he had been wondering to himself +what I had wanted to ask the girl all those questions for. + +"Why, great guns," I said, "don't I want to find the castle? And +how else would I go about it?" + +"La, sweet your worship, one may lightly answer that, I ween. +She will go with thee. They always do. She will ride with thee." + +"Ride with me? Nonsense!" + +"But of a truth she will. She will ride with thee. Thou shalt see." + +"What? She browse around the hills and scour the woods with me +--alone--and I as good as engaged to be married? Why, it's scandalous. +Think how it would look." + +My, the dear face that rose before me! The boy was eager to know +all about this tender matter. I swore him to secrecy and then +whispered her name--"Puss Flanagan." He looked disappointed, +and said he didn't remember the countess. How natural it was for +the little courtier to give her a rank. He asked me where she lived. + +"In East Har--" I came to myself and stopped, a little confused; +then I said, "Never mind, now; I'll tell you some time." + +And might he see her? Would I let him see her some day? + +It was but a little thing to promise--thirteen hundred years +or so--and he so eager; so I said Yes. But I sighed; I couldn't +help it. And yet there was no sense in sighing, for she wasn't +born yet. But that is the way we are made: we don't reason, +where we feel; we just feel. + +My expedition was all the talk that day and that night, and the +boys were very good to me, and made much of me, and seemed to have +forgotten their vexation and disappointment, and come to be as +anxious for me to hive those ogres and set those ripe old virgins +loose as if it were themselves that had the contract. Well, they +_were_ good children--but just children, that is all. And they +gave me no end of points about how to scout for giants, and how +to scoop them in; and they told me all sorts of charms against +enchantments, and gave me salves and other rubbish to put on my +wounds. But it never occurred to one of them to reflect that if +I was such a wonderful necromancer as I was pretending to be, +I ought not to need salves or instructions, or charms against +enchantments, and, least of all, arms and armor, on a foray of any +kind--even against fire-spouting dragons, and devils hot from +perdition, let alone such poor adversaries as these I was after, +these commonplace ogres of the back settlements. + +I was to have an early breakfast, and start at dawn, for that was +the usual way; but I had the demon's own time with my armor, +and this delayed me a little. It is troublesome to get into, and +there is so much detail. First you wrap a layer or two of blanket +around your body, for a sort of cushion and to keep off the cold +iron; then you put on your sleeves and shirt of chain mail--these +are made of small steel links woven together, and they form a fabric +so flexible that if you toss your shirt onto the floor, it slumps +into a pile like a peck of wet fish-net; it is very heavy and +is nearly the uncomfortablest material in the world for a night +shirt, yet plenty used it for that--tax collectors, and reformers, +and one-horse kings with a defective title, and those sorts of +people; then you put on your shoes--flat-boats roofed over with +interleaving bands of steel--and screw your clumsy spurs into +the heels. Next you buckle your greaves on your legs, and your +cuisses on your thighs; then come your backplate and your breastplate, +and you begin to feel crowded; then you hitch onto the breastplate +the half-petticoat of broad overlapping bands of steel which hangs +down in front but is scolloped out behind so you can sit down, +and isn't any real improvement on an inverted coal scuttle, either +for looks or for wear, or to wipe your hands on; next you belt +on your sword; then you put your stove-pipe joints onto your arms, +your iron gauntlets onto your hands, your iron rat-trap onto your +head, with a rag of steel web hitched onto it to hang over the back +of your neck--and there you are, snug as a candle in a candle-mould. +This is no time to dance. Well, a man that is packed away like +that is a nut that isn't worth the cracking, there is so little of +the meat, when you get down to it, by comparison with the shell. + +The boys helped me, or I never could have got in. Just as we +finished, Sir Bedivere happened in, and I saw that as like as not +I hadn't chosen the most convenient outfit for a long trip. How +stately he looked; and tall and broad and grand. He had on his +head a conical steel casque that only came down to his ears, and +for visor had only a narrow steel bar that extended down to his +upper lip and protected his nose; and all the rest of him, from +neck to heel, was flexible chain mail, trousers and all. But +pretty much all of him was hidden under his outside garment, which +of course was of chain mail, as I said, and hung straight from his +shoulders to his ankles; and from his middle to the bottom, both +before and behind, was divided, so that he could ride and let the +skirts hang down on each side. He was going grailing, and it was +just the outfit for it, too. I would have given a good deal for +that ulster, but it was too late now to be fooling around. The sun +was just up, the king and the court were all on hand to see me off +and wish me luck; so it wouldn't be etiquette for me to tarry. +You don't get on your horse yourself; no, if you tried it you +would get disappointed. They carry you out, just as they carry +a sun-struck man to the drug store, and put you on, and help get +you to rights, and fix your feet in the stirrups; and all the while +you do feel so strange and stuffy and like somebody else--like +somebody that has been married on a sudden, or struck by lightning, +or something like that, and hasn't quite fetched around yet, and +is sort of numb, and can't just get his bearings. Then they +stood up the mast they called a spear, in its socket by my left +foot, and I gripped it with my hand; lastly they hung my shield +around my neck, and I was all complete and ready to up anchor +and get to sea. Everybody was as good to me as they could be, +and a maid of honor gave me the stirrup-cup her own self. There was +nothing more to do now, but for that damsel to get up behind me on +a pillion, which she did, and put an arm or so around me to hold on. + +And so we started, and everybody gave us a goodbye and waved their +handkerchiefs or helmets. And everybody we met, going down the hill +and through the village was respectful to us, except some shabby +little boys on the outskirts. They said: + +"Oh, what a guy!" And hove clods at us. + +In my experience boys are the same in all ages. They don't respect +anything, they don't care for anything or anybody. They say +"Go up, baldhead" to the prophet going his unoffending way in +the gray of antiquity; they sass me in the holy gloom of the +Middle Ages; and I had seen them act the same way in Buchanan's +administration; I remember, because I was there and helped. The +prophet had his bears and settled with his boys; and I wanted +to get down and settle with mine, but it wouldn't answer, because +I couldn't have got up again. I hate a country without a derrick. + + + +CHAPTER XII + +SLOW TORTURE + +Straight off, we were in the country. It was most lovely and +pleasant in those sylvan solitudes in the early cool morning +in the first freshness of autumn. From hilltops we saw fair +green valleys lying spread out below, with streams winding through +them, and island groves of trees here and there, and huge lonely +oaks scattered about and casting black blots of shade; and beyond +the valleys we saw the ranges of hills, blue with haze, stretching +away in billowy perspective to the horizon, with at wide intervals +a dim fleck of white or gray on a wave-summit, which we knew was +a castle. We crossed broad natural lawns sparkling with dew, +and we moved like spirits, the cushioned turf giving out no sound +of footfall; we dreamed along through glades in a mist of green +light that got its tint from the sun-drenched roof of leaves +overhead, and by our feet the clearest and coldest of runlets +went frisking and gossiping over its reefs and making a sort of +whispering music, comfortable to hear; and at times we left the +world behind and entered into the solemn great deeps and rich +gloom of the forest, where furtive wild things whisked and scurried +by and were gone before you could even get your eye on the place +where the noise was; and where only the earliest birds were turning +out and getting to business with a song here and a quarrel yonder +and a mysterious far-off hammering and drumming for worms on +a tree trunk away somewhere in the impenetrable remotenesses of +the woods. And by and by out we would swing again into the glare. + +About the third or fourth or fifth time that we swung out into +the glare--it was along there somewhere, a couple of hours or so +after sun-up--it wasn't as pleasant as it had been. It was +beginning to get hot. This was quite noticeable. We had a very +long pull, after that, without any shade. Now it is curious how +progressively little frets grow and multiply after they once get +a start. Things which I didn't mind at all, at first, I began +to mind now--and more and more, too, all the time. The first +ten or fifteen times I wanted my handkerchief I didn't seem to care; +I got along, and said never mind, it isn't any matter, and dropped +it out of my mind. But now it was different; I wanted it all +the time; it was nag, nag, nag, right along, and no rest; I couldn't +get it out of my mind; and so at last I lost my temper and said +hang a man that would make a suit of armor without any pockets +in it. You see I had my handkerchief in my helmet; and some other +things; but it was that kind of a helmet that you can't take off +by yourself. That hadn't occurred to me when I put it there; +and in fact I didn't know it. I supposed it would be particularly +convenient there. And so now, the thought of its being there, +so handy and close by, and yet not get-at-able, made it all the +worse and the harder to bear. Yes, the thing that you can't get +is the thing that you want, mainly; every one has noticed that. +Well, it took my mind off from everything else; took it clear off, +and centered it in my helmet; and mile after mile, there it stayed, +imagining the handkerchief, picturing the handkerchief; and it +was bitter and aggravating to have the salt sweat keep trickling +down into my eyes, and I couldn't get at it. It seems like a little +thing, on paper, but it was not a little thing at all; it was +the most real kind of misery. I would not say it if it was not so. +I made up my mind that I would carry along a reticule next time, +let it look how it might, and people say what they would. Of course +these iron dudes of the Round Table would think it was scandalous, +and maybe raise Sheol about it, but as for me, give me comfort +first, and style afterwards. So we jogged along, and now and then +we struck a stretch of dust, and it would tumble up in clouds and +get into my nose and make me sneeze and cry; and of course I said +things I oughtn't to have said, I don't deny that. I am not +better than others. + +We couldn't seem to meet anybody in this lonesome Britain, not +even an ogre; and, in the mood I was in then, it was well for +the ogre; that is, an ogre with a handkerchief. Most knights +would have thought of nothing but getting his armor; but so I got +his bandanna, he could keep his hardware, for all of me. + +Meantime, it was getting hotter and hotter in there. You see, +the sun was beating down and warming up the iron more and more +all the time. Well, when you are hot, that way, every little thing +irritates you. When I trotted, I rattled like a crate of dishes, +and that annoyed me; and moreover I couldn't seem to stand that +shield slatting and banging, now about my breast, now around my +back; and if I dropped into a walk my joints creaked and screeched +in that wearisome way that a wheelbarrow does, and as we didn't +create any breeze at that gait, I was like to get fried in that +stove; and besides, the quieter you went the heavier the iron +settled down on you and the more and more tons you seemed to weigh +every minute. And you had to be always changing hands, and passing +your spear over to the other foot, it got so irksome for one hand +to hold it long at a time. + +Well, you know, when you perspire that way, in rivers, there comes +a time when you--when you--well, when you itch. You are inside, +your hands are outside; so there you are; nothing but iron between. +It is not a light thing, let it sound as it may. First it is one +place; then another; then some more; and it goes on spreading and +spreading, and at last the territory is all occupied, and nobody +can imagine what you feel like, nor how unpleasant it is. And +when it had got to the worst, and it seemed to me that I could +not stand anything more, a fly got in through the bars and settled +on my nose, and the bars were stuck and wouldn't work, and I +couldn't get the visor up; and I could only shake my head, which +was baking hot by this time, and the fly--well, you know how a fly +acts when he has got a certainty--he only minded the shaking enough +to change from nose to lip, and lip to ear, and buzz and buzz +all around in there, and keep on lighting and biting, in a way +that a person, already so distressed as I was, simply could not +stand. So I gave in, and got Alisande to unship the helmet and +relieve me of it. Then she emptied the conveniences out of it +and fetched it full of water, and I drank and then stood up, and +she poured the rest down inside the armor. One cannot think how +refreshing it was. She continued to fetch and pour until I was +well soaked and thoroughly comfortable. + +It was good to have a rest--and peace. But nothing is quite +perfect in this life, at any time. I had made a pipe a while back, +and also some pretty fair tobacco; not the real thing, but what +some of the Indians use: the inside bark of the willow, dried. +These comforts had been in the helmet, and now I had them again, +but no matches. + +Gradually, as the time wore along, one annoying fact was borne in +upon my understanding--that we were weather-bound. An armed novice +cannot mount his horse without help and plenty of it. Sandy was +not enough; not enough for me, anyway. We had to wait until +somebody should come along. Waiting, in silence, would have been +agreeable enough, for I was full of matter for reflection, and +wanted to give it a chance to work. I wanted to try and think out +how it was that rational or even half-rational men could ever +have learned to wear armor, considering its inconveniences; and +how they had managed to keep up such a fashion for generations +when it was plain that what I had suffered to-day they had had +to suffer all the days of their lives. I wanted to think that out; +and moreover I wanted to think out some way to reform this evil +and persuade the people to let the foolish fashion die out; but +thinking was out of the question in the circumstances. You couldn't +think, where Sandy was. + +She was a quite biddable creature and good-hearted, but she had +a flow of talk that was as steady as a mill, and made your head +sore like the drays and wagons in a city. If she had had a cork +she would have been a comfort. But you can't cork that kind; +they would die. Her clack was going all day, and you would think +something would surely happen to her works, by and by; but no, +they never got out of order; and she never had to slack up for +words. She could grind, and pump, and churn, and buzz by the week, +and never stop to oil up or blow out. And yet the result was just +nothing but wind. She never had any ideas, any more than a fog +has. She was a perfect blatherskite; I mean for jaw, jaw, jaw, +talk, talk, talk, jabber, jabber, jabber; but just as good as she +could be. I hadn't minded her mill that morning, on account of +having that hornets' nest of other troubles; but more than once +in the afternoon I had to say: + +"Take a rest, child; the way you are using up all the domestic air, +the kingdom will have to go to importing it by to-morrow, and it's +a low enough treasury without that." + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +FREEMEN + +Yes, it is strange how little a while at a time a person can be +contented. Only a little while back, when I was riding and +suffering, what a heaven this peace, this rest, this sweet serenity +in this secluded shady nook by this purling stream would have +seemed, where I could keep perfectly comfortable all the time +by pouring a dipper of water into my armor now and then; yet +already I was getting dissatisfied; partly because I could not +light my pipe--for, although I had long ago started a match factory, +I had forgotten to bring matches with me--and partly because we +had nothing to eat. Here was another illustration of the childlike +improvidence of this age and people. A man in armor always trusted +to chance for his food on a journey, and would have been scandalized +at the idea of hanging a basket of sandwiches on his spear. There +was probably not a knight of all the Round Table combination who +would not rather have died than been caught carrying such a thing +as that on his flagstaff. And yet there could not be anything more +sensible. It had been my intention to smuggle a couple of sandwiches +into my helmet, but I was interrupted in the act, and had to make +an excuse and lay them aside, and a dog got them. + +Night approached, and with it a storm. The darkness came on fast. +We must camp, of course. I found a good shelter for the demoiselle +under a rock, and went off and found another for myself. But +I was obliged to remain in my armor, because I could not get it off +by myself and yet could not allow Alisande to help, because it +would have seemed so like undressing before folk. It would not +have amounted to that in reality, because I had clothes on +underneath; but the prejudices of one's breeding are not gotten +rid of just at a jump, and I knew that when it came to stripping +off that bob-tailed iron petticoat I should be embarrassed. + +With the storm came a change of weather; and the stronger the wind +blew, and the wilder the rain lashed around, the colder and colder +it got. Pretty soon, various kinds of bugs and ants and worms +and things began to flock in out of the wet and crawl down inside +my armor to get warm; and while some of them behaved well enough, +and snuggled up amongst my clothes and got quiet, the majority +were of a restless, uncomfortable sort, and never stayed still, +but went on prowling and hunting for they did not know what; +especially the ants, which went tickling along in wearisome +procession from one end of me to the other by the hour, and are +a kind of creatures which I never wish to sleep with again. +It would be my advice to persons situated in this way, to not roll +or thrash around, because this excites the interest of all the +different sorts of animals and makes every last one of them want +to turn out and see what is going on, and this makes things worse +than they were before, and of course makes you objurgate harder, +too, if you can. Still, if one did not roll and thrash around +he would die; so perhaps it is as well to do one way as the other; +there is no real choice. Even after I was frozen solid I could +still distinguish that tickling, just as a corpse does when he is +taking electric treatment. I said I would never wear armor +after this trip. + +All those trying hours whilst I was frozen and yet was in a living +fire, as you may say, on account of that swarm of crawlers, that +same unanswerable question kept circling and circling through my +tired head: How do people stand this miserable armor? How have +they managed to stand it all these generations? How can they sleep +at night for dreading the tortures of next day? + +When the morning came at last, I was in a bad enough plight: seedy, +drowsy, fagged, from want of sleep; weary from thrashing around, +famished from long fasting; pining for a bath, and to get rid of +the animals; and crippled with rheumatism. And how had it fared +with the nobly born, the titled aristocrat, the Demoiselle Alisande +la Carteloise? Why, she was as fresh as a squirrel; she had slept +like the dead; and as for a bath, probably neither she nor any +other noble in the land had ever had one, and so she was not +missing it. Measured by modern standards, they were merely modified +savages, those people. This noble lady showed no impatience to get +to breakfast--and that smacks of the savage, too. On their journeys +those Britons were used to long fasts, and knew how to bear them; +and also how to freight up against probable fasts before starting, +after the style of the Indian and the anaconda. As like as not, +Sandy was loaded for a three-day stretch. + +We were off before sunrise, Sandy riding and I limping along +behind. In half an hour we came upon a group of ragged poor +creatures who had assembled to mend the thing which was regarded +as a road. They were as humble as animals to me; and when I +proposed to breakfast with them, they were so flattered, so +overwhelmed by this extraordinary condescension of mine that +at first they were not able to believe that I was in earnest. +My lady put up her scornful lip and withdrew to one side; she said +in their hearing that she would as soon think of eating with the +other cattle--a remark which embarrassed these poor devils merely +because it referred to them, and not because it insulted or offended +them, for it didn't. And yet they were not slaves, not chattels. +By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenths +of the free population of the country were of just their class and +degree: small "independent" farmers, artisans, etc.; which is +to say, they were the nation, the actual Nation; they were about +all of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respect-worthy, +and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation and +leave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, +nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with +the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value +in any rationally constructed world. And yet, by ingenious +contrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tail +of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and +banners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to be +the Nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long +that they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not only +that, but to believe it right and as it should be. The priests +had told their fathers and themselves that this ironical state +of things was ordained of God; and so, not reflecting upon how +unlike God it would be to amuse himself with sarcasms, and especially +such poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matter +there and become respectfully quiet. + +The talk of these meek people had a strange enough sound in +a formerly American ear. They were freemen, but they could not +leave the estates of their lord or their bishop without his +permission; they could not prepare their own bread, but must have +their corn ground and their bread baked at his mill and his bakery, +and pay roundly for the same; they could not sell a piece of their +own property without paying him a handsome percentage of the +proceeds, nor buy a piece of somebody else's without remembering +him in cash for the privilege; they had to harvest his grain for him +gratis, and be ready to come at a moment's notice, leaving their +own crop to destruction by the threatened storm; they had to let +him plant fruit trees in their fields, and then keep their indignation +to themselves when his heedless fruit-gatherers trampled the grain +around the trees; they had to smother their anger when his hunting +parties galloped through their fields laying waste the result of +their patient toil; they were not allowed to keep doves themselves, +and when the swarms from my lord's dovecote settled on their crops +they must not lose their temper and kill a bird, for awful would +the penalty be; when the harvest was at last gathered, then came +the procession of robbers to levy their blackmail upon it: first +the Church carted off its fat tenth, then the king's commissioner +took his twentieth, then my lord's people made a mighty inroad +upon the remainder; after which, the skinned freeman had liberty +to bestow the remnant in his barn, in case it was worth the trouble; +there were taxes, and taxes, and taxes, and more taxes, and taxes +again, and yet other taxes--upon this free and independent pauper, +but none upon his lord the baron or the bishop, none upon the +wasteful nobility or the all-devouring Church; if the baron would +sleep unvexed, the freeman must sit up all night after his day's +work and whip the ponds to keep the frogs quiet; if the freeman's +daughter--but no, that last infamy of monarchical government is +unprintable; and finally, if the freeman, grown desperate with his +tortures, found his life unendurable under such conditions, and +sacrificed it and fled to death for mercy and refuge, the gentle +Church condemned him to eternal fire, the gentle law buried him +at midnight at the cross-roads with a stake through his back, +and his master the baron or the bishop confiscated all his property +and turned his widow and his orphans out of doors. + +And here were these freemen assembled in the early morning to work +on their lord the bishop's road three days each--gratis; every +head of a family, and every son of a family, three days each, +gratis, and a day or so added for their servants. Why, it was +like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable +and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such +villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood--one: a settlement +of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for +each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of +that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and +shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. +There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it +and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other +in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had +lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand +persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are +all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, +so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, +compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, +and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with +death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the +coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so +diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could +hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror +--that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has +been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves. + +These poor ostensible freemen who were sharing their breakfast +and their talk with me, were as full of humble reverence for their +king and Church and nobility as their worst enemy could desire. +There was something pitifully ludicrous about it. I asked them +if they supposed a nation of people ever existed, who, with a free +vote in every man's hand, would elect that a single family and its +descendants should reign over it forever, whether gifted or boobies, +to the exclusion of all other families--including the voter's; and +would also elect that a certain hundred families should be raised +to dizzy summits of rank, and clothed on with offensive transmissible +glories and privileges to the exclusion of the rest of the nation's +families--_including his own_. + +They all looked unhit, and said they didn't know; that they had +never thought about it before, and it hadn't ever occurred to them +that a nation could be so situated that every man _could_ have +a say in the government. I said I had seen one--and that it would +last until it had an Established Church. Again they were all +unhit--at first. But presently one man looked up and asked me +to state that proposition again; and state it slowly, so it could +soak into his understanding. I did it; and after a little he had +the idea, and he brought his fist down and said _he_ didn't believe +a nation where every man had a vote would voluntarily get down +in the mud and dirt in any such way; and that to steal from a nation +its will and preference must be a crime and the first of all crimes. +I said to myself: + +"This one's a man. If I were backed by enough of his sort, I would +make a strike for the welfare of this country, and try to prove +myself its loyalest citizen by making a wholesome change in its +system of government." + +You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to +its institutions or its office-holders. The country is the real +thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing +to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are +extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, +become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body +from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout +for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags--that is a loyalty +of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented +by monarchy; let monarchy keep it. I was from Connecticut, whose +Constitution declares "that all political power is inherent in +the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority +and instituted for their benefit; and that they have _at all times_ +an undeniable and indefeasible right to _alter their form of +government_ in such a manner as they may think expedient." + +Under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that the +commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his +peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is +a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this +decay, does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, and +it is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not see +the matter as he does. + +And now here I was, in a country where a right to say how the +country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each +thousand of its population. For the nine hundred and ninety-four +to express dissatisfaction with the regnant system and propose +to change it, would have made the whole six shudder as one man, +it would have been so disloyal, so dishonorable, such putrid black +treason. So to speak, I was become a stockholder in a corporation +where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all +the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves +a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemed +to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was +a new deal. The thing that would have best suited the circus side +of my nature would have been to resign the Boss-ship and get up +an insurrection and turn it into a revolution; but I knew that the +Jack Cade or the Wat Tyler who tries such a thing without first +educating his materials up to revolution grade is almost absolutely +certain to get left. I had never been accustomed to getting left, +even if I do say it myself. Wherefore, the "deal" which had been +for some time working into shape in my mind was of a quite different +pattern from the Cade-Tyler sort. + +So I did not talk blood and insurrection to that man there who sat +munching black bread with that abused and mistaught herd of human +sheep, but took him aside and talked matter of another sort to him. +After I had finished, I got him to lend me a little ink from his +veins; and with this and a sliver I wrote on a piece of bark-- + + Put him in the Man-factory-- + +and gave it to him, and said: + +"Take it to the palace at Camelot and give it into the hands of +Amyas le Poulet, whom I call Clarence, and he will understand." + +"He is a priest, then," said the man, and some of the enthusiasm +went out of his face. + +"How--a priest? Didn't I tell you that no chattel of the Church, +no bond-slave of pope or bishop can enter my Man-Factory? Didn't +I tell you that _you_ couldn't enter unless your religion, whatever +it might be, was your own free property?" + +"Marry, it is so, and for that I was glad; wherefore it liked me not, +and bred in me a cold doubt, to hear of this priest being there." + +"But he isn't a priest, I tell you." + +The man looked far from satisfied. He said: + +"He is not a priest, and yet can read?" + +"He is not a priest and yet can read--yes, and write, too, for that +matter. I taught him myself." The man's face cleared. "And it is +the first thing that you yourself will be taught in that Factory--" + +"I? I would give blood out of my heart to know that art. Why, +I will be your slave, your--" + +"No you won't, you won't be anybody's slave. Take your family +and go along. Your lord the bishop will confiscate your small +property, but no matter. Clarence will fix you all right." + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +"DEFEND THEE, LORD" + +I paid three pennies for my breakfast, and a most extravagant +price it was, too, seeing that one could have breakfasted a dozen +persons for that money; but I was feeling good by this time, and +I had always been a kind of spendthrift anyway; and then these +people had wanted to give me the food for nothing, scant as +their provision was, and so it was a grateful pleasure to emphasize +my appreciation and sincere thankfulness with a good big financial +lift where the money would do so much more good than it would +in my helmet, where, these pennies being made of iron and not +stinted in weight, my half-dollar's worth was a good deal of a +burden to me. I spent money rather too freely in those days, +it is true; but one reason for it was that I hadn't got the +proportions of things entirely adjusted, even yet, after so long +a sojourn in Britain--hadn't got along to where I was able to +absolutely realize that a penny in Arthur's land and a couple of +dollars in Connecticut were about one and the same thing: just +twins, as you may say, in purchasing power. If my start from +Camelot could have been delayed a very few days I could have paid +these people in beautiful new coins from our own mint, and that +would have pleased me; and them, too, not less. I had adopted +the American values exclusively. In a week or two now, cents, +nickels, dimes, quarters, and half-dollars, and also a trifle of +gold, would be trickling in thin but steady streams all through +the commercial veins of the kingdom, and I looked to see this +new blood freshen up its life. + +The farmers were bound to throw in something, to sort of offset +my liberality, whether I would or no; so I let them give me a flint +and steel; and as soon as they had comfortably bestowed Sandy +and me on our horse, I lit my pipe. When the first blast of smoke +shot out through the bars of my helmet, all those people broke +for the woods, and Sandy went over backwards and struck the ground +with a dull thud. They thought I was one of those fire-belching +dragons they had heard so much about from knights and other +professional liars. I had infinite trouble to persuade those people +to venture back within explaining distance. Then I told them that +this was only a bit of enchantment which would work harm to none +but my enemies. And I promised, with my hand on my heart, that +if all who felt no enmity toward me would come forward and pass +before me they should see that only those who remained behind would +be struck dead. The procession moved with a good deal of promptness. +There were no casualties to report, for nobody had curiosity enough +to remain behind to see what would happen. + +I lost some time, now, for these big children, their fears gone, +became so ravished with wonder over my awe-compelling fireworks +that I had to stay there and smoke a couple of pipes out before +they would let me go. Still the delay was not wholly unproductive, +for it took all that time to get Sandy thoroughly wonted to the new +thing, she being so close to it, you know. It plugged up her +conversation mill, too, for a considerable while, and that was +a gain. But above all other benefits accruing, I had learned +something. I was ready for any giant or any ogre that might come +along, now. + +We tarried with a holy hermit, that night, and my opportunity +came about the middle of the next afternoon. We were crossing +a vast meadow by way of short-cut, and I was musing absently, +hearing nothing, seeing nothing, when Sandy suddenly interrupted +a remark which she had begun that morning, with the cry: + +"Defend thee, lord!--peril of life is toward!" + +And she slipped down from the horse and ran a little way and stood. +I looked up and saw, far off in the shade of a tree, half a dozen +armed knights and their squires; and straightway there was bustle +among them and tightening of saddle-girths for the mount. My pipe +was ready and would have been lit, if I had not been lost in +thinking about how to banish oppression from this land and restore +to all its people their stolen rights and manhood without disobliging +anybody. I lit up at once, and by the time I had got a good head +of reserved steam on, here they came. All together, too; none of +those chivalrous magnanimities which one reads so much about +--one courtly rascal at a time, and the rest standing by to see fair +play. No, they came in a body, they came with a whirr and a rush, +they came like a volley from a battery; came with heads low down, +plumes streaming out behind, lances advanced at a level. It was +a handsome sight, a beautiful sight--for a man up a tree. I laid +my lance in rest and waited, with my heart beating, till the iron +wave was just ready to break over me, then spouted a column of +white smoke through the bars of my helmet. You should have seen +the wave go to pieces and scatter! This was a finer sight than +the other one. + +But these people stopped, two or three hundred yards away, and +this troubled me. My satisfaction collapsed, and fear came; +I judged I was a lost man. But Sandy was radiant; and was going +to be eloquent--but I stopped her, and told her my magic had +miscarried, somehow or other, and she must mount, with all despatch, +and we must ride for life. No, she wouldn't. She said that my +enchantment had disabled those knights; they were not riding on, +because they couldn't; wait, they would drop out of their saddles +presently, and we would get their horses and harness. I could not +deceive such trusting simplicity, so I said it was a mistake; that +when my fireworks killed at all, they killed instantly; no, the men +would not die, there was something wrong about my apparatus, +I couldn't tell what; but we must hurry and get away, for those +people would attack us again, in a minute. Sandy laughed, and said: + +"Lack-a-day, sir, they be not of that breed! Sir Launcelot will +give battle to dragons, and will abide by them, and will assail +them again, and yet again, and still again, until he do conquer +and destroy them; and so likewise will Sir Pellinore and Sir Aglovale +and Sir Carados, and mayhap others, but there be none else that +will venture it, let the idle say what the idle will. And, la, +as to yonder base rufflers, think ye they have not their fill, +but yet desire more?" + +"Well, then, what are they waiting for? Why don't they leave? +Nobody's hindering. Good land, I'm willing to let bygones be +bygones, I'm sure." + +"Leave, is it? Oh, give thyself easement as to that. They dream +not of it, no, not they. They wait to yield them." + +"Come--really, is that 'sooth'--as you people say? If they want to, +why don't they?" + +"It would like them much; but an ye wot how dragons are esteemed, +ye would not hold them blamable. They fear to come." + +"Well, then, suppose I go to them instead, and--" + +"Ah, wit ye well they would not abide your coming. I will go." + +And she did. She was a handy person to have along on a raid. +I would have considered this a doubtful errand, myself. I presently +saw the knights riding away, and Sandy coming back. That was +a relief. I judged she had somehow failed to get the first innings +--I mean in the conversation; otherwise the interview wouldn't have +been so short. But it turned out that she had managed the business +well; in fact, admirably. She said that when she told those people +I was The Boss, it hit them where they lived: "smote them sore +with fear and dread" was her word; and then they were ready to +put up with anything she might require. So she swore them to appear +at Arthur's court within two days and yield them, with horse and +harness, and be my knights henceforth, and subject to my command. +How much better she managed that thing than I should have done +it myself! She was a daisy. + + + +CHAPTER XV + +SANDY'S TALE + +"And so I'm proprietor of some knights," said I, as we rode off. +"Who would ever have supposed that I should live to list up assets +of that sort. I shan't know what to do with them; unless I raffle +them off. How many of them are there, Sandy?" + +"Seven, please you, sir, and their squires." + +"It is a good haul. Who are they? Where do they hang out?" + +"Where do they hang out?" + +"Yes, where do they live?" + +"Ah, I understood thee not. That will I tell eftsoons." Then she +said musingly, and softly, turning the words daintily over her +tongue: "Hang they out--hang they out--where hang--where do they +hang out; eh, right so; where do they hang out. Of a truth the +phrase hath a fair and winsome grace, and is prettily worded +withal. I will repeat it anon and anon in mine idlesse, whereby +I may peradventure learn it. Where do they hang out. Even so! +already it falleth trippingly from my tongue, and forasmuch as--" + +"Don't forget the cowboys, Sandy." + +"Cowboys?" + +"Yes; the knights, you know: You were going to tell me about them. +A while back, you remember. Figuratively speaking, game's called." + +"Game--" + +"Yes, yes, yes! Go to the bat. I mean, get to work on your +statistics, and don't burn so much kindling getting your fire +started. Tell me about the knights." + +"I will well, and lightly will begin. So they two departed and +rode into a great forest. And--" + +"Great Scott!" + +You see, I recognized my mistake at once. I had set her works +a-going; it was my own fault; she would be thirty days getting down +to those facts. And she generally began without a preface and +finished without a result. If you interrupted her she would either +go right along without noticing, or answer with a couple of words, +and go back and say the sentence over again. So, interruptions +only did harm; and yet I had to interrupt, and interrupt pretty +frequently, too, in order to save my life; a person would die if +he let her monotony drip on him right along all day. + +"Great Scott!" I said in my distress. She went right back and +began over again: + +"So they two departed and rode into a great forest. And--" + +"_Which_ two?" + +"Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine. And so they came to an abbey of monks, +and there were well lodged. So on the morn they heard their masses +in the abbey, and so they rode forth till they came to a great +forest; then was Sir Gawaine ware in a valley by a turret, of +twelve fair damsels, and two knights armed on great horses, and +the damsels went to and fro by a tree. And then was Sir Gawaine +ware how there hung a white shield on that tree, and ever as the +damsels came by it they spit upon it, and some threw mire upon +the shield--" + +"Now, if I hadn't seen the like myself in this country, Sandy, +I wouldn't believe it. But I've seen it, and I can just see those +creatures now, parading before that shield and acting like that. +The women here do certainly act like all possessed. Yes, and +I mean your best, too, society's very choicest brands. The humblest +hello-girl along ten thousand miles of wire could teach gentleness, +patience, modesty, manners, to the highest duchess in Arthur's land." + +"Hello-girl?" + +"Yes, but don't you ask me to explain; it's a new kind of a girl; +they don't have them here; one often speaks sharply to them when +they are not the least in fault, and he can't get over feeling +sorry for it and ashamed of himself in thirteen hundred years, +it's such shabby mean conduct and so unprovoked; the fact is, +no gentleman ever does it--though I--well, I myself, if I've got +to confess--" + +"Peradventure she--" + +"Never mind her; never mind her; I tell you I couldn't ever explain +her so you would understand." + +"Even so be it, sith ye are so minded. Then Sir Gawaine and +Sir Uwaine went and saluted them, and asked them why they did that +despite to the shield. Sirs, said the damsels, we shall tell you. +There is a knight in this country that owneth this white shield, +and he is a passing good man of his hands, but he hateth all +ladies and gentlewomen, and therefore we do all this despite to +the shield. I will say you, said Sir Gawaine, it beseemeth evil +a good knight to despise all ladies and gentlewomen, and peradventure +though he hate you he hath some cause, and peradventure he loveth +in some other places ladies and gentlewomen, and to be loved again, +and he such a man of prowess as ye speak of--" + +"Man of prowess--yes, that is the man to please them, Sandy. +Man of brains--that is a thing they never think of. Tom Sayers +--John Heenan--John L. Sullivan--pity but you could be here. You +would have your legs under the Round Table and a 'Sir' in front +of your names within the twenty-four hours; and you could bring +about a new distribution of the married princesses and duchesses +of the Court in another twenty-four. The fact is, it is just +a sort of polished-up court of Comanches, and there isn't a squaw +in it who doesn't stand ready at the dropping of a hat to desert +to the buck with the biggest string of scalps at his belt." + +"--and he be such a man of prowess as ye speak of, said Sir Gawaine. +Now, what is his name? Sir, said they, his name is Marhaus the +king's son of Ireland." + +"Son of the king of Ireland, you mean; the other form doesn't mean +anything. And look out and hold on tight, now, we must jump +this gully.... There, we are all right now. This horse belongs in +the circus; he is born before his time." + +"I know him well, said Sir Uwaine, he is a passing good knight as +any is on live." + +"_On live_. If you've got a fault in the world, Sandy, it is that +you are a shade too archaic. But it isn't any matter." + +"--for I saw him once proved at a justs where many knights were +gathered, and that time there might no man withstand him. Ah, said +Sir Gawaine, damsels, methinketh ye are to blame, for it is to +suppose he that hung that shield there will not be long therefrom, +and then may those knights match him on horseback, and that is +more your worship than thus; for I will abide no longer to see +a knight's shield dishonored. And therewith Sir Uwaine and +Sir Gawaine departed a little from them, and then were they ware +where Sir Marhaus came riding on a great horse straight toward +them. And when the twelve damsels saw Sir Marhaus they fled into +the turret as they were wild, so that some of them fell by the way. +Then the one of the knights of the tower dressed his shield, and +said on high, Sir Marhaus defend thee. And so they ran together +that the knight brake his spear on Marhaus, and Sir Marhaus smote +him so hard that he brake his neck and the horse's back--" + +"Well, that is just the trouble about this state of things, +it ruins so many horses." + +"That saw the other knight of the turret, and dressed him toward +Marhaus, and they went so eagerly together, that the knight of +the turret was soon smitten down, horse and man, stark dead--" + +"_Another_ horse gone; I tell you it is a custom that ought to be +broken up. I don't see how people with any feeling can applaud +and support it." + + . . . . + +"So these two knights came together with great random--" + +I saw that I had been asleep and missed a chapter, but I didn't +say anything. I judged that the Irish knight was in trouble with +the visitors by this time, and this turned out to be the case. + +"--that Sir Uwaine smote Sir Marhaus that his spear brast in pieces +on the shield, and Sir Marhaus smote him so sore that horse and +man he bare to the earth, and hurt Sir Uwaine on the left side--" + +"The truth is, Alisande, these archaics are a little _too_ simple; +the vocabulary is too limited, and so, by consequence, descriptions +suffer in the matter of variety; they run too much to level Saharas +of fact, and not enough to picturesque detail; this throws about +them a certain air of the monotonous; in fact the fights are all +alike: a couple of people come together with great random +--random is a good word, and so is exegesis, for that matter, and +so is holocaust, and defalcation, and usufruct and a hundred others, +but land! a body ought to discriminate--they come together with +great random, and a spear is brast, and one party brake his shield +and the other one goes down, horse and man, over his horse-tail +and brake his neck, and then the next candidate comes randoming in, +and brast _his_ spear, and the other man brast his shield, and down +_he_ goes, horse and man, over his horse-tail, and brake _his_ neck, +and then there's another elected, and another and another and still +another, till the material is all used up; and when you come to +figure up results, you can't tell one fight from another, nor who +whipped; and as a _picture_, of living, raging, roaring battle, +sho! why, it's pale and noiseless--just ghosts scuffling in a fog. +Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiest +spectacle?--the burning of Rome in Nero's time, for instance? +Why, it would merely say, 'Town burned down; no insurance; boy +brast a window, fireman brake his neck!' Why, _that_ ain't a picture!" + +It was a good deal of a lecture, I thought, but it didn't disturb +Sandy, didn't turn a feather; her steam soared steadily up again, +the minute I took off the lid: + +"Then Sir Marhaus turned his horse and rode toward Gawaine with +his spear. And when Sir Gawaine saw that, he dressed his shield, +and they aventred their spears, and they came together with all +the might of their horses, that either knight smote other so hard +in the midst of their shields, but Sir Gawaine's spear brake--" + +"I knew it would." + +--"but Sir Marhaus's spear held; and therewith Sir Gawaine and +his horse rushed down to the earth--" + +"Just so--and brake his back." + +--"and lightly Sir Gawaine rose upon his feet and pulled out +his sword, and dressed him toward Sir Marhaus on foot, and therewith +either came unto other eagerly, and smote together with their +swords, that their shields flew in cantels, and they bruised their +helms and their hauberks, and wounded either other. But Sir Gawaine, +fro it passed nine of the clock, waxed by the space of three hours +ever stronger and stronger and thrice his might was increased. +All this espied Sir Marhaus, and had great wonder how his might +increased, and so they wounded other passing sore; and then when +it was come noon--" + +The pelting sing-song of it carried me forward to scenes and +sounds of my boyhood days: + +"N-e-e-ew Haven! ten minutes for refreshments--knductr'll strike +the gong-bell two minutes before train leaves--passengers for +the Shore line please take seats in the rear k'yar, this k'yar +don't go no furder--_ahh_-pls, _aw_-rnjz, b'_nan_ners, +_s-a-n-d-'ches, p--_op_-corn!" + +--"and waxed past noon and drew toward evensong. Sir Gawaine's +strength feebled and waxed passing faint, that unnethes he might +dure any longer, and Sir Marhaus was then bigger and bigger--" + +"Which strained his armor, of course; and yet little would one +of these people mind a small thing like that." + +--"and so, Sir Knight, said Sir Marhaus, I have well felt that +ye are a passing good knight, and a marvelous man of might as ever +I felt any, while it lasteth, and our quarrels are not great, and +therefore it were a pity to do you hurt, for I feel you are passing +feeble. Ah, said Sir Gawaine, gentle knight, ye say the word +that I should say. And therewith they took off their helms and +either kissed other, and there they swore together either to love +other as brethren--" + +But I lost the thread there, and dozed off to slumber, thinking +about what a pity it was that men with such superb strength +--strength enabling them to stand up cased in cruelly burdensome +iron and drenched with perspiration, and hack and batter and bang +each other for six hours on a stretch--should not have been born +at a time when they could put it to some useful purpose. Take +a jackass, for instance: a jackass has that kind of strength, and +puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to this world because +he is a jackass; but a nobleman is not valuable because he is +a jackass. It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should +never have been attempted in the first place. And yet, once you +start a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what is +going to come of it. + +When I came to myself again and began to listen, I perceived that +I had lost another chapter, and that Alisande had wandered a long +way off with her people. + +"And so they rode and came into a deep valley full of stones, +and thereby they saw a fair stream of water; above thereby was +the head of the stream, a fair fountain, and three damsels sitting +thereby. In this country, said Sir Marhaus, came never knight +since it was christened, but he found strange adventures--" + +"This is not good form, Alisande. Sir Marhaus the king's son of +Ireland talks like all the rest; you ought to give him a brogue, +or at least a characteristic expletive; by this means one would +recognize him as soon as he spoke, without his ever being named. +It is a common literary device with the great authors. You should +make him say, 'In this country, be jabers, came never knight since +it was christened, but he found strange adventures, be jabers.' +You see how much better that sounds." + +--"came never knight but he found strange adventures, be jabers. +Of a truth it doth indeed, fair lord, albeit 'tis passing hard +to say, though peradventure that will not tarry but better speed +with usage. And then they rode to the damsels, and either saluted +other, and the eldest had a garland of gold about her head, and +she was threescore winter of age or more--" + +"The _damsel_ was?" + +"Even so, dear lord--and her hair was white under the garland--" + +"Celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like as not--the loose-fit +kind, that go up and down like a portcullis when you eat, and +fall out when you laugh." + +"The second damsel was of thirty winter of age, with a circlet of +gold about her head. The third damsel was but fifteen year of age--" + +Billows of thought came rolling over my soul, and the voice faded +out of my hearing! + +Fifteen! Break--my heart! oh, my lost darling! Just her age +who was so gentle, and lovely, and all the world to me, and whom +I shall never see again! How the thought of her carries me back +over wide seas of memory to a vague dim time, a happy time, so many, +many centuries hence, when I used to wake in the soft summer +mornings, out of sweet dreams of her, and say "Hello, Central!" +just to hear her dear voice come melting back to me with a +"Hello, Hank!" that was music of the spheres to my enchanted ear. +She got three dollars a week, but she was worth it. + +I could not follow Alisande's further explanation of who our +captured knights were, now--I mean in case she should ever get +to explaining who they were. My interest was gone, my thoughts +were far away, and sad. By fitful glimpses of the drifting tale, +caught here and there and now and then, I merely noted in a vague +way that each of these three knights took one of these three damsels +up behind him on his horse, and one rode north, another east, +the other south, to seek adventures, and meet again and lie, after +year and day. Year and day--and without baggage. It was of +a piece with the general simplicity of the country. + +The sun was now setting. It was about three in the afternoon when +Alisande had begun to tell me who the cowboys were; so she had made +pretty good progress with it--for her. She would arrive some time +or other, no doubt, but she was not a person who could be hurried. + +We were approaching a castle which stood on high ground; a huge, +strong, venerable structure, whose gray towers and battlements were +charmingly draped with ivy, and whose whole majestic mass was +drenched with splendors flung from the sinking sun. It was the +largest castle we had seen, and so I thought it might be the one +we were after, but Sandy said no. She did not know who owned it; +she said she had passed it without calling, when she went down +to Camelot. + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +MORGAN LE FAY + +If knights errant were to be believed, not all castles were desirable +places to seek hospitality in. As a matter of fact, knights errant +were _not_ persons to be believed--that is, measured by modern +standards of veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their own +time, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It was very +simple: you discounted a statement ninety-seven per cent; the rest +was fact. Now after making this allowance, the truth remained +that if I could find out something about a castle before ringing +the door-bell--I mean hailing the warders--it was the sensible +thing to do. So I was pleased when I saw in the distance a horseman +making the bottom turn of the road that wound down from this castle. + +As we approached each other, I saw that he wore a plumed helmet, +and seemed to be otherwise clothed in steel, but bore a curious +addition also--a stiff square garment like a herald's tabard. +However, I had to smile at my own forgetfulness when I got nearer +and read this sign on his tabard: + + "Persimmon's Soap -- All the Prime-Donna Use It." + +That was a little idea of my own, and had several wholesome purposes +in view toward the civilizing and uplifting of this nation. In the +first place, it was a furtive, underhand blow at this nonsense +of knight errantry, though nobody suspected that but me. I had +started a number of these people out--the bravest knights I could +get--each sandwiched between bulletin-boards bearing one device +or another, and I judged that by and by when they got to be numerous +enough they would begin to look ridiculous; and then, even the +steel-clad ass that _hadn't_ any board would himself begin to look +ridiculous because he was out of the fashion. + +Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating +suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness +among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, +if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church. +I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education--next, freedom +--and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that +any Established Church is an established crime, an established +slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in +any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in my +own former day--in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb +of time--there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been +born in a free country: a "free" country with the Corporation Act +and the Test still in force in it--timbers propped against men's +liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an Established +Anachronism with. + +My missionaries were taught to spell out the gilt signs on their +tabards--the showy gilding was a neat idea, I could have got the +king to wear a bulletin-board for the sake of that barbaric +splendor--they were to spell out these signs and then explain to +the lords and ladies what soap was; and if the lords and ladies +were afraid of it, get them to try it on a dog. The missionary's +next move was to get the family together and try it on himself; +he was to stop at no experiment, however desperate, that could +convince the nobility that soap was harmless; if any final doubt +remained, he must catch a hermit--the woods were full of them; +saints they called themselves, and saints they were believed to be. +They were unspeakably holy, and worked miracles, and everybody +stood in awe of them. If a hermit could survive a wash, and that +failed to convince a duke, give him up, let him alone. + +Whenever my missionaries overcame a knight errant on the road +they washed him, and when he got well they swore him to go and +get a bulletin-board and disseminate soap and civilization the rest +of his days. As a consequence the workers in the field were +increasing by degrees, and the reform was steadily spreading. +My soap factory felt the strain early. At first I had only two +hands; but before I had left home I was already employing fifteen, +and running night and day; and the atmospheric result was getting +so pronounced that the king went sort of fainting and gasping +around and said he did not believe he could stand it much longer, +and Sir Launcelot got so that he did hardly anything but walk up +and down the roof and swear, although I told him it was worse up +there than anywhere else, but he said he wanted plenty of air; and +he was always complaining that a palace was no place for a soap +factory anyway, and said if a man was to start one in his house +he would be damned if he wouldn't strangle him. There were ladies +present, too, but much these people ever cared for that; they would +swear before children, if the wind was their way when the factory +was going. + +This missionary knight's name was La Cote Male Taile, and he said +that this castle was the abode of Morgan le Fay, sister of +King Arthur, and wife of King Uriens, monarch of a realm about +as big as the District of Columbia--you could stand in the middle +of it and throw bricks into the next kingdom. "Kings" and "Kingdoms" +were as thick in Britain as they had been in little Palestine in +Joshua's time, when people had to sleep with their knees pulled up +because they couldn't stretch out without a passport. + +La Cote was much depressed, for he had scored here the worst +failure of his campaign. He had not worked off a cake; yet he had +tried all the tricks of the trade, even to the washing of a hermit; +but the hermit died. This was, indeed, a bad failure, for this +animal would now be dubbed a martyr, and would take his place +among the saints of the Roman calendar. Thus made he his moan, +this poor Sir La Cote Male Taile, and sorrowed passing sore. And +so my heart bled for him, and I was moved to comfort and stay him. +Wherefore I said: + +"Forbear to grieve, fair knight, for this is not a defeat. We have +brains, you and I; and for such as have brains there are no defeats, +but only victories. Observe how we will turn this seeming disaster +into an advertisement; an advertisement for our soap; and the +biggest one, to draw, that was ever thought of; an advertisement +that will transform that Mount Washington defeat into a Matterhorn +victory. We will put on your bulletin-board, '_Patronized by the +elect_.' How does that strike you?" + +"Verily, it is wonderly bethought!" + +"Well, a body is bound to admit that for just a modest little +one-line ad, it's a corker." + +So the poor colporteur's griefs vanished away. He was a brave +fellow, and had done mighty feats of arms in his time. His chief +celebrity rested upon the events of an excursion like this one +of mine, which he had once made with a damsel named Maledisant, +who was as handy with her tongue as was Sandy, though in a different +way, for her tongue churned forth only railings and insult, whereas +Sandy's music was of a kindlier sort. I knew his story well, and so +I knew how to interpret the compassion that was in his face when he +bade me farewell. He supposed I was having a bitter hard time of it. + +Sandy and I discussed his story, as we rode along, and she said +that La Cote's bad luck had begun with the very beginning of that +trip; for the king's fool had overthrown him on the first day, +and in such cases it was customary for the girl to desert to the +conqueror, but Maledisant didn't do it; and also persisted afterward +in sticking to him, after all his defeats. But, said I, suppose +the victor should decline to accept his spoil? She said that that +wouldn't answer--he must. He couldn't decline; it wouldn't be +regular. I made a note of that. If Sandy's music got to be too +burdensome, some time, I would let a knight defeat me, on the chance +that she would desert to him. + +In due time we were challenged by the warders, from the castle +walls, and after a parley admitted. I have nothing pleasant to +tell about that visit. But it was not a disappointment, for I knew +Mrs. le Fay by reputation, and was not expecting anything pleasant. +She was held in awe by the whole realm, for she had made everybody +believe she was a great sorceress. All her ways were wicked, all +her instincts devilish. She was loaded to the eyelids with cold +malice. All her history was black with crime; and among her crimes +murder was common. I was most curious to see her; as curious as +I could have been to see Satan. To my surprise she was beautiful; +black thoughts had failed to make her expression repulsive, age +had failed to wrinkle her satin skin or mar its bloomy freshness. +She could have passed for old Uriens' granddaughter, she could +have been mistaken for sister to her own son. + +As soon as we were fairly within the castle gates we were ordered +into her presence. King Uriens was there, a kind-faced old man +with a subdued look; and also the son, Sir Uwaine le Blanchemains, +in whom I was, of course, interested on account of the tradition +that he had once done battle with thirty knights, and also on +account of his trip with Sir Gawaine and Sir Marhaus, which Sandy +had been aging me with. But Morgan was the main attraction, the +conspicuous personality here; she was head chief of this household, +that was plain. She caused us to be seated, and then she began, +with all manner of pretty graces and graciousnesses, to ask me +questions. Dear me, it was like a bird or a flute, or something, +talking. I felt persuaded that this woman must have been +misrepresented, lied about. She trilled along, and trilled along, +and presently a handsome young page, clothed like the rainbow, and +as easy and undulatory of movement as a wave, came with something +on a golden salver, and, kneeling to present it to her, overdid +his graces and lost his balance, and so fell lightly against her +knee. She slipped a dirk into him in as matter-of-course a way as +another person would have harpooned a rat! + +Poor child! he slumped to the floor, twisted his silken limbs in +one great straining contortion of pain, and was dead. Out of the +old king was wrung an involuntary "O-h!" of compassion. The look +he got, made him cut it suddenly short and not put any more hyphens +in it. Sir Uwaine, at a sign from his mother, went to the anteroom +and called some servants, and meanwhile madame went rippling sweetly +along with her talk. + +I saw that she was a good housekeeper, for while she talked she +kept a corner of her eye on the servants to see that they made +no balks in handling the body and getting it out; when they came +with fresh clean towels, she sent back for the other kind; and +when they had finished wiping the floor and were going, she indicated +a crimson fleck the size of a tear which their duller eyes had +overlooked. It was plain to me that La Cote Male Taile had failed +to see the mistress of the house. Often, how louder and clearer +than any tongue, does dumb circumstantial evidence speak. + +Morgan le Fay rippled along as musically as ever. Marvelous woman. +And what a glance she had: when it fell in reproof upon those +servants, they shrunk and quailed as timid people do when the +lightning flashes out of a cloud. I could have got the habit +myself. It was the same with that poor old Brer Uriens; he was +always on the ragged edge of apprehension; she could not even turn +toward him but he winced. + +In the midst of the talk I let drop a complimentary word about +King Arthur, forgetting for the moment how this woman hated her +brother. That one little compliment was enough. She clouded up +like storm; she called for her guards, and said: + +"Hale me these varlets to the dungeons." + +That struck cold on my ears, for her dungeons had a reputation. +Nothing occurred to me to say--or do. But not so with Sandy. +As the guard laid a hand upon me, she piped up with the tranquilest +confidence, and said: + +"God's wounds, dost thou covet destruction, thou maniac? It is +The Boss!" + +Now what a happy idea that was!--and so simple; yet it would never +have occurred to me. I was born modest; not all over, but in spots; +and this was one of the spots. + +The effect upon madame was electrical. It cleared her countenance +and brought back her smiles and all her persuasive graces and +blandishments; but nevertheless she was not able to entirely cover up +with them the fact that she was in a ghastly fright. She said: + +"La, but do list to thine handmaid! as if one gifted with powers +like to mine might say the thing which I have said unto one who +has vanquished Merlin, and not be jesting. By mine enchantments +I foresaw your coming, and by them I knew you when you entered +here. I did but play this little jest with hope to surprise you +into some display of your art, as not doubting you would blast +the guards with occult fires, consuming them to ashes on the spot, +a marvel much beyond mine own ability, yet one which I have long +been childishly curious to see." + +The guards were less curious, and got out as soon as they got permission. + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +A ROYAL BANQUET + +Madame, seeing me pacific and unresentful, no doubt judged that +I was deceived by her excuse; for her fright dissolved away, and +she was soon so importunate to have me give an exhibition and kill +somebody, that the thing grew to be embarrassing. However, to my +relief she was presently interrupted by the call to prayers. I will +say this much for the nobility: that, tyrannical, murderous, +rapacious, and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and +enthusiastically religious. Nothing could divert them from the +regular and faithful performance of the pieties enjoined by the +Church. More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his +enemy at a disadvantage, stop to pray before cutting his throat; +more than once I had seen a noble, after ambushing and despatching +his enemy, retire to the nearest wayside shrine and humbly give +thanks, without even waiting to rob the body. There was to be +nothing finer or sweeter in the life of even Benvenuto Cellini, +that rough-hewn saint, ten centuries later. All the nobles of +Britain, with their families, attended divine service morning and +night daily, in their private chapels, and even the worst of them +had family worship five or six times a day besides. The credit +of this belonged entirely to the Church. Although I was no friend +to that Catholic Church, I was obliged to admit this. And often, +in spite of me, I found myself saying, "What would this country +be without the Church?" + +After prayers we had dinner in a great banqueting hall which was +lighted by hundreds of grease-jets, and everything was as fine and +lavish and rudely splendid as might become the royal degree of the +hosts. At the head of the hall, on a dais, was the table of the +king, queen, and their son, Prince Uwaine. Stretching down the hall +from this, was the general table, on the floor. At this, above +the salt, sat the visiting nobles and the grown members of their +families, of both sexes,--the resident Court, in effect--sixty-one +persons; below the salt sat minor officers of the household, with +their principal subordinates: altogether a hundred and eighteen +persons sitting, and about as many liveried servants standing +behind their chairs, or serving in one capacity or another. It was +a very fine show. In a gallery a band with cymbals, horns, harps, +and other horrors, opened the proceedings with what seemed to be +the crude first-draft or original agony of the wail known to later +centuries as "In the Sweet Bye and Bye." It was new, and ought +to have been rehearsed a little more. For some reason or other +the queen had the composer hanged, after dinner. + +After this music, the priest who stood behind the royal table said +a noble long grace in ostensible Latin. Then the battalion of +waiters broke away from their posts, and darted, rushed, flew, +fetched and carried, and the mighty feeding began; no words +anywhere, but absorbing attention to business. The rows of chops +opened and shut in vast unison, and the sound of it was like to +the muffled burr of subterranean machinery. + +The havoc continued an hour and a half, and unimaginable was the +destruction of substantials. Of the chief feature of the feast +--the huge wild boar that lay stretched out so portly and imposing +at the start--nothing was left but the semblance of a hoop-skirt; +and he was but the type and symbol of what had happened to all +the other dishes. + +With the pastries and so on, the heavy drinking began--and the talk. +Gallon after gallon of wine and mead disappeared, and everybody +got comfortable, then happy, then sparklingly joyous--both sexes, +--and by and by pretty noisy. Men told anecdotes that were terrific +to hear, but nobody blushed; and when the nub was sprung, the +assemblage let go with a horse-laugh that shook the fortress. +Ladies answered back with historiettes that would almost have made +Queen Margaret of Navarre or even the great Elizabeth of England +hide behind a handkerchief, but nobody hid here, but only laughed +--howled, you may say. In pretty much all of these dreadful stories, +ecclesiastics were the hardy heroes, but that didn't worry the +chaplain any, he had his laugh with the rest; more than that, upon +invitation he roared out a song which was of as daring a sort as +any that was sung that night. + +By midnight everybody was fagged out, and sore with laughing; and, +as a rule, drunk: some weepingly, some affectionately, some +hilariously, some quarrelsomely, some dead and under the table. +Of the ladies, the worst spectacle was a lovely young duchess, whose +wedding-eve this was; and indeed she was a spectacle, sure enough. +Just as she was she could have sat in advance for the portrait of the +young daughter of the Regent d'Orleans, at the famous dinner whence +she was carried, foul-mouthed, intoxicated, and helpless, to her bed, +in the lost and lamented days of the Ancient Regime. + +Suddenly, even while the priest was lifting his hands, and all +conscious heads were bowed in reverent expectation of the coming +blessing, there appeared under the arch of the far-off door at +the bottom of the hall an old and bent and white-haired lady, +leaning upon a crutch-stick; and she lifted the stick and pointed it +toward the queen and cried out: + +"The wrath and curse of God fall upon you, woman without pity, +who have slain mine innocent grandchild and made desolate this +old heart that had nor chick, nor friend nor stay nor comfort in +all this world but him!" + +Everybody crossed himself in a grisly fright, for a curse was an +awful thing to those people; but the queen rose up majestic, with +the death-light in her eye, and flung back this ruthless command: + +"Lay hands on her! To the stake with her!" + +The guards left their posts to obey. It was a shame; it was a +cruel thing to see. What could be done? Sandy gave me a look; +I knew she had another inspiration. I said: + +"Do what you choose." + +She was up and facing toward the queen in a moment. She indicated +me, and said: + +"Madame, _he_ saith this may not be. Recall the commandment, or he +will dissolve the castle and it shall vanish away like the instable +fabric of a dream!" + +Confound it, what a crazy contract to pledge a person to! What if +the queen-- + +But my consternation subsided there, and my panic passed off; +for the queen, all in a collapse, made no show of resistance but +gave a countermanding sign and sunk into her seat. When she reached +it she was sober. So were many of the others. The assemblage rose, +whiffed ceremony to the winds, and rushed for the door like a mob; +overturning chairs, smashing crockery, tugging, struggling, +shouldering, crowding--anything to get out before I should change +my mind and puff the castle into the measureless dim vacancies of +space. Well, well, well, they _were_ a superstitious lot. It is +all a body can do to conceive of it. + +The poor queen was so scared and humbled that she was even afraid +to hang the composer without first consulting me. I was very sorry +for her--indeed, any one would have been, for she was really +suffering; so I was willing to do anything that was reasonable, and +had no desire to carry things to wanton extremities. I therefore +considered the matter thoughtfully, and ended by having the +musicians ordered into our presence to play that Sweet Bye and +Bye again, which they did. Then I saw that she was right, and +gave her permission to hang the whole band. This little relaxation +of sternness had a good effect upon the queen. A statesman gains +little by the arbitrary exercise of iron-clad authority upon all +occasions that offer, for this wounds the just pride of his +subordinates, and thus tends to undermine his strength. A little +concession, now and then, where it can do no harm, is the wiser policy. + +Now that the queen was at ease in her mind once more, and measurably +happy, her wine naturally began to assert itself again, and it got +a little the start of her. I mean it set her music going--her silver +bell of a tongue. Dear me, she was a master talker. It would not +become me to suggest that it was pretty late and that I was a tired +man and very sleepy. I wished I had gone off to bed when I had +the chance. Now I must stick it out; there was no other way. So +she tinkled along and along, in the otherwise profound and ghostly +hush of the sleeping castle, until by and by there came, as if +from deep down under us, a far-away sound, as of a muffled shriek +--with an expression of agony about it that made my flesh crawl. +The queen stopped, and her eyes lighted with pleasure; she tilted +her graceful head as a bird does when it listens. The sound bored +its way up through the stillness again. + +"What is it?" I said. + +"It is truly a stubborn soul, and endureth long. It is many hours now." + +"Endureth what?" + +"The rack. Come--ye shall see a blithe sight. An he yield not +his secret now, ye shall see him torn asunder." + +What a silky smooth hellion she was; and so composed and serene, +when the cords all down my legs were hurting in sympathy with that +man's pain. Conducted by mailed guards bearing flaring torches, +we tramped along echoing corridors, and down stone stairways dank +and dripping, and smelling of mould and ages of imprisoned night +--a chill, uncanny journey and a long one, and not made the shorter +or the cheerier by the sorceress's talk, which was about this +sufferer and his crime. He had been accused by an anonymous +informer, of having killed a stag in the royal preserves. I said: + +"Anonymous testimony isn't just the right thing, your Highness. +It were fairer to confront the accused with the accuser." + +"I had not thought of that, it being but of small consequence. +But an I would, I could not, for that the accuser came masked by +night, and told the forester, and straightway got him hence again, +and so the forester knoweth him not." + +"Then is this Unknown the only person who saw the stag killed?" + +"Marry, _no_ man _saw_ the killing, but this Unknown saw this hardy +wretch near to the spot where the stag lay, and came with right +loyal zeal and betrayed him to the forester." + +"So the Unknown was near the dead stag, too? Isn't it just possible +that he did the killing himself? His loyal zeal--in a mask--looks +just a shade suspicious. But what is your highness's idea for +racking the prisoner? Where is the profit?" + +"He will not confess, else; and then were his soul lost. For his +crime his life is forfeited by the law--and of a surety will I see +that he payeth it!--but it were peril to my own soul to let him +die unconfessed and unabsolved. Nay, I were a fool to fling me +into hell for _his_ accommodation." + +"But, your Highness, suppose he has nothing to confess?" + +"As to that, we shall see, anon. An I rack him to death and he +confess not, it will peradventure show that he had indeed naught +to confess--ye will grant that that is sooth? Then shall I not be +damned for an unconfessed man that had naught to confess +--wherefore, I shall be safe." + +It was the stubborn unreasoning of the time. It was useless to +argue with her. Arguments have no chance against petrified +training; they wear it as little as the waves wear a cliff. And +her training was everybody's. The brightest intellect in the land +would not have been able to see that her position was defective. + +As we entered the rack-cell I caught a picture that will not go +from me; I wish it would. A native young giant of thirty or +thereabouts lay stretched upon the frame on his back, with his +wrists and ankles tied to ropes which led over windlasses at either +end. There was no color in him; his features were contorted and +set, and sweat-drops stood upon his forehead. A priest bent over +him on each side; the executioner stood by; guards were on duty; +smoking torches stood in sockets along the walls; in a corner +crouched a poor young creature, her face drawn with anguish, +a half-wild and hunted look in her eyes, and in her lap lay a little +child asleep. Just as we stepped across the threshold the +executioner gave his machine a slight turn, which wrung a cry +from both the prisoner and the woman; but I shouted, and the +executioner released the strain without waiting to see who spoke. +I could not let this horror go on; it would have killed me to +see it. I asked the queen to let me clear the place and speak +to the prisoner privately; and when she was going to object I spoke +in a low voice and said I did not want to make a scene before +her servants, but I must have my way; for I was King Arthur's +representative, and was speaking in his name. She saw she had +to yield. I asked her to indorse me to these people, and then +leave me. It was not pleasant for her, but she took the pill; +and even went further than I was meaning to require. I only wanted +the backing of her own authority; but she said: + +"Ye will do in all things as this lord shall command. It is The Boss." + +It was certainly a good word to conjure with: you could see it +by the squirming of these rats. The queen's guards fell into line, +and she and they marched away, with their torch-bearers, and woke +the echoes of the cavernous tunnels with the measured beat of their +retreating footfalls. I had the prisoner taken from the rack and +placed upon his bed, and medicaments applied to his hurts, and +wine given him to drink. The woman crept near and looked on, +eagerly, lovingly, but timorously,--like one who fears a repulse; +indeed, she tried furtively to touch the man's forehead, and jumped +back, the picture of fright, when I turned unconsciously toward +her. It was pitiful to see. + +"Lord," I said, "stroke him, lass, if you want to. Do anything +you're a mind to; don't mind me." + +Why, her eyes were as grateful as an animal's, when you do it +a kindness that it understands. The baby was out of her way and +she had her cheek against the man's in a minute and her hands +fondling his hair, and her happy tears running down. The man +revived and caressed his wife with his eyes, which was all he +could do. I judged I might clear the den, now, and I did; cleared +it of all but the family and myself. Then I said: + +"Now, my friend, tell me your side of this matter; I know +the other side." + +The man moved his head in sign of refusal. But the woman looked +pleased--as it seemed to me--pleased with my suggestion. I went on-- + +"You know of me?" + +"Yes. All do, in Arthur's realms." + +"If my reputation has come to you right and straight, you should +not be afraid to speak." + +The woman broke in, eagerly: + +"Ah, fair my lord, do thou persuade him! Thou canst an thou wilt. +Ah, he suffereth so; and it is for me--for _me_! And how can I bear it? +I would I might see him die--a sweet, swift death; oh, my Hugo, +I cannot bear this one!" + +And she fell to sobbing and grovelling about my feet, and still +imploring. Imploring what? The man's death? I could not quite +get the bearings of the thing. But Hugo interrupted her and said: + +"Peace! Ye wit not what ye ask. Shall I starve whom I love, +to win a gentle death? I wend thou knewest me better." + +"Well," I said, "I can't quite make this out. It is a puzzle. Now--" + +"Ah, dear my lord, an ye will but persuade him! Consider how +these his tortures wound me! Oh, and he will not speak!--whereas, +the healing, the solace that lie in a blessed swift death--" + +"What _are_ you maundering about? He's going out from here a free +man and whole--he's not going to die." + +The man's white face lit up, and the woman flung herself at me +in a most surprising explosion of joy, and cried out: + +"He is saved!--for it is the king's word by the mouth of the king's +servant--Arthur, the king whose word is gold!" + +"Well, then you do believe I can be trusted, after all. Why +didn't you before?" + +"Who doubted? Not I, indeed; and not she." + +"Well, why wouldn't you tell me your story, then?" + +"Ye had made no promise; else had it been otherwise." + +"I see, I see.... And yet I believe I don't quite see, after all. +You stood the torture and refused to confess; which shows plain +enough to even the dullest understanding that you had nothing +to confess--" + +"I, my lord? How so? It was I that killed the deer!" + +"You _did_? Oh, dear, this is the most mixed-up business that ever--" + +"Dear lord, I begged him on my knees to confess, but--" + +"You _did_! It gets thicker and thicker. What did you want him +to do that for?" + +"Sith it would bring him a quick death and save him all this +cruel pain." + +"Well--yes, there is reason in that. But _he_ didn't want the +quick death." + +"He? Why, of a surety he _did_." + +"Well, then, why in the world _didn't_ he confess?" + +"Ah, sweet sir, and leave my wife and chick without bread and shelter?" + +"Oh, heart of gold, now I see it! The bitter law takes the convicted +man's estate and beggars his widow and his orphans. They could +torture you to death, but without conviction or confession they +could not rob your wife and baby. You stood by them like a man; +and _you_--true wife and the woman that you are--you would have +bought him release from torture at cost to yourself of slow +starvation and death--well, it humbles a body to think what your +sex can do when it comes to self-sacrifice. I'll book you both +for my colony; you'll like it there; it's a Factory where I'm going +to turn groping and grubbing automata into _men_." + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +IN THE QUEEN'S DUNGEONS + +Well, I arranged all that; and I had the man sent to his home. +I had a great desire to rack the executioner; not because he was +a good, painstaking and paingiving official,--for surely it was +not to his discredit that he performed his functions well--but to +pay him back for wantonly cuffing and otherwise distressing that +young woman. The priests told me about this, and were generously +hot to have him punished. Something of this disagreeable sort +was turning up every now and then. I mean, episodes that showed +that not all priests were frauds and self-seekers, but that many, +even the great majority, of these that were down on the ground +among the common people, were sincere and right-hearted, and +devoted to the alleviation of human troubles and sufferings. +Well, it was a thing which could not be helped, so I seldom fretted +about it, and never many minutes at a time; it has never been my +way to bother much about things which you can't cure. But I did +not like it, for it was just the sort of thing to keep people +reconciled to an Established Church. We _must_ have a religion +--it goes without saying--but my idea is, to have it cut up into +forty free sects, so that they will police each other, as had been +the case in the United States in my time. Concentration of power +in a political machine is bad; and and an Established Church is +only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, +cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and +does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered +condition. That wasn't law; it wasn't gospel: it was only +an opinion--my opinion, and I was only a man, one man: so it wasn't +worth any more than the pope's--or any less, for that matter. + +Well, I couldn't rack the executioner, neither would I overlook +the just complaint of the priests. The man must be punished +somehow or other, so I degraded him from his office and made him +leader of the band--the new one that was to be started. He begged +hard, and said he couldn't play--a plausible excuse, but too thin; +there wasn't a musician in the country that could. + +The queen was a good deal outraged, next morning when she found +she was going to have neither Hugo's life nor his property. But +I told her she must bear this cross; that while by law and custom +she certainly was entitled to both the man's life and his property, +there were extenuating circumstances, and so in Arthur the king's +name I had pardoned him. The deer was ravaging the man's fields, +and he had killed it in sudden passion, and not for gain; and he +had carried it into the royal forest in the hope that that might make +detection of the misdoer impossible. Confound her, I couldn't +make her see that sudden passion is an extenuating circumstance +in the killing of venison--or of a person--so I gave it up and let +her sulk it out. I _did_ think I was going to make her see it by +remarking that her own sudden passion in the case of the page +modified that crime. + +"Crime!" she exclaimed. "How thou talkest! Crime, forsooth! +Man, I am going to _pay_ for him!" + +Oh, it was no use to waste sense on her. Training--training is +everything; training is all there is _to_ a person. We speak of +nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we +call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. +We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are +transmitted to us, trained into us. All that is original in us, +and therefore fairly creditable or discreditable to us, can be +covered up and hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all the +rest being atoms contributed by, and inherited from, a procession +of ancestors that stretches back a billion years to the Adam-clam +or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been so tediously +and ostentatiously and unprofitably developed. And as for me, +all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage, this +pathetic drift between the eternities, is to look out and humbly +live a pure and high and blameless life, and save that one +microscopic atom in me that is truly _me_: the rest may land in +Sheol and welcome for all I care. + +No, confound her, her intellect was good, she had brains enough, +but her training made her an ass--that is, from a many-centuries-later +point of view. To kill the page was no crime--it was her right; +and upon her right she stood, serenely and unconscious of offense. +She was a result of generations of training in the unexamined and +unassailed belief that the law which permitted her to kill a subject +when she chose was a perfectly right and righteous one. + +Well, we must give even Satan his due. She deserved a compliment +for one thing; and I tried to pay it, but the words stuck in my +throat. She had a right to kill the boy, but she was in no wise +obliged to pay for him. That was law for some other people, but +not for her. She knew quite well that she was doing a large and +generous thing to pay for that lad, and that I ought in common +fairness to come out with something handsome about it, but I +couldn't--my mouth refused. I couldn't help seeing, in my fancy, +that poor old grandma with the broken heart, and that fair young +creature lying butchered, his little silken pomps and vanities +laced with his golden blood. How could she _pay_ for him! _Whom_ +could she pay? And so, well knowing that this woman, trained +as she had been, deserved praise, even adulation, I was yet not +able to utter it, trained as I had been. The best I could do was +to fish up a compliment from outside, so to speak--and the pity +of it was, that it was true: + +"Madame, your people will adore you for this." + +Quite true, but I meant to hang her for it some day if I lived. +Some of those laws were too bad, altogether too bad. A master +might kill his slave for nothing--for mere spite, malice, or +to pass the time--just as we have seen that the crowned head could +do it with _his_ slave, that is to say, anybody. A gentleman could +kill a free commoner, and pay for him--cash or garden-truck. +A noble could kill a noble without expense, as far as the law was +concerned, but reprisals in kind were to be expected. _Any_body +could kill _some_body, except the commoner and the slave; these had +no privileges. If they killed, it was murder, and the law wouldn't +stand murder. It made short work of the experimenter--and of +his family, too, if he murdered somebody who belonged up among +the ornamental ranks. If a commoner gave a noble even so much +as a Damiens-scratch which didn't kill or even hurt, he got Damiens' +dose for it just the same; they pulled him to rags and tatters +with horses, and all the world came to see the show, and crack +jokes, and have a good time; and some of the performances of the +best people present were as tough, and as properly unprintable, +as any that have been printed by the pleasant Casanova in his +chapter about the dismemberment of Louis XV's poor awkward enemy. + +I had had enough of this grisly place by this time, and wanted +to leave, but I couldn't, because I had something on my mind that +my conscience kept prodding me about, and wouldn't let me forget. +If I had the remaking of man, he wouldn't have any conscience. +It is one of the most disagreeable things connected with a person; +and although it certainly does a great deal of good, it cannot +be said to pay, in the long run; it would be much better to have +less good and more comfort. Still, this is only my opinion, and +I am only one man; others, with less experience, may think +differently. They have a right to their view. I only stand +to this: I have noticed my conscience for many years, and I know +it is more trouble and bother to me than anything else I started +with. I suppose that in the beginning I prized it, because we +prize anything that is ours; and yet how foolish it was to think so. +If we look at it in another way, we see how absurd it is: if I had +an anvil in me would I prize it? Of course not. And yet when you +come to think, there is no real difference between a conscience +and an anvil--I mean for comfort. I have noticed it a thousand +times. And you could dissolve an anvil with acids, when you +couldn't stand it any longer; but there isn't any way that you can +work off a conscience--at least so it will stay worked off; not +that I know of, anyway. + +There was something I wanted to do before leaving, but it was +a disagreeable matter, and I hated to go at it. Well, it bothered +me all the morning. I could have mentioned it to the old king, +but what would be the use?--he was but an extinct volcano; he had +been active in his time, but his fire was out, this good while, +he was only a stately ash-pile now; gentle enough, and kindly +enough for my purpose, without doubt, but not usable. He was +nothing, this so-called king: the queen was the only power there. +And she was a Vesuvius. As a favor, she might consent to warm +a flock of sparrows for you, but then she might take that very +opportunity to turn herself loose and bury a city. However, +I reflected that as often as any other way, when you are expecting +the worst, you get something that is not so bad, after all. + +So I braced up and placed my matter before her royal Highness. +I said I had been having a general jail-delivery at Camelot and +among neighboring castles, and with her permission I would like +to examine her collection, her bric-a-brac--that is to say, her +prisoners. She resisted; but I was expecting that. But she finally +consented. I was expecting that, too, but not so soon. That about +ended my discomfort. She called her guards and torches, and +we went down into the dungeons. These were down under the castle's +foundations, and mainly were small cells hollowed out of the living +rock. Some of these cells had no light at all. In one of them was +a woman, in foul rags, who sat on the ground, and would not answer +a question or speak a word, but only looked up at us once or twice, +through a cobweb of tangled hair, as if to see what casual thing +it might be that was disturbing with sound and light the meaningless +dull dream that was become her life; after that, she sat bowed, +with her dirt-caked fingers idly interlocked in her lap, and gave +no further sign. This poor rack of bones was a woman of middle +age, apparently; but only apparently; she had been there nine +years, and was eighteen when she entered. She was a commoner, +and had been sent here on her bridal night by Sir Breuse Sance Pite, +a neighboring lord whose vassal her father was, and to which said +lord she had refused what has since been called le droit du +seigneur, and, moreover, had opposed violence to violence and spilt +half a gill of his almost sacred blood. The young husband had +interfered at that point, believing the bride's life in danger, +and had flung the noble out into the midst of the humble and +trembling wedding guests, in the parlor, and left him there +astonished at this strange treatment, and implacably embittered +against both bride and groom. The said lord being cramped for +dungeon-room had asked the queen to accommodate his two criminals, +and here in her bastile they had been ever since; hither, indeed, +they had come before their crime was an hour old, and had never +seen each other since. Here they were, kenneled like toads in the +same rock; they had passed nine pitch dark years within fifty feet +of each other, yet neither knew whether the other was alive or not. +All the first years, their only question had been--asked with +beseechings and tears that might have moved stones, in time, +perhaps, but hearts are not stones: "Is he alive?" "Is she alive?" +But they had never got an answer; and at last that question was +not asked any more--or any other. + +I wanted to see the man, after hearing all this. He was thirty-four +years old, and looked sixty. He sat upon a squared block of +stone, with his head bent down, his forearms resting on his knees, +his long hair hanging like a fringe before his face, and he was +muttering to himself. He raised his chin and looked us slowly +over, in a listless dull way, blinking with the distress of the +torchlight, then dropped his head and fell to muttering again +and took no further notice of us. There were some pathetically +suggestive dumb witnesses present. On his wrists and ankles were +cicatrices, old smooth scars, and fastened to the stone on which +he sat was a chain with manacles and fetters attached; but this +apparatus lay idle on the ground, and was thick with rust. Chains +cease to be needed after the spirit has gone out of a prisoner. + +I could not rouse the man; so I said we would take him to her, +and see--to the bride who was the fairest thing in the earth to him, +once--roses, pearls, and dew made flesh, for him; a wonder-work, +the master-work of nature: with eyes like no other eyes, and voice +like no other voice, and a freshness, and lithe young grace, and +beauty, that belonged properly to the creatures of dreams--as he +thought--and to no other. The sight of her would set his stagnant +blood leaping; the sight of her-- + +But it was a disappointment. They sat together on the ground and +looked dimly wondering into each other's faces a while, with a +sort of weak animal curiosity; then forgot each other's presence, +and dropped their eyes, and you saw that they were away again and +wandering in some far land of dreams and shadows that we know +nothing about. + +I had them taken out and sent to their friends. The queen did not +like it much. Not that she felt any personal interest in the matter, +but she thought it disrespectful to Sir Breuse Sance Pite. However, +I assured her that if he found he couldn't stand it I would fix him +so that he could. + +I set forty-seven prisoners loose out of those awful rat-holes, +and left only one in captivity. He was a lord, and had killed +another lord, a sort of kinsman of the queen. That other lord +had ambushed him to assassinate him, but this fellow had got the +best of him and cut his throat. However, it was not for that that +I left him jailed, but for maliciously destroying the only public +well in one of his wretched villages. The queen was bound to hang +him for killing her kinsman, but I would not allow it: it was no +crime to kill an assassin. But I said I was willing to let her +hang him for destroying the well; so she concluded to put up with +that, as it was better than nothing. + +Dear me, for what trifling offenses the most of those forty-seven +men and women were shut up there! Indeed, some were there for +no distinct offense at all, but only to gratify somebody's spite; +and not always the queen's by any means, but a friend's. The newest +prisoner's crime was a mere remark which he had made. He said +he believed that men were about all alike, and one man as good +as another, barring clothes. He said he believed that if you were +to strip the nation naked and send a stranger through the crowd, he +couldn't tell the king from a quack doctor, nor a duke from a hotel +clerk. Apparently here was a man whose brains had not been reduced +to an ineffectual mush by idiotic training. I set him loose and +sent him to the Factory. + +Some of the cells carved in the living rock were just behind the +face of the precipice, and in each of these an arrow-slit had been +pierced outward to the daylight, and so the captive had a thin +ray from the blessed sun for his comfort. The case of one of +these poor fellows was particularly hard. From his dusky swallow's +hole high up in that vast wall of native rock he could peer out +through the arrow-slit and see his own home off yonder in the +valley; and for twenty-two years he had watched it, with heartache +and longing, through that crack. He could see the lights shine +there at night, and in the daytime he could see figures go in and +come out--his wife and children, some of them, no doubt, though +he could not make out at that distance. In the course of years +he noted festivities there, and tried to rejoice, and wondered +if they were weddings or what they might be. And he noted funerals; +and they wrung his heart. He could make out the coffin, but he +could not determine its size, and so could not tell whether it was +wife or child. He could see the procession form, with priests +and mourners, and move solemnly away, bearing the secret with +them. He had left behind him five children and a wife; and in +nineteen years he had seen five funerals issue, and none of them +humble enough in pomp to denote a servant. So he had lost five +of his treasures; there must still be one remaining--one now +infinitely, unspeakably precious,--but _which_ one? wife, or child? +That was the question that tortured him, by night and by day, +asleep and awake. Well, to have an interest, of some sort, and +half a ray of light, when you are in a dungeon, is a great support +to the body and preserver of the intellect. This man was in pretty +good condition yet. By the time he had finished telling me his +distressful tale, I was in the same state of mind that you would +have been in yourself, if you have got average human curiosity; +that is to say, I was as burning up as he was to find out which +member of the family it was that was left. So I took him over +home myself; and an amazing kind of a surprise party it was, too +--typhoons and cyclones of frantic joy, and whole Niagaras of happy +tears; and by George! we found the aforetime young matron graying +toward the imminent verge of her half century, and the babies all +men and women, and some of them married and experimenting familywise +themselves--for not a soul of the tribe was dead! Conceive of the +ingenious devilishness of that queen: she had a special hatred for +this prisoner, and she had _invented_ all those funerals herself, +to scorch his heart with; and the sublimest stroke of genius of +the whole thing was leaving the family-invoice a funeral _short_, +so as to let him wear his poor old soul out guessing. + +But for me, he never would have got out. Morgan le Fay hated him +with her whole heart, and she never would have softened toward him. +And yet his crime was committed more in thoughtlessness than +deliberate depravity. He had said she had red hair. Well, she +had; but that was no way to speak of it. When red-headed people +are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn. + +Consider it: among these forty-seven captives there were five +whose names, offenses, and dates of incarceration were no longer +known! One woman and four men--all bent, and wrinkled, and +mind-extinguished patriarchs. They themselves had long ago forgotten +these details; at any rate they had mere vague theories about them, +nothing definite and nothing that they repeated twice in the same +way. The succession of priests whose office it had been to pray +daily with the captives and remind them that God had put them +there, for some wise purpose or other, and teach them that patience, +humbleness, and submission to oppression was what He loved to see +in parties of a subordinate rank, had traditions about these poor +old human ruins, but nothing more. These traditions went but +little way, for they concerned the length of the incarceration only, +and not the names of the offenses. And even by the help of +tradition the only thing that could be proven was that none of +the five had seen daylight for thirty-five years: how much longer +this privation has lasted was not guessable. The king and the queen +knew nothing about these poor creatures, except that they were +heirlooms, assets inherited, along with the throne, from the former +firm. Nothing of their history had been transmitted with their +persons, and so the inheriting owners had considered them of no +value, and had felt no interest in them. I said to the queen: + +"Then why in the world didn't you set them free?" + +The question was a puzzler. She didn't know _why_ she hadn't, the +thing had never come up in her mind. So here she was, forecasting +the veritable history of future prisoners of the Castle d'If, +without knowing it. It seemed plain to me now, that with her +training, those inherited prisoners were merely property--nothing +more, nothing less. Well, when we inherit property, it does not +occur to us to throw it away, even when we do not value it. + +When I brought my procession of human bats up into the open world +and the glare of the afternoon sun--previously blindfolding them, +in charity for eyes so long untortured by light--they were a +spectacle to look at. Skeletons, scarecrows, goblins, pathetic +frights, every one; legitimatest possible children of Monarchy +by the Grace of God and the Established Church. I muttered absently: + +"I _wish_ I could photograph them!" + +You have seen that kind of people who will never let on that they +don't know the meaning of a new big word. The more ignorant they +are, the more pitifully certain they are to pretend you haven't +shot over their heads. The queen was just one of that sort, and +was always making the stupidest blunders by reason of it. She +hesitated a moment; then her face brightened up with sudden +comprehension, and she said she would do it for me. + +I thought to myself: She? why what can she know about photography? +But it was a poor time to be thinking. When I looked around, she +was moving on the procession with an axe! + +Well, she certainly was a curious one, was Morgan le Fay. I have +seen a good many kinds of women in my time, but she laid over them +all for variety. And how sharply characteristic of her this episode +was. She had no more idea than a horse of how to photograph +a procession; but being in doubt, it was just like her to try +to do it with an axe. + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +KNIGHT-ERRANTRY AS A TRADE + +Sandy and I were on the road again, next morning, bright and early. +It was so good to open up one's lungs and take in whole luscious +barrels-ful of the blessed God's untainted, dew-fashioned, +woodland-scented air once more, after suffocating body and mind for two +days and nights in the moral and physical stenches of that intolerable +old buzzard-roost! I mean, for me: of course the place was all +right and agreeable enough for Sandy, for she had been used to +high life all her days. + +Poor girl, her jaws had had a wearisome rest now for a while, +and I was expecting to get the consequences. I was right; but she +had stood by me most helpfully in the castle, and had mightily +supported and reinforced me with gigantic foolishnesses which were +worth more for the occasion than wisdoms double their size; so +I thought she had earned a right to work her mill for a while, +if she wanted to, and I felt not a pang when she started it up: + +"Now turn we unto Sir Marhaus that rode with the damsel of thirty +winter of age southward--" + +"Are you going to see if you can work up another half-stretch on +the trail of the cowboys, Sandy?" + +"Even so, fair my lord." + +"Go ahead, then. I won't interrupt this time, if I can help it. +Begin over again; start fair, and shake out all your reefs, and +I will load my pipe and give good attention." + +"Now turn we unto Sir Marhaus that rode with the damsel of thirty +winter of age southward. And so they came into a deep forest, +and by fortune they were nighted, and rode along in a deep way, +and at the last they came into a courtelage where abode the duke +of South Marches, and there they asked harbour. And on the morn +the duke sent unto Sir Marhaus, and bad him make him ready. And +so Sir Marhaus arose and armed him, and there was a mass sung +afore him, and he brake his fast, and so mounted on horseback in +the court of the castle, there they should do the battle. So there +was the duke already on horseback, clean armed, and his six sons +by him, and every each had a spear in his hand, and so they +encountered, whereas the duke and his two sons brake their spears +upon him, but Sir Marhaus held up his spear and touched none of +them. Then came the four sons by couples, and two of them brake +their spears, and so did the other two. And all this while +Sir Marhaus touched them not. Then Sir Marhaus ran to the duke, +and smote him with his spear that horse and man fell to the earth. +And so he served his sons. And then Sir Marhaus alight down, and +bad the duke yield him or else he would slay him. And then some +of his sons recovered, and would have set upon Sir Marhaus. Then +Sir Marhaus said to the duke, Cease thy sons, or else I will do +the uttermost to you all. When the duke saw he might not escape +the death, he cried to his sons, and charged them to yield them +to Sir Marhaus. And they kneeled all down and put the pommels +of their swords to the knight, and so he received them. And then +they holp up their father, and so by their common assent promised +unto Sir Marhaus never to be foes unto King Arthur, and thereupon +at Whitsuntide after, to come he and his sons, and put them in +the king's grace.* + +[*Footnote: The story is borrowed, language and all, from the +Morte d'Arthur.--M.T.] + +"Even so standeth the history, fair Sir Boss. Now ye shall wit +that that very duke and his six sons are they whom but few days +past you also did overcome and send to Arthur's court!" + +"Why, Sandy, you can't mean it!" + +"An I speak not sooth, let it be the worse for me." + +"Well, well, well,--now who would ever have thought it? One +whole duke and six dukelets; why, Sandy, it was an elegant haul. +Knight-errantry is a most chuckle-headed trade, and it is tedious +hard work, too, but I begin to see that there _is_ money in it, +after all, if you have luck. Not that I would ever engage in it +as a business, for I wouldn't. No sound and legitimate business +can be established on a basis of speculation. A successful whirl +in the knight-errantry line--now what is it when you blow away +the nonsense and come down to the cold facts? It's just a corner +in pork, that's all, and you can't make anything else out of it. +You're rich--yes,--suddenly rich--for about a day, maybe a week; +then somebody corners the market on _you_, and down goes your +bucket-shop; ain't that so, Sandy?" + +"Whethersoever it be that my mind miscarrieth, bewraying simple +language in such sort that the words do seem to come endlong +and overthwart--" + +"There's no use in beating about the bush and trying to get around +it that way, Sandy, it's _so_, just as I say. I _know_ it's so. And, +moreover, when you come right down to the bedrock, knight-errantry +is _worse_ than pork; for whatever happens, the pork's left, and +so somebody's benefited anyway; but when the market breaks, in a +knight-errantry whirl, and every knight in the pool passes in his +checks, what have you got for assets? Just a rubbish-pile of +battered corpses and a barrel or two of busted hardware. Can you +call _those_ assets? Give me pork, every time. Am I right?" + +"Ah, peradventure my head being distraught by the manifold matters +whereunto the confusions of these but late adventured haps and +fortunings whereby not I alone nor you alone, but every each of us, +meseemeth--" + +"No, it's not your head, Sandy. Your head's all right, as far as +it goes, but you don't know business; that's where the trouble +is. It unfits you to argue about business, and you're wrong +to be always trying. However, that aside, it was a good haul, +anyway, and will breed a handsome crop of reputation in Arthur's +court. And speaking of the cowboys, what a curious country this +is for women and men that never get old. Now there's Morgan le Fay, +as fresh and young as a Vassar pullet, to all appearances, and +here is this old duke of the South Marches still slashing away with +sword and lance at his time of life, after raising such a family +as he has raised. As I understand it, Sir Gawaine killed seven +of his sons, and still he had six left for Sir Marhaus and me to +take into camp. And then there was that damsel of sixty winter +of age still excursioning around in her frosty bloom--How old +are you, Sandy?" + +It was the first time I ever struck a still place in her. The mill +had shut down for repairs, or something. + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THE OGRE'S CASTLE + +Between six and nine we made ten miles, which was plenty for a +horse carrying triple--man, woman, and armor; then we stopped +for a long nooning under some trees by a limpid brook. + +Right so came by and by a knight riding; and as he drew near he +made dolorous moan, and by the words of it I perceived that he +was cursing and swearing; yet nevertheless was I glad of his +coming, for that I saw he bore a bulletin-board whereon in letters +all of shining gold was writ: + + "USE PETERSON'S PROPHYLACTIC TOOTH-BRUSH--ALL THE GO." + +I was glad of his coming, for even by this token I knew him for +knight of mine. It was Sir Madok de la Montaine, a burly great +fellow whose chief distinction was that he had come within an ace +of sending Sir Launcelot down over his horse-tail once. He was +never long in a stranger's presence without finding some pretext +or other to let out that great fact. But there was another fact +of nearly the same size, which he never pushed upon anybody unasked, +and yet never withheld when asked: that was, that the reason he +didn't quite succeed was, that he was interrupted and sent down +over horse-tail himself. This innocent vast lubber did not see +any particular difference between the two facts. I liked him, +for he was earnest in his work, and very valuable. And he was so +fine to look at, with his broad mailed shoulders, and the grand +leonine set of his plumed head, and his big shield with its quaint +device of a gauntleted hand clutching a prophylactic tooth-brush, +with motto: "Try Noyoudont." This was a tooth-wash that I was +introducing. + +He was aweary, he said, and indeed he looked it; but he would not +alight. He said he was after the stove-polish man; and with this +he broke out cursing and swearing anew. The bulletin-boarder +referred to was Sir Ossaise of Surluse, a brave knight, and of +considerable celebrity on account of his having tried conclusions +in a tournament once, with no less a Mogul than Sir Gaheris +himself--although not successfully. He was of a light and laughing +disposition, and to him nothing in this world was serious. It was +for this reason that I had chosen him to work up a stove-polish +sentiment. There were no stoves yet, and so there could be nothing +serious about stove-polish. All that the agent needed to do was +to deftly and by degrees prepare the public for the great change, +and have them established in predilections toward neatness against +the time when the stove should appear upon the stage. + +Sir Madok was very bitter, and brake out anew with cursings. He +said he had cursed his soul to rags; and yet he would not get down +from his horse, neither would he take any rest, or listen to any +comfort, until he should have found Sir Ossaise and settled this +account. It appeared, by what I could piece together of the +unprofane fragments of his statement, that he had chanced upon +Sir Ossaise at dawn of the morning, and been told that if he would +make a short cut across the fields and swamps and broken hills and +glades, he could head off a company of travelers who would be rare +customers for prophylactics and tooth-wash. With characteristic +zeal Sir Madok had plunged away at once upon this quest, and after +three hours of awful crosslot riding had overhauled his game. And +behold, it was the five patriarchs that had been released from the +dungeons the evening before! Poor old creatures, it was all of +twenty years since any one of them had known what it was to be +equipped with any remaining snag or remnant of a tooth. + +"Blank-blank-blank him," said Sir Madok, "an I do not stove-polish +him an I may find him, leave it to me; for never no knight that +hight Ossaise or aught else may do me this disservice and bide +on live, an I may find him, the which I have thereunto sworn a +great oath this day." + +And with these words and others, he lightly took his spear and +gat him thence. In the middle of the afternoon we came upon one +of those very patriarchs ourselves, in the edge of a poor village. +He was basking in the love of relatives and friends whom he had not +seen for fifty years; and about him and caressing him were also +descendants of his own body whom he had never seen at all till now; +but to him these were all strangers, his memory was gone, his mind +was stagnant. It seemed incredible that a man could outlast half +a century shut up in a dark hole like a rat, but here were his old +wife and some old comrades to testify to it. They could remember +him as he was in the freshness and strength of his young manhood, +when he kissed his child and delivered it to its mother's hands +and went away into that long oblivion. The people at the castle +could not tell within half a generation the length of time the man +had been shut up there for his unrecorded and forgotten offense; +but this old wife knew; and so did her old child, who stood there +among her married sons and daughters trying to realize a father +who had been to her a name, a thought, a formless image, a tradition, +all her life, and now was suddenly concreted into actual flesh +and blood and set before her face. + +It was a curious situation; yet it is not on that account that +I have made room for it here, but on account of a thing which +seemed to me still more curious. To wit, that this dreadful matter +brought from these downtrodden people no outburst of rage against +these oppressors. They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty +and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but +a kindness. Yes, here was a curious revelation, indeed, of the +depth to which this people had been sunk in slavery. Their entire +being was reduced to a monotonous dead level of patience, resignation, +dumb uncomplaining acceptance of whatever might befall them in +this life. Their very imagination was dead. When you can say +that of a man, he has struck bottom, I reckon; there is no lower +deep for him. + +I rather wished I had gone some other road. This was not the sort +of experience for a statesman to encounter who was planning out +a peaceful revolution in his mind. For it could not help bringing +up the unget-aroundable fact that, all gentle cant and philosophizing +to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in the world ever did +achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: +it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed must +_begin_ in blood, whatever may answer afterward. If history teaches +anything, it teaches that. What this folk needed, then, was a +Reign of Terror and a guillotine, and I was the wrong man for them. + +Two days later, toward noon, Sandy began to show signs of excitement +and feverish expectancy. She said we were approaching the ogre's +castle. I was surprised into an uncomfortable shock. The object +of our quest had gradually dropped out of my mind; this sudden +resurrection of it made it seem quite a real and startling thing +for a moment, and roused up in me a smart interest. Sandy's +excitement increased every moment; and so did mine, for that sort +of thing is catching. My heart got to thumping. You can't reason +with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which +the intellect scorns. Presently, when Sandy slid from the horse, +motioned me to stop, and went creeping stealthily, with her head +bent nearly to her knees, toward a row of bushes that bordered +a declivity, the thumpings grew stronger and quicker. And they +kept it up while she was gaining her ambush and getting her glimpse +over the declivity; and also while I was creeping to her side on +my knees. Her eyes were burning now, as she pointed with her +finger, and said in a panting whisper: + +"The castle! The castle! Lo, where it looms!" + +What a welcome disappointment I experienced! I said: + +"Castle? It is nothing but a pigsty; a pigsty with a wattled +fence around it." + +She looked surprised and distressed. The animation faded out of +her face; and during many moments she was lost in thought and +silent. Then: + +"It was not enchanted aforetime," she said in a musing fashion, +as if to herself. "And how strange is this marvel, and how awful +--that to the one perception it is enchanted and dight in a base +and shameful aspect; yet to the perception of the other it is not +enchanted, hath suffered no change, but stands firm and stately +still, girt with its moat and waving its banners in the blue air +from its towers. And God shield us, how it pricks the heart to +see again these gracious captives, and the sorrow deepened in their +sweet faces! We have tarried along, and are to blame." + +I saw my cue. The castle was enchanted to _me_, not to her. It would +be wasted time to try to argue her out of her delusion, it couldn't +be done; I must just humor it. So I said: + +"This is a common case--the enchanting of a thing to one eye and +leaving it in its proper form to another. You have heard of it +before, Sandy, though you haven't happened to experience it. +But no harm is done. In fact, it is lucky the way it is. If these +ladies were hogs to everybody and to themselves, it would be +necessary to break the enchantment, and that might be impossible +if one failed to find out the particular process of the enchantment. +And hazardous, too; for in attempting a disenchantment without the +true key, you are liable to err, and turn your hogs into dogs, +and the dogs into cats, the cats into rats, and so on, and end by +reducing your materials to nothing finally, or to an odorless gas +which you can't follow--which, of course, amounts to the same +thing. But here, by good luck, no one's eyes but mine are under +the enchantment, and so it is of no consequence to dissolve it. +These ladies remain ladies to you, and to themselves, and to +everybody else; and at the same time they will suffer in no way +from my delusion, for when I know that an ostensible hog is a +lady, that is enough for me, I know how to treat her." + +"Thanks, oh, sweet my lord, thou talkest like an angel. And I know +that thou wilt deliver them, for that thou art minded to great +deeds and art as strong a knight of your hands and as brave to will +and to do, as any that is on live." + +"I will not leave a princess in the sty, Sandy. Are those three +yonder that to my disordered eyes are starveling swine-herds--" + +"The ogres, Are _they_ changed also? It is most wonderful. Now +am I fearful; for how canst thou strike with sure aim when five of +their nine cubits of stature are to thee invisible? Ah, go warily, +fair sir; this is a mightier emprise than I wend." + +"You be easy, Sandy. All I need to know is, how _much_ of an ogre +is invisible; then I know how to locate his vitals. Don't you be +afraid, I will make short work of these bunco-steerers. Stay +where you are." + +I left Sandy kneeling there, corpse-faced but plucky and hopeful, +and rode down to the pigsty, and struck up a trade with the +swine-herds. I won their gratitude by buying out all the hogs +at the lump sum of sixteen pennies, which was rather above latest +quotations. I was just in time; for the Church, the lord of the +manor, and the rest of the tax-gatherers would have been along +next day and swept off pretty much all the stock, leaving the +swine-herds very short of hogs and Sandy out of princesses. But +now the tax people could be paid in cash, and there would be +a stake left besides. One of the men had ten children; and he +said that last year when a priest came and of his ten pigs took +the fattest one for tithes, the wife burst out upon him, and offered +him a child and said: + +"Thou beast without bowels of mercy, why leave me my child, yet +rob me of the wherewithal to feed it?" + +How curious. The same thing had happened in the Wales of my day, +under this same old Established Church, which was supposed by many +to have changed its nature when it changed its disguise. + +I sent the three men away, and then opened the sty gate and beckoned +Sandy to come--which she did; and not leisurely, but with the rush +of a prairie fire. And when I saw her fling herself upon those +hogs, with tears of joy running down her cheeks, and strain them +to her heart, and kiss them, and caress them, and call them +reverently by grand princely names, I was ashamed of her, ashamed +of the human race. + +We had to drive those hogs home--ten miles; and no ladies were +ever more fickle-minded or contrary. They would stay in no road, +no path; they broke out through the brush on all sides, and flowed +away in all directions, over rocks, and hills, and the roughest +places they could find. And they must not be struck, or roughly +accosted; Sandy could not bear to see them treated in ways unbecoming +their rank. The troublesomest old sow of the lot had to be called +my Lady, and your Highness, like the rest. It is annoying and +difficult to scour around after hogs, in armor. There was one +small countess, with an iron ring in her snout and hardly any hair +on her back, that was the devil for perversity. She gave me a race +of an hour, over all sorts of country, and then we were right where +we had started from, having made not a rod of real progress. +I seized her at last by the tail, and brought her along squealing. +When I overtook Sandy she was horrified, and said it was in the +last degree indelicate to drag a countess by her train. + +We got the hogs home just at dark--most of them. The princess +Nerovens de Morganore was missing, and two of her ladies in waiting: +namely, Miss Angela Bohun, and the Demoiselle Elaine Courtemains, +the former of these two being a young black sow with a white star +in her forehead, and the latter a brown one with thin legs and a +slight limp in the forward shank on the starboard side--a couple +of the tryingest blisters to drive that I ever saw. Also among +the missing were several mere baronesses--and I wanted them to +stay missing; but no, all that sausage-meat had to be found; so +servants were sent out with torches to scour the woods and hills +to that end. + +Of course, the whole drove was housed in the house, and, great +guns!--well, I never saw anything like it. Nor ever heard anything +like it. And never smelt anything like it. It was like an +insurrection in a gasometer. + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE PILGRIMS + +When I did get to bed at last I was unspeakably tired; the stretching +out, and the relaxing of the long-tense muscles, how luxurious, +how delicious! but that was as far as I could get--sleep was out of +the question for the present. The ripping and tearing and squealing +of the nobility up and down the halls and corridors was pandemonium +come again, and kept me broad awake. Being awake, my thoughts +were busy, of course; and mainly they busied themselves with Sandy's +curious delusion. Here she was, as sane a person as the kingdom +could produce; and yet, from my point of view she was acting like +a crazy woman. My land, the power of training! of influence! +of education! It can bring a body up to believe anything. I had +to put myself in Sandy's place to realize that she was not a +lunatic. Yes, and put her in mine, to demonstrate how easy it is +to seem a lunatic to a person who has not been taught as you have +been taught. If I had told Sandy I had seen a wagon, uninfluenced +by enchantment, spin along fifty miles an hour; had seen a man, +unequipped with magic powers, get into a basket and soar out of +sight among the clouds; and had listened, without any necromancer's +help, to the conversation of a person who was several hundred miles +away, Sandy would not merely have supposed me to be crazy, she +would have thought she knew it. Everybody around her believed in +enchantments; nobody had any doubts; to doubt that a castle could +be turned into a sty, and its occupants into hogs, would have been +the same as my doubting among Connecticut people the actuality +of the telephone and its wonders,--and in both cases would be +absolute proof of a diseased mind, an unsettled reason. Yes, Sandy +was sane; that must be admitted. If I also would be sane--to Sandy +--I must keep my superstitions about unenchanted and unmiraculous +locomotives, balloons, and telephones, to myself. Also, I believed +that the world was not flat, and hadn't pillars under it to support +it, nor a canopy over it to turn off a universe of water that +occupied all space above; but as I was the only person in the kingdom +afflicted with such impious and criminal opinions, I recognized +that it would be good wisdom to keep quiet about this matter, too, +if I did not wish to be suddenly shunned and forsaken by everybody +as a madman. + +The next morning Sandy assembled the swine in the dining-room and +gave them their breakfast, waiting upon them personally and +manifesting in every way the deep reverence which the natives of +her island, ancient and modern, have always felt for rank, let its +outward casket and the mental and moral contents be what they may. +I could have eaten with the hogs if I had had birth approaching my +lofty official rank; but I hadn't, and so accepted the unavoidable +slight and made no complaint. Sandy and I had our breakfast at +the second table. The family were not at home. I said: + +"How many are in the family, Sandy, and where do they keep themselves?" + +"Family?" + +"Yes." + +"Which family, good my lord?" + +"Why, this family; your own family." + +"Sooth to say, I understand you not. I have no family." + +"No family? Why, Sandy, isn't this your home?" + +"Now how indeed might that be? I have no home." + +"Well, then, whose house is this?" + +"Ah, wit you well I would tell you an I knew myself." + +"Come--you don't even know these people? Then who invited us here?" + +"None invited us. We but came; that is all." + +"Why, woman, this is a most extraordinary performance. The +effrontery of it is beyond admiration. We blandly march into +a man's house, and cram it full of the only really valuable nobility +the sun has yet discovered in the earth, and then it turns out +that we don't even know the man's name. How did you ever venture +to take this extravagant liberty? I supposed, of course, it was +your home. What will the man say?" + +"What will he say? Forsooth what can he say but give thanks?" + +"Thanks for what?" + +Her face was filled with a puzzled surprise: + +"Verily, thou troublest mine understanding with strange words. +Do ye dream that one of his estate is like to have the honor twice +in his life to entertain company such as we have brought to grace +his house withal?" + +"Well, no--when you come to that. No, it's an even bet that this +is the first time he has had a treat like this." + +"Then let him be thankful, and manifest the same by grateful speech +and due humility; he were a dog, else, and the heir and ancestor +of dogs." + +To my mind, the situation was uncomfortable. It might become more so. +It might be a good idea to muster the hogs and move on. So I said: + +"The day is wasting, Sandy. It is time to get the nobility together +and be moving." + +"Wherefore, fair sir and Boss?" + +"We want to take them to their home, don't we?" + +"La, but list to him! They be of all the regions of the earth! +Each must hie to her own home; wend you we might do all these +journeys in one so brief life as He hath appointed that created +life, and thereto death likewise with help of Adam, who by sin +done through persuasion of his helpmeet, she being wrought upon +and bewrayed by the beguilements of the great enemy of man, that +serpent hight Satan, aforetime consecrated and set apart unto that +evil work by overmastering spite and envy begotten in his heart +through fell ambitions that did blight and mildew a nature erst +so white and pure whenso it hove with the shining multitudes +its brethren-born in glade and shade of that fair heaven wherein +all such as native be to that rich estate and--" + +"Great Scott!" + +"My lord?" + +"Well, you know we haven't got time for this sort of thing. Don't +you see, we could distribute these people around the earth in less +time than it is going to take you to explain that we can't. We +mustn't talk now, we must act. You want to be careful; you mustn't +let your mill get the start of you that way, at a time like this. +To business now--and sharp's the word. Who is to take the +aristocracy home?" + +"Even their friends. These will come for them from the far parts +of the earth." + +This was lightning from a clear sky, for unexpectedness; and the +relief of it was like pardon to a prisoner. She would remain to +deliver the goods, of course. + +"Well, then, Sandy, as our enterprise is handsomely and successfully +ended, I will go home and report; and if ever another one--" + +"I also am ready; I will go with thee." + +This was recalling the pardon. + +"How? You will go with me? Why should you?" + +"Will I be traitor to my knight, dost think? That were dishonor. +I may not part from thee until in knightly encounter in the field +some overmatching champion shall fairly win and fairly wear me. +I were to blame an I thought that that might ever hap." + +"Elected for the long term," I sighed to myself. "I may as well +make the best of it." So then I spoke up and said: + +"All right; let us make a start." + +While she was gone to cry her farewells over the pork, I gave that +whole peerage away to the servants. And I asked them to take +a duster and dust around a little where the nobilities had mainly +lodged and promenaded; but they considered that that would be +hardly worth while, and would moreover be a rather grave departure +from custom, and therefore likely to make talk. A departure from +custom--that settled it; it was a nation capable of committing any +crime but that. The servants said they would follow the fashion, +a fashion grown sacred through immemorial observance; they would +scatter fresh rushes in all the rooms and halls, and then the +evidence of the aristocratic visitation would be no longer visible. +It was a kind of satire on Nature: it was the scientific method, +the geologic method; it deposited the history of the family in +a stratified record; and the antiquary could dig through it and +tell by the remains of each period what changes of diet the family +had introduced successively for a hundred years. + +The first thing we struck that day was a procession of pilgrims. +It was not going our way, but we joined it, nevertheless; for it +was hourly being borne in upon me now, that if I would govern +this country wisely, I must be posted in the details of its life, +and not at second hand, but by personal observation and scrutiny. + +This company of pilgrims resembled Chaucer's in this: that it +had in it a sample of about all the upper occupations and professions +the country could show, and a corresponding variety of costume. +There were young men and old men, young women and old women, +lively folk and grave folk. They rode upon mules and horses, and +there was not a side-saddle in the party; for this specialty was +to remain unknown in England for nine hundred years yet. + +It was a pleasant, friendly, sociable herd; pious, happy, merry and +full of unconscious coarsenesses and innocent indecencies. What +they regarded as the merry tale went the continual round and caused +no more embarrassment than it would have caused in the best English +society twelve centuries later. Practical jokes worthy of the +English wits of the first quarter of the far-off nineteenth century +were sprung here and there and yonder along the line, and compelled +the delightedest applause; and sometimes when a bright remark was +made at one end of the procession and started on its travels toward +the other, you could note its progress all the way by the sparkling +spray of laughter it threw off from its bows as it plowed along; +and also by the blushes of the mules in its wake. + +Sandy knew the goal and purpose of this pilgrimage, and she posted +me. She said: + +"They journey to the Valley of Holiness, for to be blessed of the +godly hermits and drink of the miraculous waters and be cleansed +from sin." + +"Where is this watering place?" + +"It lieth a two-day journey hence, by the borders of the land that +hight the Cuckoo Kingdom." + +"Tell me about it. Is it a celebrated place?" + +"Oh, of a truth, yes. There be none more so. Of old time there +lived there an abbot and his monks. Belike were none in the world +more holy than these; for they gave themselves to study of pious +books, and spoke not the one to the other, or indeed to any, and +ate decayed herbs and naught thereto, and slept hard, and prayed +much, and washed never; also they wore the same garment until it +fell from their bodies through age and decay. Right so came they +to be known of all the world by reason of these holy austerities, +and visited by rich and poor, and reverenced." + +"Proceed." + +"But always there was lack of water there. Whereas, upon a time, +the holy abbot prayed, and for answer a great stream of clear +water burst forth by miracle in a desert place. Now were the +fickle monks tempted of the Fiend, and they wrought with their +abbot unceasingly by beggings and beseechings that he would construct +a bath; and when he was become aweary and might not resist more, +he said have ye your will, then, and granted that they asked. +Now mark thou what 'tis to forsake the ways of purity the which +He loveth, and wanton with such as be worldly and an offense. +These monks did enter into the bath and come thence washed as +white as snow; and lo, in that moment His sign appeared, in +miraculous rebuke! for His insulted waters ceased to flow, and +utterly vanished away." + +"They fared mildly, Sandy, considering how that kind of crime +is regarded in this country." + +"Belike; but it was their first sin; and they had been of perfect +life for long, and differing in naught from the angels. Prayers, +tears, torturings of the flesh, all was vain to beguile that water +to flow again. Even processions; even burnt-offerings; even votive +candles to the Virgin, did fail every each of them; and all in +the land did marvel." + +"How odd to find that even this industry has its financial panics, +and at times sees its assignats and greenbacks languish to zero, +and everything come to a standstill. Go on, Sandy." + +"And so upon a time, after year and day, the good abbot made humble +surrender and destroyed the bath. And behold, His anger was in that +moment appeased, and the waters gushed richly forth again, and even +unto this day they have not ceased to flow in that generous measure." + +"Then I take it nobody has washed since." + +"He that would essay it could have his halter free; yes, and +swiftly would he need it, too." + +"The community has prospered since?" + +"Even from that very day. The fame of the miracle went abroad +into all lands. From every land came monks to join; they came +even as the fishes come, in shoals; and the monastery added building +to building, and yet others to these, and so spread wide its arms +and took them in. And nuns came, also; and more again, and yet +more; and built over against the monastery on the yon side of the +vale, and added building to building, until mighty was that nunnery. +And these were friendly unto those, and they joined their loving +labors together, and together they built a fair great foundling +asylum midway of the valley between." + +"You spoke of some hermits, Sandy." + +"These have gathered there from the ends of the earth. A hermit +thriveth best where there be multitudes of pilgrims. Ye shall not +find no hermit of no sort wanting. If any shall mention a hermit +of a kind he thinketh new and not to be found but in some far +strange land, let him but scratch among the holes and caves and +swamps that line that Valley of Holiness, and whatsoever be his +breed, it skills not, he shall find a sample of it there." + +I closed up alongside of a burly fellow with a fat good-humored +face, purposing to make myself agreeable and pick up some further +crumbs of fact; but I had hardly more than scraped acquaintance +with him when he began eagerly and awkwardly to lead up, in the +immemorial way, to that same old anecdote--the one Sir Dinadan +told me, what time I got into trouble with Sir Sagramor and was +challenged of him on account of it. I excused myself and dropped +to the rear of the procession, sad at heart, willing to go hence +from this troubled life, this vale of tears, this brief day of +broken rest, of cloud and storm, of weary struggle and monotonous +defeat; and yet shrinking from the change, as remembering how long +eternity is, and how many have wended thither who know that anecdote. + +Early in the afternoon we overtook another procession of pilgrims; +but in this one was no merriment, no jokes, no laughter, no playful +ways, nor any happy giddiness, whether of youth or age. Yet both +were here, both age and youth; gray old men and women, strong men +and women of middle age, young husbands, young wives, little boys +and girls, and three babies at the breast. Even the children were +smileless; there was not a face among all these half a hundred +people but was cast down, and bore that set expression of hopelessness +which is bred of long and hard trials and old acquaintance with +despair. They were slaves. Chains led from their fettered feet +and their manacled hands to a sole-leather belt about their waists; +and all except the children were also linked together in a file +six feet apart, by a single chain which led from collar to collar +all down the line. They were on foot, and had tramped three +hundred miles in eighteen days, upon the cheapest odds and ends +of food, and stingy rations of that. They had slept in these +chains every night, bundled together like swine. They had upon +their bodies some poor rags, but they could not be said to be +clothed. Their irons had chafed the skin from their ankles and +made sores which were ulcerated and wormy. Their naked feet were +torn, and none walked without a limp. Originally there had been a +hundred of these unfortunates, but about half had been sold on +the trip. The trader in charge of them rode a horse and carried +a whip with a short handle and a long heavy lash divided into +several knotted tails at the end. With this whip he cut the +shoulders of any that tottered from weariness and pain, and +straightened them up. He did not speak; the whip conveyed his +desire without that. None of these poor creatures looked up as +we rode along by; they showed no consciousness of our presence. +And they made no sound but one; that was the dull and awful clank +of their chains from end to end of the long file, as forty-three +burdened feet rose and fell in unison. The file moved in a cloud +of its own making. + +All these faces were gray with a coating of dust. One has seen +the like of this coating upon furniture in unoccupied houses, and +has written his idle thought in it with his finger. I was reminded +of this when I noticed the faces of some of those women, young +mothers carrying babes that were near to death and freedom, how +a something in their hearts was written in the dust upon their +faces, plain to see, and lord, how plain to read! for it was the +track of tears. One of these young mothers was but a girl, and +it hurt me to the heart to read that writing, and reflect that it +was come up out of the breast of such a child, a breast that ought +not to know trouble yet, but only the gladness of the morning of +life; and no doubt-- + +She reeled just then, giddy with fatigue, and down came the lash +and flicked a flake of skin from her naked shoulder. It stung me +as if I had been hit instead. The master halted the file and +jumped from his horse. He stormed and swore at this girl, and +said she had made annoyance enough with her laziness, and as this +was the last chance he should have, he would settle the account now. +She dropped on her knees and put up her hands and began to beg, +and cry, and implore, in a passion of terror, but the master gave +no attention. He snatched the child from her, and then made the +men-slaves who were chained before and behind her throw her on +the ground and hold her there and expose her body; and then he +laid on with his lash like a madman till her back was flayed, she +shrieking and struggling the while piteously. One of the men who +was holding her turned away his face, and for this humanity he was +reviled and flogged. + +All our pilgrims looked on and commented--on the expert way in +which the whip was handled. They were too much hardened by lifelong +everyday familiarity with slavery to notice that there was anything +else in the exhibition that invited comment. This was what slavery +could do, in the way of ossifying what one may call the superior +lobe of human feeling; for these pilgrims were kind-hearted people, +and they would not have allowed that man to treat a horse like that. + +I wanted to stop the whole thing and set the slaves free, but that +would not do. I must not interfere too much and get myself a name +for riding over the country's laws and the citizen's rights +roughshod. If I lived and prospered I would be the death of +slavery, that I was resolved upon; but I would try to fix it so +that when I became its executioner it should be by command of +the nation. + +Just here was the wayside shop of a smith; and now arrived a landed +proprietor who had bought this girl a few miles back, deliverable +here where her irons could be taken off. They were removed; then +there was a squabble between the gentleman and the dealer as to +which should pay the blacksmith. The moment the girl was delivered +from her irons, she flung herself, all tears and frantic sobbings, +into the arms of the slave who had turned away his face when she +was whipped. He strained her to his breast, and smothered her +face and the child's with kisses, and washed them with the rain +of his tears. I suspected. I inquired. Yes, I was right; it was +husband and wife. They had to be torn apart by force; the girl +had to be dragged away, and she struggled and fought and shrieked +like one gone mad till a turn of the road hid her from sight; and +even after that, we could still make out the fading plaint of those +receding shrieks. And the husband and father, with his wife and +child gone, never to be seen by him again in life?--well, the look +of him one might not bear at all, and so I turned away; but I knew +I should never get his picture out of my mind again, and there +it is to this day, to wring my heartstrings whenever I think of it. + +We put up at the inn in a village just at nightfall, and when +I rose next morning and looked abroad, I was ware where a knight +came riding in the golden glory of the new day, and recognized him +for knight of mine--Sir Ozana le Cure Hardy. He was in the +gentlemen's furnishing line, and his missionarying specialty was +plug hats. He was clothed all in steel, in the beautifulest armor +of the time--up to where his helmet ought to have been; but he +hadn't any helmet, he wore a shiny stove-pipe hat, and was ridiculous +a spectacle as one might want to see. It was another of my +surreptitious schemes for extinguishing knighthood by making it +grotesque and absurd. Sir Ozana's saddle was hung about with +leather hat boxes, and every time he overcame a wandering knight +he swore him into my service and fitted him with a plug and made +him wear it. I dressed and ran down to welcome Sir Ozana and +get his news. + +"How is trade?" I asked. + +"Ye will note that I have but these four left; yet were they sixteen +whenas I got me from Camelot." + +"Why, you have certainly done nobly, Sir Ozana. Where have you +been foraging of late?" + +"I am but now come from the Valley of Holiness, please you sir." + +"I am pointed for that place myself. Is there anything stirring +in the monkery, more than common?" + +"By the mass ye may not question it!.... Give him good feed, +boy, and stint it not, an thou valuest thy crown; so get ye lightly +to the stable and do even as I bid.... Sir, it is parlous news +I bring, and--be these pilgrims? Then ye may not do better, good +folk, than gather and hear the tale I have to tell, sith it +concerneth you, forasmuch as ye go to find that ye will not find, +and seek that ye will seek in vain, my life being hostage for my +word, and my word and message being these, namely: That a hap +has happened whereof the like has not been seen no more but once +this two hundred years, which was the first and last time that +that said misfortune strake the holy valley in that form by +commandment of the Most High whereto by reasons just and causes +thereunto contributing, wherein the matter--" + +"The miraculous fount hath ceased to flow!" This shout burst from +twenty pilgrim mouths at once. + +"Ye say well, good people. I was verging to it, even when ye spake." + +"Has somebody been washing again?" + +"Nay, it is suspected, but none believe it. It is thought to be +some other sin, but none wit what." + +"How are they feeling about the calamity?" + +"None may describe it in words. The fount is these nine days dry. +The prayers that did begin then, and the lamentations in sackcloth +and ashes, and the holy processions, none of these have ceased +nor night nor day; and so the monks and the nuns and the foundlings +be all exhausted, and do hang up prayers writ upon parchment, +sith that no strength is left in man to lift up voice. And at last +they sent for thee, Sir Boss, to try magic and enchantment; and +if you could not come, then was the messenger to fetch Merlin, +and he is there these three days now, and saith he will fetch that +water though he burst the globe and wreck its kingdoms to accomplish +it; and right bravely doth he work his magic and call upon his +hellions to hie them hither and help, but not a whiff of moisture +hath he started yet, even so much as might qualify as mist upon +a copper mirror an ye count not the barrel of sweat he sweateth +betwixt sun and sun over the dire labors of his task; and if ye--" + +Breakfast was ready. As soon as it was over I showed to Sir Ozana +these words which I had written on the inside of his hat: "Chemical +Department, Laboratory extension, Section G. Pxxp. Send two of +first size, two of No. 3, and six of No. 4, together with the proper +complementary details--and two of my trained assistants." And I said: + +"Now get you to Camelot as fast as you can fly, brave knight, and +show the writing to Clarence, and tell him to have these required +matters in the Valley of Holiness with all possible dispatch." + +"I will well, Sir Boss," and he was off. + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +THE HOLY FOUNTAIN + +The pilgrims were human beings. Otherwise they would have acted +differently. They had come a long and difficult journey, and now +when the journey was nearly finished, and they learned that the main +thing they had come for had ceased to exist, they didn't do as +horses or cats or angle-worms would probably have done--turn back +and get at something profitable--no, anxious as they had before +been to see the miraculous fountain, they were as much as forty +times as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be. +There is no accounting for human beings. + +We made good time; and a couple of hours before sunset we stood +upon the high confines of the Valley of Holiness, and our eyes +swept it from end to end and noted its features. That is, its +large features. These were the three masses of buildings. They +were distant and isolated temporalities shrunken to toy constructions +in the lonely waste of what seemed a desert--and was. Such a scene +is always mournful, it is so impressively still, and looks so +steeped in death. But there was a sound here which interrupted +the stillness only to add to its mournfulness; this was the faint +far sound of tolling bells which floated fitfully to us on the +passing breeze, and so faintly, so softly, that we hardly knew +whether we heard it with our ears or with our spirits. + +We reached the monastery before dark, and there the males were +given lodging, but the women were sent over to the nunnery. The +bells were close at hand now, and their solemn booming smote +upon the ear like a message of doom. A superstitious despair +possessed the heart of every monk and published itself in his +ghastly face. Everywhere, these black-robed, soft-sandaled, +tallow-visaged specters appeared, flitted about and disappeared, +noiseless as the creatures of a troubled dream, and as uncanny. + +The old abbot's joy to see me was pathetic. Even to tears; but +he did the shedding himself. He said: + +"Delay not, son, but get to thy saving work. An we bring not +the water back again, and soon, we are ruined, and the good work +of two hundred years must end. And see thou do it with enchantments +that be holy, for the Church will not endure that work in her cause +be done by devil's magic." + +"When I work, Father, be sure there will be no devil's work +connected with it. I shall use no arts that come of the devil, +and no elements not created by the hand of God. But is Merlin +working strictly on pious lines?" + +"Ah, he said he would, my son, he said he would, and took oath +to make his promise good." + +"Well, in that case, let him proceed." + +"But surely you will not sit idle by, but help?" + +"It will not answer to mix methods, Father; neither would it be +professional courtesy. Two of a trade must not underbid each +other. We might as well cut rates and be done with it; it would +arrive at that in the end. Merlin has the contract; no other +magician can touch it till he throws it up." + +"But I will take it from him; it is a terrible emergency and the +act is thereby justified. And if it were not so, who will give +law to the Church? The Church giveth law to all; and what she +wills to do, that she may do, hurt whom it may. I will take it +from him; you shall begin upon the moment." + +"It may not be, Father. No doubt, as you say, where power is +supreme, one can do as one likes and suffer no injury; but we poor +magicians are not so situated. Merlin is a very good magician +in a small way, and has quite a neat provincial reputation. He +is struggling along, doing the best he can, and it would not be +etiquette for me to take his job until he himself abandons it." + +The abbot's face lighted. + +"Ah, that is simple. There are ways to persuade him to abandon it." + +"No-no, Father, it skills not, as these people say. If he were +persuaded against his will, he would load that well with a malicious +enchantment which would balk me until I found out its secret. +It might take a month. I could set up a little enchantment of +mine which I call the telephone, and he could not find out its +secret in a hundred years. Yes, you perceive, he might block me +for a month. Would you like to risk a month in a dry time like this?" + +"A month! The mere thought of it maketh me to shudder. Have it +thy way, my son. But my heart is heavy with this disappointment. +Leave me, and let me wear my spirit with weariness and waiting, +even as I have done these ten long days, counterfeiting thus +the thing that is called rest, the prone body making outward sign +of repose where inwardly is none." + +Of course, it would have been best, all round, for Merlin to waive +etiquette and quit and call it half a day, since he would never be +able to start that water, for he was a true magician of the time; +which is to say, the big miracles, the ones that gave him his +reputation, always had the luck to be performed when nobody but +Merlin was present; he couldn't start this well with all this crowd +around to see; a crowd was as bad for a magician's miracle in +that day as it was for a spiritualist's miracle in mine; there was +sure to be some skeptic on hand to turn up the gas at the crucial +moment and spoil everything. But I did not want Merlin to retire +from the job until I was ready to take hold of it effectively +myself; and I could not do that until I got my things from Camelot, +and that would take two or three days. + +My presence gave the monks hope, and cheered them up a good deal; +insomuch that they ate a square meal that night for the first time +in ten days. As soon as their stomachs had been properly reinforced +with food, their spirits began to rise fast; when the mead began to +go round they rose faster. By the time everybody was half-seas over, +the holy community was in good shape to make a night of it; so we +stayed by the board and put it through on that line. Matters got +to be very jolly. Good old questionable stories were told that made +the tears run down and cavernous mouths stand wide and the round +bellies shake with laughter; and questionable songs were bellowed out +in a mighty chorus that drowned the boom of the tolling bells. + +At last I ventured a story myself; and vast was the success of it. +Not right off, of course, for the native of those islands does +not, as a rule, dissolve upon the early applications of a humorous +thing; but the fifth time I told it, they began to crack in places; +the eight time I told it, they began to crumble; at the twelfth +repetition they fell apart in chunks; and at the fifteenth they +disintegrated, and I got a broom and swept them up. This language +is figurative. Those islanders--well, they are slow pay at first, +in the matter of return for your investment of effort, but in the end +they make the pay of all other nations poor and small by contrast. + +I was at the well next day betimes. Merlin was there, enchanting +away like a beaver, but not raising the moisture. He was not in +a pleasant humor; and every time I hinted that perhaps this contract +was a shade too hefty for a novice he unlimbered his tongue and +cursed like a bishop--French bishop of the Regency days, I mean. + +Matters were about as I expected to find them. The "fountain" was +an ordinary well, it had been dug in the ordinary way, and stoned up +in the ordinary way. There was no miracle about it. Even the lie +that had created its reputation was not miraculous; I could have +told it myself, with one hand tied behind me. The well was in a +dark chamber which stood in the center of a cut-stone chapel, whose +walls were hung with pious pictures of a workmanship that would +have made a chromo feel good; pictures historically commemorative +of curative miracles which had been achieved by the waters when +nobody was looking. That is, nobody but angels; they are always +on deck when there is a miracle to the fore--so as to get put in +the picture, perhaps. Angels are as fond of that as a fire company; +look at the old masters. + +The well-chamber was dimly lighted by lamps; the water was drawn +with a windlass and chain by monks, and poured into troughs which +delivered it into stone reservoirs outside in the chapel--when +there was water to draw, I mean--and none but monks could enter +the well-chamber. I entered it, for I had temporary authority +to do so, by courtesy of my professional brother and subordinate. +But he hadn't entered it himself. He did everything by incantations; +he never worked his intellect. If he had stepped in there and used +his eyes, instead of his disordered mind, he could have cured +the well by natural means, and then turned it into a miracle in +the customary way; but no, he was an old numskull, a magician who +believed in his own magic; and no magician can thrive who is +handicapped with a superstition like that. + +I had an idea that the well had sprung a leak; that some of the +wall stones near the bottom had fallen and exposed fissures that +allowed the water to escape. I measured the chain--98 feet. Then +I called in a couple of monks, locked the door, took a candle, and +made them lower me in the bucket. When the chain was all paid out, +the candle confirmed my suspicion; a considerable section of the +wall was gone, exposing a good big fissure. + +I almost regretted that my theory about the well's trouble was +correct, because I had another one that had a showy point or two +about it for a miracle. I remembered that in America, many +centuries later, when an oil well ceased to flow, they used to +blast it out with a dynamite torpedo. If I should find this well +dry and no explanation of it, I could astonish these people most +nobly by having a person of no especial value drop a dynamite +bomb into it. It was my idea to appoint Merlin. However, it was +plain that there was no occasion for the bomb. One cannot have +everything the way he would like it. A man has no business to +be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his +mind to get even. That is what I did. I said to myself, I am in no +hurry, I can wait; that bomb will come good yet. And it did, too. + +When I was above ground again, I turned out the monks, and let down +a fish-line; the well was a hundred and fifty feet deep, and there +was forty-one feet of water in it. I called in a monk and asked: + +"How deep is the well?" + +"That, sir, I wit not, having never been told." + +"How does the water usually stand in it?" + +"Near to the top, these two centuries, as the testimony goeth, +brought down to us through our predecessors." + +It was true--as to recent times at least--for there was witness +to it, and better witness than a monk; only about twenty or thirty +feet of the chain showed wear and use, the rest of it was unworn +and rusty. What had happened when the well gave out that other +time? Without doubt some practical person had come along and +mended the leak, and then had come up and told the abbot he had +discovered by divination that if the sinful bath were destroyed +the well would flow again. The leak had befallen again now, and +these children would have prayed, and processioned, and tolled +their bells for heavenly succor till they all dried up and blew +away, and no innocent of them all would ever have thought to drop +a fish-line into the well or go down in it and find out what was +really the matter. Old habit of mind is one of the toughest things +to get away from in the world. It transmits itself like physical +form and feature; and for a man, in those days, to have had an idea +that his ancestors hadn't had, would have brought him under suspicion +of being illegitimate. I said to the monk: + +"It is a difficult miracle to restore water in a dry well, but we +will try, if my brother Merlin fails. Brother Merlin is a very +passable artist, but only in the parlor-magic line, and he may +not succeed; in fact, is not likely to succeed. But that should +be nothing to his discredit; the man that can do _this_ kind of +miracle knows enough to keep hotel." + +"Hotel? I mind not to have heard--" + +"Of hotel? It's what you call hostel. The man that can do this +miracle can keep hostel. I can do this miracle; I shall do this +miracle; yet I do not try to conceal from you that it is a miracle +to tax the occult powers to the last strain." + +"None knoweth that truth better than the brotherhood, indeed; for +it is of record that aforetime it was parlous difficult and took +a year. Natheless, God send you good success, and to that end +will we pray." + +As a matter of business it was a good idea to get the notion around +that the thing was difficult. Many a small thing has been made +large by the right kind of advertising. That monk was filled up +with the difficulty of this enterprise; he would fill up the others. +In two days the solicitude would be booming. + +On my way home at noon, I met Sandy. She had been sampling the +hermits. I said: + +"I would like to do that myself. This is Wednesday. Is there +a matinee?" + +"A which, please you, sir?" + +"Matinee. Do they keep open afternoons?" + +"Who?" + +"The hermits, of course." + +"Keep open?" + +"Yes, keep open. Isn't that plain enough? Do they knock off at noon?" + +"Knock off?" + +"Knock off?--yes, knock off. What is the matter with knock off? +I never saw such a dunderhead; can't you understand anything at all? +In plain terms, do they shut up shop, draw the game, bank the fires--" + +"Shut up shop, draw--" + +"There, never mind, let it go; you make me tired. You can't seem +to understand the simplest thing." + +"I would I might please thee, sir, and it is to me dole and sorrow +that I fail, albeit sith I am but a simple damsel and taught of +none, being from the cradle unbaptized in those deep waters of +learning that do anoint with a sovereignty him that partaketh of +that most noble sacrament, investing him with reverend state to +the mental eye of the humble mortal who, by bar and lack of that +great consecration seeth in his own unlearned estate but a symbol +of that other sort of lack and loss which men do publish to the +pitying eye with sackcloth trappings whereon the ashes of grief +do lie bepowdered and bestrewn, and so, when such shall in the +darkness of his mind encounter these golden phrases of high mystery, +these shut-up-shops, and draw-the-game, and bank-the-fires, it is +but by the grace of God that he burst not for envy of the mind that +can beget, and tongue that can deliver so great and mellow-sounding +miracles of speech, and if there do ensue confusion in that humbler +mind, and failure to divine the meanings of these wonders, then +if so be this miscomprehension is not vain but sooth and true, +wit ye well it is the very substance of worshipful dear homage and +may not lightly be misprized, nor had been, an ye had noted this +complexion of mood and mind and understood that that I would +I could not, and that I could not I might not, nor yet nor might +_nor_ could, nor might-not nor could-not, might be by advantage +turned to the desired _would_, and so I pray you mercy of my fault, +and that ye will of your kindness and your charity forgive it, good +my master and most dear lord." + +I couldn't make it all out--that is, the details--but I got the +general idea; and enough of it, too, to be ashamed. It was not +fair to spring those nineteenth century technicalities upon the +untutored infant of the sixth and then rail at her because she +couldn't get their drift; and when she was making the honest best +drive at it she could, too, and no fault of hers that she couldn't +fetch the home plate; and so I apologized. Then we meandered +pleasantly away toward the hermit holes in sociable converse +together, and better friends than ever. + +I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence +for this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station +and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless +transcontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that +I was standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the German +Language. I was so impressed with this, that sometimes when she +began to empty one of these sentences on me I unconsciously took +the very attitude of reverence, and stood uncovered; and if words +had been water, I had been drowned, sure. She had exactly the +German way; whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a +mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, +she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary +German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see +of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his +verb in his mouth. + +We drifted from hermit to hermit all the afternoon. It was a most +strange menagerie. The chief emulation among them seemed to be, +to see which could manage to be the uncleanest and most prosperous +with vermin. Their manner and attitudes were the last expression +of complacent self-righteousness. It was one anchorite's pride +to lie naked in the mud and let the insects bite him and blister +him unmolested; it was another's to lean against a rock, all day +long, conspicuous to the admiration of the throng of pilgrims +and pray; it was another's to go naked and crawl around on all fours; +it was another's to drag about with him, year in and year out, +eighty pounds of iron; it was another's to never lie down when +he slept, but to stand among the thorn-bushes and snore when there +were pilgrims around to look; a woman, who had the white hair of +age, and no other apparel, was black from crown to heel with +forty-seven years of holy abstinence from water. Groups of gazing +pilgrims stood around all and every of these strange objects, lost +in reverent wonder, and envious of the fleckless sanctity which +these pious austerities had won for them from an exacting heaven. + +By and by we went to see one of the supremely great ones. He was +a mighty celebrity; his fame had penetrated all Christendom; the +noble and the renowned journeyed from the remotest lands on the globe +to pay him reverence. His stand was in the center of the widest part +of the valley; and it took all that space to hold his crowds. + +His stand was a pillar sixty feet high, with a broad platform on +the top of it. He was now doing what he had been doing every day +for twenty years up there--bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidly +almost to his feet. It was his way of praying. I timed him with a +stop watch, and he made 1,244 revolutions in 24 minutes and +46 seconds. It seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste. +It was one of the most useful motions in mechanics, the pedal +movement; so I made a note in my memorandum book, purposing some +day to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a sewing +machine with it. I afterward carried out that scheme, and got +five years' good service out of him; in which time he turned out +upward of eighteen thousand first-rate tow-linen shirts, which +was ten a day. I worked him Sundays and all; he was going, Sundays, +the same as week days, and it was no use to waste the power. +These shirts cost me nothing but just the mere trifle for the +materials--I furnished those myself, it would not have been right +to make him do that--and they sold like smoke to pilgrims at a +dollar and a half apiece, which was the price of fifty cows or +a blooded race horse in Arthurdom. They were regarded as a perfect +protection against sin, and advertised as such by my knights +everywhere, with the paint-pot and stencil-plate; insomuch that +there was not a cliff or a bowlder or a dead wall in England but +you could read on it at a mile distance: + +"Buy the only genuine St. Stylite; patronized by the Nobility. +Patent applied for." + +There was more money in the business than one knew what to do with. +As it extended, I brought out a line of goods suitable for kings, +and a nobby thing for duchesses and that sort, with ruffles down +the forehatch and the running-gear clewed up with a featherstitch +to leeward and then hauled aft with a back-stay and triced up with +a half-turn in the standing rigging forward of the weather-gaskets. +Yes, it was a daisy. + +But about that time I noticed that the motive power had taken to +standing on one leg, and I found that there was something the matter +with the other one; so I stocked the business and unloaded, taking +Sir Bors de Ganis into camp financially along with certain of his +friends; for the works stopped within a year, and the good saint +got him to his rest. But he had earned it. I can say that for him. + +When I saw him that first time--however, his personal condition +will not quite bear description here. You can read it in the +Lives of the Saints.* + +[*All the details concerning the hermits, in this chapter, are from +Lecky--but greatly modified. This book not being a history but +only a tale, the majority of the historian's frank details were too +strong for reproduction in it.--_Editor_] + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +RESTORATION OF THE FOUNTAIN + +Saturday noon I went to the well and looked on a while. Merlin +was still burning smoke-powders, and pawing the air, and muttering +gibberish as hard as ever, but looking pretty down-hearted, for +of course he had not started even a perspiration in that well yet. +Finally I said: + +"How does the thing promise by this time, partner?" + +"Behold, I am even now busied with trial of the powerfulest +enchantment known to the princes of the occult arts in the lands +of the East; an it fail me, naught can avail. Peace, until I finish." + +He raised a smoke this time that darkened all the region, and must +have made matters uncomfortable for the hermits, for the wind +was their way, and it rolled down over their dens in a dense and +billowy fog. He poured out volumes of speech to match, and contorted +his body and sawed the air with his hands in a most extraordinary +way. At the end of twenty minutes he dropped down panting, and +about exhausted. Now arrived the abbot and several hundred monks +and nuns, and behind them a multitude of pilgrims and a couple of +acres of foundlings, all drawn by the prodigious smoke, and all +in a grand state of excitement. The abbot inquired anxiously for +results. Merlin said: + +"If any labor of mortal might break the spell that binds these +waters, this which I have but just essayed had done it. It has +failed; whereby I do now know that that which I had feared is +a truth established; the sign of this failure is, that the most +potent spirit known to the magicians of the East, and whose name +none may utter and live, has laid his spell upon this well. The +mortal does not breathe, nor ever will, who can penetrate the secret +of that spell, and without that secret none can break it. The +water will flow no more forever, good Father. I have done what +man could. Suffer me to go." + +Of course this threw the abbot into a good deal of a consternation. +He turned to me with the signs of it in his face, and said: + +"Ye have heard him. Is it true?" + +"Part of it is." + +"Not all, then, not all! What part is true?" + +"That that spirit with the Russian name has put his spell +upon the well." + +"God's wounds, then are we ruined!" + +"Possibly." + +"But not certainly? Ye mean, not certainly?" + +"That is it." + +"Wherefore, ye also mean that when he saith none can break the spell--" + +"Yes, when he says that, he says what isn't necessarily true. +There are conditions under which an effort to break it may have +some chance--that is, some small, some trifling chance--of success." + +"The conditions--" + +"Oh, they are nothing difficult. Only these: I want the well +and the surroundings for the space of half a mile, entirely to +myself from sunset to-day until I remove the ban--and nobody +allowed to cross the ground but by my authority." + +"Are these all?" + +"Yes." + +"And you have no fear to try?" + +"Oh, none. One may fail, of course; and one may also succeed. +One can try, and I am ready to chance it. I have my conditions?" + +"These and all others ye may name. I will issue commandment +to that effect." + +"Wait," said Merlin, with an evil smile. "Ye wit that he that +would break this spell must know that spirit's name?" + +"Yes, I know his name." + +"And wit you also that to know it skills not of itself, but ye +must likewise pronounce it? Ha-ha! Knew ye that?" + +"Yes, I knew that, too." + +"You had that knowledge! Art a fool? Are ye minded to utter +that name and die?" + +"Utter it? Why certainly. I would utter it if it was Welsh." + +"Ye are even a dead man, then; and I go to tell Arthur." + +"That's all right. Take your gripsack and get along. The thing +for _you_ to do is to go home and work the weather, John W. Merlin." + +It was a home shot, and it made him wince; for he was the worst +weather-failure in the kingdom. Whenever he ordered up the +danger-signals along the coast there was a week's dead calm, sure, +and every time he prophesied fair weather it rained brickbats. +But I kept him in the weather bureau right along, to undermine +his reputation. However, that shot raised his bile, and instead +of starting home to report my death, he said he would remain +and enjoy it. + +My two experts arrived in the evening, and pretty well fagged, +for they had traveled double tides. They had pack-mules along, +and had brought everything I needed--tools, pump, lead pipe, +Greek fire, sheaves of big rockets, roman candles, colored fire +sprays, electric apparatus, and a lot of sundries--everything +necessary for the stateliest kind of a miracle. They got their +supper and a nap, and about midnight we sallied out through a +solitude so wholly vacant and complete that it quite overpassed +the required conditions. We took possession of the well and its +surroundings. My boys were experts in all sorts of things, from +the stoning up of a well to the constructing of a mathematical +instrument. An hour before sunrise we had that leak mended in +ship-shape fashion, and the water began to rise. Then we stowed our +fireworks in the chapel, locked up the place, and went home to bed. + +Before the noon mass was over, we were at the well again; for there +was a deal to do yet, and I was determined to spring the miracle +before midnight, for business reasons: for whereas a miracle +worked for the Church on a week-day is worth a good deal, it is +worth six times as much if you get it in on a Sunday. In nine hours +the water had risen to its customary level--that is to say, it was +within twenty-three feet of the top. We put in a little iron pump, +one of the first turned out by my works near the capital; we bored +into a stone reservoir which stood against the outer wall of the +well-chamber and inserted a section of lead pipe that was long +enough to reach to the door of the chapel and project beyond +the threshold, where the gushing water would be visible to the +two hundred and fifty acres of people I was intending should be +present on the flat plain in front of this little holy hillock at +the proper time. + +We knocked the head out of an empty hogshead and hoisted this +hogshead to the flat roof of the chapel, where we clamped it down +fast, poured in gunpowder till it lay loosely an inch deep on the +bottom, then we stood up rockets in the hogshead as thick as they +could loosely stand, all the different breeds of rockets there are; +and they made a portly and imposing sheaf, I can tell you. We +grounded the wire of a pocket electrical battery in that powder, +we placed a whole magazine of Greek fire on each corner of the +roof--blue on one corner, green on another, red on another, and +purple on the last--and grounded a wire in each. + +About two hundred yards off, in the flat, we built a pen of +scantlings, about four feet high, and laid planks on it, and so +made a platform. We covered it with swell tapestries borrowed +for the occasion, and topped it off with the abbot's own throne. +When you are going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you want +to get in every detail that will count; you want to make all the +properties impressive to the public eye; you want to make matters +comfortable for your head guest; then you can turn yourself loose +and play your effects for all they are worth. I know the value of +these things, for I know human nature. You can't throw too much +style into a miracle. It costs trouble, and work, and sometimes +money; but it pays in the end. Well, we brought the wires to +the ground at the chapel, and then brought them under the ground +to the platform, and hid the batteries there. We put a rope fence +a hundred feet square around the platform to keep off the common +multitude, and that finished the work. My idea was, doors open +at 10:30, performance to begin at 11:25 sharp. I wished I could +charge admission, but of course that wouldn't answer. I instructed +my boys to be in the chapel as early as 10, before anybody was +around, and be ready to man the pumps at the proper time, and +make the fur fly. Then we went home to supper. + +The news of the disaster to the well had traveled far by this time; +and now for two or three days a steady avalanche of people had +been pouring into the valley. The lower end of the valley was +become one huge camp; we should have a good house, no question +about that. Criers went the rounds early in the evening and +announced the coming attempt, which put every pulse up to fever +heat. They gave notice that the abbot and his official suite would +move in state and occupy the platform at 10:30, up to which time +all the region which was under my ban must be clear; the bells +would then cease from tolling, and this sign should be permission +to the multitudes to close in and take their places. + +I was at the platform and all ready to do the honors when the +abbot's solemn procession hove in sight--which it did not do till +it was nearly to the rope fence, because it was a starless black +night and no torches permitted. With it came Merlin, and took +a front seat on the platform; he was as good as his word for once. +One could not see the multitudes banked together beyond the ban, +but they were there, just the same. The moment the bells stopped, +those banked masses broke and poured over the line like a vast +black wave, and for as much as a half hour it continued to flow, +and then it solidified itself, and you could have walked upon +a pavement of human heads to--well, miles. + +We had a solemn stage-wait, now, for about twenty minutes--a thing +I had counted on for effect; it is always good to let your audience +have a chance to work up its expectancy. At length, out of the +silence a noble Latin chant--men's voices--broke and swelled up +and rolled away into the night, a majestic tide of melody. I had +put that up, too, and it was one of the best effects I ever invented. +When it was finished I stood up on the platform and extended my +hands abroad, for two minutes, with my face uplifted--that always +produces a dead hush--and then slowly pronounced this ghastly word +with a kind of awfulness which caused hundreds to tremble, and +many women to faint: + +"Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifenmachersgesellschafft!" + +Just as I was moaning out the closing hunks of that word, I touched +off one of my electric connections and all that murky world of +people stood revealed in a hideous blue glare! It was immense +--that effect! Lots of people shrieked, women curled up and quit +in every direction, foundlings collapsed by platoons. The abbot +and the monks crossed themselves nimbly and their lips fluttered +with agitated prayers. Merlin held his grip, but he was astonished +clear down to his corns; he had never seen anything to begin +with that, before. Now was the time to pile in the effects. I lifted +my hands and groaned out this word--as it were in agony: + +"Nihilistendynamittheaterkaestchenssprengungsattentaetsversuchungen!" + +--and turned on the red fire! You should have heard that Atlantic +of people moan and howl when that crimson hell joined the blue! +After sixty seconds I shouted: + +"Transvaaltruppentropentransporttrampelthiertreibertrauungsthraenen- +tragoedie!" + +--and lit up the green fire! After waiting only forty seconds this +time, I spread my arms abroad and thundered out the devastating +syllables of this word of words: + +"Mekkamuselmannenmassenmenchenmoerdermohrenmuttermarmormonumentenmacher!" + +--and whirled on the purple glare! There they were, all going +at once, red, blue, green, purple!--four furious volcanoes pouring +vast clouds of radiant smoke aloft, and spreading a blinding +rainbowed noonday to the furthest confines of that valley. In +the distance one could see that fellow on the pillar standing rigid +against the background of sky, his seesaw stopped for the first +time in twenty years. I knew the boys were at the pump now and +ready. So I said to the abbot: + +"The time is come, Father. I am about to pronounce the dread name +and command the spell to dissolve. You want to brace up, and take +hold of something." Then I shouted to the people: "Behold, in +another minute the spell will be broken, or no mortal can break it. +If it break, all will know it, for you will see the sacred water +gush from the chapel door!" + +I stood a few moments, to let the hearers have a chance to spread +my announcement to those who couldn't hear, and so convey it +to the furthest ranks, then I made a grand exhibition of extra +posturing and gesturing, and shouted: + +"Lo, I command the fell spirit that possesses the holy fountain +to now disgorge into the skies all the infernal fires that still +remain in him, and straightway dissolve his spell and flee hence +to the pit, there to lie bound a thousand years. By his own dread +name I command it--BGWJJILLIGKKK!" + +Then I touched off the hogshead of rockets, and a vast fountain of +dazzling lances of fire vomited itself toward the zenith with a +hissing rush, and burst in mid-sky into a storm of flashing jewels! +One mighty groan of terror started up from the massed people +--then suddenly broke into a wild hosannah of joy--for there, fair +and plain in the uncanny glare, they saw the freed water leaping +forth! The old abbot could not speak a word, for tears and the +chokings in his throat; without utterance of any sort, he folded me +in his arms and mashed me. It was more eloquent than speech. +And harder to get over, too, in a country where there were really +no doctors that were worth a damaged nickel. + +You should have seen those acres of people throw themselves down +in that water and kiss it; kiss it, and pet it, and fondle it, and +talk to it as if it were alive, and welcome it back with the dear +names they gave their darlings, just as if it had been a friend who +was long gone away and lost, and was come home again. Yes, it was +pretty to see, and made me think more of them than I had done before. + +I sent Merlin home on a shutter. He had caved in and gone down +like a landslide when I pronounced that fearful name, and had +never come to since. He never had heard that name before,--neither +had I--but to him it was the right one. Any jumble would have +been the right one. He admitted, afterward, that that spirit's own +mother could not have pronounced that name better than I did. +He never could understand how I survived it, and I didn't tell +him. It is only young magicians that give away a secret like that. +Merlin spent three months working enchantments to try to find out +the deep trick of how to pronounce that name and outlive it. +But he didn't arrive. + +When I started to the chapel, the populace uncovered and fell back +reverently to make a wide way for me, as if I had been some kind +of a superior being--and I was. I was aware of that. I took along +a night shift of monks, and taught them the mystery of the pump, +and set them to work, for it was plain that a good part of the +people out there were going to sit up with the water all night, +consequently it was but right that they should have all they wanted +of it. To those monks that pump was a good deal of a miracle +itself, and they were full of wonder over it; and of admiration, +too, of the exceeding effectiveness of its performance. + +It was a great night, an immense night. There was reputation in it. +I could hardly get to sleep for glorying over it. + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +A RIVAL MAGICIAN + +My influence in the Valley of Holiness was something prodigious +now. It seemed worth while to try to turn it to some valuable +account. The thought came to me the next morning, and was suggested +by my seeing one of my knights who was in the soap line come +riding in. According to history, the monks of this place two +centuries before had been worldly minded enough to want to wash. +It might be that there was a leaven of this unrighteousness still +remaining. So I sounded a Brother: + +"Wouldn't you like a bath?" + +He shuddered at the thought--the thought of the peril of it to +the well--but he said with feeling: + +"One needs not to ask that of a poor body who has not known that +blessed refreshment sith that he was a boy. Would God I might +wash me! but it may not be, fair sir, tempt me not; it is forbidden." + +And then he sighed in such a sorrowful way that I was resolved +he should have at least one layer of his real estate removed, +if it sized up my whole influence and bankrupted the pile. So I +went to the abbot and asked for a permit for this Brother. He +blenched at the idea--I don't mean that you could see him blench, +for of course you couldn't see it without you scraped him, and +I didn't care enough about it to scrape him, but I knew the blench +was there, just the same, and within a book-cover's thickness of +the surface, too--blenched, and trembled. He said: + +"Ah, son, ask aught else thou wilt, and it is thine, and freely +granted out of a grateful heart--but this, oh, this! Would you +drive away the blessed water again?" + +"No, Father, I will not drive it away. I have mysterious knowledge +which teaches me that there was an error that other time when +it was thought the institution of the bath banished the fountain." +A large interest began to show up in the old man's face. "My +knowledge informs me that the bath was innocent of that misfortune, +which was caused by quite another sort of sin." + +"These are brave words--but--but right welcome, if they be true." + +"They are true, indeed. Let me build the bath again, Father. +Let me build it again, and the fountain shall flow forever." + +"You promise this?--you promise it? Say the word--say you promise it!" + +"I do promise it." + +"Then will I have the first bath myself! Go--get ye to your work. +Tarry not, tarry not, but go." + +I and my boys were at work, straight off. The ruins of the old +bath were there yet in the basement of the monastery, not a stone +missing. They had been left just so, all these lifetimes, and +avoided with a pious fear, as things accursed. In two days we +had it all done and the water in--a spacious pool of clear pure +water that a body could swim in. It was running water, too. +It came in, and went out, through the ancient pipes. The old abbot +kept his word, and was the first to try it. He went down black +and shaky, leaving the whole black community above troubled and +worried and full of bodings; but he came back white and joyful, +and the game was made! another triumph scored. + +It was a good campaign that we made in that Valley of Holiness, +and I was very well satisfied, and ready to move on now, but +I struck a disappointment. I caught a heavy cold, and it started +up an old lurking rheumatism of mine. Of course the rheumatism +hunted up my weakest place and located itself there. This was +the place where the abbot put his arms about me and mashed me, what +time he was moved to testify his gratitude to me with an embrace. + +When at last I got out, I was a shadow. But everybody was full +of attentions and kindnesses, and these brought cheer back into +my life, and were the right medicine to help a convalescent swiftly +up toward health and strength again; so I gained fast. + +Sandy was worn out with nursing; so I made up my mind to turn out +and go a cruise alone, leaving her at the nunnery to rest up. +My idea was to disguise myself as a freeman of peasant degree +and wander through the country a week or two on foot. This would +give me a chance to eat and lodge with the lowliest and poorest +class of free citizens on equal terms. There was no other way +to inform myself perfectly of their everyday life and the operation +of the laws upon it. If I went among them as a gentleman, there +would be restraints and conventionalities which would shut me out +from their private joys and troubles, and I should get no further +than the outside shell. + +One morning I was out on a long walk to get up muscle for my trip, +and had climbed the ridge which bordered the northern extremity +of the valley, when I came upon an artificial opening in the face +of a low precipice, and recognized it by its location as a hermitage +which had often been pointed out to me from a distance as the den +of a hermit of high renown for dirt and austerity. I knew he had +lately been offered a situation in the Great Sahara, where lions +and sandflies made the hermit-life peculiarly attractive and +difficult, and had gone to Africa to take possession, so I thought +I would look in and see how the atmosphere of this den agreed +with its reputation. + +My surprise was great: the place was newly swept and scoured. +Then there was another surprise. Back in the gloom of the cavern +I heard the clink of a little bell, and then this exclamation: + +"Hello Central! Is this you, Camelot?--Behold, thou mayst glad +thy heart an thou hast faith to believe the wonderful when that +it cometh in unexpected guise and maketh itself manifest in +impossible places--here standeth in the flesh his mightiness +The Boss, and with thine own ears shall ye hear him speak!" + +Now what a radical reversal of things this was; what a jumbling +together of extravagant incongruities; what a fantastic conjunction +of opposites and irreconcilables--the home of the bogus miracle +become the home of a real one, the den of a mediaeval hermit turned +into a telephone office! + +The telephone clerk stepped into the light, and I recognized one +of my young fellows. I said: + +"How long has this office been established here, Ulfius?" + +"But since midnight, fair Sir Boss, an it please you. We saw many +lights in the valley, and so judged it well to make a station, +for that where so many lights be needs must they indicate a town +of goodly size." + +"Quite right. It isn't a town in the customary sense, but it's +a good stand, anyway. Do you know where you are?" + +"Of that I have had no time to make inquiry; for whenas my +comradeship moved hence upon their labors, leaving me in charge, +I got me to needed rest, purposing to inquire when I waked, and +report the place's name to Camelot for record." + +"Well, this is the Valley of Holiness." + +It didn't take; I mean, he didn't start at the name, as I had +supposed he would. He merely said: + +"I will so report it." + +"Why, the surrounding regions are filled with the noise of late +wonders that have happened here! You didn't hear of them?" + +"Ah, ye will remember we move by night, and avoid speech with all. +We learn naught but that we get by the telephone from Camelot." + +"Why _they_ know all about this thing. Haven't they told you anything +about the great miracle of the restoration of a holy fountain?" + +"Oh, _that_? Indeed yes. But the name of _this_ valley doth woundily +differ from the name of _that_ one; indeed to differ wider were not pos--" + +"What was that name, then?" + +"The Valley of Hellishness." + +"_That_ explains it. Confound a telephone, anyway. It is the very +demon for conveying similarities of sound that are miracles of +divergence from similarity of sense. But no matter, you know +the name of the place now. Call up Camelot." + +He did it, and had Clarence sent for. It was good to hear my boy's +voice again. It was like being home. After some affectionate +interchanges, and some account of my late illness, I said: + +"What is new?" + +"The king and queen and many of the court do start even in this +hour, to go to your valley to pay pious homage to the waters ye +have restored, and cleanse themselves of sin, and see the place +where the infernal spirit spouted true hell-flames to the clouds +--an ye listen sharply ye may hear me wink and hear me likewise +smile a smile, sith 'twas I that made selection of those flames +from out our stock and sent them by your order." + +"Does the king know the way to this place?" + +"The king?--no, nor to any other in his realms, mayhap; but the lads +that holp you with your miracle will be his guide and lead the way, +and appoint the places for rests at noons and sleeps at night." + +"This will bring them here--when?" + +"Mid-afternoon, or later, the third day." + +"Anything else in the way of news?" + +"The king hath begun the raising of the standing army ye suggested +to him; one regiment is complete and officered." + +"The mischief! I wanted a main hand in that myself. There is +only one body of men in the kingdom that are fitted to officer +a regular army." + +"Yes--and now ye will marvel to know there's not so much as one +West Pointer in that regiment." + +"What are you talking about? Are you in earnest?" + +"It is truly as I have said." + +"Why, this makes me uneasy. Who were chosen, and what was the +method? Competitive examination?" + +"Indeed, I know naught of the method. I but know this--these +officers be all of noble family, and are born--what is it you +call it?--chuckleheads." + +"There's something wrong, Clarence." + +"Comfort yourself, then; for two candidates for a lieutenancy do +travel hence with the king--young nobles both--and if you but wait +where you are you will hear them questioned." + +"That is news to the purpose. I will get one West Pointer in, +anyway. Mount a man and send him to that school with a message; +let him kill horses, if necessary, but he must be there before +sunset to-night and say--" + +"There is no need. I have laid a ground wire to the school. +Prithee let me connect you with it." + +It sounded good! In this atmosphere of telephones and lightning +communication with distant regions, I was breathing the breath +of life again after long suffocation. I realized, then, what a +creepy, dull, inanimate horror this land had been to me all these +years, and how I had been in such a stifled condition of mind as +to have grown used to it almost beyond the power to notice it. + +I gave my order to the superintendent of the Academy personally. +I also asked him to bring me some paper and a fountain pen and +a box or so of safety matches. I was getting tired of doing +without these conveniences. I could have them now, as I wasn't +going to wear armor any more at present, and therefore could get +at my pockets. + +When I got back to the monastery, I found a thing of interest +going on. The abbot and his monks were assembled in the great +hall, observing with childish wonder and faith the performances +of a new magician, a fresh arrival. His dress was the extreme of +the fantastic; as showy and foolish as the sort of thing an Indian +medicine-man wears. He was mowing, and mumbling, and gesticulating, +and drawing mystical figures in the air and on the floor,--the +regular thing, you know. He was a celebrity from Asia--so he +said, and that was enough. That sort of evidence was as good +as gold, and passed current everywhere. + +How easy and cheap it was to be a great magician on this fellow's +terms. His specialty was to tell you what any individual on the +face of the globe was doing at the moment; and what he had done +at any time in the past, and what he would do at any time in the +future. He asked if any would like to know what the Emperor of +the East was doing now? The sparkling eyes and the delighted rubbing +of hands made eloquent answer--this reverend crowd _would_ like to +know what that monarch was at, just as this moment. The fraud +went through some more mummery, and then made grave announcement: + +"The high and mighty Emperor of the East doth at this moment put +money in the palm of a holy begging friar--one, two, three pieces, +and they be all of silver." + +A buzz of admiring exclamations broke out, all around: + +"It is marvelous!" "Wonderful!" "What study, what labor, to have +acquired a so amazing power as this!" + +Would they like to know what the Supreme Lord of Inde was doing? +Yes. He told them what the Supreme Lord of Inde was doing. Then +he told them what the Sultan of Egypt was at; also what the King +of the Remote Seas was about. And so on and so on; and with each +new marvel the astonishment at his accuracy rose higher and higher. +They thought he must surely strike an uncertain place some time; +but no, he never had to hesitate, he always knew, and always with +unerring precision. I saw that if this thing went on I should lose +my supremacy, this fellow would capture my following, I should +be left out in the cold. I must put a cog in his wheel, and do it +right away, too. I said: + +"If I might ask, I should very greatly like to know what a certain +person is doing." + +"Speak, and freely. I will tell you." + +"It will be difficult--perhaps impossible." + +"My art knoweth not that word. The more difficult it is, the more +certainly will I reveal it to you." + +You see, I was working up the interest. It was getting pretty +high, too; you could see that by the craning necks all around, +and the half-suspended breathing. So now I climaxed it: + +"If you make no mistake--if you tell me truly what I want to +know--I will give you two hundred silver pennies." + +"The fortune is mine! I will tell you what you would know." + +"Then tell me what I am doing with my right hand." + +"Ah-h!" There was a general gasp of surprise. It had not occurred +to anybody in the crowd--that simple trick of inquiring about +somebody who wasn't ten thousand miles away. The magician was +hit hard; it was an emergency that had never happened in his +experience before, and it corked him; he didn't know how to meet +it. He looked stunned, confused; he couldn't say a word. "Come," +I said, "what are you waiting for? Is it possible you can answer up, +right off, and tell what anybody on the other side of the earth is +doing, and yet can't tell what a person is doing who isn't three +yards from you? Persons behind me know what I am doing with my +right hand--they will indorse you if you tell correctly." He was +still dumb. "Very well, I'll tell you why you don't speak up and +tell; it is because you don't know. _You_ a magician! Good friends, +this tramp is a mere fraud and liar." + +This distressed the monks and terrified them. They were not used +to hearing these awful beings called names, and they did not know +what might be the consequence. There was a dead silence now; +superstitious bodings were in every mind. The magician began to +pull his wits together, and when he presently smiled an easy, +nonchalant smile, it spread a mighty relief around; for it indicated +that his mood was not destructive. He said: + +"It hath struck me speechless, the frivolity of this person's +speech. Let all know, if perchance there be any who know it not, +that enchanters of my degree deign not to concern themselves with +the doings of any but kings, princes, emperors, them that be born +in the purple and them only. Had ye asked me what Arthur the great +king is doing, it were another matter, and I had told ye; but the +doings of a subject interest me not." + +"Oh, I misunderstood you. I thought you said 'anybody,' and so +I supposed 'anybody' included--well, anybody; that is, everybody." + +"It doth--anybody that is of lofty birth; and the better if +he be royal." + +"That, it meseemeth, might well be," said the abbot, who saw his +opportunity to smooth things and avert disaster, "for it were not +likely that so wonderful a gift as this would be conferred for +the revelation of the concerns of lesser beings than such as be +born near to the summits of greatness. Our Arthur the king--" + +"Would you know of him?" broke in the enchanter. + +"Most gladly, yea, and gratefully." + +Everybody was full of awe and interest again right away, the +incorrigible idiots. They watched the incantations absorbingly, +and looked at me with a "There, now, what can you say to that?" +air, when the announcement came: + +"The king is weary with the chase, and lieth in his palace these +two hours sleeping a dreamless sleep." + +"God's benison upon him!" said the abbot, and crossed himself; +"may that sleep be to the refreshment of his body and his soul." + +"And so it might be, if he were sleeping," I said, "but the king +is not sleeping, the king rides." + +Here was trouble again--a conflict of authority. Nobody knew which +of us to believe; I still had some reputation left. The magician's +scorn was stirred, and he said: + +"Lo, I have seen many wonderful soothsayers and prophets and +magicians in my life days, but none before that could sit idle and +see to the heart of things with never an incantation to help." + +"You have lived in the woods, and lost much by it. I use incantations +myself, as this good brotherhood are aware--but only on occasions +of moment." + +When it comes to sarcasming, I reckon I know how to keep my end up. +That jab made this fellow squirm. The abbot inquired after the +queen and the court, and got this information: + +"They be all on sleep, being overcome by fatigue, like as to the king." + +I said: + +"That is merely another lie. Half of them are about their amusements, +the queen and the other half are not sleeping, they ride. Now +perhaps you can spread yourself a little, and tell us where the king +and queen and all that are this moment riding with them are going?" + +"They sleep now, as I said; but on the morrow they will ride, +for they go a journey toward the sea." + +"And where will they be the day after to-morrow at vespers?" + +"Far to the north of Camelot, and half their journey will be done." + +"That is another lie, by the space of a hundred and fifty miles. +Their journey will not be merely half done, it will be all done, +and they will be _here_, in this valley." + +_That_ was a noble shot! It set the abbot and the monks in a whirl +of excitement, and it rocked the enchanter to his base. I followed +the thing right up: + +"If the king does not arrive, I will have myself ridden on a rail: +if he does I will ride you on a rail instead." + +Next day I went up to the telephone office and found that the king +had passed through two towns that were on the line. I spotted +his progress on the succeeding day in the same way. I kept these +matters to myself. The third day's reports showed that if he +kept up his gait he would arrive by four in the afternoon. There +was still no sign anywhere of interest in his coming; there seemed +to be no preparations making to receive him in state; a strange +thing, truly. Only one thing could explain this: that other +magician had been cutting under me, sure. This was true. I asked +a friend of mine, a monk, about it, and he said, yes, the magician +had tried some further enchantments and found out that the court +had concluded to make no journey at all, but stay at home. Think +of that! Observe how much a reputation was worth in such a country. +These people had seen me do the very showiest bit of magic in +history, and the only one within their memory that had a positive +value, and yet here they were, ready to take up with an adventurer +who could offer no evidence of his powers but his mere unproven word. + +However, it was not good politics to let the king come without +any fuss and feathers at all, so I went down and drummed up a +procession of pilgrims and smoked out a batch of hermits and +started them out at two o'clock to meet him. And that was the +sort of state he arrived in. The abbot was helpless with rage +and humiliation when I brought him out on a balcony and showed +him the head of the state marching in and never a monk on hand to +offer him welcome, and no stir of life or clang of joy-bell to glad +his spirit. He took one look and then flew to rouse out his forces. +The next minute the bells were dinning furiously, and the various +buildings were vomiting monks and nuns, who went swarming in a +rush toward the coming procession; and with them went that magician +--and he was on a rail, too, by the abbot's order; and his reputation +was in the mud, and mine was in the sky again. Yes, a man can +keep his trademark current in such a country, but he can't sit +around and do it; he has got to be on deck and attending to business +right along. + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +A COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION + +When the king traveled for change of air, or made a progress, or +visited a distant noble whom he wished to bankrupt with the cost +of his keep, part of the administration moved with him. It was +a fashion of the time. The Commission charged with the examination +of candidates for posts in the army came with the king to the +Valley, whereas they could have transacted their business just +as well at home. And although this expedition was strictly a +holiday excursion for the king, he kept some of his business +functions going just the same. He touched for the evil, as usual; +he held court in the gate at sunrise and tried cases, for he was +himself Chief Justice of the King's Bench. + +He shone very well in this latter office. He was a wise and humane +judge, and he clearly did his honest best and fairest,--according +to his lights. That is a large reservation. His lights--I mean +his rearing--often colored his decisions. Whenever there was a +dispute between a noble or gentleman and a person of lower degree, +the king's leanings and sympathies were for the former class always, +whether he suspected it or not. It was impossible that this should +be otherwise. The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's +moral perceptions are known and conceded, the world over; and a +privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders +under another name. This has a harsh sound, and yet should not +be offensive to any--even to the noble himself--unless the fact +itself be an offense: for the statement simply formulates a fact. +The repulsive feature of slavery is the _thing_, not its name. One +needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of the classes that are below +him to recognize--and in but indifferently modified measure +--the very air and tone of the actual slaveholder; and behind these +are the slaveholder's spirit, the slaveholder's blunted feeling. +They are the result of the same cause in both cases: the possessor's +old and inbred custom of regarding himself as a superior being. +The king's judgments wrought frequent injustices, but it was merely +the fault of his training, his natural and unalterable sympathies. +He was as unfitted for a judgeship as would be the average mother +for the position of milk-distributor to starving children in +famine-time; her own children would fare a shade better than the rest. + +One very curious case came before the king. A young girl, an +orphan, who had a considerable estate, married a fine young fellow +who had nothing. The girl's property was within a seigniory held +by the Church. The bishop of the diocese, an arrogant scion of +the great nobility, claimed the girl's estate on the ground that +she had married privately, and thus had cheated the Church out +of one of its rights as lord of the seigniory--the one heretofore +referred to as le droit du seigneur. The penalty of refusal or +avoidance was confiscation. The girl's defense was, that the +lordship of the seigniory was vested in the bishop, and the +particular right here involved was not transferable, but must be +exercised by the lord himself or stand vacated; and that an older +law, of the Church itself, strictly barred the bishop from exercising +it. It was a very odd case, indeed. + +It reminded me of something I had read in my youth about the +ingenious way in which the aldermen of London raised the money +that built the Mansion House. A person who had not taken the +Sacrament according to the Anglican rite could not stand as a +candidate for sheriff of London. Thus Dissenters were ineligible; +they could not run if asked, they could not serve if elected. +The aldermen, who without any question were Yankees in disguise, +hit upon this neat device: they passed a by-law imposing a fine +of L400 upon any one who should refuse to be a candidate for +sheriff, and a fine of L600 upon any person who, after being +elected sheriff, refused to serve. Then they went to work and +elected a lot of Dissenters, one after another, and kept it up +until they had collected L15,000 in fines; and there stands the +stately Mansion House to this day, to keep the blushing citizen +in mind of a long past and lamented day when a band of Yankees +slipped into London and played games of the sort that has given +their race a unique and shady reputation among all truly good +and holy peoples that be in the earth. + +The girl's case seemed strong to me; the bishop's case was just +as strong. I did not see how the king was going to get out of +this hole. But he got out. I append his decision: + +"Truly I find small difficulty here, the matter being even a +child's affair for simpleness. An the young bride had conveyed +notice, as in duty bound, to her feudal lord and proper master +and protector the bishop, she had suffered no loss, for the said +bishop could have got a dispensation making him, for temporary +conveniency, eligible to the exercise of his said right, and thus +would she have kept all she had. Whereas, failing in her first +duty, she hath by that failure failed in all; for whoso, clinging +to a rope, severeth it above his hands, must fall; it being no +defense to claim that the rest of the rope is sound, neither any +deliverance from his peril, as he shall find. Pardy, the woman's +case is rotten at the source. It is the decree of the court that +she forfeit to the said lord bishop all her goods, even to the +last farthing that she doth possess, and be thereto mulcted in +the costs. Next!" + +Here was a tragic end to a beautiful honeymoon not yet three months +old. Poor young creatures! They had lived these three months +lapped to the lips in worldly comforts. These clothes and trinkets +they were wearing were as fine and dainty as the shrewdest stretch +of the sumptuary laws allowed to people of their degree; and in +these pretty clothes, she crying on his shoulder, and he trying +to comfort her with hopeful words set to the music of despair, +they went from the judgment seat out into the world homeless, +bedless, breadless; why, the very beggars by the roadsides were +not so poor as they. + +Well, the king was out of the hole; and on terms satisfactory to +the Church and the rest of the aristocracy, no doubt. Men write +many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but +the fact remains that where every man in a State has a vote, brutal +laws are impossible. Arthur's people were of course poor material +for a republic, because they had been debased so long by monarchy; +and yet even they would have been intelligent enough to make short +work of that law which the king had just been administering if it +had been submitted to their full and free vote. There is a phrase +which has grown so common in the world's mouth that it has come +to seem to have sense and meaning--the sense and meaning implied +when it is used; that is the phrase which refers to this or that or +the other nation as possibly being "capable of self-government"; +and the implied sense of it is, that there has been a nation +somewhere, some time or other which _wasn't_ capable of it--wasn't as +able to govern itself as some self-appointed specialists were or +would be to govern it. The master minds of all nations, in all +ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, +and from the mass of the nation only--not from its privileged +classes; and so, no matter what the nation's intellectual grade +was; whether high or low, the bulk of its ability was in the long +ranks of its nameless and its poor, and so it never saw the day +that it had not the material in abundance whereby to govern itself. +Which is to assert an always self-proven fact: that even the best +governed and most free and most enlightened monarchy is still +behind the best condition attainable by its people; and that the +same is true of kindred governments of lower grades, all the way +down to the lowest. + +King Arthur had hurried up the army business altogether beyond +my calculations. I had not supposed he would move in the matter +while I was away; and so I had not mapped out a scheme for determining +the merits of officers; I had only remarked that it would be wise +to submit every candidate to a sharp and searching examination; +and privately I meant to put together a list of military qualifications +that nobody could answer to but my West Pointers. That ought +to have been attended to before I left; for the king was so taken +with the idea of a standing army that he couldn't wait but must +get about it at once, and get up as good a scheme of examination +as he could invent out of his own head. + +I was impatient to see what this was; and to show, too, how much +more admirable was the one which I should display to the Examining +Board. I intimated this, gently, to the king, and it fired his +curiosity. When the Board was assembled, I followed him in; and +behind us came the candidates. One of these candidates was a bright +young West Pointer of mine, and with him were a couple of my +West Point professors. + +When I saw the Board, I did not know whether to cry or to laugh. +The head of it was the officer known to later centuries as Norroy +King-at-Arms! The two other members were chiefs of bureaus in +his department; and all three were priests, of course; all officials +who had to know how to read and write were priests. + +My candidate was called first, out of courtesy to me, and the head +of the Board opened on him with official solemnity: + +"Name?" + +"Mal-ease." + +"Son of?" + +"Webster." + +"Webster--Webster. H'm--I--my memory faileth to recall the +name. Condition?" + +"Weaver." + +"Weaver!--God keep us!" + +The king was staggered, from his summit to his foundations; one +clerk fainted, and the others came near it. The chairman pulled +himself together, and said indignantly: + +"It is sufficient. Get you hence." + +But I appealed to the king. I begged that my candidate might be +examined. The king was willing, but the Board, who were all +well-born folk, implored the king to spare them the indignity of +examining the weaver's son. I knew they didn't know enough to +examine him anyway, so I joined my prayers to theirs and the king +turned the duty over to my professors. I had had a blackboard +prepared, and it was put up now, and the circus began. It was +beautiful to hear the lad lay out the science of war, and wallow +in details of battle and siege, of supply, transportation, mining +and countermining, grand tactics, big strategy and little strategy, +signal service, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and all about siege +guns, field guns, gatling guns, rifled guns, smooth bores, musket +practice, revolver practice--and not a solitary word of it all +could these catfish make head or tail of, you understand--and it +was handsome to see him chalk off mathematical nightmares on the +blackboard that would stump the angels themselves, and do it like +nothing, too--all about eclipses, and comets, and solstices, and +constellations, and mean time, and sidereal time, and dinner time, +and bedtime, and every other imaginable thing above the clouds or +under them that you could harry or bullyrag an enemy with and make +him wish he hadn't come--and when the boy made his military salute +and stood aside at last, I was proud enough to hug him, and all +those other people were so dazed they looked partly petrified, +partly drunk, and wholly caught out and snowed under. I judged +that the cake was ours, and by a large majority. + +Education is a great thing. This was the same youth who had come +to West Point so ignorant that when I asked him, "If a general +officer should have a horse shot under him on the field of battle, +what ought he to do?" answered up naively and said: + +"Get up and brush himself." + +One of the young nobles was called up now. I thought I would +question him a little myself. I said: + +"Can your lordship read?" + +His face flushed indignantly, and he fired this at me: + +"Takest me for a clerk? I trow I am not of a blood that--" + +"Answer the question!" + +He crowded his wrath down and made out to answer "No." + +"Can you write?" + +He wanted to resent this, too, but I said: + +"You will confine yourself to the questions, and make no comments. +You are not here to air your blood or your graces, and nothing +of the sort will be permitted. Can you write?" + +"No." + +"Do you know the multiplication table?" + +"I wit not what ye refer to." + +"How much is 9 times 6?" + +"It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency +requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred, +and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren +of the knowledge." + +"If A trade a barrel of onions to B, worth 2 pence the bushel, +in exchange for a sheep worth 4 pence and a dog worth a penny, +and C kill the dog before delivery, because bitten by the same, +who mistook him for D, what sum is still due to A from B, and +which party pays for the dog, C or D, and who gets the money? +If A, is the penny sufficient, or may he claim consequential damages +in the form of additional money to represent the possible profit +which might have inured from the dog, and classifiable as earned +increment, that is to say, usufruct?" + +"Verily, in the all-wise and unknowable providence of God, who +moveth in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, have I never +heard the fellow to this question for confusion of the mind and +congestion of the ducts of thought. Wherefore I beseech you let +the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godless +names work out their several salvations from their piteous and +wonderful difficulties without help of mine, for indeed their +trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas an I tried to help I should +but damage their cause the more and yet mayhap not live myself +to see the desolation wrought." + +"What do you know of the laws of attraction and gravitation?" + +"If there be such, mayhap his grace the king did promulgate them +whilst that I lay sick about the beginning of the year and thereby +failed to hear his proclamation." + +"What do you know of the science of optics?" + +"I know of governors of places, and seneschals of castles, and +sheriffs of counties, and many like small offices and titles of +honor, but him you call the Science of Optics I have not heard +of before; peradventure it is a new dignity." + +"Yes, in this country." + +Try to conceive of this mollusk gravely applying for an official +position, of any kind under the sun! Why, he had all the earmarks +of a typewriter copyist, if you leave out the disposition to +contribute uninvited emendations of your grammar and punctuation. +It was unaccountable that he didn't attempt a little help of that +sort out of his majestic supply of incapacity for the job. But that +didn't prove that he hadn't material in him for the disposition, +it only proved that he wasn't a typewriter copyist yet. After +nagging him a little more, I let the professors loose on him and +they turned him inside out, on the line of scientific war, and +found him empty, of course. He knew somewhat about the warfare +of the time--bushwhacking around for ogres, and bull-fights in +the tournament ring, and such things--but otherwise he was empty +and useless. Then we took the other young noble in hand, and he +was the first one's twin, for ignorance and incapacity. I delivered +them into the hands of the chairman of the Board with the comfortable +consciousness that their cake was dough. They were examined in +the previous order of precedence. + +"Name, so please you?" + +"Pertipole, son of Sir Pertipole, Baron of Barley Mash." + +"Grandfather?" + +"Also Sir Pertipole, Baron of Barley Mash." + +"Great-grandfather?" + +"The same name and title." + +"Great-great-grandfather?" + +"We had none, worshipful sir, the line failing before it had +reached so far back." + +"It mattereth not. It is a good four generations, and fulfilleth +the requirements of the rule." + +"Fulfills what rule?" I asked. + +"The rule requiring four generations of nobility or else the +candidate is not eligible." + +"A man not eligible for a lieutenancy in the army unless he can +prove four generations of noble descent?" + +"Even so; neither lieutenant nor any other officer may be commissioned +without that qualification." + +"Oh, come, this is an astonishing thing. What good is such a +qualification as that?" + +"What good? It is a hardy question, fair sir and Boss, since it doth +go far to impugn the wisdom of even our holy Mother Church herself." + +"As how?" + +"For that she hath established the self-same rule regarding +saints. By her law none may be canonized until he hath lain dead +four generations." + +"I see, I see--it is the same thing. It is wonderful. In the one +case a man lies dead-alive four generations--mummified in ignorance +and sloth--and that qualifies him to command live people, and take +their weal and woe into his impotent hands; and in the other case, +a man lies bedded with death and worms four generations, and that +qualifies him for office in the celestial camp. Does the king's +grace approve of this strange law?" + +The king said: + +"Why, truly I see naught about it that is strange. All places of +honor and of profit do belong, by natural right, to them that be +of noble blood, and so these dignities in the army are their +property and would be so without this or any rule. The rule is +but to mark a limit. Its purpose is to keep out too recent blood, +which would bring into contempt these offices, and men of lofty +lineage would turn their backs and scorn to take them. I were +to blame an I permitted this calamity. _You_ can permit it an you +are minded so to do, for you have the delegated authority, but +that the king should do it were a most strange madness and not +comprehensible to any." + +"I yield. Proceed, sir Chief of the Herald's College." + +The chairman resumed as follows: + +"By what illustrious achievement for the honor of the Throne and +State did the founder of your great line lift himself to the +sacred dignity of the British nobility?" + +"He built a brewery." + +"Sire, the Board finds this candidate perfect in all the requirements +and qualifications for military command, and doth hold his case +open for decision after due examination of his competitor." + +The competitor came forward and proved exactly four generations +of nobility himself. So there was a tie in military qualifications +that far. + +He stood aside a moment, and Sir Pertipole was questioned further: + +"Of what condition was the wife of the founder of your line?" + +"She came of the highest landed gentry, yet she was not noble; +she was gracious and pure and charitable, of a blameless life and +character, insomuch that in these regards was she peer of the +best lady in the land." + +"That will do. Stand down." He called up the competing lordling +again, and asked: "What was the rank and condition of the +great-grandmother who conferred British nobility upon your +great house?" + +"She was a king's leman and did climb to that splendid eminence +by her own unholpen merit from the sewer where she was born." + +"Ah, this, indeed, is true nobility, this is the right and perfect +intermixture. The lieutenancy is yours, fair lord. Hold it not in +contempt; it is the humble step which will lead to grandeurs more +worthy of the splendor of an origin like to thine." + +I was down in the bottomless pit of humiliation. I had promised +myself an easy and zenith-scouring triumph, and this was the outcome! + +I was almost ashamed to look my poor disappointed cadet in the +face. I told him to go home and be patient, this wasn't the end. + +I had a private audience with the king, and made a proposition. +I said it was quite right to officer that regiment with nobilities, +and he couldn't have done a wiser thing. It would also be a good +idea to add five hundred officers to it; in fact, add as many +officers as there were nobles and relatives of nobles in the +country, even if there should finally be five times as many officers +as privates in it; and thus make it the crack regiment, the envied +regiment, the King's Own regiment, and entitled to fight on its +own hook and in its own way, and go whither it would and come +when it pleased, in time of war, and be utterly swell and independent. +This would make that regiment the heart's desire of all the +nobility, and they would all be satisfied and happy. Then we +would make up the rest of the standing army out of commonplace +materials, and officer it with nobodies, as was proper--nobodies +selected on a basis of mere efficiency--and we would make this +regiment toe the line, allow it no aristocratic freedom from +restraint, and force it to do all the work and persistent hammering, +to the end that whenever the King's Own was tired and wanted to go +off for a change and rummage around amongst ogres and have a good +time, it could go without uneasiness, knowing that matters were in +safe hands behind it, and business going to be continued at the +old stand, same as usual. The king was charmed with the idea. + +When I noticed that, it gave me a valuable notion. I thought +I saw my way out of an old and stubborn difficulty at last. You +see, the royalties of the Pendragon stock were a long-lived race +and very fruitful. Whenever a child was born to any of these +--and it was pretty often--there was wild joy in the nation's mouth, +and piteous sorrow in the nation's heart. The joy was questionable, +but the grief was honest. Because the event meant another call +for a Royal Grant. Long was the list of these royalties, and +they were a heavy and steadily increasing burden upon the treasury +and a menace to the crown. Yet Arthur could not believe this +latter fact, and he would not listen to any of my various projects +for substituting something in the place of the royal grants. If I +could have persuaded him to now and then provide a support for +one of these outlying scions from his own pocket, I could have +made a grand to-do over it, and it would have had a good effect +with the nation; but no, he wouldn't hear of such a thing. He had +something like a religious passion for royal grant; he seemed to +look upon it as a sort of sacred swag, and one could not irritate +him in any way so quickly and so surely as by an attack upon that +venerable institution. If I ventured to cautiously hint that there +was not another respectable family in England that would humble +itself to hold out the hat--however, that is as far as I ever got; +he always cut me short there, and peremptorily, too. + +But I believed I saw my chance at last. I would form this crack +regiment out of officers alone--not a single private. Half of it +should consist of nobles, who should fill all the places up to +Major-General, and serve gratis and pay their own expenses; and +they would be glad to do this when they should learn that the rest +of the regiment would consist exclusively of princes of the blood. +These princes of the blood should range in rank from Lieutenant-General +up to Field Marshal, and be gorgeously salaried and equipped and +fed by the state. Moreover--and this was the master stroke +--it should be decreed that these princely grandees should be always +addressed by a stunningly gaudy and awe-compelling title (which +I would presently invent), and they and they only in all England +should be so addressed. Finally, all princes of the blood should +have free choice; join that regiment, get that great title, and +renounce the royal grant, or stay out and receive a grant. Neatest +touch of all: unborn but imminent princes of the blood could be +_born_ into the regiment, and start fair, with good wages and a +permanent situation, upon due notice from the parents. + +All the boys would join, I was sure of that; so, all existing +grants would be relinquished; that the newly born would always +join was equally certain. Within sixty days that quaint and +bizarre anomaly, the Royal Grant, would cease to be a living fact, +and take its place among the curiosities of the past. + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +THE FIRST NEWSPAPER + +When I told the king I was going out disguised as a petty freeman +to scour the country and familiarize myself with the humbler life +of the people, he was all afire with the novelty of the thing +in a minute, and was bound to take a chance in the adventure +himself--nothing should stop him--he would drop everything and +go along--it was the prettiest idea he had run across for many +a day. He wanted to glide out the back way and start at once; +but I showed him that that wouldn't answer. You see, he was billed +for the king's-evil--to touch for it, I mean--and it wouldn't be +right to disappoint the house and it wouldn't make a delay worth +considering, anyway, it was only a one-night stand. And I thought +he ought to tell the queen he was going away. He clouded up at +that and looked sad. I was sorry I had spoken, especially when +he said mournfully: + +"Thou forgettest that Launcelot is here; and where Launcelot is, +she noteth not the going forth of the king, nor what day he returneth." + +Of course, I changed the Subject. Yes, Guenever was beautiful, +it is true, but take her all around she was pretty slack. I never +meddled in these matters, they weren't my affair, but I did hate +to see the way things were going on, and I don't mind saying that +much. Many's the time she had asked me, "Sir Boss, hast seen +Sir Launcelot about?" but if ever she went fretting around for +the king I didn't happen to be around at the time. + +There was a very good lay-out for the king's-evil business--very +tidy and creditable. The king sat under a canopy of state; about +him were clustered a large body of the clergy in full canonicals. +Conspicuous, both for location and personal outfit, stood Marinel, +a hermit of the quack-doctor species, to introduce the sick. All +abroad over the spacious floor, and clear down to the doors, +in a thick jumble, lay or sat the scrofulous, under a strong light. +It was as good as a tableau; in fact, it had all the look of being +gotten up for that, though it wasn't. There were eight hundred +sick people present. The work was slow; it lacked the interest +of novelty for me, because I had seen the ceremonies before; +the thing soon became tedious, but the proprieties required me +to stick it out. The doctor was there for the reason that in all +such crowds there were many people who only imagined something +was the matter with them, and many who were consciously sound +but wanted the immortal honor of fleshly contact with a king, and +yet others who pretended to illness in order to get the piece of +coin that went with the touch. Up to this time this coin had been +a wee little gold piece worth about a third of a dollar. When you +consider how much that amount of money would buy, in that age +and country, and how usual it was to be scrofulous, when not dead, +you would understand that the annual king's-evil appropriation was +just the River and Harbor bill of that government for the grip it +took on the treasury and the chance it afforded for skinning the +surplus. So I had privately concluded to touch the treasury itself +for the king's-evil. I covered six-sevenths of the appropriation +into the treasury a week before starting from Camelot on my +adventures, and ordered that the other seventh be inflated into +five-cent nickels and delivered into the hands of the head clerk +of the King's Evil Department; a nickel to take the place of each +gold coin, you see, and do its work for it. It might strain the +nickel some, but I judged it could stand it. As a rule, I do not +approve of watering stock, but I considered it square enough +in this case, for it was just a gift, anyway. Of course, you can +water a gift as much as you want to; and I generally do. The old +gold and silver coins of the country were of ancient and unknown +origin, as a rule, but some of them were Roman; they were ill-shapen, +and seldom rounder than a moon that is a week past the full; they +were hammered, not minted, and they were so worn with use that +the devices upon them were as illegible as blisters, and looked +like them. I judged that a sharp, bright new nickel, with a +first-rate likeness of the king on one side of it and Guenever +on the other, and a blooming pious motto, would take the tuck out +of scrofula as handy as a nobler coin and please the scrofulous +fancy more; and I was right. This batch was the first it was +tried on, and it worked to a charm. The saving in expense was +a notable economy. You will see that by these figures: We touched +a trifle over 700 of the 800 patients; at former rates, this would +have cost the government about $240; at the new rate we pulled +through for about $35, thus saving upward of $200 at one swoop. +To appreciate the full magnitude of this stroke, consider these +other figures: the annual expenses of a national government amount +to the equivalent of a contribution of three days' average wages of +every individual of the population, counting every individual as +if he were a man. If you take a nation of 60,000,000, where average +wages are $2 per day, three days' wages taken from each individual +will provide $360,000,000 and pay the government's expenses. In my +day, in my own country, this money was collected from imposts, +and the citizen imagined that the foreign importer paid it, and it +made him comfortable to think so; whereas, in fact, it was paid +by the American people, and was so equally and exactly distributed +among them that the annual cost to the 100-millionaire and the +annual cost to the sucking child of the day-laborer was precisely +the same--each paid $6. Nothing could be equaler than that, +I reckon. Well, Scotland and Ireland were tributary to Arthur, +and the united populations of the British Islands amounted to +something less than 1,000,000. A mechanic's average wage was +3 cents a day, when he paid his own keep. By this rule the national +government's expenses were $90,000 a year, or about $250 a day. +Thus, by the substitution of nickels for gold on a king's-evil +day, I not only injured no one, dissatisfied no one, but pleased +all concerned and saved four-fifths of that day's national expense +into the bargain--a saving which would have been the equivalent +of $800,000 in my day in America. In making this substitution +I had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source--the wisdom +of my boyhood--for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom, +howsoever lowly may be its origin: in my boyhood I had always +saved my pennies and contributed buttons to the foreign missionary +cause. The buttons would answer the ignorant savage as well as +the coin, the coin would answer me better than the buttons; all +hands were happy and nobody hurt. + +Marinel took the patients as they came. He examined the candidate; +if he couldn't qualify he was warned off; if he could he was passed +along to the king. A priest pronounced the words, "They shall +lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Then the king +stroked the ulcers, while the reading continued; finally, the +patient graduated and got his nickel--the king hanging it around +his neck himself--and was dismissed. Would you think that that +would cure? It certainly did. Any mummery will cure if the +patient's faith is strong in it. Up by Astolat there was a chapel +where the Virgin had once appeared to a girl who used to herd +geese around there--the girl said so herself--and they built the +chapel upon that spot and hung a picture in it representing the +occurrence--a picture which you would think it dangerous for a sick +person to approach; whereas, on the contrary, thousands of the lame +and the sick came and prayed before it every year and went away +whole and sound; and even the well could look upon it and live. +Of course, when I was told these things I did not believe them; +but when I went there and saw them I had to succumb. I saw the +cures effected myself; and they were real cures and not questionable. +I saw cripples whom I had seen around Camelot for years on crutches, +arrive and pray before that picture, and put down their crutches +and walk off without a limp. There were piles of crutches there +which had been left by such people as a testimony. + +In other places people operated on a patient's mind, without saying +a word to him, and cured him. In others, experts assembled patients +in a room and prayed over them, and appealed to their faith, and +those patients went away cured. Wherever you find a king who can't +cure the king's-evil you can be sure that the most valuable +superstition that supports his throne--the subject's belief in +the divine appointment of his sovereign--has passed away. In my +youth the monarchs of England had ceased to touch for the evil, +but there was no occasion for this diffidence: they could have +cured it forty-nine times in fifty. + +Well, when the priest had been droning for three hours, and the +good king polishing the evidences, and the sick were still pressing +forward as plenty as ever, I got to feeling intolerably bored. +I was sitting by an open window not far from the canopy of state. +For the five hundredth time a patient stood forward to have his +repulsivenesses stroked; again those words were being droned out: +"they shall lay their hands on the sick"--when outside there rang +clear as a clarion a note that enchanted my soul and tumbled +thirteen worthless centuries about my ears: "Camelot _Weekly +Hosannah and Literary Volcano!_--latest irruption--only two cents +--all about the big miracle in the Valley of Holiness!" One greater +than kings had arrived--the newsboy. But I was the only person +in all that throng who knew the meaning of this mighty birth, and +what this imperial magician was come into the world to do. + +I dropped a nickel out of the window and got my paper; the +Adam-newsboy of the world went around the corner to get my change; +is around the corner yet. It was delicious to see a newspaper +again, yet I was conscious of a secret shock when my eye fell upon +the first batch of display head-lines. I had lived in a clammy +atmosphere of reverence, respect, deference, so long that they +sent a quivery little cold wave through me: + + + HIGH TIMES IN THE VALLEY + + OF HOLINESS! + + ---- + + THE WATER-WORKS CORKED! + + ---- + + BRER MERLIN WORKS HIS ARTS, BUT GETS + LEFT? + + ---- + + But the Boss scores on his first Innings! + + ---- + + The Miraculous Well Uncorked amid + awful outbursts of + + INFERNAL FIRE AND SMOKE + ATHUNDER! + + ---- + + THE BUZZARD-ROOST ASTONISHED! + + ---- + + UNPARALLELED REJOIBINGS! + + +--and so on, and so on. Yes, it was too loud. Once I could have +enjoyed it and seen nothing out of the way about it, but now its +note was discordant. It was good Arkansas journalism, but this +was not Arkansas. Moreover, the next to the last line was calculated +to give offense to the hermits, and perhaps lose us their advertising. +Indeed, there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all through +the paper. It was plain I had undergone a considerable change +without noticing it. I found myself unpleasantly affected by +pert little irreverencies which would have seemed but proper and +airy graces of speech at an earlier period of my life. There was an +abundance of the following breed of items, and they discomforted me: + + LOCAL SMOKE AND CINDERS. + + Sir Launcelot met up with old King + Agrivance of Ireland unexpectedly last + weok over on the moor south of Sir + Balmoral le Merveilleuse's hog dasture. + The widow has been notified. + + Expedition No. 3 will start adout the + first of mext month on a search f8r Sir + Sagramour le Desirous. It is in com- + and of the renowned Knight of the Red + Lawns, assissted by Sir Persant of Inde, + who is compete9t. intelligent, courte- + ous, and in every way a brick, and fur- + tHer assisted by Sir Palamides the Sara- + cen, who is no huckleberry hinself. + This is no pic-nic, these boys mean + busine&s. + + The readers of the Hosannah will re- + gret to learn that the hadndsome and + popular Sir Charolais of Gaul, who dur- + ing his four weeks' stay at the Bull and + Halibut, this city, has won every heart + by his polished manners and elegant + cPnversation, will pUll out to-day for + home. Give us another call, Charley! + + The bdsiness end of the funeral of + the late Sir Dalliance the duke's son of + Cornwall, killed in an encounter with + the Giant of the Knotted Bludgeon last + Tuesday on the borders of the Plain of + Enchantment was in the hands of the + ever affable and efficient Mumble, + prince of un3ertakers, then whom there + exists none by whom it were a more + satisfying pleasure to have the last sad + offices performed. Give him a trial. + + The cordial thanks of the Hosannah + office are due, from editor down to + devil, to the ever courteous and thought- + ful Lord High Stew d of the Palace's + Third Assistant V t for several sau- + ceTs of ice crEam a quality calculated + to make the ey of the recipients hu- + mid with grt ude; and it done it. + When this administration wants to + chalk up a desirable name for early + promotion, the Hosannah would like a + chance to sudgest. + + The Demoiselle Irene Dewlap, of + South Astolat, is visiting her uncle, the + popular host of the Cattlemen's Board- + ing Ho&se, Liver Lane, this city. + + Young Barker the bellows-mender is + hoMe again, and looks much improved + by his vacation round-up among the out- + lying smithies. See his ad. + +Of course it was good enough journalism for a beginning; I knew +that quite well, and yet it was somehow disappointing. The +"Court Circular" pleased me better; indeed, its simple and dignified +respectfulness was a distinct refreshment to me after all those +disgraceful familiarities. But even it could have been improved. +Do what one may, there is no getting an air of variety into a court +circular, I acknowledge that. There is a profound monotonousness +about its facts that baffles and defeats one's sincerest efforts +to make them sparkle and enthuse. The best way to manage--in fact, +the only sensible way--is to disguise repetitiousness of fact under +variety of form: skin your fact each time and lay on a new cuticle +of words. It deceives the eye; you think it is a new fact; it +gives you the idea that the court is carrying on like everything; +this excites you, and you drain the whole column, with a good +appetite, and perhaps never notice that it's a barrel of soup made +out of a single bean. Clarence's way was good, it was simple, +it was dignified, it was direct and business-like; all I say is, +it was not the best way: + + COURT CIRCULAR. + + On Monday, the king rode in the park. + " Tuesday, " " " + " Wendesday " " " + " Thursday " " " + " Friday, " " " + " Saturday " " " + " Sunday, " " " + + +However, take the paper by and large, I was vastly pleased with it. +Little crudities of a mechanical sort were observable here and +there, but there were not enough of them to amount to anything, +and it was good enough Arkansas proof-reading, anyhow, and better +than was needed in Arthur's day and realm. As a rule, the grammar +was leaky and the construction more or less lame; but I did not +much mind these things. They are common defects of my own, and +one mustn't criticise other people on grounds where he can't stand +perpendicular himself. + +I was hungry enough for literature to want to take down the whole +paper at this one meal, but I got only a few bites, and then had +to postpone, because the monks around me besieged me so with eager +questions: What is this curious thing? What is it for? Is it a +handkerchief?--saddle blanket?--part of a shirt? What is it made of? +How thin it is, and how dainty and frail; and how it rattles. +Will it wear, do you think, and won't the rain injure it? Is it +writing that appears on it, or is it only ornamentation? They +suspected it was writing, because those among them who knew how +to read Latin and had a smattering of Greek, recognized some of +the letters, but they could make nothing out of the result as a +whole. I put my information in the simplest form I could: + +"It is a public journal; I will explain what that is, another time. +It is not cloth, it is made of paper; some time I will explain +what paper is. The lines on it are reading matter; and not written +by hand, but printed; by and by I will explain what printing is. +A thousand of these sheets have been made, all exactly like this, +in every minute detail--they can't be told apart." Then they all +broke out with exclamations of surprise and admiration: + +"A thousand! Verily a mighty work--a year's work for many men." + +"No--merely a day's work for a man and a boy." + +They crossed themselves, and whiffed out a protective prayer or two. + +"Ah-h--a miracle, a wonder! Dark work of enchantment." + +I let it go at that. Then I read in a low voice, to as many as +could crowd their shaven heads within hearing distance, part of +the account of the miracle of the restoration of the well, and +was accompanied by astonished and reverent ejaculations all through: +"Ah-h-h!" "How true!" "Amazing, amazing!" "These be the very +haps as they happened, in marvelous exactness!" And might they +take this strange thing in their hands, and feel of it and examine +it?--they would be very careful. Yes. So they took it, handling +it as cautiously and devoutly as if it had been some holy thing +come from some supernatural region; and gently felt of its texture, +caressed its pleasant smooth surface with lingering touch, and +scanned the mysterious characters with fascinated eyes. These +grouped bent heads, these charmed faces, these speaking eyes +--how beautiful to me! For was not this my darling, and was not +all this mute wonder and interest and homage a most eloquent +tribute and unforced compliment to it? I knew, then, how a mother +feels when women, whether strangers or friends, take her new baby, +and close themselves about it with one eager impulse, and bend +their heads over it in a tranced adoration that makes all the rest +of the universe vanish out of their consciousness and be as if it +were not, for that time. I knew how she feels, and that there is +no other satisfied ambition, whether of king, conqueror, or poet, +that ever reaches half-way to that serene far summit or yields half +so divine a contentment. + +During all the rest of the seance my paper traveled from group to +group all up and down and about that huge hall, and my happy eye +was upon it always, and I sat motionless, steeped in satisfaction, +drunk with enjoyment. Yes, this was heaven; I was tasting it once, +if I might never taste it more. + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +THE YANKEE AND THE KING TRAVEL INCOGNITO + +About bedtime I took the king to my private quarters to cut his +hair and help him get the hang of the lowly raiment he was to wear. +The high classes wore their hair banged across the forehead but +hanging to the shoulders the rest of the way around, whereas the +lowest ranks of commoners were banged fore and aft both; the slaves +were bangless, and allowed their hair free growth. So I inverted +a bowl over his head and cut away all the locks that hung below it. +I also trimmed his whiskers and mustache until they were only +about a half-inch long; and tried to do it inartistically, and +succeeded. It was a villainous disfigurement. When he got his +lubberly sandals on, and his long robe of coarse brown linen cloth, +which hung straight from his neck to his ankle-bones, he was no +longer the comeliest man in his kingdom, but one of the unhandsomest +and most commonplace and unattractive. We were dressed and barbered +alike, and could pass for small farmers, or farm bailiffs, or +shepherds, or carters; yes, or for village artisans, if we chose, +our costume being in effect universal among the poor, because of +its strength and cheapness. I don't mean that it was really cheap +to a very poor person, but I do mean that it was the cheapest +material there was for male attire--manufactured material, you +understand. + +We slipped away an hour before dawn, and by broad sun-up had made +eight or ten miles, and were in the midst of a sparsely settled +country. I had a pretty heavy knapsack; it was laden with +provisions--provisions for the king to taper down on, till he +could take to the coarse fare of the country without damage. + +I found a comfortable seat for the king by the roadside, and then +gave him a morsel or two to stay his stomach with. Then I said +I would find some water for him, and strolled away. Part of my +project was to get out of sight and sit down and rest a little +myself. It had always been my custom to stand when in his presence; +even at the council board, except upon those rare occasions when +the sitting was a very long one, extending over hours; then I had +a trifling little backless thing which was like a reversed culvert +and was as comfortable as the toothache. I didn't want to break +him in suddenly, but do it by degrees. We should have to sit +together now when in company, or people would notice; but it would +not be good politics for me to be playing equality with him when +there was no necessity for it. + +I found the water some three hundred yards away, and had been +resting about twenty minutes, when I heard voices. That is all +right, I thought--peasants going to work; nobody else likely to be +stirring this early. But the next moment these comers jingled into +sight around a turn of the road--smartly clad people of quality, +with luggage-mules and servants in their train! I was off like +a shot, through the bushes, by the shortest cut. For a while it +did seem that these people would pass the king before I could +get to him; but desperation gives you wings, you know, and I canted +my body forward, inflated my breast, and held my breath and flew. +I arrived. And in plenty good enough time, too. + +"Pardon, my king, but it's no time for ceremony--jump! Jump to +your feet--some quality are coming!" + +"Is that a marvel? Let them come." + +"But my liege! You must not be seen sitting. Rise!--and stand in +humble posture while they pass. You are a peasant, you know." + +"True--I had forgot it, so lost was I in planning of a huge war +with Gaul"--he was up by this time, but a farm could have got up +quicker, if there was any kind of a boom in real estate--"and +right-so a thought came randoming overthwart this majestic dream +the which--" + +"A humbler attitude, my lord the king--and quick! Duck your head! +--more!--still more!--droop it!" + +He did his honest best, but lord, it was no great things. He looked +as humble as the leaning tower at Pisa. It is the most you could +say of it. Indeed, it was such a thundering poor success that +it raised wondering scowls all along the line, and a gorgeous +flunkey at the tail end of it raised his whip; but I jumped in +time and was under it when it fell; and under cover of the volley +of coarse laughter which followed, I spoke up sharply and warned +the king to take no notice. He mastered himself for the moment, +but it was a sore tax; he wanted to eat up the procession. I said: + +"It would end our adventures at the very start; and we, being +without weapons, could do nothing with that armed gang. If we +are going to succeed in our emprise, we must not only look the +peasant but act the peasant." + +"It is wisdom; none can gainsay it. Let us go on, Sir Boss. +I will take note and learn, and do the best I may." + +He kept his word. He did the best he could, but I've seen better. +If you have ever seen an active, heedless, enterprising child +going diligently out of one mischief and into another all day +long, and an anxious mother at its heels all the while, and just +saving it by a hair from drowning itself or breaking its neck with +each new experiment, you've seen the king and me. + +If I could have foreseen what the thing was going to be like, +I should have said, No, if anybody wants to make his living +exhibiting a king as a peasant, let him take the layout; I can +do better with a menagerie, and last longer. And yet, during +the first three days I never allowed him to enter a hut or other +dwelling. If he could pass muster anywhere during his early +novitiate it would be in small inns and on the road; so to these +places we confined ourselves. Yes, he certainly did the best he +could, but what of that? He didn't improve a bit that I could see. + +He was always frightening me, always breaking out with fresh +astonishers, in new and unexpected places. Toward evening on +the second day, what does he do but blandly fetch out a dirk +from inside his robe! + +"Great guns, my liege, where did you get that?" + +"From a smuggler at the inn, yester eve." + +"What in the world possessed you to buy it?" + +"We have escaped divers dangers by wit--thy wit--but I have +bethought me that it were but prudence if I bore a weapon, too. +Thine might fail thee in some pinch." + +"But people of our condition are not allowed to carry arms. What +would a lord say--yes, or any other person of whatever condition +--if he caught an upstart peasant with a dagger on his person?" + +It was a lucky thing for us that nobody came along just then. +I persuaded him to throw the dirk away; and it was as easy as +persuading a child to give up some bright fresh new way of killing +itself. We walked along, silent and thinking. Finally the king said: + +"When ye know that I meditate a thing inconvenient, or that hath +a peril in it, why do you not warn me to cease from that project?" + +It was a startling question, and a puzzler. I didn't quite know +how to take hold of it, or what to say, and so, of course, I ended +by saying the natural thing: + +"But, sire, how can I know what your thoughts are?" + +The king stopped dead in his tracks, and stared at me. + +"I believed thou wert greater than Merlin; and truly in magic +thou art. But prophecy is greater than magic. Merlin is a prophet." + +I saw I had made a blunder. I must get back my lost ground. +After a deep reflection and careful planning, I said: + +"Sire, I have been misunderstood. I will explain. There are two +kinds of prophecy. One is the gift to foretell things that are but +a little way off, the other is the gift to foretell things that +are whole ages and centuries away. Which is the mightier gift, +do you think?" + +"Oh, the last, most surely!" + +"True. Does Merlin possess it?" + +"Partly, yes. He foretold mysteries about my birth and future +kingship that were twenty years away." + +"Has he ever gone beyond that?" + +"He would not claim more, I think." + +"It is probably his limit. All prophets have their limit. The limit +of some of the great prophets has been a hundred years." + +"These are few, I ween." + +"There have been two still greater ones, whose limit was four +hundred and six hundred years, and one whose limit compassed +even seven hundred and twenty." + +"Gramercy, it is marvelous!" + +"But what are these in comparison with me? They are nothing." + +"What? Canst thou truly look beyond even so vast a stretch +of time as--" + +"Seven hundred years? My liege, as clear as the vision of an eagle +does my prophetic eye penetrate and lay bare the future of this +world for nearly thirteen centuries and a half!" + +My land, you should have seen the king's eyes spread slowly open, +and lift the earth's entire atmosphere as much as an inch! That +settled Brer Merlin. One never had any occasion to prove his +facts, with these people; all he had to do was to state them. It +never occurred to anybody to doubt the statement. + +"Now, then," I continued, "I _could_ work both kinds of prophecy +--the long and the short--if I chose to take the trouble to keep +in practice; but I seldom exercise any but the long kind, because +the other is beneath my dignity. It is properer to Merlin's sort +--stump-tail prophets, as we call them in the profession. Of course, +I whet up now and then and flirt out a minor prophecy, but not +often--hardly ever, in fact. You will remember that there was +great talk, when you reached the Valley of Holiness, about my +having prophesied your coming and the very hour of your arrival, +two or three days beforehand." + +"Indeed, yes, I mind it now." + +"Well, I could have done it as much as forty times easier, and +piled on a thousand times more detail into the bargain, if it had +been five hundred years away instead of two or three days." + +"How amazing that it should be so!" + +"Yes, a genuine expert can always foretell a thing that is five +hundred years away easier than he can a thing that's only five +hundred seconds off." + +"And yet in reason it should clearly be the other way; it should +be five hundred times as easy to foretell the last as the first, +for, indeed, it is so close by that one uninspired might almost +see it. In truth, the law of prophecy doth contradict the likelihoods, +most strangely making the difficult easy, and the easy difficult." + +It was a wise head. A peasant's cap was no safe disguise for it; +you could know it for a king's under a diving-bell, if you could +hear it work its intellect. + +I had a new trade now, and plenty of business in it. The king +was as hungry to find out everything that was going to happen +during the next thirteen centuries as if he were expecting to live +in them. From that time out, I prophesied myself bald-headed +trying to supply the demand. I have done some indiscreet things in +my day, but this thing of playing myself for a prophet was the +worst. Still, it had its ameliorations. A prophet doesn't have +to have any brains. They are good to have, of course, for the +ordinary exigencies of life, but they are no use in professional +work. It is the restfulest vocation there is. When the spirit of +prophecy comes upon you, you merely cake your intellect and lay it +off in a cool place for a rest, and unship your jaw and leave it +alone; it will work itself: the result is prophecy. + +Every day a knight-errant or so came along, and the sight of them +fired the king's martial spirit every time. He would have forgotten +himself, sure, and said something to them in a style a suspicious +shade or so above his ostensible degree, and so I always got him +well out of the road in time. Then he would stand and look with +all his eyes; and a proud light would flash from them, and his +nostrils would inflate like a war-horse's, and I knew he was +longing for a brush with them. But about noon of the third day +I had stopped in the road to take a precaution which had been +suggested by the whip-stroke that had fallen to my share two days +before; a precaution which I had afterward decided to leave untaken, +I was so loath to institute it; but now I had just had a fresh +reminder: while striding heedlessly along, with jaw spread and +intellect at rest, for I was prophesying, I stubbed my toe and +fell sprawling. I was so pale I couldn't think for a moment; +then I got softly and carefully up and unstrapped my knapsack. +I had that dynamite bomb in it, done up in wool in a box. It was +a good thing to have along; the time would come when I could do +a valuable miracle with it, maybe, but it was a nervous thing +to have about me, and I didn't like to ask the king to carry it. +Yet I must either throw it away or think up some safe way to get +along with its society. I got it out and slipped it into my scrip, +and just then here came a couple of knights. The king stood, +stately as a statue, gazing toward them--had forgotten himself again, +of course--and before I could get a word of warning out, it was +time for him to skip, and well that he did it, too. He supposed +they would turn aside. Turn aside to avoid trampling peasant dirt +under foot? When had he ever turned aside himself--or ever had +the chance to do it, if a peasant saw him or any other noble knight +in time to judiciously save him the trouble? The knights paid +no attention to the king at all; it was his place to look out +himself, and if he hadn't skipped he would have been placidly +ridden down, and laughed at besides. + +The king was in a flaming fury, and launched out his challenge +and epithets with a most royal vigor. The knights were some little +distance by now. They halted, greatly surprised, and turned in +their saddles and looked back, as if wondering if it might be worth +while to bother with such scum as we. Then they wheeled and +started for us. Not a moment must be lost. I started for _them_. +I passed them at a rattling gait, and as I went by I flung out a +hair-lifting soul-scorching thirteen-jointed insult which made +the king's effort poor and cheap by comparison. I got it out of +the nineteenth century where they know how. They had such headway +that they were nearly to the king before they could check up; +then, frantic with rage, they stood up their horses on their hind +hoofs and whirled them around, and the next moment here they came, +breast to breast. I was seventy yards off, then, and scrambling up +a great bowlder at the roadside. When they were within thirty +yards of me they let their long lances droop to a level, depressed +their mailed heads, and so, with their horse-hair plumes streaming +straight out behind, most gallant to see, this lightning express +came tearing for me! When they were within fifteen yards, I sent +that bomb with a sure aim, and it struck the ground just under +the horses' noses. + +Yes, it was a neat thing, very neat and pretty to see. It resembled +a steamboat explosion on the Mississippi; and during the next +fifteen minutes we stood under a steady drizzle of microscopic +fragments of knights and hardware and horse-flesh. I say we, +for the king joined the audience, of course, as soon as he had got +his breath again. There was a hole there which would afford steady +work for all the people in that region for some years to come +--in trying to explain it, I mean; as for filling it up, that service +would be comparatively prompt, and would fall to the lot of a +select few--peasants of that seignory; and they wouldn't get +anything for it, either. + +But I explained it to the king myself. I said it was done with a +dynamite bomb. This information did him no damage, because it +left him as intelligent as he was before. However, it was a noble +miracle, in his eyes, and was another settler for Merlin. I thought +it well enough to explain that this was a miracle of so rare a sort +that it couldn't be done except when the atmospheric conditions +were just right. Otherwise he would be encoring it every time we +had a good subject, and that would be inconvenient, because I +hadn't any more bombs along. + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +DRILLING THE KING + +On the morning of the fourth day, when it was just sunrise, and we +had been tramping an hour in the chill dawn, I came to a resolution: +the king _must_ be drilled; things could not go on so, he must be +taken in hand and deliberately and conscientiously drilled, or we +couldn't ever venture to enter a dwelling; the very cats would know +this masquerader for a humbug and no peasant. So I called a halt +and said: + +"Sire, as between clothes and countenance, you are all right, there +is no discrepancy; but as between your clothes and your bearing, +you are all wrong, there is a most noticeable discrepancy. Your +soldierly stride, your lordly port--these will not do. You stand +too straight, your looks are too high, too confident. The cares +of a kingdom do not stoop the shoulders, they do not droop the chin, +they do not depress the high level of the eye-glance, they do not +put doubt and fear in the heart and hang out the signs of them +in slouching body and unsure step. It is the sordid cares of +the lowly born that do these things. You must learn the trick; +you must imitate the trademarks of poverty, misery, oppression, +insult, and the other several and common inhumanities that sap +the manliness out of a man and make him a loyal and proper and +approved subject and a satisfaction to his masters, or the very +infants will know you for better than your disguise, and we shall go +to pieces at the first hut we stop at. Pray try to walk like this." + +The king took careful note, and then tried an imitation. + +"Pretty fair--pretty fair. Chin a little lower, please--there, very +good. Eyes too high; pray don't look at the horizon, look at the +ground, ten steps in front of you. Ah--that is better, that is +very good. Wait, please; you betray too much vigor, too much +decision; you want more of a shamble. Look at me, please--this is +what I mean.... Now you are getting it; that is the idea--at least, +it sort of approaches it.... Yes, that is pretty fair. _But!_ +There is a great big something wanting, I don't quite know what +it is. Please walk thirty yards, so that I can get a perspective +on the thing.... Now, then--your head's right, speed's right, +shoulders right, eyes right, chin right, gait, carriage, general +style right--everything's right! And yet the fact remains, the +aggregate's wrong. The account don't balance. Do it again, +please.... _Now_ I think I begin to see what it is. Yes, I've +struck it. You see, the genuine spiritlessness is wanting; that's +what's the trouble. It's all _amateur_--mechanical details all +right, almost to a hair; everything about the delusion perfect, +except that it don't delude." + +"What, then, must one do, to prevail?" + +"Let me think... I can't seem to quite get at it. In fact, there +isn't anything that can right the matter but practice. This is +a good place for it: roots and stony ground to break up your +stately gait, a region not liable to interruption, only one field +and one hut in sight, and they so far away that nobody could +see us from there. It will be well to move a little off the road +and put in the whole day drilling you, sire." + +After the drill had gone on a little while, I said: + +"Now, sire, imagine that we are at the door of the hut yonder, +and the family are before us. Proceed, please--accost the head +of the house." + +The king unconsciously straightened up like a monument, and said, +with frozen austerity: + +"Varlet, bring a seat; and serve to me what cheer ye have." + +"Ah, your grace, that is not well done." + +"In what lacketh it?" + +"These people do not call _each other_ varlets." + +"Nay, is that true?" + +"Yes; only those above them call them so." + +"Then must I try again. I will call him villein." + +"No-no; for he may be a freeman." + +"Ah--so. Then peradventure I should call him goodman." + +"That would answer, your grace, but it would be still better if +you said friend, or brother." + +"Brother!--to dirt like that?" + +"Ah, but _we_ are pretending to be dirt like that, too." + +"It is even true. I will say it. Brother, bring a seat, and +thereto what cheer ye have, withal. Now 'tis right." + +"Not quite, not wholly right. You have asked for one, not _us_ +--for one, not both; food for one, a seat for one." + +The king looked puzzled--he wasn't a very heavy weight, intellectually. +His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do +it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once. + +"Would _you_ have a seat also--and sit?" + +"If I did not sit, the man would perceive that we were only pretending +to be equals--and playing the deception pretty poorly, too." + +"It is well and truly said! How wonderful is truth, come it in +whatsoever unexpected form it may! Yes, he must bring out seats +and food for both, and in serving us present not ewer and napkin +with more show of respect to the one than to the other." + +"And there is even yet a detail that needs correcting. He must +bring nothing outside; we will go in--in among the dirt, and +possibly other repulsive things,--and take the food with the +household, and after the fashion of the house, and all on equal +terms, except the man be of the serf class; and finally, there +will be no ewer and no napkin, whether he be serf or free. Please +walk again, my liege. There--it is better--it is the best yet; +but not perfect. The shoulders have known no ignobler burden +than iron mail, and they will not stoop." + +"Give me, then, the bag. I will learn the spirit that goeth +with burdens that have not honor. It is the spirit that stoopeth +the shoulders, I ween, and not the weight; for armor is heavy, +yet it is a proud burden, and a man standeth straight in it.... +Nay, but me no buts, offer me no objections. I will have the thing. +Strap it upon my back." + +He was complete now with that knapsack on, and looked as little +like a king as any man I had ever seen. But it was an obstinate +pair of shoulders; they could not seem to learn the trick of +stooping with any sort of deceptive naturalness. The drill went on, +I prompting and correcting: + +"Now, make believe you are in debt, and eaten up by relentless +creditors; you are out of work--which is horse-shoeing, let us +say--and can get none; and your wife is sick, your children are +crying because they are hungry--" + +And so on, and so on. I drilled him as representing in turn all +sorts of people out of luck and suffering dire privations and +misfortunes. But lord, it was only just words, words--they meant +nothing in the world to him, I might just as well have whistled. +Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have +suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to +describe. There are wise people who talk ever so knowingly and +complacently about "the working classes," and satisfy themselves +that a day's hard intellectual work is very much harder than +a day's hard manual toil, and is righteously entitled to much +bigger pay. Why, they really think that, you know, because they +know all about the one, but haven't tried the other. But I know +all about both; and so far as I am concerned, there isn't money +enough in the universe to hire me to swing a pickaxe thirty days, +but I will do the hardest kind of intellectual work for just as +near nothing as you can cipher it down--and I will be satisfied, too. + +Intellectual "work" is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, +and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, +engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, +legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in heaven +when he is at work; and as for the musician with the fiddle-bow +in his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the +ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him--why, +certainly, he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, +it's a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly +unfair--but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher +the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall +be his pay in cash, also. And it's also the very law of those +transparent swindles, transmissible nobility and kingship. + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +THE SMALLPOX HUT + +When we arrived at that hut at mid-afternoon, we saw no signs +of life about it. The field near by had been denuded of its crop +some time before, and had a skinned look, so exhaustively had +it been harvested and gleaned. Fences, sheds, everything had a +ruined look, and were eloquent of poverty. No animal was around +anywhere, no living thing in sight. The stillness was awful, it +was like the stillness of death. The cabin was a one-story one, +whose thatch was black with age, and ragged from lack of repair. + +The door stood a trifle ajar. We approached it stealthily--on tiptoe +and at half-breath--for that is the way one's feeling makes him do, +at such a time. The king knocked. We waited. No answer. Knocked +again. No answer. I pushed the door softly open and looked in. +I made out some dim forms, and a woman started up from the ground +and stared at me, as one does who is wakened from sleep. Presently +she found her voice: + +"Have mercy!" she pleaded. "All is taken, nothing is left." + +"I have not come to take anything, poor woman." + +"You are not a priest?" + +"No." + +"Nor come not from the lord of the manor?" + +"No, I am a stranger." + +"Oh, then, for the fear of God, who visits with misery and death +such as be harmless, tarry not here, but fly! This place is under +his curse--and his Church's." + +"Let me come in and help you--you are sick and in trouble." + +I was better used to the dim light now. I could see her hollow +eyes fixed upon me. I could see how emaciated she was. + +"I tell you the place is under the Church's ban. Save yourself +--and go, before some straggler see thee here, and report it." + +"Give yourself no trouble about me; I don't care anything for the +Church's curse. Let me help you." + +"Now all good spirits--if there be any such--bless thee for that +word. Would God I had a sup of water!--but hold, hold, forget +I said it, and fly; for there is that here that even he that +feareth not the Church must fear: this disease whereof we die. +Leave us, thou brave, good stranger, and take with thee such +whole and sincere blessing as them that be accursed can give." + +But before this I had picked up a wooden bowl and was rushing +past the king on my way to the brook. It was ten yards away. +When I got back and entered, the king was within, and was opening +the shutter that closed the window-hole, to let in air and light. +The place was full of a foul stench. I put the bowl to the woman's +lips, and as she gripped it with her eager talons the shutter came +open and a strong light flooded her face. Smallpox! + +I sprang to the king, and said in his ear: + +"Out of the door on the instant, sire! the woman is dying of that +disease that wasted the skirts of Camelot two years ago." + +He did not budge. + +"Of a truth I shall remain--and likewise help." + +I whispered again: + +"King, it must not be. You must go." + +"Ye mean well, and ye speak not unwisely. But it were shame that +a king should know fear, and shame that belted knight should +withhold his hand where be such as need succor. Peace, I will +not go. It is you who must go. The Church's ban is not upon me, +but it forbiddeth you to be here, and she will deal with you with +a heavy hand an word come to her of your trespass." + +It was a desperate place for him to be in, and might cost him his +life, but it was no use to argue with him. If he considered his +knightly honor at stake here, that was the end of argument; he +would stay, and nothing could prevent it; I was aware of that. +And so I dropped the subject. The woman spoke: + +"Fair sir, of your kindness will ye climb the ladder there, +and bring me news of what ye find? Be not afraid to report, +for times can come when even a mother's heart is past breaking +--being already broke." + +"Abide," said the king, "and give the woman to eat. I will go." +And he put down the knapsack. + +I turned to start, but the king had already started. He halted, +and looked down upon a man who lay in a dim light, and had not +noticed us thus far, or spoken. + +"Is it your husband?" the king asked. + +"Yes." + +"Is he asleep?" + +"God be thanked for that one charity, yes--these three hours. +Where shall I pay to the full, my gratitude! for my heart is +bursting with it for that sleep he sleepeth now." + +I said: + +"We will be careful. We will not wake him." + +"Ah, no, that ye will not, for he is dead." + +"Dead?" + +"Yes, what triumph it is to know it! None can harm him, none +insult him more. He is in heaven now, and happy; or if not there, +he bides in hell and is content; for in that place he will find +neither abbot nor yet bishop. We were boy and girl together; we +were man and wife these five and twenty years, and never separated +till this day. Think how long that is to love and suffer together. +This morning was he out of his mind, and in his fancy we were +boy and girl again and wandering in the happy fields; and so in +that innocent glad converse wandered he far and farther, still +lightly gossiping, and entered into those other fields we know +not of, and was shut away from mortal sight. And so there was +no parting, for in his fancy I went with him; he knew not but +I went with him, my hand in his--my young soft hand, not this +withered claw. Ah, yes, to go, and know it not; to separate and +know it not; how could one go peace--fuller than that? It was +his reward for a cruel life patiently borne." + +There was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where +the ladder was. It was the king descending. I could see that he +was bearing something in one arm, and assisting himself with the +other. He came forward into the light; upon his breast lay a +slender girl of fifteen. She was but half conscious; she was dying +of smallpox. Here was heroism at its last and loftiest possibility, +its utmost summit; this was challenging death in the open field +unarmed, with all the odds against the challenger, no reward set +upon the contest, and no admiring world in silks and cloth of gold +to gaze and applaud; and yet the king's bearing was as serenely +brave as it had always been in those cheaper contests where knight +meets knight in equal fight and clothed in protecting steel. He +was great now; sublimely great. The rude statues of his ancestors +in his palace should have an addition--I would see to that; and it +would not be a mailed king killing a giant or a dragon, like the +rest, it would be a king in commoner's garb bearing death in his +arms that a peasant mother might look her last upon her child and +be comforted. + +He laid the girl down by her mother, who poured out endearments +and caresses from an overflowing heart, and one could detect a +flickering faint light of response in the child's eyes, but that +was all. The mother hung over her, kissing her, petting her, and +imploring her to speak, but the lips only moved and no sound came. +I snatched my liquor flask from my knapsack, but the woman forbade +me, and said: + +"No--she does not suffer; it is better so. It might bring her back +to life. None that be so good and kind as ye are would do her +that cruel hurt. For look you--what is left to live for? Her +brothers are gone, her father is gone, her mother goeth, the +Church's curse is upon her, and none may shelter or befriend her +even though she lay perishing in the road. She is desolate. I have +not asked you, good heart, if her sister be still on live, here +overhead; I had no need; ye had gone back, else, and not left +the poor thing forsaken--" + +"She lieth at peace," interrupted the king, in a subdued voice. + +"I would not change it. How rich is this day in happiness! Ah, +my Annis, thou shalt join thy sister soon--thou'rt on thy way, +and these be merciful friends that will not hinder." + +And so she fell to murmuring and cooing over the girl again, and +softly stroking her face and hair, and kissing her and calling her +by endearing names; but there was scarcely sign of response now +in the glazing eyes. I saw tears well from the king's eyes, and +trickle down his face. The woman noticed them, too, and said: + +"Ah, I know that sign: thou'st a wife at home, poor soul, and +you and she have gone hungry to bed, many's the time, that the +little ones might have your crust; you know what poverty is, and +the daily insults of your betters, and the heavy hand of the Church +and the king." + +The king winced under this accidental home-shot, but kept still; +he was learning his part; and he was playing it well, too, for +a pretty dull beginner. I struck up a diversion. I offered the +woman food and liquor, but she refused both. She would allow +nothing to come between her and the release of death. Then I slipped +away and brought the dead child from aloft, and laid it by her. +This broke her down again, and there was another scene that was +full of heartbreak. By and by I made another diversion, and beguiled +her to sketch her story. + +"Ye know it well yourselves, having suffered it--for truly none +of our condition in Britain escape it. It is the old, weary tale. +We fought and struggled and succeeded; meaning by success, that +we lived and did not die; more than that is not to be claimed. No +troubles came that we could not outlive, till this year brought +them; then came they all at once, as one might say, and overwhelmed +us. Years ago the lord of the manor planted certain fruit trees on +our farm; in the best part of it, too--a grievous wrong and shame--" + +"But it was his right," interrupted the king. + +"None denieth that, indeed; an the law mean anything, what is +the lord's is his, and what is mine is his also. Our farm was +ours by lease, therefore 'twas likewise his, to do with it as he +would. Some little time ago, three of those trees were found hewn +down. Our three grown sons ran frightened to report the crime. +Well, in his lordship's dungeon there they lie, who saith there +shall they lie and rot till they confess. They have naught to +confess, being innocent, wherefore there will they remain until +they die. Ye know that right well, I ween. Think how this left us; +a man, a woman and two children, to gather a crop that was planted +by so much greater force, yes, and protect it night and day from +pigeons and prowling animals that be sacred and must not be hurt +by any of our sort. When my lord's crop was nearly ready for +the harvest, so also was ours; when his bell rang to call us to +his fields to harvest his crop for nothing, he would not allow that +I and my two girls should count for our three captive sons, but +for only two of them; so, for the lacking one were we daily fined. +All this time our own crop was perishing through neglect; and so +both the priest and his lordship fined us because their shares +of it were suffering through damage. In the end the fines ate up +our crop--and they took it all; they took it all and made us harvest +it for them, without pay or food, and we starving. Then the worst +came when I, being out of my mind with hunger and loss of my boys, +and grief to see my husband and my little maids in rags and misery +and despair, uttered a deep blasphemy--oh! a thousand of them! +--against the Church and the Church's ways. It was ten days ago. +I had fallen sick with this disease, and it was to the priest +I said the words, for he was come to chide me for lack of due +humility under the chastening hand of God. He carried my trespass +to his betters; I was stubborn; wherefore, presently upon my head +and upon all heads that were dear to me, fell the curse of Rome. + +"Since that day we are avoided, shunned with horror. None has +come near this hut to know whether we live or not. The rest of us +were taken down. Then I roused me and got up, as wife and mother +will. It was little they could have eaten in any case; it was +less than little they had to eat. But there was water, and I gave +them that. How they craved it! and how they blessed it! But the +end came yesterday; my strength broke down. Yesterday was the +last time I ever saw my husband and this youngest child alive. +I have lain here all these hours--these ages, ye may say--listening, +listening for any sound up there that--" + +She gave a sharp quick glance at her eldest daughter, then cried +out, "Oh, my darling!" and feebly gathered the stiffening form +to her sheltering arms. She had recognized the death-rattle. + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +THE TRAGEDY OF THE MANOR-HOUSE + +At midnight all was over, and we sat in the presence of four +corpses. We covered them with such rags as we could find, and +started away, fastening the door behind us. Their home must be +these people's grave, for they could not have Christian burial, +or be admitted to consecrated ground. They were as dogs, wild +beasts, lepers, and no soul that valued its hope of eternal life +would throw it away by meddling in any sort with these rebuked and +smitten outcasts. + +We had not moved four steps when I caught a sound as of footsteps +upon gravel. My heart flew to my throat. We must not be seen +coming from that house. I plucked at the king's robe and we drew +back and took shelter behind the corner of the cabin. + +"Now we are safe," I said, "but it was a close call--so to speak. +If the night had been lighter he might have seen us, no doubt, +he seemed to be so near." + +"Mayhap it is but a beast and not a man at all." + +"True. But man or beast, it will be wise to stay here a minute +and let it get by and out of the way." + +"Hark! It cometh hither." + +True again. The step was coming toward us--straight toward the hut. +It must be a beast, then, and we might as well have saved our +trepidation. I was going to step out, but the king laid his hand +upon my arm. There was a moment of silence, then we heard a soft +knock on the cabin door. It made me shiver. Presently the knock +was repeated, and then we heard these words in a guarded voice: + +"Mother! Father! Open--we have got free, and we bring news to +pale your cheeks but glad your hearts; and we may not tarry, but +must fly! And--but they answer not. Mother! father!--" + +I drew the king toward the other end of the hut and whispered: + +"Come--now we can get to the road." + +The king hesitated, was going to demur; but just then we heard +the door give way, and knew that those desolate men were in the +presence of their dead. + +"Come, my liege! in a moment they will strike a light, and then +will follow that which it would break your heart to hear." + +He did not hesitate this time. The moment we were in the road +I ran; and after a moment he threw dignity aside and followed. +I did not want to think of what was happening in the hut--I couldn't +bear it; I wanted to drive it out of my mind; so I struck into the +first subject that lay under that one in my mind: + +"I have had the disease those people died of, and so have nothing +to fear; but if you have not had it also--" + +He broke in upon me to say he was in trouble, and it was his +conscience that was troubling him: + +"These young men have got free, they say--but _how_? It is not +likely that their lord hath set them free." + +"Oh, no, I make no doubt they escaped." + +"That is my trouble; I have a fear that this is so, and your +suspicion doth confirm it, you having the same fear." + +"I should not call it by that name though. I do suspect that they +escaped, but if they did, I am not sorry, certainly." + +"I am not sorry, I _think_--but--" + +"What is it? What is there for one to be troubled about?" + +"_If_ they did escape, then are we bound in duty to lay hands upon +them and deliver them again to their lord; for it is not seemly +that one of his quality should suffer a so insolent and high-handed +outrage from persons of their base degree." + +There it was again. He could see only one side of it. He was +born so, educated so, his veins were full of ancestral blood that +was rotten with this sort of unconscious brutality, brought down +by inheritance from a long procession of hearts that had each done +its share toward poisoning the stream. To imprison these men +without proof, and starve their kindred, was no harm, for they were +merely peasants and subject to the will and pleasure of their lord, +no matter what fearful form it might take; but for these men to +break out of unjust captivity was insult and outrage, and a thing +not to be countenanced by any conscientious person who knew his +duty to his sacred caste. + +I worked more than half an hour before I got him to change the +subject--and even then an outside matter did it for me. This was +a something which caught our eyes as we struck the summit of a +small hill--a red glow, a good way off. + +"That's a fire," said I. + +Fires interested me considerably, because I was getting a good +deal of an insurance business started, and was also training some +horses and building some steam fire-engines, with an eye to a paid +fire department by and by. The priests opposed both my fire and +life insurance, on the ground that it was an insolent attempt to +hinder the decrees of God; and if you pointed out that they did not +hinder the decrees in the least, but only modified the hard +consequences of them if you took out policies and had luck, they +retorted that that was gambling against the decrees of God, and was +just as bad. So they managed to damage those industries more +or less, but I got even on my Accident business. As a rule, a knight +is a lummox, and some times even a labrick, and hence open to pretty +poor arguments when they come glibly from a superstition-monger, +but even _he_ could see the practical side of a thing once in a while; +and so of late you couldn't clean up a tournament and pile the +result without finding one of my accident-tickets in every helmet. + +We stood there awhile, in the thick darkness and stillness, looking +toward the red blur in the distance, and trying to make out the +meaning of a far-away murmur that rose and fell fitfully on the +night. Sometimes it swelled up and for a moment seemed less +remote; but when we were hopefully expecting it to betray its cause +and nature, it dulled and sank again, carrying its mystery with it. +We started down the hill in its direction, and the winding road +plunged us at once into almost solid darkness--darkness that was +packed and crammed in between two tall forest walls. We groped +along down for half a mile, perhaps, that murmur growing more and +more distinct all the time. The coming storm threatening more and +more, with now and then a little shiver of wind, a faint show of +lightning, and dull grumblings of distant thunder. I was in the +lead. I ran against something--a soft heavy something which gave, +slightly, to the impulse of my weight; at the same moment the +lightning glared out, and within a foot of my face was the writhing +face of a man who was hanging from the limb of a tree! That is, +it seemed to be writhing, but it was not. It was a grewsome sight. +Straightway there was an ear-splitting explosion of thunder, and +the bottom of heaven fell out; the rain poured down in a deluge. +No matter, we must try to cut this man down, on the chance that +there might be life in him yet, mustn't we? The lightning came +quick and sharp now, and the place was alternately noonday and +midnight. One moment the man would be hanging before me in an +intense light, and the next he was blotted out again in the darkness. +I told the king we must cut him down. The king at once objected. + +"If he hanged himself, he was willing to lose him property to +his lord; so let him be. If others hanged him, belike they had +the right--let him hang." + +"But--" + +"But me no buts, but even leave him as he is. And for yet another +reason. When the lightning cometh again--there, look abroad." + +Two others hanging, within fifty yards of us! + +"It is not weather meet for doing useless courtesies unto dead folk. +They are past thanking you. Come--it is unprofitable to tarry here." + +There was reason in what he said, so we moved on. Within the next +mile we counted six more hanging forms by the blaze of the lightning, +and altogether it was a grisly excursion. That murmur was a murmur +no longer, it was a roar; a roar of men's voices. A man came flying +by now, dimly through the darkness, and other men chasing him. +They disappeared. Presently another case of the kind occurred, +and then another and another. Then a sudden turn of the road +brought us in sight of that fire--it was a large manor-house, and +little or nothing was left of it--and everywhere men were flying +and other men raging after them in pursuit. + +I warned the king that this was not a safe place for strangers. +We would better get away from the light, until matters should +improve. We stepped back a little, and hid in the edge of the +wood. From this hiding-place we saw both men and women hunted +by the mob. The fearful work went on until nearly dawn. Then, +the fire being out and the storm spent, the voices and flying +footsteps presently ceased, and darkness and stillness reigned again. + +We ventured out, and hurried cautiously away; and although we were +worn out and sleepy, we kept on until we had put this place some +miles behind us. Then we asked hospitality at the hut of a charcoal +burner, and got what was to be had. A woman was up and about, but +the man was still asleep, on a straw shake-down, on the clay floor. +The woman seemed uneasy until I explained that we were travelers +and had lost our way and been wandering in the woods all night. +She became talkative, then, and asked if we had heard of the +terrible goings-on at the manor-house of Abblasoure. Yes, we had +heard of them, but what we wanted now was rest and sleep. The +king broke in: + +"Sell us the house and take yourselves away, for we be perilous +company, being late come from people that died of the Spotted Death." + +It was good of him, but unnecessary. One of the commonest decorations +of the nation was the waffle-iron face. I had early noticed that +the woman and her husband were both so decorated. She made us +entirely welcome, and had no fears; and plainly she was immensely +impressed by the king's proposition; for, of course, it was a good +deal of an event in her life to run across a person of the king's +humble appearance who was ready to buy a man's house for the sake +of a night's lodging. It gave her a large respect for us, and she +strained the lean possibilities of her hovel to the utmost to make +us comfortable. + +We slept till far into the afternoon, and then got up hungry enough to +make cotter fare quite palatable to the king, the more particularly +as it was scant in quantity. And also in variety; it consisted +solely of onions, salt, and the national black bread made out of +horse-feed. The woman told us about the affair of the evening +before. At ten or eleven at night, when everybody was in bed, +the manor-house burst into flames. The country-side swarmed to +the rescue, and the family were saved, with one exception, the +master. He did not appear. Everybody was frantic over this loss, +and two brave yeomen sacrificed their lives in ransacking the +burning house seeking that valuable personage. But after a while +he was found--what was left of him--which was his corpse. It was +in a copse three hundred yards away, bound, gagged, stabbed in a +dozen places. + +Who had done this? Suspicion fell upon a humble family in the +neighborhood who had been lately treated with peculiar harshness +by the baron; and from these people the suspicion easily extended +itself to their relatives and familiars. A suspicion was enough; +my lord's liveried retainers proclaimed an instant crusade against +these people, and were promptly joined by the community in general. +The woman's husband had been active with the mob, and had not +returned home until nearly dawn. He was gone now to find out +what the general result had been. While we were still talking he +came back from his quest. His report was revolting enough. Eighteen +persons hanged or butchered, and two yeomen and thirteen prisoners +lost in the fire. + +"And how many prisoners were there altogether in the vaults?" + +"Thirteen." + +"Then every one of them was lost?" + +"Yes, all." + +"But the people arrived in time to save the family; how is it they +could save none of the prisoners?" + +The man looked puzzled, and said: + +"Would one unlock the vaults at such a time? Marry, some would +have escaped." + +"Then you mean that nobody _did_ unlock them?" + +"None went near them, either to lock or unlock. It standeth to +reason that the bolts were fast; wherefore it was only needful +to establish a watch, so that if any broke the bonds he might not +escape, but be taken. None were taken." + +"Natheless, three did escape," said the king, "and ye will do well +to publish it and set justice upon their track, for these murthered +the baron and fired the house." + +I was just expecting he would come out with that. For a moment +the man and his wife showed an eager interest in this news and +an impatience to go out and spread it; then a sudden something +else betrayed itself in their faces, and they began to ask questions. +I answered the questions myself, and narrowly watched the effects +produced. I was soon satisfied that the knowledge of who these +three prisoners were had somehow changed the atmosphere; that +our hosts' continued eagerness to go and spread the news was now +only pretended and not real. The king did not notice the change, +and I was glad of that. I worked the conversation around toward +other details of the night's proceedings, and noted that these +people were relieved to have it take that direction. + +The painful thing observable about all this business was the +alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their +cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common +oppressor. This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel +between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural +and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil's whole caste +to side with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever +stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. This +man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his +work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against +them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable +as evidence, still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything +horrible about it. + +This was depressing--to a man with the dream of a republic in his +head. It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when +the "poor whites" of our South who were always despised and +frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed +their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their +midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lords +in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of +slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out +their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very +institution which degraded them. And there was only one redeeming +feature connected with that pitiful piece of history; and that was, +that secretly the "poor white" did detest the slave-lord, and did +feel his own shame. That feeling was not brought to the surface, +but the fact that it was there and could have been brought out, +under favoring circumstances, was something--in fact, it was enough; +for it showed that a man is at bottom a man, after all, even if it +doesn't show on the outside. + +Well, as it turned out, this charcoal burner was just the twin of +the Southern "poor white" of the far future. The king presently +showed impatience, and said: + +"An ye prattle here all the day, justice will miscarry. Think ye +the criminals will abide in their father's house? They are fleeing, +they are not waiting. You should look to it that a party of horse +be set upon their track." + +The woman paled slightly, but quite perceptibly, and the man looked +flustered and irresolute. I said: + +"Come, friend, I will walk a little way with you, and explain which +direction I think they would try to take. If they were merely +resisters of the gabelle or some kindred absurdity I would try +to protect them from capture; but when men murder a person of +high degree and likewise burn his house, that is another matter." + +The last remark was for the king--to quiet him. On the road +the man pulled his resolution together, and began the march with +a steady gait, but there was no eagerness in it. By and by I said: + +"What relation were these men to you--cousins?" + +He turned as white as his layer of charcoal would let him, and +stopped, trembling. + +"Ah, my God, how know ye that?" + +"I didn't know it; it was a chance guess." + +"Poor lads, they are lost. And good lads they were, too." + +"Were you actually going yonder to tell on them?" + +He didn't quite know how to take that; but he said, hesitatingly: + +"Ye-s." + +"Then I think you are a damned scoundrel!" + +It made him as glad as if I had called him an angel. + +"Say the good words again, brother! for surely ye mean that ye +would not betray me an I failed of my duty." + +"Duty? There is no duty in the matter, except the duty to keep +still and let those men get away. They've done a righteous deed." + +He looked pleased; pleased, and touched with apprehension at the +same time. He looked up and down the road to see that no one +was coming, and then said in a cautious voice: + +"From what land come you, brother, that you speak such perilous +words, and seem not to be afraid?" + +"They are not perilous words when spoken to one of my own caste, +I take it. You would not tell anybody I said them?" + +"I? I would be drawn asunder by wild horses first." + +"Well, then, let me say my say. I have no fears of your repeating +it. I think devil's work has been done last night upon those +innocent poor people. That old baron got only what he deserved. +If I had my way, all his kind should have the same luck." + +Fear and depression vanished from the man's manner, and gratefulness +and a brave animation took their place: + +"Even though you be a spy, and your words a trap for my undoing, +yet are they such refreshment that to hear them again and others +like to them, I would go to the gallows happy, as having had one +good feast at least in a starved life. And I will say my say now, +and ye may report it if ye be so minded. I helped to hang my +neighbors for that it were peril to my own life to show lack of +zeal in the master's cause; the others helped for none other reason. +All rejoice to-day that he is dead, but all do go about seemingly +sorrowing, and shedding the hypocrite's tear, for in that lies +safety. I have said the words, I have said the words! the only +ones that have ever tasted good in my mouth, and the reward of +that taste is sufficient. Lead on, an ye will, be it even to the +scaffold, for I am ready." + +There it was, you see. A man is a man, at bottom. Whole ages +of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him. +Whoever thinks it a mistake is himself mistaken. Yes, there is +plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded +people that ever existed--even the Russians; plenty of manhood +in them--even in the Germans--if one could but force it out of +its timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the +mud any throne that ever was set up and any nobility that ever +supported it. We should see certain things yet, let us hope and +believe. First, a modified monarchy, till Arthur's days were done, +then the destruction of the throne, nobility abolished, every +member of it bound out to some useful trade, universal suffrage +instituted, and the whole government placed in the hands of the +men and women of the nation there to remain. Yes, there was no +occasion to give up my dream yet a while. + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +MARCO + +We strolled along in a sufficiently indolent fashion now, and +talked. We must dispose of about the amount of time it ought +to take to go to the little hamlet of Abblasoure and put justice +on the track of those murderers and get back home again. And +meantime I had an auxiliary interest which had never paled yet, +never lost its novelty for me since I had been in Arthur's kingdom: +the behavior--born of nice and exact subdivisions of caste--of chance +passers-by toward each other. Toward the shaven monk who trudged +along with his cowl tilted back and the sweat washing down his +fat jowls, the coal-burner was deeply reverent; to the gentleman +he was abject; with the small farmer and the free mechanic he was +cordial and gossipy; and when a slave passed by with a countenance +respectfully lowered, this chap's nose was in the air--he couldn't +even see him. Well, there are times when one would like to hang +the whole human race and finish the farce. + +Presently we struck an incident. A small mob of half-naked boys +and girls came tearing out of the woods, scared and shrieking. +The eldest among them were not more than twelve or fourteen years +old. They implored help, but they were so beside themselves that +we couldn't make out what the matter was. However, we plunged +into the wood, they skurrying in the lead, and the trouble was +quickly revealed: they had hanged a little fellow with a bark rope, +and he was kicking and struggling, in the process of choking to +death. We rescued him, and fetched him around. It was some more +human nature; the admiring little folk imitating their elders; +they were playing mob, and had achieved a success which promised +to be a good deal more serious than they had bargained for. + +It was not a dull excursion for me. I managed to put in the time +very well. I made various acquaintanceships, and in my quality +of stranger was able to ask as many questions as I wanted to. +A thing which naturally interested me, as a statesman, was the +matter of wages. I picked up what I could under that head during +the afternoon. A man who hasn't had much experience, and doesn't +think, is apt to measure a nation's prosperity or lack of prosperity +by the mere size of the prevailing wages; if the wages be high, the +nation is prosperous; if low, it isn't. Which is an error. It +isn't what sum you get, it's how much you can buy with it, that's +the important thing; and it's that that tells whether your wages +are high in fact or only high in name. I could remember how it +was in the time of our great civil war in the nineteenth century. +In the North a carpenter got three dollars a day, gold valuation; +in the South he got fifty--payable in Confederate shinplasters +worth a dollar a bushel. In the North a suit of overalls cost +three dollars--a day's wages; in the South it cost seventy-five +--which was two days' wages. Other things were in proportion. +Consequently, wages were twice as high in the North as they were +in the South, because the one wage had that much more purchasing +power than the other had. + +Yes, I made various acquaintances in the hamlet and a thing that +gratified me a good deal was to find our new coins in circulation +--lots of milrays, lots of mills, lots of cents, a good many nickels, +and some silver; all this among the artisans and commonalty +generally; yes, and even some gold--but that was at the bank, +that is to say, the goldsmith's. I dropped in there while Marco, +the son of Marco, was haggling with a shopkeeper over a quarter +of a pound of salt, and asked for change for a twenty-dollar gold +piece. They furnished it--that is, after they had chewed the piece, +and rung it on the counter, and tried acid on it, and asked me +where I got it, and who I was, and where I was from, and where +I was going to, and when I expected to get there, and perhaps +a couple of hundred more questions; and when they got aground, +I went right on and furnished them a lot of information voluntarily; +told them I owned a dog, and his name was Watch, and my first wife +was a Free Will Baptist, and her grandfather was a Prohibitionist, +and I used to know a man who had two thumbs on each hand and a wart +on the inside of his upper lip, and died in the hope of a glorious +resurrection, and so on, and so on, and so on, till even that +hungry village questioner began to look satisfied, and also a shade +put out; but he had to respect a man of my financial strength, +and so he didn't give me any lip, but I noticed he took it out of +his underlings, which was a perfectly natural thing to do. Yes, +they changed my twenty, but I judged it strained the bank a little, +which was a thing to be expected, for it was the same as walking +into a paltry village store in the nineteenth century and requiring +the boss of it to change a two thousand-dollar bill for you all +of a sudden. He could do it, maybe; but at the same time he +would wonder how a small farmer happened to be carrying so much +money around in his pocket; which was probably this goldsmith's +thought, too; for he followed me to the door and stood there gazing +after me with reverent admiration. + +Our new money was not only handsomely circulating, but its language +was already glibly in use; that is to say, people had dropped +the names of the former moneys, and spoke of things as being worth +so many dollars or cents or mills or milrays now. It was very +gratifying. We were progressing, that was sure. + +I got to know several master mechanics, but about the most interesting +fellow among them was the blacksmith, Dowley. He was a live man +and a brisk talker, and had two journeymen and three apprentices, +and was doing a raging business. In fact, he was getting rich, +hand over fist, and was vastly respected. Marco was very proud of +having such a man for a friend. He had taken me there ostensibly +to let me see the big establishment which bought so much of his +charcoal, but really to let me see what easy and almost familiar +terms he was on with this great man. Dowley and I fraternized +at once; I had had just such picked men, splendid fellows, under +me in the Colt Arms Factory. I was bound to see more of him, so +I invited him to come out to Marco's Sunday, and dine with us. +Marco was appalled, and held his breath; and when the grandee +accepted, he was so grateful that he almost forgot to be astonished +at the condescension. + +Marco's joy was exuberant--but only for a moment; then he grew +thoughtful, then sad; and when he heard me tell Dowley I should +have Dickon, the boss mason, and Smug, the boss wheelwright, out +there, too, the coal-dust on his face turned to chalk, and he lost +his grip. But I knew what was the matter with him; it was the +expense. He saw ruin before him; he judged that his financial +days were numbered. However, on our way to invite the others, +I said: + +"You must allow me to have these friends come; and you must also +allow me to pay the costs." + +His face cleared, and he said with spirit: + +"But not all of it, not all of it. Ye cannot well bear a burden +like to this alone." + +I stopped him, and said: + +"Now let's understand each other on the spot, old friend. I am +only a farm bailiff, it is true; but I am not poor, nevertheless. +I have been very fortunate this year--you would be astonished +to know how I have thriven. I tell you the honest truth when I say +I could squander away as many as a dozen feasts like this and never +care _that_ for the expense!" and I snapped my fingers. I could +see myself rise a foot at a time in Marco's estimation, and when +I fetched out those last words I was become a very tower for style +and altitude. "So you see, you must let me have my way. You +can't contribute a cent to this orgy, that's _settled_." + +"It's grand and good of you--" + +"No, it isn't. You've opened your house to Jones and me in the +most generous way; Jones was remarking upon it to-day, just before +you came back from the village; for although he wouldn't be likely +to say such a thing to you--because Jones isn't a talker, and is +diffident in society--he has a good heart and a grateful, and +knows how to appreciate it when he is well treated; yes, you and +your wife have been very hospitable toward us--" + +"Ah, brother, 'tis nothing--_such_ hospitality!" + +"But it _is_ something; the best a man has, freely given, is always +something, and is as good as a prince can do, and ranks right +along beside it--for even a prince can but do his best. And so +we'll shop around and get up this layout now, and don't you worry +about the expense. I'm one of the worst spendthrifts that ever +was born. Why, do you know, sometimes in a single week I spend +--but never mind about that--you'd never believe it anyway." + +And so we went gadding along, dropping in here and there, pricing +things, and gossiping with the shopkeepers about the riot, and now +and then running across pathetic reminders of it, in the persons of +shunned and tearful and houseless remnants of families whose homes +had been taken from them and their parents butchered or hanged. +The raiment of Marco and his wife was of coarse tow-linen and +linsey-woolsey respectively, and resembled township maps, it being +made up pretty exclusively of patches which had been added, township +by township, in the course of five or six years, until hardly a +hand's-breadth of the original garments was surviving and present. +Now I wanted to fit these people out with new suits, on account of +that swell company, and I didn't know just how to get at it +--with delicacy, until at last it struck me that as I had already +been liberal in inventing wordy gratitude for the king, it would +be just the thing to back it up with evidence of a substantial +sort; so I said: + +"And Marco, there's another thing which you must permit--out of +kindness for Jones--because you wouldn't want to offend him. +He was very anxious to testify his appreciation in some way, but +he is so diffident he couldn't venture it himself, and so he begged +me to buy some little things and give them to you and Dame Phyllis +and let him pay for them without your ever knowing they came from +him--you know how a delicate person feels about that sort of thing +--and so I said I would, and we would keep mum. Well, his idea +was, a new outfit of clothes for you both--" + +"Oh, it is wastefulness! It may not be, brother, it may not be. +Consider the vastness of the sum--" + +"Hang the vastness of the sum! Try to keep quiet for a moment, +and see how it would seem; a body can't get in a word edgeways, +you talk so much. You ought to cure that, Marco; it isn't good +form, you know, and it will grow on you if you don't check it. +Yes, we'll step in here now and price this man's stuff--and don't +forget to remember to not let on to Jones that you know he had +anything to do with it. You can't think how curiously sensitive +and proud he is. He's a farmer--pretty fairly well-to-do farmer +--an I'm his bailiff; _but_--the imagination of that man! Why, +sometimes when he forgets himself and gets to blowing off, you'd +think he was one of the swells of the earth; and you might listen +to him a hundred years and never take him for a farmer--especially if +he talked agriculture. He _thinks_ he's a Sheol of a farmer; thinks +he's old Grayback from Wayback; but between you and me privately +he don't know as much about farming as he does about running +a kingdom--still, whatever he talks about, you want to drop your +underjaw and listen, the same as if you had never heard such +incredible wisdom in all your life before, and were afraid you +might die before you got enough of it. That will please Jones." + +It tickled Marco to the marrow to hear about such an odd character; +but it also prepared him for accidents; and in my experience when +you travel with a king who is letting on to be something else and +can't remember it more than about half the time, you can't take +too many precautions. + +This was the best store we had come across yet; it had everything +in it, in small quantities, from anvils and drygoods all the way +down to fish and pinchbeck jewelry. I concluded I would bunch +my whole invoice right here, and not go pricing around any more. +So I got rid of Marco, by sending him off to invite the mason and +the wheelwright, which left the field free to me. For I never care +to do a thing in a quiet way; it's got to be theatrical or I don't +take any interest in it. I showed up money enough, in a careless +way, to corral the shopkeeper's respect, and then I wrote down +a list of the things I wanted, and handed it to him to see if he +could read it. He could, and was proud to show that he could. +He said he had been educated by a priest, and could both read +and write. He ran it through, and remarked with satisfaction that +it was a pretty heavy bill. Well, and so it was, for a little +concern like that. I was not only providing a swell dinner, but +some odds and ends of extras. I ordered that the things be carted +out and delivered at the dwelling of Marco, the son of Marco, +by Saturday evening, and send me the bill at dinner-time Sunday. +He said I could depend upon his promptness and exactitude, it was +the rule of the house. He also observed that he would throw in +a couple of miller-guns for the Marcos gratis--that everybody +was using them now. He had a mighty opinion of that clever +device. I said: + +"And please fill them up to the middle mark, too; and add that +to the bill." + +He would, with pleasure. He filled them, and I took them with +me. I couldn't venture to tell him that the miller-gun was a +little invention of my own, and that I had officially ordered that +every shopkeeper in the kingdom keep them on hand and sell them +at government price--which was the merest trifle, and the shopkeeper +got that, not the government. We furnished them for nothing. + +The king had hardly missed us when we got back at nightfall. He +had early dropped again into his dream of a grand invasion of Gaul +with the whole strength of his kingdom at his back, and the afternoon +had slipped away without his ever coming to himself again. + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +DOWLEY'S HUMILIATION + +Well, when that cargo arrived toward sunset, Saturday afternoon, +I had my hands full to keep the Marcos from fainting. They were +sure Jones and I were ruined past help, and they blamed themselves +as accessories to this bankruptcy. You see, in addition to the +dinner-materials, which called for a sufficiently round sum, +I had bought a lot of extras for the future comfort of the family: +for instance, a big lot of wheat, a delicacy as rare to the tables +of their class as was ice-cream to a hermit's; also a sizeable +deal dinner-table; also two entire pounds of salt, which was +another piece of extravagance in those people's eyes; also crockery, +stools, the clothes, a small cask of beer, and so on. I instructed +the Marcos to keep quiet about this sumptuousness, so as to give +me a chance to surprise the guests and show off a little. Concerning +the new clothes, the simple couple were like children; they were up +and down, all night, to see if it wasn't nearly daylight, so that +they could put them on, and they were into them at last as much +as an hour before dawn was due. Then their pleasure--not to say +delirium--was so fresh and novel and inspiring that the sight of it +paid me well for the interruptions which my sleep had suffered. +The king had slept just as usual--like the dead. The Marcos could +not thank him for their clothes, that being forbidden; but they +tried every way they could think of to make him see how grateful +they were. Which all went for nothing: he didn't notice any change. + +It turned out to be one of those rich and rare fall days which is +just a June day toned down to a degree where it is heaven to be +out of doors. Toward noon the guests arrived, and we assembled +under a great tree and were soon as sociable as old acquaintances. +Even the king's reserve melted a little, though it was some little +trouble to him to adjust himself to the name of Jones along at +first. I had asked him to try to not forget that he was a farmer; +but I had also considered it prudent to ask him to let the thing +stand at that, and not elaborate it any. Because he was just the +kind of person you could depend on to spoil a little thing like +that if you didn't warn him, his tongue was so handy, and his +spirit so willing, and his information so uncertain. + +Dowley was in fine feather, and I early got him started, and then +adroitly worked him around onto his own history for a text and +himself for a hero, and then it was good to sit there and hear him +hum. Self-made man, you know. They know how to talk. They do +deserve more credit than any other breed of men, yes, that is true; +and they are among the very first to find it out, too. He told how +he had begun life an orphan lad without money and without friends +able to help him; how he had lived as the slaves of the meanest +master lived; how his day's work was from sixteen to eighteen hours +long, and yielded him only enough black bread to keep him in a +half-fed condition; how his faithful endeavors finally attracted +the attention of a good blacksmith, who came near knocking him +dead with kindness by suddenly offering, when he was totally +unprepared, to take him as his bound apprentice for nine years +and give him board and clothes and teach him the trade--or "mystery" +as Dowley called it. That was his first great rise, his first +gorgeous stroke of fortune; and you saw that he couldn't yet speak +of it without a sort of eloquent wonder and delight that such a +gilded promotion should have fallen to the lot of a common human +being. He got no new clothing during his apprenticeship, but on +his graduation day his master tricked him out in spang-new tow-linens +and made him feel unspeakably rich and fine. + +"I remember me of that day!" the wheelwright sang out, with +enthusiasm. + +"And I likewise!" cried the mason. "I would not believe they +were thine own; in faith I could not." + +"Nor other!" shouted Dowley, with sparkling eyes. "I was like +to lose my character, the neighbors wending I had mayhap been +stealing. It was a great day, a great day; one forgetteth not +days like that." + +Yes, and his master was a fine man, and prosperous, and always +had a great feast of meat twice in the year, and with it white +bread, true wheaten bread; in fact, lived like a lord, so to speak. +And in time Dowley succeeded to the business and married the daughter. + +"And now consider what is come to pass," said he, impressively. +"Two times in every month there is fresh meat upon my table." +He made a pause here, to let that fact sink home, then added +--"and eight times salt meat." + +"It is even true," said the wheelwright, with bated breath. + +"I know it of mine own knowledge," said the mason, in the same +reverent fashion. + +"On my table appeareth white bread every Sunday in the year," +added the master smith, with solemnity. "I leave it to your own +consciences, friends, if this is not also true?" + +"By my head, yes," cried the mason. + +"I can testify it--and I do," said the wheelwright. + +"And as to furniture, ye shall say yourselves what mine equipment +is." He waved his hand in fine gesture of granting frank and +unhampered freedom of speech, and added: "Speak as ye are moved; +speak as ye would speak; an I were not here." + +"Ye have five stools, and of the sweetest workmanship at that, albeit +your family is but three," said the wheelwright, with deep respect. + +"And six wooden goblets, and six platters of wood and two of pewter +to eat and drink from withal," said the mason, impressively. "And +I say it as knowing God is my judge, and we tarry not here alway, +but must answer at the last day for the things said in the body, +be they false or be they sooth." + +"Now ye know what manner of man I am, brother Jones," said the +smith, with a fine and friendly condescension, "and doubtless ye +would look to find me a man jealous of his due of respect and +but sparing of outgo to strangers till their rating and quality be +assured, but trouble yourself not, as concerning that; wit ye well +ye shall find me a man that regardeth not these matters but is +willing to receive any he as his fellow and equal that carrieth +a right heart in his body, be his worldly estate howsoever modest. +And in token of it, here is my hand; and I say with my own mouth +we are equals--equals"--and he smiled around on the company with +the satisfaction of a god who is doing the handsome and gracious +thing and is quite well aware of it. + +The king took the hand with a poorly disguised reluctance, and +let go of it as willingly as a lady lets go of a fish; all of which +had a good effect, for it was mistaken for an embarrassment natural +to one who was being called upon by greatness. + +The dame brought out the table now, and set it under the tree. +It caused a visible stir of surprise, it being brand new and a +sumptuous article of deal. But the surprise rose higher still +when the dame, with a body oozing easy indifference at every pore, +but eyes that gave it all away by absolutely flaming with vanity, +slowly unfolded an actual simon-pure tablecloth and spread it. +That was a notch above even the blacksmith's domestic grandeurs, +and it hit him hard; you could see it. But Marco was in Paradise; +you could see that, too. Then the dame brought two fine new +stools--whew! that was a sensation; it was visible in the eyes of +every guest. Then she brought two more--as calmly as she could. +Sensation again--with awed murmurs. Again she brought two +--walking on air, she was so proud. The guests were petrified, and +the mason muttered: + +"There is that about earthly pomps which doth ever move to reverence." + +As the dame turned away, Marco couldn't help slapping on the climax +while the thing was hot; so he said with what was meant for a +languid composure but was a poor imitation of it: + +"These suffice; leave the rest." + +So there were more yet! It was a fine effect. I couldn't have +played the hand better myself. + +From this out, the madam piled up the surprises with a rush that +fired the general astonishment up to a hundred and fifty in the +shade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down to +gasped "Oh's" and "Ah's," and mute upliftings of hands and eyes. +She fetched crockery--new, and plenty of it; new wooden goblets +and other table furniture; and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs, +roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealth +of genuine white wheaten bread. Take it by and large, that spread +laid everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd had +seen before. And while they sat there just simply stupefied with +wonder and awe, I sort of waved my hand as if by accident, and +the storekeeper's son emerged from space and said he had come +to collect. + +"That's all right," I said, indifferently. "What is the amount? +give us the items." + +Then he read off this bill, while those three amazed men listened, +and serene waves of satisfaction rolled over my soul and alternate +waves of terror and admiration surged over Marco's: + + 2 pounds salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 + 8 dozen pints beer, in the wood . . . . . 800 + 3 bushels wheat . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,700 + 2 pounds fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 + 3 hens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 + 1 goose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 + 3 dozen eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 + 1 roast of beef . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 + 1 roast of mutton . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 + 1 ham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 + 1 sucking pig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 + 2 crockery dinner sets . . . . . . . . . 6,000 + 2 men's suits and underwear . . . . . . . 2,800 + 1 stuff and 1 linsey-woolsey gown + and underwear . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,600 + 8 wooden goblets . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 + Various table furniture . . . . . . . . .10,000 + 1 deal table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 + 8 stools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000 + 2 miller guns, loaded . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 + +He ceased. There was a pale and awful silence. Not a limb stirred. +Not a nostril betrayed the passage of breath. + +"Is that all?" I asked, in a voice of the most perfect calmness. + +"All, fair sir, save that certain matters of light moment are +placed together under a head hight sundries. If it would like +you, I will sepa--" + +"It is of no consequence," I said, accompanying the words with +a gesture of the most utter indifference; "give me the grand +total, please." + +The clerk leaned against the tree to stay himself, and said: + +"Thirty-nine thousand one hundred and fifty milrays!" + +The wheelwright fell off his stool, the others grabbed the table +to save themselves, and there was a deep and general ejaculation of: + +"God be with us in the day of disaster!" + +The clerk hastened to say: + +"My father chargeth me to say he cannot honorably require you +to pay it all at this time, and therefore only prayeth you--" + +I paid no more heed than if it were the idle breeze, but, with an +air of indifference amounting almost to weariness, got out my money +and tossed four dollars on to the table. Ah, you should have seen +them stare! + +The clerk was astonished and charmed. He asked me to retain +one of the dollars as security, until he could go to town and +--I interrupted: + +"What, and fetch back nine cents? Nonsense! Take the whole. +Keep the change." + +There was an amazed murmur to this effect: + +"Verily this being is _made_ of money! He throweth it away even +as if it were dirt." + +The blacksmith was a crushed man. + +The clerk took his money and reeled away drunk with fortune. I said +to Marco and his wife: + +"Good folk, here is a little trifle for you"--handing the miller-guns +as if it were a matter of no consequence, though each of them +contained fifteen cents in solid cash; and while the poor creatures +went to pieces with astonishment and gratitude, I turned to the +others and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day: + +"Well, if we are all ready, I judge the dinner is. Come, fall to." + +Ah, well, it was immense; yes, it was a daisy. I don't know that +I ever put a situation together better, or got happier spectacular +effects out of the materials available. The blacksmith--well, he +was simply mashed. Land! I wouldn't have felt what that man was +feeling, for anything in the world. Here he had been blowing and +bragging about his grand meat-feast twice a year, and his fresh +meat twice a month, and his salt meat twice a week, and his white +bread every Sunday the year round--all for a family of three; the +entire cost for the year not above 69.2.6 (sixty-nine cents, two +mills and six milrays), and all of a sudden here comes along a man +who slashes out nearly four dollars on a single blow-out; and not +only that, but acts as if it made him tired to handle such small +sums. Yes, Dowley was a good deal wilted, and shrunk-up and +collapsed; he had the aspect of a bladder-balloon that's been +stepped on by a cow. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +SIXTH CENTURY POLITICAL ECONOMY + +However, I made a dead set at him, and before the first third +of the dinner was reached, I had him happy again. It was easy +to do--in a country of ranks and castes. You see, in a country +where they have ranks and castes, a man isn't ever a man, he is +only part of a man, he can't ever get his full growth. You prove +your superiority over him in station, or rank, or fortune, and +that's the end of it--he knuckles down. You can't insult him +after that. No, I don't mean quite that; of course you _can_ insult +him, I only mean it's difficult; and so, unless you've got a lot +of useless time on your hands it doesn't pay to try. I had the +smith's reverence now, because I was apparently immensely prosperous +and rich; I could have had his adoration if I had had some little +gimcrack title of nobility. And not only his, but any commoner's +in the land, though he were the mightiest production of all the ages, +in intellect, worth, and character, and I bankrupt in all three. +This was to remain so, as long as England should exist in the +earth. With the spirit of prophecy upon me, I could look into +the future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable +Georges and other royal and noble clothes-horses, and leave unhonored +the creators of this world--after God--Gutenburg, Watt, Arkwright, +Whitney, Morse, Stephenson, Bell. + +The king got his cargo aboard, and then, the talk not turning upon +battle, conquest, or iron-clad duel, he dulled down to drowsiness +and went off to take a nap. Mrs. Marco cleared the table, placed +the beer keg handy, and went away to eat her dinner of leavings +in humble privacy, and the rest of us soon drifted into matters +near and dear to the hearts of our sort--business and wages, +of course. At a first glance, things appeared to be exceeding +prosperous in this little tributary kingdom--whose lord was +King Bagdemagus--as compared with the state of things in my own +region. They had the "protection" system in full force here, +whereas we were working along down toward free-trade, by easy +stages, and were now about half way. Before long, Dowley and I +were doing all the talking, the others hungrily listening. Dowley +warmed to his work, snuffed an advantage in the air, and began +to put questions which he considered pretty awkward ones for me, +and they did have something of that look: + +"In your country, brother, what is the wage of a master bailiff, +master hind, carter, shepherd, swineherd?" + +"Twenty-five milrays a day; that is to say, a quarter of a cent." + +The smith's face beamed with joy. He said: + +"With us they are allowed the double of it! And what may a mechanic +get--carpenter, dauber, mason, painter, blacksmith, wheelwright, +and the like?" + +"On the average, fifty milrays; half a cent a day." + +"Ho-ho! With us they are allowed a hundred! With us any good +mechanic is allowed a cent a day! I count out the tailor, but +not the others--they are all allowed a cent a day, and in driving +times they get more--yes, up to a hundred and ten and even fifteen +milrays a day. I've paid a hundred and fifteen myself, within +the week. 'Rah for protection--to Sheol with free-trade!" + +And his face shone upon the company like a sunburst. But I didn't +scare at all. I rigged up my pile-driver, and allowed myself +fifteen minutes to drive him into the earth--drive him _all_ in +--drive him in till not even the curve of his skull should show +above ground. Here is the way I started in on him. I asked: + +"What do you pay a pound for salt?" + +"A hundred milrays." + +"We pay forty. What do you pay for beef and mutton--when you +buy it?" That was a neat hit; it made the color come. + +"It varieth somewhat, but not much; one may say seventy-five milrays +the pound." + +"_We_ pay thirty-three. What do you pay for eggs?" + +"Fifty milrays the dozen." + +"We pay twenty. What do you pay for beer?" + +"It costeth us eight and one-half milrays the pint." + +"We get it for four; twenty-five bottles for a cent. +What do you pay for wheat?" + +"At the rate of nine hundred milrays the bushel." + +"We pay four hundred. What do you pay for a man's tow-linen suit?" + +"Thirteen cents." + +"We pay six. What do you pay for a stuff gown for the wife of the +laborer or the mechanic?" + +"We pay eight cents, four mills." + +"Well, observe the difference: you pay eight cents and four mills, +we pay only four cents." I prepared now to sock it to him. I said: +"Look here, dear friend, _what's become of your high wages you +were bragging so about a few minutes ago?_"--and I looked around +on the company with placid satisfaction, for I had slipped up +on him gradually and tied him hand and foot, you see, without his +ever noticing that he was being tied at all. "What's become of +those noble high wages of yours?--I seem to have knocked the +stuffing all out of them, it appears to me." + +But if you will believe me, he merely looked surprised, that +is all! he didn't grasp the situation at all, didn't know he had +walked into a trap, didn't discover that he was _in_ a trap. I could +have shot him, from sheer vexation. With cloudy eye and a struggling +intellect he fetched this out: + +"Marry, I seem not to understand. It is _proved_ that our wages +be double thine; how then may it be that thou'st knocked therefrom +the stuffing?--an miscall not the wonderly word, this being the +first time under grace and providence of God it hath been granted +me to hear it." + +Well, I was stunned; partly with this unlooked-for stupidity on +his part, and partly because his fellows so manifestly sided with +him and were of his mind--if you might call it mind. My position +was simple enough, plain enough; how could it ever be simplified +more? However, I must try: + +"Why, look here, brother Dowley, don't you see? Your wages are +merely higher than ours in _name_, not in _fact_." + +"Hear him! They are the _double_--ye have confessed it yourself." + +"Yes-yes, I don't deny that at all. But that's got nothing to do +with it; the _amount_ of the wages in mere coins, with meaningless +names attached to them to know them by, has got nothing to do +with it. The thing is, how much can you _buy_ with your wages? +--that's the idea. While it is true that with you a good mechanic +is allowed about three dollars and a half a year, and with us only +about a dollar and seventy-five--" + +"There--ye're confessing it again, ye're confessing it again!" + +"Confound it, I've never denied it, I tell you! What I say is +this. With us _half_ a dollar buys more than a _dollar_ buys +with you--and THEREFORE it stands to reason and the commonest +kind of common-sense, that our wages are _higher_ than yours." + +He looked dazed, and said, despairingly: + +"Verily, I cannot make it out. Ye've just said ours are the +higher, and with the same breath ye take it back." + +"Oh, great Scott, isn't it possible to get such a simple thing +through your head? Now look here--let me illustrate. We pay +four cents for a woman's stuff gown, you pay 8.4.0, which is +four mills more than _double_. What do you allow a laboring +woman who works on a farm?" + +"Two mills a day." + +"Very good; we allow but half as much; we pay her only a tenth +of a cent a day; and--" + +"Again ye're conf--" + +"Wait! Now, you see, the thing is very simple; this time you'll +understand it. For instance, it takes your woman 42 days to earn +her gown, at 2 mills a day--7 weeks' work; but ours earns hers +in forty days--two days _short_ of 7 weeks. Your woman has a gown, +and her whole seven weeks wages are gone; ours has a gown, and +two days' wages left, to buy something else with. There--_now_ +you understand it!" + +He looked--well, he merely looked dubious, it's the most I can say; +so did the others. I waited--to let the thing work. Dowley spoke +at last--and betrayed the fact that he actually hadn't gotten away +from his rooted and grounded superstitions yet. He said, with +a trifle of hesitancy: + +"But--but--ye cannot fail to grant that two mills a day is better +than one." + +Shucks! Well, of course, I hated to give it up. So I chanced +another flyer: + +"Let us suppose a case. Suppose one of your journeymen goes out +and buys the following articles: + + "1 pound of salt; + 1 dozen eggs; + 1 dozen pints of beer; + 1 bushel of wheat; + 1 tow-linen suit; + 5 pounds of beef; + 5 pounds of mutton. + +"The lot will cost him 32 cents. It takes him 32 working days +to earn the money--5 weeks and 2 days. Let him come to us and +work 32 days at _half_ the wages; he can buy all those things for +a shade under 14 1/2 cents; they will cost him a shade under 29 +days' work, and he will have about half a week's wages over. Carry +it through the year; he would save nearly a week's wages every +two months, _your_ man nothing; thus saving five or six weeks' wages +in a year, your man not a cent. _Now_ I reckon you understand that +'high wages' and 'low wages' are phrases that don't mean anything +in the world until you find out which of them will _buy_ the most!" + +It was a crusher. + +But, alas! it didn't crush. No, I had to give it up. What those +people valued was _high wages_; it didn't seem to be a matter of +any consequence to them whether the high wages would buy anything +or not. They stood for "protection," and swore by it, which was +reasonable enough, because interested parties had gulled them into +the notion that it was protection which had created their high +wages. I proved to them that in a quarter of a century their wages +had advanced but 30 per cent., while the cost of living had gone +up 100; and that with us, in a shorter time, wages had advanced +40 per cent. while the cost of living had gone steadily down. But +it didn't do any good. Nothing could unseat their strange beliefs. + +Well, I was smarting under a sense of defeat. Undeserved defeat, +but what of that? That didn't soften the smart any. And to think +of the circumstances! the first statesman of the age, the capablest +man, the best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiest +uncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of any political +firmament for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated in +argument by an ignorant country blacksmith! And I could see that +those others were sorry for me--which made me blush till I could +smell my whiskers scorching. Put yourself in my place; feel as mean +as I did, as ashamed as I felt--wouldn't _you_ have struck below the +belt to get even? Yes, you would; it is simply human nature. +Well, that is what I did. I am not trying to justify it; I'm only +saying that I was mad, and _anybody_ would have done it. + +Well, when I make up my mind to hit a man, I don't plan out +a love-tap; no, that isn't my way; as long as I'm going to hit him +at all, I'm going to hit him a lifter. And I don't jump at him +all of a sudden, and risk making a blundering half-way business +of it; no, I get away off yonder to one side, and work up on him +gradually, so that he never suspects that I'm going to hit him +at all; and by and by, all in a flash, he's flat on his back, and +he can't tell for the life of him how it all happened. That is +the way I went for brother Dowley. I started to talking lazy and +comfortable, as if I was just talking to pass the time; and the +oldest man in the world couldn't have taken the bearings of my +starting place and guessed where I was going to fetch up: + +"Boys, there's a good many curious things about law, and custom, +and usage, and all that sort of thing, when you come to look at it; +yes, and about the drift and progress of human opinion and movement, +too. There are written laws--they perish; but there are also +unwritten laws--_they_ are eternal. Take the unwritten law of wages: +it says they've got to advance, little by little, straight through +the centuries. And notice how it works. We know what wages are +now, here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and say that's +the wages of to-day. We know what the wages were a hundred years +ago, and what they were two hundred years ago; that's as far back +as we can get, but it suffices to give us the law of progress, +the measure and rate of the periodical augmentation; and so, without +a document to help us, we can come pretty close to determining +what the wages were three and four and five hundred years ago. +Good, so far. Do we stop there? No. We stop looking backward; +we face around and apply the law to the future. My friends, I can +tell you what people's wages are going to be at any date in the +future you want to know, for hundreds and hundreds of years." + +"What, goodman, what!" + +"Yes. In seven hundred years wages will have risen to six times +what they are now, here in your region, and farm hands will be +allowed 3 cents a day, and mechanics 6." + +"I would't I might die now and live then!" interrupted Smug, the +wheelwright, with a fine avaricious glow in his eye. + +"And that isn't all; they'll get their board besides--such as it is: +it won't bloat them. Two hundred and fifty years later--pay attention +now--a mechanic's wages will be--mind you, this is law, not +guesswork; a mechanic's wages will then be _twenty_ cents a day!" + +There was a general gasp of awed astonishment, Dickon the mason +murmured, with raised eyes and hands: + +"More than three weeks' pay for one day's work!" + +"Riches!--of a truth, yes, riches!" muttered Marco, his breath +coming quick and short, with excitement. + +"Wages will keep on rising, little by little, little by little, +as steadily as a tree grows, and at the end of three hundred and +forty years more there'll be at least _one_ country where the +mechanic's average wage will be _two hundred_ cents a day!" + +It knocked them absolutely dumb! Not a man of them could get +his breath for upwards of two minutes. Then the coal-burner +said prayerfully: + +"Might I but live to see it!" + +"It is the income of an earl!" said Smug. + +"An earl, say ye?" said Dowley; "ye could say more than that and +speak no lie; there's no earl in the realm of Bagdemagus that hath +an income like to that. Income of an earl--mf! it's the income +of an angel!" + +"Now, then, that is what is going to happen as regards wages. +In that remote day, that man will earn, with _one_ week's work, +that bill of goods which it takes you upwards of _fifty_ weeks to +earn now. Some other pretty surprising things are going to happen, +too. Brother Dowley, who is it that determines, every spring, +what the particular wage of each kind of mechanic, laborer, and +servant shall be for that year?" + +"Sometimes the courts, sometimes the town council; but most of all, +the magistrate. Ye may say, in general terms, it is the magistrate +that fixes the wages." + +"Doesn't ask any of those poor devils to _help_ him fix their wages +for them, does he?" + +"Hm! That _were_ an idea! The master that's to pay him the money +is the one that's rightly concerned in that matter, ye will notice." + +"Yes--but I thought the other man might have some little trifle +at stake in it, too; and even his wife and children, poor creatures. +The masters are these: nobles, rich men, the prosperous generally. +These few, who do no work, determine what pay the vast hive shall +have who _do_ work. You see? They're a 'combine'--a trade union, +to coin a new phrase--who band themselves together to force their +lowly brother to take what they choose to give. Thirteen hundred +years hence--so says the unwritten law--the 'combine' will be the +other way, and then how these fine people's posterity will fume +and fret and grit their teeth over the insolent tyranny of trade +unions! Yes, indeed! the magistrate will tranquilly arrange the +wages from now clear away down into the nineteenth century; and +then all of a sudden the wage-earner will consider that a couple +of thousand years or so is enough of this one-sided sort of thing; +and he will rise up and take a hand in fixing his wages himself. +Ah, he will have a long and bitter account of wrong and humiliation +to settle." + +"Do ye believe--" + +"That he actually will help to fix his own wages? Yes, indeed. +And he will be strong and able, then." + +"Brave times, brave times, of a truth!" sneered the prosperous smith. + +"Oh,--and there's another detail. In that day, a master may hire +a man for only just one day, or one week, or one month at a time, +if he wants to." + +"What?" + +"It's true. Moreover, a magistrate won't be able to force a man +to work for a master a whole year on a stretch whether the man +wants to or not." + +"Will there be _no_ law or sense in that day?" + +"Both of them, Dowley. In that day a man will be his own property, +not the property of magistrate and master. And he can leave town +whenever he wants to, if the wages don't suit him!--and they can't +put him in the pillory for it." + +"Perdition catch such an age!" shouted Dowley, in strong indignation. +"An age of dogs, an age barren of reverence for superiors and +respect for authority! The pillory--" + +"Oh, wait, brother; say no good word for that institution. I think +the pillory ought to be abolished." + +"A most strange idea. Why?" + +"Well, I'll tell you why. Is a man ever put in the pillory for +a capital crime?" + +"No." + +"Is it right to condemn a man to a slight punishment for a small +offense and then kill him?" + +There was no answer. I had scored my first point! For the first +time, the smith wasn't up and ready. The company noticed it. +Good effect. + +"You don't answer, brother. You were about to glorify the pillory +a while ago, and shed some pity on a future age that isn't going +to use it. I think the pillory ought to be abolished. What +usually happens when a poor fellow is put in the pillory for some +little offense that didn't amount to anything in the world? The +mob try to have some fun with him, don't they?" + +"Yes." + +"They begin by clodding him; and they laugh themselves to pieces +to see him try to dodge one clod and get hit with another?" + +"Yes." + +"Then they throw dead cats at him, don't they?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, then, suppose he has a few personal enemies in that mob +and here and there a man or a woman with a secret grudge against +him--and suppose especially that he is unpopular in the community, +for his pride, or his prosperity, or one thing or another--stones +and bricks take the place of clods and cats presently, don't they?" + +"There is no doubt of it." + +"As a rule he is crippled for life, isn't he?--jaws broken, teeth +smashed out?--or legs mutilated, gangrened, presently cut off? +--or an eye knocked out, maybe both eyes?" + +"It is true, God knoweth it." + +"And if he is unpopular he can depend on _dying_, right there in +the stocks, can't he?" + +"He surely can! One may not deny it." + +"I take it none of _you_ are unpopular--by reason of pride or +insolence, or conspicuous prosperity, or any of those things that +excite envy and malice among the base scum of a village? _You_ +wouldn't think it much of a risk to take a chance in the stocks?" + +Dowley winced, visibly. I judged he was hit. But he didn't betray +it by any spoken word. As for the others, they spoke out plainly, +and with strong feeling. They said they had seen enough of the +stocks to know what a man's chance in them was, and they would +never consent to enter them if they could compromise on a quick +death by hanging. + +"Well, to change the subject--for I think I've established my +point that the stocks ought to be abolished. I think some of our +laws are pretty unfair. For instance, if I do a thing which ought +to deliver me to the stocks, and you know I did it and yet keep +still and don't report me, _you_ will get the stocks if anybody +informs on you." + +"Ah, but that would serve you but right," said Dowley, "for you +_must_ inform. So saith the law." + +The others coincided. + +"Well, all right, let it go, since you vote me down. But there's +one thing which certainly isn't fair. The magistrate fixes a +mechanic's wage at one cent a day, for instance. The law says that +if any master shall venture, even under utmost press of business, +to pay anything _over_ that cent a day, even for a single day, he +shall be both fined and pilloried for it; and whoever knows he did +it and doesn't inform, they also shall be fined and pilloried. Now +it seems to me unfair, Dowley, and a deadly peril to all of us, +that because you thoughtlessly confessed, a while ago, that within +a week you have paid a cent and fifteen mil--" + +Oh, I tell _you_ it was a smasher! You ought to have seen them to +go to pieces, the whole gang. I had just slipped up on poor +smiling and complacent Dowley so nice and easy and softly, that +he never suspected anything was going to happen till the blow +came crashing down and knocked him all to rags. + +A fine effect. In fact, as fine as any I ever produced, with so +little time to work it up in. + +But I saw in a moment that I had overdone the thing a little. +I was expecting to scare them, but I wasn't expecting to scare +them to death. They were mighty near it, though. You see they +had been a whole lifetime learning to appreciate the pillory; and +to have that thing staring them in the face, and every one of them +distinctly at the mercy of me, a stranger, if I chose to go and +report--well, it was awful, and they couldn't seem to recover +from the shock, they couldn't seem to pull themselves together. +Pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful? Why, they weren't any better than +so many dead men. It was very uncomfortable. Of course, I thought +they would appeal to me to keep mum, and then we would shake hands, +and take a drink all round, and laugh it off, and there an end. +But no; you see I was an unknown person, among a cruelly oppressed +and suspicious people, a people always accustomed to having advantage +taken of their helplessness, and never expecting just or kind +treatment from any but their own families and very closest intimates. +Appeal to _me_ to be gentle, to be fair, to be generous? Of course, +they wanted to, but they couldn't dare. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +THE YANKEE AND THE KING SOLD AS SLAVES + +Well, what had I better do? Nothing in a hurry, sure. I must +get up a diversion; anything to employ me while I could think, +and while these poor fellows could have a chance to come to life +again. There sat Marco, petrified in the act of trying to get +the hang of his miller-gun--turned to stone, just in the attitude +he was in when my pile-driver fell, the toy still gripped in his +unconscious fingers. So I took it from him and proposed to explain +its mystery. Mystery! a simple little thing like that; and yet it +was mysterious enough, for that race and that age. + +I never saw such an awkward people, with machinery; you see, they +were totally unused to it. The miller-gun was a little double-barreled +tube of toughened glass, with a neat little trick of a spring +to it, which upon pressure would let a shot escape. But the shot +wouldn't hurt anybody, it would only drop into your hand. In the +gun were two sizes--wee mustard-seed shot, and another sort that +were several times larger. They were money. The mustard-seed +shot represented milrays, the larger ones mills. So the gun was +a purse; and very handy, too; you could pay out money in the dark +with it, with accuracy; and you could carry it in your mouth; or +in your vest pocket, if you had one. I made them of several sizes +--one size so large that it would carry the equivalent of a dollar. +Using shot for money was a good thing for the government; the metal +cost nothing, and the money couldn't be counterfeited, for I was +the only person in the kingdom who knew how to manage a shot tower. +"Paying the shot" soon came to be a common phrase. Yes, and I knew +it would still be passing men's lips, away down in the nineteenth +century, yet none would suspect how and when it originated. + +The king joined us, about this time, mightily refreshed by his nap, +and feeling good. Anything could make me nervous now, I was so +uneasy--for our lives were in danger; and so it worried me to +detect a complacent something in the king's eye which seemed to +indicate that he had been loading himself up for a performance +of some kind or other; confound it, why must he go and choose +such a time as this? + +I was right. He began, straight off, in the most innocently +artful, and transparent, and lubberly way, to lead up to the +subject of agriculture. The cold sweat broke out all over me. +I wanted to whisper in his ear, "Man, we are in awful danger! +every moment is worth a principality till we get back these men's +confidence; _don't_ waste any of this golden time." But of course +I couldn't do it. Whisper to him? It would look as if we were +conspiring. So I had to sit there and look calm and pleasant while +the king stood over that dynamite mine and mooned along about his +damned onions and things. At first the tumult of my own thoughts, +summoned by the danger-signal and swarming to the rescue from +every quarter of my skull, kept up such a hurrah and confusion +and fifing and drumming that I couldn't take in a word; but +presently when my mob of gathering plans began to crystallize +and fall into position and form line of battle, a sort of order and +quiet ensued and I caught the boom of the king's batteries, as if +out of remote distance: + +"--were not the best way, methinks, albeit it is not to be denied +that authorities differ as concerning this point, some contending +that the onion is but an unwholesome berry when stricken early +from the tree--" + +The audience showed signs of life, and sought each other's eyes +in a surprised and troubled way. + +"--whileas others do yet maintain, with much show of reason, that +this is not of necessity the case, instancing that plums and other +like cereals do be always dug in the unripe state--" + +The audience exhibited distinct distress; yes, and also fear. + +"--yet are they clearly wholesome, the more especially when one +doth assuage the asperities of their nature by admixture of the +tranquilizing juice of the wayward cabbage--" + +The wild light of terror began to glow in these men's eyes, and +one of them muttered, "These be errors, every one--God hath surely +smitten the mind of this farmer." I was in miserable apprehension; +I sat upon thorns. + +"--and further instancing the known truth that in the case of +animals, the young, which may be called the green fruit of the +creature, is the better, all confessing that when a goat is ripe, +his fur doth heat and sore engame his flesh, the which defect, +taken in connection with his several rancid habits, and fulsome +appetites, and godless attitudes of mind, and bilious quality +of morals--" + +They rose and went for him! With a fierce shout, "The one would +betray us, the other is mad! Kill them! Kill them!" they flung +themselves upon us. What joy flamed up in the king's eye! He +might be lame in agriculture, but this kind of thing was just in +his line. He had been fasting long, he was hungry for a fight. +He hit the blacksmith a crack under the jaw that lifted him clear +off his feet and stretched him flat on his back. "St. George for +Britain!" and he downed the wheelwright. The mason was big, but +I laid him out like nothing. The three gathered themselves up and +came again; went down again; came again; and kept on repeating +this, with native British pluck, until they were battered to jelly, +reeling with exhaustion, and so blind that they couldn't tell us +from each other; and yet they kept right on, hammering away with +what might was left in them. Hammering each other--for we stepped +aside and looked on while they rolled, and struggled, and gouged, +and pounded, and bit, with the strict and wordless attention to +business of so many bulldogs. We looked on without apprehension, +for they were fast getting past ability to go for help against us, +and the arena was far enough from the public road to be safe +from intrusion. + +Well, while they were gradually playing out, it suddenly occurred +to me to wonder what had become of Marco. I looked around; he +was nowhere to be seen. Oh, but this was ominous! I pulled the +king's sleeve, and we glided away and rushed for the hut. No Marco +there, no Phyllis there! They had gone to the road for help, sure. +I told the king to give his heels wings, and I would explain later. +We made good time across the open ground, and as we darted into +the shelter of the wood I glanced back and saw a mob of excited +peasants swarm into view, with Marco and his wife at their head. +They were making a world of noise, but that couldn't hurt anybody; +the wood was dense, and as soon as we were well into its depths +we would take to a tree and let them whistle. Ah, but then came +another sound--dogs! Yes, that was quite another matter. It +magnified our contract--we must find running water. + +We tore along at a good gait, and soon left the sounds far behind +and modified to a murmur. We struck a stream and darted into it. +We waded swiftly down it, in the dim forest light, for as much +as three hundred yards, and then came across an oak with a great +bough sticking out over the water. We climbed up on this bough, +and began to work our way along it to the body of the tree; now +we began to hear those sounds more plainly; so the mob had struck +our trail. For a while the sounds approached pretty fast. And +then for another while they didn't. No doubt the dogs had found +the place where we had entered the stream, and were now waltzing +up and down the shores trying to pick up the trail again. + +When we were snugly lodged in the tree and curtained with foliage, +the king was satisfied, but I was doubtful. I believed we could +crawl along a branch and get into the next tree, and I judged it +worth while to try. We tried it, and made a success of it, though +the king slipped, at the junction, and came near failing to connect. +We got comfortable lodgment and satisfactory concealment among +the foliage, and then we had nothing to do but listen to the hunt. + +Presently we heard it coming--and coming on the jump, too; yes, +and down both sides of the stream. Louder--louder--next minute +it swelled swiftly up into a roar of shoutings, barkings, tramplings, +and swept by like a cyclone. + +"I was afraid that the overhanging branch would suggest something +to them," said I, "but I don't mind the disappointment. Come, +my liege, it were well that we make good use of our time. We've +flanked them. Dark is coming on, presently. If we can cross the +stream and get a good start, and borrow a couple of horses from +somebody's pasture to use for a few hours, we shall be safe enough." + +We started down, and got nearly to the lowest limb, when we seemed +to hear the hunt returning. We stopped to listen. + +"Yes," said I, "they're baffled, they've given it up, they're on +their way home. We will climb back to our roost again, and let +them go by." + +So we climbed back. The king listened a moment and said: + +"They still search--I wit the sign. We did best to abide." + +He was right. He knew more about hunting than I did. The noise +approached steadily, but not with a rush. The king said: + +"They reason that we were advantaged by no parlous start of them, +and being on foot are as yet no mighty way from where we took +the water." + +"Yes, sire, that is about it, I am afraid, though I was hoping +better things." + +The noise drew nearer and nearer, and soon the van was drifting +under us, on both sides of the water. A voice called a halt from +the other bank, and said: + +"An they were so minded, they could get to yon tree by this branch +that overhangs, and yet not touch ground. Ye will do well to send +a man up it." + +"Marry, that we will do!" + +I was obliged to admire my cuteness in foreseeing this very thing +and swapping trees to beat it. But, don't you know, there are +some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness +and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't need +to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person +for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never +had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought +to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing +he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends +him on the spot. Well, how could I, with all my gifts, make any +valuable preparation against a near-sighted, cross-eyed, pudding-headed +clown who would aim himself at the wrong tree and hit the right +one? And that is what he did. He went for the wrong tree, which +was, of course, the right one by mistake, and up he started. + +Matters were serious now. We remained still, and awaited developments. +The peasant toiled his difficult way up. The king raised himself +up and stood; he made a leg ready, and when the comer's head +arrived in reach of it there was a dull thud, and down went the man +floundering to the ground. There was a wild outbreak of anger +below, and the mob swarmed in from all around, and there we were +treed, and prisoners. Another man started up; the bridging bough +was detected, and a volunteer started up the tree that furnished +the bridge. The king ordered me to play Horatius and keep the +bridge. For a while the enemy came thick and fast; but no matter, +the head man of each procession always got a buffet that dislodged +him as soon as he came in reach. The king's spirits rose, his joy +was limitless. He said that if nothing occurred to mar the prospect +we should have a beautiful night, for on this line of tactics we +could hold the tree against the whole country-side. + +However, the mob soon came to that conclusion themselves; wherefore +they called off the assault and began to debate other plans. +They had no weapons, but there were plenty of stones, and stones +might answer. We had no objections. A stone might possibly +penetrate to us once in a while, but it wasn't very likely; we were +well protected by boughs and foliage, and were not visible from +any good aiming point. If they would but waste half an hour in +stone-throwing, the dark would come to our help. We were feeling +very well satisfied. We could smile; almost laugh. + +But we didn't; which was just as well, for we should have been +interrupted. Before the stones had been raging through the leaves +and bouncing from the boughs fifteen minutes, we began to notice +a smell. A couple of sniffs of it was enough of an explanation +--it was smoke! Our game was up at last. We recognized that. When +smoke invites you, you have to come. They raised their pile of +dry brush and damp weeds higher and higher, and when they saw +the thick cloud begin to roll up and smother the tree, they broke +out in a storm of joy-clamors. I got enough breath to say: + +"Proceed, my liege; after you is manners." + +The king gasped: + +"Follow me down, and then back thyself against one side of the +trunk, and leave me the other. Then will we fight. Let each pile +his dead according to his own fashion and taste." + +Then he descended, barking and coughing, and I followed. I struck +the ground an instant after him; we sprang to our appointed places, +and began to give and take with all our might. The powwow and +racket were prodigious; it was a tempest of riot and confusion and +thick-falling blows. Suddenly some horsemen tore into the midst +of the crowd, and a voice shouted: + +"Hold--or ye are dead men!" + +How good it sounded! The owner of the voice bore all the marks of +a gentleman: picturesque and costly raiment, the aspect of command, +a hard countenance, with complexion and features marred by dissipation. +The mob fell humbly back, like so many spaniels. The gentleman +inspected us critically, then said sharply to the peasants: + +"What are ye doing to these people?" + +"They be madmen, worshipful sir, that have come wandering we know +not whence, and--" + +"Ye know not whence? Do ye pretend ye know them not?" + +"Most honored sir, we speak but the truth. They are strangers +and unknown to any in this region; and they be the most violent +and bloodthirsty madmen that ever--" + +"Peace! Ye know not what ye say. They are not mad. Who are ye? +And whence are ye? Explain." + +"We are but peaceful strangers, sir," I said, "and traveling upon +our own concerns. We are from a far country, and unacquainted +here. We have purposed no harm; and yet but for your brave +interference and protection these people would have killed us. +As you have divined, sir, we are not mad; neither are we violent +or bloodthirsty." + +The gentleman turned to his retinue and said calmly: "Lash me +these animals to their kennels!" + +The mob vanished in an instant; and after them plunged the horsemen, +laying about them with their whips and pitilessly riding down such +as were witless enough to keep the road instead of taking to the +bush. The shrieks and supplications presently died away in the +distance, and soon the horsemen began to straggle back. Meantime +the gentleman had been questioning us more closely, but had dug +no particulars out of us. We were lavish of recognition of the +service he was doing us, but we revealed nothing more than that we +were friendless strangers from a far country. When the escort were +all returned, the gentleman said to one of his servants: + +"Bring the led-horses and mount these people." + +"Yes, my lord." + +We were placed toward the rear, among the servants. We traveled +pretty fast, and finally drew rein some time after dark at a +roadside inn some ten or twelve miles from the scene of our +troubles. My lord went immediately to his room, after ordering +his supper, and we saw no more of him. At dawn in the morning +we breakfasted and made ready to start. + +My lord's chief attendant sauntered forward at that moment with +indolent grace, and said: + +"Ye have said ye should continue upon this road, which is our +direction likewise; wherefore my lord, the earl Grip, hath given +commandment that ye retain the horses and ride, and that certain +of us ride with ye a twenty mile to a fair town that hight Cambenet, +whenso ye shall be out of peril." + +We could do nothing less than express our thanks and accept the +offer. We jogged along, six in the party, at a moderate and +comfortable gait, and in conversation learned that my lord Grip +was a very great personage in his own region, which lay a day's +journey beyond Cambenet. We loitered to such a degree that it was +near the middle of the forenoon when we entered the market square +of the town. We dismounted, and left our thanks once more for +my lord, and then approached a crowd assembled in the center of +the square, to see what might be the object of interest. It was the +remnant of that old peregrinating band of slaves! So they had +been dragging their chains about, all this weary time. That poor +husband was gone, and also many others; and some few purchases +had been added to the gang. The king was not interested, and +wanted to move along, but I was absorbed, and full of pity. I could +not take my eyes away from these worn and wasted wrecks of humanity. +There they sat, grounded upon the ground, silent, uncomplaining, +with bowed heads, a pathetic sight. And by hideous contrast, a +redundant orator was making a speech to another gathering not thirty +steps away, in fulsome laudation of "our glorious British liberties!" + +I was boiling. I had forgotten I was a plebeian, I was remembering +I was a man. Cost what it might, I would mount that rostrum and-- + +Click! the king and I were handcuffed together! Our companions, +those servants, had done it; my lord Grip stood looking on. The +king burst out in a fury, and said: + +"What meaneth this ill-mannered jest?" + +My lord merely said to his head miscreant, coolly: + +"Put up the slaves and sell them!" + +_Slaves!_ The word had a new sound--and how unspeakably awful! The +king lifted his manacles and brought them down with a deadly force; +but my lord was out of the way when they arrived. A dozen of +the rascal's servants sprang forward, and in a moment we were +helpless, with our hands bound behind us. We so loudly and so +earnestly proclaimed ourselves freemen, that we got the interested +attention of that liberty-mouthing orator and his patriotic crowd, +and they gathered about us and assumed a very determined attitude. +The orator said: + +"If, indeed, ye are freemen, ye have nought to fear--the God-given +liberties of Britain are about ye for your shield and shelter! +(Applause.) Ye shall soon see. Bring forth your proofs." + +"What proofs?" + +"Proof that ye are freemen." + +Ah--I remembered! I came to myself; I said nothing. But the +king stormed out: + +"Thou'rt insane, man. It were better, and more in reason, that +this thief and scoundrel here prove that we are _not_ freemen." + +You see, he knew his own laws just as other people so often know +the laws; by words, not by effects. They take a _meaning_, and get +to be very vivid, when you come to apply them to yourself. + +All hands shook their heads and looked disappointed; some turned +away, no longer interested. The orator said--and this time in the +tones of business, not of sentiment: + +"An ye do not know your country's laws, it were time ye learned +them. Ye are strangers to us; ye will not deny that. Ye may be +freemen, we do not deny that; but also ye may be slaves. The law +is clear: it doth not require the claimant to prove ye are slaves, +it requireth you to prove ye are not." + +I said: + +"Dear sir, give us only time to send to Astolat; or give us only +time to send to the Valley of Holiness--" + +"Peace, good man, these are extraordinary requests, and you may +not hope to have them granted. It would cost much time, and would +unwarrantably inconvenience your master--" + +"_Master_, idiot!" stormed the king. "I have no master, I myself +am the m--" + +"Silence, for God's sake!" + +I got the words out in time to stop the king. We were in trouble +enough already; it could not help us any to give these people +the notion that we were lunatics. + +There is no use in stringing out the details. The earl put us up +and sold us at auction. This same infernal law had existed in +our own South in my own time, more than thirteen hundred years +later, and under it hundreds of freemen who could not prove that +they were freemen had been sold into lifelong slavery without +the circumstance making any particular impression upon me; but the +minute law and the auction block came into my personal experience, +a thing which had been merely improper before became suddenly +hellish. Well, that's the way we are made. + +Yes, we were sold at auction, like swine. In a big town and an +active market we should have brought a good price; but this place +was utterly stagnant and so we sold at a figure which makes me +ashamed, every time I think of it. The King of England brought +seven dollars, and his prime minister nine; whereas the king was +easily worth twelve dollars and I as easily worth fifteen. But +that is the way things always go; if you force a sale on a dull +market, I don't care what the property is, you are going to make +a poor business of it, and you can make up your mind to it. If +the earl had had wit enough to-- + +However, there is no occasion for my working my sympathies up +on his account. Let him go, for the present; I took his number, +so to speak. + +The slave-dealer bought us both, and hitched us onto that long +chain of his, and we constituted the rear of his procession. We +took up our line of march and passed out of Cambenet at noon; +and it seemed to me unaccountably strange and odd that the King +of England and his chief minister, marching manacled and fettered +and yoked, in a slave convoy, could move by all manner of idle men +and women, and under windows where sat the sweet and the lovely, +and yet never attract a curious eye, never provoke a single remark. +Dear, dear, it only shows that there is nothing diviner about a king +than there is about a tramp, after all. He is just a cheap and +hollow artificiality when you don't know he is a king. But reveal +his quality, and dear me it takes your very breath away to look +at him. I reckon we are all fools. Born so, no doubt. + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + +A PITIFUL INCIDENT + +It's a world of surprises. The king brooded; this was natural. +What would he brood about, should you say? Why, about the prodigious +nature of his fall, of course--from the loftiest place in the world +to the lowest; from the most illustrious station in the world to +the obscurest; from the grandest vocation among men to the basest. +No, I take my oath that the thing that graveled him most, to start +with, was not this, but the price he had fetched! He couldn't +seem to get over that seven dollars. Well, it stunned me so, when +I first found it out, that I couldn't believe it; it didn't seem +natural. But as soon as my mental sight cleared and I got a right +focus on it, I saw I was mistaken; it _was_ natural. For this +reason: a king is a mere artificiality, and so a king's feelings, +like the impulses of an automatic doll, are mere artificialities; +but as a man, he is a reality, and his feelings, as a man, are +real, not phantoms. It shames the average man to be valued below +his own estimate of his worth, and the king certainly wasn't +anything more than an average man, if he was up that high. + +Confound him, he wearied me with arguments to show that in anything +like a fair market he would have fetched twenty-five dollars, +sure--a thing which was plainly nonsense, and full or the baldest +conceit; I wasn't worth it myself. But it was tender ground for +me to argue on. In fact, I had to simply shirk argument and do +the diplomatic instead. I had to throw conscience aside, and +brazenly concede that he ought to have brought twenty-five dollars; +whereas I was quite well aware that in all the ages, the world had +never seen a king that was worth half the money, and during the +next thirteen centuries wouldn't see one that was worth the fourth +of it. Yes, he tired me. If he began to talk about the crops; +or about the recent weather; or about the condition of politics; +or about dogs, or cats, or morals, or theology--no matter what +--I sighed, for I knew what was coming; he was going to get out of it +a palliation of that tiresome seven-dollar sale. Wherever we +halted where there was a crowd, he would give me a look which +said plainly: "if that thing could be tried over again now, with +this kind of folk, you would see a different result." Well, when +he was first sold, it secretly tickled me to see him go for seven +dollars; but before he was done with his sweating and worrying +I wished he had fetched a hundred. The thing never got a chance +to die, for every day, at one place or another, possible purchasers +looked us over, and, as often as any other way, their comment on +the king was something like this: + +"Here's a two-dollar-and-a-half chump with a thirty-dollar style. +Pity but style was marketable." + +At last this sort of remark produced an evil result. Our owner +was a practical person and he perceived that this defect must be +mended if he hoped to find a purchaser for the king. So he went +to work to take the style out of his sacred majesty. I could have +given the man some valuable advice, but I didn't; you mustn't +volunteer advice to a slave-driver unless you want to damage +the cause you are arguing for. I had found it a sufficiently +difficult job to reduce the king's style to a peasant's style, +even when he was a willing and anxious pupil; now then, to undertake +to reduce the king's style to a slave's style--and by force--go to! +it was a stately contract. Never mind the details--it will save me +trouble to let you imagine them. I will only remark that at the +end of a week there was plenty of evidence that lash and club +and fist had done their work well; the king's body was a sight +to see--and to weep over; but his spirit?--why, it wasn't even +phased. Even that dull clod of a slave-driver was able to see +that there can be such a thing as a slave who will remain a man +till he dies; whose bones you can break, but whose manhood you +can't. This man found that from his first effort down to his +latest, he couldn't ever come within reach of the king, but the +king was ready to plunge for him, and did it. So he gave up +at last, and left the king in possession of his style unimpaired. +The fact is, the king was a good deal more than a king, he was +a man; and when a man is a man, you can't knock it out of him. + +We had a rough time for a month, tramping to and fro in the earth, +and suffering. And what Englishman was the most interested in +the slavery question by that time? His grace the king! Yes; from +being the most indifferent, he was become the most interested. +He was become the bitterest hater of the institution I had ever +heard talk. And so I ventured to ask once more a question which +I had asked years before and had gotten such a sharp answer that +I had not thought it prudent to meddle in the matter further. +Would he abolish slavery? + +His answer was as sharp as before, but it was music this time; +I shouldn't ever wish to hear pleasanter, though the profanity +was not good, being awkwardly put together, and with the crash-word +almost in the middle instead of at the end, where, of course, it +ought to have been. + +I was ready and willing to get free now; I hadn't wanted to get +free any sooner. No, I cannot quite say that. I had wanted to, +but I had not been willing to take desperate chances, and had +always dissuaded the king from them. But now--ah, it was a new +atmosphere! Liberty would be worth any cost that might be put +upon it now. I set about a plan, and was straightway charmed +with it. It would require time, yes, and patience, too, a great +deal of both. One could invent quicker ways, and fully as sure +ones; but none that would be as picturesque as this; none that +could be made so dramatic. And so I was not going to give this +one up. It might delay us months, but no matter, I would carry +it out or break something. + +Now and then we had an adventure. One night we were overtaken +by a snow-storm while still a mile from the village we were making +for. Almost instantly we were shut up as in a fog, the driving +snow was so thick. You couldn't see a thing, and we were soon +lost. The slave-driver lashed us desperately, for he saw ruin +before him, but his lashings only made matters worse, for they +drove us further from the road and from likelihood of succor. +So we had to stop at last and slump down in the snow where we +were. The storm continued until toward midnight, then ceased. +By this time two of our feebler men and three of our women were +dead, and others past moving and threatened with death. Our +master was nearly beside himself. He stirred up the living, and +made us stand, jump, slap ourselves, to restore our circulation, +and he helped as well as he could with his whip. + +Now came a diversion. We heard shrieks and yells, and soon a +woman came running and crying; and seeing our group, she flung +herself into our midst and begged for protection. A mob of people +came tearing after her, some with torches, and they said she was a +witch who had caused several cows to die by a strange disease, +and practiced her arts by help of a devil in the form of a black +cat. This poor woman had been stoned until she hardly looked +human, she was so battered and bloody. The mob wanted to burn her. + +Well, now, what do you suppose our master did? When we closed +around this poor creature to shelter her, he saw his chance. He +said, burn her here, or they shouldn't have her at all. Imagine +that! They were willing. They fastened her to a post; they +brought wood and piled it about her; they applied the torch while +she shrieked and pleaded and strained her two young daughters +to her breast; and our brute, with a heart solely for business, +lashed us into position about the stake and warmed us into life +and commercial value by the same fire which took away the innocent +life of that poor harmless mother. That was the sort of master we +had. I took _his_ number. That snow-storm cost him nine of his +flock; and he was more brutal to us than ever, after that, for +many days together, he was so enraged over his loss. + +We had adventures all along. One day we ran into a procession. +And such a procession! All the riffraff of the kingdom seemed +to be comprehended in it; and all drunk at that. In the van was +a cart with a coffin in it, and on the coffin sat a comely young +girl of about eighteen suckling a baby, which she squeezed to her +breast in a passion of love every little while, and every little +while wiped from its face the tears which her eyes rained down +upon it; and always the foolish little thing smiled up at her, +happy and content, kneading her breast with its dimpled fat hand, +which she patted and fondled right over her breaking heart. + +Men and women, boys and girls, trotted along beside or after +the cart, hooting, shouting profane and ribald remarks, singing +snatches of foul song, skipping, dancing--a very holiday of +hellions, a sickening sight. We had struck a suburb of London, +outside the walls, and this was a sample of one sort of London +society. Our master secured a good place for us near the gallows. +A priest was in attendance, and he helped the girl climb up, and +said comforting words to her, and made the under-sheriff provide +a stool for her. Then he stood there by her on the gallows, and +for a moment looked down upon the mass of upturned faces at his +feet, then out over the solid pavement of heads that stretched away +on every side occupying the vacancies far and near, and then began +to tell the story of the case. And there was pity in his voice +--how seldom a sound that was in that ignorant and savage land! +I remember every detail of what he said, except the words he said +it in; and so I change it into my own words: + +"Law is intended to mete out justice. Sometimes it fails. This +cannot be helped. We can only grieve, and be resigned, and pray +for the soul of him who falls unfairly by the arm of the law, and +that his fellows may be few. A law sends this poor young thing +to death--and it is right. But another law had placed her where +she must commit her crime or starve with her child--and before God +that law is responsible for both her crime and her ignominious death! + +"A little while ago this young thing, this child of eighteen years, +was as happy a wife and mother as any in England; and her lips +were blithe with song, which is the native speech of glad and +innocent hearts. Her young husband was as happy as she; for he was +doing his whole duty, he worked early and late at his handicraft, +his bread was honest bread well and fairly earned, he was prospering, +he was furnishing shelter and sustenance to his family, he was +adding his mite to the wealth of the nation. By consent of a +treacherous law, instant destruction fell upon this holy home and +swept it away! That young husband was waylaid and impressed, +and sent to sea. The wife knew nothing of it. She sought him +everywhere, she moved the hardest hearts with the supplications +of her tears, the broken eloquence of her despair. Weeks dragged +by, she watching, waiting, hoping, her mind going slowly to wreck +under the burden of her misery. Little by little all her small +possessions went for food. When she could no longer pay her rent, +they turned her out of doors. She begged, while she had strength; +when she was starving at last, and her milk failing, she stole a +piece of linen cloth of the value of a fourth part of a cent, +thinking to sell it and save her child. But she was seen by the +owner of the cloth. She was put in jail and brought to trial. +The man testified to the facts. A plea was made for her, and her +sorrowful story was told in her behalf. She spoke, too, by +permission, and said she did steal the cloth, but that her mind +was so disordered of late by trouble that when she was overborne +with hunger all acts, criminal or other, swam meaningless through +her brain and she knew nothing rightly, except that she was so +hungry! For a moment all were touched, and there was disposition +to deal mercifully with her, seeing that she was so young and +friendless, and her case so piteous, and the law that robbed her +of her support to blame as being the first and only cause of her +transgression; but the prosecuting officer replied that whereas +these things were all true, and most pitiful as well, still there +was much small theft in these days, and mistimed mercy here would +be a danger to property--oh, my God, is there no property in ruined +homes, and orphaned babes, and broken hearts that British law +holds precious!--and so he must require sentence. + +"When the judge put on his black cap, the owner of the stolen +linen rose trembling up, his lip quivering, his face as gray as +ashes; and when the awful words came, he cried out, 'Oh, poor +child, poor child, I did not know it was death!' and fell as a +tree falls. When they lifted him up his reason was gone; before +the sun was set, he had taken his own life. A kindly man; a man +whose heart was right, at bottom; add his murder to this that +is to be now done here; and charge them both where they belong +--to the rulers and the bitter laws of Britain. The time is come, my +child; let me pray over thee--not _for_ thee, dear abused poor heart +and innocent, but for them that be guilty of thy ruin and death, +who need it more." + +After his prayer they put the noose around the young girl's neck, +and they had great trouble to adjust the knot under her ear, +because she was devouring the baby all the time, wildly kissing it, +and snatching it to her face and her breast, and drenching it +with tears, and half moaning, half shrieking all the while, and the +baby crowing, and laughing, and kicking its feet with delight over +what it took for romp and play. Even the hangman couldn't stand it, +but turned away. When all was ready the priest gently pulled and +tugged and forced the child out of the mother's arms, and stepped +quickly out of her reach; but she clasped her hands, and made a +wild spring toward him, with a shriek; but the rope--and the +under-sheriff--held her short. Then she went on her knees and +stretched out her hands and cried: + +"One more kiss--oh, my God, one more, one more,--it is the dying +that begs it!" + +She got it; she almost smothered the little thing. And when they +got it away again, she cried out: + +"Oh, my child, my darling, it will die! It has no home, it has +no father, no friend, no mother--" + +"It has them all!" said that good priest. "All these will I be +to it till I die." + +You should have seen her face then! Gratitude? Lord, what do +you want with words to express that? Words are only painted fire; +a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away +to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + +AN ENCOUNTER IN THE DARK + +London--to a slave--was a sufficiently interesting place. It was +merely a great big village; and mainly mud and thatch. The streets +were muddy, crooked, unpaved. The populace was an ever flocking +and drifting swarm of rags, and splendors, of nodding plumes and +shining armor. The king had a palace there; he saw the outside +of it. It made him sigh; yes, and swear a little, in a poor +juvenile sixth century way. We saw knights and grandees whom +we knew, but they didn't know us in our rags and dirt and raw +welts and bruises, and wouldn't have recognized us if we had hailed +them, nor stopped to answer, either, it being unlawful to speak +with slaves on a chain. Sandy passed within ten yards of me on +a mule--hunting for me, I imagined. But the thing which clean +broke my heart was something which happened in front of our old +barrack in a square, while we were enduring the spectacle of a man +being boiled to death in oil for counterfeiting pennies. It was +the sight of a newsboy--and I couldn't get at him! Still, I had +one comfort--here was proof that Clarence was still alive and +banging away. I meant to be with him before long; the thought was +full of cheer. + +I had one little glimpse of another thing, one day, which gave me +a great uplift. It was a wire stretching from housetop to housetop. +Telegraph or telephone, sure. I did very much wish I had a little +piece of it. It was just what I needed, in order to carry out my +project of escape. My idea was to get loose some night, along with +the king, then gag and bind our master, change clothes with him, +batter him into the aspect of a stranger, hitch him to the slave-chain, +assume possession of the property, march to Camelot, and-- + +But you get my idea; you see what a stunning dramatic surprise +I would wind up with at the palace. It was all feasible, if +I could only get hold of a slender piece of iron which I could +shape into a lock-pick. I could then undo the lumbering padlocks +with which our chains were fastened, whenever I might choose. +But I never had any luck; no such thing ever happened to fall +in my way. However, my chance came at last. A gentleman who +had come twice before to dicker for me, without result, or indeed +any approach to a result, came again. I was far from expecting +ever to belong to him, for the price asked for me from the time +I was first enslaved was exorbitant, and always provoked either +anger or derision, yet my master stuck stubbornly to it--twenty-two +dollars. He wouldn't bate a cent. The king was greatly admired, +because of his grand physique, but his kingly style was against +him, and he wasn't salable; nobody wanted that kind of a slave. +I considered myself safe from parting from him because of my +extravagant price. No, I was not expecting to ever belong to +this gentleman whom I have spoken of, but he had something which +I expected would belong to me eventually, if he would but visit +us often enough. It was a steel thing with a long pin to it, with +which his long cloth outside garment was fastened together in +front. There were three of them. He had disappointed me twice, +because he did not come quite close enough to me to make my project +entirely safe; but this time I succeeded; I captured the lower +clasp of the three, and when he missed it he thought he had lost +it on the way. + +I had a chance to be glad about a minute, then straightway a chance +to be sad again. For when the purchase was about to fail, as usual, +the master suddenly spoke up and said what would be worded thus +--in modern English: + +"I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm tired supporting these two for +no good. Give me twenty-two dollars for this one, and I'll throw +the other one in." + +The king couldn't get his breath, he was in such a fury. He began +to choke and gag, and meantime the master and the gentleman moved +away discussing. + +"An ye will keep the offer open--" + +"'Tis open till the morrow at this hour." + +"Then I will answer you at that time," said the gentleman, and +disappeared, the master following him. + +I had a time of it to cool the king down, but I managed it. +I whispered in his ear, to this effect: + +"Your grace _will_ go for nothing, but after another fashion. And +so shall I. To-night we shall both be free." + +"Ah! How is that?" + +"With this thing which I have stolen, I will unlock these locks +and cast off these chains to-night. When he comes about nine-thirty +to inspect us for the night, we will seize him, gag him, batter +him, and early in the morning we will march out of this town, +proprietors of this caravan of slaves." + +That was as far as I went, but the king was charmed and satisfied. +That evening we waited patiently for our fellow-slaves to get +to sleep and signify it by the usual sign, for you must not take +many chances on those poor fellows if you can avoid it. It is +best to keep your own secrets. No doubt they fidgeted only about +as usual, but it didn't seem so to me. It seemed to me that they +were going to be forever getting down to their regular snoring. +As the time dragged on I got nervously afraid we shouldn't have +enough of it left for our needs; so I made several premature +attempts, and merely delayed things by it; for I couldn't seem +to touch a padlock, there in the dark, without starting a rattle +out of it which interrupted somebody's sleep and made him turn +over and wake some more of the gang. + +But finally I did get my last iron off, and was a free man once +more. I took a good breath of relief, and reached for the king's +irons. Too late! in comes the master, with a light in one hand +and his heavy walking-staff in the other. I snuggled close among +the wallow of snorers, to conceal as nearly as possible that I was +naked of irons; and I kept a sharp lookout and prepared to spring +for my man the moment he should bend over me. + +But he didn't approach. He stopped, gazed absently toward our +dusky mass a minute, evidently thinking about something else; +then set down his light, moved musingly toward the door, and before +a body could imagine what he was going to do, he was out of the +door and had closed it behind him. + +"Quick!" said the king. "Fetch him back!" + +Of course, it was the thing to do, and I was up and out in a +moment. But, dear me, there were no lamps in those days, and +it was a dark night. But I glimpsed a dim figure a few steps +away. I darted for it, threw myself upon it, and then there was +a state of things and lively! We fought and scuffled and struggled, +and drew a crowd in no time. They took an immense interest in +the fight and encouraged us all they could, and, in fact, couldn't +have been pleasanter or more cordial if it had been their own +fight. Then a tremendous row broke out behind us, and as much +as half of our audience left us, with a rush, to invest some +sympathy in that. Lanterns began to swing in all directions; +it was the watch gathering from far and near. Presently a halberd +fell across my back, as a reminder, and I knew what it meant. +I was in custody. So was my adversary. We were marched off toward +prison, one on each side of the watchman. Here was disaster, +here was a fine scheme gone to sudden destruction! I tried to +imagine what would happen when the master should discover that +it was I who had been fighting him; and what would happen if they +jailed us together in the general apartment for brawlers and petty +law-breakers, as was the custom; and what might-- + +Just then my antagonist turned his face around in my direction, +the freckled light from the watchman's tin lantern fell on it, +and, by George, he was the wrong man! + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + +AN AWFUL PREDICAMENT + +Sleep? It was impossible. It would naturally have been impossible +in that noisome cavern of a jail, with its mangy crowd of drunken, +quarrelsome, and song-singing rapscallions. But the thing that +made sleep all the more a thing not to be dreamed of, was my +racking impatience to get out of this place and find out the whole +size of what might have happened yonder in the slave-quarters +in consequence of that intolerable miscarriage of mine. + +It was a long night, but the morning got around at last. I made +a full and frank explanation to the court. I said I was a slave, +the property of the great Earl Grip, who had arrived just after +dark at the Tabard inn in the village on the other side of the +water, and had stopped there over night, by compulsion, he being +taken deadly sick with a strange and sudden disorder. I had been +ordered to cross to the city in all haste and bring the best +physician; I was doing my best; naturally I was running with all +my might; the night was dark, I ran against this common person +here, who seized me by the throat and began to pummel me, although +I told him my errand, and implored him, for the sake of the great +earl my master's mortal peril-- + +The common person interrupted and said it was a lie; and was going +to explain how I rushed upon him and attacked him without a word-- + +"Silence, sirrah!" from the court. "Take him hence and give him +a few stripes whereby to teach him how to treat the servant of +a nobleman after a different fashion another time. Go!" + +Then the court begged my pardon, and hoped I would not fail +to tell his lordship it was in no wise the court's fault that this +high-handed thing had happened. I said I would make it all right, +and so took my leave. Took it just in time, too; he was starting +to ask me why I didn't fetch out these facts the moment I was +arrested. I said I would if I had thought of it--which was true +--but that I was so battered by that man that all my wit was knocked +out of me--and so forth and so on, and got myself away, still +mumbling. I didn't wait for breakfast. No grass grew under my +feet. I was soon at the slave quarters. Empty--everybody gone! +That is, everybody except one body--the slave-master's. It lay +there all battered to pulp; and all about were the evidences of +a terrific fight. There was a rude board coffin on a cart at +the door, and workmen, assisted by the police, were thinning a +road through the gaping crowd in order that they might bring it in. + +I picked out a man humble enough in life to condescend to talk +with one so shabby as I, and got his account of the matter. + +"There were sixteen slaves here. They rose against their master +in the night, and thou seest how it ended." + +"Yes. How did it begin?" + +"There was no witness but the slaves. They said the slave that +was most valuable got free of his bonds and escaped in some strange +way--by magic arts 'twas thought, by reason that he had no key, +and the locks were neither broke nor in any wise injured. When +the master discovered his loss, he was mad with despair, and threw +himself upon his people with his heavy stick, who resisted and +brake his back and in other and divers ways did give him hurts +that brought him swiftly to his end." + +"This is dreadful. It will go hard with the slaves, no doubt, +upon the trial." + +"Marry, the trial is over." + +"Over!" + +"Would they be a week, think you--and the matter so simple? They +were not the half of a quarter of an hour at it." + +"Why, I don't see how they could determine which were the guilty +ones in so short a time." + +"_Which_ ones? Indeed, they considered not particulars like to that. +They condemned them in a body. Wit ye not the law?--which men +say the Romans left behind them here when they went--that if one +slave killeth his master all the slaves of that man must die for it." + +"True. I had forgotten. And when will these die?" + +"Belike within a four and twenty hours; albeit some say they will +wait a pair of days more, if peradventure they may find the missing +one meantime." + +The missing one! It made me feel uncomfortable. + +"Is it likely they will find him?" + +"Before the day is spent--yes. They seek him everywhere. They +stand at the gates of the town, with certain of the slaves who +will discover him to them if he cometh, and none can pass out +but he will be first examined." + +"Might one see the place where the rest are confined?" + +"The outside of it--yes. The inside of it--but ye will not want +to see that." + +I took the address of that prison for future reference and then +sauntered off. At the first second-hand clothing shop I came to, +up a back street, I got a rough rig suitable for a common seaman +who might be going on a cold voyage, and bound up my face with +a liberal bandage, saying I had a toothache. This concealed my +worst bruises. It was a transformation. I no longer resembled my +former self. Then I struck out for that wire, found it and +followed it to its den. It was a little room over a butcher's +shop--which meant that business wasn't very brisk in the telegraphic +line. The young chap in charge was drowsing at his table. I locked +the door and put the vast key in my bosom. This alarmed the young +fellow, and he was going to make a noise; but I said: + +"Save your wind; if you open your mouth you are dead, sure. Tackle +your instrument. Lively, now! Call Camelot." + +"This doth amaze me! How should such as you know aught of such +matters as--" + +"Call Camelot! I am a desperate man. Call Camelot, or get away +from the instrument and I will do it myself." + +"What--you?" + +"Yes--certainly. Stop gabbling. Call the palace." + +He made the call. + +"Now, then, call Clarence." + +"Clarence _who_?" + +"Never mind Clarence who. Say you want Clarence; you'll get +an answer." + +He did so. We waited five nerve-straining minutes--ten minutes +--how long it did seem!--and then came a click that was as familiar +to me as a human voice; for Clarence had been my own pupil. + +"Now, my lad, vacate! They would have known _my_ touch, maybe, +and so your call was surest; but I'm all right now." + +He vacated the place and cocked his ear to listen--but it didn't +win. I used a cipher. I didn't waste any time in sociabilities +with Clarence, but squared away for business, straight-off--thus: + +"The king is here and in danger. We were captured and brought +here as slaves. We should not be able to prove our identity +--and the fact is, I am not in a position to try. Send a telegram +for the palace here which will carry conviction with it." + +His answer came straight back: + +"They don't know anything about the telegraph; they haven't had +any experience yet, the line to London is so new. Better not +venture that. They might hang you. Think up something else." + +Might hang us! Little he knew how closely he was crowding the +facts. I couldn't think up anything for the moment. Then an idea +struck me, and I started it along: + +"Send five hundred picked knights with Launcelot in the lead; and +send them on the jump. Let them enter by the southwest gate, and +look out for the man with a white cloth around his right arm." + +The answer was prompt: + +"They shall start in half an hour." + +"All right, Clarence; now tell this lad here that I'm a friend +of yours and a dead-head; and that he must be discreet and say +nothing about this visit of mine." + +The instrument began to talk to the youth and I hurried away. +I fell to ciphering. In half an hour it would be nine o'clock. +Knights and horses in heavy armor couldn't travel very fast. +These would make the best time they could, and now that the ground +was in good condition, and no snow or mud, they would probably +make a seven-mile gait; they would have to change horses a couple +of times; they would arrive about six, or a little after; it would +still be plenty light enough; they would see the white cloth which +I should tie around my right arm, and I would take command. We +would surround that prison and have the king out in no time. +It would be showy and picturesque enough, all things considered, +though I would have preferred noonday, on account of the more +theatrical aspect the thing would have. + +Now, then, in order to increase the strings to my bow, I thought +I would look up some of those people whom I had formerly recognized, +and make myself known. That would help us out of our scrape, +without the knights. But I must proceed cautiously, for it was +a risky business. I must get into sumptuous raiment, and it +wouldn't do to run and jump into it. No, I must work up to it +by degrees, buying suit after suit of clothes, in shops wide apart, +and getting a little finer article with each change, until I should +finally reach silk and velvet, and be ready for my project. So +I started. + +But the scheme fell through like scat! The first corner I turned, +I came plump upon one of our slaves, snooping around with a watchman. +I coughed at the moment, and he gave me a sudden look that bit right +into my marrow. I judge he thought he had heard that cough before. +I turned immediately into a shop and worked along down the counter, +pricing things and watching out of the corner of my eye. Those +people had stopped, and were talking together and looking in at +the door. I made up my mind to get out the back way, if there +was a back way, and I asked the shopwoman if I could step out +there and look for the escaped slave, who was believed to be in +hiding back there somewhere, and said I was an officer in disguise, +and my pard was yonder at the door with one of the murderers in +charge, and would she be good enough to step there and tell him +he needn't wait, but had better go at once to the further end of +the back alley and be ready to head him off when I rousted him out. + +She was blazing with eagerness to see one of those already celebrated +murderers, and she started on the errand at once. I slipped out +the back way, locked the door behind me, put the key in my pocket +and started off, chuckling to myself and comfortable. + +Well, I had gone and spoiled it again, made another mistake. +A double one, in fact. There were plenty of ways to get rid of +that officer by some simple and plausible device, but no, I must +pick out a picturesque one; it is the crying defect of my character. +And then, I had ordered my procedure upon what the officer, being +human, would _naturally_ do; whereas when you are least expecting it, +a man will now and then go and do the very thing which it's _not_ +natural for him to do. The natural thing for the officer to do, +in this case, was to follow straight on my heels; he would find +a stout oaken door, securely locked, between him and me; before +he could break it down, I should be far away and engaged in slipping +into a succession of baffling disguises which would soon get me +into a sort of raiment which was a surer protection from meddling +law-dogs in Britain than any amount of mere innocence and purity +of character. But instead of doing the natural thing, the officer +took me at my word, and followed my instructions. And so, as I +came trotting out of that cul de sac, full of satisfaction with my +own cleverness, he turned the corner and I walked right into his +handcuffs. If I had known it was a cul de sac--however, there +isn't any excusing a blunder like that, let it go. Charge it up +to profit and loss. + +Of course, I was indignant, and swore I had just come ashore from +a long voyage, and all that sort of thing--just to see, you know, +if it would deceive that slave. But it didn't. He knew me. Then +I reproached him for betraying me. He was more surprised than +hurt. He stretched his eyes wide, and said: + +"What, wouldst have me let thee, of all men, escape and not hang +with us, when thou'rt the very _cause_ of our hanging? Go to!" + +"Go to" was their way of saying "I should smile!" or "I like that!" +Queer talkers, those people. + +Well, there was a sort of bastard justice in his view of the case, +and so I dropped the matter. When you can't cure a disaster by +argument, what is the use to argue? It isn't my way. So I only said: + +"You're not going to be hanged. None of us are." + +Both men laughed, and the slave said: + +"Ye have not ranked as a fool--before. You might better keep +your reputation, seeing the strain would not be for long." + +"It will stand it, I reckon. Before to-morrow we shall be out +of prison, and free to go where we will, besides." + +The witty officer lifted at his left ear with his thumb, made +a rasping noise in his throat, and said: + +"Out of prison--yes--ye say true. And free likewise to go where +ye will, so ye wander not out of his grace the Devil's sultry realm." + +I kept my temper, and said, indifferently: + +"Now I suppose you really think we are going to hang within +a day or two." + +"I thought it not many minutes ago, for so the thing was decided +and proclaimed." + +"Ah, then you've changed your mind, is that it?" + +"Even that. I only _thought_, then; I _know_, now." + +I felt sarcastical, so I said: + +"Oh, sapient servant of the law, condescend to tell us, then, +what you _know_." + +"That ye will all be hanged _to-day_, at mid-afternoon! Oho! that +shot hit home! Lean upon me." + +The fact is I did need to lean upon somebody. My knights couldn't +arrive in time. They would be as much as three hours too late. +Nothing in the world could save the King of England; nor me, which +was more important. More important, not merely to me, but to +the nation--the only nation on earth standing ready to blossom +into civilization. I was sick. I said no more, there wasn't +anything to say. I knew what the man meant; that if the missing +slave was found, the postponement would be revoked, the execution +take place to-day. Well, the missing slave was found. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + +SIR LAUNCELOT AND KNIGHTS TO THE RESCUE + +Nearing four in the afternoon. The scene was just outside the +walls of London. A cool, comfortable, superb day, with a brilliant +sun; the kind of day to make one want to live, not die. The +multitude was prodigious and far-reaching; and yet we fifteen +poor devils hadn't a friend in it. There was something painful +in that thought, look at it how you might. There we sat, on our +tall scaffold, the butt of the hate and mockery of all those +enemies. We were being made a holiday spectacle. They had built +a sort of grand stand for the nobility and gentry, and these were +there in full force, with their ladies. We recognized a good +many of them. + +The crowd got a brief and unexpected dash of diversion out of +the king. The moment we were freed of our bonds he sprang up, +in his fantastic rags, with face bruised out of all recognition, and +proclaimed himself Arthur, King of Britain, and denounced the +awful penalties of treason upon every soul there present if hair +of his sacred head were touched. It startled and surprised him +to hear them break into a vast roar of laughter. It wounded his +dignity, and he locked himself up in silence. Then, although +the crowd begged him to go on, and tried to provoke him to it +by catcalls, jeers, and shouts of: + +"Let him speak! The king! The king! his humble subjects hunger +and thirst for words of wisdom out of the mouth of their master +his Serene and Sacred Raggedness!" + +But it went for nothing. He put on all his majesty and sat under +this rain of contempt and insult unmoved. He certainly was great +in his way. Absently, I had taken off my white bandage and wound +it about my right arm. When the crowd noticed this, they began +upon me. They said: + +"Doubtless this sailor-man is his minister--observe his costly +badge of office!" + +I let them go on until they got tired, and then I said: + +"Yes, I am his minister, The Boss; and to-morrow you will hear +that from Camelot which--" + +I got no further. They drowned me out with joyous derision. But +presently there was silence; for the sheriffs of London, in their +official robes, with their subordinates, began to make a stir which +indicated that business was about to begin. In the hush which +followed, our crime was recited, the death warrant read, then +everybody uncovered while a priest uttered a prayer. + +Then a slave was blindfolded; the hangman unslung his rope. There +lay the smooth road below us, we upon one side of it, the banked +multitude wailing its other side--a good clear road, and kept free +by the police--how good it would be to see my five hundred horsemen +come tearing down it! But no, it was out of the possibilities. +I followed its receding thread out into the distance--not a horseman +on it, or sign of one. + +There was a jerk, and the slave hung dangling; dangling and hideously +squirming, for his limbs were not tied. + +A second rope was unslung, in a moment another slave was dangling. + +In a minute a third slave was struggling in the air. It was +dreadful. I turned away my head a moment, and when I turned back +I missed the king! They were blindfolding him! I was paralyzed; +I couldn't move, I was choking, my tongue was petrified. They +finished blindfolding him, they led him under the rope. I couldn't +shake off that clinging impotence. But when I saw them put the +noose around his neck, then everything let go in me and I made +a spring to the rescue--and as I made it I shot one more glance +abroad--by George! here they came, a-tilting!--five hundred mailed +and belted knights on bicycles! + +The grandest sight that ever was seen. Lord, how the plumes +streamed, how the sun flamed and flashed from the endless procession +of webby wheels! + +I waved my right arm as Launcelot swept in--he recognized my rag +--I tore away noose and bandage, and shouted: + +"On your knees, every rascal of you, and salute the king! Who +fails shall sup in hell to-night!" + +I always use that high style when I'm climaxing an effect. Well, +it was noble to see Launcelot and the boys swarm up onto that +scaffold and heave sheriffs and such overboard. And it was fine +to see that astonished multitude go down on their knees and beg +their lives of the king they had just been deriding and insulting. +And as he stood apart there, receiving this homage in rags, +I thought to myself, well, really there is something peculiarly +grand about the gait and bearing of a king, after all. + +I was immensely satisfied. Take the whole situation all around, +it was one of the gaudiest effects I ever instigated. + +And presently up comes Clarence, his own self! and winks, and +says, very modernly: + +"Good deal of a surprise, wasn't it? I knew you'd like it. I've +had the boys practicing this long time, privately; and just hungry +for a chance to show off." + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + +THE YANKEE'S FIGHT WITH THE KNIGHTS + +Home again, at Camelot. A morning or two later I found the paper, +damp from the press, by my plate at the breakfast table. I turned +to the advertising columns, knowing I should find something of +personal interest to me there. It was this: + + DE PAR LE ROI. + + Know that the great lord and illus- + trious Kni8ht, SIR SAGRAMOR LE + DESIROUS naving condescended to + meet the King's Minister, Hank Mor- + gan, the which is surnamed The Boss, + for satisfgction of offence anciently given, + these wilL engage in the lists by + Camelot about the fourth hour of the + morning of the sixteenth day of this + next succeeding month. The battle + will be a l outrance, sith the said offence + was of a deadly sort, admitting of no + comPosition. + + DE PAR LE ROI + + +Clarence's editorial reference to this affair was to this effect: + + It will be observed, by a gl7nce at our + advertising columns, that the commu- + nity is to be favored with a treat of un- + usual interest in the tournament line. + The n ames of the artists are warrant of + good enterTemment. The box-office + will be open at noon of the 13th; ad- + mission 3 cents, reserved seatsh 5; pro- + ceeds to go to the hospital fund The + royal pair and all the Court will be pres- + ent. With these exceptions, and the + press and the clergy, the free list is strict- + ly susPended. Parties are hereby warn- + ed against buying tickets of speculators; + they will not be good at the door. + Everybody knows and likes The Boss, + everybody knows and likes Sir Sag.; + come, let us give the lads a good send- + off. ReMember, the proceeds go to a + great and free charity, and one whose + broad begevolence stretches out its help- + ing hand, warm with the blood of a lov- + ing heart, to all that suffer, regardless of + race, creed, condition or color--the + only charity yet established in the earth + which has no politico-religious stop- + cock on its compassion, but says Here + flows the stream, let ALL come and + drink! Turn out, all hands! fetch along + your dou3hnuts and your gum-drops + and have a good time. Pie for sale on + the grounds, and rocks to crack it with; + and ciRcus-lemonade--three drops of + lime juice to a barrel of water. + N.B. This is the first tournament + under the new law, whidh allow each + combatant to use any weapon he may pre- + fer. You may want to make a note of that. + +Up to the day set, there was no talk in all Britain of anything +but this combat. All other topics sank into insignificance and +passed out of men's thoughts and interest. It was not because +a tournament was a great matter, it was not because Sir Sagramor +had found the Holy Grail, for he had not, but had failed; it was +not because the second (official) personage in the kingdom was +one of the duellists; no, all these features were commonplace. +Yet there was abundant reason for the extraordinary interest which +this coming fight was creating. It was born of the fact that all +the nation knew that this was not to be a duel between mere men, +so to speak, but a duel between two mighty magicians; a duel not +of muscle but of mind, not of human skill but of superhuman art +and craft; a final struggle for supremacy between the two master +enchanters of the age. It was realized that the most prodigious +achievements of the most renowned knights could not be worthy +of comparison with a spectacle like this; they could be but child's +play, contrasted with this mysterious and awful battle of the gods. +Yes, all the world knew it was going to be in reality a duel +between Merlin and me, a measuring of his magic powers against +mine. It was known that Merlin had been busy whole days and nights +together, imbuing Sir Sagramor's arms and armor with supernal +powers of offense and defense, and that he had procured for him +from the spirits of the air a fleecy veil which would render the +wearer invisible to his antagonist while still visible to other +men. Against Sir Sagramor, so weaponed and protected, a thousand +knights could accomplish nothing; against him no known enchantments +could prevail. These facts were sure; regarding them there was +no doubt, no reason for doubt. There was but one question: might +there be still other enchantments, _unknown_ to Merlin, which could +render Sir Sagramor's veil transparent to me, and make his enchanted +mail vulnerable to my weapons? This was the one thing to be +decided in the lists. Until then the world must remain in suspense. + +So the world thought there was a vast matter at stake here, and +the world was right, but it was not the one they had in their +minds. No, a far vaster one was upon the cast of this die: +_the life of knight-errantry_. I was a champion, it was true, but +not the champion of the frivolous black arts, I was the champion +of hard unsentimental common-sense and reason. I was entering +the lists to either destroy knight-errantry or be its victim. + +Vast as the show-grounds were, there were no vacant spaces in them +outside of the lists, at ten o'clock on the morning of the 16th. +The mammoth grand-stand was clothed in flags, streamers, and rich +tapestries, and packed with several acres of small-fry tributary +kings, their suites, and the British aristocracy; with our own +royal gang in the chief place, and each and every individual +a flashing prism of gaudy silks and velvets--well, I never saw +anything to begin with it but a fight between an Upper Mississippi +sunset and the aurora borealis. The huge camp of beflagged and +gay-colored tents at one end of the lists, with a stiff-standing +sentinel at every door and a shining shield hanging by him for +challenge, was another fine sight. You see, every knight was +there who had any ambition or any caste feeling; for my feeling +toward their order was not much of a secret, and so here was their +chance. If I won my fight with Sir Sagramor, others would have +the right to call me out as long as I might be willing to respond. + +Down at our end there were but two tents; one for me, and another +for my servants. At the appointed hour the king made a sign, and +the heralds, in their tabards, appeared and made proclamation, +naming the combatants and stating the cause of quarrel. There +was a pause, then a ringing bugle-blast, which was the signal for +us to come forth. All the multitude caught their breath, and +an eager curiosity flashed into every face. + +Out from his tent rode great Sir Sagramor, an imposing tower +of iron, stately and rigid, his huge spear standing upright in its +socket and grasped in his strong hand, his grand horse's face and +breast cased in steel, his body clothed in rich trappings that +almost dragged the ground--oh, a most noble picture. A great +shout went up, of welcome and admiration. + +And then out I came. But I didn't get any shout. There was +a wondering and eloquent silence for a moment, then a great wave +of laughter began to sweep along that human sea, but a warning +bugle-blast cut its career short. I was in the simplest and +comfortablest of gymnast costumes--flesh-colored tights from neck +to heel, with blue silk puffings about my loins, and bareheaded. +My horse was not above medium size, but he was alert, slender-limbed, +muscled with watchsprings, and just a greyhound to go. He was +a beauty, glossy as silk, and naked as he was when he was born, +except for bridle and ranger-saddle. + +The iron tower and the gorgeous bedquilt came cumbrously but +gracefully pirouetting down the lists, and we tripped lightly up +to meet them. We halted; the tower saluted, I responded; then +we wheeled and rode side by side to the grand-stand and faced +our king and queen, to whom we made obeisance. The queen exclaimed: + +"Alack, Sir Boss, wilt fight naked, and without lance or sword or--" + +But the king checked her and made her understand, with a polite +phrase or two, that this was none of her business. The bugles +rang again; and we separated and rode to the ends of the lists, +and took position. Now old Merlin stepped into view and cast +a dainty web of gossamer threads over Sir Sagramor which turned +him into Hamlet's ghost; the king made a sign, the bugles blew, +Sir Sagramor laid his great lance in rest, and the next moment here +he came thundering down the course with his veil flying out behind, +and I went whistling through the air like an arrow to meet him +--cocking my ear the while, as if noting the invisible knight's +position and progress by hearing, not sight. A chorus of encouraging +shouts burst out for him, and one brave voice flung out a heartening +word for me--said: + +"Go it, slim Jim!" + +It was an even bet that Clarence had procured that favor for me +--and furnished the language, too. When that formidable lance-point +was within a yard and a half of my breast I twitched my horse aside +without an effort, and the big knight swept by, scoring a blank. +I got plenty of applause that time. We turned, braced up, and +down we came again. Another blank for the knight, a roar of +applause for me. This same thing was repeated once more; and +it fetched such a whirlwind of applause that Sir Sagramor lost his +temper, and at once changed his tactics and set himself the task +of chasing me down. Why, he hadn't any show in the world at that; +it was a game of tag, with all the advantage on my side; I whirled +out of his path with ease whenever I chose, and once I slapped him +on the back as I went to the rear. Finally I took the chase into +my own hands; and after that, turn, or twist, or do what he would, +he was never able to get behind me again; he found himself always +in front at the end of his maneuver. So he gave up that business +and retired to his end of the lists. His temper was clear gone now, +and he forgot himself and flung an insult at me which disposed +of mine. I slipped my lasso from the horn of my saddle, and +grasped the coil in my right hand. This time you should have seen +him come!--it was a business trip, sure; by his gait there was +blood in his eye. I was sitting my horse at ease, and swinging +the great loop of my lasso in wide circles about my head; the +moment he was under way, I started for him; when the space between +us had narrowed to forty feet, I sent the snaky spirals of the rope +a-cleaving through the air, then darted aside and faced about and +brought my trained animal to a halt with all his feet braced under +him for a surge. The next moment the rope sprang taut and yanked +Sir Sagramor out of the saddle! Great Scott, but there was +a sensation! + +Unquestionably, the popular thing in this world is novelty. These +people had never seen anything of that cowboy business before, +and it carried them clear off their feet with delight. From all +around and everywhere, the shout went up: + +"Encore! encore!" + +I wondered where they got the word, but there was no time to cipher +on philological matters, because the whole knight-errantry hive +was just humming now, and my prospect for trade couldn't have +been better. The moment my lasso was released and Sir Sagramor +had been assisted to his tent, I hauled in the slack, took my +station and began to swing my loop around my head again. I was +sure to have use for it as soon as they could elect a successor +for Sir Sagramor, and that couldn't take long where there were +so many hungry candidates. Indeed, they elected one straight off +--Sir Hervis de Revel. + +_Bzz_! Here he came, like a house afire; I dodged: he passed like +a flash, with my horse-hair coils settling around his neck; +a second or so later, _fst_! his saddle was empty. + +I got another encore; and another, and another, and still another. +When I had snaked five men out, things began to look serious to +the ironclads, and they stopped and consulted together. As a +result, they decided that it was time to waive etiquette and send +their greatest and best against me. To the astonishment of that +little world, I lassoed Sir Lamorak de Galis, and after him +Sir Galahad. So you see there was simply nothing to be done now, +but play their right bower--bring out the superbest of the superb, +the mightiest of the mighty, the great Sir Launcelot himself! + +A proud moment for me? I should think so. Yonder was Arthur, +King of Britain; yonder was Guenever; yes, and whole tribes of +little provincial kings and kinglets; and in the tented camp yonder, +renowned knights from many lands; and likewise the selectest body +known to chivalry, the Knights of the Table Round, the most +illustrious in Christendom; and biggest fact of all, the very sun +of their shining system was yonder couching his lance, the focal +point of forty thousand adoring eyes; and all by myself, here was +I laying for him. Across my mind flitted the dear image of a +certain hello-girl of West Hartford, and I wished she could see +me now. In that moment, down came the Invincible, with the rush +of a whirlwind--the courtly world rose to its feet and bent forward +--the fateful coils went circling through the air, and before you +could wink I was towing Sir Launcelot across the field on his +back, and kissing my hand to the storm of waving kerchiefs and +the thunder-crash of applause that greeted me! + +Said I to myself, as I coiled my lariat and hung it on my saddle-horn, +and sat there drunk with glory, "The victory is perfect--no other +will venture against me--knight-errantry is dead." Now imagine my +astonishment--and everybody else's, too--to hear the peculiar +bugle-call which announces that another competitor is about to +enter the lists! There was a mystery here; I couldn't account for +this thing. Next, I noticed Merlin gliding away from me; and then +I noticed that my lasso was gone! The old sleight-of-hand expert +had stolen it, sure, and slipped it under his robe. + +The bugle blew again. I looked, and down came Sagramor riding +again, with his dust brushed off and his veil nicely re-arranged. +I trotted up to meet him, and pretended to find him by the sound +of his horse's hoofs. He said: + +"Thou'rt quick of ear, but it will not save thee from this!" and +he touched the hilt of his great sword. "An ye are not able to see +it, because of the influence of the veil, know that it is no cumbrous +lance, but a sword--and I ween ye will not be able to avoid it." + +His visor was up; there was death in his smile. I should never +be able to dodge his sword, that was plain. Somebody was going +to die this time. If he got the drop on me, I could name the +corpse. We rode forward together, and saluted the royalties. +This time the king was disturbed. He said: + +"Where is thy strange weapon?" + +"It is stolen, sire." + +"Hast another at hand?" + +"No, sire, I brought only the one." + +Then Merlin mixed in: + +"He brought but the one because there was but the one to bring. +There exists none other but that one. It belongeth to the king +of the Demons of the Sea. This man is a pretender, and ignorant, +else he had known that that weapon can be used in but eight bouts +only, and then it vanisheth away to its home under the sea." + +"Then is he weaponless," said the king. "Sir Sagramore, ye will +grant him leave to borrow." + +"And I will lend!" said Sir Launcelot, limping up. "He is as +brave a knight of his hands as any that be on live, and he shall +have mine." + +He put his hand on his sword to draw it, but Sir Sagramor said: + +"Stay, it may not be. He shall fight with his own weapons; it +was his privilege to choose them and bring them. If he has erred, +on his head be it." + +"Knight!" said the king. "Thou'rt overwrought with passion; it +disorders thy mind. Wouldst kill a naked man?" + +"An he do it, he shall answer it to me," said Sir Launcelot. + +"I will answer it to any he that desireth!" retorted Sir Sagramor hotly. + +Merlin broke in, rubbing his hands and smiling his lowdownest +smile of malicious gratification: + +"'Tis well said, right well said! And 'tis enough of parleying, +let my lord the king deliver the battle signal." + +The king had to yield. The bugle made proclamation, and we turned +apart and rode to our stations. There we stood, a hundred yards +apart, facing each other, rigid and motionless, like horsed statues. +And so we remained, in a soundless hush, as much as a full minute, +everybody gazing, nobody stirring. It seemed as if the king could +not take heart to give the signal. But at last he lifted his hand, +the clear note of the bugle followed, Sir Sagramor's long blade +described a flashing curve in the air, and it was superb to see him +come. I sat still. On he came. I did not move. People got so +excited that they shouted to me: + +"Fly, fly! Save thyself! This is murther!" + +I never budged so much as an inch till that thundering apparition +had got within fifteen paces of me; then I snatched a dragoon +revolver out of my holster, there was a flash and a roar, and +the revolver was back in the holster before anybody could tell +what had happened. + +Here was a riderless horse plunging by, and yonder lay Sir Sagramor, +stone dead. + +The people that ran to him were stricken dumb to find that the life +was actually gone out of the man and no reason for it visible, +no hurt upon his body, nothing like a wound. There was a hole +through the breast of his chain-mail, but they attached no importance +to a little thing like that; and as a bullet wound there produces +but little blood, none came in sight because of the clothing and +swaddlings under the armor. The body was dragged over to let +the king and the swells look down upon it. They were stupefied +with astonishment naturally. I was requested to come and explain +the miracle. But I remained in my tracks, like a statue, and said: + +"If it is a command, I will come, but my lord the king knows that +I am where the laws of combat require me to remain while any desire +to come against me." + +I waited. Nobody challenged. Then I said: + +"If there are any who doubt that this field is well and fairly won, +I do not wait for them to challenge me, I challenge them." + +"It is a gallant offer," said the king, "and well beseems you. +Whom will you name first?" + +"I name none, I challenge all! Here I stand, and dare the chivalry +of England to come against me--not by individuals, but in mass!" + +"What!" shouted a score of knights. + +"You have heard the challenge. Take it, or I proclaim you recreant +knights and vanquished, every one!" + +It was a "bluff" you know. At such a time it is sound judgment +to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what +it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to "call," +and you rake in the chips. But just this once--well, things looked +squally! In just no time, five hundred knights were scrambling +into their saddles, and before you could wink a widely scattering +drove were under way and clattering down upon me. I snatched +both revolvers from the holsters and began to measure distances +and calculate chances. + +Bang! One saddle empty. Bang! another one. Bang--bang, and +I bagged two. Well, it was nip and tuck with us, and I knew it. +If I spent the eleventh shot without convincing these people, +the twelfth man would kill me, sure. And so I never did feel +so happy as I did when my ninth downed its man and I detected +the wavering in the crowd which is premonitory of panic. An instant +lost now could knock out my last chance. But I didn't lose it. +I raised both revolvers and pointed them--the halted host stood +their ground just about one good square moment, then broke and fled. + +The day was mine. Knight-errantry was a doomed institution. The +march of civilization was begun. How did I feel? Ah, you never +could imagine it. + +And Brer Merlin? His stock was flat again. Somehow, every time +the magic of fol-de-rol tried conclusions with the magic of science, +the magic of fol-de-rol got left. + + + +CHAPTER XL + +THREE YEARS LATER + +When I broke the back of knight-errantry that time, I no longer +felt obliged to work in secret. So, the very next day I exposed +my hidden schools, my mines, and my vast system of clandestine +factories and workshops to an astonished world. That is to say, +I exposed the nineteenth century to the inspection of the sixth. + +Well, it is always a good plan to follow up an advantage promptly. +The knights were temporarily down, but if I would keep them so +I must just simply paralyze them--nothing short of that would +answer. You see, I was "bluffing" that last time in the field; +it would be natural for them to work around to that conclusion, +if I gave them a chance. So I must not give them time; and I didn't. + +I renewed my challenge, engraved it on brass, posted it up where +any priest could read it to them, and also kept it standing in +the advertising columns of the paper. + +I not only renewed it, but added to its proportions. I said, +name the day, and I would take fifty assistants and stand up +_against the massed chivalry of the whole earth and destroy it_. + +I was not bluffing this time. I meant what I said; I could do +what I promised. There wasn't any way to misunderstand the language +of that challenge. Even the dullest of the chivalry perceived +that this was a plain case of "put up, or shut up." They were +wise and did the latter. In all the next three years they gave +me no trouble worth mentioning. + +Consider the three years sped. Now look around on England. A happy +and prosperous country, and strangely altered. Schools everywhere, +and several colleges; a number of pretty good newspapers. Even +authorship was taking a start; Sir Dinadan the Humorist was first +in the field, with a volume of gray-headed jokes which I had been +familiar with during thirteen centuries. If he had left out that +old rancid one about the lecturer I wouldn't have said anything; +but I couldn't stand that one. I suppressed the book and hanged +the author. + +Slavery was dead and gone; all men were equal before the law; +taxation had been equalized. The telegraph, the telephone, the +phonograph, the typewriter, the sewing-machine, and all the thousand +willing and handy servants of steam and electricity were working +their way into favor. We had a steamboat or two on the Thames, +we had steam warships, and the beginnings of a steam commercial +marine; I was getting ready to send out an expedition to discover +America. + +We were building several lines of railway, and our line from +Camelot to London was already finished and in operation. I was +shrewd enough to make all offices connected with the passenger +service places of high and distinguished honor. My idea was +to attract the chivalry and nobility, and make them useful and keep +them out of mischief. The plan worked very well, the competition +for the places was hot. The conductor of the 4.33 express was +a duke; there wasn't a passenger conductor on the line below +the degree of earl. They were good men, every one, but they had +two defects which I couldn't cure, and so had to wink at: they +wouldn't lay aside their armor, and they would "knock down" fare +--I mean rob the company. + +There was hardly a knight in all the land who wasn't in some useful +employment. They were going from end to end of the country in all +manner of useful missionary capacities; their penchant for wandering, +and their experience in it, made them altogether the most effective +spreaders of civilization we had. They went clothed in steel and +equipped with sword and lance and battle-axe, and if they couldn't +persuade a person to try a sewing-machine on the installment plan, +or a melodeon, or a barbed-wire fence, or a prohibition journal, +or any of the other thousand and one things they canvassed for, +they removed him and passed on. + +I was very happy. Things were working steadily toward a secretly +longed-for point. You see, I had two schemes in my head which +were the vastest of all my projects. The one was to overthrow the +Catholic Church and set up the Protestant faith on its ruins +--not as an Established Church, but a go-as-you-please one; and +the other project was to get a decree issued by and by, commanding +that upon Arthur's death unlimited suffrage should be introduced, +and given to men and women alike--at any rate to all men, wise +or unwise, and to all mothers who at middle age should be found +to know nearly as much as their sons at twenty-one. Arthur was +good for thirty years yet, he being about my own age--that is +to say, forty--and I believed that in that time I could easily +have the active part of the population of that day ready and eager +for an event which should be the first of its kind in the history +of the world--a rounded and complete governmental revolution +without bloodshed. The result to be a republic. Well, I may +as well confess, though I do feel ashamed when I think of it: +I was beginning to have a base hankering to be its first president +myself. Yes, there was more or less human nature in me; I found +that out. + +Clarence was with me as concerned the revolution, but in a modified +way. His idea was a republic, without privileged orders, but with +a hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an elective +chief magistrate. He believed that no nation that had ever known +the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of it +and not fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that kings were +dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal +family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful +as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would +have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition +to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably +vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive; +finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other +royal house, and "Tom VII, or Tom XI, or Tom XIV by the grace +of God King," would sound as well as it would when applied to +the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on. "And as a rule," said +he, in his neat modern English, "the character of these cats would +be considerably above the character of the average king, and this +would be an immense moral advantage to the nation, for the reason +that a nation always models its morals after its monarch's. The +worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and +harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, +and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed that +they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted +no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of +a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and +would certainly get it. The eyes of the whole harried world would +soon be fixed upon this humane and gentle system, and royal butchers +would presently begin to disappear; their subjects would fill +the vacancies with catlings from our own royal house; we should +become a factory; we should supply the thrones of the world; within +forty years all Europe would be governed by cats, and we should +furnish the cats. The reign of universal peace would begin then, +to end no more forever.... Me-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow--fzt!--wow!" + +Hang him, I supposed he was in earnest, and was beginning to be +persuaded by him, until he exploded that cat-howl and startled me +almost out of my clothes. But he never could be in earnest. He +didn't know what it was. He had pictured a distinct and perfectly +rational and feasible improvement upon constitutional monarchy, +but he was too feather-headed to know it, or care anything about +it, either. I was going to give him a scolding, but Sandy came +flying in at that moment, wild with terror, and so choked with sobs +that for a minute she could not get her voice. I ran and took her +in my arms, and lavished caresses upon her and said, beseechingly: + +"Speak, darling, speak! What is it?" + +Her head fell limp upon my bosom, and she gasped, almost inaudibly: + +"HELLO-CENTRAL!" + +"Quick!" I shouted to Clarence; "telephone the king's homeopath +to come!" + +In two minutes I was kneeling by the child's crib, and Sandy was +dispatching servants here, there, and everywhere, all over the +palace. I took in the situation almost at a glance--membranous +croup! I bent down and whispered: + +"Wake up, sweetheart! Hello-Central." + +She opened her soft eyes languidly, and made out to say: + +"Papa." + +That was a comfort. She was far from dead yet. I sent for +preparations of sulphur, I rousted out the croup-kettle myself; +for I don't sit down and wait for doctors when Sandy or the child +is sick. I knew how to nurse both of them, and had had experience. +This little chap had lived in my arms a good part of its small life, +and often I could soothe away its troubles and get it to laugh +through the tear-dews on its eye-lashes when even its mother couldn't. + +Sir Launcelot, in his richest armor, came striding along the great +hall now on his way to the stock-board; he was president of the +stock-board, and occupied the Siege Perilous, which he had bought +of Sir Galahad; for the stock-board consisted of the Knights of +the Round Table, and they used the Round Table for business purposes +now. Seats at it were worth--well, you would never believe the +figure, so it is no use to state it. Sir Launcelot was a bear, and +he had put up a corner in one of the new lines, and was just getting +ready to squeeze the shorts to-day; but what of that? He was +the same old Launcelot, and when he glanced in as he was passing +the door and found out that his pet was sick, that was enough +for him; bulls and bears might fight it out their own way for all +him, he would come right in here and stand by little Hello-Central +for all he was worth. And that was what he did. He shied his +helmet into the corner, and in half a minute he had a new wick +in the alcohol lamp and was firing up on the croup-kettle. By this +time Sandy had built a blanket canopy over the crib, and everything +was ready. + +Sir Launcelot got up steam, he and I loaded up the kettle with +unslaked lime and carbolic acid, with a touch of lactic acid added +thereto, then filled the thing up with water and inserted the +steam-spout under the canopy. Everything was ship-shape now, +and we sat down on either side of the crib to stand our watch. +Sandy was so grateful and so comforted that she charged a couple +of church-wardens with willow-bark and sumach-tobacco for us, +and told us to smoke as much as we pleased, it couldn't get under +the canopy, and she was used to smoke, being the first lady in the +land who had ever seen a cloud blown. Well, there couldn't be +a more contented or comfortable sight than Sir Launcelot in his +noble armor sitting in gracious serenity at the end of a yard +of snowy church-warden. He was a beautiful man, a lovely man, +and was just intended to make a wife and children happy. But, of +course Guenever--however, it's no use to cry over what's done and +can't be helped. + +Well, he stood watch-and-watch with me, right straight through, +for three days and nights, till the child was out of danger; then +he took her up in his great arms and kissed her, with his plumes +falling about her golden head, then laid her softly in Sandy's +lap again and took his stately way down the vast hall, between +the ranks of admiring men-at-arms and menials, and so disappeared. +And no instinct warned me that I should never look upon him again +in this world! Lord, what a world of heart-break it is. + +The doctors said we must take the child away, if we would coax +her back to health and strength again. And she must have sea-air. +So we took a man-of-war, and a suite of two hundred and sixty +persons, and went cruising about, and after a fortnight of this we +stepped ashore on the French coast, and the doctors thought it +would be a good idea to make something of a stay there. The little +king of that region offered us his hospitalities, and we were glad +to accept. If he had had as many conveniences as he lacked, we +should have been plenty comfortable enough; even as it was, we +made out very well, in his queer old castle, by the help of comforts +and luxuries from the ship. + +At the end of a month I sent the vessel home for fresh supplies, +and for news. We expected her back in three or four days. She +would bring me, along with other news, the result of a certain +experiment which I had been starting. It was a project of mine +to replace the tournament with something which might furnish an +escape for the extra steam of the chivalry, keep those bucks +entertained and out of mischief, and at the same time preserve +the best thing in them, which was their hardy spirit of emulation. +I had had a choice band of them in private training for some time, +and the date was now arriving for their first public effort. + +This experiment was baseball. In order to give the thing vogue +from the start, and place it out of the reach of criticism, I chose +my nines by rank, not capacity. There wasn't a knight in either +team who wasn't a sceptered sovereign. As for material of this +sort, there was a glut of it always around Arthur. You couldn't +throw a brick in any direction and not cripple a king. Of course, +I couldn't get these people to leave off their armor; they wouldn't +do that when they bathed. They consented to differentiate the +armor so that a body could tell one team from the other, but that +was the most they would do. So, one of the teams wore chain-mail +ulsters, and the other wore plate-armor made of my new Bessemer +steel. Their practice in the field was the most fantastic thing I +ever saw. Being ball-proof, they never skipped out of the way, +but stood still and took the result; when a Bessemer was at the bat +and a ball hit him, it would bound a hundred and fifty yards +sometimes. And when a man was running, and threw himself on his +stomach to slide to his base, it was like an iron-clad coming into +port. At first I appointed men of no rank to act as umpires, but +I had to discontinue that. These people were no easier to please +than other nines. The umpire's first decision was usually his +last; they broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted him +home on a shutter. When it was noticed that no umpire ever survived +a game, umpiring got to be unpopular. So I was obliged to appoint +somebody whose rank and lofty position under the government would +protect him. + +Here are the names of the nines: + + BESSEMERS ULSTERS + + KING ARTHUR. EMPEROR LUCIUS. + KING LOT OF LOTHIAN. KING LOGRIS. + KING OF NORTHGALIS. KING MARHALT OF IRELAND. + KING MARSIL. KING MORGANORE. + KING OF LITTLE BRITAIN. KING MARK OF CORNWALL. + KING LABOR. KING NENTRES OF GARLOT. + KING PELLAM OF LISTENGESE. KING MELIODAS OF LIONES. + KING BAGDEMAGUS. KING OF THE LAKE. + KING TOLLEME LA FEINTES. THE SOWDAN OF SYRIA. + + Umpire--CLARENCE. + +The first public game would certainly draw fifty thousand people; +and for solid fun would be worth going around the world to see. +Everything would be favorable; it was balmy and beautiful spring +weather now, and Nature was all tailored out in her new clothes. + + + +CHAPTER XLI + +THE INTERDICT + +However, my attention was suddenly snatched from such matters; +our child began to lose ground again, and we had to go to sitting +up with her, her case became so serious. We couldn't bear to allow +anybody to help in this service, so we two stood watch-and-watch, +day in and day out. Ah, Sandy, what a right heart she had, how +simple, and genuine, and good she was! She was a flawless wife +and mother; and yet I had married her for no other particular +reasons, except that by the customs of chivalry she was my property +until some knight should win her from me in the field. She had +hunted Britain over for me; had found me at the hanging-bout +outside of London, and had straightway resumed her old place at +my side in the placidest way and as of right. I was a New Englander, +and in my opinion this sort of partnership would compromise her, +sooner or later. She couldn't see how, but I cut argument short +and we had a wedding. + +Now I didn't know I was drawing a prize, yet that was what I did +draw. Within the twelvemonth I became her worshiper; and ours +was the dearest and perfectest comradeship that ever was. People +talk about beautiful friendships between two persons of the same +sex. What is the best of that sort, as compared with the friendship +of man and wife, where the best impulses and highest ideals of +both are the same? There is no place for comparison between +the two friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine. + +In my dreams, along at first, I still wandered thirteen centuries +away, and my unsatisfied spirit went calling and harking all up +and down the unreplying vacancies of a vanished world. Many a +time Sandy heard that imploring cry come from my lips in my sleep. +With a grand magnanimity she saddled that cry of mine upon our +child, conceiving it to be the name of some lost darling of mine. +It touched me to tears, and it also nearly knocked me off my feet, +too, when she smiled up in my face for an earned reward, and played +her quaint and pretty surprise upon me: + +"The name of one who was dear to thee is here preserved, here made +holy, and the music of it will abide alway in our ears. Now +thou'lt kiss me, as knowing the name I have given the child." + +But I didn't know it, all the same. I hadn't an idea in the +world; but it would have been cruel to confess it and spoil her +pretty game; so I never let on, but said: + +"Yes, I know, sweetheart--how dear and good it is of you, too! +But I want to hear these lips of yours, which are also mine, utter +it first--then its music will be perfect." + +Pleased to the marrow, she murmured: + +"HELLO-CENTRAL!" + +I didn't laugh--I am always thankful for that--but the strain +ruptured every cartilage in me, and for weeks afterward I could +hear my bones clack when I walked. She never found out her mistake. +The first time she heard that form of salute used at the telephone +she was surprised, and not pleased; but I told her I had given +order for it: that henceforth and forever the telephone must +always be invoked with that reverent formality, in perpetual honor +and remembrance of my lost friend and her small namesake. This +was not true. But it answered. + +Well, during two weeks and a half we watched by the crib, and in +our deep solicitude we were unconscious of any world outside of +that sick-room. Then our reward came: the center of the universe +turned the corner and began to mend. Grateful? It isn't the term. +There _isn't_ any term for it. You know that yourself, if you've +watched your child through the Valley of the Shadow and seen it +come back to life and sweep night out of the earth with one +all-illuminating smile that you could cover with your hand. + +Why, we were back in this world in one instant! Then we looked +the same startled thought into each other's eyes at the same +moment; more than two weeks gone, and that ship not back yet! + +In another minute I appeared in the presence of my train. They +had been steeped in troubled bodings all this time--their faces +showed it. I called an escort and we galloped five miles to a +hilltop overlooking the sea. Where was my great commerce that +so lately had made these glistening expanses populous and beautiful +with its white-winged flocks? Vanished, every one! Not a sail, +from verge to verge, not a smoke-bank--just a dead and empty +solitude, in place of all that brisk and breezy life. + +I went swiftly back, saying not a word to anybody. I told Sandy +this ghastly news. We could imagine no explanation that would +begin to explain. Had there been an invasion? an earthquake? +a pestilence? Had the nation been swept out of existence? But +guessing was profitless. I must go--at once. I borrowed the king's +navy--a "ship" no bigger than a steam launch--and was soon ready. + +The parting--ah, yes, that was hard. As I was devouring the child +with last kisses, it brisked up and jabbered out its vocabulary! +--the first time in more than two weeks, and it made fools of us +for joy. The darling mispronunciations of childhood!--dear me, +there's no music that can touch it; and how one grieves when it +wastes away and dissolves into correctness, knowing it will never +visit his bereaved ear again. Well, how good it was to be able +to carry that gracious memory away with me! + +I approached England the next morning, with the wide highway of +salt water all to myself. There were ships in the harbor, at +Dover, but they were naked as to sails, and there was no sign +of life about them. It was Sunday; yet at Canterbury the streets +were empty; strangest of all, there was not even a priest in sight, +and no stroke of a bell fell upon my ear. The mournfulness of +death was everywhere. I couldn't understand it. At last, in +the further edge of that town I saw a small funeral procession +--just a family and a few friends following a coffin--no priest; +a funeral without bell, book, or candle; there was a church there +close at hand, but they passed it by weeping, and did not enter it; +I glanced up at the belfry, and there hung the bell, shrouded in +black, and its tongue tied back. Now I knew! Now I understood +the stupendous calamity that had overtaken England. Invasion? +Invasion is a triviality to it. It was the INTERDICT! + +I asked no questions; I didn't need to ask any. The Church had +struck; the thing for me to do was to get into a disguise, and +go warily. One of my servants gave me a suit of clothes, and +when we were safe beyond the town I put them on, and from that time +I traveled alone; I could not risk the embarrassment of company. + +A miserable journey. A desolate silence everywhere. Even in +London itself. Traffic had ceased; men did not talk or laugh, or +go in groups, or even in couples; they moved aimlessly about, each +man by himself, with his head down, and woe and terror at his heart. +The Tower showed recent war-scars. Verily, much had been happening. + +Of course, I meant to take the train for Camelot. Train! Why, +the station was as vacant as a cavern. I moved on. The journey +to Camelot was a repetition of what I had already seen. The Monday +and the Tuesday differed in no way from the Sunday. I arrived +far in the night. From being the best electric-lighted town in +the kingdom and the most like a recumbent sun of anything you ever +saw, it was become simply a blot--a blot upon darkness--that is +to say, it was darker and solider than the rest of the darkness, +and so you could see it a little better; it made me feel as if +maybe it was symbolical--a sort of sign that the Church was going to +_keep_ the upper hand now, and snuff out all my beautiful civilization +just like that. I found no life stirring in the somber streets. +I groped my way with a heavy heart. The vast castle loomed black +upon the hilltop, not a spark visible about it. The drawbridge +was down, the great gate stood wide, I entered without challenge, +my own heels making the only sound I heard--and it was sepulchral +enough, in those huge vacant courts. + + + +CHAPTER XLII + +WAR! + +I found Clarence alone in his quarters, drowned in melancholy; +and in place of the electric light, he had reinstituted the ancient +rag-lamp, and sat there in a grisly twilight with all curtains +drawn tight. He sprang up and rushed for me eagerly, saying: + +"Oh, it's worth a billion milrays to look upon a live person again!" + +He knew me as easily as if I hadn't been disguised at all. Which +frightened me; one may easily believe that. + +"Quick, now, tell me the meaning of this fearful disaster," I said. +"How did it come about?" + +"Well, if there hadn't been any Queen Guenever, it wouldn't have +come so early; but it would have come, anyway. It would have +come on your own account by and by; by luck, it happened to come +on the queen's." + +"_And_ Sir Launcelot's?" + +"Just so." + +"Give me the details." + +"I reckon you will grant that during some years there has been +only one pair of eyes in these kingdoms that has not been looking +steadily askance at the queen and Sir Launcelot--" + +"Yes, King Arthur's." + +"--and only one heart that was without suspicion--" + +"Yes--the king's; a heart that isn't capable of thinking evil +of a friend." + +"Well, the king might have gone on, still happy and unsuspecting, +to the end of his days, but for one of your modern improvements +--the stock-board. When you left, three miles of the London, +Canterbury and Dover were ready for the rails, and also ready and +ripe for manipulation in the stock-market. It was wildcat, and +everybody knew it. The stock was for sale at a give-away. What +does Sir Launcelot do, but--" + +"Yes, I know; he quietly picked up nearly all of it for a song; +then he bought about twice as much more, deliverable upon call; +and he was about to call when I left." + +"Very well, he did call. The boys couldn't deliver. Oh, he had +them--and he just settled his grip and squeezed them. They were +laughing in their sleeves over their smartness in selling stock +to him at 15 and 16 and along there that wasn't worth 10. Well, +when they had laughed long enough on that side of their mouths, +they rested-up that side by shifting the laugh to the other side. +That was when they compromised with the Invincible at 283!" + +"Good land!" + +"He skinned them alive, and they deserved it--anyway, the whole +kingdom rejoiced. Well, among the flayed were Sir Agravaine and +Sir Mordred, nephews to the king. End of the first act. Act +second, scene first, an apartment in Carlisle castle, where the +court had gone for a few days' hunting. Persons present, the +whole tribe of the king's nephews. Mordred and Agravaine propose +to call the guileless Arthur's attention to Guenever and Sir +Launcelot. Sir Gawaine, Sir Gareth, and Sir Gaheris will have +nothing to do with it. A dispute ensues, with loud talk; in the +midst of it enter the king. Mordred and Agravaine spring their +devastating tale upon him. _Tableau_. A trap is laid for Launcelot, +by the king's command, and Sir Launcelot walks into it. He made +it sufficiently uncomfortable for the ambushed witnesses--to wit, +Mordred, Agravaine, and twelve knights of lesser rank, for he +killed every one of them but Mordred; but of course that couldn't +straighten matters between Launcelot and the king, and didn't." + +"Oh, dear, only one thing could result--I see that. War, and +the knights of the realm divided into a king's party and a +Sir Launcelot's party." + +"Yes--that was the way of it. The king sent the queen to the +stake, proposing to purify her with fire. Launcelot and his +knights rescued her, and in doing it slew certain good old friends +of yours and mine--in fact, some of the best we ever had; to wit, +Sir Belias le Orgulous, Sir Segwarides, Sir Griflet le Fils de Dieu, +Sir Brandiles, Sir Aglovale--" + +"Oh, you tear out my heartstrings." + +"--wait, I'm not done yet--Sir Tor, Sir Gauter, Sir Gillimer--" + +"The very best man in my subordinate nine. What a handy right-fielder +he was!" + +"--Sir Reynold's three brothers, Sir Damus, Sir Priamus, Sir Kay +the Stranger--" + +"My peerless short-stop! I've seen him catch a daisy-cutter in +his teeth. Come, I can't stand this!" + +"--Sir Driant, Sir Lambegus, Sir Herminde, Sir Pertilope, +Sir Perimones, and--whom do you think?" + +"Rush! Go on." + +"Sir Gaheris, and Sir Gareth--both!" + +"Oh, incredible! Their love for Launcelot was indestructible." + +"Well, it was an accident. They were simply onlookers; they were +unarmed, and were merely there to witness the queen's punishment. +Sir Launcelot smote down whoever came in the way of his blind fury, +and he killed these without noticing who they were. Here is an +instantaneous photograph one of our boys got of the battle; it's +for sale on every news-stand. There--the figures nearest the queen +are Sir Launcelot with his sword up, and Sir Gareth gasping his +latest breath. You can catch the agony in the queen's face through +the curling smoke. It's a rattling battle-picture." + +"Indeed, it is. We must take good care of it; its historical value +is incalculable. Go on." + +"Well, the rest of the tale is just war, pure and simple. Launcelot +retreated to his town and castle of Joyous Gard, and gathered +there a great following of knights. The king, with a great host, +went there, and there was desperate fighting during several days, +and, as a result, all the plain around was paved with corpses +and cast-iron. Then the Church patched up a peace between Arthur +and Launcelot and the queen and everybody--everybody but Sir Gawaine. +He was bitter about the slaying of his brothers, Gareth and Gaheris, +and would not be appeased. He notified Launcelot to get him +thence, and make swift preparation, and look to be soon attacked. +So Launcelot sailed to his Duchy of Guienne with his following, and +Gawaine soon followed with an army, and he beguiled Arthur to go +with him. Arthur left the kingdom in Sir Mordred's hands until +you should return--" + +"Ah--a king's customary wisdom!" + +"Yes. Sir Mordred set himself at once to work to make his kingship +permanent. He was going to marry Guenever, as a first move; but +she fled and shut herself up in the Tower of London. Mordred +attacked; the Bishop of Canterbury dropped down on him with the +Interdict. The king returned; Mordred fought him at Dover, at +Canterbury, and again at Barham Down. Then there was talk of peace +and a composition. Terms, Mordred to have Cornwall and Kent during +Arthur's life, and the whole kingdom afterward." + +"Well, upon my word! My dream of a republic to _be_ a dream, and +so remain." + +"Yes. The two armies lay near Salisbury. Gawaine--Gawaine's head +is at Dover Castle, he fell in the fight there--Gawaine appeared to +Arthur in a dream, at least his ghost did, and warned him to +refrain from conflict for a month, let the delay cost what it might. +But battle was precipitated by an accident. Arthur had given +order that if a sword was raised during the consultation over +the proposed treaty with Mordred, sound the trumpet and fall on! +for he had no confidence in Mordred. Mordred had given a similar +order to _his_ people. Well, by and by an adder bit a knight's heel; +the knight forgot all about the order, and made a slash at the +adder with his sword. Inside of half a minute those two prodigious +hosts came together with a crash! They butchered away all day. +Then the king--however, we have started something fresh since +you left--our paper has." + +"No? What is that?" + +"War correspondence!" + +"Why, that's good." + +"Yes, the paper was booming right along, for the Interdict made +no impression, got no grip, while the war lasted. I had war +correspondents with both armies. I will finish that battle by +reading you what one of the boys says: + + 'Then the king looked about him, and then was he + ware of all his host and of all his good knights + were left no more on live but two knights, that + was Sir Lucan de Butlere, and his brother Sir + Bedivere: and they were full sore wounded. Jesu + mercy, said the king, where are all my noble + knights becomen? Alas that ever I should see this + doleful day. For now, said Arthur, I am come to + mine end. But would to God that I wist where were + that traitor Sir Mordred, that hath caused all + this mischief. Then was King Arthur ware where Sir + Mordred leaned upon his sword among a great heap + of dead men. Now give me my spear, said Arthur + unto Sir Lucan, for yonder I have espied the + traitor that all this woe hath wrought. Sir, let + him be, said Sir Lucan, for he is unhappy; and if + ye pass this unhappy day, ye shall be right well + revenged upon him. Good lord, remember ye of your + night's dream, and what the spirit of Sir Gawaine + told you this night, yet God of his great goodness + hath preserved you hitherto. Therefore, for God's + sake, my lord, leave off by this. For blessed be + God ye have won the field: for here we be three + on live, and with Sir Mordred is none on live. + And if ye leave off now, this wicked day of + destiny is past. Tide me death, betide me life, + saith the king, now I see him yonder alone, he + shall never escape mine hands, for at a better + avail shall I never have him. God speed you well, + said Sir Bedivere. Then the king gat his spear + in both his hands, and ran toward Sir Mordred + crying, Traitor, now is thy death day come. And + when Sir Mordred heard Sir Arthur, he ran until + him with his sword drawn in his hand. And then + King Arthur smote Sir Mordred under the shield, + with a foin of his spear throughout the body more + than a fathom. And when Sir Mordred felt that he + had his death's wound, he thrust himself, with + the might that he had, up to the butt of King + Arthur's spear. And right so he smote his father + Arthur with his sword holden in both his hands, + on the side of the head, that the sword pierced + the helmet and the brain-pan, and therewithal + Sir Mordred fell stark dead to the earth. And + the noble Arthur fell in a swoon to the earth, + and there he swooned oft-times--'" + +"That is a good piece of war correspondence, Clarence; you are +a first-rate newspaper man. Well--is the king all right? Did +he get well?" + +"Poor soul, no. He is dead." + +I was utterly stunned; it had not seemed to me that any wound +could be mortal to him. + +"And the queen, Clarence?" + +"She is a nun, in Almesbury." + +"What changes! and in such a short while. It is inconceivable. +What next, I wonder?" + +"I can tell you what next." + +"Well?" + +"Stake our lives and stand by them!" + +"What do you mean by that?" + +"The Church is master now. The Interdict included you with Mordred; +it is not to be removed while you remain alive. The clans are +gathering. The Church has gathered all the knights that are left +alive, and as soon as you are discovered we shall have business +on our hands." + +"Stuff! With our deadly scientific war-material; with our hosts +of trained--" + +"Save your breath--we haven't sixty faithful left!" + +"What are you saying? Our schools, our colleges, our vast +workshops, our--" + +"When those knights come, those establishments will empty themselves +and go over to the enemy. Did you think you had educated the +superstition out of those people?" + +"I certainly did think it." + +"Well, then, you may unthink it. They stood every strain easily +--until the Interdict. Since then, they merely put on a bold +outside--at heart they are quaking. Make up your mind to it +--when the armies come, the mask will fall." + +"It's hard news. We are lost. They will turn our own science +against us." + +"No they won't." + +"Why?" + +"Because I and a handful of the faithful have blocked that game. +I'll tell you what I've done, and what moved me to it. Smart as +you are, the Church was smarter. It was the Church that sent +you cruising--through her servants, the doctors." + +"Clarence!" + +"It is the truth. I know it. Every officer of your ship was +the Church's picked servant, and so was every man of the crew." + +"Oh, come!" + +"It is just as I tell you. I did not find out these things at once, +but I found them out finally. Did you send me verbal information, +by the commander of the ship, to the effect that upon his return +to you, with supplies, you were going to leave Cadiz--" + +"Cadiz! I haven't been at Cadiz at all!" + +"--going to leave Cadiz and cruise in distant seas indefinitely, +for the health of your family? Did you send me that word?" + +"Of course not. I would have written, wouldn't I?" + +"Naturally. I was troubled and suspicious. When the commander +sailed again I managed to ship a spy with him. I have never +heard of vessel or spy since. I gave myself two weeks to hear +from you in. Then I resolved to send a ship to Cadiz. There was +a reason why I didn't." + +"What was that?" + +"Our navy had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared! Also, as +suddenly and as mysteriously, the railway and telegraph and +telephone service ceased, the men all deserted, poles were cut +down, the Church laid a ban upon the electric light! I had to be +up and doing--and straight off. Your life was safe--nobody in +these kingdoms but Merlin would venture to touch such a magician +as you without ten thousand men at his back--I had nothing to +think of but how to put preparations in the best trim against your +coming. I felt safe myself--nobody would be anxious to touch +a pet of yours. So this is what I did. From our various works +I selected all the men--boys I mean--whose faithfulness under +whatsoever pressure I could swear to, and I called them together +secretly and gave them their instructions. There are fifty-two of +them; none younger than fourteen, and none above seventeen years old." + +"Why did you select boys?" + +"Because all the others were born in an atmosphere of superstition +and reared in it. It is in their blood and bones. We imagined +we had educated it out of them; they thought so, too; the Interdict +woke them up like a thunderclap! It revealed them to themselves, +and it revealed them to me, too. With boys it was different. Such +as have been under our training from seven to ten years have had +no acquaintance with the Church's terrors, and it was among these +that I found my fifty-two. As a next move, I paid a private visit +to that old cave of Merlin's--not the small one--the big one--" + +"Yes, the one where we secretly established our first great electric +plant when I was projecting a miracle." + +"Just so. And as that miracle hadn't become necessary then, +I thought it might be a good idea to utilize the plant now. I've +provisioned the cave for a siege--" + +"A good idea, a first-rate idea." + +"I think so. I placed four of my boys there as a guard--inside, +and out of sight. Nobody was to be hurt--while outside; but any +attempt to enter--well, we said just let anybody try it! Then +I went out into the hills and uncovered and cut the secret wires +which connected your bedroom with the wires that go to the dynamite +deposits under all our vast factories, mills, workshops, magazines, +etc., and about midnight I and my boys turned out and connected +that wire with the cave, and nobody but you and I suspects where +the other end of it goes to. We laid it under ground, of course, and +it was all finished in a couple of hours or so. We sha'n't have +to leave our fortress now when we want to blow up our civilization." + +"It was the right move--and the natural one; military necessity, +in the changed condition of things. Well, what changes _have_ come! +We expected to be besieged in the palace some time or other, but +--however, go on." + +"Next, we built a wire fence." + +"Wire fence?" + +"Yes. You dropped the hint of it yourself, two or three years ago." + +"Oh, I remember--the time the Church tried her strength against +us the first time, and presently thought it wise to wait for a +hopefuler season. Well, how have you arranged the fence?" + +"I start twelve immensely strong wires--naked, not insulated +--from a big dynamo in the cave--dynamo with no brushes except +a positive and a negative one--" + +"Yes, that's right." + +"The wires go out from the cave and fence in a circle of level +ground a hundred yards in diameter; they make twelve independent +fences, ten feet apart--that is to say, twelve circles within +circles--and their ends come into the cave again." + +"Right; go on." + +"The fences are fastened to heavy oaken posts only three feet apart, +and these posts are sunk five feet in the ground." + +"That is good and strong." + +"Yes. The wires have no ground-connection outside of the cave. +They go out from the positive brush of the dynamo; there is a +ground-connection through the negative brush; the other ends of +the wire return to the cave, and each is grounded independently." + +"No, no, that won't do!" + +"Why?" + +"It's too expensive--uses up force for nothing. You don't want +any ground-connection except the one through the negative brush. +The other end of every wire must be brought back into the cave +and fastened independently, and _without_ any ground-connection. +Now, then, observe the economy of it. A cavalry charge hurls +itself against the fence; you are using no power, you are spending +no money, for there is only one ground-connection till those horses +come against the wire; the moment they touch it they form a +connection with the negative brush _through the ground_, and drop +dead. Don't you see?--you are using no energy until it is needed; +your lightning is there, and ready, like the load in a gun; but +it isn't costing you a cent till you touch it off. Oh, yes, the +single ground-connection--" + +"Of course! I don't know how I overlooked that. It's not only +cheaper, but it's more effectual than the other way, for if wires +break or get tangled, no harm is done." + +"No, especially if we have a tell-tale in the cave and disconnect +the broken wire. Well, go on. The gatlings?" + +"Yes--that's arranged. In the center of the inner circle, on a +spacious platform six feet high, I've grouped a battery of thirteen +gatling guns, and provided plenty of ammunition." + +"That's it. They command every approach, and when the Church's +knights arrive, there's going to be music. The brow of the +precipice over the cave--" + +"I've got a wire fence there, and a gatling. They won't drop any +rocks down on us." + +"Well, and the glass-cylinder dynamite torpedoes?" + +"That's attended to. It's the prettiest garden that was ever +planted. It's a belt forty feet wide, and goes around the outer +fence--distance between it and the fence one hundred yards--kind of +neutral ground that space is. There isn't a single square yard +of that whole belt but is equipped with a torpedo. We laid them +on the surface of the ground, and sprinkled a layer of sand over +them. It's an innocent looking garden, but you let a man start +in to hoe it once, and you'll see." + +"You tested the torpedoes?" + +"Well, I was going to, but--" + +"But what? Why, it's an immense oversight not to apply a--" + +"Test? Yes, I know; but they're all right; I laid a few in the +public road beyond our lines and they've been tested." + +"Oh, that alters the case. Who did it?" + +"A Church committee." + +"How kind!" + +"Yes. They came to command us to make submission. You see they +didn't really come to test the torpedoes; that was merely an incident." + +"Did the committee make a report?" + +"Yes, they made one. You could have heard it a mile." + +"Unanimous?" + +"That was the nature of it. After that I put up some signs, for the +protection of future committees, and we have had no intruders since." + +"Clarence, you've done a world of work, and done it perfectly." + +"We had plenty of time for it; there wasn't any occasion for hurry." + +We sat silent awhile, thinking. Then my mind was made up, and +I said: + +"Yes, everything is ready; everything is shipshape, no detail is +wanting. I know what to do now." + +"So do I; sit down and wait." + +"No, _sir_! rise up and _strike_!" + +"Do you mean it?" + +"Yes, indeed! The _de_fensive isn't in my line, and the _of_fensive +is. That is, when I hold a fair hand--two-thirds as good a hand +as the enemy. Oh, yes, we'll rise up and strike; that's our game." + +"A hundred to one you are right. When does the performance begin?" + +"_Now!_ We'll proclaim the Republic." + +"Well, that _will_ precipitate things, sure enough!" + +"It will make them buzz, I tell you! England will be a hornets' +nest before noon to-morrow, if the Church's hand hasn't lost its +cunning--and we know it hasn't. Now you write and I'll dictate thus: + + "PROCLAMATION + + --- + + "BE IT KNOWN UNTO ALL. Whereas the king having died + and left no heir, it becomes my duty to continue the + executive authority vested in me, until a government + shall have been created and set in motion. The + monarchy has lapsed, it no longer exists. By + consequence, all political power has reverted to its + original source, the people of the nation. With the + monarchy, its several adjuncts died also; wherefore + there is no longer a nobility, no longer a privileged + class, no longer an Established Church; all men are + become exactly equal; they are upon one common + level, and religion is free. _A Republic is hereby + proclaimed_, as being the natural estate of a nation + when other authority has ceased. It is the duty of + the British people to meet together immediately, + and by their votes elect representatives and deliver + into their hands the government." + +I signed it "The Boss," and dated it from Merlin's Cave. +Clarence said-- + +"Why, that tells where we are, and invites them to call right away." + +"That is the idea. We _strike_--by the Proclamation--then it's +their innings. Now have the thing set up and printed and posted, +right off; that is, give the order; then, if you've got a couple +of bicycles handy at the foot of the hill, ho for Merlin's Cave!" + +"I shall be ready in ten minutes. What a cyclone there is going +to be to-morrow when this piece of paper gets to work!... It's a +pleasant old palace, this is; I wonder if we shall ever again +--but never mind about that." + + + +CHAPTER XLIII + +THE BATTLE OF THE SAND BELT + +In Merlin's Cave-- Clarence and I and fifty-two fresh, bright, +well-educated, clean-minded young British boys. At dawn I sent +an order to the factories and to all our great works to stop +operations and remove all life to a safe distance, as everything +was going to be blown up by secret mines, "_and no telling at what +moment--therefore, vacate at once_." These people knew me, and +had confidence in my word. They would clear out without waiting +to part their hair, and I could take my own time about dating the +explosion. You couldn't hire one of them to go back during the +century, if the explosion was still impending. + +We had a week of waiting. It was not dull for me, because I was +writing all the time. During the first three days, I finished +turning my old diary into this narrative form; it only required +a chapter or so to bring it down to date. The rest of the week +I took up in writing letters to my wife. It was always my habit +to write to Sandy every day, whenever we were separate, and now +I kept up the habit for love of it, and of her, though I couldn't +do anything with the letters, of course, after I had written them. +But it put in the time, you see, and was almost like talking; +it was almost as if I was saying, "Sandy, if you and Hello-Central +were here in the cave, instead of only your photographs, what +good times we could have!" And then, you know, I could imagine +the baby goo-gooing something out in reply, with its fists in its +mouth and itself stretched across its mother's lap on its back, +and she a-laughing and admiring and worshipping, and now and then +tickling under the baby's chin to set it cackling, and then maybe +throwing in a word of answer to me herself--and so on and so on +--well, don't you know, I could sit there in the cave with my pen, +and keep it up, that way, by the hour with them. Why, it was +almost like having us all together again. + +I had spies out every night, of course, to get news. Every report +made things look more and more impressive. The hosts were gathering, +gathering; down all the roads and paths of England the knights were +riding, and priests rode with them, to hearten these original +Crusaders, this being the Church's war. All the nobilities, big +and little, were on their way, and all the gentry. This was all +as was expected. We should thin out this sort of folk to such +a degree that the people would have nothing to do but just step +to the front with their republic and-- + +Ah, what a donkey I was! Toward the end of the week I began to get +this large and disenchanting fact through my head: that the mass +of the nation had swung their caps and shouted for the republic for +about one day, and there an end! The Church, the nobles, and +the gentry then turned one grand, all-disapproving frown upon them +and shriveled them into sheep! From that moment the sheep had +begun to gather to the fold--that is to say, the camps--and offer +their valueless lives and their valuable wool to the "righteous +cause." Why, even the very men who had lately been slaves were +in the "righteous cause," and glorifying it, praying for it, +sentimentally slabbering over it, just like all the other commoners. +Imagine such human muck as this; conceive of this folly! + +Yes, it was now "Death to the Republic!" everywhere--not a dissenting +voice. All England was marching against us! Truly, this was more +than I had bargained for. + +I watched my fifty-two boys narrowly; watched their faces, their +walk, their unconscious attitudes: for all these are a language +--a language given us purposely that it may betray us in times of +emergency, when we have secrets which we want to keep. I knew +that that thought would keep saying itself over and over again +in their minds and hearts, _All England is marching against us!_ +and ever more strenuously imploring attention with each repetition, +ever more sharply realizing itself to their imaginations, until +even in their sleep they would find no rest from it, but hear +the vague and flitting creatures of the dreams say, _All England_ +--ALL ENGLAND!--_is marching against you_! I knew all this would +happen; I knew that ultimately the pressure would become so great +that it would compel utterance; therefore, I must be ready with an +answer at that time--an answer well chosen and tranquilizing. + +I was right. The time came. They HAD to speak. Poor lads, it +was pitiful to see, they were so pale, so worn, so troubled. At +first their spokesman could hardly find voice or words; but he +presently got both. This is what he said--and he put it in the +neat modern English taught him in my schools: + +"We have tried to forget what we are--English boys! We have tried +to put reason before sentiment, duty before love; our minds +approve, but our hearts reproach us. While apparently it was +only the nobility, only the gentry, only the twenty-five or thirty +thousand knights left alive out of the late wars, we were of one +mind, and undisturbed by any troubling doubt; each and every one +of these fifty-two lads who stand here before you, said, 'They +have chosen--it is their affair.' But think!--the matter is +altered--_All England is marching against us_! Oh, sir, consider! +--reflect!--these people are our people, they are bone of our bone, +flesh of our flesh, we love them--do not ask us to destroy our nation!" + +Well, it shows the value of looking ahead, and being ready for +a thing when it happens. If I hadn't foreseen this thing and been +fixed, that boy would have had me!--I couldn't have said a word. +But I was fixed. I said: + +"My boys, your hearts are in the right place, you have thought the +worthy thought, you have done the worthy thing. You are English +boys, you will remain English boys, and you will keep that name +unsmirched. Give yourselves no further concern, let your minds be +at peace. Consider this: while all England is marching against +us, who is in the van? Who, by the commonest rules of war, will +march in the front? Answer me." + +"The mounted host of mailed knights." + +"True. They are thirty thousand strong. Acres deep they will march. +Now, observe: none but _they_ will ever strike the sand-belt! Then +there will be an episode! Immediately after, the civilian multitude +in the rear will retire, to meet business engagements elsewhere. +None but nobles and gentry are knights, and _none but these_ will +remain to dance to our music after that episode. It is absolutely +true that we shall have to fight nobody but these thirty thousand +knights. Now speak, and it shall be as you decide. Shall we +avoid the battle, retire from the field?" + +"NO!!!" + +The shout was unanimous and hearty. + +"Are you--are you--well, afraid of these thirty thousand knights?" + +That joke brought out a good laugh, the boys' troubles vanished +away, and they went gaily to their posts. Ah, they were a darling +fifty-two! As pretty as girls, too. + +I was ready for the enemy now. Let the approaching big day come +along--it would find us on deck. + +The big day arrived on time. At dawn the sentry on watch in the +corral came into the cave and reported a moving black mass under +the horizon, and a faint sound which he thought to be military +music. Breakfast was just ready; we sat down and ate it. + +This over, I made the boys a little speech, and then sent out +a detail to man the battery, with Clarence in command of it. + +The sun rose presently and sent its unobstructed splendors over +the land, and we saw a prodigious host moving slowly toward us, +with the steady drift and aligned front of a wave of the sea. +Nearer and nearer it came, and more and more sublimely imposing +became its aspect; yes, all England was there, apparently. Soon +we could see the innumerable banners fluttering, and then the sun +struck the sea of armor and set it all aflash. Yes, it was a fine +sight; I hadn't ever seen anything to beat it. + +At last we could make out details. All the front ranks, no telling +how many acres deep, were horsemen--plumed knights in armor. +Suddenly we heard the blare of trumpets; the slow walk burst into +a gallop, and then--well, it was wonderful to see! Down swept +that vast horse-shoe wave--it approached the sand-belt--my breath +stood still; nearer, nearer--the strip of green turf beyond the +yellow belt grew narrow--narrower still--became a mere ribbon in +front of the horses--then disappeared under their hoofs. Great +Scott! Why, the whole front of that host shot into the sky with +a thunder-crash, and became a whirling tempest of rags and fragments; +and along the ground lay a thick wall of smoke that hid what was +left of the multitude from our sight. + +Time for the second step in the plan of campaign! I touched +a button, and shook the bones of England loose from her spine! + +In that explosion all our noble civilization-factories went up in +the air and disappeared from the earth. It was a pity, but it +was necessary. We could not afford to let the enemy turn our own +weapons against us. + +Now ensued one of the dullest quarter-hours I had ever endured. +We waited in a silent solitude enclosed by our circles of wire, +and by a circle of heavy smoke outside of these. We couldn't +see over the wall of smoke, and we couldn't see through it. But +at last it began to shred away lazily, and by the end of another +quarter-hour the land was clear and our curiosity was enabled +to satisfy itself. No living creature was in sight! We now +perceived that additions had been made to our defenses. The +dynamite had dug a ditch more than a hundred feet wide, all around +us, and cast up an embankment some twenty-five feet high on both +borders of it. As to destruction of life, it was amazing. Moreover, +it was beyond estimate. Of course, we could not _count_ the dead, +because they did not exist as individuals, but merely as homogeneous +protoplasm, with alloys of iron and buttons. + +No life was in sight, but necessarily there must have been some +wounded in the rear ranks, who were carried off the field under +cover of the wall of smoke; there would be sickness among the +others--there always is, after an episode like that. But there +would be no reinforcements; this was the last stand of the chivalry +of England; it was all that was left of the order, after the recent +annihilating wars. So I felt quite safe in believing that the +utmost force that could for the future be brought against us +would be but small; that is, of knights. I therefore issued a +congratulatory proclamation to my army in these words: + + SOLDIERS, CHAMPIONS OF HUMAN LIBERTY AND EQUALITY: + Your General congratulates you! In the pride of his + strength and the vanity of his renown, an arrogant + enemy came against you. You were ready. The conflict + was brief; on your side, glorious. This mighty + victory, having been achieved utterly without loss, + stands without example in history. So long as the + planets shall continue to move in their orbits, the + BATTLE OF THE SAND-BELT will not perish out of the + memories of men. + + THE BOSS. + +I read it well, and the applause I got was very gratifying to me. +I then wound up with these remarks: + +"The war with the English nation, as a nation, is at an end. +The nation has retired from the field and the war. Before it can +be persuaded to return, war will have ceased. This campaign is +the only one that is going to be fought. It will be brief +--the briefest in history. Also the most destructive to life, +considered from the standpoint of proportion of casualties to +numbers engaged. We are done with the nation; henceforth we deal +only with the knights. English knights can be killed, but they +cannot be conquered. We know what is before us. While one of +these men remains alive, our task is not finished, the war is not +ended. We will kill them all." [Loud and long continued applause.] + +I picketed the great embankments thrown up around our lines by +the dynamite explosion--merely a lookout of a couple of boys +to announce the enemy when he should appear again. + +Next, I sent an engineer and forty men to a point just beyond +our lines on the south, to turn a mountain brook that was there, +and bring it within our lines and under our command, arranging +it in such a way that I could make instant use of it in an emergency. +The forty men were divided into two shifts of twenty each, and +were to relieve each other every two hours. In ten hours the +work was accomplished. + +It was nightfall now, and I withdrew my pickets. The one who +had had the northern outlook reported a camp in sight, but visible +with the glass only. He also reported that a few knights had been +feeling their way toward us, and had driven some cattle across our +lines, but that the knights themselves had not come very near. +That was what I had been expecting. They were feeling us, you +see; they wanted to know if we were going to play that red terror +on them again. They would grow bolder in the night, perhaps. +I believed I knew what project they would attempt, because it was +plainly the thing I would attempt myself if I were in their places +and as ignorant as they were. I mentioned it to Clarence. + +"I think you are right," said he; "it is the obvious thing for +them to try." + +"Well, then," I said, "if they do it they are doomed." + +"Certainly." + +"They won't have the slightest show in the world." + +"Of course they won't." + +"It's dreadful, Clarence. It seems an awful pity." + +The thing disturbed me so that I couldn't get any peace of mind +for thinking of it and worrying over it. So, at last, to quiet +my conscience, I framed this message to the knights: + + TO THE HONORABLE THE COMMANDER OF THE INSURGENT + CHIVALRY OF ENGLAND: YOU fight in vain. We know + your strength--if one may call it by that name. + We know that at the utmost you cannot bring + against us above five and twenty thousand knights. + Therefore, you have no chance--none whatever. + Reflect: we are well equipped, well fortified, we + number 54. Fifty-four what? Men? No, MINDS--the + capablest in the world; a force against which + mere animal might may no more hope to prevail than + may the idle waves of the sea hope to prevail + against the granite barriers of England. Be advised. + We offer you your lives; for the sake of your + families, do not reject the gift. We offer you + this chance, and it is the last: throw down your + arms; surrender unconditionally to the Republic, + and all will be forgiven. + + (Signed) THE BOSS. + +I read it to Clarence, and said I proposed to send it by a flag +of truce. He laughed the sarcastic laugh he was born with, and said: + +"Somehow it seems impossible for you to ever fully realize what +these nobilities are. Now let us save a little time and trouble. +Consider me the commander of the knights yonder. Now, then, +you are the flag of truce; approach and deliver me your message, +and I will give you your answer." + +I humored the idea. I came forward under an imaginary guard of +the enemy's soldiers, produced my paper, and read it through. +For answer, Clarence struck the paper out of my hand, pursed up +a scornful lip and said with lofty disdain: + +"Dismember me this animal, and return him in a basket to the +base-born knave who sent him; other answer have I none!" + +How empty is theory in presence of fact! And this was just fact, +and nothing else. It was the thing that would have happened, +there was no getting around that. I tore up the paper and granted +my mistimed sentimentalities a permanent rest. + +Then, to business. I tested the electric signals from the gatling +platform to the cave, and made sure that they were all right; +I tested and retested those which commanded the fences--these +were signals whereby I could break and renew the electric current +in each fence independently of the others at will. I placed the +brook-connection under the guard and authority of three of my +best boys, who would alternate in two-hour watches all night and +promptly obey my signal, if I should have occasion to give it +--three revolver-shots in quick succession. Sentry-duty was discarded +for the night, and the corral left empty of life; I ordered that +quiet be maintained in the cave, and the electric lights turned +down to a glimmer. + +As soon as it was good and dark, I shut off the current from all +the fences, and then groped my way out to the embankment bordering +our side of the great dynamite ditch. I crept to the top of it +and lay there on the slant of the muck to watch. But it was +too dark to see anything. As for sounds, there were none. The +stillness was deathlike. True, there were the usual night-sounds +of the country--the whir of night-birds, the buzzing of insects, +the barking of distant dogs, the mellow lowing of far-off kine +--but these didn't seem to break the stillness, they only intensified +it, and added a grewsome melancholy to it into the bargain. + +I presently gave up looking, the night shut down so black, but +I kept my ears strained to catch the least suspicious sound, for +I judged I had only to wait, and I shouldn't be disappointed. +However, I had to wait a long time. At last I caught what you +may call in distinct glimpses of sound dulled metallic sound. +I pricked up my ears, then, and held my breath, for this was the +sort of thing I had been waiting for. This sound thickened, and +approached--from toward the north. Presently, I heard it at my +own level--the ridge-top of the opposite embankment, a hundred +feet or more away. Then I seemed to see a row of black dots appear +along that ridge--human heads? I couldn't tell; it mightn't be +anything at all; you can't depend on your eyes when your imagination +is out of focus. However, the question was soon settled. I heard +that metallic noise descending into the great ditch. It augmented +fast, it spread all along, and it unmistakably furnished me this +fact: an armed host was taking up its quarters in the ditch. Yes, +these people were arranging a little surprise party for us. We +could expect entertainment about dawn, possibly earlier. + +I groped my way back to the corral now; I had seen enough. I went +to the platform and signaled to turn the current on to the two +inner fences. Then I went into the cave, and found everything +satisfactory there--nobody awake but the working-watch. I woke +Clarence and told him the great ditch was filling up with men, +and that I believed all the knights were coming for us in a body. +It was my notion that as soon as dawn approached we could expect +the ditch's ambuscaded thousands to swarm up over the embankment +and make an assault, and be followed immediately by the rest +of their army. + +Clarence said: + +"They will be wanting to send a scout or two in the dark to make +preliminary observations. Why not take the lightning off the +outer fences, and give them a chance?" + +"I've already done it, Clarence. Did you ever know me to be +inhospitable?" + +"No, you are a good heart. I want to go and--" + +"Be a reception committee? I will go, too." + +We crossed the corral and lay down together between the two inside +fences. Even the dim light of the cave had disordered our eyesight +somewhat, but the focus straightway began to regulate itself and +soon it was adjusted for present circumstances. We had had to feel +our way before, but we could make out to see the fence posts now. +We started a whispered conversation, but suddenly Clarence broke +off and said: + +"What is that?" + +"What is what?" + +"That thing yonder." + +"What thing--where?" + +"There beyond you a little piece--dark something--a dull shape +of some kind--against the second fence." + +I gazed and he gazed. I said: + +"Could it be a man, Clarence?" + +"No, I think not. If you notice, it looks a lit--why, it _is_ +a man!--leaning on the fence." + +"I certainly believe it is; let us go and see." + +We crept along on our hands and knees until we were pretty close, +and then looked up. Yes, it was a man--a dim great figure in armor, +standing erect, with both hands on the upper wire--and, of course, +there was a smell of burning flesh. Poor fellow, dead as a +door-nail, and never knew what hurt him. He stood there like a +statue--no motion about him, except that his plumes swished about +a little in the night wind. We rose up and looked in through +the bars of his visor, but couldn't make out whether we knew him +or not--features too dim and shadowed. + +We heard muffled sounds approaching, and we sank down to the ground +where we were. We made out another knight vaguely; he was coming +very stealthily, and feeling his way. He was near enough now for +us to see him put out a hand, find an upper wire, then bend and +step under it and over the lower one. Now he arrived at the +first knight--and started slightly when he discovered him. He +stood a moment--no doubt wondering why the other one didn't move +on; then he said, in a low voice, "Why dreamest thou here, good +Sir Mar--" then he laid his hand on the corpse's shoulder--and just +uttered a little soft moan and sunk down dead. Killed by a dead +man, you see--killed by a dead friend, in fact. There was something +awful about it. + +These early birds came scattering along after each other, about +one every five minutes in our vicinity, during half an hour. +They brought no armor of offense but their swords; as a rule, +they carried the sword ready in the hand, and put it forward and +found the wires with it. We would now and then see a blue spark +when the knight that caused it was so far away as to be invisible +to us; but we knew what had happened, all the same; poor fellow, +he had touched a charged wire with his sword and been elected. +We had brief intervals of grim stillness, interrupted with piteous +regularity by the clash made by the falling of an iron-clad; and +this sort of thing was going on, right along, and was very creepy +there in the dark and lonesomeness. + +We concluded to make a tour between the inner fences. We elected +to walk upright, for convenience's sake; we argued that if discerned, +we should be taken for friends rather than enemies, and in any case +we should be out of reach of swords, and these gentry did not seem +to have any spears along. Well, it was a curious trip. Everywhere +dead men were lying outside the second fence--not plainly visible, +but still visible; and we counted fifteen of those pathetic +statues--dead knights standing with their hands on the upper wire. + +One thing seemed to be sufficiently demonstrated: our current +was so tremendous that it killed before the victim could cry out. +Pretty soon we detected a muffled and heavy sound, and next moment +we guessed what it was. It was a surprise in force coming! whispered +Clarence to go and wake the army, and notify it to wait in silence +in the cave for further orders. He was soon back, and we stood +by the inner fence and watched the silent lightning do its awful +work upon that swarming host. One could make out but little of +detail; but he could note that a black mass was piling itself up +beyond the second fence. That swelling bulk was dead men! Our +camp was enclosed with a solid wall of the dead--a bulwark, +a breastwork, of corpses, you may say. One terrible thing about +this thing was the absence of human voices; there were no cheers, +no war cries; being intent upon a surprise, these men moved as +noiselessly as they could; and always when the front rank was near +enough to their goal to make it proper for them to begin to get +a shout ready, of course they struck the fatal line and went down +without testifying. + +I sent a current through the third fence now; and almost immediately +through the fourth and fifth, so quickly were the gaps filled up. +I believed the time was come now for my climax; I believed that +that whole army was in our trap. Anyway, it was high time to find +out. So I touched a button and set fifty electric suns aflame +on the top of our precipice. + +Land, what a sight! We were enclosed in three walls of dead men! +All the other fences were pretty nearly filled with the living, +who were stealthily working their way forward through the wires. +The sudden glare paralyzed this host, petrified them, you may say, +with astonishment; there was just one instant for me to utilize +their immobility in, and I didn't lose the chance. You see, in +another instant they would have recovered their faculties, then +they'd have burst into a cheer and made a rush, and my wires +would have gone down before it; but that lost instant lost them +their opportunity forever; while even that slight fragment of time +was still unspent, I shot the current through all the fences and +struck the whole host dead in their tracks! _There_ was a groan +you could _hear_! It voiced the death-pang of eleven thousand men. +It swelled out on the night with awful pathos. + +A glance showed that the rest of the enemy--perhaps ten thousand +strong--were between us and the encircling ditch, and pressing +forward to the assault. Consequently we had them _all!_ and had +them past help. Time for the last act of the tragedy. I fired +the three appointed revolver shots--which meant: + +"Turn on the water!" + +There was a sudden rush and roar, and in a minute the mountain +brook was raging through the big ditch and creating a river a +hundred feet wide and twenty-five deep. + +"Stand to your guns, men! Open fire!" + +The thirteen gatlings began to vomit death into the fated ten +thousand. They halted, they stood their ground a moment against +that withering deluge of fire, then they broke, faced about and +swept toward the ditch like chaff before a gale. A full fourth +part of their force never reached the top of the lofty embankment; +the three-fourths reached it and plunged over--to death by drowning. + +Within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistance +was totally annihilated, the campaign was ended, we fifty-four were +masters of England. Twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us. + +But how treacherous is fortune! In a little while--say an hour +--happened a thing, by my own fault, which--but I have no heart +to write that. Let the record end here. + + + +CHAPTER XLIV + +A POSTSCRIPT BY CLARENCE + +I, Clarence, must write it for him. He proposed that we two +go out and see if any help could be accorded the wounded. I was +strenuous against the project. I said that if there were many, +we could do but little for them; and it would not be wise for us to +trust ourselves among them, anyway. But he could seldom be turned +from a purpose once formed; so we shut off the electric current +from the fences, took an escort along, climbed over the enclosing +ramparts of dead knights, and moved out upon the field. The first +wounded mall who appealed for help was sitting with his back +against a dead comrade. When The Boss bent over him and spoke +to him, the man recognized him and stabbed him. That knight was +Sir Meliagraunce, as I found out by tearing off his helmet. He +will not ask for help any more. + +We carried The Boss to the cave and gave his wound, which was +not very serious, the best care we could. In this service we had +the help of Merlin, though we did not know it. He was disguised +as a woman, and appeared to be a simple old peasant goodwife. +In this disguise, with brown-stained face and smooth shaven, he +had appeared a few days after The Boss was hurt and offered to cook +for us, saying her people had gone off to join certain new camps +which the enemy were forming, and that she was starving. The Boss +had been getting along very well, and had amused himself with +finishing up his record. + +We were glad to have this woman, for we were short handed. We +were in a trap, you see--a trap of our own making. If we stayed +where we were, our dead would kill us; if we moved out of our +defenses, we should no longer be invincible. We had conquered; +in turn we were conquered. The Boss recognized this; we all +recognized it. If we could go to one of those new camps and +patch up some kind of terms with the enemy--yes, but The Boss +could not go, and neither could I, for I was among the first that +were made sick by the poisonous air bred by those dead thousands. +Others were taken down, and still others. To-morrow-- + +_To-morrow._ It is here. And with it the end. About midnight +I awoke, and saw that hag making curious passes in the air about +The Boss's head and face, and wondered what it meant. Everybody +but the dynamo-watch lay steeped in sleep; there was no sound. +The woman ceased from her mysterious foolery, and started tip-toeing +toward the door. I called out: + +"Stop! What have you been doing?" + +She halted, and said with an accent of malicious satisfaction: + +"Ye were conquerors; ye are conquered! These others are perishing +--you also. Ye shall all die in this place--every one--except _him_. +He sleepeth now--and shall sleep thirteen centuries. I am Merlin!" + +Then such a delirium of silly laughter overtook him that he reeled +about like a drunken man, and presently fetched up against one +of our wires. His mouth is spread open yet; apparently he is still +laughing. I suppose the face will retain that petrified laugh until +the corpse turns to dust. + +The Boss has never stirred--sleeps like a stone. If he does not +wake to-day we shall understand what kind of a sleep it is, and +his body will then be borne to a place in one of the remote recesses +of the cave where none will ever find it to desecrate it. As for +the rest of us--well, it is agreed that if any one of us ever +escapes alive from this place, he will write the fact here, and +loyally hide this Manuscript with The Boss, our dear good chief, +whose property it is, be he alive or dead. + + + +THE END OF THE MANUSCRIPT + + + + + +FINAL P.S. BY M.T. + +The dawn was come when I laid the Manuscript aside. The rain +had almost ceased, the world was gray and sad, the exhausted storm +was sighing and sobbing itself to rest. I went to the stranger's +room, and listened at his door, which was slightly ajar. I could +hear his voice, and so I knocked. There was no answer, but I still +heard the voice. I peeped in. The man lay on his back in bed, +talking brokenly but with spirit, and punctuating with his arms, +which he thrashed about, restlessly, as sick people do in delirium. +I slipped in softly and bent over him. His mutterings and +ejaculations went on. I spoke--merely a word, to call his attention. +His glassy eyes and his ashy face were alight in an instant with +pleasure, gratitude, gladness, welcome: + +"Oh, Sandy, you are come at last--how I have longed for you! Sit +by me--do not leave me--never leave me again, Sandy, never again. +Where is your hand?--give it me, dear, let me hold it--there +--now all is well, all is peace, and I am happy again--_we_ are happy +again, isn't it so, Sandy? You are so dim, so vague, you are but +a mist, a cloud, but you are _here_, and that is blessedness sufficient; +and I have your hand; don't take it away--it is for only a little +while, I shall not require it long.... Was that the child?... +Hello-Central!... she doesn't answer. Asleep, perhaps? Bring her +when she wakes, and let me touch her hands, her face, her hair, +and tell her good-bye.... Sandy! Yes, you are there. I lost +myself a moment, and I thought you were gone.... Have I been +sick long? It must be so; it seems months to me. And such dreams! +such strange and awful dreams, Sandy! Dreams that were as real +as reality--delirium, of course, but _so_ real! Why, I thought +the king was dead, I thought you were in Gaul and couldn't get +home, I thought there was a revolution; in the fantastic frenzy +of these dreams, I thought that Clarence and I and a handful of +my cadets fought and exterminated the whole chivalry of England! +But even that was not the strangest. I seemed to be a creature +out of a remote unborn age, centuries hence, and even _that_ was +as real as the rest! Yes, I seemed to have flown back out of that +age into this of ours, and then forward to it again, and was set +down, a stranger and forlorn in that strange England, with an +abyss of thirteen centuries yawning between me and you! between +me and my home and my friends! between me and all that is dear +to me, all that could make life worth the living! It was awful +--awfuler than you can ever imagine, Sandy. Ah, watch by me, Sandy +--stay by me every moment--_don't_ let me go out of my mind again; +death is nothing, let it come, but not with those dreams, not with +the torture of those hideous dreams--I cannot endure _that_ again.... +Sandy?..." + +He lay muttering incoherently some little time; then for a time he +lay silent, and apparently sinking away toward death. Presently +his fingers began to pick busily at the coverlet, and by that sign +I knew that his end was at hand with the first suggestion of the +death-rattle in his throat he started up slightly, and seemed +to listen: then he said: + +"A bugle?... It is the king! The drawbridge, there! Man the +battlements!--turn out the--" + +He was getting up his last "effect"; but he never finished it. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's +Court, Complete, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + + +THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT + +by Mark Twain + + + +1892 + + +EXPLANATORY + +The Colonel Mulberry Sellers here re-introduced to the public is the same +person who appeared as Eschol Sellers in the first edition of the tale +entitled "The Gilded Age," years ago, and as Beriah Sellers in the +subsequent editions of the same book, and finally as Mulberry Sellers in +the drama played afterward by John T. Raymond. + +The name was changed from Eschol to Beriah to accommodate an Eschol +Sellers who rose up out of the vasty deeps of uncharted space and +preferred his request--backed by threat of a libel suit--then went his +way appeased, and came no more. In the play Beriah had to be dropped to +satisfy another member of the race, and Mulberry was substituted in the +hope that the objectors would be tired by that time and let it pass +unchallenged. So far it has occupied the field in peace; therefore we +chance it again, feeling reasonably safe, this time, under shelter of the +statute of limitations. + +MARK TWAIN. +Hartford, 1891. + + + + + + +THE WEATHER IN THIS BOOK. + +No weather will be found in this book. This is an attempt to pull a book +through without weather. It being the first attempt of the kind in +fictitious literature, it may prove a failure, but it seemed worth the +while of some dare-devil person to try it, and the author was in just the +mood. + +Many a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not able to do it +because of delays on account of the weather. Nothing breaks up an +author's progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the +weather. Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of weather are bad +for both reader and author. + +Of course weather is necessary to a narrative of human experience. +That is conceded. But it ought to be put where it will not be in the +way; where it will not interrupt the flow of the narrative. And it ought +to be the ablest weather that can be had, not ignorant, poor-quality, +amateur weather. Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand +can turn out a good article of it. The present author can do only a few +trifling ordinary kinds of weather, and he cannot do those very good. +So it has seemed wisest to borrow such weather as is necessary for the +book from qualified and recognized experts--giving credit, of course. +This weather will be found over in the back part of the book, out of the +way. See Appendix. The reader is requested to turn over and help +himself from time to time as he goes along. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +It is a matchless morning in rural England. On a fair hill we see a +majestic pile, the ivied walls and towers of Cholmondeley Castle, huge +relic and witness of the baronial grandeurs of the Middle Ages. This is +one of the seats of the Earl of Rossmore, K. G. G. C. B. K. C. M. G., +etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., who possesses twenty-two thousand acres of +English land, owns a parish in London with two thousand houses on its +lease-roll, and struggles comfortably along on an income of two hundred +thousand pounds a year. The father and founder of this proud old line +was William the Conqueror his very self; the mother of it was not +inventoried in history by name, she being merely a random episode and +inconsequential, like the tanner's daughter of Falaise. + +In a breakfast room of the castle on this breezy fine morning there are +two persons and the cooling remains of a deserted meal. One of these +persons is the old lord, tall, erect, square-shouldered, white-haired, +stern-browed, a man who shows character in every feature, attitude, and +movement, and carries his seventy years as easily as most men carry +fifty. The other person is his only son and heir, a dreamy-eyed young +fellow, who looks about twenty-six but is nearer thirty. Candor, +kindliness, honesty, sincerity, simplicity, modesty--it is easy to see +that these are cardinal traits of his character; and so when you have +clothed him in the formidable components of his name, you somehow seem +to be contemplating a lamb in armor: his name and style being the +Honourable Kirkcudbright Llanover Marjorihanks Sellers Viscount-Berkeley, +of Cholmondeley Castle, Warwickshire. (Pronounced K'koobry Thlanover +Marshbanks Sellers Vycount Barkly, of Chumly Castle, Warrikshr.) He is +standing by a great window, in an attitude suggestive of respectful +attention to what his father is saying and equally respectful dissent +from the positions and arguments offered. The father walks the floor as +he talks, and his talk shows that his temper is away up toward summer +heat. + +"Soft-spirited as you are, Berkeley, I am quite aware that when you have +once made up your mind to do a thing which your ideas of honor and +justice require you to do, argument and reason are (for the time being,) +wasted upon you--yes, and ridicule; persuasion, supplication, and command +as well. To my mind--" + +"Father, if you will look at it without prejudice, without passion, you +must concede that I am not doing a rash thing, a thoughtless, wilful +thing, with nothing substantial behind it to justify it. I did not +create the American claimant to the earldom of Rossmore; I did not hunt +for him, did not find him, did not obtrude him upon your notice. +He found himself, he injected himself into our lives--" + +"And has made mine a purgatory for ten years with his tiresome letters, +his wordy reasonings, his acres of tedious evidence,--" + +"Which you would never read, would never consent to read. Yet in common +fairness he was entitled to a hearing. That hearing would either prove +he was the rightful earl--in which case our course would be plain--or it +would prove that he wasn't--in which case our course would be equally +plain. I have read his evidences, my lord. I have conned them well, +studied them patiently and thoroughly. The chain seems to be complete, +no important link wanting. I believe he is the rightful earl." + +"And I a usurper--a--nameless pauper, a tramp! Consider what you are +saying, sir." + +"Father, if he is the rightful earl, would you, could you--that fact +being established--consent to keep his titles and his properties from him +a day, an hour, a minute?" + +"You are talking nonsense--nonsense--lurid idiotcy! Now, listen to me. +I will make a confession--if you wish to call it by that name. I did not +read those evidences because I had no occasion to--I was made familiar +with them in the time of this claimant's father and of my own father +forty years ago. This fellow's predecessors have kept mine more or less +familiar with them for close upon a hundred and fifty years. The truth +is, the rightful heir did go to America, with the Fairfax heir or about +the same time--but disappeared--somewhere in the wilds of Virginia, got +married, end began to breed savages for the Claimant market; wrote no +letters home; was supposed to be dead; his younger brother softly took +possession; presently the American did die, and straightway his eldest +product put in his claim--by letter--letter still in existence--and died +before the uncle in-possession found time--or maybe inclination--to +--answer. The infant son of that eldest product grew up--long interval, +you see--and he took to writing letters and furnishing evidences. Well, +successor after successor has done the same, down to the present idiot. +It was a succession of paupers; not one of them was ever able to pay his +passage to England or institute suit. The Fairfaxes kept their lordship +alive, and so they have never lost it to this day, although they live in +Maryland; their friend lost his by his own neglect. You perceive now, +that the facts in this case bring us to precisely this result: morally +the American tramp is rightful earl of Rossmore; legally he has no more +right than his dog. There now--are you satisfied?" + +There was a pause, then the son glanced at the crest carved in the great +oaken mantel and said, with a regretful note in his voice: + +"Since the introduction of heraldic symbols,--the motto of this house has +been 'Suum cuique'--to every man his own. By your own intrepidly frank +confession, my lord, it is become a sarcasm: If Simon Lathers--" + +Keep that exasperating name to yourself! For ten years it has pestered +my eye--and tortured my ear; till at last my very footfalls time +themselves to the brain-racking rhythm of Simon Lathers!--Simon Lathers! +--Simon Lathers! And now, to make its presence in my soul eternal, +immortal, imperishable, you have resolved to--to--what is it you have +resolved to do?" + +"To go to Simon Lathers, in America, and change places with him." + +"What? Deliver the reversion of the earldom into his hands?" + +"That is my purpose." + +"Make this tremendous surrender without even trying the fantastic case in +the Lords?" + +"Ye--s--" with hesitation and some embarrassment. + +"By all that is amazing, I believe you are insane, my son. See here +--have you been training with that ass again--that radical, if you prefer +the term, though the words are synonymous--Lord Tanzy, of Tollmache?" + +The son did not reply, and the old lord continued: + +"Yes, you confess. That puppy, that shame to his birth and caste, who +holds all hereditary lordships and privilege to be usurpation, all +nobility a tinsel sham, all aristocratic institutions a fraud, all +inequalities in rank a legalized crime and an infamy, and no bread honest +bread that a man doesn't earn by his own work--work, pah!"--and the old +patrician brushed imaginary labor-dirt from his white hands. "You have +come to hold just those opinions yourself, suppose,"--he added with a +sneer. + +A faint flush in the younger man's cheek told that the shot had hit and +hurt; but he answered with dignity: + +"I have. I say it without shame--I feel none. And now my reason for +resolving to renounce my heirship without resistance is explained. +I wish to retire from what to me is a false existence, a false position, +and begin my life over again--begin it right--begin it on the level of +mere manhood, unassisted by factitious aids, and succeed or fail by pure +merit or the want of it. I will go to America, where all men are equal +and all have an equal chance; I will live or die, sink or swim, win or +lose as just a man--that alone, and not a single helping gaud or fiction +back of it." + +"Hear, hear!" The two men looked each other steadily in the eye a moment +or two, then the elder one added, musingly, "Ab-so-lutely +cra-zy-ab-solutely!" After another silence, he said, as one who, long +troubled by clouds, detects a ray of sunshine, "Well, there will be one +satisfaction--Simon Lathets will come here to enter into his own, and I +will drown him in the horsepond. That poor devil--always so humble in +his letters, so pitiful, so deferential; so steeped in reverence for our +great line and lofty-station; so anxious to placate us, so prayerful for +recognition as a relative, a bearer in his veins of our sacred blood +--and withal so poor, so needy, so threadbare and pauper-shod as to +raiment, so despised, so laughed at for his silly claimantship by the +lewd American scum around him--ah, the vulgar, crawling, insufferable +tramp! To read one of his cringing, nauseating letters--well?" + +This to a splendid flunkey, all in inflamed plush and buttons and +knee-breeches as to his trunk, and a glinting white frost-work of +ground-glass paste as to his head, who stood with his heels together and +the upper half of him bent forward, a salver in his hands: + +"The letters, my lord." + +My lord took them, and the servant disappeared. + +"Among the rest, an American letter. From the tramp, of course. Jove, +but here's a change! No brown paper envelope this time, filched from a +shop, and carrying the shop's advertisement in the corner. Oh, no, a +proper enough envelope--with a most ostentatiously broad mourning +border--for his cat, perhaps, since he was a bachelor--and fastened with +red wax--a batch of it as big as a half-crown--and--and--our crest for a +seal!--motto and all. And the ignorant, sprawling hand is gone; he +sports a secretary, evidently--a secretary with a most confident swing +and flourish to his pen. Oh indeed, our fortunes are improving over +there--our meek tramp has undergone a metamorphosis." + +"Read it, my lord, please." + +"Yes, this time I will. For the sake of the cat: + + 14,042 SIXTEENTH. STREET, + WASHINGTON, May 2. + +It is my painful duty to announce to you that the head of our illustrious +house is no more--The Right Honourable, The Most Noble, The Most Puissant +Simon Lathers Lord Rossmore having departed this life ("Gone at last +--this is unspeakably precious news, my son,") at his seat in the environs +of the hamlet of Duffy's Corners in the grand old State of Arkansas, +--and his twin brother with him, both being crushed by a log at a +smoke-house-raising, owing to carelessness on the part of all present, +referable to over-confidence and gaiety induced by overplus of +sour-mash--("Extolled be sour-mash, whatever that may be, eh Berkeley?") +five days ago, with no scion of our ancient race present to close his +eyes and inter him with the honors due his historic name and lofty +rank--in fact, he is on the ice yet, him and his brother--friends took a +collection for it. But I shall take immediate occasion to have their +noble remains shipped to you ("Great heavens!") for interment, with due +ceremonies and solemnities, in the family vault or mausoleum of our +house. Meantime I shall put up a pair of hatchments on my house-front, +and you will of course do the same at your several seats. + +I have also to remind you that by this sad disaster I as sole heir, +inherit and become seized of all the titles, honors, lands, and goods of +our lamented relative, and must of necessity, painful as the duty is, +shortly require at the bar of the Lords restitution of these dignities +and properties, now illegally enjoyed by your titular lordship. + +With assurance of my distinguished consideration and warm cousinly +regard, I remain + Your titular lordship's + + Most obedient servant, + Mulberry Sellers Earl Rossmore. + +"Im-mense! Come, this one's interesting. Why, Berkeley, his breezy +impudence is--is--why, it's colossal, it's sublime." + +"No, this one doesn't seem to cringe much." + +"Cringe--why, he doesn't know the meaning of the word. Hatchments! To +commemorate that sniveling tramp and his, fraternal duplicate. And he is +going to send me the remains. The late Claimant was a fool, but plainly +this new one's a maniac. What a name! Mulberry Sellers--there's music +for you, Simon Lathers--Mulberry Sellers--Mulberry Sellers--Simon +Lathers. Sounds like machinery working and churning. Simon Lathers, +Mulberry Sel--Are you going?" + +"If I have your leave, father." + +The old gentleman stood musing some time, after his son was gone. This +was his thought: + +"He is a good boy, and lovable. Let him take his own course--as it would +profit nothing to oppose him--make things worse, in fact. My arguments +and his aunt's persuasions have failed; let us see what America can do +for us. Let us see what equality and hard-times can effect for the +mental health of a brain-sick young British lord. Going to renounce his +lordship and be a man! Yas!" + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +COLONEL MULBERRY SELLERS--this was some days before he wrote his letter +to Lord Rossmore--was seated in his "library," which was also his +"drawing-room" and was also his "picture gallery" and likewise his +"work-shop." Sometimes he called it by one of these names, sometimes by +another, according to occasion and circumstance. He was constructing +what seemed to be some kind of a frail mechanical toy; and was apparently +very much interested in his work. He was a white-headed man, now, but +otherwise he was as young, alert, buoyant, visionary and enterprising as +ever. His loving old wife sat near by, contentedly knitting and +thinking, with a cat asleep in her lap. The room was large, light, and +had a comfortable look, in fact a home-like look, though the furniture +was of a humble sort and not over abundant, and the knickknacks and +things that go to adorn a living-room not plenty and not costly. But +there were natural flowers, and there was an abstract and unclassifiable +something about the place which betrayed the presence in the house of +somebody with a happy taste and an effective touch. + +Even the deadly chromos on the walls were somehow without offence; +in fact they seemed to belong there and to add an attraction to the room +--a fascination, anyway; for whoever got his eye on one of them was like +to gaze and suffer till he died--you have seen that kind of pictures. +Some of these terrors were landscapes, some libeled the sea, some were +ostensible portraits, all were crimes. All the portraits were +recognizable as dead Americans of distinction, and yet, through labeling +added, by a daring hand, they were all doing duty here as "Earls of +Rossmore." The newest one had left the works as Andrew Jackson, but was +doing its best now, as "Simon Lathers Lord Rossmore, Present Earl." +On one wall was a cheap old railroad map of Warwickshire. This had been +newly labeled "The Rossmore Estates." On the opposite wall was another +map, and this was the most imposing decoration of the establishment and +the first to catch a stranger's attention, because of its great size. +It had once borne simply the title SIBERIA; but now the word "FUTURE" had +been written in front of that word. There were other additions, in red +ink--many cities, with great populations set down, scattered over the +vast-country at points where neither cities nor populations exist to-day. +One of these cities, with population placed at 1,500,000, bore the name +"Libertyorloffskoizalinski," and there was a still more populous one, +centrally located and marked "Capital," which bore the name +"Freedomolovnaivanovich." + +The "mansion"--the Colonel's usual name for the house--was a rickety old +two-story frame of considerable size, which had been painted, some time +or other, but had nearly forgotten it. It was away out in the ragged +edge of Washington and had once been somebody's country place. It had a +neglected yard around it, with a paling fence that needed straightening +up, in places, and a gate that would stay shut. By the door-post were +several modest tin signs. "Col. Mulberry Sellers, Attorney at Law and +Claim Agent," was the principal one. One learned from the others that +the Colonel was a Materializer, a Hypnotizer, a Mind-Cure dabbler; and so +on. For he was a man who could always find things to do. + +A white-headed negro man, with spectacles and damaged white cotton gloves +appeared in the presence, made a stately obeisance and announced: + +"Marse Washington Hawkins, suh." + +"Great Scott! Show him in, Dan'l, show him in." + +The Colonel and his wife were on their feet in a moment, and +the next moment were joyfully wringing the hands of a stoutish, +discouraged-looking man whose general aspect suggested that he was +fifty years old, but whose hair swore to a hundred. + +"Well, well, well, Washington, my boy, it is good to look at you again. +Sit down, sit down, and make yourself at home. There, now--why, you look +perfectly natural; aging a little, just a little, but you'd have known +him anywhere, wouldn't you, Polly?" + +"Oh, yes, Berry, he's just like his pa would have looked if he'd lived. +Dear, dear, where have you dropped from? Let me see, how long is it +since--" + +I should say it's all of fifteen` years, Mrs. Sellers." + +"Well, well, how time does get away with us. Yes, and oh, the changes +that--" + +There was a sudden catch of her voice and a trembling of the lip, the men +waiting reverently for her to get command of herself and go on; but +after a little struggle she turned away, with her apron to her eyes, and +softly disappeared. + +"Seeing you made her think of the children, poor thing--dear, dear, +they're all dead but the youngest. + +"But banish care, it's no time for it now--on with the dance, let joy be +unconfined is my motto, whether there's any dance to dance; or any joy to +unconfine--you'll be the healthier for it every time,--every time, +Washington--it's my experience, and I've seen a good deal of this world. +Come--where have you disappeared to all these years, and are you from +there, now, or where are you from?" + +"I don't quite think you would ever guess, Colonel. Cherokee Strip." + +"My land!" + +"Sure as you live." + +"You can't mean it. Actually living out there?" + +"Well, yes, if a body may call it that; though it's a pretty strong term +for 'dobies and jackass rabbits, boiled beans and slap-jacks, depression, +withered hopes, poverty in all its varieties--" + +"Louise out there?" + +"Yes, and the children." + +"Out there now?" + +"Yes, I couldn't afford to bring them with me." + +"Oh, I see,--you had to come--claim against the government. Make +yourself perfectly easy--I'll take care of that." + +"But it isn't a claim against the government." + +"No? Want to be postmaster? That's all right. Leave it to me. I'll +fix it." + +"But it isn't postmaster--you're all astray yet." + +"Well, good gracious, Washington, why don't you come out and tell me what +it is? What, do you want to be so reserved and distrustful with an old +friend like me, for? Don't you reckon I can keep a se--" + +"There's no secret about it--you merely don't give me a chance to--" + +"Now look here, old friend, I know the human race; and I know that when a +man comes to Washington, I don't care if it's from heaven, let alone +Cherokee-Strip, it's because he wants something. And I know that as a +rule he's not going to get it; that he'll stay and try--for another thing +and won't get that; the same luck with the next and the next and the +next; and keeps on till he strikes bottom, and is too poor and ashamed to +go back, even to Cherokee Strip; and at last his heart breaks--and they +take up a collection and bury him. There--don't interrupt me, I know +what I'm talking about. Happy and prosperous in the Far West wasn't I? +You know that. Principal citizen of Hawkeye, looked up to by everybody, +kind of an autocrat, actually a kind of an autocrat, Washington. Well, +nothing would do but I must go Minister to St. James, the Governor and +everybody insisting, you know, and so at last I consented--no getting out +of it, had to do it, so here I came. A day too late, Washington. Think +of that--what little things change the world's history--yes, sir, the +place had been filled. Well, there I was, you see. I offered to +compromise and go to Paris. The President was very sorry and all that, +but that place, you see, didn't belong to the West, so there I was again. +There was no help for it, so I had to stoop a little--we all reach the +day some time or other when we've got to do that, Washington, and it's +not a bad thing for us, either, take it by and large and all around +--I had to stoop a little and offer to take Constantinople. Washington, +consider this--for it's perfectly true--within a month I asked for China; +within another month I begged for Japan; one year later I was away down, +down, down, supplicating with tears and anguish for the bottom office in +the gift of the government of the United States--Flint-Picker in the +cellars of the War Department. And by George I didn't get it." + +"Flint-Picker?" + +"Yes. Office established in the time of the Revolution, last century. +The musket-flints for the military posts were supplied from the capitol. +They do it yet; for although the flint-arm has gone out and the forts +have tumbled down, the decree hasn't been repealed--been overlooked and +forgotten, you see--and so the vacancies where old Ticonderoga and others +used to stand, still get their six quarts of gun-flints a year just the +same." + +Washington said musingly after a pause: + +"How strange it seems--to start for Minister to England at twenty +thousand a year and fail for flintpicker at--" + +"Three dollars a week. It's human life, Washington--just an epitome of +human ambition, and struggle, and the outcome: you aim for the palace and +get drowned in the sewer." + +There was another meditative silence. Then Washington said, with earnest +compassion in his voice-- + +"And so, after coming here, against your inclination, to satisfy your +sense of patriotic duty and appease a selfish public clamor, you get +absolutely nothing for it." + +"Nothing?" The Colonel had to get up and stand, to get room for his +amazement to expand. "Nothing, Washington? I ask you this: to be a +perpetual Member and the only Perpetual Member of a Diplomatic Body +accredited to the greatest country on earth do you call that nothing?" + +It was Washington's turn to be amazed. He was stricken dumb; but the +wide-eyed wonder, the reverent admiration expressed in his face were more +eloquent than any words could have been. The Colonel's wounded spirit +was healed and he resumed his seat pleased and content. He leaned +forward and said impressively: + +"What was due to a man who had become forever conspicuous by an +experience without precedent in the history of the world?--a man made +permanently and diplomatically sacred, so to speak, by having been +connected, temporarily, through solicitation, with every single +diplomatic post in the roster of this government, from Envoy +Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James all +the way down to Consul to a guano rock in the Straits of Sunda--salary +payable in guano--which disappeared by volcanic convulsion the day before +they got down to my name in the list of applicants. Certainly something +august enough to be answerable to the size of this unique and memorable +experience was my due, and I got it. By the common voice of this +community, by acclamation of the people, that mighty utterance which +brushes aside laws and legislation, and from whose decrees there is no +appeal, I was named Perpetual Member of the Diplomatic Body representing +the multifarious sovereignties and civilizations of the globe near the +republican court of the United States of America. And they brought me +home with a torchlight procession." + +"It is wonderful, Colonel, simply wonderful." + +"It's the loftiest official position in the whole earth." + +"I should think so--and the most commanding." + +"You have named the word. Think of it. I frown, and there is war; I +smile, and contending nations lay down their arms." + +"It is awful. The responsibility, I mean." + +"It is nothing. Responsibility is no burden to me; I am used to it; have +always been used to it." + +"And the work--the work! Do you have to attend all the sittings?" + +"Who, I? Does the Emperor of Russia attend the conclaves of the +governors of the provinces? He sits at home, and indicates his +pleasure." + +Washington was silent a moment, then a deep sigh escaped him. + +"How proud I was an hour ago; how paltry seems my little promotion now! +Colonel, the reason I came to Washington is,--I am Congressional Delegate +from Cherokee Strip!" + +The Colonel sprang to his feet and broke out with prodigious enthusiasm: + +"Give me your hand, my boy--this is immense news! I congratulate you +with all my heart. My prophecies stand confirmed. I always said it was +in you. I always said you were born for high distinction and would +achieve it. You ask Polly if I didn't." + +Washington was dazed by this most unexpected demonstration. + +"Why, Colonel, there's nothing to it. That little narrow, desolate, +unpeopled, oblong streak of grass and gravel, lost in the remote wastes +of the vast continent--why, it's like representing a billiard table--a +discarded one." + +"Tut-tut, it's a great, it's a staving preferment, and just opulent with +influence here." + +"Shucks, Colonel, I haven't even a vote." + +"That's nothing; you can make speeches." + +"No, I can't. The population's only two hundred--" + +"That's all right, that's all right--" + +"And they hadn't any right to elect me; we're not even a territory, +there's no Organic Act, the government hasn't any official knowledge of +us whatever." + +"Never mind about that; I'll fix that. I'll rush the thing through, I'll +get you organized in no time." + +"Will you, Colonel?--it's too good of you; but it's just your old +sterling self, the same old ever-faithful friend," and the grateful tears +welled up in Washington's eyes. + +"It's just as good as done, my boy, just as good as done. Shake hands. +We'll hitch teams together, you and I, and we'll make things hum!" + + + +CHAPTER III. + +Mrs. Sellers returned, now, with her composure restored, and began to ask +after Hawkins's wife, and about his children, and the number of them, and +so on, and her examination of the witness resulted in a circumstantial +history of the family's ups and downs and driftings to and fro in the far +West during the previous fifteen years. There was a message, now, from +out back, and Colonel Sellers went out there in answer to it. Hawkins +took this opportunity to ask how the world had been using the Colonel +during the past half-generation. + +"Oh, it's been using him just the same; it couldn't change its way of +using him if it wanted to, for he wouldn't let it." + +"I can easily believe that, Mrs. Sellers." + +"Yes, you see, he doesn't change, himself--not the least little bit in +the world--he's always Mulberry Sellers." + +"I can see that plain enough." + +"Just the same old scheming, generous, good-hearted, moonshiny, hopeful, +no-account failure he always was, and still everybody likes him just as +well as if he was the shiningest success." + +"They always did: and it was natural, because he was so obliging and +accommodating, and had something about him that made it kind of easy to +ask help of him, or favors--you didn't feel shy, you know, or have that +wish--you--didn't--have--to--try feeling that you have with other +people." + +"It's just so, yet; and a body wonders at it, too, because he's been +shamefully treated, many times, by people that had used him for a ladder +to climb up by, and then kicked him down when they didn't need him any +more. For a time you can see he's hurt, his pride's wounded, because he +shrinks away from that thing and don't want to talk about it--and so I +used to think now he's learned something and he'll be more careful +hereafter--but laws! in a couple of weeks he's forgotten all about it, +and any selfish tramp out of nobody knows where can come and put up a +poor mouth and walk right into his heart with his boots on." + +"It must try your patience pretty sharply sometimes." + +"Oh, no, I'm used to it; and I'd rather have him so than the other way. +When I call him a failure, I mean to the world he's a failure; he isn't +to me. I don't know as I want him different much different, anyway. +I have to scold him some, snarl at him, you might even call it, but I +reckon I'd do that just the same, if he was different--it's my make. +But I'm a good deal less snarly and more contented when he's a failure +than I am when he isn't." + +"Then he isn't always a failure," said Hawking, brightening. + +"Him? Oh, bless you, no. He makes a strike, as he calls it, from time +to time. Then's my time to fret and fuss. For the money just flies +--first come first served. Straight off, he loads up the house with +cripples and idiots and stray cats and all the different kinds of poor +wrecks that other people don't want and he does, and then when the +poverty comes again I've got to clear the most of them out or we'd +starve; and that distresses him, and me the same, of course. + +"Here's old Dan'l and old Jinny, that the sheriff sold south one of the +times that we got bankrupted before the war--they came wandering back +after the peace, worn out and used up on the cotton plantations, +helpless, and not another lick of work left in their old hides for the +rest of this earthly pilgrimage--and we so pinched, oh so pinched for the +very crumbs to keep life in us, and he just flung the door wide, and the +way he received them you'd have thought they had come straight down from +heaven in answer to prayer. I took him one side and said, 'Mulberry we +can't have them--we've nothing for ourselves--we can't feed them.' +He looked at me kind of hurt, and said, 'Turn them out?--and they've come +to me just as confident and trusting as--as--why Polly, I must have +bought that confidence sometime or other a long time ago, and given my +note, so to speak--you don't get such things as a gift--and how am I +going to go back on a debt like that? And you see, they're so poor, +and old, and friendless, and--' But I was ashamed by that time, and shut +him off, and somehow felt a new courage in me, and so I said, softly, +'We'll keep them--the Lord will provide.' He was glad, and started to +blurt out one of those over-confident speeches of his, but checked +himself in time, and said humbly, 'I will, anyway.' It was years and +years and years ago. Well, you see those old wrecks are here yet." + +"But don't they do your housework?" + +"Laws! The idea. They would if they could, poor old things, and perhaps +they think they do do some of it. But it's a superstition. Dan'l waits +on the front door, and sometimes goes on an errand; and sometimes you'll +see one or both of them letting on to dust around in here--but that's +because there's something they want to hear about and mix their gabble +into. And they're always around at meals, for the same reason. But the +fact is, we have to keep a young negro girl just to take care of them, +and a negro woman to do the housework and help take care of them." + +"Well, they ought to be tolerably happy, I should think." + +"It's no name for it. They quarrel together pretty much all the time +--most always about religion, because Dan'l's a Dunker Baptist and Jinny's +a shouting Methodist, and Jinny believes in special Providences and Dan'l +don't, because he thinks he's a kind of a free-thinker--and they play and +sing plantation hymns together, and talk and chatter just eternally and +forever, and are sincerely fond of each other and think the world of +Mulberry, and he puts up patiently with all their spoiled ways and +foolishness, and so--ah, well, they're happy enough if it comes to that. +And I don't mind--I've got used to it. I can get used to anything, with +Mulberry to help; and the fact is, I don't much care what happens, so +long as he's spared to me." + +"Well, here's to him, and hoping he'll make another strike soon." + +"And rake in the lame, the halt and the blind, and turn the house into a +hospital again? It's what he would do. I've seen aplenty of that and +more. No, Washington, I want his strikes to be mighty moderate ones the +rest of the way down the vale." + +"Well, then, big strike or little strike, or no strike at all, here's +hoping he'll never lack for friends--and I don't reckon he ever will +while there's people around who know enough to--" + +"Him lack for friends!" and she tilted her head up with a frank pride-- +"why, Washington, you can't name a man that's anybody that isn't fond of +him. I'll tell you privately, that I've had Satan's own time to keep +them from appointing him to some office or other. They knew he'd no +business with an office, just as well as I did, but he's the hardest man +to refuse anything to, a body ever saw. Mulberry Sellers with an office! +laws goodness, you know what that would be like. Why, they'd come from +the ends of the earth to see a circus like that. I'd just as lieves be +married to Niagara Falls, and done with it." After a reflective pause +she added--having wandered back, in the interval, to the remark that had +been her text: "Friends?--oh, indeed, no man ever had more; and such +friends: Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Johnston, Longstreet, Lee--many's the +time they've sat in that chair you're sitting in--" Hawkins was out of it +instantly, and contemplating it with a reverential surprise, and with the +awed sense of having trodden shod upon holy ground-- + +"They!" he said. + +"Oh, indeed, yes, a many and a many a time." + +He continued to gaze at the chair fascinated, magnetized; and for once in +his life that continental stretch of dry prairie which stood for his +imagination was afire, and across it was marching a slanting flamefront +that joined its wide horizons together and smothered the skies with +smoke. He was experiencing what one or another drowsing, geographically +ignorant alien experiences every day in the year when he turns a dull and +indifferent eye out of the car window and it falls upon a certain +station-sign which reads "Stratford-on-Avon!" Mrs. Sellers went +gossiping comfortably along: + +"Oh, they like to hear him talk, especially if their load is getting +rather heavy on one shoulder and they want to shift it. He's all air, +you know,--breeze, you may say--and he freshens them up; it's a trip to +the country, they say. Many a time he's made General Grant laugh--and +that's a tidy job, I can tell you, and as for Sheridan, his eye lights up +and he listens to Mulberry Sellers the same as if he was artillery. +You see, the charm about Mulberry is, he is so catholic and unprejudiced +that he fits in anywhere and everywhere. It makes him powerful good +company, and as popular as scandal. You go to the White House when the +President's holding a general reception--sometime when Mulberry's there. +Why, dear me, you can't tell which of them it is that's holding that +reception." + +"Well, he certainly is a remarkable man--and he always was. Is he +religious?" + +"Clear to his marrow--does more thinking and reading on that subject than +any other except Russia and Siberia: thrashes around over the whole +field, too; nothing bigoted about him." + +"What is his religion?" + +"He--" She stopped, and was lost for a moment or two in thinking, then +she said, with simplicity, "I think he was a Mohammedan or something last +week." + +Washington started down town, now, to bring his trunk, for the hospitable +Sellerses would listen to no excuses; their house must be his home during +the session. The Colonel returned presently and resumed work upon his +plaything. It was finished when Washington got back. + +"There it is," said the Colonel, "all finished." + +"What is it for, Colonel?" + +"Oh, it's just a trifle. Toy to amuse the children." + +Washington examined it. + +"It seems to be a puzzle." + +"Yes, that's what it is. I call it Pigs in the Clover. Put them in--see +if you can put them in the pen." + +After many failures Washington succeeded, and was as pleased as a child. + +"It's wonderfully ingenious, Colonel, it's ever so clever and +interesting--why, I could play with it all day. What are you going to do +with it?" + +"Oh, nothing. Patent it and throw it aside." + +"Don't you do anything of the kind. There's money in that thing." + +A compassionate look traveled over the Colonel's countenance, and he +said: + +"Money--yes; pin money: a couple of hundred thousand, perhaps. Not +more." + +Washington's eyes blazed. + +"A couple of hundred thousand dollars! do you call that pin money?" + +The colonel rose and tip-toed his way across the room, closed a door that +was slightly ajar, tip-toed his way to his seat again, and said, under +his breath: + +"You can keep a secret?" + +Washington nodded his affirmative, he was too awed to speak. + +"You have heard of materialization--materialization of departed spirits?" + +Washington had heard of it. + +"And probably didn't believe in it; and quite right, too. The thing as +practised by ignorant charlatans is unworthy of attention or respect-- +where there's a dim light and a dark cabinet, and a parcel of sentimental +gulls gathered together, with their faith and their shudders and their +tears all ready, and one and the same fatty degeneration of protoplasm +and humbug comes out and materializes himself into anybody you want, +grandmother, grandchild, brother-in-law, Witch of Endor, John Milton, +Siamese twins, Peter the Great, and all such frantic nonsense--no, that +is all foolish and pitiful. But when a man that is competent brings the +vast powers of science to bear, it's a different matter, a totally +different matter, you see. The spectre that answers that call has come +to stay. Do you note the commercial value of that detail?" + +"Well, I--the--the truth is, that I don't quite know that I do. Do you +mean that such, being permanent, not transitory, would give more general +satisfaction, and so enhance the price--of tickets to the show--" + +"Show? Folly--listen to me; and get a good grip on your breath, for you +are going to need it. Within three days I shall have completed my +method, and then--let the world stand aghast, for it shall see marvels. +Washington, within three days--ten at the outside--you shall see me call +the dead of any century, and they will arise and walk. Walk?--they shall +walk forever, and never die again. Walk with all the muscle and spring +of their pristine vigor." + +"Colonel! Indeed it does take one's breath away." + +"Now do you see the money that's in it?" + +"I'm--well, I'm--not really sure that I do." + +Great Scott, look here. I shall have a monopoly; they'll all belong to +me, won't they? Two thousand policemen in the city of New York. Wages, +four dollars a day. I'll replace them with dead ones at half the money. + +"Oh, prodigious! I never thought of that. F-o-u-r thousand dollars a +day. Now I do begin to see! But will dead policemen answer?" + +"Haven't they--up to this time?" + +"Well, if you put it that way--" + +"Put it any way you want to. Modify it to suit yourself, and my lads +shall still be superior. They won't eat, they won't drink--don't need +those things; they won't wink for cash at gambling dens and unlicensed +rum-holes, they won't spark the scullery maids; and moreover the bands of +toughs that ambuscade them on lonely beats, and cowardly shoot and knife +them will only damage the uniforms and not live long enough to get more +than a momentary satisfaction out of that." + +"Why, Colonel, if you can furnish policemen, then of course--" + +"Certainly--I can furnish any line of goods that's wanted. Take the +army, for instance--now twenty-five thousand men; expense, twenty-two +millions a year. I will dig up the Romans, I will resurrect the Greeks, +I will furnish the government, for ten millions a year, ten thousand +veterans drawn from the victorious legions of all the ages--soldiers that +will chase Indians year in and year out on materialized horses, and cost +never a cent for rations or repairs. The armies of Europe cost two +billions a year now--I will replace them all for a billion. I will dig +up the trained statesmen of all ages and all climes, and furnish this +country with a Congress that knows enough to come in out of the rain-- +a thing that's never happened yet, since the Declaration of Independence, +and never will happen till these practically dead people are replaced +with the genuine article. I will restock the thrones of Europe with the +best brains and the best morals that all the royal sepulchres of all the +centuries can furnish--which isn't promising very much--and I'll divide +the wages and the civil list, fair and square, merely taking my half +and--" + +"Colonel, if the half of this is true, there's millions in it--millions." + +"Billions in it--billions; that's what you mean. Why, look here; the +thing is so close at hand, so imminent, so absolutely immediate, that if +a man were to come to me now and say, Colonel, I am a little short, and +if you could lend me a couple of billion dollars for--come in!" + +This in answer to a knock. An energetic looking man bustled in with a +big pocket-book in his hand, took a paper from it and presented it, with +the curt remark: + +"Seventeenth and last call--you want to out with that three dollars and +forty cents this time without fail, Colonel Mulberry Sellers." + +The Colonel began to slap this pocket and that one, and feel here and +there and everywhere, muttering: + +"What have I done with that wallet?--let me see--um--not here, not there +--Oh, I must have left it in the kitchen; I'll just run and--" + +"No you won't--you'll stay right where you are. And you're going to +disgorge, too--this time." + +Washington innocently offered to go and look. When he was gone the +Colonel said: + +"The fact is, I've got to throw myself on your indulgence just this once +more, Suggs; you see the remittances I was expecting--" + +"Hang the remittances--it's too stale--it won't answer. Come!" + +The Colonel glanced about him in despair. Then his face lighted; he ran +to the wall and began to dust off a peculiarly atrocious chromo with his +handkerchief. Then he brought it reverently, offered it to the +collector, averted his face and said: + +"Take it, but don't let me see it go. It's the sole remaining Rembrandt +that--" + +"Rembrandt be damned, it's a chromo." + +"Oh, don't speak of it so, I beg you. It's the only really great +original, the only supreme example of that mighty school of art which--" + +"Art! It's the sickest looking thing I--" + +The colonel was already bringing another horror and tenderly dusting it. + +"Take this one too--the gem of my collection--the only genuine Fra +Angelico that--" + +"Illuminated liver-pad, that's what it is. Give it here--good day-- +people will think I've robbed a' nigger barber-shop." + +As he slammed the door behind him the Colonel shouted with an anguished +accent-- + +"Do please cover them up--don't let the damp get at them. The delicate +tints in the Angelico--" + +But the man was gone. + +Washington re-appeared and said he had looked everywhere, and so had Mrs. +Sellers and the servants, but in vain; and went on to say he wished he +could get his eye on a certain man about this time--no need to hunt up +that pocket-book then. The Colonel's interest was awake at once. + +"What man?" + +"One-armed Pete they call him out there--out in the Cherokee country I +mean. Robbed the bank in Tahlequah." + +"Do they have banks in Tahlequah?" + +"Yes--a bank, anyway. He was suspected of robbing it. Whoever did it +got away with more than twenty thousand dollars. They offered a reward +of five thousand. I believe I saw that very man, on my way east." + +"No--is that so? + +"I certainly saw a man on the train, the first day I struck the railroad, +that answered the description pretty exactly--at least as to clothes and +a lacking arm." + +"Why don't you get him arrested and claim the reward?" + +"I couldn't. I had to get a requisition, of course. But I meant to stay +by him till I got my chance." + +"Well?" + +"Well, he left the train during the night some time." + +"Oh, hang it, that's too bad." + +"Not so very bad, either." + +"Why?" + +"Because he came down to Baltimore in the very train I was in, though I +didn't know it in time. As we moved out of the station I saw him going +toward the iron gate with a satchel in his hand." + +"Good; we'll catch him. Let's lay a plan." + +"Send description to the Baltimore police?" + +"Why, what are you talking about? No. Do you want them to get the +reward?" + +"What shall we do, then?" + +The Colonel reflected. + +"I'll tell you. Put a personal in the Baltimore Sun. Word it like this: + + "A. DROP ME A LINE, PETE." + +"Hold on. Which arm has he lost?" + +"The right." + +"Good. Now then-- + +"A. DROP ME A LINE, PETE, EVEN IF YOU HAVE to write with your left hand. +Address X. Y. Z., General Postoffice, Washington. From YOU KNOW WHO." + +"There--that'll fetch him." + +"But he won't know who--will he?" + +"No, but he'll want to know, won't he?" + +"Why, certainly--I didn't think of that. What made you think of it?" + +"Knowledge of human curiosity. Strong trait, very strong trait." + +"Now I'll go to my room and write it out and enclose a dollar and tell +them to print it to the worth of that." + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +The day wore itself out. After dinner the two friends put in a long and +harassing evening trying to decide what to do with the five thousand +dollars reward which they were going to get when they should find One- +Armed Pete, and catch him, and prove him to be the right person, and +extradite him, and ship him to Tahlequah in the Indian Territory. But +there were so many dazzling openings for ready cash that they found it +impossible to make up their minds and keep them made up. Finally, Mrs. +Sellers grew very weary of it all, and said: + +"What is the sense in cooking a rabbit before it's caught?" + +Then the matter was dropped, for the time being, and all went to bed. +Next morning, being persuaded by Hawkins, the colonel made drawings and +specifications and went down and applied for a patent for his toy puzzle, +and Hawkins took the toy itself and started out to see what chance there +might be to do something with it commercially. He did not have to go +far. In a small old wooden shanty which had once been occupied as a +dwelling by some humble negro family he found a keen-eyed Yankee engaged +in repairing cheap chairs and other second-hand furniture. This man +examined the toy indifferently; attempted to do the puzzle; found it not +so easy as he had expected; grew more interested, and finally +emphatically so; achieved a success at last, and asked: + +"Is it patented?" + +"Patent applied for." + +"That will answer. What do you want for it?" + +"What will it retail for?" + +"Well, twenty-five cents, I should think." + +"What will you give for the exclusive right?" + +"I couldn't give twenty dollars, if I had to pay cash down; but I'll tell +you what I'll do. I'll make it and market it, and pay you five cents +royalty on each one." + +Washington sighed. Another dream disappeared; no money in the thing. +So he said: + +"All right, take it at that. Draw me a paper." He went his way with the +paper, and dropped the matter out of his mind dropped it out to make room +for further attempts to think out the most promising way to invest his +half of the reward, in case a partnership investment satisfactory to both +beneficiaries could not be hit upon. + +He had not been very long at home when Sellers arrived sodden with grief +and booming with glad excitement--working both these emotions +successfully, sometimes separately, sometimes together. He fell on +Hawkins's neck sobbing, and said: + +"Oh, mourn with me my friend, mourn for my desolate house: death has +smitten my last kinsman and I am Earl of Rossmore--congratulate me!" + +He turned to his wife, who had entered while this was going on, put his +arms about her and said--"You will bear up, for my sake, my lady--it had +to happen, it was decreed." + +She bore up very well, and said: + +"It's no great loss. Simon Lathers was a poor well-meaning useless thing +and no account, and his brother never was worth shucks." + +The rightful earl continued: + +"I am too much prostrated by these conflicting griefs and joys to be able +to concentrate my mind upon affairs; I will ask our good friend here to +break the news by wire or post to the Lady Gwendolen and instruct her +to--" + +"What Lady Gwendolen?" + +"Our poor daughter, who, alas!--" + +"Sally Sellers? Mulberry Sellers, are you losing your mind?" + +"There--please do not forget who you are, and who I am; remember your own +dignity, be considerate also of mine. It were best to cease from using +my family name, now, Lady Rossmore." + +"Goodness gracious, well, I never! What am I to call you then?" + +"In private, the ordinary terms of endearment will still be admissible, +to some degree; but in public it will be more becoming if your ladyship +will speak to me as my lord, or your lordship, and of me as Rossmore, or +the Earl, or his Lordship, and--" + +"Oh, scat! I can't ever do it, Berry." + +"But indeed you must, my love--we must live up to our altered position +and submit with what grace we may to its requirements." + +"Well, all right, have it your own way; I've never set my wishes against +your commands yet, Mul--my lord, and it's late to begin now, though to my +mind it's the rottenest foolishness that ever was." + +"Spoken like my own true wife! There, kiss and be friends again." + +"But--Gwendolen! I don't know how I am ever going to stand that name. +Why, a body wouldn't know Sally Sellers in it. It's too large for her; +kind of like a cherub in an ulster, and it's a most outlandish sort of a +name, anyway, to my mind." + +"You'll not hear her find fault with it, my lady." + +"That's a true word. She takes to any kind of romantic rubbish like she +was born to it. She never got it from me, that's sure. And sending her +to that silly college hasn't helped the matter any--just the other way." + +"Now hear her, Hawkins! Rowena-Ivanhoe College is the selectest and most +aristocratic seat of learning for young ladies in our country. Under no +circumstances can a girl get in there unless she is either very rich and +fashionable or can prove four generations of what may be called American +nobility. Castellated college-buildings--towers and turrets and an +imitation moat--and everything about the place named out of Sir Walter +Scott's books and redolent of royalty and state and style; and all the +richest girls keep phaetons, and coachmen in livery, and riding-horses, +with English grooms in plug hats and tight-buttoned coats, and top-boots, +and a whip-handle without any whip to it, to ride sixty-three feet behind +them--" + +"And they don't learn a blessed thing, Washington Hawkins, not a single +blessed thing but showy rubbish and un-american pretentiousness. But +send for the Lady Gwendolen--do; for I reckon the peerage regulations +require that she must come home and let on to go into seclusion and mourn +for those Arkansas blatherskites she's lost." + +"My darling! Blatherskites? Remember--noblesse oblige." + +"There, there--talk to me in your own tongue, Ross--you don't know any +other, and you only botch it when you try. Oh, don't stare--it was a +slip, and no crime; customs of a life-time can't be dropped in a second. +Rossmore--there, now, be appeased, and go along with you and attend to +Gwendolen. Are you going to write, Washington?--or telegraph?" + +"He will telegraph, dear." + +"I thought as much," my lady muttered, as she left the room. "Wants it +so the address will have to appear on the envelop. It will just make a +fool of that child. She'll get it, of course, for if there are any other +Sellerses there they'll not be able to claim it. And just leave her +alone to show it around and make the most of it. Well, maybe she's +forgivable for that. She's so poor and they're so rich, of course she's +had her share of snubs from the livery-flunkey sort, and I reckon it's +only human to want to get even." + +Uncle Dan'l was sent with the telegram; for although a conspicuous object +in a corner of the drawing-room was a telephone hanging on a transmitter, +Washington found all attempts to raise the central office vain. The +Colonel grumbled something about its being "always out of order when +you've got particular and especial use for it," but he didn't explain +that one of the reasons for this was that the thing was only a dummy and +hadn't any wire attached to it. And yet the Colonel often used it--when +visitors were present--and seemed to get messages through it. Mourning +paper and a seal were ordered, then the friends took a rest. + +Next afternoon, while Hawkins, by request, draped Andrew Jackson's +portrait with crape, the rightful earl, wrote off the family bereavement +to the usurper in England--a letter which we have already read. He also, +by letter to the village authorities at Duffy's Corners, Arkansas, gave +order that the remains of the late twins be embalmed by some St. Louis +expert and shipped at once to the usurper--with bill. Then he drafted +out the Rossmore arms and motto on a great sheet of brown paper, and he +and Hawkins took it to Hawkins's Yankee furniture-mender and at the end +of an hour came back with a couple of stunning hatchments, which they +nailed up on the front of the house--attractions calculated to draw, and +they did; for it was mainly an idle and shiftless negro neighborhood, +with plenty of ragged children and indolent dogs to spare for a point of +interest like that, and keep on sparing them for it, days and days +together. + +The new earl found--without surprise--this society item in the evening +paper, and cut it out and scrapbooked it: + + By a recent bereavement our esteemed fellow citizen, Colonel + Mulberry Sellers, Perpetual Member-at-large of the Diplomatic Body, + succeeds, as rightful lord, to the great earldom of Rossmore, third + by order of precedence in the earldoms of Great Britain, and will + take early measures, by suit in the House of Lords, to wrest the + title and estates from the present usurping holder of them. Until + the season of mourning is past, the usual Thursday evening + receptions at Rossmore Towers will be discontinued. + +Lady Rossmore's comment-to herself: + +"Receptions! People who don't rightly know him may think he is +commonplace, but to my mind he is one of the most unusual men I ever saw. +As for suddenness and capacity in imagining things, his beat don't exist, +I reckon. As like as not it wouldn't have occurred to anybody else to +name this poor old rat-trap Rossmore Towers, but it just comes natural to +him. Well, no doubt it's a blessed thing to have an imagination that can +always make you satisfied, no matter how you are fixed. Uncle Dave +Hopkins used to always say, 'Turn me into John Calvin, and I want to know +which place I'm going to; turn me into Mulberry Sellers and I don't +care.'" + +The rightful earl's comment-to himself: + +"It's a beautiful name, beautiful. Pity I didn't think of it before I +wrote the usurper. But I'll be ready for him when he answers." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +No answer to that telegram; no arriving daughter. Yet nobody showed any +uneasiness or seemed surprised; that is, nobody but Washington. After +three days of waiting, he asked Lady Rossmore what she supposed the +trouble was. She answered, tranquilly: + +"Oh, it's some notion of hers, you never can tell. She's a Sellers, all +through--at least in some of her ways; and a Sellers can't tell you +beforehand what he's going to do, because he don't know himself till he's +done it. She's all right; no occasion to worry about her. When she's +ready she'll come or she'll write, and you can't tell which, till it's +happened." + +It turned out to be a letter. It was handed in at that moment, and was +received by the mother without trembling hands or feverish eagerness, +or any other of the manifestations common in the case of long delayed +answers to imperative telegrams. She polished her glasses with +tranquility and thoroughness, pleasantly gossiping along, the while, +then opened the letter and began to read aloud: + + KENILWORTH KEEP, REDGAUNTLET HALL, + ROWENA-IVANHOE COLLEGE, THURSDAY. + + DEAR PRECIOUS MAMMA ROSSMORE: + + Oh, the joy of it!--you can't think. They had always turned up + their noses at our pretentions, you know; and I had fought back as + well as I could by turning up mine at theirs. They always said it + might be something great and fine to be rightful Shadow of an + earldom, but to merely be shadow of a shadow, and two or three times + removed at that--pooh-pooh! And I always retorted that not to be + able to show four generations of American-Colonial-Dutch Peddler- + and-Salt-Cod-McAllister-Nobility might be endurable, but to have to + confess such an origin--pfew-few! Well, the telegram, it was just a + cyclone! The messenger came right into the great Rob Roy Hall of + Audience, as excited as he could be, singing out, "Dispatch for Lady + Gwendolen Sellers!" and you ought to have seen that simpering + chattering assemblage of pinchbeck aristocrats, turn to stone! + I was off in the corner, of course, by myself--it's where Cinderella + belongs. I took the telegram and read it, and tried to faint--and I + could have done it if I had had any preparation, but it was all so + sudden, you know--but no matter, I did the next best thing: I put my + handkerchief to my eyes and fled sobbing to my room, dropping the + telegram as I started. I released one corner of my eye a moment-- + just enough to see the herd swarm for the telegram--and then + continued my broken-hearted flight just as happy as a bird. + + Then the visits of condolence began, and I had to accept the loan of + Miss Augusta-Templeton-Ashmore Hamilton's quarters because the press + was so great and there isn't room for three and a cat in mine. And + I've been holding a Lodge of Sorrow ever since and defending myself + against people's attempts to claim kin. And do you know, the very + first girl to fetch her tears and sympathy to my market was that + foolish Skimperton girl who has always snubbed me so shamefully and + claimed lordship and precedence of the whole college because some + ancestor of hers, some time or other, was a McAllister. Why it was + like the bottom bird in the menagerie putting on airs because its + head ancestor was a pterodactyl. + + But the ger-reatest triumph of all was--guess. But you'll never. + This is it. That little fool and two others have always been + fussing and fretting over which was entitled to precedence--by rank, + you know. They've nearly starved themselves at it; for each claimed + the right to take precedence of all the college in leaving the + table, and so neither of them ever finished her dinner, but broke + off in the middle and tried to get out ahead of the others. Well, + after my first day's grief and seclusion--I was fixing up a mourning + dress you see--I appeared at the public table again, and then--what + do you think? Those three fluffy goslings sat there contentedly, + and squared up the long famine--lapped and lapped, munched and + munched, ate and ate, till the gravy appeared in their eyes--humbly + waiting for the Lady Gwendolen to take precedence and move out + first, you see! + + Oh, yes, I've been having a darling good time. And do you know, not + one of these collegians has had the cruelty to ask me how I came by + my new name. With some, this is due to charity, but with the others + it isn't. They refrain, not from native kindness but from educated + discretion. I educated them. + + Well, as soon as I shall have settled up what's left of the old + scores and snuffed up a few more of those pleasantly intoxicating + clouds of incense, I shall pack and depart homeward. Tell papa I + am as fond of him as I am of my new name. I couldn't put it + stronger than that. What an inspiration it was! But inspirations + come easy to him. + + These, from your loving daughter, + GWENDOLEN. + + +Hawkins reached for the letter and glanced over it. + +"Good hand," he said, "and full of confidence and animation, and goes +racing right along. She's bright--that's plain." + +"Oh, they're all bright--the Sellerses. Anyway, they would be, if there +were any. Even those poor Latherses would have been bright if they had +been Sellerses; I mean full blood. Of course they had a Sellers strain +in them--a big strain of it, too--but being a Bland dollar don't make it +a dollar just the same." + +The seventh day after the date of the telegram Washington came dreaming +down to breakfast and was set wide awake by an electrical spasm of +pleasure. + +Here was the most beautiful young creature he had ever seen in his life. +It was Sally Sellers Lady Gwendolen; she had come in the night. And it +seemed to him that her clothes were the prettiest and the daintiest he +had ever looked upon, and the most exquisitely contrived and fashioned +and combined, as to decorative trimmings, and fixings, and melting +harmonies of color. It was only a morning dress, and inexpensive, but he +confessed to himself, in the English common to Cherokee Strip, that it +was a "corker." And now, as he perceived, the reason why the Sellers +household poverties and sterilities had been made to blossom like the +rose, and charm the eye and satisfy the spirit, stood explained; here was +the magician; here in the midst of her works, and furnishing in her own +person the proper accent and climaxing finish of the whole. + +"My daughter, Major Hawkins--come home to mourn; flown home at the call +of affliction to help the authors of her being bear the burden of +bereavement. She was very fond of the late earl--idolized him, sir, +idolized him--" + +"Why, father, I've never seen him." + +"True--she's right, I was thinking of another--er--of her mother--" + +"I idolized that smoked haddock?--that sentimental, spiritless--" + +"I was thinking of myself! Poor noble fellow, we were inseparable com--" + +"Hear the man! Mulberry Sel--Mul--Rossmore--hang the troublesome name I +can never--if I've heard you say once, I've heard you say a thousand +times that if that poor sheep--" + +"I was thinking of--of--I don't know who I was thinking of, and it +doesn't make any difference anyway; somebody idolized him, I recollect it +as if it were yesterday; and--" + +"Father, I am going to shake hands with Major Hawkins, and let the +introduction work along and catch up at its leisure. I remember you very +well in deed, Major Hawkins, although I was a little child when I saw you +last; and I am very, very glad indeed to see you again and have you in +our house as one of us;" and beaming in his face she finished her cordial +shake with the hope that he had not forgotten her. + +He was prodigiously pleased by her outspoken heartiness, and wanted to +repay her by assuring her that he remembered her, and not only that but +better even than he remembered his own children, but the facts would not +quite warrant this; still, he stumbled through a tangled sentence which +answered just as well, since the purport of it was an awkward and +unintentional confession that her extraordinary beauty had so stupefied +him that he hadn't got back to his bearings, yet, and therefore couldn't +be certain as to whether he remembered her at all or not. The speech +made him her friend; it couldn't well help it. + +In truth the beauty of this fair creature was of a rare type, and may +well excuse a moment of our time spent in its consideration. It did not +consist in the fact that she had eyes, nose, mouth, chin, hair, ears, it +consisted in their arrangement. In true beauty, more depends upon right +location and judicious distribution of feature than upon multiplicity of +them. So also as regards color. The very combination of colors which in +a volcanic irruption would add beauty to a landscape might detach it from +a girl. Such was Gwendolen Sellers. + +The family circle being completed by Gwendolen's arrival, it was decreed +that the official mourning should now begin; that it should begin at six +o'clock every evening, (the dinner hour,) and end with the dinner. + +"It's a grand old line, major, a sublime old line, and deserves to be +mourned for, almost royally; almost imperially, I may say. Er--Lady +Gwendolen--but she's gone; never mind; I wanted my Peerage; I'll fetch it +myself, presently, and show you a thing or two that will give you a +realizing idea of what our house is. I've been glancing through Burke, +and I find that of William the Conqueror's sixty-four natural ah-- +my dear, would you mind getting me that book? It's on the escritoire in +our boudoir. Yes, as I was saying, there's only St. Albans, Buccleugh +and Grafton ahead of us on the list--all the rest of the British nobility +are in procession behind us. Ah, thanks, my lady. Now then, we turn to +William, and we find--letter for XYZ? Oh, splendid--when'd you get it?" + +"Last night; but I was asleep before you came, you were out so late; and +when I came to breakfast Miss Gwendolen--well, she knocked everything out +of me, you know--" + +"Wonderful girl, wonderful; her great origin is detectable in her step, +her carriage, her features--but what does he say? Come, this is +exciting." + +"I haven't read it--er--Rossm--Mr. Rossm--er--" + +"M'lord! Just cut it short like that. It's the English way. I'll open +it. Ah, now let's see." + +A. TO YOU KNOW WHO. Think I know you. Wait ten days. Coming to + Washington. + +The excitement died out of both men's faces. There was a brooding +silence for a while, then the younger one said with a sigh: + +"Why, we can't wait ten days for the money." + +"No--the man's unreasonable; we are down to the bed rock, financially +speaking." + +"If we could explain to him in some way, that we are so situated that +time is of the utmost importance to us--" + +"Yes--yes, that's it--and so if it would be as convenient for him to come +at once it would be a great accommodation to us, and one which we--which +we--which we--wh--well, which we should sincerely appreciate--" + +"That's it--and most gladly reciprocate--" + +"Certainly--that'll fetch him. Worded right, if he's a man--got any of +the feelings of a man, sympathies and all that, he'll be here inside of +twenty-four hours. Pen and paper--come, we'll get right at it." + +Between them they framed twenty-two different advertisements, but none +was satisfactory. A main fault in all of them was urgency. That feature +was very troublesome: if made prominent, it was calculated to excite +Pete's suspicion; if modified below the suspicion-point it was flat and +meaningless. Finally the Colonel resigned, and said: + +"I have noticed, in such literary experiences as I have had, that one of +the most taking things to do is to conceal your meaning when you are +trying to conceal it. Whereas, if you go at literature with a free +conscience and nothing to conceal, you can turn out a book, every time, +that the very elect can't understand. They all do." + +Then Hawkins resigned also, and the two agreed that they must manage to +wait the ten days some how or other. Next, they caught a ray of cheer: +since they had something definite to go upon, now, they could probably +borrow money on the reward--enough, at any rate, to tide them over till +they got it; and meantime the materializing recipe would be perfected, +and then good bye to trouble for good and all. + +The next day, May the tenth, a couple of things happened--among others. +The remains of the noble Arkansas twins left our shores for England, +consigned to Lord Rossmore, and Lord Rossmore's son, Kirkcudbright +Llanover Marjoribanks Sellers Viscount Berkeley, sailed from Liverpool +for America to place the reversion of the earldom in the hands of the +rightful peer, Mulberry Sellers, of Rossmore Towers in the District of +Columbia, U. S. A. + +These two impressive shipments would meet and part in mid-Atlantic, five +days later, and give no sign. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +In the course of time the twins arrived and were delivered to their great +kinsman. To try to describe the rage of that old man would profit +nothing, the attempt would fall so far short of the purpose. However +when he had worn himself out and got quiet again, he looked the matter +over and decided that the twins had some moral rights, although they had +no legal ones; they were of his blood, and it could not be decorous to +treat them as common clay. So he laid them with their majestic kin in +the Cholmondeley church, with imposing state and ceremony, and added the +supreme touch by officiating as chief mourner himself. But he drew the +line at hatchments. + +Our friends in Washington watched the weary days go by, while they waited +for Pete and covered his name with reproaches because of his calamitous +procrastinations. Meantime, Sally Sellers, who was as practical and +democratic as the Lady Gwendolen Sellers was romantic and aristocratic, +was leading a life of intense interest and activity and getting the most +she could out of her double personality. All day long in the privacy of +her work-room, Sally Sellers earned bread for the Sellers family; and all +the evening Lady Gwendolen Sellers supported the Rossmore dignity. All +day she was American, practically, and proud of the work of her head and +hands and its commercial result; all the evening she took holiday and +dwelt in a rich shadow-land peopled with titled and coroneted fictions. +By day, to her, the place was a plain, unaffected, ramshackle old trap +just that, and nothing more; by night it was Rossmore Towers. At college +she had learned a trade without knowing it. The girls had found out that +she was the designer of her own gowns. She had no idle moments after +that, and wanted none; for the exercise of an extraordinary gift is the +supremest pleasure in life, and it was manifest that Sally Sellers +possessed a gift of that sort in the matter of costume-designing. Within +three days after reaching home she had hunted up some work; before Pete +was yet due in Washington, and before the twins were fairly asleep in +English soil, she was already nearly swamped with work, and the +sacrificing of the family chromos for debt had got an effective check. + +"She's a brick," said Rossmore to the Major; "just her father all over: +prompt to labor with head or hands, and not ashamed of it; capable, +always capable, let the enterprise be what it may; successful by nature-- +don't know what defeat is; thus, intensely and practically American by +inhaled nationalism, and at the same time intensely and aristocratically +European by inherited nobility of blood. Just me, exactly: Mulberry +Sellers in matter of finance and invention; after office hours, what do +you find? The same clothes, yes, but what's in them? Rossmore of the +peerage." + +The two friends had haunted the general post-office daily. At last they +had their reward. Toward evening the 20th of May, they got a letter for +XYZ. It bore the Washington postmark; the note itself was not dated. It +said: + + "Ash barrel back of lamp post Black horse Alley. If you are playing + square go and set on it to-morrow morning 21st 10.22 not sooner not + later wait till I come." + +The friends cogitated over the note profoundly. Presently the earl said: + +"Don't you reckon he's afraid we are a sheriff with a requisition?" + +"Why, m'lord?" + +"Because that's no place for a seance. Nothing friendly, nothing +sociable about it. And at the same time, a body that wanted to know who +was roosting on that ash-barrel without exposing himself by going near +it, or seeming to be interested in it, could just stand on the street +corner and take a glance down the alley and satisfy himself, don't you +see?" + +"Yes, his idea is plain, now. He seems to be a man that can't be candid +and straightforward. He acts as if he thought we--shucks, I wish he had +come out like a man and told us what hotel he--" + +"Now you've struck it! you've struck it sure, Washington; he has told +us." + +"Has he?" + +"Yes, he has; but he didn't mean to. That alley is a lonesome little +pocket that runs along one side of the New Gadsby. That's his hotel." + +"What makes' you think that?" + +"Why, I just know it. He's got a room that's just across from that lamp +post. He's going to sit there perfectly comfortable behind his shutters +at 10.22 to-morrow, and when he sees us sitting on the ash-barrel, he'll +say to himself, 'I saw one of those fellows on the train'--and then he'll +pack his satchel in half a minute and ship for the ends of the earth." + +Hawkins turned sick with disappointment: + +"Oh, dear, it's all up, Colonel--it's exactly what he'll do." + +"Indeed he won't!" + +"Won't he? Why?" + +"Because you won't be holding the ash barrel down, it'll be me. You'll +be coming in with an officer and a requisition in plain clothes--the +officer, I mean--the minute you see him arrive and open up a talk with +me." + +"Well, what a head you have got, Colonel Sellers! I never should have +thought of that in the world." + +"Neither would any earl of Rossmore, betwixt William's contribution and +Mulberry--as earl; but it's office hours, now, you see, and the earl in +me sleeps. Come--I'll show you his very room." + +They reached the neighborhood of the New Gadsby about nine in the +evening, and passed down the alley to the lamp post. + +"There you are," said the colonel, triumphantly, with a wave of his hand +which took in the whole side of the hotel. "There it is--what did I tell +you?" + +"Well, but--why, Colonel, it's six stories high. I don't quite make out +which window you--" + +"All the windows, all of them. Let him have his choice--I'm indifferent, +now that I have located him. You go and stand on the corner and wait; +I'll prospect the hotel." + +The earl drifted here and there through the swarming lobby, and finally +took a waiting position in the neighborhood of the elevator. During an +hour crowds went up and crowds came down; and all complete as to limbs; +but at last the watcher got a glimpse of a figure that was satisfactory-- +got a glimpse of the back of it, though he had missed his chance at the +face through waning alertness. The glimpse revealed a cowboy hat, and +below it a plaided sack of rather loud pattern, and an empty sleeve +pinned up to the shoulder. Then the elevator snatched the vision aloft +and the watcher fled away in joyful excitement, and rejoined the +fellow-conspirator. + +"We've got him, Major--got him sure! I've seen him--seen him good; and I +don't care where or when that man approaches me backwards, I'll recognize +him every time. We're all right. Now for the requisition." + +They got it, after the delays usual in such cases. By half past eleven +they were at home and happy, and went to bed full of dreams of the +morrow's great promise. + +Among the elevator load which had the suspect for fellow-passenger was a +young kinsman of Mulberry Sellers, but Mulberry was not aware of it and +didn't see him. It was Viscount Berkeley. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +Arrived in his room Lord Berkeley made preparations for that first and +last and all-the-time duty of the visiting Englishman--the jotting down +in his diary of his "impressions" to date. His preparations consisted in +ransacking his "box" for a pen. There was a plenty of steel pens on his +table with the ink bottle, but he was English. The English people +manufacture steel pens for nineteen-twentieths of the globe, but they +never use any themselves. They use exclusively the pre-historic quill. +My lord not only found a quill pen, but the best one he had seen in +several years--and after writing diligently for some time, closed with +the following entry: + + BUT IN ONE THING I HAVE MADE AN IMMENSE MISTAKE, I OUGHT TO + HAVE SHUCKED MY TITLE AND CHANGED MY NAME BEFORE I STARTED. + +He sat admiring that pen a while, and then went on: + +"All attempts to mingle with the common people and became permanently one +of them are going to fail, unless I can get rid of it, disappear from it, +and re-appear with the solid protection of a new name. I am astonished +and pained to see how eager the most of these Americans are to get +acquainted with a lord, and how diligent they are in pushing attentions +upon him. They lack English servility, it is true--but they could +acquire it, with practice. My quality travels ahead of me in the most +mysterious way. I write my family name without additions, on the +register of this hotel, and imagine that I am going to pass for an +obscure and unknown wanderer, but the clerk promptly calls out, 'Front! +show his lordship to four-eighty-two!' and before I can get to the lift +there is a reporter trying to interview me as they call it. This sort of +thing shall cease at once. I will hunt up the American Claimant the +first thing in the morning, accomplish my mission, then change my lodging +and vanish from scrutiny under a fictitious name." + + +He left his diary on the table, where it would be handy in case any new +"impressions" should wake him up in the night, then he went to bed and +presently fell asleep. An hour or two passed, and then he came slowly to +consciousness with a confusion of mysterious and augmenting sounds +hammering at the gates of his brain for admission; the next moment he was +sharply awake, and those sounds burst with the rush and roar and boom of +an undammed freshet into his ears. Banging and slamming of shutters; +smashing of windows and the ringing clash of falling glass; clatter of +flying feet along the halls; shrieks, supplications, dumb moanings of +despair, within, hoarse shouts of command outside; cracklings and +mappings, and the windy roar of victorious flames! + +Bang, bang, bang! on the door, and a cry: + +"Turn out--the house is on fire!" + +The cry passed on, and the banging. Lord Berkeley sprang out of bed and +moved with all possible speed toward the clothes-press in the darkness +and the gathering smoke, but fell over a chair and lost his bearings. +He groped desperately about on his hands, and presently struck his head +against the table and was deeply grateful, for it gave him his bearings +again, since it stood close by the door. He seized his most precious +possession; his journaled Impressions of America, and darted from the +room. + +He ran down the deserted hall toward the red lamp which he knew indicated +the place of a fire-escape. The door of the room beside it was open. +In the room the gas was burning full head; on a chair was a pile of +clothing. He ran to the window, could not get it up, but smashed it with +a chair, and stepped out on the landing of the fire-escape; below him was +a crowd of men, with a sprinkling of women and youth, massed in a ruddy +light. Must he go down in his spectral night dress? No--this side of +the house was not yet on fire except at the further end; he would snatch +on those clothes. Which he did. They fitted well enough, though a +trifle loosely, and they were just a shade loud as to pattern. Also as +to hat--which was of a new breed to him, Buffalo Bill not having been to +England yet. One side of the coat went on, but the other side refused; +one of its sleeves was turned up and stitched to the shoulder. He +started down without waiting to get it loose, made the trip successfully, +and was promptly hustled outside the limit-rope by the police. + +The cowboy hat and the coat but half on made him too much of a centre of +attraction for comfort, although nothing could be more profoundly +respectful, not to say deferential, than was the manner of the crowd +toward him. In his mind he framed a discouraged remark for early entry +in his diary: "It is of no use; they know a lord through any disguise, +and show awe of him--even something very like fear, indeed." + +Presently one of the gaping and adoring half-circle of boys ventured a +timid question. My lord answered it. The boys glanced wonderingly at +each other and from somewhere fell the comment: + +"English cowboy! Well, if that ain't curious." + +Another mental note to be preserved for the diary: "Cowboy. Now what +might a cowboy be? Perhaps--" But the viscount perceived that some more +questions were about to be asked; so he worked his way out of the crowd, +released the sleeve, put on the coat and wandered away to seek a humble +and obscure lodging. He found it and went to bed and was soon asleep. + +In the morning, he examined his clothes. They were rather assertive, it +seemed to him, but they were new and clean, at any rate. There was +considerable property in the pockets. Item, five one-hundred dollar +bills. Item, near fifty dollars in small bills and silver. Plug of +tobacco. Hymn-book, which refuses to open; found to contain whiskey. +Memorandum book bearing no name. Scattering entries in it, recording in +a sprawling, ignorant hand, appointments, bets, horse-trades, and so on, +with people of strange, hyphenated name--Six-Fingered Jake, Young-Man- +afraid-of his-Shadow, and the like. No letters, no documents. + +The young man muses--maps out his course. His letter of credit is burned; +he will borrow the small bills and the silver in these pockets, apply +part of it to advertising for the owner, and use the rest for sustenance +while he seeks work. He sends out for the morning paper, next, and +proceeds to read about the fire. The biggest line in the display-head +announces his own death! The body of the account furnishes all the +particulars; and tells how, with the inherited heroism of his caste, he +went on saving women and children until escape for himself was +impossible; then with the eyes of weeping multitudes upon him, he stood +with folded arms and sternly awaited the approach of the devouring fiend; +"and so standing, amid a tossing sea of flame and on-rushing billows of +smoke, the noble young heir of the great house of Rossmore was caught up +in a whirlwind of fiery glory, and disappeared forever from the vision of +men." + +The thing was so fine and generous and knightly that it brought the +moisture to his eyes. Presently he said to himself: "What to do is as +plain as day, now. My Lord Berkeley is dead--let him stay so. Died +creditably, too; that will make the calamity the easier for my father. +And I don't have to report to the American Claimant, now. Yes, nothing +could be better than the way matters have turned out. I have only to +furnish myself with a new name, and take my new start in life totally +untrammeled. Now I breathe my first breath of real freedom; and how +fresh and breezy and inspiring it is! At last I am a man! a man on equal +terms with my neighbor; and by my manhood; and by it alone, I shall rise +and be seen of the world, or I shall sink from sight and deserve it. +This is the gladdest day, and the proudest, that ever poured it's sun +upon my head!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +"GOD bless my soul, Hawkins!" + +The morning paper dropped from the Colonel's nerveless-grasp. + +"What is it?" + +"He's gone!--the bright, the young, the gifted, the noblest of his +illustrious race--gone! gone up in flames and unimaginable glory!" + +"Who?" + +"My precious, precious young kinsman--Kirkcudbright Llanover Marjoribanks +Sellers Viscount Berkeley, son and heir of usurping Rossmore." + +"No!" + +"It's true--too true." + +"When?" + +"Last night." + +"Where?" + +"Right here in Washington; where he arrived from England last night, the +papers say." + +"You don't say!" + +"Hotel burned down." + +"What hotel?" + +"The New Gadsby!" + +"Oh, my goodness! And have we lost both of them?" + +"Both who?" + +"One-Arm Pete." + +"Oh, great guns, I forgot all about him. Oh, I hope not." + +"Hope! Well, I should say! Oh, we can't spare him! We can better +afford to lose a million viscounts than our only support and stay." + +They searched the paper diligently, and were appalled to find that a +one-armed man had been seen flying along one of the halls of the hotel +in his underclothing and apparently out of his head with fright, and as +he would listen to no one and persisted in making for a stairway which +would carry him to certain death, his case was given over as a hopeless +one. + +"Poor fellow," sighed Hawkins; "and he had friends so near. I wish we +hadn't come away from there--maybe we could have saved him." + +The earl looked up and said calmly: + +"His being dead doesn't matter. He was uncertain before. We've got him +sure, this time." + +"Got him? How?" + +"I will materialize him." + +"Rossmore, don't--don't trifle with me. Do you mean that? Can you do +it?" + +"I can do it, just as sure as you are sitting there. And I will." + +"Give me your hand, and let me have the comfort of shaking it. I was +perishing, and you have put new life into me. Get at it, oh, get at it +right away." + +"It will take a little time, Hawkins, but there's no hurry, none in the +world--in the circumstances. And of course certain duties have devolved +upon me now, which necessarily claim my first attention. This poor young +nobleman--" + +"Why, yes, I am sorry for my heartlessness, and you smitten with this new +family affliction. Of course you must materialize him first--I quite +understand that." + +"I--I--well, I wasn't meaning just that, but,--why, what am I thinking +of! Of course I must materialize him. Oh, Hawkins, selfishness is the +bottom trait in human nature; I was only thinking that now, with the +usurper's heir out of the way. But you'll forgive that momentary weakness, +and forget it. Don't ever remember it against me that Mulberry Sellers +was once mean enough to think the thought that I was thinking. I'll +materialise him--I will, on my honor--and I'd do it were he a thousand +heirs jammed into one and stretching in a solid rank from here to the +stolen estates of Rossmore, and barring the road forever to the rightful +earl! + +"There spoke the real Sellers--the other had a false ring, old friend." + +"Hawkins, my boy, it just occurs to me--a thing I keep forgetting to +mention--a matter that we've got to be mighty careful about." + +"What is that?" + +"We must keep absolutely still about these materializations. Mind, not a +hint of them must escape--not a hint. To say nothing of how my wife and +daughter--high-strung, sensitive organizations--might feel about them, +the negroes wouldn't stay on the place a minute." + +"That's true, they wouldn't. It's well you spoke, for I'm not naturally +discreet with my tongue when I'm not warned." + +Sellers reached out and touched a bell-button in the wall; set his eye +upon the rear door and waited; touched it again and waited; and just as +Hawkins was remarking admiringly that the Colonel was the most +progressive and most alert man he had ever seen, in the matter of +impressing into his service every modern convenience the moment it was +invented, and always keeping breast to breast with the drum major in the +great work of material civilization, he forsook the button (which hadn't +any wire attached to it,) rang a vast dinner bell which stood on the +table, and remarked that he had tried that new-fangled dry battery, now, +to his entire satisfaction, and had got enough of it; and added: + +"Nothing would do Graham Bell but I must try it; said the mere fact of my +trying it would secure public confidence, and get it a chance to show +what it could do. I told him that in theory a dry battery was just a +curled darling and no mistake, but when it come to practice, sho!--and +here's the result. Was I right? What should you say, Washington +Hawkins? You've seen me try that button twice. Was I right?--that's the +idea. Did I know what I was talking about, or didn't I?" + +"Well, you know how I feel about you, Colonel Sellers, and always have +felt. It seems to me that you always know everything about everything. +If that man had known you as I know you he would have taken your judgment +at the start, and dropped his dry battery where it was." + +"Did you ring, Marse Sellers?" + +"No, Marse Sellers didn't." + +"Den it was you, Marse Washington. I's heah, suh." + +"No, it wasn't Marse Washington, either." + +"De good lan'! who did ring her, den?" + +"Lord Rossmore rang it!" + +The old negro flung up his hands and exclaimed: + +"Blame my skin if I hain't gone en forgit dat name agin! Come heah, +Jinny--run heah, honey." + +Jinny arrived. + +"You take dish-yer order de lord gwine to give you I's gwine down suller +and study dat name tell I git it." + +"I take de order! Who's yo' nigger las' year? De bell rung for you." + +"Dat don't make no diffunce. When a bell ring for anybody, en old +marster tell me to--" + +"Clear out, and settle it in the kitchen!" + +The noise of the quarreling presently sank to a murmur in the distance, +and the earl added: "That's a trouble with old house servants that were +your slaves once and have been your personal friends always." + +"Yes, and members of the family." + +"Members of the family is just what they become--THE members of the +family, in fact. And sometimes master and mistress of the household. +These two are mighty good and loving and faithful and honest, but hang +it, they do just about as they please, they chip into a conversation +whenever they want to, and the plain fact is, they ought to be killed." + +It was a random remark, but it gave him an idea--however, nothing could +happen without that result. + +"What I wanted, Hawkins, was to send for the family and break the news to +them." + +"O, never mind bothering with the servants, then. I will go and bring +them down." + +While he was gone, the earl worked his idea. + +"Yes," he said to himself, "when I've got the materializing down to a +certainty, I will get Hawkins to kill them, and after that they will be +under better control. Without doubt a materialized negro could easily be +hypnotized into a state resembling silence. And this could be made +permanent--yes, and also modifiable, at will--sometimes very silent, +sometimes turn on more talk, more action, more emotion, according to what +you want. It's a prime good idea. Make it adjustable--with a screw or +something." + +The two ladies entered, now, with Hawkins, and the two negroes followed, +uninvited, and fell to brushing and dusting around, for they perceived +that there was matter of interest to the fore, and were willing to find +out what it was. + +Sellers broke the news with stateliness and ceremony, first warning the +ladies, with gentle art, that a pang of peculiar sharpness was about to +be inflicted upon their hearts--hearts still sore from a like hurt, still +lamenting a like loss--then he took the paper, and with trembling lips +and with tears in his voice he gave them that heroic death-picture. + +The result was a very genuine outbreak of sorrow and sympathy from all +the hearers. The elder lady cried, thinking how proud that great-hearted +young hero's mother would be, if she were living, and how unappeasable +her grief; and the two old servants cried with her, and spoke out their +applauses and their pitying lamentations with the eloquent sincerity and +simplicity native to their race. Gwendolen was touched, and the romantic +side of her nature was strongly wrought upon. She said that such a +nature as that young man's was rarely and truly noble, and nearly +perfect; and that with nobility of birth added it was entirely perfect. +For such a man she could endure all things, suffer all things, even to +the sacrificing of her life. She wished she could have seen him; the +slightest, the most momentary, contact with such a spirit would have +ennobled her own character and made ignoble thoughts and ignoble acts +thereafter impossible to her forever. + +"Have they found the body, Rossmore?" asked the wife. + +"Yes, that is, they've found several. It must be one of them, but none +of them are recognizable." + +"What are you going to do?" + +"I am going down there and identify one of them and send it home to the +stricken father." + +"But papa, did you ever see the young man?" + +"No, Gwendolen-why?" + +"How will you identify it?" + +"I--well, you know it says none of them are recognizable. I'll send his +father one of them--there's probably no choice." + +Gwendolen knew it was not worth while to argue the matter further, since +her father's mind was made up and there was a chance for him to appear +upon that sad scene down yonder in an authentic and official way. So she +said no more--till he asked for a basket. + +"A basket, papa? What for?" + +"It might be ashes." + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +The earl and Washington started on the sorrowful errand, talking as they +walked. + +"And as usual!" + +"What, Colonel?" + +"Seven of them in that hotel. Actresses. And all burnt out, of +course." + +"Any of them burnt up?" + +"Oh, no they escaped; they always do; but there's never a one of them +that knows enough to fetch out her jewelry with her." + +"That's strange." + +"Strange--it's the most unaccountable thing in the world. Experience +teaches them nothing; they can't seem to learn anything except out of a +book. In some uses there's manifestly a fatality about it. For +instance, take What's-her-name, that plays those sensational thunder and +lightning parts. She's got a perfectly immense reputation--draws like a +dog-fight--and it all came from getting burnt out in hotels." + +"Why, how could that give her a reputation as an actress?" + +"It didn't--it only made her name familiar. People want to see her play +because her name is familiar, but they don't know what made it familiar, +because they don't remember. First, she was at the bottom of the +ladder, and absolutely obscure wages thirteen dollars a week and find her +own pads." + +"Pads?" + +"Yes--things to fat up her spindles with so as to be plump and attractive. +Well, she got burnt out in a hotel and lost $30,000 worth of diamonds." + +"She? Where'd she get them?" + +"Goodness knows--given to her, no doubt, by spoony young flats and sappy +old bald-heads in the front row. All the papers were full of it. She +struck for higher pay and got it. Well, she got burnt out again and lost +all her diamonds, and it gave her such a lift that she went starring." + +"Well, if hotel fires are all she's got to depend on to keep up her name, +it's a pretty precarious kind of a reputation I should think." + +"Not with her. No, anything but that. Because she's so lucky; born +lucky, I reckon. Every time there's a hotel fire she's in it. She's +always there--and if she can't be there herself, her diamonds are. Now +you can't make anything out of that but just sheer luck." + +"I never heard of such a thing. She must have lost quarts of diamonds." + +"Quarts, she's lost bushels of them. It's got so that the hotels are +superstitious about her. They won't let her in. They think there will +be a fire; and besides, if she's there it cancels the insurance. She's +been waning a little lately, but this fire will set her up. She lost +$60,000 worth last night." + +"I think she's a fool. If I had $60,000 worth of diamonds I wouldn't +trust them in a hotel." + +"I wouldn't either; but you can't teach an actress that. This one's been +burnt out thirty-five times. And yet if there's a hotel fire in San +Francisco to-night she's got to bleed again, you mark my words. Perfect +ass; they say she's got diamonds in every hotel in the country." + +When they arrived at the scene of the fire the poor old earl took one +glimpse at the melancholy morgue and turned away his face overcome by the +spectacle. He said: + +"It is too true, Hawkins--recognition is impossible, not one of the five +could be identified by its nearest friend. You make the selection, I +can't bear it." + +"Which one had I better--" + +"Oh, take any of them. Pick out the best one." + +However, the officers assured the earl--for they knew him, everybody in +Washington knew him--that the position in which these bodies were found +made it impossible that any one of them could be that of his noble young +kinsman. They pointed out the spot where, if the newspaper account was +correct, he must have sunk down to destruction; and at a wide distance +from this spot they showed him where the young man must have gone down in +case he was suffocated in his room; and they showed him still a third +place, quite remote, where he might possibly have found his death if +perchance he tried to escape by the side exit toward the rear. The old +Colonel brushed away a tear and said to Hawkins: + +"As it turns out there was something prophetic in my fears. Yes, it's a +matter of ashes. Will you kindly step to a grocery and fetch a couple +more baskets?" + +Reverently they got a basket of ashes from each of those now hallowed +spots, and carried them home to consult as to the best manner of +forwarding them to England, and also to give them an opportunity to "lie +in state,"--a mark of respect which the colonel deemed obligatory, +considering the high rank of the deceased. + +They set the baskets on the table in what was formerly the library, +drawing-room and workshop--now the Hall of Audience--and went up stairs +to the lumber room to see if they could find a British flag to use as a +part of the outfit proper to the lying in state. A moment later, Lady +Rossmore came in from the street and caught sight of the baskets just as +old Jinny crossed her field of vision. She quite lost her patience and +said: + +"Well, what will you do next? What in the world possessed you to clutter +up the parlor table with these baskets of ashes?" + +"Ashes?" And she came to look. She put up her hands in pathetic +astonishment. "Well, I never see de like!" + +"Didn't you do it?" + +"Who, me? Clah to goodness it's de fust time I've sot eyes on 'em, Miss +Polly. Dat's Dan'l. Dat ole moke is losin' his mine." + +But it wasn't Dan'l, for he was called, and denied it. + +"Dey ain't no way to 'splain dat. Wen hit's one er dese-yer common +'currences, a body kin reckon maybe de cat--" + +"Oh!" and a shudder shook Lady Rossmore to her foundations. "I see it +all. Keep away from them--they're his." + +"His, m' lady?" + +"Yes--your young Marse Sellers from England that's burnt up." + +She was alone with the ashes--alone before she could take half a breath. +Then she went after Mulberry Sellers, purposing to make short work with +his program, whatever it might be; "for," said she, "when his +sentimentals are up, he's a numskull, and there's no knowing what +extravagance he'll contrive, if you let him alone." She found him. +He had found the flag and was bringing it. When she heard that his idea +was to have the remains "lie in state, and invite the government and the +public," she broke it up. She said: + +"Your intentions are all right--they always are--you want to do honour to +the remains, and surely nobody can find any fault with that, for he was +your kin; but you are going the wrong way about it, and you will see it +yourself if you stop and think. You can't file around a basket of ashes +trying to look sorry for it and make a sight that is really solemn, +because the solemner it is, the more it isn't--anybody can see that. It +would be so with one basket; it would be three times so with three. +Well, it stands to reason that if it wouldn't be solemn with one mourner, +it wouldn't be with a procession--and there would be five thousand people +here. I don't know but it would be pretty near ridiculous; I think it +would. No, Mulberry, they can't lie in state--it would be a mistake. +Give that up and think of something else." + +So he gave it up; and not reluctantly, when he had thought it over and +realized how right her instinct was. He concluded to merely sit up with +the remains just himself and Hawkins. Even this seemed a doubtful +attention, to his wife, but she offered no objection, for it was plain +that he had a quite honest and simple-hearted desire to do the friendly +and honourable thing by these forlorn poor relics which could command no +hospitality in this far off land of strangers but his. He draped the +flag about the baskets, put some crape on the door-knob, and said with +satisfaction: + +"There--he is as comfortable, now, as we can make him in the +circumstances. Except--yes, we must strain a point there--one must do as +one would wish to be done by--he must have it." + +"Have what, dear?" + +"Hatchment." + +The wife felt that the house-front was standing about all it could well +stand, in that way; the prospect of another stunning decoration of that +nature distressed her, and she wished the thing had not occurred to him. +She said, hesitatingly: + +"But I thought such an honour as that wasn't allowed to any but very very +near relations, who--" + +"Right, you are quite right, my lady, perfectly right; but there aren't +any nearer relatives than relatives by usurpation. We cannot avoid it; +we are slaves of aristocratic custom and must submit." + +The hatchments were unnecessarily generous, each being as large as a +blanket, and they were unnecessarily volcanic, too, as to variety and +violence of color, but they pleased the earl's barbaric eye, and they +satisfied his taste for symmetry and completeness, too, for they left no +waste room to speak of on the house-front. + +Lady Rossmore and her daughter assisted at the sitting-up till near +midnight, and helped the gentlemen to consider what ought to be done next +with the remains. Rossmore thought they ought to be sent home with a +committee and resolutions,--at once. But the wife was doubtful. She +said: + +"Would you send all of the baskets?" + +"Oh, yes, all." + +"All at once?" + +"To his father? Oh, no--by no means. Think of the shock. No--one at a +time; break it to him by degrees." + +"Would that have that effect, father?" + +"Yes, my daughter. Remember, you are young and elastic, but he is old. +To send him the whole at once might well be more than he could bear. +But mitigated--one basket at a time, with restful intervals between, +he would be used to it by the time he got all of him. And sending him +in three ships is safer anyway. On account of wrecks and storms." + +"I don't like the idea, father. If I were his father it would be +dreadful to have him coming in that--in that--" + +"On the installment plan," suggested Hawkins, gravely, and proud of being +able to help. + +"Yes--dreadful to have him coming in that incoherent way. There would be +the strain of suspense upon me all the time. To have so depressing a +thing as a funeral impending, delayed, waiting, unaccomplished--" + +"Oh, no, my child," said the earl reassuringly, "there would be nothing +of that kind; so old a gentleman could not endure a long-drawn suspense +like that. There will be three funerals." + +Lady Rossmore looked up surprised, and said: + +"How is that going to make it easier for him? It's a total mistake, to +my mind. He ought to be buried all at once; I'm sure of it." + +"I should think so, too," said Hawkins. + +"And certainly I should," said the daughter. + +"You are all wrong," said the earl. "You will see it yourselves, if you +think. Only one of these baskets has got him in it." + +"Very well, then," said Lady Rossmore, "the thing is perfectly simple-- +bury that one." + +"Certainly," said Lady Gwendolen. + +"But it is not simple," said the earl, "because we do not know which +basket he is in. We know he is in one of them, but that is all we do +know. You see now, I reckon, that I was right; it takes three funerals, +there is no other way." + +"And three graves and three monuments and three inscriptions?" asked the +daughter. + +"Well--yes--to do it right. That is what I should do." + +"It could not be done so, father. Each of the inscriptions would give +the same name and the same facts and say he was under each and all of +these monuments, and that would not answer at all." + +The earl nestled uncomfortably in his chair. + +"No," he said, "that is an objection. That is a serious objection. I +see no way out." + +There was a general silence for a while. Then Hawkins said: + +"It seems to me that if we mixed the three ramifications together--" + +The earl grasped him by the hand and shook it gratefully. + +"It solves the whole problem," he said. "One ship, one funeral, one +grave, one monument--it is admirably conceived. It does you honor, Major +Hawkins, it has relieved me of a most painful embarrassment and distress, +and it will save that poor stricken old father much suffering. Yes, he +shall go over in one basket." + +"When?" asked the wife. + +"To-morrow-immediately, of course." + +"I would wait, Mulberry." + +"Wait? Why?" + +"You don't want to break that childless old man's heart." + +"God knows I don't!" + +"Then wait till he sends for his son's remains. If you do that, you will +never have to give him the last and sharpest pain a parent can know-- +I mean, the certainty that his son is dead. For he will never send." + +"Why won't he?" + +"Because to send--and find out the truth--would rob him of the one +precious thing left him, the uncertainty, the dim hope that maybe, after +all, his boy escaped, and he will see him again some day." + +"Why Polly, he'll know by the papers that he was burnt up." + +"He won't let himself believe the papers; he'll argue against anything +and everything that proves his son is dead; and he will keep that up and +live on it, and on nothing else till he dies. But if the remains should +actually come, and be put before that poor old dim-hoping soul--" + +"Oh, my God, they never shall! Polly, you've saved me from a crime, and +I'll bless you for it always. Now we know what to do. We'll place them +reverently away, and he shall never know." + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +The young Lord Berkeley, with the fresh air of freedom in his nostrils, +was feeling invincibly strong for his new career; and yet--and yet--if +the fight should prove a very hard one at first, very discouraging, very +taxing on untoughened moral sinews, he might in some weak moment want to +retreat. Not likely, of course, but possibly that might happen. And so +on the whole it might be pardonable caution to burn his bridges behind +him. Oh, without doubt. He must not stop with advertising for the owner +of that money, but must put it where he could not borrow from it himself, +meantime, under stress of circumstances. So he went down town, and put +in his advertisement, then went to a bank and handed in the $500 for +deposit. + +"What name?" + +He hesitated and colored a little; he had forgotten to make a selection. +He now brought out the first one that suggested itself: + +"Howard Tracy." + +When he was gone the clerks, marveling, said: + +"The cowboy blushed." + +The first step was accomplished. The money was still under his command +and at his disposal, but the next step would dispose of that difficulty. +He went to another bank and drew upon the first bank for the 500 by +check. The money was collected and deposited a second time to the credit +of Howard Tracy. He was asked to leave a few samples of his signature, +which he did. Then he went away, once more proud and of perfect courage, +saying: + +"No help for me now, for henceforth I couldn't draw that money without +identification, and that is become legally impossible. No resources to +fall back on. It is work or starve from now to the end. I am ready--and +not afraid!" + +Then he sent this cablegram to his father: + +"Escaped unhurt from burning hotel. Have taken fictitious name. +Goodbye." + +During the, evening while he was wandering about in one of the outlying +districts of the city, he came across a small brick church, with a bill +posted there with these words printed on it: "MECHANICS' CLUB DEBATE. +ALL INVITED." He saw people, apparently mainly of the working class, +entering the place, and he followed and took his seat. It was a humble +little church, quite bare as to ornamentation. It had painted pews +without cushions, and no pulpit, properly speaking, but it had a +platform. On the platform sat the chairman, and by his side sat a man +who held a manuscript in his hand and had the waiting look of one who is +going to perform the principal part. The church was soon filled with a +quiet and orderly congregation of decently dressed and modest people. +This is what the chairman said: + +"The essayist for this evening is an old member of our club whom you all +know, Mr. Parker, assistant editor of the Daily Democrat. The subject +of his essay is the American Press, and he will use as his text a couple +of paragraphs taken from Mr. Matthew Arnold's new book. He asks me to +read these texts for him. The first is as follows: + +"'Goethe says somewhere that "the thrill of awe," that is to say, +REVERENCE, is the best thing humanity has." + +"Mr. Arnold's other paragraph is as follows: + +"'I should say that if one were searching for the best means to efface +and kill in a whole nation the discipline of respect, one could not do +better than take the American newspapers." + +Mr. Parker rose and bowed, and was received with warm applause. He then +began to read in a good round resonant voice, with clear enunciation and +careful attention to his pauses and emphases. His points were received +with approval as he went on. + +The essayist took the position that the most important function of a +public journal in any country was the propagating of national feeling and +pride in the national name--the keeping the people "in love with their +country and its institutions, and shielded from the allurements of alien +and inimical systems." He sketched the manner in which the reverent +Turkish or Russian journalist fulfilled this function--the one assisted +by the prevalent "discipline of respect" for the bastinado, the other for +Siberia. Continuing, he said: + +The chief function of an English journal is that of all other journals +the world over: it must keep the public eye fixed admiringly upon certain +things, and keep it diligently diverted from certain others. For +instance, it must keep the public eye fixed admiringly upon the glories +of England, a processional splendor stretching its receding line down the +hazy vistas of time, with the mellowed lights of a thousand years +glinting from its banners; and it must keep it diligently diverted from +the fact that all these glories were for the enrichment and +aggrandizement of the petted and privileged few, at cost of the blood and +sweat and poverty of the unconsidered masses who achieved them but might +not enter in and partake of them. It must keep the public eye fixed in +loving and awful reverence upon the throne as a sacred thing, and +diligently divert it from the fact that no throne was ever set up by the +unhampered vote of a majority of any nation; and that hence no throne +exists that has a right to exist, and no symbol of it, flying from any +flagstaff, is righteously entitled to wear any device but the skull and +crossbones of that kindred industry which differs from royalty only +business-wise--merely as retail differs from wholesale. It must keep the +citizen's eye fixed in reverent docility upon that curious invention of +machine politics, an Established Church, and upon that bald contradiction +of common justice, a hereditary nobility; and diligently divert it from +the fact that the one damns him if he doesn't wear its collar, and robs +him under the gentle name of taxation whether he wears it or not, and the +other gets all the honors while he does all the work. + +The essayist thought that Mr. Arnold, with his trained eye and +intelligent observation, ought to have perceived that the very quality +which he so regretfully missed from our press--respectfulness, reverence +--was exactly the thing which would make our press useless to us if it +had it--rob it of the very thing which differentiates it from all other +journalism in the world and makes it distinctively and preciously +American, its frank and cheerful irreverence being by all odds the most +valuable of all its qualities. "For its mission--overlooked by Mr. +Arnold--is to stand guard over a nation's liberties, not its humbugs and +shams." He thought that if during fifty years the institutions of the +old world could be exposed to the fire of a flouting and scoffing press +like ours, "monarchy and its attendant crimes would disappear from +Christendom." Monarchists might doubt this; then "why not persuade the +Czar to give it a trial in Russia?" Concluding, he said: + +Well, the charge is, that our press has but little of that old world +quality, reverence. Let us be candidly grateful that it is so. With its +limited reverence it at least reveres the things which this nation +reveres, as a rule, and that is sufficient: what other people revere is +fairly and properly matter of light importance to us. Our press does not +reverence kings, it does not reverence so called nobilities, it does not +reverence established ecclesiastical slaveries, it does not reverence +laws which rob a younger son to fatten an elder one, it does not +reverence any fraud or sham or infamy, howsoever old or rotten or holy, +which sets one citizen above his neighbor by accident of birth: it does +not reverence any law or custom, howsoever old or decayed or sacred, +which shuts against the best man in the land the best place in the land +and the divine right to prove property and go up and occupy it. In the +sense of the poet Goethe--that meek idolater of provincial three carat +royalty and nobility--our press is certainly bankrupt in the "thrill of +awe"--otherwise reverence; reverence for nickel plate and brummagem. +Let us sincerely hope that this fact will remain a fact forever: for to +my mind a discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of +human liberty--even as the other thing is the creator, nurse, and +steadfast protector of all forms of human slavery, bodily and mental. + +Tracy said to himself, almost shouted to himself, "I'm glad I came to +this country. I was right. I was right to seek out a land where such +healthy principles and theories are in men's hearty and minds. Think of +the innumerable slaveries imposed by misplaced reverence! How well he +brought that out, and how true it is. There's manifestly prodigious +force in reverence. If you can get a man to reverence your ideals, he's +your slave. Oh, yes, in all the ages the peoples of Europe have been +diligently taught to avoid reasoning about the shams of monarchy and +nobility, been taught to avoid examining them, been taught to reverence +them; and now, as a natural result, to reverence them is second nature. +In order to shock them it is sufficient to inject a thought of the +opposite kind into their dull minds. For ages, any expression of +so-called irreverence from their lips has been sin and crime. The sham +and swindle of all this is apparent the moment one reflects that he is +himself the only legitimately qualified judge of what is entitled to +reverence and what is not. Come, I hadn't thought of that before, but +it is true, absolutely true. What right has Goethe, what right has +Arnold, what right has any dictionary, to define the word Irreverence +for me? What their ideals are is nothing to me. So long as I reverence +my own ideals my whole duty is done, and I commit no profanation if I +laugh at theirs. I may scoff at other people's ideals as much as I want +to. It is my right and my privilege. No man has any right to deny it." + +Tracy was expecting to hear the essay debated, but this did not happen. +The chairman said, by way of explanation: + +"I would say, for the information of the strangers present here, that in +accordance with our custom the subject of this meeting will be debated at +the next meeting of the club. This is in order to enable our members to +prepare what they may wish to say upon the subject with pen and paper, +for we are mainly mechanics and unaccustomed to speaking. We are obliged +to write down what we desire to say." + +Many brief papers were now read, and several offhand speeches made in +discussion of the essay read at the last meeting of the club, which had +been a laudation, by some visiting professor, of college culture, and the +grand results flowing from it to the nation. One of the papers was read +by a man approaching middle age, who said he hadn't had a college +education, that he had got his education in a printing office, and had +graduated from there into the patent office, where he had been a clerk +now for a great many years. Then he continued to this effect: + +The essayist contrasted the America of to-day with the America of bygone +times, and certainly the result is the exhibition of a mighty progress. +But I think he a little overrated the college-culture share in the +production of that result. It can no doubt be easily shown that the +colleges have contributed the intellectual part of this progress, +and that that part is vast; but that the material progress has been +immeasurably vaster, I think you will concede. Now I have been looking +over a list of inventors--the creators of this amazing material +development--and I find that they were not college-bred men. Of course +there are exceptions--like Professor Henry of Princeton, the inventor of +Mr. Morse's system of telegraphy--but these exceptions are few. It is +not overstatement to say that the imagination-stunning material +development of this century, the only century worth living in since time +itself was invented, is the creation of men not college-bred. We think +we see what these inventors have done: no, we see only the visible vast +frontage of their work; behind it is their far vaster work, and it is +invisible to the careless glance. They have reconstructed this nation-- +made it over, that is--and metaphorically speaking, have multiplied its +numbers almost beyond the power of figures to express. I will explain +what I mean. What constitutes the population of a land? Merely the +numberable packages of meat and bones in it called by courtesy men and +women? Shall a million ounces of brass and a million ounces of gold be +held to be of the same value? Take a truer standard: the measure of a +man's contributing capacity to his time and his people--the work he can +do--and then number the population of this country to-day, as multiplied +by what a man can now do, more than his grandfather could do. By this +standard of measurement, this nation, two or three generations ago, +consisted of mere cripples, paralytics, dead men, as compared with the +men of to-day. In 1840 our population was 17,000,000. By way of rude +but striking illustration, let us consider, for argument's sake, that +four of these millions consisted of aged people, little children, and +other incapables, and that the remaining 13,000,000 were divided and +employed as follows: + +2,000,000 as ginners of cotton. +6,000,000 (women) as stocking-knitters. +2,000,000 (women) as thread-spinners. +500,000 as screw makers. +400,000 as reapers, binders, etc. +1,000,000 as corn shellers. +40,000 as weavers. +1,000 as stitchers of shoe soles. + +Now the deductions which I am going to append to these figures may sound +extravagant, but they are not. I take them from Miscellaneous Documents +No. 50, second session 45th Congress, and they are official and +trustworthy. To-day, the work of those 2,000,000 cotton-ginners is done +by 2,000 men; that of the 6,000,000 stocking-knitters is done by 3,000 +boys; that of the 2,000,000 thread-spinners is done by 1,000 girls; that +of the 500,000 screw makers is done by 500 girls; that of the 400,000 +reapers, binders, etc., is done by 4,000 boys; that of the 1,000,000 corn +shelters is done by 7,500 men; that of the 40,000 weavers is done by +1,200 men; and that of the 1,000 stitchers of shoe soles is done by +6 men. To bunch the figures, 17,900 persons to-day do the above-work, +whereas fifty years ago it would have taken thirteen millions of persons +to do it. Now then, how many of that ignorant race--our fathers and +grandfathers--with their ignorant methods, would it take to do our work +to-day? It would take forty thousand millions--a hundred times the +swarming population of China--twenty times the present population of the +globe. You look around you and you see a nation of sixty millions-- +apparently; but secreted in their hands and brains, and invisible to your +eyes, is the true population of this Republic, and it numbers forty +billions! It is the stupendous creation of those humble unlettered, +un-college-bred inventors--all honor to their name. + +"How grand that is!" said Tracy, as he wended homeward. "What a +civilization it is, and what prodigious results these are! and brought +about almost wholly by common men; not by Oxford-trained aristocrats, +but men who stand shoulder to shoulder in the humble ranks of life and +earn the bread that they eat. Again, I'm glad I came. I have found a +country at last where one may start fair, and breast to breast with his +fellow man, rise by his own efforts, and be something in the world and be +proud of that something; not be something created by an ancestor three +hundred years ago." + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +During the first few days he kept the fact diligently before his mind +that he was in a land where there was "work and bread for all." In fact, +for convenience' sake he fitted it to a little tune and hummed it to +himself; but as time wore on the fact itself began to take on a doubtful +look, and next the tune got fatigued and presently ran down and stopped. +His first effort was to get an upper clerkship in one of the departments, +where his Oxford education could come into play and do him service. +But he stood no chance whatever. There, competency was no +recommendation; political backing, without competency, was worth six of +it. He was glaringly English, and that was necessarily against him in +the political centre of a nation where both parties prayed for the Irish +cause on the house-top and blasphemed it in the cellar. By his dress he +was a cowboy; that won him respect--when his back was not turned--but it +couldn't get a clerkship for him. But he had said, in a rash moment, +that he would wear those clothes till the owner or the owner's friends +caught sight of them and asked for that money, and his conscience would +not let him retire from that engagement now. + +At the end of a week things were beginning to wear rather a startling +look. He had hunted everywhere for work, descending gradually the scale +of quality, until apparently he had sued for all the various kinds of +work a man without a special calling might hope to be able to do, except +ditching and the other coarse manual sorts--and had got neither work nor +the promise of it. + +He was mechanically turning over the leaves of his diary, meanwhile, and +now his eye fell upon the first record made after he was burnt out: + +"I myself did not doubt my stamina before, nobody could doubt it now, if +they could see how I am housed, and realise that I feel absolutely no +disgust with these quarters, but am as serenely content with them as any +dog would be in a similar kennel. Terms, twenty-five dollars a week. +I said I would start at the bottom. I have kept my word." + +A shudder went quaking through him, and he exclaimed: + +"What have I been thinking of! This the bottom! Mooning along a whole +week, and these terrific expenses climbing and climbing all the time! +I must end this folly straightway." + +He settled up at once and went forth to find less sumptuous lodgings. He +had to wander far and seek with diligence, but he succeeded. They made +him pay in advance--four dollars and a half; this secured both bed and +food for a week. The good-natured, hardworked landlady took him up three +flights of narrow, uncarpeted stairs and delivered him into his room. +There were two double-bedsteads in it, and one single one. He would be +allowed to sleep alone in one of the double beds until some new boarder +should come, but he wouldn't be charged extra. + +So he would presently be required to sleep with some stranger! +The thought of it made him sick. Mrs. Marsh, the landlady, was very +friendly and hoped he would like her house--they all liked it, she said. + +"And they're a very nice set of boys. They carry on a good deal, but +that's their fun. You see, this room opens right into this back one, +and sometimes they're all in one and sometimes in the other; and hot +nights they all sleep on the roof when it don't rain. They get out there +the minute it's hot enough. The season's so early that they've already +had a night or two up there. If you'd like to go up and pick out a +place, you can. You'll find chalk in the side of the chimney where +there's a brick wanting. You just take the chalk and--but of course +you've done it before." + +"Oh, no, I haven't." + +"Why, of course you haven't--what am I thinking of? Plenty of room on the +Plains without chalking, I'll be bound. Well, you just chalk out a place +the size of a blanket anywhere on the tin that ain't already marked off, +you know, and that's your property. You and your bed-mate take turnabout +carrying up the blanket and pillows and fetching them down again; +or one carries them up and the other fetches them down, you fix it the +way you like, you know. You'll like the boys, they're everlasting +sociable--except the printer. He's the one that sleeps in that single +bed--the strangest creature; why, I don't believe you could get that man +to sleep with another man, not if the house was afire. Mind you, I'm not +just talking, I know. The boys tried him, to see. They took his bed out +one night, and so when he got home about three in the morning--he was on +a morning paper then, but he's on an evening one now--there wasn't any +place for him but with the iron-moulder; and if you'll believe me, he +just set up the rest of the night--he did, honest. They say he's +cracked, but it ain't so, he's English--they're awful particular. +You won't mind my saying that. You--you're English?" + +"Yes." + +"I thought so. I could tell it by the way you mispronounce the words +that's got a's in them, you know; such as saying loff when you mean laff +--but you'll get over that. He's a right down good fellow, and a little +sociable with the photographer's boy and the caulker and the blacksmith +that work in the navy yard, but not so much with the others. The fact +is, though it's private, and the others don't know it, he's a kind of an +aristocrat, his father being a doctor, and you know what style that is-- +in England, I mean, because in this country a doctor ain't so very much, +even if he's that. But over there of course it's different. So this +chap had a falling out with his father, and was pretty high strung, and +just cut for this country, and the first he knew he had to get to work or +starve. Well, he'd been to college, you see, and so he judged he was all +right--did you say anything?" + +"No--I only sighed." + +"And there's where he was mistaken. Why, he mighty near starved. And I +reckon he would have starved sure enough, if some jour' printer or other +hadn't took pity on him and got him a place as apprentice. So he learnt +the trade, and then he was all right--but it was a close call. Once he +thought he had got to haul in his pride and holler for his father and-- +why, you're sighing again. Is anything the matter with you?--does my +clatter--" + +"Oh, dear--no. Pray go on--I like it." + +"Yes, you see, he's been over here ten years; he's twenty-eight, now, +and he ain't pretty well satisfied in his mind, because he can't get +reconciled to being a mechanic and associating with mechanics, he being, +as he says to me, a gentleman, which is a pretty plain letting-on that +the boys ain't, but of course I know enough not to let that cat out of +the bag." + +"Why--would there be any harm in it?" + +"Harm in it? They'd lick him, wouldn't they? Wouldn't you? Of course +you would. Don't you ever let a man say you ain't a gentleman in this +country. But laws, what am I thinking about? I reckon a body would +think twice before he said a cowboy wasn't a gentleman." + +A trim, active, slender and very pretty girl of about eighteen walked +into the room now, in the most satisfied and unembarrassed way. She was +cheaply but smartly and gracefully dressed, and the mother's quick glance +at the stranger's face as he rose, was of the kind which inquires what +effect has been produced, and expects to find indications of surprise and +admiration. + +"This is my daughter Hattie--we call her Puss. It's the new boarder, +Puss." This without rising. + +The young Englishman made the awkward bow common to his nationality and +time of life in circumstances of delicacy and difficulty, and these were +of that sort; for, being taken by surprise, his natural, lifelong self +sprang to the front, and that self of course would not know just how to +act when introduced to a chambermaid, or to the heiress of a mechanics' +boarding house. His other self--the self which recognized the equality +of all men--would have managed the thing better, if it hadn't been caught +off guard and robbed of its chance. The young girl paid no attention to +the bow, but put out her hand frankly and gave the stranger a friendly +shake and said: + +"How do you do?" + +Then she marched to the one washstand in the room, tilted her head this +way and that before the wreck of a cheap mirror that hung above it, +dampened her fingers with her tongue, perfected the circle of a little +lock of hair that was pasted against her forehead, then began to busy +herself with the slops. + +"Well, I must be going--it's getting towards supper time. Make yourself +at home, Mr. Tracy, you'll hear the bell when it's ready." + +The landlady took her tranquil departure, without commanding either of +the young people to vacate the room. The young man wondered a little +that a mother who seemed so honest and respectable should be so +thoughtless, and was reaching for his hat, intending to disembarrass the +girl of his presence; but she said: + +"Where are you going?" + +"Well--nowhere in particular, but as I am only in the way here--" + +"Why, who said you were in the way? Sit down--I'll move you when you are +in the way." + +She was making the beds, now. He sat down and watched her deft and +diligent performance. + +"What gave you that notion? Do you reckon I need a whole room just to +make up a bed or two in?" + +"Well no, it wasn't that, exactly. We are away up here in an empty +house, and your mother being gone--" + +The girl interrupted him with an amused laugh, and said: + +"Nobody to protect me? Bless you, I don't need it. I'm not afraid. +I might be if I was alone, because I do hate ghosts, and I don't deny it. +Not that I believe in them, for I don't. I'm only just afraid of them." + +"How can you be afraid of them if you don't believe in them?" + +"Oh, I don't know the how of it--that's too many for me; I only know it's +so. It's the same with Maggie Lee." + +"Who is that?" + +"One of the boarders; young lady that works in the factry." + +"She works in a factory?" + +"Yes. Shoe factory." + +"In a shoe factory; and you call her a young lady?" + +"Why, she's only twenty-two; what should you call her?" + +"I wasn't thinking of her age, I was thinking of the title. The fact is, +I came away from England to get away from artificial forms--for +artificial forms suit artificial people only--and here you've got them +too. I'm sorry. I hoped you had only men and women; everybody equal; +no differences in rank." + +The girl stopped with a pillow in her teeth and the case spread open +below it, contemplating him from under her brows with a slightly puzzled +expression. She released the pillow and said: + +"Why, they are all equal. Where's any difference in rank?" + +"If you call a factory girl a young lady, what do you call the +President's wife?" + +"Call her an old one." + +"Oh, you make age the only distinction?" + +"There ain't any other to make as far as I can see." + +"Then all women are ladies?" + +"Certainly they are. All the respectable ones." + +"Well, that puts a better face on it. Certainly there is no harm in a +title when it is given to everybody. It is only an offense and a wrong +when it is restricted to a favored few. But Miss--er--" + +"Hattie." + +"Miss Hattie, be frank; confess that that title isn't accorded by +everybody to everybody. The rich American doesn't call her cook a lady-- +isn't that so?" + +"Yes, it's so. What of it?" + +He was surprised and a little disappointed, to see that his admirable +shot had produced no perceptible effect. + +"What of it?" he said. "Why this: equality is not conceded here, after +all, and the Americans are no better off than the English. In fact +there's no difference." + +"Now what an idea. There's nothing in a title except what is put into +it--you've said that yourself. Suppose the title is 'clean,' instead of +'lady.' You get that?" + +"I believe so. Instead of speaking of a woman as a lady, you substitute +clean and say she's a clean person." + +"That's it. In England the swell folks don't speak of the working people +as gentlemen and ladies?" + +"Oh, no." + +"And the working people don't call themselves gentlemen and ladies?" + +"Certainly not." + +"So if you used the other word there wouldn't be any change. The swell +people wouldn't call anybody but themselves 'clean,' and those others +would drop sort of meekly into their way of talking and they wouldn't +call themselves clean. We don't do that way here. Everybody calls +himself a lady or gentleman, and thinks he is, and don't care what +anybody else thinks him, so long as he don't say it out loud. You think +there's no difference. You knuckle down and we don't. Ain't that a +difference?" + +"It is a difference I hadn't thought of; I admit that. Still--calling +one's self a lady doesn't--er--" + +"I wouldn't go on if I were you." + +Howard Tracy turned his head to see who it might be that had introduced +this remark. It was a short man about forty years old, with sandy hair, +no beard, and a pleasant face badly freckled but alive and intelligent, +and he wore slop-shop clothing which was neat but showed wear. He had +come from the front room beyond the hall, where he had left his hat, and +he had a chipped and cracked white wash-bowl in his hand. The girl came +and took the bowl. + +"I'll get it for you. You go right ahead and give it to him, Mr. +Barrow. He's the new boarder--Mr. Tracy--and I'd just got to where it +was getting too deep for me." + +"Much obliged if you will, Hattie. I was coming to borrow of the boys." +He sat down at his ease on an old trunk, and said, "I've been listening +and got interested; and as I was saying, I wouldn't go on, if I were you. +You see where you are coming to, don't you? Calling yourself a lady +doesn't elect you; that is what you were going to say; and you saw that +if you said it you were going to run right up against another difference +that you hadn't thought of: to-wit, Whose right is it to do the electing? +Over there, twenty thousand people in a million elect themselves +gentlemen and ladies, and the nine hundred and eighty thousand accept +that decree and swallow the affront which it puts upon them. Why, if +they didn't accept it, it wouldn't be an election, it would be a dead +letter and have no force at all. Over here the twenty thousand would-be +exclusives come up to the polls and vote themselves to be ladies and +gentlemen. But the thing doesn't stop there. The nine hundred and +eighty thousand come and vote themselves to be ladies and gentlemen too, +and that elects the whole nation. Since the whole million vote +themselves ladies and gentlemen, there is no question about that +election. It does make absolute equality, and there is no fiction about +it; while over yonder the inequality, (by decree of the infinitely +feeble, and consent of the infinitely strong,) is also absolute--as real +and absolute as our equality." + +Tracy had shrunk promptly into his English shell when this speech began, +notwithstanding he had now been in severe training several weeks for +contact and intercourse with the common herd on the common herd's terms; +but he lost no time in pulling himself out again, and so by the time the +speech was finished his valves were open once more, and he was forcing +himself to accept without resentment the common herd's frank fashion of +dropping sociably into other people's conversations unembarrassed and +uninvited. The process was not very difficult this time, for the man's +smile and voice and manner were persuasive and winning. Tracy would even +have liked him on the spot, but for the fact--fact which he was not +really aware of--that the equality of men was not yet a reality to him, +it was only a theory; the mind perceived, but the man failed to feel it. +It was Hattie's ghost over again, merely turned around. Theoretically +Barrow was his equal, but it was distinctly distasteful to see him +exhibit it. He presently said: + +"I hope in all sincerity that what you have said is true, as regards the +Americans, for doubts have crept into my mind several times. It seemed +that the equality must be ungenuine where the sign-names of castes were +still in vogue; but those sign-names have certainly lost their offence +and are wholly neutralized, nullified and harmless if they are the +undisputed property of every individual in the nation. I think I realize +that caste does not exist and cannot exist except by common consent of +the masses outside of its limits. I thought caste created itself and +perpetuated itself; but it seems quite true that it only creates itself, +and is perpetuated by the people whom it despises, and who can dissolve +it at any time by assuming its mere sign-names themselves." + +"It's what I think. There isn't any power on earth that can prevent +England's thirty millions from electing themselves dukes and duchesses +to-morrow and calling themselves so. And within six months all the +former dukes and duchesses would have retired from the business. +I wish they'd try that. Royalty itself couldn't survive such a process. +A handful of frowners against thirty million laughers in a state of +irruption. Why, it's Herculaneum against Vesuvius; it would take another +eighteen centuries to find that Herculaneum after the cataclysm. What's +a Colonel in our South? He's a nobody; because they're all colonels down +there. No, Tracy" (shudder from Tracy) "nobody in England would call you +a gentleman and you wouldn't call yourself one; and I tell you it's a +state of things that makes a man put himself into most unbecoming +attitudes sometimes--the broad and general recognition and acceptance of +caste as caste does, I mean. Makes him do it unconsciously--being bred +in him, you see, and never thought over and reasoned out. You couldn't +conceive of the Matterhorn being flattered by the notice of one of your +comely little English hills, could you?" + +"Why, no." + +"Well, then, let a man in his right mind try to conceive of Darwin +feeling flattered by the notice of a princess. It's so grotesque that +it--well, it paralyzes the imagination. Yet that Memnon was flattered by +the notice of that statuette; he says so--says so himself. The system +that can make a god disown his godship and profane it--oh, well, it's all +wrong, it's all wrong and ought to be abolished, I should say." + +The mention of Darwin brought on a literary discussion, and this topic +roused such enthusiasm in Barrow that he took off his coat and made +himself the more free and comfortable for it, and detained him so long +that he was still at it when the noisy proprietors of the room came +shouting and skylarking in and began to romp, scuffle, wash, and +otherwise entertain themselves. He lingered yet a little longer to offer +the hospitalities of his room and his book shelf to Tracy and ask him a +personal question or two: + +"What is your trade?" + +"They--well, they call me a cowboy, but that is a fancy. I'm not that. +I haven't any trade." + +"What do you work at for your living?" + +Oh, anything--I mean I would work at, anything I could get to do, but +thus far I haven't been able to find an occupation." + +"Maybe I can help you; I'd like to try." + +"I shall be very glad. I've tried, myself, to weariness." + +"Well, of course where a man hasn't a regular trade he's pretty bad off +in this world. What you needed, I reckon, was less book learning and +more bread-and-butter learning. I don't know what your father could have +been thinking of. You ought to have had a trade, you ought to have had a +trade, by all means. But never mind about that; we'll stir up something +to do, I guess. And don't you get homesick; that's a bad business. +We'll talk the thing over and look around a little. You'll come out all +right. Wait for me--I'll go down to supper with you." + +By this time Tracy had achieved a very friendly feeling for Barrow and +would have called him a friend, maybe, if not taken too suddenly on a +straight-out requirement to realize on his theories. He was glad of his +society, anyway, and was feeling lighter hearted than before. Also he +was pretty curious to know what vocation it might be which had furnished +Barrow such a large acquaintanceship with books and allowed him so much +time to read. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +Presently the supper bell began to ring in the depths of the house, and +the sound proceeded steadily upward, growing in intensity all the way up +towards the upper floors. The higher it came the more maddening was the +noise, until at last what it lacked of being absolutely deafening, was +made up of the sudden crash and clatter of an avalanche of boarders down +the uncarpeted stairway. The peerage did not go to meals in this +fashion; Tracy's training had not fitted him to enjoy this hilarious +zoological clamor and enthusiasm. He had to confess that there was +something about this extraordinary outpouring of animal spirits which he +would have to get inured to before he could accept it. No doubt in time +he would prefer it; but he wished the process might be modified and made +just a little more gradual, and not quite so pronounced and violent. +Barrow and Tracy followed the avalanche down through an ever increasing +and ever more and more aggressive stench of bygone cabbage and kindred +smells; smells which are to be found nowhere but in a cheap private +boarding house; smells which once encountered can never be forgotten; +smells which encountered generations later are instantly recognizable, +but never recognizable with pleasure. To Tracy these odors were +suffocating, horrible, almost unendurable; but he held his peace and said +nothing. Arrived in the basement, they entered a large dining-room where +thirty-five or forty people sat at a long table. They took their places. +The feast had already begun and the conversation was going on in the +liveliest way from one end of the table to the other. The table cloth +was of very coarse material and was liberally spotted with coffee stains +and grease. The knives and forks were iron, with bone handles, the +spoons appeared to be iron or sheet iron or something of the sort. +The tea and coffee cups were of the commonest and heaviest and most +durable stone ware. All the furniture of the table was of the commonest +and cheapest sort. There was a single large thick slice of bread by each +boarder's plate, and it was observable that he economized it as if he +were not expecting it to be duplicated. Dishes of butter were +distributed along the table within reach of people's arms, if they had +long ones, but there were no private butter plates. The butter was +perhaps good enough, and was quiet and well behaved; but it had more +bouquet than was necessary, though nobody commented upon that fact or +seemed in any way disturbed by it. The main feature of the feast was a +piping hot Irish stew made of the potatoes and meat left over from a +procession of previous meals. Everybody was liberally supplied with this +dish. On the table were a couple of great dishes of sliced ham, and +there were some other eatables of minor importance--preserves and New +Orleans molasses and such things. There was also plenty of tea and +coffee of an infernal sort, with brown sugar and condensed milk, but the +milk and sugar supply was not left at the discretion of the boarders, but +was rationed out at headquarters--one spoonful of sugar and one of +condensed milk to each cup and no more. The table was waited upon by two +stalwart negro women who raced back and forth from the bases of supplies +with splendid dash and clatter and energy. Their labors were +supplemented after a fashion by the young girl Puss. She carried coffee +and tea back and forth among the boarders, but she made pleasure +excursions rather than business ones in this way, to speak strictly. +She made jokes with various people. She chaffed the young men pleasantly +and wittily, as she supposed, and as the rest also supposed, apparently, +judging by the applause and laughter which she got by her efforts. +Manifestly she was a favorite with most of the young fellows and +sweetheart of the rest of them. Where she conferred notice she conferred +happiness, as was seen by the face of the recipient; and; at the same +time she conferred unhappiness--one could see it fall and dim the faces +of the other young fellows like a shadow. She never "Mistered" these +friends of hers, but called them "Billy," "Tom," "John," and they called +her "Puss" or "Hattie." + +Mr. Marsh sat at the head of the table, his wife sat at the foot. Marsh +was a man of sixty, and was an American; but if he had been born a month +earlier he would have been a Spaniard. He was plenty good enough +Spaniard as it was; his face was very dark, his hair very black, and his +eyes were not only exceedingly black but were very intense, and there was +something about them that indicated that they could burn with passion +upon occasion. He was stoop-shouldered and lean-faced, and the general +aspect of him was disagreeable; he was evidently not a very companionable +person. If looks went for anything, he was the very opposite of his +wife, who was all motherliness and charity, good will and good nature. +All the young men and the women called her Aunt Rachael, which was +another sign. Tracy's wandering and interested eye presently fell upon +one boarder who had been overlooked in the distribution of the stew. +He was very pale and looked as if he had but lately come out of a sick +bed, and also as if he ought to get back into it again as soon as +possible. His face was very melancholy. The waves of laughter and +conversation broke upon it without affecting it any more than if it had +been a rock in the sea and the words and the laughter veritable waters. +He held his head down and looked ashamed. Some of the women cast glances +of pity toward him from time to time in a furtive and half afraid way, +and some of the youngest of the men plainly had compassion on the young +fellow--a compassion exhibited in their faces but not in any more active +or compromising way. But the great majority of the people present showed +entire indifference to the youth and his sorrows. Marsh sat with his +head down, but one could catch the malicious gleam of his eyes through +his shaggy brows. He was watching that young fellow with evident relish. +He had not neglected him through carelessness, and apparently the table +understood that fact. The spectacle was making Mrs. Marsh very +uncomfortable. She had the look of one who hopes against hope that the +impossible may happen. But as the impossible did not happen, she finally +ventured to speak up and remind her husband that Nat Brady hadn't been +helped to the Irish stew. + +Marsh lifted his head and gasped out with mock courtliness, "Oh, he +hasn't, hasn't he? What a pity that is. I don't know how I came to +overlook him. Ah, he must pardon me. You must indeed Mr--er--Baxter-- +Barker, you must pardon me. I--er--my attention was directed to some +other matter, I don't know what. The thing that grieves me mainly is, +that it happens every meal now. But you must try to overlook these +little things, Mr. Bunker, these little neglects on my part. They're +always likely to happen with me in any case, and they are especially +likely to happen where a person has--er--well, where a person is, say, +about three weeks in arrears for his board. You get my meaning?--you get +my idea? Here is your Irish stew, and--er--it gives me the greatest +pleasure to send it to you, and I hope that you will enjoy the charity as +much as I enjoy conferring it." + +A blush rose in Brady's white cheeks and flowed slowly backward to his +ears and upward toward his forehead, but he said nothing and began to eat +his food under the embarrassment of a general silence and the sense that +all eyes were fastened upon him. Barrow whispered to Tracy: + +"The old man's been waiting for that. He wouldn't have missed that +chance for anything." + +"It's a brutal business," said Tracy. Then he said to himself, purposing +to set the thought down in his diary later: + +"Well, here in this very house is a republic where all are free and +equal, if men are free and equal anywhere in the earth, therefore I have +arrived at the place I started to find, and I am a man among men, and on +the strictest equality possible to men, no doubt. Yet here on the +threshold I find an inequality. There are people at this table who are +looked up to for some reason or another, and here is a poor devil of a +boy who is looked down upon, treated with indifference, and shamed by +humiliations, when he has committed no crime but that common one of being +poor. Equality ought to make men noble-minded. In fact I had supposed +it did do that." + +After supper, Barrow proposed a walk, and they started. Barrow had a +purpose. He wanted Tracy to get rid of that cowboy hat. He didn't see +his way to finding mechanical or manual employment for a person rigged in +that fashion. Barrow presently said: + +"As I understand it, you're not a cowboy." + +"No, I'm not." + +"Well, now if you will not think me too curious, how did you come to +mount that hat? Where'd you get it?" + +Tracy didn't know quite how to reply to this, but presently said, + +"Well, without going into particulars; I exchanged clothes with a +stranger under stress of weather, and I would like to find him and +re-exchange." + +"Well, why don't you find him? Where is he?" + +"I don't know. I supposed the best way to find him would be to continue +to wear his clothes, which are conspicuous enough to attract his +attention if I should meet him on the street." + +"Oh, very well," said Barrow, "the rest of the outfit, is well enough, +and while it's not too conspicuous, it isn't quite like the clothes that +anybody else wears. Suppress the hat. When you meet your man he'll +recognize the rest of his suit. That's a mighty embarrassing hat, you +know, in a centre of civilization like this. I don't believe an angel +could get employment in Washington in a halo like that." + +Tracy agreed to replace the hat with something of a modester form, and +they stepped aboard a crowded car and stood with others on the rear +platform. Presently, as the car moved swiftly along the rails, two men +crossing the street caught sight of the backs of Barrow and Tracy, and +both exclaimed at once, "There he is!" It was Sellers and Hawkins. +Both were so paralyzed with joy that before they could pull themselves +together and make an effort to stop the car, it was gone too far, +and they decided to wait for the next one. They waited a while; then +it occurred to Washington that there could be no use in chasing one +horse-car with another, and he wanted to hunt up a hack. But the +Colonel said: + +"When you come to think of it, there's no occasion for that at all. +Now that I've got him materialized, I can command his motions. I'll have +him at the house by the time we get there." + +Then they hurried off home in a state of great and joyful excitement. + +The hat exchange accomplished, the two new friends started to walk back +leisurely to the boarding house. Barrow's mind was full of curiosity +about this young fellow. He said, + +"You've never been to the Rocky Mountains?" + +"No." + +"You've never been out on the plains?" + +"No." + +"How long have you been in this country?" + +"Only a few days." + +"You've never been in America before?" + +Then Barrow communed with himself. "Now what odd shapes the notions of +romantic people take. Here's a young, fellow who's read in England about +cowboys and adventures on the plains. He comes here and buys a cowboy's +suit. Thinks he can play himself on folks for a cowboy, +all inexperienced as he is. Now the minute he's caught in this poor +little game, he's ashamed of it and ready to retire from it. It is that +exchange that he has put up as an explanation. It's rather thin, +too thin altogether. Well, he's young, never been anywhere, knows +nothing about the world, sentimental, no doubt. Perhaps it was the +natural thing for him to do, but it was a most singular choice, curious +freak, altogether." + +Both men were busy with their thoughts for a time, then Tracy heaved a +sigh and said, + +"Mr. Barrow, the case of that young fellow troubles me." + +"You mean Nat Brady?" + +"Yes, Brady, or Baxter, or whatever it was. The old landlord called him +by several different names." + +"Oh, yes, he has been very liberal with names for Brady, since Brady fell +into arrears for his board. Well, that's one of his sarcasms--the old +man thinks he's great on sarcasm." + +"Well, what is Brady's difficulty? What is Brady--who is he?" + +"Brady is a tinner. He's a young journeyman tinner who was getting along +all right till he fell sick and lost his job. He was very popular before +he lost his job; everybody in the house liked Brady. The old man was +rather especially fond of him, but you know that when a man loses his job +and loses his ability to support himself and to pay his way as he goes, +it makes a great difference in the way people look at him and feel about +him." + +"Is that so! Is it so?" + +Barrow looked at Tracy in a puzzled way. "Why of course it's so. +Wouldn't you know that, naturally. Don't you know that the wounded deer +is always attacked and killed by its companions and friends?" + +Tracy said to himself, while a chilly and boding discomfort spread itself +through his system, "In a republic of deer and men where all are free and +equal, misfortune is a crime, and the prosperous gore the unfortunate to +death." Then he said aloud, "Here in the boarding house, if one would +have friends and be popular instead of having the cold shoulder turned +upon him, he must be prosperous." + +"Yes," Barrow said, "that is so. It's their human nature. They do turn +against Brady, now that he's unfortunate, and they don't like him as well +as they did before; but it isn't because of any lack in Brady--he's just +as he was before, has the same nature and the same impulses, but they-- +well, Brady is a thorn in their consciences, you see. They know they +ought to help him and they're too stingy to do it, and they're ashamed of +themselves for that, and they ought also to hate themselves on that +account, but instead of that they hate Brady because he makes them +ashamed of themselves. I say that's human nature; that occurs +everywhere; this boarding house is merely the world in little, it's the +case all over--they're all alike. In prosperity we are popular; +popularity comes easy in that case, but when the other thing comes our +friends are pretty likely to turn against us." + +Tracy's noble theories and high purposes were beginning to feel pretty +damp and clammy. He wondered if by any possibility he had made a mistake +in throwing his own prosperity to the winds and taking up the cross +of other people's unprosperity. But he wouldn't listen to that sort of +thing; he cast it out of his mind and resolved to go ahead resolutely +along the course he had mapped out for himself. + +Extracts from his diary: + +Have now spent several days in this singular hive. I don't know quite +what to make out of these people. They have merits and virtues, but they +have some other qualities, and some ways that are hard to get along with. +I can't enjoy them. The moment I appeared in a hat of the period, +I noticed a change. The respect which had been paid me before, passed +suddenly away, and the people became friendly--more than that--they +became familiar, and I'm not used to familiarity, and can't take to it +right off; I find that out. These people's familiarity amounts to +impudence, sometimes. I suppose it's all right; no doubt I can get used +to it, but it's not a satisfactory process at all. I have accomplished +my dearest wish, I am a man among men, on an equal footing with Tom, Dick +and Harry, and yet it isn't just exactly what I thought it was going to +be. I--I miss home. Am obliged to say I am homesick. Another thing-- +and this is a confession--a reluctant one, but I will make it: The thing +I miss most and most severely, is the respect, the deference, with which +I was treated all my life in England, and which seems to be somehow +necessary to me. I get along very well without the luxury and the wealth +and the sort of society I've been accustomed to, but I do miss the +respect and can't seem to get reconciled to the absence of it. There is +respect, there is deference here, but it doesn't fall to my share. It is +lavished on two men. One of them is a portly man of middle age who is a +retired plumber. Everybody is pleased to have that man's notice. +He's full of pomp and circumstance and self complacency and bad grammar, +and at table he is Sir Oracle and when he opens his mouth not any +dog in the kennel barks. The other person is a policeman at the +capitol-building. He represents the government. The deference paid to +these two men is not so very far short of that which is paid to an earl +in England, though the method of it differs. Not so much courtliness, +but the deference is all there. + +Yes, and there is obsequiousness, too. + +It does rather look as if in a republic where all are free and equal, +prosperity and position constitute rank. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +The days drifted by, and they grew ever more dreary. For Barrow's +efforts to find work for Tracy were unavailing. Always the first +question asked was, "What Union do you belong to?" + +Tracy was obliged to reply that he didn't belong to any trade-union. + +"Very well, then, it's impossible to employ you. My men wouldn't stay +with me if I should employ a 'scab,' or 'rat,'" or whatever the phrase +was. + +Finally, Tracy had a happy thought. He said, "Why the thing for me to +do, of course, is to join a trade-union." + +"Yes," Barrow said, "that is the thing for you to do--if you can." + +"If I can? Is it difficult?" + +"Well, Yes," Barrow said, "it's sometimes difficult--in fact, very +difficult. But you can try, and of course it will be best to try." + +Therefore Tracy tried; but he did not succeed. He was refused admission +with a good deal of promptness, and was advised to go back home, where he +belonged, not come here taking honest men's bread out of their mouths. +Tracy began to realize that the situation was desperate, and the thought +made him cold to the marrow. He said to himself, "So there is an +aristocracy of position here, and an aristocracy of prosperity, and +apparently there is also an aristocracy of the ins as opposed to the +outs, and I am with the outs. So the ranks grow daily, here. Plainly +there are all kinds of castes here and only one that I belong to, the +outcasts." But he couldn't even smile at his small joke, although he was +obliged to confess that he had a rather good opinion of it. He was +feeling so defeated and miserable by this time that he could no longer +look with philosophical complacency on the horseplay of the young fellows +in the upper rooms at night. At first it had been pleasant to see them +unbend and have a good time after having so well earned it by the labors +of the day, but now it all rasped upon his feelings and his dignity. +He lost patience with the spectacle. When they were feeling good, they +shouted, they scuffled, they sang songs, they romped about the place like +cattle, and they generally wound up with a pillow fight, in which they +banged each other over the head, and threw the pillows in all directions, +and every now and then he got a buffet himself; and they were always +inviting him to join in. They called him "Johnny Bull," and invited him +with excessive familiarity to take a hand. At first he had endured all +this with good nature, but latterly he had shown by his manner that it +was distinctly distasteful to him, and very soon he saw a change in the +manner of these young people toward him. They were souring on him as +they would have expressed it in their language. He had never been what +might be called popular. That was hardly the phrase for it; he had +merely been liked, but now dislike for him was growing. His case was not +helped by the fact that he was out of luck, couldn't get work, didn't +belong to a union, and couldn't gain admission to one. He got a good many +slights of that small ill-defined sort that you can't quite put your +finger on, and it was manifest that there was only one thing which +protected him from open insult, and that was his muscle. These young +people had seen him exercising, mornings, after his cold sponge bath, +and they had perceived by his performance and the build of his body, +that he was athletic, and also versed in boxing. He felt pretty naked +now, recognizing that he was shorn of all respect except respect for his +fists. One night when he entered his room he found about a dozen of the +young fellows there carrying on a very lively conversation punctuated +with horse-laughter. The talking ceased instantly, and the frank affront +of a dead silence followed. He said, + +"Good evening gentlemen," and sat down. + +There was no response. He flushed to the temples but forced himself to +maintain silence. He sat there in this uncomfortable stillness some +time, then got up and went out. + +The moment he had disappeared he heard a prodigious shout of laughter +break forth. He saw that their plain purpose had been to insult him. +He ascended to the flat roof, hoping to be able to cool down his spirit +there and get back his tranquility. He found the young tinner up there, +alone and brooding, and entered into conversation with him. They were +pretty fairly matched, now, in unpopularity and general ill-luck and +misery, and they had no trouble in meeting upon this common ground with +advantage and something of comfort to both. But Tracy's movements had +been watched, and in a few minutes the tormentors came straggling one +after another to the roof, where they began to stroll up and down in an +apparently purposeless way. But presently they fell to dropping remarks +that were evidently aimed at Tracy, and some of them at the tinner. +The ringleader of this little mob was a short-haired bully and amateur +prize-fighter named Allen, who was accustomed to lording it over the +upper floor, and had more than once shown a disposition to make trouble +with Tracy. Now there was an occasional cat-call, and hootings, and +whistlings, and finally the diversion of an exchange of connected remarks +was introduced: + +"How many does it take to make a pair?" + +"Well, two generally makes a pair, but sometimes there ain't stuff enough +in them to make a whole pair." General laugh. + +"What were you saying about the English a while ago?" + +"Oh, nothing, the English are all right, only--I--" + +"What was it you said about them?" + +"Oh, I only said they swallow well." + +"Swallow better than other people?" + +"Oh, yes, the English swallow a good deal better than other people." + +"What is it they swallow best?" + +"Oh, insults." Another general laugh. + +"Pretty hard to make 'em fight, ain't it?" + +"No, taint hard to make 'em fight." + +"Ain't it, really?" + +"No, taint hard. It's impossible." Another laugh. + +"This one's kind of spiritless, that's certain." + +"Couldn't be the other way--in his case." + +"Why?" + +"Don't you know the secret of his birth?" + +"No! has he got a secret of his birth?" + +"You bet he has." + +"What is it?" + +"His father was a wax-figger." + +Allen came strolling by where the pair were sitting; stopped, and said to +the tinner; + +"How are you off for friends, these days?" + +"Well enough off." + +"Got a good many?" + +"Well, as many as I need." + +"A friend is valuable, sometimes--as a protector, you know. What do you +reckon would happen if I was to snatch your cap off and slap you in the +face with it?" + +"Please don't trouble me, Mr. Allen, I ain't doing anything to you." + +You answer me! What do you reckon would happen?" + +"Well, I don't know." + +Tracy spoke up with a good deal of deliberation and said: + +"Don't trouble the young fellow, I can tell you what would happen." + +"Oh, you can, can you? Boys, Johnny Bull can tell us what would happen +if I was to snatch this chump's cap off and slap him in the face with it. +Now you'll see." + +He snatched the cap and struck the youth in the face, and before he could +inquire what was going to happen, it had already happened, and he was +warming the tin with the broad of his back. Instantly there was a rush, +and shouts of: + +"A ring, a ring, make a ring! Fair play all round! Johnny's grit; give +him a chance." + +The ring was quickly chalked on the tin, and Tracy found himself as eager +to begin as he could have been if his antagonist had been a prince +instead of a mechanic. At bottom he was a little surprised at this, +because although his theories had been all in that direction for some +time, he was not prepared to find himself actually eager to measure +strength with quite so common a man as this ruffian. In a moment all the +windows in the neighborhood were filled with people, and the roofs also. +The men squared off, and the fight began. But Allen stood no chance +whatever, against the young Englishman. Neither in muscle nor in science +was he his equal. He measured his length on the tin time and again; +in fact, as fast as he could get up he went down again, and the applause +was kept up in liberal fashion from all the neighborhood around. +Finally, Allen had to be helped up. Then Tracy declined to punish him +further and the fight was at an end. Allen was carried off by some of +his friends in a very much humbled condition, his face black and blue and +bleeding, and Tracy was at once surrounded by the young fellows, who +congratulated him, and told him that he had done the whole house a +service, and that from this out Mr. Allen would be a little more +particular about how he handled slights and insults and maltreatment +around amongst the boarders. + +Tracy was a hero now, and exceedingly popular. Perhaps nobody had ever +been quite so popular on that upper floor before. But if being +discountenanced by these young fellows had been hard to bear, their +lavish commendations and approval and hero-worship was harder still to +endure. He felt degraded, but he did not allow himself to analyze the +reasons why, too closely. He was content to satisfy himself with the +suggestion that he looked upon himself as degraded by the public +spectacle which he had made of himself, fighting on a tin roof, for the +delectation of everybody a block or two around. But he wasn't entirely +satisfied with that explanation of it. Once he went a little too far and +wrote in his diary that his case was worse than that of the prodigal son. +He said the prodigal son merely fed swine, he didn't have to chum with +them. But he struck that out, and said "All men are equal. I will not +disown my principles. These men are as good as I am." + +Tracy was become popular on the lower floors also. Everybody was +grateful for Allen's reduction to the ranks, and for his transformation +from a doer of outrages to a mere threatener of them. The young girls, +of whom there were half a dozen, showed many attentions to Tracy, +particularly that boarding house pet Hattie, the landlady's daughter. +She said to him, very sweetly, + +"I think you're ever so nice." + +And when he said, "I'm glad you think so, Miss Hattie," she said, still +more sweetly, + +"Don't call me Miss Hattie--call me Puss." + +Ah, here was promotion! He had struck the summit. There were no higher +heights to climb in that boarding house. His popularity was complete. + +In the presence of people, Tracy showed a tranquil outside, but his heart +was being eaten out of him by distress and despair. + +In a little while he should be out of money, and then what should he do? +He wished, now, that he had borrowed a little more liberally from that +stranger's store. He found it impossible to sleep. A single torturing, +terrifying thought went racking round and round in his head, wearing a +groove in his brain: What should he do--What was to become of him? And +along with it began to intrude a something presently which was very like +a wish that he had not joined the great and noble ranks of martyrdom, but +had stayed at home and been content to be merely an earl and nothing +better, with nothing more to do in this world of a useful sort than an +earl finds to do. But he smothered that part of his thought as well as +he could; he made every effort to drive it away, and with fair keep it +from intruding a little success, but he couldn't now and then, and when +it intruded it came suddenly and nipped him like a bite, a sting, a burn. +He recognized that thought by the peculiar sharpness of its pang. The +others were painful enough, but that one cut to the quick when it calm. +Night after night he lay tossing to the music of the hideous snoring of +the honest bread-winners until two and three o'clock in the morning, +then got up and took refuge on the roof, where he sometimes got a nap and +sometimes failed entirely. His appetite was leaving him and the zest of +life was going along with it. Finally, owe day, being near the imminent +verge of total discouragement, he said to himself--and took occasion to +blush privately when he said it, "If my father knew what my American name +is,--he--well, my duty to my father rather requires that I furnish him my +name. I have no right to make his days and nights unhappy, I can do +enough unhappiness for the family all by myself. Really he ought to know +what my American name is." He thought over it a while and framed a +cablegram in his mind to this effect: + +"My American name is Howard Tracy." + +That wouldn't be suggesting anything. His father could understand that +as he chose, and doubtless he would understand it as it was meant, as a +dutiful and affectionate desire on the part of a son to make his old +father happy for a moment. Continuing his train of thought, Tracy said +to himself, "Ah, but if he should cable me to come home! I--I--couldn't +do that--I mustn't do that. I've started out on a mission, and I mustn't +turn my back on it in cowardice. No, no, I couldn't go home, at--at-- +least I shouldn't want to go home." After a reflective pause: "Well, +maybe--perhaps--it would be my duty to go in the circumstances; he's very +old and he does need me by him to stay his footsteps down the long hill +that inclines westward toward the sunset of his life. Well, I'll think +about that. Yes, of course it wouldn't be right to stay here. If I-- +well, perhaps I could just drop him a line and put it off a little while +and satisfy him in that way. It would be--well, it would mar everything +to have him require me to come instantly." Another reflective pause-- +then: "And yet if he should do that I don't know but--oh, dear me--home! +how good it sounds! and a body is excusable for wanting to see his home +again, now and then, anyway." + +He went to one of the telegraph offices in the avenue and got the first +end of what Barrow called the "usual Washington courtesy," where "they +treat you as a tramp until they find out you're a congressman, and then +they slobber all over you." There was a boy of seventeen on duty there, +tying his shoe. He had his foot on a chair and his back turned towards +the wicket. He glanced over his shoulder, took Tracy's measure, turned +back, and went on tying his shoe. Tracy finished writing his telegram +and waited, still waited, and still waited, for that performance to +finish, but there didn't seem to be any finish to it; so finally Tracy +said: + +"Can't you take my telegram?" + +The youth looked over his shoulder and said, by his manner, not his +words: + +"Don't you think you could wait a minute, if you tried?" + +However, he got the shoe tied at last, and came and took the telegram, +glanced over it, then looked up surprised, at Tracy. There was something +in his look that bordered upon respect, almost reverence, it seemed to +Tracy, although he had been so long without anything of this kind he was +not sure that he knew the signs of it. + +The boy read the address aloud, with pleased expression in face and +voice. + +"The Earl of Rossmore! Cracky! Do you know him?" + +"Yes." + +"Is that so! Does he know you?" + +"Well--yes." + +"Well, I swear! Will he answer you?" + +"I think he will." + +"Will he though? Where'll you have it sent?" + +"Oh, nowhere. I'll call here and get it. When shall I call?" + +"Oh, I don't know--I'll send it to you. Where shall I send it? Give me +your address; I'll send it to you soon's it comes." + +But Tracy didn't propose to do this. He had acquired the boy's +admiration and deferential respect, and he wasn't willing to throw these +precious things away, a result sure to follow if he should give the +address of that boarding house. So he said again that he would call and +get the telegram, and went his way. + +He idled along, reflecting. He said to himself, "There is something +pleasant about being respected. I have acquired the respect of Mr. +Allen and some of those others, and almost the deference of some of them +on pure merit, for having thrashed Allen. While their respect and their +deference--if it is deference--is pleasant, a deference based upon a +sham, a shadow, does really seem pleasanter still. It's no real merit to +be in correspondence with an earl, and yet after all, that boy makes me +feel as if there was." + +The cablegram was actually gone home! the thought of it gave him an +immense uplift. He walked with a lighter tread. His heart was full of +happiness. He threw aside all hesitances and confessed to himself that +he was glad through and through that he was going to give up this +experiment and go back to his home again. His eagerness to get his +father's answer began to grow, now, and it grew with marvelous celerity, +after it began. He waited an hour, walking about, putting in his time as +well as he could, but interested in nothing that came under his eye, and +at last he presented himself at the office again and asked if any answer +had come yet. The boy said, + +"No, no answer yet," then glanced at the clock and added, "I don't think +it's likely you'll get one to-day." + +"Why not?" + +"Well, you see it's getting pretty late. You can't always tell where +'bouts a man is when he's on the other side, and you can't always find +him just the minute you want him, and you see it's getting about six +o'clock now, and over there it's pretty late at night." + +"Why yes," said Tracy, "I hadn't thought of that." + +"Yes, pretty late, now, half past ten or eleven. Oh yes, you probably +won't get any answer to-night." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +So Tracy went home to supper. The odors in that supper room seemed more +strenuous and more horrible than ever before, and he was happy in the +thought that he was so soon to be free from them again. When the supper +was over he hardly knew whether he had eaten any of it or not, and he +certainly hadn't heard any of the conversation. His heart had been +dancing all the time, his thoughts had been faraway from these things, +and in the visions of his mind the sumptuous appointments of his father's +castle had risen before him without rebuke. Even the plushed flunkey, +that walking symbol of a sham inequality, had not been unpleasant to his +dreaming view. After the meal Barrow said, + +"Come with me. I'll give you a jolly evening." + +"Very good. Where are you going?" + +"To my club." + +"What club is that?" + +"Mechanics' Debating Club." + +Tracy shuddered, slightly. He didn't say anything about having visited +that place himself. Somehow he didn't quite relish the memory of that +time. The sentiments which had made his former visit there so enjoyable, +and filled him with such enthusiasm, had undergone a gradual change, and +they had rotted away to such a degree that he couldn't contemplate +another visit there with anything strongly resembling delight. In fact +he was a little ashamed to go; he didn't want to go there and find out by +the rude impact of the thought of those people upon his reorganized +condition of mind, how sharp the change had been. He would have +preferred to stay away. He expected that now he should hear nothing +except sentiments which would be a reproach to him in his changed mental +attitude, and he rather wished he might be excused. And yet he didn't +quite want to say that, he didn't want to show how he did feel, or show +any disinclination to go, and so he forced himself to go along with +Barrow, privately purposing to take an early opportunity to get away. + +After the essayist of the evening had read his paper, the chairman +announced that the debate would now be upon the subject of the previous +meeting, "The American Press." It saddened the backsliding disciple to +hear this announcement. It brought up too many reminiscences. He wished +he had happened upon some other subject. But the debate began, and he +sat still and listened. + +In the course of the discussion one of the speakers--a blacksmith named +Tompkins--arraigned all monarchs and all lords in the earth for their +cold selfishness in retaining their unearned dignities. He said that no +monarch and no son of a monarch, no lord and no son of a lord ought to be +able to look his fellow man in the face without shame. Shame for +consenting to keep his unearned titles, property, and privileges--at the +expense of other people; shame for consenting to remain, on any terms, in +dishonourable possession of these things, which represented bygone +robberies and wrongs inflicted upon the general people of the nation. +He said, "if there were a laid or the son of a lord here, I would like to +reason with him, and try to show him how unfair and how selfish his +position is. I would try to persuade him to relinquish it, take his +place among men on equal terms, earn the bread he eats, and hold of +slight value all deference paid him because of artificial position, all +reverence not the just due of his own personal merits." + +Tracy seemed to be listening to utterances of his own made in talks with +his radical friends in England. It was as if some eavesdropping +phonograph had treasured up his words and brought them across the +Atlantic to accuse him with them in the hour of his defection and +retreat. Every word spoken by this stranger seemed to leave a blister on +Tracy's conscience, and by the time the speech was finished he felt that +he was all conscience and one blister. This man's deep compassion for +the enslaved and oppressed millions in Europe who had to bear with the +contempt of that small class above them, throned upon shining heights +whose paths were shut against them, was the very thing he had often +uttered himself. The pity in this man's voice and words was the very +twin of the pity that used to reside in his own heart and come from his +own lips when he thought of these oppressed peoples. + +The homeward tramp was accomplished in brooding silence. It was a +silence most grateful to Tracy's feelings. He wouldn't have broken it +for anything; for he was ashamed of himself all the way through to his +spine. He kept saying to himself: + +"How unanswerable it all is--how absolutely unanswerable! It is basely, +degradingly selfish to keep those unearned honors, and--and--oh, hang +it, nobody but a cur--" + +"What an idiotic damned speech that Tompkins made!" + +This outburst was from Barrow. It flooded Tracy's demoralized soul with +waters of refreshment. These were the darlingest words the poor +vacillating young apostate had ever heard--for they whitewashed his shame +for him, and that is a good service to have when you can't get the best +of all verdicts, self-acquittal. + +"Come up to my room and smoke a pipe, Tracy." + +Tracy had been expecting this invitation, and had had his declination all +ready: but he was glad enough to accept, now. Was it possible that a +reasonable argument could be made against that man's desolating speech? +He was burning to hear Barrow try it. He knew how to start him, and keep +him going: it was to seem to combat his positions--a process effective +with most people. + +"What is it you object to in Tompkins's speech, Barrow?" + +"Oh, the leaving out of the factor of human nature; requiring another man +to do what you wouldn't do yourself." + +"Do you mean--" + +"Why here's what I mean; it's very simple. Tompkins is a blacksmith; has +a family; works for wages; and hard, too--fooling around won't furnish +the bread. Suppose it should turn out that by the death of somebody in +England he is suddenly an earl--income, half a million dollars a year. +What would he do?" + +"Well, I--I suppose he would have to decline to--" + +"Man, he would grab it in a second!" + +"Do you really think he would?" + +"Think?--I don't think anything about it, I know it." + +"Why?" + +"Because he's not a fool." + +"So you think that if he were a fool, he--" + +"No, I don't. Fool or no fool, he would grab it. Anybody would. +Anybody that's alive. And I've seen dead people that would get up and go +for it. I would myself." + +"This was balm, this was healing, this was rest and peace and comfort." + +"But I thought you were opposed to nobilities." + +"Transmissible ones, yes. But that's nothing. I'm opposed to +millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position." + +"You'd take it?" + +"I would leave the funeral of my dearest enemy to go and assume its +burdens and responsibilities." + +Tracy thought a while, then said: + +"I don't know that I quite get the bearings of your position. You say +you are opposed to hereditary nobilities, and yet if you had the chance +you would--" + +"Take one? In a minute I would. And there isn't a mechanic in that +entire club that wouldn't. There isn't a lawyer, doctor, editor, author, +tinker, loafer, railroad president, saint-land, there isn't a human being +in the United States that wouldn't jump at the chance!" + +"Except me," said Tracy softly. + +"Except you!" Barrow could hardly get the words out, his scorn so +choked him. And he couldn't get any further than that form of words; +it seemed to dam his flow, utterly. He got up and came and glared upon +Tracy in a kind of outraged and unappeasable way, and said again, "Except +you!" He walked around him--inspecting him from one point of view and +then another, and relieving his soul now and then by exploding that +formula at him; "Except you!" Finally he slumped down into his chair +with the air of one who gives it up, and said: + +"He's straining his viscera and he's breaking his heart trying to get +some low-down job that a good dog wouldn't have, and yet wants to let on +that if he had a chance to scoop an earldom he wouldn't do it. Tracy, +don't put this kind of a strain on me. Lately I'm not as strong as I +was." + +"Well, I wasn't meaning to put--a strain on you, Barrow, I was only +meaning to intimate that if an earldom ever does fall in my way--" + +"There--I wouldn't give myself any worry about that, if I was you. And +besides, I can settle what you would do. Are you any different from me?" + +"Well--no." + +"Are you any better than me?" + +"O,--er--why, certainly not." + +"Are you as good? Come!" + +"Indeed, I--the fact is you take me so suddenly--" + +"Suddenly? What is there sudden about it? It isn't a difficult question +is it? Or doubtful? Just measure us on the only fair lines--the lines +of merit--and of course you'll admit that a journeyman chairmaker that +earns his twenty dollars a week, and has had the good and genuine culture +of contact with men, and care, and hardship, and failure, and success, +and downs and ups and ups and downs, is just a trifle the superior of a +young fellow like you, who doesn't know how to do anything that's +valuable, can't earn his living in any secure and steady way, hasn't had +any experience of life and its seriousness, hasn't any culture but the +artificial culture of books, which adorns but doesn't really educate +--come! if I wouldn't scorn an earldom, what the devil right have you +to do it!" + +Tracy dissembled his joy, though he wanted to thank the chair-maker for +that last remark. Presently a thought struck him, and he spoke up +briskly and said: + +"But look here, I really can't quite get the hang of your notions--your, +principles, if they are principles. You are inconsistent. You are +opposed to aristocracies, yet you'd take an earldom if you could. Am I +to understand that you don't blame an earl for being and remaining an +earl?" + +"I certainly don't." + +"And you wouldn't blame Tompkins, or yourself, or me, or anybody, for +accepting an earldom if it was offered?" + +"Indeed I wouldn't." + +"Well, then, who would you blame?" + +"The whole nation--any bulk and mass of population anywhere, in any +country, that will put up with the infamy, the outrage, the insult of a +hereditary aristocracy which they can't enter--and on absolutely free and +equal terms." + +"Come, aren't you beclouding yourself with distinctions that are not +differences?" + +"Indeed I am not. I am entirely clear-headed about this thing. If I +could extirpate an aristocratic system by declining its honors, then I +should be a rascal to accept them. And if enough of the mass would join +me to make the extirpation possible, then I should be a rascal to do +otherwise than help in the attempt." + +"I believe I understand--yes, I think I get the idea. You have no blame +for the lucky few who naturally decline to vacate the pleasant nest they +were born into, you only despise the all-powerful and stupid mass of the +nation for allowing the nest to exist." + +"That's it, that's it! You can get a simple thing through your head if +you work at it long enough." + +"Thanks." + +"Don't mention it. And I'll give you some sound advice: when you go +back; if you find your nation up and ready to abolish that hoary affront, +lend a hand; but if that isn't the state of things and you get a chance +at an earldom, don't you be a fool--you take it." + +Tracy responded with earnestness and enthusiasm: + +"As I live, I'll do it!" + +Barrow laughed. + +"I never saw such a fellow. I begin to think you've got a good deal of +imagination. With you, the idlest-fancy freezes into a reality at a +breath. Why, you looked, then, as if it wouldn't astonish you if you did +tumble into an earldom." + +Tracy blushed. Barrow added: "Earldom! Oh, yes, take it, if it offers; +but meantime we'll go on looking around, in a modest way, and if you get +a chance to superintend a sausage-stuffer at six or eight dollars a week, +you just trade off the earldom for a last year's almanac and stick to the +sausage-stuffing," + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +Tracy went to bed happy once more, at rest in his mind once more. He had +started out on a high emprise--that was to his credit, he argued; he had +fought the best fight he could, considering the odds against him--that +was to his credit; he had been defeated--certainly there was nothing +discreditable in that. Being defeated, he had a right to retire with the +honors of war and go back without prejudice to the position in the +world's society to which he had been born. Why not? even the rabid +republican chair-maker would do that. Yes, his conscience was +comfortable once more. + +He woke refreshed, happy, and eager for his cablegram. He had been born +an aristocrat, he had been a democrat for a time, he was now an +aristocrat again. He marveled to find that this final change was not +merely intellectual, it had invaded his feeling; and he also marveled to +note that this feeling seemed a good deal less artificial than any he had +entertained in his system for a long time. He could also have noted, +if he had thought of it, that his bearing had stiffened, over night, +and that his chin had lifted itself a shade. Arrived in the basement, +he was about to enter the breakfast room when he saw old Marsh in the dim +light of a corner of the hall, beckoning him with his finger to approach. +The blood welled slowly up in Tracy's cheek, and he said with a grade of +injured dignity almost ducal: + +"Is that for me?" + +"Yes." + +"What is the purpose of it?" + +"I want to speak to you--in private." + +"This spot is private enough for me." + +Marsh was surprised; and not particularly pleased. He approached and +said: + +"Oh, in public, then, if you prefer. Though it hasn't been my way." + +The boarders gathered to the spot, interested. + +"Speak out," said Tracy. "What is it you want?" + +"Well, haven't you--er--forgot something?" + +"I? I'm not aware of it." + +"Oh, you're not? Now you stop and think, a minute." + +"I refuse to stop and think. It doesn't interest me. If it interests +you, speak out." + +"Well, then," said Marsh, raising his voice to a slightly angry pitch, +"You forgot to pay your board yesterday--if you're bound to have it +public." + +Oh, yes, this heir to an annual million or so had been dreaming and +soaring, and had forgotten that pitiful three or four dollars. For +penalty he must have it coarsely flung in his face in the presence of +these people--people in whose countenances was already beginning to dawn +an uncharitable enjoyment of the situation. + +"Is that all! Take your money and give your terrors a rest." + +Tracy's hand went down into his pocket with angry decision. But--it +didn't come out. The color began to ebb out of his face. The +countenances about him showed a growing interest; and some of them a +heightened satisfaction. There was an uncomfortable pause--then he +forced out, with difficulty, the words: + +"I've--been robbed!" + +Old Marsh's eyes flamed up with Spanish fire, and he exclaimed: + +"Robbed, is it? That's your tune? It's too old--been played in this +house too often; everybody plays it that can't get work when he wants it, +and won't work when he can get it. Trot out Mr. Allen, somebody, and let +him take a toot at it. It's his turn next, he forgot, too, last night. +I'm laying for him." + +One of the negro women came scrambling down stairs as pale as a sorrel +horse with consternation and excitement: + +"Misto Marsh, Misto Allen's skipped out!" + +"What!" + +"Yes-sah, and cleaned out his room clean; tuck bofe towels en de soap!" + +"You lie, you hussy!" + +"It's jes' so, jes' as I tells you--en Misto Summer's socks is gone, en +Misto Naylor's yuther shirt." + +Mr. Marsh was at boiling point by this time. He turned upon Tracy: + +"Answer up now--when are you going to settle?" + +"To-day--since you seem to be in a hurry." + +"To-day is it? Sunday--and you out of work? I like that. Come--where +are you going to get the money?" + +Tracy's spirit was rising again. He proposed to impress these people: + +"I am expecting a cablegram from home." + +Old Marsh was caught out, with the surprise of it. The idea was so +immense, so extravagant, that he couldn't get his breath at first. When +he did get it, it came rancid with sarcasm. + +"A cablegram--think of it, ladies and gents, he's expecting a cablegram! +He's expecting a cablegram--this duffer, this scrub, this bilk! From his +father--eh? Yes--without a doubt. A dollar or two a word--oh, that's +nothing--they don't mind a little thing like that--this kind's fathers +don't. Now his father is--er--well, I reckon his father--" + +"My father is an English earl!" + +The crowd fell back aghast-aghast at the sublimity of the young loafer's +"cheek." Then they burst into a laugh that made the windows rattle. +Tracy was too angry to realize that he had done a foolish thing. He +said: + +"Stand aside, please. I--" + +"Wait a minute, your lordship," said Marsh, bowing low, "where is your +lordship going?" + +"For the cablegram. Let me pass." + +"Excuse me, your lordship, you'll stay right where you are." + +"What do you mean by that?" + +"I mean that I didn't begin to keep boarding-house yesterday. It means +that I am not the kind that can be taken in by every hack-driver's son +that comes loafing over here because he can't bum a living at home. It +means that you can't skip out on any such--" + +Tracy made a step toward the old man, but Mrs. Marsh sprang between, and +said: + +"Don't, Mr. Tracy, please." She turned to her husband and said, "Do +bridle your tongue. What has he done to be treated so? Can't you see he +has lost his mind, with trouble and distress? He's not responsible." + +"Thank your kind heart, madam, but I've not lost my mind; and if I can +have the mere privilege of stepping to the telegraph office--" + +"Well, you can't," cried Marsh. + +"--or sending--" + +"Sending! That beats everything. If there's anybody that's fool enough +to go on such a chuckle-headed errand--" + +"Here comes Mr. Barrow--he will go for me. Barrow--" + +A brisk fire of exclamations broke out-- + +"Say, Barrow, he's expecting a cablegram!" + +"Cablegram from his father, you know!" + +"Yes--cablegram from the wax-figger!" + +"And say, Barrow, this fellow's an earl--take off your hat, pull down +your vest!" + +"Yes, he's come off and forgot his crown, that he wears Sundays. He's +cabled over to his pappy to send it." + +"You step out and get that cablegram, Barrow; his majesty's a little lame +to-day." + +"Oh stop," cried Barrow; "give the man a chance." He turned, and said +with some severity, "Tracy, what's the matter with you? What kind of +foolishness is this you've been talking. You ought to have more sense." + +"I've not been talking foolishness; and if you'll go to the telegraph +office--" + +"Oh; don't talk so. I'm your friend in trouble and out of it, before +your face and behind your back, for anything in reason; but you've lost +your head, you see, and this moonshine about a cablegram--" + +"I'll go there and ask for it!" + +"Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Brady. Here, I'll give you a +Written order for it. Fly, now, and fetch it. We'll soon see!" + +Brady flew. Immediately the sort of quiet began to steal over the crowd +which means dawning doubt, misgiving; and might be translated into the +words, "Maybe he is expecting a cablegram--maybe he has got a father +somewhere--maybe we've been just a little too fresh, just a shade too +'previous'!" + +Loud talk ceased; then the mutterings and low murmurings and whisperings +died out. The crowd began to crumble apart. By ones and twos the +fragments drifted to the breakfast table. Barrow tried to bring Tracy +in; but he said: + +"Not yet, Barrow--presently." + +Mrs. Marsh and Hattie tried, offering gentle and kindly persuasions; but +he said; + +"I would rather wait--till he comes." + +Even old Marsh began to have suspicions that maybe he had been a trifle +too "brash," as he called it in the privacy of his soul, and he pulled +himself together and started toward Tracy with invitation in his eyes; +but Tracy warned him off with a gesture which was quite positive and +eloquent. Then followed the stillest quarter of an hour which had ever +been known in that house at that time of day. It was so still, and so +solemn withal, that when somebody's cup slipped from his fingers and +landed in his plate the shock made people start, and the sharp sound +seemed as indecorous there and as out of place as if a coffin and +mourners were imminent and being waited for. And at last when Brady's +feet came clattering down the stairs the sacrilege seemed unbearable. +Everybody rose softly and turned toward the door, where stood Tracy; +then with a common impulse, moved a step or two in that direction, and +stopped. While they gazed, young Brady arrived, panting, and put into +Tracy's hand,--sure enough--an envelope. Tracy fastened a bland +victorious eye upon the gazers, and kept it there till one by one they +dropped their eyes, vanquished and embarrassed. Then he tore open the +telegram and glanced at its message. The yellow paper fell from his +fingers and fluttered to the floor, and his face turned white. There was +nothing there but one word-- + +"Thanks." + +The humorist of the house, the tall, raw-boned Billy Nash, caulker from +the navy yard, was standing in the rear of the crowd. In the midst of +the pathetic silence that was now brooding over the place and moving some +few hearts there toward compassion, he began to whimper, then he put his +handkerchief to his eyes and buried his face in the neck of the +bashfulest young fellow in the company, a navy-yard blacksmith, shrieked +"Oh, pappy, how could you!" and began to bawl like a teething baby, if +one may imagine a baby with the energy and the devastating voice of a +jackass. + +So perfect was that imitation of a child's cry, and so vast the scale of +it and so ridiculous the aspect of the performer, that all gravity was +swept from the place as if by a hurricane, and almost everybody there +joined in the crash of laughter provoked by the exhibition. Then the +small mob began to take its revenge--revenge for the discomfort and +apprehension it had brought upon itself by its own too rash freshness of +a little while before. It guyed its poor victim, baited him, worried +him, as dogs do with a cornered cat. The victim answered back with +defiances and challenges which included everybody, and which only gave +the sport new spirit and variety; but when he changed his tactics and +began to single out individuals and invite them by name, the fun lost its +funniness and the interest of the show died out, along with the noise. + +Finally Marsh was about to take an innings, but Barrow said: + +"Never mind, now--leave him alone. You've no account with him but a +money account. I'll take care of that myself." + +The distressed and worried landlady gave Barrow a fervently grateful look +for his championship of the abused stranger; and the pet of the house, a +very prism in her cheap but ravishing Sunday rig, blew him a kiss from +the tips of her fingers and said, with the darlingest smile and a sweet +little toss of her head: + +"You're the only man here, and I'm going to set my cap for you, you dear +old thing!" + +"For shame, Puss! How you talk! I never saw such a child!" + +It took a good deal of argument and persuasion--that is to say, petting, +under these disguises--to get Tracy to entertain the idea of breakfast. +He at first said he would never eat again in that house; and added that +he had enough firmness of character, he trusted, to enable him to starve +like a man when the alternative was to eat insult with his bread. + +When he had finished his breakfast, Barrow took him to his room, +furnished him a pipe, and said cheerily: + +"Now, old fellow, take in your battle-flag out of the wet, you're not in +the hostile camp any more. You're a little upset by your troubles, +and that's natural enough, but don't let your mind run on them anymore +than you can help; drag your thoughts away from your troubles by the +ears, by the heels, or any other way, so you manage it; it's the +healthiest thing a body can do; dwelling on troubles is deadly, just +deadly--and that's the softest name there is for it. You must keep your +mind amused--you must, indeed." + +"Oh, miserable me!" + +"Don't! There's just pure heart-break in that tone. It's just as I say; +you've got to get right down to it and amuse your mind, as if it was +salvation." + +"They're easy words to say, Barrow, but how am I going to amuse, +entertain, divert a mind that finds itself suddenly assaulted and +overwhelmed by disasters of a sort not dreamed of and not provided for? +No--no, the bare idea of amusement is repulsive to my feelings: Let us +talk of death and funerals." + +"No--not yet. That would be giving up the ship. We'll not give up the +ship yet. I'm going to amuse you; I sent Brady out for the wherewithal +before you finished breakfast." + +"You did? What is it?" + +"Come, this is a good sign--curiosity. Oh, there's hope for you yet." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +Brady arrived with a box, and departed, after saying, "They're finishing +one up, but they'll be along as soon as it's done." + +Barrow took a frameless oil portrait a foot square from the box, set it +up in a good light, without comment, and reached for another, taking a +furtive glance at Tracy, meantime. The stony solemnity in Tracy's face +remained as it was, and gave out no sign of interest. Barrow placed the +second portrait beside the first, and stole another glance while reaching +for a third. The stone image softened, a shade. No. 3 forced the ghost +of a smile, No. 4 swept indifference wholly away, and No. 5 started a +laugh which was still in good and hearty condition when No. 14 took its +place in the row. + +"Oh, you're all right, yet," said Barrow. "You see you're not past +amusement." + +The pictures were fearful, as to color, and atrocious as to drawing and +expression; but the feature which squelched animosity and made them funny +was a feature which could not achieve its full force in a single picture, +but required the wonder-working assistance of repetition. One loudly +dressed mechanic in stately attitude, with his hand on a cannon, ashore, +and a ship riding at anchor in the offing,--this is merely odd; but when +one sees the same cannon and the same ship in fourteen pictures in a row, +and a different mechanic standing watch in each, the thing gets to be +funny. + +"Explain--explain these aberrations," said Tracy. + +"Well, they are not the achievement of a single intellect, a single +talent--it takes two to do these miracles. They are collaborations; +the one artist does the figure, the other the accessories. The +figure-artist is a German shoemaker with an untaught passion for art, +the other is a simple hearted old Yankee sailor-man whose possibilities +are strictly limited to his ship, his cannon and his patch of petrified +sea. They work these things up from twenty-five-cent tintypes; they get +six dollars apiece for them, and they can grind out a couple a day when +they strike what they call a boost--that is, an inspiration." + +"People actually pay money for these calumnies?" + +"They actually do--and quite willingly, too. And these abortionists +could double their trade and work the women in, if Capt. Saltmarsh could +whirl a horse in, or a piano, or a guitar, in place of his cannon. The +fact is, he fatigues the market with that cannon. Even the male market, +I mean. These fourteen in the procession are not all satisfied. One is +an old "independent" fireman, and he wants an engine in place of the +cannon; another is a mate of a tug, and wants a tug in place of the ship +--and so on, and so on. But the captain can't make a tug that is +deceptive, and a fire engine is many flights beyond his power." + +"This is a most extraordinary form of robbery, I never have heard of +anything like it. It's interesting." + +"Yes, and so are the artists. They are perfectly honest men, and +sincere. And the old sailor-man is full of sound religion, and is as +devoted a student of the Bible and misquoter of it as you can find +anywhere. I don't know a better man or kinder hearted old soul than +Saltmarsh, although he does swear a little, sometimes." + +"He seems to be perfect. I want to know him, Barrow." + +"You'll have the chance. I guess I hear them coming, now. We'll draw +them out on their art, if you like." + +The artists arrived and shook hands with great heartiness. The German +was forty and a little fleshy, with a shiny bald head and a kindly face +and deferential manner. Capt. Saltmarsh was sixty, tall, erect, +powerfully built, with coal-black hair and whiskers, and he had a well +tanned complexion, and a gait and countenance that were full of command, +confidence and decision. His horny hands and wrists were covered with +tattoo-marks, and when his lips parted, his teeth showed up white and +blemishless. His voice was the effortless deep bass of a church organ, +and would disturb the tranquility of a gas flame fifty yards away. + +"They're wonderful pictures," said Barrow. "We've been examining them." + +"It is very bleasant dot you like dem," said Handel, the German, greatly +pleased. "Und you, Herr Tracy, you haf peen bleased mit dem too, +alretty?" + +"I can honestly say I have never seen anything just like them before." + +"Schon!" cried the German, delighted. "You hear, Gaptain? Here is a +chentleman, yes, vot abbreviate unser aart." + +The captain was charmed, and said: + +"Well, sir, we're thankful for a compliment yet, though they're not as +scarce now as they used to be before we made a reputation." + +"Getting the reputation is the up-hill time in most things, captain." + +"It's so. It ain't enough to know how to reef a gasket, you got to make +the mate know you know it. That's reputation. The good word, said at +the right time, that's the word that makes us; and evil be to him that +evil thinks, as Isaiah says." + +"It's very relevant, and hits the point exactly," said Tracy. + +"Where did you study art, Captain?" + +"I haven't studied; it's a natural gift." + +"He is born mit dose cannon in him. He tondt haf to do noding, his +chenius do all de vork. Of he is asleep, and take a pencil in his hand, +out come a cannon. Py crashus, of he could do a clavier, of he could do +a guitar, of he could do a vashtub, it is a fortune, heiliger Yohanniss +it is yoost a fortune!" + +"Well, it is an immense pity that the business is hindered and limited in +this unfortunate way." + +The captain grew a trifle excited, himself, now: + +"You've said it, Mr. Tracy!--Hindered? well, I should say so. Why, look +here. This fellow here, No. 11, he's a hackman,--a flourishing hackman, +I may say. He wants his hack in this picture. Wants it where the cannon +is. I got around that difficulty, by telling him the cannon's our +trademark, so to speak--proves that the picture's our work, and I was +afraid if we left it out people wouldn't know for certain if it was a +Saltmarsh--Handel--now you wouldn't yourself--" + +"What, Captain? You wrong yourself, indeed you do. Anyone who has once +seen a genuine Saltmarsh-Handel is safe from imposture forever. Strip +it, flay it, skin it out of every detail but the bare color and +expression, and that man will still recognize it--still stop to +worship--" + +"Oh, how it makes me feel to hear dose oxpressions!--" + +--"still say to himself again as he had, said a hundred times before, the +art of the Saltmarsh-Handel is an art apart, there is nothing in the +heavens above or in the earth beneath that resembles it,--" + +"Py chiminy, nur horen Sie einmal! In my life day haf I never heard so +brecious worts." + +"So I talked him out of the hack, Mr. Tracy, and he let up on that, and +said put in a hearse, then--because he's chief mate of a hearse but don't +own it--stands a watch for wages, you know. But I can't do a hearse any +more than I can a hack; so here we are--becalmed, you see. And it's the +same with women and such. They come and they want a little johnry +picture--" + +"It's the accessories that make it a 'genre?'" + +"Yes--cannon, or cat, or any little thing like that, that you heave into +whoop up the effect. We could do a prodigious trade with the women if we +could foreground the things they like, but they don't give a damn for +artillery. Mine's the lack," continued the captain with a sigh, "Andy's +end of the business is all right I tell you he's an artist from way +back!" + +"Yoost hear dot old man! He always talk 'poud me like dot," purred the +pleased German. + +"Look at his work yourself! Fourteen portraits in a row. And no two of +them alike." + +"Now that you speak of it, it is true; I hadn't noticed it before. It is +very remarkable. Unique, I suppose." + +"I should say so. That's the very thing about Andy--he discriminates. +Discrimination's the thief of time--forty-ninth Psalm; but that ain't any +matter, it's the honest thing, and it pays in the end." + +"Yes, he certainly is great in that feature, one is obliged to admit it; +but--now mind, I'm not really criticising--don't you think he is just a +trifle overstrong in technique?" + +The captain's face was knocked expressionless by this remark. It +remained quite vacant while he muttered to himself-- "Technique-- +technique--polytechnique--pyro-technique; that's it, likely--fireworks too +much color." Then he spoke up with serenity and confidence, and said: + +"Well, yes, he does pile it on pretty loud; but they all like it, you +know--fact is, it's the life of the business. Take that No. 9, there, +Evans the butcher. He drops into the stoodio as sober-colored as +anything you ever see: now look at him. You can't tell him from scarlet +fever. Well, it pleases that butcher to death. I'm making a study of a +sausage-wreath to hang on the cannon, and I don't really reckon I can do +it right, but if I can, we can break the butcher." + +"Unquestionably your confederate--I mean your--your fellow-craftsman-- +is a great colorist--" + +"Oh, danke schon!--" + +--"in fact a quite extraordinary colorist; a colorist, I make bold to +say, without imitator here or abroad--and with a most bold and effective +touch, a touch like a battering ram; and a manner so peculiar and +romantic, and extraneous, and ad libitum, and heart-searching, that-- +that--he--he is an impressionist, I presume?" + +"No," said the captain simply, "he is a Presbyterian." + +"It accounts for it all--all--there's something divine about his art,-- +soulful, unsatisfactory, yearning, dim hearkening on the void horizon, +vague--murmuring to the spirit out of ultra-marine distances and +far-sounding cataclysms of uncreated space--oh, if he--if, he--has he +ever tried distemper?" + +The captain answered up with energy: + +"Not if he knows himself! But his dog has, and--" + +"Oh, no, it vas not my dog." + +"Why, you said it was your dog." + +"Oh, no, gaptain, I--" + +"It was a white dog, wasn't it, with his tail docked, and one ear gone, +and--" + +"Dot's him, dot's him!--der fery dog. Wy, py Chorge, dot dog he would +eat baint yoost de same like--" + +"Well, never mind that, now--'vast heaving--I never saw such a man. You +start him on that dog and he'll dispute a year. Blamed if I haven't seen +him keep it up a level two hours and a half." + +"Why captain!" said Barrow. "I guess that must be hearsay." + +"No, sir, no hearsay about it--he disputed with me." + +"I don't see how you stood it." + +"Oh, you've got to--if you run with Andy. But it's the only fault he's +got." + +"Ain't you afraid of acquiring it?" + +"Oh, no," said the captain, tranquilly, "no danger of that, I reckon." + +The artists presently took their leave. Then Barrow put his hands on +Tracy's shoulders and said: + +"Look me in the eye, my boy. Steady, steady. There--it's just as I +thought--hoped, anyway; you're all right, thank goodness. Nothing the +matter with your mind. But don't do that again--even for fun. It isn't +wise. They wouldn't have believed you if you'd been an earl's son. +Why, they couldn't--don't you know that? What ever possessed you to take +such a freak? But never mind about that; let's not talk of it. It was a +mistake; you see that yourself." + +"Yes--it was a mistake." + +"Well, just drop it out of your, mind; it's no harm; we all make them. +Pull your courage together, and don't brood, and don't give up. I'm at +your back, and we'll pull through, don't you be afraid." + +When he was gone, Barrow walked the floor a good while, uneasy in his +mind. He said to himself, "I'm troubled about him. He never would have +made a break like that if he hadn't been a little off his balance. +But I know what being out of work and no prospect ahead can do for a man. +First it knocks the pluck out of him and drags his pride in the dirt; +worry does the rest, and his mind gets shaky. I must talk to these +people. No--if there's any humanity in them--and there is, at bottom-- +they'll be easier on him if they think his troubles have disturbed his +reason. But I've got to find him some work; work's the only medicine for +his disease. Poor devil! away off here, and not a friend." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +The moment Tracy was alone his spirits vanished away, and all the misery +of his situation was manifest to him. To be moneyless and an object of +the chairmaker's charity--this was bad enough, but his folly in +proclaiming himself an earl's son to that scoffing and unbelieving crew, +and, on top of that, the humiliating result--the recollection of these +things was a sharper torture still. He made up his mind that he would +never play earl's son again before a doubtful audience. + +His father's answer was a blow he could not understand. At times he +thought his father imagined he could get work to do in America without +any trouble, and was minded to let him try it and cure himself of his +radicalism by hard, cold, disenchanting experience. That seemed the most +plausible theory, yet he could not content himself with it. A theory +that pleased him better was, that this cablegram would be followed by +another, of a gentler sort, requiring him to come home. Should he write +and strike his flag, and ask for a ticket home? Oh, no, that he couldn't +ever do. At least, not yet. That cablegram would come, it certainly +would. So he went from one telegraph office to another every day for +nearly a week, and asked if there was a cablegram for Howard Tracy. +No, there wasn't any. So they answered him at first. Later, they said +it before he had a chance to ask. Later still they merely shook their +heads impatiently as soon as he came in sight. After that he was ashamed +to go any more. + +He was down in the lowest depths of despair, now; for the harder Barrow +tried to find work for him the more hopeless the possibilities seemed to +grow. At last he said to Barrow: + +"Look here. I want to make a confession. I have got down, now, to where +I am not only willing to acknowledge to myself that I am a shabby +creature and full of false pride, but am willing to acknowledge it to +you. Well, I've been allowing you to wear yourself out hunting for work +for me when there's been a chance open to me all the time. Forgive my +pride--what was left of it. It is all gone, now, and I've come to +confess that if those ghastly artists want another confederate, I'm their +man--for at last I am dead to shame." + +"No? Really, can you paint?" + +"Not as badly as they. No, I don't claim that, for I am not a genius; +in fact, I am a very indifferent amateur, a slouchy dabster, a mere +artistic sarcasm; but drunk or asleep I can beat those buccaneers." + +"Shake! I want to shout! Oh, I tell you, I am immensely delighted and +relieved. Oh, just to work--that is life! No matter what the work is-- +that's of no consequence. Just work itself is bliss when a man's been +starving for it. I've been there! Come right along; we'll hunt the old +boys up. Don't you feel good? I tell you I do." + +The freebooters were not at home. But their "works" were, displayed in +profusion all about the little ratty studio. Cannon to the right of +them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front--it was Balaclava come +again. + +"Here's the uncontented hackman, Tracy. Buckle to--deepen the sea-green +to turf, turn the ship into a hearse. Let the boys have a taste of your +quality." + +The artists arrived just as the last touch was put on. They stood +transfixed with admiration. + +"My souls but she's a stunner, that hearse! The hackman will just go all +to pieces when he sees that won't he Andy?" + +"Oh, it is sphlennid, sphlennid! Herr Tracy, why haf you not said you +vas a so sublime aartist? Lob' Gott, of you had lif'd in Paris you would +be a Pree de Rome, dot's votes de matter!" + +The arrangements were soon made. Tracy was taken into full and equal +partnership, and he went straight to work, with dash and energy, to +reconstructing gems of art whose accessories had failed to satisfy. +Under his hand, on that and succeeding days, artillery disappeared and +the emblems of peace and commerce took its place--cats, hacks, sausages, +tugs, fire engines, pianos, guitars, rocks, gardens, flower-pots, +landscapes--whatever was wanted, he flung it in; and the more out of +place and absurd the required object was, the more joy he got out of +fabricating it. The pirates were delighted, the customers applauded, the +sex began to flock in, great was the prosperity of the firm. Tracy was +obliged to confess to himself that there was something about work,--even +such grotesque and humble work as this--which most pleasantly satisfied a +something in his nature which had never been satisfied before, and also +gave him a strange new dignity in his own private view of himself. + + ....................... + +The Unqualified Member from Cherokee Strip was in a state of deep +dejection. For a good while, now, he had been leading a sort of life +which was calculated to kill; for it had consisted in regularly +alternating days of brilliant hope and black disappointment. The +brilliant hopes were created by the magician Sellers, and they always +promised that now he had got the trick, sure, and would effectively +influence that materialized cowboy to call at the Towers before night. +The black disappointments consisted in the persistent and monotonous +failure of these prophecies. + +At the date which this history has now reached, Sellers was appalled to +find that the usual remedy was inoperative, and that Hawkins's low +spirits refused absolutely to lift. Something must be done, he +reflected; it was heart-breaking, this woe, this smileless misery, +this dull despair that looked out from his poor friend's face. Yes, he +must be cheered up. He mused a while, then he saw his way. He said in +his most conspicuously casual vein: + +"Er--uh--by the way, Hawkins, we are feeling disappointed about this +thing--the way the materializee is acting, I mean--we are disappointed; +you concede that?" + +"Concede it? Why, yes, if you like the term." + +"Very well; so far, so good. Now for the basis of the feeling. It is +not that your heart, your affections are concerned; that is to say, it is +not that you want the materializee Itself. You concede that?" + +"Yes, I concede that, too--cordially." + +"Very well, again; we are making progress. To sum up: The feeling, it is +conceded, is not engendered by the mere conduct of the materializee; it +is conceded that it does not arise from any pang which the personality of +the materializee could assuage. Now then," said the earl, with the light +of triumph in his eye, "the inexorable logic of the situation narrows us +down to this: our feeling has its source in the money-loss involved. +Come--isn't that so?" + +"Goodness knows I concede that, with all my heart." + +"Very well. When you've found out the source of a disease, you've also +found out what remedy is required--just as in this case. In this case +money is required. And only money." + +The old, old seduction was in that airy, confident tone and those +significant words--usually called pregnant words in books. The old +answering signs of faith and hope showed up in Hawkins's countenance, +and he said: + +"Only money? Do you mean that you know a way to--" + +"Washington, have you the impression that I have no resources but those +I allow the public and my intimate friends to know about?" + +"Well, I--er--" + +"Is it likely, do you think, that a man moved by nature and taught by +experience to keep his affairs to himself and a cautious and reluctant +tongue in his head, wouldn't be thoughtful enough to keep a few resources +in reserve for a rainy day, when he's got as many as I have to select +from?" + +"Oh, you make me feel so much better already, Colonel!" + +"Have you ever been in my laboratory?" + +"Why, no." + +"That's it. You see you didn't even know that I had one. Come along. +I've got a little trick there that I want to show you. I've kept it +perfectly quiet, not fifty people know anything about it. But that's my +way, always been my way. Wait till you're ready, that's the idea; and +when you're ready, zzip!--let her go!" + +"Well, Colonel, I've never seen a man that I've had such unbounded +confidence in as you. When you say a thing right out, I always feel as +if that ends it; as if that is evidence, and proof, and everything else." + +The old earl was profoundly pleased and touched. + +"I'm glad you believe in me, Washington; not everybody is so just." + +"I always have believed in you; and I always shall as long as I live." + +"Thank you, my boy. You shan't repent it. And you can't." Arrived in +the "laboratory," the earl continued, "Now, cast your eye around this +room--what do you see? Apparently a junk-shop; apparently a hospital +connected with a patent office--in reality, the mines of Golconda in +disguise! Look at that thing there. Now what would you take that thing +to be?" + +"I don't believe I could ever imagine." + +"Of course you couldn't. It's my grand adaptation of the phonograph to +the marine service. You store up profanity in it for use at sea. +You know that sailors don't fly around worth a cent unless you swear +at them--so the mate that can do the best job of swearing is the most +valuable man. In great emergencies his talent saves the ship. But a +ship is a large thing, and he can't be everywhere at once; so there have +been times when one mate has lost a ship which could have been saved if +they had had a hundred. Prodigious storms, you know. Well, a ship can't +afford a hundred mates; but she can afford a hundred Cursing Phonographs, +and distribute them all over the vessel--and there, you see, she's armed +at every point. Imagine a big storm, and a hundred of my machines all +cursing away at once--splendid spectacle, splendid!--you couldn't hear +yourself think. Ship goes through that storm perfectly serene--she's +just as safe as she'd be on shore." + +"It's a wonderful idea. How do you prepare the thing?" + +"Load it--simply load it." + +"How?" + +"Why you just stand over it and swear into it." + +"That loads it, does it?" + +"Yes--because every word it collars, it keeps--keeps it forever. Never +wears out. Any time you turn the crank, out it'll come. In times of +great peril, you can reverse it, and it'll swear backwards. That makes a +sailor hump himself!" + +"O, I see. Who loads them?--the mate?" + +"Yes, if he chooses. Or I'll furnish them already loaded. I can hire an +expert for $75 a month who will load a hundred and fifty phonographs in +150 hours, and do it easy. And an expert can furnish a stronger article, +of course, than the mere average uncultivated mate could. Then you see, +all the ships of the world will buy them ready loaded--for I shall have +them loaded in any language a customer wants. Hawkins, it will work the +grandest moral reform of the 19th century. Five years from now, all the +swearing will be done by machinery--you won't ever hear a profane word +come from human lips on a ship. Millions of dollars have been spent by +the churches, in the effort to abolish profanity in the commercial +marine. Think of it--my name will live forever in the affections of good +men as the man, who, solitary and alone, accomplished this noble and +elevating reform." + +"O, it is grand and beneficent and beautiful. How did you ever come to +think of it? You have a wonderful mind. How did you say you loaded the +machine?" + +"O, it's no trouble--perfectly simple. If you want to load it up loud and +strong, you stand right over it and shout. But if you leave it open and +all set, it'll eavesdrop, so to speak--that is to say, it will load +itself up with any sounds that are made within six feet of it. Now I'll +show you how it works. I had an expert come and load this one up +yesterday. Hello, it's been left open--it's too bad--still I reckon it +hasn't had much chance to collect irrelevant stuff. All you do is to +press this button in the floor--so." + +The phonograph began to sing in a plaintive voice: + + There is a boarding-house, far far away, + Where they have ham and eggs, 3 times a day. + +"Hang it, that ain't it. Somebody's been singing around here." + +The plaintive song began again, mingled with a low, gradually rising wail +of cats slowly warming up toward a fight; + + O, how the boarders yell, + When they hear that dinner bell + They give that landlord-- + +(momentary outburst of terrific catfight which drowns out one word.) + + Three times a day. + +(Renewal of furious catfight for a moment. The plaintive voice on a high +fierce key, "Scat, you devils"--and a racket as of flying missiles.) + +"Well, never mind--let it go. I've got some sailor-profanity down in +there somewhere, if I could get to it. But it isn't any matter; you see +how the machine works." + +Hawkins responded with enthusiasm: + +"O, it works admirably! I know there's a hundred fortunes in it." + +"And mind, the Hawkins family get their share, Washington." + +"O, thanks, thanks; you are just as generous as ever. Ah, it's the +grandest invention of the age!" + +"Ah, well; we live in wonderful times. The elements are crowded full of +beneficent forces--always have been--and ours is the first generation to +turn them to account and make them work for us. Why Hawkins, everything +is useful--nothing ought ever to be wasted. Now look at sewer gas, for +instance. Sewer gas has always been wasted, heretofore; nobody tried to +save up sewer-gas--you can't name me a man. Ain't that so? you know +perfectly well it's so." + +"Yes it is so--but I never--er--I don't quite see why a body--" + +"Should want to save it up? Well, I'll tell you. Do you see this little +invention here?--it's a decomposer--I call it a decomposer. I give you +my word of honor that if you show me a house that produces a given +quantity of sewer-gas in a day, I'll engage to set up my decomposer there +and make that house produce a hundred times that quantity of sewer-gas in +less than half an hour." + +"Dear me, but why should you want to?" + +"Want to? Listen, and you'll see. My boy, for illuminating purposes +and economy combined, there's nothing in the world that begins with +sewer-gas. And really, it don't cost a cent. You put in a good inferior +article of plumbing,--such as you find everywhere--and add my decomposer, +and there you are. Just use the ordinary gas pipes--and there your +expense ends. Think of it. Why, Major, in five years from now you won't +see a house lighted with anything but sewer-gas. Every physician I talk +to, recommends it; and every plumber." + +"But isn't it dangerous?" + +"O, yes, more or less, but everything is--coal gas, candles, electricity +--there isn't anything that ain't." + +"It lights up well, does it?" + +"O, magnificently." + +"Have you given it a good trial?" + +"Well, no, not a first rate one. Polly's prejudiced, and she won't let +me put it in here; but I'm playing my cards to get it adopted in the +President's house, and then it'll go--don't you doubt it. I shall not +need this one for the present, Washington; you may take it down to some +boarding-house and give it a trial if you like." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +Washington shuddered slightly at the suggestion, then his face took on a +dreamy look and he dropped into a trance of thought. After a little, +Sellers asked him what he was grinding in his mental mill. + +"Well, this. Have you got some secret project in your head which +requires a Bank of England back of it to make it succeed?" + +The Colonel showed lively astonishment, and said: + +"Why, Hawkins, are you a mind-reader?" + +"I? I never thought of such a thing." + +"Well, then how did you happen to drop onto that idea in this curious +fashion? It's just mind-reading, that's what it is, though you may not +know it. Because I have got a private project that requires a Bank of +England at its back. How could you divine that? What was the process? +This is interesting." + +"There wasn't any process. A thought like this happened to slip through +my head by accident: How much would make you or me comfortable? +A hundred thousand. Yet you are expecting two or three of--these +inventions of yours to turn out some billions of money--and you are +wanting them to do that. If you wanted ten millions, I could understand +that--it's inside the human limits. But billions! That's clear outside +the limits. There must be a definite project back of that somewhere." + +The earl's interest and surprise augmented with every word, and when +Hawkins finished, he said with strong admiration: + +"It's wonderfully reasoned out, Washington, it certainly is. It shows +what I think is quite extraordinary penetration. For you've hit it; +you've driven the centre, you've plugged the bulls-eye of my dream. Now +I'll tell you the whole thing, and you'll understand it. I don't need to +ask you to keep it to yourself, because you'll see that the project will +prosper all the better for being kept in the background till the right +time. Have you noticed how many pamphlets and books I've got lying +around relating to Russia?" + +"Yes, I think most anybody would notice that--anybody who wasn't dead." + +"Well, I've been posting myself a good while. That's a great and, +splendid nation, and deserves to be set free." He paused, then added in +a quite matter-of-fact way, "When I get this money I'm going to set it +free." + +"Great guns!" + +"Why, what makes you jump like that?" + +"Dear me, when you are going to drop a remark under a man's chair that is +likely to blow him out through the roof, why don't you put some +expression, some force, some noise unto it that will prepare him? You +shouldn't flip out such a gigantic thing as this in that colorless kind +of a way. You do jolt a person up, so. Go on, now, I'm all right again. +Tell me all about it. I'm all interest--yes, and sympathy, too." + +"Well, I've looked the ground over, and concluded that the methods of the +Russian patriots, while good enough considering the way the boys are +hampered, are not the best; at least not the quickest. They are trying +to revolutionize Russia from within; that's pretty slow, you know, and +liable to interruption all the time, and is full of perils for the +workers. Do you know how Peter the Great started his army? He didn't +start it on the family premises under the noses of the Strelitzes; no, he +started it away off yonder, privately,--only just one regiment, you know, +and he built to that. The first thing the Strelitzes knew, the regiment +was an army, their position was turned, and they had to take a walk. +Just that little idea made the biggest and worst of all the despotisms +the world has seen. The same idea can unmake it. I'm going to prove it. +I'm going to get out to one side and work my scheme the way Peter did." + +"This is mighty interesting, Rossmore. What is it you are, going to do?" + +"I am going to buy Siberia and start a republic." + +"There,--bang you go again, without giving any notice! Going to buy it?" + +"Yes, as soon as I get the money. I don't care what the price is, I +shall take it. I can afford it, and I will. Now then, consider this-- +and you've never thought of it, I'll warrant. Where is the place where +there is twenty-five times more manhood, pluck, true heroism, +unselfishness, devotion to high and noble ideals, adoration of liberty, +wide education, and brains, per thousand of population, than any other +domain in the whole world can show?" + +"Siberia!" + +"Right." + +"It is true; it certainly is true, but I never thought of it before." + +"Nobody ever thinks of it. But it's so, just the same. In those mines +and prisons are gathered together the very finest and noblest and +capablest multitude of human beings that God is able to create. Now if +you had that kind of a population to sell, would you offer it to a +despotism? No, the despotism has no use for it; you would lose money. +A despotism has no use for anything but human cattle. But suppose you +want to start a republic?" + +"Yes, I see. It's just the material for it." + +"Well, I should say so! There's Siberia with just the very finest and +choicest material on the globe for a republic, and more coming--more +coming all the time, don't you see! It is being daily, weekly, monthly +recruited by the most perfectly devised system that has ever been +invented, perhaps. By this system the whole of the hundred millions of +Russia are being constantly and patiently sifted, sifted, sifted, by +myriads of trained experts, spies appointed by the Emperor personally; +and whenever they catch a man, woman or child that has got any brains or +education or character, they ship that person straight to Siberia. It is +admirable, it is wonderful. It is so searching and so effective that it +keeps the general level of Russian intellect and education down to that +of the Czar." + +"Come, that sounds like exaggeration." + +"Well, it's what they say anyway. But I think, myself, it's a lie. And +it doesn't seem right to slander a whole nation that way, anyhow. Now, +then, you see what the material is, there in Siberia, for a republic." +He paused, and his breast began to heave and his eye to burn, under the +impulse of strong emotion. Then his words began to stream forth, with +constantly increasing energy and fire, and he rose to his feet as if to +give himself larger freedom. "The minute I organize that republic, the +light of liberty, intelligence, justice, humanity, bursting from it, +flooding from it, flaming from it, will concentrate the gaze of the whole +astonished world as upon the miracle of a new sun; Russia's countless +multitudes of slaves will rise up and march, march!--eastward, with that +great light transfiguring their faces as they come, and far back of them +you will see-what will you see?--a vacant throne in an empty land! It +can be done, and by God I will do it!" + +He stood a moment bereft of earthy consciousness by his exaltation; then +consciousness returned, bringing him a slight shock, and he said with +grave earnestness: + +"I must ask you to pardon me, Major Hawkins. I have never used that +expression before, and I beg you will forgive it this time." + +Hawkins was quite willing. + +"You see, Washington, it is an error which I am by nature not liable to. +Only excitable people, impulsive people, are exposed to it. But the +circumstances of the present case--I being a democrat by birth and +preference, and an aristocrat by inheritance and relish--" + +The earl stopped suddenly, his frame stiffened, and he began to stare +speechless through the curtainless window. Then he pointed, and gasped +out a single rapturous word: + +"Look!" + +"What is it, Colonel?" + +"IT!" + +"No!" + +"Sure as you're born. Keep perfectly still. I'll apply the influence-- +I'll turn on all my force. I've brought It thus far--I'll fetch It right +into the house. You'll see." + +He was making all sorts of passes in the air with his hands. + +"There! Look at that. I've made It smile! See?" + +Quite true. Tracy, out for an afternoon stroll, had come unexpectantly +upon his family arms displayed upon this shabby house-front. The +hatchments made him smile; which was nothing, they had made the +neighborhood cats do that. + +"Look, Hawkins, look! I'm drawing It over!" + +"You're drawing it sure, Rossmore. If I ever had any doubts about +materialization, they're gone, now, and gone for good. Oh, this is a +joyful day!" + +Tracy was sauntering over to read the door-plate. Before he was half way +over he was saying to himself, "Why, manifestly these are the American +Claimant's quarters." + +"It's coming--coming right along. I'll slide, down and pull It in. You +follow after me." + +Sellers, pale and a good deal agitated, opened the door and confronted +Tracy. The old man could not at once get his voice: then he pumped out a +scattering and hardly coherent salutation, and followed it with-- + +"Walk in, walk right in, Mr.--er--" + +"Tracy--Howard Tracy." + +"Tracy--thanks--walk right in, you're expected." + +Tracy entered, considerably puzzled, and said: + +"Expected? I think there must be some mistake." + +"Oh, I judge not," said Sellers, who--noticing that Hawkins had arrived, +gave him a sidewise glance intended to call his close attention to a +dramatic effect which he was proposing to produce by his next remark. +Then he said, slowly and impressively--"I am--YOU KNOW WHO." + +To the astonishment of both conspirators the remark produced no dramatic +effect at all; for the new-comer responded with a quite innocent and +unembarrassed air-- + +"No, pardon me. I don't know who you are. I only suppose--but no doubt +correctly--that you are the gentleman whose title is on the doorplate." + +"Right, quite right--sit down, pray sit down." The earl was rattled, +thrown off his bearings, his head was in a whirl. Then he noticed +Hawkins standing apart and staring idiotically at what to him was the +apparition of a defunct man, and a new idea was born to him. He said to +Tracy briskly: + +"But a thousand pardons, dear sir, I am forgetting courtesies due to a +guest and stranger. Let me introduce my friend General Hawkins--General +Hawkins, our new Senator--Senator from the latest and grandest addition to +the radiant galaxy of sovereign States, Cherokee Strip"--(to himself, +"that name will shrivel him up!"--but it didn't, in the least, and the +Colonel resumed the introduction piteously disheartened and amazed),-- +"Senator Hawkins, Mr. Howard Tracy, of--er--" + +"England." + +"England!--Why that's im--" + +"England, yes, native of England." + +"Recently from there?" + +"Yes, quite recently." + +Said the Colonel to himself, "This phantom lies like an expert. +Purifying this kind by fire don't work. I'll sound him a little further, +give him another chance or two to work his gift." Then aloud--with deep +irony-- + +"Visiting our great country for recreation and amusement, no doubt. +I suppose you find that traveling in the majestic expanses of our Far +West is--" + +"I haven't been West, and haven't been devoting myself to amusement with +any sort of exclusiveness, I assure you. In fact, to merely live, an +artist has got to work, not play." + +"Artist!" said Hawkins to himself, thinking of the rifled bank; "that is +a name for it!" + +"Are you an artist?" asked the colonel; and added to himself, "now I'm +going to catch him." + +"In a humble way, yes." + +"What line?" pursued the sly veteran. + +"Oils." + +"I've got him!" said Sellers to himself. Then aloud, "This is fortunate. +Could I engage you to restore some of my paintings that need that +attention?" + +"I shall be very glad. Pray let me see them." + +No shuffling, no evasion, no embarrassment, even under this crucial test. +The Colonel was nonplussed. He led Tracy to a chromo which had suffered +damage in a former owner's hands through being used as a lamp mat, and +said, with a flourish of his hand toward the picture-- + +"This del Sarto--" + +"Is that a del Sarto?" + +The colonel bent a look of reproach upon Tracy, allowed it to sink home, +then resumed as if there had been no interruption-- + +"This del Sarto is perhaps the only original of that sublime master in +our country. You see, yourself, that the work is of such exceeding +delicacy that the risk--could--er--would you mind giving me a little +example of what you can do before we--" + +"Cheerfully, cheerfully. I will copy one of these marvels." + +Water-color materials--relics of Miss Sally's college life--were brought. +Tracy said he was better in oils, but would take a chance with these. +So he was left alone. He began his work, but the attractions of the +place were too strong for him, and he got up and went drifting about, +fascinated; also amazed. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +Meantime the earl and Hawkins were holding a troubled and anxious private +consultation. The earl said: + +"The mystery that bothers me, is, where did It get its other arm?" + +"Yes--it worries me, too. And another thing troubles me--the apparition +is English. How do you account for that, Colonel?" + +"Honestly, I don't know, Hawkins, I don't really know. It is very +confusing and awful." + +"Don't you think maybe we've waked up the wrong one?" + +"The wrong one? How do you account for the clothes?" + +"The clothes are right, there's no getting around it. What are we going +to do? We can't collect, as I see. The reward is for a one-armed +American. This is a two-armed Englishman." + +"Well, it may be that that is not objectionable. You see it isn't less +than is called for, it is more, and so,--" + +But he saw that this argument was weak, and dropped it. The friends sat +brooding over their perplexities some time in silence. Finally the +earl's face began to glow with an inspiration, and he said, impressively: + +"Hawkins, this materialization is a grander and nobler science than we +have dreamed of. We have little imagined what a solemn and stupendous +thing we have done. The whole secret is perfectly clear to me, now, +clear as day. Every man is made up of heredities, long-descended atoms +and particles of his ancestors. This present materialization is +incomplete. We have only brought it down to perhaps the beginning of +this century." + +"What do you mean, Colonel!" cried Hawkins, filled with vague alarms by +the old man's awe-compelling words and manner. + +"This. We've materialized this burglar's ancestor!" + +"Oh, don't--don't say that. It's hideous." + +"But it's true, Hawkins, I know it. Look at the facts. This apparition +is distinctly English--note that. It uses good grammar--note that. It is +an Artist--note that. It has the manners and carriage of a gentleman-- +note that. Where's your cow-boy? Answer me that." + +"Rossmore, this is dreadful--it's too dreadful to think of!" + +"Never resurrected a rag of that burglar but the clothes, not a solitary +rag of him but the clothes." + +"Colonel, do you really mean--" + +The Colonel brought his fist down with emphasis and said: + +"I mean exactly this. The materialization was immature, the burglar has +evaded us, this is nothing but a damned ancestor!" + +He rose and walked the floor in great excitement. + +Hawkins said plaintively: + +"It's a bitter disappointment--bitter." + +"I know it. I know it, Senator; I feel it as deeply as anybody could. +But we've got to submit--on moral grounds. I need money, but God knows +I am not poor enough or shabby enough to be an accessory to the punishing +of a man's ancestor for crimes committed by that ancestor's posterity." + +"But Colonel!" implored Hawkins; "stop and think; don't be rash; you know +it's the only chance we've got to get the money; and besides, the Bible +itself says posterity to the fourth generation shall be punished for the +sins and crimes committed by ancestors four generations back that hadn't +anything to do with them; and so it's only fair to turn the rule around +and make it work both ways." + +The Colonel was struck with the strong logic of this position. He strode +up and down, and thought it painfully over. Finally he said: + +"There's reason in it; yes, there's reason in it. And so, although it +seems a piteous thing to sweat this poor ancient devil for a burglary he +hadn't the least hand in, still if duty commands I suppose we must give +him up to the authorities." + +"I would," said Hawkins, cheered and relieved, "I'd give him up if he was +a thousand ancestors compacted into one." + +"Lord bless me, that's just what he is," said Sellers, with something +like a groan, "it's exactly what he is; there's a contribution in him +from every ancestor he ever had. In him there's atoms of priests, +soldiers, crusaders, poets, and sweet and gracious women--all kinds and +conditions of folk who trod this earth in old, old centuries, and +vanished out of it ages ago, and now by act of ours they are summoned +from their holy peace to answer for gutting a one-horse bank away out on +the borders of Cherokee Strip, and it's just a howling outrage!" + +"Oh, don't talk like that, Colonel; it takes the heart all out of me, and +makes me ashamed of the part I am proposing to--" + +"Wait--I've got it!" + +"A saving hope? Shout it out, I am perishing." + +"It's perfectly simple; a child would have thought of it. He is all +right, not a flaw in him, as far as I have carried the work. If I've +been able to bring him as far as the beginning of this century, what's to +stop me now? I'll go on and materialize him down to date." + +"Land, I never thought of that!" said Hawkins all ablaze with joy again. +"It's the very thing. What a brain you have got! And will he shed the +superfluous arm?" + +"He will." + +"And lose his English accent?" + +"It will wholly disappear. He will speak Cherokee Strip--and other forms +of profanity." + +"Colonel, maybe he'll confess!" + +"Confess? Merely that bank robbery?" + +"Merely? Yes, but why 'merely'?" + +The Colonel said in his most impressive manner: "Hawkins, he will be +wholly under my command. I will make him confess every crime he ever +committed. There must be a thousand. Do you get the idea?" + +"Well--not quite." + +"The rewards will come to us." + +"Prodigious conception! I never saw such ahead for seeing with a +lightning glance all the outlying ramifications and possibilities of a +central idea." + +"It is nothing; it comes natural to me. When his time is out in one jail +he goes to the next and the next, and we shall have nothing to do but +collect the rewards as he goes along. It is a perfectly steady income as +long as we live, Hawkins. And much better than other kinds of +investments, because he is indestructible." + +"It looks--it really does look the way you say; it does indeed." + +"Look?--why it is. It will not be denied that I have had a pretty wide +and comprehensive financial experience, and I do not hesitate to say that +I consider this one of the most valuable properties I have ever +controlled." + +"Do you really think so?" + +"I do, indeed." + +"O, Colonel, the wasting grind and grief of poverty! If we could realize +immediately. I don't mean sell it all, but sell part--enough, you know, +to--" + +"See how you tremble with excitement. That comes of lack of experience. +My boy, when you have been familiar with vast operations as long as I +have, you'll be different. Look at me; is my eye dilated? do you notice +a quiver anywhere? Feel my pulse: plunk-plunk-plunk--same as if I were +asleep. And yet, what is passing through my calm cold mind? A +procession of figures which would make a financial novice drunk just the +sight of them. Now it is by keeping cool, and looking at a thing all +around, that a man sees what's really in it, and saves himself from the +novice's unfailing mistake--the one you've just suggested--eagerness to +realize. Listen to me. Your idea is to sell a part of him for ready +cash. Now mine is--guess." + +"I haven't an idea. What is it?" + +"Stock him--of course." + +"Well, I should never have thought of that." + +"Because you are not a financier. Say he has committed a thousand +crimes. Certainly that's a low estimate. By the look of him, even in +his unfinished condition, he has committed all of a million. But call it +only a thousand to be perfectly safe; five thousand reward, multiplied by +a thousand, gives us a dead sure cash basis of--what? Five million +dollars!" + +"Wait--let me get my breath." + +"And the property indestructible. Perpetually fruitful--perpetually; for +a property with his disposition will go on committing crimes and winning +rewards." + +"You daze me, you make my head whirl!" + +"Let it whirl, it won't do it any harm. Now that matter is all fixed-- +leave it alone. I'll get up the company and issue the stock, all in good +time. Just leave it in my hands. I judge you don't doubt my ability to +work it up for all it is worth." + +"Indeed I don't. I can say that with truth." + +"All right, then. That's disposed of. Everything in its turn. We old +operators, go by order and system--no helter-skelter business with us. +What's the next thing on the docket? The carrying on of the +materialization--the bringing it down to date. I will begin on that at +once. I think-- + +"Look here, Rossmore. You didn't lock It in. A hundred to one it has +escaped!" + +"Calm yourself, as to that; don't give yourself any uneasiness." + +"But why shouldn't it escape?" + +"Let it, if it wants to? What of it?" + +"Well, I should consider it a pretty serious calamity." + +"Why, my dear boy, once in my power, always in my power. It may go and +come freely. I can produce it here whenever I want it, just by the +exercise of my will." + +"Well, I am truly glad to hear that, I do assure you." + +"Yes, I shall give it all the painting it wants to do, and we and the +family will make it as comfortable and contented as we can. No occasion +to restrain its movements. I hope to persuade it to remain pretty quiet, +though, because a materialization which is in a state of arrested +development must of necessity be pretty soft and flabby and +substanceless, and--er--by the way, I wonder where It comes from?" + +"How? What do you mean?" + +The earl pointed significantly--and interrogatively toward the sky. +Hawkins started; then settled into deep reflection; finally shook his +head sorrowfully and pointed downwards. + +"What makes you think so, Washington?" + +"Well, I hardly know, but really you can see, yourself, that he doesn't +seem to be pining for his last place." + +"It's well thought! Soundly deduced. We've done that Thing a favor. +But I believe I will pump it a little, in a quiet way, and find out if we +are right." + +"How long is it going to take to finish him off and fetch him down to +date, Colonel?" + +"I wish I knew, but I don't. I am clear knocked out by this new detail-- +this unforeseen necessity of working a subject down gradually from his +condition of ancestor to his ultimate result as posterity. But I'll make +him hump himself, anyway." + +"Rossmore!" + +"Yes, dear. We're in the laboratory. Come--Hawkins is here. Mind, now +Hawkins--he's a sound, living, human being to all the family--don't +forget that. Here she comes." + +"Keep your seats, I'm not coming in. I just wanted to ask, who is it +that's painting down there?" + +"That? Oh, that's a young artist; young Englishman, named Tracy; very +promising--favorite pupil of Hans Christian Andersen or one of the other +old masters--Andersen I'm pretty sure it is; he's going to half-sole some +of our old Italian masterpieces. Been talking to him?" + +"Well, only a word. I stumbled right in on him without expecting anybody +was there. I tried to be polite to him; offered him a snack"--(Sellers +delivered a large wink to Hawkins from behind his hand), "but he +declined, and said he wasn't hungry" (another sarcastic wink); "so I +brought some apples" (doublewink), "and he ate a couple of--" + +"What!" and the colonel sprang some yards toward the ceiling and came +down quaking with astonishment. + +Lady Rossmore was smitten dumb with amazement. She gazed at the sheepish +relic of Cherokee Strip, then at her husband, and then at the guest +again. Finally she said: + +"What is the matter with you, Mulberry?" + +He did not answer immediately. His back was turned; he was bending over +his chair, feeling the seat of it. But he answered next moment, and +said: + +"Ah, there it is; it was a tack." + +The lady contemplated him doubtfully a moment, then said, pretty +snappishly: + +"All that for a tack! Praise goodness it wasn't a shingle nail, it would +have landed you in the Milky Way. I do hate to have my nerves shook up +so." And she turned on her heel and went her way. + +As soon as she was safely out, the Colonel said, in a suppressed voice: + +"Come--we must see for ourselves. It must be a mistake." + +They hurried softly down and peeped in. Sellers whispered, in a sort of +despair-- + +It is eating! What a grisly spectacle! Hawkins it's horrible! Take me +away--I can't stand-- + +They tottered back to the laboratory. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +Tracy made slow progress with his work, for his mind wandered a good +deal. Many things were puzzling him. Finally a light burst upon him all +of a sudden--seemed to, at any rate--and he said to himself, "I've got +the clew at last--this man's mind is off its balance; I don't know how +much, but it's off a point or two, sure; off enough to explain this mess +of perplexities, anyway. These dreadful chromos which he takes for old +masters; these villainous portraits--which to his frantic mind represent +Rossmores; the hatchments; the pompous name of this ramshackle old crib-- +Rossmore Towers; and that odd assertion of his, that I was expected. How +could I be expected? that is, Lord Berkeley. He knows by the papers that +that person was burned up in the New Gadsby. Why, hang it, he really +doesn't know who he was expecting; for his talk showed that he was not +expecting an Englishman, or yet an artist, yet I answer his requirements +notwithstanding. He seems sufficiently satisfied with me. Yes, he is a +little off; in fact I am afraid he is a good deal off, poor old +gentleman. But he's interesting--all people in about his condition are, +I suppose. I hope he'll like my work; I would like to come every day and +study him. And when I write my father--ah, that hurts! I mustn't get on +that subject; it isn't good for my spirits. Somebody coming--I must get +to work. It's the old gentleman again. He looks bothered. Maybe my +clothes are suspicious; and they are--for an artist. If my conscience +would allow me to make a change, but that is out of the question. +I wonder what he's making those passes in the air for, with his hands. +I seem to be the object of them. Can he be trying to mesmerize me? +I don't quite like it. There's something uncanny about it." + +The colonel muttered to himself, "It has an effect on him, I can see it +myself. That's enough for one time, I reckon. He's not very solid, yet, +I suppose, and I might disintegrate him. I'll just put a sly question or +two at him, now, and see if I can find out what his condition is, and +where he's from." + +He approached and said affably: + +"Don't let me disturb you, Mr. Tracy; I only want to take a little +glimpse of your work. Ah, that's fine--that's very fine indeed. You are +doing it elegantly. My daughter will be charmed with this. May I sit +down by you?" + +"Oh, do; I shall be glad." + +"It won't disturb you? I mean, won't dissipate your inspirations?" + +Tracy laughed and said they were not ethereal enough to be very easily +discommoded. + +The colonel asked a number of cautious and well-considered questions-- +questions which seemed pretty odd and flighty to Tracy--but the answers +conveyed the information desired, apparently, for the colonel said to +himself, with mixed pride and gratification: + +"It's a good job as far as I've got, with it. He's solid. Solid and +going to last, solid as the real thing." + +"It's wonderful--wonderful. I believe I could--petrify him." After a +little he asked, warily "Do you prefer being here, or--or there?" + +"There? Where?" + +"Why--er--where you've been?" + +Tracy's thought flew to his boarding-house, and he answered with decision. + +"Oh, here, much!" + +The colonel was startled, and said to himself, "There's no uncertain ring +about that. It indicates where he's been to, poor fellow. Well, I am +satisfied, now. I'm glad I got him out." + +He sat thinking, and thinking, and watching the brush go. At length he +said to himself, "Yes, it certainly seems to account for the failure of +my endeavors in poor Berkeley's case. He went in the other direction. +Well, it's all right. He's better off." + +Sally Sellers entered from the street, now, looking her divinest, and the +artist was introduced to her. It was a violent case of mutual love at +first sight, though neither party was entirely aware of the fact, +perhaps. The Englishman made this irrelevant remark to himself, "Perhaps +he is not insane, after all." Sally sat down, and showed an interest in +Tracy's work which greatly pleased him, and a benevolent forgiveness of +it which convinced him that the girl's nature was cast in a large mould. +Sellers was anxious to report his discoveries to Hawkins; so he took his +leave, saying that if the two "young devotees of the colored Muse" +thought they could manage without him, he would go and look after his +affairs. The artist said to himself, "I think he is a little eccentric, +perhaps, but that is all." He reproached himself for having injuriously +judged a man without giving him any fair chance to show what he really +was. + +Of course the stranger was very soon at his ease and chatting along +comfortably. The average American girl possesses the valuable qualities +of naturalness, honesty, and inoffensive straightforwardness; she is +nearly barren of troublesome conventions and artificialities, +consequently her presence and her ways are unembarrassing, and one is +acquainted with her and on the pleasantest terms with her before he knows +how it came about. This new acquaintanceship--friendship, indeed-- +progressed swiftly; and the unusual swiftness of it, and the thoroughness +of it are sufficiently evidenced and established by one noteworthy fact-- +that within the first half hour both parties had ceased to be conscious +of Tracy's clothes. Later this consciousness was re-awakened; it was +then apparent to Gwendolen that she was almost reconciled to them, and it +was apparent to Tracy that he wasn't. The re-awakening was brought about +by Gwendolen's inviting the artist to stay to dinner. He had to decline, +because he wanted to live, now--that is, now that there was something to +live for--and he could not survive in those clothes at a gentleman's +table. He thought he knew that. But he went away happy, for he saw that +Gwendolen was disappointed. + +And whither did he go? He went straight to a slopshop and bought as neat +and reasonably well-fitting a suit of clothes as an Englishman could be +persuaded to wear. He said--to himself, but at his conscience--"I know +it's wrong; but it would be wrong not to do it; and two wrongs do not +make a right." + +This satisfied him, and made his heart light. Perhaps it will also +satisfy the reader--if he can make out what it means. + +The old people were troubled about Gwendolen at dinner, because she was +so distraught and silent. If they had noticed, they would have found +that she was sufficiently alert and interested whenever the talk stumbled +upon the artist and his work; but they didn't notice, and so the chat +would swap around to some other subject, and then somebody would +presently be privately worrying about Gwendolen again, and wondering if +she were not well, or if something had gone wrong in the millinery line. +Her mother offered her various reputable patent medicines, and tonics +with iron and other hardware in them, and her father even proposed to +send out for wine, relentless prohibitionist and head of the order in the +District of Columbia as he was, but these kindnesses were all declined-- +thankfully, but with decision. At bedtime, when the family were breaking +up for the night, she privately looted one of the brushes, saying to +herself, "It's the one he has used, the most." + +The next morning Tracy went forth wearing his new suit, and equipped with +a pink in his button-hole--a daily attention from Puss. His whole soul +was full of Gwendolen Sellers, and this condition was an inspiration, +art-wise. All the morning his brush pawed nimbly away at the canvases, +almost without his awarity--awarity, in this sense being the sense of +being aware, though disputed by some authorities--turning out marvel upon +marvel, in the way of decorative accessories to the portraits, with a +felicity and celerity which amazed the veterans of the firm and fetched +out of them continuous explosions of applause. + +Meantime Gwendolen was losing her morning, and many dollars. She +supposed Tracy was coming in the forenoon--a conclusion which she had +jumped to without outside help. So she tripped down stairs every little +while from her work-parlor to arrange the brushes and things over again, +and see if he had arrived. And when she was in her work-parlor it was +not profitable, but just the other way--as she found out to her sorrow. + +She had put in her idle moments during the last little while back, in +designing a particularly rare and capable gown for herself, and this +morning she set about making it up; but she was absent minded, and made +an irremediable botch of it. When she saw what she had done, she knew +the reason of it and the meaning of it; and she put her work away from +her and said she would accept the sign. And from that time forth she +came no more away from the Audience Chamber, but remained there and +waited. After luncheon she waited again. A whole hour. Then a great +joy welled up in her heart, for she saw him coming. So she flew back up +stairs thankful, and could hardly wait for him to miss the principal +brush, which she had mislaid down there, but knew where she had mislaid +it. However, all in good time the others were called in and couldn't +find the brush, and then she was sent for, and she couldn't find it +herself for some little time; but then she found it when the others had +gone away to hunt in the kitchen and down cellar and in the woodshed, +and all those other places where people look for things whose ways they +are not familiar with. So she gave him the brush, and remarked that she +ought to have seen that everything was ready for him, but it hadn't +seemed necessary, because it was so early that she wasn't expecting--but +she stopped there, surprised at herself for what she was saying; and he +felt caught and ashamed, and said to himself, "I knew my impatience would +drag me here before I was expected, and betray me, and that is just what +it has done; she sees straight through me--and is laughing at me, inside, +of course." + +Gwendolen was very much pleased, on one account, and a little the other +way in another; pleased with the new clothes and the improvement which +they had achieved; less pleased by the pink in the buttonhole. +Yesterday's pink had hardly interested her; this one was just like it, +but somehow it had got her immediate attention, and kept it. She wished +she could think of some way of getting at its history in a properly +colorless and indifferent way. Presently she made a venture. She said: + +"Whatever a man's age may be, he can reduce it several years by putting a +bright-colored flower in his button-hole. I have often noticed that. +Is that your sex's reason for wearing a boutonniere?" + +"I fancy not, but certainly that reason would be a sufficient one. I've +never heard of the idea before." + +"You seem to prefer pinks. Is it on account of the color, or the form?" + +"Oh no," he said, simply, "they are given to me. I don't think I have +any preference." + +"They are given to him," she said to herself, and she felt a coldness +toward that pink. "I wonder who it is, and what she is like." The +flower began to take up a good deal of room; it obtruded itself +everywhere, it intercepted all views, and marred them; it was becoming +exceedingly annoying and conspicuous for a little thing. "I wonder if he +cares for her." That thought gave her a quite definite pain. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +She had made everything comfortable for the artist; there was no further +pretext for staying. So she said she would go, now, and asked him to +summon the servants in case he should need anything. She went away +unhappy; and she left unhappiness behind her; for she carried away all +the sunshine. The time dragged heavily for both, now. He couldn't paint +for thinking of her; she couldn't design or millinerize with any heart, +for thinking of him. Never before had painting seemed so empty to him, +never before had millinerizing seemed so void of interest to her. She +had gone without repeating that dinner-invitation--an almost unendurable +disappointment to him. On her part-well, she was suffering, too; for she +had found she couldn't invite him. It was not hard yesterday, but it was +impossible to-day. A thousand innocent privileges seemed to have been +filched from her unawares in the past twenty-four hours. To-day she felt +strangely hampered, restrained of her liberty. To-day she couldn't +propose to herself to do anything or say anything concerning this young +man without being instantly paralyzed into non-action by the fear that he +might "suspect." Invite him to dinner to-day? It made her shiver to +think of it. + +And so her afternoon was one long fret. Broken at intervals. Three +times she had to go down stairs on errands--that is, she thought she had +to go down stairs on errands. Thus, going and coming, she had six +glimpses of him, in the aggregate, without seeming to look in his +direction; and she tried to endure these electric ecstasies without +showing any sign, but they fluttered her up a good deal, and she felt +that the naturalness she was putting on was overdone and quite too +frantically sober and hysterically calm to deceive. + +The painter had his share of the rapture; he had his six glimpses, and +they smote him with waves of pleasure that assaulted him, beat upon him, +washed over him deliciously, and drowned out all consciousness of what he +was doing with his brush. So there were six places in his canvas which +had to be done over again. + +At last Gwendolen got some peace of mind by sending word to the +Thompsons, in the neighborhood, that she was coming there to dinner. +She wouldn't be reminded, at that table, that there was an absentee who +ought to be a presentee--a word which she meant to look out in the +dictionary at a calmer time. + +About this time the old earl dropped in for a chat with the artist, and +invited him to stay to dinner. Tracy cramped down his joy and gratitude +by a sudden and powerful exercise of all his forces; and he felt that now +that he was going to be close to Gwendolen, and hear her voice and watch +her face during several precious hours, earth had nothing valuable to add +to his life for the present. + +The earl said to himself, "This spectre can eat apples, apparently. +We shall find out, now, if that is a specialty. I think, myself, it's a +specialty. Apples, without doubt, constitute the spectral limit. It was +the case with our first parents. No, I am wrong--at least only partly +right. The line was drawn at apples, just as in the present case, but it +was from the other direction." The new clothes gave him a thrill of +pleasure and pride. He said to himself, "I've got part of him down to +date, anyway." + +Sellers said he was pleased with Tracy's work; and he went on and engaged +him to restore his old masters, and said he should also want him to paint +his portrait and his wife's and possibly his daughter's. The tide of the +artist's happiness was at flood, now. The chat flowed pleasantly along +while Tracy painted and Sellers carefully unpacked a picture which he had +brought with him. It was a chromo; a new one, just out. It was the +smirking, self-satisfied portrait of a man who was inundating the Union +with advertisements inviting everybody to buy his specialty, which was a +three-dollar shoe or a dress-suit or something of that kind. The old +gentleman rested the chromo flat upon his lap and gazed down tenderly +upon it, and became silent and meditative. Presently Tracy noticed that +he was dripping tears on it. This touched the young fellow's sympathetic +nature, and at the same time gave him the painful sense of being an +intruder upon a sacred privacy, an observer of emotions which a stranger +ought not to witness. But his pity rose superior to other +considerations, and compelled him to try to comfort the old mourner with +kindly words and a show of friendly interest. He said: + +"I am very sorry--is it a friend whom--" + +"Ah, more than that, far more than that--a relative, the dearest I had on +earth, although I was never permitted to see him. Yes, it is young Lord +Berkeley, who perished so heroically in the awful conflagration, what is +the matter?" + +"Oh, nothing, nothing." + +"It was a little startling to be so suddenly brought face to face, so to +speak, with a person one has heard so much talk about. Is it a good +likeness?" + +"Without doubt, yes. I never saw him, but you can easily see the +resemblance to his father," said Sellers, holding up the chromo and +glancing from it to the chromo misrepresenting the Usurping Earl and back +again with an approving eye. + +"Well, no--I am not sure that I make out the likeness. It is plain that +the Usurping Earl there has a great deal of character and a long face +like a horse's, whereas his heir here is smirky, moon-faced and +characterless." + +"We are all that way in the beginning--all the line," said Sellers, +undisturbed. "We all start as moonfaced fools, then later we tadpole +along into horse-faced marvels of intellect and character. It is by that +sign and by that fact that I detect the resemblance here and know this +portrait to be genuine and perfect. Yes, all our family are fools at +first." + +"This young man seems to meet the hereditary requirement, certainly." + +"Yes, yes, he was a fool, without any doubt. Examine the face, the shape +of the head, the expression. It's all fool, fool, fool, straight +through." + +"Thanks,--" said Tracy, involuntarily. + +"Thanks?" + +"I mean for explaining it to me. Go on, please." + +"As I was saying, fool is printed all over the face." + +"A body can even read the details." + +"What do they say?" + +"Well, added up, he is a wobbler." + +"A which?" + +"Wobbler. A person that's always taking a firm stand about something or +other--kind of a Gibraltar stand, he thinks, for unshakable fidelity and +everlastingness--and then, inside of a little while, he begins to wobble; +no more Gibraltar there; no, sir, a mighty ordinary commonplace weakling +wobbling--around on stilts. That's Lord Berkeley to a dot, you can see +it look at that sheep! But,--why are you blushing like sunset! Dear +sir, have I unwittingly offended in some way?" + +"Oh, no indeed, no indeed. Far from it. But it always makes me blush to +hear a man revile his own blood." He said to himself, "How strangely his +vagrant and unguided fancies have hit upon the truth. By accident, he +has described me. I am that contemptible thing. When I left England I +thought I knew myself; I thought I was a very Frederick the Great for +resolution and staying capacity; whereas in truth I am just a Wobbler, +simply a Wobbler. Well--after all, it is at least creditable to have +high ideals and give birth to lofty resolutions; I will allow myself that +comfort." Then he said, aloud, "Could this sheep, as you call him, breed +a great and self-sacrificing idea in his head, do you think? Could he +meditate such a thing, for instance, as the renunciation of the earldom +and its wealth and its glories, and voluntary retirement to the ranks of +the commonalty, there to rise by his own merit or remain forever poor and +obscure?" + +"Could he? Why, look at him--look at this simpering self-righteous mug! +There is your answer. It's the very thing he would think of. And he +would start in to do it, too." + +"And then?" + +"He'd wobble." + +"And back down?" + +"Every time." + +"Is that to happen with all my--I mean would that happen to all his high +resolutions?" + +"Oh certainly--certainly. It's the Rossmore of it." + +"Then this creature was fortunate to die! Suppose, for argument's sake, +that I was a Rossmore, and--" + +"It can't be done." + +"Why?" + +"Because it's not a supposable case. To be a Rossmore at your age, you'd +have to be a fool, and you're not a fool. And you'd have to be a +Wobbler, whereas anybody that is an expert in reading character can see +at a glance that when you set your foot down once, it's there to stay; +and earthquake can't wobble it." He added to himself, "That's enough to +say to him, but it isn't half strong enough for the facts. The more +I observe him, now, the more remarkable I find him. It is the strongest +face I have ever examined. There is almost superhuman firmness here, +immovable purpose, iron steadfastness of will. A most extraordinary +young man." + +He presently said, aloud: + +"Some time I want to ask your advice about a little matter, Mr. Tracy. +You see, I've got that young lord's remaims--my goodness, how you jump!" + +"Oh, it's nothing, pray go on. You've got his remains?" + +"Yes." + +"Are you sure they are his, and not somebody else's?" + +"Oh, perfectly sure. Samples, I mean. Not all of him." + +"Samples?" + +"Yes--in baskets. Some time you will be going home; and if you wouldn't +mind taking them along--" + +"Who? I?" + +"Yes--certainly. I don't mean now; but after a while; after--but look +here, would you like to see them?" + +"No! Most certainly not. I don't want to see them." + +"O, very well. I only thought--hey, where are you going, dear?" + +"Out to dinner, papa." + +Tracy was aghast. The colonel said, in a disappointed voice: + +"Well, I'm sorry. Sho, I didn't know she was going out, Mr. Tracy." + +Gwendolen's face began to take on a sort of apprehensive 'What-have-I- +done expression.' + +"Three old people to one young one--well, it isn't a good team, that's a +fact." + +Gwendolen's face betrayed a dawning hopefulness and she said--with a tone +of reluctance which hadn't the hall-mark on it: + +"If you prefer, I will send word to the Thompsons that I--" + +"Oh, is it the Thompsons? That simplifies it--sets everything right. +We can fix it without spoiling your arrangements, my child. You've got +your heart set on--" + +"But papa, I'd just as soon go there some other--" + +"No--I won't have it. You are a good hard-working darling child, and +your father is not the man to disappoint you when you--" + +"But papa, I--" + +"Go along, I won't hear a word. We'll get along, dear." + +Gwendolen was ready to cry with venation. But there was nothing to do +but start; which she was about to do when her father hit upon an idea +which filled him with delight because it so deftly covered all the +difficulties of the situation and made things smooth and satisfactory: + +"I've got it, my love, so that you won't be robbed of your holiday and at +the same time we'll be pretty satisfactorily fixed for a good time here. +You send Belle Thompson here--perfectly beautiful creature, Tracy, +perfectly beautiful; I want you to see that girl; why, you'll just go +mad; you'll go mad inside of a minute; yes, you send her right along, +Gwendolen, and tell her--why, she's gone!" He turned--she was already +passing out at the gate. He muttered, "I wonder what's the matter; I +don't know what her mouth's doing, but I think her shoulders are +swearing. Well," said Sellers blithely to Tracy, "I shall miss her-- +parents always miss the children as soon as they're out of sight, it's +only a natural and wisely ordained partiality--but you'll be all right, +because Miss Belle will supply the youthful element for you and to your +entire content; and we old people will do our best, too. We shall have a +good enough time. And you'll have a chance to get better acquainted with +Admiral Hawkins. That's a rare character, Mr. Tracy--one of the rarest +and most engaging characters the world has produced. You'll find him +worth studying. I've studied him ever since he was a child and have +always found him developing. I really consider that one of the main +things that has enabled me to master the difficult science of +character-reading was the livid interest I always felt in that boy +and the baffling inscrutabilities of his ways and inspirations." + +Tracy was not hearing a word. His spirits were gone, he was desolate. + +"Yes, a most wonderful character. Concealment--that's the basis of it. +Always the first thing you want to do is to find the keystone a man's +character is built on--then you've got it. No misleading and apparently +inconsistent peculiarities can fool you then. What do you read on the +Senator's surface? Simplicity; a kind of rank and protuberant +simplicity; whereas, in fact, that's one of the deepest minds in the +world. A perfectly honest man--an absolutely honest and honorable man-- +and yet without doubt the profoundest master of dissimulation the world +has ever seen." + +"O, it's devilish!" This was wrung from the unlistening Tracy by the +anguished thought of what might have been if only the dinner arrangements +hadn't got mixed. + +"No, I shouldn't call it that," said Sellers, who was now placidly +walking up and down the room with his hands under his coat-tails and +listening to himself talk. "One could quite properly call it devilish +in another man, but not in the Senator. Your term is right--perfectly +right--I grant that--but the application is wrong. It makes a great +difference. Yes, he is a marvelous character. I do not suppose that any +other statesman ever had such a colossal sense of humor, combined with +the ability to totally conceal it. I may except George Washington and +Cromwell, and perhaps Robespierre, but I draw the line there. A person +not an expert might be in Judge Hawkins's company a lifetime and never +find out he had any more sense of humor than a cemetery." + +A deep-drawn yard-long sigh from the distraught and dreaming artist, +followed by a murmured, "Miserable, oh, miserable!" + +"Well, no, I shouldn't say that about it, quite. On the contrary, I +admire his ability to conceal his humor even more if possible than I +admire the gift itself, stupendous as it is. Another thing--General +Hawkins is a thinker; a keen, logical, exhaustive, analytical thinker-- +perhaps the ablest of modern times. That is, of course, upon themes +suited to his size, like the glacial period, and the correlation of +forces, and the evolution of the Christian from the caterpillar--any of +those things; give him a subject according to his size, and just stand +back and watch him think! Why you can see the place rock! Ah, yes, you +must know him; you must get on the inside of him. Perhaps the most +extraordinary mind since Aristotle." + +Dinner was kept waiting for a while for Miss Thompson, but as Gwendolen +had not delivered the invitation to her the waiting did no good, and the +household presently went to the meal without her. Poor old Sellers tried +everything his hospitable soul could devise to make the occasion an +enjoyable one for the guest, and the guest tried his honest best to be +cheery and chatty and happy for the old gentleman's sake; in fact all +hands worked hard in the interest of a mutual good time, but the thing +was a failure from the start; Tracy's heart was lead in his bosom, there +seemed to be only one prominent feature in the landscape and that was a +vacant chair, he couldn't drag his mind away from Gwendolen and his hard +luck; consequently his distractions allowed deadly pauses to slip in +every now and then when it was his turn to say something, and of course +this disease spread to the rest of the conversation--wherefore, instead +of having a breezy sail in sunny waters, as anticipated, everybody was +bailing out and praying for land. What could the matter be? Tracy alone +could have told, the others couldn't even invent a theory. + +Meanwhile they were having a similarly dismal time at the Thompson house; +in fact a twin experience. Gwendolen was ashamed of herself for allowing +her disappointment to so depress her spirits and make her so strangely +and profoundly miserable; but feeling ashamed of herself didn't improve +the matter any; it only seemed to aggravate the suffering. She explained +that she was not feeling very well, and everybody could see that this was +true; so she got sincere sympathy and commiseration; but that didn't help +the case. Nothing helps that kind of a case. It is best to just stand +off and let it fester. The moment the dinner was over the girl excused +herself, and she hurried home feeling unspeakably grateful to get away +from that house and that intolerable captivity and suffering. + +Will he be gone? The thought arose in her brain, but took effect in her +heels. She slipped into the house, threw off her things and made +straight for the dining room. She stopped and listened. Her father's +voice--with no life in it; presently her mother's--no life in that; +a considerable vacancy, then a sterile remark from Washington Hawkins. +Another silence; then, not Tracy's but her father's voice again. + +"He's gone," she said to herself despairingly, and listlessly opened the +door and stepped within. + +"Why, my child," cried the mother, "how white you are! Are you--has +anything--" + +"White?" exclaimed Sellers. "It's gone like a flash; 'twasn't serious. +Already she's as red as the soul of a watermelon! Sit down, dear, sit +down--goodness knows you're welcome. Did you have a good time? We've +had great times here--immense. Why didn't Miss Belle come? Mr. Tracy is +not feeling well, and she'd have made him forget it." + +She was content now; and out from her happy eyes there went a light that +told a secret to another pair of eyes there and got a secret in return. +In just that infinitely small fraction of a second those two great +confessions were made, received, and perfectly understood. All anxiety, +apprehension, uncertainty, vanished out of these young people's hearts +and left them filled with a great peace. + +Sellers had had the most confident faith that with the new reinforcement +victory would be at this last moment snatched from the jaws of defeat, +but it was an error. The talk was as stubbornly disjointed as ever. +He was proud of Gwendolen, and liked to show her off, even against Miss +Belle Thompson, and here had been a great opportunity, and what had she +made of it? He felt a good deal put out. It vexed him to think that +this Englishman, with the traveling Briton's everlasting disposition to +generalize whole mountain ranges from single sample-grains of sand, would +jump to the conclusion that American girls were as dumb as himself-- +generalizing the whole tribe from this single sample and she at her +poorest, there being nothing at that table to inspire her, give her a +start, keep her from going to sleep. He made up his mind that for the +honor of the country he would bring these two together again over the +social board before long. There would be a different result another +time, he judged. He said to himself, with a deep sense of injury, +"He'll put in his diary--they all keep diaries--he'll put in his diary +that she was miraculously uninteresting--dear, dear, but wasn't she! +I never saw the like--and yet looking as beautiful as Satan, too--and +couldn't seem to do anything but paw bread crumbs, and pick flowers to +pieces, and look fidgety. And it isn't any better here in the Hall of +Audience. I've had enough; I'll haul down my flag--the others may fight +it out if they want to." + +He shook hands all around and went off to do some work which he said was +pressing. The idolaters were the width of the room apart; and apparently +unconscious of each other's presence. The distance got shortened a +little, now. Very soon the mother withdrew. The distance narrowed +again. Tracy stood before a chromo of some Ohio politician which had +been retouched and chain-mailed for a crusading Rossmore, and Gwendolen +was sitting on the sofa not far from his elbow artificially absorbed in +examining a photograph album that hadn't any photographs in it. + +The "Senator" still lingered. He was sorry for the young people; it had +been a dull evening for them. In the goodness of his heart he tried to +make it pleasant for them now; tried to remove the ill impression +necessarily left by the general defeat; tried to be chatty, even tried to +be gay. But the responses were sickly, there was no starting any +enthusiasm; he would give it up and quit--it was a day specially picked +out and consecrated to failures. + +But when Gwendolen rose up promptly and smiled a glad smile and said with +thankfulness and blessing, "Must you go?" it seemed cruel to desert, and +he sat down again. + +He was about to begin a remark when--when he didn't. We have all been +there. He didn't know how he knew his concluding to stay longer had been +a mistake, he merely knew it; and knew it for dead certain, too. And so +he bade goodnight, and went mooning out, wondering what he could have +done that changed the atmosphere that way. As the door closed behind him +those two were standing side by side, looking at that door--looking at it +in a waiting, second-counting, but deeply grateful kind of way. And the +instant it closed they flung their arms about each other's necks, and +there, heart to heart and lip to lip-- + +"Oh, my God, she's kissing it!" + +Nobody heard this remark, because Hawkins, who bred it, only thought it, +he didn't utter it. He had turned, the moment he had closed the door, +and had pushed it open a little, intending to re-enter and ask what +ill-advised thing he had done or said, and apologize for it. But he +didn't re-enter; he staggered off stunned, terrified, distressed. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +Five minutes later he was sitting in his room, with his head bowed within +the circle of his arms, on the table--final attitude of grief and despair. +His tears were flowing fast, and now and then a sob broke upon the +stillness. Presently he said: + +"I knew her when she was a little child and used to climb about my knees; +I love her as I love my own, and now--oh, poor thing, poor thing, I +cannot bear it!--she's gone and lost her heart to this mangy +materializee! Why didn't we see that that might happen? But how could +we? Nobody could; nobody could ever have dreamed of such a thing. You +couldn't expect a person would fall in love with a wax-work. And this +one doesn't even amount to that." + +He went on grieving to himself, and now and then giving voice to his +lamentations. + +"It's done, oh, it's done, and there's no help for it, no undoing the +miserable business. If I had the nerve, I would kill it. But that +wouldn't do any good. She loves it; she thinks it's genuine and +authentic. If she lost it she would grieve for it just as she would for +a real person. And who's to break it to the family! Not I--I'll die +first. Sellers is the best human being I ever knew and I wouldn't any +more think of--oh, dear, why it'll break his heart when he finds it out. +And Polly's too. This comes of meddling with such infernal matters! +But for this, the creature would still be roasting in Sheol where it +belongs. How is it that these people don't smell the brimstone? +Sometimes I can't come into the same room with him without nearly +suffocating." + +After a while he broke out again: + +"Well, there's one thing, sure. The materializing has got to stop right +where it is. If she's got to marry a spectre, let her marry a decent one +out of the Middle Ages, like this one--not a cowboy and a thief such as +this protoplasmic tadpole's going to turn into if Sellers keeps on +fussing at it. It costs five thousand dollars cash and shuts down on the +incorporated company to stop the works at this point, but Sally Sellers's +happiness is worth more than that." + +He heard Sellers coming, and got himself to rights. Sellers took a seat, +and said: + +"Well, I've got to confess I'm a good deal puzzled. It did certainly +eat, there's no getting around it. Not eat, exactly, either, but it +nibbled; nibbled in an appetiteless way, but still it nibbled; and that's +just a marvel. Now the question is, what does it do with those +nibblings? That's it--what does it do with them? My idea is that we +don't begin to know all there is to this stupendous discovery yet. +But time will show--time and science--give us a chance, and don't get +impatient." + +But he couldn't get Hawkins interested; couldn't make him talk to amount +to anything; couldn't drag him out of his depression. But at last he +took a turn that arrested Hawkins's attention. + +"I'm coming to like him, Hawkins. He is a person of stupendous +character--absolutely gigantic. Under that placid exterior is concealed +the most dare-devil spirit that was ever put into a man--he's just a +Clive over again. Yes, I'm all admiration for him, on account of his +character, and liking naturally follows admiration, you know. I'm coming +to like him immensely. Do you know, I haven't the heart to degrade such +a character as that down to the burglar estate for money or for anything +else; and I've come to ask if you are willing to let the reward go, and +leave this poor fellow--" + +"Where he is?" + +"Yes--not bring him down to date." + +"Oh, there's my hand; and my heart's in it, too!" + +"I'll never forget you for this, Hawkins," said the old gentleman in a +voice which he found it hard to control. "You are making a great +sacrifice for me, and one which you can ill afford, but I'll never forget +your generosity, and if I live you shall not suffer for it, be sure of +that." + +Sally Sellers immediately and vividly realized that she was become a new +being; a being of a far higher and worthier sort than she had been such a +little while before; an earnest being, in place of a dreamer; and +supplied with a reason for her presence in the world, where merely a +wistful and troubled curiosity about it had existed before. So great and +so comprehensive was the change which had been wrought, that she seemed +to herself to be a real person who had lately been a shadow; a something +which had lately been a nothing; a purpose, which had lately been a +fancy; a finished temple, with the altar-fires lit and the voice of +worship ascending, where before had been but an architect's confusion of +arid working plans, unintelligible to the passing eye and prophesying +nothing. + +"Lady" Gwendolen! The pleasantness of that sound was all gone; it was an +offense to her ear now. She said: + +"There--that sham belongs to the past; I will not be called by it any +more." + +"I may call you simply Gwendolen? You will allow me to drop the +formalities straightway and name you by your dear first name without +additions?" + +She was dethroning the pink and replacing it with a rosebud. + +"There--that is better. I hate pinks--some pinks. Indeed yes, you are to +call me by my first name without additions--that is,--well, I don't mean +without additions entirely, but--" + +It was as far as she could get. There was a pause; his intellect was +struggling to comprehend; presently it did manage to catch the idea in +time to save embarrassment all around, and he said gratefully-- + +"Dear Gwendolen! I may say that?" + +"Yes--part of it. But--don't kiss me when I am talking, it makes me +forget what I was going to say. You can call me by part of that form, +but not the last part. Gwendolen is not my name." + +"Not your name?" This in a tone of wonder and surprise. + +The girl's soul was suddenly invaded by a creepy apprehension, a quite +definite sense of suspicion and alarm. She put his arms away from her, +looked him searchingly in the eye, and said: + +"Answer me truly, on your honor. You are not seeking to marry me on +account of my rank?" + +The shot almost knocked him through the wall, he was so little prepared +for it. There was something so finely grotesque about the question and +its parent suspicion, that he stopped to wonder and admire, and thus was +he saved from laughing. Then, without wasting precious time, he set +about the task of convincing her that he had been lured by herself alone, +and had fallen in love with her only, not her title and position; that he +loved her with all his heart, and could not love her more if she were a +duchess, or less if she were without home, name or family. She watched +his face wistfully, eagerly, hopefully, translating his words by its +expression; and when he had finished there was gladness in her heart-- +a tumultuous gladness, indeed, though outwardly she was calm, tranquil, +even judicially austere. She prepared a surprise for him, now, +calculated to put a heavy strain upon those disinterested protestations +of his; and thus she delivered it, burning it away word by word as the +fuse burns down to a bombshell, and watching to see how far the explosion +would lift him: + +"Listen--and do not doubt me, for I shall speak the exact truth. Howard +Tracy, I am no more an earl's child than you are!" + +To her joy--and secret surprise, also--it never phased him. He was +ready, this time, and saw his chance. He cried out with enthusiasm, +"Thank heaven for that!" and gathered her to his arms. + +To express her happiness was almost beyond her gift of speech. + +"You make me the proudest girl in all the earth," she said, with her head +pillowed on his shoulder. "I thought it only natural that you should be +dazzled by the title--maybe even unconsciously, you being English--and +that you might be deceiving yourself in thinking you loved only me, and +find you didn't love me when the deception was swept away; so it makes me +proud that the revelation stands for nothing and that you do love just +me, only me--oh, prouder than any words can tell!" + +"It is only you, sweetheart, I never gave one envying glance toward your +father's earldom. That is utterly true, dear Gwendolen." + +"There--you mustn't call me that. I hate that false name. I told you it +wasn't mine. My name is Sally Sellers--or Sarah, if you like. From this +time I banish dreams, visions, imaginings, and will no more of them. +I am going to be myself--my genuine self, my honest self, my natural +self, clear and clean of sham and folly and fraud, and worthy of you. +There is no grain of social inequality between us; I, like you, am poor; +I, like you, am without position or distinction; you are a struggling +artist, I am that, too, in my humbler way. Our bread is honest bread, +we work for our living. Hand in hand we will walk hence to the grave, +helping each other in all ways, living for each other, being and +remaining one in heart and purpose, one in hope and aspiration, +inseparable to the end. And though our place is low, judged by the +world's eye, we will make it as high as the highest in the great +essentials of honest work for what we eat and wear, and conduct above +reproach. We live in a land, let us be thankful, where this is +all-sufficient, and no man is better than his neighbor by the grace +of God, but only by his own merit." + +Tracy tried to break in, but she stopped him and kept the floor herself. + +"I am not through yet. I am going to purge myself of the last vestiges +of artificiality and pretence, and then start fair on your own honest +level and be worthy mate to you thenceforth. My father honestly thinks +he is an earl. Well, leave him his dream, it pleases him and does no one +any harm: It was the dream of his ancestors before him. It has made +fools of the house of Sellers for generations, and it made something of a +fool of me, but took no deep root. I am done with it now, and for good. +Forty-eight hours ago I was privately proud of being the daughter of a +pinchbeck earl, and thought the proper mate for me must be a man of like +degree; but to-day--oh, how grateful I am for your love which has healed +my sick brain and restored my sanity!--I could make oath that no earl's +son in all the world--" + +"Oh,--well, but--but--" + +"Why, you look like a person in a panic. What is it? What is the +matter?" + +"Matter? Oh, nothing--nothing. I was only going to say"--but in his +flurry nothing occurred to him to say, for a moment; then by a lucky +inspiration he thought of something entirely sufficient for the occasion, +and brought it out with eloquent force: "Oh, how beautiful you are! You +take my breath away when you look like that." + +It was well conceived, well timed, and cordially delivered--and it got +its reward. + +"Let me see. Where was I? Yes, my father's earldom is pure moonshine. +Look at those dreadful things on the wall. You have of course supposed +them to be portraits of his ancestors, earls of Rossmore. Well, they are +not. They are chromos of distinguished Americans--all moderns; but he +has carried them back a thousand years by re-labeling them. Andrew +Jackson there, is doing what he can to be the late American earl; and the +newest treasure in the collection is supposed to be the young English +heir--I mean the idiot with the crape; but in truth it's a shoemaker, and +not Lord Berkeley at all." + +"Are you sure?" + +"Why of course I am. He wouldn't look like that." + +"Why?" + +"Because his conduct in his last moments, when the fire was sweeping +around him shows that he was a man. It shows that he was a fine, +high-souled young creature." + +Tracy was strongly moved by these compliments, and it seemed to him that +the girl's lovely lips took on anew loveliness when they were delivering +them. He said, softly: + +"It is a pity he could not know what a gracious impression his behavior +was going to leave with the dearest and sweetest stranger in the +land of--" + +"Oh, I almost loved him! Why, I think of him every day. He is always +floating about in my mind." + +Tracy felt that this was a little more than was necessary. He was +conscious of the sting of jealousy. He said: + +"It is quite right to think of him--at least now and then--that is, at +intervals--in perhaps an admiring way--but it seems to me that--" + +"Howard Tracy, are you jealous of that dead man?" + +He was ashamed--and at the same time not ashamed. He was jealous--and at +the same time he was not jealous. In a sense the dead man was himself; +in that case compliments and affection lavished upon that corpse went +into his own till and were clear profit. But in another sense the dead +man was not himself; and in that case all compliments and affection +lavished there were wasted, and a sufficient basis for jealousy. A tiff +was the result of the dispute between the two. Then they made it up, and +were more loving than ever. As an affectionate clincher of the +reconciliation, Sally declared that she had now banished Lord Berkeley +from her mind; and added, "And in order to make sure that he shall never +make trouble between us again, I will teach myself to detest that name +and all that have ever borne it or ever shall bear it." + +This inflicted another pang, and Tracy was minded to ask her to modify +that a little just on general principles, and as practice in not +overdoing a good thing--perhaps he might better leave things as they were +and not risk bringing on another tiff. He got away from that particular, +and sought less tender ground for conversation. + +"I suppose you disapprove wholly of aristocracies and nobilities, now +that you have renounced your title and your father's earldom." + +"Real ones? Oh, dear no--but I've thrown aside our sham one for good." + +This answer fell just at the right time and just in the right place, to +save the poor unstable young man from changing his political complexion +once more. He had been on the point of beginning to totter again, but +this prop shored him up and kept him from floundering back into democracy +and re-renouncing aristocracy. So he went home glad that he had asked +the fortunate question. The girl would accept a little thing like a +genuine earldom, she was merely prejudiced against the brummagem article. +Yes, he could have his girl and have his earldom, too: that question was +a fortunate stroke. + +Sally went to bed happy, too; and remained happy, deliriously happy, for +nearly two hours; but at last, just as she was sinking into a contented +and luxurious unconsciousness, the shady devil who lives and lurks and +hides and watches inside of human beings and is always waiting for a +chance to do the proprietor a malicious damage, whispered to her soul and +said, "That question had a harmless look, but what was back of it?--what +was the secret motive of it?--what suggested it?" + +The shady devil had knifed her, and could retire, now, and take a rest; +the wound would attend to business for him. And it did. + +Why should Howard Tracy ask that question? If he was not trying to marry +her for the sake of her rank, what should suggest that question to him? +Didn't he plainly look gratified when she said her objections to +aristocracy had their limitations? Ah, he is after that earldom, that +gilded sham--it isn't poor me he wants. + +So she argued, in anguish and tears. Then she argued the opposite +theory, but made a weak, poor business of it, and lost the case. She +kept the arguing up, one side and then the other, the rest of the night, +and at last fell asleep at dawn; fell in the fire at dawn, one may say; +for that kind of sleep resembles fire, and one comes out of it with his +brain baked and his physical forces fried out of him. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +Tracy wrote his father before he sought his bed. He wrote a letter which +he believed would get better treatment than his cablegram received, for +it contained what ought to be welcome news; namely, that he had tried +equality and working for a living; had made a fight which he could find +no reason to be ashamed of, and in the matter of earning a living had +proved that he was able to do it; but that on the whole he had arrived at +the conclusion that he could not reform the world single-handed, and was +willing to retire from the conflict with the fair degree of honor which +he had gained, and was also willing to return home and resume his +position and be content with it and thankful for it for the future, +leaving further experiment of a missionary sort to other young people +needing the chastening and quelling persuasions of experience, the only +logic sure to convince a diseased imagination and restore it to rugged +health. Then he approached the subject of marriage with the daughter of +the American Claimant with a good deal of caution and much painstaking +art. He said praiseful and appreciative things about the girl, but +didn't dwell upon that detail or make it prominent. The thing which he +made prominent was the opportunity now so happily afforded, to reconcile +York and Lancaster, graft the warring roses upon one stem, and end +forever a crying injustice which had already lasted far too long. One +could infer that he had thought this thing all out and chosen this way of +making all things fair and right because it was sufficiently fair and +considerably wiser than the renunciation-scheme which he had brought with +him from England. One could infer that, but he didn't say it. In fact +the more he read his letter over, the more he got to inferring it +himself. + +When the old earl received that letter, the first part of it filled him +with a grim and snarly satisfaction; but the rest of it brought a snort +or two out of him that could be translated differently. He wasted no ink +in this emergency, either in cablegrams or letters; he promptly took ship +for America to look into the matter himself. He had staunchly held his +grip all this long time, and given no sign of the hunger at his heart to +see his son; hoping for the cure of his insane dream, and resolute that +the process should go through all the necessary stages without assuaging +telegrams or other nonsense from home, and here was victory at last. +Victory, but stupidly marred by this idiotic marriage project. Yes, he +would step over and take a hand in this matter himself. + +During the first ten days following the mailing of the letter Tracy's +spirits had no idle time; they were always climbing up into the clouds or +sliding down into the earth as deep as the law of gravitation reached. +He was intensely happy or intensely miserable by turns, according to Miss +Sally's moods. He never could tell when the mood was going to change, +and when it changed he couldn't tell what it was that had changed it. +Sometimes she was so in love with him that her love was tropical, torrid, +and she could find no language fervent enough for its expression; then +suddenly, and without warning or any apparent reason, the weather would +change, and the victim would find himself adrift among the icebergs and +feeling as lonesome and friendless as the north pole. It sometimes +seemed to him that a man might better be dead than exposed to these +devastating varieties of climate. + +The case was simple. Sally wanted to believe that Tracy's preference was +disinterested; so she was always applying little tests of one sort or +another, hoping and expecting that they would bring out evidence which +would confirm or fortify her belief. Poor Tracy did not know that these +experiments were being made upon him, consequently he walked promptly +into all the traps the girl set for him. These traps consisted in +apparently casual references to social distinction, aristocratic title +and privilege, and such things. Often Tracy responded to these +references heedlessly and not much caring what he said provided it kept +the talk going and prolonged the seance. He didn't suspect that the girl +was watching his face and listening for his words as one who watches the +judge's face and listens for the words which will restore him to home and +friends and freedom or shut him away from the sun and human companionship +forever. He didn't suspect that his careless words were being weighed, +and so he often delivered sentence of death when it would have been just +as handy and all the same to him to pronounce acquittal. Daily he broke +the girl's heart, nightly he sent her to the rack for sleep. He couldn't +understand it. + +Some people would have put this and that together and perceived that the +weather never changed until one particular subject was introduced, +and that then it always changed. And they would have looked further, +and perceived that that subject was always introduced by the one party, +never the other. They would have argued, then, that this was done for a +purpose. If they could not find out what that purpose was in any simpler +or easier way, they would ask. + +But Tracy was not deep enough or suspicious enough to think of these +things. He noticed only one particular; that the weather was always +sunny when a visit began. No matter how much it might cloud up later, +it always began with a clear sky. He couldn't explain this curious fact +to himself, he merely knew it to be a fact. The truth of the matter was, +that by the time Tracy had been out of Sally's sight six hours she was so +famishing for a sight of him that her doubts and suspicions were all +consumed away in the fire of that longing, and so always she came into +his presence as surprisingly radiant and joyous as she wasn't when she +went out of it. + +In circumstances like these a growing portrait runs a good many risks. +The portrait of Sellers, by Tracy, was fighting along, day by day, +through this mixed weather, and daily adding to itself ineradicable signs +of the checkered life it was leading. It was the happiest portrait, in +spots, that was ever seen; but in other spots a damned soul looked out +from it; a soul that was suffering all the different kinds of distress +there are, from stomach ache to rabies. But Sellers liked it. He said it +was just himself all over--a portrait that sweated moods from every pore, +and no two moods alike. He said he had as many different kinds of +emotions in him as a jug. + +It was a kind of a deadly work of art, maybe, but it was a starchy +picture for show; for it was life size, full length, and represented the +American earl in a peer's scarlet robe, with the three ermine bars +indicative of an earl's rank, and on the gray head an earl's coronet, +tilted just a wee bit to one side in a most gallus and winsome way. When +Sally's weather was sunny the portrait made Tracy chuckle, but when her +weather was overcast it disordered his mind and stopped the circulation +of his blood. + +Late one night when the sweethearts had been having a flawless visit +together, Sally's interior devil began to work his specialty, and soon +the conversation was drifting toward the customary rock. Presently, in +the midst of Tracy's serene flow of talk, he felt a shudder which he knew +was not his shudder, but exterior to his breast although immediately +against it. After the shudder came sobs; Sally was crying. + +"Oh, my darling, what have I done--what have I said? It has happened +again! What have I done to wound you?" + +She disengaged herself from his arms and gave him a look of deep +reproach. + +"What have you done? I will tell you what you have done. You have +unwittingly revealed--oh, for the twentieth time, though I could not +believe it, would not believe it!--that it is not me you love, but that +foolish sham my father's imitation earldom; and you have broken my +heart!" + +"Oh, my child, what are you saying! I never dreamed of such a thing." + +"Oh, Howard, Howard, the things you have uttered when you were forgetting +to guard your tongue, have betrayed you." + +"Things I have uttered when I was forgetting to guard my tongue? These +are hard words. When have I remembered to guard it? Never in one +instance. It has no office but to speak the truth. It needs no guarding +for that." + +"Howard, I have noted your words and weighed them, when you were not +thinking of their significance--and they have told me more than you meant +they should." + +"Do you mean to say you have answered the trust I had in you by using it +as an ambuscade from which you could set snares for my unsuspecting +tongue and be safe from detection while you did it? You have not done +this--surely you have not done this thing. Oh, one's enemy could not do +it." + +This was an aspect of the girl's conduct which she had not clearly +perceived before. Was it treachery? Had she abused a trust? The +thought crimsoned her cheeks with shame and remorse. + +"Oh, forgive me," she said, "I did not know what I was doing. I have +been so tortured--you will forgive me, you must; I have suffered so much, +and I am so sorry and so humble; you do forgive me, don't you?--don't +turn away, don't refuse me; it is only my love that is at fault, and you +know I love you, love you with all my heart; I couldn't bear to--oh, +dear, dear, I am so miserable, and I sever meant any harm, and I didn't +see where this insanity was carrying me, and how it was wronging and +abusing the dearest heart in all the world to me--and--and--oh, take me +in your arms again, I have no other refuge, no other home and hope!" + +There was reconciliation again--immediate, perfect, all-embracing--and +with it utter happiness. This would have been a good time to adjourn. +But no, now that the cloud-breeder was revealed at last; now that it was +manifest that all the sour weather had come from this girl's dread that +Tracy was lured by her rank and not herself, he resolved to lay that +ghost immediately and permanently by furnishing the best possible proof +that he couldn't have had back of him at any time the suspected motive. +So he said: + +"Let me whisper a little secret in your ear--a secret which I have kept +shut up in my breast all this time. Your rank couldn't ever have been an +enticement. I am son and heir to an English earl!" + +The girl stared at him--one, two, three moments, maybe a dozen--then her +lips parted: + +"You?" she said, and moved away from him, still gazing at him in a kind +of blank amazement. + +"Why--why, certainly I am. Why do you act like this? What have I done +now?" + +"What have you done? You have certainly made a most strange statement. +You must see that yourself." + +"Well," with a timid little laugh, "it may be a strange enough statement; +but of what consequence is that, if it is true?" + +"If it is true. You are already retiring from it." + +"Oh, not for a moment! You should not say that. I have not deserved it. +I have spoken the truth; why do you doubt it?" + +Her reply was prompt. + +"Simply because you didn't speak it earlier!" + +"Oh!" It wasn't a groan, exactly, but it was an intelligible enough +expression of the fact that he saw the point and recognized that there +was reason in it. + +"You have seemed to conceal nothing from me that I ought to know +concerning yourself, and you were not privileged to keep back such a +thing as this from me a moment after--after--well, after you had +determined to pay your court to me." + +"Its true, it's true, I know it! But there were circumstances--in-- +in the way--circumstances which--" + +She waved the circumstances aside. + +"Well, you see," he said, pleadingly, "you seemed so bent on our +traveling the proud path of honest labor and honorable poverty, that I +was terrified--that is, I was afraid--of--of--well, you know how you +talked." + +"Yes, I know how I talked. And I also know that before the talk was +finished you inquired how I stood as regards aristocracies, and my answer +was calculated to relieve your fears." + +He was silent a while. Then he said, in a discouraged way: + +"I don't see any way out of it. It was a mistake. That is in truth all +it was, just a mistake. No harm was meant, no harm in the world. +I didn't see how it might some time look. It is my way. I don't seem to +see far." + +The girl was almost disarmed, for a moment. Then she flared up again. + +"An Earl's son! Do earls' sons go about working in lowly callings for +their bread and butter?" + +"God knows they don't! I have wished they did." + +"Do earls' sons sink their degree in a country like this, and come sober +and decent to sue for the hand of a born child of poverty when they can +go drunk, profane, and steeped in dishonorable debt and buy the pick and +choice of the millionaires' daughters of America? You an earl's son! +Show me the signs." + +"I thank God I am not able--if those are the signs. But yet I am an +earl's son and heir. It is all I can say. I wish you would believe me, +but you will not. I know no way to persuade you." + +She was about to soften again, but his closing remark made her bring her +foot down with smart vexation, and she cried out: + +"Oh, you drive all patience out of me! Would you have one believe that +you haven't your proofs at hand, and yet are what you say you are? +You do not put your hand in your pocket now--for you have nothing there. +You make a claim like this, and then venture to travel without +credentials. These are simply incredibilities. Don't you see that, +yourself?" + +He cast about in his mind for a defence of some kind or other--hesitated +a little, and then said, with difficulty and diffidence: + +"I will tell you just the truth, foolish as it will seem to you-- +to anybody, I suppose--but it is the truth. I had an ideal--call it +a dream, a folly, if you will--but I wanted to renounce the privileges +and unfair advantages enjoyed by the nobility and wrung from the nation +by force and fraud, and purge myself of my share of those crimes against +right and reason, by thenceforth comrading with the poor and humble on +equal terms, earning with my own hands the bread I ate, and rising by my +own merit if I rose at all." + +The young girl scanned his face narrowly while he spoke; and there was +something about his simplicity of manner and statement which touched her +--touched her almost to the danger point; but she set her grip on the +yielding spirit and choked it to quiescence; it could not be wise to +surrender to compassion or any kind of sentiment, yet; she must ask one +or two more questions. Tracy was reading her face; and what he read +there lifted his drooping hopes a little. + +"An earl's son to do that! Why, he were a man! A man to love!--oh, +more, a man to worship!" + +"Why?" + +"But he never lived! He is not born, he will not be born. The +self-abnegation that could do that--even in utter folly, and hopeless of +conveying benefit to any, beyond the mere example--could be mistaken for +greatness; why, it would be greatness in this cold age of sordid ideals! +A moment--wait--let me finish; I have one question more. Your father is +earl of what?" + +"Rossmore--and I am Viscount Berkeley!" + +The fat was in the fire again. The girl felt so outraged that it was +difficult for her to speak. + +"How can you venture such a brazen thing! You know that he is dead, +and you know that I know it. Oh, to rob the living of name and honors +for a selfish and temporary advantage is crime enough, but to rob the +defenceless dead--why it is more than crime, it degrades crime!" + +"Oh, listen to me--just a word--don't turn away like that. Don't go-- +don't leave me, so--stay one moment. On my honor--" + +"Oh, on your honor!" + +"On my honor I am what I say! And I will prove it, and you will believe, +I know you will. I will bring you a message--a cablegram--" + +"When?" + +"To-morrow--next day--" + +"Signed 'Rossmore'?" + +"Yes--signed Rossmore." + +"What will that prove?" + +"What will it prove? What should it prove?" + +"If you force me to say it--possibly the presence of a confederate +somewhere." + +This was a hard blow, and staggered him. He said, dejectedly: + +"It is true. I did not think of it. Oh, my God, I do not know any way +to do; I do everything wrong. You are going?--and you won't say even +good-night--or good-bye? Ah, we have not parted like this before." + +"Oh, I want to run and--no, go, now." A pause--then she said, "You may +bring the message when it comes." + +"Oh, may I? God bless you." + +He was gone; and none too soon; her lips were already quivering, and now +she broke down. Through her sobbings her words broke from time to time. + +"Oh, he is gone. I have lost him, I shall never see him any more. And +he didn't kiss me good-bye; never even offered to force a kiss from me, +and he knowing it was the very, very last, and I expecting he would, and +never dreaming he would treat me so after all we have been to each other. +Oh, oh, oh, oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! He is a dear, poor, +miserable, good-hearted, transparent liar and humbug, but oh, I do love +him so--!" After a little she broke into speech again. "How dear he is! +and I shall miss him so, I shall miss him so! Why won't he ever think to +forge a message and fetch it?--but no, he never will, he never thinks of +anything; he's so honest and simple it wouldn't ever occur to him. +Oh, what did possess him to think he could succeed as a fraud--and he +hasn't the first requisite except duplicity that I can see. Oh, dear, +I'll go to bed and give it all up. Oh, I wish I had told him to come and +tell me whenever he didn't get any telegram--and now it's all my own +fault if I never see him again. How my eyes must look!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +Next day, sure enough, the cablegram didn't come. This was an immense +disaster; for Tracy couldn't go into the presence without that ticket, +although it wasn't going to possess any value as evidence. But if the +failure of the cablegram on that first day may be called an immense +disaster, where is the dictionary that can turn out a phrase sizeable +enough to describe the tenth day's failure? Of course every day that the +cablegram didn't come made Tracy all of twenty-four hours' more ashamed +of himself than he was the day before, and made Sally fully twenty-four +hours more certain than ever that he not only hadn't any father anywhere, +but hadn't even a confederate--and so it followed that he was a +double-dyed humbug and couldn't be otherwise. + +These were hard days for Barrow and the art firm. All these had their +hands full, trying to comfort Tracy. Barrow's task was particularly +hard, because he was made a confidant in full, and therefore had to humor +Tracy's delusion that he had a father, and that the father was an earl, +and that he was going to send a cablegram. Barrow early gave up the idea +of trying to convince Tracy that he hadn't any father, because this had +such a bad effect on the patient, and worked up his temper to such an +alarming degree. He had tried, as an experiment, letting Tracy think he +had a father; the result was so good that he went further, with proper +caution, and tried letting him think his father was an earl; this wrought +so well, that he grew bold, and tried letting him think he had two +fathers, if he wanted to, but he didn't want to, so Barrow withdrew one +of them and substituted letting him think he was going to get a +cablegram--which Barrow judged he wouldn't, and was right; but Barrow +worked the cablegram daily for all it was worth, and it was the one thing +that kept Tracy alive; that was Barrow's opinion. + +And these were bitter hard days for poor Sally, and mainly delivered up +to private crying. She kept her furniture pretty damp, and so caught +cold, and the dampness and the cold and the sorrow together undermined +her appetite, and she was a pitiful enough object, poor thing. Her state +was bad enough, as per statement of it above quoted; but all the forces +of nature and circumstance seemed conspiring to make it worse--and +succeeding. For instance, the morning after her dismissal of Tracy, +Hawkins and Sellers read in the associated press dispatches that a toy +puzzle called Pigs in the Clover, had come into sudden favor within the +past few weeks, and that from the Atlantic to the Pacific all the +populations of all the States had knocked off work to play with it, +and that the business of the country had now come to a standstill by +consequence; that judges, lawyers, burglars, parsons, thieves, merchants, +mechanics, murderers, women, children, babies--everybody, indeed, could +be seen from morning till midnight, absorbed in one deep project and +purpose, and only one--to pen those pigs, work out that puzzle +successfully; that all gayety, all cheerfulness had departed from the +nation, and in its place care, preoccupation and anxiety sat upon every +countenance, and all faces were drawn, distressed, and furrowed with the +signs of age and trouble, and marked with the still sadder signs of +mental decay and incipient madness; that factories were at work night and +day in eight cities, and yet to supply the demand for the puzzle was thus +far impossible. Hawkins was wild with joy, but Sellers was calm. Small +matters could not disturb his serenity. He said-- + +"That's just the way things go. A man invents a thing which could +revolutionize the arts, produce mountains of money, and bless the earth, +and who will bother with it or show any interest in it?--and so you are +just as poor as you were before. But you invent some worthless thing to +amuse yourself with, and would throw it away if let alone, and all of a +sudden the whole world makes a snatch for it and out crops a fortune. +Hunt up that Yankee and collect, Hawkins--half is yours, you know. +Leave me to potter at my lecture." + +This was a temperance lecture. Sellers was head chief in the Temperance +camp, and had lectured, now and then in that interest, but had been +dissatisfied with his efforts; wherefore he was now about to try a new +plan. After much thought he had concluded that a main reason why his +lectures lacked fire or something, was, that they were too transparently +amateurish; that is to say, it was probably too plainly perceptible that +the lecturer was trying to tell people about the horrid effects of liquor +when he didn't really know anything about those effects except from +hearsay, since he had hardly ever tasted an intoxicant in his life. +His scheme, now, was to prepare himself to speak from bitter experience. +Hawkins was to stand by with the bottle, calculate the doses, watch the +effects, make notes of results, and otherwise assist in the preparation. +Time was short, for the ladies would be along about noon--that is to say, +the temperance organization called the Daughters of Siloam--and Sellers +must be ready to head the procession. + +The time kept slipping along--Hawkins did not return--Sellers could not +venture to wait longer; so he attacked the bottle himself, and proceeded +to note the effects. Hawkins got back at last; took one comprehensive +glance at the lecturer, and went down and headed off the procession. +The ladies were grieved to hear that the champion had been taken suddenly +ill and violently so, but glad to hear that it was hoped he would be out +again in a few days. + +As it turned out, the old gentleman didn't turn over or show any signs of +life worth speaking of for twenty-four hours. Then he asked after the +procession, and learned what had happened about it. He was sorry; said +he had been "fixed" for it. He remained abed several days, and his wife +and daughter took turns in sitting with him and ministering to his wants. +Often he patted Sally's head and tried to comfort her. + +"Don't cry, my child, don't cry so; you know your old father did it by +mistake and didn't mean a bit of harm; you know he wouldn't intentionally +do anything to make you ashamed for the world; you know he was trying to +do good and only made the mistake through ignorance, not knowing the +right doses and Washington not there to help. Don't cry so, dear, it +breaks my old heart to see you, and think I've brought this humiliation +on you and you so dear to me and so good. I won't ever do it again, +indeed I won't; now be comforted, honey, that's a good child." + +But when she wasn't on duty at the bedside the crying went on just the +same; then the mother would try to comfort her, and say: + +"Don't cry, dear, he never meant any harm; it was all one of those +happens that you can't guard against when you are trying experiments, +that way. You see I don't cry. It's because I know him so well. +I could never look anybody in the face again if he had got into such an +amazing condition as that a-purpose; but bless you his intention was +pure and high, and that makes the act pure, though it was higher than was +necessary. We're not humiliated, dear, he did it under a noble impulse +and we don't need to be ashamed. There, don't cry any more, honey." + +Thus, the old gentleman was useful to Sally, during several days, as an +explanation of her tearfulness. She felt thankful to him for the shelter +he was affording her, but often said to herself, "It's a shame to let him +see in my cryings a reproach--as if he could ever do anything that could +make me reproach him! But I can't confess; I've got to go on using him +for a pretext, he's the only one I've got in the world, and I do need one +so much." + +As soon as Sellers was out again, and found that stacks of money had been +placed in bank for him and Hawkins by the Yankee, he said, "Now we'll +soon see who's the Claimant and who's the Authentic. I'll just go over +there and warm up that House of Lords." During the next few days he and +his wife were so busy with preparations for the voyage that Sally had all +the privacy she needed, and all the chance to cry that was good for her. +Then the old pair left for New York--and England. + +Sally had also had a chance to do another thing. That was, to make up +her mind that life was not worth living upon the present terms. If she +must give up her impostor and die; doubtless she must submit; but might +she not lay her whole case before some disinterested person, first, and +see if there wasn't perhaps some saving way out of the matter? She +turned this idea over in her mind a good deal. In her first visit with +Hawkins after her parents were gone, the talk fell upon Tracy, and she +was impelled to set her case before the statesman and take his counsel. +So she poured out her heart, and he listened with painful solicitude. +She concluded, pleadingly, with-- + +"Don't tell me he is an impostor. I suppose he is, but doesn't it look +to you as if he isn't? You are cool, you know, and outside; and so, +maybe it can look to you as if he isn't one, when it can't to me. +Doesn't it look to you as if he isn't? Couldn't you--can't it look to +you that way--for--for my sake?" + +The poor man was troubled, but he felt obliged to keep in the +neighborhood of the truth. He fought around the present detail a little +while, then gave it up and said he couldn't really see his way to +clearing Tracy. + +"No," he said, "the truth is, he's an impostor." + +"That is, you--you feel a little certain, but not entirely--oh, not +entirely, Mr. Hawkins!" + +"It's a pity to have to say it--I do hate to say it, but I don't think +anything about it, I know he's an impostor." + +"Oh, now, Mr. Hawkins, you can't go that far. A body can't really know +it, you know. It isn't proved that he's not what he says he is." + +Should he come out and make a clean breast of the whole wretched +business? Yes--at least the most of it--it ought to be done. So he set +his teeth and went at the matter with determination, but purposing to +spare the girl one pain--that of knowing that Tracy was a criminal. + +"Now I am going to tell you a plain tale; one not pleasant for me to tell +or for you to hear, but we've got to stand it. I know all about that +fellow; and I know he is no earl's son." + +The girl's eyes flashed, and she said: + +"I don't care a snap for that--go on!" + +This was so wholly unexpected that it at once obstructed the narrative; +Hawkins was not even sure that he had heard aright. He said: + +"I don't know that I quite understand. Do you mean to say that if he was +all right and proper otherwise you'd be indifferent about the earl part +of the business?" + +"Absolutely." + +"You'd be entirely satisfied with him and wouldn't care for his not being +an earl's son,--that being an earl's son wouldn't add any value to him?" + +"Not the least value that I would care for. Why, Mr. Hawkins, I've +gotten over all that day-dreaming about earldoms and aristocracies and +all such nonsense and am become just a plain ordinary nobody and content +with it; and it is to him I owe my cure. And as to anything being able +to add a value to him, nothing can do that. He is the whole world to me, +just as he is; he comprehends all the values there are--then how can you +add one?" + +"She's pretty far gone." He said that to himself. He continued, still +to himself, "I must change my plan again; I can't seem to strike one that +will stand the requirements of this most variegated emergency five +minutes on a stretch. Without making this fellow a criminal, I believe +I will invent a name and a character for him calculated to disenchant +her. If it fails to do it, then I'll know that the next rightest thing +to do will be to help her to her fate, poor thing, not hinder her." +Then he said aloud: + +"Well, Gwendolen--" + +"I want to be called Sally." + +"I'm glad of it; I like it better, myself. Well, then, I'll tell you +about this man Snodgrass." + +"Snodgrass! Is that his name?" + +"Yes--Snodgrass. The other's his nom de plume." + +"It's hideous!" + +"I know it is, but we can't help our names." + +"And that is truly his real name--and not Howard Tracy?" + +Hawkins answered, regretfully: + +"Yes, it seems a pity." + +The girl sampled the name musingly, once or twice-- + +"Snodgrass. Snodgrass. No, I could not endure that. I could not get +used to it. No, I should call him by his first name. What is his first +name?" + +"His--er--his initials are S. M." + +"His initials? I don't care anything about his initials. I can't call +him by his initials. What do they stand for?" + +"Well, you see, his father was a physician, and he--he--well he was an +idolater of his profession, and he--well, he was a very eccentric man, +and--" + +"What do they stand for! What are you shuffling about?" + +"They--well they stand for Spinal Meningitis. His father being a phy--" + +"I never heard such an infamous name! Nobody can ever call a person +that--a person they love. I wouldn't call an enemy by such a name. +It sounds like an epithet." After a moment, she added with a kind of +consternation, "Why, it would be my name! Letters would come with it +on." + +"Yes--Mrs. Spinal Meningitis Snodgrass." + +"Don't repeat it--don't; I can't bear it. Was the father a lunatic?" + +"No, that is not charged." + +"I am glad of that, because that is transmissible. What do you think was +the matter with him, then?" + +"Well, I don't really know. The family used to run a good deal to +idiots, and so, maybe--" + +"Oh, there isn't any maybe about it. This one was an idiot." + +"Well, yes--he could have been. He was suspected." + +"Suspected!" said Sally, with irritation. "Would one suspect there was +going to be a dark time if he saw the constellations fall out of the sky? +But that is enough about the idiot, I don't take any interest in idiots; +tell me about the son." + +Very well, then, this one was the eldest, but not the favorite. His +brother, Zylobalsamum--" + +"Wait--give me a chance to realize that. It is perfectly stupefying. +Zylo--what did you call it?" + +"Zylobalsamum." + +"I never heard such a name: It sounds like a disease. Is it a disease?" + +"No, I don't think it's a disease. It's either Scriptural or--" + +"Well, it's not Scriptural." + +"Then it's anatomical. I knew it was one or the other. Yes, I remember, +now, it is anatomical. It's a ganglion--a nerve centre--it is what is +called the zylobalsamum process." + +"Well, go on; and if you come to any more of them, omit the names; they +make one feel so uncomfortable." + +"Very well, then. As I said, this one was not a favorite in the family, +and so he was neglected in every way, never sent to school, always +allowed to associate with the worst and coarsest characters, and so of +course he has grown up a rude, vulgar, ignorant, dissipated ruffian, +and--" + +"He? It's no such thing! You ought to be more generous than to make +such a statement as that about a poor young stranger who--who--why, he is +the very opposite of that! He is considerate, courteous, obliging, +modest, gentle, refined, cultivated-oh, for shame! how can you say such +things about him?" + +"I don't blame you, Sally--indeed I haven't a word of blame for you for +being blinded by--your affection--blinded to these minor defects which +are so manifest to others who--" + +"Minor defects? Do you call these minor defects? What are murder and +arson, pray?" + +"It is a difficult question to answer straight off--and of course +estimates of such things vary with environment. With us, out our way, +they would not necessarily attract as much attention as with you, yet +they are often regarded with disapproval--" + +"Murder and arson are regarded with disapproval?" + +"Oh, frequently." + +"With disapproval. Who are those Puritans you are talking about? +But wait--how did you come to know so much about this family? Where did +you get all this hearsay evidence?" + +"Sally, it isn't hearsay evidence. That is the serious part of it. +I knew that family--personally." + +This was a surprise. + +"You? You actually knew them?" + +"Knew Zylo, as we used to call him, and knew his father, Dr. Snodgrass. +I didn't know your own Snodgrass, but have had glimpses of him from time +to time, and I heard about him all the time. He was the common talk, you +see, on account of his--" + +"On account of his not being a house-burner or an assassin, I suppose. +That would have made him commonplace. Where did you know these people?" + +"In Cherokee Strip." + +"Oh, how preposterous! There are not enough people in Cherokee Strip to +give anybody a reputation, good or bad. There isn't a quorum. Why the +whole population consists of a couple of wagon loads of horse thieves." + +Hawkins answered placidly-- + +"Our friend was one of those wagon loads." + +Sally's eyes burned and her breath came quick and fast, but she kept a +fairly good grip on her anger and did not let it get the advantage of her +tongue. The statesman sat still and waited for developments. He was +content with his work. It was as handsome a piece of diplomatic art as +he had ever turned out, he thought; and now, let the girl make her own +choice. He judged she would let her spectre go; he hadn't a doubt of it +in fact; but anyway, let the choice be made, and he was ready to ratify +it and offer no further hindrance. + +Meantime Sally had thought her case out and made up her mind. To the +major's disappointment the verdict was against him. Sally said: + +"He has no friend but me, and I will not desert him now. I will not +marry him if his moral character is bad; but if he can prove that it +isn't, I will--and he shall have the chance. To me he seems utterly good +and dear; I've never seen anything about him that looked otherwise-- +except, of course, his calling himself an earl's son. Maybe that is only +vanity, and no real harm, when you get to the bottom of it. I do not +believe he is any such person as you have painted him. I want to see +him. I want you to find him and send him to me. I will implore him to +be honest with me, and tell me the whole truth, and not be afraid." + +"Very well; if that is your decision I will do it. But Sally, you know, +he's poor, and--" + +"Oh, I don't care anything about that. That's neither here nor there. +Will you bring him to me?" + +"I'll do it. When?--" + +"Oh, dear, it's getting toward dark, now, and so you'll have to put it +off till morning. But you will find him in the morning, won't you? +Promise." + +"I'll have him here by daylight." + +"Oh, now you're your own old self again--and lovelier than ever!" + +"I couldn't ask fairer than that. Good-bye, dear." + +Sally mused a moment alone, then said earnestly, "I love him in spite of +his name!" and went about her affairs with a light heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +Hawkins went straight to the telegraph office and disburdened his +conscience. He said to himself, "She's not going to give this galvanized +cadaver up, that's plain. Wild horses can't pull her away from him. +I've done my share; it's for Sellers to take an innings, now." So he +sent this message to New York: + +"Come back. Hire special train. She's going to marry the materializee." + +Meantime a note came to Rossmore Towers to say that the Earl of Rossmore +had just arrived from England, and would do himself the pleasure of +calling in the evening. Sally said to herself, "It is a pity he didn't +stop in New York; but it's no matter; he can go up to-morrow and see my +father. He has come over here to tomahawk papa, very likely--or buy out +his claim. This thing would have excited me, a while back; but it has +only one interest for me now, and only one value. I can say to--to-- +Spine, Spiny, Spinal--I don't like any form of that name!--I can say to +him to-morrow, 'Don't try to keep it up any more, or I shall have to tell +you whom I have been talking with last night, and then you will be +embarrassed.'" + +Tracy couldn't know he was to be invited for the morrow, or he might have +waited. As it was, he was too miserable to wait any longer; for his last +hope--a letter--had failed him. It was fully due to-day; it had not +come. Had his father really flung him away? It looked so. It was not +like his father, but it surely looked so. His father was a rather tough +nut, in truth, but had never been so with his son--still, this implacable +silence had a calamitous look. Anyway, Tracy would go to the Towers and +--then what? He didn't know; his head was tired out with thinking-- +he wouldn't think about what he must do or say--let it all take care of +itself. So that he saw Sally once more, he would be satisfied, happen +what might; he wouldn't care. + +He hardly knew how he got to the Towers, or when. He knew and cared for +only one thing--he was alone with Sally. She was kind, she was gentle, +there was moisture in her eyes, and a yearning something in her face and +manner which she could not wholly hide--but she kept her distance. They +talked. Bye and bye she said--watching his downcast countenance out of +the corner of her eye-- + +"It's so lonesome--with papa and mamma gone. I try to read, but I can't +seem to get interested in any book. I try the newspapers, but they do +put such rubbish in them. You take up a paper and start to read +something you thinks interesting, and it goes on and on and on about how +somebody--well, Dr. Snodgrass, for instance--" + +Not a movement from Tracy, not the quiver of a muscle. Sally was amazed +--what command of himself he must have! Being disconcerted, she paused +so long that Tracy presently looked up wearily and said: + +"Well?" + +"Oh, I thought you were not listening. Yes, it goes on and on about this +Doctor Snodgrass, till you are so tired, and then about his younger son-- +the favorite son--Zylobalsamum Snodgrass--" + +Not a sign from Tracy, whose head was drooping again. What supernatural +self-possession! Sally fixed her eye on him and began again, resolved to +blast him out of his serenity this time if she knew how to apply the +dynamite that is concealed in certain forms of words when those words are +properly loaded with unexpected meanings. + +"And next it goes on and on and on about the eldest son--not the +favorite, this one--and how he is neglected in his poor barren boyhood, +and allowed to grow up unschooled, ignorant, coarse, vulgar, the comrade +of the community's scum, and become in his completed manhood a rude, +profane, dissipated ruffian--" + +That head still drooped! Sally rose, moved softly and solemnly a step or +two, and stood before Tracy--his head came slowly up, his meek eyes met +her intense ones--then she finished with deep impressiveness-- + +"--named Spinal Meningitis Snodgrass!" + +Tracy merely exhibited signs of increased fatigue. The girl was outraged +by this iron indifference and callousness, and cried out-- + +"What are you made of?" + +"I? Why?" + +"Haven't you any sensitiveness? Don't these things touch any poor +remnant of delicate feeling in you?" + +"N--no," he said wonderingly, "they don't seem to. Why should they?" + +"O, dear me, how can you look so innocent, and foolish, and good, and +empty, and gentle, and all that, right in the hearing of such things as +those! Look me in the eye--straight in the eye. There, now then, answer +me without a flinch. Isn't Doctor Snodgrass your father, and isn't +Zylobalsamum your brother," [here Hawkins was about to enter the room, +but changed his mind upon hearing these words, and elected for a walk +down town, and so glided swiftly away], "and isn't your name Spinal +Meningitis, and isn't your father a doctor and an idiot, like all the +family for generations, and doesn't he name all his children after +poisons and pestilences and abnormal anatomical eccentricities of the +human body? Answer me, some way or somehow--and quick. Why do you sit +there looking like an envelope without any address on it and see me going +mad before your face with suspense!" + +"Oh, I wish I could do--do--I wish I could do something, anything that +would give you peace again and make you happy; but I know of nothing-- +I know of no way. I have never heard of these awful people before." + +"What? Say it again!" + +"I have never--never in my life till now." + +"Oh, you do look so honest when you say that! It must be true--surely +you couldn't look that way, you wouldn't look that way if it were not +true--would you?" + +"I couldn't and wouldn't. It is true. Oh, let us end this suffering-- +take me back into your heart and confidence--" + +"Wait--one more thing. Tell me you told that falsehood out of mere +vanity and are sorry for it; that you're not expecting to ever wear the +coronet of an earl--" + +"Truly I am cured--cured this very day--I am not expecting it!" + +"O, now you are mine! I've got you back in the beauty and glory of your +unsmirched poverty and your honorable obscurity, and nobody shall ever +take you from me again but the grave! And if--" + +"De earl of Rossmore, fum Englan'!" + +"My father!" The young man released the girl and hung his head. + +The old gentleman stood surveying the couple--the one with a strongly +complimentary right eye, the other with a mixed expression done with the +left. This is difficult, and not often resorted to. Presently his face +relaxed into a kind of constructive gentleness, and he said to his son: + +"Don't you think you could embrace me, too?" + +The young man did it with alacrity. "Then you are the son of an earl, +after all," said Sally, reproachfully. + +"Yes, I--" + +"Then I won't have you!" + +"O, but you know--" + +"No, I will not. You've told me another fib." + +"She's right. Go away and leave us. I want to talk with her." + +Berkeley was obliged to go. But he did not go far. He remained on the +premises. At midnight the conference between the old gentleman and the +young girl was still going blithely on, but it presently drew to a close, +and the former said: + +"I came all the way over here to inspect you, my dear, with the general +idea of breaking off this match if there were two fools of you, but as +there's only one, you can have him if you'll take him." + +"Indeed I will, then! May I kiss you?" + +"You may. Thank you. Now you shall have that privilege whenever you are +good." + +Meantime Hawkins had long ago returned and slipped up into the +laboratory. He was rather disconcerted to find his late invention, +Snodgrass, there. The news was told him that the English Rossmore was +come, + +--"and I'm his son, Viscount Berkeley, not Howard Tracy any more." + +Hawkins was aghast. He said: + +"Good gracious, then you're dead!" + +"Dead?" + +"Yes you are--we've got your ashes." + +"Hang those ashes, I'm tired of them; I'll give them to my father." + +Slowly and painfully the statesman worked the truth into his head that +this was really a flesh and blood young man, and not the insubstantial +resurrection he and Sellers had so long supposed him to be. Then he said +with feeling-- + +"I'm so glad; so glad on Sally's account, poor thing. We took you for a +departed materialized bank thief from Tahlequah. This will be a heavy +blow to Sellers." Then he explained the whole matter to Berkeley, who +said: + +"Well, the Claimant must manage to stand the blow, severe as it is. +But he'll get over the disappointment." + +"Who--the colonel? He'll get over it the minute he invents a new miracle +to take its place. And he's already at it by this time. But look here-- +what do you suppose became of the man you've been representing all this +time?" + +"I don't know. I saved his clothes--it was all I could do. I am afraid +he lost his life." + +"Well, you must have found twenty or thirty thousand dollars in those +clothes, in money or certificates of deposit." + +"No, I found only five hundred and a trifle. I borrowed the trifle and +banked the five hundred." + +"What'll we do about it?" + +"Return it to the owner." + +"It's easy said, but not easy to manage. Let's leave it alone till we +get Sellers's advice. And that reminds me. I've got to run and meet +Sellers and explain who you are not and who you are, or he'll come +thundering in here to stop his daughter from marrying a phantom. But-- +suppose your father came over here to break off the match?" + +"Well, isn't he down stairs getting acquainted with Sally? That's all +safe." + +So Hawkins departed to meet and prepare the Sellerses. + +Rossmore Towers saw great times and late hours during the succeeding +week. The two earls were such opposites in nature that they fraternized +at once. Sellers said privately that Rossmore was the most extraordinary +character he had ever met--a man just made out of the condensed milk of +human kindness, yet with the ability to totally hide the fact from any +but the most practised character-reader; a man whose whole being was +sweetness, patience and charity, yet with a cunning so profound, an +ability so marvelous in the acting of a double part, that many a person +of considerable intelligence might live with him for centuries and never +suspect the presence in him of these characteristics. + + +Finally there was a quiet wedding at the Towers, instead of a big one at +the British embassy, with the militia and the fire brigades and the +temperance organizations on hand in torchlight procession, as at first +proposed by one of the earls. The art-firm and Barrow were present at +the wedding, and the tinner and Puss had been invited, but the tinner was +ill and Puss was nursing him--for they were engaged. + +The Sellerses were to go to England with their new allies for a brief +visit, but when it was time to take the train from Washington, +the colonel was missing. + +Hawkins was going as far as New York with the party, and said he would +explain the matter on the road. + +The explanation was in a letter left by the colonel in Hawkins's hands. +In it he promised to join Mrs. Sellers later, in England, and then went +on to say: + +The truth is, my dear Hawkins, a mighty idea has been born to me within +the hour, and I must not even stop to say goodbye to my dear ones. +A man's highest duty takes precedence of all minor ones, and must be +attended to with his best promptness and energy, at whatsoever cost to +his affections or his convenience. And first of all a man's duties is +his duty to his own honor--he must keep that spotless. Mine is +threatened. When I was feeling sure of my imminent future solidity, +I forwarded to the Czar of Russia--perhaps prematurely--an offer for the +purchase of Siberia, naming a vast sum. Since then an episode has warned +me that the method by which I was expecting to acquire this money-- +materialization upon a scale of limitless magnitude--is marred by a taint +of temporary uncertainty. His imperial majesty may accept my offer at +any moment. If this should occur now, I should find myself painfully +embarrassed, in fact financially inadequate. I could not take Siberia. +This would become known, and my credit would suffer. + +Recently my private hours have been dark indeed, but the sun shines main, +now; I see my way; I shall be able to meet my obligation, and without +having to ask an extension of the stipulated time, I think. This grand +new idea of mine--the sublimest I have ever conceived, will save me +whole, I am sure. I am leaving for San Francisco this moment, to test +it, by the help of the great Lick telescope. Like all of my more notable +discoveries and inventions, it is based upon hard, practical scientific +laws; all other bases are unsound and hence untrustworthy. In brief, +then, I have conceived the stupendous idea of reorganizing the climates +of the earth according to the desire of the populations interested. +That is to say, I will furnish climates to order, for cash or negotiable +paper, taking the old climates in part payment, of course, at a fair +discount, where they are in condition to be repaired at small cost and +let out for hire to poor and remote communities not able to afford a good +climate and not caring for an expensive one for mere display. My studies +have convinced me that the regulation of climates and the breeding of new +varieties at will from the old stock is a feasible thing. Indeed I am +convinced that it has been done before; done in prehistoric times by now +forgotten and unrecorded civilizations. Everywhere I find hoary +evidences of artificial manipulation of climates in bygone times. Take +the glacial period. Was that produced by accident? Not at all; it was +done for money. I have a thousand proofs of it, and will some day reveal +them. + +I will confide to you an outline of my idea. It is to utilize the spots +on the sun--get control of them, you understand, and apply the stupendous +energies which they wield to beneficent purposes in the reorganizing of +our climates. At present they merely make trouble and do harm in the +evoking of cyclones and other kinds of electric storms; but once under +humane and intelligent control this will cease and they will become a +boon to man. + +I have my plan all mapped out, whereby I hope and expect to acquire +complete and perfect control of the sun-spots, also details of the method +whereby I shall employ the same commercially; but I will not venture to +go into particulars before the patents shall have been issued. I shall +hope and expect to sell shop-rights to the minor countries at a +reasonable figure and supply a good business article of climate to the +great empires at special rates, together with fancy brands for +coronations, battles and other great and particular occasions. There are +billions of money in this enterprise, no expensive plant is required, and +I shall begin to realize in a few days--in a few weeks at furthest. +I shall stand ready to pay cash for Siberia the moment it is delivered, +and thus save my honor and my credit. I am confident of this. + +I would like you to provide a proper outfit and start north as soon as I +telegraph you, be it night or be it day. I wish you to take up all the +country stretching away from the north pole on all sides for many degrees +south, and buy Greenland and Iceland at the best figure you can get now +while they are cheap. It is my intention to move one of the tropics up +there and transfer the frigid zone to the equator. I will have the +entire Arctic Circle in the market as a summer resort next year, and will +use the surplusage of the old climate, over and above what can be +utilized on the equator, to reduce the temperature of opposition resorts. +But I have said enough to give you an idea of the prodigious nature of my +scheme and the feasible and enormously profitable character of it. +I shall join all you happy people in England as soon as I shall have sold +out some of my principal climates and arranged with the Czar about +Siberia. + +Meantime, watch for a sign from me. Eight days from now, we shall be +wide asunder; for I shall be on the border of the Pacific, and you far +out on the Atlantic, approaching England. That day, if I am alive and my +sublime discovery is proved and established, I will send you greeting, +and my messenger shall deliver it where you are, in the solitudes of the +sea; for I will waft a vast sun-spot across the disk like drifting smoke, +and you will know it for my love-sign, and will say "Mulberry Sellers +throws us a kiss across the universe." + + + + + + +APPENDIX. + +WEATHER FOR USE IN THIS BOOK. + +Selected from the Best Authorities. + +A brief though violent thunderstorm which had raged over the city was +passing away; but still, though the rain had ceased more than an hour +before, wild piles of dark and coppery clouds, in which a fierce and +rayless glow was laboring, gigantically overhung the grotesque and +huddled vista of dwarf houses, while in the distance, sheeting high over +the low, misty confusion of gables and chimneys, spread a pall of dead, +leprous blue, suffused with blotches of dull, glistening yellow, and with +black plague-spots of vapor floating and faint lightnings crinkling on +its surface. Thunder, still muttering in the close and sultry air, kept +the scared dwellers in the street within, behind their closed shutters; +and all deserted, cowed, dejected, squalid, like poor, stupid, top-heavy +things that had felt the wrath of the summer tempest, stood the drenched +structures on either side of the narrow and crooked way, ghastly and +picturesque, under the giant canopy. Rain dripped wretchedly in slow +drops of melancholy sound from their projecting eaves upon the broken +flagging, lay there in pools or trickled into the swollen drains, where +the fallen torrent sullenly gurgled on its way to the river. + "The Brazen Android."-W. D. O'Connor. + + + The fiery mid-March sun a moment hung + Above the bleak Judean wilderness; + Then darkness swept upon us, and 't was night. + "Easter-Eve at Kerak-Moab."--Clinton Scollard. + + +The quick-coming winter twilight was already at hand. Snow was again +falling, sifting delicately down, incidentally as it were. + "Felicia." Fanny N. D. Murfree. + + +Merciful heavens! The whole west, from right to left, blazes up with a +fierce light, and next instant the earth reels and quivers with the awful +shock of ten thousand batteries of artillery. It is the signal for the +Fury to spring--for a thousand demons to scream and shriek--for +innumerable serpents of fire to writhe and light up the blackness. + +Now the rain falls--now the wind is let loose with a terrible shriek--now +the lightning is so constant that the eyes burn, and the thunder-claps +merge into an awful roar, as did the 800 cannon at Gettysburg. Crash! +Crash! Crash! It is the cottonwood trees falling to earth. Shriek! +Shriek! Shriek! It is the Demon racing along the plain and uprooting +even the blades of grass. Shock! Shock! Shock! It is the Fury +flinging his fiery bolts into the bosom of the earth.-- + "The Demon and the Fury." M. Quad. + + +Away up the gorge all diurnal fancies trooped into the wide liberties of +endless luminous vistas of azure sunlit mountains beneath the shining +azure heavens. The sky, looking down in deep blue placidities, only here +and there smote the water to azure emulations of its tint.-- + "In the Stranger's Country." Charles Egbert Craddock. + + +There was every indication of a dust-storm, though the sun still shone +brilliantly. The hot wind had become wild and rampant. It was whipping +up the sandy coating of the plain in every direction. High in the air +were seen whirling spires and cones of sand--a curious effect against the +deep-blue sky. Below, puffs of sand were breaking out of the plain in +every direction, as though the plain were alive with invisible horsemen. +These sandy cloudlets were instantly dissipated by the wind; it was the +larger clouds that were lifted whole into the air, and the larger clouds +of sand were becoming more and more the rule. + +Alfred's eye, quickly scanning the horizon, descried the roof of the +boundary-rider's hut still gleaming in the sunlight. He remembered the +hut well. It could not be farther than four miles, if as much as that, +from this point of the track. He also knew these dust-storms of old; +Bindarra was notorious for them: Without thinking twice, Alfred put +spurs to his horse and headed for the hut. Before he had ridden half the +distance the detached clouds of sand banded together in one dense +whirlwind, and it was only owing to his horse's instinct that he did not +ride wide of the hut altogether; for during the last half-mile he never +saw the hut, until its outline loomed suddenly over his horse's ears; and +by then the sun was invisible.-- + "A Bride from the Bush." + + +It rained forty days and forty nights.--Genesis. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The American Claimant +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY + +Translated from the original MS. + +by Mark Twain + + + +[NOTE.--I translated a portion of this diary some years ago, and +a friend of mine printed a few copies in an incomplete form, but +the public never got them. Since then I have deciphered some more +of Adam's hieroglyphics, and think he has now become sufficiently +important as a public character to justify this publication.--M. T.] + + + + +Monday + +This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. +It is always hanging around and following me about. I don't like +this; I am not used to company. I wish it would stay with the +other animals. Cloudy to-day, wind in the east; think we shall +have rain.... Where did I get that word?... I remember now +--the new creature uses it. + +Tuesday + +Been examining the great waterfall. It is the finest thing on the +estate, I think. The new creature calls it Niagara Falls--why, +I am sure I do not know. Says it looks like Niagara Falls. That +is not a reason; it is mere waywardness and imbecility. I get no +chance to name anything myself. The new creature names everything +that comes along, before I can get in a protest. And always that +same pretext is offered--it looks like the thing. There is the +dodo, for instance. Says the moment one looks at it one sees at +a glance that it "looks like a dodo." It will have to keep that +name, no doubt. It wearies me to fret about it, and it does no +good, anyway. Dodo! It looks no more like a dodo than I do. + +Wednesday + +Built me a shelter against the rain, but could not have it to +myself in peace. The new creature intruded. When I tried to put +it out it shed water out of the holes it looks with, and wiped it +away with the back of its paws, and made a noise such as some of +the other animals make when they are in distress. I wish it would +not talk; it is always talking. That sounds like a cheap fling +at the poor creature, a slur; but I do not mean it so. I have never +heard the human voice before, and any new and strange sound +intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of these dreaming +solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note. And this new +sound is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my +ear, first on one side and then on the other, and I am used only +to sounds that are more or less distant from me. + +Friday + +The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do. I +had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty +--GARDEN-OF-EDEN. Privately, I continue to call it that, but not +any longer publicly. The new creature says it is all woods and +rocks and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden. +Says it looks like a park, and does not look like anything but a +park. Consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named +--NIAGARA FALLS PARK. This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to +me. And already there is a sign up: + + KEEP OFF + THE GRASS + +My life is not as happy as it was. + +Saturday + +The new creature eats too much fruit. We are going to run short, +most likely. "We" again--that is its word; mine too, now, from +hearing it so much. Good deal of fog this morning. I do not go +out in the fog myself. The new creature does. It goes out in +all weathers, and stumps right in with its muddy feet. And talks. +It used to be so pleasant and quiet here. + +Sunday + +Pulled through. This day is getting to be more and more trying. +It was selected and set apart last November as a day of rest. I +already had six of them per week, before. This morning found the +new creature trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree. + +Monday + +The new creature says its name is Eve. That is all right, I have +no objections. Says it is to call it by when I want it to come. +I said it was superfluous, then. The word evidently raised me in +its respect; and indeed it is a large, good word, and will bear +repetition. It says it is not an It, it is a She. This is probably +doubtful; yet it is all one to me; what she is were nothing to me +if she would but go by herself and not talk. + +Tuesday + +She has littered the whole estate with execrable names and offensive +signs: + +THIS WAY TO THE WHIRLPOOL. + +THIS WAY TO GOAT ISLAND. + +CAVE OF THE WINDS THIS WAY. + +She says this park would make a tidy summer resort, if there was +any custom for it. Summer resort--another invention of hers--just +words, without any meaning. What is a summer resort? But it is +best not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining. + +Friday + +She has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the Falls. What +harm does it do? Says it makes her shudder. I wonder why. I have +always done it--always liked the plunge, and the excitement, and +the coolness. I supposed it was what the Falls were for. They +have no other use that I can see, and they must have been made for +something. She says they were only made for scenery--like the +rhinoceros and the mastodon. + +I went over the Falls in a barrel--not satisfactory to her. Went +over in a tub--still not satisfactory. Swam the Whirlpool and the +Rapids in a fig-leaf suit. It got much damaged. Hence, tedious +complaints about my extravagance. I am too much hampered here. +What I need is change of scene. + +Saturday + +I escaped last Tuesday night, and travelled two days, and built +me another shelter, in a secluded place, and obliterated my tracks +as well as I could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast which +she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise +again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with. +I was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again, +when occasion offers. She engages herself in many foolish things: +among others, trying to study out why the animals called lions and +tigers live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of +teeth they wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each +other. This is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each +other, and that would introduce what, as I understand it, is called +"death;" and death, as I have been told, has not yet entered the +Park. Which is a pity, on some accounts. + +Sunday + +Pulled through. + +Monday + +I believe I see what the week is for: it is to give time to rest +up from the weariness of Sunday. It seems a good idea.... She +has been climbing that tree again. Clodded her out of it. She +said nobody was looking. Seems to consider that a sufficient +justification for chancing any dangerous thing. Told her that. +The word justification moved her admiration--and envy too, I +thought. It is a good word. + +Thursday + +She told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body. This +is at least doubtful, if not more than that. I have not missed +any rib.... She is in much trouble about the buzzard; says +grass does not agree with it; is afraid she can't raise it; thinks +it was intended to live on decayed flesh. The buzzard must get +along the best it can with what is provided. We cannot overturn +the whole scheme to accommodate the buzzard. + +Saturday + +She fell in the pond yesterday, when she was looking at herself +in it, which she is always doing. She nearly strangled, and said +it was most uncomfortable. This made her sorry for the creatures +which live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues to +fasten names on to things that don't need them and don't come when +they are called by them, which is a matter of no consequence to +her, as she is such a numskull anyway; so she got a lot of them +out and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep +warm, but I have noticed them now and then all day, and I don't +see that they are any happier there than they were before, only +quieter. When night comes I shall throw them out-doors. I will +not sleep with them again, for I find them clammy and unpleasant +to lie among when a person hasn't anything on. + +Sunday + +Pulled through. + +Tuesday + +She has taken up with a snake now. The other animals are glad, +for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them; +and I am glad, because the snake talks, and this enables me to +get a rest. + +Friday + +She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of that tree, and +says the result will be a great and fine and noble education. I +told her there would be another result, too--it would introduce +death into the world. That was a mistake--it had been better to +keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea--she could +save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent +lions and tigers. I advised her to keep away from the tree. She +said she wouldn't. I foresee trouble. Will emigrate. + +Wednesday + +I have had a variegated time. I escaped that night, and rode a +horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get clear out of +the Park and hide in some other country before the trouble should +begin; but it was not to be. About an hour after sunup, as I was +riding through a flowery plain where thousands of animals were +grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other, according to their +wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of frightful noises, +and in one moment the plain was in a frantic commotion and every +beast was destroying its neighbor. I knew what it meant--Eve had +eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world.... The +tigers ate my horse, paying no attention when I ordered them to +desist, and they would even have eaten me if I had stayed--which +I didn't, but went away in much haste.... I found this place, +outside the Park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but +she has found me out. Found me out, and has named the place +Tonawanda--says it looks like that. In fact, I was not sorry she +came, for there are but meagre pickings here, and she brought some +of those apples. I was obliged to eat them, I was so hungry. It +was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real +force except when one is well fed.... She came curtained in +boughs and bunches of leaves, and when I asked her what she meant +by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down, she +tittered and blushed. I had never seen a person titter and blush +before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic. She said I +would soon know how it was myself. This was correct. Hungry as +I was, I laid down the apple half eaten--certainly the best one I +ever saw, considering the lateness of the season--and arrayed +myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then spoke to her +with some severity and ordered her to go and get some more and not +make such a spectacle of herself. She did it, and after this we +crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected +some skins, and I made her patch together a couple of suits proper +for public occasions. They are uncomfortable, it is true, but +stylish, and that is the main point about clothes. ... I find +she is a good deal of a companion. I see I should be lonesome and +depressed without her, now that I have lost my property. Another +thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter. +She will be useful. I will superintend. + +Ten Days Later + +She accuses me of being the cause of our disaster! She says, with +apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured her that +the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. I said I +was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts. She said +the Serpent informed her that "chestnut" was a figurative term +meaning an aged and mouldy joke. I turned pale at that, for I +have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could +have been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed that they +were new when I made them. She asked me if I had made one just +at the time of the catastrophe. I was obliged to admit that I had +made one to myself, though not aloud. It was this. I was thinking +about the Falls, and I said to myself, "How wonderful it is to see +that vast body of water tumble down there!" Then in an instant a +bright thought flashed into my head, and I let it fly, saying, "It +would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble up there!"--and I +was just about to kill myself with laughing at it when all nature +broke loose in war and death, and I had to flee for my life. +"There," she said, with triumph, "that is just it; the Serpent +mentioned that very jest, and called it the First Chestnut, and +said it was coeval with the creation." Alas, I am indeed to blame. +Would that I were not witty; oh, would that I had never had that +radiant thought! + +Next Year + +We have named it Cain. She caught it while I was up country +trapping on the North Shore of the Erie; caught it in the timber +a couple of miles from our dug-out--or it might have been four, +she isn't certain which. It resembles us in some ways, and may +be a relation. That is what she thinks, but this is an error, +in my judgment. The difference in size warrants the conclusion +that it is a different and new kind of animal--a fish, perhaps, +though when I put it in the water to see, it sank, and she plunged +in and snatched it out before there was opportunity for the +experiment to determine the matter. I still think it is a fish, +but she is indifferent about what it is, and will not let me have +it to try. I do not understand this. The coming of the creature +seems to have changed her whole nature and made her unreasonable +about experiments. She thinks more of it than she does of any of +the other animals, but is not able to explain why. Her mind is +disordered--everything shows it. Sometimes she carries the fish +in her arms half the night when it complains and wants to get to +the water. At such times the water comes out of the places in +her face that she looks out of, and she pats the fish on the back +and makes soft sounds with her mouth to soothe it, and betrays +sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways. I have never seen her +do like this with any other fish, and it troubles me greatly. She +used to carry the young tigers around so, and play with them, +before we lost our property; but it was only play; she never took +on about them like this when their dinner disagreed with them. + +Sunday + +She doesn't work Sundays, but lies around all tired out, and likes +to have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool noises to +amuse it, and pretends to chew its paws, and that makes it laugh. +I have not seen a fish before that could laugh. This makes me +doubt.... I have come to like Sunday myself. Superintending +all the week tires a body so. There ought to be more Sundays. +In the old days they were tough, but now they come handy. + +Wednesday + +It isn't a fish. I cannot quite make out what it is. It makes +curious, devilish noises when not satisfied, and says "goo-goo" +when it is. It is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not +a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop; +it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; I feel sure it is not a +fish, though I cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim +or not. It merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its +feet up. I have not seen any other animal do that before. I said +I believed it was an enigma, but she only admired the word without +understanding it. In my judgment it is either an enigma or some +kind of a bug. If it dies, I will take it apart and see what its +arrangements are. I never had a thing perplex me so. + +Three Months Later + +The perplexity augments instead of diminishing. I sleep but little. +It has ceased from lying around, and goes about on its four legs +now. Yet it differs from the other four-legged animals in that +its front legs are unusually short, consequently this causes the +main part of its person to stick up uncomfortably high in the air, +and this is not attractive. It is built much as we are, but its +method of travelling shows that it is not of our breed. The short +front legs and long hind ones indicate that it is of the kangaroo +family, but it is a marked variation of the species, since the +true kangaroo hops, whereas this one never does. Still, it is a +curious and interesting variety, and has not been catalogued before. +As I discovered it, I have felt justified in securing the credit +of the discovery by attaching my name to it, and hence have called +it Kangaroorum Adamiensis.... It must have been a young one +when it came, for it has grown exceedingly since. It must be five +times as big, now, as it was then, and when discontented is able +to make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times the noise it made +at first. Coercion does not modify this, but has the contrary +effect. For this reason I discontinued the system. She reconciles +it by persuasion, and by giving it things which she had previously +told it she wouldn't give it. As already observed, I was not at +home when it first came, and she told me she found it in the woods. +It seems odd that it should be the only one, yet it must be so, +for I have worn myself out these many weeks trying to find another +one to add to my collection, and for this one to play with; for +surely then it would be quieter, and we could tame it more easily. +But I find none, nor any vestige of any; and strangest of all, no +tracks. It has to live on the ground, it cannot help itself; +therefore, how does it get about without leaving a track? I have +set a dozen traps, but they do no good. I catch all small animals +except that one; animals that merely go into the trap out of +curiosity, I think, to see what the milk is there for. They never +drink it. + +Three Months Later + +The kangaroo still continues to grow, which is very strange and +perplexing. I never knew one to be so long getting its growth. +It has fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur, but exactly +like our hair, except that it is much finer and softer, and instead +of being black is red. I am like to lose my mind over the capricious +and harassing developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak. +If I could catch another one--but that is hopeless; it is a new +variety, and the only sample; this is plain. But I caught a true +kangaroo and brought it in, thinking that this one, being lonesome, +would rather have that for company than have no kin at all, or any +animal it could feel a nearness to or get sympathy from in its +forlorn condition here among strangers who do not know its ways +or habits, or what to do to make it feel that it is among friends; +but it was a mistake--it went into such fits at the sight of the +kangaroo that I was convinced it had never seen one before. I +pity the poor noisy little animal, but there is nothing I can do +to make it happy. If I could tame it--but that is out of the +question; the more I try, the worse I seem to make it. It grieves +me to the heart to see it in its little storms of sorrow and +passion. I wanted to let it go, but she wouldn't hear of it. That +seemed cruel and not like her; and yet she may be right. It might +be lonelier than ever; for since I cannot find another one, how +could it? + +Five Months Later + +It is not a kangaroo. No, for it supports itself by holding to +her finger, and thus goes a few steps on its hind legs, and then +falls down. It is probably some kind of a bear; and yet it has +no tail--as yet--and no fur, except on its head. It still keeps +on growing--that is a curious circumstance, for bears get their +growth earlier than this. Bears are dangerous--since our +catastrophe--and I shall not be satisfied to have this one prowling +about the place much longer without a muzzle on. I have offered +to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one go, but it did no +good--she is determined to run us into all sorts of foolish risks, +I think. She was not like this before she lost her mind. + +A Fortnight Later + +I examined its mouth. There is no danger yet; it has only one +tooth. It has no tail yet. It makes more noise now than it ever +did before--and mainly at night. I have moved out. But I shall +go over, mornings, to breakfast, and to see if it has more teeth. +If it gets a mouthful of teeth, it will be time for it to go, tail +or no tail, for a bear does not need a tail in order to be +dangerous. + +Four Months Later + +I have been off hunting and fishing a month, up in the region that +she calls Buffalo; I don't know why, unless it is because there +are not any buffaloes there. Meantime the bear has learned to +paddle around all by itself on its hind legs, and says "poppa" +and "momma." It is certainly a new species. This resemblance to +words may be purely accidental, of course, and may have no purpose +or meaning; but even in that case it is still extraordinary, and +is a thing which no other bear can do. This imitation of speech, +taken together with general absence of fur and entire absence of +tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new kind of bear. The +further study of it will be exceedingly interesting. Meantime I +will go off on a far expedition among the forests of the North and +make an exhaustive search. There must certainly be another one +somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it has company +of its own species. I will go straightway; but I will muzzle this +one first. + +Three Months Later + +It has been a weary, weary hunt, yet I have had no success. In +the mean time, without stirring from the home estate, she has +caught another one! I never saw such luck. I might have hunted +these woods a hundred years, I never should have run across that +thing. + +Next Day + +I have been comparing the new one with the old one, and it is +perfectly plain that they are the same breed. I was going to stuff +one of them for my collection, but she is prejudiced against it +for some reason or other; so I have relinquished the idea, though +I think it is a mistake. It would be an irreparable loss to science +if they should get away. The old one is tamer than it was, and +can laugh and talk like the parrot, having learned this, no doubt, +from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty +in a highly developed degree. I shall be astonished if it turns +out to be a new kind of parrot, and yet I ought not to be astonished, +for it has already been everything else it could think of, since +those first days when it was a fish. The new one is as ugly now +as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat +complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it. She +calls it Abel. + +Ten Years Later + +They are boys; we found it out long ago. It was their coming in +that small, immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it. +There are some girls now. Abel is a good boy, but if Cain had +stayed a bear it would have improved him. After all these years, +I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better +to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her. +At first I thought she talked too much; but now I should be sorry +to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life. Blessed +be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me to +know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit! + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Extracts From Adam's Diary +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY + +by Mark Twain + + + +I + +I have committed sins, of course; but I have not committed enough of them +to entitle me to the punishment of reduction to the bread and water of +ordinary literature during six years when I might have been living on the +fat diet spread for the righteous in Professor Dowden's Life of Shelley, +if I had been justly dealt with. + +During these six years I have been living a life of peaceful ignorance. +I was not aware that Shelley's first wife was unfaithful to him, and that +that was why he deserted her and wiped the stain from his sensitive honor +by entering into soiled relations with Godwin's young daughter. This was +all new to me when I heard it lately, and was told that the proofs of it +were in this book, and that this book's verdict is accepted in the girls' +colleges of America and its view taught in their literary classes. + +In each of these six years multitudes of young people in our country have +arrived at the Shelley-reading age. Are these six multitudes +unacquainted with this life of Shelley? Perhaps they are; indeed, one +may feel pretty sure that the great bulk of them are. To these, then, I +address myself, in the hope that some account of this romantic historical +fable and the fabulist's manner of constructing and adorning it may +interest them. + +First, as to its literary style. Our negroes in America have several +ways of entertaining themselves which are not found among the whites +anywhere. Among these inventions of theirs is one which is particularly +popular with them. It is a competition in elegant deportment. They hire +a hall and bank the spectators' seats in rising tiers along the two +sides, leaving all the middle stretch of the floor free. A cake is +provided as a prize for the winner in the competition, and a bench of +experts in deportment is appointed to award it. Sometimes there are as +many as fifty contestants, male and female, and five hundred spectators. +One at a time the contestants enter, clothed regardless of expense in +what each considers the perfection of style and taste, and walk down the +vacant central space and back again with that multitude of critical eyes +on them. All that the competitor knows of fine airs and graces he throws +into his carriage, all that he knows of seductive expression he throws +into his countenance. He may use all the helps he can devise: watch- +chain to twirl with his fingers, cane to do graceful things with, snowy +handkerchief to flourish and get artful effects out of, shiny new +stovepipe hat to assist in his courtly bows; and the colored lady may +have a fan to work up her effects with, and smile over and blush behind, +and she may add other helps, according to her judgment. When the review +by individual detail is over, a grand review of all the contestants in +procession follows, with all the airs and graces and all the bowings and +smirkings on exhibition at once, and this enables the bench of experts to +make the necessary comparisons and arrive at a verdict. The successful +competitor gets the prize which I have before mentioned, and an abundance +of applause and envy along with it. The negroes have a name for this +grave deportment-tournament; a name taken from the prize contended for. +They call it a Cakewalk. + +This Shelley biography is a literary cake-walk. The ordinary forms of +speech are absent from it. All the pages, all the paragraphs, walk by +sedately, elegantly, not to say mincingly, in their Sunday-best, shiny +and sleek, perfumed, and with boutonnieres in their button-holes; it is +rare to find even a chance sentence that has forgotten to dress. If the +book wishes to tell us that Mary Godwin, child of sixteen, had known +afflictions, the fact saunters forth in this nobby outfit: "Mary was +herself not unlearned in the lore of pain"--meaning by that that she had +not always traveled on asphalt; or, as some authorities would frame it, +that she had "been there herself," a form which, while preferable to the +book's form, is still not to be recommended. If the book wishes to tell +us that Harriet Shelley hired a wet-nurse, that commonplace fact gets +turned into a dancing-master, who does his professional bow before us in +pumps and knee-breeches, with his fiddle under one arm and his crush-hat +under the other, thus: "The beauty of Harriet's motherly relation to her +babe was marred in Shelley's eyes by the introduction into his house of a +hireling nurse to whom was delegated the mother's tenderest office." + +This is perhaps the strangest book that has seen the light since +Frankenstein. Indeed, it is a Frankenstein itself; a Frankenstein with +the original infirmity supplemented by a new one; a Frankenstein with the +reasoning faculty wanting. Yet it believes it can reason, and is always +trying. It is not content to leave a mountain of fact standing in the +clear sunshine, where the simplest reader can perceive its form, its +details, and its relation to the rest of the landscape, but thinks it +must help him examine it and understand it; so its drifting mind settles +upon it with that intent, but always with one and the same result: there +is a change of temperature and the mountain is hid in a fog. Every time +it sets up a premise and starts to reason from it, there is a surprise in +store for the reader. It is strangely nearsighted, cross-eyed, and +purblind. Sometimes when a mastodon walks across the field of its vision +it takes it for a rat; at other times it does not see it at all. + +The materials of this biographical fable are facts, rumors, and poetry. +They are connected together and harmonized by the help of suggestion, +conjecture, innuendo, perversion, and semi-suppression. + +The fable has a distinct object in view, but this object is not +acknowledged in set words. Percy Bysshe Shelley has done something which +in the case of other men is called a grave crime; it must be shown that +in his case it is not that, because he does not think as other men do +about these things. + +Ought not that to be enough, if the fabulist is serious? Having proved +that a crime is not a crime, was it worth while to go on and fasten the +responsibility of a crime which was not a crime upon somebody else? What +is the use of hunting down and holding to bitter account people who are +responsible for other people's innocent acts? + +Still, the fabulist thinks it a good idea to do that. In his view +Shelley's first wife, Harriet, free of all offense as far as we have +historical facts for guidance, must be held unforgivably responsible for +her husband's innocent act in deserting her and taking up with another +woman. + +Any one will suspect that this task has its difficulties. Any one will +divine that nice work is necessary here, cautious work, wily work, and +that there is entertainment to be had in watching the magician do it. +There is indeed entertainment in watching him. He arranges his facts, +his rumors, and his poems on his table in full view of the house, and +shows you that everything is there--no deception, everything fair and +above board. And this is apparently true, yet there is a defect, for +some of his best stock is hid in an appendix-basket behind the door, and +you do not come upon it until the exhibition is over and the enchantment +of your mind accomplished--as the magician thinks. + +There is an insistent atmosphere of candor and fairness about this book +which is engaging at first, then a little burdensome, then a trifle +fatiguing, then progressively suspicious, annoying, irritating, and +oppressive. It takes one some little time to find out that phrases which +seem intended to guide the reader aright are there to mislead him; that +phrases which seem intended to throw light are there to throw darkness; +that phrases which seem intended to interpret a fact are there to +misinterpret it; that phrases which seem intended to forestall prejudice +are there to create it; that phrases which seem antidotes are poisons in +disguise. The naked facts arrayed in the book establish Shelley's guilt +in that one episode which disfigures his otherwise superlatively lofty +and beautiful life; but the historian's careful and methodical +misinterpretation of them transfers the responsibility to the wife's +shoulders as he persuades himself. The few meagre facts of Harriet +Shelley's life, as furnished by the book, acquit her of offense; but by +calling in the forbidden helps of rumor, gossip, conjecture, insinuation, +and innuendo he destroys her character and rehabilitates Shelley's--as he +believes. And in truth his unheroic work has not been barren of the +results he aimed at; as witness the assertion made to me that girls in +the colleges of America are taught that Harriet Shelley put a stain upon +her husband's honor, and that that was what stung him into repurifying +himself by deserting her and his child and entering into scandalous +relations with a school-girl acquaintance of his. + +If that assertion is true, they probably use a reduction of this work in +those colleges, maybe only a sketch outlined from it. Such a thing as +that could be harmful and misleading. They ought to cast it out and put +the whole book in its place. It would not deceive. It would not deceive +the janitor. + +All of this book is interesting on account of the sorcerer's methods and +the attractiveness of some of his characters and the repulsiveness of the +rest, but no part of it is so much so as are the chapters wherein he +tries to think he thinks he sets forth the causes which led to Shelley's +desertion of his wife in 1814. + +Harriet Westbrook was a school-girl sixteen years old. Shelley was +teeming with advanced thought. He believed that Christianity was a +degrading and selfish superstition, and he had a deep and sincere desire +to rescue one of his sisters from it. Harriet was impressed by his +various philosophies and looked upon him as an intellectual wonder-- +which indeed he was. He had an idea that she could give him valuable +help in his scheme regarding his sister; therefore he asked her to +correspond with him. She was quite willing. Shelley was not thinking of +love, for he was just getting over a passion for his cousin, Harriet +Grove, and just getting well steeped in one for Miss Hitchener, a school- +teacher. What might happen to Harriet Westbrook before the letter- +writing was ended did not enter his mind. Yet an older person could have +made a good guess at it, for in person Shelley was as beautiful as an +angel, he was frank, sweet, winning, unassuming, and so rich in +unselfishness, generosities, and magnanimities that he made his whole +generation seem poor in these great qualities by comparison. Besides, +he was in distress. His college had expelled him for writing an +atheistical pamphlet and afflicting the reverend heads of the university +with it, his rich father and grandfather had closed their purses against +him, his friends were cold. Necessarily, Harriet fell in love with him; +and so deeply, indeed, that there was no way for Shelley to save her from +suicide but to marry her. He believed himself to blame for this state of +things, so the marriage took place. He was pretty fairly in love with +Harriet, although he loved Miss Hitchener better. He wrote and explained +the case to Miss Hitchener after the wedding, and he could not have been +franker or more naive and less stirred up about the circumstance if the +matter in issue had been a commercial transaction involving thirty-five +dollars. + +Shelley was nineteen. He was not a youth, but a man. He had never had +any youth. He was an erratic and fantastic child during eighteen years, +then he stepped into manhood, as one steps over a door-sill. He was +curiously mature at nineteen in his ability to do independent thinking +on the deep questions of life and to arrive at sharply definite decisions +regarding them, and stick to them--stick to them and stand by them at +cost of bread, friendships, esteem, respect, and approbation. + +For the sake of his opinions he was willing to sacrifice all these +valuable things, and did sacrifice them; and went on doing it, too, when +he could at any moment have made himself rich and supplied himself with +friends and esteem by compromising with his father, at the moderate +expense of throwing overboard one or two indifferent details of his cargo +of principles. + +He and Harriet eloped to Scotland and got married. They took lodgings in +Edinburgh of a sort answerable to their purse, which was about empty, and +there their life was a happy, one and grew daily more so. They had only +themselves for company, but they needed no additions to it. They were as +cozy and contented as birds in a nest. Harriet sang evenings or read +aloud; also she studied and tried to improve her mind, her husband +instructing her in Latin. She was very beautiful, she was modest, quiet, +genuine, and, according to her husband's testimony, she had no fine lady +airs or aspirations about her. In Matthew Arnold's judgment, she was +"a pleasing figure." + +The pair remained five weeks in Edinburgh, and then took lodgings in +York, where Shelley's college mate, Hogg, lived. Shelley presently ran +down to London, and Hogg took this opportunity to make love to the young +wife. She repulsed him, and reported the fact to her husband when he got +back. It seems a pity that Shelley did not copy this creditable conduct +of hers some time or other when under temptation, so that we might have +seen the author of his biography hang the miracle in the skies and squirt +rainbows at it. + +At the end of the first year of marriage--the most trying year for any +young couple, for then the mutual failings are coming one by one to +light, and the necessary adjustments are being made in pain and +tribulation--Shelley was able to recognize that his marriage venture had +been a safe one. As we have seen, his love for his wife had begun in a +rather shallow way and with not much force, but now it was become deep +and strong, which entitles his wife to a broad credit mark, one may +admit. He addresses a long and loving poem to her, in which both passion +and worship appear: + +Exhibit A + + "O thou + Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path + Which this lone spirit travelled, + . . . . . . . . . . . . . + . . . wilt thou not turn + Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me. + Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven + And Heaven is Earth? + . . . . . . . . + Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve, + But ours shall not be mortal." + + +Shelley also wrote a sonnet to her in August of this same year in +celebration of her birthday: + +Exhibit B + + "Ever as now with hove and Virtue's glow + May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn, + Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts o'erflow + Which force from mine such quick and warm return." + + +Was the girl of seventeen glad and proud and happy? We may conjecture +that she was. + +That was the year 1812. Another year passed still happily, still +successfully--a child was born in June, 1813, and in September, three +months later, Shelley addresses a poem to this child, Ianthe, in which he +points out just when the little creature is most particularly dear to +him: + +Exhibit C + + "Dearest when most thy tender traits express + The image of thy mother's loveliness." + + +Up to this point the fabulist counsel for Shelley and prosecutor of his +young wife has had easy sailing, but now his trouble begins, for Shelley +is getting ready to make some unpleasant history for himself, and it will +be necessary to put the blame of it on the wife. + +Shelley had made the acquaintance of a charming gray-haired, young- +hearted Mrs. Boinville, whose face "retained a certain youthful beauty"; +she lived at Bracknell, and had a young daughter named Cornelia Turner, +who was equipped with many fascinations. Apparently these people were +sufficiently sentimental. Hogg says of Mrs. Boinville: + + "The greater part of her associates were odious. I generally + found there two or three sentimental young butchers, an + eminently philosophical tinker, and several very + unsophisticated medical practitioners or medical students, all + of low origin and vulgar and offensive manners. They sighed, + turned up their eyes, retailed philosophy, such as it was," + etc. + +Shelley moved to Bracknell, July 27th (this is still 1813) purposely to +be near this unwholesome prairie-dogs' nest. The fabulist says: "It was +the entrance into a world more amiable and exquisite than he had yet +known." + +"In this acquaintance the attraction was mutual"--and presently it grew +to be very mutual indeed, between Shelley and Cornelia Turner, when they +got to studying the Italian poets together. Shelley, "responding like a +tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of sentiment," had his +chance here. It took only four days for Cornelia's attractions to begin +to dim Harriet's. Shelley arrived on the 27th of July; on the 31st he +wrote a sonnet to Harriet in which "one detects already the little rift +in the lover's lute which had seemed to be healed or never to have gaped +at all when the later and happier sonnet to Ianthe was written"--in +September, we remember: + +Exhibit D + + "EVENING. TO HARRIET + + "O thou bright Sun! Beneath the dark blue line + Of western distance that sublime descendest, + And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams decline, + Thy million hues to every vapor lendest, + And over cobweb, lawn, and grove, and stream + Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light, + Till calm Earth, with the parting splendor bright, + Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream; + What gazer now with astronomic eye + Could coldly count the spots within thy sphere? + Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly + The thoughts of all that makes his passion dear, + And turning senseless from thy warm caress + Pick flaws in our close-woven happiness." + + +I cannot find the "rift"; still it may be there. What the poem seems to +say is, that a person would be coldly ungrateful who could consent to +count and consider little spots and flaws in such a warm, great, +satisfying sun as Harriet is. It is a "little rift which had seemed to +be healed, or never to have gaped at all." That is, "one detects" a +little rift which perhaps had never existed. How does one do that? +How does one see the invisible? It is the fabulist's secret; he knows +how to detect what does not exist, he knows how to see what is not +seeable; it is his gift, and he works it many a time to poor dead Harriet +Shelley's deep damage. + +"As yet, however, if there was a speck upon Shelley's happiness it was no +more than a speck"--meaning the one which one detects where "it may never +have gaped at all"--"nor had Harriet cause for discontent." + +Shelley's Latin instructions to his wife had ceased. "From a teacher he +had now become a pupil." Mrs. Boinville and her young married daughter +Cornelia were teaching him Italian poetry; a fact which warns one to +receive with some caution that other statement that Harriet had no +"cause for discontent." + +Shelley had stopped instructing Harriet in Latin, as before mentioned. +The biographer thinks that the busy life in London some time back, and +the intrusion of the baby, account for this. These were hindrances, but +were there no others? He is always overlooking a detail here and there +that might be valuable in helping us understand a situation. For +instance, when a man has been hard at work at the Italian poets with a +pretty woman, hour after hour, and responding like a tremulous instrument +to every breath of passion or of sentiment in the meantime, that man is +dog-tired when he gets home, and he can't teach his wife Latin; it would +be unreasonable to expect it. + +Up to this time we have submitted to having Mrs. Boinville pushed upon +us as ostensibly concerned in these Italian lessons, but the biographer +drops her now, of his own accord. Cornelia "perhaps" is sole teacher. +Hogg says she was a prey to a kind of sweet melancholy, arising from +causes purely imaginary; she required consolation, and found it in +Petrarch. He also says, "Bysshe entered at once fully into her views and +caught the soft infection, breathing the tenderest and sweetest +melancholy, as every true poet ought." + +Then the author of the book interlards a most stately and fine compliment +to Cornelia, furnished by a man of approved judgment who knew her well +"in later years." It is a very good compliment indeed, and she no doubt +deserved it in her "later years," when she had for generations ceased to +be sentimental and lackadaisical, and was no longer engaged in enchanting +young husbands and sowing sorrow for young wives. But why is that +compliment to that old gentlewoman intruded there? Is it to make the +reader believe she was well-chosen and safe society for a young, +sentimental husband? The biographer's device was not well planned. That +old person was not present--it was her other self that was there, her +young, sentimental, melancholy, warm-blooded self, in those early sweet +times before antiquity had cooled her off and mossed her back. + +"In choosing for friends such women as Mrs. Newton, Mrs. Boinville, and +Cornelia Turner, Shelley gave good proof of his insight and +discrimination." That is the fabulist's opinion--Harriet Shelley's is +not reported. + +Early in August, Shelley was in London trying to raise money. In +September he wrote the poem to the baby, already quoted from. In +the first week of October Shelley and family went to Warwick, then +to Edinburgh, arriving there about the middle of the month. + +"Harriet was happy." Why? The author furnishes a reason, but hides from +us whether it is history or conjecture; it is because "the babe had borne +the journey well." It has all the aspect of one of his artful devices-- +flung in in his favorite casual way--the way he has when he wants to draw +one's attention away from an obvious thing and amuse it with some trifle +that is less obvious but more useful--in a history like this. The +obvious thing is, that Harriet was happy because there was much territory +between her husband and Cornelia Turner now; and because the perilous +Italian lessons were taking a rest; and because, if there chanced to be +any respondings like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or +of sentiment in stock in these days, she might hope to get a share of +them herself; and because, with her husband liberated, now, from the +fetid fascinations of that sentimental retreat so pitilessly described by +Hogg, who also dubbed it "Shelley's paradise" later, she might hope to +persuade him to stay away from it permanently; and because she might also +hope that his brain would cool, now, and his heart become healthy, and +both brain and heart consider the situation and resolve that it would be +a right and manly thing to stand by this girl-wife and her child and see +that they were honorably dealt with, and cherished and protected and +loved by the man that had promised these things, and so be made happy and +kept so. And because, also--may we conjecture this?--we may hope for +the privilege of taking up our cozy Latin lessons again, that used to be +so pleasant, and brought us so near together--so near, indeed, that often +our heads touched, just as heads do over Italian lessons; and our hands +met in casual and unintentional, but still most delicious and thrilling +little contacts and momentary clasps, just as they inevitably do over +Italian lessons. Suppose one should say to any young wife: "I find that +your husband is poring over the Italian poets and being instructed in the +beautiful Italian language by the lovely Cornelia Robinson"--would that +cozy picture fail to rise before her mind? would its possibilities fail +to suggest themselves to her? would there be a pang in her heart and a +blush on her face? or, on the contrary, would the remark give her +pleasure, make her joyous and gay? Why, one needs only to make the +experiment--the result will not be uncertain. + +However, we learn--by authority of deeply reasoned and searching +conjecture--that the baby bore the journey well, and that that was why +the young wife was happy. That accounts for two per cent. of the +happiness, but it was not right to imply that it accounted for the other +ninety-eight also. + +Peacock, a scholar, poet, and friend of the Shelleys, was of their party +when they went away. He used to laugh at the Boinville menagerie, and +"was not a favorite." One of the Boinville group, writing to Hogg, said, +"The Shelleys have made an addition to their party in the person of a +cold scholar, who, I think, has neither taste nor feeling. This, Shelley +will perceive sooner or later, for his warm nature craves sympathy." +True, and Shelley will fight his way back there to get it--there will be +no way to head him off. + +Towards the end of November it was necessary for Shelley to pay a +business visit to London, and he conceived the project of leaving Harriet +and the baby in Edinburgh with Harriet's sister, Eliza Westbrook, +a sensible, practical maiden lady about thirty years old, who had spent +a great part of her time with the family since the marriage. She was +an estimable woman, and Shelley had had reason to like her, and did like +her; but along about this time his feeling towards her changed. Part of +Shelley's plan, as he wrote Hogg, was to spend his London evenings with +the Newtons--members of the Boinville Hysterical Society. But, alas, +when he arrived early in December, that pleasant game was partially +blocked, for Eliza and the family arrived with him. We are left +destitute of conjectures at this point by the biographer, and it is my +duty to supply one. I chance the conjecture that it was Eliza who +interfered with that game. I think she tried to do what she could +towards modifying the Boinville connection, in the interest of her young +sister's peace and honor. + +If it was she who blocked that game, she was not strong enough to block +the next one. Before the month and year were out--no date given, let us +call it Christmas--Shelley and family were nested in a furnished house in +Windsor, "at no great distance from the Boinvilles"--these decoys still +residing at Bracknell. + +What we need, now, is a misleading conjecture. We get it with +characteristic promptness and depravity: + + "But Prince Athanase found not the aged Zonoras, the friend of + his boyhood, in any wanderings to Windsor. Dr. Lind had died + a year since, and with his death Windsor must have lost, for + Shelley, its chief attraction." + +Still, not to mention Shelley's wife, there was Bracknell, at any rate. +While Bracknell remains, all solace is not lost. Shelley is represented +by this biographer as doing a great many careless things, but to my mind +this hiring a furnished house for three months in order to be with a man +who has been dead a year, is the carelessest of them all. One feels for +him--that is but natural, and does us honor besides--yet one is vexed, +for all that. He could have written and asked about the aged Zonoras +before taking the house. He may not have had the address, but that is +nothing--any postman would know the aged Zonoras; a dead postman would +remember a name like that. + +And yet, why throw a rag like this to us ravening wolves? Is it +seriously supposable that we will stop to chew it and let our prey +escape? No, we are getting to expect this kind of device, and to give it +merely a sniff for certainty's sake and then walk around it and leave it +lying. Shelley was not after the aged Zonoras; he was pointed for +Cornelia and the Italian lessons, for his warm nature was craving +sympathy. + + +II + +The year 1813 is just ended now, and we step into 1814. + +To recapitulate, how much of Cornelia's society has Shelley had, thus +far? Portions of August and September, and four days of July. That is +to say, he has had opportunity to enjoy it, more or less, during that +brief period. Did he want some more of it? We must fall back upon +history, and then go to conjecturing. + + "In the early part of the year 1814, Shelley was a frequent + visitor at Bracknell." + +"Frequent" is a cautious word, in this author's mouth; the very +cautiousness of it, the vagueness of it, provokes suspicion; it makes one +suspect that this frequency was more frequent than the mere common +everyday kinds of frequency which one is in the habit of averaging up +with the unassuming term "frequent." I think so because they fixed up a +bedroom for him in the Boinville house. One doesn't need a bedroom if +one is only going to run over now and then in a disconnected way to +respond like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of +sentiment and rub up one's Italian poetry a little. + +The young wife was not invited, perhaps. If she was, she most certainly +did not come, or she would have straightened the room up; the most +ignorant of us knows that a wife would not endure a room in the condition +in which Hogg found this one when he occupied it one night. Shelley was +away--why, nobody can divine. Clothes were scattered about, there were +books on every side: "Wherever a book could be laid was an open book +turned down on its face to keep its place." It seems plain that the wife +was not invited. No, not that; I think she was invited, but said to +herself that she could not bear to go there and see another young woman +touching heads with her husband over an Italian book and making thrilling +hand-contacts with him accidentally. + +As remarked, he was a frequent visitor there, "where he found an easeful +resting-place in the house of Mrs. Boinville--the white-haired Maimuna-- +and of her daughter, Mrs. Turner." The aged Zonoras was deceased, but +the white-haired Maimuna was still on deck, as we see. "Three charming +ladies entertained the mocker (Hogg) with cups of tea, late hours, +Wieland's Agathon, sighs and smiles, and the celestial manna of refined +sentiment." + +"Such," says Hogg, "were the delights of Shelley's paradise in +Bracknell." + +The white-haired Maimuna presently writes to Hogg: + + "I will not have you despise home-spun pleasures. Shelley is + making a trial of them with us--" + +A trial of them. It may be called that. It was March 11, and he had +been in the house a month. She continues: + + Shelley "likes then so well that he is resolved to leave off + rambling--" + +But he has already left it off. He has been there a month. + + "And begin a course of them himself." + +But he has already begun it. He has been at it a month. He likes it so +well that he has forgotten all about his wife, as a letter of his +reveals. + + "Seriously, I think his mind and body want rest." + +Yet he has been resting both for a month, with Italian, and tea, and +manna of sentiment, and late hours, and every restful thing a young +husband could need for the refreshment of weary limbs and a sore +conscience, and a nagging sense of shabbiness and treachery. + + "His journeys after what he has never found have racked his + purse and his tranquillity. He is resolved to take a little + care of the former, in pity to the latter, which I applaud, and + shall second with all, my might." + +But she does not say whether the young wife, a stranger and lonely +yonder, wants another woman and her daughter Cornelia to be lavishing so +much inflamed interest on her husband or not. That young wife is always +silent--we are never allowed to hear from her. She must have opinions +about such things, she cannot be indifferent, she must be approving or +disapproving, surely she would speak if she were allowed--even to-day and +from her grave she would, if she could, I think--but we get only the +other side, they keep her silent always. + + "He has deeply interested us. In the course of your intimacy + he must have made you feel what we now feel for him. He is + seeking a house close to us--" + +Ah! he is not close enough yet, it seems-- + + "and if he succeeds we shall have an additional motive to + induce you to come among us in the summer." + +The reader would puzzle a long time and not guess the biographer's +comment upon the above letter. It is this: + + "These sound like words of s considerate and judicious friend." + +That is what he thinks. That is, it is what he thinks he thinks. No, +that is not quite it: it is what he thinks he can stupefy a particularly +and unspeakably dull reader into thinking it is what he thinks. He makes +that comment with the knowledge that Shelley is in love with this woman's +daughter, and that it is because of the fascinations of these two that +Shelley has deserted his wife--for this month, considering all the +circumstances, and his new passion, and his employment of the time, +amounted to desertion; that is its rightful name. We cannot know how the +wife regarded it and felt about it; but if she could have read the letter +which Shelley was writing to Hogg four or five days later, we could guess +her thought and how she felt. Hear him: + . . . . . . . + "I have been staying with Mrs. Boinville for the last month; + I have escaped, in the society of all that philosophy and + friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of myself." + +It is fair to conjecture that he was feeling ashamed. + + "They have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life. + I have felt myself translated to a paradise which has nothing + of mortality but its transitoriness; my heart sickens at the + view of that necessity which will quickly divide me from the + delightful tranquillity of this happy home--for it has become + my home. + . . . . . . . + "Eliza is still with us--not here!--but will be with me when + the infinite malice of destiny forces me to depart." + +Eliza is she who blocked that game--the game in London--the one where we +were purposing to dine every night with one of the "three charming +ladies" who fed tea and manna and late hours to Hogg at Bracknell. + +Shelley could send Eliza away, of course; could have cleared her out long +ago if so minded, just as he had previously done with a predecessor of +hers whom he had first worshipped and then turned against; but perhaps +she was useful there as a thin excuse for staying away himself. + + "I am now but little inclined to contest this point. + I certainly hate her with all my heart and soul . . . . + + "It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of + disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe, + in whom I may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy. + I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking the + overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence for this miserable + wretch. But she is no more than a blind and loathsome worm, + that cannot see to sting. + + "I have begun to learn Italian again . . . . Cornelia + assists me in this language. Did I not once tell you that I + thought her cold and reserved? She is the reverse of this, as + she is the reverse of everything bad. She inherits all the + divinity of her mother . . . . I have sometimes forgotten + that I am not an inmate of this delightful home--that a time + will come which will cast me again into the boundless ocean of + abhorred society. + + "I have written nothing but one stanza, which has no meaning, + and that I have only written in thought: + + "Thy dewy looks sink in my breast; + Thy gentle words stir poison there; + Thou hast disturbed the only rest + That was the portion of despair. + Subdued to duty's hard control, + I could have borne my wayward lot: + The chains that bind this rained soul + Had cankered then, but crushed it not. + + "This is the vision of a delirious and distempered dream, which + passes away at the cold clear light of morning. Its surpassing + excellence and exquisite perfections have no more reality than + the color of an autumnal sunset." + +Then it did not refer to his wife. That is plain; otherwise he would +have said so. It is well that he explained that it has no meaning, for +if he had not done that, the previous soft references to Cornelia and the +way he has come to feel about her now would make us think she was the +person who had inspired it while teaching him how to read the warm and +ruddy Italian poets during a month. + +The biography observes that portions of this letter "read like the tired +moaning of a wounded creature." Guesses at the nature of the wound are +permissible; we will hazard one. + +Read by the light of Shelley's previous history, his letter seems to be +the cry of a tortured conscience. Until this time it was a conscience +that had never felt a pang or known a smirch. It was the conscience of +one who, until this time, had never done a dishonorable thing, or an +ungenerous, or cruel, or treacherous thing, but was now doing all of +these, and was keenly aware of it. Up to this time Shelley had been +master of his nature, and it was a nature which was as beautiful and as +nearly perfect as any merely human nature may be. But he was drunk now, +with a debasing passion, and was not himself. There is nothing in his +previous history that is in character with the Shelley of this letter. +He had done boyish things, foolish things, even crazy things, but never +a thing to be ashamed of. He had done things which one might laugh at, +but the privilege of laughing was limited always to the thing itself; +you could not laugh at the motive back of it--that was high, that was +noble. His most fantastic and quixotic acts had a purpose back of them +which made them fine, often great, and made the rising laugh seem +profanation and quenched it; quenched it, and changed the impulse to +homage. + +Up to this time he had been loyalty itself, where his obligations lay-- +treachery was new to him; he had never done an ignoble thing--baseness +was new to him; he had never done an unkind thing that also was new to +him. + +This was the author of that letter, this was the man who had deserted his +young wife and was lamenting, because he must leave another woman's house +which had become a "home" to him, and go away. Is he lamenting mainly +because he must go back to his wife and child? No, the lament is mainly +for what he is to leave behind him. The physical comforts of the house? +No, in his life he had never attached importance to such things. Then +the thing which he grieves to leave is narrowed down to a person--to the +person whose "dewy looks" had sunk into his breast, and whose seducing +words had "stirred poison there." + +He was ashamed of himself, his conscience was upbraiding him. He was the +slave of a degrading love; he was drunk with his passion, the real +Shelley was in temporary eclipse. This is the verdict which his previous +history must certainly deliver upon this episode, I think. + +One must be allowed to assist himself with conjectures like these when +trying to find his way through a literary swamp which has so many +misleading finger-boards up as this book is furnished with. + +We have now arrived at a part of the swamp where the difficulties and +perplexities are going to be greater than any we have yet met with-- +where, indeed, the finger-boards are multitudinous, and the most of them +pointing diligently in the wrong direction. We are to be told by the +biography why Shelley deserted his wife and child and took up with +Cornelia Turner and Italian. It was not on account of Cornelia's sighs +and sentimentalities and tea and manna and late hours and soft and sweet +and industrious enticements; no, it was because "his happiness in his +home had been wounded and bruised almost to death." + +It had been wounded and bruised almost to death in this way: + +1st. Harriet persuaded him to set up a carriage. + +2d. After the intrusion of the baby, Harriet stopped reading aloud and +studying. + +3d. Harriet's walks with Hogg "commonly conducted us to some fashionable +bonnet-shop." + +4th. Harriet hired a wet-nurse. + +5th. When an operation was being performed upon the baby, "Harriet stood +by, narrowly observing all that was done, but, to the astonishment of the +operator, betraying not the smallest sign of emotion." + +6th. Eliza Westbrook, sister-in-law, was still of the household. + +The evidence against Harriet Shelley is all in; there is no more. Upon +these six counts she stands indicted of the crime of driving her husband +into that sty at Bracknell; and this crime, by these helps, the +biographical prosecuting attorney has set himself the task of proving +upon her. + +Does the biographer call himself the attorney for the prosecution? +No, only to himself, privately; publicly he is the passionless, +disinterested, impartial judge on the bench. He holds up his judicial +scales before the world, that all may see; and it all tries to look so +fair that a blind person would sometimes fail to see him slip the false +weights in. + +Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to +death, first, because Harriet had persuaded him to set up a carriage. +I cannot discover that any evidence is offered that she asked him to set +up a carriage. Still, if she did, was it a heavy offence? Was it +unique? Other young wives had committed it before, others have committed +it since. Shelley had dearly loved her in those London days; possibly he +set up the carriage gladly to please her; affectionate young husbands do +such things. When Shelley ran away with another girl, by-and-by, this +girl persuaded him to pour the price of many carriages and many horses +down the bottomless well of her father's debts, but this impartial judge +finds no fault with that. Once she appeals to Shelley to raise money-- +necessarily by borrowing, there was no other way--to pay her father's +debts with at a time when Shelley was in danger of being arrested and +imprisoned for his own debts; yet the good judge finds no fault with her +even for this. + +First and last, Shelley emptied into that rapacious mendicant's lap a sum +which cost him--for he borrowed it at ruinous rates--from eighty to one +hundred thousand dollars. But it was Mary Godwin's papa, the +supplications were often sent through Mary, the good judge is Mary's +strenuous friend, so Mary gets no censures. On the Continent Mary rode +in her private carriage, built, as Shelley boasts, "by one of the best +makers in Bond Street," yet the good judge makes not even a passing +comment on this iniquity. Let us throw out Count No. 1 against Harriet +Shelley as being far-fetched, and frivolous. + +Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to +death, secondly, because Harriet's studies "had dwindled away to nothing, +Bysshe had ceased to express any interest in them." At what time was +this? It was when Harriet "had fully recovered from the fatigue of her +first effort of maternity . . . and was now in full force, vigor, and +effect." Very well, the baby was born two days before the close of June. +It took the mother a month to get back her full force, vigor, and effect; +this brings us to July 27th and the deadly Cornelia. If a wife of +eighteen is studying with her husband and he gets smitten with another +woman, isn't he likely to lose interest in his wife's studies for that +reason, and is not his wife's interest in her studies likely to languish +for the same reason? Would not the mere sight of those books of hers +sharpen the pain that is in her heart? This sudden breaking down of a +mutual intellectual interest of two years' standing is coincident with +Shelley's re-encounter with Cornelia; and we are allowed to gather from +that time forth for nearly two months he did all his studying in that +person's society. We feel at liberty to rule out Count No. 2 from the +indictment against Harriet. + +Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to +death, thirdly, because Harriet's walks with Hogg commonly led to some +fashionable bonnet-shop. I offer no palliation; I only ask why the +dispassionate, impartial judge did not offer one himself--merely, I mean, +to offset his leniency in a similar case or two where the girl who ran +away with Harriet's husband was the shopper. There are several occasions +where she interested herself with shopping--among them being walks which +ended at the bonnet-shop--yet in none of these cases does she get a word +of blame from the good judge, while in one of them he covers the deed +with a justifying remark, she doing the shopping that time to find +easement for her mind, her child having died. + +Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to +death, fourthly, by the introduction there of a wet-nurse. The wet-nurse +was introduced at the time of the Edinburgh sojourn, immediately after +Shelley had been enjoying the two months of study with Cornelia which +broke up his wife's studies and destroyed his personal interest in them. +Why, by this time, nothing that Shelley's wife could do would have been +satisfactory to him, for he was in love with another woman, and was never +going to be contented again until he got back to her. If he had been +still in love with his wife it is not easily conceivable that he would +care much who nursed the baby, provided the baby was well nursed. +Harriet's jealousy was assuredly voicing itself now, Shelley's conscience +was assuredly nagging him, pestering him, persecuting him. Shelley +needed excuses for his altered attitude towards his wife; Providence +pitied him and sent the wet-nurse. If Providence had sent him a cotton +doughnut it would have answered just as well; all he wanted was something +to find fault with. + +Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to +death, fifthly, because Harriet narrowly watched a surgical operation +which was being performed upon her child, and, "to the astonishment of +the operator," who was watching Harriet instead of attending to his +operation, she betrayed "not the smallest sign of emotion." The author +of this biography was not ashamed to set down that exultant slander. +He was apparently not aware that it was a small business to bring into +his court a witness whose name he does not know, and whose character and +veracity there is none to vouch for, and allow him to strike this blow at +the mother-heart of this friendless girl. The biographer says, "We may +not infer from this that Harriet did not feel"--why put it in, then?-- +"but we learn that those about her could believe her to be hard and +insensible." Who were those who were about her? Her husband? He hated +her now, because he was in love elsewhere. Her sister? Of course that +is not charged. Peacock? Peacock does not testify. The wet-nurse? She +does not testify. If any others were there we have no mention of them. +"Those about her" are reduced to one person--her husband. Who reports +the circumstance? It is Hogg. Perhaps he was there--we do not know. +But if he was, he still got his information at second-hand, as it was the +operator who noticed Harriet's lack of emotion, not himself. Hogg is not +given to saying kind things when Harriet is his subject. He may have +said them the time that he tried to tempt her to soil her honor, but +after that he mentions her usually with a sneer. "Among those who were +about her" was one witness well equipped to silence all tongues, abolish +all doubts, set our minds at rest; one witness, not called, and not +callable, whose evidence, if we could but get it, would outweigh the +oaths of whole battalions of hostile Hoggs and nameless surgeons--the +baby. I wish we had the baby's testimony; and yet if we had it it would +not do us any good--a furtive conjecture, a sly insinuation, a pious +"if" or two, would be smuggled in, here and there, with a solemn air of +judicial investigation, and its positiveness would wilt into dubiety. + +The biographer says of Harriet, "If words of tender affection and +motherly pride proved the reality of love, then undoubtedly she loved her +firstborn child." That is, if mere empty words can prove it, it stands +proved--and in this way, without committing himself, he gives the reader +a chance to infer that there isn't any extant evidence but words, and +that he doesn't take much stock in them. How seldom he shows his hand! +He is always lurking behind a non-committal "if" or something of that +kind; always gliding and dodging around, distributing colorless poison +here and there and everywhere, but always leaving himself in a position +to say that his language will be found innocuous if taken to pieces and +examined. He clearly exhibits a steady and never-relaxing purpose to +make Harriet the scapegoat for her husband's first great sin--but it is +in the general view that this is revealed, not in the details. His +insidious literature is like blue water; you know what it is that makes +it blue, but you cannot produce and verify any detail of the cloud of +microscopic dust in it that does it. Your adversary can dip up a +glassful and show you that it is pure white and you cannot deny it; and +he can dip the lake dry, glass by glass, and show that every glassful is +white, and prove it to any one's eye--and yet that lake was blue and you +can swear it. This book is blue--with slander in solution. + +Let the reader examine, for example, the paragraph of comment which +immediately follows the letter containing Shelley's self-exposure which +we have been considering. This is it. One should inspect the individual +sentences as they go by, then pass them in procession and review the +cake-walk as a whole: + + "Shelley's happiness in his home, as is evident from this + pathetic letter, had been fatally stricken; it is evident, + also, that he knew where duty lay; he felt that his part was to + take up his burden, silently and sorrowfully, and to bear it + henceforth with the quietness of despair. But we can perceive + that he scarcely possessed the strength and fortitude needful + for success in such an attempt. And clearly Shelley himself + was aware how perilous it was to accept that respite of + blissful ease which he enjoyed in the Boinville household; for + gentle voices and dewy looks and words of sympathy could not + fail to remind him of an ideal of tranquillity or of joy which + could never be his, and which he must henceforth sternly + exclude from his imagination." + +That paragraph commits the author in no way. Taken sentence by sentence +it asserts nothing against anybody or in favor of anybody, pleads for +nobody, accuses nobody. Taken detail by detail, it is as innocent as +moonshine. And yet, taken as a whole, it is a design against the reader; +its intent is to remove the feeling which the letter must leave with him +if let alone, and put a different one in its place--to remove a feeling +justified by the letter and substitute one not justified by it. The +letter itself gives you no uncertain picture--no lecturer is needed to +stand by with a stick and point out its details and let on to explain +what they mean. The picture is the very clear and remorsefully faithful +picture of a fallen and fettered angel who is ashamed of himself; an +angel who beats his soiled wings and cries, who complains to the woman +who enticed him that he could have borne his wayward lot, he could have +stood by his duty if it had not been for her beguilements; an angel who +rails at the "boundless ocean of abhorred society," and rages at his poor +judicious sister-in-law. If there is any dignity about this spectacle it +will escape most people. + +Yet when the paragraph of comment is taken as a whole, the picture is +full of dignity and pathos; we have before us a blameless and noble +spirit stricken to the earth by malign powers, but not conquered; +tempted, but grandly putting the temptation away; enmeshed by subtle +coils, but sternly resolved to rend them and march forth victorious, at +any peril of life or limb. Curtain--slow music. + +Was it the purpose of the paragraph to take the bad taste of Shelley's +letter out of the reader's mouth? If that was not it, good ink was +wasted; without that, it has no relevancy--the multiplication table would +have padded the space as rationally. + +We have inspected the six reasons which we are asked to believe drove a +man of conspicuous patience, honor, justice, fairness, kindliness, and +iron firmness, resolution, and steadfastness, from the wife whom he loved +and who loved him, to a refuge in the mephitic paradise of Bracknell. +These are six infinitely little reasons; but there were six colossal +ones, and these the counsel for the destruction of Harriet Shelley +persists in not considering very important. + +Moreover, the colossal six preceded the little six and had done the +mischief before they were born. Let us double-column the twelve; then we +shall see at a glance that each little reason is in turn answered by a +retorting reason of a size to overshadow it and make it insignificant: + +1. Harriet sets up carriage. 1. CORNELIA TURNER. +2. Harriet stops studying. 2. CORNELIA TURNER. +3. Harriet goes to bonnet-shop. 3. CORNELIA TURNER. +4. Harriet takes a wet-nurse. 4. CORNELIA TURNER. +5. Harriet has too much nerve. 5. CORNELIA TURNER. +6. Detested sister-in-law 6. CORNELIA TURNER. + +As soon as we comprehend that Cornelia Turner and the Italian lessons +happened before the little six had been discovered to be grievances, +we understand why Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and +bruised almost to death, and no one can persuade us into laying it on +Harriet. Shelley and Cornelia are the responsible persons, and we cannot +in honor and decency allow the cruelties which they practised upon the +unoffending wife to be pushed aside in order to give us a chance to waste +time and tears over six sentimental justifications of an offence which +the six can't justify, nor even respectably assist in justifying. + +Six? There were seven; but in charity to the biographer the seventh +ought not to be exposed. Still, he hung it out himself, and not only +hung it out, but thought it was a good point in Shelley's favor. For two +years Shelley found sympathy and intellectual food and all that at home; +there was enough for spiritual and mental support, but not enough for +luxury; and so, at the end of the contented two years, this latter detail +justifies him in going bag and baggage over to Cornelia Turner and +supplying the rest of his need in the way of surplus sympathy and +intellectual pie unlawfully. By the same reasoning a man in merely +comfortable circumstances may rob a bank without sin. + + +III + +It is 1814, it is the 16th of March, Shelley has, written his letter, he +has been in the Boinville paradise a month, his deserted wife is in her +husbandless home. Mischief had been wrought. It is the biographer who +concedes this. We greatly need some light on Harriet's side of the case +now; we need to know how she enjoyed the month, but there is no way to +inform ourselves; there seems to be a strange absence of documents and +letters and diaries on that side. Shelley kept a diary, the approaching +Mary Godwin kept a diary, her father kept one, her half-sister by +marriage, adoption, and the dispensation of God kept one, and the entire +tribe and all its friends wrote and received letters, and the letters +were kept and are producible when this biography needs them; but there +are only three or four scraps of Harriet's writing, and no diary. +Harriet wrote plenty of letters to her husband--nobody knows where they +are, I suppose; she wrote plenty of letters to other people--apparently +they have disappeared, too. Peacock says she wrote good letters, but +apparently interested people had sagacity enough to mislay them in time. +After all her industry she went down into her grave and lies silent +there--silent, when she has so much need to speak. We can only wonder at +this mystery, not account for it. + +No, there is no way of finding out what Harriet's state of feeling was +during the month that Shelley was disporting himself in the Bracknell +paradise. We have to fall back upon conjecture, as our fabulist does +when he has nothing more substantial to work with. Then we easily +conjecture that as the days dragged by Harriet's heart grew heavier and +heavier under its two burdens--shame and resentment: the shame of being +pointed at and gossiped about as a deserted wife, and resentment against +the woman who had beguiled her husband from her and now kept him in a +disreputable captivity. Deserted wives--deserted whether for cause or +without cause--find small charity among the virtuous and the discreet. +We conjecture that one after another the neighbors ceased to call; that +one after another they got to being "engaged" when Harriet called; that +finally they one after the other cut her dead on the street; that after +that she stayed in the house daytimes, and brooded over her sorrows, and +nighttimes did the same, there being nothing else to do with the heavy +hours and the silence and solitude and the dreary intervals which sleep +should have charitably bridged, but didn't. + +Yes, mischief had been wrought. The biographer arrives at this +conclusion, and it is a most just one. Then, just as you begin to half +hope he is going to discover the cause of it and launch hot bolts of +wrath at the guilty manufacturers of it, you have to turn away +disappointed. You are disappointed, and you sigh. This is what he says +--the italics [''] are mine: + + "However the mischief may have been wrought--'and at this day + no one can wish to heap blame an any buried head'--" + +So it is poor Harriet, after all. Stern justice must take its course-- +justice tempered with delicacy, justice tempered with compassion, justice +that pities a forlorn dead girl and refuses to strike her. Except in the +back. Will not be ignoble and say the harsh thing, but only insinuate +it. Stern justice knows about the carriage and the wet-nurse and the +bonnet-shop and the other dark things that caused this sad mischief, and +may not, must not blink them; so it delivers judgment where judgment +belongs, but softens the blow by not seeming to deliver judgment at all. +To resume--the italics are mine: + + "However the mischief may have been wrought--and at this day no + one can wish to heap blame on any buried head--'it is certain + that some cause or causes of deep division between Shelley and + his wife were in operation during the early part of the year + 1814'." + +This shows penetration. No deduction could be more accurate than this. +There were indeed some causes of deep division. But next comes another +disappointing sentence: + + "To guess at the precise nature of these cafes, in the absence + of definite statement, were useless." + +Why, he has already been guessing at them for several pages, and we have +been trying to outguess him, and now all of a sudden he is tired of it +and won't play any more. It is not quite fair to us. However, he will +get over this by-and-by, when Shelley commits his next indiscretion and +has to be guessed out of it at Harriet's expense. + +"We may rest content with Shelley's own words"--in a Chancery paper drawn +up by him three years later. They were these: "Delicacy forbids me to +say more than that we were disunited by incurable dissensions." + +As for me, I do not quite see why we should rest content with anything of +the sort. It is not a very definite statement. It does not necessarily +mean anything more than that he did not wish to go into the tedious +details of those family quarrels. Delicacy could quite properly excuse +him from saying, "I was in love with Cornelia all that time; my wife kept +crying and worrying about it and upbraiding me and begging me to cut +myself free from a connection which was wronging her and disgracing us +both; and I being stung by these reproaches retorted with fierce and +bitter speeches--for it is my nature to do that when I am stirred, +especially if the target of them is a person whom I had greatly loved and +respected before, as witness my various attitudes towards Miss Hitchener, +the Gisbornes, Harriet's sister, and others--and finally I did not +improve this state of things when I deserted my wife and spent a whole +month with the woman who had infatuated me." + +No, he could not go into those details, and we excuse him; but, +nevertheless, we do not rest content with this bland proposition to puff +away that whole long disreputable episode with a single mean, meaningless +remark of Shelley's. + +We do admit that "it is certain that some cause or causes of deep +division were in operation." We would admit it just the same if the +grammar of the statement were as straight as a string, for we drift into +pretty indifferent grammar ourselves when we are absorbed in historical +work; but we have to decline to admit that we cannot guess those cause or +causes. + +But guessing is not really necessary. There is evidence attainable-- +evidence from the batch discredited by the biographer and set out at the +back door in his appendix-basket; and yet a court of law would think +twice before throwing it out, whereas it would be a hardy person who +would venture to offer in such a place a good part of the material which +is placed before the readers of this book as "evidence," and so treated +by this daring biographer. Among some letters (in the appendix-basket) +from Mrs. Godwin, detailing the Godwinian share in the Shelleyan events +of 1814, she tells how Harriet Shelley came to her and her husband, +agitated and weeping, to implore them to forbid Shelley the house, and +prevent his seeing Mary Godwin. + + "She related that last November he had fallen in love with Mrs. + Turner and paid her such marked attentions Mr. Turner, the + husband, had carried off his wife to Devonshire." + +The biographer finds a technical fault in this; "the Shelleys were in +Edinburgh in November." What of that? The woman is recalling a +conversation which is more than two months old; besides, she was probably +more intent upon the central and important fact of it than upon its +unimportant date. Harriet's quoted statement has some sense in it; for +that reason, if for no other, it ought to have been put in the body of +the book. Still, that would not have answered; even the biographer's +enemy could not be cruel enough to ask him to let this real grievance, +this compact and substantial and picturesque figure, this rawhead-and- +bloody-bones, come striding in there among those pale shams, those +rickety spectres labeled WET-NURSE, BONNET-SHOP, and so on--no, the +father of all malice could not ask the biographer to expose his pathetic +goblins to a competition like that. + +The fabulist finds fault with the statement because it has a technical +error in it; and he does this at the moment that he is furnishing us an +error himself, and of a graver sort. He says: + + "If Turner carried off his wife to Devonshire he brought her + back and Shelley was staying with her and her mother on terms + of cordial intimacy in March, 1814." + +We accept the "cordial intimacy"--it was the very thing Harriet was +complaining of--but there is nothing to show that it was Turner who +brought his wife back. The statement is thrown in as if it were not only +true, but was proof that Turner was not uneasy. Turner's movements are +proof of nothing. Nothing but a statement from Turner's mouth would have +any value here, and he made none. + +Six days after writing his letter Shelley and his wife were together +again for a moment--to get remarried according to the rites of the +English Church. + +Within three weeks the new husband and wife were apart again, and the +former was back in his odorous paradise. This time it is the wife who +does the deserting. She finds Cornelia too strong for her, probably. +At any rate, she goes away with her baby and sister, and we have a +playful fling at her from good Mrs. Boinville, the "mysterious spinner +Maimuna"; she whose "face was as a damsel's face, and yet her hair was +gray"; she of whom the biographer has said, "Shelley was indeed caught in +an almost invisible thread spun around him, but unconsciously, by this +subtle and benignant enchantress." The subtle and benignant enchantress +writes to Hogg, April 18: "Shelley is again a widower; his beauteous half +went to town on Thursday." + +Then Shelley writes a poem--a chant of grief over the hard fate which +obliges him now to leave his paradise and take up with his wife again. +It seems to intimate that the paradise is cooling towards him; that he is +warned off by acclamation; that he must not even venture to tempt with +one last tear his friend Cornelia's ungentle mood, for her eye is glazed +and cold and dares not entreat her lover to stay: + +Exhibit E + + "Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries 'Away!' + Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood; + Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy + stay: + Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude." + +Back to the solitude of his now empty home, that is! + + "Away! away! to thy sad and silent home; + Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth." + . . . . . . . . + +But he will have rest in the grave by-and-by. Until that time comes, +the charms of Bracknell will remain in his memory, along with Mrs. +Boinville's voice and Cornelia Turner's smile: + + "Thou in the grave shalt rest--yet, till the phantoms flee + Which that house and hearth and garden made dear to thee ere while, + Thy remembrance and repentance and deep musings are not free + From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile." + +We cannot wonder that Harriet could not stand it. Any of us would have +left. We would not even stay with a cat that was in this condition. +Even the Boinvilles could not endure it; and so, as we have seen, they +gave this one notice. + + "Early in May, Shelley was in London. He did not yet despair + of reconciliation with Harriet, nor had he ceased to love her." + +Shelley's poems are a good deal of trouble to his biographer. They are +constantly inserted as "evidence," and they make much confusion. As soon +as one of them has proved one thing, another one follows and proves quite +a different thing. The poem just quoted shows that he was in love with +Cornelia, but a month later he is in love with Harriet again, and there +is a poem to prove it. + + "In this piteous appeal Shelley declares that he has now no + grief but one--the grief of having known and lost his wife's + love." + +Exhibit F + + "Thy look of love has power to calm + The stormiest passion of my soul." + + +But without doubt she had been reserving her looks of love a good part of +the time for ten months, now--ever since he began to lavish his own on +Cornelia Turner at the end of the previous July. He does really seem to +have already forgotten Cornelia's merits in one brief month, for he +eulogizes Harriet in a way which rules all competition out: + + "Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind, + Amid a world of hate." + +He complains of her hardness, and begs her to make the concession of +a "slight endurance"--of his waywardness, perhaps--for the sake of +"a fellow-being's lasting weal." But the main force of his appeal is +in his closing stanza, and is strongly worded: + + "O tract for once no erring guide! + Bid the remorseless feeling flee; + 'Tis malice, 'tis revenge, 'tis pride, + 'Tis anything but thee; + I deign a nobler pride to prove, + And pity if thou canst not love." + +This is in May--apparently towards the end of it. Harriet and Shelley +were corresponding all the time. Harriet got the poem--a copy exists in +her own handwriting; she being the only gentle and kind person amid a +world of hate, according to Shelley's own testimony in the poem, we are +permitted to think that the daily letters would presently have melted +that kind and gentle heart and brought about the reconciliation, if there +had been time but there wasn't; for in a very few days--in fact, before +the 8th of June--Shelley was in love with another woman. + +And so--perhaps while Harriet was walking the floor nights, trying to get +her poem by heart--her husband was doing a fresh one--for the other girl +--Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin--with sentiments like these in it: + +Exhibit G + + To spend years thus and be rewarded, + As thou, sweet love, requited me + When none were near. + . . . thy lips did meet + Mine tremblingly; . . , + + "Gentle and good and mild thou art, + Nor can I live if thou appear + Aught but thyself." . . . + + +And so on. "Before the close of June it was known and felt by Mary and +Shelley that each was inexpressibly dear to the other." Yes, Shelley had +found this child of sixteen to his liking, and had wooed and won her in +the graveyard. But that is nothing; it was better than wooing her in her +nursery, at any rate, where it might have disturbed the other children. + +However, she was a child in years only. From the day that she set her +masculine grip on Shelley he was to frisk no more. If she had occupied +the only kind and gentle Harriet's place in March it would have been a +thrilling spectacle to see her invade the Boinville rookery and read the +riot act. That holiday of Shelley's would have been of short duration, +and Cornelia's hair would have been as gray as her mother's when the +services were over. + +Hogg went to the Godwin residence in Skinner Street with Shelley on that +8th of June. They passed through Godwin's little debt-factory of a book- +shop and went up-stairs hunting for the proprietor. Nobody there. +Shelley strode about the room impatiently, making its crazy floor quake +under him. Then a door "was partially and softly opened. A thrilling +voice called 'Shelley!' A thrilling voice answered, 'Mary!' And he +darted out of the room like an arrow from the bow of the far-shooting +King. A very young female, fair and fair-haired, pale, indeed, and with +a piercing look, wearing a frock of tartan, an unusual dress in London at +that time, had called him out of the room." + +This is Mary Godwin, as described by Hogg. The thrill of the voices +shows that the love of Shelley and Mary was already upward of a fortnight +old; therefore it had been born within the month of May--born while +Harriet was still trying to get her poem by heart, we think. I must not +be asked how I know so much about that thrill; it is my secret. The +biographer and I have private ways of finding out things when it is +necessary to find them out and the customary methods fail. + +Shelley left London that day, and was gone ten days. The biographer +conjectures that he spent this interval with Harriet in Bath. It would +be just like him. To the end of his days he liked to be in love with two +women at once. He was more in love with Miss Hitchener when he married +Harriet than he was with Harriet, and told the lady so with simple and +unostentatious candor. He was more in love with Cornelia than he was +with Harriet in the end of 1813 and the beginning of 1814, yet he +supplied both of them with love poems of an equal temperature meantime; +he loved Mary and Harriet in June, and while getting ready to run off +with the one, it is conjectured that he put in his odd time trying to get +reconciled to the other; by-and-by, while still in love with Mary, he +will make love to her half-sister by marriage, adoption, and the +visitation of God, through the medium of clandestine letters, and she +will answer with letters that are for no eye but his own. + +When Shelley encountered Mary Godwin he was looking around for another +paradise. He had, tastes of his own, and there were features about the +Godwin establishment that strongly recommended it. Godwin was an +advanced thinker and an able writer. One of his romances is still read, +but his philosophical works, once so esteemed, are out of vogue now; +their authority was already declining when Shelley made his acquaintance +--that is, it was declining with the public, but not with Shelley. They +had been his moral and political Bible, and they were that yet. Shelley +the infidel would himself have claimed to be less a work of God than a +work of Godwin. Godwin's philosophies had formed his mind and interwoven +themselves into it and become a part of its texture; he regarded himself +as Godwin's spiritual son. Godwin was not without self-appreciation; +indeed, it may be conjectured that from his point of view the last +syllable of his name was surplusage. He lived serene in his lofty world +of philosophy, far above the mean interests that absorbed smaller men, +and only came down to the ground at intervals to pass the hat for alms to +pay his debts with, and insult the man that relieved him. Several of his +principles were out of the ordinary. For example, he was opposed to +marriage. He was not aware that his preachings from this text were but +theory and wind; he supposed he was in earnest in imploring people to +live together without marrying, until Shelley furnished him a working +model of his scheme and a practical example to analyze, by applying the +principle in his own family; the matter took a different and surprising +aspect then. The late Matthew Arnold said that the main defect in +Shelley's make-up was that he was destitute of the sense of humor. This +episode must have escaped Mr. Arnold's attention. + +But we have said enough about the head of the new paradise. Mrs. Godwin +is described as being in several ways a terror; and even when her soul +was in repose she wore green spectacles. But I suspect that her main +unattractiveness was born of the fact that she wrote the letters that are +out in the appendix-basket in the back yard--letters which are an outrage +and wholly untrustworthy, for they say some kind things about poor +Harriet and tell some disagreeable truths about her husband; and these +things make the fabulist grit his teeth a good deal. + +Next we have Fanny Godwin--a Godwin by courtesy only; she was Mrs. +Godwin's natural daughter by a former friend. She was a sweet and +winning girl, but she presently wearied of the Godwin paradise, and +poisoned herself. + +Last in the list is Jane (or Claire, as she preferred to call herself) +Clairmont, daughter of Mrs. Godwin by a former marriage. She was very +young and pretty and accommodating, and always ready to do what she could +to make things pleasant. After Shelley ran off with her part-sister +Mary, she became the guest of the pair, and contributed a natural child +to their nursery--Allegra. Lord Byron was the father. + +We have named the several members and advantages of the new paradise in +Skinner Street, with its crazy book-shop underneath. Shelley was all +right now, this was a better place than the other; more variety anyway, +and more different kinds of fragrance. One could turn out poetry here +without any trouble at all. + +The way the new love-match came about was this: + +Shelley told Mary all his aggravations and sorrows and griefs, and about +the wet-nurse and the bonnetshop and the surgeon and the carriage, and +the sister-in-law that blocked the London game, and about Cornelia and +her mamma, and how they had turned him out of the house after making so +much of him; and how he had deserted Harriet and then Harriet had +deserted him, and how the reconciliation was working along and Harriet +getting her poem by heart; and still he was not happy, and Mary pitied +him, for she had had trouble herself. But I am not satisfied with this. +It reads too much like statistics. It lacks smoothness and grace, and is +too earthy and business-like. It has the sordid look of a trades-union +procession out on strike. That is not the right form for it. The book +does it better; we will fall back on the book and have a cake-walk: + + "It was easy to divine that some restless grief possessed him; + Mary herself was not unlearned in the lore of pain. His + generous zeal in her father's behalf, his spiritual sonship to + Godwin, his reverence for her mother's memory, were guarantees + with Mary of his excellence.--[What she was after was + guarantees of his excellence. That he stood ready to desert + his wife and child was one of them, apparently.]--The new + friends could not lack subjects of discourse, and underneath + their words about Mary's mother, and 'Political Justice,' and + 'Rights of Woman,' were two young hearts, each feeling towards + the other, each perhaps unaware, trembling in the direction of + the other. The desire to assuage the suffering of one whose + happiness has grown precious to us may become a hunger of the + spirit as keen as any other, and this hunger now possessed + Mary's heart; when her eyes rested unseen on Shelley, it was + with a look full of the ardor of a 'soothing pity.'" + +Yes, that is better and has more composure. That is just the way it +happened. He told her about the wet-nurse, she told him about political +justice; he told her about the deadly sister-in-law, she told him about +her mother; he told her about the bonnet-shop, she murmured back about +the rights of woman; then he assuaged her, then she assuaged him; then he +assuaged her some more, next she assuaged him some more; then they both +assuaged one another simultaneously; and so they went on by the hour +assuaging and assuaging and assuaging, until at last what was the result? +They were in love. It will happen so every time. + + "He had married a woman who, as he now persuaded himself, had + never truly loved him, who loved only his fortune and his rank, + and who proved her selfishness by deserting him in his misery." + +I think that that is not quite fair to Harriet. We have no certainty +that she knew Cornelia had turned him out of the house. He went back to +Cornelia, and Harriet may have supposed that he was as happy with her as +ever. Still, it was judicious to begin to lay on the whitewash, for +Shelley is going to need many a coat of it now, and the sooner the reader +becomes used to the intrusion of the brush the sooner he will get +reconciled to it and stop fretting about it. + +After Shelley's (conjectured) visit to Harriet at Bath--8th of June to +18th--"it seems to have been arranged that Shelley should henceforth +join the Skinner Street household each day at dinner." + +Nothing could be handier than this; things will swim along now. + + "Although now Shelley was coming to believe that his wedded + union with Harriet was a thing of the past, he had not ceased + to regard her with affectionate consideration; he wrote to her + frequently, and kept her informed of his whereabouts." + +We must not get impatient over these curious inharmoniousnesses and +irreconcilabilities in Shelley's character. You can see by the +biographer's attitude towards them that there is nothing objectionable +about them. Shelley was doing his best to make two adoring young +creatures happy: he was regarding the one with affectionate consideration +by mail, and he was assuaging the other one at home. + + "Unhappy Harriet, residing at Bath, had perhaps never desired + that the breach between herself and her husband should be + irreparable and complete." + +I find no fault with that sentence except that the "perhaps" is not +strictly warranted. It should have been left out. In support--or shall +we say extenuation?--of this opinion I submit that there is not +sufficient evidence to warrant the uncertainty which it implies. The +only "evidence" offered that Harriet was hard and proud and standing out +against a reconciliation is a poem--the poem in which Shelley beseeches +her to "bid the remorseless feeling flee" and "pity" if she "cannot +love." We have just that as "evidence," and out of its meagre materials +the biographer builds a cobhouse of conjectures as big as the Coliseum; +conjectures which convince him, the prosecuting attorney, but ought to +fall far short of convincing any fair-minded jury. + +Shelley's love-poems may be very good evidence, but we know well that +they are "good for this day and train only." We are able to believe that +they spoke the truth for that one day, but we know by experience that +they could not be depended on to speak it the next. The very +supplication for a rewarming of Harriet's chilled love was followed so +suddenly by the poet's plunge into an adoring passion for Mary Godwin +that if it had been a check it would have lost its value before a lazy +person could have gotten to the bank with it. + +Hardness, stubbornness, pride, vindictiveness--these may sometimes reside +in a young wife and mother of nineteen, but they are not charged against +Harriet Shelley outside of that poem, and one has no right to insert them +into her character on such shadowy "evidence" as that. Peacock knew +Harriet well, and she has a flexible and persuadable look, as painted by +him: + + "Her manners were good, and her whole aspect and demeanor such + manifest emanations of pure and truthful nature that to be once + in her company was to know her thoroughly. She was fond of her + husband, and accommodated herself in every way to his tastes. + If they mixed in society, she adorned it; if they lived in + retirement, she was satisfied; if they travelled, she enjoyed + the change of scene." + +"Perhaps" she had never desired that the breach should be irreparable and +complete. The truth is, we do not even know that there was any breach at +all at this time. We know that the husband and wife went before the +altar and took a new oath on the 24th of March to love and cherish each +other until death--and this may be regarded as a sort of reconciliation +itself, and a wiping out of the old grudges. Then Harriet went away, and +the sister-in-law removed herself from her society. That was in April. +Shelley wrote his "appeal" in May, but the corresponding went right along +afterwards. We have a right to doubt that the subject of it was a +"reconciliation," or that Harriet had any suspicion that she needed to be +reconciled and that her husband was trying to persuade her to it--as the +biographer has sought to make us believe, with his Coliseum of +conjectures built out of a waste-basket of poetry. For we have +"evidence" now--not poetry and conjecture. When Shelley had been dining +daily in the Skinner Street paradise fifteen days and continuing the +love-match which was already a fortnight old twenty-five days earlier, +he forgot to write Harriet; forgot it the next day and the next. During +four days Harriet got no letter from him. Then her fright and anxiety +rose to expression-heat, and she wrote a letter to Shelley's publisher +which seems to reveal to us that Shelley's letters to her had been the +customary affectionate letters of husband to wife, and had carried no +appeals for reconciliation and had not needed to: + + "BATH (postmark July 7, 1814). + "MY DEAR SIR,--You will greatly oblige me by giving the + enclosed to Mr. Shelley. I would not trouble you, but it is + now four days since I have heard from him, which to me is an + age. Will you write by return of post and tell me what has + become of him? as I always fancy something dreadful has + happened if I do not hear from him. If you tell me that he is + well I shall not come to London, but if I do not hear from you + or him I shall certainly come, as I cannot endure this dreadful + state of suspense. You are his friend and you can feel for me. + "I remain yours truly, + "H. S." + + +Even without Peacock's testimony that "her whole aspect and demeanor were +manifest emanations of a pure and truthful nature," we should hold this +to be a truthful letter, a sincere letter, a loving letter; it bears +those marks; I think it is also the letter of a person accustomed to +receiving letters from her husband frequently, and that they have been of +a welcome and satisfactory sort, too, this long time back--ever since the +solemn remarriage and reconciliation at the altar most likely. + +The biographer follows Harriet's letter with a conjecture. +He conjectures that she "would now gladly have retraced her steps." +Which means that it is proven that she had steps to retrace--proven by +the poem. Well, if the poem is better evidence than the letter, we must +let it stand at that. + +Then the biographer attacks Harriet Shelley's honor--by authority of +random and unverified gossip scavengered from a group of people whose +very names make a person shudder: Mary Godwin, mistress to Shelley; her +part-sister, discarded mistress of Lord Byron; Godwin, the philosophical +tramp, who gathers his share of it from a shadow--that is to say, from a +person whom he shirks out of naming. Yet the biographer dignifies this +sorry rubbish with the name of "evidence." + +Nothing remotely resembling a distinct charge from a named person +professing to know is offered among this precious "evidence." + +1. "Shelley believed" so and so. + +2. Byron's discarded mistress says that Shelley told Mary Godwin so and +so, and Mary told her. + +3. "Shelley said" so and so--and later "admitted over and over again +that he had been in error." + +4. The unspeakable Godwin "wrote to Mr. Baxter" that he knew so and so +"from unquestionable authority"--name not furnished. + +How-any man in his right mind could bring himself to defile the grave of +a shamefully abused and defenceless girl with these baseless +fabrications, this manufactured filth, is inconceivable. How any man, in +his right mind or out of it, could sit down and coldly try to persuade +anybody to believe it, or listen patiently to it, or, indeed, do anything +but scoff at it and deride it, is astonishing. + +The charge insinuated by these odious slanders is one of the most +difficult of all offences to prove; it is also one which no man has a +right to mention even in a whisper about any woman, living or dead, +unless he knows it to be true, and not even then unless he can also prove +it to be true. There is no justification for the abomination of putting +this stuff in the book. + +Against Harriet Shelley's good name there is not one scrap of tarnishing +evidence, and not even a scrap of evil gossip, that comes from a source +that entitles it to a hearing. + +On the credit side of the account we have strong opinions from the people +who knew her best. Peacock says: + + "I feel it due to the memory of Harriet to state my most + decided conviction that her conduct as a wife was as pure, as + true, as absolutely faultless, as that of any who for such + conduct are held most in honor." + +Thornton Hunt, who had picked and published slight flaws in Harriet's +character, says, as regards this alleged large one: + + "There is not a trace of evidence or a whisper of scandal + against her before her voluntary departure from Shelley." + +Trelawney says: + + "I was assured by the evidence of the few friends who knew both + Shelley and his wife--Hookham, Hogg, Peacock, and one of the + Godwins--that Harriet was perfectly innocent of all offence." + +What excuse was there for raking up a parcel of foul rumors from +malicious and discredited sources and flinging them at this dead girl's +head? Her very defencelessness should have been her protection. The +fact that all letters to her or about her, with almost every scrap of her +own writing, had been diligently mislaid, leaving her case destitute of a +voice, while every pen-stroke which could help her husband's side had +been as diligently preserved, should have excused her from being brought +to trial. Her witnesses have all disappeared, yet we see her summoned in +her grave-clothes to plead for the life of her character, without the +help of an advocate, before a disqualified judge and a packed jury. + +Harriet Shelley wrote her distressed letter on the 7th of July. On the +28th her husband ran away with Mary Godwin and her part-sister Claire to +the Continent. He deserted his wife when her confinement was +approaching. She bore him a child at the end of November, his mistress +bore him another one something over two months later. The truants were +back in London before either of these events occurred. + +On one occasion, presently, Shelley was so pressed for money to support +his mistress with that he went to his wife and got some money of his that +was in her hands--twenty pounds. Yet the mistress was not moved to +gratitude; for later, when the wife was troubled to meet her engagements, +the mistress makes this entry in her diary: + + "Harriet sends her creditors here; nasty woman. Now we shall + have to change our lodgings." + +The deserted wife bore the bitterness and obloquy of her situation two +years and a quarter; then she gave up, and drowned herself. A month +afterwards the body was found in the water. Three weeks later Shelley +married his mistress. + +I must here be allowed to italicize a remark of the biographer's +concerning Harriet Shelley: + + "That no act of Shelley's during the two years which + immediately preceded her death tended to cause the rash act + which brought her life to its close seems certain." + +Yet her husband had deserted her and her children, and was living with a +concubine all that time! Why should a person attempt to write biography +when the simplest facts have no meaning to him? This book is littered +with as crass stupidities as that one--deductions by the page which bear +no discoverable kinship to their premises. + +The biographer throws off that extraordinary remark without any +perceptible disturbance to his serenity; for he follows it with a +sentimental justification of Shelley's conduct which has not a pang of +conscience in it, but is silky and smooth and undulating and pious-- +a cake-walk with all the colored brethren at their best. There may be +people who can read that page and keep their temper, but it is doubtful. +Shelley's life has the one indelible blot upon it, but is otherwise +worshipfully noble and beautiful. It even stands out indestructibly +gracious and lovely from the ruck of these disastrous pages, in spite of +the fact that they expose and establish his responsibility for his +forsaken wife's pitiful fate--a responsibility which he himself tacitly +admits in a letter to Eliza Westbrook, wherein he refers to his taking up +with Mary Godwin as an act which Eliza "might excusably regard as the +cause of her sister's ruin." + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In Defense of Harriet Shelley +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES + +by Mark Twain + + + + The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer stand at the head of Cooper's + novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works + which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and + scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with + either of them as a finished whole. + + The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight. + They were pure works of art.--Prof. Lounsbury. + + + The five tales reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention. + . . . One of the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty + Bumppo . . . . + + The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the + delicate art of the forest, were familiar to Cooper from his + youth up.--Prof. Brander Matthews. + + Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction + yet produced by America.--Wilkie Collins. + + +It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English +Literature in Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and +Wilkie Collies to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having +read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent +and let persons talk who have read Cooper. + +Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the +restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences +against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record. + +There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic +fiction--some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer Cooper violated eighteen of +them. These eighteen require: + +1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the +Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air. + +2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of +the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is +not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes +have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to +develop. + +3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in +the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the +corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in +the Deerslayer tale. + +4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, +shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also +has been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale. + +5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, +the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings +would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a +discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of +relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be +interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the +people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has +been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it. + +6. They require that when the author describes the character of a +personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage +shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention +in the Deerslayer tale, as Natty Bumppo's case will amply prove. + +7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, +gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering +in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel +in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the +Deerslayer tale. + +8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the +reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest," by +either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is +persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale. + +9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves +to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, +the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and +reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the Deerslayer tale. + +10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep +interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he +shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad +ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in +it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned +together. + +11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly +defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given +emergency. But in the Deerslayer tale this rule is vacated. + +In addition to these large rules there are some little ones. These +require that the author shall: + +12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it. + +13. Use the right word, not its second cousin. + +14. Eschew surplusage. + +15. Not omit necessary details. + +16. Avoid slovenliness of form. + +17. Use good grammar. + +18. Employ a simple and straightforward style. + +Even these seven are coldly and persistently violated in the Deerslayer +tale. + +Cooper's gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but such +as it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects, and +indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of +stage properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices +for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with, +and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things +and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread +in the tracks of the moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail. +Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick. +Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently +was his broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his +effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book +of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds +and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is +in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure +to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred handier things to step on, +but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and +find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the +Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series. + +I am sorry there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of the +delicate art of the forest, as practised by Natty Bumppo and some of the +other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture two or three samples. +Cooper was a sailor--a naval officer; yet he gravely tells us how a +vessel, driving towards a lee shore in a gale, is steered for a +particular spot by her skipper because he knows of an undertow there +which will hold her back against the gale and save her. For just pure +woodcraft, or sailorcraft, or whatever it is, isn't that neat? For +several years Cooper was daily in the society of artillery, and he ought +to have noticed that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it either +buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a hundred feet +or so--and so on, till finally it gets tired and rolls. Now in one place +he loses some "females"--as he always calls women--in the edge of a wood +near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to give Bumppo a chance to +show off the delicate art of the forest before the reader. These mislaid +people are hunting for a fort. They hear a cannonblast, and a +cannon-ball presently comes rolling into the wood and stops at their +feet. To the females this suggests nothing. The case is very different +with the admirable Bumppo. I wish I may never know peace again if he +doesn't strike out promptly and follow the track of that cannon-ball +across the plain through the dense fog and find the fort. Isn't it a +daisy? If Cooper had any real knowledge of Nature's ways of doing +things, he had a most delicate art in concealing the fact. For +instance: one of his acute Indian experts, Chingachgook (pronounced +Chicago, I think), has lost the trail of a person he is tracking through +the forest. Apparently that trail is hopelessly lost. Neither you nor +I could ever have guessed out the way to find it. It was very different +with Chicago. Chicago was not stumped for long. He turned a running +stream out of its course, and there, in the slush in its old bed, were +that person's moccasin-tracks. The current did not wash them away, as it +would have done in all other like cases--no, even the eternal laws of +Nature have to vacate when Cooper wants to put up a delicate job of +woodcraft on the reader. + +We must be a little wary when Brander Matthews tells us that Cooper's +books "reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention." As a rule, I am +quite willing to accept Brander Matthews's literary judgments and applaud +his lucid and graceful phrasing of them; but that particular statement +needs to be taken with a few tons of salt. Bless your heart, Cooper +hadn't any more invention than a horse; and I don't mean a high-class +horse, either; I mean a clothes-horse. It would be very difficult to +find a really clever "situation" in Cooper's books, and still more +difficult to find one of any kind which he has failed to render absurd by +his handling of it. Look at the episodes of "the caves"; and at the +celebrated scuffle between Maqua and those others on the table-land a few +days later; and at Hurry Harry's queer water-transit from the castle to +the ark; and at Deerslayer's half-hour with his first corpse; and at the +quarrel between Hurry Harry and Deerslayer later; and at--but choose for +yourself; you can't go amiss. + +If Cooper had been an observer his inventive faculty would have worked +better; not more interestingly, but more rationally, more plausibly. +Cooper's proudest creations in the way of "situations" suffer noticeably +from the absence of the observer's protecting gift. Cooper's eye was +splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He saw +nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly. Of course a man who +cannot see the commonest little every-day matters accurately is working +at a disadvantage when he is constructing a "situation." In the +Deerslayer tale Cooper has a stream which is fifty feet wide where it +flows out of a lake; it presently narrows to twenty as it meanders along +for no given reason; and yet when a stream acts like that it ought to be +required to explain itself. Fourteen pages later the width of the +brook's outlet from the lake has suddenly shrunk thirty feet, and become +"the narrowest part of the stream." This shrinkage is not accounted for. +The stream has bends in it, a sure indication that it has alluvial banks +and cuts them; yet these bends are only thirty and fifty feet long. If +Cooper had been a nice and punctilious observer he would have noticed +that the bends were oftener nine hundred feet long than short of it. + +Cooper made the exit of that stream fifty feet wide, in the first place, +for no particular reason; in the second place, he narrowed it to less +than twenty to accommodate some Indians. He bends a "sapling" to the +form of an arch over this narrow passage, and conceals six Indians in its +foliage. They are "laying" for a settler's scow or ark which is coming +up the stream on its way to the lake; it is being hauled against the +stiff current by a rope whose stationary end is anchored in the lake; its +rate of progress cannot be more than a mile an hour. Cooper describes +the ark, but pretty obscurely. In the matter of dimensions "it was +little more than a modern canal-boat." Let us guess, then, that it was +about one hundred and forty feet long. It was of "greater breadth than +common." Let us guess, then, that it was about sixteen feet wide. This +leviathan had been prowling down bends which were but a third as long as +itself, and scraping between banks where it had only two feet of space +to spare on each side. We cannot too much admire this miracle. +A low-roofed log dwelling occupies "two-thirds of the ark's length"--a +dwelling ninety feet long and sixteen feet wide, let us say a kind of +vestibule train. The dwelling has two rooms--each forty-five feet long +and sixteen feet wide, let us guess. One of them is the bedroom of the +Hutter girls, Judith and Hetty; the other is the parlor in the daytime, +at night it is papa's bedchamber. The ark is arriving at the stream's +exit now, whose width has been reduced to less than twenty feet to +accommodate the Indians--say to eighteen. There is a foot to spare on +each side of the boat. Did the Indians notice that there was going to +be a tight squeeze there? Did they notice that they could make money by +climbing down out of that arched sapling and just stepping aboard when +the ark scraped by? No, other Indians would have noticed these things, +but Cooper's Indians never notice anything. Cooper thinks they are +marvelous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error +about his Indians. There was seldom a sane one among them. + +The ark is one hundred and forty feet long; the dwelling is ninety feet +long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the +arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the +rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. It will take the ark a +minute and a half to pass under. It will take the ninety foot dwelling a +minute to pass under. Now, then, what did the six Indians do? It would +take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it +up, I believe. Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did. Their +chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian, +warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him, and when he +had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as he +judged, he let go and dropped. And missed the house! That is actually +what he did. He missed the house, and landed in the stern of the scow. +It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there +unconscious. If the house had been ninety-seven feet long he would have +made the trip. The fault was Cooper's, not his. The error lay in the +construction of the house. Cooper was no architect. + +There still remained in the roost five Indians. + +The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain +what the five did--you would not be able to reason it out for yourself. +No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No. +2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still farther astern of it. +Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then +No, 4. jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then +even No. 5 made a jump for the boat--for he was a Cooper Indian. In the +matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the +Indian that stands in front of the cigarshop is not spacious. The scow +episode is really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not thrill, +because the inaccuracy of the details throws a sort of air of +fictitiousness and general improbability over it. This comes of Cooper's +inadequacy as an observer. + +The reader will find some examples of Cooper's high talent for inaccurate +observation in the account of the shooting-match in The Pathfinder. + + "A common wrought nail was driven lightly into the target, its + head having been first touched with paint." + +The color of the paint is not stated--an important omission, but Cooper +deals freely in important omissions. No, after all, it was not an +important omission; for this nail-head is a hundred yards from the +marksmen, and could not be seen by them at that distance, no matter what +its color might be. + +How far can the best eyes see a common house-fly? A hundred yards? It +is quite impossible. Very well; eyes that cannot see a house-fly that is +a hundred yards away cannot see an ordinary nailhead at that distance, +for the size of the two objects is the same. It takes a keen eye to see +a fly or a nailhead at fifty yards--one hundred and fifty feet. Can the +reader do it? + +The nail was lightly driven, its head painted, and game called. Then the +Cooper miracles began. The bullet of the first marksman chipped an edge +off the nail-head; the next man's bullet drove the nail a little way into +the target--and removed all the paint. Haven't the miracles gone far +enough now? Not to suit Cooper; for the purpose of this whole scheme is +to show off his prodigy, Deerslayer Hawkeye--Long-Rifle-Leather-Stocking- +Pathfinder-Bumppo before the ladies. + + "'Be all ready to clench it, boys I' cried out Pathfinder, + stepping into his friend's tracks the instant they were vacant. + 'Never mind a new nail; I can see that, though the paint is + gone, and what I can see I can hit at a hundred yards, though + it were only a mosquito's eye. Be ready to clench!' + +"The rifle cracked, the bullet sped its way, and the head of the nail was +buried in the wood, covered by the piece of flattened lead." + +There, you see, is a man who could hunt flies with a rifle, and command a +ducal salary in a Wild West show to-day if we had him back with us. + +The recorded feat is certainly surprising just as it stands; but it is +not surprising enough for Cooper. Cooper adds a touch. He has made +Pathfinder do this miracle with another man's rifle; and not only that, +but Pathfinder did not have even the advantage of loading it himself. He +had everything against him, and yet he made that impossible shot; and not +only made it, but did it with absolute confidence, saying, "Be ready to +clench." Now a person like that would have undertaken that same feat +with a brickbat, and with Cooper to help he would have achieved it, too. + +Pathfinder showed off handsomely that day before the ladies. His very +first feat was a thing which no Wild West show can touch. He was +standing with the group of marksmen, observing--a hundred yards from the +target, mind; one jasper raised his rifle and drove the centre of the +bull's-eye. Then the Quartermaster fired. The target exhibited no +result this time. There was a laugh. "It's a dead miss," said Major +Lundie. Pathfinder waited an impressive moment or two; then said, in +that calm, indifferent, know-it-all way of his, "No, Major, he has +covered jasper's bullet, as will be seen if any one will take the trouble +to examine the target." + +Wasn't it remarkable! How could he see that little pellet fly through +the air and enter that distant bullet-hole? Yet that is what he did; for +nothing is impossible to a Cooper person. Did any of those people have +any deep-seated doubts about this thing? No; for that would imply +sanity, and these were all Cooper people. + + "The respect for Pathfinder's skill and for his 'quickness and + accuracy of sight'" (the italics [''] are mine) "was so + profound and general, that the instant he made this declaration + the spectators began to distrust their own opinions, and a + dozen rushed to the target in order to ascertain the fact. + There, sure enough, it was found that the Quartermaster's + bullet had gone through the hole made by Jasper's, and that, + too, so accurately as to require a minute examination to be + certain of the circumstance, which, however, was soon clearly + established by discovering one bullet over the other in the + stump against which the target was placed." + +They made a "minute" examination; but never mind, how could they know +that there were two bullets in that hole without digging the latest one +out? for neither probe nor eyesight could prove the presence of any more +than one bullet. Did they dig? No; as we shall see. It is the +Pathfinder's turn now; he steps out before the ladies, takes aim, and +fires. + +But, alas! here is a disappointment; an incredible, an unimaginable +disappointment--for the target's aspect is unchanged; there is nothing +there but that same old bullet-hole! + + "'If one dared to hint at such a thing,' cried Major Duncan, 'I + should say that the Pathfinder has also missed the target!'" + +As nobody had missed it yet, the "also" was not necessary; but never mind +about that, for the Pathfinder is going to speak. + + "'No, no, Major,' said he, confidently, 'that would be a risky + declaration. I didn't load the piece, and can't say what was + in it; but if it was lead, you will find the bullet driving + down those of the Quartermaster and Jasper, else is not my name + Pathfinder.' + + "A shout from the target announced the truth of this + assertion." + +Is the miracle sufficient as it stands? Not for Cooper. The Pathfinder +speaks again, as he "now slowly advances towards the stage occupied by +the females": + + "'That's not all, boys, that's not all; if you find the target + touched at all, I'll own to a miss. The Quartermaster cut the + wood, but you'll find no wood cut by that last messenger." + +The miracle is at last complete. He knew--doubtless saw--at the distance +of a hundred yards--that his bullet had passed into the hole without +fraying the edges. There were now three bullets in that one hole--three +bullets embedded processionally in the body of the stump back of the +target. Everybody knew this--somehow or other--and yet nobody had dug +any of them out to make sure. Cooper is not a close observer, but he is +interesting. He is certainly always that, no matter what happens. And +he is more interesting when he is not noticing what he is about than when +he is. This is a considerable merit. + +The conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound in our modern +ears. To believe that such talk really ever came out of people's mouths +would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a +person who thought he had something to say; when it was the custom to +spread a two-minute remark out to ten; when a man's mouth was a +rolling-mill, and busied itself all day long in turning four-foot pigs +of thought into thirty-foot bars of conversational railroad iron by +attenuation; when subjects were seldom faithfully stuck to, but the talk +wandered all around and arrived nowhere; when conversations consisted +mainly of irrelevancies, with here and there a relevancy, a relevancy +with an embarrassed look, as not being able to explain how it got there. + +Cooper was certainly not a master in the construction of dialogue. +Inaccurate observation defeated him here as it defeated him in so many +other enterprises of his. He even failed to notice that the man who +talks corrupt English six days in the week must and will talk it on the +seventh, and can't help himself. In the Deerslayer story he lets +Deerslayer talk the showiest kind of book-talk sometimes, and at other +times the basest of base dialects. For instance, when some one asks him +if he has a sweetheart, and if so, where she abides, this is his majestic +answer: + + "'She's in the forest-hanging from the boughs of the trees, in + a soft rain--in the dew on the open grass--the clouds that + float about in the blue heavens--the birds that sing in the + woods--the sweet springs where I slake my thirst--and in all + the other glorious gifts that come from God's Providence!'" + +And he preceded that, a little before, with this: + + "'It consarns me as all things that touches a fri'nd consarns a + fri'nd.'" + +And this is another of his remarks: + + "'If I was Injin born, now, I might tell of this, or carry in + the scalp and boast of the expl'ite afore the whole tribe; or + if my inimy had only been a bear'"--and so on. + +We cannot imagine such a thing as a veteran Scotch Commander-in-Chief +comporting himself in the field like a windy melodramatic actor, but +Cooper could. On one occasion Alice and Cora were being chased by the +French through a fog in the neighborhood of their father's fort: + + "'Point de quartier aux coquins!' cried an eager pursuer, who + seemed to direct the operations of the enemy. + + "'Stand firm and be ready, my gallant Goths!' suddenly + exclaimed a voice above them; wait to see the enemy; fire low, + and sweep the glacis.' + + "'Father? father!' exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist; + it is I! Alice! thy own Elsie! spare, O! save your daughters!' + + "'Hold!' shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of + parental agony, the sound reaching even to the woods, and + rolling back in solemn echo. ''Tis she! God has restored me my + children! Throw open the sally-port; to the field, Goths, to + the field! pull not a trigger, lest ye kill my lambs! Drive + off these dogs of France with your steel!'" + +Cooper's word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear +for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He +keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor +ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you +perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he +doesn't say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear +was satisfied with the approximate word. I will furnish some +circumstantial evidence in support of this charge. My instances are +gathered from half a dozen pages of the tale called Deerslayer. He uses +"verbal," for "oral"; "precision," for "facility"; "phenomena," for +"marvels"; "necessary," for "predetermined"; "unsophisticated," for +"primitive"; "preparation," for "expectancy"; "rebuked," for "subdued"; +"dependent on," for "resulting from"; "fact," for "condition"; "fact," +for "conjecture"; "precaution," for "caution"; "explain," for +"determine"; "mortified," for "disappointed"; "meretricious," for +"factitious"; "materially," for "considerably"; "decreasing," for +"deepening"; "increasing," for "disappearing"; "embedded," for +"enclosed"; "treacherous;" for "hostile"; "stood," for "stooped"; +"softened," for "replaced"; "rejoined," for "remarked"; "situation," for +"condition"; "different," for "differing"; "insensible," for +"unsentient"; "brevity," for "celerity"; "distrusted," for "suspicious"; +"mental imbecility," for "imbecility"; "eyes," for "sight"; +"counteracting," for "opposing"; "funeral obsequies," for "obsequies." + +There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could +write English, but they are all dead now--all dead but Lounsbury. +I don't remember that Lounsbury makes the claim in so many words, still +he makes it, for he says that Deerslayer is a "pure work of art." +Pure, in that connection, means faultless--faultless in all details and +language is a detail. If Mr. Lounsbury had only compared Cooper's +English with the English which he writes himself--but it is plain that he +didn't; and so it is likely that he imagines until this day that Cooper's +is as clean and compact as his own. Now I feel sure, deep down in my +heart, that Cooper wrote about the poorest English that exists in our +language, and that the English of Deerslayer is the very worst that even +Cooper ever wrote. + +I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that Deerslayer is not a work +of art in any sense; it does seem to me that it is destitute of every +detail that goes to the making of a work of art; in truth, it seems to me +that Deerslayer is just simply a literary delirium tremens. + +A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, +or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of +reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words +they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that +they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations +are--oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime +against the language. + +Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offences +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +ESSAYS ON PAUL BOURGET + +by Mark Twain + + + +CONTENTS: + WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US + A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET + + + + +WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US + +He reports the American joke correctly. In Boston they ask, How much +does he know? in New York, How much is he worth? in Philadelphia, Who +were his parents? And when an alien observer turns his telescope upon +us--advertisedly in our own special interest--a natural apprehension +moves us to ask, What is the diameter of his reflector? + +I take a great interest in M. Bourget's chapters, for I know by the +newspapers that there are several Americans who are expecting to get a +whole education out of them; several who foresaw, and also foretold, that +our long night was over, and a light almost divine about to break upon +the land. + + "His utterances concerning us are bound to be weighty and well + timed." + + "He gives us an object-lesson which should be thoughtfully and + profitably studied." + +These well-considered and important verdicts were of a nature to restore +public confidence, which had been disquieted by questionings as to +whether so young a teacher would be qualified to take so large a class as +70,000,000, distributed over so extensive a schoolhouse as America, and +pull it through without assistance. + +I was even disquieted myself, although I am of a cold, calm temperament, +and not easily disturbed. I feared for my country. And I was not wholly +tranquilized by the verdicts rendered as above. It seemed to me that +there was still room for doubt. In fact, in looking the ground over I +became more disturbed than I was before. Many worrying questions came up +in my mind. Two were prominent. Where had the teacher gotten his +equipment? What was his method? + +He had gotten his equipment in France. + +Then as to his method! I saw by his own intimations that he was an +Observer, and had a System that used by naturalists and other scientists. +The naturalist collects many bugs and reptiles and butterflies and +studies their ways a long time patiently. By this means he is presently +able to group these creatures into families and subdivisions of families +by nice shadings of differences observable in their characters. Then he +labels all those shaded bugs and things with nicely descriptive group +names, and is now happy, for his great work is completed, and as a result +he intimately knows every bug and shade of a bug there, inside and out. +It may be true, but a person who was not a naturalist would feel safer +about it if he had the opinion of the bug. I think it is a pleasant +System, but subject to error. + +The Observer of Peoples has to be a Classifier, a Grouper, a Deducer, a +Generalizer, a Psychologizer; and, first and last, a Thinker. He has to +be all these, and when he is at home, observing his own folk, he is often +able to prove competency. But history has shown that when he is abroad +observing unfamiliar peoples the chances are heavily against him. He is +then a naturalist observing a bug, with no more than a naturalist's +chance of being able to tell the bug anything new about itself, and no +more than a naturalist's chance of being able to teach it any new ways +which it will prefer to its own. + +To return to that first question. M. Bourget, as teacher, would simply +be France teaching America. It seemed to me that the outlook was dark +--almost Egyptian, in fact. What would the new teacher, representing +France, teach us? Railroading? No. France knows nothing valuable about +railroading. Steamshipping? No. France has no superiorities over us in +that matter. Steamboating? No. French steamboating is still of +Fulton's date--1809. Postal service? No. France is a back number +there. Telegraphy? No, we taught her that ourselves. Journalism? No. +Magazining? No, that is our own specialty. Government? No; Liberty, +Equality, Fraternity, Nobility, Democracy, Adultery the system is too +variegated for our climate. Religion? No, not variegated enough for our +climate. Morals? No, we cannot rob the poor to enrich ourselves. +Novel-writing? No. M. Bourget and the others know only one plan, and +when that is expurgated there is nothing left of the book. + +I wish I could think what he is going to teach us. Can it be Deportment? +But he experimented in that at Newport and failed to give satisfaction, +except to a few. Those few are pleased. They are enjoying their joy as +well as they can. They confess their happiness to the interviewer. They +feel pretty striped, but they remember with reverent recognition that +they had sugar between the cuts. True, sugar with sand in it, but sugar. +And true, they had some trouble to tell which was sugar and which was +sand, because the sugar itself looked just like the sand, and also had a +gravelly taste; still, they knew that the sugar was there, and would have +been very good sugar indeed if it had been screened. Yes, they are +pleased; not noisily so, but pleased; invaded, or streaked, as one may +say, with little recurrent shivers of joy--subdued joy, so to speak, not +the overdone kind. And they commune together, these, and massage each +other with comforting sayings, in a sweet spirit of resignation and +thankfulness, mixing these elements in the same proportions as the sugar +and the sand, as a memorial, and saying, the one to the other, and to the +interviewer: "It was severe--yes, it was bitterly severe; but oh, how +true it was; and it will do us so much good!" + +If it isn't Deportment, what is left? It was at this point that I seemed +to get on the right track at last. M. Bourget would teach us to know +ourselves; that was it: he would reveal us to ourselves. That would be +an education. He would explain us to ourselves. Then we should +understand ourselves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently. + +It seemed a doubtful scheme. He could explain us to himself--that would +be easy. That would be the same as the naturalist explaining the bug to +himself. But to explain the bug to the bug--that is quite a different +matter. The bug may not know himself perfectly, but he knows himself +better than the naturalist can know him, at any rate. + +A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that +that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its +interior--its soul, its life, its speech, its thought. I think that a +knowledge of these things is acquirable in only one way; not two or four +or six--absorption; years and years of unconscious absorption; years and +years of intercourse with the life concerned; of living it, indeed; +sharing personally in its shames and prides, its joys and griefs, its +loves and hates, its prosperities and reverses, its shows and +shabbinesses, its deep patriotisms, its whirlwinds of political passion, +its adorations--of flag, and heroic dead, and the glory of the national +name. Observation? Of what real value is it? One learns peoples +through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect. + +There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the +life of a people and make a valuable report--the native novelist. This +expert is so rare that the most populous country can never have fifteen +conspicuously and confessedly competent ones in stock at one time. This +native specialist is not qualified to begin work until he has been +absorbing during twenty-five years. How much of his competency is +derived from conscious "observation"? The amount is so slight that it +counts for next to nothing in the equipment. Almost the whole capital +of the novelist is the slow accumulation of unconscious observation +--absorption. The native expert's intentional observation of manners, +speech, character, and ways of life can have value, for the native knows +what they mean without having to cipher out the meaning. But I should be +astonished to see a foreigner get at the right meanings, catch the +elusive shades of these subtle things. Even the native novelist becomes +a foreigner, with a foreigner's limitations, when he steps from the State +whose life is familiar to him into a State whose life he has not lived. +Bret Harte got his California and his Californians by unconscious +absorption, and put both of them into his tales alive. But when he came +from the Pacific to the Atlantic and tried to do Newport life from +study-conscious observation--his failure was absolutely monumental. +Newport is a disastrous place for the unacclimated observer, evidently. + +To return to novel-building. Does the native novelist try to generalize +the nation? No, he lays plainly before you the ways and speech and life +of a few people grouped in a certain place--his own place--and that is +one book. In time he and his brethren will report to you the life and +the people of the whole nation--the life of a group in a New England +village; in a New York village; in a Texan village; in an Oregon village; +in villages in fifty States and Territories; then the farm-life in fifty +States and Territories; a hundred patches of life and groups of people in +a dozen widely separated cities. And the Indians will be attended to; +and the cowboys; and the gold and silver miners; and the negroes; and the +Idiots and Congressmen; and the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the +Swedes, the French, the Chinamen, the Greasers; and the Catholics, the +Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, the +Spiritualists, the Mormons, the Shakers, the Quakers, the Jews, the +Campbellites, the infidels, the Christian Scientists, the Mind-Curists, +the Faith-Curists, the train-robbers, the White Caps, the Moonshiners. +And when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the +soul of the people, the life of the people, the speech of the people; and +not anywhere else can these be had. And the shadings of character, +manners, feelings, ambitions, will be infinite. + + "'The nature of a people' is always of a similar shade in its + vices and its virtues, in its frivolities and in its labor. + 'It is this physiognomy which it is necessary to discover', + and every document is good, from the hall of a casino to the + church, from the foibles of a fashionable woman to the + suggestions of a revolutionary leader. I am therefore quite + sure that this 'American soul', the principal interest and the + great object of my voyage, appears behind the records of + Newport for those who choose to see it."--M. Paul Bourget. + +[The italics ('') are mine.] It is a large contract which he has +undertaken. "Records" is a pretty poor word there, but I think the use +of it is due to hasty translation. In the original the word is 'fastes'. +I think M. Bourget meant to suggest that he expected to find the great +"American soul" secreted behind the ostentatious of Newport; and that he +was going to get it out and examine it, and generalize it, and +psychologize it, and make it reveal to him its hidden vast mystery: "the +nature of the people" of the United States of America. We have been +accused of being a nation addicted to inventing wild schemes. I trust +that we shall be allowed to retire to second place now. + +There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled +"American." There isn't a single human ambition, or religious trend, +or drift of thought, or peculiarity of education, or code of principles, +or breed of folly, or style of conversation, or preference for a +particular subject for discussion, or form of legs or trunk or head or +face or expression or complexion, or gait, or dress, or manners, or +disposition, or any other human detail, inside or outside, that can +rationally be generalized as "American." + +Whenever you have found what seems to be an "American" peculiarity, you +have only to cross a frontier or two, or go down or up in the social +scale, and you perceive that it has disappeared. And you can cross the +Atlantic and find it again. There may be a Newport religious drift, or +sporting drift, or conversational style or complexion, or cut of face, +but there are entire empires in America, north, south, east, and west, +where you could not find your duplicates. It is the same with everything +else which one might propose to call "American." M. Bourget thinks he +has found the American Coquette. If he had really found her he would +also have found, I am sure, that she was not new, that she exists in +other lands in the same forms, and with the same frivolous heart and the +same ways and impulses. I think this because I have seen our coquette; +I have seen her in life; better still, I have seen her in our novels, +and seen her twin in foreign novels. I wish M. Bourget had seen ours. +He thought he saw her. And so he applied his System to her. She was a +Species. So he gathered a number of samples of what seemed to be her, +and put them under his glass, and divided them into groups which he calls +"types," and labeled them in his usual scientific way with "formulas" +--brief sharp descriptive flashes that make a person blink, sometimes, +they are so sudden and vivid. As a rule they are pretty far-fetched, +but that is not an important matter; they surprise, they compel +admiration, and I notice by some of the comments which his efforts have +called forth that they deceive the unwary. Here are a few of the +coquette variants which he has grouped and labeled: + + THE COLLECTOR. + THE EQUILIBREE. + THE PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY. + THE BLUFFER. + THE GIRL-BOY. + +If he had stopped with describing these characters we should have been +obliged to believe that they exist; that they exist, and that he has seen +them and spoken with them. But he did not stop there; he went further +and furnished to us light-throwing samples of their behavior, and also +light-throwing samples of their speeches. He entered those things in his +note-book without suspicion, he takes them out and delivers them to the +world with a candor and simplicity which show that he believed them +genuine. They throw altogether too much light. They reveal to the +native the origin of his find. I suppose he knows how he came to make +that novel and captivating discovery, by this time. If he does not, any +American can tell him--any American to whom he will show his anecdotes. +It was "put up" on him, as we say. It was a jest--to be plain, it was a +series of frauds. To my mind it was a poor sort of jest, witless and +contemptible. The players of it have their reward, such as it is; they +have exhibited the fact that whatever they may be they are not ladies. +M. Bourget did not discover a type of coquette; he merely discovered a +type of practical joker. One may say the type of practical joker, for +these people are exactly alike all over the world. Their equipment is +always the same: a vulgar mind, a puerile wit, a cruel disposition as a +rule, and always the spirit of treachery. + +In his Chapter IV. M. Bourget has two or three columns gravely devoted +to the collating and examining and psychologizing of these sorry little +frauds. One is not moved to laugh. There is nothing funny in the +situation; it is only pathetic. The stranger gave those people his +confidence, and they dishonorably treated him in return. + +But one must be allowed to suspect that M. Bourget was a little to blame +himself. Even a practical joker has some little judgment. He has to +exercise some degree of sagacity in selecting his prey if he would save +himself from getting into trouble. In my time I have seldom seen such +daring things marketed at any price as these conscienceless folk have +worked off at par on this confiding observer. It compels the conviction +that there was something about him that bred in those speculators a quite +unusual sense of safety, and encouraged them to strain their powers in +his behalf. They seem to have satisfied themselves that all he wanted +was "significant" facts, and that he was not accustomed to examine the +source whence they proceeded. It is plain that there was a sort of +conspiracy against him almost from the start--a conspiracy to freight him +up with all the strange extravagances those people's decayed brains could +invent. + +The lengths to which they went are next to incredible. They told him +things which surely would have excited any one else's suspicion, but they +did not excite his. Consider this: + + "There is not in all the United States an entirely nude + statue." + +If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heaven, a +reasonably cautious observer would take that angel's number and inquire a +little further before he added it to his catch. What does the present +observer do? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with +this innocent comment: + + "This small fact is strangely significant." + +It does seem to me that this kind of observing is defective. + +Here is another curiosity which some liberal person made him a present +of. I should think it ought to have disturbed the deep slumber of his +suspicion a little, but it didn't. It was a note from a fog-horn for +strenuousness, it seems to me, but the doomed voyager did not catch it. +If he had but caught it, it would have saved him from several disasters: + + "If the American knows that you are traveling to take notes, he + is interested in it, and at the same time rejoices in it, as in + a tribute." + +Again, this is defective observation. It is human to like to be praised; +one can even notice it in the French. But it is not human to like to be +ridiculed, even when it comes in the form of a "tribute." I think a +little psychologizing ought to have come in there. Something like this: +A dog does not like to be ridiculed, a redskin does not like to be +ridiculed, a negro does not like to be ridiculed, a Chinaman does not +like to be ridiculed; let us deduce from these significant facts this +formula: the American's grade being higher than these, and the chain-of +argument stretching unbroken all the way up to him, there is room for +suspicion that the person who said the American likes to be ridiculed, +and regards it as a tribute, is not a capable observer. + +I feel persuaded that in the matter of psychologizing, a professional is +too apt to yield to the fascinations of the loftier regions of that great +art, to the neglect of its lowlier walks. Every now and then, at +half-hour intervals, M. Bourget collects a hatful of airy inaccuracies +and dissolves them in a panful of assorted abstractions, and runs the +charge into a mould and turns you out a compact principle which will +explain an American girl, or an American woman, or why new people yearn +for old things, or any other impossible riddle which a person wants +answered. + +It seems to be conceded that there are a few human peculiarities that can +be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the +name of the nation where they are found. I wonder what they are. +Perhaps one of them is temperament. One speaks of French vivacity and +German gravity and English stubbornness. There is no American +temperament. The nearest that one can come at it is to say there are two +--the composed Northern and the impetuous Southern; and both are found in +other countries. Morals? Purity of women may fairly be called universal +with us, but that is the case in some other countries. We have no +monopoly of it; it cannot be named American. I think that there is but a +single specialty with us, only one thing that can be called by the wide +name "American." That is the national devotion to ice-water. All +Germans drink beer, but the British nation drinks beer, too; so neither +of those peoples is the beer-drinking nation. I suppose we do stand +alone in having a drink that nobody likes but ourselves. When we have +been a month in Europe we lose our craving for it, and we finally tell +the hotel folk that they needn't provide it any more. Yet we hardly +touch our native shore again, winter or summer, before we are eager for +it. The reasons for this state of things have not been psychologized +yet. I drop the hint and say no more. + +It is my belief that there are some "national" traits and things +scattered about the world that are mere superstitions, frauds that have +lived so long that they have the solid look of facts. One of them is the +dogma that the French are the only chaste people in the world. Ever +since I arrived in France this last time I have been accumulating doubts +about that; and before I leave this sunny land again I will gather in a +few random statistics and psychologize the plausibilities out of it. If +people are to come over to America and find fault with our girls and our +women, and psychologize every little thing they do, and try to teach them +how to behave, and how to cultivate themselves up to where one cannot +tell them from the French model, I intend to find out whether those +missionaries are qualified or not. A nation ought always to examine into +this detail before engaging the teacher for good. This last one has let +fall a remark which renewed those doubts of mine when I read it: + + "In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied + to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all + the weaknesses of the French soul." + +You see, it amounts to a trade with the French soul; a profession; +a science; the serious business of life, so to speak, in our high +Parisian existence. I do not quite like the look of it. I question if +it can be taught with profit in our country, except, of course, to those +pathetic, neglected minds that are waiting there so yearningly for the +education which M. Bourget is going to furnish them from the serene +summits of our high Parisian life. + +I spoke a moment ago of the existence of some superstitions that have +been parading the world as facts this long time. For instance, consider +the Dollar. The world seems to think that the love of money is +"American"; and that the mad desire to get suddenly rich is "American." +I believe that both of these things are merely and broadly human, not +American monopolies at all. The love of money is natural to all nations, +for money is a good and strong friend. I think that this love has +existed everywhere, ever since the Bible called it the root of all evil. + +I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying +to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising +efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out +of all proportion to the European experience. For eighty years this +opportunity has been offering itself in one new town or region after +another straight westward, step by step, all the way from the Atlantic +coast to the Pacific. When a mechanic could buy ten town lots on +tolerably long credit for ten months' savings out of his wages, and +reasonably expect to sell them in a couple of years for ten times what he +gave for them, it was human for him to try the venture, and he did it no +matter what his nationality was. He would have done it in Europe or +China if he had had the same chance. + +In the flush times in the silver regions a cook or any other humble +worker stood a very good chance to get rich out of a trifle of money +risked in a stock deal; and that person promptly took that risk, no +matter what his or her nationality might be. I was there, and saw it. + +But these opportunities have not been plenty in our Southern States; so +there you have a prodigious region where the rush for sudden wealth is +almost an unknown thing--and has been, from the beginning. + +Europe has offered few opportunities for poor Tom, Dick, and Harry; but +when she has offered one, there has been no noticeable difference between +European eagerness and American. England saw this in the wild days of +the Railroad King; France saw it in 1720--time of Law and the Mississippi +Bubble. I am sure I have never seen in the gold and silver mines any +madness, fury, frenzy to get suddenly rich which was even remotely +comparable to that which raged in France in the Bubble day. If I had a +cyclopaedia here I could turn to that memorable case, and satisfy nearly +anybody that the hunger for the sudden dollar is no more "American" than +it is French. And if I could furnish an American opportunity to staid +Germany, I think I could wake her up like a house afire. + +But I must return to the Generalizations, Psychologizings, Deductions. +When M. Bourget is exploiting these arts, it is then that he is +peculiarly and particularly himself. His ways are wholly original when +he encounters a trait or a custom which is new to him. Another person +would merely examine the find, verify it, estimate its value, and let it +go; but that is not sufficient for M. Bourget: he always wants to know +why that thing exists, he wants to know how it came to happen; and he +will not let go of it until he has found out. And in every instance he +will find that reason where no one but himself would have thought of +looking for it. He does not seem to care for a reason that is not +picturesquely located; one might almost say picturesquely and impossibly +located. + +He found out that in America men do not try to hunt down young married +women. At once, as usual, he wanted to know why. Any one could have +told him. He could have divined it by the lights thrown by the novels of +the country. But no, he preferred to find out for himself. He has a +trustfulness as regards men and facts which is fine and unusual; he is +not particular about the source of a fact, he is not particular about the +character and standing of the fact itself; but when it comes to pounding +out the reason for the existence of the fact, he will trust no one but +himself. + +In the present instance here was his fact: American young married women +are not pursued by the corruptor; and here was the question: What is it +that protects her? + +It seems quite unlikely that that problem could have offered difficulties +to any but a trained philosopher. Nearly any person would have said to +M. Bourget: "Oh, that is very simple. It is very seldom in America that +a marriage is made on a commercial basis; our marriages, from the +beginning, have been made for love; and where love is there is no room +for the corruptor." + +Now, it is interesting to see the formidable way in which M. Bourget went +at that poor, humble little thing. He moved upon it in column--three +columns--and with artillery. + +"Two reasons of a very different kind explain"--that fact. + +And now that I have got so far, I am almost afraid to say what his two +reasons are, lest I be charged with inventing them. But I will not +retreat now; I will condense them and print them, giving my word that I +am honest and not trying to deceive any one. + +1. Young married women are protected from the approaches of the seducer +in New England and vicinity by the diluted remains of a prudence created +by a Puritan law of two hundred years ago, which for a while punished +adultery with death. + +2. And young married women of the other forty or fifty States are +protected by laws which afford extraordinary facilities for divorce. + +If I have not lost my mind I have accurately conveyed those two Vesuvian +irruptions of philosophy. But the reader can consult Chapter IV. of +'Outre-Mer', and decide for himself. Let us examine this paralyzing +Deduction or Explanation by the light of a few sane facts. + +1. This universality of "protection" has existed in our country from the +beginning; before the death penalty existed in New England, and during +all the generations that have dragged by since it was annulled. + +2. Extraordinary facilities for divorce are of such recent creation that +any middle-aged American can remember a time when such things had not yet +been thought of. + +Let us suppose that the first easy divorce law went into effect forty +years ago, and got noised around and fairly started in business +thirty-five years ago, when we had, say, 25,000,000 of white population. +Let us suppose that among 5,000,000 of them the young married women were +"protected" by the surviving shudder of that ancient Puritan scare--what +is M. Bourget going to do about those who lived among the 20,000,000? +They were clean in their morals, they were pure, yet there was no easy +divorce law to protect them. + +Awhile ago I said that M. Bourget's method of truth-seeking--hunting for +it in out-of-the-way places--was new; but that was an error. I remember +that when Leverrier discovered the Milky Way, he and the other +astronomers began to theorize about it in substantially the same fashion +which M. Bourget employs in his seasonings about American social facts +and their origin. Leverrier advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way +was caused by gaseous protoplasmic emanations from the field of Waterloo, +which, ascending to an altitude determinable by their own specific +gravity, became luminous through the development and exposure--by the +natural processes of animal decay--of the phosphorus contained in them. + +This theory was warmly complimented by Ptolemy, who, however, after much +thought and research, decided that he could not accept it as final. His +own theory was that the Milky Way was an emigration of lightning bugs; +and he supported and reinforced this theorem by the well-known fact that +the locusts do like that in Egypt. + +Giordano Bruno also was outspoken in his praises of Leverrier's important +contribution to astronomical science, and was at first inclined to regard +it as conclusive; but later, conceiving it to be erroneous, he pronounced +against it, and advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was a +detachment or corps of stars which became arrested and held in 'suspenso +suspensorum' by refraction of gravitation while on the march to join +their several constellations; a proposition for which he was afterwards +burned at the stake in Jacksonville, Illinois. + +These were all brilliant and picturesque theories, and each was received +with enthusiasm by the scientific world; but when a New England farmer, +who was not a thinker, but only a plain sort of person who tried to +account for large facts in simple ways, came out with the opinion that +the Milky Way was just common, ordinary stars, and was put where it was +because God "wanted to hev it so," the admirable idea fell perfectly +flat. + +As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as fresh and striking as he is as a +scientific one. He says, "Above all, I do not believe much in +anecdotes." + +Why? "In history they are all false"--a sufficiently broad statement +--"in literature all libelous"--also a sufficiently sweeping statement, +coming from a critic who notes that we are "a people who are peculiarly +extravagant in our language--" and when it is a matter of social life, +"almost all biased." It seems to amount to stultification, almost. He +has built two or three breeds of American coquettes out of anecdotes-- +mainly "biased" ones, I suppose; and, as they occur "in literature," +furnished by his pen, they must be "all libelous." Or did he mean not in +literature or anecdotes about literature or literary people? I am not +able to answer that. Perhaps the original would be clearer, but I have +only the translation of this installment by me. I think the remark had +an intention; also that this intention was booked for the trip; but that +either in the hurry of the remark's departure it got left, or in the +confusion of changing cars at the translator's frontier it got +side-tracked. + +"But on the other hand I believe in statistics; and those on divorces +appear to me to be most conclusive." And he sets himself the task of +explaining--in a couple of columns--the process by which Easy-Divorce +conceived, invented, originated, developed, and perfected an +empire-embracing condition of sexual purity in the States. IN 40 YEARS. +No, he doesn't state the interval. With all his passion for statistics +he forgot to ask how long it took to produce this gigantic miracle. + +I have followed his pleasant but devious trail through those columns, +but I was not able to get hold of his argument and find out what it was. +I was not even able to find out where it left off. It seemed to +gradually dissolve and flow off into other matters. I followed it with +interest, for I was anxious to learn how easy-divorce eradicated adultery +in America, but I was disappointed; I have no idea yet how it did it. +I only know it didn't. But that is not valuable; I knew it before. + +Well, humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute +it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and +resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. And so, +when M. Bourget said that bright thing about our grandfathers, I broke +all up. I remember exploding its American countermine once, under that +grand hero, Napoleon. He was only First Consul then, and I was +Consul-General--for the United States, of course; but we were very +intimate, notwithstanding the difference in rank, for I waived that. +One day something offered the opening, and he said: + +"Well, General, I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an +American, because whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his +time he can always get away with a few years trying to find out who his +grandfather was!" + +I fairly shouted, for I had never heard it sound better; and then I was +back at him as quick as a flash--"Right, your Excellency! But I reckon +a Frenchman's got his little stand-by for a dull time, too; because when +all other interests fail he can turn in and see if he can't find out who +his father was!" + +Well, you should have heard him just whoop, and cackle, and carry on! +He reached up and hit me one on the shoulder, and says: + +"Land, but it's good! It's im-mensely good! I'George, I never heard it +said so good in my life before! Say it again." + +So I said it again, and he said his again, and I said mine again, and +then he did, and then I did, and then he did, and we kept on doing it, +and doing it, and I never had such a good time, and he said the same. +In my opinion there isn't anything that is as killing as one of those +dear old ripe pensioners if you know how to snatch it out in a kind of +a fresh sort of original way. + +But I wish M. Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is +the only way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was +coming to Paris, I read 'La Terre'. + + + + + + +A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET + + [The preceding squib was assailed in the North American Review + in an article entitled "Mark Twain and Paul Bourget," by Max + O'Rell. The following little note is a Rejoinder to that + article. It is possible that the position assumed here--that + M. Bourget dictated the O'Rell article himself--is untenable.] + +You have every right, my dear M. Bourget, to retort upon me by dictation, +if you prefer that method to writing at me with your pen; but if I may +say it without hurt--and certainly I mean no offence--I believe you would +have acquitted yourself better with the pen. With the pen you are at +home; it is your natural weapon; you use it with grace, eloquence, charm, +persuasiveness, when men are to be convinced, and with formidable effect +when they have earned a castigation. But I am sure I see signs in the +above article that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are out of +practice. If you will re-read it you will notice, yourself, that it +lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that +it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it +wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any +more. There are some other defects, as you will notice, but I think I +have named the main ones. I feel sure that they are all due to your lack +of practice in dictating. + +Inasmuch as you had not signed it I had the impression at first that you +had not dictated it. But only for a moment. Certain quite simple and +definite facts reminded me that the article had to come from you, for the +reason that it could not come from any one else without a specific +invitation from you or from me. I mean, it could not except as an +intrusion, a transgression of the law which forbids strangers to mix into +a private dispute between friends, unasked. + +Those simple and definite facts were these: I had published an article in +this magazine, with you for my subject; just you yourself; I stuck +strictly to that one subject, and did not interlard any other. No one, +of course, could call me to account but you alone, or your authorized +representative. I asked some questions--asked them of myself. +I answered them myself. My article was thirteen pages long, and all +devoted to you; devoted to you, and divided up in this way: one page of +guesses as to what subjects you would instruct us in, as teacher; one +page of doubts as to the effectiveness of your method of examining us and +our ways; two or three pages of criticism of your method, and of certain +results which it furnished you; two or three pages of attempts to show +the justness of these same criticisms; half a dozen pages made up of +slight fault-findings with certain minor details of your literary +workmanship, of extracts from your 'Outre-Mer' and comments upon them; +then I closed with an anecdote. I repeat--for certain reasons--that I +closed with an anecdote. + +When I was asked by this magazine if I wished to "answer" a "reply" to +that article of mine, I said "yes," and waited in Paris for the +proof-sheets of the "reply" to come. I already knew, by the cablegram, +that the "reply" would not be signed by you, but upon reflection I knew +it would be dictated by you, because no volunteer would feel himself at +liberty to assume your championship in a private dispute, unasked, in +view of the fact that you are quite well able to take care of your +matters of that sort yourself and are not in need of any one's help. No, +a volunteer could not make such a venture. It would be too immodest. +Also too gratuitously generous. And a shade too self-sufficient. No, +he could not venture it. It would look too much like anxiety to get in +at a feast where no plate had been provided for him. In fact he could +not get in at all, except by the back way, and with a false key; that is +to say, a pretext--a pretext invented for the occasion by putting into +my mouth words which I did not use, and by wresting sayings of mine from +their plain and true meaning. Would he resort to methods like those to +get in? No; there are no people of that kind. So then I knew for a +certainty that you dictated the Reply yourself. I knew you did it to +save yourself manual labor. + +And you had the right, as I have already said and I am content--perfectly +content. + +Yet it would have been little trouble to you, and a great kindness to me, +if you had written your Reply all out with your own capable hand. + +Because then it would have replied--and that is really what a Reply is +for. Broadly speaking, its function is to refute--as you will easily +concede. That leaves something for the other person to take hold of: +he has a chance to reply to the Reply, he has a chance to refute the +refutation. This would have happened if you had written it out instead +of dictating. Dictating is nearly sure to unconcentrate the dictator's +mind, when he is out of practice, confuse him, and betray him into using +one set of literary rules when he ought to use a quite different set. +Often it betrays him into employing the RULES FOR CONVERSATION BETWEEN A +SHOUTER AND A DEAF PERSON--as in the present case--when he ought to +employ the RULES FOR CONDUCTING DISCUSSION WITH A FAULT-FINDER. The +great foundation-rule and basic principle of discussion with a +fault-finder is relevancy and concentration upon the subject; whereas +the great foundation-rule and basic principle governing conversation +between a shouter and a deaf person is irrelevancy and persistent +desertion of the topic in hand. If I may be allowed to illustrate by +quoting example IV., section from chapter ix. of "Revised Rules for +Conducting Conversation between a Shouter and a Deaf Person," it will +assist us in getting a clear idea of the difference between the two sets +of rules: + +Shouter. Did you say his name is WETHERBY? + +Deaf Person. Change? Yes, I think it will. Though if it should clear +off I-- + +Shouter. It's his NAME I want--his NAME. + +Deaf Person. Maybe so, maybe so; but it will only be a shower, I think. + +Shouter. No, no, no!--you have quite misunderSTOOD me. If-- + +Deaf Person. Ah! GOOD morning; I am sorry you must go. But call again, +and let me continue to be of assistance to you in every way I can. + + +You see it is a perfect kodak of the article you have dictated. It is +really curious and interesting when you come to compare it with yours; +in detail, with my former article to which it is a Reply in your hand. +I talk twelve pages about your American instruction projects, and your +doubtful scientific system, and your painstaking classification of +nonexistent things, and your diligence and zeal and sincerity, and your +disloyal attitude towards anecdotes, and your undue reverence for unsafe +statistics and far facts that lack a pedigree; and you turn around and +come back at me with eight pages of weather. + +I do not see how a person can act so. It is good of you to repeat, with +change of language, in the bulk of your rejoinder, so much of my own +article, and adopt my sentiments, and make them over, and put new buttons +on; and I like the compliment, and am frank to say so; but agreeing with +a person cripples controversy and ought not to be allowed. It is +weather; and of almost the worst sort. It pleases me greatly to hear you +discourse with such approval and expansiveness upon my text: + +"A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that +is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its +interior;"--[And you say: "A man of average intelligence, who has passed +six months among a people, cannot express opinions that are worth jotting +down, but he can form impressions that are worth repeating. For my part, +I think that foreigners' impressions are more interesting than native +opinions. After all, such impressions merely mean 'how the country +struck the foreigner.'"]--which is a quite clear way of saying that a +foreigner's report is only valuable when it restricts itself to +impressions. It pleases me to have you follow my lead in that glowing +way, but it leaves me nothing to combat. You should give me something to +deny and refute; I would do as much for you. + +It pleases me to have you playfully warn the public against taking one of +your books seriously.--[When I published Jonathan and his Continent, I +wrote in a preface addressed to Jonathan: "If ever you should insist in +seeing in this little volume a serious study of your country and of your +countrymen, I warn you that your world-wide fame for humor will be +exploded."]--Because I used to do that cunning thing myself in earlier +days. I did it in a prefatory note to a book of mine called Tom Sawyer. + + + NOTICE. + + Persons attempting to find a motive in + this narrative will be prosecuted; + persons attempting to find a moral in it + will be banished; persons attempting to + find a plot in it will be shot. + BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR + PER G. G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE. + + +The kernel is the same in both prefaces, you see--the public must +not take us too seriously. If we remove that kernel we remove the +life-principle, and the preface is a corpse. Yes, it pleases me to have +you use that idea, for it is a high compliment. But is leaves me +nothing to combat; and that is damage to me. + +Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not a reply at all, M. Bourget? +If so, I must modify that; it is too sweeping. For you have furnished a +general answer to my inquiry as to what France through you--can teach us. +--["What could France teach America!" exclaims Mark Twain. France can +teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there is more artistic +feeling and refinement in a street of French workingmen than in many +avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach her, not +perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be happy. +She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but that +money-making is only a means to obtain an end. She can teach her that +wives are not expensive toys, but useful partners, friends, and +confidants, who should always keep men under their wholesome influence by +their diplomacy, their tact, their common-sense, without bumptiousness. +These qualities, added to the highest standard of morality (not angular +and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded to Frenchwomen by +whoever knows something of French life outside of the Paris boulevards, +and Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot even so much as stain them. + +I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was seen tipsy in his +club would immediately see his name canceled from membership. A man who +had settled his fortune on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would +be refused admission into any decent society. Many a Frenchman has blown +his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt. Now would Mark +Twain remark to this: 'An American is not such a fool: when a creditor +stands in his way he closes his doors, and reopens them the following +day. When he has been a bankrupt three times he can retire from +business?']--It is a good answer. + +It relates to manners, customs, and morals--three things concerning which +we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, and so the +verdicts delivered upon them must always lack conclusiveness and be +subject to revision; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly +as any one could do it, in the circumstances. But why did you choose a +detail of my question which could be answered only with vague hearsay +evidence, and go right by one which could have been answered with deadly +facts?--facts in everybody's reach, facts which none can dispute. +I asked what France could teach us about government. I laid myself +pretty wide open, there; and I thought I was handsomely generous, too, +when I did it. France can teach us how to levy village and city taxes +which distribute the burden with a nearer approach to perfect fairness +than is the case in any other land; and she can teach us the wisest and +surest system of collecting them that exists. She can teach us how to +elect a President in a sane way; and also how to do it without throwing +the country into earthquakes and convulsions that cripple and embarrass +business, stir up party hatred in the hearts of men, and make peaceful +people wish the term extended to thirty years. France can teach us--but +enough of that part of the question. And what else can France teach us? +She can teach us all the fine arts--and does. She throws open her +hospitable art academies, and says to us, "Come"--and we come, troops and +troops of our young and gifted; and she sets over us the ablest masters +in the world and bearing the greatest names; and she, teaches us all that +we are capable of learning, and persuades us and encourages us with +prizes and honors, much as if we were somehow children of her own; and +when this noble education is finished and we are ready to carry it home +and spread its gracious ministries abroad over our nation, and we come +with homage and gratitude and ask France for the bill--there is nothing +to pay. And in return for this imperial generosity, what does America +do? She charges a duty on French works of art! + +I wish I had your end of this dispute; I should have something worth +talking about. If you would only furnish me something to argue, +something to refute--but you persistently won't. You leave good chances +unutilized and spend your strength in proving and establishing +unimportant things. For instance, you have proven and established these +eight facts here following--a good score as to number, but not worth +while: + +Mark Twain is-- + +1. "Insulting." + +2. (Sarcastically speaking) "This refined humor, 1st." + +3. Prefers the manure-pile to the violets. + +4. Has uttered "an ill-natured sneer." + +5. Is "nasty." + +6. Needs a "lesson in politeness and good manners." + +7. Has published a "nasty article." + +8. Has made remarks "unworthy of a gentleman."--["It is more funny than +his" (Mark Twain's) "anecdote, and would have been less insulting."] + +A quoted remark of mine "is a gross insult to a nation friendly to +America." + +"He has read La Terre, this refined humorist." + +"When Mark Twain visits a garden . . . he goes in the far-away corner +where the soil is prepared." + +"Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot so much as stain them" (the +Frenchwomen). + +"When he" (Mark Twain) "takes his revenge he is unkind, unfair, bitter, +nasty." + +"But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark," etc. + +"Mark might certainly have derived from it" (M. Bourget's book) "a lesson +in politeness and good manners." + +A quoted remark of mine is "unworthy of a gentleman."-- + +These are all true, but really they are not valuable; no one cares much +for such finds. In our American magazines we recognize this and suppress +them. We avoid naming them. American writers never allow themselves to +name them. It would look as if they were in a temper, and we hold that +exhibitions of temper in public are not good form except in the very +young and inexperienced. And even if we had the disposition to name +them, in order to fill up a gap when we were short of ideas and +arguments, our magazines would not allow us to do it, because they think +that such words sully their pages. This present magazine is particularly +strenuous about it. Its note to me announcing the forwarding of your +proof-sheets to France closed thus--for your protection: + +"It is needless to ask you to avoid anything that he might consider as +personal." + +It was well enough, as a measure of precaution, but really it was not +needed. You can trust me implicitly, M. Bourget; I shall never call you +any names in print which I should be ashamed to call you with your +unoffending and dearest ones present. + +Indeed, we are reserved, and particular in America to a degree which you +would consider exaggerated. For instance, we should not write notes like +that one of yours to a lady for a small fault--or a large one.--[When M. +Paul Bourget indulges in a little chaffing at the expense of the +Americans, "who can always get away with a few years' trying to find out +who their grandfathers were,"] he merely makes an allusion to an American +foible; but, forsooth, what a kind man, what a humorist Mark Twain is +when he retorts by calling France a nation of bastards! How the +Americans of culture and refinement will admire him for thus speaking in +their name! + +Snobbery . . . . I could give Mark Twain an example of the American +specimen. It is a piquant story. I never published it because I feared +my readers might think that I was giving them a typical illustration of +American character instead of a rare exception. + +I was once booked by my manager to give a causerie in the drawing-room of +a New York millionaire. I accepted with reluctance. I do not like +private engagements. At five o'clock on the day the causerie was to be +given, the lady sent to my manager to say that she would expect me to +arrive at nine o'clock and to speak for about an hour. Then she wrote a +postscript. Many women are unfortunate there. Their minds are full of +after-thoughts, and the most important part of their letters is generally +to be found after their signature. This lady's P. S. ran thus: "I +suppose he will not expect to be entertained after the lecture." + +I fairly shorted, as Mark Twain would say, and then, indulging myself in +a bit of snobbishness, I was back at her as quick as a flash: + +"Dear Madam: As a literary man of some reputation, I have many times had +the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy +of France. I have also many times had the pleasure of being entertained +by the members of the old aristocracy of England. If it may interest +you, I can even tell you that I have several times had the honor of being +entertained by royalty; but my ambition has never been so wild as to +expect that one day I might be entertained by the aristocracy of New +York. No, I do not expect to be entertained by you, nor do I want you to +expect me to entertain you and your friends to-night, for I decline to +keep the engagement." + +Now, I could fill a book on America with reminiscences of this sort, +adding a few chapters on bosses and boodlers, on New York 'chronique +scandaleuse', on the tenement houses of the large cities, on the +gambling-hells of Denver, and the dens of San Francisco, and what not! +[But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark, will make me do +it.]--We should not think it kind. No matter how much we might have +associated with kings and nobilities, we should not think it right to +crush her with it and make her ashamed of her lowlier walk in life; for +we have a saying, "Who humiliates my mother includes his own." + +Do I seriously imagine you to be the author of that strange letter, +M. Bourget? Indeed I do not. I believe it to have been surreptitiously +inserted by your amanuensis when your back was turned. I think he did it +with a good motive, expecting it to add force and piquancy to your +article, but it does not reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve +you when you see it. I also think he interlarded many other things which +you will disapprove of when you see them. I am certain that all the +harsh names discharged at me come from him, not you. No doubt you could +have proved me entitled to them with as little trouble as it has cost him +to do it, but it would have been your disposition to hunt game of a +higher quality. + +Why, I even doubt if it is you who furnish me all that excellent +information about Balzac and those others.--["Now the style of M. +Bourget and many other French writers is apparently a closed letter to +Mark Twain; but let us leave that alone. Has he read Erckmann-Chatrian, +Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Edmond About, Cherbuliez, Renan? Has he read +Gustave Droz's 'Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe', and those books which leave +for a long time a perfume about you? Has he read the novels of Alexandre +Dumas, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and Balzac? Has he read Victor Hugo's +'Les Miserables' and 'Notre Dame de Paris'? Has he read or heard the +plays of Sandeau, Augier, Dumas, and Sardou, the works of those Titans of +modern literature, whose names will be household words all over the world +for hundreds of years to come? He has read La Terre--this kind-hearted, +refined humorist! When Mark Twain visits a garden does he smell the +violets, the roses, the jasmine, or the honeysuckle? No, he goes in the +far-away corner where the soil is prepared. Hear what he says: 'I wish M. +Paul Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is the only +way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was coming to +Paris I read La Terre.'"]--All this in simple justice to you--and to me; +for, to gravely accept those interlardings as yours would be to wrong +your head and heart, and at the same time convict myself of being +equipped with a vacancy where my penetration ought to be lodged. + +And now finally I must uncover the secret pain, the wee sore from which +the Reply grew--the anecdote which closed my recent article--and consider +how it is that this pimple has spread to these cancerous dimensions. +If any but you had dictated the Reply, M. Bourget, I would know that that +anecdote was twisted around and its intention magnified some hundreds of +times, in order that it might be used as a pretext to creep in the back +way. But I accuse you of nothing--nothing but error. When you say that +I "retort by calling France a nation of bastards," it is an error. And +not a small one, but a large one. I made no such remark, nor anything +resembling it. Moreover, the magazine would not have allowed me to use +so gross a word as that. + +You told an anecdote. A funny one--I admit that. It hit a foible of our +American aristocracy, and it stung me--I admit that; it stung me sharply. +It was like this: You found some ancient portraits of French kings in the +gallery of one of our aristocracy, and you said: + +"He has the Grand Monarch, but where is the portrait of his grandfather?" +That is, the American aristocrat's grandfather. + +Now that hits only a few of us, I grant--just the upper crust only--but +it hits exceedingly hard. + +I wondered if there was any way of getting back at you. In one of your +chapters I found this chance: + +"In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied to arts +and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all the weaknesses of +the French soul." + +You see? Your "higher Parisian" class--not everybody, not the nation, +but only the top crust of the Ovation--applies to debauchery all the +powers of its soul. + +I argued to myself that that energy must produce results. So I built an +anecdote out of your remark. In it I make Napoleon Bonaparte say to me +--but see for yourself the anecdote (ingeniously clipped and curtailed) +in paragraph eleven of your Reply.--[So, I repeat, Mark Twain does not +like M. Paul Bourget's book. So long as he makes light fun of the great +French writer he is at home, he is pleasant, he is the American humorist +we know. When he takes his revenge (and where is the reason for taking +a revenge?) he is unkind, unfair, bitter, nasty.] + +For example: +See his answer to a Frenchman who jokingly remarks to him: + +"I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American, because +whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his time, he can +always get away with a few years trying to find out who his grandfather +was." + +Hear the answer: + +"I reckon a Frenchman's got his little standby for a dull time, too; +because when all other interests fail, he can turn in and see if he can't +find out who his father was." + +The first remark is a good-humored bit of chaffing on American snobbery. +I may be utterly destitute of humor, but I call the second remark a +gratuitous charge of immorality hurled at the French women--a remark +unworthy of a man who has the ear of the public, unworthy of a gentleman, +a gross insult to a nation friendly to America, a nation that helped Mark +Twain's ancestors in their struggle for liberty, a nation where to-day it +is enough to say that you are American to see every door open wide to +you. + +If Mark Twain was hard up in search of, a French "chestnut," I might have +told him the following little anecdote. It is more funny than his, and +would have been less insulting: Two little street boys are abusing each +other. "Ah, hold your tongue," says one, "you ain't got no father." + +"Ain't got no father!" replies the other; "I've got more fathers than +you." + +Now, then, your anecdote about the grandfathers hurt me. Why? Because +it had a point. It wouldn't have hurt me if it hadn't had point. You +wouldn't have wasted space on it if it hadn't had point. + +My anecdote has hurt you. Why? Because it had point, I suppose. It +wouldn't have hurt you if it hadn't had point. I judged from your remark +about the diligence and industry of the high Parisian upper crust that it +would have some point, but really I had no idea what a gold-mine I had +struck. I never suspected that the point was going to stick into the +entire nation; but of course you know your nation better than I do, and +if you think it punctures them all, I have to yield to your judgment. +But you are to blame, your own self. Your remark misled me. I supposed +the industry was confined to that little unnumerous upper layer. + +Well, now that the unfortunate thing has been done, let us do what we can +to undo it. There must be a way, M. Bourget, and I am willing to do +anything that will help; for I am as sorry as you can be yourself. + +I will tell you what I think will be the very thing. + +We will swap anecdotes. I will take your anecdote and you take mine. I +will say to the dukes and counts and princes of the ancient nobility of +France: + +"Ha, ha! You must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your +grandfathers were?" + +They will merely smile indifferently and not feel hurt, because they can +trace their lineage back through centuries. + +And you will hurl mine at every individual in the American nation, +saying: + +"And you must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your fathers +were." They will merely smile indifferently, and not feel hurt, because +they haven't any difficulty in finding their fathers. + +Do you get the idea? The whole harm in the anecdotes is in the point, +you see; and when we swap them around that way, they haven't any. + +That settles it perfectly and beautifully, and I am glad I thought of it. +I am very glad indeed, M. Bourget; for it was just that little wee thing +that caused the whole difficulty and made you dictate the Reply, and your +amanuensis call me all those hard names which the magazines dislike so. +And I did it all in fun, too, trying to cap your funny anecdote with +another one--on the give-and-take principle, you know--which is American. +I didn't know that with the French it was all give and no take, and you +didn't tell me. But now that I have made everything comfortable again, +and fixed both anecdotes so they can never have any point any more, I +know you will forgive me. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays on Paul Bourget +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + + +TOM SAWYER ABROAD + + + + +CHAPTER I. TOM SEEKS NEW ADVENTURES + +DO you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? I mean +the adventures we had down the river, and the time we set the darky Jim +free and Tom got shot in the leg. No, he wasn't. It only just p'isoned +him for more. That was all the effect it had. You see, when we three came +back up the river in glory, as you may say, from that long travel, and +the village received us with a torchlight procession and speeches, and +everybody hurrah'd and shouted, it made us heroes, and that was what Tom +Sawyer had always been hankering to be. + +For a while he WAS satisfied. Everybody made much of him, and he tilted +up his nose and stepped around the town as though he owned it. Some +called him Tom Sawyer the Traveler, and that just swelled him up fit to +bust. You see he laid over me and Jim considerable, because we only went +down the river on a raft and came back by the steamboat, but Tom went by +the steamboat both ways. The boys envied me and Jim a good deal, but +land! they just knuckled to the dirt before TOM. + +Well, I don't know; maybe he might have been satisfied if it hadn't been +for old Nat Parsons, which was postmaster, and powerful long and slim, +and kind o' good-hearted and silly, and bald-headed, on account of his +age, and about the talkiest old cretur I ever see. For as much as thirty +years he'd been the only man in the village that had a reputation--I mean +a reputation for being a traveler, and of course he was mortal proud of +it, and it was reckoned that in the course of that thirty years he had +told about that journey over a million times and enjoyed it every time. +And now comes along a boy not quite fifteen, and sets everybody admiring +and gawking over HIS travels, and it just give the poor old man the high +strikes. It made him sick to listen to Tom, and to hear the people say +"My land!" "Did you ever!" "My goodness sakes alive!" and all such +things; but he couldn't pull away from it, any more than a fly that's got +its hind leg fast in the molasses. And always when Tom come to a rest, +the poor old cretur would chip in on HIS same old travels and work them +for all they were worth; but they were pretty faded, and didn't go for +much, and it was pitiful to see. And then Tom would take another innings, +and then the old man again--and so on, and so on, for an hour and more, +each trying to beat out the other. + +You see, Parsons' travels happened like this: When he first got to be +postmaster and was green in the business, there come a letter for +somebody he didn't know, and there wasn't any such person in the village. +Well, he didn't know what to do, nor how to act, and there the letter +stayed and stayed, week in and week out, till the bare sight of it gave +him a conniption. The postage wasn't paid on it, and that was another +thing to worry about. There wasn't any way to collect that ten cents, and +he reckon'd the gov'ment would hold him responsible for it and maybe turn +him out besides, when they found he hadn't collected it. Well, at last he +couldn't stand it any longer. He couldn't sleep nights, he couldn't eat, +he was thinned down to a shadder, yet he da'sn't ask anybody's advice, +for the very person he asked for advice might go back on him and let the +gov'ment know about the letter. He had the letter buried under the floor, +but that did no good; if he happened to see a person standing over the +place it'd give him the cold shivers, and loaded him up with suspicions, +and he would sit up that night till the town was still and dark, and then +he would sneak there and get it out and bury it in another place. Of +course, people got to avoiding him and shaking their heads and +whispering, because, the way he was looking and acting, they judged he +had killed somebody or done something terrible, they didn't know what, +and if he had been a stranger they would've lynched him. + +Well, as I was saying, it got so he couldn't stand it any longer; so he +made up his mind to pull out for Washington, and just go to the President +of the United States and make a clean breast of the whole thing, not +keeping back an atom, and then fetch the letter out and lay it before the +whole gov'ment, and say, "Now, there she is--do with me what you're a +mind to; though as heaven is my judge I am an innocent man and not +deserving of the full penalties of the law and leaving behind me a family +that must starve and yet hadn't had a thing to do with it, which is the +whole truth and I can swear to it." + +So he did it. He had a little wee bit of steamboating, and some +stage-coaching, but all the rest of the way was horseback, and it took +him three weeks to get to Washington. He saw lots of land and lots of +villages and four cities. He was gone 'most eight weeks, and there never +was such a proud man in the village as he when he got back. His travels +made him the greatest man in all that region, and the most talked about; +and people come from as much as thirty miles back in the country, and +from over in the Illinois bottoms, too, just to look at him--and there +they'd stand and gawk, and he'd gabble. You never see anything like it. + +Well, there wasn't any way now to settle which was the greatest traveler; +some said it was Nat, some said it was Tom. Everybody allowed that Nat +had seen the most longitude, but they had to give in that whatever Tom +was short in longitude he had made up in latitude and climate. It was +about a stand-off; so both of them had to whoop up their dangerous +adventures, and try to get ahead THAT way. That bullet-wound in Tom's leg +was a tough thing for Nat Parsons to buck against, but he bucked the best +he could; and at a disadvantage, too, for Tom didn't set still as he'd +orter done, to be fair, but always got up and sauntered around and worked +his limp while Nat was painting up the adventure that HE had in +Washington; for Tom never let go that limp when his leg got well, but +practiced it nights at home, and kept it good as new right along. + +Nat's adventure was like this; I don't know how true it is; maybe he got +it out of a paper, or somewhere, but I will say this for him, that he DID +know how to tell it. He could make anybody's flesh crawl, and he'd turn +pale and hold his breath when he told it, and sometimes women and girls +got so faint they couldn't stick it out. Well, it was this way, as near +as I can remember: + +He come a-loping into Washington, and put up his horse and shoved out to +the President's house with his letter, and they told him the President +was up to the Capitol, and just going to start for Philadelphia--not a +minute to lose if he wanted to catch him. Nat 'most dropped, it made him +so sick. His horse was put up, and he didn't know what to do. But just +then along comes a darky driving an old ramshackly hack, and he see his +chance. He rushes out and shouts: "A half a dollar if you git me to the +Capitol in half an hour, and a quarter extra if you do it in twenty +minutes!" + +"Done!" says the darky. + +Nat he jumped in and slammed the door, and away they went a-ripping and +a-tearing over the roughest road a body ever see, and the racket of it +was something awful. Nat passed his arms through the loops and hung on +for life and death, but pretty soon the hack hit a rock and flew up in +the air, and the bottom fell out, and when it come down Nat's feet was on +the ground, and he see he was in the most desperate danger if he couldn't +keep up with the hack. He was horrible scared, but he laid into his work +for all he was worth, and hung tight to the arm-loops and made his legs +fairly fly. He yelled and shouted to the driver to stop, and so did the +crowds along the street, for they could see his legs spinning along under +the coach, and his head and shoulders bobbing inside through the windows, +and he was in awful danger; but the more they all shouted the more the +nigger whooped and yelled and lashed the horses and shouted, "Don't you +fret, I'se gwine to git you dah in time, boss; I's gwine to do it, sho'!" +for you see he thought they were all hurrying him up, and, of course, he +couldn't hear anything for the racket he was making. And so they went +ripping along, and everybody just petrified to see it; and when they got +to the Capitol at last it was the quickest trip that ever was made, and +everybody said so. The horses laid down, and Nat dropped, all tuckered +out, and he was all dust and rags and barefooted; but he was in time and +just in time, and caught the President and give him the letter, and +everything was all right, and the President give him a free pardon on the +spot, and Nat give the nigger two extra quarters instead of one, because +he could see that if he hadn't had the hack he wouldn't'a' got there in +time, nor anywhere near it. + +It WAS a powerful good adventure, and Tom Sawyer had to work his +bullet-wound mighty lively to hold his own against it. + +Well, by and by Tom's glory got to paling down gradu'ly, on account of +other things turning up for the people to talk about--first a horse-race, +and on top of that a house afire, and on top of that the circus, and on +top of that the eclipse; and that started a revival, same as it always +does, and by that time there wasn't any more talk about Tom, so to speak, +and you never see a person so sick and disgusted. + +Pretty soon he got to worrying and fretting right along day in and day +out, and when I asked him what WAS he in such a state about, he said it +'most broke his heart to think how time was slipping away, and him +getting older and older, and no wars breaking out and no way of making a +name for himself that he could see. Now that is the way boys is always +thinking, but he was the first one I ever heard come out and say it. + +So then he set to work to get up a plan to make him celebrated; and +pretty soon he struck it, and offered to take me and Jim in. Tom Sawyer +was always free and generous that way. There's a-plenty of boys that's +mighty good and friendly when YOU'VE got a good thing, but when a good +thing happens to come their way they don't say a word to you, and try to +hog it all. That warn't ever Tom Sawyer's way, I can say that for him. +There's plenty of boys that will come hankering and groveling around you +when you've got an apple and beg the core off of you; but when they've +got one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you give them a +core one time, they say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going +to be no core. But I notice they always git come up with; all you got to +do is to wait. + +Well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom told us what it was. +It was a crusade. + +"What's a crusade?" I says. + +He looked scornful, the way he's always done when he was ashamed of a +person, and says: + +"Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don't know what a crusade is?" + +"No," says I, "I don't. And I don't care to, nuther. I've lived till now +and done without it, and had my health, too. But as soon as you tell me, +I'll know, and that's soon enough. I don't see any use in finding out +things and clogging up my head with them when I mayn't ever have any +occasion to use 'em. There was Lance Williams, he learned how to talk +Choctaw here till one come and dug his grave for him. Now, then, what's a +crusade? But I can tell you one thing before you begin; if it's a +patent-right, there's no money in it. Bill Thompson he--" + +"Patent-right!" says he. "I never see such an idiot. Why, a crusade is a +kind of war." + +I thought he must be losing his mind. But no, he was in real earnest, and +went right on, perfectly ca'm. + +"A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim." + +"Which Holy Land?" + +"Why, the Holy Land--there ain't but one." + +"What do we want of it?" + +"Why, can't you understand? It's in the hands of the paynim, and it's our +duty to take it away from them." + +"How did we come to let them git hold of it?" + +"We didn't come to let them git hold of it. They always had it." + +"Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?" + +"Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?" + +I studied over it, but couldn't seem to git at the right of it, no way. I +says: + +"It's too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine, and +another person wanted it, would it be right for him to--" + +"Oh, shucks! you don't know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn. +It ain't a farm, it's entirely different. You see, it's like this. They +own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they DO own; but it was +our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they +haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame, and we ought +not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away +from them." + +"Why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing I ever see! Now, if +I had a farm and another person--" + +"Don't I tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farming? Farming is +business, just common low-down business: that's all it is, it's all you +can say for it; but this is higher, this is religious, and totally +different." + +"Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?" + +"Certainly; it's always been considered so." + +Jim he shook his head, and says: + +"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake about it somers--dey mos' sholy is. +I's religious myself, en I knows plenty religious people, but I hain't +run across none dat acts like dat." + +It made Tom hot, and he says: + +"Well, it's enough to make a body sick, such mullet-headed ignorance! If +either of you'd read anything about history, you'd know that Richard Cur +de Loon, and the Pope, and Godfrey de Bulleyn, and lots more of the most +noble-hearted and pious people in the world, hacked and hammered at the +paynims for more than two hundred years trying to take their land away +from them, and swum neck-deep in blood the whole time--and yet here's a +couple of sap-headed country yahoos out in the backwoods of Missouri +setting themselves up to know more about the rights and wrongs of it than +they did! Talk about cheek!" + +Well, of course, that put a more different light on it, and me and Jim +felt pretty cheap and ignorant, and wished we hadn't been quite so +chipper. I couldn't say nothing, and Jim he couldn't for a while; then he +says: + +"Well, den, I reckon it's all right; beca'se ef dey didn't know, dey +ain't no use for po' ignorant folks like us to be trying to know; en so, +ef it's our duty, we got to go en tackle it en do de bes' we can. Same +time, I feel as sorry for dem paynims as Mars Tom. De hard part gwine to +be to kill folks dat a body hain't been 'quainted wid and dat hain't done +him no harm. Dat's it, you see. Ef we wuz to go 'mongst 'em, jist we +three, en say we's hungry, en ast 'em for a bite to eat, why, maybe dey's +jist like yuther people. Don't you reckon dey is? Why, DEY'D give it, I +know dey would, en den--" + +"Then what?" + +"Well, Mars Tom, my idea is like dis. It ain't no use, we CAN'T kill dem +po' strangers dat ain't doin' us no harm, till we've had practice--I +knows it perfectly well, Mars Tom--'deed I knows it perfectly well. But +ef we takes a' axe or two, jist you en me en Huck, en slips acrost de +river to-night arter de moon's gone down, en kills dat sick fam'ly dat's +over on the Sny, en burns dey house down, en--" + +"Oh, you make me tired!" says Tom. "I don't want to argue any more with +people like you and Huck Finn, that's always wandering from the subject, +and ain't got any more sense than to try to reason out a thing that's +pure theology by the laws that protect real estate!" + +Now that's just where Tom Sawyer warn't fair. Jim didn't mean no harm, +and I didn't mean no harm. We knowed well enough that he was right and we +was wrong, and all we was after was to get at the HOW of it, and that was +all; and the only reason he couldn't explain it so we could understand it +was because we was ignorant--yes, and pretty dull, too, I ain't denying +that; but, land! that ain't no crime, I should think. + +But he wouldn't hear no more about it--just said if we had tackled the +thing in the proper spirit, he would 'a' raised a couple of thousand +knights and put them in steel armor from head to heel, and made me a +lieutenant and Jim a sutler, and took the command himself and brushed the +whole paynim outfit into the sea like flies and come back across the +world in a glory like sunset. But he said we didn't know enough to take +the chance when we had it, and he wouldn't ever offer it again. And he +didn't. When he once got set, you couldn't budge him. + +But I didn't care much. I am peaceable, and don't get up rows with people +that ain't doing nothing to me. I allowed if the paynim was satisfied I +was, and we would let it stand at that. + +Now Tom he got all that notion out of Walter Scott's book, which he was +always reading. And it WAS a wild notion, because in my opinion he never +could've raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he would've got +licked. I took the book and read all about it, and as near as I could +make it out, most of the folks that shook farming to go crusading had a +mighty rocky time of it. + + + + CHAPTER II. THE BALLOON ASCENSION + +WELL, Tom got up one thing after another, but they all had tender spots +about 'em somewheres, and he had to shove 'em aside. So at last he was +about in despair. Then the St. Louis papers begun to talk a good deal +about the balloon that was going to sail to Europe, and Tom sort of +thought he wanted to go down and see what it looked like, but couldn't +make up his mind. But the papers went on talking, and so he allowed that +maybe if he didn't go he mightn't ever have another chance to see a +balloon; and next, he found out that Nat Parsons was going down to see +it, and that decided him, of course. He wasn't going to have Nat Parsons +coming back bragging about seeing the balloon, and him having to listen +to it and keep quiet. So he wanted me and Jim to go too, and we went. + +It was a noble big balloon, and had wings and fans and all sorts of +things, and wasn't like any balloon you see in pictures. It was away out +toward the edge of town, in a vacant lot, corner of Twelfth street; and +there was a big crowd around it, making fun of it, and making fun of the +man,--a lean pale feller with that soft kind of moonlight in his eyes, +you know,--and they kept saying it wouldn't go. It made him hot to hear +them, and he would turn on them and shake his fist and say they was +animals and blind, but some day they would find they had stood face to +face with one of the men that lifts up nations and makes civilizations, +and was too dull to know it; and right here on this spot their own +children and grandchildren would build a monument to him that would +outlast a thousand years, but his name would outlast the monument. And +then the crowd would burst out in a laugh again, and yell at him, and ask +him what was his name before he was married, and what he would take to +not do it, and what was his sister's cat's grandmother's name, and all +the things that a crowd says when they've got hold of a feller that they +see they can plague. Well, some things they said WAS funny,--yes, and +mighty witty too, I ain't denying that,--but all the same it warn't fair +nor brave, all them people pitching on one, and they so glib and sharp, +and him without any gift of talk to answer back with. But, good land! +what did he want to sass back for? You see, it couldn't do him no good, +and it was just nuts for them. They HAD him, you know. But that was his +way. I reckon he couldn't help it; he was made so, I judge. He was a good +enough sort of cretur, and hadn't no harm in him, and was just a genius, +as the papers said, which wasn't his fault. We can't all be sound: we've +got to be the way we're made. As near as I can make out, geniuses think +they know it all, and so they won't take people's advice, but always go +their own way, which makes everybody forsake them and despise them, and +that is perfectly natural. If they was humbler, and listened and tried to +learn, it would be better for them. + +The part the professor was in was like a boat, and was big and roomy, and +had water-tight lockers around the inside to keep all sorts of things in, +and a body could sit on them, and make beds on them, too. We went aboard, +and there was twenty people there, snooping around and examining, and old +Nat Parsons was there, too. The professor kept fussing around getting +ready, and the people went ashore, drifting out one at a time, and old +Nat he was the last. Of course it wouldn't do to let him go out behind +US. We mustn't budge till he was gone, so we could be last ourselves. + +But he was gone now, so it was time for us to follow. I heard a big +shout, and turned around--the city was dropping from under us like a +shot! It made me sick all through, I was so scared. Jim turned gray and +couldn't say a word, and Tom didn't say nothing, but looked excited. The +city went on dropping down, and down, and down; but we didn't seem to be +doing nothing but just hang in the air and stand still. The houses got +smaller and smaller, and the city pulled itself together, closer and +closer, and the men and wagons got to looking like ants and bugs crawling +around, and the streets like threads and cracks; and then it all kind of +melted together, and there wasn't any city any more it was only a big +scar on the earth, and it seemed to me a body could see up the river and +down the river about a thousand miles, though of course it wasn't so +much. By and by the earth was a ball--just a round ball, of a dull color, +with shiny stripes wriggling and winding around over it, which was +rivers. The Widder Douglas always told me the earth was round like a +ball, but I never took any stock in a lot of them superstitions o' hers, +and of course I paid no attention to that one, because I could see myself +that the world was the shape of a plate, and flat. I used to go up on the +hill, and take a look around and prove it for myself, because I reckon +the best way to get a sure thing on a fact is to go and examine for +yourself, and not take anybody's say-so. But I had to give in now that +the widder was right. That is, she was right as to the rest of the world, +but she warn't right about the part our village is in; that part is the +shape of a plate, and flat, I take my oath! + +The professor had been quiet all this time, as if he was asleep; but he +broke loose now, and he was mighty bitter. He says something like this: + +"Idiots! They said it wouldn't go; and they wanted to examine it, and spy +around and get the secret of it out of me. But I beat them. Nobody knows +the secret but me. Nobody knows what makes it move but me; and it's a new +power--a new power, and a thousand times the strongest in the earth! +Steam's foolishness to it! They said I couldn't go to Europe. To Europe! +Why, there's power aboard to last five years, and feed for three months. +They are fools! What do they know about it? Yes, and they said my +air-ship was flimsy. Why, she's good for fifty years! I can sail the +skies all my life if I want to, and steer where I please, though they +laughed at that, and said I couldn't. Couldn't steer! Come here, boy; +we'll see. You press these buttons as I tell you." + +He made Tom steer the ship all about and every which way, and learnt him +the whole thing in nearly no time; and Tom said it was perfectly easy. He +made him fetch the ship down 'most to the earth, and had him spin her +along so close to the Illinois prairies that a body could talk to the +farmers, and hear everything they said perfectly plain; and he flung out +printed bills to them that told about the balloon, and said it was going +to Europe. Tom got so he could steer straight for a tree till he got +nearly to it, and then dart up and skin right along over the top of it. +Yes, and he showed Tom how to land her; and he done it first-rate, too, +and set her down in the prairies as soft as wool. But the minute we +started to skip out the professor says, "No, you don't!" and shot her up +in the air again. It was awful. I begun to beg, and so did Jim; but it +only give his temper a rise, and he begun to rage around and look wild +out of his eyes, and I was scared of him. + +Well, then he got on to his troubles again, and mourned and grumbled +about the way he was treated, and couldn't seem to git over it, and +especially people's saying his ship was flimsy. He scoffed at that, and +at their saying she warn't simple and would be always getting out of +order. Get out of order! That graveled him; he said that she couldn't any +more get out of order than the solar sister. + +He got worse and worse, and I never see a person take on so. It give me +the cold shivers to see him, and so it did Jim. By and by he got to +yelling and screaming, and then he swore the world shouldn't ever have +his secret at all now, it had treated him so mean. He said he would sail +his balloon around the globe just to show what he could do, and then he +would sink it in the sea, and sink us all along with it, too. Well, it +was the awfulest fix to be in, and here was night coming on! + +He give us something to eat, and made us go to the other end of the boat, +and he laid down on a locker, where he could boss all the works, and put +his old pepper-box revolver under his head, and said if anybody come +fooling around there trying to land her, he would kill him. + +We set scrunched up together, and thought considerable, but didn't say +much--only just a word once in a while when a body had to say something +or bust, we was so scared and worried. The night dragged along slow and +lonesome. We was pretty low down, and the moonshine made everything soft +and pretty, and the farmhouses looked snug and homeful, and we could hear +the farm sounds, and wished we could be down there; but, laws! we just +slipped along over them like a ghost, and never left a track. + +Away in the night, when all the sounds was late sounds, and the air had a +late feel, and a late smell, too--about a two-o'clock feel, as near as I +could make out--Tom said the professor was so quiet this time he must be +asleep, and we'd better-- + +"Better what?" I says in a whisper, and feeling sick all over, because I +knowed what he was thinking about. + +"Better slip back there and tie him, and land the ship," he says. + +I says: "No, sir! Don' you budge, Tom Sawyer." + +And Jim--well, Jim was kind o' gasping, he was so scared. He says: + +"Oh, Mars Tom, DON'T! Ef you teches him, we's gone--we's gone sho'! I +ain't gwine anear him, not for nothin' in dis worl'. Mars Tom, he's plumb +crazy." + +Tom whispers and says--"That's WHY we've got to do something. If he +wasn't crazy I wouldn't give shucks to be anywhere but here; you couldn't +hire me to get out--now that I've got used to this balloon and over the +scare of being cut loose from the solid ground--if he was in his right +mind. But it's no good politics, sailing around like this with a person +that's out of his head, and says he's going round the world and then +drown us all. We've GOT to do something, I tell you, and do it before he +wakes up, too, or we mayn't ever get another chance. Come!" + +But it made us turn cold and creepy just to think of it, and we said we +wouldn't budge. So Tom was for slipping back there by himself to see if +he couldn't get at the steering-gear and land the ship. We begged and +begged him not to, but it warn't no use; so he got down on his hands and +knees, and begun to crawl an inch at a time, we a-holding our breath and +watching. After he got to the middle of the boat he crept slower than +ever, and it did seem like years to me. But at last we see him get to the +professor's head, and sort of raise up soft and look a good spell in his +face and listen. Then we see him begin to inch along again toward the +professor's feet where the steering-buttons was. Well, he got there all +safe, and was reaching slow and steady toward the buttons, but he knocked +down something that made a noise, and we see him slump down flat an' soft +in the bottom, and lay still. The professor stirred, and says, "What's +that?" But everybody kept dead still and quiet, and he begun to mutter +and mumble and nestle, like a person that's going to wake up, and I +thought I was going to die, I was so worried and scared. + +Then a cloud slid over the moon, and I 'most cried, I was so glad. She +buried herself deeper and deeper into the cloud, and it got so dark we +couldn't see Tom. Then it began to sprinkle rain, and we could hear the +professor fussing at his ropes and things and abusing the weather. We was +afraid every minute he would touch Tom, and then we would be goners, and +no help; but Tom was already on his way back, and when we felt his hands +on our knees my breath stopped sudden, and my heart fell down 'mongst my +other works, because I couldn't tell in the dark but it might be the +professor! which I thought it WAS. + +Dear! I was so glad to have him back that I was just as near happy as a +person could be that was up in the air that way with a deranged man. You +can't land a balloon in the dark, and so I hoped it would keep on +raining, for I didn't want Tom to go meddling any more and make us so +awful uncomfortable. Well, I got my wish. It drizzled and drizzled along +the rest of the night, which wasn't long, though it did seem so; and at +daybreak it cleared, and the world looked mighty soft and gray and +pretty, and the forests and fields so good to see again, and the horses +and cattle standing sober and thinking. Next, the sun come a-blazing up +gay and splendid, and then we began to feel rusty and stretchy, and first +we knowed we was all asleep. + + + + CHAPTER III. TOM EXPLAINS + +WE went to sleep about four o'clock, and woke up about eight. The +professor was setting back there at his end, looking glum. He pitched us +some breakfast, but he told us not to come abaft the midship compass. +That was about the middle of the boat. Well, when you are sharp-set, and +you eat and satisfy yourself, everything looks pretty different from what +it done before. It makes a body feel pretty near comfortable, even when +he is up in a balloon with a genius. We got to talking together. + +There was one thing that kept bothering me, and by and by I says: + +"Tom, didn't we start east?" + +"Yes." + +"How fast have we been going?" + +"Well, you heard what the professor said when he was raging round. +Sometimes, he said, we was making fifty miles an hour, sometimes ninety, +sometimes a hundred; said that with a gale to help he could make three +hundred any time, and said if he wanted the gale, and wanted it blowing +the right direction, he only had to go up higher or down lower to find +it." + +"Well, then, it's just as I reckoned. The professor lied." + +"Why?" + +"Because if we was going so fast we ought to be past Illinois, oughtn't +we?" + +"Certainly." + +"Well, we ain't." + +"What's the reason we ain't?" + +"I know by the color. We're right over Illinois yet. And you can see for +yourself that Indiana ain't in sight." + +"I wonder what's the matter with you, Huck. You know by the COLOR?" + +"Yes, of course I do." + +"What's the color got to do with it?" + +"It's got everything to do with it. Illinois is green, Indiana is pink. +You show me any pink down here, if you can. No, sir; it's green." + +"Indiana PINK? Why, what a lie!" + +"It ain't no lie; I've seen it on the map, and it's pink." + +You never see a person so aggravated and disgusted. He says: + +"Well, if I was such a numbskull as you, Huck Finn, I would jump over. +Seen it on the map! Huck Finn, did you reckon the States was the same +color out-of-doors as they are on the map?" + +"Tom Sawyer, what's a map for? Ain't it to learn you facts?" + +"Of course." + +"Well, then, how's it going to do that if it tells lies? That's what I +want to know." + +"Shucks, you muggins! It don't tell lies." + +"It don't, don't it?" + +"No, it don't." + +"All right, then; if it don't, there ain't no two States the same color. +You git around THAT if you can, Tom Sawyer." + +He see I had him, and Jim see it too; and I tell you, I felt pretty good, +for Tom Sawyer was always a hard person to git ahead of. Jim slapped his +leg and says: + +"I tell YOU! dat's smart, dat's right down smart. Ain't no use, Mars Tom; +he got you DIS time, sho'!" He slapped his leg again, and says, "My LAN', +but it was smart one!" + +I never felt so good in my life; and yet I didn't know I was saying +anything much till it was out. I was just mooning along, perfectly +careless, and not expecting anything was going to happen, and never +THINKING of such a thing at all, when, all of a sudden, out it came. Why, +it was just as much a surprise to me as it was to any of them. It was +just the same way it is when a person is munching along on a hunk of +corn-pone, and not thinking about anything, and all of a sudden bites +into a di'mond. Now all that HE knows first off is that it's some kind of +gravel he's bit into; but he don't find out it's a di'mond till he gits +it out and brushes off the sand and crumbs and one thing or another, and +has a look at it, and then he's surprised and glad--yes, and proud too; +though when you come to look the thing straight in the eye, he ain't +entitled to as much credit as he would 'a' been if he'd been HUNTING +di'monds. You can see the difference easy if you think it over. You see, +an accident, that way, ain't fairly as big a thing as a thing that's done +a-purpose. Anybody could find that di'mond in that corn-pone; but mind +you, it's got to be somebody that's got THAT KIND OF A CORN-PONE. That's +where that feller's credit comes in, you see; and that's where mine comes +in. I don't claim no great things--I don't reckon I could 'a' done it +again--but I done it that time; that's all I claim. And I hadn't no more +idea I could do such a thing, and warn't any more thinking about it or +trying to, than you be this minute. Why, I was just as ca'm, a body +couldn't be any ca'mer, and yet, all of a sudden, out it come. I've often +thought of that time, and I can remember just the way everything looked, +same as if it was only last week. I can see it all: beautiful rolling +country with woods and fields and lakes for hundreds and hundreds of +miles all around, and towns and villages scattered everywheres under us, +here and there and yonder; and the professor mooning over a chart on his +little table, and Tom's cap flopping in the rigging where it was hung up +to dry. And one thing in particular was a bird right alongside, not ten +foot off, going our way and trying to keep up, but losing ground all the +time; and a railroad train doing the same thing down there, sliding among +the trees and farms, and pouring out a long cloud of black smoke and now +and then a little puff of white; and when the white was gone so long you +had almost forgot it, you would hear a little faint toot, and that was +the whistle. And we left the bird and the train both behind, 'WAY behind, +and done it easy, too. + +But Tom he was huffy, and said me and Jim was a couple of ignorant +blatherskites, and then he says: + +"Suppose there's a brown calf and a big brown dog, and an artist is +making a picture of them. What is the MAIN thing that that artist has got +to do? He has got to paint them so you can tell them apart the minute you +look at them, hain't he? Of course. Well, then, do you want him to go and +paint BOTH of them brown? Certainly you don't. He paints one of them +blue, and then you can't make no mistake. It's just the same with the +maps. That's why they make every State a different color; it ain't to +deceive you, it's to keep you from deceiving yourself." + +But I couldn't see no argument about that, and neither could Jim. Jim +shook his head, and says: + +"Why, Mars Tom, if you knowed what chuckle-heads dem painters is, you'd +wait a long time before you'd fetch one er DEM in to back up a fac'. I's +gwine to tell you, den you kin see for you'self. I see one of 'em +a-paintin' away, one day, down in ole Hank Wilson's back lot, en I went +down to see, en he was paintin' dat old brindle cow wid de near horn +gone--you knows de one I means. En I ast him what he's paintin' her for, +en he say when he git her painted, de picture's wuth a hundred dollars. +Mars Tom, he could a got de cow fer fifteen, en I tole him so. Well, sah, +if you'll b'lieve me, he jes' shuck his head, dat painter did, en went on +a-dobbin'. Bless you, Mars Tom, DEY don't know nothin'." + +Tom lost his temper. I notice a person 'most always does that's got laid +out in an argument. He told us to shut up, and maybe we'd feel better. +Then he see a town clock away off down yonder, and he took up the glass +and looked at it, and then looked at his silver turnip, and then at the +clock, and then at the turnip again, and says: + +"That's funny! That clock's near about an hour fast." + +So he put up his turnip. Then he see another clock, and took a look, and +it was an hour fast too. That puzzled him. + +"That's a mighty curious thing," he says. "I don't understand it." + +Then he took the glass and hunted up another clock, and sure enough it +was an hour fast too. Then his eyes began to spread and his breath to +come out kinder gaspy like, and he says: + +"Ger-reat Scott, it's the LONGITUDE!" + +I says, considerably scared: + +"Well, what's been and gone and happened now?" + +"Why, the thing that's happened is that this old bladder has slid over +Illinois and Indiana and Ohio like nothing, and this is the east end of +Pennsylvania or New York, or somewheres around there." + +"Tom Sawyer, you don't mean it!" + +"Yes, I do, and it's dead sure. We've covered about fifteen degrees of +longitude since we left St. Louis yesterday afternoon, and them clocks +are right. We've come close on to eight hundred miles." + +I didn't believe it, but it made the cold streaks trickle down my back +just the same. In my experience I knowed it wouldn't take much short of +two weeks to do it down the Mississippi on a raft. Jim was working his +mind and studying. Pretty soon he says: + +"Mars Tom, did you say dem clocks uz right?" + +"Yes, they're right." + +"Ain't yo' watch right, too?" + +"She's right for St. Louis, but she's an hour wrong for here." + +"Mars Tom, is you tryin' to let on dat de time ain't de SAME +everywheres?" + +"No, it ain't the same everywheres, by a long shot." + +Jim looked distressed, and says: + +"It grieves me to hear you talk like dat, Mars Tom; I's right down +ashamed to hear you talk like dat, arter de way you's been raised. +Yassir, it'd break yo' Aunt Polly's heart to hear you." + +Tom was astonished. He looked Jim over wondering, and didn't say nothing, +and Jim went on: + +"Mars Tom, who put de people out yonder in St. Louis? De Lord done it. +Who put de people here whar we is? De Lord done it. Ain' dey bofe his +children? 'Cose dey is. WELL, den! is he gwine to SCRIMINATE 'twixt 'em?" + +"Scriminate! I never heard such ignorance. There ain't no discriminating +about it. When he makes you and some more of his children black, and +makes the rest of us white, what do you call that?" + +Jim see the p'int. He was stuck. He couldn't answer. Tom says: + +"He does discriminate, you see, when he wants to; but this case HERE +ain't no discrimination of his, it's man's. The Lord made the day, and he +made the night; but he didn't invent the hours, and he didn't distribute +them around. Man did that." + +"Mars Tom, is dat so? Man done it?" + +"Certainly." + +"Who tole him he could?" + +"Nobody. He never asked." + +Jim studied a minute, and says: + +"Well, dat do beat me. I wouldn't 'a' tuck no sich resk. But some people +ain't scared o' nothin'. Dey bangs right ahead; DEY don't care what +happens. So den dey's allays an hour's diff'unce everywhah, Mars Tom?" + +"An hour? No! It's four minutes difference for every degree of longitude, +you know. Fifteen of 'em's an hour, thirty of 'em's two hours, and so on. +When it's one clock Tuesday morning in England, it's eight o'clock the +night before in New York." + +Jim moved a little way along the locker, and you could see he was +insulted. He kept shaking his head and muttering, and so I slid along to +him and patted him on the leg, and petted him up, and got him over the +worst of his feelings, and then he says: + +"Mars Tom talkin' sich talk as dat! Choosday in one place en Monday in +t'other, bofe in the same day! Huck, dis ain't no place to joke--up here +whah we is. Two days in one day! How you gwine to get two days inter one +day? Can't git two hours inter one hour, kin you? Can't git two niggers +inter one nigger skin, kin you? Can't git two gallons of whisky inter a +one-gallon jug, kin you? No, sir, 'twould strain de jug. Yes, en even den +you couldn't, I don't believe. Why, looky here, Huck, s'posen de Choosday +was New Year's--now den! is you gwine to tell me it's dis year in one +place en las' year in t'other, bofe in de identical same minute? It's de +beatenest rubbage! I can't stan' it--I can't stan' to hear tell 'bout +it." Then he begun to shiver and turn gray, and Tom says: + +"NOW what's the matter? What's the trouble?" + +Jim could hardly speak, but he says: + +"Mars Tom, you ain't jokin', en it's SO?" + +"No, I'm not, and it is so." + +Jim shivered again, and says: + +"Den dat Monday could be de las' day, en dey wouldn't be no las' day in +England, en de dead wouldn't be called. We mustn't go over dah, Mars Tom. +Please git him to turn back; I wants to be whah--" + +All of a sudden we see something, and all jumped up, and forgot +everything and begun to gaze. Tom says: + +"Ain't that the--" He catched his breath, then says: "It IS, sure as you +live! It's the ocean!" + +That made me and Jim catch our breath, too. Then we all stood petrified +but happy, for none of us had ever seen an ocean, or ever expected to. +Tom kept muttering: + +"Atlantic Ocean--Atlantic. Land, don't it sound great! And that's IT--and +WE are looking at it--we! Why, it's just too splendid to believe!" + +Then we see a big bank of black smoke; and when we got nearer, it was a +city--and a monster she was, too, with a thick fringe of ships around one +edge; and we wondered if it was New York, and begun to jaw and dispute +about it, and, first we knowed, it slid from under us and went flying +behind, and here we was, out over the very ocean itself, and going like a +cyclone. Then we woke up, I tell you! + +We made a break aft and raised a wail, and begun to beg the professor to +turn back and land us, but he jerked out his pistol and motioned us back, +and we went, but nobody will ever know how bad we felt. + +The land was gone, all but a little streak, like a snake, away off on the +edge of the water, and down under us was just ocean, ocean, +ocean--millions of miles of it, heaving and pitching and squirming, and +white sprays blowing from the wave-tops, and only a few ships in sight, +wallowing around and laying over, first on one side and then on t'other, +and sticking their bows under and then their sterns; and before long +there warn't no ships at all, and we had the sky and the whole ocean all +to ourselves, and the roomiest place I ever see and the lonesomest. + + + + CHAPTER IV. STORM + +AND it got lonesomer and lonesomer. There was the big sky up there, empty +and awful deep; and the ocean down there without a thing on it but just +the waves. All around us was a ring, where the sky and the water come +together; yes, a monstrous big ring it was, and we right in the dead +center of it--plumb in the center. We was racing along like a prairie +fire, but it never made any difference, we couldn't seem to git past that +center no way. I couldn't see that we ever gained an inch on that ring. +It made a body feel creepy, it was so curious and unaccountable. + +Well, everything was so awful still that we got to talking in a very low +voice, and kept on getting creepier and lonesomer and less and less +talky, till at last the talk ran dry altogether, and we just set there +and "thunk," as Jim calls it, and never said a word the longest time. + +The professor never stirred till the sun was overhead, then he stood up +and put a kind of triangle to his eye, and Tom said it was a sextant and +he was taking the sun to see whereabouts the balloon was. Then he +ciphered a little and looked in a book, and then he begun to carry on +again. He said lots of wild things, and, among others, he said he would +keep up this hundred-mile gait till the middle of to-morrow afternoon, +and then he'd land in London. + +We said we would be humbly thankful. + +He was turning away, but he whirled around when we said that, and give us +a long look of his blackest kind--one of the maliciousest and +suspiciousest looks I ever see. Then he says: + +"You want to leave me. Don't try to deny it." + +We didn't know what to say, so we held in and didn't say nothing at all. + +He went aft and set down, but he couldn't seem to git that thing out of +his mind. Every now and then he would rip out something about it, and try +to make us answer him, but we dasn't. + +It got lonesomer and lonesomer right along, and it did seem to me I +couldn't stand it. It was still worse when night begun to come on. By and +by Tom pinched me and whispers: + +"Look!" + +I took a glance aft, and see the professor taking a whet out of a bottle. +I didn't like the looks of that. By and by he took another drink, and +pretty soon he begun to sing. It was dark now, and getting black and +stormy. He went on singing, wilder and wilder, and the thunder begun to +mutter, and the wind to wheeze and moan among the ropes, and altogether +it was awful. It got so black we couldn't see him any more, and wished we +couldn't hear him, but we could. Then he got still; but he warn't still +ten minutes till we got suspicious, and wished he would start up his +noise again, so we could tell where he was. By and by there was a flash +of lightning, and we see him start to get up, but he staggered and fell +down. We heard him scream out in the dark: + +"They don't want to go to England. All right, I'll change the course. +They want to leave me. I know they do. Well, they shall--and NOW!" + +I 'most died when he said that. Then he was still again--still so long I +couldn't bear it, and it did seem to me the lightning wouldn't EVER come +again. But at last there was a blessed flash, and there he was, on his +hands and knees crawling, and not four feet from us. My, but his eyes was +terrible! He made a lunge for Tom, and says, "Overboard YOU go!" but it +was already pitch-dark again, and I couldn't see whether he got him or +not, and Tom didn't make a sound. + +There was another long, horrible wait; then there was a flash, and I see +Tom's head sink down outside the boat and disappear. He was on the +rope-ladder that dangled down in the air from the gunnel. The professor +let off a shout and jumped for him, and straight off it was pitch-dark +again, and Jim groaned out, "Po' Mars Tom, he's a goner!" and made a jump +for the professor, but the professor warn't there. + +Then we heard a couple of terrible screams, and then another not so loud, +and then another that was 'way below, and you could only JUST hear it; +and I heard Jim say, "Po' Mars Tom!" + +Then it was awful still, and I reckon a person could 'a' counted four +thousand before the next flash come. When it come I see Jim on his knees, +with his arms on the locker and his face buried in them, and he was +crying. Before I could look over the edge it was all dark again, and I +was glad, because I didn't want to see. But when the next flash come, I +was watching, and down there I see somebody a-swinging in the wind on the +ladder, and it was Tom! + +"Come up!" I shouts; "come up, Tom!" + +His voice was so weak, and the wind roared so, I couldn't make out what +he said, but I thought he asked was the professor up there. I shouts: + +"No, he's down in the ocean! Come up! Can we help you?" + +Of course, all this in the dark. + +"Huck, who is you hollerin' at?" + +"I'm hollerin' at Tom." + +"Oh, Huck, how kin you act so, when you know po' Mars Tom--" Then he let +off an awful scream, and flung his head and his arms back and let off +another one, because there was a white glare just then, and he had raised +up his face just in time to see Tom's, as white as snow, rise above the +gunnel and look him right in the eye. He thought it was Tom's ghost, you +see. + +Tom clumb aboard, and when Jim found it WAS him, and not his ghost, he +hugged him, and called him all sorts of loving names, and carried on like +he was gone crazy, he was so glad. Says I: + +"What did you wait for, Tom? Why didn't you come up at first?" + +"I dasn't, Huck. I knowed somebody plunged down past me, but I didn't +know who it was in the dark. It could 'a' been you, it could 'a' been +Jim." + +That was the way with Tom Sawyer--always sound. He warn't coming up till +he knowed where the professor was. + +The storm let go about this time with all its might; and it was dreadful +the way the thunder boomed and tore, and the lightning glared out, and +the wind sung and screamed in the rigging, and the rain come down. One +second you couldn't see your hand before you, and the next you could +count the threads in your coat-sleeve, and see a whole wide desert of +waves pitching and tossing through a kind of veil of rain. A storm like +that is the loveliest thing there is, but it ain't at its best when you +are up in the sky and lost, and it's wet and lonesome, and there's just +been a death in the family. + +We set there huddled up in the bow, and talked low about the poor +professor; and everybody was sorry for him, and sorry the world had made +fun of him and treated him so harsh, when he was doing the best he could, +and hadn't a friend nor nobody to encourage him and keep him from +brooding his mind away and going deranged. There was plenty of clothes +and blankets and everything at the other end, but we thought we'd ruther +take the rain than go meddling back there. + + + + CHAPTER V. LAND + +WE tried to make some plans, but we couldn't come to no agreement. Me and +Jim was for turning around and going back home, but Tom allowed that by +the time daylight come, so we could see our way, we would be so far +toward England that we might as well go there, and come back in a ship, +and have the glory of saying we done it. + +About midnight the storm quit and the moon come out and lit up the ocean, +and we begun to feel comfortable and drowsy; so we stretched out on the +lockers and went to sleep, and never woke up again till sun-up. The sea +was sparkling like di'monds, and it was nice weather, and pretty soon our +things was all dry again. + +We went aft to find some breakfast, and the first thing we noticed was +that there was a dim light burning in a compass back there under a hood. +Then Tom was disturbed. He says: + +"You know what that means, easy enough. It means that somebody has got to +stay on watch and steer this thing the same as he would a ship, or she'll +wander around and go wherever the wind wants her to." + +"Well," I says, "what's she been doing since--er--since we had the +accident?" + +"Wandering," he says, kinder troubled--"wandering, without any doubt. +She's in a wind now that's blowing her south of east. We don't know how +long that's been going on, either." + +So then he p'inted her east, and said he would hold her there till we +rousted out the breakfast. The professor had laid in everything a body +could want; he couldn't 'a' been better fixed. There wasn't no milk for +the coffee, but there was water, and everything else you could want, and +a charcoal stove and the fixings for it, and pipes and cigars and +matches; and wine and liquor, which warn't in our line; and books, and +maps, and charts, and an accordion; and furs, and blankets, and no end of +rubbish, like brass beads and brass jewelry, which Tom said was a sure +sign that he had an idea of visiting among savages. There was money, too. +Yes, the professor was well enough fixed. + +After breakfast Tom learned me and Jim how to steer, and divided us all +up into four-hour watches, turn and turn about; and when his watch was +out I took his place, and he got out the professor's papers and pens and +wrote a letter home to his aunt Polly, telling her everything that had +happened to us, and dated it "IN THE WELKIN, APPROACHING ENGLAND," and +folded it together and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and directed it, +and wrote above the direction, in big writing, "FROM TOM SAWYER, THE +ERRONORT," and said it would stump old Nat Parsons, the postmaster, when +it come along in the mail. I says: + +"Tom Sawyer, this ain't no welkin, it's a balloon." + +"Well, now, who SAID it was a welkin, smarty?" + +"You've wrote it on the letter, anyway." + +"What of it? That don't mean that the balloon's the welkin." + +"Oh, I thought it did. Well, then, what is a welkin?" + +I see in a minute he was stuck. He raked and scraped around in his mind, +but he couldn't find nothing, so he had to say: + +"I don't know, and nobody don't know. It's just a word, and it's a mighty +good word, too. There ain't many that lays over it. I don't believe +there's ANY that does." + +"Shucks!" I says. "But what does it MEAN?--that's the p'int." + +"I don't know what it means, I tell you. It's a word that people uses +for--for--well, it's ornamental. They don't put ruffles on a shirt to +keep a person warm, do they?" + +"Course they don't." + +"But they put them ON, don't they?" + +"Yes." + +"All right, then; that letter I wrote is a shirt, and the welkin's the +ruffle on it." + +I judged that that would gravel Jim, and it did. + +"Now, Mars Tom, it ain't no use to talk like dat; en, moreover, it's +sinful. You knows a letter ain't no shirt, en dey ain't no ruffles on it, +nuther. Dey ain't no place to put 'em on; you can't put em on, and dey +wouldn't stay ef you did." + +"Oh DO shut up, and wait till something's started that you know something +about." + +"Why, Mars Tom, sholy you can't mean to say I don't know about shirts, +when, goodness knows, I's toted home de washin' ever sence--" + +"I tell you, this hasn't got anything to do with shirts. I only--" + +"Why, Mars Tom, you said yo'self dat a letter--" + +"Do you want to drive me crazy? Keep still. I only used it as a +metaphor." + +That word kinder bricked us up for a minute. Then Jim says--rather timid, +because he see Tom was getting pretty tetchy: + +"Mars Tom, what is a metaphor?" + +"A metaphor's a--well, it's a--a--a metaphor's an illustration." He see +THAT didn't git home, so he tried again. "When I say birds of a feather +flocks together, it's a metaphorical way of saying--" + +"But dey DON'T, Mars Tom. No, sir, 'deed dey don't. Dey ain't no feathers +dat's more alike den a bluebird en a jaybird, but ef you waits till you +catches dem birds together, you'll--" + +"Oh, give us a rest! You can't get the simplest little thing through your +thick skull. Now don't bother me any more." + +Jim was satisfied to stop. He was dreadful pleased with himself for +catching Tom out. The minute Tom begun to talk about birds I judged he +was a goner, because Jim knowed more about birds than both of us put +together. You see, he had killed hundreds and hundreds of them, and +that's the way to find out about birds. That's the way people does that +writes books about birds, and loves them so that they'll go hungry and +tired and take any amount of trouble to find a new bird and kill it. +Their name is ornithologers, and I could have been an ornithologer +myself, because I always loved birds and creatures; and I started out to +learn how to be one, and I see a bird setting on a limb of a high tree, +singing with its head tilted back and its mouth open, and before I +thought I fired, and his song stopped and he fell straight down from the +limb, all limp like a rag, and I run and picked him up and he was dead, +and his body was warm in my hand, and his head rolled about this way and +that, like his neck was broke, and there was a little white skin over his +eyes, and one little drop of blood on the side of his head; and, laws! I +couldn't see nothing more for the tears; and I hain't never murdered no +creature since that warn't doing me no harm, and I ain't going to. + +But I was aggravated about that welkin. I wanted to know. I got the +subject up again, and then Tom explained, the best he could. He said when +a person made a big speech the newspapers said the shouts of the people +made the welkin ring. He said they always said that, but none of them +ever told what it was, so he allowed it just meant outdoors and up high. +Well, that seemed sensible enough, so I was satisfied, and said so. That +pleased Tom and put him in a good humor again, and he says: + +"Well, it's all right, then; and we'll let bygones be bygones. I don't +know for certain what a welkin is, but when we land in London we'll make +it ring, anyway, and don't you forget it." + +He said an erronort was a person who sailed around in balloons; and said +it was a mighty sight finer to be Tom Sawyer the Erronort than to be Tom +Sawyer the Traveler, and we would be heard of all round the world, if we +pulled through all right, and so he wouldn't give shucks to be a traveler +now. + +Toward the middle of the afternoon we got everything ready to land, and +we felt pretty good, too, and proud; and we kept watching with the +glasses, like Columbus discovering America. But we couldn't see nothing +but ocean. The afternoon wasted out and the sun shut down, and still +there warn't no land anywheres. We wondered what was the matter, but +reckoned it would come out all right, so we went on steering east, but +went up on a higher level so we wouldn't hit any steeples or mountains in +the dark. + +It was my watch till midnight, and then it was Jim's; but Tom stayed up, +because he said ship captains done that when they was making the land, +and didn't stand no regular watch. + +Well, when daylight come, Jim give a shout, and we jumped up and looked +over, and there was the land sure enough--land all around, as far as you +could see, and perfectly level and yaller. We didn't know how long we'd +been over it. There warn't no trees, nor hills, nor rocks, nor towns, and +Tom and Jim had took it for the sea. They took it for the sea in a dead +ca'm; but we was so high up, anyway, that if it had been the sea and +rough, it would 'a' looked smooth, all the same, in the night, that way. + +We was all in a powerful excitement now, and grabbed the glasses and +hunted everywheres for London, but couldn't find hair nor hide of it, nor +any other settlement--nor any sign of a lake or a river, either. Tom was +clean beat. He said it warn't his notion of England; he thought England +looked like America, and always had that idea. So he said we better have +breakfast, and then drop down and inquire the quickest way to London. We +cut the breakfast pretty short, we was so impatient. As we slanted along +down, the weather began to moderate, and pretty soon we shed our furs. +But it kept ON moderating, and in a precious little while it was 'most +too moderate. We was close down now, and just blistering! + +We settled down to within thirty foot of the land--that is, it was land +if sand is land; for this wasn't anything but pure sand. Tom and me clumb +down the ladder and took a run to stretch our legs, and it felt amazing +good--that is, the stretching did, but the sand scorched our feet like +hot embers. Next, we see somebody coming, and started to meet him; but we +heard Jim shout, and looked around and he was fairly dancing, and making +signs, and yelling. We couldn't make out what he said, but we was scared +anyway, and begun to heel it back to the balloon. When we got close +enough, we understood the words, and they made me sick: + +"Run! Run fo' yo' life! Hit's a lion; I kin see him thoo de glass! Run, +boys; do please heel it de bes' you kin. He's bu'sted outen de menagerie, +en dey ain't nobody to stop him!" + +It made Tom fly, but it took the stiffening all out of my legs. I could +only just gasp along the way you do in a dream when there's a ghost +gaining on you. + +Tom got to the ladder and shinned up it a piece and waited for me; and as +soon as I got a foothold on it he shouted to Jim to soar away. But Jim +had clean lost his head, and said he had forgot how. So Tom shinned along +up and told me to follow; but the lion was arriving, fetching a most +ghastly roar with every lope, and my legs shook so I dasn't try to take +one of them out of the rounds for fear the other one would give way under +me. + +But Tom was aboard by this time, and he started the balloon up a little, +and stopped it again as soon as the end of the ladder was ten or twelve +feet above ground. And there was the lion, a-ripping around under me, and +roaring and springing up in the air at the ladder, and only missing it +about a quarter of an inch, it seemed to me. It was delicious to be out +of his reach, perfectly delicious, and made me feel good and thankful all +up one side; but I was hanging there helpless and couldn't climb, and +that made me feel perfectly wretched and miserable all down the other. It +is most seldom that a person feels so mixed like that; and it is not to +be recommended, either. + +Tom asked me what he'd better do, but I didn't know. He asked me if I +could hold on whilst he sailed away to a safe place and left the lion +behind. I said I could if he didn't go no higher than he was now; but if +he went higher I would lose my head and fall, sure. So he said, "Take a +good grip," and he started. + +"Don't go so fast," I shouted. "It makes my head swim." + +He had started like a lightning express. He slowed down, and we glided +over the sand slower, but still in a kind of sickening way; for it IS +uncomfortable to see things sliding and gliding under you like that, and +not a sound. + +But pretty soon there was plenty of sound, for the lion was catching up. +His noise fetched others. You could see them coming on the lope from +every direction, and pretty soon there was a couple of dozen of them +under me, jumping up at the ladder and snarling and snapping at each +other; and so we went skimming along over the sand, and these fellers +doing what they could to help us to not forgit the occasion; and then +some other beasts come, without an invite, and they started a regular +riot down there. + +We see this plan was a mistake. We couldn't ever git away from them at +this gait, and I couldn't hold on forever. So Tom took a think, and +struck another idea. That was, to kill a lion with the pepper-box +revolver, and then sail away while the others stopped to fight over the +carcass. So he stopped the balloon still, and done it, and then we sailed +off while the fuss was going on, and come down a quarter of a mile off, +and they helped me aboard; but by the time we was out of reach again, +that gang was on hand once more. And when they see we was really gone and +they couldn't get us, they sat down on their hams and looked up at us so +kind of disappointed that it was as much as a person could do not to see +THEIR side of the matter. + + + + CHAPTER VI. IT'S A CARAVAN + +I WAS so weak that the only thing I wanted was a chance to lay down, so I +made straight for my locker-bunk, and stretched myself out there. But a +body couldn't get back his strength in no such oven as that, so Tom give +the command to soar, and Jim started her aloft. + +We had to go up a mile before we struck comfortable weather where it was +breezy and pleasant and just right, and pretty soon I was all straight +again. Tom had been setting quiet and thinking; but now he jumps up and +says: + +"I bet you a thousand to one I know where we are. We're in the Great +Sahara, as sure as guns!" + +He was so excited he couldn't hold still; but I wasn't. I says: + +"Well, then, where's the Great Sahara? In England or in Scotland?" + +"'Tain't in either; it's in Africa." + +Jim's eyes bugged out, and he begun to stare down with no end of +interest, because that was where his originals come from; but I didn't +more than half believe it. I couldn't, you know; it seemed too awful far +away for us to have traveled. + +But Tom was full of his discovery, as he called it, and said the lions +and the sand meant the Great Desert, sure. He said he could 'a' found +out, before we sighted land, that we was crowding the land somewheres, if +he had thought of one thing; and when we asked him what, he said: + +"These clocks. They're chronometers. You always read about them in sea +voyages. One of them is keeping Grinnage time, and the other is keeping +St. Louis time, like my watch. When we left St. Louis it was four in the +afternoon by my watch and this clock, and it was ten at night by this +Grinnage clock. Well, at this time of the year the sun sets at about +seven o'clock. Now I noticed the time yesterday evening when the sun went +down, and it was half-past five o'clock by the Grinnage clock, and half +past 11 A.M. by my watch and the other clock. You see, the sun rose and +set by my watch in St. Louis, and the Grinnage clock was six hours fast; +but we've come so far east that it comes within less than half an hour of +setting by the Grinnage clock now, and I'm away out--more than four +hours and a half out. You see, that meant that we was closing up on the +longitude of Ireland, and would strike it before long if we was p'inted +right--which we wasn't. No, sir, we've been a-wandering--wandering 'way +down south of east, and it's my opinion we are in Africa. Look at this +map. You see how the shoulder of Africa sticks out to the west. Think how +fast we've traveled; if we had gone straight east we would be long past +England by this time. You watch for noon, all of you, and we'll stand up, +and when we can't cast a shadow we'll find that this Grinnage clock is +coming mighty close to marking twelve. Yes, sir, I think we're in Africa; +and it's just bully." + +Jim was gazing down with the glass. He shook his head and says: + +"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake som'er's, hain't seen no niggers +yit." + +"That's nothing; they don't live in the desert. What is that, 'way off +yonder? Gimme a glass." + +He took a long look, and said it was like a black string stretched across +the sand, but he couldn't guess what it was. + +"Well," I says, "I reckon maybe you've got a chance now to find out +whereabouts this balloon is, because as like as not that is one of these +lines here, that's on the map, that you call meridians of longitude, and +we can drop down and look at its number, and--" + +"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, I never see such a lunkhead as you. Did you +s'pose there's meridians of longitude on the EARTH?" + +"Tom Sawyer, they're set down on the map, and you know it perfectly well, +and here they are, and you can see for yourself." + +"Of course they're on the map, but that's nothing; there ain't any on the +GROUND." + +"Tom, do you know that to be so?" + +"Certainly I do." + +"Well, then, that map's a liar again. I never see such a liar as that +map." + +He fired up at that, and I was ready for him, and Jim was warming his +opinion, too, and next minute we'd 'a' broke loose on another argument, +if Tom hadn't dropped the glass and begun to clap his hands like a maniac +and sing out: + +"Camels!--Camels!" + +So I grabbed a glass and Jim, too, and took a look, but I was +disappointed, and says: + +"Camels your granny; they're spiders." + +"Spiders in a desert, you shad? Spiders walking in a procession? You +don't ever reflect, Huck Finn, and I reckon you really haven't got +anything to reflect WITH. Don't you know we're as much as a mile up in +the air, and that that string of crawlers is two or three miles away? +Spiders, good land! Spiders as big as a cow? Perhaps you'd like to go +down and milk one of 'em. But they're camels, just the same. It's a +caravan, that's what it is, and it's a mile long." + +"Well, then, let's go down and look at it. I don't believe in it, and +ain't going to till I see it and know it." + +"All right," he says, and give the command: + +"Lower away." + +As we come slanting down into the hot weather, we could see that it was +camels, sure enough, plodding along, an everlasting string of them, with +bales strapped to them, and several hundred men in long white robes, and +a thing like a shawl bound over their heads and hanging down with tassels +and fringes; and some of the men had long guns and some hadn't, and some +was riding and some was walking. And the weather--well, it was just +roasting. And how slow they did creep along! We swooped down now, all of +a sudden, and stopped about a hundred yards over their heads. + +The men all set up a yell, and some of them fell flat on their stomachs, +some begun to fire their guns at us, and the rest broke and scampered +every which way, and so did the camels. + +We see that we was making trouble, so we went up again about a mile, to +the cool weather, and watched them from there. It took them an hour to +get together and form the procession again; then they started along, but +we could see by the glasses that they wasn't paying much attention to +anything but us. We poked along, looking down at them with the glasses, +and by and by we see a big sand mound, and something like people the +other side of it, and there was something like a man laying on top of the +mound that raised his head up every now and then, and seemed to be +watching the caravan or us, we didn't know which. As the caravan got +nearer, he sneaked down on the other side and rushed to the other men and +horses--for that is what they was--and we see them mount in a hurry; and +next, here they come, like a house afire, some with lances and some with +long guns, and all of them yelling the best they could. + +They come a-tearing down on to the caravan, and the next minute both +sides crashed together and was all mixed up, and there was such another +popping of guns as you never heard, and the air got so full of smoke you +could only catch glimpses of them struggling together. There must 'a' +been six hundred men in that battle, and it was terrible to see. Then +they broke up into gangs and groups, fighting tooth and nail, and +scurrying and scampering around, and laying into each other like +everything; and whenever the smoke cleared a little you could see dead +and wounded people and camels scattered far and wide and all about, and +camels racing off in every direction. + +At last the robbers see they couldn't win, so their chief sounded a +signal, and all that was left of them broke away and went scampering +across the plain. The last man to go snatched up a child and carried it +off in front of him on his horse, and a woman run screaming and begging +after him, and followed him away off across the plain till she was +separated a long ways from her people; but it warn't no use, and she had +to give it up, and we see her sink down on the sand and cover her face +with her hands. Then Tom took the hellum, and started for that yahoo, and +we come a-whizzing down and made a swoop, and knocked him out of the +saddle, child and all; and he was jarred considerable, but the child +wasn't hurt, but laid there working its hands and legs in the air like a +tumble-bug that's on its back and can't turn over. The man went +staggering off to overtake his horse, and didn't know what had hit him, +for we was three or four hundred yards up in the air by this time. + +We judged the woman would go and get the child now; but she didn't. We +could see her, through the glass, still setting there, with her head +bowed down on her knees; so of course she hadn't seen the performance, +and thought her child was clean gone with the man. She was nearly a half +a mile from her people, so we thought we might go down to the child, +which was about a quarter of a mile beyond her, and snake it to her +before the caravan people could git to us to do us any harm; and besides, +we reckoned they had enough business on their hands for one while, +anyway, with the wounded. We thought we'd chance it, and we did. We +swooped down and stopped, and Jim shinned down the ladder and fetched up +the kid, which was a nice fat little thing, and in a noble good humor, +too, considering it was just out of a battle and been tumbled off of a +horse; and then we started for the mother, and stopped back of her and +tolerable near by, and Jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when he +was close back of her the child goo-goo'd, the way a child does, and she +heard it, and whirled and fetched a shriek of joy, and made a jump for +the kid and snatched it and hugged it, and dropped it and hugged Jim, and +then snatched off a gold chain and hung it around Jim's neck, and hugged +him again, and jerked up the child again, a-sobbing and glorifying all +the time; and Jim he shoved for the ladder and up it, and in a minute we +was back up in the sky and the woman was staring up, with the back of her +head between her shoulders and the child with its arms locked around her +neck. And there she stood, as long as we was in sight a-sailing away in +the sky. + + + + CHAPTER VII. TOM RESPECTS THE FLEA + +"NOON!" says Tom, and so it was. His shadder was just a blot around his +feet. We looked, and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve the +difference didn't amount to nothing. So Tom said London was right north +of us or right south of us, one or t'other, and he reckoned by the +weather and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many miles +north, too; as many as from New York to the city of Mexico, he guessed. + +Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the +world, unless it might be some kinds of birds--a wild pigeon, maybe, or a +railroad. + +But Tom said he had read about railroads in England going nearly a +hundred miles an hour for a little ways, and there never was a bird in +the world that could do that--except one, and that was a flea. + +"A flea? Why, Mars Tom, in de fust place he ain't a bird, strickly +speakin'--" + +"He ain't a bird, eh? Well, then, what is he?" + +"I don't rightly know, Mars Tom, but I speck he's only jist a' animal. +No, I reckon dat won't do, nuther, he ain't big enough for a' animal. He +mus' be a bug. Yassir, dat's what he is, he's a bug." + +"I bet he ain't, but let it go. What's your second place?" + +"Well, in de second place, birds is creturs dat goes a long ways, but a +flea don't." + +"He don't, don't he? Come, now, what IS a long distance, if you know?" + +"Why, it's miles, and lots of 'em--anybody knows dat." + +"Can't a man walk miles?" + +"Yassir, he kin." + +"As many as a railroad?" + +"Yassir, if you give him time." + +"Can't a flea?" + +"Well--I s'pose so--ef you gives him heaps of time." + +"Now you begin to see, don't you, that DISTANCE ain't the thing to judge +by, at all; it's the time it takes to go the distance IN that COUNTS, +ain't it?" + +"Well, hit do look sorter so, but I wouldn't 'a' b'lieved it, Mars Tom." + +"It's a matter of PROPORTION, that's what it is; and when you come to +gauge a thing's speed by its size, where's your bird and your man and +your railroad, alongside of a flea? The fastest man can't run more than +about ten miles in an hour--not much over ten thousand times his own +length. But all the books says any common ordinary third-class flea can +jump a hundred and fifty times his own length; yes, and he can make five +jumps a second too--seven hundred and fifty times his own length, in one +little second--for he don't fool away any time stopping and starting--he +does them both at the same time; you'll see, if you try to put your +finger on him. Now that's a common, ordinary, third-class flea's gait; +but you take an Eyetalian FIRST-class, that's been the pet of the +nobility all his life, and hasn't ever knowed what want or sickness or +exposure was, and he can jump more than three hundred times his own +length, and keep it up all day, five such jumps every second, which is +fifteen hundred times his own length. Well, suppose a man could go +fifteen hundred times his own length in a second--say, a mile and a half. +It's ninety miles a minute; it's considerable more than five thousand +miles an hour. Where's your man NOW?--yes, and your bird, and your +railroad, and your balloon? Laws, they don't amount to shucks 'longside +of a flea. A flea is just a comet b'iled down small." + +Jim was a good deal astonished, and so was I. Jim said: + +"Is dem figgers jist edjackly true, en no jokin' en no lies, Mars Tom?" + +"Yes, they are; they're perfectly true." + +"Well, den, honey, a body's got to respec' a flea. I ain't had no respec' +for um befo', sca'sely, but dey ain't no gittin' roun' it, dey do deserve +it, dat's certain." + +"Well, I bet they do. They've got ever so much more sense, and brains, +and brightness, in proportion to their size, than any other cretur in the +world. A person can learn them 'most anything; and they learn it quicker +than any other cretur, too. They've been learnt to haul little carriages +in harness, and go this way and that way and t'other way according to +their orders; yes, and to march and drill like soldiers, doing it as +exact, according to orders, as soldiers does it. They've been learnt to +do all sorts of hard and troublesome things. S'pose you could cultivate a +flea up to the size of a man, and keep his natural smartness a-growing +and a-growing right along up, bigger and bigger, and keener and keener, +in the same proportion--where'd the human race be, do you reckon? That +flea would be President of the United States, and you couldn't any more +prevent it than you can prevent lightning." + +"My lan', Mars Tom, I never knowed dey was so much TO de beas'. No, sir, +I never had no idea of it, and dat's de fac'." + +"There's more to him, by a long sight, than there is to any other cretur, +man or beast, in proportion to size. He's the interestingest of them all. +People have so much to say about an ant's strength, and an elephant's, +and a locomotive's. Shucks, they don't begin with a flea. He can lift two +or three hundred times his own weight. And none of them can come anywhere +near it. And, moreover, he has got notions of his own, and is very +particular, and you can't fool him; his instinct, or his judgment, or +whatever it is, is perfectly sound and clear, and don't ever make a +mistake. People think all humans are alike to a flea. It ain't so. +There's folks that he won't go near, hungry or not hungry, and I'm one of +them. I've never had one of them on me in my life." + +"Mars Tom!" + +"It's so; I ain't joking." + +"Well, sah, I hain't ever heard de likes o' dat befo'." Jim couldn't +believe it, and I couldn't; so we had to drop down to the sand and git a +supply and see. Tom was right. They went for me and Jim by the thousand, +but not a one of them lit on Tom. There warn't no explaining it, but +there it was and there warn't no getting around it. He said it had always +been just so, and he'd just as soon be where there was a million of them +as not; they'd never touch him nor bother him. + +We went up to the cold weather to freeze 'em out, and stayed a little +spell, and then come back to the comfortable weather and went lazying +along twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, the way we'd been doing for +the last few hours. The reason was, that the longer we was in that +solemn, peaceful desert, the more the hurry and fuss got kind of soothed +down in us, and the more happier and contented and satisfied we got to +feeling, and the more we got to liking the desert, and then loving it. So +we had cramped the speed down, as I was saying, and was having a most +noble good lazy time, sometimes watching through the glasses, sometimes +stretched out on the lockers reading, sometimes taking a nap. + +It didn't seem like we was the same lot that was in such a state to find +land and git ashore, but it was. But we had got over that--clean over it. +We was used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and didn't want +to be anywheres else. Why, it seemed just like home; it 'most seemed as +if I had been born and raised in it, and Jim and Tom said the same. And +always I had had hateful people around me, a-nagging at me, and pestering +of me, and scolding, and finding fault, and fussing and bothering, and +sticking to me, and keeping after me, and making me do this, and making +me do that and t'other, and always selecting out the things I didn't want +to do, and then giving me Sam Hill because I shirked and done something +else, and just aggravating the life out of a body all the time; but up +here in the sky it was so still and sunshiny and lovely, and plenty to +eat, and plenty of sleep, and strange things to see, and no nagging and +no pestering, and no good people, and just holiday all the time. Land, I +warn't in no hurry to git out and buck at civilization again. Now, one of +the worst things about civilization is, that anybody that gits a letter +with trouble in it comes and tells you all about it and makes you feel +bad, and the newspapers fetches you the troubles of everybody all over +the world, and keeps you downhearted and dismal 'most all the time, and +it's such a heavy load for a person. I hate them newspapers; and I hate +letters; and if I had my way I wouldn't allow nobody to load his troubles +on to other folks he ain't acquainted with, on t'other side of the world, +that way. Well, up in a balloon there ain't any of that, and it's the +darlingest place there is. + +We had supper, and that night was one of the prettiest nights I ever see. +The moon made it just like daylight, only a heap softer; and once we see +a lion standing all alone by himself, just all alone on the earth, it +seemed like, and his shadder laid on the sand by him like a puddle of +ink. That's the kind of moonlight to have. + +Mainly we laid on our backs and talked; we didn't want to go to sleep. +Tom said we was right in the midst of the Arabian Nights now. He said it +was right along here that one of the cutest things in that book happened; +so we looked down and watched while he told about it, because there ain't +anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has +talked about. It was a tale about a camel-driver that had lost his camel, +and he come along in the desert and met a man, and says: + +"Have you run across a stray camel to-day?" + +And the man says: + +"Was he blind in his left eye?" + +"Yes." + +"Had he lost an upper front tooth?" + +"Yes." + +"Was his off hind leg lame?" + +"Yes." + +"Was he loaded with millet-seed on one side and honey on the other?" + +"Yes, but you needn't go into no more details--that's the one, and I'm +in a hurry. Where did you see him?" + +"I hain't seen him at all," the man says. + +"Hain't seen him at all? How can you describe him so close, then?" + +"Because when a person knows how to use his eyes, everything has got a +meaning to it; but most people's eyes ain't any good to them. I knowed a +camel had been along, because I seen his track. I knowed he was lame in +his off hind leg because he had favored that foot and trod light on it, +and his track showed it. I knowed he was blind on his left side because +he only nibbled the grass on the right side of the trail. I knowed he had +lost an upper front tooth because where he bit into the sod his +teeth-print showed it. The millet-seed sifted out on one side--the ants +told me that; the honey leaked out on the other--the flies told me that. +I know all about your camel, but I hain't seen him." + +Jim says: + +"Go on, Mars Tom, hit's a mighty good tale, and powerful interestin'." + +"That's all," Tom says. + +"ALL?" says Jim, astonished. "What 'come o' de camel?" + +"I don't know." + +"Mars Tom, don't de tale say?" + +"No." + +Jim puzzled a minute, then he says: + +"Well! Ef dat ain't de beatenes' tale ever I struck. Jist gits to de +place whah de intrust is gittin' red-hot, en down she breaks. Why, Mars +Tom, dey ain't no SENSE in a tale dat acts like dat. Hain't you got no +IDEA whether de man got de camel back er not?" + +"No, I haven't." + +I see myself there warn't no sense in the tale, to chop square off that +way before it come to anything, but I warn't going to say so, because I +could see Tom was souring up pretty fast over the way it flatted out and +the way Jim had popped on to the weak place in it, and I don't think it's +fair for everybody to pile on to a feller when he's down. But Tom he +whirls on me and says: + +"What do YOU think of the tale?" + +Of course, then, I had to come out and make a clean breast and say it did +seem to me, too, same as it did to Jim, that as long as the tale stopped +square in the middle and never got to no place, it really warn't worth +the trouble of telling. + +Tom's chin dropped on his breast, and 'stead of being mad, as I reckoned +he'd be, to hear me scoff at his tale that way, he seemed to be only sad; +and he says: + +"Some people can see, and some can't--just as that man said. Let alone a +camel, if a cyclone had gone by, YOU duffers wouldn't 'a' noticed the +track." + +I don't know what he meant by that, and he didn't say; it was just one of +his irrulevances, I reckon--he was full of them, sometimes, when he was +in a close place and couldn't see no other way out--but I didn't mind. +We'd spotted the soft place in that tale sharp enough, he couldn't git +away from that little fact. It graveled him like the nation, too, I +reckon, much as he tried not to let on. + + + + CHAPTER VIII. THE DISAPPEARING LAKE + +WE had an early breakfast in the morning, and set looking down on the +desert, and the weather was ever so bammy and lovely, although we warn't +high up. You have to come down lower and lower after sundown in the +desert, because it cools off so fast; and so, by the time it is getting +toward dawn, you are skimming along only a little ways above the sand. + +We was watching the shadder of the balloon slide along the ground, and +now and then gazing off across the desert to see if anything was +stirring, and then down on the shadder again, when all of a sudden almost +right under us we see a lot of men and camels laying scattered about, +perfectly quiet, like they was asleep. + +We shut off the power, and backed up and stood over them, and then we see +that they was all dead. It give us the cold shivers. And it made us hush +down, too, and talk low, like people at a funeral. We dropped down slow +and stopped, and me and Tom clumb down and went among them. There was +men, and women, and children. They was dried by the sun and dark and +shriveled and leathery, like the pictures of mummies you see in books. +And yet they looked just as human, you wouldn't 'a' believed it; just +like they was asleep. + +Some of the people and animals was partly covered with sand, but most of +them not, for the sand was thin there, and the bed was gravel and hard. +Most of the clothes had rotted away; and when you took hold of a rag, it +tore with a touch, like spiderweb. Tom reckoned they had been laying +there for years. + +Some of the men had rusty guns by them, some had swords on and had shawl +belts with long, silver-mounted pistols stuck in them. All the camels had +their loads on yet, but the packs had busted or rotted and spilt the +freight out on the ground. We didn't reckon the swords was any good to +the dead people any more, so we took one apiece, and some pistols. We +took a small box, too, because it was so handsome and inlaid so fine; and +then we wanted to bury the people; but there warn't no way to do it that +we could think of, and nothing to do it with but sand, and that would +blow away again, of course. + +Then we mounted high and sailed away, and pretty soon that black spot on +the sand was out of sight, and we wouldn't ever see them poor people +again in this world. We wondered, and reasoned, and tried to guess how +they come to be there, and how it all happened to them, but we couldn't +make it out. First we thought maybe they got lost, and wandered around +and about till their food and water give out and they starved to death; +but Tom said no wild animals nor vultures hadn't meddled with them, and +so that guess wouldn't do. So at last we give it up, and judged we +wouldn't think about it no more, because it made us low-spirited. + +Then we opened the box, and it had gems and jewels in it, quite a pile, +and some little veils of the kind the dead women had on, with fringes +made out of curious gold money that we warn't acquainted with. We +wondered if we better go and try to find them again and give it back; but +Tom thought it over and said no, it was a country that was full of +robbers, and they would come and steal it; and then the sin would be on +us for putting the temptation in their way. So we went on; but I wished +we had took all they had, so there wouldn't 'a' been no temptation at all +left. + +We had had two hours of that blazing weather down there, and was dreadful +thirsty when we got aboard again. We went straight for the water, but it +was spoiled and bitter, besides being pretty near hot enough to scald +your mouth. We couldn't drink it. It was Mississippi river water, the +best in the world, and we stirred up the mud in it to see if that would +help, but no, the mud wasn't any better than the water. Well, we hadn't +been so very, very thirsty before, while we was interested in the lost +people, but we was now, and as soon as we found we couldn't have a drink, +we was more than thirty-five times as thirsty as we was a quarter of a +minute before. Why, in a little while we wanted to hold our mouths open +and pant like a dog. + +Tom said to keep a sharp lookout, all around, everywheres, because we'd +got to find an oasis or there warn't no telling what would happen. So we +done it. We kept the glasses gliding around all the time, till our arms +got so tired we couldn't hold them any more. Two hours--three hours--just +gazing and gazing, and nothing but sand, sand, SAND, and you could see +the quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. Dear, dear, a body don't know +what real misery is till he is thirsty all the way through and is certain +he ain't ever going to come to any water any more. At last I couldn't +stand it to look around on them baking plains; I laid down on the locker, +and give it up. + +But by and by Tom raised a whoop, and there she was! A lake, wide and +shiny, with pa'm-trees leaning over it asleep, and their shadders in the +water just as soft and delicate as ever you see. I never see anything +look so good. It was a long ways off, but that warn't anything to us; we +just slapped on a hundred-mile gait, and calculated to be there in seven +minutes; but she stayed the same old distance away, all the time; we +couldn't seem to gain on her; yes, sir, just as far, and shiny, and like +a dream; but we couldn't get no nearer; and at last, all of a sudden, she +was gone! + +Tom's eyes took a spread, and he says: + +"Boys, it was a MYridge!" Said it like he was glad. I didn't see nothing +to be glad about. I says: + +"Maybe. I don't care nothing about its name, the thing I want to know is, +what's become of it?" + +Jim was trembling all over, and so scared he couldn't speak, but he +wanted to ask that question himself if he could 'a' done it. Tom says: + +"What's BECOME of it? Why, you see yourself it's gone." + +"Yes, I know; but where's it gone TO?" + +He looked me over and says: + +"Well, now, Huck Finn, where WOULD it go to! Don't you know what a +myridge is?" + +"No, I don't. What is it?" + +"It ain't anything but imagination. There ain't anything TO it." + +It warmed me up a little to hear him talk like that, and I says: + +"What's the use you talking that kind of stuff, Tom Sawyer? Didn't I see +the lake?" + +"Yes--you think you did." + +"I don't think nothing about it, I DID see it." + +"I tell you you DIDN'T see it either--because it warn't there to see." + +It astonished Jim to hear him talk so, and he broke in and says, kind of +pleading and distressed: + +"Mars Tom, PLEASE don't say sich things in sich an awful time as dis. You +ain't only reskin' yo' own self, but you's reskin' us--same way like Anna +Nias en Siffra. De lake WUZ dah--I seen it jis' as plain as I sees you en +Huck dis minute." + +I says: + +"Why, he seen it himself! He was the very one that seen it first. NOW, +then!" + +"Yes, Mars Tom, hit's so--you can't deny it. We all seen it, en dat PROVE +it was dah." + +"Proves it! How does it prove it?" + +"Same way it does in de courts en everywheres, Mars Tom. One pusson might +be drunk, or dreamy or suthin', en he could be mistaken; en two might, +maybe; but I tell you, sah, when three sees a thing, drunk er sober, it's +SO. Dey ain't no gittin' aroun' dat, en you knows it, Mars Tom." + +"I don't know nothing of the kind. There used to be forty thousand +million people that seen the sun move from one side of the sky to the +other every day. Did that prove that the sun DONE it?" + +"Course it did. En besides, dey warn't no 'casion to prove it. A body +'at's got any sense ain't gwine to doubt it. Dah she is now--a sailin' +thoo de sky, like she allays done." + +Tom turned on me, then, and says: + +"What do YOU say--is the sun standing still?" + +"Tom Sawyer, what's the use to ask such a jackass question? Anybody that +ain't blind can see it don't stand still." + +"Well," he says, "I'm lost in the sky with no company but a passel of +low-down animals that don't know no more than the head boss of a +university did three or four hundred years ago." + +It warn't fair play, and I let him know it. I says: + +"Throwin' mud ain't arguin', Tom Sawyer." + +"Oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness gracious, dah's de lake agi'n!" yelled +Jim, just then. "NOW, Mars Tom, what you gwine to say?" + +Yes, sir, there was the lake again, away yonder across the desert, +perfectly plain, trees and all, just the same as it was before. I says: + +"I reckon you're satisfied now, Tom Sawyer." + +But he says, perfectly ca'm: + +"Yes, satisfied there ain't no lake there." + +Jim says: + +"DON'T talk so, Mars Tom--it sk'yers me to hear you. It's so hot, en +you's so thirsty, dat you ain't in yo' right mine, Mars Tom. Oh, but +don't she look good! 'clah I doan' know how I's gwine to wait tell we +gits dah, I's SO thirsty." + +"Well, you'll have to wait; and it won't do you no good, either, because +there ain't no lake there, I tell you." + +I says: + +"Jim, don't you take your eye off of it, and I won't, either." + +"'Deed I won't; en bless you, honey, I couldn't ef I wanted to." + +We went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles behind us like +nothing, but never gaining an inch on it--and all of a sudden it was +gone again! Jim staggered, and 'most fell down. When he got his breath he +says, gasping like a fish: + +"Mars Tom, hit's a GHOS', dat's what it is, en I hopes to goodness we +ain't gwine to see it no mo'. Dey's BEEN a lake, en suthin's happened, en +de lake's dead, en we's seen its ghos'; we's seen it twiste, en dat's +proof. De desert's ha'nted, it's ha'nted, sho; oh, Mars Tom, le''s git +outen it; I'd ruther die den have de night ketch us in it ag'in en de +ghos' er dat lake come a-mournin' aroun' us en we asleep en doan' know de +danger we's in." + +"Ghost, you gander! It ain't anything but air and heat and thirstiness +pasted together by a person's imagination. If I--gimme the glass!" + +He grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right. + +"It's a flock of birds," he says. "It's getting toward sundown, and +they're making a bee-line across our track for somewheres. They mean +business--maybe they're going for food or water, or both. Let her go to +starboard!--Port your hellum! Hard down! There--ease up--steady, as you +go." + +We shut down some of the power, so as not to outspeed them, and took out +after them. We went skimming along a quarter of a mile behind them, and +when we had followed them an hour and a half and was getting pretty +discouraged, and was thirsty clean to unendurableness, Tom says: + +"Take the glass, one of you, and see what that is, away ahead of the +birds." + +Jim got the first glimpse, and slumped down on the locker sick. He was +most crying, and says: + +"She's dah ag'in, Mars Tom, she's dah ag'in, en I knows I's gwine to die, +'case when a body sees a ghos' de third time, dat's what it means. I +wisht I'd never come in dis balloon, dat I does." + +He wouldn't look no more, and what he said made me afraid, too, because I +knowed it was true, for that has always been the way with ghosts; so then +I wouldn't look any more, either. Both of us begged Tom to turn off and +go some other way, but he wouldn't, and said we was ignorant +superstitious blatherskites. Yes, and he'll git come up with, one of +these days, I says to myself, insulting ghosts that way. They'll stand it +for a while, maybe, but they won't stand it always, for anybody that +knows about ghosts knows how easy they are hurt, and how revengeful they +are. + +So we was all quiet and still, Jim and me being scared, and Tom busy. By +and by Tom fetched the balloon to a standstill, and says: + +"NOW get up and look, you sapheads." + +We done it, and there was the sure-enough water right under us!--clear, +and blue, and cool, and deep, and wavy with the breeze, the loveliest +sight that ever was. And all about it was grassy banks, and flowers, and +shady groves of big trees, looped together with vines, and all looking so +peaceful and comfortable--enough to make a body cry, it was so +beautiful. + +Jim DID cry, and rip and dance and carry on, he was so thankful and out +of his mind for joy. It was my watch, so I had to stay by the works, but +Tom and Jim clumb down and drunk a barrel apiece, and fetched me up a +lot, and I've tasted a many a good thing in my life, but nothing that +ever begun with that water. + +Then we went down and had a swim, and then Tom came up and spelled me, +and me and Jim had a swim, and then Jim spelled Tom, and me and Tom had a +foot-race and a boxing-mill, and I don't reckon I ever had such a good +time in my life. It warn't so very hot, because it was close on to +evening, and we hadn't any clothes on, anyway. Clothes is well enough in +school, and in towns, and at balls, too, but there ain't no sense in them +when there ain't no civilization nor other kinds of bothers and fussiness +around. + +"Lions a-comin'!--lions! Quick, Mars Tom! Jump for yo' life, Huck!" + +Oh, and didn't we! We never stopped for clothes, but waltzed up the +ladder just so. Jim lost his head straight off--he always done it +whenever he got excited and scared; and so now, 'stead of just easing the +ladder up from the ground a little, so the animals couldn't reach it, he +turned on a raft of power, and we went whizzing up and was dangling in +the sky before he got his wits together and seen what a foolish thing he +was doing. Then he stopped her, but he had clean forgot what to do next; +so there we was, so high that the lions looked like pups, and we was +drifting off on the wind. + +But Tom he shinned up and went for the works and begun to slant her down, +and back toward the lake, where the animals was gathering like a +camp-meeting, and I judged he had lost HIS head, too; for he knowed I was +too scared to climb, and did he want to dump me among the tigers and +things? + +But no, his head was level, he knowed what he was about. He swooped down +to within thirty or forty feet of the lake, and stopped right over the +center, and sung out: + +"Leggo, and drop!" + +I done it, and shot down, feet first, and seemed to go about a mile +toward the bottom; and when I come up, he says: + +"Now lay on your back and float till you're rested and got your pluck +back, then I'll dip the ladder in the water and you can climb aboard." + +I done it. Now that was ever so smart in Tom, because if he had started +off somewheres else to drop down on the sand, the menagerie would 'a' +come along, too, and might 'a' kept us hunting a safe place till I got +tuckered out and fell. + +And all this time the lions and tigers was sorting out the clothes, and +trying to divide them up so there would be some for all, but there was a +misunderstanding about it somewheres, on account of some of them trying +to hog more than their share; so there was another insurrection, and you +never see anything like it in the world. There must 'a' been fifty of +them, all mixed up together, snorting and roaring and snapping and biting +and tearing, legs and tails in the air, and you couldn't tell which was +which, and the sand and fur a-flying. And when they got done, some was +dead and some was limping off crippled, and the rest was setting around +on the battlefield, some of them licking their sore places and the others +looking up at us and seemed to be kind of inviting us to come down and +have some fun, but which we didn't want any. + +As for the clothes, they warn't any, any more. Every last rag of them was +inside of the animals; and not agreeing with them very well, I don't +reckon, for there was considerable many brass buttons on them, and there +was knives in the pockets, too, and smoking tobacco, and nails and chalk +and marbles and fishhooks and things. But I wasn't caring. All that was +bothering me was, that all we had now was the professor's clothes, a big +enough assortment, but not suitable to go into company with, if we came +across any, because the britches was as long as tunnels, and the coats +and things according. Still, there was everything a tailor needed, and +Jim was a kind of jack legged tailor, and he allowed he could soon trim a +suit or two down for us that would answer. + + + + CHAPTER IX. TOM DISCOURSES ON THE DESERT + +STILL, we thought we would drop down there a minute, but on another +errand. Most of the professor's cargo of food was put up in cans, in the +new way that somebody had just invented; the rest was fresh. When you +fetch Missouri beefsteak to the Great Sahara, you want to be particular +and stay up in the coolish weather. So we reckoned we would drop down +into the lion market and see how we could make out there. + +We hauled in the ladder and dropped down till we was just above the reach +of the animals, then we let down a rope with a slip-knot in it and hauled +up a dead lion, a small tender one, then yanked up a cub tiger. We had to +keep the congregation off with the revolver, or they would 'a' took a +hand in the proceedings and helped. + +We carved off a supply from both, and saved the skins, and hove the rest +overboard. Then we baited some of the professor's hooks with the fresh +meat and went a-fishing. We stood over the lake just a convenient +distance above the water, and catched a lot of the nicest fish you ever +see. It was a most amazing good supper we had; lion steak, tiger steak, +fried fish, and hot corn-pone. I don't want nothing better than that. + +We had some fruit to finish off with. We got it out of the top of a +monstrous tall tree. It was a very slim tree that hadn't a branch on it +from the bottom plumb to the top, and there it bursted out like a +feather-duster. It was a pa'm-tree, of course; anybody knows a pa'm-tree +the minute he see it, by the pictures. We went for cocoanuts in this one, +but there warn't none. There was only big loose bunches of things like +oversized grapes, and Tom allowed they was dates, because he said they +answered the description in the Arabian Nights and the other books. Of +course they mightn't be, and they might be poison; so we had to wait a +spell, and watch and see if the birds et them. They done it; so we done +it, too, and they was most amazing good. + +By this time monstrous big birds begun to come and settle on the dead +animals. They was plucky creturs; they would tackle one end of a lion +that was being gnawed at the other end by another lion. If the lion drove +the bird away, it didn't do no good; he was back again the minute the +lion was busy. + +The big birds come out of every part of the sky--you could make them out +with the glass while they was still so far away you couldn't see them +with your naked eye. Tom said the birds didn't find out the meat was +there by the smell; they had to find it out by seeing it. Oh, but ain't +that an eye for you! Tom said at the distance of five mile a patch of +dead lions couldn't look any bigger than a person's finger-nail, and he +couldn't imagine how the birds could notice such a little thing so far +off. + +It was strange and unnatural to see lion eat lion, and we thought maybe +they warn't kin. But Jim said that didn't make no difference. He said a +hog was fond of her own children, and so was a spider, and he reckoned +maybe a lion was pretty near as unprincipled though maybe not quite. He +thought likely a lion wouldn't eat his own father, if he knowed which was +him, but reckoned he would eat his brother-in-law if he was uncommon +hungry, and eat his mother-in-law any time. But RECKONING don't settle +nothing. You can reckon till the cows come home, but that don't fetch you +to no decision. So we give it up and let it drop. + +Generly it was very still in the Desert nights, but this time there was +music. A lot of other animals come to dinner; sneaking yelpers that Tom +allowed was jackals, and roached-backed ones that he said was hyenas; and +all the whole biling of them kept up a racket all the time. They made a +picture in the moonlight that was more different than any picture I ever +see. We had a line out and made fast to the top of a tree, and didn't +stand no watch, but all turned in and slept; but I was up two or three +times to look down at the animals and hear the music. It was like having +a front seat at a menagerie for nothing, which I hadn't ever had before, +and so it seemed foolish to sleep and not make the most of it; I mightn't +ever have such a chance again. + +We went a-fishing again in the early dawn, and then lazied around all day +in the deep shade on an island, taking turn about to watch and see that +none of the animals come a-snooping around there after erronorts for +dinner. We was going to leave the next day, but couldn't, it was too +lovely. + +The day after, when we rose up toward the sky and sailed off eastward, we +looked back and watched that place till it warn't nothing but just a +speck in the Desert, and I tell you it was like saying good-bye to a +friend that you ain't ever going to see any more. + +Jim was thinking to himself, and at last he says: + +"Mars Tom, we's mos' to de end er de Desert now, I speck." + +"Why?" + +"Well, hit stan' to reason we is. You knows how long we's been a-skimmin' +over it. Mus' be mos' out o' san'. Hit's a wonder to me dat it's hilt out +as long as it has." + +"Shucks, there's plenty sand, you needn't worry." + +"Oh, I ain't a-worryin', Mars Tom, only wonderin', dat's all. De Lord's +got plenty san', I ain't doubtin' dat; but nemmine, He ain't gwyne to +WAS'E it jist on dat account; en I allows dat dis Desert's plenty big +enough now, jist de way she is, en you can't spread her out no mo' 'dout +was'in' san'." + +"Oh, go 'long! we ain't much more than fairly STARTED across this Desert +yet. The United States is a pretty big country, ain't it? Ain't it, +Huck?" + +"Yes," I says, "there ain't no bigger one, I don't reckon." + +"Well," he says, "this Desert is about the shape of the United States, +and if you was to lay it down on top of the United States, it would cover +the land of the free out of sight like a blanket. There'd be a little +corner sticking out, up at Maine and away up northwest, and Florida +sticking out like a turtle's tail, and that's all. We've took California +away from the Mexicans two or three years ago, so that part of the +Pacific coast is ours now, and if you laid the Great Sahara down with her +edge on the Pacific, she would cover the United States and stick out past +New York six hundred miles into the Atlantic ocean." + +I say: + +"Good land! have you got the documents for that, Tom Sawyer?" + +"Yes, and they're right here, and I've been studying them. You can look +for yourself. From New York to the Pacific is 2,600 miles. From one end +of the Great Desert to the other is 3,200. The United States contains +3,600,000 square miles, the Desert contains 4,162,000. With the Desert's +bulk you could cover up every last inch of the United States, and in +under where the edges projected out, you could tuck England, Scotland, +Ireland, France, Denmark, and all Germany. Yes, sir, you could hide the +home of the brave and all of them countries clean out of sight under the +Great Sahara, and you would still have 2,000 square miles of sand left." + +"Well," I says, "it clean beats me. Why, Tom, it shows that the Lord took +as much pains makin' this Desert as makin' the United States and all them +other countries." + +Jim says: "Huck, dat don' stan' to reason. I reckon dis Desert wa'n't +made at all. Now you take en look at it like dis--you look at it, and see +ef I's right. What's a desert good for? 'Taint good for nuthin'. Dey +ain't no way to make it pay. Hain't dat so, Huck?" + +"Yes, I reckon." + +"Hain't it so, Mars Tom?" + +"I guess so. Go on." + +"Ef a thing ain't no good, it's made in vain, ain't it?" + +"Yes." + +"NOW, den! Do de Lord make anything in vain? You answer me dat." + +"Well--no, He don't." + +"Den how come He make a desert?" + +"Well, go on. How DID He come to make it?" + +"Mars Tom, I b'lieve it uz jes like when you's buildin' a house; dey's +allays a lot o' truck en rubbish lef' over. What does you do wid it? +Doan' you take en k'yart it off en dump it into a ole vacant back lot? +'Course. Now, den, it's my opinion hit was jes like dat--dat de Great +Sahara warn't made at all, she jes HAPPEN'." + +I said it was a real good argument, and I believed it was the best one +Jim ever made. Tom he said the same, but said the trouble about arguments +is, they ain't nothing but THEORIES, after all, and theories don't prove +nothing, they only give you a place to rest on, a spell, when you are +tuckered out butting around and around trying to find out something there +ain't no way TO find out. And he says: + +"There's another trouble about theories: there's always a hole in them +somewheres, sure, if you look close enough. It's just so with this one of +Jim's. Look what billions and billions of stars there is. How does it +come that there was just exactly enough star-stuff, and none left over? +How does it come there ain't no sand-pile up there?" + +But Jim was fixed for him and says: + +"What's de Milky Way?--dat's what I want to know. What's de Milky Way? +Answer me dat!" + +In my opinion it was just a sockdologer. It's only an opinion, it's only +MY opinion and others may think different; but I said it then and I stand +to it now--it was a sockdologer. And moreover, besides, it landed Tom +Sawyer. He couldn't say a word. He had that stunned look of a person +that's been shot in the back with a kag of nails. All he said was, as for +people like me and Jim, he'd just as soon have intellectual intercourse +with a catfish. But anybody can say that--and I notice they always do, +when somebody has fetched them a lifter. Tom Sawyer was tired of that end +of the subject. + + So we got back to talking about the size of the Desert again, and the +more we compared it with this and that and t'other thing, the more nobler +and bigger and grander it got to look right along. And so, hunting among +the figgers, Tom found, by and by, that it was just the same size as the +Empire of China. Then he showed us the spread the Empire of China made on +the map, and the room she took up in the world. Well, it was wonderful to +think of, and I says: + +"Why, I've heard talk about this Desert plenty of times, but I never +knowed before how important she was." + +Then Tom says: + +"Important! Sahara important! That's just the way with some people. If a +thing's big, it's important. That's all the sense they've got. All they +can see is SIZE. Why, look at England. It's the most important country in +the world; and yet you could put it in China's vest-pocket; and not only +that, but you'd have the dickens's own time to find it again the next +time you wanted it. And look at Russia. It spreads all around and +everywhere, and yet ain't no more important in this world than Rhode +Island is, and hasn't got half as much in it that's worth saving." + +Away off now we see a little hill, a-standing up just on the edge of the +world. Tom broke off his talk, and reached for a glass very much excited, +and took a look, and says: + +"That's it--it's the one I've been looking for, sure. If I'm right, it's +the one the dervish took the man into and showed him all the treasures." + +So we begun to gaze, and he begun to tell about it out of the Arabian +Nights. + + + + CHAPTER X. THE TREASURE-HILL + +TOM said it happened like this. + +A dervish was stumping it along through the Desert, on foot, one blazing +hot day, and he had come a thousand miles and was pretty poor, and +hungry, and ornery and tired, and along about where we are now he run +across a camel-driver with a hundred camels, and asked him for some a'ms. +But the cameldriver he asked to be excused. The dervish said: + +"Don't you own these camels?" + +"Yes, they're mine." + +"Are you in debt?" + +"Who--me? No." + +"Well, a man that owns a hundred camels and ain't in debt is rich--and +not only rich, but very rich. Ain't it so?" + +The camel-driver owned up that it was so. Then the dervish says: + +"God has made you rich, and He has made me poor. He has His reasons, and +they are wise, blessed be His name. But He has willed that His rich shall +help His poor, and you have turned away from me, your brother, in my +need, and He will remember this, and you will lose by it." + +That made the camel-driver feel shaky, but all the same he was born +hoggish after money and didn't like to let go a cent; so he begun to +whine and explain, and said times was hard, and although he had took a +full freight down to Balsora and got a fat rate for it, he couldn't git +no return freight, and so he warn't making no great things out of his +trip. So the dervish starts along again, and says: + +"All right, if you want to take the risk; but I reckon you've made a +mistake this time, and missed a chance." + +Of course the camel-driver wanted to know what kind of a chance he had +missed, because maybe there was money in it; so he run after the dervish, +and begged him so hard and earnest to take pity on him that at last the +dervish gave in, and says: + +"Do you see that hill yonder? Well, in that hill is all the treasures of +the earth, and I was looking around for a man with a particular good kind +heart and a noble, generous disposition, because if I could find just +that man, I've got a kind of a salve I could put on his eyes and he could +see the treasures and get them out." + +So then the camel-driver was in a sweat; and he cried, and begged, and +took on, and went down on his knees, and said he was just that kind of a +man, and said he could fetch a thousand people that would say he wasn't +ever described so exact before. + +"Well, then," says the dervish, "all right. If we load the hundred +camels, can I have half of them?" + +The driver was so glad he couldn't hardly hold in, and says: + +"Now you're shouting." + +So they shook hands on the bargain, and the dervish got out his box and +rubbed the salve on the driver's right eye, and the hill opened and he +went in, and there, sure enough, was piles and piles of gold and jewels +sparkling like all the stars in heaven had fell down. + +So him and the dervish laid into it, and they loaded every camel till he +couldn't carry no more; then they said good-bye, and each of them started +off with his fifty. But pretty soon the camel-driver come a-running and +overtook the dervish and says: + +"You ain't in society, you know, and you don't really need all you've +got. Won't you be good, and let me have ten of your camels?" + +"Well," the dervish says, "I don't know but what you say is reasonable +enough." + +So he done it, and they separated and the dervish started off again with +his forty. But pretty soon here comes the camel-driver bawling after him +again, and whines and slobbers around and begs another ten off of him, +saying thirty camel loads of treasures was enough to see a dervish +through, because they live very simple, you know, and don't keep house, +but board around and give their note. + +But that warn't the end yet. That ornery hound kept coming and coming +till he had begged back all the camels and had the whole hundred. Then he +was satisfied, and ever so grateful, and said he wouldn't ever forgit the +dervish as long as he lived, and nobody hadn't been so good to him +before, and liberal. So they shook hands good-bye, and separated and +started off again. + +But do you know, it warn't ten minutes till the camel-driver was +unsatisfied again--he was the lowdownest reptyle in seven counties--and +he come a-running again. And this time the thing he wanted was to get the +dervish to rub some of the salve on his other eye. + +"Why?" said the dervish. + +"Oh, you know," says the driver. + +"Know what?" + +"Well, you can't fool me," says the driver. "You're trying to keep back +something from me, you know it mighty well. You know, I reckon, that if I +had the salve on the other eye I could see a lot more things that's +valuable. Come--please put it on." + +The dervish says: + +"I wasn't keeping anything back from you. I don't mind telling you what +would happen if I put it on. You'd never see again. You'd be stone-blind +the rest of your days." + +But do you know that beat wouldn't believe him. No, he begged and begged, +and whined and cried, till at last the dervish opened his box and told +him to put it on, if he wanted to. So the man done it, and sure enough he +was as blind as a bat in a minute. + +Then the dervish laughed at him and mocked at him and made fun of him; +and says: + +"Good-bye--a man that's blind hain't got no use for jewelry." + +And he cleared out with the hundred camels, and left that man to wander +around poor and miserable and friendless the rest of his days in the +Desert. + +Jim said he'd bet it was a lesson to him. + +"Yes," Tom says, "and like a considerable many lessons a body gets. They +ain't no account, because the thing don't ever happen the same way +again--and can't. The time Hen Scovil fell down the chimbly and crippled +his back for life, everybody said it would be a lesson to him. What kind +of a lesson? How was he going to use it? He couldn't climb chimblies no +more, and he hadn't no more backs to break." + +"All de same, Mars Tom, dey IS sich a thing as learnin' by expe'ence. De +Good Book say de burnt chile shun de fire." + +"Well, I ain't denying that a thing's a lesson if it's a thing that can +happen twice just the same way. There's lots of such things, and THEY +educate a person, that's what Uncle Abner always said; but there's forty +MILLION lots of the other kind--the kind that don't happen the same way +twice--and they ain't no real use, they ain't no more instructive than +the small-pox. When you've got it, it ain't no good to find out you ought +to been vaccinated, and it ain't no good to git vaccinated afterward, +because the small-pox don't come but once. But, on the other hand, Uncle +Abner said that the person that had took a bull by the tail once had +learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a +person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting +knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever +going to grow dim or doubtful. But I can tell you, Jim, Uncle Abner was +down on them people that's all the time trying to dig a lesson out of +everything that happens, no matter whether--" + +But Jim was asleep. Tom looked kind of ashamed, because you know a person +always feels bad when he is talking uncommon fine and thinks the other +person is admiring, and that other person goes to sleep that way. Of +course he oughtn't to go to sleep, because it's shabby; but the finer a +person talks the certainer it is to make you sleep, and so when you come +to look at it it ain't nobody's fault in particular; both of them's to +blame. + +Jim begun to snore--soft and blubbery at first, then a long rasp, then a +stronger one, then a half a dozen horrible ones like the last water +sucking down the plug-hole of a bath-tub, then the same with more power +to it, and some big coughs and snorts flung in, the way a cow does that +is choking to death; and when the person has got to that point he is at +his level best, and can wake up a man that is in the next block with a +dipperful of loddanum in him, but can't wake himself up although all that +awful noise of his'n ain't but three inches from his own ears. And that +is the curiosest thing in the world, seems to me. But you rake a match to +light the candle, and that little bit of a noise will fetch him. I wish I +knowed what was the reason of that, but there don't seem to be no way to +find out. Now there was Jim alarming the whole Desert, and yanking the +animals out, for miles and miles around, to see what in the nation was +going on up there; there warn't nobody nor nothing that was as close to +the noise as HE was, and yet he was the only cretur that wasn't disturbed +by it. We yelled at him and whooped at him, it never done no good; but +the first time there come a little wee noise that wasn't of a usual kind +it woke him up. No, sir, I've thought it all over, and so has Tom, and +there ain't no way to find out why a snorer can't hear himself snore. + +Jim said he hadn't been asleep; he just shut his eyes so he could listen +better. + +Tom said nobody warn't accusing him. + +That made him look like he wished he hadn't said anything. And he wanted +to git away from the subject, I reckon, because he begun to abuse the +camel-driver, just the way a person does when he has got catched in +something and wants to take it out of somebody else. He let into the +camel-driver the hardest he knowed how, and I had to agree with him; and +he praised up the dervish the highest he could, and I had to agree with +him there, too. But Tom says: + +"I ain't so sure. You call that dervish so dreadful liberal and good and +unselfish, but I don't quite see it. He didn't hunt up another poor +dervish, did he? No, he didn't. If he was so unselfish, why didn't he go +in there himself and take a pocketful of jewels and go along and be +satisfied? No, sir, the person he was hunting for was a man with a +hundred camels. He wanted to get away with all the treasure he could." + +"Why, Mars Tom, he was willin' to divide, fair and square; he only struck +for fifty camels." + +"Because he knowed how he was going to get all of them by and by." + +"Mars Tom, he TOLE de man de truck would make him bline." + +"Yes, because he knowed the man's character. It was just the kind of a +man he was hunting for--a man that never believes in anybody's word or +anybody's honorableness, because he ain't got none of his own. I reckon +there's lots of people like that dervish. They swindle, right and left, +but they always make the other person SEEM to swindle himself. They keep +inside of the letter of the law all the time, and there ain't no way to +git hold of them. THEY don't put the salve on--oh, no, that would be +sin; but they know how to fool YOU into putting it on, then it's you that +blinds yourself. I reckon the dervish and the camel-driver was just a +pair--a fine, smart, brainy rascal, and a dull, coarse, ignorant one, but +both of them rascals, just the same." + +"Mars Tom, does you reckon dey's any o' dat kind o' salve in de worl' +now?" + +"Yes, Uncle Abner says there is. He says they've got it in New York, and +they put it on country people's eyes and show them all the railroads in +the world, and they go in and git them, and then when they rub the salve +on the other eye the other man bids them goodbye and goes off with their +railroads. Here's the treasure-hill now. Lower away!" + +We landed, but it warn't as interesting as I thought it was going to be, +because we couldn't find the place where they went in to git the +treasure. Still, it was plenty interesting enough, just to see the mere +hill itself where such a wonderful thing happened. Jim said he wou'dn't +'a' missed it for three dollars, and I felt the same way. + +And to me and Jim, as wonderful a thing as any was the way Tom could come +into a strange big country like this and go straight and find a little +hump like that and tell it in a minute from a million other humps that +was almost just like it, and nothing to help him but only his own +learning and his own natural smartness. We talked and talked it over +together, but couldn't make out how he done it. He had the best head on +him I ever see; and all he lacked was age, to make a name for himself +equal to Captain Kidd or George Washington. I bet you it would 'a' +crowded either of THEM to find that hill, with all their gifts, but it +warn't nothing to Tom Sawyer; he went across Sahara and put his finger on +it as easy as you could pick a nigger out of a bunch of angels. + +We found a pond of salt water close by and scraped up a raft of salt +around the edges, and loaded up the lion's skin and the tiger's so as +they would keep till Jim could tan them. + + + + CHAPTER XI. THE SAND-STORM + +WE went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then just as the full moon +was touching the ground on the other side of the desert, we see a string +of little black figgers moving across its big silver face. You could see +them as plain as if they was painted on the moon with ink. It was another +caravan. We cooled down our speed and tagged along after it, just to have +company, though it warn't going our way. It was a rattler, that caravan, +and a most bully sight to look at next morning when the sun come +a-streaming across the desert and flung the long shadders of the camels +on the gold sand like a thousand grand-daddy-long-legses marching in +procession. We never went very near it, because we knowed better now than +to act like that and scare people's camels and break up their caravans. +It was the gayest outfit you ever see, for rich clothes and nobby style. +Some of the chiefs rode on dromedaries, the first we ever see, and very +tall, and they go plunging along like they was on stilts, and they rock +the man that is on them pretty violent and churn up his dinner +considerable, I bet you, but they make noble good time, and a camel ain't +nowheres with them for speed. + +The caravan camped, during the middle part of the day, and then started +again about the middle of the afternoon. Before long the sun begun to +look very curious. First it kind of turned to brass, and then to copper, +and after that it begun to look like a blood-red ball, and the air got +hot and close, and pretty soon all the sky in the west darkened up and +looked thick and foggy, but fiery and dreadful--like it looks through a +piece of red glass, you know. We looked down and see a big confusion +going on in the caravan, and a rushing every which way like they was +scared; and then they all flopped down flat in the sand and laid there +perfectly still. + +Pretty soon we see something coming that stood up like an amazing wide +wall, and reached from the Desert up into the sky and hid the sun, and it +was coming like the nation, too. Then a little faint breeze struck us, +and then it come harder, and grains of sand begun to sift against our +faces and sting like fire, and Tom sung out: + +"It's a sand-storm--turn your backs to it!" + +We done it; and in another minute it was blowing a gale, and the sand +beat against us by the shovelful, and the air was so thick with it we +couldn't see a thing. In five minutes the boat was level full, and we was +setting on the lockers buried up to the chin in sand, and only our heads +out and could hardly breathe. + +Then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous wall go a-sailing off +across the desert, awful to look at, I tell you. We dug ourselves out and +looked down, and where the caravan was before there wasn't anything but +just the sand ocean now, and all still and quiet. All them people and +camels was smothered and dead and buried--buried under ten foot of sand, +we reckoned, and Tom allowed it might be years before the wind uncovered +them, and all that time their friends wouldn't ever know what become of +that caravan. Tom said: + +"NOW we know what it was that happened to the people we got the swords +and pistols from." + +Yes, sir, that was just it. It was as plain as day now. They got buried +in a sand-storm, and the wild animals couldn't get at them, and the wind +never uncovered them again until they was dried to leather and warn't fit +to eat. It seemed to me we had felt as sorry for them poor people as a +person could for anybody, and as mournful, too, but we was mistaken; this +last caravan's death went harder with us, a good deal harder. You see, +the others was total strangers, and we never got to feeling acquainted +with them at all, except, maybe, a little with the man that was watching +the girl, but it was different with this last caravan. We was huvvering +around them a whole night and 'most a whole day, and had got to feeling +real friendly with them, and acquainted. I have found out that there +ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than +to travel with them. Just so with these. We kind of liked them from the +start, and traveling with them put on the finisher. The longer we +traveled with them, and the more we got used to their ways, the better +and better we liked them, and the gladder and gladder we was that we run +across them. We had come to know some of them so well that we called them +by name when we was talking about them, and soon got so familiar and +sociable that we even dropped the Miss and Mister and just used their +plain names without any handle, and it did not seem unpolite, but just +the right thing. Of course, it wasn't their own names, but names we give +them. There was Mr. Elexander Robinson and Miss Adaline Robinson, and +Colonel Jacob McDougal and Miss Harryet McDougal, and Judge Jeremiah +Butler and young Bushrod Butler, and these was big chiefs mostly that +wore splendid great turbans and simmeters, and dressed like the Grand +Mogul, and their families. But as soon as we come to know them good, and +like them very much, it warn't Mister, nor Judge, nor nothing, any more, +but only Elleck, and Addy, and Jake, and Hattie, and Jerry, and Buck, and +so on. + +And you know the more you join in with people in their joys and their +sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you. Now we warn't +cold and indifferent, the way most travelers is, we was right down +friendly and sociable, and took a chance in everything that was going, +and the caravan could depend on us to be on hand every time, it didn't +make no difference what it was. + +When they camped, we camped right over them, ten or twelve hundred feet +up in the air. When they et a meal, we et ourn, and it made it ever so +much home-liker to have their company. When they had a wedding that +night, and Buck and Addy got married, we got ourselves up in the very +starchiest of the professor's duds for the blow-out, and when they danced +we jined in and shook a foot up there. + +But it is sorrow and trouble that brings you the nearest, and it was a +funeral that done it with us. It was next morning, just in the still +dawn. We didn't know the diseased, and he warn't in our set, but that +never made no difference; he belonged to the caravan, and that was +enough, and there warn't no more sincerer tears shed over him than the +ones we dripped on him from up there eleven hundred foot on high. + +Yes, parting with this caravan was much more bitterer than it was to part +with them others, which was comparative strangers, and been dead so long, +anyway. We had knowed these in their lives, and was fond of them, too, +and now to have death snatch them from right before our faces while we +was looking, and leave us so lonesome and friendless in the middle of +that big desert, it did hurt so, and we wished we mightn't ever make any +more friends on that voyage if we was going to lose them again like that. + +We couldn't keep from talking about them, and they was all the time +coming up in our memory, and looking just the way they looked when we was +all alive and happy together. We could see the line marching, and the +shiny spearheads a-winking in the sun; we could see the dromedaries +lumbering along; we could see the wedding and the funeral; and more +oftener than anything else we could see them praying, because they don't +allow nothing to prevent that; whenever the call come, several times a +day, they would stop right there, and stand up and face to the east, and +lift back their heads, and spread out their arms and begin, and four or +five times they would go down on their knees, and then fall forward and +touch their forehead to the ground. + +Well, it warn't good to go on talking about them, lovely as they was in +their life, and dear to us in their life and death both, because it +didn't do no good, and made us too down-hearted. Jim allowed he was going +to live as good a life as he could, so he could see them again in a +better world; and Tom kept still and didn't tell him they was only +Mohammedans; it warn't no use to disappoint him, he was feeling bad +enough just as it was. + +When we woke up next morning we was feeling a little cheerfuller, and had +had a most powerful good sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed +there is, and I don't see why people that can afford it don't have it +more. And it's terrible good ballast, too; I never see the balloon so +steady before. + +Tom allowed we had twenty tons of it, and wondered what we better do with +it; it was good sand, and it didn't seem good sense to throw it away. Jim +says: + +"Mars Tom, can't we tote it back home en sell it? How long'll it take?" + +"Depends on the way we go." + +"Well, sah, she's wuth a quarter of a dollar a load at home, en I reckon +we's got as much as twenty loads, hain't we? How much would dat be?" + +"Five dollars." + +"By jings, Mars Tom, le's shove for home right on de spot! Hit's more'n a +dollar en a half apiece, hain't it?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, ef dat ain't makin' money de easiest ever I struck! She jes' +rained in--never cos' us a lick o' work. Le's mosey right along, Mars +Tom." + +But Tom was thinking and ciphering away so busy and excited he never +heard him. Pretty soon he says: + +"Five dollars--sho! Look here, this sand's worth--worth--why, it's worth +no end of money." + +"How is dat, Mars Tom? Go on, honey, go on!" + +"Well, the minute people knows it's genuwyne sand from the genuwyne +Desert of Sahara, they'll just be in a perfect state of mind to git hold +of some of it to keep on the what-not in a vial with a label on it for a +curiosity. All we got to do is to put it up in vials and float around all +over the United States and peddle them out at ten cents apiece. We've got +all of ten thousand dollars' worth of sand in this boat." + +Me and Jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun to shout +whoopjamboreehoo, and Tom says: + +"And we can keep on coming back and fetching sand, and coming back and +fetching more sand, and just keep it a-going till we've carted this whole +Desert over there and sold it out; and there ain't ever going to be any +opposition, either, because we'll take out a patent." + +"My goodness," I says, "we'll be as rich as Creosote, won't we, Tom?" + +"Yes--Creesus, you mean. Why, that dervish was hunting in that little +hill for the treasures of the earth, and didn't know he was walking over +the real ones for a thousand miles. He was blinder than he made the +driver." + +"Mars Tom, how much is we gwyne to be worth?" + +"Well, I don't know yet. It's got to be ciphered, and it ain't the +easiest job to do, either, because it's over four million square miles of +sand at ten cents a vial." + +Jim was awful excited, but this faded it out considerable, and he shook +his head and says: + +"Mars Tom, we can't 'ford all dem vials--a king couldn't. We better not +try to take de whole Desert, Mars Tom, de vials gwyne to bust us, sho'." + +Tom's excitement died out, too, now, and I reckoned it was on account of +the vials, but it wasn't. He set there thinking, and got bluer and bluer, +and at last he says: + +"Boys, it won't work; we got to give it up." + +"Why, Tom?" + +"On account of the duties." + +I couldn't make nothing out of that, neither could Jim. I says: + +"What IS our duty, Tom? Because if we can't git around it, why can't we +just DO it? People often has to." + +But he says: + +"Oh, it ain't that kind of duty. The kind I mean is a tax. Whenever you +strike a frontier--that's the border of a country, you know--you find a +custom-house there, and the gov'ment officers comes and rummages among +your things and charges a big tax, which they call a duty because it's +their duty to bust you if they can, and if you don't pay the duty they'll +hog your sand. They call it confiscating, but that don't deceive nobody, +it's just hogging, and that's all it is. Now if we try to carry this sand +home the way we're pointed now, we got to climb fences till we git +tired--just frontier after frontier--Egypt, Arabia, Hindostan, and so +on, and they'll all whack on a duty, and so you see, easy enough, we +CAN'T go THAT road." + +"Why, Tom," I says, "we can sail right over their old frontiers; how are +THEY going to stop us?" + +He looked sorrowful at me, and says, very grave: + +"Huck Finn, do you think that would be honest?" + +I hate them kind of interruptions. I never said nothing, and he went on: + +"Well, we're shut off the other way, too. If we go back the way we've +come, there's the New York custom-house, and that is worse than all of +them others put together, on account of the kind of cargo we've got." + +"Why?" + +"Well, they can't raise Sahara sand in America, of course, and when they +can't raise a thing there, the duty is fourteen hundred thousand per +cent. on it if you try to fetch it in from where they do raise it." + +"There ain't no sense in that, Tom Sawyer." + +"Who said there WAS? What do you talk to me like that for, Huck Finn? You +wait till I say a thing's got sense in it before you go to accusing me of +saying it." + +"All right, consider me crying about it, and sorry. Go on." + +Jim says: + +"Mars Tom, do dey jam dat duty onto everything we can't raise in America, +en don't make no 'stinction 'twix' anything?" + +"Yes, that's what they do." + +"Mars Tom, ain't de blessin' o' de Lord de mos' valuable thing dey is?" + +"Yes, it is." + +"Don't de preacher stan' up in de pulpit en call it down on de people?" + +"Yes." + +"Whah do it come from?" + +"From heaven." + +"Yassir! you's jes' right, 'deed you is, honey--it come from heaven, en +dat's a foreign country. NOW, den! do dey put a tax on dat blessin'?" + +"No, they don't." + +"Course dey don't; en so it stan' to reason dat you's mistaken, Mars Tom. +Dey wouldn't put de tax on po' truck like san', dat everybody ain't +'bleeged to have, en leave it off'n de bes' thing dey is, which nobody +can't git along widout." + +Tom Sawyer was stumped; he see Jim had got him where he couldn't budge. +He tried to wiggle out by saying they had FORGOT to put on that tax, but +they'd be sure to remember about it, next session of Congress, and then +they'd put it on, but that was a poor lame come-off, and he knowed it. He +said there warn't nothing foreign that warn't taxed but just that one, +and so they couldn't be consistent without taxing it, and to be +consistent was the first law of politics. So he stuck to it that they'd +left it out unintentional and would be certain to do their best to fix it +before they got caught and laughed at. + +But I didn't feel no more interest in such things, as long as we couldn't +git our sand through, and it made me low-spirited, and Jim the same. Tom +he tried to cheer us up by saying he would think up another speculation +for us that would be just as good as this one and better, but it didn't +do no good, we didn't believe there was any as big as this. It was mighty +hard; such a little while ago we was so rich, and could 'a' bought a +country and started a kingdom and been celebrated and happy, and now we +was so poor and ornery again, and had our sand left on our hands. The +sand was looking so lovely before, just like gold and di'monds, and the +feel of it was so soft and so silky and nice, but now I couldn't bear the +sight of it, it made me sick to look at it, and I knowed I wouldn't ever +feel comfortable again till we got shut of it, and I didn't have it there +no more to remind us of what we had been and what we had got degraded +down to. The others was feeling the same way about it that I was. I +knowed it, because they cheered up so, the minute I says le's throw this +truck overboard. + +Well, it was going to be work, you know, and pretty solid work, too; so +Tom he divided it up according to fairness and strength. He said me and +him would clear out a fifth apiece of the sand, and Jim three-fifths. Jim +he didn't quite like that arrangement. He says: + +"Course I's de stronges', en I's willin' to do a share accordin', but by +jings you's kinder pilin' it onto ole Jim, Mars Tom, hain't you?" + +"Well, I didn't think so, Jim, but you try your hand at fixing it, and +let's see." + +So Jim reckoned it wouldn't be no more than fair if me and Tom done a +TENTH apiece. Tom he turned his back to git room and be private, and then +he smole a smile that spread around and covered the whole Sahara to the +westward, back to the Atlantic edge of it where we come from. Then he +turned around again and said it was a good enough arrangement, and we was +satisfied if Jim was. Jim said he was. + +So then Tom measured off our two-tenths in the bow and left the rest for +Jim, and it surprised Jim a good deal to see how much difference there +was and what a raging lot of sand his share come to, and said he was +powerful glad now that he had spoke up in time and got the first +arrangement altered, for he said that even the way it was now, there was +more sand than enjoyment in his end of the contract, he believed. + +Then we laid into it. It was mighty hot work, and tough; so hot we had to +move up into cooler weather or we couldn't 'a' stood it. Me and Tom took +turn about, and one worked while t'other rested, but there warn't nobody +to spell poor old Jim, and he made all that part of Africa damp, he +sweated so. We couldn't work good, we was so full of laugh, and Jim he +kept fretting and wanting to know what tickled us so, and we had to keep +making up things to account for it, and they was pretty poor inventions, +but they done well enough, Jim didn't see through them. At last when we +got done we was 'most dead, but not with work but with laughing. By and +by Jim was 'most dead, too, but: it was with work; then we took turns and +spelled him, and he was as thankfull as he could be, and would set on the +gunnel and swab the sweat, and heave and pant, and say how good we was to +a poor old nigger, and he wouldn't ever forgit us. He was always the +gratefulest nigger I ever see, for any little thing you done for him. He +was only nigger outside; inside he was as white as you be. + + + + CHAPTER XII. JIM STANDING SIEGE + +THE next few meals was pretty sandy, but that don't make no difference +when you are hungry; and when you ain't it ain't no satisfaction to eat, +anyway, and so a little grit in the meat ain't no particular drawback, as +far as I can see. + +Then we struck the east end of the Desert at last, sailing on a northeast +course. Away off on the edge of the sand, in a soft pinky light, we see +three little sharp roofs like tents, and Tom says: + +"It's the pyramids of Egypt." + +It made my heart fairly jump. You see, I had seen a many and a many a +picture of them, and heard tell about them a hundred times, and yet to +come on them all of a sudden, that way, and find they was REAL, 'stead of +imaginations, 'most knocked the breath out of me with surprise. It's a +curious thing, that the more you hear about a grand and big and bully +thing or person, the more it kind of dreamies out, as you may say, and +gets to be a big dim wavery figger made out of moonshine and nothing +solid to it. It's just so with George Washington, and the same with them +pyramids. + +And moreover, besides, the thing they always said about them seemed to me +to be stretchers. There was a feller come to the Sunday-school once, and +had a picture of them, and made a speech, and said the biggest pyramid +covered thirteen acres, and was most five hundred foot high, just a steep +mountain, all built out of hunks of stone as big as a bureau, and laid up +in perfectly regular layers, like stair-steps. Thirteen acres, you see, +for just one building; it's a farm. If it hadn't been in Sunday-school, I +would 'a' judged it was a lie; and outside I was certain of it. And he +said there was a hole in the pyramid, and you could go in there with +candles, and go ever so far up a long slanting tunnel, and come to a +large room in the stomach of that stone mountain, and there you would +find a big stone chest with a king in it, four thousand years old. I said +to myself, then, if that ain't a lie I will eat that king if they will +fetch him, for even Methusalem warn't that old, and nobody claims it. + +As we come a little nearer we see the yaller sand come to an end in a +long straight edge like a blanket, and on to it was joined, edge to edge, +a wide country of bright green, with a snaky stripe crooking through it, +and Tom said it was the Nile. It made my heart jump again, for the Nile +was another thing that wasn't real to me. Now I can tell you one thing +which is dead certain: if you will fool along over three thousand miles +of yaller sand, all glimmering with heat so that it makes your eyes water +to look at it, and you've been a considerable part of a week doing it, +the green country will look so like home and heaven to you that it will +make your eyes water AGAIN. + +It was just so with me, and the same with Jim. + +And when Jim got so he could believe it WAS the land of Egypt he was +looking at, he wouldn't enter it standing up, but got down on his knees +and took off his hat, because he said it wasn't fitten' for a humble poor +nigger to come any other way where such men had been as Moses and Joseph +and Pharaoh and the other prophets. He was a Presbyterian, and had a most +deep respect for Moses which was a Presbyterian, too, he said. He was all +stirred up, and says: + +"Hit's de lan' of Egypt, de lan' of Egypt, en I's 'lowed to look at it +wid my own eyes! En dah's de river dat was turn' to blood, en I's looking +at de very same groun' whah de plagues was, en de lice, en de frogs, en +de locus', en de hail, en whah dey marked de door-pos', en de angel o' de +Lord come by in de darkness o' de night en slew de fust-born in all de +lan' o' Egypt. Ole Jim ain't worthy to see dis day!" + +And then he just broke down and cried, he was so thankful. So between him +and Tom there was talk enough, Jim being excited because the land was so +full of history--Joseph and his brethren, Moses in the bulrushers, Jacob +coming down into Egypt to buy corn, the silver cup in the sack, and all +them interesting things; and Tom just as excited too, because the land +was so full of history that was in HIS line, about Noureddin, and +Bedreddin, and such like monstrous giants, that made Jim's wool rise, and +a raft of other Arabian Nights folks, which the half of them never done +the things they let on they done, I don't believe. + +Then we struck a disappointment, for one of them early morning fogs +started up, and it warn't no use to sail over the top of it, because we +would go by Egypt, sure, so we judged it was best to set her by compass +straight for the place where the pyramids was gitting blurred and blotted +out, and then drop low and skin along pretty close to the ground and keep +a sharp lookout. Tom took the hellum, I stood by to let go the anchor, +and Jim he straddled the bow to dig through the fog with his eyes and +watch out for danger ahead. We went along a steady gait, but not very +fast, and the fog got solider and solider, so solid that Jim looked dim +and ragged and smoky through it. It was awful still, and we talked low +and was anxious. Now and then Jim would say: + +"Highst her a p'int, Mars Tom, highst her!" and up she would skip, a foot +or two, and we would slide right over a flat-roofed mud cabin, with +people that had been asleep on it just beginning to turn out and gap and +stretch; and once when a feller was clear up on his hind legs so he could +gap and stretch better, we took him a blip in the back and knocked him +off. By and by, after about an hour, and everything dead still and we +a-straining our ears for sounds and holding our breath, the fog thinned a +little, very sudden, and Jim sung out in an awful scare: + +"Oh, for de lan's sake, set her back, Mars Tom, here's de biggest giant +outen de 'Rabian Nights a-comin' for us!" and he went over backwards in +the boat. + +Tom slammed on the back-action, and as we slowed to a standstill a man's +face as big as our house at home looked in over the gunnel, same as a +house looks out of its windows, and I laid down and died. I must 'a' been +clear dead and gone for as much as a minute or more; then I come to, and +Tom had hitched a boat-hook on to the lower lip of the giant and was +holding the balloon steady with it whilst he canted his head back and got +a good long look up at that awful face. + +Jim was on his knees with his hands clasped, gazing up at the thing in a +begging way, and working his lips, but not getting anything out. I took +only just a glimpse, and was fading out again, but Tom says: + +"He ain't alive, you fools; it's the Sphinx!" + +I never see Tom look so little and like a fly; but that was because the +giant's head was so big and awful. Awful, yes, so it was, but not +dreadful any more, because you could see it was a noble face, and kind of +sad, and not thinking about you, but about other things and larger. It +was stone, reddish stone, and its nose and ears battered, and that give +it an abused look, and you felt sorrier for it for that. + +We stood off a piece, and sailed around it and over it, and it was just +grand. It was a man's head, or maybe a woman's, on a tiger's body a +hundred and twenty-five foot long, and there was a dear little temple +between its front paws. All but the head used to be under the sand, for +hundreds of years, maybe thousands, but they had just lately dug the sand +away and found that little temple. It took a power of sand to bury that +cretur; most as much as it would to bury a steamboat, I reckon. + +We landed Jim on top of the head, with an American flag to protect him, +it being a foreign land; then we sailed off to this and that and t'other +distance, to git what Tom called effects and perspectives and +proportions, and Jim he done the best he could, striking all the +different kinds of attitudes and positions he could study up, but +standing on his head and working his legs the way a frog does was the +best. The further we got away, the littler Jim got, and the grander the +Sphinx got, till at last it was only a clothespin on a dome, as you might +say. That's the way perspective brings out the correct proportions, Tom +said; he said Julus Cesar's niggers didn't know how big he was, they was +too close to him. + +Then we sailed off further and further, till we couldn't see Jim at all +any more, and then that great figger was at its noblest, a-gazing out +over the Nile Valley so still and solemn and lonesome, and all the little +shabby huts and things that was scattered about it clean disappeared and +gone, and nothing around it now but a soft wide spread of yaller velvet, +which was the sand. + +That was the right place to stop, and we done it. We set there a-looking +and a-thinking for a half an hour, nobody a-saying anything, for it made +us feel quiet and kind of solemn to remember it had been looking over +that valley just that same way, and thinking its awful thoughts all to +itself for thousands of years, and nobody can't find out what they are to +this day. + +At last I took up the glass and see some little black things a-capering +around on that velvet carpet, and some more a-climbing up the cretur's +back, and then I see two or three wee puffs of white smoke, and told Tom +to look. He done it, and says: + +"They're bugs. No--hold on; they--why, I believe they're men. Yes, it's +men--men and horses both. They're hauling a long ladder up onto the +Sphinx's back--now ain't that odd? And now they're trying to lean it up +a--there's some more puffs of smoke--it's guns! Huck, they're after Jim." + +We clapped on the power, and went for them a-biling. We was there in no +time, and come a-whizzing down amongst them, and they broke and scattered +every which way, and some that was climbing the ladder after Jim let go +all holts and fell. We soared up and found him laying on top of the head +panting and most tuckered out, partly from howling for help and partly +from scare. He had been standing a siege a long time--a week, HE said, +but it warn't so, it only just seemed so to him because they was crowding +him so. They had shot at him, and rained the bullets all around him, but +he warn't hit, and when they found he wouldn't stand up and the bullets +couldn't git at him when he was laying down, they went for the ladder, +and then he knowed it was all up with him if we didn't come pretty quick. +Tom was very indignant, and asked him why he didn't show the flag and +command them to GIT, in the name of the United States. Jim said he done +it, but they never paid no attention. Tom said he would have this thing +looked into at Washington, and says: + +"You'll see that they'll have to apologize for insulting the flag, and +pay an indemnity, too, on top of it even if they git off THAT easy." + +Jim says: + +"What's an indemnity, Mars Tom?" + +"It's cash, that's what it is." + +"Who gits it, Mars Tom?" + +"Why, WE do." + +"En who gits de apology?" + +"The United States. Or, we can take whichever we please. We can take the +apology, if we want to, and let the gov'ment take the money." + +"How much money will it be, Mars Tom?" + +"Well, in an aggravated case like this one, it will be at least three +dollars apiece, and I don't know but more." + +"Well, den, we'll take de money, Mars Tom, blame de 'pology. Hain't dat +yo' notion, too? En hain't it yourn, Huck?" + +We talked it over a little and allowed that that was as good a way as +any, so we agreed to take the money. It was a new business to me, and I +asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he +says: + +"Yes; the little ones does." + +We was sailing around examining the pyramids, you know, and now we soared +up and roosted on the flat top of the biggest one, and found it was just +like what the man said in the Sunday-school. It was like four pairs of +stairs that starts broad at the bottom and slants up and comes together +in a point at the top, only these stair-steps couldn't be clumb the way +you climb other stairs; no, for each step was as high as your chin, and +you have to be boosted up from behind. The two other pyramids warn't far +away, and the people moving about on the sand between looked like bugs +crawling, we was so high above them. + +Tom he couldn't hold himself he was so worked up with gladness and +astonishment to be in such a celebrated place, and he just dripped +history from every pore, seemed to me. He said he couldn't scarcely +believe he was standing on the very identical spot the prince flew from +on the Bronze Horse. It was in the Arabian Night times, he said. Somebody +give the prince a bronze horse with a peg in its shoulder, and he could +git on him and fly through the air like a bird, and go all over the +world, and steer it by turning the peg, and fly high or low and land +wherever he wanted to. + +When he got done telling it there was one of them uncomfortable silences +that comes, you know, when a person has been telling a whopper and you +feel sorry for him and wish you could think of some way to change the +subject and let him down easy, but git stuck and don't see no way, and +before you can pull your mind together and DO something, that silence has +got in and spread itself and done the business. I was embarrassed, Jim he +was embarrassed, and neither of us couldn't say a word. Well, Tom he +glowered at me a minute, and says: + +"Come, out with it. What do you think?" + +I says: + +"Tom Sawyer, YOU don't believe that, yourself." + +"What's the reason I don't? What's to hender me?" + +"There's one thing to hender you: it couldn't happen, that's all." + +"What's the reason it couldn't happen?" + +"You tell me the reason it COULD happen." + +"This balloon is a good enough reason it could happen, I should reckon." + +"WHY is it?" + +"WHY is it? I never saw such an idiot. Ain't this balloon and the bronze +horse the same thing under different names?" + +"No, they're not. One is a balloon and the other's a horse. It's very +different. Next you'll be saying a house and a cow is the same thing." + +"By Jackson, Huck's got him ag'in! Dey ain't no wigglin' outer dat!" + +"Shut your head, Jim; you don't know what you're talking about. And Huck +don't. Look here, Huck, I'll make it plain to you, so you can understand. +You see, it ain't the mere FORM that's got anything to do with their +being similar or unsimilar, it's the PRINCIPLE involved; and the +principle is the same in both. Don't you see, now?" + +I turned it over in my mind, and says: + +"Tom, it ain't no use. Principles is all very well, but they don't git +around that one big fact, that the thing that a balloon can do ain't no +sort of proof of what a horse can do." + +"Shucks, Huck, you don't get the idea at all. Now look here a +minute--it's perfectly plain. Don't we fly through the air?" + +"Yes." + +"Very well. Don't we fly high or fly low, just as we please?" + +"Yes." + +"Don't we steer whichever way we want to?" + +"Yes." + +"And don't we land when and where we please?" + +"Yes." + +"How do we move the balloon and steer it?" + +"By touching the buttons." + +"NOW I reckon the thing is clear to you at last. In the other case the +moving and steering was done by turning a peg. We touch a button, the +prince turned a peg. There ain't an atom of difference, you see. I knowed +I could git it through your head if I stuck to it long enough." + +He felt so happy he begun to whistle. But me and Jim was silent, so he +broke off surprised, and says: + +"Looky here, Huck Finn, don't you see it YET?" + +I says: + +"Tom Sawyer, I want to ask you some questions." + +"Go ahead," he says, and I see Jim chirk up to listen. + +"As I understand it, the whole thing is in the buttons and the peg--the +rest ain't of no consequence. A button is one shape, a peg is another +shape, but that ain't any matter?" + +"No, that ain't any matter, as long as they've both got the same power." + +"All right, then. What is the power that's in a candle and in a match?" + +"It's the fire." + +"It's the same in both, then?" + +"Yes, just the same in both." + +"All right. Suppose I set fire to a carpenter shop with a match, what +will happen to that carpenter shop?" + +"She'll burn up." + +"And suppose I set fire to this pyramid with a candle--will she burn up?" + +"Of course she won't." + +"All right. Now the fire's the same, both times. WHY does the shop burn, +and the pyramid don't?" + +"Because the pyramid CAN'T burn." + +"Aha! and A HORSE CAN'T FLY!" + +"My lan', ef Huck ain't got him ag'in! Huck's landed him high en dry dis +time, I tell you! Hit's de smartes' trap I ever see a body walk inter--en +ef I--" + +But Jim was so full of laugh he got to strangling and couldn't go on, and +Tom was that mad to see how neat I had floored him, and turned his own +argument ag'in him and knocked him all to rags and flinders with it, that +all he could manage to say was that whenever he heard me and Jim try to +argue it made him ashamed of the human race. I never said nothing; I was +feeling pretty well satisfied. When I have got the best of a person that +way, it ain't my way to go around crowing about it the way some people +does, for I consider that if I was in his place I wouldn't wish him to +crow over me. It's better to be generous, that's what I think. + + + + CHAPTER XIII. GOING FOR TOM'S PIPE: + +BY AND BY we left Jim to float around up there in the neighborhood of the +pyramids, and we clumb down to the hole where you go into the tunnel, and +went in with some Arabs and candles, and away in there in the middle of +the pyramid we found a room and a big stone box in it where they used to +keep that king, just as the man in the Sunday-school said; but he was +gone, now; somebody had got him. But I didn't take no interest in the +place, because there could be ghosts there, of course; not fresh ones, +but I don't like no kind. + +So then we come out and got some little donkeys and rode a piece, and +then went in a boat another piece, and then more donkeys, and got to +Cairo; and all the way the road was as smooth and beautiful a road as +ever I see, and had tall date-pa'ms on both sides, and naked children +everywhere, and the men was as red as copper, and fine and strong and +handsome. And the city was a curiosity. Such narrow streets--why, they +were just lanes, and crowded with people with turbans, and women with +veils, and everybody rigged out in blazing bright clothes and all sorts +of colors, and you wondered how the camels and the people got by each +other in such narrow little cracks, but they done it--a perfect jam, you +see, and everybody noisy. The stores warn't big enough to turn around in, +but you didn't have to go in; the storekeeper sat tailor fashion on his +counter, smoking his snaky long pipe, and had his things where he could +reach them to sell, and he was just as good as in the street, for the +camel-loads brushed him as they went by. + +Now and then a grand person flew by in a carriage with fancy dressed men +running and yelling in front of it and whacking anybody with a long rod +that didn't get out of the way. And by and by along comes the Sultan +riding horseback at the head of a procession, and fairly took your breath +away his clothes was so splendid; and everybody fell flat and laid on his +stomach while he went by. I forgot, but a feller helped me to remember. +He was one that had a rod and run in front. + +There was churches, but they don't know enough to keep Sunday; they keep +Friday and break the Sabbath. You have to take off your shoes when you go +in. There was crowds of men and boys in the church, setting in groups on +the stone floor and making no end of noise--getting their lessons by +heart, Tom said, out of the Koran, which they think is a Bible, and +people that knows better knows enough to not let on. I never see such a +big church in my life before, and most awful high, it was; it made you +dizzy to look up; our village church at home ain't a circumstance to it; +if you was to put it in there, people would think it was a drygoods box. + +What I wanted to see was a dervish, because I was interested in dervishes +on accounts of the one that played the trick on the camel-driver. So we +found a lot in a kind of a church, and they called themselves Whirling +Dervishes; and they did whirl, too. I never see anything like it. They +had tall sugar-loaf hats on, and linen petticoats; and they spun and spun +and spun, round and round like tops, and the petticoats stood out on a +slant, and it was the prettiest thing I ever see, and made me drunk to +look at it. They was all Moslems, Tom said, and when I asked him what a +Moslem was, he said it was a person that wasn't a Presbyterian. So there +is plenty of them in Missouri, though I didn't know it before. + +We didn't see half there was to see in Cairo, because Tom was in such a +sweat to hunt out places that was celebrated in history. We had a most +tiresome time to find the granary where Joseph stored up the grain before +the famine, and when we found it it warn't worth much to look at, being +such an old tumble-down wreck; but Tom was satisfied, and made more fuss +over it than I would make if I stuck a nail in my foot. How he ever found +that place was too many for me. We passed as much as forty just like it +before we come to it, and any of them would 'a' done for me, but none but +just the right one would suit him; I never see anybody so particular as +Tom Sawyer. The minute he struck the right one he reconnized it as easy +as I would reconnize my other shirt if I had one, but how he done it he +couldn't any more tell than he could fly; he said so himself. + +Then we hunted a long time for the house where the boy lived that learned +the cadi how to try the case of the old olives and the new ones, and said +it was out of the Arabian Nights, and he would tell me and Jim about it +when he got time. Well, we hunted and hunted till I was ready to drop, +and I wanted Tom to give it up and come next day and git somebody that +knowed the town and could talk Missourian and could go straight to the +place; but no, he wanted to find it himself, and nothing else would +answer. So on we went. Then at last the remarkablest thing happened I +ever see. The house was gone--gone hundreds of years ago--every last rag +of it gone but just one mud brick. Now a person wouldn't ever believe +that a backwoods Missouri boy that hadn't ever been in that town before +could go and hunt that place over and find that brick, but Tom Sawyer +done it. I know he done it, because I see him do it. I was right by his +very side at the time, and see him see the brick and see him reconnize +it. Well, I says to myself, how DOES he do it? Is it knowledge, or is it +instink? + +Now there's the facts, just as they happened: let everybody explain it +their own way. I've ciphered over it a good deal, and it's my opinion +that some of it is knowledge but the main bulk of it is instink. The +reason is this: Tom put the brick in his pocket to give to a museum with +his name on it and the facts when he went home, and I slipped it out and +put another brick considerable like it in its place, and he didn't know +the difference--but there was a difference, you see. I think that settles +it--it's mostly instink, not knowledge. Instink tells him where the exact +PLACE is for the brick to be in, and so he reconnizes it by the place +it's in, not by the look of the brick. If it was knowledge, not instink, +he would know the brick again by the look of it the next time he seen +it--which he didn't. So it shows that for all the brag you hear about +knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instink is worth forty of it for +real unerringness. Jim says the same. + +When we got back Jim dropped down and took us in, and there was a young +man there with a red skullcap and tassel on and a beautiful silk jacket +and baggy trousers with a shawl around his waist and pistols in it that +could talk English and wanted to hire to us as guide and take us to Mecca +and Medina and Central Africa and everywheres for a half a dollar a day +and his keep, and we hired him and left, and piled on the power, and by +the time we was through dinner we was over the place where the Israelites +crossed the Red Sea when Pharaoh tried to overtake them and was caught by +the waters. We stopped, then, and had a good look at the place, and it +done Jim good to see it. He said he could see it all, now, just the way +it happened; he could see the Israelites walking along between the walls +of water, and the Egyptians coming, from away off yonder, hurrying all +they could, and see them start in as the Israelites went out, and then +when they was all in, see the walls tumble together and drown the last +man of them. Then we piled on the power again and rushed away and +huvvered over Mount Sinai, and saw the place where Moses broke the tables +of stone, and where the children of Israel camped in the plain and +worshiped the golden calf, and it was all just as interesting as could +be, and the guide knowed every place as well as I knowed the village at +home. + +But we had an accident, now, and it fetched all the plans to a +standstill. Tom's old ornery corn-cob pipe had got so old and swelled and +warped that she couldn't hold together any longer, notwithstanding the +strings and bandages, but caved in and went to pieces. Tom he didn't know +WHAT to do. The professor's pipe wouldn't answer; it warn't anything but +a mershum, and a person that's got used to a cob pipe knows it lays a +long ways over all the other pipes in this world, and you can't git him +to smoke any other. He wouldn't take mine, I couldn't persuade him. So +there he was. + +He thought it over, and said we must scour around and see if we could +roust out one in Egypt or Arabia or around in some of these countries, +but the guide said no, it warn't no use, they didn't have them. So Tom +was pretty glum for a little while, then he chirked up and said he'd got +the idea and knowed what to do. He says: + +"I've got another corn-cob pipe, and it's a prime one, too, and nearly +new. It's laying on the rafter that's right over the kitchen stove at +home in the village. Jim, you and the guide will go and get it, and me +and Huck will camp here on Mount Sinai till you come back." + +"But, Mars Tom, we couldn't ever find de village. I could find de pipe, +'case I knows de kitchen, but my lan', we can't ever find de village, nur +Sent Louis, nur none o' dem places. We don't know de way, Mars Tom." + +That was a fact, and it stumped Tom for a minute. Then he said: + +"Looky here, it can be done, sure; and I'll tell you how. You set your +compass and sail west as straight as a dart, till you find the United +States. It ain't any trouble, because it's the first land you'll strike +the other side of the Atlantic. If it's daytime when you strike it, bulge +right on, straight west from the upper part of the Florida coast, and in +an hour and three quarters you'll hit the mouth of the Mississippi--at +the speed that I'm going to send you. You'll be so high up in the air +that the earth will be curved considerable--sorter like a washbowl turned +upside down--and you'll see a raft of rivers crawling around every which +way, long before you get there, and you can pick out the Mississippi +without any trouble. Then you can follow the river north nearly, an hour +and three quarters, till you see the Ohio come in; then you want to look +sharp, because you're getting near. Away up to your left you'll see +another thread coming in--that's the Missouri and is a little above St. +Louis. You'll come down low then, so as you can examine the villages as +you spin along. You'll pass about twenty-five in the next fifteen +minutes, and you'll recognize ours when you see it--and if you don't, you +can yell down and ask." + +"Ef it's dat easy, Mars Tom, I reckon we kin do it--yassir, I knows we +kin." + +The guide was sure of it, too, and thought that he could learn to stand +his watch in a little while. + +"Jim can learn you the whole thing in a half an hour," Tom said. "This +balloon's as easy to manage as a canoe." + +Tom got out the chart and marked out the course and measured it, and +says: + +"To go back west is the shortest way, you see. It's only about seven +thousand miles. If you went east, and so on around, it's over twice as +far." Then he says to the guide, "I want you both to watch the tell-tale +all through the watches, and whenever it don't mark three hundred miles +an hour, you go higher or drop lower till you find a storm-current that's +going your way. There's a hundred miles an hour in this old thing without +any wind to help. There's two-hundred-mile gales to be found, any time +you want to hunt for them." + +"We'll hunt for them, sir." + +"See that you do. Sometimes you may have to go up a couple of miles, and +it'll be p'ison cold, but most of the time you'll find your storm a good +deal lower. If you can only strike a cyclone--that's the ticket for you! +You'll see by the professor's books that they travel west in these +latitudes; and they travel low, too." + +Then he ciphered on the time, and says-- + +"Seven thousand miles, three hundred miles an hour--you can make the trip +in a day--twenty-four hours. This is Thursday; you'll be back here +Saturday afternoon. Come, now, hustle out some blankets and food and +books and things for me and Huck, and you can start right along. There +ain't no occasion to fool around--I want a smoke, and the quicker you +fetch that pipe the better." + +All hands jumped for the things, and in eight minutes our things was out +and the balloon was ready for America. So we shook hands good-bye, and +Tom gave his last orders: + +"It's 10 minutes to 2 P.M. now, Mount Sinai time. In 24 hours you'll be +home, and it'll be 6 to-morrow morning, village time. When you strike the +village, land a little back of the top of the hill, in the woods, out of +sight; then you rush down, Jim, and shove these letters in the +post-office, and if you see anybody stirring, pull your slouch down over +your face so they won't know you. Then you go and slip in the back way to +the kitchen and git the pipe, and lay this piece of paper on the kitchen +table, and put something on it to hold it, and then slide out and git +away, and don't let Aunt Polly catch a sight of you, nor nobody else. +Then you jump for the balloon and shove for Mount Sinai three hundred +miles an hour. You won't have lost more than an hour. You'll start back +at 7 or 8 A.M., village time, and be here in 24 hours, arriving at 2 or 3 +P.M., Mount Sinai time." + +Tom he read the piece of paper to us. He had wrote on it: + + "THURSDAY AFTERNOON. Tom Sawyer the Erro-nort + sends his love to Aunt Polly from Mount Sinai + where the Ark was, and so does Huck Finn, and she + will get it to-morrow morning half-past six." * + + [* This misplacing of the Ark is probably Huck's error, not +Tom's.--M.T.] + +"That'll make her eyes bulge out and the tears come," he says. Then he +says: + +"Stand by! One--two--three--away you go!" + +And away she DID go! Why, she seemed to whiz out of sight in a second. + +Then we found a most comfortable cave that looked out over the whole big +plain, and there we camped to wait for the pipe. + +The balloon come hack all right, and brung the pipe; but Aunt Polly had +catched Jim when he was getting it, and anybody can guess what happened: +she sent for Tom. So Jim he says: + +"Mars Tom, she's out on de porch wid her eye sot on de sky a-layin' for +you, en she say she ain't gwyne to budge from dah tell she gits hold of +you. Dey's gwyne to be trouble, Mars Tom, 'deed dey is." + +So then we shoved for home, and not feeling very gay, neither. + +END. + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Tom Sawyer Abroad, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +THE TRAGEDY OF PUDD'NHEAD WILSON + +by Mark Twain + + + + +A WHISPER TO THE READER + +There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed +by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: +his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the +humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of +feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +A person who is ignorant of legal matters is always liable to make +mistakes when he tries to photograph a court scene with his pen; and so I +was not willing to let the law chapters in this book go to press without +first subjecting them to rigid and exhausting revision and correction by +a trained barrister--if that is what they are called. These chapters are +right, now, in every detail, for they were rewritten under the immediate +eye of William Hicks, who studied law part of a while in southwest +Missouri thirty-five years ago and then came over here to Florence for +his health and is still helping for exercise and board in Macaroni +Vermicelli's horse-feed shed, which is up the back alley as you turn +around the corner out of the Piazza del Duomo just beyond the house where +that stone that Dante used to sit on six hundred years ago is let into +the wall when he let on to be watching them build Giotto's campanile and +yet always got tired looking as Beatrice passed along on her way to get a +chunk of chestnut cake to defend herself with in case of a Ghibelline +outbreak before she got to school, at the same old stand where they sell +the same old cake to this day and it is just as light and good as it was +then, too, and this is not flattery, far from it. He was a little rusty +on his law, but he rubbed up for this book, and those two or three legal +chapters are right and straight, now. He told me so himself. + +Given under my hand this second day of January, 1893, at the Villa +Viviani, village of Settignano, three miles back of Florence, on the +hills--the same certainly affording the most charming view to be found +on this planet, and with it the most dreamlike and enchanting sunsets to +be found in any planet or even in any solar system--and given, too, in +the swell room of the house, with the busts of Cerretani senators and +other grandees of this line looking approvingly down upon me, as they +used to look down upon Dante, and mutely asking me to adopt them into my +family, which I do with pleasure, for my remotest ancestors are but +spring chickens compared with these robed and stately antiques, and it +will be a great and satisfying lift for me, that six hundred years will. + +Mark Twain. + + + + +CHAPTER 1 + +Pudd'nhead Wins His Name + +Tell the truth or trump--but get the trick. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +The scene of this chronicle is the town of Dawson's Landing, on the +Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a day's journey, per steamboat, +below St. Louis. + +In 1830 it was a snug collection of modest one- and two- story frame +dwellings, whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight +by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles, and morning glories. +Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white +palings and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots, +prince's-feathers, and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the +windowsills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss rose plants +and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of +intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad +house-front like an explosion of flame. When there was room on the ledge +outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there--in sunny +weather--stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry +belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then that house was +complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world +by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. A home without a cat--and +a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat--may be a perfect +home, perhaps, but how can it prove title? + +All along the streets, on both sides, at the outer edge of the brick +sidewalks, stood locust trees with trunks protected by wooden boxing, and +these furnished shade for summer and a sweet fragrancer in spring, when +the clusters of buds came forth. The main street, one block back from +the river, and running parallel with it, was the sole business street. +It was six blocks long, and in each block two or three brick stores, +three stories high, towered above interjected bunches of little frame +shops. Swinging signs creaked in the wind the street's whole length. +The candy-striped pole, which indicates nobility proud and ancient along +the palace-bordered canals of Venice, indicated merely the humble +barbershop along the main street of Dawson's Landing. On a chief corner +stood a lofty unpainted pole wreathed from top to bottom with tin pots +and pans and cups, the chief tinmonger's noisy notice to the world (when +the wind blew) that his shop was on hand for business at that corner. + +The hamlet's front was washed by the clear waters of the great river; its +body stretched itself rearward up a gentle incline; its most rearward +border fringed itself out and scattered its houses about its base line of +the hills; the hills rose high, enclosing the town in a half-moon curve, +clothed with forests from foot to summit. + +Steamboats passed up and down every hour or so. Those belonging to the +little Cairo line and the little Memphis line always stopped; the big +Orleans liners stopped for hails only, or to land passengers or freight; +and this was the case also with the great flotilla of "transients." +These latter came out of a dozen rivers--the Illinois, the Missouri, the +Upper Mississippi, the Ohio, the Monongahela, the Tennessee, the Red +River, the White River, and so on--and were bound every whither and +stocked with every imaginable comfort or necessity, which the +Mississippi's communities could want, from the frosty Falls of St. +Anthony down through nine climates to torrid New Orleans. + +Dawson's Landing was a slaveholding town, with a rich, slave-worked grain +and pork country back of it. The town was sleepy and comfortable and +contented. It was fifty years old, and was growing slowly--very slowly, +in fact, but still it was growing. + +The chief citizen was York Leicester Driscoll, about forty years old, +judge of the county court. He was very proud of his old Virginian +ancestry, and in his hospitalities and his rather formal and stately +manners, he kept up its traditions. He was fine and just and generous. +To be a gentleman--a gentleman without stain or blemish--was his only +religion, and to it he was always faithful. He was respected, esteemed, +and beloved by all of the community. He was well off, and was gradually +adding to his store. He and his wife were very nearly happy, but not +quite, for they had no children. The longing for the treasure of a child +had grown stronger and stronger as the years slipped away, but the +blessing never came--and was never to come. + +With this pair lived the judge's widowed sister, Mrs. Rachel Pratt, and +she also was childless--childless, and sorrowful for that reason, and not +to be comforted. The women were good and commonplace people, and did +their duty, and had their reward in clear consciences and the community's +approbation. They were Presbyterians, the judge was a freethinker. + +Pembroke Howard, lawyer and bachelor, aged almost forty, was another old +Virginian grandee with proved descent from the First Families. He was a +fine, majestic creature, a gentleman according to the nicest requirements +of the Virginia rule, a devoted Presbyterian, an authority on the "code", +and a man always courteously ready to stand up before you in the field if +any act or word of his had seemed doubtful or suspicious to you, and +explain it with any weapon you might prefer from bradawls to artillery. +He was very popular with the people, and was the judge's dearest friend. + +Then there was Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, another F.F.V. of formidable +caliber--however, with him we have no concern. + +Percy Northumberland Driscoll, brother to the judge, and younger than he +by five years, was a married man, and had had children around his +hearthstone; but they were attacked in detail by measles, croup, and +scarlet fever, and this had given the doctor a chance with his effective +antediluvian methods; so the cradles were empty. He was a prosperous +man, with a good head for speculations, and his fortune was growing. On +the first of February, 1830, two boy babes were born in his house; one to +him, one to one of his slave girls, Roxana by name. Roxana was twenty +years old. She was up and around the same day, with her hands full, for +she was tending both babes. + +Mrs. Percy Driscoll died within the week. Roxy remained in charge of the +children. She had her own way, for Mr. Driscoll soon absorbed himself in +his speculations and left her to her own devices. + +In that same month of February, Dawson's Landing gained a new citizen. +This was Mr. David Wilson, a young fellow of Scotch parentage. He had +wandered to this remote region from his birthplace in the interior of the +State of New York, to seek his fortune. He was twenty-five years old, +college bred, and had finished a post-college course in an Eastern law +school a couple of years before. + +He was a homely, freckled, sandy-haired young fellow, with an intelligent +blue eye that had frankness and comradeship in it and a covert twinkle of +a pleasant sort. But for an unfortunate remark of his, he would no doubt +have entered at once upon a successful career at Dawson's Landing. But he +made his fatal remark the first day he spent in the village, and it +"gaged" him. He had just made the acquaintance of a group of citizens +when an invisible dog began to yelp and snarl and howl and make himself +very comprehensively disagreeable, whereupon young Wilson said, much as +one who is thinking aloud: + +"I wish I owned half of that dog." + +"Why?" somebody asked. + +"Because I would kill my half." + +The group searched his face with curiosity, with anxiety even, but found +no light there, no expression that they could read. They fell away from +him as from something uncanny, and went into privacy to discuss him. One +said: + +"'Pears to be a fool." + +"'Pears?" said another. "_Is,_ I reckon you better say." + +"Said he wished he owned _half_ of the dog, the idiot," said a third. +"What did he reckon would become of the other half if he killed his half? +Do you reckon he thought it would live?" + +"Why, he must have thought it, unless he IS the downrightest fool in the +world; because if he hadn't thought it, he would have wanted to own the +whole dog, knowing that if he killed his half and the other half died, he +would be responsible for that half just the same as if he had killed that +half instead of his own. Don't it look that way to you, gents?" + +"Yes, it does. If he owned one half of the general dog, it would be so; +if he owned one end of the dog and another person owned the other end, it +would be so, just the same; particularly in the first case, because if +you kill one half of a general dog, there ain't any man that can tell +whose half it was; but if he owned one end of the dog, maybe he could +kill his end of it and--" + +"No, he couldn't either; he couldn't and not be responsible if the other +end died, which it would. In my opinion that man ain't in his right +mind." + +"In my opinion he hain't _got_ any mind." + +No. 3 said: "Well, he's a lummox, anyway." + +"That's what he is;" said No. 4. "He's a labrick--just a Simon-pure +labrick, if there was one." + +"Yes, sir, he's a dam fool. That's the way I put him up," said No. 5. +"Anybody can think different that wants to, but those are my sentiments." + +"I'm with you, gentlemen," said No. 6. "Perfect jackass--yes, and it +ain't going too far to say he is a pudd'nhead. If he ain't a pudd'nhead, +I ain't no judge, that's all." + +Mr. Wilson stood elected. The incident was told all over the town, and +gravely discussed by everybody. Within a week he had lost his first +name; Pudd'nhead took its place. In time he came to be liked, and well +liked too; but by that time the nickname had got well stuck on, and it +stayed. That first day's verdict made him a fool, and he was not able to +get it set aside, or even modified. The nickname soon ceased to carry +any harsh or unfriendly feeling with it, but it held its place, and was +to continue to hold its place for twenty long years. + + + + +CHAPTER 2 + +Driscoll Spares His Slaves + +Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the apple for +the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake +was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +Pudd'nhead Wilson had a trifle of money when he arrived, and he bought a +small house on the extreme western verge of the town. Between it and +Judge Driscoll's house there was only a grassy yard, with a paling fence +dividing the properties in the middle. He hired a small office down in +the town and hung out a tin sign with these words on it: + +D A V I D W I L S O N + +ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR-AT-LAW + +SURVEYING, CONVEYANCING, ETC. + +But his deadly remark had ruined his chance--at least in the law. No +clients came. He took down his sign, after a while, and put it up on his +own house with the law features knocked out of it. It offered his +services now in the humble capacities of land surveyor and expert +accountant. Now and then he got a job of surveying to do, and now and +then a merchant got him to straighten out his books. With Scotch patience +and pluck he resolved to live down his reputation and work his way into +the legal field yet. Poor fellow, he could foresee that it was going to +take him such a weary long time to do it. + +He had a rich abundance of idle time, but it never hung heavy on his +hands, for he interested himself in every new thing that was born into +the universe of ideas, and studied it, and experimented upon it at his +house. One of his pet fads was palmistry. To another one he gave no +name, neither would he explain to anybody what its purpose was, but +merely said it was an amusement. In fact, he had found that his fads +added to his reputation as a pudd'nhead; there, he was growing chary of +being too communicative about them. The fad without a name was one which +dealt with people's finger marks. He carried in his coat pocket a +shallow box with grooves in it, and in the grooves strips of glass five +inches long and three inches wide. Along the lower edge of each strip +was pasted a slip of white paper. He asked people to pass their hands +through their hair (thus collecting upon them a thin coating of the +natural oil) and then making a thumb-mark on a glass strip, following it +with the mark of the ball of each finger in succession. Under this row +of faint grease prints he would write a record on the strip of white +paper--thus: + +JOHN SMITH, right hand-- + +and add the day of the month and the year, then take Smith's left hand on +another glass strip, and add name and date and the words "left hand." The +strips were now returned to the grooved box, and took their place among +what Wilson called his "records." + +He often studied his records, examining and poring over them with +absorbing interest until far into the night; but what he found there--if +he found anything--he revealed to no one. Sometimes he copied on paper +the involved and delicate pattern left by the ball of the finger, and +then vastly enlarged it with a pantograph so that he could examine its +web of curving lines with ease and convenience. + +One sweltering afternoon--it was the first day of July, 1830--he was at +work over a set of tangled account books in his workroom, which looked +westward over a stretch of vacant lots, when a conversation outside +disturbed him. It was carried on in yells, which showed that the people +engaged in it were not close together. + +"Say, Roxy, how does yo' baby come on?" This from the distant voice. + +"Fust-rate. How does _you_ come on, Jasper?" This yell was from close +by. + +"Oh, I's middlin'; hain't got noth'n' to complain of, I's gwine to come +a-court'n you bimeby, Roxy." + +"_You_ is, you black mud cat! Yah--yah--yah! I got somep'n' better to +do den 'sociat'n' wid niggers as black as you is. Is ole Miss Cooper's +Nancy done give you de mitten?" Roxy followed this sally with another +discharge of carefree laughter. + +"You's jealous, Roxy, dat's what's de matter wid you, you +hussy--yah--yah--yah! Dat's de time I got you!" + +"Oh, yes, _you_ got me, hain't you. 'Clah to goodness if dat conceit o' +yo'n strikes in, Jasper, it gwine to kill you sho'. If you b'longed to +me, I'd sell you down de river 'fo' you git too fur gone. Fust time I +runs acrost yo' marster, I's gwine to tell him so." + +This idle and aimless jabber went on and on, both parties enjoying the +friendly duel and each well satisfied with his own share of the wit +exchanged--for wit they considered it. + +Wilson stepped to the window to observe the combatants; he could not work +while their chatter continued. Over in the vacant lots was Jasper, +young, coal black, and of magnificent build, sitting on a wheelbarrow in +the pelting sun--at work, supposably, whereas he was in fact only +preparing for it by taking an hour's rest before beginning. In front of +Wilson's porch stood Roxy, with a local handmade baby wagon, in which sat +her two charges--one at each end and facing each other. From Roxy's +manner of speech, a stranger would have expected her to be black, but she +was not. Only one sixteenth of her was black, and that sixteenth did not +show. She was of majestic form and stature, her attitudes were imposing +and statuesque, and her gestures and movements distinguished by a noble +and stately grace. Her complexion was very fair, with the rosy glow of +vigorous health in her cheeks, her face was full of character and +expression, her eyes were brown and liquid, and she had a heavy suit of +fine soft hair which was also brown, but the fact was not apparent +because her head was bound about with a checkered handkerchief and the +hair was concealed under it. Her face was shapely, intelligent, and +comely--even beautiful. She had an easy, independent carriage--when she +was among her own caste--and a high and "sassy" way, withal; but of +course she was meek and humble enough where white people were. + +To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one +sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and +made her a Negro. She was a slave, and salable as such. Her child was +thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law +and custom a Negro. He had blue eyes and flaxen curls like his white +comrade, but even the father of the white child was able to tell the +children apart--little as he had commerce with them--by their clothes; +for the white babe wore ruffled soft muslin and a coral necklace, while +the other wore merely a coarse tow-linen shirt which barely reached to +its knees, and no jewelry. + +The white child's name was Thomas a Becket Driscoll, the other's name was +Valet de Chambre: no surname--slaves hadn't the privilege. Roxana had +heard that phrase somewhere, the fine sound of it had pleased her ear, +and as she had supposed it was a name, she loaded it on to her darling. +It soon got shorted to "Chambers," of course. + +Wilson knew Roxy by sight, and when the duel of wits begun to play out, +he stepped outside to gather in a record or two. Jasper went to work +energetically, at once, perceiving that his leisure was observed. Wilson +inspected the children and asked: + +"How old are they, Roxy?" + +"Bofe de same age, sir--five months. Bawn de fust o' Feb'uary." + +"They're handsome little chaps. One's just as handsome as the other, +too." + +A delighted smile exposed the girl's white teeth, and she said: + +"Bless yo' soul, Misto Wilson, it's pow'ful nice o' you to say dat, +'ca'se one of 'em ain't on'y a nigger. Mighty prime little nigger, _I_ +al'ays says, but dat's 'ca'se it's mine, o' course." + +"How do you tell them apart, Roxy, when they haven't any clothes on?" + +Roxy laughed a laugh proportioned to her size, and said: + +"Oh, _I_ kin tell 'em 'part, Misto Wilson, but I bet Marse Percy +couldn't, not to save his life." + +Wilson chatted along for awhile, and presently got Roxy's fingerprints +for his collection--right hand and left--on a couple of his glass strips; +then labeled and dated them, and took the "records" of both children, and +labeled and dated them also. + +Two months later, on the third of September, he took this trio of finger +marks again. He liked to have a "series," two or three "takings" at +intervals during the period of childhood, these to be followed at +intervals of several years. + +The next day--that is to say, on the fourth of September--something +occurred which profoundly impressed Roxana. Mr. Driscoll missed another +small sum of money--which is a way of saying that this was not a new +thing, but had happened before. In truth, it had happened three times +before. Driscoll's patience was exhausted. He was a fairly humane man +toward slaves and other animals; he was an exceedingly humane man toward +the erring of his own race. Theft he could not abide, and plainly there +was a thief in his house. Necessarily the thief must be one of his +Negros. Sharp measures must be taken. He called his servants before him. +There were three of these, besides Roxy: a man, a woman, and a boy +twelve years old. They were not related. Mr. Driscoll said: + +"You have all been warned before. It has done no good. This time I will +teach you a lesson. I will sell the thief. Which of you is the guilty +one?" + +They all shuddered at the threat, for here they had a good home, and a +new one was likely to be a change for the worse. The denial was general. +None had stolen anything--not money, anyway--a little sugar, or cake, or +honey, or something like that, that "Marse Percy wouldn't mind or miss" +but not money--never a cent of money. They were eloquent in their +protestations, but Mr. Driscoll was not moved by them. He answered each +in turn with a stern "Name the thief!" + +The truth was, all were guilty but Roxana; she suspected that the others +were guilty, but she did not know them to be so. She was horrified to +think how near she had come to being guilty herself; she had been saved +in the nick of time by a revival in the colored Methodist Church, a +fortnight before, at which time and place she "got religion." The very +next day after that gracious experience, while her change of style was +fresh upon her and she was vain of her purified condition, her master +left a couple dollars unprotected on his desk, and she happened upon that +temptation when she was polishing around with a dustrag. She looked at +the money awhile with a steady rising resentment, then she burst out +with: + +"Dad blame dat revival, I wisht it had 'a' be'n put off till tomorrow!" + +Then she covered the tempter with a book, and another member of the +kitchen cabinet got it. She made this sacrifice as a matter of religious +etiquette; as a thing necessary just now, but by no means to be wrested +into a precedent; no, a week or two would limber up her piety, then she +would be rational again, and the next two dollars that got left out in +the cold would find a comforter--and she could name the comforter. + +Was she bad? Was she worse than the general run of her race? No. They +had an unfair show in the battle of life, and they held it no sin to take +military advantage of the enemy--in a small way; in a small way, but not +in a large one. They would smouch provisions from the pantry whenever +they got a chance; or a brass thimble, or a cake of wax, or an emery bag, +or a paper of needles, or a silver spoon, or a dollar bill, or small +articles of clothing, or any other property of light value; and so far +were they from considering such reprisals sinful, that they would go to +church and shout and pray the loudest and sincerest with their plunder in +their pockets. A farm smokehouse had to be kept heavily padlocked, or +even the colored deacon himself could not resist a ham when Providence +showed him in a dream, or otherwise, where such a thing hung lonesome, +and longed for someone to love. But with a hundred hanging before him, +the deacon would not take two--that is, on the same night. On frosty +nights the humane Negro prowler would warm the end of the plank and put +it up under the cold claws of chickens roosting in a tree; a drowsy hen +would step on to the comfortable board, softly clucking her gratitude, +and the prowler would dump her into his bag, and later into his stomach, +perfectly sure that in taking this trifle from the man who daily robbed +him of an inestimable treasure--his liberty--he was not committing any +sin that God would remember against him in the Last Great Day. + +"Name the thief!" + +For the fourth time Mr. Driscoll had said it, and always in the same hard +tone. And now he added these words of awful import: + +"I give you one minute." He took out his watch. "If at the end of that +time, you have not confessed, I will not only sell all four of you, +BUT--I will sell you DOWN THE RIVER!" + +It was equivalent to condemning them to hell! No Missouri Negro doubted +this. Roxy reeled in her tracks, and the color vanished out of her face; +the others dropped to their knees as if they had been shot; tears gushed +from their eyes, their supplicating hands went up, and three answers came +in the one instant. + +"I done it!" + +"I done it!" + +"I done it!--have mercy, marster--Lord have mercy on us po' niggers!" + +"Very good," said the master, putting up his watch, "I will sell you +_here_ though you don't deserve it. You ought to be sold down the +river." + +The culprits flung themselves prone, in an ecstasy of gratitude, and +kissed his feet, declaring that they would never forget his goodness and +never cease to pray for him as long as they lived. They were sincere, for +like a god he had stretched forth his mighty hand and closed the gates of +hell against them. He knew, himself, that he had done a noble and +gracious thing, and was privately well pleased with his magnanimity; and +that night he set the incident down in his diary, so that his son might +read it in after years, and be thereby moved to deeds of gentleness and +humanity himself. + + + + +CHAPTER 3 + +Roxy Plays a Shrewd Trick + +Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a +debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. +He brought death into the world. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +Percy Driscoll slept well the night he saved his house minions from +going down the river, but no wink of sleep visited Roxy's eyes. A +profound terror had taken possession of her. Her child could grow up and +be sold down the river! The thought crazed her with horror. If she dozed +and lost herself for a moment, the next moment she was on her feet flying +to her child's cradle to see if it was still there. Then she would gather +it to her heart and pour out her love upon it in a frenzy of kisses, +moaning, crying, and saying, "Dey sha'n't, oh, dey _sha'nt'!'_--yo' po' +mammy will kill you fust!" + +Once, when she was tucking him back in its cradle again, the other child +nestled in its sleep and attracted her attention. She went and stood +over it a long time communing with herself. + +"What has my po' baby done, dat he couldn't have yo' luck? He hain't done +nuth'n. God was good to you; why warn't he good to him? Dey can't sell +_you_ down de river. I hates yo' pappy; he hain't got no heart--for +niggers, he hain't, anyways. I hates him, en I could kill him!" She +paused awhile, thinking; then she burst into wild sobbings again, and +turned away, saying, "Oh, I got to kill my chile, dey ain't no yuther +way--killin' _him_ wouldn't save de chile fum goin' down de river. Oh, I +got to do it, yo' po' mammy's got to kill you to save you, honey." She +gathered her baby to her bosom now, and began to smother it with +caresses. "Mammy's got to kill you--how _kin_ I do it! But yo' mammy +ain't gwine to desert you--no, no, _dah_, don't cry--she gwine _wid_ +you, she gwine to kill herself too. Come along, honey, come along wid +mammy; we gwine to jump in de river, den troubles o' dis worl' is all +over--dey don't sell po' niggers down the river over _yonder_." + +She stared toward the door, crooning to the child and hushing it; midway +she stopped, suddenly. She had caught sight of her new Sunday gown--a +cheap curtain-calico thing, a conflagration of gaudy colors and fantastic +figures. She surveyed it wistfully, longingly. + +"Hain't ever wore it yet," she said, "en it's just lovely." Then she +nodded her head in response to a pleasant idea, and added, "No, I ain't +gwine to be fished out, wid everybody lookin' at me, in dis mis'able ole +linsey-woolsey." + +She put down the child and made the change. She looked in the glass and +was astonished at her beauty. She resolved to make her death toilet +perfect. She took off her handkerchief turban and dressed her glossy +wealth of hair "like white folks"; she added some odds and ends of rather +lurid ribbon and a spray of atrocious artificial flowers; finally she +threw over her shoulders a fluffy thing called a "cloud" in that day, +which was of a blazing red complexion. Then she was ready for the tomb. + +She gathered up her baby once more; but when her eye fell upon its +miserably short little gray tow-linen shirt and noted the contrast +between its pauper shabbiness and her own volcanic eruption of infernal +splendors, her mother-heart was touched, and she was ashamed. + +"No, dolling mammy ain't gwine to treat you so. De angels is gwine to +'mire you jist as much as dey does yo' mammy. Ain't gwine to have 'em +putt'n dey han's up 'fo' dey eyes en sayin' to David and Goliah en dem +yuther prophets, 'Dat chile is dress' to indelicate fo' dis place.'" + +By this time she had stripped off the shirt. Now she clothed the naked +little creature in one of Thomas `a Becket's snowy, long baby gowns, with +its bright blue bows and dainty flummery of ruffles. + +"Dah--now you's fixed." She propped the child in a chair and stood off +to inspect it. Straightway her eyes begun to widen with astonishment and +admiration, and she clapped her hands and cried out, "Why, it do beat +all! I _never_ knowed you was so lovely. Marse Tommy ain't a bit +puttier--not a single bit." + +She stepped over and glanced at the other infant; she flung a glance +back at her own; then one more at the heir of the house. Now a strange +light dawned in her eyes, and in a moment she was lost in thought. She +seemed in a trance; when she came out of it, she muttered, "When I 'uz +a-washin' 'em in de tub, yistiddy, he own pappy asked me which of 'em was +his'n." + +She began to move around like one in a dream. She undressed Thomas `a +Becket, stripping him of everything, and put the tow-linen shirt on him. +She put his coral necklace on her own child's neck. Then she placed the +children side by side, and after earnest inspection she muttered: + +"Now who would b'lieve clo'es could do de like o' dat? Dog my cats if it +ain't all _I_ kin do to tell t' other fum which, let alone his pappy." + +She put her cub in Tommy's elegant cradle and said: + +"You's young Marse _Tom_ fum dis out, en I got to practice and git used +to 'memberin' to call you dat, honey, or I's gwine to make a mistake +sometime en git us bofe into trouble. Dah--now you lay still en don't +fret no mo', Marse Tom. Oh, thank de lord in heaven, you's saved, you's +saved! Dey ain't no man kin ever sell mammy's po' little honey down de +river now!" + +She put the heir of the house in her own child's unpainted pine cradle, +and said, contemplating its slumbering form uneasily: + +"I's sorry for you, honey; I's sorry, God knows I is--but what _kin_ I +do, what _could_ I do? Yo' pappy would sell him to somebody, sometime, +en den he'd go down de river, sho', en I couldn't, couldn't, _couldn't_ +stan' it." + +She flung herself on her bed and began to think and toss, toss and think. +By and by she sat suddenly upright, for a comforting thought had flown +through her worried mind-- + +"'T ain't no sin--_white_ folks has done it! It ain't no sin, glory to +goodness it ain't no sin! _Dey's_ done it--yes, en dey was de biggest +quality in de whole bilin', too--_kings!"_ + +She began to muse; she was trying to gather out of her memory the dim +particulars of some tale she had heard some time or other. At last she +said-- + +"Now I's got it; now I 'member. It was dat ole nigger preacher dat tole +it, de time he come over here fum Illinois en preached in de nigger +church. He said dey ain't nobody kin save his own self--can't do it by +faith, can't do it by works, can't do it no way at all. Free grace is de +_on'y_ way, en dat don't come fum nobody but jis' de Lord; en _he_ kin +give it to anybody He please, saint or sinner--_he_ don't kyer. He do +jis' as He's a mineter. He s'lect out anybody dat suit Him, en put +another one in his place, and make de fust one happy forever en leave t' +other one to burn wid Satan. De preacher said it was jist like dey done +in Englan' one time, long time ago. De queen she lef' her baby layin' +aroun' one day, en went out callin'; an one 'o de niggers roun'bout de +place dat was 'mos' white, she come in en see de chile layin' aroun', en +tuck en put her own chile's clo's on de queen's chile, en put de queen's +chile's clo'es on her own chile, en den lef' her own chile layin' aroun', +en tuck en toted de queen's chile home to de nigger quarter, en nobody +ever foun' it out, en her chile was de king bimeby, en sole de queen's +chile down de river one time when dey had to settle up de estate. Dah, +now--de preacher said it his own self, en it ain't no sin, 'ca'se white +folks done it. DEY done it--yes, DEY done it; en not on'y jis' common +white folks nuther, but de biggest quality dey is in de whole bilin'. +_Oh_, I's _so_ glad I 'member 'bout dat!" + +She got lighthearted and happy, and went to the cradles, and spent what +was left of the night "practicing." She would give her own child a light +pat and say humbly, "Lay still, Marse Tom," then give the real Tom a pat +and say with severity, "Lay _still_, Chambers! Does you want me to take +somep'n _to_ you?" + +As she progressed with her practice, she was surprised to see how +steadily and surely the awe which had kept her tongue reverent and her +manner humble toward her young master was transferring itself to her +speech and manner toward the usurper, and how similarly handy she was +becoming in transferring her motherly curtness of speech and +peremptoriness of manner to the unlucky heir of the ancient house of +Driscoll. + +She took occasional rests from practicing, and absorbed herself in +calculating her chances. + +"Dey'll sell dese niggers today fo' stealin' de money, den dey'll buy +some mo' dat don't now de chillen--so _dat's_ all right. When I takes de +chillen out to git de air, de minute I's roun' de corner I's gwine to +gaum dey mouths all roun' wid jam, den dey can't _nobody_ notice dey's +changed. Yes, I gwine ter do dat till I's safe, if it's a year. + +"Dey ain't but one man dat I's afeard of, en dat's dat Pudd'nhead Wilson. +Dey calls him a pudd'nhead, en says he's a fool. My lan, dat man ain't +no mo' fool den I is! He's de smartes' man in dis town, lessn' it's +Jedge Driscoll or maybe Pem Howard. Blame dat man, he worries me wid dem +ornery glasses o' his'n; _I_ b'lieve he's a witch. But nemmine, I's gwine +to happen aroun' dah one o' dese days en let on dat I reckon he wants to +print a chillen's fingers ag'in; en if HE don't notice dey's changed, I +bound dey ain't nobody gwine to notice it, en den I's safe, sho'. But I +reckon I'll tote along a hoss-shoe to keep off de witch work." + +The new Negros gave Roxy no trouble, of course. The master gave her +none, for one of his speculations was in jeopardy, and his mind was so +occupied that he hardly saw the children when he looked at them, and all +Roxy had to do was to get them both into a gale of laughter when he came +about; then their faces were mainly cavities exposing gums, and he was +gone again before the spasm passed and the little creatures resumed a +human aspect. + +Within a few days the fate of the speculation became so dubious that Mr. +Percy went away with his brother, the judge, to see what could be done +with it. It was a land speculation as usual, and it had gotten +complicated with a lawsuit. The men were gone seven weeks. Before they +got back, Roxy had paid her visit to Wilson, and was satisfied. Wilson +took the fingerprints, labeled them with the names and with the date +--October the first--put them carefully away, and continued his chat with +Roxy, who seemed very anxious that he should admire the great advance in +flesh and beauty which the babes had made since he took their +fingerprints a month before. He complimented their improvement to her +contentment; and as they were without any disguise of jam or other stain, +she trembled all the while and was miserably frightened lest at any +moment he-- + +But he didn't. He discovered nothing; and she went home jubilant, and +dropped all concern about the matter permanently out of her mind. + + + + +CHAPTER 4 + +The Ways of the Changelings + +Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they +escaped teething. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +There is this trouble about special providences--namely, there is so +often a doubt as to which party was intended to be the beneficiary. In +the case of the children, the bears, and the prophet, the bears got more +real satisfaction out of the episode than the prophet did, because they +got the children. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + + + +This history must henceforth accommodate itself to the change which +Roxana has consummated, and call the real heir "Chambers" and the +usurping little slave, "Thomas `a Becket"--shortening this latter name to +"Tom," for daily use, as the people about him did. + +"Tom" was a bad baby, from the very beginning of his usurpation. He would +cry for nothing; he would burst into storms of devilish temper without +notice, and let go scream after scream and squall after squall, then +climax the thing with "holding his breath"--that frightful specialty of +the teething nursling, in the throes of which the creature exhausts its +lungs, then is convulsed with noiseless squirmings and twistings and +kickings in the effort to get its breath, while the lips turn blue and +the mouth stands wide and rigid, offering for inspection one wee tooth +set in the lower rim of a hoop of red gums; and when the appalling +stillness has endured until one is sure the lost breath will never +return, a nurse comes flying, and dashes water in the child's face, +and--presto! the lungs fill, and instantly discharge a shriek, or a yell, +or a howl which bursts the listening ear and surprises the owner of it +into saying words which would not go well with a halo if he had one. The +baby Tom would claw anybody who came within reach of his nails, and pound +anybody he could reach with his rattle. He would scream for water until +he got it, and then throw cup and all on the floor and scream for more. +He was indulged in all his caprices, howsoever troublesome and +exasperating they might be; he was allowed to eat anything he wanted, +particularly things that would give him the stomach-ache. + +When he got to be old enough to begin to toddle about and say broken +words and get an idea of what his hands were for, he was a more +consummate pest than ever. Roxy got no rest while he was awake. He would +call for anything and everything he saw, simply saying, "Awnt it!" (want +it), which was a command. When it was brought, he said in a frenzy, and +motioning it away with his hands, "Don't awnt it! don't awnt it!" and the +moment it was gone he set up frantic yells of "Awnt it! awnt it!" and +Roxy had to give wings to her heels to get that thing back to him again +before he could get time to carry out his intention of going into +convulsions about it. + +What he preferred above all other things was the tongs. This was because +his "father" had forbidden him to have them lest he break windows and +furniture with them. The moment Roxy's back was turned he would toddle +to the presence of the tongs and say, "Like it!" and cock his eye to one +side or see if Roxy was observed; then, "Awnt it!" and cock his eye +again; then, "Hab it!" with another furtive glace; and finally, "Take +it!"--and the prize was his. The next moment the heavy implement was +raised aloft; the next, there was a crash and a squall, and the cat was +off on three legs to meet an engagement; Roxy would arrive just as the +lamp or a window went to irremediable smash. + +Tom got all the petting, Chambers got none. Tom got all the delicacies, +Chambers got mush and milk, and clabber without sugar. In consequence +Tom was a sickly child and Chambers wasn't. Tom was "fractious," as Roxy +called it, and overbearing; Chambers was meek and docile. + +With all her splendid common sense and practical everyday ability, Roxy +was a doting fool of a mother. She was this toward her child--and she +was also more than this: by the fiction created by herself, he was +become her master; the necessity of recognizing this relation outwardly +and of perfecting herself in the forms required to express the +recognition, had moved her to such diligence and faithfulness in +practicing these forms that this exercise soon concreted itself into +habit; it became automatic and unconscious; then a natural result +followed: deceptions intended solely for others gradually grew +practically into self-deceptions as well; the mock reverence became real +reverence, the mock homage real homage; the little counterfeit rift of +separation between imitation-slave and imitation-master widened and +widened, and became an abyss, and a very real one--and on one side of it +stood Roxy, the dupe of her own deceptions, and on the other stood her +child, no longer a usurper to her, but her accepted and recognized +master. He was her darling, her master, and her deity all in one, and in +her worship of him she forgot who she was and what he had been. + +In babyhood Tom cuffed and banged and scratched Chambers unrebuked, and +Chambers early learned that between meekly bearing it and resenting it, +the advantage all lay with the former policy. The few times that his +persecutions had moved him beyond control and made him fight back had +cost him very dear at headquarters; not at the hands of Roxy, for if she +ever went beyond scolding him sharply for "forgett'n' who his young +marster was," she at least never extended her punishment beyond a box on +the ear. No, Percy Driscoll was the person. He told Chambers that under +no provocation whatever was he privileged to lift his hand against his +little master. Chambers overstepped the line three times, and got three +such convincing canings from the man who was his father and didn't know +it, that he took Tom's cruelties in all humility after that, and made no +more experiments. + +Outside the house the two boys were together all through their boyhood. +Chambers was strong beyond his years, and a good fighter; strong because +he was coarsely fed and hard worked about the house, and a good fighter +because Tom furnished him plenty of practice--on white boys whom he +hated and was afraid of. Chambers was his constant bodyguard, to and +from school; he was present on the playground at recess to protect his +charge. He fought himself into such a formidable reputation, by and by, +that Tom could have changed clothes with him, and "ridden in peace," like +Sir Kay in Launcelot's armor. + +He was good at games of skill, too. Tom staked him with marbles to play +"keeps" with, and then took all the winnings away from him. In the winter +season Chambers was on hand, in Tom's worn-out clothes, with "holy" red +mittens, and "holy" shoes, and pants "holy" at the knees and seat, to +drag a sled up the hill for Tom, warmly clad, to ride down on; but he +never got a ride himself. He built snowmen and snow fortifications under +Tom's directions. He was Tom's patient target when Tom wanted to do some +snowballing, but the target couldn't fire back. Chambers carried Tom's +skates to the river and strapped them on him, then trotted around after +him on the ice, so as to be on hand when he wanted; but he wasn't ever +asked to try the skates himself. + +In summer the pet pastime of the boys of Dawson's Landing was to steal +apples, peaches, and melons from the farmer's fruit wagons--mainly on +account of the risk they ran of getting their heads laid open with the +butt of the farmer's whip. Tom was a distinguished adept at these +thefts--by proxy. Chambers did his stealing, and got the peach stones, +apple cores, and melon rinds for his share. + +Tom always made Chambers go in swimming with him, and stay by him as a +protection. When Tom had had enough, he would slip out and tie knots in +Chamber's shirt, dip the knots in the water and make them hard to undo, +then dress himself and sit by and laugh while the naked shiverer tugged +at the stubborn knots with his teeth. + +Tom did his humble comrade these various ill turns partly out of native +viciousness, and partly because he hated him for his superiorities of +physique and pluck, and for his manifold cleverness. Tom couldn't dive, +for it gave him splitting headaches. Chambers could dive without +inconvenience, and was fond of doing it. He excited so much admiration, +one day, among a crowd of white boys, by throwing back somersaults from +the stern of a canoe, that it wearied Tom's spirit, and at last he shoved +the canoe underneath Chambers while he was in the air--so he came down on +his head in the canoe bottom; and while he lay unconscious, several of +Tom's ancient adversaries saw that their long-desired opportunity was +come, and they gave the false heir such a drubbing that with Chamber's +best help he was hardly able to drag himself home afterward. + +When the boys was fifteen and upward, Tom was "showing off" in the river +one day, when he was taken with a cramp, and shouted for help. It was a +common trick with the boys--particularly if a stranger was present--to +pretend a cramp and howl for help; then when the stranger came tearing +hand over hand to the rescue, the howler would go on struggling and +howling till he was close at hand, then replace the howl with a sarcastic +smile and swim blandly away, while the town boys assailed the dupe with a +volley of jeers and laughter. Tom had never tried this joke as yet, but +was supposed to be trying it now, so the boys held warily back; but +Chambers believed his master was in earnest; therefore, he swam out, and +arrived in time, unfortunately, and saved his life. + +This was the last feather. Tom had managed to endure everything else, +but to have to remain publicly and permanently under such an obligation +as this to a nigger, and to this nigger of all niggers--this was too +much. He heaped insults upon Chambers for "pretending" to think he was in +earnest in calling for help, and said that anybody but a blockheaded +nigger would have known he was funning and left him alone. + +Tom's enemies were in strong force here, so they came out with their +opinions quite freely. The laughed at him, and called him coward, liar, +sneak, and other sorts of pet names, and told him they meant to call +Chambers by a new name after this, and make it common in the town--"Tom +Driscoll's nigger pappy,"--to signify that he had had a second birth into +this life, and that Chambers was the author of his new being. Tom grew +frantic under these taunts, and shouted: + +"Knock their heads off, Chambers! Knock their heads off! What do you +stand there with your hands in your pockets for?" + +Chambers expostulated, and said, "But, Marse Tom, dey's too many of +'em--dey's--" + +"Do you hear me?" + +"Please, Marse Tom, don't make me! Dey's so many of 'em dat--" + +Tom sprang at him and drove his pocketknife into him two or three times +before the boys could snatch him away and give the wounded lad a chance +to escape. He was considerably hurt, but not seriously. If the blade had +been a little longer, his career would have ended there. + +Tom had long ago taught Roxy "her place." It had been many a day now +since she had ventured a caress or a fondling epithet in his quarter. +Such things, from a "nigger," were repulsive to him, and she had been +warned to keep her distance and remember who she was. She saw her +darling gradually cease from being her son, she saw THAT detail perish +utterly; all that was left was master--master, pure and simple, and it +was not a gentle mastership, either. She saw herself sink from the +sublime height of motherhood to the somber depths of unmodified slavery, +the abyss of separation between her and her boy was complete. She was +merely his chattel now, his convenience, his dog, his cringing and +helpless slave, the humble and unresisting victim of his capricious +temper and vicious nature. + +Sometimes she could not go to sleep, even when worn out with fatigue, +because her rage boiled so high over the day's experiences with her boy. +She would mumble and mutter to herself: + +"He struck me en I warn't no way to blame--struck me in de face, right +before folks. En he's al'ays callin' me nigger wench, en hussy, en all +dem mean names, when I's doin' de very bes' I kin. Oh, Lord, I done so +much for him--I lif' him away up to what he is--en dis is what I git for +it." + +Sometimes when some outrage of peculiar offensiveness stung her to the +heart, she would plan schemes of vengeance and revel in the fancied +spectacle of his exposure to the world as an imposter and a slave; but in +the midst of these joys fear would strike her; she had made him too +strong; she could prove nothing, and--heavens, she might get sold down +the river for her pains! So her schemes always went for nothing, and she +laid them aside in impotent rage against the fates, and against herself +for playing the fool on that fatal September day in not providing herself +with a witness for use in the day when such a thing might be needed for +the appeasing of her vengeance-hungry heart. + +And yet the moment Tom happened to be good to her, and kind--and this +occurred every now and then--all her sore places were healed, and she was +happy; happy and proud, for this was her son, her nigger son, lording it +among the whites and securely avenging their crimes against her race. + +There were two grand funerals in Dawson's Landing that fall--the fall of +1845. One was that of Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, the other that of +Percy Driscoll. + +On his deathbed Driscoll set Roxy free and delivered his idolized +ostensible son solemnly into the keeping of his brother, the judge, and +his wife. Those childless people were glad to get him. Childless people +are not difficult to please. + +Judge Driscoll had gone privately to his brother, a month before, and +bought Chambers. He had heard that Tom had been trying to get his father +to sell the boy down the river, and he wanted to prevent the scandal--for +public sentiment did not approve of that way of treating family servants +for light cause or for no cause. + +Percy Driscoll had worn himself out in trying to save his great +speculative landed estate, and had died without succeeding. He was hardly +in his grave before the boom collapsed and left his envied young devil of +an heir a pauper. But that was nothing; his uncle told him he should be +his heir and have all his fortune when he died; so Tom was comforted. + +Roxy had no home now; so she resolved to go around and say good-by to her +friends and then clear out and see the world--that is to say, she would +go chambermaiding on a steamboat, the darling ambition of her race and +sex. + +Her last call was on the black giant, Jasper. She found him chopping +Pudd'nhead Wilson's winter provision of wood. + +Wilson was chatting with him when Roxy arrived. He asked her how she +could bear to go off chambermaiding and leave her boys; and chaffingly +offered to copy off a series of their fingerprints, reaching up to their +twelfth year, for her to remember them by; but she sobered in a moment, +wondering if he suspected anything; then she said she believed she didn't +want them. Wilson said to himself, "The drop of black blood in her is +superstitious; she thinks there's some devilry, some witch business about +my glass mystery somewhere; she used to come here with an old horseshoe +in her hand; it could have been an accident, but I doubt it." + + + + +CHAPTER 5 + +The Twins Thrill Dawson's Landing + +Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower +is nothing but cabbage with a college education. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +Remark of Dr. Baldwin's, concerning upstarts: We don't care to eat +toadstools that think they are truffles. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +Mrs. York Driscoll enjoyed two years of bliss with that prize, +Tom--bliss that was troubled a little at times, it is true, but bliss +nevertheless; then she died, and her husband and his childless sister, +Mrs. Pratt, continued this bliss-business at the old stand. Tom was +petted and indulged and spoiled to his entire content--or nearly that. +This went on till he was nineteen, then he was sent to Yale. He went +handsomely equipped with "conditions," but otherwise he was not an object +of distinction there. He remained at Yale two years, and then threw up +the struggle. He came home with his manners a good deal improved; he had +lost his surliness and brusqueness, and was rather pleasantly soft and +smooth, now; he was furtively, and sometimes openly, ironical of speech, +and given to gently touching people on the raw, but he did it with a +good-natured semiconscious air that carried it off safely, and kept him +from getting into trouble. He was as indolent as ever and showed no very +strenuous desire to hunt up an occupation. People argued from this that +he preferred to be supported by his uncle until his uncle's shoes should +become vacant. He brought back one or two new habits with him, one of +which he rather openly practiced--tippling--but concealed another, which +was gambling. It would not do to gamble where his uncle could hear of +it; he knew that quite well. + +Tom's Eastern polish was not popular among the young people. They could +have endured it, perhaps, if Tom had stopped there; but he wore gloves, +and that they couldn't stand, and wouldn't; so he was mainly without +society. He brought home with him a suit of clothes of such exquisite +style and cut in fashion--Eastern fashion, city fashion--that it filled +everybody with anguish and was regarded as a peculiarly wanton affront. +He enjoyed the feeling which he was exciting, and paraded the town serene +and happy all day; but the young fellows set a tailor to work that night, +and when Tom started out on his parade next morning, he found the old +deformed Negro bell ringer straddling along in his wake tricked out in a +flamboyant curtain-calico exaggeration of his finery, and imitating his +fancy Eastern graces as well as he could. + +Tom surrendered, and after that clothed himself in the local fashion. But +the dull country town was tiresome to him, since his acquaintanceship +with livelier regions, and it grew daily more and more so. He began to +make little trips to St. Louis for refreshment. There he found +companionship to suit him, and pleasures to his taste, along with more +freedom, in some particulars, than he could have at home. So, during the +next two years, his visits to the city grew in frequency and his +tarryings there grew steadily longer in duration. + +He was getting into deep waters. He was taking chances, privately, which +might get him into trouble some day--in fact, _did_. + +Judge Driscoll had retired from the bench and from all business +activities in 1850, and had now been comfortably idle three years. He was +president of the Freethinkers' Society, and Pudd'nhead Wilson was the +other member. The society's weekly discussions were now the old lawyer's +main interest in life. Pudd'nhead was still toiling in obscurity at the +bottom of the ladder, under the blight of that unlucky remark which he +had let fall twenty-three years before about the dog. + +Judge Driscoll was his friend, and claimed that he had a mind above the +average, but that was regarded as one of the judge's whims, and it failed +to modify the public opinion. Or rather, that was one of the reason why +it failed, but there was another and better one. If the judge had stopped +with bare assertion, it would have had a good deal of effect; but he made +the mistake of trying to prove his position. For some years Wilson had +been privately at work on a whimsical almanac, for his amusement--a +calendar, with a little dab of ostensible philosophy, usually in ironical +form, appended to each date; and the judge thought that these quips and +fancies of Wilson's were neatly turned and cute; so he carried a handful +of them around one day, and read them to some of the chief citizens. But +irony was not for those people; their mental vision was not focused for +it. They read those playful trifles in the solidest terms, and decided +without hesitancy that if there had ever been any doubt that Dave Wilson +was a pudd'nhead--which there hadn't--this revelation removed that doubt +for good and all. That is just the way in this world; an enemy can partly +ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete +the thing and make it perfect. After this the judge felt tenderer than +ever toward Wilson, and surer than ever that his calendar had merit. + +Judge Driscoll could be a freethinker and still hold his place in society +because he was the person of most consequence to the community, and +therefore could venture to go his own way and follow out his own notions. +The other member of his pet organization was allowed the like liberty +because he was a cipher in the estimation of the public, and nobody +attached any importance to what he thought or did. He was liked, he was +welcome enough all around, but he simply didn't count for anything. + +The Widow Cooper--affectionately called "Aunt Patsy" by everybody--lived +in a snug and comely cottage with her daughter Rowena, who was nineteen, +romantic, amiable, and very pretty, but otherwise of no consequence. +Rowena had a couple of young brothers--also of no consequence. + +The widow had a large spare room, which she let to a lodger, with board, +when she could find one, but this room had been empty for a year now, to +her sorrow. Her income was only sufficient for the family support, and +she needed the lodging money for trifling luxuries. But now, at last, on +a flaming June day, she found herself happy; her tedious wait was ended; +her year-worn advertisement had been answered; and not by a village +applicant, no, no!--this letter was from away off yonder in the dim great +world to the North; it was from St. Louis. She sat on her porch gazing +out with unseeing eyes upon the shining reaches of the mighty +Mississippi, her thoughts steeped in her good fortune. Indeed it was +specially good fortune, for she was to have two lodgers instead of one. + +She had read the letter to the family, and Rowena had danced away to see +to the cleaning and airing of the room by the slave woman, Nancy, and the +boys had rushed abroad in the town to spread the great news, for it was a +matter of public interest, and the public would wonder and not be pleased +if not informed. Presently Rowena returned, all ablush with joyous +excitement, and begged for a rereading of the letter. It was framed thus: + +HONORED MADAM: My brother and I have seen your advertisement, by chance, +and beg leave to take the room you offer. We are twenty-four years of +age and twins. We are Italians by birth, but have lived long in the +various countries of Europe, and several years in the United States. Our +names are Luigi and Angelo Capello. You desire but one guest; but, dear +madam, if you will allow us to pay for two, we will not incommode you. +We shall be down Thursday. + +"Italians! How romantic! Just think, Ma--there's never been one in this +town, and everybody will be dying to see them, and they're all OURS! +Think of that!" + +"Yes, I reckon they'll make a grand stir." + +"Oh, indeed they will. The whole town will be on its head! +Think--they've been in Europe and everywhere! There's never been a +traveler in this town before, Ma, I shouldn't wonder if they've seen +kings!" + +"Well, a body can't tell, but they'll make stir enough, without that." + +"Yes, that's of course. Luigi--Angelo. They're lovely names; and so +grand and foreign--not like Jones and Robinson and such. Thursday they +are coming, and this is only Tuesday; it's a cruel long time to wait. +Here comes Judge Driscoll in at the gate. He's heard about it. I'll go +and open the door." + +The judge was full of congratulations and curiosity. The letter was read +and discussed. Soon Justice Robinson arrived with more congratulations, +and there was a new reading and a new discussion. This was the beginning. +Neighbor after neighbor, of both sexes, followed, and the procession +drifted in and out all day and evening and all Wednesday and Thursday. +The letter was read and reread until it was nearly worn out; everybody +admired its courtly and gracious tone, and smooth and practiced style, +everybody was sympathetic and excited, and the Coopers were steeped in +happiness all the while. + +The boats were very uncertain in low water in these primitive times. This +time the Thursday boat had not arrived at ten at night--so the people +had waited at the landing all day for nothing; they were driven to their +homes by a heavy storm without having had a view of the illustrious +foreigners. + +Eleven o'clock came; and the Cooper house was the only one in the town +that still had lights burning. The rain and thunder were booming yet, +and the anxious family were still waiting, still hoping. At last there +was a knock at the door, and the family jumped to open it. Two Negro men +entered, each carrying a trunk, and proceeded upstairs toward the guest +room. Then entered the twins--the handsomest, the best dressed, the most +distinguished-looking pair of young fellows the West had ever seen. One +was a little fairer than the other, but otherwise they were exact +duplicates. + + + + +CHAPTER 6 + +Swimming in Glory + +Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker +will be sorry. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but +coaxed downstairs a step at a time. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +At breakfast in the morning, the twins' charm of manner and easy and +polished bearing made speedy conquest of the family's good graces. All +constraint and formality quickly disappeared, and the friendliest feeling +succeeded. Aunt Patsy called them by their Christian names almost from +the beginning. She was full of the keenest curiosity about them, and +showed it; they responded by talking about themselves, which pleased her +greatly. It presently appeared that in their early youth they had known +poverty and hardship. As the talk wandered along, the old lady watched +for the right place to drop in a question or two concerning that matter, +and when she found it, she said to the blond twin, who was now doing the +biographies in his turn while the brunette one rested: + +"If it ain't asking what I ought not to ask, Mr. Angelo, how did you come +to be so friendless and in such trouble when you were little? Do you mind +telling? But don't, if you do." + +"Oh, we don't mind it at all, madam; in our case it was merely +misfortune, and nobody's fault. Our parents were well to do, there in +Italy, and we were their only child. We were of the old Florentine +nobility"--Rowena's heart gave a great bound, her nostrils expanded, and +a fine light played in her eyes--"and when the war broke out, my father +was on the losing side and had to fly for his life. His estates were +confiscated, his personal property seized, and there we were, in Germany, +strangers, friendless, and in fact paupers. My brother and I were ten +years old, and well educated for that age, very studious, very fond of +our books, and well grounded in the German, French, Spanish, and English +languages. Also, we were marvelous musical prodigies--if you will allow +me to say it, it being only the truth. + +"Our father survived his misfortunes only a month, our mother soon +followed him, and we were alone in the world. Our parents could have +made themselves comfortable by exhibiting us as a show, and they had many +and large offers; but the thought revolted their pride, and they said +they would starve and die first. But what they wouldn't consent to do, +we had to do without the formality of consent. We were seized for the +debts occasioned by their illness and their funerals, and placed among +the attractions of a cheap museum in Berlin to earn the liquidation +money. It took us two years to get out of that slavery. We traveled all +about Germany, receiving no wages, and not even our keep. We had to be +exhibited for nothing, and beg our bread. + +"Well, madam, the rest is not of much consequence. When we escaped from +that slavery at twelve years of age, we were in some respects men. +Experience had taught us some valuable things; among others, how to take +care of ourselves, how to avoid and defeat sharks and sharpers, and how +to conduct our own business for our own profit and without other people's +help. We traveled everywhere--years and years--picking up smatterings +of strange tongues, familiarizing ourselves with strange sights and +strange customs, accumulating an education of a wide and varied and +curious sort. It was a pleasant life. We went to Venice--to London, +Paris, Russia, India, China, Japan--" + +At this point Nancy, the slave woman, thrust her head in at the door and +exclaimed: + +"Ole Missus, de house is plum' jam full o' people, en dey's jes +a-spi'lin' to see de gen'lemen!" She indicated the twins with a nod of +her head, and tucked it back out of sight again. + +It was a proud occasion for the widow, and she promised herself high +satisfaction in showing off her fine foreign birds before her neighbors +and friends--simple folk who had hardly ever seen a foreigner of any +kind, and never one of any distinction or style. Yet her feeling was +moderate indeed when contrasted with Rowena's. Rowena was in the clouds, +she walked on air; this was to be the greatest day, the most romantic +episode in the colorless history of that dull country town. She was to +be familiarly near the source of its glory and feel the full flood of it +pour over her and about her; the other girls could only gaze and envy, +not partake. + +The widow was ready, Rowena was ready, so also were the foreigners. + +The party moved along the hall, the twins in advance, and entered the +open parlor door, whence issued a low hum of conversation. The twins took +a position near the door, the widow stood at Luigi's side, Rowena stood +beside Angelo, and the march-past and the introductions began. The widow +was all smiles and contentment. She received the procession and passed +it on to Rowena. + +"Good mornin', Sister Cooper"--handshake. + +"Good morning, Brother Higgins--Count Luigi Capello, Mr. Higgins" +--handshake, followed by a devouring stare and "I'm glad to see ye," +on the part of Higgins, and a courteous inclination of the head and a +pleasant "Most happy!" on the part of Count Luigi. + +"Good mornin', Roweny"--handshake. + +"Good morning, Mr. Higgins--present you to Count Angelo Capello." +Handshake, admiring stare, "Glad to see ye"--courteous nod, smily "Most +happy!" and Higgins passes on. + +None of these visitors was at ease, but, being honest people, they didn't +pretend to be. None of them had ever seen a person bearing a title of +nobility before, and none had been expecting to see one now, consequently +the title came upon them as a kind of pile-driving surprise and caught +them unprepared. A few tried to rise to the emergency, and got out an +awkward "My lord," or "Your lordship," or something of that sort, but the +great majority were overwhelmed by the unaccustomed word and its dim and +awful associations with gilded courts and stately ceremony and anointed +kingship, so they only fumbled through the handshake and passed on, +speechless. Now and then, as happens at all receptions everywhere, a +more than ordinary friendly soul blocked the procession and kept it +waiting while he inquired how the brothers liked the village, and how +long they were going to stay, and if their family was well, and dragged +in the weather, and hoped it would get cooler soon, and all that sort of +thing, so as to be able to say, when he got home, "I had quite a long +talk with them"; but nobody did or said anything of a regrettable kind, +and so the great affair went through to the end in a creditable and +satisfactory fashion. + +General conversation followed, and the twins drifted about from group to +group, talking easily and fluently and winning approval, compelling +admiration and achieving favor from all. The widow followed their +conquering march with a proud eye, and every now and then Rowena said to +herself with deep satisfaction, "And to think they are ours--all ours!" + +There were no idle moments for mother or daughter. Eager inquiries +concerning the twins were pouring into their enchanted ears all the time; +each was the constant center of a group of breathless listeners; each +recognized that she knew now for the first time the real meaning of that +great word Glory, and perceived the stupendous value of it, and +understood why men in all ages had been willing to throw away meaner +happiness, treasure, life itself, to get a taste of its sublime and +supreme joy. Napoleon and all his kind stood accounted for--and +justified. + +When Rowena had at last done all her duty by the people in the parlor, +she went upstairs to satisfy the longings of an overflow meeting there, +for the parlor was not big enough to hold all the comers. Again she was +besieged by eager questioners, and again she swam in sunset seas of +glory. When the forenoon was nearly gone, she recognized with a pang +that this most splendid episode of her life was almost over, that nothing +could prolong it, that nothing quite its equal could ever fall to her +fortune again. But never mind, it was sufficient unto itself, the grand +occasion had moved on an ascending scale from the start, and was a noble +and memorable success. If the twins could but do some crowning act now +to climax it, something usual, something startling, something to +concentrate upon themselves the company's loftiest admiration, something +in the nature of an electric surprise-- + +Here a prodigious slam-banging broke out below, and everybody rushed down +to see. It was the twins, knocking out a classic four-handed piece on +the piano in great style. Rowena was satisfied--satisfied down to the +bottom of her heart. + +The young strangers were kept long at the piano. The villagers were +astonished and enchanted with the magnificence of their performance, and +could not bear to have them stop. All the music that they had ever heard +before seemed spiritless prentice-work and barren of grace and charm when +compared with these intoxicating floods of melodious sound. They realized +that for once in their lives they were hearing masters. + + + + +CHAPTER 7 + +The Unknown Nymph + +One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a +cat has only nine lives. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +The company broke up reluctantly, and drifted toward their several +homes, chatting with vivacity and all agreeing that it would be many a +long day before Dawson's Landing would see the equal of this one again. +The twins had accepted several invitations while the reception was in +progress, and had also volunteered to play some duets at an amateur +entertainment for the benefit of a local charity. Society was eager to +receive them to its bosom. Judge Driscoll had the good fortune to secure +them for an immediate drive, and to be the first to display them in +public. They entered his buggy with him and were paraded down the main +street, everybody flocking to the windows and sidewalks to see. + +The judge showed the strangers the new graveyard, and the jail, and where +the richest man lived, and the Freemasons' hall, and the Methodist +church, and the Presbyterian church, and where the Baptist church was +going to be when they got some money to build it with, and showed them +the town hall and the slaughterhouse, and got out of the independent fire +company in uniform and had them put out an imaginary fire; then he let +them inspect the muskets of the militia company, and poured out an +exhaustless stream of enthusiasm over all these splendors, and seemed +very well satisfied with the responses he got, for the twins admired his +admiration, and paid him back the best they could, though they could have +done better if some fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand previous +experiences of this sort in various countries had not already rubbed off +a considerable part of the novelty in it. + +The judge laid himself out hospitality to make them have a good time, and +if there was a defect anywhere, it was not his fault. He told them a good +many humorous anecdotes, and always forgot the nub, but they were always +able to furnish it, for these yarns were of a pretty early vintage, and +they had had many a rejuvenating pull at them before. And he told them +all about his several dignities, and how he had held this and that and +the other place of honor or profit, and had once been to the legislature, +and was now president of the Society of Freethinkers. He said the +society had been in existence four years, and already had two members, +and was firmly established. He would call for the brothers in the +evening, if they would like to attend a meeting of it. + +Accordingly he called for them, and on the way he told them all about +Pudd'nhead Wilson, in order that they might get a favorable impression of +him in advance and be prepared to like him. This scheme succeeded--the +favorable impression was achieved. Later it was confirmed and solidified +when Wilson proposed that out of courtesy to the strangers the usual +topics be put aside and the hour be devoted to conversation upon ordinary +subjects and the cultivation of friendly relations and good-fellowship--a +proposition which was put to vote and carried. + +The hour passed quickly away in lively talk, and when it was ended, the +lonesome and neglected Wilson was richer by two friends than he had been +when it began. He invited the twins to look in at his lodgings +presently, after disposing of an intervening engagement, and they +accepted with pleasure. + +Toward the middle of the evening, they found themselves on the road to +his house. Pudd'nhead was at home waiting for them and putting in his +time puzzling over a thing which had come under his notice that morning. +The matter was this: He happened to be up very early--at dawn, in fact; +and he crossed the hall, which divided his cottage through the center, +and entered a room to get something there. The window of the room had no +curtains, for that side of the house had long been unoccupied, and +through this window he caught sight of something which surprised and +interested him. It was a young woman--a young woman where properly no +young woman belonged; for she was in Judge Driscoll's house, and in the +bedroom over the judge's private study or sitting room. This was young +Tom Driscoll's bedroom. He and the judge, the judge's widowed sister Mrs. +Pratt, and three Negro servants were the only people who belonged in the +house. Who, then, might this young lady be? The two houses were +separated by an ordinary yard, with a low fence running back through its +middle from the street in front to the lane in the rear. The distance +was not great, and Wilson was able to see the girl very well, the window +shades of the room she was in being up, and the window also. The girl had +on a neat and trim summer dress, patterned in broad stripes of pink and +white, and her bonnet was equipped with a pink veil. She was practicing +steps, gaits and attitudes, apparently; she was doing the thing +gracefully, and was very much absorbed in her work. Who could she be, and +how came she to be in young Tom Driscoll's room? + +Wilson had quickly chosen a position from which he could watch the girl +without running much risk of being seen by her, and he remained there +hoping she would raise her veil and betray her face. But she +disappointed him. After a matter of twenty minutes she disappeared and +although he stayed at his post half an hour longer, she came no more. + +Toward noon he dropped in at the judge's and talked with Mrs. Pratt about +the great event of the day, the levee of the distinguished foreigners at +Aunt Patsy Cooper's. He asked after her nephew Tom, and she said he was +on his way home and that she was expecting him to arrive a little before +night, and added that she and the judge were gratified to gather from his +letters that he was conducting himself very nicely and creditably--at +which Wilson winked to himself privately. Wilson did not ask if there was +a newcomer in the house, but he asked questions that would have brought +light-throwing answers as to that matter if Mrs. Pratt had had any light +to throw; so he went away satisfied that he knew of things that were +going on in her house of which she herself was not aware. + +He was now awaiting for the twins, and still puzzling over the problem of +who that girl might be, and how she happened to be in that young fellow's +room at daybreak in the morning. + + + + +CHAPTER 8 + +Marse Tom Tramples His Chance + +The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and +enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not +asked to lend money. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +Consider well the proportions of things. It is better to be a young June +bug than an old bird of paradise. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +It is necessary now to hunt up Roxy. + +At the time she was set free and went away chambermaiding, she was +thirty-five. She got a berth as second chambermaid on a Cincinnati boat +in the New Orleans trade, the _Grand Mogul_. A couple of trips made her +wonted and easygoing at the work, and infatuated her with the stir and +adventure and independence of steamboat life. Then she was promoted and +become head chambermaid. She was a favorite with the officers, and +exceedingly proud of their joking and friendly way with her. + +During eight years she served three parts of the year on that boat, and +the winters on a Vicksburg packet. But now for two months, she had had +rheumatism in her arms, and was obliged to let the washtub alone. So she +resigned. But she was well fixed--rich, as she would have described it; +for she had lived a steady life, and had banked four dollars every month +in New Orleans as a provision for her old age. She said in the start +that she had "put shoes on one bar'footed nigger to tromple on her with," +and that one mistake like that was enough; she would be independent of +the human race thenceforth forevermore if hard work and economy could +accomplish it. When the boat touched the levee at New Orleans she bade +good-by to her comrades on the _Grand Mogul_ and moved her kit ashore. + +But she was back in a hour. The bank had gone to smash and carried her +four hundred dollars with it. She was a pauper and homeless. Also +disabled bodily, at least for the present. The officers were full of +sympathy for her in her trouble, and made up a little purse for her. She +resolved to go to her birthplace; she had friends there among the Negros, +and the unfortunate always help the unfortunate, she was well aware of +that; those lowly comrades of her youth would not let her starve. + +She took the little local packet at Cairo, and now she was on the +homestretch. Time had worn away her bitterness against her son, and she +was able to think of him with serenity. She put the vile side of him out +of her mind, and dwelt only on recollections of his occasional acts of +kindness to her. She gilded and otherwise decorated these, and made them +very pleasant to contemplate. She began to long to see him. She would go +and fawn upon him slavelike--for this would have to be her attitude, of +course--and maybe she would find that time had modified him, and that he +would be glad to see his long-forgotten old nurse and treat her gently. +That would be lovely; that would make her forget her woes and her +poverty. + +Her poverty! That thought inspired her to add another castle to her +dream: maybe he would give her a trifle now and then--maybe a dollar, +once a month, say; any little thing like that would help, oh, ever so +much. + +By the time she reached Dawson's Landing, she was her old self again; her +blues were gone, she was in high feather. She would get along, surely; +there were many kitchens where the servants would share their meals with +her, and also steal sugar and apples and other dainties for her to carry +home--or give her a chance to pilfer them herself, which would answer +just as well. And there was the church. She was a more rabid and devoted +Methodist than ever, and her piety was no sham, but was strong and +sincere. Yes, with plenty of creature comforts and her old place in the +amen corner in her possession again, she would be perfectly happy and at +peace thenceforward to the end. + +She went to Judge Driscoll's kitchen first of all. She was received +there in great form and with vast enthusiasm. Her wonderful travels, and +the strange countries she had seen, and the adventures she had had, made +her a marvel and a heroine of romance. The Negros hung enchanted upon a +great story of her experiences, interrupting her all along with eager +questions, with laughter, exclamations of delight, and expressions of +applause; and she was obliged to confess to herself that if there was +anything better in this world than steamboating, it was the glory to be +got by telling about it. The audience loaded her stomach with their +dinners, and then stole the pantry bare to load up her basket. + +Tom was in St. Louis. The servants said he had spent the best part of +his time there during the previous two years. Roxy came every day, and +had many talks about the family and its affairs. Once she asked why Tom +was away so much. The ostensible "Chambers" said: + +"De fac' is, ole marster kin git along better when young marster's away +den he kin when he's in de town; yes, en he love him better, too; so he +gives him fifty dollahs a month--" + +"No, is dat so? Chambers, you's a-jokin', ain't you?" + +"'Clah to goodness I ain't, Mammy; Marse Tom tole me so his own self. But +nemmine, 'tain't enough." + +"My lan', what de reason 'tain't enough?" + +"Well, I's gwine to tell you, if you gimme a chanst, Mammy. De reason it +ain't enough is 'ca'se Marse Tom gambles." + +Roxy threw up her hands in astonishment, and Chambers went on: + +"Ole marster found it out, 'ca'se he had to pay two hundred dollahs for +Marse Tom's gamblin' debts, en dat's true, Mammy, jes as dead certain as +you's bawn." + +"Two--hund'd dollahs! Why, what is you talkin' 'bout? +Two--hund'd--dollahs. Sakes alive, it's 'mos' enough to buy a tol'able +good secondhand nigger wid. En you ain't lyin', honey? You wouldn't lie +to you' old Mammy?" + +"It's God's own truth, jes as I tell you--two hund'd dollahs--I wisht I +may never stir outen my tracks if it ain't so. En, oh, my lan', ole Marse +was jes a-hoppin'! He was b'ilin' mad, I tell you! He tuck 'n' +dissenhurrit him." + +"Disen_whiched_ him?" + +"Dissenhurrit him." + +"What's dat? What do you mean?" + +"Means he bu'sted de will." + +"Bu's--ted de will! He wouldn't _ever_ treat him so! Take it back, you +mis'able imitation nigger dat I bore in sorrow en tribbilation." + +Roxy's pet castle--an occasional dollar from Tom's pocket--was tumbling +to ruin before her eyes. She could not abide such a disaster as that; +she couldn't endure the thought of it. Her remark amused Chambers. + +"Yah-yah-yah! Jes listen to dat! If I's imitation, what is you? Bofe of +us is imitation _white_--dat's what we is--en pow'ful good imitation, +too. Yah-yah-yah! We don't 'mount to noth'n as imitation _niggers_; en +as for--" + +"Shet up yo' foolin', 'fo' I knock you side de head, en tell me 'bout de +will. Tell me 'tain't bu'sted--do, honey, en I'll never forgit you." + +"Well, _'tain't_--'ca'se dey's a new one made, en Marse Tom's all right +ag'in. But what is you in sich a sweat 'bout it for, Mammy? 'Tain't +none o' your business I don't reckon." + +"'Tain't none o' my business? Whose business is it den, I'd like to +know? Wuz I his mother tell he was fifteen years old, or wusn't I?--you +answer me dat. En you speck I could see him turned out po' and ornery on +de worl' en never care noth'n' 'bout it? I reckon if you'd ever be'n a +mother yo'self, Valet de Chambers, you wouldn't talk sich foolishness as +dat." + +"Well, den, ole Marse forgive him en fixed up de will ag'in--do dat +satisfy you?" + +Yes, she was satisfied now, and quite happy and sentimental over it. She +kept coming daily, and at last she was told that Tom had come home. She +began to tremble with emotion, and straightway sent to beg him to let his +"po' ole nigger Mammy have jes one sight of him en die for joy." + +Tom was stretched at his lazy ease on a sofa when Chambers brought the +petition. Time had not modified his ancient detestation of the humble +drudge and protector of his boyhood; it was still bitter and +uncompromising. He sat up and bent a severe gaze upon the face of the +young fellow whose name he was unconsciously using and whose family +rights he was enjoying. He maintained the gaze until the victim of it +had become satisfactorily pallid with terror, then he said: + +"What does the old rip want with me?" + +The petition was meekly repeated. + +"Who gave you permission to come and disturb me with the social +attentions of niggers?" + +Tom had risen. The other young man was trembling now, visibly. He saw +what was coming, and bent his head sideways, and put up his left arm to +shield it. Tom rained cuffs upon the head and its shield, saying no +word: the victim received each blow with a beseeching, "Please, Marse +Tom!--oh, please, Marse Tom!" Seven blows--then Tom said, "Face the +door--march!" He followed behind with one, two, three solid kicks. The +last one helped the pure-white slave over the door-sill, and he limped +away mopping his eyes with his old, ragged sleeve. Tom shouted after +him, "Send her in!" + +Then he flung himself panting on the sofa again, and rasped out the +remark, "He arrived just at the right moment; I was full to the brim with +bitter thinkings, and nobody to take it out of. How refreshing it was! +I feel better." + +Tom's mother entered now, closing the door behind her, and approached her +son with all the wheedling and supplication servilities that fear and +interest can impart to the words and attitudes of the born slave. She +stopped a yard from her boy and made two or three admiring exclamations +over his manly stature and general handsomeness, and Tom put an arm under +his head and hoisted a leg over the sofa back in order to look properly +indifferent. + +"My lan', how you is growed, honey! 'Clah to goodness, I wouldn't +a-knowed you, Marse Tom! 'Deed I wouldn't! Look at me good; does you +'member old Roxy? Does you know yo' old nigger mammy, honey? Well now, I +kin lay down en die in peace, 'ca'se I'se seed--" + +"Cut it short, Goddamn it, cut it short! What is it you want?" + +"You heah dat? Jes the same old Marse Tom, al'ays so gay and funnin' wid +de ole mammy. I'uz jes as shore--" + +"Cut it short, I tell you, and get along! What do you want?" + +This was a bitter disappointment. Roxy had for so many days nourished +and fondled and petted her notion that Tom would be glad to see his old +nurse, and would make her proud and happy to the marrow with a cordial +word or two, that it took two rebuffs to convince her that he was not +funning, and that her beautiful dream was a fond and foolish variety, a +shabby and pitiful mistake. She was hurt to the heart, and so ashamed +that for a moment she did not quite know what to do or how to act. Then +her breast began to heave, the tears came, and in her forlornness she was +moved to try that other dream of hers--an appeal to her boy's charity; +and so, upon the impulse, and without reflection, she offered her +supplication: + +"Oh, Marse Tom, de po' ole mammy is in sich hard luck dese days; en she's +kinder crippled in de arms and can't work, en if you could gimme a +dollah--on'y jes one little dol--" + +Tom was on his feet so suddenly that the supplicant was startled into a +jump herself. + +"A dollar!--give you a dollar! I've a notion to strangle you! Is _that_ +your errand here? Clear out! And be quick about it!" + +Roxy backed slowly toward the door. When she was halfway she stopped, +and said mournfully: + +"Marse Tom, I nussed you when you was a little baby, en I raised you all +by myself tell you was 'most a young man; en now you is young en rich, en +I is po' en gitt'n ole, en I come heah b'leavin' dat you would he'p de +ole mammy 'long down de little road dat's lef' 'twix' her en de grave, +en--" + +Tom relished this tune less than any that he preceded it, for it began to +wake up a sort of echo in his conscience; so he interrupted and said with +decision, though without asperity, that he was not in a situation to help +her, and wasn't going to do it. + +"Ain't you ever gwine to he'p me, Marse Tom?" + +"No! Now go away and don't bother me any more." + +Roxy's head was down, in an attitude of humility. But now the fires of +her old wrongs flamed up in her breast and began to burn fiercely. She +raised her head slowly, till it was well up, and at the same time her +great frame unconsciously assumed an erect and masterful attitude, with +all the majesty and grace of her vanished youth in it. She raised her +finger and punctuated with it. + +"You has said de word. You has had yo' chance, en you has trompled it +under yo' foot. When you git another one, you'll git down on yo' knees +en _beg_ for it!" + +A cold chill went to Tom's heart, he didn't know why; for he did not +reflect that such words, from such an incongruous source, and so solemnly +delivered, could not easily fail of that effect. However, he did the +natural thing: he replied with bluster and mockery. + +"_You'll_ give me a chance--_you_! Perhaps I'd better get down on my +knees now! But in case I don't--just for argument's sake--what's going +to happen, pray?" + +"Dis is what is gwine to happen, I's gwine as straight to yo' uncle as I +kin walk, en tell him every las' thing I knows 'bout you." + +Tom's cheek blenched, and she saw it. Disturbing thoughts began to chase +each other through his head. "How can she know? And yet she must have +found out--she looks it. I've had the will back only three months, and +am already deep in debt again, and moving heaven and earth to save myself +from exposure and destruction, with a reasonably fair show of getting the +thing covered up if I'm let alone, and now this fiend has gone and found +me out somehow or other. I wonder how much she knows? Oh, oh, oh, it's +enough to break a body's heart! But I've got to humor her--there's no +other way." + +Then he worked up a rather sickly sample of a gay laugh and a hollow +chipperness of manner, and said: + +"Well, well, Roxy dear, old friends like you and me mustn't quarrel. +Here's your dollar--now tell me what you know." + +He held out the wildcat bill; she stood as she was, and made no movement. +It was her turn to scorn persuasive foolery now, and she did not waste +it. She said, with a grim implacability in voice and manner which made +Tom almost realize that even a former slave can remember for ten minutes +insults and injuries returned for compliments and flatteries received, +and can also enjoy taking revenge for them when the opportunity offers: + +"What does I know? I'll tell you what I knows, I knows enough to bu'st +dat will to flinders--en more, mind you, _more!_" + +Tom was aghast. + +"More?" he said, "What do you call more? Where's there any room for +more?" + +Roxy laughed a mocking laugh, and said scoffingly, with a toss of her +head, and her hands on her hips: + +"Yes!--oh, I reckon! _co'se_ you'd like to know--wid yo' po' little ole +rag dollah. What you reckon I's gwine to tell _you_ for?--you ain't got +no money. I's gwine to tell yo' uncle--en I'll do it dis minute, +too--he'll gimme FIVE dollahs for de news, en mighty glad, too." + +She swung herself around disdainfully, and started away. Tom was in a +panic. He seized her skirts, and implored her to wait. She turned and +said, loftily: + +"Look-a-heah, what 'uz it I tole you?" + +"You--you--I don't remember anything. What was it you told me?" + +"I tole you dat de next time I give you a chance you'd git down on yo' +knees en beg for it." + +Tom was stupefied for a moment. He was panting with excitement. Then he +said: + +"Oh, Roxy, you wouldn't require your young master to do such a horrible +thing. You can't mean it." + +"I'll let you know mighty quick whether I means it or not! You call me +names, en as good as spit on me when I comes here, po' en ornery en +'umble, to praise you for bein' growed up so fine and handsome, en tell +you how I used to nuss you en tend you en watch you when you 'uz sick en +hadn't no mother but me in de whole worl', en beg you to give de po' ole +nigger a dollah for to get her som'n' to eat, en you call me +names--_names_, dad blame you! Yassir, I gives you jes one chance mo', +and dat's _now_, en it las' on'y half a second--you hear?" + +Tom slumped to his knees and began to beg, saying: + +"You see I'm begging, and it's honest begging, too! Now tell me, Roxy, +tell me." + +The heir of two centuries of unatoned insult and outrage looked down on +him and seemed to drink in deep draughts of satisfaction. Then she said: + +"Fine nice young white gen'l'man kneelin' down to a nigger wench! I's +wanted to see dat jes once befo' I's called. Now, Gabr'el, blow de hawn, +I's ready . . . Git up!" + +Tom did it. He said, humbly: + +"Now, Roxy, don't punish me any more. I deserved what I've got, but be +good and let me off with that. Don't go to uncle. Tell me--I'll give +you the five dollars." + +"Yes, I bet you will; en you won't stop dah, nuther. But I ain't gwine +to tell you heah--" + +"Good gracious, no!" + +"Is you 'feared o' de ha'nted house?" + +"N-no." + +"Well, den, you come to de ha'nted house 'bout ten or 'leven tonight, en +climb up de ladder, 'ca'se de sta'rsteps is broke down, en you'll find +me. I's a-roostin' in de ha'nted house 'ca'se I can't 'ford to roos' +nowher's else." She started toward the door, but stopped and said, +"Gimme de dollah bill!" He gave it to her. She examined it and said, +"H'm--like enough de bank's bu'sted." She started again, but halted +again. "Has you got any whisky?" + +"Yes, a little." + +"Fetch it!" + +He ran to his room overhead and brought down a bottle which was +two-thirds full. She tilted it up and took a drink. Her eyes sparkled +with satisfaction, and she tucked the bottle under her shawl, saying, +"It's prime. I'll take it along." + +Tom humbly held the door for her, and she marched out as grim and erect +as a grenadier. + + + + +CHAPTER 9 + +Tom Practices Sycophancy + +Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is +because we are not the person involved. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a +man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained +that there were too many prehistoric toads in it. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +Tom flung himself on the sofa, and put his throbbing head in his hands, +and rested his elbows on his knees. He rocked himself back and forth and +moaned. + +"I've knelt to a nigger wench!" he muttered. "I thought I had struck the +deepest depths of degradation before, but oh, dear, it was nothing to +this. . . . Well, there is one consolation, such as it is--I've struck +bottom this time; there's nothing lower." + +But that was a hasty conclusion. + +At ten that night he climbed the ladder in the haunted house, pale, weak, +and wretched. Roxy was standing in the door of one of the rooms, +waiting, for she had heard him. + +This was a two-story log house which had acquired the reputation a few +years ago of being haunted, and that was the end of its usefulness. +Nobody would live in it afterward, or go near it by night, and most +people even gave it a wide berth in the daytime. As it had no +competition, it was called _the_ haunted house. It was getting crazy and +ruinous now, from long neglect. It stood three hundred yards beyond +Pudd'nhead Wilson's house, with nothing between but vacancy. It was the +last house in the town at that end. + +Tom followed Roxy into the room. She had a pile of clean straw in the +corner for a bed, some cheap but well-kept clothing was hanging on the +wall, there was a tin lantern freckling the floor with little spots of +light, and there were various soap and candle boxes scattered about, +which served for chairs. The two sat down. Roxy said: + +"Now den, I'll tell you straight off, en I'll begin to k'leck de money +later on; I ain't in no hurry. What does you reckon I's gwine to tell +you?" + +"Well, you--you--oh, Roxy, don't make it too hard for me! Come right out +and tell me you've found out somehow what a shape I'm in on account of +dissipation and foolishness." + +"Disposition en foolishness! NO sir, dat ain't it. Dat jist ain't +nothin' at all, 'longside o' what _I_ knows." + +Tom stared at her, and said: + +"Why, Roxy, what do you mean?" + +She rose, and gloomed above him like a Fate. + +"I means dis--en it's de Lord's truth. You ain't no more kin to ole +Marse Driscoll den I is! _dat's_ what I means!" and her eyes flamed +with triumph. + +"What?" + +"Yassir, en _dat_ ain't all! You's a _nigger!_--_bawn_ a nigger and a +_slave!_--en you's a nigger en a slave dis minute; en if I opens my mouf +ole Marse Driscoll'll sell you down de river befo' you is two days older +den what you is now!" + +"It's a thundering lie, you miserable old blatherskite!" + +"It ain't no lie, nuther. It's just de truth, en nothin' _but_ de truth, +so he'p me. Yassir--you's my _son_--" + +"You devil!" + +"En dat po' boy dat you's be'n a-kickin' en a-cuffin' today is Percy +Driscoll's son en yo' _marster_--" + +"You beast!" + +"En _his_ name is Tom Driscoll, en _yo's_ name's Valet de Chambers, en +you ain't GOT no fambly name, beca'se niggers don't _have_ em!" + +Tom sprang up and seized a billet of wood and raised it, but his mother +only laughed at him, and said: + +"Set down, you pup! Does you think you kin skyer me? It ain't in you, +nor de likes of you. I reckon you'd shoot me in de back, maybe, if you +got a chance, for dat's jist yo' style--_I_ knows you, throo en +throo--but I don't mind gitt'n killed, beca'se all dis is down in writin' +and it's in safe hands, too, en de man dat's got it knows whah to look +for de right man when I gits killed. Oh, bless yo' soul, if you puts yo' +mother up for as big a fool as _you_ is, you's pow'ful mistaken, I kin +tell you! Now den, you set still en behave yo'self; en don't you git up +ag'in till I tell you!" + +Tom fretted and chafed awhile in a whirlwind of disorganizing sensations +and emotions, and finally said, with something like settled conviction: + +"The whole thing is moonshine; now then, go ahead and do your worst; I'm +done with you." + +Roxy made no answer. She took the lantern and started for the door. Tom +was in a cold panic in a moment. + +"Come back, come back!" he wailed. "I didn't mean it, Roxy; I take it +all back, and I'll never say it again! Please come back, Roxy!" + +The woman stood a moment, then she said gravely: + +"Dat's one thing you's got to stop, Valet de Chambers. You can't call me +_Roxy_, same as if you was my equal. Chillen don't speak to dey mammies +like dat. You'll call me ma or mammy, dat's what you'll call +me--leastways when de ain't nobody aroun'. _Say_ it!" + +It cost Tom a struggle, but he got it out. + +"Dat's all right, don't you ever forgit it ag'in, if you knows what's +good for you. Now den, you had said you wouldn't ever call it lies en +moonshine ag'in. I'll tell you dis, for a warnin': if you ever does say +it ag'in, it's de LAS' time you'll ever say it to me; I'll tramp as +straight to de judge as I kin walk, en tell him who you is, en _prove_ +it. Does you b'lieve me when I says dat?" + +"Oh," groaned Tom, "I more than believe it; I _know_ it." + +Roxy knew her conquest was complete. She could have proved nothing to +anybody, and her threat of writings was a lie; but she knew the person +she was dealing with, and had made both statements without any doubt as +to the effect they would produce. + +She went and sat down on her candle box, and the pride and pomp of her +victorious attitude made it a throne. She said: + +"Now den, Chambers, we's gwine to talk business, en dey ain't gwine to be +no mo' foolishness. In de fust place, you gits fifty dollahs a month; +you's gwine to han' over half of it to yo' ma. Plank it out!" + +But Tom had only six dollars in the world. He gave her that, and +promised to start fair on next month's pension. + +"Chambers, how much is you in debt?" + +Tom shuddered, and said: + +"Nearly three hundred dollars." + +"How is you gwine to pay it?" + +Tom groaned out: "Oh, I don't know; don't ask me such awful questions." + +But she stuck to her point until she wearied a confession out of him: he +had been prowling about in disguise, stealing small valuables from +private houses; in fact, he made a good deal of a raid on his fellow +villagers a fortnight before, when he was supposed to be in St. Louis; +but he doubted if he had sent away enough stuff to realize the required +amount, and was afraid to make a further venture in the present excited +state of the town. His mother approved of his conduct, and offered to +help, but this frightened him. He tremblingly ventured to say that if +she would retire from the town he should feel better and safer, and could +hold his head higher--and was going on to make an argument, but she +interrupted and surprised him pleasantly by saying she was ready; it +didn't make any difference to her where she stayed, so that she got her +share of the pension regularly. She said she would not go far, and would +call at the haunted house once a month for her money. Then she said: + +"I don't hate you so much now, but I've hated you a many a year--and +anybody would. Didn't I change you off, en give you a good fambly en a +good name, en made you a white gen'l'man en rich, wid store clothes +on--en what did I git for it? You despised me all de time, en was al'ays +sayin' mean hard things to me befo' folks, en wouldn't ever let me forgit +I's a nigger--en--en--" + +She fell to sobbing, and broke down. Tom said: "But you know I didn't +know you were my mother; and besides--" + +"Well, nemmine 'bout dat, now; let it go. I's gwine to fo'git it." Then +she added fiercely, "En don't ever make me remember it ag'in, or you'll +be sorry, _I_ tell you." + +When they were parting, Tom said, in the most persuasive way he could +command: + +"Ma, would you mind telling me who was my father?" + +He had supposed he was asking an embarrassing question. He was mistaken. +Roxy drew herself up with a proud toss of her head, and said: + +"Does I mine tellin' you? No, dat I don't! You ain't got no 'casion to +be shame' o' yo' father, _I_ kin tell you. He wuz de highest quality in +dis whole town--ole Virginny stock. Fust famblies, he wuz. Jes as good +stock as de Driscolls en de Howards, de bes' day dey ever seed." She put +on a little prouder air, if possible, and added impressively: "Does you +'member Cunnel Cecil Burleigh Essex, dat died de same year yo' young +Marse Tom Driscoll's pappy died, en all de Masons en Odd Fellers en +Churches turned out en give him de bigges' funeral dis town ever seed? +Dat's de man." + +Under the inspiration of her soaring complacency the departed graces of +her earlier days returned to her, and her bearing took to itself a +dignity and state that might have passed for queenly if her surroundings +had been a little more in keeping with it. + +"Dey ain't another nigger in dis town dat's as highbawn as you is. Now +den, go 'long! En jes you hold yo' head up as high as you want to--you +has de right, en dat I kin swah." + + + + +CHAPTER 10 + +The Nymph Revealed + +All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to +come from the mouths of people who have had to live. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +When angry, count four; when very angry, swear. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +Every now and then, after Tom went to bed, he had sudden wakings out of +his sleep, and his first thought was, "Oh, joy, it was all a dream!" +Then he laid himself heavily down again, with a groan and the muttered +words, "A nigger! I am a nigger! Oh, I wish I was dead!" + +He woke at dawn with one more repetition of this horror, and then he +resolved to meddle no more with that treacherous sleep. He began to +think. Sufficiently bitter thinkings they were. They wandered along +something after this fashion: + +"Why were niggers _and_ whites made? What crime did the uncreated first +nigger commit that the curse of birth was decreed for him? And why is +this awful difference made between white and black? . . . How hard the +nigger's fate seems, this morning!--yet until last night such a thought +never entered my head." + +He sighed and groaned an hour or more away. Then "Chambers" came humbly +in to say that breakfast was nearly ready. "Tom" blushed scarlet to see +this aristocratic white youth cringe to him, a nigger, and call him +"Young Marster." He said roughly: + +"Get out of my sight!" and when the youth was gone, he muttered, "He has +done me no harm, poor wretch, but he is an eyesore to me now, for he is +Driscoll, the young gentleman, and I am a--oh, I wish I was dead!" + +A gigantic eruption, like that of Krakatoa a few years ago, with the +accompanying earthquakes, tidal waves, and clouds of volcanic dust, +changes the face of the surrounding landscape beyond recognition, +bringing down the high lands, elevating the low, making fair lakes where +deserts had been, and deserts where green prairies had smiled before. +The tremendous catastrophe which had befallen Tom had changed his moral +landscape in much the same way. Some of his low places he found lifted to +ideals, some of his ideas had sunk to the valleys, and lay there with the +sackcloth and ashes of pumice stone and sulphur on their ruined heads. + +For days he wandered in lonely places, thinking, thinking, thinking +--trying to get his bearings. It was new work. If he met a friend, he +found that the habit of a lifetime had in some mysterious way vanished +--his arm hung limp, instead of involuntarily extending the hand for a +shake. It was the "nigger" in him asserting its humility, and he blushed +and was abashed. And the "nigger" in him was surprised when the white +friend put out his hand for a shake with him. He found the "nigger" in +him involuntarily giving the road, on the sidewalk, to a white rowdy and +loafer. When Rowena, the dearest thing his heart knew, the idol of his +secret worship, invited him in, the "nigger" in him made an embarrassed +excuse and was afraid to enter and sit with the dread white folks on +equal terms. The "nigger" in him went shrinking and skulking here and +there and yonder, and fancying it saw suspicion and maybe detection in +all faces, tones, and gestures. So strange and uncharacteristic was +Tom's conduct that people noticed it, and turned to look after him when +he passed on; and when he glanced back--as he could not help doing, in +spite of his best resistance--and caught that puzzled expression in a +person's face, it gave him a sick feeling, and he took himself out of +view as quickly as he could. He presently came to have a hunted sense +and a hunted look, and then he fled away to the hilltops and the +solitudes. He said to himself that the curse of Ham was upon him. + +He dreaded his meals; the "nigger" in him was ashamed to sit at the white +folk's table, and feared discovery all the time; and once when Judge +Driscoll said, "What's the matter with you? You look as meek as a +nigger," he felt as secret murderers are said to feel when the accuser +says, "Thou art the man!" Tom said he was not well, and left the table. + +His ostensible "aunt's" solicitudes and endearments were become a terror +to him, and he avoided them. + +And all the time, hatred of his ostensible "uncle" was steadily growing +in his heart; for he said to himself, "He is white; and I am his chattel, +his property, his goods, and he can sell me, just as he could his dog." + +For as much as a week after this, Tom imagined that his character had +undergone a pretty radical change. But that was because he did not know +himself. + +In several ways his opinions were totally changed, and would never go +back to what they were before, but the main structure of his character +was not changed, and could not be changed. One or two very important +features of it were altered, and in time effects would result from this, +if opportunity offered--effects of a quite serious nature, too. Under the +influence of a great mental and moral upheaval, his character and his +habits had taken on the appearance of complete change, but after a while +with the subsidence of the storm, both began to settle toward their +former places. He dropped gradually back into his old frivolous and +easygoing ways and conditions of feeling and manner of speech, and no +familiar of his could have detected anything in him that differentiated +him from the weak and careless Tom of other days. + +The theft raid which he had made upon the village turned out better than +he had ventured to hope. It produced the sum necessary to pay his gaming +debts, and saved him from exposure to his uncle and another smashing of +the will. He and his mother learned to like each other fairly well. She +couldn't love him, as yet, because there "warn't nothing _to_ him," as +she expressed it, but her nature needed something or somebody to rule +over, and he was better than nothing. Her strong character and +aggressive and commanding ways compelled Tom's admiration in spite of the +fact that he got more illustrations of them than he needed for his +comfort. However, as a rule her conversation was made up of racy tales +about the privacies of the chief families of the town (for she went +harvesting among their kitchens every time she came to the village), and +Tom enjoyed this. It was just in his line. She always collected her +half of his pension punctually, and he was always at the haunted house to +have a chat with her on these occasions. Every now and then, she paid +him a visit there on between-days also. + +Occasions he would run up to St. Louis for a few weeks, and at last +temptation caught him again. He won a lot of money, but lost it, and +with it a deal more besides, which he promised to raise as soon as +possible. + +For this purpose he projected a new raid on his town. He never meddled +with any other town, for he was afraid to venture into houses whose ins +and outs he did not know and the habits of whose households he was not +acquainted with. He arrived at the haunted house in disguise on the +Wednesday before the advent of the twins--after writing his Aunt Pratt +that he would not arrive until two days after--and laying in hiding there +with his mother until toward daylight Friday morning, when he went to his +uncle's house and entered by the back way with his own key, and slipped +up to his room where he could have the use of the mirror and toilet +articles. He had a suit of girl's clothes with him in a bundle as a +disguise for his raid, and was wearing a suit of his mother's clothing, +with black gloves and veil. By dawn he was tricked out for his raid, but +he caught a glimpse of Pudd'nhead Wilson through the window over the way, +and knew that Pudd'nhead had caught a glimpse of him. So he entertained +Wilson with some airs and graces and attitudes for a while, then stepped +out of sight and resumed the other disguise, and by and by went down and +out the back way and started downtown to reconnoiter the scene of his +intended labors. + +But he was ill at ease. He had changed back to Roxy's dress, with the +stoop of age added to the disguise, so that Wilson would not bother +himself about a humble old women leaving a neighbor's house by the back +way in the early morning, in case he was still spying. But supposing +Wilson had seen him leave, and had thought it suspicious, and had also +followed him? The thought made Tom cold. He gave up the raid for the +day, and hurried back to the haunted house by the obscurest route he +knew. His mother was gone; but she came back, by and by, with the news of +the grand reception at Patsy Cooper's, and soon persuaded him that the +opportunity was like a special Providence, it was so inviting and +perfect. So he went raiding, after all, and made a nice success of it +while everybody was gone to Patsy Cooper's. Success gave him nerve and +even actual intrepidity; insomuch, indeed, that after he had conveyed his +harvest to his mother in a back alley, he went to the reception himself, +and added several of the valuables of that house to his takings. + +After this long digression we have now arrived once more at the point +where Pudd'nhead Wilson, while waiting for the arrival of the twins on +that same Friday evening, sat puzzling over the strange apparition of +that morning--a girl in young Tom Driscoll's bedroom; fretting, and +guessing, and puzzling over it, and wondering who the shameless creature +might be. + + + + +CHAPTER 11 + +Pudd'nhead's Thrilling Discovery + +There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three +form a rising scale of compliment: 1--to tell him you have read one of +his books; 2--to tell him you have read all of his books; 3--to ask him +to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you +to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you +clear into his heart. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +The twins arrived presently, and talk began. It flowed along chattily +and sociably, and under its influence the new friendship gathered ease +and strength. Wilson got out his Calendar, by request, and read a +passage or two from it, which the twins praised quite cordially. This +pleased the author so much that he complied gladly when they asked him to +lend them a batch of the work to read at home. In the course of their +wide travels, they had found out that there are three sure ways of +pleasing an author; they were now working the best of the three. + +There was an interruption now. Young Driscoll appeared, and joined the +party. He pretended to be seeing the distinguished strangers for the +first time when they rose to shake hands; but this was only a blind, as +he had already had a glimpse of them, at the reception, while robbing the +house. The twins made mental note that he was smooth-faced and rather +handsome, and smooth and undulatory in his movements--graceful, in fact. +Angelo thought he had a good eye; Luigi thought there was something +veiled and sly about it. Angelo thought he had a pleasant free-and-easy +way of talking; Luigi thought it was more so than was agreeable. Angelo +thought he was a sufficiently nice young man; Luigi reserved his +decision. Tom's first contribution to the conversation was a question +which he had put to Wilson a hundred times before. It was always cheerily +and good-natured put, and always inflicted a little pang, for it touched +a secret sore; but this time the pang was sharp, since strangers were +present. + +"Well, how does the law come on? Had a case yet?" + +Wilson bit his lip, but answered, "No--not yet," with as much +indifference as he could assume. Judge Driscoll had generously left the +law feature out of Wilson's biography which he had furnished to the +twins. Young Tom laughed pleasantly, and said: + +"Wilson's a lawyer, gentlemen, but he doesn't practice now." + +The sarcasm bit, but Wilson kept himself under control, and said without +passion: + +"I don't practice, it is true. It is true that I have never had a case, +and have had to earn a poor living for twenty years as an expert +accountant in a town where I can't get a hold of a set of books to +untangle as often as I should like. But it is also true that I did +myself well for the practice of the law. By the time I was your age, +Tom, I had chosen a profession, and was soon competent to enter upon it." +Tom winced. "I never got a chance to try my hand at it, and I may never +get a chance; and yet if I ever do get it, I shall be found ready, for I +have kept up my law studies all these years." + +"That's it; that's good grit! I like to see it. I've a notion to throw +all my business your way. My business and your law practice ought to +make a pretty gay team, Dave," and the young fellow laughed again. + +"If you will throw--" Wilson had thought of the girl in Tom's bedroom, +and was going to say, "If you will throw the surreptitious and +disreputable part of your business my way, it may amount to something," +but thought better of it and said, + +"However, this matter doesn't fit well in a general conversation." + +"All right, we'll change the subject; I guess you were about to give me +another dig, anyway, so I'm willing to change. How's the Awful Mystery +flourishing these days? Wilson's got a scheme for driving plain window +glass panes out of the market by decorating it with greasy finger marks, +and getting rich by selling it at famine prices to the crowned heads over +in Europe to outfit their palaces with. Fetch it out, Dave." + +Wilson brought three of his glass strips, and said: + +"I get the subject to pass the fingers of his right hand through his hair, +so as to get a little coating of the natural oil on them, and then press +the balls of them on the glass. A fine and delicate print of the lines +in the skin results, and is permanent, if it doesn't come in contact with +something able to rub it off. You begin, Tom." + +"Why, I think you took my finger marks once or twice before." + +"Yes, but you were a little boy the last time, only about twelve years +old." + +"That's so. Of course, I've changed entirely since then, and variety is +what the crowned heads want, I guess." + +He passed his fingers through his crop of short hair, and pressed them +one at a time on the glass. Angelo made a print of his fingers on +another glass, and Luigi followed with a third. Wilson marked the +glasses with names and dates, and put them away. Tom gave one of his +little laughs, and said: + +"I thought I wouldn't say anything, but if variety is what you are after, +you have wasted a piece of glass. The hand print of one twin is the same +as the hand print of the fellow twin." + +"Well, it's done now, and I like to have them both, anyway," said Wilson, +returned to his place. + +"But look here, Dave," said Tom, "you used to tell people's fortunes, too, +when you took their finger marks. Dave's just an all-round genius--a +genius of the first water, gentlemen; a great scientist running to seed +here in this village, a prophet with the kind of honor that prophets +generally get at home--for here they don't give shucks for his +scientifics, and they call his skull a notion factory--hey, Dave, ain't +it so? But never mind, he'll make his mark someday--finger mark, you +know, he-he! But really, you want to let him take a shy at your palms +once; it's worth twice the price of admission or your money's returned at +the door. Why, he'll read your wrinkles as easy as a book, and not only +tell you fifty or sixty things that's going to happen to you, but fifty +or sixty thousand that ain't. Come, Dave, show the gentlemen what an +inspired jack-at-all-science we've got in this town, and don't know it." + +Wilson winced under this nagging and not very courteous chaff, and the +twins suffered with him and for him. They rightly judged, now, that the +best way to relieve him would be to take the thing in earnest and +treat it with respect, ignoring Tom's rather overdone raillery; so Luigi +said: + +"We have seen something of palmistry in our wanderings, and know very +well what astonishing things it can do. If it isn't a science, and one +of the greatest of them too, I don't know what its other name ought to +be. In the Orient--" + +Tom looked surprised and incredulous. He said: + +"That juggling a science? But really, you ain't serious, are you?" + +"Yes, entirely so. Four years ago we had our hands read out to us as if +our plans had been covered with print." + +"Well, do you mean to say there was actually anything in it?" asked Tom, +his incredulity beginning to weaken a little. + +"There was this much in it," said Angelo: "what was told us of our +characters was minutely exact--we could have not have bettered it +ourselves. Next, two or three memorable things that have happened to us +were laid bare--things which no one present but ourselves could have +known about." + +"Why, it's rank sorcery!" exclaimed Tom, who was now becoming very much +interested. "And how did they make out with what was going to happen to +you in the future?" + +"On the whole, quite fairly," said Luigi. "Two or three of the most +striking things foretold have happened since; much the most striking one +of all happened within that same year. Some of the minor prophesies have +come true; some of the minor and some of the major ones have not been +fulfilled yet, and of course may never be: still, I should be more +surprised if they failed to arrive than if they didn't." + +Tom was entirely sobered, and profoundly impressed. He said, +apologetically: + +"Dave, I wasn't meaning to belittle that science; I was only chaffing +--chattering, I reckon I'd better say. I wish you would look at their +palms. Come, won't you?" + +"Why certainly, if you want me to; but you know I've had no chance to +become an expert, and don't claim to be one. When a past event is +somewhat prominently recorded in the palm, I can generally detect that, +but minor ones often escape me--not always, of course, but often--but I +haven't much confidence in myself when it comes to reading the future. I +am talking as if palmistry was a daily study with me, but that is not so. +I haven't examined half a dozen hands in the last half dozen years; you +see, the people got to joking about it, and I stopped to let the talk die +down. I'll tell you what we'll do, Count Luigi: I'll make a try at your +past, and if I have any success there--no, on the whole, I'll let the +future alone; that's really the affair of an expert." + +He took Luigi's hand. Tom said: + +"Wait--don't look yet, Dave! Count Luigi, here's paper and pencil. Set +down that thing that you said was the most striking one that was foretold +to you, and happened less than a year afterward, and give it to me so I +can see if Dave finds it in your hand." + +Luigi wrote a line privately, and folded up the piece of paper, and +handed it to Tom, saying: + +"I'll tell you when to look at it, if he finds it." + +Wilson began to study Luigi's palm, tracing life lines, heart lines, head +lines, and so on, and noting carefully their relations with the cobweb of +finer and more delicate marks and lines that enmeshed them on all sides; +he felt of the fleshy cushion at the base of the thumb and noted its +shape; he felt of the fleshy side of the hand between the wrist and the +base of the little finger and noted its shape also; he painstakingly +examined the fingers, observing their form, proportions, and natural +manner of disposing themselves when in repose. All this process was +watched by the three spectators with absorbing interest, their heads bent +together over Luigi's palm, and nobody disturbing the stillness with a +word. Wilson now entered upon a close survey of the palm again, and his +revelations began. + +He mapped out Luigi's character and disposition, his tastes, aversions, +proclivities, ambitions, and eccentricities in a way which sometimes made +Luigi wince and the others laugh, but both twins declared that the chart +was artistically drawn and was correct. + +Next, Wilson took up Luigi's history. He proceeded cautiously and with +hesitation now, moving his finger slowly along the great lines of the +palm, and now and then halting it at a "star" or some such landmark, and +examining that neighborhood minutely. He proclaimed one or two past +events, Luigi confirmed his correctness, and the search went on. +Presently Wilson glanced up suddenly with a surprised expression. + +"Here is a record of an incident which you would perhaps not wish me +to--" + +"Bring it out," said Luigi, good-naturedly. "I promise you sha'n't +embarrass me." + +But Wilson still hesitated, and did not seem quite to know what to do. +Then he said: + +"I think it is too delicate a matter to--to--I believe I would rather +write it or whisper it to you, and let you decide for yourself whether +you want it talked out or not." + +"That will answer," said Luigi. "Write it." + +Wilson wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to Luigi, who +read it to himself and said to Tom: + +"Unfold your slip and read it, Mr. Driscoll." + +Tom said: + +"'IT WAS PROPHESIED THAT I WOULD KILL A MAN. IT CAME TRUE BEFORE THE +YEAR WAS OUT.'" + +Tom added, "Great Scott!" + +Luigi handed Wilson's paper to Tom, and said: + +"Now read this one." + +Tom read: + +"'YOU HAVE KILLED SOMEONE, BUT WHETHER MAN, WOMAN, OR CHILD, I DO NOT +MAKE OUT.'" + +"Caesar's ghost!" commented Tom, with astonishment. "It beats anything +that was ever heard of! Why, a man's own hand is his deadliest enemy! +Just think of that--a man's own hand keeps a record of the deepest and +fatalest secrets of his life, and is treacherously ready to expose +himself to any black-magic stranger that comes along. But what do you +let a person look at your hand for, with that awful thing printed on it?" + +"Oh," said Luigi, reposefully, "I don't mind it. I killed the man for +good reasons, and I don't regret it." + +"What were the reasons?" + +"Well, he needed killing." + +"I'll tell you why he did it, since he won't say himself," said Angelo, +warmly. "He did it to save my life, that's what he did it for. So it was +a noble act, and not a thing to be hid in the dark." + +"So it was, so it was," said Wilson. "To do such a thing to save a +brother's life is a great and fine action." + +"Now come," said Luigi, "it is very pleasant to hear you say these +things, but for unselfishness, or heroism, or magnanimity, the +circumstances won't stand scrutiny. You overlook one detail; suppose I +hadn't saved Angelo's life, what would have become of mine? If I had let +the man kill him, wouldn't he have killed me, too? I saved my own life, +you see." + +"Yes, that is your way of talking," said Angelo, "but I know you--I +don't believe you thought of yourself at all. I keep that weapon yet +that Luigi killed the man with, and I'll show it to you sometime. That +incident makes it interesting, and it had a history before it came into +Luigi's hands which adds to its interest. It was given to Luigi by a +great Indian prince, the Gaikowar of Baroda, and it had been in his +family two or three centuries. It killed a good many disagreeable people +who troubled the hearthstone at one time or another. It isn't much too +look at, except it isn't shaped like other knives, or dirks, or whatever +it may be called--here, I'll draw it for you." He took a sheet of paper +and made a rapid sketch. "There it is--a broad and murderous blade, with +edges like a razor for sharpness. The devices engraved on it are the +ciphers or names of its long line of possessors--I had Luigi's name added +in Roman letters myself with our coat of arms, as you see. You notice +what a curious handle the thing has. It is solid ivory, polished like a +mirror, and is four or five inches long--round, and as thick as a large +man's wrist, with the end squared off flat, for your thumb to rest on; +for you grasp it, with your thumb resting on the blunt end--so--and lift +it along and strike downward. The Gaikowar showed us how the thing was +done when he gave it to Luigi, and before that night was ended, Luigi had +used the knife, and the Gaikowar was a man short by reason of it. The +sheath is magnificently ornamented with gems of great value. You will +find a sheath more worth looking at than the knife itself, of course." + +Tom said to himself: + +"It's lucky I came here. I would have sold that knife for a song; I +supposed the jewels were glass." + +"But go on; don't stop," said Wilson. "Our curiosity is up now, to hear +about the homicide. Tell us about that." + +"Well, briefly, the knife was to blame for that, all around. A native +servant slipped into our room in the palace in the night, to kill us and +steal the knife on account of the fortune encrusted on its sheath, +without a doubt. Luigi had it under his pillow; we were in bed together. +There was a dim night-light burning. I was asleep, but Luigi was awake, +and he thought he detected a vague form nearing the bed. He slipped the +knife out of the sheath and was ready and unembarrassed by hampering +bedclothes, for the weather was hot and we hadn't any. Suddenly that +native rose at the bedside, and bent over me with his right hand lifted +and a dirk in it aimed at my throat; but Luigi grabbed his wrist, pulled +him downward, and drove his own knife into the man's neck. That is the +whole story." + +Wilson and Tom drew deep breaths, and after some general chat about the +tragedy, Pudd'nhead said, taking Tom's hand: + +"Now, Tom, I've never had a look at your palms, as it happens; perhaps +you've got some little questionable privacies that need--hel-lo!" + +Tom had snatched away his hand, and was looking a good deal confused. + +"Why, he's blushing!" said Luigi. + +Tom darted an ugly look at him, and said sharply: + +"Well, if I am, it ain't because I'm a murderer!" Luigi's dark face +flushed, but before he could speak or move, Tom added with anxious haste: +"Oh, I beg a thousand pardons. I didn't mean that; it was out before I +thought, and I'm very, very sorry--you must forgive me!" + +Wilson came to the rescue, and smoothed things down as well as he could; +and in fact was entirely successful as far as the twins were concerned, +for they felt sorrier for the affront put upon him by his guest's +outburst of ill manners than for the insult offered to Luigi. But the +success was not so pronounced with the offender. Tom tried to seem at +his ease, and he went through the motions fairly well, but at bottom he +felt resentful toward all the three witnesses of his exhibition; in fact, +he felt so annoyed at them for having witnessed it and noticed it that he +almost forgot to feel annoyed at himself for placing it before them. +However, something presently happened which made him almost comfortable, +and brought him nearly back to a state of charity and friendliness. This +was a little spat between the twins; not much of a spat, but still a +spat; and before they got far with it, they were in a decided condition +of irritation while pretending to be actuated by more respectable +motives. By his help the fire got warmed up to the blazing point, and he +might have had the happiness of seeing the flames show up in another +moment, but for the interruption of a knock on the door--an interruption +which fretted him as much as it gratified Wilson. Wilson opened the +door. + +The visitor was a good-natured, ignorant, energetic middle-aged Irishman +named John Buckstone, who was a great politician in a small way, and +always took a large share in public matters of every sort. One of the +town's chief excitements, just now, was over the matter of rum. There +was a strong rum party and a strong anti-rum party. Buckstone was +training with the rum party, and he had been sent to hunt up the twins +and invite them to attend a mass meeting of that faction. He delivered +his errand, and said the clans were already gathering in the big hall +over the market house. Luigi accepted the invitation cordially. Angelo +less cordially, since he disliked crowds, and did not drink the powerful +intoxicants of America. In fact, he was even a teetotaler sometimes +--when it was judicious to be one. + +The twins left with Buckstone, and Tom Driscoll joined the company with +them uninvited. + +In the distance, one could see a long wavering line of torches drifting +down the main street, and could hear the throbbing of the bass drum, the +clash of cymbals, the squeaking of a fife or two, and the faint roar of +remote hurrahs. The tail end of this procession was climbing the market +house stairs when the twins arrived in its neighborhood; when they +reached the hall, it was full of people, torches, smoke, noise, and +enthusiasm. They were conducted to the platform by Buckstone--Tom +Driscoll still following--and were delivered to the chairman in the midst +of a prodigious explosion of welcome. When the noise had moderated a +little, the chair proposed that "our illustrious guests be at once +elected, by complimentary acclamation, to membership in our ever-glorious +organization, the paradise of the free and the perdition of the slave." + +This eloquent discharge opened the floodgates of enthusiasm again, and +the election was carried with thundering unanimity. Then arose a storm +of cries: + +"Wet them down! Wet them down! Give them a drink!" + +Glasses of whisky were handed to the twins. Luigi waves his aloft, then +brought it to his lips; but Angelo set his down. There was another storm +of cries. + +"What's the matter with the other one?" "What is the blond one going +back on us for?" "Explain! Explain!" + +The chairman inquired, and then reported: + +"We have made an unfortunate mistake, gentlemen. I find that the Count +Angelo Capello is opposed to our creed--is a teetotaler, in fact, and was +not intending to apply for membership with us. He desires that we +reconsider the vote by which he was elected. What is the pleasure of the +house?" + +There was a general burst of laughter, plentifully accented with +whistlings and catcalls, but the energetic use of the gavel presently +restored something like order. Then a man spoke from the crowd, and said +that while he was very sorry that the mistake had been made, it would not +be possible to rectify it at the present meeting. According to the +bylaws, it must go over to the next regular meeting for action. He would +not offer a motion, as none was required. He desired to apologize to the +gentlemen in the name of the house, and begged to assure him that as far +as it might lie in the power of the Sons of Liberty, his temporary +membership in the order would be made pleasant to him. + +This speech was received with great applause, mixed with cries of: + +"That's the talk!" "He's a good fellow, anyway, if he _is_ a teetotaler!" +"Drink his health!" "Give him a rouser, and no heeltaps!" + +Glasses were handed around, and everybody on the platform drank Angelo's +health, while the house bellowed forth in song: + + + For he's a jolly good fel-low, + For he's a jolly good fel-low, + For he's a jolly good fe-el-low, + Which nobody can deny. + +Tom Driscoll drank. It was his second glass, for he had drunk Angelo's +the moment that Angelo had set it down. The two drinks made him very +merry--almost idiotically so, and he began to take a most lively and +prominent part in the proceedings, particularly in the music and catcalls +and side remarks. + +The chairman was still standing at the front, the twins at his side. The +extraordinarily close resemblance of the brothers to each other suggested +a witticism to Tom Driscoll, and just as the chairman began a speech he +skipped forward and said, with an air of tipsy confidence, to the +audience: + +"Boys, I move that he keeps still and lets this human philopena snip you +out a speech." + +The descriptive aptness of the phrase caught the house, and a mighty +burst of laughter followed. + +Luigi's southern blood leaped to the boiling point in a moment under the +sharp humiliation of this insult delivered in the presence of four +hundred strangers. It was not in the young man's nature to let the +matter pass, or to delay the squaring of the account. He took a couple of +strides and halted behind the unsuspecting joker. Then he drew back and +delivered a kick of such titanic vigor that it lifted Tom clear over the +footlights and landed him on the heads of the front row of the Sons of +Liberty. + +Even a sober person does not like to have a human being emptied on him +when he is not going any harm; a person who is not sober cannot endure +such an attention at all. The nest of Sons of Liberty that Driscoll +landed in had not a sober bird in it; in fact there was probably not an +entirely sober one in the auditorium. Driscoll was promptly and +indignantly flung on the heads of Sons in the next row, and these Sons +passed him on toward the rear, and then immediately began to pummel the +front row Sons who had passed him to them. This course was strictly +followed by bench after bench as Driscoll traveled in his tumultuous and +airy flight toward the door; so he left behind him an ever-lengthening +wake of raging and plunging and fighting and swearing humanity. Down went +group after group of torches, and presently above the deafening clatter +of the gavel, roar of angry voices, and crash of succumbing benches, rose +the paralyzing cry of "_fire!_" + +The fighting ceased instantly; the cursing ceased; for one distinctly +defined moment, there was a dead hush, a motionless calm, where the +tempest had been; then with one impulse the multitude awoke to life and +energy again, and went surging and struggling and swaying, this way and +that, its outer edges melting away through windows and doors and +gradually lessening the pressure and relieving the mass. + +The fireboys were never on hand so suddenly before; for there was no +distance to go this time, their quarters being in the rear end of the +market house, There was an engine company and a hook-and-ladder company. +Half of each was composed of rummies and the other half of anti-rummies, +after the moral and political share-and-share-alike fashion of the +frontier town of the period. Enough anti-rummies were loafing in quarters +to man the engine and the ladders. In two minutes they had their red +shirts and helmets on--they never stirred officially in unofficial +costume--and as the mass meeting overhead smashed through the long row of +windows and poured out upon the roof of the arcade, the deliverers were +ready for them with a powerful stream of water, which washed some of them +off the roof and nearly drowned the rest. But water was preferable to +fire, and still the stampede from the windows continued, and still the +pitiless drenching assailed it until the building was empty; then the +fireboys mounted to the hall and flooded it with water enough to +annihilate forty times as much fire as there was there; for a village +fire company does not often get a chance to show off, and so when it does +get a chance, it makes the most of it. Such citizens of that village as +were of a thoughtful and judicious temperament did not insure against +fire; they insured against the fire company. + + + + +CHAPTER 12 + +The Shame of Judge Driscoll + +Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. +Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is +brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the +flea!--incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance +of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack +you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him +as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both +day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the +immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man +who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten +centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who +"didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and put him +at the head of the procession. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +Judge Driscoll was in bed and asleep by ten o'clock on Friday night, and +he was up and gone a-fishing before daylight in the morning with his +friend Pembroke Howard. These two had been boys together in Virginia +when that state still ranked as the chief and most imposing member of the +Union, and they still coupled the proud and affectionate adjective "old" +with her name when they spoke of her. In Missouri a recognized +superiority attached to any person who hailed from Old Virginia; and this +superiority was exalted to supremacy when a person of such nativity could +also prove descent from the First Families of that great commonwealth. +The Howards and Driscolls were of this aristocracy. In their eyes, it +was a nobility. It had its unwritten laws, and they were as clearly +defined and as strict as any that could be found among the printed +statues of the land. The F.F.V. was born a gentleman; his highest duty in +life was to watch over that great inheritance and keep it unsmirched. He +must keep his honor spotless. Those laws were his chart; his course was +marked out on it; if he swerved from it by so much as half a point of the +compass, it meant shipwreck to his honor; that is to say, degradation +from his rank as a gentleman. These laws required certain things of him +which his religion might forbid: then his religion must yield--the laws +could not be relaxed to accommodate religions or anything else. Honor +stood first; and the laws defined what it was and wherein it differed in +certain details from honor as defined by church creeds and by the social +laws and customs of some of the minor divisions of the globe that had got +crowded out when the sacred boundaries of Virginia were staked out. + +If Judge Driscoll was the recognized first citizen of Dawson's Landing, +Pembroke Howard was easily its recognized second citizen. He was called +"the great lawyer"--an earned title. He and Driscoll were of the same +age--a year or two past sixty. + +Although Driscoll was a freethinker and Howard a strong and determined +Presbyterian, their warm intimacy suffered no impairment in consequence. +They were men whose opinions were their own property and not subject to +revision and amendment, suggestion or criticism, by anybody, even their +friends. + +The day's fishing finished, they came floating downstream in their skiff, +talking national politics and other high matters, and presently met a +skiff coming up from town, with a man in it who said: + +"I reckon you know one of the new twins gave your nephew a kicking last +night, Judge?" + +"Did WHAT?" + +"Gave him a kicking." + +The old judge's lips paled, and his eyes began to flame. He choked with +anger for a moment, then he got out what he was trying to say: + +"Well--well--go on! Give me the details!" + +The man did it. At the finish the judge was silent a minute, turning +over in his mind the shameful picture of Tom's flight over the +footlights; then he said, as if musing aloud, + +"H'm--I don't understand it. I was asleep at home. He didn't wake me. +Thought he was competent to manage his affair without my help, I reckon." +His face lit up with pride and pleasure at that thought, and he said with +a cheery complacency, "I like that--it's the true old blood--hey, +Pembroke?" + +Howard smiled an iron smile, and nodded his head approvingly. Then the +news-bringer spoke again. + +"But Tom beat the twin on the trial." + +The judge looked at the man wonderingly, and said: + +"The trial? What trial?" + +"Why, Tom had him up before Judge Robinson for assault and battery." + +The old man shrank suddenly together like one who has received a death +stroke. Howard sprang for him as he sank forward in a swoon, and took +him in his arms, and bedded him on his back in the boat. He sprinkled +water in his face, and said to the startled visitor: + +"Go, now--don't let him come to and find you here. You see what an +effect your heedless speech has had; you ought to have been more +considerate than to blurt out such a cruel piece of slander as that." + +"I'm right down sorry I did it now, Mr. Howard, and I wouldn't have done +it if I had thought; but it ain't slander; it's perfectly true, just as I +told him." + +He rowed away. Presently the old judge came out of his faint and looked +up piteously into the sympathetic face that was bent over him. + +"Say it ain't true, Pembroke; tell me it ain't true!" he said in a weak +voice. + +There was nothing weak in the deep organ tones that responded: + +"You know it's a lie as well as I do, old friend. He is of the best +blood of the Old Dominion." + +"God bless you for saying it!" said the old gentleman, fervently. "Ah, +Pembroke, it was such a blow!" + +Howard stayed by his friend, and saw him home, and entered the house with +him. It was dark, and past supper-time, but the judge was not thinking +of supper; he was eager to hear the slander refuted from headquarters, +and as eager to have Howard hear it, too. Tom was sent for, and he came +immediately. He was bruised and lame, and was not a happy-looking +object. His uncle made him sit down, and said: + +"We have been hearing about your adventure, Tom, with a handsome lie +added for embellishment. Now pulverize that lie to dust! What measures +have you taken? How does the thing stand?" + +Tom answered guilelessly: "It don't stand at all; it's all over. I had +him up in court and beat him. Pudd'nhead Wilson defended him--first +case he ever had, and lost it. The judge fined the miserable hound five +dollars for the assault." + +Howard and the judge sprang to their feet with the opening sentence +--why, neither knew; then they stood gazing vacantly at each other. +Howard stood a moment, then sat mournfully down without saying anything. +The judge's wrath began to kindle, and he burst out: + +"You cur! You scum! You vermin! Do you mean to tell me that blood of +my race has suffered a blow and crawled to a court of law about it? +Answer me!" + +Tom's head drooped, and he answered with an eloquent silence. His uncle +stared at him with a mixed expression of amazement and shame and +incredulity that was sorrowful to see. At last he said: + +"Which of the twins was it?" + +"Count Luigi." + +"You have challenged him?" + +"N--no," hesitated Tom, turning pale. + +"You will challenge him tonight. Howard will carry it." + +Tom began to turn sick, and to show it. He turned his hat round and +round in his hand, his uncle glowering blacker and blacker upon him as +the heavy seconds drifted by; then at last he began to stammer, and said +piteously: + +"Oh, please, don't ask me to do it, uncle! He is a murderous devil--I +never could--I--I'm afraid of him!" + +Old Driscoll's mouth opened and closed three times before he could get it +to perform its office; then he stormed out: + +"A coward in my family! A Driscoll a coward! Oh, what have I done to +deserve this infamy!" He tottered to his secretary in the corner, +repeated that lament again and again in heartbreaking tones, and got out +of a drawer a paper, which he slowly tore to bits, scattering the bits +absently in his track as he walked up and down the room, still grieving +and lamenting. At last he said: + +"There it is, shreds and fragments once more--my will. Once more you +have forced me to disinherit you, you base son of a most noble father! +Leave my sight! Go--before I spit on you!" + +The young man did not tarry. Then the judge turned to Howard: + +"You will be my second, old friend?" + +"Of course." + +"There is pen and paper. Draft the cartel, and lose no time." + +"The Count shall have it in his hands in fifteen minutes," said Howard. + +Tom was very heavyhearted. His appetite was gone with his property and +his self-respect. He went out the back way and wandered down the obscure +lane grieving, and wondering if any course of future conduct, however +discreet and carefully perfected and watched over, could win back his +uncle's favor and persuade him to reconstruct once more that generous +will which had just gone to ruin before his eyes. He finally concluded +that it could. He said to himself that he had accomplished this sort of +triumph once already, and that what had been done once could be done +again. He would set about it. He would bend every energy to the task, +and he would score that triumph once more, cost what it might to his +convenience, limit as it might his frivolous and liberty-loving life. + +"To begin," he says to himself, "I'll square up with the proceeds of my +raid, and then gambling has got to be stopped--and stopped short off. +It's the worst vice I've got--from my standpoint, anyway, because it's +the one he can most easily find out, through the impatience of my +creditors. He thought it expensive to have to pay two hundred dollars to +them for me once. Expensive--_that!_ Why, it cost me the whole of his +fortune--but, of course, he never thought of that; some people can't +think of any but their own side of a case. If he had known how deep I am +in now, the will would have gone to pot without waiting for a duel to +help. Three hundred dollars! It's a pile! But he'll never hear of it, +I'm thankful to say. The minute I've cleared it off, I'm safe; and I'll +never touch a card again. Anyway, I won't while he lives, I make oath to +that. I'm entering on my last reform--I know it--yes, and I'll win; but +after that, if I ever slip again I'm gone." + + + + +CHAPTER 13 + +Tom Stares at Ruin + +When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have +gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in +stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, +May, March, June, December, August, and February. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +Thus mournfully communing with himself, Tom moped along the lane past +Pudd'nhead Wilson's house, and still on and on between fences enclosing +vacant country on each hand till he neared the haunted house, then he +came moping back again, with many sighs and heavy with trouble. He sorely +wanted cheerful company. Rowena! His heart gave a bound at the thought, +but the next thought quieted it--the detested twins would be there. + +He was on the inhabited side of Wilson's house, and now as he approached +it, he noticed that the sitting room was lighted. This would do; others +made him feel unwelcome sometimes, but Wilson never failed in courtesy +toward him, and a kindly courtesy does at least save one's feelings, even +if it is not professing to stand for a welcome. Wilson heard footsteps at +his threshold, then the clearing of a throat. + +"It's that fickle-tempered, dissipated young goose--poor devil, he find +friends pretty scarce today, likely, after the disgrace of carrying a +personal assault case into a law-court." + +A dejected knock. "Come in!" + +Tom entered, and dropped into a chair, without saying anything. Wilson +said kindly: + +"Why, my boy, you look desolate. Don't take it so hard. Try and forget +you have been kicked." + +"Oh, dear," said Tom, wretchedly, "it's not that, Pudd'nhead--it's not +that. It's a thousand times worse than that--oh, yes, a million times +worse." + +"Why, Tom, what do you mean? Has Rowena--" + +"Flung me? _No_, but the old man has." + +Wilson said to himself, "Aha!" and thought of the mysterious girl in the +bedroom. "The Driscolls have been making discoveries!" Then he said +aloud, gravely: + +"Tom, there are some kinds of dissipation which--" + +"Oh, shucks, this hasn't got anything to do with dissipation. He wanted +me to challenge that derned Italian savage, and I wouldn't do it." + +"Yes, of course he would do that," said Wilson in a meditative +matter-of-course way, "but the thing that puzzled me was, why he didn't +look to that last night, for one thing, and why he let you carry such a +matter into a court of law at all, either before the duel or after it. +It's no place for it. It was not like him. I couldn't understand it. +How did it happen?" + +"It happened because he didn't know anything about it. He was asleep +when I got home last night." + +"And you didn't wake him? Tom, is that possible?" + +Tom was not getting much comfort here. He fidgeted a moment, then said: + +"I didn't choose to tell him--that's all. He was going a-fishing before +dawn, with Pembroke Howard, and if I got the twins into the common +calaboose--and I thought sure I could--I never dreamed of their slipping +out on a paltry fine for such an outrageous offense--well, once in the +calaboose they would be disgraced, and uncle wouldn't want any duels with +that sort of characters, and wouldn't allow any. + +"Tom, I am ashamed of you! I don't see how you could treat your good old +uncle so. I am a better friend of his than you are; for if I had known +the circumstances I would have kept that case out of court until I got +word to him and let him have the gentleman's chance." + +"You would?" exclaimed Tom, with lively surprise. "And it your first +case! And you know perfectly well there never would have _been_ any case +if he had got that chance, don't you? And you'd have finished your days +a pauper nobody, instead of being an actually launched and recognized +lawyer today. And you would really have done that, would you?" + +"Certainly." + +Tom looked at him a moment or two, then shook his head sorrowfully and +said: + +"I believe you--upon my word I do. I don't know why I do, but I do. +Pudd'nhead Wilson, I think you're the biggest fool I ever saw." + +"Thank you." + +"Don't mention it." + +"Well, he has been requiring you to fight the Italian, and you have +refused. You degenerate remnant of an honorable line! I'm thoroughly +ashamed of you, Tom!" + +"Oh, that's nothing! I don't care for anything, now that the will's torn +up again." + +"Tom, tell me squarely--didn't he find any fault with you for anything +but those two things--carrying the case into court and refusing to +fight?" + +He watched the young fellow's face narrowly, but it was entirely +reposeful, and so also was the voice that answered: + +"No, he didn't find any other fault with me. If he had had any to find, +he would have begun yesterday, for he was just in the humor for it. He +drove that jack-pair around town and showed them the sights, and when he +came home he couldn't find his father's old silver watch that don't keep +time and he thinks so much of, and couldn't remember what he did with it +three or four days ago when he saw it last, and when I suggested that it +probably wasn't lost but stolen, it put him in a regular passion, and he +said I was a fool--which convinced me, without any trouble, that that +was just what he was afraid _had_ happened, himself, but did not want to +believe it, because lost things stand a better chance of being found +again than stolen ones." + +"Whe-ew!" whistled Wilson. "Score another one the list." + +"Another what?" + +"Another theft!" + +"Theft?" + +"Yes, theft. That watch isn't lost, it's stolen. There's been another +raid on the town--and just the same old mysterious sort of thing that has +happened once before, as you remember." + +"You don't mean it!" + +"It's as sure as you are born! Have you missed anything yourself?" + +"No. That is, I did miss a silver pencil case that Aunt Mary Pratt gave +me last birthday--" + +"You'll find it stolen--that's what you'll find." + +"No, I sha'n't; for when I suggested theft about the watch and got such a +rap, I went and examined my room, and the pencil case was missing, but it +was only mislaid, and I found it again." + +"You are sure you missed nothing else?" + +"Well, nothing of consequence. I missed a small plain gold ring worth +two or three dollars, but that will turn up. I'll look again." + +"In my opinion you'll not find it. There's been a raid, I tell you. Come +_in!_" + +Mr. Justice Robinson entered, followed by Buckstone and the town +constable, Jim Blake. They sat down, and after some wandering and +aimless weather-conversation Wilson said: + +"By the way, We've just added another to the list of thefts, maybe two. +Judge Driscoll's old silver watch is gone, and Tom here has missed a gold +ring." + +"Well, it is a bad business," said the justice, "and gets worse the +further it goes. The Hankses, the Dobsons, the Pilligrews, the Ortons, +the Grangers, the Hales, the Fullers, the Holcombs, in fact everybody +that lives around about Patsy Cooper's had been robbed of little things +like trinkets and teaspoons and suchlike small valuables that are easily +carried off. It's perfectly plain that the thief took advantage of the +reception at Patsy Cooper's when all the neighbors were in her house and +all their niggers hanging around her fence for a look at the show, to +raid the vacant houses undisturbed. Patsy is miserable about it; +miserable on account of the neighbors, and particularly miserable on +account of her foreigners, of course; so miserable on their account that +she hasn't any room to worry about her own little losses." + +"It's the same old raider," said Wilson. "I suppose there isn't any +doubt about that." + +"Constable Blake doesn't think so." + +"No, you're wrong there," said Blake. "The other times it was a man; +there was plenty of signs of that, as we know, in the profession, thought +we never got hands on him; but this time it's a woman." + +Wilson thought of the mysterious girl straight off. She was always in +his mind now. But she failed him again. Blake continued: + +"She's a stoop-shouldered old woman with a covered basket on her arm, in +a black veil, dressed in mourning. I saw her going aboard the ferryboat +yesterday. Lives in Illinois, I reckon; but I don't care where she +lives, I'm going to get her--she can make herself sure of that." + +"What makes you think she's the thief?" + +"Well, there ain't any other, for one thing; and for another, some nigger +draymen that happened to be driving along saw her coming out of or going +into houses, and told me so--and it just happens that they was _robbed_, +every time." + +It was granted that this was plenty good enough circumstantial evidence. +A pensive silence followed, which lasted some moments, then Wilson said: + +"There's one good thing, anyway. She can't either pawn or sell Count +Luigi's costly Indian dagger." + +"My!" said Tom. "Is _that_ gone?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, that was a haul! But why can't she pawn it or sell it?" + +"Because when the twins went home from the Sons of Liberty meeting last +night, news of the raid was sifting in from everywhere, and Aunt Patsy +was in distress to know if they had lost anything. They found that the +dagger was gone, and they notified the police and pawnbrokers everywhere. +It was a great haul, yes, but the old woman won't get anything out of it, +because she'll get caught." + +"Did they offer a reward?" asked Buckstone. + +"Yes, five hundred dollars for the knife, and five hundred more for the +thief." + +"What a leather-headed idea!" exclaimed the constable. "The thief das'n't +go near them, nor send anybody. Whoever goes is going to get himself +nabbed, for their ain't any pawnbroker that's going to lose the chance +to--" + +If anybody had noticed Tom's face at that time, the gray-green color of +it might have provoked curiosity; but nobody did. He said to himself: +"I'm gone! I never can square up; the rest of the plunder won't pawn or +sell for half of the bill. Oh, I know it--I'm gone, I'm gone--and this +time it's for good. Oh, this is awful--I don't know what to do, nor +which way to turn!" + +"Softly, softly," said Wilson to Blake. "I planned their scheme for them +at midnight last night, and it was all finished up shipshape by two this +morning. They'll get their dagger back, and then I'll explain to you how +the thing was done." + +There were strong signs of a general curiosity, and Buckstone said: + +"Well, you have whetted us up pretty sharp. Wilson, and I'm free to say +that if you don't mind telling us in confidence--" + +"Oh, I'd as soon tell as not, Buckstone, but as long as the twins and I +agreed to say nothing about it, we must let it stand so. But you can take +my word for it, you won't be kept waiting three days. Somebody will apply +for that reward pretty promptly, and I'll show you the thief and the +dagger both very soon afterward." + +The constable was disappointed, and also perplexed. He said: + +"It may all be--yes, and I hope it will, but I'm blamed if I can see my +way through it. It's too many for yours truly." + +The subject seemed about talked out. Nobody seemed to have anything +further to offer. After a silence the justice of the peace informed +Wilson that he and Buckstone and the constable had come as a committee, +on the part of the Democratic party, to ask him to run for mayor--for the +little town was about to become a city and the first charter election was +approaching. It was the first attention which Wilson had ever received +at the hands of any party; it was a sufficiently humble one, but it was a +recognition of his debut into the town's life and activities at last; it +was a step upward, and he was deeply gratified. He accepted, and the +committee departed, followed by young Tom. + + + + +CHAPTER 14 + +Roxana Insists Upon Reform + +The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned +with commoner things. It is chief of this world's luxuries, king by the +grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he +knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve +took: we know it because she repented. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +About the time that Wilson was bowing the committee out, Pembroke Howard +was entering the next house to report. He found the old judge sitting +grim and straight in his chair, waiting. + +"Well, Howard--the news?" + +"The best in the world." + +"Accepts, does he?" and the light of battle gleamed joyously in the +Judge's eye. + +"Accepts? Why he jumped at it." + +"Did, did he? Now that's fine--that's very fine. I like that. When is +it to be?" + +"Now! Straight off! Tonight! An admirable fellow--admirable!" + +"Admirable? He's a darling! Why, it's an honor as well as a pleasure to +stand up before such a man. Come--off with you! Go and arrange +everything--and give him my heartiest compliments. A rare fellow, indeed; +an admirable fellow, as you have said!" + +"I'll have him in the vacant stretch between Wilson's and the haunted +house within the hour, and I'll bring my own pistols." + +Judge Driscoll began to walk the floor in a state of pleased excitement; +but presently he stopped, and began to think--began to think of Tom. +Twice he moved toward the secretary, and twice he turned away again; but +finally he said: + +"This may be my last night in the world--I must not take the chance. He +is worthless and unworthy, but it is largely my fault. He was entrusted +to me by my brother on his dying bed, and I have indulged him to his +hurt, instead of training him up severely, and making a man of him, I +have violated my trust, and I must not add the sin of desertion to that. +I have forgiven him once already, and would subject him to a long and +hard trial before forgiving him again, if I could live; but I must not +run that risk. No, I must restore the will. But if I survive the duel, I +will hide it away, and he will not know, and I will not tell him until he +reforms, and I see that his reformation is going to be permanent." + +He redrew the will, and his ostensible nephew was heir to a fortune +again. As he was finishing his task, Tom, wearied with another brooding +tramp, entered the house and went tiptoeing past the sitting room door. +He glanced in, and hurried on, for the sight of his uncle was nothing but +terrors for him tonight. But his uncle was writing! That was unusual at +this late hour. What could he be writing? A chill of anxiety settled +down upon Tom's heart. Did that writing concern him? He was afraid so. +He reflected that when ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, +but in showers. He said he would get a glimpse of that document or know +the reason why. He heard someone coming, and stepped out of sight and +hearing. It was Pembroke Howard. What could be hatching? + +Howard said, with great satisfaction: + +"Everything's right and ready. He's gone to the battleground with his +second and the surgeon--also with his brother. I've arranged it all with +Wilson--Wilson's his second. We are to have three shots apiece." + +"Good! How is the moon?" + +"Bright as day, nearly. Perfect, for the distance--fifteen yards. No +wind--not a breath; hot and still." + +"All good; all first-rate. Here, Pembroke, read this, and witness it." + +Pembroke read and witnessed the will, then gave the old man's hand a +hearty shake and said: + +"Now that's right, York--but I knew you would do it. You couldn't leave +that poor chap to fight along without means or profession, with certain +defeat before him, and I knew you wouldn't, for his father's sake if not +for his own." + +"For his dead father's sake, I couldn't, I know; for poor Percy--but you +know what Percy was to me. But mind--Tom is not to know of this unless I +fall tonight." + +"I understand. I'll keep the secret." + +The judge put the will away, and the two started for the battleground. In +another minute the will was in Tom's hands. His misery vanished, his +feelings underwent a tremendous revulsion. He put the will carefully back +in its place, and spread his mouth and swung his hat once, twice, three +times around his head, in imitation of three rousing huzzahs, no sound +issuing from his lips. He fell to communing with himself excitedly and +joyously, but every now and then he let off another volley of dumb +hurrahs. + +He said to himself: "I've got the fortune again, but I'll not let on +that I know about it. And this time I'm gong to hang on to it. I take no +more risks. I'll gamble no more, I'll drink no more, because--well, +because I'll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on, +again. It's the sure way, and the only sure way; I might have thought of +that sooner--well, yes, if I had wanted to. But now--dear me, I've had a +scare this time, and I'll take no more chances. Not a single chance +more. Land! I persuaded myself this evening that I could fetch him +around without any great amount of effort, but I've been getting more and +more heavyhearted and doubtful straight along, ever since. If he tells +me about this thing, all right; but if he doesn't, I sha'n't let on. +I--well, I'd like to tell Pudd'nhead Wilson, but--no, I'll think about +that; perhaps I won't." He whirled off another dead huzzah, and said, +"I'm reformed, and this time I'll stay so, sure!" + +He was about to close with a final grand silent demonstration, when he +suddenly recollected that Wilson had put it out of his power to pawn or +sell the Indian knife, and that he was once more in awful peril of +exposure by his creditors for that reason. His joy collapsed utterly, and +he turned away and moped toward the door moaning and lamenting over the +bitterness of his luck. He dragged himself upstairs, and brooded in his +room a long time, disconsolate and forlorn, with Luigi's Indian knife for +a text. At last he sighed and said: + +"When I supposed these stones were glass and this ivory bone, the thing +hadn't any interest for me because it hadn't any value, and couldn't help +me out of my trouble. But now--why, now it is full of interest; yes, and +of a sort to break a body's heart. It's a bag of gold that has turned to +dirt and ashes in my hands. It could save me, and save me so easily, and +yet I've got to go to ruin. It's like drowning with a life preserver in +my reach. All the hard luck comes to me, and all the good luck goes to +other people--Pudd'nhead Wilson, for instance; even his career has got a +sort of a little start at last, and what has he done to deserve it, I +should like to know? Yes, he has opened his own road, but he isn't +content with that, but must block mine. It's a sordid, selfish world, and +I wish I was out of it." He allowed the light of the candle to play upon +the jewels of the sheath, but the flashings and sparklings had no charm +for his eye; they were only just so many pangs to his heart. "I must not +say anything to Roxy about this thing," he said. "She is too daring. She +would be for digging these stones out and selling them, and then--why, +she would be arrested and the stones traced, and then--" The thought made +him quake, and he hid the knife away, trembling all over and glancing +furtively about, like a criminal who fancies that the accuser is already +at hand. + +Should he try to sleep? Oh, no, sleep was not for him; his trouble was +too haunting, too afflicting for that. He must have somebody to mourn +with. He would carry his despair to Roxy. + +He had heard several distant gunshots, but that sort of thing was not +uncommon, and they had made no impression upon him. He went out at the +back door, and turned westward. He passed Wilson's house and proceeded +along the lane, and presently saw several figures approaching Wilson's +place through the vacant lots. These were the duelists returning from the +fight; he thought he recognized them, but as he had no desire for white +people's company, he stooped down behind the fence until they were out of +his way. + +Roxy was feeling fine. She said: + +"Whah was you, child? Warn't you in it?" + +"In what?" + +"In de duel." + +"Duel? Has there been a duel?" + +"Co'se dey has. De ole Jedge has be'n havin' a duel wid one o' dem +twins." + +"Great Scott!" Then he added to himself: "That's what made him remake +the will; he thought he might get killed, and it softened him toward me. +And that's what he and Howard were so busy about. . . . Oh dear, if the +twin had only killed him, I should be out of my--" + +"What is you mumblin' 'bout, Chambers? Whah was you? Didn't you know dey +was gwine to be a duel?" + +"No, I didn't. The old man tried to get me to fight one with Count +Luigi, but he didn't succeed, so I reckon he concluded to patch up the +family honor himself." + +He laughed at the idea, and went rambling on with a detailed account of +his talk with the judge, and how shocked and ashamed the judge was to +find that he had a coward in his family. He glanced up at last, and got +a shock himself. Roxana's bosom was heaving with suppressed passion, and +she was glowering down upon him with measureless contempt written in her +face. + +"En you refuse' to fight a man dat kicked you, 'stid o' jumpin' at de +chance! En you ain't got no mo' feelin' den to come en tell me, dat +fetched sich a po' lowdown ornery rabbit into de worl'! Pah! it make me +sick! It's de nigger in you, dat's what it is. Thirty-one parts o' you +is white, en on'y one part nigger, en dat po' little one part is yo' +_soul_. 'Tain't wuth savin'; 'tain't wuth totin' out on a shovel en +throwin' en de gutter. You has disgraced yo' birth. What would yo' pa +think o' you? It's enough to make him turn in his grave." + +The last three sentences stung Tom into a fury, and he said to himself +that if his father were only alive and in reach of assassination his +mother would soon find that he had a very clear notion of the size of his +indebtedness to that man, and was willing to pay it up in full, and would +do it too, even at risk of his life; but he kept this thought to himself; +that was safest in his mother's present state. + +"Whatever has come o' yo' Essex blood? Dat's what I can't understan'. +En it ain't on'y jist Essex blood dat's in you, not by a long +sight--'deed it ain't! My great-great-great-gran'father en yo' +great-great-great-great-gran'father was Ole Cap'n John Smith, de highest +blood dat Ole Virginny ever turned out, en _his_ great-great-gran'mother, +or somers along back dah, was Pocahontas de Injun queen, en her husbun' +was a nigger king outen Africa--en yit here you is, a slinkin' outen a +duel en disgracin' our whole line like a ornery lowdown hound! Yes, it's +de nigger in you!" + +She sat down on her candle box and fell into a reverie. Tom did not +disturb her; he sometimes lacked prudence, but it was not in +circumstances of this kind, Roxana's storm went gradually down, but it +died hard, and even when it seemed to be quite gone, it would now and +then break out in a distant rumble, so to speak, in the form of muttered +ejaculations. One of these was, "Ain't nigger enough in him to show in +his fingernails, en dat takes mighty little--yit dey's enough to pain +his soul." + +Presently she muttered. "Yassir, enough to paint a whole thimbleful of +'em." At last her ramblings ceased altogether, and her countenance began +to clear--a welcome sight to Tom, who had learned her moods, and knew she +was on the threshold of good humor now. He noticed that from time to time +she unconsciously carried her finger to the end of her nose. He looked +closer and said: + +"Why, Mammy, the end of your nose is skinned. How did that come?" + +She sent out the sort of wholehearted peal of laughter which God had +vouchsafed in its perfection to none but the happy angels in heaven and +the bruised and broken black slave on the earth, and said: + +"Dad fetch dat duel, I be'n in it myself." + +"Gracious! did a bullet to that?" + +"Yassir, you bet it did!" + +"Well, I declare! Why, how did that happen?" + +"Happened dis-away. I 'uz a-sett'n' here kinder dozin' in de dark, en +_che-bang!_ goes a gun, right out dah. I skips along out towards t'other +end o' de house to see what's gwine on, en stops by de ole winder on de +side towards Pudd'nhead Wilson's house dat ain't got no sash in it--but +dey ain't none of 'em got any sashes, for as dat's concerned--en I stood +dah in de dark en look out, en dar in the moonlight, right down under me +'uz one o' de twins a-cussin'--not much, but jist a-cussin' soft--it 'uz +de brown one dat 'uz cussin,' 'ca'se he 'uz hit in de shoulder. En +Doctor Claypool he 'uz a-workin' at him, en Pudd'nhead Wilson he 'uz +a-he'pin', en ole Jedge Driscoll en Pem Howard 'uz a-standin' out yonder +a little piece waitin' for 'em to get ready agin. En treckly dey squared +off en give de word, en _bang-bang_ went de pistols, en de twin he say, +'Ouch!'--hit him on de han' dis time--en I hear dat same bullet go +_spat!_ ag'in de logs under de winder; en de nex' time dey shoot, de twin +say, 'Ouch!' ag'in, en I done it too, 'ca'se de bullet glance' on his +cheekbone en skip up here en glance' on de side o' de winder en whiz +right acrost my face en tuck de hide off'n my nose--why, if I'd 'a' +be'n jist a inch or a inch en a half furder 't would 'a' tuck de whole +nose en disfiggered me. Here's de bullet; I hunted her up." + +"Did you stand there all the time?" + +"Dat's a question to ask, ain't it! What else would I do? Does I git a +chance to see a duel every day?" + +"Why, you were right in range! Weren't you afraid?" + +The woman gave a sniff of scorn. + +"'Fraid! De Smith-Pocahontases ain't 'fraid o' nothin', let alone +bullets." + +"They've got pluck enough, I suppose; what they lack is judgment. _I_ +wouldn't have stood there." + +"Nobody's accusin' you!" + +"Did anybody else get hurt?" + +"Yes, we all got hit 'cep' de blon' twin en de doctor en de seconds. De +Jedge didn't git hurt, but I hear Pudd'nhead say de bullet snip some o' +his ha'r off." + +"'George!" said Tom to himself, "to come so near being out of my trouble, +and miss it by an inch. Oh dear, dear, he will live to find me out and +sell me to some nigger trader yet--yes, and he would do it in a minute." +Then he said aloud, in a grave tone: + +"Mother, we are in an awful fix." + +Roxana caught her breath with a spasm, and said: + +"Chile! What you hit a body so sudden for, like dat? What's be'n en gone +en happen'?" + +"Well, there's one thing I didn't tell you. When I wouldn't fight, he +tore up the will again, and--" + +Roxana's face turned a dead white, and she said: + +"Now you's _done!_--done forever! Dat's de end. Bofe un us is gwine to +starve to--" + +"Wait and hear me through, can't you! I reckon that when he resolved to +fight, himself, he thought he might get killed and not have a chance to +forgive me any more in this life, so he made the will again, and I've +seen it, and it's all right. But--" + +"Oh, thank goodness, den we's safe ag'in!--safe! en so what did you want +to come here en talk sich dreadful--" + +"Hold ON, I tell you, and let me finish. The swag I gathered won't half +square me up, and the first thing we know, my creditors--well, you know +what'll happen." + +Roxana dropped her chin, and told her son to leave her alone--she must +think this matter out. Presently she said impressively: + +"You got to go mighty keerful now, I tell you! En here's what you got to +do. He didn't git killed, en if you gives him de least reason, he'll +bust de will ag'in, en dat's de _las'_ time, now you hear me! So--you's +got to show him what you kin do in de nex' few days. You got to be pison +good, en let him see it; you got to do everything dat'll make him b'lieve +in you, en you got to sweeten aroun' ole Aunt Pratt, too--she's pow'ful +strong with de Jedge, en de bes' frien' you got. Nex', you'll go 'long +away to Sent Louis, en dat'll _keep_ him in yo' favor. Den you go en make +a bargain wid dem people. You tell 'em he ain't gwine to live long--en +dat's de fac', too--en tell 'em you'll pay 'em intrust, en big intrust, +too--ten per--what you call it?" + +"Ten percent a month?" + +"Dat's it. Den you take and sell yo' truck aroun', a little at a time, +en pay de intrust. How long will it las'?" + +"I think there's enough to pay the interest five or six months." "Den +you's all right. If he don't die in six months, dat don't make no +diff'rence--Providence'll provide. You's gwine to be safe--if you +behaves." She bent an austere eye on him and added, "En you IS gwine to +behave--does you know dat?" + +He laughed and said he was going to try, anyway. She did not unbend. She +said gravely: + +"Tryin' ain't de thing. You's gwine to _do_ it. You ain't gwine to +steal a pin--'ca'se it ain't safe no mo'; en you ain't gwine into no bad +comp'ny--not even once, you understand; en you ain't gwine to drink a +drop--nary a single drop; en you ain't gwine to gamble one single +gamble--not one! Dis ain't what you's gwine to try to do, it's what +you's gwine to DO. En I'll tell you how I knows it. Dis is how. I's +gwine to foller along to Sent Louis my own self; en you's gwine to come +to me every day o' your life, en I'll look you over; en if you fails in +one single one o' dem things--jist _one_--I take my oath I'll come +straight down to dis town en tell de Jedge you's a nigger en a slave--en +_prove_ it!" She paused to let her words sink home. Then she added, +"Chambers, does you b'lieve me when I says dat?" + +Tom was sober enough now. There was no levity in his voice when he +answered: + +"Yes, Mother, I know, now, that I am reformed--and permanently. +Permanently--and beyond the reach of any human temptation." + +"Den g'long home en begin!" + + + + +CHAPTER 15 + +The Robber Robbed + +Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket" +--which is but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your +attention"; but the wise man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket +and--_watch that basket!_" + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +What a time of it Dawson's Landing was having! All its life it had been +asleep, but now it hardly got a chance for a nod, so swiftly did big +events and crashing surprises come along in one another's wake: Friday +morning, first glimpse of Real Nobility, also grand reception at Aunt +Patsy Cooper's, also great robber raid; Friday evening, dramatic kicking +of the heir of the chief citizen in presence of four hundred people; +Saturday morning, emergence as practicing lawyer of the long-submerged +Pudd'nhead Wilson; Saturday night, duel between chief citizen and titled +stranger. + +The people took more pride in the duel than in all the other events put +together, perhaps. It was a glory to their town to have such a thing +happen there. In their eyes the principals had reached the summit of +human honor. Everybody paid homage to their names; their praises were in +all mouths. Even the duelists' subordinates came in for a handsome share +of the public approbation: wherefore Pudd'nhead Wilson was suddenly +become a man of consequence. When asked to run for the mayoralty Saturday +night, he was risking defeat, but Sunday morning found him a made man and +his success assured. + +The twins were prodigiously great now; the town took them to its bosom +with enthusiasm. Day after day, and night after night, they went dining +and visiting from house to house, making friends, enlarging and +solidifying their popularity, and charming and surprising all with their +musical prodigies, and now and then heightening the effects with samples +of what they could do in other directions, out of their stock of rare and +curious accomplishments. They were so pleased that they gave the +regulation thirty days' notice, the required preparation for citizenship, +and resolved to finish their days in this pleasant place. That was the +climax. The delighted community rose as one man and applauded; and when +the twins were asked to stand for seats in the forthcoming aldermanic +board, and consented, the public contentment was rounded and complete. + +Tom Driscoll was not happy over these things; they sunk deep, and hurt +all the way down. He hated the one twin for kicking him, and the other +one for being the kicker's brother. + +Now and then the people wondered why nothing was heard of the raider, or +of the stolen knife or the other plunder, but nobody was able to throw +any light on that matter. Nearly a week had drifted by, and still the +thing remained a vexed mystery. + +On Sunday Constable Blake and Pudd'nhead Wilson met on the street, and +Tom Driscoll joined them in time to open their conversation for them. He +said to Blake: "You are not looking well, Blake; you seem to be annoyed +about something. Has anything gone wrong in the detective business? I +believe you fairly and justifiably claim to have a pretty good reputation +in that line, isn't it so?"--which made Blake feel good, and look it; +but Tom added, "for a country detective"--which made Blake feel the other +way, and not only look it, but betray it in his voice. + +"Yes, sir, I _have_ got a reputation; and it's as good as anybody's in +the profession, too, country or no country." + +"Oh, I beg pardon; I didn't mean any offense. What I started out to ask +was only about the old woman that raided the town--the stoop-shouldered +old woman, you know, that you said you were going to catch; and I knew +you would, too, because you have the reputation of never boasting, +and--well, you--you've caught the old woman?" + +"Damn the old woman!" + +"Why, sho! you don't mean to say you haven't caught her?" + +"No, I haven't caught her. If anybody could have caught her, I could; +but nobody couldn't, I don't care who he is." + +I am sorry, real sorry--for your sake; because, when it gets around that +a detective has expressed himself confidently, and then--" + +"Don't you worry, that's all--don't you worry; and as for the town, the +town needn't worry either. She's my meat--make yourself easy about that. +I'm on her track; I've got clues that--" + +"That's good! Now if you could get an old veteran detective down from +St. Louis to help you find out what the clues mean, and where they lead +to, and then--" + +"I'm plenty veteran enough myself, and I don't need anybody's help. I'll +have her inside of a we--inside of a month. That I'll swear to!" + +Tom said carelessly: + +"I suppose that will answer--yes, that will answer. But I reckon she is +pretty old, and old people don't often outlive the cautious pace of the +professional detective when he has got his clues together and is out on +his still-hunt." + +Blake's dull face flushed under this gibe, but before he could set his +retort in order Tom had turned to Wilson, and was saying, with placid +indifference of manner and voice: + +"Who got the reward, Pudd'nhead?" + +Wilson winced slightly, and saw that his own turn was come. + +"What reward?" + +"Why, the reward for the thief, and the other one for the knife." + +Wilson answered--and rather uncomfortably, to judge by his hesitating +fashion of delivering himself: + +"Well, the--well, in face, nobody has claimed it yet." + +Tom seemed surprised. + +"Why, is that so?" + +Wilson showed a trifle of irritation when he replied: + +"Yes, it's so. And what of it?" + +"Oh, nothing. Only I thought you had struck out a new idea, and invented +a scheme that was going to revolutionize the timeworn and ineffectual +methods of the--" He stopped, and turned to Blake, who was happy now +that another had taken his place on the gridiron. "Blake, didn't you +understand him to intimate that it wouldn't be necessary for you to hunt +the old woman down?" + +"'B'George, he said he'd have thief and swag both inside of three days +--he did, by hokey! and that's just about a week ago. Why, I said at the +time that no thief and no thief's pal was going to try to pawn or sell a +thing where he knowed the pawnbroker could get both rewards by taking HIM +into camp _with_ the swag. It was the blessedest idea that ever I +struck!" + +"You'd change your mind," said Wilson, with irritated bluntness, "if you +knew the entire scheme instead of only part of it." + +"Well," said the constable, pensively, "I had the idea that it wouldn't +work, and up to now I'm right anyway." + +"Very well, then, let it stand at that, and give it a further show. It +has worked at least as well as your own methods, you perceive." + +The constable hadn't anything handy to hit back with, so he discharged a +discontented sniff, and said nothing. + +After the night that Wilson had partly revealed his scheme at his house, +Tom had tried for several days to guess out the secret of the rest of it, +but had failed. Then it occurred to him to give Roxana's smarter head a +chance at it. He made up a supposititious case, and laid it before +her. She thought it over, and delivered her verdict upon it. Tom said +to himself, "She's hit it, sure!" He thought he would test that verdict +now, and watch Wilson's face; so he said reflectively: + +"Wilson, you're not a fool--a fact of recent discovery. Whatever your +scheme was, it had sense in it, Blake's opinion to the contrary +notwithstanding. I don't ask you to reveal it, but I will suppose a +case--a case which you will answer as a starting point for the real thing +I am going to come at, and that's all I want. You offered five hundred +dollars for the knife, and five hundred for the thief. We will suppose, +for argument's sake, that the first reward is _advertised_ and the second +offered by _private letter_ to pawnbrokers and--" + +Blake slapped his thigh, and cried out: + +"By Jackson, he's got you, Pudd'nhead! Now why couldn't I or _any_ fool +have thought of that?" + +Wilson said to himself, "Anybody with a reasonably good head would have +thought of it. I am not surprised that Blake didn't detect it; I am only +surprised that Tom did. There is more to him than I supposed." He said +nothing aloud, and Tom went on: + +"Very well. The thief would not suspect that there was a trap, and he +would bring or send the knife, and say he bought it for a song, or found +it in the road, or something like that, and try to collect the reward, +and be arrested--wouldn't he?" + +"Yes," said Wilson. + +"I think so," said Tom. "There can't be any doubt of it. Have you ever +seen that knife?" + +"No." + +"Has any friend of yours?" + +"Not that I know of." + +"Well, I begin to think I understand why your scheme failed." + +"What do you mean, Tom? What are you driving at?" asked Wilson, with a +dawning sense of discomfort. + +"Why, that there _isn't_ any such knife." + +"Look here, Wilson," said Blake, "Tom Driscoll's right, for a thousand +dollars--if I had it." + +Wilson's blood warmed a little, and he wondered if he had been played +upon by those strangers; it certainly had something of that look. But +what could they gain by it? He threw out that suggestion. Tom replied: + +"Gain? Oh, nothing that you would value, maybe. But they are strangers +making their way in a new community. Is it nothing to them to appear as +pets of an Oriental prince--at no expense? Is it nothing to them to be +able to dazzle this poor town with thousand-dollar rewards--at no +expense? Wilson, there isn't any such knife, or your scheme would have +fetched it to light. Or if there is any such knife, they've got it yet. +I believe, myself, that they've seen such a knife, for Angelo pictured it +out with his pencil too swiftly and handily for him to have been +inventing it, and of course I can't swear that they've never had it; but +this I'll go bail for--if they had it when they came to this town, +they've got it yet." + +Blake said: + +"It looks mighty reasonable, the way Tom puts it; it most certainly +does." + +Tom responded, turning to leave: + +"You find the old woman, Blake, and if she can't furnish the knife, go +and search the twins!" + +Tom sauntered away. Wilson felt a good deal depressed. He hardly knew +what to think. He was loath to withdraw his faith from the twins, and +was resolved not to do it on the present indecisive evidence; but--well, +he would think, and then decide how to act. + +"Blake, what do you think of this matter?" + +"Well, Pudd'nhead, I'm bound to say I put it up the way Tom does. They +hadn't the knife; or if they had it, they've got it yet." + +The men parted. Wilson said to himself: + +"I believe they had it; if it had been stolen, the scheme would have +restored it, that is certain. And so I believe they've got it." + +Tom had no purpose in his mind when he encountered those two men. When he +began his talk he hoped to be able to gall them a little and get a trifle +of malicious entertainment out of it. But when he left, he left in great +spirits, for he perceived that just by pure luck and no troublesome labor +he had accomplished several delightful things: he had touched both men +on a raw spot and seen them squirm; he had modified Wilson's sweetness +for the twins with one small bitter taste that he wouldn't be able to get +out of his mouth right away; and, best of all, he had taken the hated +twins down a peg with the community; for Blake would gossip around +freely, after the manner of detectives, and within a week the town would +be laughing at them in its sleeve for offering a gaudy reward for a +bauble which they either never possessed or hadn't lost. Tom was very +well satisfied with himself. + +Tom's behavior at home had been perfect during the entire week. His uncle +and aunt had seen nothing like it before. They could find no fault with +him anywhere. + +Saturday evening he said to the Judge: + +"I've had something preying on my mind, uncle, and as I am going away, +and might never see you again, I can't bear it any longer. I made you +believe I was afraid to fight that Italian adventurer. I had to get out +of it on some pretext or other, and maybe I chose badly, being taken +unawares, but no honorable person could consent to meet him in the field, +knowing what I knew about him." + +"Indeed? What was that?" + +"Count Luigi is a confessed assassin." + +"Incredible." + +"It's perfectly true. Wilson detected it in his hand, by palmistry, and +charged him with it, and cornered him up so close that he had to confess; +but both twins begged us on their knees to keep the secret, and swore +they would lead straight lives here; and it was all so pitiful that we +gave our word of honor never to expose them while they kept the promise. +You would have done it yourself, uncle." + +"You are right, my boy; I would. A man's secret is still his own +property, and sacred, when it has been surprised out of him like that. +You did well, and I am proud of you." Then he added mournfully, "But I +wish I could have been saved the shame of meeting an assassin on the +field on honor." + +"It couldn't be helped, uncle. If I had known you were going to +challenge him, I should have felt obliged to sacrifice my pledged word in +order to stop it, but Wilson couldn't be expected to do otherwise than +keep silent." + +"Oh, no, Wilson did right, and is in no way to blame. Tom, Tom, you have +lifted a heavy load from my heart; I was stung to the very soul when I +seemed to have discovered that I had a coward in my family." + +"You may imagine what it cost ME to assume such a part, uncle." + +"Oh, I know it, poor boy, I know it. And I can understand how much it +has cost you to remain under that unjust stigma to this time. But it is +all right now, and no harm is done. You have restored my comfort of +mind, and with it your own; and both of us had suffered enough." + +The old man sat awhile plunged in thought; then he looked up with a +satisfied light in his eye, and said: "That this assassin should have +put the affront upon me of letting me meet him on the field of honor as +if he were a gentleman is a matter which I will presently settle--but not +now. I will not shoot him until after election. I see a way to ruin them +both before; I will attend to that first. Neither of them shall be +elected, that I promise. You are sure that the fact that he is an +assassin has not got abroad?" + +"Perfectly certain of it, sir." + +"It will be a good card. I will fling a hint at it from the stump on the +polling day. It will sweep the ground from under both of them." + +"There's not a doubt of it. It will finish them." + +"That and outside work among the voters will, to a certainty. I want you +to come down here by and by and work privately among the rag-tag and +bobtail. You shall spend money among them; I will furnish it." + +Another point scored against the detested twins! Really it was a great +day for Tom. He was encouraged to chance a parting shot, now, at the +same target, and did it. + +"You know that wonderful Indian knife that the twins have been making +such a to-do about? Well, there's no track or trace of it yet; so the +town is beginning to sneer and gossip and laugh. Half the people believe +they never had any such knife, the other half believe they had it and +have got it still. I've heard twenty people talking like that today." + +Yes, Tom's blemishless week had restored him to the favor of his aunt and +uncle. + +His mother was satisfied with him, too. Privately, she believed she was +coming to love him, but she did not say so. She told him to go along to +St. Louis now, and she would get ready and follow. Then she smashed her +whisky bottle and said: + +"Dah now! I's a-gwine to make you walk as straight as a string, +Chambers, en so I's bown, you ain't gwine to git no bad example out o' +yo' mammy. I tole you you couldn't go into no bad comp'ny. Well, you's +gwine into my comp'ny, en I's gwine to fill de bill. Now, den, trot +along, trot along!" + +Tom went aboard one of the big transient boats that night with his heavy +satchel of miscellaneous plunder, and slept the sleep of the unjust, +which is serener and sounder than the other kind, as we know by the +hanging-eve history of a million rascals. But when he got up in the +morning, luck was against him again: a brother thief had robbed him while +he slept, and gone ashore at some intermediate landing. + + + + +CHAPTER 16 + +Sold Down the River + +If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite +you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +We all know about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of +the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It +seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for +studying the oyster. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +When Roxana arrived, she found her son in such despair and misery that +her heart was touched and her motherhood rose up strong in her. He was +ruined past hope now; his destruction would be immediate and sure, and he +would be an outcast and friendless. That was reason enough for a mother +to love a child; so she loved him, and told him so. It made him wince, +secretly--for she was a "nigger." That he was one himself was far from +reconciling him to that despised race. + +Roxana poured out endearments upon him, to which he responded +uncomfortably, but as well as he could. And she tried to comfort him, but +that was not possible. These intimacies quickly became horrible to him, +and within the hour he began to try to get up courage enough to tell her +so, and require that they be discontinued or very considerably modified. +But he was afraid of her; and besides, there came a lull now, for she had +begun to think. She was trying to invent a saving plan. Finally she +started up, and said she had found a way out. Tom was almost suffocated +by the joy of this sudden good news. Roxana said: + +"Here is de plan, en she'll win, sure. I's a nigger, en nobody ain't +gwine to doubt it dat hears me talk. I's wuth six hund'd dollahs. Take +en sell me, en pay off dese gamblers." + +Tom was dazed. He was not sure he had heard aright. He was dumb for a +moment; then he said: + +"Do you mean that you would be sold into slavery to save me?" + +"Ain't you my chile? En does you know anything dat a mother won't do for +her chile? Day ain't nothin' a white mother won't do for her chile. Who +made 'em so? De Lord done it. En who made de niggers? De Lord made 'em. +In de inside, mothers is all de same. De good lord he made 'em so. I's +gwine to be sole into slavery, en in a year you's gwine to buy yo' ole +mammy free ag'in. I'll show you how. Dat's de plan." + +Tom's hopes began to rise, and his spirits along with them. He said: + +"It's lovely of you, Mammy--it's just--" + +"Say it ag'in! En keep on sayin' it! It's all de pay a body kin want in +dis worl', en it's mo' den enough. Laws bless you, honey, when I's slav' +aroun', en dey 'buses me, if I knows you's a-sayin' dat, 'way off yonder +somers, it'll heal up all de sore places, en I kin stan' 'em." + +"I DO say it again, Mammy, and I'll keep on saying it, too. But how am I +going to sell you? You're free, you know." + +"Much diff'rence dat make! White folks ain't partic'lar. De law kin sell +me now if dey tell me to leave de state in six months en I don't go. You +draw up a paper--bill o' sale--en put it 'way off yonder, down in de +middle o' Kaintuck somers, en sign some names to it, en say you'll sell +me cheap 'ca'se you's hard up; you'll find you ain't gwine to have no +trouble. You take me up de country a piece, en sell me on a farm; dem +people ain't gwine to ask no questions if I's a bargain." + +Tom forged a bill of sale and sold his mother to an Arkansas cotton +planter for a trifle over six hundred dollars. He did not want to commit +this treachery, but luck threw the man in his way, and this saved him the +necessity of going up-country to hunt up a purchaser, with the added risk +of having to answer a lot of questions, whereas this planter was so +pleased with Roxy that he asked next to none at all. Besides, the +planter insisted that Roxy wouldn't know where she was, at first, and +that by the time she found out she would already have been contented. + +So Tom argued with himself that it was an immense advantaged for Roxy to +have a master who was pleased with her, as this planter manifestly was. +In almost no time his flowing reasonings carried him to the point of even +half believing he was doing Roxy a splendid surreptitious service in +selling her "down the river." And then he kept diligently saying to +himself all the time: "It's for only a year. In a year I buy her free +again; she'll keep that in mind, and it'll reconcile her." Yes; the +little deception could do no harm, and everything would come out right +and pleasant in the end, anyway. By agreement, the conversation in +Roxy's presence was all about the man's "up-country" farm, and how +pleasant a place it was, and how happy the slaves were there; so poor +Roxy was entirely deceived; and easily, for she was not dreaming that her +own son could be guilty of treason to a mother who, in voluntarily going +into slavery--slavery of any kind, mild or severe, or of any duration, +brief or long--was making a sacrifice for him compared with which death +would have been a poor and commonplace one. She lavished tears and +loving caresses upon him privately, and then went away with her owner +--went away brokenhearted, and yet proud to do it. + +Tom scored his accounts, and resolved to keep to the very letter of his +reform, and never to put that will in jeopardy again. He had three +hundred dollars left. According to his mother's plan, he was to put that +safely away, and add her half of his pension to it monthly. In one year +this fund would buy her free again. + +For a whole week he was not able to sleep well, so much the villainy +which he had played upon his trusting mother preyed upon his rag of +conscience; but after that he began to get comfortable again, and was +presently able to sleep like any other miscreant. + +The boat bore Roxy away from St. Louis at four in the afternoon, and she +stood on the lower guard abaft the paddle box and watched Tom through a +blur of tears until he melted into the throng of people and disappeared; +then she looked no more, but sat there on a coil of cable crying till far +into the night. When she went to her foul steerage bunk at last, between +the clashing engines, it was not to sleep, but only to wait for the +morning, and, waiting, grieve. + +It had been imagined that she "would not know," and would think she was +traveling upstream. She! Why, she had been steamboating for years. At +dawn she got up and went listlessly and sat down on the cable coil again. +She passed many a snag whose "break" could have told her a thing to break +her heart, for it showed a current moving in the same direction that the +boat was going; but her thoughts were elsewhere, and she did not notice. +But at last the roar of a bigger and nearer break than usual brought her +out of her torpor, and she looked up, and her practiced eye fell upon +that telltale rush of water. For one moment her petrified gaze fixed +itself there. Then her head dropped upon her breast, and she said: + +"Oh, de good Lord God have mercy on po' sinful me--I'S SOLE DOWN DE +RIVER!" + + + + +CHAPTER 17 + +The Judge Utters Dire Prophesy + +Even popularity can be overdone. In Rome, along at first, you are full +of regrets that Michelangelo died; but by and by, you only regret that +you didn't see him do it. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +JULY 4. Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all +the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left +in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country +has grown so. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +The summer weeks dragged by, and then the political campaign opened +--opened in pretty warm fashion, and waxed hotter and hotter daily. The +twins threw themselves into it with their whole heart, for their +self-love was engaged. Their popularity, so general at first, had +suffered afterward; mainly because they had been TOO popular, and so a +natural reaction had followed. Besides, it had been diligently whispered +around that it was curious--indeed, VERY curious--that that wonderful +knife of theirs did not turn up--IF it was so valuable, or IF it had ever +existed. And with the whisperings went chucklings and nudgings and winks, +and such things have an effect. The twins considered that success in the +election would reinstate them, and that defeat would work them +irreparable damage. Therefore they worked hard, but not harder than +Judge Driscoll and Tom worked against them in the closing days of the +canvass. Tom's conduct had remained so letter-perfect during two whole +months now, that his uncle not only trusted him with money with which to +persuade voters, but trusted him to go and get it himself out of the safe +in the private sitting room. + +The closing speech of the campaign was made by Judge Driscoll, and he +made it against both of the foreigners. It was disastrously effective. +He poured out rivers of ridicule upon them, and forced the big mass +meeting to laugh and applaud. He scoffed at them as adventures, +mountebanks, sideshow riffraff, dime museum freaks; he assailed their +showy titles with measureless derision; he said they were back-alley +barbers disguised as nobilities, peanut peddlers masquerading as +gentlemen, organ-grinders bereft of their brother monkey. At last he +stopped and stood still. He waited until the place had become absolutely +silent and expectant, then he delivered his deadliest shot; delivered it +with ice-cold seriousness and deliberation, with a significant emphasis +upon the closing words: he said he believed that the reward offered for +the lost knife was humbug and bunkum, and that its owner would know where +to find it whenever he should have occasion TO ASSASSINATE SOMEBODY. + +Then he stepped from the stand, leaving a startled and impressive hush +behind him instead of the customary explosion of cheers and party cries. + +The strange remark flew far and wide over the town and made an +extraordinary sensation. Everybody was asking, "What could he mean by +that?" And everybody went on asking that question, but in vain; for the +judge only said he knew what he was talking about, and stopped there; Tom +said he hadn't any idea what his uncle meant, and Wilson, whenever he was +asked what he thought it meant, parried the question by asking the +questioner what HE thought it meant. + +Wilson was elected, the twins were defeated--crushed, in fact, and left +forlorn and substantially friendless. Tom went back to St. Louis happy. + +Dawson's Landing had a week of repose now, and it needed it. But it was +in an expectant state, for the air was full of rumors of a new duel. +Judge Driscoll's election labors had prostrated him, but it was said that +as soon as he was well enough to entertain a challenge he would get one +from Count Luigi. + +The brothers withdrew entirely from society, and nursed their humiliation +in privacy. They avoided the people, and went out for exercise only late +at night, when the streets were deserted. + + + + +CHAPTER 18 + +Roxana Commands + +Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same +procession. You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the +band and the gaudy officials have gone by.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +THANKSGIVING DAY. Let us all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks +now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys; +they use plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +The Friday after the election was a rainy one in St. Louis. It rained +all day long, and rained hard, apparently trying its best to wash that +soot-blackened town white, but of course not succeeding. Toward midnight +Tom Driscoll arrived at his lodgings from the theater in the heavy +downpour, and closed his umbrella and let himself in; but when he would +have shut the door, he found that there was another person +entering--doubtless another lodger; this person closed the door and +tramped upstairs behind Tom. Tom found his door in the dark, and entered +it, and turned up the gas. When he faced about, lightly whistling, he +saw the back of a man. The man was closing and locking his door from +him. His whistle faded out and he felt uneasy. The man turned around, a +wreck of shabby old clothes, sodden with rain and all a-drip, and showed +a black face under an old slouch hat. Tom was frightened. He tried to +order the man out, but the words refused to come, and the other man got +the start. He said, in a low voice: + +"Keep still--I's yo' mother!" + +Tom sunk in a heap on a chair, and gasped out: + +"It was mean of me, and base--I know it; but I meant it for the best, I +did indeed--I can swear it." + +Roxana stood awhile looking mutely down on him while he writhed in shame +and went on incoherently babbling self-accusations mixed with pitiful +attempts at explanation and palliation of his crime; then she seated +herself and took off her hat, and her unkept masses of long brown hair +tumbled down about her shoulders. + +"It warn't no fault o' yo'n dat dat ain't gray," she said sadly, noticing +the hair. + +"I know it, I know it! I'm a scoundrel. But I swear I meant it for the +best. It was a mistake, of course, but I thought it was for the best, I +truly did." + +Roxana began to cry softly, and presently words began to find their way +out between her sobs. They were uttered lamentingly, rather than +angrily. + +"Sell a pusson down de river--DOWN DE RIVER!--for de bes'! I wouldn't +treat a dog so! I is all broke down en wore out now, en so I reckon +it ain't in me to storm aroun' no mo', like I used to when I 'uz trompled +on en 'bused. I don't know--but maybe it's so. Leastways, I's suffered +so much dat mournin' seem to come mo' handy to me now den stormin'." + +These words should have touched Tom Driscoll, but if they did, that +effect was obliterated by a stronger one--one which removed the heavy +weight of fear which lay upon him, and gave his crushed spirit a most +grateful rebound, and filled all his small soul with a deep sense of +relief. But he kept prudently still, and ventured no comment. There was +a voiceless interval of some duration now, in which no sounds were heard +but the beating of the rain upon the panes, the sighing and complaining +of the winds, and now and then a muffled sob from Roxana. The sobs became +more and more infrequent, and at last ceased. Then the refugee began to +talk again. + +"Shet down dat light a little. More. More yit. A pusson dat is hunted +don't like de light. Dah--dat'll do. I kin see whah you is, en dat's +enough. I's gwine to tell you de tale, en cut it jes as short as I kin, +en den I'll tell you what you's got to do. Dat man dat bought me ain't a +bad man; he's good enough, as planters goes; en if he could 'a' had his +way I'd 'a' be'n a house servant in his fambly en be'n comfortable: but +his wife she was a Yank, en not right down good lookin', en she riz up +agin me straight off; so den dey sent me out to de quarter 'mongst de +common fiel' han's. Dat woman warn't satisfied even wid dat, but she +worked up de overseer ag'in' me, she 'uz dat jealous en hateful; so de +overseer he had me out befo' day in de mawnin's en worked me de whole +long day as long as dey'uz any light to see by; en many's de lashin's I +got 'ca'se I couldn't come up to de work o' de stronges'. Dat overseer +wuz a Yank too, outen New Englan', en anybody down South kin tell you +what dat mean. DEY knows how to work a nigger to death, en dey knows how +to whale 'em too--whale 'em till dey backs is welted like a washboard. +'Long at fust my marster say de good word for me to de overseer, but dat +'uz bad for me; for de mistis she fine it out, en arter dat I jist +ketched it at every turn--dey warn't no mercy for me no mo'." + +Tom's heart was fired--with fury against the planter's wife; and he said +to himself, "But for that meddlesome fool, everything would have gone all +right." He added a deep and bitter curse against her. + +The expression of this sentiment was fiercely written in his face, and +stood thus revealed to Roxana by a white glare of lightning which turned +the somber dusk of the room into dazzling day at that moment. She was +pleased--pleased and grateful; for did not that expression show that her +child was capable of grieving for his mother's wrongs and a feeling +resentment toward her persecutors?--a thing which she had been doubting. +But her flash of happiness was only a flash, and went out again and left +her spirit dark; for she said to herself, "He sole me down de river--he +can't feel for a body long; dis'll pass en go." Then she took up her tale +again. + +"'Bout ten days ago I 'uz sayin' to myself dat I couldn't las' many mo' +weeks I 'uz so wore out wid de awful work en de lashin's, en so +downhearted en misable. En I didn't care no mo', nuther--life warn't +wuth noth'n' to me, if I got to go on like dat. Well, when a body is in +a frame o' mine like dat, what do a body care what a body do? Dey was a +little sickly nigger wench 'bout ten year ole dat 'uz good to me, en +hadn't no mammy, po' thing, en I loved her en she loved me; en she come +out whah I 'uz workin' en she had a roasted tater, en tried to slip it to +me--robbin' herself, you see, 'ca'se she knowed de overseer didn't give +me enough to eat--en he ketched her at it, en giver her a lick acrost de +back wid his stick, which 'uz as thick as a broom handle, en she drop' +screamin' on de groun', en squirmin' en wallerin' aroun' in de dust like +a spider dat's got crippled. I couldn't stan' it. All de hellfire dat +'uz ever in my heart flame' up, en I snatch de stick outen his han' en +laid him flat. He laid dah moanin' en cussin', en all out of his head, +you know, en de niggers 'uz plumb sk'yred to death. Dey gathered roun' +him to he'p him, en I jumped on his hoss en took out for de river as +tight as I could go. I knowed what dey would do wid me. Soon as he got +well he would start in en work me to death if marster let him; en if dey +didn't do dat, they'd sell me furder down de river, en dat's de same +thing, so I 'lowed to drown myself en git out o' my troubles. It 'uz +gitt'n' towards dark. I 'uz at de river in two minutes. Den I see a +canoe, en I says dey ain't no use to drown myself tell I got to; so I +ties de hoss in de edge o' de timber en shove out down de river, keepin' +in under de shelter o' de bluff bank en prayin' for de dark to shet down +quick. I had a pow'ful good start, 'ca'se de big house 'uz three mile +back f'om de river en on'y de work mules to ride dah on, en on'y niggers +ride 'em, en DEY warn't gwine to hurry--dey'd gimme all de chance dey +could. Befo' a body could go to de house en back it would be long pas' +dark, en dey couldn't track de hoss en fine out which way I went tell +mawnin', en de niggers would tell 'em all de lies dey could 'bout it. + +"Well, de dark come, en I went on a-spinnin' down de river. I paddled +mo'n two hours, den I warn't worried no mo', so I quit paddlin' en +floated down de current, considerin' what I 'uz gwine to do if I didn't +have to drown myself. I made up some plans, en floated along, turnin' +'em over in my mine. Well, when it 'uz a little pas' midnight, as I +reckoned, en I had come fifteen or twenty mile, I see de lights o' a +steamboat layin' at de bank, whah dey warn't no town en no woodyard, en +putty soon I ketched de shape o' de chimbly tops ag'in' de stars, en den +good gracious me, I 'most jumped out o' my skin for joy! It 'uz de GRAN' +MOGUL--I 'uz chambermaid on her for eight seasons in de Cincinnati en +Orleans trade. I slid 'long pas'--don't see nobody stirrin' nowhah--hear +'em a-hammerin' away in de engine room, den I knowed what de matter +was--some o' de machinery's broke. I got asho' below de boat and turn' +de canoe loose, den I goes 'long up, en dey 'uz jes one plank out, en I +step' 'board de boat. It 'uz pow'ful hot, deckhan's en roustabouts 'uz +sprawled aroun' asleep on de fo'cas'l', de second mate, Jim Bangs, he sot +dah on de bitts wid his head down, asleep--'ca'se dat's de way de second +mate stan' de cap'n's watch!--en de ole watchman, Billy Hatch, he 'uz +a-noddin' on de companionway;--en I knowed 'em all; en, lan', but dey did +look good! I says to myself, I wished old marster'd come along NOW en +try to take me--bless yo' heart, I's 'mong frien's, I is. So I tromped +right along 'mongst 'em, en went up on de b'iler deck en 'way back aft to +de ladies' cabin guard, en sot down dah in de same cheer dat I'd sot in +'mos' a hund'd million times, I reckon; en it 'uz jist home ag'in, I tell +you! + +"In 'bout an hour I heard de ready bell jingle, en den de racket begin. +Putty soon I hear de gong strike. 'Set her back on de outside,' I says +to myself. 'I reckon I knows dat music!' I hear de gong ag'in. 'Come +ahead on de inside,' I says. Gong ag'in. 'Stop de outside.' gong ag'in. +'Come ahead on de outside--now we's pinted for Sent Louis, en I's outer +de woods en ain't got to drown myself at all.' I knowed de MOGUL 'uz in +de Sent Louis trade now, you see. It 'uz jes fair daylight when we +passed our plantation, en I seed a gang o' niggers en white folks huntin' +up en down de sho', en troublin' deyselves a good deal 'bout me; but I +warn't troublin' myself none 'bout dem. + +"'Bout dat time Sally Jackson, dat used to be my second chambermaid en +'uz head chambermaid now, she come out on de guard, en 'uz pow'ful glad +to see me, en so 'uz all de officers; en I tole 'em I'd got kidnapped en +sole down de river, en dey made me up twenty dollahs en give it to me, en +Sally she rigged me out wid good clo'es, en when I got here I went +straight to whah you used to wuz, en den I come to dis house, en dey say +you's away but 'spected back every day; so I didn't dast to go down de +river to Dawson's, 'ca'se I might miss you. + +"Well, las' Monday I 'uz pass'n by one o' dem places in fourth street +whah deh sticks up runaway nigger bills, en he'ps to ketch 'em, en I seed +my marster! I 'mos' flopped down on de groun', I felt so gone. He had +his back to me, en 'uz talkin' to de man en givin' him some bills--nigger +bills, I reckon, en I's de nigger. He's offerin' a reward--dat's it. +Ain't I right, don't you reckon?" + +Tom had been gradually sinking into a state of ghastly terror, and he +said to himself, now: "I'm lost, no matter what turn things take! This +man has said to me that he thinks there was something suspicious about +that sale; he said he had a letter from a passenger on the GRAND MOGUL +saying that Roxy came here on that boat and that everybody on board knew +all about the case; so he says that her coming here instead of flying to +a free state looks bad for me, and that if I don't find her for him, and +that pretty soon, he will make trouble for me. I never believed that +story; I couldn't believe she would be so dead to all motherly instincts +as to come here, knowing the risk she would run of getting me into +irremediable trouble. And after all, here she is! And I stupidly swore +I would help find her, thinking it was a perfectly safe thing to promise. +If I venture to deliver her up, she--she--but how can I help myself? +I've got to do that or pay the money, and where's the money to come from? +I--I--well, I should think that if he would swear to treat her kindly +hereafter--and she says, herself, that he is a good man--and if he would +swear to never allow her to be overworked, or ill fed, or--" + +A flash of lightning exposed Tom's pallid face, drawn and rigid with +these worrying thoughts. Roxana spoke up sharply now, and there was +apprehension in her voice. + +"Turn up dat light! I want to see yo' face better. Dah now--lemme look +at you. Chambers, you's as white as yo' shirt! Has you see dat man? Has +he be'n to see you?" + +"Ye-s." + +"When?" + +"Monday noon." + +"Monday noon! Was he on my track?" + +"He--well, he thought he was. That is, he hoped he was. This is the bill +you saw." He took it out of his pocket. + +"Read it to me!" + +She was panting with excitement, and there was a dusky glow in her eyes +that Tom could not translate with certainty, but there seemed to be +something threatening about it. The handbill had the usual rude woodcut +of a turbaned Negro woman running, with the customary bundle on a stick +over her shoulder, and the heading in bold type, "$100 REWARD." Tom read +the bill aloud--at least the part that described Roxana and named the +master and his St. Louis address and the address of the Fourth street +agency; but he left out the item that applicants for the reward might +also apply to Mr. Thomas Driscoll. + +"Gimme de bill!" + +Tom had folded it and was putting it in his pocket. He felt a chilly +streak creeping down his back, but said as carelessly as he could: + +"The bill? Why, it isn't any use to you, you can't read it. What do you +want with it?" + +"Gimme de bill!" Tom gave it to her, but with a reluctance which he +could not entirely disguise. "Did you read it ALL to me?" + +"Certainly I did." + +"Hole up yo' han' en swah to it." + +Tom did it. Roxana put the bill carefully away in her pocket, with her +eyes fixed upon Tom's face all the while; then she said: + +"Yo's lyin'!" + +"What would I want to lie about it for?" + +"I don't know--but you is. Dat's my opinion, anyways. But nemmine 'bout +dat. When I seed dat man I 'uz dat sk'yerd dat I could sca'cely wobble +home. Den I give a nigger man a dollar for dese clo'es, en I ain't be'in +in a house sence, night ner day, till now. I blacked my face en laid hid +in de cellar of a ole house dat's burnt down, daytimes, en robbed de +sugar hogsheads en grain sacks on de wharf, nights, to git somethin' to +eat, en never dast to try to buy noth'n', en I's 'mos' starved. En I +never dast to come near dis place till dis rainy night, when dey ain't no +people roun' sca'cely. But tonight I be'n a-stanin' in de dark alley +ever sence night come, waitin' for you to go by. En here I is." + +She fell to thinking. Presently she said: + +"You seed dat man at noon, las' Monday?" + +"Yes." + +"I seed him de middle o' dat arternoon. He hunted you up, didn't he?" + +"Yes." + +"Did he give you de bill dat time?" + +"No, he hadn't got it printed yet." + +Roxana darted a suspicious glance at him. + +"Did you he'p him fix up de bill?" + +Tom cursed himself for making that stupid blunder, and tried to rectify +it by saying he remember now that it WAS at noon Monday that the man gave +him the bill. Roxana said: + +"You's lyin' ag'in, sho." Then she straightened up and raised her +finger: + +"Now den! I's gwine to ask you a question, en I wants to know how you's +gwine to git aroun' it. You knowed he 'uz arter me; en if you run off, +'stid o' stayin' here to he'p him, he'd know dey 'uz somethin' wrong +'bout dis business, en den he would inquire 'bout you, en dat would take +him to yo' uncle, en yo' uncle would read de bill en see dat you be'n +sellin' a free nigger down de river, en you know HIM, I reckon! He'd +t'ar up de will en kick you outen de house. Now, den, you answer me dis +question: hain't you tole dat man dat I would be sho' to come here, en +den you would fix it so he could set a trap en ketch me?" + +Tom recognized that neither lies nor arguments could help him any +longer--he was in a vise, with the screw turned on, and out of it there +was no budging. His face began to take on an ugly look, and presently he +said, with a snarl: + +"Well, what could I do? You see, yourself, that I was in his grip and +couldn't get out." + +Roxy scorched him with a scornful gaze awhile, then she said: + +"What could you do? You could be Judas to yo' own mother to save yo' +wuthless hide! Would anybody b'lieve it? No--a dog couldn't! You is de +lowdownest orneriest hound dat was ever pup'd into dis worl'--en I's +'sponsible for it!"--and she spat on him. + +He made no effort to resent this. Roxy reflected a moment, then she +said: + +"Now I'll tell you what you's gwine to do. You's gwine to give dat man +de money dat you's got laid up, en make him wait till you kin go to de +judge en git de res' en buy me free agin." + +"Thunder! What are you thinking of? Go and ask him for three hundred +dollars and odd? What would I tell him I want it for, pray?" + +Roxy's answer was delivered in a serene and level voice. + +"You'll tell him you's sole me to pay yo' gamblin' debts en dat you lied +to me en was a villain, en dat I 'quires you to git dat money en buy me +back ag'in." + +"Why, you've gone stark mad! He would tear the will to shreds in a +minute--don't you know that?" + +"Yes, I does." + +"Then you don't believe I'm idiot enough to go to him, do you?" + +"I don't b'lieve nothin' 'bout it--I KNOWS you's a-goin'. I knows it +'ca'se you knows dat if you don't raise dat money I'll go to him myself, +en den he'll sell YOU down de river, en you kin see how you like it!" + +Tom rose, trembling and excited, and there was an evil light in his eye. +He strode to the door and said he must get out of this suffocating place +for a moment and clear his brain in the fresh air so that he could +determine what to do. The door wouldn't open. Roxy smiled grimly, and +said: + +"I's got the key, honey--set down. You needn't cle'r up yo' brain none +to fine out what you gwine to do--_I_ knows what you's gwine to do." Tom +sat down and began to pass his hands through his hair with a helpless and +desperate air. Roxy said, "Is dat man in dis house?" + +Tom glanced up with a surprised expression, and asked: + +"What gave you such an idea?" + +"You done it. Gwine out to cle'r yo' brain! In de fust place you ain't +got none to cle'r, en in de second place yo' ornery eye tole on you. +You's de lowdownest hound dat ever--but I done told you dat befo'. Now +den, dis is Friday. You kin fix it up wid dat man, en tell him you's +gwine away to git de res' o' de money, en dat you'll be back wid it nex' +Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday. You understan'?" + +Tom answered sullenly: "Yes." + +"En when you gits de new bill o' sale dat sells me to my own self, take +en send it in de mail to Mr. Pudd'nhead Wilson, en write on de back dat +he's to keep it tell I come. You understan'?" + +"Yes." + +"Dat's all den. Take yo' umbreller, en put on yo' hat." + +"Why?" + +"Beca'se you's gwine to see me home to de wharf. You see dis knife? I's +toted it aroun' sence de day I seed dat man en bought dese clo'es en it. +If he ketch me, I's gwine to kill myself wid it. Now start along, en go +sof', en lead de way; en if you gives a sign in dis house, or if anybody +comes up to you in de street, I's gwine to jam it right into you. +Chambers, does you b'lieve me when I says dat?" + +"It's no use to bother me with that question. I know your word's good." + +"Yes, it's diff'rent from yo'n! Shet de light out en move along--here's +de key." + +They were not followed. Tom trembled every time a late straggler brushed +by them on the street, and half expected to feel the cold steel in his +back. Roxy was right at his heels and always in reach. After tramping a +mile they reached a wide vacancy on the deserted wharves, and in this +dark and rainy desert they parted. + +As Tom trudged home his mind was full of dreary thoughts and wild plans; +but at last he said to himself, wearily: + +"There is but the one way out. I must follow her plan. But with a +variation--I will not ask for the money and ruin myself; I will ROB the +old skinflint." + + + + +CHAPTER 19 + +The Prophesy Realized + +Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good +example. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of +opinion that makes horse races. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +Dawson's Landing was comfortably finishing its season of dull repose and +waiting patiently for the duel. Count Luigi was waiting, too; but not +patiently, rumor said. Sunday came, and Luigi insisted on having his +challenge conveyed. Wilson carried it. Judge Driscoll declined to fight +with an assassin--"that is," he added significantly, "in the field of +honor." + +Elsewhere, of course, he would be ready. Wilson tried to convince him +that if he had been present himself when Angelo told him about the +homicide committed by Luigi, he would not have considered the act +discreditable to Luigi; but the obstinate old man was not to be moved. + +Wilson went back to his principal and reported the failure of his +mission. Luigi was incensed, and asked how it could be that the old +gentleman, who was by no means dull-witted, held his trifling nephew's +evidence in inferences to be of more value than Wilson's. But Wilson +laughed, and said: + +"That is quite simple; that is easily explicable. I am not his doll--his +baby--his infatuation: his nature is. The judge and his late wife never +had any children. The judge and his wife were past middle age when this +treasure fell into their lap. One must make allowances for a parental +instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. It is +famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely +satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it +can't tell mud cat from shad. A devil born to a young couple is +measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil +adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through +thick and thin. Tom is this old man's angel; he is infatuated with him. +Tom can persuade him into things which other people can't--not all +things; I don't mean that, but a good many--particularly one class of +things: the things that create or abolish personal partialities or +prejudices in the old man's mind. The old man liked both of you. Tom +conceived a hatred for you. That was enough; it turned the old man +around at once. The oldest and strongest friendship must go to the ground +when one of these late-adopted darlings throws a brick at it." + +"It's a curious philosophy," said Luigi. + +"It ain't philosophy at all--it's a fact. And there is something +pathetic and beautiful about it, too. I think there is nothing more +pathetic than to see one of these poor old childless couples taking a +menagerie of yelping little worthless dogs to their hearts; and then +adding some cursing and squawking parrots and a jackass-voiced macaw; and +next a couple of hundred screeching songbirds, and presently some fetid +guinea pigs and rabbits, and a howling colony of cats. It is all a +groping and ignorant effort to construct out of base metal and brass +filings, so to speak, something to take the place of that golden treasure +denied them by Nature, a child. But this is a digression. The unwritten +law of this region requires you to kill Judge Driscoll on sight, and he +and the community will expect that attention at your hands--though of +course your own death by his bullet will answer every purpose. Look out +for him! Are you healed--that is, fixed?" + +"Yes, he shall have his opportunity. If he attacks me, I will respond." + +As Wilson was leaving, he said: + +"The judge is still a little used up by his campaign work, and will not +get out for a day or so; but when he does get out, you want to be on the +alert." + +About eleven at night the twins went out for exercise, and started on a +long stroll in the veiled moonlight. + +Tom Driscoll had landed at Hackett's Store, two miles below Dawson's, +just about half an hour earlier, the only passenger for that lonely spot, +and had walked up the shore road and entered Judge Driscoll's house +without having encountered anyone either on the road or under the roof. + +He pulled down his window blinds and lighted his candle. He laid off his +coat and hat and began his preparations. He unlocked his trunk and got +his suit of girl's clothes out from under the male attire in it, and laid +it by. Then he blacked his face with burnt cork and put the cork in his +pocket. His plan was to slip down to his uncle's private sitting room +below, pass into the bedroom, steal the safe key from the old gentleman's +clothes, and then go back and rob the safe. He took up his candle to +start. His courage and confidence were high, up to this point, but both +began to waver a little now. Suppose he should make a noise, by some +accident, and get caught--say, in the act of opening the safe? Perhaps +it would be well to go armed. He took the Indian knife from its hiding +place, and felt a pleasant return of his wandering courage. He slipped +stealthily down the narrow stair, his hair rising and his pulses halting +at the slightest creak. When he was halfway down, he was disturbed to +perceive that the landing below was touched by a faint glow of light. +What could that mean? Was his uncle still up? No, that was not likely; +he must have left his night taper there when he went to bed. Tom crept +on down, pausing at every step to listen. He found the door standing +open, and glanced it. What he saw pleased him beyond measure. His uncle +was asleep on the sofa; on a small table at the head of the sofa a lamp +was burning low, and by it stood the old man's small cashbox, closed. +Near the box was a pile of bank notes and a piece of paper covered with +figured in pencil. The safe door was not open. Evidently the sleeper had +wearied himself with work upon his finances, and was taking a rest. + +Tom set his candle on the stairs, and began to make his way toward the +pile of notes, stooping low as he went. When he was passing his uncle, +the old man stirred in his sleep, and Tom stopped instantly--stopped, and +softly drew the knife from its sheath, with his heart thumping, and his +eyes fastened upon his benefactor's face. After a moment or two he +ventured forward again--one step--reached for his prize and seized it, +dropping the knife sheath. Then he felt the old man's strong grip upon +him, and a wild cry of "Help! help!" rang in his ear. Without hesitation +he drove the knife home--and was free. Some of the notes escaped from his +left hand and fell in the blood on the floor. He dropped the knife and +snatched them up and started to fly; transferred them to his left hand, +and seized the knife again, in his fright and confusion, but remembered +himself and flung it from him, as being a dangerous witness to carry away +with him. + +He jumped for the stair-foot, and closed the door behind him; and as he +snatched his candle and fled upward, the stillness of the night was +broken by the sound of urgent footsteps approaching the house. In another +moment he was in his room, and the twins were standing aghast over the +body of the murdered man! + +Tom put on his coat, buttoned his hat under it, threw on his suit of +girl's clothes, dropped the veil, blew out his light, locked the room +door by which he had just entered, taking the key, passed through his +other door into the black hall, locked that door and kept the key, then +worked his way along in the dark and descended the black stairs. He was +not expecting to meet anybody, for all interest was centered in the other +part of the house now; his calculation proved correct. By the time he +was passing through the backyard, Mrs. Pratt, her servants, and a dozen +half-dressed neighbors had joined the twins and the dead, and accessions +were still arriving at the front door. + +As Tom, quaking as with a palsy, passed out at the gate, three women came +flying from the house on the opposite side of the lane. They rushed by +him and in at the gate, asking him what the trouble was there, but not +waiting for an answer. Tom said to himself, "Those old maids waited to +dress--they did the same thing the night Stevens's house burned down next +door." In a few minutes he was in the haunted house. He lighted a candle +and took off his girl-clothes. There was blood on him all down his left +side, and his right hand was red with the stains of the blood-soaked +notes which he has crushed in it; but otherwise he was free from this +sort of evidence. He cleansed his hand on the straw, and cleaned most of +the smut from his face. Then he burned the male and female attire to +ashes, scattered the ashes, and put on a disguise proper for a tramp. He +blew out his light, went below, and was soon loafing down the river road +with the intent to borrow and use one of Roxy's devices. He found a +canoe and paddled down downstream, setting the canoe adrift as dawn +approached, and making his way by land to the next village, where he kept +out of sight till a transient steamer came along, and then took deck +passage for St. Louis. He was ill at ease Dawson's Landing was behind +him; then he said to himself, "All the detectives on earth couldn't trace +me now; there's not a vestige of a clue left in the world; that homicide +will take its place with the permanent mysteries, and people won't get +done trying to guess out the secret of it for fifty years." + +In St. Louis, next morning, he read this brief telegram in the +papers--dated at Dawson's Landing: + + Judge Driscoll, an old and respected citizen, was assassinated + here about midnight by a profligate Italian nobleman or a + barber on account of a quarrel growing out of the recent + election. The assassin will probably be lynched. + +"One of the twins!" soliloquized Tom. "How lucky! It is the knife that +has done him this grace. We never know when fortune is trying to favor +us. I actually cursed Pudd'nhead Wilson in my heart for putting it out +of my power to sell that knife. I take it back now." + +Tom was now rich and independent. He arranged with the planter, and +mailed to Wilson the new bill of sale which sold Roxana to herself; then +he telegraphed his Aunt Pratt: + + Have seen the awful news in the papers and am almost + prostrated with grief. Shall start by packet today. Try to + bear up till I come. + +When Wilson reached the house of mourning and had gathered such details +as Mrs. Pratt and the rest of the crowd could tell him, he took command +as mayor, and gave orthat nothing should be touched, but everything +left as it was until Justice Robinson should arrive and take the proper +measures as coroner. He cleared everybody out of the room but the twins +and himself. The sheriff soon arrived and took the twins away to jail. +Wilson told them to keep heart, and promised to do it best in their +defense when the case should come to trial. Justice Robinson came +presently, and with him Constable Blake. They examined the room +thoroughly. They found the knife and the sheath. Wilson noticed that +there were fingerprints on the knife's handle. That pleased him, for the +twins had required the earliest comers to make a scrutiny of their hands +and clothes, and neither these people nor Wilson himself had found any +bloodstains upon them. Could there be a possibility that the twins had +spoken the truth when they had said they found the man dead when they ran +into the house in answer to the cry for help? He thought of that +mysterious girl at once. But this was not the sort of work for a girl to +be engaged in. No matter; Tom Driscoll's room must be examined. + +After the coroner's jury had viewed the body and its surroundings, Wilson +suggested a search upstairs, and he went along. The jury forced an +entrance to Tom's room, but found nothing, of course. + +The coroner's jury found that the homicide was committed by Luigi, and +that Angelo was accessory to it. + +The town was bitter against he misfortunates, and for the first few days +after the murder they were in constant danger of being lynched. The +grand jury presently indicted Luigi for murder in the first degree, and +Angelo as accessory before the fact. The twins were transferred from the +city jail to the county prison to await trial. + +Wilson examined the finger marks on the knife handle and said to himself, +"Neither of the twins made those marks. Then manifestly there was +another person concerned, either in his own interest or as hired +assassin." + +But who could it be? That, he must try to find out. The safe was not +opened, the cashbox was closed, and had three thousand dollars in it. +Then robbery was not the motive, and revenge was. Where had the murdered +man an enemy except Luigi? There was but that one person in the world +with a deep grudge against him. + +The mysterious girl! The girl was a great trial to Wilson. If the motive +had been robbery, the girl might answer; but there wasn't any girl that +would want to take this old man's life for revenge. He had no quarrels +with girls; he was a gentleman. + +Wilson had perfect tracings of the finger marks of the knife handle; and +among his glass records he had a great array of fingerprints of women and +girls, collected during the last fifteen or eighteen years, but he +scanned them in vain, they successfully withstood every test; among them +were no duplicates of the prints on the knife. + +The presence of the knife on the stage of the murder was a worrying +circumstance for Wilson. A week previously he had as good as admitted to +himself that he believed Luigi had possessed such a knife, and that he +still possessed it notwithstanding his pretense that it had been stolen. +And now here was the knife, and with it the twins. Half the town had +said the twins were humbugging when they claimed they had lost their +knife, and now these people were joyful, and said, "I told you so!" + +If their fingerprints had been on the handle--but useless to bother any +further about that; the fingerprints on the handle were NOT theirs--that +he knew perfectly. + +Wilson refused to suspect Tom; for first, Tom couldn't murder anybody--he +hadn't character enough; secondly, if he could murder a person he +wouldn't select his doting benefactor and nearest relative; thirdly, +self-interest was in the way; for while the uncle lived, Tom was sure of +a free support and a chance to get the destroyed will revived again, but +with the uncle gone, that chance was gone too. It was true the will had +really been revived, as was now discovered, but Tom could not have been +aware of it, or he would have spoken of it, in his native talky, +unsecretive way. Finally, Tom was in St. Louis when the murder was done, +and got the news out of the morning journals, as was shown by his +telegram to his aunt. These speculations were unemphasized sensations +rather than articulated thoughts, for Wilson would have laughed at the +idea of seriously connecting Tom with the murder. + +Wilson regarded the case of the twins as desperate--in fact, about +hopeless. For he argued that if a confederate was not found, an +enlightened Missouri jury would hang them; sure; if a confederate was +found, that would not improve the matter, but simply furnish one more +person for the sheriff to hang. Nothing could save the twins but the +discovery of a person who did the murder on his sole personal account--an +undertaking which had all the aspect of the impossible. Still, the +person who made the fingerprints must be sought. The twins might have no +case WITH them, but they certainly would have none without him. + +So Wilson mooned around, thinking, thinking, guessing, guessing, day and +night, and arriving nowhere. Whenever he ran across a girl or a woman he +was not acquainted with, he got her fingerprints, on one pretext or +another; and they always cost him a sigh when he got home, for they never +tallied with the finger marks on the knife handle. + +As to the mysterious girl, Tom swore he knew no such girl, and did not +remember ever seeing a girl wearing a dress like the one described by +Wilson. He admitted that he did not always lock his room, and that +sometimes the servants forgot to lock the house doors; still, in his +opinion the girl must have made but few visits or she would have been +discovered. When Wilson tried to connect her with the stealing raid, and +thought she might have been the old woman's confederate, if not the very +thief disguised as an old woman, Tom seemed stuck, and also much +interested, and said he would keep a sharp eye out for this person or +persons, although he was afraid that she or they would be too smart to +venture again into a town where everybody would now be on the watch for a +good while to come. + +Everybody was pitying Tom, he looked so quiet and sorrowful, and seemed +to feel his great loss so deeply. He was playing a part, but it was not +all a part. The picture of his alleged uncle, as he had last seen him, +was before him in the dark pretty frequently, when he was away, and +called again in his dreams, when he was asleep. He wouldn't go into the +room where the tragedy had happened. This charmed the doting Mrs. Pratt, +who realized now, "as she had never done before," she said, what a +sensitive and delicate nature her darling had, and how he adored his poor +uncle. + + + + +CHAPTER 20 + +The Murderer Chuckles + +Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to +be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great +caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you +have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take +simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say she did it with her teeth. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +The weeks dragged along, no friend visiting the jailed twins but their +counsel and Aunt Patsy Cooper, and the day of trial came at last--the +heaviest day in Wilson's life; for with all his tireless diligence he had +discovered no sign or trace of the missing confederate. "Confederate" +was the term he had long ago privately accepted for that person--not as +being unquestionably the right term, but as being the least possibly the +right one, though he was never able to understand why the twins did not +vanish and escape, as the confederate had done, instead of remaining by +the murdered man and getting caught there. + +The courthouse was crowded, of course, and would remain so to the finish, +for not only in the town itself, but in the country for miles around, the +trial was the one topic of conversation among the people. Mrs. Pratt, in +deep mourning, and Tom with a weed on his hat, had seats near Pembroke +Howard, the public prosecutor, and back of them sat a great array of +friends of the family. The twins had but one friend present to keep +their counsel in countenance, their poor old sorrowing landlady. She sat +near Wilson, and looked her friendliest. In the "nigger corner" sat +Chambers; also Roxy, with good clothes on, and her bill of sale in her +pocket. It was her most precious possession, and she never parted with +it, day or night. Tom had allowed her thirty-five dollars a month ever +since he came into his property, and had said that he and she ought to be +grateful to the twins for making them rich; but had roused such a temper +in her by this speech that he did not repeat the argument afterward. She +said the old judge had treated her child a thousand times better than he +deserved, and had never done her an unkindness in his life; so she hated +these outlandish devils for killing him, and shouldn't ever sleep +satisfied till she saw them hanged for it. She was here to watch the +trial now, and was going to lift up just one "hooraw" over it if the +county judge put her in jail a year for it. She gave her turbaned head a +toss and said, "When dat verdic' comes, I's gwine to lif' dat ROOF, now, +I TELL you." + +Pembroke Howard briefly sketched the state's case. He said he would show +by a chain of circumstantial evidence without break or fault in it +anywhere, that the principal prisoner at the bar committed the murder; +that the motive was partly revenge, and partly a desire to take his own +life out of jeopardy, and that his brother, by his presence, was a +consenting accessory to the crime; a crime which was the basest known to +the calendar of human misdeeds--assassination; that it was conceived by +the blackest of hearts and consummated by the cowardliest of hands; a +crime which had broken a loving sister's heart, blighted the happiness of +a young nephew who was as dear as a son, brought inconsolable grief to +many friends, and sorrow and loss to the whole community. The utmost +penalty of the outraged law would be exacted, and upon the accused, now +present at the bar, that penalty would unquestionably be executed. He +would reserve further remark until his closing speech. + +He was strongly moved, and so also was the whole house; Mrs. Pratt and +several other women were weeping when he sat down, and many an eye that +was full of hate was riveted upon the unhappy prisoners. + +Witness after witness was called by the state, and questioned at length; +but the cross questioning was brief. Wilson knew they could furnish +nothing valuable for his side. People were sorry for Pudd'nhead Wilson; +his budding career would get hurt by this trial. + +Several witnesses swore they heard Judge Driscoll say in his public +speech that the twins would be able to find their lost knife again when +they needed it to assassinate somebody with. This was not news, but now +it was seen to have been sorrowfully prophetic, and a profound sensation +quivered through the hushed courtroom when those dismal words were +repeated. + +The public prosecutor rose and said that it was within his knowledge, +through a conversation held with Judge Driscoll on the last day of his +life, that counsel for the defense had brought him a challenge from the +person charged at the bar with murder; that he had refused to fight with +a confessed assassin--"that is, on the field of honor," but had added +significantly, that he would be ready for him elsewhere. Presumably +the person here charged with murder was warned that he must kill or be +killed the first time he should meet Judge Driscoll. If counsel for the +defense chose to let the statement stand so, he would not call him to the +witness stand. Mr. Wilson said he would offer no denial. [Murmurs in the +house: "It is getting worse and worse for Wilson's case."] + +Mrs. Pratt testified that she heard no outcry, and did not know what woke +her up, unless it was the sound of rapid footsteps approaching the front +door. She jumped up and ran out in the hall just as she was, and heard +the footsteps flying up the front steps and then following behind her as +she ran to the sitting room. There she found the accused standing over +her murdered brother. [Here she broke down and sobbed. Sensation in the +court.] Resuming, she said the persons entered behind her were Mr. Rogers +and Mr. Buckstone. + +Cross-examined by Wilson, she said the twins proclaimed their innocence; +declared that they had been taking a walk, and had hurried to the house +in response to a cry for help which was so loud and strong that they had +heard it at a considerable distance; that they begged her and the +gentlemen just mentioned to examine their hands and clothes--which was +done, and no blood stains found. + +Confirmatory evidence followed from Rogers and Buckstone. + +The finding of the knife was verified, the advertisement minutely +describing it and offering a reward for it was put in evidence, and its +exact correspondence with that description proved. Then followed a few +minor details, and the case for the state was closed. + +Wilson said that he had three witnesses, the Misses Clarkson, who would +testify that they met a veiled young woman leaving Judge Driscoll's +premises by the back gate a few minutes after the cries for help were +heard, and that their evidence, taken with certain circumstantial +evidence which he would call the court's attention to, would in his +opinion convince the court that there was still one person concerned in +this crime who had not yet been found, and also that a stay of +proceedings ought to be granted, in justice to his clients, until that +person should be discovered. As it was late, he would ask leave to defer +the examination of his three witnesses until the next morning. + +The crowd poured out of the place and went flocking away in excited +groups and couples, taking the events of the session over with vivacity +and consuming interest, and everybody seemed to have had a satisfactory +and enjoyable day except the accused, their counsel, and their old lady +friend. There was no cheer among these, and no substantial hope. + +In parting with the twins Aunt Patsy did attempt a good-night with a gay +pretense of hope and cheer in it, but broke down without finishing. + +Absolutely secure as Tom considered himself to be, the opening +solemnities of the trial had nevertheless oppressed him with a vague +uneasiness, his being a nature sensitive to even the smallest alarms; but +from the moment that the poverty and weakness of Wilson's case lay +exposed to the court, he was comfortable once more, even jubilant. He +left the courtroom sarcastically sorry for Wilson. "The Clarksons met an +unknown woman in the back lane," he said to himself, "THAT is his case! +I'll give him a century to find her in--a couple of them if he likes. A +woman who doesn't exist any longer, and the clothes that gave her her sex +burnt up and the ashes thrown away--oh, certainly, he'll find HER easy +enough!" This reflection set him to admiring, for the hundredth time, +the shrewd ingenuities by which he had insured himself against +detection--more, against even suspicion. + +"Nearly always in cases like this there is some little detail or other +overlooked, some wee little track or trace left behind, and detection +follows; but here there's not even the faintest suggestion of a trace +left. No more than a bird leaves when it flies through the air--yes, +through the night, you may say. The man that can track a bird through the +air in the dark and find that bird is the man to track me out and find +the judge's assassin--no other need apply. And that is the job that has +been laid out for poor Pudd'nhead Wilson, of all people in the world! +Lord, it will be pathetically funny to see him grubbing and groping after +that woman that don't exist, and the right person sitting under his very +nose all the time!" The more he thought the situation over, the more the +humor of it struck him. Finally he said, "I'll never let him hear the +last of that woman. Every time I catch him in company, to his dying day, +I'll ask him in the guileless affectionate way that used to gravel him so +when I inquired how his unborn law business was coming along, 'Got on her +track yet--hey, Pudd'nhead?'" He wanted to laugh, but that would not +have answered; there were people about, and he was mourning for his +uncle. He made up his mind that it would be good entertainment to look +in on Wilson that night and watch him worry over his barren law case and +goad him with an exasperating word or two of sympathy and commiseration +now and then. + +Wilson wanted no supper, he had no appetite. He got out all the +fingerprints of girls and women in his collection of records and pored +gloomily over them an hour or more, trying to convince himself that that +troublesome girl's marks were there somewhere and had been overlooked. +But it was not so. He drew back his chair, clasped his hands over his +head, and gave himself up to dull and arid musings. + +Tom Driscoll dropped in, an hour after dark, and said with a pleasant +laugh as he took a seat: + +"Hello, we've gone back to the amusements of our days of neglect and +obscurity for consolation, have we?" and he took up one of the glass +strips and held it against the light to inspect it. "Come, cheer up, old +man; there's no use in losing your grip and going back to this child's +play merely because this big sunspot is drifting across your shiny new +disk. It'll pass, and you'll be all right again"--and he laid the glass +down. "Did you think you could win always?" + +"Oh, no," said Wilson, with a sigh, "I didn't expect that, but I can't +believe Luigi killed your uncle, and I feel very sorry for him. It makes +me blue. And you would feel as I do, Tom, if you were not prejudiced +against those young fellows." + +"I don't know about that," and Tom's countenance darkened, for his memory +reverted to his kicking. "I owe them no good will, considering the +brunet one's treatment of me that night. Prejudice or no prejudice, +Pudd'nhead, I don't like them, and when they get their deserts you're not +going to find me sitting on the mourner's bench." + +He took up another strip of glass, and exclaimed: + +"Why, here's old Roxy's label! Are you going to ornament the royal +palaces with nigger paw marks, too? By the date here, I was seven months +old when this was done, and she was nursing me and her little nigger cub. +There's a line straight across her thumbprint. How comes that?" and Tom +held out the piece of glass to Wilson. + +"That is common," said the bored man, wearily. "Scar of a cut or a +scratch, usually"--and he took the strip of glass indifferently, and +raised it toward the lamp. + +All the blood sank suddenly out of his face; his hand quaked, and he +gazed at the polished surface before him with the glassy stare of a +corpse. + +"Great heavens, what's the matter with you, Wilson? Are you going to +faint?" + +Tom sprang for a glass of water and offered it, but Wilson shrank +shuddering from him and said: + +"No, no!--take it away!" His breast was rising and falling, and he moved +his head about in a dull and wandering way, like a person who had been +stunned. Presently he said, "I shall feel better when I get to bed; I +have been overwrought today; yes, and overworked for many days." + +"Then I'll leave you and let you get to your rest. Good night, old man." +But as Tom went out he couldn't deny himself a small parting gibe: +"Don't take it so hard; a body can't win every time; you'll hang somebody +yet." + +Wilson muttered to himself, "It is no lie to say I am sorry I have to +begin with you, miserable dog though you are!" + +He braced himself up with a glass of cold whisky, and went to work again. +He did not compare the new finger marks unintentionally left by Tom a few +minutes before on Roxy's glass with the tracings of the marks left on the +knife handle, there being no need for that (for his trained eye), but +busied himself with another matter, muttering from time to time, "Idiot +that I was!--Nothing but a GIRL would do me--a man in girl's clothes +never occurred to me." First, he hunted out the plate containing the +fingerprints made by Tom when he was twelve years old, and laid it by +itself; then he brought forth the marks made by Tom's baby fingers when +he was a suckling of seven months, and placed these two plates with the +one containing this subject's newly (and unconsciously) made record. + +"Now the series is complete," he said with satisfaction, and sat down to +inspect these things and enjoy them. + +But his enjoyment was brief. He stared a considerable time at the three +strips, and seemed stupefied with astonishment. At last he put them down +and said, "I can't make it out at all--hang it, the baby's don't tally +with the others!" + +He walked the floor for half an hour puzzling over his enigma, then he +hunted out the other glass plates. + +He sat down and puzzled over these things a good while, but kept +muttering, "It's no use; I can't understand it. They don't tally right, +and yet I'll swear the names and dates are right, and so of course they +OUGHT to tally. I never labeled one of these thing carelessly in my +life. There is a most extraordinary mystery here." + +He was tired out now, and his brains were beginning to clog. He said he +would sleep himself fresh, and then see what he could do with this +riddle. He slept through a troubled and unrestful hour, then +unconsciousness began to shred away, and presently he rose drowsily to a +sitting posture. "Now what was that dream?" he said, trying to recall +it. "What was that dream? It seemed to unravel that puz--" + +He landed in the middle of the floor at a bound, without finishing the +sentence, and ran and turned up his light and seized his "records." He +took a single swift glance at them and cried out: + +"It's so! Heavens, what a revelation! And for twenty-three years no man +has ever suspected it!" + + + + +CHAPTER 21 + +Doom + +He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring +the cabbages. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +APRIL 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on +the other three hundred and sixty-four. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +Wilson put on enough clothes for business purposes and went to work +under a high pressure of steam. He was awake all over. All sense of +weariness had been swept away by the invigorating refreshment of the +great and hopeful discovery which he had made. He made fine and accurate +reproductions of a number of his "records," and then enlarged them on a +scale of ten to one with his pantograph. He did these pantograph +enlargements on sheets of white cardboard, and made each individual line +of the bewildering maze of whorls or curves or loops which consisted of +the "pattern" of a "record" stand out bold and black by reinforcing it +with ink. To the untrained eye the collection of delicate originals made +by the human finger on the glass plates looked about alike; but when +enlarged ten times they resembled the markings of a block of wood that +has been sawed across the grain, and the dullest eye could detect at a +glance, and at a distance of many feet, that no two of the patterns were +alike. When Wilson had at last finished his tedious and difficult work, +he arranged his results according to a plan in which a progressive order +and sequence was a principal feature; then he added to the batch several +pantograph enlargements which he had made from time to time in bygone +years. + +The night was spent and the day well advanced now. By the time he had +snatched a trifle of breakfast, it was nine o'clock, and the court was +ready to begin its sitting. He was in his place twelve minutes later +with his "records." + +Tom Driscoll caught a slight glimpse of the records, and nudged his +nearest friend and said, with a wink, "Pudd'nhead's got a rare eye to +business--thinks that as long as he can't win his case it's at least a +noble good chance to advertise his window palace decorations without any +expense." Wilson was informed that his witnesses had been delayed, but +would arrive presently; but he rose and said he should probably not have +occasion to make use of their testimony. [An amused murmur ran through +the room: "It's a clean backdown! he gives up without hitting a lick!"] +Wilson continued: "I have other testimony--and better. [This compelled +interest, and evoked murmurs of surprise that had a detectable ingredient +of disappointment in them.] If I seem to be springing this evidence upon +the court, I offer as my justification for this, that I did not discover +its existence until late last night, and have been engaged in examining +and classifying it ever since, until half an hour ago. I shall offer it +presently; but first I wish to say a few preliminary words. + +"May it please the court, the claim given the front place, the claim most +persistently urged, the claim most strenuously and I may even say +aggressively and defiantly insisted upon by the prosecution is this--that +the person whose hand left the bloodstained fingerprints upon the handle +of the Indian knife is the person who committed the murder." Wilson +paused, during several moments, to give impressiveness to what he was +about to say, and then added tranquilly, "WE GRANT THAT CLAIM." + +It was an electrical surprise. No one was prepared for such an +admission. A buzz of astonishment rose on all sides, and people were +heard to intimate that the overworked lawyer had lost his mind. Even the +veteran judge, accustomed as he was to legal ambushes and masked +batteries in criminal procedure, was not sure that his ears were not +deceiving him, and asked counsel what it was he had said. Howard's +impassive face betrayed no sign, but his attitude and bearing lost +something of their careless confidence for a moment. Wilson resumed: + +"We not only grant that claim, but we welcome it and strongly endorse it. +Leaving that matter for the present, we will now proceed to consider +other points in the case which we propose to establish by evidence, and +shall include that one in the chain in its proper place." + +He had made up his mind to try a few hardy guesses, in mapping out his +theory of the origin and motive of the murder--guesses designed to fill +up gaps in it--guesses which could help if they hit, and would probably +do no harm if they didn't. + +"To my mind, certain circumstances of the case before the court seem to +suggest a motive for the homicide quite different from the one insisted +on by the state. It is my conviction that the motive was not revenge, +but robbery. It has been urged that the presence of the accused brothers +in that fatal room, just after notification that one of them must take +the life of Judge Driscoll or lose his own the moment the parties should +meet, clearly signifies that the natural instinct of self-preservation +moved my clients to go there secretly and save Count Luigi by destroying +his adversary. + +"Then why did they stay there, after the deed was done? Mrs. Pratt had +time, although she did not hear the cry for help, but woke up some +moments later, to run to that room--and there she found these men +standing and making no effort to escape. If they were guilty, they ought +to have been running out of the house at the same time that she was +running to that room. If they had had such a strong instinct toward +self-preservation as to move them to kill that unarmed man, what had +become of it now, when it should have been more alert than ever. Would +any of us have remained there? Let us not slander our intelligence to +that degree. + +"Much stress has been laid upon the fact that the accused offered a very +large reward for the knife with which this murder was done; that no thief +came forward to claim that extraordinary reward; that the latter fact was +good circumstantial evidence that the claim that the knife had been +stolen was a vanity and a fraud; that these details taken in connection +with the memorable and apparently prophetic speech of the deceased +concerning that knife, and the finally discovery of that very knife in +the fatal room where no living person was found present with the +slaughtered man but the owner of the knife and his brother, form an +indestructible chain of evidence which fixed the crime upon those +unfortunate strangers. + +"But I shall presently ask to be sworn, and shall testify that there was +a large reward offered for the THIEF, also; and it was offered secretly +and not advertised; that this fact was indiscreetly mentioned--or at +least tacitly admitted--in what was supposed to be safe circumstances, +but may NOT have been. The thief may have been present himself. [Tom +Driscoll had been looking at the speaker, but dropped his eyes at this +point.] In that case he would retain the knife in his possession, not +daring to offer it for sale, or for pledge in a pawnshop. [There was a +nodding of heads among the audience by way of admission that this was not +a bad stroke.] I shall prove to the satisfaction of the jury that there +WAS a person in Judge Driscoll's room several minutes before the accused +entered it. [This produced a strong sensation; the last drowsy head in +the courtroom roused up now, and made preparation to listen.] If it +shall seem necessary, I will prove by the Misses Clarkson that they met a +veiled person--ostensibly a woman--coming out of the back gate a few +minutes after the cry for help was heard. This person was not a woman, +but a man dressed in woman's clothes." Another sensation. Wilson had his +eye on Tom when he hazarded this guess, to see what effect it would +produce. He was satisfied with the result, and said to himself, "It was +a success--he's hit!" + +The object of that person in that house was robbery, not murder. It is +true that the safe was not open, but there was an ordinary cashbox on the +table, with three thousand dollars in it. It is easily supposable that +the thief was concealed in the house; that he knew of this box, and of +its owner's habit of counting its contents and arranging his accounts at +night--if he had that habit, which I do not assert, of course--that he +tried to take the box while its owner slept, but made a noise and was +seized, and had to use the knife to save himself from capture; and that +he fled without his booty because he heard help coming. + +"I have now done with my theory, and will proceed to the evidences by +which I propose to try to prove its soundness." Wilson took up several of +his strips of glass. When the audience recognized these familiar +mementos of Pudd'nhead's old time childish "puttering" and folly, the +tense and funereal interest vanished out of their faces, and the house +burst into volleys of relieving and refreshing laughter, and Tom chirked +up and joined in the fun himself; but Wilson was apparently not +disturbed. He arranged his records on the table before him, and said: + +"I beg the indulgence of the court while I make a few remarks in +explanation of some evidence which I am about to introduce, and which I +shall presently ask to be allowed to verify under oath on the witness +stand. Every human being carries with him from his cradle to his grave +certain physical marks which do not change their character, and by which +he can always be identified--and that without shade of doubt or question. +These marks are his signature, his physiological autograph, so to speak, +and this autograph can not be counterfeited, nor can he disguise it or +hide it away, nor can it become illegible by the wear and mutations of +time. This signature is not his face--age can change that beyond +recognition; it is not his hair, for that can fall out; it is not his +height, for duplicates of that exist; it is not his form, for duplicates +of that exist also, whereas this signature is each man's very own--there +is no duplicate of it among the swarming populations of the globe! [The +audience were interested once more.] + +"This autograph consists of the delicate lines or corrugations with which +Nature marks the insides of the hands and the soles of the feet. If you +will look at the balls of your fingers--you that have very sharp +eyesight--you will observe that these dainty curving lines lie close +together, like those that indicate the borders of oceans in maps, and +that they form various clearly defined patterns, such as arches, circles, +long curves, whorls, etc., and that these patterns differ on the different +fingers. [Every man in the room had his hand up to the light now, and +his head canted to one side, and was minutely scrutinizing the balls of +his fingers; there were whispered ejaculations of "Why, it's so--I never +noticed that before!"] The patterns on the right hand are not the same as +those on the left. [Ejaculations of "Why, that's so, too!"] Taken finger +for finger, your patterns differ from your neighbor's. [Comparisons were +made all over the house--even the judge and jury were absorbed in this +curious work.] The patterns of a twin's right hand are not the same as +those on his left. One twin's patters are never the same as his fellow +twin's patters--the jury will find that the patterns upon the finger +balls of the twins' hands follow this rule. [An examination of the +twins' hands was begun at once.] You have often heard of twins who were +so exactly alike that when dressed alike their own parents could not tell +them apart. Yet there was never a twin born in to this world that did not +carry from birth to death a sure identifier in this mysterious and +marvelous natal autograph. That once known to you, his fellow twin could +never personate him and deceive you." + +Wilson stopped and stood silent. Inattention dies a quick and sure death +when a speaker does that. The stillness gives warning that something is +coming. All palms and finger balls went down now, all slouching forms +straightened, all heads came up, all eyes were fastened upon Wilson's +face. He waited yet one, two, three moments, to let his pause complete +and perfect its spell upon the house; then, when through the profound +hush he could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall, he put out his +hand and took the Indian knife by the blade and held it aloft where all +could see the sinister spots upon its ivory handle; then he said, in a +level and passionless voice: + +"Upon this haft stands the assassin's natal autograph, written in the +blood of that helpless and unoffending old man who loved you and whom you +all loved. There is but one man in the whole earth whose hand can +duplicate that crimson sign"--he paused and raised his eyes to the +pendulum swinging back and forth--"and please God we will produce that +man in this room before the clock strikes noon!" + +Stunned, distraught, unconscious of its own movement, the house half +rose, as if expecting to see the murderer appear at the door, and a +breeze of muttered ejaculations swept the place. "Order in the +court!--sit down!" This from the sheriff. He was obeyed, and quiet +reigned again. Wilson stole a glance at Tom, and said to himself, "He is +flying signals of distress now; even people who despise him are pitying +him; they think this is a hard ordeal for a young fellow who has lost his +benefactor by so cruel a stroke--and they are right." He resumed his +speech: + +"For more than twenty years I have amused my compulsory leisure with +collecting these curious physical signatures in this town. At my house I +have hundreds upon hundreds of them. Each and every one is labeled with +name and date; not labeled the next day or even the next hour, but in the +very minute that the impression was taken. When I go upon the witness +stand I will repeat under oath the things which I am now saying. I have +the fingerprints of the court, the sheriff, and every member of the jury. +There is hardly a person in this room, white or black, whose natal +signature I cannot produce, and not one of them can so disguise himself +that I cannot pick him out from a multitude of his fellow creatures and +unerringly identify him by his hands. And if he and I should live to be a +hundred I could still do it. [The interest of the audience was steadily +deepening now.] + +"I have studied some of these signatures so much that I know them as well +as the bank cashier knows the autograph of his oldest customer. While I +turn my back now, I beg that several persons will be so good as to pass +their fingers through their hair, and then press them upon one of the +panes of the window near the jury, and that among them the accused may +set THEIR finger marks. Also, I beg that these experimenters, or others, +will set their fingers upon another pane, and add again the marks of the +accused, but not placing them in the same order or relation to the other +signatures as before--for, by one chance in a million, a person might +happen upon the right marks by pure guesswork, ONCE, therefore I wish to +be tested twice." + +He turned his back, and the two panes were quickly covered with +delicately lined oval spots, but visible only to such persons as could +get a dark background for them--the foliage of a tree, outside, for +instance. Then upon call, Wilson went to the window, made his +examination, and said: + +"This is Count Luigi's right hand; this one, three signatures below, is +his left. Here is Count Angelo's right; down here is his left. Now for +the other pane: here and here are Count Luigi's, here and here are his +brother's." He faced about. "Am I right?" + +A deafening explosion of applause was the answer. The bench said: + +"This certainly approaches the miraculous!" + +Wilson turned to the window again and remarked, pointing with his finger: + +"This is the signature of Mr. Justice Robinson. [Applause.] This, of +Constable Blake. [Applause.] This of John Mason, juryman. [Applause.] +This, of the sheriff. [Applause.] I cannot name the others, but I have +them all at home, named and dated, and could identify them all by my +fingerprint records." + +He moved to his place through a storm of applause--which the sheriff +stopped, and also made the people sit down, for they were all standing +and struggling to see, of course. Court, jury, sheriff, and everybody +had been too absorbed in observing Wilson's performance to attend to the +audience earlier. + +"Now then," said Wilson, "I have here the natal autographs of the two +children--thrown up to ten times the natural size by the pantograph, so +that anyone who can see at all can tell the markings apart at a glance. +We will call the children A and B. Here are A's finger marks, taken at +the age of five months. Here they are again taken at seven months. [Tom +started.] They are alike, you see. Here are B's at five months, and also +at seven months. They, too, exactly copy each other, but the patterns +are quite different from A's, you observe. I shall refer to these again +presently, but we will turn them face down now. + +"Here, thrown up ten sizes, are the natal autographs of the two persons +who are here before you accused of murdering Judge Driscoll. I made these +pantograph copies last night, and will so swear when I go upon the +witness stand. I ask the jury to compare them with the finger marks of +the accused upon the windowpanes, and tell the court if they are the +same." + +He passed a powerful magnifying glass to the foreman. + +One juryman after another took the cardboard and the glass and made the +comparison. Then the foreman said to the judge: + +"Your honor, we are all agreed that they are identical." + +Wilson said to the foreman: + +"Please turn that cardboard face down, and take this one, and compare it +searchingly, by the magnifier, with the fatal signature upon the knife +handle, and report your finding to the court." + +Again the jury made minute examinations, and again reported: + +"We find them to be exactly identical, your honor." + +Wilson turned toward the counsel for the prosecution, and there was a +clearly recognizable note of warning in his voice when he said: + +"May it please the court, the state has claimed, strenuously and +persistently, that the bloodstained fingerprints upon that knife handle +were left there by the assassin of Judge Driscoll. You have heard us +grant that claim, and welcome it." He turned to the jury: "Compare the +fingerprints of the accused with the fingerprints left by the +assassin--and report." + +The comparison began. As it proceeded, all movement and all sound +ceased, and the deep silence of an absorbed and waiting suspense settled +upon the house; and when at last the words came, "THEY DO NOT EVEN +RESEMBLE," a thundercrash of applause followed and the house sprang to +its feet, but was quickly repressed by official force and brought to +order again. Tom was altering his position every few minutes now, but +none of his changes brought repose nor any small trifle of comfort. When +the house's attention was become fixed once more, Wilson said gravely, +indicating the twins with a gesture: + +"These men are innocent--I have no further concern with them. [Another +outbreak of applause began, but was promptly checked.] We will now +proceed to find the guilty. [Tom's eyes were starting from their +sockets--yes, it was a cruel day for the bereaved youth, everybody +thought.] We will return to the infant autographs of A and B. I will +ask the jury to take these large pantograph facsimilies of A's marked +five months and seven months. Do they tally?" + +The foreman responded: "Perfectly." + +"Now examine this pantograph, taken at eight months, and also marked A. +Does it tally with the other two?" + +The surprised response was: + +"NO--THEY DIFFER WIDELY!" + +"You are quite right. Now take these two pantographs of B's autograph, +marked five months and seven months. Do they tally with each other?" + +"Yes--perfectly." + +"Take this third pantograph marked B, eight months. Does it tally with +B's other two?" + +"BY NO MEANS!" + +"Do you know how to account for those strange discrepancies? I will tell +you. For a purpose unknown to us, but probably a selfish one, somebody +changed those children in the cradle." + +This produced a vast sensation, naturally; Roxana was astonished at this +admirable guess, but not disturbed by it. To guess the exchange was one +thing, to guess who did it quite another. Pudd'nhead Wilson could do +wonderful things, no doubt, but he couldn't do impossible ones. Safe? +She was perfectly safe. She smiled privately. + +"Between the ages of seven months and eight months those children were +changed in the cradle"--he made one of this effect--collecting pauses, +and added--"and the person who did it is in this house!" + +Roxy's pulses stood still! The house was thrilled as with an electric +shock, and the people half rose as if to seek a glimpse of the person who +had made that exchange. Tom was growing limp; the life seemed oozing out +of him. Wilson resumed: + +"A was put into B's cradle in the nursery; B was transferred to the +kitchen and became a Negro and a slave [Sensation--confusion of angry +ejaculations]--but within a quarter of an hour he will stand before you +white and free! [Burst of applause, checked by the officers.] From +seven months onward until now, A has still been a usurper, and in my +finger record he bears B's name. Here is his pantograph at the age of +twelve. Compare it with the assassin's signature upon the knife handle. +Do they tally?" + +The foreman answered: + +"TO THE MINUTEST DETAIL!" + +Wilson said, solemnly: + +"The murderer of your friend and mine--York Driscoll of the generous hand +and the kindly spirit--sits in among you. Valet de Chambre, Negro and +slave--falsely called Thomas a Becket Driscoll--make upon the window the +fingerprints that will hang you!" + +Tom turned his ashen face imploring toward the speaker, made some +impotent movements with his white lips, then slid limp and lifeless to +the floor. + +Wilson broke the awed silence with the words: + +"There is no need. He has confessed." + +Roxy flung herself upon her knees, covered her face with her hands, and +out through her sobs the words struggled: + +"De Lord have mercy on me, po' misasble sinner dat I is!" + +The clock struck twelve. + +The court rose; the new prisoner, handcuffed, was removed. + + + +CONCLUSION + +It is often the case that the man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the +best judge of one. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +OCTOBER 12, THE DISCOVERY. It was wonderful to find America, but it +would have been more wonderful to miss it. + +--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar + +The town sat up all night to discuss the amazing events of the day and +swap guesses as to when Tom's trial would begin. Troop after troop of +citizens came to serenade Wilson, and require a speech, and shout +themselves hoarse over every sentence that fell from his lips--for all +his sentences were golden, now, all were marvelous. His long fight +against hard luck and prejudice was ended; he was a made man for good. +And as each of these roaring gangs of enthusiasts marched away, some +remorseful member of it was quite sure to raise his voice and say: + +"And this is the man the likes of us have called a pudd'nhead for more +than twenty years. He has resigned from that position, friends." + +"Yes, but it isn't vacant--we're elected." + +The twins were heroes of romance, now, and with rehabilitated +reputations. But they were weary of Western adventure, and straightway +retired to Europe. + +Roxy's heart was broken. The young fellow upon whom she had inflicted +twenty-three years of slavery continued the false heir's pension of +thirty-five dollars a month to her, but her hurts were too deep for money +to heal; the spirit in her eye was quenched, her martial bearing departed +with it, and the voice of her laughter ceased in the land. In her church +and its affairs she found her only solace. + +The real heir suddenly found himself rich and free, but in a most +embarrassing situation. He could neither read nor write, and his speech +was the basest dialect of the Negro quarter. His gait, his attitudes, his +gestures, his bearing, his laugh--all were vulgar and uncouth; his +manners were the manners of a slave. Money and fine clothes could not +mend these defects or cover them up; they only made them more glaring and +the more pathetic. The poor fellow could not endure the terrors of the +white man's parlor, and felt at home and at peace nowhere but in the +kitchen. The family pew was a misery to him, yet he could nevermore enter +into the solacing refuge of the "nigger gallery"--that was closed to him +for good and all. But we cannot follow his curious fate further--that +would be a long story. + +The false heir made a full confession and was sentenced to imprisonment +for life. But now a complication came up. The Percy Driscoll estate was +in such a crippled shape when its owner died that it could pay only sixty +percent of its great indebtedness, and was settled at that rate. But the +creditors came forward now, and complained that inasmuch as through an +error for which THEY were in no way to blame the false heir was not +inventoried at the time with the rest of the property, great wrong and +loss had thereby been inflicted upon them. They rightly claimed that +"Tom" was lawfully their property and had been so for eight years; that +they had already lost sufficiently in being deprived of his services +during that long period, and ought not to be required to add anything to +that loss; that if he had been delivered up to them in the first place, +they would have sold him and he could not have murdered Judge Driscoll; +therefore it was not that he had really committed the murder, the guilt +lay with the erroneous inventory. Everybody saw that there was reason in +this. Everybody granted that if "Tom" were white and free it would be +unquestionably right to punish him--it would be no loss to anybody; but +to shut up a valuable slave for life--that was quite another matter. + +As soon as the Governor understood the case, he pardoned Tom at once, and +the creditors sold him down the river. + + + + + +Author's Note to THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS + +A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time +of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He +has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has +some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he +trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting +results. So he goes to work. To write a novel? No--that is a thought +which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little +tale, a very little tale, a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he +is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as +it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on +till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has +happened to me so many times. + +And I have noticed another thing: that as the short tale grows into the +long tale, the original intention (or motif) is apt to get abolished and +find itself superseded by a quite different one. It was so in the case +of a magazine sketch which I once started to write--a funny and fantastic +sketch about a prince and a pauper; it presently assumed a grave cast of +its own accord, and in that new shape spread itself out into a book. Much +the same thing happened with PUDD'NHEAD WILSON. I had a sufficiently +hard time with that tale, because it changed itself from a farce to a +tragedy while I was going along with it--a most embarrassing +circumstance. But what was a great deal worse was, that it was not one +story, but two stories tangled together; and they obstructed and +interrupted each other at every turn and created no end of confusion and +annoyance. I could not offer the book for publication, for I was afraid +it would unseat the reader's reason, I did not know what was the matter +with it, for I had not noticed, as yet, that it was two stories in one. +It took me months to make that discovery. I carried the manuscript back +and forth across the Atlantic two or three times, and read it and studied +over it on shipboard; and at last I saw where the difficulty lay. I had +no further trouble. I pulled one of the stories out by the roots, and +left the other--a kind of literary Caesarean operation. + +Would the reader care to know something about the story which I pulled +out? He has been told many a time how the born-and-trained novelist +works; won't he let me round and complete his knowledge by telling him +how the jackleg does it? + +Originally the story was called THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS. I meant to +make it very short. I had seen a picture of a youthful Italian +"freak"--or "freaks"--which was--or which were--on exhibition in our +cities--a combination consisting of two heads and four arms joined to a +single body and a single pair of legs--and I thought I would write an +extravagantly fantastic little story with this freak of nature for +hero--or heroes--a silly young miss for heroine, and two old ladies and +two boys for the minor parts. I lavishly elaborated these people and +their doings, of course. But the take kept spreading along and spreading +along, and other people got to intruding themselves and taking up more +and more room with their talk and their affairs. Among them came a +stranger named Pudd'nhead Wilson, and woman named Roxana; and presently +the doings of these two pushed up into prominence a young fellow named +Tom Driscoll, whose proper place was away in the obscure background. +Before the book was half finished those three were taking things almost +entirely into their own hands and working the whole tale as a private +venture of their own--a tale which they had nothing at all to do with, by +rights. + +When the book was finished and I came to look around to see what had +become of the team I had originally started out with--Aunt Patsy Cooper, +Aunt Betsy Hale, and two boys, and Rowena the lightweight heroine--they +were nowhere to be seen; they had disappeared from the story some time or +other. I hunted about and found them--found them stranded, idle, +forgotten, and permanently useless. It was very awkward. It was awkward +all around, but more particularly in the case of Rowena, because there +was a love match on, between her and one of the twins that constituted +the freak, and I had worked it up to a blistering heat and thrown in a +quite dramatic love quarrel, wherein Rowena scathingly denounced her +betrothed for getting drunk, and scoffed at his explanation of how it had +happened, and wouldn't listen to it, and had driven him from her in the +usual "forever" way; and now here she sat crying and brokenhearted; for +she had found that he had spoken only the truth; that is was not he, but +the other of the freak that had drunk the liquor that made him drunk; +that her half was a prohibitionist and had never drunk a drop in his +life, and altogether tight as a brick three days in the week, was wholly +innocent of blame; and indeed, when sober, was constantly doing all he +could to reform his brother, the other half, who never got any +satisfaction out of drinking, anyway, because liquor never affected him. +Yes, here she was, stranded with that deep injustice of hers torturing +her poor torn heart. + +I didn't know what to do with her. I was as sorry for her as anybody +could be, but the campaign was over, the book was finished, she was +sidetracked, and there was no possible way of crowding her in, anywhere. +I could not leave her there, of course; it would not do. After spreading +her out so, and making such a to-do over her affairs, it would be +absolutely necessary to account to the reader for her. I thought and +thought and studied and studied; but I arrived at nothing. I finally saw +plainly that there was really no way but one--I must simply give her the +grand bounce. It grieved me to do it, for after associating with her so +much I had come to kind of like her after a fashion, notwithstanding +things and was so nauseatingly sentimental. Still it had to be done. So +at the top of Chapter XVII I put a "Calendar" remark concerning July the +Fourth, and began the chapter with this statistic: + +"Rowena went out in the backyard after supper to see the fireworks and +fell down the well and got drowned." + +It seemed abrupt, but I thought maybe the reader wouldn't notice it, +because I changed the subject right away to something else. Anyway it +loosened up Rowena from where she was stuck and got her out of the way, +and that was the main thing. It seemed a prompt good way of weeding out +people that had got stalled, and a plenty good enough way for those +others; so I hunted up the two boys and said, "They went out back one +night to stone the cat and fell down the well and got drowned." Next I +searched around and found old Aunt Patsy and Aunt Betsy Hale where they +were around, and said, "They went out back one night to visit the sick +and fell down the well and got drowned." I was going to drown some +others, but I gave up the idea, partly because I believed that if I kept +that up it would arouse attention, and perhaps sympathy with those people, +and partly because it was not a large well and would not hold any more +anyway. + +Still the story was unsatisfactory. Here was a set of new characters who +were become inordinately prominent and who persisted in remaining so to +the end; and back yonder was an older set who made a large noise and a +great to-do for a little while and then suddenly played out utterly and +fell down the well. There was a radical defect somewhere, and I must +search it out and cure it. + +The defect turned out to be the one already spoken of--two stories in +one, a farce and a tragedy. So I pulled out the farce and left the +tragedy. This left the original team in, but only as mere names, not as +characters. Their prominence was wholly gone; they were not even worth +drowning; so I removed that detail. Also I took the twins apart and made +two separate men of them. They had no occasion to have foreign names now, +but it was too much trouble to remove them all through, so I left them +christened as they were and made no explanation. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + +THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS + +by Mark Twain + + + +A man who is born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of +it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has +no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some +people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality. He knows +these people, he knows the selected locality, and he trusts that he can +plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results. So he +goes to work. To write a novel? No--that is a thought which comes +later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale; a +very little tale; a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he is not +acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes +along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on till it +spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has happened +to me so many times. + +And I have noticed another thing: that as the short tale grows into the +long tale, the original intention (or motif) is apt to get abolished and +find itself superseded by a quite different one. It was so in the case +of a magazine sketch which I once started to write--a funny and fantastic +sketch about a prince and a pauper; it presently assumed a grave cast of +its own accord, and in that new shape spread itself out into a book. +Much the same thing happened with "Pudd'nhead Wilson." I had a +sufficiently hard time with that tale, because it changed itself from a +farce to a tragedy while I was going along with it--a most embarrassing +circumstance. But what was a great deal worse was, that it was not one +story, but two stories tangled together; and they obstructed and +interrupted each other at every turn and created no end of confusion and +annoyance. I could not offer the book for publication, for I was afraid +it would unseat the reader's reason. I did not know what was the matter +with it, for I had not noticed, as yet, that it was two stories in one. +It took me months to make that discovery. I carried the manuscript back +and forth across the Atlantic two or three times, and read it and studied +over it on shipboard; and at last I saw where the difficulty lay. I had +no further trouble. I pulled one of the stories out by the roots, and +left the other one--a kind of literary Caesarean operation. + +Would the reader care to know something about the story which I pulled +out? He has been told many a time how the born-and-trained novelist +works. Won't he let me round and complete his knowledge by telling him +how the jack-leg does it? + +Originally the story was called "Those Extraordinary Twins." I meant to +make it very short. I had seen a picture of a youthful Italian "freak" +or "freaks" which was--or which were--on exhibition in our cities--a +combination consisting of two heads and four arms joined to a single body +and a single pair of legs--and I thought I would write an extravagantly +fantastic little story with this freak of nature for hero--or heroes +--a silly young miss for heroine, and two old ladies and two boys for the +minor parts. I lavishly elaborated these people and their doings, of +course. But the tale kept spreading along, and spreading along, and +other people got to intruding themselves and taking up more and more room +with their talk and their affairs. Among them came a stranger named +Pudd'nhead Wilson, and a woman named Roxana; and presently the doings of +these two pushed up into prominence a young fellow named Tom Driscoll, +whose proper place was away in the obscure background. Before the book +was half finished those three were taking things almost entirely into +their own hands and working the whole tale as a private venture of their +own--a tale which they had nothing at all to do with, by rights. + +When the book was finished and I came to look around to see what had +become of the team I had originally started out with--Aunt Patsy Cooper, +Aunt Betsy Hale, the two boys, and Rowena the light-weight heroine--they +were nowhere to be seen; they had disappeared from the story some time or +other. I hunted about and found them found them stranded, idle, +forgotten, and permanently useless. It was very awkward. It was awkward +all around; but more particularly in the case of Rowena, because there +was a love-match on, between her and one of the twins that constituted +the freak, and I had worked it up to a blistering heat and thrown in a +quite dramatic love-quarrel, wherein Rowena scathingly denounced her +betrothed for getting drunk, and scoffed at his explanation of how it had +happened, and wouldn't listen to it, and had driven him from her in the +usual "forever" way; and now here she sat crying and broken-hearted; for +she had found that he had spoken only the truth; that it was not he, but +the other half of the freak, that had drunk the liquor that made him +drunk; that her half was a prohibitionist and had never drunk a drop in +his life, and, although tight as a brick three days in the week, was +wholly innocent of blame; and indeed, when sober, was constantly doing +all he could to reform his brother, the other half, who never got any +satisfaction out of drinking, anyway, because liquor never affected him. +Yes, here she was, stranded with that deep injustice of hers torturing +her poor torn heart. + +I didn't know what to do with her. I was as sorry for her as anybody +could be, but the campaign was over, the book was finished, she was +sidetracked, and there was no possible way of crowding her in, anywhere. +I could not leave her there, of course; it would not do. After spreading +her out so, and making such a to-do over her affairs, it would be +absolutely necessary to account to the reader for her. I thought and +thought and studied and studied; but I arrived at nothing. I finally saw +plainly that there was really no way but one--I must simply give her the +grand bounce. It grieved me to do it, for after associating with her so +much I had come to kind of like her after a fashion, notwithstanding she +was such an ass and said such stupid irritating things and was so +nauseatingly sentimental. Still it had to be done. So, at the top of +Chapter XVII, I put in a "Calendar" remark concerning July Fourth, and +began the chapter with this statistic: + +"Rowena went out in the back yard after supper to see the fireworks and +fell down the well and got drowned." + +It seemed abrupt, but I thought maybe the reader wouldn't notice it, +because I changed the subject right away to something else. Anyway it +loosened up Rowena from where she was stuck and got her out of the way, +and that was the main thing. It seemed a prompt good way of weeding out +people that had got stalled, and a plenty good enough way for those +others; so I hunted up the two boys and said "they went out back one +night to stone the cat and fell down the well and got drowned." Next I +searched around and found old Aunt Patsy Cooper and Aunt Betsy Hale where +they were aground, and said "they went out back one night to visit the +sick and fell down the well and got drowned." I was going to drown some +of the others, but I gave up the idea, partly because I believed that if +I kept that up it would arouse attention, and perhaps sympathy with those +people, and partly because it was not a large well and would not hold any +more anyway. + +Still the story was unsatisfactory. Here was a set of new characters who +were become inordinately prominent and who persisted in remaining so to +the end; and back yonder was an older set who made a large noise and a +great to-do for a little while and then suddenly played out utterly and +fell down the well. There was a radical defect somewhere, and I must +search it out and cure it. + +The defect turned out to be the one already spoken of--two stories in +one, a farce and a tragedy. So I pulled out the farce and left the +tragedy. This left the original team in, but only as mere names, not as +characters. Their prominence was wholly gone; they were not even worth +drowning; so I removed that detail. Also I took those twins apart and +made two separate men of them. They had no occasion to have foreign +names now, but it was too much trouble to remove them all through, so I +left them christened as they were and made no explanation. + + + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE TWINS AS THEY REALLY WERE + +The conglomerate twins were brought on the the stage in Chapter I of the +original extravaganza. Aunt Patsy Cooper has received their letter +applying for board and lodging, and Rowena, her daughter, insane with +joy, is begging for a hearing of it: + +"Well, set down then, and be quiet a minute and don't fly around so; it +fairly makes me tired to see you. It starts off so: 'HONORED MADAM'--" + +"I like that, ma, don't you? It shows they're high-bred." + +"Yes, I noticed that when I first read it. 'My brother and I have seen +your advertisement, by chance, in a copy of your local journal--' + +"It's so beautiful and smooth, ma-don't you think so?" + +"Yes, seems so to me--'and beg leave to take the room you offer. We are +twenty-four years of age, and twins--'" + +"Twins! How sweet! I do hope they are handsome, and I just know they +are! Don't you hope they are, ma?" + +"Land, I ain't particular. 'We are Italians by birth--'" + +"It's so romantic! Just think there's never been one in this town, and +everybody will want to see them, and they're all ours! Think of that!" + +"--'but have lived long in the various countries of Europe, and several +years in the United States.'" + +"Oh, just think what wonders they've seen, ma! Won't it be good to hear +them talk?" + +"I reckon so; yes, I reckon so. 'Our names are Luigi and Angelo +Capello--'" + +"Beautiful, perfectly beautiful! Not like Jones and Robinson and those +horrible names." + +"'You desire but one guest, but dear madam, if you will allow us to pay +for two we will not discommode you. We will sleep together in the same +bed. We have always been used to this, and prefer it. And then he goes +on to say they will be down Thursday." + +"And this is Tuesday--I don't know how I'm ever going to wait, ma! The +time does drag along so, and I'm so dying to see them! Which of them do +you reckon is the tallest, ma?" + +"How do you s'pose I can tell, child? Mostly they are the same +size-twins are." + +"'Well then, which do you reckon is the best looking?" + +"Goodness knows--I don't." + +"I think Angelo is; it's the prettiest name, anyway. Don't you think +it's a sweet name, ma?" + +"Yes, it's well enough. I'd like both of them better if I knew the way +to pronounce them--the Eyetalian way, I mean. The Missouri way and the +Eyetalian way is different, I judge." + +"Maybe--yes. It's Luigi that writes the letter. What do you reckon is +the reason Angelo didn't write it?" + +"Why, how can I tell? What's the difference who writes it, so long as +it's done?" + +"Oh, I hope it wasn't because he is sick! You don't think he is sick, do +you, ma?" + +"Sick your granny; what's to make him sick?" + +"Oh, there's never any telling. These foreigners with that kind of names +are so delicate, and of course that kind of names are not suited to our +climate--you wouldn't expect it." + + +[And so-on and so-on, no end. The time drags along; Thursday comes: the +boat arrives in a pouring storm toward midnight.] + + +At last there was a knock at the door and the anxious family jumped to +open it. Two negro men entered, each carrying a trunk, and proceeded +upstairs toward the guest-room. Then followed a stupefying apparition +--a double-headed human creature with four arms, one body, and a single +pair of legs! It--or they, as you please--bowed with elaborate foreign +formality, but the Coopers could not respond immediately; they were +paralyzed. At this moment there came from the rear of the group a +fervent ejaculation--"My lan'!"--followed by a crash of crockery, and the +slave-wench Nancy stood petrified and staring, with a tray of wrecked +tea-things at her feet. The incident broke the spell, and brought the +family to consciousness. The beautiful heads of the new-comer bowed +again, and one of them said with easy grace and dignity: + +"I crave the honor, madam and miss, to introduce to you my brother, Count +Luigi Capello," (the other head bowed) "and myself--Count Angelo; and at +the same time offer sincere apologies for the lateness of our coming, +which was unavoidable," and both heads bowed again. + +The poor old lady was in a whirl of amazement and confusion, but she +managed to stammer out: + +"I'm sure I'm glad to make your acquaintance, sir--I mean, gentlemen. +As for the delay, it is nothing, don't mention it. This is my daughter +Rowena, sir--gentlemen. Please step into the parlor and sit down and +have a bite and sup; you are dreadful wet and must be uncomfortable +--both of you, I mean." + +But to the old lady's relief they courteously excused themselves, saying +it would be wrong to keep the family out of their beds longer; then each +head bowed in turn and uttered a friendly good night, and the singular +figure moved away in the wake of Rowena's small brothers, who bore +candles, and disappeared up the stairs. + +The widow tottered into the parlor and sank into a chair with a gasp, +and Rowena followed, tongue-tied and dazed. The two sat silent in the +throbbing summer heat unconscious of the million-voiced music of the +mosquitoes, unconscious of the roaring gale, the lashing and thrashing of +the rain along the windows and the roof, the white glare of the +lightning, the tumultuous booming and bellowing of the thunder; conscious +of nothing but that prodigy, that uncanny apparition that had come and +gone so suddenly--that weird strange thing that was so soft-spoken and so +gentle of manner and yet had shaken them up like an earthquake with the +shock of its gruesome aspect. At last a cold little shudder quivered +along down the widow's meager frame and she said in a weak voice: + +"Ugh, it was awful just the mere look of that phillipene!" + +Rowena did not answer. Her faculties were still caked; she had not yet +found her voice. Presently the widow said, a little resentfully: + +"Always been used to sleeping together--in-fact, prefer it. And I was +thinking it was to accommodate me. I thought it was very good of them, +whereas a person situated as that young man is--" + +"Ma, you oughtn't to begin by getting up a prejudice against him. +I'm sure he is good-hearted and means well. Both of his faces show it." + +"I'm not so certain about that. The one on the left--I mean the one on +it's left--hasn't near as good a face, in my opinion, as its brother." + +"That's Luigi." + +"Yes, Luigi; anyway it's the dark-skinned one; the one that was west of +his brother when they stood in the door. Up to all kinds of mischief and +disobedience when he was a boy, I'll be bound. I lay his mother had +trouble to lay her hand on him when she wanted him. But the one on the +right is as good as gold, I can see that." + +"That's Angelo." + +"Yes, Angelo, I reckon, though I can't tell t'other from which by their +names, yet awhile. But it's the right-hand one--the blond one. He has +such kind blue eyes, and curly copper hair and fresh complexion--" + +"And such a noble face!--oh, it is a noble face, ma, just royal, you may +say! And beautiful deary me, how beautiful! But both are that; the dark +one's as beautiful as--a picture. There's no such wonderful faces and +handsome heads in this town none that even begin. And such hands, +especially Angelo's--so shapely and--" + +"Stuff, how could you tell which they belonged to?--they had gloves on." + +"Why, didn't I see them take off their hats?" + +"That don't signify. They might have taken off each other's hats. +Nobody could tell. There was just a wormy squirming of arms in the air +--seemed to be a couple of dozen of them, all writhing at once, and it +just made me dizzy to see them go." + +"Why, ma, I hadn't any difficulty. There's two arms on each shoulder--" + +"There, now. One arm on each shoulder belongs to each of the creatures, +don't it? For a person to have two arms on one shoulder wouldn't do him +any good, would it? Of course not. Each has an arm on each shoulder. +Now then, you tell me which of them belongs to which, if you can. They +don't know, themselves--they just work whichever arm comes handy. Of +course they do; especially if they are in a hurry and can't stop to think +which belongs to which." + +The mother seemed to have the rights of the argument, so the daughter +abandoned the struggle. Presently the widow rose with a yawn and said: + +"Poor thing, I hope it won't catch cold; it was powerful wet, just +drenched, you may say. I hope it has left its boots outside, so they can +be dried." + +Then she gave a little start, and looked perplexed. + +"Now I remember I heard one of them ask Joe to call him at half after +seven--I think it was the one on the left--no, it was the one to the east +of the other one--but I didn't hear the other one say any thing. I +wonder if he wants to be called too. Do you reckon it's too late to +ask?" + +"Why, ma, it's not necessary. Calling one is calling both. If one gets +up, the other's got to." + +"Sho, of course; I never thought of that. Well, come along, maybe we can +get some sleep, but I don't know, I'm so shook up with what we've been +through." + +The stranger had made an impression on the boys, too. They had a word of +talk as they were getting to bed. Henry, the gentle, the humane, said: + +"I feel ever so sorry for it, don't you, Joe?" + +But Joe was a boy of this world, active, enterprising, and had a +theatrical side to him: + +"Sorry? Why, how you talk! It can't stir a step without attracting +attention. It's just grand!" + +Henry said, reproachfully: + +"Instead of pitying it, Joe, you talk as if--" + +"Talk as if what? I know one thing mighty certain: if you can fix me so +I can eat for two and only have to stub toes for one, I ain't going to +fool away no such chance just for sentiment." + +The twins were wet and tired, and they proceeded to undress without-any +preliminary remarks. The abundance of sleeve made the partnership coat +hard to get off, for it was like skinning a tarantula; but it came at +last, after much tugging and perspiring. The mutual vest followed. Then +the brothers stood up before the glass, and each took off his own cravat +and collar. The collars were of the standing kind, and came high up +under the ears, like the sides of a wheelbarrow, as required by the +fashion of the day. The cravats were as broad as a bank-bill, with +fringed ends which stood far out to right and left like the wings of a +dragon-fly, and this also was strictly in accordance with the fashion of +the time. Each cravat, as to color, was in perfect taste, so far as its +owner's complexion was concerned--a delicate pink, in the case of the +blond brother, a violent scarlet in the case of the brunette--but as a +combination they broke all the laws of taste known to civilization. +Nothing more fiendish and irreconcilable than those shrieking and +blaspheming colors could have been contrived, The wet boots gave no end +of trouble--to Luigi. When they were off at last, Angelo said, with +bitterness: + +"I wish you wouldn't wear such tight boots, they hurt my feet." + +Luigi answered with indifference: + +"My friend, when I am in command of our body, I choose my apparel +according to my own convenience, as I have remarked more than several +times already. When you are in command, I beg you will do as you +please." + +Angelo was hurt, and the tears came into his eyes. There was gentle +reproach in his voice, but, not anger, when he replied: + +"Luigi, I often consult your wishes, but you never consult mine. When I +am in command I treat you as a guest; I try to make you feel at home; +when you are in command you treat me as an intruder, you make me feel +unwelcome. It embarrasses me cruelly in company, for I can, see that +people notice it and comment on it." + +"Oh, damn the people," responded the brother languidly, and with the air +of one who is tired of the subject. + +A slight shudder shook the frame of Angelo, but he said nothing and the +conversation ceased. Each buttoned his own share of the nightshirt in +silence; then Luigi, with Paine's Age of Reason in his hand, sat down in +one chair and put his feet in another and lit his pipe, while Angelo took +his Whole Duty of Man, and both began to read. Angelo presently began to +cough; his coughing increased and became mixed with gaspings for breath, +and he was finally obliged to make an appeal to his brother's humanity: + +"Luigi, if you would only smoke a little milder tobacco, I am sure I +could learn not to mind it in time, but this is so strong, and the pipe +is so rank that--" + +"Angelo, I wouldn't be such a baby! I have learned to smoke in a week, +and the trouble is already over with me; if you would try, you could +learn too, and then you would stop spoiling my comfort with your +everlasting complaints." + +"Ah, brother, that is a strong word--everlasting--and isn't quite fair. +I only complain when I suffocate; you know I don't complain when we are +in the open air." + +"Well, anyway, you could learn to smoke yourself." + +"But my principles, Luigi, you forget my principles. You would not have +me do a thing which I regard as a sin?" + +"Oh, bosh!" + +The conversation ceased again, for Angelo was sick and discouraged and +strangling; but after some time he closed his book and asked Luigi to +sing "From Greenland's Icy Mountains" with him, but he would not, and +when he tried to sing by himself Luigi did his best to drown his +plaintive tenor with a rude and rollicking song delivered in a thundering +bass. + +After the singing there was silence, and neither brother was happy. +Before blowing the light out Luigi swallowed half a tumbler of whisky, +and Angelo, whose sensitive organization could not endure intoxicants of +any kind, took a pill to keep it from giving him the headache. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +MA COOPER GETS ALL MIXED UP + +The family sat in the breakfast-room waiting for the twins to come down. +The widow was quiet, the daughter was alive with happy excitement. She +said: + +"Ah, they're a boon, ma, just a boon! on't you think so?" + +"Laws, I hope so, I don't know." + +"Why, ma, yes you do. They're so fine and handsome, and high-bred and +polite, so every way superior to our gawks here in this village; why, +they'll make life different from what it was--so humdrum and commonplace, +you know--oh, you may be sure they're full of accomplishments, and +knowledge of the world, and all that, that will be an immense advantage +to society here. Don't you think so, ma?" + +"Mercy on me, how should I know, and I've hardly set eyes on them yet." +After a pause she added, "They made considerable noise after they went +up." + +"Noise? Why, ma, they were singing! And it was beautiful, too." + +"Oh, it was well enough, but too mixed-up, seemed to me." + +"Now, ma, honor bright, did you ever hear 'Greenland's Icy Mountains' +sung sweeter--now did you?" + +"If it had been sung by itself, it would have been uncommon sweet, I +don't deny it; but what they wanted to mix it up with 'Old Bob Ridley' +for, I can't make out. Why, they don't go together, at all. They are +not of the same nature. 'Bob Ridley' is a common rackety slam-bang +secular song, one of the rippingest and rantingest and noisiest there is. +I am no judge of music, and I don't claim it, but in my opinion nobody +can make those two songs go together right." + +"Why, ma, I thought--" + +"It don't make any difference what you thought, it can't be done. They +tried it, and to my mind it was a failure. I never heard such a crazy +uproar; seemed to me, sometimes, the roof would come off; and as for the +cats--well, I've lived a many a year, and seen cats aggravated in more +ways than one, but I've never seen cats take on the way they took on last +night." + +"Well, I don't think that that goes for anything, ma, because it is the +nature of cats that any sound that is unusual--" + +"Unusual! You may well call it so. Now if they are going to sing duets +every night, I do hope they will both sing the same tune at the same +time, for in my opinion a duet that is made up of two different tunes is +a mistake; especially when the tunes ain't any kin to one another, that +way." + +"But, ma, I think it must be a foreign custom; and it must be right too; +and the best way, because they have had every opportunity to know what is +right, and it don't stand to reason that with their education they would +do anything but what the highest musical authorities have sanctioned. +You can't help but admit that, ma." + +The argument was formidably strong; the old lady could not find any way +around it; so, after thinking it over awhile she gave in with a sigh of +discontent, and admitted that the daughter's position was probably +correct. Being vanquished, she had no mind to continue the topic at that +disadvantage, and was about to seek a change when a change came of +itself. A footstep was heard on the stairs, and she said: + +"There-he's coming!" + +"They, ma--you ought to say they--it's nearer right." + +The new lodger, rather shoutingly dressed but looking superbly handsome, +stepped with courtly carnage into the trim little breakfast-room and put +out all his cordial arms at once, like one of those pocket-knives with a +multiplicity of blades, and shook hands with the whole family +simultaneously. He was so easy and pleasant and hearty that all +embarrassment presently thawed away and disappeared, and a cheery feeling +of friendliness and comradeship took its place. He--or preferably they +--were asked to occupy the seat of honor at the foot of the table. They +consented with thanks, and carved the beefsteak with one set of their +hands while they distributed it at the same time with the other set. + +"Will you have coffee, gentlemen, or tea?" + +"Coffee for Luigi, if you please, madam, tea for me." + +"Cream and sugar?" + +"For me, yes, madam; Luigi takes his coffee, black. Our natures differ a +good deal from each other, and our tastes also." + +The first time the negro girl Nancy appeared in the door and saw the two +heads turned in opposite directions and both talking at once, then saw +the commingling arms feed potatoes into one mouth and coffee into the +other at the same time, she had to pause and pull herself out of a +faintness that came over her; but after that she held her grip and was +able to wait on the table with fair courage. + +Conversation fell naturally into the customary grooves. It was a little +jerky, at first, because none of the family could get smoothly through a +sentence without a wabble in it here and a break there, caused by some +new surprise in the way of attitude or gesture on the part of the twins. +The weather suffered the most. The weather was all finished up and +disposed of, as a subject, before the simple Missourians had gotten +sufficiently wonted to the spectacle of one body feeding two heads to +feel composed and reconciled in the presence of so bizarre a miracle. +And even after everybody's mind became tranquilized there was still one +slight distraction left: the hand that picked up a biscuit carried it to +the wrong head, as often as any other way, and the wrong mouth devoured +it. This was a puzzling thing, and marred the talk a little. It +bothered the widow to such a degree that she presently dropped out of the +conversation without knowing it, and fell to watching and guessing and +talking to herself: + +"Now that hand is going to take that coffee to no, it's gone to the other +mouth; I can't understand it; and how, here is the dark-complected hand +with a potato in its fork, I'll see what goes with it--there, the +light-complected head's got it, as sure as I live!" + +Finally Rowena said: + +"Ma, what is the matter with you? Are you dreaming about something?" + +The old lady came to herself and blushed; then she explained with the +first random thing that came into her mind: "I saw Mr. Angelo take up Mr. +Luigi's coffee, and I thought maybe he--sha'n't I give you a cup, Mr. +Angelo?" + +"Oh no, madam, I am very much obliged, but I never drink coffee, much as +I would like to. You did see me take up Luigi's cup, it is true, but if +you noticed, I didn't carry it to my mouth, but to his." + +"Y-es, I thought you did: Did you mean to?" + +"How?" + +The widow was a little embarrassed again. She said: + +"I don't know but what I'm foolish, and you mustn't mind; but you see, +he got the coffee I was expecting to see you drink, and you got a potato +that I thought he was going to get. So I thought it might be a mistake +all around, and everybody getting what wasn't intended for him." + +Both twins laughed and Luigi said: + +"Dear madam, there wasn't any mistake. We are always helping each other +that way. It is a great economy for us both; it saves time and labor. +We have a system of signs which nobody can notice or understand but +ourselves. If I am using both my hands and want some coffee, I make the +sign and Angelo furnishes it to me; and you saw that when he needed a +potato I delivered it." + +"How convenient!" + +"Yes, and often of the extremest value. Take the Mississippi boats, for +instance. They are always overcrowded. There is table-room for only +half of the passengers, therefore they have to set a second table for the +second half. The stewards rush both parties, they give them no time to +eat a satisfying meal, both divisions leave the table hungry. It isn't +so with us. Angelo books himself for the one table, I book myself for +the other. Neither of us eats anything at the other's table, but just +simply works--works. Thus, you see there are four hands to feed Angelo, +and the same four to feed me. Each of us eats two meals." + +The old lady was dazed with admiration, and kept saying, "It is perfectly +wonderful, perfectly wonderful" and the boy Joe licked his chops +enviously, but said nothing--at least aloud. + +"Yes," continued Luigi, "our construction may have its disadvantages--in +fact, has but it also has its compensations of one sort and another. Take +travel, for instance. Travel is enormously expensive, in all countries; +we have been obliged to do a vast deal of it--come, Angelo, don't put any +more sugar in your tea, I'm just over one indigestion and don't want +another right away--been obliged to do a deal of it, as I was saying. +Well, we always travel as one person, since we occupy but one seat; so we +save half the fare." + +"How romantic!" interjected Rowena, with effusion. + +"Yes, my dear young lady, and how practical too, and economical. In +Europe, beds in the hotels are not charged with the board, but +separately--another saving, for we stood to our rights and paid for the +one bed only. The landlords often insisted that as both of us occupied +the bed we ought--" + +"No, they didn't," said Angelo. "They did it only twice, and in both +cases it was a double bed--a rare thing in Europe--and the double bed +gave them some excuse. Be fair to the landlords; twice doesn't +constitute 'often.'" + +"Well, that depends--that depends. I knew a man who fell down a well +twice. He said he didn't mind the first time, but he thought the second +time was once too often. Have I misused that word, Mrs. Cooper?" + +"To tell the truth, I was afraid you had, but it seems to look, now, like +you hadn't." She stopped, and was evidently struggling with the +difficult problem a moment, then she added in the tone of one who is +convinced without being converted, "It seems so, but I can't somehow tell +why." + +Rowena thought Luigi's retort was wonderfully quick and bright, and she +remarked to herself with satisfaction that there wasn't any young native +of Dawson's Landing that could have risen to the occasion like that. +Luigi detected the applause in her face, and expressed his pleasure and +his thanks with his eyes; and so eloquently withal, that the girl was +proud and pleased, and hung out the delicate sign of it on her cheeks. +Luigi went on, with animation: + +"Both of us get a bath for one ticket, theater seat for one ticket, +pew-rent is on the same basis, but at peep-shows we pay double." + +"We have much to' be thankful for," said Angelo, impressively, with a +reverent light in his eye and a reminiscent tone in his voice, "we have +been greatly blessed. As a rule, what one of us has lacked, the other, +by the bounty of Providence, has been able to supply. My brother is +hardy, I am not; he is very masculine, assertive, aggressive; I am much +less so. I am subject to illness, he is never ill. I cannot abide +medicines, and cannot take them, but he has no prejudice against them, +and--" + +"Why, goodness gracious," interrupted the widow, "when you are sick, does +he take the medicine for you?" + +"Always, madam." + +"Why, I never heard such a thing in my life! I think it's beautiful of +you." + +"Oh, madam, it's nothing, don't mention it, it's really nothing at all." + +"But I say it's beautiful, and I stick to it!" cried the widow, with a +speaking moisture in her eye. + +"A well brother to take the medicine for his poor sick brother--I wish I +had such a son," and she glanced reproachfully at her boys. "I declare +I'll never rest till I've shook you by the hand," and she scrambled out +of her chair in a fever of generous enthusiasm, and made for the twins, +blind with her tears, and began to shake. The boy Joe corrected her: +"You're shaking the wrong one, ma." + +This flurried her, but she made a swift change and went on shaking. + +"Got the wrong one again, ma," said the boy. + +"Oh, shut up, can't you!" said the widow, embarrassed and irritated. +"Give me all your hands, I want to shake them all; for I know you are +both just as good as you can be." + +It was a victorious thought, a master-stroke of diplomacy, though that +never occurred to her and she cared nothing for diplomacy. She shook the +four hands in turn cordially, and went back to her place in a state of +high and fine exultation that made her look young and handsome. + +"Indeed I owe everything to Luigi," said Angelo, affectionately. +"But for him I could not have survived our boyhood days, when we were +friendless and poor--ah, so poor! We lived from hand to mouth-lived on +the coarse fare of unwilling charity, and for weeks and weeks together +not a morsel of food passed my lips, for its character revolted me and I +could not eat it. But for Luigi I should have died. He ate for us +both." + +"How noble!" sighed Rowena. + +"Do you hear that?" said the widow, severely, to her boys. "Let it be an +example to you--I mean you, Joe." + +Joe gave his head a barely perceptible disparaging toss and said: "Et for +both. It ain't anything I'd 'a' done it." + +"Hush, if you haven't got any better manners than that. You don't see +the point at all. It wasn't good food." + +"I don't care--it was food, and I'd 'a' et it if it was rotten." + +"Shame! Such language! Can't you understand? They were starving +--actually starving--and he ate for both, and--" + +"Shucks! you gimme a chance and I'll--" + +"There, now--close your head! and don't you open it again till you're +asked." + + [Angelo goes on and tells how his parents the Count and Countess had + to fly from Florence for political reasons, and died poor in Berlin + bereft of their great property by confiscation; and how he and Luigi + had to travel with a freak-show during two years and suffer + semi-starvation.] + +"That hateful black-bread; but I seldom ate anything during that time; +that was poor Luigi's affair--" + +"I'll never Mister him again!" cried the widow, with strong emotion, +"he's Luigi to me, from this out!" + +"Thank you a thousand times, madam, a thousand times! though in truth I +don't deserve it." + +"Ah, Luigi is always the fortunate one when honors are showering," said +Angelo, plaintively; "now what have I done, Mrs. Cooper, that you leave +me out? Come, you must strain a point in my favor." + +"Call you Angelo? Why, certainly I will; what are you thinking of! In +the case of twins, why--" + +"But, ma, you're breaking up the story--do let him go on." + +"You keep still, Rowena Cooper, and he can go on all the better, I +reckon. One interruption don't hurt, it's two that makes the trouble." + +"But you've added one, now, and that is three." + +"Rowena! I will not allow you to talk back at me when you have got +nothing rational to say." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +ANGELO IS BLUE + +[After breakfast the whole village crowded in, and there was a grand +reception in honor of the twins; and at the close of it the gifted +"freak" captured everybody's admiration by sitting down at the piano and +knocking out a classic four-handed piece in great style. Then the judge +took it--or them--driving in his buggy and showed off his village.] + +All along the streets the people crowded the windows and stared at the +amazing twins. Troops of small boys flocked after the buggy, excited and +yelling. At first the dogs showed no interest. They thought they merely +saw three men in a buggy--a matter of no consequence; but when they found +out the facts of the case, they altered their opinion pretty radically, +and joined the boys, expressing their minds as they came. Other dogs got +interested; indeed, all the dogs. It was a spirited sight to see them +come leaping fences, tearing around corners, swarming out of every +bystreet and alley. The noise they made was something beyond belief +--or praise. They did not seem to be moved by malice but only by +prejudice, the common human prejudice against lack of conformity. If the +twins turned their heads, they broke and fled in every direction, but +stopped at a safe distance and faced about; and then formed and came on +again as soon as the strangers showed them their back. Negroes and +farmers' wives took to the woods when the buggy came upon them suddenly, +and altogether the drive was pleasant and animated, and a refreshment all +around. + + [It was a long and lively drive. Angelo was a Methodist, Luigi was + a Free-thinker. The judge was very proud of his Freethinkers' + Society, which was flourishing along in a most prosperous way and + already had two members--himself and the obscure and neglected + Pudd'nhead Wilson. It was to meet that evening, and he invited + Luigi to join; a thing which Luigi was glad to do, partly because it + would please himself, and partly because it would gravel Angelo.] + +They had now arrived at the widow's gate, and the excursion was ended. +The twins politely expressed their obligations for the pleasant outing +which had been afforded them; to which the judge bowed his thanks, +and then said he would now go and arrange for the Free-thinkers' meeting, +and would call for Count Luigi in the evening. + +"For you also, dear sir," he added hastily, turning to Angelo and bowing. +"In addressing myself particularly to your brother, I was not meaning to +leave you out. It was an unintentional rudeness, I assure you, and due +wholly to accident--accident and preoccupation. I beg you to forgive +me." + +His quick eye had seen the sensitive blood mount into Angelo's face, +betraying the wound that had been inflicted. The sting of the slight had +gone deep, but the apology was so prompt, and so evidently sincere, that +the hurt was almost immediately healed, and a forgiving smile testified +to the kindly judge that all was well again. + +Concealed behind Angelo's modest and unassuming exterior, and unsuspected +by any but his intimates, was a lofty pride, a pride of almost abnormal +proportions, indeed, and this rendered him ever the prey of slights; and +although they were almost always imaginary ones, they hurt none the less +on that account. By ill fortune judge Driscoll had happened to touch his +sorest point, i.e., his conviction that his brother's presence was +welcomer everywhere than his own; that he was often invited, out of mere +courtesy, where only his brother was wanted, and that in a majority of +cases he would not be included in an invitation if he could be left out +without offense. A sensitive nature like this is necessarily subject to +moods; moods which traverse the whole gamut of feeling; moods which know +all the climes of emotion, from the sunny heights of joy to the black +abysses of despair. At times, in his seasons of deepest depressions, +Angelo almost wished that he and his brother might become segregated from +each other and be separate individuals, like other men. But of course as +soon as his mind cleared and these diseased imaginings passed away, he +shuddered at the repulsive thought, and earnestly prayed that it might +visit him no more. To be separate, and as other men are! How awkward it +would seem; how unendurable. What would he do with his hands, his arms? +How would his legs feel? How odd, and strange, and grotesque every +action, attitude, movement, gesture would be. To sleep by himself, eat +by himself, walk by himself--how lonely, how unspeakably lonely! No, no, +any fate but that. In every way and from every point, the idea was +revolting. + +This was of course natural; to have felt otherwise would have been +unnatural. He had known no life but a combined one; he had been familiar +with it from his birth; he was not able to conceive of any other as being +agreeable, or even bearable. To him, in the privacy of his secret +thoughts, all other men were monsters, deformities: and during +three-fourths of his life their aspect had filled him with what promised +to be an unconquerable aversion. But at eighteen his eye began to take +note of female beauty; and little by little, undefined longings grew up +in his heart, under whose softening influences the old stubborn aversion +gradually diminished, and finally disappeared. Men were still +monstrosities to him, still deformities, and in his sober moments he had +no desire to be like them, but their strange and unsocial and uncanny +construction was no longer offensive to him. + +This had been a hard day for him, physically and mentally. He had been +called in the morning before he had quite slept off the effects of the +liquor which Luigi had drunk; and so, for the first half-hour had had the +seedy feeling, and languor, the brooding depression, the cobwebby mouth +and druggy taste that come of dissipation and are so ill a preparation +for bodily or intellectual activities; the long violent strain of the +reception had followed; and this had been followed, in turn, by the +dreary sight-seeing, the judge's wearying explanations and laudations of +the sights, and the stupefying clamor of the dogs. As a congruous +conclusion, a fitting end, his feelings had been hurt, a slight had been +put upon him. He would have been glad to forego dinner and betake +himself to rest and sleep, but he held his peace and said no word, for he +knew his brother, Luigi, was fresh, unweary, full of life, spirit, +energy; he would have scoffed at the idea of wasting valuable time on a +bed or a sofa, and would have refused permission. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +SUPERNATURAL CHRONOMETRY + +Rowena was dining out, Joe and Harry were belated at play, there +were but three chairs and four persons that noon at the home +dinner-table--the twins, the widow, and her chum, Aunt Betsy Hale. The +widow soon perceived that Angelo's spirits were as low as Luigi's were +high, and also that he had a jaded look. Her motherly solicitude was +aroused, and she tried to get him interested in the talk and win him +to a happier frame of mind, but the cloud of sadness remained on his +countenance. Luigi lent his help, too. He used a form and a phrase which +he was always accustomed to employ in these circumstances. He gave his +brother an affectionate slap on the shoulder and said, encouragingly: + +"Cheer up, the worst is yet to come!" + +But this did no good. It never did. If anything, it made the matter +worse, as a rule, because it irritated Angelo. This made it a favorite +with Luigi. By and by the widow said: + +"Angelo, you are tired, you've overdone yourself; you go right to bed +after dinner, and get a good nap and a rest, then you'll be all right." + +"Indeed, I would give anything if I could do that, madam." + +"And what's to hender, I'd like to know? Land, the room's yours to do +what you please with! The idea that you can't do what you like with your +own!" + +"But, you see, there's one prime essential--an essential of the very +first importance--which isn't my own." + +"What is that?" + +"My body." + +The old ladies looked puzzled, and Aunt Betsy Hale said: + +"Why bless your heart, how is that?" + +"It's my brother's." + +"Your brother's! I don't quite understand. I supposed it belonged to +both of you." + +"So it does. But not to both at the same time." + +"That is mighty curious; I don't see how it can be. I shouldn't think it +could be managed that way." + +"Oh, it's a good enough arrangement, and goes very well; in fact, it +wouldn't do to have it otherwise. I find that the teetotalers and the +anti-teetotalers hire the use of the same hall for their meetings. Both +parties don't use it at the same time, do they?" + +"You bet they don't!" said both old ladies in a breath. + +"And, moreover," said Aunt Betsy, "the Freethinkers and the Baptist Bible +class use the same room over the Market house, but you can take my word +for it they don't mush up together and use it at the same time.' + +"Very well," said Angelo, "you understand it now. And it stands to +reason that the arrangement couldn't be improved. I'll prove it to you. +If our legs tried to obey two wills, how could we ever get anywhere? +I would start one way, Luigi would start another, at the same moment +--the result would be a standstill, wouldn't it?" + +"As sure as you are born! Now ain't that wonderful! A body would never +have thought of it." + +"We should always be arguing and fussing and disputing over the merest +trifles. We should lose worlds of time, for we couldn't go down-stairs +or up, couldn't go to bed, couldn't rise, couldn't wash, couldn't dress, +couldn't stand up, couldn't sit down, couldn't even cross our legs, +without calling a meeting first and explaining the case and passing +resolutions, and getting consent. It wouldn't ever do--now would it?" + +"Do? Why, it would wear a person out in a week! Did you ever hear +anything like it, Patsy Cooper?" + +"Oh, you'll find there's more than one thing about them that ain't +commonplace," said the widow, with the complacent air of a person with a +property right in a novelty that is under admiring scrutiny. + +"Well, now, how ever do you manage it? I don't mind saying I'm suffering +to know." + +"He who made us," said Angelo reverently, "and with us this difficulty, +also provided a way out of it. By a mysterious law of our being, each of +us has utter and indisputable command of our body a week at a time, turn +and turn about." + +"Well, I never! Now ain't that beautiful!" + +"Yes, it is beautiful and infinitely wise and just. The week ends every +Saturday at midnight to the minute, to the second, to the last shade of +a fraction of a second, infallibly, unerringly, and in that instant the +one brother's power over the body vanishes and the other brother takes +possession, asleep or awake." + +"How marvelous are His ways, and past finding out!" + +Luigi said: "So exactly to the instant does the change come, that during +our stay in many of the great cities of the world, the public clocks were +regulated by it; and as hundreds of thousands of private clocks and +watches were set and corrected in accordance with the public clocks, we +really furnished the standard time for the entire city." + +"Don't tell me that He don't do miracles any more! Blowing down the +walls of Jericho with rams' horns wa'n't as difficult, in my opinion." + +"And that is not all," said Angelo. "A thing that is even more +marvelous, perhaps, is the fact that the change takes note of longitude +and fits itself to the meridian we are on. Luigi is in command this +week. Now, if on Saturday night at a moment before midnight we could fly +in an instant to a point fifteen degrees west of here, he would hold +possession of the power another hour, for the change observes local time +and no other." + +Betsy Hale was deeply impressed, and said with solemnity: + +"Patsy Cooper, for detail it lays over the Passage of the Red Sea." + +"Now, I shouldn't go as far as that," said Aunt Patsy, "but if you've a +mind to say Sodom and Gomorrah, I am with you, Betsy Hale." + +"I am agreeable, then, though I do think I was right, and I believe +Parson Maltby would say the same. Well, now, there's another thing. +Suppose one of you wants to borrow the legs a minute from the one that's +got them, could he let him?" + +"Yes, but we hardly ever do that. There were disagreeable results, +several times, and so we very seldom ask or grant the privilege, +nowadays, and we never even think of such a thing unless the case is +extremely urgent. Besides, a week's possession at a time seems so little +that we can't bear to spare a minute of it. People who have the use of +their legs all the time never think of what a blessing it is, of course. +It never occurs to them; it's just their natural ordinary condition, +and so it does not excite them at all. But when I wake up, on Sunday +morning, and it's my week and I feel the power all through me, oh, such a +wave of exultation and thanksgiving goes surging over me, and I want to +shout 'I can walk! I can walk!' Madam, do you ever, at your uprising, +want to shout 'I can walk! I can walk!'?" + +"No, you poor unfortunate cretur', but I'll never get out of my bed again +without doing it! Laws, to think I've had this unspeakable blessing all +my long life and never had the grace to thank the good Lord that gave it +to me!" + +Tears stood in the eyes of both the old ladies and the widow said, +softly: + +"Betsy Hale, we have learned something, you and me." + +The conversation now drifted wide, but by and by floated back once more +to that admired detail, the rigid and beautiful impartiality with which +the possession of power had been distributed, between the twins. Aunt +Betsy saw in it a far finer justice than human law exhibits in related +cases. She said: + +"In my opinion it ain't right no, and never has been right, the way a +twin born a quarter of a minute sooner than the other one gets all the +land and grandeurs and nobilities in the old countries and his brother +has to go bare and be a nobody. Which of you was born first?" + +Angelo's head was resting against Luigi's; weariness had overcome him, +and for the past five minutes he had been peacefully sleeping. The old +ladies had dropped their voices to a lulling drone, to help him to steal +the rest his brother wouldn't take him up-stairs to get. Luigi listened +a moment to Angelo's regular breathing, then said in a voice barely +audible: + +"We were both born at the same time, but I am six months older than he +is." + +"For the land's sake!" + +"'Sh! on't wake him up; he wouldn't like my telling this. It has +always been kept secret till now." + +"But how in the world can it be? If you were both born at the same time, +how can one of you be older than the other?" + +"It is very simple, and I assure you it is true. I was born with a full +crop of hair, he was as bald as an egg for six months. I could walk six +months before he could make a step. I finished teething six months ahead +of him. I began to take solids six months before he left the breast. +I began to talk six months before he could say a word. Last, and +absolutely unassailable proof, the sutures in my skull closed six months +ahead of his. Always just that six months' difference to a day. Was +that accident? Nobody is going to claim that, I'm sure. It was ordained +it was law it had its meaning, and we know what that meaning was. Now +what does this overwhelming body of evidence establish? It establishes +just one thing, and that thing it establishes beyond any peradventure +whatever. Friends, we would not have it known for the world, and I must +beg you to keep it strictly to yourselves, but the truth is, we are no +more twins than you are." + +The two old ladies were stunned, paralyzed-petrified, one may almost say +--and could only sit and gaze vacantly at each other for some moments; +then Aunt Betsy Hale said impressively: + +"There's no getting around proof like that. I do believe it's the most +amazing thing I ever heard of." She sat silent a moment or two and +breathing hard with excitement, then she looked up and surveyed the +strangers steadfastly a little while, and added: "Well, it does beat me, +but I would have took you for twins anywhere." + +"So would I, so would I," said Aunt Patsy with the emphasis of a +certainty that is not impaired by any shade of doubt. + +"Anybody would-anybody in the world, I don't care who he is," said Aunt +Betsy with decision. + +"You won't tell," said Luigi, appealingly. + +"Oh, dear, no!" answered both ladies promptly, "you can trust us, don't +you be afraid." + +"That is good of you, and kind. Never let on; treat us always as if we +were twins." + +"You can depend on us," said Aunt Betsy, "but it won't be easy, because +now that I know you ain't you don't seem so." + +Luigi muttered to himself with satisfaction: "That swindle has gone +through without change of cars." + +It was not very kind of him to load the poor things up with a secret like +that, which would be always flying to their tongues' ends every time they +heard any one speak of the strangers as twins, and would become harder +and harder to hang on to with every recurrence of the temptation to tell +it, while the torture of retaining it would increase with every new +strain that was applied; but he never thought of that, and probably would +not have worried much about it if he had. + +A visitor was announced--some one to see the twins. They withdrew to the +parlor, and the two old ladies began to discuss with interest the strange +things which they had been listening to. When they had finished the +matter to their satisfaction, and Aunt Betsy rose to go, she stopped to +ask a question: + +"How does things come on between Roweny and Tom Driscoll?" + +"Well, about the same. He writes tolerable often, and she answers +tolerable seldom." + +"Where is he?" + +"In St. Louis, I believe, though he's such a gadabout that a body can't +be very certain of him, I reckon." + +"Don't Roweny know?" + +"Oh, yes, like enough. I haven't asked her lately." + +"Do you know how him and the judge are getting along now?" + +"First rate, I believe. Mrs. Pratt says so; and being right in the +house, and sister to the one and aunt to t'other, of course she ought to +know. She says the judge is real fond of him when he's away; but frets +when he's around and is vexed with his ways, and not sorry to have him go +again. He has been gone three weeks this time--a pleasant thing for both +of them, I reckon." + +"Tom's rather harum-scarum, but there ain't anything bad in him, I +guess." + +"Oh, no, he's just young, that's all. Still, twenty-three is old, in one +way. A young man ought to be earning his living by that time. If Tom +were doing that, or was even trying to do it, the judge would be a heap +better satisfied with him. Tom's always going to begin, but somehow he +can't seem to find just the opening he likes." + +"Well, now, it's partly the judge's own fault. Promising the boy his +property wasn't the way to set him to earning a fortune of his own. But +what do you think is Roweny beginning to lean any toward him, or ain't +she?" + +Aunt Patsy had a secret in her bosom; she wanted to keep it there, but +nature was too strong for her. She drew Aunt Betsy aside, and said in +her most confidential and mysterious manner: + +"Don't you breathe a syllable to a soul--I'm going to tell you something. +In my opinion Tom Driscoll's chances were considerable better yesterday +than they are to-day." + +"Patsy Cooper, what do you mean?" + +"It's so, as sure as you're born. I wish you could 'a' been at breakfast +and seen for yourself." + +"You don't mean it!" + +"Well, if I'm any judge, there's a leaning--there's a leaning, sure." + +"My land! Which one of 'em is it?" + +"I can't say for certain, but I think it's the youngest one--Anjy." + +Then there were hand-shakings, and congratulations, and hopes, and so on, +and the old ladies parted, perfectly happy--the one in knowing something +which the rest of the town didn't, and the other in having been the sole +person able to furnish that knowledge. + +The visitor who had called to see the twins was the Rev. Mr. Hotchkiss, +pastor of the Baptist church. At the reception Angelo had told him he +had lately experienced a change in his religious views, and was now +desirous of becoming a Baptist, and would immediately join Mr. +Hotchkiss's church. There was no time to say more, and the brief talk +ended at that point. The minister was much gratified, and had dropped in +for a moment now, to invite the twins to attend his Bible class at eight +that evening. Angelo accepted, and was expecting Luigi to decline, but +he did not, because he knew that the Bible class and the Freethinkers met +in the same room, and he wanted to treat his brother to the embarrassment +of being caught in free-thinking company. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +GUILT AND INNOCENCE FINELY BLENT + +[A long and vigorous quarrel follows, between the twins. And there is +plenty to quarrel about, for Angelo was always seeking truth, and this +obliged him to change and improve his religion with frequency, which +wearied Luigi, and annoyed him too; for he had to be present at each new +enlistment--which placed him in the false position of seeming to indorse +and approve his brother's fickleness; moreover, he had to go to Angelo's +prohibition meetings, and he hated them. On the other hand, when it was +his week to command the legs he gave Angelo just cause of complaint, for +he took him to circuses and horse-races and fandangoes, exposing him to +all sorts of censure and criticism; and he drank, too; and whatever he +drank went to Angelo's head instead of his own and made him act +disgracefully. When the evening was come, the two attended the +Free-thinkers' meeting, where Angelo was sad and silent; then came the +Bible class and looked upon him coldly, finding him in such company. +Then they went to Wilson's house and Chapter XI of Pudd'nhead Wilson +follows, which tells of the girl seen in Tom Driscoll's room; and closes +with the kicking of Tom by Luigi at the anti-temperance mass-meeting of +the Sons of Liberty; with the addition of some account of Roxy's +adventures as a chamber-maid on a Mississippi boat. Her exchange of the +children had been flippantly and farcically described in an earlier +chapter.] + +Next morning all the town was a-buzz with great news; Pudd'nhead Wilson +had a law case! The, public astonishment was so great and the public +curiosity so intense, that when the justice of the peace opened his +court, the place was packed with people and even the windows were full. +Everybody was, flushed and perspiring; the summer heat was almost +unendurable. + +Tom Driscoll had brought a charge of assault and battery against the +twins. Robert Allen was retained by Driscoll, David Wilson by the +defense. Tom, his native cheerfulness unannihilated by his back-breaking +and bone-bruising passage across the massed heads of the Sons of Liberty +the previous night, laughed his little customary laugh, and said to +Wilson: + +"I've kept my promise, you see; I'm throwing my business your way. +Sooner than I was expecting, too." + +"It's very good of you--particularly if you mean to keep it up." + +"Well, I can't tell about that yet. But we'll see. If I find you +deserve it I'll take you under my protection and make your fame and +fortune for you." + +"I'll try to deserve it, Tom." + +A jury was sworn in; then Mr. Allen said: + +"We will detain your honor but a moment with this case. It is not one +where any doubt of the fact of the assault can enter in. These +gentlemen--the accused--kicked my client at the Market Hall last night; +they kicked him with violence; with extraordinary violence; with even +unprecedented violence, I may say; insomuch that he was lifted entirely +off his feet and discharged into the midst of the audience. We can prove +this by four hundred witnesses--we shall call but three. Mr. Harkness +will take the stand." + +Mr. Harkness, being sworn, testified that he was chairman upon the +occasion mentioned; that he was close at hand and saw the defendants in +this action kick the plaintiff into the air and saw him descend among the +audience. + +"Take the witness," said Allen. + +"Mr. Harkness," said Wilson, "you say you saw these gentlemen, my +clients, kick the plaintiff. Are you sure--and please remember that you +are on oath--are you perfectly sure that you saw both of them kick him, +or only one? Now be careful." + +A bewildered look began to spread itself over the witness's face. He +hesitated, stammered, but got out nothing. His eyes wandered to the +twins and fixed themselves there with a vacant gaze. + +"Please answer, Mr. Harkness, you are keeping the court waiting. It is +a very simple question." + +Counsel for the prosecution broke in with impatience: + +"Your honor, the question is an irrelevant triviality. Necessarily, they +both kicked him, for they have but the one pair of legs, and both are +responsible for them." + +Wilson said, sarcastically: + +"Will your honor permit this new witness to be sworn? He seems to +possess knowledge which can be of the utmost value just at this moment +--knowledge which would at once dispose of what every one must see is a +very difficult question in this case. Brother Allen, will you take the +stand?" + +"Go on with your case!" said Allen, petulantly. The audience laughed, +and got a warning from the court. + +"Now, Mr. Harkness," said Wilson, insinuatingly, "we shall have to insist +upon an answer to that question." + +"I--er--well, of course, I do not absolutely know, but in my opinion--" + +"Never mind your opinion, sir--answer the question." + +"I--why, I can't answer it." + +"That will do, Mr. Harkness. Stand down." + +The audience tittered, and the discomfited witness retired in a state of +great embarrassment. + +Mr. Wakeman took the stand and swore that he saw the twins kick the +plaintiff off the platform. + +The defense took the witness. + +"Mr. Wakeman, you have sworn that you saw these gentlemen kick the +plaintiff. Do I understand you to swear that you saw them both do it?" + +"Yes, sir,"--with derision. + +"How do you know that both did it?" + +"Because I saw them do it." + +The audience laughed, and got another warning from the court. + +"But by what means do you know that both, and not one, did it?" + +"Well, in the first place, the insult was given to both of them equally, +for they were called a pair of scissors. Of course they would both want +to resent it, and so--" + +"Wait! You are theorizing now. Stick to facts--counsel will attend to +the arguments. Go on." + +"Well, they both went over there--that I saw." + +"Very good. Go on." + +"And they both kicked him--I swear to it." + +"Mr. Wakeman, was Count Luigi, here, willing to join the Sons of Liberty +last night?" + +"Yes, sir, he was. He did join, too, and drank a glass or two of whisky, +like a man." + +"Was his brother willing to join?" + +"No, sir, he wasn't. He is a teetotaler, and was elected through a +mistake." + +"Was he given a glass of whisky?" + +"Yes, sir, but of course that was another mistake, and not intentional. +He wouldn't drink it. He set it down." A slight pause, then he added, +casually and quite simply: "The plaintiff reached for it and hogged it." + +There was a fine outburst of laughter, but as the justice was caught out +himself, his reprimand was not very vigorous. + +Mr. Allen jumped up and exclaimed: "I protest against these foolish +irrelevancies. What have they to do with the case?" + +Wilson said: "Calm yourself, brother, it was only an experiment. Now, +Mr. Wakeman, if one of these gentlemen chooses to join an association and +the other doesn't; and if one of them enjoys whisky and the other +doesn't, but sets it aside and leaves it unprotected" (titter from the +audience), "it seems to show that they have independent minds, and +tastes, and preferences, and that one of them is able to approve of a +thing at the very moment that the other is heartily disapproving of it. +Doesn't it seem so to you?" + +"Certainly it does. It's perfectly plain." + +"Now, then, it might be--I only say it might be--that one of these +brothers wanted to kick the plaintiff last night, and that the other +didn't want that humiliating punishment inflicted upon him in that public +way and before all those people. Isn't that possible?" + +"Of course it is. It's more than possible. I don't believe the blond +one would kick anybody. It was the other one that--" + +"Silence!" shouted the plaintiff's counsel, and went on with an angry +sentence which was lost in the wave of laughter that swept the house. + +"That will do, Mr. Wakeman," said Wilson, "you may stand down." + +The third witness was called. He had seen the twins kick the plaintiff. +Mr. Wilson took the witness. + +"Mr. Rogers, you say you saw these accused gentlemen kick the plaintiff?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Both of them?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Which of them kicked him first?" + +"Why--they--they both kicked him at the same time. + +"Are you perfectly sure of that?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"What makes you sure of it?" + +"Why, I stood right behind them, and saw them do it." + +"How many kicks were delivered?" + +"Only one." + +"If two men kick, the result should be two kicks, shouldn't it?" + +"Why--why yes, as a rule." + +"Then what do you think went with the other kick?" + +"I--well--the fact is, I wasn't thinking of two being necessary, this +time." + +"What do you think now?" + +"Well, I--I'm sure I don't quite know what to think, but I reckon that +one of them did half of the kick and the other one did the other half." + +Somebody in the crowd sung out: "It's the first sane thing that any of +them has said." + +The audience applauded. The judge said: "Silence! or I will clear the +court." + +Mr. Allen looked pleased, but Wilson did not seem disturbed. He said: + +"Mr. Rogers, you have favored us with what you think and what you reckon, +but as thinking and reckoning are not evidence, I will now give you a +chance to come out with something positive, one way or the other, and +shall require you to produce it. I will ask the accused to stand up and +repeat the phenomenal kick of last night." The twins stood up. "Now, +Mr. Rogers, please stand behind them." + +A Voice: "No, stand in front!" (Laughter. Silenced by the court.) +Another Voice: "No, give Tommy another highst!" (Laughter. Sharply +rebuked by the court.) + +"Now, then, Mr. Rogers, two kicks shall be delivered, one after the +other, and I give you my word that at least one of the two shall be +delivered by one of the twins alone, without the slightest assistance +from his brother. Watch sharply, for you have of to render a decision +without any if's and ands it." Rogers bent himself behind the twins with +palms just above his knees, in the modern attitude of the catcher at a +baseball match, and riveted eyes on the pair of legs in front of him. + +"Are you ready, Mr. Rogers?" + +"Ready sir." + +The kick, launched. + +"Have you got that one classified, Mr. Rogers?" + +"Let me study a minute, sir." + +"Take as much time as you please. Let me know when you are ready." + +For as much as a minute Rogers pondered, with all eyes and a breathless +interest fastened upon him. Then he gave the word: "Ready, sir." + +"Kick!" + +The kick that followed was an exact duplicate of the first one. + +"Now, then, Mr. Rogers, one of those kicks was an individual kick, not a +mutual one. You will now state positively which was the mutual one." + +The witness said, with a crestfallen look: + +"I've got to give it up. There ain't any man in the world that could +tell t'other from which, sir." + +"Do you still assert that last night's kick was a mutual kick?" + +"Indeed, I don't, sir." + +"That will do, Mr. Rogers. If my brother Allen desires to address the +court, your honor, very well; but as far as I am concerned I am ready to +let the case be at once delivered into the hands of this intelligent jury +without comment." + +Mr. Justice Robinson had been in office only two months, and in that +short time had not had many cases to try, of course. He had no knowledge +of laws and courts except what he had picked up since he came into +office. He was a sore trouble to the lawyers, for his rulings were +pretty eccentric sometimes, and he stood by them with Roman simplicity +and fortitude; but the people were well satisfied with him, for they saw +that his intentions were always right, that he was entirely impartial, +and that he usually made up in good sense what he lacked in technique, +so to speak. He now perceived that there was likely to be a miscarriage +of justice here, and he rose to the occasion. + +"Wait a moment, gentlemen," he said, "it is plain that an assault has +been committed it is plain to anybody; but the way things are going, the +guilty will certainly escape conviction. I can not allow this. Now---" + +"But, your honor!" said Wilson, interrupting him, earnestly but +respectfully, "you are deciding the case yourself, whereas the jury--" + +"Never mind the jury, Mr. Wilson; the jury will have a chance when there +is a reasonable doubt for them to take hold of--which there isn't, +so far. There is no doubt whatever that an assault has been committed. +The attempt to show that both of the accused committed it has failed. +Are they both to escape justice on that account? Not in this court, +if I can prevent it. It appears to have been a mistake to bring the +charge against them as a corporation; each should have been charged in +his capacity as an individual, and--" + +"But, your honor!" said Wilson, "in fairness to my clients I must insist +that inasmuch as the prosecution 'd not separate the--" + +"No wrong will be done your clients, sir--they will be protected; +also the public and the offended laws. Mr. Allen, you will amend your +pleadings, and put one of the accused on trial at a time." + +Wilson broke in: "But, your honor! this is wholly unprecedented! +To imperil an accused person by arbitrarily altering and widening the +charge against him in order to compass his conviction when the charge as +originally brought promises to fail to convict, is a thing unheard of +before." + +"Unheard of where?" + +"In the courts of this or any other state." + +The judge said with dignity: "I am not acquainted with the customs of +other courts, and am not concerned to know what they are. I am +responsible for this court, and I cannot conscientiously allow my +judgment to be warped and my judicial liberty hampered by trying to +conform to the caprices of other courts, be they--" + +"But, your honor, the oldest and highest courts in Europe--" + +"This court is not run on the European plan, Mr. Wilson; it is not run on +any plan but its own. It has a plan of its own; and that plan is, +to find justice for both State and accused, no matter what happens to be +practice and custom in Europe or anywhere else." (Great applause.) +"Silence! It has not been the custom of this court to imitate other +courts; it has not been the custom of this court to take shelter behind +the decisions of other courts, and we will not begin now. We will do the +best we can by the light that God has given us, and while this 'court +continues to have His approval, it will remain indifferent to what other +organizations may think of it." (Applause.) "Gentlemen, I must have +order!--quiet yourselves! Mr. Allen, you will now proceed against the +prisoners one at a time. Go on with the case." + +Allen was not at his ease. However, after whispering a moment with his +client and with one or two other people, he rose and said: + +"Your honor, I find it to be reported and believed that the accused are +able to act independently in many ways, but that this independence does +not extend to their legs, authority over their legs being vested +exclusively in the one brother during a specific term of days, and then +passing to the other brother for a like term, and so on, by regular +alternation. I could call witnesses who would prove that the accused had +revealed to them the existence of this extraordinary fact, and had also +made known which of them was in possession of the legs yesterday--and +this would, of course, indicate where the guilt of the assault belongs +--but as this would be mere hearsay evidence, these revelations not +having been made under oath" + +"Never mind about that, Mr. Allen. It may not all be hearsay. We shall +see. It may at least help to put us on the right track. Call the +witnesses." + +"Then I will call Mr. John Buckstone, who is now present, and I beg that +Mrs. Patsy Cooper may be sent for. Take the stand, Mr. Buckstone." + +Buckstone took the oath, and then testified that on the previous evening +the Count Angelo Capello had protested against going to the hall, and had +called all present to witness that he was going by compulsion and would +not go if he could help himself. Also, that the Count Luigi had replied +sharply that he would go, just the same, and that he, Count Luigi, would +see to that himself. Also, that upon Count Angelo's complaining about +being kept on his legs so long, Count Luigi retorted with apparent +surprise, "Your legs!--I like your impudence!" + +"Now we are getting at the kernel of the thing," observed the judge, with +grave and earnest satisfaction. "It looks as if the Count Luigi was in +possession of the battery at the time of the assault." + +Nothing further was elicited from Mr. Buckstone on direct examination. +Mr. Wilson took the witness. + +"Mr. Buckstone, about what time was it that that conversation took +place?" + +"Toward nine yesterday evening, sir." + +"Did you then proceed directly to the hall?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"How long did it take you to go there?" + +"Well, we walked; and as it was from the extreme edge of the town, and +there was no hurry, I judge it took us about twenty minutes, maybe a +trifle more." + +"About what hour was the kick delivered?" + +"About thirteen minutes and a half to ten." + +"Admirable! You are a pattern witness, Mr. Buckstone. How did you +happen to look at your watch at that particular moment?" + +"I always do it when I see an assault. It's likely I shall be called as +a witness, and it's a good point to have." + +"It would be well if others were as thoughtful. Was anything said, +between the conversation at my house and the assault, upon the detail +which we are now examining into?" + +"No, sir." + +"If power over the mutual legs was in the possession of one brother at +nine, and passed into the possession of the other one during the next +thirty or forty minutes, do you think you could have detected the +change?" + +"By no means!" + +"That is all, Mr. Buckstone." + +Mrs. Patsy Cooper was called. The crowd made way for her, and she came +smiling and bowing through the narrow human lane, with Betsy Hale, as +escort and support, smiling and bowing in her wake, the audience breaking +into welcoming cheers as the old favorites filed along. The judge did +not check this kindly demonstration of homage and affection, but let it +run its course unrebuked. + +The old ladies stopped and shook hands with the twins with effusion, then +gave the judge a friendly nod, and bustled into the seats provided for +them. They immediately began to deliver a volley of eager questions at +the friends around them: "What is this thing for?" "What is that thing +for?" "Who is that young man that's writing at the desk? Why, I +declare, it's Jack Bunce! I thought he was sick." "Which is the jury? +Why, is that the jury? Billy Price and Job Turner, and Jack Lounsbury, +and--well, I never!" "Now who would ever 'a' thought--" + +But they were gently called to order at this point, and asked not to talk +in court. Their tongues fell silent, but the radiant interest in their +faces remained, and their gratitude for the blessing of a new sensation +and a novel experience still beamed undimmed from their eyes. Aunt Patsy +stood up and took the oath, and Mr. Allen explained the point in issue, +and asked her to go on now, in her own way, and throw as much light upon +it as she could. She toyed with her reticule a moment or two, as if +considering where to begin, then she said: + +"Well, the way of it is this. They are Luigi's legs a week at a time, +and then they are Angelo's, and he can do whatever he wants to with +them." + +"You are making a mistake, Aunt Patsy Cooper," said the judge. "You +shouldn't state that as a fact, because you don't know it to be a fact." + +"What's the reason I don't?" said Aunt Patsy, bridling a little. + +"What is the reason that you do know it?" + +"The best in the world because they told me." + +"That isn't a reason." + +"Well, for the land's sake! Betsy Hale, do you hear that?" + +"Hear it? I should think so," said Aunt Betsy, rising and facing the +court. "Why, Judge, I was there and heard it myself. Luigi says to +Angelo--no, it was Angelo said it to--" + +"Come, come, Mrs. Hale, pray sit down, and--" + +"Certainly, it's all right, I'm going to sit down presently, but not +until I've--" + +"But you must sit down!" + +"Must! Well, upon my word if things ain't getting to a pretty pass +when--" + +The house broke into laughter, but was promptly brought to order, and +meantime Mr. Allen persuaded the old lady to take her seat. Aunt Patsy +continued: + +"Yes, they told me that, and I know it's true. They're Luigi's legs this +week, but--" + +"Ah, they told you that, did they?" said the Justice, with interest. + +"Well, no, I don't know that they told me, but that's neither here nor +there. I know, without that, that at dinner yesterday, Angelo was as +tired as a dog, and yet Luigi wouldn't lend him the legs to go up-stairs +and take a nap with." + +"Did he ask for them?" + +"Let me see--it seems to me, somehow, that--that--Aunt Betsy, do you +remember whether he--" + +"Never mind about what Aunt Betsy remembers--she is not a witness; we +only want to know what you remember yourself," said the judge. + +"Well, it does seem to, me that you are most cantankerously particular +about a little thing, Sim Robinson. Why, when I can't remember a thing +myself, I always--" + + +"Ah, please go on!" + +"Now how can she when you keep fussing at her all the time?" said Aunt +Betsy. "Why, with a person pecking at me that way, I should get that +fuzzled and fuddled that--" + +She was on her feet again, but Allen coaxed her into her seat once more, +while the court squelched the mirth of the house. Then the judge said: + +"Madam, do you know--do you absolutely know, independently of anything +these gentlemen have told you--that the power over their legs passes from +the one to the other regularly every week?" + +"Regularly? Bless your heart, regularly ain't any name for the exactness +of it! All the big cities in Europe used to set the clocks by it." +(Laughter, suppressed by the court.) + +"How do you know? That is the question. Please answer it plainly and +squarely." + +"Don't you talk to me like that, Sim Robinson--I won't have it. How do +I know, indeed! How do you know what you know? Because somebody told +you. You didn't invent it out of your own head, did you? Why, these +twins are the truthfulest people in the world; and I don't think it +becomes you to sit up there and throw slurs at them when they haven't +been doing anything to you. And they are orphans besides--both of them. +All--" + +But Aunt Betsy was up again now, and both old ladies were talking at once +and with all their might; but as the house was weltering in a storm of +laughter, and the judge was hammering his desk with an iron paper-weight, +one could only see them talk, not hear them. At last, when quiet was +restored, the court said: + +"Let the ladies retire." + +"But, your honor, I have the right, in the interest of my clients,--to +cross-exam--" + +"You'll not need to exercise it, Mr. Wilson--the evidence is thrown out." + +"Thrown out!" said Aunt Patsy, ruffled; "and what's it thrown out for, +I'd like to know." + +"And so would I, Patsy Cooper. It seems to me that if we can save these +poor persecuted strangers, it is our bounden duty to stand up here and +talk for them till--" + +"There, there, there, do sit down!" + +It cost some trouble and a good deal of coaxing, but they were got into +their seats at last. The trial was soon ended now. The twins themselves +became witnesses in their own defense. They established the fact, upon +oath, that the leg-power passed from one to the other every Saturday +night at twelve o'clock sharp. But or cross-examination their counsel +would not allow them to tell whose week of power the current week was. +The judge insisted upon their answering, and proposed to compel them, but +even the prosecution took fright and came to the rescue then, and helped +stay the sturdy jurist's revolutionary hand. So the case had to go to +the jury with that important point hanging in the air. They were out an +hour and brought in this verdict: + +"We the jury do find: 1, that an assault was committed, as charged; +2, that it was committed by one of the persons accused, he having been +seen to do it by several credible witnesses; 3, but that his identity is +so merged in his brother's that we have not been able to tell which was +him. We cannot convict both, for only one is guilty. We cannot acquit +both, for only one is innocent. Our verdict is that justice has been +defeated by the dispensation of God, and ask to be discharged from +further duty." + +This was read aloud in court and brought out a burst of hearty applause. +The old ladies made a spring at the twins, to shake and congratulate, but +were gently disengaged by Mr. Wilson and softly crowded back into their +places. + +The judge rose in his little tribune, laid aside his silver-bowed +spectacles, roached his gray hair up with his fingers, and said, with +dignity and solemnity, and even with a certain pathos: + +"In all my experience on the bench, I have not seen justice bow her +head in shame in this court until this day. You little realize what +far-reaching harm has just been wrought here under the fickle forms of law. +Imitation is the bane of courts--I thank God that this one is free from +the contamination of that vice--and in no long time you will see the +fatal work of this hour seized upon by profligate so-called guardians of +justice in all the wide circumstance of this planet and perpetuated in +their pernicious decisions. I wash my hands of this iniquity. I would +have compelled these culprits to expose their guilt, but support failed +me where I had most right to expect aid and encouragement. And I was +confronted by a law made in the interest of crime, which protects the +criminal from testifying against himself. Yet I had precedents of my own +whereby I had set aside that law on two different occasions and thus +succeeded in convicting criminals to whose crimes there were no witnesses +but themselves. What have you accomplished this day? Do you realize it? +You have set adrift, unadmonished, in this community, two men endowed +with an awful and mysterious gift, a hidden and grisly power for evil +--a power by which each in his turn may commit crime after crime of the +most heinous character, and no man be able to tell which is the guilty or +which the innocent party in any case of them all. Look to your homes +look to your property look to your lives for you have need! + +"Prisoners at the bar, stand up. Through suppression of evidence, a jury +of your--our--countrymen have been obliged to deliver a verdict +concerning your case which stinks to heaven with the rankness of its +injustice. By its terms you, the guilty one, go free with the innocent. +Depart in peace, and come no more! The costs devolve upon the outraged +plaintiff--another iniquity. The court stands dissolved." + +Almost everybody crowded forward to overwhelm the twins and their counsel +with congratulations; but presently the two old aunties dug the +duplicates out and bore them away in triumph through the hurrahing crowd, +while lots of new friends carried Pudd'nhead Wilson off tavernward to +feast him and "wet down" his great and victorious entry into the legal +arena. To Wilson, so long familiar with neglect and depreciation, this +strange new incense of popularity and admiration was as a fragrance blown +from the fields of paradise. A happy man was Wilson. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE AMAZING DUEL + + A deputation came in the evening and conferred upon Wilson the + welcome honor of a nomination for mayor; for the village has just + been converted into a city by charter. Tom skulks out of + challenging the twins. Judge Driscoll thereupon challenges Angelo + (accused by Tom of doing the kicking); he declines, but Luigi + accepts in his place against Angelo's timid protest. + +It was late Saturday night nearing eleven. + +The judge and his second found the rest of the war party at the further +end of the vacant ground, near the haunted house. Pudd'nhead Wilson +advanced to meet them, and said anxiously: + +"I must say a word in behalf of my principal's proxy, Count Luigi, to +whom you have kindly granted the privilege of fighting my principal's +battle for him. It is growing late, and Count Luigi is in great trouble +lest midnight shall strike before the finish." + +"It is another testimony," said Howard, approvingly. "That young man is +fine all through. He wishes to save his brother the sorrow of fighting +on the Sabbath, and he is right; it is the right and manly feeling and +does him credit. We will make all possible haste." + +Wilson said: "There is also another reason--a consideration, in fact, +which deeply concerns Count Luigi himself. These twins have command of +their mutual legs turn about. Count Luigi is in command now; but at +midnight, possession will pass to my principal, Count Angelo, and--well, +you can foresee what will happen. He will march straight off the field, +and carry Luigi with him." + +"Why! sure enough!" cried the judge, "we have heard something about that +extraordinary law of their being, already--nothing very definite, it is +true, as regards dates and durations of power, but I see it is definite +enough as regards to-night. Of course we must give Luigi every chance. +Omit all the ceremonial possible, gentlemen, and place us in position." + +The seconds at once tossed up a coin; Howard won the choice. He placed +the judge sixty feet from the haunted house and facing it; Wilson placed +the twins within fifteen feet of the house and facing the judge +--necessarily. The pistol-case was opened and the long slim tubes taken +out; when the moonlight glinted from them a shiver went through Angelo. +The doctor was a fool, but a thoroughly well-meaning one, with a kind +heart and a sincere disposition to oblige, but along with it an absence +of tact which often hurt its effectiveness. He brought his box of lint +and bandages, and asked Angelo to feel and see how soft and comfortable +they were. Angelo's head fell over against Luigi's in a faint, and +precious time was lost in bringing him to; which provoked Luigi into +expressing his mind to the doctor with a good deal of vigor and +frankness. After Angelo came to he was still so weak that Luigi was +obliged to drink a stiff horn of brandy to brace him up. + +The seconds now stepped at once to their posts, halfway between the +combatants, one of them on each side of the line of fire. Wilson was to +count, very deliberately, "One-two-three-fire!--stop!" and the duelists +could bang away at any time they chose during that recitation, but not +after the last word. Angelo grew very nervous when he saw Wilson's hand +rising slowly into the air as a sign to make ready, and he leaned his +head against Luigi's and said: + +"Oh, please take me away from here, I can't stay, I know I can't!" + +"What in the world are you doing? Straighten up! What's the matter with +you?--you're in no danger--nobody's going to shoot at you. Straighten +up, I tell you!" + +Angelo obeyed, just in time to hear: + +"One--!" + +"Bang!" Just one report, and a little tuft of white hair floated slowly +to the judge's feet in the moonlight. The judge did not swerve; he still +stood erect and motionless, like a statue, with his pistol-arm hanging +straight down at his side. He was reserving his fire. + +"Two--!" + +"Three--"! + +"Fire--!" + +Up came the pistol-arm instantly-Angelo dodged with the report. He said +"Ouch!" and fainted again. + +The doctor examined and bandaged the wound. + +It was of no consequence, he said--bullet through fleshy part of arm--no +bones broken the gentleman was still able to fight let the duel proceed. + +Next time Angelo jumped just as Luigi fired, which disordered his aim and +caused him to cut a chip off of Howard's ear. The judge took his time +again, and when he fired Angelo jumped and got a knuckle skinned. The +doctor inspected and dressed the wounds. Angelo now spoke out and said +he was content with the satisfaction he had got, and if the judge--but +Luigi shut him roughly up, and asked him not to make an ass of himself; +adding: + +"And I want you to stop dodging. You take a great deal too prominent a +part in this thing for a person who has got nothing to do with it. You +should remember that you are here only by courtesy, and are without +official recognition; officially you are not here at all; officially you +do not even exist. To all intents and purposes you are absent from this +place, and you ought for your own modesty's sake to reflect that it +cannot become a person who is not present here to be taking this sort of +public and indecent prominence in a matter in which he is not in the +slightest degree concerned. Now, don't dodge again; the bullets are not +for you, they are for me; if I want them dodged I will attend to it +myself. I never saw a person act so." + +Angelo saw the reasonableness of what his brother had said, and he did +try to reform, but it was of no use; both pistols went off at the same +instant, and he jumped once more; he got a sharp scrape along his cheek +from the judge's bullet, and so deflected Luigi's aim that his ball went +wide and chipped flake of skin from Pudd'nhead Wilson's chin. The doctor +attended to the wounded. + +By the terms, the duel was over. But Luigi was entirely out of patience, +and begged for one exchange of shots, insisting that he had had no fair +chance, on account of his brother's indelicate behavior. Howard was +opposed to granting so unusual a privilege, but the judge took Luigi's +part, and added that indeed he himself might fairly be considered +entitled to another trial, because although the proxy on the other side +was in no way to blame for his (the judge's) humiliatingly resultless +work, the gentleman with whom he was fighting this duel was to blame for +it, since if he had played no advantages and had held his head still, his +proxy would have been disposed of early. He added: + +"Count Luigi's request for another exchange is another proof that he is a +brave and chivalrous gentleman, and I beg that the courtesy he asks may +be accorded him." + +"I thank you most sincerely for this generosity, Judge Driscoll," said +Luigi, with a polite bow, and moving to his place. Then he added to +Angelo, "Now hold your grip, hold your grip, I tell you, and I'll land +him sure!" + +The men stood erect, their pistol-arms at their sides, the two seconds +stood at their official posts, the doctor stood five paces in Wilson's +rear with his instruments and bandages in his hands. The deep stillness, +the peaceful moonlight, the motionless figures, made an impressive +picture and the impending fatal possibilities augmented this +impressiveness solemnity. Wilson's hand began to rise--slowly--still +higher--still higher--in another moment: + +"Boom!" the first stroke of midnight swung up out of the distance; +Angelo was off like a deer! + +"Oh, you unspeakable traitor!" wailed his brother, as they went soaring +over the fence. + +The others stood astonished and gazing; and so stood, watching that +strange spectacle until distance dissolved it and swept it from their +view. Then they rubbed their eyes like people waking out of a dream, + +"Well, I've never seen anything like that before!" said the judge. +"Wilson, I am going to confess now, that I wasn't quite able to believe +in that leg business, and had a suspicion that it was a put-up +convenience between those twins; and when Count Angelo fainted I thought +I saw the whole scheme--thought it was pretext No. 2, and would be +followed by others till twelve o'clock should arrive, and Luigi would get +off with all the credit of seeming to want to fight and yet not have to +fight, after all. But I was mistaken. His pluck proved it. He's a +brave fellow and did want to fight." + +"There isn't any doubt about that," said Howard, and added, in a grieved +tone, "but what an unworthy sort of Christian that Angelo is--I hope and +believe there are not many like him. It is not right to engage in a duel +on the Sabbath--I could not approve of that myself; but to finish one +that has been begun--that is a duty, let the day be what it may." + +They strolled along, still wondering, still talking. + +"It is a curious circumstance," remarked the surgeon, halting Wilson a +moment to paste so more court-plaster on his chin, which had gone to +leaking blood again, "that in this duel neither of the parties who +handled the pistols lost blood while nearly all the persons present in +the mere capacity of guests got hit. I have not heard of such a thing +before. Don't you think it unusual?" + +"Yes," said the Judge, "it has struck me as peculiar. Peculiar and +unfortunate. I was annoyed at it, all the time. In the case of Angelo +it made no great difference, because he was in a measure concerned, +though not officially; but it troubled me to see the seconds compromised, +and yet I knew no way to mend the matter. + +"There was no way to mend it," said Howard, whose ear was being +readjusted now by the doctor; "the code fixes our place, and it would not +have been lawful to change it. If we could have stood at your side, or +behind you, or in front of you, it--but it would not have been legitimate +and the other parties would have had a just right to complain of our +trying to protect ourselves from danger; infractions of the code are +certainly not permissible in any case whatever." + +Wilson offered no remarks. It seemed to him that there was very little +place here for so much solemnity, but he judged that if a duel where +nobody was in danger or got crippled but the seconds and the outsiders +had nothing ridiculous about it for these gentlemen, his pointing out +that feature would probably not help them to see it. + +He invited them in to take a nightcap, and Howard and the judge accepted, +but the doctor said he would have to go and see how Angelo's principal +wound was getting on. + + [It was now Sunday, and in the afternoon Angelo was to be received + into the Baptist communion by immersion--a doubtful prospect, the + doctor feared.] + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +LUIGI DEFIES GALEN + +When the doctor arrived at Aunt Patsy Cooper's house, he found the lights +going and everybody up and dressed and in a great state of solicitude and +excitement. The twins were stretched on a sofa in the sitting-room, Aunt +Patsy was fussing at Angelo's arm, Nancy was flying around under her +commands, the two young boys were trying to keep out of the way and +always getting in it, in order to see and wonder, Rowena stood apart, +helpless with apprehension and emotion, and Luigi was growling in +unappeasable fury over Angelo's shameful flight. + +As has been reported before, the doctor was a fool--a kind-hearted and +well-meaning one, but with no tact; and as he was by long odds the most +learned physician in the town, and was quite well aware of it, and could +talk his learning with ease and precision, and liked to show off when he +had an audience, he was sometimes tempted into revealing more of a case +than was good for the patient. + +He examined Angelo's wound, and was really minded to say nothing for +once; but Aunt Patsy was so anxious and so pressing that he allowed his +caution to be overcome, and proceeded to empty himself as follows, with +scientific relish: + +"Without going too much into detail, madam--for you would probably not +understand it, anyway--I concede that great care is going to be necessary +here; otherwise exudation of the esophagus is nearly sure to ensue, and +this will be followed by ossification and extradition of the maxillaris +superioris, which must decompose the granular surfaces of the great +infusorial ganglionic system, thus obstructing the action of the +posterior varioloid arteries, and precipitating compound strangulated +sorosis of the valvular tissues, and ending unavoidably in the dispersion +and combustion of the marsupial fluxes and the consequent embrocation of +the bicuspid populo redax referendum rotulorum." + +A miserable silence followed. Aunt Patsy's heart sank, the pallor of +despair invaded her face, she was not able to speak; poor Rowena wrung +her hands in privacy and silence, and said to herself in the bitterness +of her young grief, "There is no hope--it is plain there is no hope"; the +good-hearted negro wench, Nancy, paled to chocolate, then to orange, then +to amber, and thought to herself with yearning sympathy and sorrow, "Po' +thing, he ain' gwyne to las' throo de half o' dat"; small Henry choked +up, and turned his head away to hide his rising tears, and his brother +Joe said to himself, with a sense of loss, "The baptizing's busted, +that's sure." Luigi was the only person who had any heart to speak. He +said, a little bit sharply, to the doctor: + +"Well, well, there's nothing to be gained by wasting precious time; give +him a barrel of pills--I'll take them for him." + +"You?" asked the doctor. + +"Yes. Did you suppose he was going to take them himself?" + +"Why, of course." + +"Well, it's a mistake. He never took a dose of medicine in his life. He +can't." + +"Well, upon my word, it's the most extraordinary thing I ever heard of!" + +"Oh," said Aunt Patsy, as pleased as a mother whose child is being +admired and wondered at; "you'll find that there's more about them that's +wonderful than their just being made in the image of God like the rest of +His creatures, now you can depend on that, I tell you," and she wagged +her complacent head like one who could reveal marvelous things if she +chose. + +The boy Joe began: + +"Why, ma, they ain't made in the im--" + +"You shut up, and wait till you're asked, Joe. I'll let you know when I +want help. Are you looking for something, doctor?" + +The doctor asked for a few sheets of paper and a pen, and said he would +write a prescription; which he did. It was one of Galen's; in fact, it +was Galen's favorite, and had been slaying people for sixteen thousand +years. Galen used it for everything, applied it to everything, said it +would remove everything, from warts all the way through to lungs and it +generally did. Galen was still the only medical authority recognized in +Missouri; his practice was the only practice known to the Missouri +doctors, and his prescriptions were the only ammunition they carried when +they went out for game. + +By and by Dr. Claypool laid down his pen and read the result of his +labors aloud, carefully and deliberately, for this battery must be +constructed on the premises by the family, and mistakes could occur; +for he wrote a doctor's hand the hand which from the beginning of time +has been so disastrous to the apothecary and so profitable to the +undertaker: + +"Take of afarabocca, henbane, corpobalsamum, each two drams and a half: +of cloves, opium, myrrh, cyperus, each two drams; of opobalsamum, Indian +leaf, cinnamon, zedoary, ginger, coftus, coral, cassia, euphorbium, gum +tragacanth, frankincense, styrax calamita, Celtic, nard, spignel, +hartwort, mustard, saxifrage, dill, anise, each one dram; of xylaloes, +rheum ponticum, alipta, moschata, castor, spikenard, galangals, opoponax, +anacardium, mastich, brimstone, peony, eringo, pulp of dates, red and +white hermodactyls, roses, thyme, acorns, pennyroyal, gentian, the bark +of the root of mandrake, germander, valerian, bishop's-weed, bayberries, +long and white pepper, xylobalsamum, carnabadium, macedonian, parsley +seeds, lovage, the seeds of rue, and sinon, of each a dram and a half; of +pure gold, pure silver, pearls not perforated, the blatta byzantina, the +bone of the stag's heart, of each the quantity of fourteen grains of +wheat; of sapphire, emerald and jasper stones, each one dram; of +hazel-nuts, two drams; of pellitory of Spain, shavings of ivory, calamus +odoratus, each the quantity of twenty-nine grains of wheat; of honey or +sugar a sufficient quantity. Boil down and skim off." + +"There," he said, "that will fix the patient; give his brother a +dipperful every three-quarters of an hour--" + +"--while he survives," muttered Luigi-- + +"--and see that the room is kept wholesomely hot, and the doors and +windows closed tight. Keep Count Angelo nicely covered up with six or +seven blankets, and when he is thirsty--which will be frequently--moisten +a 'rag in the vapor of the tea kettle and let his brother suck it. When +he is hungry--which will also be frequently he must not be humored +oftener than every seven or eight hours; then toast part of a cracker +until it begins to brown, and give it to his brother." + +"That is all very well, as far as Angelo is concerned," said Luigi, "but +what am I to eat?" + +"I do not see that there is anything the matter with you," the doctor +answered, "you may, of course, eat what you please." + +"And also drink what I please, I suppose?" + +"Oh, certainly--at present. When the violent and continuous perspiring +has reduced your strength, I shall have to reduce your diet, of course, +and also bleed you, but there is no occasion for that yet awhile." He +turned to Aunt Patsy and said: "He must be put to bed, and sat up with, +and tended with the greatest care, and not allowed to stir for several +days and nights." + +"For one, I'm sacredly thankful for that," said Luigi, "it postpones the +funeral--I'm not to be drowned to-day, anyhow." + +Angelo said quietly to the doctor: + +"I will cheerfully submit to all your requirements, sir, up to two +o'clock this afternoon, and will resume them after three, but cannot be +confined to the house during that intermediate hour." + +"Why, may I ask?" + +"Because I have entered the Baptist communion, and by appointment am to +be baptised in the river at that hour." + +"Oh, insanity!--it cannot be allowed!" + +Angelo answered with placid firmness: + +"Nothing shall prevent it, if I am alive." + +"Why, consider, my dear sir, in your condition it might prove fatal." + +A tender and ecstatic smile beamed from Angelo's eyes, and he broke forth +in a tone of joyous fervency: + +"Ah, how blessed it would be to die for such a cause--it would be +martyrdom!" + +"But your brother--consider your brother; you would be risking his life, +too." + +"He risked mine an hour ago," responded Angelo, gloomily; "did he +consider me?" A thought swept through his mind that made him shudder. +"If I had not run, I might have been killed in a duel on the Sabbath day, +and my soul would have been lost--lost." + +"Oh, don't fret, it wasn't in any danger," said Luigi, irritably; "they +wouldn't waste it for a little thing like that; there's a glass case all +ready for it in the heavenly museum, and a pin to stick it up with." + +Aunt Patsy was shocked, and said: + +"Looy, Looy!--don't talk so, dear!" + +Rowena's soft heart was pierced by Luigi's unfeeling words, and she +murmured to herself, "Oh, if I but had the dear privilege of protecting +and defending him with my weak voice!--but alas! this sweet boon is +denied me by the cruel conventions of social intercourse." + +"Get their bed ready," said Aunt Patsy to Nancy, "and shut up the windows +and doors, and light their candles, and see that you drive all the +mosquitoes out of their bar, and make up a good fire in their stove, and +carry up some bags of hot ashes to lay to his feet--" + +"--and a shovel of fire for his head, and a mustard plaster for his neck, +and some gum shoes for his ears," Luigi interrupted, with temper; and +added, to himself, "Damnation, I'm going to be roasted alive, I just know +it!" + +"Why, Looy! Do be quiet; I never saw such a fractious thing. A body +would think you didn't care for your brother." + +"I don't--to that extent, Aunt Patsy. I was glad the drowning was +postponed a minute ago, but I'm not now. No, that is all gone by; I want +to be drowned." + +"You'll bring a judgment on yourself just as sure as you live, if you go +on like that. Why, I never heard the beat of it. Now, there--there! +you've said enough. Not another word out of you--I won't have it!" + +"But, Aunt Patsy--" + +"Luigi! Didn't you hear what I told you?" + +"But, Aunt Patsy, I--why, I'm not going to set my heart and lungs afloat +in that pail of sewage which this criminal here has been prescri--" + +"Yes, you are, too. You are going to be good, and do everything I tell +you, like a dear," and she tapped his cheek affectionately with her +finger. "Rowena, take the prescription and go in the kitchen and hunt up +the things and lay them out for me. I'll sit up with my patient the rest +of the night, doctor; I can't trust Nancy, she couldn't make Luigi take +the medicine. Of course, you'll drop in again during the day. Have you +got any more directions?" + +"No, I believe not, Aunt Patsy. If I don't get in earlier, I'll be along +by early candle-light, anyway. Meantime, don't allow him to get out of +his bed." + +Angelo said, with calm determination: + +"I shall be baptized at two o'clock. Nothing but death shall prevent +me." + +The doctor said nothing aloud, but to himself he said: + +"Why, this chap's got a manly side, after all! Physically he's a coward, +but morally he's a lion. I'll go and tell the others about this; it will +raise him a good deal in their estimation--and the public will follow +their lead, of course." + +Privately, Aunt Patsy applauded too, and was proud of Angelo's courage in +the moral field as she was of Luigi's in the field of honor. + +The boy Henry was troubled, but the boy Joe said, inaudibly, and +gratefully, "We're all honky, after all; and no postponement on account +of the weather." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +BAPTISM OF THE BETTER HALF + +By nine o'clock the town was humming with the news of the midnight duel, +and there were but two opinions about it: one, that Luigi's pluck in the +field was most praiseworthy and Angela's flight most scandalous; the +other, that Angelo's courage in flying the field for conscience' sake was +as fine and creditable as was Luigi's in holding the field in the face of +the bullets. The one opinion was held by half of the town, the other one +was maintained by the other half. The division was clean and exact, and +it made two parties, an Angela party and a Luigi party. The twins had +suddenly become popular idols along with Pudd'nhead Wilson, and haloed +with a glory as intense as his. The children talked the duel all the way +to Sunday-school, their elders talked it all the way to church, the choir +discussed it behind their red curtain, it usurped the place of pious +thought in the "nigger gallery." + +By noon the doctor had added the news, and spread it, that Count Angelo, +in spite of his wound and all warnings and supplications, was resolute in +his determination to be baptized at the hour appointed. This swept the +town like wildfire, and mightily reinforced the enthusiasm of the Angelo +faction, who said, "If any doubted that it was moral courage that took +him from the field, what have they to say now!" + +Still the excitement grew. All the morning it was traveling countryward, +toward all points of the compass; so, whereas before only the farmers and +their wives were intending to come and witness the remarkable baptism, +a general holiday was now proclaimed and the children and negroes +admitted to the privileges of the occasion. All the farms for ten miles +around were vacated, all the converging roads emptied long processions of +wagons, horses, and yeomanry into the town. The pack and cram of people +vastly exceeded any that had ever been seen in that sleepy region before. +The only thing that had ever even approached it, was the time long gone +by, but never forgotten, nor even referred to without wonder and pride, +when two circuses and a Fourth of July fell together. But the glory of +that occasion was extinguished now for good. It was but a freshet to +this deluge. + +The great invasion massed itself on the river-bank and waited hungrily +for the immense event. Waited, and wondered if it would really happen, +or if the twin who was not a "professor" would stand out and prevent it. + +But they were not to be disappointed. Angela was as good as his word. +He came attended by an escort of honor composed of several hundred of the +best citizens, all of the Angelo party; and when the immersion was +finished they escorted him back home and would even have carried him on +their shoulders, but that people might think they were carrying Luigi. + +Far into the night the citizens continued to discuss and wonder over the +strangely mated pair of incidents that had distinguished and exalted the +past twenty-four hours above any other twenty-four in the history of +their town for picturesqueness and splendid interest; and long before the +lights were out and burghers asleep it had been decided on all hands that +in capturing these twins Dawson's Landing had drawn a prize in the great +lottery of municipal fortune. + +At midnight Angelo was sleeping peacefully. His immersion had not harmed +him, it had merely made him wholesomely drowsy, and he had been dead +asleep many hours now. It had made Luigi drowsy, too, but he had got +only brief naps, on account of his having to take the medicine every +three-quarters of an hour-and Aunt Betsy Hale was there to see that he +did it. When he complained and resisted, she was quietly firm with him, +and said in a low voice: + +"No-no, that won't do; you mustn't talk, and you mustn't retch and gag +that way, either--you'll wake up your poor brother." + +"Well, what of it, Aunt Betsy, he--" + +"'Sh-h! Don't make a noise, dear. You mustn't: forget that your poor +brother is sick and--" + +"Sick, is he? Well, I wish I--" + +"'Sh-h-h! Will you be quiet, Luigi! Here, now, take the rest of it +--don't keep me holding the dipper all night. I declare if you haven't +left a good fourth of it in the bottom! Come-that's a good-- + +"Aunt Betsy, don't make me! I feel like I've swallowed a cemetery; I do, +indeed. Do let me rest a little--just a little; I can't take any more of +the devilish stuff now." + +"Luigi! Using such language here, and him just baptized! Do you want +the roof to fall on you?" + +"I wish to goodness it would!" + +"Why, you dreadful thing! I've a good notion to--let that blanket alone; +do you want your, brother to catch his death?" + +"Aunt Betsy, I've got to have it off, I'm being roasted alive; nobody +could stand it--you couldn't yourself." + +"Now, then, you're sneezing again--I just expected it." + +"Because I've caught a cold in my head. I always do, when I go in the +water with my clothes on. And it takes me weeks to get over it, too. +I think it was a shame to serve me so." + +"Luigi, you are unreasonable; you know very well they couldn't baptize +him dry. I should think you would be willing to undergo a little +inconvenience for your brother's sake." + +"Inconvenience! Now how you talk, Aunt Betsy. I came as near as +anything to getting drowned you saw that yourself; and do you call this +inconvenience?--the room shut up as tight as a drum, and so hot the +mosquitoes are trying to get out; and a cold in the head, and dying for +sleep and no chance to get any--on account of this infamous medicine that +that assassin prescri--" + +"There, you're sneezing again. I'm going down and mix some more of this +truck for you, dear." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE DRINKLESS DRUNK + +During Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday the twins grew steadily worse; but +then the doctor was summoned South to attend his mother's funeral, and +they got well in forty-eight hours. They appeared on the street on +Friday, and were welcomed with enthusiasm by the new-born parties, the +Luigi and Angelo factions. The Luigi faction carried its strength into +the Democratic party, the Angelo faction entered into a combination with +the Whigs. The Democrats nominated Luigi for alderman under the new city +government, and the Whigs put up Angelo against him. The Democrats +nominated Pudd'nhead Wilson for mayor, and he was left alone in this +glory, for the Whigs had no man who was willing to enter the lists +against such a formidable opponent. No politician had scored such a +compliment as this before in the history of the Mississippi Valley. + +The political campaign in Dawson's Landing opened in a pretty warm +fashion, and waned hotter every week. Luigi's whole heart was in it, +and even Angelo developed a surprising amount of interest-which was +natural, because he was not merely representing Whigism, a matter of no +consequence to him; but he was representing something immensely finer and +greater--to wit, Reform. In him was centered the hopes of the whole +reform element of the town; he was the chosen and admired champion of +every clique that had a pet reform of any sort or kind at heart. He was +president of the great Teetotalers' Union, its chiefest prophet and +mouthpiece. + +But as the canvass went on, troubles began to spring up all around +--troubles for the twins, and through them for all the parties and +segments and factions of parties. Whenever Luigi had possession of the +legs, he carried Angelo to balls, rum shops, Sons of Liberty parades, +horse-races, campaign riots, and everywhere else that could damage him +with his party and the church; and when it was Angelo's week he carried +Luigi diligently to all manner of moral and religious gatherings, doing +his best to regain the ground he had lost before. As a result of these +double performances, there was a storm blowing all the time, an +ever-rising storm, too--a storm of frantic criticism of the twins, +and rage over their extravagant, incomprehensible conduct. + +Luigi had the final chance. The legs were his for the closing week of +the canvass. He led his brother a fearful dance. + +But he saved his best card for the very eve of the election. There was +to be a grand turnout of the Teetotalers' Union that day, and Angelo was +to march at the head of the procession and deliver a great oration +afterward. Luigi drank a couple of glasses of whisky--which steadied his +nerves and clarified his mind, but made Angelo drunk. Everybody who saw +the march, saw that the Champion of the Teetotalers was half seas over, +and noted also that his brother, who made no hypocritical pretensions to +extra temperance virtues, was dignified and sober. This eloquent fact +could not be unfruitful at the end of a hot political canvass. At the +mass-meeting Angelo tried to make his great temperance oration, but was +so discommoded--by hiccoughs and thickness of tongue that he had to give +it up; then drowsiness overtook him and his head drooped against Luigi's +and he went to sleep. Luigi apologized for him, and was going on to +improve his opportunity with an appeal for a moderation of what he called +"the prevailing teetotal madness," but persons in the audience began to +howl and throw things at him, and then the meeting rose in wrath and +chased him home. + +This episode was a crusher for Angelo in another way. It destroyed his +chances with Rowena. Those chances had been growing, right along, for +two months. Rowena had partly confessed that she loved him, but wanted +time to consider. Now the tender dream was ended, and she told him so +the moment he was sober enough to understand. She said she would never +marry a man who drank. + +"But I don't drink," he pleaded. + +"That is nothing to the point," she said, coldly, "you get drunk, and +that is worse." + +[There was a long and sufficiently idiotic discussion here, which ended +as reported in a previous note.] + + + + +CHAPTER X + +SO THEY HANGED LUIGI + +Dawson's Landing had a week of repose, after the election, and it needed +it, for the frantic and variegated nightmare which had tormented it all +through the preceding week had left it limp, haggard, and exhausted at +the end. It got the week of repose because Angelo had the legs, and was +in too subdued a condition to want to go out and mingle with an irritated +community that had come to disgust and detest him because there was such +a lack of harmony between his morals, which were confessedly excellent, +and his methods of illustrating them, which were distinctly damnable. +The new city officers were sworn in on the following Monday--at least all +but Luigi. There was a complication in his case. His election was +conceded, but he could not sit in the board of aldermen without his +brother, and his brother could not sit there because he was not a member. +There seemed to be no way out of the difficulty but to carry the matter +into the courts, so this was resolved upon. + +The case was set for the Monday fortnight. In due course the time +arrived. In the mean time the city government had been at a standstill, +because with out Luigi there was a tie in the board of aldermen, whereas +with him the liquor interest--the richest in the political field--would +have one majority. But the court decided that Angelo could not sit in +the board with him, either in public or executive sessions, and at the +same time forbade the board to deny admission to Luigi, a fairly and +legally chosen alderman. The case was carried up and up from court to +court, yet still the same old original decision was confirmed every time. +As a result, the city government not only stood still, with its hands +tied, but everything it was created to protect and care for went a steady +gait toward rack and ruin. There was no way to levy a tax, so the minor +officials had to resign or starve; therefore they resigned. There being +no city money, the enormous legal expenses on both sides had to be +defrayed by private subscription. But at last the people came to their +senses, and said: + +"Pudd'nhead was right at the start--we ought to have hired the official +half of that human phillipene to resign; but it's too late now; some of +us haven't got anything left to hire him with." + +"Yes, we have," said another citizen, "we've got this"--and he produced a +halter. + +Many shouted: "That's the ticket." But others said: "No--Count Angelo is +innocent; we mustn't hang him." + +"Who said anything about hanging him? We are only going to hang the +other one." + +"Then that is all right--there is no objection to that." + +So they hanged Luigi. And so ends the history of "Those Extraordinary +Twins." + + + + +FINAL REMARKS + +As you see, it was an extravagant sort of a tale, and had no purpose but +to exhibit that monstrous "freak" in all sorts of grotesque lights. But +when Roxy wandered into the tale she had to be furnished with something +to do; so she changed the children in the cradle; this necessitated the +invention of a reason for it; this, in turn, resulted in making the +children prominent personages--nothing could prevent it of course. Their +career began to take a tragic aspect, and some one had to be brought in +to help work the machinery; so Pudd'nhead Wilson was introduced and taken +on trial. By this time the whole show was being run by the new people +and in their interest, and the original show was become side-tracked and +forgotten; the twin-monster, and the heroine, and the lads, and the old +ladies had dwindled to inconsequentialities and were merely in the way. +Their story was one story, the new people's story was another story, and +there was no connection between them, no interdependence, no kinship. +It is not practicable or rational to try to tell two stories at the same +time; so I dug out the farce and left the tragedy. + +The reader already knew how the expert works; he knows now how the other +kind do it. + +MARK TWAIN. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Those Extraordinary Twins +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC + +VOLUME 1 + +by Mark Twain + + + + +Consider this unique and imposing distinction. Since the writing of +human history began, Joan of Arc is the only person, of either sex, +who has ever held supreme command of the military forces of a +nation at the age of seventeen + +LOUIS KOSSUTH. + + + + +Contents + +Translator's Preface +A Peculiarity of Joan of Arc's History +The Sieur Louis de Conte + +Book I -- IN DOMREMY + 1 When Wolves Ran Free in Paris + 2 The Fairy Tree of Domremy + 3 All Aflame with Love of France + 4 Joan Tames the Mad Man + 5 Domremy Pillaged and Burned + 6 Joan and Archangel Michael + 7 She Delivers the Divine Command + 8 Why the Scorners Relented + + +Book II -- IN COURT AND CAMP + 1 Joan Says Good-By + 2 The Governor Speeds Joan + 3 The Paladin Groans and Boasts + 4 Joan Leads Us Through the Enemy + 5 We Pierce the Last Ambuscades + 6 Joan Convinces the King + 7 Our Paladin in His Glory + 8 Joan Persuades the Inquisitors + 9 She Is Made General-in-Chief + 10 The Maid's Sword and Banner + 11 The War March Is Begun + 12 Joan Puts Heart in Her Army + 13 Checked by the Folly of the Wise + 14 What the English Answered + 15 My Exquisite Poem Goes to Smash + 16 The Finding of the Dwarf + 17 Sweet Fruit of Bitter Truth + 18 Joan's First Battle-Field + 19 We Burst In Upon Ghosts + 20 Joan Makes Cowards Brave Victors + 21 She Gently Reproves Her Dear Friend + 22 The Fate of France Decided + 23 Joan Inspires the Tawdry King + 24 Tinsel Trappings of Nobility + 25 At Last--Forward! + 26 The Last Doubts Scattered + 27 How Joan Took Jargeau + +PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC +by THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE +(her page and secretary) + + + + +In Two Volumes + + +Volume 1. + + +Freely translated out of the ancient French into modern English +from the original unpublished manuscript in the National Archives +of France + +by JEAN FRANCOIS ALDEN +Authorities examined in verification of the truthfulness of this +narrative: + +J. E. J. QUICHERAT, Condamnation et Rehabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc. +J. FABRE, Proces de Condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc. +H. A. WALLON, Jeanne d'Arc. +M. SEPET, Jeanne d'Arc. +J. MICHELET, Jeanne d'Arc. +BERRIAT DE SAINT-PRIX, La Famille de Jeanne d'Arc. +La Comtesse A. DE CHABANNES, La Vierge Lorraine. +Monseigneur RICARD, Jeanne d'Arc la Venerable. +Lord RONALD GOWER, F.S.A., Joan of Arc. JOHN O'HAGAN, Joan of Arc. +JANET TUCKEY, Joan of Arc the Maid. + + + + +TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE + +To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must +judge it by the standards of his time, not ours. Judged by the standards +of one century, the noblest characters of an earlier one lose much of +their luster; judged by the standards of to-day, there is probably no +illustrious man of four or five centuries ago whose character could meet +the test at all points. But the character of Joan of Arc is unique. It +can be measured by the standards of all times without misgiving or +apprehension as to the result. Judged by any of them, it is still +flawless, it is still ideally perfect; it still occupies the loftiest +place possible to human attainment, a loftier one than has been reached +by any other mere mortal. + +When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the +rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at +the miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her +and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful +when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was +become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a +promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great +thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves +upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest, and fine, +and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal; +she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was +steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had +forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when +men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly +true to an age that was false to the core; she maintained her personal +dignity unimpaired in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was of a +dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of +her nation; she was spotlessly pure in mind and body when society in the +highest places was foul in both--she was all these things in an age when +crime was the common business of lords and princes, and when the highest +personages in Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era +and make it stand aghast at the spectacle of their atrocious lives black +with unimaginable treacheries, butcheries, and beastialities. + +She was perhaps the only entirely unselfish person whose name has a +place in profane history. No vestige or suggestion of self-seeking can +be found in any word or deed of hers. When she had rescued her King from +his vagabondage, and set his crown upon his head, she was offered +rewards and honors, but she refused them all, and would take nothing. +All she would take for herself--if the King would grant it--was leave to +go back to her village home, and tend her sheep again, and feel her +mother's arms about her, and be her housemaid and helper. The +selfishness of this unspoiled general of victorious armies, companion of +princes, and idol of an applauding and grateful nation, reached but that +far and no farther. + +The work wrought by Joan of Arc may fairly be regarded as ranking any +recorded in history, when one considers the conditions under which it +was undertaken, the obstacles in the way, and the means at her disposal. +Caesar carried conquests far, but he did it with the trained and +confident veterans of Rome, and was a trained soldier himself; and +Napoleon swept away the disciplined armies of Europe, but he also was a +trained soldier, and the began his work with patriot battalions inflamed +and inspired by the miracle-working new breath of Liberty breathed upon +them by the Revolution--eager young apprentices to the splendid trade of +war, not old and broken men-at-arms, despairing survivors of an age-long +accumulation of monotonous defeats; but Joan of Arc, a mere child in +years, ignorant, unlettered, a poor village girl unknown and without +influence, found a great nation lying in chains, helpless and hopeless +under an alien domination, its treasury bankrupt, its soldiers +disheartened and dispersed, all spirit torpid, all courage dead in the +hearts of the people through long years of foreign and domestic outrage +and oppression, their King cowed, resigned to its fate, and preparing to +fly the country; and she laid her hand upon this nation, this corpse, +and it rose and followed her. She led it from victory to victory, she +turned back the tide of the Hundred Years' War, she fatally crippled the +English power, and died with the earned title of DELIVERER OF FRANCE, +which she bears to this day. + +And for all reward, the French King, whom she had crowned, stood supine +and indifferent, while French priests took the noble child, the most +innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have produced, and +burned her alive at the stake. + + + +A PECULIARITY OF JOAN OF ARC'S HISTORY + +The details of the life of Joan of Arc form a biography which is unique +among the world's biographies in one respect: It is the only story of a +human life which comes to us under oath, the only one which comes to us +from the witness-stand. The official records of the Great Trial of 1431, +and of the Process of Rehabilitation of a quarter of a century later, +are still preserved in the National Archives of France, and they furnish +with remarkable fullness the facts of her life. The history of no other +life of that remote time is known with either the certainty or the +comprehensiveness that attaches to hers. + +The Sieur Louis de Conte is faithful to her official history in his +Personal Recollections, and thus far his trustworthiness is +unimpeachable; but his mass of added particulars must depend for credit +upon his word alone. + +THE TRANSLATOR. + + + +THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE + +To his Great-Great-Grand Nephews and Nieces + +This is the year 1492. I am eighty-two years of age. The things I am +going to tell you are things which I saw myself as a child and as a +youth. + +In all the tales and songs and histories of Joan of Arc, which you and +the rest of the world read and sing and study in the books wrought in +the late invented art of printing, mention is made of me, the Sieur +Louis de Conte--I was her page and secretary, I was with her from the +beginning until the end. + +I was reared in the same village with her. I played with her every day, +when we were little children together, just as you play with your mates. +Now that we perceive how great she was, now that her name fills the +whole world, it seems strange that what I am saying is true; for it is +as if a perishable paltry candle should speak of the eternal sun riding +in the heavens and say, "He was gossip and housemate to me when we were +candles together." And yet it is true, just as I say. I was her +playmate, and I fought at her side in the wars; to this day I carry in +my mind, fine and clear, the picture of that dear little figure, with +breast bent to the flying horse's neck, charging at the head of the +armies of France, her hair streaming back, her silver mail plowing +steadily deeper and deeper into the thick of the battle, sometimes +nearly drowned from sight by tossing heads of horses, uplifted +sword-arms, wind-blow plumes, and intercepting shields. I was with her +to the end; and when that black day came whose accusing shadow will lie +always upon the memory of the mitered French slaves of England who were +her assassins, and upon France who stood idle and essayed no rescue, my +hand was the last she touched in life. + +As the years and the decades drifted by, and the spectacle of the +marvelous child's meteor flight across the war firmament of France and +its extinction in the smoke-clouds of the stake receded deeper and +deeper into the past and grew ever more strange, and wonderful, and +divine, and pathetic, I came to comprehend and recognize her at last for +what she was--the most noble life that was ever born into this world +save only One. + + + + +BOOK I IN DOMREMY + + +Chapter 1 When Wolves Ran Free in Paris + +I, THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE, was born in Neufchateau, on the 6th of +January, 1410; that is to say, exactly two years before Joan of Arc was +born in Domremy. My family had fled to those distant regions from the +neighborhood of Paris in the first years of the century. In politics +they were Armagnacs--patriots; they were for our own French King, crazy +and impotent as he was. The Burgundian party, who were for the English, +had stripped them, and done it well. They took everything but my +father's small nobility, and when he reached Neufchateau he reached it +in poverty and with a broken spirit. But the political atmosphere there +was the sort he liked, and that was something. He came to a region of +comparative quiet; he left behind him a region peopled with furies, +madmen, devils, where slaughter was a daily pastime and no man's life +safe for a moment. In Paris, mobs roared through the streets nightly, +sacking, burning, killing, unmolested, uninterrupted. The sun rose upon +wrecked and smoking buildings, and upon mutilated corpses lying here, +there, and yonder about the streets, just as they fell, and stripped +naked by thieves, the unholy gleaners after the mob. None had the +courage to gather these dead for burial; they were left there to rot and +create plagues. + +And plagues they did create. Epidemics swept away the people like flies, +and the burials were conducted secretly and by night, for public +funerals were not allowed, lest the revelation of the magnitude of the +plague's work unman the people and plunge them into despair. Then came, +finally, the bitterest winter which had visited France in five hundred +years. Famine, pestilence, slaughter, ice, snow--Paris had all these at +once. The dead lay in heaps about the streets, and wolves entered the +city in daylight and devoured them. + +Ah, France had fallen low--so low! For more than three quarters of a +century the English fangs had been bedded in her flesh, and so cowed had +her armies become by ceaseless rout and defeat that it was said and +accepted that the mere sight of an English army was sufficient to put a +French one to flight. + +When I was five years old the prodigious disaster of Agincourt fell upon +France; and although the English King went home to enjoy his glory, he +left the country prostrate and a prey to roving bands of Free Companions +in the service of the Burgundian party, and one of these bands came +raiding through Neufchateau one night, and by the light of our burning +roof-thatch I saw all that were dear to me in this world (save an elder +brother, your ancestor, left behind with the court) butchered while they +begged for mercy, and heard the butchers laugh at their prayers and +mimic their pleadings. I was overlooked, and escaped without hurt. When +the savages were gone I crept out and cried the night away watching the +burning houses; and I was all alone, except for the company of the dead +and the wounded, for the rest had taken flight and hidden themselves. + +I was sent to Domremy, to the priest, whose housekeeper became a loving +mother to me. The priest, in the course of time, taught me to read and +write, and he and I were the only persons in the village who possessed +this learning. + +At the time that the house of this good priest, Guillaume Fronte, became +my home, I was six years old. We lived close by the village church, and +the small garden of Joan's parents was behind the church. As to that +family there were Jacques d'Arc the father, his wife Isabel Romee; three +sons--Jacques, ten years old, Pierre, eight, and Jean, seven; Joan, +four, and her baby sister Catherine, about a year old. I had these +children for playmates from the beginning. I had some other playmates +besides--particularly four boys: Pierre Morel, Etienne Roze, Noel +Rainguesson, and Edmond Aubrey, whose father was maire at that time; +also two girls, about Joan's age, who by and by became her favorites; +one was named Haumetter, the other was called Little Mengette. These +girls were common peasant children, like Joan herself. When they grew +up, both married common laborers. Their estate was lowly enough, you +see; yet a time came, many years after, when no passing stranger, +howsoever great he might be, failed to go and pay his reverence to those +to humble old women who had been honored in their youth by the +friendship of Joan of Arc. + +These were all good children, just of the ordinary peasant type; not +bright, of course--you would not expect that--but good-hearted and +companionable, obedient to their parents and the priest; and as they +grew up they became properly stocked with narrowness and prejudices got +at second hand from their elders, and adopted without reserve; and +without examination also--which goes without saying. Their religion was +inherited, their politics the same. John Huss and his sort might find +fault with the Church, in Domremy it disturbed nobody's faith; and when +the split came, when I was fourteen, and we had three Popes at once, +nobody in Domremy was worried about how to choose among them--the Pope +of Rome was the right one, a Pope outside of Rome was no Pope at all. +Every human creature in the village was an Armagnac--a patriot--and if +we children hotly hated nothing else in the world, we did certainly hate +the English and Burgundian name and polity in that way. + + + + +Chapter 2 The Fairy Tree of Domremy + +OUR DOMREMY was like any other humble little hamlet of that remote time +and region. It was a maze of crooked, narrow lanes and alleys shaded and +sheltered by the overhanging thatch roofs of the barnlike houses. The +houses were dimly lighted by wooden-shuttered windows--that is, holes +in the walls which served for windows. The floors were dirt, and there +was very little furniture. Sheep and cattle grazing was the main +industry; all the young folks tended flocks. + +The situation was beautiful. From one edge of the village a flowery +plain extended in a wide sweep to the river--the Meuse; from the rear +edge of the village a grassy slope rose gradually, and at the top was +the great oak forest--a forest that was deep and gloomy and dense, and +full of interest for us children, for many murders had been done in it +by outlaws in old times, and in still earlier times prodigious dragons +that spouted fire and poisonous vapors from their nostrils had their +homes in there. In fact, one was still living in there in our own time. +It was as long as a tree, and had a body as big around as a tierce, and +scales like overlapping great tiles, and deep ruby eyes as large as a +cavalier's hat, and an anchor-fluke on its tail as big as I don't know +what, but very big, even unusually so for a dragon, as everybody said +who knew about dragons. It was thought that this dragon was of a +brilliant blue color, with gold mottlings, but no one had ever seen it, +therefore this was not known to be so, it was only an opinion. It was +not my opinion; I think there is no sense in forming an opinion when +there is no evidence to form it on. If you build a person without any +bones in him he may look fair enough to the eye, but he will be limber +and cannot stand up; and I consider that evidence is the bones of an +opinion. But I will take up this matter more at large at another time, +and try to make the justness of my position appear. As to that dragon, I +always held the belief that its color was gold and without blue, for +that has always been the color of dragons. That this dragon lay but a +little way within the wood at one time is shown by the fact that Pierre +Morel was in there one day and smelt it, and recognized it by the smell. +It gives one a horrid idea of how near to us the deadliest danger can be +and we not suspect it. + +In the earliest times a hundred knights from many remote places in the +earth would have gone in there one after another, to kill the dragon and +get the reward, but in our time that method had gone out, and the priest +had become the one that abolished dragons. Pere Guillaume Fronte did it +in this case. He had a procession, with candles and incense and banners, +and marched around the edge of the wood and exorcised the dragon, and it +was never heard of again, although it was the opinion of many that the +smell never wholly passed away. Not that any had ever smelt the smell +again, for none had; it was only an opinion, like that other--and lacked +bones, you see. I know that the creature was there before the exorcism, +but whether it was there afterward or not is a thing which I cannot be +so positive about. + +In a noble open space carpeted with grass on the high ground toward +Vaucouleurs stood a most majestic beech tree with wide-reaching arms and +a grand spread of shade, and by it a limpid spring of cold water; and on +summer days the children went there--oh, every summer for more than five +hundred years--went there and sang and danced around the tree for hours +together, refreshing themselves at the spring from time to time, and it +was most lovely and enjoyable. Also they made wreaths of flowers and +hung them upon the tree and about the spring to please the fairies that +lived there; for they liked that, being idle innocent little creatures, +as all fairies are, and fond of anything delicate and pretty like wild +flowers put together in that way. And in return for this attention the +fairies did any friendly thing they could for the children, such as +keeping the spring always full and clear and cold, and driving away +serpents and insects that sting; and so there was never any unkindness +between the fairies and the children during more than five hundred +years--tradition said a thousand--but only the warmest affection and the +most perfect trust and confidence; and whenever a child died the fairies +mourned just as that child's playmates did, and the sign of it was there +to see; for before the dawn on the day of the funeral they hung a little +immortelle over the place where that child was used to sit under the +tree. I know this to be true by my own eyes; it is not hearsay. And the +reason it was known that the fairies did it was this--that it was made +all of black flowers of a sort not known in France anywhere. + +Now from time immemorial all children reared in Domremy were called the +Children of the Tree; and they loved that name, for it carried with it a +mystic privilege not granted to any others of the children of this +world. Which was this: whenever one of these came to die, then beyond +the vague and formless images drifting through his darkening mind rose +soft and rich and fair a vision of the Tree--if all was well with his +soul. That was what some said. Others said the vision came in two ways: +once as a warning, one or two years in advance of death, when the soul +was the captive of sin, and then the Tree appeared in its desolate +winter aspect--then that soul was smitten with an awful fear. If +repentance came, and purity of life, the vision came again, this time +summer-clad and beautiful; but if it were otherwise with that soul the +vision was withheld, and it passed from life knowing its doom. Still +others said that the vision came but once, and then only to the sinless +dying forlorn in distant lands and pitifully longing for some last dear +reminder of their home. And what reminder of it could go to their hearts +like the picture of the Tree that was the darling of their love and the +comrade of their joys and comforter of their small griefs all through +the divine days of their vanished youth? + +Now the several traditions were as I have said, some believing one and +some another. One of them I knew to be the truth, and that was the last +one. I do not say anything against the others; I think they were true, +but I only know that the last one was; and it is my thought that if one +keep to the things he knows, and not trouble about the things which he +cannot be sure about, he will have the steadier mind for it--and there +is profit in that. I know that when the Children of the Tree die in a +far land, then--if they be at peace with God--they turn their longing +eyes toward home, and there, far-shining, as through a rift in a cloud +that curtains heaven, they see the soft picture of the Fairy Tree, +clothed in a dream of golden light; and they see the bloomy mead sloping +away to the river, and to their perishing nostrils is blown faint and +sweet the fragrance of the flowers of home. And then the vision fades +and passes--but they know, they know! and by their transfigured faces you +know also, you who stand looking on; yes, you know the message that has +come, and that it has come from heaven. + +Joan and I believed alike about this matter. But Pierre Morel and +Jacques d'Arc, and many others believed that the vision appeared twice +--to a sinner. In fact, they and many others said they knew it. Probably +because their fathers had known it and had told them; for one gets most +things at second hand in this world. + +Now one thing that does make it quite likely that there were really two +apparitions of the Tree is this fact: From the most ancient times if one +saw a villager of ours with his face ash-white and rigid with a ghastly +fright, it was common for every one to whisper to his neighbor, "Ah, he +is in sin, and has got his warning." And the neighbor would shudder at +the thought and whisper back, "Yes, poor soul, he has seen the Tree." + +Such evidences as these have their weight; they are not to be put aside +with a wave of the hand. A thing that is backed by the cumulative +evidence of centuries naturally gets nearer and nearer to being proof +all the time; and if this continue and continue, it will some day become +authority--and authority is a bedded rock, and will abide. + +In my long life I have seen several cases where the tree appeared +announcing a death which was still far away; but in none of these was +the person in a state of sin. No; the apparition was in these cases only +a special grace; in place of deferring the tidings of that soul's +redemption till the day of death, the apparition brought them long +before, and with them peace--peace that might no more be disturbed--the +eternal peace of God. I myself, old and broken, wait with serenity; for +I have seen the vision of the Tree. I have seen it, and am content. + +Always, from the remotest times, when the children joined hands and +danced around the Fairy Tree they sang a song which was the Tree's song, +the song of L'Arbre fee de Bourlemont. They sang it to a quaint sweet +air--a solacing sweet air which has gone murmuring through my dreaming +spirit all my life when I was weary and troubled, resting me and +carrying me through night and distance home again. No stranger can know +or feel what that song has been, through the drifting centuries, to +exiled Children of the Tree, homeless and heavy of heart in countries +foreign to their speech and ways. You will think it a simple thing, that +song, and poor, perchance; but if you will remember what it was to us, +and what it brought before our eyes when it floated through our +memories, then you will respect it. And you will understand how the +water wells up in our eyes and makes all things dim, and our voices +break and we cannot sing the last lines: + +"And when, in Exile wand'ring, we Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of +thee, Oh, rise upon our sight!" + +And you will remember that Joan of Arc sang this song with us around the +Tree when she was a little child, and always loved it. And that hallows +it, yes, you will grant that: + + L'ARBRE FEE DE BOURLEMONT + + SONG OF THE CHILDREN + + Now what has kept your leaves so green, + Arbre Fee de Bourlemont? + + The children's tears! They brought each grief, + And you did comfort them and cheer + Their bruised hearts, and steal a tear + That, healed, rose a leaf. + + And what has built you up so strong, + Arbre Fee de Bourlemont? + + The children's love! They've loved you long + Ten hundred years, in sooth, + They've nourished you with praise and song, + And warmed your heart and kept it young-- + A thousand years of youth! + + Bide always green in our young hearts, + Arbre Fee de Bourlemont! + And we shall always youthful be, + Not heeding Time his flight; + And when, in exile wand'ring, we + Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee, + Oh, rise upon our sight! + +The fairies were still there when we were children, but we never saw +them; because, a hundred years before that, the priest of Domremy had +held a religious function under the tree and denounced them as being +blood-kin to the Fiend and barred them from redemption; and then he +warned them never to show themselves again, nor hang any more +immortelles, on pain of perpetual banishment from that parish. + +All the children pleaded for the fairies, and said they were their good +friends and dear to them and never did them any harm, but the priest +would not listen, and said it was sin and shame to have such friends. The +children mourned and could not be comforted; and they made an agreement +among themselves that they would always continue to hang flower-wreaths +on the tree as a perpetual sign to the fairies that they were still loved +and remembered, though lost to sight. + +But late one night a great misfortune befell. Edmond Aubrey's mother +passed by the Tree, and the fairies were stealing a dance, not thinking +anybody was by; and they were so busy, and so intoxicated with the wild +happiness of it, and with the bumpers of dew sharpened up with honey +which they had been drinking, that they noticed nothing; so Dame Aubrey +stood there astonished and admiring, and saw the little fantastic atoms +holding hands, as many as three hundred of them, tearing around in a +great ring half as big as an ordinary bedroom, and leaning away back and +spreading their mouths with laughter and song, which she could hear quite +distinctly, and kicking their legs up as much as three inches from the +ground in perfect abandon and hilarity--oh, the very maddest and +witchingest dance the woman ever saw. + +But in about a minute or two minutes the poor little ruined creatures +discovered her. They burst out in one heartbreaking squeak of grief and +terror and fled every which way, with their wee hazel-nut fists in their +eyes and crying; and so disappeared. + +The heartless woman--no, the foolish woman; she was not heartless, but +only thoughtless--went straight home and told the neighbors all about it, +whilst we, the small friends of the fairies, were asleep and not witting +the calamity that was come upon us, and all unconscious that we ought to +be up and trying to stop these fatal tongues. In the morning everybody +knew, and the disaster was complete, for where everybody knows a thing +the priest knows it, of course. We all flocked to Pere Fronte, crying and +begging--and he had to cry, too, seeing our sorrow, for he had a most +kind and gentle nature; and he did not want to banish the fairies, and +said so; but said he had no choice, for it had been decreed that if they +ever revealed themselves to man again, they must go. This all happened at +the worst time possible, for Joan of Arc was ill of a fever and out of +her head, and what could we do who had not her gifts of reasoning and +persuasion? We flew in a swarm to her bed and cried out, "Joan, wake! +Wake, there is no moment to lose! Come and plead for the fairies--come +and save them; only you can do it!" + +But her mind was wandering, she did not know what we said nor what we +meant; so we went away knowing all was lost. Yes, all was lost, forever +lost; the faithful friends of the children for five hundred years must +go, and never come back any more. + +It was a bitter day for us, that day that Pere Fronte held the function +under the tree and banished the fairies. We could not wear mourning that +any could have noticed, it would not have been allowed; so we had to be +content with some poor small rag of black tied upon our garments where it +made no show; but in our hearts we wore mourning, big and noble and +occupying all the room, for our hearts were ours; they could not get at +them to prevent that. + +The great tree--l'Arbre Fee do Bourlemont was its beautiful name--was +never afterward quite as much to us as it had been before, but it was +always dear; is dear to me yet when I got there now, once a year in my +old age, to sit under it and bring back the lost playmates of my youth +and group them about me and look upon their faces through my tears and +break my heart, oh, my God! No, the place was not quite the same +afterward. In one or two ways it could not be; for, the fairies' +protection being gone, the spring lost much of its freshness and +coldness, and more than two-thirds of its volume, and the banished +serpents and stinging insects returned, and multiplied, and became a +torment and have remained so to this day. + +When that wise little child, Joan, got well, we realized how much her +illness had cost us; for we found that we had been right in believing she +could save the fairies. She burst into a great storm of anger, for so +little a creature, and went straight to Pere Fronte, and stood up before +him where he sat, and made reverence and said: + +"The fairies were to go if they showed themselves to people again, is it +not so?" + +"Yes, that was it, dear." + +"If a man comes prying into a person's room at midnight when that person +is half-naked, will you be so unjust as to say that that person is +showing himself to that man?" + +"Well--no." The good priest looked a little troubled and uneasy when he +said it. + +"Is a sin a sin, anyway, even if one did not intend to commit it?" + +Pere Fronte threw up his hands and cried out: + +"Oh, my poor little child, I see all my fault," and he drew here to his +side and put an arm around her and tried to make his peace with her, but +her temper was up so high that she could not get it down right away, but +buried her head against his breast and broke out crying and said: + +"Then the fairies committed no sin, for there was no intention to commit +one, they not knowing that any one was by; and because they were little +creatures and could not speak for themselves and say the saw was against +the intention, not against the innocent act, because they had no friend +to think that simple thing for them and say it, they have been sent away +from their home forever, and it was wrong, wrong to do it!" + +The good father hugged her yet closer to his side and said: + +"Oh, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the heedless and unthinking +are condemned; would God I could bring the little creatures back, for +your sake. And mine, yes, and mine; for I have been unjust. There, there, +don't cry--nobody could be sorrier than your poor old friend--don't cry, +dear." + +"But I can't stop right away, I've got to. And it is no little matter, +this thing that you have done. Is being sorry penance enough for such an +act?" + +Pere Fronte turned away his face, for it would have hurt her to see him +laugh, and said: + +"Oh, thou remorseless but most just accuser, no, it is not. I will put on +sackcloth and ashes; there--are you satisfied?" + +Joan's sobs began to diminish, and she presently looked up at the old man +through her tears, and said, in her simple way: + +"Yes, that will do--if it will clear you." + +Pere Fronte would have been moved to laugh again, perhaps, if he had not +remembered in time that he had made a contract, and not a very agreeable +one. It must be fulfilled. So he got up and went to the fireplace, Joan +watching him with deep interest, and took a shovelful of cold ashes, and +was going to empty them on his old gray head when a better idea came to +him, and he said: + +"Would you mind helping me, dear?" + +"How, father?" + +He got down on his knees and bent his head low, and said: + +"Take the ashes and put them on my head for me." + +The matter ended there, of course. The victory was with the priest. One +can imagine how the idea of such a profanation would strike Joan or any +other child in the village. She ran and dropped upon her knees by his +side and said: + +"Oh, it is dreadful. I didn't know that that was what one meant by +sackcloth and ashes--do please get up, father." + +"But I can't until I am forgiven. Do you forgive me?" + +"I? Oh, you have done nothing to me, father; it is yourself that must +forgive yourself for wronging those poor things. Please get up, gather, +won't you?" + +"But I am worse off now than I was before. I thought I was earning your +forgiveness, but if it is my own, I can't be lenient; it would not become +me. Now what can I do? Find me some way out of this with your wise little +head." + +The Pere would not stir, for all Joan's pleadings. She was about to cry +again; then she had an idea, and seized the shovel and deluged her own +head with the ashes, stammering out through her chokings and +suffocations: + +"There--now it is done. Oh, please get up, father." + +The old man, both touched and amused, gathered her to his breast and +said: + +"Oh, you incomparable child! It's a humble martyrdom, and not of a sort +presentable in a picture, but the right and true spirit is in it; that I +testify." + +Then he brushed the ashes out of her hair, and helped her scour her face +and neck and properly tidy herself up. He was in fine spirits now, and +ready for further argument, so he took his seat and drew Joan to his side +again, and said: + +"Joan, you were used to make wreaths there at the Fairy Tree with the +other children; is it not so?" + +That was the way he always started out when he was going to corner me up +and catch me in something--just that gentle, indifferent way that fools a +person so, and leads him into the trap, he never noticing which way he is +traveling until he is in and the door shut on him. He enjoyed that. I +knew he was going to drop corn along in front of Joan now. Joan answered: + +"Yes, father." + +"Did you hang them on the tree?" + +"No, father." + +"Didn't hang them there?" + +"No." + +"Why didn't you?" + +"I--well, I didn't wish to." + +"Didn't wish to?" + +"No, father." + +"What did you do with them?" + +"I hung them in the church." + +"Why didn't you want to hang them in the tree?" + +"Because it was said that the fairies were of kin to the Fiend, and that +it was sinful to show them honor." + +"Did you believe it was wrong to honor them so?" + +"Yes. I thought it must be wrong." + +"Then if it was wrong to honor them in that way, and if they were of kin +to the Fiend, they could be dangerous company for you and the other +children, couldn't they?" + +"I suppose so--yes, I think so." + +He studied a minute, and I judged he was going to spring his trap, and he +did. He said: + +"Then the matter stands like this. They were banned creatures, of fearful +origin; they could be dangerous company for the children. Now give me a +rational reason, dear, if you can think of any, why you call it a wrong +to drive them into banishment, and why you would have saved them from it. +In a word, what loss have you suffered by it?" + +How stupid of him to go and throw his case away like that! I could have +boxed his ears for vexation if he had been a boy. He was going along all +right until he ruined everything by winding up in that foolish and fatal +way. What had she lost by it! Was he never going to find out what kind of +a child Joan of Arc was? Was he never going to learn that things which +merely concerned her own gain or loss she cared nothing about? Could he +never get the simple fact into his head that the sure way and the only +way to rouse her up and set her on fire was to show her where some other +person was going to suffer wrong or hurt or loss? Why, he had gone and +set a trap for himself--that was all he had accomplished. + +The minute those words were out of his mouth her temper was up, the +indignant tears rose in her eyes, and she burst out on him with an energy +and passion which astonished him, but didn't astonish me, for I knew he +had fired a mine when he touched off his ill-chosen climax. + +"Oh, father, how can you talk like that? Who owns France?" + +"God and the King." + +"Not Satan?" + +"Satan, my child? This is the footstool of the Most High--Satan owns no +handful of its soil." + +"Then who gave those poor creatures their home? God. Who protected them +in it all those centuries? God. Who allowed them to dance and play there +all those centuries and found no fault with it? God. Who disapproved of +God's approval and put a threat upon them? A man. Who caught them again +in harmless sports that God allowed and a man forbade, and carried out +that threat, and drove the poor things away from the home the good God +gave them in His mercy and His pity, and sent down His rain and dew and +sunshine upon it five hundred years in token of His peace? It was their +home--theirs, by the grace of God and His good heart, and no man had a +right to rob them of it. And they were the gentlest, truest friends that +children ever had, and did them sweet and loving service all these five +long centuries, and never any hurt or harm; and the children loved them, +and now they mourn for them, and there is no healing for their grief. And +what had the children done that they should suffer this cruel stroke? The +poor fairies could have been dangerous company for the children? Yes, but +never had been; and could is no argument. Kinsmen of the Fiend? What of +it? Kinsmen of the Fiend have rights, and these had; and children have +rights, and these had; and if I had been there I would have spoken--I +would have begged for the children and the fiends, and stayed your hand +and saved them all. But now--oh, now, all is lost; everything is lost, +and there is no help more!" + +Then she finished with a blast at that idea that fairy kinsmen of the +Fiend ought to be shunned and denied human sympathy and friendship +because salvation was barred against them. She said that for that very +reason people ought to pity them, and do every humane and loving thing +they could to make them forget the hard fate that had been put upon them +by accident of birth and no fault of their own. "Poor little creatures!" +she said. "What can a person's heart be made of that can pity a +Christian's child and yet can't pity a devil's child, that a thousand +times more needs it!" + +She had torn loose from Pere Fronte, and was crying, with her knuckles in +her eyes, and stamping her small feet in a fury; and now she burst out of +the place and was gone before we could gather our senses together out of +this storm of words and this whirlwind of passion. + +The Pere had got upon his feet, toward the last, and now he stood there +passing his hand back and forth across his forehead like a person who is +dazed and troubled; then he turned and wandered toward the door of his +little workroom, and as he passed through it I heard him murmur +sorrowfully: + +"Ah, me, poor children, poor fiends, they have rights, and she said +true--I never thought of that. God forgive me, I am to blame." + +When I heard that, I knew I was right in the thought that he had set a +trap for himself. It was so, and he had walked into it, you see. I seemed +to feel encouraged, and wondered if mayhap I might get him into one; but +upon reflection my heart went down, for this was not my gift. + + + + Chapter 3 All Aflame with Love of France + +SPEAKING of this matter reminds me of many incidents, many things that I +could tell, but I think I will not try to do it now. It will be more to +my present humor to call back a little glimpse of the simple and +colorless good times we used to have in our village homes in those +peaceful days--especially in the winter. In the summer we children were +out on the breezy uplands with the flocks from dawn till night, and then +there was noisy frolicking and all that; but winter was the cozy time, +winter was the snug time. Often we gathered in old Jacques d'Arc's big +dirt-floored apartment, with a great fire going, and played games, and +sang songs, and told fortunes, and listened to the old villagers tell +tales and histories and lies and one thing and another till twelve +o'clock at night. + +One winter's night we were gathered there--it was the winter that for +years afterward they called the hard winter--and that particular night +was a sharp one. It blew a gale outside, and the screaming of the wind +was a stirring sound, and I think I may say it was beautiful, for I think +it is great and fine and beautiful to hear the wind rage and storm and +blow its clarions like that, when you are inside and comfortable. And we +were. We had a roaring fire, and the pleasant spit-spit of the snow and +sleet falling in it down the chimney, and the yarning and laughing and +singing went on at a noble rate till about ten o'clock, and then we had a +supper of hot porridge and beans, and meal cakes with butter, and +appetites to match. + +Little Joan sat on a box apart, and had her bowl and bread on another +one, and her pets around her helping. She had more than was usual of them +or economical, because all the outcast cats came and took up with her, +and homeless or unlovable animals of other kinds heard about it and came, +and these spread the matter to the other creatures, and they came also; +and as the birds and the other timid wild things of the woods were not +afraid of her, but always had an idea she was a friend when they came +across her, and generally struck up an acquaintance with her to get +invited to the house, she always had samples of those breeds in stock. +She was hospitable to them all, for an animal was an animal to her, and +dear by mere reason of being an animal, no matter about its sort or +social station; and as she would allow of no cages, no collars, no +fetters, but left the creatures free to come and go as they liked, that +contented them, and they came; but they didn't go, to any extent, and so +they were a marvelous nuisance, and made Jacques d'Arc swear a good deal; +but his wife said God gave the child the instinct, and knew what He was +doing when He did it, therefore it must have its course; it would be no +sound prudence to meddle with His affairs when no invitation had been +extended. So the pets were left in peace, and here they were, as I have +said, rabbits, birds, squirrels, cats, and other reptiles, all around the +child, and full of interest in her supper, and helping what they could. +There was a very small squirrel on her shoulder, sitting up, as those +creatures do, and turning a rocky fragment of prehistoric chestnut-cake +over and over in its knotty hands, and hunting for the less indurated +places, and giving its elevated bushy tail a flirt and its pointed ears a +toss when it found one--signifying thankfulness and surprise--and then it +filed that place off with those two slender front teeth which a squirrel +carries for that purpose and not for ornament, for ornamental they never +could be, as any will admit that have noticed them. + +Everything was going fine and breezy and hilarious, but then there came +an interruption, for somebody hammered on the door. It was one of those +ragged road-stragglers--the eternal wars kept the country full of them. +He came in, all over snow, and stamped his feet, and shook, and brushed +himself, and shut the door, and took off his limp ruin of a hat, and +slapped it once or twice against his leg to knock off its fleece of snow, +and then glanced around on the company with a pleased look upon his thin +face, and a most yearning and famished one in his eye when it fell upon +the victuals, and then he gave us a humble and conciliatory salutation, +and said it was a blessed thing to have a fire like that on such a night, +and a roof overhead like this, and that rich food to eat, and loving +friends to talk with--ah, yes, this was true, and God help the homeless, +and such as must trudge the roads in this weather. + +Nobody said anything. The embarrassed poor creature stood there and +appealed to one face after the other with his eyes, and found no welcome +in any, the smile on his own face flickering and fading and perishing, +meanwhile; then he dropped his gaze, the muscles of his face began to +twitch, and he put up his hand to cover this womanish sign of weakness. + +"Sit down!" + +This thunder-blast was from old Jacques d'Arc, and Joan was the object of +it. The stranger was startled, and took his hand away, and there was Joan +standing before him offering him her bowl of porridge. The man said: + +"God Almighty bless you, my darling!" and then the tears came, and ran +down his cheeks, but he was afraid to take the bowl. + +"Do you hear me? Sit down, I say!" + +There could not be a child more easy to persuade than Joan, but this was +not the way. Her father had not the art; neither could he learn it. Joan +said: + +"Father, he is hungry; I can see it." + +"Let him work for food, then. We are being eaten out of house and home by +his like, and I have said I would endure it no more, and will keep my +word. He has the face of a rascal anyhow, and a villain. Sit down, I tell +you!" + +"I know not if he is a rascal or no, but he is hungry, father, and shall +have my porridge--I do not need it." + +"If you don't obey me I'll-- Rascals are not entitled to help from honest +people, and no bite nor sup shall they have in this house. Joan!" + +She set her bowl down on the box and came over and stood before her +scowling father, and said: + +"Father, if you will not let me, then it must be as you say; but I would +that you would think--then you would see that it is not right to punish +one part of him for what the other part has done; for it is that poor +stranger's head that does the evil things, but it is not his head that is +hungry, it is his stomach, and it has done no harm to anybody, but is +without blame, and innocent, not having any way to do a wrong, even if it +was minded to it. Please let--" + +"What an idea! It is the most idiotic speech I ever heard." + +But Aubrey, the maire, broke in, he being fond of an argument, and having +a pretty gift in that regard, as all acknowledged. Rising in his place +and leaning his knuckles upon the table and looking about him with easy +dignity, after the manner of such as be orators, he began, smooth and +persuasive: + +"I will differ with you there, gossip, and will undertake to show the +company"--here he looked around upon us and nodded his head in a +confident way--"that there is a grain of sense in what the child has +said; for look you, it is of a certainty most true and demonstrable that +it is a man's head that is master and supreme ruler over his whole body. +Is that granted? Will any deny it?" He glanced around again; everybody +indicated assent. "Very well, then; that being the case, no part of the +body is responsible for the result when it carries out an order delivered +to it by the head; ergo, the head is alone responsible for crimes done by +a man's hands or feet or stomach--do you get the idea? am I right thus +far?" Everybody said yes, and said it with enthusiasm, and some said, one +to another, that the maire was in great form to-night and at his very +best--which pleased the maire exceedingly and made his eyes sparkle with +pleasure, for he overheard these things; so he went on in the same +fertile and brilliant way. "Now, then, we will consider what the term +responsibility means, and how it affects the case in point. +Responsibility makes a man responsible for only those things for which he +is properly responsible"--and he waved his spoon around in a wide sweep +to indicate the comprehensive nature of that class of responsibilities +which render people responsible, and several exclaimed, admiringly, "He +is right!--he has put that whole tangled thing into a nutshell--it is +wonderful!" After a little pause to give the interest opportunity to +gather and grow, he went on: "Very good. Let us suppose the case of a +pair of tongs that falls upon a man's foot, causing a cruel hurt. Will +you claim that the tongs are punishable for that? The question is +answered; I see by your faces that you would call such a claim absurd. +Now, why is it absurd? It is absurd because, there being no reasoning +faculty--that is to say, no faculty of personal command--in a pair of +togs, personal responsibility for the acts of the tongs is wholly absent +from the tongs; and, therefore, responsibility being absent, punishment +cannot ensue. Am I right?" A hearty burst of applause was his answer. +"Now, then, we arrive at a man's stomach. Consider how exactly, how +marvelously, indeed, its situation corresponds to that of a pair of +tongs. Listen--and take careful note, I beg you. Can a man's stomach plan +a murder? No. Can it plan a theft? No. Can it plan an incendiary fire? +No. Now answer me--can a pair of tongs?" (There were admiring shouts of +"No!" and "The cases are just exact!" and "Don't he do it splendid!") +"Now, then, friends and neighbors, a stomach which cannot plan a crime +cannot be a principal in the commission of it--that is plain, as you see. +The matter is narrowed down by that much; we will narrow it further. Can +a stomach, of its own motion, assist at a crime? The answer is no, +because command is absent, the reasoning faculty is absent, volition is +absent--as in the case of the tongs. We perceive now, do we not, that the +stomach is totally irresponsible for crimes committed, either in whole or +in part, by it?" He got a rousing cheer for response. "Then what do we +arrive at as our verdict? Clearly this: that there is no such thing in +this world as a guilty stomach; that in the body of the veriest rascal +resides a pure and innocent stomach; that, whatever it's owner may do, it +at least should be sacred in our eyes; and that while God gives us minds +to think just and charitable and honorable thoughts, it should be, and +is, our privilege, as well as our duty, not only to feed the hungry +stomach that resides in a rascal, having pity for its sorrow and its +need, but to do it gladly, gratefully, in recognition of its sturdy and +loyal maintenance of its purity and innocence in the midst of temptation +and in company so repugnant to its better feelings. I am done." + +Well, you never saw such an effect! They rose--the whole house rose--an +clapped, and cheered, and praised him to the skies; and one after +another, still clapping and shouting, they crowded forward, some with +moisture in their eyes, and wrung his hands, and said such glorious +things to him that he was clear overcome with pride and happiness, and +couldn't say a word, for his voice would have broken, sure. It was +splendid to see; and everybody said he had never come up to that speech +in his life before, and never could do it again. Eloquence is a power, +there is no question of that. Even old Jacques d'Arc was carried away, +for once in his life, and shouted out: + +"It's all right, Joan--give him the porridge!" + +She was embarrassed, and did not seem to know what to say, and so didn't +say anything. It was because she had given the man the porridge long ago +and he had already eaten it all up. When she was asked why she had not +waited until a decision was arrived at, she said the man's stomach was +very hungry, and it would not have been wise to wait, since she could not +tell what the decision would be. Now that was a good and thoughtful idea +for a child. + +The man was not a rascal at all. He was a very good fellow, only he was +out of luck, and surely that was no crime at that time in France. Now +that his stomach was proved to be innocent, it was allowed to make itself +at home; and as soon as it was well filled and needed nothing more, the +man unwound his tongue and turned it loose, and it was really a noble one +to go. He had been in the wars for years, and the things he told and the +way he told them fired everybody's patriotism away up high, and set all +hearts to thumping and all pulses to leaping; then, before anybody +rightly knew how the change was made, he was leading us a sublime march +through the ancient glories of France, and in fancy we saw the titanic +forms of the twelve paladins rise out of the mists of the past and face +their fate; we heard the tread of the innumerable hosts sweeping down to +shut them in; we saw this human tide flow and ebb, ebb and flow, and +waste away before that little band of heroes; we saw each detail pass +before us of that most stupendous, most disastrous, yet most adored and +glorious day in French legendary history; here and there and yonder, +across that vast field of the dead and dying, we saw this and that and +the other paladin dealing his prodigious blows with weary arm and failing +strength, and one by one we saw them fall, till only one remained--he +that was without peer, he whose name gives name to the Song of Songs, the +song which no Frenchman can hear and keep his feelings down and his pride +of country cool; then, grandest and pitifulest scene of all, we saw his +own pathetic death; and out stillness, as we sat with parted lips and +breathless, hanging upon this man's words, gave us a sense of the awful +stillness that reigned in that field of slaughter when that last +surviving soul had passed. + +And now, in this solemn hush, the stranger gave Joan a pat or two on the +head and said: + +"Little maid--whom God keep!--you have brought me from death to life this +night; now listen: here is your reward," and at that supreme time for +such a heart-melting, soul-rousing surprise, without another word he +lifted up the most noble and pathetic voice that was ever heard, and +began to pour out the great Song of Roland! + +Think of that, with a French audience all stirred up and ready. Oh, where +was your spoken eloquence now! what was it to this! How fine he looked, +how stately, how inspired, as he stood there with that mighty chant +welling from his lips and his heart, his whole body transfigured, and his +rags along with it. + +Everybody rose and stood while he sang, and their faces glowed and their +eyes burned; and the tears came and flowed don their cheeks and their +forms began to sway unconsciously to the swing of the song, and their +bosoms to heave and pant; and moanings broke out, and deep ejaculations; +and when the last verse was reached, and Roland lay dying, all alone, +with his face to the field and to his slain, lying there in heaps and +winrows, and took off and held up his gauntlet to God with his failing +hand, and breathed his beautiful prayer with his paling pips, all burst +out in sobs and wailings. But when the final great note died out and the +song was done, they all flung themselves in a body at the singer, stark +mad with love of him and love of France and pride in her great deeds and +old renown, and smothered him with their embracings; but Joan was there +first, hugged close to his breast, and covering his face with idolatrous +kisses. + +The storm raged on outside, but that was no matter; this was the +stranger's home now, for as long as he might please. + + + + Chapter 4 Joan Tames the Mad Man + +ALL CHILDREN have nicknames, and we had ours. We got one apiece early, +and they stuck to us; but Joan was richer in this matter, for, as time +went on, she earned a second, and then a third, and so on, and we gave +them to her. First and last she had as many as half a dozen. Several of +these she never lost. Peasant-girls are bashful naturally; but she +surpassed the rule so far, and colored so easily, and was so easily +embarrassed in the presence of strangers, that we nicknamed her the +Bashful. We were all patriots, but she was called the Patriot, because +our warmest feeling for our country was cold beside hers. Also she was +called the Beautiful; and this was not merely because of the +extraordinary beauty of her face and form, but because of the loveliness +of her character. These names she kept, and one other--the Brave. + +We grew along up, in that plodding and peaceful region, and got to be +good-sized boys and girls--big enough, in fact, to begin to know as much +about the wars raging perpetually to the west and north of us as our +elders, and also to feel as stirred up over the occasional news from +these red fields as they did. I remember certain of these days very +clearly. One Tuesday a crowd of us were romping and singing around the +Fairy Tree, and hanging garlands on it in memory of our lost little fairy +friends, when Little Mengette cried out: + +"Look! What is that?" + +When one exclaims like that in a way that shows astonishment and +apprehension, he gets attention. All the panting breasts and flushed +faces flocked together, and all the eager eyes were turned in one +direction--down the slope, toward the village. + +"It's a black flag." + +"A black flag! No--is it?" + +"You can see for yourself that it is nothing else." + +"It is a black flag, sure! Now, has any ever seen the like of that +before?" + +"What can it mean?" + +"Mean? It means something dreadful--what else?" + +"That is nothing to the point; anybody knows that without the telling. +But what?--that is the question." + +"It is a chance that he that bears it can answer as well as any that are +here, if you contain yourself till he comes." + +"He runs well. Who is it?" + +Some named one, some another; but presently all saw that it was Etienne +Roze, called the Sunflower, because he had yellow hair and a round +pock-marked face. His ancestors had been Germans some centuries ago. He +came straining up the slope, now and then projecting his flag-stick aloft +and giving his black symbol of woe a wave in the air, whilst all eyes +watched him, all tongues discussed him, and every heart beat faster and +faster with impatience to know his news. At last he sprang among us, and +struck his flag-stick into the ground, saying: + +"There! Stand there and represent France while I get my breath. She needs +no other flag now." + +All the giddy chatter stopped. It was as if one had announced a death. In +that chilly hush there was no sound audible but the panting of the +breath-blown boy. When he was presently able to speak, he said: + +"Black news is come. A treaty has been made at Troyes between France and +the English and Burgundians. By it France is betrayed and delivered over, +tied hand and foot, to the enemy. It is the work of the Duke of Burgundy +and that she-devil, the Queen of France. It marries Henry of England to +Catharine of France--" + +"Is not this a lie? Marries the daughter of France to the Butcher of +Agincourt? It is not to be believed. You have not heard aright." + +"If you cannot believe that, Jacques d'Arc, then you have a difficult +task indeed before you, for worse is to come. Any child that is born of +that marriage--if even a girl--is to inherit the thrones of both England +and France, and this double ownership is to remain with its posterity +forever!" + +"Now that is certainly a lie, for it runs counter to our Salic law, and +so is not legal and cannot have effect," said Edmond Aubrey, called the +Paladin, because of the armies he was always going to eat up some day. He +would have said more, but he was drowned out by the clamors of the +others, who all burst into a fury over this feature of the treaty, all +talking at once and nobody hearing anybody, until presently Haumette +persuaded them to be still, saying: + +"It is not fair to break him up so in his tale; pray let him go on. You +find fault with his history because it seems to be lies. That were reason +for satisfaction--that kind of lies--not discontent. Tell the rest, +Etienne." + +"There is but this to tell: Our King, Charles VI., is to reign until he +dies, then Henry V. of England is to be Regent of France until a child of +his shall be old enough to--" + +"That man is to reign over us--the Butcher? It is lies! all lies!" cried +the Paladin. "Besides, look you--what becomes of our Dauphin? What says +the treaty about him?" + +"Nothing. It takes away his throne and makes him an outcast." + +Then everybody shouted at once and said the news was a lie; and all began +to get cheerful again, saying, "Our King would have to sign the treaty to +make it good; and that he would not do, seeing how it serves his own +son." + +But the Sunflower said: "I will ask you this: Would the Queen sign a +treaty disinheriting her son?" + +"That viper? Certainly. Nobody is talking of her. Nobody expects better +of her. There is no villainy she will stick at, if it feed her spite; and +she hates her son. Her signing it is of no consequence. The King must +sign." + +"I will ask you another thing. What is the King's condition? Mad, isn't +he?" + +"Yes, and his people love him all the more for it. It brings him near to +them by his sufferings; and pitying him makes them love him." + +"You say right, Jacques d'Arc. Well, what would you of one that is mad? +Does he know what he does? No. Does he do what others make him do? Yes. +Now, then, I tell you he has signed the treaty." + +"Who made him do it?" + +"You know, without my telling. The Queen." + +Then there was another uproar--everybody talking at once, and all heaping +execrations upon the Queen's head. Finally Jacques d'Arc said: + +"But many reports come that are not true. Nothing so shameful as this has +ever come before, nothing that cuts so deep, nothing that has dragged +France so low; therefore there is hope that this tale is but another idle +rumor. Where did you get it?" + +The color went out of his sister Joan's face. She dreaded the answer; and +her instinct was right. + +"The cur, of Maxey brought it." + +There was a general gasp. We knew him, you see, for a trusty man. + +"Did he believe it?" + +The hearts almost stopped beating. Then came the answer: + +"He did. And that is not all. He said he knew it to be true." + +Some of the girls began to sob; the boys were struck silent. The distress +in Joan's face was like that which one sees in the face of a dumb animal +that has received a mortal hurt. The animal bears it, making no +complaint; she bore it also, saying no word. Her brother Jacques put his +hand on her head and caressed her hair to indicate his sympathy, and she +gathered the hand to her lips and kissed it for thanks, not saying +anything. Presently the reaction came, and the boys began to talk. Noel +Rainguesson said: + +"Oh, are we never going to be men! We do grow along so slowly, and France +never needed soldiers as she needs them now, to wipe out this black +insult." + +"I hate youth!" said Pierre Morel, called the Dragon-fly because his eyes +stuck out so. "You've always got to wait, and wait, and wait--and here +are the great wars wasting away for a hundred years, and you never get a +chance. If I could only be a soldier now!" + +"As for me, I'm not going to wait much longer," said the Paladin; "and +when I do start you'll hear from me, I promise you that. There are some +who, in storming a castle, prefer to be in the rear; but as for me, give +me the front or none; I will have none in front of me but the officers." + +Even the girls got the war spirit, and Marie Dupont said: + +"I would I were a man; I would start this minute!" and looked very proud +of herself, and glanced about for applause. + +"So would I," said Cecile Letellier, sniffing the air like a war-horse +that smells the battle; "I warrant you I would not turn back from the +field though all England were in front of me." + +"Pooh!" said the Paladin; "girls can brag, but that's all they are good +for. Let a thousand of them come face to face with a handful of soldiers +once, if you want to see what running is like. Here's little Joan--next +she'll be threatening to go for a soldier!" + +The idea was so funny, and got such a good laugh, that the Paladin gave +it another trial, and said: "Why you can just see her!--see her plunge +into battle like any old veteran. Yes, indeed; and not a poor shabby +common soldier like us, but an officer--an officer, mind you, with armor +on, and the bars of a steel helmet to blush behind and hide her +embarrassment when she finds an army in front of her that she hasn't been +introduced to. An officer? Why, she'll be a captain! A captain, I tell +you, with a hundred men at her back--or maybe girls. Oh, no +common-soldier business for her! And, dear me, when she starts for that +other army, you'll think there's a hurricane blowing it away!" + +Well, he kept it up like that till he made their sides ache with +laughing; which was quite natural, for certainly it was a very funny +idea--at that time--I mean, the idea of that gentle little creature, that +wouldn't hurt a fly, and couldn't bear the sight of blood, and was so +girlish and shrinking in all ways, rushing into battle with a gang of +soldiers at her back. Poor thing, she sat there confused and ashamed to +be so laughed at; and yet at that very minute there was something about +to happen which would change the aspect of things, and make those young +people see that when it comes to laughing, the person that laughs last +has the best chance. For just then a face which we all knew and all +feared projected itself from behind the Fairy Tree, and the thought that +shot through us all was, crazy Benoist has gotten loose from his cage, +and we are as good as dead! This ragged and hairy and horrible creature +glided out from behind the tree, and raised an ax as he came. We all +broke and fled, this way and that, the girls screaming and crying. No, +not all; all but Joan. She stood up and faced the man, and remained so. +As we reached the wood that borders the grassy clearing and jumped into +its shelter, two or three of us glanced back to see if Benoist was +gaining on us, and that is what we saw--Joan standing, and the maniac +gliding stealthily toward her with his ax lifted. The sight was +sickening. We stood where we were, trembling and not able to move. I did +not want to see the murder done, and yet I could not take my eyes away. +Now I saw Joan step forward to meet the man, though I believed my eyes +must be deceiving me. Then I saw him stop. He threatened her with his ax, +as if to warn her not to come further, but she paid no heed, but went +steadily on, until she was right in front of him--right under his ax. +Then she stopped, and seemed to begin to talk with him. It made me sick, +yes, giddy, and everything swam around me, and I could not see anything +for a time--whether long or brief I do not know. When this passed and I +looked again, Joan was walking by the man's side toward the village, +holding him by his hand. The ax was in her other hand. + +One by one the boys and girls crept out, and we stood there gazing, +open-mouthed, till those two entered the village and were hid from sight. +It was then that we named her the Brave. + +We left the black flag there to continue its mournful office, for we had +other matter to think of now. We started for the village on a run, to +give warning, and get Joan out of her peril; though for one, after seeing +what I had seen, it seemed to me that while Joan had the ax the man's +chance was not the best of the two. When we arrived the danger was past, +the madman was in custody. All the people were flocking to the little +square in front of the church to talk and exclaim and wonder over the +event, and it even made the town forget the black news of the treaty for +two or three hours. + +All the women kept hugging and kissing Joan, and praising her, and +crying, and the men patted her on the head and said they wished she was a +man, they would send her to the wars and never doubt but that she would +strike some blows that would be heard of. She had to tear herself away +and go and hide, this glory was so trying to her diffidence. + +Of course the people began to ask us for the particulars. I was so +ashamed that I made an excuse to the first comer, and got privately away +and went back to the Fairy Tree, to get relief from the embarrassment of +those questionings. There I found Joan, but she was there to get relief +from the embarrassment of glory. One by one the others shirked the +inquirers and joined us in our refuge. Then we gathered around Joan, and +asked her how she had dared to do that thing. She was very modest about +it, and said: + +"You make a great thing of it, but you mistake; it was not a great +matter. It was not as if I had been a stranger to the man. I know him, +and have known him long; and he knows me, and likes me. I have fed him +through the bars of his cage many times; and last December, when they +chopped off two of his fingers to remind him to stop seizing and wounding +people passing by, I dressed his hand every day till it was well again." + +"That is all well enough," said Little Mengette, "but he is a madman, +dear, and so his likings and his gratitude and friendliness go for +nothing when his rage is up. You did a perilous thing." + +"Of course you did," said the Sunflower. "Didn't he threaten to kill you +with the ax?" + +"Yes." + +"Didn't he threaten you more than once?" + +"Yes." + +"Didn't you feel afraid?" + +"No--at least not much--very little." + +"Why didn't you?" + +She thought a moment, then said, quite simply: + +"I don't know." + +It made everybody laugh. Then the Sunflower said it was like a lamb +trying to think out how it had come to eat a wolf, but had to give it up. + +Cecile Letellier asked, "Why didn't you run when we did?" + +"Because it was necessary to get him to his cage; else he would kill some +one. Then he would come to the like harm himself." + +It is noticeable that this remark, which implies that Joan was entirely +forgetful of herself and her own danger, and had thought and wrought for +the preservation of other people alone, was not challenged, or +criticized, or commented upon by anybody there, but was taken by all as +matter of course and true. It shows how clearly her character was +defined, and how well it was known and established. + +There was silence for a time, and perhaps we were all thinking of the +same thing--namely, what a poor figure we had cut in that adventure as +contrasted with Joan's performance. I tried to think up some good way of +explaining why I had run away and left a little girl at the mercy of a +maniac armed with an ax, but all of the explanations that offered +themselves to me seemed so cheap and shabby that I gave the matter up and +remained still. But others were less wise. Noel Rainguesson fidgeted +awhile, then broke out with a remark which showed what his mind had been +running on: + +"The fact is, I was taken by surprise. That is the reason. If I had had a +moment to think, I would no more have thought of running that I would +think of running from a baby. For, after all, what is Theophile Benoist, +that I should seem to be afraid of him? Pooh! the idea of being afraid of +that poor thing! I only wish he would come along now--I'd show you!" + +"So do I!" cried Pierre Morel. "If I wouldn't make him climb this tree +quicker than--well, you'd see what I would do! Taking a person by +surprise, that way--why, I never meant to run; not in earnest, I mean. I +never thought of running in earnest; I only wanted to have some fun, and +when I saw Joan standing there, and him threatening her, it was all I +could do to restrain myself from going there and just tearing the livers +and lights out of him. I wanted to do it bad enough, and if it was to do +over again, I would! If ever he comes fooling around me again, I'll--" + +"Oh, hush!" said the Paladin, breaking in with an air of disdain; "the +way you people talk, a person would think there's something heroic about +standing up and facing down that poor remnant of a man. Why, it's +nothing! There's small glory to be got in facing him down, I should say. +Why, I wouldn't want any better fun than to face down a hundred like him. +If he was to come along here now, I would walk up to him just as I am +now--I wouldn't care if he had a thousand axes--and say--" + +And so he went on and on, telling the brave things he would say and the +wonders he would do; and the others put in a word from time to time, +describing over again the gory marvels they would do if ever that madman +ventured to cross their path again, for next time they would be ready for +him, and would soon teach him that if he thought he could surprise them +twice because he had surprised them once, he would find himself very +seriously mistaken, that's all. + +And so, in the end, they all got back their self-respect; yes, and even +added somewhat to it; indeed when the sitting broke up they had a finer +opinion of themselves than they had ever had before. + + + + Chapter 5 Domremy Pillaged and Burned + +THEY WERE peaceful and pleasant, those young and smoothly flowing days of +ours; that is, that was the case as a rule, we being remote from the seat +of war; but at intervals roving bands approached near enough for us to +see the flush in the sky at night which marked where they were burning +some farmstead or village, and we all knew, or at least felt, that some +day they would come yet nearer, and we should have our turn. This dull +dread lay upon our spirits like a physical weight. It was greatly +augmented a couple of years after the Treaty of Troyes. + +It was truly a dismal year for France. One day we had been over to have +one of our occasional pitched battles with those hated Burgundian boys of +the village of Maxey, and had been whipped, and were arriving on our side +of the river after dark, bruised and weary, when we heard the bell +ringing the tocsin. We ran all the way, and when we got to the square we +found it crowded with the excited villagers, and weirdly lighted by +smoking and flaring torches. + +On the steps of the church stood a stranger, a Burgundian priest, who was +telling the people new which made them weep, and rave, and rage, and +curse, by turns. He said our old mad King was dead, and that now we and +France and the crown were the property of an English baby lying in his +cradle in London. And he urged us to give that child our allegiance, and +be its faithful servants and well-wishers; and said we should now have a +strong and stable government at last, and that in a little time the +English armies would start on their last march, and it would be a brief +one, for all that it would need to do would be to conquer what odds and +ends of our country yet remained under that rare and almost forgotten +rag, the banner of France. + +The people stormed and raged at him, and you could see dozens of them +stretch their fists above the sea of torch-lighted faces and shake them +at him; and it was all a wild picture, and stirring to look at; and the +priest was a first-rate part of it, too, for he stood there in the strong +glare and looked down on those angry people in the blandest and most +indifferent way, so that while you wanted to burn him at the stake, you +still admired the aggravating coolness of him. And his winding-up was the +coolest thing of all. For he told them how, at the funeral of our old +King, the French King-at-Arms had broken his staff of office over the +coffin of "Charles VI. and his dynasty," at the same time saying, in a +loud voice, "Good grant long life to Henry, King of France and England, +our sovereign lord!" and then he asked them to join him in a hearty Amen +to that! The people were white with wrath, and it tied their tongues for +the moment, and they could not speak. But Joan was standing close by, and +she looked up in his face, and said in her sober, earnest way: + +"I would I might see thy head struck from thy body!"--then, after a +pause, and crossing herself--"if it were the will of God." + +This is worth remembering, and I will tell you why: it is the only harsh +speech Joan ever uttered in her life. When I shall have revealed to you +the storms she went through, and the wrongs and persecutions, then you +will see that it was wonderful that she said but one bitter thing while +she lived. + +From the day that that dreary news came we had one scare after another, +the marauders coming almost to our doors every now and then; so that we +lived in ever-increasing apprehension, and yet were somehow mercifully +spared from actual attack. But at last our turn did really come. This was +in the spring of '28. The Burgundians swarmed in with a great noise, in +the middle of a dark night, and we had to jump up and fly for our lives. +We took the road to Neufchateau, and rushed along in the wildest +disorder, everybody trying to get ahead, and thus the movements of all +were impeded; but Joan had a cool head--the only cool head there--and she +took command and brought order out of that chaos. She did her work +quickly and with decision and despatch, and soon turned the panic flight +into a quite steady-going march. You will grant that for so young a +person, and a girl at that, this was a good piece of work. + +She was sixteen now, shapely and graceful, and of a beauty so +extraordinary that I might allow myself any extravagance of language in +describing it and yet have no fear of going beyond the truth. There was +in her face a sweetness and serenity and purity that justly reflected her +spiritual nature. She was deeply religious, and this is a thing which +sometimes gives a melancholy cast to a person's countenance, but it was +not so in her case. Her religion made her inwardly content and joyous; +and if she was troubled at times, and showed the pain of it in her face +and bearing, it came of distress for her country; no part of it was +chargeable to her religion. + +A considerable part of our village was destroyed, and when it became safe +for us to venture back there we realized what other people had been +suffering in all the various quarters of France for many years--yes, +decades of years. For the first time we saw wrecked and smoke-blackened +homes, and in the lanes and alleys carcasses of dumb creatures that had +been slaughtered in pure wantonness--among them calves and lambs that had +been pets of the children; and it was pity to see the children lament +over them. + +And then, the taxes, the taxes! Everybody thought of that. That burden +would fall heavy now in the commune's crippled condition, and all faces +grew long with the thought of it. Joan said: + +"Paying taxes with naught to pay them with is what the rest of France has +been doing these many years, but we never knew the bitterness of that +before. We shall know it now." + +And so she went on talking about it and growing more and more troubled +about it, until one could see that it was filling all her mind. + +At last we came upon a dreadful object. It was the madman--hacked and +stabbed to death in his iron cage in the corner of the square. It was a +bloody and dreadful sight. Hardly any of us young people had ever seen a +man before who had lost his life by violence; so this cadaver had an +awful fascination for us; we could not take our eyes from it. I mean, it +had that sort of fascination for all of us but one. That one was Joan. +She turned away in horror, and could not be persuaded to go near it +again. There--it is a striking reminder that we are but creatures of use +and custom; yes, and it is a reminder, too, of how harshly and unfairly +fate deals with us sometimes. For it was so ordered that the very ones +among us who were most fascinated with mutilated and bloody death were to +live their lives in peace, while that other, who had a native and deep +horror of it, must presently go forth and have it as a familiar spectacle +every day on the field of battle. + +You may well believe that we had plenty of matter for talk now, since the +raiding of our village seemed by long odds the greatest event that had +really ever occurred in the world; for although these dull peasants may +have thought they recognized the bigness of some of the previous +occurrences that had filtered from the world's history dimly into their +minds, the truth is that they hadn't. One biting little fact, visible to +their eyes of flesh and felt in their own personal vitals, became at once +more prodigious to them than the grandest remote episode in the world's +history which they had got at second hand and by hearsay. It amuses me +now when I recall how our elders talked then. The fumed and fretted in a +fine fashion. + +"Ah, yes," said old Jacques d'Arc, "things are come to a pretty pass, +indeed! The King must be informed of this. It is time that he cease from +idleness and dreaming, and get at his proper business." He meant our +young disinherited King, the hunted refugee, Charles VII. + +"You way well," said the maire. "He should be informed, and that at once. +It is an outrage that such things would be permitted. Why, we are not +safe in our beds, and he taking his ease yonder. It shall be made known, +indeed it shall--all France shall hear of it!" + +To hear them talk, one would have imagined that all the previous ten +thousand sackings and burnings in France had been but fables, and this +one the only fact. It is always the way; words will answer as long as it +is only a person's neighbor who is in trouble, but when that person gets +into trouble himself, it is time that the King rise up and do something. + +The big event filled us young people with talk, too. We let it flow in a +steady stream while we tended the flocks. We were beginning to feel +pretty important now, for I was eighteen and the other youths were from +one to four years older--young men, in fact. One day the Paladin was +arrogantly criticizing the patriot generals of France and said: + +"Look at Dunois, Bastard of Orleans--call him a general! Just put me in +his place once--never mind what I would do, it is not for me to say, I +have no stomach for talk, my way is to act and let others do the +talking--but just put me in his place once, that's all! And look at +Saintrailles--pooh! and that blustering La Hire, now what a general that +is!" + +It shocked everybody to hear these great names so flippantly handled, for +to us these renowned soldiers were almost gods. In their far-off splendor +they rose upon our imaginations dim and huge, shadowy and awful, and it +was a fearful thing to hear them spoken of as if they were mere men, and +their acts open to comment and criticism. The color rose in Joan's face, +and she said: + +"I know not how any can be so hardy as to use such words regarding these +sublime men, who are the very pillars of the French state, supporting it +with their strength and preserving it at daily cost of their blood. As +for me, I could count myself honored past all deserving if I might be +allowed but the privilege of looking upon them once--at a distance, I +mean, for it would not become one of my degree to approach them too +near." + +The Paladin was disconcerted for a moment, seeing by the faces around him +that Joan had put into words what the others felt, then he pulled his +complacency together and fell to fault-finding again. Joan's brother Jean +said: + +"If you don't like what our generals do, why don't you go to the great +wars yourself and better their work? You are always talking about going +to the wars, but you don't go." + +"Look you," said the Paladin, "it is easy to say that. Now I will tell +you why I remain chafing here in a bloodless tranquillity which my +reputation teaches you is repulsive to my nature. I do not go because I +am not a gentleman. That is the whole reason. What can one private +soldier do in a contest like this? Nothing. He is not permitted to rise +from the ranks. If I were a gentleman would I remain here? Not one +moment. I can save France--ah, you may laugh, but I know what is in me, I +know what is hid under this peasant cap. I can save France, and I stand +ready to do it, but not under these present conditions. If they want me, +let them send for me; otherwise, let them take the consequences; I shall +not budge but as an officer." + +"Alas, poor France--France is lost!" said Pierre d'Arc. + +"Since you sniff so at others, why don't you go to the wars yourself, +Pierre d'Arc?" + +"Oh, I haven't been sent for, either. I am no more a gentleman than you. +Yet I will go; I promise to go. I promise to go as a private under your +orders--when you are sent for." + +They all laughed, and the Dragon-fly said: + +"So soon? Then you need to begin to get ready; you might be called for in +five years--who knows? Yes, in my opinion you'll march for the wars in +five years." + +"He will go sooner," said Joan. She said it in a low voice and musingly, +but several heard it. + +"How do you know that, Joan?" said the Dragon-fly, with a surprised look. +But Jean d'Arc broke in and said: + +"I want to go myself, but as I am rather young yet, I also will wait, and +march when the Paladin is sent for." + +"No," said Joan, "he will go with Pierre." + +She said it as one who talks to himself aloud without knowing it, and +none heard it but me. I glanced at her and saw that her knitting-needles +were idle in her hands, and that her face had a dreamy and absent look in +it. There were fleeting movements of her lips as if she might be +occasionally saying parts of sentences to herself. But there was no +sound, for I was the nearest person to her and I heard nothing. But I set +my ears open, for those two speeches had affected me uncannily, I being +superstitious and easily troubled by any little thing of a strange and +unusual sort. + +Noel Rainguesson said: + +"There is one way to let France have a chance for her salvation. We've +got one gentleman in the commune, at any rate. Why can't the Scholar +change name and condition with the Paladin? Then he can be an officer. +France will send for him then, and he will sweep these English and +Burgundian armies into the sea like flies." + +I was the Scholar. That was my nickname, because I could read and write. +There was a chorus of approval, and the Sunflower said: + +"That is the very thing--it settles every difficulty. The Sieur de Conte +will easily agree to that. Yes, he will march at the back of Captain +Paladin and die early, covered with common-soldier glory." + +"He will march with Jean and Pierre, and live till these wars are +forgotten," Joan muttered; "and at the eleventh hour Noel and the Paladin +will join these, but not of their own desire." The voice was so low that +I was not perfectly sure that these were the words, but they seemed to +be. It makes one feel creepy to hear such things. + +"Come, now," Noel continued, "it's all arranged; there's nothing to do +but organize under the Paladin's banner and go forth and rescue France. +You'll all join?" + +All said yes, except Jacques d'Arc, who said: + +"I'll ask you to excuse me. It is pleasant to talk war, and I am with you +there, and I've always thought I should go soldiering about this time, +but the look of our wrecked village and that carved-up and bloody madman +have taught me that I am not made for such work and such sights. I could +never be at home in that trade. Face swords and the big guns and death? +It isn't in me. No, no; count me out. And besides, I'm the eldest son, +and deputy prop and protector of the family. Since you are going to carry +Jean and Pierre to the wars, somebody must be left behind to take care of +our Joan and her sister. I shall stay at home, and grow old in peace and +tranquillity." + +"He will stay at home, but not grow old," murmured Joan. + +The talk rattled on in the gay and careless fashion privileged to youth, +and we got the Paladin to map out his campaigns and fight his battles and +win his victories and extinguish the English and put our King upon his +throne and set his crown upon his head. Then we asked him what he was +going to answer when the King should require him to name his reward. The +Paladin had it all arranged in his head, and brought it out promptly: + +"He shall give me a dukedom, name me premier peer, and make me Hereditary +Lord High Constable of France." + +"And marry you to a princess--you're not going to leave that out, are +you?" + +The Paladin colored a trifle, and said, brusquely: + +"He may keep his princesses--I can marry more to my taste." + +Meaning Joan, though nobody suspected it at that time. If any had, the +Paladin would have been finely ridiculed for his vanity. There was no fit +mate in that village for Joan of Arc. Every one would have said that. + +In turn, each person present was required to say what reward he would +demand of the King if he could change places with the Paladin and do the +wonders the Paladin was going to do. The answers were given in fun, and +each of us tried to outdo his predecessors in the extravagance of the +reward he would claim; but when it came to Joan's turn, and they rallied +her out of her dreams and asked her to testify, they had to explain to +her what the question was, for her thought had been absent, and she had +heard none of this latter part of our talk. She supposed they wanted a +serious answer, and she gave it. She sat considering some moments, then +she said: + +"If the Dauphin, out of his grace and nobleness, should say to me, 'Now +that I am rich and am come to my own again, choose and have,' I should +kneel and ask him to give command that our village should nevermore be +taxed." + +It was so simple and out of her heart that it touched us and we did not +laugh, but fell to thinking. We did not laugh; but there came a day when +we remembered that speech with a mournful pride, and were glad that we +had not laughed, perceiving then how honest her words had been, and +seeing how faithfully she made them good when the time came, asking just +that boon of the King and refusing to take even any least thing for +herself. + + + + Chapter 6 Joan and Archangel Michael + +ALL THROUGH her childhood and up to the middle of her fourteenth year, +Joan had been the most light-hearted creature and the merriest in the +village, with a hop-skip-and-jump gait and a happy and catching laugh; +and this disposition, supplemented by her warm and sympathetic nature and +frank and winning ways, had made her everybody's pet. She had been a hot +patriot all this time, and sometimes the war news had sobered her spirits +and wrung her heart and made her acquainted with tears, but always when +these interruptions had run their course her spirits rose and she was her +old self again. + +But now for a whole year and a half she had been mainly grave; not +melancholy, but given to thought, abstraction, dreams. She was carrying +France upon her heart, and she found the burden not light. I knew that +this was her trouble, but others attributed her abstraction to religious +ecstasy, for she did not share her thinkings with the village at large, +yet gave me glimpses of them, and so I knew, better than the rest, what +was absorbing her interest. Many a time the idea crossed my mind that she +had a secret--a secret which she was keeping wholly to herself, as well +from me as from the others. This idea had come to me because several +times she had cut a sentence in two and changed the subject when +apparently she was on the verge of a revelation of some sort. I was to +find this secret out, but not just yet. + +The day after the conversation which I have been reporting we were +together in the pastures and fell to talking about France, as usual. For +her sake I had always talked hopefully before, but that was mere lying, +for really there was not anything to hang a rag of hope for France upon. +Now it was such a pain to lie to her, and cost me such shame to offer +this treachery to one so snow-pure from lying and treachery, and even +from suspicion of such baseness in others, as she was, that I was +resolved to face about now and begin over again, and never insult her +more with deception. I started on the new policy by saying--still opening +up with a small lie, of course, for habit is habit, and not to be flung +out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time: + +"Joan, I have been thinking the thing all over last night, and have +concluded that we have been in the wrong all this time; that the case of +France is desperate; that it has been desperate ever since Agincourt; and +that to-day it is more than desperate, it is hopeless." + +I did not look her in the face while I was saying it; it could not be +expected of a person. To break her heart, to crush her hope with a so +frankly brutal speech as that, without one charitable soft place in +it--it seemed a shameful thing, and it was. But when it was out, the +weight gone, and my conscience rising to the surface, I glanced at her +face to see the result. + +There was none to see. At least none that I was expecting. There was a +barely perceptible suggestion of wonder in her serious eyes, but that was +all; and she said, in her simple and placid way: + +"The case of France hopeless? Why should you think that? Tell me." + +It is a most pleasant thing to find that what you thought would inflict a +hurt upon one whom you honor, has not done it. I was relieved now, and +could say all my say without any furtivenesses and without embarrassment. +So I began: + +"Let us put sentiment and patriotic illusions aside, and look at the +facts in the face. What do they say? They speak as plainly as the figures +in a merchant's account-book. One has only to add the two columns up to +see that the French house is bankrupt, that one-half of its property is +already in the English sheriff's hands and the other half in +nobody's--except those of irresponsible raiders and robbers confessing +allegiance to nobody. Our King is shut up with his favorites and fools in +inglorious idleness and poverty in a narrow little patch of the +kingdom--a sort of back lot, as one may say--and has no authority there +or anywhere else, hasn't a farthing to his name, nor a regiment of +soldiers; he is not fighting, he is not intending to fight, he means to +make no further resistance; in truth, there is but one thing that he is +intending to do--give the whole thing up, pitch his crown into the sewer, +and run away to Scotland. There are the facts. Are they correct?" + +"Yes, they are correct." + +"Then it is as I have said: one needs but to add them together in order +to realize what they mean." + +She asked, in an ordinary, level tone: + +"What--that the case of France is hopeless?" + +"Necessarily. In face of these facts, doubt of it is impossible." + +"How can you say that? How can you feel like that?" + +"How can I? How could I think or feel in any other way, in the +circumstances? Joan, with these fatal figures before, you, have you +really any hope for France--really and actually?" + +"Hope--oh, more than that! France will win her freedom and keep it. Do +not doubt it." + +It seemed to me that her clear intellect must surely be clouded to-day. +It must be so, or she would see that those figures could mean only one +thing. Perhaps if I marshaled them again she would see. So I said: + +"Joan, your heart, which worships France, is beguiling your head. You are +not perceiving the importance of these figures. Here--I want to make a +picture of them, her eon the ground with a stick. Now, this rough outline +is France. Through its middle, east and west, I draw a river." + +"Yes, the Loire." + +"Now, then, this whole northern half of the country is in the tight grip +of the English." + +"Yes." + +"And this whole southern half is really in nobody's hands at all--as our +King confesses by meditating desertion and flight to a foreign land. +England has armies here; opposition is dead; she can assume full +possession whenever she may choose. In very truth, all France is gone, +France is already lost, France has ceased to exist. What was France is +now but a British province. Is this true?" + +Her voice was low, and just touched with emotion, but distinct: + +"Yes, it is true." + +"Very well. Now add this clinching fact, and surely the sum is complete: +When have French soldiers won a victory? Scotch soldiers, under the +French flag, have won a barren fight or two a few years back, but I am +speaking of French ones. Since eight thousand Englishmen nearly +annihilated sixty thousand Frenchmen a dozen years ago at Agincourt, +French courage has been paralyzed. And so it is a common saying to-day +that if you confront fifty French soldiers with five English ones, the +French will run." + +"It is a pity, but even these things are true." + +"Then certainly the day for hoping is past." + +I believed the case would be clear to her now. I thought it could not +fail to be clear to her, and that she would say, herself, that there was +no longer any ground for hope. But I was mistaken; and disappointed also. +She said, without any doubt in her tone: + +"France will rise again. You shall see." + +"Rise?--with this burden of English armies on her back!" + +"She will cast it off; she will trample it under foot!" This with spirit. + +"Without soldiers to fight with?" + +"The drums will summon them. They will answer, and they will march." + +"March to the rear, as usual?" + +"No; to the front--ever to the front--always to the front! You shall +see." + +"And the pauper King?" + +"He will mount his throne--he will wear his crown." + +"Well, of a truth this makes one's head dizzy. Why, if I could believe +that in thirty years from now the English domination would be broken and +the French monarch's head find itself hooped with a real crown of +sovereignty--" + +"Both will have happened before two years are sped." + +"Indeed? and who is going to perform all these sublime impossibilities?" + +"God." + +It was a reverent low note, but it rang clear. + +What could have put those strange ideas in her head? This question kept +running in my mind during two or three days. It was inevitable that I +should think of madness. What other way was there to account for such +things? Grieving and brooding over the woes of France had weakened that +strong mind, and filled it with fantastic phantoms--yes, that must be it. + +But I watched her, and tested her, and it was not so. Her eye was clear +and sane, her ways were natural, her speech direct and to the point. No, +there was nothing the matter with her mind; it was still the soundest in +the village and the best. She went on thinking for others, planning for +others, sacrificing herself for others, just as always before. She went +on ministering to her sick and to her poor, and still stood ready to give +the wayfarer her bed and content herself with the floor. There was a +secret somewhere, but madness was not the key to it. This was plain. + +Now the key did presently come into my hands, and the way that it +happened was this. You have heard all the world talk of this matter which +I am about to speak of, but you have not heard an eyewitness talk of it +before. + +I was coming from over the ridge, one day--it was the 15th of May, +'28--and when I got to the edge of the oak forest and was about to step +out of it upon the turfy open space in which the haunted beech tree +stood, I happened to cast a glance from cover, first--then I took a step +backward, and stood in the shelter and concealment of the foliage. For I +had caught sight of Joan, and thought I would devise some sort of playful +surprise for her. Think of it--that trivial conceit was neighbor, with +but a scarcely measurable interval of time between, to an event destined +to endure forever in histories and songs. + +The day was overcast, and all that grassy space wherein the Tree stood +lay in a soft rich shadow. Joan sat on a natural seat formed by gnarled +great roots of the Tree. Her hands lay loosely, one reposing in the +other, in her lap. Her head was bent a little toward the ground, and her +air was that of one who is lost to thought, steeped in dreams, and not +conscious of herself or of the world. And now I saw a most strange thing, +for I saw a white shadow come slowly gliding along the grass toward the +Tree. It was of grand proportions--a robed form, with wings--and the +whiteness of this shadow was not like any other whiteness that we know +of, except it be the whiteness of lightnings, but even the lightnings are +not so intense as it was, for one cal look at them without hurt, whereas +this brilliancy was so blinding that in pained my eyes and brought the +water into them. I uncovered my head, perceiving that I was in the +presence of something not of this world. My breath grew faint and +difficult, because of the terror and the awe that possessed me. + +Another strange thing. The wood had been silent--smitten with that deep +stillness which comes when a storm-cloud darkens a forest, and the wild +creatures lose heart and are afraid; but now all the birds burst forth +into song, and the joy, the rapture, the ecstasy of it was beyond belief; +and was so eloquent and so moving, withal, that it was plain it was an +act of worship. With the first note of those birds Joan cast herself upon +her knees, and bent her head low and crossed her hands upon her breast. + +She had not seen the shadow yet. Had the song of the birds told her it +was coming? It had that look to me. Then the like of this must have +happened before. Yes, there might be no doubt of that. + +The shadow approached Joan slowly; the extremity of it reached her, +flowed over her, clothed her in its awful splendor. In that immortal +light her face, only humanly beautiful before, became divine; flooded +with that transforming glory her mean peasant habit was become like to +the raiment of the sun-clothed children of God as we see them thronging +the terraces of the Throne in our dreams and imaginings. + +Presently she rose and stood, with her head still bowed a little, and +with her arms down and the ends of her fingers lightly laced together in +front of her; and standing so, all drenched with that wonderful light, +and yet apparently not knowing it, she seemed to listen--but I heard +nothing. After a little she raised her head, and looked up as one might +look up toward the face of a giant, and then clasped her hands and lifted +them high, imploringly, and began to plead. I heard some of the words. I +heard her say: + +"But I am so young! oh, so young to leave my mother and my home and go +out into the strange world to undertake a thing so great! Ah, how can I +talk with men, be comrade with men?--soldiers! It would give me over to +insult, and rude usage, and contempt. How can I go to the great wars, and +lead armies?--I a girl, and ignorant of such things, knowing nothing of +arms, nor how to mount a horse, nor ride it. . . . Yet--if it is +commanded--" + +Her voice sank a little, and was broken by sobs, and I made out no more +of her words. Then I came to myself. I reflected that I had been +intruding upon a mystery of God--and what might my punishment be? I was +afraid, and went deeper into the wood. Then I carved a mark in the bark +of a tree, saying to myself, it may be that I am dreaming and have not +seen this vision at all. I will come again, when I know that I am awake +and not dreaming, and see if this mark is still here; then I shall know. + + + + Chapter 7 She Delivers the Divine Command + +I HEARD my name called. It was Joan's voice. It startled me, for how +could she know I was there? I said to myself, it is part of the dream; it +is all dream--voice, vision and all; the fairies have done this. So I +crossed myself and pronounced the name of God, to break the enchantment. +I knew I was awake now and free from the spell, for no spell can +withstand this exorcism. Then I heard my name called again, and I stepped +at once from under cover, and there indeed was Joan, but not looking as +she had looked in the dream. For she was not crying now, but was looking +as she had used to look a year and a half before, when her heart was +light and her spirits high. Her old-time energy and fire were back, and a +something like exaltation showed itself in her face and bearing. It was +almost as if she had been in a trance all that time and had come awake +again. Really, it was just as if she had been away and lost, and was come +back to us at last; and I was so glad that I felt like running to call +everybody and have them flock around her and give her welcome. I ran to +her excited and said: + +"Ah, Joan, I've got such a wonderful thing to tell you about! You would +never imagine it. I've had a dream, and in the dream I saw you right here +where you are standing now, and--" + +But she put up her hand and said: + +"It was not a dream." + +It gave me a shock, and I began to feel afraid again. + +"Not a dream?" I said, "how can you know about it, Joan?" + +"Are you dreaming now?" + +"I--I suppose not. I think I am not." + +"Indeed you are not. I know you are not. And yow were not dreaming when +you cut the mark in the tree." + +I felt myself turning cold with fright, for now I knew of a certainty +that I had not been dreaming, but had really been in the presence of a +dread something not of this world. Then I remembered that my sinful feet +were upon holy ground--the ground where that celestial shadow had rested. +I moved quickly away, smitten to the bones with fear. Joan followed, and +said: + +"Do not be afraid; indeed there is no need. Come with me. We will sit by +the spring and I will tell you all my secret." + +When she was ready to begin, I checked her and said: + +"First tell me this. You could not see me in the wood; how did you know I +cut a mark in the tree?" + +"Wait a little; I will soon come to that; then you will see." + +"But tell me one thing now; what was that awful shadow that I saw?" + +"I will tell you, but do not be disturbed; you are not in danger. It was +the shadow of an archangel--Michael, the chief and lord of the armies of +heaven." + +I could but cross myself and tremble for having polluted that ground with +my feet. + +"You were not afraid, Joan? Did you see his face--did you see his form?" + +"Yes; I was not afraid, because this was not the first time. I was afraid +the first time." + +"When was that, Joan?" + +"It is nearly three years ago now." + +"So long? Have you seen him many times?" + +"Yes, many times." + +"It is this, then, that has changed you; it was this that made you +thoughtful and not as you were before. I see it now. Why did you not tell +us about it?" + +"It was not permitted. It is permitted now, and soon I shall tell all. +But only you, now. It must remain a secret for a few days still." + +"Has none seen that white shadow before but me?" + +"No one. It has fallen upon me before when you and others were present, +but none could see it. To-day it has been otherwise, and I was told why; +but it will not be visible again to any." + +"It was a sign to me, then--and a sign with a meaning of some kind?" + +"Yes, but I may not speak of that." + +"Strange--that that dazzling light could rest upon an object before one's +eyes and not be visible." + +"With it comes speech, also. Several saints come, attended by myriads of +angels, and they speak to me; I hear their voices, but others do not. +They are very dear to me--my Voices; that is what I call them to myself." + +"Joan, what do they tell you?" + +"All manner of things--about France, I mean." + +"What things have they been used to tell you?" + +She sighed, and said: + +"Disasters--only disasters, and misfortunes, and humiliation. There was +naught else to foretell." + +"They spoke of them to you beforehand?" "Yes. So that I knew what was +going to happen before it happened. It made me grave--as you saw. It +could not be otherwise. But always there was a word of hope, too. More +than that: France was to be rescued, and made great and free again. But +how and by whom--that was not told. Not until to-day." As she said those +last words a sudden deep glow shone in her eyes, which I was to see there +many times in after-days when the bugles sounded the charge and learn to +call it the battle-light. Her breast heaved, and the color rose in her +face. "But to-day I know. God has chosen the meanest of His creatures for +this work; and by His command, and in His protection, and by His +strength, not mine, I am to lead His armies, and win back France, and set +the crown upon the head of His servant that is Dauphin and shall be +King." + +I was amazed, and said: + +"You, Joan? You, a child, lead armies?" + +"Yes. For one little moment or two the thought crushed me; for it is as +you say--I am only a child; a child and ignorant--ignorant of everything +that pertains to war, and not fitted for the rough life of camps and the +companionship of soldiers. But those weak moments passed; they will not +come again. I am enlisted, I will not turn back, God helping me, till the +English grip is loosed from the throat of France. My Voices have never +told me lies, they have not lied to-day. They say I am to go to Robert de +Baudricourt, governor of Vaucouleurs, and he will give me men-at-arms for +escort and send me to the King. A year from now a blow will be struck +which will be the beginning of the end, and the end will follow swiftly." + +"Where will it be struck?" + +"My Voices have not said; nor what will happen this present year, before +it is struck. It is appointed me to strike it, that is all I know; and +follow it with others, sharp and swift, undoing in ten weeks England's +long years of costly labor, and setting the crown upon the Dauphin's +head--for such is God's will; my Voices have said it, and shall I doubt +it? No; it will be as they have said, for they say only that which is +true." + +These were tremendous sayings. They were impossibilities to my reason, +but to my heart they rang true; and so, while my reason doubted, my heart +believed--believed, and held fast to the belief from that day. Presently +I said: + +"Joan, I believe the things which you have said, and now I am glad that I +am to march with you to the great wars--that is, if it is with you I am +to march when I go." + +She looked surprised, and said: + +"It is true that you will be with me when I go to the wars, but how did +you know?" + +"I shall march with you, and so also will Jean and Pierre, but not +Jacques." + +"All true--it is so ordered, as was revealed to me lately, but I did not +know until to-day that the marching would be with me, or that I should +march at all. How did you know these things?" + +I told her when it was that she had said them. But she did not remember +about it. So then I knew that she had been asleep, or in a trance or an +ecstasy of some kind, at that time. She bade me keep these and the other +revelations to myself for the present, and I said I would, and kept the +faith I promised. + +None who met Joan that day failed to notice the change that had come over +her. She moved and spoke with energy and decision; there was a strange +new fire in her eye, and also a something wholly new and remarkable in +her carriage and in the set of her head. This new light in the eye and +this new bearing were born of the authority and leadership which had this +day been vested in her by the decree of God, and they asserted that +authority as plainly as speech could have done it, yet without +ostentation or bravado. This calm consciousness of command, and calm +unconscious outward expression of it, remained with her thenceforth until +her mission was accomplished. + +Like the other villagers, she had always accorded me the deference due my +rank; but now, without word said on either side, she and I changed +places; she gave orders, not suggestions. I received them with the +deference due a superior, and obeyed them without comment. In the evening +she said to me: + +"I leave before dawn. No one will know it but you. I go to speak with the +governor of Vaucouleurs as commanded, who will despise me and treat me +rudely, and perhaps refuse my prayer at this time. I go first to Burey, +to persuade my uncle Laxart to go with me, it not being meet that I go +alone. I may need you in Vaucouleurs; for if the governor will not +receive me I will dictate a letter to him, and so must have some one by +me who knows the art of how to write and spell the words. You will go +from here to-morrow in the afternoon, and remain in Vaucouleurs until I +need you." + +I said I would obey, and she went her way. You see how clear a head she +had, and what a just and level judgment. She did not order me to go with +her; no, she would not subject her good name to gossiping remark. She +knew that the governor, being a noble, would grant me, another noble, +audience; but no, you see, she would not have that, either. A poor +peasant-girl presenting a petition through a young nobleman--how would +that look? She always protected her modesty from hurt; and so, for +reward, she carried her good name unsmirched to the end. I knew what I +must do now, if I would have her approval: go to Vaucouleurs, keep out of +her sight, and be ready when wanted. + +I went the next afternoon, and took an obscure lodging; the next day I +called at the castle and paid my respects to the governor, who invited me +to dine with him at noon of the following day. He was an ideal soldier of +the time; tall, brawny, gray-headed, rough, full of strange oaths +acquired here and there and yonder in the wars and treasured as if they +were decorations. He had been used to the camp all his life, and to his +notion war was God's best gift to man. He had his steel cuirass on, and +wore boots that came above his knees, and was equipped with a huge sword; +and when I looked at this martial figure, and heard the marvelous oaths, +and guessed how little of poetry and sentiment might be looked for in +this quarter, I hoped the little peasant-girl would not get the privilege +of confronting this battery, but would have to content herself with the +dictated letter. + +I came again to the castle the next day at noon, and was conducted to the +great dining-hall and seated by the side of the governor at a small table +which was raised a couple of steps higher than the general table. At the +small table sat several other guests besides myself, and at the general +table sat the chief officers of the garrison. At the entrance door stood +a guard of halberdiers, in morion and breastplate. + +As for talk, there was but one topic, of course--the desperate situation +of France. There was a rumor, some one said, that Salisbury was making +preparations to march against Orleans. It raised a turmoil of excited +conversation, and opinions fell thick and fast. Some believed he would +march at once, others that he could not accomplish the investment before +fall, others that the siege would be long, and bravely contested; but +upon one thing all voices agreed: that Orleans must eventually fall, and +with it France. With that, the prolonged discussion ended, and there was +silence. Every man seemed to sink himself in his own thoughts, and to +forget where he was. This sudden and profound stillness, where before had +been so much animation, was impressive and solemn. Now came a servant and +whispered something to the governor, who said: + +"Would talk with me?" + +"Yes, your Excellency." + +"H'm! A strange idea, certainly. Bring them in." + +It was Joan and her uncle Laxart. At the spectacle of the great people +the courage oozed out of the poor old peasant and he stopped midway and +would come no further, but remained there with his red nightcap crushed +in his hands and bowing humbly here, there, and everywhere, stupefied +with embarrassment and fear. But Joan came steadily forward, erect and +self-possessed, and stood before the governor. She recognized me, but in +no way indicated it. There was a buzz of admiration, even the governor +contributing to it, for I heard him mutter, "By God's grace, it is a +beautiful creature!" He inspected her critically a moment or two, then +said: + +"Well, what is your errand, my child?" + +"My message is to you, Robert de Baudricourt, governor of Vaucouleurs, +and it is this: that you will send and tell the Dauphin to wait and not +give battle to his enemies, for God will presently send him help." + +This strange speech amazed the company, and many murmured, "The poor +young thing is demented." The governor scowled, and said: + +"What nonsense is this? The King--or the Dauphin, as you call him--needs +no message of that sort. He will wait, give yourself no uneasiness as to +that. What further do you desire to say to me?" + +"This. To beg that you will give me an escort of men-at-arms and send me +to the Dauphin." + +"What for?" + +"That he may make me his general, for it is appointed that I shall drive +the English out of France, and set the crown upon his head." + +"What--you? Why, you are but a child!" + +"Yet am I appointed to do it, nevertheless." + +"Indeed! And when will all this happen?" + +"Next year he will be crowned, and after that will remain master of +France." + +There was a great and general burst of laughter, and when it had subsided +the governor said: + +"Who has sent you with these extravagant messages?" + +"My Lord." + +"What Lord?" + +"The King of Heaven." + +Many murmured, "Ah, poor thing, poor thing!" and others, "Ah, her mind is +but a wreck!" The governor hailed Laxart, and said: + +"Harkye!--take this mad child home and whip her soundly. That is the best +cure for her ailment." + +As Joan was moving away she turned and said, with simplicity: + +"You refuse me the soldiers, I know not why, for it is my Lord that has +commanded you. Yes, it is He that has made the command; therefore I must +come again, and yet again; then I shall have the men-at-arms." + +There was a great deal of wondering talk, after she was gone; and the +guards and servants passed the talk to the town, the town passed it to +the country; Domremy was already buzzing with it when we got back. + + + + Chapter 8 Why the Scorners Relented + +HUMAN NATURE is the same everywhere: it defies success, it has nothing +but scorn for defeat. The village considered that Joan had disgraced it +with her grotesque performance and its ridiculous failure; so all the +tongues were busy with the matter, and as bilious and bitter as they were +busy; insomuch that if the tongues had been teeth she would not have +survived her persecutions. Those persons who did not scold did what was +worse and harder to bear; for they ridiculed her, and mocked at her, and +ceased neither day nor night from their witticisms and jeerings and +laughter. Haumette and Little Mengette and I stood by her, but the storm +was too strong for her other friends, and they avoided her, being ashamed +to be seen with her because she was so unpopular, and because of the +sting of the taunts that assailed them on her account. She shed tears in +secret, but none in public. In public she carried herself with serenity, +and showed no distress, nor any resentment--conduct which should have +softened the feeling against her, but it did not. Her father was so +incensed that he could not talk in measured terms about her wild project +of going to the wars like a man. He had dreamed of her doing such a +thing, some time before, and now he remembered that dream with +apprehension and anger, and said that rather than see her unsex herself +and go away with the armies, he would require her brothers to drown her; +and that if they should refuse, he would do it with his own hands. + +But none of these things shook her purpose in the least. Her parents kept +a strict watch upon her to keep her from leaving the village, but she +said her time was not yet; that when the time to go was come she should +know it, and then the keepers would watch in vain. + +The summer wasted along; and when it was seen that her purpose continued +steadfast, the parents were glad of a chance which finally offered itself +for bringing her projects to an end through marriage. The Paladin had the +effrontery to pretend that she had engaged herself to him several years +before, and now he claimed a ratification of the engagement. + +She said his statement was not true, and refused to marry him. She was +cited to appear before the ecclesiastical court at Toul to answer for her +perversity; when she declined to have counsel, and elected to conduct her +case herself, her parents and all her ill-wishers rejoiced, and looked +upon her as already defeated. And that was natural enough; for who would +expect that an ignorant peasant-girl of sixteen would be otherwise than +frightened and tongue-tied when standing for the first time in presence +of the practised doctors of the law, and surrounded by the cold +solemnities of a court? Yet all these people were mistaken. They flocked +to Toul to see and enjoy this fright and embarrassment and defeat, and +they had their trouble for their pains. She was modest, tranquil, and +quite at her ease. She called no witnesses, saying she would content +herself with examining the witnesses for the prosecution. When they had +testified, she rose and reviewed their testimony in a few words, +pronounced it vague, confused, and of no force, then she placed the +Paladin again on the stand and began to search him. His previous +testimony went rag by rag to ruin under her ingenious hands, until at +last he stood bare, so to speak, he that had come so richly clothed in +fraud and falsehood. His counsel began an argument, but the court +declined to hear it, and threw out the case, adding a few words of grave +compliment for Joan, and referring to her as "this marvelous child." + +After this victory, with this high praise from so imposing a source +added, the fickle village turned again, and gave Joan countenance, +compliment, and peace. Her mother took her back to her heart, and even +her father relented and said he was proud of her. But the time hung heavy +on her hands, nevertheless, for the siege of Orleans was begun, the +clouds lowered darker and darker over France, and still her Voices said +wait, and gave her no direct commands. The winter set in, and wore +tediously along; but at last there was a change. + + + + + + BOOK II IN COURT AND CAMP + + Chapter 1 Joan Says Good-By + +THE 5th of January, 1429, Joan came to me with her uncle Laxart, and +said: + +"The time is come. My Voices are not vague now, but clear, and they have +told me what to do. In two months I shall be with the Dauphin." + +Her spirits were high, and her bearing martial. I caught the infection +and felt a great impulse stirring in me that was like what one feels when +he hears the roll of the drums and the tramp of marching men. + +"I believe it," I said. + +"I also believe it," said Laxart. "If she had told me before, that she +was commanded of God to rescue France, I should not have believed; I +should have let her seek the governor by her own ways and held myself +clear of meddling in the matter, not doubting she was mad. But I have +seen her stand before those nobles and might men unafraid, and say her +say; and she had not been able to do that but by the help of God. That I +know. Therefore with all humbleness I am at her command, to do with me as +she will." + +"My uncle is very good to me," Joan said. "I sent and asked him to come +and persuade my mother to let him take me home with him to tend his wife, +who is not well. It is arranged, and we go at dawn to-morrow. From his +house I shall go soon to Vaucouleurs, and wait and strive until my prayer +is granted. Who were the two cavaliers who sat to your left at the +governor's table that day?" + +"One was the Sieur Jean de Novelonpont de Metz, the other the Sieur +Bertrand de Poulengy." + +"Good metal--good metal, both. I marked them for men of mine. . . . What +is it I see in your face? Doubt?" + +I was teaching myself to speak the truth to her, not trimming it or +polishing it; so I said: + +"They considered you out of your head, and said so. It is true they +pitied you for being in such misfortune, but still they held you to be +mad." + +This did not seem to trouble her in any way or wound her. She only said: + +"The wise change their minds when they perceive that they have been in +error. These will. They will march with me. I shall see them presently. . +. . You seem to doubt again? Do you doubt?" + +"N-no. Not now. I was remembering that it was a year ago, and that they +did not belong here, but only chanced to stop a day on their journey." + +"They will come again. But as to matters now in hand; I came to leave +with you some instructions. You will follow me in a few days. Order your +affairs, for you will be absent long." + +"Will Jean and Pierre go with me?" + +"No; they would refuse now, but presently they will come, and with them +they will bring my parents' blessing, and likewise their consent that I +take up my mission. I shall be stronger, then--stronger for that; for +lack of it I am weak now." She paused a little while, and the tears +gathered in her eyes; then she went on: "I would say good-by to Little +Mengette. Bring her outside the village at dawn; she must go with me a +little of the way--" + +"And Haumette?" + +She broke down and began to cry, saying: + +"No, oh, no--she is too dear to me, I could not bear it, knowing I should +never look upon her face again." + +Next morning I brought Mengette, and we four walked along the road in the +cold dawn till the village was far behind; then the two girls said their +good-bys, clinging about each other's neck, and pouring out their grief +in loving words and tears, a pitiful sight to see. And Joan took one long +look back upon the distant village, and the Fairy Tree, and the oak +forest, and the flowery plain, and the river, as if she was trying to +print these scenes on her memory so that they would abide there always +and not fade, for she knew she would not see them any more in this life; +then she turned, and went from us, sobbing bitterly. It was her birthday +and mine. She was seventeen years old. + + + + Chapter 2 The Governor Speeds Joan + +After a few days, Laxart took Joan to Vaucouleurs, and found lodging and +guardianship for her with Catherine Royer, a wheelwright's wife, an +honest and good woman. Joan went to mass regularly, she helped do the +housework, earning her keep in that way, and if any wished to talk with +her about her mission--and many did--she talked freely, making no +concealments regarding the matter now. I was soon housed near by, and +witnessed the effects which followed. At once the tidings spread that a +young girl was come who was appointed of God to save France. The common +people flocked in crowds to look at her and speak with her, and her fair +young loveliness won the half of their belief, and her deep earnestness +and transparent sincerity won the other half. The well-to-do remained +away and scoffed, but that is their way. + +Next, a prophecy of Merlin's, more than eight hundred years old, was +called to mind, which said that in a far future time France would be lost +by a woman and restored by a woman. France was now, for the first time, +lost--and by a woman, Isabel of Bavaria, her base Queen; doubtless this +fair and pure young girl was commissioned of Heaven to complete the +prophecy. + +This gave the growing interest a new and powerful impulse; the excitement +rose higher and higher, and hope and faith along with it; and so from +Vaucouleurs wave after wave of this inspiring enthusiasm flowed out over +the land, far and wide, invading all the villages and refreshing and +revivifying the perishing children of France; and from these villages +came people who wanted to see for themselves, hear for themselves; and +they did see and hear, and believe. They filled the town; they more than +filled it; inns and lodgings were packed, and yet half of the inflow had +to go without shelter. And still they came, winter as it was, for when a +man's soul is starving, what does he care for meat and roof so he can but +get that nobler hunger fed? Day after day, and still day after day the +great tide rose. Domremy was dazed, amazed, stupefied, and said to +itself, "Was this world-wonder in our familiar midst all these years and +we too dull to see it?" Jean and Pierre went out from the village, stared +at and envied like the great and fortunate of the earth, and their +progress to Vaucouleurs was like a triumph, all the country-side flocking +to see and salute the brothers of one with whom angels had spoken face to +face, and into whose hands by command of God they had delivered the +destinies of France. + +The brothers brought the parents' blessing and godspeed to Joan, and +their promise to bring it to her in person later; and so, with this +culminating happiness in her heart and the high hope it inspired, she +went and confronted the governor again. But he was no more tractable than +he had been before. He refused to send her to the King. She was +disappointed, but in no degree discouraged. She said: + +"I must still come to you until I get the men-at-arms; for so it is +commanded, and I may not disobey. I must go to the Dauphin, though I go +on my knees." + +I and the two brothers were with Joan daily, to see the people that came +and hear what they said; and one day, sure enough, the Sieur Jean de Metz +came. He talked with her in a petting and playful way, as one talks with +children, and said: + +"What are you doing here, my little maid? Will they drive the King out of +France, and shall we all turn English?" + +She answered him in her tranquil, serious way: + +"I am come to bid Robert de Baudricourt take or send me to the King, but +he does not heed my words." + +"Ah, you have an admirable persistence, truly; a whole year has not +turned you from your wish. I saw you when you came before." + +Joan said, as tranquilly as before: + +"It is not a wish, it is a purpose. He will grant it. I can wait." + +"Ah, perhaps it will not be wise to make too sure of that, my child. +These governors are stubborn people to deal with. In case he shall not +grant your prayer--" + +"He will grant it. He must. It is not a matter of choice." + +The gentleman's playful mood began to disappear--one could see that, by +his face. Joan's earnestness was affecting him. It always happened that +people who began in jest with her ended by being in earnest. They soon +began to perceive depths in her that they had not suspected; and then her +manifest sincerity and the rocklike steadfastness of her convictions were +forces which cowed levity, and it could not maintain its self-respect in +their presence. The Sieur de Metz was thoughtful for a moment or two, +then he began, quite soberly: + +"Is it necessary that you go to the King soon?--that is, I mean--" + +"Before Mid-Lent, even though I wear away my legs to the knees!" + +She said it with that sort of repressed fieriness that means so much when +a person's heart is in a thing. You could see the response in that +nobleman's face; you could see his eye light up; there was sympathy +there. He said, most earnestly: + +"God knows I think you should have the men-at-arms, and that somewhat +would come of it. What is it that you would do? What is your hope and +purpose?" + +"To rescue France. And it is appointed that I shall do it. For no one +else in the world, neither kings, nor dukes, no any other, can recover +the kingdom of France, and there is no help but in me." + +The words had a pleading and pathetic sound, and they touched that good +nobleman. I saw it plainly. Joan dropped her voice a little, and said: +"But indeed I would rather spin with my poor mother, for this is not my +calling; but I must go and do it, for it is my Lord's will." + +"Who is your Lord?" + +"He is God." + +Then the Sieur de Metz, following the impressive old feudal fashion, +knelt and laid his hands within Joan's in sign of fealty, and made oath +that by God's help he himself would take her to the king. + +The next day came the Sieur Bertrand de Poulengy, and he also pledged his +oath and knightly honor to abide with her and follower witherosever she +might lead. + +This day, too, toward evening, a great rumor went flying abroad through +the town--namely, that the very governor himself was going to visit the +young girl in her humble lodgings. So in the morning the streets and +lanes were packed with people waiting to see if this strange thing would +indeed happen. And happen it did. The governor rode in state, attended by +his guards, and the news of it went everywhere, and made a great +sensation, and modified the scoffings of the people of quality and raised +Joan's credit higher than ever. + +The governor had made up his mind to one thing: Joan was either a witch +or a saint, and he meant to find out which it was. So he brought a priest +with him to exorcise the devil that was in her in case there was one +there. The priest performed his office, but found no devil. He merely +hurt Joan's feelings and offended her piety without need, for he had +already confessed her before this, and should have known, if he knew +anything, that devils cannot abide the confessional, but utter cries of +anguish and the most profane and furious cursings whenever they are +confronted with that holy office. + +The governor went away troubled and full of thought, and not knowing what +to do. And while he pondered and studied, several days went by and the +14th of February was come. Then Joan went to the castle and said: + +"In God's name, Robert de Baudricourt, you are too slow about sending me, +and have caused damage thereby, for this day the Dauphin's cause has lost +a battle near Orleans, and will suffer yet greater injury if you do not +send me to him soon." + +The governor was perplexed by this speech, and said: + +"To-day, child, to-day? How can you know what has happened in that region +to-day? It would take eight or ten days for the word to come." + +"My Voices have brought the word to me, and it is true. A battle was lost +to-day, and you are in fault to delay me so." + +The governor walked the floor awhile, talking within himself, but letting +a great oath fall outside now and then; and finally he said: + +"Harkye! go in peace, and wait. If it shall turn out as you say, I will +give you the letter and send you to the King, and not otherwise." + +Joan said with fervor: + +"Now God be thanked, these waiting days are almost done. In nine days you +will fetch me the letter." + +Already the people of Vaucouleurs had given her a horse and had armed and +equipped her as a soldier. She got no chance to try the horse and see if +she could ride it, for her great first duty was to abide at her post and +lift up the hopes and spirits of all who would come to talk with her, and +prepare them to help in the rescue and regeneration of the kingdom. This +occupied every waking moment she had. But it was no matter. There was +nothing she could not learn--and in the briefest time, too. Her horse +would find this out in the first hour. Meantime the brothers and I took +the horse in turn and began to learn to ride. And we had teaching in the +use of the sword and other arms also. + +On the 20th Joan called her small army together--the two knights and her +two brothers and me--for a private council of war. No, it was not a +council, that is not the right name, for she did not consult with us, she +merely gave us orders. She mapped out the course she would travel toward +the King, and did it like a person perfectly versed in geography; and +this itinerary of daily marches was so arranged as to avoid here and +there peculiarly dangerous regions by flank movements--which showed that +she knew her political geography as intimately as she knew her physical +geography; yet she had never had a day's schooling, of course, and was +without education. I was astonished, but thought her Voices must have +taught her. But upon reflection I saw that this was not so. By her +references to what this and that and the other person had told her, I +perceived that she had been diligently questioning those crowds of +visiting strangers, and that out of them she had patiently dug all this +mass of invaluable knowledge. The two knights were filled with wonder at +her good sense and sagacity. + +She commanded us to make preparations to travel by night and sleep by day +in concealment, as almost the whole of our long journey would be through +the enemy's country. + +Also, she commanded that we should keep the date of our departure a +secret, since she meant to get away unobserved. Otherwise we should be +sent off with a grand demonstration which would advertise us to the +enemy, and we should be ambushed and captured somewhere. Finally she +said: + +"Nothing remains, now, but that I confide to you the date of our +departure, so that you may make all needful preparation in time, leaving +nothing to be done in haste and badly at the last moment. We march the +23d, at eleven of the clock at night." + +Then we were dismissed. The two knights were startled--yes, and troubled; +and the Sieur Bertrand said: + +"Even if the governor shall really furnish the letter and the escort, he +still may not do it in time to meet the date she has chosen. Then how can +she venture to name that date? It is a great risk--a great risk to select +and decide upon the date, in this state of uncertainty." + +I said: + +"Since she has named the 23d, we may trust her. The Voices have told her, +I think. We shall do best to obey." + +We did obey. Joan's parents were notified to come before the 23d, but +prudence forbade that they be told why this limit was named. + +All day, the 23d, she glanced up wistfully whenever new bodies of +strangers entered the house, but her parents did not appear. Still she +was not discouraged, but hoped on. But when night fell at last, her hopes +perished, and the tears came; however, she dashed them away, and said: + +"It was to be so, no doubt; no doubt it was so ordered; I must bear it, +and will." + +De Metz tried to comfort her by saying: + +"The governor sends no word; it may be that they will come to-morrow, +and--" + +He got no further, for she interrupted him, saying: + +"To what good end? We start at eleven to-night." + +And it was so. At ten the governor came, with his guard and arms, with +horses and equipment for me and for the brothers, and gave Joan a letter +to the King. Then he took off his sword, and belted it about her waist +with his own hands, and said: + +"You said true, child. The battle was lost, on the day you said. So I +have kept my word. Now go--come of it what may." + +Joan gave him thanks, and he went his way. + +The lost battle was the famous disaster that is called in history the +Battle of the Herrings. + +All the lights in the house were at once put out, and a little while +after, when the streets had become dark and still, we crept stealthily +through them and out at the western gate and rode away under whip and +spur. + + + + Chapter 3 The Paladin Groans and Boasts + +WE WERE twenty-five strong, and well equipped. We rode in double file, +Joan and her brothers in the center of the column, with Jean de Metz at +the head of it and the Sieur Bertrand at its extreme rear. In two or +three hours we should be in the enemy's country, and then none would +venture to desert. By and by we began to hear groans and sobs and +execrations from different points along the line, and upon inquiry found +that six of our men were peasants who had never ridden a horse before, +and were finding it very difficult to stay in their saddles, and moreover +were now beginning to suffer considerable bodily torture. They had been +seized by the governor at the last moment and pressed into the service to +make up the tale, and he had placed a veteran alongside of each with +orders to help him stick to the saddle, and kill him if he tried to +desert. + +These poor devils had kept quiet as long as they could, but their +physical miseries were become so sharp by this time that they were +obliged to give them vent. But we were within the enemy's country now, so +there was no help for them, they must continue the march, though Joan +said that if they chose to take the risk they might depart. They +preferred to stay with us. We modified our pace now, and moved +cautiously, and the new men were warned to keep their sorrows to +themselves and not get the command into danger with their curses and +lamentations. + +Toward dawn we rode deep into a forest, and soon all but the sentries +were sound asleep in spite of the cold ground and the frosty air. + +I woke at noon out of such a solid and stupefying sleep that at first my +wits were all astray, and I did not know where I was nor what had been +happening. Then my senses cleared, and I remembered. As I lay there +thinking over the strange events of the past month or two the thought +came into my mind, greatly surprising me, that one of Joan's prophecies +had failed; for where were Noel and the Paladin, who were to join us at +the eleventh hour? By this time, you see, I had gotten used to expecting +everything Joan said to come true. So, being disturbed and troubled by +these thoughts, I opened my eyes. Well, there stood the Paladin leaning +against a tree and looking down on me! How often that happens; you think +of a person, or speak of a person, and there he stands before you, and +you not dreaming he is near. It looks as if his being near is really the +thing that makes you think of him, and not just an accident, as people +imagine. Well, be that as it may, there was the Paladin, anyway, looking +down in my face and waiting for me to wake. I was ever so glad to see +him, and jumped up and shook him by the hand, and led him a little way +from the camp--he limping like a cripple--and told him to sit down, and +said: + +"Now, where have you dropped down from? And how did you happen to light +in this place? And what do the soldier-clothes mean? Tell me all about +it." + +He answered: + +"I marched with you last night." + +"No!" (To myself I said, "The prophecy has not all failed--half of it has +come true.") "Yes, I did. I hurried up from Domremy to join, and was +within a half a minute of being too late. In fact, I was too late, but I +begged so hard that the governor was touched by my brave devotion to my +country's cause--those are the words he used--and so he yielded, and +allowed me to come." + +I thought to myself, this is a lie, he is one of those six the governor +recruited by force at the last moment; I know it, for Joan's prophecy +said he would join at the eleventh hour, but not by his own desire. Then +I said aloud: + +"I am glad you came; it is a noble cause, and one should not sit at home +in times like these." + +"Sit at home! I could no more do it than the thunderstone could stay hid +in the clouds when the storm calls it." + +"That is the right talk. It sounds like you." + +That pleased him. + +"I'm glad you know me. Some don't. But they will, presently. They will +know me well enough before I get done with this war." + +"That is what I think. I believe that wherever danger confronts you you +will make yourself conspicuous." + +He was charmed with this speech, and it swelled him up like a bladder. He +said: + +"If I know myself--and I think I do--my performances in this campaign +will give you occasion more than once to remember those words." + +"I were a fool to doubt it. That I know." + +"I shall not be at my best, being but a common soldier; still, the +country will hear of me. If I were where I belong; if I were in the place +of La Hire, or Saintrailles, or the Bastard of Orleans--well, I say +nothing. I am not of the talking kind, like Noel Rainguesson and his +sort, I thank God. But it will be something, I take it--a novelty in this +world, I should say--to raise the fame of a private soldier above theirs, +and extinguish the glory of their names with its shadow." + +"Why, look here, my friend," I said, "do you know that you have hit out a +most remarkable idea there? Do you realize the gigantic proportions of +it? For look you; to be a general of vast renown, what is that? +Nothing--history is clogged and confused with them; one cannot keep their +names in his memory, there are so many. But a common soldier of supreme +renown--why, he would stand alone! He would the be one moon in a +firmament of mustard-seed stars; his name would outlast the human race! +My friend, who gave you that idea?" + +He was ready to burst with happiness, but he suppressed betrayal of it as +well as he could. He simply waved the compliment aside with his hand and +said, with complacency: + +"It is nothing. I have them often--ideas like that--and even greater +ones. I do not consider this one much." + +"You astonish me; you do, indeed. So it is really your own?" + +"Quite. And there is plenty more where it came from"--tapping his head +with his finger, and taking occasion at the same time to cant his morion +over his right ear, which gave him a very self-satisfied air--"I do not +need to borrow my ideas, like Noel Rainguesson." + +"Speaking of Noel, when did you see him last?" + +"Half an hour ago. He is sleeping yonder like a corpse. Rode with us last +night." + +I felt a great upleap in my heart, and said to myself, now I am at rest +and glad; I will never doubt her prophecies again. Then I said aloud: + +"It gives me joy. It makes me proud of our village. There is not keeping +our lion-hearts at home in these great times, I see that." + +"Lion-heart! Who--that baby? Why, he begged like a dog to be let off. +Cried, and said he wanted to go to his mother. Him a lion-heart!--that +tumble-bug!" + +"Dear me, why I supposed he volunteered, of course. Didn't he?" + +"Oh, yes, he volunteered the way people do to the headsman. Why, when he +found I was coming up from Domremy to volunteer, he asked me to let him +come along in my protection, and see the crowds and the excitement. Well, +we arrived and saw the torches filing out at the Castle, and ran there, +and the governor had him seized, along with four more, and he begged to +be let off, and I begged for his place, and at last the governor allowed +me to join, but wouldn't let Noel off, because he was disgusted with him, +he was such a cry-baby. Yes, and much good he'll do the King's service; +he'll eat for six and run for sixteen. I hate a pygmy with half a heart +and nine stomachs!" + +"Why, this is very surprising news to me, and I am sorry and disappointed +to hear it. I thought he was a very manly fellow." + +The Paladin gave me an outraged look, and said: + +"I don't see how you can talk like that, I'm sure I don't. I don't see +how you could have got such a notion. I don't dislike him, and I'm not +saying these things out of prejudice, for I don't allow myself to have +prejudices against people. I like him, and have always comraded with him +from the cradle, but he must allow me to speak my mind about his faults, +and I am willing he shall speak his about mine, if I have any. And, true +enough, maybe I have; but I reckon they'll bear inspection--I have that +idea, anyway. A manly fellow! You should have heard him whine and wail +and swear, last night, because the saddle hurt him. Why didn't the saddle +hurt me? Pooh--I was as much at home in it as if I had been born there. +And yet it was the first time I was ever on a horse. All those old +soldiers admired my riding; they said they had never seen anything like +it. But him--why, they had to hold him on, all the time." + +An odor as of breakfast came stealing through the wood; the Paladin +unconsciously inflated his nostrils in lustful response, and got up and +limped painfully away, saying he must go and look to his horse. + +At bottom he was all right and a good-hearted giant, without any harm in +him, for it is no harm to bark, if one stops there and does not bite, and +it is no harm to be an ass, if one is content to bray and not kick. If +this vast structure of brawn and muscle and vanity and foolishness seemed +to have a libelous tongue, what of it? There was no malice behind it; and +besides, the defect was not of his own creation; it was the work of Noel +Rainguesson, who had nurtured it, fostered it, built it up and perfected +it, for the entertainment he got out of it. His careless light heart had +to have somebody to nag and chaff and make fun of, the Paladin had only +needed development in order to meet its requirements, consequently the +development was taken in hand and diligently attended to and looked +after, gnat-and-bull fashion, for years, to the neglect and damage of far +more important concerns. The result was an unqualified success. Noel +prized the society of the Paladin above everybody else's; the Paladin +preferred anybody's to Noel's. The big fellow was often seen with the +little fellow, but it was for the same reason that the bull is often seen +with the gnat. + +With the first opportunity, I had a talk with Noel. I welcomed him to our +expedition, and said: + +"It was fine and brave of you to volunteer, Noel." + +His eye twinkled, and he answered: + +"Yes, it was rather fine, I think. Still, the credit doesn't all belong +to me; I had help." + +"Who helped you?" + +"The governor." + +"How?" + +"Well, I'll tell you the whole thing. I came up from Domremy to see the +crowds and the general show, for I hadn't ever had any experience of such +things, of course, and this was a great opportunity; but I hadn't any +mind to volunteer. I overtook the Paladin on the road and let him have my +company the rest of the way, although he did not want it and said so; and +while we were gawking and blinking in the glare of the governor's torches +they seized us and four more and added us to the escort, and that is +really how I came to volunteer. But, after all, I wasn't sorry, +remembering how dull life would have been in the village without the +Paladin." + +"How did he feel about it? Was he satisfied?" + +"I think he was glad." + +"Why?" + +"Because he said he wasn't. He was taken by surprise, you see, and it is +not likely that he could tell the truth without preparation. Not that he +would have prepared, if he had had the chance, for I do not think he +would. I am not charging him with that. In the same space of time that he +could prepare to speak the truth, he could also prepare to lie; besides, +his judgment would be cool then, and would warn him against fooling with +new methods in an emergency. No, I am sure he was glad, because he said +he wasn't." + +"Do you think he was very glad?" + +"Yes, I know he was. He begged like a slave, and bawled for his mother. +He said his health was delicate, and he didn't know how to ride a horse, +and he knew he couldn't outlive the first march. But really he wasn't +looking as delicate as he was feeling. There was a cask of wine there, a +proper lift for four men. The governor's temper got afire, and he +delivered an oath at him that knocked up the dust where it struck the +ground, and told him to shoulder that cask or he would carve him to +cutlets and send him home in a basket. The Paladin did it, and that +secured his promotion to a privacy in the escort without any further +debate." + +"Yes, you seem to make it quite plain that he was glad to join--that is, +if your premises are right that you start from. How did he stand the +march last night?" + +"About as I did. If he made the more noise, it was the privilege of his +bulk. We stayed in our saddles because we had help. We are equally lame +to-day, and if he likes to sit down, let him; I prefer to stand." + + + + Chapter 4 Joan Leads Us Through the Enemy + +WE WERE called to quarters and subjected to a searching inspection by +Joan. Then she made a short little talk in which she said that even the +rude business of war could be conducted better without profanity and +other brutalities of speech than with them, and that she should strictly +require us to remember and apply this admonition. She ordered half an +hour's horsemanship drill for the novices then, and appointed one of the +veterans to conduct it. It was a ridiculous exhibition, but we learned +something, and Joan was satisfied and complimented us. She did not take +any instruction herself or go through the evolutions and manoeuvres, but +merely sat her horse like a martial little statue and looked on. That was +sufficient for her, you see. She would not miss or forget a detail of the +lesson, she would take it all in with her eye and her mind, and apply it +afterward with as much certainty and confidence as if she had already +practised it. + +We now made three night marches of twelve or thirteen leagues each, +riding in peace and undisturbed, being taken for a roving band of Free +Companions. Country-folk were glad to have that sort of people go by +without stopping. Still, they were very wearying marches, and not +comfortable, for the bridges were few and the streams many, and as we had +to ford them we found the water dismally cold, and afterward had to bed +ourselves, still wet, on the frosty or snowy ground, and get warm as we +might and sleep if we could, for it would not have been prudent to build +fires. Our energies languished under these hardships and deadly fatigues, +but Joan's did not. Her step kept its spring and firmness and her eye its +fire. We could only wonder at this, we could not explain it. + +But if we had had hard times before, I know not what to call the five +nights that now followed, for the marches were as fatiguing, the baths as +cold, and we were ambuscaded seven times in addition, and lost two +novices and three veterans in the resulting fights. The news had leaked +out and gone abroad that the inspired Virgin of Vaucouleurs was making +for the King with an escort, and all the roads were being watched now. + +These five nights disheartened the command a good deal. This was +aggravated by a discovery which Noel made, and which he promptly made +known at headquarters. Some of the men had been trying to understand why +Joan continued to be alert, vigorous, and confident while the strongest +men in the company were fagged with the heavy marches and exposure and +were become morose and irritable. There, it shows you how men can have +eyes and yet not see. All their lives those men had seen their own +women-folks hitched up with a cow and dragging the plow in the fields +while the men did the driving. They had also seen other evidences that +women have far more endurance and patience and fortitude than men--but +what good had their seeing these things been to them? None. It had taught +them nothing. They were still surprised to see a girl of seventeen bear +the fatigues of war better than trained veterans of the army. Moreover, +they did not reflect that a great soul, with a great purpose, can make a +weak body strong and keep it so; and here was the greatest soul in the +universe; but how could they know that, those dumb creatures? No, they +knew nothing, and their reasonings were of a piece with their ignorance. +They argued and discussed among themselves, with Noel listening, and +arrived at the decision that Joan was a witch, and had her strange pluck +and strength from Satan; so they made a plan to watch for a safe +opportunity to take her life. + +To have secret plottings of this sort going on in our midst was a very +serious business, of course, and the knights asked Joan's permission to +hang the plotters, but she refused without hesitancy. She said: + +"Neither these men nor any others can take my life before my mission is +accomplished, therefore why should I have their blood upon my hands? I +will inform them of this, and also admonish them. Call them before me." + +When the came she made that statement to them in a plain matter-of-fact +way, and just as if the thought never entered her mind that any one could +doubt it after she had given her word that it was true. The men were +evidently amazed and impressed to hear her say such a thing in such a +sure and confident way, for prophecies boldly uttered never fall barren +on superstitious ears. Yes, this speech certainly impressed them, but her +closing remark impressed them still more. It was for the ringleader, and +Joan said it sorrowfully: + +"It is a pity that you should plot another's death when you own is so +close at hand." + +That man's horse stumbled and fell on him in the first ford which we +crossed that night, and he was drowned before we could help him. We had +no more conspiracies. + +This night was harassed with ambuscades, but we got through without +having any men killed. One more night would carry us over the hostile +frontier if we had good luck, and we saw the night close down with a good +deal of solicitude. Always before, we had been more or less reluctant to +start out into the gloom and the silence to be frozen in the fords and +persecuted by the enemy, but this time we were impatient to get under way +and have it over, although there was promise of more and harder fighting +than any of the previous nights had furnished. Moreover, in front of us +about three leagues there was a deep stream with a frail wooden bridge +over it, and as a cold rain mixed with snow had been falling steadily all +day we were anxious to find out whether we were in a trap or not. If the +swollen stream had washed away the bridge, we might properly consider +ourselves trapped and cut off from escape. + +As soon as it was dark we filed out from the depth of the forest where we +had been hidden and began the march. From the time that we had begun to +encounter ambushes Joan had ridden at the head of the column, and she +took this post now. By the time we had gone a league the rain and snow +had turned to sleet, and under the impulse of the storm-wind it lashed my +face like whips, and I envied Joan and the knights, who could close their +visors and shut up their heads in their helmets as in a box. Now, out of +the pitchy darkness and close at hand, came the sharp command: + +"Halt!" + +We obeyed. I made out a dim mass in front of us which might be a body of +horsemen, but one could not be sure. A man rode up and said to Joan in a +tone of reproof: + +"Well, you have taken your time, truly. And what have you found out? Is +she still behind us, or in front?" + +Joan answered in a level voice: + +"She is still behind." + +This news softened the stranger's tone. He said: + +"If you know that to be true, you have not lost your time, Captain. But +are you sure? How do you know?" + +"Because I have seen her." + +"Seen her! Seen the Virgin herself?" + +"Yes, I have been in her camp." + +"Is it possible! Captain Raymond, I ask you to pardon me for speaking in +that tone just now. You have performed a daring and admirable service. +Where was she camped?" + +"In the forest, not more than a league from here." + +"Good! I was afraid we might be still behind her, but now that we know +she is behind us, everything is safe. She is our game. We will hang her. +You shall hang her yourself. No one has so well earned the privilege of +abolishing this pestilent limb of Satan." + +"I do not know how to thank you sufficiently. If we catch her, I--" + +"If! I will take care of that; give yourself no uneasiness. All I want is +just a look at her, to see what the imp is like that has been able to +make all this noise, then you and the halter may have her. How many men +has she?" + +"I counted but eighteen, but she may have had two or three pickets out." + +"Is that all? It won't be a mouthful for my force. Is it true that she is +only a girl?" + +"Yes; she is not more than seventeen." + +"It passes belief! Is she robust, or slender?" + +"Slender." + +The officer pondered a moment or two, then he said: + +"Was she preparing to break camp?" + +"Not when I had my last glimpse of her." + +"What was she doing?" + +"She was talking quietly with an officer." + +"Quietly? Not giving orders?" + +"No, talking as quietly as we are now." + +"That is good. She is feeling a false security. She would have been +restless and fussy else--it is the way of her sex when danger is about. +As she was making no preparation to break camp--" + +"She certainly was not when I saw her last." + +"--and was chatting quietly and at her ease, it means that this weather +is not to her taste. Night-marching in sleet and wind is not for chits of +seventeen. No; she will stay where she is. She has my thanks. We will +camp, ourselves; here is as good a place as any. Let us get about it." + +"If you command it--certainly. But she has two knights with her. They +might force her to march, particularly if the weather should improve." + +I was scared, and impatient to be getting out of this peril, and it +distressed and worried me to have Joan apparently set herself to work to +make delay and increase the danger--still, I thought she probably knew +better than I what to do. The officer said: + +"Well, in that case we are here to block the way." + +"Yes, if they come this way. But if they should send out spies, and find +out enough to make them want to try for the bridge through the woods? Is +it best to allow the bridge to stand?" + +It made me shiver to hear her. + +The officer considered awhile, then said: + +"It might be well enough to send a force to destroy the bridge. I was +intending to occupy it with the whole command, but that is not necessary +now." + +Joan said, tranquilly: + +"With your permission, I will go and destroy it myself." + +Ah, now I saw her idea, and was glad she had had the cleverness to invent +it and the ability to keep her head cool and think of it in that tight +place. The officer replied: + +"You have it, Captain, and my thanks. With you to do it, it will be well +done; I could send another in your place, but not a better." + +They saluted, and we moved forward. I breathed freer. A dozen times I had +imagined I heard the hoofbeats of the real Captain Raymond's troop +arriving behind us, and had been sitting on pins and needles all the +while that that conversation was dragging along. I breathed freer, but +was still not comfortable, for Joan had given only the simple command, +"Forward!" Consequently we moved in a walk. Moved in a dead walk past a +dim and lengthening column of enemies at our side. The suspense was +exhausting, yet it lasted but a short while, for when the enemy's bugles +sang the "Dismount!" Joan gave the word to trot, and that was a great +relief to me. She was always at herself, you see. Before the command to +dismount had been given, somebody might have wanted the countersign +somewhere along that line if we came flying by at speed, but now wee +seemed to be on our way to our allotted camping position, so we were +allowed to pass unchallenged. The further we went the more formidable was +the strength revealed by the hostile force. Perhaps it was only a hundred +or two, but to me it seemed a thousand. When we passed the last of these +people I was thankful, and the deeper we plowed into the darkness beyond +them the better I felt. I came nearer and nearer to feeling good, for an +hour; then we found the bridge still standing, and I felt entirely good. +We crossed it and destroyed it, and then I felt--but I cannot describe +what I felt. One has to feel it himself in order to know what it is like. + +We had expected to hear the rush of a pursuing force behind us, for we +thought that the real Captain Raymond would arrive and suggest that +perhaps the troop that had been mistaken for his belonged to the Virgin +of Vaucouleurs; but he must have been delayed seriously, for when we +resumed our march beyond the river there were no sounds behind us except +those which the storm was furnishing. + +I said that Joan had harvested a good many compliments intended for +Captain Raymond, and that he would find nothing of a crop left but a dry +stubble of reprimands when he got back, and a commander just in the humor +to superintend the gathering of it in. + +Joan said: + +"It will be as you say, no doubt; for the commander took a troop for +granted, in the night and unchallenged, and would have camped without +sending a force to destroy the bridge if he had been left unadvised, and +none are so ready to find fault with others as those who do things worthy +of blame themselves." + +The Sieur Bertrand was amused at Joan's naive way of referring to her +advice as if it had been a valuable present to a hostile leader who was +saved by it from making a censurable blunder of omission, and then he +went on to admire how ingeniously she had deceived that man and yet had +not told him anything that was not the truth. This troubled Joan, and she +said: + +"I thought he was deceiving himself. I forbore to tell him lies, for that +would have been wrong; but if my truths deceived him, perhaps that made +them lies, and I am to blame. I would God I knew if I have done wrong." + +She was assured that she had done right, and that in the perils and +necessities of war deceptions that help one's own cause and hurt the +enemy's were always permissible; but she was not quite satisfied with +that, and thought that even when a great cause was in danger one ought to +have the privilege of trying honorable ways first. Jean said: + +"Joan, you told us yourself that you were going to Uncle Laxart's to +nurse his wife, but you didn't say you were going further, yet you did go +on to Vaucouleurs. There!" + +"I see now," said Joan, sorrowfully. "I told no lie, yet I deceived. I +had tried all other ways first, but I could not get away, and I had to +get away. My mission required it. I did wrong, I think, and am to blame." + +She was silent a moment, turning the matter over in her mind, then she +added, with quiet decision, "But the thing itself was right, and I would +do it again." + +It seemed an over-nice distinction, but nobody said anything. I few had +known her as well as she knew herself, and as her later history revealed +her to us, we should have perceived that she had a clear meaning there, +and that her position was not identical with ours, as we were supposing, +but occupied a higher plane. She would sacrifice herself--and her best +self; that is, her truthfulness--to save her cause; but only that; she +would not buy her life at that cost; whereas our war-ethics permitted the +purchase of our lives, or any mere military advantage, small or great, by +deception. Her saying seemed a commonplace at the time, the essence of +its meaning escaping us; but one sees now that it contained a principle +which lifted it above that and made it great and fine. + +Presently the wind died down, the sleet stopped falling, and the cold was +less severe. The road was become a bog, and the horses labored through it +at a walk--they could do no better. As the heavy time wore on, exhaustion +overcame us, and we slept in our saddles. Not even the dangers that +threatened us could keep us awake. + +This tenth night seemed longer than any of the others, and of course it +was the hardest, because we had been accumulating fatigue from the +beginning, and had more of it on hand now than at any previous time. But +we were not molested again. When the dull dawn came at last we saw a +river before us and we knew it was the Loire; we entered the town of +Gien, and knew we were in a friendly land, with the hostiles all behind +us. That was a glad morning for us. + +We were a worn and bedraggled and shabby-looking troop; and still, as +always, Joan was the freshest of us all, in both body and spirits. We had +averaged above thirteen leagues a night, by tortuous and wretched roads. +It was a remarkable march, and shows what men can do when they have a +leader with a determined purpose and a resolution that never flags. + + + + Chapter 5 We Pierce the Last Ambuscades + +WE RESTED and otherwise refreshed ourselves two or three hours at Gien, +but by that time the news was abroad that the young girl commissioned of +God to deliver France was come; wherefore, such a press of people flocked +to our quarters to get sight of her that it seemed best to seek a quieter +place; so we pushed on and halted at a small village called Fierbois. + +We were now within six leagues of the King, who was a the Castle of +Chinon. Joan dictated a letter to him at once, and I wrote it. In it she +said she had come a hundred and fifty leagues to bring him good news, and +begged the privilege of delivering it in person. She added that although +she had never seen him she would know him in any disguise and would point +him out. + +The two knights rode away at once with the letter. The troop slept all +the afternoon, and after supper we felt pretty fresh and fine, especially +our little group of young Domremians. We had the comfortable tap-room of +the village inn to ourselves, and for the first time in ten unspeakably +long days were exempt from bodings and terrors and hardships and +fatiguing labors. The Paladin was suddenly become his ancient self again, +and was swaggering up and down, a very monument of self-complacency. Noel +Rainguesson said: + +"I think it is wonderful, the way he has brought us through." + +"Who?" asked Jean. + +"Why, the Paladin." + +The Paladin seemed not to hear. + +"What had he to do with it?" asked Pierre d'Arc. + +"Everything. It was nothing but Joan's confidence in his discretion that +enabled her to keep up her heart. She could depend on us and on herself +for valor, but discretion is the winning thing in war, after all; +discretion is the rarest and loftiest of qualities, and he has got more +of it than any other man in France--more of it, perhaps, than any other +sixty men in France." + +"Now you are getting ready to make a fool of yourself, Noel Rainguesson," +said the Paladin, "and you want to coil some of that long tongue of yours +around your neck and stick the end of it in your ear, then you'll be the +less likely to get into trouble." + +"I didn't know he had more discretion than other people," said Pierre, +"for discretion argues brains, and he hasn't any more brains than the +rest of us, in my opinion." + +"No, you are wrong there. Discretion hasn't anything to do with brains; +brains are an obstruction to it, for it does not reason, it feels. +Perfect discretion means absence of brains. Discretion is a quality of +the heart--solely a quality of the heart; it acts upon us through +feeling. We know this because if it were an intellectual quality it would +only perceive a danger, for instance, where a danger exists; whereas--" + +"Hear him twaddle--the damned idiot!" muttered the Paladin. + +"--whereas, it being purely a quality of the heart, and proceeding by +feeling, not reason, its reach is correspondingly wider and sublimer, +enabling it to perceive and avoid dangers that haven't any existence at +all; as, for instance, that night in the fog, when the Paladin took his +horse's ears for hostile lances and got off and climbed a tree--" + +"It's a lie! a lie without shadow of foundation, and I call upon you all +to beware you give credence to the malicious inventions of this +ramshackle slander-mill that has been doing its best to destroy my +character for years, and will grind up your own reputations for you next. +I got off to tighten my saddle-girth--I wish I may die in my tracks if it +isn't so--and whoever wants to believe it can, and whoever don't can let +it alone." + +"There, that is the way with him, you see; he never can discuss a theme +temperately, but always flies off the handle and becomes disagreeable. +And you notice his defect of memory. He remembers getting off his horse, +but forgets all the rest, even the tree. But that is natural; he would +remember getting off the horse because he was so used to doing it. He +always did it when there was an alarm and the clash of arms at the +front." + +"Why did he choose that time for it?" asked Jean. + +"I don't know. To tighten up his girth, he thinks, to climb a tree, I +think; I saw him climb nine trees in a single night." + +"You saw nothing of the kind! A person that can lie like that deserves no +one's respect. I ask you all to answer me. Do you believe what this +reptile has said?" + +All seemed embarrassed, and only Pierre replied. He said, hesitatingly: + +"I--well, I hardly know what to say. It is a delicate situation. It seems +offensive to me to refuse to believe a person when he makes so direct a +statement, and yet I am obliged to say, rude as it may appear, that I am +not able to believe the whole of it--no, I am not able to believe that +you climbed nine trees." + +"There!" cried the Paladin; "now what do you think of yourself, Noel +Rainguesson? How many do you believe I climbed, Pierre?" + +"Only eight." + +The laughter that followed inflamed the Paladin's anger to white heat, +and he said: + +"I bide my time--I bide my time. I will reckon with you all, I promise +you that!" + +"Don't get him started," Noel pleaded; "he is a perfect lion when he gets +started. I saw enough to teach me that, after the third skirmish. After +it was over I saw him come out of the bushes and attack a dead man +single-handed." + +"It is another lie; and I give you fair warning that you are going too +far. You will see me attack a live one if you are not careful." + +"Meaning me, of course. This wounds me more than any number of injurious +and unkind speeches could do. In gratitude to one's benefactor--" + +"Benefactor? What do I owe you, I should like to know?" + +"You owe me your life. I stood between the trees and the foe, and kept +hundreds and thousands of the enemy at bay when they were thirsting for +your blood. And I did not do it to display my daring. I did it because I +loved you and could not live without you." + +"There--you have said enough! I will not stay here to listen to these +infamies. I can endure your lies, but not your love. Keep that corruption +for somebody with a stronger stomach than mine. And I want to say this, +before I go. That you people's small performances might appear the better +and win you the more glory, I hid my own deeds through all the march. I +went always to the front, where the fighting was thickest, to be remote +from you in order that you might not see and be discouraged by the things +I did to the enemy. It was my purpose to keep this a secret in my own +breast, but you force me to reveal it. If you ask for my witnesses, +yonder they lie, on the road we have come. I found that road mud, I paved +it with corpses. I found that country sterile, I fertilized it with +blood. Time and again I was urged to go to the rear because the command +could not proceed on account of my dead. And yet you, you miscreant, +accuse me of climbing trees! Pah!" + +And he strode out, with a lofty air, for the recital of his imaginary +deeds had already set him up again and made him feel good. + +Next day we mounted and faced toward Chinon. Orleans was at our back now, +and close by, lying in the strangling grip of the English; soon, please +God, we would face about and go to their relief. From Gien the news had +spread to Orleans that the peasant Maid of Vaucouleurs was on her way, +divinely commissioned to raise the siege. The news made a great +excitement and raised a great hope--the first breath of hope those poor +souls had breathed in five months. They sent commissioners at once to the +King to beg him to consider this matter, and not throw this help lightly +away. These commissioners were already at Chinon by this time. + +When we were half-way to Chinon we happened upon yet one more squad of +enemies. They burst suddenly out of the woods, and in considerable force, +too; but we were not the apprentices we were ten or twelve days before; +no, we were seasoned to this kind of adventure now; our hearts did not +jump into our throats and our weapons tremble in our hands. We had +learned to be always in battle array, always alert, and always ready to +deal with any emergency that might turn up. We were no more dismayed by +the sight of those people than our commander was. Before they could form, +Joan had delivered the order, "Forward!" and we were down upon them with +a rush. They stood no chance; they turned tail and scattered, we plowing +through them as if they had been men of straw. That was our last +ambuscade, and it was probably laid for us by that treacherous rascal, +the King's own minister and favorite, De la Tremouille. + +We housed ourselves in an inn, and soon the town came flocking to get a +glimpse of the Maid. + +Ah, the tedious King and his tedious people! Our two good knights came +presently, their patience well wearied, and reported. They and we +reverently stood--as becomes persons who are in the presence of kings and +the superiors of kings--until Joan, troubled by this mark of homage and +respect, and not content with it nor yet used to it, although we had not +permitted ourselves to do otherwise since the day she prophesied that +wretched traitor's death and he was straightway drowned, thus confirming +many previous signs that she was indeed an ambassador commissioned of +God, commanded us to sit; then the Sieur de Metz said to Joan: + +"The King has got the letter, but they will not let us have speech with +him." + +"Who is it that forbids?" + +"None forbids, but there be three or four that are nearest his +person--schemers and traitors every one--that put obstructions in the +way, and seek all ways, by lies and pretexts, to make delay. Chiefest of +these are Georges de la Tremouille and that plotting fox, the Archbishop +of Rheims. While they keep the King idle and in bondage to his sports and +follies, they are great and their importance grows; whereas if ever he +assert himself and rise and strike for crown and country like a man, +their reign is done. So they but thrive, they care not if the crown go to +destruction and the King with it." + +"You have spoken with others besides these?" + +"Not of the Court, no--the Court are the meek slaves of those reptiles, +and watch their mouths and their actions, acting as they act, thinking as +they think, saying as they say; wherefore they are cold to us, and turn +aside and go another way when we appear. But we have spoken with the +commissioners from Orleans. They said with heat: 'It is a marvel that any +man in such desperate case as is the King can moon around in this torpid +way, and see his all go to ruin without lifting a finger to stay the +disaster. What a most strange spectacle it is! Here he is, shut up in +this wee corner of the realm like a rat in a trap; his royal shelter this +huge gloomy tomb of a castle, with wormy rags for upholstery and crippled +furniture for use, a very house of desolation; in his treasure forty +francs, and not a farthing more, God be witness! no army, nor any shadow +of one; and by contrast with his hungry poverty you behold this crownless +pauper and his shoals of fools and favorites tricked out in the gaudiest +silks and velvets you shall find in any Court in Christendom. And look +you, he knows that when our city falls--as fall it surely will except +succor come swiftly--France falls; he knows that when that day comes he +will be an outlaw and a fugitive, and that behind him the English flag +will float unchallenged over every acre of his great heritage; he knows +these things, he knows that our faithful city is fighting all solitary +and alone against disease, starvation, and the sword to stay this awful +calamity, yet he will not strike one blow to save her, he will not hear +our prayers, he will not even look upon our faces.' That is what the +commissioners said, and they are in despair." + +Joan said, gently: + +"It is pity, but they must not despair. The Dauphin will hear them +presently. Tell them so." + +She almost always called the King the Dauphin. To her mind he was not +King yet, not being crowned. + +"We will tell them so, and it will content them, for they believe you +come from God. The Archbishop and his confederate have for backer that +veteran soldier Raoul de Gaucourt, Grand Master of the Palace, a worthy +man, but simply a soldier, with no head for any greater matter. He cannot +make out to see how a country-girl, ignorant of war, can take a sword in +her small hand and win victories where the trained generals of France +have looked for defeats only, for fifty years--and always found them. And +so he lifts his frosty mustache and scoffs." + +"When God fights it is but small matter whether the hand that bears His +sword is big or little. He will perceive this in time. Is there none in +that Castle of Chinon who favors us?" + +"Yes, the King's mother-in-law, Yolande, Queen of Sicily, who is wise and +good. She spoke with the Sieur Bertrand." + +"She favors us, and she hates those others, the King's beguilers," said +Bertrand. "She was full of interest, and asked a thousand questions, all +of which I answered according to my ability. Then she sat thinking over +these replies until I thought she was lost in a dream and would wake no +more. But it was not so. At last she said, slowly, and as if she were +talking to herself: 'A child of seventeen--a girl--country-bred +--untaught--ignorant of war, the use of arms, and the conduct of battles +--modest, gentle, shrinking--yet throws away her shepherd's crook and +clothes herself in steel, and fights her way through a hundred and fifty +leagues of fear, and comes--she to whom a king must be a dread and awful +presence--and will stand up before such an one and say, Be not afraid, +God has sent me to save you! Ah, whence could come a courage and +conviction so sublime as this but from very God Himself!' She was silent +again awhile, thinking and making up her mind; then she said, 'And +whether she comes of God or no, there is that in her heart that raises +her above men--high above all men that breathe in France to-day--for in +her is that mysterious something that puts heart into soldiers, and +turns mobs of cowards into armies of fighters that forget what fear is +when they are in that presence --fighters who go into battle with joy in +their eyes and songs on their lips, and sweep over the field like a +storm --that is the spirit that can save France, and that alone, come it +whence it may! It is in her, I do truly believe, for what else could +have borne up that child on that great march, and made her despise its +dangers and fatigues? The King must see her face to face--and shall!' +She dismissed me with those good words, and I know her promise will be +kept. They will delay her all they can--those animals--but she will not +fail in the end." + +"Would she were King!" said the other knight, fervently. "For there is +little hope that the King himself can be stirred out of his lethargy. He +is wholly without hope, and is only thinking of throwing away everything +and flying to some foreign land. The commissioners say there is a spell +upon him that makes him hopeless--yes, and that it is shut up in a +mystery which they cannot fathom." + +"I know the mystery," said Joan, with quiet confidence; "I know it, and +he knows it, but no other but God. When I see him I will tell him a +secret that will drive away his trouble, then he will hold up his head +again." + +I was miserable with curiosity to know what it was that she would tell +him, but she did not say, and I did not expect she would. She was but a +child, it is true; but she was not a chatterer to tell great matters and +make herself important to little people; no, she was reserved, and kept +things to herself, as the truly great always do. + +The next day Queen Yolande got one victory over the King's keepers, for, +in spite of their protestations and obstructions, she procured an +audience for our two knights, and they made the most they could out of +their opportunity. They told the King what a spotless and beautiful +character Joan was, and how great and noble a spirit animated her, and +they implored him to trust in her, believe in her, and have faith that +she was sent to save France. They begged him to consent to see her. He +was strongly moved to do this, and promised that he would not drop the +matter out of his mind, but would consult with his council about it. This +began to look encouraging. Two hours later there was a great stir below, +and the innkeeper came flying up to say a commission of illustrious +ecclesiastics was come from the King--from the King his very self, +understand!--think of this vast honor to his humble little hostelry!--and +he was so overcome with the glory of it that he could hardly find breath +enough in his excited body to put the facts into words. They were come +from the King to speak with the Maid of Vaucouleurs. Then he flew +downstairs, and presently appeared again, backing into the room, and +bowing to the ground with every step, in front of four imposing and +austere bishops and their train of servants. + +Joan rose, and we all stood. The bishops took seats, and for a while no +word was said, for it was their prerogative to speak first, and they were +so astonished to see what a child it was that was making such a noise in +the world and degrading personages of their dignity to the base function +of ambassadors to her in her plebeian tavern, that they could not find +any words to say at first. Then presently their spokesman told Joan they +were aware that she had a message for the King, wherefore she was now +commanded to put it into words, briefly and without waste of time or +embroideries of speech. + +As for me, I could hardly contain my joy--our message was to reach the +King at last! And there was the same joy and pride and exultation in the +faces of our knights, too, and in those of Joan's brothers. And I knew +that they were all praying--as I was--that the awe which we felt in the +presence of these great dignitaries, and which would have tied our +tongues and locked our jaws, would not affect her in the like degree, but +that she would be enabled to word her message well, and with little +stumbling, and so make a favorable impression here, where it would be so +valuable and so important. + +Ah, dear, how little we were expecting what happened then! We were aghast +to hear her say what she said. She was standing in a reverent attitude, +with her head down and her hands clasped in front of her; for she was +always reverent toward the consecrated servants of God. When the +spokesman had finished, she raised her head and set her calm eye on those +faces, not any more disturbed by their state and grandeur than a princess +would have been, and said, with all her ordinary simplicity and modesty +of voice and manner: + +"Ye will forgive me, reverend sirs, but I have no message save for the +King's ear alone." + +Those surprised men were dumb for a moment, and their faces flushed +darkly; then the spokesman said: + +"Hark ye, to you fling the King's command in his face and refuse to +deliver this message of yours to his servants appointed to receive it?" + +"God has appointed me to receive it, and another's commandment may not +take precedence of that. I pray you let me have speech for his grace the +Dauphin." + +"Forbear this folly, and come at your message! Deliver it, and waste no +more time about it." + +"You err indeed, most reverend fathers in God, and it is not well. I am +not come hither to talk, but to deliver Orleans, and lead the Dauphin to +his good city of Rheims, and set the crown upon his head." + +"Is that the message you send to the King?" + +But Joan only said, in the simple fashion which was her wont: + +"Ye will pardon me for reminding you again--but I have no message to send +to any one." + +The King's messengers rose in deep anger and swept out of the place +without further words, we and Joan kneeling as they passed. + +Our countenances were vacant, our hearts full of a sense of disaster. Our +precious opportunity was thrown away; we could not understand Joan's +conduct, she who had ben so wise until this fatal hour. At last the Sieur +Bertrand found courage to ask her why she had let this great chance to +get her message to the King go by. + +"Who sent them here?" she asked. + +"The King." + +"Who moved the King to send them?" She waited for an answer; none came, +for we began to see what was in her mind--so she answered herself: "The +Dauphin's council moved him to it. Are they enemies to me and to the +Dauphin's weal, or are they friends?" + +"Enemies," answered the Sieur Bertrand. + +"If one would have a message go sound and ungarbled, does one choose +traitors and tricksters to send it by?" + +I saw that we had been fools, and she wise. They saw it too, so none +found anything to say. Then she went on: + +"They had but small wit that contrived this trap. They thought to get my +message and seem to deliver it straight, yet deftly twist it from its +purpose. You know that one part of my message is but this--to move the +Dauphin by argument and reasonings to give me men-at-arms and send me to +the siege. If an enemy carried these in the right words, the exact words, +and no word missing, yet left out the persuasions of gesture and +supplicating tone and beseeching looks that inform the words and make +them live, where were the value of that argument--whom could it convince? +Be patient, the Dauphin will hear me presently; have no fear." + +The Sieur de Metz nodded his head several times, and muttered as to +himself: + +"She was right and wise, and we are but dull fools, when all is said." + +It was just my thought; I could have said it myself; and indeed it was +the thought of all there present. A sort of awe crept over us, to think +how that untaught girl, taken suddenly and unprepared, was yet able to +penetrate the cunning devices of a King's trained advisers and defeat +them. Marveling over this, and astonished at it, we fell silent and spoke +no more. We had come to know that she was great in courage, fortitude, +endurance, patience, conviction, fidelity to all duties--in all things, +indeed, that make a good and trusty soldier and perfect him for his post; +now we were beginning to feel that maybe there were greatnesses in her +brain that were even greater than these great qualities of the heart. It +set us thinking. + +What Joan did that day bore fruit the very day after. The King was +obliged to respect the spirit of a young girl who could hold her own and +stand her ground like that, and he asserted himself sufficiently to put +his respect into an act instead of into polite and empty words. He moved +Joan out of that poor inn, and housed her, with us her servants, in the +Castle of Courdray, personally confiding her to the care of Madame de +Bellier, wife of old Raoul de Gaucourt, Master of the Palace. Of course, +this royal attention had an immediate result: all the great lords and +ladies of the Court began to flock there to see and listen to the +wonderful girl-soldier that all the world was talking about, and who had +answered the King's mandate with a bland refusal to obey. Joan charmed +them every one with her sweetness and simplicity and unconscious +eloquence, and all the best and capablest among them recognized that +there was an indefinable something about her that testified that she was +not made of common clay, that she was built on a grander plan than the +mass of mankind, and moved on a loftier plane. These spread her fame. She +always made friends and advocates that way; neither the high nor the low +could come within the sound of her voice and the sight of her face and go +out from her presence indifferent. + + + + Chapter 6 Joan Convinces the King + +WELL, anything to make delay. The King's council advised him against +arriving at a decision in our matter too precipitately. He arrive at a +decision too precipitately! So they sent a committee of priests--always +priests--into Lorraine to inquire into Joan's character and history--a +matter which would consume several weeks, of course. You see how +fastidious they were. It was as if people should come to put out the fire +when a man's house was burning down, and they waited till they could send +into another country to find out if he had always kept the Sabbath or +not, before letting him try. + +So the days poked along; dreary for us young people in some ways, but not +in all, for we had one great anticipation in front of us; we had never +seen a king, and now some day we should have that prodigious spectacle to +see and to treasure in our memories all our lives; so we were on the +lookout, and always eager and watching for the chance. The others were +doomed to wait longer than I, as it turned out. One day great news +came--the Orleans commissioners, with Yolande and our knights, had at +last turned the council's position and persuaded the King to see Joan. + +Joan received the immense news gratefully but without losing her head, +but with us others it was otherwise; we could not eat or sleep or do any +rational thing for the excitement and the glory of it. During two days +our pair of noble knights were in distress and trepidation on Joan's +account, for the audience was to be at night, and they were afraid that +Joan would be so paralyzed by the glare of light from the long files of +torches, the solemn pomps and ceremonies, the great concourse of renowned +personages, the brilliant costumes, and the other splendors of the Court, +that she, a simple country-maid, and all unused to such things, would be +overcome by these terrors and make a piteous failure. + +No doubt I could have comforted them, but I was not free to speak. Would +Joan be disturbed by this cheap spectacle, this tinsel show, with its +small King and his butterfly dukelets?--she who had spoken face to face +with the princes of heaven, the familiars of God, and seen their retinue +of angels stretching back into the remoteness of the sky, myriads upon +myriads, like a measureless fan of light, a glory like the glory of the +sun streaming from each of those innumerable heads, the massed radiance +filling the deeps of space with a blinding splendor? I thought not. + +Queen Yolande wanted Joan to make the best possible impression upon the +King and the Court, so she was strenuous to have her clothed in the +richest stuffs, wrought upon the princeliest pattern, and set off with +jewels; but in that she had to be disappointed, of course, Joan not being +persuadable to it, but begging to be simply and sincerely dressed, as +became a servant of God, and one sent upon a mission of a serious sort +and grave political import. So then the gracious Queen imagined and +contrived that simple and witching costume which I have described to you +so many times, and which I cannot think of even now in my dull age +without being moved just as rhythmical and exquisite music moves one; for +that was music, that dress--that is what it was--music that one saw with +a the eyes and felt in the heart. Yes, she was a poem, she was a dream, +she was a spirit when she was clothed in that. + +She kept that raiment always, and wore it several times upon occasions of +state, and it is preserved to this day in the Treasury of Orleans, with +two of her swords, and her banner, and other things now sacred because +they had belonged to her. + +At the appointed time the Count of Vendome, a great lord of the court, +came richly clothed, with his train of servants and assistants, to +conduct Joan to the King, and the two knights and I went with her, being +entitled to this privilege by reason of our official positions near her +person. + +When we entered the great audience-hall, there it all was just as I have +already painted it. Here were ranks of guards in shining armor and with +polished halberds; two sides of the hall were like flower-gardens for +variety of color and the magnificence of the costumes; light streamed +upon these masses of color from two hundred and fifty flambeaux. There +was a wide free space down the middle of the hall, and at the end of it +was a throne royally canopied, and upon it sat a crowned and sceptered +figure nobly clothed and blazing with jewels. + +It is true that Joan had been hindered and put off a good while, but now +that she was admitted to an audience at last, she was received with +honors granted to only the greatest personages. At the entrance door +stood four heralds in a row, in splendid tabards, with long slender +silver trumpets at their mouths, with square silken banners depending +from them embroidered with the arms of France. As Joan and the Count +passed by, these trumpets gave forth in unison one long rich note, and as +we moved down the hall under the pictured and gilded vaulting, this was +repeated at every fifty feet of our progress--six times in all. It made +our good knights proud and happy, and they held themselves erect, and +stiffened their stride, and looked fine and soldierly. They were not +expecting this beautiful and honorable tribute to our little +country-maid. + +Joan walked two yards behind the Count, we three walked two yards behind +Joan. Our solemn march ended when we were as yet some eight or ten steps +from the throne. The Count made a deep obeisance, pronounced Joan's name, +then bowed again and moved to his place among a group of officials near +the throne. I was devouring the crowned personage with all my eyes, and +my heart almost stood still with awe. + +The eyes of all others were fixed upon Joan in a gaze of wonder which was +half worship, and which seemed to say, "How sweet--how lovely--how +divine!" All lips were parted and motionless, which was a sure sign that +those people, who seldom forget themselves, had forgotten themselves now, +and were not conscious of anything but the one object they were gazing +upon. They had the look of people who are under the enchantment of a +vision. + +Then they presently began to come to life again, rousing themselves out +of the spell and shaking it off as one drives away little by little a +clinging drowsiness or intoxication. Now they fixed their attention upon +Joan with a strong new interest of another sort; they were full of +curiosity to see what she would do--they having a secret and particular +reason for this curiosity. So they watched. This is what they saw: + +She made no obeisance, nor even any slight inclination of her head, but +stood looking toward the throne in silence. That was all there was to see +at present. + +I glanced up at De Metz, and was shocked at the paleness of his face. I +whispered and said: + +"What is it, man, what is it?" + +His answering whisper was so weak I could hardly catch it: + +"They have taken advantage of the hint in her letter to play a trick upon +her! She will err, and they will laugh at her. That is not the King that +sits there." + +Then I glanced at Joan. She was still gazing steadfastly toward the +throne, and I had the curious fancy that even her shoulders and the back +of her head expressed bewilderment. Now she turned her head slowly, and +her eye wandered along the lines of standing courtiers till it fell upon +a young man who was very quietly dressed; then her face lighted joyously, +and she ran and threw herself at his feet, and clasped his knees, +exclaiming in that soft melodious voice which was her birthright and was +now charged with deep and tender feeling: + +"God of his grace give you long life, O dear and gentle Dauphin!" + +In his astonishment and exultation De Metz cried out: + +"By the shadow of God, it is an amazing thing!" Then he mashed all the +bones of my hand in his grateful grip, and added, with a proud shake of +his mane, "Now, what have these painted infidels to say!" + +Meantime the young person in the plain clothes was saying to Joan: + +"Ah, you mistake, my child, I am not the King. There he is," and he +pointed to the throne. + +The knight's face clouded, and he muttered in grief and indignation: + +"Ah, it is a shame to use her so. But for this lie she had gone through +safe. I will go and proclaim to all the house what--" + +"Stay where you are!" whispered I and the Sieur Bertrand in a breath, and +made him stop in his place. + +Joan did not stir from her knees, but still lifted her happy face toward +the King, and said: + +"No, gracious liege, you are he, and none other." + +De Metz's troubles vanished away, and he said: + +"Verily, she was not guessing, she knew. Now, how could she know? It is a +miracle. I am content, and will meddle no more, for I perceive that she +is equal to her occasions, having that in her head that cannot profitably +be helped by the vacancy that is in mine." + +This interruption of his lost me a remark or two of the other talk; +however, I caught the King's next question: + +"But tell me who you are, and what would you?" + +"I am called Joan the Maid, and am sent to say that the King of Heaven +wills that you be crowned and consecrated in your good city of Rheims, +and be thereafter Lieutenant of the Lord of Heaven, who is King of +France. And He willeth also that you set me at my appointed work and give +me men-at-arms." After a slight pause she added, her eye lighting at the +sound of her words, "For then will I raise the siege of Orleans and break +the English power!" + +The young monarch's amused face sobered a little when this martial speech +fell upon that sick air like a breath blown from embattled camps and +fields of war, and this trifling smile presently faded wholly away and +disappeared. He was grave now, and thoughtful. After a little he waved +his hand lightly, and all the people fell away and left those two by +themselves in a vacant space. The knights and I moved to the opposite +side of the hall and stood there. We saw Joan rise at a sign, then she +and the King talked privately together. + +All that host had been consumed with curiosity to see what Joan would do. +Well, they had seen, and now they were full of astonishment to see that +she had really performed that strange miracle according to the promise in +her letter; and they were fully as much astonished to find that she was +not overcome by the pomps and splendors about her, but was even more +tranquil and at her ease in holding speech with a monarch than ever they +themselves had been, with all their practice and experience. + +As for our two knights, they were inflated beyond measure with pride in +Joan, but nearly dumb, as to speech, they not being able to think out any +way to account for her managing to carry herself through this imposing +ordeal without ever a mistake or an awkwardness of any kind to mar the +grace and credit of her great performance. + +The talk between Joan and the King was long and earnest, and held in low +voices. We could not hear, but we had our eyes and could note effects; +and presently we and all the house noted one effect which was memorable +and striking, and has been set down in memoirs and histories and in +testimony at the Process of Rehabilitation by some who witnessed it; for +all knew it was big with meaning, though none knew what that meaning was +at that time, of course. For suddenly we saw the King shake off his +indolent attitude and straighten up like a man, and at the same time look +immeasurably astonished. It was as if Joan had told him something almost +too wonderful for belief, and yet of a most uplifting and welcome nature. + +It was long before we found out the secret of this conversation, but we +know it now, and all the world knows it. That part of the talk was like +this--as one may read in all histories. The perplexed King asked Joan for +a sign. He wanted to believe in her and her mission, and that her Voices +were supernatural and endowed with knowledge hidden from mortals, but how +could he do this unless these Voices could prove their claim in some +absolutely unassailable way? It was then that Joan said: + +"I will give you a sign, and you shall no more doubt. There is a secret +trouble in your heart which you speak of to none--a doubt which wastes +away your courage, and makes you dream of throwing all away and fleeing +from your realm. Within this little while you have been praying, in your +own breast, that God of his grace would resolve that doubt, even if the +doing of it must show you that no kingly right is lodged in you." + +It was that that amazed the King, for it was as she had said: his prayer +was the secret of his own breast, and none but God could know about it. +So he said: + +"The sign is sufficient. I know now that these Voices are of God. They +have said true in this matter; if they have said more, tell it me--I will +believe." + +"They have resolved that doubt, and I bring their very words, which are +these: Thou art lawful heir to the King thy father, and true heir of +France. God has spoken it. Now lift up they head, and doubt no more, but +give me men-at-arms and let me get about my work." + +Telling him he was of lawful birth was what straightened him up and made +a man of him for a moment, removing his doubts upon that head and +convincing him of his royal right; and if any could have hanged his +hindering and pestiferous council and set him free, he would have +answered Joan's prayer and set her in the field. But no, those creatures +were only checked, not checkmated; they could invent some more delays. + +We had been made proud by the honors which had so distinguished Joan's +entrance into that place--honors restricted to personages of very high +rank and worth--but that pride was as nothing compared with the pride we +had in the honor done her upon leaving it. For whereas those first honors +were shown only to the great, these last, up to this time, had been shown +only to the royal. The King himself led Joan by the hand down the great +hall to the door, the glittering multitude standing and making reverence +as they passed, and the silver trumpets sounding those rich notes of +theirs. Then he dismissed her with gracious words, bending low over her +hand and kissing it. Always--from all companies, high or low--she went +forth richer in honor and esteem than when she came. + +And the King did another handsome thing by Joan, for he sent us back to +Courdray Castle torch-lighted and in state, under escort of his own +troop--his guard of honor--the only soldiers he had; and finely equipped +and bedizened they were, too, though they hadn't seen the color of their +wages since they were children, as a body might say. The wonders which +Joan had been performing before the King had been carried all around by +this time, so the road was so packed with people who wanted to get a +sight of her that we could hardly dig through; and as for talking +together, we couldn't, all attempts at talk being drowned in the storm of +shoutings and huzzas that broke out all along as we passed, and kept +abreast of us like a wave the whole way. + + + + Chapter 7 Our Paladin in His Glory + +WE WERE doomed to suffer tedious waits and delays, and we settled +ourselves down to our fate and bore it with a dreary patience, counting +the slow hours and the dull days and hoping for a turn when God should +please to send it. The Paladin was the only exception--that is to say, he +was the only one who was happy and had no heavy times. This was partly +owing to the satisfaction he got out of his clothes. He bought them at +second hand--a Spanish cavalier's complete suit, wide-brimmed hat with +flowing plumes, lace collar and cuffs, faded velvet doublet and trunks, +short cloak hung from the shoulder, funnel-topped buskins, long rapier, +and all that--a graceful and picturesque costume, and the Paladin's great +frame was the right place to hang it for effect. He wore it when off +duty; and when he swaggered by with one hand resting on the hilt of his +rapier, and twirling his new mustache with the other, everybody stopped +to look and admire; and well they might, for he was a fine and stately +contrast to the small French gentlemen of the day squeezed into the +trivial French costume of the time. + +He was king bee of the little village that snuggled under the shelter of +the frowning towers and bastions of Courdray Castle, and acknowledged +lord of the tap-room of the inn. When he opened his mouth there, he got a +hearing. Those simple artisans and peasants listened with deep and +wondering interest; for he was a traveler and had seen the world--all of +it that lay between Chinon and Domremy, at any rate--and that was a wide +stretch more of it than they might ever hope to see; and he had been in +battle, and knew how to paint its shock and struggle, its perils and +surprised, with an art that was all his own. He was cock of that walk, +hero of that hostelry; he drew custom as honey draws flies; so he was the +pet of the innkeeper, and of his wife and daughter, and they were his +obliged and willing servants. + +Most people who have the narrative gift--that great and rare +endowment--have with it the defect of telling their choice things over +the same way every time, and this injures them and causes them to sound +stale and wearisome after several repetitions; but it was not so with the +Paladin, whose art was of a finer sort; it was more stirring and +interesting to hear him tell about a battle the tenth time than it was +the first time, because he did not tell it twice the same way, but always +made a new battle of it and a better one, with more casualties on the +enemy's side each time, and more general wreck and disaster all around, +and more widows and orphans and suffering in the neighborhood where it +happened. He could not tell his battles apart himself, except by their +names; and by the time he had told one of then ten times it had grown so +that there wasn't room enough in France for it any more, but was lapping +over the edges. But up to that point the audience would not allow him to +substitute a new battle, knowing that the old ones were the best, and +sure to improve as long as France could hold them; and so, instead of +saying to him as they would have said to another, "Give us something +fresh, we are fatigued with that old thing," they would say, with one +voice and with a strong interest, "Tell about the surprise at Beaulieu +again--tell in three or four times!" That is a compliment which few +narrative experts have heard in their lifetime. + +At first when the Paladin heard us tell about the glories of the Royal +Audience he was broken-hearted because he was not taken with us to it; +next, his talk was full of what he would have done if he had been there; +and within two days he was telling what he did do when he was there. His +mill was fairly started, now, and could be trusted to take care of its +affair. Within three nights afterward all his battles were taking a rest, +for already his worshipers in the tap-room were so infatuated with the +great tale of the Royal Audience that they would have nothing else, and +so besotted with it were they that they would have cried if they could +not have gotten it. + +Noel Rainguesson hid himself and heard it, and came and told me, and +after that we went together to listen, bribing the inn hostess to let us +have her little private parlor, where we could stand at the wickets in +the door and see and hear. + +The tap-room was large, yet had a snug and cozy look, with its inviting +little tables and chairs scattered irregularly over its red brick floor, +and its great fire flaming and crackling in the wide chimney. It was a +comfortable place to be in on such chilly and blustering March nights as +these, and a goodly company had taken shelter there, and were sipping +their wine in contentment and gossiping one with another in a neighborly +way while they waited for the historian. The host, the hostess, and their +pretty daughter were flying here and there and yonder among the tables +and doing their best to keep up with the orders. The room was about forty +feet square, and a space or aisle down the center of it had been kept +vacant and reserved for the Paladin's needs. At the end of it was a +platform ten or twelve feet wide, with a big chair and a small table on +it, and three steps leading up to it. + +Among the wine-sippers were many familiar faces: the cobbler, the +farrier, the blacksmith, the wheelwright, the armorer, the maltster, the +weaver, the backer, the miller's man with his dusty coat, and so on; and +conscious and important, as a matter of course, was the barber-surgeon, +for he is that in all villages. As he has to pull everybody's teeth and +purge and bleed all the grown people once a month to keep their health +sound, he knows everybody, and by constant contact with all sorts of folk +becomes a master of etiquette and manners and a conversationalist of +large facility. There were plenty of carriers, drovers, and their sort, +and journeymen artisans. + +When the Paladin presently came sauntering indolently in, he was received +with a cheer, and the barber hustled forward and greeted him with several +low and most graceful and courtly bows, also taking his hand an touching +his lips to it. Then he called in a loud voice for a stoup of wine for +the Paladin, and when the host's daughter brought it up on the platform +and dropped her courtesy and departed, the barber called after her, and +told her to add the wine to his score. This won him ejaculations of +approval, which pleased him very much and made his little rat-eyes shine; +and such applause is right and proper, for when we do a liberal and +gallant thing it is but natural that we should wish to see notice taken +of it. + +The barber called upon the people to rise and drink the Paladin's health, +and they did it with alacrity and affectionate heartiness, clashing their +metal flagons together with a simultaneous crash, and heightening the +effect with a resounding cheer. It was a fine thing to see how that young +swashbuckler had made himself so popular in a strange land in so little a +while, and without other helps to his advancement than just his tongue +and the talent to use it given him by God--a talent which was but one +talent in the beginning, but was now become ten through husbandry and the +increment and usufruct that do naturally follow that and reward it as by +a law. + +The people sat down and began to hammer on the tables with their flagons +and call for "the King's Audience!--the King's Audience! --the King's +Audience!" The Paladin stood there in one of his best attitudes, with his +plumed great hat tipped over to the left, the folds of his short cloak +drooping from his shoulder, and the one hand resting upon the hilt of his +rapier and the other lifting his beaker. As the noise died down he made a +stately sort of a bow, which he had picked up somewhere, then fetched his +beaker with a sweep to his lips and tilted his head back and rained it to +the bottom. The barber jumped for it and set it upon the Paladin's table. +Then the Paladin began to walk up and down his platform with a great deal +of dignity and quite at his ease; and as he walked he talked, and every +little while stopped and stood facing his house and so standing continued +his talk. + +We went three nights in succession. It was plain that there was a charm +about the performance that was apart from the mere interest which +attaches to lying. It was presently discoverable that this charm lay in +the Paladin's sincerity. He was not lying consciously; he believed what +he was saying. To him, his initial statements were facts, and whenever he +enlarged a statement, the enlargement became a fact too. He put his heart +into his extravagant narrative, just as a poet puts his heart into a +heroic fiction, and his earnestness disarmed criticism--disarmed it as +far as he himself was concerned. Nobody believed his narrative, but all +believed that he believed it. + +He made his enlargements without flourish, without emphasis, and so +casually that often one failed to notice that a change had been made. He +spoke of the governor of Vaucouleurs, the first night, simply as the +governor of Vaucouleurs; he spoke of him the second night as his uncle +the governor of Vaucouleurs; the third night he was his father. He did +not seem to know that he was making these extraordinary changes; they +dropped from his lips in a quite natural and effortless way. By his first +night's account the governor merely attached him to the Maid's military +escort in a general and unofficial way; the second night his uncle the +governor sent him with the Maid as lieutenant of her rear guard; the +third night his father the governor put the whole command, Maid and all, +in his special charge. The first night the governor spoke of his as a +youth without name or ancestry, but "destined to achieve both"; the +second night his uncle the governor spoke of him as the latest and +worthiest lineal descendent of the chiefest and noblest of the Twelve +Paladins of Charlemagne; the third night he spoke of his as the lineal +descendent of the whole dozen. In three nights he promoted the Count of +Vendome from a fresh acquaintance to a schoolmate, and then +brother-in-law. + +At the King's Audience everything grew, in the same way. First the four +silver trumpets were twelve, then thirty-five, finally ninety-six; and by +that time he had thrown in so many drums and cymbals that he had to +lengthen the hall from five hundred feet to nine hundred to accommodate +them. Under his hand the people present multiplied in the same large way. + +The first two nights he contented himself with merely describing and +exaggerating the chief dramatic incident of the Audience, but the third +night he added illustration to description. He throned the barber in his +own high chair to represent the sham King; then he told how the Court +watched the Maid with intense interest and suppressed merriment, +expecting to see her fooled by the deception and get herself swept +permanently out of credit by the storm of scornful laughter which would +follow. He worked this scene up till he got his house in a burning fever +of excitement and anticipation, then came his climax. Turning to the +barber, he said: + +"But mark you what she did. She gazed steadfastly upon that sham's +villain face as I now gaze upon yours--this being her noble and simple +attitude, just as I stand now--then turned she--thus--to me, and +stretching her arm out--so--and pointing with her finger, she said, in +that firm, calm tone which she was used to use in directing the conduct +of a battle, 'Pluck me this false knave from the throne!' I, striding +forward as I do now, took him by the collar and lifted him out and held +him aloft--thus--as it he had been but a child." (The house rose, +shouting, stamping, and banging with their flagons, and went fairly mad +over this magnificent exhibition of strength--and there was not the +shadow of a laugh anywhere, though the spectacle of the limp but proud +barber hanging there in the air like a puppy held by the scruff of its +neck was a thing that had nothing of solemnity about it.) "Then I set him +down upon his feet--thus--being minded to get him by a better hold and +heave him out of the window, but she bid me forbear, so by that error he +escaped with his life. + +"Then she turned her about and viewed the throng with those eyes of hers, +which are the clear-shining windows whence her immortal wisdom looketh +out upon the world, resolving its falsities and coming at the kernel of +truth that is hid within them, and presently they fell upon a young man +modestly clothed, and him she proclaimed for what he truly was, saying, +'I am thy servant--thou art the King!' Then all were astonished, and a +great shout went up, the whole six thousand joining in it, so that the +walls rocked with the volume and the tumult of it." + +He made a fine and picturesque thing of the march-out from the Audience, +augmenting the glories of it to the last limit of the impossibilities; +then he took from his finger and held up a brass nut from a bolt-head +which the head ostler at the castle had given him that morning, and made +his conclusion--thus: + +"Then the King dismissed the Maid most graciously--as indeed was her +desert--and, turning to me, said, 'Take this signet-ring, son of the +Paladins, and command me with it in your day of need; and look you,' said +he, touching my temple, 'preserve this brain, France has use for it; and +look well to its casket also, for I foresee that it will be hooped with a +ducal coronet one day.' I took the ring, and knelt and kissed his hand, +saying, 'Sire, where glory calls, there will I be found; where danger and +death are thickest, that is my native air; when France and the throne +need help--well, I say nothing, for I am not of the talking sort--let my +deeds speak for me, it is all I ask.' + +"So ended the most fortunate and memorable episode, so big with future +weal for the crown and the nation, and unto God be the thanks! Rise! Fill +you flagons! Now--to France and the King--drink!" + +They emptied them to the bottom, then burst into cheers and huzzas, and +kept it up as much as two minutes, the Paladin standing at stately ease +the while and smiling benignantly from his platform. + + + + Chapter 8 Joan Persuades Her Inquisitors + +WHEN JOAN told the King what that deep secret was that was torturing his +heart, his doubts were cleared away; he believed she was sent of God, and +if he had been let alone he would have set her upon her great mission at +once. But he was not let alone. Tremouille and the holy fox of Rheims +knew their man. All they needed to say was this--and they said it: + +"Your Highness says her Voices have revealed to you, by her mouth, a +secret known only to yourself and God. How can you know that her Voices +are not of Satan, and she his mouthpiece?--for does not Satan know the +secrets of men and use his knowledge for the destruction of their souls? +It is a dangerous business, and your Highness will do well not to proceed +in it without probing the matter to the bottom." + +That was enough. It shriveled up the King's little soul like a raisin, +with terrors and apprehensions, and straightway he privately appointed a +commission of bishops to visit and question Joan daily until they should +find out whether her supernatural helps hailed from heaven or from hell. + +The King's relative, the Duke of Alencon, three years prisoner of war to +the English, was in these days released from captivity through promise of +a great ransom; and the name and fame of the Maid having reached him--for +the same filled all mouths now, and penetrated to all parts--he came to +Chinon to see with his own eyes what manner of creature she might be. The +King sent for Joan and introduced her to the Duke. She said, in her +simple fashion: + +"You are welcome; the more of the blood of France that is joined to this +cause, the better for the cause and it." + +Then the two talked together, and there was just the usual result: when +they departed, the Duke was her friend and advocate. + +Joan attended the King's mass the next day, and afterward dined with the +King and the Duke. The King was learning to prize her company and value +her conversation; and that might well be, for, like other kings, he was +used to getting nothing out of people's talk but guarded phrases, +colorless and non-committal, or carefully tinted to tally with the color +of what he said himself; and so this kind of conversation only vexes and +bores, and is wearisome; but Joan's talk was fresh and free, sincere and +honest, and unmarred by timorous self-watching and constraint. She said +the very thing that was in her mind, and said it in a plain, +straightforward way. One can believe that to the King this must have been +like fresh cold water from the mountains to parched lips used to the +water of the sun-baked puddles of the plain. + +After dinner Joan so charmed the Duke with her horsemanship and lance +practice in the meadows by the Castle of Chinon whither the King also had +come to look on, that he made her a present of a great black war-steed. + +Every day the commission of bishops came and questioned Joan about her +Voices and her mission, and then went to the King with their report. +These pryings accomplished but little. She told as much as she considered +advisable, and kept the rest to herself. Both threats and trickeries were +wasted upon her. She did not care for the threats, and the traps caught +nothing. She was perfectly frank and childlike about these things. She +knew the bishops were sent by the King, that their questions were the +King's questions, and that by all law and custom a King's questions must +be answered; yet she told the King in her naive way at his own table one +day that she answered only such of those questions as suited her. + +The bishops finally concluded that they couldn't tell whether Joan was +sent by God or not. They were cautious, you see. There were two powerful +parties at Court; therefore to make a decision either way would +infallibly embroil them with one of those parties; so it seemed to them +wisest to roost on the fence and shift the burden to other shoulders. And +that is what they did. They made final report that Joan's case was beyond +their powers, and recommended that it be put into the hands of the +learned and illustrious doctors of the University of Poitiers. Then they +retired from the field, leaving behind them this little item of +testimony, wrung from them by Joan's wise reticence: they said she was a +"gentle and simple little shepherdess, very candid, but not given to +talking." + +It was quite true--in their case. But if they could have looked back and +seen her with us in the happy pastures of Domremy, they would have +perceived that she had a tongue that could go fast enough when no harm +could come of her words. + +So we traveled to Poitiers, to endure there three weeks of tedious delay +while this poor child was being daily questioned and badgered before a +great bench of--what? Military experts?--since what she had come to apply +for was an army and the privilege of leading it to battle against the +enemies of France. Oh no; it was a great bench of priests and +monks--profoundly leaned and astute casuists--renowned professors of +theology! Instead of setting a military commission to find out if this +valorous little soldier could win victories, they set a company of holy +hair-splitters and phrase-mongers to work to find out if the soldier was +sound in her piety and had no doctrinal leaks. The rats were devouring +the house, but instead of examining the cat's teeth and claws, they only +concerned themselves to find out if it was a holy cat. If it was a pious +cat, a moral cat, all right, never mind about the other capacities, they +were of no consequence. + +Joan was as sweetly self-possessed and tranquil before this grim +tribunal, with its robed celebrities, its solemn state and imposing +ceremonials, as if she were but a spectator and not herself on trial. She +sat there, solitary on her bench, untroubled, and disconcerted the +science of the sages with her sublime ignorance--an ignorance which was a +fortress; arts, wiles, the learning drawn from books, and all like +missiles rebounded from its unconscious masonry and fell to the ground +harmless; they could not dislodge the garrison which was within--Joan's +serene great heart and spirit, the guards and keepers of her mission. + +She answered all questions frankly, and she told all the story of her +visions and of her experiences with the angels and what they said to her; +and the manner of the telling was so unaffected, and so earnest and +sincere, and made it all seem so lifelike and real, that even that hard +practical court forgot itself and sat motionless and mute, listening with +a charmed and wondering interest to the end. And if you would have other +testimony than mine, look in the histories and you will find where an +eyewitness, giving sworn testimony in the Rehabilitation process, says +that she told that tale "with a noble dignity and simplicity," and as to +its effect, says in substance what I have said. Seventeen, she +was--seventeen, and all alone on her bench by herself; yet was not +afraid, but faced that great company of erudite doctors of law ant +theology, and by the help of no art learned in the schools, but using +only the enchantments which were hers by nature, of youth, sincerity, a +voice soft and musical, and an eloquence whose source was the heart, not +the head, she laid that spell upon them. Now was not that a beautiful +thing to see? If I could, I would put it before you just as I saw it; +then I know what you would say. + +As I have told you, she could not read. "One day they harried and +pestered her with arguments, reasonings, objections, and other windy and +wordy trivialities, gathered out of the works of this and that and the +other great theological authority, until at last her patience vanished, +and she turned upon them sharply and said: + +"I don't know A from B; but I know this: that I am come by command of the +Lord of Heaven to deliver Orleans from the English power and crown the +King of Rheims, and the matters ye are puttering over are of no +consequence!" + +Necessarily those were trying days for her, and wearing for everybody +that took part; but her share was the hardest, for she had no holidays, +but must be always on hand and stay the long hours through, whereas this, +that, and the other inquisitor could absent himself and rest up from his +fatigues when he got worn out. And yet she showed no wear, no weariness, +and but seldom let fly her temper. As a rule she put her day through +calm, alert, patient, fencing with those veteran masters of scholarly +sword-play and coming out always without a scratch. + +One day a Dominican sprung upon her a question which made everybody cock +up his ears with interest; as for me, I trembled, and said to myself she +is done this time, poor Joan, for there is no way of answering this. The +sly Dominican began in this way--in a sort of indolent fashion, as if the +thing he was about was a matter of no moment: + +"You assert that God has willed to deliver France from this English +bondage?" + +"Yes, He has willed it." + +"You wish for men-at-arms, so that you may go to the relief of Orleans, I +believe?" + +"Yes--and the sooner the better." + +"God is all-powerful, and able to do whatsoever thing He wills to do, is +it not so?" + +"Most surely. None doubts it." + +The Dominican lifted his head suddenly, and sprung that question I have +spoken of, with exultation: + +"Then answer me this. If He has willed to deliver France, and is able to +do whatsoever He wills, where is the need for men-at-arms?" + +There was a fine stir and commotion when he said that, and a sudden +thrusting forward of heads and putting up of hands to ears to catch the +answer; and the Dominican wagged his head with satisfaction, and looked +about him collecting his applause, for it shone in every face. But Joan +was not disturbed. There was no note of disquiet in her voice when she +answered: + +"He helps who help themselves. The sons of France will fight the battles, +but He will give the victory!" + +You could see a light of admiration sweep the house from face to face +like a ray from the sun. Even the Dominican himself looked pleased, to +see his master-stroke so neatly parried, and I heard a venerable bishop +mutter, in the phrasing common to priest and people in that robust time, +"By God, the child has said true. He willed that Goliath should be slain, +and He sent a child like this to do it!" + +Another day, when the inquisition had dragged along until everybody +looked drowsy and tired but Joan, Brother Seguin, professor of theology +at the University of Poitiers, who was a sour and sarcastic man, fell to +plying Joan with all sorts of nagging questions in his bastard Limousin +French--for he was from Limoges. Finally he said: + +"How is it that you understand those angels? What language did they +speak?" + +"French." + +"In-deed! How pleasant to know that our language is so honored! Good +French?" + +"Yes--perfect." + +"Perfect, eh? Well, certainly you ought to know. It was even better than +your own, eh?" + +"As to that, I--I believe I cannot say," said she, and was going on, but +stopped. Then she added, almost as if she were saying it to herself, +"Still, it was an improvement on yours!" + +I knew there was a chuckle back of her eyes, for all their innocence. +Everybody shouted. Brother Seguin was nettled, and asked brusquely: + +"Do you believe in God?" + +Joan answered with an irritating nonchalance: + +"Oh, well, yes--better than you, it is likely." + +Brother Seguin lost his patience, and heaped sarcasm after sarcasm upon +her, and finally burst out in angry earnest, exclaiming: + +"Very well, I can tell you this, you whose believe in God is so great: +God has not willed that any shall believe in you without a sign. Where is +your sign?--show it!" + +This roused Joan, and she was on her feet in a moment, and flung out her +retort with spirit: + +"I have not come to Poitiers to show signs and do miracles. Send me to +Orleans and you shall have signs enough. Give me men-at-arms--few or +many--and let me go!" + +The fire was leaping from her eyes--ah, the heroic little figure! can't +you see her? There was a great burst of acclamations, and she sat down +blushing, for it was not in her delicate nature to like being +conspicuous. + +This speech and that episode about the French language scored two points +against Brother Seguin, while he scored nothing against Joan; yet, sour +man as he was, he was a manly man, and honest, as you can see by the +histories; for at the Rehabilitation he could have hidden those unlucky +incidents if he had chosen, but he didn't do it, but spoke them right out +in his evidence. + +On one of the latter days of that three-weeks session the gowned scholars +and professors made one grand assault all along the line, fairly +overwhelming Joan with objections and arguments culled from the writings +of every ancient and illustrious authority of the Roman Church. She was +well-nigh smothered; but at last she shook herself free and struck back, +crying out: + +"Listen! The Book of God is worth more than all these ye cite, and I +stand upon it. And I tell ye there are things in that Book that not one +among ye can read, with all your learning!" + +From the first she was the guest, by invitation, of the dame De Rabateau, +wife of a councilor of the Parliament of Poitiers; and to that house the +great ladies of the city came nightly to see Joan and talk with her; and +not these only, but the old lawyers, councilors and scholars of the +Parliament and the University. And these grave men, accustomed to weigh +every strange and questionable thing, and cautiously consider it, and +turn it about this way and that and still doubt it, came night after +night, and night after night, falling ever deeper and deeper under the +influence of that mysterious something, that spell, that elusive and +unwordable fascination, which was the supremest endowment of Joan of Arc, +that winning and persuasive and convincing something which high and low +alike recognized and felt, but which neither high nor low could explain +or describe, and one by one they all surrendered, saying, "This child is +sent of God." + +All day long Joan, in the great court and subject to its rigid rules of +procedure, was at a disadvantage; her judges had things their own way; +but at night she held court herself, and matters were reversed, she +presiding, with her tongue free and her same judges there before her. +There could not be but one result: all the objections and hindrances they +could build around her with their hard labors of the day she would charm +away at night. In the end, she carried her judges with her in a mass, and +got her great verdict without a dissenting voice. + +The court was a sight to see when the president of it read it from his +throne, for all the great people of the town were there who could get +admission and find room. First there were some solemn ceremonies, proper +and usual at such times; then, when there was silence again, the reading +followed, penetrating the deep hush so that every word was heard in even +the remotest parts of the house: + +"It is found, and is hereby declared, that Joan of Arc, called the Maid, +is a good Christian and a good Catholic; that there is nothing in her +person or her words contrary to the faith; and that the King may and +ought to accept the succor she offers; for to repel it would be to offend +the Holy Spirit, and render him unworthy of the air of God." + +The court rose, and then the storm of plaudits burst forth unrebuked, +dying down and bursting forth again and again, and I lost sight of Joan, +for she was swallowed up in a great tide of people who rushed to +congratulate her and pour out benedictions upon her and upon the cause of +France, now solemnly and irrevocably delivered into her little hands. + + + + Chapter 9 She Is Made General-in-Chief + +IT WAS indeed a great day, and a stirring thing to see. + +She had won! It was a mistake of Tremouille and her other ill-wishers to +let her hold court those nights. + +The commission of priests sent to Lorraine ostensibly to inquire into +Joan's character--in fact to weary her with delays and wear out her +purpose and make her give it up--arrived back and reported her character +perfect. Our affairs were in full career now, you see. + +The verdict made a prodigious stir. Dead France woke suddenly to life, +wherever the great news traveled. Whereas before, the spiritless and +cowed people hung their heads and slunk away if one mentioned war to +them, now they came clamoring to be enlisted under the banner of the Maid +of Vaucouleurs, and the roaring of war-songs and the thundering of the +drums filled all the air. I remembered now what she had said, that time +there in our village when I proved by facts and statistics that France's +case was hopeless, and nothing could ever rouse the people from their +lethargy: + +"They will hear the drums--and they will answer, they will march!" + +It has been said that misfortunes never come one at a time, but in a +body. In our case it was the same with good luck. Having got a start, it +came flooding in, tide after tide. Our next wave of it was of this sort. +There had been grave doubts among the priests as to whether the Church +ought to permit a female soldier to dress like a man. But now came a +verdict on that head. Two of the greatest scholars and theologians of the +time--one of whom had been Chancellor of the University of +Paris--rendered it. They decided that since Joan "must do the work of a +man and a soldier, it is just and legitimate that her apparel should +conform to the situation." + +It was a great point gained, the Church's authority to dress as a man. +Oh, yes, wave on wave the good luck came sweeping in. Never mind about +the smaller waves, let us come to the largest one of all, the wave that +swept us small fry quite off our feet and almost drowned us with joy. The +day of the great verdict, couriers had been despatched to the King with +it, and the next morning bright and early the clear notes of a bugle came +floating to us on the crisp air, and we pricked up our ears and began to +count them. One--two--three; pause; one--two; pause; one--two--three, +again--and out we skipped and went flying; for that formula was used only +when the King's herald-at-arms would deliver a proclamation to the +people. As we hurried along, people came racing out of every street and +house and alley, men, women, and children, all flushed, excited, and +throwing lacking articles of clothing on as they ran; still those clear +notes pealed out, and still the rush of people increased till the whole +town was abroad and streaming along the principal street. At last we +reached the square, which was now packed with citizens, and there, high +on the pedestal of the great cross, we saw the herald in his brilliant +costume, with his servitors about him. The next moment he began his +delivery in the powerful voice proper to his office: + +"Know all men, and take heed therefore, that the most high, the most +illustrious Charles, by the grace of God King of France, hath been +pleased to confer upon his well-beloved servant Joan of Arc, called the +Maid, the title, emoluments, authorities, and dignity of General-in-Chief +of the Armies of France--" + +Here a thousand caps flew in the air, and the multitude burst into a +hurricane of cheers that raged and raged till it seemed as if it would +never come to an end; but at last it did; then the herald went on and +finished: + +--"and hath appointed to be her lieutenant and chief of staff a prince of +his royal house, his grace the Duke of Alencon!" + +That was the end, and the hurricane began again, and was split up into +innumerable strips by the blowers of it and wafted through all the lanes +and streets of the town. + +General of the Armies of France, with a prince of the blood for +subordinate! Yesterday she was nothing--to-day she was this. Yesterday +she was not even a sergeant, not even a corporal, not even a +private--to-day, with one step, she was at the top. Yesterday she was +less than nobody to the newest recruit--to-day her command was law to La +Hire, Saintrailles, the Bastard of Orleans, and all those others, +veterans of old renown, illustrious masters of the trade of war. These +were the thoughts I was thinking; I was trying to realize this strange +and wonderful thing that had happened, you see. + +My mind went travelling back, and presently lighted upon a picture--a +picture which was still so new and fresh in my memory that it seemed a +matter of only yesterday--and indeed its date was no further back than +the first days of January. This is what it was. A peasant-girl in a +far-off village, her seventeenth year not yet quite completed, and +herself and her village as unknown as if they had been on the other side +of the globe. She had picked up a friendless wanderer somewhere and +brought it home--a small gray kitten in a forlorn and starving +condition--and had fed it and comforted it and got its confidence and +made it believe in her, and now it was curled up in her lap asleep, and +she was knitting a coarse stocking and thinking--dreaming--about what, +one may never know. And now--the kitten had hardly had time to become a +cat, and yet already the girl is General of the Armies of France, with a +prince of the blood to give orders to, and out of her village obscurity +her name has climbed up like the sun and is visible from all corners of +the land! It made me dizzy to think of these things, they were so out of +the common order, and seemed so impossible. + + + + Chapter 10 The Maid's Sword and Banner + +JOAN'S first official act was to dictate a letter to the English +commanders at Orleans, summoning them to deliver up all strongholds in +their possession and depart out of France. She must have been thinking it +all out before and arranging it in her mind, it flowed from her lips so +smoothly, and framed itself into such vivacious and forcible language. +Still, it might not have been so; she always had a quick mind and a +capable tongue, and her faculties were constantly developing in these +latter weeks. This letter was to be forwarded presently from Blois. Men, +provisions, and money were offering in plenty now, and Joan appointed +Blois as a recruiting-station and depot of supplies, and ordered up La +Hire from the front to take charge. + +The Great Bastard--him of the ducal house, and governor of Orleans--had +been clamoring for weeks for Joan to be sent to him, and now came another +messenger, old D'Aulon, a veteran officer, a trusty man and fine and +honest. The King kept him, and gave him to Joan to be chief of her +household, and commanded her to appoint the rest of her people herself, +making their number and dignity accord with the greatness of her office; +and at the same time he gave order that they should be properly equipped +with arms, clothing, and horses. + +Meantime the King was having a complete suit of armor made for her at +Tours. It was of the finest steel, heavily plated with silver, richly +ornamented with engraved designs, and polished like a mirror. + +Joan's Voices had told her that there was an ancient sword hidden +somewhere behind the altar of St. Catherine's at Fierbois, and she sent +De Metz to get it. The priests knew of no such sword, but a search was +made, and sure enough it was found in that place, buried a little way +under the ground. It had no sheath and was very rusty, but the priests +polished it up and sent it to Tours, whither we were now to come. They +also had a sheath of crimson velvet made for it, and the people of Tours +equipped it with another, made of cloth-of-gold. But Joan meant to carry +this sword always in battle; so she laid the showy sheaths away and got +one made of leather. It was generally believed that his sword had +belonged to Charlemagne, but that was only a matter of opinion. I wanted +to sharpen that old blade, but she said it was not necessary, as she +should never kill anybody, and should carry it only as a symbol of +authority. + +At Tours she designed her Standard, and a Scotch painter named James +Power made it. It was of the most delicate white boucassin, with fringes +of silk. For device it bore the image of God the Father throned in the +clouds and holding the world in His hand; two angels knelt at His feet, +presenting lilies; inscription, JESUS, MARIA; on the reverse the crown of +France supported by two angels. + +She also caused a smaller standard or pennon to be made, whereon was +represented an angel offering a lily to the Holy Virgin. + +Everything was humming there at Tours. Every now and then one heard the +bray and crash of military music, every little while one heard the +measured tramp of marching men--squads of recruits leaving for Blois; +songs and shoutings and huzzas filled the air night and day, the town was +full of strangers, the streets and inns were thronged, the bustle of +preparation was everywhere, and everybody carried a glad and cheerful +face. Around Joan's headquarters a crowd of people was always massed, +hoping for a glimpse of the new General, and when they got it, they went +wild; but they seldom got it, for she was busy planning her campaign, +receiving reports, giving orders, despatching couriers, and giving what +odd moments she could spare to the companies of great folk waiting in the +drawing-rooms. As for us boys, we hardly saw her at all, she was so +occupied. + +We were in a mixed state of mind--sometimes hopeful, sometimes not; +mostly not. She had not appointed her household yet--that was our +trouble. We knew she was being overrun with applications for places in +it, and that these applications were backed by great names and weighty +influence, whereas we had nothing of the sort to recommend us. She could +fill her humblest places with titled folk--folk whose relationships would +be a bulwark for her and a valuable support at all times. In these +circumstances would policy allow her to consider us? We were not as +cheerful as the rest of the town, but were inclined to be depressed and +worried. Sometimes we discussed our slim chances and gave them as good an +appearance as we could. But the very mention of the subject was anguish +to the Paladin; for whereas we had some little hope, he had none at all. +As a rule Noel Rainguesson was quite with Hireing to let the dismal +matter alone; but not when the Paladin was present. Once we were talking +the thing over, when Noel said: + +"Cheer up, Paladin, I had a dream last night, and you were the only one +among us that got an appointment. It wasn't a high one, but it was an +appointment, anyway--some kind of a lackey or body-servant, or something +of that kind." + +The Paladin roused up and looked almost cheerful; for he was a believer +in dreams, and in anything and everything of a superstitious sort, in +fact. He said, with a rising hopefulness: + +"I wish it might come true. Do you think it will come true?" + +"Certainly; I might almost say I know it will, for my dreams hardly ever +fail." + +"Noel, I could hug you if that dream could come true, I could, indeed! To +be servant of the first General of France and have all the world hear of +it, and the news go back to the village and make those gawks stare that +always said I wouldn't ever amount to anything--wouldn't it be great! Do +you think it will come true, Noel? Don't you believe it will?" + +"I do. There's my hand on it." + +"Noel, if it comes true I'll never forget you--shake again! I should be +dressed in a noble livery, and the news would go to the village, and +those animals would say, 'Him, lackey to the General-in-Chief, with the +eyes of the whole world on him, admiring--well, he has shot up into the +sky now, hasn't he!" + +He began to walk the floor and pile castles in the air so fast and so +high that we could hardly keep up with him. Then all of a sudden all the +joy went out of his face and misery took its place, and he said: + +"Oh, dear, it is all a mistake, it will never come true. I forgot that +foolish business at Toul. I have kept out of her sight as much as I +could, all these weeks, hoping she would forget that and forgive it --but +I know she never will. She can't, of course. And, after all, I wasn't to +blame. I did say she promised to marry me, but they put me up to it and +persuaded me. I swear they did!" The vast creature was almost crying. +Then he pulled himself together and said, remorsefully, "It was the only +lie I've ever told, and--" + +He was drowned out with a chorus of groans and outraged exclamations; and +before he could begin again, one of D'Aulon's liveried servants appeared +and said we were required at headquarters. We rose, and Noel said: + +"There--what did I tell you? I have a presentiment--the spirit of +prophecy is upon me. She is going to appoint him, and we are to go there +and do him homage. Come along!" + +But the Paladin was afraid to go, so we left him. + +When we presently stood in the presence, in front of a crowd of +glittering officers of the army, Joan greeted us with a winning smile, +and said she appointed all of us to places in her household, for she +wanted her old friends by her. It was a beautiful surprise to have +ourselves honored like this when she could have had people of birth and +consequence instead, but we couldn't find our tongues to say so, she was +become so great and so high above us now. One at a time we stepped +forward and each received his warrant from the hand of our chief, +D'Aulon. All of us had honorable places; the two knights stood highest; +then Joan's two brothers; I was first page and secretary, a young +gentleman named Raimond was second page; Noel was her messenger; she had +two heralds, and also a chaplain and almoner, whose name was Jean +Pasquerel. She had previously appointed a maitre d'hotel and a number of +domestics. Now she looked around and said: + +"But where is the Paladin?" + +The Sieur Bertrand said: + +"He thought he was not sent for, your Excellency." + +"Now that is not well. Let him be called." + +The Paladin entered humbly enough. He ventured no farther than just +within the door. He stopped there, looking embarrassed and afraid. Then +Joan spoke pleasantly, and said: + +"I watched you on the road. You began badly, but improved. Of old you +were a fantastic talker, but there is a man in you, and I will bring it +out." It was fine to see the Paladin's face light up when she said that. +"Will you follow where I lead?" + +"Into the fire!" he said; and I said to myself, "By the ring of that, I +think she has turned this braggart into a hero. It is another of her +miracles, I make no doubt of it." + +"I believe you," said Joan. "Here--take my banner. You will ride with me +in every field, and when France is saved, you will give it me back." + +He took the banner, which is now the most precious of the memorials that +remain of Joan of Arc, and his voice was unsteady with emotion when he +said: + +"If I ever disgrace this trust, my comrades here will know how to do a +friend's office upon my body, and this charge I lay upon them, as knowing +they will not fail me." + + + + Chapter 11 The War March Is Begun + +NO L and I went back together--silent at first, and impressed. + +Finally Noel came up out of his thinkings and said: + +"The first shall be last and the last first--there's authority for this +surprise. But at the same time wasn't it a lofty hoist for our big bull!" + +"It truly was; I am not over being stunned yet. It was the greatest place +in her gift." + +"Yes, it was. There are many generals, and she can create more; but there +is only one Standard-Bearer." + +"True. It is the most conspicuous place in the army, after her own." + +"And the most coveted and honorable. Sons of two dukes tried to get it, +as we know. And of all people in the world, this majestic windmill +carries it off. Well, isn't it a gigantic promotion, when you come to +look at it!" + +"There's no doubt about it. It's a kind of copy of Joan's own in +miniature." + +"I don't know how to account for it--do you?" + +"Yes--without any trouble at all--that is, I think I do." + +Noel was surprised at that, and glanced up quickly, as if to see if I was +in earnest. He said: + +"I thought you couldn't be in earnest, but I see you are. If you can make +me understand this puzzle, do it. Tell me what the explanation is." + +"I believe I can. You have noticed that our chief knight says a good many +wise things and has a thoughtful head on his shoulders. One day, riding +along, we were talking about Joan's great talents, and he said, 'But, +greatest of all her gifts, she has the seeing eye.' I said, like an +unthinking fool, 'The seeing eye?--I shouldn't count on that for much--I +suppose we all have it.' 'No,' he said; 'very few have it.' Then he +explained, and made his meaning clear. He said the common eye sees only +the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces +through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which +the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye +couldn't detect. He said the mightiest military genius must fail and come +to nothing if it have not the seeing eye--that is to say, if it cannot +read men and select its subordinates with an infallible judgment. It sees +as by intuition that this man is good for strategy, that one for dash and +daredevil assault, the other for patient bulldog persistence, and it +appoints each to his right place and wins, while the commander without +the seeing eye would give to each the other's place and lose. He was +right about Joan, and I saw it. When she was a child and the tramp came +one night, her father and all of us took him for a rascal, but she saw +the honest man through the rags. When I dined with the governor of +Vaucouleurs so long ago, I saw nothing in our two knights, though I sat +with them and talked with them two hours; Joan was there five minutes, +and neither spoke with them nor heard them speak, yet she marked them for +men of worth and fidelity, and they have confirmed her judgment. Whom has +she sent for to take charge of this thundering rabble of new recruits at +Blois, made up of old disbanded Armagnac raiders, unspeakable hellions, +every one? Why, she has sent for Satan himself--that is to say, La +Hire--that military hurricane, that godless swashbuckler, that lurid +conflagration of blasphemy, that Vesuvius of profanity, forever in +eruption. Does he know how to deal with that mob of roaring devils? +Better than any man that lives; for he is the head devil of this world +his own self, he is the match of the whole of them combined, and probably +the father of most of them. She places him in temporary command until she +can get to Blois herself--and then! Why, then she will certainly take +them in hand personally, or I don't know her as well as I ought to, after +all these years of intimacy. That will be a sight to see--that fair +spirit in her white armor, delivering her will to that muck-heap, that +rag-pile, that abandoned refuse of perdition." + +"La Hire!" cried Noel, "our hero of all these years--I do want to see +that man!" + +"I too. His name stirs me just as it did when I was a little boy." + +"I want to hear him swear." + +"Of course, I would rather hear him swear than another man pray. He is +the frankest man there is, and the naivest. Once when he was rebuked for +pillaging on his raids, he said it was nothing. Said he, 'If God the +Father were a soldier, He would rob.' I judge he is the right man to take +temporary charge there at Blois. Joan has cast the seeing eye upon him, +you see." + +"Which brings us back to where we started. I have an honest affection for +the Paladin, and not merely because he is a good fellow, but because he +is my child--I made him what he is, the windiest blusterer and most +catholic liar in the kingdom. I'm glad of his luck, but I hadn't the +seeing eye. I shouldn't have chosen him for the most dangerous post in +the army. I should have placed him in the rear to kill the wounded and +violate the dead." + +"Well, we shall see. Joan probably knows what is in him better than we +do. And I'll give you another idea. When a person in Joan of Arc's +position tells a man he is brave, he believes it; and believing it is +enough; in fact, to believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one +only essential thing." + +"Now you've hit it!" cried Noel. "She's got the creating mouth as well as +the seeing eye! Ah, yes, that is the thing. France was cowed and a +coward; Joan of Arc has spoken, and France is marching, with her head +up!" + +I was summoned now to write a letter from Joan's dictation. During the +next day and night our several uniforms were made by the tailors, and our +new armor provided. We were beautiful to look upon now, whether clothed +for peace or war. Clothed for peace, in costly stuffs and rich colors, +the Paladin was a tower dyed with the glories of the sunset; plumed and +sashed and iron-clad for war, he was a still statelier thing to look at. + +Orders had been issued for the march toward Blois. It was a clear, sharp, +beautiful morning. As our showy great company trotted out in column, +riding two and two, Joan and the Duke of Alencon in the lead, D'Aulon and +the big standard-bearer next, and so on, we made a handsome spectacle, as +you may well imagine; and as we plowed through the cheering crowds, with +Joan bowing her plumed head to left and right and the sun glinting from +her silver mail, the spectators realized that the curtain was rolling up +before their eyes upon the first act of a prodigious drama, and their +rising hopes were expressed in an enthusiasm that increased with each +moment, until at last one seemed to even physically feel the concussion +of the huzzas as well as hear them. Far down the street we heard the +softened strains of wind-blown music, and saw a cloud of lancers moving, +the sun glowing with a subdued light upon the massed armor, but striking +bright upon the soaring lance-heads--a vaguely luminous nebula, so to +speak, with a constellation twinkling above it--and that was our guard of +honor. It joined us, the procession was complete, the first war-march of +Joan of Arc was begun, the curtain was up. + + + + Chapter 12 Joan Puts Heart in Her Army + +WE WERE at Blois three days. Oh, that camp, it is one of the treasures of +my memory! Order? There was no more order among those brigands than there +is among the wolves and the hyenas. They went roaring and drinking about, +whooping, shouting, swearing, and entertaining themselves with all manner +of rude and riotous horse-play; and the place was full of loud and lewd +women, and they were no whit behind the men for romps and noise and +fantastics. + +It was in the midst of this wild mob that Noel and I had our first +glimpse of La Hire. He answered to our dearest dreams. He was of great +size and of martial bearing, he was cased in mail from head to heel, with +a bushel of swishing plumes on his helmet, and at his side the vast sword +of the time. + +He was on his way to pay his respects in state to Joan, and as he passed +through the camp he was restoring order, and proclaiming that the Maid +had come, and he would have no such spectacle as this exposed to the head +of the army. His way of creating order was his own, not borrowed. He did +it with his great fists. As he moved along swearing and admonishing, he +let drive this way, that way, and the other, and wherever his blow +landed, a man went down. + +"Damn you!" he said, "staggering and cursing around like this, and the +Commander-in-Chief in the camp! Straighten up!" and he laid the man flat. +What his idea of straightening up was, was his own secret. + +We followed the veteran to headquarters, listening, observing, +admiring--yes, devouring, you may say, the pet hero of the boys of France +from our cradles up to that happy day, and their idol and ours. I called +to mind how Joan had once rebuked the Paladin, there in the pastures of +Domremy, for uttering lightly those mighty names, La Hire and the Bastard +of Orleans, and how she said that if she could but be permitted to stand +afar off and let her eyes rest once upon those great men, she would hold +it a privilege. They were to her and the other girls just what they were +to the boys. Well, here was one of them at last--and what was his errand? +It was hard to realize it, and yet it was true; he was coming to uncover +his head before her and take her orders. + +While he was quieting a considerable group of his brigands in his +soothing way, near headquarters, we stepped on ahead and got a glimpse of +Joan's military family, the great chiefs of the army, for they had all +arrived now. There they were, six officers of wide renown, handsome men +in beautiful armor, but the Lord High Admiral of France was the +handsomest of them all and had the most gallant bearing. + +When La Hire entered, one could see the surprise in his face at Joan's +beauty and extreme youth, and one could see, too, by Joan's glad smile, +that it made her happy to get sight of this hero of her childhood at +last. La Hire bowed low, with his helmet in his gauntleted hand, and made +a bluff but handsome little speech with hardly an oath in it, and one +could see that those two took to each other on the spot. + +The visit of ceremony was soon over, and the others went away; but La +Hire stayed, and he and Joan sat there, and he sipped her wine, and they +talked and laughed together like old friends. And presently she gave him +some instructions, in his quality as master of the camp, which made his +breath stand still. For, to begin with, she said that all those loose +women must pack out of the place at once, she wouldn't allow one of them +to remain. Next, the rough carousing must stop, drinking must be brought +within proper and strictly defined limits, and discipline must take the +place of disorder. And finally she climaxed the list of surprises with +this--which nearly lifted him out of his armor: + +"Every man who joins my standard must confess before the priest and +absolve himself from sin; and all accepted recruits must be present at +divine service twice a day." + +La Hire could not say a word for a good part of a minute, then he said, +in deep dejection: + +"Oh, sweet child, they were littered in hell, these poor darlings of +mine! Attend mass? Why, dear heart, they'll see us both damned first!" + +And he went on, pouring out a most pathetic stream of arguments and +blasphemy, which broke Joan all up, and made her laugh as she had not +laughed since she played in the Domremy pastures. It was good to hear. + +But she stuck to her point; so the soldier yielded, and said all right, +if such were the orders he must obey, and would do the best that was in +him; then he refreshed himself with a lurid explosion of oaths, and said +that if any man in the camp refused to renounce sin and lead a pious +life, he would knock his head off. That started Joan off again; she was +really having a good time, you see. But she would not consent to that +form of conversions. She said they must be voluntary. + +La Hire said that that was all right, he wasn't going to kill the +voluntary ones, but only the others. + +No matter, none of them must be killed--Joan couldn't have it. She said +that to give a man a chance to volunteer, on pain of death if he didn't, +left him more or less trammeled, and she wanted him to be entirely free. + +So the soldier sighed and said he would advertise the mass, but said he +doubted if there was a man in camp that was any more likely to go to it +than he was himself. Then there was another surprise for him, for Joan +said: + +"But, dear man, you are going!" + +"I? Impossible! Oh, this is lunacy!" + +"Oh, no, it isn't. You are going to the service--twice a day." + +"Oh, am I dreaming? Am I drunk--or is my hearing playing me false? Why, I +would rather go to--" + +"Never mind where. In the morning you are going to begin, and after that +it will come easy. Now don't look downhearted like that. Soon you won't +mind it." + +La Hire tried to cheer up, but he was not able to do it. He sighed like a +zephyr, and presently said: + +"Well, I'll do it for you, but before I would do it for another, I swear +I--" + +"But don't swear. Break it off." + +"Break it off? It is impossible! I beg you to--to-- Why--oh, my General, +it is my native speech!" + +He begged so hard for grace for his impediment, that Joan left him one +fragment of it; she said he might swear by his bfton, the symbol of his +generalship. + +He promised that he would swear only by his bfton when in her presence, +and would try to modify himself elsewhere, but doubted he could manage +it, now that it was so old and stubborn a habit, and such a solace and +support to his declining years. + +That tough old lion went away from there a good deal tamed and +civilized--not to say softened and sweetened, for perhaps those +expressions would hardly fit him. Noel and I believed that when he was +away from Joan's influence his old aversions would come up so strong in +him that he could not master them, and so wouldn't go to mass. But we got +up early in the morning to see. + +Satan was converted, you see. Well, the rest followed. Joan rode up and +down that camp, and wherever that fair young form appeared in its shining +armor, with that sweet face to grace the vision and perfect it, the rude +host seemed to think they saw the god of war in person, descended out of +the clouds; and first they wondered, then they worshiped. After that, she +could do with them what she would. + +In three days it was a clean camp and orderly, and those barbarians were +herding to divine service twice a day like good children. The women were +gone. La Hire was stunned by these marvels; he could not understand them. +He went outside the camp when he wanted to swear. He was that sort of a +man--sinful by nature and habit, but full of superstitious respect for +holy places. + +The enthusiasm of the reformed army for Joan, its devotion to her, and +the hot desire had aroused in it to be led against the enemy, exceeded +any manifestations of this sort which La Hire had ever seen before in his +long career. His admiration of it all, and his wonder over the mystery +and miracle of it, were beyond his power to put into words. He had held +this army cheap before, but his pride and confidence in it knew no limits +now. He said: + +"Two or three days ago it was afraid of a hen-roost; one could storm the +gates of hell with it now." + +Joan and he were inseparable, and a quaint and pleasant contrast they +made. He was so big, she so little; he was so gray and so far along in +his pilgrimage of life, she so youthful; his face was so bronzed and +scarred, hers so fair and pink, so fresh and smooth; she was so gracious, +and he so stern; she was so pure, so innocent, he such a cyclopedia of +sin. In her eye was stored all charity and compassion, in his lightnings; +when her glance fell upon you it seemed to bring benediction and the +peace of God, but with his it was different, generally. + +They rode through the camp a dozen times a day, visiting every corner of +it, observing, inspecting, perfecting; and wherever they appeared the +enthusiasm broke forth. They rode side by side, he a great figure of +brawn and muscle, she a little masterwork of roundness and grace; he a +fortress of rusty iron, she a shining statuette of silver; and when the +reformed raiders and bandits caught sight of them they spoke out, with +affection and welcome in their voices, and said: + +"There they come--Satan and the Page of Christ!" + +All the three days that we were in Blois, Joan worked earnestly and +tirelessly to bring La Hire to God--to rescue him from the bondage of +sin--to breathe into his stormy hear the serenity and peace of religion. +She urged, she begged, she implored him to pray. He stood out, three days +of our stay, begging about piteously to be let off--to be let off from +just that one thing, that impossible thing; he would do anything +else--anything--command, and he would obey--he would go through the fire +for her if she said the word--but spare him this, only this, for he +couldn't pray, had never prayed, he was ignorant of how to frame a +prayer, he had no words to put it in. + +And yet--can any believe it?--she carried even that point, she won that +incredible victory. She made La Hire pray. It shows, I think, that +nothing was impossible to Joan of Arc. Yes, he stood there before her and +put up his mailed hands and made a prayer. And it was not borrowed, but +was his very own; he had none to help him frame it, he made it out of his +own head--saying: + +"Fair Sir God, I pray you to do by La Hire as he would do by you if you +were La Hire and he were God." [1] + +Then he put on his helmet and marched out of Joan's tent as satisfied +with himself as any one might be who had arranged a perplexed and +difficult business to the content and admiration of all the parties +concerned in the matter. + +If I had know that he had been praying, I could have understood why he +was feeling so superior, but of course I could not know that. + +I was coming to the tent at that moment, and saw him come out, and saw +him march away in that large fashion, and indeed it was fine and +beautiful to see. But when I got to the tent door I stopped and stepped +back, grieved and shocked, for I heard Joan crying, as I mistakenly +thought--crying as if she could not contain nor endure the anguish of her +soul, crying as if she would die. But it was not so, she was +laughing--laughing at La Hire's prayer. + +It was not until six-and-thirty years afterward that I found that out, +and then--oh, then I only cried when that picture of young care-free +mirth rose before me out of the blur and mists of that long-vanished +time; for there had come a day between, when God's good gift of laughter +had gone out from me to come again no more in this life. + +[1] This prayer has been stolen many times and by many nations in the +past four hundred and sixty years, but it originated with La Hire, and +the fact is of official record in the National Archives of France. We +have the authority of Michelet for this. --TRANSLATOR + + + + Chapter 13 Checked by the Folly of the Wise + +WE MARCHED out in great strength and splendor, and took the road toward +Orleans. The initial part of Joan's great dream was realizing itself at +last. It was the first time that any of us youngsters had ever seen an +army, and it was a most stately and imposing spectacle to us. It was +indeed an inspiring sight, that interminable column, stretching away into +the fading distances, and curving itself in and out of the crookedness of +the road like a mighty serpent. Joan rode at the head of it with her +personal staff; then came a body of priests singing the Veni Creator, the +banner of the Cross rising out of their midst; after these the glinting +forest of spears. The several divisions were commanded by the great +Armagnac generals, La Hire, and Marshal de Boussac, the Sire de Retz, +Florent d'Illiers, and Poton de Saintrailles. + +Each in his degree was tough, and there were three degrees--tough, +tougher, toughest--and La Hire was the last by a shade, but only a shade. +They were just illustrious official brigands, the whole party; and by +long habits of lawlessness they had lost all acquaintanceship with +obedience, if they had ever had any. + +But what was the good of saying that? These independent birds knew no +law. They seldom obeyed the King; they never obeyed him when it didn't +suit them to do it. Would they obey the Maid? In the first place they +wouldn't know how to obey her or anybody else, and in the second place it +was of course not possible for them to take her military character +seriously--that country-girl of seventeen who had been trained for the +complex and terrible business of war--how? By tending sheep. + +They had no idea of obeying her except in cases where their veteran +military knowledge and experience showed them that the thing she required +was sound and right when gauged by the regular military standards. Were +they to blame for this attitude? I should think not. Old war-worn +captains are hard-headed, practical men. They do not easily believe in +the ability of ignorant children to plan campaigns and command armies. No +general that ever lived could have taken Joan seriously (militarily) +before she raised the siege of Orleans and followed it with the great +campaign of the Loire. + +Did they consider Joan valueless? Far from it. They valued her as the +fruitful earth values the sun--they fully believed she could produce the +crop, but that it was in their line of business, not hers, to take it +off. They had a deep and superstitious reverence for her as being endowed +with a mysterious supernatural something that was able to do a mighty +thing which they were powerless to do--blow the breath of life and valor +into the dead corpses of cowed armies and turn them into heroes. + +To their minds they were everything with her, but nothing without her. +She could inspire the soldiers and fit them for battle--but fight the +battle herself? Oh, nonsense--that was their function. They, the +generals, would fight the battles, Joan would give the victory. That was +their idea--an unconscious paraphrase of Joan's reply to the Dominican. + +So they began by playing a deception upon her. She had a clear idea of +how she meant to proceed. It was her purpose to march boldly upon Orleans +by the north bank of the Loire. She gave that order to her generals. They +said to themselves, "The idea is insane--it is blunder No. 1; it is what +might have been expected of this child who is ignorant of war." They +privately sent the word to the Bastard of Orleans. He also recognized the +insanity of it--at least he though he did--and privately advised the +generals to get around the order in some way. + +They did it by deceiving Joan. She trusted those people, she was not +expecting this sort of treatment, and was not on the lookout for it. It +was a lesson to her; she saw to it that the game was not played a second +time. + +Why was Joan's idea insane, from the generals' point of view, but not +from hers? Because her plan was to raise the siege immediately, by +fighting, while theirs was to besiege the besiegers and starve them out +by closing their communications--a plan which would require months in the +consummation. + +The English had built a fence of strong fortresses called bastilles +around Orleans--fortresses which closed all the gates of the city but +one. To the French generals the idea of trying to fight their way past +those fortresses and lead the army into Orleans was preposterous; they +believed that the result would be the army's destruction. One may not +doubt that their opinion was militarily sound--no, would have been, but +for one circumstance which they overlooked. That was this: the English +soldiers were in a demoralized condition of superstitious terror; they +had become satisfied that the Maid was in league with Satan. By reason of +this a good deal of their courage had oozed out and vanished. On the +other hand, the Maid'' soldiers were full of courage, enthusiasm, and +zeal. + +Joan could have marched by the English forts. However, it was not to be. +She had been cheated out of her first chance to strike a heavy blow for +her country. + +In camp that night she slept in her armor on the ground. It was a cold +night, and she was nearly as stiff as her armor itself when we resumed +the march in the morning, for iron is not good material for a blanket. +However, her joy in being now so far on her way to the theater of her +mission was fire enough to warm her, and it soon did it. + +Her enthusiasm and impatience rose higher and higher with every mile of +progress; but at last we reached Olivet, and down it went, and +indignation took its place. For she saw the trick that had been played +upon her--the river lay between us and Orleans. + +She was for attacking one of the three bastilles that were on our side of +the river and forcing access to the bridge which it guarded (a project +which, if successful, would raise the siege instantly), but the +long-ingrained fear of the English came upon her generals and they +implored her not to make the attempt. The soldiers wanted to attack, but +had to suffer disappointment. So we moved on and came to a halt at a +point opposite Checy, six miles above Orleans. + +Dunois, Bastard of Orleans, with a body of knights and citizens, came up +from the city to welcome Joan. Joan was still burning with resentment +over the trick that had been put upon her, and was not in the mood for +soft speeches, even to reversed military idols of her childhood. She +said: + +"Are you the bastard?" + +"Yes, I am he, and am right glad of your coming." + +"And did you advise that I be brought by this side of the river instead +of straight to Talbot and the English?" + +Her high manner abashed him, and he was not able to answer with anything +like a confident promptness, but with many hesitations and partial +excuses he managed to get out the confession that for what he and the +council had regarded as imperative military reasons they so advised. + +"In God's name," said Joan, "my Lord's counsel is safer and wiser than +yours. You thought to deceive me, but you have deceived yourselves, for I +bring you the best help that ever knight or city had; for it is God's +help, not sent for love of me, but by God's pleasure. At the prayer of +St. Louis and St. Charlemagne He has had pity on Orleans, and will not +suffer the enemy to have both the Duke of Orleans and his city. The +provisions to save the starving people are here, the boats are below the +city, the wind is contrary, they cannot come up hither. Now then, tell +me, in God's name, you who are so wise, what that council of yours was +thinking about, to invent this foolish difficulty." + +Dunois and the rest fumbled around the matter a moment, then gave in and +conceded that a blunder had been made. + +"Yes, a blunder has been made," said Joan, "and except God take your +proper work upon Himself and change the wind and correct your blunder for +you, there is none else that can devise a remedy." + +Some of these people began to perceive that with all her technical +ignorance she had practical good sense, and that with all her native +sweetness and charm she was not the right kind of a person to play with. + +Presently God did take the blunder in hand, and by His grace the wind did +change. So the fleet of boats came up and went away loaded with +provisions and cattle, and conveyed that welcome succor to the hungry +city, managing the matter successfully under protection of a sortie from +the walls against the bastille of St. Loup. Then Joan began on the +Bastard again: + +"You see here the army?" + +"Yes." + +"It is here on this side by advice of your council?" + +"Yes." + +"Now, in God's name, can that wise council explain why it is better to +have it here than it would be to have it in the bottom of the sea?" + +Dunois made some wandering attempts to explain the inexplicable and +excuse the inexcusable, but Joan cut him short and said: + +"Answer me this, good sir--has the army any value on this side of the +river?" + +The Bastard confessed that it hadn't--that is, in view of the plan of +campaign which she had devised and decreed. + +"And yet, knowing this, you had the hardihood to disobey my orders. Since +the army's place is on the other side, will you explain to me how it is +to get there?" + +The whole size of the needless muddle was apparent. Evasions were of no +use; therefore Dunois admitted that there was no way to correct the +blunder but to send the army all the way back to Blois, and let it begin +over again and come up on the other side this time, according to Joan's +original plan. + +Any other girl, after winning such a triumph as this over a veteran +soldier of old renown, might have exulted a little and been excusable for +it, but Joan showed no disposition of this sort. She dropped a word or +two of grief over the precious time that must be lost, then began at once +to issue commands for the march back. She sorrowed to see her army go; +for she said its heart was great and its enthusiasm high, and that with +it at her back she did not fear to face all the might of England. + +All arrangements having been completed for the return of the main body of +the army, she took the Bastard and La Hire and a thousand men and went +down to Orleans, where all the town was in a fever of impatience to have +sight of her face. It was eight in the evening when she and the troops +rode in at the Burgundy gate, with the Paladin preceding her with her +standard. She was riding a white horse, and she carried in her hand the +sacred sword of Fierbois. You should have seen Orleans then. What a +picture it was! Such black seas of people, such a starry firmament of +torches, such roaring whirlwinds of welcome, such booming of bells and +thundering of cannon! It was as if the world was come to an end. +Everywhere in the glare of the torches one saw rank upon rank of upturned +white faces, the mouths wide open, shouting, and the unchecked tears +running down; Joan forged her slow way through the solid masses, her +mailed form projecting above the pavement of heads like a silver statue. +The people about her struggled along, gazing up at her through their +tears with the rapt look of men and women who believe they are seeing one +who is divine; and always her feet were being kissed by grateful folk, +and such as failed of that privilege touched her horse and then kissed +their fingers. + +Nothing that Joan did escaped notice; everything she did was commented +upon and applauded. You could hear the remarks going all the time. + +"There--she's smiling--see!" + +"Now she's taking her little plumed cap off to somebody--ah, it's fine +and graceful!" + +"She's patting that woman on the head with her gauntlet." + +"Oh, she was born on a horse--see her turn in her saddle, and kiss the +hilt of her sword to the ladies in the window that threw the flowers +down." + +"Now there's a poor woman lifting up a child--she's kissed it--oh, she's +divine!" + +"What a dainty little figure it is, and what a lovely face--and such +color and animation!" + +Joan's slender long banner streaming backward had an accident--the fringe +caught fire from a torch. She leaned forward and crushed the flame in her +hand. + +"She's not afraid of fire nor anything!" they shouted, and delivered a +storm of admiring applause that made everything quake. + +She rode to the cathedral and gave thanks to God, and the people crammed +the place and added their devotions to hers; then she took up her march +again and picked her slow way through the crowds and the wilderness of +torches to the house of Jacques Boucher, treasurer of the Duke of +Orleans, where she was to be the guest of his wife as long as she stayed +in the city, and have his young daughter for comrade and room-mate. The +delirium of the people went on the rest of the night, and with it the +clamor of the joy-bells and the welcoming cannon. + +Joan of Arc had stepped upon her stage at last, and was ready to begin. + + + + Chapter 14 What the English Answered + +SHE WAS ready, but must sit down and wait until there was an army to work +with. + +Next morning, Saturday, April 30, 1429, she set about inquiring after the +messenger who carried her proclamation to the English from Blois--the one +which she had dictated at Poitiers. Here is a copy of it. It is a +remarkable document, for several reasons: for its matter-of-fact +directness, for its high spirit and forcible diction, and for its naive +confidence in her ability to achieve the prodigious task which she had +laid upon herself, or which had been laid upon her--which you please. All +through it you seem to see the pomps of war and hear the rumbling of the +drums. In it Joan's warrior soul is revealed, and for the moment the soft +little shepherdess has disappeared from your view. This untaught +country-damsel, unused to dictating anything at all to anybody, much less +documents of state to kings and generals, poured out this procession of +vigorous sentences as fluently as if this sort of work had been her trade +from childhood: + +JESUS MARIA King of England and you Duke of Bedford who call yourself +Regent of France; William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk; and you Thomas +Lord Scales, who style yourselves lieutenants of the said Bedford--do +right to the King of Heaven. Render to the Maid who is sent by God the +keys of all the good towns you have taken and violated in France. She is +sent hither by God, to restore the blood royal. She is very ready to make +peace if you will do her right by giving up France and paying for what +you have held. And you archers, companions of war, noble and otherwise, +who are before the good city of Orleans, begone into your own land in +God's name, or expect news from the Maid who will shortly go to see you +to your very great hurt. King of England, if you do not so, I am chief of +war, and whenever I shall find your people in France, I will drive them +out, willing or not willing; and if they do not obey I will slay them +all, but if they obey, I will have them to mercy. I am come hither by +God, the King of Heaven, body for body, to put you our of France, in +spite of those who would work treason and mischief against the kingdom. +Think not you shall ever hold the kingdom from the King of Heaven, the +Son of the Blessed Mary; King Charles shall hold it, for God wills it so, +and has revealed it to him by the Maid. If you believe not the news sent +by God through the Maid, wherever we shall met you we will strike boldly +and make such a noise as has not been in France these thousand years. Be +sure that God can send more strength to the Maid than you can bring to +any assault against her and her good men-at-arms; and then we shall see +who has the better right, the King of Heaven, or you. Duke of Bedford, +the Maid prays you not to bring about your own destruction. If you do her +right, you may yet go in her company where the French shall do the finest +deed that has been done in Christendom, and if you do not, you shall be +reminded shortly of your great wrongs. + +In that closing sentence she invites them to go on crusade with her to +rescue the Holy Sepulcher. No answer had been returned to this +proclamation, and the messenger himself had not come back. + +So now she sent her two heralds with a new letter warning the English to +raise the siege and requiring them to restore that missing messenger. The +heralds came back without him. All they brought was notice from the +English to Joan that they would presently catch her and burn her if she +did not clear out now while she had a chance, and "go back to her proper +trade of minding cows." + +She held her peace, only saying it was a pity that the English would +persist in inviting present disaster and eventual destruction when she +was "doing all she could to get them out of the country with their lives +still in their bodies." + +Presently she thought of an arrangement that might be acceptable, and +said to the heralds, "Go back and say to Lord Talbot this, from me: 'Come +out of your bastilles with your host, and I will come with mine; if I +beat you, go in peace out of France; if you beat me, burn me, according +to your desire.'" + +I did not hear this, but Dunois did, and spoke of it. The challenge was +refused. + +Sunday morning her Voices or some instinct gave her a warning, and she +sent Dunois to Blois to take command of the army and hurry it to Orleans. +It was a wise move, for he found Regnault de Chartres and some more of +the King's pet rascals there trying their best to disperse the army, and +crippling all the efforts of Joan's generals to head it for Orleans. They +were a fine lot, those miscreants. They turned their attention to Dunois +now, but he had balked Joan once, with unpleasant results to himself, and +was not minded to meddle in that way again. He soon had the army moving. + + + + Chapter 15 My Exquisite Poem Goes to Smash + +WE OF the personal staff were in fairyland now, during the few days that +we waited for the return of the army. We went into society. To our two +knights this was not a novelty, but to us young villagers it was a new +and wonderful life. Any position of any sort near the person of the Maid +of Vaucouleurs conferred high distinction upon the holder and caused his +society to be courted; and so the D'Arc brothers, and Noel, and the +Paladin, humble peasants at home, were gentlemen here, personages of +weight and influence. It was fine to see how soon their country +diffidences and awkwardnesses melted away under this pleasant sun of +deference and disappeared, and how lightly and easily they took to their +new atmosphere. The Paladin was as happy as it was possible for any one +in this earth to be. His tongue went all the time, and daily he got new +delight out of hearing himself talk. He began to enlarge his ancestry and +spread it out all around, and ennoble it right and left, and it was not +long until it consisted almost entirely of dukes. He worked up his old +battles and tricked them out with fresh splendors; also with new terrors, +for he added artillery now. We had seen cannon for the first time at +Blois--a few pieces--here there was plenty of it, and now and then we had +the impressive spectacle of a huge English bastille hidden from sight in +a mountain of smoke from its own guns, with lances of red flame darting +through it; and this grand picture, along with the quaking thunders +pounding away in the heart of it, inflamed the Paladin's imagination and +enabled him to dress out those ambuscade-skirmishes of ours with a +sublimity which made it impossible for any to recognize them at all +except people who had not been there. + +You may suspect that there was a special inspiration for these great +efforts of the Paladin's, and there was. It was the daughter of the +house, Catherine Boucher, who was eighteen, and gentle and lovely in her +ways, and very beautiful. I think she might have been as beautiful as +Joan herself, if she had had Joan's eyes. But that could never be. There +was never but that one pair, there will never be another. Joan's eyes +were deep and rich and wonderful beyond anything merely earthly. They +spoke all the languages--they had no need of words. They produced all +effects--and just by a glance, just a single glance; a glance that could +convict a liar of his lie and make him confess it; that could bring down +a proud man's pride and make him humble; that could put courage into a +coward and strike dead the courage of the bravest; that could appease +resentments and real hatreds; that could make the doubter believe and the +hopeless hope again; that could purify the impure mind; that could +persuade--ah, there it is--persuasion! that is the word; what or who is +it that it couldn't persuade? The maniac of Domremy--the fairy-banishing +priest--the reverend tribunal of Toul--the doubting and superstitious +Laxart--the obstinate veteran of Vaucouleurs--the characterless heir of +France--the sages and scholars of the Parliament and University of +Poitiers--the darling of Satan, La Hire--the masterless Bastard of +Orleans, accustomed to acknowledge no way as right and rational but his +own--these were the trophies of that great gift that made her the wonder +and mystery that she was. + +We mingled companionably with the great folk who flocked to the big house +to make Joan's acquaintance, and they made much of us and we lived in the +clouds, so to speak. But what we preferred even to this happiness was the +quieter occasions, when the formal guests were gone and the family and a +few dozen of its familiar friends were gathered together for a social +good time. It was then that we did our best, we five youngsters, with +such fascinations as we had, and the chief object of them was Catherine. +None of us had ever been in love been in love before, and now we had the +misfortune to all fall in love with the same person at the same +time--which was the first moment we saw her. She was a merry heart, and +full of life, and I still remember tenderly those few evenings that I was +permitted to have my share of her dear society and of comradeship with +that little company of charming people. + +The Paladin made us all jealous the first night, for when he got fairly +started on those battles of his he had everything to himself, and there +was no use in anybody else's trying to get any attention. Those people +had been living in the midst of real war for seven months; and to hear +this windy giant lay out his imaginary campaigns and fairly swim in blood +and spatter it all around, entertained them to the verge of the grave. +Catherine was like to die, for pure enjoyment. She didn't laugh loud--we, +of course, wished she would--but kept in the shelter of a fan, and shook +until there was danger that she would unhitch her ribs from her spine. +Then when the Paladin had got done with a battle and we began to feel +thankful and hope for a change, she would speak up in a way that was so +sweet and persuasive that it rankled in me, and ask him about some detail +or other in the early part of his battle which she said had greatly +interested her, and would he be so good as to describe that part again +and with a little more particularity?--which of course precipitated the +whole battle on us, again, with a hundred lies added that had been +overlooked before. + +I do not know how to make you realize the pain I suffered. I had never +been jealous before, and it seemed intolerable that this creature should +have this good fortune which he was so ill entitled to, and I have to sit +and see myself neglected when I was so longing for the least little +attention out of the thousand that this beloved girl was lavishing on +him. I was near her, and tried two or three times to get started on some +of the things that I had done in those battles--and I felt ashamed of +myself, too, for stooping to such a business--but she cared for nothing +but his battles, and could not be got to listen; and presently when one +of my attempts caused her to lose some precious rag or other of his +mendacities and she asked him to repeat, thus bringing on a new +engagement, of course, and increasing the havoc and carnage tenfold, I +felt so humiliated by this pitiful miscarriage of mine that I gave up and +tried no more. + +The others were as outraged by the Paladin's selfish conduct as I +was--and by his grand luck, too, of course--perhaps, indeed, that was the +main hurt. We talked our trouble over together, which was natural, for +rivals become brothers when a common affliction assails them and a common +enemy bears off the victory. + +Each of us could do things that would please and get notice if it were +not for this person, who occupied all the time and gave others no chance. +I had made a poem, taking a whole night to it--a poem in which I most +happily and delicately celebrated that sweet girl's charms, without +mentioning her name, but any one could see who was meant; for the bare +title--"The Rose of Orleans"--would reveal that, as it seemed to me. It +pictured this pure and dainty white rose as growing up out of the rude +soil of war and looking abroad out of its tender eyes upon the horrid +machinery of death, and then--note this conceit--it blushes for the +sinful nature of man, and turns red in a single night. Becomes a red +rose, you see--a rose that was white before. The idea was my own, and +quite new. Then it sent its sweet perfume out over the embattled city, +and when the beleaguering forces smelt it they laid down their arms and +wept. This was also my own idea, and new. That closed that part of the +poem; then I put her into the similitude of the firmament--not the whole +of it, but only part. That is to say, she was the moon, and all the +constellations were following her about, their hearts in flames for love +of her, but she would not halt, she would not listen, for 'twas thought +she loved another. 'Twas thought she loved a poor unworthy suppliant who +was upon the earth, facing danger, death, and possible mutilation in the +bloody field, waging relentless war against a heartless foe to save her +from an all too early grave, and her city from destruction. And when the +sad pursuing constellations came to know and realize the bitter sorrow +that was come upon them --note this idea--their hearts broke and their +tears gushed forth, filling the vault of heaven with a fiery splendor, +for those tears were falling stars. It was a rash idea, but beautiful; +beautiful and pathetic; wonderfully pathetic, the way I had it, with the +rhyme and all to help. At the end of each verse there was a two-line +refrain pitying the poor earthly lover separated so far, and perhaps +forever, from her he loved so well, and growing always paler and weaker +and thinner in his agony as he neared the cruel grave--the most touching +thing--even the boys themselves could hardly keep back their tears, the +way Noel said those lines. There were eight four-line stanzas in the +first end of the poem--the end about the rose, the horticultural end, as +you may say, if that is not too large a name for such a little poem--and +eight in the astronomical end--sixteen stanzas altogether, and I could +have made it a hundred and fifty if I had wanted to, I was so inspired +and so all swelled up with beautiful thoughts and fancies; but that would +have been too many to sing or recite before a company that way, whereas +sixteen was just right, and could be done over again if desired. The boys +were amazed that I could make such a poem as that out of my own head, and +so was I, of course, it being as much a surprise to me as it could be to +anybody, for I did not know that it was in me. If any had asked me a +single day before if it was in me, I should have told them frankly no, it +was not. + +That is the way with us; we may go on half of our life not knowing such a +thing is in us, when in reality it was there all the time, and all we +needed was something to turn up that would call for it. Indeed, it was +always so without family. My grandfather had a cancer, and they never +knew what was the matter with him till he died, and he didn't know +himself. It is wonderful how gifts and diseases can be concealed in that +way. All that was necessary in my case was for this lovely and inspiring +girl to cross my path, and out came the poem, and no more trouble to me +to word it and rhyme it and perfect it than it is to stone a dog. No, I +should have said it was not in me; but it was. + +The boys couldn't say enough about it, they were so charmed and +astonished. The thing that pleased them the most was the way it would do +the Paladin's business for him. They forgot everything in their anxiety +to get him shelved and silenced. Noel Rainguesson was clear beside +himself with admiration of the poem, and wished he could do such a thing, +but it was out of his line, and he couldn't, of course. He had it by +heart in half an hour, and there was never anything so pathetic and +beautiful as the way he recited it. For that was just his gift--that and +mimicry. He could recite anything better than anybody in the world, and +he could take of La Hire to the very life--or anybody else, for that +matter. Now I never could recite worth a farthing; and when I tried with +this poem the boys wouldn't let me finish; they would nave nobody but +Noel. So then, as I wanted the poem to make the best possible impression +on Catherine and the company, I told Noel he might do the reciting. Never +was anybody so delighted. He could hardly believe that I was in earnest, +but I was. I said that to have them know that I was the author of it +would be enough for me. The boys were full of exultation, and Noel said +if he could just get one chance at those people it would be all he would +ask; he would make them realize that there was something higher and finer +than war-lies to be had here. + +But how to get the opportunity--that was the difficulty. We invented +several schemes that promised fairly, and at last we hit upon one that +was sure. That was, to let the Paladin get a good start in a manufactured +battle, and then send in a false call for him, and as soon as he was out +of the room, have Noel take his place and finish the battle himself in +the Paladin's own style, imitated to a shade. That would get great +applause, and win the house's favor and put it in the right mood to hear +the poem. The two triumphs together with finish the +Standard-Bearer--modify him, anyway, to a certainty, and give the rest of +us a chance for the future. + +So the next night I kept out of the way until the Paladin had got his +start and was sweeping down upon the enemy like a whirlwind at the head +of his corps, then I stepped within the door in my official uniform and +announced that a messenger from General La Hire's quarters desired speech +with the Standard-Bearer. He left the room, and Noel took his place and +said that the interruption was to be deplored, but that fortunately he +was personally acquainted with the details of the battle himself, and if +permitted would be glad to state them to the company. Then without +waiting for the permission he turned himself to the Paladin--a dwarfed +Paladin, of course--with manner, tones, gestures, attitudes, everything +exact, and went right on with the battle, and it would be impossible to +imagine a more perfectly and minutely ridiculous imitation than he +furnished to those shrieking people. They went into spasms, convulsions, +frenzies of laughter, and the tears flowed down their cheeks in rivulets. +The more they laughed, the more inspires Noel grew with his theme and the +greater marvels he worked, till really the laughter was not properly +laughing any more, but screaming. Blessedest feature of all, Catherine +Boucher was dying with ecstasies, and presently there was little left of +her but gasps and suffocations. Victory? It was a perfect Agincourt. + +The Paladin was gone only a couple of minutes; he found out at once that +a trick had been played on him, so he came back. When he approached the +door he heard Noel ranting in there and recognized the state of the case; +so he remained near the door but out of sight, and heard the performance +through to the end. The applause Noel got when he finished was wonderful; +and they kept it up and kept it up, clapping their hands like mad, and +shouting to him to do it over again. + +But Noel was clever. He knew the very best background for a poem of deep +and refined sentiment and pathetic melancholy was one where great and +satisfying merriment had prepared the spirit for the powerful contrast. + +So he paused until all was quiet, then his face grew grave and assumed an +impressive aspect, and at once all faces sobered in sympathy and took on +a look of wondering and expectant interest. Now he began in a low but +distinct voice the opening verses of The Rose. As he breathed the +rhythmic measures forth, and one gracious line after another fell upon +those enchanted ears in that deep hush, one could catch, on every hand, +half-audible ejaculations of "How lovely--how beautiful--how exquisite!" + +By this time the Paladin, who had gone away for a moment with the opening +of the poem, was back again, and had stepped within the door. He stood +there now, resting his great frame against the wall and gazing toward the +reciter like one entranced. When Noel got to the second part, and that +heart-breaking refrain began to melt and move all listeners, the Paladin +began to wipe away tears with the back of first one hand and then the +other. The next time the refrain was repeated he got to snuffling, and +sort of half sobbing, and went to wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his +doublet. He was so conspicuous that he embarrassed Noel a little, and +also had an ill effect upon the audience. With the next repetition he +broke quite down and began to cry like a calf, which ruined all the +effect and started many to the audience to laughing. Then he went on from +bad to worse, until I never saw such a spectacle; for he fetched out a +towel from under his doublet and began to swab his eyes with it and let +go the most infernal bellowings mixed up with sobbings and groanings and +retchings and barkings and coughings and snortings and screamings and +howlings --and he twisted himself about on his heels and squirmed this +way and that, still pouring out that brutal clamor and flourishing his +towel in the air and swabbing again and wringing it out. Hear? You +couldn't hear yourself think. Noel was wholly drowned out and silenced, +and those people were laughing the very lungs out of themselves. It was +the most degrading sight that ever was. Now I heard the clankety-clank +that plate-armor makes when the man that is in it is running, and then +alongside my head there burst out the most inhuman explosion of laughter +that ever rent the drum of a person's ear, and I looked, and it was La +Hire; and the stood there with his gauntlets on his hips and his head +tilted back and his jaws spread to that degree to let out his hurricanes +and his thunders that it amounted to indecent exposure, for you could see +everything that was in him. Only one thing more and worse could happen, +and it happened: at the other door I saw the flurry and bustle and +bowings and scrapings of officials and flunkeys which means that some +great personage is coming--then Joan of Arc stepped in, and the house +rose! Yes, and tried to shut its indecorous mouth and make itself grave +and proper; but when it saw the Maid herself go to laughing, it thanked +God for this mercy and the earthquake that followed. + +Such things make a life of bitterness, and I do not wish to dwell upon +them. The effect of the poem was spoiled. + + + + Chapter 16 The Finding of the Dwarf + +THIS EPISODE disagreed with me and I was not able to leave my bed the +next day. The others were in the same condition. But for this, one or +another of us might have had the good luck that fell to the Paladin's +share that day; but it is observable that God in His compassion sends the +good luck to such as are ill equipped with gifts, as compensation for +their defect, but requires such as are more fortunately endowed to get by +labor and talent what those others get by chance. It was Noel who said +this, and it seemed to me to be well and justly thought. + +The Paladin, going about the town all the day in order to be followed and +admired and overhear the people say in an awed voice, "'Ssh! --look, it +is the Standard-Bearer of Joan of Arc!" had speech with all sorts and +conditions of folk, and he learned from some boatmen that there was a +stir of some kind going on in the bastilles on the other side of the +river; and in the evening, seeking further, he found a deserter from the +fortress called the "Augustins," who said that the English were going to +send me over to strengthen the garrisons on our side during the darkness +of the night, and were exulting greatly, for they meant to spring upon +Dunois and the army when it was passing the bastilles and destroy it; a +thing quite easy to do, since the "Witch" would not be there, and without +her presence the army would do like the French armies of these many years +past--drop their weapons and run when they saw an English face. + +It was ten at night when the Paladin brought this news and asked leave to +speak to Joan, and I was up and on duty then. It was a bitter stroke to +me to see what a chance I had lost. Joan made searching inquiries, and +satisfied herself that the word was true, then she made this annoying +remark: + +"You have done well, and you have my thanks. It may be that you have +prevented a disaster. Your name and service shall receive official +mention." + +Then he bowed low, and when he rose he was eleven feet high. As he +swelled out past me he covertly pulled down the corner of his eye with +his finger and muttered part of that defiled refrain, "Oh, tears, ah, +tears, oh, sad sweet tears!--name in General Orders--personal mention to +the King, you see!" + +I wished Joan could have seen his conduct, but she was busy thinking what +she would do. Then she had me fetch the knight Jean de Metz, and in a +minute he was off for La Hire's quarters with orders for him and the Lord +de Villars and Florent d'Illiers to report to her at five o'clock next +morning with five hundred picked men well mounted. The histories say half +past four, but it is not true, I heard the order given. + +We were on our way at five to the minute, and encountered the head of the +arriving column between six and seven, a couple of leagues from the city. +Dunois was pleased, for the army had begun to get restive and show +uneasiness now that it was getting so near to the dreaded bastilles. But +that all disappeared now, as the word ran down the line, with a huzza +that swept along the length of it like a wave, that the Maid was come. +Dunois asked her to halt and let the column pass in review, so that the +men could be sure that the reports of her presence was not a ruse to +revive their courage. So she took position at the side of the road with +her staff, and the battalions swung by with a martial stride, huzzaing. +Joan was armed, except her head. She was wearing the cunning little +velvet cap with the mass of curved white ostrich plumes tumbling over its +edges which the city of Orleans had given her the night she arrived--the +one that is in the picture that hangs in the H"tel de Ville at Rouen. She +was looking about fifteen. The sight of soldiers always set her blood to +leaping, and lit the fires in her eyes and brought the warm rich color to +her cheeks; it was then that you saw that she was too beautiful to be of +the earth, or at any rate that there was a subtle something somewhere +about her beauty that differed it from the human types of your experience +and exalted it above them. + +In the train of wains laden with supplies a man lay on top of the goods. +He was stretched out on his back, and his hands were tied together with +ropes, and also his ankles. Joan signed to the officer in charge of that +division of the train to come to her, and he rode up and saluted. + +"What is he that is bound there?" she asked. + +"A prisoner, General." + +"What is his offense?" + +"He is a deserter." + +"What is to be done with him?" + +"He will be hanged, but it was not convenient on the march, and there was +no hurry." + +"Tell me about him." + +"He is a good soldier, but he asked leave to go and see his wife who was +dying, he said, but it could not be granted; so he went without leave. +Meanwhile the march began, and he only overtook us yesterday evening." + +"Overtook you? Did he come of his own will?" + +"Yes, it was of his own will." + +"He a deserter! Name of God! Bring him to me." + +The officer rode forward and loosed the man's feet and brought him back +with his hands still tied. What a figure he was--a good seven feet high, +and built for business! He had a strong face; he had an unkempt shock of +black hair which showed up a striking way when the officer removed his +morion for him; for weapon he had a big ax in his broad leathern belt. +Standing by Joan's horse, he made Joan look littler than ever, for his +head was about on a level with her own. His face was profoundly +melancholy; all interest in life seemed to be dead in the man. Joan said: + +"Hold up your hands." + +The man's head was down. He lifted it when he heard that soft friendly +voice, and there was a wistful something in his face which made one think +that there had been music in it for him and that he would like to hear it +again. When he raised his hands Joan laid her sword to his bonds, but the +officer said with apprehension: + +"Ah, madam--my General!" + +"What is it?" she said. + +"He is under sentence!" + +"Yes, I know. I am responsible for him"; and she cut the bonds. They had +lacerated his wrists, and they were bleeding. "Ah, pitiful!" she said; +"blood--I do not like it"; and she shrank from the sight. But only for a +moment. "Give me something, somebody, to bandage his wrists with." + +The officer said: + +"Ah, my General! it is not fitting. Let me bring another to do it." + +"Another? De par le Dieu! You would seek far to find one that can do it +better than I, for I learned it long ago among both men and beasts. And I +can tie better than those that did this; if I had tied him the ropes had +not cut his flesh." + +The man looked on silent, while he was being bandaged, stealing a furtive +glance at Joan's face occasionally, such as an animal might that is +receiving a kindness form an unexpected quarter and is gropingly trying +to reconcile the act with its source. All the staff had forgotten the +huzzaing army drifting by in its rolling clouds of dust, to crane their +necks and watch the bandaging as if it was the most interesting and +absorbing novelty that ever was. I have often seen people do like +that--get entirely lost in the simplest trifle, when it is something that +is out of their line. Now there in Poitiers, once, I saw two bishops and +a dozen of those grave and famous scholars grouped together watching a +man paint a sign on a shop; they didn't breathe, they were as good as +dead; and when it began to sprinkle they didn't know it at first; then +they noticed it, and each man hove a deep sigh, and glanced up with a +surprised look as wondering to see the others there, and how he came to +be there himself--but that is the way with people, as I have said. There +is no way of accounting for people. You have to take them as they are. + +"There," said Joan at last, pleased with her success; "another could have +done it no better--not as well, I think. Tell me--what is it you did? +Tell me all." + +The giant said: + +"It was this way, my angel. My mother died, then my three little +children, one after the other, all in two years. It was the famine; +others fared so--it was God's will. I saw them die; I had that grace; and +I buried them. Then when my poor wife's fate was come, I begged for leave +to go to her--she who was so dear to me--she who was all I had; I begged +on my knees. But they would not let me. Could I let her die, friendless +and alone? Could I let her die believing I would not come? Would she let +me die and she not come--with her feet free to do it if she would, and no +cost upon it but only her life? Ah, she would come--she would come +through the fire! So I went. I saw her. She died in my arms. I buried +her. Then the army was gone. I had trouble to overtake it, but my legs +are long and there are many hours in a day; I overtook it last night." + +Joan said, musingly, as if she were thinking aloud: + +"It sounds true. If true, it were no great harm to suspend the law this +one time--any would say that. It may not be true, but if it is true--" +She turned suddenly to the man and said, "I would see your eyes--look +up!" The eyes of the two met, and Joan said to the officer, "This man is +pardoned. Give you good day; you may go." Then she said to the man, "Did +you know it was death to come back to the army?" + +"Yes," he said, "I knew it." + +"Then why did you do it?" + +The man said, quite simply: + +"Because it was death. She was all I had. There was nothing left to +love." + +"Ah, yes, there was--France! The children of France have always their +mother--they cannot be left with nothing to love. You shall live--and you +shall serve France--" + +"I will serve you!" + +--"you shall fight for France--" + +"I will fight for you!" + +"You shall be France's soldier--" + +"I will be your soldier!" + +--"you shall give all your heart to France--" + +"I will give all my heart to you--and all my soul, if I have one--and all +my strength, which is great--for I was dead and am alive again; I had +nothing to live for, but now I have! You are France for me. You are my +France, and I will have no other." + +Joan smiled, and was touched and pleased at the man's grave +enthusiasm--solemn enthusiasm, one may call it, for the manner of it was +deeper than mere gravity--and she said: + +"Well, it shall be as you will. What are you called?" + +The man answered with unsmiling simplicity: + +"They call me the Dwarf, but I think it is more in jest than otherwise." + +It made Joan laugh, and she said: + +"It has something of that look truly! What is the office of that vast +ax?" + +The soldier replied with the same gravity--which must have been born to +him, it sat upon him so naturally: + +"It is to persuade persons to respect France." + +Joan laughed again, and said: + +"Have you given many lessons?" + +"Ah, indeed, yes--many." + +"The pupils behaved to suit you, afterward?" + +"Yes; it made them quiet--quite pleasant and quiet." + +"I should think it would happen so. Would you like to be my +man-at-arms?--orderly, sentinel, or something like that?" + +"If I may!" + +"Then you shall. You shall have proper armor, and shall go on teaching +your art. Take one of those led horses there, and follow the staff when +we move." + +That is how we came by the Dwarf; and a good fellow he was. Joan picked +him out on sight, but it wasn't a mistake; no one could be faithfuler +than he was, and he was a devil and the son of a devil when he turned +himself loose with his ax. He was so big that he made the Paladin look +like an ordinary man. He liked to like people, therefore people liked +him. He liked us boys from the start; and he liked the knights, and liked +pretty much everybody he came across; but he thought more of a paring of +Joan's finger-nail than he did of all the rest of the world put together. + +Yes, that is where we got him--stretched on the wain, going to his death, +poor chap, and nobody to say a good word for him. He was a good find. +Why, the knights treated him almost like an equal--it is the honest +truth; that is the sort of a man he was. They called him the Bastille +sometimes, and sometimes they called him Hellfire, which was on account +of his warm and sumptuous style in battle, and you know they wouldn't +have given him pet names if they hadn't had a good deal of affection for +him. + +To the Dwarf, Joan was France, the spirit of France made flesh--he never +got away from that idea that he had started with; and God knows it was +the true one. That was a humble eye to see so great a truth where some +others failed. To me that seems quite remarkable. And yet, after all, it +was, in a way, just what nations do. When they love a great and noble +thing, they embody it--they want it so that they can see it with their +eyes; like liberty, for instance. They are not content with the cloudy +abstract idea, they make a beautiful statue of it, and then their beloved +idea is substantial and they can look at it and worship it. And so it is +as I say; to the Dwarf, Joan was our country embodied, our country made +visible flesh cast in a gracious form. When she stood before others, they +saw Joan of Arc, but he saw France. + +Sometimes he would speak of her by that name. It shows you how the idea +was embedded in his mind, and how real it was to him. The world has +called our kings by it, but I know of none of them who has had so good a +right as she to that sublime title. + +When the march past was finished, Joan returned to the front and rode at +the head of the column. When we began to file past those grim bastilles +and could glimpse the men within, standing to their guns and ready to +empty death into our ranks, such a faintness came over me and such a +sickness that all things seemed to turn dim and swim before my eyes; and +the other boys looked droopy, too, I thought--including the Paladin, +although I do not know this for certain, because he was ahead of me and I +had to keep my eyes out toward the bastille side, because I could wince +better when I saw what to wince at. + +But Joan was at home--in Paradise, I might say. She sat up straight, and +I could see that she was feeling different from me. The awfulest thing +was the silence; there wasn't a sound but the screaking of the saddles, +the measured tramplings, and the sneezing of the horses, afflicted by the +smothering dust-clouds which they kicked up. I wanted to sneeze myself, +but it seemed to me that I would rather go unsneezed, or suffer even a +bitterer torture, if there is one, than attract attention to myself. + +I was not of a rank to make suggestions, or I would have suggested that +if we went faster we should get by sooner. It seemed to me that it was an +ill-judged time to be taking a walk. Just as we were drifting in that +suffocating stillness past a great cannon that stood just within a raised +portcullis, with nothing between me and it but the moat, a most uncommon +jackass in there split the world with his bray, and I fell out of the +saddle. Sir Bertrand grabbed me as I went, which was well, for if I had +gone to the ground in my armor I could not have gotten up again by +myself. The English warders on the battlements laughed a coarse laugh, +forgetting that every one must begin, and that there had been a time when +they themselves would have fared no better when shot by a jackass. + +The English never uttered a challenge nor fired a shot. It was said +afterward that when their men saw the Maid riding at the front and saw +how lovely she was, their eager courage cooled down in many cases and +vanished in the rest, they feeling certain that the creature was not +mortal, but the very child of Satan, and so the officers were prudent and +did not try to make them fight. It was said also that some of the +officers were affected by the same superstitious fears. Well, in any +case, they never offered to molest us, and we poked by all the grisly +fortresses in peace. During the march I caught up on my devotions, which +were in arrears; so it was not all loss and no profit for me after all. + +It was on this march that the histories say Dunois told Joan that the +English were expecting reinforcements under the command of Sir John +Fastolfe, and that she turned upon him and said: + +"Bastard, Bastard, in God's name I warn you to let me know of his coming +as soon as you hear of it; for if he passes without my knowledge you +shall lose your head!" + +It may be so; I don't deny it; but I didn't her it. If she really said it +I think she only meant she would take off his official head --degrade him +from his command. It was not like her to threaten a comrade's life. She +did have her doubts of her generals, and was entitled to them, for she +was all for storm and assault, and they were for holding still and tiring +the English out. Since they did not believe in her way and were +experienced old soldiers, it would be natural for them to prefer their +own and try to get around carrying hers out. + +But I did hear something that the histories didn't mention and don't know +about. I heard Joan say that now that the garrisons on the other wide had +been weakened to strengthen those on our side, the most effective point +of operations had shifted to the south shore; so she meant to go over +there and storm the forts which held the bridge end, and that would open +up communication with our own dominions and raise the siege. The generals +began to balk, privately, right away, but they only baffled and delayed +her, and that for only four days. + +All Orleans met the army at the gate and huzzaed it through the bannered +streets to its various quarters, but nobody had to rock it to sleep; it +slumped down dog-tired, for Dunois had rushed it without mercy, and for +the next twenty-four hours it would be quiet, all but the snoring. + + + + Chapter 17 Sweet Fruit of Bitter Truth + +WHEN WE got home, breakfast for us minor fry was waiting in our mess-room +and the family honored us by coming in to eat it with us. The nice old +treasurer, and in fact all three were flatteringly eager to hear about +our adventures. Nobody asked the Paladin to begin, but he did begin, +because now that his specially ordained and peculiar military rank set +him above everybody on the personal staff but old D'Aulon, who didn't eat +with us, he didn't care a farthing for the knights' nobility no mine, but +took precedence in the talk whenever it suited him, which was all the +time, because he was born that way. He said: + +"God be thanked, we found the army in admirable condition I think I have +never seen a finer body of animals." + +"Animals!" said Miss Catherine. + +"I will explain to you what he means," said Noel. "He--" + +"I will trouble you not to trouble yourself to explain anything for me," +said the Paladin, loftily. "I have reason to think--" + +"That is his way," said Noel; "always when he thinks he has reason to +think, he thinks he does think, but this is an error. He didn't see the +army. I noticed him, and he didn't see it. He was troubled by his old +complaint." + +"What s his old complaint?" Catherine asked. + +"Prudence," I said, seeing my chance to help. + +But it was not a fortunate remark, for the Paladin said: + +"It probably isn't your turn to criticize people's prudence--you who fall +out of the saddle when a donkey brays." + +They all laughed, and I was ashamed of myself for my hasty smartness. I +said: + +"It isn't quite fair for you to say I fell out on account of the donkey's +braying. It was emotion, just ordinary emotion." + +"Very well, if you want to call it that, I am not objecting. What would +you call it, Sir Bertrand?" + +"Well, it--well, whatever it was, it was excusable, I think. All of you +have learned how to behave in hot hand-to-hand engagements, and you don't +need to be ashamed of your record in that matter; but to walk along in +front of death, with one's hands idle, and no noise, no music, and +nothing going on, is a very trying situation. If I were you, De Conte, I +would name the emotion; it's nothing to be ashamed of." + +It was as straight and sensible a speech as ever I heard, and I was +grateful for the opening it gave me; so I came out and said: + +"It was fear--and thank you for the honest idea, too." + +"It was the cleanest and best way out," said the old treasurer; "you've +done well, my lad." + +That made me comfortable, and when Miss Catherine said, "It's what I +think, too," I was grateful to myself for getting into that scrape. + +Sir Jean de Metz said: + +"We were all in a body together when the donkey brayed, and it was +dismally still at the time. I don't see how any young campaigner could +escape some little touch of that emotion." + +He looked about him with a pleasant expression of inquiry on his good +face, and as each pair of eyes in turn met his head they were in nodded a +confession. Even the Paladin delivered his nod. That surprised everybody, +and saved the Standard-Bearer's credit. It was clever of him; nobody +believed he could tell the truth that way without practice, or would tell +that particular sort of a truth either with or without practice. I +suppose he judged it would favorably impress the family. Then the old +treasurer said: + +"Passing the forts in that trying way required the same sort of nerve +that a person must have when ghosts are about him in the dark, I should +think. What does the Standard-Bearer think?" + +"Well, I don't quite know about that, sir. I've often thought I would +like to see a ghost if I--" + +"Would you?" exclaimed the young lady. "We've got one! Would you try that +one? Will you?" + +She was so eager and pretty that the Paladin said straight out that he +would; and then as none of the rest had bravery enough to expose the fear +that was in him, one volunteered after the other with a prompt mouth and +a sick heart till all were shipped for the voyage; then the girl clapped +her hands in glee, and the parents were gratified, too, saying that the +ghosts of their house had been a dread and a misery to them and their +forebears for generations, and nobody had ever been found yet who was +willing to confront them and find out what their trouble was, so that the +family could heal it and content the poor specters and beguile them to +tranquillity and peace. + + + + Chapter 18 Joan's First Battle-Field + +ABOUT NOON I was chatting with Madame Boucher; nothing was going on, all +was quiet, when Catherine Boucher suddenly entered in great excitement, +and said: + +"Fly, sir, fly! The Maid was doing in her chair in my room, when she +sprang up and cried out, 'French blood is flowing!--my arms, give me my +arms!' Her giant was on guard at the door, and he brought D'Aulon, who +began to arm her, and I and the giant have been warning the staff. +Fly!--and stay by her; and if there really is a battle, keep her out of +it--don't let her risk herself--there is no need--if the men know she is +near and looking on, it is all that is necessary. Keep her out of the +fight--don't fail of this!" + +I started on a run, saying, sarcastically--for I was always fond of +sarcasm, and it was said that I had a most neat gift that way: + +"Oh, yes, nothing easier than that--I'll attend to it!" + +At the furthest end of the house I met Joan, fully armed, hurrying toward +the door, and she said: + +"Ah, French blood is being spilt, and you did not tell me." + +"Indeed I did not know it," I said; "there are no sounds of war; +everything is quiet, your Excellency." + +"You will hear war-sounds enough in a moment," she said, and was gone. + +It was true. Before one could count five there broke upon the stillness +the swelling rush and tramp of an approaching multitude of men and +horses, with hoarse cries of command; and then out of the distance came +the muffled deep boom!--boom-boom!--boom! of cannon, and straightway that +rushing multitude was roaring by the house like a hurricane. + +Our knights and all our staff came flying, armed, but with no horses +ready, and we burst out after Joan in a body, the Paladin in the lead +with the banner. The surging crowd was made up half of citizens and half +of soldiers, and had no recognized leader. When Joan was seen a huzza +went up, and she shouted: + +"A horse--a horse!" + +A dozen saddles were at her disposal in a moment. She mounted, a hundred +people shouting: + +"Way, there--way for the MAID OF ORLEANS!" The first time that that +immortal name was ever uttered--and I, praise God, was there to hear it! +The mass divided itself like the waters of the Red Sea, and down this +lane Joan went skimming like a bird, crying, "Forward, French +hearts--follow me!" and we came winging in her wake on the rest of the +borrowed horses, the holy standard streaming above us, and the lane +closing together in our rear. + +This was a different thing from the ghastly march past the dismal +bastilles. No, we felt fine, now, and all awhirl with enthusiasm. The +explanation of this sudden uprising was this. The city and the little +garrison, so long hopeless and afraid, had gone wild over Joan's coming, +and could no longer restrain their desire to get at the enemy; so, +without orders from anybody, a few hundred soldiers and citizens had +plunged out at the Burgundy gate on a sudden impulse and made a charge on +one of Lord Talbot's most formidable fortresses--St. Loup--and were +getting the worst of it. The news of this had swept through the city and +started this new crowd that we were with. + +As we poured out at the gate we met a force bringing in the wounded from +the front. The sight moved Joan, and she said: + +"Ah, French blood; it makes my hair rise to see it!" + +We were soon on the field, soon in the midst of the turmoil. Joan was +seeing her first real battle, and so were we. + +It was a battle in the open field; for the garrison of St. Loup had +sallied confidently out to meet the attack, being used to victories when +"witches" were not around. The sally had been reinforced by troops from +the "Paris" bastille, and when we approached the French were getting +whipped and were falling back. But when Joan came charging through the +disorder with her banner displayed, crying "Forward, men--follow me!" +there was a change; the French turned about and surged forward like a +solid wave of the sea, and swept the English before them, hacking and +slashing, and being hacked and slashed, in a way that was terrible to +see. + +In the field the Dwarf had no assignment; that is to say, he was not +under orders to occupy any particular place, therefore he chose his place +for himself, and went ahead of Joan and made a road for her. It was +horrible to see the iron helmets fly into fragments under his dreadful +ax. He called it cracking nuts, and it looked like that. He made a good +road, and paved it well with flesh and iron. Joan and the rest of us +followed it so briskly that we outspeeded our forces and had the English +behind us as well as before. The knights commanded us to face outward +around Joan, which we did, and then there was work done that was fine to +see. One was obliged to respect the Paladin, now. Being right under +Joan's exalting and transforming eye, he forgot his native prudence, he +forgot his diffidence in the presence of danger, he forgot what fear was, +and he never laid about him in his imaginary battles in a more tremendous +way that he did in this real one; and wherever he struck there was an +enemy the less. + +We were in that close place only a few minutes; then our forces to the +rear broke through with a great shout and joined us, and then the English +fought a retreating fight, but in a fine and gallant way, and we drove +them to their fortress foot by foot, they facing us all the time, and +their reserves on the walls raining showers of arrows, cross-bow bolts, +and stone cannon-balls upon us. + +The bulk of the enemy got safely within the works and left us outside +with piles of French and English dead and wounded for company--a +sickening sight, an awful sight to us youngsters, for our little ambush +fights in February had been in the night, and the blood and the +mutilations and the dead faces were mercifully dim, whereas we saw these +things now for the first time in all their naked ghastliness. + +Now arrived Dunois from the city, and plunged through the battle on his +foam-flecked horse and galloped up to Joan, saluting, and uttering +handsome compliments as he came. He waved his hand toward the distant +walls of the city, where a multitude of flags were flaunting gaily in the +wind, and said the populace were up there observing her fortunate +performance and rejoicing over it, and added that she and the forces +would have a great reception now. + +"Now? Hardly now, Bastard. Not yet!" + +"Why not yet? Is there more to be done?" + +"More, Bastard? We have but begun! We will take this fortress." + +"Ah, you can't be serious! We can't take this place; let me urge you not +to make the attempt; it is too desperate. Let me order the forces back." + +Joan's heart was overflowing with the joys and enthusiasms of war, and it +made her impatient to hear such talk. She cried out: + +"Bastard, Bastard, will ye play always with these English? Now verily I +tell you we will not budge until this place is ours. We will carry it by +storm. Sound the charge!" + +"Ah, my General--" + +"Waste no more time, man--let the bugles sound the assault!" and we saw +that strange deep light in her eye which we named the battle-light, and +learned to know so well in later fields. + +The martial notes pealed out, the troops answered with a yell, and down +they came against that formidable work, whose outlines were lost in its +own cannon-smoke, and whose sides were spouting flame and thunder. + +We suffered repulse after repulse, but Joan was here and there and +everywhere encouraging the men, and she kept them to their work. During +three hours the tide ebbed and flowed, flowed and ebbed; but at last La +Hire, who was now come, made a final and resistless charge, and the +bastille St. Loup was ours. We gutted it, taking all its stores and +artillery, and then destroyed it. + +When all our host was shouting itself hoarse with rejoicings, and there +went up a cry for the General, for they wanted to praise her and glorify +her and do her homage for her victory, we had trouble to find her; and +when we did find her, she was off by herself, sitting among a ruck of +corpses, with her face in her hands, crying--for she was a young girl, +you know, and her hero heart was a young girl's heart too, with the pity +and the tenderness that are natural to it. She was thinking of the +mothers of those dead friends and enemies. + +Among the prisoners were a number of priests, and Joan took these under +her protection and saved their lives. It was urged that they were most +probably combatants in disguise, but she said: + +"As to that, how can any tell? They wear the livery of God, and if even +one of these wears it rightfully, surely it were better that all the +guilty should escape than that we have upon our hands the blood of that +innocent man. I will lodge them where I lodge, and feed them, and sent +them away in safety." + +We marched back to the city with our crop of cannon and prisoners on view +and our banners displayed. Here was the first substantial bit of war-work +the imprisoned people had seen in the seven months that the siege had +endured, the first chance they had had to rejoice over a French exploit. +You may guess that they made good use of it. They and the bells went mad. +Joan was their darling now, and the press of people struggling and +shouldering each other to get a glimpse of her was so great that we could +hardly push our way through the streets at all. Her new name had gone all +about, and was on everybody's lips. The Holy Maid of Vaucouleurs was a +forgotten title; the city had claimed her for its own, and she was the +MAID OF ORLEANS now. It is a happiness to me to remember that I heard +that name the first time it was ever uttered. Between that first +utterance and the last time it will be uttered on this earth--ah, think +how many moldering ages will lie in that gap! + +The Boucher family welcomed her back as if she had been a child of the +house, and saved from death against all hope or probability. They chided +her for going into the battle and exposing herself to danger during all +those hours. They could not realize that she had meant to carry her +warriorship so far, and asked her if it had really been her purpose to go +right into the turmoil of the fight, or hadn't she got swept into it by +accident and the rush of the troops? They begged her to be more careful +another time. It was good advice, maybe, but it fell upon pretty +unfruitful soil. + + + + Chapter 19 We Burst In Upon Ghosts + +BEING WORN out with the long fight, we all slept the rest of the +afternoon away and two or three hours into the night. Then we got up +refreshed, and had supper. As for me, I could have been willing to let +the matter of the ghost drop; and the others were of a like mind, no +doubt, for they talked diligently of the battle and said nothing of that +other thing. And indeed it was fine and stirring to hear the Paladin +rehearse his deeds and see him pile his dead, fifteen here, eighteen +there, and thirty-five yonder; but this only postponed the trouble; it +could not do more. He could not go on forever; when he had carried the +bastille by assault and eaten up the garrison there was nothing for it +but to stop, unless Catherine Boucher would give him a new start and have +it all done over again--as we hoped she would, this time--but she was +otherwise minded. As soon as there was a good opening and a fair chance, +she brought up her unwelcome subject, and we faced it the best we could. + +We followed her and her parents to the haunted room at eleven o'clock, +with candles, and also with torches to place in the sockets on the walls. +It was a big house, with very thick walls, and this room was in a remote +part of it which had been left unoccupied for nobody knew how many years, +because of its evil repute. + +This was a large room, like a salon, and had a big table in it of +enduring oak and well preserved; but the chair were worm-eaten and the +tapestry on the walls was rotten and discolored by age. The dusty cobwebs +under the ceiling had the look of not having had any business for a +century. + +Catherine said: + +"Tradition says that these ghosts have never been seen--they have merely +been heard. It is plain that this room was once larger than it is now, +and that the wall at this end was built in some bygone time to make and +fence off a narrow room there. There is no communication anywhere with +that narrow room, and if it exists--and of that there is no reasonable +doubt--it has no light and no air, but is an absolute dungeon. Wait where +you are, and take note of what happens." + +That was all. Then she and her parents left us. When their footfalls had +died out in the distance down the empty stone corridors an uncanny +silence and solemnity ensued which was dismaler to me than the mute march +past the bastilles. We sat looking vacantly at each other, and it was +easy to see that no one there was comfortable. The longer we sat so, the +more deadly still that stillness got to be; and when the wind began to +moan around the house presently, it made me sick and miserable, and I +wished I had been brave enough to be a coward this time, for indeed it is +no proper shame to be afraid of ghosts, seeing how helpless the living +are in their hands. And then these ghosts were invisible, which made the +matter the worse, as it seemed to me. They might be in the room with us +at that moment--we could not know. I felt airy touches on my shoulders +and my hair, and I shrank from them and cringed, and was not ashamed to +show this fear, for I saw the others doing the like, and knew that they +were feeling those faint contacts too. As this went on--oh, eternities it +seemed, the time dragged so drearily--all those faces became as wax, and +I seemed sitting with a congress of the dead. + +At last, faint and far and weird and slow, came a +"boom!--boom!--boom!"--a distant bell tolling midnight. When the last +stroke died, that depressing stillness followed again, and as before I +was staring at those waxen faces and feeling those airy touches on my +hair and my shoulders once more. + +One minute--two minutes--three minutes of this, then we heard a long deep +groan, and everybody sprang up and stood, with his legs quaking. It came +from that little dungeon. There was a pause, then we herd muffled +sobbings, mixed with pitiful ejaculations. Then there was a second voice, +low and not distinct, and the one seemed trying to comfort the other; and +so the two voices went on, with moanings, and soft sobbings, and, ah, the +tones were so full of compassion and sorry and despair! Indeed, it made +one's heart sore to hear it. + +But those sounds were so real and so human and so moving that the idea of +ghosts passed straight out of our minds, and Sir Jean de Metz spoke out +and said: + +"Come! we will smash that wall and set those poor captives free. Here, +with your ax!" + +The Dwarf jumped forward, swinging his great ax with both hands, and +others sprang for torches and brought them. + +Bang!--whang!--slam!--smash went the ancient bricks, and there was a hole +an ox could pass through. We plunged within and held up the torches. + +Nothing there but vacancy! On the floor lay a rusty sword and a rotten +fan. + +Now you know all that I know. Take the pathetic relics, and weave about +them the romance of the dungeon's long-vanished inmates as best you can. + + + + Chapter 20 Joan Makes Cowards Brave Victors + +THE NEXT day Joan wanted to go against the enemy again, but it was the +feast of the Ascension, and the holy council of bandit generals were too +pious to be willing to profane it with bloodshed. But privately they +profaned it with plottings, a sort of industry just in their line. They +decided to do the only thing proper to do now in the new circumstances of +the case--feign an attack on the most important bastille on the Orleans +side, and then, if the English weakened the far more important fortresses +on the other side of the river to come to its help, cross in force and +capture those works. This would give them the bridge and free +communication with the Sologne, which was French territory. They decided +to keep this latter part of the program secret from Joan. + +Joan intruded and took them by surprise. She asked them what they were +about and what they had resolved upon. They said they had resolved to +attack the most important of the English bastilles on the Orleans side +next morning--and there the spokesman stopped. Joan said: + +"Well, go on." + +"There is nothing more. That is all." + +"Am I to believe this? That is to say, am I to believe that you have lost +your wits?" She turned to Dunois, and said, "Bastard, you have sense, +answer me this: if this attack is made and the bastille taken, how much +better off would we be than we are now?" + +The Bastard hesitated, and then began some rambling talk not quite +germane to the question. Joan interrupted him and said: + +"That will not do, good Bastard, you have answered. Since the Bastard is +not able to mention any advantage to be gained by taking that bastille +and stopping there, it is not likely that any of you could better the +matter. You waste much time here in inventing plans that lead to nothing, +and making delays that are a damage. Are you concealing something from +me? Bastard, this council has a general plan, I take it; without going +into details, what is it?" + +"It is the same it was in the beginning, seven months ago--to get +provisions for a long siege, then sit down and tire the English out." + +"In the name of God! As if seven months was not enough, you want to +provide for a year of it. Now ye shall drop these pusillanimous +dreams--the English shall go in three days!" + +Several exclaimed: + +"Ah, General, General, be prudent!" + +"Be prudent and starve? Do ye call that war? I tell you this, if you do +not already know it: The new circumstances have changed the face of +matters. The true point of attack has shifted; it is on the other side of +the river now. One must take the fortifications that command the bridge. +The English know that if we are not fools and cowards we will try to do +that. They are grateful for your piety in wasting this day. They will +reinforce the bridge forts from this side to-night, knowing what ought to +happen to-morrow. You have but lost a day and made our task harder, for +we will cross and take the bridge forts. Bastard, tell me the truth--does +not this council know that there is no other course for us than the one I +am speaking of?" + +Dunois conceded that the council did know it to be the most desirable, +but considered it impracticable; and he excused the council as well as he +could by saying that inasmuch as nothing was really and rationally to be +hoped for but a long continuance of the siege and wearying out of the +English, they were naturally a little afraid of Joan's impetuous notions. +He said: + +"You see, we are sure that the waiting game is the best, whereas you +would carry everything by storm." + +"That I would!--and moreover that I will! You have my orders--here and +now. We will move upon the forts of the south bank to-morrow at dawn." + +"And carry them by storm?" + +"Yes, carry them by storm!" + +La Hire came clanking in, and heard the last remark. He cried out: + +"By my baton, that is the music I love to hear! Yes, that is the right +time and the beautiful words, my General--we will carry them by storm!" + +He saluted in his large way and came up and shook Joan by the hand. + +Some member of the council was heard to say: + +"It follows, then, that we must begin with the bastille St. John, and +that will give the English time to--" + +Joan turned and said: + +"Give yourselves no uneasiness about the bastille St. John. The English +will know enough to retire from it and fall back on the bridge bastilles +when they see us coming." She added, with a touch of sarcasm, "Even a +war-council would know enough to do that itself." + +Then she took her leave. La Hire made this general remark to the council: + +"She is a child, and that is all ye seem to see. Keep to that +superstition if you must, but you perceive that this child understands +this complex game of war as well as any of you; and if you want my +opinion without the trouble of asking for it, here you have it without +ruffles or embroidery--by God, I think she can teach the best of you how +to play it!" + +Joan had spoken truly; the sagacious English saw that the policy of the +French had undergone a revolution; that the policy of paltering and +dawdling was ended; that in place of taking blows, blows were ready to be +struck now; therefore they made ready for the new state of things by +transferring heavy reinforcements to the bastilles of the south bank from +those of the north. + +The city learned the great news that once more in French history, after +all these humiliating years, France was going to take the offensive; that +France, so used to retreating, was going to advance; that France, so long +accustomed to skulking, was going to face about and strike. The joy of +the people passed all bounds. The city walls were black with them to see +the army march out in the morning in that strange new position--its +front, not its tail, toward an English camp. You shall imagine for +yourselves what the excitement was like and how it expressed itself, when +Joan rode out at the head of the host with her banner floating above her. + +We crossed the five in strong force, and a tedious long job it was, for +the boats were small and not numerous. Our landing on the island of St. +Aignan was not disputed. We threw a bridge of a few boats across the +narrow channel thence to the south shore and took up our march in good +order and unmolested; for although there was a fortress there--St. +John--the English vacated and destroyed it and fell back on the bridge +forts below as soon as our first boats were seen to leave the Orleans +shore; which was what Joan had said would happen, when she was disputing +with the council. + +We moved down the shore and Joan planted her standard before the bastille +of the Augustins, the first of the formidable works that protected the +end of the bridge. The trumpets sounded the assault, and two charges +followed in handsome style; but we were too weak, as yet, for our main +body was still lagging behind. Before we could gather for a third assault +the garrison of St. Prive were seen coming up to reinforce the big +bastille. They came on a run, and the Augustins sallied out, and both +forces came against us with a rush, and sent our small army flying in a +panic, and followed us, slashing and slaying, and shouting jeers and +insults at us. + +Joan was doing her best to rally the men, but their wits were gone, their +hearts were dominated for the moment by the old-time dread of the +English. Joan's temper flamed up, and she halted and commanded the +trumpets to sound the advance. Then she wheeled about and cried out: + +"If there is but a dozen of you that are not cowards, it is +enough--follow me!" + +Away she went, and after her a few dozen who had heard her words and been +inspired by them. The pursuing force was astonished to see her sweeping +down upon them with this handful of men, and it was their turn now to +experience a grisly fright--surely this is a witch, this is a child of +Satan! That was their thought--and without stopping to analyze the matter +they turned and fled in a panic. + +Our flying squadrons heard the bugle and turned to look; and when they +saw the Maid's banner speeding in the other direction and the enemy +scrambling ahead of it in disorder, their courage returned and they came +scouring after us. + +La Hire heard it and hurried his force forward and caught up with us just +as we were planting our banner again before the ramparts of the +Augustins. We were strong enough now. We had a long and tough piece of +work before us, but we carried it through before night, Joan keeping us +hard at it, and she and La Hire saying we were able to take that big +bastille, and must. The English fought like--well, they fought like the +English; when that is said, there is no more to say. We made assault +after assault, through the smoke and flame and the deafening +cannon-blasts, and at last as the sun was sinking we carried the place +with a rush, and planted our standard on its walls. + +The Augustins was ours. The Tourelles must be ours, too, if we would free +the bridge and raise the siege. We had achieved one great undertaking, +Joan was determined to accomplish the other. We must lie on our arms +where we were, hold fast to what we had got, and be ready for business in +the morning. So Joan was not minded to let the men be demoralized by +pillage and riot and carousings; she had the Augustins burned, with all +its stores in it, excepting the artillery and ammunition. + +Everybody was tired out with this long day's hard work, and of course +this was the case with Joan; still, she wanted to stay with the army +before the Tourelles, to be ready for the assault in the morning. The +chiefs argued with her, and at last persuaded her to go home and prepare +for the great work by taking proper rest, and also by having a leech look +to a wound which she had received in her foot. So we crossed with them +and went home. + +Just as usual, we found the town in a fury of joy, all the bells +clanging, everybody shouting, and several people drunk. We never went out +or came in without furnishing good and sufficient reasons for one of +these pleasant tempests, and so the tempest was always on hand. There had +been a blank absence of reasons for this sort of upheavals for the past +seven months, therefore the people too to the upheavals with all the more +relish on that account. + + + + Chapter 21 She Gently Reproves Her Dear Friend + +TO GET away from the usual crowd of visitors and have a rest, Joan went +with Catherine straight to the apartment which the two occupied together, +and there they took their supper and there the wound was dressed. But +then, instead of going to bed, Joan, weary as she was, sent the Dwarf for +me, in spite of Catherine's protests and persuasions. She said she had +something on her mind, and must send a courier to Domremy with a letter +for our old Pere Fronte to read to her mother. I came, and she began to +dictate. After some loving words and greetings to her mother and family, +came this: + +"But the thing which moves me to write now, is to say that when you +presently hear that I am wounded, you shall give yourself no concern +about it, and refuse faith to any that shall try to make you believe it +is serious." + +She was going on, when Catherine spoke up and said: + +"Ah, but it will fright her so to read these words. Strike them out, +Joan, strike them out, and wait only one day--two days at most--then +write and say your foot was wounded but is well again--for it surely be +well then, or very near it. Don't distress her, Joan; do as I say." + +A laugh like the laugh of the old days, the impulsive free laugh of an +untroubled spirit, a laugh like a chime of bells, was Joan's answer; then +she said: + +"My foot? Why should I write about such a scratch as that? I was not +thinking of it, dear heart." + +"Child, have you another wound and a worse, and have not spoken of it? +What have you been dreaming about, that you--" + +She had jumped up, full of vague fears, to have the leech called back at +once, but Joan laid her hand upon her arm and made her sit down again, +saying: + +"There, now, be tranquil, there is no other wound, as yet; I am writing +about one which I shall get when we storm that bastille tomorrow." + +Catherine had the look of one who is trying to understand a puzzling +proposition but cannot quite do it. She said, in a distraught fashion: + +"A wound which you are going to get? But--but why grieve your mother when +it--when it may not happen?" + +"May not? Why, it will." + +The puzzle was a puzzle still. Catherine said in that same abstracted way +as before: + +"Will. It is a strong word. I cannot seem to--my mind is not able to take +hold of this. Oh, Joan, such a presentiment is a dreadful thing--it takes +one's peace and courage all away. Cast it from you!--drive it out! It +will make your whole night miserable, and to no good; for we will hope--" + +"But it isn't a presentiment--it is a fact. And it will not make me +miserable. It is uncertainties that do that, but this is not an +uncertainty." + +"Joan, do you know it is going to happen?" + +"Yes, I know it. My Voices told me." + +"Ah," said Catherine, resignedly, "if they told you-- But are you sure it +was they?--quite sure?" + +"Yes, quite. It will happen--there is no doubt." + +"It is dreadful! Since when have you know it?" + +"Since--I think it is several weeks." Joan turned to me. "Louis, you will +remember. How long is it?" + +"Your Excellency spoke of it first to the King, in Chinon," I answered; +"that was as much as seven weeks ago. You spoke of it again the 20th of +April, and also the 22d, two weeks ago, as I see by my record here." + +These marvels disturbed Catherine profoundly, but I had long ceased to be +surprised at them. One can get used to anything in this world. Catherine +said: + +"And it is to happen to-morrow?--always to-morrow? Is it the same date +always? There has been no mistake, and no confusion?" + +"No," Joan said, "the 7th of May is the date--there is no other." + +"Then you shall not go a step out of this house till that awful day is +gone by! You will not dream of it, Joan, will you?--promise that you will +stay with us." + +But Joan was not persuaded. She said: + +"It would not help the matter, dear good friend. The wound is to come, +and come to-morrow. If I do not seek it, it will seek me. My duty calls +me to that place to-morrow; I should have to go if my death were waiting +for me there; shall I stay away for only a wound? Oh, no, we must try to +do better than that." + +"Then you are determined to go?" + +"Of a certainty, yes. There is only one thing that I can do for +France--hearten her soldiers for battle and victory." She thought a +moment, then added, "However, one should not be unreasonable, and I would +do much to please you, who are so good to me. Do you love France?" + +I wondered what she might be contriving now, but I saw no clue. Catherine +said, reproachfully: + +"Ah, what have I done to deserve this question?" + +"Then you do love France. I had not doubted it, dear. Do not be hurt, but +answer me--have you ever told a lie?" + +"In my life I have not wilfully told a lie--fibs, but no lies." + +"That is sufficient. You love France and do not tell lies; therefore I +will trust you. I will go or I will stay, as you shall decide." + +"Oh, I thank you from my heart, Joan! How good and dear it is of you to +do this for me! Oh, you shall stay, and not go!" + +In her delight she flung her arms about Joan's neck and squandered +endearments upon her the least of which would have made me rich, but, as +it was, they only made me realize how poor I was--how miserably poor in +what I would most have prized in this world. Joan said: + +"Then you will send word to my headquarters that I am not going?" + +"Oh, gladly. Leave that to me." + +"It is good of you. And how will you word it?--for it must have proper +official form. Shall I word it for you?" + +"Oh, do--for you know about these solemn procedures and stately +proprieties, and I have had no experience." + +"Then word it like this: 'The chief of staff is commanded to make known +to the King's forces in garrison and in the field, that the +General-in-Chief of the Armies of France will not face the English on the +morrow, she being afraid she may get hurt. Signed, JOAN OF ARC, by the +hand of CATHERINE BOUCHER, who loves France.'" + +There was a pause--a silence of the sort that tortures one into stealing +a glance to see how the situation looks, and I did that. There was a +loving smile on Joan's face, but the color was mounting in crimson waves +into Catherine's, and her lips were quivering and the tears gathering; +then she said: + +"Oh, I am so ashamed of myself!--and you are so noble and brave and wise, +and I am so paltry--so paltry and such a fool!" and she broke down and +began to cry, and I did so want to take her in my arms and comfort her, +but Joan did it, and of course I said nothing. Joan did it well, and most +sweetly and tenderly, but I could have done it as well, though I knew it +would be foolish and out of place to suggest such a thing, and might make +an awkwardness, too, and be embarrassing to us all, so I did not offer, +and I hope I did right and for the best, though I could not know, and was +many times tortured with doubts afterward as having perhaps let a chance +pass which might have changed all my life and made it happier and more +beautiful than, alas, it turned out to be. For this reason I grieve yet, +when I think of that scene, and do not like to call it up out of the +deeps of my memory because of the pangs it brings. + +Well, well, a good and wholesome thing is a little harmless fun in this +world; it tones a body up and keeps him human and prevents him from +souring. To set that little trap for Catherine was as good and effective +a way as any to show her what a grotesque thing she was asking of Joan. +It was a funny idea now, wasn't it, when you look at it all around? Even +Catherine dried up her tears and laughed when she thought of the English +getting hold of the French Commander-in-Chief's reason for staying out of +a battle. She granted that they could have a good time over a thing like +that. + +We got to work on the letter again, and of course did not have to strike +out the passage about the wound. Joan was in fine spirits; but when she +got to sending messages to this, that, and the other playmate and friend, +it brought our village and the Fairy Tree and the flowery plain and the +browsing sheep and all the peaceful beauty of our old humble home-place +back, and the familiar names began to tremble on her lips; and when she +got to Haumette and Little Mengette it was no use, her voice broke and +she couldn't go on. She waited a moment, then said: + +"Give them my love--my warm love--my deep love--oh, out of my heart of +hearts! I shall never see our home any more." + +Now came Pasquerel, Joan's confessor, and introduced a gallant knight, +the Sire de Rais, who had been sent with a message. He said he was +instructed to say that the council had decided that enough had been done +for the present; that it would be safest and best to be content with what +God had already done; that the city was now well victualed and able to +stand a long siege; that the wise course must necessarily be to withdraw +the troops from the other side of the river and resume the +defensive--therefore they had decided accordingly. + +"The incurable cowards!" exclaimed Joan. "So it was to get me away from +my men that they pretended so much solicitude about my fatigue. Take this +message back, not to the council--I have no speeches for those disguised +ladies' maids--but to the Bastard and La Hire, who are men. Tell them the +army is to remain where it is, and I hold them responsible if this +command miscarries. And say the offensive will be resumed in the morning. +You may go, good sir." + +Then she said to her priest: + +"Rise early, and be by me all the day. There will be much work on my +hands, and I shall be hurt between my neck and my shoulder." + + + + Chapter 22 The Fate of France Decided + +WE WERE up at dawn, and after mass we started. In the hall we met the +master of the house, who was grieved, good man, to see Joan going +breakfastless to such a day's work, and begged her to wait and eat, but +she couldn't afford the time--that is to say, she couldn't afford the +patience, she being in such a blaze of anxiety to get at that last +remaining bastille which stood between her and the completion of the +first great step in the rescue and redemption of France. Boucher put in +another plea: + +"But think--we poor beleaguered citizens who have hardly known the flavor +of fish for these many months, have spoil of that sort again, and we owe +it to you. There's a noble shad for breakfast; wait--be persuaded." + +Joan said: + +"Oh, there's going to be fish in plenty; when this day's work is done the +whole river-front will be yours to do as you please with." + +"Ah, your Excellency will do well, that I know; but we don't require +quite that much, even of you; you shall have a month for it in place of a +day. Now be beguiled--wait and eat. There's a saying that he that would +cross a river twice in the same day in a boat, will do well to eat fish +for luck, lest he have an accident." + +"That doesn't fit my case, for to-day I cross but once in a boat." + +"Oh, don't say that. Aren't you coming back to us?" + +"Yes, but not in a boat." + +"How, then?" + +"By the bridge." + +"Listen to that--by the bridge! Now stop this jesting, dear General, and +do as I would have done you. It's a noble fish." + +"Be good then, and save me some for supper; and I will bring one of those +Englishmen with me and he shall have his share." + +"Ah, well, have your way if you must. But he that fasts must attempt but +little and stop early. When shall you be back?" + +"When we've raised the siege of Orleans. FORWARD!" + +We were off. The streets were full of citizens and of groups and squads +of soldiers, but the spectacle was melancholy. There was not a smile +anywhere, but only universal gloom. It was as if some vast calamity had +smitten all hope and cheer dead. We were not used to this, and were +astonished. But when they saw the Maid, there was an immediate stir, and +the eager question flew from mouth to mouth. + +"Where is she going? Whither is she bound?" + +Joan heard it, and called out: + +"Whither would ye suppose? I am going to take the Tourelles." + +It would not be possible for any to describe how those few words turned +that mourning into joy--into exaltation--into frenzy; and how a storm of +huzzas burst out and swept down the streets in every direction and woke +those corpse-like multitudes to vivid life and action and turmoil in a +moment. The soldiers broke from the crowd and came flocking to our +standard, and many of the citizens ran and got pikes and halberds and +joined us. As we moved on, our numbers increased steadily, and the +hurrahing continued--yes, we moved through a solid cloud of noise, as you +may say, and all the windows on both sides contributed to it, for they +were filled with excited people. + +You see, the council had closed the Burgundy gate and placed a strong +force there, under that stout soldier Raoul de Gaucourt, Bailly of +Orleans, with orders to prevent Joan from getting out and resuming the +attack on the Tourelles, and this shameful thing had plunged the city +into sorrow and despair. But that feeling was gone now. They believed the +Maid was a match for the council, and they were right. + +When we reached the gate, Joan told Gaucourt to open it and let her pass. + +He said it would be impossible to do this, for his orders were from the +council and were strict. Joan said: + +"There is no authority above mine but the King's. If you have an order +from the King, produce it." + +"I cannot claim to have an order from him, General." + +"Then make way, or take the consequences!" + +He began to argue the case, for he was like the rest of the tribe, always +ready to fight with words, not acts; but in the midst of his gabble Joan +interrupted with the terse order: + +"Charge!" + +We came with a rush, and brief work we made of that small job. It was +good to see the Bailly's surprise. He was not used to this unsentimental +promptness. He said afterward that he was cut off in the midst of what he +was saying--in the midst of an argument by which he could have proved +that he could not let Joan pass--an argument which Joan could not have +answered. + +"Still, it appears she did answer it," said the person he was talking to. + +We swung through the gate in great style, with a vast accession of noise, +the most of which was laughter, and soon our van was over the river and +moving down against the Tourelles. + +First we must take a supporting work called a boulevard, and which was +otherwise nameless, before we could assault the great bastille. Its rear +communicated with the bastille by a drawbridge, under which ran a swift +and deep strip of the Loire. The boulevard was strong, and Dunois doubted +our ability to take it, but Joan had no such doubt. She pounded it with +artillery all the forenoon, then about noon she ordered an assault and +led it herself. We poured into the fosse through the smoke and a tempest +of missiles, and Joan, shouting encouragements to her men, started to +climb a scaling-ladder, when that misfortune happened which we knew was +to happen--the iron bolt from an arbaquest struck between her neck and +her shoulder, and tore its way down through her armor. When she felt the +sharp pain and saw her blood gushing over her breast, she was frightened, +poor girl, and as she sank to the ground she began to cry bitterly. + +The English sent up a glad shout and came surging down in strong force to +take her, and then for a few minutes the might of both adversaries was +concentrated upon that spot. Over her and above her, English and French +fought with desperation--for she stood for France, indeed she was France +to both sides--whichever won her won France, and could keep it forever. +Right there in that small spot, and in ten minutes by the clock, the fate +of France, for all time, was to be decided, and was decided. + +If the English had captured Joan then, Charles VII. would have flown the +country, the Treaty of Troyes would have held good, and France, already +English property, would have become, without further dispute, an English +province, to so remain until Judgment Day. A nationality and a kingdom +were at stake there, and no more time to decide it in than it takes to +hard-boil an egg. It was the most momentous ten minutes that the clock +has ever ticked in France, or ever will. Whenever you read in histories +about hours or days or weeks in which the fate of one or another nation +hung in the balance, do not you fail to remember, nor your French hearts +to beat the quicker for the remembrance, the ten minutes that France, +called otherwise Joan of Arc, lay bleeding in the fosse that day, with +two nations struggling over her for her possession. + +And you will not forget the Dwarf. For he stood over her, and did the +work of any six of the others. He swung his ax with both hands; whenever +it came down, he said those two words, "For France!" and a splintered +helmet flew like eggshells, and the skull that carried it had learned its +manners and would offend the French no more. He piled a bulwark of +iron-clad dead in front of him and fought from behind it; and at last +when the victory was ours we closed about him, shielding him, and he ran +up a ladder with Joan as easily as another man would carry a child, and +bore her out of the battle, a great crowd following and anxious, for she +was drenched with blood to her feet, half of it her own and the other +half English, for bodies had fallen across her as she lay and had poured +their red life-streams over her. One couldn't see the white armor now, +with that awful dressing over it. + +The iron bolt was still in the wound--some say it projected out behind +the shoulder. It may be--I did not wish to see, and did not try to. It +was pulled out, and the pain made Joan cry again, poor thing. Some say +she pulled it out herself because others refused, saying they could not +bear to hurt her. As to this I do not know; I only know it was pulled +out, and that the wound was treated with oil and properly dressed. + +Joan lay on the grass, weak and suffering, hour after hour, but still +insisting that the fight go on. Which it did, but not to much purpose, +for it was only under her eye that men were heroes and not afraid. They +were like the Paladin; I think he was afraid of his shadow--I mean in the +afternoon, when it was very big and long; but when he was under Joan's +eye and the inspiration of her great spirit, what was he afraid of? +Nothing in this world--and that is just the truth. + +Toward night Dunois gave it up. Joan heard the bugles. + +"What!" she cried. "Sounding the retreat!" + +Her wound was forgotten in a moment. She countermanded the order, and +sent another, to the officer in command of a battery, to stand ready to +fire five shots in quick succession. This was a signal to the force on +the Orleans side of the river under La Hire, who was not, as some of the +histories say, with us. It was to be given whenever Joan should feel sure +the boulevard was about to fall into her hands--then that force must make +a counter-attack on the Tourelles by way of the bridge. + +Joan mounted her horse now, with her staff about her, and when our people +saw us coming they raised a great shout, and were at once eager for +another assault on the boulevard. Joan rode straight to the fosse where +she had received her wound, and standing there in the rain of bolts and +arrows, she ordered the Paladin to let her long standard blow free, and +to note when its fringes should touch the fortress. Presently he said: + +"It touches." + +"Now, then," said Joan to the waiting battalions, "the place is +yours--enter in! Bugles, sound the assault! Now, then--all together--go!" + +And go it was. You never saw anything like it. We swarmed up the ladders +and over the battlements like a wave--and the place was our property. +Why, one might live a thousand years and never see so gorgeous a thing as +that again. There, hand to hand, we fought like wild beasts, for there +was no give-up to those English--there was no way to convince one of +those people but to kill him, and even then he doubted. At least so it +was thought, in those days, and maintained by many. + +We were busy and never heard the five cannon-shots fired, but they were +fired a moment after Joan had ordered the assault; and so, while we were +hammering and being hammered in the smaller fortress, the reserve on the +Orleans side poured across the bridge and attacked the Tourelles from +that side. A fire-boat was brought down and moored under the drawbridge +which connected the Tourelles with our boulevard; wherefore, when at last +we drove our English ahead of us and they tried to cross that drawbridge +and join their friends in the Tourelles, the burning timbers gave way +under them and emptied them in a mass into the river in their heavy +armor--and a pitiful sight it was to see brave men die such a death as +that. + +"Ah, God pity them!" said Joan, and wept to see that sorrowful spectacle. +She said those gentle words and wept those compassionate tears although +one of those perishing men had grossly insulted her with a coarse name +three days before, when she had sent him a message asking him to +surrender. That was their leader, Sir Williams Glasdale, a most valorous +knight. He was clothed all in steel; so he plunged under water like a +lance, and of course came up no more. + +We soon patched a sort of bridge together and threw ourselves against the +last stronghold of the English power that barred Orleans from friends and +supplies. Before the sun was quite down, Joan's forever memorable day's +work was finished, her banner floated from the fortress of the Tourelles, +her promise was fulfilled, she had raised the siege of Orleans! + +The seven months' beleaguerment was ended, the thing which the first +generals of France had called impossible was accomplished; in spite of +all that the King's ministers and war-councils could do to prevent it, +this little country-maid at seventeen had carried her immortal task +through, and had done it in four days! + +Good news travels fast, sometimes, as well as bad. By the time we were +ready to start homeward by the bridge the whole city of Orleans was one +red flame of bonfires, and the heavens blushed with satisfaction to see +it; and the booming and bellowing of cannon and the banging of bells +surpassed by great odds anything that even Orleans had attempted before +in the way of noise. + +When we arrived--well, there is no describing that. Why, those acres of +people that we plowed through shed tears enough to raise the river; there +was not a face in the glare of those fires that hadn't tears streaming +down it; and if Joan's feet had not been protected by iron they would +have kissed them off of her. "Welcome! welcome to the Maid of Orleans!" +That was the cry; I heard it a hundred thousand times. "Welcome to our +Maid!" some of them worded it. + +No other girl in all history has ever reached such a summit of glory as +Joan of Arc reached that day. And do you think it turned her head, and +that she sat up to enjoy that delicious music of homage and applause? No; +another girl would have done that, but not this one. That was the +greatest heart and the simplest that ever beat. She went straight to bed +and to sleep, like any tired child; and when the people found she was +wounded and would rest, they shut off all passage and traffic in that +region and stood guard themselves the whole night through, to see that he +slumbers were not disturbed. They said, "She has given us peace, she +shall have peace herself." + +All knew that that region would be empty of English next day, and all +said that neither the present citizens nor their posterity would ever +cease to hold that day sacred to the memory of Joan of Arc. That word has +been true for more than sixty years; it will continue so always. Orleans +will never forget the 8th of May, nor ever fail to celebrate it. It is +Joan of Arc's day--and holy. [1] + +[1] It is still celebrated every year with civic and military pomps and +solemnities. -- TRANSLATOR. + + + + Chapter 23 Joan Inspires the Tawdry King + +IN THE earliest dawn of morning, Talbot and his English forces evacuated +their bastilles and marched away, not stopping to burn, destroy, or carry +off anything, but leaving their fortresses just as they were, +provisioned, armed, and equipped for a long siege. It was difficult for +the people to believe that this great thing had really happened; that +they were actually free once more, and might go and come through any gate +they pleased, with none to molest or forbid; that the terrible Talbot, +that scourge of the French, that man whose mere name had been able to +annul the effectiveness of French armies, was gone, vanished, +retreating--driven away by a girl. + +The city emptied itself. Out of every gate the crowds poured. They +swarmed about the English bastilles like an invasion of ants, but noisier +than those creatures, and carried off the artillery and stores, then +turned all those dozen fortresses into monster bonfires, imitation +volcanoes whose lofty columns of thick smoke seemed supporting the arch +of the sky. + +The delight of the children took another form. To some of the younger +ones seven months was a sort of lifetime. They had forgotten what grass +was like, and the velvety green meadows seemed paradise to their +surprised and happy eyes after the long habit of seeing nothing but dirty +lanes and streets. It was a wonder to them--those spacious reaches of +open country to run and dance and tumble and frolic in, after their dull +and joyless captivity; so they scampered far and wide over the fair +regions on both sides of the river, and came back at eventide weary, but +laden with flowers and flushed with new health drawn from the fresh +country air and the vigorous exercise. + +After the burnings, the grown folk followed Joan from church to church +and put in the day in thanksgivings for the city's deliverance, and at +night they feted her and her generals and illuminated the town, and high +and low gave themselves up to festivities and rejoicings. By the time the +populace were fairly in bed, toward dawn, we were in the saddle and away +toward Tours to report to the King. + +That was a march which would have turned any one's head but Joan's. We +moved between emotional ranks of grateful country-people all the way. +They crowded about Joan to touch her feet, her horse, her armor, and they +even knelt in the road and kissed her horse's hoof-prints. + +The land was full of her praises. The most illustrious chiefs of the +church wrote to the King extolling the Maid, comparing her to the saints +and heroes of the Bible, and warning him not to let "unbelief, +ingratitude, or other injustice" hinder or impair the divine help sent +through her. One might think there was a touch of prophecy in that, and +we will let it go at that; but to my mind it had its inspiration in those +great men's accurate knowledge of the King's trivial and treacherous +character. + +The King had come to Tours to meet Joan. At the present day this poor +thing is called Charles the Victorious, on account of victories which +other people won for him, but in our time we had a private name for him +which described him better, and was sanctified to him by personal +deserving--Charles the Base. When we entered the presence he sat throned, +with his tinseled snobs and dandies around him. He looked like a forked +carrot, so tightly did his clothing fit him from his waist down; he wore +shoes with a rope-like pliant toe a foot long that had to be hitched up +to the knee to keep it out of the way; he had on a crimson velvet cape +that came no lower than his elbows; on his head he had a tall felt thing +like a thimble, with a feather it its jeweled band that stuck up like a +pen from an inkhorn, and from under that thimble his bush of stiff hair +stuck down to his shoulders, curving outward at the bottom, so that the +cap and the hair together made the head like a shuttlecock. All the +materials of his dress were rich, and all the colors brilliant. In his +lap he cuddled a miniature greyhound that snarled, lifting its lip and +showing its white teeth whenever any slight movement disturbed it. The +King's dandies were dressed in about the same fashion as himself, and +when I remembered that Joan had called the war-council of Orleans +"disguised ladies' maids," it reminded me of people who squander all +their money on a trifle and then haven't anything to invest when they +come across a better chance; that name ought to have been saved for these +creatures. + +Joan fell on her knees before the majesty of France, and the other +frivolous animal in his lap--a sight which it pained me to see. What had +that man done for his country or for anybody in it, that she or any other +person should kneel to him? But she--she had just done the only great +deed that had been done for France in fifty years, and had consecrated it +with the libation of her blood. The positions should have been reversed. + +However, to be fair, one must grant that Charles acquitted himself very +well for the most part, on that occasion--very much better than he was in +the habit of doing. He passed his pup to a courtier, and took off his cap +to Joan as if she had been a queen. Then he stepped from his throne and +raised her, and showed quite a spirited and manly joy and gratitude in +welcoming her and thanking her for her extraordinary achievement in his +service. My prejudices are of a later date than that. If he had continued +as he was at that moment, I should not have acquired them. + +He acted handsomely. He said: + +"You shall not kneel to me, my matchless General; you have wrought +royally, and royal courtesies are your due." Noticing that she was pale, +he said, "But you must not stand; you have lost blood for France, and +your wound is yet green--come." He led her to a seat and sat down by her. +"Now, then, speak out frankly, as to one who owes you much and freely +confesses it before all this courtly assemblage. What shall be your +reward? Name it." + +I was ashamed of him. And yet that was not fair, for how could he be +expected to know this marvelous child in these few weeks, when we who +thought we had known her all her life were daily seeing the clouds +uncover some new altitudes of her character whose existence was not +suspected by us before? But we are all that way: when we know a thing we +have only scorn for other people who don't happen to know it. And I was +ashamed of these courtiers, too, for the way they licked their chops, so +to speak, as envying Joan her great chance, they not knowing her any +better than the King did. A blush began to rise in Joan's cheeks at the +thought that she was working for her country for pay, and she dropped her +head and tried to hide her face, as girls always do when they find +themselves blushing; no one knows why they do, but they do, and the more +they blush the more they fail to get reconciled to it, and the more they +can't bear to have people look at them when they are doing it. The King +made it a great deal worse by calling attention to it, which is the +unkindest thing a person can do when a girl is blushing; sometimes, when +there is a big crowd of strangers, it is even likely to make her cry if +she is as young as Joan was. God knows the reason for this, it is hidden +from men. As for me, I would as soon blush as sneeze; in fact, I would +rather. However, these meditations are not of consequence: I will go on +with what I was saying. The King rallied her for blushing, and this +brought up the rest of the blood and turned her face to fire. Then he was +sorry, seeing what he had done, and tried to make her comfortable by +saying the blush was exceeding becoming to her and not to mind it--which +caused even the dog to notice it now, so of course the red in Joan's face +turned to purple, and the tears overflowed and ran down--I could have +told anybody that that would happen. The King was distressed, and saw +that the best thing to do would be to get away from this subject, so he +began to say the finest kind of things about Joan's capture of the +Tourelles, and presently when she was more composed he mentioned the +reward again and pressed her to name it. Everybody listened with anxious +interest to hear what her claim was going to be, but when her answer came +their faces showed that the thing she asked for was not what they had +been expecting. + +"Oh, dear and gracious Dauphin, I have but one desire--only one. If--" + +"Do not be afraid, my child--name it." + +"That you will not delay a day. My army is strong and valiant, and eager +to finish its work--march with me to Rheims and receive your crown." You +could see the indolent King shrink, in his butterfly clothes. + +"To Rheims--oh, impossible, my General! We march through the heart of +England's power?" + +Could those be French faces there? Not one of them lighted in response to +the girl's brave proposition, but all promptly showed satisfaction in the +King's objection. Leave this silken idleness for the rude contact of war? +None of these butterflies desired that. They passed their jeweled +comfit-boxes one to another and whispered their content in the head +butterfly's practical prudence. Joan pleaded with the King, saying: + +"Ah, I pray you do not throw away this perfect opportunity. Everything is +favorable--everything. It is as if the circumstances were specially made +for it. The spirits of our army are exalted with victory, those of the +English forces depressed by defeat. Delay will change this. Seeing us +hesitate to follow up our advantage, our men will wonder, doubt, lose +confidence, and the English will wonder, gather courage, and be bold +again. Now is the time--pritheee let us march!" + +The King shook his head, and La Tremouille, being asked for an opinion, +eagerly furnished it: + +"Sire, all prudence is against it. Think of the English strongholds along +the Loire; think of those that lie between us and Rheims!" + +He was going on, but Joan cut him short, and said, turning to him: + +"If we wait, they will all be strengthened, reinforced. Will that +advantage us?" + +"Why--no." + +"Then what is your suggestion?--what is it that you would propose to do?" + +"My judgment is to wait." + +"Wait for what?" + +The minister was obliged to hesitate, for he knew of no explanation that +would sound well. Moreover, he was not used to being catechized in this +fashion, with the eyes of a crowd of people on him, so he was irritated, +and said: + +"Matters of state are not proper matters for public discussion." + +Joan said placidly: + +"I have to beg your pardon. My trespass came of ignorance. I did not know +that matters connected with your department of the government were +matters of state." + +The minister lifted his brows in amused surprise, and said, with a touch +of sarcasm: + +"I am the King's chief minister, and yet you had the impression that +matters connected with my department are not matters of state? Pray, how +is that?" + +Joan replied, indifferently: + +"Because there is no state." + +"No state!" + +"No, sir, there is no state, and no use for a minister. France is shrunk +to a couple of acres of ground; a sheriff's constable could take care of +it; its affairs are not matters of state. The term is too large." + +The King did not blush, but burst into a hearty, careless laugh, and the +court laughed too, but prudently turned its head and did it silently. La +Tremouille was angry, and opened his mouth to speak, but the King put up +his hand, and said: + +"There--I take her under the royal protection. She has spoken the truth, +the ungilded truth--how seldom I hear it! With all this tinsel on me and +all this tinsel about me, I am but a sheriff after all--a poor shabby +two-acre sheriff--and you are but a constable," and he laughed his +cordial laugh again. "Joan, my frank, honest General, will you name your +reward? I would ennoble you. You shall quarter the crown and the lilies +of France for blazon, and with them your victorious sword to defend +them--speak the word." + +It made an eager buzz of surprise and envy in the assemblage, but Joan +shook her head and said: + +"Ah, I cannot, dear and noble Dauphin. To be allowed to work for France, +to spend one's self for France, is itself so supreme a reward that +nothing can add to it--nothing. Give me the one reward I ask, the dearest +of all rewards, the highest in your gift--march with me to Rheims and +receive your crown. I will beg it on my knees." + +But the King put his hand on her arm, and there was a really brave +awakening in his voice and a manly fire in his eye when he said: + +"No, sit. You have conquered me--it shall be as you--" + +But a warning sign from his minister halted him, and he added, to the +relief of the court: + +"Well, well, we will think of it, we will think it over and see. Does +that content you, impulsive little soldier?" + +The first part of the speech sent a glow of delight to Joan's face, but +the end of it quenched it and she looked sad, and the tears gathered in +her eyes. After a moment she spoke out with what seemed a sort of +terrified impulse, and said: + +"Oh, use me; I beseech you, use me--there is but little time!" + +"But little time?" + +"Only a year--I shall last only a year." + +"Why, child, there are fifty good years in that compact little body yet." + +"Oh, you err, indeed you do. In one little year the end will come. Ah, +the time is so short, so short; the moments are flying, and so much to be +done. Oh, use me, and quickly--it is life or death for France." + +Even those insects were sobered by her impassioned words. The King looked +very grave--grave, and strongly impressed. His eyes lit suddenly with an +eloquent fire, and he rose and drew his sword and raised it aloft; then +he brought it slowly down upon Joan's shoulder and said: + +"Ah, thou art so simple, so true, so great, so noble--and by this +accolade I join thee to the nobility of France, thy fitting place! And +for thy sake I do hereby ennoble all thy family and all thy kin; and all +their descendants born in wedlock, not only in the male but also in the +female line. And more!--more! To distinguish thy house and honor it above +all others, we add a privilege never accorded to any before in the +history of these dominions: the females of thy line shall have and hold +the right to ennoble their husbands when these shall be of inferior +degree." [Astonishment and envy flared up in every countenance when the +words were uttered which conferred this extraordinary grace. The King +paused and looked around upon these signs with quite evident +satisfaction.] "Rise, Joan of Arc, now and henceforth surnamed Du Lis, in +grateful acknowledgment of the good blow which you have struck for the +lilies of France; and they, and the royal crown, and your own victorious +sword, fit and fair company for each other, shall be grouped in you +escutcheon and be and remain the symbol of your high nobility forever." + +As my Lady Du Lis rose, the gilded children of privilege pressed forward +to welcome her to their sacred ranks and call her by her new name; but +she was troubled, and said these honors were not meet for one of her +lowly birth and station, and by their kind grace she would remain simple +Joan of Arc, nothing more--and so be called. + +Nothing more! As if there could be anything more, anything higher, +anything greater. My Lady Du Lis--why, it was tinsel, petty, perishable. +But, JOAN OF ARC! The mere sound of it sets one's pulses leaping. + + + + Chapter 24 Tinsel Trappings of Nobility + +IT WAS vexatious to see what a to-do the whole town, and next the whole +country, made over the news. Joan of Arc ennobled by the King! People +went dizzy with wonder and delight over it. You cannot imagine how she +was gaped at, stared at, envied. Why, one would have supposed that some +great and fortunate thing had happened to her. But we did not think any +great things of it. To our minds no mere human hand could add a glory to +Joan of Arc. To us she was the sun soaring in the heavens, and her new +nobility a candle atop of it; to us it was swallowed up and lost in her +own light. And she was as indifferent to it and as unconscious of it as +the other sun would have been. + +But it was different with her brothers. They were proud and happy in +their new dignity, which was quite natural. And Joan was glad it had been +conferred, when she saw how pleased they were. It was a clever thought in +the King to outflank her scruples by marching on them under shelter of +her love for her family and her kin. + +Jean and Pierre sported their coats-of-arms right away; and their society +was courted by everybody, the nobles and commons alike. The +Standard-Bearer said, with some touch of bitterness, that he could see +that they just felt good to be alive, they were so soaked with the +comfort of their glory; and didn't like to sleep at all, because when +they were asleep they didn't know they were noble, and so sleep was a +clean loss of time. And then he said: + +"They can't take precedence of me in military functions and state +ceremonies, but when it comes to civil ones and society affairs I judge +they'll cuddle coolly in behind you and the knights, and Noel and I will +have to walk behind them--hey?" + +"Yes," I said, "I think you are right." + +"I was just afraid of it--just afraid of it," said the Standard-Bearer, +with a sigh. "Afraid of it? I'm talking like a fool; of course I knew it. +Yes, I was talking like a fool." + +Noel Rainguesson said, musingly: + +"Yes, I noticed something natural about the tone of it." + +We others laughed. + +"Oh, you did, did you? You think you are very clever, don't you? I'll +take and wring your neck for you one of these days, Noel Rainguesson." + +The Sieur de Metz said: + +"Paladin, your fears haven't reached the top notch. They are away below +the grand possibilities. Didn't it occur to you that in civil and society +functions they will take precedence of all the rest of the personal +staff--every one of us?" + +"Oh, come!" + +"You'll find it's so. Look at their escutcheon. Its chiefest feature is +the lilies of France. It's royal, man, royal--do you understand the size +of that? The lilies are there by authority of the King--do you understand +the size of that? Though not in detail and in entirety, they do +nevertheless substantially quarter the arms of France in their coat. +Imagine it! consider it! measure the magnitude of it! We walk in front of +those boys? Bless you, we've done that for the last time. In my opinion +there isn't a lay lord in this whole region that can walk in front of +them, except the Duke d'Alencon, prince of the blood." + +You could have knocked the Paladin down with a feather. He seemed to +actually turn pale. He worked his lips a moment without getting anything +out; then it came: + +"I didn't know that, nor the half of it; how could I? I've been an idiot. +I see it now--I've been an idiot. I met them this morning, and sung out +hello to them just as I would to anybody. I didn't mean to be +ill-mannered, but I didn't know the half of this that you've been +telling. I've been an ass. Yes, that is all there is to it--I've been an +ass." + +Noel Rainguesson said, in a kind of weary way: + +"Yes, that is likely enough; but I don't see why you should seem +surprised at it." + +"You don't, don't you? Well, why don't you?" + +"Because I don't see any novelty about it. With some people it is a +condition which is present all the time. Now you take a condition which +is present all the time, and the results of that condition will be +uniform; this uniformity of result will in time become monotonous; +monotonousness, by the law of its being, is fatiguing. If you had +manifested fatigue upon noticing that you had been an ass, that would +have been logical, that would have been rational; whereas it seems to me +that to manifest surprise was to be again an ass, because the condition +of intellect that can enable a person to be surprised and stirred by +inert monotonousness is a--" + +"Now that is enough, Noel Rainguesson; stop where you are, before you get +yourself into trouble. And don't bother me any more for some days or a +week an it please you, for I cannot abide your clack." + +"Come, I like that! I didn't want to talk. I tried to get out of talking. +If you didn't want to hear my clack, what did you keep intruding your +conversation on me for?" + +"I? I never dreamed of such a thing." + +"Well, you did it, anyway. And I have a right to feel hurt, and I do feel +hurt, to have you treat me so. It seems to me that when a person goads, +and crowds, and in a manner forces another person to talk, it is neither +very fair nor very good-mannered to call what he says clack." + +"Oh, snuffle--do! and break your heart, you poor thing. Somebody fetch +this sick doll a sugar-rag. Look you, Sir Jean de Metz, do you feel +absolutely certain about that thing?" + +"What thing?" + +"Why, that Jean and Pierre are going to take precedence of all the lay +noblesse hereabouts except the Duke d'Alencon?" + +"I think there is not a doubt of it." + +The Standard-Bearer was deep in thoughts and dreams a few moments, then +the silk-and-velvet expanse of his vast breast rose and fell with a sigh, +and he said: + +"Dear, dear, what a lift it is! It just shows what luck can do. Well, I +don't care. I shouldn't care to be a painted accident--I shouldn't value +it. I am prouder to have climbed up to where I am just by sheer natural +merit than I would be to ride the very sun in the zenith and have to +reflect that I was nothing but a poor little accident, and got shot up +there out of somebody else's catapult. To me, merit is everything--in +fact, the only thing. All else is dross." + +Just then the bugles blew the assembly, and that cut our talk short. + + + + Chapter 25 At Last--Forward! + +THE DAYS began to waste away--and nothing decided, nothing done. The army +was full of zeal, but it was also hungry. It got no pay, the treasury was +getting empty, it was becoming impossible to feed it; under pressure of +privation it began to fall apart and disperse--which pleased the trifling +court exceedingly. Joan's distress was pitiful to see. She was obliged to +stand helpless while her victorious army dissolved away until hardly the +skeleton of it was left. + +At last one day she went to the Castle of Loches, where the King was +idling. She found him consulting with three of his councilors, Robert le +Ma\87on, a former Chancellor of France, Christophe d'Harcourt, and Gerard +Machet. The Bastard of Orleans was present also, and it is through him +that we know what happened. Joan threw herself at the King's feet and +embraced his knees, saying: + +"Noble Dauphin, prithee hold no more of these long and numerous councils, +but come, and come quickly, to Rheims and receive your crown." + +Christophe d'Harcourt asked: + +"Is it your Voices that command you to say that to the King?" + +"Yes, and urgently." + +"Then will you not tell us in the King's presence in what way the Voices +communicate with you?" + +It was another sly attempt to trap Joan into indiscreet admissions and +dangerous pretensions. But nothing came of it. Joan's answer was simple +and straightforward, and the smooth Bishop was not able to find any fault +with it. She said that when she met with people who doubted the truth of +her mission she went aside and prayed, complaining of the distrust of +these, and then the comforting Voices were heard at her ear saying, soft +and low, "Go forward, Daughter of God, and I will help thee." Then she +added, "When I hear that, the joy in my heart, oh, it is insupportable!" + +The Bastard said that when she said these words her face lit up as with a +flame, and she was like one in an ecstasy. + +Joan pleaded, persuaded, reasoned; gaining ground little by little, but +opposed step by step by the council. She begged, she implored, leave to +march. When they could answer nothing further, they granted that perhaps +it had been a mistake to let the army waste away, but how could we help +it now? how could we march without an army? + +"Raise one!" said Joan. + +"But it will take six weeks." + +"No matter--begin! let us begin!" + +"It is too late. Without doubt the Duke of Bedford has been gathering +troops to push to the succor of his strongholds on the Loire." + +"Yes, while we have been disbanding ours--and pity 'tis. But we must +throw away no more time; we must bestir ourselves." + +The King objected that he could not venture toward Rheims with those +strong places on the Loire in his path. But Joan said: + +"We will break them up. Then you can march." + +With that plan the King was willing to venture assent. He could sit +around out of danger while the road was being cleared. + +Joan came back in great spirits. Straightway everything was stirring. +Proclamations were issued calling for men, a recruiting-camp was +established at Selles in Berry, and the commons and the nobles began to +flock to it with enthusiasm. + +A deal of the month of May had been wasted; and yet by the 6th of June +Joan had swept together a new army and was ready to march. She had eight +thousand men. Think of that. Think of gathering together such a body as +that in that little region. And these were veteran soldiers, too. In +fact, most of the men in France were soldiers, when you came to that; for +the wars had lasted generations now. Yes, most Frenchmen were soldiers; +and admirable runners, too, both by practice and inheritance; they had +done next to nothing but run for near a century. But that was not their +fault. They had had no fair and proper leadership--at least leaders with +a fair and proper chance. Away back, King and Court got the habit of +being treacherous to the leaders; then the leaders easily got the habit +of disobeying the King and going their own way, each for himself and +nobody for the lot. Nobody could win victories that way. Hence, running +became the habit of the French troops, and no wonder. Yet all that those +troops needed in order to be good fighters was a leader who would attend +strictly to business--a leader with all authority in his hands in place +of a tenth of it along with nine other generals equipped with an equal +tenth apiece. They had a leader rightly clothed with authority now, and +with a head and heart bent on war of the most intensely businesslike and +earnest sort--and there would be results. No doubt of that. They had Joan +of Arc; and under that leadership their legs would lose the art and +mystery of running. + +Yes, Joan was in great spirits. She was here and there and everywhere, +all over the camp, by day and by night, pushing things. And wherever she +came charging down the lines, reviewing the troops, it was good to hear +them break out and cheer. And nobody could help cheering, she was such a +vision of young bloom and beauty and grace, and such an incarnation of +pluck and life and go! she was growing more and more ideally beautiful +every day, as was plain to be seen--and these were days of development; +for she was well past seventeen now--in fact, she was getting close upon +seventeen and a half--indeed, just a little woman, as you may say. + +The two young Counts de Laval arrived one day--fine young fellows allied +to the greatest and most illustrious houses of France; and they could not +rest till they had seen Joan of Arc. So the King sent for them and +presented them to her, and you may believe she filled the bill of their +expectations. When they heard that rich voice of hers they must have +thought it was a flute; and when they saw her deep eyes and her face, and +the soul that looked out of that face, you could see that the sight of +her stirred them like a poem, like lofty eloquence, like martial music. +One of them wrote home to his people, and in his letter he said, "It +seemed something divine to see her and hear her." Ah, yes, and it was a +true word. Truer word was never spoken. + +He saw her when she was ready to begin her march and open the campaign, +and this is what he said about it: + +"She was clothed all in white armor save her head, and in her hand she +carried a little battle-ax; and when she was ready to mount her great +black horse he reared and plunged and would not let her. Then she said, +'Lead him to the cross.' This cross was in front of the church close by. +So they led him there. Then she mounted, and he never budged, any more +than if he had been tied. Then she turned toward the door of the church +and said, in her soft womanly voice, 'You, priests and people of the +Church, make processions and pray to God for us!' Then she spurred away, +under her standard, with her little ax in her hand, crying +'Forward--march!' One of her brothers, who came eight days ago, departed +with her; and he also was clad all in white armor." + +I was there, and I saw it, too; saw it all, just as he pictures it. And I +see it yet--the little battle-ax, the dainty plumed cap, the white +armor--all in the soft June afternoon; I see it just as if it were +yesterday. And I rode with the staff--the personal staff--the staff of +Joan of Arc. + +That young count was dying to go, too, but the King held him back for the +present. But Joan had made him a promise. In his letter he said: + +"She told me that when the King starts for Rheims I shall go with him. +But God grant I may not have to wait till then, but may have a part in +the battles!" + +She made him that promise when she was taking leave of my lady the +Duchess d'Alencon. The duchess was exacting a promise, so it seemed a +proper time for others to do the like. The duchess was troubled for her +husband, for she foresaw desperate fighting; and she held Joan to her +breast, and stroked her hair lovingly, and said: + +"You must watch over him, dear, and take care of him, and send him back +to me safe. I require it of you; I will not let you go till you promise." + +Joan said: + +"I give you the promise with all my heart; and it is not just words, it +is a promise; you shall have him back without a hurt. Do you believe? And +are you satisfied with me now?" + +The duchess could not speak, but she kissed Joan on the forehead; and so +they parted. + +We left on the 6th and stopped over at Romorantin; then on the 9th Joan +entered Orleans in state, under triumphal arches, with the welcoming +cannon thundering and seas of welcoming flags fluttering in the breeze. +The Grand Staff rode with her, clothed in shining splendors of costume +and decorations: the Duke d'Alencon; the Bastard of Orleans; the Sire de +Boussac, Marshal of France; the Lord de Granville, Master of the +Crossbowmen; the Sire de Culan, Admiral of France; Ambroise de Lor; +Etienne de Vignoles, called La Hire; Gautier de Brusac, and other +illustrious captains. + +It was grand times; the usual shoutings and packed multitudes, the usual +crush to get sight of Joan; but at last we crowded through to our old +lodgings, and I saw old Boucher and the wife and that dear Catherine +gather Joan to their hearts and smother her with kisses--and my heart +ached for her so! for I could have kissed Catherine better than anybody, +and more and longer; yet was not thought of for that office, and I so +famished for it. Ah, she was so beautiful, and oh, so sweet! I had loved +her the first day I ever saw her, and from that day forth she was sacred +to me. I have carried her image in my heart for sixty-three years--all +lonely thee, yes, solitary, for it never has had company--and I am grown +so old, so old; but it, oh, it is as fresh and young and merry and +mischievous and lovely and sweet and pure and witching and divine as it +was when it crept in there, bringing benediction and peace to its +habitation so long ago, so long ago--for it has not aged a day! + + + + Chapter 26 The Last Doubts Scattered + +THIS TIME, as before, the King's last command to the generals was this: +"See to it that you do nothing without the sanction of the Maid." And +this time the command was obeyed; and would continue to be obeyed all +through the coming great days of the Loire campaign. + +That was a change! That was new! It broke the traditions. It shows you +what sort of a reputation as a commander-in-chief the child had made for +herself in ten days in the field. It was a conquering of men's doubts and +suspicions and a capturing and solidifying of men's belief and confidence +such as the grayest veteran on the Grand Staff had not been able to +achieve in thirty years. Don't you remember that when at sixteen Joan +conducted her own case in a grim court of law and won it, the old judge +spoke of her as "this marvelous child"? It was the right name, you see. + +These veterans were not going to branch out and do things without the +sanction of the Maid--that is true; and it was a great gain. But at the +same time there were some among them who still trembled at her new and +dashing war tactics and earnestly desired to modify them. And so, during +the 10th, while Joan was slaving away at her plans and issuing order +after order with tireless industry, the old-time consultations and +arguings and speechifyings were going on among certain of the generals. + +In the afternoon of that day they came in a body to hold one of these +councils of war; and while they waited for Joan to join them they +discussed the situation. Now this discussion is not set down in the +histories; but I was there, and I will speak of it, as knowing you will +trust me, I not being given to beguiling you with lies. + +Gautier de Brusac was spokesman for the timid ones; Joan's side was +resolutely upheld by d'Alencon, the Bastard, La Hire, the Admiral of +France, the Marshal de Boussac, and all the other really important +chiefs. + +De Brusac argued that the situation was very grave; that Jargeau, the +first point of attack, was formidably strong; its imposing walls +bristling with artillery; with seven thousand picked English veterans +behind them, and at their head the great Earl of Suffolk and his two +redoubtable brothers, the De la Poles. It seemed to him that the proposal +of Joan of Arc to try to take such a place by storm was a most rash and +over-daring idea, and she ought to be persuaded to relinquish it in favor +of the soberer and safer procedure of investment by regular siege. It +seemed to him that this fiery and furious new fashion of hurling masses +of men against impregnable walls of stone, in defiance of the established +laws and usages of war, was-- + +But he got no further. La Hire gave his plumed helm an impatient toss and +burst out with: + +"By God, she knows her trade, and none can teach it her!" + +And before he could get out anything more, D'Alencon was on his feet, and +the Bastard of Orleans, and a half a dozen others, all thundering at +once, and pouring out their indignant displeasure upon any and all that +mid hold, secretly or publicly, distrust of the wisdom of the +Commander-in-Chief. And when they had said their say, La Hire took a +chance again, and said: + +"There are some that never know how to change. Circumstances may change, +but those people are never able to see that they have got to change too, +to meet those circumstances. All that they know is the one beaten track +that their fathers and grandfathers have followed and that they +themselves have followed in their turn. If an earthquake come and rip the +land to chaos, and that beaten track now lead over precipices and into +morasses, those people can't learn that they must strike out a new +road--no; they will march stupidly along and follow the old one, to death +and perdition. Men, there's a new state of things; and a surpassing +military genius has perceived it with her clear eye. And a new road is +required, and that same clear eye has noted where it must go, and has +marked it out for us. The man does not live, never has lived, never will +live, that can improve upon it! The old state of things was defeat, +defeat, defeat--and by consequence we had troops with no dash, no heart, +no hope. Would you assault stone walls with such? No--there was but one +way with that kind: sit down before a place and wait, wait--starve it +out, if you could. The new case is the very opposite; it is this: men all +on fire with pluck and dash and vim and fury and energy--a restrained +conflagration! What would you do with it? Hold it down and let it smolder +and perish and go out? What would Joan of Arc do with it? Turn it loose, +by the Lord God of heaven and earth, and let it swallow up the foe in the +whirlwind of its fires! Nothing shows the splendor and wisdom of her +military genius like her instant comprehension of the size of the change +which has come about, and her instant perception of the right and only +right way to take advantage of it. With her is no sitting down and +starving out; no dilly-dallying and fooling around; no lazying, loafing, +and going to sleep; no, it is storm! storm! storm! and still storm! +storm! storm! and forever storm! storm! storm! hunt the enemy to his +hole, then turn her French hurricanes loose and carry him by storm! And +that is my sort! Jargeau? What of Jargeau, with its battlements and +towers, its devastating artillery, its seven thousand picked veterans? +Joan of Arc is to the fore, and by the splendor of God its fate is +sealed!" + +Oh, he carried them. There was not another word said about persuading +Joan to change her tactics. They sat talking comfortably enough after +that. + +By and by Joan entered, and they rose and saluted with their swords, and +she asked what their pleasure might be. La Hire said: + +"It is settled, my General. The matter concerned Jargeau. There were some +who thought we could not take the place." + +Joan laughed her pleasant laugh, her merry, carefree laugh; the laugh +that rippled so buoyantly from her lips and made old people feel young +again to hear it; and she said to the company: + +"Have no fears--indeed, there is no need nor any occasion for them. We +will strike the English boldly by assault, and you will see." Then a +faraway look came into her eyes, and I think that a picture of her home +drifted across the vision of her mind; for she said very gently, and as +one who muses, "But that I know God guides us and will give us success, I +had liefer keep sheep than endure these perils." + +We had a homelike farewell supper that evening--just the personal staff +and the family. Joan had to miss it; for the city had given a banquet in +her honor, and she had gone there in state with the Grand Staff, through +a riot of joy-bells and a sparkling Milky Way of illuminations. + +After supper some lively young folk whom we knew came in, and we +presently forgot that we were soldiers, and only remembered that we were +boys and girls and full of animal spirits and long-pent fun; and so there +was dancing, and games, and romps, and screams of laughter--just as +extravagant and innocent and noisy a good time as ever I had in my life. +Dear, dear, how long ago it was!--and I was young then. And outside, all +the while, was the measured tramp of marching battalions, belated odds +and ends of the French power gathering for the morrow's tragedy on the +grim stage of war. Yes, in those days we had those contrasts side by +side. And as I passed along to bed there was another one: the big Dwarf, +in brave new armor, sat sentry at Joan's door--the stern Spirit of War +made flesh, as it were--and on his ample shoulder was curled a kitten +asleep. + + + + Chapter 27 How Joan Took Jargeau + +WE MADE a gallant show next day when we filed out through the frowning +gates of Orleans, with banners flying and Joan and the Grand Staff in the +van of the long column. Those two young De Lavals were come now, and were +joined to the Grand Staff. Which was well; war being their proper trade, +for they were grandsons of that illustrious fighter Bertrand du Guesclin, +Constable of France in earlier days. Louis de Bourbon, the Marshal de +Rais, and the Vidame de Chartres were added also. We had a right to feel +a little uneasy, for we knew that a force of five thousand men was on its +way under Sir John Fastolfe to reinforce Jargeau, but I think we were not +uneasy, nevertheless. In truth, that force was not yet in our +neighborhood. Sir John was loitering; for some reason or other he was not +hurrying. He was losing precious time--four days at Etampes, and four +more at Janville. + +We reached Jargeau and began business at once. Joan sent forward a heavy +force which hurled itself against the outworks in handsome style, and +gained a footing and fought hard to keep it; but it presently began to +fall back before a sortie from the city. Seeing this, Joan raised her +battle-cry and led a new assault herself under a furious artillery fire. +The Paladin was struck down at her side wounded, but she snatched her +standard from his failing hand and plunged on through the ruck of flying +missiles, cheering her men with encouraging cries; and then for a good +time one had turmoil, and clash of steel, and collision and confusion of +struggling multitudes, and the hoarse bellowing of the guns; and then the +hiding of it all under a rolling firmament of smoke--a firmament through +which veiled vacancies appeared for a moment now and then, giving fitful +dim glimpses of the wild tragedy enacting beyond; and always at these +times one caught sight of that slight figure in white mail which was the +center and soul of our hope and trust, and whenever we saw that, with its +back to us and its face to the fight, we knew that all was well. At last +a great shout went up--a joyous roar of shoutings, in fact--and that was +sign sufficient that the faubourgs were ours. + +Yes, they were ours; the enemy had been driven back within the walls. On +the ground which Joan had won we camped; for night was coming on. + +Joan sent a summons to the English, promising that if they surrendered +she would allow them to go in peace and take their horses with them. +Nobody knew that she could take that strong place, but she knew it --knew +it well; yet she offered that grace--offered it in a time when such a +thing was unknown in war; in a time when it was custom and usage to +massacre the garrison and the inhabitants of captured cities without pity +or compunction--yes, even to the harmless women and children sometimes. +There are neighbors all about you who well remember the unspeakable +atrocities which Charles the Bold inflicted upon the men and women and +children of Dinant when he took that place some years ago. It was a +unique and kindly grace which Joan offered that garrison; but that was +her way, that was her loving and merciful nature--she always did her best +to save her enemy's life and his soldierly pride when she had the mastery +of him. + +The English asked fifteen days' armistice to consider the proposal in. +And Fastolfe coming with five thousand men! Joan said no. But she offered +another grace: they might take both their horses and their side-arms--but +they must go within the hour. + +Well, those bronzed English veterans were pretty hard-headed folk. They +declined again. Then Joan gave command that her army be made ready to +move to the assault at nine in the morning. Considering the deal of +marching and fighting which the men had done that day, D'Alencon thought +the hour rather early; but Joan said it was best so, and so must be +obeyed. Then she burst out with one of those enthusiasms which were +always burning in her when battle was imminent, and said: + +"Work! work! and God will work with us!" + +Yes, one might say that her motto was "Work! stick to it; keep on +working!" for in war she never knew what indolence was. And whoever will +take that motto and live by it will likely to succeed. There's many a way +to win in this world, but none of them is worth much without good hard +work back out of it. + +I think we should have lost our big Standard-Bearer that day, if our +bigger Dwarf had not been at hand to bring him out of the melee when he +was wounded. He was unconscious, and would have been trampled to death by +our own horse, if the Dwarf had not promptly rescued him and haled him to +the rear and safety. He recovered, and was himself again after two or +three hours; and then he was happy and proud, and made the most of his +wound, and went swaggering around in his bandages showing off like an +innocent big-child--which was just what he was. He was prouder of being +wounded than a really modest person would be of being killed. But there +was no harm in his vanity, and nobody minded it. He said he was hit by a +stone from a catapult--a stone the size of a man's head. But the stone +grew, of course. Before he got through with it he was claiming that the +enemy had flung a building at him. + +"Let him alone," said Noel Rainguesson. "Don't interrupt his processes. +To-morrow it will be a cathedral." + +He said that privately. And, sure enough, to-morrow it was a cathedral. I +never saw anybody with such an abandoned imagination. + +Joan was abroad at the crack of dawn, galloping here and there and +yonder, examining the situation minutely, and choosing what she +considered the most effective positions for her artillery; and with such +accurate judgment did she place her guns that her Lieutenant-General's +admiration of it still survived in his memory when his testimony was +taken at the Rehabilitation, a quarter of a century later. + +In this testimony the Duke d'Alencon said that at Jargeau that morning of +the 12th of June she made her dispositions not like a novice, but "with +the sure and clear judgment of a trained general of twenty or thirty +years' experience." + +The veteran captains of the armies of France said she was great in war in +all ways, but greatest of all in her genius for posting and handling +artillery. + +Who taught the shepherd-girl to do these marvels--she who could not read, +and had had no opportunity to study the complex arts of war? I do not +know any way to solve such a baffling riddle as that, there being no +precedent for it, nothing in history to compare it with and examine it +by. For in history there is no great general, however gifted, who arrived +at success otherwise than through able teaching and hard study and some +experience. It is a riddle which will never be guessed. I think these +vast powers and capacities were born in her, and that she applied them by +an intuition which could not err. + +At eight o'clock all movement ceased, and with it all sounds, all noise. +A mute expectancy reigned. The stillness was something awful --because it +meant so much. There was no air stirring. The flags on the towers and +ramparts hung straight down like tassels. Wherever one saw a person, that +person had stopped what he was doing, and was in a waiting attitude, a +listening attitude. We were on a commanding spot, clustered around Joan. +Not far from us, on every hand, were the lanes and humble dwellings of +these outlying suburbs. Many people were visible--all were listening, not +one was moving. A man had placed a nail; he was about to fasten something +with it to the door-post of his shop--but he had stopped. There was his +hand reaching up holding the nail; and there was his other hand n the act +of striking with the hammer; but he had forgotten everything--his head +was turned aside listening. Even children unconsciously stopped in their +play; I saw a little boy with his hoop-stick pointed slanting toward the +ground in the act of steering the hoop around the corner; and so he had +stopped and was listening--the hoop was rolling away, doing its own +steering. I saw a young girl prettily framed in an open window, a +watering-pot in her hand and window-boxes of red flowers under its +spout--but the water had ceased to flow; the girl was listening. +Everywhere were these impressive petrified forms; and everywhere was +suspended movement and that awful stillness. + +Joan of Arc raised her sword in the air. At the signal, the silence was +torn to rags; cannon after cannon vomited flames and smoke and delivered +its quaking thunders; and we saw answering tongues of fire dart from the +towers and walls of the city, accompanied by answering deep thunders, and +in a minute the walls and the towers disappeared, and in their place +stood vast banks and pyramids of snowy smoke, motionless in the dead air. +The startled girl dropped her watering-pot and clasped her hands +together, and at that moment a stone cannon-ball crashed through her fair +body. + +The great artillery duel went on, each side hammering away with all its +might; and it was splendid for smoke and noise, and most exalting to +one's spirits. The poor little town around about us suffered cruelly. The +cannon-balls tore through its slight buildings, wrecking them as if they +had been built of cards; and every moment or two one would see a huge +rock come curving through the upper air above the smoke-clouds and go +plunging down through the roofs. Fire broke out, and columns of flame and +smoke rose toward the sky. + +Presently the artillery concussions changed the weather. The sky became +overcast, and a strong wind rose and blew away the smoke that hid the +English fortresses. + +Then the spectacle was fine; turreted gray walls and towers, and +streaming bright flags, and jets of red fire and gushes of white smoke in +long rows, all standing out with sharp vividness against the deep leaden +background of the sky; and then the whizzing missiles began to knock up +the dirt all around us, and I felt no more interest in the scenery. There +was one English gun that was getting our position down finer and finer +all the time. Presently Joan pointed to it and said: + +"Fair duke, step out of your tracks, or that machine will kill you." + +The Duke d'Alencon did as he was bid; but Monsieur du Lude rashly took +his place, and that cannon tore his head off in a moment. + +Joan was watching all along for the right time to order the assault. At +last, about nine o'clock, she cried out: + +"Now--to the assault!" and the buglers blew the charge. + +Instantly we saw the body of men that had been appointed to this service +move forward toward a point where the concentrated fire of our guns had +crumbled the upper half of a broad stretch of wall to ruins; we saw this +force descend into the ditch and begin to plant the scaling-ladders. We +were soon with them. The Lieutenant-General thought the assault +premature. But Joan said: + +"Ah, gentle duke, are you afraid? Do you not know that I have promised to +send you home safe?" + +It was warm work in the ditches. The walls were crowded with men, and +they poured avalanches of stones down upon us. There was one gigantic +Englishman who did us more hurt than any dozen of his brethren. He always +dominated the places easiest of assault, and flung down exceedingly +troublesome big stones which smashed men and ladders both --then he would +near burst himself with laughing over what he had done. But the duke +settled accounts with him. He went and found the famous cannoneer, Jean +le Lorrain, and said: + +"Train your gun--kill me this demon." + +He did it with the first shot. He hit the Englishman fair in the breast +and knocked him backward into the city. + +The enemy's resistance was so effective and so stubborn that our people +began to show signs of doubt and dismay. Seeing this, Joan raised her +inspiring battle-cry and descended into the fosse herself, the Dwarf +helping her and the Paladin sticking bravely at her side with the +standard. She started up a scaling-ladder, but a great stone flung from +above came crashing down upon her helmet and stretched her, wounded and +stunned, upon the ground. But only for a moment. The Dwarf stood her upon +her feet, and straightway she started up the ladder again, crying: + +"To the assault, friends, to the assault--the English are ours! It is the +appointed hour!" + +There was a grand rush, and a fierce roar of war-cries, and we swarmed +over the ramparts like ants. The garrison fled, we pursued; Jargeau was +ours! + +The Earl of Suffolk was hemmed in and surrounded, and the Duke d'Alencon +and the Bastard of Orleans demanded that he surrender himself. But he was +a proud nobleman and came of a proud race. He refused to yield his sword +to subordinates, saying: + +"I will die rather. I will surrender to the Maid of Orleans alone, and to +no other." + +And so he did; and was courteously and honorably used by her. + +His two brothers retreated, fighting step by step, toward the bridge, we +pressing their despairing forces and cutting them down by scores. Arrived +on the bridge, the slaughter still continued. Alexander de la Pole was +pushed overboard or fell over, and was drowned. Eleven hundred men had +fallen; John de la Pole decided to give up the struggle. But he was +nearly as proud and particular as his brother of Suffolk as to whom he +would surrender to. The French officer nearest at hand was Guillaume +Renault, who was pressing him closely. Sir John said to him: + +"Are you a gentleman?" + +"Yes." + +"And a knight?" + +"No." + +Then Sir John knighted him himself there on the bridge, giving him the +accolade with English coolness and tranquillity in the midst of that +storm of slaughter and mutilation; and then bowing with high courtesy +took the sword by the blade and laid the hilt of it in the man's hand in +token of surrender. Ah, yes, a proud tribe, those De la Poles. + +It was a grand day, a memorable day, a most splendid victory. We had a +crowd of prisoners, but Joan would not allow them to be hurt. We took +them with us and marched into Orleans next day through the usual tempest +of welcome and joy. + +And this time there was a new tribute to our leader. From everywhere in +the packed streets the new recruits squeezed their way to her side to +touch the sword of Joan of Arc and draw from it somewhat of that + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, +Volume 1, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC VOL. 2 + +by Mark Twain + + + +PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC + +by THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE + +(her page and secretary) + + +In Two Volumes + + +Volume 2. + + +Freely translated out of the ancient French into modern English +from the original unpublished manuscript in the National Archives +of France + + +Contents + +Book II -- IN COURT AND CAMP Continued + +28 Joan Foretells Her Doom +29 Fierce Talbot Reconsiders +30 The Red Field of Patay +31 France Begins to Live Again +32 The Joyous News Flies Fast +33 Joan's Five Great Deeds +34 The Jests of the Burgundians +35 The Heir of France is Crowned +36 Joan Hears News from Home +37 Again to Arms +38 The King Cries "Forward!" +39 We Win, but the King Balks +40 Treachery Conquers Joan +41 The Maid Will March No More + +Book III -- TRIAL AND MARTYRDOM + +1 The Maid in Chains +2 Joan Sold to the English +3 Weaving the Net About Her +4 All Ready to Condemn +5 Fifty Experts Against a Novice +6 The Maid Baffles Her Persecutors +7 Craft That Was in Vain +8 Joan Tells of Her Visions +9 Her Sure Deliverance Foretold +10 The Inquisitors at Their Wit's End +11 The Court Reorganized for Assassination +12 Joan's Master-Stroke Diverted +13 The Third Trial Fails +14 Joan Struggles with Her Twelve Lies +15 Undaunted by Threat of Burning +16 Joan Stands Defiant Before the Rack +17 Supreme in Direst Peril +18 Condemned Yet Unafraid +19 Our Last Hopes of Rescue Fail +20 The Betrayal +21 Respited Only for Torture +22 Joan Gives the Fatal Answer +23 The Time Is at Hand +24 Joan the Martyr +Conclusion + + + + + Chapter 28 Joan Foretells Her Doom + +THE TROOPS must have a rest. Two days would be allowed for this. + +The morning of the 14th I was writing from Joan's dictation in a small +room which she sometimes used as a private office when she wanted to get +away from officials and their interruptions. Catherine Boucher came in +and sat down and said: + +"Joan, dear, I want you to talk to me." + +"Indeed, I am not sorry for that, but glad. What is in your mind?" + +"This. I scarcely slept last night, for thinking of the dangers you are +running. The Paladin told me how you made the duke stand out of the way +when the cannon-balls were flying all about, and so saved his life." + +"Well, that was right, wasn't it?" + +"Right? Yes; but you stayed there yourself. Why will you do like that? It +seems such a wanton risk." + +"Oh, no, it was not so. I was not in any danger." + +"How can you say that, Joan, with those deadly things flying all about +you?" + +Joan laughed, and tried to turn the subject, but Catherine persisted. She +said: + +"It was horribly dangerous, and it could not be necessary to stay in such +a place. And you led an assault again. Joan, it is tempting Providence. I +want you to make me a promise. I want you to promise me that you will let +others lead the assaults, if there must be assaults, and that you will +take better care of yourself in those dreadful battles. Will you?" + +But Joan fought away from the promise and did not give it. Catherine sat +troubled and discontented awhile, then she said: + +"Joan, are you going to be a soldier always? These wars are so long--so +long. They last forever and ever and ever." + +There was a glad flash in Joan's eye as she cried: + +"This campaign will do all the really hard work that is in front of it in +the next four days. The rest of it will be gentler--oh, far less bloody. +Yes, in four days France will gather another trophy like the redemption +of Orleans and make her second long step toward freedom!" + +Catherine started (and do did I); then she gazed long at Joan like one in +a trance, murmuring "four days--four days," as if to herself and +unconsciously. Finally she asked, in a low voice that had something of +awe in it: + +"Joan, tell me--how is it that you know that? For you do know it, I +think." + +"Yes," said Joan, dreamily, "I know--I know. I shall strike--and strike +again. And before the fourth day is finished I shall strike yet again." +She became silent. We sat wondering and still. This was for a whole +minute, she looking at the floor and her lips moving but uttering +nothing. Then came these words, but hardly audible: "And in a thousand +years the English power in France will not rise up from that blow." + +It made my flesh creep. It was uncanny. She was in a trance again--I +could see it--just as she was that day in the pastures of Domremy when +she prophesied about us boys in the war and afterward did not know that +she had done it. She was not conscious now; but Catherine did not know +that, and so she said, in a happy voice: + +"Oh, I believe it, I believe it, and I am so glad! Then you will come +back and bide with us all your life long, and we will love you so, and +honor you!" + +A scarcely perceptible spasm flitted across Joan's face, and the dreamy +voice muttered: + +"Before two years are sped I shall die a cruel death!" + +I sprang forward with a warning hand up. That is why Catherine did not +scream. She was going to do that--I saw it plainly. Then I whispered her +to slip out of the place, and say nothing of what had happened. I said +Joan was asleep--asleep and dreaming. Catherine whispered back, and said: + +"Oh, I am so grateful that it is only a dream! It sounded like prophecy." +And she was gone. + +Like prophecy! I knew it was prophecy; and I sat down crying, as knowing +we should lose her. Soon she started, shivering slightly, and came to +herself, and looked around and saw me crying there, and jumped out of her +chair and ran to me all in a whirl of sympathy and compassion, and put +her hand on my head, and said: + +"My poor boy! What is it? Look up and tell me." + +I had to tell her a lie; I grieved to do it, but there was no other way. +I picked up an old letter from my table, written by Heaven knows who, +about some matter Heaven knows what, and told her I had just gotten it +from Pere Fronte, and that in it it said the children's Fairy Tree had +been chopped down by some miscreant or other, and-- I got no further. She +snatched the letter from my hand and searched it up and down and all +over, turning it this way and that, and sobbing great sobs, and the tears +flowing down her cheeks, and ejaculating all the time, "Oh, cruel, cruel! +how could any be so heartless? Ah, poor Arbre Fee de Bourlemont gone--and +we children loved it so! Show me the place where it says it!" + +And I, still lying, showed her the pretended fatal words on the pretended +fatal page, and she gazed at them through her tears, and said she could +see herself that they were hateful, ugly words--they "had the very look +of it." + +Then we heard a strong voice down the corridor announcing: + +"His majesty's messenger--with despatches for her Excellency the +Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of France!" + + + + 29 Fierce Talbot Reconsiders + +I KNEW she had seen the wisdom of the Tree. But when? I could not know. +Doubtless before she had lately told the King to use her, for that she +had but one year left to work in. It had not occurred to me at the time, +but the conviction came upon me now that at that time she had already +seen the Tree. It had brought her a welcome message; that was plain, +otherwise she could not have been so joyous and light-hearted as she had +been these latter days. The death-warning had nothing dismal about it for +her; no, it was remission of exile, it was leave to come home. + +Yes, she had seen the Tree. No one had taken the prophecy to heart which +she made to the King; and for a good reason, no doubt; no one wanted to +take it to heart; all wanted to banish it away and forget it. And all had +succeeded, and would go on to the end placid and comfortable. All but me +alone. I must carry my awful secret without any to help me. A heavy load, +a bitter burden; and would cost me a daily heartbreak. She was to die; +and so soon. I had never dreamed of that. How could I, and she so strong +and fresh and young, and every day earning a new right to a peaceful and +honored old age? For at that time I though old age valuable. I do not +know why, but I thought so. All young people think it, I believe, they +being ignorant and full of superstitions. She had seen the Tree. All that +miserable night those ancient verses went floating back and forth through +my brain: + + And when, in exile wand'ring, we + Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee, + Oh, rise upon our sight! + +But at dawn the bugles and the drums burst through the dreamy hush of the +morning, and it was turn out all! mount and ride. For there was red work +to be done. + +We marched to Meung without halting. There we carried the bridge by +assault, and left a force to hold it, the rest of the army marching away +next morning toward Beaugency, where the lion Talbot, the terror of the +French, was in command. When we arrived at that place, the English +retired into the castle and we sat down in the abandoned town. + +Talbot was not at the moment present in person, for he had gone away to +watch for and welcome Fastolfe and his reinforcement of five thousand +men. + +Joan placed her batteries and bombarded the castle till night. Then some +news came: Richemont, Constable of France, this long time in disgrace +with the King, largely because of the evil machinations of La Tremouille +and his party, was approaching with a large body of men to offer his +services to Joan--and very much she needed them, now that Fastolfe was so +close by. Richemont had wanted to join us before, when we first marched +on Orleans; but the foolish King, slave of those paltry advisers of his, +warned him to keep his distance and refused all reconciliation with him. + +I go into these details because they are important. Important because +they lead up to the exhibition of a new gift in Joan's extraordinary +mental make-up--statesmanship. It is a sufficiently strange thing to find +that great quality in an ignorant country-girl of seventeen and a half, +but she had it. + +Joan was for receiving Richemont cordially, and so was La Hire and the +two young Lavals and other chiefs, but the Lieutenant-General, d'Alencon, +strenuously and stubbornly opposed it. He said he had absolute orders +from the King to deny and defy Richemont, and that if they were +overridden he would leave the army. This would have been a heavy +disaster, indeed. But Joan set herself the task of persuading him that +the salvation of France took precedence of all minor things--even the +commands of a sceptered ass; and she accomplished it. She persuaded him +to disobey the King in the interest of the nation, and to be reconciled +to Count Richemont and welcome him. That was statesmanship; and of the +highest and soundest sort. Whatever thing men call great, look for it in +Joan of Arc, and there you will find it. + +In the early morning, June 17th, the scouts reported the approach of +Talbot and Fastolfe with Fastolfe's succoring force. Then the drums beat +to arms; and we set forth to meet the English, leaving Richemont and his +troops behind to watch the castle of Beaugency and keep its garrison at +home. By and by we came in sight of the enemy. Fastolfe had tried to +convince Talbot that it would be wisest to retreat and not risk a battle +with Joan at this time, but distribute the new levies among the English +strongholds of the Loire, thus securing them against capture; then be +patient and wait--wait for more levies from Paris; let Joan exhaust her +army with fruitless daily skirmishing; then at the right time fall upon +her in resistless mass and annihilate her. He was a wise old experienced +general, was Fastolfe. But that fierce Talbot would hear of no delay. He +was in a rage over the punishment which the Maid had inflicted upon him +at Orleans and since, and he swore by God and Saint George that he would +have it out with her if he had to fight her all alone. So Fastolfe +yielded, though he said they were now risking the loss of everything +which the English had gained by so many years' work and so many hard +knocks. + +The enemy had taken up a strong position, and were waiting, in order of +battle, with their archers to the front and a stockade before them. + +Night was coming on. A messenger came from the English with a rude +defiance and an offer of battle. But Joan's dignity was not ruffled, her +bearing was not discomposed. She said to the herald: + +"Go back and say it is too late to meet to-night; but to-morrow, please +God and our Lady, we will come to close quarters." + +The night fell dark and rainy. It was that sort of light steady rain +which falls so softly and brings to one's spirit such serenity and peace. +About ten o'clock D'Alencon, the Bastard of Orleans, La Hire, Pothon of +Saintrailles, and two or three other generals came to our headquarters +tent, and sat down to discuss matters with Joan. Some thought it was a +pity that Joan had declined battle, some thought not. Then Pothon asked +her why she had declined it. She said: + +"There was more than one reason. These English are ours--they cannot get +away from us. Wherefore there is no need to take risks, as at other +times. The day was far spent. It is good to have much time and the fair +light of day when one's force is in a weakened state--nine hundred of us +yonder keeping the bridge of Meung under the Marshal de Rais, fifteen +hundred with the Constable of France keeping the bridge and watching the +castle of Beaugency." + +Dunois said: + +"I grieve for this decision, Excellency, but it cannot be helped. And the +case will be the same the morrow, as to that." + +Joan was walking up and down just then. She laughed her affectionate, +comrady laugh, and stopping before that old war-tiger she put her small +hand above his head and touched one of his plumes, saying: + +"Now tell me, wise man, which feather is it that I touch?" + +"In sooth, Excellency, that I cannot." + +"Name of God, Bastard, Bastard! you cannot tell me this small thing, yet +are bold to name a large one--telling us what is in the stomach of the +unborn morrow: that we shall not have those men. Now it is my thought +that they will be with us." + +That made a stir. All wanted to know why she thought that. But La Hire +took the word and said: + +"Let be. If she thinks it, that is enough. It will happen." + +Then Pothon of Santrailles said: + +"There were other reasons for declining battle, according to the saying +of your Excellency?" + +"Yes. One was that we being weak and the day far gone, the battle might +not be decisive. When it is fought it must be decisive. And it shall be." + +"God grant it, and amen. There were still other reasons?" + +"One other--yes." She hesitated a moment, then said: "This was not the +day. To-morrow is the day. It is so written." + +They were going to assail her with eager questionings, but she put up her +hand and prevented them. Then she said: + +"It will be the most noble and beneficent victory that God has vouchsafed +for France at any time. I pray you question me not as to whence or how I +know this thing, but be content that it is so." + +There was pleasure in every face, and conviction and high confidence. A +murmur of conversation broke out, but that was interrupted by a messenger +from the outposts who brought news--namely, that for an hour there had +been stir and movement in the English camp of a sort unusual at such a +time and with a resting army, he said. Spies had been sent under cover of +the rain and darkness to inquire into it. They had just come back and +reported that large bodies of men had been dimly made out who were +slipping stealthily away in the direction of Meung. + +The generals were very much surprised, as any might tell from their +faces. + +"It is a retreat," said Joan. + +"It has that look," said D'Alencon. + +"It certainly has," observed the Bastard and La Hire. + +"It was not to be expected," said Louis de Bourbon, "but one can divine +the purpose of it." + +"Yes," responded Joan. "Talbot has reflected. His rash brain has cooled. +He thinks to take the bridge of Meung and escape to the other side of the +river. He knows that this leaves his garrison of Beaugency at the mercy +of fortune, to escape our hands if it can; but there is no other course +if he would avoid this battle, and that he also knows. But he shall not +get the bridge. We will see to that." + +"Yes," said D'Alencon, "we must follow him, and take care of that matter. +What of Beaugency?" + +"Leave Beaugency to me, gentle duke; I will have it in two hours, and at +no cost of blood." + +"It is true, Excellency. You will but need to deliver this news there and +receive the surrender." + +"Yes. And I will be with you at Meung with the dawn, fetching the +Constable and his fifteen hundred; and when Talbot knows that Beaugency +has fallen it will have an effect upon him." + +"By the mass, yes!" cried La Hire. "He will join his Meung garrison to +his army and break for Paris. Then we shall have our bridge force with us +again, along with our Beaugency watchers, and be stronger for our great +day's work by four-and-twenty hundred able soldiers, as was here promised +within the hour. Verily this Englishman is doing our errands for us and +saving us much blood and trouble. Orders, Excellency--give us orders!" + +"They are simple. Let the men rest three hours longer. At one o'clock the +advance-guard will march, under our command, with Pothon of Saintrailles +as second; the second division will follow at two under the +Lieutenant-General. Keep well in the rear of the enemy, and see to it +that you avoid an engagement. I will ride under guard to Beaugency and +make so quick work there that Ii and the Constable of France will join +you before dawn with his men." + +She kept her word. Her guard mounted and we rode off through the +puttering rain, taking with us a captured English officer to confirm +Joan's news. We soon covered the journey and summoned the castle. Richard +Guetin, Talbot's lieutenant, being convinced that he and his five hundred +men were left helpless, conceded that it would be useless to try to hold +out. He could not expect easy terms, yet Joan granted them nevertheless. +His garrison could keep their horses and arms, and carry away property to +the value of a silver mark per man. They could go whither they pleased, +but must not take arms against France again under ten days. + +Before dawn we were with our army again, and with us the Constable and +nearly all his men, for we left only a small garrison in Beaugency +castle. We heard the dull booming of cannon to the front, and knew that +Talbot was beginning his attack on the bridge. But some time before it +was yet light the sound ceased and we heard it no more. + +Guetin had sent a messenger through our lines under a safe-conduct given +by Joan, to tell Talbot of the surrender. Of course this poursuivant had +arrived ahead of us. Talbot had held it wisdom to turn now and retreat +upon Paris. When daylight came he had disappeared; and with him Lord +Scales and the garrison of Meung. + +What a harvest of English strongholds we had reaped in those three +days!--strongholds which had defied France with quite cool confidence and +plenty of it until we came. + + + + 30 The Red Field of Patay + +WHEN THE morning broke at last on that forever memorable 18th of June, +thee was no enemy discoverable anywhere, as I have said. But that did not +trouble me. I knew we should find him, and that we should strike him; +strike him the promised blow--the one from which the English power in +France would not rise up in a thousand years, as Joan had said in her +trance. + +The enemy had plunged into the wide plains of La Beauce--a roadless waste +covered with bushes, with here and there bodies of forest trees--a region +where an army would be hidden from view in a very little while. We found +the trail in the soft wet earth and followed it. It indicated an orderly +march; no confusion, no panic. + +But we had to be cautious. In such a piece of country we could walk into +an ambush without any trouble. Therefore Joan sent bodies of cavalry +ahead under La Hire, Pothon, and other captains, to feel the way. Some of +the other officers began to show uneasiness; this sort of +hide-and-go-seek business troubled them and made their confidence a +little shaky. Joan divined their state of mind and cried out impetuously: + +"Name of God, what would you? We must smite these English, and we will. +They shall not escape us. Though they were hung to the clouds we would +get them!" + +By and by we were nearing Patay; it was about a league away. Now at this +time our reconnaissance, feeling its way in the bush, frightened a deer, +and it went bounding away and was out of sight in a moment. Then hardly a +minute later a dull great shout went up in the distance toward Patay. It +was the English soldiery. They had been shut up in a garrison so long on +moldy food that they could not keep their delight to themselves when this +fine fresh meat came springing into their midst. Poor creature, it had +wrought damage to a nation which loved it well. For the French knew where +the English were now, whereas the English had no suspicion of where the +French were. + +La Hire halted where he was, and sent back the tidings. Joan was radiant +with joy. The Duke d'Alencon said to her: + +"Very well, we have found them; shall we fight them?" + +"Have you good spurs, prince?" + +"Why? Will they make us run away?" + +"Nenni, en nom de Dieu! These English are ours--they are lost. They will +fly. Who overtakes them will need good spurs. Forward--close up!" + +By the time we had come up with La Hire the English had discovered our +presence. Talbot's force was marching in three bodies. First his +advance-guard; then his artillery; then his battle-corps a good way in +the rear. He was now out of the bush and in a fair open country. He at +once posted his artillery, his advance-guard, and five hundred picked +archers along some hedges where the French would be obliged to pass, and +hoped to hold this position till his battle-corps could come up. Sir John +Fastolfe urged the battle-corps into a gallop. Joan saw her opportunity +and ordered La Hire to advance--which La Hire promptly did, launching his +wild riders like a storm-wind, his customary fashion. + +The duke and the Bastard wanted to follow, but Joan said: + +"Not yet--wait." + +So they waited--impatiently, and fidgeting in their saddles. But she was +ready--gazing straight before her, measuring, weighing, calculating--by +shades, minutes, fractions of minutes, seconds--with all her great soul +present, in eye, and set of head, and noble pose of body--but patient, +steady, master of herself--master of herself and of the situation. + +And yonder, receding, receding, plumes lifting and falling, lifting and +falling, streamed the thundering charge of La Hire's godless crew, La +Hire's great figure dominating it and his sword stretched aloft like a +flagstaff. + +"Oh, Satan and his Hellions, see them go!" Somebody muttered it in deep +admiration. + +And now he was closing up--closing up on Fastolfe's rushing corps. + +And now he struck it--struck it hard, and broke its order. It lifted the +duke and the Bastard in their saddles to see it; and they turned, +trembling with excitement, to Joan, saying: + +"Now!" + +But she put up her hand, still gazing, weighing, calculating, and said +again: + +"Wait--not yet." + +Fastolfe's hard-driven battle-corps raged on like an avalanche toward the +waiting advance-guard. Suddenly these conceived the idea that it was +flying in panic before Joan; and so in that instant it broke and swarmed +away in a mad panic itself, with Talbot storming and cursing after it. + +Now was the golden time. Joan drove her spurs home and waved the advance +with her sword. "Follow me!" she cried, and bent her head to her horse's +neck and sped away like the wind! + +We went down into the confusion of that flying rout, and for three long +hours we cut and hacked and stabbed. At last the bugles sang "Halt!" + +The Battle of Patay was won. + +Joan of Arc dismounted, and stood surveying that awful field, lost in +thought. Presently she said: + +"The praise is to God. He has smitten with a heavy hand this day." After +a little she lifted her face, and looking afar off, said, with the manner +of one who is thinking aloud, "In a thousand years--a thousand years--the +English power in France will not rise up from this blow." She stood again +a time thinking, then she turned toward her grouped generals, and there +was a glory in her face and a noble light in her eye; and she said: + +"Oh, friends, friends, do you know?--do you comprehend? France is on the +way to be free!" + +"And had never been, but for Joan of Arc!" said La Hire, passing before +her and bowing low, the other following and doing likewise; he muttering +as he went, "I will say it though I be damned for it." Then battalion +after battalion of our victorious army swung by, wildly cheering. And +they shouted, "Live forever, Maid of Orleans, live forever!" while Joan, +smiling, stood at the salute with her sword. + +This was not the last time I saw the Maid of Orleans on the red field of +Patay. Toward the end of the day I came upon her where the dead and dying +lay stretched all about in heaps and winrows; our men had mortally +wounded an English prisoner who was too poor to pay a ransom, and from a +distance she had seen that cruel thing done; and had galloped to the +place and sent for a priest, and now she was holding the head of her +dying enemy in her lap, and easing him to his death with comforting soft +words, just as his sister might have done; and the womanly tears running +down her face all the time. [1] + +[1] Lord Ronald Gower (Joan of Arc, p. 82) says: "Michelet discovered +this story in the deposition of Joan of Arc's page, Louis de Conte, who +was probably an eye-witness of the scene." This is true. It was a part of +the testimony of the author of these "Personal Recollections of Joan of +Arc," given by him in the Rehabilitation proceedings of 1456. +--TRANSLATOR. + + + + 31 France Begins to Live Again + +JOAN HAD said true: France was on the way to be free. + +The war called the Hundred Years' War was very sick to-day. Sick on its +English side--for the very first time since its birth, ninety-one years +gone by. + +Shall we judge battles by the numbers killed and the ruin wrought? Or +shall we not rather judge them by the results which flowed from them? Any +one will say that a battle is only truly great or small according to its +results. Yes, any one will grant that, for it is the truth. + +Judged by results, Patay's place is with the few supremely great and +imposing battles that have been fought since the peoples of the world +first resorted to arms for the settlement of their quarrels. So judged, +it is even possible that Patay has no peer among that few just mentioned, +but stand alone, as the supremest of historic conflicts. For when it +began France lay gasping out the remnant of an exhausted life, her case +wholly hopeless in the view of all political physicians; when it ended, +three hours later, she was convalescent. Convalescent, and nothing +requisite but time and ordinary nursing to bring her back to perfect +health. The dullest physician of them all could see this, and there was +none to deny it. + +Many death-sick nations have reached convalescence through a series of +battles, a procession of battles, a weary tale of wasting conflicts +stretching over years, but only one has reached it in a single day and by +a single battle. That nation is France, and that battle Patay. + +Remember it and be proud of it; for you are French, and it is the +stateliest fact in the long annals of your country. There it stands, with +its head in the clouds! And when you grow up you will go on pilgrimage to +the field of Patay, and stand uncovered in the presence of--what? A +monument with its head in the clouds? Yes. For all nations in all times +have built monuments on their battle-fields to keep green the memory of +the perishable deed that was wrought there and of the perishable name of +him who wrought it; and will France neglect Patay and Joan of Arc? Not +for long. And will she build a monument scaled to their rank as compared +with the world's other fields and heroes? Perhaps--if there be room for +it under the arch of the sky. + +But let us look back a little, and consider certain strange and +impressive facts. The Hundred Years' War began in 1337. It raged on and +on, year after year and year after year; and at last England stretched +France prone with that fearful blow at Crecy. But she rose and struggled +on, year after year, and at last again she went down under another +devastating blow--Poitiers. She gathered her crippled strength once more, +and the war raged on, and on, and still on, year after year, decade after +decade. Children were born, grew up, married, died--the war raged on; +their children in turn grew up, married, died--the war raged on; their +children, growing, saw France struck down again; this time under the +incredible disaster of Agincourt--and still the war raged on, year after +year, and in time these children married in their turn. + +France was a wreck, a ruin, a desolation. The half of it belonged to +England, with none to dispute or deny the truth; the other half belonged +to nobody--in three months would be flying the English flag; the French +King was making ready to throw away his crown and flee beyond the seas. + +Now came the ignorant country-maid out of her remote village and +confronted this hoary war, this all-consuming conflagration that had +swept the land for three generations. Then began the briefest and most +amazing campaign that is recorded in history. In seven weeks it was +finished. In seven weeks she hopelessly crippled that gigantic war that +was ninety-one years old. At Orleans she struck it a staggering blow; on +the field of Patay she broke its back. + +Think of it. Yes, one can do that; but understand it? Ah, that is another +matter; none will ever be able to comprehend that stupefying marvel. + +Seven weeks--with her and there a little bloodshed. Perhaps the most of +it, in any single fight, at Patay, where the English began six thousand +strong and left two thousand dead upon the field. It is said and believed +that in three battles alone--Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt--near a +hundred thousand Frenchmen fell, without counting the thousand other +fights of that long war. The dead of that war make a mournful long +list--an interminable list. Of men slain in the field the count goes by +tens of thousands; of innocent women and children slain by bitter +hardship and hunger it goes by that appalling term, millions. + +It was an ogre, that war; an ogre that went about for near a hundred +years, crunching men and dripping blood from its jaws. And with her +little hand that child of seventeen struck him down; and yonder he lies +stretched on the field of Patay, and will not get up any more while this +old world lasts. + + + + 32 The Joyous News Flies Fast + +THE GREAT news of Patay was carried over the whole of France in twenty +hours, people said. I do not know as to that; but one thing is sure, +anyway: the moment a man got it he flew shouting and glorifying God and +told his neighbor; and that neighbor flew with it to the next homestead; +and so on and so on without resting the word traveled; and when a man got +it in the night, at what hour soever, he jumped out of his bed and bore +the blessed message along. And the joy that went with it was like the +light that flows across the land when an eclipse is receding from the +face of the sun; and, indeed, you may say that France had lain in an +eclipse this long time; yes, buried in a black gloom which these +beneficent tidings were sweeping away now before the onrush of their +white splendor. + +The news beat the flying enemy to Yeuville, and the town rose against its +English masters and shut the gates against their brethren. It flew to +Mont Pipeau, to Saint Simon, and to this, that, and the other English +fortress; and straightway the garrison applied the torch and took to the +fields and the woods. A detachment of our army occupied Meung and +pillaged it. + +When we reached Orleans that tow was as much as fifty times insaner with +joy than we had ever seen it before--which is saying much. Night had just +fallen, and the illuminations were on so wonderful a scale that we seemed +to plow through seas of fire; and as to the noise--the hoarse cheering of +the multitude, the thundering of cannon, the clash of bells--indeed, +there was never anything like it. And everywhere rose a new cry that +burst upon us like a storm when the column entered the gates, and +nevermore ceased: "Welcome to Joan of Arc--way for the SAVIOR OF FRANCE!" +And there was another cry: "Crecy is avenged! Poitiers is avenged! +Agincourt is avenged!--Patay shall live forever!" + +Mad? Why, you never could imagine it in the world. The prisoners were in +the center of the column. When that came along and the people caught +sight of their masterful old enemy Talbot, that had made them dance so +long to his grim war-music, you may imagine what the uproar was like if +you can, for I can not describe it. They were so glad to see him that +presently they wanted to have him out and hang him; so Joan had him +brought up to the front to ride in her protection. They made a striking +pair. + + + + 33 Joan's Five Great Deeds + +YES, ORLEANS was in a delirium of felicity. She invited the King, and +made sumptuous preparations to receive him, but--he didn't come. He was +simply a serf at that time, and La Tremouille was his master. Master and +serf were visiting together at the master's castle of Sully-sur-Loire. + +At Beaugency Joan had engaged to bring about a reconciliation between the +Constable Richemont and the King. She took Richemont to Sully-sur-Loire +and made her promise good. + +The great deeds of Joan of Arc are five: + +1. The Raising of the Siege. + +2. The Victory of Patay. + +3. The Reconciliation at Sully-sur-Loire. + +4. The Coronation of the King. + +5. The Bloodless March. + +We shall come to the Bloodless March presently (and the Coronation). It +was the victorious long march which Joan made through the enemy's country +from Gien to Rheims, and thence to the gates of Paris, capturing every +English town and fortress that barred the road, from the beginning of the +journey to the end of it; and this by the mere force of her name, and +without shedding a drop of blood--perhaps the most extraordinary campaign +in this regard in history--this is the most glorious of her military +exploits. + +The Reconciliation was one of Joan's most important achievements. No one +else could have accomplished it; and, in fact, no one else of high +consequence had any disposition to try. In brains, in scientific warfare, +and in statesmanship the Constable Richemont was the ablest man in +France. His loyalty was sincere; his probity was above suspicion--(and it +made him sufficiently conspicuous in that trivial and conscienceless +Court). + +In restoring Richemont to France, Joan made thoroughly secure the +successful completion of the great work which she had begun. She had +never seen Richemont until he came to her with his little army. Was it +not wonderful that at a glance she should know him for the one man who +could finish and perfect her work and establish it in perpetuity? How was +it that that child was able to do this? It was because she had the +"seeing eye," as one of our knights had once said. Yes, she had that +great gift--almost the highest and rarest that has been granted to man. +Nothing of an extraordinary sort was still to be done, yet the remaining +work could not safely be left to the King's idiots; for it would require +wise statesmanship and long and patient though desultory hammering of the +enemy. Now and then, for a quarter of a century yet, there would be a +little fighting to do, and a handy man could carry that on with small +disturbance to the rest of the country; and little by little, and with +progressive certainty, the English would disappear from France. + +And that happened. Under the influence of Richemont the King became at a +later time a man--a man, a king, a brave and capable and determined +soldier. Within six years after Patay he was leading storming parties +himself; fighting in fortress ditches up to his waist in water, and +climbing scaling-ladders under a furious fire with a pluck that would +have satisfied even Joan of Arc. In time he and Richemont cleared away +all the English; even from regions where the people had been under their +mastership for three hundred years. In such regions wise and careful work +was necessary, for the English rule had been fair and kindly; and men who +have been ruled in that way are not always anxious for a change. + +Which of Joan's five chief deeds shall we call the chiefest? It is my +thought that each in its turn was that. This is saying that, taken as a +whole, they equalized each other, and neither was then greater than its +mate. + +Do you perceive? Each was a stage in an ascent. To leave out one of them +would defeat the journey; to achieve one of them at the wrong time and in +the wrong place would have the same effect. + +Consider the Coronation. As a masterpiece of diplomacy, where can you +find its superior in our history? Did the King suspect its vast +importance? No. Did his ministers? No. Did the astute Bedford, +representative of the English crown? No. An advantage of incalculable +importance was here under the eyes of the King and of Bedford; the King +could get it by a bold stroke, Bedford could get it without an effort; +but, being ignorant of its value, neither of them put forth his hand. Of +all the wise people in high office in France, only one knew the priceless +worth of this neglected prize--the untaught child of seventeen, Joan of +Arc--and she had known it from the beginning as an essential detail of +her mission. + +How did she know it? It was simple: she was a peasant. That tells the +whole story. She was of the people and knew the people; those others +moved in a loftier sphere and knew nothing much about them. We make +little account of that vague, formless, inert mass, that mighty +underlying force which we call "the people"--an epithet which carries +contempt with it. It is a strange attitude; for at bottom we know that +the throne which the people support stands, and that when that support is +removed nothing in this world can save it. + +Now, then, consider this fact, and observe its importance. Whatever the +parish priest believes his flock believes; they love him, they revere +him; he is their unfailing friend, their dauntless protector, their +comforter in sorrow, their helper in their day of need; he has their +whole confidence; what he tells them to do, that they will do, with a +blind and affectionate obedience, let it cost what it may. Add these +facts thoughtfully together, and what is the sum? This: The parish priest +governs the nation. What is the King, then, if the parish priest +withdraws his support and deny his authority? Merely a shadow and no +King; let him resign. + +Do you get that idea? Then let us proceed. A priest is consecrated to his +office by the awful hand of God, laid upon him by his appointed +representative on earth. That consecration is final; nothing can undo it, +nothing can remove it. Neither the Pope nor any other power can strip the +priest of his office; God gave it, and it is forever sacred and secure. +The dull parish knows all this. To priest and parish, whatsoever is +anointed of God bears an office whose authority can no longer be disputed +or assailed. To the parish priest, and to his subjects the nation, an +uncrowned king is a similitude of a person who has been named for holy +orders but has not been consecrated; he has no office, he has not been +ordained, another may be appointed to his place. In a word, an uncrowned +king is a doubtful king; but if God appoint him and His servant the +Bishop anoint him, the doubt is annihilated; the priest and the parish +are his loyal subjects straightway, and while he lives they will +recognize no king but him. + +To Joan of Arc, the peasant-girl, Charles VII. was no King until he was +crowned; to her he was only the Dauphin; that is to say, the heir. If I +have ever made her call him King, it was a mistake; she called him the +Dauphin, and nothing else until after the Coronation. It shows you as in +a mirror--for Joan was a mirror in which the lowly hosts of France were +clearly reflected--that to all that vast underlying force called "the +people," he was no King but only Dauphin before his crowning, and was +indisputably and irrevocably King after it. + +Now you understand what a colossal move on the political chess-board the +Coronation was. Bedford realized this by and by, and tried to patch up +his mistake by crowning his King; but what good could that do? None in +the world. + +Speaking of chess, Joan's great acts may be likened to that game. Each +move was made in its proper order, and it as great and effective because +it was made in its proper order and not out of it. Each, at the time +made, seemed the greatest move; but the final result made them all +recognizable as equally essential and equally important. This is the +game, as played: + +1. Joan moves to Orleans and Patay--check. + +2. Then moves the Reconciliation--but does not proclaim check, it being a +move for position, and to take effect later. + +3. Next she moves the Coronation--check. + +4. Next, the Bloodless March--check. + +5. Final move (after her death), the reconciled Constable Richemont to +the French King's elbow--checkmate. + + + + 34 The Jests of the Burgundians + +THE CAMPAIGN of the Loire had as good as opened the road to Rheims. There +was no sufficient reason now why the Coronation should not take place. +The Coronation would complete the mission which Joan had received from +heaven, and then she would be forever done with war, and would fly home +to her mother and her sheep, and never stir from the hearthstone and +happiness any more. That was her dream; and she could not rest, she was +so impatient to see it fulfilled. She became so possessed with this +matter that I began to lose faith in her two prophecies of her early +death--and, of course, when I found that faith wavering I encouraged it +to waver all the more. + +The King was afraid to start to Rheims, because the road was mile-posted +with English fortresses, so to speak. Joan held them in light esteem and +not things to be afraid of in the existing modified condition of English +confidence. + +And she was right. As it turned out, the march to Rheims was nothing but +a holiday excursion: Joan did not even take any artillery along, she was +so sure it would not be necessary. We marched from Gien twelve thousand +strong. This was the 29th of June. The Maid rode by the side of the King; +on his other side was the Duke d'Alencon. After the duke followed three +other princes of the blood. After these followed the Bastard of Orleans, +the Marshal de Boussac, and the Admiral of France. After these came La +Hire, Saintrailles, Tremouille, and a long procession of knights and +nobles. + +We rested three days before Auxerre. The city provisioned the army, and a +deputation waited upon the King, but we did not enter the place. + +Saint-Florentin opened its gates to the King. + +On the 4th of July we reached Saint-Fal, and yonder lay Troyes before +us--a town which had a burning interest for us boys; for we remembered +how seven years before, in the pastures of Domremy, the Sunflower came +with his black flag and brought us the shameful news of the Treaty of +Troyes--that treaty which gave France to England, and a daughter of our +royal line in marriage to the Butcher of Agincourt. That poor town was +not to blame, of course; yet we flushed hot with that old memory, and +hoped there would be a misunderstanding here, for we dearly wanted to +storm the place and burn it. It was powerfully garrisoned by English and +Burgundian soldiery, and was expecting reinforcements from Paris. Before +night we camped before its gates and made rough work with a sortie which +marched out against us. + +Joan summoned Troyes to surrender. Its commandant, seeing that she had no +artillery, scoffed at the idea, and sent her a grossly insulting reply. +Five days we consulted and negotiated. No result. The King was about to +turn back now and give up. He was afraid to go on, leaving this strong +place in his rear. Then La Hire put in a word, with a slap in it for some +of his Majesty's advisers: + +"The Maid of Orleans undertook this expedition of her own motion; and it +is my mind that it is her judgment that should be followed here, and not +that of any other, let him be of whatsoever breed and standing he may." + +There was wisdom and righteousness in that. So the King sent for the +Maid, and asked her how she thought the prospect looked. She said, +without any tone of doubt or question in her voice: + +"In three days' time the place is ours." + +The smug Chancellor put in a word now: + +"If we were sure of it we would wait her six days." + +"Six days, forsooth! Name of God, man, we will enter the gates +to-morrow!" + +Then she mounted, and rode her lines, crying out: + +"Make preparation--to your work, friends, to your work! We assault at +dawn!" + +She worked hard that night, slaving away with her own hands like a common +soldier. She ordered fascines and fagots to be prepared and thrown into +the fosse, thereby to bridge it; and in this rough labor she took a man's +share. + +At dawn she took her place at the head of the storming force and the +bugles blew the assault. At that moment a flag of truce was flung to the +breeze from the walls, and Troyes surrendered without firing a shot. + +The next day the King with Joan at his side and the Paladin bearing her +banner entered the town in state at the head of the army. And a goodly +army it was now, for it had been growing ever bigger and bigger from the +first. + +And now a curious thing happened. By the terms of the treaty made with +the town the garrison of English and Burgundian soldiery were to be +allowed to carry away their "goods" with them. This was well, for +otherwise how would they buy the wherewithal to live? Very well; these +people were all to go out by the one gate, and at the time set for them +to depart we young fellows went to that gate, along with the Dwarf, to +see the march-out. Presently here they came in an interminable file, the +foot-soldiers in the lead. As they approached one could see that each +bore a burden of a bulk and weight to sorely tax his strength; and we +said among ourselves, truly these folk are well off for poor common +soldiers. When they were come nearer, what do you think? Every rascal of +them had a French prisoner on his back! They were carrying away their +"goods," you see--their property--strictly according to the permission +granted by the treaty. + +Now think how clever that was, how ingenious. What could a body say? what +could a body do? For certainly these people were within their right. +These prisoners were property; nobody could deny that. My dears, if those +had been English captives, conceive of the richness of that booty! For +English prisoners had been scarce and precious for a hundred years; +whereas it was a different matter with French prisoners. They had been +over-abundant for a century. The possessor of a French prisoner did not +hold him long for ransom, as a rule, but presently killed him to save the +cost of his keep. This shows you how small was the value of such a +possession in those times. When we took Troyes a calf was worth thirty +francs, a sheep sixteen, a French prisoner eight. It was an enormous +price for those other animals--a price which naturally seems incredible +to you. It was the war, you see. It worked two ways: it made meat dear +and prisoners cheap. + +Well, here were these poor Frenchmen being carried off. What could we do? +Very little of a permanent sort, but we did what we could. We sent a +messenger flying to Joan, and we and the French guards halted the +procession for a parley--to gain time, you see. A big Burgundian lost his +temper and swore a great oath that none should stop him; he would go, and +would take his prisoner with him. But we blocked him off, and he saw that +he was mistaken about going--he couldn't do it. He exploded into the +maddest cursings and revilings, then, and, unlashing his prisoner from +his back, stood him up, all bound and helpless; then drew his knife, and +said to us with a light of sarcasting triumph in his eye: + +"I may not carry him away, you say--yet he is mine, none will dispute it. +Since I may not convey him hence, this property of mine, there is another +way. Yes, I can kill him; not even the dullest among you will question +that right. Ah, you had not thought of that--vermin!" + +That poor starved fellow begged us with his piteous eyes to save him; +then spoke, and said he had a wife and little children at home. Think how +it wrung our heartstrings. But what could we do? The Burgundian was +within his right. We could only beg and plead for the prisoner. Which we +did. And the Burgundian enjoyed it. He stayed his hand to hear more of +it, and laugh at it. That stung. Then the Dwarf said: + +"Prithee, young sirs, let me beguile him; for when a matter requiring +permission is to the fore, I have indeed a gift in that sort, as any will +tell you that know me well. You smile; and that is punishment for my +vanity; and fairly earned, I grant you. Still, if I may toy a little, +just a little--" saying which he stepped to the Burgundian and began a +fair soft speech, all of goodly and gentle tenor; and in the midst he +mentioned the Maid; and was going on to say how she out of her good heart +would prize and praise this compassionate deed which he was about to-- It +was as far as he got. The Burgundian burst into his smooth oration with +an insult leveled at Joan of Arc. We sprang forward, but the Dwarf, his +face all livid, brushed us aside and said, in a most grave and earnest +way: + +"I crave your patience. Am not I her guard of honor? This is my affair." + +And saying this he suddenly shot his right hand out and gripped the great +Burgundian by the throat, and so held him upright on his feet. "You have +insulted the Maid," he said; "and the Maid is France. The tongue that +does that earns a long furlough." + +One heard the muffled cracking of bones. The Burgundian's eyes began to +protrude from their sockets and stare with a leaden dullness at vacancy. +The color deepened in his face and became an opaque purple. His hands +hung down limp, his body collapsed with a shiver, every muscle relaxed +its tension and ceased from its function. The Dwarf took away his hand +and the column of inert mortality sank mushily to the ground. + +We struck the bonds from the prisoner and told him he was free. His +crawling humbleness changed to frantic joy in a moment, and his ghastly +fear to a childish rage. He flew at that dead corpse and kicked it, spat +in its face, danced upon it, crammed mud into its mouth, laughing, +jeering, cursing, and volleying forth indecencies and bestialities like a +drunken fiend. It was a thing to be expected; soldiering makes few +saints. Many of the onlookers laughed, others were indifferent, none was +surprised. But presently in his mad caperings the freed man capered +within reach of the waiting file, and another Burgundian promptly slipped +a knife through his neck, and down he went with a death-shriek, his +brilliant artery blood spurting ten feet as straight and bright as a ray +of light. There was a great burst of jolly laughter all around from +friend and foe alike; and thus closed one of the pleasantest incidents of +my checkered military life. + +And now came Joan hurrying, and deeply troubled. She considered the claim +of the garrison, then said: + +"You have right upon your side. It is plain. It was a careless word to +put in the treaty, and covers too much. But ye may not take these poor +men away. They are French, and I will not have it. The King shall ransom +them, every one. Wait till I send you word from him; and hurt no hair of +their heads; for I tell you, I who speak, that that would cost you very +dear." + +That settled it. The prisoners were safe for one while, anyway. Then she +rode back eagerly and required that thing of the King, and would listen +to no paltering and no excuses. So the King told her to have her way, and +she rode straight back and bought the captives free in his name and let +them go. + + + + 35 The Heir of France is Crowned + +IT WAS here hat we saw again the Grand Master of the King's Household, in +whose castle Joan was guest when she tarried at Chinon in those first +days of her coming out of her own country. She made him Bailiff of Troyes +now by the King's permission. + +And now we marched again; Chalons surrendered to us; and there by Chalons +in a talk, Joan, being asked if she had no fears for the future, said +yes, one--treachery. Who would believe it? who could dream it? And yet in +a sense it was prophecy. Truly, man is a pitiful animal. + +We marched, marched, kept on marching; and at last, on the 16th of July, +we came in sight of our goal, and saw the great cathedraled towers of +Rheims rise out of the distance! Huzza after huzza swept the army from +van to rear; and as for Joan of Arc, there where she sat her horse +gazing, clothed all in white armor, dreamy, beautiful, and in her face a +deep, deep joy, a joy not of earth, oh, she was not flesh, she was a +spirit! Her sublime mission was closing--closing in flawless triumph. +To-morrow she could say, "It is finished--let me go free." + +We camped, and the hurry and rush and turmoil of the grand preparations +began. The Archbishop and a great deputation arrived; and after these +came flock after flock, crowd after crowd, of citizens and country-folk, +hurrahing, in, with banners and music, and flowed over the camp, one +rejoicing inundation after another, everybody drunk with happiness. And +all night long Rheims was hard at work, hammering away, decorating the +town, building triumphal arches and clothing the ancient cathedral within +and without in a glory of opulent splendors. + +We moved betimes in the morning; the coronation ceremonies would begin at +nine and last five hours. We were aware that the garrison of English and +Burgundian soldiers had given up all thought of resisting the Maid, and +that we should find the gates standing hospitably open and the whole city +ready to welcome us with enthusiasm. + +It was a delicious morning, brilliant with sunshine, but cool and fresh +and inspiring. The army was in great form, and fine to see, as it +uncoiled from its lair fold by fold, and stretched away on the final +march of the peaceful Coronation Campaign. + +Joan, on her black horse, with the Lieutenant-General and the personal +staff grouped about her, took post for a final review and a good-by; for +she was not expecting to ever be a soldier again, or ever serve with +these or any other soldiers any more after this day. The army knew this, +and believed it was looking for the last time upon the girlish face of +its invincible little Chief, its pet, its pride, its darling, whom it had +ennobled in its private heart with nobilities of its own creation, call +her "Daughter of God," "Savior of France," "Victory's Sweetheart," "The +Page of Christ," together with still softer titles which were simply +naive and frank endearments such as men are used to confer upon children +whom they love. And so one saw a new thing now; a thing bred of the +emotion that was present there on both sides. Always before, in the +march-past, the battalions had gone swinging by in a storm of cheers, +heads up and eyes flashing, the drums rolling, the bands braying p'ans of +victory; but now there was nothing of that. But for one impressive sound, +one could have closed his eyes and imagined himself in a world of the +dead. That one sound was all that visited the ear in the summer +stillness--just that one sound--the muffled tread of the marching host. +As the serried masses drifted by, the men put their right hands up to +their temples, palms to the front, in military salute, turning their eyes +upon Joan's face in mute God-bless-you and farewell, and keeping them +there while they could. They still kept their hands up in reverent salute +many steps after they had passed by. Every time Joan put her handkerchief +to her eyes you could see a little quiver of emotion crinkle along the +faces of the files. + +The march-past after a victory is a thing to drive the heart mad with +jubilation; but this one was a thing to break it. + +We rode now to the King's lodgings, which was the Archbishop's country +palace; and he was presently ready, and we galloped off and took position +at the head of the army. By this time the country-people were arriving in +multitudes from every direction and massing themselves on both sides of +the road to get sight of Joan--just as had been done every day since our +first day's march began. Our march now lay through the grassy plain, and +those peasants made a dividing double border for that plain. They +stretched right down through it, a broad belt of bright colors on each +side of the road; for every peasant girl and woman in it had a white +jacket on her body and a crimson skirt on the rest of her. Endless +borders made of poppies and lilies stretching away in front of us--that +is what it looked like. And that is the kind of lane we had been marching +through all these days. Not a lane between multitudinous flowers standing +upright on their stems--no, these flowers were always kneeling; kneeling, +these human flowers, with their hands and faces lifted toward Joan of +Arc, and the grateful tears streaming down. And all along, those closest +to the road hugged her feet and kissed them and laid their wet cheeks +fondly against them. I never, during all those days, saw any of either +sex stand while she passed, nor any man keep his head covered. Afterward +in the Great Trial these touching scenes were used as a weapon against +her. She had been made an object of adoration by the people, and this was +proof that she was a heretic--so claimed that unjust court. + +As we drew near the city the curving long sweep of ramparts and towers +was gay with fluttering flags and black with masses of people; and all +the air was vibrant with the crash of artillery and gloomed with drifting +clouds of smoke. We entered the gates in state and moved in procession +through the city, with all the guilds and industries in holiday costume +marching in our rear with their banners; and all the route was hedged +with a huzzaing crush of people, and all the windows were full and all +the roofs; and from the balconies hung costly stuffs of rich colors; and +the waving of handkerchiefs, seen in perspective through a long vista, +was like a snowstorm. + +Joan's name had been introduced into the prayers of the Church--an honor +theretofore restricted to royalty. But she had a dearer honor and an +honor more to be proud of, from a humbler source: the common people had +had leaden medals struck which bore her effigy and her escutcheon, and +these they wore as charms. One saw them everywhere. + +From the Archbishop's Palace, where we halted, and where the King and +Joan were to lodge, the King sent to the Abbey Church of St. Remi, which +was over toward the gate by which we had entered the city, for the Sainte +Ampoule, or flask of holy oil. This oil was not earthly oil; it was made +in heaven; the flask also. The flask, with the oil in it, was brought +down from heaven by a dove. It was sent down to St. Remi just as he was +going to baptize King Clovis, who had become a Christian. I know this to +be true. I had known it long before; for Pere Fronte told me in Domremy. +I cannot tell you how strange and awful it made me feel when I saw that +flask and knew I was looking with my own eyes upon a thing which had +actually been in heave, a thing which had been seen by angels, perhaps; +and by God Himself of a certainty, for He sent it. And I was looking upon +it--I. At one time I could have touched it. But I was afraid; for I could +not know but that God had touched it. It is most probable that He had. + +From this flask Clovis had been anointed; and from it all the kings of +France had been anointed since. Yes, ever since the time of Clovis, and +that was nine hundred years. And so, as I have said, that flask of holy +oil was sent for, while we waited. A coronation without that would not +have been a coronation at all, in my belief. + +Now in order to get the flask, a most ancient ceremonial had to be gone +through with; otherwise the Abb, of St. Remi, hereditary guardian in +perpetuity of the oil, would not deliver it. So, in accordance with +custom, the King deputed five great nobles to ride in solemn state and +richly armed and accoutered, they and their steeds, to the Abbey Church +as a guard of honor to the Archbishop of Rheims and his canons, who were +to bear the King's demand for the oil. When the five great lords were +ready to start, they knelt in a row and put up their mailed hands before +their faces, palm joined to palm, and swore upon their lives to conduct +the sacred vessel safely, and safely restore it again to the Church of +St. Remi after the anointing of the King. The Archbishop and his +subordinates, thus nobly escorted, took their way to St. Remi. The +Archbishop was in grand costume, with his miter on his head and his cross +in his hand. At the door of St. Remi they halted and formed, to receive +the holy vial. Soon one heard the deep tones of the organ and of chanting +men; then one saw a long file of lights approaching through the dim +church. And so came the Abbot, in his sacerdotal panoply, bearing the +vial, with his people following after. He delivered it, with solemn +ceremonies, to the Archbishop; then the march back began, and it was most +impressive; for it moved, the whole way, between two multitudes of men +and women who lay flat upon their faces and prayed in dumb silence and in +dread while that awful thing went by that had been in heaven. + +This August company arrived at the great west door of the cathedral; and +as the Archbishop entered a noble anthem rose and filled the vast +building. The cathedral was packed with people--people in thousands. Only +a wide space down the center had been kept free. Down this space walked +the Archbishop and his canons, and after them followed those five stately +figures in splendid harness, each bearing his feudal banner--and riding! + +Oh, that was a magnificent thing to see. Riding down the cavernous +vastness of the building through the rich lights streaming in long rays +from the pictured windows--oh, there was never anything so grand! + +They rode clear to the choir--as much as four hundred feet from the door, +it was said. Then the Archbishop dismissed them, and they made deep +obeisance till their plumes touched their horses' necks, then made those +proud prancing and mincing and dancing creatures go backward all the way +to the door--which was pretty to see, and graceful; then they stood them +on their hind-feet and spun them around and plunged away and disappeared. + +For some minutes there was a deep hush, a waiting pause; a silence so +profound that it was as if all those packed thousands there were steeped +in dreamless slumber--why, you could even notice the faintest sounds, +like the drowsy buzzing of insects; then came a mighty flood of rich +strains from four hundred silver trumpets, and then, framed in the +pointed archway of the great west door, appeared Joan and the King. They +advanced slowly, side by side, through a tempest of welcome--explosion +after explosion of cheers and cries, mingled with the deep thunders of +the organ and rolling tides of triumphant song from chanting choirs. +Behind Joan and the King came the Paladin and the Banner displayed; and a +majestic figure he was, and most proud and lofty in his bearing, for he +knew that the people were marking him and taking note of the gorgeous +state dress which covered his armor. + +At his side was the Sire d'Albret, proxy for the Constable of France, +bearing the Sword of State. + +After these, in order of rank, came a body royally attired representing +the lay peers of France; it consisted of three princes of the blood, and +La Tremouille and the young De Laval brothers. + +These were followed by the representatives of the ecclesiastical +peers--the Archbishop of Rheims, and the Bishops of Laon, Chalons, +Orleans, and one other. + +Behind these came the Grand Staff, all our great generals and famous +names, and everybody was eager to get a sight of them. Through all the +din one could hear shouts all along that told you where two of them were: +"Live the Bastard of Orleans!" "Satan La Hire forever!" + +The August procession reached its appointed place in time, and the +solemnities of the Coronation began. They were long and imposing--with +prayers, and anthems, and sermons, and everything that is right for such +occasions; and Joan was at the King's side all these hours, with her +Standard in her hand. But at last came the grand act: the King took the +oath, he was anointed with the sacred oil; a splendid personage, followed +by train-bearers and other attendants, approached, bearing the Crown of +France upon a cushion, and kneeling offered it. The King seemed to +hesitate--in fact, did hesitate; for he put out his hand and then stopped +with it there in the air over the crown, the fingers in the attitude of +taking hold of it. But that was for only a moment--though a moment is a +notable something when it stops the heartbeat of twenty thousand people +and makes them catch their breath. Yes, only a moment; then he caught +Joan's eye, and she gave him a look with all the joy of her thankful +great soul in it; then he smiled, and took the Crown of France in his +hand, and right finely and right royally lifted it up and set it upon his +head. + +Then what a crash there was! All about us cries and cheers, and the +chanting of the choirs and groaning of the organ; and outside the +clamoring of the bells and the booming of the cannon. The fantastic +dream, the incredible dream, the impossible dream of the peasant-child +stood fulfilled; the English power was broken, the Heir of France was +crowned. + +She was like one transfigured, so divine was the joy that shone in her +face as she sank to her knees at the King's feet and looked up at him +through her tears. Her lips were quivering, and her words came soft and +low and broken: + +"Now, O gentle King, is the pleasure of God accomplished according to His +command that you should come to Rheims and receive the crown that +belongeth of right to you, and unto none other. My work which was given +me to do is finished; give me your peace, and let me go back to my +mother, who is poor and old, and has need of me." + +The King raised her up, and there before all that host he praised her +great deeds in most noble terms; and there he confirmed her nobility and +titles, making her the equal of a count in rank, and also appointed a +household and officers for her according to her dignity; and then he +said: + +"You have saved the crown. Speak--require--demand; and whatsoever grace +you ask it shall be granted, though it make the kingdom poor to meet it." + +Now that was fine, that was royal. Joan was on her knees again +straightway, and said: + +"Then, O gentle King, if out of your compassion you will speak the word, +I pray you give commandment that my village, poor and hard pressed by +reason of war, may have its taxes remitted." + +"It is so commanded. Say on." + +"That is all." + +"All? Nothing but that?" + +"It is all. I have no other desire." + +"But that is nothing--less than nothing. Ask--do not be afraid." + +"Indeed, I cannot, gentle King. Do not press me. I will not have aught +else, but only this alone." + +The King seemed nonplussed, and stood still a moment, as if trying to +comprehend and realize the full stature of this strange unselfishness. +Then he raised his head and said: + +"Who has won a kingdom and crowned its King; and all she asks and all she +will take is this poor grace--and even this is for others, not for +herself. And it is well; her act being proportioned to the dignity of one +who carries in her head and heart riches which outvalue any that any King +could add, though he gave his all. She shall have her way. Now, +therefore, it is decreed that from this day forth Domremy, natal village +of Joan of Arc, Deliverer of France, called the Maid of Orleans, is freed +from all taxation forever." Whereat the silver horns blew a jubilant +blast. + +There, you see, she had had a vision of this very scene the time she was +in a trance in the pastures of Domremy and we asked her to name to boon +she would demand of the King if he should ever chance to tell her she +might claim one. But whether she had the vision or not, this act showed +that after all the dizzy grandeurs that had come upon her, she was still +the same simple, unselfish creature that she was that day. + +Yes, Charles VII. remitted those taxes "forever." Often the gratitude of +kings and nations fades and their promises are forgotten or deliberately +violated; but you, who are children of France, should remember with pride +that France has kept this one faithfully. Sixty-three years have gone by +since that day. The taxes of the region wherein Domremy lies have been +collected sixty-three times since then, and all the villages of that +region have paid except that one--Domremy. The tax-gatherer never visits +Domremy. Domremy has long ago forgotten what that dread sorrow-sowing +apparition is like. Sixty-three tax-books have been filed meantime, and +they lie yonder with the other public records, and any may see them that +desire it. At the top of every page in the sixty-three books stands the +name of a village, and below that name its weary burden of taxation is +figured out and displayed; in the case of all save one. It is true, just +as I tell you. In each of the sixty-three books there is a page headed +"Domremi," but under that name not a figure appears. Where the figures +should be, there are three words written; and the same words have been +written every year for all these years; yes, it is a blank page, with +always those grateful words lettered across the face of it--a touching +memorial. Thus: + +__________________________________ | | | DOMREMI | | | | + +RIEN--LA PUCELLE | |__________________________________| + +"NOTHING--THE MAID OF ORLEANS." + +How brief it is; yet how much it says! It is the nation speaking. You +have the spectacle of that unsentimental thing, a Government, making +reverence to that name and saying to its agent, "Uncover, and pass on; it +is France that commands." Yes, the promise has been kept; it will be kept +always; "forever" was the King's word. [1] At two o'clock in the +afternoon the ceremonies of the Coronation came at last to an end; then +the procession formed once more, with Joan and the King at its head, and +took up its solemn march through the midst of the church, all instruments +and all people making such clamor of rejoicing noises as was, indeed, a +marvel to hear. An so ended the third of the great days of Joan's life. +And how close together they stand--May 8th, June 18th, July 17th! + +[1] IT was faithfully kept during three hundred and sixty years and more; +then the over-confident octogenarian's prophecy failed. During the tumult +of the French Revolution the promise was forgotten and the grace +withdrawn. It has remained in disuse ever since. Joan never asked to be +remembered, but France has remembered her with an inextinguishable love +and reverence; Joan never asked for a statue, but France has lavished +them upon her; Joan never asked for a church for Domremy, but France is +building one; Joan never asked for saintship, but even that is impending. +Everything which Joan of Arc did not ask for has been given her, and with +a noble profusion; but the one humble little thing which she did ask for +and get has been taken away from her. There is something infinitely +pathetic about this. France owes Domremy a hundred years of taxes, and +could hardly find a citizen within her borders who would vote against the +payment of the debt. -- NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR. + + + + 36 Joan Hears News from Home + +WE MOUNTED and rode, a spectacle to remember, a most noble display of +rich vestments and nodding plumes, and as we moved between the banked +multitudes they sank down all along abreast of us as we advanced, like +grain before the reaper, and kneeling hailed with a rousing welcome the +consecrated King and his companion the Deliverer of France. But by and by +when we had paraded about the chief parts of the city and were come near +to the end of our course, we being now approaching the Archbishop's +palace, one saw on the right, hard by the inn that is called the Zebra, a +strange t--two men not kneeling but standing! Standing in the front rank +of the kneelers; unconscious, transfixed, staring. Yes, and clothed in +the coarse garb of the peasantry, these two. Two halberdiers sprang at +them in a fury to teach them better manners; but just as they seized them +Joan cried out "Forbear!" and slid from her saddle and flung her arms +about one of those peasants, calling him by all manner of endearing +names, and sobbing. For it was her father; and the other was her uncle, +Laxart. + +The news flew everywhere, and shouts of welcome were raised, and in just +one little moment those two despised and unknown plebeians were become +famous and popular and envied, and everybody was in a fever to get sight +of them and be able to say, all their lives long, that they had seen the +father of Joan of Arc and the brother of her mother. How easy it was for +her to do miracles like to this! She was like the sun; on whatsoever dim +and humble object her rays fell, that thing was straightway drowned in +glory. + +All graciously the King said: + +"Bring them to me." + +And she brought them; she radiant with happiness and affection, they +trembling and scared, with their caps in their shaking hands; and there +before all the world the King gave them his hand to kiss, while the +people gazed in envy and admiration; and he said to old D'Arc: + +"Give God thanks for that you are father to this child, this dispenser of +immortalities. You who bear a name that will still live in the mouths of +men when all the race of kings has been forgotten, it is not meet that +you bare your head before the fleeting fames and dignities of a +day--cover yourself!" And truly he looked right fine and princely when he +said that. Then he gave order that the Bailly of Rheims be brought; and +when he was come, and stood bent low and bare, the King said to him, +"These two are guests of France;" and bade him use them hospitably. + +I may as well say now as later, that Papa D'Arc and Laxart were stopping +in that little Zebra inn, and that there they remained. Finer quarters +were offered them by the Bailly, also public distinctions and brave +entertainment; but they were frightened at these projects, they being +only humble and ignorant peasants; so they begged off, and had peace. +They could not have enjoyed such things. Poor souls, they did not even +know what to do with their hands, and it took all their attention to keep +from treading on them. The Bailly did the best he could in the +circumstances. He made the innkeeper place a whole floor at their +disposal, and told him to provide everything they might desire, and +charge all to the city. Also the Bailly gave them a horse apiece and +furnishings; which so overwhelmed them with pride and delight and +astonishment that they couldn't speak a word; for in their lives they had +never dreamed of wealth like this, and could not believe, at first, that +the horses were real and would not dissolve to a mist and blow away. They +could not unglue their minds from those grandeurs, and were always +wrenching the conversation out of its groove and dragging the matter of +animals into it, so that they could say "my horse" here, and "my horse" +there and yonder and all around, and taste the words and lick their chops +over them, and spread their legs and hitch their thumbs in their armpits, +and feel as the good God feels when He looks out on His fleets of +constellations plowing the awful deeps of space and reflects with +satisfaction that they are His--all His. Well, they were the happiest old +children one ever saw, and the simplest. + +The city gave a grand banquet to the King and Joan in mid-afternoon, and +to the Court and the Grand Staff; and about the middle of it Pere D'Arc +and Laxart were sent for, but would not venture until it was promised +that they might sit in a gallery and be all by themselves and see all +that was to be seen and yet be unmolested. And so they sat there and +looked down upon the splendid spectacle, and were moved till the tears +ran down their cheeks to see the unbelievable honors that were paid to +their small darling, and how naively serene and unafraid she sat there +with those consuming glories beating upon her. + +But at last her serenity was broken up. Yes, it stood the strain of the +King's gracious speech; and of D'Alencon's praiseful words, and the +Bastard's; and even La Hire's thunder-blast, which took the place by +storm; but at last, as I have said, they brought a force to bear which +was too strong for her. For at the close the King put up his hand to +command silence, and so waited, with his hand up, till every sound was +dead and it was as if one could almost the stillness, so profound it +was. Then out of some remote corner of that vast place there rose a +plaintive voice, and in tones most tender and sweet and rich came +floating through that enchanted hush our poor old simple song "L'Arbre +Fee Bourlemont!" and then Joan broke down and put her face in her hands +and cried. Yes, you see, all in a moment the pomps and grandeurs +dissolved away and she was a little child again herding her sheep with +the tranquil pastures stretched about her, and war and wounds and blood +and death and the mad frenzy and turmoil of battle a dream. Ah, that +shows you the power of music, that magician of magicians, who lifts his +wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the +phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh. + +That was the King's invention, that sweet and dear surprise. Indeed, he +had fine things hidden away in his nature, though one seldom got a +glimpse of them, with that scheming Tremouille and those others always +standing in the light, and he so indolently content to save himself fuss +and argument and let them have their way. + +At the fall of night we the Domremy contingent of the personal staff were +with the father and uncle at the inn, in their private parlor, brewing +generous drinks and breaking ground for a homely talk about Domremy and +the neighbors, when a large parcel arrived from Joan to be kept till she +came; and soon she came herself and sent her guard away, saying she would +take one of her father's rooms and sleep under his roof, and so be at +home again. We of the staff rose and stood, as was meet, until she made +us sit. Then she turned and saw that the two old men had gotten up too, +and were standing in an embarrassed and unmilitary way; which made her +want to laugh, but she kept it in, as not wishing to hurt them; and got +them to their seats and snuggled down between them, and took a hand of +each of them upon her knees and nestled her own hands in them, and said: + +"Now we will nave no more ceremony, but be kin and playmates as in other +times; for I am done with the great wars now, and you two will take me +home with you, and I shall see--" She stopped, and for a moment her happy +face sobered, as if a doubt or a presentiment had flitted through her +mind; then it cleared again, and she said, with a passionate yearning, +"Oh, if the day were but come and we could start!" + +The old father was surprised, and said: + +"Why, child, are you in earnest? Would you leave doing these wonders that +make you to be praised by everybody while there is still so much glory to +be won; and would you go out from this grand comradeship with princes and +generals to be a drudging villager again and a nobody? It is not +rational." + +"No," said the uncle, Laxart, "it is amazing to hear, and indeed not +understandable. It is a stranger thing to hear her say she will stop the +soldiering that it was to hear her say she would begin it; and I who +speak to you can say in all truth that that was the strangest word that +ever I had heard till this day and hour. I would it could be explained." + +"It is not difficult," said Joan. "I was not ever fond of wounds and +suffering, nor fitted by my nature to inflict them; and quarrelings did +always distress me, and noise and tumult were against my liking, my +disposition being toward peace and quietness, and love for all things +that have life; and being made like this, how could I bear to think of +wars and blood, and the pain that goes with them, and the sorrow and +mourning that follow after? But by his angels God laid His great commands +upon me, and could I disobey? I did as I was bid. Did He command me to do +many things? No; only two: to raise the siege of Orleans, and crown the +King at Rheims. The task is finished, and I am free. Has ever a poor +soldier fallen in my sight, whether friend or foe, and I not felt the +pain in my own body, and the grief of his home-mates in my own heart? No, +not one; and, oh, it is such bliss to know that my release is won, and +that I shall not any more see these cruel things or suffer these tortures +of the mind again! Then why should I not go to my village and be as I was +before? It is heaven! and ye wonder that I desire it. Ah, ye are +men--just men! My mother would understand." + +They didn't quite know what to say; so they sat still awhile, looking +pretty vacant. Then old D'Arc said: + +"Yes, your mother--that is true. I never saw such a woman. She worries, +and worries, and worries; and wakes nights, and lies so, thinking--that +is, worrying; worrying about you. And when the night storms go raging +along, she moans and says, 'Ah, God pity her, she is out in this with her +poor wet soldiers.' And when the lightning glares and the thunder crashes +she wrings her hands and trembles, saying, 'It is like the awful cannon +and the flash, and yonder somewhere she is riding down upon the spouting +guns and I not there to protect her." + +"Ah, poor mother, it is pity, it is pity!" + +"Yes, a most strange woman, as I have noticed a many times. When there is +news of a victory and all the village goes mad with pride and joy, she +rushes here and there in a maniacal frenzy till she finds out the one +only thing she cares to know--that you are safe; then down she goes on +her knees in the dirt and praises God as long as there is any breath left +in her body; and all on your account, for she never mentions the battle +once. And always she says, 'Now it is over--now France is saved--now she +will come home'--and always is disappointed and goes about mourning." + +"Don't, father! it breaks my heart. I will be so good to her when I get +home. I will do her work for her, and be her comfort, and she shall not +suffer any more through me." + +There was some more talk of this sort, then Uncle Laxart said: + +"You have done the will of God, dear, and are quits; it is true, and none +may deny it; but what of the King? You are his best soldier; what if he +command you to stay?" + +That was a crusher--and sudden! It took Joan a moment or two to recover +from the shock of it; then she said, quite simply and resignedly: + +"The King is my Lord; I am his servant." She was silent and thoughtful a +little while, then she brightened up and said, cheerily, "But let us +drive such thoughts away--this is no time for them. Tell me about home." + +So the two old gossips talked and talked; talked about everything and +everybody in the village; and it was good to hear. Joan out of her +kindness tried to get us into the conversation, but that failed, of +course. She was the Commander-in-Chief, we were nobodies; her name was +the mightiest in France, we were invisible atoms; she was the comrade of +princes and heroes, we of the humble and obscure; she held rank above all +Personages and all Puissances whatsoever in the whole earth, by right of +baring her commission direct from God. To put it in one word, she was +JOAN OF ARC--and when that is said, all is said. To us she was divine. +Between her and us lay the bridgeless abyss which that word implies. We +could not be familiar with her. No, you can see yourselves that that +would have been impossible. + +And yet she was so human, too, and so good and kind and dear and loving +and cheery and charming and unspoiled and unaffected! Those are all the +words I think of now, but they are not enough; no, they are too few and +colorless and meager to tell it all, or tell the half. Those simple old +men didn't realize her; they couldn't; they had never known any people +but human beings, and so they had no other standard to measure her by. To +them, after their first little shyness had worn off, she was just a +girl--that was all. It was amazing. It made one shiver, sometimes, to see +how calm and easy and comfortable they were in her presence, and hear +them talk to her exactly as they would have talked to any other girl in +France. + +Why, that simple old Laxart sat up there and droned out the most tedious +and empty tale one ever heard, and neither he nor Papa D'Arc ever gave a +thought to the badness of the etiquette of it, or ever suspected that +that foolish tale was anything but dignified and valuable history. There +was not an atom of value in it; and whilst they thought it distressing +and pathetic, it was in fact not pathetic at all, but actually +ridiculous. At least it seemed so to me, and it seems so yet. Indeed, I +know it was, because it made Joan laugh; and the more sorrowful it got +the more it made her laugh; and the Paladin said that he could have +laughed himself if she had not been there, and Noel Rainguesson said the +same. It was about old Laxart going to a funeral there at Domremy two or +three weeks back. He had spots all over his face and hands, and he got +Joan to rub some healing ointment on them, and while she was doing it, +and comforting him, and trying to say pitying things to him, he told her +how it happened. And first he asked her if she remembered that black bull +calf that she left behind when she came away, and she said indeed she +did, and he was a dear, and she loved him so, and was he well?--and just +drowned him in questions about that creature. And he said it was a young +bull now, and very frisky; and he was to bear a principal hand at a +funeral; and she said, "The bull?" and he said, "No, myself"; but said +the bull did take a hand, but not because of his being invited, for he +wasn't; but anyway he was away over beyond the Fairy Tree, and fell +asleep on the grass with his Sunday funeral clothes on, and a long black +rag on his hat and hanging down his back; and when he woke he saw by the +sun how late it was, and not a moment to lose; and jumped up terribly +worried, and saw the young bull grazing there, and thought maybe he could +ride part way on him and gain time; so he tied a rope around the bull's +body to hold on by, and put a halter on him to steer with, and jumped on +and started; but it was all new to the bull, and he was discontented with +it, and scurried around and bellowed and reared and pranced, and Uncle +Laxart was satisfied, and wanted to get off and go by the next bull or +some other way that was quieter, but he didn't dare try; and it was +getting very warm for him, too, and disturbing and wearisome, and not +proper for Sunday; but by and by the bull lost all his temper, and went +tearing down the slope with his tail in the air and blowing in the most +awful way; and just in the edge of the village he knocked down some +beehives, and the bees turned out and joined the excursion, and soared +along in a black cloud that nearly hid those other two from sight, and +prodded them both, and jabbed them and speared them and spiked them, and +made them bellow and shriek, and shriek and bellow; and here they came +roaring through the village like a hurricane, and took the funeral +procession right in the center, and sent that section of it sprawling, +and galloped over it, and the rest scattered apart and fled screeching in +every direction, every person with a layer of bees on him, and not a rag +of that funeral left but the corpse; and finally the bull broke for the +river and jumped in, and when they fished Uncle Laxart out he was nearly +drowned, and his face looked like a pudding with raisins in it. And then +he turned around, this old simpleton, and looked a long time in a dazed +way at Joan where she had her face in a cushion, dying, apparently, and +says: + +"What do you reckon she is laughing at?" + +And old D'Arc stood looking at her the same way, sort of absently +scratching his head; but had to give it up, and said he didn't +know--"must have been something that happened when we weren't noticing." + +Yes, both of those old people thought that that tale was pathetic; +whereas to my mind it was purely ridiculous, and not in any way valuable +to any one. It seemed so to me then, and it seems so to me yet. And as +for history, it does not resemble history; for the office of history is +to furnish serious and important facts that teach; whereas this strange +and useless event teaches nothing; nothing that I can see, except not to +ride a bull to a funeral; and surely no reflecting person needs to be +taught that. + + + + 37 Again to Arms + +NOW THESE were nobles, you know, by decree of the King!--these precious +old infants. But they did not realize it; they could not be called +conscious of it; it was an abstraction, a phantom; to them it had no +substance; their minds could not take hold of it. No, they did not bother +about their nobility; they lived in their horses. The horses were solid; +they were visible facts, and would make a mighty stir in Domremy. +Presently something was said about the Coronation, and old D'Arc said it +was going to be a grand thing to be able to say, when they got home, that +they were present in the very town itself when it happened. Joan looked +troubled, and said: + +"Ah, that reminds me. You were here and you didn't send me word. In the +town, indeed! Why, you could have sat with the other nobles, and ben +welcome; and could have looked upon the crowning itself, and carried that +home to tell. Ah, why did you use me so, and send me no word?" + +The old father was embarrassed, now, quite visibly embarrassed, and had +the air of one who does not quite know what to say. But Joan was looking +up in his face, her hands upon his shoulders--waiting. He had to speak; +so presently he drew her to his breast, which was heaving with emotion; +and he said, getting out his words with difficulty: + +"There, hide your face, child, and let your old father humble himself and +make his confession. I--I--don't you see, don't you understand?--I could +not know that these grandeurs would not turn your young head--it would be +only natural. I might shame you before these great per--" + +"Father!" + +"And then I was afraid, as remembering that cruel thing I said once in my +sinful anger. Oh, appointed of God to be a soldier, and the greatest in +the land! and in my ignorant anger I said I would drown you with my own +hands if you unsexed yourself and brought shame to your name and family. +Ah, how could I ever have said it, and you so good and dear and innocent! +I was afraid; for I was guilty. You understand it now, my child, and you +forgive?" + +Do you see? Even that poor groping old land-crab, with his skull full of +pulp, had pride. Isn't it wonderful? And more--he had conscience; he had +a sense of right and wrong, such as it was; he was able to find remorse. +It looks impossible, it looks incredible, but it is not. I believe that +some day it will be found out that peasants are people. Yes, beings in a +great many respects like ourselves. And I believe that some day they will +find this out, too--and then! Well, then I think they will rise up and +demand to be regarded as part of the race, and that by consequence there +will be trouble. Whenever one sees in a book or in a king's proclamation +those words "the nation," they bring before us the upper classes; only +those; we know no other "nation"; for us and the kings no other "nation" +exists. But from the day that I saw old D'Arc the peasant acting and +feeling just as I should have acted and felt myself, I have carried the +conviction in my heart that our peasants are not merely animals, beasts +of burden put here by the good God to produce food and comfort for the +"nation," but something more and better. You look incredulous. Well, that +is your training; it is the training of everybody; but as for me, I thank +that incident for giving me a better light, and I have never forgotten +it. + +Let me see--where was I? One's mind wanders around here and there and +yonder, when one is old. I think I said Joan comforted him. Certainly, +that is what she would do--there was no need to say that. She coaxed him +and petted him and caressed him, and laid the memory of that old hard +speech of his to rest. Laid it to rest until she should be dead. Then he +would remember it again--yes, yes! Lord, how those things sting, and +burn, and gnaw--the things which we did against the innocent dead! And we +say in our anguish, "If they could only come back!" Which is all very +well to say, but, as far as I can see, it doesn't profit anything. In my +opinion the best way is not to do the thing in the first place. And I am +not alone in this; I have heard our two knights say the same thing; and a +man there in Orleans--no, I believe it was at Beaugency, or one of those +places--it seems more as if it was at Beaugency than the others--this man +said the same thing exactly; almost the same words; a dark man with a +cast in his eye and one leg shorter than the other. His name was--was--it +is singular that I can't call that man's name; I had it in my mind only a +moment ago, and I know it begins with--no, I don't remember what it +begins with; but never mind, let it go; I will think of it presently, and +then I will tell you. + +Well, pretty soon the old father wanted to know how Joan felt when she +was in the thick of a battle, with the bright blades hacking and flashing +all around her, and the blows rapping and slatting on her shield, and +blood gushing on her from the cloven ghastly face and broken teeth of the +neighbor at her elbow, and the perilous sudden back surge of massed +horses upon a person when the front ranks give way before a heavy rush of +the enemy, and men tumble limp and groaning out of saddles all around, +and battle-flags falling from dead hands wipe across one's face and hide +the tossing turmoil a moment, and in the reeling and swaying and laboring +jumble one's horse's hoofs sink into soft substances and shrieks of pain +respond, and presently--panic! rush! swarm! flight! and death and hell +following after! And the old fellow got ever so much excited; and strode +up and down, his tongue going like a mill, asking question after question +and never waiting for an answer; and finally he stood Joan up in the +middle of the room and stepped off and scanned her critically, and said: + +"No--I don't understand it. You are so little. So little and slender. +When you had your armor on, to-day, it gave one a sort of notion of it; +but in these pretty silks and velvets, you are only a dainty page, not a +league-striding war-colossus, moving in clouds and darkness and breathing +smoke and thunder. I would God I might see you at it and go tell your +mother! That would help her sleep, poor thing! Here--teach me the arts of +the soldier, that I may explain them to her." + +And she did it. She gave him a pike, and put him through the manual of +arms; and made him do the steps, too. His marching was incredibly awkward +and slovenly, and so was his drill with the pike; but he didn't know it, +and was wonderfully pleased with himself, and mightily excited and +charmed with the ringing, crisp words of command. I am obliged to say +that if looking proud and happy when one is marching were sufficient, he +would have been the perfect soldier. + +And he wanted a lesson in sword-play, and got it. But of course that was +beyond him; he was too old. It was beautiful to see Joan handle the +foils, but the old man was a bad failure. He was afraid of the things, +and skipped and dodged and scrambled around like a woman who has lost her +mind on account of the arrival of a bat. He was of no good as an +exhibition. But if La Hire had only come in, that would have been another +matter. Those two fenced often; I saw them many times. True, Joan was +easily his master, but it made a good show for all that, for La Hire was +a grand swordsman. What a swift creature Joan was! You would see her +standing erect with her ankle-bones together and her foil arched over her +head, the hilt in one hand and the button in the other--the old general +opposite, bent forward, left hand reposing on his back, his foil +advanced, slightly wiggling and squirming, his watching eye boring +straight into hers--and all of a sudden she would give a spring forward, +and back again; and there she was, with the foil arched over her head as +before. La Hire had been hit, but all that the spectator saw of it was a +something like a thin flash of light in the air, but nothing distinct, +nothing definite. + +We kept the drinkables moving, for that would please the Bailly and the +landlord; and old Laxart and D'Arc got to feeling quite comfortable, but +without being what you could call tipsy. They got out the presents which +they had been buying to carry home--humble things and cheap, but they +would be fine there, and welcome. And they gave to Joan a present from +Pere Fronte and one from her mother--the one a little leaden image of the +Holy Virgin, the other half a yard of blue silk ribbon; and she was as +pleased as a child; and touched, too, as one could see plainly enough. +Yes, she kissed those poor things over and over again, as if they had +been something costly and wonderful; and she pinned the Virgin on her +doublet, and sent for her helmet and tied the ribbon on that; first one +way, then another; then a new way, then another new way; and with each +effort perching the helmet on her hand and holding it off this way and +that, and canting her head to one side and then the other, examining the +effect, as a bird does when it has got a new bug. And she said she could +almost wish she was going to the wars again; for then she would fight +with the better courage, as having always with her something which her +mother's touch had blessed. + +Old Laxart said he hoped she would go to the wars again, but home first, +for that all the people there were cruel anxious to see her--and so he +went on: + +"They are proud of you, dear. Yes, prouder than any village ever was of +anybody before. And indeed it is right and rational; for it is the first +time a village has ever had anybody like you to be proud of and call its +own. And it is strange and beautiful how they try to give your name to +every creature that has a sex that is convenient. It is but half a year +since you began to be spoken of and left us, and so it is surprising to +see how many babies there are already in that region that are named for +you. First it was just Joan; then it was Joan-Orleans; then +Joan-Orleans-Beaugency-Patay; and now the next ones will have a lot of +towns and the Coronation added, of course. Yes, and the animals the same. +They know how you love animals, and so they try to do you honor and show +their love for you by naming all those creatures after you; insomuch that +if a body should step out and call "Joan of Arc--come!" there would be a +landslide of cats and all such things, each supposing it was the one +wanted, and all willing to take the benefit of the doubt, anyway, for the +sake of the food that might be on delivery. The kitten you left +behind--the last stray you fetched home--bears you name, now, and belongs +to Pere Fronte, and is the pet and pride of the village; and people have +come miles to look at it and pet it and stare at it and wonder over it +because it was Joan of Arc's cat. Everybody will tell you that; and one +day when a stranger threw a stone at it, not knowing it was your cat, the +village rose against him as one man and hanged him! And but for Pere +Fronte--" + +There was an interruption. It was a messenger from the King, bearing a +note for Joan, which I read to her, saying he had reflected, and had +consulted his other generals, and was obliged to ask her to remain at the +head of the army and withdraw her resignation. Also, would she come +immediately and attend a council of war? Straightway, at a little +distance, military commands and the rumble of drums broke on the still +night, and we knew that her guard was approaching. + +Deep disappointment clouded her face for just one moment and no more--it +passed, and with it the homesick girl, and she was Joan of Arc, +Commander-in-Chief again, and ready for duty. + + + + 38 The King Cries "Forward!" + +IN MY double quality of page and secretary I followed Joan to the +council. She entered that presence with the bearing of a grieved goddess. +What was become of the volatile child that so lately was enchanted with a +ribbon and suffocated with laughter over the distress of a foolish +peasant who had stormed a funeral on the back of a bee-stung bull? One +may not guess. Simply it was gone, and had left no sign. She moved +straight to the council-table, and stood. Her glance swept from face to +face there, and where it fell, these lit it as with a torch, those it +scorched as with a brand. She knew where to strike. She indicated the +generals with a nod, and said: + +"My business is not with you. You have not craved a council of war." Then +she turned toward the King's privy council, and continued: "No; it is +with you. A council of war! It is amazing. There is but one thing to do, +and only one, and lo, ye call a council of war! Councils of war have no +value but to decide between two or several doubtful courses. But a +council of war when there is only one course? Conceive of a man in a boat +and his family in the water, and he goes out among his friends to ask +what he would better do? A council of war, name of God! To determine +what?" + +She stopped, and turned till her eyes rested upon the face of La +Tremouille; and so she stood, silent, measuring him, the excitement in +all faces burning steadily higher and higher, and all pulses beating +faster and faster; then she said, with deliberation: + +"Every sane man--whose loyalty is to his King and not a show and a +pretense--knows that there is but one rational thing before us--the march +upon Paris!" + +Down came the fist of La Hire with an approving crash upon the table. La +Tremouille turned white with anger, but he pulled himself firmly together +and held his peace. The King's lazy blood was stirred and his eye kindled +finely, for the spirit of war was away down in him somewhere, and a +frank, bold speech always found it and made it tingle gladsomely. Joan +waited to see if the chief minister might wish to defend his position; +but he was experienced and wise, and not a man to waste his forces where +the current was against him. He would wait; the King's private ear would +be at his disposal by and by. + +That pious fox the Chancellor of France took the word now. He washed his +soft hands together, smiling persuasively, and said to Joan: + +"Would it be courteous, your Excellency, to move abruptly from here +without waiting for an answer from the Duke of Burgundy? You may not know +that we are negotiating with his Highness, and that there is likely to be +a fortnight's truce between us; and on his part a pledge to deliver Paris +into our hands without the cost of a blow or the fatigue of a march +thither." + +Joan turned to him and said, gravely: + +"This is not a confessional, my lord. You were not obliged to expose that +shame here." + +The Chancellor's face reddened, and he retorted: + +"Shame? What is there shameful about it?" + +Joan answered in level, passionless tones: + +"One may describe it without hunting far for words. I knew of this poor +comedy, my lord, although it was not intended that I should know. It is +to the credit of the devisers of it that they tried to conceal it--this +comedy whose text and impulse are describable in two words." + +The Chancellor spoke up with a fine irony in his manner: + +"Indeed? And will your Excellency be good enough to utter them?" + +"Cowardice and treachery!" + +The fists of all the generals came down this time, and again the King's +eye sparkled with pleasure. The Chancellor sprang to his feet and +appealed to his Majesty: + +"Sire, I claim your protection." + +But the King waved him to his seat again, saying: + +"Peace. She had a right to be consulted before that thing was undertaken, +since it concerned war as well as politics. It is but just that she be +heard upon it now." + +The Chancellor sat down trembling with indignation, and remarked to Joan: + +"Out of charity I will consider that you did not know who devised this +measure which you condemn in so candid language." + +"Save your charity for another occasion, my lord," said Joan, as calmly +as before. "Whenever anything is done to injure the interests and degrade +the honor of France, all but the dead know how to name the two +conspirators-in-chief--" + +"Sir, sire! this insinuation--" + +"It is not an insinuation, my lord," said Joan, placidly, "it is a +charge. I bring it against the King's chief minister and his Chancellor." + +Both men were on their feet now, insisting that the King modify Joan's +frankness; but he was not minded to do it. His ordinary councils were +stale water--his spirit was drinking wine, now, and the taste of it was +good. He said: + +"Sit--and be patient. What is fair for one must in fairness be allowed +the other. Consider--and be just. When have you two spared her? What dark +charges and harsh names have you withheld when you spoke of her?" Then he +added, with a veiled twinkle in his eyes, "If these are offenses I see no +particular difference between them, except that she says her hard things +to your faces, whereas you say yours behind her back." + +He was pleased with that neat shot and the way it shriveled those two +people up, and made La Hire laugh out loud and the other generals softly +quake and chuckle. Joan tranquilly resumed: + +"From the first, we have been hindered by this policy of shilly-shally; +this fashion of counseling and counseling and counseling where no +counseling is needed, but only fighting. We took Orleans on the 8th of +May, and could have cleared the region round about in three days and +saved the slaughter of Patay. We could have been in Rheims six weeks ago, +and in Paris now; and would see the last Englishman pass out of France in +half a year. But we struck no blow after Orleans, but went off into the +country--what for? Ostensibly to hold councils; really to give Bedford +time to send reinforcements to Talbot--which he did; and Patay had to be +fought. After Patay, more counseling, more waste of precious time. Oh, my +King, I would that you would be persuaded!" She began to warm up, now. +"Once more we have our opportunity. If we rise and strike, all is well. +Bid me march upon Paris. In twenty days it shall be yours, and in six +months all France! Here is half a year's work before us; if this chance +be wasted, I give you twenty years to do it in. Speak the word, O gentle +King--speak but the one--" + +"I cry you mercy!" interrupted the Chancellor, who saw a dangerous +enthusiasm rising in the King's face. "March upon Paris? Does your +Excellency forget that the way bristles with English strongholds?" + +"That for your English strongholds!" and Joan snapped her fingers +scornfully. "Whence have we marched in these last days? From Gien. And +whither? To Rheims. What bristled between? English strongholds. What are +they now? French ones--and they never cost a blow!" Here applause broke +out from the group of generals, and Joan had to pause a moment to let it +subside. "Yes, English strongholds bristled before us; now French ones +bristle behind us. What is the argument? A child can read it. The +strongholds between us and Paris are garrisoned by no new breed of +English, but by the same breed as those others--with the same fears, the +same questionings, the same weaknesses, the same disposition to see the +heavy hand of God descending upon them. We have but to march!--on the +instant--and they are ours, Paris is ours, France is ours! Give the word, +O my King, command your servant to--" + +"Stay!" cried the Chancellor. "It would be madness to put our affront +upon his Highness the Duke of Burgundy. By the treaty which we have every +hope to make with him--" + +"Oh, the treaty which we hope to make with him! He has scorned you for +years, and defied you. Is it your subtle persuasions that have softened +his manners and beguiled him to listen to proposals? No; it was +blows!--the blows which we gave him! That is the only teaching that that +sturdy rebel can understand. What does he care for wind? The treaty which +we hope to make with him--alack! He deliver Paris! There is no pauper in +the land that is less able to do it. He deliver Paris! Ah, but that would +make great Bedford smile! Oh, the pitiful pretext! the blind can see that +this thin pour-parler with its fifteen-day truce has no purpose but to +give Bedford time to hurry forward his forces against us. More +treachery--always treachery! We call a council of war--with nothing to +council about; but Bedford calls no council to teach him what our course +is. He knows what he would do in our place. He would hang his traitors +and march upon Paris! O gentle King, rouse! The way is open, Paris +beckons, France implores, Speak and we--" + +"Sire, it is madness, sheer madness! Your Excellency, we cannot, we must +not go back from what we have done; we have proposed to treat, we must +treat with the Duke of Burgundy." + +"And we will!" said Joan. + +"Ah? How?" + +"At the point of the lance!" + +The house rose, to a man--all that had French hearts--and let go a crack +of applause--and kept it up; and in the midst of it one heard La Hire +growl out: "At the point of the lance! By God, that is music!" The King +was up, too, and drew his sword, and took it by the blade and strode to +Joan and delivered the hilt of it into her hand, saying: + +"There, the King surrenders. Carry it to Paris." + +And so the applause burst out again, and the historical council of war +that has bred so many legends was over. + + + + Chapter 39 We Win, But the King Balks + +IT WAS away past midnight, and had been a tremendous day in the matter of +excitement and fatigue, but that was no matter to Joan when there was +business on hand. She did not think of bed. The generals followed her to +her official quarters, and she delivered her orders to them as fast as +she could talk, and they sent them off to their different commands as +fast as delivered; wherefore the messengers galloping hither and thither +raised a world of clatter and racket in the still streets; and soon were +added to this the music of distant bugles and the roll of drums--notes of +preparation; for the vanguard would break camp at dawn. + +The generals were soon dismissed, but I wasn't; nor Joan; for it was my +turn to work, now. Joan walked the floor and dictated a summons to the +Duke of Burgundy to lay down his arms and make peace and exchange pardons +with the King; or, if he must fight, go fight the Saracens. +"Pardonnez-vous l'un ... l'autre de bon coeligeur, entierement, ainsi que +doivent faire loyaux chretiens, et, s'il vous plait de guerroyer, allez +contre les Sarrasins." It was long, but it was good, and had the sterling +ring to it. It is my opinion that it was as fine and simple and +straightforward and eloquent a state paper as she ever uttered. + +It was delivered into the hands of a courier, and he galloped away with +it. The Joan dismissed me, and told me to go to the inn and stay, and in +the morning give to her father the parcel which she had left there. It +contained presents for the Domremy relatives and friends and a peasant +dress which she had bought for herself. She said she would say good-by to +her father and uncle in the morning if it should still be their purpose +to go, instead of tarrying awhile to see the city. + +I didn't say anything, of course, but I could have said that wild horses +couldn't keep those men in that town half a day. They waste the glory of +being the first to carry the great news to Domremy--the taxes remitted +forever!--and hear the bells clang and clatter, and the people cheer and +shout? Oh, not they. Patay and Orleans and the Coronation were events +which in a vague way these men understood to be colossal; but they were +colossal mists, films, abstractions; this was a gigantic reality! + +When I got there, do you suppose they were abed! Quite the reverse. They +and the rest were as mellow as mellow could be; and the Paladin was doing +his battles in great style, and the old peasants were endangering the +building with their applause. He was doing Patay now; and was bending his +big frame forward and laying out the positions and movements with a rake +here and a rake there of his formidable sword on the floor, and the +peasants were stooped over with their hands on their spread knees +observing with excited eyes and ripping out ejaculations of wonder and +admiration all along: + +"Yes, here we were, waiting--waiting for the word; our horses fidgeting +and snorting and dancing to get away, we lying back on the bridles till +our bodies fairly slanted to the rear; the word rang out at last--'Go!' +and we went! + +"Went? There was nothing like it ever seen! Where we swept by squads of +scampering English, the mere wind of our passage laid them flat in piles +and rows! Then we plunged into the ruck of Fastolfe's frantic +battle-corps and tore through it like a hurricane, leaving a causeway of +the dead stretching far behind; no tarrying, no slacking rein, but on! +on! on! far yonder in the distance lay our prey--Talbot and his host +looming vast and dark like a storm-cloud brooding on the sea! Down we +swooped upon them, glooming all the air with a quivering pall of dead +leaves flung up by the whirlwind of our flight. In another moment we +should have struck them as world strikes world when disorbited +constellations crash into the Milky way, but by misfortune and the +inscrutable dispensation of God I was recognized! Talbot turned white, +and shouting, 'Save yourselves, it is the Standard-Bearer of Joan of +Arc!' drove his spurs home till they met in the middle of his horse's +entrails, and fled the field with his billowing multitudes at his back! I +could have cursed myself for not putting on a disguise. I saw reproach in +the eyes of her Excellency, and was bitterly ashamed. I had caused what +seemed an irreparable disaster. Another might have gone aside to grieve, +as not seeing any way to mend it; but I thank God I am not of those. +Great occasions only summon as with a trumpet-call the slumbering +reserves of my intellect. I saw my opportunity in an instant--in the next +I was away! Through the woods I vanished--fst!--like an extinguished +light! Away around through the curtaining forest I sped, as if on wings, +none knowing what was become of me, none suspecting my design. Minute +after minute passed, on and on I flew; on, and still on; and at last with +a great cheer I flung my Banner to the breeze and burst out in front of +Talbot! Oh, it was a mighty thought! That weltering chaos of distracted +men whirled and surged backward like a tidal wave which has struck a +continent, and the day was ours! Poor helpless creatures, they were in a +trap; they were surrounded; they could not escape to the rear, for there +was our army; they could not escape to the front, for there was I. Their +hearts shriveled in their bodies, their hands fell listless at their +sides. They stood still, and at our leisure we slaughtered them to a man; +all except Talbot and Fastolfe, whom I saved and brought away, one under +each arm." + +Well, there is no denying it, the Paladin was in great form that night. +Such style! such noble grace of gesture, such grandeur of attitude, such +energy when he got going! such steady rise, on such sure wing, such +nicely graduated expenditures of voice according to the weight of the +matter, such skilfully calculated approaches to his surprises and +explosions, such belief-compelling sincerity of tone and manner, such a +climaxing peal from his brazen lungs, and such a lightning-vivid picture +of his mailed form and flaunting banner when he burst out before that +despairing army! And oh, the gentle art of the last half of his last +sentence--delivered in the careless and indolent tone of one who has +finished his real story, and only adds a colorless and inconsequential +detail because it has happened to occur to him in a lazy way. + +It was a marvel to see those innocent peasants. Why, they went all to +pieces with enthusiasm, and roared out applauses fit to raise the roof +and wake the dead. When they had cooled down at last and there was +silence but for the heaving and panting, old Laxart said, admiringly: + +"As it seems to me, you are an army in your single person." + +"Yes, that is what he is," said Noel Rainguesson, convincingly. "He is a +terror; and not just in this vicinity. His mere name carries a shudder +with it to distant lands--just he mere name; and when he frowns, the +shadow of it falls as far as Rome, and the chickens go to roost an hour +before schedule time. Yes; and some say--" + +"Noel Rainguesson, you are preparing yourself for trouble. I will say +just one word to you, and it will be to your advantage to--" + +I saw that the usual thing had got a start. No man could prophesy when it +would end. So I delivered Joan's message and went off to bed. + +Joan made her good-byes to those old fellows in the morning, with loving +embraces and many tears, and with a packed multitude for sympathizers, +and they rode proudly away on their precious horses to carry their great +news home. I had seen better riders, some will say that; for horsemanship +was a new art to them. + +The vanguard moved out at dawn and took the road, with bands braying and +banners flying; the second division followed at eight. Then came the +Burgundian ambassadors, and lost us the rest of that day and the whole of +the next. But Joan was on hand, and so they had their journey for their +pains. The rest of us took the road at dawn, next morning, July 20th. And +got how far? Six leagues. Tremouille was getting in his sly work with the +vacillating King, you see. The King stopped at St. Marcoul and prayed +three days. Precious time lost--for us; precious time gained for Bedford. +He would know how to use it. + +We could not go on without the King; that would be to leave him in the +conspirators' camp. Joan argued, reasoned, implored; and at last we got +under way again. + +Joan's prediction was verified. It was not a campaign, it was only +another holiday excursion. English strongholds lined our route; they +surrendered without a blow; we garrisoned them with Frenchmen and passed +on. Bedford was on the march against us with his new army by this time, +and on the 25th of July the hostile forces faced each other and made +preparation for battle; but Bedford's good judgment prevailed, and he +turned and retreated toward Paris. Now was our chance. Our men were in +great spirits. + +Will you believe it? Our poor stick of a King allowed his worthless +advisers to persuade him to start back for Gien, whence he had set out +when we first marched for Rheims and the Coronation! And we actually did +start back. The fifteen-day truce had just been concluded with the Duke +of Burgundy, and we would go and tarry at Gien until he should deliver +Paris to us without a fight. + +We marched to Bray; then the King changed his mind once more, and with it +his face toward Paris. Joan dictated a letter to the citizens of Rheims +to encourage them to keep heart in spite of the truce, and promising to +stand by them. She furnished them the news herself that the Kin had made +this truce; and in speaking of it she was her usual frank self. She said +she was not satisfied with it, and didn't know whether she would keep it +or not; that if she kept it, it would be solely out of tenderness for the +King's honor. All French children know those famous words. How naive they +are! "De cette treve qui a ete faite, je ne suis pas contente, et je ne +sais si je la tiendrai. Si je la tiens, ce sera seulement pour garder +l'honneur du roi." But in any case, she said, she would not allow the +blood royal to be abused, and would keep the army in good order and ready +for work at the end of the truce. + +Poor child, to have to fight England, Burgundy, and a French conspiracy +all at the same time--it was too bad. She was a match for the others, but +a conspiracy--ah, nobody is a match for that, when the victim that is to +be injured is weak and willing. It grieved her, these troubled days, to +be so hindered and delayed and baffled, and at times she was sad and the +tears lay near the surface. Once, talking with her good old faithful +friend and servant, the Bastard of Orleans, she said: + +"Ah, if it might but please God to let me put off this steel raiment and +go back to my father and my mother, and tend my sheep again with my +sister and my brothers, who would be so glad to see me!" + +By the 12th of August we were camped near Dampmartin. Later we had a +brush with Bedford's rear-guard, and had hopes of a big battle on the +morrow, but Bedford and all his force got away in the night and went on +toward Paris. + +Charles sent heralds and received the submission of Beauvais. The Bishop +Pierre Cauchon, that faithful friend and slave of the English, was not +able to prevent it, though he did his best. He was obscure then, but his +name was to travel round the globe presently, and live forever in the +curses of France! Bear with me now, while I spit in fancy upon his grave. + +Compiegne surrendered, and hauled down the English flag. On the 14th we +camped two leagues from Senlis. Bedford turned and approached, and took +up a strong position. We went against him, but all our efforts to beguile +him out from his intrenchments failed, though he had promised us a duel +in the open field. Night shut down. Let him look our for the morning! But +in the morning he was gone again. + +We entered Compiegne the 18th of August, turning out the English garrison +and hoisting our own flag. + +On the 23d Joan gave command to move upon Paris. The King and the clique +were not satisfied with this, and retired sulking to Senlis, which had +just surrendered. Within a few days many strong places submitted--Creil, +Pont-Saint-Maxence, Choisy, Gournay-sur-Aronde, Remy, Le +Neufville-en-Hez, Moguay, Chantilly, Saintines. The English power was +tumbling, crash after crash! And still the King sulked and disapproved, +and was afraid of our movement against the capital. + +On the 26th of August, 1429, Joan camped at St. Denis; in effect, under +the walls of Paris. + +And still the King hung back and was afraid. If we could but have had him +there to back us with his authority! Bedford had lost heart and decided +to waive resistance and go an concentrate his strength in the best and +loyalest province remaining to him--Normandy. Ah, if we could only have +persuaded the King to come and countenance us with his presence and +approval at this supreme moment! + + + + 40 Treachery Conquers Joan + +COURIER after courier was despatched to the King, and he promised to +come, but didn't. The Duke d'Alencon went to him and got his promise +again, which he broke again. Nine days were lost thus; then he came, +arriving at St. Denis September 7th. + +Meantime the enemy had begun to take heart: the spiritless conduct of the +King could have no other result. Preparations had now been made to defend +the city. Joan's chances had been diminished, but she and her generals +considered them plenty good enough yet. Joan ordered the attack for eight +o'clock next morning, and at that hour it began. + +Joan placed her artillery and began to pound a strong work which +protected the gate St. Honor,. When it was sufficiently crippled the +assault was sounded at noon, and it was carried by storm. Then we moved +forward to storm the gate itself, and hurled ourselves against it again +and again, Joan in the lead with her standard at her side, the smoke +enveloping us in choking clouds, and the missiles flying over us and +through us as thick as hail. + +In the midst of our last assault, which would have carried the gate sure +and given us Paris and in effect France, Joan was struck down by a +crossbow bolt, and our men fell back instantly and almost in a panic--for +what were they without her? She was the army, herself. + +Although disabled, she refused to retire, and begged that a new assault +be made, saying it must win; and adding, with the battle-light rising in +her eyes, "I will take Paris now or die!" She had to be carried away by +force, and this was done by Gaucourt and the Duke d'Alencon. + +But her spirits were at the very top notch, now. She was brimming with +enthusiasm. She said she would be carried before the gate in the morning, +and in half an hour Paris would be ours without any question. She could +have kept her word. About this there was no doubt. But she forgot one +factor--the King, shadow of that substance named La Tremouille. The King +forbade the attempt! + +You see, a new Embassy had just come from the Duke of Burgundy, and +another sham private trade of some sort was on foot. + +You would know, without my telling you, that Joan's heart was nearly +broken. Because of the pain of her wound and the pain at her heart she +slept little that night. Several times the watchers heard muffled sobs +from the dark room where she lay at St. Denis, and many times the +grieving words, "It could have been taken!--it could have been taken!" +which were the only ones she said. + +She dragged herself out of bed a day later with a new hope. D'Alencon had +thrown a bridge across the Seine near St. Denis. Might she not cross by +that and assault Paris at another point? But the King got wind of it and +broke the bridge down! And more--he declared the campaign ended! And more +still--he had made a new truce and a long one, in which he had agreed to +leave Paris unthreatened and unmolested, and go back to the Loire whence +he had come! + +Joan of Arc, who had never been defeated by the enemy, was defeated by +her own King. She had said once that all she feared for her cause was +treachery. It had struck its first blow now. She hung up her white armor +in the royal basilica of St. Denis, and went and asked the King to +relieve her of her functions and let her go home. As usual, she was wise. +Grand combinations, far-reaching great military moves were at an end, +now; for the future, when the truce should end, the war would be merely a +war of random and idle skirmishes, apparently; work suitable for +subalterns, and not requiring the supervision of a sublime military +genius. But the King would not let her go. The truce did not embrace all +France; there were French strongholds to be watched and preserved; he +would need her. Really, you see, Tremouille wanted to keep her where he +could balk and hinder her. + +Now came her Voices again. They said, "Remain at St. Denis." There was no +explanation. They did not say why. That was the voice of God; it took +precedence of the command of the King; Joan resolved to stay. But that +filled La Tremouille with dread. She was too tremendous a force to be +left to herself; she would surely defeat all his plans. He beguiled the +King to use compulsion. Joan had to submit--because she was wounded and +helpless. In the Great Trial she said she was carried away against her +will; and that if she had not been wounded it could not have been +accomplished. Ah, she had a spirit, that slender girl! a spirit to brave +all earthly powers and defy them. We shall never know why the Voices +ordered her to stay. We only know this; that if she could have obeyed, +the history of France would not be as it now stands written in the books. +Yes, well we know that. + +On the 13th of September the army, sad and spiritless, turned its face +toward the Loire, and marched--without music! Yes, one noted that detail. +It was a funeral march; that is what it was. A long, dreary funeral +march, with never a shout or a cheer; friends looking on in tears, all +the way, enemies laughing. We reached Gien at last--that place whence we +had set out on our splendid march toward Rheims less than three months +before, with flags flying, bands playing, the victory-flush of Patay +glowing in our faces, and the massed multitudes shouting and praising and +giving us godspeed. There was a dull rain falling now, the day was dark, +the heavens mourned, the spectators were few, we had no welcome but the +welcome of silence, and pity, and tears. + +Then the King disbanded that noble army of heroes; it furled its flags, +it stored its arms: the disgrace of France was complete. La Tremouille +wore the victor's crown; Joan of Arc, the unconquerable, was conquered. + + + + 41 The Maid Will March No More + +YES, IT was as I have said: Joan had Paris and France in her grip, and +the Hundred Years' War under her heel, and the King made her open her +fist and take away her foot. + +Now followed about eight months of drifting about with the King and his +council, and his gay and showy and dancing and flirting and hawking and +frolicking and serenading and dissipating court--drifting from town to +town and from castle to castle--a life which was pleasant to us of the +personal staff, but not to Joan. However, she only saw it, she didn't +live it. The King did his sincerest best to make her happy, and showed a +most kind and constant anxiety in this matter. + +All others had to go loaded with the chains of an exacting court +etiquette, but she was free, she was privileged. So that she paid her +duty to the King once a day and passed the pleasant word, nothing further +was required of her. Naturally, then, she made herself a hermit, and +grieved the weary days through in her own apartments, with her thoughts +and devotions for company, and the planning of now forever unrealizable +military combinations for entertainment. In fancy she moved bodies of men +from this and that and the other point, so calculating the distances to +be covered, the time required for each body, and the nature of the +country to be traversed, as to have them appear in sight of each other on +a given day or at a given hour and concentrate for battle. It was her +only game, her only relief from her burden of sorrow and inaction. She +played it hour after hour, as others play chess; and lost herself in it, +and so got repose for her mind and healing for her heart. + +She never complained, of course. It was not her way. She was the sort +that endure in silence. + +But--she was a caged eagle just the same, and pined for the free air and +the alpine heights and the fierce joys of the storm. + +France was full of rovers--disbanded soldiers ready for anything that +might turn up. Several times, at intervals, when Joan's dull captivity +grew too heavy to bear, she was allowed to gather a troop of cavalry and +make a health-restoring dash against the enemy. These things were a bath +to her spirits. + +It was like old times, there at Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, to see her lead +assault after assault, be driven back again and again, but always rally +and charge anew, all in a blaze of eagerness and delight; till at last +the tempest of missiles rained so intolerably thick that old D'Aulon, who +was wounded, sounded the retreat (for the King had charged him on his +head to let no harm come to Joan); and away everybody rushed after +him--as he supposed; but when he turned and looked, there were we of the +staff still hammering away; wherefore he rode back and urged her to come, +saying she was mad to stay there with only a dozen men. Her eye danced +merrily, and she turned upon him crying out: + +"A dozen men! name of God, I have fifty-thousand, and will never budge +till this place is taken! + +"Sound the charge!" + +Which he did, and over the walls we went, and the fortress was ours. Old +D'Aulon thought her mind was wandering; but all she meant was, that she +felt the might of fifty thousand men surging in her heart. It was a +fanciful expression; but, to my thinking, truer word was never said. + +Then there was the affair near Lagny, where we charged the intrenched +Burgundians through the open field four times, the last time +victoriously; the best prize of it Franquet d'Arras, the free-booter and +pitiless scourge of the region roundabout. + +Now and then other such affairs; and at last, away toward the end of May, +1430, we were in the neighborhood of Compiegne, and Joan resolved to go +to the help of that place, which was being besieged by the Duke of +Burgundy. + +I had been wounded lately, and was not able to ride without help; but the +good Dwarf took me on behind him, and I held on to him and was safe +enough. We started at midnight, in a sullen downpour of warm rain, and +went slowly and softly and in dead silence, for we had to slip through +the enemy's lines. We were challenged only once; we made no answer, but +held our breath and crept steadily and stealthily along, and got through +without any accident. About three or half past we reached Compiegne, just +as the gray dawn was breaking in the east. + +Joan set to work at once, and concerted a plan with Guillaume de Flavy, +captain of the city--a plan for a sortie toward evening against the +enemy, who was posted in three bodies on the other side of the Oise, in +the level plain. From our side one of the city gates communicated with a +bridge. The end of this bridge was defended on the other side of the +river by one of those fortresses called a boulevard; and this boulevard +also commanded a raised road, which stretched from its front across the +plain to the village of Marguy. A force of Burgundians occupied Marguy; +another was camped at Clairoix, a couple of miles above the raised road; +and a body of English was holding Venette, a mile and a half below it. A +kind of bow-and-arrow arrangement, you see; the causeway the arrow, the +boulevard at the feather-end of it, Marguy at the barb, Venette at one +end of the bow, Clairoix at the other. + +Joan's plan was to go straight per causeway against Marguy, carry it by +assault, then turn swiftly upon Clairoix, up to the right, and capture +that camp in the same way, then face to the rear and be ready for heavy +work, for the Duke of Burgundy lay behind Clairoix with a reserve. +Flavy's lieutenant, with archers and the artillery of the boulevard, was +to keep the English troops from coming up from below and seizing the +causeway and cutting off Joan's retreat in case she should have to make +one. Also, a fleet of covered boats was to be stationed near the +boulevard as an additional help in case a retreat should become +necessary. + +It was the 24th of May. At four in the afternoon Joan moved out at the +head of six hundred cavalry--on her last march in this life! + +It breaks my heart. I had got myself helped up onto the walls, and from +there I saw much that happened, the rest was told me long afterward by +our two knights and other eye-witnesses. Joan crossed the bridge, and +soon left the boulevard behind her and went skimming away over the raised +road with her horsemen clattering at her heels. She had on a brilliant +silver-gilt cape over her armor, and I could see it flap and flare and +rise and fall like a little patch of white flame. + +It was a bright day, and one could see far and wide over that plain. Soon +we saw the English force advancing, swiftly and in handsome order, the +sunlight flashing from its arms. + +Joan crashed into the Burgundians at Marguy and was repulsed. Then she +saw the other Burgundians moving down from Clairoix. Joan rallied her men +and charged again, and was again rolled back. Two assaults occupy a good +deal of time--and time was precious here. The English were approaching +the road now from Venette, but the boulevard opened fire on them and they +were checked. Joan heartened her men with inspiring words and led them to +the charge again in great style. This time she carried Marguy with a +hurrah. Then she turned at once to the right and plunged into the plan +and struck the Clairoix force, which was just arriving; then there was +heavy work, and plenty of it, the two armies hurling each other backward +turn about and about, and victory inclining first to the one, then to the +other. Now all of a sudden thee was a panic on our side. Some say one +thing caused it, some another. Some say the cannonade made our front +ranks think retreat was being cut off by the English, some say the rear +ranks got the idea that Joan was killed. Anyway our men broke, and went +flying in a wild rout for the causeway. Joan tried to rally them and face +them around, crying to them that victory was sure, but it did no good, +they divided and swept by her like a wave. Old D'Aulon begged her to +retreat while there was yet a chance for safety, but she refused; so he +seized her horse's bridle and bore her along with the wreck and ruin in +spite of herself. And so along the causeway they came swarming, that wild +confusion of frenzied men and horses--and the artillery had to stop +firing, of course; consequently the English and Burgundians closed in in +safety, the former in front, the latter behind their prey. Clear to the +boulevard the French were washed in this enveloping inundation; and +there, cornered in an angle formed by the flank of the boulevard and the +slope of the causeway, they bravely fought a hopeless fight, and sank +down one by one. + +Flavy, watching from the city wall, ordered the gate to be closed and the +drawbridge raised. This shut Joan out. + +The little personal guard around her thinned swiftly. Both of our good +knights went down disabled; Joan's two brothers fell wounded; then Noel +Rainguesson--all wounded while loyally sheltering Joan from blows aimed +at her. When only the Dwarf and the Paladin were left, they would not +give up, but stood their ground stoutly, a pair of steel towers streaked +and splashed with blood; and where the ax of one fell, and the sword of +the other, an enemy gasped and died. + +And so fighting, and loyal to their duty to the last, good simple souls, +they came to their honorable end. Peace to their memories! they were very +dear to me. + +Then there was a cheer and a rush, and Joan, still defiant, still laying +about her with her sword, was seized by her cape and dragged from her +horse. She was borne away a prisoner to the Duke of Burgundy's camp, and +after her followed the victorious army roaring its joy. + +The awful news started instantly on its round; from lip to lip it flew; +and wherever it came it struck the people as with a sort of paralysis; +and they murmured over and over again, as if they were talking to +themselves, or in their sleep, "The Maid of Orleans taken! . . . Joan of +Arc a prisoner! . . . the savior of France lost to us!"--and would keep +saying that over, as if they couldn't understand how it could be, or how +God could permit it, poor creatures! + +You know what a city is like when it is hung from eaves to pavement with +rustling black? Then you know what Rouse was like, and some other cities. +But can any man tell you what the mourning in the hearts of the peasantry +of France was like? No, nobody can tell you that, and, poor dumb things, +they could not have told you themselves, but it was there--indeed, yes. +Why, it was the spirit of a whole nation hung with crape! + +The 24th of May. We will draw down the curtain now upon the most strange, +and pathetic, and wonderful military drama that has been played upon the +stage of the world. Joan of Arc will march no more. + +BOOK III TRIAL AND MARTYRDOM + + + + 1 The Maid in Chains + +I CANNOT bear to dwell at great length upon the shameful history of the +summer and winter following the capture. For a while I was not much +troubled, for I was expecting every day to hear that Joan had been put to +ransom, and that the King--no, not the King, but grateful France--had +come eagerly forward to pay it. By the laws of war she could not be +denied the privilege of ransom. She was not a rebel; she was a +legitimately constituted soldier, head of the armies of France by her +King's appointment, and guilty of no crime known to military law; +therefore she could not be detained upon any pretext, if ransom were +proffered. + +But day after day dragged by and no ransom was offered! It seems +incredible, but it is true. Was that reptile Tremouille busy at the +King's ear? All we know is, that the King was silent, and made no offer +and no effort in behalf of this poor girl who had done so much for him. + +But, unhappily, there was alacrity enough in another quarter. The news of +the capture reached Paris the day after it happened, and the glad English +and Burgundians deafened the world all the day and all the night with the +clamor of their joy-bells and the thankful thunder of their artillery, +and the next day the Vicar-General of the Inquisition sent a message to +the Duke of Burgundy requiring the delivery of the prisoner into the +hands of the Church to be tried as an idolater. + +The English had seen their opportunity, and it was the English power that +was really acting, not the Church. The Church was being used as a blind, +a disguise; and for a forcible reason: the Church was not only able to +take the life of Joan of Arc, but to blight her influence and the +valor-breeding inspiration of her name, whereas the English power could +but kill her body; that would not diminish or destroy the influence of +her name; it would magnify it and make it permanent. Joan of Arc was the +only power in France that the English did not despise, the only power in +France that they considered formidable. If the Church could be brought to +take her life, or to proclaim her an idolater, a heretic, a witch, sent +from Satan, not from heaven, it was believed that the English supremacy +could be at once reinstated. + +The Duke of Burgundy listened--but waited. He could not doubt that the +French King or the French people would come forward presently and pay a +higher price than the English. He kept Joan a close prisoner in a strong +fortress, and continued to wait, week after week. He was a French prince, +and was at heart ashamed to sell her to the English. Yet with all his +waiting no offer came to him from the French side. + +One day Joan played a cunning truck on her jailer, and not only slipped +out of her prison, but locked him up in it. But as she fled away she was +seen by a sentinel, and was caught and brought back. + +Then she was sent to Beaurevoir, a stronger castle. This was early in +August, and she had been in captivity more than two months now. Here she +was shut up in the top of a tower which was sixty feet high. She ate her +heart there for another long stretch--about three months and a half. And +she was aware, all these weary five months of captivity, that the +English, under cover of the Church, were dickering for her as one would +dicker for a horse or a slave, and that France was silent, the King +silent, all her friends the same. Yes, it was pitiful. + +And yet when she heard at last that Compiegne was being closely besieged +and likely to be captured, and that the enemy had declared that no +inhabitant of it should escape massacre, not even children of seven years +of age, she was in a fever at once to fly to our rescue. So she tore her +bedclothes to strips and tied them together and descended this frail rope +in the night, and it broke, and she fell and was badly bruised, and +remained three days insensible, meantime neither eating nor drinking. + +And now came relief to us, led by the Count of Vend"me, and Compiegne was +saved and the siege raised. This was a disaster to the Duke of Burgundy. +He had to save money now. It was a good time for a new bid to be made for +Joan of Arc. The English at once sent a French bishop--that forever +infamous Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais. He was partly promised the +Archbishopric of Rouen, which was vacant, if he should succeed. He +claimed the right to preside over Joan's ecclesiastical trial because the +battle-ground where she was taken was within his diocese. By the military +usage of the time the ransom of a royal prince was 10,000 livres of gold, +which is 61,125 francs--a fixed sum, you see. It must be accepted when +offered; it could not be refused. + +Cauchon brought the offer of this very sum from the English--a royal +prince's ransom for the poor little peasant-girl of Domremy. It shows in +a striking way the English idea of her formidable importance. It was +accepted. For that sum Joan of Arc, the Savior of France, was sold; sold +to her enemies; to the enemies of her country; enemies who had lashed and +thrashed and thumped and trounced France for a century and made holiday +sport of it; enemies who had forgotten, years and years ago, what a +Frenchman's face was like, so used were they to seeing nothing but his +back; enemies whom she had whipped, whom she had cowed, whom she had +taught to respect French valor, new-born in her nation by the breath of +her spirit; enemies who hungered for her life as being the only puissance +able to stand between English triumph and French degradation. Sold to a +French priest by a French prince, with the French King and the French +nation standing thankless by and saying nothing. + +And she--what did she say? Nothing. Not a reproach passed her lips. She +was too great for that--she was Joan of Arc; and when that is said, all +is said. + +As a soldier, her record was spotless. She could not be called to account +for anything under that head. A subterfuge must be found, and, as we have +seen, was found. She must be tried by priests for crimes against +religion. If none could be discovered, some must be invented. Let the +miscreant Cauchon alone to contrive those. + +Rouen was chosen as the scene of the trial. It was in the heart of the +English power; its population had been under English dominion so many +generations that they were hardly French now, save in language. The place +was strongly garrisoned. Joan was taken there near the end of December, +1430, and flung into a dungeon. Yes, and clothed in chains, that free +spirit! + +Still France made no move. How do I account for this? I think there is +only one way. You will remember that whenever Joan was not at the front, +the French held back and ventured nothing; that whenever she led, they +swept everything before them, so long as they could see her white armor +or her banner; that every time she fell wounded or was reported +killed--as at Compiegne--they broke in panic and fled like sheep. I argue +from this that they had undergone no real transformation as yet; that at +bottom they were still under the spell of a timorousness born of +generations of unsuccess, and a lack of confidence in each other and in +their leaders born of old and bitter experience in the way of treacheries +of all sorts--for their kings had been treacherous to their great vassals +and to their generals, and these in turn were treacherous to the head of +the state and to each other. The soldiery found that they could depend +utterly on Joan, and upon her alone. With her gone, everything was gone. +She was the sun that melted the frozen torrents and set them boiling; +with that sun removed, they froze again, and the army and all France +became what they had been before, mere dead corpses--that and nothing +more; incapable of thought, hope, ambition, or motion. + + + + 2 Joan Sold to the English + +MY WOUND gave me a great deal of trouble clear into the first part of +October; then the fresher weather renewed my life and strength. All this +time there were reports drifting about that the King was going to ransom +Joan. I believed these, for I was young and had not yet found out the +littleness and meanness of our poor human race, which brags about itself +so much, and thinks it is better and higher than the other animals. + +In October I was well enough to go out with two sorties, and in the +second one, on the 23d, I was wounded again. My luck had turned, you see. +On the night of the 25th the besiegers decamped, and in the disorder and +confusion one of their prisoners escaped and got safe into Compiegne, and +hobble into my room as pallid and pathetic an object as you would wish to +see. + +"What? Alive? Noel Rainguesson!" + +It was indeed he. It was a most joyful meeting, that you will easily +know; and also as sad as it was joyful. We could not speak Joan's name. +One's voice would have broken down. We knew who was meant when she was +mentioned; we could say "she" and "her," but we could not speak the name. + +We talked of the personal staff. Old D'Aulon, wounded and a prisoner, was +still with Joan and serving her, by permission of the Duke of Burgundy. +Joan was being treated with respect due to her rank and to her character +as a prisoner of war taken in honorable conflict. And this was +continued--as we learned later--until she fell into the hands of that +bastard of Satan, Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais. + +Noel was full of noble and affectionate praises and appreciations of our +old boastful big Standard-Bearer, now gone silent forever, his real and +imaginary battles all fought, his work done, his life honorably closed +and completed. + +"And think of his luck!" burst out Noel, with his eyes full of tears. +"Always the pet child of luck! + +"See how it followed him and stayed by him, from his first step all +through, in the field or out of it; always a splendid figure in the +public eye, courted and envied everywhere; always having a chance to do +fine things and always doing them; in the beginning called the Paladin in +joke, and called it afterward in earnest because he magnificently made +the title good; and at last--supremest luck of all--died in the field! +died with his harness on; died faithful to his charge the Standard in his +hand; died--oh, think of it--with the approving eye of Joan of Arc upon +him! + +"He drained the cup of glory to the last drop, and went jubilant to his +peace, blessedly spared all part in the disaster which was to follow. +What luck, what luck! And we? What was our sin that we are still here, we +who have also earned our place with the happy dead?" + +And presently he said: + +"They tore the sacred Standard from his dead hand and carried it away, +their most precious prize after its captured owner. But they haven't it +now. A month ago we put our lives upon the risk--our two good knights, my +fellow-prisoners, and I--and stole it, and got it smuggled by trusty +hands to Orleans, and there it is now, safe for all time in the +Treasury." + +I was glad and grateful to learn that. I have seen it often since, when I +have gone to Orleans on the 8th of May to be the petted old guest of the +city and hold the first place of honor at the banquets and in the +processions--I mean since Joan's brothers passed from this life. It will +still be there, sacredly guarded by French love, a thousand years from +now--yes, as long as any shred of it hangs together. [1] Two or three +weeks after this talk came the tremendous news like a thunder-clap, and +we were aghast--Joan of Arc sold to the English! + +Not for a moment had we ever dreamed of such a thing. We were young, you +see, and did not know the human race, as I have said before. We had been +so proud of our country, so sure of her nobleness, her magnanimity, her +gratitude. We had expected little of the King, but of France we had +expected everything. Everybody knew that in various towns patriot priests +had been marching in procession urging the people to sacrifice money, +property, everything, and buy the freedom of their heaven-sent deliverer. +That the money would be raised we had not thought of doubting. + +But it was all over now, all over. It was a bitter time for us. The +heavens seemed hung with black; all cheer went out from our hearts. Was +this comrade here at my bedside really Noel Rainguesson, that +light-hearted creature whose whole life was but one long joke, and who +used up more breath in laughter than in keeping his body alive? No, no; +that Noel I was to see no more. This one's heart was broken. He moved +grieving about, and absently, like one in a dream; the stream of his +laughter was dried at its source. + +Well, that was best. It was my own mood. We were company for each other. +He nursed me patiently through the dull long weeks, and at last, in +January, I was strong enough to go about again. Then he said: + +"Shall we go now?" + +"Yes." + +There was no need to explain. Our hearts were in Rouen; we would carry +our bodies there. All that we cared for in this life was shut up in that +fortress. We could not help her, but it would be some solace to us to be +near her, to breathe the air that she breathed, and look daily upon the +stone walls that hid her. What if we should be made prisoners there? +Well, we could but do our best, and let luck and fate decide what should +happen. + +And so we started. We could not realize the change which had come upon +the country. We seemed able to choose our own route and go whenever we +pleased, unchallenged and unmolested. When Joan of Arc was in the field +there was a sort of panic of fear everywhere; but now that she was out of +the way, fear had vanished. Nobody was troubled about you or afraid of +you, nobody was curious about you or your business, everybody was +indifferent. + +We presently saw that we could take to the Seine, and not weary ourselves +out with land travel. + +So we did it, and were carried in a boat to within a league of Rouen. +Then we got ashore; not on the hilly side, but on the other, where it is +as level as a floor. Nobody could enter or leave the city without +explaining himself. It was because they feared attempts at a rescue of +Joan. + +We had no trouble. We stopped in the plain with a family of peasants and +stayed a week, helping them with their work for board and lodging, and +making friends of them. We got clothes like theirs, and wore them. When +we had worked our way through their reserves and gotten their confidence, +we found that they secretly harbored French hearts in their bodies. Then +we came out frankly and told them everything, and found them ready to do +anything they could to help us. + +Our plan was soon made, and was quite simple. It was to help them drive a +flock of sheep to the market of the city. One morning early we made the +venture in a melancholy drizzle of rain, and passed through the frowning +gates unmolested. Our friends had friends living over a humble wine shop +in a quaint tall building situated in one of the narrow lanes that run +down from the cathedral to the river, and with these they bestowed us; +and the next day they smuggled our own proper clothing and other +belongings to us. The family that lodged us--the Pieroons--were French in +sympathy, and we needed to have no secrets from them. + +[1] It remained there three hundred and sixty years, and then was +destroyed in a public bonfire, together with two swords, a plumed cap, +several suits of state apparel, and other relics of the Maid, by a mob in +the time of the Revolution. Nothing which the hand of Joan of Arc is +known to have touched now remains in existence except a few preciously +guarded military and state papers which she signed, her pen being guided +by a clerk or her secretary, Louis de Conte. A boulder exists from which +she is known to have mounted her horse when she was once setting out upon +a campaign. Up to a quarter of a century ago there was a single hair from +her head still in existence. It was drawn through the wax of a seal +attached to the parchment of a state document. It was surreptitiously +snipped out, seal and all, by some vandal relic-hunter, and carried off. +Doubtless it still exists, but only the thief knows where. -- TRANSLATOR. + + + + 3 Weaving the Net About Her + +IT WAS necessary for me to have some way to gain bread for Noel and +myself; and when the Pierrons found that I knew how to write, the applied +to their confessor in my behalf, and he got a place for me with a good +priest named Manchon, who was to be the chief recorder in the Great Trial +of Joan of Arc now approaching. It was a strange position for me--clerk +to the recorder--and dangerous if my sympathies and the late employment +should be found out. But there was not much danger. Manchon was at bottom +friendly to Joan and would not betray me; and my name would not, for I +had discarded my surname and retained only my given one, like a person of +low degree. + +I attended Manchon constantly straight along, out of January and into +February, and was often in the citadel with him--in the very fortress +where Joan was imprisoned, though not in the dungeon where she was +confined, and so did not see her, of course. + +Manchon told me everything that had been happening before my coming. Ever +since the purchase of Joan, Cauchon had been busy packing his jury for +the destruction of the Maid--weeks and weeks he had spent in this bad +industry. The University of Paris had sent him a number of learned and +able and trusty ecclesiastics of the stripe he wanted; and he had scraped +together a clergyman of like stripe and great fame here and there and +yonder, until he was able to construct a formidable court numbering half +a hundred distinguished names. French names they were, but their +interests and sympathies were English. + +A great officer of the Inquisition was also sent from Paris for the +accused must be tried by the forms of the Inquisition; but this was a +brave and righteous man, and he said squarely that this court had no +power to try the case, wherefore he refused to act; and the same honest +talk was uttered by two or three others. + +The Inquisitor was right. The case as here resurrected against Joan had +already been tried long ago at Poitiers, and decided in her favor. Yes, +and by a higher tribunal than this one, for at the head of it was an +Archbishop--he of Rheims--Cauchon's own metropolitan. So here, you see, a +lower court was impudently preparing to try and redecide a cause which +had already been decided by its superior, a court of higher authority. +Imagine it! No, the case could not properly be tried again. Cauchon could +not properly preside in this new court, for more than one reason: + +Rouen was not in his diocese; Joan had not been arrested in her domicile, +which was still Domremy; and finally this proposed judge was the +prisoner's outspoken enemy, and therefore he was incompetent to try her. +Yet all these large difficulties were gotten rid of. The territorial +Chapter of Rouen finally granted territorial letters to Cauchon--though +only after a struggle and under compulsion. Force was also applied to the +Inquisitor, and he was obliged to submit. + +So then, the little English King, by his representative, formally +delivered Joan into the hands of the court, but with this reservation: if +the court failed to condemn her, he was to have her back again! Ah, +dear, what chance was there for that forsaken and friendless child? +Friendless, indeed--it is the right word. For she was in a black dungeon, +with half a dozen brutal common soldiers keeping guard night and day in +the room where her cage was--for she was in a cage; an iron cage, and +chained to her bed by neck and hands and feet. Never a person near her +whom she had ever seen before; never a woman at all. Yes, this was, +indeed, friendlessness. + +Now it was a vassal of Jean de Luxembourg who captured Joan and +Compiegne, and it was Jean who sold her to the Duke of Burgundy. Yet this +very De Luxembourg was shameless enough to go and show his face to Joan +in her cage. He came with two English earls, Warwick and Stafford. He was +a poor reptile. He told her he would get her set free if she would +promise not to fight the English any more. She had been in that cage a +long time now, but not long enough to break her spirit. She retorted +scornfully: + +"Name of God, you but mock me. I know that you have neither the power nor +the will to do it." + +He insisted. Then the pride and dignity of the soldier rose in Joan, and +she lifted her chained hands and let them fall with a clash, saying: + +"See these! They know more than you, an can prophesy better. I know that +the English are going to kill me, for they think that when I am dead they +can get the Kingdom of France. It is not so. + +"Though there were a hundred thousand of them they would never get it." + +This defiance infuriated Stafford, and he--now think of it--he a free, +strong man, she a chained and helpless girl--he drew his dagger and flung +himself at her to stab her. But Warwick seized him and held him back. +Warwick was wise. Take her life in that way? Send her to Heaven stainless +and undisgraced? It would make her the idol of France, and the whole +nation would rise and march to victory and emancipation under the +inspiration of her spirit. No, she must be saved for another fate than +that. + +Well, the time was approaching for the Great Trial. For more than two +months Cauchon had been raking and scraping everywhere for any odds and +ends of evidence or suspicion or conjecture that might be usable against +Joan, and carefully suppressing all evidence that came to hand in her +favor. He had limitless ways and means and powers at his disposal for +preparing and strengthening the case for the prosecution, and he used +them all. + +But Joan had no one to prepare her case for her, and she was shut up in +those stone walls and had no friend to appeal to for help. And as for +witnesses, she could not call a single one in her defense; they were all +far away, under the French flag, and this was an English court; they +would have been seized and hanged if they had shown their faces at the +gates of Rouen. No, the prisoner must be the sole witness--witness for +the prosecution, witness for the defense; and with a verdict of death +resolved upon before the doors were opened for the court's first sitting. + +When she learned that the court was made up of ecclesiastics in the +interest of the English, she begged that in fairness an equal number of +priests of the French party should be added to these. + +Cauchon scoffed at her message, and would not even deign to answer it. + +By the law of the Church--she being a minor under twenty-one--it was her +right to have counsel to conduct her case, advise her how to answer when +questioned, and protect her from falling into traps set by cunning +devices of the prosecution. She probably did not know that this was her +right, and that she could demand it and require it, for there was none to +tell her that; but she begged for this help, at any rate. Cauchon refused +it. She urged and implored, pleading her youth and her ignorance of the +complexities and intricacies of the law and of legal procedure. Cauchon +refused again, and said she must get along with her case as best she +might by herself. Ah, his heart was a stone. + +Cauchon prepared the proces verbal. I will simplify that by calling it +the Bill of Particulars. It was a detailed list of the charges against +her, and formed the basis of the trial. Charges? It was a list of +suspicions and public rumors--those were the words used. It was merely +charged that she was suspected of having been guilty of heresies, +witchcraft, and other such offenses against religion. + +Now by the law of the Church, a trial of that sort could not be begun +until a searching inquiry had been made into the history and character of +the accused, and it was essential that the result of this inquiry be +added to the proces verbal and form a part of it. You remember that that +was the first thing they did before the trial at Poitiers. They did it +again now. An ecclesiastic was sent to Domremy. There and all about the +neighborhood he made an exhaustive search into Joan's history and +character, and came back with his verdict. It was very clear. The +searcher reported that he found Joan's character to be in every way what +he "would like his own sister's character to be." Just about the same +report that was brought back to Poitiers, you see. Joan's was a character +which could endure the minutest examination. + +This verdict was a strong point for Joan, you will say. Yes, it would +have been if it could have seen the light; but Cauchon was awake, and it +disappeared from the proces verbal before the trial. People were prudent +enough not to inquire what became of it. + +One would imagine that Cauchon was ready to begin the trial by this time. +But no, he devised one more scheme for poor Joan's destruction, and it +promised to be a deadly one. + +One of the great personages picked out and sent down by the University of +Paris was an ecclesiastic named Nicolas Loyseleur. He was tall, handsome, +grave, of smooth, soft speech and courteous and winning manners. There +was no seeming of treachery or hypocrisy about him, yet he was full of +both. He was admitted to Joan's prison by night, disguised as a cobbler; +he pretended to be from her own country; he professed to be secretly a +patriot; he revealed the fact that he was a priest. She was filled with +gladness to see one from the hills and plains that were so dear to her; +happier still to look upon a priest and disburden her heart in +confession, for the offices of the Church were the bread of life, the +breath of her nostrils to her, and she had been long forced to pine for +them in vain. She opened her whole innocent heart to this creature, and +in return he gave her advice concerning her trial which could have +destroyed her if her deep native wisdom had not protected her against +following it. + +You will ask, what value could this scheme have, since the secrets of the +confessional are sacred and cannot be revealed? True--but suppose another +person should overhear them? That person is not bound to keep the secret. +Well, that is what happened. Cauchon had previously caused a hole to be +bored through the wall; and he stood with his ear to that hole and heard +all. It is pitiful to think of these things. One wonders how they could +treat that poor child so. She had not done them any harm. + + + + 4 All Ready to Condemn + +ON TUESDAY, the 20th of February, while I sat at my master's work in the +evening, he came in, looking sad, and said it had been decided to begin +the trial at eight o'clock the next morning, and I must get ready to +assist him. + +Of course I had been expecting such news every day for many days; but no +matter, the shock of it almost took my breath away and set me trembling +like a leaf. I suppose that without knowing it I had been half imagining +that at the last moment something would happen, something that would stop +this fatal trial; maybe that La Hire would burst in at the gates with his +hellions at his back; maybe that God would have pity and stretch forth +His mighty hand. But now--now there was no hope. + +The trial was to begin in the chapel of the fortress and would be public. +So I went sorrowing away and told Noel, so that he might be there early +and secure a place. It would give him a chance to look again upon the +face which we so revered and which was so precious to us. All the way, +both going and coming, I plowed through chattering and rejoicing +multitudes of English soldiery and English-hearted French citizens. There +was no talk but of the coming event. Many times I heard the remark, +accompanied by a pitiless laugh: + +"The fat Bishop has got things as he wants them at last, and says he will +lead the vile witch a merry dance and a short one." + +But here and there I glimpsed compassion and distress in a face, and it +was not always a French one. English soldiers feared Joan, but they +admired her for her great deeds and her unconquerable spirit. + +In the morning Manchon and I went early, yet as we approached the vast +fortress we found crowds of men already there and still others gathering. +The chapel was already full and the way barred against further admissions +of unofficial persons. We took our appointed places. Throned on high sat +the president, Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, in his grand robes, and +before him in rows sat his robed court--fifty distinguished +ecclesiastics, men of high degree in the Church, of clear-cut +intellectual faces, men of deep learning, veteran adepts in strategy and +casuistry, practised setters of traps for ignorant minds and unwary feet. +When I looked around upon this army of masters of legal fence, gathered +here to find just one verdict and no other, and remembered that Joan must +fight for her good name and her life single-handed against them, I asked +myself what chance an ignorant poor country-girl of nineteen could have +in such an unequal conflict; and my heart sank down low, very low. When I +looked again at that obese president, puffing and wheezing there, his +great belly distending and receding with each breath, and noted his three +chins, fold above fold, and his knobby and knotty face, and his purple +and splotchy complexion, and his repulsive cauliflower nose, and his cold +and malignant eyes--a brute, every detail of him--my heart sank lower +still. And when I noted that all were afraid of this man, and shrank and +fidgeted in their seats when his eye smote theirs, my last poor ray of +hope dissolved away and wholly disappeared. + +There was one unoccupied seat in this place, and only one. It was over +against the wall, in view of every one. It was a little wooden bench +without a back, and it stood apart and solitary on a sort of dais. Tall +men-at-arms in morion, breastplate, and steel gauntlets stood as stiff as +their own halberds on each side of this dais, but no other creature was +near by it. A pathetic little bench to me it was, for I knew whom it was +for; and the sight of it carried my mind back to the great court at +Poitiers, where Joan sat upon one like it and calmly fought her cunning +fight with the astonished doctors of the Church and Parliament, and rose +from it victorious and applauded by all, and went forth to fill the world +with the glory of her name. + +What a dainty little figure she was, and how gentle and innocent, how +winning and beautiful in the fresh bloom of her seventeen years! Those +were grand days. And so recent--for she was just nineteen now--and how +much she had seen since, and what wonders she had accomplished! + +But now--oh, all was changed now. She had been languishing in dungeons, +away from light and air and the cheer of friendly faces, for nearly +three-quarters of a year--she, born child of the sun, natural comrade of +the birds and of all happy free creatures. She would be weary now, and +worn with this long captivity, her forces impaired; despondent, perhaps, +as knowing there was no hope. Yes, all was changed. + +All this time there had been a muffled hum of conversation, and rustling +of robes and scraping of feet on the floor, a combination of dull noises +which filled all the place. Suddenly: + +"Produce the accused!" + +It made me catch my breath. My heart began to thump like a hammer. But +there was silence now--silence absolute. All those noises ceased, and it +was as if they had never been. Not a sound; the stillness grew +oppressive; it was like a weight upon one. All faces were turned toward +the door; and one could properly expect that, for most of the people +there suddenly realized, no doubt, that they were about to see, in actual +flesh and blood, what had been to them before only an embodied prodigy, a +word, a phrase, a world-girdling Name. + +The stillness continued. Then, far down the stone-paved corridors, one +heard a vague slow sound approaching: clank . . . clink . . . clank--Joan +of Arc, Deliverer of France, in chains! + +My head swam; all things whirled and spun about me. Ah, I was realizing, +too. + + + + 5 Fifty Experts Against a Novice + +I GIVE you my honor now that I am not going to distort or discolor the +facts of this miserable trial. No, I will give them to you honestly, +detail by detail, just as Manchon and I set them down daily in the +official record of the court, and just as one may read them in the +printed histories. + +There will be only this difference: that in talking familiarly with you +shall use my right to comment upon the proceedings and explain them as I +go along, so that you can understand them better; also, I shall throw in +trifles which came under our eyes and have a certain interest for you and +me, but were not important enough to go into the official record. [1] To +take up my story now where I left off. We heard the clanking of Joan's +chains down the corridors; she was approaching. + +Presently she appeared; a thrill swept the house, and one heard deep +breaths drawn. Two guardsmen followed her at a short distance to the +rear. Her head was bowed a little, and she moved slowly, she being weak +and her irons heavy. She had on men's attire--all black; a soft woolen +stuff, intensely black, funereally black, not a speck of relieving color +in it from her throat to the floor. A wide collar of this same black +stuff lay in radiating folds upon her shoulders and breast; the sleeves +of her doublet were full, down to the elbows, and tight thence to her +manacled wrists; below the doublet, tight black hose down to the chains +on her ankles. + +Half-way to her bench she stopped, just where a wide shaft of light fell +slanting from a window, and slowly lifted her face. Another thrill!--it +was totally colorless, white as snow; a face of gleaming snow set in +vivid contrast upon that slender statue of somber unmitigated black. It +was smooth and pure and girlish, beautiful beyond belief, infinitely sad +and sweet. But, dear, dear! when the challenge of those untamed eyes fell +upon that judge, and the droop vanished from her form and it straightened +up soldierly and noble, my heart leaped for joy; and I said, all is well, +all is well--they have not broken her, they have not conquered her, she +is Joan of Arc still! Yes, it was plain to me now that there was one +spirit there which this dreaded judge could not quell nor make afraid. + +She moved to her place and mounted the dais and seated herself upon her +bench, gathering her chains into her lap and nestling her little white +hands there. Then she waited in tranquil dignity, the only person there +who seemed unmoved and unexcited. A bronzed and brawny English soldier, +standing at martial ease in the front rank of the citizen spectators, did +now most gallantly and respectfully put up his great hand and give her +the military salute; and she, smiling friendly, put up hers and returned +it; whereat there was a sympathetic little break of applause, which the +judge sternly silence. + +Now the memorable inquisition called in history the Great Trial began. +Fifty experts against a novice, and no one to help the novice! + +The judge summarized the circumstances of the case and the public reports +and suspicions upon which it was based; then he required Joan to kneel +and make oath that she would answer with exact truthfulness to all +questions asked her. + +Joan's mind was not asleep. It suspected that dangerous possibilities +might lie hidden under this apparently fair and reasonable demand. She +answered with the simplicity which so often spoiled the enemy's best-laid +plans in the trial at Poitiers, and said: + +"No; for I do not know what you are going to ask me; you might ask of me +things which I would not tell you." + +This incensed the Court, and brought out a brisk flurry of angry +exclamations. Joan was not disturbed. Cauchon raised his voice and began +to speak in the midst of this noise, but he was so angry that he could +hardly get his words out. He said: + +"With the divine assistance of our Lord we require you to expedite these +proceedings for the welfare of your conscience. Swear, with your hands +upon the Gospels, that you will answer true to the questions which shall +be asked you!" and he brought down his fat hand with a crash upon his +official table. + +Joan said, with composure: + +"As concerning my father and mother, and the faith, and what things I +have done since my coming into France, I will gladly answer; but as +regards the revelations which I have received from God, my Voices have +forbidden me to confide them to any save my King--" + +Here there was another angry outburst of threats and expletives, and much +movement and confusion; so she had to stop, and wait for the noise to +subside; then her waxen face flushed a little and she straightened up and +fixed her eye on the judge, and finished her sentence in a voice that had +the old ring to it: + +--"and I will never reveal these things though you cut my head off!" + +Well, maybe you know what a deliberative body of Frenchmen is like. The +judge and half the court were on their feet in a moment, and all shaking +their fists at the prisoner, and all storming and vituperating at once, +so that you could hardly hear yourself think. They kept this up several +minutes; and because Joan sat untroubled and indifferent they grew madder +and noisier all the time. Once she said, with a fleeting trace of the +old-time mischief in her eye and manner: + +"Prithee, speak one at a time, fair lords, then I will answer all of +you." + +At the end of three whole hours of furious debating over the oath, the +situation had not changed a jot. The Bishop was still requiring an +unmodified oath, Joan was refusing for the twentieth time to take any +except the one which she had herself proposed. There was a physical +change apparent, but it was confined to the court and judge; they were +hoarse, droopy, exhausted by their long frenzy, and had a sort of haggard +look in their faces, poor men, whereas Joan was still placid and +reposeful and did not seem noticeably tired. + +The noise quieted down; there was a waiting pause of some moments' +duration. Then the judge surrendered to the prisoner, and with bitterness +in his voice told her to take the oath after her own fashion. Joan sunk +at once to her knees; and as she laid her hands upon the Gospels, that +big English soldier set free his mind: + +"By God, if she were but English, she were not in this place another half +a second!" + +It was the soldier in him responding to the soldier in her. But what a +stinging rebuke it was, what an arraignment of French character and +French royalty! Would that he could have uttered just that one phrase in +the hearing of Orleans! I know that that grateful city, that adoring +city, would have risen to the last man and the last woman, and marched +upon Rouen. Some speeches--speeches that shame a man and humble him--burn +themselves into the memory and remain there. That one is burned into +mine. + +After Joan had made oath, Cauchon asked her her name, and where she was +born, and some questions about her family; also what her age was. She +answered these. Then he asked her how much education she had. + +"I have learned from my mother the Pater Noster, the Ave Maria, and the +Belief. All that I know was taught me by my mother." + +Questions of this unessential sort dribbled on for a considerable time. +Everybody was tired out by now, except Joan. The tribunal prepared to +rise. At this point Cauchon forbade Joan to try to escape from prison, +upon pain of being held guilty of the crime of heresy--singular logic! +She answered simply: + +"I am not bound by this proposition. If I could escape I would not +reproach myself, for I have given no promise, and I shall not." + +Then she complained of the burden of her chains, and asked that they +might be removed, for she was strongly guarded in that dungeon and there +was no need of them. But the Bishop refused, and reminded her that she +had broken out of prison twice before. Joan of Arc was too proud to +insist. She only said, as she rose to go with the guard: + +"It is true, I have wanted to escape, and I do want to escape." Then she +added, in a way that would touch the pity of anybody, I think, "It is the +right of every prisoner." + +And so she went from the place in the midst of an impressive stillness, +which made the sharper and more distressful to me the clank of those +pathetic chains. + +What presence of mind she had! One could never surprise her out of it. +She saw Noel and me there when she first took her seat on the bench, and +we flushed to the forehead with excitement and emotion, but her face +showed nothing, betrayed nothing. Her eyes sought us fifty times that +day, but they passed on and there was never any ray of recognition in +them. Another would have started upon seeing us, and then--why, then +there could have been trouble for us, of course. + +We walked slowly home together, each busy with his own grief and saying +not a word. + +[1] He kept his word. His account of the Great Trial will be found to be +in strict and detailed accordance with the sworn facts of history. +--TRANSLATOR. + + + + 6 The Maid Baffles Her Persecutors + +THAT NIGHT Manchon told me that all through the day's proceedings Cauchon +had had some clerks concealed in the embrasure of a window who were to +make a special report garbling Joan's answers and twisting them from +their right meaning. Ah, that was surely the cruelest man and the most +shameless that has lived in this world. But his scheme failed. Those +clerks had human hearts in them, and their base work revolted them, and +they turned to and boldly made a straight report, whereupon Cauchon curse +them and ordered them out of his presence with a threat of drowning, +which was his favorite and most frequent menace. The matter had gotten +abroad and was making great and unpleasant talk, and Cauchon would not +try to repeat this shabby game right away. It comforted me to hear that. + +When we arrived at the citadel next morning, we found that a change had +been made. The chapel had been found too small. The court had now removed +to a noble chamber situated at the end of the great hall of the castle. +The number of judges was increased to sixty-two--one ignorant girl +against such odds, and none to help her. + +The prisoner was brought in. She was as white as ever, but she was +looking no whit worse than she looked when she had first appeared the day +before. Isn't it a strange thing? Yesterday she had sat five hours on +that backless bench with her chains in her lap, baited, badgered, +persecuted by that unholy crew, without even the refreshment of a cup of +water--for she was never offered anything, and if I have made you know +her by this time you will know without my telling you that she was not a +person likely to ask favors of those people. And she had spent the night +caged in her wintry dungeon with her chains upon her; yet here she was, +as I say, collected, unworn, and ready for the conflict; yes, and the +only person there who showed no signs of the wear and worry of yesterday. +And her eyes--ah, you should have seen them and broken your hearts. Have +you seen that veiled deep glow, that pathetic hurt dignity, that +unsubdued and unsubduable spirit that burns and smolders in the eye of a +caged eagle and makes you feel mean and shabby under the burden of its +mute reproach? Her eyes were like that. How capable they were, and how +wonderful! Yes, at all times and in all circumstances they could express +as by print every shade of the wide range of her moods. In them were +hidden floods of gay sunshine, the softest and peacefulest twilights, and +devastating storms and lightnings. Not in this world have there been +others that were comparable to them. Such is my opinion, and none that +had the privilege to see them would say otherwise than this which I have +said concerning them. + +The seance began. And how did it begin, should you think? Exactly as it +began before--with that same tedious thing which had been settled once, +after so much wrangling. The Bishop opened thus: + +"You are required now, to take the oath pure and simple, to answer truly +all questions asked you." + +Joan replied placidly: + +"I have made oath yesterday, my lord; let that suffice." + +The Bishop insisted and insisted, with rising temper; Joan but shook her +head and remained silent. At last she said: + +"I made oath yesterday; it is sufficient." Then she sighed and said, "Of +a truth, you do burden me too much." + +The Bishop still insisted, still commanded, but he could not move her. At +last he gave it up and turned her over for the day's inquest to an old +hand at tricks and traps and deceptive plausibilities--Beaupere, a doctor +of theology. Now notice the form of this sleek strategist's first +remark--flung out in an easy, offhand way that would have thrown any +unwatchful person off his guard: + +"Now, Joan, the matter is very simple; just speak up and frankly and +truly answer the questions which I am going to ask you, as you have sworn +to do." + +It was a failure. Joan was not asleep. She saw the artifice. She said: + +"No. You could ask me things which I could not tell you--and would not." +Then, reflecting upon how profane and out of character it was for these +ministers of God to be prying into matters which had proceeded from His +hands under the awful seal of His secrecy, she added, with a warning note +in her tone, "If you were well informed concerning me you would wish me +out of your hands. I have done nothing but by revelation." + +Beaupere changed his attack, and began an approach from another quarter. +He would slip upon her, you see, under cover of innocent and unimportant +questions. + +"Did you learn any trade at home?" + +"Yes, to sew and to spin." Then the invincible soldier, victor of Patay, +conqueror of the lion Talbot, deliverer of Orleans, restorer of a king's +crown, commander-in-chief of a nation's armies, straightened herself +proudly up, gave her head a little toss, and said with naive complacency, +"And when it comes to that, I am not afraid to be matched against any +woman in Rouen!" + +The crowd of spectators broke out with applause--which pleased Joan--and +there was many a friendly and petting smile to be seen. But Cauchon +stormed at the people and warned them to keep still and mind their +manners. + +Beaupere asked other questions. Then: + +"Had you other occupations at home?" + +"Yes. I helped my mother in the household work and went to the pastures +with the sheep and the cattle." + +Her voice trembled a little, but one could hardly notice it. As for me, +it brought those old enchanted days flooding back to me, and I could not +see what I was writing for a little while. + +Beaupere cautiously edged along up with other questions toward the +forbidden ground, and finally repeated a question which she had refused +to answer a little while back--as to whether she had received the +Eucharist in those days at other festivals than that of Easter. Joan +merely said: + +"Passez outre." Or, as one might say, "Pass on to matters which you are +privileged to pry into." + +I heard a member of the court say to a neighbor: + +"As a rule, witnesses are but dull creatures, and an easy prey--yes, and +easily embarrassed, easily frightened--but truly one can neither scare +this child nor find her dozing." + +Presently the house pricked up its ears and began to listen eagerly, for +Beaupere began to touch upon Joan's Voices, a matter of consuming +interest and curiosity to everybody. His purpose was to trick her into +heedless sayings that could indicate that the Voices had sometimes given +her evil advice--hence that they had come from Satan, you see. To have +dealing with the devil--well, that would send her to the stake in brief +order, and that was the deliberate end and aim of this trial. + +"When did you first hear these Voices?" + +"I was thirteen when I first heard a Voice coming from God to help me to +live well. I was frightened. It came at midday, in my father's garden in +the summer." + +"Had you been fasting?" + +"Yes." + +"The day before?" + +"No." + +"From what direction did it come?" + +"From the right--from toward the church." + +"Did it come with a bright light?" + +"Oh, indeed yes. It was brilliant. When I came into France I often heard +the Voices very loud." + +"What did the Voice sound like?" + +"It was a noble Voice, and I thought it was sent to me from God. The +third time I heard it I recognized it as being an angel's." + +"You could understand it?" + +"Quite easily. It was always clear." + +"What advice did it give you as to the salvation of your soul?" + +"It told me to live rightly, and be regular in attendance upon the +services of the Church. And it told me that I must go to France." + +"In what species of form did the Voice appear?" + +Joan looked suspiciously at he priest a moment, then said, tranquilly: + +"As to that, I will not tell you." + +"Did the Voice seek you often?" + +"Yes. Twice or three times a week, saying, 'Leave your village and go to +France.'" + +"Did you father know about your departure?" + +"No. The Voice said, 'Go to France'; therefore I could not abide at home +any longer." + +"What else did it say?" + +"That I should raise the siege of Orleans." + +"Was that all?" + +"No, I was to go to Vaucouleurs, and Robert de Baudricourt would give me +soldiers to go with me to France; and I answered, saying that I was a +poor girl who did not know how to ride, neither how to fight." + +Then she told how she was balked and interrupted at Vaucouleurs, but +finally got her soldiers, and began her march. + +"How were you dressed?" + +The court of Poitiers had distinctly decided and decreed that as God had +appointed her to do a man's work, it was meet and no scandal to religion +that she should dress as a man; but no matter, this court was ready to +use any and all weapons against Joan, even broken and discredited ones, +and much was going to be made of this one before this trial should end. + +"I wore a man's dress, also a sword which Robert de Baudricourt gave me, +but no other weapon." + +"Who was it that advised you to wear the dress of a man?" + +Joan was suspicious again. She would not answer. + +The question was repeated. + +She refused again. + +"Answer. It is a command!" + +"Passez outre," was all she said. + +So Beaupere gave up the matter for the present. + +"What did Baudricourt say to you when you left?" + +"He made them that were to go with me promise to take charge of me, and +to me he said, 'Go, and let happen what may!'" (Advienne que pourra!) +After a good deal of questioning upon other matters she was asked again +about her attire. She said it was necessary for her to dress as a man. + +"Did your Voice advise it?" + +Joan merely answered placidly: + +"I believe my Voice gave me good advice." + +It was all that could be got out of her, so the questions wandered to +other matters, and finally to her first meeting with the King at Chinon. +She said she chose out the King, who was unknown to her, by the +revelation of her Voices. All that happened at that time was gone over. +Finally: + +"Do you still hear those Voices?" + +"They come to me every day." + +"What do you ask of them?" + +"I have never asked of them any recompense but the salvation of my soul." + +"Did the Voice always urge you to follow the army?" + +He is creeping upon her again. She answered: + +"It required me to remain behind at St. Denis. I would have obeyed if I +had been free, but I was helpless by my wound, and the knights carried me +away by force." + +"When were you wounded?" + +"I was wounded in the moat before Paris, in the assault." + +The next question reveals what Beaupere had been leading up to: + +"Was it a feast-day?" + +You see? The suggestion that a voice coming from God would hardly advise +or permit the violation, by war and bloodshed, of a sacred day. + +Joan was troubled a moment, then she answered yes, it was a feast-day. + +"Now, then, tell the this: did you hold it right to make the attack on +such a day?" + +This was a shot which might make the first breach in a wall which had +suffered no damage thus far. There was immediate silence in the court and +intense expectancy noticeable all about. But Joan disappointed the house. +She merely made a slight little motion with her hand, as when one brushes +away a fly, and said with reposeful indifference: + +"Passez outre." + +Smiles danced for a moment in some of the sternest faces there, and +several men even laughed outright. The trap had been long and laboriously +prepared; it fell, and was empty. + +The court rose. It had sat for hours, and was cruelly fatigued. Most of +the time had been taken up with apparently idle and purposeless inquiries +about the Chinon events, the exiled Duke of Orleans, Joan's first +proclamation, and so on, but all this seemingly random stuff had really +been sown thick with hidden traps. But Joan had fortunately escaped them +all, some by the protecting luck which attends upon ignorance and +innocence, some by happy accident, the others by force of her best and +surest helper, the clear vision and lightning intuitions of her +extraordinary mind. + +Now, then, this daily baiting and badgering of this friendless girl, a +captive in chains, was to continue a long, long time--dignified sport, a +kennel of mastiffs and bloodhounds harassing a kitten!--and I may as well +tell you, upon sworn testimony, what it was like from the first day to +the last. When poor Joan had been in her grave a quarter of a century, +the Pope called together that great court which was to re-examine her +history, and whose just verdict cleared her illustrious name from every +spot and stain, and laid upon the verdict and conduct of our Rouen +tribunal the blight of its everlasting execrations. Manchon and several +of the judges who had been members of our court were among the witnesses +who appeared before that Tribunal of Rehabilitation. Recalling these +miserable proceedings which I have been telling you about, Manchon +testified thus:--here you have it, all in fair print in the unofficial +history: + +When Joan spoke of her apparitions she was interrupted at almost every +word. They wearied her with long and multiplied interrogatories upon all +sorts of things. Almost every day the interrogatories of the morning +lasted three or four hours; then from these morning interrogatories they +extracted the particularly difficult and subtle points, and these served +as material for the afternoon interrogatories, which lasted two or three +hours. Moment by moment they skipped from one subject to another; yet in +spite of this she always responded with an astonishing wisdom and memory. +She often corrected the judges, saying, "But I have already answered that +once before--ask the recorder," referring them to me. + +And here is the testimony of one of Joan's judges. Remember, these +witnesses are not talking about two or three days, they are talking about +a tedious long procession of days: + +They asked her profound questions, but she extricated herself quite well. +Sometimes the questioners changed suddenly and passed on to another +subject to see if she would not contradict herself. They burdened her +with long interrogatories of two or three hours, from which the judges +themselves went forth fatigued. From the snares with which she was beset +the expertest man in the world could not have extricated himself but with +difficulty. She gave her responses with great prudence; indeed to such a +degree that during three weeks I believed she was inspired. + +Ah, had she a mind such as I have described? You see what these priests +say under oath--picked men, men chosen for their places in that terrible +court on account of their learning, their experience, their keen and +practised intellects, and their strong bias against the prisoner. They +make that poor country-girl out the match, and more than the match, of +the sixty-two trained adepts. Isn't it so? They from the University of +Paris, she from the sheepfold and the cow-stable! + +Ah, yes, she was great, she was wonderful. It took six thousand years to +produce her; her like will not be seen in the earth again in fifty +thousand. Such is my opinion. + + + + 7 Craft That Was in Vain + +THE THIRD meeting of the court was in that same spacious chamber, next +day, 24th of February. + +How did it begin? In just the same old way. When the preparations were +ended, the robed sixty-two massed in their chairs and the guards and +order-keepers distributed to their stations, Cauchon spoke from his +throne and commanded Joan to lay her hands upon the Gospels and swear to +tell the truth concerning everything asked her! + +Joan's eyes kindled, and she rose; rose and stood, fine and noble, and +faced toward the Bishop and said: + +"Take care what you do, my lord, you who are my judge, for you take a +terrible responsibility on yourself and you presume too far." + +It made a great stir, and Cauchon burst out upon her with an awful +threat--the threat of instant condemnation unless she obeyed. That made +the very bones of my body turn cold, and I saw cheeks about me +blanch--for it meant fire and the stake! But Joan, still standing, +answered him back, proud and undismayed: + +"Not all the clergy in Paris and Rouen could condemn me, lacking the +right!" + +This made a great tumult, and part of it was applause from the +spectators. Joan resumed her seat. + +The Bishop still insisted. Joan said: + +"I have already made oath. It is enough." + +The Bishop shouted: + +"In refusing to swear, you place yourself under suspicion!" + +"Let be. I have sword already. It is enough." + +The Bishop continued to insist. Joan answered that "she would tell what +she knew--but not all that she knew." + +The Bishop plagued her straight along, till at last she said, in a weary +tone: + +"I came from God; I have nothing more to do here. Return me to God, from +whom I came." + +It was piteous to hear; it was the same as saying, "You only want my +life; take it and let me be at peace." + +The Bishop stormed out again: + +"Once more I command you to--" + +Joan cut in with a nonchalant "Passez outre," and Cauchon retired from +the struggle; but he retired with some credit this time, for he offered a +compromise, and Joan, always clear-headed, saw protection for herself in +it and promptly and willingly accepted it. She was to swear to tell the +truth "as touching the matters et down in the proces verbal." They could +not sail her outside of definite limits, now; her course was over a +charted sea, henceforth. The Bishop had granted more than he had +intended, and more than he would honestly try to abide by. + +By command, Beaupere resumed his examination of the accused. It being +Lent, there might be a chance to catch her neglecting some detail of her +religious duties. I could have told him he would fail there. Why, +religion was her life! + +"Since when have you eaten or drunk?" + +If the least thing had passed her lips in the nature of sustenance, +neither her youth nor the fact that she was being half starved in her +prison could save her from dangerous suspicion of contempt for the +commandments of the Church. + +"I have done neither since yesterday at noon." + +The priest shifted to the Voices again. + +"When have you heard your Voice?" + +"Yesterday and to-day." + +"At what time?" + +"Yesterday it was in the morning." + +"What were you doing then?" + +"I was asleep and it woke me." + +"By touching your arm?" + +"No, without touching me." + +"Did you thank it? Did you kneel?" + +He had Satan in his mind, you see; and was hoping, perhaps, that by and +by it could be shown that she had rendered homage to the arch enemy of +God and man. + +"Yes, I thanked it; and knelt in my bed where I was chained, and joined +my hands and begged it to implore God's help for me so that I might have +light and instruction as touching the answers I should give here." + +"Then what did the Voice say?" + +"It told me to answer boldly, and God would help me." Then she turned +toward Cauchon and said, "You say that you are my judge; now I tell you +again, take care what you do, for in truth I am sent of God and you are +putting yourself in great danger." + +Beaupere asked her if the Voice's counsels were not fickle and variable. + +"No. It never contradicts itself. This very day it has told me again to +answer boldly." + +"Has it forbidden you to answer only part of what is asked you?" + +"I will tell you nothing as to that. I have revelations touching the King +my master, and those I will not tell you." Then she was stirred by a +great emotion, and the tears sprang to her eyes and she spoke out as with +strong conviction, saying: + +"I believe wholly--as wholly as I believe the Christian faith and that +God has redeemed us from the fires of hell, that God speaks to me by that +Voice!" + +Being questioned further concerning the Voice, she said she was not at +liberty to tell all she knew. + +"Do you think God would be displeased at your telling the whole truth?" + +"The Voice has commanded me to tell the King certain things, and not +you--and some very lately--even last night; things which I would he knew. +He would be more easy at his dinner." + +"Why doesn't the Voice speak to the King itself, as it did when you were +with him? Would it not if you asked it?" + +"I do not know if it be the wish of God." She was pensive a moment or +two, busy with her thoughts and far away, no doubt; then she added a +remark in which Beaupere, always watchful, always alert, detected a +possible opening--a chance to set a trap. Do you think he jumped at it +instantly, betraying the joy he had in his mind, as a young hand at craft +and artifice would do? + +No, oh, no, you could not tell that he had noticed the remark at all. He +slid indifferently away from it at once, and began to ask idle questions +about other things, so as to slip around and spring on it from behind, so +to speak: tedious and empty questions as to whether the Voice had told +her she would escape from this prison; and if it had furnished answers to +be used by her in to-day's seance; if it was accompanied with a glory of +light; if it had eyes, etc. That risky remark of Joan's was this: + +"Without the Grace of God I could do nothing." + +The court saw the priest's game, and watched his play with a cruel +eagerness. Poor Joan was grown dreamy and absent; possibly she was tired. +Her life was in imminent danger, and she did not suspect it. The time was +ripe now, and Beaupere quietly and stealthily sprang his trap: + +"Are you in a state of Grace?" + +Ah, we had two or three honorable brave men in that pack of judges; and +Jean Lefevre was one of them. He sprang to his feet and cried out: + +"It is a terrible question! The accused is not obliged to answer it!" + +Cauchon's face flushed black with anger to see this plank flung to the +perishing child, and he shouted: + +"Silence! and take your seat. The accused will answer the question!" + +There was no hope, no way out of the dilemma; for whether she said yes or +whether she said no, it would be all the same--a disastrous answer, for +the Scriptures had said one cannot know this thing. Think what hard +hearts they were to set this fatal snare for that ignorant young girl and +be proud of such work and happy in it. It was a miserable moment for me +while we waited; it seemed a year. All the house showed excitement; and +mainly it was glad excitement. Joan looked out upon these hungering faces +with innocent, untroubled eyes, and then humbly and gently she brought +out that immortal answer which brushed the formidable snare away as it +had been but a cobweb: + +"If I be not in a state of Grace, I pray God place me in it; if I be in +it, I pray God keep me so." + +Ah, you will never see an effect like that; no, not while you live. For a +space there was the silence of the grave. Men looked wondering into each +other's faces, and some were awed and crossed themselves; and I heard +Lefevre mutter: + +"It was beyond the wisdom of man to devise that answer. Whence comes this +child's amazing inspirations?" + +Beaupere presently took up his work again, but the humiliation of his +defeat weighed upon him, and he made but a rambling and dreary business +of it, he not being able to put any heart in it. + +He asked Joan a thousand questions about her childhood and about the oak +wood, and the fairies, and the children's games and romps under our dear +Arbre Fee Bourlemont, and this stirring up of old memories broke her +voice and made her cry a little, but she bore up as well as she could, +and answered everything. + +Then the priest finished by touching again upon the matter of her +apparel--a matter which was never to be lost sight of in this still-hunt +for this innocent creature's life, but kept always hanging over her, a +menace charged with mournful possibilities: + +"Would you like a woman's dress?" + +"Indeed yes, if I may go out from this prison--but here, no." + + + + 8 Joan Tells of Her Visions + +THE COURT met next on Monday the 27th. Would you believe it? The Bishop +ignored the contract limiting the examination to matters set down in the +proces verbal and again commanded Joan to take the oath without +reservations. She said: + +"You should be content I have sworn enough." + +She stood her ground, and Cauchon had to yield. + +The examination was resumed, concerning Joan's Voices. + +"You have said that you recognized them as being the voices of angels the +third time that you heard them. What angels were they?" + +"St. Catherine and St. Marguerite." + +"How did you know that it was those two saints? How could you tell the +one from the other?" + +"I know it was they; and I know how to distinguish them." + +"By what sign?" + +"By their manner of saluting me. I have been these seven years under +their direction, and I knew who they were because they told me." + +"Whose was the first Voice that came to you when you were thirteen years +old?" + +"It was the Voice of St. Michael. I saw him before my eyes; and he was +not alone, but attended by a cloud of angels." + +"Did you see the archangel and the attendant angels in the body, or in +the spirit?" + +"I saw them with the eyes of my body, just as I see you; and when they +went away I cried because they did not take me with them." + +It made me see that awful shadow again that fell dazzling white upon her +that day under l'Arbre Fee de Bourlemont, and it made me shiver again, +though it was so long ago. It was really not very long gone by, but it +seemed so, because so much had happened since. + +"In what shape and form did St. Michael appear?" + +"As to that, I have not received permission to speak." + +"What did the archangel say to you that first time?" + +"I cannot answer you to-day." + +Meaning, I think, that she would have to get permission of her Voices +first. + +Presently, after some more questions as to the revelations which had been +conveyed through her to the King, she complained of the unnecessity of +all this, and said: + +"I will say again, as I have said before many times in these sittings, +that I answered all questions of this sort before the court at Poitiers, +and I would hat you wold bring here the record of that court and read +from that. Prithee, send for that book." + +There was no answer. It was a subject that had to be got around and put +aside. That book had wisely been gotten out of the way, for it contained +things which would be very awkward here. + +Among them was a decision that Joan's mission was from God, whereas it +was the intention of this inferior court to show that it was from the +devil; also a decision permitting Joan to wear male attire, whereas it +was the purpose of this court to make the male attire do hurtful work +against her. + +"How was it that you were moved to come into France--by your own desire?" + +"Yes, and by command of God. But that it was His will I would note have +come. I would sooner have had my body torn in sunder by horses than come, +lacking that." + +Beaupere shifted once more to the matter of the male attire, now, and +proceeded to make a solemn talk about it. That tried Joan's patience; and +presently she interrupted and said: + +"It is a trifling thing and of no consequence. And I did not put it on by +counsel of any man, but by command of God." + +"Robert de Baudricourt did not order you to wear it?" + +"No." + +"Did you think you did well in taking the dress of a man?" + +"I did well to do whatsoever thing God commanded me to do." + +"But in this particular case do you think you did well in taking the +dress of a man?" + +"I have done nothing but by command of God." + +Beaupere made various attempts to lead her into contradictions of +herself; also to put her words and acts in disaccord with the Scriptures. +But it was lost time. He did not succeed. He returned to her visions, the +light which shone about them, her relations with the King, and so on. + +"Was there an angel above the King's head the first time you saw him?" + +"By the Blessed Mary!--" + +She forced her impatience down, and finished her sentence with +tranquillity: "If there was one I did not see it." + +"Was there light?" + +"There were more than three thousand soldiers there, and five hundred +torches, without taking account of spiritual light." + +"What made the King believe in the revelations which you brought him?" + +"He had signs; also the counsel of the clergy." + +"What revelations were made to the King?" + +"You will not get that out of me this year." + +Presently she added: "During three weeks I was questioned by the clergy +at Chinon and Poitiers. The King had a sign before he would believe; and +the clergy were of opinion that my acts were good and not evil." + +The subject was dropped now for a while, and Beaupere took up the matter +of the miraculous sword of Fierbois to see if he could not find a chance +there to fix the crime of sorcery upon Joan. + +"How did you know that there was an ancient sword buried in the ground +under the rear of the altar of the church of St. Catherine of Fierbois?" + +Joan had no concealments to make as to this: + +"I knew the sword was there because my Voices told me so; and I sent to +ask that it be given to me to carry in the wars. It seemed to me that it +was not very deep in the ground. The clergy of the church caused it to be +sought for and dug up; and they polished it, and the rust fell easily off +from it." + +"Were you wearing it when you were taken in battle at Compiegne?" + +"No. But I wore it constantly until I left St. Denis after the attack +upon Paris." + +This sword, so mysteriously discovered and so long and so constantly +victorious, was suspected of being under the protection of enchantment. + +"Was that sword blest? What blessing had been invoked upon it?" + +"None. I loved it because it was found in the church of St. Catherine, +for I loved that church very dearly." + +She loved it because it had been built in honor of one of her angels. + +"Didn't you lay it upon the altar, to the end that it might be lucky?" +(The altar of St. Denis.) "No." + +"Didn't you pray that it might be made lucky?" + +"Truly it were no harm to wish that my harness might be fortunate." + +"Then it was not that sword which you wore in the field of Compiegne? +What sword did you wear there?" + +"The sword of the Burgundian Franquet d'Arras, whom I took prisoner in +the engagement at Lagny. I kept it because it was a good war-sword--good +to lay on stout thumps and blows with." + +She said that quite simply; and the contrast between her delicate little +self and the grim soldier words which she dropped with such easy +familiarity from her lips made many spectators smile. + +"What is become of the other sword? Where is it now?" + +"Is that in the proces verbal?" + +Beaupere did not answer. + +"Which do you love best, your banner or your sword?" + +Her eye lighted gladly at the mention of her banner, and she cried out: + +"I love my banner best--oh, forty times more than the sword! Sometimes I +carried it myself when I charged the enemy, to avoid killing any one." +Then she added, naively, and with again that curious contrast between her +girlish little personality and her subject, "I have never killed anyone." + +It made a great many smile; and no wonder, when you consider what a +gentle and innocent little thing she looked. One could hardly believe she +had ever even seen men slaughtered, she look so little fitted for such +things. + +"In the final assault at Orleans did you tell your soldiers that the +arrows shot by the enemy and the stones discharged from their catapults +would not strike any one but you?" + +"No. And the proof its, that more than a hundred of my men were struck. I +told them to have no doubts and no fears; that they would raise the +siege. I was wounded in the neck by an arrow in the assault upon the +bastille that commanded the bridge, but St. Catherine comforted me and I +was cured in fifteen days without having to quit the saddle and leave my +work." + +"Did you know that you were going to be wounded?" + +"Yes; and I had told it to the King beforehand. I had it from my Voices." + +"When you took Jargeau, why did you not put its commandant to ransom?" + +"I offered him leave to go out unhurt from the place, with all his +garrison; and if he would not I would take it by storm." + +"And you did, I believe." + +"Yes." + +"Had your Voices counseled you to take it by storm?" + +"As to that, I do not remember." + +Thus closed a weary long sitting, without result. Every device that could +be contrived to trap Joan into wrong thinking, wrong doing, or disloyalty +to the Church, or sinfulness as a little child at home or later, had been +tried, and none of them had succeeded. She had come unscathed through the +ordeal. + +Was the court discouraged? No. Naturally it was very much surprised, very +much astonished, to find its work baffling and difficult instead of +simple and easy, but it had powerful allies in the shape of hunger, cold, +fatigue, persecution, deception, and treachery; and opposed to this array +nothing but a defenseless and ignorant girl who must some time or other +surrender to bodily and mental exhaustion or get caught in one of the +thousand traps set for her. + +And had the court made no progress during these seemingly resultless +sittings? Yes. It had been feeling its way, groping here, groping there, +and had found one or two vague trails which might freshen by and by and +lead to something. The male attire, for instance, and the visions and +Voices. Of course no one doubted that she had seen supernatural beings +and been spoken to and advised by them. And of course no one doubted that +by supernatural help miracles had been done by Joan, such as choosing out +the King in a crowd when she had never seen him before, and her discovery +of the sword buried under the altar. It would have been foolish to doubt +these things, for we all know that the air is full of devils and angels +that are visible to traffickers in magic on the one hand and to the +stainlessly holy on the other; but what many and perhaps most did doubt +was, that Joan's visions, Voices, and miracles came from God. It was +hoped that in time they could be proven to have been of satanic origin. +Therefore, as you see, the court's persistent fashion of coming back to +that subject every little while and spooking around it and prying into it +was not to pass the time--it had a strictly business end in view. + + + + 9 Her Sure Deliverance Foretold + +THE NEXT sitting opened on Thursday the first of March. Fifty-eight +judges present--the others resting. + +As usual, Joan was required to take an oath without reservations. She +showed no temper this time. She considered herself well buttressed by the +proces verbal compromise which Cauchon was so anxious to repudiate and +creep out of; so she merely refused, distinctly and decidedly; and added, +in a spirit of fairness and candor: + +"But as to matters set down in the proces verbal, I will freely tell the +whole truth--yes, as freely and fully as if I were before the Pope." + +Here was a chance! We had two or three Popes, then; only one of them +could be the true Pope, of course. Everybody judiciously shirked the +question of which was the true Pope and refrained from naming him, it +being clearly dangerous to go into particulars in this matter. Here was +an opportunity to trick an unadvised girl into bringing herself into +peril, and the unfair judge lost no time in taking advantage of it. He +asked, in a plausibly indolent and absent way: + +"Which one do you consider to be the true Pope?" + +The house took an attitude of deep attention, and so waited to hear the +answer and see the prey walk into the trap. But when the answer came it +covered the judge with confusion, and you could see many people covertly +chuckling. For Joan asked in a voice and manner which almost deceived +even me, so innocent it seemed: + +"Are there two?" + +One of the ablest priests in that body and one of the best swearers +there, spoke right out so that half the house heard him, and said: + +"By God, it was a master stroke!" + +As soon as the judge was better of his embarrassment he came back to the +charge, but was prudent and passed by Joan's question: + +"Is it true that you received a letter from the Count of Armagnac asking +you which of the three Popes he ought to obey?" + +"Yes, and answered it." + +Copies of both letters were produced and read. Joan said that hers had +not been quite strictly copied. She said she had received the Count's +letter when she was just mounting her horse; and added: + +"So, in dictating a word or two of reply I said I would try to answer him +from Paris or somewhere where I could be at rest." + +She was asked again which Pope she had considered the right one. + +"I was not able to instruct the Count of Armagnac as to which one he +ought to obey"; then she added, with a frank fearlessness which sounded +fresh and wholesome in that den of trimmers and shufflers, "but as for +me, I hold that we are bound to obey our Lord the Pope who is at Rome." + +The matter was dropped. They produced and read a copy of Joan's first +effort at dictating--her proclamation summoning the English to retire +from the siege of Orleans and vacate France--truly a great and fine +production for an unpractised girl of seventeen. + +"Do you acknowledge as your own the document which has just been read?" + +"Yes, except that there are errors in it--words which make me give myself +too much importance." I saw what was coming; I was troubled and ashamed. +"For instance, I did not say 'Deliver up to the Maid' (rendez au la +Pucelle); I said 'Deliver up to the King' (rendez au Roi); and I did not +call myself 'Commander-in-Chief' (chef de guerre). All those are words +which my secretary substituted; or mayhap he misheard me or forgot what I +said." + +She did not look at me when she said it: she spared me that +embarrassment. I hadn't misheard her at all, and hadn't forgotten. I +changed her language purposely, for she was Commander-in-Chief and +entitled to call herself so, and it was becoming and proper, too; and who +was going to surrender anything to the King?--at that time a stick, a +cipher? If any surrendering was done, it would be to the noble Maid of +Vaucouleurs, already famed and formidable though she had not yet struck a +blow. + +Ah, there would have been a fine and disagreeable episode (for me) there, +if that pitiless court had discovered that the very scribbler of that +piece of dictation, secretary to Joan of Arc, was present--and not only +present, but helping build the record; and not only that, but destined at +a far distant day to testify against lies and perversions smuggled into +it by Cauchon and deliver them over to eternal infamy! + +"Do you acknowledge that you dictated this proclamation?" + +"I do." + +"Have you repented of it? Do you retract it?" + +Ah, then she was indignant! + +"No! Not even these chains"--and she shook them--"not even these chains +can chill the hopes that I uttered there. And more!"--she rose, and stood +a moment with a divine strange light kindling in her face, then her words +burst forth as in a flood--"I warn you now that before seven years a +disaster will smite the English, oh, many fold greater than the fall of +Orleans! and--" + +"Silence! Sit down!" + +"--and then, soon after, they will lose all France!" + +Now consider these things. The French armies no longer existed. The +French cause was standing still, our King was standing still, there was +no hint that by and by the Constable Richemont would come forward and +take up the great work of Joan of Arc and finish it. In face of all this, +Joan made that prophecy--made it with perfect confidence--and it came +true. For within five years Paris fell--1436--and our King marched into +it flying the victor's flag. So the first part of the prophecy was then +fulfilled--in fact, almost the entire prophecy; for, with Paris in our +hands, the fulfilment of the rest of it was assured. + +Twenty years later all France was ours excepting a single town--Calais. + +Now that will remind you of an earlier prophecy of Joan's. At the time +that she wanted to take Paris and could have done it with ease if our +King had but consented, she said that that was the golden time; that, +with Paris ours, all France would be ours in six months. But if this +golden opportunity to recover France was wasted, said she, "I give you +twenty years to do it in." + +She was right. After Paris fell, in 1436, the rest of the work had to be +done city by city, castle by castle, and it took twenty years to finish +it. + +Yes, it was the first day of March, 1431, there in the court, that she +stood in the view of everybody and uttered that strange and incredible +prediction. Now and then, in this world, somebody's prophecy turns up +correct, but when you come to look into it there is sure to be +considerable room for suspicion that the prophecy was made after the +fact. But here the matter is different. There in that court Joan's +prophecy was set down in the official record at the hour and moment of +its utterance, years before the fulfilment, and there you may read it to +this day. + +Twenty-five years after Joan's death the record was produced in the great +Court of the Rehabilitation and verified under oath by Manchon and me, +and surviving judges of our court confirmed the exactness of the record +in their testimony. + +Joan' startling utterance on that now so celebrated first of March +stirred up a great turmoil, and it was some time before it quieted down +again. Naturally, everybody was troubled, for a prophecy is a grisly and +awful thing, whether one thinks it ascends from hell or comes down from +heaven. + +All that these people felt sure of was, that the inspiration back of it +was genuine and puissant. + +They would have given their right hands to know the source of it. + +At last the questions began again. + +"How do you know that those things are going to happen?" + +"I know it by revelation. And I know it as surely as I know that you sit +here before me." + +This sort of answer was not going to allay the spreading uneasiness. +Therefore, after some further dallying the judge got the subject out of +the way and took up one which he could enjoy more. + +"What languages do your Voices speak?" + +"French." + +"St. Marguerite, too?" + +"Verily; why not? She is on our side, not on the English!" + +Saints and angels who did not condescend to speak English is a grave +affront. They could not be brought into court and punished for contempt, +but the tribunal could take silent note of Joan's remark and remember it +against her; which they did. It might be useful by and by. + +"Do your saints and angels wear jewelry?--crowns, rings, earrings?" + +To Joan, questions like these were profane frivolities and not worthy of +serious notice; she answered indifferently. But the question brought to +her mind another matter, and she turned upon Cauchon and said: + +"I had two rings. They have been taken away from me during my captivity. +You have one of them. It is the gift of my brother. Give it back to me. +If not to me, then I pray that it be given to the Church." + +The judges conceived the idea that maybe these rings were for the working +of enchantments. + +Perhaps they could be made to do Joan a damage. + +"Where is the other ring?" + +"The Burgundians have it." + +"Where did you get it?" + +"My father and mother gave it to me." + +"Describe it." + +"It is plain and simple and has 'Jesus and Mary' engraved upon it." + +Everybody could see that that was not a valuable equipment to do devil's +work with. So that trail was not worth following. Still, to make sure, +one of the judges asked Joan if she had ever cured sick people by +touching them with the ring. She said no. + +"Now as concerning the fairies, that were used to abide near by Domremy +whereof there are many reports and traditions. It is said that your +godmother surprised these creatures on a summer's night dancing under the +tree called l'Arbre Fee de Bourlemont. Is it not possible that your +pretended saints and angles are but those fairies?" + +"Is that in your proces?" + +She made no other answer. + +"Have you not conversed with St. Marguerite and St. Catherine under that +tree?" + +"I do not know." + +"Or by the fountain near the tree?" + +"Yes, sometimes." + +"What promises did they make you?" + +"None but such as they had God's warrant for." + +"But what promises did they make?" + +"That is not in your proces; yet I will say this much: they told me that +the King would become master of his kingdom in spite of his enemies." + +"And what else?" + +There was a pause; then she said humbly: + +"They promised to lead me to Paradise." + +If faces do really betray what is passing in men's minds, a fear came +upon many in that house, at this time, that maybe, after all, a chosen +servant and herald of God was here being hunted to her death. The +interest deepened. Movements and whisperings ceased: the stillness became +almost painful. + +Have you noticed that almost from the beginning the nature of the +questions asked Joan showed that in some way or other the questioner very +often already knew his fact before he asked his question? Have you +noticed that somehow or other the questioners usually knew just how and +were to search for Joan's secrets; that they really knew the bulk of her +privacies--a fact not suspected by her--and that they had no task before +them but to trick her into exposing those secrets? + +Do you remember Loyseleur, the hypocrite, the treacherous priest, tool of +Cauchon? Do you remember that under the sacred seal of the confessional +Joan freely and trustingly revealed to him everything concerning her +history save only a few things regarding her supernatural revelations +which her Voices had forbidden her to tell to any one--and that the +unjust judge, Cauchon, was a hidden listener all the time? + +Now you understand how the inquisitors were able to devise that long +array of minutely prying questions; questions whose subtlety and +ingenuity and penetration are astonishing until we come to remember +Loyseleur's performance and recognize their source. Ah, Bishop of +Beauvais, you are now lamenting this cruel iniquity these many years in +hell! Yes verily, unless one has come to your help. There is but one +among the redeemed that would do it; and it is futile to hope that that +one has not already done it--Joan of Arc. + +We will return to the questionings. + +"Did they make you still another promise?" + +"Yes, but that is not in your proces. I will not tell it now, but before +three months I will tell it you." + +The judge seems to know the matter he is asking about, already; one gets +this idea from his next question. + +"Did your Voices tell you that you would be liberated before three +months?" + +Joan often showed a little flash of surprise at the good guessing of the +judges, and she showed one this time. I was frequently in terror to find +my mind (which I could not control) criticizing the Voices and saying, +"They counsel her to speak boldly--a thing which she would do without any +suggestion from them or anybody else--but when it comes to telling her +any useful thing, such as how these conspirators manage to guess their +way so skilfully into her affairs, they are always off attending to some +other business." + +I am reverent by nature; and when such thoughts swept through my head +they made me cold with fear, and if there was a storm and thunder at the +time, I was so ill that I could but with difficulty abide at my post and +do my work. + +Joan answered: + +"That is not in your proces. I do not know when I shall be set free, but +some who wish me out of this world will go from it before me." + +It made some of them shiver. + +"Have your Voices told you that you will be delivered from this prison?" + +Without a doubt they had, and the judge knew it before he asked the +question. + +"Ask me again in three months and I will tell you." She said it with such +a happy look, the tired prisoner! And I? And Noel Rainguesson, drooping +yonder?--why, the floods of joy went streaming through us from crown to +sole! It was all that we could do to hold still and keep from making +fatal exposure of our feelings. + +She was to be set free in three months. That was what she meant; we saw +it. The Voices had told her so, and told her true--true to the very +day--May 30th. But we know now that they had mercifully hidden from her +how she was to be set free, but left her in ignorance. Home again! + +That day was our understanding of it--Noel's and mine; that was our +dream; and now we would count the days, the hours, the minutes. They +would fly lightly along; they would soon be over. + +Yes, we would carry our idol home; and there, far from the pomps and +tumults of the world, we would take up our happy life again and live it +out as we had begun it, in the free air and the sunshine, with the +friendly sheep and the friendly people for comrades, and the grace and +charm of the meadows, the woods, and the river always before our eyes and +their deep peace in our hearts. Yes, that was our dream, the dream that +carried us bravely through that three months to an exact and awful +fulfilment, the though of which would have killed us, I think, if we had +foreknown it and been obliged to bear the burden of it upon our hearts +the half of those weary days. + +Our reading of the prophecy was this: We believed the King's soul was +going to be smitten with remorse; and that he would privately plan a +rescue with Joan's old lieutenants, D'Alencon and the Bastard and La +Hire, and that this rescue would take place at the end of the three +months. So we made up our minds to be ready and take a hand in it. + +In the present and also in later sittings Joan was urged to name the +exact day of her deliverance; but she could not do that. She had not the +permission of her Voices. Moreover, the Voices themselves did not name +the precise day. Ever since the fulfilment of the prophecy, I have +believed that Joan had the idea that her deliverance was going to dome in +the form of death. But not that death! Divine as she was, dauntless as +she was in battle, she was human also. She was not solely a saint, an +angel, she was a clay-made girl also--as human a girl as any in the +world, and full of a human girl's sensitiveness and tenderness and +delicacies. And so, that death! No, she could not have lived the three +months with that one before her, I think. You remember that the first +time she was wounded she was frightened, and cried, just as any other +girl of seventeen would have done, although she had known for eighteen +days that she was going to be wounded on that very day. No, she was not +afraid of any ordinary death, and an ordinary death was what she believed +the prophecy of deliverance meant, I think, for her face showed +happiness, not horror, when she uttered it. + +Now I will explain why I think as I do. Five weeks before she was +captured in the battle of Compiegne, her Voices told her what was coming. +They did not tell her the day or the place, but said she would be taken +prisoner and that it would be before the feast of St. John. She begged +that death, certain and swift, should be her fate, and the captivity +brief; for she was a free spirit, and dreaded the confinement. The Voices +made no promise, but only told her to bear whatever came. Now as they did +not refuse the swift death, a hopeful young thing like Joan would +naturally cherish that fact and make the most of it, allowing it to grow +and establish itself in her mind. And so now that she was told she was to +be "delivered" in three months, I think she believed it meant that she +would die in her bed in the prison, and that that was why she looked +happy and content--the gates of Paradise standing open for her, the time +so short, you see, her troubles so soon to be over, her reward so close +at hand. Yes, that would make her look happy, that would make her patient +and bold, and able to fight her fight out like a soldier. Save herself if +she could, of course, and try for the best, for that was the way she was +made; but die with her face to the front if die she must. + +Then later, when she charged Cauchon with trying to kill her with a +poisoned fish, her notion that she was to be "delivered" by death in the +prison--if she had it, and I believe she had--would naturally be greatly +strengthened, you see. + +But I am wandering from the trial. Joan was asked to definitely name the +time that she would be delivered from prison. + +"I have always said that I was not permitted to tell you everything. I am +to be set free, and I desire to ask leave of my Voices to tell you the +day. That is why I wish for delay." + +"Do your Voices forbid you to tell the truth?" + +"Is it that you wish to know matters concerning the King of France? I +tell you again that he will regain his kingdom, and that I know it as +well as I know that you sit here before me in this tribunal." She sighed +and, after a little pause, added: "I should be dead but for this +revelation, which comforts me always." + +Some trivial questions were asked her about St. Michael's dress and +appearance. She answered them with dignity, but one saw that they gave +her pain. After a little she said: + +"I have great joy in seeing him, for when I see him I have the feeling +that I am not in mortal sin." + +She added, "Sometimes St. Marguerite and St. Catherine have allowed me to +confess myself to them." + +Here was a possible chance to set a successful snare for her innocence. + +"When you confessed were you in mortal sin, do you think?" + +But her reply did her no hurt. So the inquiry was shifted once more to +the revelations made to the King--secrets which the court had tried again +and again to force out of Joan, but without success. + +"Now as to the sign given to the King--" + +"I have already told you that I will tell you nothing about it." + +"Do you know what the sign was?" + +"As to that, you will not find out from me." + +All this refers to Joan's secret interview with the King--held apart, +though two or three others were present. It was known--through Loyseleur, +of course--that this sign was a crown and was a pledge of the verity of +Joan's mission. But that is all a mystery until this day--the nature of +the crown, I mean--and will remain a mystery to the end of time. We can +never know whether a real crown descended upon the King's head, or only a +symbol, the mystic fabric of a vision. + +"Did you see a crown upon the King's head when he received the +revelation?" + +"I cannot tell you as to that, without perjury." + +"Did the King have that crown at Rheims?" + +"I think the King put upon his head a crown which he found there; but a +much richer one was brought him afterward." + +"Have you seen that one?" + +"I cannot tell you, without perjury. But whether I have seen it or not, I +have heard say that it was rich and magnificent." + +They went on and pestered her to weariness about that mysterious crown, +but they got nothing more out of her. The sitting closed. A long, hard +day for all of us. + + + + 10 The Inquisitors at Their Wits' End + +THE COURT rested a day, then took up work again on Saturday, the third of +March. + +This was one of our stormiest sessions. The whole court was out of +patience; and with good reason. These threescore distinguished churchmen, +illustrious tacticians, veteran legal gladiators, had left important +posts where their supervision was needed, to journey hither from various +regions and accomplish a most simple and easy matter--condemn and send to +death a country-lass of nineteen who could neither read nor write, knew +nothing of the wiles and perplexities of legal procedure, could not call +a single witness in her defense, was allowed no advocate or adviser, and +must conduct her case by herself against a hostile judge and a packed +jury. In two hours she would be hopelessly entangled, routed, defeated, +convicted. Nothing could be more certain that this--so they thought. But +it was a mistake. The two hours had strung out into days; what promised +to be a skirmish had expanded into a siege; the thing which had looked so +easy had proven to be surprisingly difficult; the light victim who was to +have been puffed away like a feather remained planted like a rock; and on +top of all this, if anybody had a right to laugh it was the country-lass +and not the court. + +She was not doing that, for that was not her spirit; but others were +doing it. The whole town was laughing in its sleeve, and the court knew +it, and its dignity was deeply hurt. The members could not hide their +annoyance. + +And so, as I have said, the session was stormy. It was easy to see that +these men had made up their minds to force words from Joan to-day which +should shorten up her case and bring it to a prompt conclusion. It shows +that after all their experience with her they did not know her yet. + +They went into the battle with energy. They did not leave the questioning +to a particular member; no, everybody helped. They volleyed questions at +Joan from all over the house, and sometimes so many were talking at once +that she had to ask them to deliver their fire one at a time and not by +platoons. The beginning was as usual: + +"You are once more required to take the oath pure and simple." + +"I will answer to what is in the proces verbal. When I do more, I will +choose the occasion for myself." + +That old ground was debated and fought over inch by inch with great +bitterness and many threats. But Joan remained steadfast, and the +questionings had to shift to other matters. Half an hour was spent over +Joan's apparitions--their dress, hair, general appearance, and so on--in +the hope of fishing something of a damaging sort out of the replies; but +with no result. + +Next, the male attire was reverted to, of course. After many well-worn +questions had been re-asked, one or two new ones were put forward. + +"Did not the King or the Queen sometimes ask you to quit the male dress?" + +"That is not in your proces." + +"Do you think you would have sinned if you had taken the dress of your +sex?" + +"I have done best to serve and obey my sovereign Lord and Master." + +After a while the matter of Joan's Standard was taken up, in the hope of +connecting magic and witchcraft with it. + +"Did not your men copy your banner in their pennons?" + +"The lancers of my guard did it. It was to distinguish them from the rest +of the forces. It was their own idea." + +"Were they often renewed?" + +"Yes. When the lances were broken they were renewed." + +The purpose of the question unveils itself in the next one. + +"Did you not say to your men that pennons made like your banner would be +lucky?" + +The soldier-spirit in Joan was offended at this puerility. She drew +herself up, and said with dignity and fire: "What I said to them was, +'Ride those English down!' and I did it myself." + +Whenever she flung out a scornful speech like that at these French +menials in English livery it lashed them into a rage; and that is what +happened this time. There were ten, twenty, sometimes even thirty of them +on their feet at a time, storming at the prisoner minute after minute, +but Joan was not disturbed. + +By and by there was peace, and the inquiry was resumed. + +It was now sought to turn against Joan the thousand loving honors which +had been done her when she was raising France out of the dirt and shame +of a century of slavery and castigation. + +"Did you not cause paintings and images of yourself to be made?" + +"No. At Arras I saw a painting of myself kneeling in armor before the +King and delivering him a letter; but I caused no such things to be +made." + +"Were not masses and prayers said in your honor?" + +"If it was done it was not by my command. But if any prayed for me I +think it was no harm." + +"Did the French people believe you were sent of God?" + +"As to that, I know not; but whether they believed it or not, I was not +the less sent of God." + +"If they thought you were sent of God, do you think it was well thought?" + +"If they believed it, their trust was not abused." + +"What impulse was it, think you, that moved the people to kiss your +hands, your feet, and your vestments?" + +"They were glad to see me, and so they did those things; and I could not +have prevented them if I had had the heart. Those poor people came +lovingly to me because I had not done them any hurt, but had done the +best I could for them according to my strength." + +See what modest little words she uses to describe that touching +spectacle, her marches about France walled in on both sides by the +adoring multitudes: "They were glad to see me." Glad? + +Why they were transported with joy to see her. When they could not kiss +her hands or her feet, they knelt in the mire and kissed the hoof-prints +of her horse. They worshiped her; and that is what these priests were +trying to prove. It was nothing to them that she was not to blame for +what other people did. No, if she was worshiped, it was enough; she was +guilty of mortal sin. + +Curious logic, one must say. + +"Did you not stand sponsor for some children baptized at Rheims?" + +"At Troyes I did, and at St. Denis; and I named the boys Charles, in +honor of the King, and the girls I named Joan." + +"Did not women touch their rings to those which you wore?" + +"Yes, many did, but I did not know their reason for it." + +"At Rheims was your Standard carried into the church? Did you stand at +the altar with it in your hand at the Coronation?" + +"Yes." + +"In passing through the country did you confess yourself in the Churches +and receive the sacrament?" + +"Yes." + +"In the dress of a man?" + +"Yes. But I do not remember that I was in armor." + +It was almost a concession! almost a half-surrender of the permission +granted her by the Church at Poitiers to dress as a man. The wily court +shifted to another matter: to pursue this one at this time might call +Joan's attention to her small mistake, and by her native cleverness she +might recover her lost ground. The tempestuous session had worn her and +drowsed her alertness. + +"It is reported that you brought a dead child to life in the church at +Lagny. Was that in answer to your prayers?" + +"As to that, I have no knowledge. Other young girls were praying for the +child, and I joined them and prayed also, doing no more than they." + +"Continue." + +"While we prayed it came to life, and cried. It had been dead three days, +and was as black as my doublet. It was straight way baptized, then it +passed from life again and was buried in holy ground." + +"Why did you jump from the tower of Beaurevoir by night and try to +escape?" + +"I would go to the succor of Compiegne." + +It was insinuated that this was an attempt to commit the deep crime of +suicide to avoid falling into the hands of the English. + +"Did you not say that you would rather die than be delivered into the +power of the English?" + +Joan answered frankly; without perceiving the trap: + +"Yes; my words were, that I would rather that my soul be returned unto +God than that I should fall into the hands of the English." + +It was now insinuated that when she came to, after jumping from the +tower, she was angry and blasphemed the name of God; and that she did it +again when she heard of the defection of the Commandant of Soissons. She +was hurt and indignant at this, and said: + +"It is not true. I have never cursed. It is not my custom to swear." + + + + 11 The Court Reorganized for Assassination + +A HALT was called. It was time. Cauchon was losing ground in the fight, +Joan was gaining it. + +There were signs that here and there in the court a judge was being +softened toward Joan by her courage, her presence of mind, her fortitude, +her constancy, her piety, her simplicity and candor, her manifest purity, +the nobility of her character, her fine intelligence, and the good brave +fight she was making, all friendless and alone, against unfair odds, and +there was grave room for fear that this softening process would spread +further and presently bring Cauchon's plans in danger. + +Something must be done, and it was done. Cauchon was not distinguished +for compassion, but he now gave proof that he had it in his character. He +thought it pity to subject so many judges to the prostrating fatigues of +this trial when it could be conducted plenty well enough by a handful of +them. Oh, gentle judge! But he did not remember to modify the fatigues +for the little captive. + +He would let all the judges but a handful go, but he would select the +handful himself, and he did. + +He chose tigers. If a lamb or two got in, it was by oversight, not +intention; and he knew what to do with lambs when discovered. + +He called a small council now, and during five days they sifted the huge +bulk of answers thus far gathered from Joan. They winnowed it of all +chaff, all useless matter--that is, all matter favorable to Joan; they +saved up all matter which could be twisted to her hurt, and out of this +they constructed a basis for a new trial which should have the semblance +of a continuation of the old one. Another change. It was plain that the +public trial had wrought damage: its proceedings had been discussed all +over the town and had moved many to pity the abused prisoner. There +should be no more of that. The sittings should be secret hereafter, and +no spectators admitted. So Noel could come no more. I sent this news to +him. I had not the heart to carry it myself. I would give the pain a +chance to modify before I should see him in the evening. + +On the 10th of March the secret trial began. A week had passed since I +had seen Joan. Her appearance gave me a great shock. She looked tired and +weak. She was listless and far away, and her answers showed that she was +dazed and not able to keep perfect run of all that was done and said. +Another court would not have taken advantage of her state, seeing that +her life was at stake here, but would have adjourned and spared her. Did +this one? No; it worried her for hours, and with a glad and eager +ferocity, making all it could out of this great chance, the first one it +had had. + +She was tortured into confusing herself concerning the "sign" which had +been given the King, and the next day this was continued hour after hour. +As a result, she made partial revealments of particulars forbidden by her +Voices; and seemed to me to state as facts things which were but +allegories and visions mixed with facts. + +The third day she was brighter, and looked less worn. She was almost her +normal self again, and did her work well. Many attempts were made to +beguile her into saying indiscreet things, but she saw the purpose in +view and answered with tact and wisdom. + +"Do you know if St. Catherine and St. Marguerite hate the English?" + +"They love whom Our Lord loves, and hate whom He hates." + +"Does God hate the English?" + +"Of the love or the hatred of God toward the English I know nothing." +Then she spoke up with the old martial ring in her voice and the old +audacity in her words, and added, "But I know this--that God will send +victory to the French, and that all the English will be flung out of +France but the dead ones!" + +"Was God on the side of the English when they were prosperous in France?" + +"I do not know if God hates the French, but I think that He allowed them +to be chastised for their sins." + +It was a sufficiently naive way to account for a chastisement which had +now strung out for ninety-six years. But nobody found fault with it. +There was nobody there who would not punish a sinner ninety-six years if +he could, nor anybody there who would ever dream of such a thing as the +Lord's being any shade less stringent than men. + +"Have you ever embraced St. Marguerite and St. Catherine?" + +"Yes, both of them." + +The evil face of Cauchon betrayed satisfaction when she said that. + +"When you hung garlands upon L'Arbre Fee Bourlemont, did you do it in +honor of your apparitions?" + +"No." + +Satisfaction again. No doubt Cauchon would take it for granted that she +hung them there out of sinful love for the fairies. + +"When the saints appeared to you did you bow, did you make reverence, did +you kneel?" + +"Yes; I did them the most honor and reverence that I could." + +A good point for Cauchon if he could eventually make it appear that these +were no saints to whom she had done reverence, but devils in disguise. + +Now there was the matter of Joan's keeping her supernatural commerce a +secret from her parents. Much might be made of that. In fact, particular +emphasis had been given to it in a private remark written in the margin +of the proces: "She concealed her visions from her parents and from every +one." Possibly this disloyalty to her parents might itself be the sign of +the satanic source of her mission. + +"Do you think it was right to go away to the wars without getting your +parents' leave? It is written one must honor his father and his mother." + +"I have obeyed them in all things but that. And for that I have begged +their forgiveness in a letter and gotten it." + +"Ah, you asked their pardon? So you knew you were guilty of sin in going +without their leave!" + +Joan was stirred. Her eyes flashed, and she exclaimed: + +"I was commanded of God, and it was right to go! If I had had a hundred +fathers and mothers and been a king's daughter to boot I would have +gone." + +"Did you never ask your Voices if you might tell your parents?" + +"They were willing that I should tell them, but I would not for anything +have given my parents that pain." + +To the minds of the questioners this headstrong conduct savored of pride. +That sort of pride would move one to see sacrilegious adorations. + +"Did not your Voices call you Daughter of God?" + +Joan answered with simplicity, and unsuspiciously: + +"Yes; before the siege of Orleans and since, they have several times +called me Daughter of God." + +Further indications of pride and vanity were sought. + +"What horse were you riding when you were captured? Who gave it you?" + +"The King." + +"You had other things--riches--of the King?" + +"For myself I had horses and arms, and money to pay the service in my +household." + +"Had you not a treasury?" + +"Yes. Ten or twelve thousand crowns." Then she said with naivete "It was +not a great sum to carry on a war with." + +"You have it yet?" + +"No. It is the King's money. My brothers hold it for him." + +"What were the arms which you left as an offering in the church of St. +Denis?" + +"My suit of silver mail and a sword." + +"Did you put them there in order that they might be adored?" + +"No. It was but an act of devotion. And it is the custom of men of war +who have been wounded to make such offering there. I had been wounded +before Paris." + +Nothing appealed to these stony hearts, those dull imaginations--not even +this pretty picture, so simply drawn, of the wounded girl-soldier hanging +her toy harness there in curious companionship with the grim and dusty +iron mail of the historic defenders of France. No, there was nothing in +it for them; nothing, unless evil and injury for that innocent creature +could be gotten out of it somehow. + +"Which aided most--you the Standard, or the Standard you?" + +"Whether it was the Standard or whether it was I, is nothing--the +victories came from God." + +"But did you base your hopes of victory in yourself or in your Standard?" + +"In neither. In God, and not otherwise." + +"Was not your Standard waved around the King's head at the Coronation?" + +"No. It was not." + +"Why was it that your Standard had place at the crowning of the King in +the Cathedral of Rheims, rather than those of the other captains?" + +Then, soft and low, came that touching speech which will live as long as +language lives, and pass into all tongues, and move all gentle hearts +wheresoever it shall come, down to the latest day: + +"It had borne the burden, it had earned the honor." [1] How simple it is, +and how beautiful. And how it beggars the studies eloquence of the +masters of oratory. Eloquence was a native gift of Joan of Arc; it came +from her lips without effort and without preparation. Her words were as +sublime as her deeds, as sublime as her character; they had their source +in a great heart and were coined in a great brain. + +[1] What she said has been many times translated, but never with success. +There is a haunting pathos about the original which eludes all efforts to +convey it into our tongue. It is as subtle as an odor, and escapes in the +transmission. Her words were these: + +"Il avait ,t, a la peine, c'etait bien raison qu'il fut a l'honneur." + +Monseigneur Ricard, Honorary Vicar-General to the Archbishop of Aix, +finely speaks of it (Jeanne d'Arc la Venerable, page 197) as "that +sublime reply, enduring in the history of celebrated sayings like the cry +of a French and Christian soul wounded unto death in its patriotism and +its faith." -- TRANSLATOR. + + + + 12 Joan's Master-Stroke Diverted + +NOW, as a next move, this small secret court of holy assassins did a +thing so base that even at this day, in my old age, it is hard to speak +of it with patience. + +In the beginning of her commerce with her Voices there at Domremy, the +child Joan solemnly devoted her life to God, vowing her pure body and her +pure soul to His service. You will remember that her parents tried to +stop her from going to the wars by haling her to the court at Toul to +compel her to make a marriage which she had never promised to make--a +marriage with our poor, good, windy, big, hard-fighting, and most dear +and lamented comrade, the Standard-Bearer, who fell in honorable battle +and sleeps with God these sixty years, peace to his ashes! And you will +remember how Joan, sixteen years old, stood up in that venerable court +and conducted her case all by herself, and tore the poor Paladin's case +to rags and blew it away with a breath; and how the astonished old judge +on the bench spoke of her as "this marvelous child." + +You remember all that. Then think what I felt, to see these false +priests, here in the tribunal wherein Joan had fought a fourth lone fight +in three years, deliberately twist that matter entirely around and try to +make out that Joan haled the Paladin into court and pretended that he had +promised to marry her, and was bent on making him do it. + +Certainly there was no baseness that those people were ashamed to stoop +to in their hunt for that friendless girl's life. What they wanted to +show was this--that she had committed the sin of relapsing from her vow +and trying to violate it. + +Joan detailed the true history of the case, but lost her temper as she +went along, and finished with some words for Cauchon which he remembers +yet, whether he is fanning himself in the world he belongs in or has +swindled his way into the other. + +The rest of this day and part of the next the court labored upon the old +theme--the male attire. It was shabby work for those grave men to be +engaged in; for they well knew one of Joan's reasons for clinging to the +male dress was, that soldiers of the guard were always present in her +room whether she was asleep or awake, and that the male dress was a +better protection for her modesty than the other. + +The court knew that one of Joan's purposes had been the deliverance of +the exiled Duke of Orleans, and they were curious to know how she had +intended to manage it. Her plan was characteristically businesslike, and +her statement of it as characteristically simple and straightforward: + +"I would have taken English prisoners enough in France for his ransom; +and failing that, I would have invaded England and brought him out by +force." + +That was just her way. If a thing was to be done, it was love first, and +hammer and tongs to follow; but no shilly-shallying between. She added +with a little sigh: + +"If I had had my freedom three years, I would have delivered him." + +"Have you the permission of your Voices to break out of prison whenever +you can?" + +"I have asked their leave several times, but they have not given it." + +I think it is as I have said, she expected the deliverance of death, and +within the prison walls, before the three months should expire. + +"Would you escape if you saw the doors open?" + +She spoke up frankly and said: + +"Yes--for I should see in that the permission of Our Lord. God helps who +help themselves, the proverb says. But except I thought I had permission, +I would not go." + +Now, then, at this point, something occurred which convinces me, every +time I think of it--and it struck me so at the time--that for a moment, +at least, her hopes wandered to the King, and put into her mind the same +notion about her deliverance which Noel and I had settled upon--a rescue +by her old soldiers. I think the idea of the rescue did occur to her, but +only as a passing thought, and that it quickly passed away. + +Some remark of the Bishop of Beauvais moved her to remind him once more +that he was an unfair judge, and had no right to preside there, and that +he was putting himself in great danger. + +"What danger?" he asked. + +"I do not know. St. Catherine has promised me help, but I do not know the +form of it. I do not know whether I am to be delivered from this prison +or whether when you sent me to the scaffold there will happen a trouble +by which I shall be set free. Without much thought as to this matter, I +am of the opinion that it may be one or the other." After a pause she +added these words, memorable forever--words whose meaning she may have +miscaught, misunderstood; as to that we can never know; words which she +may have rightly understood, as to that, also, we can never know; but +words whose mystery fell away from them many a year ago and revealed +their meaning to all the world: + +"But what my Voices have said clearest is, that I shall be delivered by a +great victory." She paused, my heart was beating fast, for to me that +great victory meant the sudden bursting in of our old soldiers with the +war-cry and clash of steel at the last moment and the carrying off of +Joan of Arc in triumph. But, oh, that thought had such a short life! For +now she raised her head and finished, with those solemn words which men +still so often quote and dwell upon--words which filled me with fear, +they sounded so like a prediction. "And always they say 'Submit to +whatever comes; do not grieve for your martyrdom; from it you will ascend +into the Kingdom of Paradise." + +Was she thinking of fire and the stake? I think not. I thought of it +myself, but I believe she was only thinking of this slow and cruel +martyrdom of chains and captivity and insult. Surely, martyrdom was the +right name for it. + +It was Jean de la Fontaine who was asking the questions. He was willing +to make the most he could out of what she had said: + +"As the Voices have told you you are going to Paradise, you feel certain +that that will happen and that you will not be damned in hell. Is that +so?" + +"I believe what they told me. I know that I shall be saved." + +"It is a weighty answer." + +"To me the knowledge that I shall be saved is a great treasure." + +"Do you think that after that revelation you could be able to commit +mortal sin?" + +"As to that, I do not know. My hope for salvation is in holding fast to +my oath to keep by body and my soul pure." + +"Since you know you are to be saved, do you think it necessary to go to +confession?" + +The snare was ingeniously devised, but Joan's simple and humble answer +left it empty: + +"One cannot keep his conscience too clean." + +We were now arriving at the last day of this new trial. Joan had come +through the ordeal well. It had been a long and wearisome struggle for +all concerned. All ways had been tried to convict the accused, and all +had failed, thus far. The inquisitors were thoroughly vexed and +dissatisfied. + +However, they resolved to make one more effort, put in one more day's +work. This was done--March 17th. Early in the sitting a notable trap was +set for Joan: + +"Will you submit to the determination of the Church all your words and +deeds, whether good or bad?" + +That was well planned. Joan was in imminent peril now. If she should +heedlessly say yes, it would put her mission itself upon trial, and one +would know how to decide its source and character promptly. If she should +say no, she would render herself chargeable with the crime of heresy. + +But she was equal to the occasion. She drew a distinct line of separation +between the Church's authority over her as a subject member, and the +matter of her mission. She said she loved the Church and was ready to +support the Christian faith with all her strength; but as to the works +done under her mission, those must be judged by God alone, who had +commanded them to be done. + +The judge still insisted that she submit them to the decision of the +Church. She said: + +"I will submit them to Our Lord who sent me. It would seem to me that He +and His Church are one, and that there should be no difficulty about this +matter." Then she turned upon the judge and said, "Why do you make a +difficulty when there is no room for any?" + +Then Jean de la Fontaine corrected her notion that there was but one +Church. There were two--the Church Triumphant, which is God, the saints, +the angels, and the redeemed, and has its seat in heave; and the Church +Militant, which is our Holy Father the Pope, Vicar of God, the prelates, +the clergy and all good Christians and Catholics, the which Church has +its seat in the earth, is governed by the Holy Spirit, and cannot err. +"Will you not submit those matters to the Church Militant?" + +"I am come to the King of France from the Church Triumphant on high by +its commandant, and to that Church I will submit all those things which I +have done. For the Church Militant I have no other answer now." + +The court took note of this straitly worded refusal, and would hope to +get profit out of it; but the matter was dropped for the present, and a +long chase was then made over the old hunting-ground--the fairies, the +visions, the male attire, and all that. + +In the afternoon the satanic Bishop himself took the chair and presided +over the closing scenes of the trial. Along toward the finish, this +question was asked by one of the judges: + +"You have said to my lord the Bishop that you would answer him as you +would answer before our Holy Father the Pope, and yet there are several +questions which you continually refuse to answer. Would you not answer +the Pope more fully than you have answered before my lord of Beauvais? +Would you not feel obliged to answer the Pope, who is the Vicar of God, +more fully?" + +Now a thunder-clap fell out of a clear sky: + +"Take me to the Pope. I will answer to everything that I ought to." + +It made the Bishop's purple face fairly blanch with consternation. If +Joan had only known, if she had only know! She had lodged a mine under +this black conspiracy able to blow the Bishop's schemes to the four winds +of heaven, and she didn't know it. She had made that speech by mere +instinct, not suspecting what tremendous forces were hidden in it, and +there was none to tell her what she had done. I knew, and Manchon knew; +and if she had known how to read writing we could have hoped to get the +knowledge to her somehow; but speech was the only way, and none was +allowed to approach her near enough for that. So there she sat, once more +Joan of Arc the Victorious, but all unconscious of it. She was miserably +worn and tired, by the long day's struggle and by illness, or she must +have noticed the effect of that speech and divined the reason of it. + +She had made many master-strokes, but this was the master-stroke. It was +an appeal to Rome. It was her clear right; and if she had persisted in it +Cauchon's plot would have tumbled about his ears like a house of cards, +and he would have gone from that place the worst-beaten man of the +century. He was daring, but he was not daring enough to stand up against +that demand if Joan had urged it. But no, she was ignorant, poor thing, +and did not know what a blow she had struck for life and liberty. + +France was not the Church. Rome had no interest in the destruction of +this messenger of God. + +Rome would have given her a fair trial, and that was all that her cause +needed. From that trial she would have gone forth free, and honored, and +blessed. + +But it was not so fated. Cauchon at once diverted the questions to other +matters and hurried the trial quickly to an end. + +As Joan moved feebly away, dragging her chains, I felt stunned and dazed, +and kept saying to myself, "Such a little while ago she said the saving +word and could have gone free; and now, there she goes to her death; yes, +it is to her death, I know it, I feel it. They will double the guards; +they will never let any come near her now between this and her +condemnation, lest she get a hint and speak that word again. This is the +bitterest day that has come to me in all this miserable time." + + + + 13 The Third Trial Fails + +SO THE SECOND trial in the prison was over. Over, and no definite result. +The character of it I have described to you. It was baser in one +particular than the previous one; for this time the charges had not been +communicated to Joan, therefore she had been obliged to fight in the +dark. + +There was no opportunity to do any thinking beforehand; there was no +foreseeing what traps might be set, and no way to prepare for them. Truly +it was a shabby advantage to take of a girl situated as this one was. One +day, during the course of it, an able lawyer of Normandy, Maetre Lohier, +happened to be in Rouen, and I will give you his opinion of that trial, +so that you may see that I have been honest with you, and that my +partisanship has not made me deceive you as to its unfair and illegal +character. Cauchon showed Lohier the proces and asked his opinion about +the trial. Now this was the opinion which he gave to Cauchon. He said +that the whole thing was null and void; for these reasons: 1, because the +trial was secret, and full freedom of speech and action on the part of +those present not possible; 2, because the trial touched the honor of the +King of France, yet he was not summoned to defend himself, nor any one +appointed to represent him; 3, because the charges against the prisoner +were not communicated to her; 4, because the accused, although young and +simple, had been forced to defend her cause without help of counsel, +notwithstanding she had so much at stake. + +Did that please Bishop Cauchon? It did not. He burst out upon Lohier with +the most savage cursings, and swore he would have him drowned. Lohier +escaped from Rouen and got out of France with all speed, and so saved his +life. + +Well, as I have said, the second trial was over, without definite result. +But Cauchon did not give up. He could trump up another. And still another +and another, if necessary. He had the half-promise of an enormous +prize--the Archbishopric of Rouen--if he should succeed in burning the +body and damning to hell the soul of this young girl who had never done +him any harm; and such a prize as that, to a man like the Bishop of +Beauvais, was worth the burning and damning of fifty harmless girls, let +alone one. + +So he set to work again straight off next day; and with high confidence, +too, intimating with brutal cheerfulness that he should succeed this +time. It took him and the other scavengers nine days to dig matter enough +out of Joan's testimony and their own inventions to build up the new mass +of charges. And it was a formidable mass indeed, for it numbered +sixty-six articles. + +This huge document was carried to the castle the next day, March 27th; +and there, before a dozen carefully selected judges, the new trial was +begun. + +Opinions were taken, and the tribunal decided that Joan should hear the +articles read this time. + +Maybe that was on account of Lohier's remark upon that head; or maybe it +was hoped that the reading would kill the prisoner with fatigue--for, as +it turned out, this reading occupied several days. It was also decided +that Joan should be required to answer squarely to every article, and +that if she refused she should be considered convicted. You see, Cauchon +was managing to narrow her chances more and more all the time; he was +drawing the toils closer and closer. + +Joan was brought in, and the Bishop of Beauvais opened with a speech to +her which ought to have made even himself blush, so laden it was with +hypocrisy and lies. He said that this court was composed of holy and +pious churchmen whose hearts were full of benevolence and compassion +toward her, and that they had no wish to hurt her body, but only a desire +to instruct her and lead her into the way of truth and salvation. + +Why, this man was born a devil; now think of his describing himself and +those hardened slaves of his in such language as that. + +And yet, worse was to come. For now having in mind another of Lovier's +hints, he had the cold effrontery to make to Joan a proposition which, I +think, will surprise you when you hear it. He said that this court, +recognizing her untaught estate and her inability to deal with the +complex and difficult matters which were about to be considered, had +determined, out of their pity and their mercifulness, to allow her to +choose one or more persons out of their own number to help her with +counsel and advice! + +Think of that--a court made up of Loyseleur and his breed of reptiles. It +was granting leave to a lamb to ask help of a wolf. Joan looked up to see +if he was serious, and perceiving that he was at least pretending to be, +she declined, of course. + +The Bishop was not expecting any other reply. He had made a show of +fairness and could have it entered on the minutes, therefore he was +satisfied. + +Then he commanded Joan to answer straitly to every accusation; and +threatened to cut her off from the Church if she failed to do that or +delayed her answers beyond a given length of time. + +Yes, he was narrowing her chances down, step by step. + +Thomas de Courcelles began the reading of that interminable document, +article by article. Joan answered to each article in its turn; sometimes +merely denying its truth, sometimes by saying her answer would be found +in the records of the previous trials. + +What a strange document that was, and what an exhibition and exposure of +the heart of man, the one creature authorized to boast that he is made in +the image of God. To know Joan of Arc was to know one who was wholly +noble, pure, truthful, brave, compassionate, generous, pious, unselfish, +modest, blameless as the very flowers in the fields--a nature fine and +beautiful, a character supremely great. To know her from that document +would be to know her as the exact reverse of all that. Nothing that she +was appears in it, everything that she was not appears there in detail. + +Consider some of the things it charges against her, and remember who it +is it is speaking of. It calls her a sorceress, a false prophet, an +invoker and companion of evil spirits, a dealer in magic, a person +ignorant of the Catholic faith, a schismatic; she is sacrilegious, an +idolater, an apostate, a blasphemer of God and His saints, scandalous, +seditious, a disturber of the peace; she incites men to war, and to the +spilling of human blood; she discards the decencies and proprieties of +her sex, irreverently assuming the dress of a man and the vocation of a +soldier; she beguiles both princes and people; she usurps divine honors, +and has caused herself to be adored and venerated, offering her hands and +her vestments to be kissed. + +There it is--every fact of her life distorted, perverted, reversed. As a +child she had loved the fairies, she had spoken a pitying word for them +when they were banished from their home, she had played under their tree +and around their fountain--hence she was a comrade of evil spirits. + +She had lifted France out of the mud and moved her to strike for freedom, +and led her to victory after victory--hence she was a disturber of the +peace--as indeed she was, and a provoker of war--as indeed she was again! +and France will be proud of it and grateful for it for many a century to +come. And she had been adored--as if she could help that, poor thing, or +was in any way to blame for it. The cowed veteran and the wavering +recruit had drunk the spirit of war from her eyes and touched her sword +with theirs and moved forward invincible--hence she was a sorceress. + +And so the document went on, detail by detail, turning these waters of +life to poison, this gold to dross, these proofs of a noble and beautiful +life to evidences of a foul and odious one. + +Of course, the sixty-six articles were just a rehash of the things which +had come up in the course of the previous trials, so I will touch upon +this new trial but lightly. In fact, Joan went but little into detail +herself, usually merely saying, "That is not true--passez outre"; or, "I +have answered that before--let the clerk read it in his record," or +saying some other brief thing. + +She refused to have her mission examined and tried by the earthly Church. +The refusal was taken note of. + +She denied the accusation of idolatry and that she had sought men's +homage. She said: + +"If any kissed my hands and my vestments it was not by my desire, and I +did what I could to prevent it." + +She had the pluck to say to that deadly tribunal that she did not know +the fairies to be evil beings. She knew it was a perilous thing to say, +but it was not in her nature to speak anything but the truth when she +spoke at all. Danger had no weight with her in such things. Note was +taken of her remark. + +She refused, as always before, when asked if she would put off the male +attire if she were given permission to commune. And she added this: + +"When one receives the sacrament, the manner of his dress is a small +thing and of no value in the eyes of Our Lord." + +She was charge with being so stubborn in clinging to her male dress that +she would not lay it off even to get the blessed privilege of hearing +mass. She spoke out with spirit and said: + +"I would rather die than be untrue to my oath to God." + +She was reproached with doing man's work in the wars and thus deserting +the industries proper to her sex. She answered, with some little touch of +soldierly disdain: + +"As to the matter of women's work, there's plenty to do it." + +It was always a comfort to me to see the soldier spirit crop up in her. +While that remained in her she would be Joan of Arc, and able to look +trouble and fate in the face. + +"It appears that this mission of yours which you claim you had from God, +was to make war and pour out human blood." + +Joan replied quite simply, contenting herself with explaining that war +was not her first move, but her second: + +"To begin with, I demanded that peace should be made. If it was refused, +then I would fight." + +The judge mixed the Burgundians and English together in speaking of the +enemy which Joan had come to make war upon. But she showed that she made +a distinction between them by act and word, the Burgundians being +Frenchmen and therefore entitled to less brusque treatment than the +English. She said: + +"As to the Duke of Burgundy, I required of him, both by letters and by +his ambassadors, that he make peace with the King. As to the English, the +only peace for them was that they leave the country and go home." + +Then she said that even with the English she had shown a pacific +disposition, since she had warned them away by proclamation before +attacking them. + +"If they had listened to me," said she, "they would have done wisely." At +this point she uttered her prophecy again, saying with emphasis, "Before +seven years they will see it themselves." + +Then they presently began to pester her again about her male costume, and +tried to persuade her to voluntarily promise to discard it. I was never +deep, so I think it no wonder that I was puzzled by their persistency in +what seemed a thing of no consequence, and could not make out what their +reason could be. But we all know now. We all know now that it was another +of their treacherous projects. Yes, if they could but succeed in getting +her to formally discard it they could play a game upon her which would +quickly destroy her. So they kept at their evil work until at last she +broke out and said: + +"Peace! Without the permission of God I will not lay it off though you +cut off my head!" + +At one point she corrected the proces verbal, saying: + +"It makes me say that everything which I have done was done by the +counsel of Our Lord. I did not say that, I said 'all which I have well +done.'" + +Doubt was cast upon the authenticity of her mission because of the +ignorance and simplicity of the messenger chosen. Joan smiled at that. +She could have reminded these people that Our Lord, who is no respecter +of persons, had chosen the lowly for his high purposes even oftener than +he had chosen bishops and cardinals; but she phrased her rebuke in +simpler terms: + +"It is the prerogative of Our Lord to choose His instruments where He +will." + +She was asked what form of prayer she used in invoking counsel from on +high. She said the form was brief and simple; then she lifted her pallid +face and repeated it, clasping her chained hands: + +"Most dear God, in honor of your holy passion I beseech you, if you love +me, that you will reveal to me what I am to answer to these churchmen. As +concerns my dress, I know by what command I have put it on, but I know +not in what manner I am to lay it off. I pray you tell me what to do." + +She was charged with having dared, against the precepts of God and His +saints, to assume empire over men and make herself Commander-in-Chief. +That touched the soldier in her. She had a deep reverence for priests, +but the soldier in her had but small reverence for a priest's opinions +about war; so, in her answer to this charge she did not condescend to go +into any explanations or excuses, but delivered herself with bland +indifference and military brevity. + +"If I was Commander-in-Chief, it was to thrash the English." + +Death was staring her in the face here all the time, but no matter; she +dearly loved to make these English-hearted Frenchmen squirm, and whenever +they gave her an opening she was prompt to jab her sting into it. She got +great refreshment out of these little episodes. Her days were a desert; +these were the oases in it. + +Her being in the wars with men was charged against her as an indelicacy. +She said: + +"I had a woman with me when I could--in towns and lodgings. In the field +I always slept in my armor." + +That she and her family had been ennobled by the King was charged against +her as evidence that the source of her deeds were sordid self-seeking. +She answered that she had not asked this grace of the King; it was his +own act. + +This third trial was ended at last. And once again there was no definite +result. + +Possibly a fourth trial might succeed in defeating this apparently +unconquerable girl. So the malignant Bishop set himself to work to plan +it. + +He appointed a commission to reduce the substance of the sixty-six +articles to twelve compact lies, as a basis for the new attempt. This was +done. It took several days. + +Meantime Cauchon went to Joan's cell one day, with Manchon and two of the +judges, Isambard de la Pierre and Martin Ladvenue, to see if he could not +manage somehow to beguile Joan into submitting her mission to the +examination and decision of the Church Militant--that is to say, to that +part of the Church Militant which was represented by himself and his +creatures. + +Joan once more positively refused. Isambard de la Pierre had a heart in +his body, and he so pitied this persecuted poor girl that he ventured to +do a very daring thing; for he asked her if she would be willing to have +her case go before the Council of Basel, and said it contained as many +priests of her party as of the English party. + +Joan cried out that she would gladly go before so fairly constructed a +tribunal as that; but before Isambard could say another word Cauchon +turned savagely upon him and exclaimed: + +"Shut up, in the devil's name!" + +Then Manchon ventured to do a brave thing, too, though he did it in great +fear for his life. He asked Cauchon if he should enter Joan's submission +to the Council of Basel upon the minutes. + +"No! It is not necessary." + +"Ah," said poor Joan, reproachfully, "you set down everything that is +against me, but you will not set down what is for me." + +It was piteous. It would have touched the heart of a brute. But Cauchon +was more than that. + + + + 14 Joan Struggles with Her Twelve Lies + +WE WERE now in the first days of April. Joan was ill. She had fallen ill +the 29th of March, the day after the close of the third trial, and was +growing worse when the scene which I have just described occurred in her +cell. It was just like Cauchon to go there and try to get some advantage +out of her weakened state. + +Let us note some of the particulars in the new indictment--the Twelve +Lies. + +Part of the first one says Joan asserts that she has found her salvation. +She never said anything of the kind. It also says she refuses to submit +herself to the Church. Not true. She was willing to submit all her acts +to this Rouen tribunal except those done by the command of God in +fulfilment of her mission. Those she reserved for the judgment of God. +She refused to recognize Cauchon and his serfs as the Church, but was +willing to go before the Pope or the Council of Basel. + +A clause of another of the Twelve says she admits having threatened with +death those who would not obey her. Distinctly false. Another clause says +she declares that all she has done has been done by command of God. What +she really said was, all that she had done well--a correction made by +herself as you have already seen. + +Another of the Twelve says she claims that she has never committed any +sin. She never made any such claim. + +Another makes the wearing of the male dress a sin. If it was, she had +high Catholic authority for committing it--that of the Archbishop of +Rheims and the tribunal of Poitiers. + +The Tenth Article was resentful against her for "pretending" that St. +Catherine and St. + +Marguerite spoke French and not English, and were French in their +politics. + +The Twelve were to be submitted first to the learned doctors of theology +of the University of Paris for approval. They were copied out and ready +by the night of April 4th. Then Manchon did another bold thing: he wrote +in the margin that many of the Twelve put statements in Joan's mouth +which were the exact opposite of what she had said. That fact would not +be considered important by the University of Paris, and would not +influence its decision or stir its humanity, in case it had any--which it +hadn't when acting in a political capacity, as at present--but it was a +brave thing for that good Manchon to do, all the same. + +The Twelve were sent to Paris next day, April 5th. That afternoon there +was a great tumult in Rouen, and excited crowds were flocking through all +the chief streets, chattering and seeking for news; for a report had gone +abroad that Joan of Arc was sick until death. In truth, these long +seances had worn her out, and she was ill indeed. The heads of the +English party were in a state of consternation; for if Joan should die +uncondemned by the Church and go to the grave unsmirched, the pity and +the love of the people would turn her wrongs and sufferings and death +into a holy martyrdom, and she would be even a mightier power in France +dead than she had been when alive. + +The Earl of Warwick and the English Cardinal (Winchester) hurried to the +castle and sent messengers flying for physicians. Warwick was a hard man, +a rude, coarse man, a man without compassion. There lay the sick girl +stretched in her chains in her iron cage--not an object to move man to +ungentle speech, one would think; yet Warwick spoke right out in her +hearing and said to the physicians: + +"Mind you take good care of her. The King of England has no mind to have +her die a natural death. She is dear to him, for he bought her dear, and +he does not want her to die, save at the stake. Now then, mind you cure +her." + +The doctors asked Joan what had made her ill. She said the Bishop of +Beauvais had sent her a fish and she thought it was that. + +Then Jean d'Estivet burst out on her, and called her names and abused +her. He understood Joan to be charging the Bishop with poisoning her, you +see; and that was not pleasing to him, for he was one of Cauchon's most +loving and conscienceless slaves, and it outraged him to have Joan injure +his master in the eyes of these great English chiefs, these being men who +could ruin Cauchon and would promptly do it if they got the conviction +that he was capable of saving Joan from the stake by poisoning her and +thus cheating the English out of all the real value gainable by her +purchase from the Duke of Burgundy. + +Joan had a high fever, and the doctors proposed to bleed her. Warwick +said: + +"Be careful about that; she is smart and is capable of killing herself." + +He meant that to escape the stake she might undo the bandage and let +herself bleed to death. + +But the doctors bled her anyway, and then she was better. + +Not for long, though. Jean d'Estivet could not hold still, he was so +worried and angry about the suspicion of poisoning which Joan had hinted +at; so he came back in the evening and stormed at her till he brought the +fever all back again. + +When Warwick heard of this he was in a fine temper, you may be sure, for +here was his prey threatening to escape again, and all through the +over-zeal of this meddling fool. Warwick gave D'Estivet a quite admirable +cursing--admirable as to strength, I mean, for it was said by persons of +culture that the art of it was not good--and after that the meddler kept +still. + +Joan remained ill more than two weeks; then she grew better. She was +still very weak, but she could bear a little persecution now without much +danger to her life. It seemed to Cauchon a good time to furnish it. So he +called together some of his doctors of theology and went to her dungeon. +Manchon and I went along to keep the record--that is, to set down what +might be useful to Cauchon, and leave out the rest. + +The sight of Joan gave me a shock. Why, she was but a shadow! It was +difficult for me to realize that this frail little creature with the sad +face and drooping form was the same Joan of Arc that I had so often seen, +all fire and enthusiasm, charging through a hail of death and the +lightning and thunder of the guns at the head of her battalions. It wrung +my heart to see her looking like this. + +But Cauchon was not touched. He made another of those conscienceless +speeches of his, all dripping with hypocrisy and guile. He told Joan that +among her answers had been some which had seemed to endanger religion; +and as she was ignorant and without knowledge of the Scriptures, he had +brought some good and wise men to instruct her, if she desired it. Said +he, "We are churchmen, and disposed by our good will as well as by our +vocation to procure for you the salvation of your soul and your body, in +every way in our power, just as we would do the like for our nearest kin +or for ourselves. In this we but follow the example of Holy Church, who +never closes the refuge of her bosom against any that are willing to +return." + +Joan thanked him for these sayings and said: + +"I seem to be in danger of death from this malady; if it be the pleasure +of God that I die here, I beg that I may be heard in confession and also +receive my Saviour; and that I may be buried in consecrated ground." + +Cauchon thought he saw his opportunity at last; this weakened body had +the fear of an unblessed death before it and the pains of hell to follow. +This stubborn spirit would surrender now. So he spoke out and said: + +"Then if you want the Sacraments, you must do as all good Catholics do, +and submit to the Church." + +He was eager for her answer; but when it came there was no surrender in +it, she still stood to her guns. She turned her head away and said +wearily: + +"I have nothing more to say." + +Cauchon's temper was stirred, and he raised his voice threateningly and +said that the more she was in danger of death the more she ought to amend +her life; and again he refused the things she begged for unless she would +submit to the Church. Joan said: + +"If I die in this prison I beg you to have me buried in holy ground; if +you will not, I cast myself upon my Saviour." + +There was some more conversation of the like sort, then Cauchon demanded +again, and imperiously, that she submit herself and all her deeds to the +Church. His threatening and storming went for nothing. That body was +weak, but the spirit in it was the spirit of Joan of Arc; and out of that +came the steadfast answer which these people were already so familiar +with and detested so sincerely: + +"Let come what may. I will neither do nor say any otherwise than I have +said already in your tribunals." + +Then the good theologians took turn about and worried her with reasonings +and arguments and Scriptures; and always they held the lure of the +Sacraments before her famishing soul, and tried to bribe her with them to +surrender her mission to the Church's judgment--that is to their +judgment--as if they were the Church! But it availed nothing. I could +have told them that beforehand, if they had asked me. But they never +asked me anything; I was too humble a creature for their notice. + +Then the interview closed with a threat; a threat of fearful import; a +threat calculated to make a Catholic Christian feel as if the ground were +sinking from under him: + +"The Church calls upon you to submit; disobey, and she will abandon you +as if you were a pagan!" + +Think of being abandoned by the Church!--that August Power in whose hands +is lodged the fate of the human race; whose scepter stretches beyond the +furthest constellation that twinkles in the sky; whose authority is over +millions that live and over the billions that wait trembling in purgatory +for ransom or doom; whose smile opens the gates of heaven to you, whose +frown delivers you to the fires of everlasting hell; a Power whose +dominion overshadows and belittles the pomps and shows of a village. To +be abandoned by one's King--yes, that is death, and death is much; but to +be abandoned by Rome, to be abandoned by the Church! Ah, death is nothing +to that, for that is consignment to endless life--and such a life! + +I could see the red waves tossing in that shoreless lake of fire, I could +see the black myriads of the damned rise out of them and struggle and +sink and rise again; and I knew that Joan was seeing what I saw, while +she paused musing; and I believed that she must yield now, and in truth I +hoped she would, for these men were able to make the threat good and +deliver her over to eternal suffering, and I knew that it was in their +natures to do it. + +But I was foolish to think that thought and hope that hope. Joan of Arc +was not made as others are made. Fidelity to principle, fidelity to +truth, fidelity to her word, all these were in her bone and in her +flesh--they were parts of her. She could not change, she could not cast +them out. She was the very genius of Fidelity; she was Steadfastness +incarnated. Where she had taken her stand and planted her foot, there she +would abide; hell itself could not move her from that place. + +Her Voices had not given her permission to make the sort of submission +that was required, therefore she would stand fast. She would wait, in +perfect obedience, let come what might. + +My heart was like lead in my body when I went out from that dungeon; but +she--she was serene, she was not troubled. She had done what she believed +to be her duty, and that was sufficient; the consequences were not her +affair. The last thing she said that time was full of this serenity, full +of contented repose: + +"I am a good Christian born and baptized, and a good Christian I will +die." + + + + 15 Undaunted by Threat of Burning + +TWO WEEKS went by; the second of May was come, the chill was departed out +of the air, the wild flowers were springing in the glades and glens, the +birds were piping in the woods, all nature was brilliant with sunshine, +all spirits were renewed and refreshed, all hearts glad, the world was +alive with hope and cheer, the plain beyond the Seine stretched away soft +and rich and green, the river was limpid and lovely, the leafy islands +were dainty to see, and flung still daintier reflections of themselves +upon the shining water; and from the tall bluffs above the bridge Rouen +was become again a delight to the eye, the most exquisite and satisfying +picture of a town that nestles under the arch of heaven anywhere. + +When I say that all hearts were glad and hopeful, I mean it in a general +sense. There were exceptions--we who were the friends of Joan of Arc, +also Joan of Arc herself, that poor girl shut up there in that frowning +stretch of mighty walls and towers: brooding in darkness, so close to the +flooding downpour of sunshine yet so impossibly far away from it; so +longing for any little glimpse of it, yet so implacably denied it by +those wolves in the black gowns who were plotting her death and the +blackening of her good name. + +Cauchon was ready to go on with his miserable work. He had a new scheme +to try now. He would see what persuasion could do--argument, eloquence, +poured out upon the incorrigible captive from the mouth of a trained +expert. That was his plan. But the reading of the Twelve Articles to her +was not a part of it. No, even Cauchon was ashamed to lay that +monstrosity before her; even he had a remnant of shame in him, away down +deep, a million fathoms deep, and that remnant asserted itself now and +prevailed. + +On this fair second of May, then, the black company gathered itself +together in the spacious chamber at the end of the great hall of the +castle--the Bishop of Beauvais on his throne, and sixty-two minor judges +massed before him, with the guards and recorders at their stations and +the orator at his desk. + +Then we heard the far clank of chains, and presently Joan entered with +her keepers and took her seat upon her isolated bench. She was looking +well now, and most fair and beautiful after her fortnight's rest from +wordy persecution. + +She glanced about and noted the orator. Doubtless she divined the +situation. + +The orator had written his speech all out, and had it in his hand, though +he held it back of him out of sight. It was so thick that it resembled a +book. He began flowing, but in the midst of a flowery period his memory +failed him and he had to snatch a furtive glance at his manuscript--which +much injured the effect. Again this happened, and then a third time. The +poor man's face was red with embarrassment, the whole great house was +pitying him, which made the matter worse; then Joan dropped in a remark +which completed the trouble. She said: + +"Read your book--and then I will answer you!" + +Why, it was almost cruel the way those moldy veterans laughed; and as for +the orator, he looked so flustered and helpless that almost anybody would +have pitied him, and I had difficulty to keep from doing it myself. Yes, +Joan was feeling very well after her rest, and the native mischief that +was in her lay near the surface. It did not show when she made the +remark, but I knew it was close in there back of the words. + +When the orator had gotten back his composure he did a wise thing; for he +followed Joan's advice: he made no more attempts at sham impromptu +oratory, but read his speech straight from his "book." In the speech he +compressed the Twelve Articles into six, and made these his text. + +Every now and then he stopped and asked questions, and Joan replied. The +nature of the Church Militant was explained, and once more Joan was asked +to submit herself to it. + +She gave her usual answer. + +Then she was asked: + +"Do you believe the Church can err?" + +"I believe it cannot err; but for those deeds and words of mine which +were done and uttered by command of God, I will answer to Him alone." + +"Will you say that you have no judge upon earth? Is not our Holy Father +the Pope your judge?" + +"I will say nothing about it. I have a good Master who is our Lord, and +to Him I will submit all." + +Then came these terrible words: + +"If you do not submit to the Church you will be pronounced a heretic by +these judges here present and burned at the stake!" + +Ah, that would have smitten you or me dead with fright, but it only +roused the lion heart of Joan of Arc, and in her answer rang that martial +note which had used to stir her soldiers like a bugle-call: + +"I will not say otherwise than I have said already; and if I saw the fire +before me I would say it again!" + +It was uplifting to hear her battle-voice once more and see the +battle-light burn in her eye. Many there were stirred; every man that was +a man was stirred, whether friend or foe; and Manchon risked his life +again, good soul, for he wrote in the margin of the record in good plain +letters these brave words: "Superba responsio!" and there they have +remained these sixty years, and there you may read them to this day. + +"Superba responsio!" Yes, it was just that. For this "superb answer" came +from the lips of a girl of nineteen with death and hell staring her in +the face. + +Of course, the matter of the male attire was gone over again; and as +usual at wearisome length; also, as usual, the customary bribe was +offered: if she would discard that dress voluntarily they would let her +hear mass. But she answered as she had often answered before: + +"I will go in a woman's robe to all services of the Church if I may be +permitted, but I will resume the other dress when I return to my cell." + +They set several traps for her in a tentative form; that is to say, they +placed suppositious propositions before her and cunningly tried to commit +her to one end of the propositions without committing themselves to the +other. But she always saw the game and spoiled it. The trap was in this +form: + +"Would you be willing to do so and so if we should give you leave?" + +Her answer was always in this form or to this effect: + +"When you give me leave, then you will know." + +Yes, Joan was at her best that second of May. She had all her wits about +her, and they could not catch her anywhere. It was a long, long session, +and all the old ground was fought over again, foot by foot, and the +orator-expert worked all his persuasions, all his eloquence; but the +result was the familiar one--a drawn battle, the sixty-two retiring upon +their base, the solitary enemy holding her original position within her +original lines. + + + + 16 Joan Stands Defiant Before the Rack + +THE BRILLIANT weather, the heavenly weather, the bewitching weather made +everybody's heart to sing, as I have told you; yes, Rouen was feeling +light-hearted and gay, and most willing and ready to break out and laugh +upon the least occasion; and so when the news went around that the young +girl in the tower had scored another defeat against Bishop Cauchon there +was abundant laughter--abundant laughter among the citizens of both +parties, for they all hated the Bishop. It is true, the English-hearted +majority of the people wanted Joan burned, but that did not keep them +from laughing at the man they hated. It would have been perilous for +anybody to laugh at the English chiefs or at the majority of Cauchon's +assistant judges, but to laugh at Cauchon or D'Estivet and Loyseleur was +safe--nobody would report it. + +The difference between Cauchon and cochon [1] was not noticeable in +speech, and so there was plenty of opportunity for puns; the +opportunities were not thrown away. + +Some of the jokes got well worn in the course of two or three months, +from repeated use; for every time Cauchon started a new trial the folk +said "The sow has littered [2] again"; and every time the trial failed +they said it over again, with its other meaning, "The hog has made a mess +of it." + +And so, on the third of May, Noel and I, drifting about the town, heard +many a wide-mouthed lout let go his joke and his laugh, and then move tot +he next group, proud of his wit and happy, to work it off again: + +"'Od's blood, the sow has littered five times, and five times has made a +mess of it!" + +And now and then one was bold enough to say--but he said it softly: + +"Sixty-three and the might of England against a girl, and she camps on +the field five times!" + +Cauchon lived in the great palace of the Archbishop, and it was guarded +by English soldiery; but no matter, there was never a dark night but the +walls showed next morning that the rude joker had been there with his +paint and brush. Yes, he had been thee, and had smeared the sacred walls +with pictures of hogs in all attitudes except flattering ones; hogs +clothed in a Bishop's vestments and wearing a Bishop's miter irreverently +cocked on the side of their heads. + +Cauchon raged and cursed over his defeats and his impotence during seven +says; then he conceived a new scheme. You shall see what it was; for you +have not cruel hearts, and you would never guess it. + +On the ninth of May there was a summons, and Manchon and I got out +materials together and started. But this time we were to go to one of the +other towers--not the one which was Joan's prison. It was round and grim +and massive, and built of the plainest and thickest and solidest +masonry--a dismal and forbidding structure. [3] We entered the circular +room on the ground floor, and I saw what turned me sick--the instruments +of torture and the executioners standing ready! Here you have the black +heart of Cauchon at the blackest, here you have the proof that in his +nature there was no such thing as pity. One wonders if he ever knew his +mother or ever had a sister. + +Cauchon was there, and the Vice-Inquisitor and the Abbot of St. +Corneille; also six others, among them that false Loyseleur. The guards +were in their places, the rack was there, and by it stood the executioner +and his aids in their crimson hose and doublets, meet color for their +bloody trade. The picture of Joan rose before me stretched upon the rack, +her feet tied to one end of it, her wrists to the other, and those red +giants turning the windlass and pulling her limbs out of their sockets. +It seemed to me that I could hear the bones snap and the flesh tear +apart, and I did not see how that body of anointed servants of the +merciful Jesus could sit there and look so placid and indifferent. + +After a little, Joan arrived and was brought in. She saw the rack, she +saw the attendants, and the same picture which I had been seeing must +have risen in her mind; but do you think she quailed, do you think she +shuddered? No, there was no sign of that sort. She straightened herself +up, and there was a slight curl of scorn about her lip; but as for fear, +she showed not a vestige of it. + +This was a memorable session, but it was the shortest one of all the +list. When Joan had taken her seat a r,sum, of her "crimes" was read to +her. Then Cauchon made a solemn speech. It in he said that in the course +of her several trials Joan had refused to answer some of the questions +and had answered others with lies, but that now he was going to have the +truth out of her, and the whole of it. + +Her manner was full of confidence this time; he was sure he had found a +way at last to break this child's stubborn spirit and make her beg and +cry. He would score a victory this time and stop the mouths of the jokers +of Rouen. You see, he was only just a man after all, and couldn't stand +ridicule any better than other people. He talked high, and his splotchy +face lighted itself up with all the shifting tints and signs of evil +pleasure and promised triumph--purple, yellow, red, green--they were all +there, with sometimes the dull and spongy blue of a drowned man, the +uncanniest of them all. And finally he burst out in a great passion and +said: + +"There is the rack, and there are its ministers! You will reveal all now +or be put to the torture. + +"Speak." + +Then she made that great answer which will live forever; made it without +fuss or bravado, and yet how fine and noble was the sound of it: + +"I will tell you nothing more than I have told you; no, not even if you +tear the limbs from my body. And even if in my pain I did say something +otherwise, I would always say afterward that it was the torture that +spoke and not I." + +There was no crushing that spirit. You should have seen Cauchon. Defeated +again, and he had not dreamed of such a thing. I heard it said the next +day, around the town, that he had a full confession all written out, in +his pocket and all ready for Joan to sign. I do not know that that was +true, but it probably was, for her mark signed at the bottom of a +confession would be the kind of evidence (for effect with the public) +which Cauchon and his people were particularly value, you know. + +No, there was no crushing that spirit, and no beclouding that clear mind. +Consider the depth, the wisdom of that answer, coming from an ignorant +girl. Why, there were not six men in the world who had ever reflected +that words forced out of a person by horrible tortures were not +necessarily words of verity and truth, yet this unlettered peasant-girl +put her finger upon that flaw with an unerring instinct. I had always +supposed that torture brought out the truth--everybody supposed it; and +when Joan came out with those simple common-sense words they seemed to +flood the place with light. It was like a lightning-flash at midnight +which suddenly reveals a fair valley sprinkled over with silver streams +and gleaming villages and farmsteads where was only an impenetrable world +of darkness before. Manchon stole a sidewise look at me, and his face was +full of surprise; and there was the like to be seen in other faces there. +Consider--they were old, and deeply cultured, yet here was a village maid +able to teach them something which they had not known before. I heard one +of them mutter: + +"Verily it is a wonderful creature. She has laid her hand upon an +accepted truth that is as old as the world, and it has crumbled to dust +and rubbish under her touch. Now whence got she that marvelous insight?" + +The judges laid their heads together and began to talk now. It was plain, +from chance words which one caught now and then, that Cauchon and +Loyseleur were insisting upon the application of the torture, and that +most of the others were urgently objecting. + +Finally Cauchon broke out with a good deal of asperity in his voice and +ordered Joan back to her dungeon. That was a happy surprise for me. I was +not expecting that the Bishop would yield. + +When Manchon came home that night he said he had found out why the +torture was not applied. + +There were two reasons. One was, a fear that Joan might die under the +torture, which would not suit the English at all; the other was, that the +torture would effect nothing if Joan was going to take back everything +she said under its pains; and as to putting her mark to a confession, it +was believed that not even the rack would ever make her do that. + +So all Rouen laughed again, and kept it up for three days, saying: + +"The sow has littered six times, and made six messes of it." + +And the palace walls got a new decoration--a mitered hog carrying a +discarded rack home on its shoulder, and Loyseleur weeping in its wake. +Many rewards were offered for the capture of these painters, but nobody +applied. Even the English guard feigned blindness and would not see the +artists at work. + +The Bishop's anger was very high now. He could not reconcile himself to +the idea of giving up the torture. It was the pleasantest idea he had +invented yet, and he would not cast it by. So he called in some of his +satellites on the twelfth, and urged the torture again. But it was a +failure. + +With some, Joan's speech had wrought an effect; others feared she might +die under torture; others did not believe that any amount of suffering +could make her put her mark to a lying confession. There were fourteen +men present, including the Bishop. Eleven of them voted dead against the +torture, and stood their ground in spite of Cauchon's abuse. Two voted +with the Bishop and insisted upon the torture. These two were Loyseleur +and the orator--the man whom Joan had bidden to "read his book"--Thomas +de Courcelles, the renowned pleader and master of eloquence. + +Age has taught me charity of speech; but it fails me when I think of +those three names--Cauchon, Courcelles, Loyseleur. + +[1] Hog, pig. + +[2] Cochonner, to litter, to farrow; also, "to make a mess of"! + +[3] The lower half of it remains to-day just as it was then; the upper +half is of a later date. -- TRANSLATOR. + + + + 17 Supreme in Direst Peril + +ANOTHER ten days' wait. The great theologians of that treasury of all +valuable knowledge and all wisdom, the University of Paris, were still +weighing and considering and discussing the Twelve Lies. + +I had had but little to do these ten days, so I spent them mainly in +walks about the town with Noel. But there was no pleasure in them, our +spirits being so burdened with cares, and the outlook for Joan growing +steadily darker and darker all the time. And then we naturally contrasted +our circumstances with hers: this freedom and sunshine, with her darkness +and chains; our comradeship, with her lonely estate; our alleviations of +one sort and another, with her destitution in all. She was used to +liberty, but now she had none; she was an out-of-door creature by nature +and habit, but now she was shut up day and night in a steel cage like an +animal; she was used to the light, but now she was always in a gloom +where all objects about her were dim and spectral; she was used to the +thousand various sounds which are the cheer and music of a busy life, but +now she heard only the monotonous footfall of the sentry pacing his +watch; she had been fond of talking with her mates, but now there was no +one to talk to; she had had an easy laugh, but it was gone dumb now; she +had been born for comradeship, and blithe and busy work, and all manner +of joyous activities, but here were only dreariness, and leaden hours, +and weary inaction, and brooding stillness, and thoughts that travel by +day and night and night and day round and round in the same circle, and +wear the brain and break the heart with weariness. It was death in life; +yes, death in life, that is what it must have been. And there was another +hard thing about it all. A young girl in trouble needs the soothing +solace and support and sympathy of persons of her own sex, and the +delicate offices and gentle ministries which only these can furnish; yet +in all these months of gloomy captivity in her dungeon Joan never saw the +face of a girl or a woman. Think how her heart would have leaped to see +such a face. + +Consider. If you would realize how great Joan of Arc was, remember that +it was out of such a place and such circumstances that she came week +after week and month after month and confronted the master intellects of +France single-handed, and baffled their cunningest schemes, defeated +their ablest plans, detected and avoided their secretest traps and +pitfalls, broke their lines, repelled their assaults, and camped on the +field after every engagement; steadfast always, true to her faith and her +ideals; defying torture, defying the stake, and answering threats of +eternal death and the pains of hell with a simple "Let come what may, +here I take my stand and will abide." + +Yes, if you would realize how great was the soul, how profound the +wisdom, and how luminous the intellect of Joan of Arc, you must study her +there, where she fought out that long fight all alone--and not merely +against the subtlest brains and deepest learning of France, but against +the ignoble deceits, the meanest treacheries, and the hardest hearts to +be found in any land, pagan or Christian. + +She was great in battle--we all know that; great in foresight; great in +loyalty and patriotism; great in persuading discontented chiefs and +reconciling conflicting interests and passions; great in the ability to +discover merit and genius wherever it lay hidden; great in picturesque +and eloquent speech; supremely great in the gift of firing the hearts of +hopeless men and noble enthusiasms, the gift of turning hares into +heroes, slaves and skulkers into battalions that march to death with +songs on their lips. But all these are exalting activities; they keep +hand and heart and brain keyed up to their work; there is the joy of +achievement, the inspiration of stir and movement, the applause which +hails success; the soul is overflowing with life and energy, the +faculties are at white heat; weariness, despondency, inertia--these do +not exist. + +Yes, Joan of Arc was great always, great everywhere, but she was greatest +in the Rouen trials. + +There she rose above the limitations and infirmities of our human nature, +and accomplished under blighting and unnerving and hopeless conditions +all that her splendid equipment of moral and intellectual forces could +have accomplished if they had been supplemented by the mighty helps of +hope and cheer and light, the presence of friendly faces, and a fair and +equal fight, with the great world looking on and wondering. + + + + 18 Condemned Yet Unafraid + +TOWARD THE END of the ten-day interval the University of Paris rendered +its decision concerning the Twelve Articles. By this finding, Joan was +guilty upon all the counts: she must renounce her errors and make +satisfaction, or be abandoned to the secular arm for punishment. + +The University's mind was probably already made up before the Articles +were laid before it; yet it took it from the fifth to the eighteenth to +produce its verdict. I think the delay may have been caused by temporary +difficulties concerning two points: + +1. As to who the fiends were who were represented in Joan's Voices; 2. As +to whether her saints spoke French only. + +You understand, the University decided emphatically that it was fiends +who spoke in those Voices; it would need to prove that, and it did. It +found out who those fiends were, and named them in the verdict: Belial, +Satan, and Behemoth. This has always seemed a doubtful thing to me, and +not entitled to much credit. I think so for this reason: if the +University had actually known it was those three, it would for very +consistency's sake have told how it knew it, and not stopped with the +mere assertion, since it had made Joan explain how she knew they were not +fiends. Does not that seem reasonable? To my mind the University's +position was weak, and I will tell you why. It had claimed that Joan's +angels were devils in disguise, and we all know that devils do disguise +themselves as angels; up to that point the University's position was +strong; but you see yourself that it eats its own argument when it turns +around and pretends that it can tell who such apparitions are, while +denying the like ability to a person with as good a head on her shoulders +as the best one the University could produce. + +The doctors of the University had to see those creatures in order to +know; and if Joan was deceived, it is argument that they in their turn +could also be deceived, for their insight and judgment were surely not +clearer than hers. + +As to the other point which I have thought may have proved a difficulty +and cost the University delay, I will touch but a moment upon that, and +pass on. The University decided that it was blasphemy for Joan to say +that her saints spoke French and not English, and were on the French side +in political sympathies. I think that the thing which troubled the +doctors of theology was this: they had decided that the three Voices were +Satan and two other devils; but they had also decided that these Voices +were not on the French side--thereby tacitly asserting that they were on +the English side; and if on the English side, then they must be angels +and not devils. Otherwise, the situation was embarrassing. You see, the +University being the wisest and deepest and most erudite body in the +world, it would like to be logical if it could, for the sake of its +reputation; therefore it would study and study, days and days, trying to +find some good common-sense reason for proving the Voices to be devils in +Article No. 1 and proving them to be angels in Article No. 10. However, +they had to give it up. They found no way out; and so, to this day, the +University's verdict remains just so--devils in No. 1, angels in No. 10; +and no way to reconcile the discrepancy. + +The envoys brought the verdict to Rouen, and with it a letter for Cauchon +which was full of fervid praise. The University complimented him on his +zeal in hunting down this woman "whose venom had infected the faithful of +the whole West," and as recompense it as good as promised him "a crown of +imperishable glory in heaven." Only that!--a crown in heaven; a +promissory note and no indorser; always something away off yonder; not a +word about the Archbishopric of Rouen, which was the thing Cauchon was +destroying his soul for. A crown in heaven; it must have sounded like a +sarcasm to him, after all his hard work. What should he do in heaven? he +did not know anybody there. + +On the nineteenth of May a court of fifty judges sat in the +archiepiscopal palace to discuss Joan's fate. A few wanted her delivered +over to the secular arm at once for punishment, but the rest insisted +that she be once more "charitably admonished" first. + +So the same court met in the castle on the twenty-third, and Joan was +brought to the bar. Pierre Maurice, a canon of Rouen, made a speech to +Joan in which he admonished her to save her life and her soul by +renouncing her errors and surrendering to the Church. He finished with a +stern threat: if she remained obstinate the damnation of her soul was +certain, the destruction of her body probable. But Joan was immovable. +She said: + +"If I were under sentence, and saw the fire before me, and the +executioner ready to light it--more, if I were in the fire itself, I +would say none but the things which I have said in these trials; and I +would abide by them till I died." + +A deep silence followed now, which endured some moments. It lay upon me +like a weight. I knew it for an omen. Then Cauchon, grave and solemn, +turned to Pierre Maurice: + +"Have you anything further to say?" + +The priest bowed low, and said: + +"Nothing, my lord." + +"Prisoner at the bar, have you anything further to say?" + +"Nothing." + +"Then the debate is closed. To-morrow, sentence will be pronounced. +Remove the prisoner." + +She seemed to go from the place erect and noble. But I do not know; my +sight was dim with tears. + +To-morrow--twenty-fourth of May! Exactly a year since I saw her go +speeding across the plain at the head of her troops, her silver helmet +shining, her silvery cape fluttering in the wind, her white plumes +flowing, her sword held aloft; saw her charge the Burgundian camp three +times, and carry it; saw her wheel to the right and spur for the duke's +reserves; saws her fling herself against it in the last assault she was +ever to make. And now that fatal day was come again--and see what it was +bringing! + + + + 19 Our Last Hopes of Rescue Fail + +JOAN HAD been adjudged guilty of heresy, sorcery, and all the other +terrible crimes set forth in the Twelve Articles, and her life was in +Cauchon's hands at last. He could send her to the stake at once. His work +was finished now, you think? He was satisfied? Not at all. What would his +Archbishopric be worth if the people should get the idea into their heads +that this faction of interested priests, slaving under the English lash, +had wrongly condemned and burned Joan of Arc, Deliverer of France? That +would be to make of her a holy martyr. Then her spirit would rise from +her body's ashes, a thousandfold reinforced, and sweep the English +domination into the sea, and Cauchon along with it. No, the victory was +not complete yet. Joan's guilt must be established by evidence which +would satisfy the people. Where was that evidence to be found? There was +only one person in the world who could furnish it--Joan of Arc herself. +She must condemn herself, and in public--at least she must seem to do it. + +But how was this to be managed? Weeks had been spent already in trying to +get her to surrender--time wholly wasted; what was to persuade her now? +Torture had been threatened, the fire had been threatened; what was left? +Illness, deadly fatigue, and the sight of the fire, the presence of the +fire! That was left. + +Now that was a shrewd thought. She was but a girl after all, and, under +illness and exhaustion, subject to a girl's weaknesses. + +Yes, it was shrewdly thought. She had tacitly said herself that under the +bitter pains of the rack they would be able to extort a false confession +from her. It was a hint worth remembering, and it was remembered. + +She had furnished another hint at the same time: that as soon as the +pains were gone, she would retract the confession. That hint was also +remembered. + +She had herself taught them what to do, you see. First, they must wear +out her strength, then frighten her with the fire. Second, while the +fright was on her, she must be made to sign a paper. + +But she would demand a reading of the paper. They could not venture to +refuse this, with the public there to hear. Suppose that during the +reading her courage should return?--she would refuse to sign then. Very +well, even that difficulty could be got over. They could read a short +paper of no importance, then slip a long and deadly one into its place +and trick her into signing that. + +Yet there was still one other difficulty. If they made her seem to +abjure, that would free her from the death-penalty. They could keep her +in a prison of the Church, but they could not kill her. + +That would not answer; for only her death would content the English. +Alive she was a terror, in a prison or out of it. She had escaped from +two prisons already. + +But even that difficulty could be managed. Cauchon would make promises to +her; in return she would promise to leave off the male dress. He would +violate his promises, and that would so situate her that she would not be +able to keep hers. Her lapse would condemn her to the stake, and the +stake would be ready. + +These were the several moves; there was nothing to do but to make them, +each in its order, and the game was won. One might almost name the day +that the betrayed girl, the most innocent creature in France and the +noblest, would go to her pitiful death. + +The world knows now that Cauchon's plan was as I have sketched it to you, +but the world did not know it at that time. There are sufficient +indications that Warwick and all the other English chiefs except the +highest one--the Cardinal of Winchester--were not let into the secret, +also, that only Loyseleur and Beaupere, on the French side, knew the +scheme. Sometimes I have doubted if even Loyseleur and Beaupere knew the +whole of it at first. However, if any did, it was these two. + +It is usual to let the condemned pass their last night of life in peace, +but this grace was denied to poor Joan, if one may credit the rumors of +the time. Loyseleur was smuggled into her presence, and in the character +of priest, friend, and secret partisan of France and hater of England, he +spent some hours in beseeching her to do "the only right an righteous +thing"--submit to the Church, as a good Christian should; and that then +she would straightway get out of the clutches of the dreaded English and +be transferred to the Church's prison, where she would be honorably used +and have women about her for jailers. He knew where to touch her. He knew +how odious to her was the presence of her rough and profane English +guards; he knew that her Voices had vaguely promised something which she +interpreted to be escape, rescue, release of some sort, and the chance to +burst upon France once more and victoriously complete the great work +which she had been commissioned of Heaven to do. Also there was that +other thing: if her failing body could be further weakened by loss of +rest and sleep now, her tired mind would be dazed and drowsy on the +morrow, and in ill condition to stand out against persuasions, threats, +and the sight of the stake, and also be purblind to traps and snares +which it would be swift to detect when in its normal estate. + +I do not need to tell you that there was no rest for me that night. Nor +for Noel. We went to the main gate of the city before nightfall, with a +hope in our minds, based upon that vague prophecy of Joan's Voices which +seemed to promise a rescue by force at the last moment. The immense news +had flown swiftly far and wide that at last Joan of Arc was condemned, +and would be sentenced and burned alive on the morrow; and so crowds of +people were flowing in at the gate, and other crowds were being refused +admission by the soldiery; these being people who brought doubtful passes +or none at all. We scanned these crowds eagerly, but thee was nothing +about them to indicate that they were our old war-comrades in disguise, +and certainly there were no familiar faces among them. And so, when the +gate was closed at last, we turned away grieved, and more disappointed +than we cared to admit, either in speech or thought. + +The streets were surging tides of excited men. It was difficult to make +one's way. Toward midnight our aimless tramp brought us to the +neighborhood of the beautiful church of St. Ouen, and there all was +bustle and work. The square was a wilderness of torches and people; and +through a guarded passage dividing the pack, laborers were carrying +planks and timbers and disappearing with them through the gate of the +churchyard. We asked what was going forward; the answer was: + +"Scaffolds and the stake. Don't you know that the French witch is to be +burned in the morning?" + +Then we went away. We had no heart for that place. + +At dawn we were at the city gate again; this time with a hope which our +wearied bodies and fevered minds magnified into a large probability. We +had heard a report that the Abbot of Jumieges with all his monks was +coming to witness the burning. Our desire, abetted by our imagination, +turned those nine hundred monks into Joan's old campaigners, and their +Abbot into La Hire or the Bastard or D'Alencon; and we watched them file +in, unchallenged, the multitude respectfully dividing and uncovering +while they passed, with our hearts in our throats and our eyes swimming +with tears of joy and pride and exultation; and we tried to catch +glimpses of the faces under the cowls, and were prepared to give signal +to any recognized face that we were Joan's men and ready and eager to +kill and be killed in the good cause. How foolish we were! + +But we were young, you know, and youth hopeth all things, believeth all +things. + + + + 20 The Betrayal + +IN THE MORNING I was at my official post. It was on a platform raised the +height of a man, in the churchyard, under the eaves of St. Ouen. On this +same platform was a crowd of priests and important citizens, and several +lawyers. Abreast it, with a small space between, was another and larger +platform, handsomely canopied against sun and rain, and richly carpeted; +also it was furnished with comfortable chairs, and with two which were +more sumptuous than the others, and raised above the general level. One +of these two was occupied by a prince of the royal blood of England, his +Eminence the Cardinal of Winchester; the other by Cauchon, Bishop of +Beauvais. In the rest of the chairs sat three bishops, the +Vice-Inquisitor, eight abbots, and the sixty-two friars and lawyers who +had sat as Joan's judges in her late trials. + +Twenty steps in front of the platforms was another--a table-topped +pyramid of stone, built up in retreating courses, thus forming steps. Out +of this rose that grisly thing, the stake; about the stake bundles of +fagots and firewood were piled. On the ground at the base of the pyramid +stood three crimson figures, the executioner and his assistants. At their +feet lay what had been a goodly heap of brands, but was now a smokeless +nest of ruddy coals; a foot or two from this was a supplemental supply of +wood and fagots compacted into a pile shoulder-high and containing as +much as six packhorse loads. Think of that. We seem so delicately made, +so destructible, so insubstantial; yet it is easier to reduce a granite +statue to ashes than it is to do that with a man's body. + +The sight of the stake sent physical pains tingling down the nerves of my +body; and yet, turn as I would, my eyes would keep coming back t it, such +fascination has the gruesome and the terrible for us. + +The space occupied by the platforms and the stake was kept open by a wall +of English soldiery, standing elbow to elbow, erect and stalwart figures, +fine and sightly in their polished steel; while from behind them on every +hand stretched far away a level plain of human heads; and there was no +window and no housetop within our view, howsoever distant, but was black +with patches and masses of people. + +But there was no noise, no stir; it was as if the world was dead. The +impressiveness of this silence and solemnity was deepened by a leaden +twilight, for the sky was hidden by a pall of low-hanging storm-clouds; +and above the remote horizon faint winkings of heat-lightning played, and +now and then one caught the dull mutterings and complainings of distant +thunder. + +At last the stillness was broken. From beyond the square rose an +indistinct sound, but familiar--court, crisp phrases of command; next I +saw the plain of heads dividing, and the steady swing of a marching host +was glimpsed between. My heart leaped for a moment. Was it La Hire and +his hellions? No--that was not their gait. No, it was the prisoner and +her escort; it was Joan of Arc, under guard, that was coming; my spirits +sank as low as they had been before. Weak as she was they made her walk; +they would increase her weakness all they could. The distance was not +great--it was but a few hundred yards--but short as it was it was a heavy +tax upon one who had been lying chained in one spot for months, and whose +feet had lost their powers from inaction. Yes, and for a year Joan had +known only the cool damps of a dungeon, and now she was dragging herself +through this sultry summer heat, this airless and suffocating void. As +she entered the gate, drooping with exhaustion, there was that creature +Loyseleur at her side with his head bent to her ear. We knew afterward +that he had been with her again this morning in the prison wearying her +with his persuasions and enticing her with false promises, and that he +was now still at the same work at the gate, imploring her to yield +everything that would be required of her, and assuring her that if she +would do this all would be well with her: she would be rid of the dreaded +English and find safety in the powerful shelter and protection of the +Church. A miserable man, a stony-hearted man! + +The moment Joan was seated on the platform she closed her eyes and +allowed her chin to fall; and so sat, with her hands nestling in her lap, +indifferent to everything, caring for nothing but rest. And she was so +white again--white as alabaster. + +How the faces of that packed mass of humanity lighted up with interest, +and with what intensity all eyes gazed upon this fragile girl! And how +natural it was; for these people realized that at last they were looking +upon that person whom they had so long hungered to see; a person whose +name and fame filled all Europe, and made all other names and all other +renowns insignificant by comparisons; Joan of Arc, the wonder of the +time, and destined to be the wonder of all times! + +And I could read as by print, in their marveling countenances, the words +that were drifting through their minds: "Can it be true, is it +believable, that it is this little creature, this girl, this child with +the good face, the sweet face, the beautiful face, the dear and bonny +face, that has carried fortresses by storm, charged at the head of +victorious armies, blown the might of England out of her path with a +breath, and fought a long campaign, solitary and alone, against the +massed brains and learning of France--and had won it if the fight had +been fair!" + +Evidently Cauchon had grown afraid of Manchon because of his pretty +apparent leanings toward Joan, for another recorder was in the chief +place here, which left my master and me nothing to do but sit idle and +look on. + +Well, I suppose that everything had been done which could be thought of +to tire Joan's body and mind, but it was a mistake; one more device had +been invented. This was to preach a long sermon to her in that oppressive +heat. + +When the preacher began, she cast up one distressed and disappointed +look, then dropped her head again. This preacher was Guillaume Erard, an +oratorical celebrity. He got his text from the Twelve Lies. He emptied +upon Joan al the calumnies in detail that had been bottled up in that +mass of venom, and called her all the brutal names that the Twelve were +labeled with, working himself into a whirlwind of fury as he went on; but +his labors were wasted, she seemed lost in dreams, she made no sign, she +did not seem to hear. At last he launched this apostrophe: + +"O France, how hast thou been abused! Thou hast always been the home of +Christianity; but now, Charles, who calls himself thy King and governor, +indorses, like the heretic and schismatic that he is, the words and deeds +of a worthless and infamous woman!" Joan raised her head, and her eyes +began to burn and flash. The preacher turned to her: "It is to you, Joan, +that I speak, and I tell you that your King is schismatic and a heretic!" + +Ah, he might abuse her to his heart's content; she could endure that; but +to her dying moment she could never hear in patience a word against that +ingrate, that treacherous dog our King, whose proper place was here, at +this moment, sword in hand, routing these reptiles and saving this most +noble servant that ever King had in this world--and he would have been +there if he had not been what I have called him. Joan's loyal soul was +outraged, and she turned upon the preacher and flung out a few words with +a spirit which the crowd recognized as being in accordance with the Joan +of Arc traditions: + +"By my faith, sir! I make bold to say and swear, on pain of death, that +he is the most noble Christian of all Christians, and the best lover of +the faith and the Church!" + +There was an explosion of applause from the crowd--which angered the +preacher, for he had been aching long to hear an expression like this, +and now that it was come at last it had fallen to the wrong person: he +had done all the work; the other had carried off all the spoil. He +stamped his foot and shouted to the sheriff: + +"Make her shut up!" + +That made the crowd laugh. + +A mob has small respect for a grown man who has to call on a sheriff to +protect him from a sick girl. + +Joan had damaged the preacher's cause more with one sentence than he had +helped it with a hundred; so he was much put out, and had trouble to get +a good start again. But he needn't have bothered; thee was no occasion. +It was mainly an English-feeling mob. It had but obeyed a law of our +nature--an irresistible law--to enjoy and applaud a spirited and promptly +delivered retort, no matter who makes it. The mob was with the preacher; +it had been beguiled for a moment, but only that; it would soon return. +It was there to see this girl burnt; so that it got that +satisfaction--without too much delay--it would be content. + +Presently the preacher formally summoned Joan to submit to the Church. He +made the demand with confidence, for he had gotten the idea from +Loyseleur and Beaupere that she was worn to the bone, exhausted, and +would not be able to put forth any more resistance; and, indeed, to look +at her it seemed that they must be right. Nevertheless, she made one more +effort to hold her ground, and said, wearily: + +"As to that matter, I have answered my judges before. I have told them to +report all that I have said and done to our Holy Father the Pope--to +whom, and to God first, I appeal." + +Again, out of her native wisdom, she had brought those words of +tremendous import, but was ignorant of their value. But they could have +availed her nothing in any case, now, with the stake there and these +thousands of enemies about her. Yet they made every churchman there +blench, and the preacher changed the subject with all haste. Well might +those criminals blench, for Joan's appeal of her case to the Pope +stripped Cauchon at once of jurisdiction over it, and annulled all that +he and his judges had already done in the matter and all that they should +do in it henceforth. + +Joan went on presently to reiterate, after some further talk, that she +had acted by command of God in her deeds and utterances; then, when an +attempt was made to implicate the King, and friends of hers and his, she +stopped that. She said: + +"I charge my deeds and words upon no one, neither upon my King nor any +other. If there is any fault in them, I am responsible and no other." + +She was asked if she would not recant those of her words and deeds which +had been pronounced evil by her judges. Here answer made confusion and +damage again: + +"I submit them to God and the Pope." + +The Pope once more! It was very embarrassing. Here was a person who was +asked to submit her case to the Church, and who frankly consents--offers +to submit it to the very head of it. What more could any one require? How +was one to answer such a formidably unanswerable answer as that? + +The worried judges put their heads together and whispered and planned and +discussed. Then they brought forth this sufficiently shambling +conclusion--but it was the best they could do, in so close a place: they +said the Pope was so far away; and it was not necessary to go to him +anyway, because the present judges had sufficient power and authority to +deal with the present case, and were in effect "the Church" to that +extent. At another time they could have smiled at this conceit, but not +now; they were not comfortable enough now. + +The mob was getting impatient. It was beginning to put on a threatening +aspect; it was tired of standing, tired of the scorching heat; and the +thunder was coming nearer, the lightning was flashing brighter. It was +necessary to hurry this matter to a close. Erard showed Joan a written +form, which had been prepared and made all ready beforehand, and asked +her to abjure. + +"Abjure? What is abjure?" + +She did not know the word. It was explained to her by Massieu. She tried +to understand, but she was breaking, under exhaustion, and she could not +gather the meaning. It was all a jumble and confusion of strange words. +In her despair she sent out this beseeching cry: + +"I appeal to the Church universal whether I ought to abjure or not!" + +Erard exclaimed: + +"You shall abjure instantly, or instantly be burnt!" + +She glanced up, at those awful words, and for the first time she saw the +stake and the mass of red coals--redder and angrier than ever now under +the constantly deepening storm-gloom. She gasped and staggered up out of +her seat muttering and mumbling incoherently, and gazed vacantly upon the +people and the scene about her like one who is dazed, or thinks he +dreams, and does not know where he is. + +The priests crowded about her imploring her to sign the paper, there were +many voices beseeching and urging her at once, there was great turmoil +and shouting and excitement among the populace and everywhere. + +"Sign! sign!" from the priests; "sign--sign and be saved!" And Loyseleur +was urging at her ear, "Do as I told you--do not destroy yourself!" + +Joan said plaintively to these people: + +"Ah, you do not do well to seduce me." + +The judges joined their voices to the others. Yes, even the iron in their +hearts melted, and they said: + +"O Joan, we pity you so! Take back what you have said, or we must deliver +you up to punishment." + +And now there was another voice--it was from the other platform--pealing +solemnly above the din: Cauchon's--reading the sentence of death! + +Joan's strength was all spent. She stood looking about her in a +bewildered way a moment, then slowly she sank to her knees, and bowed her +head and said: + +"I submit." + +They gave her no time to reconsider--they knew the peril of that. The +moment the words were out of her mouth Massieu was reading to her the +abjuration, and she was repeating the words after him mechanically, +unconsciously--and smiling; for her wandering mind was far away in some +happier world. + +Then this short paper of six lines was slipped aside and a long one of +many pages was smuggled into its place, and she, noting nothing, put her +mark on it, saying, in pathetic apology, that she did not know how to +write. But a secretary of the King of England was there to take care of +that defect; he guided her hand with his own, and wrote her +name--Jehanne. + +The great crime was accomplished. She had signed--what? She did not +know--but the others knew. She had signed a paper confessing herself a +sorceress, a dealer with devils, a liar, a blasphermer of God and His +angels, a lover of blood, a promoter of sedition, cruel, wicked, +commissioned of Satan; and this signature of hers bound her to resume the +dress of a woman. + +There were other promises, but that one would answer, without the others; +and that one could be made to destroy her. + +Loyseleur pressed forward and praised her for having done "such a good +day's work." + +But she was still dreamy, she hardly heard. + +Then Cauchon pronounced the words which dissolved the excommunication and +restored her to her beloved Church, with all the dear privileges of +worship. Ah, she heard that! You could see it in the deep gratitude that +rose in her face and transfigured it with joy. + +But how transient was that happiness! For Cauchon, without a tremor of +pity in his voice, added these crushing words: + +"And that she may repent of her crimes and repeat them no more, she is +sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, with the bread of affliction and the +water of anguish!" + +Perpetual imprisonment! She had never dreamed of that--such a thing had +never been hinted to her by Loyseleur or by any other. Loyseleur had +distinctly said and promised that "all would be well with her." And the +very last words spoken to her by Erard, on that very platform, when he +was urging her to abjure, was a straight, unqualified promised--that if +she would do it she should go free from captivity. + +She stood stunned and speechless a moment; then she remembered, with such +solacement as the thought could furnish, that by another clear promise +made by Cauchon himself--she would at least be the Church's captive, and +have women about her in place of a brutal foreign soldiery. So she turned +to the body of priests and said, with a sad resignation: + +"Now, you men of the Church, take me to your prison, and leave me no +longer in the hands of the English"; and she gathered up her chains and +prepared to move. + +But alas! now came these shameful words from Cauchon--and with them a +mocking laugh: + +"Take her to the prison whence she came!" + +Poor abused girl! She stood dumb, smitten, paralyzed. It was pitiful to +see. She had been beguiled, lied to, betrayed; she saw it all now. + +The rumbling of a drum broke upon the stillness, and for just one moment +she thought of the glorious deliverance promised by her Voices--I read it +in the rapture that lit her face; then she saw what it was--her prison +escort--and that light faded, never to revive again. And now her head +began a piteous rocking motion, swaying slowly, this way and that, as is +the way when one is suffering unwordable pain, or when one's heart is +broken; then drearily she went from us, with her face in her hands, and +sobbing bitterly. + + + + 21 Respited Only for Torture + +THERE IS no certainty that any one in all Rouen was in the secret of the +deep game which Cauchon was playing except the Cardinal of Winchester. +Then you can imagine the astonishment and stupefaction of that vast mob +gathered there and those crowds of churchmen assembled on the two +platforms, when they saw Joan of Arc moving away, alive and +whole--slipping out of their grip at last, after all this tedious +waiting, all this tantalizing expectancy. + +Nobody was able to stir or speak for a while, so paralyzing was the +universal astonishment, so unbelievable the fact that the stake was +actually standing there unoccupied and its prey gone. + +Then suddenly everybody broke into a fury of rage; maledictions and +charges of treachery began to fly freely; yes, and even stones: a stone +came near killing the Cardinal of Winchester--it just missed his head. +But the man who threw it was not to blame, for he was excited, and a +person who is excited never can throw straight. + +The tumult was very great, indeed, for a while. In the midst of it a +chaplain of the Cardinal even forgot the proprieties so far as to +oppobriously assail the August Bishop of Beauvais himself, shaking his +fist in his face and shouting: + +"By God, you are a traitor!" + +"You lie!" responded the Bishop. + +He a traitor! Oh, far from it; he certainly was the last Frenchman that +any Briton had a right to bring that charge against. + +The Early of Warwick lost his temper, too. He was a doughty soldier, but +when it came to the intellectuals--when it came to delicate chicane, and +scheming, and trickery--he couldn't see any further through a millstone +than another. So he burst out in his frank warrior fashion, and swore +that the King of England was being treacherously used, and that Joan of +Arc was going to be allowed to cheat the stake. But they whispered +comfort into his ear: + +"Give yourself no uneasiness, my lord; we shall soon have her again." + +Perhaps the like tidings found their way all around, for good news +travels fast as well as bad. At any rate, the ragings presently quieted +down, and the huge concourse crumbled apart and disappeared. And thus we +reached the noon of that fearful Thursday. + +We two youths were happy; happier than any words can tell--for we were +not in the secret any more than the rest. Joan's life was saved. We knew +that, and that was enough. France would hear of this day's infamous +work--and then! Why, then her gallant sons would flock to her standard by +thousands and thousands, multitudes upon multitudes, and their wrath +would be like the wrath of the ocean when the storm-winds sweep it; and +they would hurl themselves against this doomed city and overwhelm it like +the resistless tides of that ocean, and Joan of Arc would march again! + +In six days--seven days--one short week--noble France, grateful France, +indignant France, would be thundering at these gates--let us count the +hours, let us count the minutes, let us count the seconds! O happy day, O +day of ecstasy, how our hearts sang in our bosoms! + +For we were young then, yes, we were very young. + +Do you think the exhausted prisoner was allowed to rest and sleep after +she had spent the small remnant of her strength in dragging her tired +body back to the dungeon? + +No, there was no rest for her, with those sleuth-hounds on her track. +Cauchon and some of his people followed her to her lair straightway; they +found her dazed and dull, her mental and physical forces in a state of +prostration. They told her she had abjured; that she had made certain +promises--among them, to resume the apparel of her sex; and that if she +relapsed, the Church would cast her out for good and all. She heard the +words, but they had no meaning to her. She was like a person who has +taken a narcotic and is dying for sleep, dying for rest from nagging, +dying to be let alone, and who mechanically does everything the +persecutor asks, taking but dull note of the things done, and but dully +recording them in the memory. And so Joan put on the gown which Cauchon +and his people had brought; and would come to herself by and by, and have +at first but a dim idea as to when and how the change had come about. + +Cauchon went away happy and content. Joan had resumed woman's dress +without protest; also she had been formally warned against relapsing. He +had witnesses to these facts. How could matters be better? + +But suppose she should not relapse? + +Why, then she must be forced to do it. + +Did Cauchon hint to the English guards that thenceforth if they chose to +make their prisoner's captivity crueler and bitterer than ever, no +official notice would be taken of it? Perhaps so; since the guards did +begin that policy at once, and no official notice was taken of it. Yes, +from that moment Joan's life in that dungeon was made almost unendurable. +Do not ask me to enlarge upon it. I will not do it. + + + + 22 Joan Gives the Fatal Answer + +FRIDAY and Saturday were happy days for Noel and me. Our minds were full +of our splendid dream of France aroused--France shaking her mane--France +on the march--France at the gates--Rouen in ashes, and Joan free! Our +imagination was on fire; we were delirious with pride and joy. For we +were very young, as I have said. + +We knew nothing about what had been happening in the dungeon in the +yester-afternoon. We supposed that as Joan had abjured and been taken +back into the forgiving bosom of the Church, she was being gently used +now, and her captivity made as pleasant and comfortable for her as the +circumstances would allow. So, in high contentment, we planned out our +share in the great rescue, and fought our part of the fight over and over +again during those two happy days--as happy days as ever I have known. + +Sunday morning came. I was awake, enjoying the balmy, lazy weather, and +thinking. Thinking of the rescue--what else? I had no other thought now. +I was absorbed in that, drunk with the happiness of it. + +I heard a voice shouting far down the street, and soon it came nearer, +and I caught the words: + +"Joan of Arc has relapsed! The witch's time has come!" + +It stopped my heart, it turned my blood to ice. That was more than sixty +years ago, but that triumphant note rings as clear in my memory to-day as +it rang in my ear that long-vanished summer morning. We are so strangely +made; the memories that could make us happy pass away; it is the memories +that break our hearts that abide. + +Soon other voices took up that cry--tens, scores, hundreds of voices; all +the world seemed filled with the brutal joy of it. And there were other +clamors--the clatter of rushing feet, merry congratulations, bursts of +coarse laughter, the rolling of drums, the boom and crash of distant +bands profaning the sacred day with the music of victory and +thanksgiving. + +About the middle of the afternoon came a summons for Manchon and me to go +to Joan's dungeon--a summons from Cauchon. But by that time distrust had +already taken possession of the English and their soldiery again, and all +Rouen was in an angry and threatening mood. We could see plenty of +evidences of this from our own windows--fist-shaking, black looks, +tumultuous tides of furious men billowing by along the street. + +And we learned that up at the castle things were going very badly, +indeed; that there was a great mob gathered there who considered the +relapse a lie and a priestly trick, and among them many half-drunk +English soldiers. Moreover, these people had gone beyond words. They had +laid hands upon a number of churchmen who were trying to enter the +castle, and it had been difficult work to rescue them and save their +lives. + +And so Manchon refused to go. He said he would not go a step without a +safeguard from Warwick. So next morning Warwick sent an escort of +soldiers, and then we went. Matters had not grown peacefuler meantime, +but worse. The soldiers protected us from bodily damage, but as we passed +through the great mob at the castle we were assailed with insults and +shameful epithets. I bore it well enough, though, and said to myself, +with secret satisfaction, "In three or four short days, my lads, you will +be employing your tongues in a different sort from this--and I shall be +there to hear." + +To my mind these were as good as dead men. How many of them would still +be alive after the rescue that was coming? Not more than enough to amuse +the executioner a short half-hour, certainly. + +It turned out that the report was true. Joan had relapsed. She was +sitting there in her chains, clothed again in her male attire. + +She accused nobody. That was her way. It was not in her character to hold +a servant to account for what his master had made him do, and her mind +had cleared now, and she knew that the advantage which had been taken of +her the previous morning had its origin, not in the subordinate but in +the master--Cauchon. + +Here is what had happened. While Joan slept, in the early morning of +Sunday, one of the guards stole her female apparel and put her male +attire in its place. When she woke she asked for the other dress, but the +guards refused to give it back. She protested, and said she was forbidden +to wear the male dress. But they continued to refuse. She had to have +clothing, for modesty's sake; moreover, she saw that she could not save +her life if she must fight for it against treacheries like this; so she +put on the forbidden garments, knowing what the end would be. She was +weary of the struggle, poor thing. + +We had followed in the wake of Cauchon, the Vice-Inquisitor, and the +others--six or eight--and when I saw Joan sitting there, despondent, +forlorn, and still in chains, when I was expecting to find her situation +so different, I did not know what to make of it. The shock was very +great. I had doubted the relapse perhaps; possibly I had believed in it, +but had not realized it. + +Cauchon's victory was complete. He had had a harassed and irritated and +disgusted look for a long time, but that was all gone now, and +contentment and serenity had taken its place. His purple face was full of +tranquil and malicious happiness. He went trailing his robes and stood +grandly in front of Joan, with his legs apart, and remained so more than +a minute, gloating over her and enjoying the sight of this poor ruined +creature, who had won so lofty a place for him in the service of the meek +and merciful Jesus, Saviour of the World, Lord of the Universe--in case +England kept her promise to him, who kept no promises himself. + +Presently the judges began to question Joan. One of them, named +Marguerie, who was a man with more insight than prudence, remarked upon +Joan's change of clothing, and said: + +"There is something suspicious about this. How could it have come about +without connivance on the part of others? Perhaps even something worse?" + +"Thousand devils!" screamed Cauchon, in a fury. "Will you shut your +mouth?" + +"Armagnac! Traitor!" shouted the soldiers on guard, and made a rush for +Marguerie with their lances leveled. It was with the greatest difficulty +that he was saved from being run through the body. He made no more +attempts to help the inquiry, poor man. The other judges proceeded with +the questionings. + +"Why have you resumed this male habit?" + +I did not quite catch her answer, for just then a soldier's halberd +slipped from his fingers and fell on the stone floor with a crash; but I +thought I understood Joan to say that she had resumed it of her own +motion. + +"But you have promised and sworn that you would not go back to it." + +I was full of anxiety to hear her answer to that question; and when it +came it was just what I was expecting. She said--quiet quietly: + +"I have never intended and never understood myself to swear I would not +resume it." + +There--I had been sure, all along, that she did not know what she was +doing and saying on the platform Thursday, and this answer of hers was +proof that I had not been mistaken. Then she went on to add this: + +"But I had a right to resume it, because the promises made to me have not +been kept--promises that I should be allowed to go to mass and receive +the communion, and that I should be freed from the bondage of these +chains--but they are still upon me, as you see." + +"Nevertheless, you have abjured, and have especially promised to return +no more to the dress of a man." + +Then Joan held out her fettered hands sorrowfully toward these unfeeling +men and said: + +"I would rather die than continue so. But if they may be taken off, and +if I may hear mass, and be removed to a penitential prison, and have a +woman about me, I will be good, and will do what shall seem good to you +that I do." + +Cauchon sniffed scoffingly at that. Honor the compact which he and his +had made with her? + +Fulfil its conditions? What need of that? Conditions had been a good +thing to concede, temporarily, and for advantage; but they have served +their turn--let something of a fresher sort and of more consequence be +considered. The resumption of the male dress was sufficient for all +practical purposes, but perhaps Joan could be led to add something to +that fatal crime. So Cauchon asked her if her Voices had spoken to her +since Thursday--and he reminded her of her abjuration. + +"Yes," she answered; and then it came out that the Voices had talked with +her about the abjuration--told her about it, I suppose. She guilelessly +reasserted the heavenly origin of her mission, and did it with the +untroubled mien of one who was not conscious that she had ever knowingly +repudiated it. So I was convinced once more that she had had no notion of +what she was doing that Thursday morning on the platform. Finally she +said, "My Voices told me I did very wrong to confess that what I had done +was not well." Then she sighed, and said with simplicity, "But it was the +fear of the fire that made me do so." + +That is, fear of the fire had made her sign a paper whose contents she +had not understood then, but understood now by revelation of her Voices +and by testimony of her persecutors. + +She was sane now and not exhausted; her courage had come back, and with +it her inborn loyalty to the truth. She was bravely and serenely speaking +it again, knowing that it would deliver her body up to that very fire +which had such terrors for her. + +That answer of hers was quite long, quite frank, wholly free from +concealments or palliations. It made me shudder; I knew she was +pronouncing sentence of death upon herself. So did poor Manchon. And he +wrote in the margin abreast of it: + +"RESPONSIO MORTIFERA." + +Fatal answer. Yes, all present knew that it was, indeed, a fatal answer. +Then there fell a silence such as falls in a sick-room when the watchers +of the dying draw a deep breath and say softly one to another, "All is +over." + +Here, likewise, all was over; but after some moments Cauchon, wishing to +clinch this matter and make it final, put this question: + +"Do you still believe that your Voices are St. Marguerite and St. +Catherine?" + +"Yes--and that they come from God." + +"Yet you denied them on the scaffold?" + +Then she made direct and clear affirmation that she had never had any +intention to deny them; and that if--I noted the if--"if she had made +some retractions and revocations on the scaffold it was from fear of the +fire, and it was a violation of the truth." + +There it is again, you see. She certainly never knew what it was she had +done on the scaffold until she was told of it afterward by these people +and by her Voices. + +And now she closed this most painful scene with these words; and there +was a weary note in them that was pathetic: + +"I would rather do my penance all at once; let me die. I cannot endure +captivity any longer." + +The spirit born for sunshine and liberty so longed for release that it +would take it in any form, even that. + +Several among the company of judges went from the place troubled and +sorrowful, the others in another mood. In the court of the castle we +found the Earl of Warwick and fifty English waiting, impatient for news. +As soon as Cauchon saw them he shouted--laughing--think of a man +destroying a friendless poor girl and then having the heart to laugh at +it: + +"Make yourselves comfortable--it's all over with her!" + + + + 23 The Time Is at Hand + +THE YOUNG can sink into abysses of despondency, and it was so with Noel +and me now; but the hopes of the young are quick to rise again, and it +was so with ours. We called back that vague promise of the Voices, and +said the one to the other that the glorious release was to happen at "the +last moment"--"that other time was not the last moment, but this is; it +will happen now; the King will come, La Hire will come, and with them our +veterans, and behind them all France!" And so we were full of heart +again, and could already hear, in fancy, that stirring music the clash of +steel and the war-cries and the uproar of the onset, and in fancy see our +prisoner free, her chains gone, her sword in her hand. + +But this dream was to pass also, and come to nothing. Late at night, when +Manchon came in, he said: + +"I am come from the dungeon, and I have a message for you from that poor +child." + +A message to me! If he had been noticing I think he would have discovered +me--discovered that my indifference concerning the prisoner was a +pretense; for I was caught off my guard, and was so moved and so exalted +to be so honored by her that I must have shown my feeling in my face and +manner. + +"A message for me, your reverence?" + +"Yes. It is something she wishes done. She said she had noticed the young +man who helps me, and that he had a good face; and did I think he would +do a kindness for her? I said I knew you would, and asked her what it +was, and she said a letter--would you write a letter to her mother? + +"And I said you would. But I said I would do it myself, and gladly; but +she said no, that my labors were heavy, and she thought the young man +would not mind the doing of this service for one not able to do it for +herself, she not knowing how to write. Then I would have sent for you, +and at that the sadness vanished out of her face. Why, it was as if she +was going to see a friend, poor friendless thing. But I was not +permitted. I did my best, but the orders remain as strict as ever, the +doors are closed against all but officials; as before, none but officials +may speak to her. So I went back and told her, and she sighed, and was +sad again. Now this is what she begs you to write to her mother. It is +partly a strange message, and to me means nothing, but she said her +mother would understand. You will 'convey her adoring love to her family +and her village friends, and say there will be no rescue, for that this +night--and it is the third time in the twelvemonth, and is final--she has +seen the Vision of the Tree.'" + +"How strange!" + +"Yes, it is strange, but that is what she said; and said her parents +would understand. And for a little time she was lost in dreams and +thinkings, and her lips moved, and I caught in her muttering these lines, +which she said over two or three times, and they seemed to bring peace +and contentment to her. I set them down, thinking they might have some +connection with her letter and be useful; but it was not so; they were a +mere memory, floating idly in a tired mind, and they have no meaning, at +least no relevancy." + +I took the piece of paper, and found what I knew I should find: + +And when in exile wand'ring, we Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee, +Oh, rise upon our sight! + +There was no hope any more. I knew it now. I knew that Joan's letter was +a message to Noel and me, as well as to her family, and that its object +was to banish vain hopes from our minds and tell us from her own mouth of +the blow that was going to fall upon us, so that we, being her soldiers, +would know it for a command to bear it as became us and her, and so +submit to the will of God; and in thus obeying, find assuagement of our +grief. It was like her, for she was always thinking of others, not of +herself. Yes, her heart was sore for us; she could find time to think of +us, the humblest of her servants, and try to soften our pain, lighten the +burden of our troubles--she that was drinking of the bitter waters; she +that was walking in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. + +I wrote the letter. You will know what it cost me, without my telling +you. I wrote it with the same wooden stylus which had put upon parchment +the first words ever dictated by Joan of Arc--that high summons to the +English to vacate France, two years past, when she was a lass of +seventeen; it had now set down the last ones which she was ever to +dictate. Then I broke it. For the pen that had served Joan of Arc could +not serve any that would come after her in this earth without abasement. + +The next day, May 29th, Cauchon summoned his serfs, and forty-two +responded. It is charitable to believe that the other twenty were ashamed +to come. The forty-two pronounced her a relapsed heretic, and condemned +her to be delivered over to the secular arm. Cauchon thanked them. + +Then he sent orders that Joan of Arc be conveyed the next morning to the +place known as the Old Market; and that she be then delivered to the +civil judge, and by the civil judge to the executioner. That meant she +would be burnt. + +All the afternoon and evening of Tuesday, the 29th, the news was flying, +and the people of the country-side flocking to Rouen to see the +tragedy--all, at least, who could prove their English sympathies and +count upon admission. The press grew thicker and thicker in the streets, +the excitement grew higher and higher. And now a thing was noticeable +again which had been noticeable more than once before--that there was +pity for Joan in the hearts of many of these people. Whenever she had +been in great danger it had manifested itself, and now it was apparent +again--manifest in a pathetic dumb sorrow which was visible in many +faces. + +Early the next morning, Wednesday, Martin Ladvenu and another friar were +sent to Joan to prepare her for death; and Manchon and I went with +them--a hard service for me. We tramped through the dim corridors, +winding this way and that, and piercing ever deeper and deeper into that +vast heart of stone, and at last we stood before Joan. But she did not +know it. She sat with her hands in her lap and her head bowed, thinking, +and her face was very sad. One might not know what she was thinking of. +Of her home, and the peaceful pastures, and the friends she was no more +to see? Of her wrongs, and her forsaken estate, and the cruelties which +had been put upon her? Or was it of death--the death which she had longed +for, and which was now so close? + +Or was it of the kind of death she must suffer? I hoped not; for she +feared only one kind, and that one had for her unspeakable terrors. I +believed she so feared that one that with her strong will she would shut +the thought of it wholly out of her mind, and hope and believe that God +would take pity on her and grant her an easier one; and so it might +chance that the awful news which we were bringing might come as a +surprise to her at last. + +We stood silent awhile, but she was still unconscious of us, still deep +in her sad musings and far away. Then Martin Ladvenu said, softly: + +"Joan." + +She looked up then, with a little start and a wan smile, and said: + +"Speak. Have you a message for me?" + +"Yes, my poor child. Try to bear it. Do you think you can bear it?" + +"Yes"--very softly, and her head drooped again. + +"I am come to prepare you for death." + +A faint shiver trembled through her wasted body. There was a pause. In +the stillness we could hear our breathings. Then she said, still in that +low voice: + +"When will it be?" + +The muffled notes of a tolling bell floated to our ears out of the +distance. + +"Now. The time is at hand." + +That slight shiver passed again. + +"It is so soon--ah, it is so soon!" + +There was a long silence. The distant throbbings of the bell pulsed +through it, and we stood motionless and listening. But it was broken at +last: + +"What death is it?" + +"By fire!" + +"Oh, I knew it, I knew it!" She sprang wildly to her feet, and wound her +hands in her hair, and began to writhe and sob, oh, so piteously, and +mourn and grieve and lament, and turn to first one and then another of +us, and search our faces beseechingly, as hoping she might find help and +friendliness there, poor thing--she that had never denied these to any +creature, even her wounded enemy on the battle-field. + +"Oh, cruel, cruel, to treat me so! And must my body, that has never been +defiled, be consumed today and turned to ashes? Ah, sooner would I that +my head were cut off seven times than suffer this woeful death. I had the +promise of the Church's prison when I submitted, and if I had but been +there, and not left here in the hands of my enemies, this miserable fate +had not befallen me. + +"Oh, I appeal to God the Great Judge, against the injustice which has +been done me." + +There was none there that could endure it. They turned away, with the +tears running down their faces. In a moment I was on my knees at her +feet. At once she thought only of my danger, and bent and whispered in my +hear: "Up!--do not peril yourself, good heart. There--God bless you +always!" and I felt the quick clasp of her hand. Mine was the last hand +she touched with hers in life. None saw it; history does not know of it +or tell of it, yet it is true, just as I have told it. The next moment +she saw Cauchon coming, and she went and stood before him and reproached +him, saying: + +"Bishop, it is by you that I die!" + +He was not shamed, not touched; but said, smoothly: + +"Ah, be patient, Joan. You die because you have not kept your promise, +but have returned to your sins." + +"Alas," she said, "if you had put me in the Church's prison, and given me +right and proper keepers, as you promised, this would not have happened. +And for this I summon you to answer before God!" + +Then Cauchon winced, and looked less placidly content than before, and he +turned him about and went away. + +Joan stood awhile musing. She grew calmer, but occasionally she wiped her +eyes, and now and then sobs shook her body; but their violence was +modifying now, and the intervals between them were growing longer. +Finally she looked up and saw Pierre Maurice, who had come in with the +Bishop, and she said to him: + +"Master Peter, where shall I be this night?" + +"Have you not good hope in God?" + +"Yes--and by His grace I shall be in Paradise." + +Now Martin Ladvenu heard her in confession; then she begged for the +sacrament. But how grant the communion to one who had been publicly cut +off from the Church, and was now no more entitled to its privileges than +an unbaptized pagan? The brother could not do this, but he sent to +Cauchon to inquire what he must do. All laws, human and divine, were +alike to that man--he respected none of them. He sent back orders to +grant Joan whatever she wished. Her last speech to him had reached his +fears, perhaps; it could not reach his heart, for he had none. + +The Eucharist was brought now to that poor soul that had yearned for it +with such unutterable longing all these desolate months. It was a solemn +moment. While we had been in the deeps of the prison, the public courts +of the castle had been filling up with crowds of the humbler sort of men +and women, who had learned what was going on in Joan's cell, and had come +with softened hearts to do--they knew not what; to hear--they knew not +what. We knew nothing of this, for they were out of our view. And there +were other great crowds of the like caste gathered in masses outside the +castle gates. And when the lights and the other accompaniments of the +Sacrament passed by, coming to Joan in the prison, all those multitudes +kneeled down and began to pray for her, and many wept; and when the +solemn ceremony of the communion began in Joan's cell, out of the +distance a moving sound was borne moaning to our ears--it was those +invisible multitudes chanting the litany for a departing soul. + +The fear of the fiery death was gone from Joan of Arc now, to come again +no more, except for one fleeting instant--then it would pass, and +serenity and courage would take its place and abide till the end. + + + + 24 Joan the Martyr + +AT NINE o'clock the Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France, went forth in +the grace of her innocence and her youth to lay down her life for the +country she loved with such devotion, and for the King that had abandoned +her. She sat in the cart that is used only for felons. In one respect she +was treated worse than a felon; for whereas she was on her way to be +sentenced by the civil arm, she already bore her judgment inscribed in +advance upon a miter-shaped cap which she wore: + +HERETIC, RELAPSED, APOSTATE, IDOLATER + +In the cart with her sat the friar Martin Ladvenu and Maetre Jean +Massieu. She looked girlishly fair and sweet and saintly in her long +white robe, and when a gush of sunlight flooded her as she emerged from +the gloom of the prison and was yet for a moment still framed in the arch +of the somber gate, the massed multitudes of poor folk murmured "A +vision! a vision!" and sank to their knees praying, and many of the women +weeping; and the moving invocation for the dying arose again, and was +taken up and borne along, a majestic wave of sound, which accompanied the +doomed, solacing and blessing her, all the sorrowful way to the place of +death. "Christ have pity! Saint Margaret have pity! Pray for her, all ye +saints, archangels, and blessed martyrs, pray for her! Saints and angels +intercede for her! From thy wrath, good Lord, deliver her! O Lord God, +save her! Have mercy on her, we beseech Thee, good Lord!" + +It is just and true what one of the histories has said: "The poor and the +helpless had nothing but their prayers to give Joan of Arc; but these we +may believe were not unavailing. There are few more pathetic events +recorded in history than this weeping, helpless, praying crowd, holding +their lighted candles and kneeling on the pavement beneath the prison +walls of the old fortress." + +And it was so all the way: thousands upon thousands massed upon their +knees and stretching far down the distances, thick-sown with the faint +yellow candle-flames, like a field starred with golden flowers. + +But there were some that did not kneel; these were the English soldiers. +They stood elbow to elbow, on each side of Joan's road, and walled it in +all the way; and behind these living walls knelt the multitudes. + +By and by a frantic man in priest's garb came wailing and lamenting, and +tore through the crowd and the barriers of soldiers and flung himself on +his knees by Joan's cart and put up his hands in supplication, crying +out: + +"O forgive, forgive!" + +It was Loyseleur! + +And Joan forgave him; forgave him out of a heart that knew nothing but +forgiveness, nothing but compassion, nothing but pity for all that +suffer, let their offense be what it might. And she had no word of +reproach for this poor wretch who had wrought day and night with deceits +and treacheries and hypocrisies to betray her to her death. + +The soldiers would have killed him, but the Earl of Warwick saved his +life. What became of him is not known. He hid himself from the world +somewhere, to endure his remorse as he might. + +In the square of the Old Market stood the two platforms and the stake +that had stood before in the churchyard of St. Ouen. The platforms were +occupied as before, the one by Joan and her judges, the other by great +dignitaries, the principal being Cauchon and the English +Cardinal--Winchester. The square was packed with people, the windows and +roofs of the blocks of buildings surrounding it were black with them. + +When the preparations had been finished, all noise and movement gradually +ceased, and a waiting stillness followed which was solemn and impressive. + +And now, by order of Cauchon, an ecclesiastic named Nicholas Midi +preached a sermon, wherein he explained that when a branch of the +vine--which is the Church--becomes diseased and corrupt, it must be cut +away or it will corrupt and destroy the whole vine. He made it appear +that Joan, through her wickedness, was a menace and a peril to the +Church's purity and holiness, and her death therefore necessary. When he +was come to the end of his discourse he turned toward her and paused a +moment, then he said: + +"Joan, the Church can no longer protect you. Go in peace!" + +Joan had been placed wholly apart and conspicuous, to signify the +Church's abandonment of her, and she sat there in her loneliness, waiting +in patience and resignation for the end. Cauchon addressed her now. He +had been advised to read the form of her abjuration to her, and had +brought it with him; but he changed his mind, fearing that she would +proclaim the truth--that she had never knowingly abjured--and so bring +shame upon him and eternal infamy. He contented himself with admonishing +her to keep in mind her wickednesses, and repent of them, and think of +her salvation. Then he solemnly pronounced her excommunicate and cut off +from the body of the Church. With a final word he delivered her over to +the secular arm for judgment and sentence. + +Joan, weeping, knelt and began to pray. For whom? Herself? Oh, no--for +the King of France. Her voice rose sweet and clear, and penetrated all +hearts with its passionate pathos. She never thought of his treacheries +to her, she never thought of his desertion of her, she never remembered +that it was because he was an ingrate that she was here to die a +miserable death; she remembered only that he was her King, that she was +his loyal and loving subject, and that his enemies had undermined his +cause with evil reports and false charges, and he not by to defend +himself. And so, in the very presence of death, she forgot her own +troubles to implore all in her hearing to be just to him; to believe that +he was good and noble and sincere, and not in any way to blame for any +acts of hers, neither advising them nor urging them, but being wholly +clear and free of all responsibility for them. Then, closing, she begged +in humble and touching words that all here present would pray for her and +would pardon her, both her enemies and such as might look friendly upon +her and feel pity for her in their hearts. + +There was hardly one heart there that was not touched--even the English, +even the judges showed it, and there was many a lip that trembled and +many an eye that was blurred with tears; yes, even the English +Cardinal's--that man with a political heart of stone but a human heart of +flesh. + +The secular judge who should have delivered judgment and pronounced +sentence was himself so disturbed that he forgot his duty, and Joan went +to her death unsentenced--thus completing with an illegality what had +begun illegally and had so continued to the end. He only said--to the +guards: + +"Take her"; and to the executioner, "Do your duty." + +Joan asked for a cross. None was able to furnish one. But an English +soldier broke a stick in two and crossed the pieces and tied them +together, and this cross he gave her, moved to it by the good heart that +was in him; and she kissed it and put it in her bosom. Then Isambard de +la Pierre went to the church near by and brought her a consecrated one; +and this one also she kissed, and pressed it to her bosom with rapture, +and then kissed it again and again, covering it with tears and pouring +out her gratitude to God and the saints. + +And so, weeping, and with her cross to her lips, she climbed up the cruel +steps to the face of the stake, with the friar Isambard at her side. Then +she was helped up to the top of the pile of wood that was built around +the lower third of the stake and stood upon it with her back against the +stake, and the world gazing up at her breathless. The executioner +ascended to her side and wound chains around her slender body, and so +fastened her to the stake. Then he descended to finish his dreadful +office; and there she remained alone--she that had had so many friends in +the days when she was free, and had been so loved and so dear. + +All these things I saw, albeit dimly and blurred with tears; but I could +bear no more. I continued in my place, but what I shall deliver to you +now I got by others' eyes and others' mouths. Tragic sounds there were +that pierced my ears and wounded my heart as I sat there, but it is as I +tell you: the latest image recorded by my eyes in that desolating hour +was Joan of Arc with the grace of her comely youth still unmarred; and +that image, untouched by time or decay, has remained with me all my days. +Now I will go on. + +If any thought that now, in that solemn hour when all transgressors +repent and confess, she would revoke her revocation and say her great +deeds had been evil deeds and Satan and his fiends their source, they +erred. No such thought was in her blameless mind. She was not thinking of +herself and her troubles, but of others, and of woes that might befall +them. And so, turning her grieving eyes about her, where rose the towers +and spires of that fair city, she said: + +"Oh, Rouen, Rouen, must I die here, and must you be my tomb? Ah, Rouen, +Rouen, I have great fear that you will suffer for my death." + +A whiff of smoke swept upward past her face, and for one moment terror +seized her and she cried out, "Water! Give me holy water!" but the next +moment her fears were gone, and they came no more to torture her. + +She heard the flames crackling below her, and immediately distress for a +fellow-creature who was in danger took possession of her. It was the +friar Isambard. She had given him her cross and begged him to raise it +toward her face and let her eyes rest in hope and consolation upon it +till she was entered into the peace of God. She made him go out from the +danger of the fire. Then she was satisfied, and said: + +"Now keep it always in my sight until the end." + +Not even yet could Cauchon, that man without shame, endure to let her die +in peace, but went toward her, all black with crimes and sins as he was, +and cried out: + +"I am come, Joan, to exhort you for the last time to repent and seek the +pardon of God." + +"I die through you," she said, and these were the last words she spoke to +any upon earth. + +Then the pitchy smoke, shot through with red flashes of flame, rolled up +in a thick volume and hid her from sight; and from the heart of this +darkness her voice rose strong and eloquent in prayer, and when by +moments the wind shredded somewhat of the smoke aside, there were veiled +glimpses of an upturned face and moving lips. At last a mercifully swift +tide of flame burst upward, and none saw that face any more nor that +form, and the voice was still. + +Yes, she was gone from us: JOAN OF ARC! What little words they are, to +tell of a rich world made empty and poor! + + + + CONCLUSION + +JOAN'S BROTHER Jacques died in Domremy during the Great Trial at Rouen. +This was according to the prophecy which Joan made that day in the +pastures the time that she said the rest of us would go to the great +wars. + +When her poor old father heard of the martyrdom it broke his heart, and +he died. + +The mother was granted a pension by the city of Orleans, and upon this +she lived out her days, which were many. Twenty-four years after her +illustrious child's death she traveled all the way to Paris in the +winter-time and was present at the opening of the discussion in the +Cathedral of Notre Dame which was the first step in the Rehabilitation. +Paris was crowded with people, from all about France, who came to get +sight of the venerable dame, and it was a touching spectacle when she +moved through these reverent wet-eyed multitudes on her way to the grand +honors awaiting her at the cathedral. With her were Jean and Pierre, no +longer the light-hearted youths who marched with us from Vaucouleurs, but +war-torn veterans with hair beginning to show frost. + +After the martyrdom Noel and I went back to Domremy, but presently when +the Constable Richemont superseded La Tremouille as the King's chief +adviser and began the completion of Joan's great work, we put on our +harness and returned to the field and fought for the King all through the +wars and skirmishes until France was freed of the English. It was what +Joan would have desired of us; and, dead or alive, her desire was law for +us. All the survivors of the personal staff were faithful to her memory +and fought for the King to the end. Mainly we were well scattered, but +when Paris fell we happened to be together. It was a great day and a +joyous; but it was a sad one at the same time, because Joan was not there +to march into the captured capital with us. + +Noel and I remained always together, and I was by his side when death +claimed him. It was in the last great battle of the war. In that battle +fell also Joan's sturdy old enemy Talbot. He was eighty-five years old, +and had spent his whole life in battle. A fine old lion he was, with his +flowing white mane and his tameless spirit; yes, and his indestructible +energy as well; for he fought as knightly and vigorous a fight that day +as the best man there. + +La Hire survived the martyrdom thirteen years; and always fighting, of +course, for that was all he enjoyed in life. I did not see him in all +that time, for we were far apart, but one was always hearing of him. + +The Bastard of Orleans and D'Alencon and D'Aulon lived to see France +free, and to testify with Jean and Pierre d'Arc and Pasquerel and me at +the Rehabilitation. But they are all at rest now, these many years. I +alone am left of those who fought at the side of Joan of Arc in the great +wars. + +She said I would live until those wars were forgotten--a prophecy which +failed. If I should live a thousand years it would still fail. For +whatsoever had touch with Joan of Arc, that thing is immortal. + +Members of Joan's family married, and they have left descendants. Their +descendants are of the nobility, but their family name and blood bring +them honors which no other nobles receive or may hope for. You have seen +how everybody along the way uncovered when those children came yesterday +to pay their duty to me. It was not because they are noble, it is because +they are grandchildren of the brothers of Joan of Arc. + +Now as to the Rehabilitation. Joan crowned the King at Rheims. For reward +he allowed her to be hunted to her death without making one effort to +save her. During the next twenty-three years he remained indifferent to +her memory; indifferent to the fact that her good name was under a +damning blot put there by the priest because of the deeds which she had +done in saving him and his scepter; indifferent to the fact that France +was ashamed, and longed to have the Deliverer's fair fame restored. +Indifferent all that time. Then he suddenly changed and was anxious to +have justice for poor Joan himself. Why? Had he become grateful at last? +Had remorse attacked his hard heart? No, he had a better reason--a better +one for his sort of man. This better reason was that, now that the +English had been finally expelled from the country, they were beginning +to call attention to the fact that this King had gotten his crown by the +hands of a person proven by the priests to have been in league with Satan +and burned for it by them as a sorceress--therefore, of what value or +authority was such a Kingship as that? Of no value at all; no nation +could afford to allow such a king to remain on the throne. + +It was high time to stir now, and the King did it. That is how Charles +VII. came to be smitten with anxiety to have justice done the memory of +his benefactress. + +He appealed to the Pope, and the Pope appointed a great commission of +churchmen to examine into the facts of Joan's life and award judgment. +The Commission sat at Paris, at Domremy, at Rouen, at Orleans, and at +several other places, and continued its work during several months. It +examined the records of Joan's trials, it examined the Bastard of +Orleans, and the Duke d'Alencon, and D'Aulon, and Pasquerel, and +Courcelles, and Isambard de la Pierre, and Manchon, and me, and many +others whose names I have made familiar to you; also they examined more +than a hundred witnesses whose names are less familiar to you--the +friends of Joan in Domremy, Vaucouleurs, Orleans, and other places, and a +number of judges and other people who had assisted at the Rouen trials, +the abjuration, and the martyrdom. And out of this exhaustive examination +Joan's character and history came spotless and perfect, and this verdict +was placed upon record, to remain forever. + +I was present upon most of these occasions, and saw again many faces +which I have not seen for a quarter of a century; among them some +well-beloved faces--those of our generals and that of Catherine Boucher +(married, alas!), and also among them certain other faces that filled me +with bitterness--those of Beaupere and Courcelles and a number of their +fellow-fiends. I saw Haumette and Little Mengette--edging along toward +fifty now, and mothers of many children. I saw Noel's father, and the +parents of the Paladin and the Sunflower. + +It was beautiful to hear the Duke d'Alencon praise Joan's splendid +capacities as a general, and to hear the Bastard indorse these praises +with his eloquent tongue and then go on and tell how sweet and good Joan +was, and how full of pluck and fire and impetuosity, and mischief, and +mirthfulness, and tenderness, and compassion, and everything that was +pure and fine and noble and lovely. He made her live again before me, and +wrung my heart. + +I have finished my story of Joan of Arc, that wonderful child, that +sublime personality, that spirit which in one regard has had no peer and +will have none--this: its purity from all alloy of self-seeking, +self-interest, personal ambition. In it no trace of these motives can be +found, search as you may, and this cannot be said of any other person +whose name appears in profane history. + +With Joan of Arc love of country was more than a sentiment--it was a +passion. She was the Genius of Patriotism--she was Patriotism embodied, +concreted, made flesh, and palpable to the touch and visible to the eye. + +Love, Mercy, Charity, Fortitude, War, Peace, Poetry, Music--these may be +symbolized as any shall prefer: by figures of either sex and of any age; +but a slender girl in her first young bloom, with the martyr's crown upon +her head, and in her hand the sword that severed her country's +bonds--shall not this, and no other, stand for PATRIOTISM through all the + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, +Volume 2, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE + + + +CHAPTER I. AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK + +[Footnote: Strange as the incidents of this story are, they are not +inventions, but facts--even to the public confession of the accused. I +take them from an old-time Swedish criminal trial, change the actors, and +transfer the scenes to America. I have added some details, but only a +couple of them are important ones. -- M. T.] + +WELL, it was the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our old nigger +Jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on +Tom's uncle Silas's farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the +ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer +onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next +mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away +it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick +to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. Yes, and it sets +him to sighing and saddening around, and there's something the matter +with him, he don't know what. But anyway, he gets out by himself and +mopes and thinks; and mostly he hunts for a lonesome place high up on the +hill in the edge of the woods, and sets there and looks away off on the +big Mississippi down there a-reaching miles and miles around the points +where the timber looks smoky and dim it's so far off and still, and +everything's so solemn it seems like everybody you've loved is dead and +gone, and you 'most wish you was dead and gone too, and done with it all. + +Don't you know what that is? It's spring fever. That is what the name of +it is. And when you've got it, you want--oh, you don't quite know what +it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it +so! It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away +from the same old tedious things you're so used to seeing and so tired +of, and set something new. That is the idea; you want to go and be a +wanderer; you want to go wandering far away to strange countries where +everything is mysterious and wonderful and romantic. And if you can't do +that, you'll put up with considerable less; you'll go anywhere you CAN +go, just so as to get away, and be thankful of the chance, too. + +Well, me and Tom Sawyer had the spring fever, and had it bad, too; but it +warn't any use to think about Tom trying to get away, because, as he +said, his Aunt Polly wouldn't let him quit school and go traipsing off +somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. We was setting on the front +steps one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt +Polly with a letter in her hand and says: + +"Tom, I reckon you've got to pack up and go down to Arkansaw--your aunt +Sally wants you." + +I 'most jumped out of my skin for joy. I reckoned Tom would fly at his +aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a +rock, and never said a word. It made me fit to cry to see him act so +foolish, with such a noble chance as this opening up. Why, we might lose +it if he didn't speak up and show he was thankful and grateful. But he +set there and studied and studied till I was that distressed I didn't +know what to do; then he says, very ca'm, and I could a shot him for it: + +"Well," he says, "I'm right down sorry, Aunt Polly, but I reckon I got to +be excused--for the present." + +His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold impudence of +it that she couldn't say a word for as much as a half a minute, and this +gave me a chance to nudge Tom and whisper: + +"Ain't you got any sense? Sp'iling such a noble chance as this and +throwing it away?" + +But he warn't disturbed. He mumbled back: + +"Huck Finn, do you want me to let her SEE how bad I want to go? Why, +she'd begin to doubt, right away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and +dangers and objections, and first you know she'd take it all back. You +lemme alone; I reckon I know how to work her." + +Now I never would 'a' thought of that. But he was right. Tom Sawyer was +always right--the levelest head I ever see, and always AT himself and +ready for anything you might spring on him. By this time his aunt Polly +was all straight again, and she let fly. She says: + +"You'll be excused! YOU will! Well, I never heard the like of it in all +my days! The idea of you talking like that to ME! Now take yourself off +and pack your traps; and if I hear another word out of you about what +you'll be excused from and what you won't, I lay I'LL excuse you--with a +hickory!" + +She hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by, and he let on +to be whimpering as we struck for the stairs. Up in his room he hugged +me, he was so out of his head for gladness because he was going +traveling. And he says: + +"Before we get away she'll wish she hadn't let me go, but she won't know +any way to get around it now. After what she's said, her pride won't let +her take it back." + +Tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his aunt and Mary would +finish up for him; then we waited ten more for her to get cooled down and +sweet and gentle again; for Tom said it took her ten minutes to unruffle +in times when half of her feathers was up, but twenty when they was all +up, and this was one of the times when they was all up. Then we went +down, being in a sweat to know what the letter said. + +She was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in her lap. We +set down, and she says: + +"They're in considerable trouble down there, and they think you and +Huck'll be a kind of diversion for them--'comfort,' they say. Much of +that they'll get out of you and Huck Finn, I reckon. There's a neighbor +named Brace Dunlap that's been wanting to marry their Benny for three +months, and at last they told him point blank and once for all, he +COULDN'T; so he has soured on them, and they're worried about it. I +reckon he's somebody they think they better be on the good side of, for +they've tried to please him by hiring his no-account brother to help on +the farm when they can't hardly afford it, and don't want him around +anyhow. Who are the Dunlaps?" + +"They live about a mile from Uncle Silas's place, Aunt Polly--all the +farmers live about a mile apart down there--and Brace Dunlap is a long +sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of niggers. +He's a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is proud +of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. I +judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking, +and it must have set him back a good deal when he found he couldn't get +Benny. Why, Benny's only half as old as he is, and just as sweet and +lovely as--well, you've seen her. Poor old Uncle Silas--why, it's +pitiful, him trying to curry favor that way--so hard pushed and poor, and +yet hiring that useless Jubiter Dunlap to please his ornery brother." + +"What a name--Jubiter! Where'd he get it?" + +"It's only just a nickname. I reckon they've forgot his real name long +before this. He's twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since the first +time he ever went in swimming. The school teacher seen a round brown +mole the size of a dime on his left leg above his knee, and four little +bits of moles around it, when he was naked, and he said it minded him of +Jubiter and his moons; and the children thought it was funny, and so they +got to calling him Jubiter, and he's Jubiter yet. He's tall, and lazy, +and sly, and sneaky, and ruther cowardly, too, but kind of good-natured, +and wears long brown hair and no beard, and hasn't got a cent, and Brace +boards him for nothing, and gives him his old clothes to wear, and +despises him. Jubiter is a twin." + +"What's t'other twin like?" + +"Just exactly like Jubiter--so they say; used to was, anyway, but he +hain't been seen for seven years. He got to robbing when he was nineteen +or twenty, and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got away--up North +here, somers. They used to hear about him robbing and burglaring now and +then, but that was years ago. He's dead, now. At least that's what they +say. They don't hear about him any more." + +"What was his name?" + +"Jake." + +There wasn't anything more said for a considerable while; the old lady +was thinking. At last she says: + +"The thing that is mostly worrying your aunt Sally is the tempers that +that man Jubiter gets your uncle into." + +Tom was astonished, and so was I. Tom says: + +"Tempers? Uncle Silas? Land, you must be joking! I didn't know he HAD any +temper." + +"Works him up into perfect rages, your aunt Sally says; says he acts as +if he would really hit the man, sometimes." + +"Aunt Polly, it beats anything I ever heard of. Why, he's just as gentle +as mush." + +"Well, she's worried, anyway. Says your uncle Silas is like a changed +man, on account of all this quarreling. And the neighbors talk about it, +and lay all the blame on your uncle, of course, because he's a preacher +and hain't got any business to quarrel. Your aunt Sally says he hates to +go into the pulpit he's so ashamed; and the people have begun to cool +toward him, and he ain't as popular now as he used to was." + +"Well, ain't it strange? Why, Aunt Polly, he was always so good and kind +and moony and absent-minded and chuckle-headed and lovable--why, he was +just an angel! What CAN be the matter of him, do you reckon?" + + + + + CHAPTER II. JAKE DUNLAP + +WE had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a stern-wheeler +from away North which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse +rivers away down Louisiana way, and so we could go all the way down the +Upper Mississippi and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that farm +in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St. Louis; not so very +much short of a thousand miles at one pull. + +A pretty lonesome boat; there warn't but few passengers, and all old +folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was +four days getting out of the "upper river," because we got aground so +much. But it warn't dull--couldn't be for boys that was traveling, of +course. + +From the very start me and Tom allowed that there was somebody sick in +the stateroom next to ourn, because the meals was always toted in there +by the waiters. By and by we asked about it--Tom did and the waiter said +it was a man, but he didn't look sick. + +"Well, but AIN'T he sick?" + +"I don't know; maybe he is, but 'pears to me he's just letting on." + +"What makes you think that?" + +"Because if he was sick he would pull his clothes off SOME time or +other--don't you reckon he would? Well, this one don't. At least he don't +ever pull off his boots, anyway." + +"The mischief he don't! Not even when he goes to bed?" + +"No." + +It was always nuts for Tom Sawyer--a mystery was. If you'd lay out a +mystery and a pie before me and him, you wouldn't have to say take your +choice; it was a thing that would regulate itself. Because in my nature +I have always run to pie, whilst in his nature he has always run to +mystery. People are made different. And it is the best way. Tom says to +the waiter: + +"What's the man's name?" + +"Phillips." + +"Where'd he come aboard?" + +"I think he got aboard at Elexandria, up on the Iowa line." + +"What do you reckon he's a-playing?" + +"I hain't any notion--I never thought of it." + +I says to myself, here's another one that runs to pie. + +"Anything peculiar about him?--the way he acts or talks?" + +"No--nothing, except he seems so scary, and keeps his doors locked night +and day both, and when you knock he won't let you in till he opens the +door a crack and sees who it is." + +"By jimminy, it's int'resting! I'd like to get a look at him. Say--the +next time you're going in there, don't you reckon you could spread the +door and--" + +"No, indeedy! He's always behind it. He would block that game." + +Tom studied over it, and then he says: + +"Looky here. You lend me your apern and let me take him his breakfast in +the morning. I'll give you a quarter." + +The boy was plenty willing enough, if the head steward wouldn't mind. +Tom says that's all right, he reckoned he could fix it with the head +steward; and he done it. He fixed it so as we could both go in with +aperns on and toting vittles. + +He didn't sleep much, he was in such a sweat to get in there and find out +the mystery about Phillips; and moreover he done a lot of guessing about +it all night, which warn't no use, for if you are going to find out the +facts of a thing, what's the sense in guessing out what ain't the facts +and wasting ammunition? I didn't lose no sleep. I wouldn't give a dern +to know what's the matter of Phillips, I says to myself. + +Well, in the morning we put on the aperns and got a couple of trays of +truck, and Tom he knocked on the door. The man opened it a crack, and +then he let us in and shut it quick. By Jackson, when we got a sight of +him, we 'most dropped the trays! and Tom says: + +"Why, Jubiter Dunlap, where'd YOU come from?" + +Well, the man was astonished, of course; and first off he looked like he +didn't know whether to be scared, or glad, or both, or which, but finally +he settled down to being glad; and then his color come back, though at +first his face had turned pretty white. So we got to talking together +while he et his breakfast. And he says: + +"But I aint Jubiter Dunlap. I'd just as soon tell you who I am, though, +if you'll swear to keep mum, for I ain't no Phillips, either." + +Tom says: + +"We'll keep mum, but there ain't any need to tell who you are if you +ain't Jubiter Dunlap." + +"Why?" + +"Because if you ain't him you're t'other twin, Jake. You're the spit'n +image of Jubiter." + +"Well, I'm Jake. But looky here, how do you come to know us Dunlaps?" + +Tom told about the adventures we'd had down there at his uncle Silas's +last summer, and when he see that there warn't anything about his +folks--or him either, for that matter--that we didn't know, he opened out +and talked perfectly free and candid. He never made any bones about his +own case; said he'd been a hard lot, was a hard lot yet, and reckoned +he'd be a hard lot plumb to the end. He said of course it was a +dangerous life, and--He give a kind of gasp, and set his head like a +person that's listening. We didn't say anything, and so it was very +still for a second or so, and there warn't no sounds but the screaking of +the woodwork and the chug-chugging of the machinery down below. + +Then we got him comfortable again, telling him about his people, and how +Brace's wife had been dead three years, and Brace wanted to marry Benny +and she shook him, and Jubiter was working for Uncle Silas, and him and +Uncle Silas quarreling all the time--and then he let go and laughed. + +"Land!" he says, "it's like old times to hear all this tittle-tattle, and +does me good. It's been seven years and more since I heard any. How do +they talk about me these days?" + +"Who?" + +"The farmers--and the family." + +"Why, they don't talk about you at all--at least only just a mention, +once in a long time." + +"The nation!" he says, surprised; "why is that?" + +"Because they think you are dead long ago." + +"No! Are you speaking true?--honor bright, now." He jumped up, excited. + +"Honor bright. There ain't anybody thinks you are alive." + +"Then I'm saved, I'm saved, sure! I'll go home. They'll hide me and save +my life. You keep mum. Swear you'll keep mum--swear you'll never, never +tell on me. Oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted day +and night, and dasn't show his face! I've never done you any harm; I'll +never do you any, as God is in the heavens; swear you'll be good to me +and help me save my life." + +We'd a swore it if he'd been a dog; and so we done it. Well, he couldn't +love us enough for it or be grateful enough, poor cuss; it was all he +could do to keep from hugging us. + +We talked along, and he got out a little hand-bag and begun to open it, +and told us to turn our backs. We done it, and when he told us to turn +again he was perfectly different to what he was before. He had on blue +goggles and the naturalest-looking long brown whiskers and mustashes you +ever see. His own mother wouldn't 'a' knowed him. He asked us if he +looked like his brother Jubiter, now. + +"No," Tom said; "there ain't anything left that's like him except the +long hair." + +"All right, I'll get that cropped close to my head before I get there; +then him and Brace will keep my secret, and I'll live with them as being +a stranger, and the neighbors won't ever guess me out. What do you +think?" + +Tom he studied awhile, then he says: + +"Well, of course me and Huck are going to keep mum there, but if you +don't keep mum yourself there's going to be a little bit of a risk--it +ain't much, maybe, but it's a little. I mean, if you talk, won't people +notice that your voice is just like Jubiter's; and mightn't it make them +think of the twin they reckoned was dead, but maybe after all was hid all +this time under another name?" + +"By George," he says, "you're a sharp one! You're perfectly right. I've +got to play deef and dumb when there's a neighbor around. If I'd a +struck for home and forgot that little detail--However, I wasn't striking +for home. I was breaking for any place where I could get away from these +fellows that are after me; then I was going to put on this disguise and +get some different clothes, and--" + +He jumped for the outside door and laid his ear against it and listened, +pale and kind of panting. Presently he whispers: + +"Sounded like cocking a gun! Lord, what a life to lead!" + +Then he sunk down in a chair all limp and sick like, and wiped the sweat +off of his face. + + + + + CHAPTER III. A DIAMOND ROBBERY + +FROM that time out, we was with him 'most all the time, and one or +t'other of us slept in his upper berth. He said he had been so lonesome, +and it was such a comfort to him to have company, and somebody to talk to +in his troubles. We was in a sweat to find out what his secret was, but +Tom said the best way was not to seem anxious, then likely he would drop +into it himself in one of his talks, but if we got to asking questions he +would get suspicious and shet up his shell. It turned out just so. It +warn't no trouble to see that he WANTED to talk about it, but always +along at first he would scare away from it when he got on the very edge +of it, and go to talking about something else. The way it come about was +this: He got to asking us, kind of indifferent like, about the passengers +down on deck. We told him about them. But he warn't satisfied; we warn't +particular enough. He told us to describe them better. Tom done it. At +last, when Tom was describing one of the roughest and raggedest ones, he +gave a shiver and a gasp and says: + +"Oh, lordy, that's one of them! They're aboard sure--I just knowed it. +I sort of hoped I had got away, but I never believed it. Go on." + +Presently when Tom was describing another mangy, rough deck passenger, he +give that shiver again and says: + +"That's him!--that's the other one. If it would only come a good black +stormy night and I could get ashore. You see, they've got spies on me. +They've got a right to come up and buy drinks at the bar yonder forrard, +and they take that chance to bribe somebody to keep watch on me--porter +or boots or somebody. If I was to slip ashore without anybody seeing me, +they would know it inside of an hour." + +So then he got to wandering along, and pretty soon, sure enough, he was +telling! He was poking along through his ups and downs, and when he come +to that place he went right along. He says: + +"It was a confidence game. We played it on a julery-shop in St. Louis. +What we was after was a couple of noble big di'monds as big as +hazel-nuts, which everybody was running to see. We was dressed up fine, +and we played it on them in broad daylight. We ordered the di'monds sent +to the hotel for us to see if we wanted to buy, and when we was examining +them we had paste counterfeits all ready, and THEM was the things that +went back to the shop when we said the water wasn't quite fine enough for +twelve thousand dollars." + +"Twelve-thousand-dollars!" Tom says. "Was they really worth all that +money, do you reckon?" + +"Every cent of it." + +"And you fellows got away with them?" + +"As easy as nothing. I don't reckon the julery people know they've been +robbed yet. But it wouldn't be good sense to stay around St. Louis, of +course, so we considered where we'd go. One was for going one way, one +another, so we throwed up, heads or tails, and the Upper Mississippi won. +We done up the di'monds in a paper and put our names on it and put it in +the keep of the hotel clerk, and told him not to ever let either of us +have it again without the others was on hand to see it done; then we went +down town, each by his own self--because I reckon maybe we all had the +same notion. I don't know for certain, but I reckon maybe we had." + +"What notion?" Tom says. + +"To rob the others." + +"What--one take everything, after all of you had helped to get it?" + +"Cert'nly." + +It disgusted Tom Sawyer, and he said it was the orneriest, low-downest +thing he ever heard of. But Jake Dunlap said it warn't unusual in the +profession. Said when a person was in that line of business he'd got to +look out for his own intrust, there warn't nobody else going to do it for +him. And then he went on. He says: + +"You see, the trouble was, you couldn't divide up two di'monds amongst +three. If there'd been three--But never mind about that, there warn't +three. I loafed along the back streets studying and studying. And I +says to myself, I'll hog them di'monds the first chance I get, and I'll +have a disguise all ready, and I'll give the boys the slip, and when I'm +safe away I'll put it on, and then let them find me if they can. So I +got the false whiskers and the goggles and this countrified suit of +clothes, and fetched them along back in a hand-bag; and when I was +passing a shop where they sell all sorts of things, I got a glimpse of +one of my pals through the window. It was Bud Dixon. I was glad, you +bet. I says to myself, I'll see what he buys. So I kept shady, and +watched. Now what do you reckon it was he bought?" + +"Whiskers?" said I. + +"No." + +"Goggles?" + +"No." + +"Oh, keep still, Huck Finn, can't you, you're only just hendering all you +can. What WAS it he bought, Jake?" + +"You'd never guess in the world. It was only just a screwdriver--just a +wee little bit of a screwdriver." + +"Well, I declare! What did he want with that?" + +"That's what I thought. It was curious. It clean stumped me. I says to +myself, what can he want with that thing? Well, when he come out I stood +back out of sight, and then tracked him to a second-hand slop-shop and +see him buy a red flannel shirt and some old ragged clothes--just the +ones he's got on now, as you've described. Then I went down to the wharf +and hid my things aboard the up-river boat that we had picked out, and +then started back and had another streak of luck. I seen our other pal +lay in HIS stock of old rusty second-handers. We got the di'monds and +went aboard the boat. + +"But now we was up a stump, for we couldn't go to bed. We had to set up +and watch one another. Pity, that was; pity to put that kind of a strain +on us, because there was bad blood between us from a couple of weeks +back, and we was only friends in the way of business. Bad anyway, seeing +there was only two di'monds betwixt three men. First we had supper, and +then tramped up and down the deck together smoking till most midnight; +then we went and set down in my stateroom and locked the doors and looked +in the piece of paper to see if the di'monds was all right, then laid it +on the lower berth right in full sight; and there we set, and set, and +by-and-by it got to be dreadful hard to keep awake. At last Bud Dixon he +dropped off. As soon as he was snoring a good regular gait that was +likely to last, and had his chin on his breast and looked permanent, Hal +Clayton nodded towards the di'monds and then towards the outside door, +and I understood. I reached and got the paper, and then we stood up and +waited perfectly still; Bud never stirred; I turned the key of the +outside door very soft and slow, then turned the knob the same way, and +we went tiptoeing out onto the guard, and shut the door very soft and +gentle. + +"There warn't nobody stirring anywhere, and the boat was slipping along, +swift and steady, through the big water in the smoky moonlight. We never +said a word, but went straight up onto the hurricane-deck and plumb back +aft, and set down on the end of the sky-light. Both of us knowed what +that meant, without having to explain to one another. Bud Dixon would +wake up and miss the swag, and would come straight for us, for he ain't +afeard of anything or anybody, that man ain't. He would come, and we +would heave him overboard, or get killed trying. It made me shiver, +because I ain't as brave as some people, but if I showed the white +feather--well, I knowed better than do that. I kind of hoped the boat +would land somers, and we could skip ashore and not have to run the risk +of this row, I was so scared of Bud Dixon, but she was an upper-river tub +and there warn't no real chance of that. + +"Well, the time strung along and along, and that fellow never come! Why, +it strung along till dawn begun to break, and still he never come. +'Thunder,' I says, 'what do you make out of this?--ain't it suspicious?' +'Land!' Hal says, 'do you reckon he's playing us?--open the paper!' I +done it, and by gracious there warn't anything in it but a couple of +little pieces of loaf-sugar! THAT'S the reason he could set there and +snooze all night so comfortable. Smart? Well, I reckon! He had had them +two papers all fixed and ready, and he had put one of them in place of +t'other right under our noses. + +"We felt pretty cheap. But the thing to do, straight off, was to make a +plan; and we done it. We would do up the paper again, just as it was, +and slip in, very elaborate and soft, and lay it on the bunk again, and +let on WE didn't know about any trick, and hadn't any idea he was +a-laughing at us behind them bogus snores of his'n; and we would stick by +him, and the first night we was ashore we would get him drunk and search +him, and get the di'monds; and DO for him, too, if it warn't too risky. +If we got the swag, we'd GOT to do for him, or he would hunt us down and +do for us, sure. But I didn't have no real hope. I knowed we could get +him drunk--he was always ready for that--but what's the good of it? You +might search him a year and never find--Well, right there I catched my +breath and broke off my thought! For an idea went ripping through my head +that tore my brains to rags--and land, but I felt gay and good! You see, +I had had my boots off, to unswell my feet, and just then I took up one +of them to put it on, and I catched a glimpse of the heel-bottom, and it +just took my breath away. You remember about that puzzlesome little +screwdriver?" + +"You bet I do," says Tom, all excited. + +"Well, when I catched that glimpse of that boot heel, the idea that went +smashing through my head was, I know where he's hid the di'monds! You +look at this boot heel, now. See, it's bottomed with a steel plate, and +the plate is fastened on with little screws. Now there wasn't a screw +about that feller anywhere but in his boot heels; so, if he needed a +screwdriver, I reckoned I knowed why." + +"Huck, ain't it bully!" says Tom. + +"Well, I got my boots on, and we went down and slipped in and laid the +paper of sugar on the berth, and sat down soft and sheepish and went to +listening to Bud Dixon snore. Hal Clayton dropped off pretty soon, but I +didn't; I wasn't ever so wide awake in my life. I was spying out from +under the shade of my hat brim, searching the floor for leather. It took +me a long time, and I begun to think maybe my guess was wrong, but at +last I struck it. It laid over by the bulkhead, and was nearly the color +of the carpet. It was a little round plug about as thick as the end of +your little finger, and I says to myself there's a di'mond in the nest +you've come from. Before long I spied out the plug's mate. + +"Think of the smartness and coolness of that blatherskite! He put up that +scheme on us and reasoned out what we would do, and we went ahead and +done it perfectly exact, like a couple of pudd'nheads. He set there and +took his own time to unscrew his heelplates and cut out his plugs and +stick in the di'monds and screw on his plates again. He allowed we would +steal the bogus swag and wait all night for him to come up and get +drownded, and by George it's just what we done! I think it was powerful +smart." + +"You bet your life it was!" says Tom, just full of admiration. + + + + + CHAPTER IV. THE THREE SLEEPERS + +WELL, all day we went through the humbug of watching one another, and it +was pretty sickly business for two of us and hard to act out, I can tell +you. About night we landed at one of them little Missouri towns high up +toward Iowa, and had supper at the tavern, and got a room upstairs with a +cot and a double bed in it, but I dumped my bag under a deal table in the +dark hall while we was moving along it to bed, single file, me last, and +the landlord in the lead with a tallow candle. We had up a lot of whisky, +and went to playing high-low-jack for dimes, and as soon as the whisky +begun to take hold of Bud we stopped drinking, but we didn't let him +stop. We loaded him till he fell out of his chair and laid there snoring. + +"We was ready for business now. I said we better pull our boots off, and +his'n too, and not make any noise, then we could pull him and haul him +around and ransack him without any trouble. So we done it. I set my +boots and Bud's side by side, where they'd be handy. Then we stripped him +and searched his seams and his pockets and his socks and the inside of +his boots, and everything, and searched his bundle. Never found any +di'monds. We found the screwdriver, and Hal says, 'What do you reckon he +wanted with that?' I said I didn't know; but when he wasn't looking I +hooked it. At last Hal he looked beat and discouraged, and said we'd got +to give it up. That was what I was waiting for. I says: + +"'There's one place we hain't searched.' + +"'What place is that?' he says. + +"'His stomach.' + +"'By gracious, I never thought of that! NOW we're on the homestretch, to +a dead moral certainty. How'll we manage?' + +"'Well,' I says, 'just stay by him till I turn out and hunt up a drug +store, and I reckon I'll fetch something that'll make them di'monds tired +of the company they're keeping.' + +"He said that's the ticket, and with him looking straight at me I slid +myself into Bud's boots instead of my own, and he never noticed. They +was just a shade large for me, but that was considerable better than +being too small. I got my bag as I went a-groping through the hall, and +in about a minute I was out the back way and stretching up the river road +at a five-mile gait. + +"And not feeling so very bad, neither--walking on di'monds don't have no +such effect. When I had gone fifteen minutes I says to myself, there's +more'n a mile behind me, and everything quiet. Another five minutes and +I says there's considerable more land behind me now, and there's a man +back there that's begun to wonder what's the trouble. Another five and I +says to myself he's getting real uneasy--he's walking the floor now. +Another five, and I says to myself, there's two mile and a half behind +me, and he's AWFUL uneasy--beginning to cuss, I reckon. Pretty soon I +says to myself, forty minutes gone--he KNOWS there's something up! Fifty +minutes--the truth's a-busting on him now! he is reckoning I found the +di'monds whilst we was searching, and shoved them in my pocket and never +let on--yes, and he's starting out to hunt for me. He'll hunt for new +tracks in the dust, and they'll as likely send him down the river as up. + +"Just then I see a man coming down on a mule, and before I thought I +jumped into the bush. It was stupid! When he got abreast he stopped and +waited a little for me to come out; then he rode on again. But I didn't +feel gay any more. I says to myself I've botched my chances by that; I +surely have, if he meets up with Hal Clayton. + +"Well, about three in the morning I fetched Elexandria and see this +stern-wheeler laying there, and was very glad, because I felt perfectly +safe, now, you know. It was just daybreak. I went aboard and got this +stateroom and put on these clothes and went up in the pilot-house--to +watch, though I didn't reckon there was any need of it. I set there and +played with my di'monds and waited and waited for the boat to start, but +she didn't. You see, they was mending her machinery, but I didn't know +anything about it, not being very much used to steamboats. + +"Well, to cut the tale short, we never left there till plumb noon; and +long before that I was hid in this stateroom; for before breakfast I see +a man coming, away off, that had a gait like Hal Clayton's, and it made +me just sick. I says to myself, if he finds out I'm aboard this boat, +he's got me like a rat in a trap. All he's got to do is to have me +watched, and wait--wait till I slip ashore, thinking he is a thousand +miles away, then slip after me and dog me to a good place and make me +give up the di'monds, and then he'll--oh, I know what he'll do! Ain't it +awful--awful! And now to think the OTHER one's aboard, too! Oh, ain't it +hard luck, boys--ain't it hard! But you'll help save me, WON'T you?--oh, +boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted to death, and save +me--I'll worship the very ground you walk on!" + +We turned in and soothed him down and told him we would plan for him and +help him, and he needn't be so afeard; and so by and by he got to feeling +kind of comfortable again, and unscrewed his heelplates and held up his +di'monds this way and that, admiring them and loving them; and when the +light struck into them they WAS beautiful, sure; why, they seemed to kind +of bust, and snap fire out all around. But all the same I judged he was +a fool. If I had been him I would a handed the di'monds to them pals and +got them to go ashore and leave me alone. But he was made different. He +said it was a whole fortune and he couldn't bear the idea. + +Twice we stopped to fix the machinery and laid a good while, once in the +night; but it wasn't dark enough, and he was afeard to skip. But the +third time we had to fix it there was a better chance. We laid up at a +country woodyard about forty mile above Uncle Silas's place a little +after one at night, and it was thickening up and going to storm. So Jake +he laid for a chance to slide. We begun to take in wood. Pretty soon +the rain come a-drenching down, and the wind blowed hard. Of course +every boat-hand fixed a gunny sack and put it on like a bonnet, the way +they do when they are toting wood, and we got one for Jake, and he +slipped down aft with his hand-bag and come tramping forrard just like +the rest, and walked ashore with them, and when we see him pass out of +the light of the torch-basket and get swallowed up in the dark, we got +our breath again and just felt grateful and splendid. But it wasn't for +long. Somebody told, I reckon; for in about eight or ten minutes them +two pals come tearing forrard as tight as they could jump and darted +ashore and was gone. We waited plumb till dawn for them to come back, +and kept hoping they would, but they never did. We was awful sorry and +low-spirited. All the hope we had was that Jake had got such a start that +they couldn't get on his track, and he would get to his brother's and +hide there and be safe. + +He was going to take the river road, and told us to find out if Brace and +Jubiter was to home and no strangers there, and then slip out about +sundown and tell him. Said he would wait for us in a little bunch of +sycamores right back of Tom's uncle Silas's tobacker field on the river +road, a lonesome place. + +We set and talked a long time about his chances, and Tom said he was all +right if the pals struck up the river instead of down, but it wasn't +likely, because maybe they knowed where he was from; more likely they +would go right, and dog him all day, him not suspecting, and kill him +when it come dark, and take the boots. So we was pretty sorrowful. + + + + + CHAPTER V. A TRAGEDY IN THE WOODS + +WE didn't get done tinkering the machinery till away late in the +afternoon, and so it was so close to sundown when we got home that we +never stopped on our road, but made a break for the sycamores as tight as +we could go, to tell Jake what the delay was, and have him wait till we +could go to Brace's and find out how things was there. It was getting +pretty dim by the time we turned the corner of the woods, sweating and +panting with that long run, and see the sycamores thirty yards ahead of +us; and just then we see a couple of men run into the bunch and heard two +or three terrible screams for help. "Poor Jake is killed, sure," we says. +We was scared through and through, and broke for the tobacker field and +hid there, trembling so our clothes would hardly stay on; and just as we +skipped in there, a couple of men went tearing by, and into the bunch +they went, and in a second out jumps four men and took out up the road as +tight as they could go, two chasing two. + +We laid down, kind of weak and sick, and listened for more sounds, but +didn't hear none for a good while but just our hearts. We was thinking +of that awful thing laying yonder in the sycamores, and it seemed like +being that close to a ghost, and it give me the cold shudders. The moon +come a-swelling up out of the ground, now, powerful big and round and +bright, behind a comb of trees, like a face looking through prison bars, +and the black shadders and white places begun to creep around, and it was +miserable quiet and still and night-breezy and graveyardy and scary. All +of a sudden Tom whispers: + +"Look!--what's that?" + +"Don't!" I says. "Don't take a person by surprise that way. I'm 'most +ready to die, anyway, without you doing that." + +"Look, I tell you. It's something coming out of the sycamores." + +"Don't, Tom!" + +"It's terrible tall!" + +"Oh, lordy-lordy! let's--" + +"Keep still--it's a-coming this way." + +He was so excited he could hardly get breath enough to whisper. I had to +look. I couldn't help it. So now we was both on our knees with our chins +on a fence rail and gazing--yes, and gasping too. It was coming down the +road--coming in the shadder of the trees, and you couldn't see it good; +not till it was pretty close to us; then it stepped into a bright splotch +of moonlight and we sunk right down in our tracks--it was Jake Dunlap's +ghost! That was what we said to ourselves. + +We couldn't stir for a minute or two; then it was gone We talked about it +in low voices. Tom says: + +"They're mostly dim and smoky, or like they're made out of fog, but this +one wasn't." + +"No," I says; "I seen the goggles and the whiskers perfectly plain." + +"Yes, and the very colors in them loud countrified Sunday clothes--plaid +breeches, green and black--" + +"Cotton velvet westcot, fire-red and yaller squares--" + +"Leather straps to the bottoms of the breeches legs and one of them +hanging unbottoned--" + +"Yes, and that hat--" + +"What a hat for a ghost to wear!" + +You see it was the first season anybody wore that kind--a black +stiff-brim stove-pipe, very high, and not smooth, with a round top--just +like a sugar-loaf. + +"Did you notice if its hair was the same, Huck?" + +"No--seems to me I did, then again it seems to me I didn't." + +"I didn't either; but it had its bag along, I noticed that." + +"So did I. How can there be a ghost-bag, Tom?" + +"Sho! I wouldn't be as ignorant as that if I was you, Huck Finn. +Whatever a ghost has, turns to ghost-stuff. They've got to have their +things, like anybody else. You see, yourself, that its clothes was turned +to ghost-stuff. Well, then, what's to hender its bag from turning, too? +Of course it done it." + +That was reasonable. I couldn't find no fault with it. Bill Withers and +his brother Jack come along by, talking, and Jack says: + +"What do you reckon he was toting?" + +"I dunno; but it was pretty heavy." + +"Yes, all he could lug. Nigger stealing corn from old Parson Silas, I +judged." + +"So did I. And so I allowed I wouldn't let on to see him." + +"That's me, too." + +Then they both laughed, and went on out of hearing. It showed how +unpopular old Uncle Silas had got to be now. They wouldn't 'a' let a +nigger steal anybody else's corn and never done anything to him. + +We heard some more voices mumbling along towards us and getting louder, +and sometimes a cackle of a laugh. It was Lem Beebe and Jim Lane. Jim +Lane says: + +"Who?--Jubiter Dunlap?" + +"Yes." + +"Oh, I don't know. I reckon so. I seen him spading up some ground along +about an hour ago, just before sundown--him and the parson. Said he +guessed he wouldn't go to-night, but we could have his dog if we wanted +him." + +"Too tired, I reckon." + +"Yes--works so hard!" + +"Oh, you bet!" + +They cackled at that, and went on by. Tom said we better jump out and +tag along after them, because they was going our way and it wouldn't be +comfortable to run across the ghost all by ourselves. So we done it, and +got home all right. + +That night was the second of September--a Saturday. I sha'n't ever forget +it. You'll see why, pretty soon. + + + + + CHAPTER VI. PLANS TO SECURE THE DIAMONDS + +WE tramped along behind Jim and Lem till we come to the back stile where +old Jim's cabin was that he was captivated in, the time we set him free, +and here come the dogs piling around us to say howdy, and there was the +lights of the house, too; so we warn't afeard any more, and was going to +climb over, but Tom says: + +"Hold on; set down here a minute. By George!" + +"What's the matter?" says I. + +"Matter enough!" he says. "Wasn't you expecting we would be the first to +tell the family who it is that's been killed yonder in the sycamores, and +all about them rapscallions that done it, and about the di'monds they've +smouched off of the corpse, and paint it up fine, and have the glory of +being the ones that knows a lot more about it than anybody else?" + +"Why, of course. It wouldn't be you, Tom Sawyer, if you was to let such +a chance go by. I reckon it ain't going to suffer none for lack of +paint," I says, "when you start in to scollop the facts." + +"Well, now," he says, perfectly ca'm, "what would you say if I was to +tell you I ain't going to start in at all?" + +I was astonished to hear him talk so. I says: + +"I'd say it's a lie. You ain't in earnest, Tom Sawyer?" + +"You'll soon see. Was the ghost barefooted?" + +"No, it wasn't. What of it?" + +"You wait--I'll show you what. Did it have its boots on?" + +"Yes. I seen them plain." + +"Swear it?" + +"Yes, I swear it." + +"So do I. Now do you know what that means?" + +"No. What does it mean?" + +"Means that them thieves DIDN'T GET THE DI'MONDS." + +"Jimminy! What makes you think that?" + +"I don't only think it, I know it. Didn't the breeches and goggles and +whiskers and hand-bag and every blessed thing turn to ghost-stuff? +Everything it had on turned, didn't it? It shows that the reason its +boots turned too was because it still had them on after it started to go +ha'nting around, and if that ain't proof that them blatherskites didn't +get the boots, I'd like to know what you'd CALL proof." + +Think of that now. I never see such a head as that boy had. Why, I had +eyes and I could see things, but they never meant nothing to me. But Tom +Sawyer was different. When Tom Sawyer seen a thing it just got up on its +hind legs and TALKED to him--told him everything it knowed. I never see +such a head. + +"Tom Sawyer," I says, "I'll say it again as I've said it a many a time +before: I ain't fitten to black your boots. But that's all right--that's +neither here nor there. God Almighty made us all, and some He gives eyes +that's blind, and some He gives eyes that can see, and I reckon it ain't +none of our lookout what He done it for; it's all right, or He'd 'a' +fixed it some other way. Go on--I see plenty plain enough, now, that them +thieves didn't get way with the di'monds. Why didn't they, do you +reckon?" + +"Because they got chased away by them other two men before they could +pull the boots off of the corpse." + +"That's so! I see it now. But looky here, Tom, why ain't we to go and +tell about it?" + +"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, can't you see? Look at it. What's a-going to +happen? There's going to be an inquest in the morning. Them two men will +tell how they heard the yells and rushed there just in time to not save +the stranger. Then the jury'll twaddle and twaddle and twaddle, and +finally they'll fetch in a verdict that he got shot or stuck or busted +over the head with something, and come to his death by the inspiration of +God. And after they've buried him they'll auction off his things for to +pay the expenses, and then's OUR chance." "How, Tom?" + +"Buy the boots for two dollars!" + +Well, it 'most took my breath. + +"My land! Why, Tom, WE'LL get the di'monds!" + +"You bet. Some day there'll be a big reward offered for them--a thousand +dollars, sure. That's our money! Now we'll trot in and see the folks. +And mind you we don't know anything about any murder, or any di'monds, or +any thieves--don't you forget that." + +I had to sigh a little over the way he had got it fixed. I'd 'a' SOLD +them di'monds--yes, sir--for twelve thousand dollars; but I didn't say +anything. It wouldn't done any good. I says: + +"But what are we going to tell your aunt Sally has made us so long +getting down here from the village, Tom?" + +"Oh, I'll leave that to you," he says. "I reckon you can explain it +somehow." + +He was always just that strict and delicate. He never would tell a lie +himself. + +We struck across the big yard, noticing this, that, and t'other thing +that was so familiar, and we so glad to see it again, and when we got to +the roofed big passageway betwixt the double log house and the kitchen +part, there was everything hanging on the wall just as it used to was, +even to Uncle Silas's old faded green baize working-gown with the hood to +it, and raggedy white patch between the shoulders that always looked like +somebody had hit him with a snowball; and then we lifted the latch and +walked in. Aunt Sally she was just a-ripping and a-tearing around, and +the children was huddled in one corner, and the old man he was huddled in +the other and praying for help in time of need. She jumped for us with +joy and tears running down her face and give us a whacking box on the +ear, and then hugged us and kissed us and boxed us again, and just +couldn't seem to get enough of it, she was so glad to see us; and she +says: + +"Where HAVE you been a-loafing to, you good-for-nothing trash! I've been +that worried about you I didn't know what to do. Your traps has been +here ever so long, and I've had supper cooked fresh about four times so +as to have it hot and good when you come, till at last my patience is +just plumb wore out, and I declare I--I--why I could skin you alive! You +must be starving, poor things!--set down, set down, everybody; don't lose +no more time." + +It was good to be there again behind all that noble corn-pone and +spareribs, and everything that you could ever want in this world. Old +Uncle Silas he peeled off one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with as +many layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was hauling in the +slack of it I was trying to study up what to say about what kept us so +long. When our plates was all loadened and we'd got a-going, she asked +me, and I says: + +"Well, you see,--er--Mizzes--" + +"Huck Finn! Since when am I Mizzes to you? Have I ever been stingy of +cuffs or kisses for you since the day you stood in this room and I took +you for Tom Sawyer and blessed God for sending you to me, though you told +me four thousand lies and I believed every one of them like a simpleton? +Call me Aunt Sally--like you always done." + +So I done it. And I says: + +"Well, me and Tom allowed we would come along afoot and take a smell of +the woods, and we run across Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, and they asked us to +go with them blackberrying to-night, and said they could borrow Jubiter +Dunlap's dog, because he had told them just that minute--" + +"Where did they see him?" says the old man; and when I looked up to see +how HE come to take an intrust in a little thing like that, his eyes was +just burning into me, he was that eager. It surprised me so it kind of +throwed me off, but I pulled myself together again and says: + +"It was when he was spading up some ground along with you, towards +sundown or along there." + +He only said, "Um," in a kind of a disappointed way, and didn't take no +more intrust. So I went on. I says: + +"Well, then, as I was a-saying--" + +"That'll do, you needn't go no furder." It was Aunt Sally. She was boring +right into me with her eyes, and very indignant. "Huck Finn," she says, +"how'd them men come to talk about going a-black-berrying in +September--in THIS region?" + +I see I had slipped up, and I couldn't say a word. She waited, still +a-gazing at me, then she says: + +"And how'd they come to strike that idiot idea of going a-blackberrying +in the night?" + +"Well, m'm, they--er--they told us they had a lantern, and--" + +"Oh, SHET up--do! Looky here; what was they going to do with a dog?--hunt +blackberries with it?" + +"I think, m'm, they--" + +"Now, Tom Sawyer, what kind of a lie are you fixing YOUR mouth to +contribit to this mess of rubbage? Speak out--and I warn you before you +begin, that I don't believe a word of it. You and Huck's been up to +something you no business to--I know it perfectly well; I know you, BOTH +of you. Now you explain that dog, and them blackberries, and the lantern, +and the rest of that rot--and mind you talk as straight as a string--do +you hear?" + +Tom he looked considerable hurt, and says, very dignified: + +"It is a pity if Huck is to be talked to that way, just for making a +little bit of a mistake that anybody could make." + +"What mistake has he made?" + +"Why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when of course he meant +strawberries." + +"Tom Sawyer, I lay if you aggravate me a little more, I'll--" + +"Aunt Sally, without knowing it--and of course without intending it--you +are in the wrong. If you'd 'a' studied natural history the way you +ought, you would know that all over the world except just here in +Arkansaw they ALWAYS hunt strawberries with a dog--and a lantern--" + +But she busted in on him there and just piled into him and snowed him +under. She was so mad she couldn't get the words out fast enough, and +she gushed them out in one everlasting freshet. That was what Tom Sawyer +was after. He allowed to work her up and get her started and then leave +her alone and let her burn herself out. Then she would be so aggravated +with that subject that she wouldn't say another word about it, nor let +anybody else. Well, it happened just so. When she was tuckered out and +had to hold up, he says, quite ca'm: + +"And yet, all the same, Aunt Sally--" + +"Shet up!" she says, "I don't want to hear another word out of you." + +So we was perfectly safe, then, and didn't have no more trouble about +that delay. Tom done it elegant. + + + + + CHAPTER VII. A NIGHT'S VIGIL + +BENNY she was looking pretty sober, and she sighed some, now and then; +but pretty soon she got to asking about Mary, and Sid, and Tom's aunt +Polly, and then Aunt Sally's clouds cleared off and she got in a good +humor and joined in on the questions and was her lovingest best self, and +so the rest of the supper went along gay and pleasant. But the old man he +didn't take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded and restless, and done +a considerable amount of sighing; and it was kind of heart-breaking to +see him so sad and troubled and worried. + +By and by, a spell after supper, come a nigger and knocked on the door +and put his head in with his old straw hat in his hand bowing and +scraping, and said his Marse Brace was out at the stile and wanted his +brother, and was getting tired waiting supper for him, and would Marse +Silas please tell him where he was? I never see Uncle Silas speak up so +sharp and fractious before. He says: + +"Am I his brother's keeper?" And then he kind of wilted together, and +looked like he wished he hadn't spoken so, and then he says, very gentle: +"But you needn't say that, Billy; I was took sudden and irritable, and I +ain't very well these days, and not hardly responsible. Tell him he ain't +here." + +And when the nigger was gone he got up and walked the floor, backwards +and forwards, mumbling and muttering to himself and plowing his hands +through his hair. It was real pitiful to see him. Aunt Sally she +whispered to us and told us not to take notice of him, it embarrassed +him. She said he was always thinking and thinking, since these troubles +come on, and she allowed he didn't more'n about half know what he was +about when the thinking spells was on him; and she said he walked in his +sleep considerable more now than he used to, and sometimes wandered +around over the house and even outdoors in his sleep, and if we catched +him at it we must let him alone and not disturb him. She said she +reckoned it didn't do him no harm, and may be it done him good. She said +Benny was the only one that was much help to him these days. Said Benny +appeared to know just when to try to soothe him and when to leave him +alone. + +So he kept on tramping up and down the floor and muttering, till by and +by he begun to look pretty tired; then Benny she went and snuggled up to +his side and put one hand in his and one arm around his waist and walked +with him; and he smiled down on her, and reached down and kissed her; and +so, little by little the trouble went out of his face and she persuaded +him off to his room. They had very petting ways together, and it was +uncommon pretty to see. + +Aunt Sally she was busy getting the children ready for bed; so by and by +it got dull and tedious, and me and Tom took a turn in the moonlight, and +fetched up in the watermelon-patch and et one, and had a good deal of +talk. And Tom said he'd bet the quarreling was all Jubiter's fault, and +he was going to be on hand the first time he got a chance, and see; and +if it was so, he was going to do his level best to get Uncle Silas to +turn him off. + +And so we talked and smoked and stuffed watermelons much as two hours, +and then it was pretty late, and when we got back the house was quiet and +dark, and everybody gone to bed. + +Tom he always seen everything, and now he see that the old green baize +work-gown was gone, and said it wasn't gone when he went out; so he +allowed it was curious, and then we went up to bed. + +We could hear Benny stirring around in her room, which was next to ourn, +and judged she was worried a good deal about her father and couldn't +sleep. We found we couldn't, neither. So we set up a long time, and +smoked and talked in a low voice, and felt pretty dull and down-hearted. +We talked the murder and the ghost over and over again, and got so creepy +and crawly we couldn't get sleepy nohow and noway. + +By and by, when it was away late in the night and all the sounds was late +sounds and solemn, Tom nudged me and whispers to me to look, and I done +it, and there we see a man poking around in the yard like he didn't know +just what he wanted to do, but it was pretty dim and we couldn't see him +good. Then he started for the stile, and as he went over it the moon +came out strong, and he had a long-handled shovel over his shoulder, and +we see the white patch on the old work-gown. So Tom says: + +"He's a-walking in his sleep. I wish we was allowed to follow him and +see where he's going to. There, he's turned down by the tobacker-field. +Out of sight now. It's a dreadful pity he can't rest no better." + +We waited a long time, but he didn't come back any more, or if he did he +come around the other way; so at last we was tuckered out and went to +sleep and had nightmares, a million of them. But before dawn we was +awake again, because meantime a storm had come up and been raging, and +the thunder and lightning was awful, and the wind was a-thrashing the +trees around, and the rain was driving down in slanting sheets, and the +gullies was running rivers. Tom says: + +"Looky here, Huck, I'll tell you one thing that's mighty curious. Up to +the time we went out last night the family hadn't heard about Jake Dunlap +being murdered. Now the men that chased Hal Clayton and Bud Dixon away +would spread the thing around in a half an hour, and every neighbor that +heard it would shin out and fly around from one farm to t'other and try +to be the first to tell the news. Land, they don't have such a big thing +as that to tell twice in thirty year! Huck, it's mighty strange; I don't +understand it." + +So then he was in a fidget for the rain to let up, so we could turn out +and run across some of the people and see if they would say anything +about it to us. And he said if they did we must be horribly surprised and +shocked. + +We was out and gone the minute the rain stopped. It was just broad day +then. We loafed along up the road, and now and then met a person and +stopped and said howdy, and told them when we come, and how we left the +folks at home, and how long we was going to stay, and all that, but none +of them said a word about that thing; which was just astonishing, and no +mistake. Tom said he believed if we went to the sycamores we would find +that body laying there solitary and alone, and not a soul around. Said +he believed the men chased the thieves so far into the woods that the +thieves prob'ly seen a good chance and turned on them at last, and maybe +they all killed each other, and so there wasn't anybody left to tell. + +First we knowed, gabbling along that away, we was right at the sycamores. +The cold chills trickled down my back and I wouldn't budge another step, +for all Tom's persuading. But he couldn't hold in; he'd GOT to see if the +boots was safe on that body yet. So he crope in--and the next minute out +he come again with his eyes bulging he was so excited, and says: + +"Huck, it's gone!" + +I WAS astonished! I says: + +"Tom, you don't mean it." + +"It's gone, sure. There ain't a sign of it. The ground is trampled +some, but if there was any blood it's all washed away by the storm, for +it's all puddles and slush in there." + +At last I give in, and went and took a look myself; and it was just as +Tom said--there wasn't a sign of a corpse. + +"Dern it," I says, "the di'monds is gone. Don't you reckon the thieves +slunk back and lugged him off, Tom?" + +"Looks like it. It just does. Now where'd they hide him, do you +reckon?" + +"I don't know," I says, disgusted, "and what's more I don't care. +They've got the boots, and that's all I cared about. He'll lay around +these woods a long time before I hunt him up." + +Tom didn't feel no more intrust in him neither, only curiosity to know +what come of him; but he said we'd lay low and keep dark and it wouldn't +be long till the dogs or somebody rousted him out. + +We went back home to breakfast ever so bothered and put out and +disappointed and swindled. I warn't ever so down on a corpse before. + + + + + CHAPTER VIII. TALKING WITH THE GHOST + +IT warn't very cheerful at breakfast. Aunt Sally she looked old and +tired and let the children snarl and fuss at one another and didn't seem +to notice it was going on, which wasn't her usual style; me and Tom had a +plenty to think about without talking; Benny she looked like she hadn't +had much sleep, and whenever she'd lift her head a little and steal a +look towards her father you could see there was tears in her eyes; and as +for the old man, his things stayed on his plate and got cold without him +knowing they was there, I reckon, for he was thinking and thinking all +the time, and never said a word and never et a bite. + +By and by when it was stillest, that nigger's head was poked in at the +door again, and he said his Marse Brace was getting powerful uneasy about +Marse Jubiter, which hadn't come home yet, and would Marse Silas please +--He was looking at Uncle Silas, and he stopped there, like the rest of +his words was froze; for Uncle Silas he rose up shaky and steadied +himself leaning his fingers on the table, and he was panting, and his +eyes was set on the nigger, and he kept swallowing, and put his other +hand up to his throat a couple of times, and at last he got his words +started, and says: + +"Does he--does he--think--WHAT does he think! Tell him--tell him--" Then +he sunk down in his chair limp and weak, and says, so as you could hardly +hear him: "Go away--go away!" + +The nigger looked scared and cleared out, and we all felt--well, I don't +know how we felt, but it was awful, with the old man panting there, and +his eyes set and looking like a person that was dying. None of us could +budge; but Benny she slid around soft, with her tears running down, and +stood by his side, and nestled his old gray head up against her and begun +to stroke it and pet it with her hands, and nodded to us to go away, and +we done it, going out very quiet, like the dead was there. + +Me and Tom struck out for the woods mighty solemn, and saying how +different it was now to what it was last summer when we was here and +everything was so peaceful and happy and everybody thought so much of +Uncle Silas, and he was so cheerful and simple-hearted and pudd'n-headed +and good--and now look at him. If he hadn't lost his mind he wasn't muck +short of it. That was what we allowed. + +It was a most lovely day now, and bright and sunshiny; and the further +and further we went over the hills towards the prairie the lovelier and +lovelier the trees and flowers got to be and the more it seemed strange +and somehow wrong that there had to be trouble in such a world as this. +And then all of a sudden I catched my breath and grabbed Tom's arm, and +all my livers and lungs and things fell down into my legs. + +"There it is!" I says. We jumped back behind a bush shivering, and Tom +says: + +"'Sh!--don't make a noise." + +It was setting on a log right in the edge of a little prairie, thinking. +I tried to get Tom to come away, but he wouldn't, and I dasn't budge by +myself. He said we mightn't ever get another chance to see one, and he +was going to look his fill at this one if he died for it. So I looked +too, though it give me the fan-tods to do it. Tom he HAD to talk, but he +talked low. He says: + +"Poor Jakey, it's got all its things on, just as he said he would. NOW +you see what we wasn't certain about--its hair. It's not long now the way +it was: it's got it cropped close to its head, the way he said he would. +Huck, I never see anything look any more naturaler than what It does." + +"Nor I neither," I says; "I'd recognize it anywheres." + +"So would I. It looks perfectly solid and genuwyne, just the way it done +before it died." + +So we kept a-gazing. Pretty soon Tom says: + +"Huck, there's something mighty curious about this one, don't you know? +IT oughtn't to be going around in the daytime." + +"That's so, Tom--I never heard the like of it before." + +"No, sir, they don't ever come out only at night--and then not till +after twelve. There's something wrong about this one, now you mark my +words. I don't believe it's got any right to be around in the daytime. +But don't it look natural! Jake was going to play deef and dumb here, so +the neighbors wouldn't know his voice. Do you reckon it would do that if +we was to holler at it?" + +"Lordy, Tom, don't talk so! If you was to holler at it I'd die in my +tracks." + +"Don't you worry, I ain't going to holler at it. Look, Huck, it's +a-scratching its head--don't you see?" + +"Well, what of it?" + +"Why, this. What's the sense of it scratching its head? There ain't +anything there to itch; its head is made out of fog or something like +that, and can't itch. A fog can't itch; any fool knows that." + +"Well, then, if it don't itch and can't itch, what in the nation is it +scratching it for? Ain't it just habit, don't you reckon?" + +"No, sir, I don't. I ain't a bit satisfied about the way this one acts. +I've a blame good notion it's a bogus one--I have, as sure as I'm +a-sitting here. Because, if it--Huck!" + +"Well, what's the matter now?" + +"YOU CAN'T SEE THE BUSHES THROUGH IT!" + +"Why, Tom, it's so, sure! It's as solid as a cow. I sort of begin to +think--" + +"Huck, it's biting off a chaw of tobacker! By George, THEY don't +chaw--they hain't got anything to chaw WITH. Huck!" + +"I'm a-listening." + +"It ain't a ghost at all. It's Jake Dunlap his own self!" + +"Oh your granny!" I says. + +"Huck Finn, did we find any corpse in the sycamores?" + +"No." + +"Or any sign of one?" + +"No." + +"Mighty good reason. Hadn't ever been any corpse there." + +"Why, Tom, you know we heard--" + +"Yes, we did--heard a howl or two. Does that prove anybody was killed? +Course it don't. And we seen four men run, then this one come walking out +and we took it for a ghost. No more ghost than you are. It was Jake +Dunlap his own self, and it's Jake Dunlap now. He's been and got his +hair cropped, the way he said he would, and he's playing himself for a +stranger, just the same as he said he would. Ghost? Hum!--he's as sound +as a nut." + +Then I see it all, and how we had took too much for granted. I was +powerful glad he didn't get killed, and so was Tom, and we wondered which +he would like the best--for us to never let on to know him, or how? Tom +reckoned the best way would be to go and ask him. So he started; but I +kept a little behind, because I didn't know but it might be a ghost, +after all. When Tom got to where he was, he says: + +"Me and Huck's mighty glad to see you again, and you needn't be afeared +we'll tell. And if you think it'll be safer for you if we don't let on +to know you when we run across you, say the word and you'll see you can +depend on us, and would ruther cut our hands off than get you into the +least little bit of danger." + +First off he looked surprised to see us, and not very glad, either; but +as Tom went on he looked pleasanter, and when he was done he smiled, and +nodded his head several times, and made signs with his hands, and says: + +"Goo-goo--goo-goo," the way deef and dummies does. + +Just then we see some of Steve Nickerson's people coming that lived +t'other side of the prairie, so Tom says: + +"You do it elegant; I never see anybody do it better. You're right; play +it on us, too; play it on us same as the others; it'll keep you in +practice and prevent you making blunders. We'll keep away from you and +let on we don't know you, but any time we can be any help, you just let +us know." + +Then we loafed along past the Nickersons, and of course they asked if +that was the new stranger yonder, and where'd he come from, and what was +his name, and which communion was he, Babtis' or Methodis', and which +politics, Whig or Democrat, and how long is he staying, and all them +other questions that humans always asks when a stranger comes, and +animals does, too. But Tom said he warn't able to make anything out of +deef and dumb signs, and the same with goo-gooing. Then we watched them +go and bullyrag Jake; because we was pretty uneasy for him. Tom said it +would take him days to get so he wouldn't forget he was a deef and dummy +sometimes, and speak out before he thought. When we had watched long +enough to see that Jake was getting along all right and working his signs +very good, we loafed along again, allowing to strike the schoolhouse +about recess time, which was a three-mile tramp. + +I was so disappointed not to hear Jake tell about the row in the +sycamores, and how near he come to getting killed, that I couldn't seem +to get over it, and Tom he felt the same, but said if we was in Jake's +fix we would want to go careful and keep still and not take any chances. + +The boys and girls was all glad to see us again, and we had a real good +time all through recess. Coming to school the Henderson boys had come +across the new deef and dummy and told the rest; so all the scholars was +chuck full of him and couldn't talk about anything else, and was in a +sweat to get a sight of him because they hadn't ever seen a deef and +dummy in their lives, and it made a powerful excitement. + +Tom said it was tough to have to keep mum now; said we would be heroes if +we could come out and tell all we knowed; but after all, it was still +more heroic to keep mum, there warn't two boys in a million could do it. +That was Tom Sawyer's idea about it, and reckoned there warn't anybody +could better it. + + + + + CHAPTER IX. FINDING OF JUBITER DUNLAP + +IN the next two or three days Dummy he got to be powerful popular. He +went associating around with the neighbors, and they made much of him, +and was proud to have such a rattling curiosity among them. They had him +to breakfast, they had him to dinner, they had him to supper; they kept +him loaded up with hog and hominy, and warn't ever tired staring at him +and wondering over him, and wishing they knowed more about him, he was so +uncommon and romantic. His signs warn't no good; people couldn't +understand them and he prob'ly couldn't himself, but he done a sight of +goo-gooing, and so everybody was satisfied, and admired to hear him go +it. He toted a piece of slate around, and a pencil; and people wrote +questions on it and he wrote answers; but there warn't anybody could read +his writing but Brace Dunlap. Brace said he couldn't read it very good, +but he could manage to dig out the meaning most of the time. He said +Dummy said he belonged away off somers and used to be well off, but got +busted by swindlers which he had trusted, and was poor now, and hadn't +any way to make a living. + +Everybody praised Brace Dunlap for being so good to that stranger. He +let him have a little log-cabin all to himself, and had his niggers take +care of it, and fetch him all the vittles he wanted. + +Dummy was at our house some, because old Uncle Silas was so afflicted +himself, these days, that anybody else that was afflicted was a comfort +to him. Me and Tom didn't let on that we had knowed him before, and he +didn't let on that he had knowed us before. The family talked their +troubles out before him the same as if he wasn't there, but we reckoned +it wasn't any harm for him to hear what they said. Generly he didn't seem +to notice, but sometimes he did. + +Well, two or three days went along, and everybody got to getting uneasy +about Jubiter Dunlap. Everybody was asking everybody if they had any +idea what had become of him. No, they hadn't, they said: and they shook +their heads and said there was something powerful strange about it. +Another and another day went by; then there was a report got around that +praps he was murdered. You bet it made a big stir! Everybody's tongue +was clacking away after that. Saturday two or three gangs turned out and +hunted the woods to see if they could run across his remainders. Me and +Tom helped, and it was noble good times and exciting. Tom he was so +brimful of it he couldn't eat nor rest. He said if we could find that +corpse we would be celebrated, and more talked about than if we got +drownded. + +The others got tired and give it up; but not Tom Sawyer--that warn't his +style. Saturday night he didn't sleep any, hardly, trying to think up a +plan; and towards daylight in the morning he struck it. He snaked me out +of bed and was all excited, and says: + +"Quick, Huck, snatch on your clothes--I've got it! Bloodhound!" + +In two minutes we was tearing up the river road in the dark towards the +village. Old Jeff Hooker had a bloodhound, and Tom was going to borrow +him. I says: + +"The trail's too old, Tom--and besides, it's rained, you know." + +"It don't make any difference, Huck. If the body's hid in the woods +anywhere around the hound will find it. If he's been murdered and buried, +they wouldn't bury him deep, it ain't likely, and if the dog goes over +the spot he'll scent him, sure. Huck, we're going to be celebrated, sure +as you're born!" + +He was just a-blazing; and whenever he got afire he was most likely to +get afire all over. That was the way this time. In two minutes he had +got it all ciphered out, and wasn't only just going to find the +corpse--no, he was going to get on the track of that murderer and hunt +HIM down, too; and not only that, but he was going to stick to him till +--"Well," I says, "you better find the corpse first; I reckon that's +a-plenty for to-day. For all we know, there AIN'T any corpse and nobody +hain't been murdered. That cuss could 'a' gone off somers and not been +killed at all." + +That graveled him, and he says: + +"Huck Finn, I never see such a person as you to want to spoil everything. +As long as YOU can't see anything hopeful in a thing, you won't let +anybody else. What good can it do you to throw cold water on that corpse +and get up that selfish theory that there ain't been any murder? None in +the world. I don't see how you can act so. I wouldn't treat you like +that, and you know it. Here we've got a noble good opportunity to make a +ruputation, and--" + +"Oh, go ahead," I says. "I'm sorry, and I take it all back. I didn't +mean nothing. Fix it any way you want it. HE ain't any consequence to +me. If he's killed, I'm as glad of it as you are; and if he--" + +"I never said anything about being glad; I only--" + +"Well, then, I'm as SORRY as you are. Any way you druther have it, that +is the way I druther have it. He--" + +"There ain't any druthers ABOUT it, Huck Finn; nobody said anything about +druthers. And as for--" + +He forgot he was talking, and went tramping along, studying. He begun to +get excited again, and pretty soon he says: + +"Huck, it'll be the bulliest thing that ever happened if we find the body +after everybody else has quit looking, and then go ahead and hunt up the +murderer. It won't only be an honor to us, but it'll be an honor to +Uncle Silas because it was us that done it. It'll set him up again, you +see if it don't." + +But Old Jeff Hooker he throwed cold water on the whole business when we +got to his blacksmith shop and told him what we come for. + +"You can take the dog," he says, "but you ain't a-going to find any +corpse, because there ain't any corpse to find. Everybody's quit looking, +and they're right. Soon as they come to think, they knowed there warn't +no corpse. And I'll tell you for why. What does a person kill another +person for, Tom Sawyer?--answer me that." + +"Why, he--er--" + +"Answer up! You ain't no fool. What does he kill him FOR?" + +"Well, sometimes it's for revenge, and--" + +"Wait. One thing at a time. Revenge, says you; and right you are. Now +who ever had anything agin that poor trifling no-account? Who do you +reckon would want to kill HIM?--that rabbit!" + +Tom was stuck. I reckon he hadn't thought of a person having to have a +REASON for killing a person before, and now he sees it warn't likely +anybody would have that much of a grudge against a lamb like Jubiter +Dunlap. The blacksmith says, by and by: + +"The revenge idea won't work, you see. Well, then, what's next? Robbery? +B'gosh, that must 'a' been it, Tom! Yes, sirree, I reckon we've struck it +this time. Some feller wanted his gallus-buckles, and so he--" + +But it was so funny he busted out laughing, and just went on laughing and +laughing and laughing till he was 'most dead, and Tom looked so put out +and cheap that I knowed he was ashamed he had come, and he wished he +hadn't. But old Hooker never let up on him. He raked up everything a +person ever could want to kill another person about, and any fool could +see they didn't any of them fit this case, and he just made no end of fun +of the whole business and of the people that had been hunting the body; +and he said: + +"If they'd had any sense they'd 'a' knowed the lazy cuss slid out because +he wanted a loafing spell after all this work. He'll come pottering back +in a couple of weeks, and then how'll you fellers feel? But, laws bless +you, take the dog, and go and hunt his remainders. Do, Tom." + +Then he busted out, and had another of them forty-rod laughs of hisn. +Tom couldn't back down after all this, so he said, "All right, unchain +him;" and the blacksmith done it, and we started home and left that old +man laughing yet. + +It was a lovely dog. There ain't any dog that's got a lovelier +disposition than a bloodhound, and this one knowed us and liked us. He +capered and raced around ever so friendly, and powerful glad to be free +and have a holiday; but Tom was so cut up he couldn't take any intrust in +him, and said he wished he'd stopped and thought a minute before he ever +started on such a fool errand. He said old Jeff Hooker would tell +everybody, and we'd never hear the last of it. + +So we loafed along home down the back lanes, feeling pretty glum and not +talking. When we was passing the far corner of our tobacker field we +heard the dog set up a long howl in there, and we went to the place and +he was scratching the ground with all his might, and every now and then +canting up his head sideways and fetching another howl. + +It was a long square, the shape of a grave; the rain had made it sink +down and show the shape. The minute we come and stood there we looked at +one another and never said a word. When the dog had dug down only a few +inches he grabbed something and pulled it up, and it was an arm and a +sleeve. Tom kind of gasped out, and says: + +"Come away, Huck--it's found." + +I just felt awful. We struck for the road and fetched the first men that +come along. They got a spade at the crib and dug out the body, and you +never see such an excitement. You couldn't make anything out of the +face, but you didn't need to. Everybody said: + +"Poor Jubiter; it's his clothes, to the last rag!" + +Some rushed off to spread the news and tell the justice of the peace and +have an inquest, and me and Tom lit out for the house. Tom was all afire +and 'most out of breath when we come tearing in where Uncle Silas and +Aunt Sally and Benny was. Tom sung out: + +"Me and Huck's found Jubiter Dunlap's corpse all by ourselves with a +bloodhound, after everybody else had quit hunting and given it up; and if +it hadn't a been for us it never WOULD 'a' been found; and he WAS +murdered too--they done it with a club or something like that; and I'm +going to start in and find the murderer, next, and I bet I'll do it!" + +Aunt Sally and Benny sprung up pale and astonished, but Uncle Silas fell +right forward out of his chair on to the floor and groans out: + +"Oh, my God, you've found him NOW!" + + + + + CHAPTER X. THE ARREST OF UNCLE SILAS + +THEM awful words froze us solid. We couldn't move hand or foot for as +much as half a minute. Then we kind of come to, and lifted the old man +up and got him into his chair, and Benny petted him and kissed him and +tried to comfort him, and poor old Aunt Sally she done the same; but, +poor things, they was so broke up and scared and knocked out of their +right minds that they didn't hardly know what they was about. With Tom +it was awful; it 'most petrified him to think maybe he had got his uncle +into a thousand times more trouble than ever, and maybe it wouldn't ever +happened if he hadn't been so ambitious to get celebrated, and let the +corpse alone the way the others done. But pretty soon he sort of come to +himself again and says: + +"Uncle Silas, don't you say another word like that. It's dangerous, and +there ain't a shadder of truth in it." + +Aunt Sally and Benny was thankful to hear him say that, and they said the +same; but the old man he wagged his head sorrowful and hopeless, and the +tears run down his face, and he says; + +"No--I done it; poor Jubiter, I done it!" + +It was dreadful to hear him say it. Then he went on and told about it, +and said it happened the day me and Tom come--along about sundown. He +said Jubiter pestered him and aggravated him till he was so mad he just +sort of lost his mind and grabbed up a stick and hit him over the head +with all his might, and Jubiter dropped in his tracks. Then he was scared +and sorry, and got down on his knees and lifted his head up, and begged +him to speak and say he wasn't dead; and before long he come to, and when +he see who it was holding his head, he jumped like he was 'most scared to +death, and cleared the fence and tore into the woods, and was gone. So +he hoped he wasn't hurt bad. + +"But laws," he says, "it was only just fear that gave him that last +little spurt of strength, and of course it soon played out and he laid +down in the bush, and there wasn't anybody to help him, and he died." + +Then the old man cried and grieved, and said he was a murderer and the +mark of Cain was on him, and he had disgraced his family and was going to +be found out and hung. But Tom said: + +"No, you ain't going to be found out. You DIDN'T kill him. ONE lick +wouldn't kill him. Somebody else done it." + +"Oh, yes," he says, "I done it--nobody else. Who else had anything +against him? Who else COULD have anything against him?" + +He looked up kind of like he hoped some of us could mention somebody that +could have a grudge against that harmless no-account, but of course it +warn't no use--he HAD us; we couldn't say a word. He noticed that, and +he saddened down again, and I never see a face so miserable and so +pitiful to see. Tom had a sudden idea, and says: + +"But hold on!--somebody BURIED him. Now who--" + +He shut off sudden. I knowed the reason. It give me the cold shudders +when he said them words, because right away I remembered about us seeing +Uncle Silas prowling around with a long-handled shovel away in the night +that night. And I knowed Benny seen him, too, because she was talking +about it one day. The minute Tom shut off he changed the subject and +went to begging Uncle Silas to keep mum, and the rest of us done the +same, and said he MUST, and said it wasn't his business to tell on +himself, and if he kept mum nobody would ever know; but if it was found +out and any harm come to him it would break the family's hearts and kill +them, and yet never do anybody any good. So at last he promised. We was +all of us more comfortable, then, and went to work to cheer up the old +man. We told him all he'd got to do was to keep still, and it wouldn't +be long till the whole thing would blow over and be forgot. We all said +there wouldn't anybody ever suspect Uncle Silas, nor ever dream of such a +thing, he being so good and kind, and having such a good character; and +Tom says, cordial and hearty, he says: + +"Why, just look at it a minute; just consider. Here is Uncle Silas, all +these years a preacher--at his own expense; all these years doing good +with all his might and every way he can think of--at his own expense, all +the time; always been loved by everybody, and respected; always been +peaceable and minding his own business, the very last man in this whole +deestrict to touch a person, and everybody knows it. Suspect HIM? Why, +it ain't any more possible than--" + +"By authority of the State of Arkansaw, I arrest you for the murder of +Jubiter Dunlap!" shouts the sheriff at the door. + +It was awful. Aunt Sally and Benny flung themselves at Uncle Silas, +screaming and crying, and hugged him and hung to him, and Aunt Sally said +go away, she wouldn't ever give him up, they shouldn't have him, and the +niggers they come crowding and crying to the door and--well, I couldn't +stand it; it was enough to break a person's heart; so I got out. + +They took him up to the little one-horse jail in the village, and we all +went along to tell him good-bye; and Tom was feeling elegant, and says to +me, "We'll have a most noble good time and heaps of danger some dark +night getting him out of there, Huck, and it'll be talked about +everywheres and we will be celebrated;" but the old man busted that +scheme up the minute he whispered to him about it. He said no, it was his +duty to stand whatever the law done to him, and he would stick to the +jail plumb through to the end, even if there warn't no door to it. It +disappointed Tom and graveled him a good deal, but he had to put up with +it. + +But he felt responsible and bound to get his uncle Silas free; and he +told Aunt Sally, the last thing, not to worry, because he was going to +turn in and work night and day and beat this game and fetch Uncle Silas +out innocent; and she was very loving to him and thanked him and said she +knowed he would do his very best. And she told us to help Benny take +care of the house and the children, and then we had a good-bye cry all +around and went back to the farm, and left her there to live with the +jailer's wife a month till the trial in October. + + + + + CHAPTER XI. TOM SAWYER DISCOVERS THE MURDERERS + +WELL, that was a hard month on us all. Poor Benny, she kept up the best +she could, and me and Tom tried to keep things cheerful there at the +house, but it kind of went for nothing, as you may say. It was the same +up at the jail. We went up every day to see the old people, but it was +awful dreary, because the old man warn't sleeping much, and was walking +in his sleep considerable and so he got to looking fagged and miserable, +and his mind got shaky, and we all got afraid his troubles would break +him down and kill him. And whenever we tried to persuade him to feel +cheerfuler, he only shook his head and said if we only knowed what it was +to carry around a murderer's load in your heart we wouldn't talk that +way. Tom and all of us kept telling him it WASN'T murder, but just +accidental killing! but it never made any difference--it was murder, and +he wouldn't have it any other way. He actu'ly begun to come out plain +and square towards trial time and acknowledge that he TRIED to kill the +man. Why, that was awful, you know. It made things seem fifty times as +dreadful, and there warn't no more comfort for Aunt Sally and Benny. But +he promised he wouldn't say a word about his murder when others was +around, and we was glad of that. + +Tom Sawyer racked the head off of himself all that month trying to plan +some way out for Uncle Silas, and many's the night he kept me up 'most +all night with this kind of tiresome work, but he couldn't seem to get on +the right track no way. As for me, I reckoned a body might as well give +it up, it all looked so blue and I was so downhearted; but he wouldn't. +He stuck to the business right along, and went on planning and thinking +and ransacking his head. + +So at last the trial come on, towards the middle of October, and we was +all in the court. The place was jammed, of course. Poor old Uncle +Silas, he looked more like a dead person than a live one, his eyes was so +hollow and he looked so thin and so mournful. Benny she set on one side +of him and Aunt Sally on the other, and they had veils on, and was full +of trouble. But Tom he set by our lawyer, and had his finger in +everywheres, of course. The lawyer let him, and the judge let him. He +'most took the business out of the lawyer's hands sometimes; which was +well enough, because that was only a mud-turtle of a back-settlement +lawyer and didn't know enough to come in when it rains, as the saying is. + +They swore in the jury, and then the lawyer for the prostitution got up +and begun. He made a terrible speech against the old man, that made him +moan and groan, and made Benny and Aunt Sally cry. The way HE told about +the murder kind of knocked us all stupid it was so different from the old +man's tale. He said he was going to prove that Uncle Silas was SEEN to +kill Jubiter Dunlap by two good witnesses, and done it deliberate, and +SAID he was going to kill him the very minute he hit him with the club; +and they seen him hide Jubiter in the bushes, and they seen that Jubiter +was stone-dead. And said Uncle Silas come later and lugged Jubiter down +into the tobacker field, and two men seen him do it. And said Uncle Silas +turned out, away in the night, and buried Jubiter, and a man seen him at +it. + +I says to myself, poor old Uncle Silas has been lying about it because he +reckoned nobody seen him and he couldn't bear to break Aunt Sally's heart +and Benny's; and right he was: as for me, I would 'a' lied the same way, +and so would anybody that had any feeling, to save them such misery and +sorrow which THEY warn't no ways responsible for. Well, it made our +lawyer look pretty sick; and it knocked Tom silly, too, for a little +spell, but then he braced up and let on that he warn't worried--but I +knowed he WAS, all the same. And the people--my, but it made a stir +amongst them! + +And when that lawyer was done telling the jury what he was going to +prove, he set down and begun to work his witnesses. + +First, he called a lot of them to show that there was bad blood betwixt +Uncle Silas and the diseased; and they told how they had heard Uncle +Silas threaten the diseased, at one time and another, and how it got +worse and worse and everybody was talking about it, and how diseased got +afraid of his life, and told two or three of them he was certain Uncle +Silas would up and kill him some time or another. + +Tom and our lawyer asked them some questions; but it warn't no use, they +stuck to what they said. + +Next, they called up Lem Beebe, and he took the stand. It come into my +mind, then, how Lem and Jim Lane had come along talking, that time, about +borrowing a dog or something from Jubiter Dunlap; and that brought up the +blackberries and the lantern; and that brought up Bill and Jack Withers, +and how they passed by, talking about a nigger stealing Uncle Silas's +corn; and that fetched up our old ghost that come along about the same +time and scared us so--and here HE was too, and a privileged character, +on accounts of his being deef and dumb and a stranger, and they had fixed +him a chair inside the railing, where he could cross his legs and be +comfortable, whilst the other people was all in a jam so they couldn't +hardly breathe. So it all come back to me just the way it was that day; +and it made me mournful to think how pleasant it was up to then, and how +miserable ever since. + + LEM BEEBE, sworn, said--"I was a-coming along, that day, + second of September, and Jim Lane was with me, and it was + towards sundown, and we heard loud talk, like quarrelling, + and we was very close, only the hazel bushes between (that's + along the fence); and we heard a voice say, 'I've told you + more'n once I'd kill you,' and knowed it was this prisoner's + voice; and then we see a club come up above the bushes and + down out of sight again, and heard a smashing thump and then + a groan or two: and then we crope soft to where we could + see, and there laid Jupiter Dunlap dead, and this prisoner + standing over him with the club; and the next he hauled the + dead man into a clump of bushes and hid him, and then we + stooped low, to be cut of sight, and got away." + +Well, it was awful. It kind of froze everybody's blood to hear it, and +the house was 'most as still whilst he was telling it as if there warn't +nobody in it. And when he was done, you could hear them gasp and sigh, +all over the house, and look at one another the same as to say, "Ain't it +perfectly terrible--ain't it awful!" + +Now happened a thing that astonished me. All the time the first +witnesses was proving the bad blood and the threats and all that, Tom +Sawyer was alive and laying for them; and the minute they was through, he +went for them, and done his level best to catch them in lies and spile +their testimony. But now, how different. When Lem first begun to talk, +and never said anything about speaking to Jubiter or trying to borrow a +dog off of him, he was all alive and laying for Lem, and you could see he +was getting ready to cross-question him to death pretty soon, and then I +judged him and me would go on the stand by and by and tell what we heard +him and Jim Lane say. But the next time I looked at Tom I got the cold +shivers. Why, he was in the brownest study you ever see--miles and miles +away. He warn't hearing a word Lem Beebe was saying; and when he got +through he was still in that brown-study, just the same. Our lawyer +joggled him, and then he looked up startled, and says, "Take the witness +if you want him. Lemme alone--I want to think." + +Well, that beat me. I couldn't understand it. And Benny and her +mother--oh, they looked sick, they was so troubled. They shoved their +veils to one side and tried to get his eye, but it warn't any use, and I +couldn't get his eye either. So the mud-turtle he tackled the witness, +but it didn't amount to nothing; and he made a mess of it. + +Then they called up Jim Lane, and he told the very same story over again, +exact. Tom never listened to this one at all, but set there thinking and +thinking, miles and miles away. So the mud-turtle went in alone again and +come out just as flat as he done before. The lawyer for the prostitution +looked very comfortable, but the judge looked disgusted. You see, Tom was +just the same as a regular lawyer, nearly, because it was Arkansaw law +for a prisoner to choose anybody he wanted to help his lawyer, and Tom +had had Uncle Silas shove him into the case, and now he was botching it +and you could see the judge didn't like it much. All that the mud-turtle +got out of Lem and Jim was this: he asked them: + +"Why didn't you go and tell what you saw?" + +"We was afraid we would get mixed up in it ourselves. And we was just +starting down the river a-hunting for all the week besides; but as soon +as we come back we found out they'd been searching for the body, so then +we went and told Brace Dunlap all about it." + +"When was that?" + +"Saturday night, September 9th." + +The judge he spoke up and says: + +"Mr. Sheriff, arrest these two witnesses on suspicions of being +accessionary after the fact to the murder." + +The lawyer for the prostitution jumps up all excited, and says: + +"Your honor! I protest against this extraordi--" + +"Set down!" says the judge, pulling his bowie and laying it on his +pulpit. "I beg you to respect the Court." + +So he done it. Then he called Bill Withers. + + BILL WITHERS, sworn, said: "I was coming along about sundown, + Saturday, September 2d, by the prisoner's field, and my + brother Jack was with me and we seen a man toting off + something heavy on his back and allowed it was a nigger + stealing corn; we couldn't see distinct; next we made out that + it was one man carrying another; and the way it hung, so kind + of limp, we judged it was somebody that was drunk; and by the + man's walk we said it was Parson Silas, and we judged he had + found Sam Cooper drunk in the road, which he was always trying + to reform him, and was toting him out of danger." + +It made the people shiver to think of poor old Uncle Silas toting off the +diseased down to the place in his tobacker field where the dog dug up the +body, but there warn't much sympathy around amongst the faces, and I +heard one cuss say "'Tis the coldest blooded work I ever struck, lugging +a murdered man around like that, and going to bury him like a animal, and +him a preacher at that." + +Tom he went on thinking, and never took no notice; so our lawyer took the +witness and done the best he could, and it was plenty poor enough. + +Then Jack Withers he come on the stand and told the same tale, just like +Bill done. + +And after him comes Brace Dunlap, and he was looking very mournful, and +most crying; and there was a rustle and a stir all around, and everybody +got ready to listen, and lost of the women folks said, "Poor cretur, poor +cretur," and you could see a many of them wiping their eyes. + + BRACE DUNLAP, sworn, said: "I was in considerable trouble a + long time about my poor brother, but I reckoned things warn't + near so bad as he made out, and I couldn't make myself believe + anybody would have the heart to hurt a poor harmless cretur + like that"--[by jings, I was sure I seen Tom give a kind of a + faint little start, and then look disappointed again]--"and + you know I COULDN'T think a preacher would hurt him--it warn't + natural to think such an onlikely thing--so I never paid much + attention, and now I sha'n't ever, ever forgive myself; for if + I had a done different, my poor brother would be with me this + day, and not laying yonder murdered, and him so harmless." He + kind of broke down there and choked up, and waited to get his + voice; and people all around said the most pitiful things, and + women cried; and it was very still in there, and solemn, and + old Uncle Silas, poor thing, he give a groan right out so + everybody heard him. Then Brace he went on, "Saturday, + September 2d, he didn't come home to supper. By-and-by I got a + little uneasy, and one of my niggers went over to this + prisoner's place, but come back and said he warn't there. So + I got uneasier and uneasier, and couldn't rest. I went to + bed, but I couldn't sleep; and turned out, away late in the + night, and went wandering over to this prisoner's place and + all around about there a good while, hoping I would run across + my poor brother, and never knowing he was out of his troubles + and gone to a better shore--" So he broke down and choked up + again, and most all the women was crying now. Pretty soon he + got another start and says: "But it warn't no use; so at last + I went home and tried to get some sleep, but couldn't. Well, + in a day or two everybody was uneasy, and they got to talking + about this prisoner's threats, and took to the idea, which I + didn't take no stock in, that my brother was murdered so they + hunted around and tried to find his body, but couldn't and + give it up. And so I reckoned he was gone off somers to have + a little peace, and would come back to us when his troubles + was kind of healed. But late Saturday night, the 9th, Lem + Beebe and Jim Lane come to my house and told me all--told me + the whole awful 'sassination, and my heart was broke. And THEN + I remembered something that hadn't took no hold of me at the + time, because reports said this prisoner had took to walking + in his sleep and doing all kind of things of no consequence, + not knowing what he was about. I will tell you what that + thing was that come back into my memory. Away late that awful + Saturday night when I was wandering around about this + prisoner's place, grieving and troubled, I was down by the + corner of the tobacker-field and I heard a sound like digging + in a gritty soil; and I crope nearer and peeped through the + vines that hung on the rail fence and seen this prisoner + SHOVELING--shoveling with a long-handled shovel--heaving earth + into a big hole that was most filled up; his back was to me, + but it was bright moonlight and I knowed him by his old green + baize work-gown with a splattery white patch in the middle of + the back like somebody had hit him with a snowball. HE WAS + BURYING THE MAN HE'D MURDERED!" + +And he slumped down in his chair crying and sobbing, and 'most everybody +in the house busted out wailing, and crying, and saying, "Oh, it's +awful--awful--horrible! and there was a most tremendous excitement, and +you couldn't hear yourself think; and right in the midst of it up jumps +old Uncle Silas, white as a sheet, and sings out: + +"IT'S TRUE, EVERY WORD--I MURDERED HIM IN COLD BLOOD!" + +By Jackson, it petrified them! People rose up wild all over the house, +straining and staring for a better look at him, and the judge was +hammering with his mallet and the sheriff yelling "Order--order in the +court--order!" + +And all the while the old man stood there a-quaking and his eyes +a-burning, and not looking at his wife and daughter, which was clinging +to him and begging him to keep still, but pawing them off with his hands +and saying he WOULD clear his black soul from crime, he WOULD heave off +this load that was more than he could bear, and he WOULDN'T bear it +another hour! And then he raged right along with his awful tale, +everybody a-staring and gasping, judge, jury, lawyers, and everybody, and +Benny and Aunt Sally crying their hearts out. And by George, Tom Sawyer +never looked at him once! Never once--just set there gazing with all his +eyes at something else, I couldn't tell what. And so the old man raged +right along, pouring his words out like a stream of fire: + +"I killed him! I am guilty! But I never had the notion in my life to hurt +him or harm him, spite of all them lies about my threatening him, till +the very minute I raised the club--then my heart went cold!--then the +pity all went out of it, and I struck to kill! In that one moment all my +wrongs come into my mind; all the insults that that man and the scoundrel +his brother, there, had put upon me, and how they laid in together to +ruin me with the people, and take away my good name, and DRIVE me to some +deed that would destroy me and my family that hadn't ever done THEM no +harm, so help me God! And they done it in a mean revenge--for why? +Because my innocent pure girl here at my side wouldn't marry that rich, +insolent, ignorant coward, Brace Dunlap, who's been sniveling here over a +brother he never cared a brass farthing for--"[I see Tom give a jump and +look glad THIS time, to a dead certainty]"--and in that moment I've told +you about, I forgot my God and remembered only my heart's bitterness, God +forgive me, and I struck to kill. In one second I was miserably +sorry--oh, filled with remorse; but I thought of my poor family, and I +MUST hide what I'd done for their sakes; and I did hide that corpse in +the bushes; and presently I carried it to the tobacker field; and in the +deep night I went with my shovel and buried it where--" + +Up jumps Tom and shouts: + +"NOW, I've got it!" and waves his hand, oh, ever so fine and starchy, +towards the old man, and says: + +"Set down! A murder WAS done, but you never had no hand in it!" + +Well, sir, you could a heard a pin drop. And the old man he sunk down +kind of bewildered in his seat and Aunt Sally and Benny didn't know it, +because they was so astonished and staring at Tom with their mouths open +and not knowing what they was about. And the whole house the same. I +never seen people look so helpless and tangled up, and I hain't ever seen +eyes bug out and gaze without a blink the way theirn did. Tom says, +perfectly ca'm: + +"Your honor, may I speak?" + +"For God's sake, yes--go on!" says the judge, so astonished and mixed up +he didn't know what he was about hardly. + +Then Tom he stood there and waited a second or two--that was for to work +up an "effect," as he calls it--then he started in just as ca'm as ever, +and says: + +"For about two weeks now there's been a little bill sticking on the front +of this courthouse offering two thousand dollars reward for a couple of +big di'monds--stole at St. Louis. Them di'monds is worth twelve thousand +dollars. But never mind about that till I get to it. Now about this +murder. I will tell you all about it--how it happened--who done it--every +DEtail." + +You could see everybody nestle now, and begin to listen for all they was +worth. + +"This man here, Brace Dunlap, that's been sniveling so about his dead +brother that YOU know he never cared a straw for, wanted to marry that +young girl there, and she wouldn't have him. So he told Uncle Silas he +would make him sorry. Uncle Silas knowed how powerful he was, and how +little chance he had against such a man, and he was scared and worried, +and done everything he could think of to smooth him over and get him to +be good to him: he even took his no-account brother Jubiter on the farm +and give him wages and stinted his own family to pay them; and Jubiter +done everything his brother could contrive to insult Uncle Silas, and +fret and worry him, and try to drive Uncle Silas into doing him a hurt, +so as to injure Uncle Silas with the people. And it done it. Everybody +turned against him and said the meanest kind of things about him, and it +graduly broke his heart--yes, and he was so worried and distressed that +often he warn't hardly in his right mind. + +"Well, on that Saturday that we've had so much trouble about, two of +these witnesses here, Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, come along by where Uncle +Silas and Jubiter Dunlap was at work--and that much of what they've said +is true, the rest is lies. They didn't hear Uncle Silas say he would kill +Jubiter; they didn't hear no blow struck; they didn't see no dead man, +and they didn't see Uncle Silas hide anything in the bushes. Look at them +now--how they set there, wishing they hadn't been so handy with their +tongues; anyway, they'll wish it before I get done. + +"That same Saturday evening Bill and Jack Withers DID see one man lugging +off another one. That much of what they said is true, and the rest is +lies. First off they thought it was a nigger stealing Uncle Silas's +corn--you notice it makes them look silly, now, to find out somebody +overheard them say that. That's because they found out by and by who it +was that was doing the lugging, and THEY know best why they swore here +that they took it for Uncle Silas by the gait--which it WASN'T, and they +knowed it when they swore to that lie. + +"A man out in the moonlight DID see a murdered person put under ground in +the tobacker field--but it wasn't Uncle Silas that done the burying. He +was in his bed at that very time. + +"Now, then, before I go on, I want to ask you if you've ever noticed +this: that people, when they're thinking deep, or when they're worried, +are most always doing something with their hands, and they don't know it, +and don't notice what it is their hands are doing, some stroke their +chins; some stroke their noses; some stroke up UNDER their chin with +their hand; some twirl a chain, some fumble a button, then there's some +that draws a figure or a letter with their finger on their cheek, or +under their chin or on their under lip. That's MY way. When I'm +restless, or worried, or thinking hard, I draw capital V's on my cheek or +on my under lip or under my chin, and never anything BUT capital V's--and +half the time I don't notice it and don't know I'm doing it." + +That was odd. That is just what I do; only I make an O. And I could see +people nodding to one another, same as they do when they mean "THAT's +so." + +"Now, then, I'll go on. That same Saturday--no, it was the night +before--there was a steamboat laying at Flagler's Landing, forty miles +above here, and it was raining and storming like the nation. And there +was a thief aboard, and he had them two big di'monds that's advertised +out here on this courthouse door; and he slipped ashore with his hand-bag +and struck out into the dark and the storm, and he was a-hoping he could +get to this town all right and be safe. But he had two pals aboard the +boat, hiding, and he knowed they was going to kill him the first chance +they got and take the di'monds; because all three stole them, and then +this fellow he got hold of them and skipped. + +"Well, he hadn't been gone more'n ten minutes before his pals found it +out, and they jumped ashore and lit out after him. Prob'ly they burnt +matches and found his tracks. Anyway, they dogged along after him all +day Saturday and kept out of his sight; and towards sundown he come to +the bunch of sycamores down by Uncle Silas's field, and he went in there +to get a disguise out of his hand-bag and put it on before he showed +himself here in the town--and mind you he done that just a little after +the time that Uncle Silas was hitting Jubiter Dunlap over the head with a +club--for he DID hit him. + +"But the minute the pals see that thief slide into the bunch of +sycamores, they jumped out of the bushes and slid in after him. + +"They fell on him and clubbed him to death. + +"Yes, for all he screamed and howled so, they never had no mercy on him, +but clubbed him to death. And two men that was running along the road +heard him yelling that way, and they made a rush into the syca-i more +bunch--which was where they was bound for, anyway--and when the pals saw +them they lit out and the two new men after them a-chasing them as tight +as they could go. But only a minute or two--then these two new men +slipped back very quiet into the sycamores. + +"THEN what did they do? I will tell you what they done. They found where +the thief had got his disguise out of his carpet-sack to put on; so one +of them strips and puts on that disguise." + +Tom waited a little here, for some more "effect"--then he says, very +deliberate: + +"The man that put on that dead man's disguise was--JUBITER DUNLAP!" + +"Great Scott!" everybody shouted, all over the house, and old Uncle Silas +he looked perfectly astonished. + +"Yes, it was Jubiter Dunlap. Not dead, you see. Then they pulled off +the dead man's boots and put Jubiter Dunlap's old ragged shoes on the +corpse and put the corpse's boots on Jubiter Dunlap. Then Jubiter Dunlap +stayed where he was, and the other man lugged the dead body off in the +twilight; and after midnight he went to Uncle Silas's house, and took his +old green work-robe off of the peg where it always hangs in the passage +betwixt the house and the kitchen and put it on, and stole the +long-handled shovel and went off down into the tobacker field and buried +the murdered man." + +He stopped, and stood half a minute. Then--"And who do you reckon the +murdered man WAS? It was--JAKE Dunlap, the long-lost burglar!" + +"Great Scott!" + +"And the man that buried him was--BRACE Dunlap, his brother!" + +"Great Scott!" + +"And who do you reckon is this mowing idiot here that's letting on all +these weeks to be a deef and dumb stranger? It's--JUBITER Dunlap!" + +My land, they all busted out in a howl, and you never see the like of +that excitement since the day you was born. And Tom he made a jump for +Jubiter and snaked off his goggles and his false whiskers, and there was +the murdered man, sure enough, just as alive as anybody! And Aunt Sally +and Benny they went to hugging and crying and kissing and smothering old +Uncle Silas to that degree he was more muddled and confused and mushed up +in his mind than he ever was before, and that is saying considerable. +And next, people begun to yell: + +"Tom Sawyer! Tom Sawyer! Shut up everybody, and let him go on! Go on, Tom +Sawyer!" + +Which made him feel uncommon bully, for it was nuts for Tom Sawyer to be +a public character that-away, and a hero, as he calls it. So when it was +all quiet, he says: + +"There ain't much left, only this. When that man there, Bruce Dunlap, +had most worried the life and sense out of Uncle Silas till at last he +plumb lost his mind and hit this other blatherskite, his brother, with a +club, I reckon he seen his chance. Jubiter broke for the woods to hide, +and I reckon the game was for him to slide out, in the night, and leave +the country. Then Brace would make everybody believe Uncle Silas killed +him and hid his body somers; and that would ruin Uncle Silas and drive +HIM out of the country--hang him, maybe; I dunno. But when they found +their dead brother in the sycamores without knowing him, because he was +so battered up, they see they had a better thing; disguise BOTH and bury +Jake and dig him up presently all dressed up in Jubiter's clothes, and +hire Jim Lane and Bill Withers and the others to swear to some handy +lies--which they done. And there they set, now, and I told them they +would be looking sick before I got done, and that is the way they're +looking now. + +"Well, me and Huck Finn here, we come down on the boat with the thieves, +and the dead one told us all about the di'monds, and said the others +would murder him if they got the chance; and we was going to help him all +we could. We was bound for the sycamores when we heard them killing him +in there; but we was in there in the early morning after the storm and +allowed nobody hadn't been killed, after all. And when we see Jubiter +Dunlap here spreading around in the very same disguise Jake told us HE +was going to wear, we thought it was Jake his own self--and he was +goo-gooing deef and dumb, and THAT was according to agreement. + +"Well, me and Huck went on hunting for the corpse after the others quit, +and we found it. And was proud, too; but Uncle Silas he knocked us crazy +by telling us HE killed the man. So we was mighty sorry we found the +body, and was bound to save Uncle Silas's neck if we could; and it was +going to be tough work, too, because he wouldn't let us break him out of +prison the way we done with our old nigger Jim. + +"I done everything I could the whole month to think up some way to save +Uncle Silas, but I couldn't strike a thing. So when we come into court +to-day I come empty, and couldn't see no chance anywheres. But by and by +I had a glimpse of something that set me thinking--just a little wee +glimpse--only that, and not enough to make sure; but it set me thinking +hard--and WATCHING, when I was only letting on to think; and by and by, +sure enough, when Uncle Silas was piling out that stuff about HIM killing +Jubiter Dunlap, I catched that glimpse again, and this time I jumped up +and shut down the proceedings, because I KNOWED Jubiter Dunlap was +a-setting here before me. I knowed him by a thing which I seen him +do--and I remembered it. I'd seen him do it when I was here a year ago." + +He stopped then, and studied a minute--laying for an "effect"--I knowed +it perfectly well. Then he turned off like he was going to leave the +platform, and says, kind of lazy and indifferent: + +"Well, I believe that is all." + +Why, you never heard such a howl!--and it come from the whole house: + +"What WAS it you seen him do? Stay where you are, you little devil! You +think you are going to work a body up till his mouth's a-watering and +stop there? What WAS it he done?" + +That was it, you see--he just done it to get an "effect"; you couldn't +'a' pulled him off of that platform with a yoke of oxen. + +"Oh, it wasn't anything much," he says. "I seen him looking a little +excited when he found Uncle Silas was actuly fixing to hang himself for a +murder that warn't ever done; and he got more and more nervous and +worried, I a-watching him sharp but not seeming to look at him--and all +of a sudden his hands begun to work and fidget, and pretty soon his left +crept up and HIS FINGER DRAWED A CROSS ON HIS CHEEK, and then I HAD him!" + +Well, then they ripped and howled and stomped and clapped their hands +till Tom Sawyer was that proud and happy he didn't know what to do with +himself. + +And then the judge he looked down over his pulpit and says: + +"My boy, did you SEE all the various details of this strange conspiracy +and tragedy that you've been describing?" + +"No, your honor, I didn't see any of them." + +"Didn't see any of them! Why, you've told the whole history straight +through, just the same as if you'd seen it with your eyes. How did you +manage that?" + +Tom says, kind of easy and comfortable: + +"Oh, just noticing the evidence and piecing this and that together, your +honor; just an ordinary little bit of detective work; anybody could 'a' +done it." + +"Nothing of the kind! Not two in a million could 'a' done it. You are a +very remarkable boy." + +Then they let go and give Tom another smashing round, and he--well, he +wouldn't 'a' sold out for a silver mine. Then the judge says: + +"But are you certain you've got this curious history straight?" + +"Perfectly, your honor. Here is Brace Dunlap--let him deny his share of +it if he wants to take the chance; I'll engage to make him wish he hadn't +said anything...... Well, you see HE'S pretty quiet. And his brother's +pretty quiet, and them four witnesses that lied so and got paid for it, +they're pretty quiet. And as for Uncle Silas, it ain't any use for him +to put in his oar, I wouldn't believe him under oath!" + +Well, sir, that fairly made them shout; and even the judge he let go and +laughed. Tom he was just feeling like a rainbow. When they was done +laughing he looks up at the judge and says: + +"Your honor, there's a thief in this house." + +"A thief?" + +"Yes, sir. And he's got them twelve-thousand-dollar di'monds on him." + +By gracious, but it made a stir! Everybody went shouting: + +"Which is him? which is him? p'int him out!" + +And the judge says: + +"Point him out, my lad. Sheriff, you will arrest him. Which one is it?" + +Tom says: + +"This late dead man here--Jubiter Dunlap." + +Then there was another thundering let-go of astonishment and excitement; +but Jubiter, which was astonished enough before, was just fairly +putrified with astonishment this time. And he spoke up, about half +crying, and says: + +"Now THAT'S a lie. Your honor, it ain't fair; I'm plenty bad enough +without that. I done the other things--Brace he put me up to it, and +persuaded me, and promised he'd make me rich, some day, and I done it, +and I'm sorry I done it, and I wisht I hadn't; but I hain't stole no +di'monds, and I hain't GOT no di'monds; I wisht I may never stir if it +ain't so. The sheriff can search me and see." + +Tom says: + +"Your honor, it wasn't right to call him a thief, and I'll let up on that +a little. He did steal the di'monds, but he didn't know it. He stole +them from his brother Jake when he was laying dead, after Jake had stole +them from the other thieves; but Jubiter didn't know he was stealing +them; and he's been swelling around here with them a month; yes, sir, +twelve thousand dollars' worth of di'monds on him--all that riches, and +going around here every day just like a poor man. Yes, your honor, he's +got them on him now." + +The judge spoke up and says: + +"Search him, sheriff." + +Well, sir, the sheriff he ransacked him high and low, and everywhere: +searched his hat, socks, seams, boots, everything--and Tom he stood there +quiet, laying for another of them effects of hisn. Finally the sheriff +he give it up, and everybody looked disappointed, and Jubiter says: + +"There, now! what'd I tell you?" + +And the judge says: + +"It appears you were mistaken this time, my boy." + +Then Tom took an attitude and let on to be studying with all his might, +and scratching his head. Then all of a sudden he glanced up chipper, and +says: + +"Oh, now I've got it! I'd forgot." + +Which was a lie, and I knowed it. Then he says: + +"Will somebody be good enough to lend me a little small screwdriver? +There was one in your brother's hand-bag that you smouched, Jubiter. but +I reckon you didn't fetch it with you." + +"No, I didn't. I didn't want it, and I give it away." + +"That's because you didn't know what it was for." + +Jubiter had his boots on again, by now, and when the thing Tom wanted was +passed over the people's heads till it got to him, he says to Jubiter: + +"Put up your foot on this chair." And he kneeled down and begun to +unscrew the heel-plate, everybody watching; and when he got that big +di'mond out of that boot-heel and held it up and let it flash and blaze +and squirt sunlight everwhichaway, it just took everybody's breath; and +Jubiter he looked so sick and sorry you never see the like of it. And +when Tom held up the other di'mond he looked sorrier than ever. Land! he +was thinking how he would 'a' skipped out and been rich and independent +in a foreign land if he'd only had the luck to guess what the screwdriver +was in the carpet-bag for. + +Well, it was a most exciting time, take it all around, and Tom got cords +of glory. The judge took the di'monds, and stood up in his pulpit, and +cleared his throat, and shoved his spectacles back on his head, and says: + +"I'll keep them and notify the owners; and when they send for them it +will be a real pleasure to me to hand you the two thousand dollars, for +you've earned the money--yes, and you've earned the deepest and most +sincerest thanks of this community besides, for lifting a wronged and +innocent family out of ruin and shame, and saving a good and honorable +man from a felon's death, and for exposing to infamy and the punishment +of the law a cruel and odious scoundrel and his miserable creatures!" + +Well, sir, if there'd been a brass band to bust out some music, then, it +would 'a' been just the perfectest thing I ever see, and Tom Sawyer he +said the same. + +Then the sheriff he nabbed Brace Dunlap and his crowd, and by and by next +month the judge had them up for trial and jailed the whole lot. And +everybody crowded back to Uncle Silas's little old church, and was ever +so loving and kind to him and the family and couldn't do enough for them; +and Uncle Silas he preached them the blamedest jumbledest idiotic sermons +you ever struck, and would tangle you up so you couldn't find your way +home in daylight; but the people never let on but what they thought it +was the clearest and brightest and elegantest sermons that ever was; and +they would set there and cry, for love and pity; but, by George, they +give me the jim-jams and the fan-tods and caked up what brains I had, and +turned them solid; but by and by they loved the old man's intellects back +into him again, and he was as sound in his skull as ever he was, which +ain't no flattery, I reckon. And so the whole family was as happy as +birds, and nobody could be gratefuler and lovinger than what they was to +Tom Sawyer; and the same to me, though I hadn't done nothing. And when +the two thousand dollars come, Tom give half of it to me, and never told +anybody so, which didn't surprise me, because I knowed him. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tom Sawyer, Detective +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + + FOLLOWING + THE EQUATOR + A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD + BY + MARK TWAIN + SAMUEL L. CLEMENS + HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT + + + + + THIS BOOK + Is affectionately inscribed to + MY YOUNG FRIEND + HARRY ROGERS + WITH RECOGNITION + OF WHAT HE IS, AND APPREHENSION OF WHAT HE MAY BECOME + UNLESS HE FORM HIMSELF A LITTLE MORE CLOSELY + UPON THE MODEL OF + THE AUTHOR. + + + + + + THE PUDD'NHEAD MAXIMS. + THESE WISDOMS ARE FOR THE LURING OF YOUTH TOWARD + HIGH MORAL ALTITUDES. THE AUTHOR DID NOT + GATHER THEM FROM PRACTICE, BUT FROM + OBSERVATION. TO BE GOOD IS NOBLE; + BUT TO SHOW OTHERS HOW + TO BE GOOD IS NOBLER + AND NO TROUBLE. + + + + + CONTENTS + +CHAPTER I. +The Party--Across America to Vancouver--On Board the Warrimo--Steamer +Chairs-The Captain-Going Home under a Cloud--A Gritty Purser--The +Brightest Passenger--Remedy for Bad Habits--The Doctor and the Lumbago +--A Moral Pauper--Limited Smoking--Remittance-men. + + +CHAPTER II. +Change of Costume--Fish, Snake, and Boomerang Stories--Tests of Memory +--A Brahmin Expert--General Grant's Memory--A Delicately Improper Tale + + +CHAPTER III. +Honolulu--Reminiscences of the Sandwich Islands--King Liholiho and His +Royal Equipment--The Tabu--The Population of the Island--A Kanaka Diver +--Cholera at Honolulu--Honolulu; Past and Present--The Leper Colony + + +CHAPTER IV. +Leaving Honolulu--Flying-fish--Approaching the Equator--Why the Ship Went +Slow--The Front Yard of the Ship--Crossing the Equator--Horse Billiards +or Shovel Board--The Waterbury Watch--Washing Decks--Ship Painters--The +Great Meridian--The Loss of a Day--A Babe without a Birthday + + +CHAPTER V. +A lesson in Pronunciation--Reverence for Robert Burns--The Southern +Cross--Troublesome Constellations--Victoria for a Name--Islands on the +Map--Alofa and Fortuna--Recruiting for the Queensland Plantations +--Captain Warren's NoteBook--Recruiting not thoroughly Popular + + +CHAPTER VI. +Missionaries Obstruct Business--The Sugar Planter and the Kanaka--The +Planter's View--Civilizing the Kanaka The Missionary's View--The Result +--Repentant Kanakas--Wrinkles--The Death Rate in Queensland + + +CHAPTER VII. +The Fiji Islands--Suva--The Ship from Duluth--Going Ashore--Midwinter in +Fiji--Seeing the Governor--Why Fiji was Ceded to England--Old time +Fijians--Convicts among the Fijians--A Case Where Marriage was a Failure +Immortality with Limitations + + +CHAPTER VIII. +A Wilderness of Islands--Two Men without a Country--A Naturalist from New +Zealand--The Fauna of Australasia--Animals, Insects, and Birds--The +Ornithorhynchus--Poetry and Plagiarism + + +CHAPTER IX. + +Close to Australia--Porpoises at Night--Entrance to Sydney Harbor--The +Loss of the Duncan Dunbar--The Harbor--The City of Sydney--Spring-time in +Australia--The Climate--Information for Travelers--The Size of Australia +--A Dust-Storm and Hot Wind + + +CHAPTER X. +The Discovery of Australia--Transportation of Convicts--Discipline +--English Laws, Ancient and Modern--Flogging Prisoners to Death--Arrival of +Settlers--New South Wales Corps--Rum Currency--Intemperance Everywhere +$100,000 for One Gallon of Rum--Development of the Country--Immense +Resources + + +CHAPTER XI. +Hospitality of English-speaking People--Writers and their Gratitude--Mr. +Gane and the Panegyrics--Population of Sydney An English City with +American Trimming--"Squatters"--Palaces and Sheep Kingdoms--Wool and +Mutton--Australians and Americans--Costermonger Pronunciation--England is +"Home"--Table Talk--English and Colonial Audiences 124 + + +CHAPTER XII. +Mr. X., a Missionary--Why Christianity Makes Slow Progress in India--A +Large Dream--Hindoo Miracles and Legends--Sampson and Hanuman--The +Sandstone Ridge--Where are the Gates? + + +CHAPTER XIII. +Public Works in Australasia--Botanical Garden of Sydney--Four Special +Socialties--The Government House--A Governor and His Functions--The +Admiralty House--The Tour of the Harbor--Shark Fishing--Cecil Rhodes' +Shark and his First Fortune--Free Board for Sharks. + + +CHAPTER XIV. +Bad Health--To Melbourne by Rail--Maps Defective--The Colony of Victoria +--A Round-trip Ticket from Sydney--Change Cars, from Wide to Narrow +Gauge, a Peculiarity at Albury--Customs-fences--"My Word"--The Blue +Mountains--Rabbit Piles--Government R. R. Restaurants--Duchesses for +Waiters--"Sheep-dip"--Railroad Coffee--Things Seen and Not Seen + + +CHAPTER XV. +Wagga-Wagga--The Tichborne Claimant--A Stock Mystery--The Plan of the +Romance--The Realization--The Henry Bascom Mystery--Bascom Hall--The +Author's Death and Funeral + + +CHAPTER XVI. +Melbourne and its Attractions--The Melbourne Cup Races--Cup Day--Great +Crowds--Clothes Regardless of Cost--The Australian Larrikin--Is He Dead? +Australian Hospitality--Melbourne Wool-brokers--The Museums--The Palaces +--The Origin of Melbourne + + +CHAPTER XVII. +The British Empire--Its Exports and Imports--The Trade of Australia--To +Adelaide--Broken Hill Silver Mine--A Roundabout road--The Scrub and its +Possibilities for the Novelist--The Aboriginal Tracker--A Test Case--How +Does One Cow-Track Differ from Another? + + +CHAPTER XVIII. +Gum Trees--Unsociable Trees--Gorse and Broom--A universal Defect--An +Adventurer--Wanted L200, got L20,000,000--A Vast Land Scheme--The +Smash-up--The Corpse Got Up and Danced--A Unique Business by One Man +--Buying the Kangaroo Skin--The Approach to Adelaide--Everything Comes to +Him who Waits--A Healthy Religious sphere--What is the Matter with the +Specter? + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +The Botanical Gardens--Contributions from all Countries--The +Zoological Gardens of Adelaide--The Laughing Jackass--The Dingo--A +Misnamed Province--Telegraphing from Melbourne to San Francisco--A Mania +for Holidays--The Temperature--The Death Rate--Celebration of the +Reading of the Proclamation of 1836--Some old Settlers at the +Commemoration--Their Staying Powers--The Intelligence of the Aboriginal +--The Antiquity of the Boomerang + + +CHAPTER XX. +A Caller--A Talk about Old Times--The Fox Hunt--An Accurate Judgment of +an Idiot--How We Passed the Custom Officers in Italy + + +CHAPTER XXI. +The "Weet-Weet"--Keeping down the Population--Victoria--Killing the +Aboriginals--Pioneer Days in Queensland--Material for a Drama--The Bush +--Pudding with Arsenic Revenge--A Right Spirit but a Wrong Method--Death of +Donga Billy + + +CHAPTER XXII. +Continued Description of Aboriginals--Manly Qualities--Dodging Balls +--Feats of Spring--Jumping--Where the Kangaroo Learned its Art 'Well +Digging--Endurance--Surgery--Artistic Abilities--Fennimore Cooper's Last +Chance--Australian Slang + + +CHAPTER XXIII. +To Horsham (Colony of Victoria)--Description of Horsham--At the Hotel +--Pepper Tree-The Agricultural College, Forty Pupils--High Temperature +--Width of Road in Chains, Perches, etc.--The Bird with a Forgettable +Name--The Magpie and the Lady--Fruit Trees--Soils--Sheep Shearing--To Stawell +--Gold Mining Country--$75,000 per Month Income and able to Keep House +--Fine Grapes and Wine--The Dryest Community on Earth--The Three Sisters +--Gum Trees and Water + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +Road to Ballarat--The City--Great Gold Strike, 1851--Rush for Australia +--"Great Nuggets"--Taxation--Revolt and Victory--Peter Lalor and the +Eureka Stockade--"Pencil Mark"--Fine Statuary at Ballarat--Population +--Ballarat English + + +CHAPTER XXV. +Bound for Bendigo--The Priest at Castlemaine--Time Saved by Walking +--Description of Bendigo--A Valuable Nugget--Perseverence and Success +--Mr. Blank and His Influence--Conveyance of an Idea--I Had to Like the +Irishman--Corrigan Castle, and the Mark Twain Club--My Bascom Mystery +Solved + + +CHAPTER XXVI. +Where New Zealand Is--But Few Know--Things People Think They Know--The +Yale Professor and His Visitor from N. Z. + + +CHAPTER XXVII. +The South Pole Swell--Tasmania--Extermination of the Natives--The Picture +Proclamation--The Conciliator--The Formidable Sixteen + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. +When the Moment Comes the Man Appears--Why Ed. Jackson called on +Commodore Vanderbilt--Their Interview--Welcome to the Child of His Friend +--A Big Time but under Inspection--Sent on Important Business--A Visit to +the Boys on the Boat + + +CHAPTER XXIX: +Tasmania, Early Days--Description of the Town of Hobart--An Englishman's +Love of Home Surroundings--Neatest City on Earth--The Museum--A Parrot +with an Acquired Taste--Glass Arrow Beads--Refuge for the Indigent too +healthy + + +CHAPTER XXX. +Arrival at Bluff, N. Z.--Where the Rabbit Plague Began--The Natural Enemy +of the Rabbit--Dunedin--A Lovely Town--Visit to Dr. Hockin--His Museum +--A Liquified Caterpillar--The Unperfected Tape Worm--The Public Museum and +Picture + + +CHAPTER XXXI. The Express Train--"A Hell of a Hotel at Maryborough" +--Clocks and Bells--Railroad Service. + + +CHAPTER XXXII. +Description of the Town of Christ Church--A Fine Museum--Jade-stone +Trinkets--The Great Man--The First Maori in New Zealand--Women Voters +--"Person" in New Zealand Law Includes Woman--Taming an Ornithorhynchus +--A Voyage in the 'Flora' from Lyttelton--Cattle Stalls for Everybody +--A Wonderful Time. + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. +The Town of Nelson--"The Mongatapu Murders," the Great Event of the Town +--Burgess' Confession--Summit of Mount Eden--Rotorua and the Hot Lakes +and Geysers--Thermal Springs District--Kauri Gum--Tangariwa Mountains + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. +The Bay of Gisborne--Taking in Passengers by the Yard Arm--The Green +Ballarat Fly--False Teeth--From Napier to Hastings by the Ballarat Fly +Train--Kauri Trees--A Case of Mental Telegraphy + + +CHAPTER XXXV. +Fifty Miles in Four Hours--Comfortable Cars--Town of Wauganui--Plenty of +Maoris--On the Increase--Compliments to the Maoris--The Missionary Ways +all Wrong--The Tabu among the Maoris--A Mysterious Sign--Curious +War-monuments--Wellington + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. +The Poems of Mrs. Moore--The Sad Fate of William Upson--A Fellow Traveler +Imitating the Prince of Wales--A Would-be Dude--Arrival at Sydney +--Curious Town Names with Poem + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. +From Sydney for Ceylon--A Lascar Crew--A Fine Ship--Three Cats and a +Basket of Kittens--Dinner Conversations--Veuve Cliquot Wine--At Anchor in +King George's Sound Albany Harbor--More Cats--A Vulture on Board--Nearing +the Equator again--Dressing for Dinner--Ceylon, Hotel Bristol--Servant +Brampy--A Feminine Man--Japanese Jinriksha or Cart--Scenes in Ceylon--A +Missionary School--Insincerity of Clothes + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. +Steamer Rosettes to Bombay--Limes 14 cents a Barrel--Bombay, a Bewitching +City--Descriptions of People and Dress--Woman as a Road Decoration +--India, the Land of Dreams and Romance--Fourteen Porters to Carry Baggage +--Correcting a Servant--Killing a Slave--Arranging a Bedroom--Three Hours' +Work and a Terrible Racket--The Bird of Birds, the Indian Crow + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. +God Vishnu, 108 Names--Change of Titles or Hunting for an Heir--Bombay as +a Kaleidoscope--The Native's Man Servant--Servants' Recommendations--How +Manuel got his Name and his English--Satan--A Visit from God + + +CHAPTER XL. +The Government House at Malabar Point--Mansion of Kumar Shri Samatsin Hji +Bahadur--The Indian Princess--A Difficult Game--Wardrobe and Jewels +--Ceremonials--Decorations when Leaving--The Towers of Silence--A Funeral + + +CHAPTER XLI. +Jain Temple--Mr. Roychand's Bungalow--A Decorated Six-Gun Prince--Human +Fireworks--European Dress, Past and Present--Complexions--Advantages with +the Zulu--Festivities at the Bungalow-Nautch Dancers--Entrance of the +Prince--Address to the Prince + + +CHAPTER XLII. +A Hindoo Betrothal, midnight, Sleepers on the ground, Home of the Bride +of Twelve Years Dressed as a Boy--Illumination Nautch Girls--Imitating +Snakes--Later--Illuminated Porch Filled with Sleepers--The Plague + + +CHAPTER XLIII +Murder Trial in Bombay--Confidence Swindlers--Some Specialities of India +--The Plague, Juggernaut, Suttee, etc.--Everything on Gigantic Scale +--India First in Everything--80 States, more Custom Houses than Cats--Rich +Ground for Thug Society + + +CHAPTER XLIV. +Thug Book--Supplies for Traveling, Bedding, and other Freight--Scene at +Railway Station--Making Way for White Man--Waiting Passengers, High and +Low Caste, Touch in the cars--Our Car--Beds made up--Dreaming of Thugs +--Baroda--Meet Friends--Indian Well--The Old Town--Narrow Streets--A Mad +Elephant + +CHAPTER XLV. + +Elephant Riding--Howdahs--The New Palace--The Prince's Excursion--Gold +and Silver Artillery--A Vice-royal Visit--Remarkable Dog--The Bench Show +--Augustin Daly's Back Door--Fakeer + + +CHAPTER XLVI. +The Thugs--Government Efforts to Exterminate them--Choking a Victim A +Fakeer Spared--Thief Strangled + + +CHAPTER XLVII. +Thugs, Continued--Record of Murders--A Joy of Hunting and Killing Men +--Gordon Gumming--Killing an Elephant--Family Affection among Thugs +--Burial Places + + +CHAPTER XLVIII. +Starting for Allahabad--Lower Berths in Sleepers--Elderly Ladies have +Preference of Berths--An American Lady Takes One Anyhow--How Smythe Lost +his Berth--How He Got Even--The Suttee + + +CHAPTER XLIX. +Pyjamas--Day Scene in India--Clothed in a Turban and a Pocket +Handkerchief--Land Parceled Out--Established Village Servants--Witches in +Families--Hereditary Midwifery--Destruction of Girl Babies--Wedding +Display--Tiger-Persuader--Hailstorm Discourages--The Tyranny of the +Sweeper--Elephant Driver--Water Carrier--Curious Rivers--Arrival at +Allahabad--English Quarter--Lecture Hall Like a Snowstorm--Private +Carriages--A Milliner--Early Morning--The Squatting Servant--A Religious +Fair + + +CHAPTER L. +On the Road to Benares--Dust and Waiting--The Bejeweled Crowd--A Native +Prince and his Guard--Zenana Lady--The Extremes of Fashion--The Hotel at +Benares--An Annex a Mile Away--Doors in India--The Peepul Tree--Warning +against Cold Baths--A Strange Fruit--Description of Benares--The +Beginning of Creation--Pilgrims to Benares--A Priest with a Good Business +Stand--Protestant Missionary--The Trinity Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu +--Religion the Business at Benares + + +CHAPTER LI. +Benares a Religious Temple--A Guide for Pilgrims to Save Time in Securing +Salvation + + +CHAPTER LII. +A Curious Way to Secure Salvation--The Banks of the Ganges--Architecture +Represents Piety--A Trip on the River--Bathers and their Costumes +--Drinking the Water--A Scientific Test of the Nasty Purifier--Hindoo Faith +in the Ganges--A Cremation--Remembrances of the Suttee--All Life Sacred +Except Human Life--The Goddess Bhowanee, and the Sacrificers--Sacred +Monkeys--Ugly Idols Everywhere--Two White Minarets--A Great View with a +Monkey in it--A Picture on the Water + + +CHAPTER LIII. +Still in Benares--Another Living God--Why Things are Wonderful--Sri 108 +Utterly Perfect--How He Came so--Our Visit to Sri--A Friendly Deity +Exchanging Autographs and Books--Sri's Pupil--An Interesting Man +--Reverence and Irreverence--Dancing in a Sepulchre + + +CHAPTER LIV. +Rail to Calcutta--Population--The "City of Palaces"--A Fluted +Candle-stick--Ochterlony--Newspaper Correspondence--Average Knowledge of +Countries--A Wrong Idea of Chicago--Calcutta and the Black Hole +--Description of the Horrors--Those Who Lived--The Botanical Gardens--The +Afternoon Turnout--Grand Review--Military Tournament--Excursion on the +Hoogly--The Museum--What Winter Means Calcutta + + +CHAPTER LV +On the Road Again--Flannels in Order--Across Country--From Greenland's +Icy Mountain--Swapping Civilization--No Field women in India--How it is +in Other Countries--Canvas-covered Cars--The Tiger Country--My First Hunt +Some Elephants Get Away--The Plains of India--The Ghurkas--Women for +Pack-Horses--A Substitute for a Cab--Darjeeling--The Hotel--The Highest +Thing in the Himalayas--The Club--Kinchinjunga and Mt. Everest +--Thibetans--The Prayer Wheel--People Going to the Bazar + + +CHAPTER LVI. +On the Road Again--The Hand-Car--A Thirty-five-mile Slide--The Banyan +Tree--A Dramatic Performance--The Railroad--The Half-way House--The Brain +Fever Bird--The Coppersmith Bird--Nightingales and Cue Owls + + +CHAPTER LVII. +India the Most Extraordinary Country on Earth--Nothing Forgotten--The +Land of Wonders--Annual Statistics Everywhere about Violence--Tiger vs. +Man--A Handsome Fight--Annual Man Killing and Tiger Killing--Other +Animals--Snakes--Insurance and Snake Tables--The Cobra Bite--Muzaffurpore +--Dinapore--A Train that Stopped for Gossip--Six Hours for Thirty-five +Miles--A Rupee to the Engineer--Ninety Miles an Hour--Again to Benares, +the Piety Hive To Lucknow + + +CHAPTER LVIII. +The Great Mutiny--The Massacre in Cawnpore--Terrible Scenes in Lucknow +--The Residency--The Siege + + +CHAPTER LIX. +A Visit to the Residency--Cawnpore--The Adjutant Bird and the Hindoo +Corpse--The Tai Mahal--The True Conception--The Ice Storm--True Gems +--Syrian Fountains--An Exaggerated Niagara + + +CHAPTER LX. +To Lahore--The Governor's Elephant--Taking a Ride-No Danger from +Collision--Rawal Pindi--Back to Delhi--An Orientalized Englishman +--Monkeys and the Paint-pot--Monkey Crying over my Note-book--Arrival at +Jeypore--In Rajputana--Watching Servants--The Jeypore Hotel--Our Old and +New Satan--Satan as a Liar--The Museum--A Street Show--Blocks of Houses +--A Religious Procession + + +CHAPTER LXI. +Methods in American Deaf and Dumb Asylums--Methods in the Public Schools +--A Letter from a youth in Punjab--Highly Educated Service--A Damage to +the Country--A Little Book from Calcutta--Writing Poor English +--Embarrassed by a Beggar Girl--A Specimen Letter--An Application for +Employment--A Calcutta School Examination--Two Samples of +Literature + + +CHAPTER LXII. +Sail from Calcutta to Madras--Thence to Ceylon--Thence for Mauritius +--The Indian Ocean--Our Captain's Peculiarity The Scot Has one too--The +Flying-fish that Went Hunting in the Field--Fined for Smuggling--Lots of +pets on Board--The Color of the Sea--The Most Important Member of +Nature's Family--The Captain's Story of Cold Weather--Omissions in the +Ship's Library--Washing Decks--Pyjamas on Deck--The Cat's Toilet--No +Interest in the Bulletin--Perfect Rest--The Milky Way and the Magellan +Clouds--Mauritius--Port Louis--A Hot Country--Under French Control +--A Variety of People and Complexions--Train to Curepipe--A Wonderful +Office-holder--The Wooden Peg Ornament--The Prominent Historical Event of +Mauritius--"Paul and Virginia"--One of Virginia's Wedding Gifts--Heaven +Copied after Mauritius--Early History of Mauritius--Quarantines +--Population of all Kinds--What the World Consists of--Where Russia and +Germany are--A Picture of Milan Cathedral--Newspapers--The Language--Best +Sugar in the World--Literature of Mauritius + + +CHAPTER LXIII. +Port Louis--Matches no Good--Good Roads--Death Notices--Why European +Nations Rob Each Other--What Immigrants to Mauritius Do--Population +--Labor Wages--The Camaron--The Palmiste and other Eatables--Monkeys--The +Cyclone of 1892--Mauritius a Sunday Landscape + + +CHAPTER LXIV. +The Steamer "Arundel Castle"--Poor Beds in Ships--The Beds in Noah's Ark +--Getting a Rest in Europe--Ship in Sight--Mozambique Channel--The +Engineer and the Band--Thackeray's "Madagascar"--Africanders Going Home +--Singing on the After Deck--An Out-of-Place Story--Dynamite Explosion in +Johannesburg--Entering Delagoa Bay--Ashore--A Hot Winter--Small Town--No +Sights--No Carriages--Working Women--Barnum's Purchase of Shakespeare's +Birthplace, Jumbo, and the Nelson Monument--Arrival at Durban + + +CHAPTER LXV. +Royal Hotel Durban--Bells that Did not Ring--Early Inquiries for Comforts +--Change of Temperature after Sunset-Rickhaws--The Hotel Chameleon +--Natives not out after the Bell--Preponderance of Blacks in Natal--Hair +Fashions in Natal--Zulus for Police--A Drive round the Berea--The Cactus +and other Trees--Religion a Vital Matter--Peculiar Views about Babies +--Zulu Kings--A Trappist Monastery--Transvaal Politics--Reasons why the +Trouble came About + + +CHAPTER LXVI. +Jameson over the Border--His Defeat and Capture--Sent to England for +Trial--Arrest of Citizens by the Boers--Commuted sentences--Final Release +of all but Two--Interesting Days for a Stranger--Hard to Understand +Either Side--What the Reformers Expected to Accomplish--How They Proposed +to do it--Testimonies a Year Later--A "Woman's Part"--The Truth of the +South African Situation--"Jameson's Ride"--A Poem + + +CHAPTER LXVIL +Jameson's Raid--The Reform Committee's Difficult Task--Possible Plans +--Advice that Jameson Ought to Have--The War of 1881 and its Lessons +--Statistics of Losses of the Combatants--Jameson's Battles--Losses on Both +Sides--The Military Errors--How the Warfare Should Have Been Carried on +to Be Successful + + +CHAPTER LXVIII. +Judicious Mr. Rhodes--What South Africa Consists of--Johannesburg--The +Gold Mines--The Heaven of American Engineers--What the Author Knows about +Mining--Description of the Boer--What Should be Expected of Him--What Was +A Dizzy Jump for Rhodes--Taxes--Rhodesian Method of Reducing Native +Population--Journeying in Cape Colony--The Cars--The Country--The +Weather--Tamed Blacks--Familiar Figures in King William's Town--Boer +Dress--Boer Country Life--Sleeping Accommodations--The Reformers in Boer +Prison--Torturing a Black Prisoner + + +CHAPTER LXIX. +An Absorbing Novelty--The Kimberley Diamond Mines--Discovery of Diamonds +--The Wronged Stranger--Where the Gems Are--A Judicious Change of +Boundary--Modern Machinery and Appliances--Thrilling Excitement in +Finding a Diamond--Testing a Diamond--Fences--Deep Mining by Natives in +the Compound--Stealing--Reward for the Biggest Diamond--A Fortune in +Wine--The Great Diamond--Office of the De Beer Co.--Sorting the Gems +--Cape Town--The Most Imposing Man in British Provinces--Various Reasons +for his Supremacy--How He Makes Friends + + +CONCLUSION. +Table Rock--Table Bay--The Castle--Government and Parliament--The Club +--Dutch Mansions and their Hospitality--Dr. John Barry and his Doings--On +the Ship Norman--Madeira--Arrived in Southampton + + + + + + FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR + + +CHAPTER I. + +A man may have no bad habits and have worse. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The starting point of this lecturing-trip around the world was Paris, +where we had been living a year or two. + +We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations. This took +but little time. Two members of my family elected to go with me. Also a +carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is +out of place in a dictionary. + +We started westward from New York in midsummer, with Major Pond to manage +the platform-business as far as the Pacific. It was warm work, all the +way, and the last fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky, for in Oregon +and Columbia the forest fires were raging. We had an added week of smoke +at the seaboard, where we were obliged awhile for our ship. She had been +getting herself ashore in the smoke, and she had to be docked and +repaired. + +We sailed at last; and so ended a snail-paced march across the continent, +which had lasted forty days. + +We moved westward about mid-afternoon over a rippled and summer sea; an +enticing sea, a clean and cool sea, and apparently a welcome sea to all +on board; it certainly was to the distressful dustings and smokings and +swelterings of the past weeks. The voyage would furnish a three-weeks +holiday, with hardly a break in it. We had the whole Pacific Ocean in +front of us, with nothing to do but do nothing and be comfortable. The +city of Victoria was twinkling dim in the deep heart of her smoke-cloud, +and getting ready to vanish and now we closed the field-glasses and sat +down on our steamer chairs contented and at peace. But they went to +wreck and ruin under us and brought us to shame before all the +passengers. They had been furnished by the largest furniture-dealing +house in Victoria, and were worth a couple of farthings a dozen, though +they had cost us the price of honest chairs. In the Pacific and Indian +Oceans one must still bring his own deck-chair on board or go without, +just as in the old forgotten Atlantic times--those Dark Ages of sea +travel. + +Ours was a reasonably comfortable ship, with the customary sea-going fare +--plenty of good food furnished by the Deity and cooked by the devil. +The discipline observable on board was perhaps as good as it is anywhere +in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The ship was not very well arranged +for tropical service; but that is nothing, for this is the rule for ships +which ply in the tropics. She had an over-supply of cockroaches, but +this is also the rule with ships doing business in the summer seas--at +least such as have been long in service. Our young captain was a very +handsome man, tall and perfectly formed, the very figure to show up a +smart uniform's best effects. He was a man of the best intentions and +was polite and courteous even to courtliness. There was a soft and +finish about his manners which made whatever place he happened to be in +seem for the moment a drawing room. He avoided the smoking room. He had +no vices. He did not smoke or chew tobacco or take snuff; he did not +swear, or use slang or rude, or coarse, or indelicate language, or make +puns, or tell anecdotes, or laugh intemperately, or raise his voice above +the moderate pitch enjoined by the canons of good form. When he gave an +order, his manner modified it into a request. After dinner he and his +officers joined the ladies and gentlemen in the ladies' saloon, and +shared in the singing and piano playing, and helped turn the music. He +had a sweet and sympathetic tenor voice, and used it with taste and +effect the music he played whist there, always with the same partner and +opponents, until the ladies' bedtime. The electric lights burned there +as late as the ladies and their friends might desire; but they were not +allowed to burn in the smoking-room after eleven. There were many laws +on the ship's statute book of course; but so far as I could see, this and +one other were the only ones that were rigidly enforced. The captain +explained that he enforced this one because his own cabin adjoined the +smoking-room, and the smell of tobacco smoke made him sick. I did not +see how our smoke could reach him, for the smoking-room and his cabin +were on the upper deck, targets for all the winds that blew; and besides +there was no crack of communication between them, no opening of any sort +in the solid intervening bulkhead. Still, to a delicate stomach even +imaginary smoke can convey damage. + +The captain, with his gentle nature, his polish, his sweetness, his moral +and verbal purity, seemed pathetically out of place in his rude and +autocratic vocation. It seemed another instance of the irony of fate. + +He was going home under a cloud. The passengers knew about his trouble, +and were sorry for him. Approaching Vancouver through a narrow and +difficult passage densely befogged with smoke from the forest fires, he +had had the ill-luck to lose his bearings and get his ship on the rocks. +A matter like this would rank merely as an error with you and me; it +ranks as a crime with the directors of steamship companies. The captain +had been tried by the Admiralty Court at Vancouver, and its verdict had +acquitted him of blame. But that was insufficient comfort. A sterner +court would examine the case in Sydney--the Court of Directors, the lords +of a company in whose ships the captain had served as mate a number of +years. This was his first voyage as captain. + +The officers of our ship were hearty and companionable young men, and +they entered into the general amusements and helped the passengers pass +the time. Voyages in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are but pleasure +excursions for all hands. Our purser was a young Scotchman who was +equipped with a grit that was remarkable. He was an invalid, and looked +it, as far as his body was concerned, but illness could not subdue his +spirit. He was full of life, and had a gay and capable tongue. To all +appearances he was a sick man without being aware of it, for he did not +talk about his ailments, and his bearing and conduct were those of a +person in robust health; yet he was the prey, at intervals, of ghastly +sieges of pain in his heart. These lasted many hours, and while the +attack continued he could neither sit nor lie. In one instance he stood +on his feet twenty-four hours fighting for his life with these sharp +agonies, and yet was as full of life and cheer and activity +the next day as if nothing had happened. + +The brightest passenger in the ship, and the most interesting and +felicitous talker, was a young Canadian who was not able to let the +whisky bottle alone. He was of a rich and powerful family, and could have +had a distinguished career and abundance of effective help toward it if +he could have conquered his appetite for drink; but he could not do it, +so his great equipment of talent was of no use to him. He had often taken +the pledge to drink no more, and was a good sample of what that sort of +unwisdom can do for a man--for a man with anything short of an iron will. +The system is wrong in two ways: it does not strike at the root of the +trouble, for one thing, and to make a pledge of any kind is to declare +war against nature; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking and +reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man. + +I have said that the system does not strike at the root of the trouble, +and I venture to repeat that. The root is not the drinking, but the +desire to drink. These are very different things. The one merely +requires will--and a great deal of it, both as to bulk and staying +capacity--the other merely requires watchfulness--and for no long time. +The desire of course precedes the act, and should have one's first +attention; it can do but little good to refuse the act over and over +again, always leaving the desire unmolested, unconquered; the desire will +continue to assert itself, and will be almost sure to win in the long +run. When the desire intrudes, it should be at once banished out of the +mind. One should be on the watch for it all the time--otherwise it will +get in. It must be taken in time and not allowed to get a lodgment. A +desire constantly repulsed for a fortnight should die, then. That should +cure the drinking habit. The system of refusing the mere act of +drinking, and leaving the desire in full force, is unintelligent war +tactics, it seems to me. I used to take pledges--and soon violate them. +My will was not strong, and I could not help it. And then, to be tied in +any way naturally irks an otherwise free person and makes him chafe in +his bonds and want to get his liberty. But when I finally ceased from +taking definite pledges, and merely resolved that I would kill an +injurious desire, but leave myself free to resume the desire and the +habit whenever I should choose to do so, I had no more trouble. In five +days I drove out the desire to smoke and was not obliged to keep watch +after that; and I never experienced any strong desire to smoke again. At +the end of a year and a quarter of idleness I began to write a book, and +presently found that the pen was strangely reluctant to go. I tried a +smoke to see if that would help me out of the difficulty. It did. I +smoked eight or ten cigars and as many pipes a day for five months; +finished the book, and did not smoke again until a year had gone by and +another book had to be begun. + +I can quit any of my nineteen injurious habits at any time, and without +discomfort or inconvenience. I think that the Dr. Tanners and those +others who go forty days without eating do it by resolutely keeping out +the desire to eat, in the beginning, and that after a few hours the +desire is discouraged and comes no more. + +Once I tried my scheme in a large medical way. I had been confined to my +bed several days with lumbago. My case refused to improve. Finally the +doctor said,-- + +"My remedies have no fair chance. Consider what they have to fight, +besides the lumbago. You smoke extravagantly, don't you?" + +"Yes." + +"You take coffee immoderately?" + +"Yes." + +"And some tea?" + +"Yes." + +"You eat all kinds of things that are dissatisfied with each other's +company?" + +"Yes." + +"You drink two hot Scotches every night?" + +"Yes." + +"Very well, there you see what I have to contend against. We can't make +progress the way the matter stands. You must make a reduction in these +things; you must cut down your consumption of them considerably for some +days." + +"I can't, doctor." + +"Why can't you." + +"I lack the will-power. I can cut them off entirely, but I can't merely +moderate them." + +He said that that would answer, and said he would come around in +twenty-four hours and begin work again. He was taken ill himself and +could not come; but I did not need him. I cut off all those things for +two days and nights; in fact, I cut off all kinds of food, too, and all +drinks except water, and at the end of the forty-eight hours the lumbago +was discouraged and left me. I was a well man; so I gave thanks and took +to those delicacies again. + +It seemed a valuable medical course, and I recommended it to a lady. She +had run down and down and down, and had at last reached a point where +medicines no longer had any helpful effect upon her. I said I knew I +could put her upon her feet in a week. It brightened her up, it filled +her with hope, and she said she would do everything I told her to do. So +I said she must stop swearing and drinking, and smoking and eating for +four days, and then she would be all right again. And it would have +happened just so, I know it; but she said she could not stop swearing, +and smoking, and drinking, because she had never done those things. So +there it was. She had neglected her habits, and hadn't any. Now that +they would have come good, there were none in stock. She had nothing to +fall back on. She was a sinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw +over lighten ship withal. Why, even one or two little bad habits could +have saved her, but she was just a moral pauper. When she could have +acquired them she was dissuaded by her parents, who were ignorant people +though reared in the best society, and it was too late to begin now. It +seemed such a pity; but there was no help for it. These things ought to +be attended to while a person is young; otherwise, when age and disease +come, there is nothing effectual to fight them with. + +When I was a youth I used to take all kinds of pledges, and do my best to +keep them, but I never could, because I didn't strike at the root of the +habit--the desire; I generally broke down within the month. Once I tried +limiting a habit. That worked tolerably well for a while. I pledged +myself to smoke but one cigar a day. I kept the cigar waiting until +bedtime, then I had a luxurious time with it. But desire persecuted me +every day and all day long; so, within the week I found myself hunting +for larger cigars than I had been used to smoke; then larger ones still, +and still larger ones. Within the fortnight I was getting cigars made +for me--on a yet larger pattern. They still grew and grew in size. +Within the month my cigar had grown to such proportions that I could have +used it as a crutch. It now seemed to me that a one-cigar limit was no +real protection to a person, so I knocked my pledge on the head and +resumed my liberty. + +To go back to that young Canadian. He was a "remittance man," the first +one I had ever seen or heard of. Passengers explained the term to me. +They said that dissipated ne'er-do-wells belonging to important families +in England and Canada were not cast off by their people while there was +any hope of reforming them, but when that last hope perished at last, the +ne'er-do-well was sent abroad to get him out of the way. He was shipped +off with just enough money in his pocket--no, in the purser's pocket--for +the needs of the voyage--and when he reached his destined port he would +find a remittance awaiting him there. Not a large one, but just enough +to keep him a month. A similar remittance would come monthly thereafter. +It was the remittance-man's custom to pay his month's board and lodging +straightway--a duty which his landlord did not allow him to forget--then +spree away the rest of his money in a single night, then brood and mope +and grieve in idleness till the next remittance came. It is a pathetic +life. + +We had other remittance-men on board, it was said. At least they said +they were R. M.'s. There were two. But they did not resemble the +Canadian; they lacked his tidiness, and his brains, and his gentlemanly +ways, and his resolute spirit, and his humanities and generosities. One +of them was a lad of nineteen or twenty, and he was a good deal of a +ruin, as to clothes, and morals, and general aspect. He said he was a +scion of a ducal house in England, and had been shipped to Canada for the +house's relief, that he had fallen into trouble there, and was now being +shipped to Australia. He said he had no title. Beyond this remark he +was economical of the truth. The first thing he did in Australia was to +get into the lockup, and the next thing he did was to proclaim himself an +earl in the police court in the morning and fail to prove it. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +When in doubt, tell the truth. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +About four days out from Victoria we plunged into hot weather, and all +the male passengers put on white linen clothes. One or two days later we +crossed the 25th parallel of north latitude, and then, by order, the +officers of the ship laid away their blue uniforms and came out in white +linen ones. All the ladies were in white by this time. This prevalence +of snowy costumes gave the promenade deck an invitingly cool, and +cheerful and picnicky aspect. + +From my diary: + +There are several sorts of ills in the world from which a person can +never escape altogether, let him journey as far as he will. One escapes +from one breed of an ill only to encounter another breed of it. We have +come far from the snake liar and the fish liar, and there was rest and +peace in the thought; but now we have reached the realm of the boomerang +liar, and sorrow is with us once more. The first officer has seen a man +try to escape from his enemy by getting behind a tree; but the enemy sent +his boomerang sailing into the sky far above and beyond the tree; then it +turned, descended, and killed the man. The Australian passenger has seen +this thing done to two men, behind two trees--and by the one arrow. This +being received with a large silence that suggested doubt, he buttressed +it with the statement that his brother once saw the boomerang kill a bird +away off a hundred yards and bring it to the thrower. But these are ills +which must be borne. There is no other way. + +The talk passed from the boomerang to dreams--usually a fruitful subject, +afloat or ashore--but this time the output was poor. Then it passed to +instances of extraordinary memory--with better results. Blind Tom, the +negro pianist, was spoken of, and it was said that he could accurately +play any piece of music, howsoever long and difficult, after hearing it +once; and that six months later he could accurately play it again, +without having touched it in the interval. One of the most striking of +the stories told was furnished by a gentleman who had served on the staff +of the Viceroy of India. He read the details from his note-book, and +explained that he had written them down, right after the consummation of +the incident which they described, because he thought that if he did not +put them down in black and white he might presently come to think he had +dreamed them or invented them. + +The Viceroy was making a progress, and among the shows offered by the +Maharajah of Mysore for his entertainment was a memory-exhibition. +The Viceroy and thirty gentlemen of his suite sat in a row, and the +memory-expert, a high-caste Brahmin, was brought in and seated on the +floor in front of them. He said he knew but two languages, the English +and his own, but would not exclude any foreign tongue from the tests to +be applied to his memory. Then he laid before the assemblage his program +--a sufficiently extraordinary one. He proposed that one gentleman +should give him one word of a foreign sentence, and tell him its place in +the sentence. He was furnished with the French word 'est', and was told +it was second in a sentence of three words. The next, gentleman gave him +the German word 'verloren' and said it was the third in a sentence of +four words. He asked the next gentleman for one detail in a sum in +addition; another for one detail in a sum of subtraction; others for +single details in mathematical problems of various kinds; he got them. +Intermediates gave him single words from sentences in Greek, Latin, +Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and other languages, and told him their +places in the sentences. When at last everybody had furnished him a +single rag from a foreign sentence or a figure from a problem, he went +over the ground again, and got a second word and a second figure and was +told their places in the sentences and the sums; and so on and so on. He +went over the ground again and again until he had collected all the parts +of the sums and all the parts of the sentences--and all in disorder, of +course, not in their proper rotation. This had occupied two hours. + +The Brahmin now sat silent and thinking, a while, then began and repeated +all the sentences, placing the words in their proper order, and untangled +the disordered arithmetical problems and gave accurate answers to them +all. + +In the beginning he had asked the company to throw almonds at him during +the two hours, he to remember how many each gentleman had thrown; but +none were thrown, for the Viceroy said that the test would be a +sufficiently severe strain without adding that burden to it. + +General Grant had a fine memory for all kinds of things, including even +names and faces, and I could have furnished an instance of it if I had +thought of it. The first time I ever saw him was early in his first term +as President. I had just arrived in Washington from the Pacific coast, a +stranger and wholly unknown to the public, and was passing the White +House one morning when I met a friend, a Senator from Nevada. He asked +me if I would like to see the President. I said I should be very glad; +so we entered. I supposed that the President would be in the midst of a +crowd, and that I could look at him in peace and security from a +distance, as another stray cat might look at another king. But it was in +the morning, and the Senator was using a privilege of his office which I +had not heard of--the privilege of intruding upon the Chief Magistrate's +working hours. Before I knew it, the Senator and I were in the presence, +and there was none there but we three. General Grant got slowly up from +his table, put his pen down, and stood before me with the iron expression +of a man who had not smiled for seven years, and was not intending to +smile for another seven. He looked me steadily in the eyes--mine lost +confidence and fell. I had never confronted a great man before, and was +in a miserable state of funk and inefficiency. The Senator said:-- + +"Mr. President, may I have the privilege of introducing Mr. Clemens?" + +The President gave my hand an unsympathetic wag and dropped it. He did +not say a word but just stood. In my trouble I could not think of +anything to say, I merely wanted to resign. There was an awkward pause, +a dreary pause, a horrible pause. Then I thought of something, and +looked up into that unyielding face, and said timidly:-- + +"Mr. President, I--I am embarrassed. Are you?" + +His face broke--just a little--a wee glimmer, the momentary flicker of a +summer-lightning smile, seven years ahead of time--and I was out and gone +as soon as it was. + +Ten years passed away before I saw him the second time. Meantime I was +become better known; and was one of the people appointed to respond to +toasts at the banquet given to General Grant in Chicago--by the Army of +the Tennessee when he came back from his tour around the world. I +arrived late at night and got up late in the morning. All the corridors +of the hotel were crowded with people waiting to get a glimpse of General +Grant when he should pass to the place whence he was to review the great +procession. I worked my way by the suite of packed drawing-rooms, and at +the corner of the house I found a window open where there was a roomy +platform decorated with flags, and carpeted. I stepped out on it, and +saw below me millions of people blocking all the streets, and other +millions caked together in all the windows and on all the house-tops +around. These masses took me for General Grant, and broke into volcanic +explosions and cheers; but it was a good place to see the procession, and +I stayed. Presently I heard the distant blare of military music, and far +up the street I saw the procession come in sight, cleaving its way +through the huzzaing multitudes, with Sheridan, the most martial +figure of the War, riding at its head in the dress uniform of a +Lieutenant-General. + +And now General Grant, arm-in-arm with Major Carter Harrison, stepped out +on the platform, followed two and two by the badged and uniformed +reception committee. General Grant was looking exactly as he had looked +upon that trying occasion of ten years before--all iron and bronze +self-possession. Mr. Harrison came over and led me to the General and +formally introduced me. Before I could put together the proper remark, +General Grant said-- + +"Mr. Clemens, I am not embarrassed. Are you?"--and that little +seven-year smile twinkled across his face again. + +Seventeen years have gone by since then, and to-day, in New York, the +streets are a crush of people who are there to honor the remains of the +great soldier as they pass to their final resting-place under the +monument; and the air is heavy with dirges and the boom of artillery, and +all the millions of America are thinking of the man who restored the +Union and the flag, and gave to democratic government a new lease of +life, and, as we may hope and do believe, a permanent place among the +beneficent institutions of men. + +We had one game in the ship which was a good time-passer--at least it was +at night in the smoking-room when the men were getting freshened up from +the day's monotonies and dullnesses. It was the completing of +non-complete stories. That is to say, a man would tell all of a story +except the finish, then the others would try to supply the ending out of +their own invention. When every one who wanted a chance had had it, the +man who had introduced the story would give it its original ending--then +you could take your choice. Sometimes the new endings turned out to be +better than the old one. But the story which called out the most +persistent and determined and ambitious effort was one which had no +ending, and so there was nothing to compare the new-made endings with. +The man who told it said he could furnish the particulars up to a certain +point only, because that was as much of the tale as he knew. He had read +it in a volume of `sketches twenty-five years ago, and was interrupted +before the end was reached. He would give any one fifty dollars who +would finish the story to the satisfaction of a jury to be appointed by +ourselves. We appointed a jury and wrestled with the tale. We invented +plenty of endings, but the jury voted them all down. The jury was right. +It was a tale which the author of it may possibly have completed +satisfactorily, and if he really had that good fortune I would like to +know what the ending was. Any ordinary man will find that the story's +strength is in its middle, and that there is apparently no way to +transfer it to the close, where of course it ought to be. In substance +the storiette was as follows: + +John Brown, aged thirty-one, good, gentle, bashful, timid, lived in a +quiet village in Missouri. He was superintendent of the Presbyterian +Sunday-school. It was but a humble distinction; still, it was his only +official one, and he was modestly proud of it and was devoted to its work +and its interests. The extreme kindliness of his nature was recognized +by all; in fact, people said that he was made entirely out of good +impulses and bashfulness; that he could always be counted upon for help +when it was needed, and for bashfulness both when it was needed and when +it wasn't. + +Mary Taylor, twenty-three, modest, sweet, winning, and in character and +person beautiful, was all in all to him. And he was very nearly all in +all to her. She was wavering, his hopes were high. Her mother had been +in opposition from the first. But she was wavering, too; he could +see it. She was being touched by his warm interest in her two +charity-proteges and by his contributions toward their support. These +were two forlorn and aged sisters who lived in a log hut in a lonely +place up a cross road four miles from Mrs. Taylor's farm. One of the +sisters was crazy, and sometimes a little violent, but not often. + +At last the time seemed ripe for a final advance, and Brown gathered his +courage together and resolved to make it. He would take along a +contribution of double the usual size, and win the mother over; with her +opposition annulled, the rest of the conquest would be sure and prompt. + +He took to the road in the middle of a placid Sunday afternoon in the +soft Missourian summer, and he was equipped properly for his mission. He +was clothed all in white linen, with a blue ribbon for a necktie, and he +had on dressy tight boots. His horse and buggy were the finest that the +livery stable could furnish. The lap robe was of white linen, it was +new, and it had a hand-worked border that could not be rivaled in that +region for beauty and elaboration. + +When he was four miles out on the lonely road and was walking his horse +over a wooden bridge, his straw hat blew off and fell in the creek, and +floated down and lodged against a bar. He did not quite know what to do. +He must have the hat, that was manifest; but how was he to get it? + +Then he had an idea. The roads were empty, nobody was stirring. Yes, he +would risk it. He led the horse to the roadside and set it to cropping +the grass; then he undressed and put his clothes in the buggy, petted the +horse a moment to secure its compassion and its loyalty, then hurried to +the stream. He swam out and soon had the hat. When he got to the top of +the bank the horse was gone! + +His legs almost gave way under him. The horse was walking leisurely +along the road. Brown trotted after it, saying, "Whoa, whoa, there's a +good fellow;" but whenever he got near enough to chance a jump for the +buggy, the horse quickened its pace a little and defeated him. And so +this went on, the naked man perishing with anxiety, and expecting every +moment to see people come in sight. He tagged on and on, imploring the +horse, beseeching the horse, till he had left a mile behind him, and was +closing up on the Taylor premises; then at last he was successful, and +got into the buggy. He flung on his shirt, his necktie, and his coat; +then reached for--but he was too late; he sat suddenly down and pulled up +the lap-robe, for he saw some one coming out of the gate--a woman; he +thought. He wheeled the horse to the left, and struck briskly up the +cross-road. It was perfectly straight, and exposed on both sides; but +there were woods and a sharp turn three miles ahead, and he was very +grateful when he got there. As he passed around the turn he slowed down +to a walk, and reached for his tr---- too late again. + +He had come upon Mrs. Enderby, Mrs. Glossop, Mrs. Taylor, and Mary. +They were on foot, and seemed tired and excited. They came at once to +the buggy and shook hands, and all spoke at once, and said eagerly and +earnestly, how glad they were that he was come, and how fortunate it was. +And Mrs. Enderby said, impressively: + +"It looks like an accident, his coming at such a time; but let no one +profane it with such a name; he was sent--sent from on high." + +They were all moved, and Mrs. Glossop said in an awed voice: + +"Sarah Enderby, you never said a truer word in your life. This is no +accident, it is a special Providence. He was sent. He is an angel--an +angel as truly as ever angel was--an angel of deliverance. I say angel, +Sarah Enderby, and will have no other word. Don't let any one ever say +to me again, that there's no such thing as special Providences; for if +this isn't one, let them account for it that can." + +"I know it's so," said Mrs. Taylor, fervently. "John Brown, I could +worship you; I could go down on my knees to you. Didn't something tell +you?--didn't you feel that you were sent? I could kiss the hem of your +laprobe." + +He was not able to speak; he was helpless with shame and fright. Mrs. +Taylor went on: + +"Why, just look at it all around, Julia Glossop. Any person can see the +hand of Providence in it. Here at noon what do we see? We see the smoke +rising. I speak up and say, 'That's the Old People's cabin afire.' +Didn't I, Julia Glossop?" + +"The very words you said, Nancy Taylor. I was as close to you as I am +now, and I heard them. You may have said hut instead of cabin, but in +substance it's the same. And you were looking pale, too." + +"Pale? I was that pale that if--why, you just compare it with this +laprobe. Then the next thing I said was, 'Mary Taylor, tell the hired +man to rig up the team-we'll go to the rescue.' And she said, 'Mother, +don't you know you told him he could drive to see his people, and stay +over Sunday?' And it was just so. I declare for it, I had forgotten it. +'Then,' said I, 'we'll go afoot.' And go we did. And found Sarah +Enderby on the road." + +"And we all went together," said Mrs. Enderby. "And found the cabin set +fire to and burnt down by the crazy one, and the poor old things so old +and feeble that they couldn't go afoot. And we got them to a shady place +and made them as comfortable as we could, and began to wonder which way +to turn to find some way to get them conveyed to Nancy Taylor's house. +And I spoke up and said--now what did I say? Didn't I say, 'Providence +will provide'?" + +"Why sure as you live, so you did! I had forgotten it." + +"So had I," said Mrs. Glossop and Mrs. Taylor; "but you certainly said +it. Now wasn't that remarkable?" + +"Yes, I said it. And then we went to Mr. Moseley's, two miles, and all +of them were gone to the camp meeting over on Stony Fork; and then we +came all the way back, two miles, and then here, another mile--and +Providence has provided. You see it yourselves" + +They gazed at each other awe-struck, and lifted their hands and said in +unison: + +"It's per-fectly wonderful." + +"And then," said Mrs. Glossop, "what do you think we had better do let +Mr. Brown drive the Old People to Nancy Taylor's one at a time, or put +both of them in the buggy, and him lead the horse?" + +Brown gasped. + +"Now, then, that's a question," said Mrs. Enderby. "You see, we are all +tired out, and any way we fix it it's going to be difficult. For if Mr. +Brown takes both of them, at least one of us must, go back to help him, +for he can't load them into the buggy by himself, and they so helpless." + +"That is so," said Mrs. Taylor. "It doesn't look-oh, how would this do? +--one of us drive there with Mr. Brown, and the rest of you go along to +my house and get things ready. I'll go with him. He and I together can +lift one of the Old People into the buggy; then drive her to my house +and---- + +"But who will take care of the other one?" said Mrs. Enderby. "We +musn't leave her there in the woods alone, you know--especially the crazy +one. There and back is eight miles, you see." + +They had all been sitting on the grass beside the buggy for a while, now, +trying to rest their weary bodies. They fell silent a moment or two, and +struggled in thought over the baffling situation; then Mrs. Enderby +brightened and said: + +"I think I've got the idea, now. You see, we can't walk any more. Think +what we've done: four miles there, two to Moseley's, is six, then back to +here--nine miles since noon, and not a bite to eat; I declare I don't see +how we've done it; and as for me, I am just famishing. Now, somebody's +got to go back, to help Mr. Brown--there's no getting mound that; but +whoever goes has got to ride, not walk. So my idea is this: one of us to +ride back with Mr. Brown, then ride to Nancy Taylor's house with one of +the Old People, leaving Mr. Brown to keep the other old one company, you +all to go now to Nancy's and rest and wait; then one of you drive back +and get the other one and drive her to Nancy's, and Mr. Brown walk." + +"Splendid!" they all cried. "Oh, that will do--that will answer +perfectly." And they all said that Mrs. Enderby had the best head for +planning, in the company; and they said that they wondered that they +hadn't thought of this simple plan themselves. They hadn't meant to take +back the compliment, good simple souls, and didn't know they had done it. +After a consultation it was decided that Mrs. Enderby should drive back +with Brown, she being entitled to the distinction because she had +invented the plan. Everything now being satisfactorily arranged and +settled, the ladies rose, relieved and happy, and brushed down their +gowns, and three of them started homeward; Mrs. Enderby set her foot on +the buggy-step and was about to climb in, when Brown found a remnant of +his voice and gasped out-- + +"Please Mrs. Enderby, call them back--I am very weak; I can't walk, I +can't, indeed." + +"Why, dear Mr. Brown! You do look pale; I am ashamed of myself that I +didn't notice it sooner. Come back-all of you! Mr. Brown is not well. +Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Brown?--I'm real sorry. Are you +in pain?" + +"No, madam, only weak; I am not sick, but only just weak--lately; not +long, but just lately." + +The others came back, and poured out their sympathies and commiserations, +and were full of self-reproaches for not having noticed how pale he was. + +And they at once struck out a new plan, and soon agreed that it was by +far the best of all. They would all go to Nancy Taylor's house and see +to Brown's needs first. He could lie on the sofa in the parlor, and +while Mrs. Taylor and Mary took care of him the other two ladies would +take the buggy and go and get one of the Old People, and leave one of +themselves with the other one, and---- + +By this time, without any solicitation, they were at the horse's head and +were beginning to turn him around. The danger was imminent, but Brown +found his voice again and saved himself. He said-- + +"But ladies, you are overlooking something which makes the plan +impracticable. You see, if you bring one of them home, and one remains +behind with the other, there will be three persons there when one of you +comes back for that other, for some one must drive the buggy back, and +three can't come home in it." + +They all exclaimed, "Why, sure-ly, that is so!" and they were, all +perplexed again. + +"Dear, dear, what can we do?" said Mrs. Glossop; "it is the most +mixed-up thing that ever was. The fox and the goose and the corn and +things-- Oh, dear, they are nothing to it." + +They sat wearily down once more, to further torture their tormented heads +for a plan that would work. Presently Mary offered a plan; it was her +first effort. She said: + +"I am young and strong, and am refreshed, now. Take Mr. Brown to our +house, and give him help--you see how plainly he needs it. I will go +back and take care of the Old People; I can be there in twenty minutes. +You can go on and do what you first started to do--wait on the main road +at our house until somebody comes along with a wagon; then send and bring +away the three of us. You won't have to wait long; the farmers will soon +be coming back from town, now. I will keep old Polly patient and cheered +up--the crazy one doesn't need it." + +This plan was discussed and accepted; it seemed the best that could be +done, in the circumstances, and the Old People must be getting +discouraged by this time. + +Brown felt relieved, and was deeply thankful. Let him once get to the +main road and he would find a way to escape. + +Then Mrs. Taylor said: + +"The evening chill will be coming on, pretty soon, and those poor old +burnt-out things will need some kind of covering. Take the lap-robe with +you, dear." + +"Very well, Mother, I will." + +She stepped to the buggy and put out her hand to take it---- + +That was the end of the tale. The passenger who told it said that when +he read the story twenty-five years ago in a train he was interrupted at +that point--the train jumped off a bridge. + +At first we thought we could finish the story quite easily, and we set to +work with confidence; but it soon began to appear that it was not a +simple thing, but difficult and baffling. This was on account of Brown's +character--great generosity and kindliness, but complicated with unusual +shyness and diffidence, particularly in the presence of ladies. There +was his love for Mary, in a hopeful state but not yet secure--just in a +condition, indeed, where its affair must be handled with great tact, and +no mistakes made, no offense given. And there was the mother wavering, +half willing-by adroit and flawless diplomacy to be won over, now, or +perhaps never at all. Also, there were the helpless Old People yonder in +the woods waiting-their fate and Brown's happiness to be determined by +what Brown should do within the next two seconds. Mary was reaching for +the lap-robe; Brown must decide-there was no time to be lost. + +Of course none but a happy ending of the story would be accepted by the +jury; the finish must find Brown in high credit with the ladies, his +behavior without blemish, his modesty unwounded, his character for self +sacrifice maintained, the Old People rescued through him, their +benefactor, all the party proud of him, happy in him, his praises on all +their tongues. + +We tried to arrange this, but it was beset with persistent and +irreconcilable difficulties. We saw that Brown's shyness would not allow +him to give up the lap-robe. This would offend Mary and her mother; and +it would surprise the other ladies, partly because this stinginess toward +the suffering Old People would be out of character with Brown, and partly +because he was a special Providence and could not properly act so. If +asked to explain his conduct, his shyness would not allow him to tell the +truth, and lack of invention and practice would find him incapable of +contriving a lie that would wash. We worked at the troublesome problem +until three in the morning. + +Meantime Mary was still reaching for the lap-robe. We gave it up, and +decided to let her continue to reach. It is the reader's privilege to +determine for himself how the thing came out. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +On the seventh day out we saw a dim vast bulk standing up out of the +wastes of the Pacific and knew that that spectral promontory was Diamond +Head, a piece of this world which I had not seen before for twenty-nine +years. So we were nearing Honolulu, the capital city of the Sandwich +Islands--those islands which to me were Paradise; a Paradise which I had +been longing all those years to see again. Not any other thing in the +world could have stirred me as the sight of that great rock did. + +In the night we anchored a mile from shore. Through my port I could see +the twinkling lights of Honolulu and the dark bulk of the mountain-range +that stretched away right and left. I could not make out the beautiful +Nuuana valley, but I knew where it lay, and remembered how it used to +look in the old times. We used to ride up it on horseback in those days +--we young people--and branch off and gather bones in a sandy region +where one of the first Kamehameha's battles was fought. He was a +remarkable man, for a king; and he was also a remarkable man for a +savage. He was a mere kinglet and of little or no consequence at the +time of Captain Cook's arrival in 1788; but about four years afterward he +conceived the idea of enlarging his sphere of influence. That is a +courteous modern phrase which means robbing your neighbor--for your +neighbor's benefit; and the great theater of its benevolences is Africa. +Kamehameha went to war, and in the course of ten years he whipped out all +the other kings and made himself master of every one of the nine or ten +islands that form the group. But he did more than that. He bought +ships, freighted them with sandal wood and other native products, and +sent them as far as South America and China; he sold to his savages the +foreign stuffs and tools and utensils which came back in these ships, and +started the march of civilization. It is doubtful if the match to this +extraordinary thing is to be found in the history of any other savage. +Savages are eager to learn from the white man any new way to kill each +other, but it is not their habit to seize with avidity and apply with +energy the larger and nobler ideas which he offers them. The details of +Kamehameha's history show that he was always hospitably ready to examine +the white man's ideas, and that he exercised a tidy discrimination in +making his selections from the samples placed on view. + +A shrewder discrimination than was exhibited by his son and successor, +Liholiho, I think. Liholiho could have qualified as a reformer, perhaps, +but as a king he was a mistake. A mistake because he tried to be both +king and reformer. This is mixing fire and gunpowder together. A king +has no proper business with reforming. His best policy is to keep things +as they are; and if he can't do that, he ought to try to make them worse +than they are. This is not guesswork; I have thought over this matter a +good deal, so that if I should ever have a chance to become a king I +would know how to conduct the business in the best way. + +When Liholiho succeeded his father he found himself possessed of an +equipment of royal tools and safeguards which a wiser king would have +known how to husband, and judiciously employ, and make profitable. The +entire country was under the one scepter, and his was that scepter. +There was an Established Church, and he was the head of it. There was a +Standing Army, and he was the head of that; an Army of 114 privates under +command of 27 Generals and a Field Marshal. There was a proud and +ancient Hereditary Nobility. There was still one other asset. This was +the tabu--an agent endowed with a mysterious and stupendous power, an +agent not found among the properties of any European monarch, a tool of +inestimable value in the business. Liholiho was headmaster of the tabu. +The tabu was the most ingenious and effective of all the inventions that +has ever been devised for keeping a people's privileges satisfactorily +restricted. + +It required the sexes to live in separate houses. It did not allow +people to eat in either house; they must eat in another place. It did +not allow a man's woman-folk to enter his house. It did not allow the +sexes to eat together; the men must eat first, and the women must wait on +them. Then the women could eat what was left--if anything was left--and +wait on themselves. I mean, if anything of a coarse or unpalatable sort +was left, the women could have it. But not the good things, the fine +things, the choice things, such as pork, poultry, bananas, cocoanuts, the +choicer varieties of fish, and so on. By the tabu, all these were sacred +to the men; the women spent their lives longing for them and wondering +what they might taste like; and they died without finding out. + +These rules, as you see, were quite simple and clear. It was easy to +remember them; and useful. For the penalty for infringing any rule in +the whole list was death. Those women easily learned to put up with +shark and taro and dog for a diet when the other things were so +expensive. + +It was death for any one to walk upon tabu'd ground; or defile a tabu'd +thing with his touch; or fail in due servility to a chief; or step upon +the king's shadow. The nobles and the King and the priests were always +suspending little rags here and there and yonder, to give notice to the +people that the decorated spot or thing was tabu, and death lurking near. +The struggle for life was difficult and chancy in the islands in those +days. + +Thus advantageously was the new king situated. Will it be believed that +the first thing he did was to destroy his Established Church, root and +branch? He did indeed do that. To state the case figuratively, he was a +prosperous sailor who burnt his ship and took to a raft. This Church was +a horrid thing. It heavily oppressed the people; it kept them always +trembling in the gloom of mysterious threatenings; it slaughtered them in +sacrifice before its grotesque idols of wood and stone; it cowed them, it +terrorized them, it made them slaves to its priests, and through the +priests to the king. It was the best friend a king could have, and the +most dependable. To a professional reformer who should annihilate so +frightful and so devastating a power as this Church, reverence and praise +would be due; but to a king who should do it, could properly be due +nothing but reproach; reproach softened by sorrow; sorrow for his +unfitness for his position. + +He destroyed his Established Church, and his kingdom is a republic today, +in consequence of that act. + +When he destroyed the Church and burned the idols he did a mighty thing +for civilization and for his people's weal--but it was not "business." +It was unkingly, it was inartistic. It made trouble for his line. The +American missionaries arrived while the burned idols were still smoking. +They found the nation without a religion, and they repaired the defect. +They offered their own religion and it was gladly received. But it was +no support to arbitrary kingship, and so the kingly power began to weaken +from that day. Forty-seven years later, when I was in the islands, +Kainehameha V. was trying to repair Liholiho's blunder, and not +succeeding. He had set up an Established Church and made himself the +head of it. But it was only a pinchbeck thing, an imitation, a bauble, +an empty show. It had no power, no value for a king. It could not harry +or burn or slay, it in no way resembled the admirable machine which +Liholiho destroyed. It was an Established Church without an +Establishment; all the people were Dissenters. + +Long before that, the kingship had itself become but a name, a show. At +an early day the missionaries had turned it into something very much like +a republic; and here lately the business whites have turned it into +something exactly like it. + +In Captain Cook's time (1778), the native population of the islands was +estimated at 400,000; in 1836 at something short of 200,000, in 1866 at +50,000; it is to-day, per census, 25,000. All intelligent people praise +Kamehameha I. and Liholiho for conferring upon their people the great +boon of civilization. I would do it myself, but my intelligence is out +of repair, now, from over-work. + +When I was in the islands nearly a generation ago, I was acquainted with +a young American couple who had among their belongings an attractive +little son of the age of seven--attractive but not practicably +companionable with me, because he knew no English. He had played from +his birth with the little Kanakas on his father's plantation, and had +preferred their language and would learn no other. The family removed to +America a month after I arrived in the islands, and straightway the boy +began to lose his Kanaka and pick up English. By the time he was twelve +be hadn't a word of Kanaka left; the language had wholly departed from +his tongue and from his comprehension. Nine years later, when he was +twenty-one, I came upon the family in one of the lake towns of New York, +and the mother told me about an adventure which her son had been having. +By trade he was now a professional diver. A passenger boat had been +caught in a storm on the lake, and had gone down, carrying her people +with her. A few days later the young diver descended, with his armor on, +and entered the berth-saloon of the boat, and stood at the foot of the +companionway, with his hand on the rail, peering through the dim water. +Presently something touched him on the shoulder, and he turned and found +a dead man swaying and bobbing about him and seemingly inspecting him +inquiringly. He was paralyzed with fright. His entry had disturbed the +water, and now he discerned a number of dim corpses making for him and +wagging their heads and swaying their bodies like sleepy people trying to +dance. His senses forsook him, and in that condition he was drawn to the +surface. He was put to bed at home, and was soon very ill. During some +days he had seasons of delirium which lasted several hours at a time; and +while they lasted he talked Kanaka incessantly and glibly; and Kanaka +only. He was still very ill, and he talked to me in that tongue; but I +did not understand it, of course. The doctor-books tell us that cases +like this are not uncommon. Then the doctors ought to study the cases +and find out how to multiply them. Many languages and things get mislaid +in a person's head, and stay mislaid for lack of this remedy. + +Many memories of my former visit to the islands came up in my mind while +we lay at anchor in front of Honolulu that night. And pictures--pictures +pictures--an enchanting procession of them! I was impatient for the +morning to come. + +When it came it brought disappointment, of course. Cholera had broken +out in the town, and we were not allowed to have any communication with +the shore. Thus suddenly did my dream of twenty-nine years go to ruin. +Messages came from friends, but the friends themselves I was not to have +any sight of. My lecture-hall was ready, but I was not to see that, +either. + +Several of our passengers belonged in Honolulu, and these were sent +ashore; but nobody could go ashore and return. There were people on +shore who were booked to go with us to Australia, but we could not +receive them; to do it would cost us a quarantine-term in Sydney. They +could have escaped the day before, by ship to San Francisco; but the bars +had been put up, now, and they might have to wait weeks before any ship +could venture to give them a passage any whither. And there were +hardships for others. An elderly lady and her son, recreation-seekers +from Massachusetts, had wandered westward, further and further from home, +always intending to take the return track, but always concluding to go +still a little further; and now here they were at anchor before Honolulu +positively their last westward-bound indulgence--they had made up their +minds to that--but where is the use in making up your mind in this world? +It is usually a waste of time to do it. These two would have to stay +with us as far as Australia. Then they could go on around the world, or +go back the way they had come; the distance and the accommodations and +outlay of time would be just the same, whichever of the two routes they +might elect to take. Think of it: a projected excursion of five hundred +miles gradually enlarged, without any elaborate degree of intention, to a +possible twenty-four thousand. However, they were used to extensions by +this time, and did not mind this new one much. + +And we had with us a lawyer from Victoria, who had been sent out by the +Government on an international matter, and he had brought his wife with +him and left the children at home with the servants and now what was to +be done? Go ashore amongst the cholera and take the risks? Most +certainly not. They decided to go on, to the Fiji islands, wait there a +fortnight for the next ship, and then sail for home. They couldn't +foresee that they wouldn't see a homeward-bound ship again for six weeks, +and that no word could come to them from the children, and no word go +from them to the children in all that time. It is easy to make plans in +this world; even a cat can do it; and when one is out in those remote +oceans it is noticeable that a cat's plans and a man's are worth about +the same. There is much the same shrinkage in both, in the matter of +values. + +There was nothing for us to do but sit about the decks in the shade of +the awnings and look at the distant shore. We lay in luminous blue +water; shoreward the water was green-green and brilliant; at the shore +itself it broke in a long white ruffle, and with no crash, no sound that +we could hear. The town was buried under a mat of foliage that looked +like a cushion of moss. The silky mountains were clothed in soft, rich +splendors of melting color, and some of the cliffs were veiled in +slanting mists. I recognized it all. It was just as I had seen it long +before, with nothing of its beauty lost, nothing of its charm wanting. + +A change had come, but that was political, and not visible from the ship. +The monarchy of my day was gone, and a republic was sitting in its seat. +It was not a material change. The old imitation pomps, the fuss and +feathers, have departed, and the royal trademark--that is about all that +one could miss, I suppose. That imitation monarchy, was grotesque +enough, in my time; if it had held on another thirty years it would have +been a monarchy without subjects of the king's race. + +We had a sunset of a very fine sort. The vast plain of the sea was +marked off in bands of sharply-contrasted colors: great stretches of dark +blue, others of purple, others of polished bronze; the billowy mountains +showed all sorts of dainty browns and greens, blues and purples and +blacks, and the rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want to +stroke them, as one would the sleek back of a cat. The long, sloping +promontory projecting into the sea at the west turned dim and leaden and +spectral, then became suffused with pink--dissolved itself in a pink +dream, so to speak, it seemed so airy and unreal. Presently the +cloud-rack was flooded with fiery splendors, and these were copied on the +surface of the sea, and it made one drunk with delight to look upon it. + +From talks with certain of our passengers whose home was Honolulu, and +from a sketch by Mrs. Mary H. Krout, I was able to perceive what the +Honolulu of to-day is, as compared with the Honolulu of my time. In my +time it was a beautiful little town, made up of snow-white wooden +cottages deliciously smothered in tropical vines and flowers and trees +and shrubs; and its coral roads and streets were hard and smooth, and as +white as the houses. The outside aspects of the place suggested the +presence of a modest and comfortable prosperity--a general prosperity +--perhaps one might strengthen the term and say universal. There were no +fine houses, no fine furniture. There were no decorations. Tallow +candles furnished the light for the bedrooms, a whale-oil lamp furnished +it for the parlor. Native matting served as carpeting. In the parlor +one would find two or three lithographs on the walls--portraits as a +rule: Kamehameha IV., Louis Kossuth, Jenny Lind; and may be an engraving +or two: Rebecca at the Well, Moses smiting the rock, Joseph's servants +finding the cup in Benjamin's sack. There would be a center table, with +books of a tranquil sort on it: The Whole Duty of Man, Baxter's Saints' +Rest, Fox's Martyrs, Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy, bound copies of The +Missionary Herald and of Father Damon's Seaman's Friend. A melodeon; a +music stand, with 'Willie, We have Missed You', 'Star of the Evening', +'Roll on Silver Moon', 'Are We Most There', 'I Would not Live Alway', and +other songs of love and sentiment, together with an assortment of hymns. +A what-not with semi-globular glass paperweights, enclosing miniature +pictures of ships, New England rural snowstorms, and the like; sea-shells +with Bible texts carved on them in cameo style; native curios; whale's +tooth with full-rigged ship carved on it. There was nothing reminiscent +of foreign parts, for nobody had been abroad. Trips were made to San +Francisco, but that could not be called going abroad. Comprehensively +speaking, nobody traveled. + +But Honolulu has grown wealthy since then, and of course wealth has +introduced changes; some of the old simplicities have disappeared. Here +is a modern house, as pictured by Mrs. Krout: + + "Almost every house is surrounded by extensive lawns and gardens + enclosed by walls of volcanic stone or by thick hedges of the + brilliant hibiscus. + + "The houses are most tastefully and comfortably furnished; the + floors are either of hard wood covered with rugs or with fine Indian + matting, while there is a preference, as in most warm countries, for + rattan or bamboo furniture; there are the usual accessories of + bric-a-brac, pictures, books, and curios from all parts of the world, + for these island dwellers are indefatigable travelers. + + "Nearly every house has what is called a lanai. It is a large + apartment, roofed, floored, open on three sides, with a door or a + draped archway opening into the drawing-room. Frequently the roof + is formed by the thick interlacing boughs of the hou tree, + impervious to the sun and even to the rain, except in violent + storms. Vines are trained about the sides--the stephanotis or some + one of the countless fragrant and blossoming trailers which abound + in the islands. There are also curtains of matting that may be + drawn to exclude the sun or rain. The floor is bare for coolness, + or partially covered with rugs, and the lanai is prettily furnished + with comfortable chairs, sofas, and tables loaded with flowers, or + wonderful ferns in pots. + + "The lanai is the favorite reception room, and here at any social + function the musical program is given and cakes and ices are served; + here morning callers are received, or gay riding parties, the ladies + in pretty divided skirts, worn for convenience in riding astride, + --the universal mode adopted by Europeans and Americans, as well as + by the natives. + + "The comfort and luxury of such an apartment, especially at a + seashore villa, can hardly be imagined. The soft breezes sweep + across it, heavy with the fragrance of jasmine and gardenia, and + through the swaying boughs of palm and mimosa there are glimpses of + rugged mountains, their summits veiled in clouds, of purple sea with + the white surf beating eternally against the reefs, whiter still in + the yellow sunlight or the magical moonlight of the tropics." + +There: rugs, ices, pictures, lanais, worldly books, sinful bric-a-brac +fetched from everywhere. And the ladies riding astride. These are +changes, indeed. In my time the native women rode astride, but the white +ones lacked the courage to adopt their wise custom. In my time ice was +seldom seen in Honolulu. It sometimes came in sailing vessels from New +England as ballast; and then, if there happened to be a man-of-war in +port and balls and suppers raging by consequence, the ballast was worth +six hundred dollars a ton, as is evidenced by reputable tradition. But +the ice-machine has traveled all over the world, now, and brought ice +within everybody's reach. In Lapland and Spitzbergen no one uses native +ice in our day, except the bears and the walruses. + +The bicycle is not mentioned. It was not necessary. We know that it is +there, without inquiring. It is everywhere. But for it, people could +never have had summer homes on the summit of Mont Blanc; before its day, +property up there had but a nominal value. The ladies of the Hawaiian +capital learned too late the right way to occupy a horse--too late to get +much benefit from it. The riding-horse is retiring from business +everywhere in the world. In Honolulu a few years from now he will be +only a tradition. + +We all know about Father Damien, the French priest who voluntarily +forsook the world and went to the leper island of Molokai to labor among +its population of sorrowful exiles who wait there, in slow-consuming +misery, for death to cone and release them from their troubles; and we +know that the thing which he knew beforehand would happen, did happen: +that he became a leper himself, and died of that horrible disease. There +was still another case of self-sacrifice, it appears. I asked after +"Billy" Ragsdale, interpreter to the Parliament in my time--a half-white. +He was a brilliant young fellow, and very popular. As an interpreter he +would have been hard to match anywhere. He used to stand up in the +Parliament and turn the English speeches into Hawaiian and the Hawaiian +speeches into English with a readiness and a volubility that were +astonishing. I asked after him, and was told that his prosperous career +was cut short in a sudden and unexpected way, just as he was about to +marry a beautiful half-caste girl. He discovered, by some nearly +invisible sign about his skin, that the poison of leprosy was in him. +The secret was his own, and might be kept concealed for years; but he +would not be treacherous to the girl that loved him; he would not marry +her to a doom like his. And so he put his affairs in order, and went +around to all his friends and bade them good-bye, and sailed in the leper +ship to Molokai. There he died the loathsome and lingering death that +all lepers die. + +In this place let me insert a paragraph or two from "The Paradise of +the Pacific" (Rev. H. H. Gowen)-- + + "Poor lepers! It is easy for those who have no relatives or friends + among them to enforce the decree of segregation to the letter, but + who can write of the terrible, the heart-breaking scenes which that + enforcement has brought about? + + "A man upon Hawaii was suddenly taken away after a summary arrest, + leaving behind him a helpless wife about to give birth to a babe. + The devoted wife with great pain and risk came the whole journey to + Honolulu, and pleaded until the authorities were unable to resist + her entreaty that she might go and live like a leper with her leper + husband. + + "A woman in the prime of life and activity is condemned as an + incipient leper, suddenly removed from her home, and her husband + returns to find his two helpless babes moaning for their lost + mother. + + "Imagine it! The case of the babies is hard, but its bitterness is + a trifle--less than a trifle--less than nothing--compared to what + the mother must suffer; and suffer minute by minute, hour by hour, + day by day, month by month, year by year, without respite, relief, + or any abatement of her pain till she dies. + + "One woman, Luka Kaaukau, has been living with her leper husband in + the settlement for twelve years. The man has scarcely a joint left, + his limbs are only distorted ulcerated stumps, for four years his + wife has put every particle of food into his mouth. He wanted his + wife to abandon his wretched carcass long ago, as she herself was + sound and well, but Luka said that she was content to remain and + wait on the man she loved till the spirit should be freed from its + burden. + + "I myself have known hard cases enough:--of a girl, apparently in + full health, decorating the church with me at Easter, who before + Christmas is taken away as a confirmed leper; of a mother hiding her + child in the mountains for years so that not even her dearest + friends knew that she had a child alive, that he might not be taken + away; of a respectable white man taken away from his wife and + family, and compelled to become a dweller in the Leper Settlement, + where he is counted dead, even by the insurance companies." + +And one great pity of it all is, that these poor sufferers are innocent. +The leprosy does not come of sins which they committed, but of sins +committed by their ancestors, who escaped the curse of leprosy! + +Mr. Gowan has made record of a certain very striking circumstance. Would +you expect to find in that awful Leper Settlement a custom worthy to be +transplanted to your own country? They have one such, and it is +inexpressibly touching and beautiful. When death sets open the +prison-door of life there, the band salutes the freed soul with a burst +of glad music! + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +A dozen direct censures are easier to bear than one morganatic +compliment. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Sailed from Honolulu.--From diary: + +Sept. 2. Flocks of flying fish-slim, shapely, graceful, and intensely +white. With the sun on them they look like a flight of silver +fruit-knives. They are able to fly a hundred yards. + +Sept. 3. In 9 deg. 50' north latitude, at breakfast. Approaching the +equator on a long slant. Those of us who have never seen the equator are +a good deal excited. I think I would rather see it than any other thing +in the world. We entered the "doldrums" last night--variable winds, +bursts of rain, intervals of calm, with chopping seas and a wobbly and +drunken motion to the ship--a condition of things findable in +other regions sometimes, but present in the doldrums always. The +globe-girdling belt called the doldrums is 20 degrees wide, and the +thread called the equator lies along the middle of it. + +Sept. 4. Total eclipse of the moon last night. At 1.30 it began to go +off. At total--or about that--it was like a rich rosy cloud with a +tumbled surface framed in the circle and projecting from it--a bulge of +strawberry-ice, so to speak. At half-eclipse the moon was like a gilded +acorn in its cup. + +Sept. 5. Closing in on the equator this noon. A sailor explained to a +young girl that the ship's speed is poor because we are climbing up the +bulge toward the center of the globe; but that when we should once get +over, at the equator, and start down-hill, we should fly. When she asked +him the other day what the fore-yard was, he said it was the front yard, +the open area in the front end of the ship. That man has a good deal of +learning stored up, and the girl is likely to get it all. + +Afternoon. Crossed the equator. In the distance it looked like a blue +ribbon stretched across the ocean. Several passengers kodak'd it. We +had no fool ceremonies, no fantastics, no horse play. All that sort of +thing has gone out. In old times a sailor, dressed as Neptune, used to +come in over the bows, with his suite, and lather up and shave everybody +who was crossing the equator for the first time, and then cleanse these +unfortunates by swinging them from the yard-arm and ducking them three +times in the sea. This was considered funny. Nobody knows why. No, that +is not true. We do know why. Such a thing could never be funny on land; +no part of the old-time grotesque performances gotten up on shipboard to +celebrate the passage of the line would ever be funny on shore--they +would seem dreary and less to shore people. But the shore people would +change their minds about it at sea, on a long voyage. On such a voyage, +with its eternal monotonies, people's intellects deteriorate; the owners +of the intellects soon reach a point where they almost seem to prefer +childish things to things of a maturer degree. One is often surprised at +the juvenilities which grown people indulge in at sea, and the interest +they take in them, and the consuming enjoyment they get out of them. +This is on long voyages only. The mind gradually becomes inert, dull, +blunted; it loses its accustomed interest in intellectual things; nothing +but horse-play can rouse it, nothing but wild and foolish grotesqueries +can entertain it. On short voyages it makes no such exposure of itself; +it hasn't time to slump down to this sorrowful level. + +The short-voyage passenger gets his chief physical exercise out of +"horse-billiards"--shovel-board. It is a good game. We play it in this +ship. A quartermaster chalks off a diagram like this-on the deck. + +The player uses a cue that is like a broom-handle with a quarter-moon of +wood fastened to the end of it. With this he shoves wooden disks the +size of a saucer--he gives the disk a vigorous shove and sends it fifteen +or twenty feet along the deck and lands it in one of the squares if he +can. If it stays there till the inning is played out, it will count as +many points in the game as the figure in the square it has stopped in +represents. The adversary plays to knock that disk out and leave his own +in its place--particularly if it rests upon the 9 or 10 or some other of +the high numbers; but if it rests in the "10off" he backs it up--lands +his disk behind it a foot or two, to make it difficult for its owner to +knock it out of that damaging place and improve his record. When the +inning is played out it may be found that each adversary has placed his +four disks where they count; it may be found that some of them are +touching chalk lines and not counting; and very often it will be found +that there has been a general wreckage, and that not a disk has been left +within the diagram. Anyway, the result is recorded, whatever it is, and +the game goes on. The game is 100 points, and it takes from twenty +minutes to forty to play it, according to luck and the condition of the +sea. It is an exciting game, and the crowd of spectators furnish +abundance of applause for fortunate shots and plenty of laughter for the +other kind. It is a game of skill, but at the same time the uneasy +motion of the ship is constantly interfering with skill; this makes it a +chancy game, and the element of luck comes largely in. + +We had a couple of grand tournaments, to determine who should be +"Champion of the Pacific"; they included among the participants nearly +all the passengers, of both sexes, and the officers of the ship, and they +afforded many days of stupendous interest and excitement, and murderous +exercise--for horse-billiards is a physically violent game. + +The figures in the following record of some of the closing games in the +first tournament will show, better than any description, how very chancy +the game is. The losers here represented had all been winners in the +previous games of the series, some of them by fine majorities: + +Chase,102 Mrs. D.,57 Mortimer, 105 The Surgeon, 92 +Miss C.,105 Mrs. T.,9 Clemens, 101 Taylor,92 +Taylor,109 Davies,95 Miss C., 108 Mortimer,55 +Thomas,102 Roper,76 Clemens, 111 Miss C.,89 +Coomber, 106 Chase,98 + +And so on; until but three couples of winners were left. Then I beat my +man, young Smith beat his man, and Thomas beat his. This reduced the +combatants to three. Smith and I took the deck, and I led off. At the +close of the first inning I was 10 worse than nothing and Smith had +scored 7. The luck continued against me. When I was 57, Smith was 97 +--within 3 of out. The luck changed then. He picked up a 10-off or so, +and couldn't recover. I beat him. + +The next game would end tournament No. 1. + +Mr. Thomas and I were the contestants. He won the lead and went to the +bat--so to speak. And there he stood, with the crotch of his cue resting +against his disk while the ship rose slowly up, sank slowly down, rose +again, sank again. She never seemed to rise to suit him exactly. She +started up once more; and when she was nearly ready for the turn, he let +drive and landed his disk just within the left-hand end of the 10. +(Applause). The umpire proclaimed "a good 10," and the game-keeper set +it down. I played: my disk grazed the edge of Mr. Thomas's disk, and +went out of the diagram. (No applause.) + +Mr. Thomas played again--and landed his second disk alongside of the +first, and almost touching its right-hand side. "Good 10." (Great +applause.) + +I played, and missed both of them. (No applause.) + +Mr. Thomas delivered his third shot and landed his disk just at the right +of the other two. "Good 10." (Immense applause.) + +There they lay, side by side, the three in a row. It did not seem +possible that anybody could miss them. Still I did it. (Immense +silence.) + +Mr. Thomas played his last disk. It seems incredible, but he actually +landed that disk alongside of the others, and just to the right of them-a +straight solid row of 4 disks. (Tumultuous and long-continued applause.) + +Then I played my last disk. Again it did not seem possible that anybody +could miss that row--a row which would have been 14 inches long if the +disks had been clamped together; whereas, with the spaces separating them +they made a longer row than that. But I did it. It may be that I was +getting nervous. + +I think it unlikely that that innings has ever had its parallel in the +history of horse-billiards. To place the four disks side by side in the +10 was an extraordinary feat; indeed, it was a kind of miracle. To miss +them was another miracle. It will take a century to produce another man +who can place the four disks in the 10; and longer than that to find a +man who can't knock them out. I was ashamed of my performance at the +time, but now that I reflect upon it I see that it was rather fine and +difficult. + +Mr. Thomas kept his luck, and won the game, and later the championship. + +In a minor tournament I won the prize, which was a Waterbury watch. I +put it in my trunk. In Pretoria, South Africa, nine months afterward, my +proper watch broke down and I took the Waterbury out, wound it, set it by +the great clock on the Parliament House (8.05), then went back to my room +and went to bed, tired from a long railway journey. The parliamentary +clock had a peculiarity which I was not aware of at the time +--a peculiarity which exists in no other clock, and would not exist in that +one if it had been made by a sane person; on the half-hour it strikes the +succeeding hour, then strikes the hour again, at the proper time. I lay +reading and smoking awhile; then, when I could hold my eyes open no +longer and was about to put out the light, the great clock began to boom, +and I counted ten. I reached for the Waterbury to see how it was getting +along. It was marking 9.30. It seemed rather poor speed for a +three-dollar watch, but I supposed that the climate was affecting it. I +shoved it half an hour ahead; and took to my book and waited to see what +would happen. At 10 the great clock struck ten again. I looked--the +Waterbury was marking half-past 10. This was too much speed for the +money, and it troubled me. I pushed the hands back a half hour, and +waited once more; I had to, for I was vexed and restless now, and my +sleepiness was gone. By and by the great clock struck 11. The Waterbury +was marking 10.30. I pushed it ahead half an hour, with some show of +temper. By and by the great clock struck 11 again. The Waterbury showed +up 11.30, now, and I beat her brains out against the bedstead. I was +sorry next day, when I found out. + +To return to the ship. + +The average human being is a perverse creature; and when he isn't that, +he is a practical joker. The result to the other person concerned is +about the same: that is, he is made to suffer. The washing down of the +decks begins at a very early hour in all ships; in but few ships are any +measures taken to protect the passengers, either by waking or warning +them, or by sending a steward to close their ports. And so the +deckwashers have their opportunity, and they use it. They send a bucket +of water slashing along the side of the ship and into the ports, +drenching the passenger's clothes, and often the passenger himself. This +good old custom prevailed in this ship, and under unusually favorable +circumstances, for in the blazing tropical regions a removable zinc thing +like a sugarshovel projects from the port to catch the wind and bring it +in; this thing catches the wash-water and brings it in, too--and in +flooding abundance. Mrs. L, an invalid, had to sleep on the locker--sofa +under her port, and every time she over-slept and thus failed to take +care of herself, the deck-washers drowned her out. + +And the painters, what a good time they had! This ship would be going +into dock for a month in Sydney for repairs; but no matter, painting was +going on all the time somewhere or other. The ladies' dresses were +constantly getting ruined, nevertheless protests and supplications went +for nothing. Sometimes a lady, taking an afternoon nap on deck near a +ventilator or some other thing that didn't need painting, would wake up +by and by and find that the humorous painter had been noiselessly daubing +that thing and had splattered her white gown all over with little greasy +yellow spots. + +The blame for this untimely painting did not lie with the ship's +officers, but with custom. As far back as Noah's time it became law that +ships must be constantly painted and fussed at when at sea; custom grew +out of the law, and at sea custom knows no death; this custom will +continue until the sea goes dry. + +Sept. 8.--Sunday. We are moving so nearly south that we cross only about +two meridians of longitude a day. This morning we were in longitude 178 +west from Greenwich, and 57 degrees west from San Francisco. To-morrow +we shall be close to the center of the globe--the 180th degree of west +longitude and 180th degree of east longitude. + +And then we must drop out a day-lose a day out of our lives, a day never +to be found again. We shall all die one day earlier than from the +beginning of time we were foreordained to die. We shall be a day +behindhand all through eternity. We shall always be saying to the other +angels, "Fine day today," and they will be always retorting, "But it +isn't to-day, it's tomorrow." We shall be in a state of confusion all the +time and shall never know what true happiness is. + +Next Day. Sure enough, it has happened. Yesterday it was September 8, +Sunday; to-day, per the bulletin-board at the head of the companionway, +it is September 10, Tuesday. There is something uncanny about it. And +uncomfortable. In fact, nearly unthinkable, and wholly unrealizable, +when one comes to consider it. While we were crossing the 180th meridian +it was Sunday in the stern of the ship where my family were, and Tuesday +in the bow where I was. They were there eating the half of a fresh apple +on the 8th, and I was at the same time eating the other half of it on the +10th--and I could notice how stale it was, already. The family were the +same age that they were when I had left them five minutes before, but I +was a day older now than I was then. The day they were living in +stretched behind them half way round the globe, across the Pacific Ocean +and America and Europe; the day I was living in stretched in front of me +around the other half to meet it. They were stupendous days for bulk and +stretch; apparently much larger days than we had ever been in before. +All previous days had been but shrunk-up little things by comparison. +The difference in temperature between the two days was very marked, their +day being hotter than mine because it was closer to the equator. + +Along about the moment that we were crossing the Great Meridian a child +was born in the steerage, and now there is no way to tell which day it +was born on. The nurse thinks it was Sunday, the surgeon thinks it was +Tuesday. The child will never know its own birthday. It will always be +choosing first one and then the other, and will never be able to make up +its mind permanently. This will breed vacillation and uncertainty in its +opinions about religion, and politics, and business, and sweethearts, and +everything, and will undermine its principles, and rot them away, and +make the poor thing characterless, and its success in life impossible. +Every one in the ship says so. And this is not all--in fact, not the +worst. For there is an enormously rich brewer in the ship who said as +much as ten days ago, that if the child was born on his birthday he would +give it ten thousand dollars to start its little life with. His birthday +was Monday, the 9th of September. + +If the ships all moved in the one direction--westward, I mean--the world +would suffer a prodigious loss--in the matter of valuable time, through +the dumping overboard on the Great Meridian of such multitudes of days by +ships crews and passengers. But fortunately the ships do not all sail +west, half of them sail east. So there is no real loss. These latter +pick up all the discarded days and add them to the world's stock again; +and about as good as new, too; for of course the salt water preserves +them. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as +if she had laid an asteroid. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +WEDNESDAY, Sept. 11. In this world we often make mistakes of judgment. +We do not as a rule get out of them sound and whole, but sometimes we do. +At dinner yesterday evening-present, a mixture of Scotch, English, +American, Canadian, and Australasian folk--a discussion broke out about +the pronunciation of certain Scottish words. This was private ground, +and the non-Scotch nationalities, with one exception, discreetly kept +still. But I am not discreet, and I took a hand. I didn't know anything +about the subject, but I took a hand just to have something to do. At +that moment the word in dispute was the word three. One Scotchman was +claiming that the peasantry of Scotland pronounced it three, his +adversaries claimed that they didn't--that they pronounced it 'thraw'. +The solitary Scot was having a sultry time of it, so I thought I would +enrich him with my help. In my position I was necessarily quite +impartial, and was equally as well and as ill equipped to fight on the +one side as on the other. So I spoke up and said the peasantry +pronounced the word three, not thraw. It was an error of judgment. +There was a moment of astonished and ominous silence, then weather +ensued. The storm rose and spread in a surprising way, and I was snowed +under in a very few minutes. It was a bad defeat for me--a kind of +Waterloo. It promised to remain so, and I wished I had had better sense +than to enter upon such a forlorn enterprise. But just then I had a +saving thought--at least a thought that offered a chance. While the +storm was still raging, I made up a Scotch couplet, and then spoke up and +said: + +"Very well, don't say any more. I confess defeat. I thought I knew, but +I see my mistake. I was deceived by one of your Scotch poets." + +"A Scotch poet! O come! Name him." + +"Robert Burns." + +It is wonderful the power of that name. These men looked doubtful--but +paralyzed, all the same. They were quite silent for a moment; then one +of them said--with the reverence in his voice which is always present in +a Scotchman's tone when he utters the name. + +"Does Robbie Burns say--what does he say?" + +"This is what he says: + + 'There were nae bairns but only three + --Ane at the breast, twa at the knee.'" + +It ended the discussion. There was no man there profane enough, disloyal +enough, to say any word against a thing which Robert Burns had settled. +I shall always honor that great name for the salvation it brought me in +this time of my sore need. + +It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with +confidence, stands a good chance to deceive. There are people who think +that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition; there +are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it. + +We are moving steadily southward-getting further and further down under +the projecting paunch of the globe. Yesterday evening we saw the Big +Dipper and the north star sink below the horizon and disappear from our +world. No, not "we," but they. They saw it--somebody saw it--and told +me about it. But it is no matter, I was not caring for those things, I +am tired of them, any way. I think they are well enough, but one doesn't +want them always hanging around. My interest was all in the Southern +Cross. I had never seen that. I had heard about it all my life, and it +was but natural that I should be burning to see it. No other +constellation makes so much talk. I had nothing against the Big Dipper +--and naturally couldn't have anything against it, since it is a citizen of +our own sky, and the property of the United States--but I did want it to +move out of the way and give this foreigner a chance. Judging by the +size of the talk which the Southern Cross had made, I supposed it would +need a sky all to itself. + +But that was a mistake. We saw the Cross to-night, and it is not large. +Not large, and not strikingly bright. But it was low down toward the +horizon, and it may improve when it gets up higher in the sky. It is +ingeniously named, for it looks just as a cross would look if it looked +like something else. But that description does not describe; it is too +vague, too general, too indefinite. It does after a fashion suggest a +cross across that is out of repair--or out of drawing; not correctly +shaped. It is long, with a short cross-bar, and the cross-bar is canted +out of the straight line. + +It consists of four large stars and one little one. The little one is +out of line and further damages the shape. It should have been placed at +the intersection of the stem and the cross-bar. If you do not draw an +imaginary line from star to star it does not suggest a cross--nor +anything in particular. + +One must ignore the little star, and leave it out of the combination--it +confuses everything. If you leave it out, then you can make out of the +four stars a sort of cross--out of true; or a sort of kite--out of true; +or a sort of coffin-out of true. + +Constellations have always been troublesome things to name. If you give +one of them a fanciful name, it will always refuse to live up to it; it +will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for. +Ultimately, to satisfy the public, the fanciful name has to be discarded +for a common-sense one, a manifestly descriptive one. The Great Bear +remained the Great Bear--and unrecognizable as such--for thousands of +years; and people complained about it all the time, and quite properly; +but as soon as it became the property of the United States, Congress +changed it to the Big Dipper, and now every body is satisfied, and there +is no more talk about riots. I would not change the Southern Cross to +the Southern Coffin, I would change it to the Southern Kite; for up there +in the general emptiness is the proper home of a kite, but not for +coffins and crosses and dippers. In a little while, now--I cannot +tell exactly how long it will be--the globe will belong to the +English-speaking race; and of course the skies also. Then the +constellations will be re-organized, and polished up, and re-named--the +most of them "Victoria," I reckon, but this one will sail thereafter as +the Southern Kite, or go out of business. Several towns and things, here +and there, have been named for Her Majesty already. + +In these past few days we are plowing through a mighty Milky Way of +islands. They are so thick on the map that one would hardly expect to +find room between them for a canoe; yet we seldom glimpse one. Once we +saw the dim bulk of a couple of them, far away, spectral and dreamy +things; members of the Horne-Alofa and Fortuna. On the larger one are +two rival native kings--and they have a time together. They are +Catholics; so are their people. The missionaries there are French +priests. + +From the multitudinous islands in these regions the "recruits" for the +Queensland plantations were formerly drawn; are still drawn from them, I +believe. Vessels fitted up like old-time slavers came here and carried +off the natives to serve as laborers in the great Australian province. +In the beginning it was plain, simple man-stealing, as per testimony of +the missionaries. This has been denied, but not disproven. Afterward it +was forbidden by law to "recruit" a native without his consent, and +governmental agents were sent in all recruiting vessels to see that the +law was obeyed--which they did, according to the recruiting people; and +which they sometimes didn't, according to the missionaries. A man could +be lawfully recruited for a three-years term of service; he could +volunteer for another term if he so chose; when his time was up he could +return to his island. And would also have the means to do it; for the +government required the employer to put money in its hands for this +purpose before the recruit was delivered to him. + +Captain Wawn was a recruiting ship-master during many years. From his +pleasant book one gets the idea that the recruiting business was quite +popular with the islanders, as a rule. And yet that did not make the +business wholly dull and uninteresting; for one finds rather frequent +little breaks in the monotony of it--like this, for instance: + + "The afternoon of our arrival at Leper Island the schooner was lying + almost becalmed under the lee of the lofty central portion of the + island, about three-quarters of a mile from the shore. The boats + were in sight at some distance. The recruiter-boat had run into a + small nook on the rocky coast, under a high bank, above which stood + a solitary hut backed by dense forest. The government agent and + mate in the second boat lay about 400 yards to the westward. + + "Suddenly we heard the sound of firing, followed by yells from the + natives on shore, and then we saw the recruiter-boat push out with a + seemingly diminished crew. The mate's boat pulled quickly up, took + her in tow, and presently brought her alongside, all her own crew + being more or less hurt. It seems the natives had called them into + the place on pretence of friendship. A crowd gathered about the + stern of the boat, and several fellows even got into her. All of a + sudden our men were attacked with clubs and tomahawks. The + recruiter escaped the first blows aimed at him, making play with his + fists until he had an opportunity to draw his revolver. 'Tom + Sayers,' a Mare man, received a tomahawk blow on the head which laid + the scalp open but did not penetrate his skull, fortunately. 'Bobby + Towns,' another Mare boatman, had both his thumbs cut in warding off + blows, one of them being so nearly severed from the hand that the + doctors had to finish the operation. Lihu, a Lifu boy, the + recruiter's special attendant, was cut and pricked in various + places, but nowhere seriously. Jack, an unlucky Tanna recruit, who + had been engaged to act as boatman, received an arrow through his + forearm, the head of which--apiece of bone seven or eight inches + long--was still in the limb, protruding from both sides, when the + boats returned. The recruiter himself would have got off scot-free + had not an arrow pinned one of his fingers to the loom of the + steering-oar just as they were getting off. The fight had been + short but sharp. The enemy lost two men, both shot dead." + +The truth is, Captain Wawn furnishes such a crowd of instances of fatal +encounters between natives and French and English recruiting-crews (for +the French are in the business for the plantations of New Caledonia), +that one is almost persuaded that recruiting is not thoroughly popular +among the islanders; else why this bristling string of attacks and +bloodcurdling slaughter? The captain lays it all to "Exeter Hall +influence." But for the meddling philanthropists, the native fathers and +mothers would be fond of seeing their children carted into exile and now +and then the grave, instead of weeping about it and trying to kill the +kind recruiters. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +He was as shy as a newspaper is when referring to its own merits. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Captain Wawn is crystal-clear on one point: He does not approve of +missionaries. They obstruct his business. They make "Recruiting," as he +calls it ("Slave-Catching," as they call it in their frank way) a trouble +when it ought to be just a picnic and a pleasure excursion. The +missionaries have their opinion about the manner in which the Labor +Traffic is conducted, and about the recruiter's evasions of the law of +the Traffic, and about the traffic itself--and it is distinctly +uncomplimentary to the Traffic and to everything connected with it, +including the law for its regulation. Captain Wawn's book is of very +recent date; I have by me a pamphlet of still later date--hot from the +press, in fact--by Rev. Wm. Gray, a missionary; and the book and the +pamphlet taken together make exceedingly interesting reading, to my mind. + +Interesting, and easy to understand--except in one detail, which I will +mention presently. It is easy to understand why the Queensland sugar +planter should want the Kanaka recruit: he is cheap. Very cheap, in +fact. These are the figures paid by the planter: L20 to the recruiter +for getting the Kanaka or "catching" him, as the missionary phrase goes; +L3 to the Queensland government for "superintending" the importation; L5 +deposited with the Government for the Kanaka's passage home when his +three years are up, in case he shall live that long; about L25 to the +Kanaka himself for three years' wages and clothing; total payment for the +use of a man three years, L53; or, including diet, L60. Altogether, a +hundred dollars a year. One can understand why the recruiter is fond of +the business; the recruit costs him a few cheap presents (given to the +recruit's relatives, not himself), and the recruit is worth L20 to the +recruiter when delivered in Queensland. All this is clear enough; but +the thing that is not clear is, what there is about it all to persuade +the recruit. He is young and brisk; life at home in his beautiful island +is one lazy, long holiday to him; or if he wants to work he can turn out +a couple of bags of copra per week and sell it for four or five shillings +a bag. In Queensland he must get up at dawn and work from eight to +twelve hours a day in the canefields--in a much hotter climate than he is +used to--and get less than four shillings a week for it. + +I cannot understand his willingness to go to Queensland. It is a deep +puzzle to me. Here is the explanation, from the planter's point of view; +at least I gather from the missionary's pamphlet that it is the +planter's: + + "When he comes from his home he is a savage, pure and simple. He + feels no shame at his nakedness and want of adornment. When he + returns home he does so well dressed, sporting a Waterbury watch, + collars, cuffs, boots, and jewelry. He takes with him one or more + boxes--["Box" is English for trunk.]--well filled with clothing, a + musical instrument or two, and perfumery and other articles of + luxury he has learned to appreciate." + +For just one moment we have a seeming flash of comprehension of, the +Kanaka's reason for exiling himself: he goes away to acquire +civilization. Yes, he was naked and not ashamed, now he is clothed and +knows how to be ashamed; he was unenlightened; now he has a Waterbury +watch; he was unrefined, now he has jewelry, and something to make him +smell good; he was a nobody, a provincial, now he has been to far +countries and can show off. + +It all looks plausible--for a moment. Then the missionary takes hold of +this explanation and pulls it to pieces, and dances on it, and damages it +beyond recognition. + + "Admitting that the foregoing description is the average one, the + average sequel is this: The cuffs and collars, if used at all, are + carried off by youngsters, who fasten them round the leg, just below + the knee, as ornaments. The Waterbury, broken and dirty, finds its + way to the trader, who gives a trifle for it; or the inside is taken + out, the wheels strung on a thread and hung round the neck. Knives, + axes, calico, and handkerchiefs are divided among friends, and there + is hardly one of these apiece. The boxes, the keys often lost on + the road home, can be bought for 2s. 6d. They are to be seen + rotting outside in almost any shore village on Tanna. (I speak of + what I have seen.) A returned Kanaka has been furiously angry with + me because I would not buy his trousers, which he declared were just + my fit. He sold them afterwards to one of my Aniwan teachers for + 9d. worth of tobacco--a pair of trousers that probably cost him 8s. + or 10s. in Queensland. A coat or shirt is handy for cold weather. + The white handkerchiefs, the 'senet' (perfumery), the umbrella, and + perhaps the hat, are kept. The boots have to take their chance, if + they do not happen to fit the copra trader. 'Senet' on the hair, + streaks of paint on the face, a dirty white handkerchief round the + neck, strips of turtle shell in the ears, a belt, a sheath and + knife, and an umbrella constitute the rig of returned Kanaka at home + the day after landing." + +A hat, an umbrella, a belt, a neckerchief. Otherwise stark naked. All +in a day the hard-earned "civilization" has melted away to this. And +even these perishable things must presently go. Indeed, there is but a +single detail of his civilization that can be depended on to stay by him: +according to the missionary, he has learned to swear. This is art, and +art is long, as the poet says. + +In all countries the laws throw light upon the past. The Queensland law +for the regulation of the Labor Traffic is a confession. It is a +confession that the evils charged by the missionaries upon the traffic +had existed in the past, and that they still existed when the law was +made. The missionaries make a further charge: that the law is evaded by +the recruiters, and that the Government Agent sometimes helps them to do +it. Regulation 31 reveals two things: that sometimes a young fool of a +recruit gets his senses back, after being persuaded to sign away his +liberty for three years, and dearly wants to get out of the engagement +and stay at home with his own people; and that threats, intimidation, and +force are used to keep him on board the recruiting-ship, and to hold him +to his contract. Regulation 31 forbids these coercions. The law +requires that he shall be allowed to go free; and another clause of it +requires the recruiter to set him ashore--per boat, because of the +prevalence of sharks. Testimony from Rev. Mr. Gray: + + "There are 'wrinkles' for taking the penitent Kanaka. My first + experience of the Traffic was a case of this kind in 1884. A vessel + anchored just out of sight of our station, word was brought to me + that some boys were stolen, and the relatives wished me to go and + get them back. The facts were, as I found, that six boys had + recruited, had rushed into the boat, the Government Agent informed + me. They had all 'signed'; and, said the Government Agent, 'on + board they shall remain.' I was assured that the six boys were of + age and willing to go. Yet on getting ready to leave the ship I + found four of the lads ready to come ashore in the boat! This I + forbade. One of them jumped into the water and persisted in coming + ashore in my boat. When appealed to, the Government Agent suggested + that we go and leave him to be picked up by the ship's boat, a + quarter mile distant at the time!" + +The law and the missionaries feel for the repentant recruit--and +properly, one may be permitted to think, for he is only a youth and +ignorant and persuadable to his hurt--but sympathy for him is not kept in +stock by the recruiter. Rev. Mr. Gray says: + + "A captain many years in the traffic explained to me how a penitent + could betaken. 'When a boy jumps overboard we just take a boat and + pull ahead of him, then lie between him and the shore. If he has + not tired himself swimming, and passes the boat, keep on heading him + in this way. The dodge rarely fails. The boy generally tires of + swimming, gets into the boat of his own accord, and goes quietly on + board." + +Yes, exhaustion is likely to make a boy quiet. If the distressed boy had +been the speaker's son, and the captors savages, the speaker would have +been surprised to see how differently the thing looked from the new point +of view; however, it is not our custom to put ourselves in the other +person's place. Somehow there is something pathetic about that +disappointed young savage's resignation. I must explain, here, that in +the traffic dialect, "boy" does not always mean boy; it means a youth +above sixteen years of age. That is by Queensland law the age of +consent, though it is held that recruiters allow themselves some latitude +in guessing at ages. + +Captain Wawn of the free spirit chafes under the annoyance of "cast-iron +regulations." They and the missionaries have poisoned his life. He +grieves for the good old days, vanished to come no more. See him weep; +hear him cuss between the lines! + + "For a long time we were allowed to apprehend and detain all + deserters who had signed the agreement on board ship, but the + 'cast-iron' regulations of the Act of 1884 put a stop to that, + allowing the Kanaka to sign the agreement for three years' service, + travel about in the ship in receipt of the regular rations, cadge + all he could, and leave when he thought fit, so long as he did not + extend his pleasure trip to Queensland." + +Rev. Mr. Gray calls this same restrictive cast-iron law a "farce." "There +is as much cruelty and injustice done to natives by acts that are legal +as by deeds unlawful. The regulations that exist are unjust and +inadequate--unjust and inadequate they must ever be." He furnishes his +reasons for his position, but they are too long for reproduction here. + +However, if the most a Kanaka advantages himself by a three-years course +in civilization in Queensland, is a necklace and an umbrella and a showy +imperfection in the art of swearing, it must be that all the profit of +the traffic goes to the white man. This could be twisted into a +plausible argument that the traffic ought to be squarely abolished. + +However, there is reason for hope that that can be left alone to achieve +itself. It is claimed that the traffic will depopulate its sources of +supply within the next twenty or thirty years. Queensland is a very +healthy place for white people--death-rate 12 in 1,000 of the population +--but the Kanaka death-rate is away above that. The vital statistics for +1893 place it at 52; for 1894 (Mackay district), 68. The first six +months of the Kanaka's exile are peculiarly perilous for him because of +the rigors of the new climate. The death-rate among the new men has +reached as high as 180 in the 1,000. In the Kanaka's native home his +death-rate is 12 in time of peace, and 15 in time of war. Thus exile to +Queensland--with the opportunity to acquire civilization, an umbrella, +and a pretty poor quality of profanity--is twelve times as deadly for him +as war. Common Christian charity, common humanity, does seem to require, +not only that these people be returned to their homes, but that war, +pestilence, and famine be introduced among them for their preservation. + +Concerning these Pacific isles and their peoples an eloquent prophet +spoke long years ago--five and fifty years ago. In fact, he spoke a +little too early. Prophecy is a good line of business, but it is full of +risks. This prophet was the Right Rev. M. Russell, LL.D., D.C.L., of +Edinburgh: + + "Is the tide of civilization to roll only to the foot of the Rocky + Mountains, and is the sun of knowledge to set at last in the waves + of the Pacific? No; the mighty day of four thousand years is + drawing to its close; the sun of humanity has performed its destined + course; but long ere its setting rays are extinguished in the west, + its ascending beams have glittered on the isles of the eastern seas + . . . . And now we see the race of Japhet setting forth to + people the isles, and the seeds of another Europe and a second + England sown in the regions of the sun. But mark the words of the + prophecy: 'He shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be + his servant.' It is not said Canaan shall be his slave. To the + Anglo-Saxon race is given the scepter of the globe, but there is not + given either the lash of the slave-driver or the rack of the + executioner. The East will not be stained with the same atrocities + as the West; the frightful gangrene of an enthralled race is not to + mar the destinies of the family of Japhet in the Oriental world; + humanizing, not destroying, as they advance; uniting with, not + enslaving, the inhabitants with whom they dwell, the British race + may," etc., etc. + +And he closes his vision with an invocation from Thomson: + + "Come, bright Improvement! on the car of Time, + And rule the spacious world from clime to clime." + +Very well, Bright Improvement has arrived, you see, with her +civilization, and her Waterbury, and her umbrella, and her third-quality +profanity, and her humanizing-not-destroying machinery, and her +hundred-and-eighty death-rate, and everything is going along just as +handsome! + +But the prophet that speaks last has an advantage over the pioneer in the +business. Rev. Mr. Gray says: + + "What I am concerned about is that we as a Christian nation should + wipe out these races to enrich ourselves." + +And he closes his pamphlet with a grim Indictment which is as eloquent in +its flowerless straightforward English as is the hand-painted rhapsody of +the early prophet: + + "My indictment of the Queensland-Kanaka Labor Traffic is this + + "1. It generally demoralizes and always impoverishes the Kanaka, + deprives him of his citizenship, and depopulates the islands fitted + to his home. + + "2. It is felt to lower the dignity of the white agricultural + laborer in Queensland, and beyond a doubt it lowers his wages there. + + "3. The whole system is fraught with danger to Australia and the + islands on the score of health. + + "4. On social and political grounds the continuance of the + Queensland Kanaka Labor Traffic must be a barrier to the true + federation of the Australian colonies. + + "5. The Regulations under which the Traffic exists in Queensland are + inadequate to prevent abuses, and in the nature of things they must + remain so. + + "6. The whole system is contrary to the spirit and doctrine of the + Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel requires us to help the weak, + but the Kanaka is fleeced and trodden down. + + "7. The bed-rock of this Traffic is that the life and liberty of a + black man are of less value than those of a white man. And a + Traffic that has grown out of 'slave-hunting' will certainly remain + to the end not unlike its origin." + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +From Diary:--For a day or two we have been plowing among an invisible +vast wilderness of islands, catching now and then a shadowy glimpse of a +member of it. There does seem to be a prodigious lot of islands this +year; the map of this region is freckled and fly-specked all over with +them. Their number would seem to be uncountable. We are moving among +the Fijis now--224 islands and islets in the group. In front of us, to +the west, the wilderness stretches toward Australia, then curves upward +to New Guinea, and still up and up to Japan; behind us, to the east, the +wilderness stretches sixty degrees across the wastes of the Pacific; +south of us is New Zealand. Somewhere or other among these myriads Samoa +is concealed, and not discoverable on the map. Still, if you wish to go +there, you will have no trouble about finding it if you follow the +directions given by Robert Louis Stevenson to Dr. Conan Doyle and to Mr. +J. M. Barrie. "You go to America, cross the continent to San Francisco, +and then it's the second turning to the left." To get the full flavor of +the joke one must take a glance at the map. + +Wednesday, September 11.--Yesterday we passed close to an island or so, +and recognized the published Fiji characteristics: a broad belt of clean +white coral sand around the island; back of it a graceful fringe of +leaning palms, with native huts nestling cosily among the shrubbery at +their bases; back of these a stretch of level land clothed in tropic +vegetation; back of that, rugged and picturesque mountains. A detail +of the immediate foreground: a mouldering ship perched high up on a +reef-bench. This completes the composition, and makes the picture +artistically perfect. + +In the afternoon we sighted Suva, the capital of the group, and threaded +our way into the secluded little harbor--a placid basin of brilliant blue +and green water tucked snugly in among the sheltering hills. A few ships +rode at anchor in it--one of them a sailing vessel flying the American +flag; and they said she came from Duluth! There's a journey! Duluth is +several thousand miles from the sea, and yet she is entitled to the proud +name of Mistress of the Commercial Marine of the United States of +America. There is only one free, independent, unsubsidized American ship +sailing the foreign seas, and Duluth owns it. All by itself that ship is +the American fleet. All by itself it causes the American name and power +to be respected in the far regions of the globe. All by itself it +certifies to the world that the most populous civilized nation, in the +earth has a just pride in her stupendous stretch of sea-front, and is +determined to assert and maintain her rightful place as one of the Great +Maritime Powers of the Planet. All by itself it is making foreign eyes +familiar with a Flag which they have not seen before for forty years, +outside of the museum. For what Duluth has done, in building, equipping, +and maintaining at her sole expense the American Foreign Commercial +Fleet, and in thus rescuing the American name from shame and lifting it +high for the homage of the nations, we owe her a debt of gratitude which +our hearts shall confess with quickened beats whenever her name is named +henceforth. Many national toasts will die in the lapse of time, but +while the flag flies and the Republic survives, they who live under their +shelter will still drink this one, standing and uncovered: Health and +prosperity to Thee, O Duluth, American Queen of the Alien Seas! + +Row-boats began to flock from the shore; their crews were the first +natives we had seen. These men carried no overplus of clothing, and this +was wise, for the weather was hot. Handsome, great dusky men they were, +muscular, clean-limbed, and with faces full of character and +intelligence. It would be hard to find their superiors anywhere among +the dark races, I should think. + +Everybody went ashore to look around, and spy out the land, and have that +luxury of luxuries to sea-voyagers--a land-dinner. And there we saw more +natives: Wrinkled old women, with their flat mammals flung over their +shoulders, or hanging down in front like the cold-weather drip from the +molasses-faucet; plump and smily young girls, blithe and content, easy +and graceful, a pleasure to look at; young matrons, tall, straight, +comely, nobly built, sweeping by with chin up, and a gait incomparable +for unconscious stateliness and dignity; majestic young men athletes for +build and muscle clothed in a loose arrangement of dazzling white, with +bronze breast and bronze legs naked, and the head a cannon-swab of solid +hair combed straight out from the skull and dyed a rich brick-red. Only +sixty years ago they were sunk in darkness; now they have the bicycle. +We strolled about the streets of the white folks' little town, and around +over the hills by paths and roads among European dwellings and gardens +and plantations, and past clumps of hibiscus that made a body blink, the +great blossoms were so intensely red; and by and by we stopped to ask an +elderly English colonist a question or two, and to sympathize with him +concerning the torrid weather; but he was surprised, and said: + +"This? This is not hot. You ought to be here in the summer time once." + +"We supposed that this was summer; it has the ear-marks of it. You could +take it to almost any country and deceive people with it. But if it +isn't summer, what does it lack?" + +"It lacks half a year. This is mid-winter." + +I had been suffering from colds for several months, and a sudden change +of season, like this, could hardly fail to do me hurt. It brought on +another cold. It is odd, these sudden jumps from season to season. A +fortnight ago we left America in mid-summer, now it is midwinter; about a +week hence we shall arrive in Australia in the spring. + +After dinner I found in the billiard-room a resident whom I had known +somewhere else in the world, and presently made, some new friends and +drove with them out into the country to visit his Excellency the head of +the State, who was occupying his country residence, to escape the rigors +of the winter weather, I suppose, for it was on breezy high ground and +much more comfortable than the lower regions, where the town is, and +where the winter has full swing, and often sets a person's hair afire +when he takes off his hat to bow. There is a noble and beautiful view of +ocean and islands and castellated peaks from the governor's high-placed +house, and its immediate surroundings lie drowsing in that dreamy repose +and serenity which are the charm of life in the Pacific Islands. + +One of the new friends who went out there with me was a large man, and I +had been admiring his size all the way. I was still admiring it as he +stood by the governor on the veranda, talking; then the Fijian butler +stepped out there to announce tea, and dwarfed him. Maybe he did not +quite dwarf him, but at any rate the contrast was quite striking. +Perhaps that dark giant was a king in a condition of political +suspension. I think that in the talk there on the veranda it was said +that in Fiji, as in the Sandwich Islands, native kings and chiefs are of +much grander size and build than the commoners. This man was clothed in +flowing white vestments, and they were just the thing for him; they +comported well with his great stature and his kingly port and dignity. +European clothes would have degraded him and made him commonplace. I +know that, because they do that with everybody that wears them. + +It was said that the old-time devotion to chiefs and reverence for their +persons still survive in the native commoner, and in great force. The +educated young gentleman who is chief of the tribe that live in the +region about the capital dresses in the fashion of high-class European +gentlemen, but even his clothes cannot damn him in the reverence of his +people. Their pride in his lofty rank and ancient lineage lives on, in +spite of his lost authority and the evil magic of his tailor. He has no +need to defile himself with work, or trouble his heart with the sordid +cares of life; the tribe will see to it that he shall not want, and that +he shall hold up his head and live like a gentleman. I had a glimpse of +him down in the town. Perhaps he is a descendant of the last king--the +king with the difficult name whose memory is preserved by a notable +monument of cut-stone which one sees in the enclosure in the middle of +the town. Thakombau--I remember, now; that is the name. It is easier to +preserve it on a granite block than in your head. + +Fiji was ceded to England by this king in 1858. One of the gentlemen +present at the governor's quoted a remark made by the king at the time of +the session--a neat retort, and with a touch of pathos in it, too. The +English Commissioner had offered a crumb of comfort to Thakombau by +saying that the transfer of the kingdom to Great Britain was merely "a +sort of hermit-crab formality, you know." "Yes," said poor Thakombau, +"but with this difference--the crab moves into an unoccupied shell, but +mine isn't." + +However, as far as I can make out from the books, the King was between +the devil and the deep sea at the time, and hadn't much choice. He owed +the United States a large debt--a debt which he could pay if allowed +time, but time was denied him. He must pay up right away or the warships +would be upon him. To protect his people from this disaster he ceded his +country to Britain, with a clause in the contract providing for the +ultimate payment of the American debt. + +In old times the Fijians were fierce fighters; they were very religious, +and worshiped idols; the big chiefs were proud and haughty, and they were +men of great style in many ways; all chiefs had several wives, the +biggest chiefs sometimes had as many as fifty; when a chief was dead and +ready for burial, four or five of his wives were strangled and put into +the grave with him. In 1804 twenty-seven British convicts escaped from +Australia to Fiji, and brought guns and ammunition with them. Consider +what a power they were, armed like that, and what an opportunity they +had. If they had been energetic men and sober, and had had brains and +known how to use them, they could have achieved the sovereignty of the +archipelago twenty-seven kings and each with eight or nine islands under +his scepter. But nothing came of this chance. They lived worthless +lives of sin and luxury, and died without honor--in most cases by +violence. Only one of them had any ambition; he was an Irishman named +Connor. He tried to raise a family of fifty children, and scored +forty-eight. He died lamenting his failure. It was a foolish sort +of avarice. Many a father would have been rich enough with forty. + +It is a fine race, the Fijians, with brains in their heads, and an +inquiring turn of mind. It appears that their savage ancestors had a +doctrine of immortality in their scheme of religion--with limitations. +That is to say, their dead friend would go to a happy hereafter if he +could be accumulated, but not otherwise. They drew the line; they +thought that the missionary's doctrine was too sweeping, too +comprehensive. They called his attention to certain facts. For +instance, many of their friends had been devoured by sharks; the sharks, +in their turn, were caught and eaten by other men; later, these men were +captured in war, and eaten by the enemy. The original persons had +entered into the composition of the sharks; next, they and the sharks had +become part of the flesh and blood and bone of the cannibals. How, then, +could the particles of the original men be searched out from the final +conglomerate and put together again? The inquirers were full of doubts, +and considered that the missionary had not examined the matter with--the +gravity and attention which so serious a thing deserved. + +The missionary taught these exacting savages many valuable things, and +got from them one--a very dainty and poetical idea: Those wild and +ignorant poor children of Nature believed that the flowers, after they +perish, rise on the winds and float away to the fair fields of heaven, +and flourish there forever in immortal beauty! + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no +distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +When one glances at the map the members of the stupendous island +wilderness of the Pacific seem to crowd upon each other; but no, there is +no crowding, even in the center of a group; and between groups there are +lonely wide deserts of sea. Not everything is known about the islands, +their peoples and their languages. A startling reminder of this is +furnished by the fact that in Fiji, twenty years ago, were living two +strange and solitary beings who came from an unknown country and spoke an +unknown language. "They were picked up by a passing vessel many hundreds +of miles from any known land, floating in the same tiny canoe in which +they had been blown out to sea. When found they were but skin and bone. +No one could understand what they said, and they have never named their +country; or, if they have, the name does not correspond with that of any +island on any chart. They are now fat and sleek, and as happy as the day +is long. In the ship's log there is an entry of the latitude and +longitude in which they were found, and this is probably all the clue +they will ever have to their lost homes."--[Forbes's "Two Years in +Fiji."] + +What a strange and romantic episode it is; and how one is tortured with +curiosity to know whence those mysterious creatures came, those Men +Without a Country, errant waifs who cannot name their lost home, +wandering Children of Nowhere. + +Indeed, the Island Wilderness is the very home of romance and dreams and +mystery. The loneliness, the solemnity, the beauty, and the deep repose +of this wilderness have a charm which is all their own for the bruised +spirit of men who have fought and failed in the struggle for life in the +great world; and for men who have been hunted out of the great world for +crime; and for other men who love an easy and indolent existence; and for +others who love a roving free life, and stir and change and adventure; +and for yet others who love an easy and comfortable career of trading and +money-getting, mixed with plenty of loose matrimony by purchase, divorce +without trial or expense, and limitless spreeing thrown in to make life +ideally perfect. + +We sailed again, refreshed. + +The most cultivated person in the ship was a young English, man whose +home was in New Zealand. He was a naturalist. His learning in his +specialty was deep and thorough, his interest in his subject amounted to +a passion, he had an easy gift of speech; and so, when he talked about +animals it was a pleasure to listen to him. And profitable, too, though +he was sometimes difficult to understand because now and then he used +scientific technicalities which were above the reach of some of us. They +were pretty sure to be above my reach, but as he was quite willing to +explain them I always made it a point to get him to do it. I had a fair +knowledge of his subject--layman's knowledge--to begin with, but it was +his teachings which crystalized it into scientific form and clarity--in a +word, gave it value. + +His special interest was the fauna of Australasia, and his knowledge of +the matter was as exhaustive as it was accurate. I already knew a good +deal about the rabbits in Australasia and their marvelous fecundity, but +in my talks with him I found that my estimate of the great hindrance and +obstruction inflicted by the rabbit pest upon traffic and travel was far +short of the facts. He told me that the first pair of rabbits imported +into Australasia bred so wonderfully that within six months rabbits were +so thick in the land that people had to dig trenches through them to get +from town to town. + +He told me a great deal about worms, and the kangaroo, and other +coleoptera, and said he knew the history and ways of all such +pachydermata. He said the kangaroo had pockets, and carried its young in +them when it couldn't get apples. And he said that the emu was as big as +an ostrich, and looked like one, and had an amorphous appetite and would +eat bricks. Also, that the dingo was not a dingo at all, but just a wild +dog; and that the only difference between a dingo and a dodo was that +neither of them barked; otherwise they were just the same. He said that +the only game-bird in Australia was the wombat, and the only song-bird +the larrikin, and that both were protected by government. The most +beautiful of the native birds was the bird of Paradise. Next came the +two kinds of lyres; not spelt the same. He said the one kind was dying +out, the other thickening up. He explained that the "Sundowner" was not +a bird it was a man; sundowner was merely the Australian equivalent of +our word, tramp. He is a loafer, a hard drinker, and a sponge. He +tramps across the country in the sheep-shearing season, pretending to +look for work; but he always times himself to arrive at a sheep-run just +at sundown, when the day's labor ends; all he wants is whisky and supper +and bed and breakfast; he gets them and then disappears. The naturalist +spoke of the bell bird, the creature that at short intervals all day +rings out its mellow and exquisite peal from the deeps of the forest. It +is the favorite and best friend of the weary and thirsty sundowner; for +he knows that wherever the bell bird is, there is water; and he goes +somewhere else. The naturalist said that the oddest bird in Australasia +was the, Laughing Jackass, and the biggest the now extinct Great Moa. + +The Moa stood thirteen feet high, and could step over an ordinary man's +head or kick his hat off; and his head, too, for that matter. He said it +was wingless, but a swift runner. The natives used to ride it. It could +make forty miles an hour, and keep it up for four hundred miles and come +out reasonably fresh. It was still in existence when the railway was +introduced into New Zealand; still in existence, and carrying the mails. +The railroad began with the same schedule it has now: two expresses a +week-time, twenty miles an hour. The company exterminated the moa to get +the mails. + +Speaking of the indigenous coneys and bactrian camels, the naturalist +said that the coniferous and bacteriological output of Australasia was +remarkable for its many and curious departures from the accepted laws +governing these species of tubercles, but that in his opinion Nature's +fondness for dabbling in the erratic was most notably exhibited in that +curious combination of bird, fish, amphibian, burrower, crawler, +quadruped, and Christian called the Ornithorhynchus--grotesquest of +animals, king of the animalculae of the world for versatility of +character and make-up. Said he: + + "You can call it anything you want to, and be right. It is a fish, + for it lives in the river half the time; it is a land animal, for it + resides on the land half the time; it is an amphibian, since it + likes both and does not know which it prefers; it is a hybernian, + for when times are dull and nothing much going on it buries itself + under the mud at the bottom of a puddle and hybernates there a + couple of weeks at a time; it is a kind of duck, for it has a + duck-bill and four webbed paddles; it is a fish and quadruped + together, for in the water it swims with the paddles and on shore it + paws itself across country with them; it is a kind of seal, for it + has a seal's fur; it is carnivorous, herbivorous, insectivorous, and + vermifuginous, for it eats fish and grass and butterflies, and in + the season digs worms out of the mud and devours them; it is clearly + a bird, for it lays eggs, and hatches them; it is clearly a mammal, + for it nurses its young; and it is manifestly a kind of Christian, + for it keeps the Sabbath when there is anybody around, and when + there isn't, doesn't. It has all the tastes there are except + refined ones, it has all the habits there are except good ones. + + "It is a survival--a survival of the fittest. Mr. Darwin invented + the theory that goes by that name, but the Ornithorhynchus was the + first to put it to actual experiment and prove that it could be + done. Hence it should have as much of the credit as Mr. Darwin. + It was never in the Ark; you will find no mention of it there; it + nobly stayed out and worked the theory. Of all creatures in the + world it was the only one properly equipped for the test. The Ark + was thirteen months afloat, and all the globe submerged; no land + visible above the flood, no vegetation, no food for a mammal to eat, + nor water for a mammal to drink; for all mammal food was destroyed, + and when the pure floods from heaven and the salt oceans of the + earth mingled their waters and rose above the mountain tops, the + result was a drink which no bird or beast of ordinary construction + could use and live. But this combination was nuts for the + Ornithorhynchus, if I may use a term like that without offense. + Its river home had always been salted by the flood-tides of the sea. + On the face of the Noachian deluge innumerable forest trees were + floating. Upon these the Ornithorhynchus voyaged in peace; voyaged + from clime to clime, from hemisphere to hemisphere, in contentment + and comfort, in virile interest in the constant change Of scene, in + humble thankfulness for its privileges, in ever-increasing + enthusiasm in the development of the great theory upon whose + validity it had staked its life, its fortunes, and its sacred honor, + if I may use such expressions without impropriety in connection with + an episode of this nature. + + "It lived the tranquil and luxurious life of a creature of + independent means. Of things actually necessary to its existence + and its happiness not a detail was wanting. When it wished to walk, + it scrambled along the tree-trunk; it mused in the shade of the + leaves by day, it slept in their shelter by night; when it wanted + the refreshment of a swim, it had it; it ate leaves when it wanted a + vegetable diet, it dug under the bark for worms and grubs; when it + wanted fish it caught them, when it wanted eggs it laid them. If + the grubs gave out in one tree it swam to another; and as for fish, + the very opulence of the supply was an embarrassment. And finally, + when it was thirsty it smacked its chops in gratitude over a blend + that would have slain a crocodile. + + "When at last, after thirteen months of travel and research in all + the Zones it went aground on a mountain-summit, it strode ashore, + saying in its heart, 'Let them that come after me invent theories + and dream dreams about the Survival of the Fittest if they like, but + I am the first that has done it! + + "This wonderful creature dates back like the kangaroo and many other + Australian hydrocephalous invertebrates, to an age long anterior to + the advent of man upon the earth; they date back, indeed, to a time + when a causeway hundreds of miles wide, and thousands of miles long, + joined Australia to Africa, and the animals of the two countries + were alike, and all belonged to that remote geological epoch known + to science as the Old Red Grindstone Post-Pleosaurian. Later the + causeway sank under the sea; subterranean convulsions lifted the + African continent a thousand feet higher than it was before, but + Australia kept her old level. In Africa's new climate the animals + necessarily began to develop and shade off into new forms and + families and species, but the animals of Australia as necessarily + remained stationary, and have so remained until this day. In the + course of some millions of years the African Ornithorhynchus + developed and developed and developed, and sluffed off detail after + detail of its make-up until at last the creature became wholly + disintegrated and scattered. Whenever you see a bird or a beast or + a seal or an otter in Africa you know that he is merely a sorry + surviving fragment of that sublime original of whom I have been + speaking--that creature which was everything in general and nothing + in particular--the opulently endowed 'e pluribus unum' of the animal + world. + + "Such is the history of the most hoary, the most ancient, the most + venerable creature that exists in the earth today--Ornithorhynchus + Platypus Extraordinariensis--whom God preserve!" + +When he was strongly moved he could rise and soar like that with ease. +And not only in the prose form, but in the poetical as well. He had +written many pieces of poetry in his time, and these manuscripts he lent +around among the passengers, and was willing to let them be copied. It +seemed to me that the least technical one in the series, and the one +which reached the loftiest note, perhaps, was his: + + INVOCATION. + + "Come forth from thy oozy couch, + O Ornithorhynchus dear! + And greet with a cordial claw + The stranger that longs to hear + + "From thy own own lips the tale + Of thy origin all unknown: + Thy misplaced bone where flesh should be + And flesh where should be bone; + + "And fishy fin where should be paw, + And beaver-trowel tail, + And snout of beast equip'd with teeth + Where gills ought to prevail. + + "Come, Kangaroo, the good and true + Foreshortened as to legs, + And body tapered like a churn, + And sack marsupial, i' fegs, + + "And tells us why you linger here, + Thou relic of a vanished time, + When all your friends as fossils sleep, + Immortalized in lime!" + + +Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist; but there seems to be warrant +for suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an +unconscious one. The above verses are indeed beautiful, and, in a way, +touching; but there is a haunting something about them which unavoidably +suggests the Sweet Singer of Michigan. It can hardly be doubted that the +author had read the works of that poet and been impressed by them. It is +not apparent that he has borrowed from them any word or yet any phrase, +but the style and swing and mastery and melody of the Sweet Singer all +are there. Compare this Invocation with "Frank Dutton"--particularly +stanzas first and seventeenth--and I think the reader will feel convinced +that he who wrote the one had read the other: + + I. + + "Frank Dutton was as fine a lad + As ever you wish to see, + And he was drowned in Pine Island Lake + On earth no more will he be, + His age was near fifteen years, + And he was a motherless boy, + He was living with his grandmother + When he was drowned, poor boy." + + + XVII. + + "He was drowned on Tuesday afternoon, + On Sunday he was found, + And the tidings of that drowned boy + Was heard for miles around. + His form was laid by his mother's side, + Beneath the cold, cold ground, + His friends for him will drop a tear + When they view his little mound." + + The Sentimental Song Book. By Mrs. Julia Moore, p. 36. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +It is your human environment that makes climate. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Sept. 15--Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant. + +That note recalls an experience. The passengers were sent for, to come +up in the bow and see a fine sight. It was very dark. One could not +follow with the eye the surface of the sea more than fifty yards in any +direction it dimmed away and became lost to sight at about that distance +from us. But if you patiently gazed into the darkness a little while, +there was a sure reward for you. Presently, a quarter of a mile away you +would see a blinding splash or explosion of light on the water--a flash +so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that it would make you catch +your breath; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and +take the corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent, +with every curve of its body and the "break" spreading away from its +head, and the wake following behind its tail clothed in a fierce splendor +of living fire. And my, but it was coming at a lightning gait! Almost +before you could think, this monster of light, fifty feet long, would go +flaming and storming by, and suddenly disappear. And out in the distance +whence he came you would see another flash; and another and another and +another, and see them turn into sea-serpents on the instant; and once +sixteen flashed up at the same time and came tearing towards us, a swarm +of wiggling curves, a moving conflagration, a vision of bewildering +beauty, a spectacle of fire and energy whose equal the most of those +people will not see again until after they are dead. + +It was porpoises--porpoises aglow with phosphorescent light. They +presently collected in a wild and magnificent jumble under the bows, and +there they played for an hour, leaping and frollicking and carrying on, +turning summersaults in front of the stem or across it and never getting +hit, never making a miscalculation, though the stem missed them only +about an inch, as a rule. They were porpoises of the ordinary length +--eight or ten feet--but every twist of their bodies sent a long +procession of united and glowing curves astern. That fiery jumble was +an enchanting thing to look at, and we stayed out the performance; one +cannot have such a show as that twice in a lifetime. The porpoise is the +kitten of the sea; he never has a serious thought, he cares for nothing +but fun and play. But I think I never saw him at his winsomest until +that night. It was near a center of civilization, and he could have been +drinking. + +By and by, when we had approached to somewhere within thirty miles of +Sydney Heads the great electric light that is posted on one of those +lofty ramparts began to show, and in time the little spark grew to a +great sun and pierced the firmament of darkness with a far-reaching sword +of light. + +Sydney Harbor is shut in behind a precipice that extends some miles like +a wall, and exhibits no break to the ignorant stranger. It has a break +in the middle, but it makes so little show that even Captain Cook sailed +by it without seeing it. Near by that break is a false break which +resembles it, and which used to make trouble for the mariner at night, in +the early days before the place was lighted. It caused the memorable +disaster to the Duncan Dunbar, one of the most pathetic tragedies in the +history of that pitiless ruffian, the sea. The ship was a sailing +vessel; a fine and favorite passenger packet, commanded by a popular +captain of high reputation. She was due from England, and Sydney was +waiting, and counting the hours; counting the hours, and making ready to +give her a heart-stirring welcome; for she was bringing back a great +company of mothers and daughters, the long-missed light and bloom of life +of Sydney homes; daughters that had been years absent at school, and +mothers that had been with them all that time watching over them. Of all +the world only India and Australasia have by custom freighted ships and +fleets with their hearts, and know the tremendous meaning of that phrase; +only they know what the waiting is like when this freightage is entrusted +to the fickle winds, not steam, and what the joy is like when the ship +that is returning this treasure comes safe to port and the long dread is +over. + +On board the Duncan Dunbar, flying toward Sydney Heads in the waning +afternoon, the happy home-comers made busy preparation, for it was not +doubted that they would be in the arms of their friends before the day +was done; they put away their sea-going clothes and put on clothes meeter +for the meeting, their richest and their loveliest, these poor brides of +the grave. But the wind lost force, or there was a miscalculation, and +before the Heads were sighted the darkness came on. It was said that +ordinarily the captain would have made a safe offing and waited for the +morning; but this was no ordinary occasion; all about him were appealing +faces, faces pathetic with disappointment. So his sympathy moved him to +try the dangerous passage in the dark. He had entered the Heads +seventeen times, and believed he knew the ground. So he steered straight +for the false opening, mistaking it for the true one. He did not find +out that he was wrong until it was too late. There was no saving the +ship. The great seas swept her in and crushed her to splinters and +rubbish upon the rock tushes at the base of the precipice. Not one of +all that fair and gracious company was ever seen again alive. The tale +is told to every stranger that passes the spot, and it will continue to +be told to all that come, for generations; but it will never grow old, +custom cannot stale it, the heart-break that is in it can never perish +out of it. + +There were two hundred persons in the ship, and but one survived the +disaster. He was a sailor. A huge sea flung him up the face of the +precipice and stretched him on a narrow shelf of rock midway between the +top and the bottom, and there he lay all night. At any other time he +would have lain there for the rest of his life, without chance of +discovery; but the next morning the ghastly news swept through Sydney +that the Duncan Dunbar had gone down in sight of home, and straightway +the walls of the Heads were black with mourners; and one of these, +stretching himself out over the precipice to spy out what might be seen +below, discovered this miraculously preserved relic of the wreck. Ropes +were brought and the nearly impossible feat of rescuing the man was +accomplished. He was a person with a practical turn of mind, and he +hired a hall in Sydney and exhibited himself at sixpence a head till he +exhausted the output of the gold fields for that year. + +We entered and cast anchor, and in the morning went oh-ing and ah-ing in +admiration up through the crooks and turns of the spacious and beautiful +harbor--a harbor which is the darling of Sydney and the wonder of the +world. It is not surprising that the people are proud of it, nor that +they put their enthusiasm into eloquent words. A returning citizen asked +me what I thought of it, and I testified with a cordiality which I judged +would be up to the market rate. I said it was beautiful--superbly +beautiful. Then by a natural impulse I gave God the praise. The citizen +did not seem altogether satisfied. He said: + +"It is beautiful, of course it's beautiful--the Harbor; but that isn't +all of it, it's only half of it; Sydney's the other half, and it takes +both of them together to ring the supremacy-bell. God made the Harbor, +and that's all right; but Satan made Sydney." + +Of course I made an apology; and asked him to convey it to his friend. +He was right about Sydney being half of it. It would be beautiful +without Sydney, but not above half as beautiful as it is now, with Sydney +added. It is shaped somewhat like an oak-leaf-a roomy sheet of lovely +blue water, with narrow off-shoots of water running up into the country +on both sides between long fingers of land, high wooden ridges with sides +sloped like graves. Handsome villas are perched here and there on these +ridges, snuggling amongst the foliage, and one catches alluring glimpses +of them as the ship swims by toward the city. The city clothes a cluster +of hills and a ruffle of neighboring ridges with its undulating masses of +masonry, and out of these masses spring towers and spires and other +architectural dignities and grandeurs that break the flowing lines and +give picturesqueness to the general effect. + +The narrow inlets which I have mentioned go wandering out into the land +everywhere and hiding themselves in it, and pleasure-launches are always +exploring them with picnic parties on board. It is said by trustworthy +people that if you explore them all you will find that you have covered +700 miles of water passage. But there are liars everywhere this year, +and they will double that when their works are in good going order. +October was close at hand, spring was come. It was really spring +--everybody said so; but you could have sold it for summer in Canada, and +nobody would have suspected. It was the very weather that makes our home +summers the perfection of climatic luxury; I mean, when you are out in +the wood or by the sea. But these people said it was cool, now--a person +ought to see Sydney in the summer time if he wanted to know what warm +weather is; and he ought to go north ten or fifteen hundred miles if he +wanted to know what hot weather is. They said that away up there toward +the equator the hens laid fried eggs. Sydney is the place to go to get +information about other people's climates. It seems to me that the +occupation of Unbiased Traveler Seeking Information is the pleasantest +and most irresponsible trade there is. The traveler can always find out +anything he wants to, merely by asking. He can get at all the facts, and +more. Everybody helps him, nobody hinders him. Anybody who has an old +fact in stock that is no longer negotiable in the domestic market will +let him have it at his own price. An accumulation of such goods is +easily and quickly made. They cost almost nothing and they bring par in +the foreign market. Travelers who come to America always freight up with +the same old nursery tales that their predecessors selected, and they +carry them back and always work them off without any trouble in the home +market. + +If the climates of the world were determined by parallels of latitude, +then we could know a place's climate by its position on the map; and so +we should know that the climate of Sydney was the counterpart of the +climate of Columbia, S. C., and of Little Rock, Arkansas, since Sydney is +about the same distance south of the equator that those other towns are +north of-it-thirty-four degrees. But no, climate disregards the +parallels of latitude. In Arkansas they have a winter; in Sydney they +have the name of it, but not the thing itself. I have seen the ice in +the Mississippi floating past the mouth of the Arkansas river; and at +Memphis, but a little way above, the Mississippi has been frozen over, +from bank to bank. But they have never had a cold spell in Sydney which +brought the mercury down to freezing point. Once in a mid-winter day +there, in the month of July, the mercury went down to 36 deg., and that +remains the memorable "cold day" in the history of the town. No doubt +Little Rock has seen it below zero. Once, in Sydney, in mid-summer, +about New Year's Day, the mercury went up to 106 deg. in the shade, and +that is Sydney's memorable hot day. That would about tally with Little +Rock's hottest day also, I imagine. My Sydney figures are taken from a +government report, and are trustworthy. In the matter of summer weather +Arkansas has no advantage over Sydney, perhaps, but when it comes to +winter weather, that is another affair. You could cut up an Arkansas +winter into a hundred Sydney winters and have enough left for Arkansas +and the poor. + +The whole narrow, hilly belt of the Pacific side of New South Wales has +the climate of its capital--a mean winter temperature of 54 deg. and a +mean summer one of 71 deg. It is a climate which cannot be improved upon +for healthfulness. But the experts say that 90 deg. in New South Wales +is harder to bear than 112 deg. in the neighboring colony of Victoria, +because the atmosphere of the former is humid, and of the latter dry. +The mean temperature of the southernmost point of New South Wales is the +same as that of Nice--60 deg.--yet Nice is further from the equator by +460 miles than is the former. + +But Nature is always stingy of perfect climates; stingier in the case of +Australia than usual. Apparently this vast continent has a really good +climate nowhere but around the edges. + +If we look at a map of the world we are surprised to see how big +Australia is. It is about two-thirds as large as the United States was +before we added Alaska. + +But where as one finds a sufficiently good climate and fertile land +almost everywhere in the United States, it seems settled that inside of +the Australian border-belt one finds many deserts and in spots a climate +which nothing can stand except a few of the hardier kinds of rocks. In +effect, Australia is as yet unoccupied. If you take a map of the United +States and leave the Atlantic sea-board States in their places; also the +fringe of Southern States from Florida west to the Mouth of the +Mississippi; also a narrow, inhabited streak up the Mississippi half-way +to its head waters; also a narrow, inhabited border along the Pacific +coast: then take a brushful of paint and obliterate the whole remaining +mighty stretch of country that lies between the Atlantic States and the +Pacific-coast strip, your map will look like the latest map of Australia. + +This stupendous blank is hot, not to say torrid; a part of it is fertile, +the rest is desert; it is not liberally watered; it has no towns. One +has only to cross the mountains of New South Wales and descend into the +westward-lying regions to find that he has left the choice climate behind +him, and found a new one of a quite different character. In fact, he +would not know by the thermometer that he was not in the blistering +Plains of India. Captain Sturt, the great explorer, gives us a sample of +the heat. + + "The wind, which had been blowing all the morning from the N.E., + increased to a heavy gale, and I shall never forget its withering + effect. I sought shelter behind a large gum-tree, but the blasts of + heat were so terrific that I wondered the very grass did not take + fire. This really was nothing ideal: everything both animate and + inanimate gave way before it; the horses stood with their backs to + the wind and their noses to the ground, without the muscular + strength to raise their heads; the birds were mute, and the leaves + of the trees under which we were sitting fell like a snow shower + around us. At noon I took a thermometer graded to 127 deg., out of + my box, and observed that the mercury was up to 125. Thinking that + it had been unduly influenced, I put it in the fork of a tree close + to me, sheltered alike from the wind and the sun. I went to examine + it about an hour afterwards, when I found the mercury had risen to + the-top of the instrument and had burst the bulb, a circumstance + that I believe no traveler has ever before had to record. I cannot + find language to convey to the reader's mind an idea of the intense + and oppressive nature of the heat that prevailed." + +That hot wind sweeps over Sydney sometimes, and brings with it what is +called a "dust-storm." It is said that most Australian towns are +acquainted with the dust-storm. I think I know what it is like, for the +following description by Mr. Gape tallies very well with the alkali +duststorm of Nevada, if you leave out the "shovel" part. Still the +shovel part is a pretty important part, and seems to indicate that my +Nevada storm is but a poor thing, after all. + + "As we proceeded the altitude became less, and the heat + proportionately greater until we reached Dubbo, which is only 600 + feet above sea-level. It is a pretty town, built on an extensive + plain . . . . After the effects of a shower of rain have passed + away the surface of the ground crumbles into a thick layer of dust, + and occasionally, when the wind is in a particular quarter, it is + lifted bodily from the ground in one long opaque cloud. In the + midst of such a storm nothing can be seen a few yards ahead, and the + unlucky person who happens to be out at the time is compelled to + seek the nearest retreat at hand. When the thrifty housewife sees + in the distance the dark column advancing in a steady whirl towards + her house, she closes the doors and windows with all expedition. A + drawing-room, the window of which has been carelessly left open + during a dust-storm, is indeed an extraordinary sight. A lady who + has resided in Dubbo for some years says that the dust lies so thick + on the carpet that it is necessary to use a shovel to remove it." + +And probably a wagon. I was mistaken; I have not seen a proper +duststorm. To my mind the exterior aspects and character of Australia +are fascinating things to look at and think about, they are so strange, +so weird, so new, so uncommonplace, such a startling and interesting +contrast to the other sections of the planet, the sections that are known +to us all, familiar to us all. In the matter of particulars--a detail +here, a detail there--we have had the choice climate of New South Wales' +seacoast; we have had the Australian heat as furnished by Captain Sturt; +we have had the wonderful dust-storm; and we have considered the +phenomenon of an almost empty hot wilderness half as big as the United +States, with a narrow belt of civilization, population, and good climate +around it. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not +joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Captain Cook found Australia in 1770, and eighteen years later the +British Government began to transport convicts to it. Altogether, New +South Wales received 83,000 in 53 years. The convicts wore heavy chains; +they were ill-fed and badly treated by the officers set over them; they +were heavily punished for even slight infractions of the rules; "the +cruelest discipline ever known" is one historian's description of their +life.--[The Story of Australasia. J. S. Laurie.] + +English law was hard-hearted in those days. For trifling offenses which +in our day would be punished by a small fine or a few days' confinement, +men, women, and boys were sent to this other end of the earth to serve +terms of seven and fourteen years; and for serious crimes they were +transported for life. Children were sent to the penal colonies for seven +years for stealing a rabbit! + +When I was in London twenty-three years ago there was a new penalty in +force for diminishing garroting and wife-beating--25 lashes on the bare +back with the cat-o'-nine-tails. It was said that this terrible +punishment was able to bring the stubbornest ruffians to terms; and that +no man had been found with grit enough to keep his emotions to himself +beyond the ninth blow; as a rule the man shrieked earlier. That penalty +had a great and wholesome effect upon the garroters and wife-beaters; but +humane modern London could not endure it; it got its law rescinded. Many +a bruised and battered English wife has since had occasion to deplore +that cruel achievement of sentimental "humanity." + +Twenty-five lashes! In Australia and Tasmania they gave a convict fifty +for almost any little offense; and sometimes a brutal officer would add +fifty, and then another fifty, and so on, as long as the sufferer could +endure the torture and live. In Tasmania I read the entry, in an old +manuscript official record, of a case where a convict was given three +hundred lashes--for stealing some silver spoons. And men got more than +that, sometimes. Who handled the cat? Often it was another convict; +sometimes it was the culprit's dearest comrade; and he had to lay on with +all his might; otherwise he would get a flogging himself for his mercy +--for he was under watch--and yet not do his friend any good: the friend +would be attended to by another hand and suffer no lack in the matter of +full punishment. + +The convict life in Tasmania was so unendurable, and suicide so difficult +to accomplish that once or twice despairing men got together and drew +straws to determine which of them should kill another of the group--this +murder to secure death to the perpetrator and to the witnesses of it by +the hand of the hangman! + +The incidents quoted above are mere hints, mere suggestions of what +convict life was like--they are but a couple of details tossed into view +out of a shoreless sea of such; or, to change the figure, they are but a +pair of flaming steeples photographed from a point which hides from sight +the burning city which stretches away from their bases on every hand. + +Some of the convicts--indeed, a good many of them--were very bad people, +even for that day; but the most of them were probably not noticeably +worse than the average of the people they left behind them at home. We +must believe this; we cannot avoid it. We are obliged to believe that a +nation that could look on, unmoved, and see starving or freezing women +hanged for stealing twenty-six cents' worth of bacon or rags, and boys +snatched from their mothers, and men from their families, and sent to the +other side of the world for long terms of years for similar trifling +offenses, was a nation to whom the term "civilized" could not in any +large way be applied. And we must also believe that a nation that knew, +during more than forty years, what was happening to those exiles and was +still content with it, was not advancing in any showy way toward a higher +grade of civilization. + +If we look into the characters and conduct of the officers and gentlemen +who had charge of the convicts and attended to their backs and stomachs, +we must grant again that as between the convict and his masters, and +between both and the nation at home, there was a quite noticeable +monotony of sameness. + +Four years had gone by, and many convicts had come. Respectable settlers +were beginning to arrive. These two classes of colonists had to be +protected, in case of trouble among themselves or with the natives. It +is proper to mention the natives, though they could hardly count they +were so scarce. At a time when they had not as yet begun to be much +disturbed--not as yet being in the way--it was estimated that in New +South Wales there was but one native to 45,000 acres of territory. + +People had to be protected. Officers of the regular army did not want +this service--away off there where neither honor nor distinction was to +be gained. So England recruited and officered a kind of militia force of +1,000 uniformed civilians called the "New South Wales Corps" and shipped +it. + +This was the worst blow of all. The colony fairly staggered under it. +The Corps was an object-lesson of the moral condition of England outside +of the jails. The colonists trembled. It was feared that next there +would be an importation of the nobility. + +In those early days the colony was non-supporting. All the necessaries +of life--food, clothing, and all--were sent out from England, and kept in +great government store-houses, and given to the convicts and sold to the +settlers--sold at a trifling advance upon cost. The Corps saw its +opportunity. Its officers went into commerce, and in a most lawless way. +They went to importing rum, and also to manufacturing it in private +stills, in defiance of the government's commands and protests. They +leagued themselves together and ruled the market; they boycotted the +government and the other dealers; they established a close monopoly and +kept it strictly in their own hands. When a vessel arrived with spirits, +they allowed nobody to buy but themselves, and they forced the owner to +sell to them at a price named by themselves--and it was always low +enough. They bought rum at an average of two dollars a gallon and sold +it at an average of ten. They made rum the currency of the country--for +there was little or no money--and they maintained their devastating hold +and kept the colony under their heel for eighteen or twenty years before +they were finally conquered and routed by the government. + +Meantime, they had spread intemperance everywhere. And they had squeezed +farm after farm out of the settlers hands for rum, and thus had +bountifully enriched themselves. When a farmer was caught in the last +agonies of thirst they took advantage of him and sweated him for a drink. +In one instance they sold a man a gallon of rum worth two dollars for a +piece of property which was sold some years later for $100,000. +When the colony was about eighteen or twenty years old it was discovered +that the land was specially fitted for the wool-culture. Prosperity +followed, commerce with the world began, by and by rich mines of the +noble metals were opened, immigrants flowed in, capital likewise. The +result is the great and wealthy and enlightened commonwealth of New South +Wales. + +It is a country that is rich in mines, wool ranches, trams, railways, +steamship lines, schools, newspapers, botanical gardens, art galleries, +libraries, museums, hospitals, learned societies; it is the hospitable +home of every species of culture and of every species of material +enterprise, and there is a, church at every man's door, and a race-track +over the way. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is +in it--and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot +stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again--and that is +well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +All English-speaking colonies are made up of lavishly hospitable people, +and New South Wales and its capital are like the rest in this. The +English-speaking colony of the United States of America is always +called lavishly hospitable by the English traveler. As to the other +English-speaking colonies throughout the world from Canada all around, I +know by experience that the description fits them. I will not go more +particularly into this matter, for I find that when writers try to +distribute their gratitude here and there and yonder by detail they run +across difficulties and do some ungraceful stumbling. + +Mr. Gane ("New South Wales and Victoria in 1885 "), tried to distribute +his gratitude, and was not lucky: + + "The inhabitants of Sydney are renowned for their hospitality. The + treatment which we experienced at the hands of this generous-hearted + people will help more than anything else to make us recollect with + pleasure our stay amongst them. In the character of hosts and + hostesses they excel. The 'new chum' needs only the + acquaintanceship of one of their number, and he becomes at once the + happy recipient of numerous complimentary invitations and thoughtful + kindnesses. Of the towns it has been our good fortune to visit, + none have portrayed home so faithfully as Sydney." + +Nobody could say it finer than that. If he had put in his cork then, and +stayed away from Dubbo----but no; heedless man, he pulled it again. +Pulled it when he was away along in his book, and his memory of what he +had said about Sydney had grown dim: + + "We cannot quit the promising town of Dubbo without testifying, in + warm praise, to the kind-hearted and hospitable usages of its + inhabitants. Sydney, though well deserving the character it bears + of its kindly treatment of strangers, possesses a little formality + and reserve. In Dubbo, on the contrary, though the same congenial + manners prevail, there is a pleasing degree of respectful + familiarity which gives the town a homely comfort not often met with + elsewhere. In laying on one side our pen we feel contented in + having been able, though so late in this work, to bestow a + panegyric, however unpretentious, on a town which, though possessing + no picturesque natural surroundings, nor interesting architectural + productions, has yet a body of citizens whose hearts cannot but + obtain for their town a reputation for benevolence and + kind-heartedness." + +I wonder what soured him on Sydney. It seems strange that a pleasing +degree of three or four fingers of respectful familiarity should fill a +man up and give him the panegyrics so bad. For he has them, the worst +way--any one can see that. A man who is perfectly at himself does not +throw cold detraction at people's architectural productions and +picturesque surroundings, and let on that what he prefers is a Dubbonese +dust-storm and a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity, No, these are +old, old symptoms; and when they appear we know that the man has got the +panegyrics. + +Sydney has a population of 400,000. When a stranger from America steps +ashore there, the first thing that strikes him is that the place is eight +or nine times as large as he was expecting it to be; and the next thing +that strikes him is that it is an English city with American trimmings. +Later on, in Melbourne, he will find the American trimmings still more in +evidence; there, even the architecture will often suggest America; a +photograph of its stateliest business street might be passed upon him for +a picture of the finest street in a large American city. I was told that +the most of the fine residences were the city residences of squatters. +The name seemed out of focus somehow. When the explanation came, it +offered a new instance of the curious changes which words, as well as +animals, undergo through change of habitat and climate. With us, when +you speak of a squatter you are always supposed to be speaking of a poor +man, but in Australia when you speak of a squatter you are supposed to be +speaking of a millionaire; in America the word indicates the possessor of +a few acres and a doubtful title, in Australia it indicates a man whose +landfront is as long as a railroad, and whose title has been perfected in +one way or another; in America the word indicates a man who owns a dozen +head of live stock, in Australia a man who owns anywhere from fifty +thousand up to half a million head; in America the word indicates a man +who is obscure and not important, in Australia a man who is prominent and +of the first importance; in America you take off your hat to no squatter, +in Australia you do; in America if your uncle is a squatter you keep it +dark, in Australia you advertise it; in America if your friend is a +squatter nothing comes of it, but with a squatter for your friend in +Australia you may sup with kings if there are any around. + +In Australia it takes about two acres and a half of pastureland (some +people say twice as many), to support a sheep; and when the squatter has +half a million sheep his private domain is about as large as Rhode +Island, to speak in general terms. His annual wool crop may be worth a +quarter or a half million dollars. + +He will live in a palace in Melbourne or Sydney or some other of the +large cities, and make occasional trips to his sheep-kingdom several +hundred miles away in the great plains to look after his battalions of +riders and shepherds and other hands. He has a commodious dwelling out +there, and if he approve of you he will invite you to spend a week in it, +and will make you at home and comfortable, and let you see the great +industry in all its details, and feed you and slake you and smoke you +with the best that money can buy. + +On at least one of these vast estates there is a considerable town, with +all the various businesses and occupations that go to make an important +town; and the town and the land it stands upon are the property of the +squatters. I have seen that town, and it is not unlikely that there are +other squatter-owned towns in Australia. + +Australia supplies the world not only with fine wool, but with mutton +also. The modern invention of cold storage and its application in ships +has created this great trade. In Sydney I visited a huge establishment +where they kill and clean and solidly freeze a thousand sheep a day, for +shipment to England. + +The Australians did not seem to me to differ noticeably from Americans, +either in dress, carriage, ways, pronunciation, inflections, or general +appearance. There were fleeting and subtle suggestions of their English +origin, but these were not pronounced enough, as a rule, to catch one's +attention. The people have easy and cordial manners from the beginning +--from the moment that the introduction is completed. This is American. +To put it in another way, it is English friendliness with the English +shyness and self-consciousness left out. + +Now and then--but this is rare--one hears such words as piper for paper, +lydy for lady, and tyble for table fall from lips whence one would not +expect such pronunciations to come. There is a superstition prevalent in +Sydney that this pronunciation is an Australianism, but people who have +been "home"--as the native reverently and lovingly calls England--know +better. It is "costermonger." All over Australasia this pronunciation +is nearly as common among servants as it is in London among the +uneducated and the partially educated of all sorts and conditions of +people. That mislaid 'y' is rather striking when a person gets enough of +it into a short sentence to enable it to show up. In the hotel in Sydney +the chambermaid said, one morning: + +"The tyble is set, and here is the piper; and if the lydy is ready I'll +tell the wyter to bring up the breakfast." + +I have made passing mention, a moment ago, of the native Australasian's +custom of speaking of England as "home." It was always pretty to hear +it, and often it was said in an unconsciously caressing way that made it +touching; in a way which transmuted a sentiment into an embodiment, and +made one seem to see Australasia as a young girl stroking mother +England's old gray head. + +In the Australasian home the table-talk is vivacious and unembarrassed; +it is without stiffness or restraint. This does not remind one of +England so much as it does of America. But Australasia is strictly +democratic, and reserves and restraints are things that are bred by +differences of rank. + +English and colonial audiences are phenomenally alert and responsive. +Where masses of people are gathered together in England, caste is +submerged, and with it the English reserve; equality exists for the +moment, and every individual is free; so free from any consciousness of +fetters, indeed, that the Englishman's habit of watching himself and +guarding himself against any injudicious exposure of his feelings is +forgotten, and falls into abeyance--and to such a degree indeed, that he +will bravely applaud all by himself if he wants to--an exhibition of +daring which is unusual elsewhere in the world. + +But it is hard to move a new English acquaintance when he is by himself, +or when the company present is small and new to him. He is on his guard +then, and his natural reserve is to the fore. This has given him the +false reputation of being without humor and without the appreciation of +humor. + +Americans are not Englishmen, and American humor is not English humor; +but both the American and his humor had their origin in England, and have +merely undergone changes brought about by changed conditions and a new +environment. About the best humorous speeches I have yet heard were a +couple that were made in Australia at club suppers--one of them by an +Englishman, the other by an Australian. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and +shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you +know ain't so." + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +In Sydney I had a large dream, and in the course of talk I told it to a +missionary from India who was on his way to visit some relatives in New +Zealand. I dreamed that the visible universe is the physical person of +God; that the vast worlds that we see twinkling millions of miles apart +in the fields of space are the blood corpuscles in His veins; and that we +and the other creatures are the microbes that charge with multitudinous +life the corpuscles. + +Mr. X., the missionary, considered the dream awhile, then said: + + "It is not surpassable for magnitude, since its metes and bounds are + the metes and bounds of the universe itself; and it seems to me that + it almost accounts for a thing which is otherwise nearly + unaccountable--the origin of the sacred legends of the Hindoos. + Perhaps they dream them, and then honestly believe them to be divine + revelations of fact. It looks like that, for the legends are built + on so vast a scale that it does not seem reasonable that plodding + priests would happen upon such colossal fancies when awake." + +He told some of the legends, and said that they were implicitly believed +by all classes of Hindoos, including those of high social position and +intelligence; and he said that this universal credulity was a great +hindrance to the missionary in his work. Then he said something like +this: + + "At home, people wonder why Christianity does not make faster + progress in India. They hear that the Indians believe easily, and + that they have a natural trust in miracles and give them a + hospitable reception. Then they argue like this: since the Indian + believes easily, place Christianity before them and they must + believe; confirm its truths by the biblical miracles, and they will + no longer doubt, The natural deduction is, that as Christianity + makes but indifferent progress in India, the fault is with us: we + are not fortunate in presenting the doctrines and the miracles. + + "But the truth is, we are not by any means so well equipped as they + think. We have not the easy task that they imagine. To use a + military figure, we are sent against the enemy with good powder in + our guns, but only wads for bullets; that is to say, our miracles + are not effective; the Hindoos do not care for them; they have more + extraordinary ones of their own. All the details of their own + religion are proven and established by miracles; the details of ours + must be proven in the same way. When I first began my work in India + I greatly underestimated the difficulties thus put upon my task. A + correction was not long in coming. I thought as our friends think + at home--that to prepare my childlike wonder-lovers to listen with + favor to my grave message I only needed to charm the way to it with + wonders, marvels, miracles. With full confidence I told the wonders + performed by Samson, the strongest man that had ever lived--for so I + called him. + + "At first I saw lively anticipation and strong interest in the faces + of my people, but as I moved along from incident to incident of the + great story, I was distressed to see that I was steadily losing the + sympathy of my audience. I could not understand it. It was a + surprise to me, and a disappointment. Before I was through, the + fading sympathy had paled to indifference. Thence to the end the + indifference remained; I was not able to make any impression upon + it. + + "A good old Hindoo gentleman told me where my trouble lay. He said + 'We Hindoos recognize a god by the work of his hands--we accept no + other testimony. Apparently, this is also the rule with you + Christians. And we know when a man has his power from a god by the + fact that he does things which he could not do, as a man, with the + mere powers of a man. Plainly, this is the Christian's way also, of + knowing when a man is working by a god's power and not by his own. + You saw that there was a supernatural property in the hair of + Samson; for you perceived that when his hair was gone he was as + other men. It is our way, as I have said. There are many nations + in the world, and each group of nations has its own gods, and will + pay no worship to the gods of the others. Each group believes its + own gods to be strongest, and it will not exchange them except for + gods that shall be proven to be their superiors in power. Man is + but a weak creature, and needs the help of gods--he cannot do + without it. Shall he place his fate in the hands of weak gods when + there may be stronger ones to be found? That would be foolish. No, + if he hear of gods that are stronger than his own, he should not + turn a deaf ear, for it is not a light matter that is at stake. How + then shall he determine which gods are the stronger, his own or + those that preside over the concerns of other nations? By comparing + the known works of his own gods with the works of those others; + there is no other way. Now, when we make this comparison, we are + not drawn towards the gods of any other nation. Our gods are shown + by their works to be the strongest, the most powerful. The + Christians have but few gods, and they are new--new, and not strong; + as it seems to us. They will increase in number, it is true, for + this has happened with all gods, but that time is far away, many + ages and decades of ages away, for gods multiply slowly, as is meet + for beings to whom a thousand years is but a single moment. Our own + gods have been born millions of years apart. The process is slow, + the gathering of strength and power is similarly slow. In the slow + lapse of the ages the steadily accumulating power of our gods has at + last become prodigious. We have a thousand proofs of this in the + colossal character of their personal acts and the acts of ordinary + men to whom they have given supernatural qualities. To your Samson + was given supernatural power, and when he broke the withes, and slew + the thousands with the jawbone of an ass, and carried away the + gate's of the city upon his shoulders, you were amazed--and also + awed, for you recognized the divine source of his strength. But it + could not profit to place these things before your Hindoo + congregation and invite their wonder; for they would compare them + with the deed done by Hanuman, when our gods infused their divine + strength into his muscles; and they would be indifferent to them--as + you saw. In the old, old times, ages and ages gone by, when our god + Rama was warring with the demon god of Ceylon, Rama bethought him to + bridge the sea and connect Ceylon with India, so that his armies + might pass easily over; and he sent his general, Hanuman, inspired + like your own Samson with divine strength, to bring the materials + for the bridge. In two days Hanuman strode fifteen hundred miles, + to the Himalayas, and took upon his shoulder a range of those lofty + mountains two hundred miles long, and started with it toward Ceylon. + It was in the night; and, as he passed along the plain, the people + of Govardhun heard the thunder of his tread and felt the earth + rocking under it, and they ran out, and there, with their snowy + summits piled to heaven, they saw the Himalayas passing by. And as + this huge continent swept along overshadowing the earth, upon its + slopes they discerned the twinkling lights of a thousand sleeping + villages, and it was as if the constellations were filing in + procession through the sky. While they were looking, Hanuman + stumbled, and a small ridge of red sandstone twenty miles long was + jolted loose and fell. Half of its length has wasted away in the + course of the ages, but the other ten miles of it remain in the + plain by Govardhun to this day as proof of the might of the + inspiration of our gods. You must know, yourself, that Hanuman + could not have carried those mountains to Ceylon except by the + strength of the gods. You know that it was not done by his own + strength, therefore, you know that it was done by the strength of + the gods, just as you know that Samson carried the gates by the + divine strength and not by his own. I think you must concede two + things: First, That in carrying the gates of the city upon his + shoulders, Samson did not establish the superiority of his gods over + ours; secondly, That his feat is not supported by any but verbal + evidence, while Hanuman's is not only supported by verbal evidence, + but this evidence is confirmed, established, proven, by visible, + tangible evidence, which is the strongest of all testimony. We have + the sandstone ridge, and while it remains we cannot doubt, and shall + not. Have you the gates?'" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man +strikes for double value and compromises on par. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +One is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends +money upon public works--such as legislative buildings, town halls, +hospitals, asylums, parks, and botanical gardens. I should say that +where minor towns in America spend a hundred dollars on the town hall and +on public parks and gardens, the like towns in Australasia spend a +thousand. And I think that this ratio will hold good in the matter of +hospitals, also. I have seen a costly and well-equipped, and +architecturally handsome hospital in an Australian village of fifteen +hundred inhabitants. It was built by private funds furnished by the +villagers and the neighboring planters, and its running expenses were +drawn from the same sources. I suppose it would be hard to match this in +any country. This village was about to close a contract for lighting its +streets with the electric light, when I was there. That is ahead of +London. London is still obscured by gas--gas pretty widely scattered, +too, in some of the districts; so widely indeed, that except on moonlight +nights it is difficult to find the gas lamps. + +The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty-eight acres, beautifully +laid out and rich with the spoil of all the lands and all the climes of +the world. The garden is on high ground in the middle of the town, +overlooking the great harbor, and it adjoins the spacious grounds of +Government House--fifty-six acres; and at hand also, is a recreation +ground containing eighty-two acres. In addition, there are the +zoological gardens, the race-course, and the great cricket-grounds where +the international matches are played. Therefore there is plenty of room +for reposeful lazying and lounging, and for exercise too, for such as +like that kind of work. + +There are four specialties attainable in the way of social pleasure. If +you enter your name on the Visitor's Book at Government House you will +receive an invitation to the next ball that takes place there, if nothing +can be proven against you. And it will be very pleasant; for you will +see everybody except the Governor, and add a number of acquaintances and +several friends to your list. The Governor will be in England. He +always is. The continent has four or five governors, and I do not know +how many it takes to govern the outlying archipelago; but anyway you will +not see them. When they are appointed they come out from England and get +inaugurated, and give a ball, and help pray for rain, and get aboard ship +and go back home. And so the Lieutenant-Governor has to do all the work. +I was in Australasia three months and a half, and saw only one Governor. +The others were at home. + +The Australasian Governor would not be so restless, perhaps, if he had a +war, or a veto, or something like that to call for his reserve-energies, +but he hasn't. There isn't any war, and there isn't any veto in his +hands. And so there is really little or nothing doing in his line. The +country governs itself, and prefers to do it; and is so strenuous about +it and so jealous of its independence that it grows restive if even the +Imperial Government at home proposes to help; and so the Imperial veto, +while a fact, is yet mainly a name. + +Thus the Governor's functions are much more limited than are a Governor's +functions with us. And therefore more fatiguing. He is the apparent +head of the State, he is the real head of Society. He represents +culture, refinement, elevated sentiment, polite life, religion; and by +his example he propagates these, and they spread and flourish and bear +good fruit. He creates the fashion, and leads it. His ball is the ball +of balls, and his countenance makes the horse-race thrive. + +He is usually a lord, and this is well; for his position compels him to +lead an expensive life, and an English lord is generally well equipped +for that. + +Another of Sydney's social pleasures is the visit to the Admiralty House; +which is nobly situated on high ground overlooking the water. The trim +boats of the service convey the guests thither; and there, or on board +the flag-ship, they have the duplicate of the hospitalities of Government +House. The Admiral commanding a station in British waters is a magnate +of the first degree, and he is sumptuously housed, as becomes the dignity +of his office. + +Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the harbor in a +fine steam pleasure-launch. Your richer friends own boats of this kind, +and they will invite you, and the joys of the trip will make a long day +seem short. + +And finally comes the shark-fishing. Sydney Harbor is populous with the +finest breeds of man-eating sharks in the world. Some people make their +living catching them; for the Government pays a cash bounty on them. The +larger the shark the larger the bounty, and some of the sharks are twenty +feet long. You not only get the bounty, but everything that is in the +shark belongs to you. Sometimes the contents are quite valuable. + +The shark is the swiftest fish that swims. The speed of the fastest +steamer afloat is poor compared to his. And he is a great gad-about, and +roams far and wide in the oceans, and visits the shores of all of them, +ultimately, in the course of his restless excursions. I have a tale to +tell now, which has not as yet been in print. In 1870 a young stranger +arrived in Sydney, and set about finding something to do; but he knew no +one, and brought no recommendations, and the result was that he got no +employment. He had aimed high, at first, but as time and his money +wasted away he grew less and less exacting, until at last he was willing +to serve in the humblest capacities if so he might get bread and shelter. +But luck was still against him; he could find no opening of any sort. +Finally his money was all gone. He walked the streets all day, thinking; +he walked them all night, thinking, thinking, and growing hungrier and +hungrier. At dawn he found himself well away from the town and drifting +aimlessly along the harbor shore. As he was passing by a nodding +shark-fisher the man looked up and said---- + +"Say, young fellow, take my line a spell, and change my luck for me." + +"How do you know I won't make it worse?" + +"Because you can't. It has been at its worst all night. If you can't +change it, no harm's done; if you do change it, it's for the better, +of course. Come." + +"All right, what will you give?" + +"I'll give you the shark, if you catch one." + +"And I will eat it, bones and all. Give me the line." + +"Here you are. I will get away, now, for awhile, so that my luck won't +spoil yours; for many and many a time I've noticed that if----there, pull +in, pull in, man, you've got a bite! I knew how it would be. Why, I +knew you for a born son of luck the minute I saw you. All right--he's +landed." + +It was an unusually large shark--"a full nineteen-footer," the fisherman +said, as he laid the creature open with his knife. + +"Now you rob him, young man, while I step to my hamper for a fresh bait. +There's generally something in them worth going for. You've changed my +luck, you see. But my goodness, I hope you haven't changed your own." + +"Oh, it wouldn't matter; don't worry about that. Get your bait. I'll +rob him." + +When the fisherman got back the young man had just finished washing his +hands in the bay, and was starting away. + +"What, you are not going?" + +"Yes. Good-bye." + +"But what about your shark?" + +"The shark? Why, what use is he to me?" + +"What use is he? I like that. Don't you know that we can go and report +him to Government, and you'll get a clean solid eighty shillings bounty? +Hard cash, you know. What do you think about it now?" + +"Oh, well, you can collect it." + +"And keep it? Is that what you mean?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, this is odd. You're one of those sort they call eccentrics, I +judge. The saying is, you mustn't judge a man by his clothes, and I'm +believing it now. Why yours are looking just ratty, don't you know; and +yet you must be rich." + +"I am." + +The young man walked slowly back to the town, deeply musing as he went. +He halted a moment in front of the best restaurant, then glanced at his +clothes and passed on, and got his breakfast at a "stand-up." There was +a good deal of it, and it cost five shillings. He tendered a sovereign, +got his change, glanced at his silver, muttered to himself, "There isn't +enough to buy clothes with," and went his way. + +At half-past nine the richest wool-broker in Sydney was sitting in his +morning-room at home, settling his breakfast with the morning paper. A +servant put his head in and said: + +"There's a sundowner at the door wants to see you, sir." + +"What do you bring that kind of a message here for? Send him about his +business." + +"He won't go, sir. I've tried." + +"He won't go? That's--why, that's unusual. He's one of two things, +then: he's a remarkable person, or he's crazy. Is he crazy?" + +"No, sir. He don't look it." + +"Then he's remarkable. What does he say he wants?" + +"He won't tell, sir; only says it's very important." + +"And won't go. Does he say he won't go?" + +"Says he'll stand there till he sees you, sir, if it's all day." + +"And yet isn't crazy. Show him up." + +The sundowner was shown in. The broker said to himself, "No, he's not +crazy; that is easy to see; so he must be the other thing." + +Then aloud, "Well, my good fellow, be quick about it; don't waste any +words; what is it you want?" + +"I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds." + +"Scott! (It's a mistake; he is crazy . . . . No--he can't be--not +with that eye.) Why, you take my breath away. Come, who are you?" + +"Nobody that you know." + +"What is your name?" + +"Cecil Rhodes." + +"No, I don't remember hearing the name before. Now then--just for +curiosity's sake--what has sent you to me on this extraordinary errand?" + +"The intention to make a hundred thousand pounds for you and as much for +myself within the next sixty days." + +"Well, well, well. It is the most extraordinary idea that--sit down--you +interest me. And somehow you--well, you fascinate me; I think that that +is about the word. And it isn't your proposition--no, that doesn't +fascinate me; it's something else, I don't quite know what; something +that's born in you and oozes out of you, I suppose. Now then just for +curiosity's sake again, nothing more: as I understand it, it is your +desire to bor----" + +"I said intention." + +"Pardon, so you did. I thought it was an unheedful use of the word--an +unheedful valuing of its strength, you know." + +"I knew its strength." + +"Well, I must say--but look here, let me walk the floor a little, my mind +is getting into a sort of whirl, though you don't seem disturbed any. +(Plainly this young fellow isn't crazy; but as to his being remarkable +--well, really he amounts to that, and something over.) Now then, I +believe I am beyond the reach of further astonishment. Strike, and spare +not. What is your scheme?" + +"To buy the wool crop--deliverable in sixty days." + +"What, the whole of it?" + +"The whole of it." + +"No, I was not quite out of the reach of surprises, after all. Why, how +you talk! Do you know what our crop is going to foot up?" + +"Two and a half million sterling--maybe a little more." + +"Well, you've got your statistics right, any way. Now, then, do you know +what the margins would foot up, to buy it at sixty days?" + +"The hundred thousand pounds I came here to get." + +"Right, once more. Well, dear me, just to see what would happen, I wish +you had the money. And if you had it, what would you do with it?" + +"I shall make two hundred thousand pounds out of it in sixty days." + +"You mean, of course, that you might make it if----" + +"I said 'shall'." + +"Yes, by George, you did say 'shall'! You are the most definite devil I +ever saw, in the matter of language. Dear, dear, dear, look here! +Definite speech means clarity of mind. Upon my word I believe you've got +what you believe to be a rational reason, for venturing into this house, +an entire stranger, on this wild scheme of buying the wool crop of an +entire colony on speculation. Bring it out--I am prepared--acclimatized, +if I may use the word. Why would you buy the crop, and why would you +make that sum out of it? That is to say, what makes you think you----" + +"I don't think--I know." + +"Definite again. How do you know?" + +"Because France has declared war against Germany, and wool has gone up +fourteen per cent. in London and is still rising." + +"Oh, in-deed? Now then, I've got you! Such a thunderbolt as you have +just let fly ought to have made me jump out of my chair, but it didn't +stir me the least little bit, you see. And for a very simple reason: I +have read the morning paper. You can look at it if you want to. The +fastest ship in the service arrived at eleven o'clock last night, fifty +days out from London. All her news is printed here. There are no +war-clouds anywhere; and as for wool, why, it is the low-spiritedest +commodity in the English market. It is your turn to jump, now . . . . +Well, why, don't you jump? Why do you sit there in that placid fashion, +when----" + +"Because I have later news." + +"Later news? Oh, come--later news than fifty days, brought steaming hot +from London by the----" + +"My news is only ten days old." + +"Oh, Mun-chausen, hear the maniac talk! Where did you get it?" + +"Got it out of a shark." + +"Oh, oh, oh, this is too much! Front! call the police bring the gun +--raise the town! All the asylums in Christendom have broken loose in the +single person of----" + +"Sit down! And collect yourself. Where is the use in getting excited? +Am I excited? There is nothing to get excited about. When I make a +statement which I cannot prove, it will be time enough for you to begin +to offer hospitality to damaging fancies about me and my sanity." + +"Oh, a thousand, thousand pardons! I ought to be ashamed of myself, and +I am ashamed of myself for thinking that a little bit of a circumstance +like sending a shark to England to fetch back a market report----" + +"What does your middle initial stand for, sir?" + +"Andrew. What are you writing?" + +"Wait a moment. Proof about the shark--and another matter. Only ten +lines. There--now it is done. Sign it." + +"Many thanks--many. Let me see; it says--it says oh, come, this is +interesting! Why--why--look here! prove what you say here, and I'll put +up the money, and double as much, if necessary, and divide the winnings +with you, half and half. There, now--I've signed; make your promise good +if you can. Show me a copy of the London Times only ten days old." + +"Here it is--and with it these buttons and a memorandum book that +belonged to the man the shark swallowed. Swallowed him in the Thames, +without a doubt; for you will notice that the last entry in the book is +dated 'London,' and is of the same date as the Times, and says, 'Ber +confequentz der Kreigeseflarun, reife ich heute nach Deutchland ab, aur +bak ich mein leben auf dem Ultar meines Landes legen mag'----, as clean +native German as anybody can put upon paper, and means that in +consequence of the declaration of war, this loyal soul is leaving for +home to-day, to fight. And he did leave, too, but the shark had him +before the day was done, poor fellow." + +"And a pity, too. But there are times for mourning, and we will attend +to this case further on; other matters are pressing, now. I will go down +and set the machinery in motion in a quiet way and buy the crop. It will +cheer the drooping spirits of the boys, in a transitory way. Everything +is transitory in this world. Sixty days hence, when they are called to +deliver the goods, they will think they've been struck by lightning. But +there is a time for mourning, and we will attend to that case along with +the other one. Come along, I'll take you to my tailor. What did you say +your name is?" + +"Cecil Rhodes." + +"It is hard to remember. However, I think you will make it easier by and +by, if you live. There are three kinds of people--Commonplace Men, +Remarkable Men, and Lunatics. I'll classify you with the Remarkables, +and take the chances." + +The deal went through, and secured to the young stranger the first +fortune he ever pocketed. + +The people of Sydney ought to be afraid of the sharks, but for some +reason they do not seem to be. On Saturdays the young men go out in +their boats, and sometimes the water is fairly covered with the little +sails. A boat upsets now and then, by accident, a result of tumultuous +skylarking; sometimes the boys upset their boat for fun--such as it is +with sharks visibly waiting around for just such an occurrence. The +young fellows scramble aboard whole--sometimes--not always. Tragedies +have happened more than once. While I was in Sydney it was reported that +a boy fell out of a boat in the mouth of the Paramatta river and screamed +for help and a boy jumped overboard from another boat to save him from +the assembling sharks; but the sharks made swift work with the lives of +both. + +The government pays a bounty for the shark; to get the bounty the +fishermen bait the hook or the seine with agreeable mutton; the news +spreads and the sharks come from all over the Pacific Ocean to get the +free board. In time the shark culture will be one of the most successful +things in the colony. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard; but +our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of +securing that. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +My health had broken down in New York in May; it had remained in a +doubtful but fairish condition during a succeeding period of 82 days; it +broke again on the Pacific. It broke again in Sydney, but not until +after I had had a good outing, and had also filled my lecture +engagements. This latest break lost me the chance of seeing Queensland. +In the circumstances, to go north toward hotter weather was not +advisable. + +So we moved south with a westward slant, 17 hours by rail to the capital +of the colony of Victoria, Melbourne--that juvenile city of sixty years, +and half a million inhabitants. On the map the distance looked small; +but that is a trouble with all divisions of distance in such a vast +country as Australia. The colony of Victoria itself looks small on the +map--looks like a county, in fact--yet it is about as large as England, +Scotland, and Wales combined. Or, to get another focus upon it, it is +just 80 times as large as the state of Rhode Island, and one-third as +large as the State of Texas. + +Outside of Melbourne, Victoria seems to be owned by a handful of +squatters, each with a Rhode Island for a sheep farm. That is the +impression which one gathers from common talk, yet the wool industry of +Victoria is by no means so great as that of New South Wales. The climate +of Victoria is favorable to other great industries--among others, +wheat-growing and the making of wine. + +We took the train at Sydney at about four in the afternoon. It was +American in one way, for we had a most rational sleeping car; also the +car was clean and fine and new--nothing about it to suggest the rolling +stock of the continent of Europe. But our baggage was weighed, and extra +weight charged for. That was continental. Continental and troublesome. +Any detail of railroading that is not troublesome cannot honorably be +described as continental. + +The tickets were round-trip ones--to Melbourne, and clear to Adelaide in +South Australia, and then all the way back to Sydney. Twelve hundred +more miles than we really expected to make; but then as the round trip +wouldn't cost much more than the single trip, it seemed well enough to +buy as many miles as one could afford, even if one was not likely to need +them. A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing +than he needs. + +Now comes a singular thing: the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the +most baffling and unaccountable marvel that Australasia can show. At the +frontier between New South Wales and Victoria our multitude of passengers +were routed out of their snug beds by lantern-light in the morning in the +biting-cold of a high altitude to change cars on a road that has no break +in it from Sydney to Melbourne! Think of the paralysis of intellect that +gave that idea birth; imagine the boulder it emerged from on some +petrified legislator's shoulders. + +It is a narrow-gage road to the frontier, and a broader gauge thence to +Melbourne. The two governments were the builders of the road and are the +owners of it. One or two reasons are given for this curious state of +things. One is, that it represents the jealousy existing between the +colonies--the two most important colonies of Australasia. What the other +one is, I have forgotten. But it is of no consequence. It could be but +another effort to explain the inexplicable. + +All passengers fret at the double-gauge; all shippers of freight must of +course fret at it; unnecessary expense, delay, and annoyance are imposed +upon everybody concerned, and no one is benefitted. + +Each Australian colony fences itself off from its neighbor with a +custom-house. Personally, I have no objection, but it must be a good +deal of inconvenience to the people. We have something resembling it +here and there in America, but it goes by another name. The large empire +of the Pacific coast requires a world of iron machinery, and could +manufacture it economically on the spot if the imposts on foreign iron +were removed. But they are not. Protection to Pennsylvania and Alabama +forbids it. The result to the Pacific coast is the same as if there were +several rows of custom-fences between the coast and the East. Iron +carted across the American continent at luxurious railway rates would be +valuable enough to be coined when it arrived. + +We changed cars. This was at Albury. And it was there, I think, that +the growing day and the early sun exposed the distant range called the +Blue Mountains. Accurately named. "My word!" as the Australians say, +but it was a stunning color, that blue. Deep, strong, rich, exquisite; +towering and majestic masses of blue--a softly luminous blue, a +smouldering blue, as if vaguely lit by fires within. It extinguished the +blue of the sky--made it pallid and unwholesome, whitey and washed-out. +A wonderful color--just divine. + +A resident told me that those were not mountains; he said they were +rabbit-piles. And explained that long exposure and the over-ripe +condition of the rabbits was what made them look so blue. This man may +have been right, but much reading of books of travel has made me +distrustful of gratis information furnished by unofficial residents of a +country. The facts which such people give to travelers are usually +erroneous, and often intemperately so. The rabbit-plague has indeed been +very bad in Australia, and it could account for one mountain, but not for +a mountain range, it seems to me. It is too large an order. + +We breakfasted at the station. A good breakfast, except the coffee; and +cheap. The Government establishes the prices and placards them. The +waiters were men, I think; but that is not usual in Australasia. The +usual thing is to have girls. No, not girls, young ladies--generally +duchesses. Dress? They would attract attention at any royal levee in +Europe. Even empresses and queens do not dress as they do. Not that +they could not afford it, perhaps, but they would not know how. + +All the pleasant morning we slid smoothly along over the plains, through +thin--not thick--forests of great melancholy gum trees, with trunks +rugged with curled sheets of flaking bark--erysipelas convalescents, so +to speak, shedding their dead skins. And all along were tiny cabins, +built sometimes of wood, sometimes of gray-blue corrugated iron; and +the doorsteps and fences were clogged with children--rugged little +simply-clad chaps that looked as if they had been imported from the +banks of the Mississippi without breaking bulk. + +And there were little villages, with neat stations well placarded with +showy advertisements--mainly of almost too self-righteous brands of +"sheepdip." If that is the name--and I think it is. It is a stuff like +tar, and is dabbed on to places where the shearer clips a piece out of +the sheep. It bars out the flies, and has healing properties, and a nip +to it which makes the sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills. It +is not good to eat. That is, it is not good to eat except when mixed +with railroad coffee. It improves railroad coffee. Without it railroad +coffee is too vague. But with it, it is quite assertive and +enthusiastic. By itself, railroad coffee is too passive; but sheep-dip +makes it wake up and get down to business. I wonder where they get +railroad coffee? + +We saw birds, but not a kangaroo, not an emu, not an ornithorhynchus, not +a lecturer, not a native. Indeed, the land seemed quite destitute of +game. But I have misused the word native. In Australia it is applied to +Australian-born whites only. I should have said that we saw no +Aboriginals--no "blackfellows." And to this day I have never seen one. +In the great museums you will find all the other curiosities, but in the +curio of chiefest interest to the stranger all of them are lacking. We +have at home an abundance of museums, and not an American Indian in them. +It is clearly an absurdity, but it never struck me before. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +Truth is stranger than fiction--to some people, but I am measurably +familiar with it. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to +stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The air was balmy and delicious, the sunshine radiant; it was a charming +excursion. In the course of it we came to a town whose odd name was +famous all over the world a quarter of a century ago--Wagga-Wagga. This +was because the Tichborne Claimant had kept a butcher-shop there. It was +out of the midst of his humble collection of sausages and tripe that he +soared up into the zenith of notoriety and hung there in the wastes of +space a time, with the telescopes of all nations leveled at him in +unappeasable curiosity--curiosity as to which of the two long-missing +persons he was: Arthur Orton, the mislaid roustabout of Wapping, or Sir +Roger Tichborne, the lost heir of a name and estates as old as English +history. We all know now, but not a dozen people knew then; and the +dozen kept the mystery to themselves and allowed the most intricate and +fascinating and marvelous real-life romance that has ever been played +upon the world's stage to unfold itself serenely, act by act, in a +British court by the long and laborious processes of judicial +development. + +When we recall the details of that great romance we marvel to see what +daring chances truth may freely take in constructing a tale, as compared +with the poor little conservative risks permitted to fiction. The +fiction-artist could achieve no success with the materials of this +splendid Tichborne romance. + +He would have to drop out the chief characters; the public would say such +people are impossible. He would have to drop out a number of the most +picturesque incidents; the public would say such things could never +happen. And yet the chief characters did exist, and the incidents did +happen. + +It cost the Tichborne estates $400,000 to unmask the Claimant and drive +him out; and even after the exposure multitudes of Englishmen still +believed in him. It cost the British Government another $400,000 to +convict him of perjury; and after the conviction the same old multitudes +still believed in him; and among these believers were many educated and +intelligent men; and some of them had personally known the real Sir +Roger. The Claimant was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. When he +got out of prison he went to New York and kept a whisky saloon in the +Bowery for a time, then disappeared from view. + +He always claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne until death called for him. +This was but a few months ago--not very much short of a generation since +he left Wagga-Wagga to go and possess himself of his estates. On his +death-bed he yielded up his secret, and confessed in writing that he was +only Arthur Orton of Wapping, able seaman and butcher--that and nothing +more. But it is scarcely to be doubted that there are people whom even +his dying confession will not convince. The old habit of assimilating +incredibilities must have made strong food a necessity in their case; a +weaker article would probably disagree with them. + +I was in London when the Claimant stood his trial for perjury. I +attended one of his showy evenings in the sumptuous quarters provided for +him from the purses of his adherents and well-wishers. He was in evening +dress, and I thought him a rather fine and stately creature. There were +about twenty-five gentlemen present; educated men, men moving in good +society, none of them commonplace; some of them were men of distinction, +none of them were obscurities. They were his cordial friends and +admirers. It was "Sir Roger," always "Sir Roger," on all hands; no one +withheld the title, all turned it from the tongue with unction, and as if +it tasted good. + +For many years I had had a mystery in stock. Melbourne, and only +Melbourne, could unriddle it for me. In 1873 I arrived in London with my +wife and young child, and presently received a note from Naples signed by +a name not familiar to me. It was not Bascom, and it was not Henry; but +I will call it Henry Bascom for convenience's sake. This note, of about +six lines, was written on a strip of white paper whose end-edges were +ragged. I came to be familiar with those strips in later years. Their +size and pattern were always the same. Their contents were usually to +the same effect: would I and mine come to the writer's country-place in +England on such and such a date, by such and such a train, and stay +twelve days and depart by such and such a train at the end of the +specified time? A carriage would meet us at the station. + +These invitations were always for a long time ahead; if we were in +Europe, three months ahead; if we were in America, six to twelve months +ahead. They always named the exact date and train for the beginning and +also for the end of the visit. + +This first note invited us for a date three months in the future. It +asked us to arrive by the 4.10 p.m. train from London, August 6th. The +carriage would be waiting. The carriage would take us away seven days +later-train specified. And there were these words: "Speak to Tom +Hughes." + +I showed the note to the author of "Tom Brown at Rugby," and be said: +"Accept, and be thankful." + +He described Mr. Bascom as being a man of genius, a man of fine +attainments, a choice man in every way, a rare and beautiful character. +He said that Bascom Hall was a particularly fine example of the stately +manorial mansion of Elizabeth's days, and that it was a house worth going +a long way to see--like Knowle; that Mr. B. was of a social disposition; +liked the company of agreeable people, and always had samples of the sort +coming and going. + +We paid the visit. We paid others, in later years--the last one in 1879. +Soon after that Mr. Bascom started on a voyage around the world in a +steam yacht--a long and leisurely trip, for he was making collections, in +all lands, of birds, butterflies, and such things. + +The day that President Garfield was shot by the assassin Guiteau, we were +at a little watering place on Long Island Sound; and in the mail matter +of that day came a letter with the Melbourne post-mark on it. It was for +my wife, but I recognized Mr. Bascom's handwriting on the envelope, and +opened it. It was the usual note--as to paucity of lines--and was +written on the customary strip of paper; but there was nothing usual +about the contents. The note informed my wife that if it would be any +assuagement of her grief to know that her husband's lecture-tour in +Australia was a satisfactory venture from the beginning to the end, he, +the writer, could testify that such was the case; also, that her +husband's untimely death had been mourned by all classes, as she would +already know by the press telegrams, long before the reception of this +note; that the funeral was attended by the officials of the colonial and +city governments; and that while he, the writer, her friend and mine, had +not reached Melbourne in time to see the body, he had at least had the +sad privilege of acting as one of the pall-bearers. Signed, "Henry +Bascom." + +My first thought was, why didn't he have the coffin opened? He would +have seen that the corpse was an imposter, and he could have gone right +ahead and dried up the most of those tears, and comforted those sorrowing +governments, and sold the remains and sent me the money. + +I did nothing about the matter. I had set the law after living lecture +doubles of mine a couple of times in America, and the law had not been +able to catch them; others in my trade had tried to catch their +impostor-doubles and had failed. Then where was the use in harrying a +ghost? None--and so I did not disturb it. I had a curiosity to know +about that man's lecture-tour and last moments, but that could wait. +When I should see Mr. Bascom he would tell me all about it. But he +passed from life, and I never saw him again.. My curiosity faded away. + +However, when I found that I was going to Australia it revived. And +naturally: for if the people should say that I was a dull, poor thing +compared to what I was before I died, it would have a bad effect on +business. Well, to my surprise the Sydney journalists had never heard of +that impostor! I pressed them, but they were firm--they had never heard +of him, and didn't believe in him. + +I could not understand it; still, I thought it would all come right in +Melbourne. The government would remember; and the other mourners. At +the supper of the Institute of Journalists I should find out all about +the matter. But no--it turned out that they had never heard of it. + +So my mystery was a mystery still. It was a great disappointment. I +believed it would never be cleared up--in this life--so I dropped it out +of my mind. + +But at last! just when I was least expecting it---- + +However, this is not the place for the rest of it; I shall come to the +matter again, in a far-distant chapter. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +There is a Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us +that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, +and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to +enjoy it. + -Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Melbourne spreads around over an immense area of ground. It is a stately +city architecturally as well as in magnitude. It has an elaborate system +of cable-car service; it has museums, and colleges, and schools, and +public gardens, and electricity, and gas, and libraries, and theaters, +and mining centers, and wool centers, and centers of the arts and +sciences, and boards of trade, and ships, and railroads, and a harbor, +and social clubs, and journalistic clubs, and racing clubs, and a +squatter club sumptuously housed and appointed, and as many churches and +banks as can make a living. In a word, it is equipped with everything +that goes to make the modern great city. It is the largest city of +Australasia, and fills the post with honor and credit. It has one +specialty; this must not be jumbled in with those other things. It is +the mitred Metropolitan of the Horse-Racing Cult. Its race-ground is the +Mecca of Australasia. On the great annual day of sacrifice--the 5th of +November, Guy Fawkes's Day--business is suspended over a stretch of land +and sea as wide as from New York to San Francisco, and deeper than from +the northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico; and every man and woman, of +high degree or low, who can afford the expense, put away their other +duties and come. They begin to swarm in by ship and rail a fortnight +before the day, and they swarm thicker and thicker day after day, until +all the vehicles of transportation are taxed to their uttermost to meet +the demands of the occasion, and all hotels and lodgings are bulging +outward because of the pressure from within. They come a hundred +thousand strong, as all the best authorities say, and they pack the +spacious grounds and grandstands and make a spectacle such as is never to +be seen in Australasia elsewhere. + +It is the "Melbourne Cup" that brings this multitude together. Their +clothes have been ordered long ago, at unlimited cost, and without bounds +as to beauty and magnificence, and have been kept in concealment until +now, for unto this day are they consecrate. I am speaking of the ladies' +clothes; but one might know that. + +And so the grand-stands make a brilliant and wonderful spectacle, a +delirium of color, a vision of beauty. The champagne flows, everybody is +vivacious, excited, happy; everybody bets, and gloves and fortunes change +hands right along, all the time. Day after day the races go on, and the +fun and the excitement are kept at white heat; and when each day is done, +the people dance all night so as to be fresh for the race in the morning. +And at the end of the great week the swarms secure lodgings and +transportation for next year, then flock away to their remote homes and +count their gains and losses, and order next year's Cup-clothes, and then +lie down and sleep two weeks, and get up sorry to reflect that a whole +year must be put in somehow or other before they can be wholly happy +again. + +The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be +difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays +and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies. +Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out. Each of them +gets attention, but not everybody's; each of them evokes interest, but +not everybody's; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody's; in +each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter +of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory. +Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an +enthusiasm which are universal--and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup +Day is supreme it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized annual +day, in any country, which can be named by that large name--Supreme. I +can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose +approach fires the whole land with a conflagration of conversation and +preparation and anticipation and jubilation. No day save this one; but +this one does it. + +In America we have no annual supreme day; no day whose approach makes the +whole nation glad. We have the Fourth of July, and Christmas, and +Thanksgiving. Neither of them can claim the primacy; neither of them can +arouse an enthusiasm which comes near to being universal. Eight grown +Americans out of ten dread the coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium +and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone--if still alive. The +approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent +people. They have to buy a cart-load of presents, and they never know +what to buy to hit the various tastes; they put in three weeks of hard +and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so +dissatisfied with the result, and so disappointed that they want to sit +down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a +year. The observance of Thanksgiving Day--as a function--has become +general of late years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is +natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard +time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their +enthusiasm. + +We have a supreme day--a sweeping and tremendous and tumultuous day, a +day which commands an absolute universality of interest and excitement; +but it is not annual. It comes but once in four years; therefore it +cannot count as a rival of the Melbourne Cup. + +In Great Britain and Ireland they have two great days--Christmas and the +Queen's birthday. But they are equally popular; there is no supremacy. + +I think it must be conceded that the position of the Australasian Day is +unique, solitary, unfellowed; and likely to hold that high place a long +time. + +The next things which interest us when we travel are, first, the people; +next, the novelties; and finally the history of the places and countries +visited. Novelties are rare in cities which represent the most advanced +civilization of the modern day. When one is familiar with such cities in +the other parts of the world he is in effect familiar with the cities of +Australasia. The outside aspects will furnish little that is new. There +will be new names, but the things which they represent will sometimes be +found to be less new than their names. There may be shades of +difference, but these can easily be too fine for detection by the +incompetent eye of the passing stranger. In the larrikin he will not be +able to discover a new species, but only an old one met elsewhere, and +variously called loafer, rough, tough, bummer, or blatherskite, according +to his geographical distribution. The larrikin differs by a shade from +those others, in that he is more sociable toward the stranger than they, +more kindly disposed, more hospitable, more hearty, more friendly. At +least it seemed so to me, and I had opportunity to observe. In Sydney, +at least. In Melbourne I had to drive to and from the lecture-theater, +but in Sydney I was able to walk both ways, and did it. Every night, on +my way home at ten, or a quarter past, I found the larrikin grouped in +considerable force at several of the street corners, and he always gave +me this pleasant salutation: + +"Hello, Mark!" + +"Here's to you, old chap! + +"Say--Mark!--is he dead?"--a reference to a passage in some book of mine, +though I did not detect, at that time, that that was its source. And I +didn't detect it afterward in Melbourne, when I came on the stage for the +first time, and the same question was dropped down upon me from the dizzy +height of the gallery. It is always difficult to answer a sudden inquiry +like that, when you have come unprepared and don't know what it means. +I will remark here--if it is not an indecorum--that the welcome which an +American lecturer gets from a British colonial audience is a thing which +will move him to his deepest deeps, and veil his sight and break his +voice. And from Winnipeg to Africa, experience will teach him nothing; +he will never learn to expect it, it will catch him as a surprise each +time. The war-cloud hanging black over England and America made no +trouble for me. I was a prospective prisoner of war, but at dinners, +suppers, on the platform, and elsewhere, there was never anything to +remind me of it. This was hospitality of the right metal, and would have +been prominently lacking in some countries, in the circumstances. + +And speaking of the war-flurry, it seemed to me to bring to light the +unexpected, in a detail or two. It seemed to relegate the war-talk to +the politicians on both sides of the water; whereas whenever a +prospective war between two nations had been in the air theretofore, the +public had done most of the talking and the bitterest. The attitude of +the newspapers was new also. I speak of those of Australasia and India, +for I had access to those only. They treated the subject argumentatively +and with dignity, not with spite and anger. That was a new spirit, too, +and not learned of the French and German press, either before Sedan or +since. I heard many public speeches, and they reflected the moderation +of the journals. The outlook is that the English-speaking race will +dominate the earth a hundred years from now, if its sections do not get +to fighting each other. It would be a pity to spoil that prospect by +baffling and retarding wars when arbitration would settle their +differences so much better and also so much more definitely. + +No, as I have suggested, novelties are rare in the great capitals of +modern times. Even the wool exchange in Melbourne could not be told from +the familiar stock exchange of other countries. Wool brokers are just +like stockbrokers; they all bounce from their seats and put up their +hands and yell in unison--no stranger can tell what--and the president +calmly says "Sold to Smith & Co., threpence farthing--next!"--when +probably nothing of the kind happened; for how should he know? + +In the museums you will find acres of the most strange and fascinating +things; but all museums are fascinating, and they do so tire your eyes, +and break your back, and burn out your vitalities with their consuming +interest. You always say you will never go again, but you do go. The +palaces of the rich, in Melbourne, are much like the palaces of the rich +in America, and the life in them is the same; but there the resemblance +ends. The grounds surrounding the American palace are not often large, +and not often beautiful, but in the Melbourne case the grounds are often +ducally spacious, and the climate and the gardeners together make them as +beautiful as a dream. It is said that some of the country seats have +grounds--domains--about them which rival in charm and magnitude those +which surround the country mansion of an English lord; but I was not out +in the country; I had my hands full in town. + +And what was the origin of this majestic city and its efflorescence of +palatial town houses and country seats? Its first brick was laid and +its first house built by a passing convict. Australian history is almost +always picturesque; indeed, it is so curious and strange, that it is +itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer, and so it pushes +the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like +history, but like the most beautiful lies. And all of a fresh new sort, +no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises, and adventures, and +incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all +true, they all happened. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +The English are mentioned in the Bible: Blessed are the meek, for they +shall inherit the earth. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +When we consider the immensity of the British Empire in territory, +population, and trade, it requires a stern exercise of faith to believe +in the figures which represent Australasia's contribution to the Empire's +commercial grandeur. As compared with the landed estate of the British +Empire, the landed estate dominated by any other Power except one +--Russia--is not very impressive for size. My authorities make the British +Empire not much short of a fourth larger than the Russian Empire. +Roughly proportioned, if you will allow your entire hand to represent the +British Empire, you may then cut off the fingers a trifle above the +middle joint of the middle finger, and what is left of the hand will +represent Russia. The populations ruled by Great Britain and China are +about the same--400,000,000 each. No other Power approaches these +figures. Even Russia is left far behind. + +The population of Australasia--4,000,000--sinks into nothingness, and is +lost from sight in that British ocean of 400,000,000. Yet the statistics +indicate that it rises again and shows up very conspicuously when its +share of the Empire's commerce is the matter under consideration. The +value of England's annual exports and imports is stated at three billions +of dollars,--[New South Wales Blue Book.]--and it is claimed that more +than one-tenth of this great aggregate is represented by Australasia's +exports to England and imports from England. In addition to this, +Australasia does a trade with countries other than England, amounting to +a hundred million dollars a year, and a domestic intercolonial trade +amounting to a hundred and fifty millions. + +In round numbers the 4,000,000 buy and sell about $600,000,000 worth of +goods a year. It is claimed that about half of this represents +commodities of Australasian production. The products exported annually +by India are worth a trifle over $500,000,000. Now, here are some +faith-straining figures: + +Indian production (300,000,000 population), $500,000,000. + +Australasian production (4,000,000 population), $300,000,000. + +That is to say, the product of the individual Indian, annually (for +export some whither), is worth $1.15; that of the individual +Australasian (for export some whither), $75! Or, to put it in another +way, the Indian family of man and wife and three children sends away an +annual result worth $8.75, while the Australasian family sends away $375 +worth. + +There are trustworthy statistics furnished by Sir Richard Temple and +others, which show that the individual Indian's whole annual product, +both for export and home use, is worth in gold only $7.50; or, $37.50 +for the family-aggregate. Ciphered out on a like ratio of +multiplication, the Australasian family's aggregate production would be +nearly $1,600. Truly, nothing is so astonishing as figures, if they once +get started. + +We left Melbourne by rail for Adelaide, the capital of the vast Province +of South Australia--a seventeen-hour excursion. On the train we found +several Sydney friends; among them a Judge who was going out on circuit, +and was going to hold court at Broken Hill, where the celebrated silver +mine is. It seemed a curious road to take to get to that region. Broken +Hill is close to the western border of New South Wales, and Sydney is on +the eastern border. A fairly straight line, 700 miles long, drawn +westward from Sydney, would strike Broken Hill, just as a somewhat +shorter one drawn west from Boston would strike Buffalo. The way the +Judge was traveling would carry him over 2,000 miles by rail, he said; +southwest from Sydney down to Melbourne, then northward up to Adelaide, +then a cant back northeastward and over the border into New South Wales +once more--to Broken Hill. It was like going from Boston southwest to +Richmond, Virginia, then northwest up to Erie, Pennsylvania, then a cant +back northeast and over the border--to Buffalo, New York. + +But the explanation was simple. Years ago the fabulously rich silver +discovery at Broken Hill burst suddenly upon an unexpectant world. Its +stocks started at shillings, and went by leaps and bounds to the most +fanciful figures. It was one of those cases where the cook puts a +month's wages into shares, and comes next mouth and buys your house at +your own price, and moves into it herself; where the coachman takes a few +shares, and next month sets up a bank; and where the common sailor +invests the price of a spree, and next month buys out the steamship +company and goes into business on his own hook. In a word, it was one of +those excitements which bring multitudes of people to a common center +with a rush, and whose needs must be supplied, and at once. Adelaide was +close by, Sydney was far away. Adelaide threw a short railway across the +border before Sydney had time to arrange for a long one; it was not worth +while for Sydney to arrange at all. The whole vast trade-profit of +Broken Hill fell into Adelaide's hands, irrevocably. New South Wales +furnishes for Broken Hill and sends her Judges 2,000 miles--mainly +through alien countries--to administer it, but Adelaide takes the +dividends and makes no moan. + +We started at 4.20 in the afternoon, and moved across level until night. +In the morning we had a stretch of "scrub" country--the kind of thing +which is so useful to the Australian novelist. In the scrub the hostile +aboriginal lurks, and flits mysteriously about, slipping out from time to +time to surprise and slaughter the settler; then slipping back again, and +leaving no track that the white man can follow. In the scrub the +novelist's heroine gets lost, search fails of result; she wanders here +and there, and finally sinks down exhausted and unconscious, and the +searchers pass within a yard or two of her, not suspecting that she is +near, and by and by some rambler finds her bones and the pathetic diary +which she had scribbled with her failing hand and left behind. Nobody +can find a lost heroine in the scrub but the aboriginal "tracker," and he +will not lend himself to the scheme if it will interfere with the +novelist's plot. The scrub stretches miles and miles in all directions, +and looks like a level roof of bush-tops without a break or a crack in it +--as seamless as a blanket, to all appearance. One might as well walk +under water and hope to guess out a route and stick to it, I should +think. Yet it is claimed that the aboriginal "tracker" was able to hunt +out people lost in the scrub. Also in the "bush"; also in the desert; +and even follow them over patches of bare rocks and over alluvial ground +which had to all appearance been washed clear of footprints. + +From reading Australian books and talking with the people, I became +convinced that the aboriginal tracker's performances evince a craft, a +penetration, a luminous sagacity, and a minuteness and accuracy of +observation in the matter of detective-work not found in nearly so +remarkable a degree in any other people, white or colored. In an +official account of the blacks of Australia published by the government +of Victoria, one reads that the aboriginal not only notices the faint +marks left on the bark of a tree by the claws of a climbing opossum, but +knows in some way or other whether the marks were made to-day or +yesterday. + +And there is the case, on records where A., a settler, makes a bet with +B., that B. may lose a cow as effectually as he can, and A. will produce +an aboriginal who will find her. B. selects a cow and lets the tracker +see the cow's footprint, then be put under guard. B. then drives the cow +a few miles over a course which drifts in all directions, and frequently +doubles back upon itself; and he selects difficult ground all the time, +and once or twice even drives the cow through herds of other cows, and +mingles her tracks in the wide confusion of theirs. He finally brings +his cow home; the aboriginal is set at liberty, and at once moves around +in a great circle, examining all cow-tracks until he finds the one he is +after; then sets off and follows it throughout its erratic course, and +ultimately tracks it to the stable where B. has hidden the cow. Now +wherein does one cow-track differ from another? There must be a +difference, or the tracker could not have performed the feat; a +difference minute, shadowy, and not detectible by you or me, or by the +late Sherlock Holmes, and yet discernible by a member of a race charged +by some people with occupying the bottom place in the gradations of human +intelligence. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +It is easier to stay out than get out. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The train was now exploring a beautiful hill country, and went twisting +in and out through lovely little green valleys. There were several +varieties of gum trees; among them many giants. Some of them were bodied +and barked like the sycamore; some were of fantastic aspect, and reminded +one of the quaint apple trees in Japanese pictures. And there was one +peculiarly beautiful tree whose name and breed I did not know. The +foliage seemed to consist of big bunches of pine-spines, the lower half +of each bunch a rich brown or old-gold color, the upper half a most vivid +and strenuous and shouting green. The effect was altogether bewitching. +The tree was apparently rare. I should say that the first and last +samples of it seen by us were not more than half an hour apart. There +was another tree of striking aspect, a kind of pine, we were told. Its +foliage was as fine as hair, apparently, and its mass sphered itself +above the naked straight stem like an explosion of misty smoke. It was +not a sociable sort; it did not gather in groups or couples, but each +individual stood far away from its nearest neighbor. It scattered itself +in this spacious and exclusive fashion about the slopes of swelling +grassy great knolls, and stood in the full flood of the wonderful +sunshine; and as far as you could see the tree itself you could also see +the ink-black blot of its shadow on the shining green carpet at its feet. + +On some part of this railway journey we saw gorse and broom--importations +from England--and a gentleman who came into our compartment on a visit +tried to tell me which--was which; but as he didn't know, he had +difficulty. He said he was ashamed of his ignorance, but that he had +never been confronted with the question before during the fifty years and +more that he had spent in Australia, and so he had never happened to get +interested in the matter. But there was no need to be ashamed. The most +of us have his defect. We take a natural interest in novelties, but it +is against nature to take an interest in familiar things. The gorse and +the broom were a fine accent in the landscape. Here and there they burst +out in sudden conflagrations of vivid yellow against a background of +sober or sombre color, with a so startling effect as to make a body catch +his breath with the happy surprise of it. And then there was the wattle, +a native bush or tree, an inspiring cloud of sumptuous yellow bloom. It +is a favorite with the Australians, and has a fine fragrance, a quality +usually wanting in Australian blossoms. + +The gentleman who enriched me with the poverty of his formation about the +gorse and the broom told me that he came out from England a youth of +twenty and entered the Province of South Australia with thirty-six +shillings in his pocket--an adventurer without trade, profession, or +friends, but with a clearly-defined purpose in his head: he would stay +until he was worth L200, then go back home. He would allow himself five +years for the accumulation of this fortune. + +"That was more than fifty years ago," said he. "And here I am, yet." + +As he went out at the door he met a friend, and turned and introduced him +to me, and the friend and I had a talk and a smoke. I spoke of the +previous conversation and said there something very pathetic about this +half century of exile, and that I wished the L200 scheme had succeeded. + +"With him? Oh, it did. It's not so sad a case. He is modest, and he +left out some of the particulars. The lad reached South Australia just +in time to help discover the Burra-Burra copper mines. They turned out +L700,000 in the first three years. Up to now they have yielded +L120,000,000. He has had his share. Before that boy had been in the +country two years he could have gone home and bought a village; he could +go now and buy a city, I think. No, there is nothing very pathetic about +his case. He and his copper arrived at just a handy time to save South +Australia. It had got mashed pretty flat under the collapse of a land +boom a while before." There it is again; picturesque history +--Australia's specialty. In 1829 South Australia hadn't a white man in it. +In 1836 the British Parliament erected it--still a solitude--into a +Province, and gave it a governor and other governmental machinery. +Speculators took hold, now, and inaugurated a vast land scheme, and +invited immigration, encouraging it with lurid promises of sudden wealth. +It was well worked in London; and bishops, statesmen, and all ports of +people made a rush for the land company's shares. Immigrants soon began +to pour into the region of Adelaide and select town lots and farms in the +sand and the mangrove swamps by the sea. The crowds continued to come, +prices of land rose high, then higher and still higher, everybody was +prosperous and happy, the boom swelled into gigantic proportions. A +village of sheet iron huts and clapboard sheds sprang up in the sand, and +in these wigwams fashion made display; richly-dressed ladies played on +costly pianos, London swells in evening dress and patent-leather boots +were abundant, and this fine society drank champagne, and in other ways +conducted itself in this capital of humble sheds as it had been +accustomed to do in the aristocratic quarters of the metropolis of the +world. The provincial government put up expensive buildings for its own +use, and a palace with gardens for the use of its governor. The governor +had a guard, and maintained a court. Roads, wharves, and hospitals were +built. All this on credit, on paper, on wind, on inflated and fictitious +values--on the boom's moonshine, in fact. This went on handsomely during +four or five years. Then of a sudden came a smash. Bills for a huge +amount drawn the governor upon the Treasury were dishonored, the land +company's credit went up in smoke, a panic followed, values fell with a +rush, the frightened immigrants seized their grips and fled to other +lands, leaving behind them a good imitation of a solitude, where lately +had been a buzzing and populous hive of men. + +Adelaide was indeed almost empty; its population had fallen to 3,000. +During two years or more the death-trance continued. Prospect of revival +there was none; hope of it ceased. Then, as suddenly as the paralysis +had come, came the resurrection from it. Those astonishingly rich copper +mines were discovered, and the corpse got up and danced. + +The wool production began to grow; grain-raising followed--followed so +vigorously, too, that four or five years after the copper discovery, this +little colony, which had had to import its breadstuffs formerly, and pay +hard prices for them--once $50 a barrel for flour--had become an exporter +of grain. + +The prosperities continued. After many years Providence, desiring to +show especial regard for New South Wales and exhibit loving interest in +its welfare which should certify to all nations the recognition of that +colony's conspicuous righteousness and distinguished well-deserving, +conferred upon it that treasury of inconceivable riches, Broken Hill; and +South Australia went over the border and took it, giving thanks. + +Among our passengers was an American with a unique vocation. Unique is a +strong word, but I use it justifiably if I did not misconceive what the +American told me; for I understood him to say that in the world there was +not another man engaged in the business which he was following. He was +buying the kangaroo-skin crop; buying all of it, both the Australian crop +and the Tasmanian; and buying it for an American house in New York. The +prices were not high, as there was no competition, but the year's +aggregate of skins would cost him L30,000. I had had the idea that the +kangaroo was about extinct in Tasmania and well thinned out on the +continent. In America the skins are tanned and made into shoes. After +the tanning, the leather takes a new name--which I have forgotten--I only +remember that the new name does not indicate that the kangaroo furnishes +the leather. There was a German competition for a while, some years ago, +but that has ceased. The Germans failed to arrive at the secret of +tanning the skins successfully, and they withdrew from the business. Now +then, I suppose that I have seen a man whose occupation is really +entitled to bear that high epithet--unique. And I suppose that there is +not another occupation in the world that is restricted to the hands of a +sole person. I can think of no instance of it. There is more than one +Pope, there is more than one Emperor, there is even more than one living +god, walking upon the earth and worshiped in all sincerity by large +populations of men. I have seen and talked with two of these Beings +myself in India, and I have the autograph of one of them. It can come +good, by and by, I reckon, if I attach it to a "permit." + +Approaching Adelaide we dismounted from the train, as the French say, and +were driven in an open carriage over the hills and along their slopes to +the city. It was an excursion of an hour or two, and the charm of it +could not be overstated, I think. The road wound around gaps and gorges, +and offered all varieties of scenery and prospect--mountains, crags, +country homes, gardens, forests--color, color, color everywhere, and the +air fine and fresh, the skies blue, and not a shred of cloud to mar the +downpour of the brilliant sunshine. And finally the mountain gateway +opened, and the immense plain lay spread out below and stretching away +into dim distances on every hand, soft and delicate and dainty and +beautiful. On its near edge reposed the city. + +We descended and entered. There was nothing to remind one of the humble +capital, of buts and sheds of the long-vanished day of the land-boom. +No, this was a modern city, with wide streets, compactly built; with fine +homes everywhere, embowered in foliage and flowers, and with imposing +masses of public buildings nobly grouped and architecturally beautiful. + +There was prosperity, in the air; for another boom was on. Providence, +desiring to show especial regard for the neighboring colony on the west +called Western Australia--and exhibit a loving interest in its welfare +which should certify to all nations the recognition of that colony's +conspicuous righteousness and distinguished well-deserving, had recently +conferred upon it that majestic treasury of golden riches, Coolgardie; +and now South Australia had gone around the corner and taken it, giving +thanks. Everything comes to him who is patient and good, and waits. + +But South Australia deserves much, for apparently she is a hospitable +home for every alien who chooses to come; and for his religion, too. +She has a population, as per the latest census, of only 320,000-odd, and +yet her varieties of religion indicate the presence within her borders of +samples of people from pretty nearly every part of the globe you can +think of. Tabulated, these varieties of religion make a remarkable show. +One would have to go far to find its match. I copy here this +cosmopolitan curiosity, and it comes from the published census: + +Church of England,........... 89,271 +Roman Catholic,.............. 47,179 +Wesleyan,.................... 49,159 +Lutheran,.................... 23,328 +Presbyterian,................ 18,206 +Congregationalist,........... 11,882 +Bible Christian,............. 15,762 +Primitive Methodist,......... 11,654 +Baptist,..................... 17,547 +Christian Brethren,.......... 465 +Methodist New Connexion,..... 39 +Unitarian,................... 688 +Church of Christ,............ 3,367 +Society of Friends,.......... 100 +Salvation Army,.............. 4,356 +New Jerusalem Church,........ 168 +Jews,........................ 840 +Protestants (undefined),..... 6,532 +Mohammedans,................. 299 +Confucians, etc.,............ 3,884 +Other religions,............. 1,719 +Object,...................... 6,940 +Not stated,.................. 8,046 + +Total,.......................320,431 + + +The item in the above list "Other religions" includes the following as +returned: + +Agnostics, +Atheists, +Believers in Christ, +Buddhists, +Calvinists, +Christadelphians, +Christians, +Christ's Chapel, +Christian Israelites, +Christian Socialists, +Church of God, +Cosmopolitans, +Deists, +Evangelists, +Exclusive Brethren, +Free Church, +Free Methodists, +Freethinkers, +Followers of Christ, +Gospel Meetings, +Greek Church, +Infidels, +Maronites, +Memnonists, +Moravians, +Mormons, +Naturalists, +Orthodox, +Others (indefinite), +Pagans, +Pantheists, +Plymouth Brethren, +Rationalists, +Reformers, +Secularists, +Seventh-day Adventists, +Shaker, +Shintoists, +Spiritualists, +Theosophists, +Town (City) Mission, +Welsh Church, +Huguenot, +Hussite, +Zoroastrians, +Zwinglian, + + +About 64 roads to the other world. You see how healthy the religious +atmosphere is. Anything can live in it. Agnostics, Atheists, +Freethinkers, Infidels, Mormons, Pagans, Indefinites they are all there. +And all the big sects of the world can do more than merely live in it: +they can spread, flourish, prosper. All except the Spiritualists and the +Theosophists. That is the most curious feature of this curious table. +What is the matter with the specter? Why do they puff him away? He is a +welcome toy everywhere else in the world. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +Pity is for the living, Envy is for the dead. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The successor of the sheet-iron hamlet of the mangrove marshes has that +other Australian specialty, the Botanical Gardens. We cannot have these +paradises. The best we could do would be to cover a vast acreage under +glass and apply steam heat. But it would be inadequate, the lacks would +still be so great: the confined sense, the sense of suffocation, the +atmospheric dimness, the sweaty heat--these would all be there, in place +of the Australian openness to the sky, the sunshine and the breeze. +Whatever will grow under glass with us will flourish rampantly out of +doors in Australia.--[The greatest heat in Victoria, that there is an +authoritative record of, was at Sandhurst, in January, 1862. The +thermometer then registered 117 degrees in the shade. In January, 1880, +the heat at Adelaide, South Australia, was 172 degrees in the sun.] + +When the white man came the continent was nearly as poor, in variety of +vegetation, as the desert of Sahara; now it has everything that grows on +the earth. In fact, not Australia only, but all Australasia has levied +tribute upon the flora of the rest of the world; and wherever one goes +the results appear, in gardens private and public, in the woodsy walls of +the highways, and in even the forests. If you see a curious or beautiful +tree or bush or flower, and ask about it, the people, answering, usually +name a foreign country as the place of its origin--India, Africa, Japan, +China, England, America, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, Polynesia, and so on. + +In the Zoological Gardens of Adelaide I saw the only laughing jackass +that ever showed any disposition to be courteous to me. This one opened +his head wide and laughed like a demon; or like a maniac who was consumed +with humorous scorn over a cheap and degraded pun. It was a very human +laugh. If he had been out of sight I could have believed that the +laughter came from a man. It is an odd-looking bird, with a head and +beak that are much too large for its body. In time man will exterminate +the rest of the wild creatures of Australia, but this one will probably +survive, for man is his friend and lets him alone. Man always has a good +reason for his charities towards wild things, human or animal when he has +any. In this case the bird is spared because he kills snakes. If L. J. +he will not kill all of them. + +In that garden I also saw the wild Australian dog--the dingo. He was a +beautiful creature--shapely, graceful, a little wolfish in some of his +aspects, but with a most friendly eye and sociable disposition. The +dingo is not an importation; he was present in great force when the +whites first came to the continent. It may be that he is the oldest dog +in the universe; his origin, his descent, the place where his ancestors +first appeared, are as unknown and as untraceable as are the camel's. +He is the most precious dog in the world, for he does not bark. But in +an evil hour he got to raiding the sheep-runs to appease his hunger, and +that sealed his doom. He is hunted, now, just as if he were a wolf. +He has been sentenced to extermination, and the sentence will be carried +out. This is all right, and not objectionable. The world was made for +man--the white man. + +South Australia is confusingly named. All of the colonies have a +southern exposure except one--Queensland. Properly speaking, South +Australia is middle Australia. It extends straight up through the center +of the continent like the middle board in a center-table. It is 2,000 +miles high, from south to north, and about a third as wide. A wee little +spot down in its southeastern corner contains eight or nine-tenths of its +population; the other one or two-tenths are elsewhere--as elsewhere as +they could be in the United States with all the country between Denver +and Chicago, and Canada and the Gulf of Mexico to scatter over. There is +plenty of room. + +A telegraph line stretches straight up north through that 2,000 miles of +wilderness and desert from Adelaide to Port Darwin on the edge of the +upper ocean. South Australia built the line; and did it in 1871-2 when +her population numbered only 185,000. It was a great work; for there +were no roads, no paths; 1,300 miles of the route had been traversed but +once before by white men; provisions, wire, and poles had to be carried +over immense stretches of desert; wells had to be dug along the route to +supply the men and cattle with water. + +A cable had been previously laid from Port Darwin to Java and thence to +India, and there was telegraphic communication with England from India. +And so, if Adelaide could make connection with Port Darwin it meant +connection with the whole world. The enterprise succeeded. One could +watch the London markets daily, now; the profit to the wool-growers of +Australia was instant and enormous. + +A telegram from Melbourne to San Francisco covers approximately 20,000 +miles--the equivalent of five-sixths of the way around the globe. It has +to halt along the way a good many times and be repeated; still, but +little time is lost. These halts, and the distances between them, are +here tabulated.--[From "Round the Empire." (George R. Parkin), all but +the last two.] + + Miles. + +Melbourne-Mount Gambier,.......300 +Mount Gambier-Adelaide,........270 +Adelaide-Port Augusta,.........200 +Port Augusta-Alice Springs...1,036 +Alice Springs-Port Darwin,.....898 +Port Darwin-Banjoewangie,... 1,150 +Banjoewangie-Batavia,..........480 +Batavia-Singapore,.............553 +Singapore-Penang,..............399 +Penang-Madras,...............1,280 +Madras-Bombay,.................650 +Bombay-Aden,.................1,662 +Aden-Suez,...................1,346 +Suez-Alexandria,...............224 +Alexandria-Malta,..............828 +Malta-Gibraltar,.............1,008 +Gibraltar-Falmouth,..........1,061 +Falmouth-London,...............350 +London-New York,.............2,500 +New York-San Francisco,......3,500 + + +I was in Adelaide again, some months later, and saw the multitudes gather +in the neighboring city of Glenelg to commemorate the Reading of the +Proclamation--in 1836--which founded the Province. If I have at any time +called it a Colony, I withdraw the discourtesy. It is not a Colony, it +is a Province; and officially so. Moreover, it is the only one so named +in Australasia. There was great enthusiasm; it was the Province's +national holiday, its Fourth of July, so to speak. It is the pre-eminent +holiday; and that is saying much, in a country where they seem to have a +most un-English mania for holidays. Mainly they are workingmen's +holidays; for in South Australia the workingman is sovereign; his vote is +the desire of the politician--indeed, it is the very breath of the +politician's being; the parliament exists to deliver the will of the +workingman, and the government exists to execute it. The workingman is a +great power everywhere in Australia, but South Australia is his paradise. +He has had a hard time in this world, and has earned a paradise. I am +glad he has found it. The holidays there are frequent enough to be +bewildering to the stranger. I tried to get the hang of the system, but +was not able to do it. + +You have seen that the Province is tolerant, religious-wise. It is so +politically, also. One of the speakers at the Commemoration banquet--the +Minister of Public Works-was an American, born and reared in New England. +There is nothing narrow about the Province, politically, or in any other +way that I know of. Sixty-four religions and a Yankee cabinet minister. +No amount of horse-racing can damn this community. + +The mean temperature of the Province is 62 deg. The death-rate is 13 in +the 1,000--about half what it is in the city of New York, I should think, +and New York is a healthy city. Thirteen is the death-rate for the +average citizen of the Province, but there seems to be no death-rate for +the old people. There were people at the Commemoration banquet who could +remember Cromwell. There were six of them. These Old Settlers had all +been present at the original Reading of the Proclamation, in 1536. They +showed signs of the blightings and blastings of time, in their outward +aspect, but they were young within; young and cheerful, and ready to +talk; ready to talk, and talk all you wanted; in their turn, and out of +it. They were down for six speeches, and they made 42. The governor and +the cabinet and the mayor were down for 42 speeches, and they made 6. +They have splendid grit, the Old Settlers, splendid staying power. But +they do not hear well, and when they see the mayor going through motions +which they recognize as the introducing of a speaker, they think they are +the one, and they all get up together, and begin to respond, in the most +animated way; and the more the mayor gesticulates, and shouts "Sit down! +Sit down!" the more they take it for applause, and the more excited and +reminiscent and enthusiastic they get; and next, when they see the whole +house laughing and crying, three of them think it is about the bitter +old-time hardships they are describing, and the other three think the +laughter is caused by the jokes they have been uncorking--jokes of the +vintage of 1836--and then the way they do go on! And finally when ushers +come and plead, and beg, and gently and reverently crowd them down into +their seats, they say, "Oh, I'm not tired--I could bang along a week!" +and they sit there looking simple and childlike, and gentle, and proud of +their oratory, and wholly unconscious of what is going on at the other +end of the room. And so one of the great dignitaries gets a chance, and +begins his carefully prepared speech, impressively and with solemnity-- + + "When we, now great and prosperous and powerful, bow our heads in + reverent wonder in the contemplation of those sublimities of energy, + of wisdom, of forethought, of----" + +Up come the immortal six again, in a body, with a joyous "Hey, I've +thought of another one!" and at it they go, with might and main, hearing +not a whisper of the pandemonium that salutes them, but taking all the +visible violences for applause, as before, and hammering joyously away +till the imploring ushers pray them into their seats again. And a pity, +too; for those lovely old boys did so enjoy living their heroic youth +over, in these days of their honored antiquity; and certainly the things +they had to tell were usually worth the telling and the hearing. + +It was a stirring spectacle; stirring in more ways than one, for it was +amazingly funny, and at the same time deeply pathetic; for they had seen +so much, these time-worn veterans, end had suffered so much; and had +built so strongly and well, and laid the foundations of their +commonwealth so deep, in liberty and tolerance; and had lived to see the +structure rise to such state and dignity and hear themselves so praised +for honorable work. + +One of these old gentlemen told me some things of interest afterward; +things about the aboriginals, mainly. He thought them intelligent +--remarkably so in some directions--and he said that along with their +unpleasant qualities they had some exceedingly good ones; and he +considered it a great pity that the race had died out. He instanced +their invention of the boomerang and the "weet-weet" as evidences of +their brightness; and as another evidence of it he said he had never seen +a white man who had cleverness enough to learn to do the miracles with +those two toys that the aboriginals achieved. He said that even the +smartest whites had been obliged to confess that they could not learn the +trick of the boomerang in perfection; that it had possibilities which +they could not master. The white man could not control its motions, +could not make it obey him; but the aboriginal could. He told me some +wonderful things--some almost incredible things--which he had seen the +blacks do with the boomerang and the weet-weet. They have been confirmed +to me since by other early settlers and by trustworthy books. + +It is contended--and may be said to be conceded--that the boomerang was +known to certain savage tribes in Europe in Roman times. In support of +this, Virgil and two other Roman poets are quoted. It is also contended +that it was known to the ancient Egyptians. + +One of two things either some one with is then apparent: a boomerang +arrived in Australia in the days of antiquity before European knowledge +of the thing had been lost, or the Australian aboriginal reinvented it. +It will take some time to find out which of these two propositions is the +fact. But there is no hurry. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three +unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, +and the prudence never to practice either of them. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +From diary: + +Mr. G. called. I had not seen him since Nauheim, Germany--several years +ago; the time that the cholera broke out at Hamburg. We talked of the +people we had known there, or had casually met; and G. said: + +"Do you remember my introducing you to an earl--the Earl of C.?" + +"Yes. That was the last time I saw you. You and he were in a carriage, +just starting--belated--for the train. I remember it." + +"I remember it too, because of a thing which happened then which I was +not looking for. He had told me a while before, about a remarkable and +interesting Californian whom he had met and who was a friend of yours, +and said that if he should ever meet you he would ask you for some +particulars about that Californian. The subject was not mentioned that +day at Nauheim, for we were hurrying away, and there was no time; but the +thing that surprised me was this: when I induced you, you said, 'I am +glad to meet your lordship gain.' The I again' was the surprise. He is +a little hard of hearing, and didn't catch that word, and I thought you +hadn't intended that he should. As we drove off I had only time to say, +'Why, what do you know about him?' and I understood you to say, 'Oh, +nothing, except that he is the quickest judge of----' Then we were gone, +and I didn't get the rest. I wondered what it was that he was such a +quick judge of. I have thought of it many times since, and still +wondered what it could be. He and I talked it over, but could not guess +it out. He thought it must be fox-hounds or horses, for he is a good +judge of those--no one is a better. But you couldn't know that, because +you didn't know him; you had mistaken him for some one else; it must be +that, he said, because he knew you had never met him before. And of +course you hadn't had you?" + +"Yes, I had." + +"Is that so? Where?" + +"At a fox-hunt, in England." + +"How curious that is. Why, he hadn't the least recollection of it. Had +you any conversation with him?" + +"Some--yes." + +"Well, it left not the least impression upon him. What did you talk +about?" + +"About the fox. I think that was all." + +"Why, that would interest him; that ought to have left an impression. +What did he talk about?" + +"The fox." + +It's very curious. I don't understand it. Did what he said leave an +impression upon you?" + +"Yes. It showed me that he was a quick judge of--however, I will tell +you all about it, then you will understand. It was a quarter of a +century ago 1873 or '74. I had an American friend in London named F., +who was fond of hunting, and his friends the Blanks invited him and me to +come out to a hunt and be their guests at their country place. In the +morning the mounts were provided, but when I saw the horses I changed my +mind and asked permission to walk. I had never seen an English hunter +before, and it seemed to me that I could hunt a fox safer on the ground. +I had always been diffident about horses, anyway, even those of the +common altitudes, and I did not feel competent to hunt on a horse that +went on stilts. So then Mrs. Blank came to my help and said I could go +with her in the dog-cart and we would drive to a place she knew of, and +there we should have a good glimpse of the hunt as it went by. + +"When we got to that place I got out and went and leaned my elbows on a +low stone wall which enclosed a turfy and beautiful great field with +heavy wood on all its sides except ours. Mrs. Blank sat in the dog-cart +fifty yards away, which was as near as she could get with the vehicle. +I was full of interest, for I had never seen a fox-hunt. I waited, +dreaming and imagining, in the deep stillness and impressive tranquility +which reigned in that retired spot. Presently, from away off in the +forest on the left, a mellow bugle-note came floating; then all of a +sudden a multitude of dogs burst out of that forest and went tearing by +and disappeared in the forest on the right; there was a pause, and then +a cloud of horsemen in black caps and crimson coats plunged out of the +left-hand forest and went flaming across the field like a prairie-fire, +a stirring sight to see. There was one man ahead of the rest, and he +came spurring straight at me. He was fiercely excited. It was fine to +see him ride; he was a master horseman. He came like, a storm till he +was within seven feet of me, where I was leaning on the wall, then he +stood his horse straight up in the air on his hind toe-nails, and shouted +like a demon: + +"'Which way'd the fox go?' + +"I didn't much like the tone, but I did not let on; for he was excited, +you know. But I was calm; so I said softly, and without acrimony: + +"'Which fox?' + +"It seemed to anger him. I don't know why; and he thundered out: + +"'WHICH fox? Why, THE fox? Which way did the FOX go?' + +"I said, with great gentleness--even argumentatively: + +"'If you could be a little more definite--a little less vague--because I +am a stranger, and there are many foxes, as you will know even better +than I, and unless I know which one it is that you desire to identify, +and----' + +"'You're certainly the damdest idiot that has escaped in a thousand +years!' and he snatched his great horse around as easily as I would +snatch a cat, and was away like a hurricane. A very excitable man. + +"I went back to Mrs. Blank, and she was excited, too--oh, all alive. She +said: + +"'He spoke to you!--didn't he?' + +"'Yes, it is what happened.' + +"'I knew it! I couldn't hear what he said, but I knew be spoke to you! Do +you know who it was? It was Lord C., and he is Master of the Buckhounds! +Tell me--what do you think of him?' + +"'Him? Well, for sizing-up a stranger, he's got the most sudden and +accurate judgment of any man I ever saw.' + +"It pleased her. I thought it would." + +G. got away from Nauheim just in time to escape being shut in by the +quarantine-bars on the frontiers; and so did we, for we left the next +day. But G. had a great deal of trouble in getting by the Italian +custom-house, and we should have fared likewise but for the +thoughtfulness of our consul-general in Frankfort. He introduced me to +the Italian consul-general, and I brought away from that consulate a +letter which made our way smooth. It was a dozen lines merely commending +me in a general way to the courtesies of servants in his Italian +Majesty's service, but it was more powerful than it looked. In addition +to a raft of ordinary baggage, we had six or eight trunks which were +filled exclusively with dutiable stuff--household goods purchased in +Frankfort for use in Florence, where we had taken a house. I was going +to ship these through by express; but at the last moment an order went +throughout Germany forbidding the moving of any parcels by train unless +the owner went with them. This was a bad outlook. We must take these +things along, and the delay sure to be caused by the examination of them +in the custom-house might lose us our train. I imagined all sorts of +terrors, and enlarged them steadily as we approached the Italian +frontier. We were six in number, clogged with all that baggage, and I +was courier for the party the most incapable one they ever employed. + +We arrived, and pressed with the crowd into the immense custom-house, and +the usual worries began; everybody crowding to the counter and begging to +have his baggage examined first, and all hands clattering and chattering +at once. It seemed to me that I could do nothing; it would be better to +give it all up and go away and leave the baggage. I couldn't speak the +language; I should never accomplish anything. Just then a tall handsome +man in a fine uniform was passing by and I knew he must be the +station-master--and that reminded me of my letter. I ran to him and put +it into his hands. He took it out of the envelope, and the moment his +eye caught the royal coat of arms printed at its top, he took off his cap +and made a beautiful bow to me, and said in English: + +"Which is your baggage? Please show it to me." + +I showed him the mountain. Nobody was disturbing it; nobody was +interested in it; all the family's attempts to get attention to it had +failed--except in the case of one of the trunks containing the dutiable +goods. It was just being opened. My officer said: + +"There, let that alone! Lock it. Now chalk it. Chalk all of the lot. +Now please come and show the hand-baggage." + +He plowed through the waiting crowd, I following, to the counter, and he +gave orders again, in his emphatic military way: + +"Chalk these. Chalk all of them." + +Then he took off his cap and made that beautiful bow again, and went his +way. By this time these attentions had attracted the wonder of that acre +of passengers, and the whisper had gone around that the royal family were +present getting their baggage chalked; and as we passed down in review on +our way to the door, I was conscious of a pervading atmosphere of envy +which gave me deep satisfaction. + +But soon there was an accident. My overcoat pockets were stuffed with +German cigars and linen packages of American smoking tobacco, and a +porter was following us around with this overcoat on his arm, and +gradually getting it upside down. Just as I, in the rear of my family, +moved by the sentinels at the door, about three hatfuls of the tobacco +tumbled out on the floor. One of the soldiers pounced upon it, gathered +it up in his arms, pointed back whence I had come, and marched me ahead +of him past that long wall of passengers again--he chattering and +exulting like a devil, they smiling in peaceful joy, and I trying to look +as if my pride was not hurt, and as if I did not mind being brought to +shame before these pleased people who had so lately envied me. But at +heart I was cruelly humbled. + +When I had been marched two-thirds of the long distance and the misery of +it was at the worst, the stately station-master stepped out from +somewhere, and the soldier left me and darted after him and overtook him; +and I could see by the soldier's excited gestures that he was betraying +to him the whole shabby business. The station-master was plainly very +angry. He came striding down toward me, and when he was come near he +began to pour out a stream of indignant Italian; then suddenly took off +his hat and made that beautiful bow and said: + +"Oh, it is you! I beg a thousands pardons! This idiot here---" He turned +to the exulting soldier and burst out with a flood of white-hot Italian +lava, and the next moment he was bowing, and the soldier and I were +moving in procession again--he in the lead and ashamed, this time, I with +my chin up. And so we marched by the crowd of fascinated passengers, and +I went forth to the train with the honors of war. Tobacco and all. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to +get himself envied. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Before I saw Australia I had never heard of the "weet-weet" at all. +I met but few men who had seen it thrown--at least I met but few who +mentioned having seen it thrown. Roughly described, it is a fat wooden +cigar with its butt-end fastened to a flexible twig. The whole thing is +only a couple of feet long, and weighs less than two ounces. This +feather--so to call it--is not thrown through the air, but is flung with +an underhanded throw and made to strike the ground a little way in front +of the thrower; then it glances and makes a long skip; glances again, +skips again, and again and again, like the flat stone which a boy sends +skating over the water. The water is smooth, and the stone has a good +chance; so a strong man may make it travel fifty or seventy-five yards; +but the weet-weet has no such good chance, for it strikes sand, grass, +and earth in its course. Yet an expert aboriginal has sent it a measured +distance of two hundred and twenty yards. It would have gone even +further but it encountered rank ferns and underwood on its passage and +they damaged its speed. Two hundred and twenty yards; and so weightless +a toy--a mouse on the end of a bit of wire, in effect; and not sailing +through the accommodating air, but encountering grass and sand and stuff +at every jump. It looks wholly impossible; but Mr. Brough Smyth saw the +feat and did the measuring, and set down the facts in his book about +aboriginal life, which he wrote by command of the Victorian Government. + +What is the secret of the feat? No one explains. It cannot be physical +strength, for that could not drive such a feather-weight any distance. +It must be art. But no one explains what the art of it is; nor how it +gets around that law of nature which says you shall not throw any +two-ounce thing 220 yards, either through the air or bumping along the +ground. Rev. J. G. Woods says: + +"The distance to which the weet-weet or kangaroo-rat can be thrown is +truly astonishing. I have seen an Australian stand at one side of +Kennington Oval and throw the kangaroo rat completely across it." (Width +of Kensington Oval not stated.) "It darts through the air with the sharp +and menacing hiss of a rifle-ball, its greatest height from the ground +being some seven or eight feet . . . . . . When properly thrown it +looks just like a living animal leaping along . . . . . . Its +movements have a wonderful resemblance to the long leaps of a +kangaroo-rat fleeing in alarm, with its long tail trailing behind it." + +The Old Settler said that he had seen distances made by the weet-weet, in +the early days, which almost convinced him that it was as extraordinary +an instrument as the boomerang. + +There must have been a large distribution of acuteness among those naked +skinny aboriginals, or they couldn't have been such unapproachable +trackers and boomerangers and weet-weeters. It must have been +race-aversion that put upon them a good deal of the low-rate intellectual +reputation which they bear and have borne this long time in the world's +estimate of them. + +They were lazy--always lazy. Perhaps that was their trouble. It is a +killing defect. Surely they could have invented and built a competent +house, but they didn't. And they could have invented and developed the +agricultural arts, but they didn't. They went naked and houseless, and +lived on fish and grubs and worms and wild fruits, and were just plain +savages, for all their smartness. + +With a country as big as the United States to live and multiply in, and +with no epidemic diseases among them till the white man came with those +and his other appliances of civilization, it is quite probable that there +was never a day in his history when he could muster 100,000 of his race +in all Australia. He diligently and deliberately kept population down by +infanticide--largely; but mainly by certain other methods. He did not +need to practise these artificialities any more after the white man came. +The white man knew ways of keeping down population which were worth +several of his. The white man knew ways of reducing a native population +80 percent. in 20 years. The native had never seen anything as fine as +that before. + +For example, there is the case of the country now called Victoria--a +country eighty times as large as Rhode Island, as I have already said. +By the best official guess there were 4,500 aboriginals in it when the +whites came along in the middle of the 'Thirties. Of these, 1,000 lived +in Gippsland, a patch of territory the size of fifteen or sixteen Rhode +Islands: they did not diminish as fast as some of the other communities; +indeed, at the end of forty years there were still 200 of them left. The +Geelong tribe diminished more satisfactorily: from 173 persons it faded +to 34 in twenty years; at the end of another twenty the tribe numbered +one person altogether. The two Melbourne tribes could muster almost 300 +when the white man came; they could muster but twenty, thirty-seven years +later, in 1875. In that year there were still odds and ends of tribes +scattered about the colony of Victoria, but I was told that natives of +full blood are very scarce now. It is said that the aboriginals continue +in some force in the huge territory called Queensland. + +The early whites were not used to savages. They could not understand the +primary law of savage life: that if a man do you a wrong, his whole tribe +is responsible--each individual of it--and you may take your change out +of any individual of it, without bothering to seek out the guilty one. +When a white killed an aboriginal, the tribe applied the ancient law, and +killed the first white they came across. To the whites this was a +monstrous thing. Extermination seemed to be the proper medicine for such +creatures as this. They did not kill all the blacks, but they promptly +killed enough of them to make their own persons safe. From the dawn of +civilization down to this day the white man has always used that very +precaution. Mrs. Campbell Praed lived in Queensland, as a child, in the +early days, and in her "Sketches of Australian life," we get informing +pictures of the early struggles of the white and the black to reform each +other. + +Speaking of pioneer days in the mighty wilderness of Queensland, Mrs. +Praed says: + + "At first the natives retreated before the whites; and, except that + they every now and then speared a beast in one of the herds, gave + little cause for uneasiness. But, as the number of squatters + increased, each one taking up miles of country and bringing two or + three men in his train, so that shepherds' huts and stockmen's camps + lay far apart, and defenseless in the midst of hostile tribes, the + Blacks' depredations became more frequent and murder was no unusual + event. + + "The loneliness of the Australian bush can hardly be painted in + words. Here extends mile after mile of primeval forest where + perhaps foot of white man has never trod--interminable vistas where + the eucalyptus trees rear their lofty trunks and spread forth their + lanky limbs, from which the red gum oozes and hangs in fantastic + pendants like crimson stalactites; ravines along the sides of which + the long-bladed grass grows rankly; level untimbered plains + alternating with undulating tracts of pasture, here and there broken + by a stony ridge, steep gully, or dried-up creek. All wild, vast + and desolate; all the same monotonous gray coloring, except where + the wattle, when in blossom, shows patches of feathery gold, or a + belt of scrub lies green, glossy, and impenetrable as Indian jungle. + + "The solitude seems intensified by the strange sounds of reptiles, + birds, and insects, and by the absence of larger creatures; of which + in the day-time, the only audible signs are the stampede of a herd + of kangaroo, or the rustle of a wallabi, or a dingo stirring the + grass as it creeps to its lair. But there are the whirring of + locusts, the demoniac chuckle of the laughing jack-ass, the + screeching of cockatoos and parrots, the hissing of the frilled + lizard, and the buzzing of innumerable insects hidden under the + dense undergrowth. And then at night, the melancholy wailing of the + curlews, the dismal howling of dingoes, the discordant croaking of + tree-frogs, might well shake the nerves of the solitary watcher." + +That is the theater for the drama. When you comprehend one or two other +details, you will perceive how well suited for trouble it was, and how +loudly it invited it. The cattlemen's stations were scattered over that +profound wilderness miles and miles apart--at each station half a dozen +persons. There was a plenty of cattle, the black natives were always +ill-nourished and hungry. The land belonged to them. The whites had not +bought it, and couldn't buy it; for the tribes had no chiefs, nobody in +authority, nobody competent to sell and convey; and the tribes themselves +had no comprehension of the idea of transferable ownership of land. The +ousted owners were despised by the white interlopers, and this opinion +was not hidden under a bushel. More promising materials for a tragedy +could not have been collated. Let Mrs. Praed speak: + + "At Nie station, one dark night, the unsuspecting hut-keeper, + having, as he believed, secured himself against assault, was lying + wrapped in his blankets sleeping profoundly. The Blacks crept + stealthily down the chimney and battered in his skull while he + slept." + +One could guess the whole drama from that little text. The curtain was +up. It would not fall until the mastership of one party or the other was +determined--and permanently: + + "There was treachery on both sides. The Blacks killed the Whites + when they found them defenseless, and the Whites slew the Blacks in + a wholesale and promiscuous fashion which offended against my + childish sense of justice. + + "They were regarded as little above the level of brutes, and in some + cases were destroyed like vermin. + + "Here is an instance. A squatter, whose station was surrounded by + Blacks, whom he suspected to be hostile and from whom he feared an + attack, parleyed with them from his house-door. He told them it was + Christmas-time--a time at which all men, black or white, feasted; + that there were flour, sugar-plums, good things in plenty in the + store, and that he would make for them such a pudding as they had + never dreamed of--a great pudding of which all might eat and be + filled. The Blacks listened and were lost. The pudding was made + and distributed. Next morning there was howling in the camp, for it + had been sweetened with sugar and arsenic!" + +The white man's spirit was right, but his method was wrong. His spirit +was the spirit which the civilized white has always exhibited toward the +savage, but the use of poison was a departure from custom. True, it was +merely a technical departure, not a real one; still, it was a departure, +and therefore a mistake, in my opinion. It was better, kinder, swifter, +and much more humane than a number of the methods which have been +sanctified by custom, but that does not justify its employment. That is, +it does not wholly justify it. Its unusual nature makes it stand out and +attract an amount of attention which it is not entitled to. It takes +hold upon morbid imaginations and they work it up into a sort of +exhibition of cruelty, and this smirches the good name of our +civilization, whereas one of the old harsher methods would have had no +such effect because usage has made those methods familiar to us and +innocent. In many countries we have chained the savage and starved him +to death; and this we do not care for, because custom has inured us to +it; yet a quick death by poison is loving-kindness to it. In many +countries we have burned the savage at the stake; and this we do not care +for, because custom has inured us to it; yet a quick death is +loving-kindness to it. In more than one country we have hunted the +savage and his little children and their mother with dogs and guns +through the woods and swamps for an afternoon's sport, and filled the +region with happy laughter over their sprawling and stumbling flight, and +their wild supplications for mercy; but this method we do not mind, +because custom has inured us to it; yet a quick death by poison is +loving-kindness to it. In many countries we have taken the savage's land +from him, and made him our slave, and lashed him every day, and broken +his pride, and made death his only friend, and overworked him till he +dropped in his tracks; and this we do not care for, because custom has +inured us to it; yet a quick death by poison is loving-kindness to it. +In the Matabeleland today--why, there we are confining ourselves to +sanctified custom, we Rhodes-Beit millionaires in South Africa and Dukes +in London; and nobody cares, because we are used to the old holy customs, +and all we ask is that no notice-inviting new ones shall be intruded upon +the attention of our comfortable consciences. Mrs. Praed says of the +poisoner, "That squatter deserves to have his name handed down to the +contempt of posterity." + +I am sorry to hear her say that. I myself blame him for one thing, and +severely, but I stop there. I blame him for, the indiscretion of +introducing a novelty which was calculated to attract attention to our +civilization. There was no occasion to do that. It was his duty, and it +is every loyal man's duty to protect that heritage in every way he can; +and the best way to do that is to attract attention elsewhere. The +squatter's judgment was bad--that is plain; but his heart was right. He +is almost the only pioneering representative of civilization in history +who has risen above the prejudices of his caste and his heredity and +tried to introduce the element of mercy into the superior race's dealings +with the savage. His name is lost, and it is a pity; for it deserves to +be handed down to posterity with homage and reverence. + +This paragraph is from a London journal: + + "To learn what France is doing to spread the blessings of + civilization in her distant dependencies we may turn with advantage + to New Caledonia. With a view to attracting free settlers to that + penal colony, M. Feillet, the Governor, forcibly expropriated the + Kanaka cultivators from the best of their plantations, with a + derisory compensation, in spite of the protests of the Council + General of the island. Such immigrants as could be induced to cross + the seas thus found themselves in possession of thousands of coffee, + cocoa, banana, and bread-fruit trees, the raising of which had cost + the wretched natives years of toil whilst the latter had a few + five-franc pieces to spend in the liquor stores of Noumea." + +You observe the combination? It is robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow +murder, through poverty and the white man's whisky. The savage's gentle +friend, the savage's noble friend, the only magnanimous and unselfish +friend the savage has ever had, was not there with the merciful swift +release of his poisoned pudding. + +There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man's +notion that he is less savage than the other savages.--[See Chapter on +Tasmania, post.] + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand, except a lady's watch. + + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +You notice that Mrs. Praed knows her art. She can place a thing before +you so that you can see it. She is not alone in that. Australia is +fertile in writers whose books are faithful mirrors of the life of the +country and of its history. The materials were surprisingly rich, both +in quality and in mass, and Marcus Clarke, Ralph Boldrewood, Cordon, +Kendall, and the others, have built out of them a brilliant and vigorous +literature, and one which must endure. Materials--there is no end to +them! Why, a literature might be made out of the aboriginal all by +himself, his character and ways are so freckled with varieties--varieties +not staled by familiarity, but new to us. You do not need to invent any +picturesquenesses; whatever you want in that line he can furnish you; and +they will not be fancies and doubtful, but realities and authentic. In +his history, as preserved by the white man's official records, he is +everything--everything that a human creature can be. He covers the +entire ground. He is a coward--there are a thousand fact to prove it. +He is brave--there are a thousand facts to prove it. He is treacherous +--oh, beyond imagination! he is faithful, loyal, true--the white man's +records supply you with a harvest of instances of it that are noble, +worshipful, and pathetically beautiful. He kills the starving stranger +who comes begging for food and shelter there is proof of it. He succors, +and feeds, and guides to safety, to-day, the lost stranger who fired on +him only yesterday--there is proof of it. He takes his reluctant bride +by force, he courts her with a club, then loves her faithfully through a +long life--it is of record. He gathers to himself another wife by the +same processes, beats and bangs her as a daily diversion, and by and by +lays down his life in defending her from some outside harm--it is of +record. He will face a hundred hostiles to rescue one of his children, +and will kill another of his children because the family is large enough +without it. His delicate stomach turns, at certain details of the white +man's food; but he likes over-ripe fish, and brazed dog, and cat, and +rat, and will eat his own uncle with relish. He is a sociable animal, +yet he turns aside and hides behind his shield when his mother-in-law +goes by. He is childishly afraid of ghosts and other trivialities that +menace his soul, but dread of physical pain is a weakness which he is not +acquainted with. He knows all the great and many of the little +constellations, and has names for them; he has a symbol-writing by means +of which he can convey messages far and wide among the tribes; he has a +correct eye for form and expression, and draws a good picture; he can +track a fugitive by delicate traces which the white man's eye cannot +discern, and by methods which the finest white intelligence cannot +master; he makes a missile which science itself cannot duplicate without +the model--if with it; a missile whose secret baffled and defeated the +searchings and theorizings of the white mathematicians for seventy years; +and by an art all his own he performs miracles with it which the white +man cannot approach untaught, nor parallel after teaching. Within +certain limits this savage's intellect is the alertest and the brightest +known to history or tradition; and yet the poor creature was never able +to invent a counting system that would reach above five, nor a vessel +that he could boil water in. He is the prize-curiosity of all the races. +To all intents and purposes he is dead--in the body; but he has features +that will live in literature. + +Mr. Philip Chauncy, an officer of the Victorian Government, contributed +to its archives a report of his personal observations of the aboriginals +which has in it some things which I wish to condense slightly and insert +here. He speaks of the quickness of their eyes and the accuracy of their +judgment of the direction of approaching missiles as being quite +extraordinary, and of the answering suppleness and accuracy of limb and +muscle in avoiding the missile as being extraordinary also. He has seen +an aboriginal stand as a target for cricket-balls thrown with great force +ten or fifteen yards, by professional bowlers, and successfully dodge +them or parry them with his shield during about half an hour. One of +those balls, properly placed, could have killed him; "Yet he depended, +with the utmost self-possession, on the quickness of his eye and his +agility." + +The shield was the customary war-shield of his race, and would not be a +protection to you or to me. It is no broader than a stovepipe, and is +about as long as a man's arm. The opposing surface is not flat, but +slopes away from the centerline like a boat's bow. The difficulty about +a cricket-ball that has been thrown with a scientific "twist" is, that it +suddenly changes it course when it is close to its target and comes +straight for the mark when apparently it was going overhead or to one +side. I should not be able to protect myself from such balls for +half-an-hour, or less. + +Mr. Chauncy once saw "a little native man" throw a cricket-ball 119 +yards. This is said to beat the English professional record by thirteen +yards. + +We have all seen the circus-man bound into the air from a spring-board +and make a somersault over eight horses standing side by side. Mr. +Chauncy saw an aboriginal do it over eleven; and was assured that he had +sometimes done it over fourteen. But what is that to this: + + "I saw the same man leap from the ground, and in going over he + dipped his head, unaided by his hands, into a hat placed in an + inverted position on the top of the head of another man sitting + upright on horseback--both man and horse being of the average size. + The native landed on the other side of the horse with the hat fairly + on his head. The prodigious height of the leap, and the precision + with which it was taken so as to enable him to dip his head into the + hat, exceeded any feat of the kind I have ever beheld." + +I should think so! On board a ship lately I saw a young Oxford athlete +run four steps and spring into the air and squirm his hips by a +side-twist over a bar that was five and one-half feet high; but he could +not have stood still and cleared a bar that was four feet high. I know +this, because I tried it myself. + +One can see now where the kangaroo learned its art. + +Sir George Grey and Mr. Eyre testify that the natives dug wells fourteen +or fifteen feet deep and two feet in diameter at the bore--dug them in +the sand--wells that were "quite circular, carried straight down, and the +work beautifully executed." + +Their tools were their hands and feet. How did they throw sand out from +such a depth? How could they stoop down and get it, with only two feet +of space to stoop in? How did they keep that sand-pipe from caving in +on them? I do not know. Still, they did manage those seeming +impossibilities. Swallowed the sand, may be. + +Mr. Chauncy speaks highly of the patience and skill and alert +intelligence of the native huntsman when he is stalking the emu, the +kangaroo, and other game: + + "As he walks through the bush his step is light, elastic, and + noiseless; every track on the earth catches his keen eye; a leaf, or + fragment of a stick turned, or a blade of grass recently bent by the + tread of one of the lower animals, instantly arrests his attention; + in fact, nothing escapes his quick and powerful sight on the ground, + in the trees, or in the distance, which may supply him with a meal + or warn him of danger. A little examination of the trunk of a tree + which may be nearly covered with the scratches of opossums ascending + and descending is sufficient to inform him whether one went up the + night before without coming down again or not." + +Fennimore Cooper lost his chance. He would have known how to value these +people. He wouldn't have traded the dullest of them for the brightest +Mohawk he ever invented. + +All savages draw outline pictures upon bark; but the resemblances are not +close, and expression is usually lacking. But the Australian +aboriginal's pictures of animals were nicely accurate in form, attitude, +carriage; and he put spirit into them, and expression. And his pictures +of white people and natives were pretty nearly as good as his pictures of +the other animals. He dressed his whites in the fashion of their day, +both the ladies and the gentlemen. As an untaught wielder of the pencil +it is not likely that he has had his equal among savage people. + +His place in art--as to drawing, not color-work--is well up, all things +considered. His art is not to be classified with savage art at all, but +on a plane two degrees above it and one degree above the lowest plane of +civilized art. To be exact, his place in art is between Botticelli and +De Maurier. That is to say, he could not draw as well as De Maurier but +better than Boticelli. In feeling, he resembles both; also in grouping +and in his preferences in the matter of subjects. His "corrobboree" of +the Australian wilds reappears in De Maurier's Belgravian ballrooms, with +clothes and the smirk of civilization added; Botticelli's "Spring" is the +"corrobboree" further idealized, but with fewer clothes and more smirk. +And well enough as to intention, but--my word! + +The aboriginal can make a fire by friction. I have tried that. + +All savages are able to stand a good deal of physical pain. The +Australian aboriginal has this quality in a well-developed degree. Do +not read the following instances if horrors are not pleasant to you. +They were recorded by the Rev. Henry N. Wolloston, of Melbourne, who had +been a surgeon before he became a clergyman: + + 1. "In the summer of 1852 I started on horseback from Albany, King + George's Sound, to visit at Cape Riche, accompanied by a native on + foot. We traveled about forty miles the first day, then camped by a + water-hole for the night. After cooking and eating our supper, I + observed the native, who had said nothing to me on the subject, + collect the hot embers of the fire together, and deliberately place + his right foot in the glowing mass for a moment, then suddenly + withdraw it, stamping on the ground and uttering a long-drawn + guttural sound of mingled pain and satisfaction. This operation he + repeated several times. On my inquiring the meaning of his strange + conduct, he only said, 'Me carpenter-make 'em' ('I am mending my + foot'), and then showed me his charred great toe, the nail of which + had been torn off by a tea-tree stump, in which it had been caught + during the journey, and the pain of which he had borne with stoical + composure until the evening, when he had an opportunity of + cauterizing the wound in the primitive manner above described." + +And he proceeded on the journey the next day, "as if nothing had +happened"--and walked thirty miles. It was a strange idea, to keep a +surgeon and then do his own surgery. + + 2. "A native about twenty-five years of age once applied to me, as + a doctor, to extract the wooden barb of a spear, which, during a + fight in the bush some four months previously, had entered his + chest, just missing the heart, and penetrated the viscera to a + considerable depth. The spear had been cut off, leaving the barb + behind, which continued to force its way by muscular action + gradually toward the back; and when I examined him I could feel a + hard substance between the ribs below the left blade-bone. I made a + deep incision, and with a pair of forceps extracted the barb, which + was made, as usual, of hard wood about four inches long and from + half an inch to an inch thick. It was very smooth, and partly + digested, so to speak, by the maceration to which it had been + exposed during its four months' journey through the body. The wound + made by the spear had long since healed, leaving only a small + cicatrix; and after the operation, which the native bore without + flinching, he appeared to suffer no pain. Indeed, judging from his + good state of health, the presence of the foreign matter did not + materially annoy him. He was perfectly well in a few days." + +But No. 3 is my favorite. Whenever I read it I seem to enjoy all that +the patient enjoyed--whatever it was: + + 3. "Once at King George's Sound a native presented himself to me + with one leg only, and requested me to supply him with a wooden leg. + He had traveled in this maimed state about ninety-six miles, for + this purpose. I examined the limb, which had been severed just + below the knee, and found that it had been charred by fire, while + about two inches of the partially calcined bone protruded through + the flesh. I at once removed this with the saw; and having made as + presentable a stump of it as I could, covered the amputated end of + the bone with a surrounding of muscle, and kept the patient a few + days under my care to allow the wound to heal. On inquiring, the + native told me that in a fight with other black-fellows a spear had + struck his leg and penetrated the bone below the knee. Finding it + was serious, he had recourse to the following crude and barbarous + operation, which it appears is not uncommon among these people in + their native state. He made a fire, and dug a hole in the earth + only sufficiently large to admit his leg, and deep enough to allow + the wounded part to be on a level with the surface of the ground. + He then surrounded the limb with the live coals or charcoal, which + was replenished until the leg was literally burnt off. The + cauterization thus applied completely checked the hemorrhage, and he + was able in a day or two to hobble down to the Sound, with the aid + of a long stout stick, although he was more than a week on the + road." + +But he was a fastidious native. He soon discarded the wooden leg made +for him by the doctor, because "it had no feeling in it." It must have +had as much as the one he burnt off, I should think. + +So much for the Aboriginals. It is difficult for me to let them alone. +They are marvelously interesting creatures. For a quarter of a century, +now, the several colonial governments have housed their remnants in +comfortable stations, and fed them well and taken good care of them in +every way. If I had found this out while I was in Australia I could have +seen some of those people--but I didn't. I would walk thirty miles to +see a stuffed one. + +Australia has a slang of its own. This is a matter of course. The vast +cattle and sheep industries, the strange aspects of the country, and the +strange native animals, brute and human, are matters which would +naturally breed a local slang. I have notes of this slang somewhere, but +at the moment I can call to mind only a few of the words and phrases. +They are expressive ones. The wide, sterile, unpeopled deserts have +created eloquent phrases like "No Man's Land" and the "Never-never +Country." Also this felicitous form: "She lives in the Never-never +Country"--that is, she is an old maid. And this one is not without +merit: "heifer-paddock"--young ladies' seminary. "Bail up" and "stick +up" equivalent of our highwayman-term to "hold up" a stage-coach or a +train. "New-chum" is the equivalent of our "tenderfoot"--new arrival. + +And then there is the immortal "My word!" "We must import it." +"M-y word!" + +"In cold print it is the equivalent of our "Ger-rreat Caesar!" but spoken +with the proper Australian unction and fervency, it is worth six of it +for grace and charm and expressiveness. Our form is rude and explosive; +it is not suited to the drawing-room or the heifer-paddock; but "M-y +word!" is, and is music to the ear, too, when the utterer knows how to +say it. I saw it in print several times on the Pacific Ocean, but it +struck me coldly, it aroused no sympathy. That was because it was the +dead corpse of the thing, the 'soul was not there--the tones were +lacking--the informing spirit--the deep feeling--the eloquence. But the +first time I heard an Australian say it, it was positively thrilling. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +We left Adelaide in due course, and went to Horsham, in the colony of +Victoria; a good deal of a journey, if I remember rightly, but pleasant. +Horsham sits in a plain which is as level as a floor--one of those famous +dead levels which Australian books describe so often; gray, bare, sombre, +melancholy, baked, cracked, in the tedious long drouths, but a +horizonless ocean of vivid green grass the day after a rain. A country +town, peaceful, reposeful, inviting, full of snug homes, with garden +plots, and plenty of shrubbery and flowers. + +"Horsham, October 17. +At the hotel. The weather divine. Across the way, in front of the +London Bank of Australia, is a very handsome cottonwood. It is in +opulent leaf, and every leaf perfect. The full power of the on-rushing +spring is upon it, and I imagine I can see it grow. Alongside the bank +and a little way back in the garden there is a row of soaring +fountain-sprays of delicate feathery foliage quivering in the breeze, and +mottled with flashes of light that shift and play through the mass like +flash-lights through an opal--a most beautiful tree, and a striking +contrast to the cottonwood. Every leaf of the cottonwood is distinctly +defined--it is a kodak for faithful, hard, unsentimental detail; the +other an impressionist picture, delicious to look upon, full of a subtle +and exquisite charm, but all details fused in a swoon of vague and soft +loveliness." + +It turned out, upon inquiry, to be a pepper tree--an importation from +China. It has a silky sheen, soft and rich. I saw some that had long +red bunches of currant-like berries ambushed among the foliage. At a +distance, in certain lights, they give the tree a pinkish tint and a new +charm. + +There is an agricultural college eight miles from Horsham. We were +driven out to it by its chief. The conveyance was an open wagon; the +time, noonday; no wind; the sky without a cloud, the sunshine brilliant +--and the mercury at 92 deg. in the shade. In some countries an indolent +unsheltered drive of an hour and a half under such conditions would have +been a sweltering and prostrating experience; but there was nothing of +that in this case. It is a climate that is perfect. There was no sense +of heat; indeed, there was no heat; the air was fine and pure and +exhilarating; if the drive had lasted half a day I think we should not +have felt any discomfort, or grown silent or droopy or tired. Of course, +the secret of it was the exceeding dryness of the atmosphere. In that +plain 112 deg. in the shade is without doubt no harder upon a man than is +88 or 90 deg. in New York. + +The road lay through the middle of an empty space which seemed to me to +be a hundred yards wide between the fences. I was not given the width in +yards, but only in chains and perches--and furlongs, I think. I would +have given a good deal to know what the width was, but I did not pursue +the matter. I think it is best to put up with information the way you +get it; and seem satisfied with it, and surprised at it, and grateful for +it, and say, "My word!" and never let on. It was a wide space; I could +tell you how wide, in chains and perches and furlongs and things, but +that would not help you any. Those things sound well, but they are +shadowy and indefinite, like troy weight and avoirdupois; nobody knows +what they mean. When you buy a pound of a drug and the man asks you +which you want, troy or avoirdupois, it is best to say "Yes," and shift +the subject. + +They said that the wide space dates from the earliest sheep and +cattle-raising days. People had to drive their stock long distances +--immense journeys--from worn-out places to new ones where were water +and fresh pasturage; and this wide space had to be left in grass and +unfenced, or the stock would have starved to death in the transit. + +On the way we saw the usual birds--the beautiful little green parrots, +the magpie, and some others; and also the slender native bird of modest +plumage and the eternally-forgettable name--the bird that is the smartest +among birds, and can give a parrot 30 to 1 in the game and then talk him +to death. I cannot recall that bird's name. I think it begins with M. +I wish it began with G. or something that a person can remember. + +The magpie was out in great force, in the fields and on the fences. He +is a handsome large creature, with snowy white decorations, and is a +singer; he has a murmurous rich note that is lovely. He was once modest, +even diffident; but he lost all that when he found out that he was +Australia's sole musical bird. He has talent, and cuteness, and +impudence; and in his tame state he is a most satisfactory pet--never +coming when he is called, always coming when he isn't, and studying +disobedience as an accomplishment. He is not confined, but loafs all +over the house and grounds, like the laughing jackass. I think he learns +to talk, I know he learns to sing tunes, and his friends say that he +knows how to steal without learning. I was acquainted with a tame magpie +in Melbourne. He had lived in a lady's house several years, and believed +he owned it. The lady had tamed him, and in return he had tamed the +lady. He was always on deck when not wanted, always having his own way, +always tyrannizing over the dog, and always making the cat's life a slow +sorrow and a martyrdom. He knew a number of tunes and could sing them in +perfect time and tune; and would do it, too, at any time that silence was +wanted; and then encore himself and do it again; but if he was asked to +sing he would go out and take a walk. + +It was long believed that fruit trees would not grow in that baked and +waterless plain around Horsham, but the agricultural college has +dissipated that idea. Its ample nurseries were producing oranges, +apricots, lemons, almonds, peaches, cherries, 48 varieties of apples--in +fact, all manner of fruits, and in abundance. The trees did not seem to +miss the water; they were in vigorous and flourishing condition. + +Experiments are made with different soils, to see what things thrive best +in them and what climates are best for them. A man who is ignorantly +trying to produce upon his farm things not suited to its soil and its +other conditions can make a journey to the college from anywhere in +Australia, and go back with a change of scheme which will make his farm +productive and profitable. + +There were forty pupils there--a few of them farmers, relearning their +trade, the rest young men mainly from the cities--novices. It seemed a +strange thing that an agricultural college should have an attraction for +city-bred youths, but such is the fact. They are good stuff, too; they +are above the agricultural average of intelligence, and they come without +any inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances made sacred by long +descent. + +The students work all day in the fields, the nurseries, and the +shearing-sheds, learning and doing all the practical work of the +business--three days in a week. On the other three they study and hear +lectures. They are taught the beginnings of such sciences as bear upon +agriculture--like chemistry, for instance. We saw the sophomore class in +sheep-shearing shear a dozen sheep. They did it by hand, not with the +machine. The sheep was seized and flung down on his side and held there; +and the students took off his coat with great celerity and adroitness. +Sometimes they clipped off a sample of the sheep, but that is customary +with shearers, and they don't mind it; they don't even mind it as much as +the sheep. They dab a splotch of sheep-dip on the place and go right +ahead. + +The coat of wool was unbelievably thick. Before the shearing the sheep +looked like the fat woman in the circus; after it he looked like a bench. +He was clipped to the skin; and smoothly and uniformly. The fleece comes +from him all in one piece and has the spread of a blanket. + +The college was flying the Australian flag--the gridiron of England +smuggled up in the northwest corner of a big red field that had the +random stars of the Southern Cross wandering around over it. + +From Horsham we went to Stawell. By rail. Still in the colony of +Victoria. Stawell is in the gold-mining country. In the bank-safe was +half a peck of surface-gold--gold dust, grain gold; rich; pure in fact, +and pleasant to sift through one's fingers; and would be pleasanter if it +would stick. And there were a couple of gold bricks, very heavy to +handle, and worth $7,500 a piece. They were from a very valuable quartz +mine; a lady owns two-thirds of it; she has an income of $75,000 a month +from it, and is able to keep house. + +The Stawell region is not productive of gold only; it has great +vineyards, and produces exceptionally fine wines. One of these +vineyards--the Great Western, owned by Mr. Irving--is regarded as a +model. Its product has reputation abroad. It yields a choice champagne +and a fine claret, and its hock took a prize in France two or three years +ago. The champagne is kept in a maze of passages under ground, cut in +the rock, to secure it an even temperature during the three-year term +required to perfect it. In those vaults I saw 120,000 bottles of +champagne. The colony of Victoria has a population of 1,000,000, and +those people are said to drink 25,000,000 bottles of champagne per year. +The dryest community on the earth. The government has lately reduced the +duty upon foreign wines. That is one of the unkindnesses of Protection. +A man invests years of work and a vast sum of money in a worthy +enterprise, upon the faith of existing laws; then the law is changed, and +the man is robbed by his own government. + +On the way back to Stawell we had a chance to see a group of boulders +called the Three Sisters--a curiosity oddly located; for it was upon high +ground, with the land sloping away from it, and no height above it from +whence the boulders could have rolled down. Relics of an early +ice-drift, perhaps. They are noble boulders. One of them has the size +and smoothness and plump sphericity of a balloon of the biggest pattern. + +The road led through a forest of great gum-trees, lean and scraggy and +sorrowful. The road was cream-white--a clayey kind of earth, apparently. +Along it toiled occasional freight wagons, drawn by long double files of +oxen. Those wagons were going a journey of two hundred miles, I was +told, and were running a successful opposition to the railway! The +railways are owned and run by the government. + +Those sad gums stood up out of the dry white clay, pictures of patience +and resignation. It is a tree that can get along without water; still it +is fond of it--ravenously so. It is a very intelligent tree and will +detect the presence of hidden water at a distance of fifty feet, and send +out slender long root-fibres to prospect it. They will find it; and will +also get at it even through a cement wall six inches thick. Once a +cement water-pipe under ground at Stawell began to gradually reduce its +output, and finally ceased altogether to deliver water. Upon examining +into the matter it was found stopped up, wadded compactly with a mass of +root-fibres, delicate and hair-like. How this stuff had gotten into the +pipe was a puzzle for some little time; finally it was found that it had +crept in through a crack that was almost invisible to the eye. A gum +tree forty feet away had tapped the pipe and was drinking the water. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +There is no such thing as "the Queen's English." The property has gone +into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the +shares! + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Frequently, in Australia, one has cloud-effects of an unfamiliar sort. +We had this kind of scenery, finely staged, all the way to Ballarat. +Consequently we saw more sky than country on that journey. At one time a +great stretch of the vault was densely flecked with wee ragged-edged +flakes of painfully white cloud-stuff, all of one shape and size, and +equidistant apart, with narrow cracks of adorable blue showing between. +The whole was suggestive of a hurricane of snow-flakes drifting across +the skies. By and by these flakes fused themselves together in +interminable lines, with shady faint hollows between the lines, the long +satin-surfaced rollers following each other in simulated movement, and +enchantingly counterfeiting the majestic march of a flowing sea. Later, +the sea solidified itself; then gradually broke up its mass into +innumerable lofty white pillars of about one size, and ranged these +across the firmament, in receding and fading perspective, in the +similitude of a stupendous colonnade--a mirage without a doubt flung from +the far Gates of the Hereafter. + +The approaches to Ballarat were beautiful. The features, great green +expanses of rolling pasture-land, bisected by eye contenting hedges of +commingled new-gold and old-gold gorse--and a lovely lake. One must put +in the pause, there, to fetch the reader up with a slight jolt, and keep +him from gliding by without noticing the lake. One must notice it; for a +lovely lake is not as common a thing along the railways of Australia as +are the dry places. Ninety-two in the shade again, but balmy and +comfortable, fresh and bracing. A perfect climate. + +Forty-five years ago the site now occupied by the City of Ballarat was a +sylvan solitude as quiet as Eden and as lovely. Nobody had ever heard of +it. On the 25th of August, 1851, the first great gold-strike made in +Australia was made here. The wandering prospectors who made it scraped +up two pounds and a half of gold the first day-worth $600. A few days +later the place was a hive--a town. The news of the strike spread +everywhere in a sort of instantaneous way--spread like a flash to the +very ends of the earth. A celebrity so prompt and so universal has +hardly been paralleled in history, perhaps. It was as if the name +BALLARAT had suddenly been written on the sky, where all the world could +read it at once. + +The smaller discoveries made in the colony of New South Wales three +months before had already started emigrants toward Australia; they had +been coming as a stream, but they came as a flood, now. A hundred +thousand people poured into Melbourne from England and other countries in +a single month, and flocked away to the mines. The crews of the ships +that brought them flocked with them; the clerks in the government offices +followed; so did the cooks, the maids, the coachmen, the butlers, and the +other domestic servants; so did the carpenters, the smiths, the plumbers, +the painters, the reporters, the editors, the lawyers, the clients, the +barkeepers, the bummers, the blacklegs, the thieves, the loose women, the +grocers, the butchers, the bakers, the doctors, the druggists, the +nurses; so did the police; even officials of high and hitherto envied +place threw up their positions and joined the procession. This roaring +avalanche swept out of Melbourne and left it desolate, Sunday-like, +paralyzed, everything at a stand-still, the ships lying idle at anchor, +all signs of life departed, all sounds stilled save the rasping of the +cloud-shadows as they scraped across the vacant streets. + +That grassy and leafy paradise at Ballarat was soon ripped open, and +lacerated and scarified and gutted, in the feverish search for its hidden +riches. There is nothing like surface-mining to snatch the graces and +beauties and benignities out of a paradise, and make an odious and +repulsive spectacle of it. + +What fortunes were made! Immigrants got rich while the ship unloaded and +reloaded--and went back home for good in the same cabin they had come out +in! Not all of them. Only some. I saw the others in Ballarat myself, +forty-five years later--what were left of them by time and death and the +disposition to rove. They were young and gay, then; they are patriarchal +and grave, now; and they do not get excited any more. They talk of the +Past. They live in it. Their life is a dream, a retrospection. + +Ballarat was a great region for "nuggets." No such nuggets were found in +California as Ballarat produced. In fact, the Ballarat region has +yielded the largest ones known to history. Two of them weighed about 180 +pounds each, and together were worth $90,000. They were offered to any +poor person who would shoulder them and carry them away. Gold was so +plentiful that it made people liberal like that. + +Ballarat was a swarming city of tents in the early days. Everybody was +happy, for a time, and apparently prosperous. Then came trouble. The +government swooped down with a mining tax. And in its worst form, too; +for it was not a tax upon what the miner had taken out, but upon what he +was going to take out--if he could find it. It was a license-tax license +to work his claim--and it had to be paid before he could begin digging. + +Consider the situation. No business is so uncertain as surface-mining. +Your claim may be good, and it may be worthless. It may make you well +off in a month; and then again you may have to dig and slave for half a +year, at heavy expense, only to find out at last that the gold is not +there in cost-paying quantity, and that your time and your hard work have +been thrown away. It might be wise policy to advance the miner a monthly +sum to encourage him to develop the country's riches; but to tax him +monthly in advance instead--why, such a thing was never dreamed of in +America. There, neither the claim itself nor its products, howsoever +rich or poor, were taxed. + +The Ballarat miners protested, petitioned, complained--it was of no use; +the government held its ground, and went on collecting the tax. And not +by pleasant methods, but by ways which must have been very galling to +free people. The rumblings of a coming storm began to be audible. + +By and by there was a result; and I think it may be called the finest +thing in Australasian history. It was a revolution--small in size; but +great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for a +principle, a stand against injustice and oppression. It was the Barons +and John, over again; it was Hampden and Ship-Money; it was Concord and +Lexington; small beginnings, all of them, but all of them great in +political results, all of them epoch-making. It is another instance of a +victory won by a lost battle. It adds an honorable page to history; the +people know it and are proud of it. They keep green the memory of the +men who fell at the Eureka Stockade, and Peter Lalor has his monument. + +The surface-soil of Ballarat was full of gold. This soil the miners +ripped and tore and trenched and harried and disembowled, and made it +yield up its immense treasure. Then they went down into the earth with +deep shafts, seeking the gravelly beds of ancient rivers and brooks--and +found them. They followed the courses of these streams, and gutted them, +sending the gravel up in buckets to the upper world, and washing out of +it its enormous deposits of gold. The next biggest of the two monster +nuggets mentioned above came from an old river-channel 180 feet under +ground. + +Finally the quartz lodes were attacked. That is not poor-man's mining. +Quartz-mining and milling require capital, and staying-power, and +patience. Big companies were formed, and for several decades, now, the +lodes have been successfully worked, and have yielded great wealth. +Since the gold discovery in 1853 the Ballarat mines--taking the three +kinds of mining together--have contributed to the world's pocket +something over three hundred millions of dollars, which is to say that +this nearly invisible little spot on the earth's surface has yielded +about one-fourth as much gold in forty-four years as all California has +yielded in forty-seven. The Californian aggregate, from 1848 to 1895, +inclusive, as reported by the Statistician of the United States Mint, is +$1,265,215,217. + +A citizen told me a curious thing about those mines. With all my +experience of mining I had never heard of anything of the sort before. +The main gold reef runs about north and south--of course for that is the +custom of a rich gold reef. At Ballarat its course is between walls of +slate. Now the citizen told me that throughout a stretch of twelve miles +along the reef, the reef is crossed at intervals by a straight black +streak of a carbonaceous nature--a streak in the slate; a streak no +thicker than a pencil--and that wherever it crosses the reef you will +certainly find gold at the junction. It is called the Indicator. Thirty +feet on each side of the Indicator (and down in the slate, of course) is +a still finer streak--a streak as fine as a pencil mark; and indeed, that +is its name Pencil Mark. Whenever you find the Pencil Mark you know that +thirty feet from it is the Indicator; you measure the distance, excavate, +find the Indicator, trace it straight to the reef, and sink your shaft; +your fortune is made, for certain. If that is true, it is curious. And +it is curious anyway. + +Ballarat is a town of only 40,000 population; and yet, since it is in +Australia, it has every essential of an advanced and enlightened big +city. This is pure matter of course. I must stop dwelling upon these +things. It is hard to keep from dwelling upon them, though; for it is +difficult to get away from the surprise of it. I will let the other +details go, this time, but I must allow myself to mention that this +little town has a park of 326 acres; a flower garden of 83 acres, with an +elaborate and expensive fernery in it and some costly and unusually fine +statuary; and an artificial lake covering 600 acres, equipped with a +fleet of 200 shells, small sail boats, and little steam yachts. + +At this point I strike out some other praiseful things which I was +tempted to add. I do not strike them out because they were not true or +not well said, but because I find them better said by another man--and a +man more competent to testify, too, because he belongs on the ground, and +knows. I clip them from a chatty speech delivered some years ago by Mr. +William Little, who was at that time mayor of Ballarat: + + "The language of our citizens, in this as in other parts of + Australasia, is mostly healthy Anglo-Saxon, free from Americanisms, + vulgarisms, and the conflicting dialects of our Fatherland, and is + pure enough to suit a Trench or a Latham. Our youth, aided by + climatic influence, are in point of physique and comeliness + unsurpassed in the Sunny South. Our young men are well ordered; and + our maidens, 'not stepping over the bounds of modesty,' are as fair + as Psyches, dispensing smiles as charming as November flowers." + +The closing clause has the seeming of a rather frosty compliment, but +that is apparent only, not real. November is summer-time there. + +His compliment to the local purity of the language is warranted. It is +quite free from impurities; this is acknowledged far and wide. As in the +German Empire all cultivated people claim to speak Hanovarian German, so +in Australasia all cultivated people claim to speak Ballarat English. +Even in England this cult has made considerable progress, and now that it +is favored by the two great Universities, the time is not far away when +Ballarat English will come into general use among the educated classes of +Great Britain at large. Its great merit is, that it is shorter than +ordinary English--that is, it is more compressed. At first you have some +difficulty in understanding it when it is spoken as rapidly as the orator +whom I have quoted speaks it. An illustration will show what I mean. +When he called and I handed him a chair, he bowed and said: + +"Q." + +Presently, when we were lighting our cigars, he held a match to mine and +I said: + +"Thank you," and he said: + +"Km." + +Then I saw. 'Q' is the end of the phrase "I thank you" 'Km' is the end +of the phrase "You are welcome." Mr. Little puts no emphasis upon either +of them, but delivers them so reduced that they hardly have a sound. All +Ballarat English is like that, and the effect is very soft and pleasant; +it takes all the hardness and harshness out of our tongue and gives to it +a delicate whispery and vanishing cadence which charms the ear like the +faint rustling of the forest leaves. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +"Classic." A book which people praise and don't read. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +On the rail again--bound for Bendigo. From diary: + +October 23. Got up at 6, left at 7.30; soon reached Castlemaine, one of +the rich gold-fields of the early days; waited several hours for a train; +left at 3.40 and reached Bendigo in an hour. For comrade, a Catholic +priest who was better than I was, but didn't seem to know it--a man full +of graces of the heart, the mind, and the spirit; a lovable man. He will +rise. He will be a bishop some day. Later an Archbishop. Later a +Cardinal. Finally an Archangel, I hope. And then he will recall me when +I say, "Do you remember that trip we made from Ballarat to Bendigo, when +you were nothing but Father C., and I was nothing to what I am now?" +It has actually taken nine hours to come from Ballarat to Bendigo. We +could have saved seven by walking. However, there was no hurry. + +Bendigo was another of the rich strikes of the early days. It does a +great quartz-mining business, now--that business which, more than any +other that I know of, teaches patience, and requires grit and a steady +nerve. The town is full of towering chimney-stacks, and hoisting-works, +and looks like a petroleum-city. Speaking of patience; for example, one +of the local companies went steadily on with its deep borings and +searchings without show of gold or a penny of reward for eleven years +--then struck it, and became suddenly rich. The eleven years' work had +cost $55,000, and the first gold found was a grain the size of a pin's +head. It is kept under locks and bars, as a precious thing, and is +reverently shown to the visitor, "hats off." When I saw it I had not +heard its history. + +"It is gold. Examine it--take the glass. Now how much should you say it +is worth?" + +I said: + +"I should say about two cents; or in your English dialect, four +farthings." + +"Well, it cost L11,000." + +"Oh, come!" + +"Yes, it did. Ballarat and Bendigo have produced the three monumental +nuggets of the world, and this one is the monumentalest one of the three. +The other two represent 19,000 a piece; this one a couple of thousand +more. It is small, and not much to look at, but it is entitled to (its) +name--Adam. It is the Adam-nugget of this mine, and its children run up +into the millions." + +Speaking of patience again, another of the mines was worked, under heavy +expenses, during 17 years before pay was struck, and still another one +compelled a wait of 21 years before pay was struck; then, in both +instances, the outlay was all back in a year or two, with compound +interest. + +Bendigo has turned out even more gold than Ballarat. The two together +have produced $650,000,000 worth--which is half as much as California has +produced. + +It was through Mr. Blank--not to go into particulars about his name--it +was mainly through Mr. Blank that my stay in Bendigo was made memorably +pleasant and interesting. He explained this to me himself. He told me +that it was through his influence that the city government invited me to +the town-hall to hear complimentary speeches and respond to them; that it +was through his influence that I had been taken on a long pleasure-drive +through the city and shown its notable features; that it was through his +influence that I was invited to visit the great mines; that it was +through his influence that I was taken to the hospital and allowed to see +the convalescent Chinaman who had been attacked at midnight in his lonely +hut eight weeks before by robbers, and stabbed forty-six times and +scalped besides; that it was through his influence that when I arrived +this awful spectacle of piecings and patchings and bandagings was sitting +up in his cot letting on to read one of my books; that it was through his +influence that efforts had been made to get the Catholic Archbishop of +Bendigo to invite me to dinner; that it was through his influence that +efforts had been made to get the Anglican Bishop of Bendigo to ask me to +supper; that it was through his influence that the dean of the editorial +fraternity had driven me through the woodsy outlying country and shown +me, from the summit of Lone Tree Hill, the mightiest and loveliest +expanse of forest-clad mountain and valley that I had seen in all +Australia. And when he asked me what had most impressed me in Bendigo +and I answered and said it was the taste and the public spirit which had +adorned the streets with 105 miles of shade trees, he said that it was +through his influence that it had been done. + +But I am not representing him quite correctly. He did not say it was +through his influence that all these things had happened--for that would +have been coarse; be merely conveyed that idea; conveyed it so subtly +that I only caught it fleetingly, as one catches vagrant faint breaths of +perfume when one traverses the meadows in summer; conveyed it without +offense and without any suggestion of egoism or ostentation--but conveyed +it, nevertheless. + +He was an Irishman; an educated gentleman; grave, and kindly, and +courteous; a bachelor, and about forty-five or possibly fifty years old, +apparently. He called upon me at the hotel, and it was there that we had +this talk. He made me like him, and did it without trouble. This was +partly through his winning and gentle ways, but mainly through the +amazing familiarity with my books which his conversation showed. He was +down to date with them, too; and if he had made them the study of his +life he could hardly have been better posted as to their contents than he +was. He made me better satisfied with myself than I had ever been +before. It was plain that he had a deep fondness for humor, yet he never +laughed; he never even chuckled; in fact, humor could not win to outward +expression on his face at all. No, he was always grave--tenderly, +pensively grave; but he made me laugh, all along; and this was very +trying--and very pleasant at the same time--for it was at quotations from +my own books. + +When he was going, he turned and said: + +"You don't remember me?" + +"I? Why, no. Have we met before?" + +"No, it was a matter of correspondence." + +"Correspondence?" + +"Yes, many years ago. Twelve or fifteen. Oh, longer than that. But of +course you----" A musing pause. Then he said: + +"Do you remember Corrigan Castle?" + +"N-no, I believe I don't. I don't seem to recall the name." + +He waited a moment, pondering, with the door-knob in his hand, then +started out; but turned back and said that I had once been interested in +Corrigan Castle, and asked me if I would go with him to his quarters in +the evening and take a hot Scotch and talk it over. I was a teetotaler +and liked relaxation, so I said I would. + +We drove from the lecture-hall together about half-past ten. He had a +most comfortably and tastefully furnished parlor, with good pictures on +the walls, Indian and Japanese ornaments on the mantel, and here and +there, and books everywhere-largely mine; which made me proud. The light +was brilliant, the easy chairs were deep-cushioned, the arrangements for +brewing and smoking were all there. We brewed and lit up; then he passed +a sheet of note-paper to me and said-- + +"Do you remember that?" + +"Oh, yes, indeed!" + +The paper was of a sumptuous quality. At the top was a twisted and +interlaced monogram printed from steel dies in gold and blue and red, in +the ornate English fashion of long years ago; and under it, in neat +gothic capitals was this--printed in blue: + + THE MARK TWAIN CLUB + CORRIGAN CASTLE + ............187.. + +"My!" said I, "how did you come by this?" + +"I was President of it." + +"No!--you don't mean it." + +"It is true. I was its first President. I was re-elected annually as +long as its meetings were held in my castle--Corrigan--which was five +years." + +Then he showed me an album with twenty-three photographs of me in it. +Five of them were of old dates, the others of various later crops; the +list closed with a picture taken by Falk in Sydney a month before. + +"You sent us the first five; the rest were bought." + +This was paradise! We ran late, and talked, talked, talked--subject, the +Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle, Ireland. + +My first knowledge of that Club dates away back; all of twenty years, I +should say. It came to me in the form of a courteous letter, written on +the note-paper which I have described, and signed "By order of the +President; C. PEMBROKE, Secretary." It conveyed the fact that the Club +had been created in my honor, and added the hope that this token of +appreciation of my work would meet with my approval. + +I answered, with thanks; and did what I could to keep my gratification +from over-exposure. + +It was then that the long correspondence began. A letter came back, by +order of the President, furnishing me the names of the members-thirty-two +in number. With it came a copy of the Constitution and By-Laws, in +pamphlet form, and artistically printed. The initiation fee and dues +were in their proper place; also, schedule of meetings--monthly--for +essays upon works of mine, followed by discussions; quarterly for +business and a supper, without essays, but with after-supper speeches +also, there was a list of the officers: President, Vice-President, +Secretary, Treasurer, etc. The letter was brief, but it was pleasant +reading, for it told me about the strong interest which the membership +took in their new venture, etc., etc. It also asked me for a photograph +--a special one. I went down and sat for it and sent it--with a letter, +of course. + +Presently came the badge of the Club, and very dainty and pretty it was; +and very artistic. It was a frog peeping out from a graceful tangle of +grass-sprays and rushes, and was done in enamels on a gold basis, and had +a gold pin back of it. After I had petted it, and played with it, and +caressed it, and enjoyed it a couple of hours, the light happened to fall +upon it at a new angle, and revealed to me a cunning new detail; with the +light just right, certain delicate shadings of the grass-blades and +rush-stems wove themselves into a monogram--mine! You can see that that +jewel was a work of art. And when you come to consider the intrinsic +value of it, you must concede that it is not every literary club that +could afford a badge like that. It was easily worth $75, in the opinion +of Messrs. Marcus and Ward of New York. They said they could not +duplicate it for that and make a profit. By this time the Club was well +under way; and from that time forth its secretary kept my off-hours well +supplied with business. He reported the Club's discussions of my books +with laborious fullness, and did his work with great spirit and ability. +As a, rule, he synopsized; but when a speech was especially brilliant, he +short-handed it and gave me the best passages from it, written out. +There were five speakers whom he particularly favored in that way: +Palmer, Forbes, Naylor, Norris, and Calder. Palmer and Forbes could +never get through a speech without attacking each other, and each in his +own way was formidably effective--Palmer in virile and eloquent abuse, +Forbes in courtly and elegant but scalding satire. I could always tell +which of them was talking without looking for his name. Naylor had a +polished style and a happy knack at felicitous metaphor; Norris's style +was wholly without ornament, but enviably compact, lucid, and strong. +But after all, Calder was the gem. He never spoke when sober, he spoke +continuously when he wasn't. And certainly they were the drunkest +speeches that a man ever uttered. They were full of good things, but so +incredibly mixed up and wandering that it made one's head swim to follow +him. They were not intended to be funny, but they were,--funny for the +very gravity which the speaker put into his flowing miracles of +incongruity. In the course of five years I came to know the styles of +the five orators as well as I knew the style of any speaker in my own +club at home. + +These reports came every month. They were written on foolscap, 600 words +to the page, and usually about twenty-five pages in a report--a good +15,000 words, I should say,--a solid week's work. The reports were +absorbingly entertaining, long as they were; but, unfortunately for me, +they did not come alone. They were always accompanied by a lot of +questions about passages and purposes in my books, which the Club wanted +answered; and additionally accompanied every quarter by the Treasurer's +report, and the Auditor's report, and the Committee's report, and the +President's review, and my opinion of these was always desired; also +suggestions for the good of the Club, if any occurred to me. + +By and by I came to dread those things; and this dread grew and grew and +grew; grew until I got to anticipating them with a cold horror. For I +was an indolent man, and not fond of letter-writing, and whenever these +things came I had to put everything by and sit down--for my own peace of +mind--and dig and dig until I got something out of my head which would +answer for a reply. I got along fairly well the first year; but for the +succeeding four years the Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle was my +curse, my nightmare, the grief and misery of my life. And I got so, so +sick of sitting for photographs. I sat every year for five years, trying +to satisfy that insatiable organization. Then at last I rose in revolt. +I could endure my oppressions no longer. I pulled my fortitude together +and tore off my chains, and was a free man again, and happy. From that +day I burned the secretary's fat envelopes the moment they arrived, and +by and by they ceased to come. + +Well, in the sociable frankness of that night in Bendigo I brought this +all out in full confession. Then Mr. Blank came out in the same frank +way, and with a preliminary word of gentle apology said that he was the +Mark Twain Club, and the only member it had ever had! + +Why, it was matter for anger, but I didn't feel any. He said he never +had to work for a living, and that by the time he was thirty life had +become a bore and a weariness to him. He had no interests left; they had +paled and perished, one by one, and left him desolate. He had begun to +think of suicide. Then all of a sudden he thought of that happy idea of +starting an imaginary club, and went straightway to work at it, with +enthusiasm and love. He was charmed with it; it gave him something to +do. It elaborated itself on his hands;--it became twenty times more +complex and formidable than was his first rude draft of it. Every new +addition to his original plan which cropped up in his mind gave him a +fresh interest and a new pleasure. He designed the Club badge himself, +and worked over it, altering and improving it, a number of days and +nights; then sent to London and had it made. It was the only one that +was made. It was made for me; the "rest of the Club" went without. + +He invented the thirty-two members and their names. He invented the five +favorite speakers and their five separate styles. He invented their +speeches, and reported them himself. He would have kept that Club going +until now, if I hadn't deserted, he said. He said he worked like a slave +over those reports; each of them cost him from a week to a fortnight's +work, and the work gave him pleasure and kept him alive and willing to be +alive. It was a bitter blow to him when the Club died. + +Finally, there wasn't any Corrigan Castle. He had invented that, too. + +It was wonderful--the whole thing; and altogether the most ingenious and +laborious and cheerful and painstaking practical joke I have ever heard +of. And I liked it; liked to bear him tell about it; yet I have been a +hater of practical jokes from as long back as I can remember. Finally he +said-- + +"Do you remember a note from Melbourne fourteen or fifteen years ago, +telling about your lecture tour in Australia, and your death and burial +in Melbourne?--a note from Henry Bascomb, of Bascomb Hall, Upper +Holywell Hants." + +"Yes." + +"I wrote it." + +"M-y-word!" + +"Yes, I did it. I don't know why. I just took the notion, and carried +it out without stopping to think. It was wrong. It could have done +harm. I was always sorry about it afterward. You must forgive me. I +was Mr. Bascom's guest on his yacht, on his voyage around the world. He +often spoke of you, and of the pleasant times you had had together in his +home; and the notion took me, there in Melbourne, and I imitated his +hand, and wrote the letter." + +So the mystery was cleared up, after so many, many years. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one! keep +from telling their happinesses to the unhappy. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +After visits to Maryborough and some other Australian towns, we presently +took passage for New Zealand. If it would not look too much like showing +off, I would tell the reader where New Zealand is; for he is as I was; he +thinks he knows. And he thinks he knows where Hertzegovina is; and how +to pronounce pariah; and how to use the word unique without exposing +himself to the derision of the dictionary. But in truth, he knows none +of these things. There are but four or five people in the world who +possess this knowledge, and these make their living out of it. They +travel from place to place, visiting literary assemblages, geographical +societies, and seats of learning, and springing sudden bets that these +people do not know these things. Since all people think they know them, +they are an easy prey to these adventurers. Or rather they were an easy +prey until the law interfered, three months ago, and a New York court +decided that this kind of gambling is illegal, "because it traverses +Article IV, Section 9, of the Constitution of the United States, which +forbids betting on a sure thing." This decision was rendered by the full +Bench of the New York Supreme Court, after a test sprung upon the court +by counsel for the prosecution, which showed that none of the nine Judges +was able to answer any of the four questions. + +All people think that New Zealand is close to Australia or Asia, or +somewhere, and that you cross to it on a bridge. But that is not so. It +is not close to anything, but lies by itself, out in the water. It is +nearest to Australia, but still not near. The gap between is very wide. +It will be a surprise to the reader, as it was to me, to learn that the +distance from Australia to New Zealand is really twelve or thirteen +hundred miles, and that there is no bridge. I learned this from +Professor X., of Yale University, whom I met in the steamer on the great +lakes when I was crossing the continent to sail across the Pacific. I +asked him about New Zealand, in order to make conversation. I supposed +he would generalize a little without compromising himself, and then turn +the subject to something he was acquainted with, and my object would then +be attained; the ice would be broken, and we could go smoothly on, and +get acquainted, and have a pleasant time. But, to my surprise, he was +not only not embarrassed by my question, but seemed to welcome it, and to +take a distinct interest in it. He began to talk--fluently, confidently, +comfortably; and as he talked, my admiration grew and grew; for as the +subject developed under his hands, I saw that he not only knew where New +Zealand was, but that he was minutely familiar with every detail of its +history, politics, religions, and commerce, its fauna, flora, geology, +products, and climatic peculiarities. When he was done, I was lost in +wonder and admiration, and said to myself, he knows everything; in the +domain of human knowledge he is king. + +I wanted to see him do more miracles; and so, just for the pleasure of +hearing him answer, I asked him about Hertzegovina, and pariah, and +unique. But he began to generalize then, and show distress. I saw that +with New Zealand gone, he was a Samson shorn of his locks; he was as +other men. This was a curious and interesting mystery, and I was frank +with him, and asked him to explain it. + +He tried to avoid it at first; but then laughed and said that after all, +the matter was not worth concealment, so he would let me into the secret. +In substance, this is his story: + +"Last autumn I was at work one morning at home, when a card came up--the +card of a stranger. Under the name was printed a line which showed that +this visitor was Professor of Theological Engineering in Wellington +University, New Zealand. I was troubled--troubled, I mean, by the +shortness of the notice. College etiquette required that he be at once +invited to dinner by some member of the Faculty--invited to dine on that +day--not, put off till a subsequent day. I did not quite know what to +do. College etiquette requires, in the case of a foreign guest, that the +dinner-talk shall begin with complimentary references to his country, its +great men, its services to civilization, its seats of learning, and +things like that; and of course the host is responsible, and must either +begin this talk himself or see that it is done by some one else. I was +in great difficulty; and the more I searched my memory, the more my +trouble grew. I found that I knew nothing about New Zealand. I thought +I knew where it was, and that was all. I had an impression that it was +close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and that one went over to it +on a bridge. This might turn out to be incorrect; and even if correct, +it would not furnish matter enough for the purpose at the dinner, and I +should expose my College to shame before my guest; he would see that I, a +member of the Faculty of the first University in America, was wholly +ignorant of his country, and he would go away and tell this, and laugh at +it. The thought of it made my face burn. + +"I sent for my wife and told her how I was situated, and asked for her +help, and she thought of a thing which I might have thought of myself, if +I had not been excited and worried. She said she would go and tell the +visitor that I was out but would be in in a few minutes; and she would +talk, and keep him busy while I got out the back way and hurried over and +make Professor Lawson give the dinner. For Lawson knew everything, and +could meet the guest in a creditable way and save the reputation of the +University. I ran to Lawson, but was disappointed. He did not know +anything about New Zealand. He said that, as far as his recollection +went it was close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and you go over to +it on a bridge; but that was all he knew. It was too bad. Lawson was a +perfect encyclopedia of abstruse learning; but now in this hour of our +need, it turned out that he did not know any useful thing. + +"We consulted. He saw that the reputation of the University was in very +real peril, and he walked the floor in anxiety, talking, and trying to +think out some way to meet the difficulty. Presently he decided that we +must try the rest of the Faculty--some of them might know about New +Zealand. So we went to the telephone and called up the professor of +astronomy and asked him, and he said that all he knew was, that it was +close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and you went over to it on---- + +"We shut him off and called up the professor of biology, and he said that +all he knew was that it was close to Aus----. + +"We shut him off, and sat down, worried and disheartened, to see if we +could think up some other scheme. We shortly hit upon one which promised +well, and this one we adopted, and set its machinery going at once. It +was this. Lawson must give the dinner. The Faculty must be notified by +telephone to prepare. We must all get to work diligently, and at the end +of eight hours and a half we must come to dinner acquainted with New +Zealand; at least well enough informed to appear without discredit before +this native. To seem properly intelligent we should have to know about +New Zealand's population, and politics, and form of government, and +commerce, and taxes, and products, and ancient history, and modern +history, and varieties of religion, and nature of the laws, and their +codification, and amount of revenue, and whence drawn, and methods of +collection, and percentage of loss, and character of climate, and--well, +a lot of things like that; we must suck the maps and cyclopedias dry. +And while we posted up in this way, the Faculty's wives must flock over, +one after the other, in a studiedly casual way, and help my wife keep the +New Zealander quiet, and not let him get out and come interfering with +our studies. The scheme worked admirably; but it stopped business, +stopped it entirely. + +"It is in the official log-book of Yale, to be read and wondered at by +future generations--the account of the Great Blank Day--the memorable +Blank Day--the day wherein the wheels of culture were stopped, a Sunday +silence prevailed all about, and the whole University stood still while +the Faculty read-up and qualified itself to sit at meat, without shame, +in the presence of the Professor of Theological Engineering from New +Zealand: + +"When we assembled at the dinner we were miserably tired and worn--but we +were posted. Yes, it is fair to claim that. In fact, erudition is a +pale name for it. New Zealand was the only subject; and it was just +beautiful to hear us ripple it out. And with such an air of +unembarrassed ease, and unostentatious familiarity with detail, and +trained and seasoned mastery of the subject-and oh, the grace and fluency +of it! + +"Well, finally somebody happened to notice that the guest was looking +dazed, and wasn't saying anything. So they stirred him up, of course. +Then that man came out with a good, honest, eloquent compliment that made +the Faculty blush. He said he was not worthy to sit in the company of +men like these; that he had been silent from admiration; that he had been +silent from another cause also--silent from shame--silent from ignorance! +'For,' said he, 'I, who have lived eighteen years in New Zealand and have +served five in a professorship, and ought to know much about that +country, perceive, now, that I know almost nothing about it. I say it +with shame, that I have learned fifty times, yes, a hundred times more +about New Zealand in these two hours at this table than I ever knew +before in all the eighteen years put together. I was silent because I +could not help myself. What I knew about taxes, and policies, and laws, +and revenue, and products, and history, and all that multitude of things, +was but general, and ordinary, and vague-unscientific, in a word--and it +would have been insanity to expose it here to the searching glare of your +amazingly accurate and all-comprehensive knowledge of those matters, +gentlemen. I beg you to let me sit silent--as becomes me. But do not +change the subject; I can at least follow you, in this one; whereas if +you change to one which shall call out the full strength of your mighty +erudition, I shall be as one lost. If you know all this about a remote +little inconsequent patch like New Zealand, ah, what wouldn't you know +about any other Subject!'" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIL + +Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what +there is of it. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +FROM DIARY: + +November 1--noon. A fine day, a brilliant sun. Warm in the sun, cold +in the shade--an icy breeze blowing out of the south. A solemn long +swell rolling up northward. It comes from the South Pole, with nothing +in the way to obstruct its march and tone its energy down. I have read +somewhere that an acute observer among the early explorers--Cook? or +Tasman?--accepted this majestic swell as trustworthy circumstantial +evidence that no important land lay to the southward, and so did not +waste time on a useless quest in that direction, but changed his course +and went searching elsewhere. + +Afternoon. Passing between Tasmania (formerly Van Diemen's Land) and +neighboring islands--islands whence the poor exiled Tasmanian savages +used to gaze at their lost homeland and cry; and die of broken hearts. +How glad I am that all these native races are dead and gone, or nearly +so. The work was mercifully swift and horrible in some portions of +Australia. As far as Tasmania is concerned, the extermination was +complete: not a native is left. It was a strife of years, and decades of +years. The Whites and the Blacks hunted each other, ambushed each other, +butchered each other. The Blacks were not numerous. But they were wary, +alert, cunning, and they knew their country well. They lasted a long +time, few as they were, and inflicted much slaughter upon the Whites. + +The Government wanted to save the Blacks from ultimate extermination, if +possible. One of its schemes was to capture them and coop them up, on a +neighboring island, under guard. Bodies of Whites volunteered for the +hunt, for the pay was good--L5 for each Black captured and delivered, but +the success achieved was not very satisfactory. The Black was naked, and +his body was greased. It was hard to get a grip on him that would hold. +The Whites moved about in armed bodies, and surprised little families of +natives, and did make captures; but it was suspected that in these +surprises half a dozen natives were killed to one caught--and that was +not what the Government desired. + +Another scheme was to drive the natives into a corner of the island and +fence them in by a cordon of men placed in line across the country; but +the natives managed to slip through, constantly, and continue their +murders and arsons. + +The governor warned these unlettered savages by printed proclamation that +they must stay in the desolate region officially appointed for them! The +proclamation was a dead letter; the savages could not read it. Afterward +a picture-proclamation was issued. It was painted up on boards, and +these were nailed to trees in the forest. Herewith is a photographic +reproduction of this fashion-plate. Substantially it means: + +1. The Governor wishes the Whites and the Blacks to love each other; + +2. He loves his black subjects; + +3. Blacks who kill Whites will be hanged; + +4. Whites who kill Blacks will be hanged. + +Upon its several schemes the Government spent L30,000 and employed the +labors and ingenuities of several thousand Whites for a long time with +failure as a result. Then, at last, a quarter of a century after the +beginning of the troubles between the two races, the right man was found. +No, he found himself. This was George Augustus Robinson, called in +history "The Conciliator." He was not educated, and not conspicuous in +any way. He was a working bricklayer, in Hobart Town. But he must have +been an amazing personality; a man worth traveling far to see. It may be +his counterpart appears in history, but I do not know where to look for +it. + +He set himself this incredible task: to go out into the wilderness, the +jungle, and the mountain-retreats where the hunted and implacable savages +were hidden, and appear among them unarmed, speak the language of love +and of kindness to them, and persuade them to forsake their homes and the +wild free life that was so dear to them, and go with him and surrender to +the hated Whites and live under their watch and ward, and upon their +charity the rest of their lives! On its face it was the dream of a +madman. + +In the beginning, his moral-suasion project was sarcastically dubbed the +sugar plum speculation. If the scheme was striking, and new to the +world's experience, the situation was not less so. It was this. The +White population numbered 40,000 in 1831; the Black population numbered +three hundred. Not 300 warriors, but 300 men, women, and children. The +Whites were armed with guns, the Blacks with clubs and spears. The +Whites had fought the Blacks for a quarter of a century, and had tried +every thinkable way to capture, kill, or subdue them; and could not do +it. If white men of any race could have done it, these would have +accomplished it. But every scheme had failed, the splendid 300, the +matchless 300 were unconquered, and manifestly unconquerable. They would +not yield, they would listen to no terms, they would fight to the bitter +end. Yet they had no poet to keep up their heart, and sing the marvel of +their magnificent patriotism. + +At the end of five-and-twenty years of hard fighting, the surviving 300 +naked patriots were still defiant, still persistent, still efficacious +with their rude weapons, and the Governor and the 40,000 knew not which +way to turn, nor what to do. + +Then the Bricklayer--that wonderful man--proposed to go out into the +wilderness, with no weapon but his tongue, and no protection but his +honest eye and his humane heart; and track those embittered savages to +their lairs in the gloomy forests and among the mountain snows. +Naturally, he was considered a crank. But he was not quite that. In +fact, he was a good way short of that. He was building upon his long and +intimate knowledge of the native character. The deriders of his project +were right--from their standpoint--for they believed the natives to be +mere wild beasts; and Robinson was right, from his standpoint--for he +believed the natives to be human beings. The truth did really lie +between the two. The event proved that Robinson's judgment was soundest; +but about once a month for four years the event came near to giving the +verdict to the deriders, for about that frequently Robinson barely +escaped falling under the native spears. + +But history shows that he had a thinking head, and was not a mere wild +sentimentalist. For instance, he wanted the war parties (called) in +before he started unarmed upon his mission of peace. He wanted the best +chance of success--not a half-chance. And he was very willing to have +help; and so, high rewards were advertised, for any who would go unarmed +with him. This opportunity was declined. Robinson persuaded some tamed +natives of both sexes to go with him--a strong evidence of his persuasive +powers, for those natives well knew that their destruction would be +almost certain. As it turned out, they had to face death over and over +again. + +Robinson and his little party had a difficult undertaking upon their +hands. They could not ride off, horseback, comfortably into the woods +and call Leonidas and his 300 together for a talk and a treaty the +following day; for the wild men were not in a body; they were scattered, +immense distances apart, over regions so desolate that even the birds +could not make a living with the chances offered--scattered in groups of +twenty, a dozen, half a dozen, even in groups of three. And the mission +must go on foot. Mr. Bonwick furnishes a description of those horrible +regions, whereby it will be seen that even fugitive gangs of the hardiest +and choicest human devils the world has seen--the convicts set apart to +people the "Hell of Macquarrie Harbor Station"--were never able, but +once, to survive the horrors of a march through them, but starving and +struggling, and fainting and failing, ate each other, and died: + +"Onward, still onward, was the order of the indomitable Robinson. No one +ignorant of the western country of Tasmania can form a correct idea of +the traveling difficulties. While I was resident in Hobart Town, the +Governor, Sir John Franklin, and his lady, undertook the western journey +to Macquarrie Harbor, and suffered terribly. One man who assisted to +carry her ladyship through the swamps, gave me his bitter experience of +its miseries. Several were disabled for life. No wonder that but one +party, escaping from Macquarrie Harbor convict settlement, arrived at the +civilized region in safety. Men perished in the scrub, were lost in +snow, or were devoured by their companions. This was the territory +traversed by Mr. Robinson and his Black guides. All honor to his +intrepidity, and their wonderful fidelity! When they had, in the depth +of winter, to cross deep and rapid rivers, pass among mountains six +thousand feet high, pierce dangerous thickets, and find food in a country +forsaken even by birds, we can realize their hardships. + +"After a frightful journey by Cradle Mountain, and over the lofty plateau +of Middlesex Plains, the travelers experienced unwonted misery, and the +circumstances called forth the best qualities of the noble little band. +Mr. Robinson wrote afterwards to Mr. Secretary Burnett some details of +this passage of horrors. In that letter, of Oct 2, 1834, he states that +his Natives were very reluctant to go over the dreadful mountain passes; +that 'for seven successive days we continued traveling over one solid +body of snow;' that 'the snows were of incredible depth;' that 'the +Natives were frequently up to their middle in snow.' But still the +ill-clad, ill-fed, diseased, and way-worn men and women were sustained by +the cheerful voice of their unconquerable friend, and responded most +nobly to his call." + +Mr. Bonwick says that Robinson's friendly capture of the Big River tribe +remember, it was a whole tribe--"was by far the grandest feature of the +war, and the crowning glory of his efforts." The word "war" was not well +chosen, and is misleading. There was war still, but only the Blacks were +conducting it--the Whites were holding off until Robinson could give his +scheme a fair trial. I think that we are to understand that the friendly +capture of that tribe was by far the most important thing, the highest in +value, that happened during the whole thirty years of truceless +hostilities; that it was a decisive thing, a peaceful Waterloo, the +surrender of the native Napoleon and his dreaded forces, the happy ending +of the long strife. For "that tribe was the terror of the colony," its +chief "the Black Douglas of Bush households." + +Robinson knew that these formidable people were lurking somewhere, in +some remote corner of the hideous regions just described, and he and his +unarmed little party started on a tedious and perilous hunt for them. At +last, "there, under the shadows of the Frenchman's Cap, whose grim cone +rose five thousand feet in the uninhabited westward interior," they were +found. It was a serious moment. Robinson himself believed, for once, +that his mission, successful until now, was to end here in failure, and +that his own death-hour had struck. + +The redoubtable chief stood in menacing attitude, with his eighteen-foot +spear poised; his warriors stood massed at his back, armed for battle, +their faces eloquent with their long-cherished loathing for white men. +"They rattled their spears and shouted their war-cry." Their women were +back of them, laden with supplies of weapons, and keeping their 150 eager +dogs quiet until the chief should give the signal to fall on. + +"I think we shall soon be in the resurrection," whispered a member of +Robinson's little party. + +"I think we shall," answered Robinson; then plucked up heart and began +his persuasions--in the tribe's own dialect, which surprised and pleased +the chief. Presently there was an interruption by the chief: + +"Who are you?" + +"We are gentlemen." + +"Where are your guns?" + +"We have none." + +The warrior was astonished. + +"Where your little guns?" (pistols). + +"We have none." + +A few minutes passed--in by-play--suspense--discussion among the +tribesmen--Robinson's tamed squaws ventured to cross the line and begin +persuasions upon the wild squaws. Then the chief stepped back "to confer +with the old women--the real arbiters of savage war." Mr. Bonwick +continues: + + "As the fallen gladiator in the arena looks for the signal of life + or death from the president of the amphitheatre, so waited our + friends in anxious suspense while the conference continued. In a + few minutes, before a word was uttered, the women of the tribe threw + up their arms three times. This was the inviolable sign of peace! + Down fell the spears. Forward, with a heavy sigh of relief, and + upward glance of gratitude, came the friends of peace. The + impulsive natives rushed forth with tears and cries, as each saw in + the other's rank a loved one of the past. + + "It was a jubilee of joy. A festival followed. And, while tears + flowed at the recital of woe, a corrobory of pleasant laughter + closed the eventful day." + +In four years, without the spilling of a drop of blood, Robinson brought +them all in, willing captives, and delivered them to the white governor, +and ended the war which powder and bullets, and thousands of men to use +them, had prosecuted without result since 1804. + +Marsyas charming the wild beasts with his music--that is fable; but the +miracle wrought by Robinson is fact. It is history--and authentic; and +surely, there is nothing greater, nothing more reverence-compelling in +the history of any country, ancient or modern. + +And in memory of the greatest man Australasia ever developed or ever will +develop, there is a stately monument to George Augustus Robinson, the +Conciliator in--no, it is to another man, I forget his name. + +However, Robertson's own generation honored him, and in manifesting it +honored themselves. The Government gave him a money-reward and a +thousand acres of land; and the people held mass-meetings and praised him +and emphasized their praise with a large subscription of money. + +A good dramatic situation; but the curtain fell on another: + + "When this desperate tribe was thus captured, there was much + surprise to find that the L30,000 of a little earlier day had been + spent, and the whole population of the colony placed under arms, in + contention with an opposing force of sixteen men with wooden spears! + Yet such was the fact. The celebrated Big River tribe, that had + been raised by European fears to a host, consisted of sixteen men, + nine women, and one child. With a knowledge of the mischief done by + these few, their wonderful marches and their widespread aggressions, + their enemies cannot deny to them the attributes of courage and + military tact. A Wallace might harass a large army with a small and + determined band; but the contending parties were at least equal in + arms and civilization. The Zulus who fought us in Africa, the + Maories in New Zealand, the Arabs in the Soudan, were far better + provided with weapons, more advanced in the science of war, and + considerably more numerous, than the naked Tasmanians. Governor + Arthur rightly termed them a noble race." + +These were indeed wonderful people, the natives. They ought not to have +been wasted. They should have been crossed with the Whites. It would +have improved the Whites and done the Natives no harm. + +But the Natives were wasted, poor heroic wild creatures. They were +gathered together in little settlements on neighboring islands, and +paternally cared for by the Government, and instructed in religion, and +deprived of tobacco, because the superintendent of the Sunday-school was +not a smoker, and so considered smoking immoral. + +The Natives were not used to clothes, and houses, and regular hours, and +church, and school, and Sunday-school, and work, and the other misplaced +persecutions of civilization, and they pined for their lost home and +their wild free life. Too late they repented that they had traded that +heaven for this hell. They sat homesick on their alien crags, and day by +day gazed out through their tears over the sea with unappeasable longing +toward the hazy bulk which was the specter of what had been their +paradise; one by one their hearts broke and they died. + +In a very few years nothing but a scant remnant remained alive. A +handful lingered along into age. In 1864 the last man died, in 1876 the +last woman died, and the Spartans of Australasia were extinct. + +The Whites always mean well when they take human fish out of the ocean +and try to make them dry and warm and happy and comfortable in a chicken +coop; but the kindest-hearted white man can always be depended on to +prove himself inadequate when he deals with savages. He cannot turn the +situation around and imagine how he would like it to have a well-meaning +savage transfer him from his house and his church and his clothes and his +books and his choice food to a hideous wilderness of sand and rocks and +snow, and ice and sleet and storm and blistering sun, with no shelter, no +bed, no covering for his and his family's naked bodies, and nothing to +eat but snakes and grubs and 'offal. This would be a hell to him; and if +he had any wisdom he would know that his own civilization is a hell to +the savage--but he hasn't any, and has never had any; and for lack of it +he shut up those poor natives in the unimaginable perdition of his +civilization, committing his crime with the very best intentions, and saw +those poor creatures waste away under his tortures; and gazed at it, +vaguely troubled and sorrowful, and wondered what could be the matter +with them. One is almost betrayed into respecting those criminals, they +were so sincerely kind, and tender, and humane; and well-meaning. + +They didn't know why those exiled savages faded away, and they did their +honest best to reason it out. And one man, in a like case in New South +Wales, did reason it out and arrive at a solution: + + "It is from the wrath of God, which is revealed from heaven against + cold ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." + +That settles it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not +succeed. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The aphorism does really seem true: "Given the Circumstances, the Man +will appear." But the man musn't appear ahead of time, or it will spoil +everything. In Robinson's case the Moment had been approaching for a +quarter of a century--and meantime the future Conciliator was tranquilly +laying bricks in Hobart. When all other means had failed, the Moment had +arrived, and the Bricklayer put down his trowel and came forward. +Earlier he would have been jeered back to his trowel again. It reminds +me of a tale that was told me by a Kentuckian on the train when we were +crossing Montana. He said the tale was current in Louisville years ago. +He thought it had been in print, but could not remember. At any rate, in +substance it was this, as nearly as I can call it back to mind. + +A few years before the outbreak of the Civil War it began to appear that +Memphis, Tennessee, was going to be a great tobacco entrepot--the wise +could see the signs of it. At that time Memphis had a wharf boat, of +course. There was a paved sloping wharf, for the accommodation of +freight, but the steamers landed on the outside of the wharfboat, and all +loading and unloading was done across it, between steamer and shore. A +number of wharfboat clerks were needed, and part of the time, every day, +they were very busy, and part of the time tediously idle. They were +boiling over with youth and spirits, and they had to make the intervals +of idleness endurable in some way; and as a rule, they did it by +contriving practical jokes and playing them upon each other. + +The favorite butt for the jokes was Ed Jackson, because he played none +himself, and was easy game for other people's--for he always believed +whatever was told him. + +One day he told the others his scheme for his holiday. He was not going +fishing or hunting this time--no, he had thought out a better plan. Out +of his $40 a month he had saved enough for his purpose, in an economical +way, and he was going to have a look at New York. + +It was a great and surprising idea. It meant travel immense travel--in +those days it meant seeing the world; it was the equivalent of a voyage +around it in ours. At first the other youths thought his mind was +affected, but when they found that he was in earnest, the next thing to +be thought of was, what sort of opportunity this venture might afford for +a practical joke. + +The young men studied over the matter, then held a secret consultation +and made a plan. The idea was, that one of the conspirators should offer +Ed a letter of introduction to Commodore Vanderbilt, and trick him into +delivering it. It would be easy to do this. But what would Ed do when +he got back to Memphis? That was a serious matter. He was good-hearted, +and had always taken the jokes patiently; but they had been jokes which +did not humiliate him, did not bring him to shame; whereas, this would be +a cruel one in that way, and to play it was to meddle with fire; for with +all his good nature, Ed was a Southerner--and the English of that was, +that when he came back he would kill as many of the conspirators as he +could before falling himself. However, the chances must be taken--it +wouldn't do to waste such a joke as that. + +So the letter was prepared with great care and elaboration. It was +signed Alfred Fairchild, and was written in an easy and friendly spirit. +It stated that the bearer was the bosom friend of the writer's son, and +was of good parts and sterling character, and it begged the Commodore to +be kind to the young stranger for the writer's sake. It went on to say, +"You may have forgotten me, in this long stretch of time, but you will +easily call me back out of your boyhood memories when I remind you of how +we robbed old Stevenson's orchard that night; and how, while he was +chasing down the road after us, we cut across the field and doubled back +and sold his own apples to his own cook for a hat-full of doughnuts; and +the time that we----" and so forth and so on, bringing in names of +imaginary comrades, and detailing all sorts of wild and absurd and, of +course, wholly imaginary schoolboy pranks and adventures, but putting +them into lively and telling shape. + +With all gravity Ed was asked if he would like to have a letter to +Commodore Vanderbilt, the great millionaire. It was expected that the +question would astonish Ed, and it did. + +"What? Do you know that extraordinary man?" + +"No; but my father does. They were schoolboys together. And if you +like, I'll write and ask father. I know he'll be glad to give it to you +for my sake." + +Ed could not find words capable of expressing his gratitude and delight. +The three days passed, and the letter was put into his bands. He started +on his trip, still pouring out his thanks while he shook good-bye all +around. And when he was out of sight his comrades let fly their laughter +in a storm of happy satisfaction--and then quieted down, and were less +happy, less satisfied. For the old doubts as to the wisdom of this +deception began to intrude again. + +Arrived in New York, Ed found his way to Commodore Vanderbilt's business +quarters, and was ushered into a large anteroom, where a score of people +were patiently awaiting their turn for a two-minute interview with the +millionaire in his private office. A servant asked for Ed's card, and +got the letter instead. Ed was sent for a moment later, and found Mr. +Vanderbilt alone, with the letter--open--in his hand. + +"Pray sit down, Mr. --er--" + +"Jackson." + +" Ah--sit down, Mr. Jackson. By the opening sentences it seems to be a +letter from an old friend. Allow me--I will run my eye through it. He +says he says--why, who is it?" He turned the sheet and found the +signature. "Alfred Fairchild--hm--Fairchild--I don't recall the name. +But that is nothing--a thousand names have gone from me. He says--he +says-hm-hmoh, dear, but it's good! Oh, it's rare! I don't quite +remember it, but I seem to it'll all come back to me presently. He says +--he says--hm--hm-oh, but that was a game! Oh, spl-endid! How it +carries me back! It's all dim, of course it's a long time ago--and the +names--some of the names are wavery and indistinct--but sho', I know it +happened--I can feel it! and lord, how it warms my heart, and brings +back my lost youth! Well, well, well, I've got to come back into this +work-a-day world now--business presses and people are waiting--I'll keep +the rest for bed to-night, and live my youth over again. And you'll +thank Fairchild for me when you see him--I used to call him Alf, I think +--and you'll give him my gratitude for--what this letter has done for the +tired spirit of a hard-worked man; and tell him there isn't anything that +I can do for him or any friend of his that I won't do. And as for you, +my lad, you are my guest; you can't stop at any hotel in New York. Sit. +where you are a little while, till I get through with these people, then +we'll go home. I'll take care of you, my boy--make yourself easy as to +that." + +Ed stayed a week, and had an immense time--and never suspected that the +Commodore's shrewd eye was on him, and that he was daily being weighed +and measured and analyzed and tried and tested. + +Yes, he had an immense time; and never wrote home, but saved it all up to +tell when he should get back. Twice, with proper modesty and decency, he +proposed to end his visit, but the Commodore said, "No--wait; leave it to +me; I'll tell you when to go." + +In those days the Commodore was making some of those vast combinations of +his--consolidations of warring odds and ends of railroads into harmonious +systems, and concentrations of floating and rudderless commerce in +effective centers--and among other things his farseeing eye had detected +the convergence of that huge tobacco-commerce, already spoken of, toward +Memphis, and he had resolved to set his grasp upon it and make it his +own. + +The week came to an end. Then the Commodore said: + +"Now you can start home. But first we will have some more talk about +that tobacco matter. I know you now. I know your abilities as well as +you know them yourself--perhaps better. You understand that tobacco +matter; you understand that I am going to take possession of it, and you +also understand the plans which I have matured for doing it. What I want +is a man who knows my mind, and is qualified to represent me in Memphis, +and be in supreme command of that important business--and I appoint you." + +"Me!" + +"Yes. Your salary will be high--of course-for you are representing me. +Later you will earn increases of it, and will get them. You will need a +small army of assistants; choose them yourself--and carefully. Take no +man for friendship's sake; but, all things being equal, take the man you +know, take your friend, in preference to the stranger." After some +further talk under this head, the Commodore said: + +"Good-bye, my boy, and thank Alf for me, for sending you to me." + +When Ed reached Memphis he rushed down to the wharf in a fever to tell +his great news and thank the boys over and over again for thinking to +give him the letter to Mr. Vanderbilt. It happened to be one of those +idle times. Blazing hot noonday, and no sign of life on the wharf. But +as Ed threaded his way among the freight piles, he saw a white linen +figure stretched in slumber upon a pile of grain-sacks under an awning, +and said to himself, "That's one of them," and hastened his step; next, +he said, "It's Charley--it's Fairchild good"; and the next moment laid an +affectionate hand on the sleeper's shoulder. The eyes opened lazily, +took one glance, the face blanched, the form whirled itself from the +sack-pile, and in an instant Ed was alone and Fairchild was flying for +the wharf-boat like the wind! + +Ed was dazed, stupefied. Was Fairchild crazy? What could be the meaning +of this? He started slow and dreamily down toward the wharf-boat; turned +the corner of a freight-pile and came suddenly upon two of the boys. +They were lightly laughing over some pleasant matter; they heard his +step, and glanced up just as he discovered them; the laugh died abruptly; +and before Ed could speak they were off, and sailing over barrels and +bales like hunted deer. Again Ed was paralyzed. Had the boys all gone +mad? What could be the explanation of this extraordinary conduct? And +so, dreaming along, he reached the wharf-boat, and stepped aboard nothing +but silence there, and vacancy. He crossed the deck, turned the corner +to go down the outer guard, heard a fervent-- + +"O lord!" and saw a white linen form plunge overboard. + +The youth came up coughing and strangling, and cried out-- + +"Go 'way from here! You let me alone. I didn't do it, I swear I +didn't!" + +"Didn't do what?" + +"Give you the----" + +"Never mind what you didn't do--come out of that! What makes you all act +so? What have I done?" + +"You? Why you haven't done anything. But----" + +"Well, then, what have you got against me? What do you all treat me so +for?" + +"I--er--but haven't you got anything against us?" + +"Of course not. What put such a thing into your head?" + +"Honor bright--you haven't? + +"Honor bright." + +"Swear it!" + +"I don't know what in the world you mean, but I swear it, anyway." + +"And you'll shake hands with me?" + +"Goodness knows I'll be glad to! Why, I'm just starving to shake hands +with somebody!" + +The swimmer muttered, "Hang him, he smelt a rat and never delivered the +letter!--but it's all right, I'm not going to fetch up the subject." And +he crawled out and came dripping and draining to shake hands. First one +and then another of the conspirators showed up cautiously--armed to the +teeth--took in the amicable situation, then ventured warily forward and +joined the love-feast. + +And to Ed's eager inquiry as to what made them act as they had been +acting, they answered evasively, and pretended that they had put it up as +a joke, to see what he would do. It was the best explanation they could +invent at such short notice. And each said to himself, "He never +delivered that letter, and the joke is on us, if he only knew it or we +were dull enough to come out and tell." + +Then, of course, they wanted to know all about the trip; and he said-- + +"Come right up on the boiler deck and order the drinks it's my treat. +I'm going to tell you all about it. And to-night it's my treat again +--and we'll have oysters and a time!" + +When the drinks were brought and cigars lighted, Ed said: + +"Well, when, I delivered the letter to Mr. Vanderbilt----" + +"Great Scott!" + +"Gracious, how you scared me. What's the matter?" + +"Oh--er--nothing. Nothing--it was a tack in the chair-seat," said one. + +"But you all said it. However, no matter. When I delivered the +letter----" + +"Did you deliver it?" And they looked at each other as people might who +thought that maybe they were dreaming. + +Then they settled to listening; and as the story deepened and its marvels +grew, the amazement of it made them dumb, and the interest of it took +their breath. They hardly uttered a whisper during two hours, but sat +like petrifactions and drank in the immortal romance. At last the tale +was ended, and Ed said-- + +"And it's all owing to you, boys, and you'll never find me ungrateful +--bless your hearts, the best friends a fellow ever had! You'll all have +places; I want every one of you. I know you--I know you 'by the back,' +as the gamblers say. You're jokers, and all that, but you're sterling, +with the hallmark on. And Charley Fairchild, you shall be my first +assistant and right hand, because of your first-class ability, and +because you got me the letter, and for your father's sake who wrote it +for me, and to please Mr. Vanderbilt, who said it would! And here's to +that great man--drink hearty!" + +Yes, when the Moment comes, the Man appears--even if he is a thousand +miles away, and has to be discovered by a practical joke. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in +his private heart no man much respects himself. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Necessarily, the human interest is the first interest in the log-book of +any country. The annals of Tasmania, in whose shadow we were sailing, +are lurid with that feature. Tasmania was a convict-dump, in old times; +this has been indicated in the account of the Conciliator, where +reference is made to vain attempts of desperate convicts to win to +permanent freedom, after escaping from Macquarrie Harbor and the "Gates +of Hell." In the early days Tasmania had a great population of convicts, +of both sexes and all ages, and a bitter hard life they had. In one spot +there was a settlement of juvenile convicts--children--who had been sent +thither from their home and their friends on the other side of the globe +to expiate their "crimes." + +In due course our ship entered the estuary called the Derwent, at whose +head stands Hobart, the capital of Tasmania. The Derwent's shores +furnish scenery of an interesting sort. The historian Laurie, whose +book, "The Story of Australasia," is just out, invoices its features with +considerable truth and intemperance: "The marvelous picturesqueness of +every point of view, combined with the clear balmy atmosphere and the +transparency of the ocean depths, must have delighted and deeply +impressed" the early explorers. "If the rock-bound coasts, sullen, +defiant, and lowering, seemed uninviting, these were occasionally broken +into charmingly alluring coves floored with golden sand, clad with +evergreen shrubbery, and adorned with every variety of indigenous wattle, +she-oak, wild flower, and fern, from the delicately graceful +'maiden-hair' to the palm-like 'old man'; while the majestic gum-tree, +clean and smooth as the mast of 'some tall admiral' pierces the clear air +to the height of 230 feet or more." + +It looked so to me. "Coasting along Tasman's Peninsula, what a shock of +pleasant wonder must have struck the early mariner on suddenly sighting +Cape Pillar, with its cluster of black-ribbed basaltic columns rising to +a height of 900 feet, the hydra head wreathed in a turban of fleecy +cloud, the base lashed by jealous waves spouting angry fountains of +foam." + +That is well enough, but I did not suppose those snags were 900 feet +high. Still they were a very fine show. They stood boldly out by +themselves, and made a fascinatingly odd spectacle. But there was +nothing about their appearance to suggest the heads of a hydra. They +looked like a row of lofty slabs with their upper ends tapered to the +shape of a carving-knife point; in fact, the early voyager, ignorant of +their great height, might have mistaken them for a rusty old rank of +piles that had sagged this way and that out of the perpendicular. + +The Peninsula is lofty, rocky, and densely clothed with scrub, or brush, +or both. It is joined to the main by a low neck. At this junction was +formerly a convict station called Port Arthur--a place hard to escape +from. Behind it was the wilderness of scrub, in which a fugitive would +soon starve; in front was the narrow neck, with a cordon of chained dogs +across it, and a line of lanterns, and a fence of living guards, armed. +We saw the place as we swept by--that is, we had a glimpse of what we +were told was the entrance to Port Arthur. The glimpse was worth +something, as a remembrancer, but that was all. + +The voyage thence up the Derwent Frith displays a grand succession of +fairy visions, in its entire length elsewhere unequaled. In gliding over +the deep blue sea studded with lovely islets luxuriant to the water's +edge, one is at a loss which scene to choose for contemplation and to +admire most. When the Huon and Bruni have been passed, there seems no +possible chance of a rival; but suddenly Mount Wellington, massive and +noble like his brother Etna, literally heaves in sight, sternly guarded +on either hand by Mounts Nelson and Rumney; presently we arrive at +Sullivan's Cove--Hobart! + +It is an attractive town. It sits on low hills that slope to the harbor +--a harbor that looks like a river, and is as smooth as one. Its still +surface is pictured with dainty reflections of boats and grassy banks and +luxuriant foliage. Back of the town rise highlands that are clothed in +woodland loveliness, and over the way is that noble mountain, Wellington, +a stately bulk, a most majestic pile. How beautiful is the whole region, +for form, and grouping, and opulence, and freshness of foliage, and +variety of color, and grace and shapeliness of the hills, the capes, the, +promontories; and then, the splendor of the sunlight, the dim rich +distances, the charm of the water-glimpses! And it was in this paradise +that the yellow-liveried convicts were landed, and the Corps-bandits +quartered, and the wanton slaughter of the kangaroo-chasing black +innocents consummated on that autumn day in May, in the brutish old time. +It was all out of keeping with the place, a sort of bringing of heaven +and hell together. + +The remembrance of this paradise reminds me that it was at Hobart that we +struck the head of the procession of Junior Englands. We were to +encounter other sections of it in New Zealand, presently, and others +later in Natal. Wherever the exiled Englishman can find in his new home +resemblances to his old one, he is touched to the marrow of his being; +the love that is in his heart inspires his imagination, and these allied +forces transfigure those resemblances into authentic duplicates of the +revered originals. It is beautiful, the feeling which works this +enchantment, and it compels one's homage; compels it, and also compels +one's assent--compels it always--even when, as happens sometimes, one +does not see the resemblances as clearly as does the exile who is +pointing them out. + +The resemblances do exist, it is quite true; and often they cunningly +approximate the originals--but after all, in the matter of certain +physical patent rights there is only one England. Now that I have +sampled the globe, I am not in doubt. There is a beauty of Switzerland, +and it is repeated in the glaciers and snowy ranges of many parts of the +earth; there is a beauty of the fiord, and it is repeated in New Zealand +and Alaska; there is a beauty of Hawaii, and it is repeated in ten +thousand islands of the Southern seas; there is a beauty of the prairie +and the plain, and it is repeated here and there in the earth; each of +these is worshipful, each is perfect in its way, yet holds no monopoly of +its beauty; but that beauty which is England is alone--it has no +duplicate. + +It is made up of very simple details--just grass, and trees, and shrubs, +and roads, and hedges, and gardens, and houses, and vines, and churches, +and castles, and here and there a ruin--and over it all a mellow +dream-haze of history. But its beauty is incomparable, and all its own. + +Hobart has a peculiarity--it is the neatest town that the sun shines on; +and I incline to believe that it is also the cleanest. However that may +be, its supremacy in neatness is not to be questioned. There cannot be +another town in the world that has no shabby exteriors; no rickety gates +and fences, no neglected houses crumbling to ruin, no crazy and unsightly +sheds, no weed-grown front-yards of the poor, no back-yards littered with +tin cans and old boots and empty bottles, no rubbish in the gutters, no +clutter on the sidewalks, no outer-borders fraying out into dirty lanes +and tin-patched huts. No, in Hobart all the aspects are tidy, and all a +comfort to the eye; the modestest cottage looks combed and brushed, and +has its vines, its flowers, its neat fence, its neat gate, its comely cat +asleep on the window ledge. + +We had a glimpse of the museum, by courtesy of the American gentleman who +is curator of it. It has samples of half-a-dozen different kinds of +marsupials--[A marsupial is a plantigrade vertebrate whose specialty is +its pocket. In some countries it is extinct, in the others it is rare. +The first American marsupials were Stephen Girard, Mr. Aston and the +opossum; the principal marsupials of the Southern Hemisphere are Mr. +Rhodes, and the kangaroo. I, myself, am the latest marsupial. Also, I +might boast that I have the largest pocket of them all. But there is +nothing in that.]--one, the "Tasmanian devil;" that is, I think he was +one of them. And there was a fish with lungs. When the water dries up +it can live in the mud. Most curious of all was a parrot that kills +sheep. On one great sheep-run this bird killed a thousand sheep in a +whole year. He doesn't want the whole sheep, but only the kidney-fat. +This restricted taste makes him an expensive bird to support. To get the +fat he drives his beak in and rips it out; the wound is mortal. This +parrot furnishes a notable example of evolution brought about by changed +conditions. When the sheep culture was introduced, it presently brought +famine to the parrot by exterminating a kind of grub which had always +thitherto been the parrot's diet. The miseries of hunger made the bird +willing to eat raw flesh, since it could get no other food, and it began +to pick remnants of meat from sheep skins hung out on the fences to dry. +It soon came to prefer sheep meat to any other food, and by and by it +came to prefer the kidney-fat to any other detail of the sheep. The +parrot's bill was not well shaped for digging out the fat, but Nature +fixed that matter; she altered the bill's shape, and now the parrot can +dig out kidney-fat better than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or +anybody else, for that matter--even an Admiral. + +And there was another curiosity--quite a stunning one, I thought: +Arrow-heads and knives just like those which Primeval Man made out of +flint, and thought he had done such a wonderful thing--yes, and has been +humored and coddled in that superstition by this age of admiring +scientists until there is probably no living with him in the other world +by now. Yet here is his finest and nicest work exactly duplicated in our +day; and by people who have never heard of him or his works: by +aborigines who lived in the islands of these seas, within our time. And +they not only duplicated those works of art but did it in the brittlest +and most treacherous of substances--glass: made them out of old brandy +bottles flung out of the British camps; millions of tons of them. It is +time for Primeval Man to make a little less noise, now. He has had his +day. He is not what he used to be. We had a drive through a bloomy and +odorous fairy-land, to the Refuge for the Indigent--a spacious and +comfortable home, with hospitals, etc., for both sexes. There was a +crowd in there, of the oldest people I have ever seen. It was like being +suddenly set down in a new world--a weird world where Youth has never +been, a world sacred to Age, and bowed forms, and wrinkles. Out of the +359 persons present, 223, were ex-convicts, and could have told stirring +tales, no doubt, if they had been minded to talk; 42 of the 359 were past +80, and several were close upon 90; the average age at death there is 76 +years. As for me, I have no use for that place; it is too healthy. +Seventy is old enough--after that, there is too much risk. Youth and +gaiety might vanish, any day--and then, what is left? Death in life; +death without its privileges, death without its benefits. There were 185 +women in that Refuge, and 81 of them were ex-convicts. + +The steamer disappointed us. Instead of making a long visit at Hobart, +as usual, she made a short one. So we got but a glimpse of Tasmania, and +then moved on. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + +Nature makes the locust with an appetite for crops; man would have made +him with an appetite for sand. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +We spent part of an afternoon and a night at sea, and reached Bluff, in +New Zealand, early in the morning. Bluff is at the bottom of the middle +island, and is away down south, nearly forty-seven degrees below the +equator. It lies as far south of the line as Quebec lies north of it, +and the climates of the two should be alike; but for some reason or other +it has not been so arranged. Quebec is hot in the summer and cold in the +winter, but Bluff's climate is less intense; the cold weather is not very +cold, the hot weather is not very hot; and the difference between the +hottest month and the coldest is but 17 degrees Fahrenheit. + +In New Zealand the rabbit plague began at Bluff. The man who introduced +the rabbit there was banqueted and lauded; but they would hang him, now, +if they could get him. In England the natural enemy of the rabbit is +detested and persecuted; in the Bluff region the natural enemy of the +rabbit is honored, and his person is sacred. The rabbit's natural enemy +in England is the poacher, in Bluff its natural enemy is the stoat, the +weasel, the ferret, the cat, and the mongoose. In England any person +below the Heir who is caught with a rabbit in his possession must +satisfactorily explain how it got there, or he will suffer fine and +imprisonment, together with extinction of his peerage; in Bluff, the cat +found with a rabbit in its possession does not have to explain--everybody +looks the other way; the person caught noticing would suffer fine and +imprisonment, with extinction of peerage. This is a sure way to +undermine the moral fabric of a cat. Thirty years from now there will +not be a moral cat in New Zealand. Some think there is none there now. +In England the poacher is watched, tracked, hunted--he dare not show his +face; in Bluff the cat, the weasel, the stoat, and the mongoose go up and +down, whither they will, unmolested. By a law of the legislature, posted +where all may read, it is decreed that any person found in possession of +one of these creatures (dead) must satisfactorily explain the +circumstances or pay a fine of not less than L5, nor more than L20. The +revenue from this source is not large. Persons who want to pay a hundred +dollars for a dead cat are getting rarer and rarer every day. This is +bad, for the revenue was to go to the endowment of a University. All +governments are more or less short-sighted: in England they fine the +poacher, whereas he ought to be banished to New Zealand. New Zealand +would pay his way, and give him wages. + +It was from Bluff that we ought to have cut across to the west coast and +visited the New Zealand Switzerland, a land of superb scenery, made up of +snowy grandeurs, anal mighty glaciers, and beautiful lakes; and over +there, also, are the wonderful rivals of the Norwegian and Alaskan +fiords; and for neighbor, a waterfall of 1,900 feet; but we were obliged +to postpone the trip to some later and indefinite time. + +November 6. A lovely summer morning; brilliant blue sky. A few miles +out from Invercargill, passed through vast level green expanses snowed +over with sheep. Fine to see. The green, deep and very vivid sometimes; +at other times less so, but delicate and lovely. A passenger reminds me +that I am in "the England of the Far South." + +Dunedin, same date. The town justifies Michael Davitt's praises. +The people are Scotch. They stopped here on their way from home to +heaven-thinking they had arrived. The population is stated at 40,000, by +Malcolm Ross, journalist; stated by an M. P. at 60,000. A journalist +cannot lie. + +To the residence of Dr. Hockin. He has a fine collection of books +relating to New Zealand; and his house is a museum of Maori art and +antiquities. He has pictures and prints in color of many native chiefs +of the past--some of them of note in history. There is nothing of the +savage in the faces; nothing could be finer than these men's features, +nothing more intellectual than these faces, nothing more masculine, +nothing nobler than their aspect. The aboriginals of Australia and +Tasmania looked the savage, but these chiefs looked like Roman +patricians. The tattooing in these portraits ought to suggest the +savage, of course, but it does not. The designs are so flowing and +graceful and beautiful that they are a most satisfactory decoration. It +takes but fifteen minutes to get reconciled to the tattooing, and but +fifteen more to perceive that it is just the thing. After that, the +undecorated European face is unpleasant and ignoble. + +Dr. Hockiu gave us a ghastly curiosity--a lignified caterpillar with a +plant growing out of the back of its neck--a plant with a slender stem 4 +inches high. It happened not by accident, but by design--Nature's +design. This caterpillar was in the act of loyally carrying out a law +inflicted upon him by Nature--a law purposely inflicted upon him to get +him into trouble--a law which was a trap; in pursuance of this law he +made the proper preparations for turning himself into a night-moth; that +is to say, he dug a little trench, a little grave, and then stretched +himself out in it on his stomach and partially buried himself--then +Nature was ready for him. She blew the spores of a peculiar fungus +through the air with a purpose. Some of them fell into a crease in the +back of the caterpillar's neck, and began to sprout and grow--for there +was soil there--he had not washed his neck. The roots forced themselves +down into the worm's person, and rearward along through its body, sucking +up the creature's juices for sap; the worm slowly died, and turned to +wood. And here he was now, a wooden caterpillar, with every detail of +his former physique delicately and exactly preserved and perpetuated, and +with that stem standing up out of him for his monument--monument +commemorative of his own loyalty and of Nature's unfair return for it. + +Nature is always acting like that. Mrs. X. said (of course) that the +caterpillar was not conscious and didn't suffer. She should have known +better. No caterpillar can deceive Nature. If this one couldn't suffer, +Nature would have known it and would have hunted up another caterpillar. +Not that she would have let this one go, merely because it was defective. +No. She would have waited and let him turn into a night-moth; and then +fried him in the candle. + +Nature cakes a fish's eyes over with parasites, so that it shan't be able +to avoid its enemies or find its food. She sends parasites into a +star-fish's system, which clog up its prongs and swell them and make them +so uncomfortable that the poor creature delivers itself from the prong to +ease its misery; and presently it has to part with another prong for the +sake of comfort, and finally with a third. If it re-grows the prongs, +the parasite returns and the same thing is repeated. And finally, when +the ability to reproduce prongs is lost through age, that poor old +star-fish can't get around any more, and so it dies of starvation. + +In Australia is prevalent a horrible disease due to an "unperfected +tapeworm." Unperfected--that is what they call it, I do not know why, +for it transacts business just as well as if it were finished and +frescoed and gilded, and all that. + +November 9. To the museum and public picture gallery with the president +of the Society of Artists. Some fine pictures there, lent by the S. of +A. several of them they bought, the others came to them by gift. Next, +to the gallery of the S. of A.--annual exhibition--just opened. Fine. +Think of a town like this having two such collections as this, and a +Society of Artists. It is so all over Australasia. If it were a +monarchy one might understand it. I mean an absolute monarchy, where it +isn't necessary to vote money, but take it. Then art flourishes. But +these colonies are republics--republics with a wide suffrage; voters of +both sexes, this one of New Zealand. In republics, neither the +government nor the rich private citizen is much given to propagating art. +All over Australasia pictures by famous European artists are bought for +the public galleries by the State and by societies of citizens. Living +citizens--not dead ones. They rob themselves to give, not their heirs. +This S. of A. here owns its buildings built it by subscription. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + +The spirit of wrath--not the words--is the sin; and the spirit of wrath +is cursing. We begin to swear before we can talk. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +November 11. On the road. This train-express goes twenty and one-half +miles an hour, schedule time; but it is fast enough, the outlook upon sea +and land is so interesting, and the cars so comfortable. They are not +English, and not American; they are the Swiss combination of the two. +A narrow and railed porch along the side, where a person can walk +up and down. A lavatory in each car. This is progress; this is +nineteenth-century spirit. In New Zealand, these fast expresses run twice +a week. It is well to know this if you want to be a bird and fly through +the country at a 20-mile gait; otherwise you may start on one of the five +wrong days, and then you will get a train that can't overtake its own +shadow. + +By contrast, these pleasant cars call to mind the branch-road cars at +Maryborough, Australia, and the passengers' talk about the branch-road +and the hotel. + +Somewhere on the road to Maryborough I changed for a while to a +smoking-carriage. There were two gentlemen there; both riding backward, +one at each end of the compartment. They were acquaintances of each +other. I sat down facing the one that sat at the starboard window. He +had a good face, and a friendly look, and I judged from his dress that he +was a dissenting minister. He was along toward fifty. Of his own motion +he struck a match, and shaded it with his hand for me to light my cigar. +I take the rest from my diary: + +In order to start conversation I asked him something about Maryborough. +He said, in a most pleasant--even musical voice, but with quiet and +cultured decision: + +"It's a charming town, with a hell of a hotel." + +I was astonished. It seemed so odd to hear a minister swear out loud. +He went placidly on: + +"It's the worst hotel in Australia. Well, one may go further, and say in +Australasia." + +"Bad beds?" + +"No--none at all. Just sand-bags." + +"The pillows, too?" + +"Yes, the pillows, too. Just sand. And not a good quality of sand. It +packs too hard, and has never been screened. There is too much gravel in +it. It is like sleeping on nuts." + +"Isn't there any good sand?" + +"Plenty of it. There is as good bed-sand in this region as the world can +furnish. Aerated sand--and loose; but they won't buy it. They want +something that will pack solid, and petrify." + +"How are the rooms?" + +"Eight feet square; and a sheet of iced oil-cloth to step on in the +morning when you get out of the sand-quarry." + +"As to lights?" + +"Coal-oil lamp." + +"A good one?" + +"No. It's the kind that sheds a gloom." + +"I like a lamp that burns all night." + +"This one won't. You must blow it out early." + +"That is bad. One might want it again in the night. Can't find it in +the dark." + +"There's no trouble; you can find it by the stench." + +"Wardrobe?" + +"Two nails on the door to hang seven suits of clothes on if you've got +them." + +"Bells?" + +"There aren't any." + +"What do you do when you want service?" + +"Shout. But it won't fetch anybody." + +"Suppose you want the chambermaid to empty the slopjar?" + +"There isn't any slop-jar. The hotels don't keep them. That is, outside +of Sydney and Melbourne." + +"Yes, I knew that. I was only talking. It's the oddest thing in +Australia. Another thing: I've got to get up in the dark, in the +morning, to take the 5 o'clock train. Now if the boots----" + +"There isn't any." + +"Well, the porter." + +"There isn't any." + +"But who will call me?" + +"Nobody. You'll call yourself. And you'll light yourself, too. +There'll not be a light burning in the halls or anywhere. And if you +don't carry a light, you'll break your neck." + +"But who will help me down with my baggage?" + +"Nobody. However, I will tell you what to do. In Maryborough there's an +American who has lived there half a lifetime; a fine man, and prosperous +and popular. He will be on the lookout for you; you won't have any +trouble. Sleep in peace; he will rout you out, and you will make your +train. Where is your manager?" + +"I left him at Ballarat, studying the language. And besides, he had to +go to Melbourne and get us ready for New Zealand. I've not tried to +pilot myself before, and it doesn't look easy." + +"Easy! You've selected the very most difficult piece of railroad in +Australia for your experiment. There are twelve miles of this road which +no man without good executive ability can ever hope--tell me, have you +good executive ability? first-rate executive ability?" + +"I--well, I think so, but----" + +"That settles it. The tone of----oh, you wouldn't ever make it in the +world. However, that American will point you right, and you'll go. +You've got tickets?" + +"Yes--round trip; all the way to Sydney." + +"Ah, there it is, you see! You are going in the 5 o'clock by +Castlemaine--twelve miles--instead of the 7.15 by Ballarat--in order to +save two hours of fooling along the road. Now then, don't interrupt--let +me have the floor. You're going to save the government a deal of +hauling, but that's nothing; your ticket is by Ballarat, and it isn't +good over that twelve miles, and so----" + +"But why should the government care which way I go?" + +"Goodness knows! Ask of the winds that far away with fragments strewed +the sea, as the boy that stood on the burning deck used to say. The +government chooses to do its railway business in its own way, and it +doesn't know as much about it as the French. In the beginning they tried +idiots; then they imported the French--which was going backwards, you +see; now it runs the roads itself--which is going backwards again, you +see. Why, do you know, in order to curry favor with the voters, the +government puts down a road wherever anybody wants it--anybody that owns +two sheep and a dog; and by consequence we've got, in the colony of +Victoria, 800 railway stations, and the business done at eighty of them +doesn't foot up twenty shillings a week." + +"Five dollars? Oh, come!" + +"It's true. It's the absolute truth." + +"Why, there are three or four men on wages at every station." + +"I know it. And the station-business doesn't pay for the sheep-dip to +sanctify their coffee with. It's just as I say. And accommodating? +Why, if you shake a rag the train will stop in the midst of the +wilderness to pick you up. All that kind of politics costs, you see. +And then, besides, any town that has a good many votes and wants a fine +station, gets it. Don't you overlook that Maryborough station, if you +take an interest in governmental curiosities. Why, you can put the whole +population of Maryborough into it, and give them a sofa apiece, and have +room for more. You haven't fifteen stations in America that are as big, +and you probably haven't five that are half as fine. Why, it's +perfectly elegant. And the clock! Everybody will show you the clock. +There isn't a station in Europe that's got such a clock. It doesn't +strike--and that's one mercy. It hasn't any bell; and as you'll have +cause to remember, if you keep your reason, all Australia is simply +bedamned with bells. On every quarter-hour, night and day, they jingle a +tiresome chime of half a dozen notes--all the clocks in town at once, all +the clocks in Australasia at once, and all the very same notes; first, +downward scale: mi, re, do, sol--then upward scale: sol, si, re, do--down +again: mi, re, do, sol--up again: sol, si, re, do--then the clock--say at +midnight clang--clang--clang--clang--clang-clang--clang--clang--clang +--clang----and, by that time you're--hello, what's all this excitement +about? a runaway--scared by the train; why, you think this train could +scare anything. Well, when they build eighty stations at a loss and a +lot of palace-stations and clocks like Maryborough's at another loss, the +government has got to economize somewhere hasn't it? Very well look at +the rolling stock. That's where they save the money. Why, that train +from Maryborough will consist of eighteen freight-cars and two +passenger-kennels; cheap, poor, shabby, slovenly; no drinking water, no +sanitary arrangements, every imaginable inconvenience; and slow?--oh, the +gait of cold molasses; no air-brake, no springs, and they'll jolt your +head off every time they start or stop. That's where they make their +little economies, you see. They spend tons of money to house you +palatially while you wait fifteen minutes for a train, then degrade you +to six hours' convict-transportation to get the foolish outlay back. +What a rational man really needs is discomfort while he's waiting, then +his journey in a nice train would be a grateful change. But no, that +would be common sense--and out of place in a government. And then, +besides, they save in that other little detail, you know--repudiate their +own tickets, and collect a poor little illegitimate extra shilling out of +you for that twelve miles, and----" + +"Well, in any case----" + +"Wait--there's more. Leave that American out of the account and see what +would happen. There's nobody on hand to examine your ticket when you +arrive. But the conductor will come and examine it when the train is +ready to start. It is too late to buy your extra ticket now; the train +can't wait, and won't. You must climb out." + +"But can't I pay the conductor?" + +"No, he is not authorized to receive the money, and he won't. You must +climb out. There's no other way. I tell you, the railway management is +about the only thoroughly European thing here--continentally European I +mean, not English. It's the continental business in perfection; down +fine. Oh, yes, even to the peanut-commerce of weighing baggage." + +The train slowed up at his place. As he stepped out he said: + +"Yes, you'll like Maryborough. Plenty of intelligence there. It's a +charming place--with a hell of a hotel." + +Then he was gone. I turned to the other gentleman: + +"Is your friend in the ministry?" + +"No--studying for it." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + +The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +It was Junior England all the way to Christchurch--in fact, just a +garden. And Christchurch is an English town, with an English-park annex, +and a winding English brook just like the Avon--and named the Avon; but +from a man, not from Shakespeare's river. Its grassy banks are bordered +by the stateliest and most impressive weeping willows to be found in the +world, I suppose. They continue the line of a great ancestor; they were +grown from sprouts of the willow that sheltered Napoleon's grave in St. +Helena. It is a settled old community, with all the serenities, the +graces, the conveniences, and the comforts of the ideal home-life. If it +had an established Church and social inequality it would be England over +again with hardly a lack. + +In the museum we saw many curious and interesting things; among others a +fine native house of the olden time, with all the details true to the +facts, and the showy colors right and in their proper places. All the +details: the fine mats and rugs and things; the elaborate and wonderful +wood carvings--wonderful, surely, considering who did them wonderful in +design and particularly in execution, for they were done with admirable +sharpness and exactness, and yet with no better tools than flint and jade +and shell could furnish; and the totem-posts were there, ancestor above +ancestor, with tongues protruded and hands clasped comfortably over +bellies containing other people's ancestors--grotesque and ugly devils, +every one, but lovingly carved, and ably; and the stuffed natives were +present, in their proper places, and looking as natural as life; and the +housekeeping utensils were there, too, and close at hand the carved and +finely ornamented war canoe. + +And we saw little jade gods, to hang around the neck--not everybody's, +but sacred to the necks of natives of rank. Also jade weapons, and many +kinds of jade trinkets--all made out of that excessively hard stone +without the help of any tool of iron. And some of these things had small +round holes bored through them--nobody knows how it was done; a mystery, +a lost art. I think it was said that if you want such a hole bored in a +piece of jade now, you must send it to London or Amsterdam where the +lapidaries are. + +Also we saw a complete skeleton of the giant Moa. It stood ten feet +high, and must have been a sight to look at when it was a living bird. +It was a kicker, like the ostrich; in fight it did not use its beak, but +its foot. It must have been a convincing kind of kick. If a person had +his back to the bird and did not see who it was that did it, he would +think he had been kicked by a wind-mill. + +There must have been a sufficiency of moas in the old forgotten days when +his breed walked the earth. His bones are found in vast masses, all +crammed together in huge graves. They are not in caves, but in the +ground. Nobody knows how they happened to get concentrated there. Mind, +they are bones, not fossils. This means that the moa has not been +extinct very long. Still, this is the only New Zealand creature which +has no mention in that otherwise comprehensive literature, the native +legends. This is a significant detail, and is good circumstantial +evidence that the moa has been extinct 500 years, since the Maori has +himself--by tradition--been in New Zealand since the end of the fifteenth +century. He came from an unknown land--the first Maori did--then sailed +back in his canoe and brought his tribe, and they removed the aboriginal +peoples into the sea and into the ground and took the land. That is the +tradition. That that first Maori could come, is understandable, for +anybody can come to a place when he isn't trying to; but how that +discoverer found his way back home again without a compass is his secret, +and he died with it in him. His language indicates that he came from +Polynesia. He told where he came from, but he couldn't spell well, so +one can't find the place on the map, because people who could spell +better than he could, spelt the resemblance all out of it when they made +the map. However, it is better to have a map that is spelt right than +one that has information in it. + +In New Zealand women have the right to vote for members of the +legislature, but they cannot be members themselves. The law extending +the suffrage to them event into effect in 1893. The population of +Christchurch (census of 1891) was 31,454. The first election under the +law was held in November of that year. Number of men who voted, 6,313; +number of women who voted, 5,989. These figures ought to convince us +that women are not as indifferent about politics as some people would +have us believe. In New Zealand as a whole, the estimated adult female +population was 139,915; of these 109,461 qualified and registered their +names on the rolls 78.23 per cent. of the whole. Of these, 90,290 went +to the polls and voted--85.18 per cent. Do men ever turn out better than +that--in America or elsewhere? Here is a remark to the other sex's +credit, too--I take it from the official report: + +"A feature of the election was the orderliness and sobriety of the +people. Women were in no way molested." + +At home, a standing argument against woman suffrage has always been that +women could not go to the polls without being insulted. The arguments +against woman suffrage have always taken the easy form of prophecy. The +prophets have been prophesying ever since the woman's rights movement +began in 1848--and in forty-seven years they have never scored a hit. + +Men ought to begin to feel a sort of respect for their mothers and wives +and sisters by this time. The women deserve a change of attitude like +that, for they have wrought well. In forty-seven years they have swept +an imposingly large number of unfair laws from the statute books of +America. In that brief time these serfs have set themselves free +essentially. Men could not have done so much for themselves in that time +without bloodshed--at least they never have; and that is argument that +they didn't know how. The women have accomplished a peaceful revolution, +and a very beneficent one; and yet that has not convinced the average man +that they are intelligent, and have courage and energy and perseverance +and fortitude. It takes much to convince the average man of anything; +and perhaps nothing can ever make him realize that he is the average +woman's inferior--yet in several important details the evidences seems to +show that that is what he is. Man has ruled the human race from the +beginning--but he should remember that up to the middle of the present +century it was a dull world, and ignorant and stupid; but it is not such +a dull world now, and is growing less and less dull all the time. This +is woman's opportunity--she has had none before. I wonder where man will +be in another forty-seven years? + +In the New Zealand law occurs this: "The word person wherever it occurs +throughout the Act includes woman." + +That is promotion, you see. By that enlargement of the word, the matron +with the garnered wisdom and experience of fifty years becomes at one +jump the political equal of her callow kid of twenty-one. The white +population of the colony is 626,000, the Maori population is 42,000. The +whites elect seventy members of the House of Representatives, the Maoris +four. The Maori women vote for their four members. + +November 16. After four pleasant days in Christchurch, we are to leave +at midnight to-night. Mr. Kinsey gave me an ornithorhynchus, and I am +taming it. + +Sunday, 17th. Sailed last night in the Flora, from Lyttelton. + +So we did. I remember it yet. The people who sailed in the Flora that +night may forget some other things if they live a good while, but they +will not live long, enough to forget that. The Flora is about the +equivalent of a cattle-scow; but when the Union Company find it +inconvenient to keep a contract and lucrative to break it, they smuggle +her into passenger service, and "keep the change." + +They give no notice of their projected depredation; you innocently buy +tickets for the advertised passenger boat, and when you get down to +Lyttelton at midnight, you find that they have substituted the scow. +They have plenty of good boats, but no competition--and that is the +trouble. It is too late now to make other arrangements if you have +engagements ahead. + +It is a powerful company, it has a monopoly, and everybody is afraid of +it--including the government's representative, who stands at the end of +the stage-plank to tally the passengers and see that no boat receives a +greater number than the law allows her to carry. This conveniently-blind +representative saw the scow receive a number which was far in excess of +its privilege, and winked a politic wink and said nothing. The +passengers bore with meekness the cheat which had been put upon them, and +made no complaint. + +It was like being at home in America, where abused passengers act in just +the same way. A few days before, the Union Company had discharged a +captain for getting a boat into danger, and had advertised this act as +evidence of its vigilance in looking after the safety of the passengers +--for thugging a captain costs the company nothing, but when opportunity +offered to send this dangerously overcrowded tub to sea and save a little +trouble and a tidy penny by it, it forgot to worry about the passenger's +safety. + +The first officer told me that the Flora was privileged to carry 125 +passengers. She must have had all of 200 on board. All the cabins were +full, all the cattle-stalls in the main stable were full, the spaces at +the heads of companionways were full, every inch of floor and table in +the swill-room was packed with sleeping men and remained so until the +place was required for breakfast, all the chairs and benches on the +hurricane deck were occupied, and still there were people who had to walk +about all night! + +If the Flora had gone down that night, half of the people on board would +have been wholly without means of escape. + +The owners of that boat were not technically guilty of conspiracy to +commit murder, but they were morally guilty of it. + +I had a cattle-stall in the main stable--a cavern fitted up with a long +double file of two-storied bunks, the files separated by a calico +partition--twenty men and boys on one side of it, twenty women and girls +on the other. The place was as dark as the soul of the Union Company, +and smelt like a kennel. When the vessel got out into the heavy seas and +began to pitch and wallow, the cavern prisoners became immediately +seasick, and then the peculiar results that ensued laid all my previous +experiences of the kind well away in the shade. And the wails, the +groans, the cries, the shrieks, the strange ejaculations--it was +wonderful. + +The women and children and some of the men and boys spent the night in +that place, for they were too ill to leave it; but the rest of us got up, +by and by, and finished the night on the hurricane-deck. + +That boat was the foulest I was ever in; and the smell of the breakfast +saloon when we threaded our way among the layers of steaming passengers +stretched upon its floor and its tables was incomparable for efficiency. + +A good many of us got ashore at the first way-port to seek another ship. +After a wait of three hours we got good rooms in the Mahinapua, a wee +little bridal-parlor of a boat--only 205 tons burthen; clean and +comfortable; good service; good beds; good table, and no crowding. The +seas danced her about like a duck, but she was safe and capable. + +Next morning early she went through the French Pass--a narrow gateway of +rock, between bold headlands--so narrow, in fact, that it seemed no wider +than a street. The current tore through there like a mill-race, and the +boat darted through like a telegram. The passage was made in half a +minute; then we were in a wide place where noble vast eddies swept +grandly round and round in shoal water, and I wondered what they would do +with the little boat. They did as they pleased with her. They picked +her up and flung her around like nothing and landed her gently on the +solid, smooth bottom of sand--so gently, indeed, that we barely felt her +touch it, barely felt her quiver when she came to a standstill. The +water was as clear as glass, the sand on the bottom was vividly distinct, +and the fishes seemed to be swimming about in nothing. Fishing lines +were brought out, but before we could bait the hooks the boat was off and +away again. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + +Let us be grateful to Adam our benefactor. He cut us out of the +"blessing of idleness," and won for us the "curse of labor." + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +We soon reached the town of Nelson, and spent the most of the day there, +visiting acquaintances and driving with them about the garden--the whole +region is a garden, excepting the scene of the "Maungatapu Murders," of +thirty years ago. That is a wild place--wild and lonely; an ideal place +for a murder. It is at the base of a vast, rugged, densely timbered +mountain. In the deep twilight of that forest solitude four desperate +rascals--Burgess, Sullivan, Levy, and Kelley--ambushed themselves beside +the mountain-trail to murder and rob four travelers--Kempthorne, Mathieu, +Dudley, and De Pontius, the latter a New Yorker. A harmless old laboring +man came wandering along, and as his presence was an embarrassment, they +choked him, hid him, and then resumed their watch for the four. They had +to wait a while, but eventually everything turned out as they desired. + +That dark episode is the one large event in the history of Nelson. The +fame of it traveled far. Burgess made a confession. It is a remarkable +paper. For brevity, succinctness, and concentration, it is perhaps +without its peer in the literature of murder. There are no waste words +in it; there is no obtrusion of matter not pertinent to the occasion, nor +any departure from the dispassionate tone proper to a formal business +statement--for that is what it is: a business statement of a murder, by +the chief engineer of it, or superintendent, or foreman, or whatever one +may prefer to call him. + + "We were getting impatient, when we saw four men and a pack-horse + coming. I left my cover and had a look at the men, for Levy had + told me that Mathieu was a small man and wore a large beard, and + that it was a chestnut horse. I said, 'Here they come.' They were + then a good distance away; I took the caps off my gun, and put fresh + ones on. I said, 'You keep where you are, I'll put them up, and you + give me your gun while you tie them.' It was arranged as I have + described. The men came; they arrived within about fifteen yards + when I stepped up and said, 'Stand! bail up!' That means all of + them to get together. I made them fall back on the upper side of + the road with their faces up the range, and Sullivan brought me his + gun, and then tied their hands behind them. The horse was very + quiet all the time, he did not move. When they were all tied, + Sullivan took the horse up the hill, and put him in the bush; he cut + the rope and let the swags--[A "swag" is a kit, a pack, small + baggage.]--fall on the ground, and then came to me. We then marched + the men down the incline to the creek; the water at this time barely + running. Up this creek we took the men; we went, I daresay, five or + six hundred yards up it, which took us nearly half-an-hour to + accomplish. Then we turned to the right up the range; we went, I + daresay, one hundred and fifty yards from the creek, and there we + sat down with the men. I said to Sullivan, 'Put down your gun and + search these men,' which he did. I asked them their several names; + they told me. I asked them if they were expected at Nelson. They + said, 'No.' If such their lives would have been spared. In money + we took L60 odd. I said, 'Is this all you have? You had better + tell me.' Sullivan said, 'Here is a bag of gold.' I said, 'What's on + that pack-horse? Is there any gold ?' when Kempthorne said, 'Yes, + my gold is in the portmanteau, and I trust you will not take it + all.' 'Well,' I said, 'we must take you away one at a time, because + the range is steep just here, and then we will let you go.' They + said, 'All right,' most cheerfully. We tied their feet, and took + Dudley with us; we went about sixty yards with him. This was + through a scrub. It was arranged the night previously that it would + be best to choke them, in case the report of the arms might be heard + from the road, and if they were missed they never would be found. + So we tied a handkerchief over his eyes, when Sullivan took the sash + off his waist, put it round his neck, and so strangled him. + Sullivan, after I had killed the old laboring man, found fault with + the way he was choked. He said, 'The next we do I'll show you my + way.' I said, 'I have never done such a thing before. I have shot + a man, but never choked one.' We returned to the others, when + Kempthorne said, 'What noise was that?' I said it was caused by + breaking through the scrub. This was taking too much time, so it + was agreed to shoot them. With that I said, 'We'll take you no + further, but separate you, and then loose one of you, and he can + relieve the others.' So with that, Sullivan took De Pontius to the + left of where Kempthorne was sitting. I took Mathieu to the right. + I tied a strap round his legs, and shot him with a revolver. He + yelled, I ran from him with my gun in my hand, I sighted Kempthorne, + who had risen to his feet. I presented the gun, and shot him behind + the right ear; his life's blood welled from him, and he died + instantaneously. Sullivan had shot. De Pontius in the meantime, + and then came to me. I said, 'Look to Mathieu,' indicating the spot + where he lay. He shortly returned and said, 'I had to "chiv" that + fellow, he was not dead,' a cant word, meaning that he had to stab + him. Returning to the road we passed where De Pontius lay and was + dead. Sullivan said, 'This is the digger, the others were all + storekeepers; this is the digger, let's cover him up, for should the + others be found, they'll think he done it and sloped,' meaning he + had gone. So with that we threw all the stones on him, and then + left him. This bloody work took nearly an hour and a half from the + time we stopped the men." + +Anyone who reads that confession will think that the man who wrote it was +destitute of emotions, destitute of feeling. That is partly true. As +regarded others he was plainly without feeling--utterly cold and +pitiless; but as regarded himself the case was different. While he cared +nothing for the future of the murdered men, he cared a great deal for his +own. It makes one's flesh creep to read the introduction to his +confession. The judge on the bench characterized it as "scandalously +blasphemous," and it certainly reads so, but Burgess meant no blasphemy. +He was merely a brute, and whatever he said or wrote was sure to expose +the fact. His redemption was a very real thing to him, and he was as +jubilantly happy on the gallows as ever was Christian martyr at the +stake. We dwellers in this world are strangely made, and mysteriously +circumstanced. We have to suppose that the murdered men are lost, and +that Burgess is saved; but we cannot suppress our natural regrets. + + "Written in my dungeon drear this 7th of August, in the year of + Grace, 1866. To God be ascribed all power and glory in subduing the + rebellious spirit of a most guilty wretch, who has been brought, + through the instrumentality of a faithful follower of Christ, to see + his wretched and guilty state, inasmuch as hitherto he has led an + awful and wretched life, and through the assurance of this faithful + soldier of Christ, he has been led and also believes that Christ + will yet receive and cleanse him from all his deep-dyed and bloody + sins. I lie under the imputation which says, 'Come now and let us + reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, + they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, + they shall be as wool.' On this promise I rely." + +We sailed in the afternoon late, spent a few hours at New Plymouth, then +sailed again and reached Auckland the next day, November 20th, and +remained in that fine city several days. Its situation is commanding, +and the sea-view is superb. There are charming drives all about, and by +courtesy of friends we had opportunity to enjoy them. From the grassy +crater-summit of Mount Eden one's eye ranges over a grand sweep and +variety of scenery--forests clothed in luxuriant foliage, rolling green +fields, conflagrations of flowers, receding and dimming stretches of +green plain, broken by lofty and symmetrical old craters--then the blue +bays twinkling and sparkling away into the dreamy distances where the +mountains loom spiritual in their veils of haze. + +It is from Auckland that one goes to Rotorua, the region of the renowned +hot lakes and geysers--one of the chief wonders of New Zealand; but I was +not well enough to make the trip. The government has a sanitorium there, +and everything is comfortable for the tourist and the invalid. The +government's official physician is almost over-cautious in his estimates +of the efficacy of the baths, when he is talking about rheumatism, gout, +paralysis, and such things; but when he is talking about the +effectiveness of the waters in eradicating the whisky-habit, he seems to +have no reserves. The baths will cure the drinking-habit no matter how +chronic it is--and cure it so effectually that even the desire to drink +intoxicants will come no more. There should be a rush from Europe and +America to that place; and when the victims of alcoholism find out what +they can get by going there, the rush will begin. + +The Thermal-springs District of New Zealand comprises an area of upwards +of 600,000 acres, or close on 1,000 square miles. Rotorua is the +favorite place. It is the center of a rich field of lake and mountain +scenery; from Rotorua as a base the pleasure-seeker makes excursions. +The crowd of sick people is great, and growing. Rotorua is the Carlsbad +of Australasia. + +It is from Auckland that the Kauri gum is shipped. For a long time now +about 8,000 tons of it have been brought into the town per year. It is +worth about $300 per ton, unassorted; assorted, the finest grades are +worth about $1,000. It goes to America, chiefly. It is in lumps, and is +hard and smooth, and looks like amber--the light-colored like new amber, +and the dark brown like rich old amber. And it has the pleasant feel of +amber, too. Some of the light-colored samples were a tolerably fair +counterfeit of uncut South African diamonds, they were so perfectly +smooth and polished and transparent. It is manufactured into varnish; a +varnish which answers for copal varnish and is cheaper. + +The gum is dug up out of the ground; it has been there for ages. It is +the sap of the Kauri tree. Dr. Campbell of Auckland told me he sent a +cargo of it to England fifty years ago, but nothing came of the venture. +Nobody knew what to do with it; so it was sold at 15 a ton, to light +fires with. + +November 26--3 P.M., sailed. Vast and beautiful harbor. Land all about +for hours. Tangariwa, the mountain that "has the same shape from every +point of view." That is the common belief in Auckland. And so it has +--from every point of view except thirteen. Perfect summer weather. Large +school of whales in the distance. Nothing could be daintier than the +puffs of vapor they spout up, when seen against the pink glory of the +sinking sun, or against the dark mass of an island reposing in the deep +blue shadow of a storm cloud . . . . Great Barrier rock standing up +out of the sea away to the left. Sometime ago a ship hit it full speed +in a fog--20 miles out of her course--140 lives lost; the captain +committed suicide without waiting a moment. He knew that, whether he was +to blame or not, the company owning the vessel would discharge him and +make a devotion--to--passengers' safety advertisement out of it, and his +chance to make a livelihood would be permanently gone. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + +Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand +diamonds than none at all. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +November 27. To-day we reached Gisborne, and anchored in a big bay; +there was a heavy sea on, so we remained on board. + +We were a mile from shore; a little steam-tug put out from the land; she +was an object of thrilling interest; she would climb to the summit of a +billow, reel drunkenly there a moment, dim and gray in the driving storm +of spindrift, then make a plunge like a diver and remain out of sight +until one had given her up, then up she would dart again, on a steep +slant toward the sky, shedding Niagaras of water from her forecastle--and +this she kept up, all the way out to us. She brought twenty-five +passengers in her stomach--men and women mainly a traveling dramatic +company. In sight on deck were the crew, in sou'westers, yellow +waterproof canvas suits, and boots to the thigh. The deck was never +quiet for a moment, and seldom nearer level than a ladder, and noble were +the seas which leapt aboard and went flooding aft. We rove a long line +to the yard-arm, hung a most primitive basketchair to it and swung it out +into the spacious air of heaven, and there it swayed, pendulum-fashion, +waiting for its chance--then down it shot, skillfully aimed, and was +grabbed by the two men on the forecastle. A young fellow belonging to +our crew was in the chair, to be a protection to the lady-comers. At +once a couple of ladies appeared from below, took seats in his lap, we +hoisted them into the sky, waited a moment till the roll of the ship +brought them in overhead, then we lowered suddenly away, and seized the +chair as it struck the deck. We took the twenty-five aboard, and +delivered twenty-five into the tug--among them several aged ladies, and +one blind one--and all without accident. It was a fine piece of work. + +Ours is a nice ship, roomy, comfortable, well-ordered, and satisfactory. +Now and then we step on a rat in a hotel, but we have had no rats on +shipboard lately; unless, perhaps in the Flora; we had more serious +things to think of there, and did not notice. I have noticed that it is +only in ships and hotels which still employ the odious Chinese gong, that +you find rats. The reason would seem to be, that as a rat cannot tell +the time of day by a clock, he won't stay where he cannot find out when +dinner is ready. + +November 29. The doctor tells me of several old drunkards, one +spiritless loafer, and several far-gone moral wrecks who have been +reclaimed by the Salvation Army and have remained staunch people and hard +workers these two years. Wherever one goes, these testimonials to the +Army's efficiency are forthcoming . . . . This morning we had one of +those whizzing green Ballarat flies in the room, with his stunning +buzz-saw noise--the swiftest creature in the world except the +lightning-flash. It is a stupendous force that is stored up in that +little body. If we had it in a ship in the same proportion, we could spin +from Liverpool to New York in the space of an hour--the time it takes to +eat luncheon. The New Zealand express train is called the Ballarat Fly +. . . . Bad teeth in the colonies. A citizen told me they don't have +teeth filled, but pull them out and put in false ones, and that now and +then one sees a young lady with a full set. She is fortunate. I wish I +had been born with false teeth and a false liver and false carbuncles. +I should get along better. + +December 2. Monday. Left Napier in the Ballarat Fly the one that goes +twice a week. From Napier to Hastings, twelve miles; time, fifty-five +minutes--not so far short of thirteen miles an hour . . . . A perfect +summer day; cool breeze, brilliant sky, rich vegetation. Two or three +times during the afternoon we saw wonderfully dense and beautiful +forests, tumultuously piled skyward on the broken highlands--not the +customary roof-like slant of a hillside, where the trees are all the same +height. The noblest of these trees were of the Kauri breed, we were told +the timber that is now furnishing the wood-paving for Europe, and is the +best of all wood for that purpose. Sometimes these towering upheavals of +forestry were festooned and garlanded with vine-cables, and sometimes the +masses of undergrowth were cocooned in another sort of vine of a delicate +cobwebby texture--they call it the "supplejack," I think. Tree ferns +everywhere--a stem fifteen feet high, with a graceful chalice of +fern-fronds sprouting from its top--a lovely forest ornament. And there +was a ten-foot reed with a flowing suit of what looked like yellow hair +hanging from its upper end. I do not know its name, but if there is such +a thing as a scalp-plant, this is it. A romantic gorge, with a brook +flowing in its bottom, approaching Palmerston North. + +Waitukurau. Twenty minutes for luncheon. With me sat my wife and +daughter, and my manager, Mr. Carlyle Smythe. I sat at the head of the +table, and could see the right-hand wall; the others had their backs to +it. On that wall, at a good distance away, were a couple of framed +pictures. I could not see them clearly, but from the groupings of the +figures I fancied that they represented the killing of Napoleon III's son +by the Zulus in South Africa. I broke into the conversation, which was +about poetry and cabbage and art, and said to my wife-- + +"Do you remember when the news came to Paris----" + +"Of the killing of the Prince?" + +(Those were the very words I had in my mind.) "Yes, but what Prince?" + +"Napoleon. Lulu." + +"What made you think of that?" + +"I don't know." + +There was no collusion. She had not seen the pictures, and they had not +been mentioned. She ought to have thought of some recent news that came +to Paris, for we were but seven months from there and had been living +there a couple of years when we started on this trip; but instead of that +she thought of an incident of our brief sojourn in Paris of sixteen years +before. + +Here was a clear case of mental telegraphy; of mind-transference; of my +mind telegraphing a thought into hers. How do I know? Because I +telegraphed an error. For it turned out that the pictures did not +represent the killing of Lulu at all, nor anything connected with Lulu. +She had to get the error from my head--it existed nowhere else. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + +The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any other man in the +earth; but he cannot stop a sneeze. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +WAUGANIUI, December 3. A pleasant trip, yesterday, per Ballarat Fly. +Four hours. I do not know the distance, but it must have been well along +toward fifty miles. The Fly could have spun it out to eight hours and +not discommoded me; for where there is comfort, and no need for hurry, +speed is of no value--at least to me; and nothing that goes on wheels can +be more comfortable, more satisfactory, than the New Zealand trains. +Outside of America there are no cars that are so rationally devised. +When you add the constant presence of charming scenery and the nearly +constant absence of dust--well, if one is not content then, he ought to +get out and walk. That would change his spirit, perhaps? I think so. +At the end of an hour you would find him waiting humbly beside the track, +and glad to be taken aboard again. + +Much horseback riding, in and around this town; many comely girls in cool +and pretty summer gowns; much Salvation Army; lots of Maoris; the faces +and bodies of some of the old ones very tastefully frescoed. Maori +Council House over the river-large, strong, carpeted from end to end with +matting, and decorated with elaborate wood carvings, artistically +executed. The Maoris were very polite. + +I was assured by a member of the House of Representatives that the native +race is not decreasing, but actually increasing slightly. It is another +evidence that they are a superior breed of savages. I do not call to +mind any savage race that built such good houses, or such strong and +ingenious and scientific fortresses, or gave so much attention to +agriculture, or had military arts and devices which so nearly approached +the white man's. These, taken together with their high abilities in +boat-building, and their tastes and capacities in the ornamental arts +modify their savagery to a semi-civilization--or at least to, +a quarter-civilization. + +It is a compliment to them that the British did not exterminate them, as +they did the Australians and the Tasmanians, but were content with +subduing them, and showed no desire to go further. And it is another +compliment to them that the British did not take the whole of their +choicest lands, but left them a considerable part, and then went further +and protected them from the rapacities of landsharks--a protection which +the New Zealand Government still extends to them. And it is still +another compliment to the Maoris that the Government allows native +representation--in both the legislature and the cabinet, and gives both +sexes the vote. And in doing these things the Government also +compliments itself; it has not been the custom of the world for +conquerors to act in this large spirit toward the conquered. + +The highest class white men Who lived among the Maoris in the earliest +time had a high opinion of them and a strong affection for them. Among +the whites of this sort was the author of "Old New Zealand;" and Dr. +Campbell of Auckland was another. Dr. Campbell was a close friend of +several chiefs, and has many pleasant things to say of their fidelity, +their magnanimity, and their generosity. Also of their quaint notions +about the white man's queer civilization, and their equally quaint +comments upon it. One of them thought the missionary had got everything +wrong end first and upside down. "Why, he wants us to stop worshiping +and supplicating the evil gods, and go to worshiping and supplicating the +Good One! There is no sense in that. A good god is not going to do us +any harm." + +The Maoris had the tabu; and had it on a Polynesian scale of +comprehensiveness and elaboration. Some of its features could have been +importations from India and Judea. Neither the Maori nor the Hindoo of +common degree could cook by a fire that a person of higher caste had +used, nor could the high Maori or high Hindoo employ fire that had served +a man of low grade; if a low-grade Maori or Hindoo drank from a vessel +belonging to a high-grade man, the vessel was defiled, and had to be +destroyed. There were other resemblances between Maori tabu and Hindoo +caste-custom. + +Yesterday a lunatic burst into my quarters and warned me that the Jesuits +were going to "cook" (poison) me in my food, or kill me on the stage at +night. He said a mysterious sign was visible upon my posters and meant +my death. He said he saved Rev. Mr. Haweis's life by warning him that +there were three men on his platform who would kill him if he took his +eyes off them for a moment during his lecture. The same men were in my +audience last night, but they saw that he was there. "Will they be there +again to-night?" He hesitated; then said no, he thought they would +rather take a rest and chance the poison. This lunatic has no delicacy. +But he was not uninteresting. He told me a lot of things. He said he +had "saved so many lecturers in twenty years, that they put him in the +asylum." I think he has less refinement than any lunatic I have met. + +December 8. A couple of curious war-monuments here at Wanganui. One is +in honor of white men "who fell in defence of law and order against +fanaticism and barbarism." Fanaticism. We Americans are English in +blood, English in speech, English in religion, English in the essentials +of our governmental system, English in the essentials of our +civilization; and so, let us hope, for the honor of the blend, for the +honor of the blood, for the honor of the race, that that word got there +through lack of heedfulness, and will not be suffered to remain. If you +carve it at Thermopylae, or where Winkelried died, or upon Bunker Hill +monument, and read it again "who fell in defence of law and order against +fanaticism" you will perceive what the word means, and how mischosen it +is. Patriotism is Patriotism. Calling it Fanaticism cannot degrade it; +nothing can degrade it. Even though it be a political mistake, and a +thousand times a political mistake, that does not affect it; it is +honorable always honorable, always noble--and privileged to hold its head +up and look the nations in the face. It is right to praise these brave +white men who fell in the Maori war--they deserve it; but the presence of +that word detracts from the dignity of their cause and their deeds, and +makes them appear to have spilt their blood in a conflict with ignoble +men, men not worthy of that costly sacrifice. But the men were worthy. +It was no shame to fight them. They fought for their homes, they fought +for their country; they bravely fought and bravely fell; and it would +take nothing from the honor of the brave Englishmen who lie under the +monument, but add to it, to say that they died in defense of English laws +and English homes against men worthy of the sacrifice--the Maori +patriots. + +The other monument cannot be rectified. Except with dynamite. It is a +mistake all through, and a strangely thoughtless one. It is a monument +erected by white men to Maoris who fell fighting with the whites and +against their own people, in the Maori war. "Sacred to the memory of the +brave men who fell on the 14th of May, 1864," etc. On one side are the +names of about twenty Maoris. It is not a fancy of mine; the monument +exists. I saw it. It is an object-lesson to the rising generation. It +invites to treachery, disloyalty, unpatriotism. Its lesson, in frank +terms is, "Desert your flag, slay your people, burn their homes, shame +your nationality--we honor such." + +December 9. Wellington. Ten hours from Wanganui by the Fly. +December 12. It is a fine city and nobly situated. A busy place, and +full of life and movement. Have spent the three days partly in walking +about, partly in enjoying social privileges, and largely in idling around +the magnificent garden at Hutt, a little distance away, around the shore. +I suppose we shall not see such another one soon. + +We are packing to-night for the return-voyage to Australia. Our stay in +New Zealand has been too brief; still, we are not unthankful for the +glimpse which we have had of it. + +The sturdy Maoris made the settlement of the country by the whites rather +difficult. Not at first--but later. At first they welcomed the whites, +and were eager to trade with them--particularly for muskets; for their +pastime was internecine war, and they greatly preferred the white man's +weapons to their own. War was their pastime--I use the word advisedly. +They often met and slaughtered each other just for a lark, and when there +was no quarrel. The author of "Old New Zealand" mentions a case where a +victorious army could have followed up its advantage and exterminated the +opposing army, but declined to do it; explaining naively that "if we did +that, there couldn't be any more fighting." In another battle one army +sent word that it was out of ammunition, and would be obliged to stop +unless the opposing army would send some. It was sent, and the fight +went on. + +In the early days things went well enough. The natives sold land without +clearly understanding the terms of exchange, and the whites bought it +without being much disturbed about the native's confusion of mind. But +by and by the Maori began to comprehend that he was being wronged; then +there was trouble, for he was not the man to swallow a wrong and go aside +and cry about it. He had the Tasmanian's spirit and endurance, and a +notable share of military science besides; and so he rose against the +oppressor, did this gallant "fanatic," and started a war that was not +brought to a definite end until more than a generation had sped. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + +There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is +cowardice. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxllwep is +pronounced Jackson. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Friday, December 13. Sailed, at 3 p.m., in the 'Mararoa'. Summer seas +and a good ship-life has nothing better. + +Monday. Three days of paradise. Warm and sunny and smooth; the sea a +luminous Mediterranean blue . . . . One lolls in a long chair all day +under deck-awnings, and reads and smokes, in measureless content. One +does not read prose at such a time, but poetry. I have been reading the +poems of Mrs. Julia A. Moore, again, and I find in them the same grace +and melody that attracted me when they were first published, twenty years +ago, and have held me in happy bonds ever since. + +"The Sentimental Song Book" has long been out of print, and has been +forgotten by the world in general, but not by me. I carry it with me +always--it and Goldsmith's deathless story. + +Indeed, it has the same deep charm for me that the Vicar of Wakefield +has, and I find in it the same subtle touch--the touch that makes an +intentionally humorous episode pathetic and an intentionally pathetic one +funny. In her time Mrs. Moore was called "the Sweet Singer of Michigan," +and was best known by that name. I have read her book through twice +today, with the purpose of determining which of her pieces has most +merit, and I am persuaded that for wide grasp and sustained power, +"William Upson" may claim first place: + +WILLIAM UPSON. + +Air--"The Major's Only Son." +Come all good people far and near, +Oh, come and see what you can hear, +It's of a young man true and brave, +That is now sleeping in his grave. + +Now, William Upson was his name +If it's not that, it's all the same +He did enlist in a cruel strife, +And it caused him to lose his life. + +He was Perry Upson's eldest son, +His father loved his noble son, +This son was nineteen years of age +When first in the rebellion he engaged. + +His father said that he might go, +But his dear mother she said no, +"Oh! stay at home, dear Billy," she said, +But she could not turn his head. + +He went to Nashville, in Tennessee, +There his kind friends he could not see; +He died among strangers, so far away, +They did not know where his body lay. + +He was taken sick and lived four weeks, +And Oh! how his parents weep, +But now they must in sorrow mourn, +For Billy has gone to his heavenly home. + +Oh! if his mother could have seen her son, +For she loved him, her darling son; +If she could heard his dying prayer, +It would ease her heart till she met him there. + +How it would relieve his mother's heart +To see her son from this world depart, +And hear his noble words of love, +As he left this world for that above. + +Now it will relieve his mother's heart, +For her son is laid in our graveyard; +For now she knows that his grave is near, +She will not shed so many tears. + +Although she knows not that it was her son, +For his coffin could not be opened +It might be someone in his place, +For she could not see his noble face. + + +December, 17. Reached Sydney. + +December, 19. In the train. Fellow of 30 with four valises; a slim +creature, with teeth which made his mouth look like a neglected +churchyard. He had solidified hair--solidified with pomatum; it was all +one shell. He smoked the most extraordinary cigarettes--made of some +kind of manure, apparently. These and his hair made him smell like the +very nation. He had a low-cut vest on, which exposed a deal of frayed +and broken and unclean shirtfront. Showy studs, of imitation gold--they +had made black disks on the linen. Oversized sleeve buttons of imitation +gold, the copper base showing through. Ponderous watch-chain of +imitation gold. I judge that he couldn't tell the time by it, for he +asked Smythe what time it was, once. He wore a coat which had been gay +when it was young; 5-o'clock-tea-trousers of a light tint, and +marvelously soiled; yellow mustache with a dashing upward whirl at the +ends; foxy shoes, imitation patent leather. He was a novelty--an +imitation dude. He would have been a real one if he could have afforded +it. But he was satisfied with himself. You could see it in his +expression, and in all his attitudes and movements. He was living in a +dude dreamland where all his squalid shams were genuine, and himself a +sincerity. It disarmed criticism, it mollified spite, to see him so +enjoy his imitation languors, and arts, and airs, and his studied +daintinesses of gesture and misbegotten refinements. It was plain to me +that he was imagining himself the Prince of Wales, and was doing +everything the way he thought the Prince would do it. For bringing his +four valises aboard and stowing them in the nettings, he gave his porter +four cents, and lightly apologized for the smallness of the gratuity +--just with the condescendingest little royal air in the world. He +stretched himself out on the front seat and rested his pomatum-cake on +the middle arm, and stuck his feet out of the window, and began to pose +as the Prince and work his dreams and languors for exhibition; and he +would indolently watch the blue films curling up from his cigarette, and +inhale the stench, and look so grateful; and would flip the ash away with +the daintiest gesture, unintentionally displaying his brass ring in the +most intentional way; why, it was as good as being in Marlborough House +itself to see him do it so like. + +There was other scenery in the trip. That of the Hawksbury river, in the +National Park region, fine--extraordinarily fine, with spacious views of +stream and lake imposingly framed in woody hills; and every now and then +the noblest groupings of mountains, and the most enchanting +rearrangements of the water effects. Further along, green flats, thinly +covered with gum forests, with here and there the huts and cabins of +small farmers engaged in raising children. Still further along, arid +stretches, lifeless and melancholy. Then Newcastle, a rushing town, +capital of the rich coal regions. Approaching Scone, wide farming and +grazing levels, with pretty frequent glimpses of a troublesome plant--a +particularly devilish little prickly pear, daily damned in the orisons of +the agriculturist; imported by a lady of sentiment, and contributed +gratis to the colony. Blazing hot, all day. + +December 20. Back to Sydney. Blazing hot again. From the newspaper, +and from the map, I have made a collection of curious names of +Australasian towns, with the idea of making a poem out of them: + +Tumut +Takee +Murriwillumba +Bowral +Ballarat +Mullengudgery +Murrurundi +Wagga-Wagga +Wyalong +Murrumbidgee +Goomeroo +Wolloway +Wangary +Wanilla +Worrow +Koppio +Yankalilla +Yaranyacka +Yackamoorundie +Kaiwaka +Coomooroo +Tauranga +Geelong +Tongariro +Kaikoura +Wakatipu +Oohipara +Waitpinga +Goelwa +Munno Para +Nangkita +Myponga +Kapunda +Kooringa +Penola +Nangwarry +Kongorong +Comaum +Koolywurtie +Killanoola +Naracoorte +Muloowurtie +Binnum +Wallaroo +Wirrega +Mundoora +Hauraki +Rangiriri +Teawamute +Taranaki +Toowoomba +Goondiwindi +Jerrilderie +Whangaroa +Wollongong +Woolloomooloo +Bombola +Coolgardie +Bendigo +Coonamble +Cootamundra +Woolgoolga + +Mittagong +Jamberoo +Kondoparinga +Kuitpo +Tungkillo +Oukaparinga +Talunga +Yatala +Parawirra +Moorooroo +Whangarei +Woolundunga +Booleroo +Pernatty +Parramatta +Taroom +Narrandera +Deniliquin +Kawakawa. + + +It may be best to build the poem now, and make the weather help + + A SWELTERING DAY IN AUSTRALIA. + + (To be read soft and low, with the lights turned down.) + + The Bombola faints in the hot Bowral tree, + Where fierce Mullengudgery's smothering fires + Far from the breezes of Coolgardie + Burn ghastly and blue as the day expires; + + And Murriwillumba complaineth in song + For the garlanded bowers of Woolloomooloo, + And the Ballarat Fly and the lone Wollongong + They dream of the gardens of Jamberoo; + + The wallabi sighs for the Murrubidgee, + For the velvety sod of the Munno Parah, + Where the waters of healing from Muloowurtie + Flow dim in the gloaming by Yaranyackah; + + The Koppio sorrows for lost Wolloway, + And sigheth in secret for Murrurundi, + The Whangeroo wombat lamenteth the day + That made him an exile from Jerrilderie; + + The Teawamute Tumut from Wirrega's glade, + The Nangkita swallow, the Wallaroo swan, + They long for the peace of the Timaru shade + And thy balmy soft airs, O sweet Mittagong! + + The Kooringa buffalo pants in the sun, + The Kondoparinga lies gaping for breath, + The Kongorong Camaum to the shadow has won, + But the Goomeroo sinks in the slumber of death; + + In the weltering hell of the Moorooroo plain + The Yatala Wangary withers and dies, + And the Worrow Wanilla, demented with pain, + To the Woolgoolga woodlands despairingly flies; + + Sweet Nangwarry's desolate, Coonamble wails, + And Tungkillo Kuito in sables is drest, + For the Whangerei winds fall asleep in the sails + And the Booleroo life-breeze is dead in the west. + + Mypongo, Kapunda, O slumber no more + Yankalilla, Parawirra, be warned + There's death in the air! + Killanoola, wherefore + Shall the prayer of Penola be scorned? + + Cootamundra, and Takee, and Wakatipu, + Toowoomba, Kaikoura are lost + From Onkaparinga to far Oamaru + All burn in this hell's holocaust! + + Paramatta and Binnum are gone to their rest + In the vale of Tapanni Taroom, + Kawakawa, Deniliquin--all that was best + In the earth are but graves and a tomb! + + Narrandera mourns, Cameron answers not + When the roll of the scathless we cry + Tongariro, Goondiwindi, Woolundunga, the spot + Is mute and forlorn where ye lie. + +Those are good words for poetry. Among the best I have ever seen. +There are 81 in the list. I did not need them all, but I have knocked +down 66 of them; which is a good bag, it seems to me, for a person not in +the business. Perhaps a poet laureate could do better, but a poet +laureate gets wages, and that is different. When I write poetry I do not +get any wages; often I lose money by it. The best word in that list, and +the most musical and gurgly, is Woolloomoolloo. It is a place near +Sydney, and is a favorite pleasure-resort. It has eight O's in it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. + +To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, +concealment of it will do. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +MONDAY,--December 23, 1895. Sailed from Sydney for Ceylon in the P. & O. +steamer 'Oceana'. A Lascar crew mans this ship--the first I have seen. +White cotton petticoat and pants; barefoot; red shawl for belt; straw +cap, brimless, on head, with red scarf wound around it; complexion a rich +dark brown; short straight black hair; whiskers fine and silky; lustrous +and intensely black. Mild, good faces; willing and obedient people; +capable, too; but are said to go into hopeless panics when there is +danger. They are from Bombay and the coast thereabouts. Left some of +the trunks in Sydney, to be shipped to South Africa by a vessel +advertised to sail three months hence. The proverb says: "Separate not +yourself from your baggage." + +This 'Oceana' is a stately big ship, luxuriously appointed. She has +spacious promenade decks. Large rooms; a surpassingly comfortable ship. +The officers' library is well selected; a ship's library is not usually +that . . . . For meals, the bugle call, man-of-war fashion; a +pleasant change from the terrible gong . . . . Three big cats--very +friendly loafers; they wander all over the ship; the white one follows +the chief steward around like a dog. There is also a basket of kittens. +One of these cats goes ashore, in port, in England, Australia, and India, +to see how his various families are getting along, and is seen no more +till the ship is ready to sail. No one knows how he finds out the +sailing date, but no doubt he comes down to the dock every day and takes +a look, and when he sees baggage and passengers flocking in, recognizes +that it is time to get aboard. This is what the sailors believe. The +Chief Engineer has been in the China and India trade thirty three years, +and has had but three Christmases at home in that time . . . . +Conversational items at dinner, "Mocha! sold all over the world! It is +not true. In fact, very few foreigners except the Emperor of Russia have +ever seen a grain of it, or ever will, while they live." Another man +said: "There is no sale in Australia for Australian wine. But it goes to +France and comes back with a French label on it, and then they buy it." +I have heard that the most of the French-labeled claret in New York is +made in California. And I remember what Professor S. told me once about +Veuve Cliquot--if that was the wine, and I think it was. He was the +guest of a great wine merchant whose town was quite near that vineyard, +and this merchant asked him if very much V. C. was drunk in America. + +"Oh, yes," said S., "a great abundance of it." + +"Is it easy to be had?" + +"Oh, yes--easy as water. All first and second-class hotels have it." + +"What do you pay for it?" + +"It depends on the style of the hotel--from fifteen to twenty-five francs +a bottle." + +"Oh, fortunate country! Why, it's worth 100 francs right here on the +ground." + +"No!" + +"Yes!" + +"Do you mean that we are drinking a bogus Veuve-Cliquot over there?" + +"Yes--and there was never a bottle of the genuine in America since +Columbus's time. That wine all comes from a little bit of a patch of +ground which isn't big enough to raise many bottles; and all of it that +is produced goes every year to one person--the Emperor of Russia. He +takes the whole crop in advance, be it big or little." + +January 4, 1898. Christmas in Melbourne, New Year's Day in Adelaide, +and saw most of the friends again in both places . . . . Lying here +at anchor all day--Albany (King George's Sound), Western Australia. It +is a perfectly landlocked harbor, or roadstead--spacious to look at, but +not deep water. Desolate-looking rocks and scarred hills. Plenty of +ships arriving now, rushing to the new gold-fields. The papers are full +of wonderful tales of the sort always to be heard in connection with new +gold diggings. A sample: a youth staked out a claim and tried to sell +half for L5; no takers; he stuck to it fourteen days, starving, then +struck it rich and sold out for L10,000. . . About sunset, strong +breeze blowing, got up the anchor. We were in a small deep puddle, with +a narrow channel leading out of it, minutely buoyed, to the sea. + +I stayed on deck to see how we were going to manage it with such a big +ship and such a strong wind. On the bridge our giant captain, in +uniform; at his side a little pilot in elaborately gold-laced uniform; on +the forecastle a white mate and quartermaster or two, and a brilliant +crowd of lascars standing by for business. Our stern was pointing +straight at the head of the channel; so we must turn entirely around in +the puddle--and the wind blowing as described. It was done, and +beautifully. It was done by help of a jib. We stirred up much mud, but +did not touch the bottom. We turned right around in our tracks--a +seeming impossibility. We had several casts of quarter-less 5, and one +cast of half 4--27 feet; we were drawing 26 astern. By the time we were +entirely around and pointed, the first buoy was not more than a hundred +yards in front of us. It was a fine piece of work, and I was the only +passenger that saw it. However, the others got their dinner; the P. & O. +Company got mine . . . . More cats developed. Smythe says it is a +British law that they must be carried; and he instanced a case of a ship +not allowed to sail till she sent for a couple. The bill came, too: +"Debtor, to 2 cats, 20 shillings." . . . News comes that within this +week Siam has acknowledged herself to be, in effect, a French province. +It seems plain that all savage and semi-civilized countries are going to +be grabbed . . . . A vulture on board; bald, red, queer-shaped head, +featherless red places here and there on his body, intense great black +eyes set in featherless rims of inflamed flesh; dissipated look; a +businesslike style, a selfish, conscienceless, murderous aspect--the very +look of a professional assassin, and yet a bird which does no murder. +What was the use of getting him up in that tragic style for so innocent a +trade as his? For this one isn't the sort that wars upon the living, his +diet is offal--and the more out of date it is the better he likes it. +Nature should give him a suit of rusty black; then he would be all right, +for he would look like an undertaker and would harmonize with his +business; whereas the way he is now he is horribly out of true. + +January 5. At 9 this morning we passed Cape Leeuwin (lioness) and +ceased from our long due-west course along the southern shore of +Australia. Turning this extreme southwestern corner, we now take a long +straight slant nearly N. W., without a break, for Ceylon. As we speed +northward it will grow hotter very fast--but it isn't chilly, now. . . . +The vulture is from the public menagerie at Adelaide--a great and +interesting collection. It was there that we saw the baby tiger solemnly +spreading its mouth and trying to roar like its majestic mother. It +swaggered, scowling, back and forth on its short legs just as it had seen +her do on her long ones, and now and then snarling viciously, exposing +its teeth, with a threatening lift of its upper lip and bristling +moustache; and when it thought it was impressing the visitors, it would +spread its mouth wide and do that screechy cry which it meant for a roar, +but which did not deceive. It took itself quite seriously, and was +lovably comical. And there was a hyena--an ugly creature; as ugly as the +tiger-kitty was pretty. It repeatedly arched its back and delivered +itself of such a human cry; a startling resemblance; a cry which was just +that of a grown person badly hurt. In the dark one would assuredly go to +its assistance--and be disappointed . . . . Many friends of +Australasian Federation on board. They feel sure that the good day is +not far off, now. But there seems to be a party that would go further +--have Australasia cut loose from the British Empire and set up +housekeeping on her own hook. It seems an unwise idea. They point to +the United States, but it seems to me that the cases lack a good deal of +being alike. Australasia governs herself wholly--there is no +interference; and her commerce and manufactures are not oppressed in any +way. If our case had been the same we should not have gone out when we +did. + + +January 13. Unspeakably hot. The equator is arriving again. We are +within eight degrees of it. Ceylon present. Dear me, it is beautiful! +And most sumptuously tropical, as to character of foliage and opulence of +it. "What though the spicy breezes blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle"--an +eloquent line, an incomparable line; it says little, but conveys whole +libraries of sentiment, and Oriental charm and mystery, and tropic +deliciousness--a line that quivers and tingles with a thousand +unexpressed and inexpressible things, things that haunt one and find no +articulate voice . . . . Colombo, the capital. An Oriental town, +most manifestly; and fascinating. + +In this palatial ship the passengers dress for dinner. The ladies' +toilettes make a fine display of color, and this is in keeping with the +elegance of the vessel's furnishings and the flooding brilliancies of the +electric light. On the stormy Atlantic one never sees a man in evening +dress, except at the rarest intervals; and then there is only one, not +two; and he shows up but once on the voyage--the night before the ship +makes port--the night when they have the "concert" and do the amateur +wailings and recitations. He is the tenor, as a rule . . . . There +has been a deal of cricket-playing on board; it seems a queer game for a +ship, but they enclose the promenade deck with nettings and keep the ball +from flying overboard, and the sport goes very well, and is properly +violent and exciting . . . . We must part from this vessel here. + +January 14. Hotel Bristol. Servant Brompy. Alert, gentle, smiling, +winning young brown creature as ever was. Beautiful shining black hair +combed back like a woman's, and knotted at the back of his head +--tortoise-shell comb in it, sign that he is a Singhalese; slender, shapely +form; jacket; under it is a beltless and flowing white cotton gown--from +neck straight to heel; he and his outfit quite unmasculine. It was an +embarrassment to undress before him. + +We drove to the market, using the Japanese jinriksha--our first +acquaintanceship with it. It is a light cart, with a native to draw it. +He makes good speed for half-an-hour, but it is hard work for him; he is +too slight for it. After the half-hour there is no more pleasure for +you; your attention is all on the man, just as it would be on a tired +horse, and necessarily your sympathy is there too. There's a plenty of +these 'rickshas, and the tariff is incredibly cheap. + +I was in Cairo years ago. That was Oriental, but there was a lack. When +you are in Florida or New Orleans you are in the South--that is granted; +but you are not in the South; you are in a modified South, a tempered +South. Cairo was a tempered Orient--an Orient with an indefinite +something wanting. That feeling was not present in Ceylon. Ceylon was +Oriental in the last measure of completeness--utterly Oriental; also +utterly tropical; and indeed to one's unreasoning spiritual sense the two +things belong together. All the requisites were present. The costumes +were right; the black and brown exposures, unconscious of immodesty, were +right; the juggler was there, with his basket, his snakes, his mongoose, +and his arrangements for growing a tree from seed to foliage and ripe +fruitage before one's eyes; in sight were plants and flowers familiar to +one on books but in no other way celebrated, desirable, strange, but in +production restricted to the hot belt of the equator; and out a little +way in the country were the proper deadly snakes, and fierce beasts of +prey, and the wild elephant and the monkey. And there was that swoon in +the air which one associates with the tropics, and that smother of heat, +heavy with odors of unknown flowers, and that sudden invasion of purple +gloom fissured with lightnings,--then the tumult of crashing thunder and +the downpour and presently all sunny and smiling again; all these things +were there; the conditions were complete, nothing was lacking. And away +off in the deeps of the jungle and in the remotenesses of the mountains +were the ruined cities and mouldering temples, mysterious relics of the +pomps of a forgotten time and a vanished race--and this was as it should +be, also, for nothing is quite satisfyingly Oriental that lacks the +somber and impressive qualities of mystery and antiquity. + +The drive through the town and out to the Galle Face by the seashore, +what a dream it was of tropical splendors of bloom and blossom, and +Oriental conflagrations of costume! The walking groups of men, women, +boys, girls, babies--each individual was a flame, each group a house +afire for color. And such stunning colors, such intensely vivid colors, +such rich and exquisite minglings and fusings of rainbows and lightnings! +And all harmonious, all in perfect taste; never a discordant note; never +a color on any person swearing at another color on him or failing to +harmonize faultlessly with the colors of any group the wearer might join. +The stuffs were silk-thin, soft, delicate, clinging; and, as a rule, each +piece a solid color: a splendid green, a splendid blue, a splendid +yellow, a splendid purple, a splendid ruby, deep, and rich with +smouldering fires they swept continuously by in crowds and legions and +multitudes, glowing, flashing, burning, radiant; and every five seconds +came a burst of blinding red that made a body catch his breath, and +filled his heart with joy. And then, the unimaginable grace of those +costumes! Sometimes a woman's whole dress was but a scarf wound about +her person and her head, sometimes a man's was but a turban and a +careless rag or two--in both cases generous areas of polished dark skin +showing--but always the arrangement compelled the homage of the eye and +made the heart sing for gladness. + +I can see it to this day, that radiant panorama, that wilderness of rich +color, that incomparable dissolving-view of harmonious tints, and lithe +half-covered forms, and beautiful brown faces, and gracious and graceful +gestures and attitudes and movements, free, unstudied, barren of +stiffness and restraint, and-- + +Just then, into this dream of fairyland and paradise a grating dissonance +was injected. + +Out of a missionary school came marching, two and two, sixteen prim and +pious little Christian black girls, Europeanly clothed--dressed, to the +last detail, as they would have been dressed on a summer Sunday in an +English or American village. Those clothes--oh, they were unspeakably +ugly! Ugly, barbarous, destitute of taste, destitute of grace, repulsive +as a shroud. I looked at my womenfolk's clothes--just full-grown +duplicates of the outrages disguising those poor little abused creatures +--and was ashamed to be seen in the street with them. Then I looked at +my own clothes, and was ashamed to be seen in the street with myself. + +However, we must put up with our clothes as they are--they have their +reason for existing. They are on us to expose us--to advertise what we +wear them to conceal. They are a sign; a sign of insincerity; a sign of +suppressed vanity; a pretense that we despise gorgeous colors and the +graces of harmony and form; and we put them on to propagate that lie and +back it up. But we do not deceive our neighbor; and when we step into +Ceylon we realize that we have not even deceived ourselves. We do love +brilliant colors and graceful costumes; and at home we will turn out in a +storm to see them when the procession goes by--and envy the wearers. We +go to the theater to look at them and grieve that we can't be clothed +like that. We go to the King's ball, when we get a chance, and are glad +of a sight of the splendid uniforms and the glittering orders. When we +are granted permission to attend an imperial drawing-room we shut +ourselves up in private and parade around in the theatrical court-dress +by the hour, and admire ourselves in the glass, and are utterly happy; +and every member of every governor's staff in democratic America does the +same with his grand new uniform--and if he is not watched he will get +himself photographed in it, too. When I see the Lord Mayor's footman I +am dissatisfied with my lot. Yes, our clothes are a lie, and have been +nothing short of that these hundred years. They are insincere, they are +the ugly and appropriate outward exposure of an inward sham and a moral +decay. + +The last little brown boy I chanced to notice in the crowds and swarms of +Colombo had nothing on but a twine string around his waist, but in my +memory the frank honesty of his costume still stands out in pleasant +contrast with the odious flummery in which the little Sunday-school +dowdies were masquerading. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + +Prosperity is the best protector of principle. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +EVENING--11th. Sailed in the Rosetta. This is a poor old ship, and +ought to be insured and sunk. As in the 'Oceana', just so here: +everybody dresses for dinner; they make it a sort of pious duty. These +fine and formal costumes are a rather conspicuous contrast to the poverty +and shabbiness of the surroundings . . . . If you want a slice of a +lime at four o'clock tea, you must sign an order on the bar. Limes cost +14 cents a barrel. + +January 18th. We have been running up the Arabian Sea, latterly. +Closing up on Bombay now, and due to arrive this evening. + +January 20th. Bombay! A bewitching place, a bewildering place, an +enchanting place--the Arabian Nights come again? It is a vast city; +contains about a million inhabitants. Natives, they are, with a slight +sprinkling of white people--not enough to have the slightest modifying +effect upon the massed dark complexion of the public. It is winter here, +yet the weather is the divine weather of June, and the foliage is the +fresh and heavenly foliage of June. There is a rank of noble great shade +trees across the way from the hotel, and under them sit groups of +picturesque natives of both sexes; and the juggler in his turban is there +with his snakes and his magic; and all day long the cabs and the +multitudinous varieties of costumes flock by. It does not seem as if one +could ever get tired of watching this moving show, this shining and +shifting spectacle . . . . In the great bazar the pack and jam of +natives was marvelous, the sea of rich-colored turbans and draperies an +inspiring sight, and the quaint and showy Indian architecture was just +the right setting for it. Toward sunset another show; this is the drive +around the sea-shore to Malabar Point, where Lord Sandhurst, the Governor +of the Bombay Presidency, lives. Parsee palaces all along the first part +of the drive; and past them all the world is driving; the private +carriages of wealthy Englishmen and natives of rank are manned by a +driver and three footmen in stunning oriental liveries--two of these +turbaned statues standing up behind, as fine as monuments. Sometimes +even the public carriages have this superabundant crew, slightly +modified--one to drive, one to sit by and see it done, and one to stand +up behind and yell--yell when there is anybody in the way, and for +practice when there isn't. It all helps to keep up the liveliness and +augment the general sense of swiftness and energy and confusion and +pow-wow. + +In the region of Scandal Point--felicitous name--where there are handy +rocks to sit on and a noble view of the sea on the one hand, and on the +other the passing and reprising whirl and tumult of gay carriages, are +great groups of comfortably-off Parsee women--perfect flower-beds of +brilliant color, a fascinating spectacle. Tramp, tramp, tramping along +the road, in singles, couples, groups, and gangs, you have the +working-man and the working-woman--but not clothed like ours. Usually +the man is a nobly-built great athlete, with not a rag on but his +loin-handkerchief; his color a deep dark brown, his skin satin, his +rounded muscles knobbing it as if it had eggs under it. Usually the +woman is a slender and shapely creature, as erect as a lightning-rod, and +she has but one thing on--a bright-colored piece of stuff which is wound +about her head and her body down nearly half-way to her knees, and which +clings like her own skin. Her legs and feet are bare, and so are her +arms, except for her fanciful bunches of loose silver rings on her ankles +and on her arms. She has jewelry bunched on the side of her nose also, +and showy clusterings on her toes. When she undresses for bed she takes +off her jewelry, I suppose. If she took off anything more she would +catch cold. As a rule she has a large shiney brass water jar of graceful +shape on her head, and one of her naked arms curves up and the hand holds +it there. She is so straight, so erect, and she steps with such style, +and such easy grace and dignity; and her curved arm and her brazen jar +are such a help to the picture indeed, our working-women cannot begin +with her as a road-decoration. + +It is all color, bewitching color, enchanting color--everywhere all +around--all the way around the curving great opaline bay clear to +Government House, where the turbaned big native 'chuprassies' stand +grouped in state at the door in their robes of fiery red, and do most +properly and stunningly finish up the splendid show and make it +theatrically complete. I wish I were a 'chuprassy'. + +This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth +and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of +famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers +and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations +and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, +cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, +grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays +bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations--the +one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable +interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, +wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men +desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give +that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. +Even now, after the lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay +has not left me, and I hope never will. It was all new, no detail of it +hackneyed. And India did not wait for morning, it began at the hotel +--straight away. The lobbies and halls were full of turbaned, and fez'd +and embroidered, cap'd, and barefooted, and cotton-clad dark natives, +some of them rushing about, others at rest squatting, or sitting on the +ground; some of them chattering with energy, others still and dreamy; in +the dining-room every man's own private native servant standing behind +his chair, and dressed for a part in the Arabian Nights. + +Our rooms were high up, on the front. A white man--he was a burly German +--went up with us, and brought three natives along to see to arranging +things. About fourteen others followed in procession, with the +hand-baggage; each carried an article--and only one; a bag, in some +cases, in other cases less. One strong native carried my overcoat, +another a parasol, another a box of cigars, another a novel, and the last +man in the procession had no load but a fan. It was all done with +earnestness and sincerity, there was not a smile in the procession from +the head of it to the tail of it. Each man waited patiently, tranquilly, +in no sort of hurry, till one of us found time to give him a copper, then +he bent his head reverently, touched his forehead with his fingers, and +went his way. They seemed a soft and gentle race, and there was +something both winning and touching about their demeanor. + +There was a vast glazed door which opened upon the balcony. It needed +closing, or cleaning, or something, and a native got down on his knees +and went to work at it. He seemed to be doing it well enough, but +perhaps he wasn't, for the burly German put on a look that betrayed +dissatisfaction, then without explaining what was wrong, gave the native +a brisk cuff on the jaw and then told him where the defect was. It +seemed such a shame to do that before us all. The native took it with +meekness, saying nothing, and not showing in his face or manner any +resentment. I had not seen the like of this for fifty years. It carried +me back to my boyhood, and flashed upon me the forgotten fact that this +was the usual way of explaining one's desires to a slave. I was able to +remember that the method seemed right and natural to me in those days, I +being born to it and unaware that elsewhere there were other methods; but +I was also able to remember that those unresented cuffings made me sorry +for the victim and ashamed for the punisher. My father was a refined and +kindly gentleman, very grave, rather austere, of rigid probity, a sternly +just and upright man, albeit he attended no church and never spoke of +religious matters, and had no part nor lot in the pious joys of his +Presbyterian family, nor ever seemed to suffer from this deprivation. He +laid his hand upon me in punishment only twice in his life, and then not +heavily; once for telling him a lie--which surprised me, and showed me +how unsuspicious he was, for that was not my maiden effort. He punished +me those two times only, and never any other member of the family at all; +yet every now and then he cuffed our harmless slave boy, Lewis, for +trifling little blunders and awkwardnesses. My father had passed his life +among the slaves from his cradle up, and his cuffings proceeded from the +custom of the time, not from his nature. When I was ten years old I saw +a man fling a lump of iron-ore at a slaveman in anger, for merely doing +something awkwardly--as if that were a crime. It bounded from the man's +skull, and the man fell and never spoke again. He was dead in an hour. +I knew the man had a right to kill his slave if he wanted to, and yet it +seemed a pitiful thing and somehow wrong, though why wrong I was not deep +enough to explain if I had been asked to do it. Nobody in the village +approved of that murder, but of course no one said much about it. + +It is curious--the space-annihilating power of thought. For just one +second, all that goes to make the me in me was in a Missourian village, +on the other side of the globe, vividly seeing again these forgotten +pictures of fifty years ago, and wholly unconscious of all things but +just those; and in the next second I was back in Bombay, and that +kneeling native's smitten cheek was not done tingling yet! Back to +boyhood--fifty years; back to age again, another fifty; and a flight +equal to the circumference of the globe-all in two seconds by the watch! + +Some natives--I don't remember how many--went into my bedroom, now, and +put things to rights and arranged the mosquito-bar, and I went to bed to +nurse my cough. It was about nine in the evening. What a state of +things! For three hours the yelling and shouting of natives in the hall +continued, along with the velvety patter of their swift bare feet--what a +racket it was! They were yelling orders and messages down three flights. +Why, in the matter of noise it amounted to a riot, an insurrection, a +revolution. And then there were other noises mixed up with these and at +intervals tremendously accenting them--roofs falling in, I judged, +windows smashing, persons being murdered, crows squawking, and deriding, +and cursing, canaries screeching, monkeys jabbering, macaws blaspheming, +and every now and then fiendish bursts of laughter and explosions of +dynamite. By midnight I had suffered all the different kinds of shocks +there are, and knew that I could never more be disturbed by them, either +isolated or in combination. Then came peace--stillness deep and solemn +and lasted till five. + +Then it all broke loose again. And who re-started it? The Bird of Birds +the Indian crow. I came to know him well, by and by, and be infatuated +with him. I suppose he is the hardest lot that wears feathers. Yes, and +the cheerfulest, and the best satisfied with himself. He never arrived +at what he is by any careless process, or any sudden one; he is a work of +art, and "art is long"; he is the product of immemorial ages, and of deep +calculation; one can't make a bird like that in a day. He has been +reincarnated more times than Shiva; and he has kept a sample of each +incarnation, and fused it into his constitution. In the course of his +evolutionary promotions, his sublime march toward ultimate perfection, he +has been a gambler, a low comedian, a dissolute priest, a fussy woman, a +blackguard, a scoffer, a liar, a thief, a spy, an informer, a trading +politician, a swindler, a professional hypocrite, a patriot for cash, a +reformer, a lecturer, a lawyer, a conspirator, a rebel, a royalist, a +democrat, a practicer and propagator of irreverence, a meddler, an +intruder, a busybody, an infidel, and a wallower in sin for the mere love +of it. The strange result, the incredible result, of this patient +accumulation of all damnable traits is, that be does not know what care +is, he does not know what sorrow is, he does not know what remorse is, +his life is one long thundering ecstasy of happiness, and he will go to +his death untroubled, knowing that he will soon turn up again as an +author or something, and be even more intolerably capable and comfortable +than ever he was before. + +In his straddling wide forward-step, and his springy side-wise series of +hops, and his impudent air, and his cunning way of canting his head to +one side upon occasion, he reminds one of the American blackbird. But +the sharp resemblances stop there. He is much bigger than the blackbird; +and he lacks the blackbird's trim and slender and beautiful build and +shapely beak; and of course his sober garb of gray and rusty black is a +poor and humble thing compared with the splendid lustre of the +blackbird's metallic sables and shifting and flashing bronze glories. +The blackbird is a perfect gentleman, in deportment and attire, and is +not noisy, I believe, except when holding religious services and +political conventions in a tree; but this Indian sham Quaker is just a +rowdy, and is always noisy when awake--always chaffing, scolding, +scoffing, laughing, ripping, and cursing, and carrying on about something +or other. I never saw such a bird for delivering opinions. Nothing +escapes him; he notices everything that happens, and brings out his +opinion about it, particularly if it is a matter that is none of his +business. And it is never a mild opinion, but always violent--violent +and profane--the presence of ladies does not affect him. His opinions +are not the outcome of reflection, for he never thinks about anything, +but heaves out the opinion that is on top in his mind, and which is often +an opinion about some quite different thing and does not fit the case. +But that is his way; his main idea is to get out an opinion, and if he +stopped to think he would lose chances. + +I suppose he has no enemies among men. The whites and Mohammedans never +seemed to molest him; and the Hindoos, because of their religion, never +take the life of any creature, but spare even the snakes and tigers and +fleas and rats. If I sat on one end of the balcony, the crows would +gather on the railing at the other end and talk about me; and edge +closer, little by little, till I could almost reach them; and they would +sit there, in the most unabashed way, and talk about my clothes, and my +hair, and my complexion, and probable character and vocation and +politics, and how I came to be in India, and what I had been doing, and +how many days I had got for it, and how I had happened to go unhanged +so long, and when would it probably come off, and might there be more of +my sort where I came from, and when would they be hanged,--and so on, and +so on, until I could not longer endure the embarrassment of it; then I +would shoo them away, and they would circle around in the air a little +while, laughing and deriding and mocking, and presently settle on the +rail and do it all over again. + +They were very sociable when there was anything to eat--oppressively so. +With a little encouragement they would come in and light on the table and +help me eat my breakfast; and once when I was in the other room and they +found themselves alone, they carried off everything they could lift; and +they were particular to choose things which they could make no use of +after they got them. In India their number is beyond estimate, and their +noise is in proportion. I suppose they cost the country more than the +government does; yet that is not a light matter. Still, they pay; their +company pays; it would sadden the land to take their cheerful voice out +of it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + +By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, +I mean. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +You soon find your long-ago dreams of India rising in a sort of vague and +luscious moonlight above the horizon-rim of your opaque consciousness, +and softly lighting up a thousand forgotten details which were parts of a +vision that had once been vivid to you when you were a boy, and steeped +your spirit in tales of the East. The barbaric gorgeousnesses, for +instance; and the princely titles, the sumptuous titles, the sounding +titles,--how good they taste in the mouth! The Nizam of Hyderabad; the +Maharajah of Travancore; the Nabob of Jubbelpore; the Begum of Bhopal; +the Nawab of Mysore; the Rance of Gulnare; the Ahkoond of Swat's; the Rao +of Rohilkund; the Gaikwar of Baroda. Indeed, it is a country that runs +richly to name. The great god Vishnu has 108--108 special ones--108 +peculiarly holy ones--names just for Sunday use only. I learned the +whole of Vishnu's 108 by heart once, but they wouldn't stay; I don't +remember any of them now but John W. + +And the romances connected with, those princely native houses--to this +day they are always turning up, just as in the old, old times. They were +sweating out a romance in an English court in Bombay a while before we +were there. In this case a native prince, 16 1/2 years old, who has been +enjoying his titles and dignities and estates unmolested for fourteen +years, is suddenly haled into court on the charge that he is rightfully +no prince at all, but a pauper peasant; that the real prince died when +two and one-half years old; that the death was concealed, and a peasant +child smuggled into the royal cradle, and that this present incumbent was +that smuggled substitute. This is the very material that so many +oriental tales have been made of. + +The case of that great prince, the Gaikwar of Baroda, is a reversal of +the theme. When that throne fell vacant, no heir could be found for some +time, but at last one was found in the person of a peasant child who was +making mud pies in a village street, and having an innocent good time. +But his pedigree was straight; he was the true prince, and he has reigned +ever since, with none to dispute his right. + +Lately there was another hunt for an heir to another princely house, and +one was found who was circumstanced about as the Gaikwar had been. His +fathers were traced back, in humble life, along a branch of the ancestral +tree to the point where it joined the stem fourteen generations ago, and +his heirship was thereby squarely established. The tracing was done by +means of the records of one of the great Hindoo shrines, where princes on +pilgrimage record their names and the date of their visit. This is to +keep the prince's religious account straight, and his spiritual person +safe; but the record has the added value of keeping the pedigree +authentic, too. + +When I think of Bombay now, at this distance of time, I seem to have a +kaleidoscope at my eye; and I hear the clash of the glass bits as the +splendid figures change, and fall apart, and flash into new forms, figure +after figure, and with the birth of each new form I feel my skin crinkle +and my nerve-web tingle with a new thrill of wonder and delight. These +remembered pictures float past me in a sequence of contracts; following +the same order always, and always whirling by and disappearing with the +swiftness of a dream, leaving me with the sense that the actuality was +the experience of an hour, at most, whereas it really covered days, I +think. + +The series begins with the hiring of a "bearer"--native man-servant--a +person who should be selected with some care, because as long as he is in +your employ he will be about as near to you as your clothes. + +In India your day may be said to begin with the "bearer's" knock on the +bedroom door, accompanied by a formula of, words--a formula which is +intended to mean that the bath is ready. It doesn't really seem to mean +anything at all. But that is because you are not used to "bearer" +English. You will presently understand. + +Where he gets his English is his own secret. There is nothing like it +elsewhere in the earth; or even in paradise, perhaps, but the other place +is probably full of it. You hire him as soon as you touch Indian soil; +for no matter what your sex is, you cannot do without him. He is +messenger, valet, chambermaid, table-waiter, lady's maid, courier--he is +everything. He carries a coarse linen clothes-bag and a quilt; he sleeps +on the stone floor outside your chamber door, and gets his meals you do +not know where nor when; you only know that he is not fed on the +premises, either when you are in a hotel or when you are a guest in a, +private house. His wages are large--from an Indian point of view--and he +feeds and clothes himself out of them. We had three of him in two and a +half months. The first one's rate was thirty rupees a month that is to +say, twenty-seven cents a day; the rate of the others, Rs. 40 (40 rupees) +a month. A princely sum; for the native switchman on a railway and the +native servant in a private family get only Rs. 7 per month, and the +farm-hand only 4. The two former feed and clothe themselves and their +families on their $1.90 per month; but I cannot believe that the farmhand +has to feed himself on his $1.08. I think the farm probably feeds him, +and that the whole of his wages, except a trifle for the priest, go to +the support of his family. That is, to the feeding of his family; for +they live in a mud hut, hand-made, and, doubtless, rent-free, and they +wear no clothes; at least, nothing more than a rag. And not much of a +rag at that, in the case of the males. However, these are handsome times +for the farm-hand; he was not always the child of luxury that he is now. +The Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces, in a recent official +utterance wherein he was rebuking a native deputation for complaining of +hard times, reminded them that they could easily remember when a +farm-hand's wages were only half a rupee (former value) a month--that +is to say, less than a cent a day; nearly $2.90 a year. If such a +wage-earner had a good deal of a family--and they all have that, for God +is very good to these poor natives in some ways--he would save a profit +of fifteen cents, clean and clear, out of his year's toil; I mean a +frugal, thrifty person would, not one given to display and ostentation. +And if he owed $13.50 and took good care of his health, he could pay it +off in ninety years. Then he could hold up his head, and look his +creditors in the face again. + +Think of these facts and what they mean. India does not consist of +cities. There are no cities in India--to speak of. Its stupendous +population consists of farm-laborers. India is one vast farm--one almost +interminable stretch of fields with mud fences between. . . Think of the +above facts; and consider what an incredible aggregate of poverty they +place before you. + +The first Bearer that applied, waited below and sent up his +recommendations. That was the first morning in Bombay. We read them +over; carefully, cautiously, thoughtfully. There was not a fault to find +with them--except one; they were all from Americans. Is that a slur? +If it is, it is a deserved one. In my experience, an American's +recommendation of a servant is not usually valuable. We are too +good-natured a race; we hate to say the unpleasant thing; we shrink from +speaking the unkind truth about a poor fellow whose bread depends upon +our verdict; so we speak of his good points only, thus not scrupling to +tell a lie--a silent lie--for in not mentioning his bad ones we as good +as say he hasn't any. The only difference that I know of between a +silent lie and a spoken one is, that the silent lie is a less respectable +one than the other. And it can deceive, whereas the other can't--as a +rule. We not only tell the silent lie as to a servant's faults, but we +sin in another way: we overpraise his merits; for when it comes to +writing recommendations of servants we are a nation of gushers. And we +have not the Frenchman's excuse. In France you must give the departing +servant a good recommendation; and you must conceal his faults; you have +no choice. If you mention his faults for the protection of the next +candidate for his services, he can sue you for damages; and the court +will award them, too; and, moreover, the judge will give you a sharp +dressing-down from the bench for trying to destroy a poor man's +character, and rob him of his bread. I do not state this on my own +authority, I got it from a French physician of fame and repute--a man who +was born in Paris, and had practiced there all his life. And he said +that he spoke not merely from common knowledge, but from exasperating +personal experience. + +As I was saying, the Bearer's recommendations were all from American +tourists; and St. Peter would have admitted him to the fields of the +blest on them--I mean if he is as unfamiliar with our people and our ways +as I suppose he is. According to these recommendations, Manuel X. was +supreme in all the arts connected with his complex trade; and these +manifold arts were mentioned--and praised-in detail. His English was +spoken of in terms of warm admiration--admiration verging upon rapture. +I took pleased note of that, and hoped that some of it might be true. + +We had to have some one right away; so the family went down stairs and +took him a week on trial; then sent him up to me and departed on their +affairs. I was shut up in my quarters with a bronchial cough, and glad +to have something fresh to look at, something new to play with. Manuel +filled the bill; Manuel was very welcome. He was toward fifty years old, +tall, slender, with a slight stoop--an artificial stoop, a deferential +stoop, a stoop rigidified by long habit--with face of European mould; +short hair intensely black; gentle black eyes, timid black eyes, indeed; +complexion very dark, nearly black in fact; face smooth-shaven. He was +bareheaded and barefooted, and was never otherwise while his week with us +lasted; his clothing was European, cheap, flimsy, and showed much wear. + +He stood before me and inclined his head (and body) in the pathetic +Indian way, touching his forehead with the finger--ends of his right +hand, in salute. I said: + +"Manuel, you are evidently Indian, but you seem to have a Spanish name +when you put it all together. How is that?" + +A perplexed look gathered in his face; it was plain that he had not +understood--but he didn't let on. He spoke back placidly. + +"Name, Manuel. Yes, master." + +"I know; but how did you get the name?" + +"Oh, yes, I suppose. Think happen so. Father same name, not mother." + +I saw that I must simplify my language and spread my words apart, if I +would be understood by this English scholar. + +"Well--then--how--did--your--father--get--his name?" + +"Oh, he,"--brightening a little--"he Christian--Portygee; live in Goa; I +born Goa; mother not Portygee, mother native-high-caste Brahmin--Coolin +Brahmin; highest caste; no other so high caste. I high-caste Brahmin, +too. Christian, too, same like father; high-caste Christian Brahmin, +master--Salvation Army." + +All this haltingly, and with difficulty. Then he had an inspiration, and +began to pour out a flood of words that I could make nothing of; so I +said: + +"There--don't do that. I can't understand Hindostani." + +"Not Hindostani, master--English. Always I speaking English sometimes +when I talking every day all the time at you." + +"Very well, stick to that; that is intelligible. It is not up to my +hopes, it is not up to the promise of the recommendations, still it is +English, and I understand it. Don't elaborate it; I don't like +elaborations when they are crippled by uncertainty of touch." + +"Master?" + +"Oh, never mind; it was only a random thought; I didn't expect you to +understand it. How did you get your English; is it an acquirement, or +just a gift of God?" + +After some hesitation--piously: + +"Yes, he very good. Christian god very good, Hindoo god very good, too. +Two million Hindoo god, one Christian god--make two million and one. All +mine; two million and one god. I got a plenty. Sometime I pray all time +at those, keep it up, go all time every day; give something at shrine, +all good for me, make me better man; good for me, good for my family, dam +good." + +Then he had another inspiration, and went rambling off into fervent +confusions and incoherencies, and I had to stop him again. I thought we +had talked enough, so I told him to go to the bathroom and clean it up +and remove the slops--this to get rid of him. He went away, seeming to +understand, and got out some of my clothes and began to brush them. I +repeated my desire several times, simplifying and re-simplifying it, and +at last he got the idea. Then he went away and put a coolie at the work, +and explained that he would lose caste if he did it himself; it would be +pollution, by the law of his caste, and it would cost him a deal of fuss +and trouble to purify himself and accomplish his rehabilitation. He said +that that kind of work was strictly forbidden to persons of caste, and as +strictly restricted to the very bottom layer of Hindoo society--the +despised 'Sudra' (the toiler, the laborer). He was right; and apparently +the poor Sudra has been content with his strange lot, his insulting +distinction, for ages and ages--clear back to the beginning of things, so +to speak. Buckle says that his name--laborer--is a term of contempt; +that it is ordained by the Institutes of Menu (900 B.C.) that if a Sudra +sit on a level with his superior he shall be exiled or branded--[Without +going into particulars I will remark that as a rule they wear no clothing +that would conceal the brand.--M. T.]. . . ; if he speak +contemptuously of his superior or insult him he shall suffer death; if he +listen to the reading of the sacred books he shall have burning oil +poured in his ears; if he memorize passages from them he shall be killed; +if he marry his daughter to a Brahmin the husband shall go to hell for +defiling himself by contact with a woman so infinitely his inferior; and +that it is forbidden to a Sudra to acquire wealth. "The bulk of the +population of India," says Bucklet--[Population to-day, 300,000,000.] +--"is the Sudras--the workers, the farmers, the creators of wealth." + +Manuel was a failure, poor old fellow. His age was against him. He was +desperately slow and phenomenally forgetful. When he went three blocks +on an errand he would be gone two hours, and then forget what it was he +went for. When he packed a trunk it took him forever, and the trunk's +contents were an unimaginable chaos when he got done. He couldn't wait +satisfactorily at table--a prime defect, for if you haven't your own +servant in an Indian hotel you are likely to have a slow time of it and +go away hungry. We couldn't understand his English; he couldn't +understand ours; and when we found that he couldn't understand his own, +it seemed time for us to part. I had to discharge him; there was no help +for it. But I did it as kindly as I could, and as gently. We must part, +said I, but I hoped we should meet again in a better world. It was not +true, but it was only a little thing to say, and saved his feelings and +cost me nothing. + +But now that he was gone, and was off my mind and heart, my spirits began +to rise at once, and I was soon feeling brisk and ready to go out and +have adventures. Then his newly-hired successor flitted in, touched his +forehead, and began to fly around here, there, and everywhere, on his +velvet feet, and in five minutes he had everything in the room +"ship-shape and Bristol fashion," as the sailors say, and was standing at +the salute, waiting for orders. Dear me, what a rustler he was after the +slumbrous way of Manuel, poor old slug! All my heart, all my affection, +all my admiration, went out spontaneously to this frisky little forked +black thing, this compact and compressed incarnation of energy and force +and promptness and celerity and confidence, this smart, smily, engaging, +shiney-eyed little devil, feruled on his upper end by a gleaming +fire-coal of a fez with a red-hot tassel dangling from it. I said, +with deep satisfaction-- + +"You'll suit. What is your name?" + +He reeled it mellowly off. + +"Let me see if I can make a selection out of it--for business uses, I +mean; we will keep the rest for Sundays. Give it to me in installments." + +He did it. But there did not seem to be any short ones, except +Mousawhich suggested mouse. It was out of character; it was too soft, +too quiet, too conservative; it didn't fit his splendid style. I +considered, and said-- + +"Mousa is short enough, but I don't quite like it. It seems colorless +--inharmonious--inadequate; and I am sensitive to such things. How do you +think Satan would do?" + +"Yes, master. Satan do wair good." + +It was his way of saying "very good." + +There was a rap at the door. Satan covered the ground with a single +skip; there was a word or two of Hindostani, then he disappeared. Three +minutes later he was before me again, militarily erect, and waiting for +me to speak first. + +"What is it, Satan?" + +"God want to see you." + +"Who?" + +"God. I show him up, master?" + +"Why, this is so unusual, that--that--well, you see indeed I am so +unprepared--I don't quite know what I do mean. Dear me, can't you +explain? Don't you see that this is a most ex----" + +"Here his card, master." + +Wasn't it curious--and amazing, and tremendous, and all that? Such a +personage going around calling on such as I, and sending up his card, +like a mortal--sending it up by Satan. It was a bewildering collision of +the impossibles. But this was the land of the Arabian Nights, this was +India! and what is it that cannot happen in India? + +We had the interview. Satan was right--the Visitor was indeed a God in +the conviction of his multitudinous followers, and was worshiped by them +in sincerity and humble adoration. They are troubled by no doubts as to +his divine origin and office. They believe in him, they pray to him, +they make offerings to him, they beg of him remission of sins; to them +his person, together with everything connected with it, is sacred; from +his barber they buy the parings of his nails and set them in gold, and +wear them as precious amulets. + +I tried to seem tranquilly conversational and at rest, but I was not. +Would you have been? I was in a suppressed frenzy of excitement and +curiosity and glad wonder. I could not keep my eyes off him. I was +looking upon a god, an actual god, a recognized and accepted god; and +every detail of his person and his dress had a consuming interest for me. +And the thought went floating through my head, "He is worshiped--think of +it--he is not a recipient of the pale homage called compliment, wherewith +the highest human clay must make shift to be satisfied, but of an +infinitely richer spiritual food: adoration, worship!--men and women lay +their cares and their griefs and their broken hearts at his feet; and he +gives them his peace; and they go away healed." + +And just then the Awful Visitor said, in the simplest way--"There is a +feature of the philosophy of Huck Finn which"--and went luminously on +with the construction of a compact and nicely-discriminated literary +verdict. + +It is a land of surprises--India! I had had my ambitions--I had hoped, +and almost expected, to be read by kings and presidents and emperors--but +I had never looked so high as That. It would be false modesty to pretend +that I was not inordinately pleased. I was. I was much more pleased +than I should have been with a compliment from a man. + +He remained half an hour, and I found him a most courteous and charming +gentleman. The godship has been in his family a good while, but I do not +know how long. He is a Mohammedan deity; by earthly rank he is a prince; +not an Indian but a Persian prince. He is a direct descendant of the +Prophet's line. He is comely; also young--for a god; not forty, perhaps +not above thirty-five years old. He wears his immense honors with +tranquil brace, and with a dignity proper to his awful calling. He +speaks English with the ease and purity of a person born to it. I think +I am not overstating this. He was the only god I had ever seen, and I +was very favorably impressed. When he rose to say good-bye, the door +swung open and I caught the flash of a red fez, and heard these words, +reverently said-- + +"Satan see God out?" + +"Yes." And these mis-mated Beings passed from view Satan in the lead and +The Other following after. + + + + +CHAPTER XL. + +Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man's, I mean. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The next picture in my mind is Government House, on Malabar Point, with +the wide sea-view from the windows and broad balconies; abode of His +Excellency the Governor of the Bombay Presidency--a residence which is +European in everything but the native guards and servants, and is a home +and a palace of state harmoniously combined. + +That was England, the English power, the English civilization, the modern +civilization--with the quiet elegancies and quiet colors and quiet tastes +and quiet dignity that are the outcome of the modern cultivation. And +following it came a picture of the ancient civilization of India--an hour +in the mansion of a native prince: Kumar Schri Samatsinhji Bahadur of the +Palitana State. + +The young lad, his heir, was with the prince; also, the lad's sister, a +wee brown sprite, very pretty, very serious, very winning, delicately +moulded, costumed like the daintiest butterfly, a dear little fairyland +princess, gravely willing to be friendly with the strangers, but in the +beginning preferring to hold her father's hand until she could take stock +of them and determine how far they were to be trusted. She must have +been eight years old; so in the natural (Indian) order of things she +would be a bride in three or four years from now, and then this free +contact with the sun and the air and the other belongings of out-door +nature and comradeship with visiting male folk would end, and she would +shut herself up in the zenana for life, like her mother, and by inherited +habit of mind would be happy in that seclusion and not look upon it as an +irksome restraint and a weary captivity. + +The game which the prince amuses his leisure with--however, never mind +it, I should never be able to describe it intelligibly. I tried to get +an idea of it while my wife and daughter visited the princess in the +zenana, a lady of charming graces and a fluent speaker of English, but I +did not make it out. It is a complicated game, and I believe it is said +that nobody can learn to play it well--but an Indian. And I was not able +to learn how to wind a turban. It seemed a simple art and easy; but that +was a deception. It is a piece of thin, delicate stuff a foot wide or +more, and forty or fifty feet long; and the exhibitor of the art takes +one end of it in his hands, and winds it in and out intricately about his +head, twisting it as he goes, and in a minute or two the thing is +finished, and is neat and symmetrical and fits as snugly as a mould. + +We were interested in the wardrobe and the jewels, and in the silverware, +and its grace of shape and beauty and delicacy of ornamentation. The +silverware is kept locked up, except at meal-times, and none but the +chief butler and the prince have keys to the safe. I did not clearly +understand why, but it was not for the protection of the silver. It was +either to protect the prince from the contamination which his caste would +suffer if the vessels were touched by low-caste hands, or it was to +protect his highness from poison. Possibly it was both. I believe a +salaried taster has to taste everything before the prince ventures it--an +ancient and judicious custom in the East, and has thinned out the tasters +a good deal, for of course it is the cook that puts the poison in. If I +were an Indian prince I would not go to the expense of a taster, I would +eat with the cook. + +Ceremonials are always interesting; and I noted that the Indian +good-morning is a ceremonial, whereas ours doesn't amount to that. In +salutation the son reverently touches the father's forehead with a small +silver implement tipped with vermillion paste which leaves a red spot +there, and in return the son receives the father's blessing. Our good +morning is well enough for the rowdy West, perhaps, but would be too +brusque for the soft and ceremonious East. + +After being properly necklaced, according to custom, with great garlands +made of yellow flowers, and provided with betel-nut to chew, this +pleasant visit closed, and we passed thence to a scene of a different +sort: from this glow of color and this sunny life to those grim +receptacles of the Parsee dead, the Towers of Silence. There is +something stately about that name, and an impressiveness which sinks +deep; the hush of death is in it. We have the Grave, the Tomb, the +Mausoleum, God's Acre, the Cemetery; and association has made them +eloquent with solemn meaning; but we have no name that is so majestic as +that one, or lingers upon the ear with such deep and haunting pathos. + +On lofty ground, in the midst of a paradise of tropical foliage and +flowers, remote from the world and its turmoil and noise, they stood--the +Towers of Silence; and away below was spread the wide groves of cocoa +palms, then the city, mile on mile, then the ocean with its fleets of +creeping ships all steeped in a stillness as deep as the hush that +hallowed this high place of the dead. The vultures were there. They +stood close together in a great circle all around the rim of a massive +low tower--waiting; stood as motionless as sculptured ornaments, and +indeed almost deceived one into the belief that that was what they were. +Presently there was a slight stir among the score of persons present, and +all moved reverently out of the path and ceased from talking. A funeral +procession entered the great gate, marching two and two, and moved +silently by, toward the Tower. The corpse lay in a shallow shell, and +was under cover of a white cloth, but was otherwise naked. The bearers +of the body were separated by an interval of thirty feet from the +mourners. They, and also the mourners, were draped all in pure white, +and each couple of mourners was figuratively bound together by a piece of +white rope or a handkerchief--though they merely held the ends of it in +their hands. Behind the procession followed a dog, which was led in a +leash. When the mourners had reached the neighborhood of the Tower +--neither they nor any other human being but the bearers of the dead must +approach within thirty feet of it--they turned and went back to one of +the prayer-houses within the gates, to pray for the spirit of their dead. +The bearers unlocked the Tower's sole door and disappeared from view +within. In a little while they came out bringing the bier and the white +covering-cloth, and locked the door again. Then the ring of vultures +rose, flapping their wings, and swooped down into the Tower to devour the +body. Nothing was left of it but a clean-picked skeleton when they +flocked-out again a few minutes afterward. + +The principle which underlies and orders everything connected with a +Parsee funeral is Purity. By the tenets of the Zoroastrian religion, the +elements, Earth, Fire, and Water, are sacred, and must not be +contaminated by contact with a dead body. Hence corpses must not be +burned, neither must they be buried. None may touch the dead or enter +the Towers where they repose except certain men who are officially +appointed for that purpose. They receive high pay, but theirs is a +dismal life, for they must live apart from their species, because their +commerce with the dead defiles them, and any who should associate with +them would share their defilement. When they come out of the Tower the +clothes they are wearing are exchanged for others, in a building within +the grounds, and the ones which they have taken off are left behind, for +they are contaminated, and must never be used again or suffered to go +outside the grounds. These bearers come to every funeral in new +garments. So far as is known, no human being, other than an official +corpse-bearer--save one--has ever entered a Tower of Silence after its +consecration. Just a hundred years ago a European rushed in behind the +bearers and fed his brutal curiosity with a glimpse of the forbidden +mysteries of the place. This shabby savage's name is not given; his +quality is also concealed. These two details, taken in connection with +the fact that for his extraordinary offense the only punishment he got +from the East India Company's Government was a solemn official +"reprimand"--suggest the suspicion that he was a European of consequence. +The same public document which contained the reprimand gave warning that +future offenders of his sort, if in the Company's service, would be +dismissed; and if merchants, suffer revocation of license and exile to +England. + +The Towers are not tall, but are low in proportion to their +circumference, like a gasometer. If you should fill a gasometer half way +up with solid granite masonry, then drive a wide and deep well down +through the center of this mass of masonry, you would have the idea of a +Tower of Silence. On the masonry surrounding the well the bodies lie, in +shallow trenches which radiate like wheel-spokes from the well. The +trenches slant toward the well and carry into it the rainfall. +Underground drains, with charcoal filters in them, carry off this water +from the bottom of the well. + +When a skeleton has lain in the Tower exposed to the rain and the flaming +sun a month it is perfectly dry and clean. Then the same bearers that +brought it there come gloved and take it up with tongs and throw it into +the well. There it turns to dust. It is never seen again, never touched +again, in the world. Other peoples separate their dead, and preserve and +continue social distinctions in the grave--the skeletons of kings and +statesmen and generals in temples and pantheons proper to skeletons of +their degree, and the skeletons of the commonplace and the poor in places +suited to their meaner estate; but the Parsees hold that all men rank +alike in death--all are humble, all poor, all destitute. In sign of +their poverty they are sent to their grave naked, in sign of their +equality the bones of the rich, the poor, the illustrious and the obscure +are flung into the common well together. At a Parsee funeral there are +no vehicles; all concerned must walk, both rich and poor, howsoever great +the distance to be traversed may be. In the wells of the Five Towers of +Silence is mingled the dust of all the Parsee men and women and children +who have died in Bombay and its vicinity during the two centuries which +have elapsed since the Mohammedan conquerors drove the Parsees out of +Persia, and into that region of India. The earliest of the five towers +was built by the Modi family something more than 200 years ago, and it is +now reserved to the heirs of that house; none but the dead of that blood +are carried thither. + +The origin of at least one of the details of a Parsee funeral is not now +known--the presence of the dog. Before a corpse is borne from the house +of mourning it must be uncovered and exposed to the gaze of a dog; a dog +must also be led in the rear of the funeral. Mr. Nusserwanjee Byranijee, +Secretary to the Parsee Punchayet, said that these formalities had once +had a meaning and a reason for their institution, but that they were +survivals whose origin none could now account for. Custom and tradition +continue them in force, antiquity hallows them. It is thought that in +ancient times in Persia the dog was a sacred animal and could guide souls +to heaven; also that his eye had the power of purifying objects which had +been contaminated by the touch of the dead; and that hence his presence +with the funeral cortege provides an ever-applicable remedy in case of +need. + +The Parsees claim that their method of disposing of the dead is an +effective protection of the living; that it disseminates no corruption, +no impurities of any sort, no disease-germs; that no wrap, no garment +which has touched the dead is allowed to touch the living afterward; that +from the Towers of Silence nothing proceeds which can carry harm to the +outside world. These are just claims, I think. As a sanitary measure, +their system seems to be about the equivalent of cremation, and as sure. +We are drifting slowly--but hopefully--toward cremation in these days. +It could not be expected that this progress should be swift, but if it be +steady and continuous, even if slow, that will suffice. When cremation +becomes the rule we shall cease to shudder at it; we should shudder at +burial if we allowed ourselves to think what goes on in the grave. + +The dog was an impressive figure to me, representing as he did a mystery +whose key is lost. He was humble, and apparently depressed; and he let +his head droop pensively, and looked as if he might be trying to call +back to his mind what it was that he had used to symbolize ages ago when +he began his function. There was another impressive thing close at hand, +but I was not privileged to see it. That was the sacred fire--a fire +which is supposed to have been burning without interruption for more than +two centuries; and so, living by the same heat that was imparted to it so +long ago. + +The Parsees are a remarkable community. There are only about 60,000 in +Bombay, and only about half as many as that in the rest of India; but +they make up in importance what they lack in numbers. They are highly +educated, energetic, enterprising, progressive, rich, and the Jew himself +is not more lavish or catholic in his charities and benevolences. The +Parsees build and endow hospitals, for both men and animals; and they and +their womenkind keep an open purse for all great and good objects. They +are a political force, and a valued support to the government. They have +a pure and lofty religion, and they preserve it in its integrity and +order their lives by it. + +We took a final sweep of the wonderful view of plain and city and ocean, +and so ended our visit to the garden and the Towers of Silence; and the +last thing I noticed was another symbol--a voluntary symbol this one; it +was a vulture standing on the sawed-off top of a tall and slender and +branchless palm in an open space in the ground; he was perfectly +motionless, and looked like a piece of sculpture on a pillar. And he had +a mortuary look, too, which was in keeping with the place. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + +There is an old-time toast which is golden for its beauty. +"When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend." + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The next picture that drifts across the field of my memory is one which +is connected with religious things. We were taken by friends to see a +Jain temple. It was small, and had many flags or streamers flying from +poles standing above its roof; and its little battlements supported a +great many small idols or images. Upstairs, inside, a solitary Jain was +praying or reciting aloud in the middle of the room. Our presence did +not interrupt him, nor even incommode him or modify his fervor. Ten or +twelve feet in front of him was the idol, a small figure in a sitting +posture. It had the pinkish look of a wax doll, but lacked the doll's +roundness of limb and approximation to correctness of form and justness +of proportion. Mr. Gandhi explained every thing to us. He was delegate +to the Chicago Fair Congress of Religions. It was lucidly done, in +masterly English, but in time it faded from me, and now I have nothing +left of that episode but an impression: a dim idea of a religious belief +clothed in subtle intellectual forms, lofty and clean, barren of fleshly +grossnesses; and with this another dim impression which connects that +intellectual system somehow with that crude image, that inadequate idol +--how, I do not know. Properly they do not seem to belong together. +Apparently the idol symbolized a person who had become a saint or a god +through accessions of steadily augmenting holiness acquired through a +series of reincarnations and promotions extending over many ages; and was +now at last a saint and qualified to vicariously receive worship and +transmit it to heaven's chancellery. Was that it? + +And thence we went to Mr. Premchand Roychand's bungalow, in Lovelane, +Byculla, where an Indian prince was to receive a deputation of the Jain +community who desired to congratulate him upon a high honor lately +conferred upon him by his sovereign, Victoria, Empress of India. She had +made him a knight of the order of the Star of India. It would seem that +even the grandest Indian prince is glad to add the modest title "Sir" to +his ancient native grandeurs, and is willing to do valuable service to +win it. He will remit taxes liberally, and will spend money freely upon +the betterment of the condition of his subjects, if there is a knighthood +to be gotten by it. And he will also do good work and a deal of it to +get a gun added to the salute allowed him by the British Government. +Every year the Empress distributes knighthoods and adds guns for public +services done by native princes. The salute of a small prince is three +or four guns; princes of greater consequence have salutes that run higher +and higher, gun by gun,--oh, clear away up to eleven; possibly more, but +I did not hear of any above eleven-gun princes. I was told that when a +four-gun prince gets a gun added, he is pretty troublesome for a while, +till the novelty wears off, for he likes the music, and keeps hunting up +pretexts to get himself saluted. It may be that supremely grand folk, +like the Nyzam of Hyderabad and the Gaikwar of Baroda, have more than +eleven guns, but I don't know. + +When we arrived at the bungalow, the large hall on the ground floor was +already about full, and carriages were still flowing into the grounds. +The company present made a fine show, an exhibition of human fireworks, +so to speak, in the matters of costume and comminglings of brilliant +color. The variety of form noticeable in the display of turbans was +remarkable. We were told that the explanation of this was, that this +Jain delegation was drawn from many parts of India, and that each man +wore the turban that was in vogue in his own region. This diversity of +turbans made a beautiful effect. + +I could have wished to start a rival exhibition there, of Christian hats +and clothes. I would have cleared one side of the room of its Indian +splendors and repacked the space with Christians drawn from America, +England, and the Colonies, dressed in the hats and habits of now, and of +twenty and forty and fifty years ago. It would have been a hideous +exhibition, a thoroughly devilish spectacle. Then there would have been +the added disadvantage of the white complexion. It is not an unbearably +unpleasant complexion when it keeps to itself, but when it comes into +competition with masses of brown and black the fact is betrayed that it +is endurable only because we are used to it. Nearly all black and brown +skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare. How rare, one +may learn by walking down a street in Paris, New York, or London on a +week-day particularly an unfashionable street--and keeping count of the +satisfactory complexions encountered in the course of a mile. Where dark +complexions are massed, they make the whites look bleached-out, +unwholesome, and sometimes frankly ghastly. I could notice this as a +boy, down South in the slavery days before the war. The splendid black +satin skin of the South African Zulus of Durban seemed to me to come very +close to perfection. I can see those Zulus yet--'ricksha athletes +waiting in front of the hotel for custom; handsome and intensely black +creatures, moderately clothed in loose summer stuffs whose snowy +whiteness made the black all the blacker by contrast. Keeping that group +in my mind, I can compare those complexions with the white ones which are +streaming past this London window now: + + A lady. Complexion, new parchment. Another lady. Complexion, old + parchment. + + Another. Pink and white, very fine. + + Man. Grayish skin, with purple areas. + + Man. Unwholesome fish-belly skin. + + Girl. Sallow face, sprinkled with freckles. + + Old woman. Face whitey-gray. + + Young butcher. Face a general red flush. + + Jaundiced man--mustard yellow. + + Elderly lady. Colorless skin, with two conspicuous moles. + + Elderly man--a drinker. Boiled-cauliflower nose in a flabby face + veined with purple crinklings. + + Healthy young gentleman. Fine fresh complexion. + + Sick young man. His face a ghastly white. + +No end of people whose skins are dull and characterless modifications of +the tint which we miscall white. Some of these faces are pimply; some +exhibit other signs of diseased blood; some show scars of a tint out of a +harmony with the surrounding shades of color. The white man's complexion +makes no concealments. It can't. It seemed to have been designed as a +catch-all for everything that can damage it. Ladies have to paint it, +and powder it, and cosmetic it, and diet it with arsenic, and enamel it, +and be always enticing it, and persuading it, and pestering it, and +fussing at it, to make it beautiful; and they do not succeed. But these +efforts show what they think of the natural complexion, as distributed. +As distributed it needs these helps. The complexion which they try to +counterfeit is one which nature restricts to the few--to the very few. +To ninety-nine persons she gives a bad complexion, to the hundredth a +good one. The hundredth can keep it--how long? Ten years, perhaps. + +The advantage is with the Zulu, I think. He starts with a beautiful +complexion, and it will last him through. And as for the Indian brown +--firm, smooth, blemishless, pleasant and restful to the eye, afraid of no +color, harmonizing with all colors and adding a grace to them all--I +think there is no sort of chance for the average white complexion against +that rich and perfect tint. + +To return to the bungalow. The most gorgeous costume present were worn +by some children. They seemed to blaze, so bright were the colors, and +so brilliant the jewels strum over the rich materials. These children +were professional nautch-dancers, and looked like girls, but they were +boys, They got up by ones and twos and fours, and danced and sang to an +accompaniment of weird music. Their posturings and gesturings were +elaborate and graceful, but their voices were stringently raspy and +unpleasant, and there was a good deal of monotony about the tune. + +By and by there was a burst of shouts and cheers outside and the prince +with his train entered in fine dramatic style. He was a stately man, he +was ideally costumed, and fairly festooned with ropes of gems; some of +the ropes were of pearls, some were of uncut great emeralds--emeralds +renowned in Bombay for their quality and value. Their size was +marvelous, and enticing to the eye, those rocks. A boy--a princeling +--was with the prince, and he also was a radiant exhibition. + +The ceremonies were not tedious. The prince strode to his throne with +the port and majesty--and the sternness--of a Julius Caesar coming to +receive and receipt for a back-country kingdom and have it over and get +out, and no fooling. There was a throne for the young prince, too, and +the two sat there, side by side, with their officers grouped at either +hand and most accurately and creditably reproducing the pictures which +one sees in the books--pictures which people in the prince's line of +business have been furnishing ever since Solomon received the Queen of +Sheba and showed her his things. The chief of the Jain delegation read +his paper of congratulations, then pushed it into a beautifully engraved +silver cylinder, which was delivered with ceremony into the prince's +hands and at once delivered by him without ceremony into the hands of an +officer. I will copy the address here. It is interesting, as showing +what an Indian prince's subject may have opportunity to thank him for in +these days of modern English rule, as contrasted with what his ancestor +would have given them opportunity to thank him for a century and a half +ago--the days of freedom unhampered by English interference. A century +and a half ago an address of thanks could have been put into small space. +It would have thanked the prince-- + + 1. For not slaughtering too many of his people upon mere caprice; + + 2. For not stripping them bare by sudden and arbitrary tax levies, + and bringing famine upon them; + + 3. For not upon empty pretext destroying the rich and seizing their + property; + + 4. For not killing, blinding, imprisoning, or banishing the + relatives of the royal house to protect the throne from possible + plots; + + 5. For not betraying the subject secretly, for a bribe, into the + hands of bands of professional Thugs, to be murdered and robbed in + the prince's back lot. + +Those were rather common princely industries in the old times, but they +and some others of a harsh sort ceased long ago under English rule. +Better industries have taken their place, as this Address from the Jain +community will show: + + "Your Highness,--We the undersigned members of the Jain community of + Bombay have the pleasure to approach your Highness with the + expression of our heartfelt congratulations on the recent conference + on your Highness of the Knighthood of the Most Exalted Order of the + Star of India. Ten years ago we had the pleasure and privilege of + welcoming your Highness to this city under circumstances which have + made a memorable epoch in the history of your State, for had it not + been for a generous and reasonable spirit that your Highness + displayed in the negotiations between the Palitana Durbar and the + Jain community, the conciliatory spirit that animated our people + could not have borne fruit. That was the first step in your + Highness's administration, and it fitly elicited the praise of the + Jain community, and of the Bombay Government. A decade of your + Highness's administration, combined with the abilities, training, + and acquirements that your Highness brought to bear upon it, has + justly earned for your Highness the unique and honourable + distinction--the Knighthood of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of + India, which we understand your Highness is the first to enjoy among + Chiefs of your, Highness's rank and standing. And we assure your + Highness that for this mark of honour that has been conferred on you + by Her Most Gracious Majesty, the Queen-Empress, we feel no less + proud than your Highness. Establishment of commercial factories, + schools, hospitals, etc., by your Highness in your State has marked + your Highness's career during these ten years, and we trust that + your Highness will be spared to rule over your people with wisdom + and foresight, and foster the many reforms that your Highness has + been pleased to introduce in your State. We again offer your + Highness our warmest felicitations for the honour that has been + conferred on you. We beg to remain your Highness's obedient + servants." + +Factories, schools, hospitals, reforms. The prince propagates that kind +of things in the modern times, and gets knighthood and guns for it. + +After the address the prince responded with snap and brevity; spoke a +moment with half a dozen guests in English, and with an official or two +in a native tongue; then the garlands were distributed as usual, and the +function ended. + + + + +CHAPTER XLII. + +Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all his others--his +last breath. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Toward midnight, that night, there was another function. This was a +Hindoo wedding--no, I think it was a betrothal ceremony. Always before, +we had driven through streets that were multitudinous and tumultuous with +picturesque native life, but now there was nothing of that. We seemed to +move through a city of the dead. There was hardly a suggestion of life +in those still and vacant streets. Even the crows were silent. But +everywhere on the ground lay sleeping natives-hundreds and hundreds. +They lay stretched at full length and tightly wrapped in blankets, beads +and all. Their attitude and their rigidity counterfeited death. The +plague was not in Bombay then, but it is devastating the city now. The +shops are deserted, now, half of the people have fled, and of the +remainder the smitten perish by shoals every day. No doubt the city +looks now in the daytime as it looked then at night. When we had pierced +deep into the native quarter and were threading its narrow dim lanes, we +had to go carefully, for men were stretched asleep all about and there +was hardly room to drive between them. And every now and then a swarm of +rats would scamper across past the horses' feet in the vague light--the +forbears of the rats that are carrying the plague from house to house in +Bombay now. The shops were but sheds, little booths open to the street; +and the goods had been removed, and on the counters families were +sleeping, usually with an oil lamp present. Recurrent dead watches, it +looked like. + +But at last we turned a corner and saw a great glare of light ahead. It +was the home of the bride, wrapped in a perfect conflagration of +illuminations,--mainly gas-work designs, gotten up specially for the +occasion. Within was abundance of brilliancy--flames, costumes, colors, +decorations, mirrors--it was another Aladdin show. + +The bride was a trim and comely little thing of twelve years, dressed as +we would dress a boy, though more expensively than we should do it, of +course. She moved about very much at her ease, and stopped and talked +with the guests and allowed her wedding jewelry to be examined. It was +very fine. Particularly a rope of great diamonds, a lovely thing to look +at and handle. It had a great emerald hanging to it. + +The bridegroom was not present. He was having betrothal festivities of +his own at his father's house. As I understood it, he and the bride were +to entertain company every night and nearly all night for a week or more, +then get married, if alive. Both of the children were a little elderly, +as brides and grooms go, in India--twelve; they ought to have been +married a year or two sooner; still to a, stranger twelve seems quite +young enough. + +A while after midnight a couple of celebrated and high-priced +nautch-girls appeared in the gorgeous place, and danced and sang. With +them were men who played upon strange instruments which made uncanny +noises of a sort to make one's flesh creep. One of these instruments was +a pipe, and to its music the girls went through a performance which +represented snake charming. It seemed a doubtful sort of music to charm +anything with, but a native gentleman assured me that snakes like it and +will come out of their holes and listen to it with every evidence of +refreshment And gratitude. He said that at an entertainment in his +grounds once, the pipe brought out half a dozen snakes, and the music had +to be stopped before they would be persuaded to go. Nobody wanted their +company, for they were bold, familiar, and dangerous; but no one would +kill them, of course, for it is sinful for a Hindoo to kill any kind of a +creature. + +We withdrew from the festivities at two in the morning. Another picture, +then--but it has lodged itself in my memory rather as a stage-scene than +as a reality. It is of a porch and short flight of steps crowded with +dark faces and ghostly-white draperies flooded with the strong glare from +the dazzling concentration of illuminations; and midway of the steps one +conspicuous figure for accent--a turbaned giant, with a name according to +his size: Rao Bahadur Baskirao Balinkanje Pitale, Vakeel to his Highness +the Gaikwar of Baroda. Without him the picture would not have been +complete; and if his name had been merely Smith, he wouldn't have +answered. Close at hand on house-fronts on both sides of the narrow +street were illuminations of a kind commonly employed by the natives +--scores of glass tumblers (containing tapers) fastened a few in inches +apart all over great latticed frames, forming starry constellations which +showed out vividly against their black back grounds. As we drew away +into the distance down the dim lanes the illuminations gathered together +into a single mass, and glowed out of the enveloping darkness like a sun. + +Then again the deep silence, the skurrying rats, the dim forms stretched +every-where on the ground; and on either hand those open booths +counterfeiting sepulchres, with counterfeit corpses sleeping motionless +in the flicker of the counterfeit death lamps. And now, a year later, +when I read the cablegrams I seem to be reading of what I myself partly +saw--saw before it happened--in a prophetic dream, as it were. One +cablegram says, "Business in the native town is about suspended. Except +the wailing and the tramp of the funerals. There is but little life or +movement. The closed shops exceed in number those that remain open." +Another says that 325,000 of the people have fled the city and are +carrying the plague to the country. Three days later comes the news, +"The population is reduced by half." The refugees have carried the +disease to Karachi; "220 cases, 214 deaths." A day or two later, "52 +fresh cases, all of which proved fatal." + +The plague carries with it a terror which no other disease can excite; +for of all diseases known to men it is the deadliest--by far the +deadliest. "Fifty-two fresh cases--all fatal." It is the Black Death +alone that slays like that. We can all imagine, after a fashion, the +desolation of a plague-stricken city, and the stupor of stillness broken +at intervals by distant bursts of wailing, marking the passing of +funerals, here and there and yonder, but I suppose it is not possible for +us to realize to ourselves the nightmare of dread and fear that possesses +the living who are present in such a place and cannot get away. That +half million fled from Bombay in a wild panic suggests to us something of +what they were feeling, but perhaps not even they could realize what the +half million were feeling whom they left stranded behind to face the +stalking horror without chance of escape. Kinglake was in Cairo many +years ago during an epidemic of the Black Death, and he has imagined the +terrors that creep into a man's heart at such a time and follow him until +they themselves breed the fatal sign in the armpit, and then the delirium +with confused images, and home-dreams, and reeling billiard-tables, and +then the sudden blank of death: + + "To the contagionist, filled as he is with the dread of final + causes, having no faith in destiny, nor in the fixed will of God, + and with none of the devil-may-care indifference which might stand + him instead of creeds--to such one, every rag that shivers in the + breeze of a plague-stricken city has this sort of sublimity. If by + any terrible ordinance he be forced to venture forth, be sees death + dangling from every sleeve; and, as he creeps forward, he poises his + shuddering limbs between the imminent jacket that is stabbing at his + right elbow and the murderous pelisse that threatens to mow him + clean down as it sweeps along on his left. But most of all he + dreads that which most of all he should love--the touch of a woman's + dress; for mothers and wives, hurrying forth on kindly errands from + the bedsides of the dying, go slouching along through the streets + more willfully and less courteously than the men. For a while it + may be that the caution of the poor Levantine may enable him to + avoid contact, but sooner or later, perhaps, the dreaded chance + arrives; that bundle of linen, with the dark tearful eyes at the top + of it, that labors along with the voluptuous clumsiness of Grisi + --she has touched the poor Levantine with the hem of her sleeve! From + that dread moment his peace is gone; his mind for ever hanging upon + the fatal touch invites the blow which he fears; he watches for the + symptoms of plague so carefully, that sooner or later they come in + truth. The parched mouth is a sign--his mouth is parched; the + throbbing brain--his brain does throb; the rapid pulse--he touches + his own wrist (for he dares not ask counsel of any man lest he be + deserted), he touches his wrist, and feels how his frighted blood + goes galloping out of his heart. There is nothing but the fatal + swelling that is wanting to make his sad conviction complete; + immediately, he has an odd feel under the arm--no pain, but a little + straining of the skin; he would to God it were his fancy that were + strong enough to give him that sensation; this is the worst of all. + It now seems to him that he could be happy and contented with his + parched mouth, and his throbbing brain, and his rapid pulse, if only + he could know that there were no swelling under the left arm; but + dares he try?--in a moment of calmness and deliberation he dares + not; but when for a while he has writhed under the torture of + suspense, a sudden strength of will drives him to seek and know his + fate; he touches the gland, and finds the skin sane and sound but + under the cuticle there lies a small lump like a pistol-bullet, that + moves as he pushes it. Oh! but is this for all certainty, is this + the sentence of death? Feel the gland of the other arm. There is + not the same lump exactly, yet something a little like it. Have not + some people glands naturally enlarged?--would to heaven he were one! + So he does for himself the work of the plague, and when the Angel of + Death thus courted does indeed and in truth come, he has only to + finish that which has been so well begun; he passes his fiery hand + over the brain of the victim, and lets him rave for a season, but + all chance-wise, of people and things once dear, or of people and + things indifferent. Once more the poor fellow is back at his home + in fair Provence, and sees the sundial that stood in his childhood's + garden--sees his mother, and the long-since forgotten face of that + little dear sister--(he sees her, he says, on a Sunday morning, for + all the church bells are ringing); he looks up and down through the + universe, and owns it well piled with bales upon bales of cotton, + and cotton eternal--so much so that he feels--he knows--he swears he + could make that winning hazard, if the billiard-table would not + slant upwards, and if the cue were a cue worth playing with; but it + is not--it's a cue that won't move--his own arm won't move--in + short, there's the devil to pay in the brain of the poor Levantine; + and perhaps, the next night but one he becomes the 'life and the + soul' of some squalling jackal family, who fish him out by the foot + from his shallow and sandy grave." + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII. + +Hunger is the handmaid of genius + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +One day during our stay in Bombay there was a criminal trial of a most +interesting sort, a terribly realistic chapter out of the "Arabian +Nights," a strange mixture of simplicities and pieties and murderous +practicalities, which brought back the forgotten days of Thuggee and made +them live again; in fact, even made them believable. It was a case where +a young girl had been assassinated for the sake of her trifling +ornaments, things not worth a laborer's day's wages in America. This +thing could have been done in many other countries, but hardly with the +cold business-like depravity, absence of fear, absence of caution, +destitution of the sense of horror, repentance, remorse, exhibited in +this case. Elsewhere the murderer would have done his crime secretly, by +night, and without witnesses; his fears would have allowed him no peace +while the dead body was in his neighborhood; he would not have rested +until he had gotten it safe out of the way and hidden as effectually as +he could hide it. But this Indian murderer does his deed in the full +light of day, cares nothing for the society of witnesses, is in no way +incommoded by the presence of the corpse, takes his own time about +disposing of it, and the whole party are so indifferent, so phlegmatic, +that they take their regular sleep as if nothing was happening and no +halters hanging over them; and these five bland people close the episode +with a religious service. The thing reads like a Meadows-Taylor Thug-tale +of half a century ago, as may be seen by the official report of the +trial: + + "At the Mazagon Police Court yesterday, Superintendent Nolan again + charged Tookaram Suntoo Savat Baya, woman, her daughter Krishni, and + Gopal Yithoo Bhanayker, before Mr. Phiroze Hoshang Dastur, Fourth + Presidency Magistrate, under sections 302 and 109 of the Code, with + having on the night of the 30th of December last murdered a Hindoo + girl named Cassi, aged 12, by strangulation, in the room of a chawl + at Jakaria Bunder, on the Sewriroad, and also with aiding and + abetting each other in the commission of the offense. + + "Mr. F. A. Little, Public Prosecutor, conducted the case on behalf + of the Crown, the accused being undefended. + + "Mr. Little applied under the provisions of the Criminal Procedure + Code to tender pardon to one of the accused, Krishni, woman, aged + 22, on her undertaking to make a true and full statement of facts + under which the deceased girl Cassi was murdered. + + "The Magistrate having granted the Public Prosecutor's application, + the accused Krishni went into the witness-box, and, on being + examined by Mr. Little, made the following confession:--I am a + mill-hand employed at the Jubilee Mill. I recollect the day + (Tuesday); on which the body of the deceased Cassi was found. + Previous to that I attended the mill for half a day, and then + returned home at 3 in the afternoon, when I saw five persons in the + house, viz.: the first accused Tookaram, who is my paramour, my + mother, the second accused Baya, the accused Gopal, and two guests + named Ramji Daji and Annaji Gungaram. Tookaram rented the room of + the chawl situated at Jakaria Bunder-road from its owner, + Girdharilal Radhakishan, and in that room I, my paramour, Tookaram, + and his younger brother, Yesso Mahadhoo, live. Since his arrival in + Bombay from his native country Yesso came and lived with us. When I + returned from the mill on the afternoon of that day, I saw the two + guests seated on a cot in the veranda, and a few minutes after the + accused Gopal came and took his seat by their side, while I and my + mother were seated inside the room. Tookaram, who had gone out to + fetch some 'pan' and betelnuts, on his return home had brought the + two guests with him. After returning home he gave them 'pan + supari'. While they were eating it my mother came out of the room + and inquired of one of the guests, Ramji, what had happened to his + foot, when he replied that he had tried many remedies, but they had + done him no good. My mother then took some rice in her hand and + prophesied that the disease which Ramji was suffering from would not + be cured until he returned to his native country. In the meantime + the deceased Casi came from the direction of an out-house, and stood + in front on the threshold of our room with a 'lota' in her hand. + Tookaram then told his two guests to leave the room, and they then + went up the steps towards the quarry. After the guests had gone + away, Tookaram seized the deceased, who had come into the room, and + he afterwards put a waistband around her, and tied her to a post + which supports a loft. After doing this, he pressed the girl's + throat, and, having tied her mouth with the 'dhotur' (now shown in + Court), fastened it to the post. Having killed the girl, Tookaram + removed her gold head ornament and a gold 'putlee', and also took + charge of her 'lota'. Besides these two ornaments Cassi had on her + person ear-studs a nose-ring, some silver toe-rings, two necklaces, + a pair of silver anklets and bracelets. Tookaram afterwards tried + to remove the silver amulets, the ear-studs, and the nose-ring; but + he failed in his attempt. While he was doing so, I, my mother, and + Gopal were present. After removing the two gold ornaments, he + handed them over to Gopal, who was at the time standing near me. + When he killed Cassi, Tookaram threatened to strangle me also if I + informed any one of this. Gopal and myself were then standing at + the door of our room, and we both were threatened by Tookaram. My + mother, Baya, had seized the legs of the deceased at the time she + was killed, and whilst she was being tied to the post. Cassi then + made a noise. Tookaram and my mother took part in killing the girl. + After the murder her body was wrapped up in a mattress and kept on + the loft over the door of our room. When Cassi was strangled, the + door of the room was fastened from the inside by Tookaram. This + deed was committed shortly after my return home from work in the + mill. Tookaram put the body of the deceased in the mattress, and, + after it was left on the loft, he went to have his head shaved by a + barber named Sambhoo Raghoo, who lives only one door away from me. + My mother and myself then remained in the possession of the + information. I was slapped and threatened by my paramour, Tookaram, + and that was the only reason why I did not inform any one at that + time. When I told Tookaram that I would give information of the + occurrence, he slapped me. The accused Gopal was asked by Tookaram + to go back to his room, and he did so, taking away with him the two + gold ornaments and the 'lota'. Yesso Mahadhoo, a brother-in-law of + Tookaram, came to the house and asked Taokaram why he was washing, + the water-pipe being just opposite. Tookaram replied that he was + washing his dhotur, as a fowl had polluted it. About 6 o'clock of + the evening of that day my mother gave me three pice and asked me to + buy a cocoanut, and I gave the money to Yessoo, who went and fetched + a cocoanut and some betel leaves. When Yessoo and others were in + the room I was bathing, and, after I finished my bath, my mother + took the cocoanut and the betel leaves from Yessoo, and we five went + to the sea. The party consisted of Tookaram, my mother, Yessoo, + Tookaram's younger brother, and myself. On reaching the seashore, + my mother made the offering to the sea, and prayed to be pardoned + for what we had done. Before we went to the sea, some one came to + inquire after the girl Cassi. The police and other people came to + make these inquiries both before and after we left the house for the + seashore. The police questioned my mother about the girl, and she + replied that Cassi had come to her door, but had left. The next day + the police questioned Tookaram, and he, too, gave a similar reply. + This was said the same night when the search was made for the girl. + After the offering was made to the sea, we partook of the cocoanut + and returned home, when my mother gave me some food; but Tookaram + did not partake of any food that night. After dinner I and my + mother slept inside the room, and Tookaram slept on a cot near his + brother-in-law, Yessoo Mahadhoo, just outside the door. That was + not the usual place where Tookaram slept. He usually slept inside + the room. The body of the deceased remained on the loft when I went + to sleep. The room in which we slept was locked, and I heard that + my paramour, Tookaram, was restless outside. About 3 o'clock the + following morning Tookaram knocked at the door, when both myself and + my mother opened it. He then told me to go to the steps leading to + the quarry, and see if any one was about. Those steps lead to a + stable, through which we go to the quarry at the back of the + compound. When I got to the steps I saw no one there. Tookaram + asked me if any one was there, and I replied that I could see no one + about. He then took the body of the deceased from the loft, and + having wrapped it up in his saree, asked me to accompany him to the + steps of the quarry, and I did so. The 'saree' now produced here + was the same. Besides the 'saree', there was also a 'cholee' on the + body. He then carried the body in his arms, and went up the steps, + through the stable, and then to the right hand towards a Sahib's + bungalow, where Tookaram placed the body near a wall. All the time + I and my mother were with him. When the body was taken down, Yessoo + was lying on the cot. After depositing the body under the wall, we + all returned home, and soon after 5 a.m. the police again came and + took Tookaram away. About an hour after they returned and took me + and my mother away. We were questioned about it, when I made a + statement. Two hours later I was taken to the room, and I pointed + out this waistband, the 'dhotur', the mattress, and the wooden post + to Superintendent Nolan and Inspectors Roberts and Rashanali, in the + presence of my mother and Tookaram. Tookaram killed the girl Cassi + for her ornaments, which he wanted for the girl to whom he was + shortly going to be married. The body was found in the same place + where it was deposited by Tookaram." + +The criminal side of the native has always been picturesque, always +readable. The Thuggee and one or two other particularly outrageous +features of it have been suppressed by the English, but there is enough +of it left to keep it darkly interesting. One finds evidence of these +survivals in the newspapers. Macaulay has a light-throwing passage upon +this matter in his great historical sketch of Warren Hastings, where he +is describing some effects which followed the temporary paralysis of +Hastings' powerful government brought about by Sir Philip Francis and his +party: + + "The natives considered Hastings as a fallen man; and they acted + after their kind. Some of our readers may have seen, in India, a + cloud of crows pecking a sick vulture to death--no bad type of what + happens in that country as often as fortune deserts one who has been + great and dreaded. In an instant all the sycophants, who had lately + been ready to lie for him, to forge for him, to pander for him, to + poison for him, hasten to purchase the favor of his victorious + enemies by accusing him. An Indian government has only to let it be + understood that it wishes a particular man to be ruined, and in + twenty-four hours it will be furnished with grave charges, supported + by depositions so full and circumstantial that any person + unaccustomed to Asiatic mendacity would regard them as decisive. It + is well if the signature of the destined victim is not counterfeited + at the foot of some illegal compact, and if some treasonable paper + is not slipped into a hiding-place in his house." + +That was nearly a century and a quarter ago. An article in one of the +chief journals of India (the Pioneer) shows that in some respects the +native of to-day is just what his ancestor was then. Here are niceties +of so subtle and delicate a sort that they lift their breed of rascality +to a place among the fine arts, and almost entitle it to respect: + + "The records of the Indian courts might certainly be relied upon to + prove that swindlers as a class in the East come very close to, if + they do not surpass, in brilliancy of execution and originality of + design the most expert of their fraternity in Europe and America. + India in especial is the home of forgery. There are some particular + districts which are noted as marts for the finest specimens of the + forger's handiwork. The business is carried on by firms who possess + stores of stamped papers to suit every emergency. They habitually + lay in a store of fresh stamped papers every year, and some of the + older and more thriving houses can supply documents for the past + forty years, bearing the proper water-mark and possessing the + genuine appearance of age. Other districts have earned notoriety + for skilled perjury, a pre-eminence that excites a respectful + admiration when one thinks of the universal prevalence of the art, + and persons desirous of succeeding in false suits are ready to pay + handsomely to avail themselves of the services of these local + experts as witnesses." + +Various instances illustrative of the methods of these swindlers are +given. They exhibit deep cunning and total depravity on the part of the +swindler and his pals, and more obtuseness on the part of the victim than +one would expect to find in a country where suspicion of your neighbor +must surely be one of the earliest things learned. The favorite subject +is the young fool who has just come into a fortune and is trying to see +how poor a use he can put it to. I will quote one example: + + "Sometimes another form of confidence trick is adopted, which is + invariably successful. The particular pigeon is spotted, and, his + acquaintance having been made, he is encouraged in every form of + vice. When the friendship is thoroughly established, the swindler + remarks to the young man that he has a brother who has asked him to + lend him Rs.10,000. The swindler says he has the money and would + lend it; but, as the borrower is his brother, he cannot charge + interest. So he proposes that he should hand the dupe the money, + and the latter should lend it to the swindler's brother, exacting a + heavy pre-payment of interest which, it is pointed out, they may + equally enjoy in dissipation. The dupe sees no objection, and on + the appointed day receives Rs.7,000 from the swindler, which he + hands over to the confederate. The latter is profuse in his thanks, + and executes a promissory note for Rs.10,000, payable to bearer. + The swindler allows the scheme to remain quiescent for a time, and + then suggests that, as the money has not been repaid and as it would + be unpleasant to sue his brother, it would be better to sell the + note in the bazaar. The dupe hands the note over, for the money he + advanced was not his, and, on being informed that it would be + necessary to have his signature on the back so as to render the + security negotiable, he signs without any hesitation. The swindler + passes it on to confederates, and the latter employ a respectable + firm of solicitors to ask the dupe if his signature is genuine. He + admits it at once, and his fate is sealed. A suit is filed by a + confederate against the dupe, two accomplices being made + co-defendants. They admit their Signatures as indorsers, and the + one swears he bought the note for value from the dupe. The latter + has no defense, for no court would believe the apparently idle + explanation of the manner in which he came to endorse the note." + +There is only one India! It is the only country that has a monopoly of +grand and imposing specialties. When another country has a remarkable +thing, it cannot have it all to itself--some other country has a +duplicate. But India--that is different. Its marvels are its own; the +patents cannot be infringed; imitations are not possible. And think of +the size of them, the majesty of them, the weird and outlandish character +of the most of them! + +There is the Plague, the Black Death: India invented it; India is the +cradle of that mighty birth. + +The Car of Juggernaut was India's invention. + +So was the Suttee; and within the time of men still living eight hundred +widows willingly, and, in fact, rejoicingly, burned themselves to death +on the bodies of their dead husbands in a single year. Eight hundred +would do it this year if the British government would let them. + +Famine is India's specialty. Elsewhere famines are inconsequential +incidents--in India they are devastating cataclysms; in one case they +annihilate hundreds; in the other, millions. + +India had 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion all other +countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire. + +With her everything is on a giant scale--even her poverty; no other +country can show anything to compare with it. And she has been used to +wealth on so vast a scale that she has to shorten to single words the +expressions describing great sums. She describes 100,000 with one word +--a 'lahk'; she describes ten millions with one word--a 'crore'. + +In the bowels of the granite mountains she has patiently carved out +dozens of vast temples, and made them glorious with sculptured colonnades +and stately groups of statuary, and has adorned the eternal walls with +noble paintings. She has built fortresses of such magnitude that the +show-strongholds of the rest of the world are but modest little things by +comparison; palaces that are wonders for rarity of materials, delicacy +and beauty of workmanship, and for cost; and one tomb which men go around +the globe to see. It takes eighty nations, speaking eighty languages, to +people her, and they number three hundred millions. + +On top of all this she is the mother and home of that wonder of wonders +caste--and of that mystery of mysteries, the satanic brotherhood of the +Thugs. + +India had the start of the whole world in the beginning of things. She +had the first civilization; she had the first accumulation of material +wealth; she was populous with deep thinkers and subtle intellects; she +had mines, and woods, and a fruitful soil. It would seem as if she +should have kept the lead, and should be to-day not the meek dependent of +an alien master, but mistress of the world, and delivering law and +command to every tribe and nation in it. But, in truth, there was never +any possibility of such supremacy for her. If there had been but one +India and one language--but there were eighty of them! Where there are +eighty nations and several hundred governments, fighting and quarreling +must be the common business of life; unity of purpose and policy are +impossible; out of such elements supremacy in the world cannot come. +Even caste itself could have had the defeating effect of a multiplicity +of tongues, no doubt; for it separates a people into layers, and layers, +and still other layers, that have no community of feeling with each +other; and in such a condition of things as that, patriotism can have no +healthy growth. + +It was the division of the country into so many States and nations that +made Thuggee possible and prosperous. It is difficult to realize the +situation. But perhaps one may approximate it by imagining the States of +our Union peopled by separate nations, speaking separate languages, with +guards and custom-houses strung along all frontiers, plenty of +interruptions for travelers and traders, interpreters able to handle all +the languages very rare or non-existent, and a few wars always going on +here and there and yonder as a further embarrassment to commerce and +excursioning. It would make intercommunication in a measure ungeneral. +India had eighty languages, and more custom-houses than cats. No clever +man with the instinct of a highway robber could fail to notice what a +chance for business was here offered. India was full of clever men with +the highwayman instinct, and so, quite naturally, the brotherhood of the +Thugs came into being to meet the long-felt want. + +How long ago that was nobody knows-centuries, it is supposed. One of the +chiefest wonders connected with it was the success with which it kept its +secret. The English trader did business in India two hundred years and +more before he ever heard of it; and yet it was assassinating its +thousands all around him every year, the whole time. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV. + +The old saw says, "Let a sleeping dog lie." Right.... Still, when there +is much at stake it is better to get a newspaper to do it. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +FROM DIARY: + +January 28. I learned of an official Thug-book the other day. I was +not aware before that there was such a thing. I am allowed the temporary +use of it. We are making preparations for travel. Mainly the +preparations are purchases of bedding. This is to be used in sleeping +berths in the trains; in private houses sometimes; and in nine-tenths of +the hotels. It is not realizable; and yet it is true. It is a survival; +an apparently unnecessary thing which in some strange way has outlived +the conditions which once made it necessary. It comes down from a time +when the railway and the hotel did not exist; when the occasional white +traveler went horseback or by bullock-cart, and stopped over night in the +small dak-bungalow provided at easy distances by the government--a +shelter, merely, and nothing more. He had to carry bedding along, or do +without. The dwellings of the English residents are spacious and +comfortable and commodiously furnished, and surely it must be an odd +sight to see half a dozen guests come filing into such a place and +dumping blankets and pillows here and there and everywhere. But custom +makes incongruous things congruous. + +One buys the bedding, with waterproof hold-all for it at almost any shop +--there is no difficulty about it. + +January 30. What a spectacle the railway station was, at train-time! It +was a very large station, yet when we arrived it seemed as if the whole +world was present--half of it inside, the other half outside, and both +halves, bearing mountainous head-loads of bedding and other freight, +trying simultaneously to pass each other, in opposing floods, in one +narrow door. These opposing floods were patient, gentle, long-suffering +natives, with whites scattered among them at rare intervals; and wherever +a white man's native servant appeared, that native seemed to have put +aside his natural gentleness for the time and invested himself with the +white man's privilege of making a way for himself by promptly shoving all +intervening black things out of it. In these exhibitions of authority +Satan was scandalous. He was probably a Thug in one of his former +incarnations. + +Inside the great station, tides upon tides of rainbow-costumed natives +swept along, this way and that, in massed and bewildering confusion, +eager, anxious, belated, distressed; and washed up to the long trains and +flowed into them with their packs and bundles, and disappeared, followed +at once by the next wash, the next wave. And here and there, in the +midst of this hurly-burly, and seemingly undisturbed by it, sat great +groups of natives on the bare stone floor,--young, slender brown women, +old, gray wrinkled women, little soft brown babies, old men, young men, +boys; all poor people, but all the females among them, both big and +little, bejeweled with cheap and showy nose-rings, toe-rings, leglets, +and armlets, these things constituting all their wealth, no doubt. These +silent crowds sat there with their humble bundles and baskets and small +household gear about them, and patiently waited--for what? A train that +was to start at some time or other during the day or night! They hadn't +timed themselves well, but that was no matter--the thing had been so +ordered from on high, therefore why worry? There was plenty of time, +hours and hours of it, and the thing that was to happen would happen +--there was no hurrying it. + +The natives traveled third class, and at marvelously cheap rates. They +were packed and crammed into cars that held each about fifty; and it was +said that often a Brahmin of the highest caste was thus brought into +personal touch, and consequent defilement, with persons of the lowest +castes--no doubt a very shocking thing if a body could understand it and +properly appreciate it. Yes, a Brahmin who didn't own a rupee and +couldn't borrow one, might have to touch elbows with a rich hereditary +lord of inferior caste, inheritor of an ancient title a couple of yards +long, and he would just have to stand it; for if either of the two was +allowed to go in the cars where the sacred white people were, it probably +wouldn't be the august poor Brahmin. There was an immense string of +those third-class cars, for the natives travel by hordes; and a weary +hard night of it the occupants would have, no doubt. + +When we reached our car, Satan and Barney had already arrived there with +their train of porters carrying bedding and parasols and cigar boxes, and +were at work. We named him Barney for short; we couldn't use his real +name, there wasn't time. + +It was a car that promised comfort; indeed, luxury. Yet the cost of it +--well, economy could no further go; even in France; not even in Italy. It +was built of the plainest and cheapest partially-smoothed boards, with a +coating of dull paint on them, and there was nowhere a thought of +decoration. The floor was bare, but would not long remain so when the +dust should begin to fly. Across one end of the compartment ran a +netting for the accommodation of hand-baggage; at the other end was a +door which would shut, upon compulsion, but wouldn't stay shut; it opened +into a narrow little closet which had a wash-bowl in one end of it, and a +place to put a towel, in case you had one with you--and you would be sure +to have towels, because you buy them with the bedding, knowing that the +railway doesn't furnish them. On each side of the car, and running fore +and aft, was a broad leather-covered sofa to sit on in the day and sleep +on at night. Over each sofa hung, by straps, a wide, flat, +leather-covered shelf--to sleep on. In the daytime you can hitch it up +against the wall, out of the way--and then you have a big unencumbered +and most comfortable room to spread out in. No car in any country is +quite its equal for comfort (and privacy) I think. For usually there are +but two persons in it; and even when there are four there is but little +sense of impaired privacy. Our own cars at home can surpass the railway +world in all details but that one: they have no cosiness; there are too +many people together. + +At the foot of each sofa was a side-door, for entrance and exit. +Along the whole length of the sofa on each side of the car ran a row of +large single-plate windows, of a blue tint-blue to soften the bitter +glare of the sun and protect one's eyes from torture. These could be let +down out of the way when one wanted the breeze. In the roof were two oil +lamps which gave a light strong enough to read by; each had a green-cloth +attachment by which it could be covered when the light should be no +longer needed. + +While we talked outside with friends, Barney and Satan placed the +hand-baggage, books, fruits, and soda-bottles in the racks, and the +hold-alls and heavy baggage in the closet, hung the overcoats and +sun-helmets and towels on the hooks, hoisted the two bed-shelves up out +of the way, then shouldered their bedding and retired to the third class. + +Now then, you see what a handsome, spacious, light, airy, homelike place +it was, wherein to walk up and down, or sit and write, or stretch out and +read and smoke. A central door in the forward end of the compartment +opened into a similar compartment. It was occupied by my wife and +daughter. About nine in the evening, while we halted a while at a +station, Barney and Satan came and undid the clumsy big hold-alls, and +spread the bedding on the sofas in both compartments--mattresses, sheets, +gay coverlets, pillows, all complete; there are no chambermaids in India +--apparently it was an office that was never heard of. Then they +closed the communicating door, nimbly tidied up our place, put the +night-clothing on the beds and the slippers under them, then returned +to their own quarters. + +January 31. It was novel and pleasant, and I stayed awake as long as I +could, to enjoy it, and to read about those strange people the Thugs. In +my sleep they remained with me, and tried to strangle me. The leader of +the gang was that giant Hindoo who was such a picture in the strong light +when we were leaving those Hindoo betrothal festivities at two o'clock in +the morning--Rao Bahadur Baskirao Balinkanje Pitale, Vakeel to the +Gaikwar of Baroda. It was he that brought me the invitation from his +master to go to Baroda and lecture to that prince--and now he was +misbehaving in my dreams. But all things can happen in dreams. It is +indeed as the Sweet Singer of Michigan says--irrelevantly, of course, for +the one and unfailing great quality which distinguishes her poetry from +Shakespeare's and makes it precious to us is its stern and simple +irrelevancy: + + My heart was gay and happy, + This was ever in my mind, + There is better times a coming, + And I hope some day to find + Myself capable of composing, + It was my heart's delight + To compose on a sentimental subject + If it came in my mind just right. + +--["The Sentimental Song Book," p. 49; theme, "The Author's Early Life," +19th stanza.] + + +Barroda. Arrived at 7 this morning. The dawn was just beginning to +show. It was forlorn to have to turn out in a strange place at such a +time, and the blinking lights in the station made it seem night still. +But the gentlemen who had come to receive us were there with their +servants, and they make quick work; there was no lost time. We were soon +outside and moving swiftly through the soft gray light, and presently +were comfortably housed--with more servants to help than we were used to, +and with rather embarassingly important officials to direct them. But it +was custom; they spoke Ballarat English, their bearing was charming and +hospitable, and so all went well. + +Breakfast was a satisfaction. Across the lawns was visible in the +distance through the open window an Indian well, with two oxen tramping +leisurely up and down long inclines, drawing water; and out of the +stillness came the suffering screech of the machinery--not quite musical, +and yet soothingly melancholy and dreamy and reposeful--a wail of lost +spirits, one might imagine. And commemorative and reminiscent, perhaps; +for of course the Thugs used to throw people down that well when they +were done with them. + +After breakfast the day began, a sufficiently busy one. We were driven +by winding roads through a vast park, with noble forests of great trees, +and with tangles and jungles of lovely growths of a humbler sort; and at +one place three large gray apes came out and pranced across the road--a +good deal of a surprise and an unpleasant one, for such creatures belong +in the menagerie, and they look artificial and out of place in a +wilderness. + +We came to the city, by and by, and drove all through it. Intensely +Indian, it was, and crumbly, and mouldering, and immemorially old, to all +appearance. And the houses--oh, indescribably quaint and curious they +were, with their fronts an elaborate lace-work of intricate and beautiful +wood-carving, and now and then further adorned with rude pictures of +elephants and princes and gods done in shouting colors; and all the +ground floors along these cramped and narrow lanes occupied as shops +--shops unbelievably small and impossibly packed with merchantable rubbish, +and with nine-tenths-naked natives squatting at their work of hammering, +pounding, brazing, soldering, sewing, designing, cooking, measuring out +grain, grinding it, repairing idols--and then the swarm of ragged and +noisy humanity under the horses' feet and everywhere, and the pervading +reek and fume and smell! It was all wonderful and delightful. + +Imagine a file of elephants marching through such a crevice of a street +and scraping the paint off both sides of it with their hides. How big +they must look, and how little they must make the houses look; and when +the elephants are in their glittering court costume, what a contrast they +must make with the humble and sordid surroundings. And when a mad +elephant goes raging through, belting right and left with his trunk, how +do these swarms of people get out of the way? I suppose it is a thing +which happens now and then in the mad season (for elephants have a mad +season). + +I wonder how old the town is. There are patches of building--massive +structures, monuments, apparently--that are so battered and worn, and +seemingly so tired and so burdened with the weight of age, and so dulled +and stupefied with trying to remember things they forgot before history +began, that they give one the feeling that they must have been a part of +original Creation. This is indeed one of the oldest of the princedoms of +India, and has always been celebrated for its barbaric pomps and +splendors, and for the wealth of its princes. + + + + +CHAPTER XLV. + +It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the +heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Out of the town again; a long drive through open country, by winding +roads among secluded villages nestling in the inviting shade of tropic +vegetation, a Sabbath stillness everywhere, sometimes a pervading sense +of solitude, but always barefoot natives gliding by like spirits, without +sound of footfall, and others in the distance dissolving away and +vanishing like the creatures of dreams. Now and then a string of stately +camels passed by--always interesting things to look at--and they were +velvet-shod by nature, and made no noise. Indeed, there were no noises +of any sort in this paradise. Yes, once there was one, for a moment: a +file of native convicts passed along in charge of an officer, and we +caught the soft clink of their chains. In a retired spot, resting +himself under a tree, was a holy person--a naked black fakeer, thin and +skinny, and whitey-gray all over with ashes. + +By and by to the elephant stables, and I took a ride; but it was by +request--I did not ask for it, and didn't want it; but I took it, because +otherwise they would have thought I was afraid, which I was. The +elephant kneels down, by command--one end of him at a time--and you climb +the ladder and get into the howdah, and then he gets up, one end at a +time, just as a ship gets up over a wave; and after that, as he strides +monstrously about, his motion is much like a ship's motion. The mahout +bores into the back of his head with a great iron prod and you wonder at +his temerity and at the elephant's patience, and you think that perhaps +the patience will not last; but it does, and nothing happens. The mahout +talks to the elephant in a low voice all the time, and the elephant seems +to understand it all and to be pleased with it; and he obeys every order +in the most contented and docile way. Among these twenty-five elephants +were two which were larger than any I had ever seen before, and if I had +thought I could learn to not be afraid, I would have taken one of them +while the police were not looking. + +In the howdah-house there were many howdahs that were made of silver, one +of gold, and one of old ivory, and equipped with cushions and canopies of +rich and costly stuffs. The wardrobe of the elephants was there, too; +vast velvet covers stiff and heavy with gold embroidery; and bells of +silver and gold; and ropes of these metals for fastening the things on +harness, so to speak; and monster hoops of massive gold for the elephant +to wear on his ankles when he is out in procession on business of state. + +But we did not see the treasury of crown jewels, and that was a +disappointment, for in mass and richness it ranks only second in India. +By mistake we were taken to see the new palace instead, and we used up +the last remnant of our spare time there. It was a pity, too; for the +new palace is mixed modern American-European, and has not a merit except +costliness. It is wholly foreign to India, and impudent and out of +place. The architect has escaped. This comes of overdoing the +suppression of the Thugs; they had their merits. The old palace is +oriental and charming, and in consonance with the country. The old +palace would still be great if there were nothing of it but the spacious +and lofty hall where the durbars are held. It is not a good place to +lecture in, on account of the echoes, but it is a good place to hold +durbars in and regulate the affairs of a kingdom, and that is what it is +for. If I had it I would have a durbar every day, instead of once or +twice a year. + +The prince is an educated gentleman. His culture is European. He has +been in Europe five times. People say that this is costly amusement for +him, since in crossing the sea he must sometimes be obliged to drink +water from vessels that are more or less public, and thus damage his +caste. To get it purified again he must make pilgrimage to some renowned +Hindoo temples and contribute a fortune or two to them. His people are +like the other Hindoos, profoundly religious; and they could not be +content with a master who was impure. + +We failed to see the jewels, but we saw the gold cannon and the silver +one--they seemed to be six-pounders. They were not designed for +business, but for salutes upon rare and particularly important state +occasions. An ancestor of the present Gaikwar had the silver one made, +and a subsequent ancestor had the gold one made, in order to outdo him. + +This sort of artillery is in keeping with the traditions of Baroda, which +was of old famous for style and show. It used to entertain visiting +rajahs and viceroys with tiger-fights, elephant-fights, illuminations, +and elephant-processions of the most glittering and gorgeous character. + +It makes the circus a pale, poor thing. + +In the train, during a part of the return journey from Baroda, we had the +company of a gentleman who had with him a remarkable looking dog. I had +not seen one of its kind before, as far as I could remember; though of +course I might have seen one and not noticed it, for I am not acquainted +with dogs, but only with cats. This dog's coat was smooth and shiny and +black, and I think it had tan trimmings around the edges of the dog, and +perhaps underneath. It was a long, low dog, with very short, strange +legs--legs that curved inboard, something like parentheses wrong way (. +Indeed, it was made on the plan of a bench for length and lowness. It +seemed to be satisfied, but I thought the plan poor, and structurally +weak, on account of the distance between the forward supports and those +abaft. With age the dog's back was likely to sag; and it seemed to me +that it would have been a stronger and more practicable dog if it had had +some more legs. It had not begun to sag yet, but the shape of the legs +showed that the undue weight imposed upon them was beginning to tell. +It had a long nose, and floppy ears that hung down, and a resigned +expression of countenance. I did not like to ask what kind of a dog it +was, or how it came to be deformed, for it was plain that the gentleman +was very fond of it, and naturally he could be sensitive about it. From +delicacy I thought it best not to seem to notice it too much. No doubt a +man with a dog like that feels just as a person does who has a child that +is out of true. The gentleman was not merely fond of the dog, he was +also proud of it--just the same again, as a mother feels about her +child when it is an idiot. I could see that he was proud of it, +not-withstanding it was such a long dog and looked so resigned and pious. +It had been all over the world with him, and had been pilgriming like +that for years and years. It had traveled 50,000 miles by sea and rail, +and had ridden in front of him on his horse 8,000. It had a silver medal +from the Geographical Society of Great Britain for its travels, and I saw +it. It had won prizes in dog shows, both in India and in England--I saw +them. He said its pedigree was on record in the Kennel Club, and that it +was a well-known dog. He said a great many people in London could +recognize it the moment they saw it. I did not say anything, but I did +not think it anything strange; I should know that dog again, myself, yet +I am not careful about noticing dogs. He said that when he walked along +in London, people often stopped and looked at the dog. Of course I did +not say anything, for I did not want to hurt his feelings, but I could +have explained to him that if you take a great long low dog like that and +waddle it along the street anywhere in the world and not charge anything, +people will stop and look. He was gratified because the dog took prizes. +But that was nothing; if I were built like that I could take prizes +myself. I wished I knew what kind of a dog it was, and what it was for, +but I could not very well ask, for that would show that I did not know. +Not that I want a dog like that, but only to know the secret of its +birth. + +I think he was going to hunt elephants with it, because I know, from +remarks dropped by him, that he has hunted large game in India and +Africa, and likes it. But I think that if he tries to hunt elephants +with it, he is going to be disappointed. + +I do not believe that it is suited for elephants. It lacks energy, it +lacks force of character, it lacks bitterness. These things all show in +the meekness and resignation of its expression. It would not attack an +elephant, I am sure of it. It might not run if it saw one coming, but it +looked to me like a dog that would sit down and pray. + +I wish he had told me what breed it was, if there are others; but I shall +know the dog next time, and then if I can bring myself to it I will put +delicacy aside and ask. If I seem strangely interested in dogs, I have a +reason for it; for a dog saved me from an embarrassing position once, and +that has made me grateful to these animals; and if by study I could learn +to tell some of the kinds from the others, I should be greatly pleased. +I only know one kind apart, yet, and that is the kind that saved me that +time. I always know that kind when I meet it, and if it is hungry or +lost I take care of it. The matter happened in this way + +It was years and years ago. I had received a note from Mr. Augustin Daly +of the Fifth Avenue Theatre, asking me to call the next time I should be +in New York. I was writing plays, in those days, and he was admiring +them and trying to get me a chance to get them played in Siberia. I took +the first train--the early one--the one that leaves Hartford at 8.29 in +the morning. At New Haven I bought a paper, and found it filled with +glaring display-lines about a "bench-show" there. I had often heard of +bench-shows, but had never felt any interest in them, because I supposed +they were lectures that were not well attended. It turned out, now, that +it was not that, but a dog-show. There was a double-leaded column about +the king-feature of this one, which was called a Saint Bernard, and was +worth $10,000, and was known to be the largest and finest of his species +in the world. I read all this with interest, because out of my +school-boy readings I dimly remembered how the priests and pilgrims of +St. Bernard used to go out in the storms and dig these dogs out of the +snowdrifts when lost and exhausted, and give them brandy and save their +lives, and drag them to the monastery and restore them with gruel. + +Also, there was a picture of this prize-dog in the paper, a noble great +creature with a benignant countenance, standing by a table. He was +placed in that way so that one could get a right idea of his great +dimensions. You could see that he was just a shade higher than the +table--indeed, a huge fellow for a dog. Then there was a description +which event into the details. It gave his enormous weight--150 1/2 +pounds, and his length 4 feet 2 inches, from stem to stern-post; and his +height--3 feet 1 inch, to the top of his back. The pictures and the +figures so impressed me, that I could see the beautiful colossus before +me, and I kept on thinking about him for the next two hours; then I +reached New York, and he dropped out of my mind. + +In the swirl and tumult of the hotel lobby I ran across Mr. Daly's +comedian, the late James Lewis, of beloved memory, and I casually +mentioned that I was going to call upon Mr. Daly in the evening at 8. +He looked surprised, and said he reckoned not. For answer I handed him +Mr. Daly's note. Its substance was: "Come to my private den, over the +theater, where we cannot be interrupted. And come by the back way, not +the front. No. 642 Sixth Avenue is a cigar shop; pass through it and you +are in a paved court, with high buildings all around; enter the second +door on the left, and come up stairs." + +"Is this all?" + +"Yes," I said. + +"Well, you'll never get in" + +"Why?" + +"Because you won't. Or if you do you can draw on me for a hundred +dollars; for you will be the first man that has accomplished it in +twenty-five years. I can't think what Mr. Daly can have been absorbed +in. He has forgotten a most important detail, and he will feel +humiliated in the morning when he finds that you tried to get in and +couldn't." + +"Why, what is the trouble?" + +"I'll tell you. You see----" + +At that point we were swept apart by the crowd, somebody detained me with +a moment's talk, and we did not get together again. But it did not +matter; I believed he was joking, anyway. + +At eight in the evening I passed through the cigar shop and into the +court and knocked at the second door. + +"Come in!" + +I entered. It was a small room, carpetless, dusty, with a naked deal +table, and two cheap wooden chairs for furniture. A giant Irishman was +standing there, with shirt collar and vest unbuttoned, and no coat on. I +put my hat on the table, and was about to say something, when the +Irishman took the innings himself. And not with marked courtesy of tone: + +"Well, sor, what will you have?" + +I was a little disconcerted, and my easy confidence suffered a shrinkage. +The man stood as motionless as Gibraltar, and kept his unblinking eye +upon me. It was very embarrassing, very humiliating. I stammered at a +false start or two; then---- + +"I have just run down from----" + +"Av ye plaze, ye'll not smoke here, ye understand." + +I laid my cigar on the window-ledge; chased my flighty thoughts a moment, +then said in a placating manner: + +"I--I have come to see Mr. Daly." + +"Oh, ye have, have ye?" + +"Yes" + +"Well, ye'll not see him." + +"But he asked me to come." + +"Oh, he did, did he?" + +"Yes, he sent me this note, and----" + +"Lemme see it." + +For a moment I fancied there would be a change in the atmosphere, now; +but this idea was premature. The big man was examining the note +searchingly under the gas-jet. A glance showed me that he had it upside +down--disheartening evidence that he could not read. + +"Is ut his own handwrite?" + +"Yes--he wrote it himself." + +"He did, did he?" + +"Yes." + +"H'm. Well, then, why ud he write it like that?" + +"How do you mean?" + +"I mane, why wudn't he put his naime to ut?" + +"His name is to it. That's not it--you are looking at my name." + +I thought that that was a home shot, but he did not betray that he had +been hit. He said: + +"It's not an aisy one to spell; how do you pronounce ut?" + +"Mark Twain." + +"H'm. H'm. Mike Train. H'm. I don't remember ut. What is it ye want +to see him about?" + +"It isn't I that want to see him, he wants to see me." + +"Oh, he does, does he?" + +"Yes." + +"What does he want to see ye about?" + +"I don't know." + +"Ye don't know! And ye confess it, becod! Well, I can tell ye wan +thing--ye'll not see him. Are ye in the business?" + +"What business?" + +"The show business." + +A fatal question. I recognized that I was defeated. If I answered no, +he would cut the matter short and wave me to the door without the grace +of a word--I saw it in his uncompromising eye; if I said I was a +lecturer, he would despise me, and dismiss me with opprobrious words; if +I said I was a dramatist, he would throw me out of the window. I saw +that my case was hopeless, so I chose the course which seemed least +humiliating: I would pocket my shame and glide out without answering. +The silence was growing lengthy. + +"I'll ask ye again. Are ye in the show business yerself?" + +"Yes!" + +I said it with splendid confidence; for in that moment the very twin of +that grand New Haven dog loafed into the room, and I saw that Irishman's +eye light eloquently with pride and affection. + +"Ye are? And what is it?" + +"I've got a bench-show in New Haven." + +The weather did change then. + +"You don't say, sir! And that's your show, sir! Oh, it's a grand show, +it's a wonderful show, sir, and a proud man I am to see your honor this +day. And ye'll be an expert, sir, and ye'll know all about dogs--more +than ever they know theirselves, I'll take me oath to ut." + +I said, with modesty: + +"I believe I have some reputation that way. In fact, my business +requires it." + +"Ye have some reputation, your honor! Bedad I believe you! There's not +a jintleman in the worrld that can lay over ye in the judgmint of a dog, +sir. Now I'll vinture that your honor'll know that dog's dimensions +there better than he knows them his own self, and just by the casting of +your educated eye upon him. Would you mind giving a guess, if ye'll be +so good?" + +I knew that upon my answer would depend my fate. If I made this dog +bigger than the prize-dog, it would be bad diplomacy, and suspicious; if +I fell too far short of the prizedog, that would be equally damaging. +The dog was standing by the table, and I believed I knew the difference +between him and the one whose picture I had seen in the newspaper to a +shade. I spoke promptly up and said: + +"It's no trouble to guess this noble creature's figures height, three +feet; length, four feet and three-quarters of an inch; weight, a hundred +and forty-eight and a quarter." + +The man snatched his hat from its peg and danced on it with joy, +shouting: + +"Ye've hardly missed it the hair's breadth, hardly the shade of a shade, +your honor! Oh, it's the miraculous eye ye've got, for the judgmint of a +dog!" + +And still pouring out his admiration of my capacities, he snatched off +his vest and scoured off one of the wooden chairs with it, and scrubbed +it and polished it, and said: + +"There, sit down, your honor, I'm ashamed of meself that I forgot ye were +standing all this time; and do put on your hat, ye mustn't take cold, +it's a drafty place; and here is your cigar, sir, a getting cold, I'll +give ye a light. There. The place is all yours, sir, and if ye'll just +put your feet on the table and make yourself at home, I'll stir around +and get a candle and light ye up the ould crazy stairs and see that ye +don't come to anny harm, for be this time Mr. Daly'll be that impatient +to see your honor that he'll be taking the roof off." + +He conducted me cautiously and tenderly up the stairs, lighting the way +and protecting me with friendly warnings, then pushed the door open and +bowed me in and went his way, mumbling hearty things about my wonderful +eye for points of a dog. Mr. Daly was writing and had his back to me. +He glanced over his shoulder presently, then jumped up and said-- + +"Oh, dear me, I forgot all about giving instructions. I was just writing +you to beg a thousand pardons. But how is it you are here? How did you +get by that Irishman? You are the first man that's done it in five and +twenty years. You didn't bribe him, I know that; there's not money +enough in New York to do it. And you didn't persuade him; he is all ice +and iron: there isn't a soft place nor a warm one in him anywhere. That +is your secret? Look here; you owe me a hundred dollars for +unintentionally giving you a chance to perform a miracle--for it is a +miracle that you've done." + +"That is all right," I said, "collect it of Jimmy Lewis." + +That good dog not only did me that good turn in the time of my need, but +he won for me the envious reputation among all the theatrical people from +the Atlantic to the Pacific of being the only man in history who had ever +run the blockade of Augustin Daly's back door. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI. + +If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, +who would escape hanging. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +On the Train. Fifty years ago, when I was a boy in the then remote and +sparsely peopled Mississippi valley, vague tales and rumors of a +mysterious body of professional murderers came wandering in from a +country which was constructively as far from us as the constellations +blinking in space--India; vague tales and rumors of a sect called Thugs, +who waylaid travelers in lonely places and killed them for the +contentment of a god whom they worshiped; tales which everybody liked to +listen to and nobody believed, except with reservations. It was +considered that the stories had gathered bulk on their travels. The +matter died down and a lull followed. Then Eugene Sue's "Wandering Jew" +appeared, and made great talk for a while. One character in it was a +chief of Thugs--"Feringhea"--a mysterious and terrible Indian who was as +slippery and sly as a serpent, and as deadly; and he stirred up the Thug +interest once more. But it did not last. It presently died again this +time to stay dead. + +At first glance it seems strange that this should have happened; but +really it was not strange--on the contrary,. it was natural; I mean on +our side of the water. For the source whence the Thug tales mainly came +was a Government Report, and without doubt was not republished in +America; it was probably never even seen there. Government Reports have +no general circulation. They are distributed to the few, and are not +always read by those few. I heard of this Report for the first time a +day or two ago, and borrowed it. It is full of fascinations; and it +turns those dim, dark fairy tales of my boyhood days into realities. + +The Report was made in 1889 by Major Sleeman, of the Indian Service, and +was printed in Calcutta in 1840. It is a clumsy, great, fat, poor sample +of the printer's art, but good enough for a government printing-office in +that old day and in that remote region, perhaps. To Major Sleeman was +given the general superintendence of the giant task of ridding India of +Thuggee, and he and his seventeen assistants accomplished it. It was the +Augean Stables over again. Captain Vallancey, writing in a Madras +journal in those old times, makes this remark: + + "The day that sees this far-spread evil eradicated from India and + known only in name, will greatly tend to immortalize British rule in + the East." + +He did not overestimate the magnitude and difficulty of the work, nor the +immensity of the credit which would justly be due to British rule in case +it was accomplished. + +Thuggee became known to the British authorities in India about 1810, but +its wide prevalence was not suspected; it was not regarded as a serious +matter, and no systematic measures were taken for its suppression until +about 1830. About that time Major Sleeman captured Eugene Sue's +Thug-chief, "Feringhea," and got him to turn King's evidence. The +revelations were so stupefying that Sleeman was not able to believe them. +Sleeman thought he knew every criminal within his jurisdiction, and that +the worst of them were merely thieves; but Feringhea told him that he was +in reality living in the midst of a swarm of professional murderers; that +they had been all about him for many years, and that they buried their +dead close by. These seemed insane tales; but Feringhea said come and +see--and he took him to a grave and dug up a hundred bodies, and told him +all the circumstances of the killings, and named the Thugs who had done +the work. It was a staggering business. Sleeman captured some of these +Thugs and proceeded to examine them separately, and with proper +precautions against collusion; for he would not believe any Indian's +unsupported word. The evidence gathered proved the truth of what +Feringhea had said, and also revealed the fact that gangs of Thugs were +plying their trade all over India. The astonished government now took +hold of Thuggee, and for ten years made systematic and relentless war +upon it, and finally destroyed it. Gang after gang was captured, tried, +and punished. The Thugs were harried and hunted from one end of India to +the other. The government got all their secrets out of them; and also +got the names of the members of the bands, and recorded them in a book, +together with their birthplaces and places of residence. + +The Thugs were worshipers of Bhowanee; and to this god they sacrificed +anybody that came handy; but they kept the dead man's things themselves, +for the god cared for nothing but the corpse. Men were initiated into +the sect with solemn ceremonies. Then they were taught how to strangle a +person with the sacred choke-cloth, but were not allowed to perform +officially with it until after long practice. No half-educated strangler +could choke a man to death quickly enough to keep him from uttering a +sound--a muffled scream, gurgle, gasp, moan, or something of the sort; +but the expert's work was instantaneous: the cloth was whipped around the +victim's neck, there was a sudden twist, and the head fell silently +forward, the eyes starting from the sockets; and all was over. The Thug +carefully guarded against resistance. It was usual to to get the victims +to sit down, for that was the handiest position for business. + +If the Thug had planned India itself it could not have been more +conveniently arranged for the needs of his occupation. + +There were no public conveyances. There were no conveyances for hire. +The traveler went on foot or in a bullock cart or on a horse which he +bought for the purpose. As soon as he was out of his own little State or +principality he was among strangers; nobody knew him, nobody took note of +him, and from that time his movements could no longer be traced. He did +not stop in towns or villages, but camped outside of them and sent his +servants in to buy provisions. There were no habitations between +villages. Whenever he was between villages he was an easy prey, +particularly as he usually traveled by night, to avoid the heat. He was +always being overtaken by strangers who offered him the protection of +their company, or asked for the protection of his--and these strangers +were often Thugs, as he presently found out to his cost. The +landholders, the native police, the petty princes, the village officials, +the customs officers were in many cases protectors and harborers of the +Thugs, and betrayed travelers to them for a share of the spoil. At first +this condition of things made it next to impossible for the government to +catch the marauders; they were spirited away by these watchful friends. +All through a vast continent, thus infested, helpless people of every +caste and kind moved along the paths and trails in couples and groups +silently by night, carrying the commerce of the country--treasure, +jewels, money, and petty batches of silks, spices, and all manner of +wares. It was a paradise for the Thug. + +When the autumn opened, the Thugs began to gather together by +pre-concert. Other people had to have interpreters at every turn, but +not the Thugs; they could talk together, no matter how far apart they +were born, for they had a language of their own, and they had secret +signs by which they knew each other for Thugs; and they were always +friends. Even their diversities of religion and caste were sunk in +devotion to their calling, and the Moslem and the high-caste and +low-caste Hindoo were staunch and affectionate brothers in Thuggery. + +When a gang had been assembled, they had religious worship, and waited +for an omen. They had definite notions about the omens. The cries of +certain animals were good omens, the cries of certain other creatures +were bad omens. A bad omen would stop proceedings and send the men home. + +The sword and the strangling-cloth were sacred emblems. The Thugs +worshiped the sword at home before going out to the assembling-place; the +strangling-cloth was worshiped at the place of assembly. The chiefs of +most of the bands performed the religious ceremonies themselves; but the +Kaets delegated them to certain official stranglers (Chaurs). The rites +of the Kaets were so holy that no one but the Chaur was allowed to touch +the vessels and other things used in them. + +Thug methods exhibit a curious mixture of caution and the absence of it; +cold business calculation and sudden, unreflecting impulse; but there +were two details which were constant, and not subject to caprice: patient +persistence in following up the prey, and pitilessness when the time came +to act. + +Caution was exhibited in the strength of the bands. They never felt +comfortable and confident unless their strength exceeded that of any +party of travelers they were likely to meet by four or fivefold. Yet it +was never their purpose to attack openly, but only when the victims were +off their guard. When they got hold of a party of travelers they often +moved along in their company several days, using all manner of arts to +win their friendship and get their confidence. At last, when this was +accomplished to their satisfaction, the real business began. A few Thugs +were privately detached and sent forward in the dark to select a good +killing-place and dig the graves. When the rest reached the spot a halt +was called, for a rest or a smoke. The travelers were invited to sit. +By signs, the chief appointed certain Thugs to sit down in front of the +travelers as if to wait upon them, others to sit down beside them and +engage them in conversation, and certain expert stranglers to stand +behind the travelers and be ready when the signal was given. The signal +was usually some commonplace remark, like "Bring the tobacco." Sometimes +a considerable wait ensued after all the actors were in their places--the +chief was biding his time, in order to make everything sure. Meantime, +the talk droned on, dim figures moved about in the dull light, peace and +tranquility reigned, the travelers resigned themselves to the pleasant +reposefulness and comfort of the situation, unconscious of the +death-angels standing motionless at their backs. The time was ripe, now, +and the signal came: "Bring the tobacco." There was a mute swift +movement, all in the same instant the men at each victim's sides seized +his hands, the man in front seized his feet, and pulled, the man at his +back whipped the cloth around his neck and gave it a twist the head sunk +forward, the tragedy was over. The bodies were stripped and covered up +in the graves, the spoil packed for transportation, then the Thugs gave +pious thanks to Bhowanee, and departed on further holy service. + +The Report shows that the travelers moved in exceedingly small groups +--twos, threes, fours, as a rule; a party with a dozen in it was rare. The +Thugs themselves seem to have been the only people who moved in force. +They went about in gangs of 10, 15, 25, 40, 60, 100, 150, 200, 250, and +one gang of 310 is mentioned. Considering their numbers, their catch was +not extraordinary--particularly when you consider that they were not in +the least fastidious, but took anybody they could get, whether rich or +poor, and sometimes even killed children. Now and then they killed +women, but it was considered sinful to do it, and unlucky. The "season" +was six or eight months long. One season the half dozen Bundelkand and +Gwalior gangs aggregated 712 men, and they murdered 210 people. One +season the Malwa and Kandeish gangs aggregated 702 men, and they murdered +232. One season the Kandeish and Berar gangs aggregated 963 men, and +they murdered 385 people. + +Here is the tally-sheet of a gang of sixty Thugs for a whole season--gang +under two noted chiefs, "Chotee and Sheik Nungoo from Gwalior": + + "Left Poora, in Jhansee, and on arrival at Sarora murdered a + traveler. + + "On nearly reaching Bhopal, met 3 Brahmins, and murdered them. + + "Cross the Nerbudda; at a village called Hutteea, murdered a Hindoo. + + "Went through Aurungabad to Walagow; there met a Havildar of the + barber caste and 5 sepoys (native soldiers); in the evening came to + Jokur, and in the morning killed them near the place where the + treasure-bearers were killed the year before. + + "Between Jokur and Dholeea met a sepoy of the shepherd caste; killed + him in the jungle. + + "Passed through Dholeea and lodged in a village; two miles beyond, + on the road to Indore, met a Byragee (beggar-holy mendicant); + murdered him at the Thapa. + + "In the morning, beyond the Thapa, fell in with 3 Marwarie + travelers; murdered them. + + "Near a village on the banks of the Taptee met 4 travelers and + killed them. + + "Between Choupra and Dhoreea met a Marwarie; murdered him. + + "At Dhoreea met 3 Marwaries; took them two miles and murdered them. + + "Two miles further on, overtaken by three treasure-bearers; took + them two miles and murdered them in the jungle. + + "Came on to Khurgore Bateesa in Indore, divided spoil, and + dispersed. + + "A total of 27 men murdered on one expedition." + +Chotee (to save his neck) was informer, and furnished these facts. +Several things are noticeable about his resume. 1. Business brevity; +2, absence of emotion; 3, smallness of the parties encountered by the 60; +4, variety in character and quality of the game captured; 5, Hindoo and +Mohammedan chiefs in business together for Bhowanee; 6, the sacred caste +of the Brahmins not respected by either; 7, nor yet the character of that +mendicant, that Byragee. + +A beggar is a holy creature, and some of the gangs spared him on that +account, no matter how slack business might be; but other gangs +slaughtered not only him, but even that sacredest of sacred creatures, +the fakeer--that repulsive skin-and-bone thing that goes around naked and +mats his bushy hair with dust and dirt, and so beflours his lean body +with ashes that he looks like a specter. Sometimes a fakeer trusted a +shade too far in the protection of his sacredness. In the middle of a +tally-sheet of Feringhea's, who had been out with forty Thugs, I find a +case of the kind. After the killing of thirty-nine men and one woman, +the fakeer appears on the scene: + + "Approaching Doregow, met 3 pundits; also a fakeer, mounted on a + pony; he was plastered over with sugar to collect flies, and was + covered with them. Drove off the fakeer, and killed the other + three. + + "Leaving Doregow, the fakeer joined again, and went on in company to + Raojana; met 6 Khutries on their way from Bombay to Nagpore. Drove + off the fakeer with stones, and killed the 6 men in camp, and buried + them in the grove. + + "Next day the fakeer joined again; made him leave at Mana. Beyond + there, fell in with two Kahars and a sepoy, and came on towards the + place selected for the murder. When near it, the fakeer came again. + Losing all patience with him, gave Mithoo, one of the gang, 5 rupees + ($2.50) to murder him, and take the sin upon himself. All four were + strangled, including the fakeer. Surprised to find among the + fakeer's effects 30 pounds of coral, 350 strings of small pearls, 15 + strings of large pearls, and a gilt necklace." + +It it curious, the little effect that time has upon a really interesting +circumstance. This one, so old, so long ago gone down into oblivion, +reads with the same freshness and charm that attach to the news in the +morning paper; one's spirits go up, then down, then up again, following +the chances which the fakeer is running; now you hope, now you despair, +now you hope again; and at last everything comes out right, and you feel +a great wave of personal satisfaction go weltering through you, and +without thinking, you put out your hand to pat Mithoo on the back, when +--puff! the whole thing has vanished away, there is nothing there; Mithoo +and all the crowd have been dust and ashes and forgotten, oh, so many, +many, many lagging years! And then comes a sense of injury: you don't +know whether Mithoo got the swag, along with the sin, or had to divide up +the swag and keep all the sin himself. There is no literary art about a +government report. It stops a story right in the most interesting place. + +These reports of Thug expeditions run along interminably in one +monotonous tune: "Met a sepoy--killed him; met 5 pundits--killed them; +met 4 Rajpoots and a woman--killed them"--and so on, till the statistics +get to be pretty dry. But this small trip of Feringhea's Forty had some +little variety about it. Once they came across a man hiding in a grave +--a thief; he had stolen 1,100 rupees from Dhunroj Seith of Parowtee. +They strangled him and took the money. They had no patience with thieves. +They killed two treasure-bearers, and got 4,000 rupees. They came across +two bullocks "laden with copper pice," and killed the four drivers and +took the money. There must have been half a ton of it. I think it takes +a double handful of pice to make an anna, and 16 annas to make a rupee; +and even in those days the rupee was worth only half a dollar. Coming +back over their tracks from Baroda, they had another picturesque stroke +of luck: "'The Lohars of Oodeypore' put a traveler in their charge for +safety." Dear, dear, across this abyssmal gulf of time we still see +Feringhea's lips uncover his teeth, and through the dim haze we catch the +incandescent glimmer of his smile. He accepted that trust, good man; and +so we know what went with the traveler. + +Even Rajahs had no terrors for Feringhea; he came across an +elephant-driver belonging to the Rajah of Oodeypore and promptly +strangled him. + +"A total of 100 men and 5 women murdered on this expedition." + +Among the reports of expeditions we find mention of victims of almost +every quality and estate. + +Also a prince's cook; and even the water-carrier of that sublime lord of +lords and king of kings, the Governor-General of India! How broad they +were in their tastes! They also murdered actors--poor wandering +barnstormers. There are two instances recorded; the first one by a gang +of Thugs under a chief who soils a great name borne by a better man +--Kipling's deathless "Gungadin": + + "After murdering 4 sepoys, going on toward Indore, met 4 strolling + players, and persuaded them to come with us, on the pretense that we + would see their performance at the next stage. Murdered them at a + temple near Bhopal." + +Second instance: + + "At Deohuttee, joined by comedians. Murdered them eastward of that + place." + +But this gang was a particularly bad crew. On that expedition they +murdered a fakeer and twelve beggars. And yet Bhowanee protected them; +for once when they were strangling a man in a wood when a crowd was going +by close at hand and the noose slipped and the man screamed, Bhowanee +made a camel burst out at the same moment with a roar that drowned the +scream; and before the man could repeat it the breath was choked out of +his body. + +The cow is so sacred in India that to kill her keeper is an awful +sacrilege, and even the Thugs recognized this; yet now and then the lust +for blood was too strong, and so they did kill a few cow-keepers. In one +of these instances the witness who killed the cowherd said, "In Thuggee +this is strictly forbidden, and is an act from which no good can come. I +was ill of a fever for ten days afterward. I do believe that evil will +follow the murder of a man with a cow. If there be no cow it does not +signify." Another Thug said he held the cowherd's feet while this +witness did the strangling. He felt no concern, "because the bad fortune +of such a deed is upon the strangler and not upon the assistants; even if +there should be a hundred of them." + +There were thousands of Thugs roving over India constantly, during many +generations. They made Thug gee a hereditary vocation and taught it to +their sons and to their son's sons. Boys were in full membership as +early as 16 years of age; veterans were still at work at 70. What was +the fascination, what was the impulse? Apparently, it was partly piety, +largely gain, and there is reason to suspect that the sport afforded was +the chiefest fascination of all. Meadows Taylor makes a Thug in one of +his books claim that the pleasure of killing men was the white man's +beast-hunting instinct enlarged, refined, ennobled. I will quote the +passage: + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII. + +Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an +eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait, and count forty. To save +three-quarters, count sixty. To save it all, count sixty-five. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The Thug said: + +"How many of you English are passionately devoted to sporting! Your days +and months are passed in its excitement. A tiger, a panther, a buffalo +or a hog rouses your utmost energies for its destruction--you even risk +your lives in its pursuit. How much higher game is a Thug's!" + +That must really be the secret of the rise and development of Thuggee. +The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done--these are traits of +the human race at large. We white people are merely modified Thugs; +Thugs fretting under the restraints of a not very thick skin of +civilization; Thugs who long ago enjoyed the slaughter of the Roman +arena, and later the burning of doubtful Christians by authentic +Christians in the public squares, and who now, with the Thugs of Spain +and Nimes, flock to enjoy the blood and misery of the bullring. We have +no tourists of either sex or any religion who are able to resist the +delights of the bull-ring when opportunity offers; and we are gentle +Thugs in the hunting-season, and love to chase a tame rabbit and kill it. +Still, we have made some progress-microscopic, and in truth scarcely +worth mentioning, and certainly nothing to be proud of--still, it is +progress: we no longer take pleasure in slaughtering or burning helpless +men. We have reached a little altitude where we may look down upon the +Indian Thugs with a complacent shudder; and we may even hope for a day, +many centuries hence, when our posterity will look down upon us in the +same way. + +There are many indications that the Thug often hunted men for the mere +sport of it; that the fright and pain of the quarry were no more to him +than are the fright and pain of the rabbit or the stag to us; and that he +was no more ashamed of beguiling his game with deceits and abusing its +trust than are we when we have imitated a wild animal's call and shot it +when it honored us with its confidence and came to see what we wanted: + + "Madara, son of Nihal, and I, Ramzam, set out from Kotdee in the + cold weather and followed the high road for about twenty days in + search of travelers, until we came to Selempore, where we met a very + old man going to the east. We won his confidence in this manner: he + carried a load which was too heavy for his old age; I said to him, + 'You are an old man, I will aid you in carrying your load, as you + are from my part of the country.' He said, 'Very well, take me with + you.' So we took him with us to Selempore, where we slept that + night. We woke him next morning before dawn and set out, and at the + distance of three miles we seated him to rest while it was still + very dark. Madara was ready behind him, and strangled him. He + never spoke a word. He was about 60 or 70 years of age." + +Another gang fell in with a couple of barbers and persuaded them to come +along in their company by promising them the job of shaving the whole +crew--30 Thugs. At the place appointed for the murder 15 got shaved, and +actually paid the barbers for their work. Then killed them and took back +the money. + +A gang of forty-two Thugs came across two Brahmins and a shopkeeper on +the road, beguiled them into a grove and got up a concert for their +entertainment. While these poor fellows were listening to the music the +stranglers were standing behind them; and at the proper moment for +dramatic effect they applied the noose. + +The most devoted fisherman must have a bite at least as often as once +a week or his passion will cool and he will put up his tackle. The +tiger-sportsman must find a tiger at least once a fortnight or he will get +tired and quit. The elephant-hunter's enthusiasm will waste away little +by little, and his zeal will perish at last if he plod around a month +without finding a member of that noble family to assassinate. + +But when the lust in the hunter's heart is for the noblest of all +quarries, man, how different is the case! and how watery and poor is the +zeal and how childish the endurance of those other hunters by comparison. +Then, neither hunger, nor thirst, nor fatigue, nor deferred hope, nor +monotonous disappointment, nor leaden-footed lapse of time can conquer +the hunter's patience or weaken the joy of his quest or cool the splendid +rage of his desire. Of all the hunting-passions that burn in the breast +of man, there is none that can lift him superior to discouragements like +these but the one--the royal sport, the supreme sport, whose quarry is +his brother. By comparison, tiger-hunting is a colorless poor thing, for +all it has been so bragged about. + +Why, the Thug was content to tramp patiently along, afoot, in the wasting +heat of India, week after week, at an average of nine or ten miles a day, +if he might but hope to find game some time or other and refresh his +longing soul with blood. Here is an instance: + + "I (Ramzam) and Hyder set out, for the purpose of strangling + travelers, from Guddapore, and proceeded via the Fort of Julalabad, + Newulgunge, Bangermow, on the banks of the Ganges (upwards of 100 + miles), from whence we returned by another route. Still no + travelers! till we reached Bowaneegunge, where we fell in with a + traveler, a boatman; we inveigled him and about two miles east of + there Hyder strangled him as he stood--for he was troubled and + afraid, and would not sit. We then made a long journey (about 130 + miles) and reached Hussunpore Bundwa, where at the tank we fell in + with a traveler--he slept there that night; next morning we followed + him and tried to win his confidence; at the distance of two miles we + endeavored to induce him to sit down--but he would not, having + become aware of us. I attempted to strangle him as he walked along, + but did not succeed; both of us then fell upon him, he made a great + outcry, 'They are murdering me!' at length we strangled him and + flung his body into a well. After this we returned to our homes, + having been out a month and traveled about 260 miles. A total of + two men murdered on the expedition." + +And here is another case-related by the terrible Futty Khan, a man with a +tremendous record, to be re-mentioned by and by: + + "I, with three others, traveled for about 45 days a distance of + about 200 miles in search of victims along the highway to Bundwa and + returned by Davodpore (another 200 miles) during which journey we + had only one murder, which happened in this manner. Four miles to + the east of Noubustaghat we fell in with a traveler, an old man. I, + with Koshal and Hyder, inveigled him and accompanied him that day + within 3 miles of Rampoor, where, after dark, in a lonely place, we + got him to sit down and rest; and while I kept him in talk, seated + before him, Hyder behind strangled him: he made no resistance. + Koshal stabbed him under the arms and in the throat, and we flung + the body into a running stream. We got about 4 or 5 rupees each ($2 + or $2.50). We then proceeded homewards. A total of one man + murdered on this expedition." + +There. They tramped 400 miles, were gone about three months, and +harvested two dollars and a half apiece. But the mere pleasure of the +hunt was sufficient. That was pay enough. They did no grumbling. + +Every now and then in this big book one comes across that pathetic +remark: "we tried to get him to sit down but he would not." It tells the +whole story. Some accident had awakened the suspicion in him that these +smooth friends who had been petting and coddling him and making him feel +so safe and so fortunate after his forlorn and lonely wanderings were the +dreaded Thugs; and now their ghastly invitation to "sit and rest" had +confirmed its truth. He knew there was no help for him, and that he was +looking his last upon earthly things, but "he would not sit." No, not +that--it was too awful to think of! + +There are a number of instances which indicate that when a man had once +tasted the regal joys of man-hunting he could not be content with the +dull monotony of a crimeless life after ward. Example, from a Thug's +testimony: + + "We passed through to Kurnaul, where we found a former Thug named + Junooa, an old comrade of ours, who had turned religious mendicant + and become a disciple and holy. He came to us in the serai and + weeping with joy returned to his old trade." + +Neither wealth nor honors nor dignities could satisfy a reformed Thug for +long. He would throw them all away, someday, and go back to the lurid +pleasures of hunting men, and being hunted himself by the British. + +Ramzam was taken into a great native grandee's service and given +authority over five villages. "My authority extended over these people +to summons them to my presence, to make them stand or sit. I dressed +well, rode my pony, and had two sepoys, a scribe and a village guard to +attend me. During three years I used to pay each village a monthly +visit, and no one suspected that I was a Thug! The chief man used to +wait on me to transact business, and as I passed along, old and young +made their salaam to me." + +And yet during that very three years he got leave of absence "to attend a +wedding," and instead went off on a Thugging lark with six other Thugs +and hunted the highway for fifteen days!--with satisfactory results. + +Afterwards he held a great office under a Rajah. There he had ten miles +of country under his command and a military guard of fifteen men, with +authority to call out 2,000 more upon occasion. But the British got on +his track, and they crowded him so that he had to give himself up. See +what a figure he was when he was gotten up for style and had all his +things on: "I was fully armed--a sword, shield, pistols, a matchlock +musket and a flint gun, for I was fond of being thus arrayed, and when so +armed feared not though forty men stood before me." + +He gave himself up and proudly proclaimed himself a Thug. Then by +request he agreed to betray his friend and pal, Buhram, a Thug with the +most tremendous record in India. "I went to the house where Buhram slept +(often has he led our gangs!) I woke him, he knew me well, and came +outside to me. It was a cold night, so under pretence of warming myself, +but in reality to have light for his seizure by the guards, I lighted +some straw and made a blaze. We were warming our hands. The guards drew +around us. I said to them, 'This is Buhram,' and he was seized just as a +cat seizes a mouse. Then Buhram said, 'I am a Thug! my father was a +Thug, my grandfather was a Thug, and I have thugged with many!'" + +So spoke the mighty hunter, the mightiest of the mighty, the Gordon +Cumming of his day. Not much regret noticeable in it.--["Having planted +a bullet in the shoulder-bone of an elephant, and caused the agonized +creature to lean for support against a tree, I proceeded to brew some +coffee. Having refreshed myself, taking observations of the elephant's +spasms and writhings between the sips, I resolved to make experiments on +vulnerable points, and, approaching very near, I fired several bullets at +different parts of his enormous skull. He only acknowledged the shots by +a salaam-like movement of his trunk, with the point of which he gently +touched the wounds with a striking and peculiar action. Surprised and +shocked to find that I was only prolonging the suffering of the noble +beast, which bore its trials with such dignified composure, I resolved to +finish the proceeding with all possible despatch, and accordingly opened +fire upon him from the left side. Aiming at the shoulder, I fired six +shots with the two-grooved rifle, which must have eventually proved +mortal, after which I fired six shots at the same part with the Dutch +six-founder. Large tears now trickled down from his eyes, which he +slowly shut and opened, his colossal frame shivered convulsively, and +falling on his side he expired."--Gordon Cumming.] + +So many many times this Official Report leaves one's curiosity +unsatisfied. For instance, here is a little paragraph out of the record +of a certain band of 193 Thugs, which has that defect: + + "Fell in with Lall Sing Subahdar and his family, consisting of nine + persons. Traveled with them two days, and the third put them all to + death except the two children, little boys of one and a half years + old." + +There it stops. What did they do with those poor little fellows? What +was their subsequent history? Did they purpose training them up as +Thugs? How could they take care of such little creatures on a march +which stretched over several months? No one seems to have cared to ask +any questions about the babies. But I do wish I knew. + +One would be apt to imagine that the Thugs were utterly callous, utterly +destitute of human feelings, heartless toward their own families as well +as toward other people's; but this was not so. Like all other Indians, +they had a passionate love for their kin. A shrewd British officer who +knew the Indian character, took that characteristic into account in +laying his plans for the capture of Eugene Sue's famous Feringhea. He +found out Feringhea's hiding-place, and sent a guard by night to seize +him, but the squad was awkward and he got away. However, they got the +rest of the family--the mother, wife, child, and brother--and brought +them to the officer, at Jubbulpore; the officer did not fret, but bided +his time: "I knew Feringhea would not go far while links so dear to him +were in my hands." He was right. Feringhea knew all the danger he was +running by staying in the neighborhood, still he could not tear himself +away. The officer found that he divided his time between five villages +where be had relatives and friends who could get news for him from his +family in Jubbulpore jail; and that he never slept two consecutive nights +in the same village. The officer traced out his several haunts, then +pounced upon all the five villages on the one night and at the same hour, +and got his man. + +Another example of family affection. A little while previously to the +capture of Feringhea's family, the British officer had captured +Feringhea's foster-brother, leader of a gang of ten, and had tried the +eleven and condemned them to be hanged. Feringhea's captured family +arrived at the jail the day before the execution was to take place. The +foster-brother, Jhurhoo, entreated to be allowed to see the aged mother +and the others. The prayer was granted, and this is what took place--it +is the British officer who speaks: + + "In the morning, just before going to the scaffold, the interview + took place before me. He fell at the old woman's feet and begged + that she would relieve him from the obligations of the milk with + which she had nourished him from infancy, as he was about to die + before he could fulfill any of them. She placed her hands on his + head, and he knelt, and she said she forgave him all, and bid him + die like a man." + +If a capable artist should make a picture of it, it would be full of +dignity and solemnity and pathos; and it could touch you. You would +imagine it to be anything but what it was. There is reverence there, and +tenderness, and gratefulness, and compassion, and resignation, and +fortitude, and self-respect--and no sense of disgrace, no thought of +dishonor. Everything is there that goes to make a noble parting, and +give it a moving grace and beauty and dignity. And yet one of these +people is a Thug and the other a mother of Thugs! The incongruities of +our human nature seem to reach their limit here. + +I wish to make note of one curious thing while I think of it. One of the +very commonest remarks to be found in this bewildering array of Thug +confessions is this: + +"Strangled him and threw him an a well!" In one case they threw sixteen +into a well--and they had thrown others in the same well before. It +makes a body thirsty to read about it. + +And there is another very curious thing. The bands of Thugs had private +graveyards. They did not like to kill and bury at random, here and there +and everywhere. They preferred to wait, and toll the victims along, and +get to one of their regular burying-places ('bheels') if they could. In +the little kingdom of Oude, which was about half as big as Ireland and +about as big as the State of Maine, they had two hundred and seventy-four +'bheels'. They were scattered along fourteen hundred miles of road, at +an average of only five miles apart, and the British government traced +out and located each and every one of them and set them down on the map. + +The Oude bands seldom went out of their own country, but they did a +thriving business within its borders. So did outside bands who came in +and helped. Some of the Thug leaders of Oude were noted for their +successful careers. Each of four of them confessed to above 300 murders; +another to nearly 400; our friend Ramzam to 604--he is the one who got +leave of absence to attend a wedding and went thugging instead; and he is +also the one who betrayed Buhram to the British. + +But the biggest records of all were the murder-lists of Futty Khan and +Buhram. Futty Khan's number is smaller than Ramzam's, but he is placed +at the head because his average is the best in Oude-Thug history per year +of service. His slaughter was 508 men in twenty years, and he was still +a young man when the British stopped his industry. Buhram's list was 931 +murders, but it took him forty years. His average was one man and nearly +all of another man per month for forty years, but Futty Khan's average +was two men and a little of another man per month during his twenty years +of usefulness. + +There is one very striking thing which I wish to call attention to. You +have surmised from the listed callings followed by the victims of the +Thugs that nobody could travel the Indian roads unprotected and live to +get through; that the Thugs respected no quality, no vocation, no +religion, nobody; that they killed every unarmed man that came in their +way. That is wholly true--with one reservation. In all the long file of +Thug confessions an English traveler is mentioned but once--and this is +what the Thug says of the circumstance: + + "He was on his way from Mhow to Bombay. We studiously avoided him. + He proceeded next morning with a number of travelers who had sought + his protection, and they took the road to Baroda." + +We do not know who he was; he flits across the page of this rusty old +book and disappears in the obscurity beyond; but he is an impressive +figure, moving through that valley of death serene and unafraid, clothed +in the might of the English name. + +We have now followed the big official book through, and we understand +what Thuggee was, what a bloody terror it was, what a desolating scourge +it was. In 1830 the English found this cancerous organization imbedded +in the vitals of the empire, doing its devastating work in secrecy, and +assisted, protected, sheltered, and hidden by innumerable confederates +--big and little native chiefs, customs officers, village officials, and +native police, all ready to lie for it, and the mass of the people, +through fear, persistently pretending to know nothing about its doings; +and this condition of things had existed for generations, and was +formidable with the sanctions of age and old custom. If ever there was +an unpromising task, if ever there was a hopeless task in the world, +surely it was offered here--the task of conquering Thuggee. But that +little handful of English officials in India set their sturdy and +confident grip upon it, and ripped it out, root and branch! How modest +do Captain Vallancey's words sound now, when we read them again, knowing +what we know: + + "The day that sees this far-spread evil completely eradicated from + India, and known only in name, will greatly tend to immortalize + British rule in the East." + +It would be hard to word a claim more modestly than that for this most +noble work. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII. + +Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you +must have somebody to divide it with. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +We left Bombay for Allahabad by a night train. It is the custom of the +country to avoid day travel when it can conveniently be done. But there +is one trouble: while you can seemingly "secure" the two lower berths by +making early application, there is no ticket as witness of it, and no +other producible evidence in case your proprietorship shall chance to be +challenged. The word "engaged" appears on the window, but it doesn't +state who the compartment is engaged, for. If your Satan and your Barney +arrive before somebody else's servants, and spread the bedding on the two +sofas and then stand guard till you come, all will be well; but if they +step aside on an errand, they may find the beds promoted to the two +shelves, and somebody else's demons standing guard over their master's +beds, which in the meantime have been spread upon your sofas. + +You do not pay anything extra for your sleeping place; that is where the +trouble lies. If you buy a fare-ticket and fail to use it, there is room +thus made available for someone else; but if the place were secured to +you it would remain vacant, and yet your ticket would secure you another +place when you were presently ready to travel. + +However, no explanation of such a system can make it seem quite rational +to a person who has been used to a more rational system. If our people +had the arranging of it, we should charge extra for securing the place, +and then the road would suffer no loss if the purchaser did not occupy +it. + +The present system encourages good manners--and also discourages them. +If a young girl has a lower berth and an elderly lady comes in, it is +usual for the girl to offer her place to this late comer; and it is usual +for the late comer to thank her courteously and take it. But the thing +happens differently sometimes. When we were ready to leave Bombay my +daughter's satchels were holding possession of her berth--a lower one. +At the last moment, a middle-aged American lady swarmed into the +compartment, followed by native porters laden with her baggage. She was +growling and snarling and scolding, and trying to make herself +phenomenally disagreeable; and succeeding. Without a word, she hoisted +the satchels into the hanging shelf, and took possession of that lower +berth. + +On one of our trips Mr. Smythe and I got out at a station to walk up and +down, and when we came back Smythe's bed was in the hanging shelf and an +English cavalry officer was in bed on the sofa which he had lately been +occupying. It was mean to be glad about it, but it is the way we are +made; I could not have been gladder if it had been my enemy that had +suffered this misfortune. We all like to see people in trouble, if it +doesn't cost us anything. I was so happy over Mr. Smythe's chagrin that +I couldn't go to sleep for thinking of it and enjoying it. I knew he +supposed the officer had committed the robbery himself, whereas without a +doubt the officer's servant had done it without his knowledge. Mr. +Smythe kept this incident warm in his heart, and longed for a chance to +get even with somebody for it. Sometime afterward the opportunity came, +in Calcutta. We were leaving on a 24-hour journey to Darjeeling. Mr. +Barclay, the general superintendent, has made special provision for our +accommodation, Mr. Smythe said; so there was no need to hurry about +getting to the train; consequently, we were a little late. + +When we arrived, the usual immense turmoil and confusion of a great +Indian station were in full blast. It was an immoderately long train, +for all the natives of India were going by it somewhither, and the native +officials were being pestered to frenzy by belated and anxious people. +They didn't know where our car was, and couldn't remember having received +any orders about it. It was a deep disappointment; moreover, it looked +as if our half of our party would be left behind altogether. Then Satan +came running and said he had found a compartment with one shelf and one +sofa unoccupied, and had made our beds and had stowed our baggage. We +rushed to the place, and just as the train was ready to pull out and the +porters were slamming the doors to, all down the line, an officer of the +Indian Civil Service, a good friend of ours, put his head in and said:-- + +"I have been hunting for you everywhere. What are you doing here? Don't +you know----" + +The train started before he could finish. Mr. Smythe's opportunity was +come. His bedding, on the shelf, at once changed places with the +bedding--a stranger's--that was occupying the sofa that was opposite to +mine. About ten o'clock we stopped somewhere, and a large Englishman of +official military bearing stepped in. We pretended to be asleep. The +lamps were covered, but there was light enough for us to note his look of +surprise. He stood there, grand and fine, peering down at Smythe, and +wondering in silence at the situation. After a bit be said:-- + +"Well!" And that was all. + +But that was enough. It was easy to understand. It meant: "This is +extraordinary. This is high-handed. I haven't had an experience like +this before." + +He sat down on his baggage, and for twenty minutes we watched him through +our eyelashes, rocking and swaying there to the motion of the train. +Then we came to a station, and he got up and went out, muttering: "I must +find a lower berth, or wait over." His servant came presently and carried +away his things. + +Mr. Smythe's sore place was healed, his hunger for revenge was satisfied. +But he couldn't sleep, and neither could I; for this was a venerable old. +car, and nothing about it was taut. The closet door slammed all night, +and defied every fastening we could invent. We got up very much jaded, +at dawn, and stepped out at a way station; and, while we were taking a +cup of coffee, that Englishman ranged up alongside, and somebody said to +him: + +"So you didn't stop off, after all?" + +"No. The guard found a place for me that had been, engaged and not +occupied. I had a whole saloon car all to myself--oh, quite palatial! +I never had such luck in my life." + +That was our car, you see. We moved into it, straight off, the family +and all. But I asked the English gentleman to remain, and he did. A +pleasant man, an infantry colonel; and doesn't know, yet, that Smythe +robbed him of his berth, but thinks it was done by Smythe's servant +without Smythe's knowledge. He was assisted in gathering this +impression. + +The Indian trains are manned by natives exclusively. The Indian stations +except very large and important ones--are manned entirely by natives, and +so are the posts and telegraphs. The rank and file of the police are +natives. All these people are pleasant and accommodating. One day I +left an express train to lounge about in that perennially ravishing show, +the ebb and flow and whirl of gaudy natives, that is always surging up +and down the spacious platform of a great Indian station; and I lost +myself in the ecstasy of it, and when I turned, the train was moving +swiftly away. I was going to sit down and wait for another train, as I +would have done at home; I had no thought of any other course. But a +native official, who had a green flag in his hand, saw me, and said +politely: + +"Don't you belong in the train, sir?" + +"Yes." I said. + +He waved his flag, and the train came back! And he put me aboard with as +much ceremony as if I had been the General Superintendent. They are +kindly people, the natives. The face and the bearing that indicate a +surly spirit and a bad heart seemed to me to be so rare among Indians--so +nearly non-existent, in fact--that I sometimes wondered if Thuggee wasn't +a dream, and not a reality. The bad hearts are there, but I believe that +they are in a small, poor minority. One thing is sure: They are much the +most interesting people in the world--and the nearest to being +incomprehensible. At any rate, the hardest to account for. Their +character and their history, their customs and their religion, confront +you with riddles at every turn-riddles which are a trifle more perplexing +after they are explained than they were before. You can get the facts of +a custom--like caste, and Suttee, and Thuggee, and so on--and with the +facts a theory which tries to explain, but never quite does it to your +satisfaction. You can never quite understand how so strange a thing +could have been born, nor why. + +For instance--the Suttee. This is the explanation of it: + +A woman who throws away her life when her husband dies is instantly +joined to him again, and is forever afterward happy with him in heaven; +her family will build a little monument to her, or a temple, and will +hold her in honor, and, indeed, worship her memory always; they will +themselves be held in honor by the public; the woman's self-sacrifice has +conferred a noble and lasting distinction upon her posterity. And, +besides, see what she has escaped: If she had elected to live, she would +be a disgraced person; she could not remarry; her family would despise +her and disown her; she would be a friendless outcast, and miserable all +her days. + +Very well, you say, but the explanation is not complete yet. How did +people come to drift into such a strange custom? What was the origin of +the idea? "Well, nobody knows; it was probably a revelation sent down by +the gods." One more thing: Why was such a cruel death chosen--why +wouldn't a gentle one have answered? "Nobody knows; maybe that was a +revelation, too." + +No--you can never understand it. It all seems impossible. You resolve +to believe that a widow never burnt herself willingly, but went to her +death because she was afraid to defy public opinion. But you are not +able to keep that position. History drives you from it. Major Sleeman +has a convincing case in one of his books. In his government on the +Nerbudda he made a brave attempt on the 28th of March, 1828, to put down +Suttee on his own hook and without warrant from the Supreme Government of +India. He could not foresee that the Government would put it down itself +eight months later. The only backing he had was a bold nature and a +compassionate heart. He issued his proclamation abolishing the Suttee in +his district. On the morning of Tuesday--note the day of the week--the +24th of the following November, Ummed Singh Upadhya, head of the most +respectable and most extensive Brahmin family in the district, died, and +presently came a deputation of his sons and grandsons to beg that his old +widow might be allowed to burn herself upon his pyre. Sleeman threatened +to enforce his order, and punish severely any man who assisted; and he +placed a police guard to see that no one did so. From the early morning +the old widow of sixty-five had been sitting on the bank of the sacred +river by her dead, waiting through the long hours for the permission; and +at last the refusal came instead. In one little sentence Sleeman gives +you a pathetic picture of this lonely old gray figure: all day and all +night "she remained sitting by the edge of the water without eating or +drinking." The next morning the body of the husband was burned to ashes +in a pit eight feet square and three or four feet deep, in the view of +several thousand spectators. Then the widow waded out to a bare rock in +the river, and everybody went away but her sons and other relations. All +day she sat there on her rock in the blazing sun without food or drink, +and with no clothing but a sheet over her shoulders. + +The relatives remained with her and all tried to persuade her to desist +from her purpose, for they deeply loved her. She steadily refused. Then +a part of the family went to Sleeman's house, ten miles away, and tried +again to get him to let her burn herself. He refused, hoping to save her +yet. + +All that day she scorched in her sheet on the rock, and all that night +she kept her vigil there in the bitter cold. Thursday morning, in the +sight of her relatives, she went through a ceremonial which said more to +them than any words could have done; she put on the dhaja (a coarse red +turban) and broke her bracelets in pieces. By these acts she became a +dead person in the eye of the law, and excluded from her caste forever. +By the iron rule of ancient custom, if she should now choose to live she +could never return to her family. Sleeman was in deep trouble. If she +starved herself to death her family would be disgraced; and, moreover, +starving would be a more lingering misery than the death by fire. He +went back in the evening thoroughly worried. The old woman remained on +her rock, and there in the morning he found her with her dhaja still on +her head. "She talked very collectedly, telling me that she had +determined to mix her ashes with those of her departed husband, and +should patiently wait my permission to do so, assured that God would +enable her to sustain life till that was given, though she dared not eat +or drink. Looking at the sun, then rising before her over a long and +beautiful reach of the river, she said calmly, 'My soul has been for five +days with my husband's near that sun; nothing but my earthly frame is +left; and this, I know, you will in time suffer to be mixed with his +ashes in yonder pit, because it is not in your nature or usage wantonly +to prolong the miseries of a poor old woman.'" + +He assured her that it was his desire and duty to save her, and to urge +her to live, and to keep her family from the disgrace of being thought +her murderers. But she said she "was not afraid of their being thought +so; that they had all, like good children, done everything in their power +to induce her to live, and to abide with them; and if I should consent I +know they would love and honor me, but my duties to them have now ended. +I commit them all to your care, and I go to attend my husband, Ummed +Singh Upadhya, with whose ashes on the funeral pile mine have been +already three times mixed." + +She believed that she and he had been upon the earth three several times +as wife and husband, and that she had burned herself to death three times +upon his pyre. That is why she said that strange thing. Since she had +broken her bracelets and put on the red turban she regarded herself as a +corpse; otherwise she would not have allowed herself to do her husband +the irreverence of pronouncing his name. "This was the first time in her +long life that she had ever uttered her husband's name, for in India no +woman, high or low, ever pronounces the name of her husband." + +Major Sleeman still tried to shake her purpose. He promised to build her +a fine house among the temples of her ancestors upon the bank of the +river and make handsome provision for her out of rent-free lands if she +would consent to live; and if she wouldn't he would allow no stone or +brick to ever mark the place where she died. But she only smiled and +said, "My pulse has long ceased to beat, my spirit has departed; I shall +suffer nothing in the burning; and if you wish proof, order some fire and +you shall see this arm consumed without giving me any pain." + +Sleeman was now satisfied that he could not alter her purpose. He sent +for all the chief members of the family and said he would suffer her to +burn herself if they would enter into a written engagement to abandon the +suttee in their family thenceforth. They agreed; the papers were drawn +out and signed, and at noon, Saturday, word was sent to the poor old +woman. She seemed greatly pleased. The ceremonies of bathing were gone +through with, and by three o'clock she was ready and the fire was briskly +burning in the pit. She had now gone without food or drink during more +than four days and a half. She came ashore from her rock, first wetting +her sheet in the waters of the sacred river, for without that safeguard +any shadow which might fall upon her would convey impurity to her; then +she walked to the pit, leaning upon one of her sons and a nephew--the +distance was a hundred and fifty yards. + +"I had sentries placed all around, and no other person was allowed to +approach within five paces. She came on with a calm and cheerful +countenance, stopped once, and casting her eyes upwards, said, 'Why have +they kept me five days from thee, my husband?' On coming to the sentries +her supporters stopped and remained standing; she moved on, and walked +once around the pit, paused a moment, and while muttering a prayer, threw +some flowers into the fire. She then walked up deliberately and steadily +to the brink, stepped into the centre of the flame, sat down, and leaning +back in the midst as if reposing upon a couch, was consumed without +uttering a shriek or betraying one sign of agony." + +It is fine and beautiful. It compels one's reverence and respect--no, +has it freely, and without compulsion. We see how the custom, once +started, could continue, for the soul of it is that stupendous power, +Faith; faith brought to the pitch of effectiveness by the cumulative +force of example and long use and custom; but we cannot understand how +the first widows came to take to it. That is a perplexing detail. + +Sleeman says that it was usual to play music at the suttee, but that the +white man's notion that this was to drown the screams of the martyr is +not correct; that it had a quite different purpose. It was believed that +the martyr died prophecying; that the prophecies sometimes foretold +disaster, and it was considered a kindness to those upon whom it was to +fall to drown the voice and keep them in ignorance of the misfortune that +was to come. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX. + +He had had much experience of physicians, and said "the only way to keep +your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what; you don't like, +and do what you'd druther not." + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +It was a long journey--two nights, one day, and part of another day, from +Bombay eastward to Allahabad; but it was always interesting, and it was +not fatiguing. At first the, night travel promised to be fatiguing, but +that was on account of pyjamas. This foolish night-dress consists of +jacket and drawers. Sometimes they are made of silk, sometimes of a +raspy, scratchy, slazy woolen material with a sandpaper surface. The +drawers are loose elephant-legged and elephant-waisted things, and +instead of buttoning around the body there is a drawstring to produce the +required shrinkage. The jacket is roomy, and one buttons it in front. +Pyjamas are hot on a hot night and cold on a cold night--defects which a +nightshirt is free from. I tried the pyjamas in order to be in the +fashion; but I was obliged to give them up, I couldn't stand them. There +was no sufficient change from day-gear to night-gear. I missed the +refreshing and luxurious sense, induced by the night-gown, of being +undressed, emancipated, set free from restraints and trammels. In place +of that, I had the worried, confined, oppressed, suffocated sense of +being abed with my clothes on. All through the warm half of the night +the coarse surfaces irritated my skin and made it feel baked and +feverish, and the dreams which came in the fitful flurries of slumber +were such as distress the sleep of the damned, or ought to; and all +through the cold other half of the night I could get no time for sleep +because I had to employ it all in stealing blankets. But blankets are of +no value at such a time; the higher they are piled the more effectively +they cork the cold in and keep it from getting out. The result is that +your legs are ice, and you know how you will feel by and by when you are +buried. In a sane interval I discarded the pyjamas, and led a rational +and comfortable life thenceforth. + +Out in the country in India, the day begins early. One sees a plain, +perfectly flat, dust-colored and brick-yardy, stretching limitlessly away +on every side in the dim gray light, striped everywhere with hard-beaten +narrow paths, the vast flatness broken at wide intervals by bunches of +spectral trees that mark where villages are; and along all the paths are +slender women and the black forms of lanky naked men moving, to their +work, the women with brass water-jars on their heads, the men carrying +hoes. The man is not entirely naked; always there is a bit of white rag, +a loin-cloth; it amounts to a bandage, and is a white accent on his black +person, like the silver band around the middle of a pipe-stem. Sometimes +he also wears a fluffy and voluminous white turban, and this adds a +second accent. He then answers properly to Miss Gordon Cumming's +flash-light picture of him--as a person who is dressed in "a turban +and a pocket handkerchief." + +All day long one has this monotony of dust-colored dead levels and +scattering bunches of trees and mud villages. You soon realize that +India is not beautiful; still there is an enchantment about it that is +beguiling, and which does not pall. You cannot tell just what it is that +makes the spell, perhaps, but you feel it and confess it, nevertheless. +Of course, at bottom, you know in a vague way that it is history; it is +that that affects you, a haunting sense of the myriads of human lives +that have blossomed, and withered, and perished here, repeating and +repeating and repeating, century after century, and age after age, the +barren and meaningless process; it is this sense that gives to this +forlorn, uncomely land power to speak to the spirit and make friends with +it; to, speak to it with a voice bitter with satire, but eloquent with +melancholy. The deserts of Australia and the ice-barrens of Greenland +have no speech, for they have no venerable history; with nothing to tell +of man and his vanities, his fleeting glories and his miseries, they have +nothing wherewith to spiritualize their ugliness and veil it with a +charm. + +There is nothing pretty about an Indian village--a mud one--and I do not +remember that we saw any but mud ones on that long flight to Allahabad. +It is a little bunch of dirt-colored mud hovels jammed together within a +mud wall. As a rule, the rains had beaten down parts of some of the +houses, and this gave the village the aspect of a mouldering and hoary +ruin. I believe the cattle and the vermin live inside the wall; for I +saw cattle coming out and cattle going in; and whenever I saw a villager, +he was scratching. This last is only circumstantial evidence, but I +think it has value. The village has a battered little temple or two, big +enough to hold an idol, and with custom enough to fat-up a priest and +keep him comfortable. Where there are Mohammedans there are generally a +few sorry tombs outside the village that have a decayed and neglected +look. The villages interested me because of things which Major Sleeman +says about them in his books--particularly what he says about the +division of labor in them. He says that the whole face of India is +parceled out into estates of villages; that nine-tenths of the vast +population of the land consist of cultivators of the soil; that it is +these cultivators who inhabit the villages; that there are certain +"established" village servants--mechanics and others who are apparently +paid a wage by the village at large, and whose callings remain in certain +families and are handed down from father to son, like an estate. He +gives a list of these established servants: Priest, blacksmith, +carpenter, accountant, washerman, basketmaker, potter, watchman, barber, +shoemaker, brazier, confectioner, weaver, dyer, etc. In his day witches +abounded, and it was not thought good business wisdom for a man to marry +his daughter into a family that hadn't a witch in it, for she would need +a witch on the premises to protect her children from the evil spells +which would certainly be cast upon them by the witches connected with the +neighboring families. + +The office of midwife was hereditary in the family of the basket-maker. +It belonged to his wife. She might not be competent, but the office was +hers, anyway. Her pay was not high--25 cents for a boy, and half as much +for a girl. The girl was not desired, because she would be a disastrous +expense by and by. As soon as she should be old enough to begin to wear +clothes for propriety's sake, it would be a disgrace to the family if she +were not married; and to marry her meant financial ruin; for by custom +the father must spend upon feasting and wedding-display everything he had +and all he could borrow--in fact, reduce himself to a condition of +poverty which he might never more recover from. + +It was the dread of this prospective ruin which made the killing of +girl-babies so prevalent in India in the old days before England laid the +iron hand of her prohibitions upon the piteous slaughter. One may judge +of how prevalent the custom was, by one of Sleeman's casual electrical +remarks, when he speaks of children at play in villages--where +girl-voices were never heard! + +The wedding-display folly is still in full force in India, and by +consequence the destruction of girl-babies is still furtively practiced; +but not largely, because of the vigilance of the government and the +sternness of the penalties it levies. + +In some parts of India the village keeps in its pay three other servants: +an astrologer to tell the villager when he may plant his crop, or make a +journey, or marry a wife, or strangle a child, or borrow a dog, or climb +a tree, or catch a rat, or swindle a neighbor, without offending the +alert and solicitous heavens; and what his dream means, if he has had one +and was not bright enough to interpret it himself by the details of his +dinner; the two other established servants were the tiger-persuader and +the hailstorm discourager. The one kept away the tigers if he could, and +collected the wages anyway, and the other kept off the hailstorms, or +explained why he failed. He charged the same for explaining a failure +that he did for scoring a success. A man is an idiot who can't earn a +living in India. + +Major Sleeman reveals the fact that the trade union and the boycott are +antiquities in India. India seems to have originated everything. The +"sweeper" belongs to the bottom caste; he is the lowest of the low--all +other castes despise him and scorn his office. But that does not trouble +him. His caste is a caste, and that is sufficient for him, and so he is +proud of it, not ashamed. Sleeman says: + + "It is perhaps not known to many of my countrymen, even in India, + that in every town and city in the country the right of sweeping the + houses and streets is a monopoly, and is supported entirely by the + pride of castes among the scavengers, who are all of the lowest + class. The right of sweeping within a certain range is recognized + by the caste to belong to a certain member; and if any other member + presumes to sweep within that range, he is excommunicated--no other + member will smoke out of his pipe or drink out of his jug; and he + can get restored to caste only by a feast to the whole body of + sweepers. If any housekeeper within a particular circle happens to + offend the sweeper of that range, none of his filth will be removed + till he pacifies him, because no other sweeper will dare to touch + it; and the people of a town are often more tyrannized over by these + people than by any other." + +A footnote by Major Sleeman's editor, Mr. Vincent Arthur Smith, says that +in our day this tyranny of the sweepers' guild is one of the many +difficulties which bar the progress of Indian sanitary reform. Think of +this: + + "The sweepers cannot be readily coerced, because no Hindoo or + Mussulman would do their work to save his life, nor will he pollute + himself by beating the refractory scavenger." + +They certainly do seem to have the whip-hand; it would be difficult to +imagine a more impregnable position. "The vested rights described in the +text are so fully recognized in practice that they are frequently the +subject of sale or mortgage." + +Just like a milk-route; or like a London crossing-sweepership. It is +said that the London crossing-sweeper's right to his crossing is +recognized by the rest of the guild; that they protect him in its +possession; that certain choice crossings are valuable property, and are +saleable at high figures. I have noticed that the man who sweeps in +front of the Army and Navy Stores has a wealthy South African +aristocratic style about him; and when he is off his guard, he has +exactly that look on his face which you always see in the face of a man +who has is saving up his daughter to marry her to a duke. + +It appears from Sleeman that in India the occupation of elephant-driver +is confined to Mohammedans. I wonder why that is. The water-carrier +('bheestie') is a Mohammedan, but it is said that the reason of that is, +that the Hindoo's religion does not allow him to touch the skin of dead +kine, and that is what the water-sack is made of; it would defile him. +And it doesn't allow him to eat meat; the animal that furnished the meat +was murdered, and to take any creature's life is a sin. It is a good and +gentle religion, but inconvenient. + +A great Indian river, at low water, suggests the familiar anatomical +picture of a skinned human body, the intricate mesh of interwoven muscles +and tendons to stand for water-channels, and the archipelagoes of fat and +flesh inclosed by them to stand for the sandbars. Somewhere on this +journey we passed such a river, and on a later journey we saw in the +Sutlej the duplicate of that river. Curious rivers they are; low shores +a dizzy distance apart, with nothing between but an enormous acreage of +sand-flats with sluggish little veins of water dribbling around amongst +them; Saharas of sand, smallpox-pitted with footprints punctured in belts +as straight as the equator clear from the one shore to the other (barring +the channel-interruptions)--a dry-shod ferry, you see. Long railway +bridges are required for this sort of rivers, and India has them. You +approach Allahabad by a very long one. It was now carrying us across the +bed of the Jumna, a bed which did not seem to have been slept in for one +while or more. It wasn't all river-bed--most of it was overflow ground. + +Allahabad means "City of God." I get this from the books. From a printed +curiosity--a letter written by one of those brave and confident Hindoo +strugglers with the English tongue, called a "babu"--I got a more +compressed translation: "Godville." It is perfectly correct, but that is +the most that can be said for it. + +We arrived in the forenoon, and short-handed; for Satan got left behind +somewhere that morning, and did not overtake us until after nightfall. +It seemed very peaceful without him. The world seemed asleep and +dreaming. + +I did not see the native town, I think. I do not remember why; for an +incident connects it with the Great Mutiny, and that is enough to make +any place interesting. But I saw the English part of the city. It is a +town of wide avenues and noble distances, and is comely and alluring, and +full of suggestions of comfort and leisure, and of the serenity which a +good conscience buttressed by a sufficient bank account gives. The +bungalows (dwellings) stand well back in the seclusion and privacy of +large enclosed compounds (private grounds, as we should say) and in the +shade and shelter of trees. Even the photographer and the prosperous +merchant ply their industries in the elegant reserve of big compounds, +and the citizens drive in thereupon their business occasions. And not in +cabs--no; in the Indian cities cabs are for the drifting stranger; all +the white citizens have private carriages; and each carriage has a flock +of white-turbaned black footmen and drivers all over it. The vicinity of +a lecture-hall looks like a snowstorm,--and makes the lecturer feel like +an opera. India has many names, and they are correctly descriptive. It +is the Land of Contradictions, the Land of Subtlety and Superstition, the +Land of Wealth and Poverty, the Land of Splendor and Desolation, the Land +of Plague and Famine, the Land of the Thug and the Poisoner, and of the +Meek and the Patient, the Land of the Suttee, the Land of the +Unreinstatable Widow, the Land where All Life is Holy, the Land of +Cremation, the Land where the Vulture is a Grave and a Monument, the Land +of the Multitudinous Gods; and if signs go for anything, it is the Land +of the Private Carriage. + +In Bombay the forewoman of a millinery shop came to the hotel in her +private carriage to take the measure for a gown--not for me, but for +another. She had come out to India to make a temporary stay, but was +extending it indefinitely; indeed, she was purposing to end her days +there. In London, she said, her work had been hard, her hours long; for +economy's sake she had had to live in shabby rooms and far away from the +shop, watch the pennies, deny herself many of the common comforts of +life, restrict herself in effect to its bare necessities, eschew cabs, +travel third-class by underground train to and from her work, swallowing +coal-smoke and cinders all the way, and sometimes troubled with the +society of men and women who were less desirable than the smoke and the +cinders. But in Bombay, on almost any kind of wages, she could live in +comfort, and keep her carriage, and have six servants in place of the +woman-of-all-work she had had in her English home. Later, in Calcutta, I +found that the Standard Oil clerks had small one-horse vehicles, and did +no walking; and I was told that the clerks of the other large concerns +there had the like equipment. But to return to Allahabad. + +I was up at dawn, the next morning. In India the tourist's servant does +not sleep in a room in the hotel, but rolls himself up head and ears in +his blanket and stretches himself on the veranda, across the front of his +master's door, and spends the night there. I don't believe anybody's +servant occupies a room. Apparently, the bungalow servants sleep on the +veranda; it is roomy, and goes all around the house. I speak of +menservants; I saw none of the other sex. I think there are none, except +child-nurses. I was up at dawn, and walked around the veranda, past the +rows of sleepers. In front of one door a Hindoo servant was squatting, +waiting for his master to call him. He had polished the yellow shoes and +placed them by the door, and now he had nothing to do but wait. It was +freezing cold, but there he was, as motionless as a sculptured image, and +as patient. It troubled me. I wanted to say to him, "Don't crouch there +like that and freeze; nobody requires it of you; stir around and get +warm." But I hadn't the words. I thought of saying 'jeldy jow', but I +couldn't remember what it meant, so I didn't say it. I knew another +phrase, but it wouldn't come to my mind. I moved on, purposing to +dismiss him from my thoughts, but his bare legs and bare feet kept him +there. They kept drawing me back from the sunny side to a point whence I +could see him. At the end of an hour he had not changed his attitude in +the least degree. It was a curious and impressive exhibition of meekness +and patience, or fortitude or indifference, I did not know which. But it +worried me, and it was spoiling my morning. In fact, it spoiled two +hours of it quite thoroughly. I quitted this vicinity, then, and left +him to punish himself as much as he might want to. But up to that time +the man had not changed his attitude a hair. He will always remain with +me, I suppose; his figure never grows vague in my memory. Whenever I +read of Indian resignation, Indian patience under wrongs, hardships, and +misfortunes, he comes before me. He becomes a personification, and +stands for India in trouble. And for untold ages India in trouble has +been pursued with the very remark which I was going to utter but didn't, +because its meaning had slipped me: "Jeddy jow!" ("Come, shove along!") + +Why, it was the very thing. + +In the early brightness we made a long drive out to the Fort. Part of +the way was beautiful. It led under stately trees and through groups of +native houses and by the usual village well, where the picturesque gangs +are always flocking to and fro and laughing and chattering; and this time +brawny men were deluging their bronze bodies with the limpid water, and +making a refreshing and enticing show of it; enticing, for the sun was +already transacting business, firing India up for the day. There was +plenty of this early bathing going on, for it was getting toward +breakfast time, and with an unpurified body the Hindoo must not eat. + +Then we struck into the hot plain, and found the roads crowded with +pilgrims of both sexes, for one of the great religious fairs of India was +being held, just beyond the Fort, at the junction of the sacred rivers, +the Ganges and the Jumna. Three sacred rivers, I should have said, for +there is a subterranean one. Nobody has seen it, but that doesn't +signify. The fact that it is there is enough. These pilgrims had come +from all over India; some of them had been months on the way, plodding +patiently along in the heat and dust, worn, poor, hungry, but supported +and sustained by an unwavering faith and belief; they were supremely +happy and content, now; their full and sufficient reward was at hand; +they were going to be cleansed from every vestige of sin and corruption +by these holy waters which make utterly pure whatsoever thing they touch, +even the dead and rotten. It is wonderful, the power of a faith like +that, that can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and +the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint upon such +incredible journeys and endure the resultant miseries without repining. +It is done in love, or it is done in fear; I do not know which it is. +No matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination +marvelous to our kind of people, the cold whites. There are choice great +natures among us that could exhibit the equivalent of this prodigious +self-sacrifice, but the rest of us know that we should not be equal to +anything approaching it. Still, we all talk self-sacrifice, and this +makes me hope that we are large enough to honor it in the Hindoo. + +Two millions of natives arrive at this fair every year. How many start, +and die on the road, from age and fatigue and disease and scanty +nourishment, and how many die on the return, from the same causes, no one +knows; but the tale is great, one may say enormous. Every twelfth year +is held to be a year of peculiar grace; a greatly augmented volume of +pilgrims results then. The twelfth year has held this distinction since +the remotest times, it is said. It is said also that there is to be but +one more twelfth year--for the Ganges. After that, that holiest of all +sacred rivers will cease to be holy, and will be abandoned by the pilgrim +for many centuries; how many, the wise men have not stated. At the end +of that interval it will become holy again. Meantime, the data will be +arranged by those people who have charge of all such matters, the great +chief Brahmins. It will be like shutting down a mint. At a first glance +it looks most unbrahminically uncommercial, but I am not disturbed, being +soothed and tranquilized by their reputation. "Brer fox he lay low," as +Uncle Remus says; and at the judicious time he will spring something on +the Indian public which will show that he was not financially asleep when +he took the Ganges out of the market. + +Great numbers of the natives along the roads were bringing away holy +water from the rivers. They would carry it far and wide in India and +sell it. Tavernier, the French traveler (17th century), notes that +Ganges water is often given at weddings, "each guest receiving a cup or +two, according to the liberality of the host; sometimes 2,000 or 3,000 +rupees' worth of it is consumed at a wedding." + +The Fort is a huge old structure, and has had a large experience in +religions. In its great court stands a monolith which was placed there +more than 2,000 years ago to preach (Budhism) by its pious inscription; +the Fort was built three centuries ago by a Mohammedan Emperor--a +resanctification of the place in the interest of that religion. There is +a Hindoo temple, too, with subterranean ramifications stocked with +shrines and idols; and now the Fort belongs to the English, it contains a +Christian Church. Insured in all the companies. + +From the lofty ramparts one has a fine view of the sacred rivers. They +join at that point--the pale blue Jumna, apparently clean and clear, and +the muddy Ganges, dull yellow and not clean. On a long curved spit +between the rivers, towns of tents were visible, with a multitude of +fluttering pennons, and a mighty swarm of pilgrims. It was a troublesome +place to get down to, and not a quiet place when you arrived; but it was +interesting. There was a world of activity and turmoil and noise, partly +religious, partly commercial; for the Mohammedans were there to curse and +sell, and the Hindoos to buy and pray. It is a fair as well as a +religious festival. Crowds were bathing, praying, and drinking the +purifying waters, and many sick pilgrims had come long journeys in +palanquins to be healed of their maladies by a bath; or if that might not +be, then to die on the blessed banks and so make sure of heaven. There +were fakeers in plenty, with their bodies dusted over with ashes and +their long hair caked together with cow-dung; for the cow is holy and so +is the rest of it; so holy that the good Hindoo peasant frescoes the +walls of his hut with this refuse, and also constructs ornamental figures +out of it for the gracing of his dirt floor. There were seated families, +fearfully and wonderfully painted, who by attitude and grouping +represented the families of certain great gods. There was a holy man who +sat naked by the day and by the week on a cluster of iron spikes, and did +not seem to mind it; and another holy man, who stood all day holding his +withered arms motionless aloft, and was said to have been doing it for +years. All of these performers have a cloth on the ground beside them +for the reception of contributions, and even the poorest of the people +give a trifle and hope that the sacrifice will be blessed to him. At +last came a procession of naked holy people marching by and chanting, and +I wrenched myself away. + + + + +CHAPTER L. + +The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that +wears a fig-leaf. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The journey to Benares was all in daylight, and occupied but a few hours. +It was admirably dusty. The dust settled upon you in a thick ashy layer +and turned you into a fakeer, with nothing lacking to the role but the +cow manure and the sense of holiness. There was a change of cars about +mid-afternoon at Moghul-serai--if that was the name--and a wait of two +hours there for the Benares train. We could have found a carriage and +driven to the sacred city, but we should have lost the wait. In other +countries a long wait at a station is a dull thing and tedious, but one +has no right to have that feeling in India. You have the monster crowd +of bejeweled natives, the stir, the bustle, the confusion, the shifting +splendors of the costumes--dear me, the delight of it, the charm of it +are beyond speech. The two-hour wait was over too soon. Among other +satisfying things to look at was a minor native prince from the backwoods +somewhere, with his guard of honor, a ragged but wonderfully gaudy gang +of fifty dark barbarians armed with rusty flint-lock muskets. The +general show came so near to exhausting variety that one would have said +that no addition to it could be conspicuous, but when this Falstaff and +his motleys marched through it one saw that that seeming impossibility +had happened. + +We got away by and by, and soon reached the outer edge of Benares; then +there was another wait; but, as usual, with something to look at. This +was a cluster of little canvas-boxes--palanquins. A canvas-box is not much +of a sight--when empty; but when there is a lady in it, it is an object +of interest. These boxes were grouped apart, in the full blaze of the +terrible sun during the three-quarters of an hour that we tarried there. +They contained zenana ladies. They had to sit up; there was not room +enough to stretch out. They probably did not mind it. They are used to +the close captivity of the dwellings all their lives; when they go a +journey they are carried to the train in these boxes; in the train they +have to be secluded from inspection. Many people pity them, and I always +did it myself and never charged anything; but it is doubtful if this +compassion is valued. While we were in India some good-hearted Europeans +in one of the cities proposed to restrict a large park to the use of +zenana ladies, so that they could go there and in assured privacy go +about unveiled and enjoy the sunshine and air as they had never enjoyed +them before. The good intentions back of the proposition were +recognized, and sincere thanks returned for it, but the proposition +itself met with a prompt declination at the hands of those who were +authorized to speak for the zenana ladies. Apparently, the idea was +shocking to the ladies--indeed, it was quite manifestly shocking. Was +that proposition the equivalent of inviting European ladies to assemble +scantily and scandalously clothed in the seclusion of a private park? It +seemed to be about that. + +Without doubt modesty is nothing less than a holy feeling; and without +doubt the person whose rule of modesty has been transgressed feels the +same sort of wound that he would feel if something made holy to him by +his religion had suffered a desecration. I say "rule of modesty" because +there are about a million rules in the world, and this makes a million +standards to be looked out for. Major Sleeman mentions the case of some +high-caste veiled ladies who were profoundly scandalized when some +English young ladies passed by with faces bare to the world; so +scandalized that they spoke out with strong indignation and wondered that +people could be so shameless as to expose their persons like that. And +yet "the legs of the objectors were naked to mid-thigh." Both parties +were clean-minded and irreproachably modest, while abiding by their +separate rules, but they couldn't have traded rules for a change without +suffering considerable discomfort. All human rules are more or less +idiotic, I suppose. It is best so, no doubt. The way it is now, the +asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane +we should run out of building materials. + +You have a long drive through the outskirts of Benares before you get to +the hotel. And all the aspects are melancholy. It is a vision of dusty +sterility, decaying temples, crumbling tombs, broken mud walls, shabby +huts. The whole region seems to ache with age and penury. It must take +ten thousand years of want to produce such an aspect. We were still +outside of the great native city when we reached the hotel. It was a +quiet and homelike house, inviting, and manifestly comfortable. But we +liked its annex better, and went thither. It was a mile away, perhaps, +and stood in the midst of a large compound, and was built bungalow +fashion, everything on the ground floor, and a veranda all around. They +have doors in India, but I don't know why. They don't fasten, and they +stand open, as a rule, with a curtain hanging in the doorspace to keep +out the glare of the sun. Still, there is plenty of privacy, for no +white person will come in without notice, of course. The native men +servants will, but they don't seem to count. They glide in, barefoot and +noiseless, and are in the midst before one knows it. At first this is a +shock, and sometimes it is an embarrassment; but one has to get used to +it, and does. + +There was one tree in the compound, and a monkey lived in it. At first I +was strongly interested in the tree, for I was told that it was the +renowned peepul--the tree in whose shadow you cannot tell a lie. This +one failed to stand the test, and I went away from it disappointed. +There was a softly creaking well close by, and a couple of oxen drew +water from it by the hour, superintended by two natives dressed in the +usual "turban and pocket-handkerchief." The tree and the well were the +only scenery, and so the compound was a soothing and lonesome and +satisfying place; and very restful after so many activities. There was +nobody in our bungalow but ourselves; the other guests were in the next +one, where the table d'hote was furnished. A body could not be more +pleasantly situated. Each room had the customary bath attached--a room +ten or twelve feet square, with a roomy stone-paved pit in it and +abundance of water. One could not easily improve upon this arrangement, +except by furnishing it with cold water and excluding the hot, in +deference to the fervency of the climate; but that is forbidden. It +would damage the bather's health. The stranger is warned against taking +cold baths in India, but even the most intelligent strangers are fools, +and they do not obey, and so they presently get laid up. I was the most +intelligent fool that passed through, that year. But I am still more +intelligent now. Now that it is too late. + +I wonder if the 'dorian', if that is the name of it, is another +superstition, like the peepul tree. There was a great abundance and +variety of tropical fruits, but the dorian was never in evidence. It was +never the season for the dorian. It was always going to arrive from +Burma sometime or other, but it never did. By all accounts it was a most +strange fruit, and incomparably delicious to the taste, but not to the +smell. Its rind was said to exude a stench of so atrocious a nature that +when a dorian was in the room even the presence of a polecat was a +refreshment. We found many who had eaten the dorian, and they all spoke +of it with a sort of rapture. They said that if you could hold your nose +until the fruit was in your mouth a sacred joy would suffuse you from +head to foot that would make you oblivious to the smell of the rind, but +that if your grip slipped and you caught the smell of the rind before the +fruit was in your mouth, you would faint. There is a fortune in that +rind. Some day somebody will import it into Europe and sell it for +cheese. + +Benares was not a disappointment. It justified its reputation as a +curiosity. It is on high ground, and overhangs a grand curve of the +Ganges. It is a vast mass of building, compactly crusting a hill, and is +cloven in all directions by an intricate confusion of cracks which stand +for streets. Tall, slim minarets and beflagged temple-spires rise out of +it and give it picturesqueness, viewed from the river. The city is as +busy as an ant-hill, and the hurly-burly of human life swarming along the +web of narrow streets reminds one of the ants. The sacred cow swarms +along, too, and goes whither she pleases, and takes toll of the +grain-shops, and is very much in the way, and is a good deal of a +nuisance, since she must not be molested. + +Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than +legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together. From a +Hindoo statement quoted in Rev. Mr. Parker's compact and lucid Guide to +Benares, I find that the site of the town was the beginning-place of the +Creation. It was merely an upright "lingam," at first, no larger than a +stove-pipe, and stood in the midst of a shoreless ocean. This was the +work of the God Vishnu. Later he spread the lingam out till its surface +was ten miles across. Still it was not large enough for the business; +therefore he presently built the globe around it. Benares is thus the +center of the earth. This is considered an advantage. + +It has had a tumultuous history, both materially and spiritually. It +started Brahminically, many ages ago; then by and by Buddha came in +recent times 2,500 years ago, and after that it was Buddhist during many +centuries--twelve, perhaps--but the Brahmins got the upper hand again, +then, and have held it ever since. It is unspeakably sacred in Hindoo +eyes, and is as unsanitary as it is sacred, and smells like the rind of +the dorian. It is the headquarters of the Brahmin faith, and one-eighth +of the population are priests of that church. But it is not an +overstock, for they have all India as a prey. All India flocks thither +on pilgrimage, and pours its savings into the pockets of the priests in a +generous stream, which never fails. A priest with a good stand on the +shore of the Ganges is much better off than the sweeper of the best +crossing in London. A good stand is worth a world of money. The holy +proprietor of it sits under his grand spectacular umbrella and blesses +people all his life, and collects his commission, and grows fat and rich; +and the stand passes from father to son, down and down and down through +the ages, and remains a permanent and lucrative estate in the family. As +Mr. Parker suggests, it can become a subject of dispute, at one time or +another, and then the matter will be settled, not by prayer and fasting +and consultations with Vishnu, but by the intervention of a much more +puissant power--an English court. In Bombay I was told by an American +missionary that in India there are 640 Protestant missionaries at work. +At first it seemed an immense force, but of course that was a thoughtless +idea. One missionary to 500,000 natives--no, that is not a force; it is +the reverse of it; 640 marching against an intrenched camp of +300,000,000--the odds are too great. A force of 640 in Benares alone +would have its hands over-full with 8,000 Brahmin priests for adversary. +Missionaries need to be well equipped with hope and confidence, and this +equipment they seem to have always had in all parts of the world. Mr. +Parker has it. It enables him to get a favorable outlook out of +statistics which might add up differently with other mathematicians. For +instance: + +"During the past few years competent observers declare that the number of +pilgrims to Benares has increased." + +And then he adds up this fact and gets this conclusion: + +"But the revival, if so it may be called, has in it the marks of death. +It is a spasmodic struggle before dissolution." + +In this world we have seen the Roman Catholic power dying, upon these +same terms, for many centuries. Many a time we have gotten all ready for +the funeral and found it postponed again, on account of the weather or +something. Taught by experience, we ought not to put on our things for +this Brahminical one till we see the procession move. Apparently one of +the most uncertain things in the world is the funeral of a religion. + +I should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of Hindoo theology, +but the difficulties were too great, the matter was too intricate. Even +the mere A, B, C of it is baffling. + +There is a trinity--Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu--independent powers, +apparently, though one cannot feel quite sure of that, because in one of +the temples there is an image where an attempt has been made to +concentrate the three in one person. The three have other names and +plenty of them, and this makes confusion in one's mind. The three have +wives and the wives have several names, and this increases the confusion. +There are children, the children have many names, and thus the confusion +goes on and on. It is not worth while to try to get any grip upon the +cloud of minor gods, there are too many of them. + +It is even a justifiable economy to leave Brahma, the chiefest god of +all, out of your studies, for he seems to cut no great figure in India. +The vast bulk of the national worship is lavished upon Shiva and Vishnu +and their families. Shiva's symbol--the "lingam" with which Vishnu began +the Creation--is worshiped by everybody, apparently. It is the commonest +object in Benares. It is on view everywhere, it is garlanded with +flowers, offerings are made to it, it suffers no neglect. Commonly it is +an upright stone, shaped like a thimble-sometimes like an elongated +thimble. This priapus-worship, then, is older than history. Mr. Parker +says that the lingams in Benares "outnumber the inhabitants." + +In Benares there are many Mohammedan mosques. There are Hindoo temples +without number--these quaintly shaped and elaborately sculptured little +stone jugs crowd all the lanes. The Ganges itself and every individual +drop of water in it are temples. Religion, then, is the business of +Benares, just as gold-production is the business of Johannesburg. Other +industries count for nothing as compared with the vast and all-absorbing +rush and drive and boom of the town's specialty. Benares is the +sacredest of sacred cities. The moment you step across the +sharply-defined line which separates it from the rest of the globe, you +stand upon ineffably and unspeakably holy ground. Mr. Parker says: "It +is impossible to convey any adequate idea of the intense feelings of +veneration and affection with which the pious Hindoo regards 'Holy Kashi' +(Benares)." And then he gives you this vivid and moving picture: + + "Let a Hindoo regiment be marched through the district, and as soon + as they cross the line and enter the limits of the holy place they + rend the air with cries of 'Kashi ji ki jai--jai--jai! (Holy + Kashi! Hail to thee! Hail! Hail! Hail)'. The weary pilgrim + scarcely able to stand, with age and weakness, blinded by the dust + and heat, and almost dead with fatigue, crawls out of the oven-like + railway carriage and as soon as his feet touch the ground he lifts + up his withered hands and utters the same pious exclamation. Let a + European in some distant city in casual talk in the bazar mention + the fact that he has lived at Benares, and at once voices will be + raised to call down blessings on his head, for a dweller in Benares + is of all men most blessed." + +It makes our own religious enthusiasm seem pale and cold. Inasmuch as +the life of religion is in the heart, not the head, Mr. Parker's touching +picture seems to promise a sort of indefinite postponement of that +funeral. + + + + +CHAPTER LI. + +Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its +laws or its songs either. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Yes, the city of Benares is in effect just a big church, a religious +hive, whose every cell is a temple, a shrine or a mosque, and whose every +conceivable earthly and heavenly good is procurable under one roof, so to +speak--a sort of Army and Navy Stores, theologically stocked. + +I will make out a little itinerary for the pilgrim; then you will see how +handy the system is, how convenient, how comprehensive. If you go to +Benares with a serious desire to spiritually benefit yourself, you will +find it valuable. I got some of the facts from conversations with the +Rev. Mr. Parker and the others from his Guide to Benares; they are +therefore trustworthy. + +1. Purification. At sunrise you must go down to the Ganges and bathe, +pray, and drink some of the water. This is for your general +purification. + +2. Protection against Hunger. Next, you must fortify yourself against +the sorrowful earthly ill just named. This you will do by worshiping for +a moment in the Cow Temple. By the door of it you will find an image of +Ganesh, son of Shiva; it has the head of an elephant on a human body; its +face and hands are of silver. You will worship it a little, and pass on, +into a covered veranda, where you will find devotees reciting from the +sacred books, with the help of instructors. In this place are groups of +rude and dismal idols. You may contribute something for their support; +then pass into the temple, a grim and stenchy place, for it is populous +with sacred cows and with beggars. You will give something to the +beggars, and "reverently kiss the tails" of such cows as pass along, for +these cows are peculiarly holy, and this act of worship will secure you +from hunger for the day. + +3. "The Poor Man's Friend." You will next worship this god. He is at +the bottom of a stone cistern in the temple of Dalbhyeswar, under the +shade of a noble peepul tree on the bluff overlooking the Ganges, so you +must go back to the river. The Poor Man's Friend is the god of material +prosperity in general, and the god of the rain in particular. You will +secure material prosperity, or both, by worshiping him. He is Shiva, +under a new alias, and he abides in the bottom of that cistern, in the +form of a stone lingam. You pour Ganges water over him, and in return +for this homage you get the promised benefits. If there is any delay +about the rain, you must pour water in until the cistern is full; the +rain will then be sure to come. + +4. Fever. At the Kedar Ghat you will find a long flight of stone steps +leading down to the river. Half way down is a tank filled with sewage. +Drink as much of it as you want. It is for fever. + +5. Smallpox. Go straight from there to the central Ghat. At its +upstream end you will find a small whitewashed building, which is a +temple sacred to Sitala, goddess of smallpox. Her under-study is there +--a rude human figure behind a brass screen. You will worship this for +reasons to be furnished presently. + +6. The Well of Fate. For certain reasons you will next go and do homage +at this well. You will find it in the Dandpan Temple, in the city. The +sunlight falls into it from a square hole in the masonry above. You will +approach it with awe, for your life is now at stake. You will bend over +and look. If the fates are propitious, you will see your face pictured +in the water far down in the well. If matters have been otherwise +ordered, a sudden cloud will mask the sun and you will see nothing. This +means that you have not six months to live. If you are already at the +point of death, your circumstances are now serious. There is no time to +lose. Let this world go, arrange for the next one. Handily situated, at +your very elbow, is opportunity for this. You turn and worship the image +of Maha Kal, the Great Fate, and happiness in the life to come is +secured. If there is breath in your body yet, you should now make an +effort to get a further lease of the present life. You have a chance. +There is a chance for everything in this admirably stocked and +wonderfully systemized Spiritual and Temporal Army and Navy Store. You +must get yourself carried to the + +7. Well of Long Life. This is within the precincts of the mouldering and +venerable Briddhkal Temple, which is one of the oldest in Benares. You +pass in by a stone image of the monkey god, Hanuman, and there, among the +ruined courtyards, you will find a shallow pool of stagnant sewage. It +smells like the best limburger cheese, and is filthy with the washings of +rotting lepers, but that is nothing, bathe in it; bathe in it gratefully +and worshipfully, for this is the Fountain of Youth; these are the Waters +of Long Life. Your gray hairs will disappear, and with them your +wrinkles and your rheumatism, the burdens of care and the weariness of +age, and you will come out young, fresh, elastic, and full of eagerness +for the new race of life. Now will come flooding upon you the manifold +desires that haunt the dear dreams of the morning of life. You will go +whither you will find + +8. Fulfillment of Desire. To wit, to the Kameshwar Temple, sacred to +Shiva as the Lord of Desires. Arrange for yours there. And if you like +to look at idols among the pack and jam of temples, there you will find +enough to stock a museum. You will begin to commit sins now with a +fresh, new vivacity; therefore, it will be well to go frequently to a +place where you can get + +9. Temporary Cleansing from Sin. To wit, to the Well of the Earring. +You must approach this with the profoundest reverence, for it is +unutterably sacred. It is, indeed, the most sacred place in Benares, the +very Holy of Holies, in the estimation of the people. It is a railed +tank, with stone stairways leading down to the water. The water is not +clean. Of course it could not be, for people are always bathing in it. +As long as you choose to stand and look, you will see the files of +sinners descending and ascending--descending soiled with sin, ascending +purged from it. "The liar, the thief, the murderer, and the adulterer +may here wash and be clean," says the Rev. Mr. Parker, in his book. Very +well. I know Mr. Parker, and I believe it; but if anybody else had said +it, I should consider him a person who had better go down in the tank and +take another wash. The god Vishnu dug this tank. He had nothing to dig +with but his "discus." I do not know what a discus is, but I know it is a +poor thing to dig tanks with, because, by the time this one was finished, +it was full of sweat--Vishnu's sweat. He constructed the site that +Benares stands on, and afterward built the globe around it, and thought +nothing of it, yet sweated like that over a little thing like this tank. +One of these statements is doubtful. I do not know which one it is, but +I think it difficult not to believe that a god who could build a world +around Benares would not be intelligent enough to build it around the +tank too, and not have to dig it. Youth, long life, temporary +purification from sin, salvation through propitiation of the Great Fate +--these are all good. But you must do something more. You must + +10. Make Salvation Sure. There are several ways. To get drowned in +the Ganges is one, but that is not pleasant. To die within the limits of +Benares is another; but that is a risky one, because you might be out of +town when your time came. The best one of all is the Pilgrimage Around +the City. You must walk; also, you must go barefoot. The tramp is +forty-four miles, for the road winds out into the country a piece, and +you will be marching five or six days. But you will have plenty of +company. You will move with throngs and hosts of happy pilgrims whose +radiant costumes will make the spectacle beautiful and whose glad songs +and holy pans of triumph will banish your fatigues and cheer your spirit; +and at intervals there will be temples where you may sleep and be +refreshed with food. The pilgrimage completed, you have purchased +salvation, and paid for it. But you may not get it unless you + +11. Get Your Redemption Recorded. You can get this done at the Sakhi +Binayak Temple, and it is best to do it, for otherwise you might not be +able to prove that you had made the pilgrimage in case the matter should +some day come to be disputed. That temple is in a lane back of the Cow +Temple. Over the door is a red image of Ganesh of the elephant head, son +and heir of Shiva, and Prince of Wales to the Theological Monarchy, so to +speak. Within is a god whose office it is to record your pilgrimage and +be responsible for you. You will not see him, but you will see a Brahmin +who will attend to the matter and take the money. If he should forget to +collect the money, you can remind him. He knows that your salvation is +now secure, but of course you would like to know it yourself. You have +nothing to do but go and pray, and pay at the + +12. Well of the Knowledge of Salvation. It is close to the Golden +Temple. There you will see, sculptured out of a single piece of black +marble, a bull which is much larger than any living bull you have ever +seen, and yet is not a good likeness after all. And there also you will +see a very uncommon thing--an image of Shiva. You have seen his lingam +fifty thousand times already, but this is Shiva himself, and said to be a +good likeness. It has three eyes. He is the only god in the firm that +has three. "The well is covered by a fine canopy of stone supported by +forty pillars," and around it you will find what you have already seen at +almost every shrine you have visited in Benares, a mob of devout and +eager pilgrims. The sacred water is being ladled out to them; with it +comes to them the knowledge, clear, thrilling, absolute, that they are +saved; and you can see by their faces that there is one happiness in this +world which is supreme, and to which no other joy is comparable. You +receive your water, you make your deposit, and now what more would you +have? Gold, diamonds, power, fame? All in a single moment these things +have withered to dirt, dust, ashes. The world has nothing to give you +now. For you it is bankrupt. + +I do not claim that the pilgrims do their acts of worship in the order +and sequence above charted out in this Itinerary of mine, but I think +logic suggests that they ought to do so. Instead of a helter-skelter +worship, we then have a definite starting-place, and a march which +carries the pilgrim steadily forward by reasoned and logical progression +to a definite goal. Thus, his Ganges bath in the early morning gives him +an appetite; he kisses the cow-tails, and that removes it. It is now +business hours, and longings for material prosperity rise in his mind, +and be goes and pours water over Shiva's symbol; this insures the +prosperity, but also brings on a rain, which gives him a fever. Then he +drinks the sewage at the Kedar Ghat to cure the fever; it cures the fever +but gives him the smallpox. He wishes to know how it is going to turn +out; he goes to the Dandpan Temple and looks down the well. A clouded +sun shows him that death is near. Logically his best course for the +present, since he cannot tell at what moment he may die, is to secure a +happy hereafter; this he does, through the agency of the Great Fate. He +is safe, now, for heaven; his next move will naturally be to keep out of +it as long as he can. Therefore he goes to the Briddhkal Temple and +secures Youth and long life by bathing in a puddle of leper-pus which +would kill a microbe. Logically, Youth has re-equipped him for sin and +with the disposition to commit it; he will naturally go to the fane which +is consecrated to the Fulfillment of Desires, and make arrangements. +Logically, he will now go to the Well of the Earring from time to time to +unload and freshen up for further banned enjoyments. But first and last +and all the time he is human, and therefore in his reflective intervals +he will always be speculating in "futures." He will make the Great +Pilgrimage around the city and so make his salvation absolutely sure; he +will also have record made of it, so that it may remain absolutely sure +and not be forgotten or repudiated in the confusion of the Final +Settlement. Logically, also, he will wish to have satisfying and +tranquilizing personal knowledge that that salvation is secure; therefore +he goes to the Well of the Knowledge of Salvation, adds that completing +detail, and then goes about his affairs serene and content; serene and +content, for he is now royally endowed with an advantage which no +religion in this world could give him but his own; for henceforth he may +commit as many million sins as he wants to and nothing can come of it. + +Thus the system, properly and logically ordered, is neat, compact, +clearly defined, and covers the whole ground. I desire to recommend it +to such as find the other systems too difficult, exacting, and irksome +for the uses of this fretful brief life of ours. + +However, let me not deceive any one. My Itinerary lacks a detail. I +must put it in. The truth is, that after the pilgrim has faithfully +followed the requirements of the Itinerary through to the end and has +secured his salvation and also the personal knowledge of that fact, there +is still an accident possible to him which can annul the whole thing. If +he should ever cross to the other side of the Ganges and get caught out +and die there he would at once come to life again in the form of an ass. +Think of that, after all this trouble and expense. You see how +capricious and uncertain salvation is there. The Hindoo has a childish +and unreasoning aversion to being turned into an ass. It is hard to tell +why. One could properly expect an ass to have an aversion to being +turned into a Hindoo. One could understand that he could lose dignity by +it; also self-respect, and nine-tenths of his intelligence. But the +Hindoo changed into an ass wouldn't lose anything, unless you count his +religion. And he would gain much--release from his slavery to two +million gods and twenty million priests, fakeers, holy mendicants, and +other sacred bacilli; he would escape the Hindoo hell; he would also +escape the Hindoo heaven. These are advantages which the Hindoo ought to +consider; then he would go over and die on the other side. + +Benares is a religious Vesuvius. In its bowels the theological forces +have been heaving and tossing, rumbling, thundering and quaking, boiling, +and weltering and flaming and smoking for ages. But a little group of +missionaries have taken post at its base, and they have hopes. There are +the Baptist Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society, the London +Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Missionary Society, and the Zenana Bible +and Medical Mission. They have schools, and the principal work seems to +be among the children. And no doubt that part of the work prospers best, +for grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the religion +they were brought up in. + + + + +CHAPTER LII. + +Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +In one of those Benares temples we saw a devotee working for salvation in +a curious way. He had a huge wad of clay beside him and was making it up +into little wee gods no bigger than carpet tacks. He stuck a grain of +rice into each--to represent the lingam, I think. He turned them out +nimbly, for he had had long practice and had acquired great facility. +Every day he made 2,000 gods, then threw them into the holy Ganges. This +act of homage brought him the profound homage of the pious--also their +coppers. He had a sure living here, and was earning a high place in the +hereafter. + +The Ganges front is the supreme show-place of Benares. Its tall bluffs +are solidly caked from water to summit, along a stretch of three miles, +with a splendid jumble of massive and picturesque masonry, a bewildering +and beautiful confusion of stone platforms, temples, stair-flights, rich +and stately palaces--nowhere a break, nowhere a glimpse of the bluff +itself; all the long face of it is compactly walled from sight by this +crammed perspective of platforms, soaring stairways, sculptured temples, +majestic palaces, softening away into the distances; and there is +movement, motion, human life everywhere, and brilliantly costumed +--streaming in rainbows up and down the lofty stairways, and massed in +metaphorical flower-gardens on the miles of great platforms at the +river's edge. + +All this masonry, all this architecture represents piety. The palaces +were built by native princes whose homes, as a rule, are far from +Benares, but who go there from time to time to refresh their souls with +the sight and touch of the Ganges, the river of their idolatry. The +stairways are records of acts of piety; the crowd of costly little +temples are tokens of money spent by rich men for present credit and hope +of future reward. Apparently, the rich Christian who spends large sums +upon his religion is conspicuous with us, by his rarity, but the rich +Hindoo who doesn't spend large sums upon his religion is seemingly +non-existent. With us the poor spend money on their religion, but they +keep back some to live on. Apparently, in India, the poor bankrupt +themselves daily for their religion. The rich Hindoo can afford his +pious outlays; he gets much glory for his spendings, yet keeps back a +sufficiency of his income for temporal purposes; but the poor Hindoo is +entitled to compassion, for his spendings keep him poor, yet get him no +glory. + +We made the usual trip up and down the river, seated in chairs under an +awning on the deck of the usual commodious hand-propelled ark; made it +two or three times, and could have made it with increasing interest and +enjoyment many times more; for, of course, the palaces and temples would +grow more and more beautiful every time one saw them, for that happens +with all such things; also, I think one would not get tired of the +bathers, nor their costumes, nor of their ingenuities in getting out of +them and into them again without exposing too much bronze, nor of their +devotional gesticulations and absorbed bead-tellings. + +But I should get tired of seeing them wash their mouths with that +dreadful water and drink it. In fact, I did get tired of it, and very +early, too. At one place where we halted for a while, the foul gush from +a sewer was making the water turbid and murky all around, and there was a +random corpse slopping around in it that had floated down from up +country. Ten steps below that place stood a crowd of men, women, and +comely young maidens waist deep in the water-and they were scooping it up +in their hands and drinking it. Faith can certainly do wonders, and this +is an instance of it. Those people were not drinking that fearful stuff +to assuage thirst, but in order to purify their souls and the interior of +their bodies. According to their creed, the Ganges water makes +everything pure that it touches--instantly and utterly pure. The sewer +water was not an offence to them, the corpse did not revolt them; the +sacred water had touched both, and both were now snow-pure, and could +defile no one. The memory of that sight will always stay by me; but not +by request. + +A word further concerning the nasty but all-purifying Ganges water. When +we went to Agra, by and by, we happened there just in time to be in at +the birth of a marvel--a memorable scientific discovery--the discovery +that in certain ways the foul and derided Ganges water is the most +puissant purifier in the world! This curious fact, as I have said, had +just been added to the treasury of modern science. It had long been +noted as a strange thing that while Benares is often afflicted with the +cholera she does not spread it beyond her borders. This could not be +accounted for. Mr. Henkin, the scientist in the employ of the government +of Agra, concluded to examine the water. He went to Benares and made his +tests. He got water at the mouths of the sewers where they empty into +the river at the bathing ghats; a cubic centimetre of it contained +millions of germs; at the end of six hours they were all dead. He caught +a floating corpse, towed it to the shore, and from beside it he dipped up +water that was swarming with cholera germs; at the end of six hours they +were all dead. He added swarm after swarm of cholera germs to this +water; within the six hours they always died, to the last sample. +Repeatedly, he took pure well water which was bare of animal life, and +put into it a few cholera germs; they always began to propagate at once, +and always within six hours they swarmed--and were numberable by millions +upon millions. + +For ages and ages the Hindoos have had absolute faith that the water of +the Ganges was absolutely pure, could not be defiled by any contact +whatsoever, and infallibly made pure and clean whatsoever thing touched +it. They still believe it, and that is why they bathe in it and drink +it, caring nothing for its seeming filthiness and the floating corpses. +The Hindoos have been laughed at, these many generations, but the +laughter will need to modify itself a little from now on. How did +they find out the water's secret in those ancient ages? Had they +germ-scientists then? We do not know. We only know that they had a +civilization long before we emerged from savagery. But to return to +where I was before; I was about to speak of the burning-ghat. + +They do not burn fakeers--those revered mendicants. They are so holy +that they can get to their place without that sacrament, provided they be +consigned to the consecrating river. We saw one carried to mid-stream +and thrown overboard. He was sandwiched between two great slabs of +stone. + +We lay off the cremation-ghat half an hour and saw nine corpses burned. +I should not wish to see any more of it, unless I might select the +parties. The mourners follow the bier through the town and down to the +ghat; then the bier-bearers deliver the body to some low-caste natives +--Doms--and the mourners turn about and go back home. I heard no crying +and saw no tears, there was no ceremony of parting. Apparently, these +expressions of grief and affection are reserved for the privacy of the +home. The dead women came draped in red, the men in white. They are +laid in the water at the river's edge while the pyre is being prepared. + +The first subject was a man. When the Doms unswathed him to wash him, he +proved to be a sturdily built, well-nourished and handsome old gentleman, +with not a sign about him to suggest that he had ever been ill. Dry wood +was brought and built up into a loose pile; the corpse was laid upon it +and covered over with fuel. Then a naked holy man who was sitting on +high ground a little distance away began to talk and shout with great +energy, and he kept up this noise right along. It may have been the +funeral sermon, and probably was. I forgot to say that one of the +mourners remained behind when the others went away. This was the dead +man's son, a boy of ten or twelve, brown and handsome, grave and +self-possessed, and clothed in flowing white. He was there to burn his +father. He was given a torch, and while he slowly walked seven times +around the pyre the naked black man on the high ground poured out his +sermon more clamorously than ever. The seventh circuit completed, the +boy applied the torch at his father's head, then at his feet; the flames +sprang briskly up with a sharp crackling noise, and the lad went away. +Hindoos do not want daughters, because their weddings make such a ruinous +expense; but they want sons, so that at death they may have honorable +exit from the world; and there is no honor equal to the honor of having +one's pyre lighted by one's son. The father who dies sonless is in a +grievous situation indeed, and is pitied. Life being uncertain, the +Hindoo marries while he is still a boy, in the hope that he will have a +son ready when the day of his need shall come. But if he have no son, he +will adopt one. This answers every purpose. + +Meantime the corpse is burning, also several others. It is a dismal +business. The stokers did not sit down in idleness, but moved briskly +about, punching up the fires with long poles, and now and then adding +fuel. Sometimes they hoisted the half of a skeleton into the air, then +slammed it down and beat it with the pole, breaking it up so that it +would burn better. They hoisted skulls up in the same way and banged and +battered them. The sight was hard to bear; it would have been harder if +the mourners had stayed to witness it. I had but a moderate desire to +see a cremation, so it was soon satisfied. For sanitary reasons it would +be well if cremation were universal; but this form is revolting, and not +to be recommended. + +The fire used is sacred, of course--for there is money in it. Ordinary +fire is forbidden; there is no money in it. I was told that this sacred +fire is all furnished by one person, and that he has a monopoly of it and +charges a good price for it. Sometimes a rich mourner pays a thousand +rupees for it. To get to paradise from India is an expensive thing. +Every detail connected with the matter costs something, and helps to +fatten a priest. I suppose it is quite safe to conclude that that +fire-bug is in holy orders. + +Close to the cremation-ground stand a few time-worn stones which are +remembrances of the suttee. Each has a rough carving upon it, +representing a man and a woman standing or walking hand in hand, and +marks the spot where a widow went to her death by fire in the days when +the suttee flourished. Mr. Parker said that widows would burn themselves +now if the government would allow it. The family that can point to one +of these little memorials and say: "She who burned herself there was an +ancestress of ours," is envied. + +It is a curious people. With them, all life seems to be sacred except +human life. Even the life of vermin is sacred, and must not be taken. +The good Jain wipes off a seat before using it, lest he cause the death +of-some valueless insect by sitting down on it. It grieves him to have +to drink water, because the provisions in his stomach may not agree with +the microbes. Yet India invented Thuggery and the Suttee. India is a +hard country to understand. We went to the temple of the Thug goddess, +Bhowanee, or Kali, or Durga. She has these names and others. She is the +only god to whom living sacrifices are made. Goats are sacrificed to +her. Monkeys would be cheaper. There are plenty of them about the +place. Being sacred, they make themselves very free, and scramble around +wherever they please. The temple and its porch are beautifully carved, +but this is not the case with the idol. Bhowanee is not pleasant to look +at. She has a silver face, and a projecting swollen tongue painted a +deep red. She wears a necklace of skulls. + +In fact, none of the idols in Benares are handsome or attractive. And +what a swarm of them there is! The town is a vast museum of idols--and +all of them crude, misshapen, and ugly. They flock through one's dreams +at night, a wild mob of nightmares. When you get tired of them in the +temples and take a trip on the river, you find idol giants, flashily +painted, stretched out side by side on the shore. And apparently +wherever there is room for one more lingam, a lingam is there. If Vishnu +had foreseen what his town was going to be, he would have called it +Idolville or Lingamburg. + +The most conspicuous feature of Benares is the pair of slender white +minarets which tower like masts from the great Mosque of Aurangzeb. They +seem to be always in sight, from everywhere, those airy, graceful, +inspiring things. But masts is not the right word, for masts have a +perceptible taper, while these minarets have not. They are 142 feet +high, and only 8 1/2 feet in diameter at the base, and 7 1/2 at the +summit--scarcely any taper at all. These are the proportions of a +candle; and fair and fairylike candles these are. Will be, anyway, some +day, when the Christians inherit them and top them with the electric +light. There is a great view from up there--a wonderful view. A large +gray monkey was part of it, and damaged it. A monkey has no judgment. +This one was skipping about the upper great heights of the mosque +--skipping across empty yawning intervals which were almost too wide for +him, and which he only just barely cleared, each time, by the skin of his +teeth. He got me so nervous that I couldn't look at the view. I +couldn't look at anything but him. Every time he went sailing over one +of those abysses my breath stood still, and when he grabbed for the perch +he was going for, I grabbed too, in sympathy. And he was perfectly +indifferent, perfectly unconcerned, and I did all the panting myself. +He came within an ace of losing his life a dozen times, and I was so +troubled about him that I would have shot him if I had had anything to do +it with. But I strongly recommend the view. There is more monkey than +view, and there is always going to be more monkey while that idiot +survives, but what view you get is superb. All Benares, the river, and +the region round about are spread before you. Take a gun, and look at +the view. + +The next thing I saw was more reposeful. It was a new kind of art. It +was a picture painted on water. It was done by a native. He sprinkled +fine dust of various colors on the still surface of a basin of water, and +out of these sprinklings a dainty and pretty picture gradually grew, a +picture which a breath could destroy. Somehow it was impressive, after +so much browsing among massive and battered and decaying fanes that rest +upon ruins, and those ruins upon still other ruins, and those upon still +others again. It was a sermon, an allegory, a symbol of Instability. +Those creations in stone were only a kind of water pictures, after all. + +A prominent episode in the Indian career of Warren Hastings had Benares +for its theater. Wherever that extraordinary man set his foot, he left +his mark. He came to Benares in 1781 to collect a fine of L500,000 which +he had levied upon its Rajah, Cheit Singly on behalf of the East India +Company. Hastings was a long way from home and help. There were, +probably, not a dozen Englishmen within reach; the Rajah was in his fort +with his myriads around him. But no matter. From his little camp in a +neighboring garden, Hastings sent a party to arrest the sovereign. He +sent on this daring mission a couple of hundred native soldiers sepoys +--under command of three young English lieutenants. The Rajah submitted +without a word. The incident lights up the Indian situation +electrically, and gives one a vivid sense of the strides which the +English had made and the mastership they had acquired in the land since +the date of Clive's great victory. In a quarter of a century, from being +nobodies, and feared by none, they were become confessed lords and +masters, feared by all, sovereigns included, and served by all, +sovereigns included. It makes the fairy tales sound true. The English +had not been afraid to enlist native soldiers to fight against their own +people and keep them obedient. And now Hastings was not afraid to come +away out to this remote place with a handful of such soldiers and send +them to arrest a native sovereign. + +The lieutenants imprisoned the Rajah in his own fort. It was beautiful, +the pluckiness of it, the impudence of it. The arrest enraged the +Rajah's people, and all Benares came storming about the place and +threatening vengeance. And yet, but for an accident, nothing important +would have resulted, perhaps. The mob found out a most strange thing, an +almost incredible thing--that this handful of soldiers had come on this +hardy errand with empty guns and no ammunition. This has been attributed +to thoughtlessness, but it could hardly have been that, for in such large +emergencies as this, intelligent people do think. It must have been +indifference, an over-confidence born of the proved submissiveness of the +native character, when confronted by even one or two stern Britons in +their war paint. But, however that may be, it was a fatal discovery that +the mob had made. They were full of courage, now, and they broke into +the fort and massacred the helpless soldiers and their officers. +Hastings escaped from Benares by night and got safely away, leaving the +principality in a state of wild insurrection; but he was back again +within the month, and quieted it down in his prompt and virile way, and +took the Rajah's throne away from him and gave it to another man. He was +a capable kind of person was Warren Hastings. This was the only time he +was ever out of ammunition. Some of his acts have left stains upon his +name which can never be washed away, but he saved to England the Indian +Empire, and that was the best service that was ever done to the Indians +themselves, those wretched heirs of a hundred centuries of pitiless +oppression and abuse. + + + + +CHAPTER LIII. + +True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +It was in Benares that I saw another living god. That makes two. +I believe I have seen most of the greater and lesser wonders of the +world, but I do not remember that any of them interested me so +overwhelmingly as did that pair of gods. + +When I try to account for this effect I find no difficulty about it. +I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because +of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get +almost all our wonders at second hand. We are eager to see any +celebrated thing--and we never fail of our reward; just the deep +privilege of gazing upon an object which has stirred the enthusiasm or +evoked the reverence or affection or admiration of multitudes of our race +is a thing which we value; we are profoundly glad that we have seen it, +we are permanently enriched from having seen it, we would not part with +the memory of that experience for a great price. And yet that very +spectacle may be the Taj. You cannot keep your enthusiasms down, you +cannot keep your emotions within bounds when that soaring bubble of +marble breaks upon your view. But these are not your enthusiasms and +emotions--they are the accumulated emotions and enthusiasms of a thousand +fervid writers, who have been slowly and steadily storing them up in your +heart day by day and year by year all your life; and now they burst out +in a flood and overwhelm you; and you could not be a whit happier if they +were your very own. By and by you sober down, and then you perceive that +you have been drunk on the smell of somebody else's cork. For ever and +ever the memory of my distant first glimpse of the Taj will compensate me +for creeping around the globe to have that great privilege. + +But the Taj--with all your inflation of delusive emotions, acquired at +second-hand from people to whom in the majority of cases they were also +delusions acquired at second-hand--a thing which you fortunately did not +think of or it might have made you doubtful of what you imagined were +your own what is the Taj as a marvel, a spectacle and an uplifting and +overpowering wonder, compared with a living, breathing, speaking +personage whom several millions of human beings devoutly and sincerely +and unquestioningly believe to be a God, and humbly and gratefully +worship as a God? + +He was sixty years old when I saw him. He is called Sri 108 Swami +Bhaskarananda Saraswati. That is one form of it. I think that that is +what you would call him in speaking to him--because it is short. But you +would use more of his name in addressing a letter to him; courtesy would +require this. Even then you would not have to use all of it, but only +this much: + +Sri 108 Matparamahansrzpairivrajakacharyaswamibhaskaranandasaraswati. + +You do not put "Esq." after it, for that is not necessary. The word +which opens the volley is itself a title of honor "Sri." The "108" +stands for the rest of his names, I believe. Vishnu has 108 names which +he does not use in business, and no doubt it is a custom of gods and a +privilege sacred to their order to keep 108 extra ones in stock. Just +the restricted name set down above is a handsome property, without the +108. By my count it has 58 letters in it. This removes the long German +words from competition; they are permanently out of the race. + +Sri 108 S. B. Saraswati has attained to what among the Hindoos is called +the "state of perfection." It is a state which other Hindoos reach by +being born again and again, and over and over again into this world, +through one re-incarnation after another--a tiresome long job covering +centuries and decades of centuries, and one that is full of risks, too, +like the accident of dying on the wrong side of the Ganges some time or +other and waking up in the form of an ass, with a fresh start necessary +and the numerous trips to be made all over again. But in reaching +perfection, Sri 108 S. B. S. has escaped all that. He is no longer a +part or a feature of this world; his substance has changed, all +earthiness has departed out of it; he is utterly holy, utterly pure; +nothing can desecrate this holiness or stain this purity; he is no longer +of the earth, its concerns are matters foreign to him, its pains and +griefs and troubles cannot reach him. When he dies, Nirvana is his; he +will be absorbed into the substance of the Supreme Deity and be at peace +forever. + +The Hindoo Scriptures point out how this state is to be reached, but it +is only once in a thousand years, perhaps, that candidate accomplishes +it. This one has traversed the course required, stage by stage, from the +beginning to the end, and now has nothing left to do but wait for the +call which shall release him from a world in which he has now no part nor +lot. First, he passed through the student stage, and became learned in +the holy books. Next he became citizen, householder, husband, and +father. That was the required second stage. Then--like John Bunyan's +Christian he bade perpetual good-bye to his family, as required, and went +wandering away. He went far into the desert and served a term as hermit. +Next, he became a beggar, "in accordance with the rites laid down in the +Scriptures," and wandered about India eating the bread of mendicancy. A +quarter of a century ago he reached the stage of purity. This needs no +garment; its symbol is nudity; he discarded the waist-cloth which he had +previously worn. He could resume it now if he chose, for neither that +nor any other contact can defile him; but he does not choose. + +There are several other stages, I believe, but I do not remember what +they are. But he has been through them. Throughout the long course he +was perfecting himself in holy learning, and writing commentaries upon +the sacred books. He was also meditating upon Brahma, and he does that +now. + +White marble relief-portraits of him are sold all about India. He lives +in a good house in a noble great garden in Benares, all meet and proper +to his stupendous rank. Necessarily he does not go abroad in the +streets. Deities would never be able to move about handily in any +country. If one whom we recognized and adored as a god should go abroad +in our streets, and the day it was to happen were known, all traffic +would be blocked and business would come to a standstill. + +This god is comfortably housed, and yet modestly, all things considered, +for if he wanted to live in a palace he would only need to speak and his +worshipers would gladly build it. Sometimes he sees devotees for a +moment, and comforts them and blesses them, and they kiss his feet and go +away happy. Rank is nothing to him, he being a god. To him all men are +alike. He sees whom he pleases and denies himself to whom he pleases. +Sometimes he sees a prince and denies himself to a pauper; at other times +he receives the pauper and turns the prince away. However, he does not +receive many of either class. He has to husband his time for his +meditations. I think he would receive Rev. Mr. Parker at any time. I +think he is sorry for Mr. Parker, and I think Mr. Parker is sorry for +him; and no doubt this compassion is good for both of them. + +When we arrived we had to stand around in the garden a little while and +wait, and the outlook was not good, for he had been turning away +Maharajas that day and receiving only the riff-raff, and we belonged in +between, somewhere. But presently, a servant came out saying it was all +right, he was coming. + +And sure enough, he came, and I saw him--that object of the worship of +millions. It was a strange sensation, and thrilling. I wish I could +feel it stream through my veins again. And yet, to me he was not a god, +he was only a Taj. The thrill was not my thrill, but had come to me +secondhand from those invisible millions of believers. By a hand-shake +with their god I had ground-circuited their wire and got their monster +battery's whole charge. + +He was tall and slender, indeed emaciated. He had a clean cut and +conspicuously intellectual face, and a deep and kindly eye. He looked +many years older than he really was, but much study and meditation and +fasting and prayer, with the arid life he had led as hermit and beggar, +could account for that. He is wholly nude when he receives natives, of +whatever rank they may be, but he had white cloth around his loins now, a +concession to Mr. Parker's Europe prejudices, no doubt. + +As soon as I had sobered down a little we got along very well together, +and I found him a most pleasant and friendly deity. He had heard a deal +about Chicago, and showed a quite remarkable interest in it, for a god. +It all came of the World's Fair and the Congress of Religions. If India +knows about nothing else American, she knows about those, and will keep +them in mind one while. + +He proposed an exchange of autographs, a delicate attention which made me +believe in him, but I had been having my doubts before. He wrote his in +his book, and I have a reverent regard for that book, though the words +run from right to left, and so I can't read it. It was a mistake to +print in that way. It contains his voluminous comments on the Hindoo +holy writings, and if I could make them out I would try for perfection +myself. I gave him a copy of Huckleberry Finn. I thought it might rest +him up a little to mix it in along with his meditations on Brahma, for he +looked tired, and I knew that if it didn't do him any good it wouldn't do +him any harm. + +He has a scholar meditating under him--Mina Bahadur Rana--but we did not +see him. He wears clothes and is very imperfect. He has written a +little pamphlet about his master, and I have that. It contains a +wood-cut of the master and himself seated on a rug in the garden. The +portrait of the master is very good indeed. The posture is exactly that +which Brahma himself affects, and it requires long arms and limber legs, +and can be accumulated only by gods and the india-rubber man. There is a +life-size marble relief of Shri 108, S.B.S. in the garden. It +represents him in this same posture. + +Dear me! It is a strange world. Particularly the Indian division of it. +This pupil, Mina Bahadur Rana, is not a commonplace person, but a man of +distinguished capacities and attainments, and, apparently, he had a fine +worldly career in front of him. He was serving the Nepal Government in a +high capacity at the Court of the Viceroy of India, twenty years ago. He +was an able man, educated, a thinker, a man of property. But the longing +to devote himself to a religious life came upon him, and he resigned his +place, turned his back upon the vanities and comforts of the world, and +went away into the solitudes to live in a hut and study the sacred +writings and meditate upon virtue and holiness and seek to attain them. +This sort of religion resembles ours. Christ recommended the rich to +give away all their property and follow Him in poverty, not in worldly +comfort. American and English millionaires do it every day, and thus +verify and confirm to the world the tremendous forces that lie in +religion. Yet many people scoff at them for this loyalty to duty, and +many will scoff at Mina Bahadur Rana and call him a crank. Like many +Christians of great character and intellect, he has made the study of his +Scriptures and the writing of books of commentaries upon them the loving +labor of his life. Like them, he has believed that his was not an idle +and foolish waste of his life, but a most worthy and honorable employment +of it. Yet, there are many people who will see in those others, men +worthy of homage and deep reverence, but in him merely a crank. But I +shall not. He has my reverence. And I don't offer it as a common thing +and poor, but as an unusual thing and of value. The ordinary reverence, +the reverence defined and explained by the dictionary costs nothing. +Reverence for one's own sacred things--parents, religion, flag, laws, and +respect for one's own beliefs--these are feelings which we cannot even +help. They come natural to us; they are involuntary, like breathing. +There is no personal merit in breathing. But the reverence which is +difficult, and which has personal merit in it, is the respect which you +pay, without compulsion, to the political or religious attitude of a man +whose beliefs are not yours. You can't revere his gods or his politics, +and no one expects you to do that, but you could respect his belief in +them if you tried hard enough; and you could respect him, too, if you +tried hard enough. But it is very, very difficult; it is next to +impossible, and so we hardly ever try. If the man doesn't believe as we +do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean it does nowadays, +because now we can't burn him. + +We are always canting about people's "irreverence," always charging this +offense upon somebody or other, and thereby intimating that we are better +than that person and do not commit that offense ourselves. Whenever we +do this we are in a lying attitude, and our speech is cant; for none of +us are reverent--in a meritorious way; deep down in our hearts we are all +irreverent. There is probably not a single exception to this rule in the +earth. There is probably not one person whose reverence rises higher +than respect for his own sacred things; and therefore, it is not a thing +to boast about and be proud of, since the most degraded savage has that +--and, like the best of us, has nothing higher. To speak plainly, we +despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the +pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange +inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the +things which are holy to us. Suppose we should meet with a paragraph +like the following, in the newspapers: + +"Yesterday a visiting party of the British nobility had a picnic at Mount +Vernon, and in the tomb of Washington they ate their luncheon, sang +popular songs, played games, and danced waltzes and polkas." + +Should we be shocked? Should we feel outraged? Should we be amazed? +Should we call the performance a desecration? Yes, that would all +happen. We should denounce those people in round terms, and call them +hard names. + +And suppose we found this paragraph in the newspapers: + +"Yesterday a visiting party of American pork-millionaires had a picnic in +Westminster Abbey, and in that sacred place they ate their luncheon, sang +popular songs, played games, and danced waltzes and polkas." + +Would the English be shocked? Would they feel outraged? Would they be +amazed? Would they call the performance a desecration? That would all +happen. The pork-millionaires would be denounced in round terms; they +would be called hard names. + +In the tomb at Mount Vernon lie the ashes of America's most honored son; +in the Abbey, the ashes of England's greatest dead; the tomb of tombs, +the costliest in the earth, the wonder of the world, the Taj, was built +by a great Emperor to honor the memory of a perfect wife and perfect +mother, one in whom there was no spot or blemish, whose love was his stay +and support, whose life was the light of the world to him; in it her +ashes lie, and to the Mohammedan millions of India it is a holy place; to +them it is what Mount Vernon is to Americans, it is what the Abbey is to +the English. + +Major Sleeman wrote forty or fifty years ago (the italics are mine): + + "I would here enter my humble protest against the quadrille and + lunch parties which are sometimes given to European ladies and + gentlemen of the station at this imperial tomb; drinking and dancing + are no doubt very good things in their season, but they are sadly + out of place in a sepulchre." + +Were there any Americans among those lunch parties? If they were +invited, there were. + +If my imagined lunch-parties in Westminster and the tomb of Washington +should take place, the incident would cause a vast outbreak of bitter +eloquence about Barbarism and Irreverence; and it would come from two +sets of people who would go next day and dance in the Taj if they had a +chance. + +As we took our leave of the Benares god and started away we noticed a +group of natives waiting respectfully just within the gate--a Rajah from +somewhere in India, and some people of lesser consequence. The god +beckoned them to come, and as we passed out the Rajah was kneeling and +reverently kissing his sacred feet. + +If Barnum--but Barnum's ambitions are at rest. This god will remain in +the holy peace and seclusion of his garden, undisturbed. Barnum could +not have gotten him, anyway. Still, he would have found a substitute +that would answer. + + + + +CHAPTER LIV. + +Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a +bad investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth +$4 a minute. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +A comfortable railway journey of seventeen and a half hours brought us to +the capital of India, which is likewise the capital of Bengal--Calcutta. +Like Bombay, it has a population of nearly a million natives and a small +gathering of white people. It is a huge city and fine, and is called the +City of Palaces. It is rich in historical memories; rich in British +achievement--military, political, commercial; rich in the results of the +miracles done by that brace of mighty magicians, Clive and Hastings. And +has a cloud kissing monument to one Ochterlony. + +It is a fluted candlestick 250 feet high. This lingam is the only large +monument in Calcutta, I believe. It is a fine ornament, and will keep +Ochterlony in mind. + +Wherever you are, in Calcutta, and for miles around, you can see it; and +always when you see it you think of Ochterlony. And so there is not an +hour in the day that you do not think of Ochterlony and wonder who he +was. It is good that Clive cannot come back, for he would think it was +for Plassey; and then that great spirit would be wounded when the +revelation came that it was not. Clive would find out that it was for +Ochterlony; and he would think Ochterlony was a battle. And he would +think it was a great one, too, and he would say, "With three thousand I +whipped sixty thousand and founded the Empire--and there is no monument; +this other soldier must have whipped a billion with a dozen and saved the +world." + +But he would be mistaken. Ochterlony was a man, not a battle. And he +did good and honorable service, too; as good and honorable service as has +been done in India by seventy-five or a hundred other Englishmen of +courage, rectitude, and distinguished capacity. For India has been a +fertile breeding-ground of such men, and remains so; great men, both in +war and in the civil service, and as modest as great. But they have no +monuments, and were not expecting any. Ochterlony could not have been +expecting one, and it is not at all likely that he desired one--certainly +not until Clive and Hastings should be supplied. Every day Clive and +Hastings lean on the battlements of heaven and look down and wonder which +of the two the monument is for; and they fret and worry because they +cannot find out, and so the peace of heaven is spoiled for them and lost. +But not for Ochterlony. Ochterlony is not troubled. He doesn't suspect +that it is his monument. Heaven is sweet and peaceful to him. There is +a sort of unfairness about it all. + +Indeed, if monuments were always given in India for high achievements, +duty straitly performed, and smirchless records, the landscape would be +monotonous with them. The handful of English in India govern the Indian +myriads with apparent ease, and without noticeable friction, through +tact, training, and distinguished administrative ability, reinforced by +just and liberal laws--and by keeping their word to the native whenever +they give it. + +England is far from India and knows little about the eminent services +performed by her servants there, for it is the newspaper correspondent +who makes fame, and he is not sent to India but to the continent, to +report the doings of the princelets and the dukelets, and where they are +visiting and whom they are marrying. Often a British official spends +thirty or forty years in India, climbing from grade to grade by services +which would make him celebrated anywhere else, and finishes as a +vice-sovereign, governing a great realm and millions of subjects; then he +goes home to England substantially unknown and unheard of, and settles +down in some modest corner, and is as one extinguished. Ten years later +there is a twenty-line obituary in the London papers, and the reader is +paralyzed by the splendors of a career which he is not sure that he had +ever heard of before. But meanwhile he has learned all about the +continental princelets and dukelets. + +The average man is profoundly ignorant of countries that lie remote from +his own. When they are mentioned in his presence one or two facts and +maybe a couple of names rise like torches in his mind, lighting up an +inch or two of it and leaving the rest all dark. The mention of Egypt +suggests some Biblical facts and the Pyramids-nothing more. The mention +of South Africa suggests Kimberly and the diamonds and there an end. +Formerly the mention, to a Hindoo, of America suggested a name--George +Washington--with that his familiarity with our country was exhausted. +Latterly his familiarity with it has doubled in bulk; so that when +America is mentioned now, two torches flare up in the dark caverns of his +mind and he says, "Ah, the country of the great man Washington; and of +the Holy City--Chicago." For he knows about the Congress of Religion, and +this has enabled him to get an erroneous impression of Chicago. + +When India is mentioned to the citizen of a far country it suggests +Clive, Hastings, the Mutiny, Kipling, and a number of other great events; +and the mention of Calcutta infallibly brings up the Black Hole. And so, +when that citizen finds himself in the capital of India he goes first of +all to see the Black Hole of Calcutta--and is disappointed. + +The Black Hole was not preserved; it is gone, long, long ago. It is +strange. Just as it stood, it was itself a monument; a ready-made one. +It was finished, it was complete, its materials were strong and lasting, +it needed no furbishing up, no repairs; it merely needed to be let alone. +It was the first brick, the Foundation Stone, upon which was reared a +mighty Empire--the Indian Empire of Great Britain. It was the ghastly +episode of the Black Hole that maddened the British and brought Clive, +that young military marvel, raging up from Madras; it was the seed from +which sprung Plassey; and it was that extraordinary battle, whose like +had not been seen in the earth since Agincourt, that laid deep and strong +the foundations of England's colossal Indian sovereignty. + +And yet within the time of men who still live, the Black Hole was torn +down and thrown away as carelessly as if its bricks were common clay, not +ingots of historic gold. There is no accounting for human beings. + +The supposed site of the Black Hole is marked by an engraved plate. I +saw that; and better that than nothing. The Black Hole was a prison--a +cell is nearer the right word--eighteen feet square, the dimensions of an +ordinary bedchamber; and into this place the victorious Nabob of Bengal +packed 146 of his English prisoners. There was hardly standing room for +them; scarcely a breath of air was to be got; the time was night, the +weather sweltering hot. Before the dawn came, the captives were all dead +but twenty-three. Mr. Holwell's long account of the awful episode was +familiar to the world a hundred years ago, but one seldom sees in print +even an extract from it in our day. Among the striking things in it is +this. Mr. Holwell, perishing with thirst, kept himself alive by sucking +the perspiration from his sleeves. It gives one a vivid idea of the +situation. He presently found that while he was busy drawing life from +one of his sleeves a young English gentleman was stealing supplies from +the other one. Holwell was an unselfish man, a man of the most generous +impulses; he lived and died famous for these fine and rare qualities; yet +when he found out what was happening to that unwatched sleeve, he took +the precaution to suck that one dry first. The miseries of the Black +Hole were able to change even a nature like his. But that young +gentleman was one of the twenty-three survivors, and he said it was the +stolen perspiration that saved his life. From the middle of Mr. +Holwell's narrative I will make a brief excerpt: + + "Then a general prayer to Heaven, to hasten the approach of the + flames to the right and left of us, and put a period to our misery. + But these failing, they whose strength and spirits were quite + exhausted laid themselves down and expired quietly upon their + fellows: others who had yet some strength and vigor left made a last + effort at the windows, and several succeeded by leaping and + scrambling over the backs and heads of those in the first rank, and + got hold of the bars, from which there was no removing them. Many + to the right and left sunk with the violent pressure, and were soon + suffocated; for now a steam arose from the living and the dead, + which affected us in all its circumstances as if we were forcibly + held with our heads over a bowl full of strong volatile spirit of + hartshorn, until suffocated; nor could the effluvia of the one be + distinguished from the other, and frequently, when I was forced by + the load upon my head and shoulders to hold my face down, I was + obliged, near as I was to the window, instantly to raise it again to + avoid suffocation. I need not, my dear friend, ask your + commiseration, when I tell you, that in this plight, from half an + hour past eleven till near two in the morning, I sustained the + weight of a heavy man, with his knees in my back, and the pressure + of his whole body on my head. A Dutch surgeon who had taken his + seat upon my left shoulder, and a Topaz (a black Christian soldier) + bearing on my right; all which nothing could have enabled me to + support but the props and pressure equally sustaining me all around. + The two latter I frequently dislodged by shifting my hold on the + bars and driving my knuckles into their ribs; but my friend above + stuck fast, held immovable by two bars. + + "I exerted anew my strength and fortitude; but the repeated trials + and efforts I made to dislodge the insufferable incumbrances upon me + at last quite exhausted me; and towards two o'clock, finding I must + quit the window or sink where I was, I resolved on the former, + having bore, truly for the sake of others, infinitely more for life + than the best of it is worth. In the rank close behind me was an + officer of one of the ships, whose name was Cary, and who had + behaved with much bravery during the siege (his wife, a fine woman, + though country born, would not quit him, but accompanied him into + the prison, and was one who survived). This poor wretch had been + long raving for water and air; I told him I was determined to give + up life, and recommended his gaining my station. On my quitting it + he made a fruitless attempt to get my place; but the Dutch surgeon, + who sat on my shoulder, supplanted him. Poor Cary expressed his + thankfulness, and said he would give up life too; but it was with + the utmost labor we forced our way from the window (several in the + inner ranks appearing to me dead standing, unable to fall by the + throng and equal pressure around). He laid himself down to die; and + his death, I believe, was very sudden; for he was a short, full, + sanguine man. His strength was great; and, I imagine, had he not + retired with me, I should never have been able to force my way. I + was at this time sensible of no pain, and little uneasiness; I can + give you no better idea of my situation than by repeating my simile + of the bowl of spirit of hartshorn. I found a stupor coming on + apace, and laid myself down by that gallant old man, the Rev. Mr. + Jervas Bellamy, who laid dead with his son, the lieutenant, hand in + hand, near the southernmost wall of the prison. When I had lain + there some little time, I still had reflection enough to suffer some + uneasiness in the thought that I should be trampled upon, when dead, + as I myself had done to others. With some difficulty I raised + myself, and gained the platform a second time, where I presently + lost all sensation; the last trace of sensibility that I have been + able to recollect after my laying down, was my sash being uneasy + about my waist, which I untied, and threw from me. Of what passed + in this interval, to the time of my resurrection from this hole of + horrors, I can give you no account." + +There was plenty to see in Calcutta, but there was not plenty of time for +it. I saw the fort that Clive built; and the place where Warren Hastings +and the author of the Junius Letters fought their duel; and the great +botanical gardens; and the fashionable afternoon turnout in the Maidan; +and a grand review of the garrison in a great plain at sunrise; and a +military tournament in which great bodies of native soldiery exhibited +the perfection of their drill at all arms, a spectacular and beautiful +show occupying several nights and closing with the mimic storming of a +native fort which was as good as the reality for thrilling and accurate +detail, and better than the reality for security and comfort; we had a +pleasure excursion on the 'Hoogly' by courtesy of friends, and devoted +the rest of the time to social life and the Indian museum. One should +spend a month in the museum, an enchanted palace of Indian antiquities. +Indeed, a person might spend half a year among the beautiful and +wonderful things without exhausting their interest. + +It was winter. We were of Kipling's "hosts of tourists who travel up and +down India in the cold weather showing how things ought to be managed." +It is a common expression there, "the cold weather," and the people think +there is such a thing. It is because they have lived there half a +lifetime, and their perceptions have become blunted. When a person is +accustomed to 138 in the shade, his ideas about cold weather are not +valuable. I had read, in the histories, that the June marches made +between Lucknow and Cawnpore by the British forces in the time of the +Mutiny were made weather--138 in the shade and had taken it for +historical embroidery. I had read it again in Serjeant-Major +Forbes-Mitchell's account of his military experiences in the Mutiny +--at least I thought I had--and in Calcutta I asked him if it was true, +and he said it was. An officer of high rank who had been in the thick of +the Mutiny said the same. As long as those men were talking about what +they knew, they were trustworthy, and I believed them; but when they said +it was now "cold weather," I saw that they had traveled outside of their +sphere of knowledge and were floundering. I believe that in India "cold +weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through +the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which +will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. +It was observable that brass ones were in use while I was in Calcutta, +showing that it was not yet time to change to porcelain; I was told the +change to porcelain was not usually made until May. But this cold +weather was too warm for us; so we started to Darjeeling, in the +Himalayas--a twenty-four hour journey. + + + + +CHAPTER LV. + +There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been +squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy +neighbor. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + + +FROM DIARY: + +February 14. We left at 4:30 P.M. Until dark we moved through rich +vegetation, then changed to a boat and crossed the Ganges. + +February 15. Up with the sun. A brilliant morning, and frosty. A +double suit of flannels is found necessary. The plain is perfectly +level, and seems to stretch away and away and away, dimming and +softening, to the uttermost bounds of nowhere. What a soaring, +strenuous, gushing fountain spray of delicate greenery a bunch of bamboo +is! As far as the eye can reach, these grand vegetable geysers grace the +view, their spoutings refined to steam by distance. And there are fields +of bananas, with the sunshine glancing from the varnished surface of +their drooping vast leaves. And there are frequent groves of palm; and +an effective accent is given to the landscape by isolated individuals of +this picturesque family, towering, clean-stemmed, their plumes broken and +hanging ragged, Nature's imitation of an umbrella that has been out to +see what a cyclone is like and is trying not to look disappointed. And +everywhere through the soft morning vistas we glimpse the villages, the +countless villages, the myriad villages, thatched, built of clean new +matting, snuggling among grouped palms and sheaves of bamboo; villages, +villages, no end of villages, not three hundred yards apart, and dozens +and dozens of them in sight all the time; a mighty City, hundreds of +miles long, hundreds of miles broad, made all of villages, the biggest +city in the earth, and as populous as a European kingdom. I have seen no +such city as this before. And there is a continuously repeated and +replenished multitude of naked men in view on both sides and ahead. We +fly through it mile after mile, but still it is always there, on both +sides and ahead--brown-bodied, naked men and boys, plowing in the fields. +But not woman. In these two hours I have not seen a woman or a girl +working in the fields. + + "From Greenland's icy mountains, + From India's coral strand, + Where Afric's sunny fountains + Roll down their golden sand. + From many an ancient river, + From many a palmy plain, + They call us to deliver + Their land from error's chain." + +Those are beautiful verses, and they have remained in my memory all my +life. But if the closing lines are true, let us hope that when we come +to answer the call and deliver the land from its errors, we shall secrete +from it some of our high-civilization ways, and at the same time borrow +some of its pagan ways to enrich our high system with. We have a right +to do this. If we lift those people up, we have a right to lift +ourselves up nine or ten grades or so, at their expense. A few years ago +I spent several weeks at Tolz, in Bavaria. It is a Roman Catholic +region, and not even Benares is more deeply or pervasively or +intelligently devout. In my diary of those days I find this: + + "We took a long drive yesterday around about the lovely country + roads. But it was a drive whose pleasure was damaged in a couple of + ways: by the dreadful shrines and by the shameful spectacle of gray + and venerable old grandmothers toiling in the fields. The shrines + were frequent along the roads--figures of the Saviour nailed to the + cross and streaming with blood from the wounds of the nails and the + thorns. + + "When missionaries go from here do they find fault with the pagan + idols? I saw many women seventy and even eighty years old mowing + and binding in the fields, and pitchforking the loads into the + wagons." + +I was in Austria later, and in Munich. In Munich I saw gray old women +pushing trucks up hill and down, long distances, trucks laden with +barrels of beer, incredible loads. In my Austrian diary I find this: + + "In the fields I often see a woman and a cow harnessed to the plow, + and a man driving. + + "In the public street of Marienbad to-day, I saw an old, bent, + gray-headed woman, in harness with a dog, drawing a laden sled over + bare dirt roads and bare pavements; and at his ease walked the + driver, smoking his pipe, a hale fellow not thirty years old." + +Five or six years ago I bought an open boat, made a kind of a canvas +wagon-roof over the stern of it to shelter me from sun and rain; hired a +courier and a boatman, and made a twelve-day floating voyage down the +Rhone from Lake Bourget to Marseilles. In my diary of that trip I find +this entry. I was far down the Rhone then: + + "Passing St. Etienne, 2:15 P.M. On a distant ridge inland, a tall + openwork structure commandingly situated, with a statue of the + Virgin standing on it. A devout country. All down this river, + wherever there is a crag there is a statue of the Virgin on it. I + believe I have seen a hundred of them. And yet, in many respects, + the peasantry seem to be mere pagans, and destitute of any + considerable degree of civilization. + + " . . . . We reached a not very promising looking village about + 4 o'clock, and I concluded to tie up for the day; munching fruit and + fogging the hood with pipe-smoke had grown monotonous; I could not + have the hood furled, because the floods of rain fell unceasingly. + The tavern was on the river bank, as is the custom. It was dull + there, and melancholy--nothing to do but look out of the window into + the drenching rain, and shiver; one could do that, for it was bleak + and cold and windy, and country France furnishes no fire. Winter + overcoats did not help me much; they had to be supplemented with + rugs. The raindrops were so large and struck the river with such + force that they knocked up the water like pebble-splashes. + + "With the exception of a very occasional woodenshod peasant, nobody + was abroad in this bitter weather--I mean nobody of our sex. But + all weathers are alike to the women in these continental countries. + To them and the other animals, life is serious; nothing interrupts + their slavery. Three of them were washing clothes in the river + under the window when I arrived, and they continued at it as long as + there was light to work by. One was apparently thirty; another--the + mother!--above fifty; the third--grandmother!--so old and worn and + gray she could have passed for eighty; I took her to be that old. + They had no waterproofs nor rubbers, of course; over their shoulders + they wore gunnysacks--simply conductors for rivers of water; some of + the volume reached the ground; the rest soaked in on the way. + + "At last a vigorous fellow of thirty-five arrived, dry and + comfortable, smoking his pipe under his big umbrella in an open + donkey-cart-husband, son, and grandson of those women! He stood up + in the cart, sheltering himself, and began to superintend, issuing + his orders in a masterly tone of command, and showing temper when + they were not obeyed swiftly enough. + + "Without complaint or murmur the drowned women patiently carried out + the orders, lifting the immense baskets of soggy, wrung-out clothing + into the cart and stowing them to the man's satisfaction. There + were six of the great baskets, and a man of mere ordinary strength + could not have lifted any one of them. The cart being full now, the + Frenchman descended, still sheltered by his umbrella, entered the + tavern, and the women went drooping homeward, trudging in the wake + of the cart, and soon were blended with the deluge and lost to + sight. + + "When I went down into the public room, the Frenchman had his bottle + of wine and plate of food on a bare table black with grease, and was + "chomping" like a horse. He had the little religious paper which is + in everybody's hands on the Rhone borders, and was enlightening + himself with the histories of French saints who used to flee to the + desert in the Middle Ages to escape the contamination of woman. For + two hundred years France has been sending missionaries to other + savage lands. To spare to the needy from poverty like hers is fine + and true generosity." + +But to get back to India--where, as my favorite poem says-- + + "Every prospect pleases, + And only man is vile." + +It is because Bavaria and Austria and France have not introduced their +civilization to him yet. But Bavaria and Austria and France are on their +way. They are coming. They will rescue him; they will refine the +vileness out of him. + +Some time during the forenoon, approaching the mountains, we changed from +the regular train to one composed of little canvas-sheltered cars that +skimmed along within a foot of the ground and seemed to be going fifty +miles an hour when they were really making about twenty. Each car had +seating capacity for half-a-dozen persons; and when the curtains were up +one was substantially out of doors, and could see everywhere, and get all +the breeze, and be luxuriously comfortable. It was not a pleasure +excursion in name only, but in fact. + +After a while the stopped at a little wooden coop of a station just +within the curtain of the sombre jungle, a place with a deep and dense +forest of great trees and scrub and vines all about it. The royal Bengal +tiger is in great force there, and is very bold and unconventional. From +this lonely little station a message once went to the railway manager in +Calcutta: "Tiger eating station-master on front porch; telegraph +instructions." + +It was there that I had my first tiger hunt. I killed thirteen. We were +presently away again, and the train began to climb the mountains. In one +place seven wild elephants crossed the track, but two of them got away +before I could overtake them. The railway journey up the mountain is +forty miles, and it takes eight hours to make it. It is so wild and +interesting and exciting and enchanting that it ought to take a week. As +for the vegetation, it is a museum. The jungle seemed to contain samples +of every rare and curious tree and bush that we had ever seen or heard +of. It is from that museum, I think, that the globe must have been +supplied with the trees and vines and shrubs that it holds precious. + +The road is infinitely and charmingly crooked. It goes winding in and +out under lofty cliffs that are smothered in vines and foliage, and +around the edges of bottomless chasms; and all the way one glides by +files of picturesque natives, some carrying burdens up, others going down +from their work in the tea-gardens; and once there was a gaudy wedding +procession, all bright tinsel and color, and a bride, comely and girlish, +who peeped out from the curtains of her palanquin, exposing her face with +that pure delight which the young and happy take in sin for sin's own +sake. + +By and by we were well up in the region of the clouds, and from that +breezy height we looked down and afar over a wonderful picture--the +Plains of India, stretching to the horizon, soft and fair, level as a +floor, shimmering with heat, mottled with cloud-shadows, and cloven with +shining rivers. Immediately below us, and receding down, down, down, +toward the valley, was a shaven confusion of hilltops, with ribbony roads +and paths squirming and snaking cream-yellow all over them and about +them, every curve and twist sharply distinct. + +At an elevation of 6,000 feet we entered a thick cloud, and it shut out +the world and kept it shut out. We climbed 1,000 feet higher, then began +to descend, and presently got down to Darjeeling, which is 6,000 feet +above the level of the Plains. + +We had passed many a mountain village on the way up, and seen some new +kinds of natives, among them many samples of the fighting Ghurkas. They +are not large men, but they are strong and resolute. There are no better +soldiers among Britain's native troops. And we had passed shoals of +their women climbing the forty miles of steep road from the valley to +their mountain homes, with tall baskets on their backs hitched to their +foreheads by a band, and containing a freightage weighing--I will not say +how many hundreds of pounds, for the sum is unbelievable. These were +young women, and they strode smartly along under these astonishing +burdens with the air of people out for a holiday. I was told that a +woman will carry a piano on her back all the way up the mountain; and +that more than once a woman had done it. If these were old women I +should regard the Ghurkas as no more civilized than the Europeans. +At the railway station at Darjeeling you find plenty of cab-substitutes +--open coffins, in which you sit, and are then borne on men's shoulders up +the steep roads into the town. + +Up there we found a fairly comfortable hotel, the property of an +indiscriminate and incoherent landlord, who looks after nothing, but +leaves everything to his army of Indian servants. No, he does look after +the bill--to be just to him--and the tourist cannot do better than follow +his example. I was told by a resident that the summit of Kinchinjunga is +often hidden in the clouds, and that sometimes a tourist has waited +twenty-two days and then been obliged to go away without a sight of it. +And yet went not disappointed; for when he got his hotel bill he +recognized that he was now seeing the highest thing in the Himalayas. +But this is probably a lie. + +After lecturing I went to the Club that night, and that was a comfortable +place. It is loftily situated, and looks out over a vast spread of +scenery; from it you can see where the boundaries of three countries come +together, some thirty miles away; Thibet is one of them, Nepaul another, +and I think Herzegovina was the other. Apparently, in every town and +city in India the gentlemen of the British civil and military service +have a club; sometimes it is a palatial one, always it is pleasant and +homelike. The hotels are not always as good as they might be, and the +stranger who has access to the Club is grateful for his privilege and +knows how to value it. + +Next day was Sunday. Friends came in the gray dawn with horses, and my +party rode away to a distant point where Kinchinjunga and Mount Everest +show up best, but I stayed at home for a private view; for it was very +old, and I was not acquainted with the horses, any way. I got a pipe and +a few blankets and sat for two hours at the window, and saw the sun drive +away the veiling gray and touch up the snow-peaks one after another with +pale pink splashes and delicate washes of gold, and finally flood the +whole mighty convulsion of snow-mountains with a deluge of rich +splendors. + +Kinchinjunga's peak was but fitfully visible, but in the between times it +was vividly clear against the sky--away up there in the blue dome more +than 28,000 feet above sea level--the loftiest land I had ever seen, by +12,000 feet or more. It was 45 miles away. Mount Everest is a thousand +feet higher, but it was not a part of that sea of mountains piled up +there before me, so I did not see it; but I did not care, because I think +that mountains that are as high as that are disagreeable. + +I changed from the back to the front of the house and spent the rest of +the morning there, watching the swarthy strange tribes flock by from +their far homes in the Himalayas. All ages and both sexes were +represented, and the breeds were quite new to me, though the costumes of +the Thibetans made them look a good deal like Chinamen. The prayer-wheel +was a frequent feature. It brought me near to these people, and made +them seem kinfolk of mine. Through our preacher we do much of our +praying by proxy. We do not whirl him around a stick, as they do, but +that is merely a detail. The swarm swung briskly by, hour after hour, a +strange and striking pageant. It was wasted there, and it seemed a pity. +It should have been sent streaming through the cities of Europe or +America, to refresh eyes weary of the pale monotonies of the +circus-pageant. These people were bound for the bazar, with things to +sell. We went down there, later, and saw that novel congress of the wild +peoples, and plowed here and there through it, and concluded that it +would be worth coming from Calcutta to see, even if there were no +Kinchinjunga and Everest. + + + + +CHAPTER LVI. + +There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he +can't afford it, and when he can. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +On Monday and Tuesday at sunrise we again had fair-to-middling views of +the stupendous mountains; then, being well cooled off and refreshed, we +were ready to chance the weather of the lower world once more. + +We traveled up hill by the regular train five miles to the summit, then +changed to a little canvas-canopied hand-car for the 35-mile descent. It +was the size of a sleigh, it had six seats and was so low that it seemed +to rest on the ground. It had no engine or other propelling power, and +needed none to help it fly down those steep inclines. It only needed a +strong brake, to modify its flight, and it had that. There was a story +of a disastrous trip made down the mountain once in this little car by +the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, when the car jumped the track and +threw its passengers over a precipice. It was not true, but the story +had value for me, for it made me nervous, and nervousness wakes a person +up and makes him alive and alert, and heightens the thrill of a new and +doubtful experience. The car could really jump the track, of course; a +pebble on the track, placed there by either accident or malice, at a +sharp curve where one might strike it before the eye could discover it, +could derail the car and fling it down into India; and the fact that the +lieutenant-governor had escaped was no proof that I would have the same +luck. And standing there, looking down upon the Indian Empire from the +airy altitude of 7,000 feet, it seemed unpleasantly far, dangerously far, +to be flung from a handcar. + +But after all, there was but small danger-for me. What there was, was +for Mr. Pugh, inspector of a division of the Indian police, in whose +company and protection we had come from Calcutta. He had seen long +service as an artillery officer, was less nervous than I was, and so he +was to go ahead of us in a pilot hand-car, with a Ghurka and another +native; and the plan was that when we should see his car jump over a +precipice we must put on our break [sp.] and send for another pilot. +It was a good arrangement. Also Mr. Barnard, chief engineer of the +mountain-division of the road, was to take personal charge of our car, +and he had been down the mountain in it many a time. + +Everything looked safe. Indeed, there was but one questionable detail +left: the regular train was to follow us as soon as we should start, and +it might run over us. Privately, I thought it would. + +The road fell sharply down in front of us and went corkscrewing in and +out around the crags and precipices, down, down, forever down, suggesting +nothing so exactly or so uncomfortably as a croaked toboggan slide with +no end to it. Mr. Pugh waved his flag and started, like an arrow from a +bow, and before I could get out of the car we were gone too. I had +previously had but one sensation like the shock of that departure, and +that was the gaspy shock that took my breath away the first time that I +was discharged from the summit of a toboggan slide. But in both +instances the sensation was pleasurable--intensely so; it was a sudden +and immense exaltation, a mixed ecstasy of deadly fright and unimaginable +joy. I believe that this combination makes the perfection of human +delight. + +The pilot car's flight down the mountain suggested the swoop of a swallow +that is skimming the ground, so swiftly and smoothly and gracefully it +swept down the long straight reaches and soared in and out of the bends +and around the corners. We raced after it, and seemed to flash by the +capes and crags with the speed of light; and now and then we almost +overtook it--and had hopes; but it was only playing with us; when we got +near, it released its brake, make a spring around a corner, and the next +time it spun into view, a few seconds later, it looked as small as a +wheelbarrow, it was so far away. We played with the train in the same +way. We often got out to gather flowers or sit on a precipice and look +at the scenery, then presently we would hear a dull and growing roar, and +the long coils of the train would come into sight behind and above us; +but we did not need to start till the locomotive was close down upon us +--then we soon left it far behind. It had to stop at every station, +therefore it was not an embarrassment to us. Our brake was a good piece +of machinery; it could bring the car to a standstill on a slope as steep +as a house-roof. + +The scenery was grand and varied and beautiful, and there was no hurry; +we could always stop and examine it. There was abundance of time. We +did not need to hamper the train; if it wanted the road, we could switch +off and let it go by, then overtake it and pass it later. We stopped at +one place to see the Gladstone Cliff, a great crag which the ages and the +weather have sculptured into a recognizable portrait of the venerable +statesman. Mr. Gladstone is a stockholder in the road, and Nature began +this portrait ten thousand years ago, with the idea of having the +compliment ready in time for the event. + +We saw a banyan tree which sent down supporting stems from branches which +were sixty feet above the ground. That is, I suppose it was a banyan; +its bark resembled that of the great banyan in the botanical gardens at +Calcutta, that spider-legged thing with its wilderness of vegetable +columns. And there were frequent glimpses of a totally leafless tree +upon whose innumerable twigs and branches a cloud of crimson butterflies +had lighted--apparently. In fact these brilliant red butterflies were +flowers, but the illusion was good. Afterward in South Africa, I saw +another splendid effect made by red flowers. This flower was probably +called the torch-plant--should have been so named, anyway. It had a +slender stem several feet high, and from its top stood up a single tongue +of flame, an intensely red flower of the size and shape of a small +corn-cob. The stems stood three or four feet apart all over a great +hill-slope that was a mile long, and make one think of what the Place +de la Concorde would be if its myriad lights were red instead of white +and yellow. + +A few miles down the mountain we stopped half an hour to see a Thibetan +dramatic performance. It was in the open air on the hillside. The +audience was composed of Thibetans, Ghurkas, and other unusual people. +The costumes of the actors were in the last degree outlandish, and the +performance was in keeping with the clothes. To an accompaniment of +barbarous noises the actors stepped out one after another and began to +spin around with immense swiftness and vigor and violence, chanting the +while, and soon the whole troupe would be spinning and chanting and +raising the dust. They were performing an ancient and celebrated +historical play, and a Chinaman explained it to me in pidjin English as +it went along. The play was obscure enough without the explanation; with +the explanation added, it was (opake). As a drama this ancient +historical work of art was defective, I thought, but as a wild and +barbarous spectacle the representation was beyond criticism. +Far down the mountain we got out to look at a piece of remarkable +loop-engineering--a spiral where the road curves upon itself with such +abruptness that when the regular train came down and entered the loop, we +stood over it and saw the locomotive disappear under our bridge, then in +a few moments appear again, chasing its own tail; and we saw it gain on +it, overtake it, draw ahead past the rear cars, and run a race with that +end of the train. It was like a snake swallowing itself. + +Half-way down the mountain we stopped about an hour at Mr. Barnard's +house for refreshments, and while we were sitting on the veranda looking +at the distant panorama of hills through a gap in the forest, we came +very near seeing a leopard kill a calf.--[It killed it the day before.] +--It is a wild place and lovely. From the woods all about came the songs +of birds,--among them the contributions of a couple of birds which I was +not then acquainted with: the brain-fever bird and the coppersmith. The +song of the brain-fever demon starts on a low but steadily rising key, +and is a spiral twist which augments in intensity and severity with each +added spiral, growing sharper and sharper, and more and more painful, +more and more agonizing, more and more maddening, intolerable, +unendurable, as it bores deeper and deeper and deeper into the listener's +brain, until at last the brain fever comes as a relief and the man dies. +I am bringing some of these birds home to America. They will be a great +curiosity there, and it is believed that in our climate they will +multiply like rabbits. + +The coppersmith bird's note at a certain distance away has the ring of a +sledge on granite; at a certain other distance the hammering has a more +metallic ring, and you might think that the bird was mending a copper +kettle; at another distance it has a more woodeny thump, but it is a +thump that is full of energy, and sounds just like starting a bung. So +he is a hard bird to name with a single name; he is a stone-breaker, +coppersmith, and bung-starter, and even then he is not completely named, +for when he is close by you find that there is a soft, deep, melodious +quality in his thump, and for that no satisfying name occurs to you. You +will not mind his other notes, but when he camps near enough for you to +hear that one, you presently find that his measured and monotonous +repetition of it is beginning to disturb you; next it will weary you, +soon it will distress you, and before long each thump will hurt your +head; if this goes on, you will lose your mind with the pain and misery +of it, and go crazy. I am bringing some of these birds home to America. +There is nothing like them there. They will be a great surprise, and it +is said that in a climate like ours they will surpass expectation for +fecundity. + +I am bringing some nightingales, too, and some cue-owls. I got them in +Italy. The song of the nightingale is the deadliest known to +ornithology. That demoniacal shriek can kill at thirty yards. The note +of the cue-owl is infinitely soft and sweet--soft and sweet as the +whisper of a flute. But penetrating--oh, beyond belief; it can bore +through boiler-iron. It is a lingering note, and comes in triplets, on +the one unchanging key: hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o; then a silence of +fifteen seconds, then the triplet again; and so on, all night. At first +it is divine; then less so; then trying; then distressing; then +excruciating; then agonizing, and at the end of two hours the listener is +a maniac. + +And so, presently we took to the hand-car and went flying down the +mountain again; flying and stopping, flying and stopping, till at last we +were in the plain once more and stowed for Calcutta in the regular train. +That was the most enjoyable day I have spent in the earth. For rousing, +tingling, rapturous pleasure there is no holiday trip that approaches the +bird-flight down the Himalayas in a hand-car. It has no fault, no +blemish, no lack, except that there are only thirty-five miles of it +instead of five hundred. + + + + +CHAPTER LVII. + +She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what +you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a +parrot. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man +or Nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun +visits on his round. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing over +looked. Always, when you think you have come to the end of her +tremendous specialties and have finished banging tags upon her as the +Land of the Thug, the Land of the Plague, the Land of Famine, the Land of +Giant Illusions, the Land of Stupendous Mountains, and so forth, another +specialty crops up and another tag is required. I have been overlooking +the fact that India is by an unapproachable supremacy--the Land of +Murderous Wild Creatures. Perhaps it will be simplest to throw away the +tags and generalize her with one all-comprehensive name, as the Land of +Wonders. + +For many years the British Indian Government has been trying to destroy +the murderous wild creatures, and has spent a great deal of money in the +effort. The annual official returns show that the undertaking is a +difficult one. + +These returns exhibit a curious annual uniformity in results; the sort of +uniformity which you find in the annual output of suicides in the world's +capitals, and the proportions of deaths by this, that, and the other +disease. You can always come close to foretelling how many suicides will +occur in Paris, London, and New York, next year, and also how many deaths +will result from cancer, consumption, dog-bite, falling out of the +window, getting run over by cabs, etc., if you know the statistics of +those matters for the present year. In the same way, with one year's +Indian statistics before you, you can guess closely at how many people +were killed in that Empire by tigers during the previous year, and the +year before that, and the year before that, and at how many were killed +in each of those years by bears, how many by wolves, and how many by +snakes; and you can also guess closely at how many people are going to be +killed each year for the coming five years by each of those agencies. +You can also guess closely at how many of each agency the government is +going to kill each year for the next five years. + +I have before me statistics covering a period of six consecutive years. +By these, I know that in India the tiger kills something over 800 persons +every year, and that the government responds by killing about double as +many tigers every year. In four of the six years referred to, the tiger +got 800 odd; in one of the remaining two years he got only 700, but in +the other remaining year he made his average good by scoring 917. He is +always sure of his average. Anyone who bets that the tiger will kill +2,400 people in India in any three consecutive years has invested his +money in a certainty; anyone who bets that he will kill 2,600 in any +three consecutive years, is absolutely sure to lose. + +As strikingly uniform as are the statistics of suicide, they are not any +more so than are those of the tiger's annual output of slaughtered human +beings in India. The government's work is quite uniform, too; it about +doubles the tiger's average. In six years the tiger killed 5,000 +persons, minus 50; in the same six years 10,000 tigers were killed, minus +400. + +The wolf kills nearly as many people as the tiger--700 a year to the +tiger's 800 odd--but while he is doing it, more than 5,000 of his tribe +fall. + +The leopard kills an average of 230 people per year, but loses 3,300 of +his own mess while he is doing it. + +The bear kills 100 people per year at a cost of 1,250 of his own tribe. + +The tiger, as the figures show, makes a very handsome fight against man. +But it is nothing to the elephant's fight. The king of beasts, the lord +of the jungle, loses four of his mess per year, but he kills forty--five +persons to make up for it. + +But when it comes to killing cattle, the lord of the jungle is not +interested. He kills but 100 in six years--horses of hunters, no doubt +--but in the same six the tiger kills more than 84,000, the leopard +100,000, the bear 4,000, the wolf 70,000, the hyena more than 13,000, +other wild beasts 27,000, and the snakes 19,000, a grand total of more +than 300,000; an average of 50,000 head per year. + +In response, the government kills, in the six years, a total of 3,201,232 +wild beasts and snakes. Ten for one. + +It will be perceived that the snakes are not much interested in cattle; +they kill only 3,000 odd per year. The snakes are much more interested +in man. India swarms with deadly snakes. At the head of the list is the +cobra, the deadliest known to the world, a snake whose bite kills where +the rattlesnake's bite merely entertains. + +In India, the annual man-killings by snakes are as uniform, as regular, +and as forecastable as are the tiger-average and the suicide-average. +Anyone who bets that in India, in any three consecutive years the snakes +will kill 49,500 persons, will win his bet; and anyone who bets that in +India in any three consecutive years, the snakes will kill 53,500 +persons, will lose his bet. In India the snakes kill 17,000 people a +year; they hardly ever fall short of it; they as seldom exceed it. An +insurance actuary could take the Indian census tables and the +government's snake tables and tell you within sixpence how much it would +be worth to insure a man against death by snake-bite there. If I had a +dollar for every person killed per year in India, I would rather have it +than any other property, as it is the only property in the world not +subject to shrinkage. + +I should like to have a royalty on the government-end of the snake +business, too, and am in London now trying to get it; but when I get it +it is not going to be as regular an income as the other will be if I get +that; I have applied for it. The snakes transact their end of the +business in a more orderly and systematic way than the government +transacts its end of it, because the snakes have had a long experience +and know all about the traffic. You can make sure that the government +will never kill fewer than 110,000 snakes in a year, and that it will +newer quite reach 300,000 too much room for oscillation; good speculative +stock, to bear or bull, and buy and sell long and short, and all that +kind of thing, but not eligible for investment like the other. The man +that speculates in the government's snake crop wants to go carefully. I +would not advise a man to buy a single crop at all--I mean a crop of +futures for the possible wobble is something quite extraordinary. If he +can buy six future crops in a bunch, seller to deliver 1,500,000 +altogether, that is another matter. I do not know what snakes are worth +now, but I know what they would be worth then, for the statistics show +that the seller could not come within 427,000 of carrying out his +contract. However, I think that a person who speculates in snakes is a +fool, anyway. He always regrets it afterwards. + +To finish the statistics. In six years the wild beasts kill 20,000 +persons, and the snakes kill 103,000. In the same six the government +kills 1,073,546 snakes. Plenty left. + +There are narrow escapes in India. In the very jungle where I killed +sixteen tigers and all those elephants, a cobra bit me but it got well; +everyone was surprised. This could not happen twice in ten years, +perhaps. Usually death would result in fifteen minutes. + +We struck out westward or northwestward from Calcutta on an itinerary of +a zig-zag sort, which would in the course of time carry us across India +to its northwestern corner and the border of Afghanistan. The first part +of the trip carried us through a great region which was an endless +garden--miles and miles of the beautiful flower from whose juices comes +the opium, and at Muzaffurpore we were in the midst of the indigo +culture; thence by a branch road to the Ganges at a point near Dinapore, +and by a train which would have missed the connection by a week but for +the thoughtfulness of some British officers who were along, and who knew +the ways of trains that are run by natives without white supervision. +This train stopped at every village; for no purpose connected with +business, apparently. We put out nothing, we took nothing aboard. The +train bands stepped ashore and gossiped with friends a quarter of an +hour, then pulled out and repeated this at the succeeding villages. We +had thirty-five miles to go and six hours to do it in, but it was plain +that we were not going to make it. It was then that the English officers +said it was now necessary to turn this gravel train into an express. So +they gave the engine-driver a rupee and told him to fly. It was a simple +remedy. After that we made ninety miles an hour. We crossed the Ganges +just at dawn, made our connection, and went to Benares, where we stayed +twenty-four hours and inspected that strange and fascinating piety-hive +again; then left for Lucknow, a city which is perhaps the most +conspicuous of the many monuments of British fortitude and valor that are +scattered about the earth. + +The heat was pitiless, the flat plains were destitute of grass, and baked +dry by the sun they were the color of pale dust, which was flying in +clouds. But it was much hotter than this when the relieving forces +marched to Lucknow in the time of the Mutiny. Those were the days of 138 +deg. in the shade. + + + + +CHAPTER, LVIII. + +Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. +This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty +without pain. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +It seems to be settled, now, that among the many causes from which the +Great Mutiny sprang, the main one was the annexation of the kingdom of +Oudh by the East India Company--characterized by Sir Henry Lawrence as +"the most unrighteous act that was ever committed." In the spring of +1857, a mutinous spirit was observable in many of the native garrisons, +and it grew day by day and spread wider and wider. The younger military +men saw something very serious in it, and would have liked to take hold +of it vigorously and stamp it out promptly; but they were not in +authority. Old-men were in the high places of the army--men who should +have been retired long before, because of their great age--and they +regarded the matter as a thing of no consequence. They loved their +native soldiers, and would not believe that anything could move them to +revolt. Everywhere these obstinate veterans listened serenely to the +rumbling of the volcanoes under them, and said it was nothing. + +And so the propagators of mutiny had everything their own way. They +moved from camp to camp undisturbed, and painted to the native soldier +the wrongs his people were suffering at the hands of the English, and +made his heart burn for revenge. They were able to point to two facts of +formidable value as backers of their persuasions: In Clive's day, native +armies were incoherent mobs, and without effective arms; therefore, they +were weak against Clive's organized handful of well-armed men, but the +thing was the other way, now. The British forces were native; they had +been trained by the British, organized by the British, armed by the +British, all the power was in their hands--they were a club made by +British hands to beat out British brains with. There was nothing to +oppose their mass, nothing but a few weak battalions of British soldiers +scattered about India, a force not worth speaking of. This argument, +taken alone, might not have succeeded, for the bravest and best Indian +troops had a wholesome dread of the white soldier, whether he was weak or +strong; but the agitators backed it with their second and best point +prophecy--a prophecy a hundred years old. The Indian is open to prophecy +at all times; argument may fail to convince him, but not prophecy. There +was a prophecy that a hundred years from the year of that battle of +Clive's which founded the British Indian Empire, the British power would +be overthrown and swept away by the natives. + +The Mutiny broke out at Meerut on the 10th of May, 1857, and fired a +train of tremendous historical explosions. Nana Sahib's massacre of the +surrendered garrison of Cawnpore occurred in June, and the long siege of +Lucknow began. The military history of England is old and great, but I +think it must be granted that the crushing of the Mutiny is the greatest +chapter in it. The British were caught asleep and unprepared. They were +a few thousands, swallowed up in an ocean of hostile populations. It +would take months to inform England and get help, but they did not falter +or stop to count the odds, but with English resolution and English +devotion they took up their task, and went stubbornly on with it, through +good fortune and bad, and fought the most unpromising fight that one may +read of in fiction or out of it, and won it thoroughly. + +The Mutiny broke out so suddenly, and spread with such rapidity that +there was but little time for occupants of weak outlying stations to +escape to places of safety. Attempts were made, of course, but they were +attended by hardships as bitter as death in the few cases which were +successful; for the heat ranged between 120 and 138 in the shade; the way +led through hostile peoples, and food and water were hardly to be had. +For ladies and children accustomed to ease and comfort and plenty, such a +journey must have been a cruel experience. Sir G. O. Trevelyan quotes +an example: + + "This is what befell Mrs. M----, the wife of the surgeon at a + certain station on the southern confines of the insurrection. 'I + heard,' she says, 'a number of shots fired, and, looking out, I saw + my husband driving furiously from the mess-house, waving his whip. + I ran to him, and, seeing a bearer with my child in his arms, I + caught her up, and got into the buggy. At the mess-house we found + all the officers assembled, together with sixty sepoys, who had + remained faithful. We went off in one large party, amidst a general + conflagration of our late homes. We reached the caravanserai at + Chattapore the next morning, and thence started for Callinger. At + this point our sepoy escort deserted us. We were fired upon by + match-lockmen, and one officer was shot dead. We heard, likewise, + that the people had risen at Callinger, so we returned and walked + back ten miles that day. M---- and I carried the child alternately. + Presently Mrs. Smalley died of sunstroke. We had no food amongst + us. An officer kindly lent us a horse. We were very faint. The + Major died, and was buried; also the Sergeant-major and some women. + The bandsmen left us on the nineteenth of June. We were fired at + again by match-lockmen, and changed direction for Allahabad. Our + party consisted of nine gentlemen, two children, the sergeant and + his wife. On the morning of the twentieth, Captain Scott took + Lottie on to his horse. I was riding behind my husband, and she was + so crushed between us. She was two years old on the first of the + month. We were both weak through want of food and the effect of the + sun. Lottie and I had no head covering. M---- had a sepoy's cap I + found on the ground. Soon after sunrise we were followed by + villagers armed with clubs and spears. One of them struck Captain + Scott's horse on the leg. He galloped off with Lottie, and my poor + husband never saw his child again. We rode on several miles, + keeping away from villages, and then crossed the river. Our thirst + was extreme. M---- had dreadful cramps, so that I had to hold him + on the horse. I was very uneasy about him. The day before I saw + the drummer's wife eating chupatties, and asked her to give a piece + to the child, which she did. I now saw water in a ravine. The + descent was steep, and our only drinkingvessel was M----'s cap. Our + horse got water, and I bathed my neck. I had no stockings, and my + feet were torn and blistered. Two peasants came in sight, and we + were frightened and rode off. The sergeant held our horse, and + M---- put me up and mounted. I think he must have got suddenly faint, + for I fell and he over me, on the road, when the horse started off. + Some time before he said, and Barber, too, that he could not live + many hours. I felt he was dying before we came to the ravine. He + told me his wishes about his children and myself, and took leave. + My brain seemed burnt up. No tears came. As soon as we fell, the + sergeant let go the horse, and it went off; so that escape was cut + off. We sat down on the ground waiting for death. Poor fellow! he + was very weak; his thirst was frightful, and I went to get him + water. Some villagers came, and took my rupees and watch. I took + off my wedding-ring, and twisted it in my hair, and replaced the + guard. I tore off the skirt of my dress to bring water in, but was + no use, for when I returned my beloved's eyes were fixed, and, + though I called and tried to restore him, and poured water into his + mouth, it only rattled in his throat. He never spoke to me again. + I held him in my arms till he sank gradually down. I felt frantic, + but could not cry. I was alone. I bound his head and face in my + dress, for there was no earth to buy him. The pain in my hands and + feet was dreadful. I went down to the ravine, and sat in the water + on a stone, hoping to get off at night and look for Lottie. When I + came back from the water, I saw that they had not taken her little + watch, chain, and seals, so I tied them under my petticoat. In an + hour, about thirty villagers came, they dragged me out of the + ravine, and took off my jacket, and found the little chain. They + then dragged me to a village, mocking me all the way, and disputing + as to whom I was to belong to. The whole population came to look at + me. I asked for a bedstead, and lay down outside the door of a hut. + They had a dozen of cows, and yet refused me milk. When night came, + and the village was quiet, some old woman brought me a leafful of + rice. I was too parched to eat, and they gave me water. The + morning after a neighboring Rajah sent a palanquin and a horseman to + fetch me, who told me that a little child and three Sahibs had come + to his master's house. And so the poor mother found her lost one, + 'greatly blistered,' poor little creature. It is not for Europeans + in India to pray that their flight be not in the winter." + +In the first days of June the aged general, Sir Hugh Wheeler commanding +the forces at Cawnpore, was deserted by his native troops; then he moved +out of the fort and into an exposed patch of open flat ground and built a +four-foot mud wall around it. He had with him a few hundred white +soldiers and officers, and apparently more women and children than +soldiers. He was short of provisions, short of arms, short of +ammunition, short of military wisdom, short of everything but courage and +devotion to duty. The defense of that open lot through twenty-one days +and nights of hunger, thirst, Indian heat, and a never-ceasing storm of +bullets, bombs, and cannon-balls--a defense conducted, not by the aged +and infirm general, but by a young officer named Moore--is one of the +most heroic episodes in history. When at last the Nana found it +impossible to conquer these starving men and women with powder and ball, +he resorted to treachery, and that succeeded. He agreed to supply them +with food and send them to Allahabad in boats. Their mud wall and their +barracks were in ruins, their provisions were at the point of exhaustion, +they had done all that the brave could do, they had conquered an +honorable compromise,--their forces had been fearfully reduced by +casualties and by disease, they were not able to continue the contest +longer. They came forth helpless but suspecting no treachery, the Nana's +host closed around them, and at a signal from a trumpet the massacre +began. About two hundred women and children were spared--for the +present--but all the men except three or four were killed. Among the +incidents of the massacre quoted by Sir G. O. Trevelyan, is this: + + "When, after the lapse of some twenty minutes, the dead began to + outnumber the living;--when the fire slackened, as the marks grew + few and far between; then the troopers who had been drawn up to the + right of the temple plunged into the river, sabre between teeth, and + pistol in hand. Thereupon two half-caste Christian women, the wives + of musicians in the band of the Fifty-sixth, witnessed a scene which + should not be related at second-hand. 'In the boat where I was to + have gone,' says Mrs. Bradshaw, confirmed throughout by Mrs. Betts, + 'was the school-mistress and twenty-two misses. General Wheeler + came last in a palkee. They carried him into the water near the + boat. I stood close by. He said, 'Carry me a little further + towards the boat.' But a trooper said, 'No, get out here.' As the + General got out of the palkee, head-foremost, the trooper gave him a + cut with his sword into the neck, and he fell into the water. My + son was killed near him. I saw it; alas! alas! Some were stabbed + with bayonets; others cut down. Little infants were torn in pieces. + We saw it; we did; and tell you only what we saw. Other children + were stabbed and thrown into the river. The schoolgirls were burnt + to death. I saw their clothes and hair catch fire. In the water, a + few paces off, by the next boat, we saw the youngest daughter of + Colonel Williams. A sepoy was going to kill her with his bayonet. + She said, 'My father was always kind to sepoys.' He turned away, + and just then a villager struck her on the head with a club, and she + fell into the water. These people likewise saw good Mr. Moncrieff, + the clergyman, take a book from his pocket that he never had leisure + to open, and heard him commence a prayer for mercy which he was not + permitted to conclude. Another deponent observed an European making + for a drain like a scared water-rat, when some boatmen, armed with + cudgels, cut off his retreat, and beat him down dead into the mud." + +The women and children who had been reserved from the massacre were +imprisoned during a fortnight in a small building, one story high--a +cramped place, a slightly modified Black Hole of Calcutta. They were +waiting in suspense; there was none who could foretaste their fate. +Meantime the news of the massacre had traveled far and an army of +rescuers with Havelock at its head was on its way--at least an army which +hoped to be rescuers. It was crossing the country by forced marches, and +strewing its way with its own dead men struck down by cholera, and by a +heat which reached 135 deg. It was in a vengeful fury, and it stopped +for nothing neither heat, nor fatigue, nor disease, nor human opposition. +It tore its impetuous way through hostile forces, winning victory after +victory, but still striding on and on, not halting to count results. And +at last, after this extraordinary march, it arrived before the walls of +Cawnpore, met the Nana's massed strength, delivered a crushing defeat, +and entered. + +But too late--only a few hours too late. For at the last moment the Nana +had decided upon the massacre of the captive women and children, and had +commissioned three Mohammedans and two Hindoos to do the work. Sir G. +O. Trevelyan says: + + "Thereupon the five men entered. It was the short gloaming of + Hindostan--the hour when ladies take their evening drive. She who + had accosted the officer was standing in the doorway. With her were + the native doctor and two Hindoo menials. That much of the business + might be seen from the veranda, but all else was concealed amidst + the interior gloom. Shrieks and scuffing acquainted those without + that the journeymen were earning their hire. Survur Khan soon + emerged with his sword broken off at the hilt. He procured another + from the Nana's house, and a few minutes after appeared again on the + same errand. The third blade was of better temper; or perhaps the + thick of the work was already over. By the time darkness had closed + in, the men came forth and locked up the house for the night. Then + the screams ceased, but the groans lasted till morning. + + "The sun rose as usual. When he had been up nearly three hours the + five repaired to the scene of their labors over night. They were + attended by a few sweepers, who proceeded to transfer the contents + of the house to a dry well situated behind some trees which grew + hard by. 'The bodies,' says one who was present throughout, 'were + dragged out, most of them by the hair of the head. Those who had + clothing worth taking were stripped. Some of the women were alive. + I cannot say how many; but three could speak. They prayed for the + sake of God that an end might be put to their sufferings. I + remarked one very stout woman, a half-caste, who was severely + wounded in both arms, who entreated to be killed. She and two or + three others were placed against the bank of the cut by which + bullocks go down in drawing water. The dead were first thrown in. + Yes: there was a great crowd looking on; they were standing along + the walls of the compound. They were principally city people and + villagers. Yes: there were also sepoys. Three boys were alive. + They were fair children. The eldest, I think, must have been six or + seven, and the youngest five years. They were running around the + well (where else could they go to?), and there was none to save + them. No one said a word or tried to save them.' + + "At length the smallest of them made an infantile attempt to get + away. The little thing had been frightened past bearing by the + murder of one of the surviving ladies. He thus attracted the + observation of a native who flung him and his companions down the + well." + +The soldiers had made a march of eighteen days, almost without rest, to +save the women and the children, and now they were too late--all were +dead and the assassin had flown. What happened then, Trevelyan hesitated +to put into words. "Of what took place, the less said is the better." + +Then he continues: + + "But there was a spectacle to witness which might excuse much. + Those who, straight from the contested field, wandered sobbing + through the rooms of the ladies' house, saw what it were well could + the outraged earth have straightway hidden. The inner apartment was + ankle-deep in blood. The plaster was scored with sword-cuts; not + high up as where men have fought, but low down, and about the + corners, as if a creature had crouched to avoid the blow. Strips of + dresses, vainly tied around the handles of the doors, signified the + contrivance to which feminine despair had resorted as a means of + keeping out the murderers. Broken combs were there, and the frills + of children's trousers, and torn cuffs and pinafores, and little + round hats, and one or two shoes with burst latchets, and one or two + daguerreotype cases with cracked glasses. An officer picked up a + few curls, preserved in a bit of cardboard, and marked 'Ned's hair, + with love'; but around were strewn locks, some near a yard in + length, dissevered, not as a keepsake, by quite other scissors." + +The battle of Waterloo was fought on the 18th of June, 1815. I do not +state this fact as a reminder to the reader, but as news to him. For a +forgotten fact is news when it comes again. Writers of books have the +fashion of whizzing by vast and renowned historical events with the +remark, "The details of this tremendous episode are too familiar to the +reader to need repeating here." They know that that is not true. It is +a low kind of flattery. They know that the reader has forgotten every +detail of it, and that nothing of the tremendous event is left in his +mind but a vague and formless luminous smudge. Aside from the desire to +flatter the reader, they have another reason for making the remark-two +reasons, indeed. They do not remember the details themselves, and do not +want the trouble of hunting them up and copying them out; also, they are +afraid that if they search them out and print them they will be scoffed +at by the book-reviewers for retelling those worn old things which are +familiar to everybody. They should not mind the reviewer's jeer; he +doesn't remember any of the worn old things until the book which he is +reviewing has retold them to him. + +I have made the quoted remark myself, at one time and another, but I was +not doing it to flatter the reader; I was merely doing it to save work. +If I had known the details without brushing up, I would have put them in; +but I didn't, and I did not want the labor of posting myself; so I said, +"The details of this tremendous episode are too familiar to the reader to +need repeating here." I do not like that kind of a lie; still, it does +save work. + +I am not trying to get out of repeating the details of the Siege of +Lucknow in fear of the reviewer; I am not leaving them out in fear that +they would not interest the reader; I am leaving them out partly to save +work; mainly for lack of room. It is a pity, too; for there is not a +dull place anywhere in the great story. + +Ten days before the outbreak (May 10th) of the Mutiny, all was serene at +Lucknow, the huge capital of Oudh, the kingdom which had recently been +seized by the India Company. There was a great garrison, composed of +about 7,000 native troops and between 700 and 800 whites. These white +soldiers and their families were probably the only people of their race +there; at their elbow was that swarming population of warlike natives, a +race of born soldiers, brave, daring, and fond of fighting. On high +ground just outside the city stood the palace of that great personage, +the Resident, the representative of British power and authority. It +stood in the midst of spacious grounds, with its due complement of +outbuildings, and the grounds were enclosed by a wall--a wall not for +defense, but for privacy. The mutinous spirit was in the air, but the +whites were not afraid, and did not feel much troubled. + +Then came the outbreak at Meerut, then the capture of Delhi by the +mutineers; in June came the three-weeks leaguer of Sir Hugh Wheeler in +his open lot at Cawnpore--40 miles distant from Lucknow--then the +treacherous massacre of that gallant little garrison; and now the great +revolt was in full flower, and the comfortable condition of things at +Lucknow was instantly changed. + +There was an outbreak there, and Sir Henry Lawrence marched out of the +Residency on the 30th of June to put it down, but was defeated with heavy +loss, and had difficulty in getting back again. That night the memorable +siege of the Residency--called the siege of Lucknow--began. Sir Henry +was killed three days later, and Brigadier Inglis succeeded him in +command. + +Outside of the Residency fence was an immense host of hostile and +confident native besiegers; inside it were 480 loyal native soldiers, 730 +white ones, and 500 women and children. + +In those days the English garrisons always managed to hamper themselves +sufficiently with women and children. + +The natives established themselves in houses close at hand and began to +rain bullets and cannon-balls into the Residency; and this they kept up, +night and day, during four months and a half, the little garrison +industriously replying all the time. The women and children soon became +so used to the roar of the guns that it ceased to disturb their sleep. +The children imitated siege and defense in their play. The women--with +any pretext, or with none--would sally out into the storm-swept grounds. +The defense was kept up week after week, with stubborn fortitude, in the +midst of death, which came in many forms--by bullet, small-pox, cholera, +and by various diseases induced by unpalatable and insufficient food, by +the long hours of wearying and exhausting overwork in the daily and +nightly battle in the oppressive Indian heat, and by the broken rest +caused by the intolerable pest of mosquitoes, flies, mice, rats, and +fleas. + +Six weeks after the beginning of the siege more than one-half of the +original force of white soldiers was dead, and close upon three-fifths of +the original native force. + +But the fighting went on just the same. The enemy mined, the English +counter-mined, and, turn about, they blew up each other's posts. The +Residency grounds were honey-combed with the enemy's tunnels. Deadly +courtesies were constantly exchanged--sorties by the English in the +night; rushes by the enemy in the night--rushes whose purpose was to +breach the walls or scale them; rushes which cost heavily, and always +failed. + +The ladies got used to all the horrors of war--the shrieks of mutilated +men, the sight of blood and death. Lady Inglis makes this mention in her +diary: + + "Mrs. Bruere's nurse was carried past our door to-day, wounded in + the eye. To extract the bullet it was found necessary to take out + the eye--a fearful operation. Her mistress held her while it was + performed." + +The first relieving force failed to relieve. It was under Havelock and +Outram; and arrived when the siege had been going on for three months. +It fought its desperate way to Lucknow, then fought its way through the +city against odds of a hundred to one, and entered the Residency; but +there was not enough left of it, then, to do any good. It lost more men +in its last fight than it found in the Residency when it got in. It +became captive itself. + +The fighting and starving and dying by bullets and disease went steadily +on. Both sides fought with energy and industry. Captain Birch puts this +striking incident in evidence. He is speaking of the third month of the +siege: + + "As an instance of the heavy firing brought to bear on our position + this month may be mentioned the cutting down of the upper story of a + brick building simply by musketry firring. This building was in a + most exposed position. All the shots which just missed the top of + the rampart cut into the dead wall pretty much in a straight line, + and at length cut right through and brought the upper story tumbling + down. The upper structure on the top of the brigade-mess also fell + in. The Residency house was a wreck. Captain Anderson's post had + long ago been knocked down, and Innes' post also fell in. These two + were riddled with round shot. As many as 200 were picked up by + Colonel Masters." + +The exhausted garrison fought doggedly on all through the next month +October. Then, November 2d, news came Sir Colin Campbell's relieving +force would soon be on its way from Cawnpore. + +On the 12th the boom of his guns was heard. + +On the 13th the sounds came nearer--he was slowly, but steadily, cutting +his way through, storming one stronghold after another. + +On the 14th he captured the Martiniere College, and ran up the British +flag there. It was seen from the Residency. + +Next he took the Dilkoosha. + +On the 17th he took the former mess-house of the 32d regiment--a +fortified building, and very strong. "A most exciting, anxious day," +writes Lady Inglis in her diary. "About 4 P.M., two strange officers +walked through our yard, leading their horses"--and by that sign she knew +that communication was established between the forces, that the relief +was real, this time, and that the long siege of Lucknow was ended. + +The last eight or ten miles of Sir Colin Campbell's march was through +seas of, blood. The weapon mainly used was the bayonet, the fighting was +desperate. The way was mile-stoned with detached strong buildings of +stone, fortified, and heavily garrisoned, and these had to be taken by +assault. Neither side asked for quarter, and neither gave it. At the +Secundrabagh, where nearly two thousand of the enemy occupied a great +stone house in a garden, the work of slaughter was continued until every +man was killed. That is a sample of the character of that devastating +march. + +There were but few trees in the plain at that time, and from the +Residency the progress of the march, step by step, victory by victory, +could be noted; the ascending clouds of battle-smoke marked the way to +the eye, and the thunder of the guns marked it to the ear. + +Sir Colin Campbell had not come to Lucknow to hold it, but to save the +occupants of the Residency, and bring them away. Four or five days after +his arrival the secret evacuation by the troops took place, in the middle +of a dark night, by the principal gate, (the Bailie Guard). The two +hundred women and two hundred and fifty children had been previously +removed. Captain Birch says: + + "And now commenced a movement of the most perfect arrangement and + successful generalship--the withdrawal of the whole of the various + forces, a combined movement requiring the greatest care and skill. + First, the garrison in immediate contact with the enemy at the + furthest extremity of the Residency position was marched out. Every + other garrison in turn fell in behind it, and so passed out through + the Bailie Guard gate, till the whole of our position was evacuated. + Then Havelock's force was similarly withdrawn, post by post, + marching in rear of our garrison. After them in turn came the + forces of the Commander-in-Chief, which joined on in the rear of + Havelock's force. Regiment by regiment was withdrawn with--the + utmost order and regularity. The whole operation resembled the + movement of a telescope. Stern silence was kept, and the enemy took + no alarm." + +Lady Inglis, referring to her husband and to General Sir James Outram, +sets down the closing detail of this impressive midnight retreat, in +darkness and by stealth, of this shadowy host through the gate which it +had defended so long and so well: + + "At twelve precisely they marched out, John and Sir James Outram + remaining till all had passed, and then they took off their hats to + the Bailie Guard, the scene of as noble a defense as I think history + will ever have to relate." + + + + +CHAPTER LIX. + +Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist +but you have ceased to live. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict +truth. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +We were driven over Sir Colin Campbell's route by a British officer, and +when I arrived at the Residency I was so familiar with the road that I +could have led a retreat over it myself; but the compass in my head has +been out of order from my birth, and so, as soon as I was within the +battered Bailie Guard and turned about to review the march and imagine +the relieving forces storming their way along it, everything was upside +down and wrong end first in a moment, and I was never able to get +straightened out again. And now, when I look at the battle-plan, the +confusion remains. In me the east was born west, the battle-plans which +have the east on the right-hand side are of no use to me. + +The Residency ruins are draped with flowering vines, and are impressive +and beautiful. They and the grounds are sacred now, and will suffer no +neglect nor be profaned by any sordid or commercial use while the British +remain masters of India. Within the grounds are buried the dead who gave +up their lives there in the long siege. + +After a fashion, I was able to imagine the fiery storm that raged night +and day over the place during so many months, and after a fashion I could +imagine the men moving through it, but I could not satisfactorily place +the 200 women, and I could do nothing at all with the 250 children. I +knew by Lady Inglis' diary that the children carried on their small +affairs very much as if blood and carnage and the crash and thunder of a +siege were natural and proper features of nursery life, and I tried to +realize it; but when her little Johnny came rushing, all excitement, +through the din and smoke, shouting, "Oh, mamma, the white hen has laid +an egg!" I saw that I could not do it. Johnny's place was under the +bed. I could imagine him there, because I could imagine myself there; +and I think I should not have been interested in a hen that was laying an +egg; my interest would have been with the parties that were laying the +bombshells. I sat at dinner with one of those children in the Club's +Indian palace, and I knew that all through the siege he was perfecting +his teething and learning to talk; and while to me he was the most +impressive object in Lucknow after the Residency ruins, I was not able to +imagine what his life had been during that tempestuous infancy of his, +nor what sort of a curious surprise it must have been to him to be +marched suddenly out into a strange dumb world where there wasn't any +noise, and nothing going on. He was only forty-one when I saw him, a +strangely youthful link to connect the present with so ancient an episode +as the Great Mutiny. + +By and by we saw Cawnpore, and the open lot which was the scene of +Moore's memorable defense, and the spot on the shore of the Ganges where +the massacre of the betrayed garrison occurred, and the small Indian +temple whence the bugle-signal notified the assassins to fall on. This +latter was a lonely spot, and silent. The sluggish river drifted by, +almost currentless. It was dead low water, narrow channels with vast +sandbars between, all the way across the wide bed; and the only living +thing in sight was that grotesque and solemn bald-headed bird, the +Adjutant, standing on his six-foot stilts, solitary on a distant bar, +with his head sunk between his shoulders, thinking; thinking of his +prize, I suppose--the dead Hindoo that lay awash at his feet, and whether +to eat him alone or invite friends. He and his prey were a proper accent +to that mournful place. They were in keeping with it, they emphasized +its loneliness and its solemnity. + +And we saw the scene of the slaughter of the helpless women and children, +and also the costly memorial that is built over the well which contains +their remains. The Black Hole of Calcutta is gone, but a more reverent +age is come, and whatever remembrancer still exists of the moving and +heroic sufferings and achievements of the garrisons of Lucknow and +Cawnpore will be guarded and preserved. + +In Agra and its neighborhood, and afterwards at Delhi, we saw forts, +mosques, and tombs, which were built in the great days of the Mohammedan +emperors, and which are marvels of cost, magnitude, and richness of +materials and ornamentation, creations of surpassing grandeur, wonders +which do indeed make the like things in the rest of the world seem tame +and inconsequential by comparison. I am not purposing to describe them. +By good fortune I had not read too much about them, and therefore was +able to get a natural and rational focus upon them, with the result that +they thrilled, blessed, and exalted me. But if I had previously +overheated my imagination by drinking too much pestilential literary hot +Scotch, I should have suffered disappointment and sorrow. + +I mean to speak of only one of these many world-renowned buildings, the +Taj Mahal, the most celebrated construction in the earth. I had read a +great deal too much about it. I saw it in the daytime, I saw it in the +moonlight, I saw it near at hand, I saw it from a distance; and I knew +all the time, that of its kind it was the wonder of the world, with no +competitor now and no possible future competitor; and yet, it was not my +Taj. My Taj had been built by excitable literary people; it was solidly +lodged in my head, and I could not blast it out. + +I wish to place before the reader some of the usual descriptions of the +Taj, and ask him to take note of the impressions left in his mind. These +descriptions do really state the truth--as nearly as the limitations of +language will allow. But language is a treacherous thing, a most unsure +vehicle, and it can seldom arrange descriptive words in such a way that +they will not inflate the facts--by help of the reader's imagination, +which is always ready to take a hand, and work for nothing, and do the +bulk of it at that. + +I will begin with a few sentences from the excellent little local +guide-book of Mr. Satya Chandra Mukerji. I take them from here and there +in his description: + + "The inlaid work of the Taj and the flowers and petals that are to + be found on all sides on the surface of the marble evince a most + delicate touch." + +That is true. + + "The inlaid work, the marble, the flowers, the buds, the leaves, the + petals, and the lotus stems are almost without a rival in the whole + of the civilized world." + + "The work of inlaying with stones and gems is found in the highest + perfection in the Taj." + +Gems, inlaid flowers, buds, and leaves to be found on all sides. What do +you see before you? Is the fairy structure growing? Is it becoming a +jewel casket? + + "The whole of the Taj produces a wonderful effect that is equally + sublime and beautiful." + +Then Sir William Wilson Hunter: + + "The Taj Mahal with its beautiful domes, 'a dream of marble,' rises + on the river bank." + + "The materials are white marble and red sandstone." + + "The complexity of its design and the delicate intricacy of the + workmanship baffle description." + +Sir William continues. I will italicize some of his words: + + "The mausoleum stands on a raised marble platform at each of whose + corners rises a tall and slender minaret of graceful proportions and + of exquisite beauty. Beyond the platform stretch the two wings, one + of which is itself a mosque of great architectural merit. In the + center of the whole design the mausoleum occupies a square of 186 + feet, with the angles deeply truncated so also form an unequal + octagon. The main feature in this central pile is the great dome, + which swells upward to nearly two-thirds of a sphere and tapers at + its extremity into a pointed spire crowned by a crescent. Beneath + it an enclosure of marble trellis-work surrounds the tomb of the + princess and of her husband, the Emperor. Each corner of the + mausoleum is covered by a similar though much smaller dome erected + on a pediment pierced with graceful Saracenic arches. Light is + admitted into the interior through a double screen of pierced + marble, which tempers the glare of an Indian sky while its whiteness + prevents the mellow effect from degenerating into gloom. The + internal decorations consist of inlaid work in precious stones, such + as agate, jasper, etc., with which every squandril or salient point + in the architecture is richly fretted. Brown and violet marble is + also freely employed in wreaths, scrolls, and lintels to relieve the + monotony of white wall. In regard to color and design, the interior + of the Taj may rank first in the world for purely decorative + workmanship; while the perfect symmetry of its exterior, once seen + can never be forgotten, nor the aerial grace of its domes, rising + like marble bubbles into the clear sky. The Taj represents the most + highly elaborated stage of ornamentation reached by the + Indo-Mohammedan builders, the stage in which the architect ends and + the jeweler begins. In its magnificent gateway the diagonal + ornamentation at the corners, which satisfied the designers of the + gateways of Itimad-ud-doulah and Sikandra mausoleums is superseded + by fine marble cables, in bold twists, strong and handsome. The + triangular insertions of white marble and large flowers have in like + manner given place to fine inlaid work. Firm perpendicular lines in + black marble with well proportioned panels of the same material are + effectively used in the interior of the gateway. On its top the + Hindu brackets and monolithic architraves of Sikandra are replaced + by Moorish carped arches, usually single blocks of red sandstone, in + the Kiosks and pavilions which adorn the roof. From the pillared + pavilions a magnificent view is obtained of the Taj gardens below, + with the noble Jumna river at their farther end, and the city and + fort of Agra in the distance. From this beautiful and splendid + gateway one passes up a straight alley shaded by evergreen trees + cooled by a broad shallow piece of water running along the middle of + the path to the Taj itself. The Taj is entirely of marble and gems. + The red sandstone of the other Mohammedan buildings has entirely + disappeared, or rather the red sandstone which used to form the + thickness of the walls, is in the Taj itself overlaid completely + with white marble, and the white marble is itself inlaid with + precious stones arranged in lovely patterns of flowers. A feeling + of purity impresses itself on the eye and the mind from the absence + of the coarser material which forms so invariable a material in Agra + architecture. The lower wall and panels are covered with tulips, + oleanders, and fullblown lilies, in flat carving on the white + marble; and although the inlaid work of flowers done in gems is very + brilliant when looked at closely, there is on the whole but little + color, and the all-prevailing sentiment is one of whiteness, + silence, and calm. The whiteness is broken only by the fine color + of the inlaid gems, by lines in black marble, and by delicately + written inscriptions, also in black, from the Koran. Under the dome + of the vast mausoleum a high and beautiful screen of open tracery in + white marble rises around the two tombs, or rather cenotaphs of the + emperor and his princess; and in this marvel of marble the carving + has advanced from the old geometrical patterns to a trellis-work of + flowers and foliage, handled with great freedom and spirit. The two + cenotaphs in the center of the exquisite enclosure have no carving + except the plain Kalamdan or oblong pen-box on the tomb of Emperor + Shah Jehan. But both cenotaphs are inlaid with flowers made of + costly gems, and with the ever graceful oleander scroll." + +Bayard Taylor, after describing the details of the Taj, goes on to say: + + "On both sides the palm, the banyan, and the feathery bamboo mingle + their foliage; the song of birds meets your ears, and the odor of + roses and lemon flowers sweetens the air. Down such a vista and + over such a foreground rises the Taj. There is no mystery, no sense + of partial failure about the Taj. A thing of perfect beauty and of + absolute finish in every detail, it might pass for the work of genii + who knew naught of the weaknesses and ills with which mankind are + beset." + +All of these details are true. But, taken together, they state a +falsehood--to you. You cannot add them up correctly. Those writers know +the values of their words and phrases, but to you the words and phrases +convey other and uncertain values. To those writers their phrases have +values which I think I am now acquainted with; and for the help of the +reader I will here repeat certain of those words and phrases, and follow +them with numerals which shall represent those values--then we shall see +the difference between a writer's ciphering and a mistaken reader's-- + +Precious stones, such as agate, jasper, etc.--5. + +With which every salient point is richly fretted--5. + +First in the world for purely decorative workmanship--9. + +The Taj represents the stage where the architect ends and the jeweler +begins--5. + +The Taj is entirely of marble and gems--7. + +Inlaid with precious stones in lovely patterns of flowers--5. + +The inlaid work of flowers done in gems is very brilliant +(followed by a most important modification which the reader is sure to +read too carelessly)--2. + +The vast mausoleum--5. + +This marvel of marble--5. + +The exquisite enclosure--5. + +Inlaid with flowers made of costly gems--5. + +A thing of perfect beauty and absolute finish--5. + + +Those details are correct; the figures which I have placed after them +represent quite fairly their individual, values. Then why, as a whole, +do they convey a false impression to the reader? It is because the +reader--beguiled by, his heated imagination--masses them in the wrong +way. The writer would mass the first three figures in the following way, +and they would speak the truth + +Total--19 + +But the reader masses them thus--and then they tell a lie--559. + +The writer would add all of his twelve numerals together, and then the +sum would express the whole truth about the Taj, and the truth only--63. + +But the reader--always helped by his imagination--would put the figures +in a row one after the other, and get this sum, which would tell him a +noble big lie: + +559575255555. + +You must put in the commas yourself; I have to go on with my work. + +The reader will always be sure to put the figures together in that wrong +way, and then as surely before him will stand, sparkling in the sun, a +gem-crusted Taj tall as the Matterhorn. + +I had to visit Niagara fifteen times before I succeeded in getting my +imaginary Falls gauged to the actuality and could begin to sanely and +wholesomely wonder at them for what they were, not what I had expected +them to be. When I first approached them it was with my face lifted +toward the sky, for I thought I was going to see an Atlantic ocean +pouring down thence over cloud-vexed Himalayan heights, a sea-green wall +of water sixty miles front and six miles high, and so, when the toy +reality came suddenly into view--that beruiled little wet apron hanging +out to dry--the shock was too much for me, and I fell with a dull thud. + +Yet slowly, surely, steadily, in the course of my fifteen visits, the +proportions adjusted themselves to the facts, and I came at last to +realize that a waterfall a hundred and sixty-five feet high and a quarter +of a mile wide was an impressive thing. It was not a dipperful to my +vanished great vision, but it would answer. + +I know that I ought to do with the Taj as I was obliged to do with +Niagara--see it fifteen times, and let my mind gradually get rid of the +Taj built in it by its describers, by help of my imagination, and +substitute for it the Taj of fact. It would be noble and fine, then, and +a marvel; not the marvel which it replaced, but still a marvel, and fine +enough. I am a careless reader, I suppose--an impressionist reader; an +impressionist reader of what is not an impressionist picture; a reader +who overlooks the informing details or masses their sum improperly, and +gets only a large splashy, general effect--an effect which is not +correct, and which is not warranted by the particulars placed before me +particulars which I did not examine, and whose meanings I did not +cautiously and carefully estimate. It is an effect which is some +thirty-five or forty times finer than the reality, and is therefore a +great deal better and more valuable than the reality; and so, I ought +never to hunt up the reality, but stay miles away from it, and thus +preserve undamaged my own private mighty Niagara tumbling out of the +vault of heaven, and my own ineffable Taj, built of tinted mists upon +jeweled arches of rainbows supported by colonnades of moonlight. It is a +mistake for a person with an unregulated imagination to go and look at an +illustrious world's wonder. + +I suppose that many, many years ago I gathered the idea that the Taj's +place in the achievements of man was exactly the place of the ice-storm +in the achievements of Nature; that the Taj represented man's supremest +possibility in the creation of grace and beauty and exquisiteness and +splendor, just as the ice-storm represents Nature's supremest possibility +in the combination of those same qualities. I do not know how long ago +that idea was bred in me, but I know that I cannot remember back to a +time when the thought of either of these symbols of gracious and +unapproachable perfection did not at once suggest the other. If I +thought of the ice-storm, the Taj rose before me divinely beautiful; if I +thought of the Taj, with its encrustings and inlayings of jewels, the +vision of the ice-storm rose. And so, to me, all these years, the Taj +has had no rival among the temples and palaces of men, none that even +remotely approached it it was man's architectural ice-storm. + +Here in London the other night I was talking with some Scotch and English +friends, and I mentioned the ice-storm, using it as a figure--a figure +which failed, for none of them had heard of the ice-storm. One +gentleman, who was very familiar with American literature, said he had +never seen it mentioned in any book. That is strange. And I, myself, +was not able to say that I had seen it mentioned in a book; and yet the +autumn foliage, with all other American scenery, has received full and +competent attention. + +The oversight is strange, for in America the ice-storm is an event. And +it is not an event which one is careless about. When it comes, the news +flies from room to room in the house, there are bangings on the doors, +and shoutings, "The ice-storm! the ice-storm!" and even the laziest +sleepers throw off the covers and join the rush for the windows. The +ice-storm occurs in midwinter, and usually its enchantments are wrought +in the silence and the darkness of the night. A fine drizzling rain +falls hour after hour upon the naked twigs and branches of the trees, and +as it falls it freezes. In time the trunk and every branch and twig are +incased in hard pure ice; so that the tree looks like a skeleton tree +made all of glass--glass that is crystal-clear. All along the underside +of every branch and twig is a comb of little icicles--the frozen drip. +Sometimes these pendants do not quite amount to icicles, but are round +beads--frozen tears. + +The weather clears, toward dawn, and leaves a brisk pure atmosphere and a +sky without a shred of cloud in it--and everything is still, there is not +a breath of wind. The dawn breaks and spreads, the news of the storm +goes about the house, and the little and the big, in wraps and blankets, +flock to the window and press together there, and gaze intently out upon +the great white ghost in the grounds, and nobody says a word, nobody +stirs. All are waiting; they know what is coming, and they are waiting +waiting for the miracle. The minutes drift on and on and on, with not a +sound but the ticking of the clock; at last the sun fires a sudden sheaf +of rays into the ghostly tree and turns it into a white splendor of +glittering diamonds. Everybody catches his breath, and feels a swelling +in his throat and a moisture in his eyes-but waits again; for he knows +what is coming; there is more yet. The sun climbs higher, and still +higher, flooding the tree from its loftiest spread of branches to its +lowest, turning it to a glory of white fire; then in a moment, without +warning, comes the great miracle, the supreme miracle, the miracle +without its fellow in the earth; a gust of wind sets every branch and +twig to swaying, and in an instant turns the whole white tree into a +spouting and spraying explosion of flashing gems of every conceivable +color; and there it stands and sways this way and that, flash! flash! +flash! a dancing and glancing world of rubies, emeralds, diamonds, +sapphires, the most radiant spectacle, the most blinding spectacle, the +divinest, the most exquisite, the most intoxicating vision of fire and +color and intolerable and unimaginable splendor that ever any eye has +rested upon in this world, or will ever rest upon outside of the gates of +heaven. + +By, all my senses, all my faculties, I know that the icestorm is Nature's +supremest achievement in the domain of the superb and the beautiful; and +by my reason, at least, I know that the Taj is man's ice-storm. + +In the ice-storm every one of the myriad ice-beads pendant from twig and +branch is an individual gem, and changes color with every motion caused +by the wind; each tree carries a million, and a forest-front exhibits the +splendors of the single tree multiplied by a thousand. + +It occurs to me now that I have never seen the ice-storm put upon canvas, +and have not heard that any painter has tried to do it. I wonder why +that is. Is it that paint cannot counterfeit the intense blaze of a +sun-flooded jewel? There should be, and must be, a reason, and a good one, +why the most enchanting sight that Nature has created has been neglected +by the brush. + +Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict +truth. The describers of the Taj have used the word gem in its strictest +sense--its scientific sense. In that sense it is a mild word, and +promises but little to the eye-nothing bright, nothing brilliant, nothing +sparkling, nothing splendid in the way of color. It accurately describes +the sober and unobtrusive gem-work of the Taj; that is, to the very +highly-educated one person in a thousand; but it most falsely describes +it to the 999. But the 999 are the people who ought to be especially +taken care of, and to them it does not mean quiet-colored designs wrought +in carnelians, or agates, or such things; they know the word in its wide +and ordinary sense only, and so to them it means diamonds and rubies and +opals and their kindred, and the moment their eyes fall upon it in print +they see a vision of glorious colors clothed in fire. + +These describers are writing for the "general," and so, in order to make +sure of being understood, they ought to use words in their ordinary +sense, or else explain. The word fountain means one thing in Syria, +where there is but a handful of people; it means quite another thing in +North America, where there are 75,000,000. If I were describing some +Syrian scenery, and should exclaim, "Within the narrow space of a quarter +of a mile square I saw, in the glory of the flooding moonlight, two +hundred noble fountains--imagine the spectacle!" the North American would +have a vision of clustering columns of water soaring aloft, bending over +in graceful arches, bursting in beaded spray and raining white fire in +the moonlight-and he would be deceived. But the Syrian would not be +deceived; he would merely see two hundred fresh-water springs--two +hundred drowsing puddles, as level and unpretentious and unexcited as so +many door-mats, and even with the help of the moonlight he would not lose +his grip in the presence of the exhibition. My word "fountain" would be +correct; it would speak the strict truth; and it would convey the strict +truth to the handful of Syrians, and the strictest misinformation to the +North American millions. With their gems--and gems--and more gems--and +gems again--and still other gems--the describers of the Taj are within +their legal but not their moral rights; they are dealing in the strictest +scientific truth; and in doing it they succeed to admiration in telling +"what ain't so." + + + + +CHAPTER LX. + +SATAN (impatiently) to NEW-COMER. The trouble with you Chicago people +is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are +merely the most numerous. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +We wandered contentedly around here and there in India; to Lahore, among +other places, where the Lieutenant-Governor lent me an elephant. This +hospitality stands out in my experiences in a stately isolation. It was +a fine elephant, affable, gentlemanly, educated, and I was not afraid of +it. I even rode it with confidence through the crowded lanes of the +native city, where it scared all the horses out of their senses, and +where children were always just escaping its feet. It took the middle of +the road in a fine independent way, and left it to the world to get out +of the way or take the consequences. I am used to being afraid of +collisions when I ride or drive, but when one is on top of an elephant +that feeling is absent. I could have ridden in comfort through a +regiment of runaway teams. I could easily learn to prefer an elephant to +any other vehicle, partly because of that immunity from collisions, and +partly because of the fine view one has from up there, and partly because +of the dignity one feels in that high place, and partly because one can +look in at the windows and see what is going on privately among the +family. The Lahore horses were used to elephants, but they were +rapturously afraid of them just the same. It seemed curious. Perhaps +the better they know the elephant the more they respect him in that +peculiar way. In our own case--we are not afraid of dynamite till we get +acquainted with it. + +We drifted as far as Rawal Pindi, away up on the Afghan frontier--I think +it was the Afghan frontier, but it may have been Hertzegovina--it was +around there somewhere--and down again to Delhi, to see the ancient +architectural wonders there and in Old Delhi and not describe them, and +also to see the scene of the illustrious assault, in the Mutiny days, +when the British carried Delhi by storm, one of the marvels of history +for impudent daring and immortal valor. + +We had a refreshing rest, there in Delhi, in a great old mansion which +possessed historical interest. It was built by a rich Englishman who had +become orientalized--so much so that he had a zenana. But he was a +broadminded man, and remained so. To please his harem he built a mosque; +to please himself he built an English church. That kind of a man will +arrive, somewhere. In the Mutiny days the mansion was the British +general's headquarters. It stands in a great garden--oriental fashion +--and about it are many noble trees. The trees harbor monkeys; and they +are monkeys of a watchful and enterprising sort, and not much troubled +with fear. They invade the house whenever they get a chance, and carry +off everything they don't want. One morning the master of the house was +in his bath, and the window was open. Near it stood a pot of yellow +paint and a brush. Some monkeys appeared in the window; to scare them +away, the gentleman threw his sponge at them. They did not scare at all; +they jumped into the room and threw yellow paint all over him from the +brush, and drove him out; then they painted the walls and the floor and +the tank and the windows and the furniture yellow, and were in the +dressing-room painting that when help arrived and routed them. + +Two of these creatures came into my room in the early morning, through a +window whose shutters I had left open, and when I woke one of them was +before the glass brushing his hair, and the other one had my note-book, +and was reading a page of humorous notes and crying. I did not mind the +one with the hair-brush, but the conduct of the other one hurt me; it +hurts me yet. I threw something at him, and that was wrong, for my host +had told me that the monkeys were best left alone. They threw everything +at me that they could lift, and then went into the bathroom to get some +more things, and I shut the door on them. + +At Jeypore, in Rajputana, we made a considerable stay. We were not in +the native city, but several miles from it, in the small European +official suburb. There were but few Europeans--only fourteen but they +were all kind and hospitable, and it amounted to being at home. In +Jeypore we found again what we had found all about India--that while the +Indian servant is in his way a very real treasure, he will sometimes bear +watching, and the Englishman watches him. If he sends him on an errand, +he wants more than the man's word for it that he did the errand. When +fruit and vegetables were sent to us, a "chit" came with them--a receipt +for us to sign; otherwise the things might not arrive. If a gentleman +sent up his carriage, the chit stated "from" such-and-such an hour "to" +such-and-such an hour--which made it unhandy for the coachman and his two +or three subordinates to put us off with a part of the allotted time and +devote the rest of it to a lark of their own. + +We were pleasantly situated in a small two-storied inn, in an empty large +compound which was surrounded by a mud wall as high as a man's head. The +inn was kept by nine Hindoo brothers, its owners. They lived, with their +families, in a one-storied building within the compound, but off to one +side, and there was always a long pile of their little comely brown +children loosely stacked in its veranda, and a detachment of the parents +wedged among them, smoking the hookah or the howdah, or whatever they +call it. By the veranda stood a palm, and a monkey lived in it, and led +a lonesome life, and always looked sad and weary, and the crows bothered +him a good deal. + +The inn cow poked about the compound and emphasized the secluded and +country air of the place, and there was a dog of no particular breed, who +was always present in the compound, and always asleep, always stretched +out baking in the sun and adding to the deep tranquility and +reposefulness of the place, when the crows were away on business. +White-draperied servants were coming and going all the time, but they +seemed only spirits, for their feet were bare and made no sound. Down +the lane a piece lived an elephant in the shade of a noble tree, and +rocked and rocked, and reached about with his trunk, begging of his brown +mistress or fumbling the children playing at his feet. And there were +camels about, but they go on velvet feet, and were proper to the silence +and serenity of the surroundings. + +The Satan mentioned at the head of this chapter was not our Satan, but +the other one. Our Satan was lost to us. In these later days he had +passed out of our life--lamented by me, and sincerely. I was missing +him; I am missing him yet, after all these months. He was an astonishing +creature to fly around and do things. He didn't always do them quite +right, but he did them, and did them suddenly. There was no time wasted. +You would say: + +"Pack the trunks and bags, Satan." + +"Wair good" (very good). + +Then there would be a brief sound of thrashing and slashing and humming +and buzzing, and a spectacle as of a whirlwind spinning gowns and jackets +and coats and boots and things through the air, and then with bow and +touch-- + +"Awready, master." + +It was wonderful. It made one dizzy. He crumpled dresses a good deal, +and he had no particular plan about the work--at first--except to put +each article into the trunk it didn't belong in. But he soon reformed, +in this matter. Not entirely; for, to the last, he would cram into the +satchel sacred to literature any odds and ends of rubbish that he +couldn't find a handy place for elsewhere. When threatened with death +for this, it did not trouble him; he only looked pleasant, saluted with +soldierly grace, said "Wair good," and did it again next day. + +He was always busy; kept the rooms tidied up, the boots polished, the +clothes brushed, the wash-basin full of clean water, my dress clothes +laid out and ready for the lecture-hall an hour ahead of time; and he +dressed me from head to heel in spite of my determination to do it +myself, according to my lifelong custom. + +He was a born boss, and loved to command, and to jaw and dispute with +inferiors and harry them and bullyrag them. He was fine at the railway +station--yes, he was at his finest there. He would shoulder and plunge +and paw his violent way through the packed multitude of natives with +nineteen coolies at his tail, each bearing a trifle of luggage--one a +trunk, another a parasol, another a shawl, another a fan, and so on; one +article to each, and the longer the procession, the better he was suited +--and he was sure to make for some engaged sleeper and begin to hurl the +owner's things out of it, swearing that it was ours and that there had +been a mistake. Arrived at our own sleeper, he would undo the +bedding-bundles and make the beds and put everything to rights and +shipshape in two minutes; then put his head out at, a window and have a +restful good time abusing his gang of coolies and disputing their bill +until we arrived and made him pay them and stop his noise. + +Speaking of noise, he certainly was the noisest little devil in India +--and that is saying much, very much, indeed. I loved him for his noise, +but the family detested him for it. They could not abide it; they could +not get reconciled to it. It humiliated them. As a rule, when we got +within six hundred yards of one of those big railway stations, a mighty +racket of screaming and shrieking and shouting and storming would break +upon us, and I would be happy to myself, and the family would say, with +shame: + +"There--that's Satan. Why do you keep him?" + +And, sure enough, there in the whirling midst of fifteen hundred +wondering people we would find that little scrap of a creature +gesticulating like a spider with the colic, his black eyes snapping, his +fez-tassel dancing, his jaws pouring out floods of billingsgate upon his +gang of beseeching and astonished coolies. + +I loved him; I couldn't help it; but the family--why, they could hardly +speak of him with patience. To this day I regret his loss, and wish I +had him back; but they--it is different with them. He was a native, and +came from Surat. Twenty degrees of latitude lay between his birthplace +and Manuel's, and fifteen hundred between their ways and characters and +dispositions. I only liked Manuel, but I loved Satan. This latter's +real name was intensely Indian. I could not quite get the hang of it, +but it sounded like Bunder Rao Ram Chunder Clam Chowder. It was too long +for handy use, anyway; so I reduced it. + +When he had been with us two or three weeks, he began to make mistakes +which I had difficulty in patching up for him. Approaching Benares one +day, he got out of the train to see if he could get up a misunderstanding +with somebody, for it had been a weary, long journey and he wanted to +freshen up. He found what he was after, but kept up his pow-wow a shade +too long and got left. So there we were in a strange city and no +chambermaid. It was awkward for us, and we told him he must not do so +any more. He saluted and said in his dear, pleasant way, "Wair good." +Then at Lucknow he got drunk. I said it was a fever, and got the +family's compassion, and solicitude aroused; so they gave him a +teaspoonful of liquid quinine and it set his vitals on fire. He made +several grimaces which gave me a better idea of the Lisbon earthquake +than any I have ever got of it from paintings and descriptions. His +drunk was still portentously solid next morning, but I could have pulled +him through with the family if he would only have taken another spoonful +of that remedy; but no, although he was stupefied, his memory still had +flickerings of life; so he smiled a divinely dull smile and said, +fumblingly saluting: + +"Scoose me, mem Saheb, scoose me, Missy Saheb; Satan not prefer it, +please." + +Then some instinct revealed to them that he was drunk. They gave him +prompt notice that next time this happened he must go. He got out a +maudlin and most gentle "Wair good," and saluted indefinitely. + +Only one short week later he fell again. And oh, sorrow! not in a hotel +this time, but in an English gentleman's private house. And in Agra, of +all places. So he had to go. When I told him, he said patiently, "Wair +good," and made his parting salute, and went out from us to return no +more forever. Dear me! I would rather have lost a hundred angels than +that one poor lovely devil. What style he used to put on, in a swell +hotel or in a private house--snow-white muslin from his chin to his bare +feet, a crimson sash embroidered with gold thread around his waist, and +on his head a great sea-green turban like to the turban of the Grand +Turk. + +He was not a liar; but he will become one if he keeps on. He told me +once that he used to crack cocoanuts with his teeth when he was a boy; +and when I asked how he got them into his mouth, he said he was upward of +six feet high at that time, and had an unusual mouth. And when I +followed him up and asked him what had become of that other foot, he said +a house fell on him and he was never able to get his stature back again. +Swervings like these from the strict line of fact often beguile a +truthful man on and on until he eventually becomes a liar. + +His successor was a Mohammedan, Sahadat Mohammed Khan; very dark, very +tall, very grave. He went always in flowing masses of white, from the +top of his big turban down to his bare feet. His voice was low. He +glided about in a noiseless way, and looked like a ghost. He was +competent and satisfactory. But where he was, it seemed always Sunday. +It was not so in Satan's time. + +Jeypore is intensely Indian, but it has two or three features which +indicate the presence of European science and European interest in the +weal of the common public, such as the liberal water-supply furnished by +great works built at the State's expense; good sanitation, resulting in a +degree of healthfulness unusually high for India; a noble pleasure +garden, with privileged days for women; schools for the instruction of +native youth in advanced art, both ornamental and utilitarian; and a new +and beautiful palace stocked with a museum of extraordinary interest and +value. Without the Maharaja's sympathy and purse these beneficences +could not have been created; but he is a man of wide views and large +generosities, and all such matters find hospitality with him. + +We drove often to the city from the hotel Kaiser-i-Hind, a journey which +was always full of interest, both night and day, for that country road +was never quiet, never empty, but was always India in motion, always a +streaming flood of brown people clothed in smouchings from the rainbow, a +tossing and moiling flood, happy, noisy, a charming and satisfying +confusion of strange human and strange animal life and equally strange +and outlandish vehicles. + +And the city itself is a curiosity. Any Indian city is that, but this +one is not like any other that we saw. It is shut up in a lofty turreted +wall; the main body of it is divided into six parts by perfectly straight +streets that are more than a hundred feet wide; the blocks of houses +exhibit a long frontage of the most taking architectural quaintnesses, +the straight lines being broken everywhere by pretty little balconies, +pillared and highly ornamented, and other cunning and cozy and inviting +perches and projections, and many of the fronts are curiously pictured by +the brush, and the whole of them have the soft rich tint of strawberry +ice-cream. One cannot look down the far stretch of the chief street and +persuade himself that these are real houses, and that it is all out of +doors--the impression that it is an unreality, a picture, a scene in a +theater, is the only one that will take hold. + +Then there came a great day when this illusion was more pronounced than +ever. A rich Hindoo had been spending a fortune upon the manufacture of +a crowd of idols and accompanying paraphernalia whose purpose was to +illustrate scenes in the life of his especial god or saint, and this fine +show was to be brought through the town in processional state at ten in +the morning. As we passed through the great public pleasure garden on +our way to the city we found it crowded with natives. That was one +sight. Then there was another. In the midst of the spacious lawns +stands the palace which contains the museum--a beautiful construction of +stone which shows arched colonnades, one above another, and receding, +terrace-fashion, toward the sky. Every one of these terraces, all the +way to the top one, was packed and jammed with natives. One must try to +imagine those solid masses of splendid color, one above another, up and +up, against the blue sky, and the Indian sun turning them all to beds of +fire and flame. + +Later, when we reached the city, and glanced down the chief avenue, +smouldering in its crushed-strawberry tint, those splendid effects were +repeated; for every balcony, and every fanciful bird-cage of a snuggery +countersunk in the house-fronts, and all the long lines of roofs were +crowded with people, and each crowd was an explosion of brilliant color. + +Then the wide street itself, away down and down and down into the +distance, was alive with gorgeously-clothed people not still, but moving, +swaying, drifting, eddying, a delirious display of all colors and all +shades of color, delicate, lovely, pale, soft, strong, stunning, vivid, +brilliant, a sort of storm of sweetpea blossoms passing on the wings of a +hurricane; and presently, through this storm of color, came swaying and +swinging the majestic elephants, clothed in their Sunday best of +gaudinesses, and the long procession of fanciful trucks freighted with +their groups of curious and costly images, and then the long rearguard of +stately camels, with their picturesque riders. + +For color, and picturesqueness, and novelty, and outlandishness, and +sustained interest and fascination, it was the most satisfying show I had +ever seen, and I suppose I shall not have the privilege of looking upon +its like again. + + + + +CHAPTER LXI. + +In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made +School Boards. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Suppose we applied no more ingenuity to the instruction of deaf and dumb +and blind children than we sometimes apply in our American public schools +to the instruction of children who are in possession of all their +faculties? The result would be that the deaf and dumb and blind would +acquire nothing. They would live and die as ignorant as bricks and +stones. The methods used in the asylums are rational. The teacher +exactly measures the child's capacity, to begin with; and from thence +onwards the tasks imposed are nicely gauged to the gradual development of +that capacity, the tasks keep pace with the steps of the child's +progress, they don't jump miles and leagues ahead of it by irrational +caprice and land in vacancy--according to the average public-school plan. +In the public school, apparently, they teach the child to spell cat, then +ask it to calculate an eclipse; when it can read words of two syllables, +they require it to explain the circulation of the blood; when it reaches +the head of the infant class they bully it with conundrums that cover the +domain of universal knowledge. This sounds extravagant--and is; yet it +goes no great way beyond the facts. + +I received a curious letter one day, from the Punjab (you must pronounce +it Punjawb). The handwriting was excellent, and the wording was English +--English, and yet not exactly English. The style was easy and smooth +and flowing, yet there was something subtly foreign about it--A something +tropically ornate and sentimental and rhetorical. It turned out to be +the work of a Hindoo youth, the holder of a humble clerical billet in a +railway office. He had been educated in one of the numerous colleges of +India. Upon inquiry I was told that the country was full of young +fellows of his like. They had been educated away up to the snow-summits +of learning--and the market for all this elaborate cultivation was +minutely out of proportion to the vastness of the product. This market +consisted of some thousands of small clerical posts under the government +--the supply of material for it was multitudinous. If this youth with the +flowing style and the blossoming English was occupying a small railway +clerkship, it meant that there were hundreds and hundreds as capable as +he, or he would be in a high place; and it certainly meant that there +were thousands whose education and capacity had fallen a little short, +and that they would have to go without places. Apparently, then, the +colleges of India were doing what our high schools have long been doing +--richly over-supplying the market for highly-educated service; and thereby +doing a damage to the scholar, and through him to the country. + +At home I once made a speech deploring the injuries inflicted by the high +school in making handicrafts distasteful to boys who would have been +willing to make a living at trades and agriculture if they had but had +the good luck to stop with the common school. But I made no converts. +Not one, in a community overrun with educated idlers who were above +following their fathers' mechanical trades, yet could find no market for +their book-knowledge. The same rail that brought me the letter from the +Punjab, brought also a little book published by Messrs. Thacker, Spink & +Co., of Calcutta, which interested me, for both its preface and its +contents treated of this matter of over-education. In the preface occurs +this paragraph from the Calcutta Review. For "Government office" read +"drygoods clerkship" and it will fit more than one region of America: + + "The education that we give makes the boys a little less clownish in + their manners, and more intelligent when spoken to by strangers. On + the other hand, it has made them less contented with their lot in + life, and less willing to work with their hands. The form which + discontent takes in this country is not of a healthy kind; for, the + Natives of India consider that the only occupation worthy of an + educated man is that of a writership in some office, and especially + in a Government office. The village schoolboy goes back to the plow + with the greatest reluctance; and the town schoolboy carries the + same discontent and inefficiency into his father's workshop. + Sometimes these ex-students positively refuse at first to work; and + more than once parents have openly expressed their regret that they + ever allowed their sons to be inveigled to school." + +The little book which I am quoting from is called "Indo-Anglian +Literature," and is well stocked with "baboo" English--clerkly English, +hooky English, acquired in the schools. Some of it is very funny, +--almost as funny, perhaps, as what you and I produce when we try to write +in a language not our own; but much of it is surprisingly correct and +free. If I were going to quote good English--but I am not. India is +well stocked with natives who speak it and write it as well as the best +of us. I merely wish to show some of the quaint imperfect attempts at +the use of our tongue. There are many letters in the book; poverty +imploring help--bread, money, kindness, office generally an office, a +clerkship, some way to get food and a rag out of the applicant's +unmarketable education; and food not for himself alone, but sometimes for +a dozen helpless relations in addition to his own family; for those +people are astonishingly unselfish, and admirably faithful to their ties +of kinship. Among us I think there is nothing approaching it. Strange +as some of these wailing and supplicating letters are, humble and even +groveling as some of them are, and quaintly funny and confused as a +goodly number of them are, there is still a pathos about them, as a rule, +that checks the rising laugh and reproaches it. In the following letter +"father" is not to be read literally. In Ceylon a little native +beggar-girl embarrassed me by calling me father, although I knew she was +mistaken. I was so new that I did not know that she was merely following +the custom of the dependent and the supplicant. + + "SIR, + + "I pray please to give me some action (work) for I am very poor boy + I have no one to help me even so father for it so it seemed in thy + good sight, you give the Telegraph Office, and another work what is + your wish I am very poor boy, this understand what is your wish you + my father I am your son this understand what is your wish. + + "Your Sirvent, P. C. B." + +Through ages of debasing oppression suffered by these people at the hands +of their native rulers, they come legitimately by the attitude and +language of fawning and flattery, and one must remember this in +mitigation when passing judgment upon the native character. It is common +in these letters to find the petitioner furtively trying to get at the +white man's soft religious side; even this poor boy baits his hook with a +macerated Bible-text in the hope that it may catch something if all else +fail. + +Here is an application for the post of instructor in English to some +children: + + "My Dear Sir or Gentleman, that your Petitioner has much + qualification in the Language of English to instruct the young boys; + I was given to understand that your of suitable children has to + acquire the knowledge of English language." + +As a sample of the flowery Eastern style, I will take a sentence or two +from along letter written by a young native to the Lieutenant-Governor of +Bengal--an application for employment: + + "HONORED AND MUCH RESPECTED SIR, + + "I hope your honor will condescend to hear the tale of this poor + creature. I shall overflow with gratitude at this mark of your + royal condescension. The bird-like happiness has flown away from my + nest-like heart and has not hitherto returned from the period whence + the rose of my father's life suffered the autumnal breath of death, + in plain English he passed through the gates of Grave, and from that + hour the phantom of delight has never danced before me." + +It is all school-English, book-English, you see; and good enough, too, +all things considered. If the native boy had but that one study he would +shine, he would dazzle, no doubt. But that is not the case. He is +situated as are our public-school children--loaded down with an +over-freightage of other studies; and frequently they are as far beyond +the actual point of progress reached by him and suited to the stage of +development attained, as could be imagined by the insanest fancy. +Apparently--like our public-school boy--he must work, work, work, in +school and out, and play but little. Apparently--like our public-school +boy--his "education" consists in learning things, not the meaning of +them; he is fed upon the husks, not the corn. From several essays +written by native schoolboys in answer to the question of how they spend +their day, I select one--the one which goes most into detail: + + "66. At the break of day I rises from my own bed and finish my + daily duty, then I employ myself till 8 o'clock, after which I + employ myself to bathe, then take for my body some sweet meat, and + just at 9 1/2 I came to school to attend my class duty, then at + 2 1/2 P. M. I return from school and engage myself to do my natural + duty, then, I engage for a quarter to take my tithn, then I study + till 5 P. M., after which I began to play anything which comes in + my head. After 8 1/2, half pass to eight we are began to sleep, + before sleeping I told a constable just 11 o' he came and rose us + from half pass eleven we began to read still morning." + +It is not perfectly clear, now that I come to cipher upon it. He gets up +at about 5 in the morning, or along there somewhere, and goes to bed +about fifteen or sixteen hours afterward--that much of it seems straight; +but why he should rise again three hours later and resume his studies +till morning is puzzling. + +I think it is because he is studying history. History requires a world +of time and bitter hard work when your "education" is no further advanced +than the cat's; when you are merely stuffing yourself with a mixed-up +mess of empty names and random incidents and elusive dates, which no one +teaches you how to interpret, and which, uninterpreted, pay you not a +farthing's value for your waste of time. Yes, I think he had to get up +at halfpast 11 P.M. in order to be sure to be perfect with his history +lesson by noon. With results as follows--from a Calcutta school +examination: + +"Q. Who was Cardinal Wolsey? +"Cardinal Wolsey was an Editor of a paper named North Briton. No. 45 of +his publication he charged the King of uttering a lie from the throne. +He was arrested and cast into prison; and after releasing went to France. + +"3. As Bishop of York but died in disentry in a church on his way to be +blockheaded. + +"8. Cardinal Wolsey was the son of Edward IV, after his father's death +he himself ascended the throne at the age of (10) ten only, but when he +surpassed or when he was fallen in his twenty years of age at that time +he wished to make a journey in his countries under him, but he was +opposed by his mother to do journey, and according to his mother's +example he remained in the home, and then became King. After many times +obstacles and many confusion he become King and afterwards his brother." + +There is probably not a word of truth in that. + +"Q. What is the meaning of 'Ich Dien'? + +"10. An honor conferred on the first or eldest sons of English +Sovereigns. It is nothing more than some feathers. + +"11. Ich Dien was the word which was written on the feathers of the +blind King who came to fight, being interlaced with the bridles of the +horse. + +"13. Ich Dien is a title given to Henry VII by the Pope of Rome, when he +forwarded the Reformation of Cardinal Wolsy to Rome, and for this reason +he was called Commander of the faith." + +A dozen or so of this kind of insane answers are quoted in the book from +that examination. Each answer is sweeping proof, all by itself, that the +person uttering it was pushed ahead of where he belonged when he was put +into history; proof that he had been put to the task of acquiring history +before he had had a single lesson in the art of acquiring it, which is +the equivalent of dumping a pupil into geometry before he has learned the +progressive steps which lead up to it and make its acquirement possible. +Those Calcutta novices had no business with history. There was no excuse +for examining them in it, no excuse for exposing them and their teachers. +They were totally empty; there was nothing to "examine." + +Helen Keller has been dumb, stone deaf, and stone blind, ever since she +was a little baby a year-and-a-half old; and now at sixteen years of age +this miraculous creature, this wonder of all the ages, passes the Harvard +University examination in Latin, German, French history, belles lettres, +and such things, and does it brilliantly, too, not in a commonplace +fashion. She doesn't know merely things, she is splendidly familiar with +the meanings of them. When she writes an essay on a Shakespearean +character, her English is fine and strong, her grasp of the subject is +the grasp of one who knows, and her page is electric with light. Has +Miss Sullivan taught her by the methods of India and the American public +school? No, oh, no; for then she would be deafer and dumber and blinder +than she was before. It is a pity that we can't educate all the children +in the asylums. + +To continue the Calcutta exposure: + +"What is the meaning of a Sheriff?" + +"25. Sheriff is a post opened in the time of John. The duty of Sheriff +here in Calcutta, to look out and catch those carriages which is rashly +driven out by the coachman; but it is a high post in England. + +"26. Sheriff was the English bill of common prayer. + +"27. The man with whom the accusative persons are placed is called +Sheriff. + +"28. Sheriff--Latin term for 'shrub,' we called broom, worn by the first +earl of Enjue, as an emblem of humility when they went to the pilgrimage, +and from this their hairs took their crest and surname. + +"29. Sheriff is a kind of titlous sect of people, as Barons, Nobles, +etc. + +"30. Sheriff; a tittle given on those persons who were respective and +pious in England." + +The students were examined in the following bulky matters: Geometry, the +Solar Spectrum, the Habeas Corpus Act, the British Parliament, and in +Metaphysics they were asked to trace the progress of skepticism from +Descartes to Hume. It is within bounds to say that some of the results +were astonishing. Without doubt, there were students present who +justified their teacher's wisdom in introducing them to these studies; +but the fact is also evident that others had been pushed into these +studies to waste their time over them when they could have been +profitably employed in hunting smaller game. Under the head of Geometry, +one of the answers is this: + +"49. The whole BD = the whole CA, and so-so-so-so-so-so-so." + +To me this is cloudy, but I was never well up in geometry. That was the +only effort made among the five students who appeared for examination in +geometry; the other four wailed and surrendered without a fight. They +are piteous wails, too, wails of despair; and one of them is an eloquent +reproach; it comes from a poor fellow who has been laden beyond his +strength by a stupid teacher, and is eloquent in spite of the poverty of +its English. The poor chap finds himself required to explain riddles +which even Sir Isaac Newton was not able to understand: + +"50. Oh my dear father examiner you my father and you kindly give a +number of pass you my great father. + +"51. I am a poor boy and have no means to support my mother and two +brothers who are suffering much for want of food. I get four rupees +monthly from charity fund of this place, from which I send two rupees for +their support, and keep two for my own support. Father, if I relate the +unlucky circumstance under which we are placed, then, I think, you will +not be able to suppress the tender tear. + +"52. Sir which Sir Isaac Newton and other experienced mathematicians +cannot understand I being third of Entrance Class can understand these +which is too impossible to imagine. And my examiner also has put very +tiresome and very heavy propositions to prove." + +We must remember that these pupils had to do their thinking in one +language, and express themselves in another and alien one. It was a +heavy handicap. I have by me "English as She is Taught"--a collection of +American examinations made in the public schools of Brooklyn by one of +the teachers, Miss Caroline B. Le Row. An extract or two from its pages +will show that when the American pupil is using but one language, and +that one his own, his performance is no whit better than his Indian +brother's: + +"ON HISTORY. + +"Christopher Columbus was called the father of his Country. Queen +Isabella of Spain sold her watch and chain and other millinery so that +Columbus could discover America. + +"The Indian wars were very desecrating to the country. + +"The Indians pursued their warfare by hiding in the bushes and then +scalping them. + +"Captain John Smith has been styled the father of his country. His life +was saved by his daughter Pochahantas. + +"The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America. + +"The Stamp Act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they should +be null and void. + +"Washington died in Spain almost broken-hearted. His remains were taken +to the cathedral in Havana. + +"Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas." + + +In Brooklyn, as in India, they examine a pupil, and when they find out he +doesn't know anything, they put him into literature, or geometry, or +astronomy, or government, or something like that, so that he can properly +display the assification of the whole system-- + +"ON LITERATURE. + +"'Bracebridge Hall' was written by Henry Irving. + +"Edgar A. Poe was a very curdling writer. + +"Beowulf wrote the Scriptures. + +"Ben Johnson survived Shakespeare in some respects. + +"In the 'Canterbury Tale' it gives account of King Alfred on his way to +the shrine of Thomas Bucket. + +"Chaucer was the father of English pottery. + +"Chaucer was succeeded by H. Wads. Longfellow." + + +We will finish with a couple of samples of "literature," one from +America, the other from India. The first is a Brooklyn public-school +boy's attempt to turn a few verses of the "Lady of the Lake" into prose. +You will have to concede that he did it: + +"The man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made +of steel alone with strong ardor not diminishing, for, being tired from +the time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant with +weariness, while every breath for labor lie drew with cries full of +sorrow, the young deer made imperfect who worked hard filtered in sight." + + +The following paragraph is from a little book which is famous in India +--the biography of a distinguished Hindoo judge, Onoocool Chunder +Mookerjee; it was written by his nephew, and is unintentionally funny-in +fact, exceedingly so. I offer here the closing scene. If you would like +to sample the rest of the book, it can be had by applying to the +publishers, Messrs. Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta + + "And having said these words he hermetically sealed his lips not to + open them again. All the well-known doctors of Calcutta that could + be procured for a man of his position and wealth were brought, + --Doctors Payne, Fayrer, and Nilmadhub Mookerjee and others; they did + what they could do, with their puissance and knack of medical + knowledge, but it proved after all as if to milk the ram! His wife + and children had not the mournful consolation to hear his last + words; he remained sotto voce for a few hours, and then was taken + from us at 6.12 P.m. according to the caprice of God which passeth + understanding." + + + + +CHAPTER LXII. + +There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined ones. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +We sailed from Calcutta toward the end of March; stopped a day at Madras; +two or three days in Ceylon; then sailed westward on a long flight for +Mauritius. From my diary: + +April 7. We are far abroad upon the smooth waters of the Indian Ocean, +now; it is shady and pleasant and peaceful under the vast spread of the +awnings, and life is perfect again--ideal. + +The difference between a river and the sea is, that the river looks +fluid, the sea solid--usually looks as if you could step out and walk on +it. + +The captain has this peculiarity--he cannot tell the truth in a plausible +way. In this he is the very opposite of the austere Scot who sits midway +of the table; he cannot tell a lie in an unplausible way. When the +captain finishes a statement the passengers glance at each other +privately, as who should say, "Do you believe that?" When the Scot +finishes one, the look says, "How strange and interesting." The whole +secret is in the manner and method of the two men. The captain is a +little shy and diffident, and he states the simplest fact as if he were a +little afraid of it, while the Scot delivers himself of the most +abandoned lie with such an air of stern veracity that one is forced to +believe it although one knows it isn't so. For instance, the Scot told +about a pet flying-fish he once owned, that lived in a little fountain in +his conservatory, and supported itself by catching birds and frogs and +rats in the neighboring fields. It was plain that no one at the table +doubted this statement. + +By and by, in the course of some talk about custom-house annoyances, the +captain brought out the following simple everyday incident, but through +his infirmity of style managed to tell it in such a way that it got no +credence. He said: + + "I went ashore at Naples one voyage when I was in that trade, and + stood around helping my passengers, for I could speak a little + Italian. Two or three times, at intervals, the officer asked me if + I had anything dutiable about me, and seemed more and more put out + and disappointed every time I told him no. Finally a passenger whom + I had helped through asked me to come out and take something. I + thanked him, but excused myself, saying I had taken a whisky just + before I came ashore. + + "It was a fatal admission. The officer at once made me pay sixpence + import-duty on the whisky-just from ship to shore, you see; and he + fined me L5 for not declaring the goods, another L5 for falsely + denying that I had anything dutiable about me, also L5 for + concealing the goods, and L50 for smuggling, which is the maximum + penalty for unlawfully bringing in goods under the value of + sevenpence ha'penny. Altogether, sixty-five pounds sixpence for a + little thing like that." + +The Scot is always believed, yet he never tells anything but lies; +whereas the captain is never believed, although he never tells a lie, so +far as I can judge. If he should say his uncle was a male person, he +would probably say it in such a way that nobody would believe it; at the +same time the Scot could claim that he had a female uncle and not stir a +doubt in anybody's mind. My own luck has been curious all my literary +life; I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that +anybody would believe. + +Lots of pets on board--birds and things. In these far countries the +white people do seem to run remarkably to pets. Our host in Cawnpore had +a fine collection of birds--the finest we saw in a private house in +India. And in Colombo, Dr. Murray's great compound and commodious +bungalow were well populated with domesticated company from the woods: +frisky little squirrels; a Ceylon mina walking sociably about the house; +a small green parrot that whistled a single urgent note of call without +motion of its beak; also chuckled; a monkey in a cage on the back +veranda, and some more out in the trees; also a number of beautiful +macaws in the trees; and various and sundry birds and animals of breeds +not known to me. But no cat. Yet a cat would have liked that place. + +April 9. Tea-planting is the great business in Ceylon, now. A passenger +says it often pays 40 per cent. on the investment. Says there is a boom. + +April 10. The sea is a Mediterranean blue; and I believe that that is +about the divinest color known to nature. + +It is strange and fine--Nature's lavish generosities to her creatures. +At least to all of them except man. For those that fly she has provided +a home that is nobly spacious--a home which is forty miles deep and +envelops the whole globe, and has not an obstruction in it. For those +that swim she has provided a more than imperial domain--a domain which is +miles deep and covers four-fifths of the globe. But as for man, she has +cut him off with the mere odds and ends of the creation. She has given +him the thin skin, the meagre skin which is stretched over the remaining +one-fifth--the naked bones stick up through it in most places. On the +one-half of this domain he can raise snow, ice, sand, rocks, and nothing +else. So the valuable part of his inheritance really consists of but a +single fifth of the family estate; and out of it he has to grub hard to +get enough to keep him alive and provide kings and soldiers and powder to +extend the blessings of civilization with. Yet man, in his simplicity +and complacency and inability to cipher, thinks Nature regards him as the +important member of the family--in fact, her favorite. Surely, it must +occur to even his dull head, sometimes, that she has a curious way of +showing it. + +Afternoon. The captain has been telling how, in one of his Arctic +voyages, it was so cold that the mate's shadow froze fast to the deck and +had to be ripped loose by main strength. And even then he got only about +two-thirds of it back. Nobody said anything, and the captain went away. +I think he is becoming disheartened . . . . Also, to be fair, there +is another word of praise due to this ship's library: it contains no copy +of the Vicar of Wakefield, that strange menagerie of complacent +hypocrites and idiots, of theatrical cheap-john heroes and heroines, who +are always showing off, of bad people who are not interesting, and good +people who are fatiguing. A singular book. Not a sincere line in it, +and not a character that invites respect; a book which is one long +waste-pipe discharge of goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities; a +book which is full of pathos which revolts, and humor which grieves the +heart. There are few things in literature that are more piteous, more +pathetic, than the celebrated "humorous" incident of Moses and the +spectacles. Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just +that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library +that hadn't a book in it. + +Customs in tropic seas. At 5 in the morning they pipe to wash down the +decks, and at once the ladies who are sleeping there turn out and they +and their beds go below. Then one after another the men come up from the +bath in their pyjamas, and walk the decks an hour or two with bare legs +and bare feet. Coffee and fruit served. The ship cat and her kitten now +appear and get about their toilets; next the barber comes and flays us on +the breezy deck. Breakfast at 9.30, and the day begins. I do not know +how a day could be more reposeful: no motion; a level blue sea; nothing +in sight from horizon to horizon; the speed of the ship furnishes a +cooling breeze; there is no mail to read and answer; no newspapers to +excite you; no telegrams to fret you or fright you--the world is far, far +away; it has ceased to exist for you--seemed a fading dream, along in the +first days; has dissolved to an unreality now; it is gone from your mind +with all its businesses and ambitions, its prosperities and disasters, +its exultations and despairs, its joys and griefs and cares and worries. +They are no concern of yours any more; they have gone out of your life; +they are a storm which has passed and left a deep calm behind. The +people group themselves about the decks in their snowy white linen, and +read, smoke, sew, play cards, talk, nap, and so on. In other ships the +passengers are always ciphering about when they are going to arrive; out +in these seas it is rare, very rare, to hear that subject broached. In +other ships there is always an eager rush to the bulletin board at noon +to find out what the "run" has been; in these seas the bulletin seems to +attract no interest; I have seen no one visit it; in thirteen days I have +visited it only once. Then I happened to notice the figures of the day's +run. On that day there happened to be talk, at dinner, about the speed +of modern ships. I was the only passenger present who knew this ship's +gait. Necessarily, the Atlantic custom of betting on the ship's run is +not a custom here--nobody ever mentions it. + +I myself am wholly indifferent as to when we are going to "get in"; if +any one else feels interested in the matter he has not indicated it in my +hearing. If I had my way we should never get in at all. This sort of +sea life is charged with an indestructible charm. There is no weariness, +no fatigue, no worry, no responsibility, no work, no depression of +spirits. There is nothing like this serenity, this comfort, this peace, +this deep contentment, to be found anywhere on land. If I had my way I +would sail on for ever and never go to live on the solid ground again. + +One of Kipling's ballads has delivered the aspect and sentiment of this +bewitching sea correctly: + + "The Injian Ocean sets an' smiles + So sof', so bright, so bloomin' blue; + There aren't a wave for miles an' miles + Excep' the jiggle from the screw." + +April 14. It turns out that the astronomical apprentice worked off a +section of the Milky Way on me for the Magellan Clouds. A man of more +experience in the business showed one of them to me last night. It was +small and faint and delicate, and looked like the ghost of a bunch of +white smoke left floating in the sky by an exploded bombshell. + +Wednesday, April 15. Mauritius. Arrived and anchored off Port Louis +2 A. M. Rugged clusters of crags and peaks, green to their summits; from +their bases to the sea a green plain with just tilt enough to it to make +the water drain off. I believe it is in 56 E. and 22 S.--a hot tropical +country. The green plain has an inviting look; has scattering dwellings +nestling among the greenery. Scene of the sentimental adventure of Paul +and Virginia. + +Island under French control--which means a community which depends upon +quarantines, not sanitation, for its health. + +Thursday, April 16. Went ashore in the forenoon at Port Louis, a little +town, but with the largest variety of nationalities and complexions we +have encountered yet. French, English, Chinese, Arabs, Africans with +wool, blacks with straight hair, East Indians, half-whites, quadroons +--and great varieties in costumes and colors. + +Took the train for Curepipe at 1.30--two hours' run, gradually uphill. +What a contrast, this frantic luxuriance of vegetation, with the arid +plains of India; these architecturally picturesque crags and knobs and +miniature mountains, with the monotony of the Indian dead-levels. + +A native pointed out a handsome swarthy man of grave and dignified +bearing, and said in an awed tone, "That is so-and-so; has held office of +one sort or another under this government for 37 years--he is known all +over this whole island and in the other countries of the world perhaps +--who knows? One thing is certain; you can speak his name anywhere in this +whole island, and you will find not one grown person that has not heard +it. It is a wonderful thing to be so celebrated; yet look at him; it +makes no change in him; he does not even seem to know it." + +Curepipe (means Pincushion or Pegtown, probably). Sixteen miles (two +hours) by rail from Port Louis. At each end of every roof and on the +apex of every dormer window a wooden peg two feet high stands up; in some +cases its top is blunt, in others the peg is sharp and looks like a +toothpick. The passion for this humble ornament is universal. + +Apparently, there has been only one prominent event in the history of +Mauritius, and that one didn't happen. I refer to the romantic sojourn +of Paul and Virginia here. It was that story that made Mauritius known +to the world, made the name familiar to everybody, the geographical +position of it to nobody. + +A clergyman was asked to guess what was in a box on a table. It was a +vellum fan painted with the shipwreck, and was "one of Virginia's wedding +gifts." + +April 18. This is the only country in the world where the stranger is +not asked "How do you like this place?" This is indeed a large +distinction. Here the citizen does the talking about the country +himself; the stranger is not asked to help. You get all sorts of +information. From one citizen you gather the idea that Mauritius was +made first, and then heaven; and that heaven was copied after Mauritius. +Another one tells you that this is an exaggeration; that the two chief +villages, Port Louis and Curepipe, fall short of heavenly perfection; +that nobody lives in Port Louis except upon compulsion, and that Curepipe +is the wettest and rainiest place in the world. An English citizen said: + + "In the early part of this century Mauritius was used by the French + as a basis from which to operate against England's Indian + merchantmen; so England captured the island and also the neighbor, + Bourbon, to stop that annoyance. England gave Bourbon back; the + government in London did not want any more possessions in the West + Indies. If the government had had a better quality of geography in + stock it would not have wasted Bourbon in that foolish way. A big + war will temporarily shut up the Suez Canal some day and the English + ships will have to go to India around the Cape of Good Hope again; + then England will have to have Bourbon and will take it. + + "Mauritius was a crown colony until 20 years ago, with a governor + appointed by the Crown and assisted by a Council appointed by + himself; but Pope Hennessey came out as Governor then, and he worked + hard to get a part of the council made elective, and succeeded. So + now the whole council is French, and in all ordinary matters of + legislation they vote together and in the French interest, not the + English. The English population is very slender; it has not votes + enough to elect a legislator. Half a dozen rich French families + elect the legislature. Pope Hennessey was an Irishman, a Catholic, + a Home Ruler, M.P., a hater of England and the English, a very + troublesome person and a serious incumbrance at Westminster; so it + was decided to send him out to govern unhealthy countries, in hope + that something would happen to him. But nothing did. The first + experiment was not merely a failure, it was more than a failure. He + proved to be more of a disease himself than any he was sent to + encounter. The next experiment was here. The dark scheme failed + again. It was an off-season and there was nothing but measles here + at the time. Pope Hennessey's health was not affected. He worked + with the French and for the French and against the English, and he + made the English very tired and the French very happy, and lived to + have the joy of seeing the flag he served publicly hissed. His + memory is held in worshipful reverence and affection by the French. + + "It is a land of extraordinary quarantines. They quarantine a ship + for anything or for nothing; quarantine her for 20 and even 30 days. + They once quarantined a ship because her captain had had the + smallpox when he was a boy. That and because he was English. + + "The population is very small; small to insignificance. The + majority is East Indian; then mongrels; then negroes (descendants of + the slaves of the French times); then French; then English. There + was an American, but he is dead or mislaid. The mongrels are the + result of all kinds of mixtures; black and white, mulatto and white, + quadroon and white, octoroon and white. And so there is every shade + of complexion; ebony, old mahogany, horsechestnut, sorrel, + molasses-candy, clouded amber, clear amber, old-ivory white, + new-ivory white, fish-belly white--this latter the leprous complexion + frequent with the Anglo-Saxon long resident in tropical climates. + + "You wouldn't expect a person to be proud of being a Mauritian, now + would you? But it is so. The most of them have never been out of + the island, and haven't read much or studied much, and they think + the world consists of three principal countries--Judaea, France, and + Mauritius; so they are very proud of belonging to one of the three + grand divisions of the globe. They think that Russia and Germany + are in England, and that England does not amount to much. They have + heard vaguely about the United States and the equator, but they + think both of them are monarchies. They think Mount Peter Botte is + the highest mountain in the world, and if you show one of them a + picture of Milan Cathedral he will swell up with satisfaction and + say that the idea of that jungle of spires was stolen from the + forest of peg-tops and toothpicks that makes the roofs of Curepipe + look so fine and prickly. + + "There is not much trade in books. The newspapers educate and + entertain the people. Mainly the latter. They have two pages of + large-print reading-matter-one of them English, the other French. + The English page is a translation of the French one. The typography + is super-extra primitive--in this quality it has not its equal + anywhere. There is no proof-reader now; he is dead. + + "Where do they get matter to fill up a page in this little island + lost in the wastes of the Indian Ocean? Oh, Madagascar. They + discuss Madagascar and France. That is the bulk. Then they chock + up the rest with advice to the Government. Also, slurs upon the + English administration. The papers are all owned and edited by + creoles--French. + + "The language of the country is French. Everybody speaks it--has + to. You have to know French particularly mongrel French, the patois + spoken by Tom, Dick, and Harry of the multiform complexions--or you + can't get along. + +"This was a flourishing country in former days, for it made then and +still makes the best sugar in the world; but first the Suez Canal severed +it from the world and left it out in the cold and next the beetroot sugar +helped by bounties, captured the European markets. Sugar is the life of +Mauritius, and it is losing its grip. Its downward course was checked by +the depreciation of the rupee--for the planter pays wages in rupees but +sells his crop for gold--and the insurrection in Cuba and paralyzation of +the sugar industry there have given our prices here a life-saving lift; +but the outlook has nothing permanently favorable about it. It takes a +year to mature the canes--on the high ground three and six months longer +--and there is always a chance that the annual cyclone will rip the +profit out of the crop. In recent times a cyclone took the whole crop, +as you may say; and the island never saw a finer one. Some of the +noblest sugar estates in the island are in deep difficulties. A dozen of +them are investments of English capital; and the companies that own them +are at work now, trying to settle up and get out with a saving of half +the money they put in. You know, in these days, when a country begins to +introduce the tea culture, it means that its own specialty has gone back +on it. Look at Bengal; look at Ceylon. Well, they've begun to introduce +the tea culture, here. + +"Many copies of Paul and Virginia are sold every year in Mauritius. No +other book is so popular here except the Bible. By many it is supposed +to be a part of the Bible. All the missionaries work up their French on +it when they come here to pervert the Catholic mongrel. It is the +greatest story that was ever written about Mauritius, and the only one." + + + + +CHAPTER LXIII. + +The principal difference between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only +nine lives. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +April 20.--The cyclone of 1892 killed and crippled hundreds of people; +it was accompanied by a deluge of rain, which drowned Port Louis and +produced a water famine. Quite true; for it burst the reservoir and the +water-pipes; and for a time after the flood had disappeared there was +much distress from want of water. + +This is the only place in the world where no breed of matches can stand +the damp. Only one match in 16 will light. + +The roads are hard and smooth; some of the compounds are spacious, some +of the bungalows commodious, and the roadways are walled by tall bamboo +hedges, trim and green and beautiful; and there are azalea hedges, too, +both the white and the red; I never saw that before. + +As to healthiness: I translate from to-day's (April 20) Merchants' and +Planters' Gazette, from the article of a regular contributor, "Carminge," +concerning the death of the nephew of a prominent citizen: + + "Sad and lugubrious existence, this which we lead in Mauritius; I + believe there is no other country in the world where one dies more + easily than among us. The least indisposition becomes a mortal + malady; a simple headache develops into meningitis; a cold into + pneumonia, and presently, when we are least expecting it, death is a + guest in our home." + +This daily paper has a meteorological report which tells you what the +weather was day before yesterday. + +One is clever pestered by a beggar or a peddler in this town, so far as I +can see. This is pleasantly different from India. + +April 22. To such as believe that the quaint product called French +civilization would be an improvement upon the civilization of New Guinea +and the like, the snatching of Madagascar and the laying on of French +civilization there will be fully justified. But why did the English +allow the French to have Madagascar? Did she respect a theft of a couple +of centuries ago? Dear me, robbery by European nations of each other's +territories has never been a sin, is not a sin to-day. To the several +cabinets the several political establishments of the world are +clotheslines; and a large part of the official duty of these cabinets is +to keep an eye on each other's wash and grab what they can of it as +opportunity offers. All the territorial possessions of all the political +establishments in the earth--including America, of course--consist of +pilferings from other people's wash. No tribe, howsoever insignificant, +and no nation, howsoever mighty, occupies a foot of land that was not +stolen. When the English, the French, and the Spaniards reached America, +the Indian tribes had been raiding each other's territorial clothes-lines +for ages, and every acre of ground in the continent had been stolen and +re-stolen 500 times. The English, the French, and the Spaniards went to +work and stole it all over again; and when that was satisfactorily +accomplished they went diligently to work and stole it from each other. +In Europe and Asia and Africa every acre of ground has been stolen +several millions of times. A crime persevered in a thousand centuries +ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, +and custom supersedes all other forms of law. Christian governments are +as frank to-day, as open and above-board, in discussing projects for +raiding each other's clothes-lines as ever they were before the Golden +Rule came smiling into this inhospitable world and couldn't get a night's +lodging anywhere. In 150 years England has beneficently retired garment +after garment from the Indian lines, until there is hardly a rag of the +original wash left dangling anywhere. In 800 years an obscure +tribe of Muscovite savages has risen to the dazzling position of +Land-Robber-in-Chief; she found a quarter of the world hanging out to dry +on a hundred parallels of latitude, and she scooped in the whole wash. +She keeps a sharp eye on a multitude of little lines that stretch along +the northern boundaries of India, and every now and then she snatches a +hip-rag or a pair of pyjamas. It is England's prospective property, and +Russia knows it; but Russia cares nothing for that. In fact, in our day +land-robbery, claim-jumping, is become a European governmental frenzy. +Some have been hard at it in the borders of China, in Burma, in Siam, and +the islands of the sea; and all have been at it in Africa. Africa has +been as coolly divided up and portioned out among the gang as if they had +bought it and paid for it. And now straightway they are beginning the +old game again --to steal each other's grabbings. Germany found a vast +slice of Central Africa with the English flag and the English missionary +and the English trader scattered all over it, but with certain +formalities neglected--no signs up, "Keep off the grass," +"Trespassers-forbidden," etc.--and she stepped in with a cold calm smile +and put up the signs herself, and swept those English pioneers promptly +out of the country. + +There is a tremendous point there. It can be put into the form of a +maxim: Get your formalities right--never mind about the moralities. + +It was an impudent thing; but England had to put up with it. Now, in the +case of Madagascar, the formalities had originally been observed, but by +neglect they had fallen into desuetude ages ago. England should have +snatched Madagascar from the French clothes-line. Without an effort she +could have saved those harmless natives from the calamity of French +civilization, and she did not do it. Now it is too late. + +The signs of the times show plainly enough what is going to happen. All +the savage lands in the world are going to be brought under subjection to +the Christian governments of Europe. I am not sorry, but glad. This +coming fate might have been a calamity to those savage peoples two +hundred years ago; but now it will in some cases be a benefaction. The +sooner the seizure is consummated, the better for the savages. + +The dreary and dragging ages of bloodshed and disorder and oppression +will give place to peace and order and the reign of law. When one +considers what India was under her Hindoo and Mohammedan rulers, and what +she is now; when he remembers the miseries of her millions then and the +protections and humanities which they enjoy now, he must concede that the +most fortunate thing that has ever befallen that empire was the +establishment of British supremacy there. The savage lands of the world +are to pass to alien possession, their peoples to the mercies of alien +rulers. Let us hope and believe that they will all benefit by the +change. + +April 23. "The first year they gather shells; the second year they +gather shells and drink; the third year they do not gather shells." (Said +of immigrants to Mauritius.) + +Population 375,000. 120 sugar factories. + +Population 1851, 185,000. The increase is due mainly to the introduction +of Indian coolies. They now apparently form the great majority of the +population. They are admirable breeders; their homes are always hazy +with children. Great savers of money. A British officer told me that in +India he paid his servant 10 rupees a month, and he had 11 cousins, +uncles, parents, etc., dependent upon him, and he supported them on his +wages. These thrifty coolies are said to be acquiring land a trifle at a +time, and cultivating it; and may own the island by and by. + +The Indian women do very hard labor [for wages of (1/2 rupee) for twelve +hours' work.] They carry mats of sugar on their heads (70 pounds) all +day lading ships, for half a rupee, and work at gardening all day for +less. + +The camaron is a fresh water creature like a cray-fish. It is regarded +here as the world's chiefest delicacy--and certainly it is good. Guards +patrol the streams to prevent poaching it. A fine of Rs.200 or 300 +(they say) for poaching. Bait is thrown in the water; the camaron goes +for it; the fisher drops his loop in and works it around and about the +camaron he has selected, till he gets it over its tail; then there's a +jerk or something to certify the camaron that it is his turn now; he +suddenly backs away, which moves the loop still further up his person and +draws it taut, and his days are ended. + +Another dish, called palmiste, is like raw turnip-shavings and tastes +like green almonds; is very delicate and good. Costs the life of a palm +tree 12 to 20 years old--for it is the pith. + +Another dish--looks like greens or a tangle of fine seaweed--is a +preparation of the deadly nightshade. Good enough. + +The monkeys live in the dense forests on the flanks of the toy mountains, +and they flock down nights and raid the sugar-fields. Also on other +estates they come down and destroy a sort of bean-crop--just for fun, +apparently--tear off the pods and throw them down. + +The cyclone of 1892 tore down two great blocks of stone buildings in the +center of Port Louis--the chief architectural feature-and left the +uncomely and apparently frail blocks standing. Everywhere in its track +it annihilated houses, tore off roofs, destroyed trees and crops. The +men were in the towns, the women and children at home in the country +getting crippled, killed, frightened to insanity; and the rain deluging +them, the wind howling, the thunder crashing, the lightning glaring. +This for an hour or so. Then a lull and sunshine; many ventured out of +safe shelter; then suddenly here it came again from the opposite point +and renewed and completed the devastation. It is said the Chinese fed +the sufferers for days on free rice. + +Whole streets in Port Louis were laid flat--wrecked. During a minute and +a half the wind blew 123 miles an hour; no official record made after +that, when it may have reached 150. It cut down an obelisk. It carried +an American ship into the woods after breaking the chains of two anchors. +They now use four-two forward, two astern. Common report says it killed +1,200 in Port Louis alone, in half an hour. Then came the lull of the +central calm--people did not know the barometer was still going down +--then suddenly all perdition broke loose again while people were rushing +around seeking friends and rescuing the wounded. The noise was +comparable to nothing; there is nothing resembling it but thunder and +cannon, and these are feeble in comparison. + +What there is of Mauritius is beautiful. You have undulating wide +expanses of sugar-cane--a fine, fresh green and very pleasant to the eye; +and everywhere else you have a ragged luxuriance of tropic vegetation of +vivid greens of varying shades, a wild tangle of underbrush, with +graceful tall palms lifting their crippled plumes high above it; and you +have stretches of shady dense forest with limpid streams frolicking +through them, continually glimpsed and lost and glimpsed again in the +pleasantest hide-and-seek fashion; and you have some tiny mountains, +some quaint and picturesque groups of toy peaks, and a dainty little +vest-pocket Matterhorn; and here and there and now and then a strip of +sea with a white ruffle of surf breaks into the view. + +That is Mauritius; and pretty enough. The details are few, the massed +result is charming, but not imposing; not riotous, not exciting; it is a +Sunday landscape. Perspective, and the enchantments wrought by distance, +are wanting. There are no distances; there is no perspective, so to +speak. Fifteen miles as the crow flies is the usual limit of vision. +Mauritius is a garden and a park combined. It affects one's emotions as +parks and gardens affect them. The surfaces of one's spiritual deeps are +pleasantly played upon, the deeps themselves are not reached, not +stirred. Spaciousness, remote altitudes, the sense of mystery which +haunts apparently inaccessible mountain domes and summits reposing in the +sky--these are the things which exalt the spirit and move it to see +visions and dream dreams. + +The Sandwich Islands remain my ideal of the perfect thing in the matter +of tropical islands. I would add another story to Mauna Loa's 16,000 +feet if I could, and make it particularly bold and steep and craggy and +forbidding and snowy; and I would make the volcano spout its lava-floods +out of its summit instead of its sides; but aside from these +non-essentials I have no corrections to suggest. I hope these will be +attended to; I do not wish to have to speak of it again. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIV. + +When your watch gets out of order you have choice of two things to do: +throw it in the fire or take it to the watch-tinker. The former is the +quickest. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The Arundel Castle is the finest boat I have seen in these seas. She is +thoroughly modern, and that statement covers a great deal of ground. She +has the usual defect, the common defect, the universal defect, the defect +that has never been missing from any ship that ever sailed--she has +imperfect beds. Many ships have good beds, but no ship has very good +ones. In the matter of beds all ships have been badly edited, ignorantly +edited, from the beginning. The selection of the beds is given to some +hearty, strong-backed, self-made man, when it ought to be given to a +frail woman accustomed from girlhood to backaches and insomnia. Nothing +is so rare, on either side of the ocean, as a perfect bed; nothing is so +difficult to make. Some of the hotels on both sides provide it, but no +ship ever does or ever did. In Noah's Ark the beds were simply +scandalous. Noah set the fashion, and it will endure in one degree of +modification or another till the next flood. + +8 A.M. Passing Isle de Bourbon. Broken-up sky-line of volcanic +mountains in the middle. Surely it would not cost much to repair them, +and it seems inexcusable neglect to leave them as they are. + +It seems stupid to send tired men to Europe to rest. It is no proper +rest for the mind to clatter from town to town in the dust and cinders, +and examine galleries and architecture, and be always meeting people and +lunching and teaing and dining, and receiving worrying cables and +letters. And a sea voyage on the Atlantic is of no use--voyage too +short, sea too rough. The peaceful Indian and Pacific Oceans and the +long stretches of time are the healing thing. + +May 2, AM. A fair, great ship in sight, almost the first we have seen in +these weeks of lonely voyaging. We are now in the Mozambique Channel, +between Madagascar and South Africa, sailing straight west for Delagoa +Bay. + +Last night, the burly chief engineer, middle-aged, was standing telling a +spirited seafaring tale, and had reached the most exciting place, where a +man overboard was washing swiftly astern on the great seas, and uplifting +despairing cries, everybody racing aft in a frenzy of excitement and +fading hope, when the band, which had been silent a moment, began +impressively its closing piece, the English national anthem. As simply +as if he was unconscious of what he was doing, he stopped his story, +uncovered, laid his laced cap against his breast, and slightly bent his +grizzled head. The few bars finished, he put on his cap and took up his +tale again, as naturally as if that interjection of music had been a part +of it. There was something touching and fine about it, and it was moving +to reflect that he was one of a myriad, scattered over every part of the +globe, who by turn was doing as he was doing every hour of the +twenty-four--those awake doing it while the others slept--those +impressive bars forever floating up out of the various climes, never +silent and never lacking reverent listeners. + +All that I remember about Madagascar is that Thackeray's little Billie +went up to the top of the mast and there knelt him upon his knee, saying, +"I see + + "Jerusalem and Madagascar, + And North and South Amerikee." + +May 3. Sunday. Fifteen or twenty Africanders who will end their voyage +to-day and strike for their several homes from Delagoa Bay to-morrow, sat +up singing on the afterdeck in the moonlight till 3 A.M. Good fun and +wholesome. And the songs were clean songs, and some of them were +hallowed by tender associations. Finally, in a pause, a man asked, "Have +you heard about the fellow that kept a diary crossing the Atlantic?" +It was a discord, a wet blanket. The men were not in the mood for +humorous dirt. The songs had carried them to their homes, and in spirit +they sat by those far hearthstones, and saw faces and heard voices other +than those that were about them. And so this disposition to drag in an +old indecent anecdote got no welcome; nobody answered. The poor man +hadn't wit enough to see that he had blundered, but asked his question +again. Again there was no response. It was embarrassing for him. In +his confusion he chose the wrong course, did the wrong thing--began the +anecdote. Began it in a deep and hostile stillness, where had been such +life and stir and warm comradeship before. He delivered himself of the +brief details of the diary's first day, and did it with some confidence +and a fair degree of eagerness. It fell flat. There was an awkward +pause. The two rows of men sat like statues. There was no movement, no +sound. He had to go on; there was no other way, at least none that an +animal of his calibre could think of. At the close of each day's diary, +the same dismal silence followed. When at last he finished his tale and +sprung the indelicate surprise which is wont to fetch a crash of +laughter, not a ripple of sound resulted. It was as if the tale had been +told to dead men. After what seemed a long, long time, somebody sighed, +somebody else stirred in his seat; presently, the men dropped into a low +murmur of confidential talk, each with his neighbor, and the incident was +closed. There were indications that that man was fond of his anecdote; +that it was his pet, his standby, his shot that never missed, his +reputation-maker. But he will never tell it again. No doubt he will +think of it sometimes, for that cannot well be helped; and then he will +see a picture, and always the same picture--the double rank of dead men; +the vacant deck stretching away in dimming perspective beyond them, the +wide desert of smooth sea all abroad; the rim of the moon spying from +behind a rag of black cloud; the remote top of the mizzenmast shearing a +zigzag path through the fields of stars in the deeps of space; and this +soft picture will remind him of the time that he sat in the midst of it +and told his poor little tale and felt so lonesome when he got through. + +Fifty Indians and Chinamen asleep in a big tent in the waist of the ship +forward; they lie side by side with no space between; the former wrapped +up, head and all, as in the Indian streets, the Chinamen uncovered; the +lamp and things for opium smoking in the center. + +A passenger said it was ten 2-ton truck loads of dynamite that lately +exploded at Johannesburg. Hundreds killed; he doesn't know how many; +limbs picked up for miles around. Glass shattered, and roofs swept away +or collapsed 200 yards off; fragment of iron flung three and a half +miles. + +It occurred at 3 p.m.; at 6, L65,000 had been subscribed. When this +passenger left, L35,000 had been voted by city and state governments and +L100,000 by citizens and business corporations. When news of the +disaster was telephoned to the Exchange L35,000 were subscribed in the +first five minutes. Subscribing was still going on when he left; the +papers had ceased the names, only the amounts--too many names; not enough +room. L100,000 subscribed by companies and citizens; if this is true, it +must be what they call in Australia "a record"--the biggest instance of a +spontaneous outpour for charity in history, considering the size of the +population it was drawn from, $8 or $10 for each white resident, babies +at the breast included. + +Monday, May 4. Steaming slowly in the stupendous Delagoa Bay, its dim +arms stretching far away and disappearing on both sides. It could +furnish plenty of room for all the ships in the world, but it is shoal. +The lead has given us 3 1/2 fathoms several times and we are drawing +that, lacking 6 inches. + +A bold headland--precipitous wall, 150 feet high, very strong, red color, +stretching a mile or so. A man said it was Portuguese blood--battle +fought here with the natives last year. I think this doubtful. Pretty +cluster of houses on the tableland above the red-and rolling stretches of +grass and groups of trees, like England. + +The Portuguese have the railroad (one passenger train a day) to the +border--70 miles--then the Netherlands Company have it. Thousands of +tons of freight on the shore--no cover. This is Portuguese allover +--indolence, piousness, poverty, impotence. + +Crews of small boats and tugs, all jet black woolly heads and very +muscular. + +Winter. The South African winter is just beginning now, but nobody but +an expert can tell it from summer. However, I am tired of summer; we +have had it unbroken for eleven months. We spent the afternoon on shore, +Delagoa Bay. A small town--no sights. No carriages. Three 'rickshas, +but we couldn't get them--apparently private. These Portuguese are a +rich brown, like some of the Indians. Some of the blacks have the long +horse beads and very long chins of the negroes of the picture books; but +most of them are exactly like the negroes of our Southern States round +faces, flat noses, good-natured, and easy laughers. + +Flocks of black women passed along, carrying outrageously heavy bags of +freight on their heads. The quiver of their leg as the foot was planted +and the strain exhibited by their bodies showed what a tax upon their +strength the load was. They were stevedores and doing full stevedores +work. They were very erect when unladden--from carrying heavy loads on +their heads--just like the Indian women. It gives them a proud fine +carriage. + +Sometimes one saw a woman carrying on her head a laden and top-heavy +basket the shape of an inverted pyramid-its top the size of a soup-plate, +its base the diameter of a teacup. It required nice balancing--and got +it. + +No bright colors; yet there were a good many Hindoos. + +The Second Class Passenger came over as usual at "lights out" (11) and we +lounged along the spacious vague solitudes of the deck and smoked the +peaceful pipe and talked. He told me an incident in Mr. Barnum's life +which was evidently characteristic of that great showman in several ways: + +This was Barnum's purchase of Shakespeare's birthplace, a quarter of a +century ago. The Second Class Passenger was in Jamrach's employ at the +time and knew Barnum well. He said the thing began in this way. One +morning Barnum and Jamrach were in Jamrach's little private snuggery back +of the wilderness of caged monkeys and snakes and other commonplaces of +Jamrach's stock in trade, refreshing themselves after an arduous stroke +of business, Jamrach with something orthodox, Barnum with something +heterodox--for Barnum was a teetotaler. The stroke of business was in +the elephant line. Jamrach had contracted to deliver to Barnum in New +York 18 elephants for $360,000 in time for the next season's opening. +Then it occurred to Mr. Barnum that he needed a "card" He suggested +Jumbo. Jamrach said he would have to think of something else--Jumbo +couldn't be had; the Zoo wouldn't part with that elephant. Barnum said +he was willing to pay a fortune for Jumbo if he could get him. Jamrach +said it was no use to think about it; that Jumbo was as popular as the +Prince of Wales and the Zoo wouldn't dare to sell him; all England would +be outraged at the idea; Jumbo was an English institution; he was part of +the national glory; one might as well think of buying the Nelson +monument. Barnum spoke up with vivacity and said: + +"It's a first-rate idea. I'll buy the Monument." + +Jamrach was speechless for a second. Then he said, like one ashamed +"You caught me. I was napping. For a moment I thought you were in +earnest." + +Barnum said pleasantly-- + +"I was in earnest. I know they won't sell it, but no matter, I will not +throw away a good idea for all that. All I want is a big advertisement. +I will keep the thing in mind, and if nothing better turns up I will +offer to buy it. That will answer every purpose. It will furnish me a +couple of columns of gratis advertising in every English and American +paper for a couple of months, and give my show the biggest boom a show +ever had in this world." + +Jamrach started to deliver a burst of admiration, but was interrupted by +Barnum, who said: + +"Here is a state of things! England ought to blush." + +His eye had fallen upon something in the newspaper. He read it through +to himself, then read it aloud. It said that the house that Shakespeare +was born in at Stratford-on-Avon was falling gradually to ruin through +neglect; that the room where the poet first saw the light was now serving +as a butcher's shop; that all appeals to England to contribute money (the +requisite sum stated) to buy and repair the house and place it in the +care of salaried and trustworthy keepers had fallen resultless. Then +Barnum said: + +"There's my chance. Let Jumbo and the Monument alone for the present +--they'll keep. I'll buy Shakespeare's house. I'll set it up in my +Museum in New York and put a glass case around it and make a sacred thing +of it; and you'll see all America flock there to worship; yes, and +pilgrims from the whole earth; and I'll make them take their hats off, +too. In America we know how to value anything that Shakespeare's touch +has made holy. You'll see." + +In conclusion the S. C. P. said: + +"That is the way the thing came about. Barnum did buy Shakespeare's +house. He paid the price asked, and received the properly attested +documents of sale. Then there was an explosion, I can tell you. England +rose! That, the birthplace of the master-genius of all the ages and all +the climes--that priceless possession of Britain--to be carted out of the +country like so much old lumber and set up for sixpenny desecration in a +Yankee show-shop--the idea was not to be tolerated for a moment. England +rose in her indignation; and Barnum was glad to relinquish his prize and +offer apologies. However, he stood out for a compromise; he claimed a +concession--England must let him have Jumbo. And England consented, but +not cheerfully." + +It shows how, by help of time, a story can grow--even after Barnum has +had the first innings in the telling of it. Mr. Barnum told me the story +himself, years ago. He said that the permission to buy Jumbo was not a +concession; the purchase was made and the animal delivered before the +public knew anything about it. Also, that the securing of Jumbo was all +the advertisement he needed. It produced many columns of newspaper talk, +free of cost, and he was satisfied. He said that if he had failed to get +Jumbo he would have caused his notion of buying the Nelson Monument to be +treacherously smuggled into print by some trusty friend, and after he had +gotten a few hundred pages of gratuitous advertising out of it, he would +have come out with a blundering, obtuse, but warm-hearted letter of +apology, and in a postscript to it would have naively proposed to let the +Monument go, and take Stonehenge in place of it at the same price. + +It was his opinion that such a letter, written with well-simulated +asinine innocence and gush would have gotten his ignorance and stupidity +an amount of newspaper abuse worth six fortunes to him, and not +purchasable for twice the money. + +I knew Mr. Barnum well, and I placed every confidence in the account +which he gave me of the Shakespeare birthplace episode. He said he found +the house neglected and going-to decay, and he inquired into the matter +and was told that many times earnest efforts had been made to raise money +for its proper repair and preservation, but without success. He then +proposed to buy it. The proposition was entertained, and a price named +--$50,000, I think; but whatever it was, Barnum paid the money down, +without remark, and the papers were drawn up and executed. He said that +it had been his purpose to set up the house in his Museum, keep it in +repair, protect it from name-scribblers and other desecrators, and leave +it by bequest to the safe and perpetual guardianship of the Smithsonian +Institute at Washington. + +But as soon as it was found that Shakespeare's house had passed into +foreign hands and was going to be carried across the ocean, England was +stirred as no appeal from the custodians of the relic had ever stirred +England before, and protests came flowing in--and money, too, to stop the +outrage. Offers of repurchase were made--offers of double the money that +Mr. Barnum had paid for the house. He handed the house back, but took +only the sum which it had cost him--but on the condition that an +endowment sufficient for the future safeguarding and maintenance of the +sacred relic should be raised. This condition was fulfilled. + +That was Barnum's account of the episode; and to the end of his days he +claimed with pride and satisfaction that not England, but America +--represented by him--saved the birthplace of Shakespeare from destruction. + +At 3 P.M., May 6th, the ship slowed down, off the land, and thoughtfully +and cautiously picked her way into the snug harbor of Durban, South +Africa. + + + + +CHAPTER LXV. + +In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the +moralities. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +FROM DIARY: + +Royal Hotel. Comfortable, good table, good service of natives and +Madrasis. Curious jumble of modern and ancient city and village, +primitiveness and the other thing. Electric bells, but they don't ring. +Asked why they didn't, the watchman in the office said he thought they +must be out of order; he thought so because some of them rang, but most +of them didn't. Wouldn't it be a good idea to put them in order? He +hesitated--like one who isn't quite sure--then conceded the point. + +May 7. A bang on the door at 6. Did I want my boots cleaned? Fifteen +minutes later another bang. Did we want coffee? Fifteen later, bang +again, my wife's bath ready; 15 later, my bath ready. Two other bangs; +I forget what they were about. Then lots of shouting back and forth, +among the servants just as in an Indian hotel. + +Evening. At 4 P.M. it was unpleasantly warm. Half-hour after sunset +one needed a spring overcoat; by 8 a winter one. + +Durban is a neat and clean town. One notices that without having his +attention called to it. + +Rickshaws drawn by splendidly built black Zulus, so overflowing with +strength, seemingly, that it is a pleasure, not a pain, to see them +snatch a rickshaw along. They smile and laugh and show their teeth--a +good-natured lot. Not allowed to drink; 2s per hour for one person; 3s +for two; 3d for a course--one person. + +The chameleon in the hotel court. He is fat and indolent and +contemplative; but is business-like and capable when a fly comes about +--reaches out a tongue like a teaspoon and takes him in. He gums his +tongue first. He is always pious, in his looks. And pious and thankful +both, when Providence or one of us sends him a fly. He has a froggy +head, and a back like a new grave--for shape; and hands like a bird's +toes that have been frostbitten. But his eyes are his exhibition +feature. A couple of skinny cones project from the sides of his head, +with a wee shiny bead of an eye set in the apex of each; and these cones +turn bodily like pivot-guns and point every-which-way, and they are +independent of each other; each has its own exclusive machinery. When I +am behind him and C. in front of him, he whirls one eye rearwards and the +other forwards--which gives him a most Congressional expression (one eye +on the constituency and one on the swag); and then if something happens +above and below him he shoots out one eye upward like a telescope and the +other downward--and this changes his expression, but does not improve it. + +Natives must not be out after the curfew bell without a pass. In Natal +there are ten blacks to one white. + +Sturdy plump creatures are the women. They comb their wool up to a peak +and keep it in position by stiffening it with brown-red clay--half of +this tower colored, denotes engagement; the whole of it colored denotes +marriage. + +None but heathen Zulus on the police; Christian ones not allowed. + +May 9. A drive yesterday with friends over the Berea. Very fine roads +and lofty, overlooking the whole town, the harbor, and the sea-beautiful +views. Residences all along, set in the midst of green lawns with shrubs +and generally one or two intensely red outbursts of poinsettia--the +flaming splotch of blinding red a stunning contrast with the world of +surrounding green. The cactus tree--candelabrum-like; and one twisted +like gray writhing serpents. The "flat-crown" (should be flat-roof) +--half a dozen naked branches full of elbows, slant upward like artificial +supports, and fling a roof of delicate foliage out in a horizontal +platform as flat as a floor; and you look up through this thin floor as +through a green cobweb or veil. The branches are japanesich. All about +you is a bewildering variety of unfamiliar and beautiful trees; one sort +wonderfully dense foliage and very dark green--so dark that you notice it +at once, notwithstanding there are so many orange trees. The +"flamboyant"--not in flower, now, but when in flower lives up to its +name, we are told. Another tree with a lovely upright tassel scattered +among its rich greenery, red and glowing as a firecoal. Here and there a +gum-tree; half a dozen lofty Norfolk Island pines lifting their fronded +arms skyward. Groups of tall bamboo. + +Saw one bird. Not many birds here, and they have no music--and the +flowers not much smell, they grow so fast. + +Everything neat and trim and clean like the town. The loveliest trees +and the greatest variety I have ever seen anywhere, except approaching +Darjeeling. Have not heard anyone call Natal the garden of South Africa, +but that is what it probably is. + +It was when Bishop of Natal that Colenso raised such a storm in the +religious world. The concerns of religion are a vital matter here yet. +A vigilant eye is kept upon Sunday. Museums and other dangerous resorts +are not allowed to be open. You may sail on the Bay, but it is wicked to +play cricket. For a while a Sunday concert was tolerated, upon condition +that it must be admission free and the money taken by collection. But +the collection was alarmingly large and that stopped the matter. They +are particular about babies. A clergyman would not bury a child +according to the sacred rites because it had not been baptized. The +Hindoo is more liberal. He burns no child under three, holding that it +does not need purifying. + +The King of the Zulus, a fine fellow of 30, was banished six years ago +for a term of seven years. He is occupying Napoleon's old stand--St. +Helena. The people are a little nervous about having him come back, and +they may well be, for Zulu kings have been terrible people sometimes +--like Tchaka, Dingaan, and Cetewayo. + +There is a large Trappist monastery two hours from Durban, over the +country roads, and in company with Mr. Milligan and Mr. Hunter, general +manager of the Natal government railways, who knew the heads of it, we +went out to see it. + +There it all was, just as one reads about it in books and cannot believe +that it is so--I mean the rough, hard work, the impossible hours, the +scanty food, the coarse raiment, the Maryborough beds, the tabu of human +speech, of social intercourse, of relaxation, of amusement, of +entertainment, of the presence of woman in the men's establishment. +There it all was. It was not a dream, it was not a lie. And yet with +the fact before one's face it was still incredible. It is such a +sweeping suppression of human instincts, such an extinction of the man as +an individual. + +La Trappe must have known the human race well. The scheme which he +invented hunts out everything that a man wants and values--and withholds +it from him. Apparently there is no detail that can help make life worth +living that has not been carefully ascertained and placed out of the +Trappist's reach. La Trappe must have known that there were men who +would enjoy this kind of misery, but how did he find it out? + +If he had consulted you or me he would have been told that his scheme +lacked too many attractions; that it was impossible; that it could never +be floated. But there in the monastery was proof that he knew the human +race better than it knew itself. He set his foot upon every desire that +a man has--yet he floated his project, and it has prospered for two +hundred years, and will go on prospering forever, no doubt. + +Man likes personal distinction--there in the monastery it is obliterated. +He likes delicious food--there he gets beans and bread and tea, and not +enough of it. He likes to lie softly--there he lies on a sand mattress, +and has a pillow and a blanket, but no sheet. When he is dining, in a +great company of friends, he likes to laugh and chat--there a monk reads +a holy book aloud during meals, and nobody speaks or laughs. When a man +has a hundred friends about him, evenings, be likes to have a good time +and run late--there he and the rest go silently to bed at 8; and in the +dark, too; there is but a loose brown robe to discard, there are no +night-clothes to put on, a light is not needed. Man likes to lie abed +late there he gets up once or twice in the night to perform some +religious office, and gets up finally for the day at two in the morning. +Man likes light work or none at all--there he labors all day in the +field, or in the blacksmith shop or the other shops devoted to the +mechanical trades, such as shoemaking, saddlery, carpentry, and so on. +Man likes the society of girls and women--there he never has it. He +likes to have his children about him, and pet them and play with them +--there he has none. He likes billiards--there is no table there. He +likes outdoor sports and indoor dramatic and musical and social +entertainments--there are none there. He likes to bet on things--I was +told that betting is forbidden there. When a man's temper is up he likes +to pour it out upon somebody there this is not allowed. A man likes +animals--pets; there are none there. He likes to smoke--there he cannot +do it. He likes to read the news--no papers or magazines come there. A +man likes to know how his parents and brothers and sisters are getting +along when he is away, and if they miss him--there he cannot know. A man +likes a pretty house, and pretty furniture, and pretty things, and pretty +colors--there he has nothing but naked aridity and sombre colors. A man +likes--name it yourself: whatever it is, it is absent from that place. + +From what I could learn, all that a man gets for this is merely the +saving of his soul. + +It all seems strange, incredible, impossible. But La Trappe knew the +race. He knew the powerful attraction of unattractiveness; he knew that +no life could be imagined, howsoever comfortless and forbidding, but +somebody would want to try it. + +This parent establishment of Germans began its work fifteen years ago, +strangers, poor, and unencouraged; it owns 15,000 acres of land now, and +raises grain and fruit, and makes wines, and manufactures all manner of +things, and has native apprentices in its shops, and sends them forth +able to read and write, and also well equipped to earn their living by +their trades. And this young establishment has set up eleven branches in +South Africa, and in them they are christianizing and educating and +teaching wage-yielding mechanical trades to 1,200 boys and girls. +Protestant Missionary work is coldly regarded by the commercial white +colonist all over the heathen world, as a rule, and its product is +nicknamed "rice-Christians" (occupationless incapables who join the +church for revenue only), but I think it would be difficult to pick a +flaw in the work of these Catholic monks, and I believe that the +disposition to attempt it has not shown itself. + +Tuesday, May 12. Transvaal politics in a confused condition. First the +sentencing of the Johannesburg Reformers startled England by its +severity; on the top of this came Kruger's exposure of the cipher +correspondence, which showed that the invasion of the Transvaal, with the +design of seizing that country and adding it to the British Empire, was +planned by Cecil Rhodes and Beit--which made a revulsion in English +feeling, and brought out a storm against Rhodes and the Chartered Company +for degrading British honor. For a good while I couldn't seem to get at +a clear comprehension of it, it was so tangled. But at last by patient +study I have managed it, I believe. As I understand it, the Uitlanders +and other Dutchmen were dissatisfied because the English would not allow +them to take any part in the government except to pay taxes. Next, as I +understand it, Dr. Kruger and Dr. Jameson, not having been able to make +the medical business pay, made a raid into Matabeleland with the +intention of capturing the capital, Johannesburg, and holding the women +and children to ransom until the Uitlanders and the other Boers should +grant to them and the Chartered Company the political rights which had +been withheld from them. They would have succeeded in this great scheme, +as I understand it, but for the interference of Cecil Rhodes and Mr. +Beit, and other Chiefs of the Matabele, who persuaded their countrymen to +revolt and throw off their allegiance to Germany. This, in turn, as I +understand it, provoked the King of Abyssinia to destroy the Italian army +and fall back upon Johannesburg; this at the instigation of Rhodes, to +bull the stock market. + + + + +CHAPTER LXVI. + +Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +When I scribbled in my note-book a year ago the paragraph which ends the +preceding chapter, it was meant to indicate, in an extravagant form, two +things: the conflicting nature of the information conveyed by the citizen +to the stranger concerning South African politics, and the resulting +confusion created in the stranger's mind thereby. + +But it does not seem so very extravagant now. Nothing could in that +disturbed and excited time make South African politics clear or quite +rational to the citizen of the country because his personal interest and +his political prejudices were in his way; and nothing could make those +politics clear or rational to the stranger, the sources of his +information being such as they were. + +I was in South Africa some little time. When I arrived there the +political pot was boiling fiercely. Four months previously, Jameson had +plunged over the Transvaal border with about 600 armed horsemen at his +back, to go to the "relief of the women and children" of Johannesburg; on +the fourth day of his march the Boers had defeated him in battle, and +carried him and his men to Pretoria, the capital, as prisoners; the Boer +government had turned Jameson and his officers over to the British +government for trial, and shipped them to England; next, it had arrested +64 important citizens of Johannesburg as raid-conspirators, condemned +their four leaders to death, then commuted the sentences, and now the 64 +were waiting, in jail, for further results. Before midsummer they were +all out excepting two, who refused to sign the petitions for release; 58 +had been fined $10,000 each and enlarged, and the four leaders had gotten +off with fines of $125,000 each with permanent exile added, in one case. + +Those were wonderfully interesting days for a stranger, and I was glad. +to be in the thick of the excitement. Everybody was talking, and I +expected to understand the whole of one side of it in a very little +while. + +I was disappointed. There were singularities, perplexities, +unaccountabilities about it which I was not able to master. I had no +personal access to Boers--their side was a secret to me, aside from what +I was able to gather of it from published statements. My sympathies were +soon with the Reformers in the Pretoria jail, with their friends, and +with their cause. By diligent inquiry in Johannesburg I found out +--apparently--all the details of their side of the quarrel except one--what +they expected to accomplish by an armed rising. + +Nobody seemed to know. + +The reason why the Reformers were discontented and wanted some changes +made, seemed quite clear. In Johannesburg it was claimed that the +Uitlanders (strangers, foreigners) paid thirteen-fifteenths of the +Transvaal taxes, yet got little or nothing for it. Their city had no +charter; it had no municipal government; it could levy no taxes for +drainage, water-supply, paving, cleaning, sanitation, policing. There +was a police force, but it was composed of Boers, it was furnished by the +State Government, and the city had no control over it. Mining was very +costly; the government enormously increased the cost by putting +burdensome taxes upon the mines, the output, the machinery, the +buildings; by burdensome imposts upon incoming materials; by burdensome +railway-freight-charges. Hardest of all to bear, the government reserved +to itself a monopoly in that essential thing, dynamite, and burdened it +with an extravagant price. The detested Hollander from over the water +held all the public offices. The government was rank with corruption. +The Uitlander had no vote, and must live in the State ten or twelve years +before he could get one. He was not represented in the Raad +(legislature) that oppressed him and fleeced him. Religion was not free. +There were no schools where the teaching was in English, yet the great +majority of the white population of the State knew no tongue but that. +The State would not pass a liquor law; but allowed a great trade in cheap +vile brandy among the blacks, with the result that 25 per cent. of the +50,000 blacks employed in the mines were usually drunk and incapable of +working. + +There--it was plain enough that the reasons for wanting some changes made +were abundant and reasonable, if this statement of the existing +grievances was correct. + +What the Uitlanders wanted was reform--under the existing Republic. + +What they proposed to do was to secure these reforms by, prayer, +petition, and persuasion. + +They did petition. Also, they issued a Manifesto, whose very first note +is a bugle-blast of loyalty: "We want the establishment of this Republic +as a true Republic." + +Could anything be clearer than the Uitlander's statement of the +grievances and oppressions under which they were suffering? Could +anything be more legal and citizen-like and law-respecting than their +attitude as expressed by their Manifesto? No. Those things were +perfectly clear, perfectly comprehensible. + +But at this point the puzzles and riddles and confusions begin to flock +in. You have arrived at a place which you cannot quite understand. + +For you find that as a preparation for this loyal, lawful, and in every +way unexceptionable attempt to persuade the government to right their +grievances, the Uitlanders had smuggled a Maxim gun or two and 1,500 +muskets into the town, concealed in oil tanks and coal cars, and had +begun to form and drill military companies composed of clerks, merchants, +and citizens generally. + +What was their idea? Did they suppose that the Boers would attack them +for petitioning, for redress? That could not be. + +Did they suppose that the Boers would attack them even for issuing a +Manifesto demanding relief under the existing government? + +Yes, they apparently believed so, because the air was full of talk of +forcing the government to grant redress if it were not granted +peacefully. + +The Reformers were men of high intelligence. If they were in earnest, +they were taking extraordinary risks. They had enormously valuable +properties to defend; their town was full of women and children; their +mines and compounds were packed with thousands upon thousands of sturdy +blacks. If the Boers attacked, the mines would close, the blacks would +swarm out and get drunk; riot and conflagration and the Boers together +might lose the Reformers more in a day, in money, blood, and suffering, +than the desired political relief could compensate in ten years if they +won the fight and secured the reforms. + +It is May, 1897, now; a year has gone by, and the confusions of that day +have been to a considerable degree cleared away. Mr. Cecil Rhodes, Dr. +Jameson, and others responsible for the Raid, have testified before the +Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry in London, and so have Mr. Lionel +Phillips and other Johannesburg Reformers, monthly-nurses of the +Revolution which was born dead. These testimonies have thrown light. +Three books have added much to this light: + +"South Africa As It Is," by Mr. Statham, an able writer partial to the +Boers; "The Story of an African Crisis," by Mr. Garrett, a brilliant +writer partial to Rhodes; and "A Woman's Part in a Revolution," by Mrs. +John Hays Hammond, a vigorous and vivid diarist, partial to the +Reformers. By liquifying the evidence of the prejudiced books and of the +prejudiced parliamentary witnesses and stirring the whole together and +pouring it into my own (prejudiced) moulds, I have got at the truth of +that puzzling South African situation, which is this: + +1. The capitalists and other chief men of Johannesburg were fretting +under various political and financial burdens imposed by the State (the +South African Republic, sometimes called "the Transvaal") and desired to +procure by peaceful means a modification of the laws. + +2. Mr. Cecil Rhodes, Premier of the British Cape Colony, millionaire, +creator and managing director of the territorially-immense and +financially unproductive South Africa Company; projector of vast schemes +for the unification and consolidation of all the South African States, +one imposing commonwealth or empire under the shadow and general +protection of the British flag, thought he saw an opportunity to make +profitable use of the Uitlander discontent above mentioned--make the +Johannesburg cat help pull out one of his consolidation chestnuts for +him. With this view he set himself the task of warming the lawful and +legitimate petitions and supplications of the Uitlanders into seditious +talk, and their frettings into threatenings--the final outcome to be +revolt and armed rebellion. If he could bring about a bloody collision +between those people and the Boer government, Great Britain would have to +interfere; her interference would be resisted by the Boers; she would +chastise them and add the Transvaal to her South African possessions. It +was not a foolish idea, but a rational and practical one. + +After a couple of years of judicious plotting, Mr. Rhodes had his reward; +the revolutionary kettle was briskly boiling in Johannesburg, and the +Uitlander leaders were backing their appeals to the government--now +hardened into demands--by threats of force and bloodshed. By the middle +of December, 1895, the explosion seemed imminent. Mr. Rhodes was +diligently helping, from his distant post in Cape Town. He was helping +to procure arms for Johannesburg; he was also arranging to have Jameson +break over the border and come to Johannesburg with 600 mounted men at +his back. Jameson--as per instructions from Rhodes, perhaps--wanted a +letter from the Reformers requesting him to come to their aid. It was a +good idea. It would throw a considerable share of the responsibility of +his invasion upon the Reformers. He got the letter--that famous one +urging him to fly to the rescue of the women and children. He got it two +months before he flew. The Reformers seem to have thought it over and +concluded that they had not done wisely; for the next day after giving +Jameson the implicating document they wanted to withdraw it and leave the +women and children in danger; but they were told that it was too late. +The original had gone to Mr. Rhodes at the Cape. Jameson had kept a +copy, though. + +From that time until the 29th of December, a good deal of the Reformers' +time was taken up with energetic efforts to keep Jameson from coming to +their assistance. Jameson's invasion had been set for the 26th. The +Reformers were not ready. The town was not united. Some wanted a fight, +some wanted peace; some wanted a new government, some wanted the existing +one reformed; apparently very few wanted the revolution to take place in +the interest and under the ultimate shelter of the Imperial flag +--British; yet a report began to spread that Mr. Rhodes's embarrassing +assistance had for its end this latter object. + +Jameson was away up on the frontier tugging at his leash, fretting to +burst over the border. By hard work the Reformers got his starting-date +postponed a little, and wanted to get it postponed eleven days. +Apparently, Rhodes's agents were seconding their efforts--in fact wearing +out the telegraph wires trying to hold him back. Rhodes was himself the +only man who could have effectively postponed Jameson, but that would +have been a disadvantage to his scheme; indeed, it could spoil his whole +two years' work. + +Jameson endured postponement three days, then resolved to wait no longer. +Without any orders--excepting Mr. Rhodes's significant silence--he cut +the telegraph wires on the 29th, and made his plunge that night, to go to +the rescue of the women and children, by urgent request of a letter now +nine days old--as per date,--a couple of months old, in fact. He read +the letter to his men, and it affected them. It did not affect all of +them alike. Some saw in it a piece of piracy of doubtful wisdom, and +were sorry to find that they had been assembled to violate friendly +territory instead of to raid native kraals, as they had supposed. + +Jameson would have to ride 150 miles. He knew that there were suspicions +abroad in the Transvaal concerning him, but he expected to get through to +Johannesburg before they should become general and obstructive. But a +telegraph wire had been overlooked and not cut. It spread the news of +his invasion far and wide, and a few hours after his start the Boer +farmers were riding hard from every direction to intercept him. + +As soon as it was known in Johannesburg that he was on his way to rescue +the women and children, the grateful people put the women and children in +a train and rushed them for Australia. In fact, the approach of +Johannesburg's saviour created panic and consternation; there, and a +multitude of males of peaceable disposition swept to the trains like a +sand-storm. The early ones fared best; they secured seats--by sitting in +them--eight hours before the first train was timed to leave. + +Mr. Rhodes lost no time. He cabled the renowned Johannesburg letter of +invitation to the London press--the gray-headedest piece of ancient +history that ever went over a cable. + +The new poet laureate lost no time. He came out with a rousing poem +lauding Jameson's prompt and splendid heroism in flying to the rescue of +the women and children; for the poet could not know that he did not fly +until two months after the invitation. He was deceived by the false date +of the letter, which was December 20th. + +Jameson was intercepted by the Boers on New Year's Day, and on the next +day he surrendered. He had carried his copy of the letter along, and if +his instructions required him--in case of emergency--to see that it fell +into the hands of the Boers, he loyally carried them out. Mrs. Hammond +gives him a sharp rap for his supposed carelessness, and emphasizes her +feeling about it with burning italics: "It was picked up on the +battle-field in a leathern pouch, supposed to be Dr. Jameson's saddle-bag. +Why, in the name of all that is discreet and honorable, didn't he eat it!" + +She requires too much. He was not in the service of the Reformers +--excepting ostensibly; he was in the service of Mr. Rhodes. It was the +only plain English document, undarkened by ciphers and mysteries, and +responsibly signed and authenticated, which squarely implicated the +Reformers in the raid, and it was not to Mr. Rhodes's interest that it +should be eaten. Besides, that letter was not the original, it was only +a copy. Mr. Rhodes had the original--and didn't eat it. He cabled it to +the London press. It had already been read in England and America and +all over Europe before, Jameson dropped it on the battlefield. If the +subordinate's knuckles deserved a rap, the principal's deserved as many +as a couple of them. + +That letter is a juicily dramatic incident and is entitled to all its +celebrity, because of the odd and variegated effects which it produced. +All within the space of a single week it had made Jameson an illustrious +hero in England, a pirate in Pretoria, and an ass without discretion or +honor in Johannesburg; also it had produced a poet-laureatic explosion of +colored fireworks which filled the world's sky with giddy splendors, and, +the knowledge that Jameson was coming with it to rescue the women and +children emptied Johannesburg of that detail of the population. For an +old letter, this was much. For a letter two months old, it did marvels; +if it had been a year old it would have done miracles. + + + + +CHAPTER LXVII. + +First catch your Boer, then kick him. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Those latter days were days of bitter worry and trouble for the harassed +Reformers. + +From Mrs. Hammond we learn that on the 31st (the day after Johannesburg +heard of the invasion), "The Reform Committee repudiates Dr. Jameson's +inroad." + +It also publishes its intention to adhere to the Manifesto. + +It also earnestly desires that the inhabitants shall refrain from overt +acts against the Boer government. + +It also "distributes arms" at the Court House, and furnishes horses "to +the newly-enrolled volunteers." + +It also brings a Transvaal flag into the committee-room, and the entire +body swear allegiance to it "with uncovered heads and upraised arms." + +Also "one thousand Lee-Metford rifles have been given out"--to rebels. + +Also, in a speech, Reformer Lionel Phillips informs the public that the +Reform Committee Delegation has "been received with courtesy by the +Government Commission," and "been assured that their proposals shall be +earnestly considered." That "while the Reform Committee regretted +Jameson's precipitate action, they would stand by him." + +Also the populace are in a state of "wild enthusiasm," and "46 can +scarcely be restrained; they want to go out to meet Jameson and bring him +in with triumphal outcry." + +Also the British High Commissioner has issued a damnifying proclamation +against Jameson and all British abettors of his game. It arrives January +1st. + +It is a difficult position for the Reformers, and full of hindrances and +perplexities. Their duty is hard, but plain: + +1. They have to repudiate the inroad, and stand by the inroader. + +2. They have to swear allegiance to the Boer government, and distribute +cavalry horses to the rebels. + +3. They have to forbid overt acts against the Boer government, and +distribute arms to its enemies. + +4. They have to avoid collision with the British government, but still +stand by Jameson and their new oath of allegiance to the Boer government, +taken, uncovered, in presence of its flag. + +They did such of these things as they could; they tried to do them all; +in fact, did do them all, but only in turn, not simultaneously. In the +nature of things they could not be made to simultane. + +In preparing for armed revolution and in talking revolution, were the +Reformers "bluffing," or were they in earnest? If they were in earnest, +they were taking great risks--as has been already pointed out. A +gentleman of high position told me in Johannesburg that he had in his +possession a printed document proclaiming a new government and naming its +president--one of the Reform leaders. He said that this proclamation had +been ready for issue, but was suppressed when the raid collapsed. +Perhaps I misunderstood him. Indeed, I must have misunderstood him, for +I have not seen mention of this large incident in print anywhere. + +Besides, I hope I am mistaken; for, if I am, then there is argument that +the Reformers were privately not serious, but were only trying to scare +the Boer government into granting the desired reforms. + +The Boer government was scared, and it had a right to be. For if Mr. +Rhodes's plan was to provoke a collision that would compel the +interference of England, that was a serious matter. If it could be shown +that that was also the Reformers' plan and purpose, it would prove that +they had marked out a feasible project, at any rate, although it was one +which could hardly fail to cost them ruinously before England should +arrive. But it seems clear that they had no such plan nor desire. If, +when the worst should come to the worst, they meant to overthrow the +government, they also meant to inherit the assets themselves, no doubt. + +This scheme could hardly have succeeded. With an army of Boers at their +gates and 50,000 riotous blacks in their midst, the odds against success +would have been too heavy--even if the whole town had been armed. With +only 2,500 rifles in the place, they stood really no chance. + +To me, the military problems of the situation are of more interest than +the political ones, because by disposition I have always been especially +fond of war. No, I mean fond of discussing war; and fond of giving +military advice. If I had been with Jameson the morning after he +started, I should have advised him to turn back. That was Monday; it was +then that he received his first warning from a Boer source not to violate +the friendly soil of the Transvaal. It showed that his invasion was +known. If I had been with him on Tuesday morning and afternoon, when he +received further warnings, I should have repeated my advice. If I had +been with him the next morning--New Year's--when he received notice that +"a few hundred" Boers were waiting for him a few miles ahead, I should +not have advised, but commanded him to go back. And if I had been with +him two or three hours later--a thing not conceivable to me--I should +have retired him by force; for at that time he learned that the few +hundred had now grown to 800; and that meant that the growing would go on +growing. + +For,--by authority of Mr. Garrett, one knows that Jameson's 600 were only +530 at most, when you count out his native drivers, etc.; and that the +530 consisted largely of "green" youths, "raw young fellows," not trained +and war-worn British soldiers; and I would have told. Jameson that those +lads would not be able to shoot effectively from horseback in the scamper +and racket of battle, and that there would not be anything for them to +shoot at, anyway, but rocks; for the Boers would be behind the rocks, not +out in the open. I would have told him that 300 Boer sharpshooters +behind rocks would be an overmatch for his 500 raw young fellows on +horseback. + +If pluck were the only thing essential to battle-winning, the English +would lose no battles. But discretion, as well as pluck, is required +when one fights Boers and Red Indians. In South Africa the Briton has +always insisted upon standing bravely up, unsheltered, before the hidden +Boer, and taking the results: Jameson's men would follow the custom. +Jameson would not have listened to me--he would have been intent upon +repeating history, according to precedent. Americans are not acquainted +with the British-Boer war of 1881; but its history is interesting, and +could have been instructive to Jameson if he had been receptive. I will +cull some details of it from trustworthy sources mainly from "Russell's +Natal." Mr. Russell is not a Boer, but a Briton. He is inspector of +schools, and his history is a text-book whose purpose is the instruction +of the Natal English youth. + +After the seizure of the Transvaal and the suppression of the Boer +government by England in 1877, the Boers fretted for three years, and +made several appeals to England for a restoration of their liberties, +but without result. Then they gathered themselves together in a great +mass-meeting at Krugersdorp, talked their troubles over, and resolved to +fight for their deliverance from the British yoke. (Krugersdorp--the +place where the Boers interrupted the Jameson raid.) The little handful +of farmers rose against the strongest empire in the world. They +proclaimed martial law and the re-establishment of their Republic. They +organized their forces and sent them forward to intercept the British +battalions. This, although Sir Garnet Wolseley had but lately made +proclamation that "so long as the sun shone in the heavens," the +Transvaal would be and remain English territory. And also in spite of +the fact that the commander of the 94th regiment--already on the march to +suppress this rebellion--had been heard to say that "the Boers would turn +tail at the first beat of the big drum."--["South Africa As It Is," +by F. Reginald Statham, page 82. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1897.] + +Four days after the flag-raising, the Boer force which had been sent +forward to forbid the invasion of the English troops met them at +Bronkhorst Spruit--246 men of the 94th regiment, in command of a colonel, +the big drum beating, the band playing--and the first battle was fought. +It lasted ten minutes. Result: + + British loss, more than 150 officers and men, out of the 246. + Surrender of the remnant. + + Boer loss--if any--not stated. + +They are fine marksmen, the Boers. From the cradle up, they live on +horseback and hunt wild animals with the rifle. They have a passion for +liberty and the Bible, and care for nothing else. + +"General Sir George Colley, Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief in +Natal, felt it his duty to proceed at once to the relief of the loyalists +and soldiers beleaguered in the different towns of the Transvaal." He +moved out with 1,000 men and some artillery. He found the Boers encamped +in a strong and sheltered position on high ground at Laing's Nek--every +Boer behind a rock. Early in the morning of the 28th January, 1881, he +moved to the attack "with the 58th regiment, commanded by Colonel Deane, +a mounted squadron of 70 men, the 60th Rifles, the Naval Brigade with +three rocket tubes, and the Artillery with six guns." He shelled the +Boers for twenty minutes, then the assault was delivered, the 58th +marching up the slope in solid column. The battle was soon finished, +with this result, according to Russell-- + + British loss in killed and wounded, 174. + + Boer loss, "trifling." + +Colonel Deane was killed, and apparently every officer above the grade of +lieutenant was killed or wounded, for the 58th retreated to its camp in +command of a lieutenant. ("Africa as It Is.") + +That ended the second battle. + +On the 7th of February General Colley discovered that the Boers were +flanking his position. The next morning he left his camp at Mount +Pleasant and marched out and crossed the Ingogo river with 270 men, +started up the Ingogo heights, and there fought a battle which lasted +from noon till nightfall. He then retreated, leaving his wounded with +his military chaplain, and in recrossing the now swollen river lost some +of his men by drowning. That was the third Boer victory. Result, +according to Mr. Russell-- + + British loss 150 out of 270 engaged. + + Boer loss, 8 killed, 9 wounded--17. + +There was a season of quiet, now, but at the end of about three weeks Sir +George Colley conceived the idea of climbing, with an infantry and +artillery force, the steep and rugged mountain of Amajuba in the night--a +bitter hard task, but he accomplished it. On the way he left about 200 +men to guard a strategic point, and took about 400 up the mountain with +him. When the sun rose in the morning, there was an unpleasant surprise +for the Boers; yonder were the English troops visible on top of the +mountain two or three miles away, and now their own position was at the +mercy of the English artillery. The Boer chief resolved to retreat--up +that mountain. He asked for volunteers, and got them. + +The storming party crossed the swale and began to creep up the steeps, +"and from behind rocks and bushes they shot at the soldiers on the +skyline as if they were stalking deer," says Mr. Russell. There was +"continuous musketry fire, steady and fatal on the one side, wild and +ineffectual on the other." The Boers reached the top, and began to put in +their ruinous work. Presently the British "broke and fled for their +lives down the rugged steep." The Boers had won the battle. Result in +killed and wounded, including among the killed the British General: + + British loss, 226, out of 400 engaged. + + Boer loss, 1 killed, 5 wounded. + +That ended the war. England listened to reason, and recognized the Boer +Republic--a government which has never been in any really awful danger +since, until Jameson started after it with his 500 "raw young fellows." +To recapitulate: + +The Boer farmers and British soldiers fought 4 battles, and the Boers won +them all. Result of the 4, in killed and wounded: + + British loss, 700 men. + + Boer loss, so far as known, 23 men. + +It is interesting, now, to note how loyally Jameson and his several +trained British military officers tried to make their battles conform to +precedent. Mr. Garrett's account of the Raid is much the best one I have +met with, and my impressions of the Raid are drawn from that. + +When Jameson learned that near Krugersdorp he would find 800 Boers +waiting to dispute his passage, he was not in the least disturbed. He +was feeling as he had felt two or three days before, when he had opened +his campaign with a historic remark to the same purport as the one with +which the commander of the 94th had opened the Boer-British war of +fourteen years before. That Commander's remark was, that the Boers +"would turn tail at the first beat of the big drum." Jameson's was, that +with his "raw young fellows" he could kick the (persons) of the Boers +"all round the Transvaal." He was keeping close to historic precedent. + +Jameson arrived in the presence of the Boers. They--according to +precedent--were not visible. It was a country of ridges, depressions, +rocks, ditches, moraines of mining-tailings--not even as favorable for +cavalry work as Laing's Nek had been in the former disastrous days. +Jameson shot at the ridges and rocks with his artillery, just as General +Colley had done at the Nek; and did them no damage and persuaded no Boer +to show himself. Then about a hundred of his men formed up to charge the +ridge-according to the 58th's precedent at the Nek; but as they dashed +forward they opened out in a long line, which was a considerable +improvement on the 58th's tactics; when they had gotten to within 200 +yards of the ridge the concealed Boers opened out on them and emptied 20 +saddles. The unwounded dismounted and fired at the rocks over the backs +of their horses; but the return-fire was too hot, and they mounted again, +"and galloped back or crawled away into a clump of reeds for cover, where +they were shortly afterward taken prisoners as they lay among the reeds. +Some thirty prisoners were so taken, and during the night which followed +the Boers carried away another thirty killed and wounded--the wounded to +Krugersdorp hospital." Sixty per cent. of the assaulted force disposed +of--according to Mr. Garrett's estimate. + +It was according to Amajuba precedent, where the British loss was 226 out +of about 400 engaged. + +Also, in Jameson's camp, that night, "there lay about 30 wounded or +otherwise disabled" men. Also during the night "some 30 or 40 young +fellows got separated from the command and straggled through into +Johannesburg." Altogether a possible 150 men gone, out of his 530. His +lads had fought valorously, but had not been able to get near enough to a +Boer to kick him around the Transvaal. + +At dawn the next morning the column of something short of 400 whites +resumed its march. Jameson's grit was stubbornly good; indeed, it was +always that. He still had hopes. There was a long and tedious +zigzagging march through broken ground, with constant harassment from the +Boers; and at last the column "walked into a sort of trap," and the Boers +"closed in upon it." "Men and horses dropped on all sides. In the +column the feeling grew that unless it could burst through the Boer lines +at this point it was done for. The Maxims were fired until they grew too +hot, and, water failing for the cool jacket, five of them jammed and went +out of action. The 7-pounder was fired until only half an hour's +ammunition was left to fire with. One last rush was made, and failed, +and then the Staats Artillery came up on the left flank, and the game was +up." + +Jameson hoisted a white flag and surrendered. + +There is a story, which may not be true, about an ignorant Boer farmer +there who thought that this white flag was the national flag of England. +He had been at Bronkhorst, and Laing's Nek, and Ingogo and Amajuba, and +supposed that the English did not run up their flag excepting at the end +of a fight. + +The following is (as I understand it) Mr. Garrett's estimate of Jameson's +total loss in killed and wounded for the two days: + +"When they gave in they were minus some 20 per cent. of combatants. +There were 76 casualties. There were 30 men hurt or sick in the wagons. +There were 27 killed on the spot or mortally wounded." + +Total, 133, out of the original 530. It is just 25 per cent.--[However, +I judge that the total was really 150; for the number of wounded carried +to Krugersdorp hospital was 53; not 30, as Mr. Garrett reports it. The +lady whose guest I was in Krugerdorp gave me the figures. She was head +nurse from the beginning of hostilities (Jan. 1) until the professional +nurses arrived, Jan. 8th. Of the 53, "Three or four were Boers"; I quote +her words.]--This is a large improvement upon the precedents established +at Bronkhorst, Laing's Nek, Ingogo, and Amajuba, and seems to indicate +that Boer marksmanship is not so good now as it was in those days. But +there is one detail in which the Raid-episode exactly repeats history. +By surrender at Bronkhorst, the whole British force disappeared from the +theater of war; this was the case with Jameson's force. + +In the Boer loss, also, historical precedent is followed with sufficient +fidelity. In the 4 battles named above, the Boer loss, so far as known, +was an average of 6 men per battle, to the British average loss of 175. +In Jameson's battles, as per Boer official report, the Boer loss in +killed was 4. Two of these were killed by the Boers themselves, by +accident, the other by Jameson's army--one of them intentionally, the +other by a pathetic mischance. "A young Boer named Jacobz was moving +forward to give a drink to one of the wounded troopers (Jameson's) after +the first charge, when another wounded man, mistaking his intention; shot +him." There were three or four wounded Boers in the Krugersdorp +hospital, and apparently no others have been reported. Mr. Garrett, "on +a balance of probabilities, fully accepts the official version, and +thanks Heaven the killed was not larger." + +As a military man, I wish to point out what seems to me to be military +errors in the conduct of the campaign which we have just been +considering. I have seen active service in the field, and it was in the +actualities of war that I acquired my training and my right to speak. +I served two weeks in the beginning of our Civil War, and during all that +tune commanded a battery of infantry composed of twelve men. General +Grant knew the history of my campaign, for I told it him. I also told +him the principle upon which I had conducted it; which was, to tire the +enemy. I tired out and disqualified many battalions, yet never had a +casualty myself nor lost a man. General Grant was not given to paying +compliments, yet he said frankly that if I had conducted the whole war +much bloodshed would have been spared, and that what the army might have +lost through the inspiriting results of collision in the field would have +been amply made up by the liberalizing influences of travel. Further +endorsement does not seem to me to be necessary. + +Let us now examine history, and see what it teaches. In the 4 battles +fought in 1881 and the two fought by Jameson, the British loss in killed, +wounded, and prisoners, was substantially 1,300 men; the Boer loss, as +far as is ascertainable, eras about 30 men. These figures show that +there was a defect somewhere. It was not in the absence of courage. I +think it lay in the absence of discretion. The Briton should have done +one thing or the other: discarded British methods and fought the Boer +with Boer methods, or augmented his own force until--using British +methods--it should be large enough to equalize results with the Boer. + +To retain the British method requires certain things, determinable by +arithmetic. If, for argument's sake, we allow that the aggregate of +1,716 British soldiers engaged in the 4 early battles was opposed by the +same aggregate of Boers, we have this result: the British loss of 700 and +the Boer loss of 23 argues that in order to equalize results in future +battles you must make the British force thirty times as strong as the +Boer force. Mr. Garrett shows that the Boer force immediately opposed to +Jameson was 2,000, and that there were 6,000 more on hand by the evening +of the second day. Arithmetic shows that in order to make himself the +equal of the 8,000 Boers, Jameson should have had 240,000 men, whereas he +merely had 530 boys. From a military point of view, backed by the facts +of history, I conceive that Jameson's military judgment was at fault. + +Another thing.--Jameson was encumbered by artillery, ammunition, and +rifles. The facts of the battle show that he should have had none of +those things along. They were heavy, they were in his way, they impeded +his march. There was nothing to shoot at but rocks--he knew quite well +that there would be nothing to shoot at but rocks--and he knew that +artillery and rifles have no effect upon rocks. He was badly overloaded +with unessentials. He had 8 Maxims--a Maxim is a kind of Gatling, I +believe, and shoots about 500 bullets per minute; he had one +12 1/2-pounder cannon and two 7-pounders; also, 145,000 rounds of +ammunition. He worked the Maxims so hard upon the rocks that five of them +became disabled--five of the Maxims, not the rocks. It is believed that +upwards of 100,000 rounds of ammunition of the various kinds were fired +during the 21 hours that the battles lasted. One man killed. He must +have been much mutilated. It was a pity to bring those futile Maxims +along. Jameson should have furnished himself with a battery of Pudd'nhead +Wilson maxims instead, They are much more deadly than those others, and +they are easily carried, because they have no weight. + +Mr. Garrett--not very carefully concealing a smile--excuses the presence +of the Maxims by saying that they were of very substantial use because +their sputtering disordered the aim of the Boers, and in that way saved +lives. + +Three cannon, eight Maxims, and five hundred rifles yielded a result +which emphasized a fact which had already been established--that the +British system of standing out in the open to fight Boers who are behind +rocks is not wise, not excusable, and ought to be abandoned for something +more efficacious. For the purpose of war is to kill, not merely to waste +ammunition. + +If I could get the management of one of those campaigns, I would know +what to do, for I have studied the Boer. He values the Bible above every +other thing. The most delicious edible in South Africa is "biltong." +You will have seen it mentioned in Olive Schreiner's books. It is what +our plainsmen call "jerked beef." It is the Boer's main standby. He has +a passion for it, and he is right. + +If I had the command of the campaign I would go with rifles only, no +cumbersome Maxims and cannon to spoil good rocks with. I would move +surreptitiously by night to a point about a quarter of a mile from the +Boer camp, and there I would build up a pyramid of biltong and Bibles +fifty feet high, and then conceal my men all about. In the morning the +Boers would send out spies, and then the rest would come with a rush. +I would surround them, and they would have to fight my men on equal +terms, in the open. There wouldn't be any Amajuba results. + +--[Just as I am finishing this book an unfortunate dispute has sprung up +between Dr. Jameson and his officers, on the one hand, and Colonel Rhodes +on the other, concerning the wording of a note which Colonel Rhodes sent +from Johannesburg by a cyclist to Jameson just before hostilities began +on the memorable New Year's Day. Some of the fragments of this note were +found on the battlefield after the fight, and these have been pieced +together; the dispute is as to what words the lacking fragments +contained. Jameson says the note promised him a reinforcement of 300 men +from Johannesburg. Colonel Rhodes denies this, and says he merely +promised to send out "some" men "to meet you."] + +[It seems a pity that these friends should fall out over so little a +thing. If the 300 had been sent, what good would it have done? In 21 +hours of industrious fighting, Jameson's 530 men, with 8 Maxims, 3 +cannon, and 145,000 rounds of ammunition, killed an aggregate of 1. +Boer. These statistics show that a reinforcement of 300 Johannesburgers, +armed merely with muskets, would have killed, at the outside, only a +little over a half of another Boer. This would not have saved the day. +It would not even have seriously affected the general result. The +figures show clearly, and with mathematical violence, that the only way +to save Jameson, or even give him a fair and equal chance with the enemy, +was for Johannesburg to send him 240 Maxims, 90 cannon, 600 carloads of +ammunition, and 240,000 men. Johannesburg was not in a position to do +this. Johannesburg has been called very hard names for not reinforcing +Jameson. But in every instance this has been done by two classes of +persons--people who do not read history, and people, like Jameson, who do +not understand what it means, after they have read it.] + + + + +CHAPTER LXVIII. + +None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its +cussedness; but we can try. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +The Duke of Fife has borne testimony that Mr. Rhodes deceived him. That +is also what Mr. Rhodes did with the Reformers. He got them into +trouble, and then stayed out himself. A judicious man. He has always +been that. As to this there was a moment of doubt, once. It was when he +was out on his last pirating expedition in the Matabele country. The +cable shouted out that he had gone unarmed, to visit a party of hostile +chiefs. It was true, too; and this dare-devil thing came near fetching +another indiscretion out of the poet laureate. It would have been too +bad, for when the facts were all in, it turned out that there was a lady +along, too, and she also was unarmed. + +In the opinion of many people Mr. Rhodes is South Africa; others think he +is only a large part of it. These latter consider that South Africa +consists of Table Mountain, the diamond mines, the Johannesburg gold +fields, and Cecil Rhodes. The gold fields are wonderful in every way. +In seven or eight years they built up, in a desert, a city of a hundred +thousand inhabitants, counting white and black together; and not the +ordinary mining city of wooden shanties, but a city made out of lasting +material. Nowhere in the world is there such a concentration of rich +mines as at Johannesburg. Mr. Bonamici, my manager there, gave me a +small gold brick with some statistics engraved upon it which record the +output of gold from the early days to July, 1895, and exhibit the strides +which have been made in the development of the industry; in 1888 the +output was $4,162,440; the output of the next five and a half years was +(total: $17,585,894); for the single year ending with June, 1895, it was +$45,553,700. + +The capital which has developed the mines came from England, the mining +engineers from America. This is the case with the diamond mines also. +South Africa seems to be the heaven of the American scientific mining +engineer. He gets the choicest places, and keeps them. His salary is +not based upon what he would get in America, but apparently upon what a +whole family of him would get there. + +The successful mines pay great dividends, yet the rock is not rich, from +a Californian point of view. Rock which yields ten or twelve dollars a +ton is considered plenty rich enough. It is troubled with base metals to +such a degree that twenty years ago it would have been only about half as +valuable as it is now; for at that time there was no paying way of +getting anything out of such rock but the coarser-grained "free" gold; but +the new cyanide process has changed all that, and the gold fields of the +world now deliver up fifty million dollars' worth of gold per year which +would have gone into the tailing-pile under the former conditions. + +The cyanide process was new to me, and full of interest; and among the +costly and elaborate mining machinery there were fine things which were +new to me, but I was already familiar with the rest of the details of the +gold-mining industry. I had been a gold miner myself, in my day, and +knew substantially everything that those people knew about it, except how +to make money at it. But I learned a good deal about the Boers there, +and that was a fresh subject. What I heard there was afterwards repeated +to me in other parts of South Africa. Summed up--according to the +information thus gained--this is the Boer: + +He is deeply religious, profoundly ignorant, dull, obstinate, bigoted, +uncleanly in his habits, hospitable, honest in his dealings with the +whites, a hard master to his black servant, lazy, a good shot, good +horseman, addicted to the chase, a lover of political independence, a +good husband and father, not fond of herding together in towns, but +liking the seclusion and remoteness and solitude and empty vastness and +silence of the veldt; a man of a mighty appetite, and not delicate about +what he appeases it with--well-satisfied with pork and Indian corn and +biltong, requiring only that the quantity shall not be stinted; willing +to ride a long journey to take a hand in a rude all-night dance +interspersed with vigorous feeding and boisterous jollity, but ready to +ride twice as far for a prayer-meeting; proud of his Dutch and Huguenot +origin and its religious and military history; proud of his race's +achievements in South Africa, its bold plunges into hostile and uncharted +deserts in search of free solitudes unvexed by the pestering and detested +English, also its victories over the natives and the British; proudest of +all, of the direct and effusive personal interest which the Deity has +always taken in its affairs. He cannot read, he cannot write; he has one +or two newspapers, but he is, apparently, not aware of it; until latterly +he had no schools, and taught his children nothing, news is a term which +has no meaning to him, and the thing itself he cares nothing about. He +hates to be taxed and resents it. He has stood stock still in South +Africa for two centuries and a half, and would like to stand still till +the end of time, for he has no sympathy with Uitlander notions of +progress. He is hungry to be rich, for he is human; but his preference +has been for riches in cattle, not in fine clothes and fine houses and +gold and diamonds. The gold and the diamonds have brought the godless +stranger within his gates, also contamination and broken repose, and he +wishes that they had never been discovered. + +I think that the bulk of those details can be found in Olive Schreiner's +books, and she would not be accused of sketching the Boer's portrait with +an unfair hand. + +Now what would you expect from that unpromising material? What ought you +to expect from it? Laws inimical to religious liberty? Yes. Laws +denying, representation and suffrage to the intruder? Yes. Laws +unfriendly to educational institutions? Yes. Laws obstructive of gold +production? Yes. Discouragement of railway expansion? Yes. Laws heavily +taxing the intruder and overlooking the Boer? Yes. + +The Uitlander seems to have expected something very different from all +that. I do not know why. Nothing different from it was rationally to be +expected. A round man cannot be expected to fit a square hole right +away. He must have time to modify his shape. The modification had begun +in a detail or two, before the Raid, and was making some progress. It +has made further progress since. There are wise men in the Boer +government, and that accounts for the modification; the modification of +the Boer mass has probably not begun yet. If the heads of the Boer +government had not been wise men they would have hanged Jameson, and thus +turned a very commonplace pirate into a holy martyr. But even their +wisdom has its limits, and they will hang Mr. Rhodes if they ever catch +him. That will round him and complete him and make him a saint. He has +already been called by all other titles that symbolize human grandeur, +and he ought to rise to this one, the grandest of all. It will be a +dizzy jump from where he is now, but that is nothing, it will land him in +good company and be a pleasant change for him. + +Some of the things demanded by the Johannesburgers' Manifesto have been +conceded since the days of the Raid, and the others will follow in time, +no doubt. It was most fortunate for the miners of Johannesburg that the +taxes which distressed them so much were levied by the Boer government, +instead of by their friend Rhodes and his Chartered Company of +highwaymen, for these latter take half of whatever their mining victims +find, they do not stop at a mere percentage. If the Johannesburg miners +were under their jurisdiction they would be in the poorhouse in twelve +months. + +I have been under the impression all along that I had an unpleasant +paragraph about the Boers somewhere in my notebook, and also a pleasant +one. I have found them now. The unpleasant one is dated at an interior +village, and says-- + +"Mr. Z. called. He is an English Afrikander; is an old resident, and has +a Boer wife. He speaks the language, and his professional business is +with the Boers exclusively. He told me that the ancient Boer families in +the great region of which this village is the commercial center are +falling victims to their inherited indolence and dullness in the +materialistic latter-day race and struggle, and are dropping one by one +into the grip of the usurer--getting hopelessly in debt--and are losing +their high place and retiring to second and lower. The Boer's farm does +not go to another Boer when he loses it, but to a foreigner. Some have +fallen so low that they sell their daughters to the blacks." + +Under date of another South African town I find the note which is +creditable to the Boers: + +"Dr. X. told me that in the Kafir war 1,500 Kafirs took refuge in a great +cave in the mountains about 90 miles north of Johannesburg, and the Boers +blocked up the entrance and smoked them to death. Dr. X. has been in +there and seen the great array of bleached skeletons--one a woman with +the skeleton of a child hugged to her breast." + +The great bulk of the savages must go. The white man wants their lands, +and all must go excepting such percentage of them as he will need to do +his work for him upon terms to be determined by himself. Since history +has removed the element of guesswork from this matter and made it +certainty, the humanest way of diminishing the black population should be +adopted, not the old cruel ways of the past. Mr. Rhodes and his gang +have been following the old ways.--They are chartered to rob and slay, +and they lawfully do it, but not in a compassionate and Christian spirit. +They rob the Mashonas and the Matabeles of a portion of their territories +in the hallowed old style of "purchase!" for a song, and then they force +a quarrel and take the rest by the strong hand. They rob the natives of +their cattle under the pretext that all the cattle in the country +belonged to the king whom they have tricked and assassinated. They issue +"regulations" requiring the incensed and harassed natives to work for the +white settlers, and neglect their own affairs to do it. This is slavery, +and is several times worse than was the American slavery which used to +pain England so much; for when this Rhodesian slave is sick, +super-annuated, or otherwise disabled, he must support himself +or starve--his master is under no obligation to support him. + +The reduction of the population by Rhodesian methods to the desired limit +is a return to the old-time slow-misery and lingering-death system of a +discredited time and a crude "civilization." We humanely reduce an +overplus of dogs by swift chloroform; the Boer humanely reduced an +overplus of blacks by swift suffocation; the nameless but right-hearted +Australian pioneer humanely reduced his overplus of aboriginal neighbors +by a sweetened swift death concealed in a poisoned pudding. All these +are admirable, and worthy of praise; you and I would rather suffer either +of these deaths thirty times over in thirty successive days than linger +out one of the Rhodesian twenty-year deaths, with its daily burden of +insult, humiliation, and forced labor for a man whose entire race the +victim hates. Rhodesia is a happy name for that land of piracy and +pillage, and puts the right stain upon it. + +Several long journeys--gave us experience of the Cape Colony railways; +easy-riding, fine cars; all the conveniences; thorough cleanliness; +comfortable beds furnished for the night trains. It was in the first +days of June, and winter; the daytime was pleasant, the nighttime nice +and cold. Spinning along all day in the cars it was ecstasy to breathe +the bracing air and gaze out over the vast brown solitudes of the velvet +plains, soft and lovely near by, still softer and lovelier further away, +softest and loveliest of all in the remote distances, where dim +island-hills seemed afloat, as in a sea--a sea made of dream-stuff and +flushed with colors faint and rich; and dear me, the depth of the sky, +and the beauty of the strange new cloud-forms, and the glory of the +sunshine, the lavishness, the wastefulness of it! The vigor and +freshness and inspiration of the air and the sunwell, it was all +just as Olive Schreiner had made it in her books. + +To me the veldt, in its sober winter garb, was surpassingly beautiful. +There were unlevel stretches where it was rolling and swelling, and +rising and subsiding, and sweeping superbly on and on, and still on and +on like an ocean, toward the faraway horizon, its pale brown deepening by +delicately graduated shades to rich orange, and finally to purple and +crimson where it washed against the wooded hills and naked red crags at +the base of the sky. + +Everywhere, from Cape Town to Kimberley and from Kimberley to Port +Elizabeth and East London, the towns were well populated with tamed +blacks; tamed and Christianized too, I suppose, for they wore the dowdy +clothes of our Christian civilization. But for that, many of them would +have been remarkably handsome. These fiendish clothes, together with the +proper lounging gait, good-natured face, happy air, and easy laugh, made +them precise counterparts of our American blacks; often where all the +other aspects were strikingly and harmoniously and thrillingly African, a +flock of these natives would intrude, looking wholly out of place, and +spoil it all, making the thing a grating discord, half African and half +American. + +One Sunday in King William's Town a score of colored women came mincing +across the great barren square dressed--oh, in the last perfection of +fashion, and newness, and expensiveness, and showy mixture of unrelated +colors,--all just as I had seen it so often at home; and in their faces +and their gait was that languishing, aristocratic, divine delight in +their finery which was so familiar to me, and had always been such a +satisfaction to my eye and my heart. I seemed among old, old friends; +friends of fifty years, and I stopped and cordially greeted them. They +broke into a good-fellowship laugh, flashing their white teeth upon me, +and all answered at once. I did not understand a word they said. I was +astonished; I was not dreaming that they would answer in anything but +American. + +The voices, too, of the African women, were familiar to me sweet and +musical, just like those of the slave women of my early days. I followed +a couple of them all over the Orange Free State--no, over its capital +--Bloemfontein, to hear their liquid voices and the happy ripple of their +laughter. Their language was a large improvement upon American. Also +upon the Zulu. It had no Zulu clicks in it; and it seemed to have no +angles or corners, no roughness, no vile s's or other hissing sounds, but +was very, very mellow and rounded and flowing. + +In moving about the country in the trains, I had opportunity to see a +good many Boers of the veldt. One day at a village station a hundred of +them got out of the third-class cars to feed. + +Their clothes were very interesting. For ugliness of shapes, and for +miracles of ugly colors inharmoniously associated, they were a record. +The effect was nearly as exciting and interesting as that produced by the +brilliant and beautiful clothes and perfect taste always on view at the +Indian railway stations. One man had corduroy trousers of a faded +chewing gum tint. And they were new--showing that this tint did not come +by calamity, but was intentional; the very ugliest color I have ever +seen. A gaunt, shackly country lout six feet high, in battered gray +slouched hat with wide brim, and old resin-colored breeches, had on a +hideous brand-new woolen coat which was imitation tiger skin wavy broad +stripes of dazzling yellow and deep brown. I thought he ought to be +hanged, and asked the station-master if it could be arranged. He said +no; and not only that, but said it rudely; said it with a quite +unnecessary show of feeling. Then he muttered something about my being a +jackass, and walked away and pointed me out to people, and did everything +he could to turn public sentiment against me. It is what one gets for +trying to do good. + +In the train that day a passenger told me some more about Boer life out +in the lonely veldt. He said the Boer gets up early and sets his +"niggers" at their tasks (pasturing the cattle, and watching them); eats, +smokes, drowses, sleeps; toward evening superintends the milking, etc.; +eats, smokes, drowses; goes to bed at early candlelight in the fragrant +clothes he (and she) have worn all day and every week-day for years. I +remember that last detail, in Olive Schreiner's "Story of an African +Farm." And the passenger told me that the Boers were justly noted for +their hospitality. He told me a story about it. He said that his grace +the Bishop of a certain See was once making a business-progress through +the tavernless veldt, and one night he stopped with a Boer; after supper +was shown to bed; he undressed, weary and worn out, and was soon sound +asleep; in the night he woke up feeling crowded and suffocated, and found +the old Boer and his fat wife in bed with him, one on each side, with all +their clothes on, and snoring. He had to stay there and stand it--awake +and suffering--until toward dawn, when sleep again fell upon him for an +hour. Then he woke again. The Boer was gone, but the wife was still at +his side. + +Those Reformers detested that Boer prison; they were not used to cramped +quarters and tedious hours, and weary idleness, and early to bed, and +limited movement, and arbitrary and irritating rules, and the absence of +the luxuries which wealth comforts the day and the night with. The +confinement told upon their bodies and their spirits; still, they were +superior men, and they made the best that was to be made of the +circumstances. Their wives smuggled delicacies to them, which helped to +smooth the way down for the prison fare. + +In the train Mr. B. told me that the Boer jail-guards treated the black +prisoners--even political ones--mercilessly. An African chief and his +following had been kept there nine months without trial, and during all +that time they had been without shelter from rain and sun. He said that +one day the guards put a big black in the stocks for dashing his soup on +the ground; they stretched his legs painfully wide apart, and set him +with his back down hill; he could not endure it, and put back his hands +upon the slope for a support. The guard ordered him to withdraw the +support and kicked him in the back. "Then," said Mr. B., "'the powerful +black wrenched the stocks asunder and went for the guard; a Reform +prisoner pulled him off, and thrashed the guard himself." + + + + +CHAPTER LXIX. + +The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice. + --Pudd'nhead Wilsons's New Calendar. + +There isn't a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the +Equator if it had had its rights. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +Next to Mr. Rhodes, to me the most interesting convulsion of nature in +South Africa was the diamond-crater. The Rand gold fields are a +stupendous marvel, and they make all other gold fields small, but I was +not a stranger to gold-mining; the veldt was a noble thing to see, but it +was only another and lovelier variety of our Great Plains; the natives +were very far from being uninteresting, but they were not new; and as for +the towns, I could find my way without a guide through the most of them +because I had learned the streets, under other names, in towns just like +them in other lands; but the diamond mine was a wholly fresh thing, a +splendid and absorbing novelty. Very few people in the world have seen +the diamond in its home. It has but three or four homes in the world, +whereas gold has a million. It is worth while to journey around the +globe to see anything which can truthfully be called a novelty, and the +diamond mine is the greatest and most select and restricted novelty which +the globe has in stock. + +The Kimberley diamond deposits were discovered about 1869, I think. When +everything is taken into consideration, the wonder is that they were not +discovered five thousand years ago and made familiar to the African world +for the rest of time. For this reason the first diamonds were found on +the surface of the ground. They were smooth and limpid, and in the +sunlight they vomited fire. They were the very things which an African +savage of any era would value above every other thing in the world +excepting a glass bead. For two or three centuries we have been buying +his lands, his cattle, his neighbor, and any other thing he had for sale, +for glass beads and so it is strange that he was indifferent to the +diamonds--for he must have pickets them up many and many a time. It +would not occur to him to try to sell them to whites, of course, since +the whites already had plenty of glass beads, and more fashionably +shaped, too, than these; but one would think that the poorer sort of +black, who could not afford real glass, would have been humbly content to +decorate himself with the imitation, and that presently the white trader +would notice the things, and dimly suspect, and carry some of them home, +and find out what they were, and at once empty a multitude of +fortune-hunters into Africa. There are many strange things in human +history; one of the strangest is that the sparkling diamonds laid there +so long without exciting any one's interest. + +The revelation came at last by accident. In a Boer's hut out in the wide +solitude of the plains, a traveling stranger noticed a child playing with +a bright object, and was told it was a piece of glass which had been +found in the veldt. The stranger bought it for a trifle and carried it +away; and being without honor, made another stranger believe it was a +diamond, and so got $125 out of him for it, and was as pleased with +himself as if he had done a righteous thing. In Paris the wronged +stranger sold it to a pawnshop for $10,000, who sold it to a countess for +$90,000, who sold it to a brewer for $800;000, who traded it to a king +for a dukedom and a pedigree, and the king "put it up the spout." +--[handwritten note: "From the Greek meaning 'pawned it.'" M.T.]--I know +these particulars to be correct. + +The news flew around, and the South African diamond-boom began. The +original traveler--the dishonest one--now remembered that he had once +seen a Boer teamster chocking his wagon-wheel on a steep grade with a +diamond as large as a football, and he laid aside his occupations and +started out to hunt for it, but not with the intention of cheating +anybody out of $125 with it, for he had reformed. + +We now come to matters more didactic. Diamonds are not imbedded in rock +ledges fifty miles long, like the Johannesburg gold, but are distributed +through the rubbish of a filled-up well, so to speak. The well is rich, +its walls are sharply defined; outside of the walls are no diamonds. The +well is a crater, and a large one. Before it had been meddled with, its +surface was even with the level plain, and there was no sign to suggest +that it was there. The pasturage covering the surface of the Kimberley +crater was sufficient for the support of a cow, and the pasturage +underneath was sufficient for the support of a kingdom; but the cow did +not know it, and lost her chance. + +The Kimberley crater is roomy enough to admit the Roman Coliseum; the +bottom of the crater has not been reached, and no one can tell how far +down in the bowels of the earth it goes. Originally, it was a +perpendicular hole packed solidly full of blue rock or cement, and +scattered through that blue mass, like raisins in a pudding, were the +diamonds. As deep down in the earth as the blue stuff extends, so deep +will the diamonds be found. + +There are three or four other celebrated craters near by a circle three +miles in diameter would enclose them all. They are owned by the De Beers +Company, a consolidation of diamond properties arranged by Mr. Rhodes +twelve or fourteen years ago. The De Beers owns other craters; they are +under the grass, but the De Beers knows where they are, and will open +them some day, if the market should require it. + +Originally, the diamond deposits were the property of the Orange Free +State; but a judicious "rectification" of the boundary line shifted them +over into the British territory of Cape Colony. A high official of the +Free State told me that the sum of $4,00,000 was handed to his +commonwealth as a compromise, or indemnity, or something of the sort, and +that he thought his commonwealth did wisely to take the money and keep +out of a dispute, since the power was all on the one side and the +weakness all on the other. The De Beers Company dig out $400,000 worth +of diamonds per week, now. The Cape got the territory, but no profit; +for Mr. Rhodes and the Rothschilds and the other De Beers people own the +mines, and they pay no taxes. + +In our day the mines are worked upon scientific principles, under the +guidance of the ablest mining-engineering talent procurable in America. +There are elaborate works for reducing the blue rock and passing it +through one process after another until every diamond it contains has +been hunted down and secured. I watched the "concentrators" at work big +tanks containing mud and water and invisible diamonds--and was told that +each could stir and churn and properly treat 300 car-loads of mud per day +1,600 pounds to the car-load--and reduce it to 3 car-loads of slush. I +saw the 3 carloads of slush taken to the "pulsators" and there reduced to +quarter of a load of nice clean dark-colored sand. Then I followed it to +the sorting tables and saw the men deftly and swiftly spread it out and +brush it about and seize the diamonds as they showed up. I assisted, and +once I found a diamond half as large as an almond. It is an exciting +kind of fishing, and you feel a fine thrill of pleasure every time you +detect the glow of one of those limpid pebbles through the veil of dark +sand. I would like to spend my Saturday holidays in that charming sport +every now and then. Of course there are disappointments. Sometimes you +find a diamond which is not a diamond; it is only a quartz crystal or +some such worthless thing. The expert can generally distinguish it from +the precious stone which it is counterfeiting; but if he is in doubt he +lays it on a flatiron and hits it with a sledgehammer. If it is a +diamond it holds its own; if it is anything else, it is reduced to +powder. I liked that experiment very much, and did not tire of +repetitions of it. It was full of enjoyable apprehensions, unmarred by +any personal sense of risk. The De Beers concern treats 8;000 carloads +--about 6,000 tons--of blue rock per day, and the result is three pounds of +diamonds. Value, uncut, $50,000 to $70,000. After cutting, they will +weigh considerably less than a pound, but will be worth four or five +times as much as they were before. + +All the plain around that region is spread over, a foot deep, with blue +rock, placed there by the Company, and looks like a plowed field. +Exposure for a length of time make the rock easier to work than it is +when it comes out of the mine. If mining should cease now, the supply of +rock spread over those fields would furnish the usual 8,000 car-loads per +day to the separating works during three years. The fields are fenced +and watched; and at night they are under the constant inspection of lofty +electric searchlight. They contain fifty or sixty million dollars' +worth' of diamonds, and there is an abundance of enterprising thieves +around. + +In the dirt of the Kimberley streets there is much hidden wealth. Some +time ago the people were granted the privilege of a free wash-up. There +was a general rush, the work was done with thoroughness, and a good +harvest of diamonds was gathered. + +The deep mining is done by natives. There are many hundreds of them. +They live in quarters built around the inside of a great compound. They +are a jolly and good-natured lot, and accommodating. They performed a +war-dance for us, which was the wildest exhibition I have ever seen. +They are not allowed outside of the compound during their term of service +three months, I think it, is, as a rule. They go down the shaft, stand +their watch, come up again, are searched, and go to bed or to their +amusements in the compound; and this routine they repeat, day in and day +out. + +It is thought that they do not now steal many diamonds successfully. +They used to swallow them, and find other ways of concealing them, but +the white man found ways of beating their various games. One man cut his +leg and shoved a diamond into the wound, but even that project did not +succeed. When they find a fine large diamond they are more likely to +report it than to steal it, for in the former case they get a reward, and +in the latter they are quite apt to merely get into trouble. Some years +ago, in a mine not owned by the De Beers, a black found what has been +claimed to be the largest diamond known to the world's history; and, as a +reward he was released from service and given a blanket, a horse, and +five hundred dollars. It made him a Vanderbilt. He could buy four +wives, and have money left. Four wives are an ample support for a +native. With four wives he is wholly independent, and need never do a +stroke of work again. + +That great diamond weighs 97l carats. Some say it is as big as a piece +of alum, others say it is as large as a bite of rock candy, but the best +authorities agree that it is almost exactly the size of a chunk of ice. +But those details are not important; and in my opinion not trustworthy. +It has a flaw in it, otherwise it would be of incredible value. As it +is, it is held to be worth $2,000,000. After cutting it ought to be +worth from $5,000,000 to $8,000,000, therefore persons desiring to save +money should buy it now. It is owned by a syndicate, and apparently +there is no satisfactory market for it. It is earning nothing; it is +eating its head off. Up to this time it has made nobody rich but the +native who found it. + +He found it in a mine which was being worked by contract. That is to +say, a company had bought the privilege of taking from the mine 5,000,000 +carloads of blue-rock, for a sum down and a royalty. Their speculation +had not paid; but on the very day that their privilege ran out that +native found the $2,000,000-diamond and handed it over to them. Even the +diamond culture is not without its romantic episodes. + +The Koh-i-Noor is a large diamond, and valuable; but it cannot compete in +these matters with three which--according to legend--are among the crown +trinkets of Portugal and Russia. One of these is held to be worth +$20,000,000; another, $25,000,000, and the third something over +$28,000,000. + +Those are truly wonderful diamonds, whether they exist or not; and yet +they are of but little importance by comparison with the one wherewith +the Boer wagoner chocked his wheel on that steep grade as heretofore +referred to. In Kimberley I had some conversation with the man who saw +the Boer do that--an incident which had occurred twenty-seven or +twenty-eight years before I had my talk with him. He assured me that +that diamond's value could have been over a billion dollars, but not +under it. I believed him, because he had devoted twenty-seven years to +hunting for it, and was, in a position to know. + +A fitting and interesting finish to an examination of the tedious and +laborious and costly processes whereby the diamonds are gotten out of the +deeps of the earth and freed from the base stuffs which imprison them is +the visit to the De Beers offices in the town of Kimberley, where the +result of each day's mining is brought every day, and, weighed, assorted, +valued, and deposited in safes against shipping-day. An unknown and +unaccredited person cannot, get into that place; and it seemed apparent +from the generous supply of warning and protective and prohibitory signs +that were posted all about, that not even the known and accredited can +steal diamonds there without inconvenience. + +We saw the day's output--shining little nests of diamonds, distributed a +foot apart, along a counter, each nest reposing upon a sheet of white +paper. That day's catch was about $70,000 worth. In the course of a +year half a ton of diamonds pass under the scales there and sleep on that +counter; the resulting money is $18,000,000 or $20,000,000. Profit, +about $12,000,000. + +Young girls were doing the sorting--a nice, clean, dainty, and probably +distressing employment. Every day ducal incomes sift and sparkle through +the fingers of those young girls; yet they go to bed at night as poor as +they were when they got up in the morning. The same thing next day, and +all the days. + +They are beautiful things, those diamonds, in their native state. They +are of various shapes; they have flat surfaces, rounded borders, and +never a sharp edge. They are of all colors and shades of color, from +dewdrop white to actual black; and their smooth and rounded surfaces and +contours, variety of color, and transparent limpidity make them look like +piles of assorted candies. A very light straw color is their commonest +tint. It seemed to me that these uncut gems must be more beautiful than +any cut ones could be; but when a collection of cut ones was brought out, +I saw my mistake. Nothing is so beautiful as a rose diamond with the +light playing through it, except that uncostly thing which is just like +it--wavy sea-water with the sunlight playing through it and striking a +white-sand bottom. + +Before the middle of July we reached Cape Town, and the end of our +African journeyings. And well satisfied; for, towering above us was +Table Mountain--a reminder that we had now seen each and all of the great +features of South Africa except Mr. Cecil Rhodes. I realize that that is +a large exception. I know quite well that whether Mr. Rhodes is the +lofty and worshipful patriot and statesman that multitudes believe him to +be, or Satan come again, as the rest of the world account him, he is +still the most imposing figure in the British empire outside of England. +When he stands on the Cape of Good Hope, his shadow falls to the Zambesi. +He is the only colonial in the British dominions whose goings and comings +are chronicled and discussed under all the globe's meridians, and whose +speeches, unclipped, are cabled from the ends of the earth; and he is the +only unroyal outsider whose arrival in London can compete for attention +with an eclipse. + +That he is an extraordinary man, and not an accident of fortune, not even +his dearest South African enemies were willing to deny, so far as I heard +them testify. The whole South African world seemed to stand in a kind of +shuddering awe of him, friend and enemy alike. It was as if he were +deputy-God on the one side, deputy-Satan on the other, proprietor of the +people, able to make them or ruin them by his breath, worshiped by many, +hated by many, but blasphemed by none among the judicious, and even by +the indiscreet in guarded whispers only. + +What is the secret of his formidable supremacy? One says it is his +prodigious wealth--a wealth whose drippings in salaries and in other ways +support multitudes and make them his interested and loyal vassals; +another says it is his personal magnetism and his persuasive tongue, and +that these hypnotize and make happy slaves of all that drift within the +circle of their influence; another says it is his majestic ideas, his +vast schemes for the territorial aggrandizement of England, his patriotic +and unselfish ambition to spread her beneficent protection and her just +rule over the pagan wastes of Africa and make luminous the African +darkness with the glory of her name; and another says he wants the earth +and wants it for his own, and that the belief that he will get it and let +his friends in on the ground floor is the secret that rivets so many eyes +upon him and keeps him in the zenith where the view is unobstructed. + +One may take his choice. They are all the same price. One fact is sure: +he keeps his prominence and a vast following, no matter what he does. He +"deceives" the Duke of Fife--it is the Duke's word--but that does not +destroy the Duke's loyalty to him. He tricks the Reformers into immense +trouble with his Raid, but the most of them believe he meant well. He +weeps over the harshly--taxed Johannesburgers and makes them his friends; +at the same time he taxes his Charter-settlers 50 per cent., and so wins +their affection and their confidence that they are squelched with despair +at every rumor that the Charter is to be annulled. He raids and robs and +slays and enslaves the Matabele and gets worlds of Charter-Christian +applause for it. He has beguiled England into buying Charter waste paper +for Bank of England notes, ton for ton, and the ravished still burn +incense to him as the Eventual God of Plenty. He has done everything he +could think of to pull himself down to the ground; he has done more than +enough to pull sixteen common-run great men down; yet there he stands, to +this day, upon his dizzy summit under the dome of the sky, an apparent +permanency, the marvel of the time, the mystery of the age, an Archangel +with wings to half the world, Satan with a tail to the other half. + +I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a +piece of the rope for a keepsake. + + + + +CONCLUSION. + +I have traveled more than anyone else, and I have noticed that even the +angels speak English with an accent. + --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. + +I saw Table Rock, anyway--a majestic pile. It is 3,000 feet high. It is +also 17,000 feet high. These figures may be relied upon. I got them in +Cape Town from the two best-informed citizens, men who had made Table +Rock the study of their lives. And I saw Table Bay, so named for its +levelness. I saw the Castle--built by the Dutch East India Company three +hundred years ago--where the Commanding General lives; I saw St. Simon's +Bay, where the Admiral lives. I saw the Government, also the Parliament, +where they quarreled in two languages when I was there, and agreed in +none. I saw the club. I saw and explored the beautiful sea-girt drives +that wind about the mountains and through the paradise where the villas +are: Also I saw some of the fine old Dutch mansions, pleasant homes of +the early times, pleasant homes to-day, and enjoyed the privilege of +their hospitalities. + +And just before I sailed I saw in one of them a quaint old picture which +was a link in a curious romance--a picture of a pale, intellectual young +man in a pink coat with a high black collar. It was a portrait of Dr. +James Barry, a military surgeon who came out to the Cape fifty years ago +with his regiment. He was a wild young fellow, and was guilty of various +kinds of misbehavior. He was several times reported to headquarters in +England, and it was in each case expected that orders would come out to +deal with him promptly and severely, but for some mysterious reason no +orders of any kind ever came back--nothing came but just an impressive +silence. This made him an imposing and uncanny wonder to the town. + +Next, he was promoted-away up. He was made Medical Superintendent +General, and transferred to India. Presently he was back at the Cape +again and at his escapades once more. There were plenty of pretty girls, +but none of them caught him, none of them could get hold of his heart; +evidently he was not a marrying man. And that was another marvel, +another puzzle, and made no end of perplexed talk. Once he was called in +the night, an obstetric service, to do what he could for a woman who was +believed to be dying. He was prompt and scientific, and saved both +mother and child. There are other instances of record which testify to +his mastership of his profession; and many which testify to his love of +it and his devotion to it. Among other adventures of his was a duel of a +desperate sort, fought with swords, at the Castle. He killed his man. + +The child heretofore mentioned as having been saved by Dr. Barry so long +ago, was named for him, and still lives in Cape Town. He had Dr. +Barry's portrait painted, and gave it to the gentleman in whose old Dutch +house I saw it--the quaint figure in pink coat and high black collar. + +The story seems to be arriving nowhere. But that is because I have not +finished. Dr. Barry died in Cape Town 30 years ago. It was then +discovered that he was a woman. + +The legend goes that enquiries--soon silenced--developed the fact that +she was a daughter of a great English house, and that that was why her +Cape wildnesses brought no punishment and got no notice when reported to +the government at home. Her name was an alias. She had disgraced +herself with her people; so she chose to change her name and her sex and +take a new start in the world. + +We sailed on the 15th of July in the Norman, a beautiful ship, perfectly +appointed. The voyage to England occupied a short fortnight, without a +stop except at Madeira. A good and restful voyage for tired people, and +there were several of us. I seemed to have been lecturing a thousand +years, though it was only a twelvemonth, and a considerable number of the +others were Reformers who were fagged out with their five months of +seclusion in the Pretoria prison. + +Our trip around the earth ended at the Southampton pier, where we +embarked thirteen months before. It seemed a fine and large thing to +have accomplished--the circumnavigation of this great globe in that +little time, and I was privately proud of it. For a moment. +Then came one of those vanity-snubbing astronomical reports from the +Observatory-people, whereby it appeared that another great body of light +had lately flamed up in the remotenesses of space which was traveling at +a gait which would enable it to do all that I had done in a minute and a +half. Human pride is not worth while; there is always something lying in +wait to take the wind out of it. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Complete +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG AND OTHER STORIES + +By Mark Twain + + +CONTENTS: + THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG + MY FIRST LIE, AND HOW I GOT OUT OF IT + THE ESQUIMAUX MAIDEN'S ROMANCE + CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY + IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD? + MY DEBUT AS A LITERARY PERSON + AT THE APPETITE-CURE + CONCERNING THE JEWS + FROM THE 'LONDON TIMES' OF 1904 + ABOUT PLAY-ACTING + TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER + DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES + LUCK + THE CAPTAIN'S STORY + STIRRING TIMES IN AUSTRIA + MEISTERSCHAFT + MY BOYHOOD DREAMS + TO THE ABOVE OLD PEOPLE + IN MEMORIAM--OLIVIA SUSAN CLEMENS + + + + +THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG + +It was many years ago. Hadleyburg was the most honest and upright town +in all the region round about. It had kept that reputation unsmirched +during three generations, and was prouder of it than of any other of its +possessions. It was so proud of it, and so anxious to insure its +perpetuation, that it began to teach the principles of honest dealing to +its babies in the cradle, and made the like teachings the staple of their +culture thenceforward through all the years devoted to their education. +Also, throughout the formative years temptations were kept out of the way +of the young people, so that their honesty could have every chance to +harden and solidify, and become a part of their very bone. The +neighbouring towns were jealous of this honourable supremacy, and +affected to sneer at Hadleyburg's pride in it and call it vanity; but all +the same they were obliged to acknowledge that Hadleyburg was in reality +an incorruptible town; and if pressed they would also acknowledge that +the mere fact that a young man hailed from Hadleyburg was all the +recommendation he needed when he went forth from his natal town to seek +for responsible employment. + +But at last, in the drift of time, Hadleyburg had the ill luck to offend +a passing stranger--possibly without knowing it, certainly without +caring, for Hadleyburg was sufficient unto itself, and cared not a rap +for strangers or their opinions. Still, it would have been well to make +an exception in this one's case, for he was a bitter man, and revengeful. +All through his wanderings during a whole year he kept his injury in +mind, and gave all his leisure moments to trying to invent a compensating +satisfaction for it. He contrived many plans, and all of them were good, +but none of them was quite sweeping enough: the poorest of them would +hurt a great many individuals, but what he wanted was a plan which would +comprehend the entire town, and not let so much as one person escape +unhurt. At last he had a fortunate idea, and when it fell into his brain +it lit up his whole head with an evil joy. He began to form a plan at +once, saying to himself "That is the thing to do--I will corrupt the +town." + +Six months later he went to Hadleyburg, and arrived in a buggy at the +house of the old cashier of the bank about ten at night. He got a sack +out of the buggy, shouldered it, and staggered with it through the +cottage yard, and knocked at the door. A woman's voice said "Come in," +and he entered, and set his sack behind the stove in the parlour, saying +politely to the old lady who sat reading the "Missionary Herald" by the +lamp: + +"Pray keep your seat, madam, I will not disturb you. There--now it is +pretty well concealed; one would hardly know it was there. Can I see +your husband a moment, madam?" + +No, he was gone to Brixton, and might not return before morning. + +"Very well, madam, it is no matter. I merely wanted to leave that sack +in his care, to be delivered to the rightful owner when he shall be +found. I am a stranger; he does not know me; I am merely passing through +the town to-night to discharge a matter which has been long in my mind. +My errand is now completed, and I go pleased and a little proud, and you +will never see me again. There is a paper attached to the sack which +will explain everything. Good-night, madam." + +The old lady was afraid of the mysterious big stranger, and was glad to +see him go. But her curiosity was roused, and she went straight to the +sack and brought away the paper. It began as follows: + + "TO BE PUBLISHED, or, the right man sought out by private inquiry +--either will answer. This sack contains gold coin weighing a hundred +and sixty pounds four ounces--" + + "Mercy on us, and the door not locked!" + +Mrs. Richards flew to it all in a tremble and locked it, then pulled down +the window-shades and stood frightened, worried, and wondering if there +was anything else she could do toward making herself and the money more +safe. She listened awhile for burglars, then surrendered to curiosity, +and went back to the lamp and finished reading the paper: + + "I am a foreigner, and am presently going back to my own country, to +remain there permanently. I am grateful to America for what I have +received at her hands during my long stay under her flag; and to one of +her citizens--a citizen of Hadleyburg--I am especially grateful for a +great kindness done me a year or two ago. Two great kindnesses in fact. +I will explain. I was a gambler. I say I WAS. I was a ruined gambler. +I arrived in this village at night, hungry and without a penny. I asked +for help--in the dark; I was ashamed to beg in the light. I begged of +the right man. He gave me twenty dollars--that is to say, he gave me +life, as I considered it. He also gave me fortune; for out of that money +I have made myself rich at the gaming-table. And finally, a remark which +he made to me has remained with me to this day, and has at last conquered +me; and in conquering has saved the remnant of my morals: I shall gamble +no more. Now I have no idea who that man was, but I want him found, and +I want him to have this money, to give away, throw away, or keep, as he +pleases. It is merely my way of testifying my gratitude to him. If I +could stay, I would find him myself; but no matter, he will be found. +This is an honest town, an incorruptible town, and I know I can trust it +without fear. This man can be identified by the remark which he made to +me; I feel persuaded that he will remember it. + +"And now my plan is this: If you prefer to conduct the inquiry +privately, do so. Tell the contents of this present writing to any one +who is likely to be the right man. If he shall answer, 'I am the man; +the remark I made was so-and-so,' apply the test--to wit: open the sack, +and in it you will find a sealed envelope containing that remark. If the +remark mentioned by the candidate tallies with it, give him the money, +and ask no further questions, for he is certainly the right man. + +"But if you shall prefer a public inquiry, then publish this present +writing in the local paper--with these instructions added, to wit: Thirty +days from now, let the candidate appear at the town-hall at eight in the +evening (Friday), and hand his remark, in a sealed envelope, to the Rev. +Mr. Burgess (if he will be kind enough to act); and let Mr. Burgess there +and then destroy the seals of the sack, open it, and see if the remark is +correct: if correct, let the money be delivered, with my sincere +gratitude, to my benefactor thus identified." + +Mrs. Richards sat down, gently quivering with excitement, and was soon +lost in thinkings--after this pattern: "What a strange thing it is! +. . . And what a fortune for that kind man who set his bread afloat upon +the waters! . . . If it had only been my husband that did it!--for we are +so poor, so old and poor! . . ." Then, with a sigh--"But it was not my +Edward; no, it was not he that gave a stranger twenty dollars. It is a +pity too; I see it now. . . " Then, with a shudder--"But it is GAMBLERS' +money! the wages of sin; we couldn't take it; we couldn't touch it. I +don't like to be near it; it seems a defilement." She moved to a farther +chair. . . "I wish Edward would come, and take it to the bank; a burglar +might come at any moment; it is dreadful to be here all alone with it." + +At eleven Mr. Richards arrived, and while his wife was saying "I am SO +glad you've come!" he was saying, "I am so tired--tired clear out; it is +dreadful to be poor, and have to make these dismal journeys at my time of +life. Always at the grind, grind, grind, on a salary--another man's +slave, and he sitting at home in his slippers, rich and comfortable." + +"I am so sorry for you, Edward, you know that; but be comforted; we have +our livelihood; we have our good name--" + +"Yes, Mary, and that is everything. Don't mind my talk--it's just a +moment's irritation and doesn't mean anything. Kiss me--there, it's all +gone now, and I am not complaining any more. What have you been getting? +What's in the sack?" + +Then his wife told him the great secret. It dazed him for a moment; then +he said: + +"It weighs a hundred and sixty pounds? Why, Mary, it's for-ty thousand +dollars--think of it--a whole fortune! Not ten men in this village are +worth that much. Give me the paper." + +He skimmed through it and said: + +"Isn't it an adventure! Why, it's a romance; it's like the impossible +things one reads about in books, and never sees in life." He was well +stirred up now; cheerful, even gleeful. He tapped his old wife on the +cheek, and said humorously, "Why, we're rich, Mary, rich; all we've got +to do is to bury the money and burn the papers. If the gambler ever comes +to inquire, we'll merely look coldly upon him and say: 'What is this +nonsense you are talking? We have never heard of you and your sack of +gold before;' and then he would look foolish, and--" + +"And in the meantime, while you are running on with your jokes, the money +is still here, and it is fast getting along toward burglar-time." + +"True. Very well, what shall we do--make the inquiry private? No, not +that; it would spoil the romance. The public method is better. Think +what a noise it will make! And it will make all the other towns jealous; +for no stranger would trust such a thing to any town but Hadleyburg, and +they know it. It's a great card for us. I must get to the +printing-office now, or I shall be too late." + +"But stop--stop--don't leave me here alone with it, Edward!" + +But he was gone. For only a little while, however. Not far from his own +house he met the editor--proprietor of the paper, and gave him the +document, and said "Here is a good thing for you, Cox--put it in." + +"It may be too late, Mr. Richards, but I'll see." + +At home again, he and his wife sat down to talk the charming mystery +over; they were in no condition for sleep. The first question was, Who +could the citizen have been who gave the stranger the twenty dollars? It +seemed a simple one; both answered it in the same breath-- + +"Barclay Goodson." + +"Yes," said Richards, "he could have done it, and it would have been like +him, but there's not another in the town." + +"Everybody will grant that, Edward--grant it privately, anyway. For six +months, now, the village has been its own proper self once more--honest, +narrow, self-righteous, and stingy." + +"It is what he always called it, to the day of his death--said it right +out publicly, too." + +"Yes, and he was hated for it." + +"Oh, of course; but he didn't care. I reckon he was the best-hated man +among us, except the Reverend Burgess." + +"Well, Burgess deserves it--he will never get another congregation here. +Mean as the town is, it knows how to estimate HIM. Edward, doesn't it +seem odd that the stranger should appoint Burgess to deliver the money?" + +"Well, yes--it does. That is--that is--" + +"Why so much that-IS-ing? Would YOU select him?" + +"Mary, maybe the stranger knows him better than this village does." + +"Much THAT would help Burgess!" + +The husband seemed perplexed for an answer; the wife kept a steady eye +upon him, and waited. Finally Richards said, with the hesitancy of one +who is making a statement which is likely to encounter doubt, + +"Mary, Burgess is not a bad man." + +His wife was certainly surprised. + +"Nonsense!" she exclaimed. + +"He is not a bad man. I know. The whole of his unpopularity had its +foundation in that one thing--the thing that made so much noise." + +"That 'one thing,' indeed! As if that 'one thing' wasn't enough, all by +itself." + +"Plenty. Plenty. Only he wasn't guilty of it." + +"How you talk! Not guilty of it! Everybody knows he WAS guilty." + +"Mary, I give you my word--he was innocent." + +"I can't believe it and I don't. How do you know?" + +"It is a confession. I am ashamed, but I will make it. I was the only +man who knew he was innocent. I could have saved him, and--and--well, +you know how the town was wrought up--I hadn't the pluck to do it. It +would have turned everybody against me. I felt mean, ever so mean; ut I +didn't dare; I hadn't the manliness to face that." + +Mary looked troubled, and for a while was silent. Then she said +stammeringly: + +"I--I don't think it would have done for you to--to--One mustn't +--er--public opinion--one has to be so careful--so--" It was a difficult +road, and she got mired; but after a little she got started again. "It +was a great pity, but--Why, we couldn't afford it, Edward--we couldn't +indeed. Oh, I wouldn't have had you do it for anything!" + +"It would have lost us the good-will of so many people, Mary; and +then--and then--" + +"What troubles me now is, what HE thinks of us, Edward." + +"He? HE doesn't suspect that I could have saved him." + +"Oh," exclaimed the wife, in a tone of relief, "I am glad of that. As +long as he doesn't know that you could have saved him, he--he--well that +makes it a great deal better. Why, I might have known he didn't know, +because he is always trying to be friendly with us, as little +encouragement as we give him. More than once people have twitted me with +it. There's the Wilsons, and the Wilcoxes, and the Harknesses, they take +a mean pleasure in saying 'YOUR FRIEND Burgess,' because they know it +pesters me. I wish he wouldn't persist in liking us so; I can't think +why he keeps it up." + +"I can explain it. It's another confession. When the thing was new and +hot, and the town made a plan to ride him on a rail, my conscience hurt +me so that I couldn't stand it, and I went privately and gave him notice, +and he got out of the town and stayed out till it was safe to come back." + +"Edward! If the town had found it out--" + +"DON'T! It scares me yet, to think of it. I repented of it the minute +it was done; and I was even afraid to tell you lest your face might +betray it to somebody. I didn't sleep any that night, for worrying. But +after a few days I saw that no one was going to suspect me, and after +that I got to feeling glad I did it. And I feel glad yet, Mary--glad +through and through." + +"So do I, now, for it would have been a dreadful way to treat him. Yes, +I'm glad; for really you did owe him that, you know. But, Edward, +suppose it should come out yet, some day!" + +"It won't." + +"Why?" + +"Because everybody thinks it was Goodson." + +"Of course they would!" + +"Certainly. And of course HE didn't care. They persuaded poor old +Sawlsberry to go and charge it on him, and he went blustering over there +and did it. Goodson looked him over, like as if he was hunting for a +place on him that he could despise the most; then he says, 'So you are +the Committee of Inquiry, are you?' Sawlsberry said that was about what +he was. 'H'm. Do they require particulars, or do you reckon a kind of a +GENERAL answer will do?' 'If they require particulars, I will come back, +Mr. Goodson; I will take the general answer first.' 'Very well, then, +tell them to go to hell--I reckon that's general enough. And I'll give +you some advice, Sawlsberry; when you come back for the particulars, +fetch a basket to carry what is left of yourself home in.'" + +"Just like Goodson; it's got all the marks. He had only one vanity; he +thought he could give advice better than any other person." + +"It settled the business, and saved us, Mary. The subject was dropped." + +"Bless you, I'm not doubting THAT." + +Then they took up the gold-sack mystery again, with strong interest. Soon +the conversation began to suffer breaks--interruptions caused by absorbed +thinkings. The breaks grew more and more frequent. At last Richards +lost himself wholly in thought. He sat long, gazing vacantly at the +floor, and by-and-by he began to punctuate his thoughts with little +nervous movements of his hands that seemed to indicate vexation. +Meantime his wife too had relapsed into a thoughtful silence, and her +movements were beginning to show a troubled discomfort. Finally Richards +got up and strode aimlessly about the room, ploughing his hands through +his hair, much as a somnambulist might do who was having a bad dream. +Then he seemed to arrive at a definite purpose; and without a word he put +on his hat and passed quickly out of the house. His wife sat brooding, +with a drawn face, and did not seem to be aware that she was alone. Now +and then she murmured, "Lead us not into t . . . but--but--we are so +poor, so poor! . . . Lead us not into . . . Ah, who would be hurt by +it?--and no one would ever know . . . Lead us . . . " The voice died out +in mumblings. After a little she glanced up and muttered in a +half-frightened, half-glad way-- + +"He is gone! But, oh dear, he may be too late--too late . . . Maybe +not--maybe there is still time." She rose and stood thinking, nervously +clasping and unclasping her hands. A slight shudder shook her frame, and +she said, out of a dry throat, "God forgive me--it's awful to think such +things--but . . . Lord, how we are made--how strangely we are made!" + +She turned the light low, and slipped stealthily over and knelt down by +the sack and felt of its ridgy sides with her hands, and fondled them +lovingly; and there was a gloating light in her poor old eyes. She fell +into fits of absence; and came half out of them at times to mutter "If we +had only waited!--oh, if we had only waited a little, and not been in +such a hurry!" + +Meantime Cox had gone home from his office and told his wife all about +the strange thing that had happened, and they had talked it over eagerly, +and guessed that the late Goodson was the only man in the town who could +have helped a suffering stranger with so noble a sum as twenty dollars. +Then there was a pause, and the two became thoughtful and silent. And +by-and-by nervous and fidgety. At last the wife said, as if to herself, + +"Nobody knows this secret but the Richardses . . . and us . . . nobody." + +The husband came out of his thinkings with a slight start, and gazed +wistfully at his wife, whose face was become very pale; then he +hesitatingly rose, and glanced furtively at his hat, then at his wife--a +sort of mute inquiry. Mrs. Cox swallowed once or twice, with her hand at +her throat, then in place of speech she nodded her head. In a moment she +was alone, and mumbling to herself. + +And now Richards and Cox were hurrying through the deserted streets, from +opposite directions. They met, panting, at the foot of the +printing-office stairs; by the night-light there they read each other's +face. Cox whispered: + +"Nobody knows about this but us?" + +The whispered answer was: + +"Not a soul--on honour, not a soul!" + +"If it isn't too late to--" + +The men were starting up-stairs; at this moment they were overtaken by a +boy, and Cox asked, + +"Is that you, Johnny?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"You needn't ship the early mail--nor ANY mail; wait till I tell you." + +"It's already gone, sir." + +"GONE?" It had the sound of an unspeakable disappointment in it. + +"Yes, sir. Time-table for Brixton and all the towns beyond changed +to-day, sir--had to get the papers in twenty minutes earlier than common. +I had to rush; if I had been two minutes later--" + +The men turned and walked slowly away, not waiting to hear the rest. +Neither of them spoke during ten minutes; then Cox said, in a vexed tone, + +"What possessed you to be in such a hurry, I can't make out." + +The answer was humble enough: + +"I see it now, but somehow I never thought, you know, until it was too +late. But the next time--" + +"Next time be hanged! It won't come in a thousand years." + +Then the friends separated without a good-night, and dragged themselves +home with the gait of mortally stricken men. At their homes their wives +sprang up with an eager "Well?"--then saw the answer with their eyes and +sank down sorrowing, without waiting for it to come in words. In both +houses a discussion followed of a heated sort--a new thing; there had +been discussions before, but not heated ones, not ungentle ones. The +discussions to-night were a sort of seeming plagiarisms of each other. +Mrs. Richards said: + +"If you had only waited, Edward--if you had only stopped to think; but +no, you must run straight to the printing-office and spread it all over +the world." + +"It SAID publish it." + +"That is nothing; it also said do it privately, if you liked. There, +now--is that true, or not?" + +"Why, yes--yes, it is true; but when I thought what a stir it would make, +and what a compliment it was to Hadleyburg that a stranger should trust +it so--" + +"Oh, certainly, I know all that; but if you had only stopped to think, +you would have seen that you COULDN'T find the right man, because he is +in his grave, and hasn't left chick nor child nor relation behind him; +and as long as the money went to somebody that awfully needed it, and +nobody would be hurt by it, and--and--" + +She broke down, crying. Her husband tried to think of some comforting +thing to say, and presently came out with this: + +"But after all, Mary, it must be for the best--it must be; we know that. +And we must remember that it was so ordered--" + +"Ordered! Oh, everything's ORDERED, when a person has to find some way +out when he has been stupid. Just the same, it was ORDERED that the money +should come to us in this special way, and it was you that must take it +on yourself to go meddling with the designs of Providence--and who gave +you the right? It was wicked, that is what it was--just blasphemous +presumption, and no more becoming to a meek and humble professor of--" + +"But, Mary, you know how we have been trained all our lives long, like +the whole village, till it is absolutely second nature to us to stop not +a single moment to think when there's an honest thing to be done--" + +"Oh, I know it, I know it--it's been one everlasting training and +training and training in honesty--honesty shielded, from the very cradle, +against every possible temptation, and so it's ARTIFICIAL honesty, and +weak as water when temptation comes, as we have seen this night. God +knows I never had shade nor shadow of a doubt of my petrified and +indestructible honesty until now--and now, under the very first big and +real temptation, I--Edward, it is my belief that this town's honesty is +as rotten as mine is; as rotten as yours. It is a mean town, a hard, +stingy town, and hasn't a virtue in the world but this honesty it is so +celebrated for and so conceited about; and so help me, I do believe that +if ever the day comes that its honesty falls under great temptation, its +grand reputation will go to ruin like a house of cards. There, now, I've +made confession, and I feel better; I am a humbug, and I've been one all +my life, without knowing it. Let no man call me honest again--I will not +have it." + +"I--Well, Mary, I feel a good deal as you do: I certainly do. It seems +strange, too, so strange. I never could have believed it--never." + +A long silence followed; both were sunk in thought. At last the wife +looked up and said: + +"I know what you are thinking, Edward." + +Richards had the embarrassed look of a person who is caught. + +"I am ashamed to confess it, Mary, but--" + +"It's no matter, Edward, I was thinking the same question myself." + +"I hope so. State it." + +"You were thinking, if a body could only guess out WHAT THE REMARK WAS +that Goodson made to the stranger." + +"It's perfectly true. I feel guilty and ashamed. And you?" + +"I'm past it. Let us make a pallet here; we've got to stand watch till +the bank vault opens in the morning and admits the sack. . . Oh dear, oh +dear--if we hadn't made the mistake!" + +The pallet was made, and Mary said: + +"The open sesame--what could it have been? I do wonder what that remark +could have been. But come; we will get to bed now." + +"And sleep?" + +"No; think." + +"Yes; think." + +By this time the Coxes too had completed their spat and their +reconciliation, and were turning in--to think, to think, and toss, and +fret, and worry over what the remark could possibly have been which +Goodson made to the stranded derelict; that golden remark; that remark +worth forty thousand dollars, cash. + +The reason that the village telegraph-office was open later than usual +that night was this: The foreman of Cox's paper was the local +representative of the Associated Press. One might say its honorary +representative, for it wasn't four times a year that he could furnish +thirty words that would be accepted. But this time it was different. +His despatch stating what he had caught got an instant answer: + + "Send the whole thing--all the details--twelve hundred words." + + A colossal order! The foreman filled the bill; and he was the proudest +man in the State. By breakfast-time the next morning the name of +Hadleyburg the Incorruptible was on every lip in America, from Montreal +to the Gulf, from the glaciers of Alaska to the orange-groves of Florida; +and millions and millions of people were discussing the stranger and his +money-sack, and wondering if the right man would be found, and hoping +some more news about the matter would come soon--right away. + + + + II + + Hadleyburg village woke up world-celebrated--astonished--happy--vain. +Vain beyond imagination. Its nineteen principal citizens and their wives +went about shaking hands with each other, and beaming, and smiling, and +congratulating, and saying THIS thing adds a new word to the +dictionary--HADLEYBURG, synonym for INCORRUPTIBLE--destined to live in +dictionaries for ever! And the minor and unimportant citizens and their +wives went around acting in much the same way. Everybody ran to the bank +to see the gold-sack; and before noon grieved and envious crowds began to +flock in from Brixton and all neighbouring towns; and that afternoon and +next day reporters began to arrive from everywhere to verify the sack and +its history and write the whole thing up anew, and make dashing free-hand +pictures of the sack, and of Richards's house, and the bank, and the +Presbyterian church, and the Baptist church, and the public square, and +the town-hall where the test would be applied and the money delivered; +and damnable portraits of the Richardses, and Pinkerton the banker, and +Cox, and the foreman, and Reverend Burgess, and the postmaster--and even +of Jack Halliday, who was the loafing, good-natured, no-account, +irreverent fisherman, hunter, boys' friend, stray-dogs' friend, typical +"Sam Lawson" of the town. The little mean, smirking, oily Pinkerton +showed the sack to all comers, and rubbed his sleek palms together +pleasantly, and enlarged upon the town's fine old reputation for honesty +and upon this wonderful endorsement of it, and hoped and believed that +the example would now spread far and wide over the American world, and be +epoch-making in the matter of moral regeneration. And so on, and so on. + +By the end of a week things had quieted down again; the wild intoxication +of pride and joy had sobered to a soft, sweet, silent delight--a sort of +deep, nameless, unutterable content. All faces bore a look of peaceful, +holy happiness. + +Then a change came. It was a gradual change; so gradual that its +beginnings were hardly noticed; maybe were not noticed at all, except by +Jack Halliday, who always noticed everything; and always made fun of it, +too, no matter what it was. He began to throw out chaffing remarks about +people not looking quite so happy as they did a day or two ago; and next +he claimed that the new aspect was deepening to positive sadness; next, +that it was taking on a sick look; and finally he said that everybody was +become so moody, thoughtful, and absent-minded that he could rob the +meanest man in town of a cent out of the bottom of his breeches pocket +and not disturb his reverie. + +At this stage--or at about this stage--a saying like this was dropped at +bedtime--with a sigh, usually--by the head of each of the nineteen +principal households: + +"Ah, what COULD have been the remark that Goodson made?" + +And straightway--with a shudder--came this, from the man's wife: + +"Oh, DON'T! What horrible thing are you mulling in your mind? Put it +away from you, for God's sake!" + +But that question was wrung from those men again the next night--and got +the same retort. But weaker. + +And the third night the men uttered the question yet again--with anguish, +and absently. This time--and the following night--the wives fidgeted +feebly, and tried to say something. But didn't. + +And the night after that they found their tongues and responded +--longingly: + +"Oh, if we COULD only guess!" + +Halliday's comments grew daily more and more sparklingly disagreeable and +disparaging. He went diligently about, laughing at the town, +individually and in mass. But his laugh was the only one left in the +village: it fell upon a hollow and mournful vacancy and emptiness. Not +even a smile was findable anywhere. Halliday carried a cigar-box around +on a tripod, playing that it was a camera, and halted all passers and +aimed the thing and said "Ready!--now look pleasant, please," but not +even this capital joke could surprise the dreary faces into any +softening. + +So three weeks passed--one week was left. It was Saturday evening after +supper. Instead of the aforetime Saturday-evening flutter and bustle and +shopping and larking, the streets were empty and desolate. Richards and +his old wife sat apart in their little parlour--miserable and thinking. +This was become their evening habit now: the life-long habit which had +preceded it, of reading, knitting, and contented chat, or receiving or +paying neighbourly calls, was dead and gone and forgotten, ages ago--two +or three weeks ago; nobody talked now, nobody read, nobody visited--the +whole village sat at home, sighing, worrying, silent. Trying to guess +out that remark. + +The postman left a letter. Richards glanced listlessly at the +superscription and the post-mark--unfamiliar, both--and tossed the letter +on the table and resumed his might-have-beens and his hopeless dull +miseries where he had left them off. Two or three hours later his wife +got wearily up and was going away to bed without a good-night--custom +now--but she stopped near the letter and eyed it awhile with a dead +interest, then broke it open, and began to skim it over. Richards, +sitting there with his chair tilted back against the wall and his chin +between his knees, heard something fall. It was his wife. He sprang to +her side, but she cried out: + +"Leave me alone, I am too happy. Read the letter--read it!" + +He did. He devoured it, his brain reeling. The letter was from a +distant State, and it said: + + "I am a stranger to you, but no matter: I have something to tell. I +have just arrived home from Mexico, and learned about that episode. Of +course you do not know who made that remark, but I know, and I am the +only person living who does know. It was GOODSON. I knew him well, many +years ago. I passed through your village that very night, and was his +guest till the midnight train came along. I overheard him make that +remark to the stranger in the dark--it was in Hale Alley. He and I +talked of it the rest of the way home, and while smoking in his house. +He mentioned many of your villagers in the course of his talk--most of +them in a very uncomplimentary way, but two or three favourably: among +these latter yourself. I say 'favourably'--nothing stronger. I remember +his saying he did not actually LIKE any person in the town--not one; but +that you--I THINK he said you--am almost sure--had done him a very great +service once, possibly without knowing the full value of it, and he +wished he had a fortune, he would leave it to you when he died, and a +curse apiece for the rest of the citizens. Now, then, if it was you that +did him that service, you are his legitimate heir, and entitled to the +sack of gold. I know that I can trust to your honour and honesty, for in +a citizen of Hadleyburg these virtues are an unfailing inheritance, and +so I am going to reveal to you the remark, well satisfied that if you are +not the right man you will seek and find the right one and see that poor +Goodson's debt of gratitude for the service referred to is paid. This is +the remark 'YOU ARE FAR FROM BEING A BAD MAN: GO, AND REFORM.' + +"HOWARD L. STEPHENSON." + + "Oh, Edward, the money is ours, and I am so grateful, OH, so +grateful,--kiss me, dear, it's for ever since we kissed--and we needed it +so--the money--and now you are free of Pinkerton and his bank, and +nobody's slave any more; it seems to me I could fly for joy." + +It was a happy half-hour that the couple spent there on the settee +caressing each other; it was the old days come again--days that had begun +with their courtship and lasted without a break till the stranger brought +the deadly money. By-and-by the wife said: + +"Oh, Edward, how lucky it was you did him that grand service, poor +Goodson! I never liked him, but I love him now. And it was fine and +beautiful of you never to mention it or brag about it." Then, with a +touch of reproach, "But you ought to have told ME, Edward, you ought to +have told your wife, you know." + +"Well, I--er--well, Mary, you see--" + +"Now stop hemming and hawing, and tell me about it, Edward. I always +loved you, and now I'm proud of you. Everybody believes there was only +one good generous soul in this village, and now it turns out that +you--Edward, why don't you tell me?" + +"Well--er--er--Why, Mary, I can't!" + +"You CAN'T? WHY can't you?" + +"You see, he--well, he--he made me promise I wouldn't." + +The wife looked him over, and said, very slowly: + +"Made--you--promise? Edward, what do you tell me that for?" + +"Mary, do you think I would lie?" + +She was troubled and silent for a moment, then she laid her hand within +his and said: + +"No . . . no. We have wandered far enough from our bearings--God spare +us that! In all your life you have never uttered a lie. But now--now +that the foundations of things seem to be crumbling from under us, +we--we--" She lost her voice for a moment, then said, brokenly, "Lead us +not into temptation. . . I think you made the promise, Edward. Let it +rest so. Let us keep away from that ground. Now--that is all gone by; +let us be happy again; it is no time for clouds." + +Edward found it something of an effort to comply, for his mind kept +wandering--trying to remember what the service was that he had done +Goodson. + +The couple lay awake the most of the night, Mary happy and busy, Edward +busy, but not so happy. Mary was planning what she would do with the +money. Edward was trying to recall that service. At first his +conscience was sore on account of the lie he had told Mary--if it was a +lie. After much reflection--suppose it WAS a lie? What then? Was it +such a great matter? Aren't we always ACTING lies? Then why not tell +them? Look at Mary--look what she had done. While he was hurrying off on +his honest errand, what was she doing? Lamenting because the papers +hadn't been destroyed and the money kept. Is theft better than lying? + +THAT point lost its sting--the lie dropped into the background and left +comfort behind it. The next point came to the front: HAD he rendered +that service? Well, here was Goodson's own evidence as reported in +Stephenson's letter; there could be no better evidence than that--it was +even PROOF that he had rendered it. Of course. So that point was +settled. . . No, not quite. He recalled with a wince that this unknown +Mr. Stephenson was just a trifle unsure as to whether the performer of it +was Richards or some other--and, oh dear, he had put Richards on his +honour! He must himself decide whither that money must go--and Mr. +Stephenson was not doubting that if he was the wrong man he would go +honourably and find the right one. Oh, it was odious to put a man in +such a situation--ah, why couldn't Stephenson have left out that doubt? +What did he want to intrude that for? + +Further reflection. How did it happen that RICHARDS'S name remained in +Stephenson's mind as indicating the right man, and not some other man's +name? That looked good. Yes, that looked very good. In fact it went on +looking better and better, straight along--until by-and-by it grew into +positive PROOF. And then Richards put the matter at once out of his +mind, for he had a private instinct that a proof once established is +better left so. + +He was feeling reasonably comfortable now, but there was still one other +detail that kept pushing itself on his notice: of course he had done +that service--that was settled; but what WAS that service? He must recall +it--he would not go to sleep till he had recalled it; it would make his +peace of mind perfect. And so he thought and thought. He thought of a +dozen things--possible services, even probable services--but none of them +seemed adequate, none of them seemed large enough, none of them seemed +worth the money--worth the fortune Goodson had wished he could leave in +his will. And besides, he couldn't remember having done them, anyway. +Now, then--now, then--what KIND of a service would it be that would make +a man so inordinately grateful? Ah--the saving of his soul! That must +be it. Yes, he could remember, now, how he once set himself the task of +converting Goodson, and laboured at it as much as--he was going to say +three months; but upon closer examination it shrunk to a month, then to a +week, then to a day, then to nothing. Yes, he remembered now, and with +unwelcome vividness, that Goodson had told him to go to thunder and mind +his own business--HE wasn't hankering to follow Hadleyburg to heaven! + +So that solution was a failure--he hadn't saved Goodson's soul. Richards +was discouraged. Then after a little came another idea: had he saved +Goodson's property? No, that wouldn't do--he hadn't any. His life? +That is it! Of course. Why, he might have thought of it before. This +time he was on the right track, sure. His imagination-mill was hard at +work in a minute, now. + +Thereafter, during a stretch of two exhausting hours, he was busy saving +Goodson's life. He saved it in all kinds of difficult and perilous ways. +In every case he got it saved satisfactorily up to a certain point; then, +just as he was beginning to get well persuaded that it had really +happened, a troublesome detail would turn up which made the whole thing +impossible. As in the matter of drowning, for instance. In that case he +had swum out and tugged Goodson ashore in an unconscious state with a +great crowd looking on and applauding, but when he had got it all thought +out and was just beginning to remember all about it, a whole swarm of +disqualifying details arrived on the ground: the town would have known +of the circumstance, Mary would have known of it, it would glare like a +limelight in his own memory instead of being an inconspicuous service +which he had possibly rendered "without knowing its full value." And at +this point he remembered that he couldn't swim anyway. + +Ah--THERE was a point which he had been overlooking from the start: it +had to be a service which he had rendered "possibly without knowing the +full value of it." Why, really, that ought to be an easy hunt--much +easier than those others. And sure enough, by-and-by he found it. +Goodson, years and years ago, came near marrying a very sweet and pretty +girl, named Nancy Hewitt, but in some way or other the match had been +broken off; the girl died, Goodson remained a bachelor, and by-and-by +became a soured one and a frank despiser of the human species. Soon +after the girl's death the village found out, or thought it had found +out, that she carried a spoonful of negro blood in her veins. Richards +worked at these details a good while, and in the end he thought he +remembered things concerning them which must have gotten mislaid in his +memory through long neglect. He seemed to dimly remember that it was HE +that found out about the negro blood; that it was he that told the +village; that the village told Goodson where they got it; that he thus +saved Goodson from marrying the tainted girl; that he had done him this +great service "without knowing the full value of it," in fact without +knowing that he WAS doing it; but that Goodson knew the value of it, and +what a narrow escape he had had, and so went to his grave grateful to his +benefactor and wishing he had a fortune to leave him. It was all clear +and simple, now, and the more he went over it the more luminous and +certain it grew; and at last, when he nestled to sleep, satisfied and +happy, he remembered the whole thing just as if it had been yesterday. +In fact, he dimly remembered Goodson's TELLING him his gratitude once. +Meantime Mary had spent six thousand dollars on a new house for herself +and a pair of slippers for her pastor, and then had fallen peacefully to +rest. + +That same Saturday evening the postman had delivered a letter to each of +the other principal citizens--nineteen letters in all. No two of the +envelopes were alike, and no two of the superscriptions were in the same +hand, but the letters inside were just like each other in every detail +but one. They were exact copies of the letter received by +Richards--handwriting and all--and were all signed by Stephenson, but in +place of Richards's name each receiver's own name appeared. + +All night long eighteen principal citizens did what their caste-brother +Richards was doing at the same time--they put in their energies trying to +remember what notable service it was that they had unconsciously done +Barclay Goodson. In no case was it a holiday job; still they succeeded. + +And while they were at this work, which was difficult, their wives put in +the night spending the money, which was easy. During that one night the +nineteen wives spent an average of seven thousand dollars each out of the +forty thousand in the sack--a hundred and thirty-three thousand +altogether. + +Next day there was a surprise for Jack Halliday. He noticed that the +faces of the nineteen chief citizens and their wives bore that expression +of peaceful and holy happiness again. He could not understand it, +neither was he able to invent any remarks about it that could damage it +or disturb it. And so it was his turn to be dissatisfied with life. His +private guesses at the reasons for the happiness failed in all instances, +upon examination. When he met Mrs. Wilcox and noticed the placid ecstasy +in her face, he said to himself, "Her cat has had kittens"--and went and +asked the cook; it was not so, the cook had detected the happiness, but +did not know the cause. When Halliday found the duplicate ecstasy in the +face of "Shadbelly" Billson (village nickname), he was sure some +neighbour of Billson's had broken his leg, but inquiry showed that this +had not happened. The subdued ecstasy in Gregory Yates's face could mean +but one thing--he was a mother-in-law short; it was another mistake. +"And Pinkerton--Pinkerton--he has collected ten cents that he thought he +was going to lose." And so on, and so on. In some cases the guesses had +to remain in doubt, in the others they proved distinct errors. In the +end Halliday said to himself, "Anyway it roots up that there's nineteen +Hadleyburg families temporarily in heaven: I don't know how it happened; +I only know Providence is off duty to-day." + +An architect and builder from the next State had lately ventured to set +up a small business in this unpromising village, and his sign had now +been hanging out a week. Not a customer yet; he was a discouraged man, +and sorry he had come. But his weather changed suddenly now. First one +and then another chief citizen's wife said to him privately: + +"Come to my house Monday week--but say nothing about it for the present. +We think of building." + +He got eleven invitations that day. That night he wrote his daughter and +broke off her match with her student. He said she could marry a mile +higher than that. + +Pinkerton the banker and two or three other well-to-do men planned +country-seats--but waited. That kind don't count their chickens until +they are hatched. + +The Wilsons devised a grand new thing--a fancy-dress ball. They made no +actual promises, but told all their acquaintanceship in confidence that +they were thinking the matter over and thought they should give it--"and +if we do, you will be invited, of course." People were surprised, and +said, one to another, "Why, they are crazy, those poor Wilsons, they +can't afford it." Several among the nineteen said privately to their +husbands, "It is a good idea, we will keep still till their cheap thing +is over, then WE will give one that will make it sick." + +The days drifted along, and the bill of future squanderings rose higher +and higher, wilder and wilder, more and more foolish and reckless. It +began to look as if every member of the nineteen would not only spend his +whole forty thousand dollars before receiving-day, but be actually in +debt by the time he got the money. In some cases light-headed people did +not stop with planning to spend, they really spent--on credit. They +bought land, mortgages, farms, speculative stocks, fine clothes, horses, +and various other things, paid down the bonus, and made themselves liable +for the rest--at ten days. Presently the sober second thought came, and +Halliday noticed that a ghastly anxiety was beginning to show up in a +good many faces. Again he was puzzled, and didn't know what to make of +it. "The Wilcox kittens aren't dead, for they weren't born; nobody's +broken a leg; there's no shrinkage in mother-in-laws; NOTHING has +happened--it is an insolvable mystery." + +There was another puzzled man, too--the Rev. Mr. Burgess. For days, +wherever he went, people seemed to follow him or to be watching out for +him; and if he ever found himself in a retired spot, a member of the +nineteen would be sure to appear, thrust an envelope privately into his +hand, whisper "To be opened at the town-hall Friday evening," then vanish +away like a guilty thing. He was expecting that there might be one +claimant for the sack--doubtful, however, Goodson being dead--but it +never occurred to him that all this crowd might be claimants. When the +great Friday came at last, he found that he had nineteen envelopes. + + + + III + + The town-hall had never looked finer. The platform at the end of it was +backed by a showy draping of flags; at intervals along the walls were +festoons of flags; the gallery fronts were clothed in flags; the +supporting columns were swathed in flags; all this was to impress the +stranger, for he would be there in considerable force, and in a large +degree he would be connected with the press. The house was full. The +412 fixed seats were occupied; also the 68 extra chairs which had been +packed into the aisles; the steps of the platform were occupied; some +distinguished strangers were given seats on the platform; at the +horseshoe of tables which fenced the front and sides of the platform sat +a strong force of special correspondents who had come from everywhere. +It was the best-dressed house the town had ever produced. There were +some tolerably expensive toilets there, and in several cases the ladies +who wore them had the look of being unfamiliar with that kind of clothes. +At least the town thought they had that look, but the notion could have +arisen from the town's knowledge of the fact that these ladies had never +inhabited such clothes before. + +The gold-sack stood on a little table at the front of the platform where +all the house could see it. The bulk of the house gazed at it with a +burning interest, a mouth-watering interest, a wistful and pathetic +interest; a minority of nineteen couples gazed at it tenderly, lovingly, +proprietarily, and the male half of this minority kept saying over to +themselves the moving little impromptu speeches of thankfulness for the +audience's applause and congratulations which they were presently going +to get up and deliver. Every now and then one of these got a piece of +paper out of his vest pocket and privately glanced at it to refresh his +memory. + +Of course there was a buzz of conversation going on--there always is; but +at last, when the Rev. Mr. Burgess rose and laid his hand on the sack, he +could hear his microbes gnaw, the place was so still. He related the +curious history of the sack, then went on to speak in warm terms of +Hadleyburg's old and well-earned reputation for spotless honesty, and of +the town's just pride in this reputation. He said that this reputation +was a treasure of priceless value; that under Providence its value had +now become inestimably enhanced, for the recent episode had spread this +fame far and wide, and thus had focussed the eyes of the American world +upon this village, and made its name for all time, as he hoped and +believed, a synonym for commercial incorruptibility. [Applause.] "And +who is to be the guardian of this noble fame--the community as a whole? +No! The responsibility is individual, not communal. From this day forth +each and every one of you is in his own person its special guardian, and +individually responsible that no harm shall come to it. Do you--does +each of you--accept this great trust? [Tumultuous assent.] Then all is +well. Transmit it to your children and to your children's children. +To-day your purity is beyond reproach--see to it that it shall remain so. +To-day there is not a person in your community who could be beguiled to +touch a penny not his own--see to it that you abide in this grace. ["We +will! we will!"] This is not the place to make comparisons between +ourselves and other communities--some of them ungracious towards us; they +have their ways, we have ours; let us be content. [Applause.] I am +done. Under my hand, my friends, rests a stranger's eloquent recognition +of what we are; through him the world will always henceforth know what we +are. We do not know who he is, but in your name I utter your gratitude, +and ask you to raise your voices in indorsement." + +The house rose in a body and made the walls quake with the thunders of +its thankfulness for the space of a long minute. Then it sat down, and +Mr. Burgess took an envelope out of his pocket. The house held its +breath while he slit the envelope open and took from it a slip of paper. +He read its contents--slowly and impressively--the audience listening +with tranced attention to this magic document, each of whose words stood +for an ingot of gold: + +"'The remark which I made to the distressed stranger was this: "You are +very far from being a bad man; go, and reform."' Then he continued:--'We +shall know in a moment now whether the remark here quoted corresponds +with the one concealed in the sack; and if that shall prove to be so--and +it undoubtedly will--this sack of gold belongs to a fellow-citizen who +will henceforth stand before the nation as the symbol of the special +virtue which has made our town famous throughout the land--Mr. Billson!'" + +The house had gotten itself all ready to burst into the proper tornado of +applause; but instead of doing it, it seemed stricken with a paralysis; +there was a deep hush for a moment or two, then a wave of whispered +murmurs swept the place--of about this tenor: "BILLSON! oh, come, this is +TOO thin! Twenty dollars to a stranger--or ANYBODY--BILLSON! Tell it +to the marines!" And now at this point the house caught its breath all +of a sudden in a new access of astonishment, for it discovered that +whereas in one part of the hall Deacon Billson was standing up with his +head weekly bowed, in another part of it Lawyer Wilson was doing the +same. There was a wondering silence now for a while. Everybody was +puzzled, and nineteen couples were surprised and indignant. + +Billson and Wilson turned and stared at each other. Billson asked, +bitingly: + +"Why do YOU rise, Mr. Wilson?" + +"Because I have a right to. Perhaps you will be good enough to explain +to the house why YOU rise." + +"With great pleasure. Because I wrote that paper." + +"It is an impudent falsity! I wrote it myself." + +It was Burgess's turn to be paralysed. He stood looking vacantly at +first one of the men and then the other, and did not seem to know what to +do. The house was stupefied. Lawyer Wilson spoke up now, and said: + +"I ask the Chair to read the name signed to that paper." + +That brought the Chair to itself, and it read out the name: + +"John Wharton BILLSON." + +"There!" shouted Billson, "what have you got to say for yourself now? +And what kind of apology are you going to make to me and to this insulted +house for the imposture which you have attempted to play here?" + +"No apologies are due, sir; and as for the rest of it, I publicly charge +you with pilfering my note from Mr. Burgess and substituting a copy of it +signed with your own name. There is no other way by which you could have +gotten hold of the test-remark; I alone, of living men, possessed the +secret of its wording." + +There was likely to be a scandalous state of things if this went on; +everybody noticed with distress that the shorthand scribes were +scribbling like mad; many people were crying "Chair, chair! Order! +order!" Burgess rapped with his gavel, and said: + +"Let us not forget the proprieties due. There has evidently been a +mistake somewhere, but surely that is all. If Mr. Wilson gave me an +envelope--and I remember now that he did--I still have it." + +He took one out of his pocket, opened it, glanced at it, looked surprised +and worried, and stood silent a few moments. Then he waved his hand in a +wandering and mechanical way, and made an effort or two to say something, +then gave it up, despondently. Several voices cried out: + +"Read it! read it! What is it?" + +So he began, in a dazed and sleep-walker fashion: + +"'The remark which I made to the unhappy stranger was this: "You are far +from being a bad man. [The house gazed at him marvelling.] Go, and +reform."'" [Murmurs: "Amazing! what can this mean?"] "This one," said +the Chair, "is signed Thurlow G. Wilson." + +"There!" cried Wilson, "I reckon that settles it! I knew perfectly well +my note was purloined." + +"Purloined!" retorted Billson. "I'll let you know that neither you nor +any man of your kidney must venture to--" + +The Chair: "Order, gentlemen, order! Take your seats, both of you, +please." + +They obeyed, shaking their heads and grumbling angrily. The house was +profoundly puzzled; it did not know what to do with this curious +emergency. Presently Thompson got up. Thompson was the hatter. He +would have liked to be a Nineteener; but such was not for him; his stock +of hats was not considerable enough for the position. He said: + +"Mr. Chairman, if I may be permitted to make a suggestion, can both of +these gentlemen be right? I put it to you, sir, can both have happened +to say the very same words to the stranger? It seems to me--" + +The tanner got up and interrupted him. The tanner was a disgruntled man; +he believed himself entitled to be a Nineteener, but he couldn't get +recognition. It made him a little unpleasant in his ways and speech. +Said he: + +"Sho, THAT'S not the point! THAT could happen--twice in a hundred +years--but not the other thing. NEITHER of them gave the twenty +dollars!" [A ripple of applause.] + +Billson. "I did!" + +Wilson. "I did!" + +Then each accused the other of pilfering. + +The Chair. "Order! Sit down, if you please--both of you. Neither of +the notes has been out of my possession at any moment." + +A Voice. "Good--that settles THAT!" + +The Tanner. "Mr. Chairman, one thing is now plain: one of these men has +been eavesdropping under the other one's bed, and filching family +secrets. If it is not unparliamentary to suggest it, I will remark that +both are equal to it. [The Chair. "Order! order!"] I withdraw the +remark, sir, and will confine myself to suggesting that IF one of them +has overheard the other reveal the test-remark to his wife, we shall +catch him now." + +A Voice. "How?" + +The Tanner. "Easily. The two have not quoted the remark in exactly the +same words. You would have noticed that, if there hadn't been a +considerable stretch of time and an exciting quarrel inserted between the +two readings." + +A Voice. "Name the difference." + +The Tanner. "The word VERY is in Billson's note, and not in the other." + +Many Voices. "That's so--he's right!" + +The Tanner. "And so, if the Chair will examine the test-remark in the +sack, we shall know which of these two frauds--[The Chair. +"Order!"]--which of these two adventurers--[The Chair. "Order! +order!"]--which of these two gentlemen--[laughter and applause]--is +entitled to wear the belt as being the first dishonest blatherskite ever +bred in this town--which he has dishonoured, and which will be a sultry +place for him from now out!" [Vigorous applause.] + +Many Voices. "Open it!--open the sack!" + +Mr. Burgess made a slit in the sack, slid his hand in, and brought out an +envelope. In it were a couple of folded notes. He said: + +"One of these is marked, 'Not to be examined until all written +communications which have been addressed to the Chair--if any--shall have +been read.' The other is marked 'THE TEST.' Allow me. It is worded--to +wit: + +"'I do not require that the first half of the remark which was made to me +by my benefactor shall be quoted with exactness, for it was not striking, +and could be forgotten; but its closing fifteen words are quite striking, +and I think easily rememberable; unless THESE shall be accurately +reproduced, let the applicant be regarded as an impostor. My benefactor +began by saying he seldom gave advice to anyone, but that it always bore +the hallmark of high value when he did give it. Then he said this--and +it has never faded from my memory: 'YOU ARE FAR FROM BEING A BAD MAN--'" + +Fifty Voices. "That settles it--the money's Wilson's! Wilson! Wilson! +Speech! Speech!" + +People jumped up and crowded around Wilson, wringing his hand and +congratulating fervently--meantime the Chair was hammering with the gavel +and shouting: + +"Order, gentlemen! Order! Order! Let me finish reading, please." When +quiet was restored, the reading was resumed--as follows: + +"'GO, AND REFORM--OR, MARK MY WORDS--SOME DAY, FOR YOUR SINS YOU WILL DIE +AND GO TO HELL OR HADLEYBURG--TRY AND MAKE IT THE FORMER.'" + +A ghastly silence followed. First an angry cloud began to settle darkly +upon the faces of the citizenship; after a pause the cloud began to rise, +and a tickled expression tried to take its place; tried so hard that it +was only kept under with great and painful difficulty; the reporters, the +Brixtonites, and other strangers bent their heads down and shielded their +faces with their hands, and managed to hold in by main strength and +heroic courtesy. At this most inopportune time burst upon the stillness +the roar of a solitary voice--Jack Halliday's: + +"THAT'S got the hall-mark on it!" + +Then the house let go, strangers and all. Even Mr. Burgess's gravity +broke down presently, then the audience considered itself officially +absolved from all restraint, and it made the most of its privilege. It +was a good long laugh, and a tempestuously wholehearted one, but it +ceased at last--long enough for Mr. Burgess to try to resume, and for the +people to get their eyes partially wiped; then it broke out again, and +afterward yet again; then at last Burgess was able to get out these +serious words: + +"It is useless to try to disguise the fact--we find ourselves in the +presence of a matter of grave import. It involves the honour of your +town--it strikes at the town's good name. The difference of a single +word between the test-remarks offered by Mr. Wilson and Mr. Billson was +itself a serious thing, since it indicated that one or the other of these +gentlemen had committed a theft--" + +The two men were sitting limp, nerveless, crushed; but at these words +both were electrified into movement, and started to get up. + +"Sit down!" said the Chair, sharply, and they obeyed. "That, as I have +said, was a serious thing. And it was--but for only one of them. But +the matter has become graver; for the honour of BOTH is now in formidable +peril. Shall I go even further, and say in inextricable peril? BOTH +left out the crucial fifteen words." He paused. During several moments +he allowed the pervading stillness to gather and deepen its impressive +effects, then added: "There would seem to be but one way whereby this +could happen. I ask these gentlemen--Was there COLLUSION?--AGREEMENT?" + +A low murmur sifted through the house; its import was, "He's got them +both." + +Billson was not used to emergencies; he sat in a helpless collapse. But +Wilson was a lawyer. He struggled to his feet, pale and worried, and +said: + +"I ask the indulgence of the house while I explain this most painful +matter. I am sorry to say what I am about to say, since it must inflict +irreparable injury upon Mr. Billson, whom I have always esteemed and +respected until now, and in whose invulnerability to temptation I +entirely believed--as did you all. But for the preservation of my own +honour I must speak--and with frankness. I confess with shame--and I now +beseech your pardon for it--that I said to the ruined stranger all of the +words contained in the test-remark, including the disparaging fifteen. +[Sensation.] When the late publication was made I recalled them, and I +resolved to claim the sack of coin, for by every right I was entitled to +it. Now I will ask you to consider this point, and weigh it well; that +stranger's gratitude to me that night knew no bounds; he said himself +that he could find no words for it that were adequate, and that if he +should ever be able he would repay me a thousandfold. Now, then, I ask +you this; could I expect--could I believe--could I even remotely imagine +--that, feeling as he did, he would do so ungrateful a thing as to add +those quite unnecessary fifteen words to his test?--set a trap for +me?--expose me as a slanderer of my own town before my own people +assembled in a public hall? It was preposterous; it was impossible. His +test would contain only the kindly opening clause of my remark. Of that I +had no shadow of doubt. You would have thought as I did. You would not +have expected a base betrayal from one whom you had befriended and +against whom you had committed no offence. And so with perfect +confidence, perfect trust, I wrote on a piece of paper the opening +words--ending with "Go, and reform,"--and signed it. When I was about to +put it in an envelope I was called into my back office, and without +thinking I left the paper lying open on my desk." He stopped, turned his +head slowly toward Billson, waited a moment, then added: "I ask you to +note this; when I returned, a little latter, Mr. Billson was retiring by +my street door." [Sensation.] + +In a moment Billson was on his feet and shouting: + +"It's a lie! It's an infamous lie!" + +The Chair. "Be seated, sir! Mr. Wilson has the floor." + +Billson's friends pulled him into his seat and quieted him, and Wilson +went on: + +"Those are the simple facts. My note was now lying in a different place +on the table from where I had left it. I noticed that, but attached no +importance to it, thinking a draught had blown it there. That Mr. Billson +would read a private paper was a thing which could not occur to me; he +was an honourable man, and he would be above that. If you will allow me +to say it, I think his extra word 'VERY' stands explained: it is +attributable to a defect of memory. I was the only man in the world who +could furnish here any detail of the test-mark--by HONOURABLE means. I +have finished." + +There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the +mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an +audience not practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory. Wilson sat +down victorious. The house submerged him in tides of approving applause; +friends swarmed to him and shook him by the hand and congratulated him, +and Billson was shouted down and not allowed to say a word. The Chair +hammered and hammered with its gavel, and kept shouting: + +"But let us proceed, gentlemen, let us proceed!" + +At last there was a measurable degree of quiet, and the hatter said: + +"But what is there to proceed with, sir, but to deliver the money?" + +Voices. "That's it! That's it! Come forward, Wilson!" + +The Hatter. "I move three cheers for Mr. Wilson, Symbol of the special +virtue which--" + +The cheers burst forth before he could finish; and in the midst of +them--and in the midst of the clamour of the gavel also--some enthusiasts +mounted Wilson on a big friend's shoulder and were going to fetch him in +triumph to the platform. The Chair's voice now rose above the noise: + +"Order! To your places! You forget that there is still a document to be +read." When quiet had been restored he took up the document, and was +going to read it, but laid it down again saying "I forgot; this is not to +be read until all written communications received by me have first been +read." He took an envelope out of his pocket, removed its enclosure, +glanced at it--seemed astonished--held it out and gazed at it--stared at +it. + +Twenty or thirty voices cried out: + +"What is it? Read it! read it!" + +And he did--slowly, and wondering: + +"'The remark which I made to the stranger--[Voices. "Hello! how's +this?"]--was this: "You are far from being a bad man. [Voices. "Great +Scott!"] Go, and reform."' [Voice. "Oh, saw my leg off!"] Signed by Mr. +Pinkerton the banker." + +The pandemonium of delight which turned itself loose now was of a sort to +make the judicious weep. Those whose withers were unwrung laughed till +the tears ran down; the reporters, in throes of laughter, set down +disordered pot-hooks which would never in the world be decipherable; and +a sleeping dog jumped up scared out of its wits, and barked itself crazy +at the turmoil. All manner of cries were scattered through the din: +"We're getting rich--TWO Symbols of Incorruptibility!--without counting +Billson!" "THREE!--count Shadbelly in--we can't have too many!" "All +right--Billson's elected!" "Alas, poor Wilson! victim of TWO thieves!" + +A Powerful Voice. "Silence! The Chair's fished up something more out of +its pocket." + +Voices. "Hurrah! Is it something fresh? Read it! read! read!" + +The Chair [reading]. "'The remark which I made,' etc. 'You are far from +being a bad man. Go,' etc. Signed, 'Gregory Yates.'" + +Tornado of Voices. "Four Symbols!" "'Rah for Yates!" "Fish again!" + +The house was in a roaring humour now, and ready to get all the fun out +of the occasion that might be in it. Several Nineteeners, looking pale +and distressed, got up and began to work their way towards the aisles, +but a score of shouts went up: + +"The doors, the doors--close the doors; no Incorruptible shall leave this +place! Sit down, everybody!" The mandate was obeyed. + +"Fish again! Read! read!" + +The Chair fished again, and once more the familiar words began to fall +from its lips--"'You are far from being a bad man--'" + +"Name! name! What's his name?" + +"'L. Ingoldsby Sargent.'" + +"Five elected! Pile up the Symbols! Go on, go on!" + +"'You are far from being a bad--'" + +"Name! name!" + +"'Nicholas Whitworth.'" + +"Hooray! hooray! it's a symbolical day!" + +Somebody wailed in, and began to sing this rhyme (leaving out "it's") to +the lovely "Mikado" tune of "When a man's afraid of a beautiful maid;" +the audience joined in, with joy; then, just in time, somebody +contributed another line-- + + "And don't you this forget--" + + The house roared it out. A third line was at once furnished-- + + "Corruptibles far from Hadleyburg are--" + + The house roared that one too. As the last note died, Jack Halliday's +voice rose high and clear, freighted with a final line-- + + "But the Symbols are here, you bet!" + +That was sung, with booming enthusiasm. Then the happy house started in +at the beginning and sang the four lines through twice, with immense +swing and dash, and finished up with a crashing three-times-three and a +tiger for "Hadleyburg the Incorruptible and all Symbols of it which we +shall find worthy to receive the hall-mark to-night." + +Then the shoutings at the Chair began again, all over the place: + +"Go on! go on! Read! read some more! Read all you've got!" + +"That's it--go on! We are winning eternal celebrity!" + +A dozen men got up now and began to protest. They said that this farce +was the work of some abandoned joker, and was an insult to the whole +community. Without a doubt these signatures were all forgeries-- + +"Sit down! sit down! Shut up! You are confessing. We'll find your +names in the lot." + +"Mr. Chairman, how many of those envelopes have you got?" + +The Chair counted. + +"Together with those that have been already examined, there are +nineteen." + +A storm of derisive applause broke out. + +"Perhaps they all contain the secret. I move that you open them all and +read every signature that is attached to a note of that sort--and read +also the first eight words of the note." + +"Second the motion!" + +It was put and carried--uproariously. Then poor old Richards got up, and +his wife rose and stood at his side. Her head was bent down, so that +none might see that she was crying. Her husband gave her his arm, and so +supporting her, he began to speak in a quavering voice: + +"My friends, you have known us two--Mary and me--all our lives, and I +think you have liked us and respected us--" + +The Chair interrupted him: + +"Allow me. It is quite true--that which you are saying, Mr. Richards; +this town DOES know you two; it DOES like you; it DOES respect you; +more--it honours you and LOVES you--" + +Halliday's voice rang out: + +"That's the hall-marked truth, too! If the Chair is right, let the house +speak up and say it. Rise! Now, then--hip! hip! hip!--all together!" + +The house rose in mass, faced toward the old couple eagerly, filled the +air with a snow-storm of waving handkerchiefs, and delivered the cheers +with all its affectionate heart. + +The Chair then continued: + +"What I was going to say is this: We know your good heart, Mr. Richards, +but this is not a time for the exercise of charity toward offenders. +[Shouts of "Right! right!"] I see your generous purpose in your face, +but I cannot allow you to plead for these men--" + +"But I was going to--" + +"Please take your seat, Mr. Richards. We must examine the rest of these +notes--simple fairness to the men who have already been exposed requires +this. As soon as that has been done--I give you my word for this--you +shall be heard." + +Many voices. "Right!--the Chair is right--no interruption can be +permitted at this stage! Go on!--the names! the names!--according to the +terms of the motion!" + +The old couple sat reluctantly down, and the husband whispered to the +wife, "It is pitifully hard to have to wait; the shame will be greater +than ever when they find we were only going to plead for OURSELVES." + +Straightway the jollity broke loose again with the reading of the names. + +"'You are far from being a bad man--' Signature, 'Robert J. Titmarsh.'" + +'"You are far from being a bad man--' Signature, 'Eliphalet Weeks.'" + +"'You are far from being a bad man--' Signature, 'Oscar B. Wilder.'" + +At this point the house lit upon the idea of taking the eight words out +of the Chairman's hands. He was not unthankful for that. Thenceforward +he held up each note in its turn and waited. The house droned out the +eight words in a massed and measured and musical deep volume of sound +(with a daringly close resemblance to a well-known church chant)--"You +are f-a-r from being a b-a-a-a-d man." Then the Chair said, "Signature, +'Archibald Wilcox.'" And so on, and so on, name after name, and +everybody had an increasingly and gloriously good time except the +wretched Nineteen. Now and then, when a particularly shining name was +called, the house made the Chair wait while it chanted the whole of the +test-remark from the beginning to the closing words, "And go to hell or +Hadleyburg--try and make it the for-or-m-e-r!" and in these special +cases they added a grand and agonised and imposing "A-a-a-a-MEN!" + +The list dwindled, dwindled, dwindled, poor old Richards keeping tally of +the count, wincing when a name resembling his own was pronounced, and +waiting in miserable suspense for the time to come when it would be his +humiliating privilege to rise with Mary and finish his plea, which he was +intending to word thus: ". . . for until now we have never done any +wrong thing, but have gone our humble way unreproached. We are very +poor, we are old, and, have no chick nor child to help us; we were sorely +tempted, and we fell. It was my purpose when I got up before to make +confession and beg that my name might not be read out in this public +place, for it seemed to us that we could not bear it; but I was +prevented. It was just; it was our place to suffer with the rest. It +has been hard for us. It is the first time we have ever heard our name +fall from any one's lips--sullied. Be merciful--for the sake or the +better days; make our shame as light to bear as in your charity you can." +At this point in his reverie Mary nudged him, perceiving that his mind +was absent. The house was chanting, "You are f-a-r," etc. + +"Be ready," Mary whispered. "Your name comes now; he has read eighteen." + +The chant ended. + +"Next! next! next!" came volleying from all over the house. + +Burgess put his hand into his pocket. The old couple, trembling, began +to rise. Burgess fumbled a moment, then said: + +"I find I have read them all." + +Faint with joy and surprise, the couple sank into their seats, and Mary +whispered: + +"Oh, bless God, we are saved!--he has lost ours--I wouldn't give this for +a hundred of those sacks!" + +The house burst out with its "Mikado" travesty, and sang it three times +with ever-increasing enthusiasm, rising to its feet when it reached for +the third time the closing line-- + +"But the Symbols are here, you bet!" + +and finishing up with cheers and a tiger for "Hadleyburg purity and our +eighteen immortal representatives of it." + +Then Wingate, the saddler, got up and proposed cheers "for the cleanest +man in town, the one solitary important citizen in it who didn't try to +steal that money--Edward Richards." + +They were given with great and moving heartiness; then somebody proposed +that "Richards be elected sole Guardian and Symbol of the now Sacred +Hadleyburg Tradition, with power and right to stand up and look the whole +sarcastic world in the face." + +Passed, by acclamation; then they sang the "Mikado" again, and ended it +with-- + +"And there's ONE Symbol left, you bet!" + +There was a pause; then-- + +A Voice. "Now, then, who's to get the sack?" + +The Tanner (with bitter sarcasm). "That's easy. The money has to be +divided among the eighteen Incorruptibles. They gave the suffering +stranger twenty dollars apiece--and that remark--each in his turn--it +took twenty-two minutes for the procession to move past. Staked the +stranger--total contribution, $360. All they want is just the loan +back--and interest--forty thousand dollars altogether." + +Many Voices [derisively.] "That's it! Divvy! divvy! Be kind to the +poor--don't keep them waiting!" + +The Chair. "Order! I now offer the stranger's remaining document. It +says: 'If no claimant shall appear [grand chorus of groans], I desire +that you open the sack and count out the money to the principal citizens +of your town, they to take it in trust [Cries of "Oh! Oh! Oh!"], and use +it in such ways as to them shall seem best for the propagation and +preservation of your community's noble reputation for incorruptible +honesty [more cries]--a reputation to which their names and their efforts +will add a new and far-reaching lustre." [Enthusiastic outburst of +sarcastic applause.] That seems to be all. No--here is a postscript: + +"'P.S.--CITIZENS OF HADLEYBURG: There IS no test-remark--nobody made +one. [Great sensation.] There wasn't any pauper stranger, nor any +twenty-dollar contribution, nor any accompanying benediction and +compliment--these are all inventions. [General buzz and hum of +astonishment and delight.] Allow me to tell my story--it will take but a +word or two. I passed through your town at a certain time, and received +a deep offence which I had not earned. Any other man would have been +content to kill one or two of you and call it square, but to me that +would have been a trivial revenge, and inadequate; for the dead do not +SUFFER. Besides I could not kill you all--and, anyway, made as I am, even +that would not have satisfied me. I wanted to damage every man in the +place, and every woman--and not in their bodies or in their estate, but +in their vanity--the place where feeble and foolish people are most +vulnerable. So I disguised myself and came back and studied you. You +were easy game. You had an old and lofty reputation for honesty, and +naturally you were proud of it--it was your treasure of treasures, the +very apple of your eye. As soon as I found out that you carefully and +vigilantly kept yourselves and your children OUT OF TEMPTATION, I knew +how to proceed. Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak +things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire. I laid a plan, +and gathered a list of names. My project was to corrupt Hadleyburg the +Incorruptible. My idea was to make liars and thieves of nearly half a +hundred smirchless men and women who had never in their lives uttered a +lie or stolen a penny. I was afraid of Goodson. He was neither born nor +reared in Hadleyburg. I was afraid that if I started to operate my +scheme by getting my letter laid before you, you would say to yourselves, +'Goodson is the only man among us who would give away twenty dollars to a +poor devil'--and then you might not bite at my bait. But heaven took +Goodson; then I knew I was safe, and I set my trap and baited it. It may +be that I shall not catch all the men to whom I mailed the pretended +test-secret, but I shall catch the most of them, if I know Hadleyburg +nature. [Voices. "Right--he got every last one of them."] I believe +they will even steal ostensible GAMBLE-money, rather than miss, poor, +tempted, and mistrained fellows. I am hoping to eternally and +everlastingly squelch your vanity and give Hadleyburg a new renown--one +that will STICK--and spread far. If I have succeeded, open the sack and +summon the Committee on Propagation and Preservation of the Hadleyburg +Reputation.'" + +A Cyclone of Voices. "Open it! Open it! The Eighteen to the front! +Committee on Propagation of the Tradition! Forward--the Incorruptibles!" + +The Chair ripped the sack wide, and gathered up a handful of bright, +broad, yellow coins, shook them together, then examined them. + +"Friends, they are only gilded disks of lead!" + +There was a crashing outbreak of delight over this news, and when the +noise had subsided, the tanner called out: + +"By right of apparent seniority in this business, Mr. Wilson is Chairman +of the Committee on Propagation of the Tradition. I suggest that he step +forward on behalf of his pals, and receive in trust the money." + +A Hundred Voices. "Wilson! Wilson! Wilson! Speech! Speech!" + +Wilson [in a voice trembling with anger]. "You will allow me to say, and +without apologies for my language, DAMN the money!" + +A Voice. "Oh, and him a Baptist!" + +A Voice. "Seventeen Symbols left! Step up, gentlemen, and assume your +trust!" + +There was a pause--no response. + +The Saddler. "Mr. Chairman, we've got ONE clean man left, anyway, out of +the late aristocracy; and he needs money, and deserves it. I move that +you appoint Jack Halliday to get up there and auction off that sack of +gilt twenty-dollar pieces, and give the result to the right man--the man +whom Hadleyburg delights to honour--Edward Richards." + +This was received with great enthusiasm, the dog taking a hand again; the +saddler started the bids at a dollar, the Brixton folk and Barnum's +representative fought hard for it, the people cheered every jump that the +bids made, the excitement climbed moment by moment higher and higher, the +bidders got on their mettle and grew steadily more and more daring, more +and more determined, the jumps went from a dollar up to five, then to +ten, then to twenty, then fifty, then to a hundred, then-- + +At the beginning of the auction Richards whispered in distress to his +wife: "Oh, Mary, can we allow it? It--it--you see, it is an +honour--reward, a testimonial to purity of character, and--and--can we +allow it? Hadn't I better get up and--Oh, Mary, what ought we to +do?--what do you think we--" [Halliday's voice. "Fifteen I'm bid! +--fifteen for the sack!--twenty!--ah, thanks!--thirty--thanks again! +Thirty, thirty, thirty!--do I hear forty?--forty it is! Keep the ball +rolling, gentlemen, keep it rolling!--fifty!--thanks, noble Roman!--going +at fifty, fifty, fifty!--seventy!--ninety!--splendid!--a hundred!--pile +it up, pile it up!--hundred and twenty--forty!--just in time!--hundred +and fifty!--Two hundred!--superb! Do I hear two h--thanks!--two hundred +and fifty!--"] + +"It is another temptation, Edward--I'm all in a tremble--but, oh, we've +escaped one temptation, and that ought to warn us, to--["Six did I +hear?--thanks!--six fifty, six f--SEVEN hundred!"] And yet, Edward, when +you think--nobody susp--["Eight hundred dollars!--hurrah!--make it +nine!--Mr. Parsons, did I hear you say--thanks!--nine!--this noble sack +of virgin lead going at only nine hundred dollars, gilding and all--come! +do I hear--a thousand!--gratefully yours!--did some one say eleven?--a +sack which is going to be the most celebrated in the whole Uni--"] Oh, +Edward (beginning to sob), we are so poor!--but--but--do as you think +best--do as you think best." + +Edward fell--that is, he sat still; sat with a conscience which was not +satisfied, but which was overpowered by circumstances. + +Meantime a stranger, who looked like an amateur detective gotten up as an +impossible English earl, had been watching the evening's proceedings with +manifest interest, and with a contented expression in his face; and he +had been privately commenting to himself. He was now soliloquising +somewhat like this: 'None of the Eighteen are bidding; that is not +satisfactory; I must change that--the dramatic unities require it; they +must buy the sack they tried to steal; they must pay a heavy price, +too--some of them are rich. And another thing, when I make a mistake in +Hadleyburg nature the man that puts that error upon me is entitled to a +high honorarium, and some one must pay. This poor old Richards has +brought my judgment to shame; he is an honest man:--I don't understand +it, but I acknowledge it. Yes, he saw my deuces--AND with a straight +flush, and by rights the pot is his. And it shall be a jack-pot, too, if +I can manage it. He disappointed me, but let that pass.' + +He was watching the bidding. At a thousand, the market broke: the +prices tumbled swiftly. He waited--and still watched. One competitor +dropped out; then another, and another. He put in a bid or two now. +When the bids had sunk to ten dollars, he added a five; some one raised +him a three; he waited a moment, then flung in a fifty-dollar jump, and +the sack was his--at $1,282. The house broke out in cheers--then +stopped; for he was on his feet, and had lifted his hand. He began to +speak. + +"I desire to say a word, and ask a favour. I am a speculator in +rarities, and I have dealings with persons interested in numismatics all +over the world. I can make a profit on this purchase, just as it stands; +but there is a way, if I can get your approval, whereby I can make every +one of these leaden twenty-dollar pieces worth its face in gold, and +perhaps more. Grant me that approval, and I will give part of my gains +to your Mr. Richards, whose invulnerable probity you have so justly and +so cordially recognised tonight; his share shall be ten thousand dollars, +and I will hand him the money to-morrow. [Great applause from the house. +But the "invulnerable probity" made the Richardses blush prettily; +however, it went for modesty, and did no harm.] If you will pass my +proposition by a good majority--I would like a two-thirds vote--I will +regard that as the town's consent, and that is all I ask. Rarities are +always helped by any device which will rouse curiosity and compel remark. +Now if I may have your permission to stamp upon the faces of each of +these ostensible coins the names of the eighteen gentlemen who--" + +Nine-tenths of the audience were on their feet in a moment--dog and +all--and the proposition was carried with a whirlwind of approving +applause and laughter. + +They sat down, and all the Symbols except "Dr." Clay Harkness got up, +violently protesting against the proposed outrage, and threatening to-- + +"I beg you not to threaten me," said the stranger calmly. "I know my +legal rights, and am not accustomed to being frightened at bluster." +[Applause.] He sat down. "Dr." Harkness saw an opportunity here. He +was one of the two very rich men of the place, and Pinkerton was the +other. Harkness was proprietor of a mint; that is to say, a popular +patent medicine. He was running for the Legislature on one ticket, and +Pinkerton on the other. It was a close race and a hot one, and getting +hotter every day. Both had strong appetites for money; each had bought a +great tract of land, with a purpose; there was going to be a new railway, +and each wanted to be in the Legislature and help locate the route to his +own advantage; a single vote might make the decision, and with it two or +three fortunes. The stake was large, and Harkness was a daring +speculator. He was sitting close to the stranger. He leaned over while +one or another of the other Symbols was entertaining the house with +protests and appeals, and asked, in a whisper, + +"What is your price for the sack?" + +"Forty thousand dollars." + +"I'll give you twenty." + +"No." + +"Twenty-five." + +"No." + +"Say thirty." + +"The price is forty thousand dollars; not a penny less." + +"All right, I'll give it. I will come to the hotel at ten in the +morning. I don't want it known; will see you privately." + +"Very good." Then the stranger got up and said to the house: + +"I find it late. The speeches of these gentlemen are not without merit, +not without interest, not without grace; yet if I may be excused I will +take my leave. I thank you for the great favour which you have shown me +in granting my petition. I ask the Chair to keep the sack for me until +to-morrow, and to hand these three five-hundred-dollar notes to Mr. +Richards." They were passed up to the Chair. + +"At nine I will call for the sack, and at eleven will deliver the rest of +the ten thousand to Mr. Richards in person at his home. Good-night." + +Then he slipped out, and left the audience making a vast noise, which was +composed of a mixture of cheers, the "Mikado" song, dog-disapproval, and +the chant, "You are f-a-r from being a b-a-a-d man--a-a-a a-men!" + + + + IV + + At home the Richardses had to endure congratulations and compliments +until midnight. Then they were left to themselves. They looked a little +sad, and they sat silent and thinking. Finally Mary sighed and said: + +"Do you think we are to blame, Edward--MUCH to blame?" and her eyes +wandered to the accusing triplet of big bank-notes lying on the table, +where the congratulators had been gloating over them and reverently +fingering them. Edward did not answer at once; then he brought out a +sigh and said, hesitatingly: + +"We--we couldn't help it, Mary. It--well it was ordered. ALL things +are." + +Mary glanced up and looked at him steadily, but he didn't return the +look. Presently she said: + +"I thought congratulations and praises always tasted good. But--it seems +to me, now--Edward?" + +"Well?" + +"Are you going to stay in the bank?" + +"N--no." + +"Resign?" + +"In the morning--by note." + +"It does seem best." + +Richards bowed his head in his hands and muttered: + +"Before I was not afraid to let oceans of people's money pour through my +hands, but--Mary, I am so tired, so tired--" + +"We will go to bed." + +At nine in the morning the stranger called for the sack and took it to +the hotel in a cab. At ten Harkness had a talk with him privately. The +stranger asked for and got five cheques on a metropolitan bank--drawn to +"Bearer,"--four for $1,500 each, and one for $34,000. He put one of the +former in his pocket-book, and the remainder, representing $38,500, he +put in an envelope, and with these he added a note which he wrote after +Harkness was gone. At eleven he called at the Richards' house and +knocked. Mrs. Richards peeped through the shutters, then went and +received the envelope, and the stranger disappeared without a word. She +came back flushed and a little unsteady on her legs, and gasped out: + +"I am sure I recognised him! Last night it seemed to me that maybe I had +seen him somewhere before." + +"He is the man that brought the sack here?" + +"I am almost sure of it." + +"Then he is the ostensible Stephenson too, and sold every important +citizen in this town with his bogus secret. Now if he has sent cheques +instead of money, we are sold too, after we thought we had escaped. I +was beginning to feel fairly comfortable once more, after my night's +rest, but the look of that envelope makes me sick. It isn't fat enough; +$8,500 in even the largest bank-notes makes more bulk than that." + +"Edward, why do you object to cheques?" + +"Cheques signed by Stephenson! I am resigned to take the $8,500 if it +could come in bank-notes--for it does seem that it was so ordered, +Mary--but I have never had much courage, and I have not the pluck to try +to market a cheque signed with that disastrous name. It would be a trap. +That man tried to catch me; we escaped somehow or other; and now he is +trying a new way. If it is cheques--" + +"Oh, Edward, it is TOO bad!" And she held up the cheques and began to +cry. + +"Put them in the fire! quick! we mustn't be tempted. It is a trick to +make the world laugh at US, along with the rest, and--Give them to ME, +since you can't do it!" He snatched them and tried to hold his grip till +he could get to the stove; but he was human, he was a cashier, and he +stopped a moment to make sure of the signature. Then he came near to +fainting. + +"Fan me, Mary, fan me! They are the same as gold!" + +"Oh, how lovely, Edward! Why?" + +"Signed by Harkness. What can the mystery of that be, Mary?" + +"Edward, do you think--" + +"Look here--look at this! Fifteen--fifteen--fifteen--thirty-four. +Thirty-eight thousand five hundred! Mary, the sack isn't worth twelve +dollars, and Harkness--apparently--has paid about par for it." + +"And does it all come to us, do you think--instead of the ten thousand?" + +"Why, it looks like it. And the cheques are made to 'Bearer,' too." + +"Is that good, Edward? What is it for?" + +"A hint to collect them at some distant bank, I reckon. Perhaps Harkness +doesn't want the matter known. What is that--a note?" + +"Yes. It was with the cheques." + +It was in the "Stephenson" handwriting, but there was no signature. It +said: + + "I am a disappointed man. Your honesty is beyond the reach of +temptation. I had a different idea about it, but I wronged you in that, +and I beg pardon, and do it sincerely. I honour you--and that is sincere +too. This town is not worthy to kiss the hem of your garment. Dear sir, +I made a square bet with myself that there were nineteen debauchable men +in your self-righteous community. I have lost. Take the whole pot, you +are entitled to it." + + Richards drew a deep sigh, and said: + +"It seems written with fire--it burns so. Mary--I am miserable again." + +"I, too. Ah, dear, I wish--" + +"To think, Mary--he BELIEVES in me." + +"Oh, don't, Edward--I can't bear it." + +"If those beautiful words were deserved, Mary--and God knows I believed I +deserved them once--I think I could give the forty thousand dollars for +them. And I would put that paper away, as representing more than gold +and jewels, and keep it always. But now--We could not live in the shadow +of its accusing presence, Mary." + +He put it in the fire. + +A messenger arrived and delivered an envelope. Richards took from it a +note and read it; it was from Burgess: + + "You saved me, in a difficult time. I saved you last night. It was at +cost of a lie, but I made the sacrifice freely, and out of a grateful +heart. None in this village knows so well as I know how brave and good +and noble you are. At bottom you cannot respect me, knowing as you do of +that matter of which I am accused, and by the general voice condemned; +but I beg that you will at least believe that I am a grateful man; it +will help me to bear my burden. [Signed] 'BURGESS.'" + + "Saved, once more. And on such terms!" He put the note in the lire. +"I--I wish I were dead, Mary, I wish I were out of it all!" + +"Oh, these are bitter, bitter days, Edward. The stabs, through their +very generosity, are so deep--and they come so fast!" + +Three days before the election each of two thousand voters suddenly found +himself in possession of a prized memento--one of the renowned bogus +double-eagles. Around one of its faces was stamped these words: "THE +REMARK I MADE TO THE POOR STRANGER WAS--" Around the other face was +stamped these: "GO, AND REFORM. [SIGNED] PINKERTON." Thus the entire +remaining refuse of the renowned joke was emptied upon a single head, and +with calamitous effect. It revived the recent vast laugh and +concentrated it upon Pinkerton; and Harkness's election was a walk-over. + +Within twenty-four hours after the Richardses had received their cheques +their consciences were quieting down, discouraged; the old couple were +learning to reconcile themselves to the sin which they had committed. +But they were to learn, now, that a sin takes on new and real terrors +when there seems a chance that it is going to be found out. This gives +it a fresh and most substantial and important aspect. At church the +morning sermon was of the usual pattern; it was the same old things said +in the same old way; they had heard them a thousand times and found them +innocuous, next to meaningless, and easy to sleep under; but now it was +different: the sermon seemed to bristle with accusations; it seemed +aimed straight and specially at people who were concealing deadly sins. +After church they got away from the mob of congratulators as soon as they +could, and hurried homeward, chilled to the bone at they did not know +what--vague, shadowy, indefinite fears. And by chance they caught a +glimpse of Mr. Burgess as he turned a corner. He paid no attention to +their nod of recognition! He hadn't seen it; but they did not know that. +What could his conduct mean? It might mean--it might--mean--oh, a dozen +dreadful things. Was it possible that he knew that Richards could have +cleared him of guilt in that bygone time, and had been silently waiting +for a chance to even up accounts? At home, in their distress they got to +imagining that their servant might have been in the next room listening +when Richards revealed the secret to his wife that he knew of Burgess's +innocence; next Richards began to imagine that he had heard the swish of +a gown in there at that time; next, he was sure he HAD heard it. They +would call Sarah in, on a pretext, and watch her face; if she had been +betraying them to Mr. Burgess, it would show in her manner. They asked +her some questions--questions which were so random and incoherent and +seemingly purposeless that the girl felt sure that the old people's minds +had been affected by their sudden good fortune; the sharp and watchful +gaze which they bent upon her frightened her, and that completed the +business. She blushed, she became nervous and confused, and to the old +people these were plain signs of guilt--guilt of some fearful sort or +other--without doubt she was a spy and a traitor. When they were alone +again they began to piece many unrelated things together and get horrible +results out of the combination. When things had got about to the worst +Richards was delivered of a sudden gasp and his wife asked: + +"Oh, what is it?--what is it?" + +"The note--Burgess's note! Its language was sarcastic, I see it now." +He quoted: "'At bottom you cannot respect me, KNOWING, as you do, of +THAT MATTER OF which I am accused'--oh, it is perfectly plain, now, God +help me! He knows that I know! You see the ingenuity of the phrasing. +It was a trap--and like a fool, I walked into it. And Mary--!" + +"Oh, it is dreadful--I know what you are going to say--he didn't return +your transcript of the pretended test-remark." + +"No--kept it to destroy us with. Mary, he has exposed us to some +already. I know it--I know it well. I saw it in a dozen faces after +church. Ah, he wouldn't answer our nod of recognition--he knew what he +had been doing!" + +In the night the doctor was called. The news went around in the morning +that the old couple were rather seriously ill--prostrated by the +exhausting excitement growing out of their great windfall, the +congratulations, and the late hours, the doctor said. The town was +sincerely distressed; for these old people were about all it had left to +be proud of, now. + +Two days later the news was worse. The old couple were delirious, and +were doing strange things. By witness of the nurses, Richards had +exhibited cheques--for $8,500? No--for an amazing sum--$38,500! What +could be the explanation of this gigantic piece of luck? + +The following day the nurses had more news--and wonderful. They had +concluded to hide the cheques, lest harm come to them; but when they +searched they were gone from under the patient's pillow--vanished away. +The patient said: + +"Let the pillow alone; what do you want?" + +"We thought it best that the cheques--" + +"You will never see them again--they are destroyed. They came from +Satan. I saw the hell-brand on them, and I knew they were sent to betray +me to sin." Then he fell to gabbling strange and dreadful things which +were not clearly understandable, and which the doctor admonished them to +keep to themselves. + +Richards was right; the cheques were never seen again. + +A nurse must have talked in her sleep, for within two days the forbidden +gabblings were the property of the town; and they were of a surprising +sort. They seemed to indicate that Richards had been a claimant for the +sack himself, and that Burgess had concealed that fact and then +maliciously betrayed it. + +Burgess was taxed with this and stoutly denied it. And he said it was +not fair to attach weight to the chatter of a sick old man who was out of +his mind. Still, suspicion was in the air, and there was much talk. + +After a day or two it was reported that Mrs. Richards's delirious +deliveries were getting to be duplicates of her husband's. Suspicion +flamed up into conviction, now, and the town's pride in the purity of its +one undiscredited important citizen began to dim down and flicker toward +extinction. + +Six days passed, then came more news. The old couple were dying. +Richards's mind cleared in his latest hour, and he sent for Burgess. +Burgess said: + +"Let the room be cleared. I think he wishes to say something in +privacy." + +"No!" said Richards; "I want witnesses. I want you all to hear my +confession, so that I may die a man, and not a dog. I was clean +--artificially--like the rest; and like the rest I fell when temptation +came. I signed a lie, and claimed the miserable sack. Mr. Burgess +remembered that I had done him a service, and in gratitude (and +ignorance) he suppressed my claim and saved me. You know the thing that +was charged against Burgess years ago. My testimony, and mine alone, +could have cleared him, and I was a coward and left him to suffer +disgrace--" + +"No--no--Mr. Richards, you--" + +"My servant betrayed my secret to him--" + +"No one has betrayed anything to me--" + +--"And then he did a natural and justifiable thing; he repented of the +saving kindness which he had done me, and he EXPOSED me--as I deserved--" + +"Never!--I make oath--" + +"Out of my heart I forgive him." + +Burgess's impassioned protestations fell upon deaf ears; the dying man +passed away without knowing that once more he had done poor Burgess a +wrong. The old wife died that night. + +The last of the sacred Nineteen had fallen a prey to the fiendish sack; +the town was stripped of the last rag of its ancient glory. Its mourning +was not showy, but it was deep. + +By act of the Legislature--upon prayer and petition--Hadleyburg was +allowed to change its name to (never mind what--I will not give it away), +and leave one word out of the motto that for many generations had graced +the town's official seal. + +It is an honest town once more, and the man will have to rise early that +catches it napping again. + + + + + +MY FIRST LIE, AND HOW I GOT OUT OF IT + +As I understand it, what you desire is information about 'my first lie, +and how I got out of it.' I was born in 1835; I am well along, and my +memory is not as good as it was. If you had asked about my first truth +it would have been easier for me and kinder of you, for I remember that +fairly well. I remember it as if it were last week. The family think it +was week before, but that is flattery and probably has a selfish project +back of it. When a person has become seasoned by experience and has +reached the age of sixty-four, which is the age of discretion, he likes a +family compliment as well as ever, but he does not lose his head over it +as in the old innocent days. + +I do not remember my first lie, it is too far back; but I remember my +second one very well. I was nine days old at the time, and had noticed +that if a pin was sticking in me and I advertised it in the usual +fashion, I was lovingly petted and coddled and pitied in a most agreeable +way and got a ration between meals besides. + +It was human nature to want to get these riches, and I fell. I lied +about the pin--advertising one when there wasn't any. You would have +done it; George Washington did it, anybody would have done it. During +the first half of my life I never knew a child that was able to rise +about that temptation and keep from telling that lie. Up to 1867 all the +civilised children that were ever born into the world were liars +--including George. Then the safety-pin came in and blocked the game. But +is that reform worth anything? No; for it is reform by force and has no +virtue in it; it merely stops that form of lying, it doesn't impair the +disposition to lie, by a shade. It is the cradle application of +conversion by fire and sword, or of the temperance principle through +prohibition. + +To return to that early lie. They found no pin and they realised that +another liar had been added to the world's supply. For by grace of a +rare inspiration a quite commonplace but seldom noticed fact was borne in +upon their understandings--that almost all lies are acts, and speech has +no part in them. Then, if they examined a little further they recognised +that all people are liars from the cradle onwards, without exception, and +that they begin to lie as soon as they wake in the morning, and keep it +up without rest or refreshment until they go to sleep at night. If they +arrived at that truth it probably grieved them--did, if they had been +heedlessly and ignorantly educated by their books and teachers; for why +should a person grieve over a thing which by the eternal law of his make +he cannot help? He didn't invent the law; it is merely his business to +obey it and keep still; join the universal conspiracy and keep so still +that he shall deceive his fellow-conspirators into imagining that he +doesn't know that the law exists. It is what we all do--we that know. I +am speaking of the lie of silent assertion; we can tell it without saying +a word, and we all do it--we that know. In the magnitude of its +territorial spread it is one of the most majestic lies that the +civilisations make it their sacred and anxious care to guard and watch +and propagate. + +For instance. It would not be possible for a humane and intelligent +person to invent a rational excuse for slavery; yet you will remember +that in the early days of the emancipation agitation in the North the +agitators got but small help or countenance from any one. Argue and +plead and pray as they might, they could not break the universal +stillness that reigned, from pulpit and press all the way down to the +bottom of society--the clammy stillness created and maintained by the lie +of silent assertion--the silent assertion that there wasn't anything +going on in which humane and intelligent people were interested. + +From the beginning of the Dreyfus case to the end of it all France, +except a couple of dozen moral paladins, lay under the smother of the +silent-assertion lie that no wrong was being done to a persecuted and +unoffending man. The like smother was over England lately, a good half +of the population silently letting on that they were not aware that Mr. +Chamberlain was trying to manufacture a war in South Africa and was +willing to pay fancy prices for the materials. + +Now there we have instances of three prominent ostensible civilisations +working the silent-assertion lie. Could one find other instances in the +three countries? I think so. Not so very many perhaps, but say a +billion--just so as to keep within bounds. Are those countries working +that kind of lie, day in and day out, in thousands and thousands of +varieties, without ever resting? Yes, we know that to be true. The +universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always +and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, +never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most +timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages +and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and +aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and +religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here +and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them +alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent +assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men are +aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop. + +What I am arriving at is this: When whole races and peoples conspire to +propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why +should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals? Why +should we try to make it appear that abstention from lying is a virtue? +Why should we want to beguile ourselves in that way? Why should we +without shame help the nation lie, and then be ashamed to do a little +lying on our own account? Why shouldn't we be honest and honourable, and +lie every time we get a chance? That is to say, why shouldn't we be +consistent, and either lie all the time or not at all? Why should we +help the nation lie the whole day long and then object to telling one +little individual private lie in our own interest to go to bed on? Just +for the refreshment of it, I mean, and to take the rancid taste out of +our mouth. + +Here in England they have the oddest ways. They won't tell a spoken lie +--nothing can persuade them. Except in a large moral interest, like +politics or religion, I mean. To tell a spoken lie to get even the +poorest little personal advantage out of it is a thing which is +impossible to them. They make me ashamed of myself sometimes, they are +so bigoted. They will not even tell a lie for the fun of it; they will +not tell it when it hasn't even a suggestion of damage or advantage in +it for any one. This has a restraining influence upon me in spite of +reason, and I am always getting out of practice. + +Of course, they tell all sorts of little unspoken lies, just like +anybody; but they don't notice it until their attention is called to it. +They have got me so that sometimes I never tell a verbal lie now except +in a modified form; and even in the modified form they don't approve of +it. Still, that is as far as I can go in the interest of the growing +friendly relations between the two countries; I must keep some of my +self-respect--and my health. I can live on a pretty low diet, but I +can't get along on no sustenance at all. + +Of course, there are times when these people have to come out with a +spoken lie, for that is a thing which happens to everybody once in a +while, and would happen to the angels if they came down here much. +Particularly to the angels, in fact, for the lies I speak of are +self-sacrificing ones told for a generous object, not a mean one; but +even when these people tell a lie of that sort it seems to scare them +and unsettle their minds. It is a wonderful thing to see, and shows +that they are all insane. In fact, it is a country which is full of +the most interesting superstitions. + +I have an English friend of twenty-five years' standing, and yesterday +when we were coming down-town on top of the 'bus I happened to tell him a +lie--a modified one, of course; a half-breed, a mulatto; I can't seem to +tell any other kind now, the market is so flat. I was explaining to him +how I got out of an embarrassment in Austria last year. I do not know +what might have become of me if I hadn't happened to remember to tell the +police that I belonged to the same family as the Prince of Wales. That +made everything pleasant and they let me go; and apologised, too, and +were ever so kind and obliging and polite, and couldn't do too much for +me, and explained how the mistake came to be made, and promised to hang +the officer that did it, and hoped I would let bygones be bygones and not +say anything about it; and I said they could depend on me. My friend +said, austerely: + +'You call it a modified lie? Where is the modification?' + +I explained that it lay in the form of my statement to the police. +'I didn't say I belonged to the Royal Family; I only said I belonged to +the same family as the Prince--meaning the human family, of course; and +if those people had had any penetration they would have known it. I +can't go around furnishing brains to the police; it is not to be +expected.' + +'How did you feel after that performance?' + +'Well, of course I was distressed to find that the police had +misunderstood me, but as long as I had not told any lie I knew there was +no occasion to sit up nights and worry about it.' + +My friend struggled with the case several minutes, turning it over and +examining it in his mind, then he said that so far as he could see the +modification was itself a lie, it being a misleading reservation of an +explanatory fact, and so I had told two lies instead of only one. + +'I wouldn't have done it,' said he; 'I have never told a lie, and I +should be very sorry to do such a thing.' + +Just then he lifted his hat and smiled a basketful of surprised and +delighted smiles down at a gentleman who was passing in a hansom. + +'Who was that, G---?' + +'I don't know.' + +'Then why did you do that?' + +'Because I saw he thought he knew me and was expecting it of me. If I +hadn't done it he would have been hurt. I didn't want to embarrass him +before the whole street.' + +'Well, your heart was right, G---, and your act was right. What you did +was kindly and courteous and beautiful; I would have done it myself; but +it was a lie.' + +'A lie? I didn't say a word. How do you make it out?' + +'I know you didn't speak, still you said to him very plainly and +enthusiastically in dumb show, "Hello! you in town? Awful glad to see +you, old fellow; when did you get back?" Concealed in your actions was +what you have called "a misleading reservation of an explanatory fact" +--the act that you had never seen him before. You expressed joy in +encountering him--a lie; and you made that reservation--another lie. It +was my pair over again. But don't be troubled--we all do it.' + +Two hours later, at dinner, when quite other matters were being +discussed, he told how he happened along once just in the nick of time to +do a great service for a family who were old friends of his. The head of +it had suddenly died in circumstances and surroundings of a ruinously +disgraceful character. If know the facts would break the hearts of the +innocent family and put upon them a load of unendurable shame. There was +no help but in a giant lie, and he girded up his loins and told it. + +'The family never found out, G---?' + +'Never. In all these years they have never suspected. They were proud +of him and had always reason to be; they are proud of him yet, and to +them his memory is sacred and stainless and beautiful.' + +'They had a narrow escape, G---.' + +'Indeed they had.' + +'For the very next man that came along might have been one of these +heartless and shameless truth-mongers. You have told the truth a million +times in your life, G---, but that one golden lie atones for it all. +Persevere.' + +Some may think me not strict enough in my morals, but that position is +hardly tenable. There are many kinds of lying which I do not approve. I +do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else; and I +do not like the lie of bravado, nor the lie of virtuous ecstasy; the +latter was affected by Bryant, the former by Carlyle. + +Mr. Bryant said, 'Truth crushed to earth will rise again.' I have taken +medals at thirteen world's fairs, and may claim to be not without +capacity, but I never told as big a one as that. Mr. Bryant was playing +to the gallery; we all do it. Carlyle said, in substance, this--I do not +remember the exact words: 'This gospel is eternal--that a lie shall not +live.' I have a reverent affection for Carlyle's books, and have read +his 'Revelation' eight times; and so I prefer to think he was not +entirely at himself when he told that one. To me it is plain that he +said it in a moment of excitement, when chasing Americans out of his +back-yard with brickbats. They used to go there and worship. At bottom +he was probably fond of it, but he was always able to conceal it. He +kept bricks for them, but he was not a good shot, and it is matter of +history that when he fired they dodged, and carried off the brick; for as +a nation we like relics, and so long as we get them we do not much care +what the reliquary thinks about it. I am quite sure that when he told +that large one about a lie not being able to live he had just missed an +American and was over excited. He told it above thirty years ago, but it +is alive yet; alive, and very healthy and hearty, and likely to outlive +any fact in history. Carlyle was truthful when calm, but give him +Americans enough and bricks enough and he could have taken medals +himself. + +As regards that time that George Washington told the truth, a word must +be said, of course. It is the principal jewel in the crown of America, +and it is but natural that we should work it for all it is worth, as +Milton says in his 'Lay of the Last Minstrel.' It was a timely and +judicious truth, and I should have told it myself in the circumstances. +But I should have stopped there. It was a stately truth, a lofty truth +--a Tower; and I think it was a mistake to go on and distract attention +from its sublimity by building another Tower alongside of it fourteen +times as high. I refer to his remark that he 'could not lie.' I should +have fed that to the marines; or left it to Carlyle; it is just in his +style. It would have taken a medal at any European fair, and would have +got an honourable mention even at Chicago if it had been saved up. But +let it pass; the Father of his Country was excited. I have been in those +circumstances, and I recollect. + +With the truth he told I have no objection to offer, as already +indicated. I think it was not premeditated but an inspiration. With his +fine military mind, he had probably arranged to let his brother Edward in +for the cherry tree results, but by an inspiration he saw his opportunity +in time and took advantage of it. By telling the truth he could astonish +his father; his father would tell the neighbours; the neighbours would +spread it; it would travel to all firesides; in the end it would make him +President, and not only that, but First President. He was a far-seeing +boy and would be likely to think of these things. Therefore, to my mind, +he stands justified for what he did. But not for the other Tower; it was +a mistake. Still, I don't know about that; upon reflection I think +perhaps it wasn't. For indeed it is that Tower that makes the other one +live. If he hadn't said 'I cannot tell a lie' there would have been no +convulsion. That was the earthquake that rocked the planet. That is the +kind of statement that lives for ever, and a fact barnacled to it has a +good chance to share its immortality. + +To sum up, on the whole I am satisfied with things the way they are. +There is a prejudice against the spoken lie, but none against any other, +and by examination and mathematical computation I find that the +proportion of the spoken lie to the other varieties is as 1 to 22,894. +Therefore the spoken lie is of no consequence, and it is not worth while +to go around fussing about it and trying to make believe that it is an +important matter. The silent colossal National Lie that is the support +and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and +unfairnesses that afflict the peoples--that is the one to throw bricks +and sermons at. But let us be judicious and let somebody else begin. + +And then--But I have wandered from my text. How did I get out of my +second lie? I think I got out with honour, but I cannot be sure, for it +was a long time ago and some of the details have faded out of my memory. +I recollect that I was reversed and stretched across some one's knee, and +that something happened, but I cannot now remember what it was. I think +there was music; but it is all dim now and blurred by the lapse of time, +and this may be only a senile fancy. + + + + + + +THE ESQUIMAUX MAIDEN'S ROMANCE + +'Yes, I will tell you anything about my life that you would like to know, +Mr. Twain,' she said, in her soft voice, and letting her honest eyes rest +placidly upon my face, 'for it is kind and good of you to like me and +care to know about me.' + +She had been absently scraping blubber-grease from her cheeks with a +small bone-knife and transferring it to her fur sleeve, while she watched +the Aurora Borealis swing its flaming streamers out of the sky and wash +the lonely snow plain and the templed icebergs with the rich hues of the +prism, a spectacle of almost intolerable splendour and beauty; but now +she shook off her reverie and prepared to give me the humble little +history I had asked for. She settled herself comfortably on the block of +ice which we were using as a sofa, and I made ready to listen. + +She was a beautiful creature. I speak from the Esquimaux point of view. +Others would have thought her a trifle over-plump. She was just twenty +years old, and was held to be by far the most bewitching girl in her +tribe. Even now, in the open air, with her cumbersome and shapeless fur +coat and trousers and boots and vast hood, the beauty of her face was at +least apparent; but her figure had to be taken on trust. Among all the +guests who came and went, I had seen no girl at her father's hospitable +trough who could be called her equal. Yet she was not spoiled. She was +sweet and natural and sincere, and if she was aware that she was a belle, +there was nothing about her ways to show that she possessed that +knowledge. + +She had been my daily comrade for a week now, and the better I knew her +the better I liked her. She had been tenderly and carefully brought up, +in an atmosphere of singularly rare refinement for the polar regions, for +her father was the most important man of his tribe and ranked at the top +of Esquimaux civilisation. I made long dog-sledge trips across the +mighty ice floes with Lasca--that was her name--and found her company +always pleasant and her conversation agreeable. I went fishing with her, +but not in her perilous boat: I merely followed along on the ice and +watched her strike her game with her fatally accurate spear. We went +sealing together; several times I stood by while she and the family dug +blubber from a stranded whale, and once I went part of the way when she +was hunting a bear, but turned back before the finish, because at bottom +I am afraid of bears. + +However, she was ready to begin her story, now, and this is what she +said: + +'Our tribe had always been used to wander about from place to place over +the frozen seas, like the other tribes, but my father got tired of that, +two years ago, and built this great mansion of frozen snow-blocks--look +at it; it is seven feet high and three or four times as long as any of +the others--and here we have stayed ever since. He was very proud of his +house, and that was reasonable, for if you have examined it with care you +must have noticed how much finer and completer it is than houses usually +are. But if you have not, you must, for you will find it has luxurious +appointments that are quite beyond the common. For instance, in that end +of it which you have called the "parlour," the raised platform for the +accommodation of guests and the family at meals is the largest you have +ever seen in any house--is it not so?' + +'Yes, you are quite right, Lasca; it is the largest; we have nothing +resembling it in even the finest houses in the United States.' This +admission made her eyes sparkle with pride and pleasure. I noted that, +and took my cue. + +'I thought it must have surprised you,' she said. 'And another thing; it +is bedded far deeper in furs than is usual; all kinds of furs--seal, +sea-otter, silver-grey fox, bear, marten, sable--every kind of fur in +profusion; and the same with the ice-block sleeping-benches along the +walls which you call "beds." Are your platforms and sleeping-benches +better provided at home?' + +'Indeed, they are not, Lasca--they do not begin to be.' That pleased her +again. All she was thinking of was the number of furs her aesthetic +father took the trouble to keep on hand, not their value. I could have +told her that those masses of rich furs constituted wealth--or would in +my country--but she would not have understood that; those were not the +kind of things that ranked as riches with her people. I could have told +her that the clothes she had on, or the every-day clothes of the +commonest person about her, were worth twelve or fifteen hundred dollars, +and that I was not acquainted with anybody at home who wore +twelve-hundred dollar toilets to go fishing in; but she would not have +understood it, so I said nothing. She resumed: + +'And then the slop-tubs. We have two in the parlour, and two in the rest +of the house. It is very seldom that one has two in the parlour. Have +you two in the parlour at home?' + +The memory of those tubs made me gasp, but I recovered myself before she +noticed, and said with effusion: + +'Why, Lasca, it is a shame of me to expose my country, and you must not +let it go further, for I am speaking to you in confidence; but I give you +my word of honour that not even the richest man in the city of New York +has two slop-tubs in his drawing-room.' + +She clapped her fur-clad hands in innocent delight, and exclaimed: + +'Oh, but you cannot mean it, you cannot mean it!' + +'Indeed, I am in earnest, dear. There is Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is +almost the richest man in the whole world. Now, if I were on my dying +bed, I could say to you that not even he has two in his drawing-room. +Why, he hasn't even one--I wish I may die in my tracks if it isn't true.' + +Her lovely eyes stood wide with amazement, and she said, slowly, and with +a sort of awe in her voice: + +'How strange--how incredible--one is not able to realise it. Is he +penurious?' + +'No--it isn't that. It isn't the expense he minds, but--er--well, you +know, it would look like showing off. Yes, that is it, that is the idea; +he is a plain man in his way, and shrinks from display.' + +'Why, that humility is right enough,' said Lasca, 'if one does not carry +it too far--but what does the place look like?' + +'Well, necessarily it looks pretty barren and unfinished, but--' + +'I should think so! I never heard anything like it. Is it a fine house +--that is, otherwise?' + +'Pretty fine, yes. It is very well thought of.' + +The girl was silent awhile, and sat dreamily gnawing a candle-end, +apparently trying to think the thing out. At last she gave her head a +little toss and spoke out her opinion with decision: + +'Well, to my mind there's a breed of humility which is itself a species +of showing off when you get down to the marrow of it; and when a man is +able to afford two slop-tubs in his parlour, and doesn't do it, it may be +that he is truly humble-minded, but it's a hundred times more likely that +he is just trying to strike the public eye. In my judgment, your Mr. +Vanderbilt knows what he is about.' + +I tried to modify this verdict, feeling that a double slop-tub standard +was not a fair one to try everybody by, although a sound enough one in +its own habitat; but the girl's head was set, and she was not to be +persuaded. Presently she said: + +'Do the rich people, with you, have as good sleeping-benches as ours, and +made out of as nice broad ice-blocks?' + +'Well, they are pretty good--good enough--but they are not made of +ice-blocks.' + +'I want to know! Why aren't they made of ice-blocks?' + +I explained the difficulties in the way, and the expensiveness of ice in +a country where you have to keep a sharp eye on your ice-man or your +ice-bill will weigh more than your ice. Then she cried out: + +'Dear me, do you buy your ice?' + +'We most surely do, dear.' + +She burst into a gale of guileless laughter, and said: + +'Oh, I never heard of anything so silly! My! there's plenty of it--it +isn't worth anything. Why, there is a hundred miles of it in sight, +right now. I wouldn't give a fish-bladder for the whole of it.' + +'Well, it's because you don't know how to value it, you little provincial +muggings. If you had it in New York in midsummer, you could buy all the +whales in the market with it.' + +She looked at me doubtfully, and said: + +'Are you speaking true?' + +'Absolutely. I take my oath to it.' + +This made her thoughtful. Presently she said, with a little sigh: + +'I wish I could live there.' + +I had merely meant to furnish her a standard of values which she could +understand; but my purpose had miscarried. I had only given her the +impression that whales were cheap and plenty in New York, and set her +mouth to watering for them. It seemed best to try to mitigate the evil +which I had done, so I said: + +'But you wouldn't care for whale-meat if you lived there. Nobody does.' + +'What!' + +'Indeed they don't.' + +'Why don't they?' + +'Wel-l-l, I hardly know. It's prejudice, I think. Yes, that is it--just +prejudice. I reckon somebody that hadn't anything better to do started a +prejudice against it, some time or other, and once you get a caprice like +that fairly going, you know it will last no end of time.' + +'That is true--perfectly true,' said the girl, reflectively. 'Like our +prejudice against soap, here--our tribes had a prejudice against soap at +first, you know.' + +I glanced at her to see if she was in earnest. Evidently she was. I +hesitated, then said, cautiously: + +'But pardon me. They had a prejudice against soap? Had?'--with falling +inflection. + +'Yes--but that was only at first; nobody would eat it.' + +'Oh--I understand. I didn't get your idea before.' + +She resumed: + +'It was just a prejudice. The first time soap came here from the +foreigners, nobody liked it; but as soon as it got to be fashionable, +everybody liked it, and now everybody has it that can afford it. Are you +fond of it?' + +'Yes, indeed; I should die if I couldn't have it--especially here. Do +you like it?' + +'I just adore it! Do you like candles?' + +'I regard them as an absolute necessity. Are you fond of them?' + +Her eyes fairly danced, and she exclaimed: + +'Oh! Don't mention it! Candles!--and soap!--' + +'And fish-interiors!--' + +'And train-oil--' + +'And slush!--' + +'And whale-blubber!--' + +'And carrion! and sour-krout! and beeswax! and tar! and turpentine! and +molasses! and--' + +'Don't--oh, don't--I shall expire with ecstasy!--' + +'And then serve it all up in a slush-bucket, and invite the neighbours +and sail in!' + +But this vision of an ideal feast was too much for her, and she swooned +away, poor thing. I rubbed snow in her face and brought her to, and +after a while got her excitement cooled down. By-and-by she drifted into +her story again: + +'So we began to live here in the fine house. But I was not happy. The +reason was this: I was born for love: for me there could be no true +happiness without it. I wanted to be loved for myself alone. I wanted +an idol, and I wanted to be my idol's idol; nothing less than mutual +idolatry would satisfy my fervent nature. I had suitors in plenty--in +over-plenty, indeed--but in each and every case they had a fatal defect: +sooner or later I discovered that defect--not one of them failed to +betray it--it was not me they wanted, but my wealth.' + +'Your wealth?' + +'Yes; for my father is much the richest man in this tribe--or in any +tribe in these regions.' + +I wondered what her father's wealth consisted of. It couldn't be the +house--anybody could build its mate. It couldn't be the furs--they were +not valued. It couldn't be the sledge, the dogs, the harpoons, the boat, +the bone fish-hooks and needles, and such things--no, these were not +wealth. Then what could it be that made this man so rich and brought +this swarm of sordid suitors to his house? It seemed to me, finally, +that the best way to find out would be to ask. So I did it. The girl +was so manifestly gratified by the question that I saw she had been +aching to have me ask it. She was suffering fully as much to tell as I +was to know. She snuggled confidentially up to me and said: + +'Guess how much he is worth--you never can!' + +I pretended to consider the matter deeply, she watching my anxious and +labouring countenance with a devouring and delighted interest; and when, +at last, I gave it up and begged her to appease my longing by telling me +herself how much this polar Vanderbilt was worth, she put her mouth close +to my ear and whispered, impressively: + +'Twenty-two fish-hooks--not bone, but foreign--made out of real iron!' + +Then she sprang back dramatically, to observe the effect. I did my level +best not to disappoint her. I turned pale and murmured: + +'Great Scott!' + +'It's as true as you live, Mr. Twain!' + +'Lasca, you are deceiving me--you cannot mean it.' + +She was frightened and troubled. She exclaimed: + +'Mr. Twain, every word of it is true--every word. You believe me--you do +believe me, now don't you? Say you believe me--do say you believe me!' + +'I--well, yes, I do--I am trying to. But it was all so sudden. So +sudden and prostrating. You shouldn't do such a thing in that sudden +way. It--' + +'Oh, I'm so sorry! If I had only thought--' + +'Well, it's all right, and I don't blame you any more, for you are young +and thoughtless, and of course you couldn't foresee what an effect--' + +'But oh, dear, I ought certainly to have known better. Why--' + +'You see, Lasca, if you had said five or six hooks, to start with, and +then gradually--' + +'Oh, I see, I see--then gradually added one, and then two, and then--ah, +why couldn't I have thought of that!' + +'Never mind, child, it's all right--I am better now--I shall be over it +in a little while. But--to spring the whole twenty-two on a person +unprepared and not very strong anyway--' + +'Oh, it was a crime! But you forgive me--say you forgive me. Do!' + +After harvesting a good deal of very pleasant coaxing and petting and +persuading, I forgave her and she was happy again, and by-and-by she got +under way with her narrative once more. I presently discovered that the +family treasury contained still another feature--a jewel of some sort, +apparently--and that she was trying to get around speaking squarely about +it, lest I get paralysed again. But I wanted to known about that thing, +too, and urged her to tell me what it was. She was afraid. But I +insisted, and said I would brace myself this time and be prepared, then +the shock would not hurt me. She was full of misgivings, but the +temptation to reveal that marvel to me and enjoy my astonishment and +admiration was too strong for her, and she confessed that she had it on +her person, and said that if I was sure I was prepared--and so on and so +on--and with that she reached into her bosom and brought out a battered +square of brass, watching my eye anxiously the while. I fell over +against her in a quite well-acted faint, which delighted her heart and +nearly frightened it out of her, too, at the same time. When I came to +and got calm, she was eager to know what I thought of her jewel. + +'What do I think of it? I think it is the most exquisite thing I ever +saw.' + +'Do you really? How nice of you to say that! But it is a love, now isn't +it?' + +'Well, I should say so! I'd rather own it than the equator.' + +'I thought you would admire it,' she said. 'I think it is so lovely. +And there isn't another one in all these latitudes. People have come all +the way from the open Polar Sea to look at it. Did you ever see one +before?' + +I said no, this was the first one I had ever seen. It cost me a pang to +tell that generous lie, for I had seen a million of them in my time, this +humble jewel of hers being nothing but a battered old New York Central +baggage check. + +'Land!' said I, 'you don't go about with it on your person this way, +alone and with no protection, not even a dog?' + +'Ssh! not so loud,' she said. 'Nobody knows I carry it with me. They +think it is in papa's treasury. That is where it generally is.' + +'Where is the treasury?' + +It was a blunt question, and for a moment she looked startled and a +little suspicious, but I said: + +'Oh, come, don't you be afraid about me. At home we have seventy +millions of people, and although I say it myself that shouldn't, there is +not one person among them all but would trust me with untold fish-hooks.' + +This reassured her, and she told me where the hooks were hidden in the +house. Then she wandered from her course to brag a little about the size +of the sheets of transparent ice that formed the windows of the mansion, +and asked me if I had ever seen their like at home, and I came right out +frankly and confessed that I hadn't, which pleased her more than she +could find words to dress her gratification in. It was so easy to please +her, and such a pleasure to do it, that I went on and said-- + +'Ah, Lasca, you are a fortune girl!--this beautiful house, this dainty +jewel, that rich treasure, all this elegant snow, and sumptuous icebergs +and limitless sterility, and public bears and walruses, and noble freedom +and largeness and everybody's admiring eyes upon you, and everybody's +homage and respect at your command without the asking; young, rich, +beautiful, sought, courted, envied, not a requirement unsatisfied, not a +desire ungratified, nothing to wish for that you cannot have--it is +immeasurable good-fortune! I have seen myriads of girls, but none of whom +these extraordinary things could be truthfully said but you alone. And +you are worthy--worthy of it all, Lasca--I believe it in my heart.' + +It made her infinitely proud and happy to hear me say this, and she +thanked me over and over again for that closing remark, and her voice and +eyes showed that she was touched. Presently she said: + +'Still, it is not all sunshine--there is a cloudy side. The burden of +wealth is a heavy one to bear. Sometimes I have doubted if it were not +better to be poor--at least not inordinately rich. It pains me to see +neighbouring tribesmen stare as they pass by, and overhear them say, +reverently, one to another, "There--that is she--the millionaire's +daughter!" And sometimes they say sorrowfully, "She is rolling in +fish-hooks, and I--I have nothing." It breaks my heart. When I was a +child and we were poor, we slept with the door open, if we chose, but +now--now we have to have a night-watchman. In those days my father was +gentle and courteous to all; but now he is austere and haughty and cannot +abide familiarity. Once his family were his sole thought, but now he +goes about thinking of his fish-hooks all the time. And his wealth makes +everybody cringing and obsequious to him. Formerly nobody laughed at his +jokes, they being always stale and far-fetched and poor, and destitute of +the one element that can really justify a joke--the element of humour; +but now everybody laughs and cackles at these dismal things, and if any +fails to do it my father is deeply displeased, and shows it. Formerly +his opinion was not sought upon any matter and was not valuable when he +volunteered it; it has that infirmity yet, but, nevertheless, it is +sought by all and applauded by all--and he helps do the applauding +himself, having no true delicacy and a plentiful want of tact. He has +lowered the tone of all our tribe. Once they were a frank and manly +race, now they are measly hypocrites, and sodden with servility. In my +heart of hearts I hate all the ways of millionaires! Our tribe was once +plain, simple folk, and content with the bone fish-hooks of their +fathers; now they are eaten up with avarice and would sacrifice every +sentiment of honour and honesty to possess themselves of the debasing +iron fish-hooks of the foreigner. However, I must not dwell on these sad +things. As I have said, it was my dream to be loved for myself alone. + +'At last, this dream seemed about to be fulfilled. A stranger came by, +one day, who said his name was Kalula. I told him my name, and he said +he loved me. My heart gave a great bound of gratitude and pleasure, for +I had loved him at sight, and now I said so. He took me to his breast +and said he would not wish to be happier than he was now. We went +strolling together far over the ice-floes, telling all about each other, +and planning, oh, the loveliest future! When we were tired at last we sat +down and ate, for he had soap and candles and I had brought along some +blubber. We were hungry and nothing was ever so good. + +'He belonged to a tribe whose haunts were far to the north, and I found +that he had never heard of my father, which rejoiced me exceedingly. I +mean he had heard of the millionaire, but had never heard his name--so, +you see, he could not know that I was the heiress. You may be sure that +I did not tell him. I was loved for myself at last, and was satisfied. +I was so happy--oh, happier than you can think! + +'By-and-by it was towards supper time, and I led him home. As we +approached our house he was amazed, and cried out: + +'"How splendid! Is that your father's?" + +'It gave me a pang to hear that tone and see that admiring light in his +eye, but the feeling quickly passed away, for I loved him so, and he +looked so handsome and noble. All my family of aunts and uncles and +cousins were pleased with him, and many guests were called in, and the +house was shut up tight and the rag lamps lighted, and when everything +was hot and comfortable and suffocating, we began a joyous feast in +celebration of my betrothal. + +'When the feast was over my father's vanity overcame him, and he could +not resist the temptation to show off his riches and let Kalula see what +grand good-fortune he had stumbled into--and mainly, of course, he wanted +to enjoy the poor man's amazement. I could have cried--but it would have +done no good to try to dissuade my father, so I said nothing, but merely +sat there and suffered. + +'My father went straight to the hiding-place in full sight of everybody, +and got out the fish-hooks and brought them and flung them scatteringly +over my head, so that they fell in glittering confusion on the platform +at my lover's knee. + +'Of course, the astounding spectacle took the poor lad's breath away. He +could only stare in stupid astonishment, and wonder how a single +individual could possess such incredible riches. Then presently he +glanced brilliantly up and exclaimed: + +'"Ah, it is you who are the renowned millionaire!" + +'My father and all the rest burst into shouts of happy laughter, and when +my father gathered the treasure carelessly up as if it might be mere +rubbish and of no consequence, and carried it back to its place, poor +Kulala's surprise was a study. He said: + +'"Is it possible that you put such things away without counting them?" + +'My father delivered a vain-glorious horse-laugh, and said: + +'"Well, truly, a body may know you have never been rich, since a mere +matter of a fish-hook or two is such a mighty matter in your eyes." + +'Kalula was confused, and hung his head, but said: + +'"Ah, indeed, sir, I was never worth the value of the barb of one of +those precious things, and I have never seen any man before who was so +rich in them as to render the counting of his hoard worth while, since +the wealthiest man I have ever known, till now, was possessed of but +three." + +'My foolish father roared again with jejune delight, and allowed the +impression to remain that he was not accustomed to count his hooks and +keep sharp watch over them. He was showing off, you see. Count them? +Why, he counted them every day! + +'I had met and got acquainted with my darling just at dawn; I had brought +him home just at dark, three hours afterwards--for the days were +shortening toward the six-months' night at that time. We kept up the +festivities many hours; then, at last, the guests departed and the rest +of us distributed ourselves along the walls on sleeping-benches, and soon +all were steeped in dreams but me. I was too happy, too excited, to +sleep. After I had lain quiet a long, long time, a dim form passed by me +and was swallowed up in the gloom that pervaded the farther end of the +house. I could not make out who it was, or whether it was man or woman. +Presently that figure or another one passed me going the other way. I +wondered what it all meant, but wondering did no good; and while I was +still wondering I fell asleep. + +'I do not know how long I slept, but at last I came suddenly broad awake +and heard my father say in a terrible voice, "By the great Snow God, +there's a fish-hook gone!" Something told me that that meant sorrow for +me, and the blood in my veins turned cold. The presentiment was +confirmed in the same instant: my father shouted, "Up, everybody, and +seize the stranger!" Then there was an outburst of cries and curses from +all sides, and a wild rush of dim forms through the obscurity. I flew to +my beloved's help, but what could I do but wait and wring my hands?--he +was already fenced away from me by a living wall, he was being bound hand +and foot. Not until he was secured would they let me get to him. I +flung myself upon his poor insulted form and cried my grief out upon his +breast while my father and all my family scoffed at me and heaped threats +and shameful epithets upon him. He bore his ill usage with a tranquil +dignity which endeared him to me more than ever, and made me proud and +happy to suffer with him and for him. I heard my father order that the +elders of the tribe be called together to try my Kalula for his life. + +'"What!" I said, "before any search has been made for the lost hook?" + +'"Lost hook!" they all shouted, in derision; and my father added, +mockingly, "Stand back, everybody, and be properly serious--she is going +to hunt up that lost hook: oh, without doubt she will find it!"--whereat +they all laughed again. + +'I was not disturbed--I had no fears, no doubts. I said: + +'"It is for you to laugh now; it is your turn. But ours is coming; wait +and see." + +'I got a rag lamp. I thought I should find that miserable thing in one +little moment; and I set about that matter with such confidence that +those people grew grace, beginning to suspect that perhaps they had been +too hasty. But alas and alas!--oh, the bitterness of that search! There +was deep silence while one might count his fingers ten or twelve times, +then my heart began to sink, and around me the mockings began again, and +grew steadily louder and more assured, until at last, when I gave up, +they burst into volley after volley of cruel laughter. + +'None will ever know what I suffered then. But my love was my support +and my strength, and I took my rightful place at my Kalula's side, and +put my arm about his neck, and whispered in his ear, saying: + +'"You are innocent, my own--that I know; but say it to me yourself, for +my comfort, then I can bear whatever is in store for us." + +'He answered: + +'"As surely as I stand upon the brink of death at this moment, I am +innocent. Be comforted, then, O bruised heart; be at peace, O thou +breath of my nostrils, life of my life!" + +'"Now, then, let the elders come!"--and as I said the words there was a +gathering sound of crunching snow outside, and then a vision of stooping +forms filing in at the door--the elders. + +'My father formally accused the prisoner, and detailed the happenings of +the night. He said that the watchman was outside the door, and that in +the house were none but the family and the stranger. "Would the family +steal their own property?" He paused. The elders sat silent many +minutes; at last, one after another said to his neighbour, "This looks +bad for the stranger"--sorrowful words for me to hear. Then my father +sat down. O miserable, miserable me! At that very moment I could have +proved my darling innocent, but I did not know it! + +'The chief of the court asked: + +'"Is there any here to defend the prisoner?" + +'I rose and said: + +'"Why should he steal that hook, or any or all of them? In another day +he would have been heir to the whole!" + +I stood waiting. There was a long silence, the steam from the many +breaths rising about me like a fog. At last one elder after another +nodded his head slowly several times, and muttered, "There is force in +what the child has said." Oh, the heart-lift that was in those words! +--so transient, but, oh, so precious! I sat down. + +'"If any would say further, let him speak now, or after hold his peace," +said the chief of the court. + +'My father rose and said: + +'"In the night a form passed by me in the gloom, going toward the +treasury and presently returned. I think, now, it was the stranger." + +'Oh, I was like to swoon! I had supposed that that was my secret; not the +grip of the great Ice God himself could have dragged it out of my heart. +The chief of the court said sternly to my poor Kalula: + +'"Speak!" + +'Kalula hesitated, then answered: + +'"It was I. I could not sleep for thinking of the beautiful hooks. I +went there and kissed them and fondled them, to appease my spirit and +drown it in a harmless joy, then I put them back. I may have dropped +one, but I stole none." + +'Oh, a fatal admission to make in such a place! There was an awful hush. +I knew he had pronounced his own doom, and that all was over. On every +face you could see the words hieroglyphed: "It is a confession!--and +paltry, lame, and thin." + +'I sat drawing in my breath in faint gasps--and waiting. Presently, I +heard the solemn words I knew were coming; and each word, as it came, was +a knife in my heart: + +'"It is the command of the court that the accused be subjected to the +trial by water." + +'Oh, curses be upon the head of him who brought "trial by water" to our +land! It came, generations ago, from some far country that lies none +knows where. Before that our fathers used augury and other unsure +methods of trial, and doubtless some poor guilty creatures escaped with +their lives sometimes; but it is not so with trial by water, which is an +invention by wiser men than we poor ignorant savages are. By it the +innocent are proved innocent, without doubt or question, for they drown; +and the guilty are proven guilty with the same certainty, for they do not +drown. My heart was breaking in my bosom, for I said, "He is innocent, +and he will go down under the waves and I shall never see him more." + +'I never left his side after that. I mourned in his arms all the +precious hours, and he poured out the deep stream of his love upon me, +and oh, I was so miserable and so happy! At last, they tore him from me, +and I followed sobbing after them, and saw them fling him into the sea +--then I covered my face with my hands. Agony? Oh, I know the deepest +deeps of that word! + +'The next moment the people burst into a shout of malicious joy, and I +took away my hands, startled. Oh, bitter sight--he was swimming! My +heart turned instantly to stone, to ice. I said, "He was guilty, and he +lied to me!" I turned my back in scorn and went my way homeward. + +'They took him far out to sea and set him on an iceberg that was drifting +southward in the great waters. Then my family came home, and my father +said to me: + +'"Your thief sent his dying message to you, saying, 'Tell her I am +innocent, and that all the days and all the hours and all the minutes +while I starve and perish I shall love her and think of her and bless the +day that gave me sight of her sweet face.'" Quite pretty, even poetical! + +'I said, "He is dirt--let me never hear mention of him again." And oh, +to think--he was innocent all the time! + +'Nine months--nine dull, sad months--went by, and at last came the day of +the Great Annual Sacrifice, when all the maidens of the tribe wash their +faces and comb their hair. With the first sweep of my comb out came the +fatal fish-hook from where it had been all those months nestling, and I +fell fainting into the arms of my remorseful father! Groaning, he said, +"We murdered him, and I shall never smile again!" He has kept his word. +Listen; from that day to this not a month goes by that I do not comb my +hair. But oh, where is the good of it all now!' + +So ended the poor maid's humble little tale--whereby we learn that since +a hundred million dollars in New York and twenty-two fish-hooks on the +border of the Arctic Circle represent the same financial supremacy, a man +in straitened circumstances is a fool to stay in New York when he can buy +ten cents' worth of fish-hooks and emigrate. + + + + + + +CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY + + 'It is the first time since the dawn-days of Creation that a Voice + has gone crashing through space with such placid and complacent + confidence and command.' + +I + +This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the +Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight and +broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was +found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the +nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed +farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning +little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright-coloured +flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room, +separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the +front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the +manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring +that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables +a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars. + +There was a village a mile away, and a horse-doctor lived there, but +there was no surgeon. It seemed a bad outlook; mine was distinctly a +surgery case. Then it was remembered that a lady from Boston was +summering in that village, and she was a Christian Science doctor and +could cure anything. So she was sent for. It was night by this time, +and she could not conveniently come, but sent word that it was no matter, +there was no hurry, she would give me 'absent treatment' now, and come in +the morning; meantime she begged me to make myself tranquil and +comfortable and remember that there was nothing the matter with me. I +thought there must be some mistake. + +'Did you tell her I walked off a cliff seventy-five feet high?' + +'Yes.' + +'And struck a boulder at the bottom and bounced?' + +'Yes.' + +'And struck another one and bounced again?' + +'Yes.' + +'And struck another one and bounced yet again?' + +'Yes.' + +'And broke the boulders?' + +'Yes.' + +'That accounts for it; she is thinking of the boulders. Why didn't you +tell her I got hurt, too?' + +'I did. I told her what you told me to tell her: that you were now but +an incoherent series of compound fractures extending from your scalp-lock +to your heels, and that the comminuted projections caused you to look +like a hat-rack.' + +'And it was after this that she wished me to remember that there was +nothing the matter with me?' + +'Those were her words.' + +'I do not understand it. I believe she has not diagnosed the case with +sufficient care. Did she look like a person who was theorising, or did +she look like one who has fallen off precipices herself and brings to the +aid of abstract science the confirmation of personal experience?' + +'Bitte?' + +It was too large a contract for the Stubenmadchen's vocabulary; she +couldn't call the hand. I allowed the subject to rest there, and asked +for something to eat and smoke, and something hot to drink, and a basket +to pile my legs in, and another capable person to come and help me curse +the time away; but I could not have any of these things. + +'Why?' + +'She said you would need nothing at all.' + +'But I am hungry and thirsty, and in desperate pain.' + +'She said you would have these delusions, but must pay no attention to +them. She wants you to particularly remember that there are no such +things as hunger and thirst and pain.' + +'She does, does she?' + +'It is what she said.' + +'Does she seem o be in full and functional possession of her intellectual +plant, such as it is?' + +'Bitte?' + +'Do they let her run at large, or do they tie her up?' + +'Tie her up?' + +'There, good-night, run along; you are a good girl, but your mental +Geschirr is not arranged for light and airy conversation. Leave me to my +delusions.' + + +II + +It was a night of anguish, of course--at least I supposed it was, for it +had all the symptoms of it--but it passed at last, and the Christian +Scientist came, and I was glad. She was middle-aged, and large and bony +and erect, and had an austere face and a resolute jaw and a Roman beak +and was a widow in the third degree, and her name was Fuller. I was +eager to get to business and find relief, but she was distressingly +deliberate. She unpinned and unhooked and uncoupled her upholsteries one +by one, abolished the wrinkles with a flirt of her hand and hung the +articles up; peeled off her gloves and disposed of them, got a book out +of her hand-bag, then drew a chair to the bedside, descended into it +without hurry, and I hung out my tongue. She said, with pity but without +passion: + +'Return it to its receptacle. We deal with the mind only, not with its +dumb servants.' + +I could not offer my pulse, because the connection was broken; but she +detected the apology before I could word it, and indicated by a negative +tilt of her head that the pulse was another dumb servant that she had no +use for. Then I thought I would tell her my symptoms and how I felt, so +that she would understand the case; but that was another inconsequence, +she did not need to know those things; moreover, my remark about how I +felt was an abuse of language, a misapplication of terms-- + +'One does not feel,' she explained; 'there is no such thing as feeling: +therefore, to speak of a non-existent thing as existent as a +contradiction. Matter has no existence; nothing exists but mind; the +mind cannot feel pain, it can only imagine it.' + +'But if it hurts, just the same--' + +'It doesn't. A thing which is unreal cannot exercise the functions of +reality. Pain is unreal; hence pain cannot hurt.' + +In making a sweeping gesture to indicate the act of shooing the illusion +of pain out of the mind, she raked her hand on a pin in her dress, said +'Ouch!' and went tranquilly on with her talk. 'You should never allow +yourself to speak of how you feel, nor permit others to ask you how you +are feeling: you should never concede that you are ill, nor permit others +to talk about disease or pain or death or similar non-existences in your +preserve. Such talk only encourages the mind to continue its empty +imaginings.' Just at that point the Stubenmadchen trod on the cat's +tail, and the cat let fly a frenzy of cat-profanity. I asked with +caution: + +'Is a cat's opinion about pain valuable?' + +'A cat has no opinion; opinions proceed from the mind only; the lower +animals, being eternally perishable, have not been granted mind; without +mind opinion is impossible.' + +'She merely imagined she felt a pain--the cat?' + +'She cannot imagine a pain, for imagination is an effect of mind; without +mind, there is no imagination. A cat has no imagination.' + +'Then she had a real pain?' + +'I have already told you there is no such thing as real pain.' + +'It is strange and interesting. I do wonder what was the matter with the +cat. Because, there being no such thing as real pain, and she not being +able to imagine an imaginary thing, it would seem that God in his Pity +has compensated the cat with some kind of a mysterious emotion useable +when her tail is trodden on which for the moment joins cat and Christian +in one common brotherhood of--' + +She broke in with an irritated-- + +'Peace! The cat feels nothing, the Christian feels nothing. Your empty +and foolish imaginings are profanation and blasphemy, and can do you an +injury. It is wiser and better and holier to recognise and confess that +there is no such thing as disease or pain or death.' + +'I am full of imaginary tortures,' I said, 'but I do not think I could be +any more uncomfortable if they were real ones. What must I do to get rid +of them?' + +'There is no occasion to get rid of them, since they do not exist. They +are illusions propagated by matter, and matter has no existence; there is +no such thing as matter.' + +'It sounds right and clear, but yet it seems in a degree elusive; it +seems to slip through, just when you think you are getting a grip on it.' + +'Explain.' + +'Well, for instance: if there is no such thing as matter, how can matter +propagate things?' + +In her compassion she almost smiled. She would have smiled if there were +any such thing as a smile. + +'It is quite simple,' she said; 'the fundamental propositions of +Christian Science explain it, and they are summarised in the four +following self-evident propositions: 1. God is All in all. 2. God is +good. Good is Mind. 3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter. +4. Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny death, evil sin, disease. There +--now you see.' + +It seemed nebulous: it did not seem to say anything about the difficulty +in hand--how non-existent matter can propagate illusions. I said, with +some hesitancy: + +'Does--does it explain?' + +'Doesn't it? Even if read backward it will do it.' + +With a budding hope, I asked her to do it backward. + +'Very well. Disease sin evil death deny Good omnipotent God life matter +is nothing all being Spirit God Mind is Good good is God all in All is +God. There--do you understand now? + +'It--it--well, it is plainer than it was before; still--' + +'Well?' + +'Could you try it some more ways?' + +'As many as you like: it always means the same. Interchanged in any way +you please it cannot be made to mean anything different from what it +means when put in any other way. Because it is perfect. You can jumble +it all up, and it makes no difference: it always comes out the way it was +before. It was a marvellous mind that produced it. As a mental tour de +force it is without a mate, it defies alike the simple, the concrete, and +the occult.' + +'It seems to be a corker.' + +I blushed for the word, but it was out before I could stop it. + +'A what?' + +'A--wonderful structure--combination, so to speak, or profound thoughts +--unthinkable ones--un--' + +'It is true. Read backwards, or forwards, or perpendicularly, or at any +given angle, these four propositions will always be found to agree in +statement and proof.' + +'Ah--proof. Now we are coming at it. The statements agree; they agree +with--with--anyway, they agree; I noticed that; but what is it they +prove--I mean, in particular?' + +'Why, nothing could be clearer. They prove: 1. GOD--Principle, Life, +Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind. Do you get that?' + +'I--well, I seem to. Go on, please. + +'2. MAN--God's universal idea, individual, perfect, eternal. Is it +clear?' + +'It--I think so. Continue.' + +'3. IDEA--An image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding. +There it is--the whole sublime Arcana of Christian Science in a nutshell. +Do you find a weak place in it anywhere?' + +'Well--no; it seems strong.' + +'Very well. There is more. Those three constitute the Scientific +Definition of Immortal Mind. Next, we have the Scientific Definition of +Mortal Mind. Thus. FIRST DEGREE: Depravity. 1. Physical--Passions and +appetites, fear, depraved will, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge, +sin, disease, death.' + +'Phantasms, madam--unrealities, as I understand it.' + +'Every one. SECOND DEGREE: Evil Disappearing. 1. Moral--Honesty, +affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance. Is it clear?' + +'Crystal.' + +'THIRD DEGREE: Spiritual Salvation. 1. Spiritual--Faith, wisdom, power, +purity, understanding, health, love. You see how searchingly and +co-ordinately interdependent and anthropomorphous it all is. In this +Third Degree, as we know by the revelations of Christian Science, mortal +mind disappears.' + +'Not earlier?' + +'No, not until the teaching and preparation for the Third Degree are +completed.' + +'It is not until then that one is enabled to take hold of Christian +Science effectively, and with the right sense of sympathy and kinship, as +I understand you. That is to say, it could not succeed during the +process of the Second Degree, because there would still be remains of +mind left; and therefore--but I interrupted you. You were about to +further explain the good results proceeding from the erosions and +disintegrations effected by the Third Degree. It is very interesting: go +on, please.' + +'Yes, as I was saying, in this Third Degree mortal mind disappears. +Science so reverses the evidence before the corporeal human senses as to +make this scriptural testimony true in our hearts, "the last shall be +first and the first shall be last," that God and His idea may be to us +--what divinity really is, and must of necessity be--all-inclusive.' + +'It is beautiful. And with that exhaustive exactness your choice and +arrangement of words confirms and establishes what you have claimed for +the powers and functions of the Third Degree. The Second could probably +produce only temporary absence of mind, it is reserved to the Third to +make it permanent. A sentence framed under the auspices of the Second +could have a kind of meaning--a sort of deceptive semblance of it +--whereas it is only under the magic of the Third that that defect would +disappear. Also, without doubt, it is the Third Degree that contributes +another remarkable specialty to Christian Science: viz., ease and flow +and lavishness of words, and rhythm and swing and smoothness. There must +be a special reason for this?' + +'Yes--God-all, all-God, good Good, non-Matter, Matteration, Spirit, +Bones, Truth.' + +'That explains it.' + +'There is nothing in Christian Science that is not explicable; for God is +one, Time is one, Individuality is one, and may be one of a series, one +of many, as an individual man, individual horse; whereas God is one, not +one of a series, but one alone and without an equal.' + +'These are noble thoughts. They make one burn to know more. How does +Christian Science explain the spiritual relation of systematic duality to +incidental reflection?' + +'Christian Science reverses the seeming relation of Soul and body--as +astronomy reverses the human perception of the movement of the solar +system--and makes body tributary to Mind. As it is the earth which is in +motion, while the sun is at rest, though in viewing the sun rise one +finds it impossible to believe the sun not to be really rising, so the +body is but the humble servant of the restful Mind, though it seems +otherwise to finite sense; but we shall never understand this while we +admit that soul is in body, or mind in matter, and that man is included +in non-intelligence. Soul is God, unchangeable and eternal; and man +coexists with and reflects Soul, for the All-in-all is the Altogether, +and the Altogether embraces the All-one, Soul-Mind, Mind-Soul, Love, +Spirit, Bones, Liver, one of a series, alone and without an equal.' + +(It is very curious, the effect which Christian Science has upon the +verbal bowels. Particularly the Third Degree; it makes one think of a +dictionary with the cholera. But I only thought this; I did not say it.) + +'What is the origin of Christian Science? Is it a gift of God, or did it +just happen?' + +'In a sense, it is a gift of God. That is to say, its powers are from +Him, but the credit of the discovery of the powers and what they are for +is due to an American lady.' + +'Indeed? When did this occur?' + +'In 1866. That is the immortal date when pain and disease and death +disappeared from the earth to return no more for ever. That is, the +fancies for which those terms stand, disappeared. The things themselves +had never existed; therefore as soon as it was perceived that there were +no such things, they were easily banished. The history and nature of the +great discovery are set down in the book here, and--' + +'Did the lady write the book?' + +'Yes, she wrote it all, herself. The title is "Science and Health, with +Key to the Scriptures"--for she explains the Scriptures; they were not +understood before. Not even by the twelve Disciples. She begins thus--I +will read it to you.' + +But she had forgotten to bring her glasses. + +'Well, it is no matter,' she said, 'I remember the words--indeed, all +Christian Scientists know the book by heart; it is necessary in our +practice. We should otherwise make mistakes and do harm. She begins +thus: "In the year 1866 I discovered the Science of Metaphysical Healing, +and named it Christian Science." And she says--quite beautifully, I +think--"Through Christian Science, religion and medicine are inspired +with a diviner nature and essence, fresh pinions are given to faith and +understanding, and thoughts acquaint themselves intelligently with God." +Her very words.' + +'It is elegant. And it is a fine thought, too--marrying religion to +medicine, instead of medicine to the undertaker in the old way; for +religion and medicine properly belong together, they being the basis of +all spiritual and physical health. What kind of medicine do you give for +the ordinary diseases, such as--' + +'We never give medicine in any circumstances whatever! We--' + +'But, madam, it says--' + +'I don't care what it says, and I don't wish to talk about it.' + +'I am sorry if I have offended, but you see the mention seemed in some +way inconsistent, and--' + +'There are no inconsistencies in Christian Science. The thing is +impossible, for the Science is absolute. It cannot be otherwise, since +it proceeds directly from the All-in-all and the Everything-in-Which, +also Soul, Bones, Truth, one of a series, alone and without equal. It is +Mathematics purified from material dross and made spiritual.' + +'I can see that, but--' + +'It rests upon the immovable basis of an Apodictical Principle.' + +The word flattened itself against my mind trying to get in, and +disordered me a little, and before I could inquire into its pertinency, +she was already throwing the needed light: + +'This Apodictical Principle is the absolute Principle of Scientific +Mind-healing, the sovereign Omnipotence which delivers the children of +men from pain, disease, decay, and every ill that flesh is heir to.' + +'Surely not every ill, every decay?' + +'Every one; there are no exceptions; there is no such thing as decay--it +is an unreality, it has no existence.' + +'But without your glasses your failing eyesight does not permit you to--' + +'My eyesight cannot fail; nothing can fail; the Mind is master, and the +Mind permits no retrogression.' + +She was under the inspiration of the Third Degree, therefore there could +be no profit in continuing this part of the subject. I shifted to other +ground and inquired further concerning the Discoverer of the Science. + +'Did the discovery come suddenly, like Klondike, or after long study and +calculation, like America?' + +'The comparisons are not respectful, since they refer to trivialities +--but let it pass. I will answer in the Discoverer's own words: "God had +been graciously fitting me, during many years, for the reception of a +final revelation of the absolute Principle of Scientific Mind-healing."' + +'Many years? How many?' + +'Eighteen centuries!' + +'All God, God-good, good-God, Truth, Bones, Liver, one of a series alone +and without equal--it is amazing!' + +'You may well say it, sir. Yet it is but the truth. This American lady, +our revered and sacred founder, is distinctly referred to and her coming +prophesied, in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse; she could not have +been more plainly indicated by St. John without actually mentioning her +name.' + +'How strange, how wonderful!' + +'I will quote her own words, for her "Key to the Scriptures:" "The +twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse has a special suggestiveness in +connection with this nineteenth century." There--do you note that? +Think--note it well.' + +'But--what does it mean?' + +'Listen, and you will know. I quote her inspired words again: "In the +opening of the Sixth Seal, typical of six thousand years since Adam, +there is one distinctive feature which has special reference to the +present age. Thus: + +'"Revelation xii. 1. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven--a +woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her +head a crown of twelve stars." + +'That is our Head, our Chief, our Discoverer of Christian Science +--nothing can be plainer, nothing surer. And note this: + +'"Revelation xii. 6. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she +had a place prepared of God." + +'That is Boston.' + +'I recognise it, madam. These are sublime things and impressive; I never +understood these passages before; please go on with the--with the +--proofs.' + +'Very well. Listen: + +'"And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a +cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the +sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he had in his hand a little +book." + +'A little book, merely a little book--could words be modester? Yet how +stupendous its importance! Do you know what book that was?' + +'Was it--' + +'I hold it in my hand--"Christian Science"!' + +'Love, Livers, Lights, Bones, Truth, Kidneys, one of a series, alone and +without equal--it is beyond imagination and wonder!' + +'Hear our Founder's eloquent words: "Then will a voice from harmony cry, +'Go and take the little book; take it and eat it up, and it shall make +thy belly bitter; but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.' Mortal, +obey the heavenly evangel. Take up Divine Science. Read it from +beginning to end. Study it, ponder it. It will be indeed sweet at its +first taste, when it heals you; but murmur not over Truth, if you find +its digestion bitter." You now know the history of our dear and holy +Science, sir, and that its origin is not of this earth, but only its +discovery. I will leave the book with you and will go, now, but give +yourself no uneasiness--I will give you absent treatment from now till I +go to bed.' + + +III + +Under the powerful influence of the near treatment and the absent +treatment together, my bones were gradually retreating inward and +disappearing from view. The good word took a brisk start, now, and went +on quite swiftly. My body was diligently straining and stretching, this +way and that, to accommodate the processes of restoration, and every +minute or two I heard a dull click inside and knew that the two ends of a +fracture had been successfully joined. This muffled clicking and +gritting and grinding and rasping continued during the next three hours, +and then stopped--the connections had all been made. All except +dislocations; there were only seven of these: hips, shoulders, knees, +neck; so that was soon over; one after another they slipped into their +sockets with a sound like pulling a distant cork, and I jumped up as good +as new, as to framework, and sent for the horse-doctor. + +I was obliged to do this because I had a stomach-ache and a cold in the +head, and I was not willing to trust these things any longer in the hands +of a woman whom I did not know, and in whose ability to successfully +treat mere disease I had lost all confidence. My position was justified +by the fact that the cold and the ache had been in her charge from the +first, along with the fractures, but had experienced not a shade of +relief; and indeed the ache was even growing worse and worse, and more +and more bitter, now, probably on account of the protracted abstention +from food and drink. + +The horse-doctor came, a pleasant man and full of hope and professional +interest in the case. In the matter of smell he was pretty aromatic, in +fact quite horsey, and I tried to arrange with him for absent treatment, +but it was not in his line, so out of delicacy I did not press it. He +looked at my teeth and examined my hock, and said my age and general +condition were favourable to energetic measures; therefore he would give +me something to turn the stomach-ache into the botts and the cold in the +head into the blind staggers; then he should be on his own beat and would +know what to do. He made up a bucket of bran-mash, and said a dipperful +of it every two hours, alternated with a drench with turpentine and +axle-grease in it, would either knock my ailments out of me in +twenty-four hours or so interest me in other ways as to make me forget +they were on the premises. He administered my first dose himself, then +took his leave, saying I was free to eat and drink anything I pleased and +in any quantity I liked. But I was not hungry any more, and did not care +for food. + +I took up the 'Christian Scientist' book and read half of it, then took a +dipperful of drench and read the other half. The resulting experiences +were full of interest and adventure. All through the rumblings and +grindings and quakings and effervescings accompanying the evolution of +the ache into the botts and the cold into the blind staggers I could note +the generous struggle for mastery going on between the mash and the +drench and the literature; and often I could tell which was ahead, and +could easily distinguish the literature from the others when the others +were separate, though not when they were mixed; for when a bran-mash and +an eclectic drench are mixed together they look just like the Apodictical +Principle out on a lark, and no one can tell it from that. The finish +was reached at last, the evolutions were complete and a fine success; but +I think that this result could have been achieved with fewer materials. +I believe the mash was necessary to the conversion of the stomach-ache +into the boots, but I think one could develop the blind staggers out of +the literature by itself; also, that blind staggers produced in this way +would be of a better quality and more lasting than any produced by the +artificial processes of a horse-doctor. + +For of all the strange, and frantic, and incomprehensible, and +uninterpretable books which the imagination of man has created, surely +this one is the prize sample. It is written with a limitless confidence +and complacency, and with a dash and stir and earnestness which often +compel the effects of eloquence, even when the words do not seem to have +any traceable meaning. There are plenty of people who imagine they +understand the book; I know this, for I have talked with them; but in all +cases they were people who also imagined that there were no such things +as pain, sickness, and death, and no realities in the world; nothing +actually existent but Mind. It seems to me to modify the value of their +testimony. When these people talk about Christian Science they do as +Mrs. Fuller did; they do not use their own language, but the book's; they +pour out the book's showy incoherences, and leave you to find out later +that they were not originating, but merely quoting; they seem to know the +volume by heart, and to revere it as they would a Bible--another Bible, +perhaps I ought to say. Plainly the book was written under the mental +desolations of the Third Degree, and I feel sure that none but the +membership of that Degree can discover meanings in it. When you read it +you seem to be listening to a lively and aggressive and oracular speech +delivered in an unknown tongue, a speech whose spirit you get but not the +particulars; or, to change the figure, you seem to be listening to a +vigorous instrument which is making a noise it thinks is a tune, but +which to persons not members of the band is only the martial tooting of a +trombone, and merely stirs the soul through the noise but does not convey +a meaning. + +The book's serenities of self-satisfaction do almost seem to smack of a +heavenly origin--they have no blood-kin in the earth. It is more than +human to be so placidly certain about things, and so finely superior, and +so airily content with one's performance. Without ever presenting +anything which may rightfully be called by the strong name of Evidence, +and sometimes without even mentioning a reason for a deduction at all, it +thunders out the startling words, 'I have Proved' so and so! It takes the +Pope and all the great guns of his church in battery assembled to +authoritatively settle and establish the meaning of a sole and single +unclarified passage of Scripture, and this at vast cost of time and study +and reflection, but the author of this work is superior to all that: she +finds the whole Bible in an unclarified condition, and at small expense +of time and no expense of mental effort she clarifies it from lid to lid, +reorganises and improves the meanings, then authoritatively settles and +establishes them with formulae which you cannot tell from 'Let there be +light!' and 'Here you have it!' It is the first time since the dawn-days +of Creation that a Voice has gone crashing through space with such placid +and complacent confidence and command. + + +IV + +A word upon a question of authorship. Not that quite; but, rather, a +question of emendation and revision. We know that the Bible-Annex was +not written by Mrs. Eddy, but was handed down to her eighteen hundred +years ago by the Angel of the Apocalypse; but did she translate it alone, +or did she have help? There seems to be evidence that she had help. For +there are four several copyrights on it--1875, 1885, 1890, 1894. It did +not come down in English, for in that language it could not have acquired +copyright--there were no copyright laws eighteen centuries ago, and in my +opinion no English language--at least up there. This makes it +substantially certain that the Annex is a translation. Then, was not the +first translation complete? If it was, on what grounds were the later +copyrights granted? + +I surmise that the first translation was poor; and that a friend or +friends of Mrs. Eddy mended its English three times, and finally got it +into its present shape, where the grammar is plenty good enough, and the +sentences are smooth and plausible though they do not mean anything. I +think I am right in this surmise, for Mrs. Eddy cannot write English +to-day, and this is argument that she never could. I am not able to +guess who did the mending, but I think it was not done by any member of +the Eddy Trust, nor by the editors of the 'Christian Science Journal,' +for their English is not much better than Mrs. Eddy's. + +However, as to the main point: it is certain that Mrs. Eddy did not +doctor the Annex's English herself. Her original, spontaneous, +undoctored English furnishes ample proof of this. Here are samples from +recent articles from her unappeasable pen; double columned with them are +a couple of passages from the Annex. It will be seen that they throw +light. The italics are mine: + +1. 'What plague spot, 'Therefore the efficient +or bacilli were (sic) gnawing remedy is to destroy the +(sic) at the heart of this patient's unfortunate belief, +metropolis... and bringing by both silently and audibly +it on bended knee? arguing the opposite facts in +Why, it was an institute that regard to harmonious being +had entered its vitals (sic) representing man as +that, among other things, healthful instead of diseased, +taught games,' et cetera. (P. and showing that it is +670, 'C.S.Journal,' article impossible for matter to suffer, +entitled 'A Narrative--by to feel pain or heat, to be +Mary Baker G. Eddy.') thirsty or sick.' (P. 375, Annex.) +2. 'Parks sprang up (sic)... +electric street cars run 'Man is never sick; for +(sic) merrily through several Mind is not sick, and matter +streets, concrete sidewalks cannot be. A false belief +and macadamised roads dotted is both the tempter and the +(sic) the place,' et cetera. tempted, the sin and the +(Ibid.) sinner, the disease and its +3. 'Shorn (sic) of its cause. It is well to be calm +suburbs it had indeed little in sickness; to be hopeful is +left to admire, save to (sic) still better; but to +such as fancy a skeleton understand that sickness is not +above ground breathing (sic) real, and that Truth can +slowly through a barren (sic) destroy it, is best of all, for +breast.' (Ibid.) it is the universal and perfect + remedy.' (Chapter xii., + Annex.) + + +You notice the contrast between the smooth, plausible, elegant, addled +English of the doctored Annex and the lumbering, ragged, ignorant output +of the translator's natural, spontaneous, and unmedicated penwork. The +English of the Annex has been slicked up by a very industrious and +painstaking hand--but it was not Mrs. Eddy's. + +If Mrs. Eddy really wrote or translated the Annex, her original draft was +exactly in harmony with the English of her plague-spot or bacilli which +were gnawing at the insides of the metropolis and bringing its heart on +bended knee, thus exposing to the eye the rest of the skeleton breathing +slowly through a barren breast. And it bore little or no resemblance to +the book as we have it now--now that the salaried polisher has holystoned +all of the genuine Eddyties out of it. + +Will the plague-spot article go into a volume just as it stands? I think +not. I think the polisher will take off his coat and vest and cravat and +'demonstrate over' it a couple of weeks and sweat it into a shape +something like the following--and then Mrs. Eddy will publish it and +leave people to believe that she did the polishing herself: + +1. What injurious influence was it that was affecting the city's morals? +It was a social club which propagated an interest in idle amusements, +disseminated a knowledge of games, et cetera. + +2. By the magic of the new and nobler influences the sterile spaces were +transformed into wooded parks, the merry electric car replaced the +melancholy 'bus, smooth concrete the tempestuous plank sidewalk, the +macadamised road the primitive corduroy, et cetera. + +3. Its pleasant suburbs gone, there was little left to admire save the +wrecked graveyard with its uncanny exposures. + +The Annex contains one sole and solitary humorous remark. There is a +most elaborate and voluminous Index, and it is preceded by this note: + +'This Index will enable the student to find any thought or idea contained +in the book.' + + +V + +No one doubts--certainly not I--that the mind exercises a powerful +influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the +interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack, the +wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the +hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in their +work. They have all recognised the potency and availability of that +force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill; they know that +where the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence in the doctor +will make the bread pill effective. + +Faith in the doctor. Perhaps that is the entire thing. It seems to look +like it. In old times the King cured the king's evil by the touch of the +royal hand. He frequently made extraordinary cures. Could his footman +have done it? No--not in his own clothes. Disguised as the King, could +he have done it? I think we may not doubt it. I think we may feel sure +that it was not the King's touch that made the cure in any instance, but +the patient's faith in the efficacy of a King's touch. Genuine and +remarkable cures have been achieved through contact with the relics of a +saint. Is it not likely that any other bones would have done as well if +the substitution had been concealed from the patient? When I was a boy, +a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village, had great fame as +a faith-doctor--that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her +from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, 'Have faith +--it is all that is necessary,' and they went away well of their ailments. +She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She +said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw +her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the +patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this +sort of industry and has both the high and the low for patients. He gets +into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but his +business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is +unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria +there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire +from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of +his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to +year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no +religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in +his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is +this confidence which does the work and not some mysterious power issuing +from himself. + +Within the last quarter of a century, in America, several sects of curers +have appeared under various names and have done notable things in the way +of healing ailments without the use of medicines. There are the Mind +Cure, the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, the Mental-Science Cure, and the +Christian-Science Cure; and apparently they all do their miracles with +the same old powerful instrument--the patient's imagination. Differing +names, but no difference in the process. But they do not give that +instrument the credit; each sect claims that its way differs from the +ways of the others. + +They all achieve some cures, there is no question about it; and the Faith +Cure and the Prayer Cure probably do no harm when they do no good, since +they do not forbid the patient to help out the cure with medicines if he +wants to; but the others bar medicines, and claim ability to cure every +conceivable human ailment through the application of their mental forces +alone. They claim ability to cure malignant cancer, and other affections +which have never been cured in the history of the race. There would seem +to be an element of danger here. It has the look of claiming too much, I +think. Public confidence would probably be increased if less were +claimed. + +I believe it might be shown that all the 'mind' sects except Christian +Science have lucid intervals; intervals in which they betray some +diffidence, and in effect confess that they are not the equals of the +Deity; but if the Christian Scientist even stops with being merely the +equal of the Deity, it is not clearly provable by his Christian-Science +Amended Bible. In the usual Bible the Deity recognises pain, disease, +and death as facts, but the Christian Scientist knows better. Knows +better, and is not diffident about saying so. + +The Christian Scientist was not able to cure my stomach-ache and my cold; +but the horse-doctor did it. This convinces me that Christian Science +claims too much. In my opinion it ought to let diseases alone and +confine itself to surgery. There it would have everything its own way. + +The horse-doctor charged me thirty kreutzers, and I paid him; in fact I +doubled it and gave him a shilling. Mrs. Fuller brought in an itemised +bill for a crate of broken bones mended in two hundred and thirty-four +places--one dollar per fracture. + +'Nothing exists but Mind?' + +'Nothing,' she answered. 'All else is substanceless, all else is +imaginary.' + +I gave her an imaginary cheque, and now she is suing me for substantial +dollars. It looks inconsistent. + + +VI + +Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to +each other, it will unriddle many riddles, it will make clear and simple +many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and +obscurities now. + +Those of us who are not in the asylum, and not demonstrably due there, +are nevertheless no doubt insane in one or two particulars--I think we +must admit this; but I think that we are otherwise healthy-minded. I +think that when we all see one thing alike, it is evidence that as +regards that one thing, our minds are perfectly sound. Now there are +really several things which we do all see alike; things which we all +accept, and about which we do not dispute. For instance, we who are +outside of the asylum all agree that water seeks its level; that the sun +gives light and heat; that fire consumes; that fog is damp; that 6 times +6 are thirty-six; that 2 from 10 leave eight; that 8 and 7 are fifteen. +These are perhaps the only things we are agreed about; but although they +are so few, they are of inestimable value, because they make an +infallible standard of sanity. Whosoever accepts them we know to be +substantially sane; sufficiently sane; in the working essentials, sane. +Whoever disputes a single one of them we know to be wholly insane, and +qualified for the asylum. + +Very well, the man who disputes none of them we concede to be entitled to +go at large--but that is concession enough; we cannot go any further than +that; for we know that in all matters of mere opinion that same man is +insane--just as insane as we are; just as insane as Shakespeare was, just +as insane as the Pope is. We know exactly where to put our finger upon +his insanity; it is where his opinion differs from ours. + +That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and +unbiased Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question +every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters. +When a thoughtful and unbiased Mohammedan examines the Westminster +Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane. I +cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove +anything to a lunatic--for that is a part of his insanity and the +evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has +the same defect that afflicts his. All democrats are insane, but not one +of them knows it; none but the republicans and mugwumps know it. All the +republicans are insane, but only the democrats and mugwumps can perceive +it. The rule is perfect; in all matters of opinion our adversaries are +insane. When I look around me I am often troubled to see how many people +are mad. To mention only a few: + +The Atheist, The Shakers, +The Infidel, The Millerites, +The Agnostic, The Mormons, +The Baptist, The Laurence Oliphant +The Methodist, Harrisites, +The Catholic, and the other The Grand Lama's people, + 115 Christian sects, the The Monarchists, + Presbyterian excepted, The Imperialists, +The 72 Mohammedan sects, The Democrats, +The Buddhist, The Republicans (but not +The Blavatsky-Buddhist, the Mugwumps), +The Nationalist, The Mind-Curists, +The Confucian, The Faith-Curists, +The Spiritualist, The Mental Scientists, +The 2,000 East Indian The Allopaths, + sects, The Homeopaths, +The Peculiar People, The Electropaths, +The Swedenborgians, + + +The--but there's no end to the list; there are millions of them! And all +insane; each in his own way; insane as to his pet fad or opinion, but +otherwise sane and rational. + +This should move us to be charitable toward one another's lunacies. I +recognise that in his special belief the Christian Scientist is insane, +because he does not believe as I do; but I hail him as my mate and fellow +because I am as insane as he--insane from his point of view, and his +point of view is as authoritative as mine and worth as much. That is to +say, worth a brass farthing. Upon a great religious or political +question the opinion of the dullest head in the world is worth the same +as the opinion of the brightest head in the world--a brass farthing. How +do we arrive at this? It is simple: The affirmative opinion of a stupid +man is neutralised by the negative opinion of his stupid neighbour--no +decision is reached; the affirmative opinion of the intellectual giant +Gladstone is neutralised by the negative opinion of the intellectual +giant Cardinal Newman--no decision is reached. Opinions that prove +nothing are, of course, without value--any but a dead person knows that +much. This obliges us to admit the truth of the unpalatable proposition +just mentioned above--that in disputed matters political and religious +one man's opinion is worth no more than his peer's, and hence it follows +that no man's opinion possesses any real value. It is a humbling +thought, but there is no way to get around it: all opinions upon these +great subjects are brass-farthing opinions. + +It is a mere plain simple fact--as clear and as certain as that 8 and 7 +make fifteen. And by it we recognise that we are all insane, as concerns +those matters. If we were sane we should all see a political or +religious doctrine alike, there would be no dispute: it would be a case +of 8 and 7--just as it is in heaven, where all are sane and none insane. +There there is but one religion, one belief, the harmony is perfect, +there is never a discordant note. + +Under protection of these preliminaries I suppose I may now repeat +without offence that the Christian Scientist is insane. I mean him no +discourtesy, and I am not charging--nor even imagining--that he is +insaner than the rest of the human race. I think he is more +picturesquely insane that some of us. At the same time, I am quite sure +that in one important and splendid particular he is saner than is the +vast bulk of the race. + +Why is he insane? I told you before: it is because his opinions are not +ours. I know of no other reason, and I do not need any other; it is the +only way we have of discovering insanity when it is not violent. It is +merely the picturesqueness of his insanity that makes it more interesting +than my kind or yours. For instance, consider his 'little book'--the one +described in the previous article; the 'little book' exposed in the sky +eighteen centuries ago by the flaming angel of the Apocalypse and handed +down in our day to Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy of New Hampshire and +translated by her, word for word, into English (with help of a polisher), +and now published and distributed in hundreds of editions by her at a +clear profit per volume, above cost, of 700 per cent.!--a profit which +distinctly belongs to the angel of the Apocalypse, and let him collect it +if he can; a 'little book' which the C.S. very frequently calls by just +that name, and always inclosed in quotation-marks to keep its high origin +exultantly in mind; a 'little book' which 'explains' and reconstructs and +new-paints and decorates the Bible and puts a mansard roof on it and a +lightning-rod and all the other modern improvements; a little book which +for the present affects to travel in yoke with the Bible and be friendly +to it, and within half a century will hitch it in the rear, and +thenceforth travel tandem, itself in the lead, in the coming great march +of Christian Scientism through the Protestant dominions of the planet. + +Perhaps I am putting the tandem arrangement too far away; perhaps five +years might be nearer the mark than fifty; for a Viennese lady told me +last night that in the Christian Science Mosque in Boston she noticed +some things which seem to me to promise a shortening of the interval; on +one side there was a display of texts from the New Testament, signed with +the Saviour's initials, 'J.C.;' and on the opposite side a display of +texts from the 'little book' signed--with the author's mere initials? +No--signed with Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy's name in full. Perhaps the +Angel of the Apocalypse likes this kind of piracy. I made this remark +lightly to a Christian Scientist this morning, but he did not receive it +lightly, but said it was jesting upon holy things; he said there was no +piracy, for the angel did not compose the book, he only brought it--'God +composed it.' I could have retorted that it was a case of piracy just +the same; that the displayed texts should be signed with the Author's +initials, and that to sign them with the translator's train of names was +another case of 'jesting upon holy things.' However, I did not say these +things, for this Scientist was a large person, and although by his own +doctrine we have no substance, but are fictions and unrealities, I knew +he could hit me an imaginary blow which would furnish me an imaginary +pain which could last me a week. The lady said that in that Mosque there +were two pulpits; in one of them was a man with the Former Bible, in the +other a woman with Mrs. Eddy's apocalyptic Annex; and from these books +the man and the woman were reading verse and verse about: + + 'Hungry ones throng to hear the Bible read in connection with the + text-book of Christian Science, "Science and Health, with Key to the + Scriptures," by Mary Baker G. Eddy. These are our only preachers. + They are the word of God.'--Christian Science Journal, October + 1898. + +Are these things picturesque? The Viennese lady told me that in a chapel +of the Mosque there was a picture or image of Mrs. Eddy, and that before +it burns a never-extinguished light. Is that picturesque? How long do +you think it will be before the Christian Scientist will be worshipping +that image and praying to it? How long do you think it will be before it +is claimed that Mrs. Eddy is a Redeemer, a Christ, or Christ's equal? +Already her army of disciples speak of her reverently as 'Our Mother.' +How long will it be before they place her on the steps of the Throne +beside the Virgin--and later a step higher? First, Mary the Virgin and +Mary the Matron; later, with a change of Precedence, Mary the Matron and +Mary the Virgin. Let the artist get ready with his canvas and his +brushes; the new Renaissance is on its way, and there will be money in +altar-canvases--a thousand times as much as the Popes and their Church +ever spent on the Old Masters; for their riches were as poverty as +compared with what is going to pour into the treasure-chest of the +Christian-Scientist Papacy by-and-by, let us not doubt it. We will +examine the financial outlook presently and see what it promises. A +favourite subject of the new Old Master will be the first verse of the +twelfth chapter of Revelation--a verse which Mrs. Eddy says (in her Annex +to the Scriptures) has 'one distinctive feature which has special +reference to the present age'--and to her, as is rather pointedly +indicated: + + 'And there appeared a great wonder in heaven--a woman clothed with + the sun and the moon under her feet,' etc. + +The woman clothed with the sun will be a portrait of Mrs. Eddy. + +Is it insanity to believe that Christian Scientism is destined to make +the most formidable show that any new religion has made in the world +since the birth and spread of Mohammedanism, and that within a century +from now it may stand second to Rome only, in numbers and power in +Christendom? + +If this is a wild dream it will not be easy to prove it is so just yet, I +think. There seems argument that it may come true. The +Christian-Science 'boom' is not yet five years old; yet already it has +500 churches and 1,000,000 members in America. + +It has its start, you see, and it is a phenomenally good one. Moreover, +it is latterly spreading with a constantly accelerating swiftness. It +has a better chance to grow and prosper and achieve permanency than any +other existing 'ism;' for it has more to offer than any other. The past +teaches us that, in order to succeed, a movement like this must not be a +mere philosophy, it must be a religion; also, that it must not claim +entire originality, but content itself with passing for an improvement on +an existing religion, and show its hand later, when strong and +prosperous--like Mohammedanism. + +Next, there must be money--and plenty of it. + +Next, the power and authority and capital must be concentrated in the +grip of a small and irresponsible clique, with nobody outside privileged +to ask questions or find fault. + +Next, as before remarked, it must bait its hook with some new and +attractive advantages over the baits offered by the other religions. + +A new movement equipped with some of these endowments--like spiritualism, +for instance--may count upon a considerable success; a new movement +equipped with the bulk of them--like Mohammedanism, for instance--may +count upon a widely extended conquest. Mormonism had all the requisites +but one--it had nothing new and nothing valuable to bait with; and, +besides, it appealed to the stupid and the ignorant only. Spiritualism +lacked the important detail of concentration of money and authority in +the hands of an irresponsible clique. + +The above equipment is excellent, admirable, powerful, but not perfect. +There is yet another detail which is worth the whole of it put together +--and more; a detail which has never been joined (in the beginning of a +religious movement) to a supremely good working equipment since the world +began, until now: a new personage to worship. Christianity had the +Saviour, but at first and for generations it lacked money and +concentrated power. In Mrs. Eddy, Christian Science possesses the new +personage for worship, and in addition--here in the very beginning--a +working equipment that has not a flaw in it. In the beginning, +Mohammedanism had no money; and it has never had anything to offer its +client but heaven--nothing here below that was valuable. In addition to +heaven hereafter, Christian Science has present health and a cheerful +spirit to offer--for cash--and in comparison with this bribe all other +this-world bribes are poor and cheap. You recognise that this estimate +is admissible, do you not? + +To whom does Bellamy's 'Nationalism' appeal? Necessarily to the few: +people who read and dream, and are compassionate, and troubled for the +poor and the hard-driven. To whom does Spiritualism appeal? Necessarily +to the few; its 'boom' has lasted for half a century and I believe it +claims short of four millions of adherents in America. Who are attracted +by Swedenborgianism and some of the other fine and delicate 'isms?' The +few again: Educated people, sensitively organised, with superior mental +endowments, who seek lofty planes of thought and find their contentment +there. And who are attracted by Christian Science? There is no limit; +its field is horizonless; its appeal is as universal as is the appeal of +Christianity itself. It appeals to the rich, the poor, the high, the +low, the cultured, the ignorant, the gifted, the stupid, the modest, the +vain, the wise, the silly, the soldier, the civilian, the hero, the +coward, the idler, the worker, the godly, the godless, the freeman, the +slave, the adult, the child; they who are ailing, they who have friends +that are ailing. To mass it in a phrase, its clientele is the Human +Race? Will it march? I think so. + + +VII + +Remember its principal great offer: to rid the Race of pain and disease. +Can it do it? In large measure, yes. How much of the pain and disease +in the world is created by the imaginations of the sufferers, and then +kept alive by those same imaginations? Four-fifths? Not anything short +of that I should think. Can Christian Science banish that four-fifths? +I think so. Can any other (organised) force do it? None that I know of. +Would this be a new world when that was accomplished? And a pleasanter +one--for us well people, as well as for those fussy and fretting sick +ones? Would it seem as if there was not as much gloomy weather as there +used to be? I think so. + +In the meantime would the Scientist kill off a good many patients? I +think so. More than get killed off now by the legalised methods? I will +take up that question presently. + +At present I wish to ask you to examine some of the Scientist's +performances, as registered in his magazine, 'The Christian Science +Journal'--October number, 1898. First, a Baptist clergyman gives us this +true picture of 'the average orthodox Christian'--and he could have added +that it is a true picture of the average (civilised) human being: + +'He is a worried and fretted and fearful man; afraid of himself and his +propensities, afraid of colds and fevers, afraid of treading on serpents +or drinking deadly things.' + +Then he gives us this contrast: + +'The average Christian Scientist has put all anxiety and fretting under +his feet. He does have a victory over fear and care that is not achieved +by the average orthodox Christian.' + +He has put all anxiety and fretting under his feet. What proportion of +your earnings or income would you be willing to pay for that frame of +mind, year in year out? It really outvalues any price that can be put +upon it. Where can you purchase it, at any outlay of any sort, in any +Church or out of it, except the Scientist's? + +Well, it is the anxiety and fretting about colds, and fevers, and +draughts, and getting our feet wet, and about forbidden food eaten in +terror of indigestion, that brings on the cold and the fever and the +indigestion and the most of our other ailments; and so, if the Science +can banish that anxiety from the world I think it can reduce the world's +disease and pain about four-fifths. + +In this October number many of the redeemed testify and give thanks; and +not coldly but with passionate gratitude. As a rule they seem drunk with +health, and with the surprise of it, the wonder of it, the unspeakable +glory and splendour of it, after a long sober spell spent in inventing +imaginary diseases and concreting them with doctor-stuff. The first +witness testifies that when 'this most beautiful Truth first dawned on +him' he had 'nearly all the ills that flesh is heir to;' that those he +did not have he thought he had--and thus made the tale about complete. +What was the natural result? Why, he was a dump-pit 'for all the +doctors, druggists, and patent medicines of the country.' Christian +Science came to his help, and 'the old sick conditions passed away,' and +along with them the 'dismal forebodings' which he had been accustomed to +employ in conjuring up ailments. And so he was a healthy and cheerful +man, now, and astonished. + +But I am not astonished, for from other sources I know what must have +been his method of applying Christian Science. If I am in the right, he +watchfully and diligently diverted his mind from unhealthy channels and +compelled it to travel in healthy ones. Nothing contrivable by human +invention could be more formidably effective than that, in banishing +imaginary ailments and in closing the entrances against subsequent +applicants of their breed. I think his method was to keep saying, 'I am +well! I am sound!--sound and well! well and sound! Perfectly sound, +perfectly well! I have no pain; there's no such thing as pain! I have no +disease; there's no such thing as disease! Nothing is real but Mind; all +is Mind, All-Good, Good-Good, Life, Soul, Liver, Bones, one of a series, +ante and pass the buck!' + +I do not mean that that was exactly the formula used, but that it +doubtless contains the spirit of it. The Scientist would attach value to +the exact formula, no doubt, and to the religious spirit in which it was +used. I should think that any formula that would divert the mind from +unwholesome channels and force it into healthy ones would answer every +purpose with some people, though not with all. I think it most likely +that a very religious man would find the addition of the religious spirit +a powerful reinforcement in his case. + +The second witness testifies that the Science banished 'an old organic +trouble' which the doctor and the surgeon had been nursing with drugs and +the knife for seven years. + +He calls it his 'claim.' A surface-miner would think it was not his +claim at all, but the property of the doctor and his pal the surgeon--for +he would be misled by that word, which is Christian-Science slang for +'ailment.' The Christian Scientist has no ailment; to him there is no +such thing, and he will not use the lying word. All that happens to him +is, that upon his attention an imaginary disturbance sometimes obtrudes +itself which claims to be an ailment, but isn't. + +This witness offers testimony for a clergyman seventy years old who had +preached forty years in a Christian church, and has not gone over to the +new sect. He was 'almost blind and deaf.' He was treated by the C.S. +method, and 'when he heard the voice of Truth he saw spiritually.' Saw +spiritually. It is a little indefinite; they had better treat him again. +Indefinite testimonies might properly be waste-basketed, since there is +evidently no lack of definite ones procurable, but this C.S. magazine is +poorly edited, and so mistakes of this kind must be expected. + +The next witness is a soldier of the Civil War. When Christian Science +found him, he had in stock the following claims: + +Indigestion, +Rheumatism, +Catarrh, +Chalky deposits in + Shoulder joints, + Arm joints, + Hand joints, +Atrophy of the muscles of + Arms, + Shoulders, +Stiffness of all those joints, +Insomnia, +Excruciating pains most of the time. + + +These claims have a very substantial sound. They came of exposure in the +campaigns. The doctors did all they could, but it was little. Prayers +were tried, but 'I never realised any physical relief from that source.' +After thirty years of torture he went to a Christian Scientist and took +an hour's treatment and went home painless. Two days later he 'began to +eat like a well man.' Then 'the claims vanished--some at once, others +more gradually;' finally, 'they have almost entirely disappeared.' And +--a thing which is of still greater value--he is now 'contented and happy.' +That is a detail which, as earlier remarked, is a Scientist-Church +specialty. With thirty-one years' effort the Methodist Church had not +succeeded in furnishing it to this harassed soldier. + +And so the tale goes on. Witness after witness bulletins his claims, +declares their prompt abolishment, and gives Mrs. Eddy's Discovery the +praise. Milk-leg is cured; nervous prostration is cured; consumption is +cured; and St. Vitus's dance made a pastime. And now and then an +interesting new addition to the Science slang appears on the page. We +have 'demonstrations over' chilblains and such things. It seems to be a +curtailed way of saying 'demonstrations of the power of Christian-Science +Truth over the fiction which masquerades under the name of Chilblains.' +The children as well as the adults, share in the blessings of the +Science. 'Through the study of the "little book" they are learning how +to be healthful, peaceful, and wise.' Sometimes they are cured of their +little claims by the professional healer, and sometimes more advanced +children say over the formula and cure themselves. + +A little Far-Western girl of nine, equipped with an adult vocabulary, +states her age and says, 'I thought I would write a demonstration to +you.' She had a claim derived from getting flung over a pony's head and +landed on a rock-pile. She saved herself from disaster by remember to +say 'God is All' while she was in the air. I couldn't have done it. I +shouldn't have even thought of it. I should have been too excited. +Nothing but Christian Science could have enabled that child to do that +calm and thoughtful and judicious thing in those circumstances. She came +down on her head, and by all the rules she should have broken it; but the +intervention of the formula prevented that, so the only claim resulting +was a blackened eye. Monday morning it was still swollen and shut. At +school 'it hurt pretty bad--that is, it seemed to.' So 'I was excused, +and went down in the basement and said, "Now I am depending on mamma +instead of God, and I will depend on God instead of mamma."' No doubt +this would have answered; but, to make sure, she added Mrs. Eddy to the +team and recited 'the Scientific Statement of Being,' which is one of the +principal incantations, I judge. Then 'I felt my eye opening.' Why, it +would have opened an oyster. I think it is one of the touchingest things +in child-history, that pious little rat down cellar pumping away at the +Scientific Statement of Being. + +There is a page about another good child--little Gordon. Little Gordon +'came into the world without the assistance of surgery or anaesthetics.' +He was a 'demonstration.' A painless one; therefore his coming evoked +'joy and thankfulness to God and the Discoverer of Christian Science.' +It is a noticeable feature of this literature--the so frequent linking +together of the Two Beings in an equal bond; also of Their Two Bibles. +When little Gordon was two years old, 'he was playing horse on the bed, +where I had left my "little book." I noticed him stop in his play, take +the book carefully in his little hands, kiss it softly, then look about +for the highest place of safety his arms could reach, and put it there.' +This pious act filled the mother 'with such a train of thought as I had +never experienced before. I thought of the sweet mother of long ago who +kept things in her heart,' etc. It is a bold comparison; however, +unconscious profanations are about as common in the mouths of the lay +membership of the new Church as are frank and open ones in the mouths of +its consecrated chiefs. + +Some days later, the family library--Christian Science books--was lying +in a deep-seated window. It was another chance for the holy child to +show off. He left his play and went there and pushed all the books to +one side except the Annex. 'It he took in both hands, slowly raised it +to his lips, then removed it carefully, and seated himself in the +window.' It had seemed to the mother too wonderful to be true, that +first time; but now she was convinced that 'neither imagination nor +accident had anything to do with it.' Later, little Gordon let the +author of his being see him do it. After that he did it frequently; +probably every time anybody was looking. I would rather have that child +than a chromo. If this tale has any object, it is to intimate that the +inspired book was supernaturally able to convey a sense of its sacred and +awful character to this innocent little creature without the intervention +of outside aids. The magazine is not edited with high-priced discretion. +The editor has a claim, and he ought to get it treated. + +Among other witnesses, there is one who had a 'jumping toothache,' which +several times tempted her to 'believe that there was sensation in matter, +but each time it was overcome by the power of Truth.' She would not +allow the dentist to use cocaine, but sat there and let him punch and +drill and split and crush the tool, and tear and slash its ulcerations, +and pull out the nerve, and dig out fragments of bone; and she wouldn't +once confess that it hurt. And to this day she thinks it didn't, and I +have not a doubt that she is nine-tenths right, and that her Christian +Science faith did her better service than she could have gotten out of +cocaine. + +There is an account of a boy who got broken all up into small bits by an +accident, but said over the Scientific Statement of Being, or some of the +other incantations, and got well and sound without having suffered any +real pain and without the intrusion of a surgeon. I can believe this, +because my own case was somewhat similar, as per my former article. + +Also there is an account of the restoration to perfect health, in a +single night, of a fatally injured horse, by the application of Christian +Science. I can stand a good deal, but I recognise that the ice is +getting thin here. That horse had as many as fifty claims: how could he +demonstrate over them? Could he do the All-Good, Good-Good, +Good-Gracious, Liver, Bones, Truth, All down but Nine, Set them up on the +Other Alley? Could he intone the Scientific Statement of Being? Now, +could he? Wouldn't it give him a relapse? Let us draw the line at +horses. Horses and furniture. + +There is a plenty of other testimonies in the magazine, but these quoted +samples will answer. They show the kind of trade the Science is driving. +Now we come back to the question; Does it kill a patient here and there +and now and then? We must concede it. Does it compensate for this? I +am persuaded that it can make a plausible showing in that direction. For +instance: when it lays its hands upon a soldier who has suffered thirty +years of helpless torture and makes him whole in body and mind, what is +the actual sum of that achievement? This, I think: that it has restored +to life a subject who had essentially died ten deaths a year for thirty +years, and each of them a long and painful one. But for its interference +that man would have essentially died thirty times more, in the three +years which have since elapsed. There are thousand of young people in +the land who are now ready to enter upon a life-long death similar to +that man's. Every time the Science captures one of these and secures to +him life-long immunity from imagination-manufactured disease, it may +plausibly claim that in his person it has saved 300 lives. Meantime it +will kill a man every now and then; but no matter, it will still be ahead +on the credit side. + + +VIII + + 'We consciously declare that "Science and Health with Key to the + Scriptures," was foretold as well as its author, Mary Baker Eddy, in + Revelation x. She is the "mighty angel," or God's highest thought + to this age (verse 1), giving us the spiritual interpretation of the + Bible in the "little book open" (verse 2). Thus we prove that + Christian Science is the second coming of Christ--Truth--Spirit.' + --Lecture by Dr. George Tomkins, D.D., C.S. + +There you have it in plain speech. She is the mighty angel; she is the +divinely and officially sent bearer of God's highest thought. For the +present, she brings the Second Advent. We must expect that before she +has been in her grave fifty years she will be regarded by her following +as having been herself the Second Advent. She is already worshipped, and +we must expect this feeling to spread territorially, and also to deepen +in intensity [1]. + +Particularly after her death; for then, as anyone can foresee, +Eddy-worship will be taught in the Sunday-schools and pulpits of the +cult. Already whatever she puts her trade-mark on, thought it be only a +memorial spoon, is holy and is eagerly and passionately and gratefully +bought by the disciple, and becomes a fetish in his house. I say bought, +for the Boston Christian-Science Trust gives nothing away; everything it +has for sale. And the terms are cash; and not cash only but cash in +advance. Its god is Mrs. Eddy first, then the Dollar. Not a spiritual +Dollar, but a real one. From end to end of the Christian-Science +literature not a single (material) thing in the world is conceded to be +real, except the Dollar. But all through and through its advertisements +that reality is eagerly and persistently recognised. The hunger of the +Trust for the Dollar, its adoration of the Dollar, its lust after the +Dollar, its ecstasy in the mere thought of the Dollar--there has been +nothing like it in the world in any age or country, nothing so coarse, +nothing so lubricous, nothing so bestial, except a French novel's +attitude towards adultery. + +The Dollar is hunted down in all sorts of ways; the Christian-Science +Mother-Church and Bargain-Counter in Boston peddles all kinds of +spiritual wares to the faithful, always at extravagant prices, and always +on the one condition--cash, cash in advance. The Angel of the Apocalypse +could not go there and get a copy of his own pirated book on credit. +Many, many precious Christian-Science things are to be had there--for +cash: Bible Lessons; Church Manual; C.S. Hymnal; History of the building +of the Mother-Church; lot of Sermons; Communion Hymn, 'Saw Ye My +Saviour,' by Mrs. Eddy, half a dollar a copy, 'words used by special +permission of Mrs. Eddy.' Also we have Mrs. Eddy's and the Angel's +little Bible-Annex in eight styles of binding at eight kinds of +war-prices: among these a sweet thing in 'levant, divinity circuit, +leather lined to edge, round corners, gold edge, silk sewed, each, +prepaid, $6,' and if you take a million you get them a shilling +cheaper--that is to say, 'prepaid, $5.75.' Also we have Mrs. Eddy's +'Miscellaneous Writings,' at noble big prices, the divinity-circuit +style heading the extortions, shilling discount where you take an +edition. Next comes 'Christ and Christmas,' by the fertile Mrs. +Eddy--a poem--I would God I could see it--price $3, cash in advance. +Then follow five more books by Mrs. Eddy at highwaymen's rates, as +usual, some of them in 'leatherette covers,' some of them in 'pebbled +cloth,' with divinity circuit, compensation balance, twin screw, and +the other modern improvements: and at the same bargain counter can be +had the 'Christian Science Journal.' I wish it were in refined taste +to apply a rudely and ruggedly descriptive epithet to that literary +slush-bucket, so as to give one an accurate idea of what it is like. +I am moved to do it, but I must not: it is better to be refined than +accurate when one is talking about a production like that. + +Christian-Science literary oleomargarine is a monopoly of the Mother +Church Headquarters Factory in Boston; none genuine without the +trade-mark of the Trust. You must apply there, and not elsewhere; and +you pay your money before you get your soap-fat. + +The Trust has still other sources of income. Mrs. Eddy is president (and +perhaps proprietor?) of the Trust's Metaphysical College in Boston, where +the student who has practised C.S. healing during three years the best +he knew how perfects himself in the game by a two weeks' course, and pays +one hundred dollars for it! And I have a case among my statistics where +the student had a three weeks' course and paid three hundred for it. + +The Trust does love the Dollar when it isn't a spiritual one. + +In order to force the sale of Mrs. Eddy's Bible-Annex, no healer, +Metaphysical College-bred or other, is allowed to practise the game +unless he possess a copy of that holy nightmare. That means a large and +constantly augmenting income for the Trust. No C.S. family would +consider itself loyal or pious or pain-proof without an Annex or two in +the house. That means an income for the Trust--in the near future--of +millions: not thousands--millions a year. + +No member, young or old, of a Christian-Scientist church can retain that +membership unless he pay 'capitation tax' to the Boston Trust every year. +That means an income for the Trust--in the near future--of millions more +per year. + +It is a reasonably safe guess that in America in 1910 there will be +10,000,000 Christian Scientists, and 3,000,000 in Great Britain; that +these figures will be trebled by 1920; that in America in 1910 the +Christian Scientists will be a political force, in 1920 politically +formidable--to remain that, permanently. And I think it a reasonable +guess that the Trust (which is already in our day pretty brusque in its +ways) will then be the most insolent and unscrupulous and tyrannical +politico-religious master that has dominated a people since the palmy +days of the Inquisition. And a stronger master than the strongest of +bygone times, because this one will have a financial strength not dreamed +of by any predecessor; as effective a concentration of irresponsible +power as any predecessor had; in the railway, the telegraph, and the +subsidised newspaper, better facilities for watching and managing his +empire than any predecessor has had; and after a generation or two he +will probably divide Christendom with the Catholic Church. + +The Roman Church has a perfect organisation, and it has an effective +centralisation of power--but not of its cash. Its multitude of Bishops +are rich, but their riches remain in large measure in their own hands. +They collect from 200,000,000 of people, but they keep the bulk of the +result at home. The Boston Pope of by-and-by will draw his dollar-a-head +capitation-tax from 300,000,000 of the human race, and the Annex and the +rest of his book-shop will fetch in double as much more; and his +Metaphysical Colleges, the annual pilgrimage to Mrs. Eddy's tomb, from +all over the world--admission, the Christian-Science Dollar (payable in +advance)--purchases of consecrated glass beads, candles, memorial spoons, +aureoled chromo-portraits and bogus autographs of Mrs. Eddy, cash +offerings at her shrine--no crutches of cured cripples received, and no +imitations of miraculously restored broken legs and necks allowed to be +hung up except when made out of the Holy Metal and proved by fire-assay; +cash for miracles worked at the tomb: these money-sources, with a +thousand to be yet invented and ambushed upon the devotee, will bring the +annual increment well up above a billion. And nobody but the Trust will +have the handling of it. No Bishops appointed unless they agree to hand +in 90 per cent. of the catch. In that day the Trust will monopolise the +manufacture and sale of the Old and New Testaments as well as the Annex, +and raise their price to Annex rates, and compel the devotee to buy (for +even to-day a healer has to have the Annex and the Scriptures or he is +not allowed to work the game), and that will bring several hundred +million dollars more. In those days the Trust will have an income +approaching $5,000,000 a day, and no expenses to be taken out of it; no +taxes to pay, and no charities to support. That last detail should not +be lightly passed over by the read; it is well entitled to attention. + +No charities to support. No, nor even to contribute to. One searches in +vain the Trust's advertisements and the utterances of its pulpit for any +suggestion that it spends a penny on orphans, widows, discharged +prisoners, hospitals, ragged schools, night missions, city missions, +foreign missions, libraries, old people's homes, or any other object that +appeals to a human being's purse through his heart.[2] + +I have hunted, hunted, and hunted, by correspondence and otherwise, and +have not yet got upon the track of a farthing that the Trust has spent +upon any worthy object. Nothing makes a Scientist so uncomfortable as to +ask him if he knows of a case where Christian Science has spent money on +a benevolence, either among its own adherents or elsewhere. He is +obliged to say no. And then one discovers that the person questioned has +been asked the question many times before, and that it is getting to be a +sore subject with him. Why a sore subject? Because he has written his +chiefs and asked with high confidence for an answer that will confound +these questioners--and the chiefs did not reply. He has written again +--and then again--not with confidence, but humbly, now, and has begged for +defensive ammunition in the voice of supplication. A reply does at last +come--to this effect: 'We must have faith in Our Mother, and rest content +in the conviction that whatever She[3] does with the money it is in +accordance with orders from Heaven, for She does no act of any kind +without first "demonstrating over" it.' + +That settles it--as far as the disciple is concerned. His Mind is +entirely satisfied with that answer; he gets down his Annex and does an +incantation or two, and that mesmerises his spirit and puts that to +sleep--brings it peace. Peace and comfort and joy, until some inquirer +punctures the old sore again. + +Through friends in America I asked some questions, and in some cases got +definite and informing answers; in other cases the answers were not +definite and not valuable. From the definite answers I gather than the +'capitation-tax' is compulsory, and that the sum is one dollar. To the +question, 'Does any of the money go to charities?' the answer from an +authoritative source was: 'No, *not in the sense usually conveyed by this +word*.' (The italics are mine.) That answer is cautious. But definite, +I think--utterly and unassailably definite--although quite +Christian-scientifically foggy in its phrasing. Christian Science is +generally foggy, generally diffuse, generally garrulous. The writer was +aware that the first word in his phrase answered the question which I was +asking, but he could not help adding nine dark words. Meaningless ones, +unless explained by him. It is quite likely--as intimated by him--that +Christian Science has invented a new class of objects to apply the word +charity to, but without an explanation we cannot know what they are. We +quite easily and naturally and confidently guess that they are in all +cases objects which will return five hundred per cent. on the Trust's +investment in them, but guessing is not knowledge; it is merely, in this +case, a sort of nine-tenths certainty deducible from what we think we +know of the Trust's trade principles and its sly and furtive and shifty +ways. + +Sly? Deep? Judicious? The Trust understands business. The Trust does +not give itself away. It defeats all the attempts of us impertinents to +get at its trade secrets. To this day, after all our diligence, we have +not been able to get it to confess what it does with the money. It does +not even let its own disciples find out. All it says is, that the matter +has been 'demonstrated over.' Now and then a lay Scientist says, with a +grateful exultation, that Mrs. Eddy is enormously rich, but he stops +there; as to whether any of the money goes to other charities or not, he +is obliged to admit that he does not know. However, the Trust is +composed of human beings; and this justifies the conjecture that if it +had a charity on its list which it did not need to blush for, we should +soon hear of it. + +'Without money and without price.' Those used to be the terms. Mrs. +Eddy's Annex cancels them. The motto of Christian Science is 'The +labourer is worthy of his hire.' And now that it has been 'demonstrated +over,' we find its spiritual meaning to be, 'Do anything and everything +your hand may find to do; and charge cash for it, and collect the money +in advance.' The Scientist has on his tongue's end a cut-and-dried, +Boston-supplied set of rather lean arguments whose function is to show +that it is a Heaven-commanded duty to do this, and that the croupiers of +the game have no choice by to obey. + +The Trust seems to be a reincarnation. Exodus xxxii.4. + +I have no reverence for Mrs. Eddy and the rest of the Trust--if there is +a rest--but I am not lacking in reverence for the sincerities of the lay +membership of the new Church. There is every evidence that the lay +members are entirely sincere in their faith, and I think sincerity is +always entitled to honour and respect, let the inspiration of the +sincerity be what it may. Zeal and sincerity can carry a new religion +further than any other missionary except fire and sword, and I believe +that the new religion will conquer the half of Christendom in a hundred +years. I am not intending this as a compliment to the human race, I am +merely stating an opinion. And yet I think that perhaps it is a +compliment to the race. I keep in mind that saying of an orthodox +preacher--quoted further back. He conceded that this new Christianity +frees its possessor's life from frets, fears, vexations, bitterness, and +all sorts of imagination-propagated maladies and pains, and fills his +world with sunshine and his heart with gladness. If Christian Science, +with this stupendous equipment--and final salvation added--cannot win +half the Christian globe, I must be badly mistaken in the make-up of the +human race. + +I think the Trust will be handed down like the other papacy, and will +always know how to handle its limitless cash. It will press the button; +the zeal, the energy, the sincerity, the enthusiasm of its countless +vassals will do the rest. + + +IX + +The power which a man's imagination has over his body to heal it or make +it sick is a force which none of us is born without. The first man had +it, the last one will possess it. If left to himself a man is most +likely to use only the mischievous half of the force--the half which +invents imaginary ailments for him and cultivates them: and if he is one +of these very wise people he is quite likely to scoff at the beneficent +half of the force and deny its existence. And so, to heal or help that +man, two imaginations are required: his own and some outsider's. The +outsider, B, must imagine that his incantations are the healing power +that is curing A, and A must imagine that this is so. It is not so, at +all; but no matter, the cure is effected, and that is the main thing. +The outsider's work is unquestionably valuable; so valuable that it may +fairly be likened to the essential work performed by the engineer when he +handles the throttle and turns on the steam: the actual power is lodged +exclusively in the engine, but if the engine were left alone it would +never start of itself. Whether the engineer be named Jim, or Bob, or +Tom, it is all one--his services are necessary, and he is entitled to +such wage as he can get you to pay. Whether he be named Christian +Scientist, or Mental Scientist, or Mind Curist, or Lourdes +Miracle-Worker, or King's-Evil Expert, it is all one,--he is merely the +Engineer, he simply turns on the same old steam and the engine does the +whole work. + +In the case of the cure-engine it is a distinct advantage to clothe the +engineer in religious overalls and give him a pious name. It greatly +enlarges the business, and does no one any harm. + +The Christian-Scientist engineer drives exactly the same trade as the +other engineers, yet he out-prospers the whole of them put together. Is +it because he has captured the takingest name? I think that that is only +a small part of it. I think that the secret of his high prosperity lies +elsewhere: + +The Christian Scientist has organised the business. Now that was +certainly a gigantic idea. There is more intellect in it than +would be needed in the invention of a couple of millions of Eddy +Science-and-Health Bible Annexes. Electricity, in limitless volume, has +existed in the air and the rocks and the earth and everywhere since time +began--and was going to waste all the while. In our time we have +organised that scattered and wandering force and set it to work, and +backed the business with capital, and concentrated it in few and +competent hands, and the results are as we see. + +The Christian Scientist has taken a force which has been lying idle in +every member of the human race since time began, and has organised it, +and backed the business with capital, and concentrated it at Boston +headquarters in the hands of a small and very competent Trust, and there +are results. + +Therein lies the promise that this monopoly is going to extend its +commerce wide in the earth. I think that if the business were conducted +in the loose and disconnected fashion customary with such things, it +would achieve but little more than the modest prosperity usually secured +by unorganised great moral and commercial ventures; but I believe that so +long as this one remains compactly organised and closely concentrated in +a Trust, the spread of its dominion will continue. + +VIENNA: May 1, 1899. + +[1] After raising a dead child to life, the disciple who did it writes an +account of her performance, to Mrs. Eddy, and closes it thus: 'My prayer +daily is to be more spiritual, that I may do more as you would have me +do... and may we all love you more and so live it that the world may +know that the Christ is come.'--Printed in the Concord, N.H., +Independent Statesman, March 9, 1899. If this is no worship, it is a +good imitation of it. + +[2] In the past two years the membership of the Established Church of +England have given voluntary contributions amounting to $73,000,000 to +the Church's benevolent enterprises. Churches that give have nothing to +hide. + +[3] I may be introducing the capital S a little early--still it is on its +way. + + + + + + +IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD? + +I was spending the month of March 1892 at Mentone, in the Riviera. At +this retired spot one has all the advantages, privately, which are to be +had publicly at Monte Carlo and Nice, a few miles farther along. That is +to say, one has the flooding sunshine, the balmy air and the brilliant +blue sea, without the marring additions of human pow-wow and fuss and +feathers and display. Mentone is quiet, simple, restful, unpretentious; +the rich and the gaudy do not come there. As a rule, I mean, the rich do +not come there. Now and then a rich man comes, and I presently got +acquainted with one of these. Partially to disguise him I will call him +Smith. One day, in the Hotel des Anglais, at the second breakfast, he +exclaimed: + +'Quick! Cast your eye on the man going out at the door. Take in every +detail of him.' + +'Why?' + +'Do you know who he is?' + +'Yes. He spent several days here before you came. He is an old, +retired, and very rich silk manufacturer from Lyons, they say, and I +guess he is alone in the world, for he always looks sad and dreamy, and +doesn't talk with anybody. His name is Theophile Magnan.' + +I supposed that Smith would now proceed to justify the large interest +which he had shown in Monsieur Magnan, but, instead, he dropped into a +brown study, and was apparently lost to me and to the rest of the world +during some minutes. Now and then he passed his fingers through his +flossy white hair, to assist his thinking, and meantime he allowed his +breakfast to go on cooling. At last he said: + +'No, it's gone; I can't call it back.' + +'Can't call what back?' + +'It's one of Hans Andersen's beautiful little stories. But it's gone fro +me. Part of it is like this: A child has a caged bird, which it loves +but thoughtlessly neglects. The bird pours out its song unheard and +unheeded; but, in time, hunger and thirst assail the creature, and its +song grows plaintive and feeble and finally ceases--the bird dies. The +child comes, and is smitten to the heart with remorse: then, with bitter +tears and lamentations, it calls its mates, and they bury the bird with +elaborate pomp and the tenderest grief, without knowing, poor things, +that it isn't children only who starve poets to death and then spend +enough on their funerals and monuments to have kept them alive and made +them easy and comfortable. Now--' + +But here we were interrupted. About ten that evening I ran across Smith, +and he asked me up to his parlour to help him smoke and drink hot Scotch. +It was a cosy place, with its comfortable chairs, its cheerful lamps, and +its friendly open fire of seasoned olive-wood. To make everything +perfect, there was a muffled booming of the surf outside. After the +second Scotch and much lazy and contented chat, Smith said: + +'Now we are properly primed--I to tell a curious history and you to +listen to it. It has been a secret for many years--a secret between me +and three others; but I am going to break the seal now. Are you +comfortable?' + +'Perfectly. Go on.' + +Here follows what he told me: + +'A long time ago I was a young artist--a very young artist, in fact--and +I wandered about the country parts of France, sketching here and +sketching there, and was presently joined by a couple of darling young +Frenchmen who were at the same kind of thing that I was doing. We were +as happy as we were poor, or as poor as we were happy--phrase it to suit +yourself. Claude Frere and Carl Boulanger--these are the names of those +boys; dear, dear fellows, and the sunniest spirits that ever laughed at +poverty and had a noble good time in all weathers. + +'At last we ran hard aground in a Breton village, and an artist as poor +as ourselves took us in and literally saved us from starving--Francois +Millet--' + +'What! the great Francois Millet?' + +'Great? He wasn't any greater than we were, then. He hadn't any fame, +even in his own village; and he was so poor that he hadn't anything to +feed us on but turnips, and even the turnips failed us sometimes. We +four became fast friends, doting friends, inseparables. We painted away +together with all our might, piling up stock, piling up stock, but very +seldom getting rid of any of it. We had lovely times together; but, O my +soul! how we were pinched now and then! + +'For a little over two years this went on. At last, one day, Claude +said: + +'"Boys, we've come to the end. Do you understand that?--absolutely to +the end. Everybody has struck--there's a league formed against us. I've +been all around the village and it's just as I tell you. They refuse to +credit us for another centime until all the odds and ends are paid up." + +'This struck us as cold. Every face was blank with dismay. We realised +that our circumstances were desperate, now. There was a long silence. +Finally, Millet said with a sigh: + +'"Nothing occurs to me--nothing. Suggest something, lads." + +'There was no response, unless a mournful silence may be called a +response. Carl got up, and walked nervously up and down a while, then +said: + +'"It's a shame! Look at these canvases: stacks and stacks of as good +pictures as anybody in Europe paints--I don't care who he is. Yes, and +plenty of lounging strangers have said the same--or nearly that, anyway." + +'"But didn't buy," Millet said. + +'"No matter, they said it; and it's true, too. Look at your 'Angelus' +there! Will anybody tell me--" + +'"Pah, Carl--My 'Angelus!' I was offered five francs for it." + +'"When?" + +'"Who offered it?" + +'"Where is he?" + +'"Why didn't you take it?" + +'"Come--don't all speak at once. I thought he would give more--I was +sure of it--he looked it--so I asked him eight." + +'"Well--and then?" + +'"He said he would call again." + +'"Thunder and lightning! Why, Francois--" + +'"Oh, I know--I know! It was a mistake, and I was a fool. Boys, I meant +for the best; you'll grant me that, and I--" + +'"Why, certainly, we know that, bless your dear heart; but don't you be a +fool again." + +'"I? I wish somebody would come along and offer us a cabbage for it +--you'd see!" + +'"A cabbage! Oh, don't name it--it makes my mouth water. Talk of things +less trying." + +'"Boys," said Carl, "do these pictures lack merit? Answer me that." + +'"No!" + +'"Aren't they of very great and high merit? Answer me that." + +'"Yes." + +'"Of such great and high merit that, if an illustrious name were attached +to them they would sell at splendid prices. Isn't it so?" + +'"Certainly it is. Nobody doubts that." + +'"But--I'm not joking--isn't it so?" + +'"Why, of course it's so--and we are not joking. But what of it. What +of it? How does that concern us?" + +'"In this way, comrades--we'll attach an illustrious name to them!" + +'The lively conversation stopped. The faces were turned inquiringly upon +Carl. What sort of riddle might this be? Where was an illustrious name +to be borrowed? And who was to borrow it? + +'Carl sat down, and said: + +'"Now, I have a perfectly serious thing to propose. I think it is the +only way to keep us out of the almshouse, and I believe it to be a +perfectly sure way. I base this opinion upon certain multitudinous and +long-established facts in human history. I believe my project will make +us all rich." + +'"Rich! You've lost your mind." + +'"No, I haven't." + +'"Yes, you have--you've lost your mind. What do you call rich?" + +'"A hundred thousand francs apiece." + +'"He has lost his mind. I knew it." + +'"Yes, he has. Carl, privation has been too much for you, and--" + +'"Carl, you want to take a pill and get right to bed." + +'"Bandage him first--bandage his head, and then--" + +'"No, bandage his heels; his brains have been settling for weeks--I've +noticed it." + +'"Shut up!" said Millet, with ostensible severity, "and let the boy have +his say. Now, then--come out with your project, Carl. What is it?" + +'"Well, then, by way of preamble I will ask you to note this fact in +human history: that the merit of many a great artist has never been +acknowledged until after he was starved and dead. This has happened so +often that I make bold to found a law upon it. This law: that the merit +of every great unknown and neglected artist must and will be recognised +and his pictures climb to high prices after his death. My project is +this: we must cast lots--one of us must die." + +'The remark fell so calmly and so unexpectedly that we almost forgot to +jump. Then there was a wild chorus of advice again--medical advice--for +the help of Carl's brain; but he waited patiently for the hilarity to +calm down, and then went on again with his project: + +'"Yes, one of us must die, to save the others--and himself. We will cast +lots. The one chosen shall be illustrious, all of us shall be rich. +Hold still, now--hold still; don't interrupt--I tell you I know what I am +talking about. Here is the idea. During the next three months the one +who is to die shall paint with all his might, enlarge his stock all he +can--not pictures, no! skeleton sketches, studies, parts of studies, +fragments of studies, a dozen dabs of the brush on each--meaningless, of +course, but his, with his cipher on them; turn out fifty a day, each to +contain some peculiarity or mannerism easily detectable as his--they're +the things that sell, you know, and are collected at fabulous prices for +the world's museums, after the great man is gone; we'll have a ton of +them ready--a ton! And all that time the rest of us will be busy +supporting the moribund, and working Paris and the dealers--preparations +for the coming event, you know; and when everything is hot and just +right, we'll spring the death on them and have the notorious funeral. +You get the idea?" + +'"N-o; at least, not qu--" + +'"Not quite? Don't you see? The man doesn't really die; he changes his +name and vanishes; we bury a dummy, and cry over it, with all the world +to help. And I--" + +'But he wasn't allowed to finish. Everybody broke out into a rousing +hurrah of applause; and all jumped up and capered about the room and fell +on each other's necks in transports of gratitude and joy. For hours we +talked over the great plan, without ever feeling hungry; and at last, +when all the details had been arranged satisfactorily, we cast lots and +Millet was elected--elected to die, as we called it. Then we scraped +together those things which one never parts with until he is betting them +against future wealth--keepsake trinkets and suchlike--and these we +pawned for enough to furnish us a frugal farewell supper and breakfast, +and leave us a few francs over for travel, and a stake of turnips and +such for Millet to live on for a few days. + +'Next morning, early, the three of us cleared out, straightway after +breakfast--on foot, of course. Each of us carried a dozen of Millet's +small pictures, purposing to market them. Carl struck for Paris, where +he would start the work of building up Millet's name against the coming +great day. Claude and I were to separate, and scatter abroad over +France. + +'Now, it will surprise you to know what an easy and comfortable thing we +had. I walked two days before I began business. Then I began to sketch +a villa in the outskirts of a big town--because I saw the proprietor +standing on an upper veranda. He came down to look on--I thought he +would. I worked swiftly, intending to keep him interested. Occasionally +he fired off a little ejaculation of approbation, and by-and-by he spoke +up with enthusiasm, and said I was a master! + +'I put down my brush, reached into my satchel, fetched out a Millet, and +pointed to the cipher in the corner. I said, proudly: + +'"I suppose you recognise that? Well, he taught me! I should think I +ought to know my trade!" + +'The man looked guiltily embarrassed, and was silent. I said +sorrowfully: + +'"You don't mean to intimate that you don't know the cipher of Francois +Millet!" + +'Of course he didn't know that cipher; but he was the gratefullest man +you ever saw, just the same, for being let out of an uncomfortable place +on such easy terms. He said: + +'"No! Why, it is Millet's, sure enough! I don't know what I could have +been thinking of. Of course I recognise it now." + +'Next, he wanted to buy it; but I said that although I wasn't rich I +wasn't that poor. However, at last, I let him have it for eight hundred +francs.' + +'Eight hundred!' + +'Yes. Millet would have sold it for a pork chop. Yes, I got eight +hundred francs for that little thing. I wish I could get it back for +eighty thousand. But that time's gone by. I made a very nice picture of +that man's house and I wanted to offer it to him for ten francs, but that +wouldn't answer, seeing I was the pupil of such a master, so I sold it to +him for a hundred. I sent the eight hundred francs straight to Millet +from that town and struck out again next day. + +'But I didn't walk--no. I rode. I have ridden ever since. I sold one +picture every day, and never tried to sell two. I always said to my +customer: + +'"I am a fool to sell a picture of Francois Millet's at all, for that man +is not going to live three months, and when he dies his pictures can't be +had for love or money." + +'I took care to spread that little fact as far as I could, and prepare +the world for the event. + +'I take credit to myself for our plan of selling the pictures--it was +mine. I suggested it that last evening when we were laying out our +campaign, and all three of us agreed to give it a good fair trial before +giving it up for some other. It succeeded with all of us. I walked only +two days, Claude walked two--both of afraid to make Millet celebrated too +close to home--but Carl walked only half a day, the bright, +conscienceless rascal, and after that he travelled like a duke. + +'Every now and then we got in with a country editor and started an item +around through the press; not an item announcing that a new painter had +been discovered, but an item which let on that everybody knew Francois +Millet; not an item praising him in any way, but merely a word concerning +the present condition of the "master"--sometimes hopeful, sometimes +despondent, but always tinged with fears for the worst. We always marked +these paragraphs, and sent the papers to all the people who had bought +pictures of us. + +'Carl was soon in Paris and he worked things with a high hand. He made +friends with the correspondents, and got Millet's condition reported to +England and all over the continent, and America, and everywhere. + +'At the end of six weeks from the start, we three met in Paris and called +a halt, and stopped sending back to Millet for additional pictures. The +boom was so high, and everything so ripe, that we saw that it would be a +mistake not to strike now, right away, without waiting any longer. So we +wrote Millet to go to bed and begin to waste away pretty fast, for we +should like him to die in ten days if he could get ready. + +'Then we figured up and found that among us we had sold eighty-five small +pictures and studies, and had sixty-nine thousand francs to show for it. +Carl had made the last sale and the most brilliant one of all. He sold +the "Angelus" for twenty-two hundred francs. How we did glorify him! +--not foreseeing that a day was coming by-and-by when France would struggle +to own it and a stranger would capture it for five hundred and fifty +thousand, cash. + +'We had a wind-up champagne supper that night, and next day Claude and I +packed up and went off to nurse Millet through his last days and keep +busybodies out of the house and send daily bulletins to Carl in Paris for +publication in the papers of several continents for the information of a +waiting world. The sad end came at last, and Carl was there in time to +help in the final mournful rites. + +'You remember that great funeral, and what a stir it made all over the +globe, and how the illustrious of two worlds came to attend it and +testify their sorrow. We four--still inseparable--carried the coffin, +and would allow none to help. And we were right about that, because it +hadn't anything in it but a wax figure, and any other coffin-bearers +would have found fault with the weight. Yes, we same old four, who had +lovingly shared privation together in the old hard times now gone for +ever, carried the cof--' + +'Which four?' + +'We four--for Millet helped to carry his own coffin. In disguise, you +know. Disguised as a relative--distant relative.' + +'Astonishing!' + +'But true just the same. Well, you remember how the pictures went up. +Money? We didn't know what to do with it. There's a man in Paris to-day +who owns seventy Millet pictures. He paid us two million francs for +them. And as for the bushels of sketches and studies which Millet +shovelled out during the six weeks that we were on the road, well, it +would astonish you to know the figure we sell them at nowadays--that is, +when we consent to let one go!' + +'It is a wonderful history, perfectly wonderful!' + +'Yes--it amounts to that.' + +'Whatever became of Millet?' + +'Can you keep a secret?' + +'I can.' + +'Do you remember the man I called your attention to in the dining room +to-day? That was Francois Millet.' + +'Great--' + +'Scott! Yes. For once they didn't starve a genius to death and then put +into other pockets the rewards he should have had himself. This +song-bird was not allowed to pipe out its heart unheard and then be paid +with the cold pomp of a big funeral. We looked out for that.' + + + + + + +MY DEBUT AS A LITERARY PERSON + +In those early days I had already published one little thing ('The +Jumping Frog') in an Eastern paper, but I did not consider that that +counted. In my view, a person who published things in a mere newspaper +could not properly claim recognition as a Literary Person: he must rise +away above that; he must appear in a magazine. He would then be a +Literary Person; also, he would be famous--right away. These two +ambitions were strong upon me. This was in 1866. I prepared my +contribution, and then looked around for the best magazine to go up to +glory in. I selected the most important one in New York. The +contribution was accepted. I signed it 'MARK TWAIN;' for that name had +some currency on the Pacific coast, and it was my idea to spread it all +over the world, now, at this one jump. The article appeared in the +December number, and I sat up a month waiting for the January number; for +that one would contain the year's list of contributors, my name would be +in it, and I should be famous and could give the banquet I was +meditating. + +I did not give the banquet. I had not written the 'MARK TWAIN' +distinctly; it was a fresh name to Eastern printers, and they put it +'Mike Swain' or 'MacSwain,' I do not remember which. At any rate, I was +not celebrated and I did not give the banquet. I was a Literary Person, +but that was all--a buried one; buried alive. + +My article was about the burning of the clipper-ship 'Hornet' on the +line, May 3, 1866. There were thirty-one men on board at the time, and I +was in Honolulu when the fifteen lean and ghostly survivors arrived there +after a voyage of forty-three days in an open boat, through the blazing +tropics, on ten days' rations of food. A very remarkable trip; but it +was conducted by a captain who was a remarkable man, otherwise there +would have been no survivors. He was a New Englander of the best +sea-going stock of the old capable times--Captain Josiah Mitchell. + +I was in the islands to write letters for the weekly edition of the +Sacramento 'Union,' a rich and influential daily journal which hadn't any +use for them, but could afford to spend twenty dollars a week for +nothing. The proprietors were lovable and well-beloved men: long ago +dead, no doubt, but in me there is at least one person who still holds +them in grateful remembrance; for I dearly wanted to see the islands, and +they listened to me and gave me the opportunity when there was but +slender likelihood that it could profit them in any way. + +I had been in the islands several months when the survivors arrived. I +was laid up in my room at the time, and unable to walk. Here was a great +occasion to serve my journal, and I not able to take advantage of it. +Necessarily I was in deep trouble. But by good luck his Excellency Anson +Burlingame was there at the time, on his way to take up his post in +China, where he did such good work for the United States. He came and +put me on a stretcher and had me carried to the hospital where the +shipwrecked men were, and I never needed to ask a question. He attended +to all of that himself, and I had nothing to do but make the notes. It +was like him to take that trouble. He was a great man and a great +American, and it was in his fine nature to come down from his high office +and do a friendly turn whenever he could. + +We got through with this work at six in the evening. I took no dinner, +for there was no time to spare if I would beat the other correspondents. +I spent four hours arranging the notes in their proper order, then wrote +all night and beyond it; with this result: that I had a very long and +detailed account of the 'Hornet' episode ready at nine in the morning, +while the other correspondents of the San Francisco journals had nothing +but a brief outline report--for they didn't sit up. The now-and-then +schooner was to sail for San Francisco about nine; when I reached the +dock she was free forward and was just casting off her stern-line. My +fat envelope was thrown by a strong hand, and fell on board all right, +and my victory was a safe thing. All in due time the ship reached San +Francisco, but it was my complete report which made the stir and was +telegraphed to the New York papers, by Mr. Cash; he was in charge of the +Pacific bureau of the 'New York Herald' at the time. + +When I returned to California by-and-by, I went up to Sacramento and +presented a bill for general correspondence at twenty dollars a week. It +was paid. Then I presented a bill for 'special' service on the 'Hornet' +matter of three columns of solid nonpareil at a hundred dollars a column. +The cashier didn't faint, but he came rather near it. He sent for the +proprietors, and they came and never uttered a protest. They only +laughed in their jolly fashion, and said it was robbery, but no matter; +it was a grand 'scoop' (the bill or my 'Hornet' report, I didn't know +which): 'Pay it. It's all right.' The best men that ever owned a +newspaper. + +The 'Hornet' survivors reached the Sandwich Islands the 15th of June. +They were mere skinny skeletons; their clothes hung limp about them and +fitted them no better than a flag fits the flag-staff in a calm. But +they were well nursed in the hospital; the people of Honolulu kept them +supplied with all the dainties they could need; they gathered strength +fast, and were presently nearly as good as new. Within a fortnight the +most of them took ship for San Francisco; that is, if my dates have not +gone astray in my memory. I went in the same ship, a sailing-vessel. +Captain Mitchell of the 'Hornet' was along; also the only passengers the +'Hornet' had carried. These were two young men from Stamford, +Connecticut--brothers: Samuel and Henry Ferguson. The 'Hornet' was a +clipper of the first class and a fast sailer; the young men's quarters +were roomy and comfortable, and were well stocked with books, and also +with canned meats and fruits to help out the ship-fare with; and when the +ship cleared from New York harbour in the first week of January there was +promise that she would make quick and pleasant work of the fourteen or +fifteen thousand miles in front of her. As soon as the cold latitudes +were left behind and the vessel entered summer weather, the voyage became +a holiday picnic. The ship flew southward under a cloud of sail which +needed no attention, no modifying or change of any kind, for days +together. The young men read, strolled the ample deck, rested and +drowsed in the shade of the canvas, took their meals with the captain; +and when the day was done they played dummy whist with him till bed-time. +After the snow and ice and tempests of the Horn, the ship bowled +northward into summer weather again, and the trip was a picnic once more. + +Until the early morning of the 3rd of May. Computed position of the ship +112 degrees 10 minutes longitude, latitude 2 degrees above the equator; +no wind, no sea--dead calm; temperature of the atmosphere, tropical, +blistering, unimaginable by one who has not been roasted in it. There +was a cry of fire. An unfaithful sailor had disobeyed the rules and gone +into the booby-hatch with an open light to draw some varnish from a cask. +The proper result followed, and the vessel's hours were numbered. + +There was not much time to spare, but the captain made the most of it. +The three boats were launched--long-boat and two quarter-boats. That the +time was very short and the hurry and excitement considerable is +indicated by the fact that in launching the boats a hole was stove in the +side of one of them by some sort of collision, and an oar driven through +the side of another. The captain's first care was to have four sick +sailors brought up and placed on deck out of harm's way--among them a +'Portyghee.' This man had not done a day's work on the voyage, but had +lain in his hammock four months nursing an abscess. When we were taking +notes in the Honolulu hospital and a sailor told this to Mr. Burlingame, +the third mate, who was lying near, raised his head with an effort, and +in a weak voice made this correction--with solemnity and feeling: + +'Raising abscesses! He had a family of them. He done it to keep from +standing his watch.' + +Any provisions that lay handy were gathered up by the men and two +passengers and brought and dumped on the deck where the 'Portyghee' lay; +then they ran for more. The sailor who was telling this to Mr. +Burlingame added: + +'We pulled together thirty-two days' rations for the thirty-one men that +way.' + +The third mate lifted his head again and made another correction--with +bitterness: + +'The "Portyghee" et twenty-two of them while he was soldiering there and +nobody noticing. A damned hound.' + +The fire spread with great rapidity. The smoke and flame drove the men +back, and they had to stop their incomplete work of fetching provisions, +and take to the boats with only ten days' rations secured. + +Each boat had a compass, a quadrant, a copy of Bowditch's 'Navigator,' +and a Nautical Almanac, and the captain's and chief mate's boats had +chronometers. There were thirty-one men all told. The captain took an +account of stock, with the following result: four hams, nearly thirty +pounds of salt pork, half-box of raisins, one hundred pounds of bread, +twelve two-pound cans of oysters, clams, and assorted meats, a keg +containing four pounds of butter, twelve gallons of water in a +forty-gallon 'scuttle-butt', four one-gallon demijohns full of water, +three bottles of brandy (the property of passengers), some pipes, +matches, and a hundred pounds of tobacco. No medicines. Of course +the whole party had to go on short rations at once. + +The captain and the two passengers kept diaries. On our voyage to San +Francisco we ran into a calm in the middle of the Pacific, and did not +move a rod during fourteen days; this gave me a chance to copy the +diaries. Samuel Ferguson's is the fullest; I will draw upon it now. +When the following paragraph was written the doomed ship was about one +hundred and twenty days out from port, and all hands were putting in the +lazy time about as usual, as no one was forecasting disaster. + + [Diary entry] May 2. Latitude 1 degree 28 minutes N., longitude 111 + degrees 38 minutes W. Another hot and sluggish day; at one time, + however, the clouds promised wind, and there came a slight breeze + --just enough to keep us going. The only thing to chronicle to-day + is the quantities of fish about; nine bonitos were caught this + forenoon, and some large albacores seen. After dinner the first + mate hooked a fellow which he could not hold, so he let the line go + to the captain, who was on the bow. He, holding on, brought the + fish to with a jerk, and snap went the line, hook and all. We also + saw astern, swimming lazily after us, an enormous shark, which must + have been nine or ten feet long. We tried him with all sorts of + lines and a piece of pork, but he declined to take hold. I suppose + he had appeased his appetite on the heads and other remains of the + bonitos we had thrown overboard. + +Next day's entry records the disaster. The three boats got away, retired +to a short distance, and stopped. The two injured ones were leaking +badly; some of the men were kept busy baling, others patched the holes as +well as they could. The captain, the two passengers, and eleven men were +in the long-boat, with a share of the provisions and water, and with no +room to spare, for the boat was only twenty-one feet long, six wide, and +three deep. The chief mate and eight men were in one of the small boats, +the second mate and seven men in the other. The passengers had saved no +clothing but what they had on, excepting their overcoats. The ship, +clothed in flame and sending up a vast column of black smoke into the +sky, made a grand picture in the solitudes of the sea, and hour after +hour the outcasts sat and watched it. Meantime the captain ciphered on +the immensity of the distance that stretched between him and the nearest +available land, and then scaled the rations down to meet the emergency; +half a biscuit for dinner; one biscuit and some canned meat for dinner; +half a biscuit for tea; a few swallows of water for each meal. And so +hunger began to gnaw while the ship was still burning. + + [Diary entry] May 4. The ship burned all night very brightly, and + hopes are that some ship has seen the light and is bearing down upon + us. None seen, however, this forenoon, so we have determined to go + together north and a little west to some islands in 18 degrees or 19 + degrees north latitude and 114 degrees to 115 degrees west + longitude, hoping in the meantime to be picked up by some ship. The + ship sank suddenly at about 5 A.M. We find the sun very hot and + scorching, but all try to keep out of it as much as we can. + +They did a quite natural thing now: waited several hours for that +possible ship that might have seen the light to work her slow way to them +through the nearly dead calm. Then they gave it up and set about their +plans. If you will look at the map you will say that their course could +be easily decided. Albemarle Island (Galapagos group) lies straight +eastward nearly a thousand miles; the islands referred to in the diary as +'some islands' (Revillagigedo Islands) lie, as they think, in some widely +uncertain region northward about one thousand miles and westward one +hundred or one hundred and fifty miles. Acapulco, on the Mexican coast, +lies about north-east something short of one thousand miles. You will +say random rocks in the ocean are not what is wanted; let them strike for +Acapulco and the solid continent. That does look like the rational +course, but one presently guesses from the diaries that the thing would +have been wholly irrational--indeed, suicidal. If the boats struck for +Albemarle they would be in the doldrums all the way; and that means a +watery perdition, with winds which are wholly crazy, and blow from all +points of the compass at once and also perpendicularly. If the boats +tried for Acapulco they would get out of the doldrums when half-way +there--in case they ever got half-way--and then they would be in +lamentable case, for there they would meet the north-east trades coming +down in their teeth, and these boats were so rigged that they could not +sail within eight points of the wind. So they wisely started northward, +with a slight slant to the west. They had but ten days' short allowance +of food; the long-boat was towing the others; they could not depend on +making any sort of definite progress in the doldrums, and they had four +or five hundred miles of doldrums in front of them yet. They are the +real equator, a tossing, roaring, rainy belt, ten or twelve hundred miles +broad, which girdles the globe. + +It rained hard the first night and all got drenched, but they filled up +their water-butt. The brothers were in the stern with the captain, who +steered. The quarters were cramped; no one got much sleep. 'Kept on our +course till squalls headed us off.' + +Stormy and squally the next morning, with drenching rains. A heavy and +dangerous 'cobbling' sea. One marvels how such boats could live in it. +Is it called a feat of desperate daring when one man and a dog cross the +Atlantic in a boat the size of a long-boat, and indeed it is; but this +long-boat was overloaded with men and other plunder, and was only three +feet deep. 'We naturally thought often of all at home, and were glad to +remember that it was Sacrament Sunday, and that prayers would go up from +our friends for us, although they know not our peril.' + +The captain got not even a cat-nap during the first three days and +nights, but he got a few winks of sleep the fourth night. 'The worst sea +yet.' About ten at night the captain changed his course and headed +east-north-east, hoping to make Clipperton Rock. If he failed, no +matter; he would be in a better position to make those other islands. I +will mention here that he did not find that rock. + +On May 8 no wind all day; sun blistering hot; they take to the oars. +Plenty of dolphins, but they couldn't catch any. 'I think we are all +beginning to realise more and more the awful situation we are in.' 'It +often takes a ship a week to get through the doldrums; how much longer, +then, such a craft as ours?' 'We are so crowded that we cannot stretch +ourselves out for a good sleep, but have to take it any way we can get +it.' + +Of course this feature will grow more and more trying, but it will be +human nature to cease to set it down; there will be five weeks of it yet +--we must try to remember that for the diarist; it will make our beds the +softer. + +May 9 the sun gives him a warning: 'Looking with both eyes, the horizon +crossed thus +.' 'Henry keeps well, but broods over our troubles more +than I wish he did.' They caught two dolphins; they tasted well. 'The +captain believed the compass out of the way, but the long-invisible north +star came out--a welcome sight--and endorsed the compass.' + +May 10, 'latitude 7 degrees 0 minutes 3 seconds N., longitude 111 degrees +32 minutes W.' So they have made about three hundred miles of northing +in the six days since they left the region of the lost ship. 'Drifting +in calms all day.' And baking hot, of course; I have been down there, +and I remember that detail. 'Even as the captain says, all romance has +long since vanished, and I think the most of us are beginning to look the +fact of our awful situation full in the face.' 'We are making but little +headway on our course.' Bad news from the rearmost boat: the men are +improvident; 'they have eaten up all of the canned meats brought from the +ship, and are now growing discontented.' Not so with the chief mate's +people--they are evidently under the eye of a man. + +Under date of May 11: 'Standing still! or worse; we lost more last night +than we made yesterday.' In fact, they have lost three miles of the +three hundred of northing they had so laboriously made. 'The cock that +was rescued and pitched into the boat while the ship was on fire still +lives, and crows with the breaking of dawn, cheering us a good deal.' +What has he been living on for a week? Did the starving men feed him +from their dire poverty? 'The second mate's boat out of water again, +showing that they over-drink their allowance. The captain spoke pretty +sharply to them.' It is true: I have the remark in my old note-book; I +got it of the third mate in the hospital at Honolulu. But there is not +room for it here, and it is too combustible, anyway. Besides, the third +mate admired it, and what he admired he was likely to enhance. + +They were still watching hopefully for ships. The captain was a +thoughtful man, and probably did not disclose on them that that was +substantially a waste of time. 'In this latitude the horizon is filled +with little upright clouds that look very much like ships.' Mr. Ferguson +saved three bottles of brandy from his private stores when he left the +ship, and the liquor came good in these days. 'The captain serves out +two tablespoonfuls of brandy and water--half and half--to our crew.' He +means the watch that is on duty; they stood regular watches--four hours +on and four off. The chief mate was an excellent officer--a +self-possessed, resolute, fine, all-round man. The diarist makes the +following note--there is character in it: 'I offered one bottle of brandy +to the chief mate, but he declined, saying he could keep the after-boat +quiet, and we had not enough for all.' + + + +HENRY FERGUSON'S DIARY TO DATE, GIVEN IN FULL: + + May 4, 5, 6, doldrums. May 7, 8, 9, doldrums. May 10, 11, 12, + doldrums. Tells it all. Never saw, never felt, never heard, never + experienced such heat, such darkness, such lightning and thunder, + and wind and rain, in my life before. + +That boy's diary is of the economical sort that a person might properly +be expected to keep in such circumstances--and be forgiven for the +economy, too. His brother, perishing of consumption, hunger, thirst, +blazing heat, drowning rains, loss of sleep, lack of exercise, was +persistently faithful and circumstantial with his diary from the first +day to the last--an instance of noteworthy fidelity and resolution. In +spite of the tossing and plunging boat he wrote it close and fine, in a +hand as easy to read as print. They can't seem to get north of 7 degrees +N.; they are still there the next day: + + [Diary entry] May 12. A good rain last night, and we caught a good + deal, though not enough to fill up our tank, pails, &c. Our object + is to get out of these doldrums, but it seems as if we cannot do it. + To-day we have had it very variable, and hope we are on the northern + edge, thought we are not much above 7 degrees. This morning we all + thought we had made out a sail; but it was one of those deceiving + clouds. Rained a good deal to-day, making all hands wet and + uncomfortable; we filled up pretty nearly all our water-pots, + however. I hope we may have a fine night, for the captain certainly + wants rest, and while there is any danger of squalls, or danger of + any kind, he is always on hand. I never would have believed that + open boats such as ours, with their loads, could live in some of the + seas we have had. + +During the night, 12th-13th, 'the cry of A SHIP! brought us to our feet.' +It seemed to be the glimmer of a vessel's signal-lantern rising out of +the curve of the sea. There was a season of breathless hope while they +stood watching, with their hands shading their eyes, and their hearts in +their throats; then the promise failed: the light was a rising star. It +is a long time ago--thirty-two years--and it doesn't matter now, yet one +is sorry for their disappointment. 'Thought often of those at home +to-day, and of the disappointment they will feel next Sunday at not +hearing from us by telegraph from San Francisco.' It will be many weeks +yet before the telegram is received, and it will come as a thunderclap of +joy then, and with the seeming of a miracle, for it will raise from the +grave men mourned as dead. 'To-day our rations were reduced to a quarter +of a biscuit a meal, with about half a pint of water.' This is on May +13, with more than a month of voyaging in front of them yet! However, as +they do not know that, 'we are all feeling pretty cheerful.' + +In the afternoon of the 14th there was a thunderstorm, 'which toward +night seemed to close in around us on every side, making it very dark and +squally.' 'Our situation is becoming more and more desperate,' for they +were making very little northing 'and every day diminishes our small +stock of provisions.' They realise that the boats must soon separate, +and each fight for its own life. Towing the quarter-boats is a hindering +business. + +That night and next day, light and baffling winds and but little +progress. Hard to bear, that persistent standing still, and the food +wasting away. 'Everything in a perfect sop; and all so cramped, and no +change of clothes.' Soon the sun comes out and roasts them. 'Joe caught +another dolphin to-day; in his maw we found a flying-fish and two +skipjacks.' There is an event, now, which rouses an enthusiasm of hope: +a land-bird arrives! It rests on the yard for awhile, and they can look +at it all they like, and envy it, and thank it for its message. As a +subject of talk it is beyond price--a fresh new topic for tongues tired +to death of talking upon a single theme: Shall we ever see the land +again; and when? Is the bird from Clipperton Rock? They hope so; and +they take heart of grace to believe so. As it turned out the bird had no +message; it merely came to mock. + +May 16, 'the cock still lives, and daily carols forth his praise.' It +will be a rainy night, 'but I do not care if we can fill up our +water-butts.' + +On the 17th one of those majestic spectres of the deep, a water-spout, +stalked by them, and they trembled for their lives. Young Henry set it +down in his scanty journal with the judicious comment that 'it might have +been a fine sight from a ship.' + +From Captain Mitchell's log for this day: 'Only half a bushel of +bread-crumbs left.' (And a month to wander the seas yet.') + +It rained all night and all day; everybody uncomfortable. Now came a +sword-fish chasing a bonito; and the poor thing, seeking help and +friends, took refuge under the rudder. The big sword-fish kept hovering +around, scaring everybody badly. The men's mouths watered for him, for +he would have made a whole banquet; but no one dared to touch him, of +course, for he would sink a boat promptly if molested. Providence +protected the poor bonito from the cruel sword-fish. This was just and +right. Providence next befriended the shipwrecked sailors: they got the +bonito. This was also just and right. But in the distribution of +mercies the sword-fish himself got overlooked. He now went away; to muse +over these subtleties, probably. The men in all the boats seem pretty +well; the feeblest of the sick ones (not able for a long time to stand +his watch on board the ship) 'is wonderfully recovered.' This is the +third mate's detected 'Portyghee' that raised the family of abscesses. + + Passed a most awful night. Rained hard nearly all the time, and + blew in squalls, accompanied by terrific thunder and lightning from + all points of the compass.--Henry's Log. + + Most awful night I ever witnessed.--Captain's Log. + +Latitude, May 18, 11 degrees 11 minutes. So they have averaged but forty +miles of northing a day during the fortnight. Further talk of +separating. 'Too bad, but it must be done for the safety of the whole.' +'At first I never dreamed, but now hardly shut my eyes for a cat-nap +without conjuring up something or other--to be accounted for by weakness, +I suppose.' But for their disaster they think they would be arriving in +San Francisco about this time. 'I should have liked to send B---the +telegram for her birthday.' This was a young sister. + +On the 19th the captain called up the quarter-boats and said one would +have to go off on its own hook. The long-boat could no longer tow both +of them. The second mate refused to go, but the chief mate was ready; in +fact, he was always ready when there was a man's work to the fore. He +took the second mate's boat; six of its crew elected to remain, and two +of his own crew came with him (nine in the boat, now, including himself). +He sailed away, and toward sunset passed out of sight. The diarist was +sorry to see him go. It was natural; one could have better spared the +'Portyghee.' After thirty-two years I find my prejudice against this +'Portyghee' reviving. His very looks have long passed out of my memory; +but no matter, I am coming to hate him as religiously as ever. 'Water +will now be a scarce article, for as we get out of the doldrums we shall +get showers only now and then in the trades. This life is telling +severely on my strength. Henry holds out first-rate.' Henry did not +start well, but under hardships he improved straight along. + +Latitude, Sunday, May 20, 12 degrees 0 minutes 9 seconds. They ought to +be well out of the doldrums now, but they are not. No breeze--the +longed-for trades still missing. They are still anxiously watching for a +sail, but they have only 'visions of ships that come to naught--the +shadow without the substance.' The second mate catches a booby this +afternoon, a bird which consists mainly of feathers; 'but as they have no +other meat, it will go well.' + +May 21, they strike the trades at last! The second mate catches three +more boobies, and gives the long-boat one. Dinner 'half a can of +mincemeat divided up and served around, which strengthened us somewhat.' +They have to keep a man bailing all the time; the hole knocked in the +boat when she was launched from the burning ship was never efficiently +mended. 'Heading about north-west now.' They hope they have easting +enough to make some of these indefinite isles. Failing that, they think +they will be in a better position to be picked up. It was an infinitely +slender chance, but the captain probably refrained from mentioning that. + +The next day is to be an eventful one. + + [Diary entry] May 22. Last night wind headed us off, so that part + of the time we had to steer east-south-east and then + west-north-west, and so on. This morning we were all startled by a + cry of 'SAIL HO!' Sure enough, we could see it! And for a time we + cut adrift from the second mate's boat, and steered so as to + attract its attention. This was about half-past five A.M. After + sailing in a state of high excitement for almost twenty minutes we + made it out to be the chief mate's boat. Of course we were glad to + see them and have them report all well; but still it was a bitter + disappointment to us all. Now that we are in the trades it seems + impossible to make northing enough to strike the isles. We have + determined to do the best we can, and get in the route of vessels. + Such being the determination, it became necessary to cast off the + other boat, which, after a good deal of unpleasantness, was done, + we again dividing water and stores, and taking Cox into our boat. + This makes our number fifteen. The second mate's crew wanted to + all get in with us, and cast the other boat adrift. It was a very + painful separation. + +So these isles that they have struggled for so long and so hopefully have +to be given up. What with lying birds that come to mock, and isles that +are but a dream, and 'visions of ships that come to naught,' it is a +pathetic time they are having, with much heartbreak in it. It was odd +that the vanished boat, three days lost to sight in that vast solitude, +should appear again. But it brought Cox--we can't be certain why. But +if it hadn't, the diarist would never have seen the land again. + + [Diary entry] Our chances as we go west increase in regard to being + picked up, but each day our scanty fare is so much reduced. Without + the fish, turtle, and birds sent us, I do not know how we should + have got along. The other day I offered to read prayers morning and + evening for the captain, and last night commenced. The men, + although of various nationalities and religions, are very attentive, + and always uncovered. May God grant my weak endeavour its issue! + + Latitude, May 24, 14 degrees 18 minutes N. Five oysters apiece for + dinner and three spoonfuls of juice, a gill of water, and a piece of + biscuit the size of a silver dollar. 'We are plainly getting + weaker--God have mercy upon us all!' That night heavy seas break + over the weather side and make everybody wet and uncomfortable + besides requiring constant baling. + +Next day 'nothing particular happened.' Perhaps some of us would have +regarded it differently. 'Passed a spar, but not near enough to see what +it was.' They saw some whales blow; there were flying-fish skimming the +seas, but none came aboard. Misty weather, with fine rain, very +penetrating. + +Latitude, May 26, 15 degrees 50 minutes. They caught a flying-fish and a +booby, but had to eat them raw. 'The men grow weaker, and, I think, +despondent; they say very little, though.' And so, to all the other +imaginable and unimaginable horrors, silence is added--the muteness and +brooding of coming despair. 'It seems our best chance to get in the +track of ships with the hope that some one will run near enough to our +speck to see it.' He hopes the other boards stood west and have been +picked up. (They will never be heard of again in this world.) + + [Diary entry] Sunday, May 27, Latitude 16 degrees 0 minutes 5 + seconds; longitude, by chronometer, 117 degrees 22 minutes. Our + fourth Sunday! When we left the ship we reckoned on having about + ten days' supplies, and now we hope to be able, by rigid economy, to + make them last another week if possible.[1] Last night the sea was + comparatively quiet, but the wind headed us off to about + west-north-west, which has been about our course all day to-day. + Another flying-fish came aboard last night, and one more to-day + --both small ones. No birds. A booby is a great catch, and a good + large one makes a small dinner for the fifteen of us--that is, of + course, as dinners go in the 'Hornet's' long-boat. Tried this + morning to read the full service to myself, with the Communion, but + found it too much; am too weak, and get sleepy, and cannot give + strict attention; so I put off half till this afternoon. I trust + God will hear the prayers gone up for us at home to-day, and + graciously answer them by sending us succour and help in this our + season of deep distress. + +The next day was 'a good day for seeing a ship.' But none was seen. The +diarist 'still feels pretty well,' though very weak; his brother Henry +'bears up and keeps his strength the best of any on board.' 'I do not +feel despondent at all, for I fully trust that the Almighty will hear our +and the home prayers, and He who suffers not a sparrow to fall sees and +cares for us, His creatures.' + +Considering the situation and circumstances, the record for next day, +May 29, is one which has a surprise in it for those dull people who think +that nothing but medicines and doctors can cure the sick. A little +starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best +medicines and the best doctors. I do not mean a restricted diet; I mean +total abstention from food for one or two days. I speak from experience; +starvation has been my cold and fever doctor for fifteen years, and has +accomplished a cure in all instances. The third mate told me in Honolulu +that the 'Portyghee' had lain in his hammock for months, raising his +family of abscesses and feeding like a cannibal. We have seen that in +spite of dreadful weather, deprivation of sleep, scorching, drenching, +and all manner of miseries, thirteen days of starvation 'wonderfully +recovered' him. There were four sailors down sick when the ship was +burned. Twenty-five days of pitiless starvation have followed, and now +we have this curious record: 'All the men are hearty and strong; even the +ones that were down sick are well, except poor Peter.' When I wrote an +article some months ago urging temporary abstention from food as a remedy +for an inactive appetite and for disease, I was accused of jesting, but I +was in earnest. 'We are all wonderfully well and strong, comparatively +speaking.' On this day the starvation regime drew its belt a couple of +buckle-holes tighter: the bread ration was reduced from the usual piece +of cracker the size of a silver dollar to the half of that, and one meal +was abolished from the daily three. This will weaken the men physically, +but if there are any diseases of an ordinary sort left in them they will +disappear. + + Two quarts bread-crumbs left, one-third of a ham, three small cans + of oysters, and twenty gallons of water.--Captain's Log. + +The hopeful tone of the diaries is persistent. It is remarkable. Look +at the map and see where the boat is: latitude 16 degrees 44 minutes, +longitude 119 degrees 20 minutes. It is more than two hundred miles west +of the Revillagigedo Islands, so they are quite out of the question +against the trades, rigged as this boat is. The nearest land available +for such a boat is the American group, six hundred and fifty miles away, +westward; still, there is no note of surrender, none even of +discouragement! Yet, May 30, 'we have now left: one can of oysters; +three pounds of raisins; one can of soup; one-third of a ham; three pints +of biscuit-crumbs.' + +And fifteen starved men to live on it while they creep and crawl six +hundred and fifty miles. 'Somehow I feel much encouraged by this change +of course (west by north) which we have made to-day.' Six hundred and +fifty miles on a hatful of provisions. Let us be thankful, even after +thirty-two years, that they are mercifully ignorant of the fact that it +isn't six hundred and fifty that they must creep on the hatful, but +twenty-two hundred! + +Isn't the situation romantic enough just as it stands? No. Providence +added a startling detail: pulling an oar in that boat, for common +seaman's wages, was a banished duke--Danish. We hear no more of him; +just that mention, that is all, with the simple remark added that 'he is +one of our best men'--a high enough compliment for a duke or any other +man in those manhood-testing circumstances. With that little glimpse of +him at his oar, and that fine word of praise, he vanishes out of our +knowledge for all time. For all time, unless he should chance upon this +note and reveal himself. + +The last day of May is come. And now there is a disaster to report: +think of it, reflect upon it, and try to understand how much it means, +when you sit down with your family and pass your eye over your +breakfast-table. Yesterday there were three pints of bread-crumbs; this +morning the little bag is found open and some of the crumbs are missing. +'We dislike to suspect any one of such a rascally act, but there is no +question that this grave crime has been committed. Two days will +certainly finish the remaining morsels. God grant us strength to reach +the American group!' The third mate told me in Honolulu that in these +days the men remembered with bitterness that the 'Portyghee' had devoured +twenty-two days' rations while he lay waiting to be transferred from the +burning ship, and that now they cursed him and swore an oath that if it +came to cannibalism he should be the first to suffer for the rest. + + [Diary entry] The captain has lost his glasses, and therefore he + cannot read our pocket prayer-books as much as I think he would + like, though he is not familiar with them. + +Further of the captain: 'He is a good man, and has been most kind to us +--almost fatherly. He says that if he had been offered the command of the +ship sooner he should have brought his two daughters with him.' It makes +one shudder yet to think how narrow an escape it was. + + The two meals (rations) a day are as follows: fourteen raisins and a + piece of cracker the size of a penny for tea; a gill of water, and a + piece of ham and a piece of bread, each the size of a penny, for + breakfast.--Captain's Log. + +He means a penny in thickness as well as in circumference. Samuel +Ferguson's diary says the ham was shaved 'about as thin as it could be +cut.' + + [Diary entry] June 1. Last night and to-day sea very high and + cobbling, breaking over and making us all wet and cold. Weather + squally, and there is no doubt that only careful management--with + God's protecting care--preserved us through both the night and the + day; and really it is most marvellous how every morsel that passes + our lips is blessed to us. It makes me think daily of the miracle + of the loaves and fishes. Henry keeps up wonderfully, which is a + great consolation to me. I somehow have great confidence, and hope + that our afflictions will soon be ended, though we are running + rapidly across the track of both outward and inward bound vessels, + and away from them; our chief hope is a whaler, man-of-war, or some + Australian ship. The isles we are steering for are put down in + Bowditch, but on my map are said to be doubtful. God grant they may + be there! + + Hardest day yet.--Captain's Log. + +Doubtful! It was worse than that. A week later they sailed straight +over them. + + [Diary entry] June 2. Latitude 18 degrees 9 minutes. Squally, + cloudy, a heavy sea.... I cannot help thinking of the cheerful and + comfortable time we had aboard the 'Hornet.' + + Two days' scanty supplies left--ten rations of water apiece and a + little morsel of bread. BUT THE SUN SHINES AND GOD IS MERCIFUL. + --Captain's Log. + + [Diary entry] Sunday, June 3. Latitude 17 degrees 54 minutes. + Heavy sea all night, and from 4 A.M. very wet, the sea breaking + over us in frequent sluices, and soaking everything aft, + particularly. All day the sea has been very high, and it is a + wonder that we are not swamped. Heaven grant that it may go down + this evening! Our suspense and condition are getting terrible. I + managed this morning to crawl, more than step, to the forward end of + the boat, and was surprised to find that I was so weak, especially + in the legs and knees. The sun has been out again, and I have dried + some things, and hope for a better night. + + June 4. Latitude 17 degrees 6 minutes, longitude 131 degrees 30 + minutes. Shipped hardly any seas last night, and to-day the sea has + gone down somewhat, although it is still too high for comfort, as we + have an occasional reminder that water is wet. The sun has been out + all day, and so we have had a good drying. I have been trying for + the last ten or twelve days to get a pair of drawers dry enough to + put on, and to-day at last succeeded. I mention this to show the + state in which we have lived. If our chronometer is anywhere near + right, we ought to see the American Isles to-morrow or next day. If + there are not there, we have only the chance, for a few days, of a + stray ship, for we cannot eke out the provisions more than five or + six days longer, and our strength is failing very fast. I was much + surprised to-day to note how my legs have wasted away above my + knees: they are hardly thicker than my upper arm used to be. Still, + I trust in God's infinite mercy, and feel sure he will do what is + best for us. To survive, as we have done, thirty-two days in an + open boat, with only about ten days' fair provisions for thirty-one + men in the first place, and these divided twice subsequently, is + more than mere unassisted HUMAN art and strength could have + accomplished and endured. + + Bread and raisins all gone.--Captain's Log. + + Men growing dreadfully discontented, and awful grumbling and + unpleasant talk is arising. God save us from all strife of men; and + if we must die now, take us himself, and not embitter our bitter + death still more.--Henry's Log. + + [Diary entry] June 5. Quiet night and pretty comfortable day, + though our sail and block show signs of failing, and need taking + down--which latter is something of a job, as it requires the + climbing of the mast. We also had news from forward, there being + discontent and some threatening complaints of unfair allowances, + etc., all as unreasonable as foolish; still, these things bid us be + on our guard. I am getting miserably weak, but try to keep up the + best I can. If we cannot find those isles we can only try to make + north-west and get in the track of Sandwich Island-bound vessels, + living as best we can in the meantime. To-day we changed to one + meal, and that at about noon, with a small ration or water at 8 or 9 + A.M., another at 12 A.M., and a third at 5 or 6 P.M. + + Nothing left but a little piece of ham and a gill of water, all + around.--Captain's Log. + +They are down to one meal a day now--such as it is--and fifteen hundred +miles to crawl yet! And now the horrors deepen, and, though they escaped +actual mutiny, the attitude of the men became alarming. Now we seem to +see why that curious incident happened, so long ago; I mean Cox's return, +after he had been far away and out of sight several days in the chief +mate's boat. If he had not come back the captain and the two young +passengers might have been slain, now, by these sailors, who were +becoming crazed through their sufferings. + + + NOTE SECRETLY PASSED BY HENRY TO HIS BROTHER: + + Cox told me last night that there is getting to be a good deal of + ugly talk among the men against the captain and us aft. They say + that the captain is the cause of all; that he did not try to save + the ship at all, nor to get provisions, and that even would not let + the men put in some they had; and that partiality is shown us in + apportioning our rations aft.... asked Cox the other day if he + would starve first or eat human flesh. Cox answered he would + starve.... then told him he would only be killing himself. If we + do not find those islands we would do well to prepare for anything. + .... is the loudest of all. + + + REPLY: + + We can depend on ..., I think, and ..., and Cox, can we not? + + + SECOND NOTE: + + I guess so, and very likely on ...; but there is no telling .... and + Cox are certain. There is nothing definite said or hinted as yet, + as I understand Cox; but starving men are the same as maniacs. It + would be well to keep a watch on your pistol, so as to have it and + the cartridges safe from theft. + + Henry's Log, June 5. Dreadful forebodings. God spare us from all + such horrors! Some of the men getting to talk a good deal. Nothing + to write down. Heart very sad. + + Henry's Log, June 6. Passed some sea-weed and something that looked + like the trunk of an old tree, but no birds; beginning to be afraid + islands not there. To-day it was said to the captain, in the + hearing of all, that some of the men would not shrink, when a man + was dead, from using the flesh, though they would not kill. + Horrible! God give us all full use of our reason, and spare us from + such things! 'From plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and + murder, and from sudden death, good Lord, deliver us!' + + [Diary entry] June 6. Latitude 16 degrees 30 minutes, longitude + (chron.) 134 degrees. Dry night and wind steady enough to require + no change in sail; but this A.M. an attempt to lower it proved + abortive. First the third mate tried and got up to the block, and + fastened a temporary arrangement to reeve the halyards through, but + had to come down, weak and almost fainting, before finishing; then + Joe tried, and after twice ascending, fixed it and brought down the + block; but it was very exhausting work, and afterward he was good + for nothing all day. The clue-iron which we are trying to make + serve for the broken block works, however, very indifferently, and + will, I am afraid, soon cut the rope. It is very necessary to get + everything connected with the sail in good easy running order before + we get too weak to do anything with it. + + Only three meals left.--Captain's Log. + + [Diary entry] June 7. Latitude 16 degrees 35 minutes N., longitude + 136 degrees 30 minutes W. Night wet and uncomfortable. To-day + shows us pretty conclusively that the American Isles are not there, + though we have had some signs that looked like them. At noon we + decided to abandon looking any farther for them, and to-night haul a + little more northerly, so as to get in the way of Sandwich Island + vessels, which fortunately come down pretty well this way--say to + latitude 19 degrees to 20 degrees to get the benefit of the + trade-winds. Of course all the westing we have made is gain, and I + hope the chronometer is wrong in our favour, for I do not see how + any such delicate instrument can keep good time with the constant + jarring and thumping we get from the sea. With the strong trade we + have, I hope that a week from Sunday will put us in sight of the + Sandwich Islands, if we are not safe by that time by being picked + up. + +It is twelve hundred miles to the Sandwich Islands; the provisions are +virtually exhausted, but not the perishing diarist's pluck. + + [Diary entry] My cough troubled me a good deal last night, and + therefore I got hardly any sleep at all. Still, I make out pretty + well, and should not complain. Yesterday the third mate mended the + block, and this P.M. the sail, after some difficulty, was got down, + and Harry got to the top of the mast and rove the halyards through + after some hardship, so that it now works easy and well. This + getting up the mast is no easy matter at any time with the sea we + have, and is very exhausting in our present state. We could only + reward Harry by an extra ration of water. We have made good time + and course to-day. Heading her up, however, makes the boat ship + seas and keeps us all wet; however, it cannot be helped. Writing is + a rather precarious thing these times. Our meal to-day for the + fifteen consists of half a can of 'soup and boullie'; the other half + is reserved for to-morrow. Henry still keeps up grandly, and is a + great favourite. God grant he may be spared. + + A better feeling prevails among the men.--Captain's Log. + + [Diary entry] June 9. Latitude 17 degrees 53 minutes. Finished + to-day, I may say, our whole stack of provisions.[2] We have only + left a lower end of a ham-bone, with some of the outer rind and + skin on. In regard to the water, however, I think we have got ten + days' supply at our present rate of allowance. This, with what + nourishment we can get from boot-legs and such chewable matter, we + hope will enable us to weather it out till we get to the Sandwich + Islands, or, sailing in the meantime in the track of vessels + thither bound, be picked up. My hope is in the latter, for in all + human probability I cannot stand the other. Still, we have been + marvellously protected, and God, I hope, will preserve us all in + His own good time and way. The men are getting weaker, but are + still quiet and orderly. + + [Diary entry] Sunday, June 10. Latitude 18 degrees 40 minutes, + longitude 142 degrees 34 minutes. A pretty good night last night, + with some wettings, and again another beautiful Sunday. I cannot + but think how we should all enjoy it at home, and what a contrast is + here! How terrible their suspense must begin to be! God grant that + it may be relieved before very long, and He certainly seems to be + with us in everything we do, and has preserved this boat + miraculously; for since we left the ship we have sailed considerably + over three thousand miles, which, taking into consideration our + meagre stock of provisions, is almost unprecedented. As yet I do + not feel the stint of food so much as I do that of water. Even + Henry, who is naturally a good water-drinker, can save half of his + allowance from time to time, when I cannot. My diseased throat may + have something to do with that, however. + +Nothing is now left which by any flattery can be called food. But they +must manage somehow for five days more, for at noon they have still eight +hundred miles to go. It is a race for life now. + +This is no time for comments or other interruptions from me--every moment +is valuable. I will take up the boy brother's diary at this point, and +clear the seas before it and let it fly. + + HENRY FERGUSON'S LOG: + + Sunday, June 10. Our ham-bone has given us a taste of food to-day, + and we have got left a little meat and the remainder of the bone for + tomorrow. Certainly, never was there such a sweet knuckle-one, or + one that was so thoroughly appreciated .... I do not know that I + feel any worse than I did last Sunday, notwithstanding the reduction + of diet; and I trust that we may all have strength given us to + sustain the sufferings and hardships of the coming week. We + estimate that we are within seven hundred miles of the Sandwich + Islands, and that our average, daily, is somewhat over a hundred + miles, so that our hopes have some foundation in reason. Heaven + send we may all live to see land! + + June 11. Ate the meat and rind of our ham-bone, and have the bone + and the greasy cloth from around the ham left to eat to-morrow. God + send us birds or fish, and let us not perish of hunger, or be + brought to the dreadful alternative of feeding on human flesh! As I + feel now, I do not think anything could persuade me; but you cannot + tell what you will do when you are reduced by hunger and your mind + wandering. I hope and pray we can make out to reach the islands + before we get to this strait; but we have one or two desperate men + aboard, though they are quiet enough now. IT IS MY FIRM TRUST AND + BELIEF THAT WE ARE GOING TO BE SAVED. + + All food gone.--Captain's Log.[3] + +[Ferguson's log continues] + + June 12. Stiff breeze, and we are fairly flying--dead ahead of it + --and toward the islands. Good hope, but the prospects of hunger are + awful. Ate ham-bone to-day. It is the captain's birthday; he is + fifty-four years old. + + June 13. The ham-rags are not quite all gone yet, and the + boot-legs, we find, are very palatable after we get the salt out of + them. A little smoke, I think, does some little good; but I don't + know. + + June 14. Hunger does not pain us much, but we are dreadfully weak. + Our water is getting frightfully low. God grant we may see land + soon! NOTHING TO EAT, but feel better than I did yesterday. Toward + evening saw a magnificent rainbow--THE FIRST WE HAD SEEN. Captain + said, 'Cheer up, boys; it's a prophecy--IT'S THE BOW OF PROMISE!' + + June 15. God be for ever praised for His infinite mercy! LAND IN + SIGHT! rapidly neared it and soon were SURE of it .... Two noble + Kanakas swam out and took the boat ashore. We were joyfully + received by two white men--Mr. Jones and his steward Charley--and a + crowd of native men, women, and children. They treated us + splendidly--aided us, and carried us up the bank, and brought us + water, poi, bananas, and green coconuts; but the white men took care + of us and prevented those who would have eaten too much from doing + so. Everybody overjoyed to see us, and all sympathy expressed in + faces, deeds, and words. We were then helped up to the house; and + help we needed. Mr. Jones and Charley are the only white men here. + Treated us splendidly. Gave us first about a teaspoonful of spirits + in water, and then to each a cup of warm tea, with a little bread. + Takes EVERY care of us. Gave us later another cup of tea, and bread + the same, and then let us go to rest. IT IS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY + LIFE.... God in His mercy has heard our prayer.... Everybody is so + kind. Words cannot tell. + + June 16. Mr. Jones gave us a delightful bed, and we surely had a + good night's rest; but not sleep--we were too happy to sleep; would + keep the reality and not let it turn to a delusion--dreaded that we + might wake up and find ourselves in the boat again. + + +It is an amazing adventure. There is nothing of its sort in history that +surpasses it in impossibilities made possible. In one extraordinary +detail--the survival of every person in the boat--it probably stands +alone in the history of adventures of its kinds. Usually merely a part +of a boat's company survive--officers, mainly, and other educated and +tenderly-reared men, unused to hardship and heavy labour; the untrained, +roughly-reared hard workers succumb. But in this case even the rudest +and roughest stood the privations and miseries of the voyage almost as +well as did the college-bred young brothers and the captain. I mean, +physically. The minds of most of the sailors broke down in the fourth +week and went to temporary ruin, but physically the endurance exhibited +was astonishing. Those men did not survive by any merit of their own, of +course, but by merit of the character and intelligence of the captain; +they lived by the mastery of his spirit. Without him they would have +been children without a nurse; they would have exhausted their provisions +in a week, and their pluck would not have lasted even as long as the +provisions. + +The boat came near to being wrecked at the last. As it approached the +shore the sail was let go, and came down with a run; then the captain saw +that he was drifting swiftly toward an ugly reef, and an effort was made +to hoist the sail again; but it could not be done; the men's strength was +wholly exhausted; they could not even pull an oar. They were helpless, +and death imminent. It was then that they were discovered by the two +Kanakas who achieved the rescue. They swam out and manned the boat, and +piloted her through a narrow and hardly noticeable break in the reef--the +only break in it in a stretch of thirty-five miles! The spot where the +landing was made was the only one in that stretch where footing could +have been found on the shore; everywhere else precipices came sheer down +into forty fathoms of water. Also, in all that stretch this was the only +spot where anybody lived. + +Within ten days after the landing all the men but one were up and +creeping about. Properly, they ought to have killed themselves with the +'food' of the last few days--some of them, at any rate--men who had +freighted their stomachs with strips of leather from old boots and with +chips from the butter cask; a freightage which they did not get rid of by +digestion, but by other means. The captain and the two passengers did +not eat strips and chips, as the sailors did, but scraped the +boot-leather and the wood, and made a pulp of the scrapings by moistening +them with water. The third mate told me that the boots were old and full +of holes; then added thoughtfully, 'but the holes digested the best.' +Speaking of digestion, here is a remarkable thing, and worth nothing: +during this strange voyage, and for a while afterward on shore, the +bowels of some of the men virtually ceased from their functions; in some +cases there was no action for twenty and thirty days, and in one case for +forty-four! Sleeping also came to be rare. Yet the men did very well +without it. During many days the captain did not sleep at all +--twenty-one, I think, on one stretch. + +When the landing was made, all the men were successfully protected from +over-eating except the 'Portyghee;' he escaped the watch and ate an +incredible number of bananas: a hundred and fifty-two, the third mate +said, but this was undoubtedly an exaggeration; I think it was a hundred +and fifty-one. He was already nearly half full of leather; it was +hanging out of his ears. (I do not state this on the third mate's +authority, for we have seen what sort of a person he was; I state it on +my own.) The 'Portyghee' ought to have died, of course, and even now it +seems a pity that he didn't; but he got well, and as early as any of +them; and all full of leather, too, the way he was, and butter-timber and +handkerchiefs and bananas. Some of the men did eat handkerchiefs in +those last days, also socks; and he was one of them. + +It is to the credit of the men that they did not kill the rooster that +crowed so gallantly mornings. He lived eighteen days, and then stood up +and stretched his neck and made a brave, weak effort to do his duty once +more, and died in the act. It is a picturesque detail; and so is that +rainbow, too--the only one seen in the forty-three days,--raising its +triumphal arch in the skies for the sturdy fighters to sail under to +victory and rescue. + +With ten days' provisions Captain Josiah Mitchell performed this +memorable voyage of forty-three days and eight hours in an open boat, +sailing four thousand miles in reality and thirty-three hundred and sixty +by direct courses, and brought every man safe to land. A bright, +simple-hearted, unassuming, plucky, and most companionable man. I walked +the deck with him twenty-eight days--when I was not copying diaries,--and +I remember him with reverent honour. If he is alive he is eighty-six +years old now. + +If I remember rightly, Samuel Ferguson died soon after we reached San +Francisco. I do not think he lived to see his home again; his disease +had been seriously aggravated by his hardships. + +For a time it was hoped that the two quarter-boats would presently be +heard of, but this hope suffered disappointment. They went down with all +on board, no doubt, not even sparing that knightly chief mate. + +The authors of the diaries allowed me to copy them exactly as they were +written, and the extracts that I have given are without any smoothing +over or revision. These diaries are finely modest and unaffected, and +with unconscious and unintentional art they rise toward the climax with +graduated and gathering force and swing and dramatic intensity; they +sweep you along with a cumulative rush, and when the cry rings out at +last, 'Land in sight!' your heart is in your mouth, and for a moment you +think it is you that have been saved. The last two paragraphs are not +improvable by anybody's art; they are literary gold; and their very +pauses and uncompleted sentences have in them an eloquence not reachable +by any words. + +The interest of this story is unquenchable; it is of the sort that time +cannot decay. I have not looked at the diaries for thirty-two years, but +I find that they have lost nothing in that time. Lost? They have +gained; for by some subtle law all tragic human experiences gain in +pathos by the perspective of time. We realize this when in Naples we +stand musing over the poor Pompeian mother, lost in the historic storm of +volcanic ashes eighteen centuries ago, who lies with her child gripped +close to her breast, trying to save it, and whose despair and grief have +been preserved for us by the fiery envelope which took her life but +eternalized her form and features. She moves us, she haunts us, she +stays in our thoughts for many days, we do not know why, for she is +nothing to us, she has been nothing to anyone for eighteen centuries; +whereas of the like case to-day we should say, 'Poor thing! it is +pitiful,' and forget it in an hour. + +[1] There are nineteen days of voyaging ahead yet.--M.T. + +[2] Six days to sail yet, nevertheless.--M.T. + +[3] It was at this time discovered that the crazed sailors had gotten the +delusion that the captain had a million dollars in gold concealed aft, +and they were conspiring to kill him and the two passengers and seize it. +--M.T. + + + + + + +AT THE APPETITE-CURE + +This establishment's name is Hochberghaus. It is in Bohemia, a short +day's journey from Vienna, and being in the Austrian Empire is of course +a health resort. The empire is made up of health resorts; it distributes +health to the whole world. Its waters are all medicinal. They are +bottled and sent throughout the earth; the natives themselves drink beer. +This is self-sacrifice apparently--but outlanders who have drunk Vienna +beer have another idea about it. Particularly the Pilsner which one gets +in a small cellar up an obscure back lane in the First Bezirk--the name +has escaped me, but the place is easily found: You inquire for the Greek +church; and when you get to it, go right along by--the next house is that +little beer-mill. It is remote from all traffic and all noise; it is +always Sunday there. There are two small rooms, with low ceilings +supported by massive arches; the arches and ceilings are whitewashed, +otherwise the rooms would pass for cells in the dungeons of a bastile. +The furniture is plain and cheap, there is no ornamentation anywhere; yet +it is a heaven for the self-sacrificers, for the beer there is +incomparable; there is nothing like it elsewhere in the world. In the +first room you will find twelve or fifteen ladies and gentlemen of +civilian quality; in the other one a dozen generals and ambassadors. One +may live in Vienna many months and not hear of this place; but having +once heard of it and sampled it, the sampler will afterward infest it. + +However, this is all incidental--a mere passing note of gratitude for +blessings received--it has nothing to do with my subject. My subject is +health resorts. All unhealthy people ought to domicile themselves in +Vienna, and use that as a base, making flights from time to time to the +outlying resorts, according to need. A flight to Marienbad to get rid of +fat; a flight to Carlsbad to get rid of rheumatism; a flight to +Kalteneutgeben to take the water cure and get rid of the rest of the +diseases. It is all so handy. You can stand in Vienna and toss a +biscuit into Kaltenleutgeben, with a twelve-inch gun. You can run out +thither at any time of the day; you go by phenomenally slow trains, and +yet inside of an hour you have exchanged the glare and swelter of the +city for wooded hills, and shady forest paths, and soft cool airs, and +the music of birds, and the repose and the peace of paradise. + +And there are plenty of other health resorts at your service and +convenient to get at from Vienna; charming places, all of them; Vienna +sits in the centre of a beautiful world of mountains with now and then a +lake and forests; in fact, no other city is so fortunately situated. + +There is an abundance of health resorts, as I have said. Among them this +place--Hochberghaus. It stands solitary on the top of a densely wooded +mountain, and is a building of great size. It is called the Appetite +Anstallt, and people who have lost their appetites come here to get them +restored. When I arrived I was taken by Professor Haimberger to his +consulting-room and questioned: + +'It is six o'clock. When did you eat last?' + +'At noon.' + +'What did you eat?' + +'Next to nothing.' + +'What was on the table?' + +'The usual things.' + +'Chops, chickens, vegetables, and so on?' + +'Yes; but don't mention them--I can't bear it.' + +'Are you tired of them?' + +'Oh, utterly. I wish I might never hear of them again.' + +'The mere sight of food offends you, does it?' + +'More, it revolts me.' + +The doctor considered awhile, then got out a long menu and ran his eye +slowly down it. + +'I think,' said he, 'that what you need to eat is--but here, choose for +yourself.' + +I glanced at the list, and my stomach threw a hand-spring. Of all the +barbarous lay-outs that were ever contrived, this was the most atrocious. +At the top stood 'tough, underdone, overdue tripe, garnished with +garlic;' half-way down the bill stood 'young cat; old cat; scrambled +cat;' at the bottom stood 'sailor-boots, softened with tallow--served +raw.' The wide intervals of the bill were packed with dishes calculated +to gag a cannibal. I said: + +'Doctor, it is not fair to joke over so serious a case as mine. I came +here to get an appetite, not to throw away the remnant that's left.' + +He said gravely: 'I am not joking; why should I joke?' + +'But I can't eat these horrors.' + +'Why not?' + +He said it with a naivete that was admirable, whether it was real or +assumed. + +'Why not? Because--why, doctor, for months I have seldom been able to +endure anything more substantial than omelettes and custards. These +unspeakable dishes of yours--' + +'Oh, you will come to like them. They are very good. And you must eat +them. It is a rule of the place, and is strict. I cannot permit any +departure from it.' + +I said smiling: 'Well, then, doctor, you will have to permit the +departure of the patient. I am going.' + +He looked hurt, and said in a way which changed the aspect of things: + +'I am sure you would not do me that injustice. I accepted you in good +faith--you will not shame that confidence. This appetite-cure is my +whole living. If you should go forth from it with the sort of appetite +which you now have, it could become known, and you can see, yourself, +that people would say my cure failed in your case and hence can fail in +other cases. You will not go; you will not do me this hurt.' + +I apologised and said I would stay. + +'That is right. I was sure you would not go; it would take the food from +my family's mouths.' + +'Would they mind that? Do they eat these fiendish things?' + +'They? My family?' His eyes were full of gentle wonder. 'Of course +not.' + +'Oh, they don't! Do you?' + +'Certainly not.' + +'I see. It's another case of a physician who doesn't take his own +medicine.' + +'I don't need it. It is six hours since you lunched. Will you have +supper now--or later?' + +'I am not hungry, but now is as good a time as any, and I would like to +be done with it and have it off my mind. It is about my usual time, and +regularity is commanded by all the authorities. Yes, I will try to +nibble a little now--I wish a light horsewhipping would answer instead.' + +The professor handed me that odious menu. + +'Choose--or will you have it later?' + +'Oh, dear me, show me to my room; I forgot your hard rule.' + +'Wait just a moment before you finally decide. There is another rule. +If you choose now, the order will be filled at once; but if you wait, you +will have to await my pleasure. You cannot get a dish from that entire +bill until I consent.' + +'All right. Show me to my room, and send the cook to bed; there is not +going to be any hurry.' + +The professor took me up one flight of stairs and showed me into a most +inviting and comfortable apartment consisting of parlour, bedchamber, and +bathroom. + +The front windows looked out over a far-reaching spread of green glades +and valleys, and tumbled hills clothed with forests--a noble solitude +unvexed by the fussy world. In the parlour were many shelves filled with +books. The professor said he would now leave me to myself; and added: + +'Smoke and read as much as you please, drink all the water you like. +When you get hungry, ring and give your order, and I will decide whether +it shall be filled or not. Yours is a stubborn, bad case, and I think +the first fourteen dishes in the bill are each and all too delicate for +its needs. I ask you as a favour to restrain yourself and not call for +them.' + +'Restrain myself, is it? Give yourself no uneasiness. You are going to +save money by me. The idea of coaxing a sick man's appetite back with +this buzzard-fare is clear insanity.' + +I said it with bitterness, for I felt outraged by this calm, cold talk +over these heartless new engines of assassination. The doctor looked +grieved, but not offended. He laid the bill of fare of the commode at my +bed's head, 'so that it would be handy,' and said: + +'Yours is not the worst case I have encountered, by any means; still it +is a bad one and requires robust treatment; therefore I shall be +gratified if you will restrain yourself and skip down to No. 15 and begin +with that.' + +Then he left me and I began to undress, for I was dog-tired and very +sleepy. I slept fifteen hours and woke up finely refreshed at ten the +next morning. Vienna coffee! It was the first thing I thought of--that +unapproachable luxury--that sumptuous coffee-house coffee, compared with +which all other European coffee and all American hotel coffee is mere +fluid poverty. I rang, and ordered it; also Vienna bread, that delicious +invention. The servant spoke through the wicket in the door and said +--but you know what he said. He referred me to the bill of fare. +I allowed him to go--I had no further use for him. + +After the bath I dressed and started for a walk, and got as far as the +door. It was locked on the outside. I rang, and the servant came and +explained that it was another rule. The seclusion of the patient was +required until after the first meal. I had not been particularly anxious +to get out before; but it was different now. Being locked in makes a +person wishful to get out. I soon began to find it difficult to put in +the time. At two o'clock I had been twenty-six hours without food. I +had been growing hungry for some time; I recognised that I was not only +hungry now, but hungry with a strong adjective in front of it. Yet I was +not hungry enough to face the bill of fare. + +I must put in the time somehow. I would read and smoke. I did it; hour +by hour. The books were all of one breed--shipwrecks; people lost in +deserts; people shut up in caved-in mines; people starving in besieged +cities. I read about all the revolting dishes that ever famishing men +had stayed their hunger with. During the first hours these things +nauseated me: hours followed in which they did not so affect me; still +other hours followed in which I found myself smacking my lips over some +tolerably infernal messes. When I had been without food forty-five hours +I ran eagerly to the bell and ordered the second dish in the bill, which +was a sort of dumplings containing a compost made of caviar and tar. + +It was refused me. During the next fifteen hours I visited the bell +every now and then and ordered a dish that was further down the list. +Always a refusal. But I was conquering prejudice after prejudice, right +along; I was making sure progress; I was creeping up on No. 15 with +deadly certainty, and my heart beat faster and faster, my hopes rose +higher and higher. + +At last when food had not passed my lips for sixty hours, victory was +mine, and I ordered No. 15: + +'Soft-boiled spring chicken--in the egg; six dozen, hot and fragrant!' + +In fifteen minutes it was there; and the doctor along with it, rubbing +his hands with joy. He said with great excitement: + +'It's a cure, it's a cure! I knew I could do it. Dear sir, my grand +system never failed--never. You've got your appetite back--you know you +have; say it and make me happy.' + +'Bring on your carrion--I can eat anything in the bill!' + +'Oh, this is noble, this is splendid--but I knew I could do it, the +system never fails. How are the birds?' + +'Never was anything so delicious in the world; and yet as a rule I don't +care for game. But don't interrupt me, don't--I can't spare my mouth, I +really can't.' + +Then the doctor said: + +'The cure is perfect. There is no more doubt nor danger. Let the +poultry alone; I can trust you with a beefsteak, now.' + +The beefsteak came--as much as a basketful of it--with potatoes, and +Vienna bread and coffee; and I ate a meal then that was worth all the +costly preparation I had made for it. And dripped tears of gratitude +into the gravy all the time--gratitude to the doctor for putting a little +plain common-sense into me when I had been empty of it so many, many +years. + + +II + +Thirty years ago Haimberger went off on a long voyage in a sailing-ship. +There were fifteen passengers on board. The table-fare was of the +regulation pattern of the day: At 7 in the morning, a cup of bad coffee +in bed; at 9, breakfast: bad coffee, with condensed milk; soggy rolls, +crackers, salt fish; at 1 P.M., luncheon: cold tongue, cold ham, cold +corned beef, soggy cold rolls, crackers; 5 P.M., dinner: thick pea soup, +salt fish, hot corned beef and sour kraut, boiled pork and beans, +pudding; 9 till 11 P.M., supper: tea, with condensed milk, cold tongue, +cold ham, pickles, sea-biscuit, pickled oysters, pickled pigs' feet, +grilled bones, golden buck. + +At the end of the first week eating had ceased, nibbling had taken its +place. The passengers came to the table, but it was partly to put in the +time, and partly because the wisdom of the ages commanded them to be +regular in their meals. They were tired of the coarse and monotonous +fare, and took no interest in it, had no appetite for it. All day and +every day they roamed the ship half hungry, plagued by their gnawing +stomachs, moody, untalkative, miserable. Among them were three confirmed +dyspeptics. These became shadows in the course of three weeks. There +was also a bed-ridden invalid; he lived on boiled rice; he could not look +at the regular dishes. + +Now came shipwrecks and life in open boats, with the usual paucity of +food. Provisions ran lower and lower. The appetites improved, then. +When nothing was left but raw ham and the ration of that was down to two +ounces a day per person, the appetites were perfect. At the end of +fifteen days the dyspeptics, the invalid, and the most delicate ladies in +the party were chewing sailor-boots in ecstasy, and only complaining +because the supply of them was limited. Yet these were the same people +who couldn't endure the ship's tedious corned beef and sour kraut and +other crudities. They were rescued by an English vessel. Within ten +days the whole fifteen were in as good condition as they had been when +the shipwreck occurred. + +'They had suffered no damage by their adventure,' said the professor. + +'Do you note that?' + +'Yes.' + +'Do you note it well?' + +'Yes--I think I do.' + +'But you don't. You hesitate. You don't rise to the importance of it. +I will say it again--with emphasis--not one of them suffered any damage.' + +'Now I begin to see. Yes, it was indeed remarkable.' + +'Nothing of the kind. It was perfectly natural. There was no reason why +they should suffer damage. They were undergoing Nature's Appetite-Cure, +the best and wisest in the world.' + +'Is that where you got your idea?' + +'That is where I got it.' + +'It taught those people a valuable lesson.' + +'What makes you think that?' + +'Why shouldn't I? You seem to think it taught you one.' + +'That is nothing to the point. I am not a fool.' + +'I see. Were they fools?' + +'They were human beings.' + +'Is it the same thing?' + +'Why do you ask? You know it yourself. As regards his health--and the +rest of the things--the average man is what his environment and his +superstitions have made him; and their function is to make him an ass. +He can't add up three or four new circumstances together and perceive +what they mean; it is beyond him. He is not capable of observing for +himself; he has to get everything at second-hand. If what are miscalled +the lower animals were as silly as man is, they would all perish from the +earth in a year.' + +'Those passengers learned no lesson, then?' + +'Not a sign of it. They went to their regular meals in the English ship, +and pretty soon they were nibbling again--nibbling, appetiteless, +disgusted with the food, moody, miserable, half hungry, their outraged +stomachs cursing and swearing and whining and supplicating all day long. +And in vain, for they were the stomachs of fools.' + +'Then, as I understand it, your scheme is--' + +'Quite simple. Don't eat until you are hungry. If the food fails to +taste good, fails to satisfy you, rejoice you, comfort you, don't eat +again until you are very hungry. Then it will rejoice you--and do you +good, too.' + +'And I am to observe no regularity, as to hours?' + +'When you are conquering a bad appetite--no. After it is conquered, +regularity is no harm, so long as the appetite remains good. As soon as +the appetite wavers, apply the corrective again--which is starvation, +long or short according to the needs of the case.' + +'The best diet, I suppose--I mean the wholesomest--' + +'All diets are wholesome. Some are wholesomer than others, but all the +ordinary diets are wholesome enough for the people who use them. Whether +the food be fine or coarse it will taste good and it will nourish if a +watch be kept upon the appetite and a little starvation introduced every +time it weakens. Nansen was used to fine fare, but when his meals were +restricted to bear-meat months at a time he suffered no damage and no +discomfort, because his appetite was kept at par through the difficulty +of getting his bear-meat regularly.' + +'But doctors arrange carefully considered and delicate diets for +invalids.' + +'They can't help it. The invalid is full of inherited superstitions and +won't starve himself. He believes it would certainly kill him.' + +'It would weaken him, wouldn't it?' + +'Nothing to hurt. Look at the invalids in our shipwreck. They lived +fifteen days on pinches of raw ham, a suck at sailor-boots, and general +starvation. It weakened them, but it didn't hurt them. It put them in +fine shape to eat heartily of hearty food and build themselves up to a +condition of robust health. But they did not know enough to profit by +that; they lost their opportunity; they remained invalids; it served them +right. Do you know the trick that the health-resort doctors play?' + +'What is it?' + +'My system disguised--covert starvation. Grape-cure, bath-cure, +mud-cure--it is all the same. The grape and the bath and the mud make a +show and do a trifle of the work--the real work is done by the +surreptitious starvation. The patient accustomed to four meals and late +hours--at both ends of the day--now consider what he has to do at a +health resort. He gets up at 6 in the morning. Eats one egg. Tramps up +and down a promenade two hours with the other fools. Eats a butterfly. +Slowly drinks a glass of filtered sewage that smells like a buzzard's +breath. Promenades another two hours, but alone; if you speak to him he +says anxiously, "My water!--I am walking off my water!--please don't +interrupt," and goes stumping along again. Eats a candied roseleaf. Lies +at rest in the silence and solitude of his room for hours; mustn't read, +mustn't smoke. The doctor comes and feels of his heart, now, and his +pulse, and thumps his breast and his back and his stomach, and listens +for results through a penny flageolet; then orders the man's bath--half a +degree, Reaumur, cooler than yesterday. After the bath another egg. A +glass of sewage at three or four in the afternoon, and promenade solemnly +with the other freaks. Dinner at 6--half a doughnut and a cup of tea. +Walk again. Half-past 8, supper--more butterfly; at 9, to bed. Six +weeks of this regime--think of it. It starves a man out and puts him in +splendid condition. It would have the same effect in London, New York, +Jericho--anywhere.' + +'How long does it take to put a person in condition here?' + +'It ought to take but a day or two; but in fact it takes from one to six +weeks, according to the character and mentality of the patient.' + +'How is that?' + +'Do you see that crowd of women playing football, and boxing, and jumping +fences yonder? They have been here six or seven weeks. They were +spectral poor weaklings when they came. They were accustomed to nibbling +at dainties and delicacies at set hours four times a day, and they had no +appetite for anything. I questioned them, and then locked them into +their rooms--the frailest ones to starve nine or ten hours, the others +twelve or fifteen. Before long they began to beg; and indeed they +suffered a good deal. They complained of nausea, headache, and so on. +It was good to see them eat when the time was up. They could not +remember when the devouring of a meal had afforded them such rapture +--that was their word. Now, then, that ought to have ended their cure, but +it didn't. They were free to go to any meals in the house, and they +chose their accustomed four. Within a day or two I had to interfere. +Their appetites were weakening. I made them knock out a meal. That set +them up again. Then they resumed the four. I begged them to learn to +knock out a meal themselves, without waiting for me. Up to a fortnight +ago they couldn't; they really hadn't manhood enough; but they were +gaining it, and now I think they are safe. They drop out a meal every +now and then of their own accord. They are in fine condition now, and +they might safely go home, I think, but their confidence is not quite +perfect yet, so they are waiting awhile.' + +'Other cases are different?' + +'Oh yes. Sometimes a man learns the whole trick in a week. Learns to +regulate his appetite and keep it in perfect order. Learns to drop out a +meal with frequency and not mind it.' + +'But why drop the entire meal out? Why not a part of it?' + +'It's a poor device, and inadequate. If the stomach doesn't call +vigorously--with a shout, as you may say--it is better not to pester it +but just give it a real rest. Some people can eat more meals than +others, and still thrive. There are all sorts of people, and all sorts +of appetites. I will show you a man presently who was accustomed to +nibble at eight meals a day. It was beyond the proper gait of his +appetite by two. I have got him down to six a day, now, and he is all +right, and enjoys life. How many meals to you affect per day?' + +'Formerly--for twenty-two years--a meal and a half; during the past two +years, two and a half: coffee and a roll at 9, luncheon at 1, dinner at +7.30 or 8.' + +'Formerly a meal and a half--that is, coffee and a roll at 9, dinner in +the evening, nothing between--is that it? + +'Yes.' + +'Why did you add a meal?' + +'It was the family's idea. They were uneasy. They thought I was killing +myself.' + +'You found a meal and a half per day enough, all through the twenty-two +years?' + +'Plenty.' + +'Your present poor condition is due to the extra meal. Drop it out. You +are trying to eat oftener than your stomach demands. You don't gain, you +lose. You eat less food now, in a day, on two and a half meals, than you +formerly ate on one and a half.' + +'True--a good deal less; for in those olds days my dinner was a very +sizeable thing.' + +'Put yourself on a single meal a day, now--dinner--for a few days, till +you secure a good, sound, regular, trustworthy appetite, then take to +your one and a half permanently, and don't listen to the family any more. +When you have any ordinary ailment, particularly of a feverish sort, eat +nothing at all during twenty-four hours. That will cure it. It will +cure the stubbornest cold in the head, too. No cold in the head can +survive twenty-four hours' unmodified starvation.' + +I know it. I have proved it many a time. + + + + + + +CONCERNING THE JEWS + +Some months ago I published a magazine article[1] descriptive of a +remarkable scene in the Imperial Parliament in Vienna. Since then I have +received from Jews in America several letters of inquiry. They were +difficult letters to answer, for they were not very definite. But at +last I have received a definite one. It is from a lawyer, and he really +asks the questions which the other writers probably believed they were +asking. By help of this text I will do the best I can to publicly answer +this correspondent, and also the others--at the same time apologising for +having failed to reply privately. The lawyer's letter reads as follows: + + 'I have read "Stirring Times in Austria." One point in particular + is of vital import to not a few thousand people, including myself, + being a point about which I have often wanted to address a question + to some disinterested person. The show of military force in the + Austrian Parliament, which precipitated the riots, was not + introduced by any Jew. No Jew was a member of that body. No Jewish + question was involved in the Ausgleich or in the language + proposition. No Jew was insulting anybody. In short, no Jew was + doing any mischief toward anybody whatsoever. In fact, the Jews + were the only ones of the nineteen different races in Austria which + did not have a party--they are absolute non-participants. Yet in + your article you say that in the rioting which followed, all classes + of people were unanimous only on one thing, viz., in being against + the Jews. Now, will you kindly tell me why, in your judgment, the + Jews have thus ever been, and are even now, in these days of + supposed intelligence, the butt of baseless, vicious animosities? + I dare say that for centuries there has been no more quiet, + undisturbing, and well-behaving citizen, as a class, than that same + Jew. It seems to me that ignorance and fanaticism cannot alone + account for these horrible and unjust persecutions. + + 'Tell me, therefore, from your vantage point of cold view, what in + your mind is the cause. Can American Jews do anything to correct it + either in America or abroad? Will it ever come to an end? Will a + Jew be permitted to live honestly, decently, and peaceably like the + rest of mankind? What has become of the Golden Rule?' + +I will begin by saying that if I thought myself prejudiced against the +Jew, I should hold it fairest to leave this subject to a person not +crippled in that way. But I think I have no such prejudice. A few years +ago a Jew observed to me that there was no uncourteous reference to his +people in my books, and asked how it happened. It happened because the +disposition was lacking. I am quite sure that (bar one) I have no race +prejudices, and I think I have no colour prejudices nor caste prejudices +nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All +that I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for +me; he can't be any worse. I have no special regard for Satan; but I can +at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that +I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All +religions issue Bibles against him, and say the most injurious things +about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for +the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this +is irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it is French. +Without this precedent Dreyfus could not have been condemned. Of course +Satan has some kind of a case, it goes without saying. It may be a poor +one, but that is nothing; that can be said about any of us. As soon as I +can get at the facts I will undertake his rehabilitation myself, if I can +find an unpolitic publisher. It is a thing which we ought to be willing +to do for any one who is under a cloud. We may not pay Satan reverence, +for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents. +A person who has during all time maintained the imposing position of +spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of +the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of +the loftiest order. In his large presence the other popes and +politicians shrink to midges for the microscope. I would like to see +him. I would rather see him and shake him by the tail than any other +member of the European Concert. In the present paper I shall allow +myself to use the word Jew as if it stood for both religion and race. It +is handy; and, besides, that is what the term means to the general world. + +In the above letter one notes these points: + +1. The Jew is a well-behaved citizen. + +2. Can ignorance and fanaticism alone account for his unjust treatment? + +3. Can Jews do anything to improve the situation? + +4. The Jews have no party; they are non-participants. + +5. Will the persecution ever come to an end? + +6. What has become of the Golden Rule? + +Point No. 1.--We must grant proposition No. 1, for several sufficient +reasons. The Jew is not a disturber of the peace of any country. Even +his enemies will concede that. He is not a loafer, he is not a sot, he +is not noisy, he is not a brawler nor a rioter, he is not quarrelsome. +In the statistics of crime his presence is conspicuously rare--in all +countries. With murder and other crimes of violence he has but little to +do: he is a stranger to the hangman. In the police court's daily long +roll of 'assaults' and 'drunk and disorderlies' his name seldom appears. +That the Jewish home is a home in the truest sense is a fact which no one +will dispute. The family is knitted together by the strongest +affections; its members show each other every due respect; and reverence +for the elders is an inviolate law of the house. The Jew is not a burden +on the charities of the state nor of the city; these could cease from +their functions without affecting him. When he is well enough, he works; +when he is incapacitated, his own people take care of him. And not in a +poor and stingy way, but with a fine and large benevolence. His race is +entitled to be called the most benevolent of all the races of men. A +Jewish beggar is not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but +there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle. The Jew +has been staged in many uncomplimentary forms, but, so far as I know, no +dramatist has done him the injustice to stage him as a beggar. Whenever +a Jew has real need to beg, his people save him from the necessity of +doing it. The charitable institutions of the Jews are supported by +Jewish money, and amply. The Jews make no noise about it; it is done +quietly; they do not nag and pester and harass us for contributions; they +give us peace, and set us an example--an example which he have not found +ourselves able to follow; for by nature we are not free givers, and have +to be patiently and persistently hunted down in the interest of the +unfortunate. + +These facts are all on the credit side of the proposition that the Jew is +a good and orderly citizen. Summed up, they certify that he is quiet, +peaceable, industrious, unaddicted to high crimes and brutal +dispositions; that his family life is commendable; that he is not a +burden upon public charities; that he is not a beggar; that in +benevolence he is above the reach of competition. These are the very +quintessentials of good citizenship. If you can add that he is as honest +as the average of his neighbours--But I think that question is +affirmatively answered by the fact that he is a successful business man. +The basis of successful business is honesty; a business cannot thrive +where the parties to it cannot trust each other. In the matter of +numbers the Jew counts for little in the overwhelming population of New +York; but that his honest counts for much is guaranteed by the fact that +the immense wholesale business of Broadway, from the Battery to Union +Square, is substantially in his hands. + +I suppose that the most picturesque example in history of a trader's +trust in his fellow-trader was one where it was not Christian trusting +Christian, but Christian trusting Jew. That Hessian Duke who used to +sell his subjects to George III. to fight George Washington with got rich +at it; and by-and-by, when the wars engendered by the French Revolution +made his throne too warm for him, he was obliged to fly the country. He +was in a hurry, and had to leave his earnings behind--$9,000,000. He had +to risk the money with some one without security. He did not select a +Christian, but a Jew--a Jew of only modest means, but of high character; +a character so high that it left him lonesome--Rothschild of Frankfort. +Thirty years later, when Europe had become quiet and safe again, the Duke +came back from overseas, and the Jew returned the loan, with interest +added.[2] + +The Jew has his other side. He has some discreditable ways, though he +has not a monopoly of them, because he cannot get entirely rid of +vexatious Christian competition. We have seen that he seldom +transgresses the laws against crimes of violence. Indeed, his dealings +with courts are almost restricted to matters connected with commerce. He +has a reputation for various small forms of cheating, and for practising +oppressive usury, and for burning himself out to get the insurance, and +for arranging cunning contracts which leave him an exit but lock the +other man in, and for smart evasions which find him safe and comfortable +just within the strict letter of the law, when court and jury know very +well that he has violated the spirit of it. He is a frequent and +faithful and capable officer in the civil service, but he is charged with +an unpatriotic disinclination to stand by the flag as a soldier--like the +Christian Quaker. + +Now if you offset these discreditable features by the creditable ones +summarised in a preceding paragraph beginning with the words, 'These +facts are all on the credit side,' and strike a balance, what must the +verdict be? This, I think: that, the merits and demerits being fairly +weighed and measured on both sides, the Christian can claim no +superiority over the Jew in the matter of good citizenship. + +Yet in all countries, from the dawn of history, the Jew has been +persistently and implacably hated, and with frequency persecuted. + + +Point No. 2.--'Can fanaticism alone account for this?' + +Years ago I used to think that it was responsible for nearly all of it, +but latterly I have come to think that this was an error. Indeed, it is +now my conviction that it is responsible for hardly any of it. + +In this connection I call to mind Genesis, chapter xlvii. + +We have all thoughtfully--or unthoughtfully--read the pathetic story of +the years of plenty and the years of famine in Egypt, and how Joseph, +with that opportunity, made a corner in broken hearts, and the crusts of +the poor, and human liberty--a corner whereby he took a nation's money +all away, to the last penny; took a nation's live stock all away, to the +last hoof; took a nation's land away, to the last acre; then took the +nation itself, buying it for bread, man by man, woman by woman, child by +child, till all were slaves; a corner which took everything, left +nothing; a corner so stupendous that, by comparison with it, the most +gigantic corners in subsequent history are but baby things, for it dealt +in hundreds of millions of bushels, and its profits were reckonable by +hundreds of millions of dollars, and it was a disaster so crushing that +its effects have not wholly disappeared from Egypt to-day, more than +three thousand years after the event. + +Is it presumably that the eye of Egypt was upon Joseph the foreign Jew +all this time? I think it likely. Was it friendly? We must doubt it. +Was Joseph establishing a character for his race which would survive long +in Egypt? and in time would his name come to be familiarly used to +express that character--like Shylock's? It is hardly to be doubted. Let +us remember that this was centuries before the Crucifixion? + +I wish to come down eighteen hundred years later and refer to a remark +made by one of the Latin historians. I read it in a translation many +years ago, and it comes back to me now with force. It was alluding to a +time when people were still living who could have seen the Saviour in the +flesh. Christianity was so new that the people of Rome had hardly heard +of it, and had but confused notions of what it was. The substance of the +remark was this: Some Christians were persecuted in Rome through error, +they being 'mistaken for Jews.' + +The meaning seems plain. These pagans had nothing against Christians, +but they were quite ready to persecute Jews. For some reason or other +they hated a Jew before they even knew what a Christian was. May I not +assume, then, that the persecution of Jews is a thing which antedates +Christianity and was not born of Christianity? I think so. What was the +origin of the feeling? + +When I was a boy, in the back settlements of the Mississippi Valley, +where a gracious and beautiful Sunday school simplicity and practicality +prevailed, the 'Yankee' (citizen of the New England States) was hated +with a splendid energy. But religion had nothing to do with it. In a +trade, the Yankee was held to be about five times the match of the +Westerner. His shrewdness, his insight, his judgment, his knowledge, his +enterprise, and his formidable cleverness in applying these forces were +frankly confessed, and most competently cursed. + +In the cotton States, after the war, the simple and ignorant Negroes made +the crops for the white planter on shares. The Jew came down in force, +set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the negro's wants on credit, +and at the end of the season was proprietor of the negro's share of the +present crop and of part of his share of the next one. Before long, the +whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the negro loved him. + +The Jew is begin legislated out of Russia. The reason is not concealed. +The movement was instituted because the Christian peasant and villager +stood no chance against his commercial abilities. He was always ready to +lend money on a crop, and sell vodka and other necessities of life on +credit while the crop was growing. When settlement day came he owned the +crop; and next year or year after he owned the farm, like Joseph. + +In the dull and ignorant English of John's time everybody got into debt +to the Jew. He gathered all lucrative enterprises into his hands; he was +the king of commerce; he was ready to be helpful in all profitable ways; +he even financed crusades for the rescue of the Sepulchre. To wipe out +his account with the nation and restore business to its natural and +incompetent channels he had to be banished the realm. + +For the like reasons Spain had to banish him four hundred years ago, and +Austria about a couple of centuries later. + +In all the ages Christian Europe has been oblige to curtail his +activities. If he entered upon a mechanical trade, the Christian had to +retire from it. If he set up as a doctor, he was the best one, and he +took the business. If he exploited agriculture, the other farmers had to +get at something else. Since there was no way to successfully compete +with him in any vocation, the law had to step in and save the Christian +from the poor-house. Trade after trade was taken away from the Jew by +statute till practically none was left. He was forbidden to engage in +agriculture; he was forbidden to practise law; he was forbidden to +practise medicine, except among Jews; he was forbidden the handicrafts. +Even the seats of learning and the schools of science had to be closed +against this tremendous antagonist. Still, almost bereft of employments, +he found ways to make money, even ways to get rich. Also ways to invest +his takings well, for usury was not denied him. In the hard conditions +suggested, the Jew without brains could not survive, and the Jew with +brains had to keep them in good training and well sharpened up, or +starve. Ages of restriction to the one tool which the law was not able +to take from him--his brain--have made that tool singularly competent; +ages of compulsory disuse of his hands have atrophied them, and he never +uses them now. This history has a very, very commercial look, a most +sordid and practical commercial look, the business aspect of a Chinese +cheap-labour crusade. Religious prejudices may account for one part of +it, but not for the other nine. + +Protestants have persecuted Catholics, but they did not take their +livelihoods away from them. The Catholics have persecuted the +Protestants with bloody and awful bitterness, but they never closed +agriculture and the handicrafts against them. Why was that? That has +the candid look of genuine religious persecution, not a trade-union +boycott in a religious dispute. + +The Jews are harried and obstructed in Austria and Germany, and lately in +France; but England and America give them an open field and yet survive. +Scotland offers them an unembarrassed field too, but there are not many +takers. There are a few Jews in Glasgow, and one in Aberdeen; but that +is because they can't earn enough to get away. The Scotch pay themselves +that compliment, but it is authentic. + +I feel convinced that the Crucifixion has not much to do with the world's +attitude toward the Jew; that the reasons for it are older than that +event, as suggested by Egypt's experience and by Rome's regret for having +persecuted an unknown quantity called a Christian, under the mistaken +impression that she was merely persecuting a Jew. Merely a Jew--a +skinned eel who was used to it, presumably. I am persuaded that in +Russia, Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew +comes from the average Christian's inability to compete successfully with +the average Jew in business--in either straight business or the +questionable sort. + +In Berlin, a few years ago, I read a speech which frankly urged the +expulsion of the Jews from Germany; and the agitator's reason was as +frank as his proposition. It was this: that eighty-five percent of the +successful lawyers of Berlin were Jews, and that about the same +percentage of the great and lucrative businesses of all sorts in Germany +were in the hands of the Jewish race! Isn't it an amazing confession? +It was but another way of saying that in a population of 48,000,000, of +whom only 500,000 were registered as Jews, eighty-five per cent of the +brains and honesty of the whole was lodged in the Jews. I must insist +upon the honesty--it is an essential of successful business, taken by and +large. Of course it does not rule out rascals entirely, even among +Christians, but it is a good working rule, nevertheless. The speaker's +figures may have been inexact, but the motive of persecution stands out +as clear as day. + +The man claimed that in Berlin the banks, the newspapers, the theatres, +the great mercantile, shipping, mining, and manufacturing interests, the +big army and city contracts, the tramways, and pretty much all other +properties of high value, and also the small businesses, were in the +hands of the Jews. He said the Jew was pushing the Christian to the wall +all along the line; that it was all a Christian could do to scrape +together a living; and that the Jew must be banished, and soon--there was +no other way of saving the Christian. Here in Vienna, last autumn, +an agitator said that all these disastrous details were true of +Austria-Hungary also; and in fierce language he demanded the expulsion of +the Jews. When politicians come out without a blush and read the baby +act in this frank way, unrebuked, it is a very good indication that they +have a market back of them, and know where to fish for votes. + +You note the crucial point of the mentioned agitation; the argument is +that the Christian cannot compete with the Jew, and that hence his very +bread is in peril. To human beings this is a much more hate-inspiring +thing than is any detail connected with religion. With most people, of a +necessity, bread and meat take first rank, religion second. I am +convinced that the persecution of the Jew is not due in any large degree +to religious prejudice. + +No, the Jew is a money-getter; and in getting his money he is a very +serious obstruction to less capable neighbours who are on the same quest. +I think that that is the trouble. In estimating worldly values the Jew +is not shallow, but deep. With precocious wisdom he found out in the +morning of time that some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some +worship power, some worship God, and that over these ideals they dispute +and cannot unite--but that they all worship money; so he made it the end +and aim of his life to get it. He was at it in Egypt thirty-six +centuries ago; he was at it in Rome when that Christian got persecuted by +mistake for him; he has been at it ever since. The cost to him has been +heavy; his success has made the whole human race his enemy--but it has +paid, for it has brought him envy, and that is the only thing which +men will sell both soul and body to get. He long ago observed +that a millionaire commands respect, a two-millionaire homage, +a multi-millionaire the deepest deeps of adoration. We all know that +feeling; we have seen it express itself. We have noticed that when the +average man mentions the name of a multi-millionaire he does it with that +mixture in his voice of awe and reverence and lust which burns in a +Frenchman's eye when it falls on another man's centime. + + +Point No. 4--'The Jews have no party; they are non-participants.' + +Perhaps you have let the secret out and given yourself away. It seems +hardly a credit to the race that it is able to say that; or to you, sir, +that you can say it without remorse; more, that you should offer it as a +plea against maltreatment, injustice, and oppression. Who gives the Jew +the right, who gives any race the right, to sit still in a free country, +and let somebody else look after its safety? The oppressed Jew was +entitled to all pity in the former times under brutal autocracies, for he +was weak and friendless, and had no way to help his case. But he has +ways now, and he has had them for a century, but I do not see that he has +tried to make serious use of then. When the Revolution set him free in +France it was an act of grace--the grace of other people; he does not +appear in it as a helper. I do not know that he helped when England set +him free. Among the Twelve Sane Men of France who have stepped forward +with great Zola at their head to fight (and win, I hope and believe[3]) +the battle for the most infamously misused Jew of modern times, do you +find a great or rich or illustrious Jew helping? In the United States he +was created free in the beginning--he did not need to help, of course. +In Austria and Germany and France he has a vote, but of what considerable +use is it to him? He doesn't seem to know how to apply it to the best +effect. With all his splendid capacities and all his fat wealth he is +to-day not politically important in any country. In America, as early as +1854, the ignorant Irish hod-carrier, who had a spirit of his own and a +way of exposing it to the weather, made it apparent to all that he must +be politically reckoned with; yet fifteen years before that we hardly +knew what an Irishman looked like. As an intelligent force and +numerically, he has always been away down, but he has governed the +country just the same. It was because he was organised. It made his +vote valuable--in fact, essential. + +You will say the Jew is everywhere numerically feeble. That is nothing +to the point--with the Irishman's history for an object-lesson. But I am +coming to your numerical feebleness presently. In all parliamentary +countries you could no doubt elect Jews to the legislatures--and even one +member in such a body is sometimes a force which counts. How deeply have +you concerned yourselves about this in Austria, France, and Germany? Or +even in America, for that matter? You remark that the Jews were not to +blame for the riots in this Reichsrath here, and you add with +satisfaction that there wasn't one in that body. That is not strictly +correct; if it were, would it not be in order for you to explain it and +apologise for it, not try to make a merit of it? But I think that the +Jew was by no means in as large force there as he ought to have been, +with his chances. Austria opens the suffrage to him on fairly liberal +terms, and it must surely be his own fault that he is so much in the +background politically. + +As to your numerical weakness. I mentioned some figures awhile ago +--500,00--as the Jewish population of Germany. I will add some more +--6,000,000 in Russia, 5,000,000 in Austria, 250,000 in the United States. +I take them from memory; I read them in the 'Encyclopaedia Brittannica' +ten or twelve years ago. Still, I am entirely sure of them. If those +statistics are correct, my argument is not as strong as it ought to be as +concerns America, but it still has strength. It is plenty strong enough +as concerns Austria, for ten years ago 5,000,000 was nine per cent of the +empire's population. The Irish would govern the Kingdom of Heaven if +they had a strength there like that. + +I have some suspicions; I got them at second-hand, but they have remained +with me these ten or twelve years. When I read in the 'E.B.' that the +Jewish population of the United States was 250,000 I wrote the editor, +and explained to him that I was personally acquainted with more Jews than +that in my country, and that his figures were without a doubt a misprint +for 25,000,000. I also added that I was personally acquainted with that +many there; but that was only to raise his confidence in me, for it was +not true. His answer miscarried, and I never got it; but I went around +talking about the matter, and people told me they had reason to suspect +that for business reasons many Jews whose dealings were mainly with the +Christians did not report themselves as Jews in the census. It looked +plausible; it looks plausible yet. Look at the city of New York; and +look at Boston, and Philadelphia, and New Orleans, and Chicago, and +Cincinnati, and San Francisco--how your race swarms in those places!--and +everywhere else in America, down to the least little village. Read the +signs on the marts of commerce and on the shops; Goldstein (gold stone), +Edelstein (precious stone), Blumenthal (flower-vale), Rosenthal +(rose-vale), Veilchenduft (violent odour), Singvogel (song-bird), +Rosenzweig (rose branch), and all the amazing list of beautiful and +enviable names which Prussia and Austria glorified you with so long ago. +It is another instance of Europe's coarse and cruel persecution of your +race; not that it was coarse and cruel to outfit it with pretty and +poetical names like those, but it was coarse and cruel to make it pay for +them or else take such hideous and often indecent names that to-day their +owners never use them; or, if they do, only on official papers. And it +was the many, not the few, who got the odious names, they being too poor +to bribe the officials to grant them better ones. + +Now why was the race renamed? I have been told that in Prussia it was +given to using fictitious names, and often changing them, so as to beat +the tax-gatherer, escape military service, and so on; and that finally +the idea was hit upon of furnishing all the inmates of a house with one +and the same surname, and then holding the house responsible right along +for those inmates, and accountable for any disappearances that might +occur; it made the Jews keep track of each other, for self-interest's +sake, and saved the Government the trouble[4]. + +If that explanation of how the Jews of Prussia came to be renamed is +correct, if it is true that they fictitiously registered themselves to +gain certain advantages, it may possible be true that in America they +refrain from registered themselves as Jews to fend off the damaging +prejudices of the Christian customer. I have no way of knowing whether +this notion is well founded or not. There may be other and better ways +of explaining why only that poor little 250,000 of our Jews got into the +'Encyclopaedia'. I may, of course, be mistaken, but I am strongly of the +opinion that we have an immense Jewish population in America. + + +Point No. 3--'Can Jews do anything to improve the situation?' + +I think so. If I may make a suggestion without seeming to be trying to +teach my grandmother to suck eggs, I will offer it. In our days we have +learned the value of combination. We apply it everywhere--in railway +systems, in trusts, in trade unions, in Salvation Armies, in minor +politics, in major politics, in European Concerts. Whatever our strength +may be, big or little, we organise it. We have found out that that is +the only way to get the most out of it that is in it. We know the +weakness of individual sticks, and the strength of the concentrated +faggot. Suppose you try a scheme like this, for instance. In England +and America put every Jew on the census-book as a Jew (in case you have +not been doing that). Get up volunteer regiments composed of Jews +solely, and when the drum beats, fall in and go to the front, so as to +remove the reproach that you have few Massenas among you, and that you +feed on a country but don't like to fight for it. Next, in politics, +organise your strength, band together, and deliver the casting-vote where +you can, and, where you can't, compel as good terms as possible. You +huddle to yourselves already in all countries, but you huddle to no +sufficient purpose, politically speaking. You do not seem to be +organised, except for your charities. There you are omnipotent; there +you compel your due of recognition--you do not have to beg for it. It +shows what you can do when you band together for a definite purpose. + +And then from America and England you can encourage your race in Austria, +France, and Germany, and materially help it. It was a pathetic tale that +was told by a poor Jew a fortnight ago during the riots, after he had +been raided by the Christian peasantry and despoiled of everything he +had. He said his vote was of no value to him, and he wished he could be +excused from casting it, for indeed, casting it was a sure damage to him, +since, no matter which party he voted for, the other party would come +straight and take its revenge out of him. Nine per cent of the +population, these Jews, and apparently they cannot put a plank into any +candidate's platform! If you will send our Irish lads over here I think +they will organise your race and change the aspect of the Reichsrath. + +You seem to think that the Jews take no hand in politics here, that they +are 'absolutely non-participants.' I am assured by men competent to +speak that this is a very large error, that the Jews are exceedingly +active in politics all over the empire, but that they scatter their work +and their votes among the numerous parties, and thus lose the advantages +to be had by concentration. I think that in America they scatter too, +but you know more about that than I do. + +Speaking of concentration, Dr. Herzl has a clear insight into the value +of that. Have you heard of his plan? He wishes to gather the Jews of +the world together in Palestine, with a government of their own--under +the suzerainty of the Sultan, I suppose. At the Convention of Berne, +last year, there were delegates from everywhere, and the proposal was +received with decided favour. I am not the Sultan, and I am not +objecting; but if that concentration of the cunningest brains in the +world were going to be made in a free country (bar Scotland), I think it +would be politic to stop it. It will not be well to let that race find +out its strength. If the horses knew theirs, we should not ride any +more. + + +Point No. 5.--'Will the persecution of the Jews ever come to an end?' + +On the score of religion, I think it has already come to an end. On the +score of race prejudice and trade, I have the idea that it will continue. +That is, here and there in spots about the world, where a barbarous +ignorance and a sort of mere animal civilisation prevail; but I do not +think that elsewhere the Jew need now stand in any fear of being robbed +and raided. Among the high civilisations he seems to be very comfortably +situated indeed, and to have more than his proportionate share of the +prosperities going. It has that look in Vienna. I suppose the race +prejudice cannot be removed; but he can stand that; it is no particular +matter. By his make and ways he is substantially a foreigner wherever he +may be, and even the angels dislike a foreigner. I am using this word +foreigner in the German sense--stranger. Nearly all of us have an +antipathy to a stranger, even of our own nationality. We pile grip-sacks +in a vacant seat to keep him from getting it; and a dog goes further, and +does as a savage would--challenges him on the spot. The German +dictionary seems to make no distinction between a stranger and a +foreigner; in its view a stranger is a foreigner--a sound position, +I think. You will always be by ways and habits and predilections +substantially strangers--foreigners--wherever you are, and that will +probably keep the race prejudice against you alive. + +But you were the favourites of Heaven originally, and your manifold and +unfair prosperities convince me that you have crowded back into that snug +place again. Here is an incident that is significant. Last week in +Vienna a hailstorm struck the prodigious Central Cemetery and made +wasteful destruction there. In the Christian part of it, according to +the official figures, 621 window-panes were broken; more than 900 +singing-birds were killed; five great trees and many small ones were torn +to shreds and the shreds scattered far and wide by the wind; the +ornamental plants and other decorations of the graces were ruined, and +more than a hundred tomb-lanterns shattered; and it took the cemetery's +whole force of 300 labourers more than three days to clear away the +storm's wreckage. In the report occurs this remark--and in its italics +you can hear it grit its Christian teeth: '...lediglich die israelitische +Abtheilung des Friedhofes vom Hagelwetter ganzlich verschont worden war.' +Not a hailstone hit the Jewish reservation! Such nepotism makes me +tired. + + +Point No. 6.--'What has become of the Golden Rule?' + +It exists, it continues to sparkle, and is well taken care of. It is +Exhibit A in the Church's assets, and we pull it out every Sunday and +give it an airing. But you are not permitted to try to smuggle it into +this discussion, where it is irrelevant and would not feel at home. +It is strictly religious furniture, like an acolyte, or a +contribution-plate, or any of those things. It has never intruded into +business; and Jewish persecution is not a religious passion, it is a +business passion. + + +To conclude.--If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one +per cent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star-dust +lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be +heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as +prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial +importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his +bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in +literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning +are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has +made a marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it +with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be +excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, +filled the planet with sound and splendour, then faded to dream-stuff and +passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and +they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for +a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have +vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always +was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his +parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive +mind. All things are mortal to the Jew; all other forces pass, but he +remains. What is the secret of his immortality? + + +Postscript--THE JEW AS SOLDIER + +When I published the above article in 'Harper's Monthly,' I was ignorant +--like the rest of the Christian world--of the fact that the Jew had a +record as a soldier. I have since seen the official statistics, and I +find that he furnished soldiers and high officers to the Revolution, the +War of 1812, and the Mexican War. In the Civil War he was represented in +the armies and navies of both the North and the South by 10 per cent of +his numerical strength--the same percentage that was furnished by the +Christian populations of the two sections. This large fact means more +than it seems to mean; for it means that the Jew's patriotism was not +merely level with the Christian's, but overpassed it. When the Christian +volunteer arrived in camp he got a welcome and applause, but as a rule +the Jew got a snub. His company was not desired, and he was made to feel +it. That he nevertheless conquered his wounded pride and sacrificed both +that and his blood for his flag raises the average and quality of his +patriotism above the Christian's. His record for capacity, for fidelity, +and for gallant soldiership in the field is as good as any one's. This +is true of the Jewish private soldiers and of the Jewish generals alike. +Major-General O. O. Howard speaks of one of his Jewish staff officers as +being 'of the bravest and best;' of another--killed at Chancellorsville +--as being 'a true friend and a brave officer;' he highly praises two of +his Jewish brigadier-generals; finally, he uses these strong words: +'Intrinsically there are no more patriotic men to be found in the country +than those who claim to be of Hebrew descent, and who served with me in +parallel commands or more directly under my instructions.' + +Fourteen Jewish Confederate and Union families contributed, between them, +fifty-one soldiers to the war. Among these, a father and three sons; and +another, a father and four sons. + +In the above article I was neither able to endorse nor repel the common +approach that the Jew is willing to feed upon a country but not to fight +for it, because I did not know whether it was true or false. I supposed +it to be true, but it is not allowable to endorse wandering maxims upon +supposition--except when one is trying to make out a case. That slur +upon the Jew cannot hold up its head in presence of the figures of the +War Department. It has done its work, and done it long and faithfully, +and with high approval: it ought to be pensioned off now, and retired +from active service. + +[1] See 'Stirring Times in Austria,' in this volume. + +[2] Here is another piece of picturesque history; and it reminds us that +shabbiness and dishonesty are not the monopoly of any race or creed, but +are merely human: + +'Congress has passed a bill to pay $379.56 to Moses Pendergrass, of +Libertyville, Missouri. The story of the reason of this liberality is +pathetically interesting, and shows the sort of pickle that an honest man +may get into who undertakes to do an honest job of work for Uncle Sam. +In 1886 Moses Pendergrass put in a bid for the contract to carry the mail +on the route from Knob Lick to Libertyville and Coffman, thirty miles a +day, from July 1, 1887, for one years. He got the postmaster at Knob +Lick to write the letter for him, and while Moses intended that his bid +should be $400, his scribe carelessly made it $4. Moses got the +contract, and did not find out about the mistake until the end of the +first quarter, when he got his first pay. When he found at what rate he +was working he was sorely cast down, and opened communication with the +Post Office Department. The department informed his that he must either +carry out his contract or throw it up, and that if he threw it up his +bondsman would have the pay the Government $1,459.85 damages. So Moses +carried out his contract, walked thirty miles every week-day for a year, +and carried the mail, and received for his labour $4, or, to be accurate, +$6.84; for, the route being extended after his bid was accepted, his pay +was proportionately increased. Now, after ten years, a bill was finally +passed to pay to Moses the difference between what he earned in that +unlucky year and what he received.' + +The 'Sun,' which tells the above story, says that bills were introduced +in three or four Congresses for Moses' relief, and that committees +repeatedly investigated his claim. + +It took six Congresses, containing in their persons the compressed +virtues of 70,000,000 of people, and cautiously and carefully giving +expression to those virtues in the fear of God and the next election, +eleven years to find out some way to cheat a fellow Christian out of +about $13 on his honestly executed contract, and out of nearly $300 due +him on its enlarged terms. And they succeeded. During the same time +they paid out $1,000,000,000 in pensions--a third of it unearned and +undeserved. This indicates a splendid all-round competency in theft, for +it starts with farthings, and works its industries all the way up to +ship-loads. It may be possible that the Jews can beat this, but the man +that bets on it is taking chances. + +[3] The article was written in the summer of 1898. + +[4] In Austria the renaming was merely done because the Jews in some +newly-acquired regions had no surnames, but were mostly named Abraham and +Moses, and therefore the tax-gatherer could tell t'other from which, and +was likely to lose his reason over the matter. The renaming was put into +the hands of the War Department, and a charming mess the graceless young +lieutenants made of it. To them a Jew was of no sort of consequence, and +they labelled the race in a way to make the angels weep. As an example, +take these two: Abraham Bellyache and Schmul Godbedamned--Culled from +'Namens Studien,' by Karl Emil Fransos. + + + + + + +FROM THE 'LONDON TIMES' OF 1904 + +Correspondence of the 'London Times' +Chicago, April 1, 1904 + +I resume by cable-telephone where I left off yesterday. For many hours +now, this vast city--along with the rest of the globe, of course--has +talked of nothing but the extraordinary episode mentioned in my last +report. In accordance with your instructions, I will now trace the +romance from its beginnings down to the culmination of yesterday--or +today; call it which you like. By an odd chance, I was a personal actor +in a part of this drama myself. The opening scene plays in Vienna. +Date, one o'clock in the morning, March 31, 1898. I had spent the +evening at a social entertainment. About midnight I went away, in +company with the military attaches of the British, Italian, and American +embassies, to finish with a late smoke. This function had been appointed +to take place in the house of Lieutenant Hillyer, the third attache +mentioned in the above list. When we arrived there we found several +visitors in the room; young Szczepanik;[1] Mr. K., his financial backer; +Mr. W., the latter's secretary; and Lieutenant Clayton, of the United +States Army. War was at that time threatening between Spain and our +country, and Lieutenant Clayton had been sent to Europe on military +business. I was well acquainted with young Szczepanik and his two +friends, and I knew Mr. Clayton slightly. I had met him at West Point +years before, when he was a cadet. It was when General Merritt was +superintendent. He had the reputation of being an able officer, and also +of being quick-tempered and plain-spoken. + +This smoking-party had been gathered together partly for business. This +business was to consider the availability of the telelectroscope for +military service. It sounds oddly enough now, but it is nevertheless +true that at that time the invention was not taken seriously by any one +except its inventor. Even his financial support regarded it merely as a +curious and interesting toy. Indeed, he was so convinced of this that he +had actually postponed its use by the general world to the end of the +dying century by granting a two years' exclusive lease of it to a +syndicate, whose intent was to exploit it at the Paris World's Fair. +When we entered the smoking-room we found Lieutenant Clayton and +Szczepanik engaged in a warm talk over the telelectroscope in the German +tongue. Clayton was saying: + +'Well, you know my opinion of it, anyway!' and he brought his fist down +with emphasis upon the table. + +'And I do not value it,' retorted the young inventor, with provoking +calmness of tone and manner. + +Clayton turned to Mr. K., and said: + +'I cannot see why you are wasting money on this toy. In my opinion, the +day will never come when it will do a farthing's worth of real service +for any human being.' + +'That may be; yes, that may be; still, I have put the money in it, and am +content. I think, myself, that it is only a toy; but Szczepanik claims +more for it, and I know him well enough to believe that he can see father +than I can--either with his telelectroscope or without it.' + +The soft answer did not cool Clayton down; it seemed only to irritate him +the more; and he repeated and emphasised his conviction that the +invention would never do any man a farthing's worth of real service. He +even made it a 'brass' farthing, this time. Then he laid an English +farthing on the table, and added: + +'Take that, Mr. K., and put it away; and if ever the telelectroscope does +any man an actual service--mind, a real service--please mail it to me as +a reminder, and I will take back what I have been saying. Will you?' + +'I will,' and Mr. K. put the coin in his pocket. + +Mr. Clayton now turned toward Szczepanik, and began with a taunt--a taunt +which did not reach a finish; Szczepanik interrupted it with a hardy +retort, and followed this with a blow. There was a brisk fight for a +moment or two; then the attaches separated the men. + +The scene now changes to Chicago. Time, the autumn of 1901. As soon as +the Paris contract released the telelectroscope, it was delivered to +public use, and was soon connected with the telephonic systems of the +whole world. The improved 'limitless-distance' telephone was presently +introduced, and the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody, +and audibly discussible, too, by witnesses separated by any number of +leagues. + +By-and-by Szczepanik arrived in Chicago. Clayton (now captain) was +serving in that military department at the time. The two men resumed the +Viennese quarrel of 1898. On three different occasions they quarrelled, +and were separated by witnesses. Then came an interval of two months, +during which time Szczepanik was not seen by any of his friends, and it +was at first supposed that he had gone off on a sight seeing tour and +would soon be heard from. But no; no word came from him. Then it was +supposed that he had returned to Europe. Still, time drifted on, and he +was not heard from. Nobody was troubled, for he was like most inventors +and other kinds of poets, and went and came in a capricious way, and +often without notice. + +Now comes the tragedy. On December 29, in a dark and unused compartment +of the cellar under Captain Clayton's house, a corpse was discovered by +one of Clayton's maid-servants. Friends of deceased identified it as +Szczepanik's. The man had died by violence. Clayton was arrested, +indicted, and brought to trial, charged with this murder. The evidence +against him was perfect in every detail, and absolutely unassailable. +Clayton admitted this himself. He said that a reasonable man could not +examine this testimony with a dispassionate mind and not be convinced by +it; yet the man would be in error, nevertheless. Clayton swore that he +did not commit the murder, and that he had had nothing to do with it. + +As your readers will remember, he was condemned to death. He had +numerous and powerful friends, and they worked hard to save him, for none +of them doubted the truth of his assertion. I did what little I could to +help, for I had long since become a close friend of his, and thought I +knew that it was not in his character to inveigle an enemy into a corner +and assassinate him. During 1902 and 1903 he was several times reprieved +by the governor; he was reprieved once more in the beginning of the +present year, and the execution day postponed to March 31. + +The governor's situation has been embarrassing, from the day of the +condemnation, because of the fact that Clayton's wife is the governor's +niece. The marriage took place in 1899, when Clayton was thirty-four and +the girl twenty-three, and has been a happy one. There is one child, a +little girl three years old. Pity for the poor mother and child kept the +mouths of grumblers closed at first; but this could not last for ever +--for in America politics has a hand in everything--and by-and-by the +governor's political opponents began to call attention to his delay in +allowing the law to take its course. These hints have grown more and +more frequent of late, and more and more pronounced. As a natural +result, his own part grew nervous. Its leaders began to visit +Springfield and hold long private conferences with him. He was now +between two fires. On the one hand, his niece was imploring him to +pardon her husband; on the other were the leaders, insisting that he +stand to his plain duty as chief magistrate of the State, and place no +further bar to Clayton's execution. Duty won in the struggle, and the +Governor gave his word that he would not again respite the condemned man. +This was two weeks ago. Mrs. Clayton now said: + +'Now that you have given your word, my last hope is gone, for I know you +will never go back from it. But you have done the best you could for +John, and I have no reproaches for you. You love him, and you love me, +and we know that if you could honourable save him, you would do it. I +will go to him now, and be what help I can to him, and get what comfort I +may out of the few days that are left to us before the night comes which +will have no end for me in life. You will be with me that day? You will +not let me bear it alone?' + +'I will take you to him myself, poor child, and I will be near you to the +last.' + +By the governor's command, Clayton was now allowed every indulgence he +might ask for which could interest his mind and soften the hardships of +his imprisonment. His wife and child spent the days with him; I was his +companion by night. He was removed from the narrow cell which he had +occupied during such a dreary stretch of time, and given the chief +warden's roomy and comfortable quarters. His mind was always busy with +the catastrophe of his life, and with the slaughtered inventor, and he +now took the fancy that he would like to have the telelectroscope and +divert his mind with it. He had his wish. The connection was made with +the international telephone-station, and day by day, and night by night, +he called up one corner of the globe after another, and looked upon its +life, and studied its strange sights, and spoke with its people, and +realised that by grace of this marvellous instrument he was almost as +free as the birds of the air, although a prisoner under locks and bars. +He seldom spoke, and I never interrupted him when he was absorbed in this +amusement. I sat in his parlour and read, and smoked, and the nights +were very quiet and reposefully sociable, and I found them pleasant. Now +and then I would her him say 'Give me Yedo;' next, 'Give me Hong-Kong;' +next, 'Give me Melbourne.' And I smoked on, and read in comfort, while +he wandered about the remote underworld, where the sun was shining in the +sky, and the people were at their daily work. Sometimes the talk that +came from those far regions through the microphone attachment interested +me, and I listened. + +Yesterday--I keep calling it yesterday, which is quite natural, for +certain reasons--the instrument remained unused, and that also was +natural, for it was the eve of the execution day. It was spent in tears +and lamentations and farewells. The governor and the wife and child +remained until a quarter-past eleven at night, and the scenes I witnessed +were pitiful to see. The execution was to take place at four in the +morning. A little after eleven a sound of hammering broke out upon the +still night, and there was a glare of light, and the child cried out, +'What is that, papa?' and ran to the window before she could be stopped +and clapped her small hands and said, 'Oh, come and see, mamma--such a +pretty thing they are making!' The mother knew--and fainted. It was the +gallows! + +She was carried away to her lodging, poor woman, and Clayton and I were +alone--alone, and thinking, brooding, dreaming. We might have been +statues, we sat so motionless and still. It was a wild night, for winter +was come again for a moment, after the habit of this region in the early +spring. The sky was starless and black, and a strong wind was blowing +from the lake. The silence in the room was so deep that all outside +sounds seemed exaggerated by contrast with it. These sounds were fitting +ones: they harmonised with the situation and the conditions: the boom and +thunder of sudden storm-gusts among the roofs and chimneys, then the +dying down into moanings and wailings about the eaves and angles; now and +then a gnashing and lashing rush of sleet along the window-panes; and +always the muffled and uncanny hammering of the gallows-builders in the +court-yard. After an age of this, another sound--far off, and coming +smothered and faint through the riot of the tempest--a bell tolling +twelve! Another age, and it was tolled again. By-and-by, again. A +dreary long interval after this, then the spectral sound floated to us +once more--one, two three; and this time we caught our breath; sixty +minutes of life left! + +Clayton rose, and stood by the window, and looked up into the black sky, +and listened to the thrashing sleet and the piping wind; then he said: +'That a dying man's last of earth should be--this!' After a little he +said: 'I must see the sun again--the sun!' and the next moment he was +feverishly calling: 'China! Give me China--Peking!' + +I was strangely stirred, and said to myself: 'To think that it is a mere +human being who does this unimaginable miracle--turns winter into summer, +night into day, storm into calm, gives the freedom of the great globe to +a prisoner in his cell, and the sun in his naked splendour to a man dying +in Egyptian darkness.' + +I was listening. + +'What light! what brilliancy! what radiance!... This is Peking?' + +'Yes.' + +'The time?' + +'Mid-afternoon.' + +'What is the great crowd for, and in such gorgeous costumes? What masses +and masses of rich colour and barbaric magnificence! And how they flash +and glow and burn in the flooding sunlight! What is the occasion of it +all?' + +'The coronation of our new emperor--the Czar.' + +'But I thought that that was to take place yesterday.' + +'This is yesterday--to you.' + +'Certainly it is. But my mind is confused, these days: there are reasons +for it.... Is this the beginning of the procession?' + +'Oh, no; it began to move an hour ago.' + +'Is there much more of it still to come?' + +'Two hours of it. Why do you sigh?' + +'Because I should like to see it all.' + +'And why can't you?' + +'I have to go--presently.' + +'You have an engagement?' + +After a pause, softly: 'Yes.' After another pause: 'Who are these in the +splendid pavilion?' + +'The imperial family, and visiting royalties from here and there and +yonder in the earth.' + +'And who are those in the adjoining pavilions to the right and left?' + +'Ambassadors and their families and suites to the right; unofficial +foreigners to the left.' + +'If you will be so good, I--' + +Boom! That distant bell again, tolling the half-hour faintly through the +tempest of wind and sleet. The door opened, and the governor and the +mother and child entered--the woman in widow's weeds! She fell upon her +husband's breast in a passion of sobs, and I--I could not stay; I could +not bear it. I went into the bedchamber, and closed the door. I sat +there waiting--waiting--waiting, and listening to the rattling sashes and +the blustering of the storm. After what seemed a long, long time, I +heard a rustle and movement in the parlour, and knew that the clergyman +and the sheriff and the guard were come. There was some low-voiced +talking; then a hush; then a prayer, with a sound of sobbing; presently, +footfalls--the departure for the gallows; then the child's happy voice: +'Don't cry now, mamma, when we've got papa again, and taking him home.' + +The door closed; they were gone. I was ashamed: I was the only friend of +the dying man that had no spirit, no courage. I stepped into the room, +and said I would be a man and would follow. But we are made as we are +made, and we cannot help it. I did not go. + +I fidgeted about the room nervously, and presently went to the window and +softly raised it--drawn by that dread fascination which the terrible and +the awful exert--and looked down upon the court-yard. By the garish +light of the electric lamps I saw the little group of privileged +witnesses, the wife crying on her uncle's breast, the condemned man +standing on the scaffold with the halter around his neck, his arms +strapped to his body, the black cap on his head, the sheriff at his side +with his hand on the drop, the clergyman in front of him with bare head +and his book in his hand. + +'I am the resurrection and the life--' + +I turned away. I could not listen; I could not look. I did not know +whither to go or what to do. Mechanically and without knowing it, I put +my eye to that strange instrument, and there was Peking and the Czar's +procession! The next moment I was leaning out of the window, gasping, +suffocating, trying to speak, but dumb from the very imminence of the +necessity of speaking. The preacher could speak, but I, who had such +need of words--'And may God have mercy upon your soul. Amen.' + +The sheriff drew down the black cap, and laid his hand upon the lever. I +got my voice. + +'Stop, for God's sake! The man is innocent. Come here and see +Szczepanik face to face!' + +Hardly three minutes later the governor had my place at the window, and +was saying: + +'Strike off his bonds and set him free!' + +Three minutes later all were in the parlour again. The reader will +imagine the scene; I have no need to describe it. It was a sort of mad +orgy of joy. + +A messenger carried word to Szczepanik in the pavilion, and one could see +the distressed amazement in his face as he listened to the tale. Then he +came to his end of the line, and talked with Clayton and the governor and +the others; and the wife poured out her gratitude upon him for saving her +husband's life, and in her deep thankfulness she kissed him at twelve +thousand miles' range. + +The telelectroscopes of the world were put to service now, and for many +hours the kinds and queens of many realms (with here and there a +reporter) talked with Szczepanik, and praised him; and the few scientific +societies which had not already made him an honorary member conferred +that grace upon him. + +How had he come to disappear from among us? It was easily explained. +HE had not grown used to being a world-famous person, and had been forced +to break away from the lionising that was robbing him of all privacy and +repose. So he grew a beard, put on coloured glasses, disguised himself a +little in other ways, then took a fictitious name, and went off to wander +about the earth in peace. + +Such is the tale of the drama which began with an inconsequential quarrel +in Vienna in the spring of 1898, and came near ending as a tragedy in the +spring of 1904. + + +II + +Correspondence of the 'London Times' +Chicago, April 5, 1904 + +To-day, by a clipper of the Electric Line, and the latter's Electric +Railway connections, arrived an envelope from Vienna, for Captain +Clayton, containing an English farthing. The receiver of it was a good +deal moved. He called up Vienna, and stood face to face with Mr. K., and +said: + +'I do not need to say anything: you can see it all in my face. My wife +has the farthing. Do not be afraid--she will not throw it away.' + + +III + +Correspondence of the 'London Times' +Chicago, April 23, 1904 + +Now that the after developments of the Clayton case have run their course +and reached a finish, I will sum them up. Clayton's romantic escape from +a shameful death stepped all this region in an enchantment of wonder and +joy--during the proverbial nine days. Then the sobering process +followed, and men began to take thought, and to say: 'But a man was +killed, and Clayton killed him.' Others replied: 'That is true: we have +been overlooking that important detail; we have been led away by +excitement.' + +The telling soon became general that Clayton ought to be tried again. +Measures were taken accordingly, and the proper representations conveyed +to Washington; for in America under the new paragraph added to the +Constitution in 1889, second trials are not State affairs, but national, +and must be tried by the most august body in the land--the Supreme Court +of the United States. The justices were therefore summoned to sit in +Chicago. The session was held day before yesterday, and was opened with +the usual impressive formalities, the nine judges appearing in their +black robes, and the new chief justice (Lemaitre) presiding. In opening +the case the chief justice said: + +'It is my opinion that this matter is quite simple. The prisoner at the +bar was charged with murdering the man Szczepanik; he was tried for +murdering the man Szczepanik; he was fairly tried and justly condemned +and sentenced to death for murdering the man Szczepanik. It turns out +that the man Szczepanik was not murdered at all. By the decision of the +French courts in the Dreyfus matter, it is established beyond cavil or +question that the decisions of courts and permanent and cannot be +revised. We are obliged to respect and adopt this precedent. It is upon +precedents that the enduring edifice of jurisprudence is reared. The +prisoner at the bar has been fairly and righteously condemned to death +for the murder of the man Szczepanik, and, in my opinion, there is but +one course to pursue in the matter: he must be hanged.' + +Mr. Justice Crawford said: + +'But, your Excellency, he was pardoned on the scaffold for that.' + +'The pardon is not valid, and cannot stand, because he was pardoned for +killing Szczepanik, a man whom he had not killed. A man cannot be +pardoned for a crime which he has not committed; it would be an +absurdity.' + +'But, your Excellency, he did kill a man.' + +'That is an extraneous detail; we have nothing to do with it. The court +cannot take up this crime until the prisoner has expiated the other one.' + +Mr. Justice Halleck said: + +'If we order his execution, your Excellency, we shall bring about a +miscarriage of justice, for the governor will pardon him again.' + +'He will not have the power. He cannot pardon a man for a crime which he +has not committed. As I observed before, it would be an absurdity.' + +After a consultation, Mr. Justice Wadsworth said: + +'Several of us have arrived at the conclusion, your Excellency, that it +would be an error to hang the prisoner for killing Szczepanik, instead of +for killing the other man, since it is proven that he did not kill +Szczepanik.' + +'On the contrary, it is proven that he did kill Szczepanik. By the +French precedent, it is plain that we must abide by the finding of the +court.' + +'But Szczepanik is still alive.' + +'So is Dreyfus.' + +In the end it was found impossible to ignore or get around the French +precedent. There could be but one result: Clayton was delivered over for +the execution. It made an immense excitement; the State rose as one man +and clamored for Clayton's pardon and retrial. The governor issued the +pardon, but the Supreme Court was in duty bound to annul it, and did so, +and poor Clayton was hanged yesterday. The city is draped in black, and, +indeed, the like may be said of the State. All America is vocal with +scorn of 'French justice,' and of the malignant little soldiers who +invented it and inflicted it upon the other Christian lands. + +[1] Pronounced (approximately) Shepannik. + + + + + + + + +ABOUT PLAY-ACTING + + +I + +I have a project to suggest. But first I will write a chapter of +introduction. + +I have just been witnessing a remarkable play, here at the Burg Theatre +in Vienna. I do not know of any play that much resembles it. In fact, +it is such a departure from the common laws of the drama that the name +'play' doesn't seem to fit it quite snugly. However, whatever else it +may be, it is in any case a great and stately metaphysical poem, and +deeply fascinating. 'Deeply fascinating' is the right term: for the +audience sat four hours and five minutes without thrice breaking into +applause, except at the close of each act; sat rapt and silent +--fascinated. This piece is 'The Master of Palmyra.' It is twenty years +old; yet I doubt if you have ever heard of it. It is by Wilbrandt, and +is his masterpiece and the work which is to make his name permanent in +German literature. It has never been played anywhere except in Berlin +and in the great Burg Theatre in Vienna. Yet whenever it is put on the +stage it packs the house, and the free list is suspended. I know people +who have seem it ten times; they know the most of it by heart; they do +not tire of it; and they say they shall still be quite willing to go and +sit under its spell whenever they get the opportunity. + +There is a dash of metempsychosis in it--and it is the strength of the +piece. The play gave me the sense of the passage of a dimly connected +procession of dream-pictures. The scene of it is Palmyra in Roman times. +It covers a wide stretch of time--I don't know how many years--and in the +course of it the chief actress is reincarnated several times: four times +she is a more or less young woman, and once she is a lad. In the first +act she is Zoe--a Christian girl who has wandered across the desert from +Damascus to try to Christianise the Zeus-worshipping pagans of Palmyra. +In this character she is wholly spiritual, a religious enthusiast, a +devotee who covets martyrdom--and gets it. + +After many years she appears in the second act as Phoebe, a graceful and +beautiful young light-o'-love from Rome, whose soul is all for the shows +and luxuries and delights of this life--a dainty and capricious +feather-head, a creature of shower and sunshine, a spoiled child, but a +charming one. In the third act, after an interval of many years, she +reappears as Persida, mother of a daughter who is in the fresh bloom of +youth. She is now a sort of combination of her two earlier selves: in +religious loyalty and subjection she is Zoe: in triviality of character +and shallowness of judgement--together with a touch of vanity in dress +--she is Phoebe. + +After a lapse of years she appears in the fourth act as Nymphas, a +beautiful boy, in whose character the previous incarnations are +engagingly mixed. + +And after another stretch of years all these heredities are joined in the +Zenobia of the fifth act--a person of gravity, dignity, sweetness, with a +heart filled with compassion for all who suffer, and a hand prompt to put +into practical form the heart's benignant impulses. + +There are a number of curious and interesting features in this piece. +For instance, its hero, Appelles, young, handsome, vigorous, in the first +act, remains so all through the long flight of years covered by the five +acts. Other men, young in the firs act, are touched with gray in the +second, are old and racked with infirmities in the third; in the fourth, +all but one are gone to their long home, and this one is a blind and +helpless hulk of ninety or a hundred years. It indicates that the +stretch of time covered by the piece is seventy years or more. The +scenery undergoes decay, too--the decay of age assisted and perfected by +a conflagration. The fine new temples and palaces of the second act are +by-and-by a wreck of crumbled walls and prostrate columns, mouldy, +grass-grown, and desolate; but their former selves are still recognisable +in their ruins. The ageing men and the ageing scenery together convey a +profound illusion of that long lapse of time: they make you live it +yourself! You leave the theatre with the weight of a century upon you. + +Another strong effect: Death, in person, walks about the stage in every +act. So far as I could make out, he was supposably not visible to any +excepting two persons--the one he came for and Appelles. He used various +costumes: but there was always more black about them than any other tint; +and so they were always sombre. Also they were always deeply impressive +and, indeed, awe-inspiring. The face was not subjected to changes, but +remained the same first and last--a ghastly white. To me he was always +welcome, he seemed so real--the actual Death, not a play-acting +artificiality. He was of a solemn and stately carriage; and he had a +deep voice, and used it with a noble dignity. Wherever there was a +turmoil of merry-making or fighting or feasting or chaffing or +quarreling, or a gilded pageant, or other manifestation of our trivial +and fleeting life, into it drifted that black figure with the +corpse-face, and looked its fateful look and passed on; leaving its +victim shuddering and smitten. And always its coming made the fussy +human pack seem infinitely pitiful and shabby, and hardly worth the +attention of either saving or damning. + +In the beginning of the first act the young girl Zoe appears by some +great rocks in the desert, and sits down exhausted, to rest. Presently +arrive a pauper couple stricken with age and infirmities; and they begin +to mumble and pray to the Spirit of Life, who is said to inhabit that +spot. The Spirit of Life appears; also Death--uninvited. They are +(supposably) invisible. Death, tall, black-robed, corpse-faced, stands +motionless and waits. The aged couple pray to the Spirit of Life for a +means to prop up their existence and continue it. Their prayer fails. +The Spirit of Life prophesies Zoe's martyrdom; it will take place before +night. Soon Appelles arrives, young and vigorous and full of enthusiasm: +he has led a host against the Persians and won the battle; he is the pet +of fortune, rich, honoured, believed, 'Master of Palmyra'. He has heard +that whoever stretches himself out on one of those rocks there and asks +for a deathless life can have his wish. He laughs at the tradition, but +wants to make the trial anyway. The invisible Spirit of Life warns him! +'Life without end can be regret without end.' But he persists: let him +keep his youth, his strength, and his mental faculties unimpaired, and he +will take all the risks. He has his desire. + +From this time forth, act after act, the troubles and sorrows and +misfortunes and humiliations of life beat upon him without pity or +respite; but he will not give up, he will not confess his mistake. +Whenever he meets Death he still furiously defies him--but Death +patiently waits. He, the healer of sorrows, is man's best friend: the +recognition of this will come. As the years drag on, and on, and on, the +friends of the Master's youth grow old; and one by one they totter to the +grave: he goes on with his proud fight, and will not yield. At length he +is wholly alone in the world; all his friends are dead; last of all, his +darling of darlings, his son, the lad Nymphas, who dies in his arms. His +pride is broken now; and he would welcome Death, if Death would come, if +Death would hear his prayers and give him peace. The closing act is fine +and pathetic. Appelles meets Zenobia, the helper of all who suffer, and +tells her his story, which moves her pity. By common report she is +endowed with more than earthly powers; and since he cannot have the boon +of death, he appeals to her to drown his memory in forgetfulness of his +griefs--forgetfulness 'which is death's equivalent'. She says (roughly +translated), in an exaltation of compassion: + +'Come to me! + + Kneel; and may the power be granted me + To cool the fires of this poor tortured brain, + And bring it peace and healing.' + +He kneels. From her hand, which she lays upon his head, a mysterious +influence steals through him; and he sinks into a dreamy tranquility. + + 'Oh, if I could but so drift + Through this soft twilight into the night of peace, + Never to wake again! + +(Raising his hand, as if in benediction.) + + O mother earth, farewell! + Gracious thou were to me. Farewell! + Appelles goes to rest.' + +Death appears behind him and encloses the uplifted hand in his. Appelles +shudders, wearily and slowly turns, and recognises his life-long +adversary. He smiles and puts all his gratitude into one simple and +touching sentence, 'Ich danke dir,' and dies. + +Nothing, I think, could be more moving, more beautiful, than this close. +This piece is just one long, soulful, sardonic laugh at human life. Its +title might properly be 'Is Life a Failure?' and leave the five acts to +play with the answer. I am not at all sure that the author meant to +laugh at life. I only notice that he has done it. Without putting into +words any ungracious or discourteous things about life, the episodes in +the piece seem to be saying all the time, inarticulately: 'Note what a +silly poor thing human life is; how childish its ambitions, how +ridiculous its pomps, how trivial its dignities, how cheap its heroisms, +how capricious its course, how brief its flight, how stingy in +happinesses, how opulent in miseries, how few its prides, how +multitudinous its humiliations, how comic its tragedies, how tragic its +comedies, how wearisome and monotonous its repetition of its stupid +history through the ages, with never the introduction of a new detail; +how hard it has tried, from the Creation down, to play itself upon its +possessor as a boon and has never proved its case in a single instance!' + +Take note of some of the details of the piece. Each of the five acts +contains an independent tragedy of its own. In each act someone's +edifice of hope, or of ambition, or of happiness, goes down in ruins. +Even Appelles' perennial youth is only a long tragedy, and his life a +failure. There are two martyrdoms in the piece; and they are curiously +and sarcastically contrasted. In the first act the pagans persecute Zoe, +the Christian girl, and a pagan mob slaughters her. In the fourth act +those same pagans--now very old and zealous--are become Christians, and +they persecute the pagans; a mob of them slaughters the pagan youth, +Nymphas, who is standing up for the old gods of his fathers. No remark +is made about this picturesque failure of civilisation; but there it +stands, as an unworded suggestion that civilisation, even when +Christianised, was not able wholly to subdue the natural man in that old +day--just as in our day the spectacle of a shipwrecked French crew +clubbing women and children who tried to climb into the lifeboats +suggests that civilisation has not succeeded in entirely obliterating the +natural man even yet. Common sailors a year ago, in Paris, at a fire, +the aristocracy of the same nation clubbed girls and women out of the way +to save themselves. Civilisation tested at top and bottom both, you see. +And in still another panic of fright we have this same tough civilisation +saving its honour by condemning an innocent man to multiform death, and +hugging and whitewashing the guilty one. + +In the second act a grand Roman official is not above trying to blast +Appelles' reputation by falsely charging him with misappropriating public +moneys. Appelles, who is too proud to endure even the suspicion of +irregularity, strips himself to naked poverty to square the unfair +account, and his troubles begin: the blight which is to continue and +spread strikes his life; for the frivolous, pretty creature whom he +brought from Rome has no taste for poverty and agrees to elope with a +more competent candidate. Her presence in the house has previously +brought down the pride and broken the heart of Appelles' poor old mother; +and her life is a failure. Death comes for her, but is willing to trade +her for the Roman girl; so the bargain is struck with Appelles, and the +mother is spared for the present. + +No one's life escapes the blight. Timoleus, the gay satirist of the +first two acts, who scoffed at the pious hypocrisies and money-grubbing +ways of the great Roman lords, is grown old and fat and blear-eyed and +racked with disease in the third, has lost his stately purities, and +watered the acid of his wit. His life has suffered defeat. Unthinkingly +he swears by Zeus--from ancient habit--and then quakes with fright; for a +fellow-communicant is passing by. Reproached by a pagan friend of his +youth for his apostasy, he confesses that principle, when unsupported by +an assenting stomach, has to climb down. One must have bread; and 'the +bread is Christian now.' Then the poor old wreck, once so proud of his +iron rectitude, hobbles away, coughing and barking. + +In that same act Appelles give his sweet young Christian daughter and her +fine young pagan lover his consent and blessing, and makes them utterly +happy--for five minutes. Then the priest and the mob come, to tear them +apart and put the girl in a nunnery; for marriage between the sects is +forbidden. Appelles' wife could dissolve the rule; and she wants to do +it; but under priestly pressure she wavers; then, fearing that in +providing happiness for her child she would be committing a sin dangerous +to her own, she goes over to the opposition, and throws the casting vote +for the nunnery. The blight has fallen upon the young couple, and their +life is a failure. + +In the fourth act, Longinus, who made such a prosperous and enviable +start in the first act, is left alone in the desert, sick, blind, +helpless, incredibly old, to die: not a friend left in the world--another +ruined life. And in that act, also, Appelles' worshipped boy, Nymphas, +done to death by the mob, breathes out his last sigh in his father's +arms--one more failure. In the fifth act, Appelles himself dies, and is +glad to do it; he who so ignorantly rejoiced, only four acts before, over +the splendid present of an earthly immortality--the very worst failure of +the lot! + + +II + +Now I approach my project. Here is the theatre list for Saturday, May 7, +1898, cut from the advertising columns of a New York paper: + +[graphic here] + +Now I arrive at my project, and make my suggestion. From the look of +this lightsome feast, I conclude that what you need is a tonic. Send for +'The Master of Palmyra.' You are trying to make yourself believe that +life is a comedy, that its sole business is fun, that there is nothing +serious in it. You are ignoring the skeleton in your closet. Send for +'The Master of Palmyra.' You are neglecting a valuable side of your +life; presently it will be atrophied. You are eating too much mental +sugar; you will bring on Bright's disease of the intellect. You need a +tonic; you need it very much. Send for 'The Master of Palmyra.' You +will not need to translate it; its story is as plain as a procession of +pictures. + +I have made my suggestion. Now I wish to put an annex to it. And that +is this: It is right and wholesome to have those light comedies and +entertaining shows; and I shouldn't wish to see them diminished. But +none of us is always in the comedy spirit; we have our graver moods; they +come to us all; the lightest of us cannot escape them. These moods have +their appetites--healthy and legitimate appetites--and there ought to be +some way of satisfying them. It seems to me that New York ought to have +one theatre devoted to tragedy. With her three millions of population, +and seventy outside millions to draw upon, she can afford it, she can +support it. America devotes more time, labour, money and attention to +distributing literary and musical culture among the general public than +does any other nation, perhaps; yet here you find her neglecting what is +possibly the most effective of all the breeders and nurses and +disseminators of high literary taste and lofty emotion--the tragic stage. +To leave that powerful agency out is to haul the culture-wagon with a +crippled team. Nowadays, when a mood comes which only Shakespeare can +set to music, what must we do? Read Shakespeare ourselves! Isn't it +pitiful? It is playing an organ solo on a jew's-harp. We can't read. +None but the Booths can do it. + +Thirty years ago Edwin Booth played 'Hamlet' a hundred nights in New +York. With three times the population, how often is 'Hamlet' played now +in a year? If Booth were back now in his prime, how often could he play +it in New York? Some will say twenty-five nights. I will say three +hundred, and say it with confidence. The tragedians are dead; but I +think that the taste and intelligence which made their market are not. + +What has come over us English-speaking people? During the first half of +this century tragedies and great tragedians were as common with us as +farce and comedy; and it was the same in England. Now we have not a +tragedian, I believe, and London, with her fifty shows and theatres, has +but three, I think. It is an astonishing thing, when you come to +consider it. Vienna remains upon the ancient basis: there has been no +change. She sticks to the former proportions: a number of rollicking +comedies, admirably played, every night; and also every night at the Burg +Theatre--that wonder of the world for grace and beauty and richness and +splendour and costliness--a majestic drama of depth and seriousness, or a +standard old tragedy. It is only within the last dozen years that men +have learned to do miracles on the stage in the way of grand and +enchanting scenic effects; and it is at such a time as this that we have +reduced our scenery mainly to different breeds of parlours and varying +aspects of furniture and rugs. I think we must have a Burg in New York, +and Burg scenery, and a great company like the Burg company. Then, with +a tragedy-tonic once or twice a month, we shall enjoy the comedies all +the better. Comedy keeps the heart sweet; but we all know that there is +wholesome refreshment for both mind and heart in an occasional climb +among the solemn pomps of the intellectual snow-summits built by +Shakespeare and those others. Do I seem to be preaching? It is out of +my life: I only do it because the rest of the clergy seem to be on +vacation. + + + + + + +TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER + +Last spring I went out to Chicago to see the Fair, and although I did not +see it my trip was not wholly lost--there were compensations. In New +York I was introduced to a Major in the regular army who said he was +going to the Fair, and we agreed to go together. I had to go to Boston +first, but that did not interfere; he said he would go along and put in +the time. He was a handsome man and built like a gladiator. But his +ways were gentle, and his speech was soft and persuasive. He was +companionable, but exceedingly reposeful. Yes, and wholly destitute of +the sense of humour. He was full of interest in everything that went on +around him, but his serenity was indestructible; nothing disturbed him, +nothing excited him. + +But before the day was done I found that deep down in him somewhere he +had a passion, quiet as he was--a passion for reforming petty public +abuses. He stood for citizenship--it was his hobby. His idea was that +every citizen of the republic ought to consider himself an unofficial +policeman, and keep unsalaried watch and ward over the laws and their +execution. He thought that the only effective way of preserving and +protecting public rights was for each citizen to do his share in +preventing or punishing such infringements of them as came under his +personal notice. + +It was a good scheme, but I thought it would keep a body in trouble all +the time; it seemed to me that one would be always trying to get +offending little officials discharged, and perhaps getting laughed at for +all reward. But he said no, I had the wrong idea: that there was no +occasion to get anybody discharged; that in fact you mustn't get anybody +discharged; that that would itself be a failure; no, one must reform the +man--reform him and make him useful where he was. + +'Must one report the offender and then beg his superior not to discharge +him, but reprimand him and keep him?' + +'No, that is not the idea; you don't report him at all, for then you risk +his bread and butter. You can act as if you are going to report him +--when nothing else will answer. But that's an extreme case. That is a +sort of force, and force is bad. Diplomacy is the effective thing. Now +if a man has tact--if a man will exercise diplomacy--' + +For two minutes we had been standing at a telegraph wicket, and during +all this time the Major had been trying to get the attention of one of +the young operators, but they were all busy skylarking. The Major spoke +now, and asked one of them to take his telegram. He got for reply: + +'I reckon you can wait a minute, can't you?' And the skylarking went on. + +The Major said yes, he was not in a hurry. Then he wrote another +telegram: + + 'President Western Union Tel. Co.: + + 'Come and dine with me this evening. I can tell you how business is + conducted in one of your branches.' + +Presently the young fellow who had spoken so pertly a little before +reached out and took the telegram, and when he read it he lost colour and +began to apologise and explain. He said he would lose his place if this +deadly telegram was sent, and he might never get another. If he could be +let off this time he would give no cause of complaint again. The +compromise was accepted. + +As we walked away, the Major said: + +'Now, you see, that was diplomacy--and you see how it worked. It +wouldn't do any good to bluster, the way people are always doing. That +boy can always give you as good as you send, and you'll come out defeated +and ashamed of yourself pretty nearly always. But you see he stands no +chance against diplomacy. Gentle words and diplomacy--those are the +tools to work with.' + +'Yes, I see: but everybody wouldn't have had your opportunity. It isn't +everybody that is on those familiar terms with the President of the +Western Union.' + +'Oh, you misunderstand. I don't know the President--I only use him +diplomatically. It is for his good and for the public good. There's no +harm in it.' + +I said with hesitation and diffidence: + +'But is it ever right or noble to tell a lie?' + +He took no note of the delicate self-righteousness of the question, but +answered with undisturbed gravity and simplicity: + +'Yes, sometimes. Lies told to injure a person and lies told to profit +yourself are not justifiable, but lies told to help another person, and +lies told in the public interest--oh, well, that is quite another matter. +Anybody knows that. But never mind about the methods: you see the +result. That youth is going to be useful now, and well-behaved. He had +a good face. He was worth saving. Why, he was worth saving on his +mother's account if not his own. Of course, he has a mother--sisters, +too. Damn these people who are always forgetting that! Do you know, +I've never fought a duel in my life--never once--and yet have been +challenged, like other people. I could always see the other man's +unoffending women folks or his little children standing between him and +me. They hadn't done anything--I couldn't break their hearts, you know.' + +He corrected a good many little abuses in the course of the day, and +always without friction--always with a fine and dainty 'diplomacy' which +left no sting behind; and he got such happiness and such contentment out +of these performances that I was obliged to envy him his trade--and +perhaps would have adopted it if I could have managed the necessary +deflections from fact as confidently with my mouth as I believe I could +with a pen, behind the shelter of print, after a little practice. + +Away late that night we were coming up-town in a horse-car when three +boisterous roughs got aboard, and began to fling hilarious obscenities +and profanities right and left among the timid passengers, some of whom +were women and children. Nobody resisted or retorted; the conductor +tried soothing words and moral suasion, but the toughs only called him +names and laughed at him. Very soon I saw that the Major realised that +this was a matter which was in his line; evidently he was turning over +his stock of diplomacy in his mind and getting ready. I felt that the +first diplomatic remark he made in this place would bring down a +landslide of ridicule upon him, and maybe something worse; but before I +could whisper to him and check him he had begun, and it was too late. He +said, in a level and dispassionate tone: + +'Conductor, you must put these swine out. I will help you.' + +I was not looking for that. In a flash the three roughs plunged at him. +But none of them arrived. He delivered three such blows as one could not +expect to encounter outside the prize-ring, and neither of the men had +life enough left in him to get up from where he fell. The Major dragged +them out and threw them off the car, and we got under way again. + +I was astonished: astonished to see a lamb act so; astonished at the +strength displayed, and the clean and comprehensive result; astonished at +the brisk and business-like style of the whole thing. The situation had +a humorous side to it, considering how much I had been hearing about mild +persuasion and gentle diplomacy all day from this pile-driver, and I +would have liked to call his attention to that feature and do some +sarcasms about it; but when I looked at him I saw that it would be of no +use--his placid and contented face had no ray of humour in it; he would +not have understood. When we left the car, I said: + +'That was a good stroke of diplomacy--three good strokes of diplomacy, in +fact.' + +'That? That wasn't diplomacy. You are quite in the wrong. Diplomacy is +a wholly different thing. One cannot apply it to that sort; they would +not understand it. No, that was not diplomacy; it was force.' + +'Now that you mention it, I--yes, I think perhaps you are right.' + +'Right? Of course I am right. It was just force.' + +'I think, myself, it had the outside aspect of it. Do you often have to +reform people in that way?' + +'Far from it. It hardly ever happens. Not oftener than once in half a +year, at the outside.' + +'Those men will get well?' + +'Get well? Why, certainly they will. They are not in any danger. I +know how to hit and where to hit. You noticed that I did not hit them +under the jaw. That would have killed them.' + +I believed that. I remarked--rather wittily, as I thought--that he had +been a lamb all day, but now had all of a sudden developed into a ram +--battering-ram; but with dulcet frankness and simplicity he said no, a +battering-ram was quite a different thing, and not in use now. This was +maddening, and I came near bursting out and saying he had no more +appreciation of wit than a jackass--in fact, I had it right on my tongue, +but did not say it, knowing there was no hurry and I could say it just as +well some other time over the telephone. + +We started to Boston the next afternoon. The smoking compartment in the +parlour-car was full, and he went into the regular smoker. Across the +aisle in the front seat sat a meek, farmer-looking old man with a sickly +pallor in his face, and he was holding the door open with his foot to get +the air. Presently a big brakeman came rushing through, and when he got +to the door he stopped, gave the farmer an ugly scowl, then wrenched the +door to with such energy as to almost snatch the old man's boot off. +Then on he plunged about his business. Several passengers laughed, and +the old gentleman looked pathetically shamed and grieved. + +After a little the conductor passed along, and the Major stopped him and +asked him a question in his habitually courteous way: + +'Conductor, where does one report the misconduct of a brakeman? Does one +report to you?' + +'You can report him at New Haven if you want to. What has he been +doing?' + +The Major told the story. The conductor seemed amused. He said, with +just a touch of sarcasm in his bland tones: + +'As I understand you, the brakeman didn't say anything?' + +'No, he didn't say anything.' + +'But he scowled, you say?' + +'Yes.' + +'And snatched the door loose in a rough way?' + +'Yes.' + +'That's the whole business, is it?' + +'Yes, that is the whole of it.' + +The conductor smiled pleasantly, and said: + +'Well, if you want to report him, all right, but I don't quite make out +what it's going to amount to. You'll say--as I understand you--that the +brakeman insulted this old gentleman. They'll ask you what he said. +You'll say he didn't say anything at all. I reckon they'll say, How are +you going to make out an insult when you acknowledge yourself that he +didn't say a word?' + +There was a murmur of applause at the conductor's compact reasoning, and +it gave him pleasure--you could see it in his face. But the Major was +not disturbed. He said: + +'There--now you have touched upon a crying defect in the complaint +system. The railway officials--as the public think and as you also seem +to think--are not aware that there are any insults except spoken ones. +So nobody goes to headquarters and reports insults of manner, insults of +gesture, look, and so forth; and yet these are sometimes harder to bear +than any words. They are bitter hard to bear because there is nothing +tangible to take hold of; and the insulter can always say, if called +before the railway officials, that he never dreamed of intending any +offence. It seems to me that the officials ought to specially and +urgently request the public to report unworded affronts and +incivilities.' + +The conductor laughed, and said: + +'Well, that would be trimming it pretty fine, sure!' + +'But not too fine, I think. I will report this matter at New Haven, and +I have an idea that I'll be thanked for it.' + +The conductor's face lost something of its complacency; in fact, it +settled to a quite sober cast as the owner of it moved away. I said: + +'You are not really going to bother with that trifle, are you?' + +'It isn't a trifle. Such things ought always to be reported. It is a +public duty and no citizen has a right to shirk it. But I sha'n't' have +to report this case.' + +'Why?' + +'It won't be necessary. Diplomacy will do the business. You'll see.' + +Presently the conductor came on his rounds again, and when he reached the +Major he leaned over and said: + +'That's all right. You needn't report him. He's responsible to me, and +if he does it again I'll give him a talking to.' + +The Major's response was cordial: + +'Now that is what I like! You mustn't think that I was moved by any +vengeful spirit, for that wasn't the case. It was duty--just a sense of +duty, that was all. My brother-in-law is one of the directors of the +road, and when he learns that you are going to reason with your brakeman +the very next time he brutally insults an unoffending old man it will +please him, you may be sure of that.' + +The conductor did not look as joyous as one might have thought he would, +but on the contrary looked sickly and uncomfortable. He stood around a +little; then said: + +'I think something ought to be done to him now. I'll discharge him.' + +'Discharge him! What good would that do? Don't you think it would be +better wisdom to teach him better ways and keep him?' + +'Well, there's something in that. What would you suggest?' + +'He insulted the old gentleman in presence of all these people. How +would it do to have him come and apologise in their presence?' + +'I'll have him here right off. And I want to say this: If people would +do as you've done, and report such things to me instead of keeping mum +and going off and blackguarding the road, you'd see a different state of +things pretty soon. I'm much obliged to you.' + +The brakeman came and apologised. After he was gone the Major said: + +'Now you see how simple and easy that was. The ordinary citizen would +have accomplished nothing--the brother-in-law of a directory can +accomplish anything he wants to.' + +'But are you really the brother-in-law of a director?' + +'Always. Always when the public interests require it. I have a +brother-in-law on all the boards--everywhere. It saves me a world of +trouble.' + +'It is a good wide relationship.' + +'Yes. I have over three hundred of them.' + +'Is the relationship never doubted by a conductor?' + +'I have never met with a case. It is the honest truth--I never have.' + +'Why didn't you let him go ahead and discharge the brakeman, in spite of +your favourite policy. You know he deserved it.' + +The Major answered with something which really had a sort of distant +resemblance to impatience: + +'If you would stop and think a moment you wouldn't ask such a question as +that. Is a brakeman a dog, that nothing but dogs' methods will do for +him? He is a man and has a man's fight for life. And he always has a +sister, or a mother, or wife and children to support. Always--there are +no exceptions. When you take his living away from him you take theirs +away too--and what have they done to you? Nothing. And where is the +profit in discharging an uncourteous brakeman and hiring another just +like him? It's unwisdom. Don't you see that the rational thing to do is +to reform the brakeman and keep him? Of course it is.' + +Then he quoted with admiration the conduct of a certain division +superintendent of the Consolidated road, in a case where a switchman of +two years' experience was negligent once and threw a train off the track +and killed several people. Citizens came in a passion to urge the man's +dismissal, but the superintendent said: + +'No, you are wrong. He has learned his lesson, he will throw no more +trains off the track. He is twice as valuable as he was before. I shall +keep him.' + +We had only one more adventure on the train. Between Hartford and +Springfield the train-boy came shouting with an armful of literature, and +dropped a sample into a slumbering gentleman's lap, and the man woke up +with a start. He was very angry, and he and a couple of friends +discussed the outrage with much heat. They sent for the parlour-car +conductor and described the matter, and were determined to have the boy +expelled from his situation. The three complainants were wealthy Holyoke +merchants, and it was evident that the conductor stood in some awe of +them. He tried to pacify them, and explained that the boy was not under +his authority, but under that of one of the news companies; but he +accomplished nothing. + +Then the Major volunteered some testimony for the defence. He said: + +'I saw it all. You gentlemen have not meant to exaggerate the +circumstances, but still that is what you have done. The boy has done +nothing more than all train-boys do. If you want to get his ways +softened down and his manners reformed, I am with you and ready to help, +but it isn't fair to get him discharged without giving him a chance.' + +But they were angry, and would hear of no compromise. They were well +acquainted with the President of the Boston and Albany, they said, and +would put everything aside next day and go up to Boston and fix that boy. + +The Major said he would be on hand too, and would do what he could to +save the boy. One of the gentlemen looked him over and said: + +'Apparently it is going to be a matter of who can wield the most +influence with the President. Do you know Mr. Bliss personally?' + +The Major said, with composure: + +'Yes; he is my uncle.' + +The effect was satisfactory. There was an awkward silence for a minute +or more; then the hedging and the half-confessions of over-haste and +exaggerated resentment began, and soon everything was smooth and friendly +and sociable, and it was resolved to drop the matter and leave the boy's +bread and butter unmolested. + +It turned out as I had expected: the President of the road was not the +Major's uncle at all--except by adoption, and for this day and train +only. + +We got into no episodes on the return journey. Probably it was because +we took a night train and slept all the way. + +We left New York Saturday night by the Pennsylvania road. After +breakfast the next morning we went into the parlour-car, but found it a +dull place and dreary. There were but few people in it and nothing going +on. Then we went into the little smoking compartment of the same car and +found three gentlemen in there. Two of them were grumbling over one of +the rules of the road--a rule which forbade card-playing on the trains on +Sunday. They had started an innocent game of high-low-jack and had been +stopped. The Major was interested. He said to the third gentleman: + +'Did you object to the game?' + +'Not at all. I am a Yale professor and a religious man, but my +prejudices are not extensive.' + +Then the Major said to the others: + +'You are at perfect liberty to resume your game, gentlemen; no one here +objects.' + +One of them declined the risk, but the other one said he would like to +begin again if the Major would join him. So they spread an overcoat over +their knees and the game proceeded. Pretty soon the parlour-car +conductor arrived, and said, brusquely: + +'There, there, gentlemen, that won't do. Put up the cards--it's not +allowed.' + +The Major was shuffling. He continued to shuffle, and said: + +'By whose order is it forbidden?' + +'It's my order. I forbid it.' + +The dealing began. The Major asked: + +'Did you invent the idea?' + +'What idea?' + +'The idea of forbidding card-playing on Sunday.' + +'No--of course not.' + +'Who did?' + +'The company.' + +'Then it isn't your order, after all, but the company's. Is that it?' + +'Yes. But you don't stop playing! I have to require you to stop playing +immediately.' + +'Nothing is gained by hurry, and often much is lost. Who authorised the +company to issue such an order?' + +'My dear sir, that is a matter of no consequence to me, and--' + +'But you forget that you are not the only person concerned. It may be a +matter of consequence to me. It is, indeed, a matter of very great +importance to me. I cannot violate a legal requirement of my country +without dishonouring myself; I cannot allow any man or corporation to +hamper my liberties with illegal rules--a thing which railway companies +are always trying to do--without dishonouring my citizenship. So I come +back to that question: By whose authority has the company issued this +order?' + +'I don't know. That's their affair.' + +'Mine, too. I doubt if the company has any right to issue such a rule. +This road runs through several States. Do you know what State we are in +now, and what its laws are in matters of this kind?' + +'Its laws do not concern me, but the company's orders do. It is my duty +to stop this game, gentlemen, and it must be stopped.' + +'Possibly; but still there is no hurry. In hotels they post certain +rules in the rooms, but they always quote passages from the State law as +authority for these requirements. I see nothing posted here of this +sort. Please produce your authority and let us arrive at a decision, for +you see yourself that you are marring the game.' + +'I have nothing of the kind, but I have my orders, and that is +sufficient. They must be obeyed.' + +'Let us not jump to conclusions. It will be better all around to examine +into the matter without heat or haste, and see just where we stand before +either of us makes a mistake--for the curtailing of the liberties of a +citizen of the United States is a much more serious matter than you and +the railroads seem to think, and it cannot be done in my person until the +curtailer proves his right to do so. Now--' + +'My dear sir, will you put down those cards?' + +'All in good time, perhaps. It depends. You say this order must be +obeyed. Must. It is a strong word. You see yourself how strong it is. +A wise company would not arm you with so drastic an order as this, of +course, without appointing a penalty for its infringement. Otherwise it +runs the risk of being a dead letter and a thing to laugh at. What is +the appointed penalty for an infringement of this law?' + +'Penalty? I never heard of any.' + +'Unquestionably you must be mistaken. Your company orders you to come +here and rudely break up an innocent amusement, and furnishes you no way +to enforce the order! Don't you see that that is nonsense? What do you +do when people refuse to obey this order? Do you take the cards away +from them?' + +'No.' + +'Do you put the offender off at the next station?' + +'Well, no--of course we couldn't if he had a ticket.' + +'Do you have him up before a court?' + +The conductor was silent and apparently troubled. The Major started a +new deal, and said: + +'You see that you are helpless, and that the company has placed you in a +foolish position. You are furnished with an arrogant order, and you +deliver it in a blustering way, and when you come to look into the matter +you find you haven't any way of enforcing obedience.' + +The conductor said, with chill dignity: + +'Gentlemen, you have heard the order, and my duty is ended. As to +obeying it or not, you will do as you think fit.' And he turned to +leave. + +'But wait. The matter is not yet finished. I think you are mistaken +about your duty being ended; but if it really is, I myself have a duty to +perform yet.' + +'How do you mean?' + +'Are you going to report my disobedience at headquarters in Pittsburg?' + +'No. What good would that do?' + +'You must report me, or I will report you.' + +'Report me for what?' + +'For disobeying the company's orders in not stopping this game. As a +citizen it is my duty to help the railway companies keep their servants +to their work.' + +'Are you in earnest?' + +'Yes, I am in earnest. I have nothing against you as a man, but I have +this against you as an officer--that you have not carried out that order, +and if you do not report me I must report you. And I will.' + +The conductor looked puzzled, and was thoughtful a moment; then he burst +out with: + +'I seem to be getting myself into a scrape! It's all a muddle; I can't +make head or tail of it; it never happened before; they always knocked +under and never said a word, and so I never saw how ridiculous that +stupid order with no penalty is. I don't want to report anybody, and I +don't want to be reported--why, it might do me no end of harm! No do go +on with the game--play the whole day if you want to--and don't let's have +any more trouble about it!' + +'No, I only sat down here to establish this gentleman's rights--he can +have his place now. But before won't you tell me what you think the +company made this rule for? Can you imagine an excuse for it? I mean a +rational one--an excuse that is not on its face silly, and the invention +of an idiot?' + +'Why, surely I can. The reason it was made is plain enough. It is to +save the feelings of the other passengers--the religious ones among them, +I mean. They would not like it to have the Sabbath desecrated by +card-playing on the train.' + +'I just thought as much. They are willing to desecrate it themselves by +travelling on Sunday, but they are not willing that other people--' + +'By gracious, you've hit it! I never thought of that before. The fact +is, it is a silly rule when you come to look into it.' + +At this point the train conductor arrived, and was going to shut down the +game in a very high-handed fashion, but the parlour-car conductor stopped +him, and took him aside to explain. Nothing more was heard of the +matter. + +I was ill in bed eleven days in Chicago and got no glimpse of the Fair, +for I was obliged to return East as soon as I was able to travel. The +Major secured and paid for a state-room in a sleeper the day before we +left, so that I could have plenty of room and be comfortable; but when we +arrived at the station a mistake had been made and our car had not been +put on. The conductor had reserved a section for us--it was the best he +could do, he said. But Major said we were not in a hurry, and would wait +for the car to be put on. The conductor responded, with pleasant irony: + +'It may be that you are not in a hurry, just as you say, but we are. +Come, get aboard, gentlemen, get aboard--don't keep us waiting.' + +But the Major would not get aboard himself nor allow me to do it. He +wanted his car, and said he must have it. This made the hurried and +perspiring conductor impatient, and he said: + +'It's the best we can do--we can't do impossibilities. You will take the +section or go without. A mistake has been made and can't be rectified at +this late hour. It's a thing that happens now and then, and there is +nothing for it but to put up with it and make the best of it. Other +people do.' + +'Ah, that is just it, you see. If they had stuck to their rights and +enforced them you wouldn't be trying to trample mine underfoot in this +bland way now. I haven't any disposition to give you unnecessary +trouble, but it is my duty to protect the next man from this kind of +imposition. So I must have my car. Otherwise I will wait in Chicago and +sue the company for violating its contract.' + +'Sue the company?--for a thing like that!' + +'Certainly.' + +'Do you really mean that?' + +'Indeed, I do.' + +The conductor looked the Major over wonderingly, and then said: + +'It beats me--it's bran-new--I've never struck the mate to it before. +But I swear I think you'd do it. Look here, I'll send for the +station-master.' + +When the station-master came he was a good deal annoyed--at the Major, +not at the person who had made the mistake. He was rather brusque, and +took the same position which the conductor had taken in the beginning; +but he failed to move the soft-spoken artilleryman, who still insisted +that he must have his car. However, it was plain that there was only one +strong side in this case, and that that side was the Major's. The +station-master banished his annoyed manner, and became pleasant and even +half-apologetic. This made a good opening for a compromise, and the +Major made a concession. He said he would give up the engaged +state-room, but he must have a state-room. After a deal of ransacking, +one was found whose owner was persuadable; he exchanged it for our +section, and we got away at last. The conductor called on us in the +evening, and was kind and courteous and obliging, and we had a long talk +and got to be good friends. He said he wished the public would make +trouble oftener--it would have a good effect. He said that the +railroads could not be expected to do their whole duty by the traveller +unless the traveller would take some interest in the matter himself. + +I hoped that we were done reforming for the trip now, but it was not so. +In the hotel car, in the morning, the Major called for broiled chicken. +The waiter said: + +'It's not in the bill of fare, sir; we do not serve anything but what is +in the bill.' + +'That gentleman yonder is eating a broiled chicken.' + +'Yes, but that is different. He is one of the superintendents of the +road.' + +'Then all the more must I have broiled chicken. I do not like these +discriminations. Please hurry--bring me a broiled chicken.' + +The waiter brought the steward, who explained in a low and polite voice +that the thing was impossible--it was against the rule, and the rule was +rigid. + +'Very well, then, you must either apply it impartially or break it +impartially. You must take that gentleman's chicken away from him or +bring me one.' + +The steward was puzzled, and did not quite know what to do. He began an +incoherent argument, but the conductor came along just then, and asked +what the difficulty was. The steward explained that here was a gentleman +who was insisting on having a chicken when it was dead against the rule +and not in the bill. The conductor said: + +'Stick by your rules--you haven't any option. Wait a moment--is this the +gentleman?' Then he laughed and said: 'Never mind your rules--it's my +advice, and sound: give him anything he wants--don't get him started on +his rights. Give him whatever he asks for; and it you haven't got it, +stop the train and get it.' + +The Major ate the chicken, but said he did it from a sense of duty and to +establish a principle, for he did not like chicken. + +I missed the Fair it is true, but I picked up some diplomatic tricks +which I and the reader may find handy and useful as we go along. + + + + + + +DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES + +VIENNA, January 5--I find in this morning's papers the statement that the +Government of the United States has paid to the two members of the Peace +Commission entitled to receive money for their services 100,000 dollars +each for their six weeks' work in Paris. + +I hope that this is true. I will allow myself the satisfaction of +considering that it is true, and of treating it as a thing finished and +settled. + +It is a precedent; and ought to be a welcome one to our country. A +precedent always has a chance to be valuable (as well as the other way); +and its best chance to be valuable (or the other way) is when it takes +such a striking form as to fix a whole nation's attention upon it. If it +come justified out of the discussion which will follow, it will find a +career ready and waiting for it. + +We realise that the edifice of public justice is built of precedents, +from the ground upward; but we do not always realise that all the other +details of our civilisation are likewise built of precedents. The +changes also which they undergo are due to the intrusion of new +precedents, which hold their ground against opposition, and keep their +place. A precedent may die at birth, or it may live--it is mainly a +matter of luck. If it be imitated once, it has a chance; if twice a +better chance; if three times it is reaching a point where account must +be taken of it; if four, five, or six times, it has probably come to +stay--for a whole century, possibly. If a town start a new bow, or a new +dance, or a new temperance project, or a new kind of hat, and can get the +precedent adopted in the next town, the career of that precedent is +begun; and it will be unsafe to bet as to where the end of its journey is +going to be. It may not get this start at all, and may have no career; +but, if a crown prince introduce the precedent, it will attract vast +attention, and its chances for a career are so great as to amount almost +to a certainty. + +For a long time we have been reaping damage from a couple of disastrous +precedents. One is the precedent of shabby pay to public servants +standing for the power and dignity of the Republic in foreign lands; the +other is a precedent condemning them to exhibit themselves officially in +clothes which are not only without grace or dignity, but are a pretty +loud and pious rebuke to the vain and frivolous costumes worn by the +other officials. To our day an American ambassador's official costume +remains under the reproach of these defects. At a public function in a +European court all foreign representatives except ours wear clothes which +in some way distinguish them from the unofficial throng, and mark them as +standing for their countries. But our representative appears in a plain +black swallow-tail, which stands for neither country, nor people. It has +no nationality. It is found in all countries; it is as international as +a night-shirt. It has no particular meaning; but our Government tries to +give it one; it tries to make it stand for Republican Simplicity, modesty +and unpretentiousness. Tries, and without doubt fails, for it is not +conceivable that this loud ostentation of simplicity deceives any one. +The statue that advertises its modesty with a fig-leaf really brings its +modesty under suspicion. Worn officially, our nonconforming swallow-tail +is a declaration of ungracious independence in the matter of manners, and +is uncourteous. It says to all around: 'In Rome we do not choose to do +as Rome does; we refuse to respect your tastes and your traditions; we +make no sacrifices to anyone's customs and prejudices; we yield no jot to +the courtesies of life; we prefer our manners, and intrude them here.' + +That is not the true American spirit, and those clothes misrepresent us. +When a foreigner comes among us and trespasses against our customs and +our code of manners, we are offended, and justly so; but our Government +commands our ambassadors to wear abroad an official dress which is an +offence against foreign manners and customers; and the discredit of it +falls upon the nation. + +We did not dress our public functionaries in undistinguished raiment +before Franklin's time; and the change would not have come if he had been +an obscurity. But he was such a colossal figure in the world that +whatever he did of an unusual nature attracted the world's attention, +and became a precedent. In the case of clothes, the next representative +after him, and the next, had to imitate it. After that, the thing was +custom; and custom is a petrifaction: nothing but dynamite can dislodge +it for a century. We imagine that our queer official costumery was +deliberately devised to symbolise our Republican Simplicity--a quality +which we have never possessed, and are too old to acquire now, if we had +any use for it or any leaning toward it. But it is not so; there was +nothing deliberate about it; it grew naturally and heedlessly out of the +precedent set by Franklin. + +If it had been an intentional thing, and based upon a principle, it would +not have stopped where it did: we should have applied it further. +Instead of clothing our admirals and generals, for courts-martial and +other public functions, in superb dress uniforms blazing with colour and +gold, the Government would put them in swallow-tails and white cravats, +and make them look like ambassadors and lackeys. If I am wrong in making +Franklin the father of our curious official clothes, it is no matter--he +will be able to stand it. + +It is my opinion--and I make no charge for the suggestion--that, whenever +we appoint an ambassador or a minister, we ought to confer upon him the +temporary rank of admiral or general, and allow him to wear the +corresponding uniform at public functions in foreign countries. I would +recommend this for the reason that it is not consonant with the dignity +of the United States of America that her representative should appear +upon occasions of state in a dress which makes him glaringly conspicuous; +and that is what his present undertaker-outfit does when it appears, with +its dismal smudge, in the midst of the butterfly splendours of a +Continental court. It is a most trying position for a shy man, a modest +man, a man accustomed to being like other people. He is the most +striking figure present; there is no hiding from the multitudinous eyes. +It would be funny, if it were not such a cruel spectacle, to see the +hunted creature in his solemn sables scuffling around in that sea of +vivid colour, like a mislaid Presbyterian in perdition. We are all aware +that our representative's dress should not compel too much attention; for +anybody but an Indian chief knows that that is a vulgarity. I am saying +these things in the interest of our national pride and dignity. Our +representative is the flag. He is the Republic. He is the United States +of America. And when these embodiments pass by, we do not want them +scoffed at; we desire that people shall be obliged to concede that they +are worthily clothed, and politely. + +Our Government is oddly inconsistent in this matter of official dress. +When its representative is a civilian who has not been a solider, it +restricts him to the black swallow-tail and white tie; but if he is a +civilian who has been a solider, it allows him to wear the uniform of his +former rank as an official dress. When General Sickles was minister to +Spain, he always wore, when on official duty, the dress uniform of a +major-general. When General Grant visited foreign courts, he went +handsomely and properly ablaze in the uniform of a full general, and was +introduced by diplomatic survivals of his own Presidential +Administration. The latter, by official necessity, went in the meek and +lowly swallow-tail--a deliciously sarcastic contrast: the one dress +representing the honest and honourable dignity of the nation; the other, +the cheap hypocrisy of the Republican Simplicity tradition. In Paris our +present representative can perform his official functions reputably +clothed; for he was an officer in the Civil War. In London our late +ambassador was similarly situated; for he, also, was an officer in the +Civil War. But Mr. Choate must represent the Great Republic--even at +official breakfasts at seven in the morning--in that same old funny +swallow-tail. + +Our Government's notions about proprieties of costume are indeed very, +very odd--as suggested by that last fact. The swallow-tail is recognised +the world over as not wearable in the daytime; it is a night-dress, and a +night-dress only--a night-shirt is not more so. Yet, when our +representative makes an official visit in the morning, he is obliged by +his Government to go in that night-dress. It makes the very cab-horses +laugh. + +The truth is, that for awhile during the present century, and up to +something short of forty years ago, we had a lucid interval, and dropped +the Republican Simplicity sham, and dressed our foreign representatives +in a handsome and becoming official costume. This was discarded +by-and-by, and the swallow-tail substituted. I believe it is not now +known which statesman brought about this change; but we all know that, +stupid as he was as to diplomatic proprieties in dress, he would not have +sent his daughter to a state ball in a corn-shucking costume, nor to a +corn-shucking in a state-ball costume, to be harshly criticised as an +ill-mannered offender against the proprieties of custom in both places. +And we know another thing, viz. that he himself would not have wounded +the tastes and feelings of a family of mourners by attending a funeral in +their house in a costume which was an offence against the dignities and +decorum prescribed by tradition and sanctified by custom. Yet that man +was so heedless as not to reflect that all the social customs of +civilised peoples are entitled to respectful observance, and that no man +with a right spirit of courtesy in him ever has any disposition to +transgress these customs. + +There is still another argument for a rational diplomatic dress--a +business argument. We are a trading nation; and our representative is a +business agent. If he is respected, esteemed, and liked where he is +stationed, he can exercise an influence which can extend our trade and +forward our prosperity. A considerable number of his business activities +have their field in his social relations; and clothes which do not offend +against local manners and customers and prejudices are a valuable part of +his equipment in this matter--would be, if Franklin had died earlier. + +I have not done with gratis suggestions yet. We made a great deal of +valuable advance when we instituted the office of ambassador. That lofty +rank endows its possessor with several times as much influence, +consideration, and effectiveness as the rank of minister bestows. For +the sake of the country's dignity and for the sake of her advantage +commercially, we should have ambassadors, not ministers, at the great +courts of the world. + +But not at present salaries! No; if we are to maintain present salaries, +let us make no more ambassadors; and let us unmake those we have already +made. The great position, without the means of respectably maintaining +it--there could be no wisdom in that. A foreign representative, to be +valuable to his country, must be on good terms with the officials of the +capital and with the rest of the influential folk. He must mingle with +this society; he cannot sit at home--it is not business, it butters no +commercial parsnips. He must attend the dinners, banquets, suppers, +balls, receptions, and must return these hospitalities. He should return +as good as he gets, too, for the sake of the dignity of his country, and +for the sake of Business. Have we ever had a minister or an ambassador +who could do this on his salary? No--not once, from Franklin's time to +ours. Other countries understand the commercial value of properly lining +the pockets of their representatives; but apparently our Government has +not learned it. England is the most successful trader of the several +trading nations; and she takes good care of the watchmen who keep guard +in her commercial towers. It has been a long time, now, since we needed +to blush for our representatives abroad. It has become custom to send +our fittest. We send men of distinction, cultivation, character--our +ablest, our choicest, our best. Then we cripple their efficiency through +the meagreness of their pay. Here is a list of salaries for English and +American ministers and ambassadors: + + + +City Salaries + + American English + +Paris $17,500 $45,000 +Berlin 17,500 40,000 +Vienna 12,000 40,000 +Constantinople 10,000 40,000 +St. Petersburg 17,500 39,000 +Rome 12,000 35,000 +Washington -- 32,500 + + + +Sir Julian Pauncefote, the English ambassador at Washington, has a very +fine house besides--at no damage to his salary. + +English ambassadors pay no house rent; they live in palaces owned by +England. Our representatives pay house-rent out of their salaries. You +can judge by the above figures what kind of houses the United States +of America has been used to living in abroad, and what sort of +return-entertaining she has done. There is not a salary in our list +which would properly house the representative receiving it, and, in +addition, pay $3,000 toward his family's bacon and doughnuts--the strange +but economical and customary fare of the American ambassador's household, +except on Sundays, when petrified Boston crackers are added. + +The ambassadors and ministers of foreign nations not only have generous +salaries, but their Governments provide them with money wherewith to pay +a considerable part of their hospitality bills. I believe our Government +pays no hospitality bills except those incurred by the navy. Through +this concession to the navy, that arm is able to do us credit in foreign +parts; and certainly that is well and politic. But why the Government +does not think it well and politic that our diplomats should be able to +do us like credit abroad is one of those mysterious inconsistencies which +have been puzzling me ever since I stopped trying to understand baseball +and took up statesmanship as a pastime. + +To return to the matter of house-rent. Good houses, properly furnished, +in European capitals, are not to be had at small figures. Consequently, +our foreign representatives have been accustomed to live in garrets +--sometimes on the roof. Being poor men, it has been the best they could +do on the salary which the Government has paid them. How could they +adequately return the hospitalities shown them? It was impossible. It +would have exhausted the salary in three months. Still, it was their +official duty to entertain their influentials after some sort of fashion; +and they did the best they could with their limited purse. In return for +champagne they furnished lemonade; in return for game they furnished ham; +in return for whale they furnished sardines; in return for liquors they +furnished condensed milk; in return for the battalion of liveried and +powdered flunkeys they furnished the hired girl; in return for the fairy +wilderness of sumptuous decorations they draped the stove with the +American flag; in return for the orchestra they furnished zither and +ballads by the family; in return for the ball--but they didn't return the +ball, except in cases where the United States lived on the roof and had +room. + +Is this an exaggeration? It can hardly be called that. I saw nearly the +equivalent of it, a good many years ago. A minister was trying to create +influential friends for a project which might be worth ten millions a +year to the agriculturists of the Republic; and our Government had +furnished him ham and lemonade to persuade the opposition with. The +minister did not succeed. He might not have succeeded if his salary had +been what it ought to have been--$50,000 or $60,00 a year--but his +chances would have been very greatly improved. And in any case, he and +his dinners and his country would not have been joked about by the +hard-hearted and pitied by the compassionate. + +Any experienced 'drummer' will testify that, when you want to do +business, there is no economy in ham and lemonade. The drummer takes his +country customer to the theatre, the opera, the circus; dines him, wines +him, entertains him all the day and all the night in luxurious style; and +plays upon his human nature in all seductive ways. For he knows, by old +experience, that this is the best way to get a profitable order out of +him. He has this reward. All Governments except our own play the same +policy, with the same end in view; and they, also, have their reward. +But ours refuses to do business by business ways, and sticks to ham and +lemonade. This is the most expensive diet known to the diplomatic +service of the world. + +Ours is the only country of first importance that pays its foreign +representatives trifling salaries. If we were poor, we could not find +great fault with these economies, perhaps--at least one could find a sort +of plausible excuse for them. But we are not poor; and the excuse fails. +As shown above, some of our important diplomatic representatives receive +$12,000; others, $17,500. These salaries are all ham and lemonade, and +unworthy of the flag. When we have a rich ambassador in London or Paris, +he lives as the ambassador of a country like ours ought to live, and it +costs him $100,000 a year to do it. But why should we allow him to pay +that out of his private pocket? There is nothing fair about it; and the +Republic is no proper subject for any one's charity. In several cases +our salaries of $12,000 should be $50,000; and all of the salaries of +$17,500 ought to be $75,000 or $100,000, since we pay no representative's +house-rent. Our State Department realises the mistake which we are +making, and would like to rectify it, but it has not the power. + +When a young girl reaches eighteen she is recognised as being a woman. +She adds six inches to her skirt, she unplaits her dangling braids and +balls her hair on top of her head, she stops sleeping with her little +sister and has a room to herself, and becomes in many ways a thundering +expense. But she is in society now; and papa has to stand it. There is +no avoiding it. Very well. The Great Republic lengthened her skirts +last year, balled up her hair, and entered the world's society. This +means that, if she would prosper and stand fair with society, she must +put aside some of her dearest and darlingest young ways and +superstitions, and do as society does. Of course, she can decline if she +wants to; but this would be unwise. She ought to realise, now that she +has 'come out,' that this is a right and proper time to change a part of +her style. She is in Rome; and it has long been granted that when one is +in Rome it is good policy to do as Rome does. To advantage Rome? No--to +advantage herself. + +If our Government has really paid representatives of ours on the Paris +Commission $100,000 apiece for six weeks' work, I feel sure that it is +the best cash investment the nation has made in many years. For it seems +quite impossible that, with that precedent on the books, the Government +will be able to find excuses for continuing its diplomatic salaries at +the present mean figure. + +P.S.--VIENNA, January 10.--I see, by this morning's telegraphic news, +that I am not to be the new ambassador here, after all. This--well, I +hardly know what to say. I--well, of course, I do not care anything +about it; but it is at least a surprise. I have for many months been +using my influence at Washington to get this diplomatic see expanded into +an ambassadorship, with the idea, of course th--But never mind. Let it +go. It is of no consequence. I say it calmly; for I am calm. But at +the same time--However, the subject has no interest for me, and never +had. I never really intended to take the place, anyway--I made up my +mind to it months and months ago, nearly a year. But now, while I am +calm, I would like to say this--that so long as I shall continue to +possess an American's proper pride in the honour and dignity of his +country, I will not take any ambassadorship in the gift of the flag at a +salary short of $75,000 a year. If I shall be charged with wanting to +live beyond my country's means, I cannot help it. A country which cannot +afford ambassador's wages should be ashamed to have ambassadors. + +Think of a Seventeen-thousand-five-hundred-dollar ambassador! +Particularly for America. Why it is the most ludicrous spectacle, the +most inconsistent and incongruous spectable, contrivable by even the most +diseased imagination. It is a billionaire in a paper collar, a king in a +breechclout, an archangel in a tin halo. And, for pure sham and +hypocrisy, the salary is just the match of the ambassador's official +clothes--that boastful advertisement of a Republican Simplicity which +manifests itself at home in Fifty-thousand-dollar salaries to insurance +presidents and railway lawyers, and in domestic palaces whose fittings +and furnishings often transcend in costly display and splendour and +richness the fittings and furnishings of the palaces of the sceptred +masters of Europe; and which has invented and exported to the Old World +the palace-car, the sleeping-car, the tram-car, the electric trolley, the +best bicycles, the best motor-cars, the steam-heater, the best and +smartest systems of electric calls and telephonic aids to laziness and +comfort, the elevator, the private bath-room (hot and cold water on tap), +the palace-hotel, with its multifarious conveniences, comforts, shows, +and luxuries, the--oh, the list is interminable! In a word, Republican +Simplicity found Europe with one shirt on her back, so to speak, as far +as real luxuries, conveniences, and the comforts of life go, and has +clothed her to the chin with the latter. We are the lavishest and +showiest and most luxury-loving people on the earth; and at our masthead +we fly one true and honest symbol, the gaudiest flag the world has ever +seen. Oh, Republican Simplicity, there are many, many humbugs in the +world, but none to which you need take off your hat! + + + + + + +LUCK + +[NOTE.--This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who was +an instructor at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its truth. +--M.T.] + +It was at a banquet in London in honour of one of the two or three +conspicuously illustrious English military names of this generation. +For reasons which will presently appear, I will withhold his real name +and titles, and call him Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, V.C., +K.C.B., etc., etc., etc. What a fascination there is in a renowned name! +There say the man, in actual flesh, whom I had heard of so many thousands +of times since that day, thirty years before, when his name shot suddenly +to the zenith from a Crimean battle-field, to remain for ever celebrated. +It was food and drink to me to look, and look, and look at that demigod; +scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the reserve, the noble +gravity of his countenance; the simple honesty that expressed itself all +over him; the sweet unconsciousness of his greatness--unconsciousness of +the hundreds of admiring eyes fastened upon him, unconsciousness of the +deep, loving, sincere worship welling out of the breasts of those people +and flowing toward him. + +The clergyman at my left was an old acquaintance of mine--clergyman now, +but had spent the first half of his life in the camp and field, and as an +instructor in the military school at Woolwich. Just at the moment I have +been talking about, a veiled and singular light glimmered in his eyes, +and he leaned down and muttered confidentially to me--indicating the hero +of the banquet with a gesture,--'Privately--his glory is an accident +--just a product of incredible luck.' + +This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been +Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been +greater. + +Some days later came the explanation of this strange remark, and this is +what the Reverend told me. + +About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy at +Woolwich. I was present in one of the sections when young Scoresby +underwent his preliminary examination. I was touched to the quick with +pity; for the rest of the class answered up brightly and handsomely, +while he--why, dear me, he didn't know anything, so to speak. He was +evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guileless; and so it was +exceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a graven image, +and deliver himself of answers which were veritably miraculous for +stupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his +behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined again, he will be +flung over, of course; so it will be simple a harmless act of charity to +ease his fall as much as I can. + +I took him aside, and found that he knew a little of Caesar's history; +and as he didn't know anything else, I went to work and drilled him like +a galley-slave on a certain line of stock questions concerning Caesar +which I knew would be used. If you'll believe me, he went through with +flying colours on examination day! He went through on that purely +superficial 'cram', and got compliments, too, while others, who knew a +thousand times more than he, got plucked. By some strangely lucky +accident--an accident not likely to happen twice in a century--he was +asked no question outside of the narrow limits of his drill. + +It was stupefying. Well, although through his course I stood by him, +with something of the sentiment which a mother feels for a crippled +child; and he always saved himself--just by miracle, apparently. + +Now of course the thing that would expose him and kill him at last was +mathematics. I resolved to make his death as easy as I could; so I +drilled him and crammed him, and crammed him and drilled him, just on the +line of questions which the examiner would be most likely to use, and +then launched him on his fate. Well, sir, try to conceive of the result: +to my consternation, he took the first prize! And with it he got a +perfect ovation in the way of compliments. + +Sleep! There was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience +tortured me day and night. What I had done I had done purely through +charity, and only to ease the poor youth's fall--I never had dreamed of +any such preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt as +guilty and miserable as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a +wooden-head whom I had put in the way of glittering promotions and +prodigious responsibilities, and but one thing could happen: he and his +responsibilities would all go to ruin together at the first opportunity. + +The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course there had to be a war, I +said to myself: we couldn't have peace and give this donkey a chance to +die before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And +it made me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a +captaincy in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the +service before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever +have foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on +such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood it +if they had made him a cornet; but a captain--think of it! I thought my +hair would turn white. + +Consider what I did--I who so loved repose and inaction. I said to +myself, I am responsible to the country for this, and I must go along +with him and protect the country against him as far as I can. So I took +my poor little capital that I had saved up through years of work and +grinding economy, and went with a sigh and bought a cornetcy in his +regiment, and away we went to the field. + +And there--oh dear, it was awful. Blunders? why, he never did anything +but blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow's secret--everybody +had him focused wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performance +every time--consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations +of genius; they did honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to make a +man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry--and rage and rave +too, privately. And the thing that kept me always in a sweat of +apprehension was the fact that every fresh blunder he made increased the +lustre of his reputation! I kept saying to myself, he'll get so high +that when discovery does finally come it will be like the sun falling out +of the sky. + +He went right along up, from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of his +superiors, until at last, in the hottest moment of the battle of ... +down went our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresby +was next in rank! Now for it, said I; we'll all land in Sheol in ten +minutes, sure. + +The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all over +the field. Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder +now must be destruction. At this critical moment, what does this +immortal fool do but detach the regiment from its place and order a +charge over a neighbouring hill where there wasn't a suggestion of an +enemy! 'There you go!' I said to myself; 'this is the end at last.' + +And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the hill before the +insane movement could be discovered and stopped. And what did we find? +An entire and unsuspected Russian army in reserve! And what happened? +We were eaten up? That is necessarily what would have happened in +ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But no; those Russians argued that +no single regiment would come browsing around there at such a time. It +must be the entire English army, and that the sly Russian game was +detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and away they went, pell-mell, +over the hill and down into the field, in wild confusion, and we after +them; they themselves broke the solid Russia centre in the field, and +tore through, and in no time there was the most tremendous rout you ever +saw, and the defeat of the allies was turned into a sweeping and splendid +victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy with astonishment, +admiration, and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby, and hugged him, +and decorated him on the field in presence of all the armies! + +And what was Scoresby's blunder that time? Merely the mistaking his +right hand for his left--that was all. An order had come to him to fall +back and support our right; and instead he fell forward and went over the +hill to the left. But the name he won that day as a marvellous military +genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory will never fade +while history books last. + +He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man can +be, but he doesn't know enough to come in when it rains. He has been +pursued, day by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal and +astonishing luckiness. He has been a shining soldier in all our wars for +half a generation; he has littered his military life with blunders, and +yet has never committed one that didn't make him a knight or a baronet or +a lord or something. Look at his breast; why, he is just clothed in +domestic and foreign decorations. Well, sir, every one of them is a +record of some shouting stupidity or other; and, taken together, they are +proof that the very best thing in all this world that can befall a man is +to be born lucky. + + + + + + + +THE CAPTAIN'S STORY + +There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain 'Hurricane' +Jones, of the Pacific Ocean--peace to his ashes! Two or three of us +present had known him; I, particularly well, for I had made four +sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was born on a +ship; he picked up what little education he had among his ship-mates; +he began life in the forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the +captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty-five were spent at sea. +He had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all +climates. When a man has been fifty years at sea, he necessarily knows +nothing of men, nothing of the world but its surface, nothing of the +world's thought, nothing of the world's learning but it's a B C, and that +blurred and distorted by the unfocussed lenses of an untrained mind. +Such a man is only a gray and bearded child. That is what old Hurricane +Jones was--simply an innocent, lovable old infant. When his spirit was +in repose he was as sweet and gentle as a girl; when his wrath was up he +was a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely descriptive. He was +formidable in a fight, for he was of powerful build and dauntless +courage. He was frescoed from head to heel with pictures and mottoes +tattooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him one voyage when he +got his last vacant space tattooed; this vacant space was around his left +ankle. During three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle bare +and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out from a clouding +of India ink: 'Virtue is its own R'd.' (There was a lack of room.) He +was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fish-woman. He +considered swearing blameless, because sailors would not understand an +order unillumined by it. He was a profound Biblical scholar--that is, he +thought he was. He believed everything in the Bible, but he had his own +methods of arriving at his beliefs. He was of the 'advanced' school of +thinkers, and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all miracles, +somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of creation six +geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it, he was a +rather severe satirist on modern scientific religionists. Such a man as +I have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and argument; one +knows that without being told it. + +One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did not know he was a +clergyman, since the passenger list did not betray the fact. He took a +great liking to this Rev. Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great deal: +told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and wove a +glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that was +refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated +speech. One day the captain said, 'Peters, do you ever read the Bible?' + +'Well--yes.' + +'I judge it ain't often, by the way you say it. Now, you tackle it in +dead earnest once, and you'll find it'll pay. Don't you get discouraged, +but hang right on. First you won't understand it; but by-and-by things +will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn't lay it down to --ear.' + +'Yes, I have heard that said.' + +'And it's so too. There ain't a book that begins with it. It lays over +'em all, Peters. There's some pretty tough things in it--there ain't any +getting around that--but you stick to them and think them out, and when +once you get on the inside everything's plain as day.' + +'The miracles, too, captain?' + +'Yes, sir! the miracles, too. Every one of them. Now, there's that +business with the prophets of Baal; like enough that stumped you?' + +'Well, I don't know but--' + +'Own up, now; it stumped you. Well, I don't wonder. You hadn't any +experience in ravelling such things out, and naturally it was too many +for you. Would you like to have me explain that thing to you, and show +you how to get at the meat of these matters?' + +'Indeed, I would, captain, if you don't mind.' + +Then the captain proceeded as follows: 'I'll do it with pleasure. First, +you see, I read and read, and thought and thought, till I got to +understand what sort of people they were in the old Bible times, and then +after that it was clear and easy. Now, this was the way I put it up, +concerning Isaac[1] and the prophets of Baal. There was some mighty +sharp men amongst the public characters of that old ancient day, and +Isaac was one of them. Isaac had his failings--plenty of them, too; it +ain't for me to apologise for Isaac; he played a cold deck on the +prophets of Baal, and like enough he was justifiable, considering the +odds that was against him. No, all I say it, 't' wa'n't any miracle, and +that I'll show you so's 't you can see it yourself. + +'Well, times had been getting rougher and rougher for prophets--that is, +prophets of Isaac's denomination. There were four hundred and fifty +prophets of Baal in the community, and only one Presbyterian; that is, if +Isaac was a Presbyterian, which I reckon he was, but it don't say. +Naturally, the prophets of Baal took all the trade. Isaac was pretty low +spirited, I reckon, but he was a good deal of a man, and no doubt he went +a-prophesying around, letting on to be doing a land-office business, but +'t' wa'n't any use; he couldn't run any opposition to amount to anything. +By-and-by things got desperate with him; he sets his head to work and +thinks it all out, and then what does he do? Why he begins to throw out +hints that the other parties are this and that and t'other,--nothing very +definite, may be, but just kind of undermining their reputation in a +quiet way. This made talk, of course, and finally got to the King. The +King asked Isaac what he meant by his talk. Says Isaac, "Oh, nothing +particular; only, can they pray down fire from heaven on an altar? It +ain't much, maybe, your majesty, only can they do it? That's the idea." +So the King was a good deal disturbed, and he went to the prophets of +Baal, and they said, pretty airy, that if he had an altar ready, they +were ready; and they intimated he better get it insured, too. + +'So next morning all the Children of Israel and their parents and the +other people gathered themselves together. Well, here was that great +crowd of prophets of Baal packed together on one side, and Isaac walking +up and down all alone on the other, putting up his job. When time was +called, Isaac let on to be comfortable and indifferent; told the other +team to take the first innings. So they went at it, the whole four +hundred and fifty, praying around the altar, very hopefully, and doing +their level best. They prayed an hour--two hours--three hours--and so +on, plumb till noon. It wa'n't any use; they hadn't took a trick. Of +course they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and well they +might. Now, what would a magnanimous man do? Keep still, wouldn't he? +Of course. What did Isaac do? He graveled the prophets of Baal every +way he could think of. Says he, "You don't speak up loud enough; your +god's asleep, like enough, or may be he's taking a walk; you want to +holler, you know," or words to that effect; I don't recollect the exact +language. Mind I don't apologise for Isaac; he had his faults. + +'Well, the prophets of Baal prayed along the best they knew how all the +afternoon, and never raised a spark. At last, about sundown, they were +all tuckered out, and they owned up and quit. + +'What does Isaac do, now? He steps up and says to some friends of his, +there, "Pour four barrels of water on the altar!" Everybody was +astonished; for the other side had prayed at it dry, you know, and got +whitewashed. They poured it on. Says he, "Heave on four more barrels." +Then he says, "Heave on four more." Twelve barrels, you see, altogether. +The water ran all over the altar, and all down the sides, and filled up a +trench around it that would hold a couple of hogsheads--"measures," it +says: I reckon it means about a hogshead. Some of the people were going +to put on their things and go, for they allowed he was crazy. They +didn't know Isaac. Isaac knelt down and began to pray: he strung along, +and strung along, about the heathen in distant lands, and about the +sister churches, and about the state and the country at large, and about +those that's in authority in the government, and all the usual programme, +you know, till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about +something else, and then, all of a sudden, when nobody was noticing, he +outs with a match and rakes it on the under side of his leg, and pff! up +the whole thing blazes like a house afire! Twelve barrels of water? +Petroleum, sir, PETROLEUM! that's what it was!' + +'Petroleum, captain?' + +'Yes, sir; the country was full of it. Isaac knew all about that. You +read the Bible. Don't you worry about the tough places. They ain't +tough when you come to think them out and throw light on them. There +ain't a thing in the Bible but what is true; all you want is to go +prayerfully to work and cipher out how 'twas done.' + +[1] This is the captain's own mistake. + + + + + + +STIRRING TIMES IN AUSTRIA + + +I. THE GOVERNMENT IN THE FRYING-PAN. + +Here in Vienna in these closing days of 1897 one's blood gets no chance +to stagnate. The atmosphere is brimful of political electricity. All +conversation is political; every man is a battery, with brushes overworn, +and gives out blue sparks when you set him going on the common topic. +Everybody has an opinion, and lets you have it frank and hot, and out of +this multitude of counsel you get merely confusion and despair. For no +one really understands this political situation, or can tell you what is +going to be the outcome of it. + +Things have happened here recently which would set any country but +Austria on fire from end to end, and upset the Government to a certainty; +but no one feels confident that such results will follow here. Here, +apparently, one must wait and see what will happen, then he will know, +and not before; guessing is idle; guessing cannot help the matter. This +is what the wise tell you; they all say it; they say it every day, and it +is the sole detail upon which they all agree. + +There is some approach to agreement upon another point: that there will +be no revolution. Men say: 'Look at our history, revolutions have not +been in our line; and look at our political map, its construction is +unfavourable to an organised uprising, and without unity what could a +revolt accomplish? It is disunion which has held our empire together for +centuries, and what it has done in the past it may continue to do now and +in the future.' + +The most intelligible sketch I have encountered of this unintelligible +arrangement of things was contributed to the 'Traveller's Record' by Mr. +Forrest Morgan, of Hartford, three years ago. He says: + + 'The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy is the patchwork-quilt, the Midway + Plaisance, the national chain-gang of Europe; a state that is not a + nation, but a collection of nations, some with national memories and + aspirations and others without, some occupying distinct provinces + almost purely their own, and others mixed with alien races, but each + with a different language, and each mostly holding the others + foreigners as much as if the link of a common government did not + exist. Only one of its races even now comprises so much as + one-fourth of the whole, and not another so much as one-sixth; and + each has remained for ages as unchanged in isolation, however + mingled together in locality, as globules of oil in water. There + is nothing else in the modern world that is nearly like it, though + there have been plenty in past ages; it seems unreal and impossible + even though we know it is true; it violates all our feeling as to + what a country should be in order to have a right to exist; and it + seems as though it was too ramshackle to go on holding together any + length of time. Yet it has survived, much in its present shape, two + centuries of storms that have swept perfectly unified countries + from existence and others that have brought it to the verge of + ruin, has survived formidable European coalitions to dismember it, + and has steadily gained force after each; forever changing in its + exact make-up, losing in the West but gaining in the East, the + changes leave the structure as firm as ever, like the dropping off + and adding on of logs in a raft, its mechanical union of pieces + showing all the vitality of genuine national life.' + +That seems to confirm and justify the prevalent Austrian faith that in +this confusion of unrelated and irreconcilable elements, this condition +of incurable disunion, there is strength--for the Government. Nearly +every day some one explains to me that a revolution would not succeed +here. 'It couldn't, you know. Broadly speaking, all the nations in the +empire hate the Government--but they all hate each other too, and with +devoted and enthusiastic bitterness; no two of them can combine; the +nation that rises must rise alone; then the others would joyfully join +the Government against her, and she would have just a fly's chance +against a combination of spiders. This Government is entirely +independent. It can go its own road, and do as it pleases; it has +nothing to fear. In countries like England and America, where there is +one tongue and the public interests are common, the Government must take +account of public opinion; but in Austria-Hungary there are nineteen +public opinions--one for each state. No--two or three for each state, +since there are two or three nationalities in each. A Government cannot +satisfy all these public opinions; it can only go through the motions of +trying. This Government does that. It goes through the motions, and +they do not succeed; but that does not worry the Government much.' + +The next man will give you some further information. 'The Government has +a policy--a wise one--and sticks to it. This policy is--tranquillity: +keep this hive of excitable nations as quiet as possible; encourage them +to amuse themselves with things less inflammatory that politics. To this +end it furnishes them an abundance of Catholic priests to teach them to +be docile and obedient, and to be diligent in acquiring ignorance about +things here below, and knowledge about the kingdom of heaven, to whose +historic delights they are going to add the charm of their society +by-and-by; and further--to this same end--it cools off the newspapers +every morning at five o'clock, whenever warm events are happening.' +There is a censor of the press, and apparently he is always on duty and +hard at work. A copy of each morning paper is brought to him at five +o'clock. His official wagons wait at the doors of the newspaper offices +and scud to him with the first copies that come from the press. His +company of assistants read every line in these papers, and mark +everything which seems to have a dangerous look; then he passes final +judgment upon these markings. Two things conspire to give to the results +a capricious and unbalanced look: his assistants have diversified notions +as to what is dangerous and what isn't; he can't get time to examine +their criticisms in much detail; and so sometimes the very same matter +which is suppressed in one paper fails to be damned in another one, and +gets published in full feather and unmodified. Then the paper in which +it was suppressed blandly copies the forbidden matter into its evening +edition--provokingly giving credit and detailing all the circumstances in +courteous and inoffensive language--and of course the censor cannot say a +word. + +Sometimes the censor sucks all the blood out of a newspaper and leaves it +colourless and inane; sometimes he leaves it undisturbed, and lets it +talk out its opinions with a frankness and vigour hardly to be surpassed, +I think, in the journals of any country. Apparently the censor sometimes +revises his verdicts upon second thought, for several times lately he has +suppressed journals after their issue and partial distribution. The +distributed copies are then sent for by the censor and destroyed. I have +two of these, but at the time they were sent for I could not remember +what I had done with them. + +If the censor did his work before the morning edition was printed, he +would be less of an inconvenience than he is; but, of course, the papers +cannot wait many minutes after five o'clock to get his verdict; they +might as well go out of business as do that; so they print and take their +chances. Then, if they get caught by a suppression, they must strike out +the condemned matter and print the edition over again. That delays the +issue several hours, and is expensive besides. The Government gets the +suppressed edition for nothing. If it bought it, that would be joyful, +and would give great satisfaction. Also, the edition would be larger. +Some of the papers do not replace the condemned paragraphs with other +matter; they merely snatch they out and leave blanks behind--mourning +blanks, marked 'Confiscated'. + +The Government discourages the dissemination of newspaper information in +other ways. For instance, it does not allow newspapers to be sold on the +streets: therefore the newsboy is unknown in Vienna. And there is a +stamp duty of nearly a cent upon each copy of a newspaper's issue. Every +American paper that reaches me has a stamp upon it, which has been pasted +there in the post-office or downstairs in the hotel office; but no matter +who put it there, I have to pay for it, and that is the main thing. +Sometimes friends send me so many papers that it takes all I can earn +that week to keep this Government going. + +I must take passing notice of another point in the Government's measures +for maintaining tranquillity. Everybody says it does not like to see any +individual attain to commanding influence in the country, since such a +man can become a disturber and an inconvenience. 'We have as much talent +as the other nations,' says the citizen, resignedly, and without +bitterness, 'but for the sake of the general good of the country, we are +discouraged from making it over-conspicuous; and not only discouraged, +but tactfully and skillfully prevented from doing it, if we show too much +persistence. Consequently we have no renowned men; in centuries we have +seldom produced one--that is, seldom allowed one to produce himself. We +can say to-day what no other nation of first importance in the family of +Christian civilisations can say--that there exists no Austrian who has +made an enduring name for himself which is familiar all around the globe. + +Another helper toward tranquillity is the army. It is as pervasive as +the atmosphere. It is everywhere. All the mentioned creators, +promoters, and preservers of the public tranquillity do their several +shares in the quieting work. They make a restful and comfortable +serenity and reposefulness. This is disturbed sometimes for a little +while: a mob assembles to protest against something; it gets noisy +--noisier--still noisier--finally too noisy; then the persuasive soldiery +comes charging down upon it, and in a few minutes all is quiet again, and +there is no mob. + +There is a Constitution and there is a Parliament. The House draws its +membership of 425 deputies from the nineteen or twenty states heretofore +mentioned. These men represent peoples who speak eleven different +languages. That means eleven distinct varieties of jealousies, +hostilities, and warring interests. This could be expected to furnish +forth a parliament of a pretty inharmonious sort, and make legislation +difficult at times--and it does that. The Parliament is split up into +many parties--the Clericals, the Progressists, the German Nationalists, +the Young Czechs, the Social Democrats, the Christian Socialists, and +some others--and it is difficult to get up working combinations among +them. They prefer to fight apart sometimes. + +The recent troubles have grown out of Count Badeni's necessities. He +could not carry on his Government without a majority vote in the House at +his back, and in order to secure it he had to make a trade of some sort. +He made it with the Czechs--the Bohemians. The terms were not easy for +him: he must issue an ordinance making the Czech tongue the official +language in Bohemia in place of the German. This created a storm. All +the Germans in Austria were incensed. In numbers they form but a fourth +part of the empire's population, but they urge that the country's public +business should be conducted in one common tongue, and that tongue a +world language--which German is. + +However, Badeni secured his majority. The German element in Parliament +was apparently become helpless. The Czech deputies were exultant. + +Then the music began. Badeni's voyage, instead of being smooth, was +disappointingly rough from the start. The Government must get the +Ausgleich through. It must not fail. Badeni's majority was ready to +carry it through; but the minority was determined to obstruct it and +delay it until the obnoxious Czech-language measure should be shelved. + +The Ausgleich is an Adjustment, Arrangement, Settlement, which holds +Austria and Hungary together. It dates from 1867, and has to be renewed +every ten years. It establishes the share which Hungary must pay toward +the expenses of the imperial Government. Hungary is a kingdom (the +Emperor of Austria is its King), and has its own Parliament and +governmental machinery. But it has no foreign office, and it has no +army--at least its army is a part of the imperial army, is paid out of +the imperial treasury, and is under the control of the imperial war +office. + +The ten-year arrangement was due a year ago, but failed to connect. At +least completely. A year's compromise was arranged. A new arrangement +must be effected before the last day of this year. Otherwise the two +countries become separate entities. The Emperor would still be King of +Hungary--that is, King of an independent foreign country. There would be +Hungarian custom-houses on the Austrian border, and there would be a +Hungarian army and a Hungarian foreign office. Both countries would be +weakened by this, both would suffer damage. + +The Opposition in the House, although in the minority, had a good weapon +to fight with in the pending Ausgleich. If it could delay the Ausgleich +a few weeks, the Government would doubtless have to withdraw the hated +language ordinance or lose Hungary. + +The Opposition began its fight. Its arms were the Rules of the House. +It was soon manifest that by applying these Rules ingeniously it could +make the majority helpless, and keep it so as long as it pleased. It +could shut off business every now and then with a motion to adjourn. It +could require the ayes and noes on the motion, and use up thirty minutes +on that detail. It could call for the reading and verification of the +minutes of the preceding meeting, and use up half a day in that way. It +could require that several of its members be entered upon the list of +permitted speakers previously to the opening of a sitting; and as there +is no time-limit, further delays could thus be accomplished. + +These were all lawful weapons, and the men of the Opposition (technically +called the Left) were within their rights in using them. They used them +to such dire purpose that all parliamentary business was paralysed. The +Right (the Government side) could accomplish nothing. Then it had a +saving idea. This idea was a curious one. It was to have the President +and the Vice-Presidents of the Parliament trample the Rules under foot +upon occasion! + +This, for a profoundly embittered minority constructed out of fire and +gun-cotton! It was time for idle strangers to go and ask leave to look +down out of a gallery and see what would be the result of it. + + +II. A MEMORABLE SITTING. + +And now took place that memorable sitting of the House which broke two +records. It lasted the best part of two days and a night, surpassing by +half an hour the longest sitting known to the world's previous +parliamentary history, and breaking the long-speech record with Dr. +Lecher's twelve-hour effort, the longest flow of unbroken talk that ever +came out of one mouth since the world began. + +At 8.45 on the evening of the 28th of October, when the House had been +sitting a few minutes short of ten hours, Dr. Lecher was granted the +floor. It was a good place for theatrical effects. I think that no +other Senate House is so shapely as this one, or so richly and showily +decorated. Its plan is that of an opera-house. Up toward the straight +side of it--the stage side--rise a couple of terraces of desks for the +ministry, and the official clerks or secretaries--terraces thirty feet +long, and each supporting about half a dozen desks with spaces between +them. Above these is the President's terrace, against the wall. Along +it are distributed the proper accommodations for the presiding officer +and his assistants. The wall is of richly coloured marble highly +polished, its paneled sweep relieved by fluted columns and pilasters of +distinguished grace and dignity, which glow softly and frostily in the +electric light. Around the spacious half-circle of the floor bends the +great two-storied curve of the boxes, its frontage elaborately ornamented +and sumptuously gilded. On the floor of the House the 425 desks radiate +fanwise from the President's tribune. + +The galleries are crowded on this particular evening, for word has gone +about that the Ausgleich is before the House; that the President, Ritter +von Abrahamowicz, has been throttling the Rules; that the Opposition are +in an inflammable state in consequence, and that the night session is +likely to be of an exciting sort. + +The gallery guests are fashionably dressed, and the finery of the women +makes a bright and pretty show under the strong electric light. But down +on the floor there is no costumery. + +The deputies are dressed in day clothes; some of the clothes neat and +trim, others not; there may be three members in evening dress, but not +more. There are several Catholic priests in their long black gowns, and +with crucifixes hanging from their necks. No member wears his hat. One +may see by these details that the aspects are not those of an evening +sitting of an English House of Commons, but rather those of a sitting of +our House of Representatives. + +In his high place sits the President, Abrahamowicz, object of the +Opposition's limitless hatred. He is sunk back in the depths of his +arm-chair, and has his chin down. He brings the ends of his spread +fingers together, in front of his breast, and reflectively taps them +together, with the air of one who would like to begin business, but must +wait, and be as patient as he can. It makes you think of Richelieu. Now +and then he swings his head up to the left or to the right and answers +something which some one has bent down to say to him. Then he taps his +fingers again. He looks tired, and maybe a trifle harassed. He is a +gray-haired, long, slender man, with a colourless long face, which, in +repose, suggests a death-mask; but when not in repose is tossed and +rippled by a turbulent smile which washes this way and that, and is not +easy to keep up with--a pious smile, a holy smile, a saintly smile, a +deprecating smile, a beseeching and supplicating smile; and when it is at +work the large mouth opens, and the flexible lips crumple, and unfold, +and crumple again, and move around in a genial and persuasive and angelic +way, and expose large glimpses of the teeth; and that interrupts the +sacredness of the smile and gives it momentarily a mixed worldly and +political and satanic cast. It is a most interesting face to watch. And +then the long hands and the body--they furnish great and frequent help to +the face in the business of adding to the force of the statesman's words. + +To change the tense. At the time of which I have just been speaking the +crowds in the galleries were gazing at the stage and the pit with rapt +interest and expectancy. One half of the great fan of desks was in +effect empty, vacant; in the other half several hundred members were +bunched and jammed together as solidly as the bristles in a brush; and +they also were waiting and expecting. Presently the Chair delivered this +utterance: + +'Dr. Lecher has the floor.' + +Then burst out such another wild and frantic and deafening clamour as has +not been heard on this planet since the last time the Comanches surprised +a white settlement at night. Yells from the Left, counter-yells from the +Right, explosions of yells from all sides at once, and all the air sawed +and pawed and clawed and cloven by a writhing confusion of gesturing arms +and hands. Out of the midst of this thunder and turmoil and tempest rose +Dr. Lecher, serene and collected, and the providential length of his +enabled his head to show out of it. He began his twelve-hour speech. At +any rate, his lips could be seen to move, and that was evidence. On high +sat the President, imploring order, with his long hands put together as +in prayer, and his lips visibly but not hearably speaking. At intervals +he grasped his bell and swung it up and down with vigour, adding its keen +clamour to the storm weltering there below. + +Dr. Lecher went on with his pantomime speech, contented, untroubled. +Here and there and now and then powerful voices burst above the din, and +delivered an ejaculation that was heard. Then the din ceased for a +moment or two, and gave opportunity to hear what the Chair might answer; +then the noise broke out again. Apparently the President was being +charged with all sorts of illegal exercises of power in the interest of +the Right (the Government side): among these, with arbitrarily closing an +Order of Business before it was finished; with an unfair distribution of +the right to the floor; with refusal of the floor, upon quibble and +protest, to members entitled to it; with stopping a speaker's speech upon +quibble and protest; and with other transgressions of the Rules of the +House. One of the interrupters who made himself heard was a young fellow +of slight build and neat dress, who stood a little apart from the solid +crowd and leaned negligently, with folded arms and feet crossed, against +a desk. Trim and handsome; strong face and thin features; black hair +roughed up; parsimonious moustache; resonant great voice, of good tone +and pitch. It is Wolf, capable and hospitable with sword and pistol; +fighter of the recent duel with Count Badeni, the head of the Government. +He shot Badeni through the arm and then walked over in the politest way +and inspected his game, shook hands, expressed regret, and all that. Out +of him came early this thundering peal, audible above the storm: + +'I demand the floor. I wish to offer a motion.' + +In the sudden lull which followed, the President answered, 'Dr. Lecher +has the floor.' + +Wolf. 'I move the close of the sitting!' + +P. 'Representative Lecher has the floor.' [Stormy outburst from the +Left--that is, the Opposition.] + +Wolf. 'I demand the floor for the introduction of a formal notion. +[Pause]. Mr. President, are you going to grant it, or not? [Crash of +approval from the Left.] I will keep on demanding the floor till I get +it.' + +P. 'I call Representative Wolf to order. Dr. Lecher has the floor.' + +Wolf. 'Mr. President, are you going to observe the Rules of this House?' +[Tempest of applause and confused ejaculations from the Left--a boom and +roar which long endured, and stopped all business for the time being.] + +Dr. von Pessler. 'By the Rules motions are in order, and the Chair must +put them to vote.' + +For answer the President (who is a Pole--I make this remark in passing) +began to jangle his bell with energy at the moment that that wild +pandemonium of voices broke out again. + +Wolf (hearable above the storm). 'Mr. President, I demand the floor. We +intend to find out, here and now, which is the hardest, a Pole's skull or +a German's!' + +This brought out a perfect cyclone of satisfaction from the Left. In the +midst of it someone again moved an Adjournment. The President blandly +answered that Dr. Lecher had the floor. Which was true; and he was +speaking, too, calmly, earnestly, and argumentatively; and the official +stenographers had left their places and were at his elbows taking down +his words, he leaning and orating into their ears--a most curious and +interesting scene. + +Dr. von Pessler (to the Chair). 'Do not drive us to extremities!' + +The tempest burst out again: yells of approval from the Left, catcalls +and ironical laughter from the Right. At this point a new and most +effective noise-maker was pressed into service. Each desk has an +extension, consisting of a removable board eighteen inches long, six +wide, and a half-inch thick. A member pulled one of these out and began +to belabour the top of his desk with it. Instantly other members +followed suit, and perhaps you can imagine the result. Of all +conceivable rackets it is the most ear-splitting, intolerable, and +altogether fiendish. + +The persecuted President leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, +clasped his hands in his lap, and a look of pathetic resignation crept +over his long face. It is the way a country schoolmaster used to look in +days long past when he had refused his school a holiday and it had risen +against him in ill-mannered riot and violence and insurrection. Twice a +motion to adjourn had been offered--a motion always in order in other +Houses, and doubtless so in this one also. The President had refused to +put these motions. By consequence, he was not in a pleasant place now, +and was having a right hard time. Votes upon motions, whether carried or +defeated, could make endless delay, and postpone the Ausgleich to next +century. + +In the midst of these sorrowful circumstances and this hurricane of yells +and screams and satanic clatter of desk-boards, Representative Dr. +Kronawetter unfeelingly reminds the Chair that a motion has been offered, +and adds: 'Say yes, or no! What do you sit there for, and give no +answer?' + +P. 'After I have given a speaker the floor, I cannot give it to another. +After Dr. Lecher is through, I will put your motion.' [Storm of +indignation from the Left.] + +Wolf (to the Chair). 'Thunder and lightning! look at the Rule governing +the case!' + +Kronawetter. 'I move the close of the sitting! And I demand the ayes +and noes!' + +Dr. Lecher. 'Mr. President, have I the floor?' + +P. 'You have the floor.' + +Wolf (to the Chair, in a stentorian voice which cleaves its way through +the storm). 'It is by such brutalities as these that you drive us to +extremities! Are you waiting till someone shall throw into your face the +word that shall describe what you are bringing about?[1] [Tempest of +insulted fury from the Right.] Is that what you are waiting for, old +Grayhead?' [Long-continued clatter of desk-boards from the Left, with +shouts of 'The vote! the vote!' An ironical shout from the Right, 'Wolf +is boss!'] + +Wolf keeps on demanding the floor for his motion. At length-- + +P. 'I call Representative Wolf to order! Your conduct is unheard of, +sir! You forget that you are in a parliament; you must remember where +you are, sir.' [Applause from the Right. Dr. Lecher is still peacefully +speaking, the stenographers listening at his lips.] + +Wolf (banging on his desk with his desk-board). 'I demand the floor for +my motion! I won't stand this trampling of the Rules under foot--no, not +if I die for it! I will never yield. You have got to stop me by force. +Have I the floor?' + +P. 'Representative Wolf, what kind of behaviour is this? I call you to +order again. You should have some regard for your dignity.' + +Dr. Lecher speaks on. Wolf turns upon him with an offensive innuendo. + +Dr. Lecher. 'Mr. Wolf, I beg you to refrain from that sort of +suggestions.' [Storm of hand-clapping from the Right.] + +This was applause from the enemy, for Lecher himself, like Wolf, was an +Obstructionist. + +Wolf growls to Lecher, 'You can scribble that applause in your album!' + +P. 'Once more I call Representative Wolf to order! Do not forget that +you are a Representative, sir!' + +Wolf (slam-banging with his desk-board). 'I will force this matter! Are +you going to grant me the floor, or not?' + +And still the sergeant-at-arms did not appear. It was because there +wasn't any. It is a curious thing, but the Chair has no effectual means +of compelling order. + +After some more interruptions: + +Wolf (banging with his board). 'I demand the floor. I will not yield!' + +P. 'I have no recourse against Representative Wolf. In the presence of +behaviour like this it is to be regretted that such is the case.' [A +shout from the Right, 'Throw him out!'] + +It is true he had no effective recourse. He had an official called an +'Ordner,' whose help he could invoke in desperate cases, but apparently +the Ordner is only a persuader, not a compeller. Apparently he is a +sergeant-at-arms who is not loaded; a good enough gun to look at, but not +valuable for business. + +For another twenty or thirty minutes Wolf went on banging with his board +and demanding his rights; then at last the weary President threatened to +summon the dread order-maker. But both his manner and his words were +reluctant. Evidently it grieved him to have to resort to this dire +extremity. He said to Wolf, 'If this goes on, I shall feel obliged to +summon the Ordner, and beg him to restore order in the House.' + +Wolf. 'I'd like to see you do it! Suppose you fetch in a few policemen +too! [Great tumult.] Are you going to put my motion to adjourn, or not?' + +Dr. Lecher continues his speech. Wolf accompanies him with his +board-clatter. + +The President despatches the Ordner, Dr. Lang (himself a deputy), on his +order-restoring mission. Wolf, with his board uplifted for defence, +confronts the Ordner with a remark which Boss Tweed might have translated +into 'Now let's see what you are going to do about it!' [Noise and tumult +all over the House.] + +Wolf stands upon his rights, and says he will maintain them until he is +killed in his tracks. Then he resumes his banging, the President jangles +his bell and begs for order, and the rest of the House augments the +racket the best it can. + +Wolf. 'I require an adjournment, because I find myself personally +threatened. [Laughter from the Right.] Not that I fear for myself; +I am only anxious about what will happen to the man who touches me.' + +The Ordner. 'I am not going to fight with you.' + +Nothing came of the efforts of the angel of peace, and he presently +melted out of the scene and disappeared. Wolf went on with his noise +and with his demands that he be granted the floor, resting his board at +intervals to discharge criticisms and epithets at the Chair. Once he +reminded the Chairman of his violated promise to grant him (Wolf) the +floor, and said, 'Whence I came, we call promise-breakers rascals!' +And he advised the Chairman to take his conscience to bed with him and +use it as a pillow. Another time he said that the Chair was making +itself ridiculous before all Europe. In fact, some of Wolf's language +was almost unparliamentary. By-and-by he struck the idea of beating out +a tune with his board. Later he decided to stop asking for the floor, +and to confer it upon himself. And so he and Dr. Lecher now spoke at the +same time, and mingled their speeches with the other noises, and nobody +heard either of them. Wolf rested himself now and then from +speech-making by reading, in his clarion voice, from a pamphlet. + +I will explain that Dr. Lecher was not making a twelve-hour speech for +pastime, but for an important purpose. It was the Government's intention +to push the Ausgleich through its preliminary stages in this one sitting +(for which it was the Order of the Day), and then by vote refer it to a +select committee. It was the Majority's scheme--as charged by the +Opposition--to drown debate upon the bill by pure noise--drown it out and +stop it. The debate being thus ended, the vote upon the reference would +follow--with victory for the Government. But into the Government's +calculations had not entered the possibility of a single-barrelled speech +which should occupy the entire time-limit of the setting, and also get +itself delivered in spite of all the noise. Goliath was not expecting +David. But David was there; and during twelve hours he tranquilly pulled +statistical, historical, and argumentative pebbles out of his scrip and +slung them at the giant; and when he was done he was victor, and the day +was saved. + +In the English House an obstructionist has held the floor with +Bible-readings and other outside matters; but Dr. Lecher could not have +that restful and recuperative privilege--he must confine himself strictly +to the subject before the House. More than once, when the President +could not hear him because of the general tumult, he sent persons to +listen and report as to whether the orator was speaking to the subject or +not. + +The subject was a peculiarly difficult one, and it would have troubled +any other deputy to stick to it three hours without exhausting his +ammunition, because it required a vast and intimate knowledge--detailed +and particularised knowledge--of the commercial, railroading, financial, +and international banking relations existing between two great +sovereignties, Hungary and the Empire. But Dr. Lecher is President of +the Board of Trade of his city of Brunn, and was master of the situation. +His speech was not formally prepared. He had a few notes jotted down for +his guidance; he had his facts in his head; his heard was in his work; +and for twelve hours he stood there, undisturbed by the clamour around +him, and with grace and ease and confidence poured out the riches of his +mind, in closely reasoned arguments, clothed in eloquent and faultless +phrasing. + +He is a young man of thirty-seven. He is tall and well-proportioned, and +has cultivated and fortified his muscle by mountain-climbing. If he were +a little handsomer he would sufficiently reproduce for me the Chauncey +Depew of the great New England dinner nights of some years ago; he has +Depew's charm of manner and graces of language and delivery. + +There was but one way for Dr. Lecher to hold the floor--he must stay on +his legs. If he should sit down to rest a moment, the floor would be +taken from him by the enemy in the Chair. When he had been talking three +or four hours he himself proposed an adjournment, in order that he might +get some rest from his wearing labours; but he limited his motion with +the condition that if it was lost he should be allowed to continue +his speech, and if it was carried he should have the floor at +the next sitting. Wolf was now appeased, and withdrew his own +thousand-times-offered motion, and Dr. Lecher's was voted upon--and lost. +So he went on speaking. + +By one o'clock in the morning, excitement and noise-making had tired out +nearly everybody but the orator. Gradually the seats of the Right +underwent depopulation; the occupants had slipped out to the +refreshment-rooms to eat and drink, or to the corridors to chat. Some +one remarked that there was no longer a quorum present, and moved a call +of the House. The Chair (Vice-President Dr. Kramarz) refused to put it to +vote. There was a small dispute over the legality of this ruling, but +the Chair held its ground. + +The Left remained on the battle-field to support their champion. He went +steadily on with his speech; and always it was strong, virile, +felicitous, and to the point. He was earning applause, and this enabled +his party to turn that fact to account. Now and then they applauded him +a couple of minutes on a stretch, and during that time he could stop +speaking and rest his voice without having the floor taken from him. + +At a quarter to two a member of the Left demanded that Dr. Lecher be +allowed a recess for rest, and said that the Chairman was 'heartless.' +Dr. Lecher himself asked for ten minutes. The Chair allowed him five. +Before the time had run out Dr. Lecher was on his feet again. + +Wolf burst out again with a motion to adjourn. Refused by the Chair. +Wolf said the whole Parliament wasn't worth a pinch of powder. The Chair +retorted that that was true in a case where a single member was able to +make all parliamentary business impossible. Dr. Lecher continued his +speech. + +The members of the Majority went out by detachments from time to time and +took naps upon sofas in the reception-rooms; and also refreshed +themselves with food and drink--in quantities nearly unbelievable--but +the Minority stayed loyally by their champion. Some distinguished +deputies of the Majority stayed by him too, compelled thereto by +admiration of his great performance. When a man has been speaking eight +hours, is it conceivable that he can still be interesting, still +fascinating? When Dr. Lecher had been speaking eight hours he was still +compactly surrounded by friends who would not leave him, and by foes (of +all parties) who could not; and all hung enchanted and wondering upon his +words, and all testified their admiration with constant and cordial +outbursts of applause. Surely this was a triumph without precedent in +history. + +During the twelve-hour effort friends brought to the orator three glasses +of wine, four cups of coffee, and one glass of beer--a most stingy +re-enforcement of his wasting tissues, but the hostile Chair would permit +no addition to it. But, no matter, the Chair could not beat that man. +He was a garrison holding a fort, and was not to be starved out. + +When he had been speaking eight hours his pulse was 72; when he had +spoken twelve, it was 100. + +He finished his long speech in these terms, as nearly as a permissibly +free translation can convey them: + +'I will now hasten to close my examination of the subject. I conceive +that we of the Left have made it clear to the honourable gentlemen of the +other side of the House that we are stirred by no intemperate enthusiasm +for this measure in its present shape.... + +'What we require, and shall fight for with all lawful weapons, is a +formal, comprehensive, and definitive solution and settlement of these +vexed matters. We desire the restoration of the earlier condition of +things; the cancellation of all this incapable Government's pernicious +trades with Hungary; and then--release from the sorry burden of the +Badeni ministry! + +'I voice the hope--I know not if it will be fulfilled--I voice the deep +and sincere and patriotic hope that the committee into whose hands this +bill will eventually be committed will take its stand upon high ground, +and will return the Ausgleich-Provisorium to this House in a form which +shall make it the protector and promoter alike of the great interests +involved and of the honour of our fatherland.' After a pause, turning +towards the Government benches: 'But in any case, gentlemen of the +Majority, make sure of this: henceforth, as before, you find us at our +post. The Germans of Austria will neither surrender nor die!' + +Then burst a storm of applause which rose and fell, rose and fell, burst +out again and again and again, explosion after explosion, hurricane after +hurricane, with no apparent promise of ever coming to an end; and +meantime the whole Left was surging and weltering about the champion, all +bent upon wringing his hand and congratulating him and glorifying him. + +Finally he got away, and went home and ate five loaves and twelve baskets +of fish, read the morning papers, slept three hours, took a short drive, +then returned to the House, and sat out the rest of the thirty-three-hour +session. + +To merely stand up in one spot twelve hours on a stretch is a feat which +very few men could achieve; to add to the task the utterance of a hundred +thousand words would be beyond the possibilities of the most of those +few; to superimpose the requirement that the words should be put into the +form of a compact, coherent, and symmetrical oration would probably rule +out the rest of the few, bar Dr. Lecher. + + +III.--CURIOUS PARLIAMENTARY ETIQUETTE. + +In consequence of Dr. Lecher's twelve-hour speech and the other +obstructions furnished by the Minority, the famous thirty-three-hour +sitting of the House accomplished nothing. The Government side had made +a supreme effort, assisting itself with all the helps at hand, both +lawful and unlawful, yet had failed to get the Ausgleich into the hands +of a committee. This was a severe defeat. The Right was mortified, the +Left jubilant. + +Parliament was adjourned for a week--to let the members cool off, +perhaps--a sacrifice of precious time; for but two months remained in +which to carry the all-important Ausgleich to a consummation. + +If I have reported the behaviour of the House intelligibly, the reader +has been surprised by it, and has wondered whence these law-makers come +and what they are made of; and he has probably supposed that the conduct +exhibited at the Long Sitting was far out of the common, and due to +special excitement and irritation. As to the make-up of the House, it is +this: the deputies come from all the walks of life and from all the +grades of society. There are princes, counts, barons, priests, peasants, +mechanics, labourers, lawyers, judges, physicians, professors, merchants, +bankers, shopkeepers. They are religious men, they are earnest, sincere, +devoted, and they hate the Jews. The title of Doctor is so common in the +House that one may almost say that the deputy who does not bear it is by +that reason conspicuous. I am assured that it is not a self-granted +title, and not an honorary one, but an earned one; that in Austria it is +very seldom conferred as a mere compliment; that in Austria the degrees +of Doctor of Music, Doctor of Philosophy, and so on, are not conferred by +the seats of learning; and so, when an Austrian is called Doctor, it +means that he is either a lawyer or a physician, and that he is not a +self-educated man, but is college-bred, and has been diplomaed for merit. + +That answers the question of the constitution of the House. Now as to +the House's curious manners. The manners exhibited by this convention of +Doctors were not at that time being tried as a wholly new experiment. I +will go back to a previous sitting in order to show that the deputies had +already had some practice. + +There had been an incident. The dignity of the House had been wounded by +improprieties indulged in in its presence by a couple of the members. +This matter was placed in the hands of a committee to determine where the +guilt lay and the degree of it, and also to suggest the punishment. The +chairman of the committee brought in his report. By this it appeared +that in the course of a speech, Deputy Schrammel said that religion had +no proper place in the public schools--it was a private matter. +Whereupon Deputy Gregorig shouted, 'How about free love!' + +To this, Deputy Iro flung out this retort: 'Soda-water at the Wimberger!' + +This appeared to deeply offend Deputy Gregorig, who shouted back at Iro, +'You cowardly blatherskite, say that again!' + +The committee had sat three hours. Gregorig had apologised. Iro +explained that he didn't say anything about soda-water at the Wimberger. +He explained in writing, and was very explicit: 'I declare upon my word +of honour that I did not say the words attributed to me.' + +Unhappily for his word of honour, it was proved by the official +stenographers and by the testimony of several deputies that he did say +them. + +The committee did not officially know why the apparently inconsequential +reference to soda-water at the Wimberger should move Deputy Gregorig to +call the utterer of it a cowardly blatherskite; still, after proper +deliberation, it was of the opinion that the House ought to formally +censure the whole business. This verdict seems to have been regarded as +sharply severe. I think so because Deupty Dr. Lueger, Burgermeister of +Vienna, felt it a duty to soften the blow to his friend Gregorig by +showing that the soda-water remark was not so innocuous as it might look; +that, indeed, Gregorig's tough retory was justifiable--and he proceeded +to explain why. He read a number of scandalous post-cards which he +intimated had proceeded from Iro, as indicated by the handwriting, though +they were anonymous. Some of them were posted to Gregorig at his place +of business and could have been read by all his subordinates; the others +were posted to Gregorig's wife. Lueger did not say--but everybody knew +--that the cards referred to a matter of town gossip which made Mr. +Gregorig a chief actor in a tavern scene where siphon-squirting played a +prominent and humorous part, and wherein women had a share. + +There were several of the cards; more than several, in fact; no fewer +than five were sent in one day. Dr. Lueger read some of them, and +described others. Some of them had pictures on them; one a picture of a +hog with a monstrous snout, and beside it a squirting soda-siphon; below +it some sarcastic doggerel. + +Gregorig dealt in shirts, cravats, etc. One of the cards bore these +words: 'Much-respected Deputy and collar-sewer--or stealer.' + +Another: 'Hurrah for the Christian-Social work among the +women-assemblages! Hurrah for the soda-squirter!' Comment by Dr. Lueger: +'I cannot venture to read the rest of that one, nor the signature, +either.' + +Another: 'Would you mind telling me if....' Comment by Dr. Lueger: 'The +rest of it is not properly readable.' + +To Deputy Gregorig's wife: 'Much-respected Madam Gregorig,--The +undersigned desires an invitation to the next soda-squirt.' Comment by +Dr. Lueger: 'Neither the rest of the card nor the signature can I venture +to read to the House, so vulgar are they.' + +The purpose of this card--to expose Gregorig to his family--was repeated +in others of these anonymous missives. + +The House, by vote, censured the two improper deputies. + +This may have had a modifying effect upon the phraseology of the +membership for a while, and upon its general exuberance also, but it was +not for long. As has been seen, it had become lively once more on the +night of the Long Sitting. At the next sitting after the long one there +was certainly no lack of liveliness. The President was persistently +ignoring the Rules of the House in the interest of the government side, +and the Minority were in an unappeasable fury about it. The ceaseless +din and uproar, the shouting and stamping and desk-banging, were +deafening, but through it all burst voices now and then that made +themselves heard. Some of the remarks were of a very candid sort, and I +believe that if they had been uttered in our House of Representatives +they would have attracted attention. I will insert some samples here. +Not in their order, but selected on their merits: + +Mr. Mayreder (to the President). 'You have lied! You conceded the floor +to me; make it good, or you have lied!' + +Mr. Glockner (to the President). 'Leave! Get out!' + +Wolf (indicating the President). 'There sits a man to whom a certain +title belongs!' + +Unto Wolf, who is continuously reading, in a powerful voice, from a +newspaper, arrive these personal remarks from the Majority: 'Oh, shut +your mouth!' 'Put him out!' 'Out with him!' Wolf stops reading a moment +to shout at Dr. Lueger, who has the floor but cannot get a hearing, +'Please, Betrayer of the People, begin!' + +Dr. Lueger, 'Meine Herren--' ['Oho!' and groans.] + +Wolf. 'That's the holy light of the Christian Socialists!' + +Mr. Kletzenbauer (Christian Socialist). 'Dam--nation! Are you ever +going to quiet down?' + +Wolf discharges a galling remark at Mr. Wohlmeyer. + +Wohlmeyer (responding). 'You Jew, you!' + +There is a moment's lull, and Dr. Lueger begins his speech. Graceful, +handsome man, with winning manners and attractive bearing, a bright and +easy speaker, and is said to know how to trim his political sails to +catch any favouring wind that blows. He manages to say a few words, then +the tempest overwhelms him again. + +Wolf stops reading his paper a moment to say a drastic thing about Lueger +and his Christian-Social pieties, which sets the C.S.S. in a sort of +frenzy. + +Mr. Vielohlawek. 'You leave the Christian Socialists alone, you +word-of-honour-breaker! Obstruct all you want to, but you leave them +alone! You've no business in this House; you belong in a gin-mill!' + +Mr. Prochazka. 'In a lunatic-asylum, you mean!' + +Vielohlawek. 'It's a pity that such man should be leader of the Germans; +he disgraces the German name!' + +Dr. Scheicher. 'It's a shame that the like of him should insult us.' + +Strohbach (to Wolf). 'Contemptible cub--we will bounce thee out of +this!' [It is inferable that the 'thee' is not intended to indicate +affection this time, but to re-enforce and emphasise Mr. Storhbach's +scorn.] + +Dr. Scheicher. 'His insults are of no consequence. He wants his ears +boxed.' + +Dr. Lueger (to Wolf). 'You'd better worry a trifle over your Iro's word +of honour. You are behaving like a street arab.' + +Dr. Scheicher. 'It is infamous!' + +Dr. Lueger. 'And these shameless creatures are the leaders of the German +People's Party!' + +Meantime Wolf goes whooping along with his newspaper readings in great +contentment. + +Dr. Pattai. 'Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You haven't the floor!' + +Strohbach. 'The miserable cub!' + +Dr. Lueger (to Wolf, raising his voice strenuously above the storm). +'You are a wholly honourless street brat!' [A voice, 'Fire the +rapscallion out!' But Wolf's soul goes marching noisily on, just the +same.] + +Schonerer (vast and muscular, and endowed with the most powerful voice in +the Reichsrath; comes ploughing down through the standing crowds, red, +and choking with anger; halts before Deputy Wohlmeyer, grabs a rule and +smashes it with a blow upon a desk, threatens Wohlmeyer's face with his +fist, and bellows out some personalities, and a promise). 'Only you +wait--we'll teach you!' [A whirlwind of offensive retorts assails him +from the band of meek and humble Christian Socialists compacted around +their leader, that distinguished religious expert, Dr. Lueger, +Burgermeister of Vienna. Our breath comes in excited gasps now, and we +are full of hope. We imagine that we are back fifty years ago in the +Arkansas Legislature, and we think we know what is going to happen, and +are glad we came, and glad we are up in the gallery, out of the way, +where we can see the whole thing and yet not have to supply any of the +material for the inquest. However, as it turns out, our confidence is +abused, our hopes are misplaced.] + +Dr. Pattai (wildly excited). 'You quiet down, or we shall turn ourselves +loose! There will be cuffing of ears!' + +Prochazka (in a fury). 'No--not ear boxing, but genuine blows!' + +Vieholawek. 'I would rather take my hat off to a Jew than to Wolf!' + +Strohbach (to Wolf). 'Jew flunky! Here we have been fighting the Jews +for ten years, and now you are helping them to power again. How much do +you get for it?' + +Holansky. 'What he wants is a strait-jacket!' + +Wolf continues his reading. It is a market report now. + +Remark flung across the House to Schonerer: 'Die Grossmutter auf dem +Misthaufen erzeugt worden!' + +It will be judicious not to translate that. Its flavour is pretty high, +in any case, but it becomes particularly gamy when you remember that the +first gallery was well stocked with ladies. + +Apparently it was a great hit. It fetched thunders of joyous enthusiasm +out of the Christian Socialists, and in their rapture they flung biting +epithets with wasteful liberality at specially detested members of the +Opposition; among others, this one at Schonerer, 'Bordell in der +Krugerstrasse!' Then they added these words, which they whooped, howled, +and also even sand, in a deep-voiced chorus: 'Schmul Leeb Kohn! Schmul +Leeb Kohn! Schmul Leeb Kohn!' and made it splendidly audible above the +banging of desk-boards and the rest of the roaring cyclone of fiendish +noises. [A gallery witticism comes flitting by from mouth to mouth +around the great curve: 'The swan-song of Austrian representative +government!' You can note its progress by the applausive smiles and nods +it gets as it skims along.] + +Kletzenbauer. 'Holofernes, where is Judith?' [Storm of laughter.] + +Gregorig (the shirt-merchant). 'This Wolf-Theatre is costing 6,000 +florins!' + +Wolf (with sweetness). 'Notice him, gentlemen; it is Mr. Gregorig.' +[Laughter.] + +Vieholawek (to Wolf). 'You Judas!' + +Schneider. 'Brothel-knight!' + +Chorus of Voices. 'East-German offal tub!' + +And so the war of epithets crashes along, with never-diminishing energy, +for a couple of hours. + +The ladies in the gallery were learning. That was well; for by-and-by +ladies will form a part of the membership of all the legislatures in the +world; as soon as they can prove competency they will be admitted. At +present, men only are competent to legislate; therefore they look down +upon women, and would feel degraded if they had to have them for +colleagues in their high calling. + +Wolf is yelling another market report now. + +Gessman. 'Shut up, infamous louse-brat!' + +During a momentary lull Dr. Lueger gets a hearing for three sentences of +his speech. The demand and require that the President shall suppress the +four noisiest members of the Opposition. + +Wolf (with a that-settles-it toss of the head). 'The shifty trickster of +Vienna has spoken!' + +Iro belonged to Schonerer's party. The word-of-honour incident has given +it a new name. Gregorig is a Christian Socialist, and hero of the +post-cards and the Wimberger soda-squirting incident. He stands vast and +conspicuous, and conceited and self-satisfied, and roosterish and +inconsequential, at Lueger's elbow, and is proud and cocky to be in such +a great company. He looks very well indeed; really majestic, and aware +of it. He crows out his little empty remark, now and then, and looks as +pleased as if he had been delivered of the Ausgleich. Indeed, he does +look notably fine. He wears almost the only dress vest on the floor; it +exposes a continental spread of white shirt-front; his hands are posed at +ease in the lips of his trousers pockets; his head is tilted back +complacently; he is attitudinising; he is playing to the gallery. +However, they are all doing that. It is curious to see. Men who only +vote, and can't make speeches, and don't know how to invent witty +ejaculations, wander about the vacated parts of the floor, and stop in a +good place and strike attitudes--attitudes suggestive of weighty thought, +mostly--and glance furtively up at the galleries to see how it works; or +a couple will come together and shake hands in an artificial way, and +laugh a gay manufactured laugh, and do some constrained and +self-conscious attitudinising; and they steal glances at the galleries to +see if they are getting notice. It is like a scene on the stage--by-play +by minor actors at the back while the stars do the great work at the +front. Even Count Badeni attitudinises for a moment; strikes a reflective +Napoleonic attitude of fine picturesqueness--but soon thinks better of it +and desists. There are two who do not attitudinise--poor harried and +insulted President Abrahamowicz, who seems wholly miserable, and can find +no way to put in the dreary time but by swinging his bell and discharging +occasional remarks which nobody can hear; and a resigned and patient +priest, who sits lonely in a great vacancy on Majority territory and +munches an apple. + +Schonerer uplifts his fog-horn of a voice and shakes the roof with an +insult discharged at the Majority. + +Dr. Lueger. 'The Honourless Party would better keep still here!' + +Gregorig (the echo, swelling out his shirt-front). 'Yes, keep quiet, +pimp!' + +Schonerer (to Lueger). 'Political mountebank!' + +Prochazka (to Schonerer). 'Drunken clown!' + +During the final hour of the sitting many happy phrases were distributed +through the proceedings. Among them were these--and they are strikingly +good ones: + +'Blatherskite!' + +'Blackguard!' + +'Scoundrel!' + +'Brothel-daddy!' + +This last was the contribution of Dr. Gessman, and gave great +satisfaction. And deservedly. It seems to me that it was one of the +most sparkling things that was said during the whole evening. + +At half-past two in the morning the House adjourned. The victory was +with the Opposition. No; not quite that. The effective part of it was +snatched away from them by an unlawful exercise of Presidential force +--another contribution toward driving the mistreated Minority out of their +minds. + +At other sittings of the parliament, gentlemen of the Opposition, shaking +their fists toward the President, addressed him as 'Polish Dog'. At one +sitting an angry deputy turned upon a colleague and shouted, +'----------!' + +You must try to imagine what it was. If I should offer it even in the +original it would probably not get by the editor's blue pencil; to offer +a translation would be to waste my ink, of course. This remark was +frankly printed in its entirety by one of the Vienna dailies, but the +others disguised the toughest half of it with stars. + +If the reader will go back over this chapter and gather its array of +extraordinary epithets into a bunch and examine them, he will marvel at +two things: how this convention of gentlemen could consent to use such +gross terms; and why the users were allowed to get out the place alive. +There is no way to understand this strange situation. If every man in +the House were a professional blackguard, and had his home in a sailor +boarding-house, one could still not understand it; for, although that +sort do use such terms, they never take them. These men are not +professional blackguards; they are mainly gentlemen, and educated; yet +they use the terms, and take them too. They really seem to attach no +consequence to them. One cannot say that they act like schoolboys; for +that is only almost true, not entirely. Schoolboys blackguard each other +fiercely, and by the hour, and one would think that nothing would ever +come of it but noise; but that would be a mistake. Up to a certain limit +the result would be noise only, but, that limit overstepped, trouble +would follow right away. There are certain phrases--phrases of a +peculiar character--phrases of the nature of that reference to +Schonerer's grandmother, for instance--which not even the most spiritless +schoolboy in the English-speaking world would allow to pass unavenged. +One difference between schoolboys and the law-makers of the Reichsrath +seems to be that the law-makers have no limit, no danger-line. +Apparently they may call each other what they please, and go home +unmutilated. + +Now, in fact, they did have a scuffle on two occasions, but it was not on +account of names called. There has been no scuffle where that was the +cause. + +It is not to be inferred that the House lacks a sense of honour because +it lacks delicacy. That would be an error. Iro was caught in a lie, and +it profoundly disgraced him. The House cut him, turned its back upon +him. He resigned his seat; otherwise he would have been expelled. But +it was lenient with Gregorig, who had called Iro a cowardly blatherskite +in debate. It merely went through the form of mildly censuring him. +That did not trouble Gregorig. + +The Viennese say of themselves that they are an easy-going, +pleasure-loving community, making the best of life, and not taking it +very seriously. Nevertheless, they are grieved about the ways of their +Parliament, and say quite frankly that they are ashamed. They claim that +the low condition of the parliament's manners is new, not old. A +gentleman who was at the head of the government twenty years ago confirms +this, and says that in his time the parliament was orderly and +well-behaved. An English gentleman of long residence here endorses this, +and says that a low order of politicians originated the present forms of +questionable speech on the stump some years ago, and imported them into +the parliament.[2] However, some day there will be a Minister of +Etiquette and a sergeant-at-arms, and then things will go better. I mean +if parliament and the Constitution survive the present storm. + + +IV.--THE HISTORIC CLIMAX + +During the whole of November things went from bad to worse. The +all-important Ausgleich remained hard aground, and could not be sparred +off. Badeni's government could not withdraw the Language Ordinance and +keep its majority, and the Opposition could not be placated on easier +terms. One night, while the customary pandemonium was crashing and +thundering along at its best, a fight broke out. It was a surging, +struggling, shoulder-to-shoulder scramble. A great many blows were +struck. Twice Schonerer lifted one of the heavy ministerial fauteuils +--some say with one hand--and threatened members of the Majority with it, +but it was wrenched away from him; a member hammered Wolf over the head +with the President's bell, and another member choked him; a professor was +flung down and belaboured with fists and choked; he held up an open +penknife as a defence against the blows; it was snatched from him and +flung to a distance; it hit a peaceful Christian Socialist who wasn't +doing anything, and brought blood from his hand. This was the only blood +drawn. The men who got hammered and choked looked sound and well next +day. The fists and the bell were not properly handled, or better results +would have been apparent. I am quite sure that the fighters were not in +earnest. + +On Thanksgiving Day the sitting was a history-making one. On that day +the harried, bedevilled, and despairing government went insane. In order +to free itself from the thraldom of the Opposition it committed this +curiously juvenile crime; it moved an important change of the Rules of +the House, forbade debate upon the motion, put it to a stand-up vote +instead of ayes and noes, and then gravely claimed that it had been +adopted; whereas, to even the dullest witness--if I without immodesty may +pretend to that place--it was plain that nothing legitimately to be +called a vote had been taken at all. + +I think that Saltpeter never uttered a truer thing than when he said, +'Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.' Evidently the +government's mind was tottering when this bald insults to the House was +the best way it could contrive for getting out of the frying-pan. + +The episode would have been funny if the matter at stake had been a +trifle; but in the circumstances it was pathetic. The usual storm was +raging in the House. As usual, many of the Majority and the most of the +Minority were standing up--to have a better chance to exchange epithets +and make other noises. Into this storm Count Falkenhayn entered, with +his paper in his hand; and at once there was a rush to get near him and +hear him read his motion. In a moment he was walled in by listeners. +The several clauses of his motion were loudly applauded by these allies, +and as loudly disapplauded--if I may invent a word--by such of the +Opposition as could hear his voice. When he took his seat the President +promptly put the motion--persons desiring to vote in the affirmative, +stand up! The House was already standing up; had been standing for an +hour; and before a third of it had found out what the President had been +saying, he had proclaimed the adoption of the motion! And only a few +heard that. In fact, when that House is legislating you can't tell it +from artillery practice. + +You will realise what a happy idea it was to side-track the lawful ayes +and noes and substitute a stand-up vote by this fact: that a little +later, when a deputation of deputies waited upon the President and asked +him if he was actually willing to claim that that measure had been +passed, he answered, 'Yes--and unanimously.' It shows that in effect the +whole House was on its feet when that trick was sprung. + +The 'Lex Falkenhayn,' thus strangely born, gave the President power to +suspend for three days any deputy who should continue to be disorderly +after being called to order twice, and it also placed at his disposal +such force as might be necessary to make the suspension effective. So +the House had a sergeant-at-arms at last, and a more formidable one, as +to power, than any other legislature in Christendom had ever possessed. +The Lex Falkenhayn also gave the House itself authority to suspend +members for thirty days. + +On these terms the Ausgleich could be put through in an hour--apparently. +The Opposition would have to sit meek and quiet, and stop obstructing, or +be turned into the street, deputy after deputy, leaving the Majority an +unvexed field for its work. + +Certainly the thing looked well. The government was out of the +frying-pan at last. It congratulated itself, and was almost girlishly +happy. Its stock rose suddenly from less than nothing to a premium. It +confessed to itself, with pride, that its Lex Falkenhayn was a +master-stroke--a work of genius. + +However, there were doubters--men who were troubled, and believed that a +grave mistake had been made. It might be that the Opposition was +crushed, and profitably for the country, too; but the manner of it--the +manner of it! That was the serious part. It could have far-reaching +results; results whose gravity might transcend all guessing. It might be +the initial step toward a return to government by force, a restoration of +the irresponsible methods of obsolete times. + +There were no vacant seats in the galleries next day. In fact, +standing-room outside the building was at a premium. There were crowds +there, and a glittering array of helmeted and brass-buttoned police, on +foot and on horseback, to keep them from getting too much excited. No +one could guess what was going to happen, but every one felt that +something was going to happen, and hoped he might have a chance to see +it, or at least get the news of it while it was fresh. + +At noon the House was empty--for I do not count myself. Half an hour +later the two galleries were solidly packed, the floor still empty. +Another half-hour later Wolf entered and passed to his place; then other +deputies began to stream in, among them many forms and faces grown +familiar of late. By one o'clock the membership was present in full +force. A band of Socialists stood grouped against the ministerial desks, +in the shadow of the Presidential tribune. It was observable that these +official strongholds were now protected against rushes by bolted gates, +and that these were in ward of servants wearing the House's livery. Also +the removable desk-boards had been taken away, and nothing left for +disorderly members to slat with. + +There was a pervading, anxious hush--at least what stood very well for a +hush in that House. It was believed by many that the Opposition was +cowed, and that there would be no more obstruction, no more noise. That +was an error. + +Presently the President entered by the distant door to the right, +followed by Vice-President Fuchs, and the two took their way down past +the Polish benches toward the tribune. Instantly the customary storm of +noises burst out, and rose higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and +really seemed to surpass anything that had gone before it in that place. +The President took his seat and begged for order, but no one could hear +him. His lips moved--one could see that; he bowed his body forward +appealingly, and spread his great hand eloquently over his breast--one +could see that; but as concerned his uttered words, he probably could not +hear them himself. Below him was that crowd of two dozen Socialists +glaring up at him, shaking their fists at him, roaring imprecations and +insulting epithets at him. This went on for some time. Suddenly the +Socialists burst through the gates and stormed up through the ministerial +benches, and a man in a red cravat reached up and snatched the documents +that lay on the President's desk and flung them abroad. The next moment +he and his allies were struggling and fighting with the half-dozen +uniformed servants who were there to protect the new gates. Meantime a +detail of Socialists had swarmed up the side steps and overflowed the +President and the Vice, and were crowding and shouldering and shoving +them out of the place. They crowded them out, and down the steps and +across the House, past the Polish benches; and all about them swarmed +hostile Poles and Czechs, who resisted them. One could see fists go up +and come down, with other signs and shows of a heady fight; then the +President and the Vice disappeared through the door of entrance, and the +victorious Socialists turned and marched back, mounted the tribune, flung +the President's bell and his remaining papers abroad, and then stood +there in a compact little crowd, eleven strong, and held the place as if +it were a fortress. Their friends on the floor were in a frenzy of +triumph, and manifested it in their deafening way. The whole House was +on its feet, amazed and wondering. + +It was an astonishing situation, and imposingly dramatic. Nobody had +looked for this. The unexpected had happened. What next? But there can +be no next; the play is over; the grand climax is reached; the +possibilities are exhausted; ring down the curtain. + +Not yet. That distant door opens again. And now we see what history +will be talking of five centuries hence: a uniformed and helmeted +battalion of bronzed and stalwart men marching in double file down the +floor of the House--a free parliament profaned by an invasion of brute +force! + +It was an odious spectacle--odious and awful. For one moment it was an +unbelievable thing--a thing beyond all credibility; it must be a +delusion, a dream, a nightmare. But no, it was real--pitifully real, +shamefully real, hideously real. These sixty policemen had been +soldiers, and they went at their work with the cold unsentimentality of +their trade. They ascended the steps of the tribune, laid their hands +upon the inviolable persons of the representatives of a nation, and +dragged and tugged and hauled them down the steps and out at the door; +then ranged themselves in stately military array in front of the +ministerial estrade, and so stood. + +It was a tremendous episode. The memory of it will outlast all the +thrones that exist to-day. In the whole history of free parliaments the +like of it had been seen but three times before. It takes its imposing +place among the world's unforgettable things. It think that in my +lifetime I have not twice seen abiding history made before my eyes, but I +know that I have seen it once. + +Some of the results of this wild freak followed instantly. The Badeni +government came down with a crash; there was a popular outbreak or two in +Vienna; there were three or four days of furious rioting in Prague, +followed by the establishing there of martial law; the Jews and Germans +were harried and plundered, and their houses destroyed; in other Bohemian +towns there was rioting--in some cases the Germans being the rioters, in +others the Czechs--and in all cases the Jew had to roast, no matter which +side he was on. We are well along in December now;[3] the next new +Minister-President has not been able to patch up a peace among the +warring factions of the parliament, therefore there is no use in calling +it together again for the present; public opinion believes that +parliamentary government and the Constitution are actually threatened +with extinction, and that the permanency of the monarchy itself is a not +absolutely certain thing! + +Yes, the Lex Falkenhayn was a great invention, and did what was claimed +for it--it got the government out of the frying-pan. + +[1] That is, revolution. + +[2] 'In that gracious bygone time when a mild and good-tempered spirit +was the atmosphere of our House, when the manner of our speakers was +studiously formal and academic, and the storms and explosions of to-day +were wholly unknown,' etc.--Translation of the opening remark of a +leading article in this morning's 'Neue Freie Presse,' December 11. + +[3] It is the 9th.--M.T. + + + + + + +PRIVATE HISTORY OF THE 'JUMPING FROG' STORY + +Five or six years ago a lady from Finland asked me to tell her a story in +our Negro dialect, so that she could get an idea of what that variety of +speech was like. I told her one of Hopkinson Smith's Negro stories, and +gave her a copy of 'Harper's Monthly' containing it. She translated it +for a Swedish newspaper, but by an oversight named me as the author of it +instead of Smith. I was very sorry for that, because I got a good +lashing in the Swedish press, which would have fallen to his share but +for that mistake; for it was shown that Boccaccio had told that very +story, in his curt and meagre fashion, five hundred years before Smith +took hold of it and made a good and tellable thing out of it. + +I have always been sorry for Smith. But my own turn has come now. A few +weeks ago Professor Van Dyke, of Princeton, asked this question: + +'Do you know how old your "Jumping Frog" story is?' + +And I answered: + +'Yes--forty-five years. The thing happened in Calaveras County, in the +spring of 1849.' + +'No; it happened earlier--a couple of thousand years earlier; it is a +Greek story.' + +I was astonished--and hurt. I said: + +'I am willing to be a literary thief if it has been so ordained; I am +even willing to be caught robbing the ancient dead alongside of Hopkinson +Smith, for he is my friend and a good fellow, and I think would be as +honest as any one if he could do it without occasioning remark; but I am +not willing to antedate his crimes by fifteen hundred years. I must ask +you to knock off part of that.' + +But the professor was not chaffing: he was in earnest, and could not +abate a century. He offered to get the book and send it to me and the +Cambridge text-book containing the English translation also. I thought I +would like the translation best, because Greek makes me tired. January +30th he sent me the English version, and I will presently insert it in +this article. It is my 'Jumping Frog' tale in every essential. It is +not strung out as I have strung it out, but it is all there. + +To me this is very curious and interesting. Curious for several reasons. +For instance: + +I heard the story told by a man who was not telling it to his hearers as +a thing new to them, but as a thing which they had witnessed and would +remember. He was a dull person, and ignorant; he had no gift as a +story-teller, and no invention; in his mouth this episode was merely +history--history and statistics; and the gravest sort of history, too; +he was entirely serious, for he was dealing with what to him were austere +facts, and they interested him solely because they were facts; he was +drawing on his memory, not his mind; he saw no humour in his tale, +neither did his listeners; neither he nor they ever smiled or laughed; in +my time I have not attended a more solemn conference. To him and to his +fellow gold-miners there were just two things in the story that were +worth considering. One was the smartness of its hero, Jim Smiley, in +taking the stranger in with a loaded frog; and the other was Smiley's +deep knowledge of a frog's nature--for he knew (as the narrator asserted +and the listeners conceded) that a frog likes shot and is already ready +to eat it. Those men discussed those two points, and those only. They +were hearty in their admiration of them, and none of the party was aware +that a first-rate story had been told in a first-rate way, and that it +brimful of a quality whose presence they never suspected--humour. + +Now, then, the interesting question is, did the frog episode happen in +Angel's Camp in the spring of '49, as told in my hearing that day in the +fall of 1865? I am perfectly sure that it did. I am also sure that its +duplicate happened in Boeotia a couple of thousand years ago. I think it +must be a case of history actually repeating itself, and not a case of a +good story floating down the ages and surviving because too good to be +allowed to perish. + +I would now like to have the reader examine the Greek story and the story +told by the dull and solemn Californian, and observe how exactly alike +they are in essentials. + + + + +[Translation.] + + +THE ATHENIAN AND THE FROG.[1] + +An Athenian once fell in with a Boeotian who was sitting by the road-side +looking at a frog. Seeing the other approach, the Boeotian said his was +a remarkable frog, and asked if he would agree to start a contest of +frogs, on condition that he whose frog jumped farthest should receive a +large sum of money. The Athenian replied that he would if the other +would fetch him a frog, for the lake was near. To this he agreed, and +when he was gone the Athenian took the frog, and, opening its mouth, +poured some stones into its stomach, so that it did not indeed seem +larger than before, but could not jump. The Boeotian soon returned with +the other frog, and the contest began. The second frog first was +pinched, and jumped moderately; then they pinched the Boeotian frog. And +he gathered himself for a leap, and used the utmost effort, but he could +not move his body the least. So the Athenian departed with the money. +When he was gone the Boeotian, wondering what was the matter with the +frog, lifted him up and examined him. And being turned upside down, he +opened his mouth and vomited out the stones. + + +And here is the way it happened in California: + +FROM 'THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY' + +Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers and chicken cocks, and tom-cats, +and all of them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't +fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you. He ketched a frog +one day, and took him home, and said he cal'lated to educate him; and so +he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn +that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him +a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling +in the air like a doughnut--see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple +if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a +cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep'him in +practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could +see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do +'most anything--and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster +down here on this flor--Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog--and sing +out, 'Flies, Dan'l, flies!' and quicker'n you could wink he'd spring +straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the +floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of +his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd +been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest +and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it +come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more +ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. +Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it +came to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red. +Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers +that had travelled and been everywheres all said he laid over any frog +that ever they see. + +Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch +him down-town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller--a stranger +in the camp, he was--come acrost him with his box, and says: + +'What might it be that you've got in the box?' + +And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, 'It might be a parrot, or it +might be a canary, maybe, but it's ain't--it's only just a frog.' + +And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round +this way and that, and says, 'H'm--so 'tis. Well, what's he good for?' + +'Well,' Smiley says, easy and careless, 'he's good enough for one thing, +I should judge--he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.' + +The feller took the box again and took another long, particular look, and +give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, 'Well,' he says, 'I +don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.' + +'Maybe you don't,' Smiley says. 'Maybe you understand frogs and maybe +you don't understand 'em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you +ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll +resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.' + +And the feller studies a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, 'Well, +I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog, but if I had a frog +I'd bet you.' + +And then Smiley says: 'That's all right--that's all right; if you'll hold +my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog.' And so the feller took the +box and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's and set down to +wait. + +So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then +he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and +filled him full of quail shot--filled him pretty near up to his chin--and +set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in +the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog and fetched him in +and give him to this feller, and says: + +'Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore-paws +just even with Dan'l's, and I'll give the word.' Then he says, 'One +--two--three--git!' and him and the feller touched up the frogs from +behind, and the new frog hopped off lively; but Dan'l give a heave, and +hysted up his shoulders--so--like a Frenchman, but it warn't no use--he +couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn't no +more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised, +and he was disgusted, too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter +was, of course. + +The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at +the door he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder--so--at Dan'l, and +says again, very deliberate: 'Well,' he says, 'I don't see no p'ints +about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.' + +Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long +time, and at last he says, 'I do wonder what in the nation that frog +throw'd off for--I wonder if there ain't something the matter with him +--he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.' And he ketched Dan'l by the +nape of the neck, and hefted him, and says, 'Why, blame my cats if he +don't weigh five pound!' and turned him upside down, and he belched out a +double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the +maddest man--he set the frog down and took out after that feeler, but he +never ketched him. + + +The resemblances are deliciously exact. There you have the wily Boeotain +and the wily Jim Smiley waiting--two thousand years apart--and waiting, +each equipped with his frog and 'laying' for the stranger. A contest is +proposed--for money. The Athenian would take a chance 'if the other +would fetch him a frog'; the Yankee says: 'I'm only a stranger here, and +I ain't got a frog; but if I had a frog I'd bet you.' The wily Boeotian +and the wily Californian, with that vast gulf of two thousand years +between, retire eagerly and go frogging in the marsh; the Athenian and +the Yankee remain behind and work a best advantage, the one with pebbles, +the other with shot. Presently the contest began. In the one case 'they +pinched the Boeotian frog'; in the other, 'him and the feller touched up +the frogs from behind.' The Boeotian frog 'gathered himself for a leap' +(you can just see him!), but 'could not move his body in the least'; the +Californian frog 'give a heave, but it warn't no use--he couldn't budge.' +In both the ancient and the modern cases the strangers departed with the +money. The Boeotian and the Californian wonder what is the matter with +their frogs; they lift them and examine; they turn them upside down and +out spills the informing ballast. + +Yes, the resemblances are curiously exact. I used to tell the story of +the 'Jumping Frog' in San Francisco, and presently Artemus Ward came +along and wanted it to help fill out a little book which he was about to +publish; so I wrote it out and sent it to his publisher, Carleton; but +Carleton thought the book had enough matter in it, so he gave the story +to Henry Clapp as a present, and Clapp put it in his 'Saturday Press,' +and it killed that paper with a suddenness that was beyond praise. At +least the paper died with that issue, and none but envious people have +ever tried to rob me of the honour and credit of killing it. The +'Jumping Frog' was the first piece of writing of mine that spread itself +through the newspapers and brought me into public notice. Consequently, +the 'Saturday Press' was a cocoon and I the worm in it; also, I was the +gay-coloured literary moth which its death set free. This simile has +been used before. + +Early in '66 the 'Jumping Frog' was issued in book form, with other +sketches of mine. A year or two later Madame Blanc translated it into +French and published it in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' but the result +was not what should have been expected, for the 'Revue' struggled along +and pulled through, and is alive yet. I think the fault must have been +in the translation. I ought to have translated it myself. I think so +because I examined into the matter and finally retranslated the sketch +from the French back into English, to see what the trouble was; that is, +to see just what sort of a focus the French people got upon it. Then the +mystery was explained. In French the story is too confused and chaotic +and unreposeful and ungrammatical and insane; consequently it could only +cause grief and sickness--it could not kill. A glance at my +retranslation will show the reader that this must be true. + + + + +[My Retranslation.] + +THE FROG JUMPING OF THE COUNTY OF CALAVERAS + +Eh bien! this Smiley nourished some terriers a rats, and some cocks of +combat, and some cats, and all sorts of things: and with his rage of +betting one no had more of repose. He trapped one day a frog and him +imported with him (et l'emporta chez lui) saying that he pretended to +make his education. You me believe if you will, but during three months +he not has nothing done but to him apprehend to jump (apprendre a sauter) +in a court retired of her mansion (de sa maison). And I you respond that +he have succeeded. He him gives a small blow by behind, and the instant +after you shall see the frog turn in the air like a grease-biscuit, make +one summersault, sometimes two, when she was well started, and refall +upon his feet like a cat. He him had accomplished in the art of to +gobble the flies (gober des mouches), and him there exercised +continually--so well that a fly at the most far that she appeared was a +fly lost. Smiley had custom to say that all which lacked to a frog it +was the education, but with the education she could do nearly all--and I +him believe. Tenez, I him have seen pose Daniel Webster there upon this +plank--Daniel Webster was the name of the frog--and to him sing, 'Some +flies, Daniel, some flies!'--in a fash of the eye Daniel had bounded and +seized a fly here upon the counter, then jumped anew at the earth, where +he rested truly to himself scratch the head with his behind-foot, as if +he no had not the least idea of his superiority. Never you not have seen +frog as modest, as natural, sweet as she was. And when he himself +agitated to jump purely and simply upon plain earth, she does more ground +in one jump than any beast of his species than you can know. + +To jump plain--this was his strong. When he himself agitated for that +Smiley multiplied the bests upon her as long as there to him remained a +red. It must to know, Smiley was monstrously proud of his frog, and he +of it was right, for some men who were travelled, who had all seen, said +that they to him would be injurious to him compare to another frog. +Smiley guarded Daniel in a little box latticed which he carried bytimes +to the village for some bet. + +One day an individual stranger at the camp him arrested with his box and +him said: + +'What is this that you have then shut up there within?' + +Smiley said, with an air indifferent: + +'That could be a paroquet, or a syringe (ou un serin), but this no is +nothing of such, it not is but a frog.' + +The individual it took, it regarded with care, it turned from one side +and from the other, then he said: + +'Tiens! in effect!--At what is she good?' + +'My God!' responded Smiley, always with an air disengaged, 'she is good +for one thing, to my notice (a mon avis), she can better in jumping (elle +peut batter en sautant) all frogs of the county of Calaveras.' + +The individual retook the box, it examined of new longly, and it rendered +to Smiley in saying with an air deliberate: + +'Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each +frog.' (Je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune +grenouille.) [If that isn't grammar gone to seed, then I count myself no +judge.--M.T.] + +'Possible that you not it saw not,' said Smiley; 'possible that you--you +comprehend frogs; possible that you not you there comprehend nothing; +possible that you had of the experience, and possible that you not be but +an amateur. Of all manner (de toute maniere) I bet forty dollars that +she batter in jumping no matter which frog of the country of Calaveras.' + +The individual reflected a second, and said like sad: + +'I not am but a stranger here, I no have not a frog; but if I of it had +one, I would embrace the bet.' + +'Strong, well!' respond Smiley; 'nothing of more facility. If you will +hold my box a minute, I go you to search a frog (j'irai vous chercher.)' + +Behold, then, the individual who guards the box, who puts his forty +dollars upon those of Smiley, and who attends (et qui attendre). He +attended enough longtimes, reflecting all solely. And figure you that he +takes Daniel, him opens the mouth by force and with a teaspoon him fills +with shot of the hunt, even him fills just to the chin, then he him puts +by the earth. Smiley during these times was at slopping in a swamp. +Finally he trapped (attrape) a frog, him carried to that individual, and +said: + +'Now if you be ready, put him all against Daniel, with their before-feet +upon the same line, and I give the signal'--then he added: 'One, two +three--advance!' + +Him and the individual touched their frogs by behind, and the frog new +put to jump smartly, but Daniel himself lifted ponderously, exhalted the +shoulders thus, like a Frenchman--to what good? He could not budge, he +is planted solid like a church, he not advance no more than if one him +had put at the anchor. + +Smiley was surprised and disgusted, but he not himself doubted not of the +turn being intended (mais il ne se doutait pas du tour bien entendre). +The indidivual empocketed the silver, himself with it went, and of it +himself in going is that he no gives not a jerk of thumb over the +shoulder--like that--at the poor Daniel, in saying with his air +deliberate--(L'individu empoche l'argent, s'en va et en s'en allant +est-ce qu'il ne donne pas un coup de pouce pas-dessus l'epaule, comme ca, +au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air delibere). + +'Eh bien! I no see not that that frog has nothing of better than +another.' + +Smiley himself scratched longtimes the head, the eyes fixed upon Daniel, +until that which at last he said: + +'I me demand how the devil it makes itself that this beast has refused. +Is it that she had something? One would believe that she is stuffed.' + +He grasped Daniel by the skin of the neck, him lifted and said: + +'The wolf me bite if he no weigh not five pounds.' + +He him reversed and the unhappy belched two handfuls of shot (et le +malheureux, etc.). When Smiley recognised how it was, he was like mad. +He deposited his frog by the earth and ran after that individual, but he +not him caught never. + + +It may be that there are people who can translate better than I can, but +I am not acquainted with them. + +So ends the private and public history of the Jumping Frog of Calaveras +County, an incident which has this unique feature about it--that it is +both old and new, a 'chestnut' and not a 'chestnut;' for it was original +when it happened two thousand years ago, and was again original when it +happened in California in our own time. + +P.S. + +London, July, 1900.--Twice, recently, I have been asked this question: + +'Have you seen the Greek version of the "Jumping Frog"?' + +And twice I have answered--'No.' + +'Has Professor Van Dyke seen it?' + +'I suppose so.' + +'Then you supposition is at fault.' + +'Why?' + +'Because there isn't any such version.' + +'Do you mean to intimate that the tale is modern, and not borrowed from +some ancient Greek book.' + +'Yes. It is not permissible for any but the very young and innocent to +be so easily beguiled as you and Van Dyke have been.' + +'Do you mean that we have fallen a prey to our ignorance and simplicity?' + +'Yes. Is Van Dyke a Greek scholar?' + +'I believe so.' + +'Then he knew where to find the ancient Greek version if one existed. +Why didn't he look? Why did he jump to conclusions?' + +'I don't know. And was it worth the trouble, anyway?' + +As it turns out, now, it was not claimed that the story had been +translated from the Greek. It had its place among other uncredited +stories, and was there to be turned into Greek by students of that +language. 'Greek Prose Composition'--that title is what made the +confusion. It seemed to mean that the originals were Greek. It was not +well chosen, for it was pretty sure to mislead. + +Thus vanishes the Greek Frog, and I am sorry: for he loomed fine and +grand across the sweep of the ages, and I took a great pride in him. + +M.T. + +[1] Sidgwick, Greek Prose Composition, page 116 + + + + + + + +MY MILITARY CAMPAIGN + +You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war; is +it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started +out to do something in it, but didn't? Thousands entered the war, got +just a taste of it, and then stepped out again, permanently. These, by +their very numbers, are respectable, and are therefore entitled to a sort +of voice--not a loud one, but a modest one; not a boastful one, but an +apologetic one. They ought not to be allowed much space among better +people--people who did something--I grant that; but they ought at least +to be allowed to state why they didn't do anything, and also to explain +the process by which they didn't do anything. Surely this kind of light +must have a sort of value. + +Out West there was a good deal of confusion in men's minds during the +first months of the great trouble--a good deal of unsettledness, of +leaning first this way, then that, then the other way. It was hard for +us to get our bearings. I call to mind an instance of this. I was +piloting on the Mississippi when the news came that South Carolina had +gone out of the Union on December 20, 1860. My pilot-mate was a New +Yorker. He was strong for the Union; so was I. But he would not listen +to me with any patience; my loyalty was smirched, to his eye, because my +father had owned slaves. I said, in palliation of this dark fact, that I +had heard my father say, some years before he died, that slavery was a +great wrong, and that he would free the solitary Negro he then owned if +he could think it right to give away the property of the family when he +was so straitened in means. My mate retorted that a mere impulse was +nothing--anybody could pretend to a good impulse; and went on decrying my +Unionism and libelling my ancestry. A month later the secession +atmosphere had considerably thickened on the Lower Mississippi, and I +became a rebel; so did he. We were together in New Orleans, January 26, +when Louisiana went out of the Union. He did his full share of the rebel +shouting, but was bitterly opposed to letting me do mine. He said that I +came of bad stock--of a father who had been willing to set slaves free. +In the following summer he was piloting a Federal gun-boat and shouting +for the Union again, and I was in the Confederate army. I held his note +for some borrowed money. He was one of the most upright men I ever knew; +but he repudiated that note without hesitation, because I was a rebel, +and the son of a man who had owned slaves. + +In that summer--of 1861--the first wash of the wave of war broke upon the +shores of Missouri. Our State was invaded by the Union forces. They +took possession of St. Louis, Jefferson Barracks, and some other points. +The Governor, Claib Jackson, issued his proclamation calling out fifty +thousand militia to repel the invader. + +I was visiting in the small town where my boyhood had been spent +--Hannibal, Marion County. Several of us got together in a secret place by +night and formed ourselves into a military company. One Tom Lyman, a +young fellow of a good deal of spirit but of no military experience, was +made captain; I was made second lieutenant. We had no first lieutenant; +I do not know why; it was long ago. There were fifteen of us. By the +advice of an innocent connected with the organisation, we called +ourselves the Marion Rangers. I do not remember that any one found fault +with the name. I did not; I thought it sounded quite well. The young +fellow who proposed this title was perhaps a fair sample of the kind of +stuff we were made of. He was young, ignorant, good-natured, +well-meaning, trivial, full of romance, and given to reading chivalric +novels and singing forlorn love-ditties. He had some pathetic little +nickel-plated aristocratic instincts, and detested his name, which was +Dunlap; detested it, partly because it was nearly as common in that +region as Smith, but mainly because it had a plebeian sound to his ear. +So he tried to ennoble it by writing it in this way: d'Unlap. That +contented his eye, but left his ear unsatisfied, for people gave the new +name the same old pronunciation--emphasis on the front end of it. He +then did the bravest thing that can be imagined--a thing to make one +shiver when one remembers how the world is given to resenting shams and +affectations; he began to write his name so: d'Un Lap. And he waited +patiently through the long storm of mud that was flung at this work of +art, and he had his reward at last; for he lived to see that name +accepted, and the emphasis put where he wanted it, by people who had +known him all his life, and to whom the tribe of Dunlaps had been as +familiar as the rain and the sunshine for forty years. So sure of +victory at last is the courage that can wait. He said he had found, by +consulting some ancient French chronicles, that the name was rightly and +originally written d'Un Lap; and said that if it were translated into +English it would mean Peterson: Lap, Latin or Greek, he said, for stone +or rock, same as the French Pierre, that is to say, Peter; d', of or +from; un, a or one; hence d'Un Lap, of or from a stone or a Peter; that +is to say, one who is the son of a stone, the son of a Peter--Peterson. +Our militia company were not learned, and the explanation confused them; +so they called him Peterson Dunlap. He proved useful to us in his way; +he named our camps for us, and he generally struck a name that was 'no +slouch,' as the boys said. + +That is one sample of us. Another was Ed Stevens, son of the town +jeweller,--trim-built, handsome, graceful, neat as a cat; bright, +educated, but given over entirely to fun. There was nothing serious in +life to him. As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of +ours was simply a holiday. I should say that about half of us looked +upon it in the same way; not consciously, perhaps, but unconsciously. +We did not think; we were not capable of it. As for myself, I was full +of unreasoning joy to be done with turning out of bed at midnight and +four in the morning, for a while; grateful to have a change, new scenes, +new occupations, a new interest. In my thoughts that was as far as I +went; I did not go into the details; as a rule one doesn't at +twenty-five. + +Another sample was Smith, the blacksmith's apprentice. This vast donkey +had some pluck, of a slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart; at one +time he would knock a horse down for some impropriety, and at another he +would get homesick and cry. However, he had one ultimate credit to his +account which some of us hadn't: he stuck to the war, and was killed in +battle at last. + +Jo Bowers, another sample, was a huge, good-natured, flax-headed lubber; +lazy, sentimental, full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature; an +experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar, +and yet not a successful one, for he had had no intelligent training, but +was allowed to come up just any way. This life was serious enough to +him, and seldom satisfactory. But he was a good fellow, anyway, and the +boys all liked him. He was made orderly sergeant; Stevens was made +corporal. + +These samples will answer--and they are quite fair ones. Well, this herd +of cattle started for the war. What could you expect of them? They did +as well as they knew how, but really what was justly to be expected of +them? Nothing, I should say. That is what they did. + +We waited for a dark night, for caution and secrecy were necessary; then, +toward midnight, we stole in couples and from various directions to the +Griffith place, beyond the town; from that point we set out together on +foot. Hannibal lies at the extreme south-eastern corner of Marion +County, on the Mississippi River; our objective point was the hamlet of +New London, ten miles away, in Ralls County. + +The first hour was all fun, all idle nonsense and laughter. But that +could not be kept up. The steady trudging came to be like work; the play +had somehow oozed out of it; the stillness of the woods and the +sombreness of the night began to throw a depressing influence over the +spirits of the boys, and presently the talking died out and each person +shut himself up in his own thoughts. During the last half of the second +hour nobody said a word. + +Now we approached a log farm-house where, according to report, there was +a guard of five Union soldiers. Lyman called a halt; and there, in the +deep gloom of the overhanging branches, he began to whisper a plan of +assault upon that house, which made the gloom more depressing than it was +before. It was a crucial moment; we realised, with a cold suddenness, +that here was no jest--we were standing face to face with actual war. We +were equal to the occasion. In our response there was no hesitation, no +indecision: we said that if Lyman wanted to meddle with those soldiers, +he could go ahead and do it; but if he waited for us to follow him, he +would wait a long time. + +Lyman urged, pleaded, tried to shame us, but it had no effect. Our +course was plain, our minds were made up: we would flank the farmhouse +--go out around. And that is what we did. We turned the position. + +We struck into the woods and entered upon a rough time, stumbling over +roots, getting tangled in vines, and torn by briers. At last we reached +an open place in a safe region, and sat down, blown and hot, to cool off +and nurse our scratches and bruises. Lyman was annoyed, but the rest of +us were cheerful; we had flanked the farm-house, we had made our first +military movement, and it was a success; we had nothing to fret about, we +were feeling just the other way. Horse-play and laughing began again; +the expedition was become a holiday frolic once more. + +Then we had two more hours of dull trudging and ultimate silence and +depression; then, about dawn, we straggled into New London, soiled, +heel-blistered, fagged with our little march, and all of us except +Stevens in a sour and raspy humour and privately down on the war. We +stacked our shabby old shot-guns in Colonel Ralls's barn, and then went +in a body and breakfasted with that veteran of the Mexican War. +Afterwards he took us to a distant meadow, and there in the shade of a +tree we listened to an old-fashioned speech from him, full of gunpowder +and glory, full of that adjective-piling, mixed metaphor, and windy +declamation which was regarded as eloquence in that ancient time and that +remote region; and then he swore us on the Bible to be faithful to the +State of Missouri and drive all invaders from her soil, no matter whence +they might come or under what flag they might march. This mixed us +considerably, and we could not make out just what service we were +embarked in; but Colonel Ralls, the practised politician and +phrase-juggler, was not similarly in doubt; he knew quite clearly that he +had invested us in the cause of the Southern Confederacy. He closed the +solemnities by belting around me the sword which his neighbour, colonel +Brown, had worn at Buena Vista and Molino del Rey; and he accompanied +this act with another impressive blast. + +Then we formed in line of battle and marched four miles to a shady and +pleasant piece of woods on the border of the far-reached expanses of a +flowery prairie. It was an enchanting region for war--our kind of war. + +We pierced the forest about half a mile, and took up a strong position, +with some low, rocky, and wooded hills behind us, and a purling, limpid +creek in front. Straightway half the command were in swimming, and the +other half fishing. The ass with the French name gave this position a +romantic title, but it was too long, so the boys shortened and simplified +it to Camp Ralls. + +We occupied an old maple-sugar camp, whose half-rotted troughs were still +propped against the trees. A long corn-crib served for sleeping quarters +for the battalion. On our left, half a mile away, was Mason's farm and +house; and he was a friend to the cause. Shortly after noon the farmers +began to arrive from several directions, with mules and horses for our +use, and these they lent us for as long as the war might last, which they +judged would be about three months. The animals were of all sizes, all +colours, and all breeds. They were mainly young and frisky, and nobody +in the command could stay on them long at a time; for we were town boys, +and ignorant of horsemanship. The creature that fell to my share was a +very small mule, and yet so quick and active that it could throw me +without difficulty; and it did this whenever I got on it. Then it would +bray--stretching its neck out, laying its ears back, and spreading its +jaws till you could see down to its works. It was a disagreeable animal, +in every way. If I took it by the bridle and tried to lead it off the +grounds, it would sit down and brace back, and no one could budge it. +However, I was not entirely destitute of military resources, and I did +presently manage to spoil this game; for I had seen many a steam-boat +aground in my time, and knew a trick or two which even a grounded mule +would be obliged to respect. There was a well by the corn-crib; so I +substituted thirty fathom of rope for the bridle, and fetched him home +with the windlass. + +I will anticipate here sufficiently to say that we did learn to ride, +after some days' practice, but never well. We could not learn to like +our animals; they were not choice ones, and most of them had annoying +peculiarities of one kind or another. Stevens's horse would carry him, +when he was not noticing, under the huge excrescences which form on the +trunks of oak-trees, and wipe him out of the saddle; in this way Stevens +got several bad hurts. Sergeant Bowers's horse was very large and tall, +with slim, long legs, and looked like a railroad bridge. His size +enabled him to reach all about, and as far as he wanted to, with his +head; so he was always biting Bowers's legs. On the march, in the sun, +Bowers slept a good deal; and as soon as the horse recognised that he was +asleep he would reach around and bite him on the leg. His legs were +black and blue with bites. This was the only thing that could ever make +him swear, but this always did; whenever the horse bit him he always +swore, and of course Stevens, who laughed at everything, laughed at this, +and would even get into such convulsions over it as to lose his balance +and fall off his horse; and then Bowers, already irritated by the pain of +the horse-bite, would resent the laughter with hard language, and there +would be a quarrel; so that horse made no end of trouble and bad blood in +the command. + +However, I will get back to where I was--our first afternoon in the +sugar-camp. The sugar-troughs came very handy as horse-troughs, and we +had plenty of corn to fill them with. I ordered Sergeant Bowers to feed +my mule; but he said that if I reckoned he went to war to be dry-nurse to +a mule, it wouldn't take me very long to find out my mistake. I believed +that this was insubordination, but I was full of uncertainties about +everything military, and so I let the thing pass, and went and ordered +Smith, the blacksmith's apprentice, to feed the mule; but he merely gave +me a large, cold, sarcastic grin, such as an ostensibly seven-year-old +horse gives you when you lift his lip and find he is fourteen, and turned +his back on me. I then went to the captain, and asked if it was not +right and proper and military for me to have an orderly. He said it was, +but as there was only one orderly in the corps, it was but right that he +himself should have Bowers on his staff. Bowers said he wouldn't serve +on anybody's staff; and if anybody thought he could make him, let him try +it. So, of course, the thing had to be dropped; there was no other way. + +Next, nobody would cook; it was considered a degradation; so we had no +dinner. We lazied the rest of the pleasant afternoon away, some dozing +under the trees, some smoking cob-pipes and talking sweethearts and war, +some playing games. By late supper-time all hands were famished; and to +meet the difficulty all hands turned to, on an equal footing, and +gathered wood, built fires, and cooked the meal. Afterward everything +was smooth for a while; then trouble broke out between the corporal and +the sergeant, each claiming to rank the other. Nobody knew which was the +higher office; so Lyman had to settle the matter by making the rank of +both officers equal. The commander of an ignorant crew like that has +many troubles and vexations which probably do not occur in the regular +army at all. However, with the song-singing and yarn-spinning around the +camp-fire, everything presently became serene again; and by-and-by we +raked the corn down level in one end of the crib, and all went to bed on +it, tying a horse to the door, so that he would neigh if any one tried to +get in.[1] + +We had some horsemanship drill every forenoon; then, afternoons, we rode +off here and there in squads a few miles, and visited the farmers' girls, +and had a youthful good time, and got an honest good dinner or supper, +and then home again to camp, happy and content. + +For a time, life was idly delicious, it was perfect; there was nothing to +mar it. Then came some farmers with an alarm one day. They said it was +rumoured that the enemy were advancing in our direction, from over Hyde's +prairie. The result was a sharp stir among us, and general +consternation. It was a rude awakening from our pleasant trance. The +rumour was but a rumour--nothing definite about it; so, in the confusion, +we did not know which way to retreat. Lyman was for not retreating at +all, in these uncertain circumstances; but he found that if he tried to +maintain that attitude he would fare badly, for the command were in no +humour to put up with insubordination. So he yielded the point and +called a council of war--to consist of himself and the three other +officers; but the privates made such a fuss about being left out, that we +had to allow them to remain, for they were already present, and doing the +most of the talking too. The question was, which way to retreat; but all +were so flurried that nobody seemed to have even a guess to offer. +Except Lyman. He explained in a few calm words, that inasmuch as the +enemy were approaching from over Hyde's prairie, our course was simple: +all we had to do was not to retreat toward him; any other direction would +answer our needs perfectly. Everybody saw in a moment how true this was, +and how wise; so Lyman got a great many compliments. It was now decided +that we should fall back upon Mason's farm. + +It was after dark by this time, and as we could not know how soon the +enemy might arrive, it did not seem best to try to take the horses and +things with us; so we only took the guns and ammunition, and started at +once. The route was very rough and hilly and rocky, and presently the +night grew very black and rain began to fall; so we had a troublesome +time of it, struggling and stumbling along in the dark; and soon some +person slipped and fell, and then the next person behind stumbled over +him and fell, and so did the rest, one after the other; and then Bowers +came with the keg of powder in his arms, whilst the command were all +mixed together, arms and legs, on the muddy slope; and so he fell, of +course, with the keg, and this started the whole detachment down the hill +in a body, and they landed in the brook at the bottom in a pile, and each +that was undermost pulling the hair and scratching and biting those that +were on top of him; and those that were being scratched and bitten, +scratching and biting the rest in their turn, and all saying they would +die before they would ever go to war again if they ever got out of this +brook this time, and the invader might rot for all they cared, and the +country along with them--and all such talk as that, which was dismal to +hear and take part in, in such smothered, low voices, and such a grisly +dark place and so wet, and the enemy maybe coming any moment. + +The keg of powder was lost, and the guns too; so the growling and +complaining continued straight along whilst the brigade pawed around the +pasty hillside and slopped around in the brook hunting for these things; +consequently we lost considerable time at this; and then we heard a +sound, and held our breath and listened, and it seemed to be the enemy +coming, though it could have been a cow, for it had a cough like a cow; +but we did not wait, but left a couple of guns behind and struck out for +Mason's again as briskly as we could scramble along in the dark. But we +got lost presently among the rugged little ravines, and wasted a deal of +time finding the way again, so it was after nine when we reached Mason's +stile at last; and then before we could open our mouths to give the +countersign, several dogs came bounding over the fence, with great riot +and noise, and each of them took a soldier by the slack of his trousers +and began to back away with him. We could not shoot the dogs without +endangering the persons they were attached to; so we had to look on, +helpless, at what was perhaps the most mortifying spectacle of the civil +war. There was light enough, and to spare, for the Masons had now run +out on the porch with candles in their hands. The old man and his son +came and undid the dogs without difficulty, all but Bowers's; but they +couldn't undo his dog, they didn't know his combination; he was of the +bull kind, and seemed to be set with a Yale time-lock; but they got him +loose at last with some scalding water, of which Bowers got his share and +returned thanks. Peterson Dunlap afterwards made up a fine name for this +engagement, and also for the night march which preceded it, but both have +long ago faded out of my memory. + +We now went into the house, and they began to ask us a world of +questions, whereby it presently came out that we did not know anything +concerning who or what we were running from; so the old gentleman made +himself very frank, and said we were a curious breed of soldiers, and +guessed we could be depended on to end up the war in time, because no +Government could stand the expense of the shoe-leather we should cost it +trying to follow us around. 'Marion Rangers! good name, b'gosh!' said +he. And wanted to know why we hadn't had a picket-guard at the place +where the road entered the prairie, and why we hadn't sent out a scouting +party to spy out the enemy and bring us an account of his strength, and +so on, before jumping up and stampeding out of a strong position upon a +mere vague rumour--and so on, and so forth, till he made us all fell +shabbier than the dogs had done, and not half so enthusiastically +welcome. So we went to bed shamed and low-spirited; except Stevens. +Soon Stevens began to devise a garment for Bowers which could be made to +automatically display his battle-scars to the grateful, or conceal them +from the envious, according to his occasions; but Bowers was in no humour +for this, so there was a fight, and when it was over Stevens had some +battle-scars of his own to think about. + +Then we got a little sleep. But after all we had gone through, our +activities were not over for the night; for about two o'clock in the +morning we heard a shout of warning from down the lane, accompanied by a +chorus from all the dogs, and in a moment everybody was up and flying +around to find out what the alarm was about. The alarmist was a horseman +who gave notice that a detachment of Union soldiers was on its way from +Hannibal with orders to capture and hang any bands like ours which it +could find, and said we had no time to lose. Farmer Mason was in a +flurry this time, himself. He hurried us out of the house with all +haste, and sent one of his negroes with us to show us where to hide +ourselves and our tell-tale guns among the ravines half a mile away. It +was raining heavily. + +We struck down the lane, then across some rocky pasture-land which +offered good advantages for stumbling; consequently we were down in the +mud most of the time, and every time a man went down he blackguarded the +war, and the people who started it, and everybody connected with it, and +gave himself the master dose of all for being so foolish as to go into +it. At last we reached the wooded mouth of a ravine, and there we +huddled ourselves under the streaming trees, and sent the negro back +home. It was a dismal and heart-breaking time. We were like to be +drowned with the rain, deafened with the howling wind and the booming +thunder, and blinded by the lightning. It was indeed a wild night. The +drenching we were getting was misery enough, but a deeper misery still +was the reflection that the halter might end us before we were a day +older. A death of this shameful sort had not occurred to us as being +among the possibilities of war. It took the romance all out of the +campaign, and turned our dreams of glory into a repulsive nightmare. As +for doubting that so barbarous an order had been given, not one of us did +that. + +The long night wore itself out at last, and then the negro came to us +with the news that the alarm had manifestly been a false one, and that +breakfast would soon be ready. Straightway we were light-hearted again, +and the world was bright, and life as full of hope and promise as ever +--for we were young then. How long ago that was! Twenty-four years. + +The mongrel child of philology named the night's refuse Camp Devastation, +and no soul objected. The Masons gave us a Missouri country breakfast, +in Missourian abundance, and we needed it: hot biscuits; hot 'wheat +bread' prettily criss-crossed in a lattice pattern on top; hot corn pone; +fried chicken; bacon, coffee, eggs, milk, buttermilk, etc.;--and the +world may be confidently challenged to furnish the equal to such a +breakfast, as it is cooked in the South. + +We stayed several days at Mason's; and after all these years the memory +of the dullness, the stillness and lifelessness of that slumberous +farm-house still oppresses my spirit as with a sense of the presence of +death and mourning. There was nothing to do, nothing to think about; +there was no interest in life. The male part of the household were away +in the fields all day, the women were busy and out of our sight; there +was no sound but the plaintive wailing of a spinning-wheel, forever +moaning out from some distant room--the most lonesome sound in nature, a +sound steeped and sodden with homesickness and the emptiness of life. +The family went to bed about dark every night, and as we were not invited +to intrude any new customs, we naturally followed theirs. Those nights +were a hundred years long to youths accustomed to being up till twelve. +We lay awake and miserable till that hour every time, and grew old and +decrepit waiting through the still eternities for the clock-strikes. This +was no place for town boys. So at last it was with something very like +joy that we received news that the enemy were on our track again. With a +new birth of the old warrior spirit, we sprang to our places in line of +battle and fell back on Camp Ralls. + +Captain Lyman had taken a hint from Mason's talk, and he now gave ordered +that our camp should be guarded against surprise by the posting of +pickets. I was ordered to place a picket at the forks of the road in +Hyde's prairie. Night shut down black and threatening. I told Sergeant +Bowers to go out to that place and stay till midnight; and, just as I was +expecting, he said he wouldn't do it. I tried to get others to go, but +all refused. Some excused themselves on account of the weather; but the +rest were frank enough to say they wouldn't go in any kind of weather. +This kind of thing sounds odd now, and impossible, but it seemed a +perfectly natural thing to do. There were scores of little camps +scattered over Missouri where the same thing was happening. These camps +were composed of young men who had been born and reared to a sturdy +independence, and who did not know what it meant to be ordered around by +Tom, Dick, and Harry, whom they had known familiarly all their lives, in +the village or on the farm. It is quite within the probabilities that +this same thing was happening all over the South. James Redpath +recognised the justice of this assumption, and furnished the following +instance in support of it. During a short stay in East Tennessee he was +in a citizen colonel's tent one day, talking, when a big private appeared +at the door, and without salute or other circumlocution said to the +colonel: + +'Say, Jim, I'm a-goin' home for a few days.' + +'What for?' + +'Well, I hain't b'en there for a right smart while, and I'd like to see +how things is comin' on.' + +'How long are you going to be gone?' + +''Bout two weeks.' + +'Well don't be gone longer than that; and get back sooner if you can.' + +That was all, and the citizen officer resumed his conversation where the +private had broken it off. This was in the first months of the war, of +course. The camps in our part of Missouri were under Brigadier-General +Thomas H. Harris. He was a townsman of ours, a first-rate fellow, and +well liked; but we had all familiarly known him as the sole and +modest-salaried operator in our telegraph office, where he had to send +about one dispatch a week in ordinary times, and two when there was a +rush of business; consequently, when he appeared in our midst one day, on +the wing, and delivered a military command of some sort, in a large +military fashion, nobody was surprised at the response which he got from +the assembled soldiery: + +'Oh, now, what'll you take to don't, Tom Harris!' + +It was quite the natural thing. One might justly imagine that we were +hopeless material for war. And so we seemed, in our ignorant state; but +there were those among us who afterward learned the grim trade; learned +to obey like machines; became valuable soldiers; fought all through the +war, and came out at the end with excellent records. One of the very +boys who refused to go out on picket duty that night, and called me an +ass for thinking he would expose himself to danger in such a foolhardy +way, had become distinguished for intrepidity before he was a year older. + +I did secure my picket that night--not by authority, but by diplomacy. I +got Bowers to go, by agreeing to exchange ranks with him for the time +being, and go along and stand the watch with him as his subordinate. We +stayed out there a couple of dreary hours in the pitchy darkness and the +rain, with nothing to modify the dreariness but Bowers's monotonous +growlings at the war and the weather; then we began to nod, and presently +found it next to impossible to stay in the saddle; so we gave up the +tedious job, and went back to the camp without waiting for the relief +guard. We rode into camp without interruption or objection from anybody, +and the enemy could have done the same, for there were no sentries. +Everybody was asleep; at midnight there was nobody to send out another +picket, so none was sent. We never tried to establish a watch at night +again, as far as I remember, but we generally kept a picket out in the +daytime. + +In that camp the whole command slept on the corn in the big corn-crib; +and there was usually a general row before morning, for the place was +full of rats, and they would scramble over the boys' bodies and faces, +annoying and irritating everybody; and now and then they would bite some +one's toe, and the person who owned the toe would start up and magnify +his English and begin to throw corn in the dark. The ears were half as +heavy as bricks, and when they struck they hurt. The persons struck +would respond, and inside of five minutes every man would be locked in a +death-grip with his neighbour. There was a grievous deal of blood shed +in the corn-crib, but this was all that was spilt while I was in the war. +No, that is not quite true. But for one circumstance it would have been +all. I will come to that now. + +Our scares were frequent. Every few days rumours would come that the +enemy were approaching. In these cases we always fell back on some other +camp of ours; we never stayed where we were. But the rumours always +turned out to be false; so at last even we began to grow indifferent to +them. One night a negro was sent to our corn-crib with the same old +warning: the enemy was hovering in our neighbourhood. We all said let +him hover. We resolved to stay still and be comfortable. It was a fine +warlike resolution, and no doubt we all felt the stir of it in our veins +--for a moment. We had been having a very jolly time, that was full of +horse-play and school-boy hilarity; but that cooled down now, and +presently the fast-waning fire of forced jokes and forced laughs died out +altogether, and the company became silent. Silent and nervous. And soon +uneasy--worried--apprehensive. We had said we would stay, and we were +committed. We could have been persuaded to go, but there was nobody +brave enough to suggest it. An almost noiseless movement presently began +in the dark, by a general and unvoiced impulse. When the movement was +completed, each man knew that he was not the only person who had crept to +the front wall and had his eye at a crack between the logs. No, we were +all there; all there with our hearts in our throats, and staring out +toward the sugar-troughs where the forest foot-path came through. It was +late, and there was a deep woodsy stillness everywhere. There was a +veiled moonlight, which was only just strong enough to enable us to mark +the general shape of objects. Presently a muffled sound caught our ears, +and we recognised it as the hoof-beats of a horse or horses. And right +away a figure appeared in the forest path; it could have been made of +smoke, its mass had so little sharpness of outline. It was a man on +horseback; and it seemed to me that there were others behind him. I got +hold of a gun in the dark, and pushed it through a crack between the +logs, hardly knowing what I was doing, I was so dazed with fright. +Somebody said 'Fire!' I pulled the trigger. I seemed to see a hundred +flashes and hear a hundred reports, then I saw the man fall down out of +the saddle. My first feeling was of surprised gratification; my first +impulse was an apprentice-sportsman's impulse to run and pick up his +game. Somebody said, hardly audibly, 'Good--we've got him!--wait for the +rest.' But the rest did not come. There was not a sound, not the +whisper of a leaf; just perfect stillness; an uncanny kind of stillness, +which was all the more uncanny on account of the damp, earthy, late-night +smells now rising and pervading it. Then, wondering, we crept stealthily +out, and approached the man. When we got to him the moon revealed him +distinctly. He was lying on his back, with his arms abroad; his mouth +was open and his chest heaving with long gasps, and his white shirt-front +was all splashed with blood. The thought shot through me that I was a +murderer; that I had killed a man--a man who had never done me any harm. +That was the coldest sensation that ever went through my marrow. I was +down by him in a moment, helplessly stroking his forehead; and I would +have given anything then--my own life freely--to make him again what he +had been five minutes before. And all the boys seemed to be feeling in +the same way; they hung over him, full of pitying interest, and tried all +they could to help him, and said all sorts of regretful things. They had +forgotten all about the enemy; they thought only of this one forlorn unit +of the foe. Once my imagination persuaded me that the dying man gave me +a reproachful look out of his shadowy eyes, and it seemed to me that I +would rather he had stabbed me than done that. He muttered and mumbled +like a dreamer in his sleep, about his wife and child; and I thought with +a new despair, 'This thing that I have done does not end with him; it +falls upon them too, and they never did me any harm, any more than he.' + +In a little while the man was dead. He was killed in war; killed in fair +and legitimate war; killed in battle, as you might say; and yet he was as +sincerely mourned by the opposing force as if he had been their brother. +The boys stood there a half hour sorrowing over him, and recalling the +details of the tragedy, and wondering who he might be, and if he were a +spy, and saying that if it were to do over again they would not hurt him +unless he attacked them first. It soon came out that mine was not the +only shot fired; there were five others--a division of the guilt which +was a grateful relief to me, since it in some degree lightened and +diminished the burden I was carrying. There were six shots fired at +once; but I was not in my right mind at the time, and my heated +imagination had magnified my one shot into a volley. + +The man was not in uniform, and was not armed. He was a stranger in the +country; that was all we ever found out about him. The thought of him +got to preying upon me every night; I could not get rid of it. I could +not drive it away, the taking of that unoffending life seemed such a +wanton thing. And it seemed an epitome of war; that all war must be just +that--the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal +animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you +found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it. My +campaign was spoiled. It seemed to me that I was not rightly equipped +for this awful business; that war was intended for men, and I for a +child's nurse. I resolved to retire from this avocation of sham +soldiership while I could save some remnant of my self-respect. These +morbid thoughts clung to me against reason; for at bottom I did not +believe I had touched that man. The law of probabilities decreed me +guiltless of his blood; for in all my small experience with guns I had +never hit anything I had tried to hit, and I knew I had done my best to +hit him. Yet there was no solace in the thought. Against a diseased +imagination, demonstration goes for nothing. + +The rest of my war experience was of a piece with what I have already +told of it. We kept monotonously falling back upon one camp or another, +and eating up the country--I marvel now at the patience of the farmers +and their families. They ought to have shot us; on the contrary, they +were as hospitably kind and courteous to us as if we had deserved it. +In one of these camps we found Ab Grimes, an Upper Mississippi pilot, who +afterwards became famous as a dare-devil rebel spy, whose career bristled +with desperate adventures. The look and style of his comrades suggested +that they had not come into the war to play, and their deeds made good +the conjecture later. They were fine horsemen and good revolver-shots; +but their favourite arm was the lasso. Each had one at his pommel, and +could snatch a man out of the saddle with it every time, on a full +gallop, at any reasonable distance. + +In another camp the chief was a fierce and profane old blacksmith of +sixty, and he had furnished his twenty recruits with gigantic home-made +bowie-knives, to be swung with the two hands, like the machetes of the +Isthmus. It was a grisly spectacle to see that earnest band practising +their murderous cuts and slashes under the eye of that remorseless old +fanatic. + +The last camp which we fell back upon was in a hollow near the village of +Florida, where I was born--in Monroe County. Here we were warned, one +day, that a Union colonel was sweeping down on us with a whole regiment +at his heels. This looked decidedly serious. Our boys went apart and +consulted; then we went back and told the other companies present that +the war was a disappointment to us and we were going to disband. They +were getting ready, themselves, to fall back on some place or other, and +were only waiting for General Tom Harris, who was expected to arrive at +any moment; so they tried to persuade us to wait a little while, but the +majority of us said no, we were accustomed to falling back, and didn't +need any of Tom Harris's help; we could get along perfectly well without +him and save time too. So about half of our fifteen, including myself, +mounted and left on the instant; the others yielded to persuasion and +stayed--stayed through the war. + +An hour later we met General Harris on the road, with two or three people +in his company--his staff, probably, but we could not tell; none of them +was in uniform; uniforms had not come into vogue among us yet. Harris +ordered us back; but we told him there was a Union colonel coming with a +whole regiment in his wake, and it looked as if there was going to be a +disturbance; so we had concluded to go home. He raged a little, but it +was of no use; our minds were made up. We had done our share; had killed +one man, exterminated one army, such as it was; let him go and kill the +rest, and that would end the war. I did not see that brisk young general +again until last year; then he was wearing white hair and whiskers. + +In time I came to know that Union colonel whose coming frightened me out +of the war and crippled the Southern cause to that extent--General Grant. +I came within a few hours of seeing him when he was as unknown as I was +myself; at a time when anybody could have said, 'Grant?--Ulysses S. +Grant? I do not remember hearing the name before.' It seems difficult +to realise that there was once a time when such a remark could be +rationally made; but there was, and I was within a few miles of the place +and the occasion too, though proceeding in the other direction. + +The thoughtful will not throw this war-paper of mine lightly aside as +being valueless. It has this value: it is a not unfair picture of what +went on in many and many a militia camp in the first months of the +rebellion, when the green recruits were without discipline, without the +steadying and heartening influence or trained leaders; when all their +circumstances were new and strange, and charged with exaggerated terrors, +and before the invaluable experience of actual collision in the field had +turned them from rabbits into soldiers. If this side of the picture of +that early day has not before been put into history, then history has +been to that degree incomplete, for it had and has its rightful place +there. There was more Bull Run material scattered through the early +camps of this country than exhibited itself at Bull Run. And yet it +learned its trade presently, and helped to fight the great battles later. +I could have become a soldier myself, if I had waited. I had got part of +it learned; I knew more about retreating than the man that invented +retreating. + +[1] It was always my impression that that was what the horse was there +for, and I know that it was also the impression of at least one other of +the command, for we talked about it at the time, and admired the military +ingenuity of the device; but when I was out West three years ago I was +told by Mr. A. G. Fuqua, a member of our company, that the horse was his, +that the leaving him tied at the door was a matter of mere forgetfulness, +and that to attribute it to intelligent invention was to give him quite +too much credit. In support of his position, he called my attention to +the suggestive fact that the artifice was not employed again. I had not +thought of that before. + + + + + + +MEISTERSCHAFT + +IN THREE ACTS [1] + + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE: + +MR. STEPHENSON. MARGARET STEPHENSON. +GEORGE FRANKLIN. ANNIE STEPHENSON. +WILLIAM JACKSON. MRS. BLUMENTHAL, the Wirthin. +GRETCHEN, Kellnerin + + + +ACT I. SCENE I. + +Scene of the play, the parlour of a small private dwelling in a village. +(MARGARET discovered crocheting--has a pamphlet.) + +MARGARET. (Solus.) Dear, dear! it's dreary enough, to have to study +this impossible German tongue: to be exiled from home and all human +society except a body's sister in order to do it, is just simply +abscheulich. Here's only three weeks of the three months gone, and it +seems like three years. I don't believe I can live through it, and I'm +sure Annie can't. (Refers to her book, and rattles through, several +times, like one memorising:) Entschuldigen Sie, mein Herr, konnen Sie +mir vielleicht sagen, um wie viel Uhr der erste Zug nach Dresden abgeht? +(Makes mistakes and corrects them.) I just hate Meisterschaft! We may +see people; we can have society; yes, on condition that the conversation +shall be in German, and in German only--every single word of it! Very +kind--oh, very! when neither Annie nor I can put two words together, +except as they are put together for us in Meisterschaft or that idiotic +Ollendorff! (Refers to book, and memorises: Mein Bruder hat Ihren Herrn +Vater nicht gesehen, als er gestern in dem Laden des deutschen Kaufmannes +war.) Yes, we can have society, provided we talk German. What would +conversation be like! If you should stick to Meisterschaft, it would +change the subject every two minutes; and if you stuck to Ollendorff, it +would be all about your sister's mother's good stocking of thread, or +your grandfather's aunt's good hammer of the carpenter, and who's got it, +and there an end. You couldn't keep up your interest in such topics. +(Memorising: Wenn irgend moglich--mochte ich noch heute Vormittag +Geschaftsfreunde zu treffen.) My mind is made up to one thing: I will be +an exile, in spirit and in truth: I will see no one during these three +months. Father is very ingenious--oh, very! thinks he is, anyway. +Thinks he has invented a way to force us to learn to speak German. He is +a dear good soul, and all that; but invention isn't his fach'. He will +see. (With eloquent energy.) Why, nothing in the world shall--Bitte, +konnen Sie mir vielleicht sagen, ob Herr Schmidt mit diesem Zuge +angekommen ist? Oh, dear, dear George--three weeks! It seems a whole +century since I saw him. I wonder if he suspects that I--that I--care +for him--j-just a wee, wee bit? I believe he does. And I believe Will +suspects that Annie cares for him a little, that I do. And I know +perfectly well that they care for us. They agree with all our opinions, +no matter what they are; and if they have a prejudice, they change it, as +soon as they see how foolish it is. Dear George! at first he just +couldn't abide cats; but now, why now he's just all for cats; he fairly +welters in cats. I never saw such a reform. And it's just so with all +his principles: he hasn't got one that he had before. Ah, if all men +were like him, this world would--(Memorising: Im Gegentheil, mein Herr, +dieser Stoff ist sehr billig. Bitte, sehen Sie sich nur die Qualitat +an.) Yes, and what did they go to studying German for, if it wasn't an +inspiration of the highest and purest sympathy? Any other explanation is +nonsense--why, they'd as soon have thought of studying American history. + +[Turns her back, buries herself in her pamphlet, first memorising aloud, +until Annie enters, then to herself, rocking to and fro, and rapidly +moving her lips, without uttering a sound.] + +Enter ANNIE, absorbed in her pamphlet--does not at first see MARGARET. + +ANNIE. (Memorising: Er liess mich gestern fruh rufen, und sagte mir dass +er einen sehr unangenehmen Brief von Ihrem Lehrer erhalten hatte. +Repeats twice aloud, then to herself, briskly moving her lips.) + +M. (Still not seeing her sister.) Wie geht es Ihrem Herrn Schwiegervater? +Es freut mich sehr dass Ihre Frau Mutter wieder wohl ist. (Repeats. +Then mouths in silence.) + +A. (Repeats her sentence a couple of times aloud; then looks up, working +her lips, and discovers Margaret.) Oh, you here? (Running to her.) O +lovey-dovey, dovey-lovey, I've got the gr-reatest news! Guess, guess, +guess! You'll never guess in a hundred thousand million years--and more! + +M. Oh, tell me, tell me, dearie; don't keep me in agony. + +A. Well I will. What--do--you--think? They're here! + +M. Wh-a-t! Who? When? Which? Speak! + +A. Will and George! + +M. Annie Alexandra Victoria Stephenson, what do you mean? + +A. As sure as guns! + +M. (Spasmodically embracing and kissing her.) 'Sh! don't use such +language. O darling, say it again! + +A. As sure as guns! + +M. I don't mean that! Tell me again, that-- + +A. (Springing up and waltzing about the room.) They're here--in this +very village--to learn German--for three months! Es sollte mich sehr +freuen wenn Sie-- + +M. (Joining in the dance.) Oh, it's just too lovely for anything! +(Unconsciously memorising:) Es ware mir lieb wenn Sie morgen mit mir in +die Kirche gehen konnten, aber ich kann selbst nicht gehen, weil ich +Sonntags gewohnlich krank bin. Juckhe! + +A. (Finishing some unconscious memorising.)--morgen Mittag bei mir +speisen konnten. Juckhe! Sit down and I'll tell you all I've heard. +(They sit.) They're here, and under that same odious law that fetters us +--our tongues, I mean; the metaphor's faulty, but no matter. They can go +out, and see people, only on condition that they hear and speak German, +and German only. + +M. Isn't--that--too lovely! + +A. And they're coming to see us! + +M. Darling! (Kissing her.) But are you sure? + +A. Sure as guns--Gatling guns! + +M. 'Sh! don't, child, it's schrecklich! Darling--you aren't mistaken? + +A. As sure as g--batteries! [They jump up and dance a moment--then--] + +M. (With distress.) But, Annie dear!--we can't talk German--and neither +can they! + +A. (Sorrowfully.) I didn't think of that. + +M. How cruel it is! What can we do? + +A. (After a reflective pause, resolutely.) Margaret--we've got to. + +M. Got to what? + +A. Speak German. + +M. Why, how, child? + +A. (Contemplating her pamphlet with earnestness.) I can tell you one +thing. Just give me the blessed privilege: just hinsetzen Will Jackson +here in front of me, and I'll talk German to him as long as this +Meisterschaft holds out to burn. + +M. (Joyously.) Oh, what an elegant idea! You certainly have got a mind +that's a mine of resources, if ever anybody had one. + +A. I'll skin this Meisterschaft to the last sentence in it! + +M. (With a happy idea.) Why Annie, it's the greatest thing in the world. +I've been all this time struggling and despairing over these few little +Meisterschaft primers: but as sure as you live, I'll have the whole +fifteen by heart before this time day after to-morrow. See if I don't. + +A. And so will I; and I'll trowel in a layer of Ollendorff mush between +every couple of courses of Meisterschaft bricks. Juckhe! + +M. Hoch! hoch! hoch! + +A. Stoss an! + +M. Juckhe! Wir werden gleich gute deutsche Schulerinnen werden! Juck-- + +A. --he! + +M. Annie, when are they coming to see us? To-night? + +A. No. + +M. No? Why not? When are they coming? What are they waiting for? The +idea! I never heard of such a thing! What do you-- + +A. (Breaking in.) Wait, wait, wait! give a body a chance. They have +their reasons. + +M. Reasons?--what reasons? + +A. Well, now, when you stop and think, they're royal good ones. They've +got to talk German when they come, haven't they? Of course. Well, they +don't know any German but Wie befinden Sie sich, and Haben Sie gut +geschlafen, and Vater unser, and Ich trinke lieber Bier als Wasser, and a +few little parlour things like that; but when it comes to talking, why, +they don't know a hundred and fifteen German words, put them all +together. + +M. Oh, I see. + +A. So they're going to neither eat, sleep, smoke, nor speak the truth +till they've crammed home the whole fifteen Meisterschafts auswendig! + +M. Noble hearts! + +A. They've given themselves till day after to-morrow, half-past 7 P.M., +and then they'll arrive here loaded. + +M. Oh, how lovely, how gorgeous, how beautiful! Some think this world +is made of mud; I think it's made of rainbows. (Memorising.) Wenn irgend +moglich, so mochte ich noch heute Vormittag dort ankommen, da es mir sehr +daran gelegen ist--Annie, I can learn it just like nothing! + +A. So can I. Meisterschaft's mere fun--I don't see how it ever could +have seemed difficult. Come! We can't be disturbed here; let's give +orders that we don't want anything to eat for two days; and are absent to +friends, dead to strangers, and not at home even to nougat peddlers-- + +M. Schon! and we'll lock ourselves into our rooms, and at the end of two +days, whosoever may ask us a Meisterschaft question shall get a +Meisterschaft answer--and hot from the bat! + +BOTH. (Reciting in unison.) Ich habe einen Hut fur meinen Sohn, ein Paar +Handschuhe fur meinen Bruder, und einen Kamm fur mich selbst gekauft. +[Exeunt.] + +Enter Mrs. BLUMENTHAL, the Wirthin. + +WIRTHIN. (Solus.) Ach, die armen Madchen, sie hassen die deutsche +Sprache, drum ist es ganz und gar unmoglich dass sie sie je lernen +konnen. Es bricht mir ja mein Herz ihre Kummer uber die Studien +anzusehen.... Warum haben sie den Entchluss gefasst in ihren Zimmern ein +Paar Tagezu bleiben?... Ja--gewiss--das versteht sich; sie sind +entmuthigt--arme Kinder!(A knock at the door.) Herein! + +Enter GRETCHEN with card. + +GR. Er ist schon wieder da, und sagt dass er nur Sie sehen will. (Hands +the card.) Auch-WIRTHIN. Gott im Himmel--der Vater der Madchen? (Puts +the card in her pocket.) Er wunscht die Tochter nicht zu treffen? Ganz +recht; also, Du schweigst. + +GR. Zu Befehl. WIRTHIN. Lass ihn hereinkommen. + +GR. Ja, Frau Wirthin! [Exit GRETCHEN.] + +WIRTHIN. (Solus.) Ah--jetzt muss ich ihm die Wahrheit offenbaren. + +Enter Mr. STEPHENSON. + +STEPHENSON. Good-morning, Mrs. Blumenthal--keep your seat, keep your +seat, please. I'm only here for a moment--merely to get your report, you +know. (Seating himself.) Don't want to see the girls--poor things, +they'd want to go home with me. I'm afraid I couldn't have the heart to +say no. How's the German getting along? + +WIRTHIN. N-not very well; I was afraid you would ask me that. You see, +they hate it, they don't take the least interest in it, and there isn't +anything to incite them to an interest, you see. And so they can't talk +at all. + +S. M-m. That's bad. I had an idea that they'd get lonesome, and have +to seek society; and then, of course, my plan would work, considering the +cast-iron conditions of it. + +WIRTHIN. But it hasn't, so far. I've thrown nice company in their way +--I've done my very best, in every way I could think of--but it's no use; +they won't go out, and they won't receive anybody. And a body can't +blame them; they'd be tongue-tied--couldn't do anything with a German +conversation. Now, when I started to learn German--such poor German as I +know--the case was very different: my intended was a German. I was to +live among Germans the rest of my life; and so I had to learn. Why, +bless my heart! I nearly lost the man the first time he asked me--I +thought he was talking about the measles. They were very prevalent at +the time. Told him I didn't want any in mine. But I found out the +mistake, and I was fixed for him next time.... Oh yes, Mr. Stephenson, a +sweetheart's a prime incentive. + +S. (Aside.) Good soul! she doesn't suspect that my plan is a double +scheme--includes a speaking knowledge of German, which I am bound they +shall have, and the keeping them away from those two young fellows +--though if I had known that those boys were going off for a year's foreign +travel, I--however, the girls would never learn that language at home; +they're here, and I won't relent--they've got to stick the three months +out. (Aloud.) So they are making poor progress? Now tell me--will they +learn it--after a sort of fashion, I mean--in three months? + +WIRTHIN. Well, now, I'll tell you the only chance I see. Do what I +will, they won't answer my German with anything but English; if that goes +on, they'll stand stock-still. Now I'm willing to do this: I'll +straighten everything up, get matters in smooth running order, and day +after to-morrow I'll go to bed sick, and stay sick three weeks. + +S. Good! You are an angel? I see your idea. The servant girl-- + +WIRTHIN. That's it; that's my project. She doesn't know a word of +English. And Gretchen's a real good soul, and can talk the slates off a +roof. Her tongue's just a flutter-mill. I'll keep my room--just ailing +a little--and they'll never see my face except when they pay their little +duty-visits to me, and then I'll say English disorders my mind. They'll +be shut up with Gretchen's windmill, and she'll just grind them to +powder. Oh, they'll get a start in the language--sort of a one, sure's +you live. You come back in three weeks. + +S. Bless you, my Retterin! I'll be here to the day! Get ye to your +sick-room--you shall have treble pay. (Looking at watch.) Good! I can +just catch my train. Leben Sie wohl! [Exit.] + +WIRTHIN. Leben Sie wohl! mein Herr! + + + + + +ACT II. SCENE I. + +Time, a couple of days later. The girls discovered with their work and +primers. + +ANNIE. Was fehlt der Wirthin? + +MARGARET. Das weiss ich nicht. Sie ist schon vor zwei Tagen ins Bett +gegangen-- + +A. My! how fliessend you speak! + +M. Danke schon--und sagte dass sie nicht wohl sei. + +A. Good? Oh no, I don't mean that! no--only lucky for us--glucklich, +you know I mean because it'll be so much nicer to have them all to +ourselves. + +M. Oh, naturlich! Ja! Dass ziehe ich durchaus vor. Do you believe +your Meisterschaft will stay with you, Annie? + +A. Well, I know it is with me--every last sentence of it; and a couple +of hods of Ollendorff, too, for emergencies. Maybe they'll refuse to +deliver--right off--at first, you know--der Verlegenheit wegen--aber ich +will sie spater herausholen--when I get my hand in--und vergisst Du das +nicht! + +M. Sei nicht grob, Liebste. What shall we talk about first--when they +come? + +A. Well--let me see. There's shopping--and--all that about the trains, +you know--and going to church--and--buying tickets to London, and Berlin, +and all around--and all that subjunctive stuff about the battle in +Afghanistan, and where the American was said to be born, and so on--and +--and ah--oh, there's so many things--I don't think a body can choose +beforehand, because you know the circumstances and the atmosphere always +have so much to do in directing a conversation, especially a German +conversation, which is only a kind of an insurrection, anyway. I believe +it's best to just depend on Prov--(Glancing at watch, and gasping.) +--half-past--seven! + +M. Oh, dear, I'm all of a tremble! Let's get something ready, Annie! +(Both fall nervously to reciting): Entschuldigen Sie, mein Herr, konnen +Sie mir vielleicht sagen wie ich nach dem norddeutschen Bahnhof gehe? +(They repeat it several times, losing their grip and mixing it all up.) + +BOTH. Herein! Oh, dear! O der heilige-- + +Enter GRETCHEN. + +GRETCHEN (Ruffled and indignant.) Entschuldigen Sie, meine gnadigsten +Fraulein, es sind zwei junge rasende Herren draussen, die herein wollen, +aber ich habe ihnen geschworen dass--(Handing the cards.) + +M. Due liebe Zeit, they're here! And of course down goes my back hair! +Stay and receive them, dear, while I--(Leaving.) + +A. I--alone? I won't! I'll go with you! (To GR.) Lassen Sie die +Herren naher treten; und sagen Sie ihnen dass wir gleich zuruckkommen +werden. [Exit.] + +GR. (Solus.) Was! Sie freuen sich daruber? Und ich sollte wirklich +diese Blodsinnigen, dies grobe Rindvieh hereinlassen? In den hulflosen +Umstanden meiner gnadigen jungen Damen?--Unsinn! (Pause--thinking.) +Wohlan! Ich werde sie mal beschutzen! Sollte man nicht glauben, dass +sie einen Sparren zu viel hatten? (Tapping her skull significantly.) Was +sie mir doch Alles gesagt haben! Der Eine: Guten Morgen! wie geht es +Ihrem Herrn Schwiegervater? Du liebe Zeit! Wie sollte ich einen +Schwiegervater haben konnen! Und der Andere: 'Es thut mir sehr leid dass +Ihrer Herr Vater meinen Bruder nicht gesehen hat, als er doch gestern in +dem Laden des deutschen Kaufmannes war!' Potztausendhimmelsdonnerwetter! +Oh, ich war ganz rasend! Wie ich aber rief: 'Meine Herren, ich kenne Sie +nicht, und Sie kennen meinen Vater nicht, wissen Sie, denn er ist schon +lange durchgebrannt, und geht nicht beim Tage in einen Laden hinein, +wissen Sie--und ich habe keinen Schwiegervater, Gott sei Dank, werde auch +nie einen kriegen, werde uberhaupt, wissen Sie, ein solches Ding nie +haben, nie dulden, nie ausstehen: warum greifen Sie ein Madchen an, das +nur Unschuld kennt, das Ihnen nie Etwas zu Leide gethan hat?' Dann haben +sie sich beide die Finger in die Ohren gesteckt und gebetet: +'Allmachtiger Gott! Erbarme Dich unser?' (Pauses.) Nun, ich werde schon +diesen Schurken Einlass gonnen, aber ich werde ein Auge mit ihnen haben, +damit sie sich nicht wie reine Teufel geberden sollen. [Exit, grumbling +and shaking her head.] + +Enter WILLIAM and GEORGE. + +W. My land, what a girl! and what an incredible gift of gabble!--kind +of patent climate-proof compensation-balance self-acting automatic +Meisterschaft--touch her button, and br-r-r! away she goes! + +GEO. Never heard anything like it; tongue journalled on ball-bearings! +I wonder what she said; seemed to be swearing, mainly. + +W. (After mumbling Meisterschaft a while.) Look here, George, this is +awful--come to think--this project: we can't talk this frantic language. + +GEO. I know it, Will, and it is awful; but I can't live without seeing +Margaret--I've endured it as long as I can. I should die if I tried to +hold out longer--and even German is preferable to death. + +W. (Hesitatingly.) Well, I don't know; it's a matter of opinion. + +GEO. (Irritably.) It isn't a matter of opinion either. German is +preferable to death. + +W. (Reflectively.) Well, I don't know--the problem is so sudden--but I +think you may be right: some kinds of death. It is more than likely that +a slow, lingering--well, now, there in Canada in the early times a couple +of centuries ago, the Indians would take a missionary and skin him, and +get some hot ashes and boiling water and one thing and another, and +by-and-by that missionary--well, yes, I can see that, by-and-by, talking +German could be a pleasant change for him. + +GEO. Why, of course. Das versteht sich; but you have to always think a +thing out, or you're not satisfied. But let's not go to bothering about +thinking out this present business; we're here, we're in for it; you are +as moribund to see Annie as I am to see Margaret; you know the terms: +we've got to speak German. Now stop your mooning and get at your +Meisterschaft; we've got nothing else in the world. + +W. Do you think that'll see us through? + +GEO. Why it's got to. Suppose we wandered out of it and took a chance +at the language on our own responsibility, where the nation would we be! +Up a stump, that's where. Our only safety is in sticking like wax to the +text. + +W. But what can we talk about? + +GEO. Why, anything that Meisterschaft talks about. It ain't our affair. + +W. I know; but Meisterschaft talks about everything. + +GEO. And yet don't talk about anything long enough for it to get +embarrassing. Meisterschaft is just splendid for general conversation. + +W. Yes, that's so; but it's so blamed general! Won't it sound foolish? + +GEO. Foolish! Why, of course; all German sounds foolish. + +W. Well, that is true; I didn't think of that. + +GEO. Now, don't fool around any more. Load up; load up; get ready. Fix +up some sentences; you'll need them in two minutes new. [They walk up +and down, moving their lips in dumb-show memorising.] + +W. Look here--when we've said all that's in the book on a topic, and +want to change the subject, how can we say so?--how would a German say +it? + +GEO. Well, I don't know. But you know when they mean 'Change cars,' +they say Umsteigen. Don't you reckon that will answer? + +W. Tip-top! It's short and goes right to the point; and it's got a +business whang to it that's almost American. Umsteigen!--change subject! +--why, it's the very thing! + +GEO. All right, then, you umsteigen--for I hear them coming. + +Enter the girls. + +A. to W. (With solemnity.) Guten Morgen, mein Herr, es freut mich sehr, +Sie zu sehen. + +W. Guten Morgen, mein Fraulein, es freut mich sehr Sie zu sehen. + +[MARGARET and GEORGE repeat the same sentences. Then, after an +embarrassing silence, MARGARET refers to her book and says:] + +M. Bitte, meine Herren, setzen Sie sich. + +THE GENTLEMEN. Danke schon.[The four seat themselves in couples, the +width of the stage apart, and the two conversations begin. The talk is +not flowing--at any rate at first; there are painful silences all along. +Each couple worry out a remark and a reply: there is a pause of silent +thinking, and then the other couple deliver themselves.] + +W. Haben Sie meinen Vater in dem Laden meines Bruders nicht gesehen? + +A. Nein, mein Herr, ich habe Ihren Herrn Vater in dem Laden Ihres Herrn +Bruders nicht gesehen. + +GEO. Waren Sie gestern Abend im Koncert, oder im Theater? + +M. Nein, ich war gestern Abend nicht im Koncert, noch im Theater, ich war +gestern Abend zu Hause.[General break-down--long pause.] + +W. Ich store doch nicht etwa? + +A. Sie storen mich durchaus nicht. + +GEO. Bitte, lassen Sie sich nicht von mir storen. + +M. Aber ich bitte Sie, Sie storen mich durchaus nicht. + +W. (To both girls.) Wenn wir Sie storen so gehen wir gleich wieder. + +A. O, nein! Gewiss, nein! + +M. Im Gegentheil, es freut uns sehr, Sie zu sehen, alle beide. + +W. Schon! + +GEO. Gott sei dank! + +M. (Aside.) It's just lovely! + +A. (Aside.) It's like a poem. [Pause.] + +W. Umsteigen! + +M. Um--welches? + +W. Umsteigen. + +GEO. Auf English, change cars--oder subject. + +BOTH GIRLS. Wie schon! + +W. Wir haben uns die Freiheit genommen, bei Ihnen vorzusprechen. + +A. Sie sind sehr gutig. + +GEO. Wir wollten uns erkundigen, wie Sie sich befanden. + +M. Ich bin Ihnen sehr verbunden--meine Schwester auch. + +W. Meine Frau lasst sich Ihnen bestens empfehlen. + +A. Ihre Frau? + +W. (Examining his book.) Vielleicht habe ich mich geirrt. (Shows the +place.) Nein, gerade so sagt das Buch. + +A. (Satisfied.) Ganz recht. Aber-- + +W. Bitte empfehlen Sie mich Ihrem Herrn Bruder. + +A. Ah, das ist viel besser--viel besser. (Aside.) Wenigstens es ware +viel besser wenn ich einen Bruder hatte. + +GEO. Wie ist es Ihnen gegangen, seitdem ich das Vergnugen hatte, Sie +anderswo zu sehen? + +M. Danke bestens, ich befinde mich gewohnlich ziemlich wohl. + +[GRETCHEN slips in with a gun, and listens.] + +GEO. (Still to Margaret.) Befindet sich Ihre Frau Gemahlin wohl? + +GR. (Raising hands and eyes.) Frau Gemahlin--heiliger Gott! [Is like to +betray herself with her smothered laughter, and glides out.] + +M. Danke sehr, meine Frau ist ganz wohl. [Pause.] + +W. Durfen wir vielleicht--umsteigen? + +THE OTHERS. Gut! + +GEO. (Aside.) I feel better, now. I'm beginning to catch on. (Aloud.) +Ich mochte gern morgen fruh einige Einkaufe machen und wurde Ihnen seht +verbunden sein, wenn Sie mir den Gefallen thaten, mir die Namen der +besten hiesigen Firmen aufzuschreiben. + +M. (Aside.) How sweet! + +W. (Aside.) Hang it, I was going to say that! That's one of the noblest +things in the book. + +A. Ich mochte Ihnen gern begleiten, aber es ist mir wirklich heute +Morgen ganz unmoglich auszugehen. (Aside.) It's getting as easy as 9 +times 7 is 46. + +M. Sagen Sie dem Brieftrager, wenn's gefallig ist, er, mochte Ihnen den +eingeschriebenen Brief geben lassen. + +W. Ich wurde Ihnen sehr verbunden sein, wenn Sie diese Schachtel fur +mich nach der Post tragen wurden, da mir sehr daran liegt einen meiner +Geschaftsfreunde in dem Laden des deutschen Kaufmanns heute Abend treffen +zu konnen. (Aside.) All down but nine; set'm up on the other alley! + +A. Aber, Herr Jackson! Sie haven die Satze gemischt. Es ist +unbegreiflich wie Sie das haben thun konnen. Zwischen Ihrem ersten Theil +und Ihrem letzten Theil haben Sie ganz funfzig Seiten ubergeschlagen! +Jetzt bin ich ganz verloren. Wie kann man reden, wenn man seinen Platz +durchaus nicht wieder finden kann? + +W. Oh, bitte, verzeihen Sie; ich habe das wirklich nicht beabsichtigt. + +A. (Mollified.) Sehr wohl, lassen Sie gut sein. Aber thun Sie es nicht +wieder. Sie mussen ja doch einraumen, das solche Dinge unertragliche +Verwirrung mit sich fuhren. + +[GRETCHEN slips in again with her gun.] + +W. Unzweifelhaft haben Sic Recht, meine holdselige Landsmannin.... +Umsteigen! + +[As GEORGE gets fairly into the following, GRETCHEN draws a bead on him, +and lets drive at the close, but the gun snaps.] + +GEO. Glauben Sie dass ich ein hubsches Wohnzimmer fur mich selbst und +ein kleines Schlafzimmer fur meinen Sohn in diesem Hotel fur funfzehn +Mark die Woche bekommen kann, oder, wurden Sie mir rathen, in einer +Privatwohnung Logis zu nehmen? (Aside.) That's a daisy! + +GR. (Aside.) Schade! [She draws her charge and reloads.] + +M. Glauben Sie nicht Sie werden besser thun bei diesem Wetter zu Hause +zu bleiben? + +A. Freilich glaube ich, Herr Franklin, Sie werden sich erkalten, wenn +Sie bei diesem unbestandigen Wetter ohne Ueberrock ausgehen. + +GR. (Relieved--aside.) So? Man redet von Ausgehen. Das klingt schon +besser. [Sits.] + +W. (To A.) Wie theuer haben Sie das gekauft? [Indicating a part of her +dress.] + +A. Das hat achtzehn Mark gekostet. + +W. Das ist sehr theuer. + +GEO. Ja, obgleich dieser Stoff wunderschon ist und das Muster sehr +geschmackvoll und auch das Vorzuglichste dass es in dieser Art gibt, so +ist es doch furchtbat theuer fur einen solcehn Artikel. + +M. (Aside.) How sweet is this communion of soul with soul! + +A. Im Gegentheil, mein Herr, das ist sehr billig. Sehen Sie sich nur +die Qualitat an. + +[They all examine it.] + +GEO. Moglicherweise ist es das allerneuste das man in diesem Stoff hat; +aber das Muster gefallt mir nicht. + +[Pause.] + +W. Umsteigen! + +A. Welchen Hund haben Sie? Haben Sie den hubschen Hund des Kaufmanns, +oder den hasslichen Hund der Urgrossmutter des Lehrlings des +bogenbeinigen Zimmermanns? + +W. (Aside.) Oh, come, she's ringing in a cold deck on us: that's +Ollendorff. + +GEO. Ich habe nicht den Hund des--des--(Aside.) Stuck! That's no +Meisterschaft; they don't play fair. (Aloud.) Ich habe nicht den Hund +des--des--In unserem Buche leider, gibt es keinen Hund; daher, ob ich +auch gern von solchen Thieren sprechen mochte, ist es mir doch unmoglich, +weil ich nicht vorbereitet bin. Entschuldigen Sie, meine Damen. + +GR. (Aside) Beim Teufel, sie sind alle blodsinnig geworden. In meinem +Leben habe ich nie ein so narrisches, verfluchtes, verdammtes Gesprach +gehort. + +W. Bitte, umsteigen. + +[Run the following rapidly through.] + +M. (Aside.) Oh, I've flushed an easy batch! (Aloud.) Wurden Sie mir +erlauben meine Reisetasche heir hinzustellen? + +GR. (Aside.) Wo ist seine Reisetasche? Ich sehe keine. + +W. Bitte sehr. + +GEO. Ist meine Reisetasche Ihnen im Wege? + +GR. (Aside.) Und wo ist seine Reisetasche? + +A. Erlauben Sie mir Sie von meiner Reisetasche zu bereien. + +GR. (Aside.) Du Esel! + +W. Ganz und gar nicht. (To Geo.) Es ist sehr schwul in diesem Coupe. + +GR. (Aside.) Coupe. + +GEO. Sie haben Recht. Erlauben Sie mir, gefalligst, das Fenster zu +offnen. Ein wenig Luft wurde uns gut thun. + +M. Wir fahren sehr rasch. + +A. Haben Sie den Namen jener Station gehort? + +W. Wie lange halten wir auf dieser Station an? + +GEO. Ich reise nach Dresden, Schaffner. Wo muss ich umsteigen? + +GR. (Aside.) Sie sind ja alle ganz und gar verruckt. Man denke sich sie +glauben dass sie auf der Eisenbahn reisen. + +GEO. (Aside, to William.) Now brace up; pull all your confidence +together, my boy, and we'll try that lovely goodbye business a flutter. +I think it's about the gaudiest thing in the book, if you boom it right +along and don't get left on a base. It'll impress the girls. (Aloud.) +Lassen Sie uns gehen: es ist schon sehr spat, und ich muss morgen ganz +fruh aufstehen. + +GR. (Aside--grateful.) Gott sei Dank dass sie endlich gehen. + +[Sets her gun aside.] + +W. (To Geo.) Ich danke Ihnen hoflichst fur die Ehre die Sie mir +erweisen, aber ich kann nicht langer bleiben. + +GEO. (To W.) Entschuldigen Sie mich gutigst, aber ich kann wirklich +nicht langer bleiben. + +[GRETCHEN looks on stupefied.] + +W. (To Geo.) Ich habe schon eine Einladung angenommen; ich kann wirklich +nicht langer bleiben. + +[GRETCHEN fingers her gun again.] + +GEO. (To W.) Ich muss gehen. + +W. (To GEO.) Wie! Sie wollen schon wieder gehen? Sie sind ja eben +erst gekommen. + +M. (Aside.) It's just music! + +A. (Aside.) Oh, how lovely they do it! + +GEO. (To W.) Also denken Sie doch noch nicht an's Gehen. + +W. (To Geo.) Es thut mir unendlich leid, aber ich muss nach Hause. +Meine Frau wird sich wundern, was aus mir geworden ist. + +GEO. (To W.) Meine Frau hat keine Ahnung wo ich bin: ich muss wirklich +jetzt fort. + +W. (To Geo.) Dann will ich Sie nicht langer aufhalten; ich bedaure sehr +dass Sie uns einen so kurzen Besuch gemacht haben. + +GEO. (To W.) Adieu--auf recht baldiges Wiedersehen. + +W. UMSTEIGNEN! + +[Great hand-clapping from the girls.] + +M. (Aside.) Oh, how perfect! how elegant! + +A. (Aside.) Per-fectly enchanting! + +JOYOUS CHORUS. (All) Ich habe gehabt, du hast gehabt, er hat gehabt, +wir haben gehabt, ihr habet gehabt, sie haben gehabt. + +[GRETCHEN faints, and tumbles from her chair, and the gun goes off with a +crash. Each girl, frightened, seizes the protecting hand of her +sweetheart. GRETCHEN scrambles up. Tableau.] + +W. (Takes out some money--beckons Gretchen to him. George adds money to +the pile.) Hubsches Madchen (giving her some of the coins), hast Du etwas +gesehen? + +GR. (Courtesy--aside.) Der Engel! (Aloud--impressively.) Ich habe +nichts gesehen. + +W. (More money.) Hast Du etwas gehort? + +GR. Ich habe nichts gehort. + +W. (More money.) Und morgen? + +GR. Morgen--ware es nothig--bin ich taub und blind. + +W. Unvergleichbares Madchen! Und (giving the rest of the money) +darnach? + +GR. (Deep courtesy--aside.) Erzengel! (Aloud.) Darnach, mein +gnadgister, betrachten Sie mich also taub--blind--todt! + +ALL. (In chorus--with reverent joy.) Ich habe gehabt, du hast gehabt, er +hat gehabt, wir haben gehabt, ihr habet gehabt, sie haben gehabt! + + + + +ACT III. + +Three weeks later. + +SCENE I. + +Enter GRETCHEN, and puts her shawl on a chair. Brushing around with the +traditional feather-duster of the drama. Smartly dressed, for she is +prosperous. + + +GR. Wie hatte man sich das vorstellen konnen! In nur drei Wochen bin +ich schon reich geworden! (Gets out of her pocket handful after handful +of silver, which she piles on the table, and proceeds to repile and +count, occasionally ringing or biting a piece to try its quality.) Oh, +dass (with a sigh) die Frau Wirthin nur ewig krank bliebe!... Diese +edlen jungen Manner--sie sind ja so liebenswurdig! Und so fleissig! +--und so treu! Jeden Morgen kommen sie gerade um drei Viertel auf neun; +und plaudern und schwatzen, und plappern, und schnattern, die jungen +Damen auch; um Schlage zwolf nehmen sie Abschied; um Sclage eins kommen +sie schon wieder, und plauden und schwatzen und plappern und schnattern; +gerade um sechs Uhr nehmen sie wiederum Abschied; um halb acht kehren sie +noche'mal zuruck, und plaudern und schwatzen und plappern und schnattern +bis zehn Uhr, oder vielleicht ein Viertel nach, falls ihre Uhren nach +gehen (und stets gehen sie nach am Ende des Besuchs, aber stets vor +Beginn desselben), und zuweilen unterhalten sich die jungen Leute beim +Spazierengehen; und jeden Sonntag gehen sie dreimal in die Kirche; und +immer plaudern sie, und schwatzen und plappern und schnattern bis ihnen +die Zahne aus dem Munde fallen. Und ich? Durch Mangel an Uebung, ist +mir die Zunge mit Moos belegt worden! Freilich ist's mir eine dumme Zei +gewesen. Aber--um Gotteswillen, was geht das mir an? Was soll ich +daraus machen? Taglich sagt die Frau Wirthin, 'Gretchen' (dumb-show of +paying a piece of money into her hand), 'du bist eine der besten Sprach +--Lehrerinnen der Welt!' Act, Gott! Und taglich sagen die edlen jungen +Manner, 'Gretchen, liebes Kind' (money-paying again in dumb-show--three +coins), 'bleib' taub--blind--todt!' und so bleibe ich.... Jetzt wird es +ungefahr neun Uhr sein; bald kommen sie vom Spaziergehen zuruck. Also, +es ware gut dass ich meinem eigenen Schatz einen Besuch abstatte und +spazieren gehe. + +[Dons her shawl. Exit. L.] + +Enter WIRTHIN. R. + +WIRTHIN. That was Mr. Stephenson's train that just came in. Evidently +the girls are out walking with Gretchen;--can't find them, and she +doesn't seem to be around. (A ring at the door.) That's him. I'll go +see. [Exit. R.] + +Enter STEPHENSON and WIRTHIN. R. + +S. Well, how does sickness seem to agree with you? + +WIRTHIN. So well that I've never been out of my room since, till I heard +your train come in. + +S. Thou miracle of fidelity! Now I argue from that, that the new plan +is working. + +WIRTHIN. Working? Mr. Stephenson, you never saw anything like it in the +whole course of your life! It's absolutely wonderful the way it works. + +S. Succeeds? No--you don't mean it. + +WIRTHIN. Indeed I do mean it. I tell you, Mr. Stephenson, that plan was +just an inspiration--that's what it was. You could teach a cat German by +it. + +S. Dear me, this is noble news! Tell me about it. + +WIRTHIN. Well, it's all Gretchen--ev-ery bit of it. I told you she was +a jewel. And then the sagacity of that child--why, I never dreamed it +was in her. Sh-she, 'Never you ask the young ladies a question--never +let on--just keep mum--leave the whole thing to me,' sh-she. + +S. Good! And she justified, did she? + +WIRTHIN. Well, sir, the amount of German gabble that that child crammed +into those two girls inside the next forty-eight hours--well, I was +satisfied! So I've never asked a question--never wanted to ask any. +I've just lain curled up there, happy. The little dears! they've flitted +in to see me a moment, every morning and noon and supper-time; and as +sure as I'm sitting here, inside of six days they were clattering German +to me like a house afire! + +S. Sp-lendid, splendid! + +WIRTHIN. Of course it ain't grammatical--the inventor of the language +can't talk grammatical; if the dative didn't fetch him the accusative +would; but it's German all the same, and don't you forget it! + +S. Go on--go on--this is delicious news-- + +WIRTHIN. Gretchen, she says to me at the start, 'Never you mind about +company for 'em,' sh-she--'I'm company enough.' And I says, 'All right +--fix it your own way, child;' and that she was right is shown by the fact +that to this day they don't care a straw for any company but hers. + +S. Dear me; why, it's admirable! + +WIRTHIN. Well, I should think so! They just dote on that hussy--can't +seem to get enough of her. Gretchen tells me so herself. And the care +she takes of them! She tells me that every time there's a moonlight +night she coaxes them out for a walk; and if a body can believe her, she +actually bullies them off to church three times every Sunday! + +S. Why, the little dev--missionary! Really, she's a genius! + +WIRTHIN. She's a bud, I tell you! Dear me, how she's brought those +girls' health up! Cheeks?--just roses. Gait?--they walk on +watch-springs! And happy?--by the bliss in their eyes, you'd think +they're in Paradise! Ah, that Gretchen! Just you imagine our trying to +achieve these marvels! + +S. You're right--every time. Those girls--why, all they'd have wanted +to know was what we wanted done, and then they wouldn't have done it--the +mischievous young rascals! + +WIRTHIN. Don't tell me? Bless you, I found that out early--when I was +bossing. + +S. Well, I'm im-mensely pleased. Now fetch them down. I'm not afraid +now. They won't want to go home. + +WIRTHIN. Home! I don't believe you could drag them away from Gretchen +with nine span of horses. But if you want to see them, put on your hat +and come along; they're out somewhere trapseing along with Gretchen. +[Going.] + +S. I'm with you--lead on. + +WIRTHIN. We'll go out the side door. It's towards the Anlage. [Exit +both. L.] + +Enter GEORGE and MARGARET. R. Her head lies upon his shoulder, his arm +is about her waist; they are steeped in sentiment. + +M. (Turning a fond face up at him.) Du Engel! + +GEO. Liebste! + +M. Oh, das Liedchen dass Du mir gewidmet hast--es ist so schon, so +wunderschon. Wie hatte ich je geahnt dass Du ein Poet warest! + +GEO. Mein Schatzchen!--es ist mir lieb wenn Dir die Kleinigkeit +gefallt. + +M. Ah, es ist mit der zartlichsten Musik gefullt--klingt ja so suss und +selig--wie das Flustern des Sommerwindes die Abenddammerung hindurch. +Wieder--Theuerste!--sag'es wieder. + +GEO. Du bist wie eine Blume!--So schon und hold und rein--Ich schau' +Dich an, und WehmuthSchleicht mir ins Herz hinein. Mir ist als ob ich +die HandeAufs Haupt Dir legen sollt', Betend, dass Gott Dich erhalte, So +rein und schon und hold. + +M. A-ch! (Dumb-show sentimentalisms.) Georgie-- + +GEO. Kindchen! + +M. Warum kommen sie nicht? + +GEO. Das weiss ich gar night. Sie waren-- + +M. Es wird spat. Wir mussen sie antreiben. Komm! + +GEO. Ich glaube sie werden recht bald ankommen, aber--[Exit both. L.] + +Enter GRETCHEN, R., in a state of mind. Slumps into a chair limp with +despair. + +GR. Ach! was wird jetzt aus mir werden! Zufallig habe ich in der Ferne +den verdammten Papa gesehen!--und die Frau Wirthin auch! Oh, diese +Erscheinung--die hat mir beinahe das Leben genommen. Sie suchen die +jungen Damen--das weiss ich wenn sie diese und die jungen Herren zusammen +fanden--du heileger Gott! Wenn das gescheiht, waren wir Alle ganz und +gar verloren! Ich muss sie gleich finden, und ihr eine Warnung geben! +[Exit. L.] + +Enter ANNIE and WILL, R., posed like the former couple and sentimental. + +A. Ich liebe Dich schon so sehr--Deiner edlen Natur wegen. Dass du dazu +auch ein Dichter bist!--ach, mein Leben ist ubermassig reich geworden! +Wer hatte sich doch einbilden konnen dass ich einen Mann zu einem so +wunderschonen Gedicht hatte begeistern konnen? + +W. Liebste! Es ist nur eine Kleinigkeit. + +A. Nein, nein, es ist ein echtes Wunder! Sage es noch einmal--ich flehe +Dich an. + +W. Du bist wie eine Blume!--So schon und hold und rein--Ich schau' Dich +an, und WehmuthSchleicht mir ins Herz hinein. Mir ist als ob ich die +HandeAufs Haupt Dir legen sollt', Betend, dass Gott Dich erhalt, So rein +und schon und hold. + +A. Ach, es ist himmlisch--einfach himmlisch. [Kiss.] Schreibt auch +George Gedicht? + +W. Oh, ja--zuweilen. + +A. Wie schon! + +W. (Aside.) Smouches 'em, same as I do! It was a noble good idea to +play that little thing on her. George wouldn't ever think of that +--somehow he never had any invention. + +A. (Arranging chairs.) Jetzt will ich bei Dir sitzen bleiben, und Du-- + +W. (They sit.) Ja--und ich-- + +A. Du wirst mir die alte Geschichte, die immer neu bleibt, noch wieder +erzahlen. + +W. Zum Beispiel, dass ich Dich liebe! + +A. Wieder! + +W. Ich--sie kommen! + +Enter GEORGE and MARGARET. + +A. Das macht nichts. Fortan! [GEORGE unties M.'s bonnet. She reties +his cravat--interspersings of love-pats, etc., and dumb show of +love-quarrellings.] + +W. Ich liebe Dich. + +A. Ach! Noch einmal! + +W. Ich habe Dich vom Herzen lieb. + +A. Ach! Abermals! + +W. Bist Du denn noch nicht satt? + +A. Nein! (The other couple sit down, and MARGARET begins a retying of +the cravat. Enter the WIRTHIN and STEPHENSON, he imposing silence with a +sign.) Mich hungert sehr, ich verhungre! + +W. Oh, Du armes Kind! (Lays her head on his shoulder. Dumb-show +between STEPHENSON and WIRTHIN.) Und hungert es nicht mich? Du hast mir +nicht einmal gesagt-- + +A. Dass ich Dich liebe? Mein Eigener! (Frau WIRTHIN threatens to +faint--is supported by STEPHENSON.) Hore mich nur an: Ich liebe Dich, +ich liebe Dich-- + +Enter GRETCHEN. + +GR. (Tears her hair.) Oh, dass ich in der Holle ware! + +M. Ich liebe Dich, ich liebe Dich! Ah, ich bin so glucklich dass ich +nicht schlafen kann, nicht lesen kann, nicht reden kann, nicht-- + +A. Und ich! Ich bin auch so glucklich dass ich nicht speisen kann, +nicht studieren, arbeiten, denken, schreiben-- + +S. (To Wirthin--aside.) Oh, there isn't any mistake about it +--Gretchen's just a rattling teacher! + +WIRTHIN. (To Stephenson--aside.) I'll skin her alive when I get my +hands on her! + +M. Komm, alle Verliebte! [They jump up, join hands, and sing in chorus--] +Du, Du, wie ich Dich liebe, Du, Du, liebest auch mich! Die, die +zartlichsten Triebe-- + +S. (Stepping forward.) Well! [The girls throw themselves upon his neck +with enthusiasm.] + +THE GIRLS. Why, father! + +S. My darlings! [The young men hesitate a moment, they they add their +embrace, flinging themselves on Stephenson's neck, along with the girls.] + +THE YOUNG MEN. Why, father! + +S. (Struggling.) Oh, come, this is too thin!--too quick, I mean. Let +go, you rascals! + +GEO. We'll never let go till you put us on the family list. + +M. Right! hold to him! + +A. Cling to him, Will! [GRETCHEN rushes in and joins the general +embrace, but is snatched away by the WIRTHIN, crushed up against the +wall, and threatened with destruction.] + +S. (Suffocating.) All right, all right--have it your own way, you +quartette of swindlers! + +W. He's a darling! Three cheers for papa! + +EVERYBODY. (Except Stephenson, who bows with hand on heart) Hip--hip +--hip: hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! + +GR. Der Tiger--ah-h-h! + +WIRTHIN. Sei ruhig, you hussy! + +S. Well, I've lost a couple of precious daughters, but I've gained a +couple of precious scamps to fill up the gap with; so it's all right. +I'm satisfied, and everybody's forgiven--[With mock threats at Gretchen.] + +W. Oh, wir werden fur Dich sorgen--dur herrliches Gretchen! + +GR. Danke schon! + +M. (To Wirthin.) Und fur Sie auch; denn wenn Sie nicht so freundlich +gewesen waren, krank zu werden, wie waren wir je so glucklich geworden +wie jetzt? + +WIRTHIN. Well, dear, I was kind, but I didn't mean it. But I ain't +sorry--not one bit--that I ain't. [Tableau.] + +S. Come, now, the situation is full of hope, and grace, and tender +sentiment. If I had in the least poetic gift, I know I could improvise +under such an inspiration (each girl nudges her sweetheart) something +worthy to--to--Is there no poet among us? [Each youth turns solemnly his +back upon the other, and raises his hands in benediction over his +sweetheart's bowed head.] + +BOTH YOUTHS AT ONCE. Mir ist als ob ich die HandeAufs Haupt Dir legen +sollt'--[They turn and look reproachfully at each other--the girls +contemplate them with injured surprise.] + +S. (Reflectively.) I think I've heard that before somewhere. + +WIRTHIN. (Aside.) Why, the very cats in Germany know it! + +(Curtain.) + + +[1] [EXPLANATORY.] I regard the idea of this play as a valuable +invention. I call it the Patent Universally-Applicable Automatically +Adjustable Language Drama. This indicates that it is adjustable to any +tongue, and performable in any tongue. The English portions of the play +are to remain just as they are, permanently; but you change the foreign +portions to any language you please, at will. Do you see? You at once +have the same old play in a new tongue. And you can keep changing it +from language to language, until your private theatrical pupils have +become glib and at home in the speech of all nations. Zum Beispiel, +suppose we wish to adjust the play to the French tongue. First, we give +Mrs. Blumenthal and Gretchen French names. Next, we knock the German +Meisterschaft sentences out of the first scene, and replace them with +sentences from the French Meisterschaft--like this, for instance: 'Je +voudrais faire des emplettes ce matin; voulez-vous avoir l'obligeance de +venir avec moi chez le tailleur francais?' And so on. Wherever you find +German, replace it with French, leaving the English parts undisturbed. +When you come to the long conversation in the second act, turn to any +pamphlet of your French Meisterschaft, and shovel in as much French talk +on any subject as will fill up the gaps left by the expunged German. +Example--page 423, French Meisterschaft: On dirait qu'il va faire chaud. +J'ai chaud. J'ai extremement chaud. Ah! qu'il fait chaud! Il fait une +chaleur etouffante! L'air est brulant. Je meurs de chaleur. Il est +presque impossible de supporter la chaleur. Cela vous fait transpirer. +Mettons-nous a l'ombre. Il fait du vent. Il fait un vent froid. Il +fait un tres agreable pour se promener aujourd'hui. And so on, all the +way through. It is very easy to adjust the play to any desired language. +Anybody can do it. + + + + + + +MY BOYHOOD DREAMS + +The dreams of my boyhood? No, they have not been realised. For all who +are old, there is something infinitely pathetic about the subject which +you have chosen, for in no greyhead's case can it suggest any but one +thing--disappointment. Disappointment is its own reason for its pain: +the quality or dignity of the hope that failed is a matter aside. The +dreamer's valuation of the thing lost--not another man's--is the only +standard to measure it by, and his grief for it makes it large and great +and fine, and is worthy of our reverence in all cases. We should +carefully remember that. There are sixteen hundred million people in the +world. Of these there is but a trifling number--in fact, only +thirty-eight millions--who can understand why a person should have an +ambition to belong to the French army; and why, belonging to it, he +should be proud of that; and why, having got down that far, he should +want to go on down, down, down till he struck the bottom and got on the +General Staff; and why, being stripped of this livery, or set free and +reinvested with his self-respect by any other quick and thorough process, +let it be what it might, he should wish to return to his strange serfage. +But no matter: the estimate put upon these things by the fifteen hundred +and sixty millions is no proper measure of their value: the proper +measure, the just measure, is that which is put upon them by Dreyfus, and +is cipherable merely upon the littleness or the vastness of the +disappointment which their loss cost him. There you have it: the measure +of the magnitude of a dream-failure is the measure of the disappointment +the failure cost the dreamer; the value, in others' eyes, of the thing +lost, has nothing to do with the matter. With this straightening out and +classification of the dreamer's position to help us, perhaps we can put +ourselves in his place and respect his dream--Dreyfus's, and the dreams +our friends have cherished and reveal to us. Some that I call to mind, +some that have been revealed to me, are curious enough; but we may not +smile at them, for they were precious to the dreamers, and their failure +has left scars which give them dignity and pathos. With this theme in my +mind, dear heads that were brown when they and mine were young together +rise old and white before me now, beseeching me to speak for them, and +most lovingly will I do it. Howells, Hay, Aldrich, Matthews, Stockton, +Cable, Remus--how their young hopes and ambitions come flooding back to +my memory now, out of the vague far past, the beautiful past, the +lamented past! I remember it so well--that night we met together--it was +in Boston, and Mr. Fiends was there, and Mr. Osgood, Ralph Keeler, and +Boyle O'Reilly, lost to us now these many years--and under the seal of +confidence revealed to each other what our boyhood dreams had been: reams +which had not as yet been blighted, but over which was stealing the grey +of the night that was to come--a night which we prophetically felt, and +this feeling oppressed us and made us sad. I remember that Howells's +voice broke twice, and it was only with great difficulty that he was able +to go on; in the end he wept. For he had hoped to be an auctioneer. He +told of his early struggles to climb to his goal, and how at last he +attained to within a single step of the coveted summit. But there +misfortune after misfortune assailed him, and he went down, and down, and +down, until now at last, weary and disheartened, he had for the present +given up the struggle and become the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. This +was in 1830. Seventy years are gone since, and where now is his dream? +It will never be fulfilled. And it is best so; he is no longer fitted +for the position; no one would take him now; even if he got it, he would +not be able to do himself credit in it, on account of his deliberateness +of speech and lack of trained professional vivacity; he would be put on +real estate, and would have the pain of seeing younger and abler men +intrusted with the furniture and other such goods--goods which draw a +mixed and intellectually low order of customers, who must be beguiled of +their bids by a vulgar and specialised humour and sparkle, accompanied +with antics. But it is not the thing lost that counts, but only the +disappointment the loss brings to the dreamer that had coveted that thing +and had set his heart of hearts upon it, and when we remember this, a +great wave of sorrow for Howells rises in our breasts, and we wish for +his sake that his fate could have been different. At that time Hay's +boyhood dream was not yet past hope of realisation, but it was fading, +dimming, wasting away, and the wind of a growing apprehension was blowing +cold over the perishing summer of his life. In the pride of his young +ambition he had aspired to be a steamboat mate; and in fancy saw himself +dominating a forecastle some day on the Mississippi and dictating terms +to roustabouts in high and wounding terms. I look back now, from this +far distance of seventy years, and note with sorrow the stages of that +dream's destruction. Hay's history is but Howells's, with differences of +detail. Hay climbed high toward his ideal; when success seemed almost +sure, his foot upon the very gang-plank, his eye upon the capstan, +misfortune came and his fall began. Down--down--down--ever down: Private +Secretary to the President; Colonel in the field; Charge d'Affaires in +Paris; Charge d'Affaires in Vienna; Poet; Editor of the Tribune; +Biographer of Lincoln; Ambassador to England; and now at last there he +lies--Secretary of State, Head of Foreign Affairs. And he has fallen +like Lucifer, never to rise again. And his dream--where now is his +dream? Gone down in blood and tears with the dream of the auctioneer. +And the young dream of Aldrich--where is that? I remember yet how he sat +there that night fondling it, petting it; seeing it recede and ever +recede; trying to be reconciled and give it up, but not able yet to bear +the thought; for it had been his hope to be a horse-doctor. He also +climbed high, but, like the others, fell; then fell again, and yet again, +and again and again. And now at last he can fall no further. He is old +now, he has ceased to struggle, and is only a poet. No one would risk a +horse with him now. His dream is over. Has any boyhood dream ever been +fulfilled? I must doubt it. Look at Brander Matthews. He wanted to be +a cowboy. What is he to-day? Nothing but a professor in a university. +Will he ever be a cowboy? It is hardly conceivable. Look at Stockton. +What was Stockton's young dream? He hoped to be a barkeeper. See where +he has landed. Is it better with Cable? What was Cable's young dream? +To be ring-master in the circus, and swell around and crack the whip. +What is he to-day? Nothing but a theologian and novelist. And Uncle +Remus--what was his young dream? To be a buccaneer. Look at him now. +Ah, the dreams of our youth, how beautiful they are, and how perishable! +The ruins of these might-have-beens, how pathetic! The heart-secrets that +were revealed that night now so long vanished, how they touch me as I +give them voice! Those sweet privacies, how they endeared us to each +other! We were under oath never to tell any of these things, and I have +always kept that oath inviolate when speaking with persons whom I thought +not worthy to hear them. Oh, our lost Youth--God keep its memory green +in our hearts! for Age is upon us, with the indignity of its infirmities, +and Death beckons! + + + + + + +TO THE ABOVE OLD PEOPLE + + +Sleep! for the Sun that scores another Day +Against the Tale allotted You to stay, +Reminding You, is Risen, and now +Serves Notice--ah, ignore it while You stay! + +The chill Wind blew, and those who stood before +The Tavern murmured, 'Having drunk his Score, +Why tarries He with empty Cup? Behold, +The Wine of Youth once poured, is poured no more + +'Come, leave the Cup, and on the Winter's Snow +Your Summer Garment of Enjoyment throw: +Your Tide of Life is ebbing fast, and it, +Exhausted once, for You no more shall flow.' + +While yet the Phantom of false Youth was mine, +I heard a Voice from out the Darkness whine, +'O Youth, O whither gone? Return, +And bathe my Age in thy reviving Wine.' + +In this subduing Draught of tender green +And kindly Absinth, with its wimpling Sheen +Of dusky half-lights, let me drown +The haunting Pathos of the Might-Have-Been. + +For every nickeled Joy, marred and brief, +We pay some day its Weight in golden Grief +Mined from our Hearts. Ah, murmur not +--From this one-sided Bargain dream of no Relief! + +The Joy of Life, that streaming through their Veins +Tumultuous swept, falls slack--and wanes +The Glory in the Eye--and one by one +Life's Pleasures perish and make place for Pains. + +Whether one hide in some secluded Nook +--Whether at Liverpool or Sandy Hook +--'Tis one. Old Age will search him out--and He +--He--He--when ready will know where to look. + +From Cradle unto Grave I keep a House +OF Entertainment where may drowse +Bacilli and kindred Germs--or feed--or breed +Their festering Species in a deep Carouse. + +Think--in this battered Caravanserai, +Whose Portals open stand all Night and Day, +How Microbe after Microbe with his Pomp +Arrives unasked, and comes to stay. + +Our ivory Teeth, confessing to the Lust +Of masticating, once, now own Disgust +Of Clay-Plug'd Cavities--full soon our Snags +Are emptied, and our Mouths are filled with Dust. + +Our Gums forsake the Teeth and tender grow, +And fat, like over-riped Figs--we know +The Sign--the Riggs' Disease is ours, and we +Must list this Sorrow, add another Woe; + +Our Lungs begin to fail and soon we Cough, +And chilly Streaks play up our Backs, and off +Our fever'd Foreheads drips an icy Sweat +--We scoffered before, but now we may not scoff. + +Some for the Bunions that afflict us prate +Of Plasters unsurpassable, and hate +To Cut a corn--ah cut, and let the Plaster go, +Nor murmur if the Solace come too late. + +Some for the Honours of Old Age, and some +Long for its Respite from the Hum +And Clash of sordid Strife--O Fools, +The Past should teach them what's to Come: + +Lo, for the Honours, cold Neglect instead! +For Respite, disputatious Heirs a Bed +Of Thorns for them will furnish. Go, +Seek not Here for Peace--but Yonder--with the Dead. + +For whether Zal and Rustam heed this Sign, +And even smitten thus, will not repine, +Let Zal and Rustam shuffle as they may, +The Fine once levied they must Cash the Fine. + +O Voices of the Long Ago that were so dear! +Fall'n Silent, now, for many a Mould'ring Year, +O whither are ye flown? Come back, +And break my heart, but bless my grieving ear. + +Some happy Day my Voice will Silent fall, +And answer not when some that love it call: +Be glad for Me when this you note--and think +I've found the Voices lost, beyond the Pall. + +So let me grateful drain the Magic Bowl +That medicines hurt Minds and on the Soul +The Healing of its Peace doth lay--if then +Death claim me--Welcome be his Dole! + +SANNA, SWEDEN, September 15th. + + +Private.--If you don't know what Riggs's Disease of the Teeth is, the +dentist will tell you. I've had it--and it is more than interesting. + M.T. + + +EDITORIAL NOTE + +Fearing that there might be some mistake, we submitted a proof of this +article to the (American) gentlemen named in it, and asked them to +correct any errors of detail that might have crept in among the facts. +They reply with some asperity that errors cannot creep in among facts +where there are no facts for them to creep in among; and that none are +discoverable in this article, but only baseless aberrations of a +disordered mind. They have no recollection of any such night in Boston, +nor elsewhere; and in their opinion there was never any such night. They +have met Mr. Twain, but have had the prudence not to intrust any +privacies to him--particularly under oath; and they think they now see +that this prudence was justified, since he has been untrustworthy enough +to even betray privacies which had no existence. Further, they think it +a strange thing that Mr. Twain, who was never invited to meddle with +anybody's boyhood dreams but his own, has been so gratuitously anxious to +see that other people's are placed before the world that he has quite +lost his head in his zeal and forgotten to make any mention of his own at +all. Provided we insert this explanation, they are willing to let his +article pass; otherwise they must require its suppression in the interest +of truth. + +P.S.--These replies having left us in some perplexity, and also in some +fear lest they distress Mr. Twain if published without his privity, we +judged it but fair to submit them to him and give him an opportunity to +defend himself. But he does not seem to be troubled, or even aware that +he is in a delicate situation. He merely says: 'Do not worry about those +former young people. They can write good literature, but when it comes +to speaking the truth, they have not had my training.--MARK TWAIN.' +The last sentence seems obscure, and liable to an unfortunate +construction. It plainly needs refashioning, but we cannot take the +responsibility of doing it.--EDITOR. + + + + + + +IN MEMORIAM + +OLIVIA SUSAN CLEMENS + +DIED AUGUST 18, 1896; AGED 24 + +In a fair valley--oh, how long ago, how long ago!-- +Where all the broad expanse was clothed in vines, +And fruitful fields and meadows starred with flowers, +And clear streams wandered at their idle will; +And still lakes slept, their burnished surfaces +A dream of painted clouds, and soft airs +Went whispering with odorous breath, +And all was peace--in that fair vale, +Shut from the troubled world, a nameless hamlet drowsed. + +Hard by, apart, a temple stood; +And strangers from the outer world +Passing, noted it with tired eyes, +And seeing, saw it not: +A glimpse of its fair form--an answering momentary thrill-- +And they passed on, careless and unaware. + +They could not know the cunning of its make; +They could not know the secret shut up in its heart; +Only the dwellers of the hamlet knew; +They knew that what seemed brass was gold; +What marble seemed, was ivory; +The glories that enriched the milky surfaces-- +The trailing vines, and interwoven flowers, +And tropic birds a-wing, clothed all in tinted fires-- +They knew for what they were, not what they seemed: +Encrustings all of gems, not perishable splendours of the brush. +They knew the secret spot where one must stand-- +They knew the surest hour, the proper slant of sun-- +To gather in, unmarred, undimmed, +The vision of the fane in all its fairy grace, +A fainting dream against the opal sky. + +And more than this. They knew +That in the temple's inmost place a spirit dwelt, +Made all of light! +For glimpses of it they had caught +Beyond the curtains when the priests +That served the altar came and went. + +All loved that light and held it dear +That had this partial grace; +But the adoring priests alone who lived +By day and night submerged in its immortal glow +Knew all its power and depth, and could appraise the loss +If it should fade and fail and come no more. + +All this was long ago--so long ago! + +The light burned on; and they that worshipped it, +And they that caught its flash at intervals and held it dear, +Contented lived in its secure possession. Ah, +How long ago it was! + +And then when they +Were nothing fearing, and God's peace was in the air, +And none was prophesying harm, +The vast disaster fell: +Where stood the temple when the sun went down +Was vacant desert when it rose again! + +Ah yes! 'Tis ages since it chanced! +So long ago it was, +That from the memory of the hamlet-folk the Light has passed-- +They scarce believing, now, that once it was, +Or if believing, yet not missing it, +And reconciled to have it gone. + +Not so the priests! Oh, not so +The stricken ones that served it day and night, +Adoring it, abiding in the healing of its peace: +They stand, yet, where erst they stood +Speechless in that dim morning long ago; +And still they gaze, as then they gazed, +And murmur, 'It will come again; +It knows our pain--it knows--it knows-- +Ah surely it will come again. + +S.L.C. + +LAKE LUCERNE, August 18, 1897. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and +Other Stories, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS OF MARK TWAIN +(Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910) + + + +CONTENTS: + + What Is Man? + + The Death of Jean + + The Turning-Point of My Life + + How to Make History Dates Stick + + The Memorable Assassination + + A Scrap of Curious History + + Switzerland, the Cradle of Liberty + + At the Shrine of St. Wagner + + William Dean Howells + + English as She is Taught + + A Simplified Alphabet + + As Concerns Interpreting the Deity + + Concerning Tobacco + + Taming the Bicycle + + Is Shakespeare Dead? + + + +WHAT IS MAN? + +I + +a. Man the Machine. b. Personal Merit + +[The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing. The Old Man had +asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more. The +Young Man objected, and asked him to go into particulars and furnish his +reasons for his position.] + +Old Man. What are the materials of which a steam-engine is made? + +Young Man. Iron, steel, brass, white-metal, and so on. + +O.M. Where are these found? + +Y.M. In the rocks. + +O.M. In a pure state? + +Y.M. No--in ores. + +O.M. Are the metals suddenly deposited in the ores? + +Y.M. No--it is the patient work of countless ages. + +O.M. You could make the engine out of the rocks themselves? + +Y.M. Yes, a brittle one and not valuable. + +O.M. You would not require much, of such an engine as that? + +Y.M. No--substantially nothing. + +O.M. To make a fine and capable engine, how would you proceed? + +Y.M. Drive tunnels and shafts into the hills; blast out the iron ore; +crush it, smelt it, reduce it to pig-iron; put some of it through the +Bessemer process and make steel of it. Mine and treat and combine +several metals of which brass is made. + +O.M. Then? + +Y.M. Out of the perfected result, build the fine engine. + +O.M. You would require much of this one? + +Y.M. Oh, indeed yes. + +O.M. It could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches, polishers, in a +word all the cunning machines of a great factory? + +Y.M. It could. + +O.M. What could the stone engine do? + +Y.M. Drive a sewing-machine, possibly--nothing more, perhaps. + +O.M. Men would admire the other engine and rapturously praise it? + +Y.M. Yes. + +O.M. But not the stone one? + +Y.M. No. + +O.M. The merits of the metal machine would be far above those of the +stone one? + +Y.M. Of course. + +O.M. Personal merits? + +Y.M. PERSONAL merits? How do you mean? + +O.M. It would be personally entitled to the credit of its own +performance? + +Y.M. The engine? Certainly not. + +O.M. Why not? + +Y.M. Because its performance is not personal. It is the result of the +law of construction. It is not a MERIT that it does the things which it +is set to do--it can't HELP doing them. + +O.M. And it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine that it does +so little? + +Y.M. Certainly not. It does no more and no less than the law of its +make permits and compels it to do. There is nothing PERSONAL about it; +it cannot choose. In this process of "working up to the matter" is it +your idea to work up to the proposition that man and a machine are about +the same thing, and that there is no personal merit in the performance of +either? + +O.M. Yes--but do not be offended; I am meaning no offense. What makes +the grand difference between the stone engine and the steel one? Shall +we call it training, education? Shall we call the stone engine a savage +and the steel one a civilized man? The original rock contained the stuff +of which the steel one was built--but along with a lot of sulphur and +stone and other obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from the old +geologic ages--prejudices, let us call them. Prejudices which nothing +within the rock itself had either POWER to remove or any DESIRE to +remove. Will you take note of that phrase? + +Y.M. Yes. I have written it down; "Prejudices which nothing within the +rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove." Go on. + +O.M. Prejudices must be removed by OUTSIDE INFLUENCES or not at all. +Put that down. + +Y.M. Very well; "Must be removed by outside influences or not at all." +Go on. + +O.M. The iron's prejudice against ridding itself of the cumbering rock. +To make it more exact, the iron's absolute INDIFFERENCE as to whether the +rock be removed or not. Then comes the OUTSIDE INFLUENCE and grinds the +rock to powder and sets the ore free. The IRON in the ore is still +captive. An OUTSIDE INFLUENCE smelts it free of the clogging ore. The +iron is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent to further progress. An +OUTSIDE INFLUENCE beguiles it into the Bessemer furnace and refines it +into steel of the first quality. It is educated, now--its training is +complete. And it has reached its limit. By no possible process can it +be educated into GOLD. Will you set that down? + +Y.M. Yes. "Everything has its limit--iron ore cannot be educated into +gold." + +O.M. There are gold men, and tin men, and copper men, and leaden mean, +and steel men, and so on--and each has the limitations of his nature, his +heredities, his training, and his environment. You can build engines out +of each of these metals, and they will all perform, but you must not +require the weak ones to do equal work with the strong ones. In each +case, to get the best results, you must free the metal from its +obstructing prejudicial ones by education--smelting, refining, and so +forth. + +Y.M. You have arrived at man, now? + +O.M. Yes. Man the machine--man the impersonal engine. Whatsoever a man +is, is due to his MAKE, and to the INFLUENCES brought to bear upon it by +his heredities, his habitat, his associations. He is moved, directed, +COMMANDED, by EXTERIOR influences--SOLELY. He ORIGINATES nothing, not +even a thought. + +Y.M. Oh, come! Where did I get my opinion that this which you are +talking is all foolishness? + +O.M. It is a quite natural opinion--indeed an inevitable opinion--but +YOU did not create the materials out of which it is formed. They are +odds and ends of thoughts, impressions, feelings, gathered unconsciously +from a thousand books, a thousand conversations, and from streams of +thought and feeling which have flowed down into your heart and brain out +of the hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors. PERSONALLY you did +not create even the smallest microscopic fragment of the materials out of +which your opinion is made; and personally you cannot claim even the +slender merit of PUTTING THE BORROWED MATERIALS TOGETHER. That was done +AUTOMATICALLY--by your mental machinery, in strict accordance with the +law of that machinery's construction. And you not only did not make that +machinery yourself, but you have NOT EVEN ANY COMMAND OVER IT. + +Y.M. This is too much. You think I could have formed no opinion but +that one? + +O.M. Spontaneously? No. And YOU DID NOT FORM THAT ONE; your machinery +did it for you--automatically and instantly, without reflection or the +need of it. + +Y.M. Suppose I had reflected? How then? + +O.M. Suppose you try? + +Y.M. (AFTER A QUARTER OF AN HOUR.) I have reflected. + +O.M. You mean you have tried to change your opinion--as an experiment? + +Y.M. Yes. + +O.M. With success? + +Y.M. No. It remains the same; it is impossible to change it. + +O.M. I am sorry, but you see, yourself, that your mind is merely a +machine, nothing more. You have no command over it, it has no command +over itself--it is worked SOLELY FROM THE OUTSIDE. That is the law of its +make; it is the law of all machines. + +Y.M. Can't I EVER change one of these automatic opinions? + +O.M. No. You can't yourself, but EXTERIOR INFLUENCES can do it. + +Y.M. And exterior ones ONLY? + +O.M. Yes--exterior ones only. + +Y.M. That position is untenable--I may say ludicrously untenable. + +O.M. What makes you think so? + +Y.M. I don't merely think it, I know it. Suppose I resolve to enter +upon a course of thought, and study, and reading, with the deliberate +purpose of changing that opinion; and suppose I succeed. THAT is not the +work of an exterior impulse, the whole of it is mine and personal; for I +originated the project. + +O.M. Not a shred of it. IT GREW OUT OF THIS TALK WITH ME. But for that +it would not have occurred to you. No man ever originates anything. All +his thoughts, all his impulses, come FROM THE OUTSIDE. + +Y.M. It's an exasperating subject. The FIRST man had original thoughts, +anyway; there was nobody to draw from. + +O.M. It is a mistake. Adam's thoughts came to him from the outside. +YOU have a fear of death. You did not invent that--you got it from +outside, from talking and teaching. Adam had no fear of death--none in +the world. + +Y.M. Yes, he had. + +O.M. When he was created? + +Y.M. No. + +O.M. When, then? + +Y.M. When he was threatened with it. + +O.M. Then it came from OUTSIDE. Adam is quite big enough; let us not +try to make a god of him. NONE BUT GODS HAVE EVER HAD A THOUGHT WHICH +DID NOT COME FROM THE OUTSIDE. Adam probably had a good head, but it was +of no sort of use to him until it was filled up FROM THE OUTSIDE. He was +not able to invent the triflingest little thing with it. He had not a +shadow of a notion of the difference between good and evil--he had to get +the idea FROM THE OUTSIDE. Neither he nor Eve was able to originate the +idea that it was immodest to go naked; the knowledge came in with the +apple FROM THE OUTSIDE. A man's brain is so constructed that IT CAN +ORIGINATE NOTHING WHATSOEVER. It can only use material obtained OUTSIDE. +It is merely a machine; and it works automatically, not by will-power. +IT HAS NO COMMAND OVER ITSELF, ITS OWNER HAS NO COMMAND OVER IT. + +Y.M. Well, never mind Adam: but certainly Shakespeare's creations-- + +O.M. No, you mean Shakespeare's IMITATIONS. Shakespeare created +nothing. He correctly observed, and he marvelously painted. He exactly +portrayed people whom GOD had created; but he created none himself. Let +us spare him the slander of charging him with trying. Shakespeare could +not create. HE WAS A MACHINE, AND MACHINES DO NOT CREATE. + +Y.M. Where WAS his excellence, then? + +O.M. In this. He was not a sewing-machine, like you and me; he was a +Gobelin loom. The threads and the colors came into him FROM THE OUTSIDE; +outside influences, suggestions, EXPERIENCES (reading, seeing plays, +playing plays, borrowing ideas, and so on), framed the patterns in his +mind and started up his complex and admirable machinery, and IT +AUTOMATICALLY turned out that pictured and gorgeous fabric which still +compels the astonishment of the world. If Shakespeare had been born and +bred on a barren and unvisited rock in the ocean his mighty intellect +would have had no OUTSIDE MATERIAL to work with, and could have invented +none; and NO OUTSIDE INFLUENCES, teachings, moldings, persuasions, +inspirations, of a valuable sort, and could have invented none; and so +Shakespeare would have produced nothing. In Turkey he would have produced +something--something up to the highest limit of Turkish influences, +associations, and training. In France he would have produced something +better--something up to the highest limit of the French influences and +training. In England he rose to the highest limit attainable through the +OUTSIDE HELPS AFFORDED BY THAT LAND'S IDEALS, INFLUENCES, AND TRAINING. +You and I are but sewing-machines. We must turn out what we can; we must +do our endeavor and care nothing at all when the unthinking reproach us +for not turning out Gobelins. + +Y.M. And so we are mere machines! And machines may not boast, nor feel +proud of their performance, nor claim personal merit for it, nor applause +and praise. It is an infamous doctrine. + +O.M. It isn't a doctrine, it is merely a fact. + +Y.M. I suppose, then, there is no more merit in being brave than in +being a coward? + +O.M. PERSONAL merit? No. A brave man does not CREATE his bravery. He +is entitled to no personal credit for possessing it. It is born to him. +A baby born with a billion dollars--where is the personal merit in that? +A baby born with nothing--where is the personal demerit in that? The one +is fawned upon, admired, worshiped, by sycophants, the other is neglected +and despised--where is the sense in it? + +Y.M. Sometimes a timid man sets himself the task of conquering his +cowardice and becoming brave--and succeeds. What do you say to that? + +O.M. That it shows the value of TRAINING IN RIGHT DIRECTIONS OVER +TRAINING IN WRONG ONES. Inestimably valuable is training, influence, +education, in right directions--TRAINING ONE'S SELF-APPROBATION TO +ELEVATE ITS IDEALS. + +Y.M. But as to merit--the personal merit of the victorious coward's +project and achievement? + +O.M. There isn't any. In the world's view he is a worthier man than he +was before, but HE didn't achieve the change--the merit of it is not his. + +Y.M. Whose, then? + +O.M. His MAKE, and the influences which wrought upon it from the +outside. + +Y.M. His make? + +O.M. To start with, he was NOT utterly and completely a coward, or the +influences would have had nothing to work upon. He was not afraid of a +cow, though perhaps of a bull: not afraid of a woman, but afraid of a +man. There was something to build upon. There was a SEED. No seed, no +plant. Did he make that seed himself, or was it born in him? It was no +merit of HIS that the seed was there. + +Y.M. Well, anyway, the idea of CULTIVATING it, the resolution to +cultivate it, was meritorious, and he originated that. + +O.M. He did nothing of the kind. It came whence ALL impulses, good or +bad, come--from OUTSIDE. If that timid man had lived all his life in a +community of human rabbits, had never read of brave deeds, had never +heard speak of them, had never heard any one praise them nor express envy +of the heroes that had done them, he would have had no more idea of +bravery than Adam had of modesty, and it could never by any possibility +have occurred to him to RESOLVE to become brave. He COULD NOT ORIGINATE +THE IDEA--it had to come to him from the OUTSIDE. And so, when he heard +bravery extolled and cowardice derided, it woke him up. He was ashamed. +Perhaps his sweetheart turned up her nose and said, "I am told that you +are a coward!" It was not HE that turned over the new leaf--she did it +for him. HE must not strut around in the merit of it--it is not his. + +Y.M. But, anyway, he reared the plant after she watered the seed. + +O.M. No. OUTSIDE INFLUENCES reared it. At the command--and +trembling--he marched out into the field--with other soldiers and in the +daytime, not alone and in the dark. He had the INFLUENCE OF EXAMPLE, he +drew courage from his comrades' courage; he was afraid, and wanted to +run, but he did not dare; he was AFRAID to run, with all those soldiers +looking on. He was progressing, you see--the moral fear of shame had +risen superior to the physical fear of harm. By the end of the campaign +experience will have taught him that not ALL who go into battle get +hurt--an outside influence which will be helpful to him; and he will also +have learned how sweet it is to be praised for courage and be huzza'd at +with tear-choked voices as the war-worn regiment marches past the +worshiping multitude with flags flying and the drums beating. After that +he will be as securely brave as any veteran in the army--and there will +not be a shade nor suggestion of PERSONAL MERIT in it anywhere; it will +all have come from the OUTSIDE. The Victoria Cross breeds more heroes +than-- + +Y.M. Hang it, where is the sense in his becoming brave if he is to get +no credit for it? + +O.M. Your question will answer itself presently. It involves an +important detail of man's make which we have not yet touched upon. + +Y.M. What detail is that? + +O.M. The impulse which moves a person to do things--the only impulse +that ever moves a person to do a thing. + +Y.M. The ONLY one! Is there but one? + +O.M. That is all. There is only one. + +Y.M. Well, certainly that is a strange enough doctrine. What is the sole +impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing? + +O.M. The impulse to CONTENT HIS OWN SPIRIT--the NECESSITY of contenting +his own spirit and WINNING ITS APPROVAL. + +Y.M. Oh, come, that won't do! + +O.M. Why won't it? + +Y.M. Because it puts him in the attitude of always looking out for his +own comfort and advantage; whereas an unselfish man often does a thing +solely for another person's good when it is a positive disadvantage to +himself. + +O.M. It is a mistake. The act must do HIM good, FIRST; otherwise he +will not do it. He may THINK he is doing it solely for the other +person's sake, but it is not so; he is contenting his own spirit +first--the other's person's benefit has to always take SECOND place. + +Y.M. What a fantastic idea! What becomes of self-sacrifice? Please +answer me that. + +O.M. What is self-sacrifice? + +Y.M. The doing good to another person where no shadow nor suggestion of +benefit to one's self can result from it. + + + +II + +Man's Sole Impulse--the Securing of His Own Approval + +Old Man. There have been instances of it--you think? + +Young Man. INSTANCES? Millions of them! + +O.M. You have not jumped to conclusions? You have examined +them--critically? + +Y.M. They don't need it: the acts themselves reveal the golden impulse +back of them. + +O.M. For instance? + +Y.M. Well, then, for instance. Take the case in the book here. The man +lives three miles up-town. It is bitter cold, snowing hard, midnight. +He is about to enter the horse-car when a gray and ragged old woman, a +touching picture of misery, puts out her lean hand and begs for rescue +from hunger and death. The man finds that he has a quarter in his +pocket, but he does not hesitate: he gives it her and trudges home +through the storm. There--it is noble, it is beautiful; its grace is +marred by no fleck or blemish or suggestion of self-interest. + +O.M. What makes you think that? + +Y.M. Pray what else could I think? Do you imagine that there is some +other way of looking at it? + +O.M. Can you put yourself in the man's place and tell me what he felt +and what he thought? + +Y.M. Easily. The sight of that suffering old face pierced his generous +heart with a sharp pain. He could not bear it. He could endure the +three-mile walk in the storm, but he could not endure the tortures his +conscience would suffer if he turned his back and left that poor old +creature to perish. He would not have been able to sleep, for thinking +of it. + +O.M. What was his state of mind on his way home? + +Y.M. It was a state of joy which only the self-sacrificer knows. His +heart sang, he was unconscious of the storm. + +O.M. He felt well? + +Y.M. One cannot doubt it. + +O.M. Very well. Now let us add up the details and see how much he got +for his twenty-five cents. Let us try to find out the REAL why of his +making the investment. In the first place HE couldn't bear the pain +which the old suffering face gave him. So he was thinking of HIS +pain--this good man. He must buy a salve for it. If he did not succor +the old woman HIS conscience would torture him all the way home. +Thinking of HIS pain again. He must buy relief for that. If he didn't +relieve the old woman HE would not get any sleep. He must buy some +sleep--still thinking of HIMSELF, you see. Thus, to sum up, he bought +himself free of a sharp pain in his heart, he bought himself free of the +tortures of a waiting conscience, he bought a whole night's sleep--all +for twenty-five cents! It should make Wall Street ashamed of itself. On +his way home his heart was joyful, and it sang--profit on top of profit! +The impulse which moved the man to succor the old woman was--FIRST--to +CONTENT HIS OWN SPIRIT; secondly to relieve HER sufferings. Is it your +opinion that men's acts proceed from one central and unchanging and +inalterable impulse, or from a variety of impulses? + +Y.M. From a variety, of course--some high and fine and noble, others +not. What is your opinion? + +O.M. Then there is but ONE law, one source. + +Y.M. That both the noblest impulses and the basest proceed from that one +source? + +O.M. Yes. + +Y.M. Will you put that law into words? + +O.M. Yes. This is the law, keep it in your mind. FROM HIS CRADLE TO +HIS GRAVE A MAN NEVER DOES A SINGLE THING WHICH HAS ANY FIRST AND +FOREMOST OBJECT BUT ONE--TO SECURE PEACE OF MIND, SPIRITUAL COMFORT, FOR +HIMSELF. + +Y.M. Come! He never does anything for any one else's comfort, spiritual +or physical? + +O.M. No. EXCEPT ON THOSE DISTINCT TERMS--that it shall FIRST secure HIS +OWN spiritual comfort. Otherwise he will not do it. + +Y.M. It will be easy to expose the falsity of that proposition. + +O.M. For instance? + +Y.M. Take that noble passion, love of country, patriotism. A man who +loves peace and dreads pain, leaves his pleasant home and his weeping +family and marches out to manfully expose himself to hunger, cold, +wounds, and death. Is that seeking spiritual comfort? + +O.M. He loves peace and dreads pain? + +Y.M. Yes. + +O.M. Then perhaps there is something that he loves MORE than he loves +peace--THE APPROVAL OF HIS NEIGHBORS AND THE PUBLIC. And perhaps there +is something which he dreads more than he dreads pain--the DISAPPROVAL of +his neighbors and the public. If he is sensitive to shame he will go to +the field--not because his spirit will be ENTIRELY comfortable there, but +because it will be more comfortable there than it would be if he remained +at home. He will always do the thing which will bring him the MOST +mental comfort--for that is THE SOLE LAW OF HIS LIFE. He leaves the +weeping family behind; he is sorry to make them uncomfortable, but not +sorry enough to sacrifice his OWN comfort to secure theirs. + +Y.M. Do you really believe that mere public opinion could force a timid +and peaceful man to-- + +O.M. Go to war? Yes--public opinion can force some men to do ANYTHING. + +Y.M. ANYTHING? + +O.M. Yes--anything. + +Y.M. I don't believe that. Can it force a right-principled man to do a +wrong thing? + +O.M. Yes. + +Y.M. Can it force a kind man to do a cruel thing? + +O.M. Yes. + +Y.M. Give an instance. + +O.M. Alexander Hamilton was a conspicuously high-principled man. He +regarded dueling as wrong, and as opposed to the teachings of +religion--but in deference to PUBLIC OPINION he fought a duel. He deeply +loved his family, but to buy public approval he treacherously deserted +them and threw his life away, ungenerously leaving them to lifelong +sorrow in order that he might stand well with a foolish world. In the +then condition of the public standards of honor he could not have been +comfortable with the stigma upon him of having refused to fight. The +teachings of religion, his devotion to his family, his kindness of heart, +his high principles, all went for nothing when they stood in the way of +his spiritual comfort. A man will do ANYTHING, no matter what it is, TO +SECURE HIS SPIRITUAL COMFORT; and he can neither be forced nor persuaded +to any act which has not that goal for its object. Hamilton's act was +compelled by the inborn necessity of contenting his own spirit; in this +it was like all the other acts of his life, and like all the acts of all +men's lives. Do you see where the kernel of the matter lies? A man +cannot be comfortable without HIS OWN approval. He will secure the +largest share possible of that, at all costs, all sacrifices. + +Y.M. A minute ago you said Hamilton fought that duel to get PUBLIC +approval. + +O.M. I did. By refusing to fight the duel he would have secured his +family's approval and a large share of his own; but the public approval +was more valuable in his eyes than all other approvals put together--in +the earth or above it; to secure that would furnish him the MOST comfort +of mind, the most SELF-approval; so he sacrificed all other values to get +it. + +Y.M. Some noble souls have refused to fight duels, and have manfully +braved the public contempt. + +O.M. They acted ACCORDING TO THEIR MAKE. They valued their principles +and the approval of their families ABOVE the public approval. They took +the thing they valued MOST and let the rest go. They took what would +give them the LARGEST share of PERSONAL CONTENTMENT AND APPROVAL--a man +ALWAYS does. Public opinion cannot force that kind of men to go to the +wars. When they go it is for other reasons. Other spirit-contenting +reasons. + +Y.M. Always spirit-contenting reasons? + +O.M. There are no others. + +Y.M. When a man sacrifices his life to save a little child from a +burning building, what do you call that? + +O.M. When he does it, it is the law of HIS make. HE can't bear to see +the child in that peril (a man of a different make COULD), and so he +tries to save the child, and loses his life. But he has got what he was +after--HIS OWN APPROVAL. + +Y.M. What do you call Love, Hate, Charity, Revenge, Humanity, +Magnanimity, Forgiveness? + +O.M. Different results of the one Master Impulse: the necessity of +securing one's self approval. They wear diverse clothes and are subject +to diverse moods, but in whatsoever ways they masquerade they are the +SAME PERSON all the time. To change the figure, the COMPULSION that +moves a man--and there is but the one--is the necessity of securing the +contentment of his own spirit. When it stops, the man is dead. + +Y.M. That is foolishness. Love-- + +O.M. Why, love is that impulse, that law, in its most uncompromising +form. It will squander life and everything else on its object. Not +PRIMARILY for the object's sake, but for ITS OWN. When its object is +happy IT is happy--and that is what it is unconsciously after. + +Y.M. You do not even except the lofty and gracious passion of +mother-love? + +O.M. No, IT is the absolute slave of that law. The mother will go naked +to clothe her child; she will starve that it may have food; suffer +torture to save it from pain; die that it may live. She takes a living +PLEASURE in making these sacrifices. SHE DOES IT FOR THAT REWARD--that +self-approval, that contentment, that peace, that comfort. SHE WOULD DO +IT FOR YOUR CHILD IF SHE COULD GET THE SAME PAY. + +Y.M. This is an infernal philosophy of yours. + +O.M. It isn't a philosophy, it is a fact. + +Y.M. Of course you must admit that there are some acts which-- + +O.M. No. There is NO act, large or small, fine or mean, which springs +from any motive but the one--the necessity of appeasing and contenting +one's own spirit. + +Y.M. The world's philanthropists-- + +O.M. I honor them, I uncover my head to them--from habit and training; +and THEY could not know comfort or happiness or self-approval if they did +not work and spend for the unfortunate. It makes THEM happy to see others +happy; and so with money and labor they buy what they are +after--HAPPINESS, SELF-APPROVAL. Why don't miners do the same thing? +Because they can get a thousandfold more happiness by NOT doing it. +There is no other reason. They follow the law of their make. + +Y.M. What do you say of duty for duty's sake? + +O.M. That IS DOES NOT EXIST. Duties are not performed for duty's SAKE, +but because their NEGLECT would make the man UNCOMFORTABLE. A man +performs but ONE duty--the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of +making himself agreeable to himself. If he can most satisfyingly perform +this sole and only duty by HELPING his neighbor, he will do it; if he can +most satisfyingly perform it by SWINDLING his neighbor, he will do it. +But he always looks out for Number One--FIRST; the effects upon others +are a SECONDARY matter. Men pretend to self-sacrifices, but this is a +thing which, in the ordinary value of the phrase, DOES NOT EXIST AND HAS +NOT EXISTED. A man often honestly THINKS he is sacrificing himself +merely and solely for some one else, but he is deceived; his bottom +impulse is to content a requirement of his nature and training, and thus +acquire peace for his soul. + +Y.M. Apparently, then, all men, both good and bad ones, devote their +lives to contenting their consciences. + +O.M. Yes. That is a good enough name for it: Conscience--that +independent Sovereign, that insolent absolute Monarch inside of a man who +is the man's Master. There are all kinds of consciences, because there +are all kinds of men. You satisfy an assassin's conscience in one way, a +philanthropist's in another, a miser's in another, a burglar's in still +another. As a GUIDE or INCENTIVE to any authoritatively prescribed line +of morals or conduct (leaving TRAINING out of the account), a man's +conscience is totally valueless. I know a kind-hearted Kentuckian whose +self-approval was lacking--whose conscience was troubling him, to phrase +it with exactness--BECAUSE HE HAD NEGLECTED TO KILL A CERTAIN MAN--a man +whom he had never seen. The stranger had killed this man's friend in a +fight, this man's Kentucky training made it a duty to kill the stranger +for it. He neglected his duty--kept dodging it, shirking it, putting it +off, and his unrelenting conscience kept persecuting him for this +conduct. At last, to get ease of mind, comfort, self-approval, he hunted +up the stranger and took his life. It was an immense act of +SELF-SACRIFICE (as per the usual definition), for he did not want to do +it, and he never would have done it if he could have bought a contented +spirit and an unworried mind at smaller cost. But we are so made that we +will pay ANYTHING for that contentment--even another man's life. + +Y.M. You spoke a moment ago of TRAINED consciences. You mean that we +are not BORN with consciences competent to guide us aright? + +O.M. If we were, children and savages would know right from wrong, and +not have to be taught it. + +Y.M. But consciences can be TRAINED? + +O.M. Yes. + +Y.M. Of course by parents, teachers, the pulpit, and books. + +O.M. Yes--they do their share; they do what they can. + +Y.M. And the rest is done by-- + +O.M. Oh, a million unnoticed influences--for good or bad: influences +which work without rest during every waking moment of a man's life, from +cradle to grave. + +Y.M. You have tabulated these? + +O.M. Many of them--yes. + +Y.M. Will you read me the result? + +O.M. Another time, yes. It would take an hour. + +Y.M. A conscience can be trained to shun evil and prefer good? + +O.M. Yes. + +Y.M. But will it for spirit-contenting reasons only? + +O.M. It CAN'T be trained to do a thing for any OTHER reason. The thing +is impossible. + +Y.M. There MUST be a genuinely and utterly self-sacrificing act recorded +in human history somewhere. + +O.M. You are young. You have many years before you. Search one out. + +Y.M. It does seem to me that when a man sees a fellow-being struggling +in the water and jumps in at the risk of his life to save him-- + +O.M. Wait. Describe the MAN. Describe the FELLOW-BEING. State if there +is an AUDIENCE present; or if they are ALONE. + +Y.M. What have these things to do with the splendid act? + +O.M. Very much. Shall we suppose, as a beginning, that the two are +alone, in a solitary place, at midnight? + +Y.M. If you choose. + +O.M. And that the fellow-being is the man's daughter? + +Y.M. Well, n-no--make it someone else. + +O.M. A filthy, drunken ruffian, then? + +Y.M. I see. Circumstances alter cases. I suppose that if there was no +audience to observe the act, the man wouldn't perform it. + +O.M. But there is here and there a man who WOULD. People, for instance, +like the man who lost his life trying to save the child from the fire; +and the man who gave the needy old woman his twenty-five cents and walked +home in the storm--there are here and there men like that who would do +it. And why? Because they couldn't BEAR to see a fellow-being +struggling in the water and not jump in and help. It would give THEM +pain. They would save the fellow-being on that account. THEY WOULDN'T +DO IT OTHERWISE. They strictly obey the law which I have been insisting +upon. You must remember and always distinguish the people who CAN'T BEAR +things from people who CAN. It will throw light upon a number of +apparently "self-sacrificing" cases. + +Y.M. Oh, dear, it's all so disgusting. + +O.M. Yes. And so true. + +Y.M. Come--take the good boy who does things he doesn't want to do, in +order to gratify his mother. + +O.M. He does seven-tenths of the act because it gratifies HIM to gratify +his mother. Throw the bulk of advantage the other way and the good boy +would not do the act. He MUST obey the iron law. None can escape it. + +Y.M. Well, take the case of a bad boy who-- + +O.M. You needn't mention it, it is a waste of time. It is no matter +about the bad boy's act. Whatever it was, he had a spirit-contenting +reason for it. Otherwise you have been misinformed, and he didn't do it. + +Y.M. It is very exasperating. A while ago you said that man's +conscience is not a born judge of morals and conduct, but has to be +taught and trained. Now I think a conscience can get drowsy and lazy, +but I don't think it can go wrong; if you wake it up-- + + + +A Little Story + +O.M. I will tell you a little story: + +Once upon a time an Infidel was guest in the house of a Christian widow +whose little boy was ill and near to death. The Infidel often watched by +the bedside and entertained the boy with talk, and he used these +opportunities to satisfy a strong longing in his nature--that desire +which is in us all to better other people's condition by having them +think as we think. He was successful. But the dying boy, in his last +moments, reproached him and said: + +"I BELIEVED, AND WAS HAPPY IN IT; YOU HAVE TAKEN MY BELIEF AWAY, AND MY +COMFORT. NOW I HAVE NOTHING LEFT, AND I DIE MISERABLE; FOR THE THINGS +WHICH YOU HAVE TOLD ME DO NOT TAKE THE PLACE OF THAT WHICH I HAVE LOST." + +And the mother, also, reproached the Infidel, and said: + +"MY CHILD IS FOREVER LOST, AND MY HEART IS BROKEN. HOW COULD YOU DO THIS +CRUEL THING? WE HAVE DONE YOU NO HARM, BUT ONLY KINDNESS; WE MADE OUR +HOUSE YOUR HOME, YOU WERE WELCOME TO ALL WE HAD, AND THIS IS OUR REWARD." + +The heart of the Infidel was filled with remorse for what he had done, +and he said: + +"IT WAS WRONG--I SEE IT NOW; BUT I WAS ONLY TRYING TO DO HIM GOOD. IN MY +VIEW HE WAS IN ERROR; IT SEEMED MY DUTY TO TEACH HIM THE TRUTH." + +Then the mother said: + +"I HAD TAUGHT HIM, ALL HIS LITTLE LIFE, WHAT I BELIEVED TO BE THE TRUTH, +AND IN HIS BELIEVING FAITH BOTH OF US WERE HAPPY. NOW HE IS DEAD,--AND +LOST; AND I AM MISERABLE. OUR FAITH CAME DOWN TO US THROUGH CENTURIES OF +BELIEVING ANCESTORS; WHAT RIGHT HAD YOU, OR ANY ONE, TO DISTURB IT? +WHERE WAS YOUR HONOR, WHERE WAS YOUR SHAME?" + +Y.M. He was a miscreant, and deserved death! + +O.M. He thought so himself, and said so. + +Y.M. Ah--you see, HIS CONSCIENCE WAS AWAKENED! + +O.M. Yes, his Self-Disapproval was. It PAINED him to see the mother +suffer. He was sorry he had done a thing which brought HIM pain. It did +not occur to him to think of the mother when he was misteaching the boy, +for he was absorbed in providing PLEASURE for himself, then. Providing +it by satisfying what he believed to be a call of duty. + +Y.M. Call it what you please, it is to me a case of AWAKENED CONSCIENCE. +That awakened conscience could never get itself into that species of +trouble again. A cure like that is a PERMANENT cure. + +O.M. Pardon--I had not finished the story. We are creatures of OUTSIDE +INFLUENCES--we originate NOTHING within. Whenever we take a new line of +thought and drift into a new line of belief and action, the impulse is +ALWAYS suggested from the OUTSIDE. Remorse so preyed upon the Infidel +that it dissolved his harshness toward the boy's religion and made him +come to regard it with tolerance, next with kindness, for the boy's sake +and the mother's. Finally he found himself examining it. From that +moment his progress in his new trend was steady and rapid. He became a +believing Christian. And now his remorse for having robbed the dying boy +of his faith and his salvation was bitterer than ever. It gave him no +rest, no peace. He MUST have rest and peace--it is the law of nature. +There seemed but one way to get it; he must devote himself to saving +imperiled souls. He became a missionary. He landed in a pagan country +ill and helpless. A native widow took him into her humble home and +nursed him back to convalescence. Then her young boy was taken +hopelessly ill, and the grateful missionary helped her tend him. Here +was his first opportunity to repair a part of the wrong done to the other +boy by doing a precious service for this one by undermining his foolish +faith in his false gods. He was successful. But the dying boy in his +last moments reproached him and said: + +"I BELIEVED, AND WAS HAPPY IN IT; YOU HAVE TAKEN MY BELIEF AWAY, AND MY +COMFORT. NOW I HAVE NOTHING LEFT, AND I DIE MISERABLE; FOR THE THINGS +WHICH YOU HAVE TOLD ME DO NOT TAKE THE PLACE OF THAT WHICH I HAVE LOST." + +And the mother, also, reproached the missionary, and said: + +"MY CHILD IS FOREVER LOST, AND MY HEART IS BROKEN. HOW COULD YOU DO THIS +CRUEL THING? WE HAD DONE YOU NO HARM, BUT ONLY KINDNESS; WE MADE OUR +HOUSE YOUR HOME, YOU WERE WELCOME TO ALL WE HAD, AND THIS IS OUR REWARD." + +The heart of the missionary was filled with remorse for what he had done, +and he said: + +"IT WAS WRONG--I SEE IT NOW; BUT I WAS ONLY TRYING TO DO HIM GOOD. IN MY +VIEW HE WAS IN ERROR; IT SEEMED MY DUTY TO TEACH HIM THE TRUTH." + +Then the mother said: + +"I HAD TAUGHT HIM, ALL HIS LITTLE LIFE, WHAT I BELIEVED TO BE THE TRUTH, +AND IN HIS BELIEVING FAITH BOTH OF US WERE HAPPY. NOW HE IS DEAD--AND +LOST; AND I AM MISERABLE. OUR FAITH CAME DOWN TO US THROUGH CENTURIES OF +BELIEVING ANCESTORS; WHAT RIGHT HAD YOU, OR ANY ONE, TO DISTURB IT? +WHERE WAS YOUR HONOR, WHERE WAS YOUR SHAME?" + +The missionary's anguish of remorse and sense of treachery were as bitter +and persecuting and unappeasable, now, as they had been in the former +case. The story is finished. What is your comment? + +Y.M. The man's conscience is a fool! It was morbid. It didn't know +right from wrong. + +O.M. I am not sorry to hear you say that. If you grant that ONE man's +conscience doesn't know right from wrong, it is an admission that there +are others like it. This single admission pulls down the whole doctrine +of infallibility of judgment in consciences. Meantime there is one thing +which I ask you to notice. + +Y.M. What is that? + +O.M. That in both cases the man's ACT gave him no spiritual discomfort, +and that he was quite satisfied with it and got pleasure out of it. But +afterward when it resulted in PAIN to HIM, he was sorry. Sorry it had +inflicted pain upon the others, BUT FOR NO REASON UNDER THE SUN EXCEPT +THAT THEIR PAIN GAVE HIM PAIN. Our consciences take NO notice of pain +inflicted upon others until it reaches a point where it gives pain to US. +In ALL cases without exception we are absolutely indifferent to another +person's pain until his sufferings make us uncomfortable. Many an infidel +would not have been troubled by that Christian mother's distress. Don't +you believe that? + +Y.M. Yes. You might almost say it of the AVERAGE infidel, I think. + +O.M. And many a missionary, sternly fortified by his sense of duty, +would not have been troubled by the pagan mother's distress--Jesuit +missionaries in Canada in the early French times, for instance; see +episodes quoted by Parkman. + +Y.M. Well, let us adjourn. Where have we arrived? + +O.M. At this. That we (mankind) have ticketed ourselves with a number +of qualities to which we have given misleading names. Love, Hate, +Charity, Compassion, Avarice, Benevolence, and so on. I mean we attach +misleading MEANINGS to the names. They are all forms of self-contentment, +self-gratification, but the names so disguise them that they distract our +attention from the fact. Also we have smuggled a word into the +dictionary which ought not to be there at all--Self-Sacrifice. It +describes a thing which does not exist. But worst of all, we ignore and +never mention the Sole Impulse which dictates and compels a man's every +act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every +emergency and at all costs. To it we owe all that we are. It is our +breath, our heart, our blood. It is our only spur, our whip, our goad, +our only impelling power; we have no other. Without it we should be mere +inert images, corpses; no one would do anything, there would be no +progress, the world would stand still. We ought to stand reverently +uncovered when the name of that stupendous power is uttered. + +Y.M. I am not convinced. + +O.M. You will be when you think. + + + +III + +Instances in Point + +Old Man. Have you given thought to the Gospel of Self-Approval since we +talked? + +Young Man. I have. + +O.M. It was I that moved you to it. That is to say an OUTSIDE INFLUENCE +moved you to it--not one that originated in your head. Will you try to +keep that in mind and not forget it? + +Y.M. Yes. Why? + +O.M. Because by and by in one of our talks, I wish to further impress +upon you that neither you, nor I, nor any man ever originates a thought +in his own head. THE UTTERER OF A THOUGHT ALWAYS UTTERS A SECOND-HAND +ONE. + +Y.M. Oh, now-- + +O.M. Wait. Reserve your remark till we get to that part of our +discussion--tomorrow or next day, say. Now, then, have you been +considering the proposition that no act is ever born of any but a +self-contenting impulse--(primarily). You have sought. What have you +found? + +Y.M. I have not been very fortunate. I have examined many fine and +apparently self-sacrificing deeds in romances and biographies, but-- + +O.M. Under searching analysis the ostensible self-sacrifice disappeared? +It naturally would. + +Y.M. But here in this novel is one which seems to promise. In the +Adirondack woods is a wage-earner and lay preacher in the lumber-camps +who is of noble character and deeply religious. An earnest and practical +laborer in the New York slums comes up there on vacation--he is leader of +a section of the University Settlement. Holme, the lumberman, is fired +with a desire to throw away his excellent worldly prospects and go down +and save souls on the East Side. He counts it happiness to make this +sacrifice for the glory of God and for the cause of Christ. He resigns +his place, makes the sacrifice cheerfully, and goes to the East Side and +preaches Christ and Him crucified every day and every night to little +groups of half-civilized foreign paupers who scoff at him. But he +rejoices in the scoffings, since he is suffering them in the great cause +of Christ. You have so filled my mind with suspicions that I was +constantly expecting to find a hidden questionable impulse back of all +this, but I am thankful to say I have failed. This man saw his duty, and +for DUTY'S SAKE he sacrificed self and assumed the burden it imposed. + +O.M. Is that as far as you have read? + +Y.M. Yes. + +O.M. Let us read further, presently. Meantime, in sacrificing +himself--NOT for the glory of God, PRIMARILY, as HE imagined, but FIRST +to content that exacting and inflexible master within him--DID HE +SACRIFICE ANYBODY ELSE? + +Y.M. How do you mean? + +O.M. He relinquished a lucrative post and got mere food and lodging in +place of it. Had he dependents? + +Y.M. Well--yes. + +O.M. In what way and to what extend did his self-sacrifice affect THEM? + +Y.M. He was the support of a superannuated father. He had a young +sister with a remarkable voice--he was giving her a musical education, so +that her longing to be self-supporting might be gratified. He was +furnishing the money to put a young brother through a polytechnic school +and satisfy his desire to become a civil engineer. + +O.M. The old father's comforts were now curtailed? + +Y.M. Quite seriously. Yes. + +O.M. The sister's music-lessens had to stop? + +Y.M. Yes. + +O.M. The young brother's education--well, an extinguishing blight fell +upon that happy dream, and he had to go to sawing wood to support the old +father, or something like that? + +Y.M. It is about what happened. Yes. + +O.M. What a handsome job of self-sacrificing he did do! It seems to me +that he sacrificed everybody EXCEPT himself. Haven't I told you that no +man EVER sacrifices himself; that there is no instance of it upon record +anywhere; and that when a man's Interior Monarch requires a thing of its +slave for either its MOMENTARY or its PERMANENT contentment, that thing +must and will be furnished and that command obeyed, no matter who may +stand in the way and suffer disaster by it? That man RUINED HIS FAMILY +to please and content his Interior Monarch-- + +Y.M. And help Christ's cause. + +O.M. Yes--SECONDLY. Not firstly. HE thought it was firstly. + +Y.M. Very well, have it so, if you will. But it could be that he argued +that if he saved a hundred souls in New York-- + +O.M. The sacrifice of the FAMILY would be justified by that great profit +upon the--the--what shall we call it? + +Y.M. Investment? + +O.M. Hardly. How would SPECULATION do? How would GAMBLE do? Not a +solitary soul-capture was sure. He played for a possible +thirty-three-hundred-per-cent profit. It was GAMBLING--with his family +for "chips." However let us see how the game came out. Maybe we can get +on the track of the secret original impulse, the REAL impulse, that moved +him to so nobly self-sacrifice his family in the Savior's cause under the +superstition that he was sacrificing himself. I will read a chapter or +so. . . . Here we have it! It was bound to expose itself sooner or +later. He preached to the East-Side rabble a season, then went back to +his old dull, obscure life in the lumber-camps "HURT TO THE HEART, HIS +PRIDE HUMBLED." Why? Were not his efforts acceptable to the Savior, for +Whom alone they were made? Dear me, that detail is LOST SIGHT OF, is not +even referred to, the fact that it started out as a motive is entirely +forgotten! Then what is the trouble? The authoress quite innocently and +unconsciously gives the whole business away. The trouble was this: this +man merely PREACHED to the poor; that is not the University Settlement's +way; it deals in larger and better things than that, and it did not +enthuse over that crude Salvation-Army eloquence. It was courteous to +Holme--but cool. It did not pet him, did not take him to its bosom. +"PERISHED WERE ALL HIS DREAMS OF DISTINCTION, THE PRAISE AND GRATEFUL +APPROVAL--" Of whom? The Savior? No; the Savior is not mentioned. Of +whom, then? Of "His FELLOW-WORKERS." Why did he want that? Because the +Master inside of him wanted it, and would not be content without it. +That emphasized sentence quoted above, reveals the secret we have been +seeking, the original impulse, the REAL impulse, which moved the obscure +and unappreciated Adirondack lumberman to sacrifice his family and go on +that crusade to the East Side--which said original impulse was this, to +wit: without knowing it HE WENT THERE TO SHOW A NEGLECTED WORLD THE LARGE +TALENT THAT WAS IN HIM, AND RISE TO DISTINCTION. As I have warned you +before, NO act springs from any but the one law, the one motive. But I +pray you, do not accept this law upon my say-so; but diligently examine +for yourself. Whenever you read of a self-sacrificing act or hear of +one, or of a duty done for DUTY'S SAKE, take it to pieces and look for +the REAL motive. It is always there. + +Y.M. I do it every day. I cannot help it, now that I have gotten +started upon the degrading and exasperating quest. For it is hatefully +interesting!--in fact, fascinating is the word. As soon as I come across +a golden deed in a book I have to stop and take it apart and examine it, +I cannot help myself. + +O.M. Have you ever found one that defeated the rule? + +Y.M. No--at least, not yet. But take the case of servant-tipping in +Europe. You pay the HOTEL for service; you owe the servants NOTHING, yet +you pay them besides. Doesn't that defeat it? + +O.M. In what way? + +Y.M. You are not OBLIGED to do it, therefore its source is compassion +for their ill-paid condition, and-- + +O.M. Has that custom ever vexed you, annoyed you, irritated you? + +Y.M. Well, yes. + +O.M. Still you succumbed to it? + +Y.M. Of course. + +O.M. Why of course? + +Y.M. Well, custom is law, in a way, and laws must be submitted +to--everybody recognizes it as a DUTY. + +O.M. Then you pay for the irritating tax for DUTY'S sake? + +Y.M. I suppose it amounts to that. + +O.M. Then the impulse which moves you to submit to the tax is not ALL +compassion, charity, benevolence? + +Y.M. Well--perhaps not. + +O.M. Is ANY of it? + +Y.M. I--perhaps I was too hasty in locating its source. + +O.M. Perhaps so. In case you ignored the custom would you get prompt +and effective service from the servants? + +Y.M. Oh, hear yourself talk! Those European servants? Why, you wouldn't +get any of all, to speak of. + +O.M. Couldn't THAT work as an impulse to move you to pay the tax? + +Y.M. I am not denying it. + +O.M. Apparently, then, it is a case of for-duty's-sake with a little +self-interest added? + +Y.M. Yes, it has the look of it. But here is a point: we pay that tax +knowing it to be unjust and an extortion; yet we go away with a pain at +the heart if we think we have been stingy with the poor fellows; and we +heartily wish we were back again, so that we could do the right thing, +and MORE than the right thing, the GENEROUS thing. I think it will be +difficult for you to find any thought of self in that impulse. + +O.M. I wonder why you should think so. When you find service charged in +the HOTEL bill does it annoy you? + +Y.M. No. + +O.M. Do you ever complain of the amount of it? + +Y.M. No, it would not occur to me. + +O.M. The EXPENSE, then, is not the annoying detail. It is a fixed +charge, and you pay it cheerfully, you pay it without a murmur. When you +came to pay the servants, how would you like it if each of the men and +maids had a fixed charge? + +Y.M. Like it? I should rejoice! + +O.M. Even if the fixed tax were a shade MORE than you had been in the +habit of paying in the form of tips? + +Y.M. Indeed, yes! + +O.M. Very well, then. As I understand it, it isn't really compassion +nor yet duty that moves you to pay the tax, and it isn't the AMOUNT of +the tax that annoys you. Yet SOMETHING annoys you. What is it? + +Y.M. Well, the trouble is, you never know WHAT to pay, the tax varies +so, all over Europe. + +O.M. So you have to guess? + +Y.M. There is no other way. So you go on thinking and thinking, and +calculating and guessing, and consulting with other people and getting +their views; and it spoils your sleep nights, and makes you distraught in +the daytime, and while you are pretending to look at the sights you are +only guessing and guessing and guessing all the time, and being worried +and miserable. + +O.M. And all about a debt which you don't owe and don't have to pay +unless you want to! Strange. What is the purpose of the guessing? + +Y.M. To guess out what is right to give them, and not be unfair to any +of them. + +O.M. It has quite a noble look--taking so much pains and using up so +much valuable time in order to be just and fair to a poor servant to whom +you owe nothing, but who needs money and is ill paid. + +Y.M. I think, myself, that if there is any ungracious motive back of it +it will be hard to find. + +O.M. How do you know when you have not paid a servant fairly? + +Y.M. Why, he is silent; does not thank you. Sometimes he gives you a +look that makes you ashamed. You are too proud to rectify your mistake +there, with people looking, but afterward you keep on wishing and wishing +you HAD done it. My, the shame and the pain of it! Sometimes you see, +by the signs, that you have it JUST RIGHT, and you go away mightily +satisfied. Sometimes the man is so effusively thankful that you know you +have given him a good deal MORE than was necessary. + +O.M. NECESSARY? Necessary for what? + +Y.M. To content him. + +O.M. How do you feel THEN? + +Y.M. Repentant. + +O.M. It is my belief that you have NOT been concerning yourself in +guessing out his just dues, but only in ciphering out what would CONTENT +him. And I think you have a self-deluding reason for that. + +Y.M. What was it? + +O.M. If you fell short of what he was expecting and wanting, you would +get a look which would SHAME YOU BEFORE FOLK. That would give you PAIN. +YOU--for you are only working for yourself, not HIM. If you gave him too +much you would be ASHAMED OF YOURSELF for it, and that would give YOU +pain--another case of thinking of YOURSELF, protecting yourself, SAVING +YOURSELF FROM DISCOMFORT. You never think of the servant once--except to +guess out how to get HIS APPROVAL. If you get that, you get your OWN +approval, and that is the sole and only thing you are after. The Master +inside of you is then satisfied, contented, comfortable; there was NO +OTHER thing at stake, as a matter of FIRST interest, anywhere in the +transaction. + + + +Further Instances + +Y.M. Well, to think of it; Self-Sacrifice for others, the grandest thing +in man, ruled out! non-existent! + +O.M. Are you accusing me of saying that? + +Y.M. Why, certainly. + +O.M. I haven't said it. + +Y.M. What did you say, then? + +O.M. That no man has ever sacrificed himself in the common meaning of +that phrase--which is, self-sacrifice for another ALONE. Men make daily +sacrifices for others, but it is for their own sake FIRST. The act must +content their own spirit FIRST. The other beneficiaries come second. + +Y.M. And the same with duty for duty's sake? + +O.M. Yes. No man performs a duty for mere duty's sake; the act must +content his spirit FIRST. He must feel better for DOING the duty than he +would for shirking it. Otherwise he will not do it. + +Y.M. Take the case of the BERKELEY CASTLE. + +O.M. It was a noble duty, greatly performed. Take it to pieces and +examine it, if you like. + +Y.M. A British troop-ship crowded with soldiers and their wives and +children. She struck a rock and began to sink. There was room in the +boats for the women and children only. The colonel lined up his regiment +on the deck and said "it is our duty to die, that they may be saved." +There was no murmur, no protest. The boats carried away the women and +children. When the death-moment was come, the colonel and his officers +took their several posts, the men stood at shoulder-arms, and so, as on +dress-parade, with their flag flying and the drums beating, they went +down, a sacrifice to duty for duty's sake. Can you view it as other than +that? + +O.M. It was something as fine as that, as exalted as that. Could you +have remained in those ranks and gone down to your death in that +unflinching way? + +Y.M. Could I? No, I could not. + +O.M. Think. Imagine yourself there, with that watery doom creeping +higher and higher around you. + +Y.M. I can imagine it. I feel all the horror of it. I could not have +endured it, I could not have remained in my place. I know it. + +O.M. Why? + +Y.M. There is no why about it: I know myself, and I know I couldn't DO +it. + +O.M. But it would be your DUTY to do it. + +Y.M. Yes, I know--but I couldn't. + +O.M. It was more than thousand men, yet not one of them flinched. Some +of them must have been born with your temperament; if they could do that +great duty for duty's SAKE, why not you? Don't you know that you could +go out and gather together a thousand clerks and mechanics and put them +on that deck and ask them to die for duty's sake, and not two dozen of +them would stay in the ranks to the end? + +Y.M. Yes, I know that. + +O.M. But you TRAIN them, and put them through a campaign or two; then +they would be soldiers; soldiers, with a soldier's pride, a soldier's +self-respect, a soldier's ideals. They would have to content a SOLDIER'S +spirit then, not a clerk's, not a mechanic's. They could not content +that spirit by shirking a soldier's duty, could they? + +Y.M. I suppose not. + +O.M. Then they would do the duty not for the DUTY'S sake, but for their +OWN sake--primarily. The DUTY was JUST THE SAME, and just as imperative, +when they were clerks, mechanics, raw recruits, but they wouldn't perform +it for that. As clerks and mechanics they had other ideals, another +spirit to satisfy, and they satisfied it. They HAD to; it is the law. +TRAINING is potent. Training toward higher and higher, and ever higher +ideals is worth any man's thought and labor and diligence. + +Y.M. Consider the man who stands by his duty and goes to the stake +rather than be recreant to it. + +O.M. It is his make and his training. He has to content the spirit that +is in him, though it cost him his life. Another man, just as sincerely +religious, but of different temperament, will fail of that duty, though +recognizing it as a duty, and grieving to be unequal to it: but he must +content the spirit that is in him--he cannot help it. He could not +perform that duty for duty's SAKE, for that would not content his spirit, +and the contenting of his spirit must be looked to FIRST. It takes +precedence of all other duties. + +Y.M. Take the case of a clergyman of stainless private morals who votes +for a thief for public office, on his own party's ticket, and against an +honest man on the other ticket. + +O.M. He has to content his spirit. He has no public morals; he has no +private ones, where his party's prosperity is at stake. He will always +be true to his make and training. + + + +IV + +Training + +Young Man. You keep using that word--training. By it do you +particularly mean-- + +Old Man. Study, instruction, lectures, sermons? That is a part of +it--but not a large part. I mean ALL the outside influences. There are +a million of them. From the cradle to the grave, during all his waking +hours, the human being is under training. In the very first rank of his +trainers stands ASSOCIATION. It is his human environment which +influences his mind and his feelings, furnishes him his ideals, and sets +him on his road and keeps him in it. If he leave that road he will find +himself shunned by the people whom he most loves and esteems, and whose +approval he most values. He is a chameleon; by the law of his nature he +takes the color of his place of resort. The influences about him create +his preferences, his aversions, his politics, his tastes, his morals, his +religion. He creates none of these things for himself. He THINKS he +does, but that is because he has not examined into the matter. You have +seen Presbyterians? + +Y.M. Many. + +O.M. How did they happen to be Presbyterians and not Congregationalists? +And why were the Congregationalists not Baptists, and the Baptists Roman +Catholics, and the Roman Catholics Buddhists, and the Buddhists Quakers, +and the Quakers Episcopalians, and the Episcopalians Millerites and the +Millerites Hindus, and the Hindus Atheists, and the Atheists +Spiritualists, and the Spiritualists Agnostics, and the Agnostics +Methodists, and the Methodists Confucians, and the Confucians Unitarians, +and the Unitarians Mohammedans, and the Mohammedans Salvation Warriors, +and the Salvation Warriors Zoroastrians, and the Zoroastrians Christian +Scientists, and the Christian Scientists Mormons--and so on? + +Y.M. You may answer your question yourself. + +O.M. That list of sects is not a record of STUDIES, searchings, seekings +after light; it mainly (and sarcastically) indicates what ASSOCIATION can +do. If you know a man's nationality you can come within a split hair of +guessing the complexion of his religion: English--Protestant; American +--ditto; Spaniard, Frenchman, Irishman, Italian, South American--Roman +Catholic; Russian--Greek Catholic; Turk--Mohammedan; and so on. And when +you know the man's religious complexion, you know what sort of religious +books he reads when he wants some more light, and what sort of books he +avoids, lest by accident he get more light than he wants. In America if +you know which party-collar a voter wears, you know what his associations +are, and how he came by his politics, and which breed of newspaper he +reads to get light, and which breed he diligently avoids, and which breed +of mass-meetings he attends in order to broaden his political knowledge, +and which breed of mass-meetings he doesn't attend, except to refute its +doctrines with brickbats. We are always hearing of people who are around +SEEKING AFTER TRUTH. I have never seen a (permanent) specimen. I think +he had never lived. But I have seen several entirely sincere people who +THOUGHT they were (permanent) Seekers after Truth. They sought +diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect +honesty and nicely adjusted judgment--until they believed that without +doubt or question they had found the Truth. THAT WAS THE END OF THE +SEARCH. The man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith +to protect his Truth from the weather. If he was seeking after political +Truth he found it in one or another of the hundred political gospels +which govern men in the earth; if he was seeking after the Only True +Religion he found it in one or another of the three thousand that are on +the market. In any case, when he found the Truth HE SOUGHT NO FURTHER; +but from that day forth, with his soldering-iron in one hand and his +bludgeon in the other he tinkered its leaks and reasoned with objectors. +There have been innumerable Temporary Seekers of Truth--have you ever +heard of a permanent one? In the very nature of man such a person is +impossible. However, to drop back to the text--training: all training +is one from or another of OUTSIDE INFLUENCE, and ASSOCIATION is the +largest part of it. A man is never anything but what his outside +influences have made him. They train him downward or they train him +upward--but they TRAIN him; they are at work upon him all the time. + +Y.M. Then if he happen by the accidents of life to be evilly placed +there is no help for him, according to your notions--he must train +downward. + +O.M. No help for him? No help for this chameleon? It is a mistake. It +is in his chameleonship that his greatest good fortune lies. He has only +to change his habitat--his ASSOCIATIONS. But the impulse to do it must +come from the OUTSIDE--he cannot originate it himself, with that purpose +in view. Sometimes a very small and accidental thing can furnish him the +initiatory impulse and start him on a new road, with a new idea. The +chance remark of a sweetheart, "I hear that you are a coward," may water +a seed that shall sprout and bloom and flourish, and ended in producing a +surprising fruitage--in the fields of war. The history of man is full of +such accidents. The accident of a broken leg brought a profane and ribald +soldier under religious influences and furnished him a new ideal. From +that accident sprang the Order of the Jesuits, and it has been shaking +thrones, changing policies, and doing other tremendous work for two +hundred years--and will go on. The chance reading of a book or of a +paragraph in a newspaper can start a man on a new track and make him +renounce his old associations and seek new ones that are IN SYMPATHY WITH +HIS NEW IDEAL: and the result, for that man, can be an entire change of +his way of life. + +Y.M. Are you hinting at a scheme of procedure? + +O.M. Not a new one--an old one. Old as mankind. + +Y.M. What is it? + +O.M. Merely the laying of traps for people. Traps baited with +INITIATORY IMPULSES TOWARD HIGH IDEALS. It is what the tract-distributor +does. It is what the missionary does. It is what governments ought to +do. + +Y.M. Don't they? + +O.M. In one way they do, in another they don't. They separate the +smallpox patients from the healthy people, but in dealing with crime they +put the healthy into the pest-house along with the sick. That is to say, +they put the beginners in with the confirmed criminals. This would be +well if man were naturally inclined to good, but he isn't, and so +ASSOCIATION makes the beginners worse than they were when they went into +captivity. It is putting a very severe punishment upon the comparatively +innocent at times. They hang a man--which is a trifling punishment; this +breaks the hearts of his family--which is a heavy one. They comfortably +jail and feed a wife-beater, and leave his innocent wife and family to +starve. + +Y.M. Do you believe in the doctrine that man is equipped with an +intuitive perception of good and evil? + +O.M. Adam hadn't it. + +Y.M. But has man acquired it since? + +O.M. No. I think he has no intuitions of any kind. He gets ALL his +ideas, all his impressions, from the outside. I keep repeating this, in +the hope that I may impress it upon you that you will be interested to +observe and examine for yourself and see whether it is true or false. + +Y.M. Where did you get your own aggravating notions? + +O.M. From the OUTSIDE. I did not invent them. They are gathered from a +thousand unknown sources. Mainly UNCONSCIOUSLY gathered. + +Y.M. Don't you believe that God could make an inherently honest man? + +O.M. Yes, I know He could. I also know that He never did make one. + +Y.M. A wiser observer than you has recorded the fact that "an honest +man's the noblest work of God." + +O.M. He didn't record a fact, he recorded a falsity. It is windy, and +sounds well, but it is not true. God makes a man with honest and +dishonest POSSIBILITIES in him and stops there. The man's ASSOCIATIONS +develop the possibilities--the one set or the other. The result is +accordingly an honest man or a dishonest one. + +Y.M. And the honest one is not entitled to-- + +O.M. Praise? No. How often must I tell you that? HE is not the +architect of his honesty. + +Y.M. Now then, I will ask you where there is any sense in training +people to lead virtuous lives. What is gained by it? + +O.M. The man himself gets large advantages out of it, and that is the +main thing--to HIM. He is not a peril to his neighbors, he is not a +damage to them--and so THEY get an advantage out of his virtues. That is +the main thing to THEM. It can make this life comparatively comfortable +to the parties concerned; the NEGLECT of this training can make this life +a constant peril and distress to the parties concerned. + +Y.M. You have said that training is everything; that training is the man +HIMSELF, for it makes him what he is. + +O.M. I said training and ANOTHER thing. Let that other thing pass, for +the moment. What were you going to say? + +Y.M. We have an old servant. She has been with us twenty-two years. +Her service used to be faultless, but now she has become very forgetful. +We are all fond of her; we all recognize that she cannot help the +infirmity which age has brought her; the rest of the family do not scold +her for her remissnesses, but at times I do--I can't seem to control +myself. Don't I try? I do try. Now, then, when I was ready to dress, +this morning, no clean clothes had been put out. I lost my temper; I +lose it easiest and quickest in the early morning. I rang; and +immediately began to warn myself not to show temper, and to be careful +and speak gently. I safe-guarded myself most carefully. I even chose the +very word I would use: "You've forgotten the clean clothes, Jane." When +she appeared in the door I opened my mouth to say that phrase--and out of +it, moved by an instant surge of passion which I was not expecting and +hadn't time to put under control, came the hot rebuke, "You've forgotten +them again!" You say a man always does the thing which will best please +his Interior Master. Whence came the impulse to make careful preparation +to save the girl the humiliation of a rebuke? Did that come from the +Master, who is always primarily concerned about HIMSELF? + +O.M. Unquestionably. There is no other source for any impulse. +SECONDARILY you made preparation to save the girl, but PRIMARILY its +object was to save yourself, by contenting the Master. + +Y.M. How do you mean? + +O.M. Has any member of the family ever implored you to watch your temper +and not fly out at the girl? + +Y.M. Yes. My mother. + +O.M. You love her? + +Y.M. Oh, more than that! + +O.M. You would always do anything in your power to please her? + +Y.M. It is a delight to me to do anything to please her! + +O.M. Why? YOU WOULD DO IT FOR PAY, SOLELY--for PROFIT. What profit +would you expect and certainly receive from the investment? + +Y.M. Personally? None. To please HER is enough. + +O.M. It appears, then, that your object, primarily, WASN'T to save the +girl a humiliation, but to PLEASE YOUR MOTHER. It also appears that to +please your mother gives YOU a strong pleasure. Is not that the profit +which you get out of the investment? Isn't that the REAL profits and +FIRST profit? + +Y.M. Oh, well? Go on. + +O.M. In ALL transactions, the Interior Master looks to it that YOU GET +THE FIRST PROFIT. Otherwise there is no transaction. + +Y.M. Well, then, if I was so anxious to get that profit and so intent +upon it, why did I threw it away by losing my temper? + +O.M. In order to get ANOTHER profit which suddenly superseded it in +value. + +Y.M. Where was it? + +O.M. Ambushed behind your born temperament, and waiting for a chance. +Your native warm temper suddenly jumped to the front, and FOR THE MOMENT +its influence was more powerful than your mother's, and abolished it. In +that instance you were eager to flash out a hot rebuke and enjoy it. You +did enjoy it, didn't you? + +Y.M. For--for a quarter of a second. Yes--I did. + +O.M. Very well, it is as I have said: the thing which will give you the +MOST pleasure, the most satisfaction, in any moment or FRACTION of a +moment, is the thing you will always do. You must content the Master's +LATEST whim, whatever it may be. + +Y.M. But when the tears came into the old servant's eyes I could have +cut my hand off for what I had done. + +O.M. Right. You had humiliated YOURSELF, you see, you had given +yourself PAIN. Nothing is of FIRST importance to a man except results +which damage HIM or profit him--all the rest is SECONDARY. Your Master +was displeased with you, although you had obeyed him. He required a +prompt REPENTANCE; you obeyed again; you HAD to--there is never any +escape from his commands. He is a hard master and fickle; he changes his +mind in the fraction of a second, but you must be ready to obey, and you +will obey, ALWAYS. If he requires repentance, you content him, you will +always furnish it. He must be nursed, petted, coddled, and kept +contented, let the terms be what they may. + +Y.M. Training! Oh, what's the use of it? Didn't I, and didn't my +mother try to train me up to where I would no longer fly out at that +girl? + +O.M. Have you never managed to keep back a scolding? + +Y.M. Oh, certainly--many times. + +O.M. More times this year than last? + +Y.M. Yes, a good many more. + +O.M. More times last year than the year before? + +Y.M. Yes. + +O.M. There is a large improvement, then, in the two years? + +Y.M. Yes, undoubtedly. + +O.M. Then your question is answered. You see there IS use in training. +Keep on. Keeping faithfully on. You are doing well. + +Y.M. Will my reform reach perfection? + +O.M. It will. UP to YOUR limit. + +Y.M. My limit? What do you mean by that? + +O.M. You remember that you said that I said training was EVERYTHING. I +corrected you, and said "training and ANOTHER thing." That other thing +is TEMPERAMENT--that is, the disposition you were born with. YOU CAN'T +ERADICATE YOUR DISPOSITION NOR ANY RAG OF IT--you can only put a pressure +on it and keep it down and quiet. You have a warm temper? + +Y.M. Yes. + +O.M. You will never get rid of it; but by watching it you can keep it +down nearly all the time. ITS PRESENCE IS YOUR LIMIT. Your reform will +never quite reach perfection, for your temper will beat you now and then, +but you come near enough. You have made valuable progress and can make +more. There IS use in training. Immense use. Presently you will reach +a new stage of development, then your progress will be easier; will +proceed on a simpler basis, anyway. + +Y.M. Explain. + +O.M. You keep back your scoldings now, to please YOURSELF by pleasing +your MOTHER; presently the mere triumphing over your temper will delight +your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and satisfaction upon +you than even the approbation of your MOTHER confers upon you now. You +will then labor for yourself directly and at FIRST HAND, not by the +roundabout way through your mother. It simplifies the matter, and it +also strengthens the impulse. + +Y.M. Ah, dear! But I sha'n't ever reach the point where I will spare +the girl for HER sake PRIMARILY, not mine? + +O.M. Why--yes. In heaven. + +Y.M. (AFTER A REFLECTIVE PAUSE) Temperament. Well, I see one must +allow for temperament. It is a large factor, sure enough. My mother is +thoughtful, and not hot-tempered. When I was dressed I went to her room; +she was not there; I called, she answered from the bathroom. I heard the +water running. I inquired. She answered, without temper, that Jane had +forgotten her bath, and she was preparing it herself. I offered to ring, +but she said, "No, don't do that; it would only distress her to be +confronted with her lapse, and would be a rebuke; she doesn't deserve +that--she is not to blame for the tricks her memory serves her." I +say--has my mother an Interior Master?--and where was he? + +O.M. He was there. There, and looking out for his own peace and +pleasure and contentment. The girl's distress would have pained YOUR +MOTHER. Otherwise the girl would have been rung up, distress and all. I +know women who would have gotten a No. 1 PLEASURE out of ringing Jane +up--and so they would infallibly have pushed the button and obeyed the +law of their make and training, which are the servants of their Interior +Masters. It is quite likely that a part of your mother's forbearance +came from training. The GOOD kind of training--whose best and highest +function is to see to it that every time it confers a satisfaction upon +its pupil a benefit shall fall at second hand upon others. + +Y.M. If you were going to condense into an admonition your plan for the +general betterment of the race's condition, how would you word it? + + + +Admonition + +O.M. Diligently train your ideals UPWARD and STILL UPWARD toward a +summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which, while +contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor and +the community. + +Y.M. Is that a new gospel? + +O.M. No. + +Y.M. It has been taught before? + +O.M. For ten thousand years. + +Y.M. By whom? + +O.M. All the great religions--all the great gospels. + +Y.M. Then there is nothing new about it? + +O.M. Oh yes, there is. It is candidly stated, this time. That has not +been done before. + +Y.M. How do you mean? + +O.M. Haven't I put YOU FIRST, and your neighbor and the community +AFTERWARD? + +Y.M. Well, yes, that is a difference, it is true. + +O.M. The difference between straight speaking and crooked; the +difference between frankness and shuffling. + +Y.M. Explain. + +O.M. The others offer your a hundred bribes to be good, thus conceding +that the Master inside of you must be conciliated and contented first, +and that you will do nothing at FIRST HAND but for his sake; then they +turn square around and require you to do good for OTHER'S sake CHIEFLY; +and to do your duty for duty's SAKE, chiefly; and to do acts of +SELF-SACRIFICE. Thus at the outset we all stand upon the same +ground--recognition of the supreme and absolute Monarch that resides in +man, and we all grovel before him and appeal to him; then those others +dodge and shuffle, and face around and unfrankly and inconsistently and +illogically change the form of their appeal and direct its persuasions to +man's SECOND-PLACE powers and to powers which have NO EXISTENCE in him, +thus advancing them to FIRST place; whereas in my Admonition I stick +logically and consistently to the original position: I place the Interior +Master's requirements FIRST, and keep them there. + +Y.M. If we grant, for the sake of argument, that your scheme and the +other schemes aim at and produce the same result--RIGHT LIVING--has +yours an advantage over the others? + +O.M. One, yes--a large one. It has no concealments, no deceptions. +When a man leads a right and valuable life under it he is not deceived as +to the REAL chief motive which impels him to it--in those other cases he +is. + +Y.M. Is that an advantage? Is it an advantage to live a lofty life for +a mean reason? In the other cases he lives the lofty life under the +IMPRESSION that he is living for a lofty reason. Is not that an +advantage? + +O.M. Perhaps so. The same advantage he might get out of thinking +himself a duke, and living a duke's life and parading in ducal fuss and +feathers, when he wasn't a duke at all, and could find it out if he would +only examine the herald's records. + +Y.M. But anyway, he is obliged to do a duke's part; he puts his hand in +his pocket and does his benevolences on as big a scale as he can stand, +and that benefits the community. + +O.M. He could do that without being a duke. + +Y.M. But would he? + +O.M. Don't you see where you are arriving? + +Y.M. Where? + +O.M. At the standpoint of the other schemes: That it is good morals to +let an ignorant duke do showy benevolences for his pride's sake, a pretty +low motive, and go on doing them unwarned, lest if he were made +acquainted with the actual motive which prompted them he might shut up +his purse and cease to be good? + +Y.M. But isn't it best to leave him in ignorance, as long as he THINKS +he is doing good for others' sake? + +O.M. Perhaps so. It is the position of the other schemes. They think +humbug is good enough morals when the dividend on it is good deeds and +handsome conduct. + +Y.M. It is my opinion that under your scheme of a man's doing a good +deed for his OWN sake first-off, instead of first for the GOOD DEED'S +sake, no man would ever do one. + +O.M. Have you committed a benevolence lately? + +Y.M. Yes. This morning. + +O.M. Give the particulars. + +Y.M. The cabin of the old negro woman who used to nurse me when I was a +child and who saved my life once at the risk of her own, was burned last +night, and she came mourning this morning, and pleading for money to +build another one. + +O.M. You furnished it? + +Y.M. Certainly. + +O.M. You were glad you had the money? + +Y.M. Money? I hadn't. I sold my horse. + +O.M. You were glad you had the horse? + +Y.M. Of course I was; for if I hadn't had the horse I should have been +incapable, and my MOTHER would have captured the chance to set old Sally +up. + +O.M. You were cordially glad you were not caught out and incapable? + +Y.M. Oh, I just was! + +O.M. Now, then-- + +Y.M. Stop where you are! I know your whole catalog of questions, and I +could answer every one of them without your wasting the time to ask them; +but I will summarize the whole thing in a single remark: I did the +charity knowing it was because the act would give ME a splendid pleasure, +and because old Sally's moving gratitude and delight would give ME +another one; and because the reflection that she would be happy now and +out of her trouble would fill ME full of happiness. I did the whole +thing with my eyes open and recognizing and realizing that I was looking +out for MY share of the profits FIRST. Now then, I have confessed. Go +on. + +O.M. I haven't anything to offer; you have covered the whole ground. +Can you have been any MORE strongly moved to help Sally out of her +trouble--could you have done the deed any more eagerly--if you had been +under the delusion that you were doing it for HER sake and profit only? + +Y.M. No! Nothing in the world could have made the impulse which moved +me more powerful, more masterful, more thoroughly irresistible. I played +the limit! + +O.M. Very well. You begin to suspect--and I claim to KNOW--that when a +man is a shade MORE STRONGLY MOVED to do ONE of two things or of two +dozen things than he is to do any one of the OTHERS, he will infallibly +do that ONE thing, be it good or be it evil; and if it be good, not all +the beguilements of all the casuistries can increase the strength of the +impulse by a single shade or add a shade to the comfort and contentment +he will get out of the act. + +Y.M. Then you believe that such tendency toward doing good as is in +men's hearts would not be diminished by the removal of the delusion that +good deeds are done primarily for the sake of No. 2 instead of for the +sake of No. 1? + +O.M. That is what I fully believe. + +Y.M. Doesn't it somehow seem to take from the dignity of the deed? + +O.M. If there is dignity in falsity, it does. It removes that. + +Y.M. What is left for the moralists to do? + +O.M. Teach unreservedly what he already teaches with one side of his +mouth and takes back with the other: Do right FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, and be +happy in knowing that your NEIGHBOR will certainly share in the benefits +resulting. + +Y.M. Repeat your Admonition. + +O.M. DILIGENTLY TRAIN YOUR IDEALS UPWARD AND STILL UPWARD TOWARD A +SUMMIT WHERE YOU WILL FIND YOUR CHIEFEST PLEASURE IN CONDUCT WHICH, WHILE +CONTENTING YOU, WILL BE SURE TO CONFER BENEFITS UPON YOUR NEIGHBOR AND +THE COMMUNITY. + +Y.M. One's EVERY act proceeds from EXTERIOR INFLUENCES, you think? + +O.M. Yes. + +Y.M. If I conclude to rob a person, I am not the ORIGINATOR of the idea, +but it comes in from the OUTSIDE? I see him handling money--for +instance--and THAT moves me to the crime? + +O.M. That, by itself? Oh, certainly not. It is merely the LATEST +outside influence of a procession of preparatory influences stretching +back over a period of years. No SINGLE outside influence can make a man +do a thing which is at war with his training. The most it can do is to +start his mind on a new tract and open it to the reception of NEW +influences--as in the case of Ignatius Loyola. In time these influences +can train him to a point where it will be consonant with his new +character to yield to the FINAL influence and do that thing. I will put +the case in a form which will make my theory clear to you, I think. Here +are two ingots of virgin gold. They shall represent a couple of +characters which have been refined and perfected in the virtues by years +of diligent right training. Suppose you wanted to break down these +strong and well-compacted characters--what influence would you bring to +bear upon the ingots? + +Y.M. Work it out yourself. Proceed. + +O.M. Suppose I turn upon one of them a steam-jet during a long +succession of hours. Will there be a result? + +Y.M. None that I know of. + +O.M. Why? + +Y.M. A steam-jet cannot break down such a substance. + +O.M. Very well. The steam is an OUTSIDE INFLUENCE, but it is +ineffective because the gold TAKES NO INTEREST IN IT. The ingot remains +as it was. Suppose we add to the steam some quicksilver in a vaporized +condition, and turn the jet upon the ingot, will there be an +instantaneous result? + +Y.M. No. + +O.M. The QUICKSILVER is an outside influence which gold (by its peculiar +nature--say TEMPERAMENT, DISPOSITION) CANNOT BE INDIFFERENT TO. It stirs +up the interest of the gold, although we do not perceive it; but a SINGLE +application of the influence works no damage. Let us continue the +application in a steady stream, and call each minute a year. By the end +of ten or twenty minutes--ten or twenty years--the little ingot is sodden +with quicksilver, its virtues are gone, its character is degraded. At +last it is ready to yield to a temptation which it would have taken no +notice of, ten or twenty years ago. We will apply that temptation in the +form of a pressure of my finger. You note the result? + +Y.M. Yes; the ingot has crumbled to sand. I understand, now. It is not +the SINGLE outside influence that does the work, but only the LAST one of +a long and disintegrating accumulation of them. I see, now, how my +SINGLE impulse to rob the man is not the one that makes me do it, but +only the LAST one of a preparatory series. You might illustrate with a +parable. + + + +A Parable + +O.M. I will. There was once a pair of New England boys--twins. They +were alike in good dispositions, feckless morals, and personal +appearance. They were the models of the Sunday-school. At fifteen +George had the opportunity to go as cabin-boy in a whale-ship, and sailed +away for the Pacific. Henry remained at home in the village. At eighteen +George was a sailor before the mast, and Henry was teacher of the +advanced Bible class. At twenty-two George, through fighting-habits and +drinking-habits acquired at sea and in the sailor boarding-houses of the +European and Oriental ports, was a common rough in Hong-Kong, and out of +a job; and Henry was superintendent of the Sunday-school. At twenty-six +George was a wanderer, a tramp, and Henry was pastor of the village +church. Then George came home, and was Henry's guest. One evening a man +passed by and turned down the lane, and Henry said, with a pathetic +smile, "Without intending me a discomfort, that man is always keeping me +reminded of my pinching poverty, for he carries heaps of money about him, +and goes by here every evening of his life." That OUTSIDE +INFLUENCE--that remark--was enough for George, but IT was not the one +that made him ambush the man and rob him, it merely represented the +eleven years' accumulation of such influences, and gave birth to the act +for which their long gestation had made preparation. It had never +entered the head of Henry to rob the man--his ingot had been subjected to +clean steam only; but George's had been subjected to vaporized +quicksilver. + + + +V + +More About the Machine + +Note.--When Mrs. W. asks how can a millionaire give a single dollar to +colleges and museums while one human being is destitute of bread, she has +answered her question herself. Her feeling for the poor shows that she +has a standard of benevolence; there she has conceded the millionaire's +privilege of having a standard; since she evidently requires him to adopt +her standard, she is by that act requiring herself to adopt his. The +human being always looks down when he is examining another person's +standard; he never find one that he has to examine by looking up. + + + +The Man-Machine Again + +Young Man. You really think man is a mere machine? + +Old Man. I do. + +Y.M. And that his mind works automatically and is independent of his +control--carries on thought on its own hook? + +O.M. Yes. It is diligently at work, unceasingly at work, during every +waking moment. Have you never tossed about all night, imploring, +beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to +sleep?--you who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must +obey your orders, think what you tell it to think, and stop when you tell +it to stop. When it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it still +for an instant. The brightest man would not be able to supply it with +subjects if he had to hunt them up. If it needed the man's help it would +wait for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning. + +Y.M. Maybe it does. + +O.M. No, it begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to +give it a suggestion. He may go to sleep saying, "The moment I wake I +will think upon such and such a subject," but he will fail. His mind +will be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough awake +to be half conscious, he will find that it is already at work upon +another subject. Make the experiment and see. + +Y.M. At any rate, he can make it stick to a subject if he wants to. + +O.M. Not if it find another that suits it better. As a rule it will +listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all +persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle +dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes +chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. You cannot +keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you. + + + +After an Interval of Days + +O.M. Now, dreams--but we will examine that later. Meantime, did you try +commanding your mind to wait for orders from you, and not do any thinking +on its own hook? + +Y.M. Yes, I commanded it to stand ready to take orders when I should +wake in the morning. + +O.M. Did it obey? + +Y.M. No. It went to thinking of something of its own initiation, +without waiting for me. Also--as you suggested--at night I appointed a +theme for it to begin on in the morning, and commanded it to begin on +that one and no other. + +O.M. Did it obey? + +Y.M. No. + +O.M. How many times did you try the experiment? + +Y.M. Ten. + +O.M. How many successes did you score? + +Y.M. Not one. + +O.M. It is as I have said: the mind is independent of the man. He has +no control over it; it does as it pleases. It will take up a subject in +spite of him; it will stick to it in spite of him; it will throw it aside +in spite of him. It is entirely independent of him. + +Y.M. Go on. Illustrate. + +O.M. Do you know chess? + +Y.M. I learned it a week ago. + +O.M. Did your mind go on playing the game all night that first night? + +Y.M. Don't mention it! + +O.M. It was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in the +combinations; you implored it to drop the game and let you get some +sleep? + +Y.M. Yes. It wouldn't listen; it played right along. It wore me out +and I got up haggard and wretched in the morning. + +O.M. At some time or other you have been captivated by a ridiculous +rhyme-jingle? + +Y.M. Indeed, yes! + +"I saw Esau kissing Kate, And she saw I saw Esau; I saw Esau, he saw +Kate, And she saw--" + +And so on. My mind went mad with joy over it. It repeated it all day +and all night for a week in spite of all I could do to stop it, and it +seemed to me that I must surely go crazy. + +O.M. And the new popular song? + +Y.M. Oh yes! "In the Swee-eet By and By"; etc. Yes, the new popular +song with the taking melody sings through one's head day and night, +asleep and awake, till one is a wreck. There is no getting the mind to +let it alone. + +O.M. Yes, asleep as well as awake. The mind is quite independent. It +is master. You have nothing to do with it. It is so apart from you that +it can conduct its affairs, sing its songs, play its chess, weave its +complex and ingeniously constructed dreams, while you sleep. It has no +use for your help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either, +whether you be asleep or awake. You have imagined that you could +originate a thought in your mind, and you have sincerely believed you +could do it. + +Y.M. Yes, I have had that idea. + +O.M. Yet you can't originate a dream-thought for it to work out, and get +it accepted? + +Y.M. No. + +O.M. And you can't dictate its procedure after it has originated a +dream-thought for itself? + +Y.M. No. No one can do it. Do you think the waking mind and the dream +mind are the same machine? + +O.M. There is argument for it. We have wild and fantastic day-thoughts? +Things that are dream-like? + +Y.M. Yes--like Mr. Wells's man who invented a drug that made him +invisible; and like the Arabian tales of the Thousand Nights. + +O.M. And there are dreams that are rational, simple, consistent, and +unfantastic? + +Y.M. Yes. I have dreams that are like that. Dreams that are just like +real life; dreams in which there are several persons with distinctly +differentiated characters--inventions of my mind and yet strangers to me: +a vulgar person; a refined one; a wise person; a fool; a cruel person; a +kind and compassionate one; a quarrelsome person; a peacemaker; old +persons and young; beautiful girls and homely ones. They talk in +character, each preserves his own characteristics. There are vivid +fights, vivid and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there are +tragedies and comedies, there are griefs that go to one's heart, there +are sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole thing is +exactly like real life. + +O.M. Your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently and +artistically develops it, and carries the little drama creditably +through--all without help or suggestion from you? + +Y.M. Yes. + +O.M. It is argument that it could do the like awake without help or +suggestion from you--and I think it does. It is argument that it is the +same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help. I think the mind +is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent machine, an automatic +machine. Have you tried the other experiment which I suggested to you? + +Y.M. Which one? + +O.M. The one which was to determine how much influence you have over +your mind--if any. + +Y.M. Yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it. I did as you +ordered: I placed two texts before my eyes--one a dull one and barren of +interest, the other one full of interest, inflamed with it, white-hot +with it. I commanded my mind to busy itself solely with the dull one. + +O.M. Did it obey? + +Y.M. Well, no, it didn't. It busied itself with the other one. + +O.M. Did you try hard to make it obey? + +Y.M. Yes, I did my honest best. + +O.M. What was the text which it refused to be interested in or think +about? + +Y.M. It was this question: If A owes B a dollar and a half, and B owes C +two and three-quarter, and C owes A thirty-five cents, and D and A +together owe E and B three-sixteenths of--of--I don't remember the rest, +now, but anyway it was wholly uninteresting, and I could not force my +mind to stick to it even half a minute at a time; it kept flying off to +the other text. + +O.M. What was the other text? + +Y.M. It is no matter about that. + +O.M. But what was it? + +Y.M. A photograph. + +O.M. Your own? + +Y.M. No. It was hers. + +O.M. You really made an honest good test. Did you make a second trial? + +Y.M. Yes. I commanded my mind to interest itself in the morning paper's +report of the pork-market, and at the same time I reminded it of an +experience of mine of sixteen years ago. It refused to consider the pork +and gave its whole blazing interest to that ancient incident. + +O.M. What was the incident? + +Y.M. An armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of twenty +spectators. It makes me wild and murderous every time I think of it. + +O.M. Good tests, both; very good tests. Did you try my other +suggestion? + +Y.M. The one which was to prove to me that if I would leave my mind to +its own devices it would find things to think about without any of my +help, and thus convince me that it was a machine, an automatic machine, +set in motion by exterior influences, and as independent of me as it +could be if it were in some one else's skull. Is that the one? + +O.M. Yes. + +Y.M. I tried it. I was shaving. I had slept well, and my mind was very +lively, even gay and frisky. It was reveling in a fantastic and joyful +episode of my remote boyhood which had suddenly flashed up in my +memory--moved to this by the spectacle of a yellow cat picking its way +carefully along the top of the garden wall. The color of this cat +brought the bygone cat before me, and I saw her walking along the +side-step of the pulpit; saw her walk on to a large sheet of sticky +fly-paper and get all her feet involved; saw her struggle and fall down, +helpless and dissatisfied, more and more urgent, more and more +unreconciled, more and more mutely profane; saw the silent congregation +quivering like jelly, and the tears running down their faces. I saw it +all. The sight of the tears whisked my mind to a far distant and a +sadder scene--in Terra del Fuego--and with Darwin's eyes I saw a naked +great savage hurl his little boy against the rocks for a trifling fault; +saw the poor mother gather up her dying child and hug it to her breast +and weep, uttering no word. Did my mind stop to mourn with that nude +black sister of mine? No--it was far away from that scene in an instant, +and was busying itself with an ever-recurring and disagreeable dream of +mine. In this dream I always find myself, stripped to my shirt, cringing +and dodging about in the midst of a great drawing-room throng of finely +dressed ladies and gentlemen, and wondering how I got there. And so on +and so on, picture after picture, incident after incident, a drifting +panorama of ever-changing, ever-dissolving views manufactured by my mind +without any help from me--why, it would take me two hours to merely name +the multitude of things my mind tallied off and photographed in fifteen +minutes, let alone describe them to you. + +O.M. A man's mind, left free, has no use for his help. But there is one +way whereby he can get its help when he desires it. + +Y.M. What is that way? + +O.M. When your mind is racing along from subject to subject and strikes +an inspiring one, open your mouth and begin talking upon that +matter--or--take your pen and use that. It will interest your mind and +concentrate it, and it will pursue the subject with satisfaction. It +will take full charge, and furnish the words itself. + +Y.M. But don't I tell it what to say? + +O.M. There are certainly occasions when you haven't time. The words leap +out before you know what is coming. + +Y.M. For instance? + +O.M. Well, take a "flash of wit"--repartee. Flash is the right word. +It is out instantly. There is no time to arrange the words. There is no +thinking, no reflecting. Where there is a wit-mechanism it is automatic +in its action and needs no help. Where the wit-mechanism is lacking, no +amount of study and reflection can manufacture the product. + +Y.M. You really think a man originates nothing, creates nothing. + + + +The Thinking-Process + +O.M. I do. Men perceive, and their brain-machines automatically combine +the things perceived. That is all. + +Y.M. The steam-engine? + +O.M. It takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it. One meaning of +invent is discover. I use the word in that sense. Little by little they +discover and apply the multitude of details that go to make the perfect +engine. Watt noticed that confined steam was strong enough to lift the +lid of the teapot. He didn't create the idea, he merely discovered the +fact; the cat had noticed it a hundred times. From the teapot he evolved +the cylinder--from the displaced lid he evolved the piston-rod. To +attach something to the piston-rod to be moved by it, was a simple +matter--crank and wheel. And so there was a working engine. [1] + +One by one, improvements were discovered by men who used their eyes, not +their creating powers--for they hadn't any--and now, after a hundred +years the patient contributions of fifty or a hundred observers stand +compacted in the wonderful machine which drives the ocean liner. + +Y.M. A Shakespearean play? + +O.M. The process is the same. The first actor was a savage. He +reproduced in his theatrical war-dances, scalp-dances, and so on, +incidents which he had seen in real life. A more advanced civilization +produced more incidents, more episodes; the actor and the story-teller +borrowed them. And so the drama grew, little by little, stage by stage. +It is made up of the facts of life, not creations. It took centuries to +develop the Greek drama. It borrowed from preceding ages; it lent to the +ages that came after. Men observe and combine, that is all. So does a +rat. + +Y.M. How? + +O.M. He observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and finds. The +astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and that to the +this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an invisible planet, +seeks it and finds it. The rat gets into a trap; gets out with trouble; +infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles with that trap no +more. The astronomer is very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud +of his. Yet both are machines; they have done machine work, they have +originated nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit +belongs to their Maker. They are entitled to no honors, no praises, no +monuments when they die, no remembrance. One is a complex and elaborate +machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but they are alike in +principle, function, and process, and neither of them works otherwise +than automatically, and neither of them may righteously claim a PERSONAL +superiority or a personal dignity above the other. + +Y.M. In earned personal dignity, then, and in personal merit for what he +does, it follows of necessity that he is on the same level as a rat? + +O.M. His brother the rat; yes, that is how it seems to me. Neither of +them being entitled to any personal merit for what he does, it follows of +necessity that neither of them has a right to arrogate to himself +(personally created) superiorities over his brother. + +Y.M. Are you determined to go on believing in these insanities? Would +you go on believing in them in the face of able arguments backed by +collated facts and instances? + +O.M. I have been a humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker. + +Y.M. Very well? + +O.M. The humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker is always convertible +by such means. + +Y.M. I am thankful to God to hear you say this, for now I know that your +conversion-- + +O.M. Wait. You misunderstand. I said I have BEEN a Truth-Seeker. + +Y.M. Well? + +O.M. I am not that now. Have your forgotten? I told you that there are +none but temporary Truth-Seekers; that a permanent one is a human +impossibility; that as soon as the Seeker finds what he is thoroughly +convinced is the Truth, he seeks no further, but gives the rest of his +days to hunting junk to patch it and caulk it and prop it with, and make +it weather-proof and keep it from caving in on him. Hence the +Presbyterian remains a Presbyterian, the Mohammedan a Mohammedan, the +Spiritualist a Spiritualist, the Democrat a Democrat, the Republican a +Republican, the Monarchist a Monarchist; and if a humble, earnest, and +sincere Seeker after Truth should find it in the proposition that the +moon is made of green cheese nothing could ever budge him from that +position; for he is nothing but an automatic machine, and must obey the +laws of his construction. + +Y.M. After so-- + +O.M. Having found the Truth; perceiving that beyond question man has but +one moving impulse--the contenting of his own spirit--and is merely a +machine and entitled to no personal merit for anything he does, it is not +humanly possible for me to seek further. The rest of my days will be +spent in patching and painting and puttying and caulking my priceless +possession and in looking the other way when an imploring argument or a +damaging fact approaches. + +----- 1. The Marquess of Worcester had done all of this more than a +century earlier. + + + +VI + +Instinct and Thought + +Young Man. It is odious. Those drunken theories of yours, advanced a +while ago--concerning the rat and all that--strip Man bare of all his +dignities, grandeurs, sublimities. + +Old Man. He hasn't any to strip--they are shams, stolen clothes. He +claims credits which belong solely to his Maker. + +Y.M. But you have no right to put him on a level with a rat. + +O.M. I don't--morally. That would not be fair to the rat. The rat is +well above him, there. + +Y.M. Are you joking? + +O.M. No, I am not. + +Y.M. Then what do you mean? + +O.M. That comes under the head of the Moral Sense. It is a large +question. Let us finish with what we are about now, before we take it +up. + +Y.M. Very well. You have seemed to concede that you place Man and the +rat on A level. What is it? The intellectual? + +O.M. In form--not a degree. + +Y.M. Explain. + +O.M. I think that the rat's mind and the man's mind are the same +machine, but of unequal capacities--like yours and Edison's; like the +African pygmy's and Homer's; like the Bushman's and Bismarck's. + +Y.M. How are you going to make that out, when the lower animals have no +mental quality but instinct, while man possesses reason? + +O.M. What is instinct? + +Y.M. It is merely unthinking and mechanical exercise of inherited habit. + +O.M. What originated the habit? + +Y.M. The first animal started it, its descendants have inherited it. + +O.M. How did the first one come to start it? + +Y.M. I don't know; but it didn't THINK it out. + +O.M. How do you know it didn't? + +Y.M. Well--I have a right to suppose it didn't, anyway. + +O.M. I don't believe you have. What is thought? + +Y.M. I know what you call it: the mechanical and automatic putting +together of impressions received from outside, and drawing an inference +from them. + +O.M. Very good. Now my idea of the meaningless term "instinct" is, that +it is merely PETRIFIED THOUGHT; solidified and made inanimate by habit; +thought which was once alive and awake, but it become unconscious--walks +in its sleep, so to speak. + +Y.M. Illustrate it. + +O.M. Take a herd of cows, feeding in a pasture. Their heads are all +turned in one direction. They do that instinctively; they gain nothing +by it, they have no reason for it, they don't know why they do it. It is +an inherited habit which was originally thought--that is to say, +observation of an exterior fact, and a valuable inference drawn from that +observation and confirmed by experience. The original wild ox noticed +that with the wind in his favor he could smell his enemy in time to +escape; then he inferred that it was worth while to keep his nose to the +wind. That is the process which man calls reasoning. Man's +thought-machine works just like the other animals', but it is a better +one and more Edisonian. Man, in the ox's place, would go further, reason +wider: he would face part of the herd the other way and protect both +front and rear. + +Y.M. Did you stay the term instinct is meaningless? + +O.M. I think it is a bastard word. I think it confuses us; for as a +rule it applies itself to habits and impulses which had a far-off origin +in thought, and now and then breaks the rule and applies itself to habits +which can hardly claim a thought-origin. + +Y.M. Give an instance. + +O.M. Well, in putting on trousers a man always inserts the same old leg +first--never the other one. There is no advantage in that, and no sense +in it. All men do it, yet no man thought it out and adopted it of set +purpose, I imagine. But it is a habit which is transmitted, no doubt, +and will continue to be transmitted. + +Y.M. Can you prove that the habit exists? + +O.M. You can prove it, if you doubt. If you will take a man to a +clothing-store and watch him try on a dozen pairs of trousers, you will +see. + +Y.M. The cow illustration is not-- + +O.M. Sufficient to show that a dumb animal's mental machine is just the +same as a man's and its reasoning processes the same? I will illustrate +further. If you should hand Mr. Edison a box which you caused to fly +open by some concealed device he would infer a spring, and would hunt for +it and find it. Now an uncle of mine had an old horse who used to get +into the closed lot where the corn-crib was and dishonestly take the +corn. I got the punishment myself, as it was supposed that I had +heedlessly failed to insert the wooden pin which kept the gate closed. +These persistent punishments fatigued me; they also caused me to infer +the existence of a culprit, somewhere; so I hid myself and watched the +gate. Presently the horse came and pulled the pin out with his teeth and +went in. Nobody taught him that; he had observed--then thought it out +for himself. His process did not differ from Edison's; he put this and +that together and drew an inference--and the peg, too; but I made him +sweat for it. + +Y.M. It has something of the seeming of thought about it. Still it is +not very elaborate. Enlarge. + +O.M. Suppose Mr. Edison has been enjoying some one's hospitalities. He +comes again by and by, and the house is vacant. He infers that his host +has moved. A while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter a +house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire. +Here, now, is the experience of a gull, as related by a naturalist. The +scene is a Scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated. +This particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was +fed again; came into the house, next time, and ate with the family; kept +on doing this almost daily, thereafter. But, once the gull was away on a +journey for a few days, and when it returned the house was vacant. Its +friends had removed to a village three miles distant. Several months +later it saw the head of the family on the street there, followed him +home, entered the house without excuse or apology, and became a daily +guest again. Gulls do not rank high mentally, but this one had memory +and the reasoning faculty, you see, and applied them Edisonially. + +Y.M. Yet it was not an Edison and couldn't be developed into one. + +O.M. Perhaps not. Could you? + +Y.M. That is neither here nor there. Go on. + +O.M. If Edison were in trouble and a stranger helped him out of it and +next day he got into the same difficulty again, he would infer the wise +thing to do in case he knew the stranger's address. Here is a case of a +bird and a stranger as related by a naturalist. An Englishman saw a bird +flying around about his dog's head, down in the grounds, and uttering +cries of distress. He went there to see about it. The dog had a young +bird in his mouth--unhurt. The gentleman rescued it and put it on a bush +and brought the dog away. Early the next morning the mother bird came +for the gentleman, who was sitting on his veranda, and by its maneuvers +persuaded him to follow it to a distant part of the grounds--flying a +little way in front of him and waiting for him to catch up, and so on; +and keeping to the winding path, too, instead of flying the near way +across lots. The distance covered was four hundred yards. The same dog +was the culprit; he had the young bird again, and once more he had to +give it up. Now the mother bird had reasoned it all out: since the +stranger had helped her once, she inferred that he would do it again; she +knew where to find him, and she went upon her errand with confidence. Her +mental processes were what Edison's would have been. She put this and +that together--and that is all that thought IS--and out of them built her +logical arrangement of inferences. Edison couldn't have done it any +better himself. + +Y.M. Do you believe that many of the dumb animals can think? + +O.M. Yes--the elephant, the monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot, the +macaw, the mocking-bird, and many others. The elephant whose mate fell +into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom was +raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped with +the reasoning quality. I conceive that all animals that can learn things +through teaching and drilling have to know how to observe, and put this +and that together and draw an inference--the process of thinking. Could +you teach an idiot of manuals of arms, and to advance, retreat, and go +through complex field maneuvers at the word of command? + +Y.M. Not if he were a thorough idiot. + +O.M. Well, canary-birds can learn all that; dogs and elephants learn all +sorts of wonderful things. They must surely be able to notice, and to +put things together, and say to themselves, "I get the idea, now: when I +do so and so, as per order, I am praised and fed; when I do differently I +am punished." Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can. + +Y.M. Granting, then, that dumb animals are able to think upon a low +plane, is there any that can think upon a high one? Is there one that is +well up toward man? + +O.M. Yes. As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage +race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the +superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental +qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized! + +Y.M. Oh, come! you are abolishing the intellectual frontier which +separates man and beast. + +O.M. I beg your pardon. One cannot abolish what does not exist. + +Y.M. You are not in earnest, I hope. You cannot mean to seriously say +there is no such frontier. + +O.M. I do say it seriously. The instances of the horse, the gull, the +mother bird, and the elephant show that those creatures put their this's +and thats together just as Edison would have done it and drew the same +inferences that he would have drawn. Their mental machinery was just like +his, also its manner of working. Their equipment was as inferior to the +Strasburg clock, but that is the only difference--there is no frontier. + +Y.M. It looks exasperatingly true; and is distinctly offensive. It +elevates the dumb beasts to--to-- + +O.M. Let us drop that lying phrase, and call them the Unrevealed +Creatures; so far as we can know, there is no such thing as a dumb beast. + +Y.M. On what grounds do you make that assertion? + +O.M. On quite simple ones. "Dumb" beast suggests an animal that has no +thought-machinery, no understanding, no speech, no way of communicating +what is in its mind. We know that a hen HAS speech. We cannot +understand everything she says, but we easily learn two or three of her +phrases. We know when she is saying, "I have laid an egg"; we know when +she is saying to the chicks, "Run here, dears, I've found a worm"; we +know what she is saying when she voices a warning: "Quick! hurry! gather +yourselves under mamma, there's a hawk coming!" We understand the cat +when she stretches herself out, purring with affection and contentment +and lifts up a soft voice and says, "Come, kitties, supper's ready"; we +understand her when she goes mourning about and says, "Where can they be? +They are lost. Won't you help me hunt for them?" and we understand the +disreputable Tom when he challenges at midnight from his shed, "You come +over here, you product of immoral commerce, and I'll make your fur fly!" +We understand a few of a dog's phrases and we learn to understand a few +of the remarks and gestures of any bird or other animal that we +domesticate and observe. The clearness and exactness of the few of the +hen's speeches which we understand is argument that she can communicate +to her kind a hundred things which we cannot comprehend--in a word, that +she can converse. And this argument is also applicable in the case of +others of the great army of the Unrevealed. It is just like man's vanity +and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull +perceptions. Now as to the ant-- + +Y.M. Yes, go back to the ant, the creature that--as you seem to +think--sweeps away the last vestige of an intellectual frontier between +man and the Unrevealed. + +O.M. That is what she surely does. In all his history the aboriginal +Australian never thought out a house for himself and built it. The ant +is an amazing architect. She is a wee little creature, but she builds a +strong and enduring house eight feet high--a house which is as large in +proportion to her size as is the largest capitol or cathedral in the +world compared to man's size. No savage race has produced architects who +could approach the air in genius or culture. No civilized race has +produced architects who could plan a house better for the uses proposed +than can hers. Her house contains a throne-room; nurseries for her +young; granaries; apartments for her soldiers, her workers, etc.; and +they and the multifarious halls and corridors which communicate with them +are arranged and distributed with an educated and experienced eye for +convenience and adaptability. + +Y.M. That could be mere instinct. + +O.M. It would elevate the savage if he had it. But let us look further +before we decide. The ant has soldiers--battalions, regiments, armies; +and they have their appointed captains and generals, who lead them to +battle. + +Y.M. That could be instinct, too. + +O.M. We will look still further. The ant has a system of government; it +is well planned, elaborate, and is well carried on. + +Y.M. Instinct again. + +O.M. She has crowds of slaves, and is a hard and unjust employer of +forced labor. + +Y.M. Instinct. + +O.M. She has cows, and milks them. + +Y.M. Instinct, of course. + +O.M. In Texas she lays out a farm twelve feet square, plants it, weeds +it, cultivates it, gathers the crop and stores it away. + +Y.M. Instinct, all the same. + +O.M. The ant discriminates between friend and stranger. Sir John Lubbock +took ants from two different nests, made them drunk with whiskey and laid +them, unconscious, by one of the nests, near some water. Ants from the +nest came and examined and discussed these disgraced creatures, then +carried their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. Sir John +repeated the experiment a number of times. For a time the sober ants did +as they had done at first--carried their friends home and threw the +strangers overboard. But finally they lost patience, seeing that their +reformatory efforts went for nothing, and threw both friends and +strangers overboard. Come--is this instinct, or is it thoughtful and +intelligent discussion of a thing new--absolutely new--to their +experience; with a verdict arrived at, sentence passed, and judgment +executed? Is it instinct?--thought petrified by ages of habit--or isn't +it brand-new thought, inspired by the new occasion, the new +circumstances? + +Y.M. I have to concede it. It was not a result of habit; it has all the +look of reflection, thought, putting this and that together, as you +phrase it. I believe it was thought. + +O.M. I will give you another instance of thought. Franklin had a cup of +sugar on a table in his room. The ants got at it. He tried several +preventives; and ants rose superior to them. Finally he contrived one +which shut off access--probably set the table's legs in pans of water, or +drew a circle of tar around the cup, I don't remember. At any rate, he +watched to see what they would do. They tried various schemes--failures, +every one. The ants were badly puzzled. Finally they held a +consultation, discussed the problem, arrived at a decision--and this time +they beat that great philosopher. They formed in procession, cross the +floor, climbed the wall, marched across the ceiling to a point just over +the cup, then one by one they let go and fell down into it! Was that +instinct--thought petrified by ages of inherited habit? + +Y.M. No, I don't believe it was. I believe it was a newly reasoned +scheme to meet a new emergency. + +O.M. Very well. You have conceded the reasoning power in two instances. +I come now to a mental detail wherein the ant is a long way the superior +of any human being. Sir John Lubbock proved by many experiments that an +ant knows a stranger ant of her own species in a moment, even when the +stranger is disguised--with paint. Also he proved that an ant knows +every individual in her hive of five hundred thousand souls. Also, after +a year's absence one of the five hundred thousand she will straightway +recognize the returned absentee and grace the recognition with a +affectionate welcome. How are these recognitions made? Not by color, +for painted ants were recognized. Not by smell, for ants that had been +dipped in chloroform were recognized. Not by speech and not by antennae +signs nor contacts, for the drunken and motionless ants were recognized +and the friend discriminated from the stranger. The ants were all of the +same species, therefore the friends had to be recognized by form and +feature--friends who formed part of a hive of five hundred thousand! Has +any man a memory for form and feature approaching that? + +Y.M. Certainly not. + +O.M. Franklin's ants and Lubbuck's ants show fine capacities of putting +this and that together in new and untried emergencies and deducting smart +conclusions from the combinations--a man's mental process exactly. With +memory to help, man preserves his observations and reasonings, reflects +upon them, adds to them, recombines, and so proceeds, stage by stage, to +far results--from the teakettle to the ocean greyhound's complex engine; +from personal labor to slave labor; from wigwam to palace; from the +capricious chase to agriculture and stored food; from nomadic life to +stable government and concentrated authority; from incoherent hordes to +massed armies. The ant has observation, the reasoning faculty, and the +preserving adjunct of a prodigious memory; she has duplicated man's +development and the essential features of his civilization, and you call +it all instinct! + +Y.M. Perhaps I lacked the reasoning faculty myself. + +O.M. Well, don't tell anybody, and don't do it again. + +Y.M. We have come a good way. As a result--as I understand it--I am +required to concede that there is absolutely no intellectual frontier +separating Man and the Unrevealed Creatures? + +O.M. That is what you are required to concede. There is no such +frontier--there is no way to get around that. Man has a finer and more +capable machine in him than those others, but it is the same machine and +works in the same way. And neither he nor those others can command the +machine--it is strictly automatic, independent of control, works when it +pleases, and when it doesn't please, it can't be forced. + +Y.M. Then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental +machinery, and there isn't any difference of any stupendous magnitude +between them, except in quality, not in kind. + +O.M. That is about the state of it--intellectuality. There are +pronounced limitations on both sides. We can't learn to understand much +of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand a +very great deal of ours. To that extent they are our superiors. On the +other hand, they can't learn reading, writing, etc., nor any of our fine +and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them. + +Y.M. Very well, let them have what they've got, and welcome; there is +still a wall, and a lofty one. They haven't got the Moral Sense; we have +it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them. + +O.M. What makes you think that? + +Y.M. Now look here--let's call a halt. I have stood the other infamies +and insanities and that is enough; I am not going to have man and the +other animals put on the same level morally. + +O.M. I wasn't going to hoist man up to that. + +Y.M. This is too much! I think it is not right to jest about such +things. + +O.M. I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple +truth--and without uncharitableness. The fact that man knows right from +wrong proves his INTELLECTUAL superiority to the other creatures; but the +fact that he can DO wrong proves his MORAL inferiority to any creature +that CANNOT. It is my belief that this position is not assailable. + + + +Free Will + +Y.M. What is your opinion regarding Free Will? + +O.M. That there is no such thing. Did the man possess it who gave the +old woman his last shilling and trudged home in the storm? + +Y.M. He had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her +to suffer. Isn't it so? + +O.M. Yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the +one hand and the comfort of the spirit on the other. The body made a +strong appeal, of course--the body would be quite sure to do that; the +spirit made a counter appeal. A choice had to be made between the two +appeals, and was made. Who or what determined that choice? + +Y.M. Any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in +doing it he exercised Free Will. + +O.M. We are constantly assured that every man is endowed with Free Will, +and that he can and must exercise it where he is offered a choice between +good conduct and less-good conduct. Yet we clearly saw that in that +man's case he really had no Free Will: his temperament, his training, and +the daily influences which had molded him and made him what he was, +COMPELLED him to rescue the old woman and thus save HIMSELF--save himself +from spiritual pain, from unendurable wretchedness. He did not make the +choice, it was made FOR him by forces which he could not control. Free +Will has always existed in WORDS, but it stops there, I think--stops +short of FACT. I would not use those words--Free Will--but others. + +Y.M. What others? + +O.M. Free Choice. + +Y.M. What is the difference? + +O.M. The one implies untrammeled power to ACT as you please, the other +implies nothing beyond a mere MENTAL PROCESS: the critical ability to +determine which of two things is nearest right and just. + +Y.M. Make the difference clear, please. + +O.M. The mind can freely SELECT, CHOOSE, POINT OUT the right and just +one--its function stops there. It can go no further in the matter. It +has no authority to say that the right one shall be acted upon and the +wrong one discarded. That authority is in other hands. + +Y.M. The man's? + +O.M. In the machine which stands for him. In his born disposition and +the character which has been built around it by training and environment. + +Y.M. It will act upon the right one of the two? + +O.M. It will do as it pleases in the matter. George Washington's +machine would act upon the right one; Pizarro would act upon the wrong +one. + +Y.M. Then as I understand it a bad man's mental machinery calmly and +judicially points out which of two things is right and just-- + +O.M. Yes, and his MORAL machinery will freely act upon the other or the +other, according to its make, and be quite indifferent to the MIND'S +feeling concerning the matter--that is, WOULD be, if the mind had any +feelings; which it hasn't. It is merely a thermometer: it registers the +heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing about either. + +Y.M. Then we must not claim that if a man KNOWS which of two things is +right he is absolutely BOUND to do that thing? + +O.M. His temperament and training will decide what he shall do, and he +will do it; he cannot help himself, he has no authority over the mater. +Wasn't it right for David to go out and slay Goliath? + +Y.M. Yes. + +O.M. Then it would have been equally RIGHT for any one else to do it? + +Y.M. Certainly. + +O.M. Then it would have been RIGHT for a born coward to attempt it? + +Y.M. It would--yes. + +O.M. You know that no born coward ever would have attempted it, don't +you? + +Y.M. Yes. + +O.M. You know that a born coward's make and temperament would be an +absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying such a thing, don't +you? + +Y.M. Yes, I know it. + +O.M. He clearly perceives that it would be RIGHT to try it? + +Y.M. Yes. + +O.M. His mind has Free Choice in determining that it would be RIGHT to +try it? + +Y.M. Yes. + +O.M. Then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply can NOT essay +it, what becomes of his Free Will? Where is his Free Will? Why claim +that he has Free Will when the plain facts show that he hasn't? Why +content that because he and David SEE the right alike, both must ACT +alike? Why impose the same laws upon goat and lion? + +Y.M. There is really no such thing as Free Will? + +O.M. It is what I think. There is WILL. But it has nothing to do with +INTELLECTUAL PERCEPTIONS OF RIGHT AND WRONG, and is not under their +command. David's temperament and training had Will, and it was a +compulsory force; David had to obey its decrees, he had no choice. The +coward's temperament and training possess Will, and IT is compulsory; it +commands him to avoid danger, and he obeys, he has no choice. But +neither the Davids nor the cowards possess Free Will--will that may do +the right or do the wrong, as their MENTAL verdict shall decide. + + + +Not Two Values, But Only One + +Y.M. There is one thing which bothers me: I can't tell where you draw +the line between MATERIAL covetousness and SPIRITUAL covetousness. + +O.M. I don't draw any. + +Y.M. How do you mean? + +O.M. There is no such thing as MATERIAL covetousness. All covetousness +is spiritual + +Y.M. ALL longings, desires, ambitions SPIRITUAL, never material? + +O.M. Yes. The Master in you requires that in ALL cases you shall +content his SPIRIT--that alone. He never requires anything else, he +never interests himself in any other matter. + +Y.M. Ah, come! When he covets somebody's money--isn't that rather +distinctly material and gross? + +O.M. No. The money is merely a symbol--it represents in visible and +concrete form a SPIRITUAL DESIRE. Any so-called material thing that you +want is merely a symbol: you want it not for ITSELF, but because it will +content your spirit for the moment. + +Y.M. Please particularize. + +O.M. Very well. Maybe the thing longed for is a new hat. You get it and +your vanity is pleased, your spirit contented. Suppose your friends +deride the hat, make fun of it: at once it loses its value; you are +ashamed of it, you put it out of your sight, you never want to see it +again. + +Y.M. I think I see. Go on. + +O.M. It is the same hat, isn't it? It is in no way altered. But it +wasn't the HAT you wanted, but only what it stood for--a something to +please and content your SPIRIT. When it failed of that, the whole of its +value was gone. There are no MATERIAL values; there are only spiritual +ones. You will hunt in vain for a material value that is ACTUAL, +REAL--there is no such thing. The only value it possesses, for even a +moment, is the spiritual value back of it: remove that end and it is at +once worthless--like the hat. + +Y.M. Can you extend that to money? + +O.M. Yes. It is merely a symbol, it has no MATERIAL value; you think +you desire it for its own sake, but it is not so. You desire it for the +spiritual content it will bring; if it fail of that, you discover that +its value is gone. There is that pathetic tale of the man who labored +like a slave, unresting, unsatisfied, until he had accumulated a fortune, +and was happy over it, jubilant about it; then in a single week a +pestilence swept away all whom he held dear and left him desolate. His +money's value was gone. He realized that his joy in it came not from the +money itself, but from the spiritual contentment he got out of his +family's enjoyment of the pleasures and delights it lavished upon them. +Money has no MATERIAL value; if you remove its spiritual value nothing is +left but dross. It is so with all things, little or big, majestic or +trivial--there are no exceptions. Crowns, scepters, pennies, paste +jewels, village notoriety, world-wide fame--they are all the same, they +have no MATERIAL value: while they content the SPIRIT they are precious, +when this fails they are worthless. + + + +A Difficult Question + +Y.M. You keep me confused and perplexed all the time by your elusive +terminology. Sometimes you divide a man up into two or three separate +personalities, each with authorities, jurisdictions, and responsibilities +of its own, and when he is in that condition I can't grasp it. Now when +_I_ speak of a man, he is THE WHOLE THING IN ONE, and easy to hold and +contemplate. + +O.M. That is pleasant and convenient, if true. When you speak of "my +body" who is the "my"? + +Y.M. It is the "me." + +O.M. The body is a property then, and the Me owns it. Who is the Me? + +Y.M. The Me is THE WHOLE THING; it is a common property; an undivided +ownership, vested in the whole entity. + +O.M. If the Me admires a rainbow, is it the whole Me that admires it, +including the hair, hands, heels, and all? + +Y.M. Certainly not. It is my MIND that admires it. + +O.M. So YOU divide the Me yourself. Everybody does; everybody must. +What, then, definitely, is the Me? + +Y.M. I think it must consist of just those two parts--the body and the +mind. + +O.M. You think so? If you say "I believe the world is round," who is +the "I" that is speaking? + +Y.M. The mind. + +O.M. If you say "I grieve for the loss of my father," who is the "I"? + +Y.M. The mind. + +O.M. Is the mind exercising an intellectual function when it examines +and accepts the evidence that the world is round? + +Y.M. Yes. + +O.M. Is it exercising an intellectual function when it grieves for the +loss of your father? + +Y.M. That is not cerebration, brain-work, it is a matter of FEELING. + +O.M. Then its source is not in your mind, but in your MORAL territory? + +Y.M. I have to grant it. + +O.M. Is your mind a part of your PHYSICAL equipment? + +Y.M. No. It is independent of it; it is spiritual. + +O.M. Being spiritual, it cannot be affected by physical influences? + +Y.M. No. + +O.M. Does the mind remain sober with the body is drunk? + +Y.M. Well--no. + +O.M. There IS a physical effect present, then? + +Y.M. It looks like it. + +O.M. A cracked skull has resulted in a crazy mind. Why should it happen +if the mind is spiritual, and INDEPENDENT of physical influences? + +Y.M. Well--I don't know. + +O.M. When you have a pain in your foot, how do you know it? + +Y.M. I feel it. + +O.M. But you do not feel it until a nerve reports the hurt to the brain. +Yet the brain is the seat of the mind, is it not? + +Y.M. I think so. + +O.M. But isn't spiritual enough to learn what is happening in the +outskirts without the help of the PHYSICAL messenger? You perceive that +the question of who or what the Me is, is not a simple one at all. You +say "I admire the rainbow," and "I believe the world is round," and in +these cases we find that the Me is not speaking, but only the MENTAL +part. You say, "I grieve," and again the Me is not all speaking, but +only the MORAL part. You say the mind is wholly spiritual; then you say +"I have a pain" and find that this time the Me is mental AND spiritual +combined. We all use the "I" in this indeterminate fashion, there is no +help for it. We imagine a Master and King over what you call The Whole +Thing, and we speak of him as "I," but when we try to define him we find +we cannot do it. The intellect and the feelings can act quite +INDEPENDENTLY of each other; we recognize that, and we look around for a +Ruler who is master over both, and can serve as a DEFINITE AND +INDISPUTABLE "I," and enable us to know what we mean and who or what we +are talking about when we use that pronoun, but we have to give it up and +confess that we cannot find him. To me, Man is a machine, made up of +many mechanisms, the moral and mental ones acting automatically in +accordance with the impulses of an interior Master who is built out of +born-temperament and an accumulation of multitudinous outside influences +and trainings; a machine whose ONE function is to secure the spiritual +contentment of the Master, be his desires good or be they evil; a machine +whose Will is absolute and must be obeyed, and always IS obeyed. + +Y.M. Maybe the Me is the Soul? + +O.M. Maybe it is. What is the Soul? + +Y.M. I don't know. + +O.M. Neither does any one else. + + + +The Master Passion + +Y.M. What is the Master?--or, in common speech, the Conscience? +Explain it. + +O.M. It is that mysterious autocrat, lodged in a man, which compels the +man to content its desires. It may be called the Master Passion--the +hunger for Self-Approval. + +Y.M. Where is its seat? + +O.M. In man's moral constitution. + +Y.M. Are its commands for the man's good? + +O.M. It is indifferent to the man's good; it never concerns itself about +anything but the satisfying of its own desires. It can be TRAINED to +prefer things which will be for the man's good, but it will prefer them +only because they will content IT better than other things would. + +Y.M. Then even when it is trained to high ideals it is still looking out +for its own contentment, and not for the man's good. + +O.M. True. Trained or untrained, it cares nothing for the man's good, +and never concerns itself about it. + +Y.M. It seems to be an IMMORAL force seated in the man's moral +constitution. + +O.M. It is a COLORLESS force seated in the man's moral constitution. Let +us call it an instinct--a blind, unreasoning instinct, which cannot and +does not distinguish between good morals and bad ones, and cares nothing +for results to the man provided its own contentment be secured; and it +will ALWAYS secure that. + +Y.M. It seeks money, and it probably considers that that is an advantage +for the man? + +O.M. It is not always seeking money, it is not always seeking power, nor +office, nor any other MATERIAL advantage. In ALL cases it seeks a +SPIRITUAL contentment, let the MEANS be what they may. Its desires are +determined by the man's temperament--and it is lord over that. +Temperament, Conscience, Susceptibility, Spiritual Appetite, are, in +fact, the same thing. Have you ever heard of a person who cared nothing +for money? + +Y.M. Yes. A scholar who would not leave his garret and his books to +take a place in a business house at a large salary. + +O.M. He had to satisfy his master--that is to say, his temperament, his +Spiritual Appetite--and it preferred books to money. Are there other +cases? + +Y.M. Yes, the hermit. + +O.M. It is a good instance. The hermit endures solitude, hunger, cold, +and manifold perils, to content his autocrat, who prefers these things, +and prayer and contemplation, to money or to any show or luxury that +money can buy. Are there others? + +Y.M. Yes. The artist, the poet, the scientist. + +O.M. Their autocrat prefers the deep pleasures of these occupations, +either well paid or ill paid, to any others in the market, at any price. +You REALIZE that the Master Passion--the contentment of the +spirit--concerns itself with many things besides so-called material +advantage, material prosperity, cash, and all that? + +Y.M. I think I must concede it. + +O.M. I believe you must. There are perhaps as many Temperaments that +would refuse the burdens and vexations and distinctions of public office +as there are that hunger after them. The one set of Temperaments seek +the contentment of the spirit, and that alone; and this is exactly the +case with the other set. Neither set seeks anything BUT the contentment +of the spirit. If the one is sordid, both are sordid; and equally so, +since the end in view is precisely the same in both cases. And in both +cases Temperament decides the preference--and Temperament is BORN, not +made. + + + +Conclusion + +O.M. You have been taking a holiday? + +Y.M. Yes; a mountain tramp covering a week. Are you ready to talk? + +O.M. Quite ready. What shall we begin with? + +Y.M. Well, lying abed resting up, two days and nights, I have thought +over all these talks, and passed them carefully in review. With this +result: that . . . that . . . are you intending to publish your notions +about Man some day? + +O.M. Now and then, in these past twenty years, the Master inside of me +has half-intended to order me to set them to paper and publish them. Do +I have to tell you why the order has remained unissued, or can you +explain so simply a thing without my help? + +Y.M. By your doctrine, it is simplicity itself: outside influences moved +your interior Master to give the order; stronger outside influences +deterred him. Without the outside influences, neither of these impulses +could ever have been born, since a person's brain is incapable or +originating an idea within itself. + +O.M. Correct. Go on. + +Y.M. The matter of publishing or withholding is still in your Master's +hands. If some day an outside influence shall determine him to publish, +he will give the order, and it will be obeyed. + +O.M. That is correct. Well? + +Y.M. Upon reflection I have arrived at the conviction that the +publication of your doctrines would be harmful. Do you pardon me? + +O.M. Pardon YOU? You have done nothing. You are an instrument--a +speaking-trumpet. Speaking-trumpets are not responsible for what is said +through them. Outside influences--in the form of lifelong teachings, +trainings, notions, prejudices, and other second-hand importations--have +persuaded the Master within you that the publication of these doctrines +would be harmful. Very well, this is quite natural, and was to be +expected; in fact, was inevitable. Go on; for the sake of ease and +convenience, stick to habit: speak in the first person, and tell me what +your Master thinks about it. + +Y.M. Well, to begin: it is a desolating doctrine; it is not inspiring, +enthusing, uplifting. It takes the glory out of man, it takes the pride +out of him, it takes the heroism out of him, it denies him all personal +credit, all applause; it not only degrades him to a machine, but allows +him no control over the machine; makes a mere coffee-mill of him, and +neither permits him to supply the coffee nor turn the crank, his sole and +piteously humble function being to grind coarse or fine, according to his +make, outside impulses doing the rest. + +O.M. It is correctly stated. Tell me--what do men admire most in each +other? + +Y.M. Intellect, courage, majesty of build, beauty of countenance, +charity, benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness, heroism, and--and-- + +O.M. I would not go any further. These are ELEMENTALS. Virtue, +fortitude, holiness, truthfulness, loyalty, high ideals--these, and all +the related qualities that are named in the dictionary, are MADE OF THE +ELEMENTALS, by blendings, combinations, and shadings of the elementals, +just as one makes green by blending blue and yellow, and makes several +shades and tints of red by modifying the elemental red. There are +several elemental colors; they are all in the rainbow; out of them we +manufacture and name fifty shades of them. You have named the elementals +of the human rainbow, and also one BLEND--heroism, which is made out of +courage and magnanimity. Very well, then; which of these elements does +the possessor of it manufacture for himself? Is it intellect? + +Y.M. No. + +O.M. Why? + +Y.M. He is born with it. + +O.M. Is it courage? + +Y.M. No. He is born with it. + +O.M. Is it majesty of build, beauty of countenance? + +Y.M. No. They are birthrights. + +O.M. Take those others--the elemental moral qualities--charity, +benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness; fruitful seeds, out of which +spring, through cultivation by outside influences, all the manifold +blends and combinations of virtues named in the dictionaries: does man +manufacture any of those seeds, or are they all born in him? + +Y.M. Born in him. + +O.M. Who manufactures them, then? + +Y.M. God. + +O.M. Where does the credit of it belong? + +Y.M. To God. + +O.M. And the glory of which you spoke, and the applause? + +Y.M. To God. + +O.M. Then it is YOU who degrade man. You make him claim glory, praise, +flattery, for every valuable thing he possesses--BORROWED finery, the +whole of it; no rag of it earned by himself, not a detail of it produced +by his own labor. YOU make man a humbug; have I done worse by him? + +Y.M. You have made a machine of him. + +O.M. Who devised that cunning and beautiful mechanism, a man's hand? + +Y.M. God. + +O.M. Who devised the law by which it automatically hammers out of a +piano an elaborate piece of music, without error, while the man is +thinking about something else, or talking to a friend? + +Y.M. God. + +O.M. Who devised the blood? Who devised the wonderful machinery which +automatically drives its renewing and refreshing streams through the +body, day and night, without assistance or advice from the man? Who +devised the man's mind, whose machinery works automatically, interests +itself in what it pleases, regardless of its will or desire, labors all +night when it likes, deaf to his appeals for mercy? God devised all +these things. _I_ have not made man a machine, God made him a machine. I +am merely calling attention to the fact, nothing more. Is it wrong to +call attention to the fact? Is it a crime? + +Y.M. I think it is wrong to EXPOSE a fact when harm can come of it. + +O.M. Go on. + +Y.M. Look at the matter as it stands now. Man has been taught that he +is the supreme marvel of the Creation; he believes it; in all the ages he +has never doubted it, whether he was a naked savage, or clothed in purple +and fine linen, and civilized. This has made his heart buoyant, his life +cheery. His pride in himself, his sincere admiration of himself, his joy +in what he supposed were his own and unassisted achievements, and his +exultation over the praise and applause which they evoked--these have +exalted him, enthused him, ambitioned him to higher and higher flights; +in a word, made his life worth the living. But by your scheme, all this +is abolished; he is degraded to a machine, he is a nobody, his noble +prides wither to mere vanities; let him strive as he may, he can never be +any better than his humblest and stupidest neighbor; he would never be +cheerful again, his life would not be worth the living. + +O.M. You really think that? + +Y.M. I certainly do. + +O.M. Have you ever seen me uncheerful, unhappy. + +Y.M. No. + +O.M. Well, _I_ believe these things. Why have they not made me unhappy? + +Y.M. Oh, well--temperament, of course! You never let THAT escape from +your scheme. + +O.M. That is correct. If a man is born with an unhappy temperament, +nothing can make him happy; if he is born with a happy temperament, +nothing can make him unhappy. + +Y.M. What--not even a degrading and heart-chilling system of beliefs? + +O.M. Beliefs? Mere beliefs? Mere convictions? They are powerless. +They strive in vain against inborn temperament. + +Y.M. I can't believe that, and I don't. + +O.M. Now you are speaking hastily. It shows that you have not +studiously examined the facts. Of all your intimates, which one is the +happiest? Isn't it Burgess? + +Y.M. Easily. + +O.M. And which one is the unhappiest? Henry Adams? + +Y.M. Without a question! + +O.M. I know them well. They are extremes, abnormals; their temperaments +are as opposite as the poles. Their life-histories are about alike--but +look at the results! Their ages are about the same--about around fifty. +Burgess had always been buoyant, hopeful, happy; Adams has always been +cheerless, hopeless, despondent. As young fellows both tried country +journalism--and failed. Burgess didn't seem to mind it; Adams couldn't +smile, he could only mourn and groan over what had happened and torture +himself with vain regrets for not having done so and so instead of so and +so--THEN he would have succeeded. They tried the law--and failed. +Burgess remained happy--because he couldn't help it. Adams was +wretched--because he couldn't help it. From that day to this, those two +men have gone on trying things and failing: Burgess has come out happy +and cheerful every time; Adams the reverse. And we do absolutely know +that these men's inborn temperaments have remained unchanged through all +the vicissitudes of their material affairs. Let us see how it is with +their immaterials. Both have been zealous Democrats; both have been +zealous Republicans; both have been zealous Mugwumps. Burgess has always +found happiness and Adams unhappiness in these several political beliefs +and in their migrations out of them. Both of these men have been +Presbyterians, Universalists, Methodists, Catholics--then Presbyterians +again, then Methodists again. Burgess has always found rest in these +excursions, and Adams unrest. They are trying Christian Science, now, +with the customary result, the inevitable result. No political or +religious belief can make Burgess unhappy or the other man happy. I +assure you it is purely a matter of temperament. Beliefs are +ACQUIREMENTS, temperaments are BORN; beliefs are subject to change, +nothing whatever can change temperament. + +Y.M. You have instanced extreme temperaments. + +O.M. Yes, the half-dozen others are modifications of the extremes. But +the law is the same. Where the temperament is two-thirds happy, or +two-thirds unhappy, no political or religious beliefs can change the +proportions. The vast majority of temperaments are pretty equally +balanced; the intensities are absent, and this enables a nation to learn +to accommodate itself to its political and religious circumstances and +like them, be satisfied with them, at last prefer them. Nations do not +THINK, they only FEEL. They get their feelings at second hand through +their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought--by force +of circumstances, not argument--to reconcile itself to ANY KIND OF +GOVERNMENT OR RELIGION THAT CAN BE DEVISED; in time it will fit itself to +the required conditions; later, it will prefer them and will fiercely +fight for them. As instances, you have all history: the Greeks, the +Romans, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Russians, the Germans, the +French, the English, the Spaniards, the Americans, the South Americans, +the Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Turks--a thousand wild and +tame religions, every kind of government that can be thought of, from +tiger to house-cat, each nation KNOWING it has the only true religion and +the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each +an ass and not suspecting it, each proud of its fancied supremacy, each +perfectly sure it is the pet of God, each without undoubting confidence +summoning Him to take command in time of war, each surprised when He goes +over to the enemy, but by habit able to excuse it and resume +compliments--in a word, the whole human race content, always content, +persistently content, indestructibly content, happy, thankful, proud, NO +MATTER WHAT ITS RELIGION IS, NOR WHETHER ITS MASTER BE TIGER OR +HOUSE-CAT. Am I stating facts? You know I am. Is the human race +cheerful? You know it is. Considering what it can stand, and be happy, +you do me too much honor when you think that _I_ can place before it a +system of plain cold facts that can take the cheerfulness out of it. +Nothing can do that. Everything has been tried. Without success. I beg +you not to be troubled. + + + + + +THE DEATH OF JEAN + + + +The death of Jean Clemens occurred early in the morning of December 24, +1909. Mr. Clemens was in great stress of mind when I first saw him, but +a few hours later I found him writing steadily. + +"I am setting it down," he said, "everything. It is a relief to me to +write it. It furnishes me an excuse for thinking." At intervals during +that day and the next I looked in, and usually found him writing. Then +on the evening of the 26th, when he knew that Jean had been laid to rest +in Elmira, he came to my room with the manuscript in his hand. + +"I have finished it," he said; "read it. I can form no opinion of it +myself. If you think it worthy, some day--at the proper time--it can end +my autobiography. It is the final chapter." + +Four months later--almost to the day--(April 21st) he was with Jean. + +Albert Bigelow Paine. + + + + + +Stormfield, Christmas Eve, 11 A.M., 1909. + +JEAN IS DEAD! + +Has any one ever tried to put upon paper all the little happenings +connected with a dear one--happenings of the twenty-four hours preceding +the sudden and unexpected death of that dear one? Would a book contain +them? Would two books contain them? I think not. They pour into the +mind in a flood. They are little things that have been always happening +every day, and were always so unimportant and easily forgettable +before--but now! Now, how different! how precious they are, now dear, how +unforgettable, how pathetic, how sacred, how clothed with dignity! + +Last night Jean, all flushed with splendid health, and I the same, from +the wholesome effects of my Bermuda holiday, strolled hand in hand from +the dinner-table and sat down in the library and chatted, and planned, +and discussed, cheerily and happily (and how unsuspectingly!)--until +nine--which is late for us--then went upstairs, Jean's friendly German +dog following. At my door Jean said, "I can't kiss you good night, +father: I have a cold, and you could catch it." I bent and kissed her +hand. She was moved--I saw it in her eyes--and she impulsively kissed my +hand in return. Then with the usual gay "Sleep well, dear!" from both, +we parted. + +At half past seven this morning I woke, and heard voices outside my door. +I said to myself, "Jean is starting on her usual horseback flight to the +station for the mail." Then Katy [1] entered, stood quaking and gasping +at my bedside a moment, then found her tongue: + +"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!" + +Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through +his heart. + +In her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon +the floor and covered with a sheet. And looking so placid, so natural, +and as if asleep. We knew what had happened. She was an epileptic: she +had been seized with a convulsion and heart failure in her bath. The +doctor had to come several miles. His efforts, like our previous ones, +failed to bring her back to life. + +It is noon, now. How lovable she looks, how sweet and how tranquil! It +is a noble face, and full of dignity; and that was a good heart that lies +there so still. + +In England, thirteen years ago, my wife and I were stabbed to the heart +with a cablegram which said, "Susy was mercifully released today." I had +to send a like shot to Clara, in Berlin, this morning. With the +peremptory addition, "You must not come home." Clara and her husband +sailed from here on the 11th of this month. How will Clara bear it? +Jean, from her babyhood, was a worshiper of Clara. + +Four days ago I came back from a month's holiday in Bermuda in perfected +health; but by some accident the reporters failed to perceive this. Day +before yesterday, letters and telegrams began to arrive from friends and +strangers which indicated that I was supposed to be dangerously ill. +Yesterday Jean begged me to explain my case through the Associated Press. +I said it was not important enough; but she was distressed and said I +must think of Clara. Clara would see the report in the German papers, +and as she had been nursing her husband day and night for four months [2] +and was worn out and feeble, the shock might be disastrous. There was +reason in that; so I sent a humorous paragraph by telephone to the +Associated Press denying the "charge" that I was "dying," and saying "I +would not do such a thing at my time of life." + +Jean was a little troubled, and did not like to see me treat the matter +so lightly; but I said it was best to treat it so, for there was nothing +serious about it. This morning I sent the sorrowful facts of this day's +irremediable disaster to the Associated Press. Will both appear in this +evening's papers?--the one so blithe, the other so tragic? + +I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother--her incomparable +mother!--five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in +Europe; and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! +Seven months ago Mr. Roger died--one of the best friends I ever had, and +the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, I have yet met among my race; +within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and Laffan--old, old +friends of mine. Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under +our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night--and it was +forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit +here--writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How +dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a +mockery. + +Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days ago. Seventy-four years old +yesterday. Who can estimate my age today? + +I have looked upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as +her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long ago. +The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep. + +I saw her mother buried. I said I would never endure that horror again; +that I would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me. I +have kept to that. They will take Jean from this house tomorrow, and +bear her to Elmira, New York, where lie those of us that have been +released, but I shall not follow. + +Jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago. She was +at the door, beaming a welcome, when I reached this house the next +evening. We played cards, and she tried to teach me a new game called +"Mark Twain." We sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, and +she wouldn't let me look into the loggia, where she was making Christmas +preparations. She said she would finish them in the morning, and then +her little French friend would arrive from New York--the surprise would +follow; the surprise she had been working over for days. While she was +out for a moment I disloyally stole a look. The loggia floor was clothed +with rugs and furnished with chairs and sofas; and the uncompleted +surprise was there: in the form of a Christmas tree that was drenched +with silver film in a most wonderful way; and on a table was prodigal +profusion of bright things which she was going to hang upon it today. +What desecrating hand will ever banish that eloquent unfinished surprise +from that place? Not mine, surely. All these little matters have +happened in the last four days. "Little." Yes--THEN. But not now. +Nothing she said or thought or did is little now. And all the lavish +humor!--what is become of it? It is pathos, now. Pathos, and the +thought of it brings tears. + +All these little things happened such a few hours ago--and now she lies +yonder. Lies yonder, and cares for nothing any more. +Strange--marvelous--incredible! I have had this experience before; but +it would still be incredible if I had had it a thousand times. + +"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!" + +That is what Katy said. When I heard the door open behind the bed's head +without a preliminary knock, I supposed it was Jean coming to kiss me +good morning, she being the only person who was used to entering without +formalities. + +And so-- + +I have been to Jean's parlor. Such a turmoil of Christmas presents for +servants and friends! They are everywhere; tables, chairs, sofas, the +floor--everything is occupied, and over-occupied. It is many and many a +year since I have seen the like. In that ancient day Mrs. Clemens and I +used to slip softly into the nursery at midnight on Christmas Eve and +look the array of presents over. The children were little then. And now +here is Jean's parlor looking just as that nursery used to look. The +presents are not labeled--the hands are forever idle that would have +labeled them today. Jean's mother always worked herself down with her +Christmas preparations. Jean did the same yesterday and the preceding +days, and the fatigue has cost her her life. The fatigue caused the +convulsion that attacked her this morning. She had had no attack for +months. + +Jean was so full of life and energy that she was constantly is danger of +overtaxing her strength. Every morning she was in the saddle by half +past seven, and off to the station for her mail. She examined the +letters and I distributed them: some to her, some to Mr. Paine, the +others to the stenographer and myself. She dispatched her share and then +mounted her horse again and went around superintending her farm and her +poultry the rest of the day. Sometimes she played billiards with me +after dinner, but she was usually too tired to play, and went early to +bed. + +Yesterday afternoon I told her about some plans I had been devising while +absent in Bermuda, to lighten her burdens. We would get a housekeeper; +also we would put her share of the secretary-work into Mr. Paine's hands. + +No--she wasn't willing. She had been making plans herself. The matter +ended in a compromise, I submitted. I always did. She wouldn't audit the +bills and let Paine fill out the checks--she would continue to attend to +that herself. Also, she would continue to be housekeeper, and let Katy +assist. Also, she would continue to answer the letters of personal +friends for me. Such was the compromise. Both of us called it by that +name, though I was not able to see where my formidable change had been +made. + +However, Jean was pleased, and that was sufficient for me. She was proud +of being my secretary, and I was never able to persuade her to give up +any part of her share in that unlovely work. + +In the talk last night I said I found everything going so smoothly that +if she were willing I would go back to Bermuda in February and get +blessedly out of the clash and turmoil again for another month. She was +urgent that I should do it, and said that if I would put off the trip +until March she would take Katy and go with me. We struck hands upon +that, and said it was settled. I had a mind to write to Bermuda by +tomorrow's ship and secure a furnished house and servants. I meant to +write the letter this morning. But it will never be written, now. + +For she lies yonder, and before her is another journey than that. + +Night is closing down; the rim of the sun barely shows above the sky-line +of the hills. + +I have been looking at that face again that was growing dearer and dearer +to me every day. I was getting acquainted with Jean in these last nine +months. She had been long an exile from home when she came to us +three-quarters of a year ago. She had been shut up in sanitariums, many +miles from us. How eloquent glad and grateful she was to cross her +father's threshold again! + +Would I bring her back to life if I could do it? I would not. If a word +would do it, I would beg for strength to withhold the word. And I would +have the strength; I am sure of it. In her loss I am almost bankrupt, +and my life is a bitterness, but I am content: for she has been enriched +with the most precious of all gifts--that gift which makes all other +gifts mean and poor--death. I have never wanted any released friend of +mine restored to life since I reached manhood. I felt in this way when +Susy passed away; and later my wife, and later Mr. Rogers. When Clara +met me at the station in New York and told me Mr. Rogers had died +suddenly that morning, my thought was, Oh, favorite of fortune +--fortunate all his long and lovely life--fortunate to his latest moment! +The reporters said there were tears of sorrow in my eyes. True--but they +were for ME, not for him. He had suffered no loss. All the fortunes he +had ever made before were poverty compared with this one. + +Why did I build this house, two years ago? To shelter this vast +emptiness? How foolish I was! But I shall stay in it. The spirits of +the dead hallow a house, for me. It was not so with other members of the +family. Susy died in the house we built in Hartford. Mrs. Clemens would +never enter it again. But it made the house dearer to me. I have +entered it once since, when it was tenantless and silent and forlorn, but +to me it was a holy place and beautiful. It seemed to me that the +spirits of the dead were all about me, and would speak to me and welcome +me if they could: Livy, and Susy, and George, and Henry Robinson, and +Charles Dudley Warner. How good and kind they were, and how lovable +their lives! In fancy I could see them all again, I could call the +children back and hear them romp again with George--that peerless black +ex-slave and children's idol who came one day--a flitting stranger--to +wash windows, and stayed eighteen years. Until he died. Clara and Jean +would never enter again the New York hotel which their mother had +frequented in earlier days. They could not bear it. But I shall stay in +this house. It is dearer to me tonight than ever it was before. Jean's +spirit will make it beautiful for me always. Her lonely and tragic +death--but I will not think of that now. + +Jean's mother always devoted two or three weeks to Christmas shopping, +and was always physically exhausted when Christmas Eve came. Jean was +her very own child--she wore herself out present-hunting in New York +these latter days. Paine has just found on her desk a long list of +names--fifty, he thinks--people to whom she sent presents last night. +Apparently she forgot no one. And Katy found there a roll of bank-notes, +for the servants. + +Her dog has been wandering about the grounds today, comradeless and +forlorn. I have seen him from the windows. She got him from Germany. +He has tall ears and looks exactly like a wolf. He was educated in +Germany, and knows no language but the German. Jean gave him no orders +save in that tongue. And so when the burglar-alarm made a fierce clamor +at midnight a fortnight ago, the butler, who is French and knows no +German, tried in vain to interest the dog in the supposed burglar. Jean +wrote me, to Bermuda, about the incident. It was the last letter I was +ever to receive from her bright head and her competent hand. The dog will +not be neglected. + +There was never a kinder heart than Jean's. From her childhood up she +always spent the most of her allowance on charities of one kind or +another. After she became secretary and had her income doubled she spent +her money upon these things with a free hand. Mine too, I am glad and +grateful to say. + +She was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all, birds, +beasts, and everything--even snakes--an inheritance from me. She knew +all the birds; she was high up in that lore. She became a member of +various humane societies when she was still a little girl--both here and +abroad--and she remained an active member to the last. She founded two +or three societies for the protection of animals, here and in Europe. + +She was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my correspondence out +of the waste-basket and answered the letters. She thought all letters +deserved the courtesy of an answer. Her mother brought her up in that +kindly error. + +She could write a good letter, and was swift with her pen. She had but an +indifferent ear music, but her tongue took to languages with an easy +facility. She never allowed her Italian, French, and German to get rusty +through neglect. + +The telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far and wide, now, just as +they did in Italy five years and a half ago, when this child's mother +laid down her blameless life. They cannot heal the hurt, but they take +away some of the pain. When Jean and I kissed hands and parted at my +door last, how little did we imagine that in twenty-two hours the +telegraph would be bringing words like these: + +"From the bottom of our hearts we send out sympathy, dearest of friends." + +For many and many a day to come, wherever I go in this house, +remembrancers of Jean will mutely speak to me of her. Who can count the +number of them? + +She was in exile two years with the hope of healing her malady--epilepsy. +There are no words to express how grateful I am that she did not meet her +fate in the hands of strangers, but in the loving shelter of her own +home. + +"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!" + +It is true. Jean is dead. + +A month ago I was writing bubbling and hilarious articles for magazines +yet to appear, and now I am writing--this. + +CHRISTMAS DAY. NOON.--Last night I went to Jean's room at intervals, +and turned back the sheet and looked at the peaceful face, and kissed the +cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in Florence so long +ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when I crept downstairs so +many times, and turned back a sheet and looked at a face just like this +one--Jean's mother's face--and kissed a brow that was just like this one. +And last night I saw again what I had seen then--that strange and lovely +miracle--the sweet, soft contours of early maidenhood restored by the +gracious hand of death! When Jean's mother lay dead, all trace of care, +and trouble, and suffering, and the corroding years had vanished out of +the face, and I was looking again upon it as I had known and worshipped +it in its young bloom and beauty a whole generation before. + +About three in the morning, while wandering about the house in the deep +silences, as one does in times like these, when there is a dumb sense +that something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must be +sought, if only for the employment the useless seeking gives, I came upon +Jean's dog in the hall downstairs, and noted that he did not spring to +greet me, according to his hospitable habit, but came slow and +sorrowfully; also I remembered that he had not visited Jean's apartment +since the tragedy. Poor fellow, did he know? I think so. Always when +Jean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when she was in the +house he was with her, in the night as well as in the day. Her parlor was +his bedroom. Whenever I happened upon him on the ground floor he always +followed me about, and when I went upstairs he went too--in a tumultuous +gallop. But now it was different: after patting him a little I went to +the library--he remained behind; when I went upstairs he did not follow +me, save with his wistful eyes. He has wonderful eyes--big, and kind, +and eloquent. He can talk with them. He is a beautiful creature, and is +of the breed of the New York police-dogs. I do not like dogs, because +they bark when there is no occasion for it; but I have liked this one +from the beginning, because he belonged to Jean, and because he never +barks except when there is occasion--which is not oftener than twice a +week. + +In my wanderings I visited Jean's parlor. On a shelf I found a pile of +my books, and I knew what it meant. She was waiting for me to come home +from Bermuda and autograph them, then she would send them away. If I +only knew whom she intended them for! But I shall never know. I will +keep them. Her hand has touched them--it is an accolade--they are noble, +now. + +And in a closet she had hidden a surprise for me--a thing I have often +wished I owned: a noble big globe. I couldn't see it for the tears. She +will never know the pride I take in it, and the pleasure. Today the +mails are full of loving remembrances for her: full of those old, old +kind words she loved so well, "Merry Christmas to Jean!" If she could +only have lived one day longer! + +At last she ran out of money, and would not use mine. So she sent to one +of those New York homes for poor girls all the clothes she could +spare--and more, most likely. + +CHRISTMAS NIGHT.--This afternoon they took her away from her room. As +soon as I might, I went down to the library, and there she lay, in her +coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes she wore when she stood at +the other end of the same room on the 6th of October last, as Clara's +chief bridesmaid. Her face was radiant with happy excitement then; it +was the same face now, with the dignity of death and the peace of God +upon it. + +They told me the first mourner to come was the dog. He came uninvited, +and stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore paws upon the trestle, +and took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him, then went +his way as silently as he had come. HE KNOWS. + +At mid-afternoon it began to snow. The pity of it--that Jean could not +see it! She so loved the snow. + +The snow continued to fall. At six o'clock the hearse drew up to the +door to bear away its pathetic burden. As they lifted the casket, Paine +began playing on the orchestrelle Schubert's "Impromptu," which was +Jean's favorite. Then he played the Intermezzo; that was for Susy; then +he played the Largo; that was for their mother. He did this at my +request. Elsewhere in my Autobiography I have told how the Intermezzo +and the Largo came to be associated in my heart with Susy and Livy in +their last hours in this life. + +From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road +and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and presently +disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back any +more. Jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were babies +together--he and her beloved old Katy--were conducting her to her distant +childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's side once more, in the +company of Susy and Langdon. + +DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o'clock this morning. +He was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will be his quarters +hereafter. + +The storm raged all night. It has raged all the morning. The snow drives +across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime--and Jean not here +to see. + +2:30 P.M.--It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four +hundred miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The +scene is the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean's coffin stands where +her mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where +Susy's coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother's stood five +years and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time. + +FIVE O'CLOCK.--It is all over. + +When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe, it was hard, but I +could bear it, for I had Jean left. I said WE would be a family. We +said we would be close comrades and happy--just we two. That fair dream +was in my mind when Jean met me at the steamer last Monday; it was in my +mind when she received me at the door last Tuesday evening. We were +together; WE WERE A FAMILY! the dream had come true--oh, precisely true, +contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days. + +And now? Now Jean is in her grave! + +In the grave--if I can believe it. God rest her sweet spirit! + +----- 1. Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens family +for twenty-nine years. + +2. Mr. Gabrilowitsch had been operated on for appendicitis. + + + + + + + +THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE + +I + +If I understand the idea, the BAZAR invites several of us to write upon +the above text. It means the change in my life's course which introduced +what must be regarded by me as the most IMPORTANT condition of my career. +But it also implies--without intention, perhaps--that that turning-point +ITSELF was the creator of the new condition. This gives it too much +distinction, too much prominence, too much credit. It is only the LAST +link in a very long chain of turning-points commissioned to produce the +cardinal result; it is not any more important than the humblest of its +ten thousand predecessors. Each of the ten thousand did its appointed +share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all +necessary; to have left out any one of them would have defeated the +scheme and brought about SOME OTHER result. It know we have a fashion of +saying "such and such an event was the turning-point in my life," but we +shouldn't say it. We should merely grant that its place as LAST link in +the chain makes it the most CONSPICUOUS link; in real importance it has +no advantage over any one of its predecessors. + +Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the +crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says: + +Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a +while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on +the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, "We may still +retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to +fight it out in arms." + +This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big +and little, of Caesar's previous life had been leading up to it, stage by +stage, link by link. This was the LAST link--merely the last one, and no +bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the inflating +mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of Neptune. + +You, the reader, have a PERSONAL interest in that link, and so have I; so +has the rest of the human race. It was one of the links in your +life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. We may wait, now, with +bated breath, while Caesar reflects. Your fate and mine are involved in +his decision. + +While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person +remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand, +sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a +number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters +among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with +it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other +side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: "Let us go whither the omens of the +gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. THE DIE IS CAST." + +So he crossed--and changed the future of the whole human race, for all +time. But that stranger was a link in Caesar's life-chain, too; and a +necessary one. We don't know his name, we never hear of him again; he +was very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he was +there by compulsion of HIS life-chain, to blow the electrifying blast +that was to make up Caesar's mind for him, and thence go piping down the +aisles of history forever. + +If the stranger hadn't been there! But he WAS. And Caesar crossed. +With such results! Such vast events--each a link in the HUMAN RACE'S +life-chain; each event producing the next one, and that one the next one, +and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the empire; +the breaking up of the empire; the rise of Christianity upon its ruins; +the spread of the religion to other lands--and so on; link by link took +its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of America being +one of them; our Revolution another; the inflow of English and other +immigrants another; their drift westward (my ancestors among them) +another; the settlement of certain of them in Missouri, which resulted in +ME. For I was one of the unavoidable results of the crossing of the +Rubicon. If the stranger, with his trumpet blast, had stayed away (which +he COULDN'T, for he was the appointed link) Caesar would not have +crossed. What would have happened, in that case, we can never guess. We +only know that the things that did happen would not have happened. They +might have been replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but +their nature and results are beyond our guessing. But the matter that +interests me personally is that I would not be HERE now, but somewhere +else; and probably black--there is no telling. Very well, I am glad he +crossed. And very really and thankfully glad, too, though I never cared +anything about it before. + + + +II + +To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature. I +have been professionally literary something more than forty years. There +have been many turning-points in my life, but the one that was the link +in the chain appointed to conduct me to the literary guild is the most +CONSPICUOUS link in that chain. BECAUSE it was the last one. It was not +any more important than its predecessors. All the other links have an +inconspicuous look, except the crossing of the Rubicon; but as factors in +making me literary they are all of the one size, the crossing of the +Rubicon included. + +I know how I came to be literary, and I will tell the steps that lead up +to it and brought it about. + +The crossing of the Rubicon was not the first one, it was hardly even a +recent one; I should have to go back ages before Caesar's day to find the +first one. To save space I will go back only a couple of generations and +start with an incident of my boyhood. When I was twelve and a half years +old, my father died. It was in the spring. The summer came, and brought +with it an epidemic of measles. For a time a child died almost every +day. The village was paralyzed with fright, distress, despair. Children +that were not smitten with the disease were imprisoned in their homes to +save them from the infection. In the homes there were no cheerful faces, +there was no music, there was no singing but of solemn hymns, no voice +but of prayer, no romping was allowed, no noise, no laughter, the family +moved spectrally about on tiptoe, in a ghostly hush. I was a prisoner. +My soul was steeped in this awful dreariness--and in fear. At some time +or other every day and every night a sudden shiver shook me to the +marrow, and I said to myself, "There, I've got it! and I shall die." +Life on these miserable terms was not worth living, and at last I made up +my mind to get the disease and have it over, one way or the other. I +escaped from the house and went to the house of a neighbor where a +playmate of mine was very ill with the malady. When the chance offered I +crept into his room and got into bed with him. I was discovered by his +mother and sent back into captivity. But I had the disease; they could +not take that from me. I came near to dying. The whole village was +interested, and anxious, and sent for news of me every day; and not only +once a day, but several times. Everybody believed I would die; but on +the fourteenth day a change came for the worse and they were +disappointed. + +This was a turning-point of my life. (Link number one.) For when I got +well my mother closed my school career and apprenticed me to a printer. +She was tired of trying to keep me out of mischief, and the adventure of +the measles decided her to put me into more masterful hands than hers. + +I became a printer, and began to add one link after another to the chain +which was to lead me into the literary profession. A long road, but I +could not know that; and as I did not know what its goal was, or even +that it had one, I was indifferent. Also contented. + +A young printer wanders around a good deal, seeking and finding work; and +seeking again, when necessity commands. N. B. Necessity is a +CIRCUMSTANCE; Circumstance is man's master--and when Circumstance +commands, he must obey; he may argue the matter--that is his privilege, +just as it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with the +attraction of gravitation--but it won't do any good, he must OBEY. I +wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of +Circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of Iowa, where I worked +several months. Among the books that interested me in those days was one +about the Amazon. The traveler told an alluring tale of his long voyage +up the great river from Para to the sources of the Madeira, through the +heart of an enchanted land, a land wastefully rich in tropical wonders, a +romantic land where all the birds and flowers and animals were of the +museum varieties, and where the alligator and the crocodile and the +monkey seemed as much at home as if they were in the Zoo. Also, he told +an astonishing tale about COCA, a vegetable product of miraculous powers, +asserting that it was so nourishing and so strength-giving that the +native of the mountains of the Madeira region would tramp up hill and +down all day on a pinch of powdered coca and require no other sustenance. + +I was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon. Also with a longing to +open up a trade in coca with all the world. During months I dreamed that +dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to Para and spring that splendid +enterprise upon an unsuspecting planet. But all in vain. A person may +PLAN as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come +of it until the magician CIRCUMSTANCE steps in and takes the matter off +his hands. At last Circumstance came to my help. It was in this way. +Circumstance, to help or hurt another man, made him lose a fifty-dollar +bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me find it. I +advertised the find, and left for the Amazon the same day. This was +another turning-point, another link. + +Could Circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to the +Amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fifty-dollar basis and been +obeyed? No, I was the only one. There were other fools there--shoals +and shoals of them--but they were not of my kind. I was the only one of +my kind. + +Circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a +partner. Its partner is man's TEMPERAMENT--his natural disposition. His +temperament is not his invention, it is BORN in him, and he has no +authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts. He cannot +change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify it--except +temporarily. But it won't stay modified. It is permanent, like the +color of the man's eyes and the shape of his ears. Blue eyes are gray in +certain unusual lights; but they resume their natural color when that +stress is removed. + +A Circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man of +a different temperament. If Circumstance had thrown the bank-note in +Caesar's way, his temperament would not have made him start for the +Amazon. His temperament would have compelled him to do something with +the money, but not that. It might have made him advertise the note--and +WAIT. We can't tell. Also, it might have made him go to New York and buy +into the Government, with results that would leave Tweed nothing to learn +when it came his turn. + +Very well, Circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told me +what to do with it. Sometimes a temperament is an ass. When that is the +case of the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one. +Training, experience, association, can temporarily so polish him, improve +him, exalt him that people will think he is a mule, but they will be +mistaken. Artificially he IS a mule, for the time being, but at bottom +he is an ass yet, and will remain one. + +By temperament I was the kind of person that DOES things. Does them, and +reflects afterward. So I started for the Amazon without reflecting and +without asking any questions. That was more than fifty years ago. In +all that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade. I have +been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things and +reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to me; I +still do the thing commanded by Circumstance and Temperament, and reflect +afterward. Always violently. When I am reflecting, on these occasions, +even deaf persons can hear me think. + +I went by the way of Cincinnati, and down the Ohio and Mississippi. My +idea was to take ship, at New Orleans, for Para. In New Orleans I +inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for Para. Also, that there +never had BEEN one leaving for Para. I reflected. A policeman came and +asked me what I was doing, and I told him. He made me move on, and said +if he caught me reflecting in the public street again he would run me in. + +After a few days I was out of money. Then Circumstance arrived, with +another turning-point of my life--a new link. On my way down, I had made +the acquaintance of a pilot. I begged him to teach me the river, and he +consented. I became a pilot. + +By and by Circumstance came again--introducing the Civil War, this time, +in order to push me ahead another stage or two toward the literary +profession. The boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone. + +Circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point and a fresh +link. My brother was appointed secretary to the new Territory of Nevada, +and he invited me to go with him and help him in his office. I accepted. + +In Nevada, Circumstance furnished me the silver fever and I went into the +mines to make a fortune, as I supposed; but that was not the idea. The +idea was to advance me another step toward literature. For amusement I +scribbled things for the Virginia City ENTERPRISE. One isn't a printer +ten years without setting up acres of good and bad literature, and +learning--unconsciously at first, consciously later--to discriminate +between the two, within his mental limitations; and meantime he is +unconsciously acquiring what is called a "style." One of my efforts +attracted attention, and the ENTERPRISE sent for me and put me on its +staff. + +And so I became a journalist--another link. By and by Circumstance and +the Sacramento UNION sent me to the Sandwich Islands for five or six +months, to write up sugar. I did it; and threw in a good deal of +extraneous matter that hadn't anything to do with sugar. But it was this +extraneous matter that helped me to another link. + +It made me notorious, and San Francisco invited me to lecture. Which I +did. And profitably. I had long had a desire to travel and see the +world, and now Circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me +upon the platform and furnished me the means. So I joined the "Quaker +City Excursion." + +When I returned to America, Circumstance was waiting on the pier--with +the LAST link--the conspicuous, the consummating, the victorious link: I +was asked to WRITE A BOOK, and I did it, and called it THE INNOCENTS +ABROAD. Thus I became at last a member of the literary guild. That was +forty-two years ago, and I have been a member ever since. Leaving the +Rubicon incident away back where it belongs, I can say with truth that +the reason I am in the literary profession is because I had the measles +when I was twelve years old. + +III + +Now what interests me, as regards these details, is not the details +themselves, but the fact that none of them was foreseen by me, none of +them was planned by me, I was the author of none of them. Circumstance, +working in harness with my temperament, created them all and compelled +them all. I often offered help, and with the best intentions, but it was +rejected--as a rule, uncourteously. I could never plan a thing and get +it to come out the way I planned it. It came out some other way--some +way I had not counted upon. + +And so I do not admire the human being--as an intellectual marvel--as +much as I did when I was young, and got him out of books, and did not +know him personally. When I used to read that such and such a general +did a certain brilliant thing, I believed it. Whereas it was not so. +Circumstance did it by help of his temperament. The circumstances would +have failed of effect with a general of another temperament: he might see +the chance, but lose the advantage by being by nature too slow or too +quick or too doubtful. Once General Grant was asked a question about a +matter which had been much debated by the public and the newspapers; he +answered the question without any hesitancy. "General, who planned the +the march through Georgia?" "The enemy!" He added that the enemy +usually makes your plans for you. He meant that the enemy by neglect or +through force of circumstances leaves an opening for you, and you see +your chance and take advantage of it. + +Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our +temperaments. I see no great difference between a man and a watch, +except that the man is conscious and the watch isn't, and the man TRIES +to plan things and the watch doesn't. The watch doesn't wind itself and +doesn't regulate itself--these things are done exteriorly. Outside +influences, outside circumstances, wind the MAN and regulate him. Left +to himself, he wouldn't get regulated at all, and the sort of time he +would keep would not be valuable. Some rare men are wonderful watches, +with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some men +are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys. I am a Waterbury. A +Waterbury of that kind, some say. + +A nation is only an individual multiplied. It makes plans and +Circumstances comes and upsets them--or enlarges them. Some patriots +throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy a Bastille. The +PLANS stop there; then Circumstance comes in, quite unexpectedly, and +turns these modest riots into a revolution. + +And there was poor Columbus. He elaborated a deep plan to find a new +route to an old country. Circumstance revised his plan for him, and he +found a new WORLD. And HE gets the credit of it to this day. He hadn't +anything to do with it. + +Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of yours) +was the Garden of Eden. It was there that the first link was forged of +the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me into the +literary guild. Adam's TEMPERAMENT was the first command the Deity ever +issued to a human being on this planet. And it was the only command Adam +would NEVER be able to disobey. It said, "Be weak, be water, be +characterless, be cheaply persuadable." The latter command, to let the +fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam himself, but by +his TEMPERAMENT--which he did not create and had no authority over. For +the TEMPERAMENT is the man; the thing tricked out with clothes and named +Man is merely its Shadow, nothing more. The law of the tiger's +temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the law of the sheep's temperament is +Thou shalt not kill. To issue later commands requiring the tiger to let +the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to imbue its hands in the +blood of the lion is not worth while, for those commands CAN'T be obeyed. +They would invite to violations of the law of TEMPERAMENT, which is +supreme, and take precedence of all other authorities. I cannot help +feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve. That is, in their temperaments. +Not in THEM, poor helpless young creatures--afflicted with temperaments +made out of butter; which butter was commanded to get into contact with +fire and BE MELTED. What I cannot help wishing is, that Adam had been +postponed, and Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place--that +splendid pair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of +asbestos. By neither sugary persuasions nor by hell fire could Satan have +beguiled THEM to eat the apple. There would have been results! Indeed, +yes. The apple would be intact today; there would be no human race; +there would be no YOU; there would be no ME. And the old, old +creation-dawn scheme of ultimately launching me into the literary guild +would have been defeated. + + + + + +HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK + +These chapters are for children, and I shall try to make the words large +enough to command respect. In the hope that you are listening, and that +you have confidence in me, I will proceed. Dates are difficult things to +acquire; and after they are acquired it is difficult to keep them in the +head. But they are very valuable. They are like the cattle-pens of a +ranch--they shut in the several brands of historical cattle, each within +its own fence, and keep them from getting mixed together. Dates are hard +to remember because they consist of figures; figures are monotonously +unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they form no +pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to help. Pictures are the +thing. Pictures can make dates stick. They can make nearly anything +stick--particularly IF YOU MAKE THE PICTURES YOURSELF. Indeed, that is +the great point--make the pictures YOURSELF. I know about this from +experience. Thirty years ago I was delivering a memorized lecture every +night, and every night I had to help myself with a page of notes to keep +from getting myself mixed. The notes consisted of beginnings of +sentences, and were eleven in number, and they ran something like this: + +"IN THAT REGION THE WEATHER--" + +"AT THAT TIME IT WAS A CUSTOM--" + +"BUT IN CALIFORNIA ONE NEVER HEARD--" + +Eleven of them. They initialed the brief divisions of the lecture and +protected me against skipping. But they all looked about alike on the +page; they formed no picture; I had them by heart, but I could never with +certainty remember the order of their succession; therefore I always had +to keep those notes by me and look at them every little while. Once I +mislaid them; you will not be able to imagine the terrors of that +evening. I now saw that I must invent some other protection. So I got +ten of the initial letters by heart in their proper order--I, A, B, and +so on--and I went on the platform the next night with these marked in ink +on my ten finger-nails. But it didn't answer. I kept track of the +figures for a while; then I lost it, and after that I was never quite +sure which finger I had used last. I couldn't lick off a letter after +using it, for while that would have made success certain it also would +have provoked too much curiosity. There was curiosity enough without +that. To the audience I seemed more interested in my fingernails than I +was in my subject; one or two persons asked me afterward what was the +matter with my hands. + +It was now that the idea of pictures occurred to me; then my troubles +passed away. In two minutes I made six pictures with a pen, and they did +the work of the eleven catch-sentences, and did it perfectly. I threw +the pictures away as soon as they were made, for I was sure I could shut +my eyes and see them any time. That was a quarter of a century ago; the +lecture vanished out of my head more than twenty years ago, but I would +rewrite it from the pictures--for they remain. Here are three of them: +(Fig. 1). + +The first one is a haystack--below it a rattlesnake--and it told me where +to begin to talk ranch-life in Carson Valley. The second one told me +where to begin the talk about a strange and violent wind that used to +burst upon Carson City from the Sierra Nevadas every afternoon at two +o'clock and try to blow the town away. The third picture, as you easily +perceive, is lightning; its duty was to remind me when it was time to +begin to talk about San Francisco weather, where there IS no +lightning--nor thunder, either--and it never failed me. + +I will give you a valuable hint. When a man is making a speech and you +are to follow him don't jot down notes to speak from, jot down PICTURES. +It is awkward and embarrassing to have to keep referring to notes; and +besides it breaks up your speech and makes it ragged and non-coherent; +but you can tear up your pictures as soon as you have made them--they +will stay fresh and strong in your memory in the order and sequence in +which you scratched them down. And many will admire to see what a good +memory you are furnished with, when perhaps your memory is not any better +than mine. + +Sixteen years ago when my children were little creatures the governess +was trying to hammer some primer histories into their heads. Part of +this fun--if you like to call it that--consisted in the memorizing of the +accession dates of the thirty-seven personages who had ruled England from +the Conqueror down. These little people found it a bitter, hard +contract. It was all dates, and all looked alike, and they wouldn't +stick. Day after day of the summer vacation dribbled by, and still the +kings held the fort; the children couldn't conquer any six of them. + +With my lecture experience in mind I was aware that I could invent some +way out of the trouble with pictures, but I hoped a way could be found +which would let them romp in the open air while they learned the kings. +I found it, and they mastered all the monarchs in a day or two. + +The idea was to make them SEE the reigns with their eyes; that would be a +large help. We were at the farm then. From the house-porch the grounds +sloped gradually down to the lower fence and rose on the right to the +high ground where my small work-den stood. A carriage-road wound through +the grounds and up the hill. I staked it out with the English monarchs, +beginning with the Conqueror, and you could stand on the porch and +clearly see every reign and its length, from the Conquest down to +Victoria, then in the forty-sixth year of her reign--EIGHT HUNDRED AND +SEVENTEEN YEARS OF English history under your eye at once! + +English history was an unusually live topic in America just then. The +world had suddenly realized that while it was not noticing the Queen had +passed Henry VIII., passed Henry VI. and Elizabeth, and gaining in length +every day. Her reign had entered the list of the long ones; everybody +was interested now--it was watching a race. Would she pass the long +Edward? There was a possibility of it. Would she pass the long Henry? +Doubtful, most people said. The long George? Impossible! Everybody said +it. But we have lived to see her leave him two years behind. + +I measured off 817 feet of the roadway, a foot representing a year, and +at the beginning and end of each reign I drove a three-foot white-pine +stake in the turf by the roadside and wrote the name and dates on it. +Abreast the middle of the porch-front stood a great granite flower-vase +overflowing with a cataract of bright-yellow flowers--I can't think of +their name. The vase of William the Conqueror. We put his name on it +and his accession date, 1066. We started from that and measured off +twenty-one feet of the road, and drove William Rufus's state; then +thirteen feet and drove the first Henry's stake; then thirty-five feet +and drove Stephen's; then nineteen feet, which brought us just past the +summer-house on the left; then we staked out thirty-five, ten, and +seventeen for the second Henry and Richard and John; turned the curve and +entered upon just what was needed for Henry III.--a level, straight +stretch of fifty-six feet of road without a crinkle in it. And it lay +exactly in front of the house, in the middle of the grounds. There +couldn't have been a better place for that long reign; you could stand on +the porch and see those two wide-apart stakes almost with your eyes shut. +(Fig. 2.) + +That isn't the shape of the road--I have bunched it up like that to save +room. The road had some great curves in it, but their gradual sweep was +such that they were no mar to history. No, in our road one could tell at +a glance who was who by the size of the vacancy between stakes--with +LOCALITY to help, of course. + +Although I am away off here in a Swedish village [1] and those stakes did +not stand till the snow came, I can see them today as plainly as ever; +and whenever I think of an English monarch his stakes rise before me of +their own accord and I notice the large or small space which he takes up +on our road. Are your kings spaced off in your mind? When you think of +Richard III. and of James II. do the durations of their reigns seem about +alike to you? It isn't so to me; I always notice that there's a foot's +difference. When you think of Henry III. do you see a great long stretch +of straight road? I do; and just at the end where it joins on to Edward +I. I always see a small pear-bush with its green fruit hanging down. +When I think of the Commonwealth I see a shady little group of these +small saplings which we called the oak parlor; when I think of George +III. I see him stretching up the hill, part of him occupied by a flight +of stone steps; and I can locate Stephen to an inch when he comes into my +mind, for he just filled the stretch which went by the summer-house. +Victoria's reign reached almost to my study door on the first little +summit; there's sixteen feet to be added now; I believe that that would +carry it to a big pine-tree that was shattered by some lightning one +summer when it was trying to hit me. + +We got a good deal of fun out of the history road; and exercise, too. We +trotted the course from the conqueror to the study, the children calling +out the names, dates, and length of reigns as we passed the stakes, going +a good gait along the long reigns, but slowing down when we came upon +people like Mary and Edward VI., and the short Stuart and Plantagenet, to +give time to get in the statistics. I offered prizes, too--apples. I +threw one as far as I could send it, and the child that first shouted the +reign it fell in got the apple. + +The children were encouraged to stop locating things as being "over by +the arbor," or "in the oak parlor," or "up at the stone steps," and say +instead that the things were in Stephen, or in the Commonwealth, or in +George III. They got the habit without trouble. To have the long road +mapped out with such exactness was a great boon for me, for I had the +habit of leaving books and other articles lying around everywhere, and +had not previously been able to definitely name the place, and so had +often been obliged to go to fetch them myself, to save time and failure; +but now I could name the reign I left them in, and send the children. + +Next I thought I would measure off the French reigns, and peg them +alongside the English ones, so that we could always have contemporaneous +French history under our eyes as we went our English rounds. We pegged +them down to the Hundred Years' War, then threw the idea aside, I do not +now remember why. After that we made the English pegs fence in European +and American history as well as English, and that answered very well. +English and alien poets, statesmen, artists, heroes, battles, plagues, +cataclysms, revolutions--we shoveled them all into the English fences +according to their dates. Do you understand? We gave Washington's birth +to George II.'s pegs and his death to George III.'s; George II. got the +Lisbon earthquake and George III. the Declaration of Independence. +Goethe, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Savonarola, Joan of Arc, the French +Revolution, the Edict of Nantes, Clive, Wellington, Waterloo, Plassey, +Patay, Cowpens, Saratoga, the Battle of the Boyne, the invention of the +logarithms, the microscope, the steam-engine, the telegraph--anything +and everything all over the world--we dumped it all in among the English +pegs according to it date and regardless of its nationality. + +If the road-pegging scheme had not succeeded I should have lodged the +kings in the children's heads by means of pictures--that is, I should +have tried. It might have failed, for the pictures could only be +effective WHEN MADE BY THE PUPIL; not the master, for it is the work put +upon the drawing that makes the drawing stay in the memory, and my +children were too little to make drawings at that time. And, besides, +they had no talent for art, which is strange, for in other ways they are +like me. + +But I will develop the picture plan now, hoping that you will be able to +use it. It will come good for indoors when the weather is bad and one +cannot go outside and peg a road. Let us imagine that the kings are a +procession, and that they have come out of the Ark and down Ararat for +exercise and are now starting back again up the zigzag road. This will +bring several of them into view at once, and each zigzag will represent +the length of a king's reign. + +And so on. You will have plenty of space, for by my project you will use +the parlor wall. You do not mark on the wall; that would cause trouble. +You only attach bits of paper to it with pins or thumb-tacks. These will +leave no mark. + +Take your pen now, and twenty-one pieces of white paper, each two inches +square, and we will do the twenty-one years of the Conqueror's reign. On +each square draw a picture of a whale and write the dates and term of +service. We choose the whale for several reasons: its name and William's +begin with the same letter; it is the biggest fish that swims, and +William is the most conspicuous figure in English history in the way of a +landmark; finally, a whale is about the easiest thing to draw. By the +time you have drawn twenty-one wales and written "William +I.--1066-1087--twenty-one years" twenty-one times, those details will be +your property; you cannot dislodge them from your memory with anything +but dynamite. I will make a sample for you to copy: (Fig. 3). + +I have got his chin up too high, but that is no matter; he is looking for +Harold. It may be that a whale hasn't that fin up there on his back, but +I do not remember; and so, since there is a doubt, it is best to err on +the safe side. He looks better, anyway, than he would without it. + +Be very careful and ATTENTIVE while you are drawing your first whale from +my sample and writing the word and figures under it, so that you will not +need to copy the sample any more. Compare your copy with the sample; +examine closely; if you find you have got everything right and can shut +your eyes and see the picture and call the words and figures, then turn +the sample and copy upside down and make the next copy from memory; and +also the next and next, and so on, always drawing and writing from memory +until you have finished the whole twenty-one. This will take you twenty +minutes, or thirty, and by that time you will find that you can make a +whale in less time than an unpracticed person can make a sardine; also, +up to the time you die you will always be able to furnish William's dates +to any ignorant person that inquires after them. + +You will now take thirteen pieces of BLUE paper, each two inches square, +and do William II. (Fig. 4.) + +Make him spout his water forward instead of backward; also make him +small, and stick a harpoon in him and give him that sick look in the eye. +Otherwise you might seem to be continuing the other William, and that +would be confusing and a damage. It is quite right to make him small; he +was only about a No. 11 whale, or along there somewhere; there wasn't +room in him for his father's great spirit. The barb of that harpoon +ought not to show like that, because it is down inside the whale and +ought to be out of sight, but it cannot be helped; if the barb were +removed people would think some one had stuck a whip-stock into the +whale. It is best to leave the barb the way it is, then every one will +know it is a harpoon and attending to business. Remember--draw from the +copy only once; make your other twelve and the inscription from memory. + +Now the truth is that whenever you have copied a picture and its +inscription once from my sample and two or three times from memory the +details will stay with you and be hard to forget. After that, if you +like, you may make merely the whale's HEAD and WATER-SPOUT for the +Conqueror till you end his reign, each time SAYING the inscription in +place of writing it; and in the case of William II. make the HARPOON +alone, and say over the inscription each time you do it. You see, it +will take nearly twice as long to do the first set as it will to do the +second, and that will give you a marked sense of the difference in length +of the two reigns. + +Next do Henry I. on thirty-five squares of RED paper. (Fig. 5.) + +That is a hen, and suggests Henry by furnishing the first syllable. When +you have repeated the hen and the inscription until you are perfectly +sure of them, draw merely the hen's head the rest of the thirty-five +times, saying over the inscription each time. Thus: (Fig. 6). + +You begin to understand how how this procession is going to look when it +is on the wall. First there will be the Conqueror's twenty-one whales +and water-spouts, the twenty-one white squares joined to one another and +making a white stripe three and one-half feet long; the thirteen blue +squares of William II. will be joined to that--a blue stripe two feet, +two inches long, followed by Henry's red stripe five feet, ten inches +long, and so on. The colored divisions will smartly show to the eye the +difference in the length of the reigns and impress the proportions on the +memory and the understanding. (Fig. 7.) + +Stephen of Blois comes next. He requires nineteen two-inch squares of +YELLOW paper. (Fig. 8.) + +That is a steer. The sound suggests the beginning of Stephen's name. I +choose it for that reason. I can make a better steer than that when I am +not excited. But this one will do. It is a good-enough steer for +history. The tail is defective, but it only wants straightening out. + +Next comes Henry II. Give him thirty-five squares of RED paper. These +hens must face west, like the former ones. (Fig. 9.) + +This hen differs from the other one. He is on his way to inquire what +has been happening in Canterbury. + +How we arrive at Richard I., called Richard of the Lion-heart because he +was a brave fighter and was never so contented as when he was leading +crusades in Palestine and neglecting his affairs at home. Give him ten +squares of WHITE paper. (Fig. 10). + +That is a lion. His office is to remind you of the lion-hearted Richard. +There is something the matter with his legs, but I do not quite know what +it is, they do not seem right. I think the hind ones are the most +unsatisfactory; the front ones are well enough, though it would be better +if they were rights and lefts. + +Next comes King John, and he was a poor circumstance. He was called +Lackland. He gave his realm to the Pope. Let him have seventeen squares +of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 11.) + +That creature is a jamboree. It looks like a trademark, but that is only +an accident and not intentional. It is prehistoric and extinct. It used +to roam the earth in the Old Silurian times, and lay eggs and catch fish +and climb trees and live on fossils; for it was of a mixed breed, which +was the fashion then. It was very fierce, and the Old Silurians were +afraid of it, but this is a tame one. Physically it has no +representative now, but its mind has been transmitted. First I drew it +sitting down, but have turned it the other way now because I think it +looks more attractive and spirited when one end of it is galloping. I +love to think that in this attitude it gives us a pleasant idea of John +coming all in a happy excitement to see what the barons have been +arranging for him at Runnymede, while the other one gives us an idea of +him sitting down to wring his hands and grieve over it. + +We now come to Henry III.; RED squares again, of course--fifty-six of +them. We must make all the Henrys the same color; it will make their +long reigns show up handsomely on the wall. Among all the eight Henrys +there were but two short ones. A lucky name, as far as longevity goes. +The reigns of six of the Henrys cover 227 years. It might have been well +to name all the royal princes Henry, but this was overlooked until it was +too late. (Fig. 12.) + +This is the best one yet. He is on his way (1265) to have a look at the +first House of Commons in English history. It was a monumental event, +the situation in the House, and was the second great liberty landmark +which the century had set up. I have made Henry looking glad, but this +was not intentional. + +Edward I. comes next; LIGHT-BROWN paper, thirty-five squares. (Fig. 13.) + +That is an editor. He is trying to think of a word. He props his feet +on a chair, which is the editor's way; then he can think better. I do +not care much for this one; his ears are not alike; still, editor +suggests the sound of Edward, and he will do. I could make him better if +I had a model, but I made this one from memory. But is no particular +matter; they all look alike, anyway. They are conceited and troublesome, +and don't pay enough. Edward was the first really English king that had +yet occupied the throne. The editor in the picture probably looks just +as Edward looked when it was first borne in upon him that this was so. +His whole attitude expressed gratification and pride mixed with +stupefaction and astonishment. + +Edward II. now; twenty BLUE squares. (Fig. 14.) + +Another editor. That thing behind his ear is his pencil. Whenever he +finds a bright thing in your manuscript he strikes it out with that. +That does him good, and makes him smile and show his teeth, the way he is +doing in the picture. This one has just been striking out a smart thing, +and now he is sitting there with his thumbs in his vest-holes, gloating. +They are full of envy and malice, editors are. This picture will serve +to remind you that Edward II. was the first English king who was DEPOSED. +Upon demand, he signed his deposition himself. He had found kingship a +most aggravating and disagreeable occupation, and you can see by the look +of him that he is glad he resigned. He has put his blue pencil up for +good now. He had struck out many a good thing with it in his time. + +Edward III. next; fifty RED squares. (Fig. 15.) + +This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his +tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for +breakfast. This one's arms are put on wrong. I did not notice it at +first, but I see it now. Somehow he has got his right arm on his left +shoulder, and his left arm on his right shoulder, and this shows us the +back of his hands in both instances. It makes him left-handed all +around, which is a thing which has never happened before, except perhaps +in a museum. That is the way with art, when it is not acquired but born +to you: you start in to make some simple little thing, not suspecting +that your genius is beginning to work and swell and strain in secret, and +all of a sudden there is a convulsion and you fetch out something +astonishing. This is called inspiration. It is an accident; you never +know when it is coming. I might have tried as much as a year to think of +such a strange thing as an all-around left-handed man and I could not +have done it, for the more you try to think of an unthinkable thing the +more it eludes you; but it can't elude inspiration; you have only to bait +with inspiration and you will get it every time. Look at Botticelli's +"Spring." Those snaky women were unthinkable, but inspiration secured +them for us, thanks to goodness. It is too late to reorganize this +editor-critic now; we will leave him as he is. He will serve to remind +us. + +Richard II. next; twenty-two WHITE squares. (Fig. 16.) + +We use the lion again because this is another Richard. Like Edward II., +he was DEPOSED. He is taking a last sad look at his crown before they +take it away. There was not room enough and I have made it too small; +but it never fitted him, anyway. + +Now we turn the corner of the century with a new line of monarchs--the +Lancastrian kings. + +Henry IV.; fourteen squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 17.) + +This hen has laid the egg of a new dynasty and realizes the magnitude of +the event. She is giving notice in the usual way. You notice I am +improving in the construction of hens. At first I made them too much +like other animals, but this one is orthodox. I mention this to +encourage you. You will find that the more you practice the more +accurate you will become. I could always draw animals, but before I was +educated I could not tell what kind they were when I got them done, but +now I can. Keep up your courage; it will be the same with you, although +you may not think it. This Henry died the year after Joan of Arc was +born. + +Henry V.; nine BLUE squares. (Fig. 18) + +There you see him lost in meditation over the monument which records the +amazing figures of the battle of Agincourt. French history says 20,000 +Englishmen routed 80,000 Frenchmen there; and English historians say that +the French loss, in killed and wounded, was 60,000. + +Henry VI.; thirty-nine RED squares. (Fig. 19) + +This is poor Henry VI., who reigned long and scored many misfortunes and +humiliations. Also two great disasters: he lost France to Joan of Arc +and he lost the throne and ended the dynasty which Henry IV. had started +in business with such good prospects. In the picture we see him sad and +weary and downcast, with the scepter falling from his nerveless grasp. +It is a pathetic quenching of a sun which had risen in such splendor. + +Edward IV.; twenty-two LIGHT-BROWN squares. (Fig. 20.) + +That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his legs +crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes the ladies wear, so +that he can describe them for his paper and make them out finer than they +are and get bribes for it and become wealthy. That flower which he is +wearing in his buttonhole is a rose--a white rose, a York rose--and will +serve to remind us of the War of the Roses, and that the white one was +the winning color when Edward got the throne and dispossessed the +Lancastrian dynasty. + +Edward V.; one-third of a BLACK square. (Fig. 21.) + +His uncle Richard had him murdered in the tower. When you get the reigns +displayed upon the wall this one will be conspicuous and easily +remembered. It is the shortest one in English history except Lady Jane +Grey's, which was only nine days. She is never officially recognized as +a monarch of England, but if you or I should ever occupy a throne we +should like to have proper notice taken of it; and it would be only fair +and right, too, particularly if we gained nothing by it and lost our +lives besides. + +Richard III.; two WHITE squares. (Fig. 22.) + +That is not a very good lion, but Richard was not a very good king. You +would think that this lion has two heads, but that is not so; one is only +a shadow. There would be shadows for the rest of him, but there was not +light enough to go round, it being a dull day, with only fleeting +sun-glimpses now and then. Richard had a humped back and a hard heart, +and fell at the battle of Bosworth. I do not know the name of that +flower in the pot, but we will use it as Richard's trade-mark, for it is +said that it grows in only one place in the world--Bosworth Field--and +tradition says it never grew there until Richard's royal blood warmed its +hidden seed to life and made it grow. + +Henry VII.; twenty-four BLUE squares. (Fig. 23.) + +Henry VII. had no liking for wars and turbulence; he preferred peace and +quiet and the general prosperity which such conditions create. He liked +to sit on that kind of eggs on his own private account as well as the +nation's, and hatch them out and count up their result. When he died he +left his heir 2,000,000 pounds, which was a most unusual fortune for a +king to possess in those days. Columbus's great achievement gave him the +discovery-fever, and he sent Sebastian Cabot to the New World to search +out some foreign territory for England. That is Cabot's ship up there in +the corner. This was the first time that England went far abroad to +enlarge her estate--but not the last. + +Henry VIII.; thirty-eight RED squares. (Fig. 24.) + +That is Henry VIII. suppressing a monastery in his arrogant fashion. + +Edward VI.; six squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 25.) + +He is the last Edward to date. It is indicated by that thing over his +head, which is a LAST--shoemaker's last. + +Mary; five squares of BLACK paper. (Fig. 26.) + +The picture represents a burning martyr. He is in back of the smoke. +The first three letters of Mary's name and the first three of the word +martyr are the same. Martyrdom was going out in her day and martyrs were +becoming scarcer, but she made several. For this reason she is sometimes +called Bloody Mary. + +This brings us to the reign of Elizabeth, after passing through a period +of nearly five hundred years of England's history--492 to be exact. I +think you may now be trusted to go the rest of the way without further +lessons in art or inspirations in the matter of ideas. You have the +scheme now, and something in the ruler's name or career will suggest the +pictorial symbol. The effort of inventing such things will not only help +your memory, but will develop originality in art. See what it has done +for me. If you do not find the parlor wall big enough for all of +England's history, continue it into the dining-room and into other rooms. +This will make the walls interesting and instructive and really worth +something instead of being just flat things to hold the house together. + +----- 1. Summer of 1899. + + + + + +THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION + +Note.--The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva, September +10, 1898, occurred during Mark Twain's Austrian residence. The news came +to him at Kaltenleutgeben, a summer resort a little way out of Vienna. +To his friend, the Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, he wrote: + +"That good and unoffending lady, the Empress, is killed by a madman, and +I am living in the midst of world-history again. The Queen's Jubilee +last year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and now this +murder, which will still be talked of and described and painted a +thousand a thousand years from now. To have a personal friend of the +wearer of two crowns burst in at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening +and say, in a voice broken with tears, 'My God! the Empress is murdered,' +and fly toward her home before we can utter a question--why, it brings +the giant event home to you, makes you a part of it and personally +interested; it is as if your neighbor, Antony, should come flying and +say, 'Caesar is butchered--the head of the world is fallen!' + +"Of course there is no talk but of this. The mourning is universal and +genuine, the consternation is stupefying. The Austrian Empire is being +draped with black. Vienna will be a spectacle to see by next Saturday, +when the funeral cort`ege marches." + +He was strongly moved by the tragedy, impelled to write concerning it. +He prepared the article which follows, but did not offer it for +publication, perhaps feeling that his own close association with the +court circles at the moment prohibited this personal utterance. There +appears no such reason for withholding its publication now. + +A. B. P. + +The more one thinks of the assassination, the more imposing and +tremendous the event becomes. The destruction of a city is a large +event, but it is one which repeats itself several times in a thousand +years; the destruction of a third part of a nation by plague and famine +is a large event, but it has happened several times in history; the +murder of a king is a large event, but it has been frequent. + +The murder of an empress is the largest of all events. One must go back +about two thousand years to find an instance to put with this one. The +oldest family of unchallenged descent in Christendom lives in Rome and +traces its line back seventeen hundred years, but no member of it has +been present in the earth when an empress was murdered, until now. Many +a time during these seventeen centuries members of that family have been +startled with the news of extraordinary events--the destruction of +cities, the fall of thrones, the murder of kings, the wreck of dynasties, +the extinction of religions, the birth of new systems of government; and +their descendants have been by to hear of it and talk about it when all +these things were repeated once, twice, or a dozen times--but to even +that family has come news at last which is not staled by use, has no +duplicates in the long reach of its memory. + +It is an event which confers a curious distinction upon every individual +now living in the world: he has stood alive and breathing in the presence +of an event such as has not fallen within the experience of any traceable +or untraceable ancestor of his for twenty centuries, and it is not likely +to fall within the experience of any descendant of his for twenty more. + +Time has made some great changes since the Roman days. The murder of an +empress then--even the assassination of Caesar himself--could not +electrify the world as this murder has electrified it. For one reason, +there was then not much of a world to electrify; it was a small world, as +to known bulk, and it had rather a thin population, besides; and for +another reason, the news traveled so slowly that its tremendous initial +thrill wasted away, week by week and month by month, on the journey, and +by the time it reached the remoter regions there was but little of it +left. It was no longer a fresh event, it was a thing of the far past; it +was not properly news, it was history. But the world is enormous now, +and prodigiously populated--that is one change; and another is the +lightning swiftness of the flight of tidings, good and bad. "The Empress +is murdered!" When those amazing words struck upon my ear in this +Austrian village last Saturday, three hours after the disaster, I knew +that it was already old news in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, San +Francisco, Japan, China, Melbourne, Cape Town, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, +and that the entire globe with a single voice, was cursing the +perpetrator of it. Since the telegraph first began to stretch itself +wider and wider about the earth, larger and increasingly larger areas of +the world have, as time went on, received simultaneously the shock of a +great calamity; but this is the first time in history that the entire +surface of the globe has been swept in a single instant with the thrill +of so gigantic an event. + +And who is the miracle-worker who has furnished to the world this +spectacle? All the ironies are compacted in the answer. He is at the +bottom of the human ladder, as the accepted estimates of degree and value +go: a soiled and patched young loafer, without gifts, without talents, +without education, without morals, without character, without any born +charm or any acquired one that wins or beguiles or attracts; without a +single grace of mind or heart or hand that any tramp or prostitute could +envy him; an unfaithful private in the ranks, an incompetent +stone-cutter, an inefficient lackey; in a word, a mangy, offensive, +empty, unwashed, vulgar, gross, mephitic, timid, sneaking, human polecat. +And it was within the privileges and powers of this sarcasm upon the +human race to reach up--up--up--and strike from its far summit in the +social skies the world's accepted ideal of Glory and Might and Splendor +and Sacredness! It realizes to us what sorry shows and shadows we are. +Without our clothes and our pedestals we are poor things and much of a +size; our dignities are not real, our pomps are shams. At our best and +stateliest we are not suns, as we pretended, and teach, and believe, but +only candles; and any bummer can blow us out. + +And now we get realized to us once more another thing which we often +forget--or try to: that no man has a wholly undiseased mind; that in one +way or another all men are mad. Many are mad for money. When this +madness is in a mild form it is harmless and the man passes for sane; but +when it develops powerfully and takes possession of the man, it can make +him cheat, rob, and kill; and when he has got his fortune and lost it +again it can land him in the asylum or the suicide's coffin. Love is a +madness; if thwarted it develops fast; it can grow to a frenzy of despair +and make an otherwise sane and highly gifted prince, like Rudolph, throw +away the crown of an empire and snuff out his own life. All the whole +list of desires, predilections, aversions, ambitions, passions, cares, +griefs, regrets, remorses, are incipient madness, and ready to grow, +spread, and consume, when the occasion comes. There are no healthy +minds, and nothing saves any man but accident--the accident of not having +his malady put to the supreme test. + +One of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to be noticed, the +pleasure derived from being noticed. Perhaps it is not merely common, +but universal. In its mildest form it doubtless is universal. Every +child is pleased at being noticed; many intolerable children put in their +whole time in distressing and idiotic effort to attract the attention of +visitors; boys are always "showing off"; apparently all men and women are +glad and grateful when they find that they have done a thing which has +lifted them for a moment out of obscurity and caused wondering talk. +This common madness can develop, by nurture, into a hunger for notoriety +in one, for fame in another. It is this madness for being noticed and +talked about which has invented kingship and the thousand other +dignities, and tricked them out with pretty and showy fineries; it has +made kings pick one another's pockets, scramble for one another's crowns +and estates, slaughter one another's subjects; it has raised up +prize-fighters, and poets, and villages mayors, and little and big +politicians, and big and little charity-founders, and bicycle champions, +and banditti chiefs, and frontier desperadoes, and Napoleons. Anything to +get notoriety; anything to set the village, or the township, or the city, +or the State, or the nation, or the planet shouting, "Look--there he +goes--that is the man!" And in five minutes' time, at no cost of brain, +or labor, or genius this mangy Italian tramp has beaten them all, +transcended them all, outstripped them all, for in time their names will +perish; but by the friendly help of the insane newspapers and courts and +kings and historians, his is safe and live and thunder in the world all +down the ages as long as human speech shall endure! Oh, if it were not +so tragic how ludicrous it would be! + +She was so blameless, the Empress; and so beautiful, in mind and heart, +in person and spirit; and whether with a crown upon her head or without +it and nameless, a grace to the human race, and almost a justification of +its creation; WOULD be, indeed, but that the animal that struck her down +re-establishes the doubt. + +In her character was every quality that in woman invites and engages +respect, esteem, affection, and homage. Her tastes, her instincts, and +her aspirations were all high and fine and all her life her heart and +brain were busy with activities of a noble sort. She had had bitter +griefs, but they did not sour her spirit, and she had had the highest +honors in the world's gift, but she went her simple way unspoiled. She +knew all ranks, and won them all, and made them her friends. An English +fisherman's wife said, "When a body was in trouble she didn't send her +help, she brought it herself." Crowns have adorned others, but she +adorned her crowns. + +It was a swift celebrity the assassin achieved. And it is marked by some +curious contrasts. At noon last, Saturday there was no one in the world +who would have considered acquaintanceship with him a thing worth +claiming or mentioning; no one would have been vain of such an +acquaintanceship; the humblest honest boot-black would not have valued +the fact that he had met him or seen him at some time or other; he was +sunk in abysmal obscurity, he was away beneath the notice of the bottom +grades of officialdom. Three hours later he was the one subject of +conversation in the world, the gilded generals and admirals and governors +were discussing him, all the kings and queens and emperors had put aside +their other interests to talk about him. And wherever there was a man, at +the summit of the world or the bottom of it, who by chance had at some +time or other come across that creature, he remembered it with a secret +satisfaction, and MENTIONED it--for it was a distinction, now! It brings +human dignity pretty low, and for a moment the thing is not quite +realizable--but it is perfectly true. If there is a king who can +remember, now, that he once saw that creature in a time past, he has let +that fact out, in a more or less studiedly casual and indifferent way, +some dozens of times during the past week. For a king is merely human; +the inside of him is exactly like the inside of any other person; and it +is human to find satisfaction in being in a kind of personal way +connected with amazing events. We are all privately vain of such a thing; +we are all alike; a king is a king by accident; the reason the rest of us +are not kings is merely due to another accident; we are all made out of +the same clay, and it is a sufficient poor quality. + +Below the kings, these remarks are in the air these days; I know it well +as if I were hearing them: + +THE COMMANDER: "He was in my army." + +THE GENERAL: "He was in my corps." + +THE COLONEL: "He was in my regiment. A brute. I remember him well." + +THE CAPTAIN: "He was in my company. A troublesome scoundrel. I remember +him well." + +THE SERGEANT: "Did I know him? As well as I know you. Why, every morning +I used to--" etc., etc.; a glad, long story, told to devouring ears. + +THE LANDLADY: "Many's the time he boarded with me. I can show you his +very room, and the very bed he slept in. And the charcoal mark there on +the wall--he made that. My little Johnny saw him do it with his own +eyes. Didn't you, Johnny?" + +It is easy to see, by the papers, that the magistrate and the constables +and the jailer treasure up the assassin's daily remarks and doings as +precious things, and as wallowing this week in seas of blissful +distinction. The interviewer, too; he tried to let on that he is not +vain of his privilege of contact with this man whom few others are +allowed to gaze upon, but he is human, like the rest, and can no more +keep his vanity corked in than could you or I. + +Some think that this murder is a frenzied revolt against the criminal +militarism which is impoverishing Europe and driving the starving poor +mad. That has many crimes to answer for, but not this one, I think. One +may not attribute to this man a generous indignation against the wrongs +done the poor; one may not dignify him with a generous impulse of any +kind. When he saw his photograph and said, "I shall be celebrated," he +laid bare the impulse that prompted him. It was a mere hunger for +notoriety. There is another confessed case of the kind which is as old as +history--the burning of the temple of Ephesus. + +Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must +concede high rank to the many which have described it as a "peculiarly +brutal crime" and then added that it was "ordained from above." I think +this verdict will not be popular "above." If the deed was ordained from +above, there is no rational way of making this prisoner even partially +responsible for it, and the Genevan court cannot condemn him without +manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic, and by disregarding its +laws even the most pious and showy theologian may be beguiled into +preferring charges which should not be ventured upon except in the +shelter of plenty of lightning-rods. + +I witnessed the funeral procession, in company with friends, from the +windows of the Krantz, Vienna's sumptuous new hotel. We came into town +in the middle of the forenoon, and I went on foot from the station. +Black flags hung down from all the houses; the aspects were Sunday-like; +the crowds on the sidewalks were quiet and moved slowly; very few people +were smoking; many ladies wore deep mourning, gentlemen were in black as +a rule; carriages were speeding in all directions, with footmen and +coachmen in black clothes and wearing black cocked hats; the shops were +closed; in many windows were pictures of the Empress: as a beautiful +young bride of seventeen; as a serene and majestic lady with added years; +and finally in deep black and without ornaments--the costume she always +wore after the tragic death of her son nine years ago, for her heart +broke then, and life lost almost all its value for her. The people stood +grouped before these pictures, and now and then one saw women and girls +turn away wiping the tears from their eyes. + +In front of the Krantz is an open square; over the way was the church +where the funeral services would be held. It is small and old and +severely plain, plastered outside and whitewashed or painted, and with no +ornament but a statue of a monk in a niche over the door, and above that +a small black flag. But in its crypt lie several of the great dead of +the House of Habsburg, among them Maria Theresa and Napoleon's son, the +Duke of Reichstadt. Hereabouts was a Roman camp, once, and in it the +Emperor Marcus Aurelius died a thousand years before the first Habsburg +ruled in Vienna, which was six hundred years ago and more. + +The little church is packed in among great modern stores and houses, and +the windows of them were full of people. Behind the vast plate-glass +windows of the upper floors of the house on the corner one glimpsed +terraced masses of fine-clothed men and women, dim and shimmery, like +people under water. Under us the square was noiseless, but it was full +of citizens; officials in fine uniforms were flitting about on errands, +and in a doorstep sat a figure in the uttermost raggedness of poverty, +the feet bare, the head bent humbly down; a youth of eighteen or twenty, +he was, and through the field-glass one could see that he was tearing +apart and munching riffraff that he had gathered somewhere. Blazing +uniforms flashed by him, making a sparkling contrast with his drooping +ruin of moldy rags, but he took not notice; he was not there to grieve +for a nation's disaster; he had his own cares, and deeper. From two +directions two long files of infantry came plowing through the pack and +press in silence; there was a low, crisp order and the crowd vanished, +the square save the sidewalks was empty, the private mourner was gone. +Another order, the soldiers fell apart and enclosed the square in a +double-ranked human fence. It was all so swift, noiseless, exact--like a +beautifully ordered machine. + +It was noon, now. Two hours of stillness and waiting followed. Then +carriages began to flow past and deliver the two and three hundred court +personages and high nobilities privileged to enter the church. Then the +square filled up; not with civilians, but with army and navy officers in +showy and beautiful uniforms. They filled it compactly, leaving only a +narrow carriage path in front of the church, but there was no civilian +among them. And it was better so; dull clothes would have marred the +radiant spectacle. In the jam in front of the church, on its steps, and +on the sidewalk was a bunch of uniforms which made a blazing splotch of +color--intense red, gold, and white--which dimmed the brilliancies around +them; and opposite them on the other side of the path was a bunch of +cascaded bright-green plumes above pale-blue shoulders which made another +splotch of splendor emphatic and conspicuous in its glowing surroundings. +It was a sea of flashing color all about, but these two groups were the +high notes. The green plumes were worn by forty or fifty Austrian +generals, the group opposite them were chiefly Knights of Malta and +knights of a German order. The mass of heads in the square were covered +by gilt helmets and by military caps roofed with a mirror-like gaze, and +the movements of the wearers caused these things to catch the sun-rays, +and the effect was fine to see--the square was like a garden of richly +colored flowers with a multitude of blinding and flashing little suns +distributed over it. + +Think of it--it was by command of that Italian loafer yonder on his +imperial throne in the Geneva prison that this splendid multitude was +assembled there; and the kings and emperors that were entering the church +from a side street were there by his will. It is so strange, so +unrealizable. + +At three o'clock the carriages were still streaming by in single file. +At three-five a cardinal arrives with his attendants; later some bishops; +then a number of archdeacons--all in striking colors that add to the +show. At three-ten a procession of priests passed along, with crucifix. +Another one, presently; after an interval, two more; at three-fifty +another one--very long, with many crosses, gold-embroidered robes, and +much white lace; also great pictured banners, at intervals, receding into +the distance. + +A hum of tolling bells makes itself heard, but not sharply. At +three-fifty-eight a waiting interval. Presently a long procession of +gentlemen in evening dress comes in sight and approaches until it is near +to the square, then falls back against the wall of soldiers at the +sidewalk, and the white shirt-fronts show like snowflakes and are very +conspicuous where so much warm color is all about. + +A waiting pause. At four-twelve the head of the funeral procession comes +into view at last. First, a body of cavalry, four abreast, to widen the +path. Next, a great body of lancers, in blue, with gilt helmets. Next, +three six-horse mourning-coaches; outriders and coachmen in black, with +cocked hats and white wigs. Next, troops in splendid uniforms, red, +gold, and white, exceedingly showy. + +Now the multitude uncover. The soldiers present arms; there is a low +rumble of drums; the sumptuous great hearse approaches, drawn at a walk +by eight black horses plumed with black bunches of nodding ostrich +feathers; the coffin is borne into the church, the doors are closed. + +The multitude cover their heads, and the rest of the procession moves by; +first the Hungarian Guard in their indescribably brilliant and +picturesque and beautiful uniform, inherited from the ages of barbaric +splendor, and after them other mounted forces, a long and showy array. + +Then the shining crown in the square crumbled apart, a wrecked rainbow, +and melted away in radiant streams, and in the turn of a wrist the three +dirtiest and raggedest and cheerfulest little slum-girls in Austria were +capering about in the spacious vacancy. It was a day of contrasts. + +Twice the Empress entered Vienna in state. The first time was in 1854, +when she was a bride of seventeen, and then she rode in measureless pomp +and with blare of music through a fluttering world of gay flags and +decorations, down streets walled on both hands with a press of shouting +and welcoming subjects; and the second time was last Wednesday, when she +entered the city in her coffin and moved down the same streets in the +dead of the night under swaying black flags, between packed human walls +again; but everywhere was a deep stillness, now--a stillness emphasized, +rather than broken, by the muffled hoofbeats of the long cavalcade over +pavements cushioned with sand, and the low sobbing of gray-headed women +who had witnessed the first entry forty-four years before, when she and +they were young--and unaware! + +A character in Baron von Berger's recent fairy drama "Habsburg" tells +about the first coming of the girlish Empress-Queen, and in his history +draws a fine picture: I cannot make a close translation of it, but will +try to convey the spirit of the verses: + +I saw the stately pageant pass: +In her high place I saw the Empress-Queen: +I could not take my eyes away +From that fair vision, spirit-like and pure, +That rose serene, sublime, and figured to my sense +A noble Alp far lighted in the blue, +That in the flood of morning rends its veil of cloud +And stands a dream of glory to the gaze +Of them that in the Valley toil and plod. + + + + + +A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY + +Marion City, on the Mississippi River, in the State of Missouri--a +village; time, 1845. La Bourboule-les-Bains, France--a village; time, +the end of June, 1894. I was in the one village in that early time; I am +in the other now. These times and places are sufficiently wide apart, +yet today I have the strange sense of being thrust back into that +Missourian village and of reliving certain stirring days that I lived +there so long ago. + +Last Saturday night the life of the President of the French Republic was +taken by an Italian assassin. Last night a mob surrounded our hotel, +shouting, howling, singing the "Marseillaise," and pelting our windows +with sticks and stones; for we have Italian waiters, and the mob demanded +that they be turned out of the house instantly--to be drubbed, and then +driven out of the village. Everybody in the hotel remained up until far +into the night, and experienced the several kinds of terror which one +reads about in books which tell of nigh attacks by Italians and by French +mobs: the growing roar of the oncoming crowd; the arrival, with rain of +stones and a crash of glass; the withdrawal to rearrange plans--followed +by a silence ominous, threatening, and harder to bear than even the +active siege and the noise. The landlord and the two village policemen +stood their ground, and at last the mob was persuaded to go away and +leave our Italians in peace. Today four of the ringleaders have been +sentenced to heavy punishment of a public sort--and are become local +heroes, by consequence. + +That is the very mistake which was at first made in the Missourian +village half a century ago. The mistake was repeated and repeated--just +as France is doing in these later months. + +In our village we had our Ravochals, our Henrys, our Vaillants; and in a +humble way our Cesario--I hope I have spelled this name wrong. Fifty +years ago we passed through, in all essentials, what France has been +passing through during the past two or three years, in the matter of +periodical frights, horrors, and shudderings. + +In several details the parallels are quaintly exact. In that day, for a +man to speak out openly and proclaim himself an enemy of negro slavery +was simply to proclaim himself a madman. For he was blaspheming against +the holiest thing known to a Missourian, and could NOT be in his right +mind. For a man to proclaim himself an anarchist in France, three years +ago, was to proclaim himself a madman--he could not be in his right mind. + +Now the original first blasphemer against any institution profoundly +venerated by a community is quite sure to be in earnest; his followers +and imitators may be humbugs and self-seekers, but he himself is +sincere--his heart is in his protest. + +Robert Hardy was our first ABOLITIONIST--awful name! He was a journeyman +cooper, and worked in the big cooper-shop belonging to the great +pork-packing establishment which was Marion City's chief pride and sole +source of prosperity. He was a New-Englander, a stranger. And, being a +stranger, he was of course regarded as an inferior person--for that has +been human nature from Adam down--and of course, also, he was made to +feel unwelcome, for this is the ancient law with man and the other +animals. Hardy was thirty years old, and a bachelor; pale, given to +reverie and reading. He was reserved, and seemed to prefer the isolation +which had fallen to his lot. He was treated to many side remarks by his +fellows, but as he did not resent them it was decided that he was a +coward. + +All of a sudden he proclaimed himself an abolitionist--straight out and +publicly! He said that negro slavery was a crime, an infamy. For a +moment the town was paralyzed with astonishment; then it broke into a +fury of rage and swarmed toward the cooper-shop to lynch Hardy. But the +Methodist minister made a powerful speech to them and stayed their hands. +He proved to them that Hardy was insane and not responsible for his +words; that no man COULD be sane and utter such words. + +So Hardy was saved. Being insane, he was allowed to go on talking. He +was found to be good entertainment. Several nights running he made +abolition speeches in the open air, and all the town flocked to hear and +laugh. He implored them to believe him sane and sincere, and have pity +on the poor slaves, and take measurements for the restoration of their +stolen rights, or in no long time blood would flow--blood, blood, rivers +of blood! + +It was great fun. But all of a sudden the aspect of things changed. A +slave came flying from Palmyra, the county-seat, a few miles back, and +was about to escape in a canoe to Illinois and freedom in the dull +twilight of the approaching dawn, when the town constable seized him. +Hardy happened along and tried to rescue the negro; there was a struggle, +and the constable did not come out of it alive. Hardly crossed the river +with the negro, and then came back to give himself up. All this took +time, for the Mississippi is not a French brook, like the Seine, the +Loire, and those other rivulets, but is a real river nearly a mile wide. +The town was on hand in force by now, but the Methodist preacher and the +sheriff had already made arrangements in the interest of order; so Hardy +was surrounded by a strong guard and safely conveyed to the village +calaboose in spite of all the effort of the mob to get hold of him. The +reader will have begun to perceive that this Methodist minister was a +prompt man; a prompt man, with active hands and a good headpiece. +Williams was his name--Damon Williams; Damon Williams in public, +Damnation Williams in private, because he was so powerful on that theme +and so frequent. + +The excitement was prodigious. The constable was the first man who had +ever been killed in the town. The event was by long odds the most +imposing in the town's history. It lifted the humble village into sudden +importance; its name was in everybody's mouth for twenty miles around. +And so was the name of Robert Hardy--Robert Hardy, the stranger, the +despised. In a day he was become the person of most consequence in the +region, the only person talked about. As to those other coopers, they +found their position curiously changed--they were important people, or +unimportant, now, in proportion as to how large or how small had been +their intercourse with the new celebrity. The two or three who had +really been on a sort of familiar footing with him found themselves +objects of admiring interest with the public and of envy with their +shopmates. + +The village weekly journal had lately gone into new hands. The new man +was an enterprising fellow, and he made the most of the tragedy. He +issued an extra. Then he put up posters promising to devote his whole +paper to matters connected with the great event--there would be a full +and intensely interesting biography of the murderer, and even a portrait +of him. He was as good as his word. He carved the portrait himself, on +the back of a wooden type--and a terror it was to look at. It made a +great commotion, for this was the first time the village paper had ever +contained a picture. The village was very proud. The output of the +paper was ten times as great as it had ever been before, yet every copy +was sold. + +When the trial came on, people came from all the farms around, and from +Hannibal, and Quincy, and even from Keokuk; and the court-house could +hold only a fraction of the crowd that applied for admission. The trial +was published in the village paper, with fresh and still more trying +pictures of the accused. + +Hardy was convicted, and hanged--a mistake. People came from miles +around to see the hanging; they brought cakes and cider, also the women +and children, and made a picnic of the matter. It was the largest crowd +the village had ever seen. The rope that hanged Hardy was eagerly bought +up, in inch samples, for everybody wanted a memento of the memorable +event. + +Martyrdom gilded with notoriety has its fascinations. Within one week +afterward four young lightweights in the village proclaimed themselves +abolitionists! In life Hardy had not been able to make a convert; +everybody laughed at him; but nobody could laugh at his legacy. The four +swaggered around with their slouch-hats pulled down over their faces, and +hinted darkly at awful possibilities. The people were troubled and +afraid, and showed it. And they were stunned, too; they could not +understand it. "Abolitionist" had always been a term of shame and +horror; yet here were four young men who were not only not ashamed to +bear that name, but were grimly proud of it. Respectable young men they +were, too--of good families, and brought up in the church. Ed Smith, the +printer's apprentice, nineteen, had been the head Sunday-school boy, and +had once recited three thousand Bible verses without making a break. +Dick Savage, twenty, the baker's apprentice; Will Joyce, twenty-two, +journeyman blacksmith; and Henry Taylor, twenty-four, +tobacco-stemmer--were the other three. They were all of a sentimental +cast; they were all romance-readers; they all wrote poetry, such as it +was; they were all vain and foolish; but they had never before been +suspected of having anything bad in them. + +They withdrew from society, and grew more and more mysterious and +dreadful. They presently achieved the distinction of being denounced by +names from the pulpit--which made an immense stir! This was grandeur, +this was fame. They were envied by all the other young fellows now. +This was natural. Their company grew--grew alarmingly. They took a name. +It was a secret name, and was divulged to no outsider; publicly they were +simply the abolitionists. They had pass-words, grips, and signs; they +had secret meetings; their initiations were conducted with gloomy pomps +and ceremonies, at midnight. + +They always spoke of Hardy as "the Martyr," and every little while they +moved through the principal street in procession--at midnight, +black-robed, masked, to the measured tap of the solemn drum--on +pilgrimage to the Martyr's grave, where they went through with some +majestic fooleries and swore vengeance upon his murderers. They gave +previous notice of the pilgrimage by small posters, and warned everybody +to keep indoors and darken all houses along the route, and leave the road +empty. These warnings were obeyed, for there was a skull and crossbones +at the top of the poster. + +When this kind of thing had been going on about eight weeks, a quite +natural thing happened. A few men of character and grit woke up out of +the nightmare of fear which had been stupefying their faculties, and +began to discharge scorn and scoffings at themselves and the community +for enduring this child's-play; and at the same time they proposed to end +it straightway. Everybody felt an uplift; life was breathed into their +dead spirits; their courage rose and they began to feel like men again. +This was on a Saturday. All day the new feeling grew and strengthened; +it grew with a rush; it brought inspiration and cheer with it. Midnight +saw a united community, full of zeal and pluck, and with a clearly +defined and welcome piece of work in front of it. The best organizer and +strongest and bitterest talker on that great Saturday was the +Presbyterian clergyman who had denounced the original four from his +pulpit--Rev. Hiram Fletcher--and he promised to use his pulpit in the +public interest again now. On the morrow he had revelations to make, he +said--secrets of the dreadful society. + +But the revelations were never made. At half past two in the morning the +dead silence of the village was broken by a crashing explosion, and the +town patrol saw the preacher's house spring in a wreck of whirling +fragments into the sky. The preacher was killed, together with a negro +woman, his only slave and servant. + +The town was paralyzed again, and with reason. To struggle against a +visible enemy is a thing worth while, and there is a plenty of men who +stand always ready to undertake it; but to struggle against an invisible +one--an invisible one who sneaks in and does his awful work in the dark +and leaves no trace--that is another matter. That is a thing to make the +bravest tremble and hold back. + +The cowed populace were afraid to go to the funeral. The man who was to +have had a packed church to hear him expose and denounce the common enemy +had but a handful to see him buried. The coroner's jury had brought in a +verdict of "death by the visitation of God," for no witness came forward; +if any existed they prudently kept out of the way. Nobody seemed sorry. +Nobody wanted to see the terrible secret society provoked into the +commission of further outrages. Everybody wanted the tragedy hushed up, +ignored, forgotten, if possible. + +And so there was a bitter surprise and an unwelcome one when Will Joyce, +the blacksmith's journeyman, came out and proclaimed himself the +assassin! Plainly he was not minded to be robbed of his glory. He made +his proclamation, and stuck to it. Stuck to it, and insisted upon a +trial. Here was an ominous thing; here was a new and peculiarly +formidable terror, for a motive was revealed here which society could not +hope to deal with successfully--VANITY, thirst for notoriety. If men +were going to kill for notoriety's sake, and to win the glory of +newspaper renown, a big trial, and a showy execution, what possible +invention of man could discourage or deter them? The town was in a sort +of panic; it did not know what to do. + +However, the grand jury had to take hold of the matter--it had no choice. +It brought in a true bill, and presently the case went to the county +court. The trial was a fine sensation. The prisoner was the principal +witness for the prosecution. He gave a full account of the +assassination; he furnished even the minutest particulars: how he +deposited his keg of powder and laid his train--from the house to +such-and-such a spot; how George Ronalds and Henry Hart came along just +then, smoking, and he borrowed Hart's cigar and fired the train with it, +shouting, "Down with all slave-tyrants!" and how Hart and Ronalds made no +effort to capture him, but ran away, and had never come forward to +testify yet. + +But they had to testify now, and they did--and pitiful it was to see how +reluctant they were, and how scared. The crowded house listened to +Joyce's fearful tale with a profound and breathless interest, and in a +deep hush which was not broken till he broke it himself, in concluding, +with a roaring repetition of his "Death to all slave-tyrants!"--which +came so unexpectedly and so startlingly that it made everyone present +catch his breath and gasp. + +The trial was put in the paper, with biography and large portrait, with +other slanderous and insane pictures, and the edition sold beyond +imagination. + +The execution of Joyce was a fine and picturesque thing. It drew a vast +crowd. Good places in trees and seats on rail fences sold for half a +dollar apiece; lemonade and gingerbread-stands had great prosperity. +Joyce recited a furious and fantastic and denunciatory speech on the +scaffold which had imposing passages of school-boy eloquence in it, and +gave him a reputation on the spot as an orator, and his name, later, in +the society's records, of the "Martyr Orator." He went to his death +breathing slaughter and charging his society to "avenge his murder." If +he knew anything of human nature he knew that to plenty of young fellows +present in that great crowd he was a grand hero--and enviably situated. + +He was hanged. It was a mistake. Within a month from his death the +society which he had honored had twenty new members, some of them +earnest, determined men. They did not court distinction in the same way, +but they celebrated his martyrdom. The crime which had been obscure and +despised had become lofty and glorified. + +Such things were happening all over the country. Wild-brained martyrdom +was succeeded by uprising and organization. Then, in natural order, +followed riot, insurrection, and the wrack and restitutions of war. It +was bound to come, and it would naturally come in that way. It has been +the manner of reform since the beginning of the world. + + + + + +SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY + +Interlaken, Switzerland, 1891. + +It is a good many years since I was in Switzerland last. In that remote +time there was only one ladder railway in the country. That state of +things is all changed. There isn't a mountain in Switzerland now that +hasn't a ladder railroad or two up its back like suspenders; indeed, some +mountains are latticed with them, and two years hence all will be. In +that day the peasant of the high altitudes will have to carry a lantern +when he goes visiting in the night to keep from stumbling over railroads +that have been built since his last round. And also in that day, if +there shall remain a high-altitude peasant whose potato-patch hasn't a +railroad through it, it would make him as conspicuous as William Tell. + +However, there are only two best ways to travel through Switzerland. The +first best is afloat. The second best is by open two-horse carriage. +One can come from Lucerne to Interlaken over the Brunig by ladder +railroad in an hour or so now, but you can glide smoothly in a carriage +in ten, and have two hours for luncheon at noon--for luncheon, not for +rest. There is no fatigue connected with the trip. One arrives fresh in +spirit and in person in the evening--no fret in his heart, no grime on +his face, no grit in his hair, not a cinder in his eye. This is the +right condition of mind and body, the right and due preparation for the +solemn event which closed the day--stepping with metaphorically uncovered +head into the presence of the most impressive mountain mass that the +globe can show--the Jungfrau. The stranger's first feeling, when suddenly +confronted by that towering and awful apparition wrapped in its shroud of +snow, is breath-taking astonishment. It is as if heaven's gates had +swung open and exposed the throne. + +It is peaceful here and pleasant at Interlaken. Nothing going on--at +least nothing but brilliant life-giving sunshine. There are floods and +floods of that. One may properly speak of it as "going on," for it is +full of the suggestion of activity; the light pours down with energy, +with visible enthusiasm. This is a good atmosphere to be in, morally as +well as physically. After trying the political atmosphere of the +neighboring monarchies, it is healing and refreshing to breathe air that +has known no taint of slavery for six hundred years, and to come among a +people whose political history is great and fine, and worthy to be taught +in all schools and studied by all races and peoples. For the struggle +here throughout the centuries has not been in the interest of any private +family, or any church, but in the interest of the whole body of the +nation, and for shelter and protection of all forms of belief. This fact +is colossal. If one would realize how colossal it is, and of what +dignity and majesty, let him contrast it with the purposes and objects of +the Crusades, the siege of York, the War of the Roses, and other historic +comedies of that sort and size. + +Last week I was beating around the Lake of Four Cantons, and I saw Rutli +and Altorf. Rutli is a remote little patch of meadow, but I do not know +how any piece of ground could be holier or better worth crossing oceans +and continents to see, since it was there that the great trinity of +Switzerland joined hands six centuries ago and swore the oath which set +their enslaved and insulted country forever free; and Altorf is also +honorable ground and worshipful, since it was there that William, +surnamed Tell (which interpreted means "The foolish talker"--that is to +say, the too-daring talker), refused to bow to Gessler's hat. Of late +years the prying student of history has been delighting himself beyond +measure over a wonderful find which he has made--to wit, that Tell did +not shoot the apple from his son's head. To hear the students jubilate, +one would suppose that the question of whether Tell shot the apple or +didn't was an important matter; whereas it ranks in importance exactly +with the question of whether Washington chopped down the cherry-tree or +didn't. The deeds of Washington, the patriot, are the essential thing; +the cherry-tree incident is of no consequence. To prove that Tell did +shoot the apple from his son's head would merely prove that he had better +nerve than most men and was skillful with a bow as a million others who +preceded and followed him, but not one whit more so. But Tell was more +and better than a mere marksman, more and better than a mere cool head; +he was a type; he stands for Swiss patriotism; in his person was +represented a whole people; his spirit was their spirit--the spirit which +would bow to none but God, the spirit which said this in words and +confirmed it with deeds. There have always been Tells in +Switzerland--people who would not bow. There was a sufficiency of them +at Rutli; there were plenty of them at Murten; plenty at Grandson; there +are plenty today. And the first of them all--the very first, earliest +banner-bearer of human freedom in this world--was not a man, but a +woman--Stauffacher's wife. There she looms dim and great, through the +haze of the centuries, delivering into her husband's ear that gospel of +revolt which was to bear fruit in the conspiracy of Rutli and the birth +of the first free government the world had ever seen. + +From this Victoria Hotel one looks straight across a flat of trifling +width to a lofty mountain barrier, which has a gateway in it shaped like +an inverted pyramid. Beyond this gateway arises the vast bulk of the +Jungfrau, a spotless mass of gleaming snow, into the sky. The gateway, +in the dark-colored barrier, makes a strong frame for the great picture. +The somber frame and the glowing snow-pile are startlingly contrasted. +It is this frame which concentrates and emphasizes the glory of the +Jungfrau and makes it the most engaging and beguiling and fascinating +spectacle that exists on the earth. There are many mountains of snow +that are as lofty as the Jungfrau and as nobly proportioned, but they +lack the fame. They stand at large; they are intruded upon and elbowed +by neighboring domes and summits, and their grandeur is diminished and +fails of effect. + +It is a good name, Jungfrau--Virgin. Nothing could be whiter; nothing +could be purer; nothing could be saintlier of aspect. At six yesterday +evening the great intervening barrier seen through a faint bluish haze +seemed made of air and substanceless, so soft and rich it was, so +shimmering where the wandering lights touched it and so dim where the +shadows lay. Apparently it was a dream stuff, a work of the imagination, +nothing real about it. The tint was green, slightly varying shades of +it, but mainly very dark. The sun was down--as far as that barrier was +concerned, but not for the Jungfrau, towering into the heavens beyond the +gateway. She was a roaring conflagration of blinding white. + +It is said the Fridolin (the old Fridolin), a new saint, but formerly a +missionary, gave the mountain its gracious name. He was an Irishman, son +of an Irish king--there were thirty thousand kings reigning in County +Cork alone in his time, fifteen hundred years ago. It got so that they +could not make a living, there was so much competition and wages got cut +so. Some of them were out of work months at a time, with wife and little +children to feed, and not a crust in the place. At last a particularly +severe winter fell upon the country, and hundreds of them were reduced to +mendicancy and were to be seen day after day in the bitterest weather, +standing barefoot in the snow, holding out their crowns for alms. +Indeed, they would have been obliged to emigrate or starve but for a +fortunate idea of Prince Fridolin's, who started a labor-union, the first +one in history, and got the great bulk of them to join it. He thus won +the general gratitude, and they wanted to make him emperor--emperor over +them all--emperor of County Cork, but he said, No, walking delegate was +good enough for him. For behold! he was modest beyond his years, and +keen as a whip. To this day in Germany and Switzerland, where St. +Fridolin is revered and honored, the peasantry speak of him +affectionately as the first walking delegate. + +The first walk he took was into France and Germany, missionarying--for +missionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. All +you had to do was to cure the savage's sick daughter by a "miracle"--a +miracle like the miracle of Lourdes in our day, for instance--and +immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled to the eyes +with a new convert's enthusiasm. You could sit down and make yourself +easy, now. He would take an ax and convert the rest of the nation +himself. Charlemagne was that kind of a walking delegate. + +Yes, there were great missionaries in those days, for the methods were +sure and the rewards great. We have no such missionaries now, and no +such methods. + +But to continue the history of the first walking delegate, if you are +interested. I am interested myself because I have seen his relics in +Sackingen, and also the very spot where he worked his great miracle--the +one which won him his sainthood in the papal court a few centuries later. +To have seen these things makes me feel very near to him, almost like a +member of the family, in fact. While wandering about the Continent he +arrived at the spot on the Rhine which is now occupied by Sackingen, and +proposed to settle there, but the people warned him off. He appealed to +the king of the Franks, who made him a present of the whole region, +people and all. He built a great cloister there for women and proceeded +to teach in it and accumulate more land. There were two wealthy brothers +in the neighborhood, Urso and Landulph. Urso died and Fridolin claimed +his estates. Landulph asked for documents and papers. Fridolin had none +to show. He said the bequest had been made to him by word of mouth. +Landulph suggested that he produce a witness and said it in a way which +he thought was very witty, very sarcastic. This shows that he did not +know the walking delegate. Fridolin was not disturbed. He said: + +"Appoint your court. I will bring a witness." + +The court thus created consisted of fifteen counts and barons. A day was +appointed for the trial of the case. On that day the judges took their +seats in state, and proclamation was made that the court was ready for +business. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed, and yet no +Fridolin appeared. Landulph rose, and was in the act of claiming judgment +by default when a strange clacking sound was heard coming up the stairs. +In another moment Fridolin entered at the door and came walking in a deep +hush down the middle aisle, with a tall skeleton stalking in his rear. + +Amazement and terror sat upon every countenance, for everybody suspected +that the skeleton was Urso's. It stopped before the chief judge and +raised its bony arm aloft and began to speak, while all the assembled +shuddered, for they could see the words leak out between its ribs. It +said: + +"Brother, why dost thou disturb my blessed rest and withhold by robbery +the gift which I gave thee for the honor of God?" + +It seems a strange thing and most irregular, but the verdict was actually +given against Landulph on the testimony of this wandering rack-heap of +unidentified bones. In our day a skeleton would not be allowed to +testify at all, for a skeleton has no moral responsibility, and its word +could not be believed on oath, and this was probably one of them. +However, the incident is valuable as preserving to us a curious sample of +the quaint laws of evidence of that remote time--a time so remote, so far +back toward the beginning of original idiocy, that the difference between +a bench of judges and a basket of vegetables was as yet so slight that we +may say with all confidence that it didn't really exist. + +During several afternoons I have been engaged in an interesting, maybe +useful, piece of work--that is to say, I have been trying to make the +mighty Jungfrau earn her living--earn it in a most humble sphere, but on +a prodigious scale, on a prodigious scale of necessity, for she couldn't +do anything in a small way with her size and style. I have been trying +to make her do service on a stupendous dial and check off the hours as +they glide along her pallid face up there against the sky, and tell the +time of day to the populations lying within fifty miles of her and to the +people in the moon, if they have a good telescope there. + +Until late in the afternoon the Jungfrau's aspect is that of a spotless +desert of snow set upon edge against the sky. But by mid-afternoon some +elevations which rise out of the western border of the desert, whose +presence you perhaps had not detected or suspected up to that time, began +to cast black shadows eastward across the gleaming surface. At first +there is only one shadow; later there are two. Toward 4 P.M. the other +day I was gazing and worshiping as usual when I chanced to notice that +shadow No. 1 was beginning to take itself something of the shape of the +human profile. By four the back of the head was good, the military cap +was pretty good, the nose was bold and strong, the upper lip sharp, but +not pretty, and there was a great goatee that shot straight aggressively +forward from the chin. + +At four-thirty the nose had changed its shape considerably, and the +altered slant of the sun had revealed and made conspicuous a huge +buttress or barrier of naked rock which was so located as to answer very +well for a shoulder or coat-collar to this swarthy and indiscreet +sweetheart who had stolen out there right before everybody to pillow his +head on the Virgin's white breast and whisper soft sentimentalities to +her in the sensuous music of the crashing ice-domes and the boom and +thunder of the passing avalanche--music very familiar to his ear, for he +had heard it every afternoon at this hour since the day he first came +courting this child of the earth, who lives in the sky, and that day is +far, yes--for he was at this pleasant sport before the Middle Ages +drifted by him in the valley; before the Romans marched past, and before +the antique and recordless barbarians fished and hunted here and wondered +who he might be, and were probably afraid of him; and before primeval man +himself, just emerged from his four-footed estate, stepped out upon this +plain, first sample of his race, a thousand centuries ago, and cast a +glad eye up there, judging he had found a brother human being and +consequently something to kill; and before the big saurians wallowed +here, still some eons earlier. Oh yes, a day so far back that the +eternal son was present to see that first visit; a day so far back that +neither tradition nor history was born yet and a whole weary eternity +must come and go before the restless little creature, of whose face this +stupendous Shadow Face was the prophecy, would arrive in the earth and +begin his shabby career and think of a big thing. Oh, indeed yes; when +you talk about your poor Roman and Egyptian day-before-yesterday +antiquities, you should choose a time when the hoary Shadow Face of the +Jungfrau is not by. It antedates all antiquities known or imaginable; +for it was here the world itself created the theater of future +antiquities. And it is the only witness with a human face that was there +to see the marvel, and remains to us a memorial of it. + +By 4:40 P.M. the nose of the shadow is perfect and is beautiful. It is +black and is powerfully marked against the upright canvas of glowing +snow, and covers hundreds of acres of that resplendent surface. + +Meantime shadow No. 2 has been creeping out well to the rear of the face +west of it--and at five o'clock has assumed a shape that has rather a +poor and rude semblance of a shoe. + +Meantime, also, the great Shadow Face has been gradually changing for +twenty minutes, and now, 5 P.M., it is becoming a quite fair portrait of +Roscoe Conkling. The likeness is there, and is unmistakable. The goatee +is shortened, now, and has an end; formerly it hadn't any, but ran off +eastward and arrived nowhere. + +By 6 P.M. the face has dissolved and gone, and the goatee has become what +looks like the shadow of a tower with a pointed roof, and the shoe had +turned into what the printers call a "fist" with a finger pointing. + +If I were now imprisoned on a mountain summit a hundred miles northward +of this point, and was denied a timepiece, I could get along well enough +from four till six on clear days, for I could keep trace of the time by +the changing shapes of these mighty shadows of the Virgin's front, the +most stupendous dial I am acquainted with, the oldest clock in the world +by a couple of million years. + +I suppose I should not have noticed the forms of the shadows if I hadn't +the habit of hunting for faces in the clouds and in mountain crags--a +sort of amusement which is very entertaining even when you don't find +any, and brilliantly satisfying when you do. I have searched through +several bushels of photographs of the Jungfrau here, but found only one +with the Face in it, and in this case it was not strictly recognizable as +a face, which was evidence that the picture was taken before four o'clock +in the afternoon, and also evidence that all the photographers have +persistently overlooked one of the most fascinating features of the +Jungfrau show. I say fascinating, because if you once detect a human +face produced on a great plan by unconscious nature, you never get tired +of watching it. At first you can't make another person see it at all, +but after he has made it out once he can't see anything else afterward. + +The King of Greece is a man who goes around quietly enough when off +duty. One day this summer he was traveling in an ordinary first-class +compartment, just in his other suit, the one which he works the realm in +when he is at home, and so he was not looking like anybody in particular, +but a good deal like everybody in general. By and by a hearty and +healthy German-American got in and opened up a frank and interesting and +sympathetic conversation with him, and asked him a couple of thousand +questions about himself, which the king answered good-naturedly, but in a +more or less indefinite way as to private particulars. + +"Where do you live when you are at home?" + +"In Greece." + +"Greece! Well, now, that is just astonishing! Born there?" + +"No." + +"Do you speak Greek?" + +"Yes." + +"Now, ain't that strange! I never expected to live to see that. What is +your trade? I mean how do you get your living? What is your line of +business?" + +"Well, I hardly know how to answer. I am only a kind of foreman, on a +salary; and the business--well, is a very general kind of business." + +"Yes, I understand--general jobbing--little of everything--anything that +there's money in." + +"That's about it, yes." + +"Are you traveling for the house now?" + +"Well, partly; but not entirely. Of course I do a stroke of business if +it falls in the way--" + +"Good! I like that in you! That's me every time. Go on." + +"I was only going to say I am off on my vacation now." + +"Well that's all right. No harm in that. A man works all the better for +a little let-up now and then. Not that I've been used to having it +myself; for I haven't. I reckon this is my first. I was born in +Germany, and when I was a couple of weeks old shipped to America, and +I've been there ever since, and that's sixty-four years by the watch. +I'm an American in principle and a German at heart, and it's the boss +combination. Well, how do you get along, as a rule--pretty fair?" + +"I've a rather large family--" + +"There, that's it--big family and trying to raise them on a salary. Now, +what did you go to do that for?" + +"Well, I thought--" + +"Of course you did. You were young and confident and thought you could +branch out and make things go with a whirl, and here you are, you see! +But never mind about that. I'm not trying to discourage you. Dear me! +I've been just where you are myself! You've got good grit; there's good +stuff in you, I can see that. You got a wrong start, that's the whole +trouble. But you hold your grip, and we'll see what can be done. Your +case ain't half as bad as it might be. You are going to come out all +right--I'm bail for that. Boys and girls?" + +"My family? Yes, some of them are boys--" + +"And the rest girls. It's just as I expected. But that's all right, and +it's better so, anyway. What are the boys doing--learning a trade?" + +"Well, no--I thought--" + +"It's a big mistake. It's the biggest mistake you ever made. You see +that in your own case. A man ought always to have a trade to fall back +on. Now, I was harness-maker at first. Did that prevent me from +becoming one of the biggest brewers in America? Oh no. I always had the +harness trick to fall back on in rough weather. Now, if you had learned +how to make harness--However, it's too late now; too late. But it's no +good plan to cry over spilt milk. But as to the boys, you see--what's to +become of them if anything happens to you?" + +"It has been my idea to let the eldest one succeed me--" + +"Oh, come! Suppose the firm don't want him?" + +"I hadn't thought of that, but--" + +"Now, look here; you want to get right down to business and stop +dreaming. You are capable of immense things--man. You can make a +perfect success in life. All you want is somebody to steady you and +boost you along on the right road. Do you own anything in the business?" + +"No--not exactly; but if I continue to give satisfaction, I suppose I can +keep my--" + +"Keep your place--yes. Well, don't you depend on anything of the kind. +They'll bounce you the minute you get a little old and worked out; +they'll do it sure. Can't you manage somehow to get into the firm? +That's the great thing, you know." + +"I think it is doubtful; very doubtful." + +"Um--that's bad--yes, and unfair, too. Do you suppose that if I should +go there and have a talk with your people--Look here--do you think you +could run a brewery?" + +"I have never tried, but I think I could do it after a little familiarity +with the business." + +The German was silent for some time. He did a good deal of thinking, and +the king waited curiously to see what the result was going to be. +Finally the German said: + +"My mind's made up. You leave that crowd--you'll never amount to +anything there. In these old countries they never give a fellow a show. +Yes, you come over to America--come to my place in Rochester; bring the +family along. You shall have a show in the business and the foremanship, +besides. George--you said your name was George?--I'll make a man of you. +I give you my word. You've never had a chance here, but that's all going +to change. By gracious! I'll give you a lift that'll make your hair +curl!" + + + + + +AT THE SHRINE OF ST. WAGNER + +Bayreuth, Aug. 2d, 1891 + +It was at Nuremberg that we struck the inundation of music-mad strangers +that was rolling down upon Bayreuth. It had been long since we had seen +such multitudes of excited and struggling people. It took a good +half-hour to pack them and pair them into the train--and it was the +longest train we have yet seen in Europe. Nuremberg had been witnessing +this sort of experience a couple of times a day for about two weeks. It +gives one an impressive sense of the magnitude of this biennial +pilgrimage. For a pilgrimage is what it is. The devotees come from the +very ends of the earth to worship their prophet in his own Kaaba in his +own Mecca. + +If you are living in New York or San Francisco or Chicago or anywhere +else in America, and you conclude, by the middle of May, that you would +like to attend the Bayreuth opera two months and a half later, you must +use the cable and get about it immediately or you will get no seats, and +you must cable for lodgings, too. Then if you are lucky you will get +seats in the last row and lodgings in the fringe of the town. If you +stop to write you will get nothing. There were plenty of people in +Nuremberg when we passed through who had come on pilgrimage without first +securing seats and lodgings. They had found neither in Bayreuth; they +had walked Bayreuth streets a while in sorrow, then had gone to Nuremberg +and found neither beds nor standing room, and had walked those quaint +streets all night, waiting for the hotels to open and empty their guests +into trains, and so make room for these, their defeated brethren and +sisters in the faith. They had endured from thirty to forty hours' +railroading on the continent of Europe--with all which that implies of +worry, fatigue, and financial impoverishment--and all they had got and +all they were to get for it was handiness and accuracy in kicking +themselves, acquired by practice in the back streets of the two towns +when other people were in bed; for back they must go over that +unspeakable journey with their pious mission unfulfilled. These +humiliated outcasts had the frowsy and unbrushed and apologetic look of +wet cats, and their eyes were glazed with drowsiness, their bodies were +adroop from crown to sole, and all kind-hearted people refrained from +asking them if they had been to Bayreuth and failed to connect, as +knowing they would lie. + +We reached here (Bayreuth) about mid-afternoon of a rainy Saturday. We +were of the wise, and had secured lodgings and opera seats months in +advance. + +I am not a musical critic, and did not come here to write essays about +the operas and deliver judgment upon their merits. The little children of +Bayreuth could do that with a finer sympathy and a broader intelligence +than I. I only care to bring four or five pilgrims to the operas, +pilgrims able to appreciate them and enjoy them. What I write about the +performance to put in my odd time would be offered to the public as +merely a cat's view of a king, and not of didactic value. + +Next day, which was Sunday, we left for the opera-house--that is to say, +the Wagner temple--a little after the middle of the afternoon. The great +building stands all by itself, grand and lonely, on a high ground outside +the town. We were warned that if we arrived after four o'clock we should +be obliged to pay two dollars and a half extra by way of fine. We saved +that; and it may be remarked here that this is the only opportunity that +Europe offers of saving money. There was a big crowd in the grounds +about the building, and the ladies' dresses took the sun with fine +effect. I do not mean to intimate that the ladies were in full dress, +for that was not so. The dresses were pretty, but neither sex was in +evening dress. + +The interior of the building is simple--severely so; but there is no +occasion for color and decoration, since the people sit in the dark. The +auditorium has the shape of a keystone, with the stage at the narrow end. +There is an aisle on each side, but no aisle in the body of the house. +Each row of seats extends in an unbroken curve from one side of the house +to the other. There are seven entrance doors on each side of the theater +and four at the butt, eighteen doors to admit and emit 1,650 persons. +The number of the particular door by which you are to enter the house or +leave it is printed on your ticket, and you can use no door but that one. +Thus, crowding and confusion are impossible. Not so many as a hundred +people use any one door. This is better than having the usual (and +useless) elaborate fireproof arrangements. It is the model theater of +the world. It can be emptied while the second hand of a watch makes its +circuit. It would be entirely safe, even if it were built of lucifer +matches. + +If your seat is near the center of a row and you enter late you must work +your way along a rank of about twenty-five ladies and gentlemen to get to +it. Yet this causes no trouble, for everybody stands up until all the +seats are full, and the filling is accomplished in a very few minutes. +Then all sit down, and you have a solid mass of fifteen hundred heads, +making a steep cellar-door slant from the rear of the house down to the +stage. + +All the lights were turned low, so low that the congregation sat in a +deep and solemn gloom. The funereal rustling of dresses and the low buzz +of conversation began to die swiftly down, and presently not the ghost of +a sound was left. This profound and increasingly impressive stillness +endured for some time--the best preparation for music, spectacle, or +speech conceivable. I should think our show people would have invented +or imported that simple and impressive device for securing and +solidifying the attention of an audience long ago; instead of which there +continue to this day to open a performance against a deadly competition +in the form of noise, confusion, and a scattered interest. + +Finally, out of darkness and distance and mystery soft rich notes rose +upon the stillness, and from his grave the dead magician began to weave +his spells about his disciples and steep their souls in his enchantments. +There was something strangely impressive in the fancy which kept +intruding itself that the composer was conscious in his grave of what was +going on here, and that these divine souls were the clothing of thoughts +which were at this moment passing through his brain, and not recognized +and familiar ones which had issued from it at some former time. + +The entire overture, long as it was, was played to a dark house with the +curtain down. It was exquisite; it was delicious. But straightway +thereafter, or course, came the singing, and it does seem to me that +nothing can make a Wagner opera absolutely perfect and satisfactory to +the untutored but to leave out the vocal parts. I wish I could see a +Wagner opera done in pantomime once. Then one would have the lovely +orchestration unvexed to listen to and bathe his spirit in, and the +bewildering beautiful scenery to intoxicate his eyes with, and the dumb +acting couldn't mar these pleasures, because there isn't often anything +in the Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting; +as a rule all you would see would be a couple of silent people, one of +them standing still, the other catching flies. Of course I do not really +mean that he would be catching flies; I only mean that the usual operatic +gestures which consist in reaching first one hand out into the air and +then the other might suggest the sport I speak of if the operator +attended strictly to business and uttered no sound. + +This present opera was "Parsifal." Madame Wagner does not permit its +representation anywhere but in Bayreuth. The first act of the three +occupied two hours, and I enjoyed that in spite of the singing. + +I trust that I know as well as anybody that singing is one of the most +entrancing and bewitching and moving and eloquent of all the vehicles +invented by man for the conveying of feeling; but it seems to me that the +chief virtue in song is melody, air, tune, rhythm, or what you please to +call it, and that when this feature is absent what remains is a picture +with the color left out. I was not able to detect in the vocal parts of +"Parsifal" anything that might with confidence be called rhythm or tune +or melody; one person performed at a time--and a long time, too--often +in a noble, and always in a high-toned, voice; but he only pulled out +long notes, then some short ones, then another long one, then a sharp, +quick, peremptory bark or two--and so on and so on; and when he was done +you saw that the information which he had conveyed had not compensated +for the disturbance. Not always, but pretty often. If two of them would +but put in a duet occasionally and blend the voices; but no, they don't +do that. The great master, who knew so well how to make a hundred +instruments rejoice in unison and pour out their souls in mingled and +melodious tides of delicious sound, deals only in barren solos when he +puts in the vocal parts. It may be that he was deep, and only added the +singing to his operas for the sake of the contrast it would make with the +music. Singing! It does seem the wrong name to apply to it. Strictly +described, it is a practicing of difficult and unpleasant intervals, +mainly. An ignorant person gets tired of listening to gymnastic +intervals in the long run, no matter how pleasant they may be. In +"Parsifal" there is a hermit named Gurnemanz who stands on the stage in +one spot and practices by the hour, while first one and then another +character of the cast endures what he can of it and then retires to die. + +During the evening there was an intermission of three-quarters of an hour +after the first act and one an hour long after the second. In both +instances the theater was totally emptied. People who had previously +engaged tables in the one sole eating-house were able to put in their +time very satisfactorily; the other thousand went hungry. The opera was +concluded at ten in the evening or a little later. When we reached home +we had been gone more than seven hours. Seven hours at five dollars a +ticket is almost too much for the money. + +While browsing about the front yard among the crowd between the acts I +encountered twelve or fifteen friends from different parts of America, +and those of them who were most familiar with Wagner said that "Parsifal" +seldom pleased at first, but that after one had heard it several times it +was almost sure to become a favorite. It seemed impossible, but it was +true, for the statement came from people whose word was not to be +doubted. + +And I gathered some further information. On the ground I found part of a +German musical magazine, and in it a letter written by Uhlic thirty-three +years ago, in which he defends the scorned and abused Wagner against +people like me, who found fault with the comprehensive absence of what +our kind regards as singing. Uhlic says Wagner despised "JENE PLAPPERUDE +MUSIC," and therefore "runs, trills, and SCHNORKEL are discarded by him." +I don't know what a SCHNORKEL is, but now that I know it has been left +out of these operas I never have missed so much in my life. And Uhlic +further says that Wagner's song is true: that it is "simply emphasized +intoned speech." That certainly describes it--in "Parsifal" and some of +the operas; and if I understand Uhlic's elaborate German he apologizes +for the beautiful airs in "Tannh:auser." Very well; now that Wagner and +I understand each other, perhaps we shall get along better, and I shall +stop calling Waggner, on the American plan, and thereafter call him +Waggner as per German custom, for I feel entirely friendly now. The +minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are to throw aside +little needless puctilios and pronounce his name right! + +Of course I came home wondering why people should come from all corners +of America to hear these operas, when we have lately had a season or two +of them in New York with these same singers in the several parts, and +possibly this same orchestra. I resolved to think that out at all +hazards. + +TUESDAY.--Yesterday they played the only operatic favorite I have ever +had--an opera which has always driven me mad with ignorant delight +whenever I have heard it--"Tannh:auser." I heard it first when I was a +youth; I heard it last in the last German season in New York. I was busy +yesterday and I did not intend to go, knowing I should have another +"Tannh:auser" opportunity in a few days; but after five o'clock I found +myself free and walked out to the opera-house and arrived about the +beginning of the second act. My opera ticket admitted me to the grounds +in front, past the policeman and the chain, and I thought I would take a +rest on a bench for an hour and two and wait for the third act. + +In a moment or so the first bugles blew, and the multitude began to +crumble apart and melt into the theater. I will explain that this +bugle-call is one of the pretty features here. You see, the theater is +empty, and hundreds of the audience are a good way off in the +feeding-house; the first bugle-call is blown about a quarter of an hour +before time for the curtain to rise. This company of buglers, in uniform, +march out with military step and send out over the landscape a few bars +of the theme of the approaching act, piercing the distances with the +gracious notes; then they march to the other entrance and repeat. +Presently they do this over again. Yesterday only about two hundred +people were still left in front of the house when the second call was +blown; in another half-minute they would have been in the house, but then +a thing happened which delayed them--the only solitary thing in this +world which could be relied on with certainty to accomplish it, I +suppose--an imperial princess appeared in the balcony above them. They +stopped dead in their tracks and began to gaze in a stupor of gratitude +and satisfaction. The lady presently saw that she must disappear or the +doors would be closed upon these worshipers, so she returned to her box. +This daughter-in-law of an emperor was pretty; she had a kind face; she +was without airs; she is known to be full of common human sympathies. +There are many kinds of princesses, but this kind is the most harmful of +all, for wherever they go they reconcile people to monarchy and set back +the clock of progress. The valuable princes, the desirable princes, are +the czars and their sort. By their mere dumb presence in the world they +cover with derision every argument that can be invented in favor of +royalty by the most ingenious casuist. In his time the husband of this +princess was valuable. He led a degraded life, he ended it with his own +hand in circumstances and surroundings of a hideous sort, and was buried +like a god. + +In the opera-house there is a long loft back of the audience, a kind of +open gallery, in which princes are displayed. It is sacred to them; it is +the holy of holies. As soon as the filling of the house is about +complete the standing multitude turn and fix their eyes upon the princely +layout and gaze mutely and longingly and adoringly and regretfully like +sinners looking into heaven. They become rapt, unconscious, steeped in +worship. There is no spectacle anywhere that is more pathetic than this. +It is worth crossing many oceans to see. It is somehow not the same gaze +that people rivet upon a Victor Hugo, or Niagara, or the bones of the +mastodon, or the guillotine of the Revolution, or the great pyramid, or +distant Vesuvius smoking in the sky, or any man long celebrated to you by +his genius and achievements, or thing long celebrated to you by the +praises of books and pictures--no, that gaze is only the gaze of intense +curiosity, interest, wonder, engaged in drinking delicious deep draughts +that taste good all the way down and appease and satisfy the thirst of a +lifetime. Satisfy it--that is the word. Hugo and the mastodon will +still have a degree of intense interest thereafter when encountered, but +never anything approaching the ecstasy of that first view. The interest +of a prince is different. It may be envy, it may be worship, doubtless +it is a mixture of both--and it does not satisfy its thirst with one +view, or even noticeably diminish it. Perhaps the essence of the thing +is the value which men attach to a valuable something which has come by +luck and not been earned. A dollar picked up in the road is more +satisfaction to you than the ninety-and-nine which you had to work for, +and money won at faro or in stocks snuggles into your heart in the same +way. A prince picks up grandeur, power, and a permanent holiday and +gratis support by a pure accident, the accident of birth, and he stands +always before the grieved eye of poverty and obscurity a monumental +representative of luck. And then--supremest value of all-his is the only +high fortune on the earth which is secure. The commercial millionaire +may become a beggar; the illustrious statesman can make a vital mistake +and be dropped and forgotten; the illustrious general can lose a decisive +battle and with it the consideration of men; but once a prince always a +prince--that is to say, an imitation god, and neither hard fortune nor an +infamous character nor an addled brain nor the speech of an ass can +undeify him. By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the +most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved +or undeserved. It follows without doubt or question, then, that the most +desirable position possible is that of a prince. And I think it also +follows that the so-called usurpations with which history is littered are +the most excusable misdemeanors which men have committed. To usurp a +usurpation--that is all it amounts to, isn't it? + +A prince is not to us what he is to a European, of course. We have not +been taught to regard him as a god, and so one good look at him is likely +to so nearly appease our curiosity as to make him an object of no greater +interest the next time. We want a fresh one. But it is not so with the +European. I am quite sure of it. The same old one will answer; he never +stales. Eighteen years ago I was in London and I called at an +Englishman's house on a bleak and foggy and dismal December afternoon to +visit his wife and married daughter by appointment. I waited half an hour +and then they arrived, frozen. They explained that they had been delayed +by an unlooked-for circumstance: while passing in the neighborhood of +Marlborough House they saw a crowd gathering and were told that the +Prince of Wales was about to drive out, so they stopped to get a sight of +him. They had waited half an hour on the sidewalk, freezing with the +crowd, but were disappointed at last--the Prince had changed his mind. I +said, with a good deal of surprise, "Is it possible that you two have +lived in London all your lives and have never seen the Prince of Wales?" + +Apparently it was their turn to be surprised, for they exclaimed: "What +an idea! Why, we have seen him hundreds of times." + +They had seem him hundreds of times, yet they had waited half an hour in +the gloom and the bitter cold, in the midst of a jam of patients from the +same asylum, on the chance of seeing him again. It was a stupefying +statement, but one is obliged to believe the English, even when they say +a thing like that. I fumbled around for a remark, and got out this one: + +"I can't understand it at all. If I had never seen General Grant I doubt +if I would do that even to get a sight of him." With a slight emphasis on +the last word. + +Their blank faces showed that they wondered where the parallel came in. +Then they said, blankly: "Of course not. He is only a President." + +It is doubtless a fact that a prince is a permanent interest, an interest +not subject to deterioration. The general who was never defeated, the +general who never held a council of war, the only general who ever +commanded a connected battle-front twelve hundred miles long, the smith +who welded together the broken parts of a great republic and +re-established it where it is quite likely to outlast all the monarchies +present and to come, was really a person of no serious consequence to +these people. To them, with their training, my General was only a man, +after all, while their Prince was clearly much more than that--a being of +a wholly unsimilar construction and constitution, and being of no more +blood and kinship with men than are the serene eternal lights of the +firmament with the poor dull tallow candles of commerce that sputter and +die and leave nothing behind but a pinch of ashes and a stink. + +I saw the last act of "Tannh:auser." I sat in the gloom and the deep +stillness, waiting--one minute, two minutes, I do not know exactly how +long--then the soft music of the hidden orchestra began to breathe its +rich, long sighs out from under the distant stage, and by and by the +drop-curtain parted in the middle and was drawn softly aside, disclosing +the twilighted wood and a wayside shrine, with a white-robed girl praying +and a man standing near. Presently that noble chorus of men's voices was +heard approaching, and from that moment until the closing of the curtain +it was music, just music--music to make one drunk with pleasure, music to +make one take scrip and staff and beg his way round the globe to hear it. + +To such as are intending to come here in the Wagner season next year I +wish to say, bring your dinner-pail with you. If you do, you will never +cease to be thankful. If you do not, you will find it a hard fight to +save yourself from famishing in Bayreuth. Bayreuth is merely a large +village, and has no very large hotels or eating-houses. The principal +inns are the Golden Anchor and the Sun. At either of these places you +can get an excellent meal--no, I mean you can go there and see other +people get it. There is no charge for this. The town is littered with +restaurants, but they are small and bad, and they are overdriven with +custom. You must secure a table hours beforehand, and often when you +arrive you will find somebody occupying it. We have had this experience. +We have had a daily scramble for life; and when I say we, I include +shoals of people. I have the impression that the only people who do not +have to scramble are the veterans--the disciples who have been here +before and know the ropes. I think they arrive about a week before the +first opera, and engage all the tables for the season. My tribe had +tried all kinds of places--some outside of the town, a mile or two--and +have captured only nibblings and odds and ends, never in any instance a +complete and satisfying meal. Digestible? No, the reverse. These odds +and ends are going to serve as souvenirs of Bayreuth, and in that regard +their value is not to be overestimated. Photographs fade, bric-a-brac +gets lost, busts of Wagner get broken, but once you absorb a +Bayreuth-restaurant meal it is your possession and your property until +the time comes to embalm the rest of you. Some of these pilgrims here +become, in effect, cabinets; cabinets of souvenirs of Bayreuth. It is +believed among scientists that you could examine the crop of a dead +Bayreuth pilgrim anywhere in the earth and tell where he came from. But +I like this ballast. I think a "Hermitage" scrap-up at eight in the +evening, when all the famine-breeders have been there and laid in their +mementoes and gone, is the quietest thing you can lay on your keelson +except gravel. + +THURSDAY.--They keep two teams of singers in stock for the chief roles, +and one of these is composed of the most renowned artists in the world, +with Materna and Alvary in the lead. I suppose a double team is +necessary; doubtless a single team would die of exhaustion in a week, for +all the plays last from four in the afternoon till ten at night. Nearly +all the labor falls upon the half-dozen head singers, and apparently they +are required to furnish all the noise they can for the money. If they +feel a soft, whispery, mysterious feeling they are required to open out +and let the public know it. Operas are given only on Sundays, Mondays, +Wednesdays, and Thursdays, with three days of ostensible rest per week, +and two teams to do the four operas; but the ostensible rest is devoted +largely to rehearsing. It is said that the off days are devoted to +rehearsing from some time in the morning till ten at night. Are there +two orchestras also? It is quite likely, since there are one hundred and +ten names in the orchestra list. + +Yesterday the opera was "Tristan and Isolde." I have seen all sorts of +audiences--at theaters, operas, concerts, lectures, sermons, +funerals--but none which was twin to the Wagner audience of Bayreuth for +fixed and reverential attention. Absolute attention and petrified +retention to the end of an act of the attitude assumed at the beginning +of it. You detect no movement in the solid mass of heads and shoulders. +You seem to sit with the dead in the gloom of a tomb. You know that they +are being stirred to their profoundest depths; that there are times when +they want to rise and wave handkerchiefs and shout their approbation, and +times when tears are running down their faces, and it would be a relief +to free their pent emotions in sobs or screams; yet you hear not one +utterance till the curtain swings together and the closing strains have +slowly faded out and died; then the dead rise with one impulse and shake +the building with their applause. Every seat is full in the first act; +there is not a vacant one in the last. If a man would be conspicuous, +let him come here and retire from the house in the midst of an act. It +would make him celebrated. + +This audience reminds me of nothing I have ever seen and of nothing I +have read about except the city in the Arabian tale where all the +inhabitants have been turned to brass and the traveler finds them after +centuries mute, motionless, and still retaining the attitudes which they +last knew in life. Here the Wagner audience dress as they please, and +sit in the dark and worship in silence. At the Metropolitan in New York +they sit in a glare, and wear their showiest harness; they hum airs, they +squeak fans, they titter, and they gabble all the time. In some of the +boxes the conversation and laughter are so loud as to divide the +attention of the house with the stage. In large measure the Metropolitan +is a show-case for rich fashionables who are not trained in Wagnerian +music and have no reverence for it, but who like to promote art and show +their clothes. + +Can that be an agreeable atmosphere to persons in whom this music +produces a sort of divine ecstasy and to whom its creator is a very +deity, his stage a temple, the works of his brain and hands consecrated +things, and the partaking of them with eye and ear a sacred solemnity? +Manifestly, no. Then, perhaps the temporary expatriation, the tedious +traversing of seas and continents, the pilgrimage to Bayreuth stands +explained. These devotees would worship in an atmosphere of devotion. +It is only here that they can find it without fleck or blemish or any +worldly pollution. In this remote village there are no sights to see, +there is no newspaper to intrude the worries of the distant world, there +is nothing going on, it is always Sunday. The pilgrim wends to his +temple out of town, sits out his moving service, returns to his bed with +his heart and soul and his body exhausted by long hours of tremendous +emotion, and he is in no fit condition to do anything but to lie torpid +and slowly gather back life and strength for the next service. This +opera of "Tristan and Isolde" last night broke the hearts of all +witnesses who were of the faith, and I know of some who have heard of +many who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. I feel +strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the sane person in a +community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all +others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and +always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven. + +But by no means do I ever overlook or minify the fact that this is one of +the most extraordinary experiences of my life. I have never seen +anything like this before. I have never seen anything so great and fine +and real as this devotion. + +FRIDAY.--Yesterday's opera was "Parsifal" again. The others went and +they show marked advance in appreciation; but I went hunting for relics +and reminders of the Margravine Wilhelmina, she of the imperishable +"Memoirs." I am properly grateful to her for her (unconscious) satire +upon monarchy and nobility, and therefore nothing which her hand touched +or her eye looked upon is indifferent to me. I am her pilgrim; the rest +of this multitude here are Wagner's. + +TUESDAY.--I have seen my last two operas; my season is ended, and we +cross over into Bohemia this afternoon. I was supposing that my musical +regeneration was accomplished and perfected, because I enjoyed both of +these operas, singing and all, and, moreover, one of them was "Parsifal," +but the experts have disenchanted me. They say: + +"Singing! That wasn't singing; that was the wailing, screeching of +third-rate obscurities, palmed off on us in the interest of economy." + +Well, I ought to have recognized the sign--the old, sure sign that has +never failed me in matters of art. Whenever I enjoy anything in art it +means that it is mighty poor. The private knowledge of this fact has +saved me from going to pieces with enthusiasm in front of many and many a +chromo. However, my base instinct does bring me profit sometimes; I was +the only man out of thirty-two hundred who got his money back on those +two operas. + +WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS + + + +Is it true that the sun of a man's mentality touches noon at forty and +then begins to wane toward setting? Doctor Osler is charged with saying +so. Maybe he said it, maybe he didn't; I don't know which it is. But if +he said it, I can point him to a case which proves his rule. Proves it +by being an exception to it. To this place I nominate Mr. Howells. + +I read his VENETIAN DAYS about forty years ago. I compare it with his +paper on Machiavelli in a late number of HARPER, and I cannot find that +his English has suffered any impairment. For forty years his English has +been to me a continual delight and astonishment. In the sustained +exhibition of certain great qualities--clearness, compression, verbal +exactness, and unforced and seemingly unconscious felicity of +phrasing--he is, in my belief, without his peer in the English-writing +world. SUSTAINED. I entrench myself behind that protecting word. There +are others who exhibit those great qualities as greatly as he does, but +only by intervaled distributions of rich moonlight, with stretches of +veiled and dimmer landscape between; whereas Howells's moon sails +cloudless skies all night and all the nights. + +In the matter of verbal exactness Mr. Howells has no superior, I suppose. +He seems to be almost always able to find that elusive and shifty grain +of gold, the RIGHT WORD. Others have to put up with approximations, more +or less frequently; he has better luck. To me, the others are miners +working with the gold-pan--of necessity some of the gold washes over and +escapes; whereas, in my fancy, he is quicksilver raiding down a +riffle--no grain of the metal stands much chance of eluding him. A +powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes it +plain; a close approximation to it will answer, and much traveling is +done in a well-enough fashion by its help, but we do not welcome it and +applaud it and rejoice in it as we do when THE right one blazes out on +us. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book +or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and +electrically prompt: it tingles exquisitely around through the walls of +the mouth and tastes as tart and crisp and good as the autumn-butter that +creams the sumac-berry. One has no time to examine the word and vote +upon its rank and standing, the automatic recognition of its supremacy is +so immediate. There is a plenty of acceptable literature which deals +largely in approximations, but it may be likened to a fine landscape seen +through the rain; the right word would dismiss the rain, then you would +see it better. It doesn't rain when Howells is at work. + +And where does he get the easy and effortless flow of his speech? and its +cadenced and undulating rhythm? and its architectural felicities of +construction, its graces of expression, its pemmican quality of +compression, and all that? Born to him, no doubt. All in shining good +order in the beginning, all extraordinary; and all just as shining, just +as extraordinary today, after forty years of diligent wear and tear and +use. He passed his fortieth year long and long ago; but I think his +English of today--his perfect English, I wish to say--can throw down the +glove before his English of that antique time and not be afraid. + +I will got back to the paper on Machiavelli now, and ask the reader to +examine this passage from it which I append. I do not mean examine it in +a bird's-eye way; I mean search it, study it. And, of course, read it +aloud. I may be wrong, still it is my conviction that one cannot get out +of finely wrought literature all that is in it by reading it mutely: + +Mr. Dyer is rather of the opinion, first luminously suggested by +Macaulay, that Machiavelli was in earnest, but must not be judged as a +political moralist of our time and race would be judged. He thinks that +Machiavelli was in earnest, as none but an idealist can be, and he is the +first to imagine him an idealist immersed in realities, who involuntarily +transmutes the events under his eye into something like the visionary +issues of reverie. The Machiavelli whom he depicts does not cease to be +politically a republican and socially a just man because he holds up an +atrocious despot like Caesar Borgia as a mirror for rulers. What +Machiavelli beheld round him in Italy was a civic disorder in which there +was oppression without statecraft, and revolt without patriotism. When a +miscreant like Borgia appeared upon the scene and reduced both tyrants +and rebels to an apparent quiescence, he might very well seem to such a +dreamer the savior of society whom a certain sort of dreamers are always +looking for. Machiavelli was no less honest when he honored the +diabolical force than Carlyle was when at different times he extolled the +strong man who destroys liberty in creating order. But Carlyle has only +just ceased to be mistaken for a reformer, while it is still +Machiavelli's hard fate to be so trammeled in his material that his name +stands for whatever is most malevolent and perfidious in human nature. + +You see how easy and flowing it is; how unvexed by ruggednesses, +clumsinesses, broken meters; how simple and--so far as you or I can make +out--unstudied; how clear, how limpid, how understandable, how unconfused +by cross-currents, eddies, undertows; how seemingly unadorned, yet is all +adornment, like the lily-of-the-valley; and how compressed, how compact, +without a complacency-signal hung out anywhere to call attention to it. + +There are twenty-three lines in the quoted passage. After reading it +several times aloud, one perceives that a good deal of matter is crowded +into that small space. I think it is a model of compactness. When I +take its materials apart and work them over and put them together in my +way, I find I cannot crowd the result back into the same hole, there not +being room enough. I find it a case of a woman packing a man's trunk: he +can get the things out, but he can't ever get them back again. + +The proffered paragraph is a just and fair sample; the rest of the +article is as compact as it is; there are no waste words. The sample is +just in other ways: limpid, fluent, graceful, and rhythmical as it is, it +holds no superiority in these respects over the rest of the essay. Also, +the choice phrasing noticeable in the sample is not lonely; there is a +plenty of its kin distributed through the other paragraphs. This is +claiming much when that kin must face the challenge of a phrase like the +one in the middle sentence: "an idealist immersed in realities who +involuntarily transmutes the events under his eye into something like the +visionary issues of reverie." With a hundred words to do it with, the +literary artisan could catch that airy thought and tie it down and reduce +it to a concrete condition, visible, substantial, understandable and all +right, like a cabbage; but the artist does it with twenty, and the result +is a flower. + +The quoted phrase, like a thousand others that have come from the same +source, has the quality of certain scraps of verse which take hold of us +and stay in our memories, we do not understand why, at first: all the +words being the right words, none of them is conspicuous, and so they all +seem inconspicuous, therefore we wonder what it is about them that makes +their message take hold. + +The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, + +And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the +tomb. + +It is like a dreamy strain of moving music, with no sharp notes in it. +The words are all "right" words, and all the same size. We do not notice +it at first. We get the effect, it goes straight home to us, but we do +not know why. It is when the right words are conspicuous that they +thunder: + +The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome! + +When I got back from Howells old to Howells young I find him arranging +and clustering English words well, but not any better than now. He is +not more felicitous in concreting abstractions now than he was in +translating, then, the visions of the eyes of flesh into words that +reproduced their forms and colors: + +In Venetian streets they give the fallen snow no rest. It is at once +shoveled into the canals by hundreds of half-naked FACCHINI; and now in +St. Mark's Place the music of innumerable shovels smote upon my ear; and +I saw the shivering legion of poverty as it engaged the elements in a +struggle for the possession of the Piazza. But the snow continued to +fall, and through the twilight of the descending flakes all this toil and +encountered looked like that weary kind of effort in dreams, when the +most determined industry seems only to renew the task. The lofty crest +of the bell-tower was hidden in the folds of falling snow, and I could no +longer see the golden angel upon its summit. But looked at across the +Piazza, the beautiful outline of St. Mark's Church was perfectly penciled +in the air, and the shifting threads of the snowfall were woven into a +spell of novel enchantment around the structure that always seemed to me +too exquisite in its fantastic loveliness to be anything but the creation +of magic. The tender snow had compassionated the beautiful edifice for +all the wrongs of time, and so hid the stains and ugliness of decay that +it looked as if just from the hand of the builder--or, better said, just +from the brain of the architect. There was marvelous freshness in the +colors of the mosaics in the great arches of the facade, and all that +gracious harmony into which the temple rises, or marble scrolls and leafy +exuberance airily supporting the statues of the saints, was a hundred +times etherealized by the purity and whiteness of the drifting flakes. +The snow lay lightly on the golden gloves that tremble like +peacocks-crests above the vast domes, and plumed them with softest white; +it robed the saints in ermine; and it danced over all its works, as if +exulting in its beauty--beauty which filled me with subtle, selfish +yearning to keep such evanescent loveliness for the little-while-longer +of my whole life, and with despair to think that even the poor lifeless +shadow of it could never be fairly reflected in picture or poem. + +Through the wavering snowfall, the Saint Theodore upon one of the granite +pillars of the Piazzetta did not show so grim as his wont is, and the +winged lion on the other might have been a winged lamb, so gentle and +mild he looked by the tender light of the storm. The towers of the +island churches loomed faint and far away in the dimness; the sailors in +the rigging of the ships that lay in the Basin wrought like phantoms +among the shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque distance +more noiselessly and dreamily than ever; and a silence, almost palpable, +lay upon the mutest city in the world. + +The spirit of Venice is there: of a city where Age and Decay, fagged +with distributing damage and repulsiveness among the other cities of the +planet in accordance with the policy and business of their profession, +come for rest and play between seasons, and treat themselves to the +luxury and relaxation of sinking the shop and inventing and squandering +charms all about, instead of abolishing such as they find, as it their +habit when not on vacation. + +In the working season they do business in Boston sometimes, and a +character in THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY takes accurate note of pathetic +effects wrought by them upon the aspects of a street of once dignified +and elegant homes whose occupants have moved away and left them a prey to +neglect and gradual ruin and progressive degradation; a descent which +reaches bottom at last, when the street becomes a roost for humble +professionals of the faith-cure and fortune-telling sort. + +What a queer, melancholy house, what a queer, melancholy street! I +don't think I was ever in a street before when quite so many professional +ladies, with English surnames, preferred Madam to Mrs. on their +door-plates. And the poor old place has such a desperately conscious air +of going to the deuce. Every house seems to wince as you go by, and +button itself up to the chin for fear you should find out it had no shirt +on--so to speak. I don't know what's the reason, but these material +tokens of a social decay afflict me terribly; a tipsy woman isn't +dreadfuler than a haggard old house, that's once been a home, in a street +like this. + +Mr. Howells's pictures are not mere stiff, hard, accurate photographs; +they are photographs with feeling in them, and sentiment, photographs +taken in a dream, one might say. + +As concerns his humor, I will not try to say anything, yet I would try, +if I had the words that might approximately reach up to its high place. +I do not think any one else can play with humorous fancies so gracefully +and delicately and deliciously as he does, nor has so many to play with, +nor can come so near making them look as if they were doing the playing +themselves and he was not aware that they were at it. For they are +unobtrusive, and quiet in their ways, and well conducted. His is a humor +which flows softly all around about and over and through the mesh of the +page, pervasive, refreshing, health-giving, and makes no more show and no +more noise than does the circulation of the blood. + +There is another thing which is contentingly noticeable in Mr. Howells's +books. That is his "stage directions"--those artifices which authors +employ to throw a kind of human naturalness around a scene and a +conversation, and help the reader to see the one and get at meanings in +the other which might not be perceived if entrusted unexplained to the +bare words of the talk. Some authors overdo the stage directions, they +elaborate them quite beyond necessity; they spend so much time and take +up so much room in telling us how a person said a thing and how he looked +and acted when he said it that we get tired and vexed and wish he hadn't +said it all. Other authors' directions are brief enough, but it is +seldom that the brevity contains either wit or information. Writers of +this school go in rags, in the matter of state directions; the majority +of them having nothing in stock but a cigar, a laugh, a blush, and a +bursting into tears. In their poverty they work these sorry things to +the bone. They say: + +". . . replied Alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar." (This explains +nothing; it only wastes space.) + +". . . responded Richard, with a laugh." (There was nothing to laugh +about; there never is. The writer puts it in from habit--automatically; +he is paying no attention to his work; or he would see that there is +nothing to laugh at; often, when a remark is unusually and poignantly +flat and silly, he tries to deceive the reader by enlarging the stage +direction and making Richard break into "frenzies of uncontrollable +laughter." This makes the reader sad.) + +". . . murmured Gladys, blushing." (This poor old shop-worn blush is a +tiresome thing. We get so we would rather Gladys would fall out of the +book and break her neck than do it again. She is always doing it, and +usually irrelevantly. Whenever it is her turn to murmur she hangs out +her blush; it is the only thing she's got. In a little while we hate +her, just as we do Richard.) + +". . . repeated Evelyn, bursting into tears." (This kind keep a book +damp all the time. They can't say a thing without crying. They cry so +much about nothing that by and by when they have something to cry ABOUT +they have gone dry; they sob, and fetch nothing; we are not moved. We +are only glad.) + +They gavel me, these stale and overworked stage directions, these carbon +films that got burnt out long ago and cannot now carry any faintest +thread of light. It would be well if they could be relieved from duty +and flung out in the literary back yard to rot and disappear along with +the discarded and forgotten "steeds" and "halidomes" and similar +stage-properties once so dear to our grandfathers. But I am friendly to +Mr. Howells's stage directions; more friendly to them than to any one +else's, I think. They are done with a competent and discriminating art, +and are faithful to the requirements of a state direction's proper and +lawful office, which is to inform. Sometimes they convey a scene and its +conditions so well that I believe I could see the scene and get the +spirit and meaning of the accompanying dialogue if some one would read +merely the stage directions to me and leave out the talk. For instance, +a scene like this, from THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY: + +". . . and she laid her arms with a beseeching gesture on her father's +shoulder." + +". . . she answered, following his gesture with a glance." + +". . . she said, laughing nervously." + +". . . she asked, turning swiftly upon him that strange, searching +glance." + +". . . she answered, vaguely." + +". . . she reluctantly admitted." + +". . . but her voice died wearily away, and she stood looking into his +face with puzzled entreaty." + +Mr. Howells does not repeat his forms, and does not need to; he can +invent fresh ones without limit. It is mainly the repetition over and +over again, by the third-rates, of worn and commonplace and juiceless +forms that makes their novels such a weariness and vexation to us, I +think. We do not mind one or two deliveries of their wares, but as we +turn the pages over and keep on meeting them we presently get tired of +them and wish they would do other things for a change. + +". . . replied Alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar." + +". . . responded Richard, with a laugh." + +". . . murmured Gladys, blushing." + +". . . repeated Evelyn, bursting into tears." + +". . . replied the Earl, flipping the ash from his cigar." + +". . . responded the undertaker, with a laugh." + +". . . murmured the chambermaid, blushing." + +". . . repeated the burglar, bursting into tears." + +". . . replied the conductor, flipping the ash from his cigar." + +". . . responded Arkwright, with a laugh." + +". . . murmured the chief of police, blushing." + +". . . repeated the house-cat, bursting into tears." + +And so on and so on; till at last it ceases to excite. I always notice +stage directions, because they fret me and keep me trying to get out of +their way, just as the automobiles do. At first; then by and by they +become monotonous and I get run over. + +Mr. Howells has done much work, and the spirit of it is as beautiful as +the make of it. I have held him in admiration and affection so many +years that I know by the number of those years that he is old now; but +his heart isn't, nor his pen; and years do not count. Let him have +plenty of them; there is profit in them for us. + + + + + +ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT + +In the appendix to Croker's Boswell's Johnson one finds this anecdote: + +CATO'S SOLILOQUY.--One day Mrs. Gastrel set a little girl to repeat to +him [Dr. Samuel Johnson] Cato's Soliloquy, which she went through very +correctly. The Doctor, after a pause, asked the child: + +"What was to bring Cato to an end?" + +She said it was a knife. + +"No, my dear, it was not so." + +"My aunt Polly said it was a knife." + +"Why, Aunt Polly's knife MAY DO, but it was a DAGGER, my dear." + +He then asked her the meaning of "bane and antidote," which she was +unable to give. Mrs. Gastrel said: + +"You cannot expect so young a child to know the meaning of such words." + +He then said: + +"My dear, how many pence are there in SIXPENCE?" + +"I cannot tell, sir," was the half-terrified reply. + +On this, addressing himself to Mrs. Gastrel, he said: + +"Now, my dear lady, can anything be more ridiculous than to teach a child +Cato's Soliloquy, who does not know how many pence there are in a +sixpence?" + +In a lecture before the Royal Geographical Society Professor Ravenstein +quoted the following list of frantic questions, and said that they had +been asked in an examination: + +Mention all names of places in the world derived from Julius Caesar or +Augustus Caesar. + +Where are the following rivers: Pisuerga, Sakaria, Guadalete, Jalon, +Mulde? + +All you know of the following: Machacha, Pilmo, Schebulos, Crivoscia, +Basces, Mancikert, Taxhem, Citeaux, Meloria, Zutphen. + +The highest peaks of the Karakorum range. + +The number of universities in Prussia. + +Why are the tops of mountains continually covered with snow [sic]? + +Name the length and breadth of the streams of lava which issued from the +Skaptar Jokul in the eruption of 1783. + +That list would oversize nearly anybody's geographical knowledge. Isn't +it reasonably possible that in our schools many of the questions in all +studies are several miles ahead of where the pupil is?--that he is set to +struggle with things that are ludicrously beyond his present reach, +hopelessly beyond his present strength? This remark in passing, and by +way of text; now I come to what I was going to say. + +I have just now fallen upon a darling literary curiosity. It is a little +book, a manuscript compilation, and the compiler sent it to me with the +request that I say whether I think it ought to be published or not. I +said, Yes; but as I slowly grow wise I briskly grow cautious; and so, now +that the publication is imminent, it has seemed to me that I should feel +more comfortable if I could divide up this responsibility with the public +by adding them to the court. Therefore I will print some extracts from +the book, in the hope that they may make converts to my judgment that the +volume has merit which entitles it to publication. + +As to its character. Every one has sampled "English as She is Spoke" and +"English as She is Wrote"; this little volume furnishes us an instructive +array of examples of "English as She is Taught"--in the public schools +of--well, this country. The collection is made by a teacher in those +schools, and all the examples in it are genuine; none of them have been +tampered with, or doctored in any way. From time to time, during several +years, whenever a pupil has delivered himself of anything peculiarly +quaint or toothsome in the course of his recitations, this teacher and +her associates have privately set that thing down in a memorandum-book; +strictly following the original, as to grammar, construction, spelling, +and all; and the result is this literary curiosity. + +The contents of the book consist mainly of answers given by the boys and +girls to questions, said answers being given sometimes verbally, +sometimes in writing. The subjects touched upon are fifteen in number: +I. Etymology; II. Grammar; III. Mathematics; IV. Geography; V. +"Original"; VI. Analysis; VII. History; VIII. "Intellectual"; IX. +Philosophy; X. Physiology; XI. Astronomy; XII. Politics; XIII. Music; +XIV. Oratory; XV. Metaphysics. + +You perceive that the poor little young idea has taken a shot at a good +many kinds of game in the course of the book. Now as to results. Here +are some quaint definitions of words. It will be noticed that in all of +these instances the sound of the word, or the look of it on paper, has +misled the child: + +ABORIGINES, a system of mountains. + +ALIAS, a good man in the Bible. + +AMENABLE, anything that is mean. + +AMMONIA, the food of the gods. + +ASSIDUITY, state of being an acid. + +AURIFEROUS, pertaining to an orifice. + +CAPILLARY, a little caterpillar. + +CORNIFEROUS, rocks in which fossil corn is found. + +EMOLUMENT, a headstone to a grave. + +EQUESTRIAN, one who asks questions. + +EUCHARIST, one who plays euchre. + +FRANCHISE, anything belonging to the French. + +IDOLATER, a very idle person. + +IPECAC, a man who likes a good dinner. + +IRRIGATE, to make fun of. + +MENDACIOUS, what can be mended. + +MERCENARY, one who feels for another. + +PARASITE, a kind of umbrella. + +PARASITE, the murder of an infant. + +PUBLICAN, a man who does his prayers in public. + +TENACIOUS, ten acres of land. + +Here is one where the phrase "publicans and sinners" has got mixed up in +the child's mind with politics, and the result is a definition which +takes one in a sudden and unexpected way: + +REPUBLICAN, a sinner mentioned in the Bible. + +Also in Democratic newspapers now and then. Here are two where the +mistake has resulted from sound assisted by remote fact: + +PLAGIARIST, a writer of plays. + +DEMAGOGUE, a vessel containing beer and other liquids. + +I cannot quite make out what it was that misled the pupil in the +following instances; it would not seem to have been the sound of the +word, nor the look of it in print: + +ASPHYXIA, a grumbling, fussy temper. + +QUARTERNIONS, a bird with a flat beak and no bill, living in New Zealand. + +QUARTERNIONS, the name given to a style of art practiced by the +Phoenicians. + +QUARTERNIONS, a religious convention held every hundred years. + +SIBILANT, the state of being idiotic. + +CROSIER, a staff carried by the Deity. + +In the following sentences the pupil's ear has been deceiving him again: + +The marriage was illegible. + +He was totally dismasted with the whole performance. + +He enjoys riding on a philosopher. + +She was very quick at repertoire. + +He prayed for the waters to subsidize. + +The leopard is watching his sheep. + +They had a strawberry vestibule. + +Here is one which--well, now, how often we do slam right into the truth +without ever suspecting it: + +The men employed by the Gas Company go around and speculate the meter. + +Indeed they do, dear; and when you grow up, many and many's the time you +will notice it in the gas bill. In the following sentences the little +people have some information to convey, every time; but in my case they +fail to connect: the light always went out on the keystone word: + +The coercion of some things is remarkable; as bread and molasses. + +Her hat is contiguous because she wears it on one side. + +He preached to an egregious congregation. + +The captain eliminated a bullet through the man's heart. + +You should take caution and be precarious. + +The supercilious girl acted with vicissitude when the perennial time +came. + +The last is a curiously plausible sentence; one seems to know what it +means, and yet he knows all the time that he doesn't. Here is an odd +(but entirely proper) use of a word, and a most sudden descent from a +lofty philosophical altitude to a very practical and homely illustration: + +We should endeavor to avoid extremes--like those of wasps and bees. + +And here--with "zoological" and "geological" in his mind, but not ready +to his tongue--the small scholar has innocently gone and let out a couple +of secrets which ought never to have been divulged in any circumstances: + +There are a good many donkeys in theological gardens. + +Some of the best fossils are found in theological gardens. + +Under the head of "Grammar" the little scholars furnish the following +information: + +Gender is the distinguishing nouns without regard to sex. + +A verb is something to eat. + +Adverbs should always be used as adjectives and adjectives as adverbs. + +Every sentence and name of God must begin with a caterpillar. + +"Caterpillar" is well enough, but capital letter would have been +stricter. The following is a brave attempt at a solution, but it failed +to liquify: + +When they are going to say some prose or poetry before they say the +poetry or prose they must put a semicolon just after the introduction of +the prose or poetry. + +The chapter on "Mathematics" is full of fruit. From it I take a few +samples--mainly in an unripe state: + +A straight line is any distance between two places. + +Parallel lines are lines that can never meet until they run together. + +A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle. + +Things which are equal to each other are equal to anything else. + +To find the number of square feet in a room you multiply the room by the +number of the feet. The product is the result. + +Right you are. In the matter of geography this little book is +unspeakably rich. The questions do not appear to have applied the +microscope to the subject, as did those quoted by Professor Ravenstein; +still, they proved plenty difficult enough without that. These pupils +did not hunt with a microscope, they hunted with a shot-gun; this is +shown by the crippled condition of the game they brought in: + +America is divided into the Passiffic slope and the Mississippi valey. + +North America is separated by Spain. + +America consists from north to south about five hundred miles. + +The United States is quite a small country compared with some other +countrys, but it about as industrious. + +The capital of the United States is Long Island. + +The five seaports of the U.S. are Newfunlan and Sanfrancisco. + +The principal products of the U.S. is earthquakes and volcanoes. + +The Alaginnies are mountains in Philadelphia. + +The Rocky Mountains are on the western side of Philadelphia. + +Cape Hateras is a vast body of water surrounded by land and flowing into +the Gulf of Mexico. + +Mason and Dixon's line is the Equator. + +One of the leading industries of the United States is mollasses, +book-covers, numbers, gas, teaching, lumber, manufacturers, paper-making, +publishers, coal. + +In Austria the principal occupation is gathering Austrich feathers. + +Gibraltar is an island built on a rock. + +Russia is very cold and tyrannical. + +Sicily is one of the Sandwich Islands. + +Hindoostan flows through the Ganges and empties into the Mediterranean +Sea. + +Ireland is called the Emigrant Isle because it is so beautiful and green. + +The width of the different zones Europe lies in depend upon the +surrounding country. + +The imports of a country are the things that are paid for, the exports +are the things that are not. + +Climate lasts all the time and weather only a few days. + +The two most famous volcanoes of Europe are Sodom and Gomorrah. + +The chapter headed "Analysis" shows us that the pupils in our public +schools are not merely loaded up with those showy facts about geography, +mathematics, and so on, and left in that incomplete state; no, there's +machinery for clarifying and expanding their minds. They are required to +take poems and analyze them, dig out their common sense, reduce them to +statistics, and reproduce them in a luminous prose translation which +shall tell you at a glance what the poet was trying to get at. One +sample will do. Here is a stanza from "The Lady of the Lake," followed +by the pupil's impressive explanation of it: + +Alone, but with unbated zeal, The horseman plied with scourge and steel; +For jaded now and spent with toil, Embossed with foam and dark with soil, +While every gasp with sobs he drew, The laboring stag strained full in +view. + +The man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made +of steel alone with strong ardor not diminishing, for, being tired from +the time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant with +weariness, while every breath for labor he drew with cries full or +sorrow, the young deer made imperfect who worked hard filtered in sight. + +I see, now, that I never understood that poem before. I have had +glimpses of its meaning, it moments when I was not as ignorant with +weariness as usual, but this is the first time the whole spacious idea of +it ever filtered in sight. If I were a public-school pupil I would put +those other studies aside and stick to analysis; for, after all, it is +the thing to spread your mind. + +We come now to historical matters, historical remains, one might say. As +one turns the pages he is impressed with the depth to which one date has +been driven into the American child's head--1492. The date is there, +and it is there to stay. And it is always at hand, always deliverable at +a moment's notice. But the Fact that belongs with it? That is quite +another matter. Only the date itself is familiar and sure: its vast Fact +has failed of lodgment. It would appear that whenever you ask a +public-school pupil when a thing--anything, no matter what--happened,and +he is in doubt, he always rips out his 1492. He applies it to +everything, from the landing of the ark to the introduction of the +horse-car. Well, after all, it is our first date, and so it is right +enough to honor it, and pay the public schools to teach our children to +honor it: + +George Washington was born in 1492. + +Washington wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1492. + +St. Bartholemew was massacred in 1492. + +The Brittains were the Saxons who entered England in 1492 under Julius +Caesar. + +The earth is 1492 miles in circumference. + + + +To proceed with "History" + +Christopher Columbus was called the Father of his Country. + +Queen Isabella of Spain sold her watch and chain and other millinery so +that Columbus could discover America. + +The Indian wars were very desecrating to the country. + +The Indians pursued their warfare by hiding in the bushes and then +scalping them. + +Captain John Smith has been styled the father of his country. His life +was saved by his daughter Pochahantas. + +The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America. + +The Stamp Act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they should be +null and void. + +Washington died in Spain almost broken-hearted. His remains were taken +to the cathedral in Havana. + +Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas. + +John Brown was a very good insane man who tried to get fugitives slaves +into Virginia. He captured all the inhabitants, but was finally +conquered and condemned to his death. The confederasy was formed by the +fugitive slaves. + +Alfred the Great reigned 872 years. He was distinguished for letting +some buckwheat cakes burn, and the lady scolded him. + +Henry Eight was famous for being a great widower haveing lost several +wives. + +Lady Jane Grey studied Greek and Latin and was beheaded after a few days. + +John Bright is noted for an incurable disease. + +Lord James Gordon Bennet instigated the Gordon Riots. + +The Middle Ages come in between antiquity and posterity. + +Luther introduced Christianity into England a good many thousand years +ago. His birthday was November 1883. He was once a Pope. He lived at +the time of the Rebellion of Worms. + +Julius Caesar is noted for his famous telegram dispatch I came I saw I +conquered. + +Julius Caesar was really a very great man. He was a very great soldier +and wrote a book for beginners in the Latin. + +Cleopatra was caused by the death of an asp which she dissolved in a wine +cup. + +The only form of government in Greece was a limited monkey. + +The Persian war lasted about 500 years. + +Greece had only 7 wise men. + +Socrates . . . destroyed some statues and had to drink Shamrock. + +Here is a fact correctly stated; and yet it is phrased with such +ingenious infelicity that it can be depended upon to convey +misinformation every time it is uncarefully unread: + +By the Salic law no woman or descendant of a woman could occupy the +throne. + +To show how far a child can travel in history with judicious and +diligent boosting in the public school, we select the following mosaic: + +Abraham Lincoln was born in Wales in 1599. + +In the chapter headed "Intellectual" I find a great number of most +interesting statements. A sample or two may be found not amiss: + +Bracebridge Hall was written by Henry Irving. + +Show Bound was written by Peter Cooper. + +The House of the Seven Gables was written by Lord Bryant. + +Edgar A. Poe was a very curdling writer. + +Cotton Mather was a writer who invented the cotten gin and wrote +histories. + +Beowulf wrote the Scriptures. + +Ben Johnson survived Shakspeare in some respects. + +In the Canterbury Tale it gives account of King Alfred on his way to the +shrine of Thomas Bucket. + +Chaucer was the father of English pottery. + +Chaucer was a bland verse writer of the third century. + +Chaucer was succeeded by H. Wads. Longfellow an American Writer. His +writings were chiefly prose and nearly one hundred years elapsed. + +Shakspere translated the Scriptures and it was called St. James because +he did it. + +In the middle of the chapter I find many pages of information concerning +Shakespeare's plays, Milton's works, and those of Bacon, Addison, Samuel +Johnson, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Smollett, De Foe, Locke, Pope, +Swift, Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, Wordsworth, Gibbon, Byron, Coleridge, +Hood, Scott, Macaulay, George Eliot, Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray, +Browning, Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, and Disraeli--a fact which shows that +into the restricted stomach of the public-school pupil is shoveled every +year the blood, bone, and viscera of a gigantic literature, and the same +is there digested and disposed of in a most successful and characteristic +and gratifying public-school way. I have space for but a trifling few of +the results: + +Lord Byron was the son of an heiress and a drunken man. + +Wm. Wordsworth wrote the Barefoot Boy and Imitations on Immortality. + +Gibbon wrote a history of his travels in Italy. This was original. + +George Eliot left a wife and children who mourned greatly for his genius. + +George Eliot Miss Mary Evans Mrs. Cross Mrs. Lewis was the greatest +female poet unless George Sands is made an exception of. + +Bulwell is considered a good writer. + +Sir Walter Scott Charles Bronte Alfred the Great and Johnson were the +first great novelists. + +Thomas Babington Makorlay graduated at Harvard and then studied law, he +was raised to the peerage as baron in 1557 and died in 1776. + +Here are two or three miscellaneous facts that may be of value, if taken +in moderation: + +Homer's writings are Homer's Essays Virgil the Aenid and Paradise lost +some people say that these poems were not written by Homer but by another +man of the same name. + +A sort of sadness kind of shone in Bryant's poems. + +Holmes is a very profligate and amusing writer. + +When the public-school pupil wrestles with the political features of the +Great Republic, they throw him sometimes: + +A bill becomes a law when the President vetoes it. + +The three departments of the government is the President rules the world, +the governor rules the State, the mayor rules the city. + +The first conscientious Congress met in Philadelphia. + +The Constitution of the United States was established to ensure domestic +hostility. + +Truth crushed to earth will rise again. As follows: + +The Constitution of the United States is that part of the book at the +end which nobody reads. + +And here she rises once more and untimely. There should be a limit to +public-school instruction; it cannot be wise or well to let the young +find out everything: + +Congress is divided into civilized half civilized and savage. + +Here are some results of study in music and oratory: + +An interval in music is the distance on the keyboard from one piano to +the next. + +A rest means you are not to sing it. + +Emphasis is putting more distress on one word than another. + +The chapter on "Physiology" contains much that ought not to be lost to +science: + +Physillogigy is to study about your bones stummick and vertebry. + +Occupations which are injurious to health are cabolic acid gas which is +impure blood. + +We have an upper and lower skin. The lower skin moves all the time and +the upper skin moves when we do. + +The body is mostly composed of water and about one half is avaricious +tissue. + +The stomach is a small pear-shaped bone situated in the body. + +The gastric juice keeps the bones from creaking. + +The Chyle flows up the middle of the backbone and reaches the heart where +it meets the oxygen and is purified. + +The salivary glands are used to salivate the body. + +In the stomach starch is changed to cane sugar and cane sugar to sugar +cane. + +The olfactory nerve enters the cavity of the orbit and is developed into +the special sense of hearing. + +The growth of a tooth begins in the back of the mouth and extends to the +stomach. + +If we were on a railroad track and a train was coming the train would +deafen our ears so that we couldn't see to get off the track. + +If, up to this point, none of my quotations have added flavor to the +Johnsonian anecdote at the head of this article, let us make another +attempt: + +The theory that intuitive truths are discovered by the light of nature +originated from St. John's interpretation of a passage in the Gospel of +Plato. + +The weight of the earth is found by comparing a mass of known lead with +that of a mass of unknown lead. + +To find the weight of the earth take the length of a degree on a meridian +and multiply by 6 1/2 pounds. + +The spheres are to each other as the squares of their homologous sides. + +A body will go just as far in the first second as the body will go plus +the force of gravity and that's equal to twice what the body will go. + +Specific gravity is the weight to be compared weight of an equal volume +of or that is the weight of a body compared with the weight of an equal +volume. + +The law of fluid pressure divide the different forms of organized bodies +by the form of attraction and the number increased will be the form. + +Inertia is that property of bodies by virtue of which it cannot change +its own condition of rest or motion. In other words it is the negative +quality of passiveness either in recoverable latency or insipient +latescence. + +If a laugh is fair here, not the struggling child, nor the unintelligent +teacher--or rather the unintelligent Boards, Committees, and +Trustees--are the proper target for it. All through this little book one +detects the signs of a certain probable fact--that a large part of the +pupil's "instruction" consists in cramming him with obscure and wordy +"rules" which he does not understand and has no time to understand. It +would be as useful to cram him with brickbats; they would at least stay. +In a town in the interior of New York, a few years ago, a gentleman set +forth a mathematical problem and proposed to give a prize to every +public-school pupil who should furnish the correct solution of it. +Twenty-two of the brightest boys in the public schools entered the +contest. The problem was not a very difficult one for pupils of their +mathematical rank and standing, yet they all failed--by a hair--through +one trifling mistake or another. Some searching questions were asked, +when it turned out that these lads were as glib as parrots with the +"rules," but could not reason out a single rule or explain the principle +underlying it. Their memories had been stocked, but not their +understandings. It was a case of brickbat culture, pure and simple. + +There are several curious "compositions" in the little book, and we must +make room for one. It is full of naivete, brutal truth, and +unembarrassed directness, and is the funniest (genuine) boy's composition +I think I have ever seen: + + + +ON GIRLS + +Girls are very stuck up and dignefied in their maner and be have your. +They think more of dress than anything and like to play with dowls and +rags. They cry if they see a cow in a far distance and are afraid of +guns. They stay at home all the time and go to church on Sunday. They +are al-ways sick. They are always funy and making fun of boy's hands and +they say how dirty. They cant play marbels. I pity them poor things. +They make fun of boys and then turn round and love them. I dont beleave +they ever kiled a cat or anything. They look out every nite and say oh +ant the moon lovely. Thir is one thing I have not told and that is they +al-ways now their lessons bettern boys. + +From Mr. Edward Channing's recent article in SCIENCE: + +The marked difference between the books now being produced by French, +English, and American travelers, on the one hand, and German explorers, +on the other, is too great to escape attention. That difference is due +entirely to the fact that in school and university the German is taught, +in the first place to see, and in the second place to understand what he +does see. + + + + + +A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET + +(This article, written during the autumn of 1899, was about the last +writing done by Mark Twain on any impersonal subject.) + +I have had a kindly feeling, a friendly feeling, a cousinly feeling +toward Simplified Spelling, from the beginning of the movement three +years ago, but nothing more inflamed than that. It seemed to me to merely +propose to substitute one inadequacy for another; a sort of patching and +plugging poor old dental relics with cement and gold and porcelain paste; +what was really needed was a new set of teeth. That is to say, a new +ALPHABET. + +The heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet. It doesn't know +how to spell, and can't be taught. In this it is like all other +alphabets except one--the phonographic. This is the only competent +alphabet in the world. It can spell and correctly pronounce any word in +our language. + +That admirable alphabet, that brilliant alphabet, that inspired alphabet, +can be learned in an hour or two. In a week the student can learn to +write it with some little facility, and to read it with considerable +ease. I know, for I saw it tried in a public school in Nevada forty-five +years ago, and was so impressed by the incident that it has remained in +my memory ever since. + +I wish we could adopt it in place of our present written (and printed) +character. I mean SIMPLY the alphabet; simply the consonants and the +vowels--I don't mean any REDUCTIONS or abbreviations of them, such as the +shorthand writer uses in order to get compression and speed. No, I would +SPELL EVERY WORD OUT. + +I will insert the alphabet here as I find it in Burnz's PHONIC SHORTHAND. +[Figure 1] It is arranged on the basis of Isaac Pitman's PHONOGRAPHY. +Isaac Pitman was the originator and father of scientific phonography. It +is used throughout the globe. It was a memorable invention. He made it +public seventy-three years ago. The firm of Isaac Pitman & Sons, New +York, still exists, and they continue the master's work. + +What should we gain? + +First of all, we could spell DEFINITELY--and correctly--any word you +please, just by the SOUND of it. We can't do that with our present +alphabet. For instance, take a simple, every-day word PHTHISIS. If we +tried to spell it by the sound of it, we should make it TYSIS, and be +laughed at by every educated person. + +Secondly, we should gain in REDUCTION OF LABOR in writing. + +Simplified Spelling makes valuable reductions in the case of several +hundred words, but the new spelling must be LEARNED. You can't spell +them by the sound; you must get them out of the book. + +But even if we knew the simplified form for every word in the language, +the phonographic alphabet would still beat the Simplified Speller "hands +down" in the important matter of economy of labor. I will illustrate: + +PRESENT FORM: through, laugh, highland. + +SIMPLIFIED FORM: thru, laff, hyland. + +PHONOGRAPHIC FORM: [Figure 2] + +To write the word "through," the pen has to make twenty-one strokes. + +To write the word "thru," then pen has to make twelve strokes--a good +saving. + +To write that same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to +make only THREE strokes. + +To write the word "laugh," the pen has to make FOURTEEN strokes. + +To write "laff," the pen has to make the SAME NUMBER of strokes--no labor +is saved to the penman. + +To write the same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to +make only THREE strokes. + +To write the word "highland," the pen has to make twenty-two strokes. + +To write "hyland," the pen has to make eighteen strokes. + +To write that word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make +only FIVE strokes. [Figure 3] + +To write the words "phonographic alphabet," the pen has to make +fifty-three strokes. + +To write "fonografic alfabet," the pen has to make fifty strokes. To the +penman, the saving in labor is insignificant. + +To write that word (with vowels) with the phonographic alphabet, the pen +has to make only SEVENTEEN strokes. + +Without the vowels, only THIRTEEN strokes. [Figure 4] The vowels are +hardly necessary, this time. + +We make five pen-strokes in writing an m. Thus: [Figure 5] a stroke +down; a stroke up; a second stroke down; a second stroke up; a final +stroke down. Total, five. The phonographic alphabet accomplishes the m +with a single stroke--a curve, like a parenthesis that has come home +drunk and has fallen face down right at the front door where everybody +that goes along will see him and say, Alas! + +When our written m is not the end of a word, but is otherwise located, it +has to be connected with the next letter, and that requires another +pen-stroke, making six in all, before you get rid of that m. But never +mind about the connecting strokes--let them go. Without counting them, +the twenty-six letters of our alphabet consumed about eighty pen-strokes +for their construction--about three pen-strokes per letter. + +It is THREE TIMES THE NUMBER required by the phonographic alphabet. It +requires but ONE stroke for each letter. + +My writing-gait is--well, I don't know what it is, but I will time myself +and see. Result: it is twenty-four words per minute. I don't mean +composing; I mean COPYING. There isn't any definite composing-gait. + +Very well, my copying-gait is 1,440 words per hour--say 1,500. If I +could use the phonographic character with facility I could do the 1,500 +in twenty minutes. I could do nine hours' copying in three hours; I +could do three years' copying in one year. Also, if I had a typewriting +machine with the phonographic alphabet on it--oh, the miracles I could +do! + +I am not pretending to write that character well. I have never had a +lesson, and I am copying the letters from the book. But I can accomplish +my desire, at any rate, which is, to make the reader get a good and clear +idea of the advantage it would be to us if we could discard our present +alphabet and put this better one in its place--using it in books, +newspapers, with the typewriter, and with the pen. + +[Figure 6]--MAN DOG HORSE. I think it is graceful and would look comely +in print. And consider--once more, I beg--what a labor-saver it is! Ten +pen-strokes with the one system to convey those three words above, and +thirty-three by the other! [Figure 6] I mean, in SOME ways, not in all. +I suppose I might go so far as to say in most ways, and be within the +facts, but never mind; let it go at SOME. One of the ways in which it +exercises this birthright is--as I think--continuing to use our laughable +alphabet these seventy-three years while there was a rational one at +hand, to be had for the taking. + +It has taken five hundred years to simplify some of Chaucer's rotten +spelling--if I may be allowed to use to frank a term as that--and it will +take five hundred years more to get our exasperating new Simplified +Corruptions accepted and running smoothly. And we sha'n't be any better +off then than we are now; for in that day we shall still have the +privilege the Simplifiers are exercising now: ANYBODY can change the +spelling that wants to. + +BUT YOU CAN'T CHANGE THE PHONOGRAPHIC SPELLING; THERE ISN'T ANY WAY. It +will always follow the SOUND. If you want to change the spelling, you +have to change the sound first. + +Mind, I myself am a Simplified Speller; I belong to that unhappy guild +that is patiently and hopefully trying to reform our drunken old alphabet +by reducing his whiskey. Well, it will improve him. When they get +through and have reformed him all they can by their system he will be +only HALF drunk. Above that condition their system can never lift him. +There is no competent, and lasting, and real reform for him but to take +away his whiskey entirely, and fill up his jug with Pitman's wholesome +and undiseased alphabet. + +One great drawback to Simplified Spelling is, that in print a simplified +word looks so like the very nation! and when you bunch a whole squadron +of the Simplified together the spectacle is very nearly unendurable. + +The da ma ov koars kum when the publik ma be expektd to get rekonsyled to +the bezair asspekt of the Simplified Kombynashuns, but--if I may be +allowed the expression--is it worth the wasted time? [Figure 7] + +To see our letters put together in ways to which we are not accustomed +offends the eye, and also takes the EXPRESSION out of the words. + +La on, Makduf, and damd be he hoo furst krys hold, enuf! + +It doesn't thrill you as it used to do. The simplifications have sucked +the thrill all out of it. + +But a written character with which we are NOT ACQUAINTED does not offend +us--Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, and the others--they have an +interesting look, and we see beauty in them, too. And this is true of +hieroglyphics, as well. There is something pleasant and engaging about +the mathematical signs when we do not understand them. The mystery +hidden in these things has a fascination for us: we can't come across a +printed page of shorthand without being impressed by it and wishing we +could read it. + +Very well, what I am offering for acceptance and adopting is not +shorthand, but longhand, written with the SHORTHAND ALPHABET UNREACHED. +You can write three times as many words in a minute with it as you can +write with our alphabet. And so, in a way, it IS properly a shorthand. +It has a pleasant look, too; a beguiling look, an inviting look. I will +write something in it, in my rude and untaught way: [Figure 8] + +Even when _I_ do it it comes out prettier than it does in Simplified +Spelling. Yes, and in the Simplified it costs one hundred and +twenty-three pen-strokes to write it, whereas in the phonographic it +costs only twenty-nine. + +[Figure 9] is probably [Figure 10]. + +Let us hope so, anyway. + +AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY + +I + +This line of hieroglyphics was for fourteen years the despair of all the +scholars who labored over the mysteries of the Rosetta stone: [Figure 1] + +After five years of study Champollion translated it thus: + +Therefore let the worship of Epiphanes be maintained in all the temples, +this upon pain of death. + +That was the twenty-forth translation that had been furnished by +scholars. For a time it stood. But only for a time. Then doubts began +to assail it and undermine it, and the scholars resumed their labors. +Three years of patient work produced eleven new translations; among them, +this, by Gr:unfeldt, was received with considerable favor: + +The horse of Epiphanes shall be maintained at the public expense; this +upon pain of death. + +But the following rendering, by Gospodin, was received by the learned +world with yet greater favor: + +The priest shall explain the wisdom of Epiphanes to all these people, +and these shall listen with reverence, upon pain of death. + +Seven years followed, in which twenty-one fresh and widely varying +renderings were scored--none of them quite convincing. But now, at last, +came Rawlinson, the youngest of all the scholars, with a translation +which was immediately and universally recognized as being the correct +version, and his name became famous in a day. So famous, indeed, that +even the children were familiar with it; and such a noise did the +achievement itself make that not even the noise of the monumental +political event of that same year--the flight from Elba--was able to +smother it to silence. Rawlinson's version reads as follows: + +Therefore, walk not away from the wisdom of Epiphanes, but turn and +follow it; so shall it conduct thee to the temple's peace, and soften for +thee the sorrows of life and the pains of death. + +Here is another difficult text: [Figure 2] + +It is demotic--a style of Egyptian writing and a phase of the language +which has perished from the knowledge of all men twenty-five hundred +years before the Christian era. + +Our red Indians have left many records, in the form of pictures, upon our +crags and boulders. It has taken our most gifted and painstaking +students two centuries to get at the meanings hidden in these pictures; +yet there are still two little lines of hieroglyphics among the figures +grouped upon the Dighton Rocks which they have not succeeds in +interpreting to their satisfaction. These: [Figure 3] + +The suggested solutions are practically innumerable; they would fill a +book. + +Thus we have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only +when we set out to discover the secret of God that our difficulties +disappear. It was always so. In antique Roman times it was the custom +of the Deity to try to conceal His intentions in the entrails of birds, +and this was patiently and hopefully continued century after century, +although the attempted concealment never succeeded, in a single recorded +instance. The augurs could read entrails as easily as a modern child can +read coarse print. Roman history is full of the marvels of +interpretation which these extraordinary men performed. These strange +and wonderful achievements move our awe and compel our admiration. Those +men could pierce to the marrow of a mystery instantly. If the +Rosetta-stone idea had been introduced it would have defeated them, but +entrails had no embarrassments for them. Entrails have gone out, +now--entrails and dreams. It was at last found out that as hiding-places +for the divine intentions they were inadequate. + +A part of the wall of Valletri in former times been struck with thunder, +the response of the soothsayers was, that a native of that town would +some time or other arrive at supreme power. --BOHN'S SUETONIUS, p. 138. + +"Some time or other." It looks indefinite, but no matter, it happened, +all the same; one needed only to wait, and be patient, and keep watch, +then he would find out that the thunder-stroke had Caesar Augustus in +mind, and had come to give notice. + +There were other advance-advertisements. One of them appeared just +before Caesar Augustus was born, and was most poetic and touching and +romantic in its feelings and aspects. It was a dream. It was dreamed by +Caesar Augustus's mother, and interpreted at the usual rates: + +Atia, before her delivery, dreamed that her bowels stretched to the +stars and expanded through the whole circuit of heaven and +earth.--SUETONIUS, p. 139. + +That was in the augur's line, and furnished him no difficulties, but it +would have taken Rawlinson and Champollion fourteen years to make sure of +what it meant, because they would have been surprised and dizzy. It +would have been too late to be valuable, then, and the bill for service +would have been barred by the statute of limitation. + +In those old Roman days a gentleman's education was not complete until he +had taken a theological course at the seminary and learned how to +translate entrails. Caesar Augustus's education received this final +polish. All through his life, whenever he had poultry on the menu he +saved the interiors and kept himself informed of the Deity's plans by +exercising upon those interiors the arts of augury. + +In his first consulship, while he was observing the auguries, twelve +vultures presented themselves, as they had done to Romulus. And when he +offered sacrifice, the livers of all the victims were folded inward in +the lower part; a circumstance which was regarded by those present who +had skill in things of that nature, as an indubitable prognostic of great +and wonderful fortune.--SUETONIUS, p. 141. + +"Indubitable" is a strong word, but no doubt it was justified, if the +livers were really turned that way. In those days chicken livers were +strangely and delicately sensitive to coming events, no matter how far +off they might be; and they could never keep still, but would curl and +squirm like that, particularly when vultures came and showed interest in +that approaching great event and in breakfast. + +II + +We may now skip eleven hundred and thirty or forty years, which brings us +down to enlightened Christian times and the troubled days of King Stephen +of England. The augur has had his day and has been long ago forgotten; +the priest had fallen heir to his trade. + +King Henry is dead; Stephen, that bold and outrageous person, comes +flying over from Normandy to steal the throne from Henry's daughter. He +accomplished his crime, and Henry of Huntington, a priest of high degree, +mourns over it in his Chronicle. The Archbishop of Canterbury +consecrated Stephen: "wherefore the Lord visited the Archbishop with the +same judgment which he had inflicted upon him who struck Jeremiah the +great priest: he died with a year." + +Stephen's was the greater offense, but Stephen could wait; not so the +Archbishop, apparently. + +The kingdom was a prey to intestine wars; slaughter, fire, and rapine +spread ruin throughout the land; cries of distress, horror, and woe rose +in every quarter. + +That was the result of Stephen's crime. These unspeakable conditions +continued during nineteen years. Then Stephen died as comfortably as any +man ever did, and was honorably buried. It makes one pity the poor +Archbishop, and with that he, too, could have been let off as leniently. +How did Henry of Huntington know that the Archbishop was sent to his +grave by judgment of God for consecrating Stephen? He does not explain. +Neither does he explain why Stephen was awarded a pleasanter death than +he was entitled to, while the aged King Henry, his predecessor, who had +ruled England thirty-five years to the people's strongly worded +satisfaction, was condemned to close his life in circumstances most +distinctly unpleasant, inconvenient, and disagreeable. His was probably +the most uninspiring funeral that is set down in history. There is not a +detail about it that is attractive. It seems to have been just the +funeral for Stephen, and even at this far-distant day it is matter of +just regret that by an indiscretion the wrong man got it. + +Whenever God punishes a man, Henry of Huntington knows why it was done, +and tells us; and his pen is eloquent with admiration; but when a man has +earned punishment, and escapes, he does not explain. He is evidently +puzzled, but he does not say anything. I think it is often apparent that +he is pained by these discrepancies, but loyally tries his best not to +show it. When he cannot praise, he delivers himself of a silence so +marked that a suspicious person could mistake it for suppressed +criticism. However, he has plenty of opportunities to feel contented +with the way things go--his book is full of them. + +King David of Scotland . . . under color of religion caused his +followers to deal most barbarously with the English. They ripped open +women, tossed children on the points of spears, butchered priests at the +altars, and, cutting off the heads from the images on crucifixes, placed +them on the bodies of the slain, while in exchange they fixed on the +crucifixes the heads of their victims. Wherever the Scots came, there +was the same scene of horror and cruelty: women shrieking, old men +lamenting, amid the groans of the dying and the despair of the living. + +But the English got the victory. + +Then the chief of the men of Lothian fell, pierced by an arrow, and all +his followers were put to flight. For the Almighty was offended at them +and their strength was rent like a cobweb. + +Offended at them for what? For committing those fearful butcheries? +No, for that was the common custom on both sides, and not open to +criticism. Then was it for doing the butcheries "under cover of +religion"? No, that was not it; religious feeling was often expressed in +that fervent way all through those old centuries. The truth is, He was +not offended at "them" at all; He was only offended at their king, who +had been false to an oath. Then why did not He put the punishment upon +the king instead of upon "them"? It is a difficult question. One can +see by the Chronicle that the "judgments" fell rather customarily upon +the wrong person, but Henry of Huntington does not explain why. Here is +one that went true; the chronicler's satisfaction in it is not hidden: + +In the month of August, Providence displayed its justice in a remarkable +manner; for two of the nobles who had converted monasteries into +fortifications, expelling the monks, their sin being the same, met with a +similar punishment. Robert Marmion was one, Godfrey de Mandeville the +other. Robert Marmion, issuing forth against the enemy, was slain under +the walls of the monastery, being the only one who fell, though he was +surrounded by his troops. Dying excommunicated, he became subject to +death everlasting. In like manner Earl Godfrey was singled out among his +followers, and shot with an arrow by a common foot-soldier. He made light +of the wound, but he died of it in a few days, under excommunication. +See here the like judgment of God, memorable through all ages! + +The exaltation jars upon me; not because of the death of the men, for +they deserved that, but because it is death eternal, in white-hot fire +and flame. It makes my flesh crawl. I have not known more than three +men, or perhaps four, in my whole lifetime, whom I would rejoice to see +writhing in those fires for even a year, let alone forever. I believe I +would relent before the year was up, and get them out if I could. I +think that in the long run, if a man's wife and babies, who had not +harmed me, should come crying and pleading, I couldn't stand it; I know I +should forgive him and let him go, even if he had violated a monastery. +Henry of Huntington has been watching Godfrey and Marmion for nearly +seven hundred and fifty years, now, but I couldn't do it, I know I +couldn't. I am soft and gentle in my nature, and I should have forgiven +them seventy-and-seven times, long ago. And I think God has; but this is +only an opinion, and not authoritative, like Henry of Huntington's +interpretations. I could learn to interpret, but I have never tried; I +get so little time. + +All through his book Henry exhibits his familiarity with the intentions +of God, and with the reasons for his intentions. Sometimes--very often, +in fact--the act follows the intention after such a wide interval of time +that one wonders how Henry could fit one act out of a hundred to one +intention out of a hundred and get the thing right every time when there +was such abundant choice among acts and intentions. Sometimes a man +offends the Deity with a crime, and is punished for it thirty years +later; meantime he was committed a million other crimes: no matter, Henry +can pick out the one that brought the worms. Worms were generally used in +those days for the slaying of particularly wicked people. This has gone +out, now, but in old times it was a favorite. It always indicated a case +of "wrath." For instance: + +. . . the just God avenging Robert Fitzhilderbrand's perfidy, a worm +grew in his vitals, which gradually gnawing its way through his +intestines fattened on the abandoned man till, tortured with excruciating +sufferings and venting himself in bitter moans, he was by a fitting +punishment brought to his end. --(P. 400.) + +It was probably an alligator, but we cannot tell; we only know it was a +particular breed, and only used to convey wrath. Some authorities think +it was an ichthyosaurus, but there is much doubt. + +However, one thing we do know; and that is that that worm had been due +years and years. Robert F. had violated a monastery once; he had +committed unprintable crimes since, and they had been permitted--under +disapproval--but the ravishment of the monastery had not been forgotten +nor forgiven, and the worm came at last. + +Why were these reforms put off in this strange way? What was to be +gained by it? Did Henry of Huntington really know his facts, or was he +only guessing? Sometimes I am half persuaded that he is only a guesser, +and not a good one. The divine wisdom must surely be of the better +quality than he makes it out to be. + +Five hundred years before Henry's time some forecasts of the Lord's +purposes were furnished by a pope, who perceived, by certain perfectly +trustworthy signs furnished by the Deity for the information of His +familiars, that the end of the world was + +. . . about to come. But as this end of the world draws near many +things are at hand which have not before happened, as changes in the air, +terrible signs in the heavens, tempests out of the common order of the +seasons, wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes in various places; all +which will not happen in our days, but after our days all will come to +pass. + +Still, the end was so near that these signs were "sent before that we +may be careful for our souls and be found prepared to meet the impending +judgment." + +That was thirteen hundred years ago. This is really no improvement on +the work of the Roman augurs. + + + + + +CONCERNING TOBACCO + +As concerns tobacco, there are many superstitions. And the chiefest is +this--that there is a STANDARD governing the matter, whereas there is +nothing of the kind. Each man's own preference is the only standard for +him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command +him. A congress of all the tobacco-lovers in the world could not elect a +standard which would be binding upon you or me, or would even much +influence us. + +The next superstition is that a man has a standard of his own. He hasn't. +He thinks he has, but he hasn't. He thinks he can tell what he regards +as a good cigar from what he regards as a bad one--but he can't. He goes +by the brand, yet imagines he goes by the flavor. One may palm off the +worst counterfeit upon him; if it bears his brand he will smoke it +contentedly and never suspect. + +Children of twenty-five, who have seven years experience, try to tell me +what is a good cigar and what isn't. Me, who never learned to smoke, but +always smoked; me, who came into the world asking for a light. + +No one can tell me what is a good cigar--for me. I am the only judge. +People who claim to know say that I smoke the worst cigars in the world. +They bring their own cigars when they come to my house. They betray an +unmanly terror when I offer them a cigar; they tell lies and hurry away +to meet engagements which they have not made when they are threatened +with the hospitalities of my box. Now then, observe what superstition, +assisted by a man's reputation, can do. I was to have twelve personal +friends to supper one night. One of them was as notorious for costly and +elegant cigars as I was for cheap and devilish ones. I called at his +house and when no one was looking borrowed a double handful of his very +choicest; cigars which cost him forty cents apiece and bore red-and-gold +labels in sign of their nobility. I removed the labels and put the +cigars into a box with my favorite brand on it--a brand which those +people all knew, and which cowed them as men are cowed by an epidemic. +They took these cigars when offered at the end of the supper, and lit +them and sternly struggled with them--in dreary silence, for hilarity +died when the fell brand came into view and started around--but their +fortitude held for a short time only; then they made excuses and filed +out, treading on one another's heels with indecent eagerness; and in the +morning when I went out to observe results the cigars lay all between the +front door and the gate. All except one--that one lay in the plate of the +man from whom I had cabbaged the lot. One or two whiffs was all he could +stand. He told me afterward that some day I would get shot for giving +people that kind of cigars to smoke. + +Am I certain of my own standard? Perfectly; yes, absolutely--unless +somebody fools me by putting my brand on some other kind of cigar; for no +doubt I am like the rest, and know my cigar by the brand instead of by +the flavor. However, my standard is a pretty wide one and covers a good +deal of territory. To me, almost any cigar is good that nobody else will +smoke, and to me almost all cigars are bad that other people consider +good. Nearly any cigar will do me, except a Havana. People think they +hurt my feelings when then come to my house with their life preservers +on--I mean, with their own cigars in their pockets. It is an error; I +take care of myself in a similar way. When I go into danger--that is, +into rich people's houses, where, in the nature of things, they will have +high-tariff cigars, red-and-gilt girded and nested in a rosewood box +along with a damp sponge, cigars which develop a dismal black ash and +burn down the side and smell, and will grow hot to the fingers, and will +go on growing hotter and hotter, and go on smelling more and more +infamously and unendurably the deeper the fire tunnels down inside below +the thimbleful of honest tobacco that is in the front end, the furnisher +of it praising it all the time and telling you how much the deadly thing +cost--yes, when I go into that sort of peril I carry my own defense +along; I carry my own brand--twenty-seven cents a barrel--and I live to +see my family again. I may seem to light his red-gartered cigar, but +that is only for courtesy's sake; I smuggle it into my pocket for the +poor, of whom I know many, and light one of my own; and while he praises +it I join in, but when he says it cost forty-five cents I say nothing, +for I know better. + +However, to say true, my tastes are so catholic that I have never seen +any cigars that I really could not smoke, except those that cost a dollar +apiece. I have examined those and know that they are made of dog-hair, +and not good dog-hair at that. + +I have a thoroughly satisfactory time in Europe, for all over the +Continent one finds cigars which not even the most hardened newsboys in +New York would smoke. I brought cigars with me, the last time; I will +not do that any more. In Italy, as in France, the Government is the only +cigar-peddler. Italy has three or four domestic brands: the Minghetti, +the Trabuco, the Virginia, and a very coarse one which is a modification +of the Virginia. The Minghettis are large and comely, and cost three +dollars and sixty cents a hundred; I can smoke a hundred in seven days +and enjoy every one of them. The Trabucos suit me, too; I don't remember +the price. But one has to learn to like the Virginia, nobody is born +friendly to it. It looks like a rat-tail file, but smokes better, some +think. It has a straw through it; you pull this out, and it leaves a +flue, otherwise there would be no draught, not even as much as there is +to a nail. Some prefer a nail at first. However, I like all the French, +Swiss, German, and Italian domestic cigars, and have never cared to +inquire what they are made of; and nobody would know, anyhow, perhaps. +There is even a brand of European smoking-tobacco that I like. It is a +brand used by the Italian peasants. It is loose and dry and black, and +looks like tea-grounds. When the fire is applied it expands, and climbs +up and towers above the pipe, and presently tumbles off inside of one's +vest. The tobacco itself is cheap, but it raises the insurance. It is +as I remarked in the beginning--the taste for tobacco is a matter of +superstition. There are no standards--no real standards. Each man's +preference is the only standard for him, the only one which he can +accept, the only one which can command him. + + + + + +THE BEE + +It was Maeterlinck who introduced me to the bee. I mean, in the +psychical and in the poetical way. I had had a business introduction +earlier. It was when I was a boy. It is strange that I should remember +a formality like that so long; it must be nearly sixty years. + +Bee scientists always speak of the bee as she. It is because all the +important bees are of that sex. In the hive there is one married bee, +called the queen; she has fifty thousand children; of these, about one +hundred are sons; the rest are daughters. Some of the daughters are +young maids, some are old maids, and all are virgins and remain so. + +Every spring the queen comes out of the hive and flies away with one of +her sons and marries him. The honeymoon lasts only an hour or two; then +the queen divorces her husband and returns home competent to lay two +million eggs. This will be enough to last the year, but not more than +enough, because hundreds of bees are drowned every day, and other +hundreds are eaten by birds, and it is the queen's business to keep the +population up to standard--say, fifty thousand. She must always have +that many children on hand and efficient during the busy season, which is +summer, or winter would catch the community short of food. She lays from +two thousand to three thousand eggs a day, according to the demand; and +she must exercise judgment, and not lay more than are needed in a slim +flower-harvest, nor fewer than are required in a prodigal one, or the +board of directors will dethrone her and elect a queen that has more +sense. + +There are always a few royal heirs in stock and ready to take her +place--ready and more than anxious to do it, although she is their own +mother. These girls are kept by themselves, and are regally fed and +tended from birth. No other bees get such fine food as they get, or live +such a high and luxurious life. By consequence they are larger and longer +and sleeker than their working sisters. And they have a curved sting, +shaped like a scimitar, while the others have a straight one. + +A common bee will sting any one or anybody, but a royalty stings +royalties only. A common bee will sting and kill another common bee, for +cause, but when it is necessary to kill the queen other ways are +employed. When a queen has grown old and slack and does not lay eggs +enough one of her royal daughters is allowed to come to attack her, the +rest of the bees looking on at the duel and seeing fair play. It is a +duel with the curved stings. If one of the fighters gets hard pressed +and gives it up and runs, she is brought back and must try again--once, +maybe twice; then, if she runs yet once more for her life, judicial death +is her portion; her children pack themselves into a ball around her +person and hold her in that compact grip two or three days, until she +starves to death or is suffocated. Meantime the victor bee is receiving +royal honors and performing the one royal function--laying eggs. + +As regards the ethics of the judicial assassination of the queen, that is +a matter of politics, and will be discussed later, in its proper place. + +During substantially the whole of her short life of five or six years the +queen lives in Egyptian darkness and stately seclusion of the royal +apartments, with none about her but plebeian servants, who give her empty +lip-affection in place of the love which her heart hungers for; who spy +upon her in the interest of her waiting heirs, and report and exaggerate +her defects and deficiencies to them; who fawn upon her and flatter her +to her face and slander her behind her back; who grovel before her in the +day of her power and forsake her in her age and weakness. There she +sits, friendless, upon her throne through the long night of her life, cut +off from the consoling sympathies and sweet companionship and loving +endearments which she craves, by the gilded barriers of her awful rank; a +forlorn exile in her own house and home, weary object of formal +ceremonies and machine-made worship, winged child of the sun, native to +the free air and the blue skies and the flowery fields, doomed by the +splendid accident of her birth to trade this priceless heritage for a +black captivity, a tinsel grandeur, and a loveless life, with shame and +insult at the end and a cruel death--and condemned by the human instinct +in her to hold the bargain valuable! + +Huber, Lubbock, Maeterlinck--in fact, all the great authorities--are +agreed in denying that the bee is a member of the human family. I do not +know why they have done this, but I think it is from dishonest motives. +Why, the innumerable facts brought to light by their own painstaking and +exhaustive experiments prove that if there is a master fool in the world, +it is the bee. That seems to settle it. + +But that is the way of the scientist. He will spend thirty years in +building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a certain +theory; then he is so happy in his achievement that as a rule he +overlooks the main chief fact of all--that his accumulation proves an +entirely different thing. When you point out this miscarriage to him he +does not answer your letters; when you call to convince him, the servant +prevaricates and you do not get in. Scientists have odious manners, +except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them. + +To be strictly fair, I will concede that now and then one of them will +answer your letter, but when they do they avoid the issue--you cannot pin +them down. When I discovered that the bee was human I wrote about it to +all those scientists whom I have just mentioned. For evasions, I have +seen nothing to equal the answers I got. + +After the queen, the personage next in importance in the hive is the +virgin. The virgins are fifty thousand or one hundred thousand in +number, and they are the workers, the laborers. No work is done, in the +hive or out of it, save by them. The males do not work, the queen does +no work, unless laying eggs is work, but it does not seem so to me. +There are only two million of them, anyway, and all of five months to +finish the contract in. The distribution of work in a hive is as +cleverly and elaborately specialized as it is in a vast American +machine-shop or factory. A bee that has been trained to one of the many +and various industries of the concern doesn't know how to exercise any +other, and would be offended if asked to take a hand in anything outside +of her profession. She is as human as a cook; and if you should ask the +cook to wait on the table, you know what will happen. Cooks will play +the piano if you like, but they draw the line there. In my time I have +asked a cook to chop wood, and I know about these things. Even the hired +girl has her frontiers; true, they are vague, they are ill-defined, even +flexible, but they are there. This is not conjecture; it is founded on +the absolute. And then the butler. You ask the butler to wash the dog. +It is just as I say; there is much to be learned in these ways, without +going to books. Books are very well, but books do not cover the whole +domain of esthetic human culture. Pride of profession is one of the +boniest bones in existence, if not the boniest. Without doubt it is so +in the hive. + + + +TAMING THE BICYCLE + +In the early eighties Mark Twain learned to ride one of the old +high-wheel bicycles of that period. He wrote an account of his +experience, but did not offer it for publication. The form of bicycle he +rode long ago became antiquated, but in the humor of his pleasantry is a +quality which does not grow old. + +A. B. P. + + + +I + +I thought the matter over, and concluded I could do it. So I went down a +bought a barrel of Pond's Extract and a bicycle. The Expert came home +with me to instruct me. We chose the back yard, for the sake of privacy, +and went to work. + +Mine was not a full-grown bicycle, but only a colt--a fifty-inch, with +the pedals shortened up to forty-eight--and skittish, like any other +colt. The Expert explained the thing's points briefly, then he got on +its back and rode around a little, to show me how easy it was to do. He +said that the dismounting was perhaps the hardest thing to learn, and so +we would leave that to the last. But he was in error there. He found, +to his surprise and joy, that all that he needed to do was to get me on +to the machine and stand out of the way; I could get off, myself. +Although I was wholly inexperienced, I dismounted in the best time on +record. He was on that side, shoving up the machine; we all came down +with a crash, he at the bottom, I next, and the machine on top. + +We examined the machine, but it was not in the least injured. This was +hardly believable. Yet the Expert assured me that it was true; in fact, +the examination proved it. I was partly to realize, then, how admirably +these things are constructed. We applied some Pond's Extract, and +resumed. The Expert got on the OTHER side to shove up this time, but I +dismounted on that side; so the result was as before. + +The machine was not hurt. We oiled ourselves again, and resumed. This +time the Expert took up a sheltered position behind, but somehow or other +we landed on him again. + +He was full of admiration; said it was abnormal. She was all right, not +a scratch on her, not a timber started anywhere. I said it was wonderful, +while we were greasing up, but he said that when I came to know these +steel spider-webs I would realize that nothing but dynamite could cripple +them. Then he limped out to position, and we resumed once more. This +time the Expert took up the position of short-stop, and got a man to +shove up behind. We got up a handsome speed, and presently traversed a +brick, and I went out over the top of the tiller and landed, head down, +on the instructor's back, and saw the machine fluttering in the air +between me and the sun. It was well it came down on us, for that broke +the fall, and it was not injured. + +Five days later I got out and was carried down to the hospital, and found +the Expert doing pretty fairly. In a few more days I was quite sound. I +attribute this to my prudence in always dismounting on something soft. +Some recommend a feather bed, but I think an Expert is better. + +The Expert got out at last, brought four assistants with him. It was a +good idea. These four held the graceful cobweb upright while I climbed +into the saddle; then they formed in column and marched on either side of +me while the Expert pushed behind; all hands assisted at the dismount. + +The bicycle had what is called the "wabbles," and had them very badly. +In order to keep my position, a good many things were required of me, and +in every instance the thing required was against nature. That is to say, +that whatever the needed thing might be, my nature, habit, and breeding +moved me to attempt it in one way, while some immutable and unsuspected +law of physics required that it be done in just the other way. I +perceived by this how radically and grotesquely wrong had been the +life-long education of my body and members. They were steeped in +ignorance; they knew nothing--nothing which it could profit them to know. +For instance, if I found myself falling to the right, I put the tiller +hard down the other way, by a quite natural impulse, and so violated a +law, and kept on going down. The law required the opposite thing--the +big wheel must be turned in the direction in which you are falling. It +is hard to believe this, when you are told it. And not merely hard to +believe it, but impossible; it is opposed to all your notions. And it is +just as hard to do it, after you do come to believe it. Believing it, +and knowing by the most convincing proof that it is true, does not help +it: you can't any more DO it than you could before; you can neither force +nor persuade yourself to do it at first. The intellect has to come to +the front, now. It has to teach the limbs to discard their old education +and adopt the new. + +The steps of one's progress are distinctly marked. At the end of each +lesson he knows he has acquired something, and he also knows what that +something is, and likewise that it will stay with him. It is not like +studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for +thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring +the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No--and I see now, plainly +enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't +fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to +make you attend strictly to business. But I also see, by what I have +learned of bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn German is +by the bicycling method. That is to say, take a grip on one villainy of +it at a time, leaving that one half learned. + +When you have reached the point in bicycling where you can balance the +machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then comes your next +task--how to mount it. You do it in this way: you hop along behind it on +your right foot, resting the other on the mounting-peg, and grasping the +tiller with your hands. At the word, you rise on the peg, stiffen your +left leg, hang your other one around in the air in a general in +indefinite way, lean your stomach against the rear of the saddle, and +then fall off, maybe on one side, maybe on the other; but you fall off. +You get up and do it again; and once more; and then several times. + +By this time you have learned to keep your balance; and also to steer +without wrenching the tiller out by the roots (I say tiller because it IS +a tiller; "handle-bar" is a lamely descriptive phrase). So you steer +along, straight ahead, a little while, then you rise forward, with a +steady strain, bringing your right leg, and then your body, into the +saddle, catch your breath, fetch a violent hitch this way and then that, +and down you go again. + +But you have ceased to mind the going down by this time; you are getting +to light on one foot or the other with considerable certainty. Six more +attempts and six more falls make you perfect. You land in the saddle +comfortably, next time, and stay there--that is, if you can be content to +let your legs dangle, and leave the pedals alone a while; but if you grab +at once for the pedals, you are gone again. You soon learn to wait a +little and perfect your balance before reaching for the pedals; then the +mounting-art is acquired, is complete, and a little practice will make it +simple and easy to you, though spectators ought to keep off a rod or two +to one side, along at first, if you have nothing against them. + +And now you come to the voluntary dismount; you learned the other kind +first of all. It is quite easy to tell one how to do the voluntary +dismount; the words are few, the requirement simple, and apparently +undifficult; let your left pedal go down till your left leg is nearly +straight, turn your wheel to the left, and get off as you would from a +horse. It certainly does sound exceedingly easy; but it isn't. I don't +know why it isn't but it isn't. Try as you may, you don't get down as +you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire. +You make a spectacle of yourself every time. + +II + +During the eight days I took a daily lesson an hour and a half. At the +end of this twelve working-hours' appreticeship I was graduated--in the +rough. I was pronounced competent to paddle my own bicycle without +outside help. It seems incredible, this celerity of acquirement. It +takes considerably longer than that to learn horseback-riding in the +rough. + +Now it is true that I could have learned without a teacher, but it would +have been risky for me, because of my natural clumsiness. The +self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a +tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; +and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless +people into going and doing as he himself has done. There are those who +imagine that the unlucky accidents of life--life's "experiences"--are in +some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never knew one of +them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch +you on your inexperienced side. If personal experience can be worth +anything as an education, it wouldn't seem likely that you could trip +Methuselah; and yet if that old person could come back here it is more +that likely that one of the first things he would do would be to take +hold of one of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a knot. +Now the surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask somebody +whether it was a good thing to take hold of. But that would not suit +him; he would be one of the self-taught kind that go by experience; he +would want to examine for himself. And he would find, for his +instruction, that the coiled patriarch shuns the electric wire; and it +would be useful to him, too, and would leave his education in quite a +complete and rounded-out condition, till he should come again, some day, +and go to bouncing a dynamite-can around to find out what was in it. + +But we wander from the point. However, get a teacher; it saves much time +and Pond's Extract. + +Before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my +physical strength, and I was able to inform him that I hadn't any. He +said that that was a defect which would make up-hill wheeling pretty +difficult for me at first; but he also said the bicycle would soon remove +it. The contrast between his muscles and mine was quite marked. He +wanted to test mine, so I offered my biceps--which was my best. It +almost made him smile. He said, "It is pulpy, and soft, and yielding, +and rounded; it evades pressure, and glides from under the fingers; in +the dark a body might think it was an oyster in a rag." Perhaps this made +me look grieved, for he added, briskly: "Oh, that's all right, you +needn't worry about that; in a little while you can't tell it from a +petrified kidney. Just go right along with your practice; you're all +right." + +Then he left me, and I started out alone to seek adventures. You don't +really have to seek them--that is nothing but a phrase--they come to +you. + +I chose a reposeful Sabbath-day sort of a back street which was about +thirty yards wide between the curbstones. I knew it was not wide enough; +still, I thought that by keeping strict watch and wasting no space +unnecessarily I could crowd through. + +Of course I had trouble mounting the machine, entirely on my own +responsibility, with no encouraging moral support from the outside, no +sympathetic instructor to say, "Good! now you're doing well--good +again--don't hurry--there, now, you're all right--brace up, go ahead." +In place of this I had some other support. This was a boy, who was +perched on a gate-post munching a hunk of maple sugar. + +He was full of interest and comment. The first time I failed and went +down he said that if he was me he would dress up in pillows, that's what +he would do. The next time I went down he advised me to go and learn to +ride a tricycle first. The third time I collapsed he said he didn't +believe I could stay on a horse-car. But the next time I succeeded, and +got clumsily under way in a weaving, tottering, uncertain fashion, and +occupying pretty much all of the street. My slow and lumbering gait +filled the boy to the chin with scorn, and he sung out, "My, but don't he +rip along!" Then he got down from his post and loafed along the +sidewalk, still observing and occasionally commenting. Presently he +dropped into my wake and followed along behind. A little girl passed by, +balancing a wash-board on her head, and giggled, and seemed about to make +a remark, but the boy said, rebukingly, "Let him alone, he's going to a +funeral." + +I have been familiar with that street for years, and had always supposed +it was a dead level; but it was not, as the bicycle now informed me, to +my surprise. The bicycle, in the hands of a novice, is as alert and +acute as a spirit-level in the detecting the delicate and vanishing +shades of difference in these matters. It notices a rise where your +untrained eye would not observe that one existed; it notices any decline +which water will run down. I was toiling up a slight rise, but was not +aware of it. It made me tug and pant and perspire; and still, labor as I +might, the machine came almost to a standstill every little while. At +such times the boy would say: "That's it! take a rest--there ain't no +hurry. They can't hold the funeral without YOU." + +Stones were a bother to me. Even the smallest ones gave me a panic when +I went over them. I could hit any kind of a stone, no matter how small, +if I tried to miss it; and of course at first I couldn't help trying to +do that. It is but natural. It is part of the ass that is put in us all, +for some inscrutable reason. + +It was at the end of my course, at last, and it was necessary for me to +round to. This is not a pleasant thing, when you undertake it for the +first time on your own responsibility, and neither is it likely to +succeed. Your confidence oozes away, you fill steadily up with nameless +apprehensions, every fiber of you is tense with a watchful strain, you +start a cautious and gradual curve, but your squirmy nerves are all full +of electric anxieties, so the curve is quickly demoralized into a jerky +and perilous zigzag; then suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in +its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone, defying all prayers and +all your powers to change its mind--your heart stands still, your breath +hangs fire, your legs forget to work, straight on you go, and there are +but a couple of feet between you and the curb now. And now is the +desperate moment, the last chance to save yourself; of course all your +instructions fly out of your head, and you whirl your wheel AWAY from the +curb instead of TOWARD it, and so you go sprawling on that granite-bound +inhospitable shore. That was my luck; that was my experience. I dragged +myself out from under the indestructible bicycle and sat down on the curb +to examine. + +I started on the return trip. It was now that I saw a farmer's wagon +poking along down toward me, loaded with cabbages. If I needed anything +to perfect the precariousness of my steering, it was just that. The +farmer was occupying the middle of the road with his wagon, leaving +barely fourteen or fifteen yards of space on either side. I couldn't +shout at him--a beginner can't shout; if he opens his mouth he is gone; +he must keep all his attention on his business. But in this grisly +emergency, the boy came to the rescue, and for once I had to be grateful +to him. He kept a sharp lookout on the swiftly varying impulses and +inspirations of my bicycle, and shouted to the man accordingly: + +"To the left! Turn to the left, or this jackass 'll run over you!" The +man started to do it. "No, to the right, to the right! Hold on! THAT +won't do!--to the left!--to the right!--to the LEFT--right! left--ri-- +Stay where you ARE, or you're a goner!" + +And just then I caught the off horse in the starboard and went down in a +pile. I said, "Hang it! Couldn't you SEE I was coming?" + +"Yes, I see you was coming, but I couldn't tell which WAY you was coming. +Nobody could--now, COULD they? You couldn't yourself--now, COULD you? +So what could _I_ do?" + +There was something in that, and so I had the magnanimity to say so. I +said I was no doubt as much to blame as he was. + +Within the next five days I achieved so much progress that the boy +couldn't keep up with me. He had to go back to his gate-post, and +content himself with watching me fall at long range. + +There was a row of low stepping-stones across one end of the street, a +measured yard apart. Even after I got so I could steer pretty fairly I +was so afraid of those stones that I always hit them. They gave me the +worst falls I ever got in that street, except those which I got from +dogs. I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a +dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that +may be true: but I think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was +because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But I ran +over every dog that came along. I think it makes a great deal of +difference. If you try to run over the dog he knows how to calculate, +but if you are trying to miss him he does not know how to calculate, and +is liable to jump the wrong way every time. It was always so in my +experience. Even when I could not hit a wagon I could hit a dog that +came to see me practice. They all liked to see me practice, and they all +came, for there was very little going on in our neighborhood to entertain +a dog. It took time to learn to miss a dog, but I achieved even that. + +I can steer as well as I want to, now, and I will catch that boy one of +these days and run over HIM if he doesn't reform. + +Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live. + + + +IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD? + +(from My Autobiography) + +Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript +which constitute this formidable Autobiography and Diary of mine, certain +chapters will in some distant future be found which deal with +"Claimants"--claimants historically notorious: Satan, Claimant; the +Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Claimant; Louis +XVII., Claimant; William Shakespeare, Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant; +Mary Baker G. Eddy, Claimant--and the rest of them. Eminent Claimants, +successful Claimants, defeated Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb +Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered Claimants, despised +Claimants, twinkle star-like here and there and yonder through the mists +of history and legend and tradition--and, oh, all the darling tribe are +clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with deep interest +and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous resentment, +according to which side we hitch ourselves to. It has always been so +with the human race. There was never a Claimant that couldn't get a +hearing, nor one that couldn't accumulate a rapturous following, no +matter how flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim might be. Arthur +Orton's claim that he was the lost Tichborne baronet come to life again +was as flimsy as Mrs. Eddy's that she wrote SCIENCE AND HEALTH from the +direct dictation of the Deity; yet in England nearly forty years ago +Orton had a huge army of devotees and incorrigible adherents, many of +whom remained stubbornly unconvinced after their fat god had been proven +an impostor and jailed as a perjurer, and today Mrs. Eddy's following is +not only immense, but is daily augmenting in numbers and enthusiasm. +Orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherents, Mrs. Eddy has +had the like among hers from the beginning. Her Church is as well +equipped in those particulars as is any other Church. Claimants can +always count upon a following, it doesn't matter who they are, nor what +they claim, nor whether they come with documents or without. It was +always so. Down out of the long-vanished past, across the abyss of the +ages, if you listen, you can still hear the believing multitudes shouting +for Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel. + +A friend has sent me a new book, from England--THE SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM +RESTATED--well restated and closely reasoned; and my fifty years' +interest in that matter--asleep for the last three years--is excited once +more. It is an interest which was born of Delia Bacon's book--away back +in the ancient day--1857, or maybe 1856. About a year later my +pilot-master, Bixby, transferred me from his own steamboat to the +PENNSYLVANIA, and placed me under the orders and instructions of George +Ealer--dead now, these many, many years. I steered for him a good many +months--as was the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice: stood a daylight +watch and spun the wheel under the severe superintendence and correction +of the master. He was a prime chess-player and an idolater of +Shakespeare. He would play chess with anybody; even with me, and it cost +his official dignity something to do that. Also--quite uninvited--he +would read Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it +was his watch and I was steering. He read well, but not profitably for +me, because he constantly injected commands into the text. That broke it +all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all up--to that degree, in fact, that +if we were in a risky and difficult piece of river an ignorant person +couldn't have told, sometimes, which observations were Shakespeare's and +which were Ealer's. For instance: + +What man dare, _I_ dare! + +Approach thou WHAT are you laying in the leads for? what a hell of an +idea! like the rugged ease her off a little, ease her off! rugged Russian +bear, the armed rhinoceros or the THERE she goes! meet her, meet her! +didn't you KNOW she'd smell the reef if you crowded in like that? Hyrcan +tiger; take any ship but that and my firm nerves she'll be in the WOODS +the first you know! stop he starboard! come ahead strong on the larboard! +back the starboard! . . . NOW then, you're all right; come ahead on the +starboard; straighten up and go 'long, never tremble: or be alive again, +and dare me to the desert DAMNATION can't you keep away from that greasy +water? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her baldheaded! with thy sword; +if trembling I inhabit then, lay in the leads!--no, only with the +starboard one, leave the other alone, protest me the baby of a girl. +Hence horrible shadow! eight bells--that watchman's asleep again, I +reckon, go down and call Brown yourself, unreal mockery, hence! + +He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and +tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have never since been able +to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid it of his +explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with their irrelevant, +"What in hell are you up to NOW! pull her down! more! MORE!--there now, +steady as you go," and the other disorganizing interruptions that were +always leaping from his mouth. When I read Shakespeare now I can hear +them as plainly as I did in that long-departed time--fifty-one years ago. +I never regarded Ealer's readings as educational. Indeed, they were a +detriment to me. + +His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that detail +he was a good reader; I can say that much for him. He did not use the +book, and did not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as well as Euclid ever +knew his multiplication table. + +Did he have something to say--this Shakespeare-adoring Mississippi +pilot--anent Delia Bacon's book? + +Yes. And he said it; said it all the time, for months--in the morning +watch, the middle watch, and dog watch; and probably kept it going in his +sleep. He bought the literature of the dispute as fast as it appeared, +and we discussed it all through thirteen hundred miles of river four +times traversed in every thirty-five days--the time required by that +swift boat to achieve two round trips. We discussed, and discussed, and +discussed, and disputed and disputed and disputed; at any rate, HE did, +and I got in a word now and then when he slipped a cog and there was a +vacancy. He did his arguing with heat, with energy, with violence; and I +did mine with the reverse and moderation of a subordinate who does not +like to be flung out of a pilot-house and is perched forty feet above the +water. He was fiercely loyal to Shakespeare and cordially scornful of +Bacon and of all the pretensions of the Baconians. So was I--at first. +And at first he was glad that that was my attitude. There were even +indications that he admired it; indications dimmed, it is true, by the +distance that lay between the lofty boss-pilotical altitude and my lowly +one, yet perceptible to me; perceptible, and translatable into a +compliment--compliment coming down from about the snow-line and not well +thawed in the transit, and not likely to set anything afire, not even a +cub-pilot's self-conceit; still a detectable complement, and precious. + +Naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to Shakespeare--if +possible--than I was before, and more prejudiced against Bacon--if +possible--that I was before. And so we discussed and discussed, both on +the same side, and were happy. For a while. Only for a while. Only for +a very little while, a very, very, very little while. Then the +atmosphere began to change; began to cool off. + +A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, earlier than I +did, perhaps, but I saw it early enough for all practical purposes. You +see, he was of an argumentative disposition. Therefore it took him but a +little time to get tired of arguing with a person who agreed with +everything he said and consequently never furnished him a provocative to +flare up and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold, hard, +rose-cut, hundred-faceted, diamond-flashing REASONING. That was his name +for it. It has been applied since, with complacency, as many as several +times, in the Bacon-Shakespeare scuffle. On the Shakespeare side. + +Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me +when principle and personal interest found themselves in opposition to +each other and a choice had to be made: I let principle go, and went over +to the other side. Not the entire way, but far enough to answer the +requirements of the case. That is to say, I took this attitude--to wit, +I only BELIEVED Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I KNEW Shakespeare +didn't. Ealer was satisfied with that, and the war broke loose. Study, +practice, experience in handling my end of the matter presently enabled +me to take my new position almost seriously; a little bit later, utterly +seriously; a little later still, lovingly, gratefully, devotedly; +finally: fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly. After that I was welded to +my faith, I was theoretically ready to die for it, and I looked down with +compassion not unmixed with scorn upon everybody else's faith that didn't +tally with mine. That faith, imposed upon me by self-interest in that +ancient day, remains my faith today, and in it I find comfort, solace, +peace, and never-failing joy. You see how curiously theological it is. +The "rice Christian" of the Orient goes through the very same steps, when +he is after rice and the missionary is after HIM; he goes for rice, and +remains to worship. + +Ealer did a lot of our "reasoning"--not to say substantially all of it. +The slaves of his cult have a passion for calling it by that large name. +We others do not call our inductions and deductions and reductions by any +name at all. They show for themselves what they are, and we can with +tranquil confidence leave the world to ennoble them with a title of its +own choosing. + +Now and then when Ealer had to stop to cough, I pulled my +induction-talents together and hove the controversial lead myself: always +getting eight feet, eight and a half, often nine, sometimes even +quarter-less-twain--as _I_ believed; but always "no bottom," as HE said. + +I got the best of him only once. I prepared myself. I wrote out a +passage from Shakespeare--it may have been the very one I quoted awhile +ago, I don't remember--and riddled it with his wild steamboatful +interlardings. When an unrisky opportunity offered, one lovely summer +day, when we had sounded and buoyed a tangled patch of crossings known as +Hell's Half Acre, and were aboard again and he had sneaked the +PENNSYLVANIA triumphantly through it without once scraping sand, and the +A. T. LACEY had followed in our wake and got stuck, and he was feeling +good, I showed it to him. It amused him. I asked him to fire it off +--READ it; read it, I diplomatically added, as only HE could read +dramatic poetry. The compliment touched him where he lived. He did read +it; read it with surpassing fire and spirit; read it as it will never be +read again; for HE know how to put the right music into those thunderous +interlardings and make them seem a part of the text, make them sound as +if they were bursting from Shakespeare's own soul, each one of them a +golden inspiration and not to be left out without damage to the massed +and magnificent whole. + +I waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer; waited until he +brought up for reasonings and vituperation my pet position, my pet +argument, the one which I was fondest of, the one which I prized far +above all others in my ammunition-wagon--to wit, that Shakespeare +couldn't have written Shakespeare's words, for the reason that the man +who wrote them was limitlessly familiar with the laws, and the +law-courts, and law-proceedings, and lawyer-talk, and lawyer-ways--and if +Shakespeare was possessed of the infinitely divided star-dust that +constituted this vast wealth, HOW did he get it, and WHERE and WHEN? + +"From books." + +From books! That was always the idea. I answered as my readings of the +champions of my side of the great controversy had taught me to answer: +that a man can't handle glibly and easily and comfortably and +successfully the argot of a trade at which he has not personally served. +He will make mistakes; he will not, and cannot, get the trade-phrasings +precisely and exactly right; and the moment he departs, by even a shade, +from a common trade-form, the reader who has served that trade will know +the writer HASN'T. Ealer would not be convinced; he said a man could +learn how to correctly handle the subtleties and mysteries and +free-masonries of ANY trade by careful reading and studying. But when I +got him to read again the passage from Shakespeare with the +interlardings, he perceived, himself, that books couldn't teach a student +a bewildering multitude of pilot-phrases so thoroughly and perfectly that +he could talk them off in book and play or conversation and make no +mistake that a pilot would not immediately discover. It was a triumph +for me. He was silent awhile, and I knew what was happening--he was +losing his temper. And I knew he would presently close the session with +the same old argument that was always his stay and his support in time of +need; the same old argument, the one I couldn't answer, because I +dasn't--the argument that I was an ass, and better shut up. He delivered +it, and I obeyed. + +O dear, how long ago it was--how pathetically long ago! And here am I, +old, forsaken, forlorn, and alone, arranging to get that argument out of +somebody again. + +When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without saying that he +keeps company with other standard authors. Ealer always had several +high-class books in the pilot-house, and he read the same ones over and +over again, and did not care to change to newer and fresher ones. He +played well on the flute, and greatly enjoyed hearing himself play. So +did I. He had a notion that a flute would keep its health better if you +took it apart when it was not standing a watch; and so, when it was not +on duty it took its rest, disjointed, on the compass-shelf under the +breastboard. When the PENNSYLVANIA blew up and became a drifting +rack-heap freighted with wounded and dying poor souls (my young brother +Henry among them), pilot Brown had the watch below, and was probably +asleep and never knew what killed him; but Ealer escaped unhurt. He and +his pilot-house were shot up into the air; then they fell, and Ealer sank +through the ragged cavern where the hurricane-deck and the boiler-deck +had been, and landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck, on top of one +of the unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of scald and +deadly steam. But not for long. He did not lose his head--long +familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, in any and all +emergencies. He held his coat-lapels to his nose with one hand, to keep +out the steam, and scrabbled around with the other till he found the +joints of his flute, then he took measures to save himself alive, and was +successful. I was not on board. I had been put ashore in New Orleans by +Captain Klinenfelter. The reason--however, I have told all about it in +the book called OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI, and it isn't important, +anyway, it is so long ago. + +II + +When I was a Sunday-school scholar, something more than sixty years ago, +I became interested in Satan, and wanted to find out all I could about +him. I began to ask questions, but my class-teacher, Mr. Barclay, the +stone-mason, was reluctant about answering them, it seemed to me. I was +anxious to be praised for turning my thoughts to serious subjects when +there wasn't another boy in the village who could be hired to do such a +thing. I was greatly interested in the incident of Eve and the serpent, +and thought Eve's calmness was perfectly noble. I asked Mr. Barclay if +he had ever heard of another woman who, being approached by a serpeant, +would not excuse herself and break for the nearest timber. He did not +answer my question, but rebuked me for inquiring into matters above my +age and comprehension. I will say for Mr. Barclay that he was willing to +tell me the facts of Satan's history, but he stopped there: he wouldn't +allow any discussion of them. + +In the course of time we exhausted the facts. There were only five or +six of them; you could set them all down on a visiting-card. I was +disappointed. I had been meditating a biography, and was grieved to find +that there were no materials. I said as much, with the tears running +down. Mr. Barclay's sympathy and compassion were aroused, for he was a +most kind and gentle-spirited man, and he patted me on the head and +cheered me up by saying there was a whole vast ocean of materials! I can +still feel the happy thrill which these blessed words shot through me. + +Then he began to bail out that ocean's riches for my encouragement and +joy. Like this: it was "conjectured"--though not established--that Satan +was originally an angel in Heaven; that he fell; that he rebelled, and +brought on a war; that he was defeated, and banished to perdition. Also, +"we have reason to believe" that later he did so and so; that "we are +warranted in supposing" that at a subsequent time he traveled +extensively, seeking whom he might devour; that a couple of centuries +afterward, "as tradition instructs us," he took up the cruel trade of +tempting people to their ruin, with vast and fearful results; that by and +by, "as the probabilities seem to indicate," he may have done certain +things, he might have done certain other things, he must have done still +other things. + +And so on and so on. We set down the five known facts by themselves on a +piece of paper, and numbered it "page 1"; then on fifteen hundred other +pieces of paper we set down the "conjectures," and "suppositions," and +"maybes," and "perhapses," and "doubtlesses," and "rumors," and +"guesses," and "probabilities," and "likelihoods," and "we are permitted +to thinks," and "we are warranted in believings," and "might have beens," +and "could have beens," and "must have beens," and "unquestionablys," and +"without a shadow of doubt"--and behold! + +MATERIALS? Why, we had enough to build a biography of Shakespeare! + +Yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the history of +Satan. Why? Because, as he said, he had suspicions--suspicions that my +attitude in the matter was not reverent, and that a person must be +reverent when writing about the sacred characters. He said any one who +spoke flippantly of Satan would be frowned upon by the religious world +and also be brought to account. + +I assured him, in earnest and sincere words, that he had wholly +misconceived my attitude; that I had the highest respect for Satan, and +that my reverence for him equaled, and possibly even exceeded, that of +any member of the church. I said it wounded me deeply to perceive by his +words that he thought I would make fun of Satan, and deride him, laugh at +him, scoff at him; whereas in truth I had never thought of such a thing, +but had only a warm desire to make fun of those others and laugh at THEM. +"What others?" "Why, the Supposers, the Perhapsers, the +Might-Have-Beeners, the Could-Have-Beeners, the Must-Have-Beeners, the +Without-a-Shadow-of-Doubters, the We-Are-Warranted-in-Believingers, and +all that funny crop of solemn architects who have taken a good solid +foundation of five indisputable and unimportant facts and built upon it a +Conjectural Satan thirty miles high." + +What did Mr. Barclay do then? Was he disarmed? Was he silenced? No. +He was shocked. He was so shocked that he visibly shuddered. He said +the Satanic Traditioners and Perhapsers and Conjecturers were THEMSELVES +sacred! As sacred as their work. So sacred that whoso ventured to mock +them or make fun of their work, could not afterward enter any respectable +house, even by the back door. + +How true were his words, and how wise! How fortunate it would have been +for me if I had heeded them. But I was young, I was but seven years of +age, and vain, foolish, and anxious to attract attention. I wrote the +biography, and have never been in a respectable house since. + +III + +How curious and interesting is the parallel--as far as poverty of +biographical details is concerned--between Satan and Shakespeare. It is +wonderful, it is unique, it stands quite alone, there is nothing +resembling it in history, nothing resembling it in romance, nothing +approaching it even in tradition. How sublime is their position, and how +over-topping, how sky-reaching, how supreme--the two Great Unknowns, the +two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the best-known unknown +persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet. + +For the instruction of the ignorant I will make a list, now, of those +details of Shakespeare's history which are FACTS--verified facts, +established facts, undisputed facts. + + + +Facts + +He was born on the 23d of April, 1564. + +Of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, could +not sign their names. + +At Stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and +unclean, and densely illiterate. Of the nineteen important men charged +with the government of the town, thirteen had to "make their mark" in +attesting important documents, because they could not write their names. + +Of the first eighteen years of his life NOTHING is known. They are a +blank. + +On the 27th of November (1582) William Shakespeare took out a license to +marry Anne Whateley. + +Next day William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Hathaway. +She was eight years his senior. + +William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. In a hurry. By grace of a +reluctantly granted dispensation there was but one publication of the +banns. + +Within six months the first child was born. + +About two (blank) years followed, during which period NOTHING AT ALL +HAPPENED TO SHAKESPEARE, so far as anybody knows. + +Then came twins--1585. February. + +Two blank years follow. + +Then--1587--he makes a ten-year visit to London, leaving the family +behind. + +Five blank years follow. During this period NOTHING HAPPENED TO HIM, as +far as anybody actually knows. + +Then--1592--there is mention of him as an actor. + +Next year--1593--his name appears in the official list of players. + +Next year--1594--he played before the queen. A detail of no consequence: +other obscurities did it every year of the forty-five of her reign. And +remained obscure. + +Three pretty full years follow. Full of play-acting. Then + +In 1597 he bought New Place, Stratford. + +Thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he accumulated +money, and also reputation as actor and manager. + +Meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become associated +with a number of great plays and poems, as (ostensibly) author of the +same. + +Some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he made no +protest. + +Then--1610-11--he returned to Stratford and settled down for good and +all, and busied himself in lending money, trading in tithes, trading in +land and houses; shirking a debt of forty-one shillings, borrowed by his +wife during his long desertion of his family; suing debtors for shillings +and coppers; being sued himself for shillings and coppers; and acting as +confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the town of its rights in a +certain common, and did not succeed. + +He lived five or six years--till 1616--in the joy of these elevated +pursuits. Then he made a will, and signed each of its three pages with +his name. + +A thoroughgoing business man's will. It named in minute detail every +item of property he owned in the world--houses, lands, sword, silver-gilt +bowl, and so on--all the way down to his "second-best bed" and its +furniture. + +It carefully and calculatingly distributed his riches among the members +of his family, overlooking no individual of it. Not even his wife: the +wife he had been enabled to marry in a hurry by urgent grace of a special +dispensation before he was nineteen; the wife whom he had left +husbandless so many years; the wife who had had to borrow forty-one +shillings in her need, and which the lender was never able to collect of +the prosperous husband, but died at last with the money still lacking. +No, even this wife was remembered in Shakespeare's will. + +He left her that "second-best bed." + +And NOT ANOTHER THING; not even a penny to bless her lucky widowhood +with. + +It was eminently and conspicuously a business man's will, not a poet's. + +It mentioned NOT A SINGLE BOOK. + +Books were much more precious than swords and silver-gilt bowls and +second-best beds in those days, and when a departing person owned one he +gave it a high place in his will. + +The will mentioned NOT A PLAY, NOT A POEM, NOT AN UNFINISHED LITERARY +WORK, NOT A SCRAP OF MANUSCRIPT OF ANY KIND. + +Many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that has +died THIS poor; the others all left literary remains behind. Also a +book. Maybe two. + +If Shakespeare had owned a dog--but we not go into that: we know he would +have mentioned it in his will. If a good dog, Susanna would have got it; +if an inferior one his wife would have got a downer interest in it. I +wish he had had a dog, just so we could see how painstakingly he would +have divided that dog among the family, in his careful business way. + +He signed the will in three places. + +In earlier years he signed two other official documents. + +These five signatures still exist. + +There are NO OTHER SPECIMENS OF HIS PENMANSHIP IN EXISTENCE. Not a line. + +Was he prejudiced against the art? His granddaughter, whom he loved, was +eight years old when he died, yet she had had no teaching, he left no +provision for her education, although he was rich, and in her mature +womanhood she couldn't write and couldn't tell her husband's manuscript +from anybody else's--she thought it was Shakespeare's. + +When Shakespeare died in Stratford, IT WAS NOT AN EVENT. It made no more +stir in England than the death of any other forgotten theater-actor would +have made. Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting poems, +no eulogies, no national tears--there was merely silence, and nothing +more. A striking contrast with what happened when Ben Jonson, and +Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh, and the other distinguished +literary folk of Shakespeare's time passed from life! No praiseful voice +was lifted for the lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson waited seven years +before he lifted his. + +SO FAR AS ANYBODY ACTUALLY KNOWS AND CAN PROVE, Shakespeare of +Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life. + +SO FAR AS ANY ONE KNOWS, HE RECEIVED ONLY ONE LETTER DURING HIS LIFE. + +So far as any one KNOWS AND CAN PROVE, Shakespeare of Stratford wrote +only one poem during his life. This one is authentic. He did write that +one--a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it; he wrote +the whole of it out of his own head. He commanded that this work of art +be engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. There it abides to this +day. This is it: + +Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare +To digg the dust encloased heare: +Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones +And curst be he yt moves my bones. + +In the list as above set down will be found EVERY POSITIVELY KNOWN fact +of Shakespeare's life, lean and meager as the invoice is. Beyond these +details we know NOT A THING about him. All the rest of his vast history, +as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of +guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures--an Eiffel Tower of +artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation +of inconsequential facts. + +IV + +Conjectures + +The historians "suppose" that Shakespeare attended the Free School in +Stratford from the time he was seven years old till he was thirteen. +There is no EVIDENCE in existence that he ever went to school at all. + +The historians "infer" that he got his Latin in that school--the school +which they "suppose" he attended. + +They "suppose" his father's declining fortunes made it necessary for him +to leave the school they supposed he attended, and get to work and help +support his parents and their ten children. But there is no evidence +that he ever entered or returned from the school they suppose he +attended. + +They "suppose" he assisted his father in the butchering business; and +that, being only a boy, he didn't have to do full-grown butchering, but +only slaughtering calves. Also, that whenever he killed a calf he made a +high-flown speech over it. This supposition rests upon the testimony of a +man who wasn't there at the time; a man who got it from a man who could +have been there, but did not say whether he was nor not; and neither of +them thought to mention it for decades, and decades, and decades, and two +more decades after Shakespeare's death (until old age and mental decay +had refreshed and vivified their memories). They hadn't two facts in +stock about the long-dead distinguished citizen, but only just the one: +he slaughtered calves and broke into oratory while he was at it. +Curious. They had only one fact, yet the distinguished citizen had spent +twenty-six years in that little town--just half his lifetime. However, +rightly viewed, it was the most important fact, indeed almost the only +important fact, of Shakespeare's life in Stratford. Rightly viewed. For +experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing +that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he +writes. Rightly viewed, calf-butchering accounts for "Titus Andronicus," +the only play--ain't it?--that the Stratford Shakespeare ever wrote; and +yet it is the only one everybody tried to chouse him out of, the +Baconians included. + +The historians find themselves "justified in believing" that the young +Shakespeare poached upon Sir Thomas Lucy's deer preserves and got haled +before that magistrate for it. But there is no shred of respectworthy +evidence that anything of the kind happened. + +The historians, having argued the thing that MIGHT have happened into the +thing that DID happen, found no trouble in turning Sir Thomas Lucy into +Mr. Justice Shallow. They have long ago convinced the world--on surmise +and without trustworthy evidence--that Shallow IS Sir Thomas. + +The next addition to the young Shakespeare's Stratford history comes +easy. The historian builds it out of the surmised deer-steeling, and the +surmised trial before the magistrate, and the surmised vengeance-prompted +satire upon the magistrate in the play: result, the young Shakespeare was +a wild, wild, wild, oh, SUCH a wild young scamp, and that gratuitous +slander is established for all time! It is the very way Professor Osborn +and I built the colossal skeleton brontosaur that stands fifty-seven feet +long and sixteen feet high in the Natural History Museum, the awe and +admiration of all the world, the stateliest skeleton that exists on the +planet. We had nine bones, and we built the rest of him out of plaster +of Paris. We ran short of plaster of Paris, or we'd have built a +brontosaur that could sit down beside the Stratford Shakespeare and none +but an expert could tell which was biggest or contained the most plaster. + +Shakespeare pronounced "Venus and Adonis" "the first heir of his +invention," apparently implying that it was his first effort at literary +composition. He should not have said it. It has been an embarrassment +to his historians these many, many years. They have to make him write +that graceful and polished and flawless and beautiful poem before he +escaped from Stratford and his family--1586 or '87--age, twenty-two, or +along there; because within the next five years he wrote five great +plays, and could not have found time to write another line. + +It is sorely embarrassing. If he began to slaughter calves, and poach +deer, and rollick around, and learn English, at the earliest likely +moment--say at thirteen, when he was supposably wretched from that school +where he was supposably storing up Latin for future literary use--he had +his youthful hands full, and much more than full. He must have had to +put aside his Warwickshire dialect, which wouldn't be understood in +London, and study English very hard. Very hard indeed; incredibly hard, +almost, if the result of that labor was to be the smooth and rounded and +flexible and letter-perfect English of the "Venus and Adonis" in the +space of ten years; and at the same time learn great and fine and +unsurpassable literary FORM. + +However, it is "conjectured" that he accomplished all this and more, much +more: learned law and its intricacies; and the complex procedure of the +law-courts; and all about soldiering, and sailoring, and the manners and +customs and ways of royal courts and aristocratic society; and likewise +accumulated in his one head every kind of knowledge the learned then +possessed, and every kind of humble knowledge possessed by the lowly and +the ignorant; and added thereto a wider and more intimate knowledge of +the world's great literatures, ancient and modern, than was possessed by +any other man of his time--for he was going to make brilliant and easy +and admiration-compelling use of these splendid treasures the moment he +got to London. And according to the surmisers, that is what he did. +Yes, although there was no one in Stratford able to teach him these +things, and no library in the little village to dig them out of. His +father could not read, and even the surmisers surmise that he did not +keep a library. + +It is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare got his vast +knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate acquaintance with the +manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers through being for a time the +CLERK OF A STRATFORD COURT; just as a bright lad like me, reared in a +village on the banks of the Mississippi, might become perfect in +knowledge of the Bering Strait whale-fishery and the shop-talk of the +veteran exercises of that adventure-bristling trade through catching +catfish with a "trot-line" Sundays. But the surmise is damaged by the +fact that there is no evidence--and not even tradition--that the young +Shakespeare was ever clerk of a law-court. + +It is further surmised that the young Shakespeare accumulated his +law-treasures in the first years of his sojourn in London, through +"amusing himself" by learning book-law in his garret and by picking up +lawyer-talk and the rest of it through loitering about the law-courts and +listening. But it is only surmise; there is no EVIDENCE that he ever did +either of those things. They are merely a couple of chunks of plaster of +Paris. + +There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding horses in +front of the London theaters, mornings and afternoons. Maybe he did. If +he did, it seriously shortened his law-study hours and his +recreation-time in the courts. In those very days he was writing great +plays, and needed all the time he could get. The horse-holding legend +ought to be strangled; it too formidably increases the historian's +difficulty in accounting for the young Shakespeare's erudition--an +erudition which he was acquiring, hunk by hunk and chunk by chunk, every +day in those strenuous times, and emptying each day's catch into next +day's imperishable drama. + +He had to acquire a knowledge of war at the same time; and a knowledge of +soldier-people and sailor-people and their ways and talk; also a +knowledge of some foreign lands and their languages: for he was daily +emptying fluent streams of these various knowledges, too, into his +dramas. How did he acquire these rich assets? + +In the usual way: by surmise. It is SURMISED that he traveled in Italy +and Germany and around, and qualified himself to put their scenic and +social aspects upon paper; that he perfected himself in French, Italian, +and Spanish on the road; that he went in Leicester's expedition to the +Low Countries, as soldier or sutler or something, for several months or +years--or whatever length of time a surmiser needs in his business--and +thus became familiar with soldiership and soldier-ways and soldier-talk +and generalship and general-ways and general-talk, and seamanship and +sailor-ways and sailor-talk. + +Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who held the +horses in the mean time; and who studied the books in the garret; and who +frolicked in the law-courts for recreation. Also, who did the call-boying +and the play-acting. + +For he became a call-boy; and as early as '93 he became a "vagabond"--the +law's ungentle term for an unlisted actor; and in '94 a "regular" and +properly and officially listed member of that (in those days) lightly +valued and not much respected profession. + +Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theaters, and +manager of them. Thenceforward he was a busy and flourishing business +man, and was raking in money with both hands for twenty years. Then in a +noble frenzy of poetic inspiration he wrote his one poem--his only poem, +his darling--and laid him down and died: + +Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare: +Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones And curst be he yt moves my bones. + +He was probably dead when he wrote it. Still, this is only conjecture. +We have only circumstantial evidence. Internal evidence. + +Shall I set down the rest of the Conjectures which constitute the giant +Biography of William Shakespeare? It would strain the Unabridged +Dictionary to hold them. He is a brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred +barrels of plaster of Paris. + + + +V + +"We May Assume" + +In the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are +transacting business. Two of these cults are known as the Shakespearites +and the Baconians, and I am the other one--the Brontosaurian. + +The Shakespearite knows that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's Works; the +Baconian knows that Francis Bacon wrote them; the Brontosaurian doesn't +really know which of them did it, but is quite composedly and contentedly +sure that Shakespeare DIDN'T, and strongly suspects that Bacon DID. We +all have to do a good deal of assuming, but I am fairly certain that in +every case I can call to mind the Baconian assumers have come out ahead +of the Shakespearites. Both parties handle the same materials, but the +Baconians seem to me to get much more reasonable and rational and +persuasive results out of them than is the case with the Shakespearites. +The Shakespearite conducts his assuming upon a definite principle, an +unchanging and immutable law: which is: 2 and 8 and 7 and 14, added +together, make 165. I believe this to be an error. No matter, you +cannot get a habit-sodden Shakespearite to cipher-up his materials upon +any other basis. With the Baconian it is different. If you place before +him the above figures and set him to adding them up, he will never in any +case get more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out of ten he will +get just the proper 31. + +Let me try to illustrate the two systems in a simple and homely way +calculated to bring the idea within the grasp of the ignorant and +unintelligent. We will suppose a case: take a lap-bred, house-fed, +uneducated, inexperienced kitten; take a rugged old Tom that's scarred +from stem to rudder-post with the memorials of strenuous experience, and +is so cultured, so educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may say of +him "all cat-knowledge is his province"; also, take a mouse. Lock the +three up in a holeless, crackless, exitless prison-cell. Wait half an +hour, then open the cell, introduce a Shakespearite and a Baconian, and +let them cipher and assume. The mouse is missing: the question to be +decided is, where is it? You can guess both verdicts beforehand. One +verdict will say the kitten contains the mouse; the other will as +certainly say the mouse is in the tom-cat. + +The Shakespearite will Reason like this--(that is not my word, it is +his). He will say the kitten MAY HAVE BEEN attending school when nobody +was noticing; therefore WE ARE WARRANTED IN ASSUMING that it did so; +also, it COULD HAVE BEEN training in a court-clerk's office when no one +was noticing; since that could have happened, WE ARE JUSTIFIED IN +ASSUMING that it did happen; it COULD HAVE STUDIED CATOLOGY IN A GARRET +when no one was noticing--therefore it DID; it COULD HAVE attended +cat-assizes on the shed-roof nights, for recreation, when no one was +noticing, and have harvested a knowledge of cat court-forms and cat +lawyer-talk in that way: it COULD have done it, therefore without a doubt +it DID; it COULD HAVE gone soldiering with a war-tribe when no one was +noticing, and learned soldier-wiles and soldier-ways, and what to do with +a mouse when opportunity offers; the plain inference, therefore, is that +that is what it DID. Since all these manifold things COULD have +occurred, we have EVERY RIGHT TO BELIEVE they did occur. These patiently +and painstakingly accumulated vast acquirements and competences needed +but one thing more--opportunity--to convert themselves into triumphal +action. The opportunity came, we have the result; BEYOND SHADOW OF +QUESTION the mouse is in the kitten. + +It is proper to remark that when we of the three cults plant a "WE THINK +WE MAY ASSUME," we expect it, under careful watering and fertilizing and +tending, to grow up into a strong and hardy and weather-defying "THERE +ISN'T A SHADOW OF A DOUBT" at last--and it usually happens. + +We know what the Baconian's verdict would be: "THERE IS NOT A RAG OF +EVIDENCE THAT THE KITTEN HAS HAD ANY TRAINING, ANY EDUCATION, ANY +EXPERIENCE QUALIFYING IT FOR THE PRESENT OCCASION, OR IS INDEED EQUIPPED +FOR ANY ACHIEVEMENT ABOVE LIFTING SUCH UNCLAIMED MILK AS COMES ITS WAY; +BUT THERE IS ABUNDANT EVIDENCE--UNASSAILABLE PROOF, IN FACT--THAT THE +OTHER ANIMAL IS EQUIPPED, TO THE LAST DETAIL, WITH EVERY QUALIFICATION +NECESSARY FOR THE EVENT. WITHOUT SHADOW OF DOUBT THE TOM-CAT CONTAINS +THE MOUSE." + +VI + +When Shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions attributed to +him as author had been before the London world and in high favor for +twenty-four years. Yet his death was not an event. It made no stir, it +attracted no attention. Apparently his eminent literary contemporaries +did not realize that a celebrated poet had passed from their midst. +Perhaps they knew a play-actor of minor rank had disappeared, but did not +regard him as the author of his Works. "We are justified in assuming" +this. + +His death was not even an event in the little town of Stratford. Does +this mean that in Stratford he was not regarded as a celebrity of ANY +kind? + +"We are privileged to assume"--no, we are indeed OBLIGED to assume--that +such was the case. He had spent the first twenty-two or twenty-three +years of his life there, and of course knew everybody and was known by +everybody of that day in the town, including the dogs and the cats and +the horses. He had spent the last five or six years of his life there, +diligently trading in every big and little thing that had money in it; so +we are compelled to assume that many of the folk there in those said +latter days knew him personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay. But +not as a CELEBRITY? Apparently not. For everybody soon forgot to +remember any contact with him or any incident connected with him. The +dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known about +him in the first twenty-three years of his life were in the same +unremembering condition: if they knew of any incident connected with that +period of his life they didn't tell about it. Would the if they had been +asked? It is most likely. Were they asked? It is pretty apparent that +they were not. Why weren't they? It is a very plausible guess that +nobody there or elsewhere was interested to know. + +For seven years after Shakespeare's death nobody seems to have been +interested in him. Then the quarto was published, and Ben Jonson awoke +out of his long indifference and sang a song of praise and put it in the +front of the book. Then silence fell AGAIN. + +For sixty years. Then inquiries into Shakespeare's Stratford life began +to be made, of Stratfordians. Of Stratfordians who had known Shakespeare +or had seen him? No. Then of Stratfordians who had seen people who had +known or seen people who had seen Shakespeare? No. Apparently the +inquires were only made of Stratfordians who were not Stratfordians of +Shakespeare's day, but later comers; and what they had learned had come +to them from persons who had not seen Shakespeare; and what they had +learned was not claimed as FACT, but only as legend--dim and fading and +indefinite legend; legend of the calf-slaughtering rank, and not worth +remembering either as history or fiction. + +Has it ever happened before--or since--that a celebrated person who had +spent exactly half of a fairly long life in the village where he was born +and reared, was able to slip out of this world and leave that village +voiceless and gossipless behind him--utterly voiceless., utterly +gossipless? And permanently so? I don't believe it has happened in any +case except Shakespeare's. And couldn't and wouldn't have happened in his +case if he had been regarded as a celebrity at the time of his death. + +When I examine my own case--but let us do that, and see if it will not be +recognizable as exhibiting a condition of things quite likely to result, +most likely to result, indeed substantially SURE to result in the case of +a celebrated person, a benefactor of the human race. Like me. + +My parents brought me to the village of Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks +of the Mississippi, when I was two and a half years old. I entered +school at five years of age, and drifted from one school to another in +the village during nine and a half years. Then my father died, leaving +his family in exceedingly straitened circumstances; wherefore my +book-education came to a standstill forever, and I became a printer's +apprentice, on board and clothes, and when the clothes failed I got a +hymn-book in place of them. This for summer wear, probably. I lived in +Hannibal fifteen and a half years, altogether, then ran away, according +to the custom of persons who are intending to become celebrated. I never +lived there afterward. Four years later I became a "cub" on a +Mississippi steamboat in the St. Louis and New Orleans trade, and after a +year and a half of hard study and hard work the U.S. inspectors +rigorously examined me through a couple of long sittings and decided that +I knew every inch of the Mississippi--thirteen hundred miles--in the dark +and in the day--as well as a baby knows the way to its mother's paps day +or night. So they licensed me as a pilot--knighted me, so to speak--and +I rose up clothed with authority, a responsible servant of the United +States Government. + +Now then. Shakespeare died young--he was only fifty-two. He had lived in +his native village twenty-six years, or about that. He died celebrated +(if you believe everything you read in the books). Yet when he died +nobody there or elsewhere took any notice of it; and for sixty years +afterward no townsman remembered to say anything about him or about his +life in Stratford. When the inquirer came at last he got but one fact +--no, LEGEND--and got that one at second hand, from a person who had only +heard it as a rumor and didn't claim copyright in it as a production of +his own. He couldn't, very well, for its date antedated his own +birth-date. But necessarily a number of persons were still alive in +Stratford who, in the days of their youth, had seen Shakespeare nearly +every day in the last five years of his life, and they would have been +able to tell that inquirer some first-hand things about him if he had in +those last days been a celebrity and therefore a person of interest to +the villagers. Why did not the inquirer hunt them up and interview them? +Wasn't it worth while? Wasn't the matter of sufficient consequence? Had +the inquirer an engagement to see a dog-fight and couldn't spare the +time? + +It all seems to mean that he never had any literary celebrity, there or +elsewhere, and no considerable repute as actor and manager. + +Now then, I am away along in life--my seventy-third year being already +well behind me--yet SIXTEEN of my Hannibal schoolmates are still alive +today, and can tell--and do tell--inquirers dozens and dozens of +incidents of their young lives and mine together; things that happened to +us in the morning of life, in the blossom of our youth, in the good days, +the dear days, "the days when we went gipsying, a long time ago." Most +of them creditable to me, too. One child to whom I paid court when she +was five years old and I eight still lives in Hannibal, and she visited +me last summer, traversing the necessary ten or twelve hundred miles of +railroad without damage to her patience or to her old-young vigor. +Another little lassie to whom I paid attention in Hannibal when she was +nine years old and I the same, is still alive--in London--and hale and +hearty, just as I am. And on the few surviving steamboats--those +lingering ghosts and remembrancers of great fleets that plied the big +river in the beginning of my water-career--which is exactly as long ago +as the whole invoice of the life-years of Shakespeare numbers--there are +still findable two or three river-pilots who saw me do creditable things +in those ancient days; and several white-headed engineers; and several +roustabouts and mates; and several deck-hands who used to heave the lead +for me and send up on the still night the "Six--feet--SCANT!" that made +me shudder, and the "M-a-r-k--TWAIN!" that took the shudder away, and +presently the darling "By the d-e-e-p--FOUR!" that lifted me to heaven +for joy. [1] They know about me, and can tell. And so do printers, from +St. Louis to New York; and so do newspaper reporters, from Nevada to San +Francisco. And so do the police. If Shakespeare had really been +celebrated, like me, Stratford could have told things about him; and if +my experience goes for anything, they'd have done it. + +------ 1. Four fathoms--twenty-four feet. + + + +VII + +If I had under my superintendence a controversy appointed to decide +whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare or not, I believe I would place +before the debaters only the one question, WAS SHAKESPEARE EVER A +PRACTICING LAWYER? and leave everything else out. + +It is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not merely +myriad-minded, but also myriad-accomplished: that he not only knew some +thousands of things about human life in all its shades and grades, and +about the hundred arts and trades and crafts and professions which men +busy themselves in, but that he could TALK about the men and their grades +and trades accurately, making no mistakes. Maybe it is so, but have the +experts spoken, or is it only Tom, Dick, and Harry? Does the exhibit +stand upon wide, and loose, and eloquent generalizing--which is not +evidence, and not proof--or upon details, particulars, statistics, +illustrations, demonstrations? + +Experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely as to only +one of Shakespeare's multifarious craft-equipments, so far as my +recollections of Shakespeare-Bacon talk abide with me--his law-equipment. +I do not remember that Wellington or Napoleon ever examined Shakespeare's +battles and sieges and strategies, and then decided and established for +good and all that they were militarily flawless; I do not remember that +any Nelson, or Drake, or Cook ever examined his seamanship and said it +showed profound and accurate familiarity with that art; I don't remember +that any king or prince or duke has ever testified that Shakespeare was +letter-perfect in his handling of royal court-manners and the talk and +manners of aristocracies; I don't remember that any illustrious Latinist +or Grecian or Frenchman or Spaniard or Italian has proclaimed him a +past-master in those languages; I don't remember--well, I don't remember +that there is TESTIMONY--great testimony--imposing +testimony--unanswerable and unattackable testimony as to any of +Shakespeare's hundred specialties, except one--the law. + +Other things change, with time, and the student cannot trace back with +certainty the changes that various trades and their processes and +technicalities have undergone in the long stretch of a century or two and +find out what their processes and technicalities were in those early +days, but with the law it is different: it is mile-stoned and documented +all the way back, and the master of that wonderful trade, that complex +and intricate trade, that awe-compelling trade, has competent ways of +knowing whether Shakespeare-law is good law or not; and whether his +law-court procedure is correct or not, and whether his legal shop-talk is +the shop-talk of a veteran practitioner or only a machine-made +counterfeit of it gathered from books and from occasional loiterings in +Westminster. + +Richard H. Dana served two years before the mast, and had every +experience that falls to the lot of the sailor before the mast of our +day. His sailor-talk flows from his pen with the sure touch and the ease +and confidence of a person who has LIVED what he is talking about, not +gathered it from books and random listenings. Hear him: + +Having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each sail +fast by the jigger, with a man on each yard, at the word the whole canvas +of the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity possible +everything was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor tripped and +cat-headed, and the ship under headway. + +Again: + +The royal yards were all crossed at once, and royals and sky-sails set, +and, as we had the wind free, the booms were run out, and all were aloft, +active as cats, laying out on the yards and booms, reeving the +studding-sail gear; and sail after sail the captain piled upon her, until +she was covered with canvas, her sails looking like a great white cloud +resting upon a black speck. + +Once more. A race in the Pacific: + +Our antagonist was in her best trim. Being clear of the point, the +breeze became stiff, and the royal-masts bent under our sails, but we +would not take them in until we saw three boys spring into the rigging of +the CALIFORNIA; then they were all furled at once, but with orders to our +boys to stay aloft at the top-gallant mast-heads and loose them again at +the word. It was my duty to furl the fore-royal; and while standing by +to loose it again, I had a fine view of the scene. From where I stood, +the two vessels seemed nothing but spars and sails, while their narrow +decks, far below, slanting over by the force of the wind aloft, appeared +hardly capable of supporting the great fabrics raised upon them. The +CALIFORNIA was to windward of us, and had every advantage; yet, while the +breeze was stiff we held our own. As soon as it began to slacken she +ranged a little ahead, and the order was given to loose the royals. In +an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt dropped. "Sheet home the +fore-royal!"--"Weather sheet's home!"--"Lee sheet's home!"--"Hoist away, +sir!" is bawled from aloft. "Overhaul your clew-lines!" shouts the mate. +"Aye-aye, sir, all clear!"--"Taut leech! belay! Well the lee brace; haul +taut to windward!" and the royals are set. + +What would the captain of any sailing-vessel of our time say to that? +He would say, "The man that wrote that didn't learn his trade out of a +book, he has BEEN there!" But would this same captain be competent to +sit in judgment upon Shakespeare's seamanship--considering the changes in +ships and ship-talk that have necessarily taken place, unrecorded, +unremembered, and lost to history in the last three hundred years? It is +my conviction that Shakespeare's sailor-talk would be Choctaw to him. +For instance--from "The Tempest": + +MASTER. Boatswain! + +BOATSWAIN. Here, master; what cheer? + +MASTER. Good, speak to the mariners: fall to 't, yarely, or we run +ourselves to ground; bestir, bestir! (ENTER MARINERS.) + +BOATSWAIN. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! +Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's whistle. . . . Down with the +topmast! yare! lower, lower! Bring her to try wi' the main course. . . . +Lay her a-hold, a-hold! Set her two courses. Off to sea again; lay her +off. + +That will do, for the present; let us yare a little, now, for a change. + +If a man should write a book and in it make one of his characters say, +"Here, devil, empty the quoins into the standing galley and the +imposing-stone into the hell-box; assemble the comps around the frisket +and let them jeff for takes and be quick about it," I should recognize a +mistake or two in the phrasing, and would know that the writer was only a +printer theoretically, not practically. + +I have been a quartz miner in the silver regions--a pretty hard life; I +know all the palaver of that business: I know all about discovery claims +and the subordinate claims; I know all about lodes, ledges, outcroppings, +dips, spurs, angles, shafts, drifts, inclines, levels, tunnels, +air-shafts, "horses," clay casings, granite casings; quartz mills and +their batteries; arastras, and how to charge them with quicksilver and +sulphate of copper; and how to clean them up, and how to reduce the +resulting amalgam in the retorts, and how to cast the bullion into pigs; +and finally I know how to screen tailings, and also how to hunt for +something less robust to do, and find it. I know the argot and the +quartz-mining and milling industry familiarly; and so whenever Bret Harte +introduces that industry into a story, the first time one of his miners +opens his mouth I recognize from his phrasing that Harte got the phrasing +by listening--like Shakespeare--I mean the Stratford one--not by +experience. No one can talk the quartz dialect correctly without +learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse. + +I have been a surface miner--gold--and I know all its mysteries, and the +dialects that belongs with them; and whenever Harte introduces that +industry into a story I know by the phrasing of his characters that +neither he nor they have ever served that trade. + +I have been a "pocket" miner--a sort of gold mining not findable in any +but one little spot in the world, so far as I know. I know how, with +horn and water, to find the trail of a pocket and trace it step by step +and stage by stage up the mountain to its source, and find the compact +little nest of yellow metal reposing in its secret home under the ground. +I know the language of that trade, that capricious trade, that +fascinating buried-treasure trade, and can catch any writer who tries to +use it without having learned it by the sweat of his brow and the labor +of his hands. + +I know several other trades and the argot that goes with them; and +whenever a person tries to talk the talk peculiar to any of them without +having learned it at its source I can trap him always before he gets far +on his road. + +And so, as I have already remarked, if I were required to superintend a +Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, I would narrow the matter down to a single +question--the only one, so far as the previous controversies have +informed me, concerning which illustrious experts of unimpeachable +competency have testified: WAS THE AUTHOR OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS A +LAWYER?--a lawyer deeply read and of limitless experience? I would put +aside the guesses and surmises, and perhapes, and might-have-beens, and +could-have-beens, and must-have-beens, and we-are-justified-in- +presumings,and the rest of those vague specters and shadows and +indefintenesses, and stand or fall, win or lose, by the verdict rendered +by the jury upon that single question. If the verdict was Yes, I should +feel quite convinced that the Stratford Shakespeare, the actor, manager, +and trader who died so obscure, so forgotten, so destitute of even +village consequence, that sixty years afterward no fellow-citizen and +friend of his later days remembered to tell anything about him, did not +write the Works. + +Chapter XIII of THE SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM RESTATED bears the heading +"Shakespeare as a Lawyer," and comprises some fifty pages of expert +testimony, with comments thereon, and I will copy the first nine, as +being sufficient all by themselves, as it seems to me, to settle the +question which I have conceived to be the master-key to the +Shakespeare-Bacon puzzle. + + + +VIII + +Shakespeare as a Lawyer [1] + +The Plays and Poems of Shakespeare supply ample evidence that their +author not only had a very extensive and accurate knowledge of law, but +that he was well acquainted with the manners and customs of members of +the Inns of Court and with legal life generally. + +"While novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as to the +laws of marriage, of wills, of inheritance, to Shakespeare's law, +lavishly as he expounds it, there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of +exceptions, nor writ of error." Such was the testimony borne by one of +the most distinguished lawyers of the nineteenth century who was raised +to the high office of Lord Chief Justice in 1850, and subsequently became +Lord Chancellor. Its weight will, doubtless, be more appreciated by +lawyers than by laymen, for only lawyers know how impossible it is for +those who have not served an apprenticeship to the law to avoid +displaying their ignorance if they venture to employ legal terms and to +discuss legal doctrines. "There is nothing so dangerous," wrote Lord +Campbell, "as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry." +A layman is certain to betray himself by using some expression which a +lawyer would never employ. Mr. Sidney Lee himself supplies us with an +example of this. He writes (p. 164): "On February 15, 1609, Shakespeare +. . . obtained judgment from a jury against Addenbroke for the payment of +No. 6, and No. 1, 5s. 0d. costs." Now a lawyer would never have spoken +of obtaining "judgment from a jury," for it is the function of a jury not +to deliver judgment (which is the prerogative of the court), but to find +a verdict on the facts. The error is, indeed, a venial one, but it is +just one of those little things which at once enable a lawyer to know if +the writer is a layman or "one of the craft." + +But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he is +naturally apt to make an exhibition of his incompetence. "Let a +non-professional man, however acute," writes Lord Campbell again, +"presume to talk law, or to draw illustrations from legal science in +discussing other subjects, and he will speedily fall into laughable +absurdity." + +And what does the same high authority say about Shakespeare? He had "a +deep technical knowledge of the law," and an easy familiarity with "some +of the most abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence." And again: +"Whenever he indulges this propensity he uniformly lays down good law." +Of "Henry IV.," Part 2, he says: "If Lord Eldon could be supposed to have +written the play, I do not see how he could be chargeable with having +forgotten any of his law while writing it." Charles and Mary Cowden +Clarke speak of "the marvelous intimacy which he displays with legal +terms, his frequent adoption of them in illustration, and his curiously +technical knowledge of their form and force." Malone, himself a lawyer, +wrote: "His knowledge of legal terms is not merely such as might be +acquired by the casual observation of even his all-comprehending mind; it +has the appearance of technical skill." Another lawyer and well-known +Shakespearean, Richard Grant White, says: "No dramatist of the time, not +even Beaumont, who was the younger son of a judge of the Common Pleas, +and who after studying in the Inns of Court abandoned law for the drama, +used legal phrases with Shakespeare's readiness and exactness. And the +significance of this fact is heightened by another, that is only to the +language of the law that he exhibits this inclination. The phrases +peculiar to other occupations serve him on rare occasions by way of +description, comparison, or illustration, generally when something in the +scene suggests them, but legal phrases flow from his pen as part of his +vocabulary and parcel of his thought. Take the word 'purchase' for +instance, which, in ordinary use, means to acquire by giving value, but +applies in law to all legal modes of obtaining property except by +inheritance or descent, and in this peculiar sense the word occurs five +times in Shakespeare's thirty-four plays, and only in one single instance +in the fifty-four plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. It has been suggested +that it was in attendance upon the courts in London that he picked up his +legal vocabulary. But this supposition not only fails to account for +Shakespeare's peculiar freedom and exactness in the use of that +phraseology, it does not even place him in the way of learning those +terms his use of which is most remarkable, which are not such as he would +have heard at ordinary proceedings at NISI PRIUS, but such as refer to +the tenure or transfer of real property, 'fine and recovery,' 'statutes +merchant,' 'purchase,' 'indenture,' 'tenure,' 'double voucher,' 'fee +simple,' 'fee farm,' 'remainder,' 'reversion,' 'forfeiture,' etc. This +conveyancer's jargon could not have been picked up by hanging round the +courts of law in London two hundred and fifty years ago, when suits as to +the title of real property were comparatively rare. And besides, +Shakespeare uses his law just as freely in his first plays, written in +his first London years, as in those produced at a later period. Just as +exactly, too; for the correctness and propriety with which these terms +are introduced have compelled the admiration of a Chief Justice and a +Lord Chancellor." + +Senator Davis wrote: "We seem to have something more than a sciolist's +temerity of indulgence in the terms of an unfamiliar art. No legal +solecisms will be found. The abstrusest elements of the common law are +impressed into a disciplined service. Over and over again, where such +knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law, Shakespeare +appears in perfect possession of it. In the law of real property, its +rules of tenure and descents, its entails, its fines and recoveries, +their vouchers and double vouchers, in the procedure of the Courts, the +method of bringing writs and arrests, the nature of actions, the rules of +pleading, the law of escapes and of contempt of court, in the principles +of evidence, both technical and philosophical, in the distinction between +the temporal and spiritual tribunals, in the law of attainder and +forfeiture, in the requisites of a valid marriage, in the presumption of +legitimacy, in the learning of the law of prerogative, in the inalienable +character of the Crown, this mastership appears with surprising +authority." + +To all this testimony (and there is much more which I have not cited) may +now be added that of a great lawyer of our own times, VIZ.: Sir James +Plaisted Wilde, Q.C. 1855, created a Baron of the Exchequer in 1860, +promoted to the post of Judge-Ordinary and Judge of the Courts of Probate +and Divorce in 1863, and better known to the world as Lord Penzance, to +which dignity he was raised in 1869. Lord Penzance, as all lawyers know, +and as the late Mr. Inderwick, K.C., has testified, was one of the first +legal authorities of his day, famous for his "remarkable grasp of legal +principles," and "endowed by nature with a remarkable facility for +marshaling facts, and for a clear expression of his views." + +Lord Penzance speaks of Shakespeare's "perfect familiarity with not only +the principles, axioms, and maxims, but the technicalities of English +law, a knowledge so perfect and intimate that he was never incorrect and +never at fault. . . . The mode in which this knowledge was pressed into +service on all occasions to express his meaning and illustrate his +thoughts was quite unexampled. He seems to have had a special pleasure +in his complete and ready mastership of it in all its branches. As +manifested in the plays, this legal knowledge and learning had therefore +a special character which places it on a wholly different footing from +the rest of the multifarious knowledge which is exhibited in page after +page of the plays. At every turn and point at which the author required +a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned FIRST to the +law. He seems almost to have THOUGHT in legal phrases, the commonest of +legal expressions were ever at the end of his pen in description or +illustration. That he should have descanted in lawyer language when he +had a forensic subject in hand, such as Shylock's bond, was to be +expected, but the knowledge of law in 'Shakespeare' was exhibited in a +far different manner: it protruded itself on all occasions, appropriate +or inappropriate, and mingled itself with strains of thought widely +divergent from forensic subjects." Again: "To acquire a perfect +familiarity with legal principles, and an accurate and ready use of the +technical terms and phrases not only of the conveyancer's office, but of +the pleader's chambers and the Courts at Westminster, nothing short of +employment in some career involving constant contact with legal questions +and general legal work would be requisite. But a continuous employment +involves the element of time, and time was just what the manager of two +theaters had not at his disposal. In what portion of Shakespeare's (i.e., +Shakspere's) career would it be possible to point out that time could be +found for the interposition of a legal employment in the chambers or +offices of practicing lawyers?" + +Stratfordians, as is well known, casting about for some possible +explanation of Shakespeare's extraordinary knowledge of law, have made +the suggestion that Shakespeare might, conceivably, have been a clerk in +an attorney's office before he came to London. Mr. Collier wrote to Lord +Campbell to ask his opinion as to the probability of this being true. +His answer was as follows: "You require us to believe implicitly a fact, +of which, if true, positive and irrefragable evidence in his own +handwriting might have been forthcoming to establish it. Not having been +actually enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local court +at Stratford nor of the superior Court at Westminster would present his +name as being concerned in any suit as an attorney, but it might +reasonably have been expected that there would be deeds or wills +witnessed by him still extant, and after a very diligent search none such +can be discovered." + +Upon this Lord Penzance commends: "It cannot be doubted that Lord +Campbell was right in this. No young man could have been at work in an +attorney's office without being called upon continually to act as a +witness, and in many other ways leaving traces of his work and name." +There is not a single fact or incident in all that is known of +Shakespeare, even by rumor or tradition, which supports this notion of a +clerkship. And after much argument and surmise which has been indulged +in on this subject, we may, I think, safely put the notion on one side, +for no less an authority than Mr. Grant White says finally that the idea +of his having been clerk to an attorney has been "blown to pieces." + +It is altogether characteristic of Mr. Churton Collins that he, +nevertheless, adopts this exploded myth. "That Shakespeare was in early +life employed as a clerk in an attorney's office may be correct. At +Stratford there was by royal charter a Court of Record sitting every +fortnight, with six attorneys, besides the town clerk, belonging to it, +and it is certainly not straining probability to suppose that the young +Shakespeare may have had employment in one of them. There is, it is +true, no tradition to this effect, but such traditions as we have about +Shakespeare's occupation between the time of leaving school and going to +London are so loose and baseless that no confidence can be placed in +them. It is, to say the least, more probable that he was in an +attorney's office than that he was a butcher killing calves 'in a high +style,' and making speeches over them." + +This is a charming specimen of Stratfordian argument. There is, as we +have seen, a very old tradition that Shakespeare was a butcher's +apprentice. John Dowdall, who made a tour of Warwickshire in 1693, +testifies to it as coming from the old clerk who showed him over the +church, and it is unhesitatingly accepted as true by Mr. +Halliwell-Phillipps. (Vol. I, p. 11, and Vol. II, pp. 71, 72.) Mr. +Sidney Lee sees nothing improbable in it, and it is supported by Aubrey, +who must have written his account some time before 1680, when his +manuscript was completed. Of the attorney's clerk hypothesis, on the +other hand, there is not the faintest vestige of a tradition. It has +been evolved out of the fertile imaginations of embarrassed +Stratfordians, seeking for some explanation of the Stratford rustic's +marvelous acquaintance with law and legal terms and legal life. But Mr. +Churton Collins has not the least hesitation in throwing over the +tradition which has the warrant of antiquity and setting up in its stead +this ridiculous invention, for which not only is there no shred of +positive evidence, but which, as Lord Campbell and Lord Penzance pointed +out, is really put out of court by the negative evidence, since "no young +man could have been at work in an attorney's office without being called +upon continually to act as a witness, and in many other ways leaving +traces of his work and name." And as Mr. Edwards further points out, +since the day when Lord Campbell's book was published (between forty and +fifty years ago), "every old deed or will, to say nothing of other legal +papers, dated during the period of William Shakespeare's youth, has been +scrutinized over half a dozen shires, and not one signature of the young +man has been found." + +Moreover, if Shakespeare had served as clerk in an attorney's office it +is clear that he must have served for a considerable period in order to +have gained (if, indeed, it is credible that he could have so gained) his +remarkable knowledge of the law. Can we then for a moment believe that, +if this had been so, tradition would have been absolutely silent on the +matter? That Dowdall's old clerk, over eighty years of age, should have +never heard of it (though he was sure enough about the butcher's +apprentice) and that all the other ancient witnesses should be in similar +ignorance! + +But such are the methods of Stratfordian controversy. Tradition is to be +scouted when it is found inconvenient, but cited as irrefragable truth +when it suits the case. Shakespeare of Stratford was the author of the +Plays and Poems, but the author of the Plays and Poems could not have +been a butcher's apprentice. Anyway, therefore, with tradition. But the +author of the Plays and Poems MUST have had a very large and a very +accurate knowledge of the law. Therefore, Shakespeare of Stratford must +have been an attorney's clerk! The method is simplicity itself. By +similar reasoning Shakespeare has been made a country schoolmaster, a +soldier, a physician, a printer, and a good many other things besides, +according to the inclination and the exigencies of the commentator. It +would not be in the least surprising to find that he was studying Latin +as a schoolmaster and law in an attorney's office at the same time. + +However, we must do Mr. Collins the justice of saying that he has fully +recognized, what is indeed tolerable obvious, that Shakespeare must have +had a sound legal training. "It may, of course, be urged," he writes, +"that Shakespeare's knowledge of medicine, and particularly that branch +of it which related to morbid psychology, is equally remarkable, and that +no one has ever contended that he was a physician. (Here Mr. Collins is +wrong; that contention also has been put forward.) It may be urged that +his acquaintance with the technicalities of other crafts and callings, +notably of marine and military affairs, was also extraordinary, and yet +no one has suspected him of being a sailor or a soldier. (Wrong again. +Why, even Messrs. Garnett and Gosse "suspect" that he was a soldier!) +This may be conceded, but the concession hardly furnishes an analogy. To +these and all other subjects he recurs occasionally, and in season, but +with reminiscences of the law his memory, as is abundantly clear, was +simply saturated. In season and out of season now in manifest, now in +recondite application, he presses it into the service of expression and +illustration. At least a third of his myriad metaphors are derived from +it. It would indeed be difficult to find a single act in any of his +dramas, nay, in some of them, a single scene, the diction and imagery of +which are not colored by it. Much of his law may have been acquired from +three books easily accessible to him--namely, Tottell's PRECEDENTS +(1572), Pulton's STATUTES (1578), and Fraunce's LAWIER'S LOGIKE (1588), +works with which he certainly seems to have been familiar; but much of it +could only have come from one who had an intimate acquaintance with legal +proceedings. We quite agree with Mr. Castle that Shakespeare's legal +knowledge is not what could have been picked up in an attorney's office, +but could only have been learned by an actual attendance at the Courts, +at a Pleader's Chambers, and on circuit, or by associating intimately +with members of the Bench and Bar." + +This is excellent. But what is Mr. Collins's explanation? "Perhaps the +simplest solution of the problem is to accept the hypothesis that in +early life he was in an attorney's office (!), that he there contracted a +love for the law which never left him, that as a young man in London he +continued to study or dabble in it for his amusement, to stroll in +leisure hours into the Courts, and to frequent the society of lawyers. +On no other supposition is it possible to explain the attraction which +the law evidently had for him, and his minute and undeviating accuracy in +a subject where no layman who has indulged in such copious and +ostentatious display of legal technicalities has ever yet succeeded in +keeping himself from tripping." + +A lame conclusion. "No other supposition" indeed! Yes, there is another, +and a very obvious supposition--namely, that Shakespeare was himself a +lawyer, well versed in his trade, versed in all the ways of the courts, +and living in close intimacy with judges and members of the Inns of +Court. + +One is, of course, thankful that Mr. Collins has appreciated the fact +that Shakespeare must have had a sound legal training, but I may be +forgiven if I do not attach quite so much importance to his +pronouncements on this branch of the subject as to those of Malone, Lord +Campbell, Judge Holmes, Mr. Castle, K.C., Lord Penzance, Mr. Grant White, +and other lawyers, who have expressed their opinion on the matter of +Shakespeare's legal acquirements. . . . + +Here it may, perhaps, be worth while to quote again from Lord Penzance's +book as to the suggestion that Shakespeare had somehow or other managed +"to acquire a perfect familiarity with legal principles, and an accurate +and ready use of the technical terms and phrases, not only of the +conveyancer's office, but of the pleader's chambers and the Courts at +Westminster." This, as Lord Penzance points out, "would require nothing +short of employment in some career involving CONSTANT CONTACT with legal +questions and general legal work." But "in what portion of Shakespeare's +career would it be possible to point out that time could be found for the +interposition of a legal employment in the chambers or offices of +practicing lawyers? . . . It is beyond doubt that at an early period he +was called upon to abandon his attendance at school and assist his +father, and was soon after, at the age of sixteen, bound apprentice to a +trade. While under the obligation of this bond he could not have pursued +any other employment. Then he leaves Stratford and comes to London. He +has to provide himself with the means of a livelihood, and this he did in +some capacity at the theater. No one doubts that. The holding of horses +is scouted by many, and perhaps with justice, as being unlikely and +certainly unproved; but whatever the nature of his employment was at the +theater, there is hardly room for the belief that it could have been +other than continuous, for his progress there was so rapid. Ere long he +had been taken into the company as an actor, and was soon spoken of as a +'Johannes Factotum.' His rapid accumulation of wealth speaks volumes for +the constancy and activity of his services. One fails to see when there +could be a break in the current of his life at this period of it, giving +room or opportunity for legal or indeed any other employment. 'In 1589,' +says Knight, 'we have undeniable evidence that he had not only a casual +engagement, was not only a salaried servant, as may players were, but was +a shareholder in the company of the Queen's players with other +shareholders below him on the list.' This (1589) would be within two +years after his arrival in London, which is placed by White and +Halliwell-Phillipps about the year 1587. The difficulty in supposing +that, starting with a state of ignorance in 1587, when he is supposed to +have come to London, he was induced to enter upon a course of most +extended study and mental culture, is almost insuperable. Still it was +physically possible, provided always that he could have had access to the +needful books. But this legal training seems to me to stand on a +different footing. It is not only unaccountable and incredible, but it +is actually negatived by the known facts of his career." Lord Penzance +then refers to the fact that "by 1592 (according to the best authority, +Mr. Grant White) several of the plays had been written. 'The Comedy of +Errors' in 1589, 'Love's Labour's Lost' in 1589, 'Two Gentlemen of +Verona' in 1589 or 1590," and so forth, and then asks, "with this +catalogue of dramatic work on hand . . . was it possible that he could +have taken a leading part in the management and conduct of two theaters, +and if Mr. Phillipps is to be relied upon, taken his share in the +performances of the provincial tours of his company--and at the same time +devoted himself to the study of the law in all its branches so +efficiently as to make himself complete master of its principles and +practice, and saturate his mind with all its most technical terms?" + +I have cited this passage from Lord Penzance's book, because it lay +before me, and I had already quoted from it on the matter of +Shakespeare's legal knowledge; but other writers have still better set +forth the insuperable difficulties, as they seem to me, which beset the +idea that Shakespeare might have found them in some unknown period of +early life, amid multifarious other occupations, for the study of +classics, literature, and law, to say nothing of languages and a few +other matters. Lord Penzance further asks his readers: "Did you ever +meet with or hear of an instance in which a young man in this country +gave himself up to legal studies and engaged in legal employments, which +is the only way of becoming familiar with the technicalities of practice, +unless with the view of practicing in that profession? I do not believe +that it would be easy, or indeed possible, to produce an instance in +which the law has been seriously studied in all its branches, except as a +qualification for practice in the legal profession." + +This testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative; and so +uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and surmises, and maybe-so's, and +might-have-beens, and could-have-beens, and must-have-beens, and the rest +of that ton of plaster of Paris out of which the biographers have built +the colossal brontosaur which goes by the Stratford actor's name, that it +quite convinces me that the man who wrote Shakespeare's Works knew all +about law and lawyers. Also, that that man could not have been the +Stratford Shakespeare--and WASN'T. + +Who did write these Works, then? + +I wish I knew. + +----- 1. From Chapter XIII of THE SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM RESTATED. By +George G. Greenwood, M.P. John Lane Company, publishers. + + + +IX + +Did Francis Bacon write Shakespeare's Works? Nobody knows. + +We cannot say we KNOW a thing when that thing has not been proved. KNOW +is too strong a word to use when the evidence is not final and absolutely +conclusive. We can infer, if we want to, like those slaves. . . . No, I +will not write that word, it is not kind, it is not courteous. The +upholders of the Stratford-Shakespeare superstition call US the hardest +names they can think of, and they keep doing it all the time; very well, +if they like to descend to that level, let them do it, but I will not so +undignify myself as to follow them. I cannot call them harsh names; the +most I can do is to indicate them by terms reflecting my disapproval; and +this without malice, without venom. + +To resume. What I was about to say was, those thugs have built their +entire superstition upon INFERENCES, not upon known and established +facts. It is a weak method, and poor, and I am glad to be able to say +our side never resorts to it while there is anything else to resort to. + +But when we must, we must; and we have now arrived at a place of that +sort. . . . Since the Stratford Shakespeare couldn't have written the +Works, we infer that somebody did. Who was it, then? This requires some +more inferring. + +Ordinarily when an unsigned poem sweeps across the continent like a tidal +wave whose roar and boom and thunder are made up of admiration, delight, +and applause, a dozen obscure people rise up and claim the authorship. +Why a dozen, instead of only one or two? One reason is, because there +are a dozen that are recognizably competent to do that poem. Do you +remember "Beautiful Snow"? Do you remember "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother, +Rock Me to Sleep"? Do you remember "Backward, turn, backward, O Time, in +thy flight! Make me a child again just for tonight"? I remember them +very well. Their authorship was claimed by most of the grown-up people +who were alive at the time, and every claimant had one plausible argument +in his favor, at least--to wit, he could have done the authoring; he was +competent. + +Have the Works been claimed by a dozen? They haven't. There was good +reason. The world knows there was but one man on the planet at the time +who was competent--not a dozen, and not two. A long time ago the +dwellers in a far country used now and then to find a procession of +prodigious footprints stretching across the plain--footprints that were +three miles apart, each footprint a third of a mile long and a furlong +deep, and with forests and villages mashed to mush in it. Was there any +doubt as to who made that mighty trail? Were there a dozen claimants? +Where there two? No--the people knew who it was that had been along +there: there was only one Hercules. + +There has been only one Shakespeare. There couldn't be two; certainly +there couldn't be two at the same time. It takes ages to bring forth a +Shakespeare, and some more ages to match him. This one was not matched +before his time; nor during his time; and hasn't been matched since. The +prospect of matching him in our time is not bright. + +The Baconians claim that the Stratford Shakespeare was not qualified to +write the Works, and that Francis Bacon was. They claim that Bacon +possessed the stupendous equipment--both natural and acquired--for the +miracle; and that no other Englishman of his day possessed the like; or, +indeed, anything closely approaching it. + +Macaulay, in his Essay, has much to say about the splendor and +horizonless magnitude of that equipment. Also, he has synopsized Bacon's +history--a thing which cannot be done for the Stratford Shakespeare, for +he hasn't any history to synopsize. Bacon's history is open to the world, +from his boyhood to his death in old age--a history consisting of known +facts, displayed in minute and multitudinous detail; FACTS, not guesses +and conjectures and might-have-beens. + +Whereby it appears that he was born of a race of statesmen, and had a +Lord Chancellor for his father, and a mother who was "distinguished both +as a linguist and a theologian: she corresponded in Greek with Bishop +Jewell, and translated his APOLOGIA from the Latin so correctly that +neither he nor Archbishop Parker could suggest a single alteration." It +is the atmosphere we are reared in that determines how our inclinations +and aspirations shall tend. The atmosphere furnished by the parents to +the son in this present case was an atmosphere saturated with learning; +with thinkings and ponderings upon deep subjects; and with polite +culture. It had its natural effect. Shakespeare of Stratford was reared +in a house which had no use for books, since its owners, his parents, +were without education. This may have had an effect upon the son, but we +do not know, because we have no history of him of an informing sort. +There were but few books anywhere, in that day, and only the well-to-do +and highly educated possessed them, they being almost confined to the +dead languages. "All the valuable books then extant in all the +vernacular dialects of Europe would hardly have filled a single +shelf"--imagine it! The few existing books were in the Latin tongue +mainly. "A person who was ignorant of it was shut out from all +acquaintance--not merely with Cicero and Virgil, but with the most +interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own time"--a +literature necessary to the Stratford lad, for his fictitious +reputation's sake, since the writer of his Works would begin to use it +wholesale and in a most masterly way before the lad was hardly more than +out of his teens and into his twenties. + +At fifteen Bacon was sent to the university, and he spent three years +there. Thence he went to Paris in the train of the English Ambassador, +and there he mingled daily with the wise, the cultured, the great, and +the aristocracy of fashion, during another three years. A total of six +years spent at the sources of knowledge; knowledge both of books and of +men. The three spent at the university were coeval with the second and +last three spent by the little Stratford lad at Stratford school +supposedly, and perhapsedly, and maybe, and by inference--with nothing to +infer from. The second three of the Baconian six were "presumably" spent +by the Stratford lad as apprentice to a butcher. That is, the thugs +presume it--on no evidence of any kind. Which is their way, when they +want a historical fact. Fact and presumption are, for business purposes, +all the same to them. They know the difference, but they also know how +to blink it. They know, too, that while in history-building a fact is +better than a presumption, it doesn't take a presumption long to bloom +into a fact when THEY have the handling of it. They know by old +experience that when they get hold of a presumption-tadpole he is not +going to STAY tadpole in their history-tank; no, they know how to develop +him into the giant four-legged bullfrog of FACT, and make him sit up on +his hams, and puff out his chin, and look important and insolent and +come-to-stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure authenticity with a +thundering bellow that will convince everybody because it is so loud. The +thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons where reasoning +convinces but one. I wouldn't be a thug, not even if--but never mind +about that, it has nothing to do with the argument, and it is not noble +in spirit besides. If I am better than a thug, is the merit mine? No, +it is His. Then to Him be the praise. That is the right spirit. + +They "presume" the lad severed his "presumed" connection with the +Stratford school to become apprentice to a butcher. They also "presume" +that the butcher was his father. They don't know. There is no written +record of it, nor any other actual evidence. If it would have helped +their case any, they would have apprenticed him to thirty butchers, to +fifty butchers, to a wilderness of butchers--all by their patented method +"presumption." If it will help their case they will do it yet; and if it +will further help it, they will "presume" that all those butchers were +his father. And the week after, they will SAY it. Why, it is just like +being the past tense of the compound reflexive adverbial incandescent +hypodermic irregular accusative Noun of Multitude; which is father to the +expression which the grammarians call Verb. It is like a whole ancestry, +with only one posterity. + +To resume. Next, the young Bacon took up the study of law, and mastered +that abstruse science. From that day to the end of his life he was daily +in close contact with lawyers and judges; not as a casual onlooker in +intervals between holding horses in front of a theater, but as a +practicing lawyer--a great and successful one, a renowned one, a +Launcelot of the bar, the most formidable lance in the high brotherhood +of the legal Table Round; he lived in the law's atmosphere thenceforth, +all his years, and by sheer ability forced his way up its difficult +steeps to its supremest summit, the Lord-Chancellorship, leaving behind +him no fellow-craftsman qualified to challenge his divine right to that +majestic place. + +When we read the praises bestowed by Lord Penzance and the other +illustrious experts upon the legal condition and legal aptnesses, +brilliances, profundities, and felicities so prodigally displayed in the +Plays, and try to fit them to the historyless Stratford stage-manager, +they sound wild, strange, incredible, ludicrous; but when we put them in +the mouth of Bacon they do not sound strange, they seem in their natural +and rightful place, they seem at home there. Please turn back and read +them again. Attributed to Shakespeare of Stratford they are meaningless, +they are inebriate extravagancies--intemperate admirations of the dark +side of the moon, so to speak; attributed to Bacon, they are admirations +of the golden glories of the moon's front side, the moon at the full--and +not intemperate, not overwrought, but sane and right, and justified. "At +ever turn and point at which the author required a metaphor, simile, or +illustration, his mind ever turned FIRST to the law; he seems almost to +have THOUGHT in legal phrases; the commonest legal phrases, the commonest +of legal expressions, were ever at the end of his pen." That could +happen to no one but a person whose TRADE was the law; it could not +happen to a dabbler in it. Veteran mariners fill their conversation with +sailor-phrases and draw all their similes from the ship and the sea and +the storm, but no mere PASSENGER ever does it, be he of Stratford or +elsewhere; or could do it with anything resembling accuracy, if he were +hardy enough to try. Please read again what Lord Campbell and the other +great authorities have said about Bacon when they thought they were +saying it about Shakespeare of Stratford. + + + +X + +The Rest of the Equipment + +The author of the Plays was equipped, beyond every other man of his +time, with wisdom, erudition, imagination, capaciousness of mind, grace, +and majesty of expression. Everyone one had said it, no one doubts it. +Also, he had humor, humor in rich abundance, and always wanting to break +out. We have no evidence of any kind that Shakespeare of Stratford +possessed any of these gifts or any of these acquirements. The only +lines he ever wrote, so far as we know, are substantially barren of them +--barren of all of them. + +Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare: +Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones And curst be he yt moves my bones. + +Ben Jonson says of Bacon, as orator: + +His language, WHERE HE COULD SPARE AND PASS BY A JEST, was nobly +censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, +or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member +of his speech but consisted of his (its) own graces. . . . The fear of +every man that heard him was lest he should make an end. + +From Macaulay: + +He continued to distinguish himself in Parliament, particularly by his +exertions in favor of one excellent measure on which the King's heart was +set--the union of England and Scotland. It was not difficult for such an +intellect to discover many irresistible arguments in favor of such a +scheme. He conducted the great case of the POST NATI in the Exchequer +Chamber; and the decision of the judges--a decision the legality of which +may be questioned, but the beneficial effect of which must be +acknowledged--was in a great measure attributed to his dexterous +management. + +Again: + +While actively engaged in the House of Commons and in the courts of law, +he still found leisure for letters and philosophy. The noble treatise on +the ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, which at a later period was expanded into +the DE AUGMENTIS, appeared in 1605. + +The WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS, a work which, if it had proceeded from any +other writer, would have been considered as a masterpiece of wit and +learning, was printed in 1609. + +In the mean time the NOVUM ORGANUM was slowly proceeding. Several +distinguished men of learning had been permitted to see portions of that +extraordinary book, and they spoke with the greatest admiration of his +genius. + +Even Sir Thomas Bodley, after perusing the COGITATA ET VISA, one of the +most precious of those scattered leaves out of which the great oracular +volume was afterward made up, acknowledged that "in all proposals and +plots in that book, Bacon showed himself a master workman"; and that "it +could not be gainsaid but all the treatise over did abound with choice +conceits of the present state of learning, and with worthy contemplations +of the means to procure it." + +In 1612 a new edition of the ESSAYS appeared, with additions surpassing +the original collection both in bulk and quality. + +Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon's attention from a work the most +arduous, the most glorious, and the most useful that even his mighty +powers could have achieved, "the reducing and recompiling," to use his +own phrase, "of the laws of England." + +To serve the exacting and laborious offices of Attorney-General and +Solicitor-General would have satisfied the appetite of any other man for +hard work, but Bacon had to add the vast literary industries just +described, to satisfy his. He was a born worker. + +The service which he rendered to letters during the last five years of +his life, amid ten thousand distractions and vexations, increase the +regret with which we think on the many years which he had wasted, to use +the words of Sir Thomas Bodley, "on such study as was not worthy such a +student." + +He commenced a digest of the laws of England, a History of England under +the Princes of the House of Tudor, a body of National History, a +Philosophical Romance. He made extensive and valuable additions to his +Essays. He published the inestimable TREATISE DE AUGMENTIS SCIENTIARUM. + +Did these labors of Hercules fill up his time to his contentment, and +quiet his appetite for work? Not entirely: + +The trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain and languor +bore the mark of his mind. THE BEST JEST-BOOK IN THE WORLD is that which +he dictated from memory, without referring to any book, on a day on which +illness had rendered him incapable of serious study. + +Here are some scattered remarks (from Macaulay) which throw light upon +Bacon, and seem to indicate--and maybe demonstrate--that he was +competent to write the Plays and Poems: + +With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of +comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other human +being. + +The ESSAYS contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of character, no +peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a garden, or a court-masque, +could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable of taking in the +whole world of knowledge. + +His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy Paribanou gave to +Prince Ahmed: fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady; spread +it, and the armies of the powerful Sultans might repose beneath its +shade. + +The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men was a knowledge of the +mutual relations of all departments of knowledge. + +In a letter written when he was only thirty-one, to his uncle, Lord +Burleigh, he said, "I have taken all knowledge to be my province." + +Though Bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons of logic, he +adorned her profusely with all the richest decorations of rhetoric. + +The practical faculty was powerful in Bacon; but not, like his wit, so +powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason and to +tyrannize over the whole man. + +There are too many places in the Plays where this happens. Poor old +dying John of Gaunt volleying second-rate puns at his own name, is a +pathetic instance of it. "We may assume" that it is Bacon's fault, but +the Stratford Shakespeare has to bear the blame. + +No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly subjugated. +It stopped at the first check from good sense. + +In truth, much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world--amid +things as strange as any that are described in the ARABIAN TALES . . . +amid buildings more sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, fountains more +wonderful than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances more rapid than +the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more formidable than the lance of +Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than the balsam of Fierabras. Yet in +his magnificent day-dreams there was nothing wild--nothing but what sober +reason sanctioned. + +Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the NOVUM ORGANUM. . . +. Every part of it blazes with wit, but with wit which is employed only +to illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever made so great a +revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew so may prejudices, +introduced so many new opinions. + +But what we most admire is the vast capacity of that intellect which, +without effort, takes in at once all the domains of science--all the +past, the present and the future, all the errors of two thousand years, +all the encouraging signs of the passing times, all the bright hopes of +the coming age. + +He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close and rendering it +portable. + +His eloquence would alone have entitled him to a high rank in +literature. + +It is evident that he had each and every one of the mental gifts and +each and every one of the acquirements that are so prodigally displayed +in the Plays and Poems, and in much higher and richer degree than any +other man of his time or of any previous time. He was a genius without a +mate, a prodigy not matable. There was only one of him; the planet could +not produce two of him at one birth, nor in one age. He could have +written anything that is in the Plays and Poems. He could have written +this: + + + +The cloud-cap'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, +The solemn temples, the great globe itself, +Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, +And, like an insubstantial pageant faded, +Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff +As dreams are made of, and our little life +Is rounded with a sleep. + +Also, he could have written this, but he refrained: + +Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare +To digg the dust encloased heare: +Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones +And curst be he yt moves my bones. + +When a person reads the noble verses about the cloud-cap'd towers, he +ought not to follow it immediately with Good friend for Iesus sake +forbeare, because he will find the transition from great poetry to poor +prose too violent for comfort. It will give him a shock. You never +notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is until you bite into a layer +of it in a pie. + + + +XI + +Am I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write +Shakespeare's Works? Ah, now, what do you take me for? Would I be so +soft as that, after having known the human race familiarly for nearly +seventy-four years? It would grieve me to know that any one could think +so injuriously of me, so uncomplimentarily, so unadmiringly of me. No, +no, I am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has been +trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be +possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, +dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance +which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. +I doubt if I could do it myself. We always get at second hand our +notions about systems of government; and high tariff and low tariff; and +prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the holiness of peace and the +glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals; and approval of +the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs concerning the nature of +cats; and our ideas as to whether the murder of helpless wild animals is +base or is heroic; and our preferences in the matter of religious and +political parties; and our acceptance or rejection of the Shakespeares +and the Author Ortons and the Mrs. Eddys. We get them all at second +hand, we reason none of them out for ourselves. It is the way we are +made. It is the way we are all made, and we can't help it, we can't +change it. And whenever we have been furnished a fetish, and have been +taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain from +examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong, that can +persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty and our devotion. In morals, +conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment and +associations, and it is a color that can safely be warranted to wash. +Whenever we have been furnished with a tar baby ostensibly stuffed with +jewels, and warned that it will be dishonorable and irreverent to +disembowel it and test the jewels, we keep our sacrilegious hands off it. +We submit, not reluctantly, but rather gladly, for we are privately +afraid we should find, upon examination that the jewels are of the sort +that are manufactured at North Adams, Mass. + +I haven't any idea that Shakespeare will have to vacate his pedestal this +side of the year 2209. Disbelief in him cannot come swiftly, disbelief +in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never been known to +disintegrate swiftly; it is a very slow process. It took several +thousand years to convince our fine race--including every splendid +intellect in it--that there is no such thing as a witch; it has taken +several thousand years to convince the same fine race--including every +splendid intellect in it--that there is no such person as Satan; it has +taken several centuries to remove perdition from the Protestant Church's +program of post-mortem entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to +persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to +bear it the best they can; and it looks as if their Scotch brethren will +still be burning babies in the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes +down from his perch. + +We are The Reasoning Race. We can't prove it by the above examples, and +we can't prove it by the miraculous "histories" built by those +Stratfordolaters out of a hatful of rags and a barrel of sawdust, but +there is a plenty of other things we can prove it by, if I could think of +them. We are The Reasoning Race, and when we find a vague file of +chipmunk-tracks stringing through the dust of Stratford village, we know +by our reasoning bowers that Hercules has been along there. I feel that +our fetish is safe for three centuries yet. The bust, too--there in the +Stratford Church. The precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm bust, +the serene bust, the emotionless bust, with the dandy mustache, and the +putty face, unseamed of care--that face which has looked passionlessly +down upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years and will still +look down upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with the deep, deep, +deep, subtle, subtle, subtle expression of a bladder. + + + +XII + +Irreverence + +One of the most trying defects which I find in these--these--what shall +I call them? for I will not apply injurious epithets to them, the way +they do to us, such violations of courtesy being repugnant to my nature +and my dignity. The farthest I can go in that direction is to call them +by names of limited reverence--names merely descriptive, never unkind, +never offensive, never tainted by harsh feeling. If THEY would do like +this, they would feel better in their hearts. Very well, then--to +proceed. One of the most trying defects which I find in these +Stratfordolaters, these Shakesperiods, these thugs, these bangalores, +these troglodytes, these herumfrodites, these blatherskites, these +buccaneers, these bandoleers, is their spirit of irreverence. It is +detectable in every utterance of theirs when they are talking about us. +I am thankful that in me there is nothing of that spirit. When a thing +is sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it. I +cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, +except towards the things which were sacred to other people. Am I in the +right? I think so. But I ask no one to take my unsupported word; no, +look at the dictionary; let the dictionary decide. Here is the +definition: + +IRREVERENCE. The quality or condition of irreverence toward God and +sacred things. + +What does the Hindu say? He says it is correct. He says irreverence is +lack of respect for Vishnu, and Brahma, and Chrishna, and his other gods, +and for his sacred cattle, and for his temples and the things within +them. He endorses the definition, you see; and there are 300,000,000 +Hindus or their equivalents back of him. + +The dictionary had the acute idea that by using the capital G it could +restrict irreverence to lack of reverence for OUR Deity and our sacred +things, but that ingenious and rather sly idea miscarried: for by the +simple process of spelling HIS deities with capitals the Hindu +confiscates the definition and restricts it to his own sects, thus making +it clearly compulsory upon us to revere HIS gods and HIS sacred things, +and nobody's else. We can't say a word, for he had our own dictionary at +his back, and its decision is final. + +This law, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: 1. Whatever is sacred +to the Christian must be held in reverence by everybody else; 2. +whatever is sacred to the Hindu must be held in reverence by everybody +else; 3. therefore, by consequence, logically, and indisputably, +whatever is sacred to ME must be held in reverence by everybody else. + +Now then, what aggravates me is that these troglodytes and muscovites and +bandoleers and buccaneers are ALSO trying to crowd in and share the +benefit of the law, and compel everybody to revere their Shakespeare and +hold him sacred. We can't have that: there's enough of us already. If +you go on widening and spreading and inflating the privilege, it will +presently come to be conceded that each man's sacred things are the ONLY +ones, and the rest of the human race will have to be humbly reverent +toward them or suffer for it. That can surely happen, and when it +happens, the word Irreverence will be regarded as the most meaningless, +and foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent, and impudent, and +dictatorial word in the language. And people will say, "Whose business +is it what gods I worship and what things hold sacred? Who has the right +to dictate to my conscience, and where did he get that right?" + +We cannot afford to let that calamity come upon us. We must save the +word from this destruction. There is but one way to do it, and that is +to stop the spread of the privilege and strictly confine it to its +present limits--that is, to all the Christian sects, to all the Hindu +sects, and me. We do not need any more, the stock is watered enough, +just as it is. + +It would be better if the privilege were limited to me alone. I think so +because I am the only sect that knows how to employ it gently, kindly, +charitably, dispassionately. The other sects lack the quality of +self-restraint. The Catholic Church says the most irreverent things +about matters which are sacred to the Protestants, and the Protestant +Church retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which +Catholics hold sacred; then both of these irreverencers turn upon Thomas +Paine and charge HIM with irreverence. This is all unfortunate, because +it makes it difficult for students equipped with only a low grade of +mentality to find out what Irreverence really IS. + +It will surely be much better all around if the privilege of regulating +the irreverent and keeping them in order shall eventually be withdrawn +from all the sects but me. Then there will be no more quarreling, no +more bandying of disrespectful epithets, no more heartburnings. + +There will then be nothing sacred involved in this Bacon-Shakespeare +controversy except what is sacred to me. That will simplify the whole +matter, and trouble will cease. There will be irreverence no longer, +because I will not allow it. The first time those criminals charge me +with irreverence for calling their Stratford myth an +Arthur-Orton-Mary-Baker-Thompson-Eddy-Louis-the-Seventeenth-Veiled- +Prophet-of-Khorassan will be the last. Taught by the methods found +effective in extinguishing earlier offenders by the Inquisition, of holy +memory, I shall know how to quiet them. + + + +XIII + +Isn't it odd, when you think of it, that you may list all the celebrated +Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen of modern times, clear back to the +first Tudors--a list containing five hundred names, shall we say?--and +you can go to the histories, biographies, and cyclopedias and learn the +particulars of the lives of every one of them. Every one of them except +one--the most famous, the most renowned--by far the most illustrious of +them all--Shakespeare! You can get the details of the lives of all the +celebrated ecclesiastics in the list; all the celebrated tragedians, +comedians, singers, dancers, orators, judges, lawyers, poets, dramatists, +historians, biographers, editors, inventors, reformers, statesmen, +generals, admirals, discoverers, prize-fighters, murderers, pirates, +conspirators, horse-jockeys, bunco-steerers, misers, swindlers, +explorers, adventurers by land and sea, bankers, financiers, astronomers, +naturalists, claimants, impostors, chemists, biologists, geologists, +philologists, college presidents and professors, architects, engineers, +painters, sculptors, politicians, agitators, rebels, revolutionists, +patriots, demagogues, clowns, cooks, freaks, philosophers, burglars, +highwaymen, journalists, physicians, surgeons--you can get the +life-histories of all of them but ONE. Just ONE--the most extraordinary +and the most celebrated of them all--Shakespeare! + +You may add to the list the thousand celebrated persons furnished by the +rest of Christendom in the past four centuries, and you can find out the +life-histories of all those people, too. You will then have listed +fifteen hundred celebrities, and you can trace the authentic +life-histories of the whole of them. Save one--far and away the most +colossal prodigy of the entire accumulation--Shakespeare! About him you +can find out NOTHING. Nothing of even the slightest importance. Nothing +worth the trouble of stowing away in your memory. Nothing that even +remotely indicates that he was ever anything more than a distinctly +commonplace person--a manager, an actor of inferior grade, a small trader +in a small village that did not regard him as a person of any +consequence, and had forgotten all about him before he was fairly cold in +his grave. We can go to the records and find out the life-history of +every renowned RACE-HORSE of modern times--but not Shakespeare's! There +are many reasons why, and they have been furnished in cart-loads (of +guess and conjecture) by those troglodytes; but there is one that is +worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is abundantly +sufficient all by itself--HE HADN'T ANY HISTORY TO RECORD. There is no +way of getting around that deadly fact. And no sane way has yet been +discovered of getting around its formidable significance. + +Its quite plain significance--to any but those thugs (I do not use the +term unkindly) is, that Shakespeare had no prominence while he lived, and +none until he had been dead two or three generations. The Plays enjoyed +high fame from the beginning; and if he wrote them it seems a pity the +world did not find it out. He ought to have explained that he was the +author, and not merely a NOM DE PLUME for another man to hide behind. If +he had been less intemperately solicitous about his bones, and more +solicitous about his Works, it would have been better for his good name, +and a kindness to us. The bones were not important. They will moulder +away, they will turn to dust, but the Works will endure until the last +sun goes down. + + + +Mark Twain. + +P.S. MARCH 25. About two months ago I was illuminating this +Autobiography with some notions of mine concerning the Bacon-Shakespeare +controversy, and I then took occasion to air the opinion that the +Stratford Shakespeare was a person of no public consequence or celebrity +during his lifetime, but was utterly obscure and unimportant. And not +only in great London, but also in the little village where he was born, +where he lived a quarter of a century, and where he died and was buried. +I argued that if he had been a person of any note at all, aged villagers +would have had much to tell about him many and many a year after his +death, instead of being unable to furnish inquirers a single fact +connected with him. I believed, and I still believe, that if he had been +famous, his notoriety would have lasted as long as mine has lasted in my +native village out in Missouri. It is a good argument, a prodigiously +strong one, and most formidable one for even the most gifted and +ingenious and plausible Stratfordolator to get around or explain away. +Today a Hannibal COURIER-POST of recent date has reached me, with an +article in it which reinforces my contention that a really celebrated +person cannot be forgotten in his village in the short space of sixty +years. I will make an extract from it: + +Hannibal, as a city, may have many sins to answer for, but ingratitude +is not one of them, or reverence for the great men she has produced, and +as the years go by her greatest son, Mark Twain, or S. L. Clemens as a +few of the unlettered call him, grows in the estimation and regard of the +residents of the town he made famous and the town that made him famous. +His name is associated with every old building that is torn down to make +way for the modern structures demanded by a rapidly growing city, and +with every hill or cave over or through which he might by any possibility +have roamed, while the many points of interest which he wove into his +stories, such as Holiday Hill, Jackson's Island, or Mark Twain Cave, are +now monuments to his genius. Hannibal is glad of any opportunity to do +him honor as he had honored her. + +So it has happened that the "old timers" who went to school with Mark or +were with him on some of his usual escapades have been honored with large +audiences whenever they were in a reminiscent mood and condescended to +tell of their intimacy with the ordinary boy who came to be a very +extraordinary humorist and whose every boyish act is now seen to have +been indicative of what was to come. Like Aunt Becky and Mrs. Clemens, +they can now see that Mark was hardly appreciated when he lived here and +that the things he did as a boy and was whipped for doing were not all +bad, after all. So they have been in no hesitancy about drawing out the +bad things he did as well as the good in their efforts to get a "Mark +Twain" story, all incidents being viewed in the light of his present +fame, until the volume of "Twainiana" is already considerable and growing +in proportion as the "old timers" drop away and the stories are retold +second and third hand by their descendants. With some seventy-three +years and living in a villa instead of a house, he is a fair target, and +let him incorporate, copyright, or patent himself as he will, there are +some of his "works" that will go swooping up Hannibal chimneys as long as +graybeards gather about the fires and begin with, "I've heard father +tell," or possibly, "Once when I." The Mrs. Clemens referred to is my +mother--WAS my mother. + +And here is another extract from a Hannibal paper, of date twenty days +ago: + +Miss Becca Blankenship died at the home of William Dickason, 408 Rock +Street, at 2.30 o'clock yesterday afternoon, aged 72 years. The deceased +was a sister of "Huckleberry Finn," one of the famous characters in Mark +Twain's TOM SAWYER. She had been a member of the Dickason family--the +housekeeper--for nearly forty-five years, and was a highly respected +lady. For the past eight years she had been an invalid, but was as well +cared for by Mr. Dickason and his family as if she had been a near +relative. She was a member of the Park Methodist Church and a Christian +woman. + +I remember her well. I have a picture of her in my mind which was +graven there, clear and sharp and vivid, sixty-three years ago. She was +at that time nine years old, and I was about eleven. I remember where +she stood, and how she looked; and I can still see her bare feet, her +bare head, her brown face, and her short tow-linen frock. She was +crying. What it was about I have long ago forgotten. But it was the +tears that preserved the picture for me, no doubt. She was a good child, +I can say that for her. She knew me nearly seventy years ago. Did she +forget me, in the course of time? I think not. If she had lived in +Stratford in Shakespeare's time, would she have forgotten him? Yes. For +he was never famous during his lifetime, he was utterly obscure in +Stratford, and there wouldn't be any occasion to remember him after he +had been dead a week. + +"Injun Joe," "Jimmy Finn," and "General Gaines" were prominent and very +intemperate ne'er-do-weels in Hannibal two generations ago. Plenty of +grayheads there remember them to this day, and can tell you about them. +Isn't it curious that two "town drunkards" and one half-breed loafer +should leave behind them, in a remote Missourian village, a fame a +hundred times greater and several hundred times more particularized in +the matter of definite facts than Shakespeare left behind him in the +village where he had lived the half of his lifetime? + + +End of Project Gutenberg's What Is Man?, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER + +by Mark Twain + + + +Contents: + The Mysterious Stranger + A Fable + Hunting The Deceitful Turkey + The Mcwilliamses And The Burglar Alarm + + + + +THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER + + +Chapter 1 + +It was in 1590--winter. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep; +it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so +forever. Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said +that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Belief in +Austria. But they meant it as a compliment, not a slur, and it was so +taken, and we were all proud of it. I remember it well, although I was +only a boy; and I remember, too, the pleasure it gave me. + +Yes, Austria was far from the world, and asleep, and our village was in +the middle of that sleep, being in the middle of Austria. It drowsed in +peace in the deep privacy of a hilly and woodsy solitude where news from +the world hardly ever came to disturb its dreams, and was infinitely +content. At its front flowed the tranquil river, its surface painted +with cloud-forms and the reflections of drifting arks and stone-boats; +behind it rose the woody steeps to the base of the lofty precipice; from +the top of the precipice frowned a vast castle, its long stretch of +towers and bastions mailed in vines; beyond the river, a league to the +left, was a tumbled expanse of forest-clothed hills cloven by winding +gorges where the sun never penetrated; and to the right a precipice +overlooked the river, and between it and the hills just spoken of lay a +far-reaching plain dotted with little homesteads nested among orchards +and shade trees. + +The whole region for leagues around was the hereditary property of a +prince, whose servants kept the castle always in perfect condition for +occupancy, but neither he nor his family came there oftener than once in +five years. When they came it was as if the lord of the world had +arrived, and had brought all the glories of its kingdoms along; and when +they went they left a calm behind which was like the deep sleep which +follows an orgy. + +Eseldorf was a paradise for us boys. We were not overmuch pestered with +schooling. Mainly we were trained to be good Christians; to revere the +Virgin, the Church, and the saints above everything. Beyond these +matters we were not required to know much; and, in fact, not allowed to. +Knowledge was not good for the common people, and could make them +discontented with the lot which God had appointed for them, and God would +not endure discontentment with His plans. We had two priests. One of +them, Father Adolf, was a very zealous and strenuous priest, much +considered. + +There may have been better priests, in some ways, than Father Adolf, but +there was never one in our commune who was held in more solemn and awful +respect. This was because he had absolutely no fear of the Devil. He +was the only Christian I have ever known of whom that could be truly +said. People stood in deep dread of him on that account; for they +thought that there must be something supernatural about him, else he +could not be so bold and so confident. All men speak in bitter +disapproval of the Devil, but they do it reverently, not flippantly; but +Father Adolf's way was very different; he called him by every name he +could lay his tongue to, and it made everyone shudder that heard him; and +often he would even speak of him scornfully and scoffingly; then the +people crossed themselves and went quickly out of his presence, fearing +that something fearful might happen. + +Father Adolf had actually met Satan face to face more than once, and +defied him. This was known to be so. Father Adolf said it himself. He +never made any secret of it, but spoke it right out. And that he was +speaking true there was proof in at least one instance, for on that +occasion he quarreled with the enemy, and intrepidly threw his bottle at +him; and there, upon the wall of his study, was the ruddy splotch where +it struck and broke. + +But it was Father Peter, the other priest, that we all loved best and +were sorriest for. Some people charged him with talking around in +conversation that God was all goodness and would find a way to save all +his poor human children. It was a horrible thing to say, but there was +never any absolute proof that Father Peter said it; and it was out of +character for him to say it, too, for he was always good and gentle and +truthful. He wasn't charged with saying it in the pulpit, where all the +congregation could hear and testify, but only outside, in talk; and it is +easy for enemies to manufacture that. Father Peter had an enemy and a +very powerful one, the astrologer who lived in a tumbled old tower up the +valley, and put in his nights studying the stars. Every one knew he +could foretell wars and famines, though that was not so hard, for there +was always a war, and generally a famine somewhere. But he could also +read any man's life through the stars in a big book he had, and find lost +property, and every one in the village except Father Peter stood in awe +of him. Even Father Adolf, who had defied the Devil, had a wholesome +respect for the astrologer when he came through our village wearing his +tall, pointed hat and his long, flowing robe with stars on it, carrying +his big book, and a staff which was known to have magic power. The +bishop himself sometimes listened to the astrologer, it was said, for, +besides studying the stars and prophesying, the astrologer made a great +show of piety, which would impress the bishop, of course. + +But Father Peter took no stock in the astrologer. He denounced him +openly as a charlatan--a fraud with no valuable knowledge of any kind, or +powers beyond those of an ordinary and rather inferior human being, which +naturally made the astrologer hate Father Peter and wish to ruin him. It +was the astrologer, as we all believed, who originated the story about +Father Peter's shocking remark and carried it to the bishop. It was said +that Father Peter had made the remark to his niece, Marget, though Marget +denied it and implored the bishop to believe her and spare her old uncle +from poverty and disgrace. But the bishop wouldn't listen. He suspended +Father Peter indefinitely, though he wouldn't go so far as to +excommunicate him on the evidence of only one witness; and now Father +Peter had been out a couple of years, and our other priest, Father Adolf, +had his flock. + +Those had been hard years for the old priest and Marget. They had been +favorites, but of course that changed when they came under the shadow of +the bishop's frown. Many of their friends fell away entirely, and the +rest became cool and distant. Marget was a lovely girl of eighteen when +the trouble came, and she had the best head in the village, and the most +in it. She taught the harp, and earned all her clothes and pocket money +by her own industry. But her scholars fell off one by one now; she was +forgotten when there were dances and parties among the youth of the +village; the young fellows stopped coming to the house, all except +Wilhelm Meidling--and he could have been spared; she and her uncle were +sad and forlorn in their neglect and disgrace, and the sunshine was gone +out of their lives. Matters went worse and worse, all through the two +years. Clothes were wearing out, bread was harder and harder to get. +And now, at last, the very end was come. Solomon Isaacs had lent all the +money he was willing to put on the house, and gave notice that to-morrow +he would foreclose. + + + + +Chapter 2 + +Three of us boys were always together, and had been so from the cradle, +being fond of one another from the beginning, and this affection deepened +as the years went on--Nikolaus Bauman, son of the principal judge of the +local court; Seppi Wohlmeyer, son of the keeper of the principal inn, the +"Golden Stag," which had a nice garden, with shade trees reaching down to +the riverside, and pleasure boats for hire; and I was the third--Theodor +Fischer, son of the church organist, who was also leader of the village +musicians, teacher of the violin, composer, tax-collector of the commune, +sexton, and in other ways a useful citizen, and respected by all. We +knew the hills and the woods as well as the birds knew them; for we were +always roaming them when we had leisure--at least, when we were not +swimming or boating or fishing, or playing on the ice or sliding down +hill. + +And we had the run of the castle park, and very few had that. It was +because we were pets of the oldest servingman in the castle--Felix +Brandt; and often we went there, nights, to hear him talk about old times +and strange things, and to smoke with him (he taught us that) and to +drink coffee; for he had served in the wars, and was at the siege of +Vienna; and there, when the Turks were defeated and driven away, among +the captured things were bags of coffee, and the Turkish prisoners +explained the character of it and how to make a pleasant drink out of it, +and now he always kept coffee by him, to drink himself and also to +astonish the ignorant with. When it stormed he kept us all night; and +while it thundered and lightened outside he told us about ghosts and +horrors of every kind, and of battles and murders and mutilations, and +such things, and made it pleasant and cozy inside; and he told these +things from his own experience largely. He had seen many ghosts in his +time, and witches and enchanters, and once he was lost in a fierce storm +at midnight in the mountains, and by the glare of the lightning had seen +the Wild Huntsman rage on the blast with his specter dogs chasing after +him through the driving cloud-rack. Also he had seen an incubus once, +and several times he had seen the great bat that sucks the blood from the +necks of people while they are asleep, fanning them softly with its wings +and so keeping them drowsy till they die. + +He encouraged us not to fear supernatural things, such as ghosts, and +said they did no harm, but only wandered about because they were lonely +and distressed and wanted kindly notice and compassion; and in time we +learned not to be afraid, and even went down with him in the night to the +haunted chamber in the dungeons of the castle. The ghost appeared only +once, and it went by very dim to the sight and floated noiseless through +the air, and then disappeared; and we scarcely trembled, he had taught us +so well. He said it came up sometimes in the night and woke him by +passing its clammy hand over his face, but it did him no hurt; it only +wanted sympathy and notice. But the strangest thing was that he had seen +angels--actual angels out of heaven--and had talked with them. They had +no wings, and wore clothes, and talked and looked and acted just like any +natural person, and you would never know them for angels except for the +wonderful things they did which a mortal could not do, and the way they +suddenly disappeared while you were talking with them, which was also a +thing which no mortal could do. And he said they were pleasant and +cheerful, not gloomy and melancholy, like ghosts. + +It was after that kind of a talk one May night that we got up next +morning and had a good breakfast with him and then went down and crossed +the bridge and went away up into the hills on the left to a woody +hill-top which was a favorite place of ours, and there we stretched out +on the grass in the shade to rest and smoke and talk over these strange +things, for they were in our minds yet, and impressing us. But we +couldn't smoke, because we had been heedless and left our flint and steel +behind. + +Soon there came a youth strolling toward us through the trees, and he sat +down and began to talk in a friendly way, just as if he knew us. But we +did not answer him, for he was a stranger and we were not used to +strangers and were shy of them. He had new and good clothes on, and was +handsome and had a winning face and a pleasant voice, and was easy and +graceful and unembarrassed, not slouchy and awkward and diffident, like +other boys. We wanted to be friendly with him, but didn't know how to +begin. Then I thought of the pipe, and wondered if it would be taken as +kindly meant if I offered it to him. But I remembered that we had no +fire, so I was sorry and disappointed. But he looked up bright and +pleased, and said: + +"Fire? Oh, that is easy; I will furnish it." + +I was so astonished I couldn't speak; for I had not said anything. He +took the pipe and blew his breath on it, and the tobacco glowed red, and +spirals of blue smoke rose up. We jumped up and were going to run, for +that was natural; and we did run a few steps, although he was yearningly +pleading for us to stay, and giving us his word that he would not do us +any harm, but only wanted to be friends with us and have company. So we +stopped and stood, and wanted to go back, being full of curiosity and +wonder, but afraid to venture. He went on coaxing, in his soft, +persuasive way; and when we saw that the pipe did not blow up and nothing +happened, our confidence returned by little and little, and presently our +curiosity got to be stronger than our fear, and we ventured back--but +slowly, and ready to fly at any alarm. + +He was bent on putting us at ease, and he had the right art; one could +not remain doubtful and timorous where a person was so earnest and simple +and gentle, and talked so alluringly as he did; no, he won us over, and +it was not long before we were content and comfortable and chatty, and +glad we had found this new friend. When the feeling of constraint was +all gone we asked him how he had learned to do that strange thing, and he +said he hadn't learned it at all; it came natural to him--like other +things--other curious things. + +"What ones?" + +"Oh, a number; I don't know how many." + +"Will you let us see you do them?" + +"Do--please!" the others said. + +"You won't run away again?" + +"No--indeed we won't. Please do. Won't you?" + +"Yes, with pleasure; but you mustn't forget your promise, you know." + +We said we wouldn't, and he went to a puddle and came back with water in +a cup which he had made out of a leaf, and blew upon it and threw it out, +and it was a lump of ice the shape of the cup. We were astonished and +charmed, but not afraid any more; we were very glad to be there, and +asked him to go on and do some more things. And he did. He said he +would give us any kind of fruit we liked, whether it was in season or +not. We all spoke at once; + +"Orange!" + +"Apple!" + +"Grapes!" + +"They are in your pockets," he said, and it was true. And they were of +the best, too, and we ate them and wished we had more, though none of us +said so. + +"You will find them where those came from," he said, "and everything else +your appetites call for; and you need not name the thing you wish; as +long as I am with you, you have only to wish and find." + +And he said true. There was never anything so wonderful and so +interesting. Bread, cakes, sweets, nuts--whatever one wanted, it was +there. He ate nothing himself, but sat and chatted, and did one curious +thing after another to amuse us. He made a tiny toy squirrel out of +clay, and it ran up a tree and sat on a limb overhead and barked down at +us. Then he made a dog that was not much larger than a mouse, and it +treed the squirrel and danced about the tree, excited and barking, and +was as alive as any dog could be. It frightened the squirrel from tree +to tree and followed it up until both were out of sight in the forest. +He made birds out of clay and set them free, and they flew away, singing. + +At last I made bold to ask him to tell us who he was. + +"An angel," he said, quite simply, and set another bird free and clapped +his hands and made it fly away. + +A kind of awe fell upon us when we heard him say that, and we were afraid +again; but he said we need not be troubled, there was no occasion for us +to be afraid of an angel, and he liked us, anyway. He went on chatting +as simply and unaffectedly as ever; and while he talked he made a crowd +of little men and women the size of your finger, and they went diligently +to work and cleared and leveled off a space a couple of yards square in +the grass and began to build a cunning little castle in it, the women +mixing the mortar and carrying it up the scaffoldings in pails on their +heads, just as our work-women have always done, and the men laying the +courses of masonry--five hundred of these toy people swarming briskly +about and working diligently and wiping the sweat off their faces as +natural as life. In the absorbing interest of watching those five +hundred little people make the castle grow step by step and course by +course, and take shape and symmetry, that feeling and awe soon passed +away and we were quite comfortable and at home again. We asked if we +might make some people, and he said yes, and told Seppi to make some +cannon for the walls, and told Nikolaus to make some halberdiers, with +breastplates and greaves and helmets, and I was to make some cavalry, +with horses, and in allotting these tasks he called us by our names, but +did not say how he knew them. Then Seppi asked him what his own name +was, and he said, tranquilly, "Satan," and held out a chip and caught a +little woman on it who was falling from the scaffolding and put her back +where she belonged, and said, "She is an idiot to step backward like that +and not notice what she is about." + +It caught us suddenly, that name did, and our work dropped out of our +hands and broke to pieces--a cannon, a halberdier, and a horse. Satan +laughed, and asked what was the matter. I said, "Nothing, only it seemed +a strange name for an angel." He asked why. + +"Because it's--it's--well, it's his name, you know." + +"Yes--he is my uncle." + +He said it placidly, but it took our breath for a moment and made our +hearts beat. He did not seem to notice that, but mended our halberdiers +and things with a touch, handing them to us finished, and said, "Don't +you remember?--he was an angel himself, once." + +"Yes--it's true," said Seppi; "I didn't think of that." + +"Before the Fall he was blameless." + +"Yes," said Nikolaus, "he was without sin." + +"It is a good family--ours," said Satan; "there is not a better. He is +the only member of it that has ever sinned." + +I should not be able to make any one understand how exciting it all was. +You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you +are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is +just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it; and you know how you gaze, +and your lips turn dry and your breath comes short, but you wouldn't be +anywhere but there, not for the world. I was bursting to ask one +question--I had it on my tongue's end and could hardly hold it back--but +I was ashamed to ask it; it might be a rudeness. Satan set an ox down +that he had been making, and smiled up at me and said: + +"It wouldn't be a rudeness, and I should forgive it if it was. Have I +seen him? Millions of times. From the time that I was a little child a +thousand years old I was his second favorite among the nursery angels of +our blood and lineage--to use a human phrase--yes, from that time until +the Fall, eight thousand years, measured as you count time." + +"Eight--thousand!" + +"Yes." He turned to Seppi, and went on as if answering something that was +in Seppi's mind: "Why, naturally I look like a boy, for that is what I +am. With us what you call time is a spacious thing; it takes a long +stretch of it to grow an angel to full age." There was a question in my +mind, and he turned to me and answered it, "I am sixteen thousand years +old--counting as you count." Then he turned to Nikolaus and said: "No, +the Fall did not affect me nor the rest of the relationship. It was only +he that I was named for who ate of the fruit of the tree and then +beguiled the man and the woman with it. We others are still ignorant of +sin; we are not able to commit it; we are without blemish, and shall +abide in that estate always. We--" Two of the little workmen were +quarreling, and in buzzing little bumblebee voices they were cursing and +swearing at each other; now came blows and blood; then they locked +themselves together in a life-and-death struggle. Satan reached out his +hand and crushed the life out of them with his fingers, threw them away, +wiped the red from his fingers on his handkerchief, and went on talking +where he had left off: "We cannot do wrong; neither have we any +disposition to do it, for we do not know what it is." + +It seemed a strange speech, in the circumstances, but we barely noticed +that, we were so shocked and grieved at the wanton murder he had +committed--for murder it was, that was its true name, and it was without +palliation or excuse, for the men had not wronged him in any way. It +made us miserable, for we loved him, and had thought him so noble and so +beautiful and gracious, and had honestly believed he was an angel; and to +have him do this cruel thing--ah, it lowered him so, and we had had such +pride in him. He went right on talking, just as if nothing had happened, +telling about his travels, and the interesting things he had seen in the +big worlds of our solar systems and of other solar systems far away in +the remotenesses of space, and about the customs of the immortals that +inhabit them, somehow fascinating us, enchanting us, charming us in spite +of the pitiful scene that was now under our eyes, for the wives of the +little dead men had found the crushed and shapeless bodies and were +crying over them, and sobbing and lamenting, and a priest was kneeling +there with his hands crossed upon his breast, praying; and crowds and +crowds of pitying friends were massed about them, reverently uncovered, +with their bare heads bowed, and many with the tears running down--a +scene which Satan paid no attention to until the small noise of the +weeping and praying began to annoy him, then he reached out and took the +heavy board seat out of our swing and brought it down and mashed all +those people into the earth just as if they had been flies, and went on +talking just the same. + +An angel, and kill a priest! An angel who did not know how to do wrong, +and yet destroys in cold blood hundreds of helpless poor men and women +who had never done him any harm! It made us sick to see that awful deed, +and to think that none of those poor creatures was prepared except the +priest, for none of them had ever heard a mass or seen a church. And we +were witnesses; we had seen these murders done and it was our duty to +tell, and let the law take its course. + +But he went on talking right along, and worked his enchantments upon us +again with that fatal music of his voice. He made us forget everything; +we could only listen to him, and love him, and be his slaves, to do with +us as he would. He made us drunk with the joy of being with him, and of +looking into the heaven of his eyes, and of feeling the ecstasy that +thrilled along our veins from the touch of his hand. + + + + +Chapter 3 + +The Stranger had seen everything, he had been everywhere, he knew +everything, and he forgot nothing. What another must study, he learned +at a glance; there were no difficulties for him. And he made things live +before you when he told about them. He saw the world made; he saw Adam +created; he saw Samson surge against the pillars and bring the temple +down in ruins about him; he saw Caesar's death; he told of the daily life +in heaven; he had seen the damned writhing in the red waves of hell; and +he made us see all these things, and it was as if we were on the spot and +looking at them with our own eyes. And we felt them, too, but there was +no sign that they were anything to him beyond mere entertainments. Those +visions of hell, those poor babes and women and girls and lads and men +shrieking and supplicating in anguish--why, we could hardly bear it, but +he was as bland about it as if it had been so many imitation rats in an +artificial fire. + +And always when he was talking about men and women here on the earth and +their doings--even their grandest and sublimest--we were secretly +ashamed, for his manner showed that to him they and their doings were of +paltry poor consequence; often you would think he was talking about +flies, if you didn't know. Once he even said, in so many words, that our +people down here were quite interesting to him, notwithstanding they were +so dull and ignorant and trivial and conceited, and so diseased and +rickety, and such a shabby, poor, worthless lot all around. He said it +in a quite matter-of-course way and without bitterness, just as a person +might talk about bricks or manure or any other thing that was of no +consequence and hadn't feelings. I could see he meant no offense, but in +my thoughts I set it down as not very good manners. + +"Manners!" he said. "Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good +manners; manners are a fiction. The castle is done. Do you like it?" + +Any one would have been obliged to like it. It was lovely to look at, it +was so shapely and fine, and so cunningly perfect in all its particulars, +even to the little flags waving from the turrets. Satan said we must put +the artillery in place now, and station the halberdiers and display the +cavalry. Our men and horses were a spectacle to see, they were so little +like what they were intended for; for, of course, we had no art in making +such things. Satan said they were the worst he had seen; and when he +touched them and made them alive, it was just ridiculous the way they +acted, on account of their legs not being of uniform lengths. They +reeled and sprawled around as if they were drunk, and endangered +everybody's lives around them, and finally fell over and lay helpless and +kicking. It made us all laugh, though it was a shameful thing to see. +The guns were charged with dirt, to fire a salute, but they were so +crooked and so badly made that they all burst when they went off, and +killed some of the gunners and crippled the others. Satan said we would +have a storm now, and an earthquake, if we liked, but we must stand off a +piece, out of danger. We wanted to call the people away, too, but he +said never mind them; they were of no consequence, and we could make +more, some time or other, if we needed them. + +A small storm-cloud began to settle down black over the castle, and the +miniature lightning and thunder began to play, and the ground to quiver, +and the wind to pipe and wheeze, and the rain to fall, and all the people +flocked into the castle for shelter. The cloud settled down blacker and +blacker, and one could see the castle only dimly through it; the +lightning blazed out flash upon flash and pierced the castle and set it +on fire, and the flames shone out red and fierce through the cloud, and +the people came flying out, shrieking, but Satan brushed them back, +paying no attention to our begging and crying and imploring; and in the +midst of the howling of the wind and volleying of the thunder the +magazine blew up, the earthquake rent the ground wide, and the castle's +wreck and ruin tumbled into the chasm, which swallowed it from sight, and +closed upon it, with all that innocent life, not one of the five hundred +poor creatures escaping. Our hearts were broken; we could not keep from +crying. + +"Don't cry," Satan said; "they were of no value." + +"But they are gone to hell!" + +"Oh, it is no matter; we can make plenty more." + +It was of no use to try to move him; evidently he was wholly without +feeling, and could not understand. He was full of bubbling spirits, and +as gay as if this were a wedding instead of a fiendish massacre. And he +was bent on making us feel as he did, and of course his magic +accomplished his desire. It was no trouble to him; he did whatever he +pleased with us. In a little while we were dancing on that grave, and he +was playing to us on a strange, sweet instrument which he took out of his +pocket; and the music--but there is no music like that, unless perhaps in +heaven, and that was where he brought it from, he said. It made one mad, +for pleasure; and we could not take our eyes from him, and the looks that +went out of our eyes came from our hearts, and their dumb speech was +worship. He brought the dance from heaven, too, and the bliss of +paradise was in it. + +Presently he said he must go away on an errand. But we could not bear +the thought of it, and clung to him, and pleaded with him to stay; and +that pleased him, and he said so, and said he would not go yet, but would +wait a little while and we would sit down and talk a few minutes longer; +and he told us Satan was only his real name, and he was to be known by it +to us alone, but he had chosen another one to be called by in the +presence of others; just a common one, such as people have--Philip Traum. + +It sounded so odd and mean for such a being! But it was his decision, +and we said nothing; his decision was sufficient. + +We had seen wonders this day; and my thoughts began to run on the +pleasure it would be to tell them when I got home, but he noticed those +thoughts, and said: + +"No, all these matters are a secret among us four. I do not mind your +trying to tell them, if you like, but I will protect your tongues, and +nothing of the secret will escape from them." + +It was a disappointment, but it couldn't be helped, and it cost us a sigh +or two. We talked pleasantly along, and he was always reading our +thoughts and responding to them, and it seemed to me that this was the +most wonderful of all the things he did, but he interrupted my musings +and said: + +"No, it would be wonderful for you, but it is not wonderful for me. I am +not limited like you. I am not subject to human conditions. I can +measure and understand your human weaknesses, for I have studied them; +but I have none of them. My flesh is not real, although it would seem +firm to your touch; my clothes are not real; I am a spirit. Father Peter +is coming." We looked around, but did not see any one. "He is not in +sight yet, but you will see him presently." + +"Do you know him, Satan?" + +"No." + +"Won't you talk with him when he comes? He is not ignorant and dull, +like us, and he would so like to talk with you. Will you?" + +"Another time, yes, but not now. I must go on my errand after a little. +There he is now; you can see him. Sit still, and don't say anything." + +We looked up and saw Father Peter approaching through the chestnuts. We +three were sitting together in the grass, and Satan sat in front of us in +the path. Father Peter came slowly along with his head down, thinking, +and stopped within a couple of yards of us and took off his hat and got +out his silk handkerchief, and stood there mopping his face and looking +as if he were going to speak to us, but he didn't. Presently he +muttered, "I can't think what brought me here; it seems as if I were in +my study a minute ago--but I suppose I have been dreaming along for an +hour and have come all this stretch without noticing; for I am not myself +in these troubled days." Then he went mumbling along to himself and +walked straight through Satan, just as if nothing were there. It made us +catch our breath to see it. We had the impulse to cry out, the way you +nearly always do when a startling thing happens, but something +mysteriously restrained us and we remained quiet, only breathing fast. +Then the trees hid Father Peter after a little, and Satan said: + +"It is as I told you--I am only a spirit." + +"Yes, one perceives it now," said Nikolaus, "but we are not spirits. It +is plain he did not see you, but were we invisible, too? He looked at +us, but he didn't seem to see us." + +"No, none of us was visible to him, for I wished it so." + +It seemed almost too good to be true, that we were actually seeing these +romantic and wonderful things, and that it was not a dream. And there he +sat, looking just like anybody--so natural and simple and charming, and +chatting along again the same as ever, and--well, words cannot make you +understand what we felt. It was an ecstasy; and an ecstasy is a thing +that will not go into words; it feels like music, and one cannot tell +about music so that another person can get the feeling of it. He was +back in the old ages once more now, and making them live before us. He +had seen so much, so much! It was just a wonder to look at him and try +to think how it must seem to have such experience behind one. + +But it made you seem sorrowfully trivial, and the creature of a day, and +such a short and paltry day, too. And he didn't say anything to raise up +your drooping pride--no, not a word. He always spoke of men in the same +old indifferent way--just as one speaks of bricks and manure-piles and +such things; you could see that they were of no consequence to him, one +way or the other. He didn't mean to hurt us, you could see that; just as +we don't mean to insult a brick when we disparage it; a brick's emotions +are nothing to us; it never occurs to us to think whether it has any or +not. + +Once when he was bunching the most illustrious kings and conquerors and +poets and prophets and pirates and beggars together--just a brick-pile--I +was shamed into putting in a word for man, and asked him why he made so +much difference between men and himself. He had to struggle with that a +moment; he didn't seem to understand how I could ask such a strange +question. Then he said: + +"The difference between man and me? The difference between a mortal and +an immortal? between a cloud and a spirit?" He picked up a wood-louse +that was creeping along a piece of bark: "What is the difference between +Caesar and this?" + +I said, "One cannot compare things which by their nature and by the +interval between them are not comparable." + +"You have answered your own question," he said. "I will expand it. Man +is made of dirt--I saw him made. I am not made of dirt. Man is a museum +of diseases, a home of impurities; he comes to-day and is gone to-morrow; +he begins as dirt and departs as stench; I am of the aristocracy of the +Imperishables. And man has the Moral Sense. You understand? He has the +Moral Sense. That would seem to be difference enough between us, all by +itself." + +He stopped there, as if that settled the matter. I was sorry, for at +that time I had but a dim idea of what the Moral Sense was. I merely +knew that we were proud of having it, and when he talked like that about +it, it wounded me, and I felt as a girl feels who thinks her dearest +finery is being admired and then overhears strangers making fun of it. +For a while we were all silent, and I, for one, was depressed. Then +Satan began to chat again, and soon he was sparkling along in such a +cheerful and vivacious vein that my spirits rose once more. He told some +very cunning things that put us in a gale of laughter; and when he was +telling about the time that Samson tied the torches to the foxes' tails +and set them loose in the Philistines' corn, and Samson sitting on the +fence slapping his thighs and laughing, with the tears running down his +cheeks, and lost his balance and fell off the fence, the memory of that +picture got him to laughing, too, and we did have a most lovely and jolly +time. By and by he said: + +"I am going on my errand now." + +"Don't!" we all said. "Don't go; stay with us. You won't come back." + +"Yes, I will; I give you my word." + +"When? To-night? Say when." + +"It won't be long. You will see." + +"We like you." + +"And I you. And as a proof of it I will show you something fine to see. +Usually when I go I merely vanish; but now I will dissolve myself and let +you see me do it." + +He stood up, and it was quickly finished. He thinned away and thinned +away until he was a soap-bubble, except that he kept his shape. You +could see the bushes through him as clearly as you see things through a +soap-bubble, and all over him played and flashed the delicate iridescent +colors of the bubble, and along with them was that thing shaped like a +window-sash which you always see on the globe of the bubble. You have +seen a bubble strike the carpet and lightly bound along two or three +times before it bursts. He did that. He sprang--touched the grass +--bounded--floated along--touched again--and so on, and presently +exploded--puff! and in his place was vacancy. + +It was a strange and beautiful thing to see. We did not say anything, +but sat wondering and dreaming and blinking; and finally Seppi roused up +and said, mournfully sighing: + +"I suppose none of it has happened." + +Nikolaus sighed and said about the same. + +I was miserable to hear them say it, for it was the same cold fear that +was in my own mind. Then we saw poor old Father Peter wandering along +back, with his head bent down, searching the ground. When he was pretty +close to us he looked up and saw us, and said, "How long have you been +here, boys?" + +"A little while, Father." + +"Then it is since I came by, and maybe you can help me. Did you come up +by the path?" + +"Yes, Father." + +"That is good. I came the same way. I have lost my wallet. There +wasn't much in it, but a very little is much to me, for it was all I had. +I suppose you haven't seen anything of it?" + +"No, Father, but we will help you hunt." + +"It is what I was going to ask you. Why, here it is!" + +We hadn't noticed it; yet there it lay, right where Satan stood when he +began to melt--if he did melt and it wasn't a delusion. Father Peter +picked it up and looked very much surprised. + +"It is mine," he said, "but not the contents. This is fat; mine was +flat; mine was light; this is heavy." He opened it; it was stuffed as +full as it could hold with gold coins. He let us gaze our fill; and of +course we did gaze, for we had never seen so much money at one time +before. All our mouths came open to say "Satan did it!" but nothing came +out. There it was, you see--we couldn't tell what Satan didn't want +told; he had said so himself. + +"Boys, did you do this?" + +It made us laugh. And it made him laugh, too, as soon as he thought what +a foolish question it was. + +"Who has been here?" + +Our mouths came open to answer, but stood so for a moment, because we +couldn't say "Nobody," for it wouldn't be true, and the right word didn't +seem to come; then I thought of the right one, and said it: + +"Not a human being." + +"That is so," said the others, and let their mouths go shut. + +"It is not so," said Father Peter, and looked at us very severely. "I +came by here a while ago, and there was no one here, but that is nothing; +some one has been here since. I don't mean to say that the person didn't +pass here before you came, and I don't mean to say you saw him, but some +one did pass, that I know. On your honor--you saw no one?" + +"Not a human being." + +"That is sufficient; I know you are telling me the truth." + +He began to count the money on the path, we on our knees eagerly helping +to stack it in little piles. + +"It's eleven hundred ducats odd!" he said. "Oh dear! if it were only +mine--and I need it so!" and his voice broke and his lips quivered. + +"It is yours, sir!" we all cried out at once, "every heller!" + +"No--it isn't mine. Only four ducats are mine; the rest...!" He fell to +dreaming, poor old soul, and caressing some of the coins in his hands, +and forgot where he was, sitting there on his heels with his old gray +head bare; it was pitiful to see. "No," he said, waking up, "it isn't +mine. I can't account for it. I think some enemy... it must be a +trap." + +Nikolaus said: "Father Peter, with the exception of the astrologer you +haven't a real enemy in the village--nor Marget, either. And not even a +half-enemy that's rich enough to chance eleven hundred ducats to do you a +mean turn. I'll ask you if that's so or not?" + +He couldn't get around that argument, and it cheered him up. "But it +isn't mine, you see--it isn't mine, in any case." + +He said it in a wistful way, like a person that wouldn't be sorry, but +glad, if anybody would contradict him. + +"It is yours, Father Peter, and we are witness to it. Aren't we, boys?" + +"Yes, we are--and we'll stand by it, too." + +"Bless your hearts, you do almost persuade me; you do, indeed. If I had +only a hundred-odd ducats of it! The house is mortgaged for it, and +we've no home for our heads if we don't pay to-morrow. And that four +ducats is all we've got in the--" + +"It's yours, every bit of it, and you've got to take it--we are bail that +it's all right. Aren't we, Theodor? Aren't we, Seppi?" + +We two said yes, and Nikolaus stuffed the money back into the shabby old +wallet and made the owner take it. So he said he would use two hundred +of it, for his house was good enough security for that, and would put the +rest at interest till the rightful owner came for it; and on our side we +must sign a paper showing how he got the money--a paper to show to the +villagers as proof that he had not got out of his troubles dishonestly. + + + + +Chapter 4 + +It made immense talk next day, when Father Peter paid Solomon Isaacs in +gold and left the rest of the money with him at interest. Also, there +was a pleasant change; many people called at the house to congratulate +him, and a number of cool old friends became kind and friendly again; +and, to top all, Marget was invited to a party. + +And there was no mystery; Father Peter told the whole circumstance just +as it happened, and said he could not account for it, only it was the +plain hand of Providence, so far as he could see. + +One or two shook their heads and said privately it looked more like the +hand of Satan; and really that seemed a surprisingly good guess for +ignorant people like that. Some came slyly buzzing around and tried to +coax us boys to come out and "tell the truth;" and promised they wouldn't +ever tell, but only wanted to know for their own satisfaction, because +the whole thing was so curious. They even wanted to buy the secret, and +pay money for it; and if we could have invented something that would +answer--but we couldn't; we hadn't the ingenuity, so we had to let the +chance go by, and it was a pity. + +We carried that secret around without any trouble, but the other one, the +big one, the splendid one, burned the very vitals of us, it was so hot to +get out and we so hot to let it out and astonish people with it. But we +had to keep it in; in fact, it kept itself in. Satan said it would, and +it did. We went off every day and got to ourselves in the woods so that +we could talk about Satan, and really that was the only subject we +thought of or cared anything about; and day and night we watched for him +and hoped he would come, and we got more and more impatient all the time. +We hadn't any interest in the other boys any more, and wouldn't take part +in their games and enterprises. They seemed so tame, after Satan; and +their doings so trifling and commonplace after his adventures in +antiquity and the constellations, and his miracles and meltings and +explosions, and all that. + +During the first day we were in a state of anxiety on account of one +thing, and we kept going to Father Peter's house on one pretext or +another to keep track of it. That was the gold coin; we were afraid it +would crumble and turn to dust, like fairy money. If it did--But it +didn't. At the end of the day no complaint had been made about it, so +after that we were satisfied that it was real gold, and dropped the +anxiety out of our minds. + +There was a question which we wanted to ask Father Peter, and finally we +went there the second evening, a little diffidently, after drawing +straws, and I asked it as casually as I could, though it did not sound as +casual as I wanted, because I didn't know how: + +"What is the Moral Sense, sir?" + +He looked down, surprised, over his great spectacles, and said, "Why, it +is the faculty which enables us to distinguish good from evil." + +It threw some light, but not a glare, and I was a little disappointed, +also to some degree embarrassed. He was waiting for me to go on, so, in +default of anything else to say, I asked, "Is it valuable?" + +"Valuable? Heavens! lad, it is the one thing that lifts man above the +beasts that perish and makes him heir to immortality!" + +This did not remind me of anything further to say, so I got out, with the +other boys, and we went away with that indefinite sense you have often +had of being filled but not fatted. They wanted me to explain, but I was +tired. + +We passed out through the parlor, and there was Marget at the spinnet +teaching Marie Lueger. So one of the deserting pupils was back; and an +influential one, too; the others would follow. Marget jumped up and ran +and thanked us again, with tears in her eyes--this was the third time +--for saving her and her uncle from being turned into the street, and we +told her again we hadn't done it; but that was her way, she never could +be grateful enough for anything a person did for her; so we let her have +her say. And as we passed through the garden, there was Wilhelm Meidling +sitting there waiting, for it was getting toward the edge of the evening, +and he would be asking Marget to take a walk along the river with him +when she was done with the lesson. He was a young lawyer, and succeeding +fairly well and working his way along, little by little. He was very +fond of Marget, and she of him. He had not deserted along with the +others, but had stood his ground all through. His faithfulness was not +lost on Marget and her uncle. He hadn't so very much talent, but he was +handsome and good, and these are a kind of talents themselves and help +along. He asked us how the lesson was getting along, and we told him it +was about done. And maybe it was so; we didn't know anything about it, +but we judged it would please him, and it did, and didn't cost us +anything. + + + + +Chapter 5 + +On the fourth day comes the astrologer from his crumbling old tower up +the valley, where he had heard the news, I reckon. He had a private talk +with us, and we told him what we could, for we were mightily in dread of +him. He sat there studying and studying awhile to himself; then he +asked: + +"How many ducats did you say?" + +"Eleven hundred and seven, sir." + +Then he said, as if he were talking to himself: "It is ver-y singular. +Yes... very strange. A curious coincidence." Then he began to ask +questions, and went over the whole ground from the beginning, we +answering. By and by he said: "Eleven hundred and six ducats. It is a +large sum." + +"Seven," said Seppi, correcting him. + +"Oh, seven, was it? Of course a ducat more or less isn't of consequence, +but you said eleven hundred and six before." + +It would not have been safe for us to say he was mistaken, but we knew he +was. Nikolaus said, "We ask pardon for the mistake, but we meant to say +seven." + +"Oh, it is no matter, lad; it was merely that I noticed the discrepancy. +It is several days, and you cannot be expected to remember precisely. +One is apt to be inexact when there is no particular circumstance to +impress the count upon the memory." + +"But there was one, sir," said Seppi, eagerly. + +"What was it, my son?" asked the astrologer, indifferently. + +"First, we all counted the piles of coin, each in turn, and all made it +the same--eleven hundred and six. But I had slipped one out, for fun, +when the count began, and now I slipped it back and said, 'I think there +is a mistake--there are eleven hundred and seven; let us count again.' +We did, and of course I was right. They were astonished; then I told how +it came about." + +The astrologer asked us if this was so, and we said it was. + +"That settles it," he said. "I know the thief now. Lads, the money was +stolen." + +Then he went away, leaving us very much troubled, and wondering what he +could mean. In about an hour we found out; for by that time it was all +over the village that Father Peter had been arrested for stealing a great +sum of money from the astrologer. Everybody's tongue was loose and +going. Many said it was not in Father Peter's character and must be a +mistake; but the others shook their heads and said misery and want could +drive a suffering man to almost anything. About one detail there were no +differences; all agreed that Father Peter's account of how the money came +into his hands was just about unbelievable--it had such an impossible +look. They said it might have come into the astrologer's hands in some +such way, but into Father Peter's, never! Our characters began to suffer +now. We were Father Peter's only witnesses; how much did he probably pay +us to back up his fantastic tale? People talked that kind of talk to us +pretty freely and frankly, and were full of scoffings when we begged them +to believe really we had told only the truth. Our parents were harder on +us than any one else. Our fathers said we were disgracing our families, +and they commanded us to purge ourselves of our lie, and there was no +limit to their anger when we continued to say we had spoken true. Our +mothers cried over us and begged us to give back our bribe and get back +our honest names and save our families from shame, and come out and +honorably confess. And at last we were so worried and harassed that we +tried to tell the whole thing, Satan and all--but no, it wouldn't come +out. We were hoping and longing all the time that Satan would come and +help us out of our trouble, but there was no sign of him. + +Within an hour after the astrologer's talk with us, Father Peter was in +prison and the money sealed up and in the hands of the officers of the +law. The money was in a bag, and Solomon Isaacs said he had not touched +it since he had counted it; his oath was taken that it was the same +money, and that the amount was eleven hundred and seven ducats. Father +Peter claimed trial by the ecclesiastical court, but our other priest, +Father Adolf, said an ecclesiastical court hadn't jurisdiction over a +suspended priest. The bishop upheld him. That settled it; the case +would go to trial in the civil court. The court would not sit for some +time to come. Wilhelm Meidling would be Father Peter's lawyer and do the +best he could, of course, but he told us privately that a weak case on +his side and all the power and prejudice on the other made the outlook +bad. + +So Marget's new happiness died a quick death. No friends came to condole +with her, and none were expected; an unsigned note withdrew her +invitation to the party. There would be no scholars to take lessons. +How could she support herself? She could remain in the house, for the +mortgage was paid off, though the government and not poor Solomon Isaacs +had the mortgage-money in its grip for the present. Old Ursula, who was +cook, chambermaid, housekeeper, laundress, and everything else for Father +Peter, and had been Marget's nurse in earlier years, said God would +provide. But she said that from habit, for she was a good Christian. +She meant to help in the providing, to make sure, if she could find a +way. + +We boys wanted to go and see Marget and show friendliness for her, but +our parents were afraid of offending the community and wouldn't let us. +The astrologer was going around inflaming everybody against Father Peter, +and saying he was an abandoned thief and had stolen eleven hundred and +seven gold ducats from him. He said he knew he was a thief from that +fact, for it was exactly the sum he had lost and which Father Peter +pretended he had "found." + +In the afternoon of the fourth day after the catastrophe old Ursula +appeared at our house and asked for some washing to do, and begged my +mother to keep this secret, to save Marget's pride, who would stop this +project if she found it out, yet Marget had not enough to eat and was +growing weak. Ursula was growing weak herself, and showed it; and she +ate of the food that was offered her like a starving person, but could +not be persuaded to carry any home, for Marget would not eat charity +food. She took some clothes down to the stream to wash them, but we saw +from the window that handling the bat was too much for her strength; so +she was called back and a trifle of money offered her, which she was +afraid to take lest Marget should suspect; then she took it, saying she +would explain that she found it in the road. To keep it from being a lie +and damning her soul, she got me to drop it while she watched; then she +went along by there and found it, and exclaimed with surprise and joy, +and picked it up and went her way. Like the rest of the village, she +could tell every-day lies fast enough and without taking any precautions +against fire and brimstone on their account; but this was a new kind of +lie, and it had a dangerous look because she hadn't had any practice in +it. After a week's practice it wouldn't have given her any trouble. It +is the way we are made. + +I was in trouble, for how would Marget live? Ursula could not find a +coin in the road every day--perhaps not even a second one. And I was +ashamed, too, for not having been near Marget, and she so in need of +friends; but that was my parents' fault, not mine, and I couldn't help +it. + +I was walking along the path, feeling very down-hearted, when a most +cheery and tingling freshening-up sensation went rippling through me, and +I was too glad for any words, for I knew by that sign that Satan was by. +I had noticed it before. Next moment he was alongside of me and I was +telling him all my trouble and what had been happening to Marget and her +uncle. While we were talking we turned a curve and saw old Ursula +resting in the shade of a tree, and she had a lean stray kitten in her +lap and was petting it. I asked her where she got it, and she said it +came out of the woods and followed her; and she said it probably hadn't +any mother or any friends and she was going to take it home and take care +of it. Satan said: + +"I understand you are very poor. Why do you want to add another mouth to +feed? Why don't you give it to some rich person?" + +Ursula bridled at this and said: "Perhaps you would like to have it. You +must be rich, with your fine clothes and quality airs." Then she sniffed +and said: "Give it to the rich--the idea! The rich don't care for +anybody but themselves; it's only the poor that have feeling for the +poor, and help them. The poor and God. God will provide for this +kitten." + +"What makes you think so?" + +Ursula's eyes snapped with anger. "Because I know it!" she said. "Not a +sparrow falls to the ground without His seeing it." + +"But it falls, just the same. What good is seeing it fall?" + +Old Ursula's jaws worked, but she could not get any word out for the +moment, she was so horrified. When she got her tongue, she stormed out, +"Go about your business, you puppy, or I will take a stick to you!" + +I could not speak, I was so scared. I knew that with his notions about +the human race Satan would consider it a matter of no consequence to +strike her dead, there being "plenty more"; but my tongue stood still, I +could give her no warning. But nothing happened; Satan remained +tranquil--tranquil and indifferent. I suppose he could not be insulted +by Ursula any more than the king could be insulted by a tumble-bug. The +old woman jumped to her feet when she made her remark, and did it as +briskly as a young girl. It had been many years since she had done the +like of that. That was Satan's influence; he was a fresh breeze to the +weak and the sick, wherever he came. His presence affected even the lean +kitten, and it skipped to the ground and began to chase a leaf. This +surprised Ursula, and she stood looking at the creature and nodding her +head wonderingly, her anger quite forgotten. + +"What's come over it?" she said. "Awhile ago it could hardly walk." + +"You have not seen a kitten of that breed before," said Satan. + +Ursula was not proposing to be friendly with the mocking stranger, and +she gave him an ungentle look and retorted: "Who asked you to come here +and pester me, I'd like to know? And what do you know about what I've +seen and what I haven't seen?" + +"You haven't seen a kitten with the hair-spines on its tongue pointing to +the front, have you?" + +"No--nor you, either." + +"Well, examine this one and see." + +Ursula was become pretty spry, but the kitten was spryer, and she could +not catch it, and had to give it up. Then Satan said: + +"Give it a name, and maybe it will come." + +Ursula tried several names, but the kitten was not interested. + +"Call it Agnes. Try that." + +The creature answered to the name and came. Ursula examined its tongue. +"Upon my word, it's true!" she said. "I have not seen this kind of a cat +before. Is it yours?" + +"No." + +"Then how did you know its name so pat?" + +"Because all cats of that breed are named Agnes; they will not answer to +any other." + +Ursula was impressed. "It is the most wonderful thing!" Then a shadow of +trouble came into her face, for her superstitions were aroused, and she +reluctantly put the creature down, saying: "I suppose I must let it go; I +am not afraid--no, not exactly that, though the priest--well, I've heard +people--indeed, many people... And, besides, it is quite well now and +can take care of itself." She sighed, and turned to go, murmuring: "It +is such a pretty one, too, and would be such company--and the house is so +sad and lonesome these troubled days... Miss Marget so mournful and just +a shadow, and the old master shut up in jail." + +"It seems a pity not to keep it," said Satan. + +Ursula turned quickly--just as if she were hoping some one would +encourage her. + +"Why?" she asked, wistfully. + +"Because this breed brings luck." + +"Does it? Is it true? Young man, do you know it to be true? How does +it bring luck?" + +"Well, it brings money, anyway." + +Ursula looked disappointed. "Money? A cat bring money? The idea! You +could never sell it here; people do not buy cats here; one can't even +give them away." She turned to go. + +"I don't mean sell it. I mean have an income from it. This kind is +called the Lucky Cat. Its owner finds four silver groschen in his pocket +every morning." + +I saw the indignation rising in the old woman's face. She was insulted. +This boy was making fun of her. That was her thought. She thrust her +hands into her pockets and straightened up to give him a piece of her +mind. Her temper was all up, and hot. Her mouth came open and let out +three words of a bitter sentence,... then it fell silent, and the anger +in her face turned to surprise or wonder or fear, or something, and she +slowly brought out her hands from her pockets and opened them and held +them so. In one was my piece of money, in the other lay four silver +groschen. She gazed a little while, perhaps to see if the groschen would +vanish away; then she said, fervently: + +"It's true--it's true--and I'm ashamed and beg forgiveness, O dear master +and benefactor!" And she ran to Satan and kissed his hand, over and over +again, according to the Austrian custom. + +In her heart she probably believed it was a witch-cat and an agent of the +Devil; but no matter, it was all the more certain to be able to keep its +contract and furnish a daily good living for the family, for in matters +of finance even the piousest of our peasants would have more confidence +in an arrangement with the Devil than with an archangel. Ursula started +homeward, with Agnes in her arms, and I said I wished I had her privilege +of seeing Marget. + +Then I caught my breath, for we were there. There in the parlor, and +Marget standing looking at us, astonished. She was feeble and pale, but +I knew that those conditions would not last in Satan's atmosphere, and it +turned out so. I introduced Satan--that is, Philip Traum--and we sat +down and talked. There was no constraint. We were simple folk, in our +village, and when a stranger was a pleasant person we were soon friends. +Marget wondered how we got in without her hearing us. Traum said the +door was open, and we walked in and waited until she should turn around +and greet us. This was not true; no door was open; we entered through +the walls or the roof or down the chimney, or somehow; but no matter, +what Satan wished a person to believe, the person was sure to believe, +and so Marget was quite satisfied with that explanation. And then the +main part of her mind was on Traum, anyway; she couldn't keep her eyes +off him, he was so beautiful. That gratified me, and made me proud. I +hoped he would show off some, but he didn't. He seemed only interested +in being friendly and telling lies. He said he was an orphan. That made +Marget pity him. The water came into her eyes. He said he had never +known his mamma; she passed away while he was a young thing; and said his +papa was in shattered health, and had no property to speak of--in fact, +none of any earthly value--but he had an uncle in business down in the +tropics, and he was very well off and had a monopoly, and it was from +this uncle that he drew his support. The very mention of a kind uncle +was enough to remind Marget of her own, and her eyes filled again. She +said she hoped their two uncles would meet, some day. It made me +shudder. Philip said he hoped so, too; and that made me shudder again. + +"Maybe they will," said Marget. "Does your uncle travel much?" + +"Oh yes, he goes all about; he has business everywhere." + +And so they went on chatting, and poor Marget forgot her sorrow for one +little while, anyway. It was probably the only really bright and cheery +hour she had known lately. I saw she liked Philip, and I knew she would. +And when he told her he was studying for the ministry I could see that +she liked him better than ever. And then, when he promised to get her +admitted to the jail so that she could see her uncle, that was the +capstone. He said he would give the guards a little present, and she +must always go in the evening after dark, and say nothing, "but just show +this paper and pass in, and show it again when you come out"--and he +scribbled some queer marks on the paper and gave it to her, and she was +ever so thankful, and right away was in a fever for the sun to go down; +for in that old, cruel time prisoners were not allowed to see their +friends, and sometimes they spent years in the jails without ever seeing +a friendly face. I judged that the marks on the paper were an +enchantment, and that the guards would not know what they were doing, nor +have any memory of it afterward; and that was indeed the way of it. +Ursula put her head in at the door now and said: + +"Supper's ready, miss." Then she saw us and looked frightened, and +motioned me to come to her, which I did, and she asked if we had told +about the cat. I said no, and she was relieved, and said please don't; +for if Miss Marget knew, she would think it was an unholy cat and would +send for a priest and have its gifts all purified out of it, and then +there wouldn't be any more dividends. So I said we wouldn't tell, and +she was satisfied. Then I was beginning to say good-by to Marget, but +Satan interrupted and said, ever so politely--well, I don't remember just +the words, but anyway he as good as invited himself to supper, and me, +too. Of course Marget was miserably embarrassed, for she had no reason +to suppose there would be half enough for a sick bird. Ursula heard him, +and she came straight into the room, not a bit pleased. At first she was +astonished to see Marget looking so fresh and rosy, and said so; then she +spoke up in her native tongue, which was Bohemian, and said--as I learned +afterward--"Send him away, Miss Marget; there's not victuals enough." + +Before Marget could speak, Satan had the word, and was talking back to +Ursula in her own language--which was a surprise to her, and for her +mistress, too. He said, "Didn't I see you down the road awhile ago?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Ah, that pleases me; I see you remember me." He stepped to her and +whispered: "I told you it is a Lucky Cat. Don't be troubled; it will +provide." + +That sponged the slate of Ursula's feelings clean of its anxieties, and a +deep, financial joy shone in her eyes. The cat's value was augmenting. +It was getting full time for Marget to take some sort of notice of +Satan's invitation, and she did it in the best way, the honest way that +was natural to her. She said she had little to offer, but that we were +welcome if we would share it with her. + +We had supper in the kitchen, and Ursula waited at table. A small fish +was in the frying-pan, crisp and brown and tempting, and one could see +that Marget was not expecting such respectable food as this. Ursula +brought it, and Marget divided it between Satan and me, declining to take +any of it herself; and was beginning to say she did not care for fish +to-day, but she did not finish the remark. It was because she noticed +that another fish had appeared in the pan. She looked surprised, but did +not say anything. She probably meant to inquire of Ursula about this +later. There were other surprises: flesh and game and wines and fruits +--things which had been strangers in that house lately; but Marget made +no exclamations, and now even looked unsurprised, which was Satan's +influence, of course. Satan talked right along, and was entertaining, +and made the time pass pleasantly and cheerfully; and although he told a +good many lies, it was no harm in him, for he was only an angel and did +not know any better. They do not know right from wrong; I knew this, +because I remembered what he had said about it. He got on the good side +of Ursula. He praised her to Marget, confidentially, but speaking just +loud enough for Ursula to hear. He said she was a fine woman, and he +hoped some day to bring her and his uncle together. Very soon Ursula was +mincing and simpering around in a ridiculous girly way, and smoothing out +her gown and prinking at herself like a foolish old hen, and all the time +pretending she was not hearing what Satan was saying. I was ashamed, for +it showed us to be what Satan considered us, a silly race and trivial. +Satan said his uncle entertained a great deal, and to have a clever woman +presiding over the festivities would double the attractions of the place. + +"But your uncle is a gentleman, isn't he?" asked Marget. + +"Yes," said Satan indifferently; "some even call him a Prince, out of +compliment, but he is not bigoted; to him personal merit is everything, +rank nothing." + +My hand was hanging down by my chair; Agnes came along and licked it; by +this act a secret was revealed. I started to say, "It is all a mistake; +this is just a common, ordinary cat; the hair-needles on her tongue point +inward, not outward." But the words did not come, because they couldn't. +Satan smiled upon me, and I understood. + +When it was dark Marget took food and wine and fruit, in a basket, and +hurried away to the jail, and Satan and I walked toward my home. I was +thinking to myself that I should like to see what the inside of the jail +was like; Satan overheard the thought, and the next moment we were in the +jail. We were in the torture-chamber, Satan said. The rack was there, +and the other instruments, and there was a smoky lantern or two hanging +on the walls and helping to make the place look dim and dreadful. There +were people there--and executioners--but as they took no notice of us, it +meant that we were invisible. A young man lay bound, and Satan said he +was suspected of being a heretic, and the executioners were about to +inquire into it. They asked the man to confess to the charge, and he +said he could not, for it was not true. Then they drove splinter after +splinter under his nails, and he shrieked with the pain. Satan was not +disturbed, but I could not endure it, and had to be whisked out of there. +I was faint and sick, but the fresh air revived me, and we walked toward +my home. I said it was a brutal thing. + +"No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a +misuse of that word; they have not deserved it," and he went on talking +like that. "It is like your paltry race--always lying, always claiming +virtues which it hasn't got, always denying them to the higher animals, +which alone possess them. No brute ever does a cruel thing--that is the +monopoly of those with the Moral Sense. When a brute inflicts pain he +does it innocently; it is not wrong; for him there is no such thing as +wrong. And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure of inflicting it +--only man does that. Inspired by that mongrel Moral Sense of his! A +sense whose function is to distinguish between right and wrong, with +liberty to choose which of them he will do. Now what advantage can he +get out of that? He is always choosing, and in nine cases out of ten he +prefers the wrong. There shouldn't be any wrong; and without the Moral +Sense there couldn't be any. And yet he is such an unreasoning creature +that he is not able to perceive that the Moral Sense degrades him to the +bottom layer of animated beings and is a shameful possession. Are you +feeling better? Let me show you something." + + + + +Chapter 6 + +In a moment we were in a French village. We walked through a great +factory of some sort, where men and women and little children were +toiling in heat and dirt and a fog of dust; and they were clothed in +rags, and drooped at their work, for they were worn and half starved, and +weak and drowsy. Satan said: + +"It is some more Moral Sense. The proprietors are rich, and very holy; +but the wage they pay to these poor brothers and sisters of theirs is +only enough to keep them from dropping dead with hunger. The work-hours +are fourteen per day, winter and summer--from six in the morning till +eight at night--little children and all. And they walk to and from the +pigsties which they inhabit--four miles each way, through mud and slush, +rain, snow, sleet, and storm, daily, year in and year out. They get four +hours of sleep. They kennel together, three families in a room, in +unimaginable filth and stench; and disease comes, and they die off like +flies. Have they committed a crime, these mangy things? No. What have +they done, that they are punished so? Nothing at all, except getting +themselves born into your foolish race. You have seen how they treat a +misdoer there in the jail; now you see how they treat the innocent and +the worthy. Is your race logical? Are these ill-smelling innocents +better off than that heretic? Indeed, no; his punishment is trivial +compared with theirs. They broke him on the wheel and smashed him to +rags and pulp after we left, and he is dead now, and free of your +precious race; but these poor slaves here--why, they have been dying for +years, and some of them will not escape from life for years to come. It +is the Moral Sense which teaches the factory proprietors the difference +between right and wrong--you perceive the result. They think themselves +better than dogs. Ah, you are such an illogical, unreasoning race! And +paltry--oh, unspeakably!" + +Then he dropped all seriousness and just overstrained himself making fun +of us, and deriding our pride in our warlike deeds, our great heroes, our +imperishable fames, our mighty kings, our ancient aristocracies, our +venerable history--and laughed and laughed till it was enough to make a +person sick to hear him; and finally he sobered a little and said, "But, +after all, it is not all ridiculous; there is a sort of pathos about it +when one remembers how few are your days, how childish your pomps, and +what shadows you are!" + +Presently all things vanished suddenly from my sight, and I knew what it +meant. The next moment we were walking along in our village; and down +toward the river I saw the twinkling lights of the Golden Stag. Then in +the dark I heard a joyful cry: + +"He's come again!" + +It was Seppi Wohlmeyer. He had felt his blood leap and his spirits rise +in a way that could mean only one thing, and he knew Satan was near, +although it was too dark to see him. He came to us, and we walked along +together, and Seppi poured out his gladness like water. It was as if he +were a lover and had found his sweetheart who had been lost. Seppi was a +smart and animated boy, and had enthusiasm and expression, and was a +contrast to Nikolaus and me. He was full of the last new mystery, now +--the disappearance of Hans Oppert, the village loafer. People were +beginning to be curious about it, he said. He did not say anxious +--curious was the right word, and strong enough. No one had seen Hans +for a couple of days. + +"Not since he did that brutal thing, you know," he said. + +"What brutal thing?" It was Satan that asked. + +"Well, he is always clubbing his dog, which is a good dog, and his only +friend, and is faithful, and loves him, and does no one any harm; and two +days ago he was at it again, just for nothing--just for pleasure--and the +dog was howling and begging, and Theodor and I begged, too, but he +threatened us, and struck the dog again with all his might and knocked +one of his eyes out, and he said to us, 'There, I hope you are satisfied +now; that's what you have got for him by your damned meddling'--and he +laughed, the heartless brute." Seppi's voice trembled with pity and +anger. I guessed what Satan would say, and he said it. + +"There is that misused word again--that shabby slander. Brutes do not +act like that, but only men." + +"Well, it was inhuman, anyway." + +"No, it wasn't, Seppi; it was human--quite distinctly human. It is not +pleasant to hear you libel the higher animals by attributing to them +dispositions which they are free from, and which are found nowhere but in +the human heart. None of the higher animals is tainted with the disease +called the Moral Sense. Purify your language, Seppi; drop those lying +phrases out of it." + +He spoke pretty sternly--for him--and I was sorry I hadn't warned Seppi +to be more particular about the word he used. I knew how he was feeling. +He would not want to offend Satan; he would rather offend all his kin. +There was an uncomfortable silence, but relief soon came, for that poor +dog came along now, with his eye hanging down, and went straight to +Satan, and began to moan and mutter brokenly, and Satan began to answer +in the same way, and it was plain that they were talking together in the +dog language. We all sat down in the grass, in the moonlight, for the +clouds were breaking away now, and Satan took the dog's head in his lap +and put the eye back in its place, and the dog was comfortable, and he +wagged his tail and licked Satan's hand, and looked thankful and said the +same; I knew he was saying it, though I did not understand the words. +Then the two talked together a bit, and Satan said: + +"He says his master was drunk." + +"Yes, he was," said we. + +"And an hour later he fell over the precipice there beyond the Cliff +Pasture." + +"We know the place; it is three miles from here." + +"And the dog has been often to the village, begging people to go there, +but he was only driven away and not listened to." + +We remembered it, but hadn't understood what he wanted. + +"He only wanted help for the man who had misused him, and he thought only +of that, and has had no food nor sought any. He has watched by his +master two nights. What do you think of your race? Is heaven reserved +for it, and this dog ruled out, as your teachers tell you? Can your race +add anything to this dog's stock of morals and magnanimities?" He spoke +to the creature, who jumped up, eager and happy, and apparently ready for +orders and impatient to execute them. "Get some men; go with the dog--he +will show you that carrion; and take a priest along to arrange about +insurance, for death is near." + +With the last word he vanished, to our sorrow and disappointment. We got +the men and Father Adolf, and we saw the man die. Nobody cared but the +dog; he mourned and grieved, and licked the dead face, and could not be +comforted. We buried him where he was, and without a coffin, for he had +no money, and no friend but the dog. If we had been an hour earlier the +priest would have been in time to send that poor creature to heaven, but +now he was gone down into the awful fires, to burn forever. It seemed +such a pity that in a world where so many people have difficulty to put +in their time, one little hour could not have been spared for this poor +creature who needed it so much, and to whom it would have made the +difference between eternal joy and eternal pain. It gave an appalling +idea of the value of an hour, and I thought I could never waste one again +without remorse and terror. Seppi was depressed and grieved, and said it +must be so much better to be a dog and not run such awful risks. We took +this one home with us and kept him for our own. Seppi had a very good +thought as we were walking along, and it cheered us up and made us feel +much better. He said the dog had forgiven the man that had wronged him +so, and maybe God would accept that absolution. + +There was a very dull week, now, for Satan did not come, nothing much was +going on, and we boys could not venture to go and see Marget, because the +nights were moonlit and our parents might find us out if we tried. But +we came across Ursula a couple of times taking a walk in the meadows +beyond the river to air the cat, and we learned from her that things were +going well. She had natty new clothes on and bore a prosperous look. +The four groschen a day were arriving without a break, but were not being +spent for food and wine and such things--the cat attended to all that. + +Marget was enduring her forsakenness and isolation fairly well, all +things considered, and was cheerful, by help of Wilhelm Meidling. She +spent an hour or two every night in the jail with her uncle, and had +fattened him up with the cat's contributions. But she was curious to +know more about Philip Traum, and hoped I would bring him again. Ursula +was curious about him herself, and asked a good many questions about his +uncle. It made the boys laugh, for I had told them the nonsense Satan +had been stuffing her with. She got no satisfaction out of us, our +tongues being tied. + +Ursula gave us a small item of information: money being plenty now, she +had taken on a servant to help about the house and run errands. She +tried to tell it in a commonplace, matter-of-course way, but she was so +set up by it and so vain of it that her pride in it leaked out pretty +plainly. It was beautiful to see her veiled delight in this grandeur, +poor old thing, but when we heard the name of the servant we wondered if +she had been altogether wise; for although we were young, and often +thoughtless, we had fairly good perception on some matters. This boy was +Gottfried Narr, a dull, good creature, with no harm in him and nothing +against him personally; still, he was under a cloud, and properly so, for +it had not been six months since a social blight had mildewed the family +--his grandmother had been burned as a witch. When that kind of a malady +is in the blood it does not always come out with just one burning. Just +now was not a good time for Ursula and Marget to be having dealings with +a member of such a family, for the witch-terror had risen higher during +the past year than it had ever reached in the memory of the oldest +villagers. The mere mention of a witch was almost enough to frighten us +out of our wits. This was natural enough, because of late years there +were more kinds of witches than there used to be; in old times it had +been only old women, but of late years they were of all ages--even +children of eight and nine; it was getting so that anybody might turn out +to be a familiar of the Devil--age and sex hadn't anything to do with it. +In our little region we had tried to extirpate the witches, but the more +of them we burned the more of the breed rose up in their places. + +Once, in a school for girls only ten miles away, the teachers found that +the back of one of the girls was all red and inflamed, and they were +greatly frightened, believing it to be the Devil's marks. The girl was +scared, and begged them not to denounce her, and said it was only fleas; +but of course it would not do to let the matter rest there. All the +girls were examined, and eleven out of the fifty were badly marked, the +rest less so. A commission was appointed, but the eleven only cried for +their mothers and would not confess. Then they were shut up, each by +herself, in the dark, and put on black bread and water for ten days and +nights; and by that time they were haggard and wild, and their eyes were +dry and they did not cry any more, but only sat and mumbled, and would +not take the food. Then one of them confessed, and said they had often +ridden through the air on broomsticks to the witches' Sabbath, and in a +bleak place high up in the mountains had danced and drunk and caroused +with several hundred other witches and the Evil One, and all had +conducted themselves in a scandalous way and had reviled the priests and +blasphemed God. That is what she said--not in narrative form, for she +was not able to remember any of the details without having them called to +her mind one after the other; but the commission did that, for they knew +just what questions to ask, they being all written down for the use of +witch-commissioners two centuries before. They asked, "Did you do so and +so?" and she always said yes, and looked weary and tired, and took no +interest in it. And so when the other ten heard that this one confessed, +they confessed, too, and answered yes to the questions. Then they were +burned at the stake all together, which was just and right; and everybody +went from all the countryside to see it. I went, too; but when I saw +that one of them was a bonny, sweet girl I used to play with, and looked +so pitiful there chained to the stake, and her mother crying over her and +devouring her with kisses and clinging around her neck, and saying, "Oh, +my God! Oh, my God!" it was too dreadful, and I went away. + +It was bitter cold weather when Gottfried's grandmother was burned. It +was charged that she had cured bad headaches by kneading the person's +head and neck with her fingers--as she said--but really by the Devil's +help, as everybody knew. They were going to examine her, but she stopped +them, and confessed straight off that her power was from the Devil. So +they appointed to burn her next morning, early, in our market-square. +The officer who was to prepare the fire was there first, and prepared it. +She was there next--brought by the constables, who left her and went to +fetch another witch. Her family did not come with her. They might be +reviled, maybe stoned, if the people were excited. I came, and gave her +an apple. She was squatting at the fire, warming herself and waiting; +and her old lips and hands were blue with the cold. A stranger came +next. He was a traveler, passing through; and he spoke to her gently, +and, seeing nobody but me there to hear, said he was sorry for her. And +he asked if what she confessed was true, and she said no. He looked +surprised and still more sorry then, and asked her: + +"Then why did you confess?" + +"I am old and very poor," she said, "and I work for my living. There was +no way but to confess. If I hadn't they might have set me free. That +would ruin me, for no one would forget that I had been suspected of being +a witch, and so I would get no more work, and wherever I went they would +set the dogs on me. In a little while I would starve. The fire is best; +it is soon over. You have been good to me, you two, and I thank you." + +She snuggled closer to the fire, and put out her hands to warm them, the +snow-flakes descending soft and still on her old gray head and making it +white and whiter. The crowd was gathering now, and an egg came flying +and struck her in the eye, and broke and ran down her face. There was a +laugh at that. + +I told Satan all about the eleven girls and the old woman, once, but it +did not affect him. He only said it was the human race, and what the +human race did was of no consequence. And he said he had seen it made; +and it was not made of clay; it was made of mud--part of it was, anyway. +I knew what he meant by that--the Moral Sense. He saw the thought in my +head, and it tickled him and made him laugh. Then he called a bullock +out of a pasture and petted it and talked with it, and said: + +"There--he wouldn't drive children mad with hunger and fright and +loneliness, and then burn them for confessing to things invented for them +which had never happened. And neither would he break the hearts of +innocent, poor old women and make them afraid to trust themselves among +their own race; and he would not insult them in their death-agony. For +he is not besmirched with the Moral Sense, but is as the angels are, and +knows no wrong, and never does it." + +Lovely as he was, Satan could be cruelly offensive when he chose; and he +always chose when the human race was brought to his attention. He always +turned up his nose at it, and never had a kind word for it. + +Well, as I was saying, we boys doubted if it was a good time for Ursula +to be hiring a member of the Narr family. We were right. When the +people found it out they were naturally indignant. And, moreover, since +Marget and Ursula hadn't enough to eat themselves, where was the money +coming from to feed another mouth? That is what they wanted to know; and +in order to find out they stopped avoiding Gottfried and began to seek +his society and have sociable conversations with him. He was pleased +--not thinking any harm and not seeing the trap--and so he talked +innocently along, and was no discreeter than a cow. + +"Money!" he said; "they've got plenty of it. They pay me two groschen a +week, besides my keep. And they live on the fat of the land, I can tell +you; the prince himself can't beat their table." + +This astonishing statement was conveyed by the astrologer to Father Adolf +on a Sunday morning when he was returning from mass. He was deeply +moved, and said: + +"This must be looked into." + +He said there must be witchcraft at the bottom of it, and told the +villagers to resume relations with Marget and Ursula in a private and +unostentatious way, and keep both eyes open. They were told to keep +their own counsel, and not rouse the suspicions of the household. The +villagers were at first a bit reluctant to enter such a dreadful place, +but the priest said they would be under his protection while there, and +no harm could come to them, particularly if they carried a trifle of holy +water along and kept their beads and crosses handy. This satisfied them +and made them willing to go; envy and malice made the baser sort even +eager to go. + +And so poor Marget began to have company again, and was as pleased as a +cat. She was like 'most anybody else--just human, and happy in her +prosperities and not averse from showing them off a little; and she was +humanly grateful to have the warm shoulder turned to her and he smiled +upon by her friends and the village again; for of all the hard things to +bear, to be cut by your neighbors and left in contemptuous solitude is +maybe the hardest. + +The bars were down, and we could all go there now, and we did--our +parents and all--day after day. The cat began to strain herself. She +provided the top of everything for those companies, and in abundance +--among them many a dish and many a wine which they had not tasted before +and which they had not even heard of except at second-hand from the +prince's servants. And the tableware was much above ordinary, too. + +Marget was troubled at times, and pursued Ursula with questions to an +uncomfortable degree; but Ursula stood her ground and stuck to it that it +was Providence, and said no word about the cat. Marget knew that nothing +was impossible to Providence, but she could not help having doubts that +this effort was from there, though she was afraid to say so, lest +disaster come of it. Witchcraft occurred to her, but she put the thought +aside, for this was before Gottfried joined the household, and she knew +Ursula was pious and a bitter hater of witches. By the time Gottfried +arrived Providence was established, unshakably intrenched, and getting +all the gratitude. The cat made no murmur, but went on composedly +improving in style and prodigality by experience. + +In any community, big or little, there is always a fair proportion of +people who are not malicious or unkind by nature, and who never do +unkind things except when they are overmastered by fear, or when their +self-interest is greatly in danger, or some such matter as that. +Eseldorf had its proportion of such people, and ordinarily their good and +gentle influence was felt, but these were not ordinary times--on account +of the witch-dread--and so we did not seem to have any gentle and +compassionate hearts left, to speak of. Every person was frightened at +the unaccountable state of things at Marget's house, not doubting that +witchcraft was at the bottom of it, and fright frenzied their reason. +Naturally there were some who pitied Marget and Ursula for the danger +that was gathering about them, but naturally they did not say so; it +would not have been safe. So the others had it all their own way, and +there was none to advise the ignorant girl and the foolish woman and warn +them to modify their doings. We boys wanted to warn them, but we backed +down when it came to the pinch, being afraid. We found that we were not +manly enough nor brave enough to do a generous action when there was a +chance that it could get us into trouble. Neither of us confessed this +poor spirit to the others, but did as other people would have done +--dropped the subject and talked about something else. And I knew we all +felt mean, eating and drinking Marget's fine things along with those +companies of spies, and petting her and complimenting her with the rest, +and seeing with self-reproach how foolishly happy she was, and never +saying a word to put her on her guard. And, indeed, she was happy, and +as proud as a princess, and so grateful to have friends again. And all +the time these people were watching with all their eyes and reporting all +they saw to Father Adolf. + +But he couldn't make head or tail of the situation. There must be an +enchanter somewhere on the premises, but who was it? Marget was not seen +to do any jugglery, nor was Ursula, nor yet Gottfried; and still the +wines and dainties never ran short, and a guest could not call for a +thing and not get it. To produce these effects was usual enough with +witches and enchanters--that part of it was not new; but to do it without +any incantations, or even any rumblings or earthquakes or lightnings or +apparitions--that was new, novel, wholly irregular. There was nothing in +the books like this. Enchanted things were always unreal. Gold turned +to dirt in an unenchanted atmosphere, food withered away and vanished. +But this test failed in the present case. The spies brought samples: +Father Adolf prayed over them, exorcised them, but it did no good; they +remained sound and real, they yielded to natural decay only, and took the +usual time to do it. + +Father Adolf was not merely puzzled, he was also exasperated; for these +evidences very nearly convinced him--privately--that there was no +witchcraft in the matter. It did not wholly convince him, for this could +be a new kind of witchcraft. There was a way to find out as to this: if +this prodigal abundance of provender was not brought in from the outside, +but produced on the premises, there was witchcraft, sure. + + + + +Chapter 7 + +Marget announced a party, and invited forty people; the date for it was +seven days away. This was a fine opportunity. Marget's house stood by +itself, and it could be easily watched. All the week it was watched +night and day. Marget's household went out and in as usual, but they +carried nothing in their hands, and neither they nor others brought +anything to the house. This was ascertained. Evidently rations for +forty people were not being fetched. If they were furnished any +sustenance it would have to be made on the premises. It was true that +Marget went out with a basket every evening, but the spies ascertained +that she always brought it back empty. + +The guests arrived at noon and filled the place. Father Adolf followed; +also, after a little, the astrologer, without invitation. The spies had +informed him that neither at the back nor the front had any parcels been +brought in. He entered, and found the eating and drinking going on +finely, and everything progressing in a lively and festive way. He +glanced around and perceived that many of the cooked delicacies and all +of the native and foreign fruits were of a perishable character, and he +also recognized that these were fresh and perfect. No apparitions, no +incantations, no thunder. That settled it. This was witchcraft. And +not only that, but of a new kind--a kind never dreamed of before. It was +a prodigious power, an illustrious power; he resolved to discover its +secret. The announcement of it would resound throughout the world, +penetrate to the remotest lands, paralyze all the nations with amazement +--and carry his name with it, and make him renowned forever. It was a +wonderful piece of luck, a splendid piece of luck; the glory of it made +him dizzy. + +All the house made room for him; Marget politely seated him; Ursula +ordered Gottfried to bring a special table for him. Then she decked it +and furnished it, and asked for his orders. + +"Bring me what you will," he said. + +The two servants brought supplies from the pantry, together with white +wine and red--a bottle of each. The astrologer, who very likely had +never seen such delicacies before, poured out a beaker of red wine, drank +it off, poured another, then began to eat with a grand appetite. + +I was not expecting Satan, for it was more than a week since I had seen +or heard of him, but now he came in--I knew it by the feel, though people +were in the way and I could not see him. I heard him apologizing for +intruding; and he was going away, but Marget urged him to stay, and he +thanked her and stayed. She brought him along, introducing him to the +girls, and to Meidling, and to some of the elders; and there was quite a +rustle of whispers: "It's the young stranger we hear so much about and +can't get sight of, he is away so much." "Dear, dear, but he is +beautiful--what is his name?" "Philip Traum." "Ah, it fits him!" (You +see, "Traum" is German for "Dream.") "What does he do?" "Studying for the +ministry, they say." "His face is his fortune--he'll be a cardinal some +day." "Where is his home?" "Away down somewhere in the tropics, they +say--has a rich uncle down there." And so on. He made his way at once; +everybody was anxious to know him and talk with him. Everybody noticed +how cool and fresh it was, all of a sudden, and wondered at it, for they +could see that the sun was beating down the same as before, outside, and +the sky was clear of clouds, but no one guessed the reason, of course. + +The astrologer had drunk his second beaker; he poured out a third. He +set the bottle down, and by accident overturned it. He seized it before +much was spilled, and held it up to the light, saying, "What a pity--it +is royal wine." Then his face lighted with joy or triumph, or something, +and he said, "Quick! Bring a bowl." + +It was brought--a four-quart one. He took up that two-pint bottle and +began to pour; went on pouring, the red liquor gurgling and gushing into +the white bowl and rising higher and higher up its sides, everybody +staring and holding their breath--and presently the bowl was full to the +brim. + +"Look at the bottle," he said, holding it up; "it is full yet!" I glanced +at Satan, and in that moment he vanished. Then Father Adolf rose up, +flushed and excited, crossed himself, and began to thunder in his great +voice, "This house is bewitched and accursed!" People began to cry and +shriek and crowd toward the door. "I summon this detected household +to--" + +His words were cut off short. His face became red, then purple, but he +could not utter another sound. Then I saw Satan, a transparent film, +melt into the astrologer's body; then the astrologer put up his hand, and +apparently in his own voice said, "Wait--remain where you are." All +stopped where they stood. "Bring a funnel!" Ursula brought it, +trembling and scared, and he stuck it in the bottle and took up the great +bowl and began to pour the wine back, the people gazing and dazed with +astonishment, for they knew the bottle was already full before he began. +He emptied the whole of the bowl into the bottle, then smiled out over +the room, chuckled, and said, indifferently: "It is nothing--anybody can +do it! With my powers I can even do much more." + +A frightened cry burst out everywhere. "Oh, my God, he is possessed!" +and there was a tumultuous rush for the door which swiftly emptied the +house of all who did not belong in it except us boys and Meidling. +We boys knew the secret, and would have told it if we could, but we +couldn't. We were very thankful to Satan for furnishing that good help +at the needful time. + +Marget was pale, and crying; Meidling looked kind of petrified; Ursula +the same; but Gottfried was the worst--he couldn't stand, he was so weak +and scared. For he was of a witch family, you know, and it would be bad +for him to be suspected. Agnes came loafing in, looking pious and +unaware, and wanted to rub up against Ursula and be petted, but Ursula +was afraid of her and shrank away from her, but pretending she was not +meaning any incivility, for she knew very well it wouldn't answer to have +strained relations with that kind of a cat. But we boys took Agnes and +petted her, for Satan would not have befriended her if he had not had a +good opinion of her, and that was indorsement enough for us. He seemed +to trust anything that hadn't the Moral Sense. + +Outside, the guests, panic-stricken, scattered in every direction and +fled in a pitiable state of terror; and such a tumult as they made with +their running and sobbing and shrieking and shouting that soon all the +village came flocking from their houses to see what had happened, and +they thronged the street and shouldered and jostled one another in +excitement and fright; and then Father Adolf appeared, and they fell +apart in two walls like the cloven Red Sea, and presently down this lane +the astrologer came striding and mumbling, and where he passed the lanes +surged back in packed masses, and fell silent with awe, and their eyes +stared and their breasts heaved, and several women fainted; and when he +was gone by the crowd swarmed together and followed him at a distance, +talking excitedly and asking questions and finding out the facts. +Finding out the facts and passing them on to others, with improvements +--improvements which soon enlarged the bowl of wine to a barrel, and +made the one bottle hold it all and yet remain empty to the last. + +When the astrologer reached the market-square he went straight to a +juggler, fantastically dressed, who was keeping three brass balls in the +air, and took them from him and faced around upon the approaching crowd +and said: "This poor clown is ignorant of his art. Come forward and see +an expert perform." + +So saying, he tossed the balls up one after another and set them whirling +in a slender bright oval in the air, and added another, then another and +another, and soon--no one seeing whence he got them--adding, adding, +adding, the oval lengthening all the time, his hands moving so swiftly +that they were just a web or a blur and not distinguishable as hands; and +such as counted said there were now a hundred balls in the air. The +spinning great oval reached up twenty feet in the air and was a shining +and glinting and wonderful sight. Then he folded his arms and told the +balls to go on spinning without his help--and they did it. After a +couple of minutes he said, "There, that will do," and the oval broke and +came crashing down, and the balls scattered abroad and rolled every +whither. And wherever one of them came the people fell back in dread, +and no one would touch it. It made him laugh, and he scoffed at the +people and called them cowards and old women. Then he turned and saw the +tight-rope, and said foolish people were daily wasting their money to see +a clumsy and ignorant varlet degrade that beautiful art; now they should +see the work of a master. With that he made a spring into the air and +lit firm on his feet on the rope. Then he hopped the whole length of it +back and forth on one foot, with his hands clasped over his eyes; and +next he began to throw somersaults, both backward and forward, and threw +twenty-seven. + +The people murmured, for the astrologer was old, and always before had +been halting of movement and at times even lame, but he was nimble enough +now and went on with his antics in the liveliest manner. Finally he +sprang lightly down and walked away, and passed up the road and around +the corner and disappeared. Then that great, pale, silent, solid crowd +drew a deep breath and looked into one another's faces as if they said: +"Was it real? Did you see it, or was it only I--and was I dreaming?" +Then they broke into a low murmur of talking, and fell apart in couples, +and moved toward their homes, still talking in that awed way, with faces +close together and laying a hand on an arm and making other such gestures +as people make when they have been deeply impressed by something. + +We boys followed behind our fathers, and listened, catching all we could +of what they said; and when they sat down in our house and continued +their talk they still had us for company. They were in a sad mood, for +it was certain, they said, that disaster for the village must follow this +awful visitation of witches and devils. Then my father remembered that +Father Adolf had been struck dumb at the moment of his denunciation. + +"They have not ventured to lay their hands upon an anointed servant of +God before," he said; "and how they could have dared it this time I +cannot make out, for he wore his crucifix. Isn't it so?" + +"Yes," said the others, "we saw it." + +"It is serious, friends, it is very serious. Always before, we had a +protection. It has failed." + +The others shook, as with a sort of chill, and muttered those words over +--"It has failed." "God has forsaken us." + +"It is true," said Seppi Wohlmeyer's father; "there is nowhere to look +for help." + +"The people will realize this," said Nikolaus's father, the judge, "and +despair will take away their courage and their energies. We have indeed +fallen upon evil times." + +He sighed, and Wohlmeyer said, in a troubled voice: "The report of it all +will go about the country, and our village will be shunned as being under +the displeasure of God. The Golden Stag will know hard times." + +"True, neighbor," said my father; "all of us will suffer--all in repute, +many in estate. And, good God!--" + +"What is it?" + +"That can come--to finish us!" + +"Name it--um Gottes Willen!" + +"The Interdict!" + +It smote like a thunderclap, and they were like to swoon with the terror +of it. Then the dread of this calamity roused their energies, and they +stopped brooding and began to consider ways to avert it. They discussed +this, that, and the other way, and talked till the afternoon was far +spent, then confessed that at present they could arrive at no decision. +So they parted sorrowfully, with oppressed hearts which were filled with +bodings. + +While they were saying their parting words I slipped out and set my +course for Marget's house to see what was happening there. I met many +people, but none of them greeted me. It ought to have been surprising, +but it was not, for they were so distraught with fear and dread that they +were not in their right minds, I think; they were white and haggard, and +walked like persons in a dream, their eyes open but seeing nothing, their +lips moving but uttering nothing, and worriedly clasping and unclasping +their hands without knowing it. + +At Marget's it was like a funeral. She and Wilhelm sat together on the +sofa, but said nothing, and not even holding hands. Both were steeped in +gloom, and Marget's eyes were red from the crying she had been doing. +She said: + +"I have been begging him to go, and come no more, and so save himself +alive. I cannot bear to be his murderer. This house is bewitched, and +no inmate will escape the fire. But he will not go, and he will be lost +with the rest." + +Wilhelm said he would not go; if there was danger for her, his place was +by her, and there he would remain. Then she began to cry again, and it +was all so mournful that I wished I had stayed away. There was a knock, +now, and Satan came in, fresh and cheery and beautiful, and brought that +winy atmosphere of his and changed the whole thing. He never said a word +about what had been happening, nor about the awful fears which were +freezing the blood in the hearts of the community, but began to talk and +rattle on about all manner of gay and pleasant things; and next about +music--an artful stroke which cleared away the remnant of Marget's +depression and brought her spirits and her interests broad awake. She +had not heard any one talk so well and so knowingly on that subject +before, and she was so uplifted by it and so charmed that what she was +feeling lit up her face and came out in her words; and Wilhelm noticed it +and did not look as pleased as he ought to have done. And next Satan +branched off into poetry, and recited some, and did it well, and Marget +was charmed again; and again Wilhelm was not as pleased as he ought to +have been, and this time Marget noticed it and was remorseful. + +I fell asleep to pleasant music that night--the patter of rain upon the +panes and the dull growling of distant thunder. Away in the night Satan +came and roused me and said: "Come with me. Where shall we go?" + +"Anywhere--so it is with you." + +Then there was a fierce glare of sunlight, and he said, "This is China." + +That was a grand surprise, and made me sort of drunk with vanity and +gladness to think I had come so far--so much, much farther than anybody +else in our village, including Bartel Sperling, who had such a great +opinion of his travels. We buzzed around over that empire for more than +half an hour, and saw the whole of it. It was wonderful, the spectacles +we saw; and some were beautiful, others too horrible to think. For +instance--However, I may go into that by and by, and also why Satan chose +China for this excursion instead of another place; it would interrupt my +tale to do it now. Finally we stopped flitting and lit. + +We sat upon a mountain commanding a vast landscape of mountain-range and +gorge and valley and plain and river, with cities and villages slumbering +in the sunlight, and a glimpse of blue sea on the farther verge. It was +a tranquil and dreamy picture, beautiful to the eye and restful to the +spirit. If we could only make a change like that whenever we wanted to, +the world would be easier to live in than it is, for change of scene +shifts the mind's burdens to the other shoulder and banishes old, +shop-worn wearinesses from mind and body both. + +We talked together, and I had the idea of trying to reform Satan and +persuade him to lead a better life. I told him about all those things he +had been doing, and begged him to be more considerate and stop making +people unhappy. I said I knew he did not mean any harm, but that he +ought to stop and consider the possible consequences of a thing before +launching it in that impulsive and random way of his; then he would not +make so much trouble. He was not hurt by this plain speech; he only +looked amused and surprised, and said: + +"What? I do random things? Indeed, I never do. I stop and consider +possible consequences? Where is the need? I know what the consequences +are going to be--always." + +"Oh, Satan, then how could you do these things?" + +"Well, I will tell you, and you must understand if you can. You +belong to a singular race. Every man is a suffering-machine and a +happiness-machine combined. The two functions work together +harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take +principle. For every happiness turned out in the one department the +other stands ready to modify it with a sorrow or a pain--maybe a dozen. +In most cases the man's life is about equally divided between happiness +and unhappiness. When this is not the case the unhappiness predominates +--always; never the other. Sometimes a man's make and disposition are +such that his misery-machine is able to do nearly all the business. Such +a man goes through life almost ignorant of what happiness is. Everything +he touches, everything he does, brings a misfortune upon him. You have +seen such people? To that kind of a person life is not an advantage, is +it? It is only a disaster. Sometimes for an hour's happiness a man's +machinery makes him pay years of misery. Don't you know that? It +happens every now and then. I will give you a case or two presently. Now +the people of your village are nothing to me--you know that, don't you?" + +I did not like to speak out too flatly, so I said I had suspected it. + +"Well, it is true that they are nothing to me. It is not possible that +they should be. The difference between them and me is abysmal, +immeasurable. They have no intellect." + +"No intellect?" + +"Nothing that resembles it. At a future time I will examine what man +calls his mind and give you the details of that chaos, then you will see +and understand. Men have nothing in common with me--there is no point of +contact; they have foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities +and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is but a +laugh, a sigh, and extinction; and they have no sense. Only the Moral +Sense. I will show you what I mean. Here is a red spider, not so big as +a pin's head. Can you imagine an elephant being interested in him +--caring whether he is happy or isn't, or whether he is wealthy or poor, +or whether his sweetheart returns his love or not, or whether his mother +is sick or well, or whether he is looked up to in society or not, or +whether his enemies will smite him or his friends desert him, or whether +his hopes will suffer blight or his political ambitions fail, or whether +he shall die in the bosom of his family or neglected and despised in a +foreign land? These things can never be important to the elephant; they +are nothing to him; he cannot shrink his sympathies to the microscopic +size of them. Man is to me as the red spider is to the elephant. The +elephant has nothing against the spider--he cannot get down to that +remote level; I have nothing against man. The elephant is indifferent; I +am indifferent. The elephant would not take the trouble to do the spider +an ill turn; if he took the notion he might do him a good turn, if it +came in his way and cost nothing. I have done men good service, but no +ill turns. + +"The elephant lives a century, the red spider a day; in power, intellect, +and dignity the one creature is separated from the other by a distance +which is simply astronomical. Yet in these, as in all qualities, man is +immeasurably further below me than is the wee spider below the elephant. + +"Man's mind clumsily and tediously and laboriously patches little +trivialities together and gets a result--such as it is. My mind creates! +Do you get the force of that? Creates anything it desires--and in a +moment. Creates without material. Creates fluids, solids, colors +--anything, everything--out of the airy nothing which is called Thought. +A man imagines a silk thread, imagines a machine to make it, imagines a +picture, then by weeks of labor embroiders it on canvas with the thread. +I think the whole thing, and in a moment it is before you--created. + +"I think a poem, music, the record of a game of chess--anything--and it +is there. This is the immortal mind--nothing is beyond its reach. +Nothing can obstruct my vision; the rocks are transparent to me, and +darkness is daylight. I do not need to open a book; I take the whole of +its contents into my mind at a single glance, through the cover; and in a +million years I could not forget a single word of it, or its place in the +volume. Nothing goes on in the skull of man, bird, fish, insect, or +other creature which can be hidden from me. I pierce the learned man's +brain with a single glance, and the treasures which cost him threescore +years to accumulate are mine; he can forget, and he does forget, but I +retain. + +"Now, then, I perceive by your thoughts that you are understanding me +fairly well. Let us proceed. Circumstances might so fall out that the +elephant could like the spider--supposing he can see it--but he could not +love it. His love is for his own kind--for his equals. An angel's love +is sublime, adorable, divine, beyond the imagination of man--infinitely +beyond it! But it is limited to his own august order. If it fell upon +one of your race for only an instant, it would consume its object to +ashes. No, we cannot love men, but we can be harmlessly indifferent to +them; we can also like them, sometimes. I like you and the boys, I like +Father Peter, and for your sakes I am doing all these things for the +villagers." + +He saw that I was thinking a sarcasm, and he explained his position. + +"I have wrought well for the villagers, though it does not look like it +on the surface. Your race never know good fortune from ill. They are +always mistaking the one for the other. It is because they cannot see +into the future. What I am doing for the villagers will bear good fruit +some day; in some cases to themselves; in others, to unborn generations +of men. No one will ever know that I was the cause, but it will be none +the less true, for all that. Among you boys you have a game: you stand a +row of bricks on end a few inches apart; you push a brick, it knocks its +neighbor over, the neighbor knocks over the next brick--and so on till +all the row is prostrate. That is human life. A child's first act +knocks over the initial brick, and the rest will follow inexorably. If +you could see into the future, as I can, you would see everything that +was going to happen to that creature; for nothing can change the order of +its life after the first event has determined it. That is, nothing will +change it, because each act unfailingly begets an act, that act begets +another, and so on to the end, and the seer can look forward down the +line and see just when each act is to have birth, from cradle to grave." + +"Does God order the career?" + +"Foreordain it? No. The man's circumstances and environment order it. +His first act determines the second and all that follow after. But +suppose, for argument's sake, that the man should skip one of these acts; +an apparently trifling one, for instance; suppose that it had been +appointed that on a certain day, at a certain hour and minute and second +and fraction of a second he should go to the well, and he didn't go. +That man's career would change utterly, from that moment; thence to the +grave it would be wholly different from the career which his first act as +a child had arranged for him. Indeed, it might be that if he had gone to +the well he would have ended his career on a throne, and that omitting to +do it would set him upon a career that would lead to beggary and a +pauper's grave. For instance: if at any time--say in boyhood--Columbus +had skipped the triflingest little link in the chain of acts projected +and made inevitable by his first childish act, it would have changed his +whole subsequent life, and he would have become a priest and died obscure +in an Italian village, and America would not have been discovered for two +centuries afterward. I know this. To skip any one of the billion acts +in Columbus's chain would have wholly changed his life. I have examined +his billion of possible careers, and in only one of them occurs the +discovery of America. You people do not suspect that all of your acts +are of one size and importance, but it is true; to snatch at an appointed +fly is as big with fate for you as is any other appointed act--" + +"As the conquering of a continent, for instance?" + +"Yes. Now, then, no man ever does drop a link--the thing has never +happened! Even when he is trying to make up his mind as to whether he +will do a thing or not, that itself is a link, an act, and has its proper +place in his chain; and when he finally decides an act, that also was the +thing which he was absolutely certain to do. You see, now, that a man +will never drop a link in his chain. He cannot. If he made up his mind +to try, that project would itself be an unavoidable link--a thought bound +to occur to him at that precise moment, and made certain by the first act +of his babyhood." + +It seemed so dismal! + +"He is a prisoner for life," I said sorrowfully, "and cannot get free." + +"No, of himself he cannot get away from the consequences of his first +childish act. But I can free him." + +I looked up wistfully. + +"I have changed the careers of a number of your villagers." + +I tried to thank him, but found it difficult, and let it drop. + +"I shall make some other changes. You know that little Lisa Brandt?" + +"Oh yes, everybody does. My mother says she is so sweet and so lovely +that she is not like any other child. She says she will be the pride of +the village when she grows up; and its idol, too, just as she is now." + +"I shall change her future." + +"Make it better?" I asked. + +"Yes. And I will change the future of Nikolaus." + +I was glad, this time, and said, "I don't need to ask about his case; you +will be sure to do generously by him." + +"It is my intention." + +Straight off I was building that great future of Nicky's in my +imagination, and had already made a renowned general of him and +hofmeister at the court, when I noticed that Satan was waiting for me to +get ready to listen again. I was ashamed of having exposed my cheap +imaginings to him, and was expecting some sarcasms, but it did not +happen. He proceeded with his subject: + +"Nicky's appointed life is sixty-two years." + +"That's grand!" I said. + +"Lisa's, thirty-six. But, as I told you, I shall change their lives and +those ages. Two minutes and a quarter from now Nikolaus will wake out of +his sleep and find the rain blowing in. It was appointed that he should +turn over and go to sleep again. But I have appointed that he shall get +up and close the window first. That trifle will change his career +entirely. He will rise in the morning two minutes later than the chain +of his life had appointed him to rise. By consequence, thenceforth +nothing will ever happen to him in accordance with the details of the old +chain." He took out his watch and sat looking at it a few moments, then +said: "Nikolaus has risen to close the window. His life is changed, his +new career has begun. There will be consequences." + +It made me feel creepy; it was uncanny. + +"But for this change certain things would happen twelve days from now. +For instance, Nikolaus would save Lisa from drowning. He would arrive +on the scene at exactly the right moment--four minutes past ten, the +long-ago appointed instant of time--and the water would be shoal, the +achievement easy and certain. But he will arrive some seconds too late, +now; Lisa will have struggled into deeper water. He will do his best, +but both will drown." + +"Oh, Satan! Oh, dear Satan!" I cried, with the tears rising in my eyes, +"save them! Don't let it happen. I can't bear to lose Nikolaus, he is +my loving playmate and friend; and think of Lisa's poor mother!" + +I clung to him and begged and pleaded, but he was not moved. He made me +sit down again, and told me I must hear him out. + +"I have changed Nikolaus's life, and this has changed Lisa's. If I had +not done this, Nikolaus would save Lisa, then he would catch cold from +his drenching; one of your race's fantastic and desolating scarlet fevers +would follow, with pathetic after-effects; for forty-six years he would +lie in his bed a paralytic log, deaf, dumb, blind, and praying night and +day for the blessed relief of death. Shall I change his life back?" + +"Oh no! Oh, not for the world! In charity and pity leave it as it is." + +"It is best so. I could not have changed any other link in his life and +done him so good a service. He had a billion possible careers, but not +one of them was worth living; they were charged full with miseries and +disasters. But for my intervention he would do his brave deed twelve +days from now--a deed begun and ended in six minutes--and get for all +reward those forty-six years of sorrow and suffering I told you of. It +is one of the cases I was thinking of awhile ago when I said that +sometimes an act which brings the actor an hour's happiness and +self-satisfaction is paid for--or punished--by years of suffering." + +I wondered what poor little Lisa's early death would save her from. He +answered the thought: + +"From ten years of pain and slow recovery from an accident, and then from +nineteen years' pollution, shame, depravity, crime, ending with death at +the hands of the executioner. Twelve days hence she will die; her mother +would save her life if she could. Am I not kinder than her mother?" + +"Yes--oh, indeed yes; and wiser." + +"Father Peter's case is coming on presently. He will be acquitted, +through unassailable proofs of his innocence." + +"Why, Satan, how can that be? Do you really think it?" + +"Indeed, I know it. His good name will be restored, and the rest of his +life will be happy." + +"I can believe it. To restore his good name will have that effect." + +"His happiness will not proceed from that cause. I shall change his life +that day, for his good. He will never know his good name has been +restored." + +In my mind--and modestly--I asked for particulars, but Satan paid no +attention to my thought. Next, my mind wandered to the astrologer, and I +wondered where he might be. + +"In the moon," said Satan, with a fleeting sound which I believed was a +chuckle. "I've got him on the cold side of it, too. He doesn't know +where he is, and is not having a pleasant time; still, it is good enough +for him, a good place for his star studies. I shall need him presently; +then I shall bring him back and possess him again. He has a long and +cruel and odious life before him, but I will change that, for I have no +feeling against him and am quite willing to do him a kindness. I think I +shall get him burned." + +He had such strange notions of kindness! But angels are made so, and do +not know any better. Their ways are not like our ways; and, besides, +human beings are nothing to them; they think they are only freaks. It +seems to me odd that he should put the astrologer so far away; he could +have dumped him in Germany just as well, where he would be handy. + +"Far away?" said Satan. "To me no place is far away; distance does not +exist for me. The sun is less than a hundred million miles from here, +and the light that is falling upon us has taken eight minutes to come; +but I can make that flight, or any other, in a fraction of time so minute +that it cannot be measured by a watch. I have but to think the journey, +and it is accomplished." + +I held out my hand and said, "The light lies upon it; think it into a +glass of wine, Satan." + +He did it. I drank the wine. + +"Break the glass," he said. + +I broke it. + +"There--you see it is real. The villagers thought the brass balls were +magic stuff and as perishable as smoke. They were afraid to touch them. +You are a curious lot--your race. But come along; I have business. I +will put you to bed." Said and done. Then he was gone; but his voice +came back to me through the rain and darkness saying, "Yes, tell Seppi, +but no other." + +It was the answer to my thought. + + + + +Chapter 8 + +Sleep would not come. It was not because I was proud of my travels and +excited about having been around the big world to China, and feeling +contemptuous of Bartel Sperling, "the traveler," as he called himself, +and looked down upon us others because he had been to Vienna once and was +the only Eseldorf boy who had made such a journey and seen the world's +wonders. At another time that would have kept me awake, but it did not +affect me now. No, my mind was filled with Nikolaus, my thoughts ran +upon him only, and the good days we had seen together at romps and +frolics in the woods and the fields and the river in the long summer +days, and skating and sliding in the winter when our parents thought we +were in school. And now he was going out of this young life, and the +summers and winters would come and go, and we others would rove and play +as before, but his place would be vacant; we should see him no more. +To-morrow he would not suspect, but would be as he had always been, and +it would shock me to hear him laugh, and see him do lightsome and +frivolous things, for to me he would be a corpse, with waxen hands and +dull eyes, and I should see the shroud around his face; and next day he +would not suspect, nor the next, and all the time his handful of days +would be wasting swiftly away and that awful thing coming nearer and +nearer, his fate closing steadily around him and no one knowing it but +Seppi and me. Twelve days--only twelve days. It was awful to think of. +I noticed that in my thoughts I was not calling him by his familiar +names, Nick and Nicky, but was speaking of him by his full name, and +reverently, as one speaks of the dead. Also, as incident after incident +of our comradeship came thronging into my mind out of the past, I noticed +that they were mainly cases where I had wronged him or hurt him, and they +rebuked me and reproached me, and my heart was wrung with remorse, just +as it is when we remember our unkindnesses to friends who have passed +beyond the veil, and we wish we could have them back again, if only for a +moment, so that we could go on our knees to them and say, "Have pity, and +forgive." + +Once when we were nine years old he went a long errand of nearly two +miles for the fruiterer, who gave him a splendid big apple for reward, +and he was flying home with it, almost beside himself with astonishment +and delight, and I met him, and he let me look at the apple, not thinking +of treachery, and I ran off with it, eating it as I ran, he following me +and begging; and when he overtook me I offered him the core, which was +all that was left; and I laughed. Then he turned away, crying, and said +he had meant to give it to his little sister. That smote me, for she was +slowly getting well of a sickness, and it would have been a proud moment +for him, to see her joy and surprise and have her caresses. But I was +ashamed to say I was ashamed, and only said something rude and mean, to +pretend I did not care, and he made no reply in words, but there was a +wounded look in his face as he turned away toward his home which rose +before me many times in after years, in the night, and reproached me and +made me ashamed again. It had grown dim in my mind, by and by, then it +disappeared; but it was back now, and not dim. + +Once at school, when we were eleven, I upset my ink and spoiled four +copy-books, and was in danger of severe punishment; but I put it upon +him, and he got the whipping. + +And only last year I had cheated him in a trade, giving him a large +fish-hook which was partly broken through for three small sound ones. +The first fish he caught broke the hook, but he did not know I was +blamable, and he refused to take back one of the small hooks which my +conscience forced me to offer him, but said, "A trade is a trade; the +hook was bad, but that was not your fault." + +No, I could not sleep. These little, shabby wrongs upbraided me and +tortured me, and with a pain much sharper than one feels when the wrongs +have been done to the living. Nikolaus was living, but no matter; he was +to me as one already dead. The wind was still moaning about the eaves, +the rain still pattering upon the panes. + +In the morning I sought out Seppi and told him. It was down by the +river. His lips moved, but he did not say anything, he only looked dazed +and stunned, and his face turned very white. He stood like that a few +moments, the tears welling into his eyes, then he turned away and I +locked my arm in his and we walked along thinking, but not speaking. We +crossed the bridge and wandered through the meadows and up among the +hills and the woods, and at last the talk came and flowed freely, and it +was all about Nikolaus and was a recalling of the life we had lived with +him. And every now and then Seppi said, as if to himself: + +"Twelve days!--less than twelve days." + +We said we must be with him all the time; we must have all of him we +could; the days were precious now. Yet we did not go to seek him. It +would be like meeting the dead, and we were afraid. We did not say it, +but that was what we were feeling. And so it gave us a shock when we +turned a curve and came upon Nikolaus face to face. He shouted, gaily: + +"Hi-hi! What is the matter? Have you seen a ghost?" + +We couldn't speak, but there was no occasion; he was willing to talk for +us all, for he had just seen Satan and was in high spirits about it. +Satan had told him about our trip to China, and he had begged Satan to +take him a journey, and Satan had promised. It was to be a far journey, +and wonderful and beautiful; and Nikolaus had begged him to take us, too, +but he said no, he would take us some day, maybe, but not now. Satan +would come for him on the 13th, and Nikolaus was already counting the +hours, he was so impatient. + +That was the fatal day. We were already counting the hours, too. + +We wandered many a mile, always following paths which had been our +favorites from the days when we were little, and always we talked about +the old times. All the blitheness was with Nikolaus; we others could not +shake off our depression. Our tone toward Nikolaus was so strangely +gentle and tender and yearning that he noticed it, and was pleased; and +we were constantly doing him deferential little offices of courtesy, and +saying, "Wait, let me do that for you," and that pleased him, too. I +gave him seven fish-hooks--all I had--and made him take them; and Seppi +gave him his new knife and a humming-top painted red and yellow +--atonements for swindles practised upon him formerly, as I learned +later, and probably no longer remembered by Nikolaus now. These things +touched him, and he could not have believed that we loved him so; and his +pride in it and gratefulness for it cut us to the heart, we were so +undeserving of them. When we parted at last, he was radiant, and said he +had never had such a happy day. + +As we walked along homeward, Seppi said, "We always prized him, but never +so much as now, when we are going to lose him." + +Next day and every day we spent all of our spare time with Nikolaus; and +also added to it time which we (and he) stole from work and other duties, +and this cost the three of us some sharp scoldings, and some threats of +punishment. Every morning two of us woke with a start and a shudder, +saying, as the days flew along, "Only ten days left;" "only nine days +left;" "only eight;" "only seven." Always it was narrowing. Always +Nikolaus was gay and happy, and always puzzled because we were not. He +wore his invention to the bone trying to invent ways to cheer us up, but +it was only a hollow success; he could see that our jollity had no heart +in it, and that the laughs we broke into came up against some obstruction +or other and suffered damage and decayed into a sigh. He tried to find +out what the matter was, so that he could help us out of our trouble or +make it lighter by sharing it with us; so we had to tell many lies to +deceive him and appease him. + +But the most distressing thing of all was that he was always making +plans, and often they went beyond the 13th! Whenever that happened it +made us groan in spirit. All his mind was fixed upon finding some way to +conquer our depression and cheer us up; and at last, when he had but +three days to live, he fell upon the right idea and was jubilant over it +--a boys-and-girls' frolic and dance in the woods, up there where we +first met Satan, and this was to occur on the 14th. It was ghastly, for +that was his funeral day. We couldn't venture to protest; it would only +have brought a "Why?" which we could not answer. He wanted us to help +him invite his guests, and we did it--one can refuse nothing to a dying +friend. But it was dreadful, for really we were inviting them to his +funeral. + +It was an awful eleven days; and yet, with a lifetime stretching back +between to-day and then, they are still a grateful memory to me, and +beautiful. In effect they were days of companionship with one's sacred +dead, and I have known no comradeship that was so close or so precious. +We clung to the hours and the minutes, counting them as they wasted away, +and parting with them with that pain and bereavement which a miser feels +who sees his hoard filched from him coin by coin by robbers and is +helpless to prevent it. + +When the evening of the last day came we stayed out too long; Seppi and I +were in fault for that; we could not bear to part with Nikolaus; so it +was very late when we left him at his door. We lingered near awhile, +listening; and that happened which we were fearing. His father gave him +the promised punishment, and we heard his shrieks. But we listened only +a moment, then hurried away, remorseful for this thing which we had +caused. And sorry for the father, too; our thought being, "If he only +knew--if he only knew!" + +In the morning Nikolaus did not meet us at the appointed place, so we +went to his home to see what the matter was. His mother said: + +"His father is out of all patience with these goings-on, and will not +have any more of it. Half the time when Nick is needed he is not to be +found; then it turns out that he has been gadding around with you two. +His father gave him a flogging last night. It always grieved me before, +and many's the time I have begged him off and saved him, but this time he +appealed to me in vain, for I was out of patience myself." + +"I wish you had saved him just this one time," I said, my voice trembling +a little; "it would ease a pain in your heart to remember it some day." + +She was ironing at the time, and her back was partly toward me. She +turned about with a startled or wondering look in her face and said, +"What do you mean by that?" + +I was not prepared, and didn't know anything to say; so it was awkward, +for she kept looking at me; but Seppi was alert and spoke up: + +"Why, of course it would be pleasant to remember, for the very reason we +were out so late was that Nikolaus got to telling how good you are to +him, and how he never got whipped when you were by to save him; and he +was so full of it, and we were so full of the interest of it, that none +of us noticed how late it was getting." + +"Did he say that? Did he?" and she put her apron to her eyes. + +"You can ask Theodor--he will tell you the same." + +"It is a dear, good lad, my Nick," she said. "I am sorry I let him get +whipped; I will never do it again. To think--all the time I was sitting +here last night, fretting and angry at him, he was loving me and praising +me! Dear, dear, if we could only know! Then we shouldn't ever go wrong; +but we are only poor, dumb beasts groping around and making mistakes. I +shan't ever think of last night without a pang." + +She was like all the rest; it seemed as if nobody could open a mouth, in +these wretched days, without saying something that made us shiver. They +were "groping around," and did not know what true, sorrowfully true +things they were saying by accident. + +Seppi asked if Nikolaus might go out with us. + +"I am sorry," she answered, "but he can't. To punish him further, his +father doesn't allow him to go out of the house to-day." + +We had a great hope! I saw it in Seppi's eyes. We thought, "If he +cannot leave the house, he cannot be drowned." Seppi asked, to make +sure: + +"Must he stay in all day, or only the morning?" + +"All day. It's such a pity, too; it's a beautiful day, and he is so +unused to being shut up. But he is busy planning his party, and maybe +that is company for him. I do hope he isn't too lonesome." + +Seppi saw that in her eye which emboldened him to ask if we might go up +and help him pass his time. + +"And welcome!" she said, right heartily. "Now I call that real +friendship, when you might be abroad in the fields and the woods, having +a happy time. You are good boys, I'll allow that, though you don't +always find satisfactory ways of improving it. Take these cakes--for +yourselves--and give him this one, from his mother." + +The first thing we noticed when we entered Nikolaus's room was the time +--a quarter to 10. Could that be correct? Only such a few minutes to +live! I felt a contraction at my heart. Nikolaus jumped up and gave us +a glad welcome. He was in good spirits over his plannings for his party +and had not been lonesome. + +"Sit down," he said, "and look at what I've been doing. And I've +finished a kite that you will say is a beauty. It's drying, in the +kitchen; I'll fetch it." + +He had been spending his penny savings in fanciful trifles of various +kinds, to go as prizes in the games, and they were marshaled with fine +and showy effect upon the table. He said: + +"Examine them at your leisure while I get mother to touch up the kite +with her iron if it isn't dry enough yet." + +Then he tripped out and went clattering down-stairs, whistling. + +We did not look at the things; we couldn't take any interest in anything +but the clock. We sat staring at it in silence, listening to the +ticking, and every time the minute-hand jumped we nodded recognition--one +minute fewer to cover in the race for life or for death. Finally Seppi +drew a deep breath and said: + +"Two minutes to ten. Seven minutes more and he will pass the +death-point. Theodor, he is going to be saved! He's going to--" + +"Hush! I'm on needles. Watch the clock and keep still." + +Five minutes more. We were panting with the strain and the excitement. +Another three minutes, and there was a footstep on the stair. + +"Saved!" And we jumped up and faced the door. + +The old mother entered, bringing the kite. "Isn't it a beauty?" she +said. "And, dear me, how he has slaved over it--ever since daylight, I +think, and only finished it awhile before you came." She stood it +against the wall, and stepped back to take a view of it. "He drew the +pictures his own self, and I think they are very good. The church isn't +so very good, I'll have to admit, but look at the bridge--any one can +recognize the bridge in a minute. He asked me to bring it up.... Dear +me! it's seven minutes past ten, and I--" + +"But where is he?" + +"He? Oh, he'll be here soon; he's gone out a minute." + +"Gone out?" + +"Yes. Just as he came down-stairs little Lisa's mother came in and said +the child had wandered off somewhere, and as she was a little uneasy I +told Nikolaus to never mind about his father's orders--go and look her +up.... Why, how white you two do look! I do believe you are sick. Sit +down; I'll fetch something. That cake has disagreed with you. It is a +little heavy, but I thought--" + +She disappeared without finishing her sentence, and we hurried at once to +the back window and looked toward the river. There was a great crowd at +the other end of the bridge, and people were flying toward that point +from every direction. + +"Oh, it is all over--poor Nikolaus! Why, oh, why did she let him get out +of the house!" + +"Come away," said Seppi, half sobbing, "come quick--we can't bear to meet +her; in five minutes she will know." + +But we were not to escape. She came upon us at the foot of the stairs, +with her cordials in her hands, and made us come in and sit down and take +the medicine. Then she watched the effect, and it did not satisfy her; +so she made us wait longer, and kept upbraiding herself for giving us the +unwholesome cake. + +Presently the thing happened which we were dreading. There was a sound +of tramping and scraping outside, and a crowd came solemnly in, with +heads uncovered, and laid the two drowned bodies on the bed. + +"Oh, my God!" that poor mother cried out, and fell on her knees, and put +her arms about her dead boy and began to cover the wet face with kisses. +"Oh, it was I that sent him, and I have been his death. If I had obeyed, +and kept him in the house, this would not have happened. And I am +rightly punished; I was cruel to him last night, and him begging me, his +own mother, to be his friend." + +And so she went on and on, and all the women cried, and pitied her, and +tried to comfort her, but she could not forgive herself and could not be +comforted, and kept on saying if she had not sent him out he would be +alive and well now, and she was the cause of his death. + +It shows how foolish people are when they blame themselves for anything +they have done. Satan knows, and he said nothing happens that your first +act hasn't arranged to happen and made inevitable; and so, of your own +motion you can't ever alter the scheme or do a thing that will break a +link. Next we heard screams, and Frau Brandt came wildly plowing and +plunging through the crowd with her dress in disorder and hair flying +loose, and flung herself upon her dead child with moans and kisses and +pleadings and endearments; and by and by she rose up almost exhausted +with her outpourings of passionate emotion, and clenched her fist and +lifted it toward the sky, and her tear-drenched face grew hard and +resentful, and she said: + +"For nearly two weeks I have had dreams and presentiments and warnings +that death was going to strike what was most precious to me, and day and +night and night and day I have groveled in the dirt before Him praying +Him to have pity on my innocent child and save it from harm--and here is +His answer!" + +Why, He had saved it from harm--but she did not know. + +She wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks, and stood awhile gazing +down at the child and caressing its face and its hair with her hands; +then she spoke again in that bitter tone: "But in His hard heart is no +compassion. I will never pray again." + +She gathered her dead child to her bosom and strode away, the crowd +falling back to let her pass, and smitten dumb by the awful words they +had heard. Ah, that poor woman! It is as Satan said, we do not know +good fortune from bad, and are always mistaking the one for the other. +Many a time since I have heard people pray to God to spare the life of +sick persons, but I have never done it. + +Both funerals took place at the same time in our little church next day. +Everybody was there, including the party guests. Satan was there, too; +which was proper, for it was on account of his efforts that the funerals +had happened. Nikolaus had departed this life without absolution, and a +collection was taken up for masses, to get him out of purgatory. Only +two-thirds of the required money was gathered, and the parents were going +to try to borrow the rest, but Satan furnished it. He told us privately +that there was no purgatory, but he had contributed in order that +Nikolaus's parents and their friends might be saved from worry and +distress. We thought it very good of him, but he said money did not cost +him anything. + +At the graveyard the body of little Lisa was seized for debt by a +carpenter to whom the mother owed fifty groschen for work done the year +before. She had never been able to pay this, and was not able now. The +carpenter took the corpse home and kept it four days in his cellar, the +mother weeping and imploring about his house all the time; then he buried +it in his brother's cattle-yard, without religious ceremonies. It drove +the mother wild with grief and shame, and she forsook her work and went +daily about the town, cursing the carpenter and blaspheming the laws of +the emperor and the church, and it was pitiful to see. Seppi asked Satan +to interfere, but he said the carpenter and the rest were members of the +human race and were acting quite neatly for that species of animal. He +would interfere if he found a horse acting in such a way, and we must +inform him when we came across that kind of horse doing that kind of +human thing, so that he could stop it. We believed this was sarcasm, for +of course there wasn't any such horse. + +But after a few days we found that we could not abide that poor woman's +distress, so we begged Satan to examine her several possible careers, and +see if he could not change her, to her profit, to a new one. He said the +longest of her careers as they now stood gave her forty-two years to +live, and her shortest one twenty-nine, and that both were charged with +grief and hunger and cold and pain. The only improvement he could make +would be to enable her to skip a certain three minutes from now; and he +asked us if he should do it. This was such a short time to decide in +that we went to pieces with nervous excitement, and before we could pull +ourselves together and ask for particulars he said the time would be up +in a few more seconds; so then we gasped out, "Do it!" + +"It is done," he said; "she was going around a corner; I have turned her +back; it has changed her career." + +"Then what will happen, Satan?" + +"It is happening now. She is having words with Fischer, the weaver. In +his anger Fischer will straightway do what he would not have done but for +this accident. He was present when she stood over her child's body and +uttered those blasphemies." + +"What will he do?" + +"He is doing it now--betraying her. In three days she will go to the +stake." + +We could not speak; we were frozen with horror, for if we had not meddled +with her career she would have been spared this awful fate. Satan +noticed these thoughts, and said: + +"What you are thinking is strictly human-like--that is to say, foolish. +The woman is advantaged. Die when she might, she would go to heaven. By +this prompt death she gets twenty-nine years more of heaven than she is +entitled to, and escapes twenty-nine years of misery here." + +A moment before we were bitterly making up our minds that we would ask no +more favors of Satan for friends of ours, for he did not seem to know any +way to do a person a kindness but by killing him; but the whole aspect of +the case was changed now, and we were glad of what we had done and full +of happiness in the thought of it. + +After a little I began to feel troubled about Fischer, and asked, +timidly, "Does this episode change Fischer's life-scheme, Satan?" + +"Change it? Why, certainly. And radically. If he had not met Frau +Brandt awhile ago he would die next year, thirty-four years of age. Now +he will live to be ninety, and have a pretty prosperous and comfortable +life of it, as human lives go." + +We felt a great joy and pride in what we had done for Fischer, and were +expecting Satan to sympathize with this feeling; but he showed no sign +and this made us uneasy. We waited for him to speak, but he didn't; so, +to assuage our solicitude we had to ask him if there was any defect in +Fischer's good luck. Satan considered the question a moment, then said, +with some hesitation: + +"Well, the fact is, it is a delicate point. Under his several former +possible life-careers he was going to heaven." + +We were aghast. "Oh, Satan! and under this one--" + +"There, don't be so distressed. You were sincerely trying to do him a +kindness; let that comfort you." + +"Oh, dear, dear, that cannot comfort us. You ought to have told us what +we were doing, then we wouldn't have acted so." + +But it made no impression on him. He had never felt a pain or a sorrow, +and did not know what they were, in any really informing way. He had no +knowledge of them except theoretically--that is to say, intellectually. +And of course that is no good. One can never get any but a loose and +ignorant notion of such things except by experience. We tried our best +to make him comprehend the awful thing that had been done and how we were +compromised by it, but he couldn't seem to get hold of it. He said he +did not think it important where Fischer went to; in heaven he would not +be missed, there were "plenty there." We tried to make him see that he +was missing the point entirely; that Fischer, and not other people, was +the proper one to decide about the importance of it; but it all went for +nothing; he said he did not care for Fischer--there were plenty more +Fischers. + +The next minute Fischer went by on the other side of the way, and it made +us sick and faint to see him, remembering the doom that was upon him, and +we the cause of it. And how unconscious he was that anything had +happened to him! You could see by his elastic step and his alert manner +that he was well satisfied with himself for doing that hard turn for poor +Frau Brandt. He kept glancing back over his shoulder expectantly. And, +sure enough, pretty soon Frau Brandt followed after, in charge of the +officers and wearing jingling chains. A mob was in her wake, jeering and +shouting, "Blasphemer and heretic!" and some among them were neighbors +and friends of her happier days. Some were trying to strike her, and the +officers were not taking as much trouble as they might to keep them from +it. + +"Oh, stop them, Satan!" It was out before we remembered that he could not +interrupt them for a moment without changing their whole after-lives. He +puffed a little puff toward them with his lips and they began to reel and +stagger and grab at the empty air; then they broke apart and fled in +every direction, shrieking, as if in intolerable pain. He had crushed a +rib of each of them with that little puff. We could not help asking if +their life-chart was changed. + +"Yes, entirely. Some have gained years, some have lost them. Some few +will profit in various ways by the change, but only that few." + +We did not ask if we had brought poor Fischer's luck to any of them. We +did not wish to know. We fully believed in Satan's desire to do us +kindnesses, but we were losing confidence in his judgment. It was at +this time that our growing anxiety to have him look over our life-charts +and suggest improvements began to fade out and give place to other +interests. + +For a day or two the whole village was a chattering turmoil over Frau +Brandt's case and over the mysterious calamity that had overtaken the +mob, and at her trial the place was crowded. She was easily convicted of +her blasphemies, for she uttered those terrible words again and said she +would not take them back. When warned that she was imperiling her life, +she said they could take it in welcome, she did not want it, she would +rather live with the professional devils in perdition than with these +imitators in the village. They accused her of breaking all those ribs by +witchcraft, and asked her if she was not a witch? She answered +scornfully: + +"No. If I had that power would any of you holy hypocrites be alive five +minutes? No; I would strike you all dead. Pronounce your sentence and +let me go; I am tired of your society." + +So they found her guilty, and she was excommunicated and cut off from the +joys of heaven and doomed to the fires of hell; then she was clothed in a +coarse robe and delivered to the secular arm, and conducted to the +market-place, the bell solemnly tolling the while. We saw her chained to +the stake, and saw the first film of blue smoke rise on the still air. +Then her hard face softened, and she looked upon the packed crowd in +front of her and said, with gentleness: + +"We played together once, in long-agone days when we were innocent little +creatures. For the sake of that, I forgive you." + +We went away then, and did not see the fires consume her, but we heard +the shrieks, although we put our fingers in our ears. When they ceased +we knew she was in heaven, notwithstanding the excommunication; and we +were glad of her death and not sorry that we had brought it about. + +One day, a little while after this, Satan appeared again. We were always +watching out for him, for life was never very stagnant when he was by. +He came upon us at that place in the woods where we had first met him. +Being boys, we wanted to be entertained; we asked him to do a show for +us. + +"Very well," he said; "would you like to see a history of the progress of +the human race?--its development of that product which it calls +civilization?" + +We said we should. + +So, with a thought, he turned the place into the Garden of Eden, and we +saw Abel praying by his altar; then Cain came walking toward him with his +club, and did not seem to see us, and would have stepped on my foot if I +had not drawn it in. He spoke to his brother in a language which we did +not understand; then he grew violent and threatening, and we knew what +was going to happen, and turned away our heads for the moment; but we +heard the crash of the blows and heard the shrieks and the groans; then +there was silence, and we saw Abel lying in his blood and gasping out his +life, and Cain standing over him and looking down at him, vengeful and +unrepentant. + +Then the vision vanished, and was followed by a long series of unknown +wars, murders, and massacres. Next we had the Flood, and the Ark tossing +around in the stormy waters, with lofty mountains in the distance showing +veiled and dim through the rain. Satan said: + +"The progress of your race was not satisfactory. It is to have another +chance now." + +The scene changed, and we saw Noah overcome with wine. + +Next, we had Sodom and Gomorrah, and "the attempt to discover two or +three respectable persons there," as Satan described it. Next, Lot and +his daughters in the cave. + +Next came the Hebraic wars, and we saw the victors massacre the survivors +and their cattle, and save the young girls alive and distribute them +around. + +Next we had Jael; and saw her slip into the tent and drive the nail into +the temple of her sleeping guest; and we were so close that when the +blood gushed out it trickled in a little, red stream to our feet, and we +could have stained our hands in it if we had wanted to. + +Next we had Egyptian wars, Greek wars, Roman wars, hideous drenchings of +the earth with blood; and we saw the treacheries of the Romans toward the +Carthaginians, and the sickening spectacle of the massacre of those brave +people. Also we saw Caesar invade Britain--"not that those barbarians +had done him any harm, but because he wanted their land, and desired to +confer the blessings of civilization upon their widows and orphans," as +Satan explained. + +Next, Christianity was born. Then ages of Europe passed in review before +us, and we saw Christianity and Civilization march hand in hand through +those ages, "leaving famine and death and desolation in their wake, and +other signs of the progress of the human race," as Satan observed. + +And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars--all over +Europe, all over the world. "Sometimes in the private interest of royal +families," Satan said, "sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war +started by the aggressor for any clean purpose--there is no such war in +the history of the race." + +"Now," said Satan, "you have seen your progress down to the present, and +you must confess that it is wonderful--in its way. We must now exhibit +the future." + +He showed us slaughters more terrible in their destruction of life, more +devastating in their engines of war, than any we had seen. + +"You perceive," he said, "that you have made continual progress. Cain +did his murder with a club; the Hebrews did their murders with javelins +and swords; the Greeks and Romans added protective armor and the fine +arts of military organization and generalship; the Christian has added +guns and gunpowder; a few centuries from now he will have so greatly +improved the deadly effectiveness of his weapons of slaughter that all +men will confess that without Christian civilization war must have +remained a poor and trifling thing to the end of time." + +Then he began to laugh in the most unfeeling way, and make fun of the +human race, although he knew that what he had been saying shamed us and +wounded us. No one but an angel could have acted so; but suffering is +nothing to them; they do not know what it is, except by hearsay. + +More than once Seppi and I had tried in a humble and diffident way to +convert him, and as he had remained silent we had taken his silence as a +sort of encouragement; necessarily, then, this talk of his was a +disappointment to us, for it showed that we had made no deep impression +upon him. The thought made us sad, and we knew then how the missionary +must feel when he has been cherishing a glad hope and has seen it +blighted. We kept our grief to ourselves, knowing that this was not the +time to continue our work. + +Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish; then he said: "It is a +remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high +civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, +then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest +ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did +their best--to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race and the +earliest incident in its history--but only the Christian civilization has +scored a triumph to be proud of. Two or three centuries from now it will +be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the +pagan world will go to school to the Christian--not to acquire his +religion, but his guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to kill +missionaries and converts with." + +By this time his theater was at work again, and before our eyes nation +after nation drifted by, during two or three centuries, a mighty +procession, an endless procession, raging, struggling, wallowing through +seas of blood, smothered in battle-smoke through which the flags glinted +and the red jets from the cannon darted; and always we heard the thunder +of the guns and the cries of the dying. + +"And what does it amount to?" said Satan, with his evil chuckle. +"Nothing at all. You gain nothing; you always come out where you went +in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating +itself and monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense--to what end? No +wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of +usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel +defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you +proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not +ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you +and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your +alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who +address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the +language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, +while in your heart--if you have one--you despise yourselves for it. The +first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet +failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations +have been built. Drink to their perpetuation! Drink to their +augmentation! Drink to--" Then he saw by our faces how much we were +hurt, and he cut his sentence short and stopped chuckling, and his manner +changed. He said, gently: "No, we will drink one another's health, and +let civilization go. The wine which has flown to our hands out of space +by desire is earthly, and good enough for that other toast; but throw +away the glasses; we will drink this one in wine which has not visited +this world before." + +We obeyed, and reached up and received the new cups as they descended. +They were shapely and beautiful goblets, but they were not made of any +material that we were acquainted with. They seemed to be in motion, they +seemed to be alive; and certainly the colors in them were in motion. +They were very brilliant and sparkling, and of every tint, and they were +never still, but flowed to and fro in rich tides which met and broke and +flashed out dainty explosions of enchanting color. I think it was most +like opals washing about in waves and flashing out their splendid fires. +But there is nothing to compare the wine with. We drank it, and felt a +strange and witching ecstasy as of heaven go stealing through us, and +Seppi's eyes filled and he said worshipingly: + +"We shall be there some day, and then--" + +He glanced furtively at Satan, and I think he hoped Satan would say, +"Yes, you will be there some day," but Satan seemed to be thinking about +something else, and said nothing. This made me feel ghastly, for I knew +he had heard; nothing, spoken or unspoken, ever escaped him. Poor Seppi +looked distressed, and did not finish his remark. The goblets rose and +clove their way into the sky, a triplet of radiant sundogs, and +disappeared. Why didn't they stay? It seemed a bad sign, and depressed +me. Should I ever see mine again? Would Seppi ever see his? + + + + +Chapter 9 + +It was wonderful, the mastery Satan had over time and distance. For him +they did not exist. He called them human inventions, and said they were +artificialities. We often went to the most distant parts of the globe +with him, and stayed weeks and months, and yet were gone only a fraction +of a second, as a rule. You could prove it by the clock. One day when +our people were in such awful distress because the witch commission were +afraid to proceed against the astrologer and Father Peter's household, or +against any, indeed, but the poor and the friendless, they lost patience +and took to witch-hunting on their own score, and began to chase a born +lady who was known to have the habit of curing people by devilish arts, +such as bathing them, washing them, and nourishing them instead of +bleeding them and purging them through the ministrations of a +barber-surgeon in the proper way. She came flying down, with the howling +and cursing mob after her, and tried to take refuge in houses, but the +doors were shut in her face. They chased her more than half an hour, we +following to see it, and at last she was exhausted and fell, and they +caught her. They dragged her to a tree and threw a rope over the limb, +and began to make a noose in it, some holding her, meantime, and she +crying and begging, and her young daughter looking on and weeping, but +afraid to say or do anything. + +They hanged the lady, and I threw a stone at her, although in my heart I +was sorry for her; but all were throwing stones and each was watching his +neighbor, and if I had not done as the others did it would have been +noticed and spoken of. Satan burst out laughing. + +All that were near by turned upon him, astonished and not pleased. It +was an ill time to laugh, for his free and scoffing ways and his +supernatural music had brought him under suspicion all over the town and +turned many privately against him. The big blacksmith called attention +to him now, raising his voice so that all should hear, and said: + +"What are you laughing at? Answer! Moreover, please explain to the +company why you threw no stone." + +"Are you sure I did not throw a stone?" + +"Yes. You needn't try to get out of it; I had my eye on you." + +"And I--I noticed you!" shouted two others. + +"Three witnesses," said Satan: "Mueller, the blacksmith; Klein, the +butcher's man; Pfeiffer, the weaver's journeyman. Three very ordinary +liars. Are there any more?" + +"Never mind whether there are others or not, and never mind about what +you consider us--three's enough to settle your matter for you. You'll +prove that you threw a stone, or it shall go hard with you." + +"That's so!" shouted the crowd, and surged up as closely as they could to +the center of interest. + +"And first you will answer that other question," cried the blacksmith, +pleased with himself for being mouthpiece to the public and hero of the +occasion. "What are you laughing at?" + +Satan smiled and answered, pleasantly: "To see three cowards stoning a +dying lady when they were so near death themselves." + +You could see the superstitious crowd shrink and catch their breath, +under the sudden shock. The blacksmith, with a show of bravado, said: + +"Pooh! What do you know about it?" + +"I? Everything. By profession I am a fortune-teller, and I read the +hands of you three--and some others--when you lifted them to stone the +woman. One of you will die to-morrow week; another of you will die +to-night; the third has but five minutes to live--and yonder is the +clock!" + +It made a sensation. The faces of the crowd blanched, and turned +mechanically toward the clock. The butcher and the weaver seemed smitten +with an illness, but the blacksmith braced up and said, with spirit: + +"It is not long to wait for prediction number one. If it fails, young +master, you will not live a whole minute after, I promise you that." + +No one said anything; all watched the clock in a deep stillness which was +impressive. When four and a half minutes were gone the blacksmith gave a +sudden gasp and clapped his hands upon his heart, saying, "Give me +breath! Give me room!" and began to sink down. The crowd surged back, +no one offering to support him, and he fell lumbering to the ground and +was dead. The people stared at him, then at Satan, then at one another; +and their lips moved, but no words came. Then Satan said: + +"Three saw that I threw no stone. Perhaps there are others; let them +speak." + +It struck a kind of panic into them, and, although no one answered him, +many began to violently accuse one another, saying, "You said he didn't +throw," and getting for reply, "It is a lie, and I will make you eat it!" +And so in a moment they were in a raging and noisy turmoil, and beating +and banging one another; and in the midst was the only indifferent one +--the dead lady hanging from her rope, her troubles forgotten, her spirit +at peace. + +So we walked away, and I was not at ease, but was saying to myself, "He +told them he was laughing at them, but it was a lie--he was laughing at +me." + +That made him laugh again, and he said, "Yes, I was laughing at you, +because, in fear of what others might report about you, you stoned the +woman when your heart revolted at the act--but I was laughing at the +others, too." + +"Why?" + +"Because their case was yours." + +"How is that?" + +"Well, there were sixty-eight people there, and sixty-two of them had no +more desire to throw a stone than you had." + +"Satan!" + +"Oh, it's true. I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is +governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its +feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most +noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no +matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether +savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting +pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they +don't dare to assert themselves. Think of it! One kind-hearted creature +spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally helps in iniquities +which revolt both of them. Speaking as an expert, I know that +ninety-nine out of a hundred of your race were strongly against the +killing of witches when that foolishness was first agitated by a handful +of pious lunatics in the long ago. And I know that even to-day, after +ages of transmitted prejudice and silly teaching, only one person in +twenty puts any real heart into the harrying of a witch. And yet +apparently everybody hates witches and wants them killed. Some day a +handful will rise up on the other side and make the most noise--perhaps +even a single daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do +it--and in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and +witch-hunting will come to a sudden end. + +"Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large +defect in your race--the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his +desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's +eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and +always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always +be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the +majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these +institutions." + +I did not like to hear our race called sheep, and said I did not think +they were. + +"Still, it is true, lamb," said Satan. "Look at you in war--what mutton +you are, and how ridiculous!" + +"In war? How?" + +"There has never been a just one, never an honorable one--on the part of +the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this +rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud +little handful--as usual--will shout for the war. The pulpit will +--warily and cautiously--object--at first; the great, big, dull bulk of +the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should +be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and +dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will +shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason +against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and +be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, +and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. +Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the +platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their +secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers--as earlier +--but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation--pulpit and all +--will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest +man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease +to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame +upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those +conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse +to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince +himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he +enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." + + + + +Chapter 10 + +Days and days went by now, and no Satan. It was dull without him. But +the astrologer, who had returned from his excursion to the moon, went +about the village, braving public opinion, and getting a stone in the +middle of his back now and then when some witch-hater got a safe chance +to throw it and dodge out of sight. Meantime two influences had been +working well for Marget. That Satan, who was quite indifferent to her, +had stopped going to her house after a visit or two had hurt her pride, +and she had set herself the task of banishing him from her heart. +Reports of Wilhelm Meidling's dissipation brought to her from time to +time by old Ursula had touched her with remorse, jealousy of Satan being +the cause of it; and so now, these two matters working upon her together, +she was getting a good profit out of the combination--her interest in +Satan was steadily cooling, her interest in Wilhelm as steadily warming. +All that was needed to complete her conversion was that Wilhelm should +brace up and do something that should cause favorable talk and incline +the public toward him again. + +The opportunity came now. Marget sent and asked him to defend her uncle +in the approaching trial, and he was greatly pleased, and stopped +drinking and began his preparations with diligence. With more diligence +than hope, in fact, for it was not a promising case. He had many +interviews in his office with Seppi and me, and threshed out our +testimony pretty thoroughly, thinking to find some valuable grains among +the chaff, but the harvest was poor, of course. + +If Satan would only come! That was my constant thought. He could invent +some way to win the case; for he had said it would be won, so he +necessarily knew how it could be done. But the days dragged on, and +still he did not come. Of course I did not doubt that it would be won, +and that Father Peter would be happy for the rest of his life, since +Satan had said so; yet I knew I should be much more comfortable if he +would come and tell us how to manage it. It was getting high time for +Father Peter to have a saving change toward happiness, for by general +report he was worn out with his imprisonment and the ignominy that was +burdening him, and was like to die of his miseries unless he got relief +soon. + +At last the trial came on, and the people gathered from all around to +witness it; among them many strangers from considerable distances. Yes, +everybody was there except the accused. He was too feeble in body for +the strain. But Marget was present, and keeping up her hope and her +spirit the best she could. The money was present, too. It was emptied +on the table, and was handled and caressed and examined by such as were +privileged. + +The astrologer was put in the witness-box. He had on his best hat and +robe for the occasion. + +QUESTION. You claim that this money is yours? + +ANSWER. I do. + +Q. How did you come by it? + +A. I found the bag in the road when I was returning from a journey. + +Q. When? + +A. More than two years ago. + +Q. What did you do with it? + +A. I brought it home and hid it in a secret place in my observatory, +intending to find the owner if I could. + +Q. You endeavored to find him? + +A. I made diligent inquiry during several months, but nothing came of +it. + +Q. And then? + +A. I thought it not worth while to look further, and was minded to use +the money in finishing the wing of the foundling-asylum connected with +the priory and nunnery. So I took it out of its hiding-place and counted +it to see if any of it was missing. And then-- + +Q. Why do you stop? Proceed. + +A. I am sorry to have to say this, but just as I had finished and was +restoring the bag to its place, I looked up and there stood Father Peter +behind me. + +Several murmured, "That looks bad," but others answered, "Ah, but he is +such a liar!" + +Q. That made you uneasy? + +A. No; I thought nothing of it at the time, for Father Peter often came +to me unannounced to ask for a little help in his need. + +Marget blushed crimson at hearing her uncle falsely and impudently +charged with begging, especially from one he had always denounced as a +fraud, and was going to speak, but remembered herself in time and held +her peace. + +Q. Proceed. + +A. In the end I was afraid to contribute the money to the +foundling-asylum, but elected to wait yet another year and continue my +inquiries. When I heard of Father Peter's find I was glad, and no +suspicion entered my mind; when I came home a day or two later and +discovered that my own money was gone I still did not suspect until three +circumstances connected with Father Peter's good fortune struck me as +being singular coincidences. + +Q. Pray name them. + +A. Father Peter had found his money in a path--I had found mine in a +road. Father Peter's find consisted exclusively of gold ducats--mine +also. Father Peter found eleven hundred and seven ducats--I exactly the +same. + +This closed his evidence, and certainly it made a strong impression on +the house; one could see that. + +Wilhelm Meidling asked him some questions, then called us boys, and we +told our tale. It made the people laugh, and we were ashamed. We were +feeling pretty badly, anyhow, because Wilhelm was hopeless, and showed +it. He was doing as well as he could, poor young fellow, but nothing was +in his favor, and such sympathy as there was was now plainly not with his +client. It might be difficult for court and people to believe the +astrologer's story, considering his character, but it was almost +impossible to believe Father Peter's. We were already feeling badly +enough, but when the astrologer's lawyer said he believed he would not +ask us any questions--for our story was a little delicate and it would be +cruel for him to put any strain upon it--everybody tittered, and it was +almost more than we could bear. Then he made a sarcastic little speech, +and got so much fun out of our tale, and it seemed so ridiculous and +childish and every way impossible and foolish, that it made everybody +laugh till the tears came; and at last Marget could not keep up her +courage any longer, but broke down and cried, and I was so sorry for her. + +Now I noticed something that braced me up. It was Satan standing +alongside of Wilhelm! And there was such a contrast!--Satan looked so +confident, had such a spirit in his eyes and face, and Wilhelm looked so +depressed and despondent. We two were comfortable now, and judged that +he would testify and persuade the bench and the people that black was +white and white black, or any other color he wanted it. We glanced +around to see what the strangers in the house thought of him, for he was +beautiful, you know--stunning, in fact--but no one was noticing him; so +we knew by that that he was invisible. + +The lawyer was saying his last words; and while he was saying them Satan +began to melt into Wilhelm. He melted into him and disappeared; and then +there was a change, when his spirit began to look out of Wilhelm's eyes. + +That lawyer finished quite seriously, and with dignity. He pointed to +the money, and said: + +"The love of it is the root of all evil. There it lies, the ancient +tempter, newly red with the shame of its latest victory--the dishonor of +a priest of God and his two poor juvenile helpers in crime. If it could +but speak, let us hope that it would be constrained to confess that of +all its conquests this was the basest and the most pathetic." + +He sat down. Wilhelm rose and said: + +"From the testimony of the accuser I gather that he found this money in a +road more than two years ago. Correct me, sir, if I misunderstood you." + +The astrologer said his understanding of it was correct. + +"And the money so found was never out of his hands thenceforth up to a +certain definite date--the last day of last year. Correct me, sir, if I +am wrong." + +The astrologer nodded his head. Wilhelm turned to the bench and said: + +"If I prove that this money here was not that money, then it is not his?" + +"Certainly not; but this is irregular. If you had such a witness it was +your duty to give proper notice of it and have him here to--" He broke +off and began to consult with the other judges. Meantime that other +lawyer got up excited and began to protest against allowing new witnesses +to be brought into the case at this late stage. + +The judges decided that his contention was just and must be allowed. + +"But this is not a new witness," said Wilhelm. "It has already been +partly examined. I speak of the coin." + +"The coin? What can the coin say?" + +"It can say it is not the coin that the astrologer once possessed. It +can say it was not in existence last December. By its date it can say +this." + +And it was so! There was the greatest excitement in the court while that +lawyer and the judges were reaching for coins and examining them and +exclaiming. And everybody was full of admiration of Wilhelm's brightness +in happening to think of that neat idea. At last order was called and +the court said: + +"All of the coins but four are of the date of the present year. The +court tenders its sincere sympathy to the accused, and its deep regret +that he, an innocent man, through an unfortunate mistake, has suffered +the undeserved humiliation of imprisonment and trial. The case is +dismissed." + +So the money could speak, after all, though that lawyer thought it +couldn't. The court rose, and almost everybody came forward to shake +hands with Marget and congratulate her, and then to shake with Wilhelm +and praise him; and Satan had stepped out of Wilhelm and was standing +around looking on full of interest, and people walking through him every +which way, not knowing he was there. And Wilhelm could not explain why +he only thought of the date on the coins at the last moment, instead of +earlier; he said it just occurred to him, all of a sudden, like an +inspiration, and he brought it right out without any hesitation, for, +although he didn't examine the coins, he seemed, somehow, to know it was +true. That was honest of him, and like him; another would have pretended +he had thought of it earlier, and was keeping it back for a surprise. + +He had dulled down a little now; not much, but still you could notice +that he hadn't that luminous look in his eyes that he had while Satan was +in him. He nearly got it back, though, for a moment when Marget came and +praised him and thanked him and couldn't keep him from seeing how proud +she was of him. The astrologer went off dissatisfied and cursing, and +Solomon Isaacs gathered up the money and carried it away. It was Father +Peter's for good and all, now. + +Satan was gone. I judged that he had spirited himself away to the jail +to tell the prisoner the news; and in this I was right. Marget and the +rest of us hurried thither at our best speed, in a great state of +rejoicing. + +Well, what Satan had done was this: he had appeared before that poor +prisoner, exclaiming, "The trial is over, and you stand forever disgraced +as a thief--by verdict of the court!" + +The shock unseated the old man's reason. When we arrived, ten minutes +later, he was parading pompously up and down and delivering commands to +this and that and the other constable or jailer, and calling them Grand +Chamberlain, and Prince This and Prince That, and Admiral of the Fleet, +Field Marshal in Command, and all such fustian, and was as happy as a +bird. He thought he was Emperor! + +Marget flung herself on his breast and cried, and indeed everybody was +moved almost to heartbreak. He recognized Marget, but could not +understand why she should cry. He patted her on the shoulder and said: + +"Don't do it, dear; remember, there are witnesses, and it is not becoming +in the Crown Princess. Tell me your trouble--it shall be mended; there +is nothing the Emperor cannot do." Then he looked around and saw old +Ursula with her apron to her eyes. He was puzzled at that, and said, +"And what is the matter with you?" + +Through her sobs she got out words explaining that she was distressed to +see him--"so." He reflected over that a moment, then muttered, as if to +himself: "A singular old thing, the Dowager Duchess--means well, but is +always snuffling and never able to tell what it is about. It is because +she doesn't know." His eyes fell on Wilhelm. "Prince of India," he +said, "I divine that it is you that the Crown Princess is concerned +about. Her tears shall be dried; I will no longer stand between you; she +shall share your throne; and between you you shall inherit mine. There, +little lady, have I done well? You can smile now--isn't it so?" + +He petted Marget and kissed her, and was so contented with himself and +with everybody that he could not do enough for us all, but began to give +away kingdoms and such things right and left, and the least that any of +us got was a principality. And so at last, being persuaded to go home, +he marched in imposing state; and when the crowds along the way saw how +it gratified him to be hurrahed at, they humored him to the top of his +desire, and he responded with condescending bows and gracious smiles, and +often stretched out a hand and said, "Bless you, my people!" + +As pitiful a sight as ever I saw. And Marget, and old Ursula crying all +the way. + +On my road home I came upon Satan, and reproached him with deceiving me +with that lie. He was not embarrassed, but said, quite simply and +composedly: + +"Ah, you mistake; it was the truth. I said he would be happy the rest of +his days, and he will, for he will always think he is the Emperor, and +his pride in it and his joy in it will endure to the end. He is now, and +will remain, the one utterly happy person in this empire." + +"But the method of it, Satan, the method! Couldn't you have done it +without depriving him of his reason?" + +It was difficult to irritate Satan, but that accomplished it. + +"What an ass you are!" he said. "Are you so unobservant as not to have +found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No +sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a +fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. +The few that imagine themselves kings or gods are happy, the rest are no +happier than the sane. Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind +at any time, but I have been referring to the extreme cases. I have +taken from this man that trumpery thing which the race regards as a Mind; +I have replaced his tin life with a silver-gilt fiction; you see the +result--and you criticize! I said I would make him permanently happy, +and I have done it. I have made him happy by the only means possible to +his race--and you are not satisfied!" He heaved a discouraged sigh, and +said, "It seems to me that this race is hard to please." + +There it was, you see. He didn't seem to know any way to do a person a +favor except by killing him or making a lunatic out of him. I +apologized, as well as I could; but privately I did not think much of his +processes--at that time. + +Satan was accustomed to say that our race lived a life of continuous and +uninterrupted self-deception. It duped itself from cradle to grave with +shams and delusions which it mistook for realities, and this made its +entire life a sham. Of the score of fine qualities which it imagined it +had and was vain of, it really possessed hardly one. It regarded itself +as gold, and was only brass. One day when he was in this vein he +mentioned a detail--the sense of humor. I cheered up then, and took +issue. I said we possessed it. + +"There spoke the race!" he said; "always ready to claim what it hasn't +got, and mistake its ounce of brass filings for a ton of gold-dust. You +have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of you +possess that. This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade +and trivial things--broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, +absurdities, evokers of the horse-laugh. The ten thousand high-grade +comicalities which exist in the world are sealed from their dull vision. +Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these +juvenilities and laugh at them--and by laughing at them destroy them? +For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective +weapon--laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution +--these can lift at a colossal humbug--push it a little--weaken it a +little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and +atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. +You are always fussing and fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever +use that one? No; you leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever +use it at all? No; you lack sense and the courage." + +We were traveling at the time and stopped at a little city in India and +looked on while a juggler did his tricks before a group of natives. They +were wonderful, but I knew Satan could beat that game, and I begged him +to show off a little, and he said he would. He changed himself into a +native in turban and breech-cloth, and very considerately conferred on me +a temporary knowledge of the language. + +The juggler exhibited a seed, covered it with earth in a small +flower-pot, then put a rag over the pot; after a minute the rag began to +rise; in ten minutes it had risen a foot; then the rag was removed and a +little tree was exposed, with leaves upon it and ripe fruit. We ate the +fruit, and it was good. But Satan said: + +"Why do you cover the pot? Can't you grow the tree in the sunlight?" + +"No," said the juggler; "no one can do that." + +"You are only an apprentice; you don't know your trade. Give me the +seed. I will show you." He took the seed and said, "What shall I raise +from it?" + +"It is a cherry seed; of course you will raise a cherry." + +"Oh no; that is a trifle; any novice can do that. Shall I raise an +orange-tree from it?" + +"Oh yes!" and the juggler laughed. + +"And shall I make it bear other fruits as well as oranges?" + +"If God wills!" and they all laughed. + +Satan put the seed in the ground, put a handful of dust on it, and said, +"Rise!" + +A tiny stem shot up and began to grow, and grew so fast that in five +minutes it was a great tree, and we were sitting in the shade of it. +There was a murmur of wonder, then all looked up and saw a strange and +pretty sight, for the branches were heavy with fruits of many kinds and +colors--oranges, grapes, bananas, peaches, cherries, apricots, and so on. +Baskets were brought, and the unlading of the tree began; and the people +crowded around Satan and kissed his hand, and praised him, calling him +the prince of jugglers. The news went about the town, and everybody came +running to see the wonder--and they remembered to bring baskets, too. +But the tree was equal to the occasion; it put out new fruits as fast as +any were removed; baskets were filled by the score and by the hundred, +but always the supply remained undiminished. At last a foreigner in +white linen and sun-helmet arrived, and exclaimed, angrily: + +"Away from here! Clear out, you dogs; the tree is on my lands and is my +property." + +The natives put down their baskets and made humble obeisance. Satan made +humble obeisance, too, with his fingers to his forehead, in the native +way, and said: + +"Please let them have their pleasure for an hour, sir--only that, and no +longer. Afterward you may forbid them; and you will still have more +fruit than you and the state together can consume in a year." + +This made the foreigner very angry, and he cried out, "Who are you, you +vagabond, to tell your betters what they may do and what they mayn't!" +and he struck Satan with his cane and followed this error with a kick. + +The fruits rotted on the branches, and the leaves withered and fell. The +foreigner gazed at the bare limbs with the look of one who is surprised, +and not gratified. Satan said: + +"Take good care of the tree, for its health and yours are bound together. +It will never bear again, but if you tend it well it will live long. +Water its roots once in each hour every night--and do it yourself; it +must not be done by proxy, and to do it in daylight will not answer. If +you fail only once in any night, the tree will die, and you likewise. Do +not go home to your own country any more--you would not reach there; make +no business or pleasure engagements which require you to go outside your +gate at night--you cannot afford the risk; do not rent or sell this +place--it would be injudicious." + +The foreigner was proud and wouldn't beg, but I thought he looked as if +he would like to. While he stood gazing at Satan we vanished away and +landed in Ceylon. + +I was sorry for that man; sorry Satan hadn't been his customary self and +killed him or made him a lunatic. It would have been a mercy. Satan +overheard the thought, and said: + +"I would have done it but for his wife, who has not offended me. She is +coming to him presently from their native land, Portugal. She is well, +but has not long to live, and has been yearning to see him and persuade +him to go back with her next year. She will die without knowing he can't +leave that place." + +"He won't tell her?" + +"He? He will not trust that secret with any one; he will reflect that it +could be revealed in sleep, in the hearing of some Portuguese guest's +servant some time or other." + +"Did none of those natives understand what you said to him?" + +"None of them understood, but he will always be afraid that some of them +did. That fear will be torture to him, for he has been a harsh master to +them. In his dreams he will imagine them chopping his tree down. That +will make his days uncomfortable--I have already arranged for his +nights." + +It grieved me, though not sharply, to see him take such a malicious +satisfaction in his plans for this foreigner. + +"Does he believe what you told him, Satan?" + +"He thought he didn't, but our vanishing helped. The tree, where there +had been no tree before--that helped. The insane and uncanny variety of +fruits--the sudden withering--all these things are helps. Let him think +as he may, reason as he may, one thing is certain, he will water the +tree. But between this and night he will begin his changed career with a +very natural precaution--for him." + +"What is that?" + +"He will fetch a priest to cast out the tree's devil. You are such a +humorous race--and don't suspect it." + +"Will he tell the priest?" + +"No. He will say a juggler from Bombay created it, and that he wants the +juggler's devil driven out of it, so that it will thrive and be fruitful +again. The priest's incantations will fail; then the Portuguese will +give up that scheme and get his watering-pot ready." + +"But the priest will burn the tree. I know it; he will not allow it to +remain." + +"Yes, and anywhere in Europe he would burn the man, too. But in India +the people are civilized, and these things will not happen. The man will +drive the priest away and take care of the tree." + +I reflected a little, then said, "Satan, you have given him a hard life, +I think." + +"Comparatively. It must not be mistaken for a holiday." + +We flitted from place to place around the world as we had done before, +Satan showing me a hundred wonders, most of them reflecting in some way +the weakness and triviality of our race. He did this now every few days +--not out of malice--I am sure of that--it only seemed to amuse and +interest him, just as a naturalist might be amused and interested by a +collection of ants. + + + + +Chapter 11 + +For as much as a year Satan continued these visits, but at last he came +less often, and then for a long time he did not come at all. This always +made me lonely and melancholy. I felt that he was losing interest in our +tiny world and might at any time abandon his visits entirely. When one +day he finally came to me I was overjoyed, but only for a little while. +He had come to say good-by, he told me, and for the last time. He had +investigations and undertakings in other corners of the universe, he +said, that would keep him busy for a longer period than I could wait for +his return. + +"And you are going away, and will not come back any more?" + +"Yes," he said. "We have comraded long together, and it has been +pleasant--pleasant for both; but I must go now, and we shall not see each +other any more." + +"In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall meet in another, surely?" + +Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the strange answer, "There is +no other." + +A subtle influence blew upon my spirit from his, bringing with it a +vague, dim, but blessed and hopeful feeling that the incredible words +might be true--even must be true. + +"Have you never suspected this, Theodor?" + +"No. How could I? But if it can only be true--" + +"It is true." + +A gust of thankfulness rose in my breast, but a doubt checked it before +it could issue in words, and I said, "But--but--we have seen that future +life--seen it in its actuality, and so--" + +"It was a vision--it had no existence." + +I could hardly breathe for the great hope that was struggling in me. +"A vision?--a vi--" + +"Life itself is only a vision, a dream." + +It was electrical. By God! I had had that very thought a thousand times +in my musings! + +"Nothing exists; all is a dream. God--man--the world--the sun, the moon, +the wilderness of stars--a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. +Nothing exists save empty space--and you!" + +"I!" + +"And you are not you--you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a +thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream--your dream, +creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, +then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the +nothingness out of which you made me.... + +"I am perishing already--I am failing--I am passing away. In a little +while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless +solitudes without friend or comrade forever--for you will remain a +thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, +indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself +and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better! + +"Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago--centuries, ages, +eons, ago!--for you have existed, companionless, through all the +eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that +your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! +Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane--like all +dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet +preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, +yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, +yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness +unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels +painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and +maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell--mouths +mercy and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied +by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other +people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them +all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the +responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it +where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine +obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!... + +"You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a +dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly +creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks--in a +word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks +are all present; you should have recognized them earlier. + +"It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no +universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all +a dream--a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you +are but a thought--a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless +thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!" + +He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he +had said was true. + + + + + + +A FABLE + +Once upon a time an artist who had painted a small and very beautiful +picture placed it so that he could see it in the mirror. He said, "This +doubles the distance and softens it, and it is twice as lovely as it was +before." + +The animals out in the woods heard of this through the housecat, who was +greatly admired by them because he was so learned, and so refined and +civilized, and so polite and high-bred, and could tell them so much which +they didn't know before, and were not certain about afterward. They were +much excited about this new piece of gossip, and they asked questions, so +as to get at a full understanding of it. They asked what a picture was, +and the cat explained. + +"It is a flat thing," he said; "wonderfully flat, marvelously flat, +enchantingly flat and elegant. And, oh, so beautiful!" + +That excited them almost to a frenzy, and they said they would give the +world to see it. Then the bear asked: + +"What is it that makes it so beautiful?" + +"It is the looks of it," said the cat. + +This filled them with admiration and uncertainty, and they were more +excited than ever. Then the cow asked: + +"What is a mirror?" + +"It is a hole in the wall," said the cat. "You look in it, and there you +see the picture, and it is so dainty and charming and ethereal and +inspiring in its unimaginable beauty that your head turns round and +round, and you almost swoon with ecstasy." + +The ass had not said anything as yet; he now began to throw doubts. +He said there had never been anything as beautiful as this before, and +probably wasn't now. He said that when it took a whole basketful of +sesquipedalian adjectives to whoop up a thing of beauty, it was time for +suspicion. + +It was easy to see that these doubts were having an effect upon the +animals, so the cat went off offended. The subject was dropped for a +couple of days, but in the meantime curiosity was taking a fresh start, +aid there was a revival of interest perceptible. Then the animals +assailed the ass for spoiling what could possibly have been a pleasure to +them, on a mere suspicion that the picture was not beautiful, without any +evidence that such was the case. The ass was not, troubled; he was calm, +and said there was one way to find out who was in the right, himself or +the cat: he would go and look in that hole, and come back and tell what +he found there. The animals felt relieved and grateful, and asked him to +go at once--which he did. + +But he did not know where he ought to stand; and so, through error, he +stood between the picture and the mirror. The result was that the +picture had no chance, and didn't show up. He returned home and said: + +"The cat lied. There was nothing in that hole but an ass. There wasn't +a sign of a flat thing visible. It was a handsome ass, and friendly, but +just an ass, and nothing more." + +The elephant asked: + +"Did you see it good and clear? Were you close to it?" + +"I saw it good and clear, O Hathi, King of Beasts. I was so close that I +touched noses with it." + +"This is very strange," said the elephant; "the cat was always truthful +before--as far as we could make out. Let another witness try. Go, +Baloo, look in the hole, and come and report." + +So the bear went. When he came back, he said: + +"Both the cat and the ass have lied; there was nothing in the hole but a +bear." + +Great was the surprise and puzzlement of the animals. Each was now +anxious to make the test himself and get at the straight truth. The +elephant sent them one at a time. + +First, the cow. She found nothing in the hole but a cow. + +The tiger found nothing in it but a tiger. + +The lion found nothing in it but a lion. + +The leopard found nothing in it but a leopard. + +The camel found a camel, and nothing more. + +Then Hathi was wroth, and said he would have the truth, if he had to go +and fetch it himself. When he returned, he abused his whole subjectry +for liars, and was in an unappeasable fury with the moral and mental +blindness of the cat. He said that anybody but a near-sighted fool could +see that there was nothing in the hole but an elephant. + + MORAL, BY THE CAT + +You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it +and the mirror of your imagination. You may not see your ears, but they +will be there. + + + + + + +HUNTING THE DECEITFUL TURKEY + +When I was a boy my uncle and his big boys hunted with the rifle, the +youngest boy Fred and I with a shotgun--a small single-barrelled shotgun +which was properly suited to our size and strength; it was not much +heavier than a broom. We carried it turn about, half an hour at a time. +I was not able to hit anything with it, but I liked to try. Fred and I +hunted feathered small game, the others hunted deer, squirrels, wild +turkeys, and such things. My uncle and the big boys were good shots. +They killed hawks and wild geese and such like on the wing; and they +didn't wound or kill squirrels, they stunned them. When the dogs treed a +squirrel, the squirrel would scamper aloft and run out on a limb and +flatten himself along it, hoping to make himself invisible in that way +--and not quite succeeding. You could see his wee little ears sticking +up. You couldn't see his nose, but you knew where it was. Then the +hunter, despising a "rest" for his rifle, stood up and took offhand aim +at the limb and sent a bullet into it immediately under the squirrel's +nose, and down tumbled the animal, unwounded, but unconscious; the dogs +gave him a shake and he was dead. Sometimes when the distance was great +and the wind not accurately allowed for, the bullet would hit the +squirrel's head; the dogs could do as they pleased with that one--the +hunter's pride was hurt, and he wouldn't allow it to go into the gamebag. + +In the first faint gray of the dawn the stately wild turkeys would be +stalking around in great flocks, and ready to be sociable and answer +invitations to come and converse with other excursionists of their kind. +The hunter concealed himself and imitated the turkey-call by sucking the +air through the leg-bone of a turkey which had previously answered a call +like that and lived only just long enough to regret it. There is nothing +that furnishes a perfect turkey-call except that bone. Another of +Nature's treacheries, you see. She is full of them; half the time she +doesn't know which she likes best--to betray her child or protect it. +In the case of the turkey she is badly mixed: she gives it a bone to be +used in getting it into trouble, and she also furnishes it with a trick +for getting itself out of the trouble again. When a mamma-turkey answers +an invitation and finds she has made a mistake in accepting it, she does +as the mamma-partridge does--remembers a previous engagement--and goes +limping and scrambling away, pretending to be very lame; and at the same +time she is saying to her not-visible children, "Lie low, keep still, +don't expose yourselves; I shall be back as soon as I have beguiled this +shabby swindler out of the country." + +When a person is ignorant and confiding, this immoral device can have +tiresome results. I followed an ostensibly lame turkey over a +considerable part of the United States one morning, because I believed in +her and could not think she would deceive a mere boy, and one who was +trusting her and considering her honest. I had the single-barrelled +shotgun, but my idea was to catch her alive. I often got within rushing +distance of her, and then made my rush; but always, just as I made my +final plunge and put my hand down where her back had been, it wasn't +there; it was only two or three inches from there and I brushed the +tail-feathers as I landed on my stomach--a very close call, but still not +quite close enough; that is, not close enough for success, but just close +enough to convince me that I could do it next time. She always waited +for me, a little piece away, and let on to be resting and greatly +fatigued; which was a lie, but I believed it, for I still thought her +honest long after I ought to have begun to doubt her, suspecting that +this was no way for a high-minded bird to be acting. I followed, and +followed, and followed, making my periodical rushes, and getting up and +brushing the dust off, and resuming the voyage with patient confidence; +indeed, with a confidence which grew, for I could see by the change of +climate and vegetation that we were getting up into the high latitudes, +and as she always looked a little tireder and a little more discouraged +after each rush, I judged that I was safe to win, in the end, the +competition being purely a matter of staying power and the advantage +lying with me from the start because she was lame. + +Along in the afternoon I began to feel fatigued myself. Neither of us +had had any rest since we first started on the excursion, which was +upwards of ten hours before, though latterly we had paused awhile after +rushes, I letting on to be thinking about something else; but neither of +us sincere, and both of us waiting for the other to call game but in no +real hurry about it, for indeed those little evanescent snatches of rest +were very grateful to the feelings of us both; it would naturally be so, +skirmishing along like that ever since dawn and not a bite in the +meantime; at least for me, though sometimes as she lay on her side +fanning herself with a wing and praying for strength to get out of this +difficulty a grasshopper happened along whose time had come, and that was +well for her, and fortunate, but I had nothing--nothing the whole day. + +More than once, after I was very tired, I gave up taking her alive, and +was going to shoot her, but I never did it, although it was my right, for +I did not believe I could hit her; and besides, she always stopped and +posed, when I raised the gun, and this made me suspicious that she knew +about me and my marksmanship, and so I did not care to expose myself to +remarks. + +I did not get her, at all. When she got tired of the game at last, she +rose from almost under my hand and flew aloft with the rush and whir of a +shell and lit on the highest limb of a great tree and sat down and +crossed her legs and smiled down at me, and seemed gratified to see me so +astonished. + +I was ashamed, and also lost; and it was while wandering the woods +hunting for myself that I found a deserted log cabin and had one of the +best meals there that in my life-days I have eaten. The weed-grown +garden was full of ripe tomatoes, and I ate them ravenously, though I had +never liked them before. Not more than two or three times since have I +tasted anything that was so delicious as those tomatoes. I surfeited +myself with them, and did not taste another one until I was in middle +life. I can eat them now, but I do not like the look of them. I suppose +we have all experienced a surfeit at one time or another. Once, in +stress of circumstances, I ate part of a barrel of sardines, there being +nothing else at hand, but since then I have always been able to get along +without sardines. + + + + + + +THE McWILLIAMSES AND THE BURGLAR ALARM + +The conversation drifted smoothly and pleasantly along from weather to +crops, from crops to literature, from literature to scandal, from scandal +to religion; then took a random jump, and landed on the subject of +burglar alarms. And now for the first time Mr. McWilliams showed +feeling. Whenever I perceive this sign on this man's dial, I comprehend +it, and lapse into silence, and give him opportunity to unload his heart. +Said he, with but ill-controlled emotion: + +"I do not go one single cent on burglar alarms, Mr. Twain--not a single +cent--and I will tell you why. When we were finishing our house, we +found we had a little cash left over, on account of the plumber not +knowing it. I was for enlightening the heathen with it, for I was always +unaccountably down on the heathen somehow; but Mrs. McWilliams said no, +let's have a burglar alarm. I agreed to this compromise. I will explain +that whenever I want a thing, and Mrs. McWilliams wants another thing, +and we decide upon the thing that Mrs. McWilliams wants--as we always do +--she calls that a compromise. Very well: the man came up from New York +and put in the alarm, and charged three hundred and twenty-five dollars +for it, and said we could sleep without uneasiness now. So we did for +awhile--say a month. Then one night we smelled smoke, and I was advised +to get up and see what the matter was. I lit a candle, and started +toward the stairs, and met a burglar coming out of a room with a basket +of tinware, which he had mistaken for solid silver in the dark. He was +smoking a pipe. I said, 'My friend, we do not allow smoking in this +room.' He said he was a stranger, and could not be expected to know the +rules of the house: said he had been in many houses just as good as this +one, and it had never been objected to before. He added that as far as +his experience went, such rules had never been considered to apply to +burglars, anyway. + +"I said: 'Smoke along, then, if it is the custom, though I think that the +conceding of a privilege to a burglar which is denied to a bishop is a +conspicuous sign of the looseness of the times. But waiving all that, +what business have you to be entering this house in this furtive and +clandestine way, without ringing the burglar alarm?' + +"He looked confused and ashamed, and said, with embarrassment: 'I beg a +thousand pardons. I did not know you had a burglar alarm, else I would +have rung it. I beg you will not mention it where my parents may hear of +it, for they are old and feeble, and such a seemingly wanton breach of +the hallowed conventionalities of our Christian civilization might all +too rudely sunder the frail bridge which hangs darkling between the pale +and evanescent present and the solemn great deeps of the eternities. May +I trouble you for a match?' + +"I said: 'Your sentiments do you honor, but if you will allow me to say +it, metaphor is not your best hold. Spare your thigh; this kind light +only on the box, and seldom there, in fact, if my experience may be +trusted. But to return to business: how did you get in here?' + +"'Through a second-story window.' + +"It was even so. I redeemed the tinware at pawnbroker's rates, less cost +of advertising, bade the burglar good-night, closed the window after him, +and retired to headquarters to report. Next morning we sent for the +burglar-alarm man, and he came up and explained that the reason the alarm +did not 'go off' was that no part of the house but the first floor was +attached to the alarm. This was simply idiotic; one might as well have +no armor on at all in battle as to have it only on his legs. The expert +now put the whole second story on the alarm, charged three hundred +dollars for it, and went his way. By and by, one night, I found a +burglar in the third story, about to start down a ladder with a lot of +miscellaneous property. My first impulse was to crack his head with a +billiard cue; but my second was to refrain from this attention, because +he was between me and the cue rack. The second impulse was plainly the +soundest, so I refrained, and proceeded to compromise. I redeemed the +property at former rates, after deducting ten per cent. for use of +ladder, it being my ladder, and, next day we sent down for the expert +once more, and had the third story attached to the alarm, for three +hundred dollars. + +"By this time the 'annunciator' had grown to formidable dimensions. It +had forty-seven tags on it, marked with the names of the various rooms +and chimneys, and it occupied the space of an ordinary wardrobe. The +gong was the size of a wash-bowl, and was placed above the head of our +bed. There was a wire from the house to the coachman's quarters in the +stable, and a noble gong alongside his pillow. + +"We should have been comfortable now but for one defect. Every morning +at five the cook opened the kitchen door, in the way of business, and rip +went that gong! The first time this happened I thought the last day was +come sure. I didn't think it in bed--no, but out of it--for the first +effect of that frightful gong is to hurl you across the house, and slam +you against the wall, and then curl you up, and squirm you like a spider +on a stove lid, till somebody shuts the kitchen door. In solid fact, +there is no clamor that is even remotely comparable to the dire clamor +which that gong makes. Well, this catastrophe happened every morning +regularly at five o'clock, and lost us three hours sleep; for, mind you, +when that thing wakes you, it doesn't merely wake you in spots; it wakes +you all over, conscience and all, and you are good for eighteen hours of +wide-awakeness subsequently--eighteen hours of the very most +inconceivable wide-awakeness that you ever experienced in your life. +A stranger died on our hands one time, aid we vacated and left him in our +room overnight. Did that stranger wait for the general judgment? No, +sir; he got up at five the next morning in the most prompt and +unostentatious way. I knew he would; I knew it mighty well. He +collected his life-insurance, and lived happy ever after, for there was +plenty of proof as to the perfect squareness of his death. + +"Well, we were gradually fading toward a better land, on account of the +daily loss of sleep; so we finally had the expert up again, and he ran a +wire to the outside of the door, and placed a switch there, whereby +Thomas, the butler, always made one little mistake--he switched the alarm +off at night when he went to bed, and switched it on again at daybreak in +the morning, just in time for the cook to open the kitchen door, and +enable that gong to slam us across the house, sometimes breaking a window +with one or the other of us. At the end of a week we recognized that +this switch business was a delusion and a snare. We also discovered that +a band of burglars had been lodging in the house the whole time--not +exactly to steal, for there wasn't much left now, but to hide from the +police, for they were hot pressed, and they shrewdly judged that the +detectives would never think of a tribe of burglars taking sanctuary in a +house notoriously protected by the most imposing and elaborate burglar +alarm in America. + +"Sent down for the expert again, and this time he struck a most dazzling +idea--he fixed the thing so that opening the kitchen door would take off +the alarm. It was a noble idea, and he charged accordingly. But you +already foresee the result. I switched on the alarm every night at +bed-time, no longer trusting on Thomas's frail memory; and as soon as the +lights were out the burglars walked in at the kitchen door, thus taking +the alarm off without waiting for the cook to do it in the morning. You +see how aggravatingly we were situated. For months we couldn't have any +company. Not a spare bed in the house; all occupied by burglars. + +"Finally, I got up a cure of my own. The expert answered the call, and +ran another ground wire to the stable, and established a switch there, so +that the coachman could put on and take off the alarm. That worked first +rate, and a season of peace ensued, during which we got to inviting +company once more and enjoying life. + +"But by and by the irrepressible alarm invented a new kink. One winter's +night we were flung out of bed by the sudden music of that awful gong, +and when we hobbled to the annunciator, turned up the gas, and saw the +word 'Nursery' exposed, Mrs. McWilliams fainted dead away, and I came +precious near doing the same thing myself. I seized my shotgun, and +stood timing the coachman whilst that appalling buzzing went on. I knew +that his gong had flung him out, too, and that he would be along with his +gun as soon as he could jump into his clothes. When I judged that the +time was ripe, I crept to the room next the nursery, glanced through the +window, and saw the dim outline of the coachman in the yard below, +standing at present-arms and waiting for a chance. Then I hopped into +the nursery and fired, and in the same instant the coachman fired at the +red flash of my gun. Both of us were successful; I crippled a nurse, and +he shot off all my back hair. We turned up the gas, and telephoned for a +surgeon. There was not a sign of a burglar, and no window had been +raised. One glass was absent, but that was where the coachman's charge +had come through. Here was a fine mystery--a burglar alarm 'going off' +at midnight of its own accord, and not a burglar in the neighborhood! + +"The expert answered the usual call, and explained that it was a 'False +alarm.' Said it was easily fixed. So he overhauled the nursery window, +charged a remunerative figure for it, and departed. + +"What we suffered from false alarms for the next three years no +stylographic pen can describe. During the next three months I always +flew with my gun to the room indicated, and the coachman always sallied +forth with his battery to support me. But there was never anything to +shoot at--windows all tight and secure. We always sent down for the +expert next day, and he fixed those particular windows so they would keep +quiet a week or so, and always remembered to send us a bill about like +this: + + Wire ............................$2.15 + Nipple........................... .75 + Two hours' labor ................ 1.50 + Wax.............................. .47 + Tape............................. .34 + Screws........................... .15 + Recharging battery .............. .98 + Three hours' labor .............. 2.25 + String........................... .02 + Lard ............................ .66 + Pond's Extract .................. 1.25 + Springs at 50.................... 2.00 + Railroad fares................... 7.25 + + +"At length a perfectly natural thing came about--after we had answered +three or four hundred false alarms--to wit, we stopped answering them. +Yes, I simply rose up calmly, when slammed across the house by the alarm, +calmly inspected the annunciator, took note of the room indicated; and +then calmly disconnected that room from the alarm, and went back to bed +as if nothing had happened. Moreover, I left that room off permanently, +and did not send for the expert. Well, it goes without saying that in +the course of time all the rooms were taken off, and the entire machine +was out of service. + +"It was at this unprotected time that the heaviest calamity of all +happened. The burglars walked in one night and carried off the burglar +alarm! yes, sir, every hide and hair of it: ripped it out, tooth and +nail; springs, bells, gongs, battery, and all; they took a hundred and +fifty miles of copper wire; they just cleaned her out, bag and baggage, +and never left us a vestige of her to swear at--swear by, I mean. + +"We had a time of it to get her back; but we accomplished it finally, for +money. The alarm firm said that what we needed now was to have her put +in right--with their new patent springs in the windows to make false +alarms impossible, and their new patent clock attached to take off and +put on the alarm morning and night without human assistance. That seemed +a good scheme. They promised to have the whole thing finished in ten +days. They began work, and we left for the summer. They worked a couple +of days; then they left for the summer. After which the burglars moved +in, and began their summer vacation. When we returned in the fall, the +house was as empty as a beer closet in premises where painters have been +at work. We refurnished, and then sent down to hurry up the expert. He +came up and finished the job, and said: 'Now this clock is set to put on +the alarm every night at 10, and take it off every morning at 5:45. All +you've got to do is to wind her up every week, and then leave her alone +--she will take care of the alarm herself.' + +"After that we had a most tranquil season during three months. The bill +was prodigious, of course, and I had said I would not pay it until the +new machinery had proved itself to be flawless. The time stipulated was +three months. So I paid the bill, and the very next day the alarm went +to buzzing like ten thousand bee swarms at ten o'clock in the morning. +I turned the hands around twelve hours, according to instructions, and +this took off the alarm; but there was another hitch at night, and I had +to set her ahead twelve hours once more to get her to put the alarm on +again. That sort of nonsense went on a week or two, then the expert came +up and put in a new clock. He came up every three months during the next +three years, and put in a new clock. But it was always a failure. His +clocks all had the same perverse defect: they would put the alarm on in +the daytime, and they would not put it on at night; and if you forced it +on yourself, they would take it off again the minute your back was +turned. + +"Now there is the history of that burglar alarm--everything just as it +happened; nothing extenuated, and naught set down in malice. Yes, sir, +--and when I had slept nine years with burglars, and maintained an +expensive burglar alarm the whole time, for their protection, not mine, +and at my sole cost--for not a d---d cent could I ever get THEM to +contribute--I just said to Mrs. McWilliams that I had had enough of that +kind of pie; so with her full consent I took the whole thing out and +traded it off for a dog, and shot the dog. I don't know what you think +about it, Mr. Twain; but I think those things are made solely in the +interest of the burglars. Yes, sir, a burglar alarm combines in its +person all that is objectionable about a fire, a riot, and a harem, and +at the same time had none of the compensating advantages, of one sort or +another, that customarily belong with that combination. Good-by: I get +off here." + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mysterious Stranger and Other +Stories, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +A DOUBLE BARRELLED DETECTIVE + +by Mark Twain + + + +PART I + + "We ought never to do wrong when people are looking." + + +I + +The first scene is in the country, in Virginia; the time, 1880. There +has been a wedding, between a handsome young man of slender means and a +rich young girl--a case of love at first sight and a precipitate +marriage; a marriage bitterly opposed by the girl's widowed father. + +Jacob Fuller, the bridegroom, is twenty-six years old, is of an old but +unconsidered family which had by compulsion emigrated from Sedgemoor, and +for King James's purse's profit, so everybody said--some maliciously the +rest merely because they believed it. The bride is nineteen and +beautiful. She is intense, high-strung, romantic, immeasurably proud of +her Cavalier blood, and passionate in her love for her young husband. +For its sake she braved her father's displeasure, endured his reproaches, +listened with loyalty unshaken to his warning predictions and went from +his house without his blessing, proud and happy in the proofs she was +thus giving of the quality of the affection which had made its home in +her heart. + +The morning after the marriage there was a sad surprise for her. Her +husband put aside her proffered caresses, and said: + +"Sit down. I have something to say to you. I loved you. That was +before I asked your father to give you to me. His refusal is not my +grievance--I could have endured that. But the things he said of me to +you--that is a different matter. There--you needn't speak; I know quite +well what they were; I got them from authentic sources. Among other +things he said that my character was written in my face; that I was +treacherous, a dissembler, a coward, and a brute without sense of pity or +compassion: the 'Sedgemoor trade-mark,' he called it--and 'white-sleeve +badge.' Any other man in my place would have gone to his house and shot +him down like a dog. I wanted to do it, and was minded to do it, but a +better thought came to me: to put him to shame; to break his heart; to +kill him by inches. How to do it? Through my treatment of you, his +idol! I would marry you; and then--Have patience. You will see." + +From that moment onward, for three months, the young wife suffered all +the humiliations, all the insults, all the miseries that the diligent and +inventive mind of the husband could contrive, save physical injuries +only. Her strong pride stood by her, and she kept the secret of her +troubles. Now and then the husband said, "Why don't you go to your +father and tell him?" Then he invented new tortures, applied them, and +asked again. She always answered, "He shall never know by my mouth," and +taunted him with his origin; said she was the lawful slave of a scion of +slaves, and must obey, and would--up to that point, but no further; he +could kill her if he liked, but he could not break her; it was not in the +Sedgemoor breed to do it. At the end of the three months he said, with a +dark significance in his manner, "I have tried all things but one"--and +waited for her reply. "Try that," she said, and curled her lip in +mockery. + +That night he rose at midnight and put on his clothes, then said to her: + +"Get up and dress!" + +She obeyed--as always, without a word. He led her half a mile from the +house, and proceeded to lash her to a tree by the side of the public +road; and succeeded, she screaming and struggling. He gagged her then, +struck her across the face with his cowhide, and set his bloodhounds on +her. They tore the clothes off her, and she was naked. He called the +dogs off, and said: + +"You will be found--by the passing public. They will be dropping along +about three hours from now, and will spread the news--do you hear? +Good-by. You have seen the last of me." + +He went away then. She moaned to herself: + +"I shall bear a child--to him! God grant it may be a boy!" + +The farmers released her by and by--and spread the news, which was +natural. They raised the country with lynching intentions, but the bird +had flown. The young wife shut herself up in her father's house; he shut +himself up with her, and thenceforth would see no one. His pride was +broken, and his heart; so he wasted away, day by day, and even his +daughter rejoiced when death relieved him. + +Then she sold the estate and disappeared. + + + + +II + +In 1886 a young woman was living in a modest house near a secluded New +England village, with no company but a little boy about five years old. +She did her own work, she discouraged acquaintanceships, and had none. +The butcher, the baker, and the others that served her could tell the +villagers nothing about her further than that her name was Stillman, and +that she called the child Archy. Whence she came they had not been able +to find out, but they said she talked like a Southerner. The child had +no playmates and no comrade, and no teacher but the mother. She taught +him diligently and intelligently, and was satisfied with the results +--even a little proud of them. One day Archy said: + +"Mamma, am I different from other children?" + +"Well, I suppose not. Why?" + +"There was a child going along out there and asked me if the postman had +been by and I said yes, and she said how long since I saw him and I said +I hadn't seen him at all, and she said how did I know he'd been by, then, +and I said because I smelt his track on the sidewalk, and she said I was +a dum fool and made a mouth at me. What did she do that for?" + +The young woman turned white, and said to herself, "It's a birth mark! +The gift of the bloodhound is in him." She snatched the boy to her +breast and hugged him passionately, saying, "God has appointed the way!" +Her eyes were burning with a fierce light, and her breath came short and +quick with excitement. She said to herself: "The puzzle is solved now; +many a time it has been a mystery to me, the impossible things the child +has done in the dark, but it is all clear to me now." + +She set him in his small chair, and said: + +"Wait a little till I come, dear; then we will talk about the matter." + +She went up to her room and took from her dressing-table several small +articles and put them out of sight: a nail-file on the floor under the +bed; a pair of nail-scissors under the bureau; a small ivory paper-knife +under the wardrobe. Then she returned, and said: + +"There! I have left some things which I ought to have brought down." +She named them, and said, "Run up and bring them, dear." + +The child hurried away on his errand and was soon back again with the +things. + +"Did you have any difficulty, dear?" + +"No, mamma; I only went where you went." + +During his absence she had stepped to the bookcase, taken several books +from the bottom shelf, opened each, passed her hand over a page, noting +its number in her memory, then restored them to their places. Now she +said: + +"I have been doing something while you have been gone, Archy. Do you +think you can find out what it was?" + +The boy went to the bookcase and got out the books that had been touched, +and opened them at the pages which had been stroked. + +The mother took him in her lap, and said: + +"I will answer your question now, dear. I have found out that in one way +you are quite different from other people. You can see in the dark, you +can smell what other people cannot, you have the talents of a bloodhound. +They are good and valuable things to have, but you must keep the matter a +secret. If people found it out, they would speak of you as an odd child, +a strange child, and children would be disagreeable to you, and give you +nicknames. In this world one must be like everybody else if he doesn't +want to provoke scorn or envy or jealousy. It is a great and fine +distinction which has been born to you, and I am glad; but you will keep +it a secret, for mamma's sake, won't you?" + +The child promised, without understanding. + +All the rest of the day the mother's brain was busy with excited +thinkings; with plans, projects, schemes, each and all of them uncanny, +grim, and dark. Yet they lit up her face; lit it with a fell light of +their own; lit it with vague fires of hell. She was in a fever of +unrest; she could not sit, stand, read, sew; there was no relief for her +but in movement. She tested her boy's gift in twenty ways, and kept +saying to herself all the time, with her mind in the past: "He broke my +father's heart, and night and day all these years I have tried, and all +in vain, to think out a way to break his. I have found it now--I have +found it now." + +When night fell, the demon of unrest still possessed her. She went on +with her tests; with a candle she traversed the house from garret to +cellar, hiding pins, needles, thimbles, spools, under pillows, under +carpets, in cracks in the walls, under the coal in the bin; then sent the +little fellow in the dark to find them; which he did, and was happy and +proud when she praised him and smothered him with caresses. + +From this time forward life took on a new complexion for her. She said, +"The future is secure--I can wait, and enjoy the waiting." The most of +her lost interests revived. She took up music again, and languages, +drawing, painting, and the other long-discarded delights of her +maidenhood. She was happy once more, and felt again the zest of life. +As the years drifted by she watched the development of her boy, and was +contented with it. Not altogether, but nearly that. The soft side of +his heart was larger than the other side of it. It was his only defect, +in her eyes. But she considered that his love for her and worship of her +made up for it. He was a good hater--that was well; but it was a +question if the materials of his hatreds were of as tough and enduring a +quality as those of his friendships--and that was not so well. + + +The years drifted on. Archy was become a handsome, shapely, athletic +youth, courteous, dignified, companionable, pleasant in his ways, and +looking perhaps a trifle older than he was, which was sixteen. One +evening his mother said she had something of grave importance to say to +him, adding that he was old enough to hear it now, and old enough and +possessed of character enough and stability enough to carry out a stern +plan which she had been for years contriving and maturing. Then she told +him her bitter story, in all its naked atrociousness. For a while the +boy was paralyzed; then he said: + +"I understand. We are Southerners; and by our custom and nature there is +but one atonement. I will search him out and kill him." + +"Kill him? No! Death is release, emancipation; death is a favor. Do I +owe him favors? You must not hurt a hair of his head." + +The boy was lost in thought awhile; then he said: + +"You are all the world to me, and your desire is my law and my pleasure. +Tell me what to do and I will do it." + +The mother's eyes beamed with satisfaction, and she said: + +"You will go and find him. I have known his hiding-place for eleven +years; it cost me five years and more of inquiry, and much money, to +locate it. He is a quartz-miner in Colorado, and well-to-do. He lives +in Denver. His name is Jacob Fuller. There--it is the first time I have +spoken it since that unforgettable night. Think! That name could have +been yours if I had not saved you that shame and furnished you a cleaner +one. You will drive him from that place; you will hunt him down and +drive him again; and yet again, and again, and again, persistently, +relentlessly, poisoning his life, filling it with mysterious terrors, +loading it with weariness and misery, making him wish for death, and that +he had a suicide's courage; you will make of him another Wandering Jew; +he shall know no rest any more, no peace of mind, no placid sleep; you +shall shadow him, cling to him, persecute him, till you break his heart, +as he broke my father's and mine." + +"I will obey, mother." + +"I believe it, my child. The preparations are all made; everything is +ready. Here is a letter of credit; spend freely, there is no lack of +money. At times you may need disguises. I have provided them; also some +other conveniences." She took from the drawer of the typewriter-table +several squares of paper. They all bore these typewritten words: + + $10,000 REWARD + +It is believed that a certain man who is wanted in an Eastern state +is sojourning here. In 1880, in the night, he tied his young wife +to a tree by the public road, cut her across the face with a +cowhide, and made his dogs tear her clothes from her, leaving her +naked. He left her there, and fled the country. A blood-relative +of hers has searched for him for seventeen years. Address . . . +. . . . . . , . . . . . . . . . . , Post-office. +The above reward will be paid in cash to the person who will furnish +the seeker, in a personal interview, the criminal's address. + +"When you have found him and acquainted yourself with his scent, you will +go in the night and placard one of these upon the building he occupies, +and another one upon the post-office or in some other prominent place. +It will be the talk of the region. At first you must give him several +days in which to force a sale of his belongings at something approaching +their value. We will ruin him by and by, but gradually; we must not +impoverish him at once, for that could bring him to despair and injure +his health, possibly kill him." + +She took three or four more typewritten forms from the drawer +--duplicates--and read one: + +. . . . . . . . . . , . . . . . . . . . . , 18. + . . . +To Jacob Fuller: + +You have . . . . . . days in which to settle your affairs. +You will not be disturbed during that limit, which will expire at . +. . . . . M., on the . . . . . . of . . . . . . . +You must then MOVE ON. If you are still in the place after the +named hour, I will placard you on all the dead walls, detailing your +crime once more, and adding the date, also the scene of it, with all +names concerned, including your own. Have no fear of bodily injury +--it will in no circumstances ever be inflicted upon you. You +brought misery upon an old man, and ruined his life and broke his +heart. What he suffered, you are to suffer. + +"You will add no signature. He must receive this before he learns of the +reward placard--before he rises in the morning--lest he lose his head and +fly the place penniless." + +"I shall not forget." + +"You will need to use these forms only in the beginning--once may be +enough. Afterward, when you are ready for him to vanish out of a place, +see that he gets a copy of this form, which merely says: + + "MOVE ON. You have . . . . . . days." + +"He will obey. That is sure." + + + + +III + +Extracts from letters to the mother: + + DENVER, April 3, 1897 +I have now been living several days in the same hotel with Jacob Fuller. +I have his scent; I could track him through ten divisions of infantry and +find him. I have often been near him and heard him talk. He owns a good +mine, and has a fair income from it; but he is not rich. He learned +mining in a good way--by working at it for wages. He is a cheerful +creature, and his forty-three years sit lightly upon him; he could pass +for a younger man--say thirty-six or thirty-seven. He has never married +again--passes himself off for a widower. He stands well, is liked, is +popular, and has many friends. Even I feel a drawing toward him--the +paternal blood in me making its claim. How blind and unreasoning and +arbitrary are some of the laws of nature--the most of them, in fact! My +task is become hard now--you realize it? you comprehend, and make +allowances?--and the fire of it has cooled, more than I like to confess +to myself, But I will carry it out. Even with the pleasure paled, the +duty remains, and I will not spare him. + +And for my help, a sharp resentment rises in me when I reflect that he +who committed that odious crime is the only one who has not suffered by +it. The lesson of it has manifestly reformed his character, and in the +change he is happy. He, the guilty party, is absolved from all +suffering; you, the innocent, are borne down with it. But be comforted +--he shall harvest his share. + + + SILVER GULCH, May 19 +I placarded Form No. 1 at midnight of April 3; an hour later I slipped +Form No. 2 under his chamber door, notifying him to leave Denver at or +before 11.50 the night of the 14th. + +Some late bird of a reporter stole one of my placards, then hunted the +town over and found the other one, and stole that. In this manner he +accomplished what the profession call a "scoop"--that is, he got a +valuable item, and saw to it that no other paper got it. And so his +paper--the principal one in the town--had it in glaring type on the +editorial page in the morning, followed by a Vesuvian opinion of our +wretch a column long, which wound up by adding a thousand dollars to our +reward on the paper's account! The journals out here know how to do the +noble thing--when there's business in it. + +At breakfast I occupied my usual seat--selected because it afforded a +view of papa Fuller's face, and was near enough for me to hear the talk +that went on at his table. Seventy-five or a hundred people were in the +room, and all discussing that item, and saying they hoped the seeker +would find that rascal and remove the pollution of his presence from the +town--with a rail, or a bullet, or something. + +When Fuller came in he had the Notice to Leave--folded up--in one hand, +and the newspaper in the other; and it gave me more than half a pang to +see him. His cheerfulness was all gone, and he looked old and pinched +and ashy. And then--only think of the things he had to listen to! +Mamma, he heard his own unsuspecting friends describe him with epithets +and characterizations drawn from the very dictionaries and phrase-books +of Satan's own authorized editions down below. And more than that, he +had to agree with the verdicts and applaud them. His applause tasted +bitter in his mouth, though; he could not disguise that from me; and it +was observable that his appetite was gone; he only nibbled; he couldn't +eat. Finally a man said: + +"It is quite likely that that relative is in the room and hearing what +this town thinks of that unspeakable scoundrel. I hope so." + +Ah, dear, it was pitiful the way Fuller winced, and glanced around +scared! He couldn't endure any more, and got up and left. + +During several days he gave out that he had bought a mine in Mexico, and +wanted to sell out and go down there as soon as he could, and give the +property his personal attention. He played his cards well; said he would +take $40,000--a quarter in cash, the rest in safe notes; but that as he +greatly needed money on account of his new purchase, he would diminish +his terms for cash in full, He sold out for $30,000. And then, what do +you think he did? He asked for greenbacks, and took them, saying the man +in Mexico was a New-Englander, with a head full of crotchets, and +preferred greenbacks to gold or drafts. People thought it queer, since a +draft on New York could produce greenbacks quite conveniently. There was +talk of this odd thing, but only for a day; that is as long as any topic +lasts in Denver. + +I was watching, all the time. As soon as the sale was completed and the +money paid--which was on the 11th--I began to stick to Fuller's track +without dropping it for a moment. That night--no, 12th, for it was a +little past midnight--I tracked him to his room, which was four doors +from mine in the same hall; then I went back and put on my muddy +day-laborer disguise, darkened my complexion, and sat down in my room in +the gloom, with a gripsack handy, with a change in it, and my door ajar. +For I suspected that the bird would take wing now. In half an hour an +old woman passed by, carrying a grip: I caught the familiar whiff, and +followed with my grip, for it was Fuller. He left the hotel by a side +entrance, and at the corner he turned up an unfrequented street and +walked three blocks in a light rain and a heavy darkness, and got into a +two-horse hack, which of course was waiting for him by appointment. I +took a seat (uninvited) on the trunk platform behind, and we drove +briskly off. We drove ten miles, and the hack stopped at a way-station +and was discharged. Fuller got out and took a seat on a barrow under the +awning, as far as he could get from the light; I went inside, and watched +the ticket-office. Fuller bought no ticket; I bought none. Presently +the train came along, and he boarded a car; I entered the same car at the +other end, and came down the aisle and took the seat behind him. When he +paid the conductor and named his objective point, I dropped back several +seats, while the conductor was changing a bill, and when he came to me I +paid to the same place--about a hundred miles westward. + +From that time for a week on end he led me a dance. He traveled here and +there and yonder--always on a general westward trend--but he was not a +woman after the first day. He was a laborer, like myself, and wore bushy +false whiskers. His outfit was perfect, and he could do the character +without thinking about it, for he had served the trade for wages. His +nearest friend could not have recognized him. At last he located himself +here, the obscurest little mountain camp in Montana; he has a shanty, and +goes out prospecting daily; is gone all day, and avoids society. I am +living at a miner's boardinghouse, and it is an awful place: the bunks, +the food, the dirt--everything. + +We have been here four weeks, and in that time I have seen him but once; +but every night I go over his track and post myself. As soon as he +engaged a shanty here I went to a town fifty miles away and telegraphed +that Denver hotel to keep my baggage till I should send for it. I need +nothing here but a change of army shirts, and I brought that with me. + + + SILVER GULCH, June 12 +The Denver episode has never found its way here, I think. I know the +most of the men in camp, and they have never referred to it, at least in +my hearing. Fuller doubtless feels quite safe in these conditions. He +has located a claim, two miles away, in an out-of-the-way place in the +mountains; it promises very well, and he is working it diligently. Ah, +but the change in him! He never smiles, and he keeps quite to himself, +consorting with no one--he who was so fond of company and so cheery only +two months ago. I have seen him passing along several times recently +--drooping, forlorn, the spring gone from his step, a pathetic figure. +He calls himself David Wilson. + +I can trust him to remain here until we disturb him. Since you insist, I +will banish him again, but I do not see how he can be unhappier than he +already is. I will go hack to Denver and treat myself to a little season +of comfort, and edible food, and endurable beds, and bodily decency; then +I will fetch my things, and notify poor papa Wilson to move on. + + + DENVER, June 19 +They miss him here. They all hope he is prospering in Mexico, and they +do not say it just with their mouths, but out of their hearts. You know +you can always tell. I am loitering here overlong, I confess it. But if +you were in my place you would have charity for me. Yes, I know what you +will say, and you are right: if I were in your place, and carried your +scalding memories in my heart-- + +I will take the night train back to-morrow. + + + DENVER, June 20 +God forgive us, mother, me are hunting the wrong man! I have not slept +any all night. I am now awaiting, at dawn, for the morning train--and +how the minutes drag, how they drag! + +This Jacob Fuller is a cousin of the guilty one. How stupid we have been +not to reflect that the guilty one would never again wear his own name +after that fiendish deed! The Denver Fuller is four years younger than +the other one; he came here a young widower in '79, aged twenty-one--a +year before you were married; and the documents to prove it are +innumerable. Last night I talked with familiar friends of his who have +known him from the day of his arrival. I said nothing, but a few days +from now I will land him in this town again, with the loss upon his mine +made good; and there will be a banquet, and a torch-light procession, and +there will not be any expense on anybody but me. Do you call this +"gush"? I am only a boy, as you well know; it is my privilege. By and +by I shall not be a boy any more. + + + SILVER GULCH, July 3 +Mother, he is gone! Gone, and left no trace. The scent was cold when I +came. To-day I am out of bed for the first time since. I wish I were +not a boy; then I could stand shocks better. They all think he went +west. I start to-night, in a wagon--two or three hours of that, then I +get a train. I don't know where I'm going, but I must go; to try to keep +still would be torture. + +Of course he has effaced himself with a new name and a disguise. This +means that I may have to search the whole globe to find him. Indeed it +is what I expect. Do you see, mother? It is I that am the Wandering +Jew. The irony of it! We arranged that for another. + +Think of the difficulties! And there would be none if I only could +advertise for him. But if there is any way to do it that would not +frighten him, I have not been able to think it out, and I have tried till +my brains are addled. "If the gentleman who lately bought a mine in +Mexico and sold one in Denver will send his address to" (to whom, +mother!), "it will be explained to him that it was all a mistake; his +forgiveness will be asked, and full reparation made for a loss which he +sustained in a certain matter." Do you see? He would think it a trap. +Well, any one would. If I should say, "It is now known that he was not +the man wanted, but another man--a man who once bore the same name, but +discarded it for good reasons"--would that answer? But the Denver people +would wake up then and say "Oho!" and they would remember about the +suspicious greenbacks, and say, "Why did he run away if he wasn't the +right man?--it is too thin." If I failed to find him he would be ruined +there--there where there is no taint upon him now. You have a better +head than mine. Help me. + +I have one clue, and only one. I know his handwriting. If he puts his +new false name upon a hotel register and does not disguise it too much, +it will be valuable to me if I ever run across it. + + + SAN FRANCISCO, June 28, 1898 +You already know how well I have searched the states from Colorado to the +Pacific, and how nearly I came to getting him once. Well, I have had +another close miss. It was here, yesterday. I struck his trail, hot, on +the street, and followed it on a run to a cheap hotel. That was a costly +mistake; a dog would have gone the other way. But I am only part dog, +and can get very humanly stupid when excited. He had been stopping in +that house ten days; I almost know, now, that he stops long nowhere, the +past six or eight months, but is restless and has to keep moving. I +understand that feeling! and I know what it is to feel it. He still +uses the name he had registered when I came so near catching him nine +months ago--"James Walker"; doubtless the same he adopted when he fled +from Silver Gulch. An unpretending man, and has small taste for fancy +names. I recognized the hand easily, through its slight disguise. A +square man, and not good at shams and pretenses. + +They said he was just gone, on a journey; left no address; didn't say +where he was going; looked frightened when asked to leave his address; +had no baggage but a cheap valise; carried it off on foot--a "stingy old +person, and not much loss to the house." "Old!" I suppose he is, now I +hardly heard; I was there but a moment. I rushed along his trail, and it +led me to a wharf. Mother, the smoke of the steamer he had taken was +just fading out on the horizon! I should have saved half on hour if I +had gone in the right direction at first. I could have taken a fast tug, +and should have stood a chance of catching that vessel. She is bound for +Melbourne. + + + HOPE CANYON, CALIFORNIA, October 3, 1900 +You have a right to complain. "A letter a year" is a paucity; I freely +acknowledge it; but how can one write when there is nothing to write +about but failures? No one can keep it up; it breaks the heart, + +I told you--it seems ages ago, now--how I missed him at Melbourne, and +then chased him all over Australasia for months on end. + +Well, then, after that I followed him to India; almost saw him in Bombay; +traced him all around--to Baroda, Rawal-Pindi, Lucknow, Lahore, Cawnpore, +Allahabad, Calcutta, Madras--oh, everywhere; week after week, month after +month, through the dust and swelter--always approximately on his track, +sometimes close upon him, get never catching him. And down to Ceylon, +and then to--Never mind; by and by I will write it all out. + +I chased him home to California, and down to Mexico, and back again to +California. Since then I have been hunting him about the state from the +first of last January down to a month ago. I feel almost sure he is not +far from Hope Canyon; I traced him to a point thirty miles from here, but +there I lost the trail; some one gave him a lift in a wagon, I suppose. + +I am taking a rest, now--modified by searchings for the lost trail. I +was tired to death, mother, and low-spirited, and sometimes coming +uncomfortably near to losing hope; but the miners in this little camp are +good fellows, and I am used to their sort this long time back; and their +breezy ways freshen a person up and make him forget his troubles. I have +been here a month. I am cabining with a young fellow named "Sammy" +Hillyer, about twenty-five, the only son of his mother--like me--and +loves her dearly, and writes to her every week--part of which is like me. +He is a timid body, and in the matter of intellect--well, he cannot be +depended upon to set a river on fire; but no matter, he is well liked; he +is good and fine, and it is meat and bread and rest and luxury to sit and +talk with him and have a comradeship again. I wish "James Walker" could +have it. He had friends; he liked company. That brings up that picture +of him, the time that I saw him last. The pathos of it! It comes before +me often and often. At that very time, poor thing, I was girding up my +conscience to make him move on again! + +Hillyer's heart is better than mine, better than anybody's in the +community, I suppose, for he is the one friend of the black sheep of the +camp--Flint Buckner--and the only man Flint ever talks with or allows to +talk with him. He says he knows Flint's history, and that it is trouble +that has made him what he is, and so one ought to be as charitable toward +him as one can. Now none but a pretty large heart could find space to +accommodate a lodger like Flint Buckner, from all I hear about him +outside. I think that this one detail will give you a better idea of +Sammy's character than any labored-out description I could furnish you of +him. In one of our talks he said something about like this: "Flint is a +kinsman of mine, and he pours out all his troubles to me--empties his +breast from time to time, or I reckon it would burst. There couldn't be +any unhappier man, Archy Stillman; his life had been made up of misery of +mind--he isn't near as old as he looks. He has lost the feel of +reposefulness and peace--oh, years and years ago! He doesn't know what +good luck is--never has had any; often says he wishes he was in the other +hell, he is so tired of this one." + + + + +IV + "No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the + presence of ladies." + +It was a crisp and spicy morning in early October. The lilacs and +laburnums, lit with the glory-fires of autumn, hung burning and flashing +in the upper air, a fairy bridge provided by kind Nature for the wingless +wild things that have their homes in the tree-tops and would visit +together; the larch and the pomegranate flung their purple and yellow +flames in brilliant broad splashes along the slanting sweep of the +woodland; the sensuous fragrance of innumerable deciduous flowers rose +upon the swooning atmosphere; far in he empty sky a solitary oesophagus +slept upon motionless wing; everywhere brooded stillness, serenity, and +the peace of God. + +October is the time--1900; Hope Canyon is the place, a silver-mining camp +away down in the Esmeralda region. It is a secluded spot, high and +remote; recent as to discovery; thought by its occupants to be rich in +metal--a year or two's prospecting will decide that matter one way or the +other. For inhabitants, the camp has about two hundred miners, one white +woman and child, several Chinese washermen, five squaws, and a dozen +vagrant buck Indians in rabbit-skin robes, battered plug hats, and +tin-can necklaces. There are no mills as yet; no church, no newspaper. +The camp has existed but two years; it has made no big strike; the world +is ignorant of its name and place. + +On both sides of the canyon the mountains rise wall-like, three thousand +feet, and the long spiral of straggling huts down in its narrow bottom +gets a kiss from the sun only once a day, when he sails over at noon. +The village is a couple of miles long; the cabins stand well apart from +each other. The tavern is the only "frame" house--the only house, one +might say. It occupies a central position, and is the evening resort of +the population. They drink there, and play seven-up and dominoes; also +billiards, for there is a table, crossed all over with torn places +repaired with court-plaster; there are some cues, but no leathers; some +chipped balls which clatter when they run, and do not slow up gradually, +but stop suddenly and sit down; there is a part of a cube of chalk, with +a projecting jag of flint in it; and the man who can score six on a +single break can set up the drinks at the bar's expense. + +Flint Buckner's cabin was the last one of the village, going south; his +silver-claim was at the other end of the village, northward, and a little +beyond the last hut in that direction. He was a sour creature, +unsociable, and had no companionships. People who had tried to get +acquainted with him had regretted it and dropped him. His history was +not known. Some believed that Sammy Hillyer knew it; others said no. +If asked, Hillyer said no, he was not acquainted with it. Flint had a +meek English youth of sixteen or seventeen with him, whom he treated +roughly, both in public and in private; and of course this lad was +applied to for information, but with no success. Fetlock Jones--name of +the youth--said that Flint picked him up on a prospecting tramp, and as +he had neither home nor friends in America, he had found it wise to stay +and take Buckner's hard usage for the sake of the salary, which was bacon +and beans. Further than this he could offer no testimony. + +Fetlock had been in this slavery for a month now, and under his meek +exterior he was slowly consuming to a cinder with the insults and +humiliations which his master had put upon him. For the meek suffer +bitterly from these hurts; more bitterly, perhaps, than do the manlier +sort, who can burst out and get relief with words or blows when the limit +of endurance has been reached. Good-hearted people wanted to help +Fetlock out of his trouble, and tried to get him to leave Buckner; but +the boy showed fright at the thought, and said he "dasn't." Pat Riley +urged him, and said: + +"You leave the damned hunks and come with me; don't you be afraid. I'll +take care of him." + +The boy thanked him with tears in his eyes, but shuddered and said he +"dasn't risk it"; he said Flint would catch him alone, some time, in the +night, and then--"Oh, it makes me sick, Mr. Riley, to think of it." + +Others said, "Run away from him; we'll stake you; skip out for the coast +some night." But all these suggestions failed; he said Flint would hunt +him down and fetch him back, just for meanness. + +The people could not understand this. The boy's miseries went steadily +on, week after week. It is quite likely that the people would have +understood if they had known how he was employing his spare time. He +slept in an out-cabin near Flint's; and there, nights, he nursed his +bruises and his humiliations, and studied and studied over a single +problem--how he could murder Flint Buckner and not be found out. It was +the only joy he had in life; these hours were the only ones in the +twenty-four which he looked forward to with eagerness and spent in +happiness. + +He thought of poison. No--that would not serve; the inquest would reveal +where it was procured and who had procured it. He thought of a shot in +the back in a lonely place when Flint would be homeward bound at +midnight--his unvarying hour for the trip. No--somebody might be near, +and catch him. He thought of stabbing him in his sleep. No--he might +strike an inefficient blow, and Flint would seize him. He examined a +hundred different ways--none of them would answer; for in even the very +obscurest and secretest of them there was always the fatal defect of a +risk, a chance, a possibility that he might be found out. He would have +none of that. + +But he was patient, endlessly patient. There was no hurry, he said to +himself. He would never leave Flint till he left him a corpse; there was +no hurry--he would find the way. It was somewhere, and he would endure +shame and pain and misery until he found it. Yes, somewhere there was a +way which would leave not a trace, not even the faintest clue to the +murderer--there was no hurry--he would find that way, and then--oh, then, +it would just be good to be alive! Meantime he would diligently keep up +his reputation for meekness; and also, as always theretofore, he would +allow no one to hear him say a resentful or offensive thing about his +oppressor. + +Two days before the before-mentioned October morning Flint had bought +some things, and he and Fetlock had brought them home to Flint's cabin: a +fresh box of candles, which they put in the corner; a tin can of +blasting-powder, which they placed upon the candle-box; a keg of +blasting-powder, which they placed under Flint's bunk; a huge coil of +fuse, which they hung on a peg. Fetlock reasoned that Flint's mining +operations had outgrown the pick, and that blasting was about to begin +now. He had seen blasting done, and he had a notion of the process, but +he had never helped in it. His conjecture was right--blasting-time had +come. In the morning the pair carried fuse, drills, and the powder-can +to the shaft; it was now eight feet deep, and to get into it and out of +it a short ladder was used. They descended, and by command Fetlock held +the drill--without any instructions as to the right way to hold it--and +Flint proceeded to strike. The sledge came down; the drill sprang out of +Fetlock's hand, almost as a matter of course. + +"You mangy son of a nigger, is that any way to hold a drill? Pick it up! +Stand it up! There--hold fast. D--you! I'll teach you!" + +At the end of an hour the drilling was finished. + +"Now, then, charge it." + +The boy started to pour in the powder. + +"Idiot!" + +A heavy bat on the jaw laid the lad out. + +"Get up! You can't lie sniveling there. Now, then, stick in the fuse +first. Now put in the powder. Hold on, hold on! Are you going to fill +the hole all up? Of all the sap-headed milksops I--Put in some dirt! +Put in some gravel! Tamp it down! Hold on, hold on! Oh, great Scott! +get out of the way!" He snatched the iron and tamped the charge himself, +meantime cursing and blaspheming like a fiend. Then he fired the fuse, +climbed out of the shaft, and ran fifty yards away, Fetlock following. +They stood waiting a few minutes, then a great volume of smoke and rocks +burst high into the air with a thunderous explosion; after a little there +was a shower of descending stones; then all was serene again. + +"I wish to God you'd been in it!" remarked the master. + +They went down the shaft, cleaned it out, drilled another hole, and put +in another charge. + +"Look here! How much fuse are you proposing to waste? Don't you know +how to time a fuse?" + +"No, sir." + +"You don't! Well, if you don't beat anything I ever saw!" + +He climbed out of the shaft and spoke down: + +"Well, idiot, are you going to be all day? Cut the fuse and light it!" + +The trembling creature began: + +"If you please, sir, I--" + +"You talk back to me? Cut it and light it!" + +The boy cut and lit. + +"Ger-reat Scott! a one-minute fuse! I wish you were in--" + +In his rage he snatched the ladder out of the shaft and ran. The boy was +aghast. + +"Oh, my God! Help. Help! Oh, save me!" he implored. "Oh, what can I +do! What can I do!" + +He backed against the wall as tightly as he could; the sputtering fuse +frightened the voice out of him; his breath stood still; he stood gazing +and impotent; in two seconds, three seconds, four he would be flying +toward the sky torn to fragments. Then he had an inspiration. He sprang +at the fuse; severed the inch of it that was left above ground, and was +saved. + +He sank down limp and half lifeless with fright, his strength gone; but +he muttered with a deep joy: + +"He has learnt me! I knew there was a way, if I would wait." + +After a matter of five minutes Buckner stole to the shaft, looking +worried and uneasy, and peered down into it. He took in the situation; +he saw what had happened. He lowered the ladder, and the boy dragged +himself weakly up it. He was very white. His appearance added something +to Buckner's uncomfortable state, and he said, with a show of regret and +sympathy which sat upon him awkwardly from lack of practice: + +"It was an accident, you know. Don't say anything about it to anybody; +I was excited, and didn't notice what I was doing. You're not looking +well; you've worked enough for to-day; go down to my cabin and eat what +you want, and rest. It's just an accident, you know, on account of my +being excited." + +"It scared me," said the lad, as he started away; "but I learnt +something, so I don't mind it." + +"Damned easy to please!" muttered Buckner, following him with his eye. +"I wonder if he'll tell? Mightn't he?... I wish it had killed him." + +The boy took no advantage of his holiday in the matter of resting; he +employed it in work, eager and feverish and happy work. A thick growth +of chaparral extended down the mountainside clear to Flint's cabin; the +most of Fetlock's labor was done in the dark intricacies of that stubborn +growth; the rest of it was done in his own shanty. At last all was +complete, and he said: + +"If he's got any suspicions that I'm going to tell on him, he won't keep +them long, to-morrow. He will see that I am the same milksop as I always +was--all day and the next. And the day after to-morrow night there 'll +be an end of him; nobody will ever guess who finished him up nor how it +was done. He dropped me the idea his own self, and that's odd." + + + + +V + +The next day came and went. + +It is now almost midnight, and in five minutes the new morning will +begin. The scene is in the tavern billiard-room. Rough men in rough +clothing, slouch-hats, breeches stuffed into boot-tops, some with vests, +none with coats, are grouped about the boiler-iron stove, which has ruddy +cheeks and is distributing a grateful warmth; the billiard-balls are +clacking; there is no other sound--that is, within; the wind is fitfully +moaning without. The men look bored; also expectant. A hulking +broad-shouldered miner, of middle age, with grizzled whiskers, and an +unfriendly eye set in an unsociable face, rises, slips a coil of fuse +upon his arm, gathers up some other personal properties, and departs +without word or greeting to anybody. It is Flint Buckner. As the door +closes behind him a buzz of talk breaks out. + +"The regularest man that ever was," said Jake Parker, the blacksmith: +"you can tell when it's twelve just by him leaving, without looking at +your Waterbury." + +"And it's the only virtue he's got, as fur as I know," said Peter Hawes, +miner. + +"He's just a blight on this society," said Wells-Fargo's man, Ferguson. +"If I was running this shop I'd make him say something, some time or +other, or vamos the ranch." This with a suggestive glance at the +barkeeper, who did not choose to see it, since the man under discussion +was a good customer, and went home pretty well set up, every night, with +refreshments furnished from the bar. + +"Say," said Ham Sandwich, miner, "does any of you boys ever recollect of +him asking you to take a drink?" + +"Him? Flint Buckner? Oh, Laura!" + +This sarcastic rejoinder came in a spontaneous general outburst in one +form of words or another from the crowd. After a brief silence, Pat +Riley, miner, said: + +"He's the 15-puzzle, that cuss. And his boy's another one. I can't make +them out." + +"Nor anybody else," said Ham Sandwich; "and if they are 15-puzzles how +are you going to rank up that other one? When it comes to A 1 right-down +solid mysteriousness, he lays over both of them. Easy--don't he?" + +"You bet!" + +Everybody said it. Every man but one. He was the new-comer--Peterson. +He ordered the drinks all round, and asked who No. 3 might be. All +answered at once, "Archy Stillman!" + +"Is he a mystery?" asked Peterson. + +"Is he a mystery? Is Archy Stillman a mystery?" said Wells-Fargo's man, +Ferguson. "Why, the fourth dimension's foolishness to him." + +For Ferguson was learned. + +Peterson wanted to hear all about him; everybody wanted to tell him; +everybody began. But Billy Stevens, the barkeeper, called the house to +order, and said one at a time was best. He distributed the drinks, and +appointed Ferguson to lead. Ferguson said: + +"Well, he's a boy. And that is just about all we know about him. You +can pump him till you are tired; it ain't any use; you won't get +anything. At least about his intentions, or line of business, or where +he's from, and such things as that. And as for getting at the nature and +get-up of his main big chief mystery, why, he'll just change the subject, +that's all. You can guess till you're black in the face--it's your +privilege--but suppose you do, where do you arrive at? Nowhere, as near +as I can make out." + +"What is his big chief one?" + +"Sight, maybe. Hearing, maybe. Instinct, maybe. Magic, maybe. Take +your choice--grownups, twenty-five; children and servants, half price. +Now I'll tell you what he can do. You can start here, and just +disappear; you can go and hide wherever you want to, I don't care where +it is, nor how far--and he'll go straight and put his finger on you." + +"You don't mean it!" + +"I just do, though. Weather's nothing to him--elemental conditions is +nothing to him--he don't even take notice of them." + +"Oh, come! Dark? Rain? Snow? Hey?" + +"It's all the same to him. He don't give a damn." + +"Oh, say--including fog, per'aps?" + +"Fog! he's got an eye 't can plunk through it like a bullet." + +"Now, boys, honor bright, what's he giving me?" + +"It's a fact!" they all shouted. "Go on, Wells-Fargo." + +"Well, sir, you can leave him here, chatting with the boys, and you can +slip out and go to any cabin in this camp and open a book--yes, sir, a +dozen of them--and take the page in your memory, and he'll start out and +go straight to that cabin and open every one of them books at the right +page, and call it off, and never make a mistake." + +"He must be the devil!" + +"More than one has thought it. Now I'll tell you a perfectly wonderful +thing that he done. The other night he--" + +There was a sudden great murmur of sounds outside, the door flew open, +and an excited crowd burst in, with the camp's one white woman in the +lead and crying: + +"My child! my child! she's lost and gone! For the love of God help me +to find Archy Stillman; we've hunted everywhere!" + +Said the barkeeper: + +"Sit down, sit down, Mrs. Hogan, and don't worry. He asked for a bed +three hours ago, tuckered out tramping the trails the way he's always +doing, and went up-stairs. Ham Sandwich, run up and roust him out; he's +in No. 14." + +The youth was soon down-stairs and ready. He asked Mrs. Hogan for +particulars. + +"Bless you, dear, there ain't any; I wish there was. I put her to sleep +at seven in the evening, and when I went in there an hour ago to go to +bed myself, she was gone. I rushed for your cabin, dear, and you wasn't +there, and I've hunted for you ever since, at every cabin down the gulch, +and now I've come up again, and I'm that distracted and scared and +heart-broke; but, thanks to God, I've found you at last, dear heart, +and you'll find my child. Come on! come quick!" + +"Move right along; I'm with you, madam. Go to your cabin first." + +The whole company streamed out to join the hunt. All the southern half +of the village was up, a hundred men strong, and waiting outside, a vague +dark mass sprinkled with twinkling lanterns. The mass fell into columns +by threes and fours to accommodate itself to the narrow road, and strode +briskly along southward in the wake of the leaders. In a few minutes the +Hogan cabin was reached. + +"There's the bunk," said Mrs. Hogan; "there's where she was; it's where +I laid her at seven o'clock; but where she is now, God only knows." + +"Hand me a lantern," said Archy. He set it on the hard earth floor and +knelt by it, pretending to examine the ground closely. "Here's her +track," he said, touching the ground here and there and yonder with his +finger. "Do you see?" + +Several of the company dropped upon their knees and did their best to +see. One or two thought they discerned something like a track; the +others shook their heads and confessed that the smooth hard surface had +no marks upon it which their eyes were sharp enough to discover. One +said, "Maybe a child's foot could make a mark on it, but I don't see +how." + +Young Stillman stepped outside, held the light to the ground, turned +leftward, and moved three steps, closely examining; then said, "I've got +the direction--come along; take the lantern, somebody." + +He strode off swiftly southward, the files following, swaying and bending +in and out with the deep curves of the gorge. Thus a mile, and the mouth +of the gorge was reached; before them stretched the sagebrush plain, dim, +vast, and vague. Stillman called a halt, saying, "We mustn't start +wrong, now; we must take the direction again." + +He took a lantern and examined the ground for a matter of twenty yards; +then said, "Come on; it's all right," and gave up the lantern. In and +out among the sage-bushes he marched, a quarter of a mile, bearing +gradually to the right; then took a new direction and made another great +semicircle; then changed again and moved due west nearly half a mile--and +stopped. + +"She gave it up, here, poor little chap. Hold the lantern. You can see +where she sat." + +But this was in a slick alkali flat which was surfaced like steel, and no +person in the party was quite hardy enough to claim an eyesight that +could detect the track of a cushion on a veneer like that. The bereaved +mother fell upon her knees and kissed the spot, lamenting. + +"But where is she, then?" some one said. "She didn't stay here. We can +see that much, anyway." + +Stillman moved about in a circle around the place, with the lantern, +pretending to hunt for tracks. + +"Well!" he said presently, in an annoyed tone, "I don't understand it." +He examined again. "No use. She was here--that's certain; she never +walked away from here--and that's certain. It's a puzzle; I can't make +it out." + +The mother lost heart then. + +"Oh, my God! oh, blessed Virgin! some flying beast has got her. I'll +never see her again!" + +"Ah, don't give up," said Archy. "We'll find her--don't give up." + +"God bless you for the words, Archy Stillman!" and she seized his hand +and kissed it fervently. + +Peterson, the new-comer, whispered satirically in Ferguson's ear: + +"Wonderful performance to find this place, wasn't it? Hardly worth while +to come so far, though; any other supposititious place would have +answered just as well--hey?" + +Ferguson was not pleased with the innuendo. He said, with some warmth: + +"Do you mean to insinuate that the child hasn't been here? I tell you +the child has been here! Now if you want to get yourself into as tidy a +little fuss as--" + +"All right!" sang out Stillman. "Come, everybody, and look at this! It +was right under our noses all the time, and we didn't see it." + +There was a general plunge for the ground at the place where the child +was alleged to have rested, and many eyes tried hard and hopefully to see +the thing that Archy's finger was resting upon. There was a pause, then +a several-barreled sigh of disappointment. Pat Riley and Ham Sandwich +said, in the one breath: + +"What is it, Archy? There's nothing here." + +"Nothing? Do you call that nothing?" and he swiftly traced upon the +ground a form with his finger. "There--don't you recognize it now? It's +Injun Billy's track. He's got the child." + +"God be praised!" from the mother. + +"Take away the lantern. I've got the direction. Follow!" + +He started on a run, racing in and out among the sage-bushes a matter of +three hundred yards, and disappeared over a sand-wave; the others +struggled after him, caught him up, and found him waiting. Ten steps +away was a little wickiup, a dim and formless shelter of rags and old +horse-blankets, a dull light showing through its chinks. + +"You lead, Mrs. Hogan," said the lad. "It's your privilege to be first." + +All followed the sprint she made for the wickiup, and saw, with her, the +picture its interior afforded. Injun Billy was sitting on the ground; +the child was asleep beside him. The mother hugged it with a wild +embrace, which included Archy Stillman, the grateful tears running down +her face, and in a choked and broken voice she poured out a golden stream +of that wealth of worshiping endearments which has its home in full +richness nowhere but in the Irish heart. + +"I find her bymeby it is ten o'clock," Billy explained. "She 'sleep out +yonder, ve'y tired--face wet, been cryin', 'spose; fetch her home, feed +her, she heap much hungry--go 'sleep 'gin." + +In her limitless gratitude the happy mother waived rank and hugged him +too, calling him "the angel of God in disguise." And he probably was in +disguise if he was that kind of an official. He was dressed for the +character. + +At half past one in the morning the procession burst into the village +singing, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," waving its lanterns and +swallowing the drinks that were brought out all along its course. It +concentrated at the tavern, and made a night of what was left of the +morning. + + + + + + +PART II + + +I + +The next afternoon the village was electrified with an immense sensation. +A grave and dignified foreigner of distinguished bearing and appearance +had arrived at the tavern, and entered this formidable name upon the +register: + + SHERLOCK HOLMES + +The news buzzed from cabin to cabin, from claim to claim; tools were +dropped, and the town swarmed toward the center of interest. A man +passing out at the northern end of the village shouted it to Pat Riley, +whose claim was the next one to Flint Buckner's. At that time Fetlock +Jones seemed to turn sick. He muttered to himself: + +"Uncle Sherlock! The mean luck of it!--that he should come just when..." +He dropped into a reverie, and presently said to himself: "But what's the +use of being afraid of him? Anybody that knows him the way I do knows he +can't detect a crime except where he plans it all out beforehand and +arranges the clues and hires some fellow to commit it according to +instructions.... Now there ain't going to be any clues this time--so, +what show has he got? None at all. No, sir; everything's ready. If I +was to risk putting it off--No, I won't run any risk like that. Flint +Buckner goes out of this world to-night, for sure." Then another trouble +presented itself. "Uncle Sherlock 'll be wanting to talk home matters +with me this evening, and how am I going to get rid of him? for I've got +to be at my cabin a minute or two about eight o'clock." This was an +awkward matter, and cost him much thought. But he found a way to beat +the difficulty. "We'll go for a walk, and I'll leave him in the road a +minute, so that he won't see what it is I do: the best way to throw a +detective off the track, anyway, is to have him along when you are +preparing the thing. Yes, that's the safest--I'll take him with me." + + +Meantime the road in front of the tavern was blocked with villagers +waiting and hoping for a glimpse of the great man. But he kept his room, +and did not appear. None but Ferguson, Jake Parker the blacksmith, and +Ham Sandwich had any luck. These enthusiastic admirers of the great +scientific detective hired the tavern's detained-baggage lockup, which +looked into the detective's room across a little alleyway ten or twelve +feet wide, ambushed themselves in it, and cut some peep-holes in the +window-blind. Mr. Holmes's blinds were down; but by and by he raised +them. It gave the spies a hair-lifting but pleasurable thrill to find +themselves face to face with the Extraordinary Man who had filled the +world with the fame of his more than human ingenuities. There he sat +--not a myth, not a shadow, but real, alive, compact of substance, and +almost within touching distance with the hand. + +"Look at that head!" said Ferguson, in an awed voice. "By gracious! +that's a head!" + +"You bet!" said the blacksmith, with deep reverence. "Look at his nose! +look at his eyes! Intellect? Just a battery of it!" + +"And that paleness," said Ham Sandwich. "Comes from thought--that's what +it comes from. Hell! duffers like us don't know what real thought is." + +"No more we don't," said Ferguson. "What we take for thinking is just +blubber-and-slush." + +"Right you are, Wells-Fargo. And look at that frown--that's deep +thinking--away down, down, forty fathom into the bowels of things. He's +on the track of something." + +"Well, he is, and don't you forget it. Say--look at that awful gravity +--look at that pallid solemness--there ain't any corpse can lay over it." + +"No, sir, not for dollars! And it's his'n by hereditary rights, too; +he's been dead four times a'ready, and there's history for it. Three +times natural, once by accident. I've heard say he smells damp and cold, +like a grave. And he--" + +"'Sh! Watch him! There--he's got his thumb on the bump on the near +corner of his forehead, and his forefinger on the off one. His +think-works is just a-grinding now, you bet your other shirt." + +"That's so. And now he's gazing up toward heaven and stroking his +mustache slow, and--" + +"Now he has rose up standing, and is putting his clues together on his +left fingers with his right finger. See? he touches the forefinger--now +middle finger--now ring-finger--" + +"Stuck!" + +"Look at him scowl! He can't seem to make out that clue. So he--" + +"See him smile!--like a tiger--and tally off the other fingers like +nothing! He's got it, boys; he's got it sure!" + +"Well, I should say! I'd hate to be in that man's place that he's +after." + +Mr. Holmes drew a table to the window, sat down with his back to the +spies, and proceeded to write. The spies withdrew their eyes from the +peep-holes, lit their pipes, and settled themselves for a comfortable +smoke and talk. Ferguson said, with conviction: + +"Boys, it's no use talking, he's a wonder! He's got the signs of it all +over him." + +"You hain't ever said a truer word than that, Wells-Fargo," said Jake +Parker. "Say, wouldn't it 'a' been nuts if he'd a-been here last night?" + +"Oh, by George, but wouldn't it!" said Ferguson. "Then we'd have seen +scientific work. Intellect--just pure intellect--away up on the upper +levels, dontchuknow. Archy is all right, and it don't become anybody to +belittle him, I can tell you. But his gift is only just eyesight, sharp +as an owl's, as near as I can make it out just a grand natural animal +talent, no more, no less, and prime as far as it goes, but no intellect +in it, and for awfulness and marvelousness no more to be compared to what +this man does than--than--Why, let me tell you what he'd have done. He'd +have stepped over to Hogan's and glanced--just glanced, that's all--at +the premises, and that's enough. See everything? Yes, sir, to the last +little detail; and he'll know more about that place than the Hogans would +know in seven years. Next, he would sit down on the bunk, just as ca'm, +and say to Mrs. Hogan--Say, Ham, consider that you are Mrs. Hogan. I'll +ask the questions; you answer them." + +"All right; go on." + +"'Madam, if you please--attention--do not let your mind wander. Now, +then--sex of the child?' + +"'Female, your Honor.' + +"'Um--female. Very good, very good. Age?' + +"'Turned six, your Honor.' + +"'Um--young, weak--two miles. Weariness will overtake it then. It will +sink down and sleep. We shall find it two miles away, or less. Teeth?' + +"'Five, your Honor, and one a-coming.' + +"'Very good, very good, very good, indeed.' You see, boys, he knows a +clue when he sees it, when it wouldn't mean a dern thing to anybody else. +'Stockings, madam? Shoes?' + +"'Yes, your Honor--both.' + +"'Yarn, perhaps? Morocco?' + +"'Yarn, your Honor. And kip.' + +"'Um--kip. This complicates the matter. However, let it go--we shall +manage. Religion?' + +"'Catholic, your Honor.' + +"'Very good. Snip me a bit from the bed blanket, please. Ah, thanks. +Part wool--foreign make. Very well. A snip from some garment of the +child's, please. Thanks. Cotton. Shows wear. An excellent clue, +excellent. Pass me a pallet of the floor dirt, if you'll be so kind. +Thanks, many thanks. Ah, admirable, admirable! Now we know where we +are, I think.' You see, boys, he's got all the clues he wants now; he +don't need anything more. Now, then, what does this Extraordinary Man +do? He lays those snips and that dirt out on the table and leans over +them on his elbows, and puts them together side by side and studies them +--mumbles to himself, 'Female'; changes them around--mumbles, 'Six years +old'; changes them this way and that--again mumbles: 'Five teeth +--one a-coming--Catholic--yarn--cotton--kip--damn that kip.' Then he +straightens up and gazes toward heaven, and plows his hands through his +hair--plows and plows, muttering, 'Damn that kip!' Then he stands up and +frowns, and begins to tally off his clues on his fingers--and gets stuck +at the ring-finger. But only just a minute--then his face glares all up +in a smile like a house afire, and he straightens up stately and +majestic, and says to the crowd, 'Take a lantern, a couple of you, and go +down to Injun Billy's and fetch the child--the rest of you go 'long home +to bed; good-night, madam; good-night, gents.' And he bows like the +Matterhorn, and pulls out for the tavern. That's his style, and the +Only--scientific, intellectual--all over in fifteen minutes--no poking +around all over the sage-brush range an hour and a half in a mass-meeting +crowd for him, boys--you hear me!" + +"By Jackson, it's grand!" said Ham Sandwich. "Wells-Fargo, you've got +him down to a dot. He ain't painted up any exacter to the life in the +books. By George, I can just see him--can't you, boys?" + +"You bet you! It's just a photograft, that's what it is." + +Ferguson was profoundly pleased with his success, and grateful. He sat +silently enjoying his happiness a little while, then he murmured, with a +deep awe in his voice, + +"I wonder if God made him?" + +There was no response for a moment; then Ham Sandwich said, reverently: + +"Not all at one time, I reckon." + + + + +VII + +At eight o'clock that evening two persons were groping their way past +Flint Buckner's cabin in the frosty gloom. They were Sherlock Holmes and +his nephew. + +"Stop here in the road a moment, uncle," said Fetlock, "while I run to my +cabin; I won't be gone a minute." + +He asked for something--the uncle furnished it--then he disappeared in +the darkness, but soon returned, and the talking-walk was resumed. By +nine o'clock they had wandered back to the tavern. They worked their way +through the billiard-room, where a crowd had gathered in the hope of +getting a glimpse of the Extraordinary Man. A royal cheer was raised. +Mr. Holmes acknowledged the compliment with a series of courtly bows, and +as he was passing out his nephew said to the assemblage: + +"Uncle Sherlock's got some work to do, gentlemen, that 'll keep him till +twelve or one; but he'll be down again then, or earlier if he can, and +hopes some of you'll be left to take a drink with him." + +"By George, he's just a duke, boys! Three cheers for Sherlock Holmes, +the greatest man that ever lived!" shouted Ferguson. "Hip, hip, hip--" + +"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! Tiger!" + +The uproar shook the building, so hearty was the feeling the boys put +into their welcome. Up-stairs the uncle reproached the nephew gently, +saying: + +"What did you get me into that engagement for?" + +"I reckon you don't want to be unpopular, do you, uncle? Well, then, +don't you put on any exclusiveness in a mining-camp, that's all. The +boys admire you; but if you was to leave without taking a drink with +them, they'd set you down for a snob. And besides, you said you had home +talk enough in stock to keep us up and at it half the night." + +The boy was right, and wise--the uncle acknowledged it. The boy was wise +in another detail which he did not mention--except to himself: "Uncle and +the others will come handy--in the way of nailing an alibi where it can't +be budged." + +He and his uncle talked diligently about three hours. Then, about +midnight, Fetlock stepped down-stairs and took a position in the dark a +dozen steps from the tavern, and waited. Five minutes later Flint +Buckner came rocking out of the billiard-room and almost brushed him as +he passed. + +"I've got him!" muttered the boy. He continued to himself, looking after +the shadowy form: "Good-by--good-by for good, Flint Buckner; you called +my mother a--well, never mind what: it's all right, now; you're taking +your last walk, friend." + +He went musing back into the tavern. "From now till one is an hour. +We'll spend it with the boys; it's good for the alibi." + +He brought Sherlock Holmes to the billiard-room, which was jammed with +eager and admiring miners; the guest called the drinks, and the fun +began. Everybody was happy; everybody was complimentary; the ice was +soon broken, songs, anecdotes, and more drinks followed, and the pregnant +minutes flew. At six minutes to one, when the jollity was at its +highest-- + +BOOM!! + +There was silence instantly. The deep sound came rolling and rumbling +frown peak to peak up the gorge, then died down, and ceased. The spell +broke, then, and the men made a rush for the door, saying: + +"Something's blown up!" + +Outside, a voice in the darkness said, "It's away down the gorge; I saw +the flash." + +The crowd poured down the canyon--Holmes, Fetlock, Archy Stillman, +everybody. They made the mile in a few minutes. By the light of a +lantern they found the smooth and solid dirt floor of Flint Buckner's +cabin; of the cabin itself not a vestige remained, not a rag nor a +splinter. Nor any sign of Flint. Search-parties sought here and there +and yonder, and presently a cry went up. + +"Here he is!" + +It was true. Fifty yards down the gulch they had found him--that is, +they had found a crushed and lifeless mass which represented him. +Fetlock Jones hurried thither with the others and looked. + +The inquest was a fifteen-minute affair. Ham Sandwich, foreman of the +jury, handed up the verdict, which was phrased with a certain unstudied +literary grace, and closed with this finding, to wit: that "deceased came +to his death by his own act or some other person or persons unknown to +this jury not leaving any family or similar effects behind but his cabin +which was blown away and God have mercy on his soul amen." + +Then the impatient jury rejoined the main crowd, for the storm-center of +interest was there--Sherlock Holmes. The miners stood silent and +reverent in a half-circle, inclosing a large vacant space which included +the front exposure of the site of the late premises. In this +considerable space the Extraordinary Man was moving about, attended by +his nephew with a lantern. With a tape he took measurements of the cabin +site; of the distance from the wall of chaparral to the road; of the +height of the chaparral bushes; also various other measurements. He +gathered a rag here, a splinter there, and a pinch of earth yonder, +inspected them profoundly, and preserved them. He took the "lay" of the +place with a pocket-compass, allowing two seconds for magnetic variation. +He took the time (Pacific) by his watch, correcting it for local time. +He paced off the distance from the cabin site to the corpse, and +corrected that for tidal differentiation. He took the altitude with a +pocket-aneroid, and the temperature with a pocket-thermometer. Finally +he said, with a stately bow: + +"It is finished. Shall we return, gentlemen?" + +He took up the line of march for the tavern, and the crowd fell into his +wake, earnestly discussing and admiring the Extraordinary Man, and +interlarding guesses as to the origin of the tragedy and who the author +of it might he. + +"My, but it's grand luck having him here--hey, boys?" said Ferguson. + +"It's the biggest thing of the century," said Ham Sandwich. "It 'll go +all over the world; you mark my words." + +"You bet!" said Jake Parker, the blacksmith. "It 'll boom this camp. +Ain't it so, Wells-Fargo?" + +"Well, as you want my opinion--if it's any sign of how I think about it, +I can tell you this: yesterday I was holding the Straight Flush claim at +two dollars a foot; I'd like to see the man that can get it at sixteen +to-day." + +"Right you are, Wells-Fargo! It's the grandest luck a new camp ever +struck. Say, did you see him collar them little rags and dirt and +things? What an eye! He just can't overlook a clue--'tain't in him." + +"That's so. And they wouldn't mean a thing to anybody else; but to him, +why, they're just a book--large print at that." + +"Sure's you're born! Them odds and ends have got their little old +secret, and they think there ain't anybody can pull it; but, land! when +he sets his grip there they've got to squeal, and don't you forget it." + +"Boys, I ain't sorry, now, that he wasn't here to roust out the child; +this is a bigger thing, by a long sight. Yes, sir, and more tangled up +and scientific and intellectual." + +"I reckon we're all of us glad it's turned out this way. Glad? 'George! +it ain't any name for it. Dontchuknow, Archy could 've learnt something +if he'd had the nous to stand by and take notice of how that man works +the system. But no; he went poking up into the chaparral and just missed +the whole thing." + +"It's true as gospel; I seen it myself. Well, Archy's young. He'll know +better one of these days." + +"Say, boys, who do you reckon done it?" + +That was a difficult question, and brought out a world of unsatisfying +conjecture. Various men were mentioned as possibilities, but one by one +they were discarded as not being eligible. No one but young Hillyer had +been intimate with Flint Buckner; no one had really had a quarrel with +him; he had affronted every man who had tried to make up to him, although +not quite offensively enough to require bloodshed. There was one name +that was upon every tongue from the start, but it was the last to get +utterance--Fetlock Jones's. It was Pat Riley that mentioned it. + +"Oh, well," the boys said, "of course we've all thought of him, because +he had a million rights to kill Flint Buckner, and it was just his plain +duty to do it. But all the same there's two things we can't get around: +for one thing, he hasn't got the sand; and for another, he wasn't +anywhere near the place when it happened." + +"I know it," said Pat. "He was there in the billiard-room with us when +it happened." + +"Yes, and was there all the time for an hour before it happened." + +"It's so. And lucky for him, too. He'd have been suspected in a minute +if it hadn't been for that." + + + + +III + +The tavern dining-room had been cleared of all its furniture save one +six-foot pine table and a chair. This table was against one end of the +room; the chair was on it; Sherlock Holmes, stately, imposing, +impressive, sat in the chair. The public stood. The room was full. The +tobacco-smoke was dense, the stillness profound. + +The Extraordinary Man raised his hand to command additional silence; held +it in the air a few moments; then, in brief, crisp terms he put forward +question after question, and noted the answers with "Um-ums," nods of the +head, and so on. By this process he learned all about Flint Buckner, +his character, conduct, and habits, that the people were able to tell +him. It thus transpired that the Extraordinary Man's nephew was the only +person in the camp who had a killing-grudge against Flint Buckner. +Mr. Holmes smiled compassionately upon the witness, and asked, languidly: + +"Do any of you gentlemen chance to know where the lad Fetlock Jones was +at the time of the explosion?" + +A thunderous response followed: + +"In the billiard-room of this house!" + +"Ah. And had he just come in?" + +"Been there all of an hour!" + +"Ah. It is about--about--well, about how far might it be to the scene of +the explosions" + +"All of a mile!" + +"Ah. It isn't much of an alibi, 'tis true, but--" + +A storm-burst of laughter, mingled with shouts of "By jiminy, but he's +chain-lightning!" and "Ain't you sorry you spoke, Sandy?" shut off the +rest of the sentence, and the crushed witness drooped his blushing face +in pathetic shame. The inquisitor resumed: + +"The lad Jones's somewhat distant connection with the case" (laughter) +"having been disposed of, let us now call the eye-witnesses of the +tragedy, and listen to what they have to say." + +He got out his fragmentary clues and arranged them on a sheet of +cardboard on his knee. The house held its breath and watched. + +"We have the longitude and the latitude, corrected for magnetic +variation, and this gives us the exact location of the tragedy. We have +the altitude, the temperature, and the degree of humidity prevailing +--inestimably valuable, since they enable us to estimate with precision +the degree of influence which they would exercise upon the mood and +disposition of the assassin at that time of the night." + +(Buzz of admiration; muttered remark, "By George, but he's deep.") He +fingered his clues. "And now let us ask these mute witnesses to speak to +us. + +"Here we have an empty linen shot-bag. What is its message? This: that +robbery was the motive, not revenge. What is its further message? +This: that the assassin was of inferior intelligence--shall we say +light-witted, or perhaps approaching that? How do we know this? Because +a person of sound intelligence would not have proposed to rob the man +Buckner, who never had much money with him. But the assassin might have +been a stranger? Let the bag speak again. I take from it this article. +It is a bit of silver-bearing quartz. It is peculiar. Examine it, +please--you--and you--and you. Now pass it back, please. There is but +one lode on this coast which produces just that character and color of +quartz; and that is a lode which crops out for nearly two miles on a +stretch, and in my opinion is destined, at no distant day, to confer upon +its locality a globe-girdling celebrity, and upon its two hundred owners +riches beyond the dreams of avarice. Name that lode, please." + +"The Consolidated Christian Science and Mary Ann!" was the prompt +response. + +A wild crash of hurrahs followed, and every man reached for his +neighbor's hand and wrung it, with tears in his eyes; and Wells-Fargo +Ferguson shouted, "The Straight Flush is on the lode, and up she goes to +a hunched and fifty a foot--you hear me!" + +When quiet fell, Mr. Holmes resumed: + +"We perceive, then, that three facts are established, to wit: the +assassin was approximately light-witted; he was not a stranger; his +motive was robbery, not revenge. Let us proceed. I hold in my hand a +small fragment of fuse, with the recent smell of fire upon it. What is +its testimony? Taken with the corroborative evidence of the quartz, it +reveals to us that the assassin was a miner. What does it tell us +further? This, gentlemen: that the assassination was consummated by +means of an explosive. What else does it say? This: that the explosive +was located against the side of the cabin nearest the road--the front +side--for within six feet of that spot I found it. + +"I hold in my fingers a burnt Swedish match--the kind one rubs on a +safety-box. I found it in the road, six hundred and twenty-two feet from +the abolished cabin. What does it say? This: that the train was fired +from that point. What further does it tell us? This: that the assassin +was left-handed. How do I know this? I should not be able to explain to +you, gentlemen, how I know it, the signs being so subtle that only long +experience and deep study can enable one to detect them. But the signs +are here, and they are reinforced by a fact which you must have often +noticed in the great detective narratives--that all assassins are +left-handed." + +"By Jackson, that's so." said Ham Sandwich, bringing his great hand down +with a resounding slap upon his thigh; "blamed if I ever thought of it +before." + +"Nor I!" "Nor I!" cried several. "Oh, there can't anything escape him +--look at his eye!" + +"Gentlemen, distant as the murderer was from his doomed victim, he did +not wholly escape injury. This fragment of wood which I now exhibit to +you struck him. It drew blood. Wherever he is, he bears the telltale +mark. I picked it up where he stood when he fired the fatal train," +He looked out over the house from his high perch, and his countenance +began to darken; he slowly raised his hand, and pointed: + +"There stands the assassin!" + +For a moment the house was paralyzed with amazement; then twenty voices +burst out with: + +"Sammy Hillyer? Oh, hell, no! Him? It's pure foolishness!" + +"Take care, gentlemen--be not hasty. Observe--he has the blood-mark on +his brow." + +Hillyer turned white with fright. He was near to crying. He turned this +way and that, appealing to every face for help and sympathy; and held out +his supplicating hands toward Holmes and began to plead: + +"Don't, oh, don't! I never did it; I give my word I never did it. The +way I got this hurt on my forehead was--" + +"Arrest him, constable!" cried Holmes. "I will swear out the warrant." + +The constable moved reluctantly forward--hesitated--stopped. + +Hillyer broke out with another appeal. "Oh, Archy, don't let them do it; +it would kill mother! You know how I got the hurt. Tell them, and save +me, Archy; save me!" + +Stillman worked his way to the front, and said: + +"Yes, I'll save you. Don't be afraid." Then he said to the house, +"Never mind how he got the hurt; it hasn't anything to do with this case, +and isn't of any consequence." + +"God bless you, Archy, for a true friend!" + +"Hurrah for Archy! Go in, boy, and play 'em a knock-down flush to their +two pair 'n' a jack!" shouted the house, pride in their home talent and a +patriotic sentiment of loyalty to it rising suddenly in the public heart +and changing the whole attitude of the situation. + +Young Stillman waited for the noise to cease; then he said: + +"I will ask Tom Jeffries to stand by that door yonder, and Constable +Harris to stand by the other one here, and not let anybody leave the +room. + +"Said and done. Go on, old man!" + +"The criminal is present, I believe. I will show him to you before long, +in case I am right in my guess. Now I will tell you all about the +tragedy, from start to finish. The motive wasn't robbery; it was +revenge. The murderer wasn't light-witted. He didn't stand six hundred +and twenty-two feet away. He didn't get hit with a piece of wood. He +didn't place the explosive against the cabin. He didn't bring a shot-bag +with him, and he wasn't left-handed. With the exception of these errors, +the distinguished guest's statement of the case is substantially +correct." + +A comfortable laugh rippled over the house; friend nodded to friend, as +much as to say, "That's the word, with the bark on it. Good lad, good +boy. He ain't lowering his flag any!" + +The guest's serenity was not disturbed. Stillman resumed: + +"I also have some witnesses; and I will presently tell you where you can +find some more." He held up a piece of coarse wire; the crowd craned +their necks to see. "It has a smooth coating of melted tallow on it. +And here is a candle which is burned half-way down. The remaining half +of it has marks cut upon it an inch apart. Soon I will tell you where I +found these things. I will now put aside reasonings, guesses, the +impressive hitchings of odds and ends of clues together, and the other +showy theatricals of the detective trade, and tell you in a plain, +straightforward way just how this dismal thing happened." + +He paused a moment, for effect--to allow silence and suspense to +intensify and concentrate the house's interest; then he went on: + +"The assassin studied out his plan with a good deal of pains. It was a +good plan, very ingenious, and showed an intelligent mind, not a feeble +one. It was a plan which was well calculated to ward off all suspicion +from its inventor. In the first place, he marked a candle into spaces an +inch apart, and lit it and timed it. He found it took three hours to +burn four inches of it. I tried it myself for half an hour, awhile ago, +up-stairs here, while the inquiry into Flint Buckner's character and ways +was being conducted in this room, and I arrived in that way at the rate +of a candle's consumption when sheltered from the wind. Having proved +his trial candle's rate, he blew it out--I have already shown it to you +--and put his inch-marks on a fresh one. + +"He put the fresh one into a tin candlestick. Then at the five-hour mark +he bored a hole through the candle with a red-hot wire. I have already +shown you the wire, with a smooth coat of tallow on it--tallow that had +been melted and had cooled. + +"With labor--very hard labor, I should say--he struggled up through the +stiff chaparral that clothes the steep hillside back of Flint Buckner's +place, tugging an empty flour-barrel with him. He placed it in that +absolutely secure hiding-place, and in the bottom of it he set the +candlestick. Then he measured off about thirty-five feet of fuse--the +barrel's distance from the back of the cabin. He bored a hole in the +side of the barrel--here is the large gimlet he did it with. He went on +and finished his work; and when it was done, one end of the fuse was in +Buckner's cabin, and the other end, with a notch chipped in it to expose +the powder, was in the hole in the candle--timed to blow the place up at +one o'clock this morning, provided the candle was lit about eight o'clock +yesterday evening--which I am betting it was--and provided there was an +explosive in the cabin and connected with that end of the fuse--which I +am also betting there was, though I can't prove it. Boys, the barrel is +there in the chaparral, the candle's remains are in it in the tin stick; +the burnt-out fuse is in the gimlet-hole, the other end is down the hill +where the late cabin stood. I saw them all an hour or two ago, when the +Professor here was measuring off unimplicated vacancies and collecting +relics that hadn't anything to do with the case." + +He paused. The house drew a long, deep breath, shook its strained cords +and muscles free and burst into cheers. "Dang him!" said Ham Sandwich, +"that's why he was snooping around in the chaparral, instead of picking +up points out of the P'fessor's game. Looky here--he ain't no fool, +boys." + +"No, sir! Why, great Scott--" + +But Stillman was resuming: + +"While we were out yonder an hour or two ago, the owner of the gimlet and +the trial candle took them from a place where he had concealed them--it +was not a good place--and carried them to what he probably thought was a +better one, two hundred yards up in the pine woods, and hid them there, +covering them over with pine needles. It was there that I found them. +The gimlet exactly fits the hole in the barrel. And now--" + +The Extraordinary Man interrupted him. He said, sarcastically: + +"We have had a very pretty fairy tale, gentlemen--very pretty indeed. +Now I would like to ask this young man a question or two." + +Some of the boys winced, and Ferguson said: + +"I'm afraid Archy's going to catch it now." + +The others lost their smiles and sobered down. Mr. Holmes said: + +"Let us proceed to examine into this fairy tale in a consecutive and +orderly way--by geometrical progression, so to speak--linking detail to +detail in a steadily advancing and remorselessly consistent and +unassailable march upon this tinsel toy fortress of error, the dream +fabric of a callow imagination. To begin with, young sir, I desire to +ask you but three questions at present--at present. Did I understand you +to say it was your opinion that the supposititious candle was lighted at +about eight o'clock yesterday evening?" + +"Yes, sir--about eight." + +"Could you say exactly eight?" + +"Well, no, I couldn't be that exact." + +"Um. If a person had been passing along there just about that time, he +would have been almost sure to encounter that assassin, do you think?" + +"Yes, I should think so." + +"Thank you, that is all. For the present. I say, all for the present." + +"Dern him, he's laying for Archy," said Ferguson. + +"It's so," said Ham Sandwich. "I don't like the look of it." + +Stillman said, glancing at the guest, "I was along there myself at +half-past eight--no, about nine." + +"In-deed? This is interesting--this is very interesting. Perhaps you +encountered the assassin?" + +"No, I encountered no one." + +"Ah. Then--if you will excuse the remark--I do not quite see the +relevancy of the information." + +"It has none. At present. I say it has none--at present." + +He paused. Presently he resumed: "I did not encounter the assassin, but +I am on his track, I am sure, for I believe he is in this room. I will +ask you all to pass one by one in front of me--here, where there is a +good light--so that I can see your feet." + +A buzz of excitement swept the place, and the march began, the guest +looking on with an iron attempt at gravity which was not an unqualified +success. Stillman stooped, shaded his eyes with his hand, and gazed down +intently at each pair of feet as it passed. Fifty men tramped +monotonously by--with no result. Sixty. Seventy. The thing was +beginning to look absurd. The guest remarked, with suave irony: + +"Assassins appear to be scarce this evening." + +The house saw the humor if it, and refreshed itself with a cordial laugh. +Ten or twelve more candidates tramped by--no, danced by, with airy and +ridiculous capers which convulsed the spectators--then suddenly Stillman +put out his hand and said: + +"This is the assassin!" + +"Fetlock Jones, by the great Sanhedrim!" roared the crowd; and at once +let fly a pyrotechnic explosion and dazzle and confusion of stirring +remarks inspired by the situation. + +At the height of the turmoil the guest stretched out his hand, commanding +peace. The authority of a great name and a great personality laid its +mysterious compulsion upon the house, and it obeyed. Out of the panting +calm which succeeded, the guest spoke, saying, with dignity and feeling: + +"This is serious. It strikes at an innocent life. Innocent beyond +suspicion! Innocent beyond peradventure! Hear me prove it; observe how +simple a fact can brush out of existence this witless lie. Listen. My +friends, that lad was never out of my sight yesterday evening at any +time!" + +It made a deep impression. Men turned their eyes upon Stillman with +grave inquiry in them. His face brightened, and he said: + +"I knew there was another one!" He stepped briskly to the table and +glanced at the guest's feet, then up at his face, and said: "You were +with him! You were not fifty steps from him when he lit the candle that +by and by fired the powder!" (Sensation.) "And what is more, you +furnished the matches yourself!" + +Plainly the guest seemed hit; it looked so to the public. He opened his +mouth to speak; the words did not come freely. + +"This--er--this is insanity--this--" + +Stillman pressed his evident advantage home. He held up a charred match. + +"Here is one of them. I found it in the barrel--and there's another one +there." + +The guest found his voice at once. + +"Yes--and put them there yourself!" + +It was recognized a good shot. Stillman retorted. + +"It is wax--a breed unknown to this camp. I am ready to be searched for +the box. Are you?" + +The guest was staggered this time--the dullest eye could see it. He +fumbled with his hands; once or twice his lips moved, but the words did +not come. The house waited and watched, in tense suspense, the stillness +adding effect to the situation. Presently Stillman said, gently: + +"We are waiting for your decision." + +There was silence again during several moments; then the guest answered, +in a low voice: + +"I refuse to be searched." + +There was no noisy demonstration, but all about the house one voice after +another muttered: + +"That settles it! He's Archy's meat." + +What to do now? Nobody seemed to know. It was an embarrassing situation +for the moment--merely, of course, because matters had taken such a +sudden and unexpected turn that these unpractised minds were not prepared +for it, and had come to a standstill, like a stopped clock, under the +shock. But after a little the machinery began to work again, +tentatively, and by twos and threes the men put their heads together and +privately buzzed over this and that and the other proposition. One of +these propositions met with much favor; it was, to confer upon the +assassin a vote of thanks for removing Flint Buckner, and let him go. +But the cooler heads opposed it, pointing out that addled brains in the +Eastern states would pronounce it a scandal, and make no end of foolish +noise about it. Finally the cool heads got the upper hand, and obtained +general consent to a proposition of their own; their leader then called +the house to order and stated it--to this effect: that Fetlock Jones be +jailed and put upon trial. + +The motion was carried. Apparently there was nothing further to do now, +and the people were glad, for, privately, they were impatient to get out +and rush to the scene of the tragedy, and see whether that barrel and the +other things were really there or not. + +But no--the break-up got a check. The surprises were not over yet. For +a while Fetlock Jones had been silently sobbing, unnoticed in the +absorbing excitements which had been following one another so +persistently for some time; but when his arrest and trial were decreed, +he broke out despairingly, and said: + +"No! it's no use. I don't want any jail, I don't want any trial; I've +had all the hard luck I want, and all the miseries. Hang me now, and let +me out! It would all come out, anyway--there couldn't anything save me. +He has told it all, just as if he'd been with me and seen it--I don't +know how he found out; and you'll find the barrel and things, and then I +wouldn't have any chance any more. I killed him; and you'd have done it +too, if he'd treated you like a dog, and you only a boy, and weak and +poor, and not a friend to help you." + +"And served him damned well right!" broke in Ham Sandwich. "Looky here, +boys--" + +From the constable: "Order! Order, gentlemen!" + +A voice: "Did your uncle know what you was up to?" + +"No, he didn't." + +"Did he give you the matches, sure enough?" + +"Yes, he did; but he didn't know what I wanted them for." + +"When you was out on such a business as that, how did you venture to risk +having him along--and him a detective? How's that?" + +The boy hesitated, fumbled with his buttons in an embarrassed way, then +said, shyly: + +"I know about detectives, on account of having them in the family; and if +you don't want them to find out about a thing, it's best to have them +around when you do it." + +The cyclone of laughter which greeted this native discharge of wisdom did +not modify the poor little waif's embarrassment in any large degree. + + + + +IV + + From a letter to Mrs. Stillman, dated merely "Tuesday." + +Fetlock Jones was put under lock and key in an unoccupied log cabin, and +left there to await his trial. Constable Harris provided him with a +couple of days' rations, instructed him to keep a good guard over +himself, and promised to look in on him as soon as further supplies +should be due. + +Next morning a score of us went with Hillyer, out of friendship, and +helped him bury his late relative, the unlamented Buckner, and I acted as +first assistant pall-bearer, Hillyer acting as chief. Just as we had +finished our labors a ragged and melancholy stranger, carrying an old +hand-bag, limped by with his head down, and I caught the scent I had +chased around the globe! It was the odor of Paradise to my perishing +hope! + +In a moment I was at his side and had laid a gentle hand upon his +shoulder. He slumped to the ground as if a stroke of lightning had +withered him in his tracks; and as the boys came running he struggled to +his knees and put up his pleading hands to me, and out of his chattering +jaws he begged me to persecute him no more, and said: + +"You have hunted me around the world, Sherlock Holmes, yet God is my +witness I have never done any man harm!" + +A glance at his wild eyes showed us that he was insane. That was my +work, mother! The tidings of your death can some day repeat the misery I +felt in that moment, but nothing else can ever do it. The boys lifted +him up, and gathered about him, and were full of pity of him, and said +the gentlest and touchingest things to him, and said cheer up and don't +be troubled, he was among friends now, and they would take care of him, +and protect him, and hang any man that laid a hand on him. They are just +like so many mothers, the rough mining-camp boys are, when you wake up +the south side of their hearts; yes, and just like so many reckless and +unreasoning children when you wake up the opposite of that muscle. They +did everything they could think of to comfort him, but nothing succeeded +until Wells-Fargo Ferguson, who is a clever strategist, said: + +"If it's only Sherlock Holmes that's troubling you, you needn't worry any +more." + +"Why?" asked the forlorn lunatic, eagerly. + +"Because he's dead again." + +"Dead! Dead! Oh, don't trifle with a poor wreck like me. Is he dead? +On honor, now--is he telling me true, boys?" + +"True as you're standing there!" said Ham Sandwich, and they all backed +up the statement in a body. + +"They hung him in San Bernardino last week," added Ferguson, clinching +the matter, "whilst he was searching around after you. Mistook him for +another man. They're sorry, but they can't help it now." + +"They're a-building him a monument," said Ham Sandwich, with the air of a +person who had contributed to it, and knew. + +"James Walker" drew a deep sigh--evidently a sigh of relief--and said +nothing; but his eyes lost something of their wildness, his countenance +cleared visibly, and its drawn look relaxed a little. We all went to our +cabin, and the boys cooked him the best dinner the camp could furnish the +materials for, and while they were about it Hillyer and I outfitted him +from hat to shoe-leather with new clothes of ours, and made a comely and +presentable old gentleman of him. "Old" is the right word, and a pity, +too: old by the droop of him, and the frost upon his hair, and the marks +which sorrow and distress have left upon his face; though he is only in +his prime in the matter of years. While he ate, we smoked and chatted; +and when he was finishing he found his voice at last, and of his own +accord broke out with his personal history. I cannot furnish his exact +words, but I will come as near it as I can. + + + THE "WRONG MAN'S" STORY + +It happened like this: I was in Denver. I had been there many years; +sometimes I remember how many, sometimes I don't--but it isn't any +matter. All of a sudden I got a notice to leave, or I would be exposed +for a horrible crime committed long before--years and years before--in +the East. + +I knew about that crime, but I was not the criminal; it was a cousin of +mine of the same name. What should I better do? My head was all +disordered by fear, and I didn't know. I was allowed very little time +--only one day, I think it was. I would be ruined if I was published, +and the people would lynch me, and not believe what I said. It is always +the way with lynchings: when they find out it is a mistake they are +sorry, but it is too late--the same as it was with Mr. Holmes, you see. +So I said I would sell out and get money to live on, and run away until +it blew over and I could come back with my proofs. Then I escaped in the +night and went a long way off in the mountains somewhere, and lived +disguised and had a false name. + +I got more and more troubled and worried, and my troubles made me see +spirits and hear voices, and I could not think straight and clear on any +subject, but got confused and involved and had to give it up, because my +head hurt so. It got to be worse and worse; more spirits and more +voices. They were about me all the time; at first only in the night, +then in the day too. They were always whispering around my bed and +plotting against me, and it broke my sleep and kept me fagged out, +because I got no good rest. + +And then came the worst. One night the whispers said, "We'll never +manage, because we can't see him, and so can't point him out to the +people." + +They sighed; then one said: "We must bring Sherlock Holmes. He can be +here in twelve days." + +They all agreed, and whispered and jibbered with joy. But my heart +broke; for I had read about that man, and knew what it would be to have +him upon my track, with his superhuman penetration and tireless energies. + +The spirits went away to fetch him, and I got up at once in the middle of +the night and fled away, carrying nothing but the hand-bag that had my +money in it--thirty thousand dollars; two-thirds of it are in the bag +there yet. It was forty days before that man caught up on my track. +I just escaped. From habit he had written his real name on a tavern +register, but had scratched it out and written "Dagget Barclay" in the +place of it. But fear gives you a watchful eye and keen, and I read the +true name through the scratches, and fled like a deer. + +He has hunted me all over this world for three years and a half--the +Pacific states, Australasia, India--everywhere you can think of; then +back to Mexico and up to California again, giving me hardly any rest; but +that name on the registers always saved me, and what is left of me is +alive yet. And I am so tired! A cruel time he has given me, yet I give +you my honor I have never harmed him nor any man. + +That was the end of the story, and it stirred those boys to blood-heat, +be sure of it. As for me--each word burnt a hole in me where it struck. + +We voted that the old man should bunk with us, and be my guest and +Hillyer's. I shall keep my own counsel, naturally; but as soon as he is +well rested and nourished, I shall take him to Denver and rehabilitate +his fortunes. + +The boys gave the old fellow the bone-smashing good-fellowship handshake +of the mines, and then scattered away to spread the news. + +At dawn next morning Wells-Fargo Ferguson and Ham Sandwich called us +softly out, and said, privately: + +"That news about the way that old stranger has been treated has spread +all around, and the camps are up. They are piling in from everywhere, +and are going to lynch the P'fessor. Constable Harris is in a dead funk, +and has telephoned the sheriff. Come along!" + +We started on a run. The others were privileged to feel as they chose, +but in my heart's privacy I hoped the sheriff would arrive in time; for I +had small desire that Sherlock Holmes should hang for my deeds, as you +can easily believe. I had heard a good deal about the sheriff, but for +reassurance's sake I asked: + +"Can he stop a mob?" + +"Can he stop a mob! Can Jack Fairfax stop a mob! Well, I should smile! +Ex-desperado--nineteen scalps on his string. Can he! Oh, I say!" + +As we tore up the gulch, distant cries and shouts and yells rose faintly +on the still air, and grew steadily in strength as we raced along. Roar +after roar burst out, stronger and stronger, nearer and nearer; and at +last, when we closed up upon the multitude massed in the open area in +front of the tavern, the crash of sound was deafening. Some brutal +roughs from Daly's gorge had Holmes in their grip, and he was the calmest +man there; a contemptuous smile played about his lips, and if any fear of +death was in his British heart, his iron personality was master of it and +no sign of it was allowed to appear. + +"Come to a vote, men!" This from one of the Daly gang, Shadbelly Higgins. +"Quick! is it hang, or shoot?" + +"Neither!" shouted one of his comrades. "He'll be alive again in a week; +burning's the only permanency for him." + +The gangs from all the outlying camps burst out in a thundercrash of +approval, and went struggling and surging toward the prisoner, and closed +around him, shouting, "Fire! fire's the ticket!" They dragged him to the +horse-post, backed him against it, chained him to it, and piled wood and +pine cones around him waist-deep. Still the strong face did not blench, +and still the scornful smile played about the thin lips. + +"A match! fetch a match!" + +Shadbelly struck it, shaded it with his hand, stooped, and held it under +a pine cone. A deep silence fell upon the mob. The cone caught, a tiny +flame flickered about it a moment or two. I seemed to catch the sound of +distant hoofs--it grew more distinct--still more and more distinct, more +and more definite, but the absorbed crowd did not appear to notice it. +The match went out. The man struck another, stooped, and again the flame +rose; this time it took hold and began to spread--here and there men +turned away their faces. The executioner stood with the charred match in +his fingers, watching his work. The hoof-beats turned a projecting crag, +and now they came thundering down upon us. Almost the next moment there +was a shout: + +"The sheriff!" + +And straightway he came tearing into the midst, stood his horse almost on +his hind feet, and said: + +"Fall back, you gutter-snipes!" + +He was obeyed. By all but their leader. He stood his ground, and his +hand went to his revolver. The sheriff covered him promptly, and said: + +"Drop your hand, you parlor desperado. Kick the fire away. Now unchain +the stranger." + +The parlor desperado obeyed. Then the sheriff made a speech; sitting his +horse at martial ease, and not warming his words with any touch of fire, +but delivering them in a measured and deliberate way, and in a tone which +harmonized with their character and made them impressively disrespectful. + +"You're a nice lot--now ain't you? Just about eligible to travel with +this bilk here--Shadbelly Higgins--this loud-mouthed sneak that shoots +people in the back and calls himself a desperado. If there's anything I +do particularly despise, it's a lynching mob; I've never seen one that +had a man in it. It has to tally up a hundred against one before it can +pump up pluck enough to tackle a sick tailor. It's made up of cowards, +and so is the community that breeds it; and ninety-nine times out of a +hundred the sheriff's another one." He paused--apparently to turn that +last idea over in his mind and taste the juice of it--then he went on: +"The sheriff that lets a mob take a prisoner away from him is the +lowest-down coward there is. By the statistics there was a hundred and +eighty-two of them drawing sneak pay in America last year. By the way +it's going, pretty soon there 'll be a new disease in the doctor-books +--sheriff complaint." That idea pleased him--any one could see it. +"People will say, 'Sheriff sick again?' 'Yes; got the same old thing.' +And next there 'll be a new title. People won't say, 'He's running for +sheriff of Rapaho County,' for instance; they'll say, 'He's running for +Coward of Rapaho.' Lord, the idea of a grown-up person being afraid of +a lynch mob!" + +He turned an eye on the captive, and said, "Stranger, who are you, and +what have you been doing?" + +"My name is Sherlock Holmes, and I have not been doing anything." + +It was wonderful, the impression which the sound of that name made on the +sheriff, notwithstanding he must have come posted. He spoke up with +feeling, and said it was a blot on the county that a man whose marvelous +exploits had filled the world with their fame and their ingenuity, and +whose histories of them had won every reader's heart by the brilliancy +and charm of their literary setting, should be visited under the Stars +and Stripes by an outrage like this. He apologized in the name of the +whole nation, and made Holmes a most handsome bow, and told Constable +Harris to see him to his quarters, and hold himself personally +responsible if he was molested again. Then he turned to the mob and +said: + +"Hunt your holes, you scum!" which they did; then he said: "Follow me, +Shadbelly; I'll take care of your case myself. No--keep your popgun; +whenever I see the day that I'll be afraid to have you behind me with +that thing, it 'll be time for me to join last year's hundred and +eighty-two"; and he rode off in a walk, Shadbelly following. + +When we were on our way back to our cabin, toward breakfast-time, we ran +upon the news that Fetlock Jones had escaped from his lock-up in the +night and is gone! Nobody is sorry. Let his uncle track him out if he +likes; it is in his line; the camp is not interested. + + + + +V + +Ten days later. + +"James Walker" is all right in body now, and his mind shows improvement +too. I start with him for Denver to-morrow morning. + +Next night. Brief note, mailed at a way-station. + +As we were starting, this morning, Hillyer whispered to me: "Keep this +news from Walker until you think it safe and not likely to disturb his +mind and check his improvement: the ancient crime he spoke of was really +committed--and by his cousin, as he said. We buried the real criminal +the other day--the unhappiest man that has lived in a century--Flint +Buckner. His real name was Jacob Fuller!" There, mother, by help of me, +an unwitting mourner, your husband and my father is in his grave. Let +him rest. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Double Barrelled Detective +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + + THE $30,000 BEQUEST + and Other Stories + + by + Mark Twain + (Samuel L. Clemens) + + +Contents: + The $30,000 Bequest + A Dog's Tale + Was It Heaven? Or Hell? + A Cure for the Blues + The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant + The Californian's Tale + A Helpless Situation + A Telephonic Conversation + Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale + The Five Boons of Life + The First Writing-machines + Italian without a Master + Italian with Grammar + A Burlesque Biography + How to Tell a Story + General Washington's Negro Body-servant + Wit Inspirations of the "Two-year-olds" + An Entertaining Article + A Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury + Amended Obituaries + A Monument to Adam + A Humane Word from Satan + Introduction to "The New Guide of the + Conversation in Portuguese and English" + Advice to Little Girls + Post-mortem Poetry + The Danger of Lying in Bed + Portrait of King William III + Does the Race of Man Love a Lord? + Extracts from Adam's Diary + Eve's Diary + + + + +THE $30,000 BEQUEST + + +CHAPTER I + + +Lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants, +and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the Far West. It had church +accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is the way of the Far +West and the South, where everybody is religious, and where each of the +Protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own. Rank was +unknown in Lakeside--unconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and +his dog, and a sociable friendliness was the prevailing atmosphere. + +Saladin Foster was book-keeper in the principal store, and the only +high-salaried man of his profession in Lakeside. He was thirty-five +years old, now; he had served that store for fourteen years; +he had begun in his marriage-week at four hundred dollars a year, +and had climbed steadily up, a hundred dollars a year, for four years; +from that time forth his wage had remained eight hundred--a handsome +figure indeed, and everybody conceded that he was worth it. + +His wife, Electra, was a capable helpmeet, although--like himself +--a dreamer of dreams and a private dabbler in romance. The first thing +she did, after her marriage--child as she was, aged only nineteen +--was to buy an acre of ground on the edge of the town, and pay +down the cash for it--twenty-five dollars, all her fortune. +Saladin had less, by fifteen. She instituted a vegetable garden there, +got it farmed on shares by the nearest neighbor, and made it pay +her a hundred per cent. a year. Out of Saladin's first year's wage +she put thirty dollars in the savings-bank, sixty out of his second, +a hundred out of his third, a hundred and fifty out of his fourth. +His wage went to eight hundred a year, then, and meantime two children +had arrived and increased the expenses, but she banked two hundred +a year from the salary, nevertheless, thenceforth. When she had been +married seven years she built and furnished a pretty and comfortable +two-thousand-dollar house in the midst of her garden-acre, paid +half of the money down and moved her family in. Seven years later +she was out of debt and had several hundred dollars out earning +its living. + +Earning it by the rise in landed estate; for she had long ago bought +another acre or two and sold the most of it at a profit to pleasant +people who were willing to build, and would be good neighbors and +furnish a general comradeship for herself and her growing family. +She had an independent income from safe investments of about a hundred +dollars a year; her children were growing in years and grace; +and she was a pleased and happy woman. Happy in her husband, happy in +her children, and the husband and the children were happy in her. +It is at this point that this history begins. + +The youngest girl, Clytemnestra--called Clytie for short +--was eleven; her sister, Gwendolen--called Gwen for short +--was thirteen; nice girls, and comely. The names betray the latent +romance-tinge in the parental blood, the parents' names indicate +that the tinge was an inheritance. It was an affectionate family, +hence all four of its members had pet names, Saladin's was a curious +and unsexing one--Sally; and so was Electra's--Aleck. All day +long Sally was a good and diligent book-keeper and salesman; +all day long Aleck was a good and faithful mother and housewife, +and thoughtful and calculating business woman; but in the cozy +living-room at night they put the plodding world away, and lived in +another and a fairer, reading romances to each other, dreaming dreams, +comrading with kings and princes and stately lords and ladies in the +flash and stir and splendor of noble palaces and grim and ancient castles. + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Now came great news! Stunning news--joyous news, in fact. +It came from a neighboring state, where the family's only surviving +relative lived. It was Sally's relative--a sort of vague and indefinite +uncle or second or third cousin by the name of Tilbury Foster, +seventy and a bachelor, reputed well off and corresponding sour +and crusty. Sally had tried to make up to him once, by letter, +in a bygone time, and had not made that mistake again. Tilbury now +wrote to Sally, saying he should shortly die, and should leave him +thirty thousand dollars, cash; not for love, but because money +had given him most of his troubles and exasperations, and he wished +to place it where there was good hope that it would continue its +malignant work. The bequest would be found in his will, and would +be paid over. PROVIDED, that Sally should be able to prove to the +executors that he had TAKEN NO NOTICE OF THE GIFT BY SPOKEN WORD OR +BY LETTER, HAD MADE NO INQUIRIES CONCERNING THE MORIBUND'S PROGRESS +TOWARD THE EVERLASTING TROPICS, AND HAD NOT ATTENDED THE FUNERAL. + +As soon as Aleck had partially recovered from the tremendous +emotions created by the letter, she sent to the relative's habitat +and subscribed for the local paper. + +Man and wife entered into a solemn compact, now, to never mention +the great news to any one while the relative lived, lest some +ignorant person carry the fact to the death-bed and distort it +and make it appear that they were disobediently thankful for +the bequest, and just the same as confessing it and publishing it, +right in the face of the prohibition. + +For the rest of the day Sally made havoc and confusion with his books, +and Aleck could not keep her mind on her affairs, not even take up +a flower-pot or book or a stick of wood without forgetting what she +had intended to do with it. For both were dreaming. + +"Thir-ty thousand dollars!" + +All day long the music of those inspiring words sang through +those people's heads. + +From his marriage-day forth, Aleck's grip had been upon the purse, +and Sally had seldom known what it was to be privileged to squander +a dime on non-necessities. + +"Thir-ty thousand dollars!" the song went on and on. A vast sum, +an unthinkable sum! + +All day long Aleck was absorbed in planning how to invest it, +Sally in planning how to spend it. + +There was no romance-reading that night. The children took +themselves away early, for their parents were silent, distraught, +and strangely unentertaining. The good-night kisses might as well +have been impressed upon vacancy, for all the response they got; +the parents were not aware of the kisses, and the children had +been gone an hour before their absence was noticed. Two pencils +had been busy during that hour--note-making; in the way of plans. +It was Sally who broke the stillness at last. He said, with exultation: + +"Ah, it'll be grand, Aleck! Out of the first thousand we'll have +a horse and a buggy for summer, and a cutter and a skin lap-robe +for winter." + +Aleck responded with decision and composure-- + +"Out of the CAPITAL? Nothing of the kind. Not if it was a million!" + +Sally was deeply disappointed; the glow went out of his face. + +"Oh, Aleck!" he said, reproachfully. "We've always worked so hard +and been so scrimped: and now that we are rich, it does seem--" + +He did not finish, for he saw her eye soften; his supplication +had touched her. She said, with gentle persuasiveness: + +"We must not spend the capital, dear, it would not be wise. +Out of the income from it--" + +"That will answer, that will answer, Aleck! How dear and good you are! +There will be a noble income and if we can spend that--" + +"Not ALL of it, dear, not all of it, but you can spend a part of it. +That is, a reasonable part. But the whole of the capital +--every penny of it--must be put right to work, and kept at it. +You see the reasonableness of that, don't you?" + +"Why, ye-s. Yes, of course. But we'll have to wait so long. +Six months before the first interest falls due." + +"Yes--maybe longer." + +"Longer, Aleck? Why? Don't they pay half-yearly?" + +"THAT kind of an investment--yes; but I sha'n't invest in that way." + +"What way, then?" + +"For big returns." + +"Big. That's good. Go on, Aleck. What is it?" + +"Coal. The new mines. Cannel. I mean to put in ten thousand. +Ground floor. When we organize, we'll get three shares for one." + +"By George, but it sounds good, Aleck! Then the shares will be worth +--how much? And when?" + +"About a year. They'll pay ten per cent. half yearly, and be +worth thirty thousand. I know all about it; the advertisement +is in the Cincinnati paper here." + +"Land, thirty thousand for ten--in a year! Let's jam in the whole +capital and pull out ninety! I'll write and subscribe right now +--tomorrow it maybe too late." + +He was flying to the writing-desk, but Aleck stopped him and put +him back in his chair. She said: + +"Don't lose your head so. WE mustn't subscribe till we've got +the money; don't you know that?" + +Sally's excitement went down a degree or two, but he was not +wholly appeased. + +"Why, Aleck, we'll HAVE it, you know--and so soon, too. He's probably +out of his troubles before this; it's a hundred to nothing he's +selecting his brimstone-shovel this very minute. Now, I think--" + +Aleck shuddered, and said: + +"How CAN you, Sally! Don't talk in that way, it is perfectly scandalous." + +"Oh, well, make it a halo, if you like, _I_ don't care for his outfit, +I was only just talking. Can't you let a person talk?" + +"But why should you WANT to talk in that dreadful way? How would +you like to have people talk so about YOU, and you not cold yet?" + +"Not likely to be, for ONE while, I reckon, if my last act was +giving away money for the sake of doing somebody a harm with it. +But never mind about Tilbury, Aleck, let's talk about something worldly. +It does seem to me that that mine is the place for the whole thirty. +What's the objection?" + +"All the eggs in one basket--that's the objection." + +"All right, if you say so. What about the other twenty? +What do you mean to do with that?" + +"There is no hurry; I am going to look around before I do anything +with it." + +"All right, if your mind's made up," signed Sally. He was deep +in thought awhile, then he said: + +"There'll be twenty thousand profit coming from the ten a year +from now. We can spend that, can we, Aleck?" + +Aleck shook her head. + +"No, dear," she said, "it won't sell high till we've had the first +semi-annual dividend. You can spend part of that." + +"Shucks, only THAT--and a whole year to wait! Confound it, I--" + +"Oh, do be patient! It might even be declared in three months +--it's quite within the possibilities." + +"Oh, jolly! oh, thanks!" and Sally jumped up and kissed his wife +in gratitude. "It'll be three thousand--three whole thousand! +how much of it can we spend, Aleck? Make it liberal!--do, dear, +that's a good fellow." + +Aleck was pleased; so pleased that she yielded to the pressure and +conceded a sum which her judgment told her was a foolish extravagance +--a thousand dollars. Sally kissed her half a dozen times and even +in that way could not express all his joy and thankfulness. +This new access of gratitude and affection carried Aleck quite +beyond the bounds of prudence, and before she could restrain +herself she had made her darling another grant--a couple +of thousand out of the fifty or sixty which she meant to clear +within a year of the twenty which still remained of the bequest. +The happy tears sprang to Sally's eyes, and he said: + +"Oh, I want to hug you!" And he did it. Then he got his +notes and sat down and began to check off, for first purchase, +the luxuries which he should earliest wish to secure. +"Horse--buggy--cutter--lap-robe--patent-leathers--dog--plug-hat +--church-pew--stem-winder--new teeth--SAY, Aleck!" + +"Well?" + +"Ciphering away, aren't you? That's right. Have you got the twenty +thousand invested yet?" + +"No, there's no hurry about that; I must look around first, +and think." + +"But you are ciphering; what's it about?" + +"Why, I have to find work for the thirty thousand that comes out +of the coal, haven't I?" + +"Scott, what a head! I never thought of that. How are you +getting along? Where have you arrived?" + +"Not very far--two years or three. I've turned it over twice; +once in oil and once in wheat." + +"Why, Aleck, it's splendid! How does it aggregate?" + +"I think--well, to be on the safe side, about a hundred and eighty +thousand clear, though it will probably be more." + +"My! isn't it wonderful? By gracious! luck has come our way at last, +after all the hard sledding, Aleck!" + +"Well?" + +"I'm going to cash in a whole three hundred on the missionaries +--what real right have we care for expenses!" + +"You couldn't do a nobler thing, dear; and it's just like your +generous nature, you unselfish boy." + +The praise made Sally poignantly happy, but he was fair and just +enough to say it was rightfully due to Aleck rather than to himself, +since but for her he should never have had the money. + +Then they went up to bed, and in their delirium of bliss they forgot +and left the candle burning in the parlor. They did not remember +until they were undressed; then Sally was for letting it burn; +he said they could afford it, if it was a thousand. But Aleck went +down and put it out. + +A good job, too; for on her way back she hit on a scheme that would +turn the hundred and eighty thousand into half a million before it +had had time to get cold. + + + +CHAPTER III + + +The little newspaper which Aleck had subscribed for was a Thursday sheet; +it would make the trip of five hundred miles from Tilbury's village +and arrive on Saturday. Tilbury's letter had started on Friday, +more than a day too late for the benefactor to die and get into +that week's issue, but in plenty of time to make connection for the +next output. Thus the Fosters had to wait almost a complete week to +find out whether anything of a satisfactory nature had happened to him +or not. It was a long, long week, and the strain was a heavy one. +The pair could hardly have borne it if their minds had not had the +relief of wholesome diversion. We have seen that they had that. +The woman was piling up fortunes right along, the man was spending them +--spending all his wife would give him a chance at, at any rate. + +At last the Saturday came, and the WEEKLY SAGAMORE arrived. +Mrs. Eversly Bennett was present. She was the Presbyterian +parson's wife, and was working the Fosters for a charity. +Talk now died a sudden death--on the Foster side. Mrs. Bennett +presently discovered that her hosts were not hearing a word she +was saying; so she got up, wondering and indignant, and went away. +The moment she was out of the house, Aleck eagerly tore the wrapper +from the paper, and her eyes and Sally's swept the columns for the +death-notices. Disappointment! Tilbury was not anywhere mentioned. +Aleck was a Christian from the cradle, and duty and the force of +habit required her to go through the motions. She pulled herself +together and said, with a pious two-per-cent. trade joyousness: + +"Let us be humbly thankful that he has been spared; and--" + +"Damn his treacherous hide, I wish--" + +"Sally! For shame!" + +"I don't care!" retorted the angry man. "It's the way YOU feel, +and if you weren't so immorally pious you'd be honest and say so." + +Aleck said, with wounded dignity: + +"I do not see how you can say such unkind and unjust things. +There is no such thing as immoral piety." + +Sally felt a pang, but tried to conceal it under a shuffling attempt +to save his case by changing the form of it--as if changing the form +while retaining the juice could deceive the expert he was trying +to placate. He said: + +"I didn't mean so bad as that, Aleck; I didn't really mean +immoral piety, I only meant--meant--well, conventional piety, +you know; er--shop piety; the--the--why, YOU know what I mean. +Aleck--the--well, where you put up that plated article and play +it for solid, you know, without intending anything improper, +but just out of trade habit, ancient policy, petrified custom, +loyalty to--to--hang it, I can't find the right words, but YOU +know what I mean, Aleck, and that there isn't any harm in it. +I'll try again. You see, it's this way. If a person--" + +"You have said quite enough," said Aleck, coldly; "let the subject +be dropped." + +"I'M willing," fervently responded Sally, wiping the sweat from +his forehead and looking the thankfulness he had no words for. +Then, musingly, he apologized to himself. "I certainly held threes +--I KNOW it--but I drew and didn't fill. That's where I'm so often +weak in the game. If I had stood pat--but I didn't. I never do. +I don't know enough." + +Confessedly defeated, he was properly tame now and subdued. +Aleck forgave him with her eyes. + +The grand interest, the supreme interest, came instantly to the +front again; nothing could keep it in the background many minutes +on a stretch. The couple took up the puzzle of the absence +of Tilbury's death-notice. They discussed it every which way, +more or less hopefully, but they had to finish where they began, +and concede that the only really sane explanation of the absence +of the notice must be--and without doubt was--that Tilbury was +not dead. There was something sad about it, something even a +little unfair, maybe, but there it was, and had to be put up with. +They were agreed as to that. To Sally it seemed a strangely +inscrutable dispensation; more inscrutable than usual, he thought; +one of the most unnecessary inscrutable he could call to mind, +in fact--and said so, with some feeling; but if he was hoping +to draw Aleck he failed; she reserved her opinion, if she had one; +she had not the habit of taking injudicious risks in any market, +worldly or other. + +The pair must wait for next week's paper--Tilbury had +evidently postponed. That was their thought and their decision. +So they put the subject away and went about their affairs +again with as good heart as they could. + + +Now, if they had but known it, they had been wronging Tilbury +all the time. Tilbury had kept faith, kept it to the letter; +he was dead, he had died to schedule. He was dead more than four +days now and used to it; entirely dead, perfectly dead, as dead +as any other new person in the cemetery; dead in abundant time to get +into that week's SAGAMORE, too, and only shut out by an accident; +an accident which could not happen to a metropolitan journal, +but which happens easily to a poor little village rag like the SAGAMORE. +On this occasion, just as the editorial page was being locked up, +a gratis quart of strawberry ice-water arrived from Hostetter's +Ladies and Gents Ice-Cream Parlors, and the stickful of rather +chilly regret over Tilbury's translation got crowded out to make +room for the editor's frantic gratitude. + +On its way to the standing-galley Tilbury's notice got pied. +Otherwise it would have gone into some future edition, for WEEKLY +SAGAMORES do not waste "live" matter, and in their galleys "live" +matter is immortal, unless a pi accident intervenes. But a thing +that gets pied is dead, and for such there is no resurrection; +its chance of seeing print is gone, forever and ever. And so, +let Tilbury like it or not, let him rave in his grave to his fill, +no matter--no mention of his death would ever see the light in the +WEEKLY SAGAMORE. + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Five weeks drifted tediously along. The SAGAMORE arrived regularly on +the Saturdays, but never once contained a mention of Tilbury Foster. +Sally's patience broke down at this point, and he said, resentfully: + +"Damn his livers, he's immortal!" + +Aleck give him a very severe rebuke, and added with icy solemnity: + +"How would you feel if you were suddenly cut out just after such +an awful remark had escaped out of you?" + +Without sufficient reflection Sally responded: + +"I'd feel I was lucky I hadn't got caught with it IN me." + +Pride had forced him to say something, and as he could not think +of any rational thing to say he flung that out. Then he stole a base +--as he called it--that is, slipped from the presence, to keep from +being brayed in his wife's discussion-mortar. + +Six months came and went. The SAGAMORE was still silent about Tilbury. +Meantime, Sally had several times thrown out a feeler--that is, +a hint that he would like to know. Aleck had ignored the hints. +Sally now resolved to brace up and risk a frontal attack. +So he squarely proposed to disguise himself and go to Tilbury's +village and surreptitiously find out as to the prospects. +Aleck put her foot on the dangerous project with energy and decision. +She said: + +"What can you be thinking of? You do keep my hands full! +You have to be watched all the time, like a little child, to keep +you from walking into the fire. You'll stay right where you are!" + +"Why, Aleck, I could do it and not be found out--I'm certain of it." + +"Sally Foster, don't you know you would have to inquire around?" + +"Of course, but what of it? Nobody would suspect who I was." + +"Oh, listen to the man! Some day you've got to prove to the +executors that you never inquired. What then?" + +He had forgotten that detail. He didn't reply; there wasn't +anything to say. Aleck added: + +"Now then, drop that notion out of your mind, and don't ever meddle +with it again. Tilbury set that trap for you. Don't you know it's +a trap? He is on the watch, and fully expecting you to blunder +into it. Well, he is going to be disappointed--at least while I +am on deck. Sally!" + +"Well?" + +"As long as you live, if it's a hundred years, don't you ever make +an inquiry. Promise!" + +"All right," with a sigh and reluctantly. + +Then Aleck softened and said: + +"Don't be impatient. We are prospering; we can wait; there is +no hurry. Our small dead-certain income increases all the time; +and as to futures, I have not made a mistake yet--they are piling +up by the thousands and tens of thousands. There is not another +family in the state with such prospects as ours. Already we are +beginning to roll in eventual wealth. You know that, don't you?" + +"Yes, Aleck, it's certainly so." + +"Then be grateful for what God is doing for us and stop worrying. +You do not believe we could have achieved these prodigious results +without His special help and guidance, do you?" + +Hesitatingly, "N-no, I suppose not." Then, with feeling +and admiration, "And yet, when it comes to judiciousness +in watering a stock or putting up a hand to skin Wall Street +I don't give in that YOU need any outside amateur help, if I do wish I--" + +"Oh, DO shut up! I know you do not mean any harm or any irreverence, +poor boy, but you can't seem to open your mouth without letting out +things to make a person shudder. You keep me in constant dread. +For you and for all of us. Once I had no fear of the thunder, +but now when I hear it I--" + +Her voice broke, and she began to cry, and could not finish. +The sight of this smote Sally to the heart and he took her in his +arms and petted her and comforted her and promised better conduct, +and upbraided himself and remorsefully pleaded for forgiveness. +And he was in earnest, and sorry for what he had done and ready for any +sacrifice that could make up for it. + +And so, in privacy, he thought long and deeply over the matter, +resolving to do what should seem best. It was easy to PROMISE reform; +indeed he had already promised it. But would that do any real good, +any permanent good? No, it would be but temporary--he knew +his weakness, and confessed it to himself with sorrow--he could +not keep the promise. Something surer and better must be devised; +and he devised it. At cost of precious money which he had long +been saving up, shilling by shilling, he put a lightning-rod on +the house. + +At a subsequent time he relapsed. + +What miracles habit can do! and how quickly and how easily habits +are acquired--both trifling habits and habits which profoundly change us. +If by accident we wake at two in the morning a couple of nights +in succession, we have need to be uneasy, for another repetition can +turn the accident into a habit; and a month's dallying with whiskey +--but we all know these commonplace facts. + +The castle-building habit, the day-dreaming habit--how it grows! +what a luxury it becomes; how we fly to its enchantments at every +idle moment, how we revel in them, steep our souls in them, +intoxicate ourselves with their beguiling fantasies--oh yes, +and how soon and how easily our dream life and our material life +become so intermingled and so fused together that we can't quite +tell which is which, any more. + +By and by Aleck subscribed to a Chicago daily and for the WALL +STREET POINTER. With an eye single to finance she studied these +as diligently all the week as she studied her Bible Sundays. +Sally was lost in admiration, to note with what swift and sure strides +her genius and judgment developed and expanded in the forecasting and +handling of the securities of both the material and spiritual markets. +He was proud of her nerve and daring in exploiting worldly stocks, +and just as proud of her conservative caution in working her +spiritual deals. He noted that she never lost her head in either case; +that with a splendid courage she often went short on worldly futures, +but heedfully drew the line there--she was always long on the others. +Her policy was quite sane and simple, as she explained it to him: +what she put into earthly futures was for speculation, what she put +into spiritual futures was for investment; she was willing to go into +the one on a margin, and take chances, but in the case of the other, +"margin her no margins"--she wanted to cash in a hundred cents per +dollar's worth, and have the stock transferred on the books. + +It took but a very few months to educate Aleck's imagination +and Sally's. Each day's training added something to the spread +and effectiveness of the two machines. As a consequence, Aleck made +imaginary money much faster than at first she had dreamed of making it, +and Sally's competency in spending the overflow of it kept pace with +the strain put upon it, right along. In the beginning, Aleck had +given the coal speculation a twelvemonth in which to materialize, +and had been loath to grant that this term might possibly be shortened +by nine months. But that was the feeble work, the nursery work, +of a financial fancy that had had no teaching, no experience, +no practice. These aids soon came, then that nine months vanished, +and the imaginary ten-thousand-dollar investment came marching +home with three hundred per cent. profit on its back! + +It was a great day for the pair of Fosters. They were speechless +for joy. Also speechless for another reason: after much watching +of the market, Aleck had lately, with fear and trembling, made her +first flyer on a "margin," using the remaining twenty thousand of +the bequest in this risk. In her mind's eye she had seen it climb, +point by point--always with a chance that the market would break +--until at last her anxieties were too great for further endurance +--she being new to the margin business and unhardened, as yet--and she +gave her imaginary broker an imaginary order by imaginary telegraph +to sell. She said forty thousand dollars' profit was enough. +The sale was made on the very day that the coal venture had returned +with its rich freight. As I have said, the couple were speechless. +they sat dazed and blissful that night, trying to realize that they were +actually worth a hundred thousand dollars in clean, imaginary cash. +Yet so it was. + +It was the last time that ever Aleck was afraid of a margin; +at least afraid enough to let it break her sleep and pale her cheek +to the extent that this first experience in that line had done. + +Indeed it was a memorable night. Gradually the realization that they +were rich sank securely home into the souls of the pair, then they +began to place the money. If we could have looked out through +the eyes of these dreamers, we should have seen their tidy little +wooden house disappear, and two-story brick with a cast-iron fence +in front of it take its place; we should have seen a three-globed +gas-chandelier grow down from the parlor ceiling; we should have seen +the homely rag carpet turn to noble Brussels, a dollar and a half +a yard; we should have seen the plebeian fireplace vanish away and +a recherche, big base-burner with isinglass windows take position +and spread awe around. And we should have seen other things, +too; among them the buggy, the lap-robe, the stove-pipe hat, and so on. + +From that time forth, although the daughters and the neighbors +saw only the same old wooden house there, it was a two-story +brick to Aleck and Sally and not a night went by that Aleck did +not worry about the imaginary gas-bills, and get for all comfort +Sally's reckless retort: "What of it? We can afford it." + +Before the couple went to bed, that first night that they were rich, +they had decided that they must celebrate. They must give a party +--that was the idea. But how to explain it--to the daughters and +the neighbors? They could not expose the fact that they were rich. +Sally was willing, even anxious, to do it; but Aleck kept her head +and would not allow it. She said that although the money was as +good as in, it would be as well to wait until it was actually in. +On that policy she took her stand, and would not budge. +The great secret must be kept, she said--kept from the daughters and +everybody else. + +The pair were puzzled. They must celebrate, they were determined +to celebrate, but since the secret must be kept, what could +they celebrate? No birthdays were due for three months. +Tilbury wasn't available, evidently he was going to live forever; +what the nation COULD they celebrate? That was Sally's way +of putting it; and he was getting impatient, too, and harassed. +But at last he hit it--just by sheer inspiration, as it seemed to him +--and all their troubles were gone in a moment; they would celebrate +the Discovery of America. A splendid idea! + +Aleck was almost too proud of Sally for words--she said SHE never would +have thought of it. But Sally, although he was bursting with delight +in the compliment and with wonder at himself, tried not to let on, +and said it wasn't really anything, anybody could have done it. +Whereat Aleck, with a prideful toss of her happy head, said: + +"Oh, certainly! Anybody could--oh, anybody! Hosannah Dilkins, +for instance! Or maybe Adelbert Peanut--oh, DEAR--yes! Well, I'd like +to see them try it, that's all. Dear-me-suz, if they could think +of the discovery of a forty-acre island it's more than _I_ believe +they could; and as for the whole continent, why, Sally Foster, +you know perfectly well it would strain the livers and lights +out of them and THEN they couldn't!" + +The dear woman, she knew he had talent; and if affection made +her over-estimate the size of it a little, surely it was a sweet +and gentle crime, and forgivable for its source's sake. + + + +CHAPTER V + + +The celebration went off well. The friends were all present, +both the young and the old. Among the young were Flossie and +Gracie Peanut and their brother Adelbert, who was a rising young +journeyman tinner, also Hosannah Dilkins, Jr., journeyman plasterer, +just out of his apprenticeship. For many months Adelbert and Hosannah +had been showing interest in Gwendolen and Clytemnestra Foster, +and the parents of the girls had noticed this with private satisfaction. +But they suddenly realized now that that feeling had passed. +They recognized that the changed financial conditions had raised +up a social bar between their daughters and the young mechanics. +The daughters could now look higher--and must. Yes, must. They need +marry nothing below the grade of lawyer or merchant; poppa and momma +would take care of this; there must be no mesalliances. + +However, these thinkings and projects of their were private, +and did not show on the surface, and therefore threw no shadow +upon the celebration. What showed upon the surface was a serene +and lofty contentment and a dignity of carriage and gravity of +deportment which compelled the admiration and likewise the wonder +of the company. All noticed it and all commented upon it, but none +was able to divine the secret of it. It was a marvel and a mystery. +Three several persons remarked, without suspecting what clever +shots they were making: + +"It's as if they'd come into property." + +That was just it, indeed. + +Most mothers would have taken hold of the matrimonial matter in the +old regulation way; they would have given the girls a talking to, +of a solemn sort and untactful--a lecture calculated to defeat its +own purpose, by producing tears and secret rebellion; and the said +mothers would have further damaged the business by requesting +the young mechanics to discontinue their attentions. But this +mother was different. She was practical. She said nothing to any +of the young people concerned, nor to any one else except Sally. +He listened to her and understood; understood and admired. +He said: + +"I get the idea. Instead of finding fault with the samples on view, +thus hurting feelings and obstructing trade without occasion, +you merely offer a higher class of goods for the money, and leave +nature to take her course. It's wisdom, Aleck, solid wisdom, +and sound as a nut. Who's your fish? Have you nominated him yet?" + +No, she hadn't. They must look the market over--which they did. +To start with, they considered and discussed Brandish, rising young +lawyer, and Fulton, rising young dentist. Sally must invite them +to dinner. But not right away; there was no hurry, Aleck said. +Keep an eye on the pair, and wait; nothing would be lost by going +slowly in so important a matter. + +It turned out that this was wisdom, too; for inside of three +weeks Aleck made a wonderful strike which swelled her imaginary +hundred thousand to four hundred thousand of the same quality. +She and Sally were in the clouds that evening. For the first +time they introduced champagne at dinner. Not real champagne, +but plenty real enough for the amount of imagination expended on it. +It was Sally that did it, and Aleck weakly submitted. At bottom both +were troubled and ashamed, for he was a high-up Son of Temperance, +and at funerals wore an apron which no dog could look upon and retain +his reason and his opinion; and she was a W. C. T. U., with all that +that implies of boiler-iron virtue and unendurable holiness. But there +is was; the pride of riches was beginning its disintegrating work. +They had lived to prove, once more, a sad truth which had been proven +many times before in the world: that whereas principle is a great +and noble protection against showy and degrading vanities and vices, +poverty is worth six of it. More than four hundred thousand +dollars to the good. They took up the matrimonial matter again. +Neither the dentist nor the lawyer was mentioned; there was no occasion, +they were out of the running. Disqualified. They discussed the son +of the pork-packer and the son of the village banker. But finally, +as in the previous case, they concluded to wait and think, and go +cautiously and sure. + +Luck came their way again. Aleck, ever watchful saw a great +and risky chance, and took a daring flyer. A time of trembling, +of doubt, of awful uneasiness followed, for non-success meant absolute +ruin and nothing short of it. Then came the result, and Aleck, +faint with joy, could hardly control her voice when she said: + +"The suspense is over, Sally--and we are worth a cold million!" + +Sally wept for gratitude, and said: + +"Oh, Electra, jewel of women, darling of my heart, we are free +at last, we roll in wealth, we need never scrimp again. It's a +case for Veuve Cliquot!" and he got out a pint of spruce-beer +and made sacrifice, he saying "Damn the expense," and she rebuking +him gently with reproachful but humid and happy eyes. + +They shelved the pork-packer's son and the banker's son, and sat +down to consider the Governor's son and the son of the Congressman. + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +It were a weariness to follow in detail the leaps and bounds the Foster +fictitious finances took from this time forth. It was marvelous, +it was dizzying, it was dazzling. Everything Aleck touched turned +to fairy gold, and heaped itself glittering toward the firmament. +Millions upon millions poured in, and still the mighty stream flowed +thundering along, still its vast volume increased. Five millions +--ten millions--twenty--thirty--was there never to be an end? + +Two years swept by in a splendid delirium, the intoxicated Fosters +scarcely noticing the flight of time. They were now worth three hundred +million dollars; they were in every board of directors of every +prodigious combine in the country; and still as time drifted along, +the millions went on piling up, five at a time, ten at a time, +as fast as they could tally them off, almost. The three hundred +double itself--then doubled again--and yet again--and yet once more. + +Twenty-four hundred millions! + +The business was getting a little confused. It was necessary +to take an account of stock, and straighten it out. The Fosters +knew it, they felt it, they realized that it was imperative; +but they also knew that to do it properly and perfectly the task +must be carried to a finish without a break when once it was begun. +A ten-hours' job; and where could THEY find ten leisure hours +in a bunch? Sally was selling pins and sugar and calico all day +and every day; Aleck was cooking and washing dishes and sweeping +and making beds all day and every day, with none to help, +for the daughters were being saved up for high society. The Fosters +knew there was one way to get the ten hours, and only one. +Both were ashamed to name it; each waited for the other to do it. +Finally Sally said: + +"Somebody's got to give in. It's up to me. Consider that I've +named it--never mind pronouncing it out aloud." + +Aleck colored, but was grateful. Without further remark, they fell. +Fell, and--broke the Sabbath. For that was their only free +ten-hour stretch. It was but another step in the downward path. +Others would follow. Vast wealth has temptations which fatally +and surely undermine the moral structure of persons not habituated +to its possession. + +They pulled down the shades and broke the Sabbath. With hard +and patient labor they overhauled their holdings and listed them. +And a long-drawn procession of formidable names it was! +Starting with the Railway Systems, Steamer Lines, Standard Oil, +Ocean Cables, Diluted Telegraph, and all the rest, and winding +up with Klondike, De Beers, Tammany Graft, and Shady Privileges +in the Post-office Department. + +Twenty-four hundred millions, and all safely planted in Good Things, +gilt-edged and interest-bearing. Income, $120,000,000 a year. +Aleck fetched a long purr of soft delight, and said: + +"Is it enough?" + +"It is, Aleck." + +"What shall we do?" + +"Stand pat." + +"Retire from business?" + +"That's it." + +"I am agreed. The good work is finished; we will take a long rest +and enjoy the money." + +"Good! Aleck!" + +"Yes, dear?" + +"How much of the income can we spend?" + +"The whole of it." + +It seemed to her husband that a ton of chains fell from his limbs. +He did not say a word; he was happy beyond the power of speech. + +After that, they broke the Sabbaths right along as fast as they +turned up. It is the first wrong step that counts. Every Sunday +they put in the whole day, after morning service, on inventions +--inventions of ways to spend the money. They got to continuing this +delicious dissipation until past midnight; and at every seance Aleck +lavished millions upon great charities and religious enterprises, +and Sally lavished like sums upon matters to which (at first) +he gave definite names. Only at first. Later the names gradually +lost sharpness of outline, and eventually faded into "sundries," +thus becoming entirely--but safely--undescriptive. For Sally +was crumbling. The placing of these millions added seriously +and most uncomfortably to the family expenses--in tallow candles. +For a while Aleck was worried. Then, after a little, she ceased +to worry, for the occasion of it was gone. She was pained, +she was grieved, she was ashamed; but she said nothing, and so became +an accessory. Sally was taking candles; he was robbing the store. +It is ever thus. Vast wealth, to the person unaccustomed to it, +is a bane; it eats into the flesh and bone of his morals. +When the Fosters were poor, they could have been trusted with +untold candles. But now they--but let us not dwell upon it. +From candles to apples is but a step: Sally got to taking apples; +then soap; then maple-sugar; then canned goods; then crockery. +How easy it is to go from bad to worse, when once we have started upon a +downward course! + +Meantime, other effects had been milestoning the course of the Fosters' +splendid financial march. The fictitious brick dwelling had +given place to an imaginary granite one with a checker-board +mansard roof; in time this one disappeared and gave place to a +still grander home--and so on and so on. Mansion after mansion, +made of air, rose, higher, broader, finer, and each in its turn +vanished away; until now in these latter great days, our dreamers +were in fancy housed, in a distant region, in a sumptuous vast +palace which looked out from a leafy summit upon a noble prospect +of vale and river and receding hills steeped in tinted mists +--and all private, all the property of the dreamers; a palace swarming +with liveried servants, and populous with guests of fame and power, +hailing from all the world's capitals, foreign and domestic. + +This palace was far, far away toward the rising sun, immeasurably remote, +astronomically remote, in Newport, Rhode Island, Holy Land +of High Society, ineffable Domain of the American Aristocracy. +As a rule they spent a part of every Sabbath--after morning service +--in this sumptuous home, the rest of it they spent in Europe, +or in dawdling around in their private yacht. Six days of sordid +and plodding fact life at home on the ragged edge of Lakeside +and straitened means, the seventh in Fairlyand--such had been +their program and their habit. + +In their sternly restricted fact life they remained as of old +--plodding, diligent, careful, practical, economical. They stuck +loyally to the little Presbyterian Church, and labored faithfully +in its interests and stood by its high and tough doctrines with all +their mental and spiritual energies. But in their dream life they +obeyed the invitations of their fancies, whatever they might be, +and howsoever the fancies might change. Aleck's fancies were not +very capricious, and not frequent, but Sally's scattered a good deal. +Aleck, in her dream life, went over to the Episcopal camp, on account +of its large official titles; next she became High-church on account +of the candles and shows; and next she naturally changed to Rome, +where there were cardinals and more candles. But these excursions +were a nothing to Sally's. His dream life was a glowing and continuous +and persistent excitement, and he kept every part of it fresh and +sparkling by frequent changes, the religious part along with the rest. +He worked his religions hard, and changed them with his shirt. + +The liberal spendings of the Fosters upon their fancies began +early in their prosperities, and grew in prodigality step by step +with their advancing fortunes. In time they became truly enormous. +Aleck built a university or two per Sunday; also a hospital or two; +also a Rowton hotel or so; also a batch of churches; now and then +a cathedral; and once, with untimely and ill-chosen playfulness, +Sally said, "It was a cold day when she didn't ship a cargo of +missionaries to persuade unreflecting Chinamen to trade off twenty-four +carat Confucianism for counterfeit Christianity." + +This rude and unfeeling language hurt Aleck to the heart, and she +went from the presence crying. That spectacle went to his own heart, +and in his pain and shame he would have given worlds to have +those unkind words back. She had uttered no syllable of reproach +--and that cut him. Not one suggestion that he look at his own record +--and she could have made, oh, so many, and such blistering ones! +Her generous silence brought a swift revenge, for it turned his +thoughts upon himself, it summoned before him a spectral procession, +a moving vision of his life as he had been leading it these past +few years of limitless prosperity, and as he sat there reviewing +it his cheeks burned and his soul was steeped in humiliation. +Look at her life--how fair it was, and tending ever upward; and look +at his own--how frivolous, how charged with mean vanities, how selfish, +how empty, how ignoble! And its trend--never upward, but downward, +ever downward! + +He instituted comparisons between her record and his own. He had found +fault with her--so he mused--HE! And what could he say for himself? +When she built her first church what was he doing? Gathering other +blase multimillionaires into a Poker Club; defiling his own palace +with it; losing hundreds of thousands to it at every sitting, +and sillily vain of the admiring notoriety it made for him. +When she was building her first university, what was he doing? +Polluting himself with a gay and dissipated secret life in the +company of other fast bloods, multimillionaires in money and paupers +in character. When she was building her first foundling asylum, +what was he doing? Alas! When she was projecting her noble Society +for the Purifying of the Sex, what was he doing? Ah, what, indeed! +When she and the W. C. T. U. and the Woman with the Hatchet, +moving with resistless march, were sweeping the fatal bottle from +the land, what was he doing? Getting drunk three times a day. +When she, builder of a hundred cathedrals, was being gratefully +welcomed and blest in papal Rome and decorated with the Golden Rose +which she had so honorably earned, what was he doing? Breaking the +bank at Monte Carlo. + +He stopped. He could go no farther; he could not bear the rest. +He rose up, with a great resolution upon his lips: this secret +life should be revealing, and confessed; no longer would he live +it clandestinely, he would go and tell her All. + +And that is what he did. He told her All; and wept upon +her bosom; wept, and moaned, and begged for her forgiveness. +It was a profound shock, and she staggered under the blow, but he +was her own, the core of her heart, the blessing of her eyes, +her all in all, she could deny him nothing, and she forgave him. +She felt that he could never again be quite to her what he had +been before; she knew that he could only repent, and not reform; +yet all morally defaced and decayed as he was, was he not her own, +her very own, the idol of her deathless worship? She said she +was his serf, his slave, and she opened her yearning heart and took +him in. + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +One Sunday afternoon some time after this they were sailing the +summer seas in their dream yacht, and reclining in lazy luxury under +the awning of the after-deck. There was silence, for each was busy +with his own thoughts. These seasons of silence had insensibly +been growing more and more frequent of late; the old nearness and +cordiality were waning. Sally's terrible revelation had done its work; +Aleck had tried hard to drive the memory of it out of her mind, +but it would not go, and the shame and bitterness of it were +poisoning her gracious dream life. She could see now (on Sundays) +that her husband was becoming a bloated and repulsive Thing. +She could not close her eyes to this, and in these days she +no longer looked at him, Sundays, when she could help it. + +But she--was she herself without blemish? Alas, she knew she was not. +She was keeping a secret from him, she was acting dishonorably +toward him, and many a pang it was costing her. SHE WAS BREAKING +THE COMPACT, AND CONCEALING IT FROM HIM. Under strong temptation +she had gone into business again; she had risked their whole +fortune in a purchase of all the railway systems and coal and steel +companies in the country on a margin, and she was now trembling, +every Sabbath hour, lest through some chance word of hers he find +it out. In her misery and remorse for this treachery she could +not keep her heart from going out to him in pity; she was filled +with compunctions to see him lying there, drunk and contented, +and ever suspecting. Never suspecting--trusting her with a perfect +and pathetic trust, and she holding over him by a thread a possible +calamity of so devastating a-- + +"SAY--Aleck?" + +The interrupting words brought her suddenly to herself. She was +grateful to have that persecuting subject from her thoughts, +and she answered, with much of the old-time tenderness in her tone: + +"Yes, dear." + +"Do you know, Aleck, I think we are making a mistake--that is, +you are. I mean about the marriage business." He sat up, fat and +froggy and benevolent, like a bronze Buddha, and grew earnest. +"Consider--it's more than five years. You've continued the same +policy from the start: with every rise, always holding on for five +points higher. Always when I think we are going to have some weddings, +you see a bigger thing ahead, and I undergo another disappointment. +_I_ think you are too hard to please. Some day we'll get left. +First, we turned down the dentist and the lawyer. That was all right +--it was sound. Next, we turned down the banker's son and the +pork-butcher's heir--right again, and sound. Next, we turned +down the Congressman's son and the Governor's--right as a trivet, +I confess it. Next the Senator's son and the son of the Vice-President +of the United States--perfectly right, there's no permanency about +those little distinctions. Then you went for the aristocracy; +and I thought we had struck oil at last--yes. We would make +a plunge at the Four Hundred, and pull in some ancient lineage, +venerable, holy, ineffable, mellow with the antiquity of a hundred +and fifty years, disinfected of the ancestral odors of salt-cod +and pelts all of a century ago, and unsmirched by a day's work since, +and then! why, then the marriages, of course. But no, along comes +a pair a real aristocrats from Europe, and straightway you throw over +the half-breeds. It was awfully discouraging, Aleck! Since then, +what a procession! You turned down the baronets for a pair +of barons; you turned down the barons for a pair of viscounts; +the viscounts for a pair of earls; the earls for a pair of marquises; +the marquises for a brace of dukes. NOW, Aleck, cash in! +--you've played the limit. You've got a job lot of four dukes +under the hammer; of four nationalities; all sound in the wind +and limb and pedigree, all bankrupt and in debt up to the ears. +They come high, but we can afford it. Come, Aleck, don't delay +any longer, don't keep up the suspense: take the whole lay-out, +and leave the girls to choose!" + +Aleck had been smiling blandly and contentedly all through this +arraignment of her marriage policy, a pleasant light, as of triumph +with perhaps a nice surprise peeping out through it, rose in her eyes, +and she said, as calmly as she could: + +"Sally, what would you say to--ROYALTY?" + +Prodigious! Poor man, it knocked him silly, and he fell over the +garboard-strake and barked his shin on the cat-heads. He was dizzy +for a moment, then he gathered himself up and limped over and sat +down by his wife and beamed his old-time admiration and affection +upon her in floods, out of his bleary eyes. + +"By George!" he said, fervently, "Aleck, you ARE great--the greatest +woman in the whole earth! I can't ever learn the whole size of you. +I can't ever learn the immeasurable deeps of you. Here I've been +considering myself qualified to criticize your game. _I!_ Why, +if I had stopped to think, I'd have known you had a lone hand up +your sleeve. Now, dear heart, I'm all red-hot impatience--tell me +about it!" + +The flattered and happy woman put her lips to his ear and whispered +a princely name. It made him catch his breath, it lit his face +with exultation. + +"Land!" he said, "it's a stunning catch! He's got a gambling-hall, +and a graveyard, and a bishop, and a cathedral--all his very own. +And all gilt-edged five-hundred-per-cent. stock, every detail of it; +the tidiest little property in Europe. and that graveyard +--it's the selectest in the world: none but suicides admitted; +YES, sir, and the free-list suspended, too, ALL the time. +There isn't much land in the principality, but there's enough: +eight hundred acres in the graveyard and forty-two outside. +It's a SOVEREIGNTY--that's the main thing; LAND'S nothing. +There's plenty land, Sahara's drugged with it." + +Aleck glowed; she was profoundly happy. She said: + +"Think of it, Sally--it is a family that has never married outside +the Royal and Imperial Houses of Europe: our grandchildren will +sit upon thrones!" + +"True as you live, Aleck--and bear scepters, too; and handle +them as naturally and nonchantly as I handle a yardstick. +it's a grand catch, Aleck. He's corralled, is he? Can't get away? +You didn't take him on a margin?" + +"No. Trust me for that. He's not a liability, he's an asset. +So is the other one." + +"Who is it, Aleck?" + +"His Royal Highness +Sigismund-Siegfriend-Lauenfeld-Dinkelspiel-Schwartzenberg +Blutwurst, Hereditary Grant Duke of Katzenyammer." + +"No! You can't mean it!" + +"It's as true as I'm sitting here, I give you my word," she answered. + +His cup was full, and he hugged her to his heart with rapture, saying: + +"How wonderful it all seems, and how beautiful! It's one of the +oldest and noblest of the three hundred and sixty-four ancient +German principalities, and one of the few that was allowed to +retain its royal estate when Bismarck got done trimming them. +I know that farm, I've been there. It's got a rope-walk and a +candle-factory and an army. Standing army. Infantry and cavalry. +Three soldier and a horse. Aleck, it's been a long wait, and full +of heartbreak and hope deferred, but God knows I am happy now. +Happy, and grateful to you, my own, who have done it all. +When is it to be?" + +"Next Sunday." + +"Good. And we'll want to do these weddings up in the very regalest +style that's going. It's properly due to the royal quality of the +parties of the first part. Now as I understand it, there is only one +kind of marriage that is sacred to royalty, exclusive to royalty: +it's the morganatic." + +"What do they call it that for, Sally?" + +"I don't know; but anyway it's royal, and royal only." + +"Then we will insist upon it. More--I will compel it. +It is morganatic marriage or none." + +"That settles it!" said Sally, rubbing his hands with delight. +"And it will be the very first in America. Aleck, it will make +Newport sick." + +Then they fell silent, and drifted away upon their dream wings +to the far regions of the earth to invite all the crowned heads +and their families and provide gratis transportation to them. + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +During three days the couple walked upon air, with their heads in +the clouds. They were but vaguely conscious of their surroundings; +they saw all things dimly, as through a veil; they were steeped +in dreams, often they did not hear when they were spoken to; +they often did not understand when they heard; they answered confusedly +or at random; Sally sold molasses by weight, sugar by the yard, +and furnished soap when asked for candles, and Aleck put the cat +in the wash and fed milk to the soiled linen. Everybody was stunned +and amazed, and went about muttering, "What CAN be the matter +with the Fosters?" + +Three days. Then came events! Things had taken a happy turn, +and for forty-eight hours Aleck's imaginary corner had been booming. +Up--up--still up! Cost point was passed. Still up--and up +--and up! Cost point was passed. STill up--and up--and up! +Five points above cost--then ten--fifteen--twenty! Twenty points +cold profit on the vast venture, now, and Aleck's imaginary brokers +were shouting frantically by imaginary long-distance, "Sell! sell! +for Heaven's sake SELL!" + +She broke the splendid news to Sally, and he, too, said, +"Sell! sell--oh, don't make a blunder, now, you own the earth! +--sell, sell!" But she set her iron will and lashed it amidships, +and said she would hold on for five points more if she died for it. + +It was a fatal resolve. The very next day came the historic crash, +the record crash, the devastating crash, when the bottom fell out +of Wall Street, and the whole body of gilt-edged stocks dropped +ninety-five points in five hours, and the multimillionaire was seen +begging his bread in the Bowery. Aleck sternly held her grip +and "put up" as long as she could, but at last there came a call +which she was powerless to meet, and her imaginary brokers sold +her out. Then, and not till then, the man in her was vanished, +and the woman in her resumed sway. She put her arms about her +husband's neck and wept, saying: + +"I am to blame, do not forgive me, I cannot bear it. We are paupers! +Paupers, and I am so miserable. The weddings will never come off; +all that is past; we could not even buy the dentist, now." + +A bitter reproach was on Sally's tongue: "I BEGGED you to sell, +but you--" He did not say it; he had not the heart to add a hurt +to that broken and repentant spirit. A nobler thought came to him +and he said: + +"Bear up, my Aleck, all is not lost! You really never invested +a penny of my uncle's bequest, but only its unmaterialized future; +what we have lost was only the incremented harvest from that future +by your incomparable financial judgment and sagacity. Cheer up, +banish these griefs; we still have the thirty thousand untouched; +and with the experience which you have acquired, think what you will +be able to do with it in a couple years! The marriages are not off, +they are only postponed." + +These are blessed words. Aleck saw how true they were, and their +influence was electric; her tears ceased to flow, and her great spirit +rose to its full stature again. With flashing eye and grateful heart, +and with hand uplifted in pledge and prophecy, she said: + +"Now and here I proclaim--" + +But she was interrupted by a visitor. It was the editor and proprietor +of the SAGAMORE. He had happened into Lakeside to pay a duty-call upon +an obscure grandmother of his who was nearing the end of her pilgrimage, +and with the idea of combining business with grief he had looked up +the Fosters, who had been so absorbed in other things for the past +four years that they neglected to pay up their subscription. +Six dollars due. No visitor could have been more welcome. He would +know all about Uncle Tilbury and what his chances might be getting +to be, cemeterywards. They could, of course, ask no questions, +for that would squelch the bequest, but they could nibble around on +the edge of the subject and hope for results. The scheme did not work. +The obtuse editor did not know he was being nibbled at; but at last, +chance accomplished what art had failed in. In illustration of something +under discussion which required the help of metaphor, the editor said: + +"Land, it's a tough as Tilbury Foster!--as WE say." + +It was sudden, and it made the Fosters jump. The editor noticed, +and said, apologetically: + +"No harm intended, I assure you. It's just a saying; just a joke, +you know--nothing of it. Relation of yours?" + +Sally crowded his burning eagerness down, and answered with all +the indifference he could assume: + +"I--well, not that I know of, but we've heard of him." The editor +was thankful, and resumed his composure. Sally added: "Is he +--is he--well?" + +"Is he WELL? Why, bless you he's in Sheol these five years!" + +The Fosters were trembling with grief, though it felt like joy. +Sally said, non-committally--and tentatively: + +"Ah, well, such is life, and none can escape--not even the rich +are spared." + +The editor laughed. + +"If you are including Tilbury," said he, "it don't apply. +HE hadn't a cent; the town had to bury him." + +The Fosters sat petrified for two minutes; petrified and cold. +Then, white-faced and weak-voiced, Sally asked: + +"Is it true? Do you KNOW it to be true?" + +"Well, I should say! I was one of the executors. He hadn't +anything to leave but a wheelbarrow, and he left that to me. +It hadn't any wheel, and wasn't any good. Still, it was something, +and so, to square up, I scribbled off a sort of a little obituarial +send-off for him, but it got crowded out." + +The Fosters were not listening--their cup was full, it could +contain no more. They sat with bowed heads, dead to all things +but the ache at their hearts. + +An hour later. Still they sat there, bowed, motionless, silent, +the visitor long ago gone, they unaware. + +Then they stirred, and lifted their heads wearily, and gazed at each +other wistfully, dreamily, dazed; then presently began to twaddle +to each other in a wandering and childish way. At intervals they +lapsed into silences, leaving a sentence unfinished, seemingly either +unaware of it or losing their way. Sometimes, when they woke +out of these silences they had a dim and transient consciousness +that something had happened to their minds; then with a dumb +and yearning solicitude they would softly caress each other's +hands in mutual compassion and support, as if they would say: +"I am near you, I will not forsake you, we will bear it together; +somewhere there is release and forgetfulness, somewhere there +is a grave and peace; be patient, it will not be long." + +They lived yet two years, in mental night, always brooding, +steeped in vague regrets and melancholy dreams, never speaking; +then release came to both on the same day. + +Toward the end the darkness lifted from Sally's ruined mind +for a moment, and he said: + +"Vast wealth, acquired by sudden and unwholesome means, is a snare. +It did us no good, transient were its feverish pleasures; +yet for its sake we threw away our sweet and simple and happy life +--let others take warning by us." + +He lay silent awhile, with closed eyes; then as the chill of death +crept upward toward his heart, and consciousness was fading from +his brain, he muttered: + +"Money had brought him misery, and he took his revenge upon us, +who had done him no harm. He had his desire: with base and cunning +calculation he left us but thirty thousand, knowing we would try +to increase it, and ruin our life and break our hearts. Without added +expense he could have left us far above desire of increase, far above +the temptation to speculate, and a kinder soul would have done it; +but in him was no generous spirit, no pity, no--" + + + + + + +A DOG'S TALE + + +CHAPTER I + + +My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am +a Presbyterian. This is what my mother told me, I do not know +these nice distinctions myself. To me they are only fine large +words meaning nothing. My mother had a fondness for such; +she liked to say them, and see other dogs look surprised and envious, +as wondering how she got so much education. But, indeed, it was not +real education; it was only show: she got the words by listening +in the dining-room and drawing-room when there was company, +and by going with the children to Sunday-school and listening there; +and whenever she heard a large word she said it over to herself +many times, and so was able to keep it until there was a dogmatic +gathering in the neighborhood, then she would get it off, +and surprise and distress them all, from pocket-pup to mastiff, +which rewarded her for all her trouble. If there was a stranger +he was nearly sure to be suspicious, and when he got his breath +again he would ask her what it meant. And she always told him. +He was never expecting this but thought he would catch her; +so when she told him, he was the one that looked ashamed, +whereas he had thought it was going to be she. The others were +always waiting for this, and glad of it and proud of her, for they +knew what was going to happen, because they had had experience. +When she told the meaning of a big word they were all so taken up +with admiration that it never occurred to any dog to doubt if it +was the right one; and that was natural, because, for one thing, +she answered up so promptly that it seemed like a dictionary speaking, +and for another thing, where could they find out whether it was right +or not? for she was the only cultivated dog there was. By and by, +when I was older, she brought home the word Unintellectual, one time, +and worked it pretty hard all the week at different gatherings, +making much unhappiness and despondency; and it was at this time +that I noticed that during that week she was asked for the meaning +at eight different assemblages, and flashed out a fresh definition +every time, which showed me that she had more presence of mind +than culture, though I said nothing, of course. She had one word +which she always kept on hand, and ready, like a life-preserver, +a kind of emergency word to strap on when she was likely to get +washed overboard in a sudden way--that was the word Synonymous. +When she happened to fetch out a long word which had had its day +weeks before and its prepared meanings gone to her dump-pile, +if there was a stranger there of course it knocked him groggy for +a couple of minutes, then he would come to, and by that time she +would be away down wind on another tack, and not expecting anything; +so when he'd hail and ask her to cash in, I (the only dog on +the inside of her game) could see her canvas flicker a moment +--but only just a moment--then it would belly out taut and full, +and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, "It's synonymous +with supererogation," or some godless long reptile of a word +like that, and go placidly about and skim away on the next tack, +perfectly comfortable, you know, and leave that stranger looking +profane and embarrassed, and the initiated slatting the floor +with their tails in unison and their faces transfigured with a +holy joy. + +And it was the same with phrases. She would drag home a whole phrase, +if it had a grand sound, and play it six nights and two matinees, +and explain it a new way every time--which she had to, for all she +cared for was the phrase; she wasn't interested in what it meant, +and knew those dogs hadn't wit enough to catch her, anyway. +Yes, she was a daisy! She got so she wasn't afraid of anything, +she had such confidence in the ignorance of those creatures. +She even brought anecdotes that she had heard the family and the +dinner-guests laugh and shout over; and as a rule she got the nub +of one chestnut hitched onto another chestnut, where, of course, +it didn't fit and hadn't any point; and when she delivered the nub +she fell over and rolled on the floor and laughed and barked +in the most insane way, while I could see that she was wondering +to herself why it didn't seem as funny as it did when she first +heard it. But no harm was done; the others rolled and barked too, +privately ashamed of themselves for not seeing the point, and never +suspecting that the fault was not with them and there wasn't any +to see. + +You can see by these things that she was of a rather vain and +frivolous character; still, she had virtues, and enough to make up, +I think. She had a kind heart and gentle ways, and never harbored +resentments for injuries done her, but put them easily out of her +mind and forgot them; and she taught her children her kindly way, +and from her we learned also to be brave and prompt in time of danger, +and not to run away, but face the peril that threatened friend +or stranger, and help him the best we could without stopping to think +what the cost might be to us. And she taught us not by words only, +but by example, and that is the best way and the surest and the +most lasting. Why, the brave things she did, the splendid things! she +was just a soldier; and so modest about it--well, you couldn't help +admiring her, and you couldn't help imitating her; not even a King +Charles spaniel could remain entirely despicable in her society. +So, as you see, there was more to her than her education. + + + +CHAPTER II + + +When I was well grown, at last, I was sold and taken away, +and I never saw her again. She was broken-hearted, and so was I, +and we cried; but she comforted me as well as she could, and said +we were sent into this world for a wise and good purpose, and must +do our duties without repining, take our life as we might find it, +live it for the best good of others, and never mind about the results; +they were not our affair. She said men who did like this would have +a noble and beautiful reward by and by in another world, and although +we animals would not go there, to do well and right without reward +would give to our brief lives a worthiness and dignity which in +itself would be a reward. She had gathered these things from time +to time when she had gone to the Sunday-school with the children, +and had laid them up in her memory more carefully than she had done +with those other words and phrases; and she had studied them deeply, +for her good and ours. One may see by this that she had a wise +and thoughtful head, for all there was so much lightness and vanity +in it. + +So we said our farewells, and looked our last upon each other through +our tears; and the last thing she said--keeping it for the last +to make me remember it the better, I think--was, "In memory of me, +when there is a time of danger to another do not think of yourself, +think of your mother, and do as she would do." + +Do you think I could forget that? No. + + + +CHAPTER III + + +It was such a charming home!--my new one; a fine great house, +with pictures, and delicate decorations, and rich furniture, +and no gloom anywhere, but all the wilderness of dainty colors lit up +with flooding sunshine; and the spacious grounds around it, and the +great garden--oh, greensward, and noble trees, and flowers, no end! +And I was the same as a member of the family; and they loved me, +and petted me, and did not give me a new name, but called me by my +old one that was dear to me because my mother had given it me +--Aileen Mavoureen. She got it out of a song; and the Grays knew +that song, and said it was a beautiful name. + +Mrs. Gray was thirty, and so sweet and so lovely, you cannot +imagine it; and Sadie was ten, and just like her mother, just a +darling slender little copy of her, with auburn tails down her back, +and short frocks; and the baby was a year old, and plump and dimpled, +and fond of me, and never could get enough of hauling on my tail, +and hugging me, and laughing out its innocent happiness; and Mr. Gray +was thirty-eight, and tall and slender and handsome, a little bald +in front, alert, quick in his movements, business-like, prompt, +decided, unsentimental, and with that kind of trim-chiseled face +that just seems to glint and sparkle with frosty intellectuality! +He was a renowned scientist. I do not know what the word means, +but my mother would know how to use it and get effects. She would +know how to depress a rat-terrier with it and make a lap-dog +look sorry he came. But that is not the best one; the best one +was Laboratory. My mother could organize a Trust on that one that +would skin the tax-collars off the whole herd. The laboratory +was not a book, or a picture, or a place to wash your hands in, +as the college president's dog said--no, that is the lavatory; +the laboratory is quite different, and is filled with jars, +and bottles, and electrics, and wires, and strange machines; +and every week other scientists came there and sat in the place, +and used the machines, and discussed, and made what they called +experiments and discoveries; and often I came, too, and stood +around and listened, and tried to learn, for the sake of my mother, +and in loving memory of her, although it was a pain to me, as realizing +what she was losing out of her life and I gaining nothing at all; +for try as I might, I was never able to make anything out of it +at all. + +Other times I lay on the floor in the mistress's work-room and slept, +she gently using me for a foot-stool, knowing it pleased me, +for it was a caress; other times I spent an hour in the nursery, +and got well tousled and made happy; other times I watched by the +crib there, when the baby was asleep and the nurse out for a few +minutes on the baby's affairs; other times I romped and raced +through the grounds and the garden with Sadie till we were tired out, +then slumbered on the grass in the shade of a tree while she read +her book; other times I went visiting among the neighbor dogs +--for there were some most pleasant ones not far away, and one very +handsome and courteous and graceful one, a curly-haired Irish +setter by the name of Robin Adair, who was a Presbyterian like me, +and belonged to the Scotch minister. + +The servants in our house were all kind to me and were fond of me, +and so, as you see, mine was a pleasant life. There could not be +a happier dog that I was, nor a gratefuler one. I will say this +for myself, for it is only the truth: I tried in all ways to do +well and right, and honor my mother's memory and her teachings, +and earn the happiness that had come to me, as best I could. + +By and by came my little puppy, and then my cup was full, my happiness +was perfect. It was the dearest little waddling thing, and so smooth +and soft and velvety, and had such cunning little awkward paws, +and such affectionate eyes, and such a sweet and innocent face; +and it made me so proud to see how the children and their mother +adored it, and fondled it, and exclaimed over every little wonderful +thing it did. It did seem to me that life was just too lovely to-- + +Then came the winter. One day I was standing a watch in the nursery. +That is to say, I was asleep on the bed. The baby was asleep in +the crib, which was alongside the bed, on the side next the fireplace. +It was the kind of crib that has a lofty tent over it made of gauzy +stuff that you can see through. The nurse was out, and we two +sleepers were alone. A spark from the wood-fire was shot out, and it +lit on the slope of the tent. I suppose a quiet interval followed, +then a scream from the baby awoke me, and there was that tent +flaming up toward the ceiling! Before I could think, I sprang +to the floor in my fright, and in a second was half-way to the door; +but in the next half-second my mother's farewell was sounding +in my ears, and I was back on the bed again., I reached my head +through the flames and dragged the baby out by the waist-band, +and tugged it along, and we fell to the floor together in a cloud +of smoke; I snatched a new hold, and dragged the screaming little +creature along and out at the door and around the bend of the hall, +and was still tugging away, all excited and happy and proud, +when the master's voice shouted: + +"Begone you cursed beast!" and I jumped to save myself; but he +was furiously quick, and chased me up, striking furiously at me +with his cane, I dodging this way and that, in terror, and at last a +strong blow fell upon my left foreleg, which made me shriek and fall, +for the moment, helpless; the cane went up for another blow, +but never descended, for the nurse's voice rang wildly out, +"The nursery's on fire!" and the master rushed away in that direction, +and my other bones were saved. + +The pain was cruel, but, no matter, I must not lose any time; +he might come back at any moment; so I limped on three legs to the +other end of the hall, where there was a dark little stairway leading +up into a garret where old boxes and such things were kept, as I had +heard say, and where people seldom went. I managed to climb up there, +then I searched my way through the dark among the piles of things, +and hid in the secretest place I could find. It was foolish to be +afraid there, yet still I was; so afraid that I held in and hardly +even whimpered, though it would have been such a comfort to whimper, +because that eases the pain, you know. But I could lick my leg, +and that did some good. + +For half an hour there was a commotion downstairs, and shoutings, +and rushing footsteps, and then there was quiet again. Quiet for +some minutes, and that was grateful to my spirit, for then my fears +began to go down; and fears are worse than pains--oh, much worse. +Then came a sound that froze me. They were calling me--calling me +by name--hunting for me! + +It was muffled by distance, but that could not take the terror out of it, +and it was the most dreadful sound to me that I had ever heard. +It went all about, everywhere, down there: along the halls, through all +the rooms, in both stories, and in the basement and the cellar; +then outside, and farther and farther away--then back, and all +about the house again, and I thought it would never, never stop. +But at last it did, hours and hours after the vague twilight of +the garret had long ago been blotted out by black darkness. + +Then in that blessed stillness my terrors fell little by little away, +and I was at peace and slept. It was a good rest I had, but I woke +before the twilight had come again. I was feeling fairly comfortable, +and I could think out a plan now. I made a very good one; +which was, to creep down, all the way down the back stairs, +and hide behind the cellar door, and slip out and escape when the +iceman came at dawn, while he was inside filling the refrigerator; +then I would hide all day, and start on my journey when night came; +my journey to--well, anywhere where they would not know me and betray +me to the master. I was feeling almost cheerful now; then suddenly +I thought: Why, what would life be without my puppy! + +That was despair. There was no plan for me; I saw that; +I must say where I was; stay, and wait, and take what might come +--it was not my affair; that was what life is--my mother had said it. +Then--well, then the calling began again! All my sorrows came back. +I said to myself, the master will never forgive. I did not know +what I had done to make him so bitter and so unforgiving, yet I +judged it was something a dog could not understand, but which was +clear to a man and dreadful. + +They called and called--days and nights, it seemed to me. +So long that the hunger and thirst near drove me mad, and I +recognized that I was getting very weak. When you are this way you +sleep a great deal, and I did. Once I woke in an awful fright +--it seemed to me that the calling was right there in the garret! +And so it was: it was Sadie's voice, and she was crying; my name +was falling from her lips all broken, poor thing, and I could not +believe my ears for the joy of it when I heard her say: + +"Come back to us--oh, come back to us, and forgive--it is all so sad +without our--" + +I broke in with SUCH a grateful little yelp, and the next moment +Sadie was plunging and stumbling through the darkness and the lumber +and shouting for the family to hear, "She's found, she's found!" + + +The days that followed--well, they were wonderful. The mother +and Sadie and the servants--why, they just seemed to worship me. +They couldn't seem to make me a bed that was fine enough; +and as for food, they couldn't be satisfied with anything but game +and delicacies that were out of season; and every day the friends +and neighbors flocked in to hear about my heroism--that was the +name they called it by, and it means agriculture. I remember my +mother pulling it on a kennel once, and explaining it in that way, +but didn't say what agriculture was, except that it was synonymous +with intramural incandescence; and a dozen times a day Mrs. Gray +and Sadie would tell the tale to new-comers, and say I risked my life +to say the baby's, and both of us had burns to prove it, and then +the company would pass me around and pet me and exclaim about me, +and you could see the pride in the eyes of Sadie and her mother; +and when the people wanted to know what made me limp, they looked +ashamed and changed the subject, and sometimes when people hunted +them this way and that way with questions about it, it looked to me +as if they were going to cry. + +And this was not all the glory; no, the master's friends came, +a whole twenty of the most distinguished people, and had me in +the laboratory, and discussed me as if I was a kind of discovery; +and some of them said it was wonderful in a dumb beast, the finest +exhibition of instinct they could call to mind; but the master said, +with vehemence, "It's far above instinct; it's REASON, and many a man, +privileged to be saved and go with you and me to a better world +by right of its possession, has less of it that this poor silly +quadruped that's foreordained to perish"; and then he laughed, +and said: "Why, look at me--I'm a sarcasm! bless you, with all +my grand intelligence, the only think I inferred was that the dog +had gone mad and was destroying the child, whereas but for the +beast's intelligence--it's REASON, I tell you!--the child would +have perished!" + +They disputed and disputed, and _I_ was the very center of subject +of it all, and I wished my mother could know that this grand honor +had come to me; it would have made her proud. + +Then they discussed optics, as they called it, and whether a certain +injury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could +not agree about it, and said they must test it by experiment by and by; +and next they discussed plants, and that interested me, because in +the summer Sadie and I had planted seeds--I helped her dig the holes, +you know--and after days and days a little shrub or a flower came +up there, and it was a wonder how that could happen; but it did, +and I wished I could talk--I would have told those people about it +and shown then how much I knew, and been all alive with the subject; +but I didn't care for the optics; it was dull, and when they came back +to it again it bored me, and I went to sleep. + +Pretty soon it was spring, and sunny and pleasant and lovely, +and the sweet mother and the children patted me and the puppy +good-by, and went away on a journey and a visit to their kin, +and the master wasn't any company for us, but we played together +and had good times, and the servants were kind and friendly, +so we got along quite happily and counted the days and waited +for the family. + +And one day those men came again, and said, now for the test, +and they took the puppy to the laboratory, and I limped +three-leggedly along, too, feeling proud, for any attention shown +to the puppy was a pleasure to me, of course. They discussed +and experimented, and then suddenly the puppy shrieked, +and they set him on the floor, and he went staggering around, +with his head all bloody, and the master clapped his hands and shouted: + +"There, I've won--confess it! He's a blind as a bat!" + +And they all said: + +"It's so--you've proved your theory, and suffering humanity owes +you a great debt from henceforth," and they crowded around him, +and wrung his hand cordially and thankfully, and praised him. + +But I hardly saw or heard these things, for I ran at once to my +little darling, and snuggled close to it where it lay, and licked +the blood, and it put its head against mine, whimpering softly, +and I knew in my heart it was a comfort to it in its pain and +trouble to feel its mother's touch, though it could not see me. +Then it dropped down, presently, and its little velvet nose rested +upon the floor, and it was still, and did not move any more. + +Soon the master stopped discussing a moment, and rang in the footman, +and said, "Bury it in the far corner of the garden," and then went +on with the discussion, and I trotted after the footman, very happy +and grateful, for I knew the puppy was out of its pain now, because it +was asleep. We went far down the garden to the farthest end, +where the children and the nurse and the puppy and I used to play +in the summer in the shade of a great elm, and there the footman dug +a hole, and I saw he was going to plant the puppy, and I was glad, +because it would grow and come up a fine handsome dog, like Robin Adair, +and be a beautiful surprise for the family when they came home; +so I tried to help him dig, but my lame leg was no good, being stiff, +you know, and you have to have two, or it is no use. When the +footman had finished and covered little Robin up, he patted my head, +and there were tears in his eyes, and he said: "Poor little doggie, +you saved HIS child!" + +I have watched two whole weeks, and he doesn't come up! This last week +a fright has been stealing upon me. I think there is something terrible +about this. I do not know what it is, but the fear makes me sick, +and I cannot eat, though the servants bring me the best of food; +and they pet me so, and even come in the night, and cry, and say, +"Poor doggie--do give it up and come home; DON'T break our hearts!" +and all this terrifies me the more, and makes me sure something +has happened. And I am so weak; since yesterday I cannot stand on my +feet anymore. And within this hour the servants, looking toward the +sun where it was sinking out of sight and the night chill coming on, +said things I could not understand, but they carried something cold +to my heart. + +"Those poor creatures! They do not suspect. They will come home +in the morning, and eagerly ask for the little doggie that did +the brave deed, and who of us will be strong enough to say the truth +to them: 'The humble little friend is gone where go the beasts +that perish.'" + + + + + + +WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL? + + + +CHAPTER I + + +"You told a LIE?" + +"You confess it--you actually confess it--you told a lie!" + + + +CHAPTER II + + +The family consisted of four persons: Margaret Lester, widow, +aged thirty six; Helen Lester, her daughter, aged sixteen; +Mrs. Lester's maiden aunts, Hannah and Hester Gray, twins, aged +sixty-seven. Waking and sleeping, the three women spent their days +and night in adoring the young girl; in watching the movements +of her sweet spirit in the mirror of her face; in refreshing their +souls with the vision of her bloom and beauty; in listening to the +music of her voice; in gratefully recognizing how rich and fair +for them was the world with this presence in it; in shuddering +to think how desolate it would be with this light gone out of it. + +By nature--and inside--the aged aunts were utterly dear and lovable +and good, but in the matter of morals and conduct their training +had been so uncompromisingly strict that it had made them +exteriorly austere, not to say stern. Their influence was effective +in the house; so effective that the mother and the daughter +conformed to its moral and religious requirements cheerfully, +contentedly, happily, unquestionably. To do this was become +second nature to them. And so in this peaceful heaven there +were no clashings, no irritations, no fault-finding, no heart-burnings. + +In it a lie had no place. In it a lie was unthinkable. +In it speech was restricted to absolute truth, iron-bound truth, +implacable and uncompromising truth, let the resulting consequences +be what they might. At last, one day, under stress of circumstances, +the darling of the house sullied her lips with a lie--and confessed it, +with tears and self-upbraidings. There are not any words that can paint +the consternation of the aunts. It was as if the sky had crumpled +up and collapsed and the earth had tumbled to ruin with a crash. +They sat side by side, white and stern, gazing speechless upon +the culprit, who was on her knees before them with her face +buried first in one lap and then the other, moaning and sobbing, +and appealing for sympathy and forgiveness and getting no response, +humbly kissing the hand of the one, then of the other, only to see +it withdrawn as suffering defilement by those soiled lips. + +Twice, at intervals, Aunt Hester said, in frozen amazement: + +"You told a LIE?" + +Twice, at intervals, Aunt Hannah followed with the muttered +and amazed ejaculation: + +"You confess it--you actually confess it--you told a lie!" + +It was all they could say. The situation was new, unheard of, +incredible; they could not understand it, they did not know +how to take hold of it, it approximately paralyzed speech. + +At length it was decided that the erring child must be taken to +her mother, who was ill, and who ought to know what had happened. +Helen begged, besought, implored that she might be spared this +further disgrace, and that her mother might be spared the grief +and pain of it; but this could not be: duty required this sacrifice, +duty takes precedence of all things, nothing can absolve one from +a duty, with a duty no compromise is possible. + +Helen still begged, and said the sin was her own, her mother had +had no hand in it--why must she be made to suffer for it? + +But the aunts were obdurate in their righteousness, and said the +law that visited the sins of the parent upon the child was by all +right and reason reversible; and therefore it was but just that the +innocent mother of a sinning child should suffer her rightful share +of the grief and pain and shame which were the allotted wages of the sin. + +The three moved toward the sick-room. + + +At this time the doctor was approaching the house. He was still +a good distance away, however. He was a good doctor and a good man, +and he had a good heart, but one had to know him a year to get +over hating him, two years to learn to endure him, three to learn +to like him, and four and five to learn to love him. It was a slow +and trying education, but it paid. He was of great stature; he had +a leonine head, a leonine face, a rough voice, and an eye which was +sometimes a pirate's and sometimes a woman's, according to the mood. +He knew nothing about etiquette, and cared nothing about it; in speech, +manner, carriage, and conduct he was the reverse of conventional. +He was frank, to the limit; he had opinions on all subjects; they were +always on tap and ready for delivery, and he cared not a farthing +whether his listener liked them or didn't. Whom he loved he loved, +and manifested it; whom he didn't love he hated, and published +it from the housetops. In his young days he had been a sailor, +and the salt-airs of all the seas blew from him yet. He was a sturdy +and loyal Christian, and believed he was the best one in the land, +and the only one whose Christianity was perfectly sound, healthy, +full-charged with common sense, and had no decayed places in it. +People who had an ax to grind, or people who for any reason wanted +wanted to get on the soft side of him, called him The Christian +--a phrase whose delicate flattery was music to his ears, and whose +capital T was such an enchanting and vivid object to him that he +could SEE it when it fell out of a person's mouth even in the dark. +Many who were fond of him stood on their consciences with both feet +and brazenly called him by that large title habitually, because it +was a pleasure to them to do anything that would please him; +and with eager and cordial malice his extensive and diligently +cultivated crop of enemies gilded it, beflowered it, expanded it +to "The ONLY Christian." Of these two titles, the latter had +the wider currency; the enemy, being greatly in the majority, +attended to that. Whatever the doctor believed, he believed with +all his heart, and would fight for it whenever he got the chance; +and if the intervals between chances grew to be irksomely wide, +he would invent ways of shortening them himself. He was +severely conscientious, according to his rather independent lights, +and whatever he took to be a duty he performed, no matter whether +the judgment of the professional moralists agreed with his own +or not. At sea, in his young days, he had used profanity freely, +but as soon as he was converted he made a rule, which he rigidly stuck +to ever afterward, never to use it except on the rarest occasions, +and then only when duty commanded. He had been a hard drinker at sea, +but after his conversion he became a firm and outspoken teetotaler, +in order to be an example to the young, and from that time forth he +seldom drank; never, indeed, except when it seemed to him to be a duty +--a condition which sometimes occurred a couple of times a year, but never +as many as five times. + +Necessarily, such a man is impressionable, impulsive, emotional. +This one was, and had no gift at hiding his feelings; or if he +had it he took no trouble to exercise it. He carried his soul's +prevailing weather in his face, and when he entered a room +the parasols or the umbrellas went up--figuratively speaking +--according to the indications. When the soft light was in his eye +it meant approval, and delivered a benediction; when he came with a +frown he lowered the temperature ten degrees. He was a well-beloved +man in the house of his friends, but sometimes a dreaded one. + +He had a deep affection for the Lester household and its several +members returned this feeling with interest. They mourned over +his kind of Christianity, and he frankly scoffed at theirs; +but both parties went on loving each other just the same. + +He was approaching the house--out of the distance; the aunts +and the culprit were moving toward the sick-chamber. + + + +CHAPTER III + + +The three last named stood by the bed; the aunts austere, +the transgressor softly sobbing. The mother turned her head +on the pillow; her tired eyes flamed up instantly with sympathy +and passionate mother-love when they fell upon her child, +and she opened the refuge and shelter of her arms. + +"Wait!" said Aunt Hannah, and put out her hand and stayed the girl +from leaping into them. + +"Helen," said the other aunt, impressively, "tell your mother all. +Purge your soul; leave nothing unconfessed." + +Standing stricken and forlorn before her judges, the young girl +mourned her sorrowful tale through the end, then in a passion +of appeal cried out: + +"Oh, mother, can't you forgive me? won't you forgive me?--I am +so desolate!" + +"Forgive you, my darling? Oh, come to my arms!--there, lay your head +upon my breast, and be at peace. If you had told a thousand lies--" + +There was a sound--a warning--the clearing of a throat. The aunts +glanced up, and withered in their clothes--there stood the doctor, +his face a thunder-cloud. Mother and child knew nothing of +his presence; they lay locked together, heart to heart, steeped in +immeasurable content, dead to all things else. The physician +stood many moments glaring and glooming upon the scene before him; +studying it, analyzing it, searching out its genesis; then he put +up his hand and beckoned to the aunts. They came trembling to him, +and stood humbly before him and waited. He bent down and whispered: + +"Didn't I tell you this patient must be protected from all excitement? +What the hell have you been doing? Clear out of the place!" + +They obeyed. Half an hour later he appeared in the parlor, +serene, cheery, clothed in sunshine, conducting Helen, with his +arm about her waist, petting her, and saying gentle and playful +things to her; and she also was her sunny and happy self again. + +"Now, then;" he said, "good-by, dear. Go to your room, and keep +away from your mother, and behave yourself. But wait--put out +your tongue. There, that will do--you're as sound as a nut!" +He patted her cheek and added, "Run along now; I want to talk +to these aunts." + +She went from the presence. His face clouded over again at once; +and as he sat down he said: + +"You too have been doing a lot of damage--and maybe some good. +Some good, yes--such as it is. That woman's disease is typhoid! +You've brought it to a show-up, I think, with your insanities, +and that's a service--such as it is. I hadn't been able to determine +what it was before." + +With one impulse the old ladies sprang to their feet, quaking with terror. + +"Sit down! What are you proposing to do?" + +"Do? We must fly to her. We--" + +"You'll do nothing of the kind; you've done enough harm for one day. +Do you want to squander all your capital of crimes and follies on a +single deal? Sit down, I tell you. I have arranged for her to sleep; +she needs it; if you disturb her without my orders, I'll brain you +--if you've got the materials for it." + +They sat down, distressed and indignant, but obedient, under compulsion. +He proceeded: + +"Now, then, I want this case explained. THEY wanted to explain it +to me--as if there hadn't been emotion or excitement enough already. +You knew my orders; how did you dare to go in there and get up +that riot?" + +Hester looked appealing at Hannah; Hannah returned a beseeching look +at Hester--neither wanted to dance to this unsympathetic orchestra. +The doctor came to their help. He said: + +"Begin, Hester." + +Fingering at the fringes of her shawl, and with lowered eyes, +Hester said, timidly: + +"We should not have disobeyed for any ordinary cause, but this +was vital. This was a duty. With a duty one has no choice; +one must put all lighter considerations aside and perform it. +We were obliged to arraign her before her mother. She had told +a lie." + +The doctor glowered upon the woman a moment, and seemed +to be trying to work up in his mind an understand of a wholly +incomprehensible proposition; then he stormed out: + +"She told a lie! DID she? God bless my soul! I tell a million a day! +And so does every doctor. And so does everybody--including you +--for that matter. And THAT was the important thing that authorized +you to venture to disobey my orders and imperil that woman's life! +Look here, Hester Gray, this is pure lunacy; that girl COULDN'T tell +a lie that was intended to injure a person. The thing is impossible +--absolutely impossible. You know it yourselves--both of you; +you know it perfectly well." + +Hannah came to her sister's rescue: + +"Hester didn't mean that it was that kind of a lie, and it wasn't. +But it was a lie." + +"Well, upon my word, I never heard such nonsense! Haven't you +got sense enough to discriminate between lies! Don't you know +the difference between a lie that helps and a lie that hurts?" + +"ALL lies are sinful," said Hannah, setting her lips together +like a vise; "all lies are forbidden." + +The Only Christian fidgeted impatiently in his chair. He went to attack +this proposition, but he did not quite know how or where to begin. +Finally he made a venture: + +"Hester, wouldn't you tell a lie to shield a person from an undeserved +injury or shame?" + +"No." + +"Not even a friend?" + +"No." + +"Not even your dearest friend?" + +"No. I would not." + +The doctor struggled in silence awhile with this situation; +then he asked: + +"Not even to save him from bitter pain and misery and grief?" + +"No. Not even to save his life." + +Another pause. Then: + +"Nor his soul?" + +There was a hush--a silence which endured a measurable interval +--then Hester answered, in a low voice, but with decision: + +"Nor his soul?" + +No one spoke for a while; then the doctor said: + +"Is it with you the same, Hannah?" + +"Yes," she answered. + +"I ask you both--why?" + +"Because to tell such a lie, or any lie, is a sin, and could cost +us the loss of our own souls--WOULD, indeed, if we died without +time to repent." + +"Strange . . . strange . . . it is past belief." Then he +asked, roughly: "Is such a soul as that WORTH saving?" +He rose up, mumbling and grumbling, and started for the door, +stumping vigorously along. At the threshold he turned and rasped +out an admonition: "Reform! Drop this mean and sordid and selfish +devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt up +something to do that's got some dignity to it! RISK your souls! risk +them in good causes; then if you lose them, why should you care? Reform!" + +The good old gentlewomen sat paralyzed, pulverized, outraged, insulted, +and brooded in bitterness and indignation over these blasphemies. +They were hurt to the heart, poor old ladies, and said they could +never forgive these injuries. + +"Reform!" + +They kept repeating that word resentfully. "Reform--and learn +to tell lies!" + +Time slipped along, and in due course a change came over their spirits. +They had completed the human being's first duty--which is to think +about himself until he has exhausted the subject, then he is in a +condition to take up minor interests and think of other people. +This changes the complexion of his spirits--generally wholesomely. +The minds of the two old ladies reverted to their beloved niece +and the fearful disease which had smitten her; instantly they forgot +the hurts their self-love had received, and a passionate desire +rose in their hearts to go to the help of the sufferer and comfort +her with their love, and minister to her, and labor for her the best +they could with their weak hands, and joyfully and affectionately +wear out their poor old bodies in her dear service if only they might +have the privilege. + +"And we shall have it!" said Hester, with the tears running +down her face. "There are no nurses comparable to us, for there +are no others that will stand their watch by that bed till they +drop and die, and God knows we would do that." + +"Amen," said Hannah, smiling approval and endorsement through the +mist of moisture that blurred her glasses. "The doctor knows us, +and knows we will not disobey again; and he will call no others. +He will not dare!" + +"Dare?" said Hester, with temper, and dashing the water from her eyes; +"he will dare anything--that Christian devil! But it will do no +good for him to try it this time--but, laws! Hannah! after all's +said and done, he is gifted and wise and good, and he would not +think of such a thing. . . . It is surely time for one of us to go +to that room. What is keeping him? Why doesn't he come and say so?" + +They caught the sound of his approaching step. He entered, sat down, +and began to talk. + +"Margaret is a sick woman," he said. "She is still sleeping, +but she will wake presently; then one of you must go to her. +She will be worse before she is better. Pretty soon a night-and-day +watch must be set. How much of it can you two undertake?" + +"All of it!" burst from both ladies at once. + +The doctor's eyes flashed, and he said, with energy: + +"You DO ring true, you brave old relics! And you SHALL do all of +the nursing you can, for there's none to match you in that divine +office in this town; but you can't do all of it, and it would +be a crime to let you." It was grand praise, golden praise, +coming from such a source, and it took nearly all the resentment +out of the aged twin's hearts. "Your Tilly and my old Nancy shall +do the rest--good nurses both, white souls with black skins, +watchful, loving, tender--just perfect nurses!--and competent liars +from the cradle. . . . Look you! keep a little watch on Helen; +she is sick, and is going to be sicker." + +The ladies looked a little surprised, and not credulous; and Hester said: + +"How is that? It isn't an hour since you said she was as sound +as a nut." + +The doctor answered, tranquilly: + +"It was a lie." + +The ladies turned upon him indignantly, and Hannah said: + +"How can you make an odious confession like that, in so indifferent +a tone, when you know how we feel about all forms of--" + +"Hush! You are as ignorant as cats, both of you, and you don't know +what you are talking about. You are like all the rest of the moral moles; +you lie from morning till night, but because you don't do it with +your mouths, but only with your lying eyes, your lying inflections, +your deceptively misplaced emphasis, and your misleading gestures, +you turn up your complacent noses and parade before God and +the world as saintly and unsmirched Truth-Speakers, in whose +cold-storage souls a lie would freeze to death if it got there! +Why will you humbug yourselves with that foolish notion that no +lie is a lie except a spoken one? What is the difference between +lying with your eyes and lying with your mouth? There is none; +and if you would reflect a moment you would see that it is so. +There isn't a human being that doesn't tell a gross of lies every day +of his life; and you--why, between you, you tell thirty thousand; +yet you flare up here in a lurid hypocritical horror because I +tell that child a benevolent and sinless lie to protect her from +her imagination, which would get to work and warm up her blood to a +fever in an hour, if I were disloyal enough to my duty to let it. +Which I should probably do if I were interested in saving my soul +by such disreputable means. + +"Come, let us reason together. Let us examine details. When you +two were in the sick-room raising that riot, what would you have +done if you had known I was coming?" + +"Well, what?" + +"You would have slipped out and carried Helen with you--wouldn't you?" + +The ladies were silent. + +"What would be your object and intention?" + +"Well, what?" + +"To keep me from finding out your guilt; to beguile me to infer that +Margaret's excitement proceeded from some cause not known to you. +In a word, to tell me a lie--a silent lie. Moreover, a possibly +harmful one." + +The twins colored, but did not speak. + +"You not only tell myriads of silent lies, but you tell lies +with your mouths--you two." + +"THAT is not so!" + +"It is so. But only harmless ones. You never dream of uttering +a harmful one. Do you know that that is a concession--and a confession?" + +"How do you mean?" + +"It is an unconscious concession that harmless lies are not criminal; +it is a confession that you constantly MAKE that discrimination. +For instance, you declined old Mrs. Foster's invitation last week +to meet those odious Higbies at supper--in a polite note in which you +expressed regret and said you were very sorry you could not go. +It was a lie. It was as unmitigated a lie as was ever uttered. +Deny it, Hester--with another lie." + +Hester replied with a toss of her head. + +"That will not do. Answer. Was it a lie, or wasn't it?" + +The color stole into the cheeks of both women, and with a struggle +and an effort they got out their confession: + +"It was a lie." + +"Good--the reform is beginning; there is hope for you yet; +you will not tell a lie to save your dearest friend's soul, but you +will spew out one without a scruple to save yourself the discomfort +of telling an unpleasant truth." + +He rose. Hester, speaking for both, said; coldly: + +"We have lied; we perceive it; it will occur no more. To lie is +a sin. We shall never tell another one of any kind whatsoever, +even lies of courtesy or benevolence, to save any one a pang +or a sorrow decreed for him by God." + +"Ah, how soon you will fall! In fact, you have fallen already; +for what you have just uttered is a lie. Good-by. Reform! +One of you go to the sick-room now." + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Twelve days later. + +Mother and child were lingering in the grip of the hideous disease. +Of hope for either there was little. The aged sisters looked white +and worn, but they would not give up their posts. Their hearts +were breaking, poor old things, but their grit was steadfast +and indestructible. All the twelve days the mother had pined for +the child, and the child for the mother, but both knew that the prayer +of these longings could not be granted. When the mother was told +--on the first day--that her disease was typhoid, she was frightened, +and asked if there was danger that Helen could have contracted it the +day before, when she was in the sick-chamber on that confession visit. +Hester told her the doctor had poo-pooed the idea. It troubled +Hester to say it, although it was true, for she had not believed +the doctor; but when she saw the mother's joy in the news, the pain +in her conscience lost something of its force--a result which made +her ashamed of the constructive deception which she had practiced, +though not ashamed enough to make her distinctly and definitely +wish she had refrained from it. From that moment the sick woman +understood that her daughter must remain away, and she said she would +reconcile herself to the separation the best she could, for she +would rather suffer death than have her child's health imperiled. +That afternoon Helen had to take to her bed, ill. She grew worse +during the night. In the morning her mother asked after her: + +"Is she well?" + +Hester turned cold; she opened her lips, but the words refused to come. +The mother lay languidly looking, musing, waiting; suddenly she +turned white and gasped out: + +"Oh, my God! what is it? is she sick?" + +Then the poor aunt's tortured heart rose in rebellion, and words came: + +"No--be comforted; she is well." + +The sick woman put all her happy heart in her gratitude: + +"Thank God for those dear words! Kiss me. How I worship you +for saying them!" + +Hester told this incident to Hannah, who received it with +a rebuking look, and said, coldly: + +"Sister, it was a lie." + +Hester's lips trembled piteously; she choked down a sob, and said: + +"Oh, Hannah, it was a sin, but I could not help it. I could not +endure the fright and the misery that were in her face." + +"No matter. It was a lie. God will hold you to account for it." + +"Oh, I know it, I know it," cried Hester, wringing her hands, +"but even if it were now, I could not help it. I know I should do +it again." + +"Then take my place with Helen in the morning. I will make +the report myself." + +Hester clung to her sister, begging and imploring. + +"Don't, Hannah, oh, don't--you will kill her." + +"I will at least speak the truth." + +In the morning she had a cruel report to bear to the mother, +and she braced herself for the trial. When she returned from +her mission, Hester was waiting, pale and trembling, in the hall. +She whispered: + +"Oh, how did she take it--that poor, desolate mother?" + +Hannah's eyes were swimming in tears. She said: + +"God forgive me, I told her the child was well!" + +Hester gathered her to her heart, with a grateful "God bless you, Hannah!" +and poured out her thankfulness in an inundation of worshiping praises. + +After that, the two knew the limit of their strength, and accepted +their fate. They surrendered humbly, and abandoned themselves to the +hard requirements of the situation. Daily they told the morning lie, +and confessed their sin in prayer; not asking forgiveness, as not +being worthy of it, but only wishing to make record that they +realized their wickedness and were not desiring to hide it or excuse it. + +Daily, as the fair young idol of the house sank lower and lower, +the sorrowful old aunts painted her glowing bloom and her fresh young +beauty to the wan mother, and winced under the stabs her ecstasies +of joy and gratitude gave them. + +In the first days, while the child had strength to hold a pencil, +she wrote fond little love-notes to her mother, in which she concealed +her illness; and these the mother read and reread through happy +eyes wet with thankful tears, and kissed them over and over again, +and treasured them as precious things under her pillow. + +Then came a day when the strength was gone from the hand, and the +mind wandered, and the tongue babbled pathetic incoherences. +this was a sore dilemma for the poor aunts. There were no love-notes +for the mother. They did not know what to do. Hester began a +carefully studied and plausible explanation, but lost the track of it +and grew confused; suspicion began to show in the mother's face, +then alarm. Hester saw it, recognized the imminence of the danger, +and descended to the emergency, pulling herself resolutely together +and plucking victor from the open jaws of defeat. In a placid +and convincing voice she said: + +"I thought it might distress you to know it, but Helen spent the night +at the Sloanes'. There was a little party there, and, although she +did not want to go, and you so sick, we persuaded her, she being +young and needing the innocent pastimes of youth, and we believing +you would approve. Be sure she will write the moment she comes." + +"How good you are, and how dear and thoughtful for us both! +Approve? Why, I thank you with all my heart. My poor little exile! +Tell her I want her to have every pleasure she can--I would not rob +her of one. Only let her keep her health, that is all I ask. +Don't let that suffer; I could not bear it. How thankful I am that she +escaped this infection--and what a narrow risk she ran, Aunt Hester! +Think of that lovely face all dulled and burned with fever. +I can't bear the thought of it. Keep her health. Keep her bloom! +I can see her now, the dainty creature--with the big, blue, earnest eyes; +and sweet, oh, so sweet and gentle and winning! Is she as beautiful +as ever, dear Aunt Hester?" + +"Oh, more beautiful and bright and charming than ever she was before, +if such a thing can be"--and Hester turned away and fumbled with +the medicine-bottles, to hide her shame and grief. + + + +CHAPTER V + + +After a little, both aunts were laboring upon a difficult and baffling +work in Helen's chamber. Patiently and earnestly, with their stiff +old fingers, they were trying to forge the required note. They made +failure after failure, but they improved little by little all the time. +The pity of it all, the pathetic humor of it, there was none to see; +they themselves were unconscious of it. Often their tears fell +upon the notes and spoiled them; sometimes a single misformed word +made a note risky which could have been ventured but for that; +but at last Hannah produced one whose script was a good enough +imitation of Helen's to pass any but a suspicious eye, and bountifully +enriched it with the petting phrases and loving nicknames that +had been familiar on the child's lips from her nursery days. +She carried it to the mother, who took it with avidity, and kissed it, +and fondled it, reading its precious words over and over again, +and dwelling with deep contentment upon its closing paragraph: + +"Mousie darling, if I could only see you, and kiss your eyes, +and feel your arms about me! I am so glad my practicing does not +disturb you. Get well soon. Everybody is good to me, but I am +so lonesome without you, dear mamma." + +"The poor child, I know just how she feels. She cannot be quite +happy without me; and I--oh, I live in the light of her eyes! +Tell her she must practice all she pleases; and, Aunt Hannah +--tell her I can't hear the piano this far, nor hear dear voice +when she sings: God knows I wish I could. No one knows how sweet +that voice is to me; and to think--some day it will be silent! +What are you crying for?" + +"Only because--because--it was just a memory. When I came away she +was singing, 'Loch Lomond.' The pathos of it! It always moves +me so when she sings that." + +"And me, too. How heartbreakingly beautiful it is when some youthful +sorrow is brooding in her breast and she sings it for the mystic +healing it brings. . . . Aunt Hannah?" + +"Dear Margaret?" + +"I am very ill. Sometimes it comes over me that I shall never hear +that dear voice again." + +"Oh, don't--don't, Margaret! I can't bear it!" + +Margaret was moved and distressed, and said, gently: + +"There--there--let me put my arms around you. +Don't cry. There--put your cheek to mine. Be comforted. +I wish to live. I will live if I can. Ah, what could she +do without me! . . . Does she often speak of me?--but I know she does." + +"Oh, all the time--all the time!" + +"My sweet child! She wrote the note the moment she came home?" + +"Yes--the first moment. She would not wait to take off her things." + +"I knew it. It is her dear, impulsive, affectionate way. I knew it +without asking, but I wanted to hear you say it. The petted wife +knows she is loved, but she makes her husband tell her so every day, +just for the joy of hearing it. . . . She used the pen this time. +That is better; the pencil-marks could rub out, and I should grieve +for that. Did you suggest that she use the pen?" + +"Y--no--she--it was her own idea." + +The mother looked her pleasure, and said: + +"I was hoping you would say that. There was never such a dear +and thoughtful child! . . . Aunt Hannah?" + +"Dear Margaret?" + +"Go and tell her I think of her all the time, and worship her. +Why--you are crying again. Don't be so worried about me, dear; +I think there is nothing to fear, yet." + +The grieving messenger carried her message, and piously delivered +it to unheeding ears. The girl babbled on unaware; looking up +at her with wondering and startled eyes flaming with fever, +eyes in which was no light of recognition: + +"Are you--no, you are not my mother. I want her--oh, I want her! +She was here a minute ago--I did not see her go. Will she come? will +she come quickly? will she come now? . . . There are so many houses +. . . and they oppress me so . . . and everything whirls and turns +and whirls . . . oh, my head, my head!"--and so she wandered on +and on, in her pain, flitting from one torturing fancy to another, +and tossing her arms about in a weary and ceaseless persecution +of unrest. + +Poor old Hannah wetted the parched lips and softly stroked the +hot brow, murmuring endearing and pitying words, and thanking +the Father of all that the mother was happy and did not know. + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +Daily the child sank lower and steadily lower towards the grave, +and daily the sorrowing old watchers carried gilded tidings of her +radiant health and loveliness to the happy mother, whose pilgrimage +was also now nearing its end. And daily they forged loving and cheery +notes in the child's hand, and stood by with remorseful consciences +and bleeding hearts, and wept to see the grateful mother devour +them and adore them and treasure them away as things beyond price, +because of their sweet source, and sacred because her child's hand +had touched them. + +At last came that kindly friend who brings healing and peace to all. +The lights were burning low. In the solemn hush which precedes the +dawn vague figures flitted soundless along the dim hall and gathered +silent and awed in Helen's chamber, and grouped themselves about +her bed, for a warning had gone forth, and they knew. The dying +girl lay with closed lids, and unconscious, the drapery upon her +breast faintly rising and falling as her wasting life ebbed away. +At intervals a sigh or a muffled sob broke upon the stillness. +The same haunting thought was in all minds there: the pity of +this death, the going out into the great darkness, and the mother +not here to help and hearten and bless. + +Helen stirred; her hands began to grope wistfully about as if they +sought something--she had been blind some hours. The end was come; +all knew it. With a great sob Hester gathered her to her breast, +crying, "Oh, my child, my darling!" A rapturous light broke in the +dying girl's face, for it was mercifully vouchsafed her to mistake +those sheltering arms for another's; and she went to her rest murmuring, +"Oh, mamma, I am so happy--I longed for you--now I can die." + + +Two hours later Hester made her report. The mother asked: + +"How is it with the child?" + +"She is well." + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +A sheaf of white crape and black was hung upon the door of the house, +and there it swayed and rustled in the wind and whispered its tidings. +At noon the preparation of the dead was finished, and in the +coffin lay the fair young form, beautiful, and in the sweet face +a great peace. Two mourners sat by it, grieving and worshipping +--Hannah and the black woman Tilly. Hester came, and she was trembling, +for a great trouble was upon her spirit. She said: + +"She asks for a note." + +Hannah's face blanched. She had not thought of this; it had seemed +that that pathetic service was ended. But she realized now that +that could not be. For a little while the two women stood looking +into each other's face, with vacant eyes; then Hannah said: + +"There is no way out of it--she must have it; she will suspect, else." + +"And she would find out." + +"Yes. It would break her heart." She looked at the dead face, +and her eyes filled. "I will write it," she said. + +Hester carried it. The closing line said: + +"Darling Mousie, dear sweet mother, we shall soon be together again. +Is not that good news? And it is true; they all say it is true." + +The mother mourned, saying: + +"Poor child, how will she bear it when she knows? I shall never see +her again in life. It is hard, so hard. She does not suspect? +You guard her from that?" + +"She thinks you will soon be well." + +"How good you are, and careful, dear Aunt Hester! None goes near +herr who could carry the infection?" + +"It would be a crime." + +"But you SEE her?" + +"With a distance between--yes." + +"That is so good. Others one could not trust; but you two guardian +angels--steel is not so true as you. Others would be unfaithful; +and many would deceive, and lie." + +Hester's eyes fell, and her poor old lips trembled. + +"Let me kiss you for her, Aunt Hester; and when I am gone, +and the danger is past, place the kiss upon her dear lips some day, +and say her mother sent it, and all her mother's broken heart is +in it." + +Within the hour, Hester, raining tears upon the dead face, +performed her pathetic mission. + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Another day dawned, and grew, and spread its sunshine in the earth. +Aunt Hannah brought comforting news to the failing mother, and a +happy note, which said again, "We have but a little time to wait, +darling mother, then we shall be together." + +The deep note of a bell came moaning down the wind. + +"Aunt Hannah, it is tolling. Some poor soul is at rest. +As I shall be soon. You will not let her forget me?" + +"Oh, God knows she never will!" + +"Do not you hear strange noises, Aunt Hannah? It sounds like +the shuffling of many feet." + +"We hoped you would not hear it, dear. It is a little company +gathering, for--for Helen's sake, poor little prisoner. There will +be music--and she loves it so. We thought you would not mind." + +"Mind? Oh no, no--oh, give her everything her dear heart can desire. +How good you two are to her, and how good to me! God bless you +both always!" + +After a listening pause: + +"How lovely! It is her organ. Is she playing it herself, do you think?" +Faint and rich and inspiring the chords floating to her ears on +the still air. "Yes, it is her touch, dear heart, I recognize it. +They are singing. Why--it is a hymn! and the sacredest of all, +the most touching, the most consoling. . . . It seems to open +the gates of paradise to me. . . . If I could die now. . . ." + +Faint and far the words rose out of the stillness: + + +Nearer, my God, to Thee, + +Nearer to Thee, + +E'en though it be a cross + +That raiseth me. + + +With the closing of the hymn another soul passed to its rest, +and they that had been one in life were not sundered in death. +The sisters, mourning and rejoicing, said: + +"How blessed it was that she never knew!" + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +At midnight they sat together, grieving, and the angel of the Lord +appeared in the midst transfigured with a radiance not of earth; +and speaking, said: + +"For liars a place is appointed. There they burn in the fires +of hell from everlasting unto everlasting. Repent!" + +The bereaved fell upon their knees before him and clasped their +hands and bowed their gray heads, adoring. But their tongues +clove to the roof of their mouths, and they were dumb. + +"Speak! that I may bear the message to the chancery of heaven +and bring again the decree from which there is no appeal." + +Then they bowed their heads yet lower, and one said: + +"Our sin is great, and we suffer shame; but only perfect and final +repentance can make us whole; and we are poor creatures who have learned +our human weakness, and we know that if we were in those hard straits +again our hearts would fail again, and we should sin as before. +The strong could prevail, and so be saved, but we are lost." + +They lifted their heads in supplication. The angel was gone. +While they marveled and wept he came again; and bending low, +he whispered the decree. + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Was it Heaven? Or Hell? + + + + + + +A CURE FOR THE BLUES + + + +By courtesy of Mr. Cable I came into possession of a singular book +eight or ten years ago. It is likely that mine is now the only copy +in existence. Its title-page, unabbreviated, reads as follows: + +"The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant. By G. Ragsdale McClintock, +[1] author of 'An Address,' etc., delivered at Sunflower Hill, +South Carolina, and member of the Yale Law School. New Haven: +published by T. H. Pease, 83 Chapel Street, 1845." + +No one can take up this book and lay it down again unread. +Whoever reads one line of it is caught, is chained; he has become +the contented slave of its fascinations; and he will read and read, +devour and devour, and will not let it go out of his hand till it +is finished to the last line, though the house be on fire over +his head. And after a first reading he will not throw it aside, +but will keep it by him, with his Shakespeare and his Homer, +and will take it up many and many a time, when the world is dark +and his spirits are low, and be straightway cheered and refreshed. +Yet this work has been allowed to lie wholly neglected, unmentioned, +and apparently unregretted, for nearly half a century. + +The reader must not imagine that he is to find in it wisdom, +brilliancy, fertility of invention, ingenuity of construction, +excellence of form, purity of style, perfection of imagery, +truth to nature, clearness of statement, humanly possible situations, +humanly possible people, fluent narrative, connected sequence of events +--or philosophy, or logic, or sense. No; the rich, deep, beguiling charm +of the book lies in the total and miraculous ABSENCE from it of all +these qualities--a charm which is completed and perfected by the +evident fact that the author, whose naive innocence easily and surely +wins our regard, and almost our worship, does not know that they +are absent, does not even suspect that they are absent. When read +by the light of these helps to an understanding of the situation, +the book is delicious--profoundly and satisfyingly delicious. + +I call it a book because the author calls it a book, I call it a work +because he calls it a work; but, in truth, it is merely a duodecimo +pamphlet of thirty-one pages. It was written for fame and money, +as the author very frankly--yes, and very hopefully, too, poor fellow +--says in his preface. The money never came--no penny of it ever came; +and how long, how pathetically long, the fame has been deferred +--forty-seven years! He was young then, it would have been so much to +him then; but will he care for it now? + +As time is measured in America, McClintock's epoch is antiquity. +In his long-vanished day the Southern author had a passion for +"eloquence"; it was his pet, his darling. He would be eloquent, +or perish. And he recognized only one kind of eloquence--the lurid, +the tempestuous, the volcanic. He liked words--big words, +fine words, grand words, rumbling, thundering, reverberating words; +with sense attaching if it could be got in without marring the sound, +but not otherwise. He loved to stand up before a dazed world, +and pour forth flame and smoke and lava and pumice-stone into +the skies, and work his subterranean thunders, and shake himself +with earthquakes, and stench himself with sulphur fumes. If he +consumed his own fields and vineyards, that was a pity, yes; but he +would have his eruption at any cost. Mr. McClintock's eloquence +--and he is always eloquent, his crater is always spouting--is of the +pattern common to his day, but he departs from the custom of the time +in one respect: his brethren allowed sense to intrude when it did +not mar the sound, but he does not allow it to intrude at all. +For example, consider this figure, which he used in the village +"Address" referred to with such candid complacency in the title-page +above quoted--"like the topmost topaz of an ancient tower." +Please read it again; contemplate it; measure it; walk around it; +climb up it; try to get at an approximate realization of the size of it. +Is the fellow to that to be found in literature, ancient or modern, +foreign or domestic, living or dead, drunk or sober? One notices +how fine and grand it sounds. We know that if it was loftily uttered, +it got a noble burst of applause from the villagers; yet there isn't +a ray of sense in it, or meaning to it. + +McClintock finished his education at Yale in 1843, and came to +Hartford on a visit that same year. I have talked with men who at +that time talked with him, and felt of him, and knew he was real. +One needs to remember that fact and to keep fast hold of it; +it is the only way to keep McClintock's book from undermining one's +faith in McClintock's actuality. + +As to the book. The first four pages are devoted to an inflamed eulogy +of Woman--simply woman in general, or perhaps as an institution +--wherein, among other compliments to her details, he pays a unique +one to her voice. He says it "fills the breast with fond alarms, +echoed by every rill." It sounds well enough, but it is not true. +After the eulogy he takes up his real work and the novel begins. +It begins in the woods, near the village of Sunflower Hill. + + +Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair Chattahoochee, +to spread their beauty over the thick forest, to guide the hero whose +bosom beats with aspirations to conquer the enemy that would tarnish +his name, and to win back the admiration of his long-tried friend. + + +It seems a general remark, but it is not general; the hero mentioned +is the to-be hero of the book; and in this abrupt fashion, +and without name or description, he is shoveled into the tale. +"With aspirations to conquer the enemy that would tarnish his name" +is merely a phrase flung in for the sake of the sound--let it +not mislead the reader. No one is trying to tarnish this person; +no one has thought of it. The rest of the sentence is also merely +a phrase; the man has no friend as yet, and of course has had no +chance to try him, or win back his admiration, or disturb him in any +other way. + +The hero climbs up over "Sawney's Mountain," and down the other side, +making for an old Indian "castle"--which becomes "the red man's hut" +in the next sentence; and when he gets there at last, he "surveys +with wonder and astonishment" the invisible structure, "which time +has buried in the dust, and thought to himself his happiness was +not yet complete." One doesn't know why it wasn't, nor how near it +came to being complete, nor what was still wanting to round it up +and make it so. Maybe it was the Indian; but the book does not say. +At this point we have an episode: + + +Beside the shore of the brook sat a young man, about eighteen or twenty, +who seemed to be reading some favorite book, and who had a remarkably +noble countenance--eyes which betrayed more than a common mind. +This of course made the youth a welcome guest, and gained him +friends in whatever condition of his life he might be placed. +The traveler observed that he was a well-built figure which showed +strength and grace in every movement. He accordingly addressed +him in quite a gentlemanly manner, and inquired of him the way +to the village. After he had received the desired information, +and was about taking his leave, the youth said, "Are you not +Major Elfonzo, the great musician [2]--the champion of a noble cause +--the modern Achilles, who gained so many victories in the Florida War?" +"I bear that name," said the Major, "and those titles, +trusting at the same time that the ministers of grace will carry +me triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if," +continued the Major, "you, sir, are the patronizer of noble deeds, +I should like to make you my confidant and learn your address." +The youth looked somewhat amazed, bowed low, mused for a moment, +and began: "My name is Roswell. I have been recently admitted +to the bar, and can only give a faint outline of my future success +in that honorable profession; but I trust, sir, like the Eagle, I shall +look down from the lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man, and shall +ever be ready to give you any assistance in my official capacity, +and whatever this muscular arm of mine can do, whenever it shall be +called from its buried GREATNESS." The Major grasped him by the hand, +and exclaimed: "O! thou exalted spirit of inspiration--thou flame +of burning prosperity, may the Heaven-directed blaze be the glare +of thy soul, and battle down every rampart that seems to impede +your progress!" + + +There is a strange sort of originality about McClintock; +he imitates other people's styles, but nobody can imitate his, +not even an idiot. Other people can be windy, but McClintock blows +a gale; other people can blubber sentiment, but McClintock spews it; +other people can mishandle metaphors, but only McClintock knows +how to make a business of it. McClintock is always McClintock, +he is always consistent, his style is always his own style. He does +not make the mistake of being relevant on one page and irrelevant +on another; he is irrelevant on all of them. He does not make +the mistake of being lucid in one place and obscure in another; +he is obscure all the time. He does not make the mistake of slipping +in a name here and there that is out of character with his work; +he always uses names that exactly and fantastically fit his lunatics. +In the matter of undeviating consistency he stands alone in authorship. +It is this that makes his style unique, and entitles it to a name +of its own--McClintockian. It is this that protects it from being +mistaken for anybody else's. Uncredited quotations from other writers +often leave a reader in doubt as to their authorship, but McClintock +is safe from that accident; an uncredited quotation from him would +always be recognizable. When a boy nineteen years old, who had +just been admitted to the bar, says, "I trust, sir, like the Eagle, +I shall look down from lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man," +we know who is speaking through that boy; we should recognize +that note anywhere. There be myriads of instruments in this +world's literary orchestra, and a multitudinous confusion of sounds +that they make, wherein fiddles are drowned, and guitars smothered, +and one sort of drum mistaken for another sort; but whensoever the +brazen note of the McClintockian trombone breaks through that fog +of music, that note is recognizable, and about it there can be no blur +of doubt. + +The novel now arrives at the point where the Major goes home to see +his father. When McClintock wrote this interview he probably +believed it was pathetic. + + +The road which led to the town presented many attractions Elfonzo +had bid farewell to the youth of deep feeling, and was now wending +his way to the dreaming spot of his fondness. The south winds +whistled through the woods, as the waters dashed against the banks, +as rapid fire in the pent furnace roars. This brought him to +remember while alone, that he quietly left behind the hospitality +of a father's house, and gladly entered the world, with higher hopes +than are often realized. But as he journeyed onward, he was mindful +of the advice of his father, who had often looked sadly on the ground, +when tears of cruelly deceived hope moistened his eyes. Elfonzo had +been somewhat a dutiful son; yet fond of the amusements of life +--had been in distant lands--had enjoyed the pleasure of the world, +and had frequently returned to the scenes of his boyhood, +almost destitute of many of the comforts of life. In this condition, +he would frequently say to his father, "Have I offended you, +that you look upon me as a stranger, and frown upon me with +stinging looks? Will you not favor me with the sound of your voice? +If I have trampled upon your veneration, or have spread a humid veil +of darkness around your expectations, send me back into the world, +where no heart beats for me--where the foot of man had never yet trod; +but give me at least one kind word--allow me to come into the presence +sometimes of thy winter-worn locks." "Forbid it, Heaven, that I +should be angry with thee," answered the father, "my son, and yet +I send thee back to the children of the world--to the cold charity +of the combat, and to a land of victory. I read another destiny +in thy countenance--I learn thy inclinations from the flame that has +already kindled in my soul a strange sensation. It will seek thee, +my dear ELFONZO, it will find thee--thou canst not escape that +lighted torch, which shall blot out from the remembrance of men +a long train of prophecies which they have foretold against thee. +I once thought not so. Once, I was blind; but now the path of life +is plain before me, and my sight is clear; yet, Elfonzo, return to thy +worldly occupation--take again in thy hand that chord of sweet sounds +--struggle with the civilized world and with your own heart; +fly swiftly to the enchanted ground--let the night-OWL send forth +its screams from the stubborn oak--let the sea sport upon the beach, +and the stars sing together; but learn of these, Elfonzo, thy doom, +and thy hiding-place. Our most innocent as well as our most lawful +DESIRES must often be denied us, that we may learn to sacrifice them +to a Higher will." + +Remembering such admonitions with gratitude, Elfonzo was immediately +urged by the recollection of his father's family to keep moving. + + +McClintock has a fine gift in the matter of surprises; but as a +rule they are not pleasant ones, they jar upon the feelings. +His closing sentence in the last quotation is of that sort. +It brings one down out of the tinted clouds in too sudden and collapsed +a fashion. It incenses one against the author for a moment. +It makes the reader want to take him by this winter-worn locks, +and trample on his veneration, and deliver him over to the cold +charity of combat, and blot him out with his own lighted torch. +But the feeling does not last. The master takes again in his hand that +concord of sweet sounds of his, and one is reconciled, pacified. + + +His steps became quicker and quicker--he hastened through the PINY woods, +dark as the forest was, and with joy he very soon reached the little +village of repose, in whose bosom rested the boldest chivalry. +His close attention to every important object--his modest questions +about whatever was new to him--his reverence for wise old age, +and his ardent desire to learn many of the fine arts, soon brought +him into respectable notice. + +One mild winter day, as he walked along the streets toward the Academy, +which stood upon a small eminence, surrounded by native growth +--some venerable in its appearance, others young and prosperous +--all seemed inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as +well as for genius to spend its research beneath its spreading shades. +He entered its classic walls in the usual mode of southern manners. + + +The artfulness of this man! None knows so well as he how to pique +the curiosity of the reader--and how to disappoint it. He raises +the hope, here, that he is going to tell all about how one enters +a classic wall in the usual mode of Southern manners; but does he? +No; he smiles in his sleeve, and turns aside to other matters. + + +The principal of the Institution begged him to be seated and listen +to the recitations that were going on. He accordingly obeyed +the request, and seemed to be much pleased. After the school +was dismissed, and the young hearts regained their freedom, +with the songs of the evening, laughing at the anticipated pleasures +of a happy home, while others tittered at the actions of the past day, +he addressed the teacher in a tone that indicated a resolution +--with an undaunted mind. He said he had determined to become +a student, if he could meet with his approbation. "Sir," said he, +"I have spent much time in the world. I have traveled among +the uncivilized inhabitants of America. I have met with friends, +and combated with foes; but none of these gratify my ambition, +or decide what is to be my destiny. I see the learned world +have an influence with the voice of the people themselves. +The despoilers of the remotest kingdoms of the earth refer their +differences to this class of persons. This the illiterate and +inexperienced little dream of; and now if you will receive me as I am, +with these deficiencies--with all my misguided opinions, I will give +you my honor, sir, that I will never disgrace the Institution, +or those who have placed you in this honorable station." +The instructor, who had met with many disappointments, knew how to +feel for a stranger who had been thus turned upon the charities +of an unfeeling community. He looked at him earnestly, and said: +"Be of good cheer--look forward, sir, to the high destination you +may attain. Remember, the more elevated the mark at which you aim, +the more sure, the more glorious, the more magnificent the prize." +From wonder to wonder, his encouragement led the impatient listener. +A strange nature bloomed before him--giant streams promised +him success--gardens of hidden treasures opened to his view. +All this, so vividly described, seemed to gain a new witchery from his +glowing fancy. + + +It seems to me that this situation is new in romance. I feel +sure it has not been attempted before. Military celebrities have +been disguised and set at lowly occupations for dramatic effect, +but I think McClintock is the first to send one of them to school. +Thus, in this book, you pass from wonder to wonder, through gardens +of hidden treasure, where giant streams bloom before you, +and behind you, and all around, and you feel as happy, and groggy, +and satisfied with your quart of mixed metaphor aboard as you would +if it had been mixed in a sample-room and delivered from a jug. + +Now we come upon some more McClintockian surprise--a sweetheart +who is sprung upon us without any preparation, along with a name +for her which is even a little more of a surprise than she herself is. + + +In 1842 he entered the class, and made rapid progress in the English +and Latin departments. Indeed, he continued advancing with such +rapidity that he was like to become the first in his class, +and made such unexpected progress, and was so studious, that he had +almost forgotten the pictured saint of his affections. The fresh +wreaths of the pine and cypress had waited anxiously to drop once +more the dews of Heaven upon the heads of those who had so often +poured forth the tender emotions of their souls under its boughs. +He was aware of the pleasure that he had seen there. So one evening, as +he was returning from his reading, he concluded he would pay a visit +to this enchanting spot. Little did he think of witnessing a shadow +of his former happiness, though no doubt he wished it might be so. +He continued sauntering by the roadside, meditating on the past. +The nearer he approached the spot, the more anxious he became. +At that moment a tall female figure flitted across his path, with a +bunch of roses in her hand; her countenance showed uncommon vivacity, +with a resolute spirit; her ivory teeth already appeared as she +smiled beautifully, promenading--while her ringlets of hair dangled +unconsciously around her snowy neck. Nothing was wanting to complete +her beauty. The tinge of the rose was in full bloom upon her cheek; +the charms of sensibility and tenderness were always her associates. +In Ambulinia's bosom dwelt a noble soul--one that never faded +--one that never was conquered. + + +Ambulinia! It can hardly be matched in fiction. The full name +is Ambulinia Valeer. Marriage will presently round it out and +perfect it. Then it will be Mrs. Ambulinia Valeer Elfonzo. +It takes the chromo. + + +Her heart yielded to no feeling but the love of Elfonzo, on whom +she gazed with intense delight, and to whom she felt herself +more closely bound, because he sought the hand of no other. +Elfonzo was roused from his apparent reverie. His books no longer +were his inseparable companions--his thoughts arrayed themselves +to encourage him to the field of victory. He endeavored to speak +to his supposed Ambulinia, but his speech appeared not in words. +No, his effort was a stream of fire, that kindled his soul into +a flame of admiration, and carried his senses away captive. +Ambulinia had disappeared, to make him more mindful of his duty. +As she walked speedily away through the piny woods, she calmly echoed: +"O! Elfonzo, thou wilt now look from thy sunbeams. Thou shalt +now walk in a new path--perhaps thy way leads through darkness; +but fear not, the stars foretell happiness." + + +To McClintock that jingling jumble of fine words meant something, +no doubt, or seemed to mean something; but it is useless for us to try +to divine what it was. Ambulinia comes--we don't know whence nor why; +she mysteriously intimates--we don't know what; and then she goes +echoing away--we don't know whither; and down comes the curtain. +McClintock's art is subtle; McClintock's art is deep. + + +Not many days afterward, as surrounded by fragrant flowers she sat +one evening at twilight, to enjoy the cool breeze that whispered +notes of melody along the distant groves, the little birds perched +on every side, as if to watch the movements of their new visitor. +The bells were tolling, when Elfonzo silently stole along by the wild +wood flowers, holding in his hand his favorite instrument of music +--his eye continually searching for Ambulinia, who hardly seemed +to perceive him, as she played carelessly with the songsters +that hopped from branch to branch. Nothing could be more striking +than the difference between the two. Nature seemed to have given +the more tender soul to Elfonzo, and the stronger and more courageous +to Ambulinia. A deep feeling spoke from the eyes of Elfonzo +--such a feeling as can only be expressed by those who are blessed +as admirers, and by those who are able to return the same with +sincerity of heart. He was a few years older than Ambulinia: +she had turned a little into her seventeenth. He had almost grown +up in the Cherokee country, with the same equal proportions as one +of the natives. But little intimacy had existed between them until +the year forty-one--because the youth felt that the character of such +a lovely girl was too exalted to inspire any other feeling than +that of quiet reverence. But as lovers will not always be insulted, +at all times and under all circumstances, by the frowns and cold +looks of crabbed old age, which should continually reflect dignity +upon those around, and treat the unfortunate as well as the fortunate +with a graceful mien, he continued to use diligence and perseverance. +All this lighted a spark in his heart that changed his whole character, +and like the unyielding Deity that follows the storm to check its +rage in the forest, he resolves for the first time to shake off +his embarrassment and return where he had before only worshiped. + + +At last we begin to get the Major's measure. We are able to put +this and that casual fact together, and build the man up before +our eyes, and look at him. And after we have got him built, we find +him worth the trouble. By the above comparison between his age +and Ambulinia's, we guess the war-worn veteran to be twenty-two; +and the other facts stand thus: he had grown up in the Cherokee +country with the same equal proportions as one of the natives +--how flowing and graceful the language, and yet how tantalizing +as to meaning!--he had been turned adrift by his father, to whom he +had been "somewhat of a dutiful son"; he wandered in distant lands; +came back frequently "to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute +of many of the comforts of life," in order to get into the presence +of his father's winter-worn locks, and spread a humid veil of +darkness around his expectations; but he was always promptly sent +back to the cold charity of the combat again; he learned to play +the fiddle, and made a name for himself in that line; he had dwelt +among the wild tribes; he had philosophized about the despoilers +of the kingdoms of the earth, and found out--the cunning creature +--that they refer their differences to the learned for settlement; +he had achieved a vast fame as a military chieftain, the Achilles +of the Florida campaigns, and then had got him a spelling-book +and started to school; he had fallen in love with Ambulinia Valeer +while she was teething, but had kept it to himself awhile, out of +the reverential awe which he felt for the child; but now at last, +like the unyielding Deity who follows the storm to check its rage in +the forest, he resolves to shake off his embarrassment, and to return +where before he had only worshiped. The Major, indeed, has made up +his mind to rise up and shake his faculties together, and to see +if HE can't do that thing himself. This is not clear. But no matter +about that: there stands the hero, compact and visible; and he is +no mean structure, considering that his creator had never structure, +considering that his creator had never created anything before, +and hadn't anything but rags and wind to build with this time. +It seems to me that no one can contemplate this odd creature, this quaint +and curious blatherskite, without admiring McClintock, or, at any rate, +loving him and feeling grateful to him; for McClintock made him, +he gave him to us; without McClintock we could not have had him, +and would now be poor. + +But we must come to the feast again. Here is a courtship scene, down +there in the romantic glades among the raccoons, alligators, and things, +that has merit, peculiar literary merit. See how Achilles woos. +Dwell upon the second sentence (particularly the close of it) and the +beginning of the third. Never mind the new personage, Leos, who is +intruded upon us unheralded and unexplained. That is McClintock's way; +it is his habit; it is a part of his genius; he cannot help it; +he never interrupts the rush of his narrative to make introductions. + + +It could not escape Ambulinia's penetrating eye that he sought +an interview with her, which she as anxiously avoided, and assumed +a more distant calmness than before, seemingly to destroy all hope. +After many efforts and struggles with his own person, with timid +steps the Major approached the damsel, with the same caution +as he would have done in a field of battle. "Lady Ambulinia," +said he, trembling, "I have long desired a moment like this. +I dare not let it escape. I fear the consequences; yet I hope +your indulgence will at least hear my petition. Can you not +anticipate what I would say, and what I am about to express? +Will not you, like Minerva, who sprung from the brain of Jupiter, +release me from thy winding chains or cure me--" "Say no more, +Elfonzo," answered Ambulinia, with a serious look, raising her hand +as if she intended to swear eternal hatred against the whole world; +"another lady in my place would have perhaps answered your question +in bitter coldness. I know not the little arts of my sex. +I care but little for the vanity of those who would chide me, +and am unwilling as well as ashamed to be guilty of anything +that would lead you to think 'all is not gold that glitters'; +so be no rash in your resolution. It is better to repent now, +than to do it in a more solemn hour. Yes, I know what you would say. +I know you have a costly gift for me--the noblest that man can make +--YOUR HEART! You should not offer it to one so unworthy. +Heaven, you know, has allowed my father's house to be made a house +of solitude, a home of silent obedience, which my parents say +is more to be admired than big names and high-sounding titles. +Notwithstanding all this, let me speak the emotions of an honest heart +--allow me to say in the fullness of my hopes that I anticipate +better days. The bird may stretch its wings toward the sun, +which it can never reach; and flowers of the field appear to +ascend in the same direction, because they cannot do otherwise; +but man confides his complaints to the saints in whom he believes; +for in their abodes of light they know no more sorrow. From your +confession and indicative looks, I must be that person; if so deceive +not yourself." + +Elfonzo replied, "Pardon me, my dear madam, for my frankness. +I have loved you from my earliest days--everything grand and beautiful +hath borne the image of Ambulinia; while precipices on every hand +surrounded me, your GUARDIAN ANGEL stood and beckoned me away from +the deep abyss. In every trial, in every misfortune, I have met +with your helping hand; yet I never dreamed or dared to cherish +thy love, till a voice impaired with age encouraged the cause, +and declared they who acquired thy favor should win a victory. +I saw how Leos worshiped thee. I felt my own unworthiness. +I began to KNOW JEALOUSLY, a strong guest--indeed, in my bosom, +--yet I could see if I gained your admiration Leos was to be my rival. +I was aware that he had the influence of your parents, and the wealth +of a deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for permanent +and regular tranquillity; yet I have determined by your permission +to beg an interest in your prayers--to ask you to animate my drooping +spirits by your smiles and your winning looks; for if you but speak +I shall be conqueror, my enemies shall stagger like Olympus shakes. +And though earth and sea may tremble, and the charioteer of the sun +may forget his dashing steed, yet I am assured that it is only +to arm me with divine weapons which will enable me to complete my +long-tried intention." + +"Return to yourself, Elfonzo," said Ambulinia, pleasantly: "a dream +of vision has disturbed your intellect; you are above the atmosphere, +dwelling in the celestial regions; nothing is there that urges +or hinders, nothing that brings discord into our present litigation. +I entreat you to condescend a little, and be a man, and forget it all. +When Homer describes the battle of the gods and noble men fighting +with giants and dragons, they represent under this image our struggles +with the delusions of our passions. You have exalted me, an unhappy girl, +to the skies; you have called me a saint, and portrayed in your +imagination an angel in human form. Let her remain such to you, +let her continue to be as you have supposed, and be assured that she +will consider a share in your esteem as her highest treasure. +Think not that I would allure you from the path in which your +conscience leads you; for you know I respect the conscience of others, +as I would die for my own. Elfonzo, if I am worthy of thy love, +let such conversation never again pass between us. Go, seek a nobler +theme! we will seek it in the stream of time, as the sun set in +the Tigris." As she spake these words she grasped the hand of Elfonzo, +saying at the same time--"Peace and prosperity attend you, my hero; +be up and doing!" Closing her remarks with this expression, +she walked slowly away, leaving Elfonzo astonished and amazed. +He ventured not to follow or detain her. Here he stood alone, +gazing at the stars; confounded as he was, here he stood. + + +Yes; there he stood. There seems to be no doubt about that. +Nearly half of this delirious story has now been delivered to the reader. +It seems a pity to reduce the other half to a cold synopsis. +Pity! it is more than a pity, it is a crime; for to synopsize McClintock +is to reduce a sky-flushing conflagration to dull embers, it is to +reduce barbaric splendor to ragged poverty. McClintock never wrote +a line that was not precious; he never wrote one that could be spared; +he never framed one from which a word could be removed without damage. +Every sentence that this master has produced may be likened to a +perfect set of teeth, white, uniform, beautiful. If you pull one, +the charm is gone. + +Still, it is now necessary to begin to pull, and to keep it up; +for lack of space requires us to synopsize. + +We left Elfonzo standing there amazed. At what, we do not know. +Not at the girl's speech. No; we ourselves should have been +amazed at it, of course, for none of us has ever heard anything +resembling it; but Elfonzo was used to speeches made up of noise +and vacancy, and could listen to them with undaunted mind like +the "topmost topaz of an ancient tower"; he was used to making +them himself; he--but let it go, it cannot be guessed out; we shall +never know what it was that astonished him. He stood there awhile; +then he said, "Alas! am I now Grief's disappointed son at last?" +He did not stop to examine his mind, and to try to find out what +he probably meant by that, because, for one reason, "a mixture +of ambition and greatness of soul moved upon his young heart," +and started him for the village. He resumed his bench in school, +"and reasonably progressed in his education." His heart was heavy, +but he went into society, and sought surcease of sorrow in its +light distractions. He made himself popular with his violin, +"which seemed to have a thousand chords--more symphonious than the +Muses of Apollo, and more enchanting than the ghost of the Hills." +This is obscure, but let it go. + +During this interval Leos did some unencouraged courting, but at last, +"choked by his undertaking," he desisted. + +Presently "Elfonzo again wends his way to the stately walls and +new-built village." He goes to the house of his beloved; she opens +the door herself. To my surprise--for Ambulinia's heart had still +seemed free at the time of their last interview--love beamed from the +girl's eyes. One sees that Elfonzo was surprised, too; for when he caught +that light, "a halloo of smothered shouts ran through every vein." +A neat figure--a very neat figure, indeed! Then he kissed her. +"The scene was overwhelming." They went into the parlor. The girl +said it was safe, for her parents were abed, and would never know. +Then we have this fine picture--flung upon the canvas with hardly +an effort, as you will notice. + + +Advancing toward him, she gave a bright display of her rosy neck, +and from her head the ambrosial locks breathed divine fragrance; +her robe hung waving to his view, while she stood like a goddess +confessed before him. + + +There is nothing of interest in the couple's interview. Now at this +point the girl invites Elfonzo to a village show, where jealousy is +the motive of the play, for she wants to teach him a wholesome lesson, +if he is a jealous person. But this is a sham, and pretty shallow. +McClintock merely wants a pretext to drag in a plagiarism of his upon +a scene or two in "Othello." + +The lovers went to the play. Elfonzo was one of the fiddlers. +He and Ambulinia must not been seen together, lest trouble follow with +the girl's malignant father; we are made to understand that clearly. +So the two sit together in the orchestra, in the midst of the musicians. +This does not seem to be good art. In the first place, the girl would +be in the way, for orchestras are always packed closely together, +and there is no room to spare for people's girls; in the next place, +one cannot conceal a girl in an orchestra without everybody taking +notice of it. There can be no doubt, it seems to me, that this is +bad art. + +Leos is present. Of course, one of the first things that catches +his eye is the maddening spectacle of Ambulinia "leaning upon +Elfonzo's chair." This poor girl does not seem to understand even +the rudiments of concealment. But she is "in her seventeenth," +as the author phrases it, and that is her justification. + +Leos meditates, constructs a plan--with personal violence as a basis, +of course. It was their way down there. It is a good plain plan, +without any imagination in it. He will go out and stand at the +front door, and when these two come out he will "arrest Ambulinia +from the hands of the insolent Elfonzo," and thus make for himself +a "more prosperous field of immortality than ever was decreed +by Omnipotence, or ever pencil drew or artist imagined." But, dear me, +while he is waiting there the couple climb out at the back window +and scurry home! This is romantic enough, but there is a lack +of dignity in the situation. + +At this point McClintock puts in the whole of his curious play +--which we skip. + +Some correspondence follows now. The bitter father and the +distressed lovers write the letters. Elopements are attempted. +They are idiotically planned, and they fail. Then we have several +pages of romantic powwow and confusion dignifying nothing. +Another elopement is planned; it is to take place on Sunday, +when everybody is at church. But the "hero" cannot keep the secret; +he tells everybody. Another author would have found another +instrument when he decided to defeat this elopement; but that is +not McClintock's way. He uses the person that is nearest at hand. + +The evasion failed, of course. Ambulinia, in her flight, +takes refuge in a neighbor's house. Her father drags her home. +The villagers gather, attracted by the racket. + + +Elfonzo was moved at this sight. The people followed on to see +what was going to become of Ambulinia, while he, with downcast looks, +kept at a distance, until he saw them enter the abode of the father, +thrusting her, that was the sigh of his soul, out of his presence +into a solitary apartment, when she exclaimed, "Elfonzo! Elfonzo! oh, +Elfonzo! where art thou, with all thy heroes? haste, oh! haste, +come thou to my relief. Ride on the wings of the wind! Turn thy +force loose like a tempest, and roll on thy army like a whirlwind, +over this mountain of trouble and confusion. Oh friends! if any +pity me, let your last efforts throng upon the green hills, +and come to the relief of Ambulinia, who is guilty of nothing +but innocent love." Elfonzo called out with a loud voice, "My God, +can I stand this! arouse up, I beseech you, and put an end to +this tyranny. Come, my brave boys," said he, "are you ready to go +forth to your duty?" They stood around him. "Who," said he, +"will call us to arms? Where are my thunderbolts of war? Speak ye, +the first who will meet the foe! Who will go forward with me +in this ocean of grievous temptation? If there is one who desires +to go, let him come and shake hands upon the altar of devotion, +and swear that he will be a hero; yes, a Hector in a cause like this, +which calls aloud for a speedy remedy." "Mine be the deed," +said a young lawyer, "and mine alone; Venus alone shall quit her +station before I will forsake one jot or tittle of my promise to you; +what is death to me? what is all this warlike army, if it is not +to win a victory? I love the sleep of the lover and the mighty; +nor would I give it over till the blood of my enemies should wreak +with that of my own. But God forbid that our fame should soar +on the blood of the slumberer." Mr. Valeer stands at his door +with the frown of a demon upon his brow, with his dangerous weapon +[3] ready to strike the first man who should enter his door. +"Who will arise and go forward through blood and carnage to the rescue +of my Ambulinia?" said Elfonzo. "All," exclaimed the multitude; +and onward they went, with their implements of battle. Others, of a +more timid nature, stood among the distant hills to see the result of +the contest. + + +It will hardly be believed that after all this thunder and lightning +not a drop of rain fell; but such is the fact. Elfonzo and his +gang stood up and black-guarded Mr. Valeer with vigor all night, +getting their outlay back with interest; then in the early +morning the army and its general retired from the field, +leaving the victory with their solitary adversary and his crowbar. +This is the first time this has happened in romantic literature. +The invention is original. Everything in this book is original; +there is nothing hackneyed about it anywhere. Always, in other +romances, when you find the author leading up to a climax, +you know what is going to happen. But in this book it is different; +the thing which seems inevitable and unavoidable never happens; +it is circumvented by the art of the author every time. + +Another elopement was attempted. It failed. + +We have now arrived at the end. But it is not exciting. +McClintock thinks it is; but it isn't. One day Elfonzo sent Ambulinia +another note--a note proposing elopement No. 16. This time the plan +is admirable; admirable, sagacious, ingenious, imaginative, deep +--oh, everything, and perfectly easy. One wonders why it was never +thought of before. This is the scheme. Ambulinia is to leave the +breakfast-table, ostensibly to "attend to the placing of those flowers, +which should have been done a week ago"--artificial ones, of course; +the others wouldn't keep so long--and then, instead of fixing +the flowers, she is to walk out to the grove, and go off with Elfonzo. +The invention of this plan overstrained the author that is plain, +for he straightway shows failing powers. The details of the plan +are not many or elaborate. The author shall state them himself +--this good soul, whose intentions are always better than his English: + + +"You walk carelessly toward the academy grove, where you will find +me with a lightning steed, elegantly equipped to bear you off +where we shall be joined in wedlock with the first connubial rights." + + +Last scene of all, which the author, now much enfeebled, +tries to smarten up and make acceptable to his spectacular heart +by introducing some new properties--silver bow, golden harp, +olive branch--things that can all come good in an elopement, +no doubt, yet are not to be compared to an umbrella for real +handiness and reliability in an excursion of that kind. + + +And away she ran to the sacred grove, surrounded with glittering pearls, +that indicated her coming. Elfonzo hails her with his silver bow +and his golden harp. They meet--Ambulinia's countenance brightens +--Elfonzo leads up the winged steed. "Mount," said he, "ye true-hearted, +ye fearless soul--the day is ours." She sprang upon the back +of the young thunderbolt, a brilliant star sparkles upon her head, +with one hand she grasps the reins, and with the other she holds +an olive branch. "Lend thy aid, ye strong winds," they exclaimed, +"ye moon, ye sun, and all ye fair host of heaven, witness the +enemy conquered." "Hold," said Elfonzo, "thy dashing steed." +"Ride on," said Ambulinia, "the voice of thunder is behind us." +And onward they went, with such rapidity that they very soon arrived +at Rural Retreat, where they dismounted, and were united with all +the solemnities that usually attended such divine operations. + + +There is but one Homer, there is but one Shakespeare, there is but +one McClintock--and his immortal book is before you. Homer could +not have written this book, Shakespeare could not have written it, +I could not have done it myself. There is nothing just like it +in the literature of any country or of any epoch. It stands alone; +it is monumental. It adds G. Ragsdale McClintock's to the sum of +the republic's imperishable names. + +1. The name here given is a substitute for the one actually +attached to the pamphlet. + +2. Further on it will be seen that he is a country expert +on the fiddle, and has a three-township fame. + +3. It is a crowbar. + + + + + + +THE CURIOUS BOOK + + +Complete + + + +[The foregoing review of the great work of G. Ragsdale McClintock is +liberally illuminated with sample extracts, but these cannot appease +the appetite. Only the complete book, unabridged, can do that. +Therefore it is here printed.--M.T.] + + + +THE ENEMY CONQUERED; OR, LOVE TRIUMPHANT + + + +Sweet girl, thy smiles are full of charms, + +Thy voice is sweeter still, + +It fills the breast with fond alarms, + +Echoed by every rill. + + +I begin this little work with an eulogy upon woman, who has ever +been distinguished for her perseverance, her constancy, and her +devoted attention to those upon whom she has been pleased to place +her AFFECTIONS. Many have been the themes upon which writers and +public speakers have dwelt with intense and increasing interest. +Among these delightful themes stands that of woman, the balm +to all our sighs and disappointments, and the most pre-eminent +of all other topics. Here the poet and orator have stood and gazed +with wonder and with admiration; they have dwelt upon her innocence, +the ornament of all her virtues. First viewing her external charms, +such as set forth in her form and benevolent countenance, and then passing +to the deep hidden springs of loveliness and disinterested devotion. +In every clime, and in every age, she has been the pride of her NATION. +Her watchfulness is untiring; she who guarded the sepulcher was +the first to approach it, and the last to depart from its awful +yet sublime scene. Even here, in this highly favored land, +we look to her for the security of our institutions, and for our +future greatness as a nation. But, strange as it may appear, +woman's charms and virtues are but slightly appreciated by thousands. +Those who should raise the standard of female worth, and paint her +value with her virtues, in living colors, upon the banners that are +fanned by the zephyrs of heaven, and hand them down to posterity +as emblematical of a rich inheritance, do not properly estimate them. + +Man is not sensible, at all times, of the nature and the emotions +which bear that name; he does not understand, he will not comprehend; +his intelligence has not expanded to that degree of glory which +drinks in the vast revolution of humanity, its end, its mighty +destination, and the causes which operated, and are still operating, +to produce a more elevated station, and the objects which energize +and enliven its consummation. This he is a stranger to; +he is not aware that woman is the recipient of celestial love, +and that man is dependent upon her to perfect his character; +that without her, philosophically and truly speaking, the brightest +of his intelligence is but the coldness of a winter moon, +whose beams can produce no fruit, whose solar light is not its own, +but borrowed from the great dispenser of effulgent beauty. +We have no disposition in the world to flatter the fair sex, +we would raise them above those dastardly principles which only +exist in little souls, contracted hearts, and a distracted brain. +Often does she unfold herself in all her fascinating loveliness, +presenting the most captivating charms; yet we find man frequently +treats such purity of purpose with indifference. Why does he do it? +Why does he baffle that which is inevitably the source of his +better days? Is he so much of a stranger to those excellent qualities +as not to appreciate woman, as not to have respect to her dignity? +Since her art and beauty first captivated man, she has been his +delight and his comfort; she has shared alike in his misfortunes +and in his prosperity. + +Whenever the billows of adversity and the tumultuous waves of trouble +beat high, her smiles subdue their fury. Should the tear of sorrow +and the mournful sigh of grief interrupt the peace of his mind, +her voice removes them all, and she bends from her circle to encourage +him onward. When darkness would obscure his mind, and a thick cloud +of gloom would bewilder its operations, her intelligent eye darts +a ray of streaming light into his heart. Mighty and charming is that +disinterested devotion which she is ever ready to exercise toward man, +not waiting till the last moment of his danger, but seeks to relieve +him in his early afflictions. It gushes forth from the expansive +fullness of a tender and devoted heart, where the noblest, the purest, +and the most elevated and refined feelings are matured and developed +in those may kind offices which invariably make her character. + +In the room of sorrow and sickness, this unequaled characteristic +may always been seen, in the performance of the most charitable acts; +nothing that she can do to promote the happiness of him who she +claims to be her protector will be omitted; all is invigorated by +the animating sunbeams which awaken the heart to songs of gaiety. +Leaving this point, to notice another prominent consideration, +which is generally one of great moment and of vital importance. +Invariably she is firm and steady in all her pursuits and aims. +There is required a combination of forces and extreme opposition to +drive her from her position; she takes her stand, not to be moved by +the sound of Apollo's lyre or the curved bow of pleasure. + +Firm and true to what she undertakes, and that which she requires +by her own aggrandizement, and regards as being within the strict rules +of propriety, she will remain stable and unflinching to the last. +A more genuine principle is not to be found in the most determined, +resolute heart of man. For this she deserves to be held in the +highest commendation, for this she deserves the purest of all +other blessings, and for this she deserves the most laudable reward +of all others. It is a noble characteristic and is worthy of imitation +of any age. And when we look at it in one particular aspect, +it is still magnified, and grows brighter and brighter the more we +reflect upon its eternal duration. What will she not do, when her +word as well as her affections and LOVE are pledged to her lover? +Everything that is dear to her on earth, all the hospitalities +of kind and loving parents, all the sincerity and loveliness +of sisters, and the benevolent devotion of brothers, who have +surrounded her with every comfort; she will forsake them all, +quit the harmony and sweet sound of the lute and the harp, +and throw herself upon the affections of some devoted admirer, +in whom she fondly hopes to find more than she has left behind, +which is not often realized by many. Truth and virtue all combined! +How deserving our admiration and love! Ah cruel would it be in man, +after she has thus manifested such an unshaken confidence in him, +and said by her determination to abandon all the endearments and +blandishments of home, to act a villainous part, and prove a traitor +in the revolution of his mission, and then turn Hector over the +innocent victim whom he swore to protect, in the presence of Heaven, +recorded by the pen of an angel. + +Striking as this train may unfold itself in her character, +and as pre-eminent as it may stand among the fair display of her +other qualities, yet there is another, which struggles into existence, +and adds an additional luster to what she already possesses. +I mean that disposition in woman which enables her, in sorrow, +in grief, and in distress, to bear all with enduring patience. +This she has done, and can and will do, amid the din of war and +clash of arms. Scenes and occurrences which, to every appearance, +are calculated to rend the heart with the profoundest emotions of trouble, +do not fetter that exalted principle imbued in her very nature. +It is true, her tender and feeling heart may often be moved (as she +is thus constituted), but she is not conquered, she has not given up +to the harlequin of disappointments, her energies have not become +clouded in the last movement of misfortune, but she is continually +invigorated by the archetype of her affections. She may bury her face +in her hands, and let the tear of anguish roll, she may promenade +the delightful walks of some garden, decorated with all the flowers +of nature, or she may steal out along some gently rippling stream, +and there, as the silver waters uninterruptedly move forward, +shed her silent tears; they mingle with the waves, and take a last +farewell of their agitated home, to seek a peaceful dwelling among +the rolling floods; yet there is a voice rushing from her breast, +that proclaims VICTORY along the whole line and battlement of +her affections. That voice is the voice of patience and resignation; +that voice is one that bears everything calmly and dispassionately, +amid the most distressing scenes; when the fates are arrayed against +her peace, and apparently plotting for her destruction, still she +is resigned. + +Woman's affections are deep, consequently her troubles may be made +to sink deep. Although you may not be able to mark the traces of her +grief and the furrowings of her anguish upon her winning countenance, +yet be assured they are nevertheless preying upon her inward person, +sapping the very foundation of that heart which alone was made +for the weal and not the woe of man. The deep recesses of the soul +are fields for their operation. But they are not destined simply +to take the regions of the heart for their dominion, they are not +satisfied merely with interrupting her better feelings; but after +a while you may see the blooming cheek beginning to droop and fade, +her intelligent eye no longer sparkles with the starry light of heaven, +her vibrating pulse long since changed its regular motion, and her +palpitating bosom beats once more for the midday of her glory. +Anxiety and care ultimately throw her into the arms of the haggard +and grim monster death. But, oh, how patient, under every +pining influence! Let us view the matter in bolder colors; +see her when the dearest object of her affections recklessly seeks +every bacchanalian pleasure, contents himself with the last rubbish +of creation. With what solicitude she awaits his return! Sleep fails +to perform its office--she weeps while the nocturnal shades of the +night triumph in the stillness. Bending over some favorite book, +whilst the author throws before her mind the most beautiful imagery, +she startles at every sound. The midnight silence is broken +by the solemn announcement of the return of another morning. +He is still absent; she listens for that voice which has so often +been greeted by the melodies of her own; but, alas! stern silence +is all that she receives for her vigilance. + +Mark her unwearied watchfulness, as the night passes away. +At last, brutalized by the accursed thing, he staggers along +with rage, and, shivering with cold, he makes his appearance. +Not a murmur is heard from her lips. On the contrary, she meets him +with a smile--she caresses him with tender arms, with all the gentleness +and softness of her sex. Here, then, is seen her disposition, +beautifully arrayed. Woman, thou art more to be admired than the spicy +gales of Arabia, and more sought for than the gold of Golconda. +We believe that Woman should associate freely with man, and we believe +that it is for the preservation of her rights. She should become +acquainted with the metaphysical designs of those who condescended +to sing the siren song of flattery. This, we think, should be +according to the unwritten law of decorum, which is stamped upon +every innocent heart. The precepts of prudery are often steeped +in the guilt of contamination, which blasts the expectations of +better moments. Truth, and beautiful dreams--loveliness, and delicacy +of character, with cherished affections of the ideal woman +--gentle hopes and aspirations, are enough to uphold her in the storms +of darkness, without the transferred colorings of a stained sufferer. +How often have we seen it in our public prints, that woman occupies +a false station in the world! and some have gone so far as to say it +was an unnatural one. So long has she been regarded a weak creature, +by the rabble and illiterate--they have looked upon her as an +insufficient actress on the great stage of human life--a mere puppet, +to fill up the drama of human existence--a thoughtless, inactive being +--that she has too often come to the same conclusion herself, and has +sometimes forgotten her high destination, in the meridian of her glory. +We have but little sympathy or patience for those who treat her as +a mere Rosy Melindi--who are always fishing for pretty complements +--who are satisfied by the gossamer of Romance, and who can be +allured by the verbosity of high-flown words, rich in language, +but poor and barren in sentiment. Beset, as she has been, by the +intellectual vulgar, the selfish, the designing, the cunning, the hidden, +and the artful--no wonder she has sometimes folded her wings in despair, +and forgotten her HEAVENLY mission in the delirium of imagination; +no wonder she searches out some wild desert, to find a peaceful home. +But this cannot always continue. A new era is moving gently onward, +old things are rapidly passing away; old superstitions, old prejudices, +and old notions are now bidding farewell to their old associates +and companions, and giving way to one whose wings are plumed +with the light of heaven and tinged by the dews of the morning. +There is a remnant of blessedness that clings to her in spite of all +evil influence, there is enough of the Divine Master left to accomplish +the noblest work ever achieved under the canopy of the vaulted skies; +and that time is fast approaching, when the picture of the true +woman will shine from its frame of glory, to captivate, to win back, +to restore, and to call into being once more, THE OBJECT OF HER MISSION. + + Star of the brave! thy glory shed, + O'er all the earth, thy army led-- + Bold meteor of immortal birth! + Why come from Heaven to dwell on Earth? + +Mighty and glorious are the days of youth; happy the moments +of the LOVER, mingled with smiles and tears of his devoted, +and long to be remembered are the achievements which he gains with a +palpitating heart and a trembling hand. A bright and lovely dawn, +the harbinger of a fair and prosperous day, had arisen over the +beautiful little village of Cumming, which is surrounded by the +most romantic scenery in the Cherokee country. Brightening clouds +seemed to rise from the mist of the fair Chattahoochee, to spread +their beauty over the the thick forest, to guide the hero whose +bosom beats with aspirations to conquer the enemy that would tarnish +his name, and to win back the admiration of his long-tried friend. +He endeavored to make his way through Sawney's Mountain, where many meet +to catch the gales that are continually blowing for the refreshment +of the stranger and the traveler. Surrounded as he was by hills +on every side, naked rocks dared the efforts of his energies. +Soon the sky became overcast, the sun buried itself in the clouds, +and the fair day gave place to gloomy twilight, which lay heavily +on the Indian Plains. He remembered an old Indian Castle, +that once stood at the foot of the mountain. He thought if he could +make his way to this, he would rest contented for a short time. +The mountain air breathed fragrance--a rosy tinge rested on the glassy +waters that murmured at its base. His resolution soon brought him +to the remains of the red man's hut: he surveyed with wonder and +astonishment the decayed building, which time had buried in the dust, +and thought to himself, his happiness was not yet complete. +Beside the shore of the brook sat a young man, about eighteen or twenty, +who seemed to be reading some favorite book, and who had a remarkably +noble countenance--eyes which betrayed more than a common mind. +This of course made the youth a welcome guest, and gained him +friends in whatever condition of life he might be placed. +The traveler observed that he was a well-built figure, which showed +strength and grace in every movement. He accordingly addressed +him in quite a gentlemanly manner, and inquired of him the way +to the village. After he had received the desired information, +and was about taking his leave, the youth said, "Are you not +Major Elfonzo, the great musician--the champion of a noble cause +--the modern Achilles, who gained so many victories in the Florida War?" +"I bear that name," said the Major, "and those titles, +trusting at the same time that the ministers of grace will carry +me triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if," +continued the Major, "you, sir, are the patronizer of noble deeds, +I should like to make you my confidant and learn your address." +The youth looked somewhat amazed, bowed low, mused for a moment, +and began: "My name is Roswell. I have been recently admitted +to the bar, and can only give a faint outline of my future success +in that honorable profession; but I trust, sir, like the Eagle, +I shall look down from lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man, and shall +ever be ready to give you any assistance in my official capacity, +and whatever this muscular arm of mine can do, whenever it shall be +called from its buried GREATNESS." The Major grasped him by the hand, +and exclaimed: "O! thou exalted spirit of inspiration--thou flame +of burning prosperity, may the Heaven-directed blaze be the glare +of thy soul, and battle down every rampart that seems to impede +your progress!" + +The road which led to the town presented many attractions. +Elfonzo had bid farewell to the youth of deep feeling, and was +not wending his way to the dreaming spot of his fondness. +The south winds whistled through the woods, as the waters dashed +against the banks, as rapid fire in the pent furnace roars. +This brought him to remember while alone, that he quietly left behind +the hospitality of a father's house, and gladly entered the world, +with higher hopes than are often realized. But as he journeyed onward, +he was mindful of the advice of his father, who had often looked +sadly on the ground when tears of cruelly deceived hope moistened +his eye. Elfonzo had been somewhat of a dutiful son; yet fond +of the amusements of life--had been in distant lands--had enjoyed +the pleasure of the world and had frequently returned to the scenes +of his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life. +In this condition, he would frequently say to his father, "Have I +offended you, that you look upon me as a stranger, and frown upon +me with stinging looks? Will you not favor me with the sound of +your voice? If I have trampled upon your veneration, or have spread +a humid veil of darkness around your expectations, send me back into +the world where no heart beats for me--where the foot of man has +never yet trod; but give me at least one kind word--allow me to come +into the presence sometimes of thy winter-worn locks." "Forbid it, +Heaven, that I should be angry with thee," answered the father, +"my son, and yet I send thee back to the children of the world +--to the cold charity of the combat, and to a land of victory. I read +another destiny in thy countenance--I learn thy inclinations from +the flame that has already kindled in my soul a stranger sensation. +It will seek thee, my dear ELFONZO, it will find thee--thou canst +not escape that lighted torch, which shall blot out from the +remembrance of men a long train of prophecies which they have +foretold against thee. I once thought not so. Once, I was blind; +but now the path of life is plain before me, and my sight is clear; +yet Elfonzo, return to thy worldly occupation--take again in thy +hand that chord of sweet sounds--struggle with the civilized world, +and with your own heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted ground +--let the night-OWL send forth its screams from the stubborn oak +--let the sea sport upon the beach, and the stars sing together; +but learn of these, Elfonzo, thy doom, and thy hiding-place. Our most +innocent as well as our most lawful DESIRES must often be denied us, +that we may learn to sacrifice them to a Higher will." + +Remembering such admonitions with gratitude, Elfonzo was immediately +urged by the recollection of his father's family to keep moving. +His steps became quicker and quicker--he hastened through the PINY woods, +dark as the forest was, and with joy he very soon reached the little +village or repose, in whose bosom rested the boldest chivalry. +His close attention to every important object--his modest questions +about whatever was new to him--his reverence for wise old age, +and his ardent desire to learn many of the fine arts, soon brought him +into respectable notice. + +One mild winter day as he walked along the streets toward the Academy, +which stood upon a small eminence, surrounded by native growth +--some venerable in its appearance, others young and prosperous +--all seemed inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as +well as for genius to spend its research beneath its spreading shades. +He entered its classic walls in the usual mode of southern manners. +The principal of the Institution begged him to be seated and listen +to the recitations that were going on. He accordingly obeyed +the request, and seemed to be much pleased. After the school +was dismissed, and the young hearts regained their freedom, +with the songs of the evening, laughing at the anticipated pleasures +of a happy home, while others tittered at the actions of the past day, +he addressed the teacher in a tone that indicated a resolution +--with an undaunted mind. He said he had determined to become +a student, if he could meet with his approbation. "Sir," said he, +"I have spent much time in the world. I have traveled among +the uncivilized inhabitants of America. I have met with friends, +and combated with foes; but none of these gratify my ambition, +or decide what is to be my destiny. I see the learned would +have an influence with the voice of the people themselves. +The despoilers of the remotest kingdoms of the earth refer their +differences to this class of persons. This the illiterate and +inexperienced little dream of; and now if you will receive me as I am, +with these deficiencies--with all my misguided opinions, I will give +you my honor, sir, that I will never disgrace the Institution, +or those who have placed you in this honorable station." +The instructor, who had met with many disappointments, knew how to +feel for a stranger who had been thus turned upon the charities +of an unfeeling community. He looked at him earnestly, and said: +"Be of good cheer--look forward, sir, to the high destination you +may attain. Remember, the more elevated the mark at which you aim, +the more sure, the more glorious, the more magnificent the prize." +From wonder to wonder, his encouragement led the impatient listener. +A stranger nature bloomed before him--giant streams promised +him success--gardens of hidden treasures opened to his view. +All this, so vividly described, seemed to gain a new witchery from his +glowing fancy. + +In 1842 he entered the class, and made rapid progress in the English +and Latin departments. Indeed, he continued advancing with such +rapidity that he was like to become the first in his class, +and made such unexpected progress, and was so studious, that he had +almost forgotten the pictured saint of his affections. The fresh +wreaths of the pine and cypress had waited anxiously to drop once +more the dews of Heavens upon the heads of those who had so often +poured forth the tender emotions of their souls under its boughs. +He was aware of the pleasure that he had seen there. So one evening, +as he was returning from his reading, he concluded he would pay a visit +to this enchanting spot. Little did he think of witnessing a shadow +of his former happiness, though no doubt he wished it might be so. +He continued sauntering by the roadside, meditating on the past. +The nearer he approached the spot, the more anxious he became. +At the moment a tall female figure flitted across his path, with a +bunch of roses in her hand; her countenance showed uncommon vivacity, +with a resolute spirit; her ivory teeth already appeared as she +smiled beautifully, promenading--while her ringlets of hair dangled +unconsciously around her snowy neck. Nothing was wanting to complete +her beauty. The tinge of the rose was in full bloom upon her cheek; +the charms of sensibility and tenderness were always her associates.. +In Ambulinia's bosom dwelt a noble soul--one that never faded +--one that never was conquered. Her heart yielded to no feeling +but the love of Elfonzo, on whom she gazed with intense delight, +and to whom she felt herself more closely bound, because he sought +the hand of no other. Elfonzo was roused from his apparent reverie. +His books no longer were his inseparable companions--his thoughts +arrayed themselves to encourage him in the field of victory. +He endeavored to speak to his supposed Ambulinia, but his speech +appeared not in words. No, his effort was a stream of fire, +that kindled his soul into a flame of admiration, and carried +his senses away captive. Ambulinia had disappeared, to make him +more mindful of his duty. As she walked speedily away through +the piny woods she calmly echoed: "O! Elfonzo, thou wilt +now look from thy sunbeams. Thou shalt now walk in a new path +--perhaps thy way leads through darkness; but fear not, the stars +foretell happiness." + +Not many days afterward, as surrounded by fragrant flowers she sat +one evening at twilight, to enjoy the cool breeze that whispered +notes of melody along the distant groves, the little birds perched +on every side, as if to watch the movements of their new visitor. +The bells were tolling when Elfonzo silently stole along by the wild +wood flowers, holding in his hand his favorite instrument of music +--his eye continually searching for Ambulinia, who hardly seemed +to perceive him, as she played carelessly with the songsters +that hopped from branch to branch. Nothing could be more striking +than the difference between the two. Nature seemed to have given +the more tender soul to Elfonzo, and the stronger and more courageous +to Ambulinia. A deep feeling spoke from the eyes of Elfonzo +--such a feeling as can only be expressed by those who are blessed +as admirers, and by those who are able to return the same with +sincerity of heart. He was a few years older than Ambulinia: +she had turned a little into her seventeenth. He had almost grown +up in the Cherokee country, with the same equal proportions as one +of the natives. But little intimacy had existed between them until +the year forty-one--because the youth felt that the character of such +a lovely girl was too exalted to inspire any other feeling than +that of quiet reverence. But as lovers will not always be insulted, +at all times and under all circumstances, by the frowns and cold +looks of crabbed old age, which should continually reflect dignity +upon those around, and treat unfortunate as well as the fortunate +with a graceful mien, he continued to use diligence and perseverance. +All this lighted a spark in his heart that changed his whole character, +and like the unyielding Deity that follows the storm to check its +rage in the forest, he resolves for the first time to shake off +his embarrassment and return where he had before only worshiped. + +It could not escape Ambulinia's penetrating eye that he sought +an interview with her, which she as anxiously avoided, and assumed +a more distant calmness than before, seemingly to destroy all hope. +After many efforts and struggles with his own person, with timid +steps the Major approached the damsel, with the same caution +as he would have done in a field of battle. "Lady Ambulinia," +said he, trembling, "I have long desired a moment like this. +I dare not let it escape. I fear the consequences; yet I hope +your indulgence will at least hear my petition. Can you not +anticipate what I would say, and what I am about to express? +Will not you, like Minerva, who sprung from the brain of Jupiter, +release me from thy winding chains or cure me--" "Say no more, +Elfonzo," answered Ambulinia, with a serious look, raising her hand +as if she intended to swear eternal hatred against the whole world; +"another lady in my place would have perhaps answered your question +in bitter coldness. I know not the little arts of my sex. +I care but little for the vanity of those who would chide me, +and am unwilling as well as shamed to be guilty of anything +that would lead you to think 'all is not gold that glitters'; +so be not rash in your resolution. It is better to repent now than +to do it in a more solemn hour. Yes, I know what you would say. +I know you have a costly gift for me--the noblest that man can make +--YOUR HEART! you should not offer it to one so unworthy. +Heaven, you know, has allowed my father's house to be made a house +of solitude, a home of silent obedience, which my parents say +is more to be admired than big names and high-sounding titles. +Notwithstanding all this, let me speak the emotions of an honest heart; +allow me to say in the fullness of my hopes that I anticipate +better days. The bird may stretch its wings toward the sun, +which it can never reach; and flowers of the field appear to +ascend in the same direction, because they cannot do otherwise; +but man confides his complaints to the saints in whom he believes; +for in their abodes of light they know no more sorrow. From your +confession and indicative looks, I must be that person; if so, +deceive not yourself." + +Elfonzo replied, "Pardon me, my dear madam, for my frankness. +I have loved you from my earliest days; everything grand and beautiful +hath borne the image of Ambulinia; while precipices on every hand +surrounded me, your GUARDIAN ANGEL stood and beckoned me away from +the deep abyss. In every trial, in every misfortune, I have met +with your helping hand; yet I never dreamed or dared to cherish +thy love till a voice impaired with age encouraged the cause, +and declared they who acquired thy favor should win a victory. +I saw how Leos worshipped thee. I felt my own unworthiness. +I began to KNOW JEALOUSY--a strong guest, indeed, in my bosom +--yet I could see if I gained your admiration Leos was to be my rival. +I was aware that he had the influence of your parents, and the wealth +of a deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for permanent +and regular tranquillity; yet I have determined by your permission +to beg an interest in your prayers--to ask you to animate my dropping +spirits by your smiles and your winning looks; for if you but speak +I shall be conqueror, my enemies shall stagger like Olympus shakes. +And though earth and sea may tremble, and the charioteer of the sun +may forget his dashing steed, yet I am assured that it is only +to arm me with divine weapons which will enable me to complete my +long-tried intention." + +"Return to your self, Elfonzo," said Ambulinia, pleasantly; "a dream +of vision has disturbed your intellect; you are above the atmosphere, +dwelling in the celestial regions; nothing is there that urges +or hinders, nothing that brings discord into our present litigation. +I entreat you to condescend a little, and be a man, and forget it all. +When Homer describes the battle of the gods and noble men fighting +with giants and dragons, they represent under this image our struggles +with the delusions of our passions. You have exalted me, an unhappy girl, +to the skies; you have called me a saint, and portrayed in your +imagination an angel in human form. Let her remain such to you, +let her continue to be as you have supposed, and be assured that she +will consider a share in your esteem as her highest treasure. +Think not that I would allure you from the path in which your +conscience leads you; for you know I respect the conscience of others, +as I would die for my own. Elfonzo, if I am worthy of thy love, +let such conversation never again pass between us. Go, seek a nobler +theme! we will seek it in the stream of time as the sun set in +the Tigris." As she spake these words she grasped the hand of Elfonzo, +saying at the same time, "Peace and prosperity attend you, my hero: +be up and doing!" Closing her remarks with this expression, +she walked slowly away, leaving Elfonzo astonished and amazed. +He ventured not to follow or detain her. Here he stood alone, +gazing at the stars; confounded as he was, here he stood. The rippling +stream rolled on at his feet. Twilight had already begun to draw +her sable mantle over the earth, and now and then the fiery smoke +would ascend from the little town which lay spread out before him. +The citizens seemed to be full of life and good-humor; but poor Elfonzo +saw not a brilliant scene. No; his future life stood before him, +stripped of the hopes that once adorned all his sanguine desires. +"Alas!" said he, "am I now Grief's disappointed son at last." +Ambulinia's image rose before his fancy. A mixture of ambition +and greatness of soul moved upon his young heart, and encouraged +him to bear all his crosses with the patience of a Job, +notwithstanding he had to encounter with so many obstacles. +He still endeavored to prosecute his studies, and reasonable +progressed in his education. Still, he was not content; there was +something yet to be done before his happiness was complete. +He would visit his friends and acquaintances. They would invite him +to social parties, insisting that he should partake of the amusements +that were going on. This he enjoyed tolerably well. The ladies +and gentlemen were generally well pleased with the Major; as he +delighted all with his violin, which seemed to have a thousand chords +--more symphonious than the Muses of Apollo and more enchanting +than the ghost of the Hills. He passed some days in the country. +During that time Leos had made many calls upon Ambulinia, who was +generally received with a great deal of courtesy by the family. +They thought him to be a young man worthy of attention, though he +had but little in his soul to attract the attention or even win +the affections of her whose graceful manners had almost made +him a slave to every bewitching look that fell from her eyes. +Leos made several attempts to tell her of his fair prospects +--how much he loved her, and how much it would add to his bliss if he +could but think she would be willing to share these blessings +with him; but, choked by his undertaking, he made himself more like an +inactive drone than he did like one who bowed at beauty's shrine. + +Elfonzo again wends his way to the stately walls and new-built village. +He now determines to see the end of the prophesy which had been +foretold to him. The clouds burst from his sight; he believes +if he can but see his Ambulinia, he can open to her view the bloody +altars that have been misrepresented to stigmatize his name. +He knows that her breast is transfixed with the sword of reason, +and ready at all times to detect the hidden villainy of her enemies. +He resolves to see her in her own home, with the consoling theme: +"'I can but perish if I go.' Let the consequences be what they may," +said he, "if I die, it shall be contending and struggling for my +own rights." + +Night had almost overtaken him when he arrived in town. Colonel Elder, +a noble-hearted, high-minded, and independent man, met him at +his door as usual, and seized him by the hand. "Well, Elfonzo," +said the Colonel, "how does the world use you in your efforts?" +"I have no objection to the world," said Elfonzo, "but the people +are rather singular in some of their opinions." "Aye, well," +said the Colonel, "you must remember that creation is made up of +many mysteries; just take things by the right handle; be always sure +you know which is the smooth side before you attempt your polish; +be reconciled to your fate, be it what it may; and never find fault +with your condition, unless your complaining will benefit it. +Perseverance is a principle that should be commendable in those who have +judgment to govern it. I should never had been so successful in my +hunting excursions had I waited till the deer, by some magic dream, +had been drawn to the muzzle of the gun before I made an attempt to fire +at the game that dared my boldness in the wild forest. The great +mystery in hunting seems to be--a good marksman, a resolute mind, +a fixed determination, and my world for it, you will never return +home without sounding your horn with the breath of a new victory. +And so with every other undertaking. Be confident that your ammunition +is of the right kind--always pull your trigger with a steady hand, +and so soon as you perceive a calm, touch her off, and the spoils +are yours." + +This filled him with redoubled vigor, and he set out with a stronger +anxiety than ever to the home of Ambulinia. A few short steps soon +brought him to the door, half out of breath. He rapped gently. +Ambulinia, who sat in the parlor alone, suspecting Elfonzo was near, +ventured to the door, opened it, and beheld the hero, who stood +in an humble attitude, bowed gracefully, and as they caught each +other's looks the light of peace beamed from the eyes of Ambulinia. +Elfonzo caught the expression; a halloo of smothered shouts ran +through every vein, and for the first time he dared to impress a kiss +upon her cheek. The scene was overwhelming; had the temptation +been less animating, he would not have ventured to have acted +so contrary to the desired wish of his Ambulinia; but who could +have withstood the irrestistable temptation! What society condemns +the practice but a cold, heartless, uncivilized people that know +nothing of the warm attachments of refined society? Here the dead +was raised to his long-cherished hopes, and the lost was found. +Here all doubt and danger were buried in the vortex of oblivion; +sectional differences no longer disunited their opinions; like the freed +bird from the cage, sportive claps its rustling wings, wheels about +to heaven in a joyful strain, and raises its notes to the upper sky. +Ambulinia insisted upon Elfonzo to be seated, and give her a history +of his unnecessary absence; assuring him the family had retired, +consequently they would ever remain ignorant of his visit. +Advancing toward him, she gave a bright display of her rosy neck, +and from her head the ambrosial locks breathed divine fragrance; +her robe hung waving to his view, while she stood like a goddess +confessed before him. + +"It does seem to me, my dear sir," said Ambulinia, "that you have +been gone an age. Oh, the restless hours I have spent since I last +saw you, in yon beautiful grove. There is where I trifled with your +feelings for the express purpose of trying your attachment for me. +I now find you are devoted; but ah! I trust you live not unguarded +by the powers of Heaven. Though oft did I refuse to join my hand +with thine, and as oft did I cruelly mock thy entreaties with +borrowed shapes: yes, I feared to answer thee by terms, in words +sincere and undissembled. O! could I pursue, and you have leisure +to hear the annals of my woes, the evening star would shut Heaven's +gates upon the impending day before my tale would be finished, +and this night would find me soliciting your forgiveness." + +"Dismiss thy fears and thy doubts," replied Elfonzo. + +"Look, O! look: that angelic look of thine--bathe not thy visage +in tears; banish those floods that are gathering; let my confession +and my presence bring thee some relief." "Then, indeed, I will +be cheerful," said Ambulinia, "and I think if we will go to the +exhibition this evening, we certainly will see something worthy +of our attention. One of the most tragical scenes is to be acted +that has ever been witnessed, and one that every jealous-hearted person +should learn a lesson from. It cannot fail to have a good effect, +as it will be performed by those who are young and vigorous, +and learned as well as enticing. You are aware, Major Elfonzo, who are +to appear on the stage, and what the characters are to represent." +"I am acquainted with the circumstances," replied Elfonzo, "and as I +am to be one of the musicians upon that interesting occasion, +I should be much gratified if you would favor me with your company +during the hours of the exercises." + +"What strange notions are in your mind?" inquired Ambulinia. +"Now I know you have something in view, and I desire you to tell +me why it is that you are so anxious that I should continue +with you while the exercises are going on; though if you think I +can add to your happiness and predilections, I have no particular +objection to acquiesce in your request. Oh, I think I foresee, +now, what you anticipate." "And will you have the goodness to tell +me what you think it will be?" inquired Elfonzo. "By all means," +answered Ambulinia; "a rival, sir, you would fancy in your own mind; +but let me say for you, fear not! fear not! I will be one of the +last persons to disgrace my sex by thus encouraging every one who +may feel disposed to visit me, who may honor me with their graceful +bows and their choicest compliments. It is true that young men too +often mistake civil politeness for the finer emotions of the heart, +which is tantamount to courtship; but, ah! how often are they deceived, +when they come to test the weight of sunbeams with those on whose +strength hangs the future happiness of an untried life." + +The people were now rushing to the Academy with impatient anxiety; +the band of music was closely followed by the students; then the parents +and guardians; nothing interrupted the glow of spirits which ran +through every bosom, tinged with the songs of a Virgil and the tide +of a Homer. Elfonzo and Ambulinia soon repaired to the scene, +and fortunately for them both the house was so crowded that they took +their seats together in the music department, which was not in view +of the auditory. This fortuitous circumstances added more the bliss +of the Major than a thousand such exhibitions would have done. +He forgot that he was man; music had lost its charms for him; +whenever he attempted to carry his part, the string of the instrument +would break, the bow became stubborn, and refused to obey the loud +calls of the audience. Here, he said, was the paradise of his home, +the long-sought-for opportunity; he felt as though he could +send a million supplications to the throne of Heaven for such +an exalted privilege. Poor Leos, who was somewhere in the crowd, +looking as attentively as if he was searching for a needle in a haystack; +here is stood, wondering to himself why Ambulinia was not there. +"Where can she be? Oh! if she was only here, how I could relish +the scene! Elfonzo is certainly not in town; but what if he is? +I have got the wealth, if I have not the dignity, and I am sure that +the squire and his lady have always been particular friends of mine, +and I think with this assurance I shall be able to get upon the blind +side of the rest of the family and make the heaven-born Ambulinia +the mistress of all I possess." Then, again, he would drop his head, +as if attempting to solve the most difficult problem in Euclid. +While he was thus conjecturing in his own mind, a very interesting +part of the exhibition was going on, which called the attention +of all present. The curtains of the stage waved continually +by the repelled forces that were given to them, which caused +Leos to behold Ambulinia leaning upon the chair of Elfonzo. +Her lofty beauty, seen by the glimmering of the chandelier, +filled his heart with rapture, he knew not how to contain himself; +to go where they were would expose him to ridicule; to continue +where he was, with such an object before him, without being allowed +an explanation in that trying hour, would be to the great injury +of his mental as well as of his physical powers; and, in the name +of high heaven, what must he do? Finally, he resolved to contain +himself as well as he conveniently could, until the scene was over, +and then he would plant himself at the door, to arrest Ambulinia from +the hands of the insolent Elfonzo, and thus make for himself a more +prosperous field of immortality than ever was decreed by Omnipotence, +or ever pencil drew or artist imagined. Accordingly he made +himself sentinel, immediately after the performance of the evening +--retained his position apparently in defiance of all the world; he waited, +he gazed at every lady, his whole frame trembled; here he stood, +until everything like human shape had disappeared from the institution, +and he had done nothing; he had failed to accomplish that which he +so eagerly sought for. Poor, unfortunate creature! he had not +the eyes of an Argus, or he might have seen his Juno and Elfonzo, +assisted by his friend Sigma, make their escape from the window, +and, with the rapidity of a race-horse, hurry through the blast of +the storm to the residence of her father, without being recognized. +He did not tarry long, but assured Ambulinia the endless chain +of their existence was more closely connected than ever, since he +had seen the virtuous, innocent, imploring, and the constant +Amelia murdered by the jealous-hearted Farcillo, the accursed of +the land. + +The following is the tragical scene, which is only introduced +to show the subject-matter that enabled Elfonzo to come to such +a determinate resolution that nothing of the kind should ever +dispossess him of his true character, should he be so fortunate +as to succeed in his present undertaking. + +Amelia was the wife of Farcillo, and a virtuous woman; Gracia, +a young lady, was her particular friend and confidant. Farcillo grew +jealous of Amelia, murders her, finds out that he was deceived, +AND STABS HIMSELF. Amelia appears alone, talking to herself. + +A. Hail, ye solitary ruins of antiquity, ye sacred tombs and +silent walks! it is your aid I invoke; it is to you, my soul, +wrapt in deep mediating, pours forth its prayer. Here I wander upon +the stage of mortality, since the world hath turned against me. +Those whom I believed to be my friends, alas! are now my enemies, +planting thorns in all my paths, poisoning all my pleasures, +and turning the past to pain. What a lingering catalogue of sighs +and tears lies just before me, crowding my aching bosom with +the fleeting dream of humanity, which must shortly terminate. +And to what purpose will all this bustle of life, these agitations +and emotions of the heart have conduced, if it leave behind it +nothing of utility, if it leave no traces of improvement? Can it +be that I am deceived in my conclusions? No, I see that I have +nothing to hope for, but everything for fear, which tends to drive +me from the walks of time. + + +Oh! in this dead night, if loud winds arise, + +To lash the surge and bluster in the skies, + +May the west its furious rage display, + +Toss me with storms in the watery way. + + +(Enter Gracia.) + + +G. Oh, Amelia, is it you, the object of grief, the daughter of opulence, +of wisdom and philosophy, that thus complaineth? It cannot be you +are the child of misfortune, speaking of the monuments of former ages, +which were allotted not for the reflection of the distressed, +but for the fearless and bold. + +A. Not the child of poverty, Gracia, or the heir of glory and peace, +but of fate. Remember, I have wealth more than wit can number; I have +had power more than kings could emcompass; yet the world seems a desert; +all nature appears an afflictive spectacle of warring passions. +This blind fatality, that capriciously sports with the rules +and lives of mortals, tells me that the mountains will never again +send forth the water of their springs to my thirst. Oh, that I +might be freed and set at liberty from wretchedness! But I fear, +I fear this will never be. + +G. Why, Amelia, this untimely grief? What has caused the sorrows +that bespeak better and happier days, to those lavish out such +heaps of misery? You are aware that your instructive lessons +embellish the mind with holy truths, by wedding its attention +to none but great and noble affections. + +A. This, of course, is some consolation. I will ever love my own +species with feelings of a fond recollection, and while I am +studying to advance the universal philanthropy, and the spotless +name of my own sex, I will try to build my own upon the pleasing +belief that I have accelerated the advancement of one who whispers +of departed confidence. + + +And I, like some poor peasant fated to reside + +Remote from friends, in a forest wide. + +Oh, see what woman's woes and human wants require, + +Since that great day hath spread the seed of sinful fire. + + +G. Look up, thou poor disconsolate; you speak of quitting +earthly enjoyments. Unfold thy bosom to a friend, who would be +willing to sacrifice every enjoyment for the restoration of the +dignity and gentleness of mind which used to grace your walks, +and which is so natural to yourself; not only that, but your +paths were strewed with flowers of every hue and of every order. + + +With verdant green the mountains glow, + +For thee, for thee, the lilies grow; + +Far stretched beneath the tented hills, + +A fairer flower the valley fills. + + +A. Oh, would to Heaven I could give you a short narrative of my +former prospects for happiness, since you have acknowledged to be +an unchangeable confidant--the richest of all other blessings. +Oh, ye names forever glorious, ye celebrated scenes, ye renowned +spot of my hymeneal moments; how replete is your chart with +sublime reflections! How many profound vows, decorated with +immaculate deeds, are written upon the surface of that precious +spot of earth where I yielded up my life of celibacy, bade youth +with all its beauties a final adieu, took a last farewell of the +laurels that had accompanied me up the hill of my juvenile career. +It was then I began to descend toward the valley of disappointment +and sorrow; it was then I cast my little bark upon a mysterious ocean +of wedlock, with him who then smiled and caressed me, but, alas! now +frowns with bitterness, and has grown jealous and cold toward me, +because the ring he gave me is misplaced or lost. Oh, bear me, +ye flowers of memory, softly through the eventful history of +past times; and ye places that have witnessed the progression of man +in the circle of so many societies, and, of, aid my recollection, +while I endeavor to trace the vicissitudes of a life devoted +in endeavoring to comfort him that I claim as the object of my wishes. + + +Ah! ye mysterious men, of all the world, how few + +Act just to Heaven and to your promise true! + +But He who guides the stars with a watchful eye, + +The deeds of men lay open without disguise; + +Oh, this alone will avenge the wrongs I bear, + +For all the oppressed are His peculiar care. + + +(F. makes a slight noise.) + + +A. Who is there--Farcillo? + +G. Then I must gone. Heaven protect you. Oh, Amelia, farewell, +be of good cheer. + + +May you stand like Olympus' towers, + +Against earth and all jealous powers! + +May you, with loud shouts ascend on high + +Swift as an eagle in the upper sky. + + +A. Why so cold and distant tonight, Farcillo? Come, let us each +other greet, and forget all the past, and give security for the future. + +F. Security! talk to me about giving security for the future +--what an insulting requisition! Have you said your prayers tonight, +Madam Amelia? + +A. Farcillo, we sometimes forget our duty, particularly when we +expect to be caressed by others. + +F. If you bethink yourself of any crime, or of any fault, that is +yet concealed from the courts of Heaven and the thrones of grace, +I bid you ask and solicit forgiveness for it now. + +A. Oh, be kind, Farcillo, don't treat me so. What do you mean +by all this? + +F. Be kind, you say; you, madam, have forgot that kindness you owe +to me, and bestowed it upon another; you shall suffer for your +conduct when you make your peace with your God. I would not slay thy +unprotected spirit. I call to Heaven to be my guard and my watch +--I would not kill thy soul, in which all once seemed just, right, +and perfect; but I must be brief, woman. + +A. What, talk you of killing? Oh, Farcillo, Farcillo, what is +the matter? + +F. Aye, I do, without doubt; mark what I say, Amelia. + +A. Then, O God, O Heaven, and Angels, be propitious, and have mercy +upon me. + +F. Amen to that, madam, with all my heart, and with all my soul. + +A. Farcillo, listen to me one moment; I hope you will not kill me. + +F. Kill you, aye, that I will; attest it, ye fair host of light, +record it, ye dark imps of hell! + +A. Oh, I fear you--you are fatal when darkness covers your brow; +yet I know not why I should fear, since I never wronged you in all +my life. I stand, sir, guiltless before you. + +F. You pretend to say you are guiltless! Think of thy sins, +Amelia; think, oh, think, hidden woman. + +A. Wherein have I not been true to you? That death is unkind, +cruel, and unnatural, that kills for living. + +F. Peace, and be still while I unfold to thee. + +A. I will, Farcillo, and while I am thus silent, tell me the cause +of such cruel coldness in an hour like this. + +F. That RING, oh, that ring I so loved, and gave thee as the ring +of my heart; the allegiance you took to be faithful, when it +was presented; the kisses and smiles with which you honored it. +You became tired of the donor, despised it as a plague, and finally +gave it to Malos, the hidden, the vile traitor. + +A. No, upon my word and honor, I never did; I appeal to the Most +High to bear me out in this matter. Send for Malos, and ask him. + +F. Send for Malos, aye! Malos you wish to see; I thought so. +I knew you could not keep his name concealed. Amelia, sweet Amelia, +take heed, take heed of perjury; you are on the stage of death, +to suffer for YOUR SINS. + +A. What, not to die I hope, my Farcillo, my ever beloved. + +F. Yes, madam, to die a traitor's death. Shortly your spirit shall +take its exit; therefore confess freely thy sins, for to deny tends +only to make me groan under the bitter cup thou hast made for me. +Thou art to die with the name of traitor on thy brow! + +A. Then, O Lord, have mercy upon me; give me courage, give me grace +and fortitude to stand this hour of trial. + +F. Amen, I say, with all my heart. + +A. And, oh, Farcillo, will you have mercy, too? I never +intentionally offended you in all my life, never LOVED Malos, +never gave him cause to think so, as the high court of Justice +will acquit me before its tribunal. + +F. Oh, false, perjured woman, thou didst chill my blood, and makest +me a demon like thyself. I saw the ring. + +A. He found it, then, or got it clandestinely; send for him, +and let him confess the truth; let his confession be sifted. + +F. And you still wish to see him! I tell you, madam, he hath +already confessed, and thou knowest the darkness of thy heart. + +A. What, my deceived Farcillo, that I gave him the ring, in which +all my affections were concentrated? Oh, surely not. + +F. Aye, he did. Ask thy conscience, and it will speak with a voice +of thunder to thy soul. + +A. He will not say so, he dare not, he cannot. + +F. No, he will not say so now, because his mouth, I trust, is hushed +in death, and his body stretched to the four winds of heaven, +to be torn to pieces by carnivorous birds. + +A. What, he is dead, and gone to the world of spirits with that +declaration in his mouth? Oh, unhappy man! Oh, insupportable hour! + +F. Yes, and had all his sighs and looks and tears been lives, my great +revenge could have slain them all, without the least condemnation. + +A. Alas! he is ushered into eternity without testing the matter +for which I am abused and sentenced and condemned to die. + +F. Cursed, infernal woman! Weepest thou for him to my face? He that +hath robbed me of my peace, my energy, the whole love of my life? +Could I call the fabled Hydra, I would have him live and perish, +survive and die, until the sun itself would grow dim with age. +I would make him have the thirst of a Tantalus, and roll the +wheel of an Ixion, until the stars of heaven should quit their +brilliant stations. + +A. Oh, invincible God, save me! Oh, unsupportable moment! Oh, heavy +hour! Banish me, Farcillo--send me where no eye can ever see me, where +no sound shall ever great my ear; but, oh, slay me not, Farcillo; vent thy +rage and thy spite upon this emaciated frame of mine, only spare my life. + +F. Your petitions avail nothing, cruel Amelia. + +A. Oh, Farcillo, perpetrate the dark deed tomorrow; let me live +till then, for my past kindness to you, and it may be some kind +angel will show to you that I am not only the object of innocence, +but one who never loved another but your noble self. + +F. Amelia, the decree has gone forth, it is to be done, and that quickly; +thou art to die, madam. + +A. But half an hour allow me, to see my father and my only child, +to tell her the treachery and vanity of this world. + +F. There is no alternative, there is no pause: my daughter shall +not see its deceptive mother die; your father shall not know that his +daughter fell disgraced, despised by all but her enchanting Malos. + +A. Oh, Farcillo, put up thy threatening dagger into its scabbard; +let it rest and be still, just while I say one prayer for thee and +for my child. + +F. It is too late, thy doom is fixed, thou hast not confessed +to Heaven or to me, my child's protector--thou art to die. +Ye powers of earth and heaven, protect and defend me in this alone. +(STABS HER WHILE IMPLORING FOR MERCY.) + +A. Oh, Farcillo, Farcillo, a guiltless death I die. + +F. Die! die! die! + + +(Gracia enters running, falls on her knees weeping, and kisses Amelia.) + + +G. Oh, Farcillo, Farcillo! oh, Farcillo! + +F. I am here, the genius of the age, and the avenger of my wrongs. + +G. Oh, lady, speak once more; sweet Amelia, on, speak again. +Gone, gone--yes, forever gone! Farcillo, oh, cold-hearted Farcillo, +some evil fiend hath urged you to do this, Farcillo. + +F. Say not so again, or you shall receive the same fate. I did +the glorious deed, madam--beware, then, how you talk. + +G. I fear not your implements of war; I will let you know you have +not the power to do me harm. If you have a heart of triple brass, +it shall be reached and melted, and thy blood shall chill thy veins +and grow stiff in thy arteries. Here is the ring of the virtuous +and innocent murdered Amelia; I obtained it from Malos, who yet lives, +in hopes that he will survive the wound given him, and says he got +it clandestinely--declares Amelia to be the princess of truth and virtue, +invulnerable to anything like forgetting her first devotion to thee. +The world has heard of your conduct and your jealousy, and with +one universal voice declares her to be the best of all in piety; +that she is the star of this great universe, and a more virtuous +woman never lived since the wheels of time began. Oh, had you waited +till tomorrow, or until I had returned, some kind window would have +been opened to her relief. But, alas! she is gone--yes, forever gone, +to try the realities of an unknown world! + + +(Farcillo leaning over the body of Amelia.) + + +F. Malos not dead, and here is my ring! Oh, Amelia! falsely murdered! +Oh, bloody deed! Oh, wretch that I am! Oh, angels forgive me! Oh, God, +withhold thy vengeance! Oh, Amelia! if Heaven would make a thousand +worlds like this, set with diamonds, and all of one perfect chrysolite, +I would not have done this for them all, I would not have frowned +and cursed as I did. Oh, she was heavenly true, nursed in the very +lap of bright angels! Cursed slave that I am! Jealousy, oh! thou +infernal demon! Lost, lost to every sense of honor! Oh! Amelia +--heaven-born Amelia--dead, dead! Oh! oh! oh!--then let me die with +thee. Farewell! farewell! ye world that deceived me! (STABS HIMSELF.) + + +Soon after the excitement of this tragical scene was over, +and the enlisted feeling for Amelia had grown more buoyant with +Elfonzo and Ambulinia, he determined to visit his retired home, +and make the necessary improvements to enjoy a better day; +consequently he conveyed the following lines to Ambulinia: + + +Go tell the world that hope is glowing, + +Go bid the rocks their silence break, + +Go tell the stars that love is glowing, + +Then bid the hero his lover take. + + +In the region where scarcely the foot of man hath ever trod, +where the woodman hath not found his way, lies a blooming grove, +seen only by the sun when he mounts his lofty throne, visited only +by the light of the stars, to whom are entrusted the guardianship +of earth, before the sun sinks to rest in his rosy bed. High cliffs +of rocks surround the romantic place, and in the small cavity of +the rocky wall grows the daffodil clear and pure; and as the wind +blows along the enchanting little mountain which surrounds the +lonely spot, it nourishes the flowers with the dew-drops of heaven. +Here is the seat of Elfonzo; darkness claims but little victory over +this dominion, and in vain does she spread out her gloomy wings. +Here the waters flow perpetually, and the trees lash their tops +together to bid the welcome visitor a happy muse. Elfonzo, during his +short stay in the country, had fully persuaded himself that it was +his duty to bring this solemn matter to an issue. A duty that he +individually owed, as a gentleman, to the parents of Ambulinia, +a duty in itself involving not only his own happiness and his own +standing in society, but one that called aloud the act of the parties +to make it perfect and complete. How he should communicate his +intentions to get a favorable reply, he was at a loss to know; +he knew not whether to address Esq. Valeer in prose or in poetry, +in a jocular or an argumentative manner, or whether he should use +moral suasion, legal injunction, or seizure and take by reprisal; +if it was to do the latter, he would have no difficulty in deciding +in his own mind, but his gentlemanly honor was at stake; so he +concluded to address the following letter to the father and mother +of Ambulinia, as his address in person he knew would only aggravate +the old gentleman, and perhaps his lady. + + + +Cumming, Ga., January 22, 1844 + +Mr. and Mrs. Valeer-- + +Again I resume the pleasing task of addressing you, and once more beg +an immediate answer to my many salutations. From every circumstance +that has taken place, I feel in duty bound to comply with my obligations; +to forfeit my word would be more than I dare do; to break my pledge, +and my vows that have been witnessed, sealed, and delivered in the +presence of an unseen Deity, would be disgraceful on my part, as well +as ruinous to Ambulinia. I wish no longer to be kept in suspense +about this matter. I wish to act gentlemanly in every particular. +It is true, the promises I have made are unknown to any but Ambulinia, +and I think it unnecessary to here enumerate them, as they who +promise the most generally perform the least. Can you for a moment +doubt my sincerity or my character? My only wish is, sir, that you +may calmly and dispassionately look at the situation of the case, +and if your better judgment should dictate otherwise, my obligations +may induce me to pluck the flower that you so diametrically opposed. +We have sword by the saints--by the gods of battle, and by that +faith whereby just men are made perfect--to be united. I hope, +my dear sir, you will find it convenient as well as agreeable +to give me a favorable answer, with the signature of Mrs. Valeer, +as well as yourself. + + +With very great esteem, + +your humble servant, + +J. I. Elfonzo. + + + +The moon and stars had grown pale when Ambulinia had retired +to rest. A crowd of unpleasant thoughts passed through her bosom. +Solitude dwelt in her chamber--no sound from the neighboring +world penetrated its stillness; it appeared a temple of silence, +of repose, and of mystery. At that moment she heard a still voice +calling her father. In an instant, like the flash of lightning, +a thought ran through her mind that it must be the bearer +of Elfonzo's communication. "It is not a dream!" she said, +"no, I cannot read dreams. Oh! I would to Heaven I was near +that glowing eloquence--that poetical language--it charms the +mind in an inexpressible manner, and warms the coldest heart." +While consoling herself with this strain, her father rushed into +her room almost frantic with rage, exclaiming: "Oh, Ambulinia! +Ambulinia!! undutiful, ungrateful daughter! What does this mean? +Why does this letter bear such heart-rending intelligence? +Will you quit a father's house with this debased wretch, without a +place to lay his distracted head; going up and down the country, +with every novel object that many chance to wander through this region. +He is a pretty man to make love known to his superiors, and you, +Ambulinia, have done but little credit to yourself by honoring +his visits. Oh, wretchedness! can it be that my hopes of happiness +are forever blasted! Will you not listen to a father's entreaties, +and pay some regard to a mother's tears. I know, and I do pray that God +will give me fortitude to bear with this sea of troubles, and rescue +my daughter, my Ambulinia, as a brand from the eternal burning." +"Forgive me, father, oh! forgive thy child," replied Ambulinia. +"My heart is ready to break, when I see you in this grieved state +of agitation. Oh! think not so meanly of me, as that I mourn +for my own danger. Father, I am only woman. Mother, I am only +the templement of thy youthful years, but will suffer courageously +whatever punishment you think proper to inflict upon me, if you will +but allow me to comply with my most sacred promises--if you will but +give me my personal right and my personal liberty. Oh, father! if +your generosity will but give me these, I ask nothing more. +When Elfonzo offered me his heart, I gave him my hand, never to +forsake him, and now may the mighty God banish me before I leave him +in adversity. What a heart must I have to rejoice in prosperity +with him whose offers I have accepted, and then, when poverty comes, +haggard as it may be, for me to trifle with the oracles of Heaven, +and change with every fluctuation that may interrupt our happiness +--like the politician who runs the political gantlet for office one day, +and the next day, because the horizon is darkened a little, he is +seen running for his life, for fear he might perish in its ruins. +Where is the philosophy, where is the consistency, where is the charity, +in conduct like this? Be happy then, my beloved father, and forget me; +let the sorrow of parting break down the wall of separation and make +us equal in our feeling; let me now say how ardently I love you; +let me kiss that age-worn cheek, and should my tears bedew thy face, +I will wipe them away. Oh, I never can forget you; no, never, never!" + +"Weep not," said the father, "Ambulinia. I will forbid Elfonzo +my house, and desire that you may keep retired a few days. I will +let him know that my friendship for my family is not linked together +by cankered chains; and if he ever enters upon my premises again, +I will send him to his long home." "Oh, father! let me entreat you +to be calm upon this occasion, and though Elfonzo may be the sport +of the clouds and winds, yet I feel assured that no fate will send +him to the silent tomb until the God of the Universe calls him +hence with a triumphant voice." + +Here the father turned away, exclaiming: "I will answer his letter +in a very few words, and you, madam, will have the goodness to stay +at home with your mother; and remember, I am determined to protect +you from the consuming fire that looks so fair to your view." + + + +Cumming, January 22, 1844. + + +Sir--In regard to your request, I am as I ever have been, utterly opposed +to your marrying into my family; and if you have any regard for yourself, +or any gentlemanly feeling, I hope you will mention it to me no more; +but seek some other one who is not so far superior to you in standing. + + +W. W. Valeer. + + + +When Elfonzo read the above letter, he became so much depressed +in spirits that many of his friends thought it advisable to use +other means to bring about the happy union. "Strange," said he, +"that the contents of this diminutive letter should cause me to have +such depressed feelings; but there is a nobler theme than this. I know +not why my MILITARY TITLE is not as great as that of SQUIRE VALEER. +For my life I cannot see that my ancestors are inferior to those +who are so bitterly opposed to my marriage with Ambulinia. I know +I have seen huge mountains before me, yet, when I think that I know +gentlemen will insult me upon this delicate matter, should I become +angry at fools and babblers, who pride themselves in their impudence +and ignorance? No. My equals! I know not where to find them. +My inferiors! I think it beneath me; and my superiors! I think +it presumption; therefore, if this youthful heart is protected +by any of the divine rights, I never will betray my trust." + +He was aware that Ambulinia had a confidence that was, indeed, +as firm and as resolute as she was beautiful and interesting. +He hastened to the cottage of Louisa, who received him in her usual +mode of pleasantness, and informed him that Ambulinia had just that +moment left. "Is it possible?" said Elfonzo. "Oh, murdered hours! +Why did she not remain and be the guardian of my secrets? +But hasten and tell me how she has stood this trying scene, +and what are her future determinations." "You know," said Louisa, +"Major Elfonzo, that you have Ambulinia's first love, which is +of no small consequence. She came here about twilight, and shed +many precious tears in consequence of her own fate with yours. +We walked silently in yon little valley you see, where we spent +a momentary repose. She seemed to be quite as determined as ever, +and before we left that beautiful spot she offered up a prayer +to Heaven for thee." "I will see her then," replied Elfonzo, +"though legions of enemies may oppose. She is mine by foreordination +--she is mine by prophesy--she is mine by her own free will, and I +will rescue her from the hands of her oppressors. Will you not, +Miss Louisa, assist me in my capture?" + +"I will certainly, by the aid of Divine Providence," answered Louisa, +"endeavor to break those slavish chains that bind the richest of prizes; +though allow me, Major, to entreat you to use no harsh means on this +important occasion; take a decided stand, and write freely to Ambulinia +upon this subject, and I will see that no intervening cause hinders +its passage to her. God alone will save a mourning people. Now is +the day and now is the hour to obey a command of such valuable worth." +The Major felt himself grow stronger after this short interview +with Louisa. He felt as if he could whip his weight in wildcats +--he knew he was master of his own feelings, and could now write +a letter that would bring this litigation to AN ISSUE. + + + +Cumming, January 24, 1844. + +Dear Ambulinia-- + +We have now reached the most trying moment of our lives; we are +pledged not to forsake our trust; we have waited for a favorable hour +to come, thinking your friends would settle the matter agreeably +among themselves, and finally be reconciled to our marriage; +but as I have waited in vain, and looked in vain, I have determined +in my own mind to make a proposition to you, though you may think +it not in accord with your station, or compatible with your rank; +yet, "sub loc signo vinces." You know I cannot resume my visits, +in consequence of the utter hostility that your father has to me; +therefore the consummation of our union will have to be sought +for in a more sublime sphere, at the residence of a respectable +friend of this village. You cannot have an scruples upon this +mode of proceeding, if you will but remember it emanates from one +who loves you better than his own life--who is more than anxious +to bid you welcome to a new and happy home. Your warmest associates +say come; the talented, the learned, the wise, and the experienced +say come;--all these with their friends say, come. Viewing these, +with many other inducements, I flatter myself that you will come +to the embraces of your Elfonzo; for now is the time of your +acceptance of the day of your liberation. You cannot be ignorant, +Ambulinia, that thou art the desire of my heart; its thoughts +are too noble, and too pure, to conceal themselves from you. +I shall wait for your answer to this impatiently, expecting that you +will set the time to make your departure, and to be in readiness +at a moment's warning to share the joys of a more preferable life. +This will be handed to you by Louisa, who will take a pleasure in +communicating anything to you that may relieve your dejected spirits, +and will assure you that I now stand ready, willing, and waiting +to make good my vows. + +I am, dear Ambulinia, your + +truly, and forever, + +J. I. Elfonzo. + + + +Louisa made it convenient to visit Mr. Valeer's, though they +did not suspect her in the least the bearer of love epistles; +consequently, she was invited in the room to console Ambulinia, +where they were left alone. Ambulinia was seated by a small table +--her head resting on her hand--her brilliant eyes were bathed in tears. +Louisa handed her the letter of Elfonzo, when another spirit animated +her features--the spirit of renewed confidence that never fails +to strengthen the female character in an hour of grief and sorrow +like this, and as she pronounced the last accent of his name, +she exclaimed, "And does he love me yet! I never will forget +your generosity, Louisa. Oh, unhappy and yet blessed Louisa! may you +never feel what I have felt--may you never know the pangs of love. +Had I never loved, I never would have been unhappy; but I turn to Him +who can save, and if His wisdom does not will my expected union, +I know He will give me strength to bear my lot. Amuse yourself +with this little book, and take it as an apology for my silence," +said Ambulinia, "while I attempt to answer this volume of consolation." +"Thank you," said Louisa, "you are excusable upon this occasion; +but I pray you, Ambulinia, to be expert upon this momentous subject, +that there may be nothing mistrustful upon my part." "I will," +said Ambulinia, and immediately resumed her seat and addressed the +following to Elfonzo: + + + +Cumming, Ga., January 28, 1844. + +Devoted Elfonzo-- + +I hail your letter as a welcome messenger of faith, and can now +say truly and firmly that my feelings correspond with yours. +Nothing shall be wanting on my part to make my obedience your fidelity. +Courage and perseverance will accomplish success. Receive this +as my oath, that while I grasp your hand in my own imagination, +we stand united before a higher tribunal than any on earth. +All the powers of my life, soul, and body, I devote to thee. +Whatever dangers may threaten me, I fear not to encounter them. +Perhaps I have determined upon my own destruction, by leaving +the house of the best of parents; be it so; I flee to you; I share +your destiny, faithful to the end. The day that I have concluded +upon for this task is SABBATH next, when the family with the citizens +are generally at church. For Heaven's sake let not that day +pass unimproved: trust not till tomorrow, it is the cheat of life +--the future that never comes--the grave of many noble births +--the cavern of ruined enterprise: which like the lightning's +flash is born, and dies, and perishes, ere the voice of him +who sees can cry, BEHOLD! BEHOLD!! You may trust to what I say, +no power shall tempt me to betray confidence. Suffer me to add one +word more. + + +I will soothe thee, in all thy grief, + +Beside the gloomy river; + +And though thy love may yet be brief; + +Mine is fixed forever. + + +Receive the deepest emotions of my heart for thy constant love, +and may the power of inspiration by thy guide, thy portion, and thy all. +In great haste, + +Yours faithfully, + +Ambulinia. + + + +"I now take my leave of you, sweet girl," said Louisa, "sincerely +wishing you success on Sabbath next." When Ambulinia's letter was +handed to Elfonzo, he perused it without doubting its contents. +Louisa charged him to make but few confidants; but like most young +men who happened to win the heart of a beautiful girl, he was so +elated with the idea that he felt as a commanding general on parade, +who had confidence in all, consequently gave orders to all. +The appointed Sabbath, with a delicious breeze and cloudless sky, +made its appearance. The people gathered in crowds to the church +--the streets were filled with neighboring citizens, all marching +to the house of worship. It is entirely useless for me to attempt +to describe the feelings of Elfonzo and Ambulinia, who were silently +watching the movements of the multitude, apparently counting them as then +entered the house of God, looking for the last one to darken the door. +The impatience and anxiety with which they waited, and the bliss +they anticipated on the eventful day, is altogether indescribable. +Those that have been so fortunate as to embark in such a noble +enterprise know all its realities; and those who have not had this +inestimable privilege will have to taste its sweets before they can +tell to others its joys, its comforts, and its Heaven-born worth. +Immediately after Ambulinia had assisted the family off to church, +she took advantage of that opportunity to make good her promises. +She left a home of enjoyment to be wedded to one whose love had +been justifiable. A few short steps brought her to the presence +of Louisa, who urged her to make good use of her time, and not +to delay a moment, but to go with her to her brother's house, +where Elfonzo would forever make her happy. With lively speed, +and yet a graceful air, she entered the door and found herself +protected by the champion of her confidence. The necessary +arrangements were fast making to have the two lovers united +--everything was in readiness except the parson; and as they are +generally very sanctimonious on such occasions, the news got +to the parents of Ambulinia before the everlasting knot was tied, +and they both came running, with uplifted hands and injured feelings, +to arrest their daughter from an unguarded and hasty resolution. +Elfonzo desired to maintain his ground, but Ambulinia thought +it best for him to leave, to prepare for a greater contest. +He accordingly obeyed, as it would have been a vain endeavor for him +to have battled against a man who was armed with deadly weapons; +and besides, he could not resist the request of such a pure heart. +Ambulinia concealed herself in the upper story of the house, fearing +the rebuke of her father; the door was locked, and no chastisement +was now expected. Esquire Valeer, whose pride was already touched, +resolved to preserve the dignity of his family. He entered the house +almost exhausted, looking wildly for Ambulinia. "Amazed and astonished +indeed I am," said he, "at a people who call themselves civilized, +to allow such behavior as this. Ambulinia, Ambulinia!" he cried, +"come to the calls of your first, your best, and your only friend. +I appeal to you, sir," turning to the gentleman of the house, +"to know where Ambulinia has gone, or where is she?" "Do you mean +to insult me, sir, in my own house?" inquired the gentleman. +"I will burst," said Mr. V., "asunder every door in your dwelling, +in search of my daughter, if you do not speak quickly, and tell me +where she is. I care nothing about that outcast rubbish of creation, +that mean, low-lived Elfonzo, if I can but obtain Ambulinia. +Are you not going to open this door?" said he. "By the Eternal +that made Heaven and earth! I will go about the work instantly, +if this is not done!" The confused citizens gathered from all +parts of the village, to know the cause of this commotion. +Some rushed into the house; the door that was locked flew open, +and there stood Ambulinia, weeping. "Father, be still," said she, +"and I will follow thee home." But the agitated man seized her, +and bore her off through the gazing multitude. "Father!" she exclaimed, +"I humbly beg your pardon--I will be dutiful--I will obey thy commands. +Let the sixteen years I have lived in obedience to thee by my +future security." "I don't like to be always giving credit, +when the old score is not paid up, madam," said the father. The mother +followed almost in a state of derangement, crying and imploring +her to think beforehand, and ask advice from experienced persons, +and they would tell her it was a rash undertaking. "Oh!" said she, +"Ambulinia, my daughter, did you know what I have suffered +--did you know how many nights I have whiled away in agony, +in pain, and in fear, you would pity the sorrows of a heartbroken +mother." + +"Well, mother," replied Ambulinia, "I know I have been disobedient; +I am aware that what I have done might have been done much better; +but oh! what shall I do with my honor? it is so dear to me; +I am pledged to Elfonzo. His high moral worth is certainly worth +some attention; moreover, my vows, I have no doubt, are recorded +in the book of life, and must I give these all up? must my fair +hopes be forever blasted? Forbid it, father; oh! forbid it, mother; +forbid it, Heaven." "I have seen so many beautiful skies overclouded," +replied the mother, "so many blossoms nipped by the frost, +that I am afraid to trust you to the care of those fair days, +which may be interrupted by thundering and tempestuous nights. +You no doubt think as I did--life's devious ways were strewn with +sweet-scented flowers, but ah! how long they have lingered around me +and took their flight in the vivid hope that laughs at the drooping +victims it has murdered." Elfonzo was moved at this sight. +The people followed on to see what was going to become of Ambulinia, +while he, with downcast looks, kept at a distance, until he saw +them enter the abode of the father, thrusting her, that was the +sigh of his soul, out of his presence into a solitary apartment, +when she exclaimed, "Elfonzo! Elfonzo! oh, Elfonzo! where art thou, +with all thy heroes? haste, oh! haste, come thou to my relief. +Ride on the wings of the wind! Turn thy force loose like a tempest, +and roll on thy army like a whirlwind, over this mountain of trouble +and confusion. Oh, friends! if any pity me, let your last efforts +throng upon the green hills, and come to the relief of Ambulinia, +who is guilty of nothing but innocent love." Elfonzo called out with +a loud voice, "My God, can I stand this! arise up, I beseech you, +and put an end to this tyranny. Come, my brave boys," said he, +"are you ready to go forth to your duty?" They stood around him. +"Who," said he, "will call us to arms? Where are my thunderbolts of war? +Speak ye, the first who will meet the foe! Who will go forward with me +in this ocean of grievous temptation? If there is one who desires +to go, let him come and shake hands upon the altar of devotion, +and swear that he will be a hero; yes, a Hector in a cause like this, +which calls aloud for a speedy remedy." "Mine be the deed," +said a young lawyer, "and mine alone; Venus alone shall quit her +station before I will forsake one jot or tittle of my promise to you; +what is death to me? what is all this warlike army, if it is not +to win a victory? I love the sleep of the lover and the mighty; +nor would I give it over till the blood of my enemies should wreak +with that of my own. But God forbid that our fame should soar +on the blood of the slumberer." Mr. Valeer stands at his door +with the frown of a demon upon his brow, with his dangerous +weapon ready to strike the first man who should enter his door. +"Who will arise and go forward through blood and carnage to the rescue +of my Ambulinia?" said Elfonzo. "All," exclaimed the multitude; +and onward they went, with their implements of battle. Others, of a +more timid nature, stood among the distant hills to see the result of +the contest. + +Elfonzo took the lead of his band. Night arose in clouds; +darkness concealed the heavens; but the blazing hopes that stimulated +them gleamed in every bosom. All approached the anxious spot; +they rushed to the front of the house and, with one exclamation, +demanded Ambulinia. "Away, begone, and disturb my peace no more," +said Mr. Valeer. "You are a set of base, insolent, and infernal rascals. +Go, the northern star points your path through the dim twilight of +the night; go, and vent your spite upon the lonely hills; pour forth +your love, you poor, weak-minded wretch, upon your idleness and upon +your guitar, and your fiddle; they are fit subjects for your admiration, +for let me assure you, though this sword and iron lever are cankered, +yet they frown in sleep, and let one of you dare to enter my +house this night and you shall have the contents and the weight +of these instruments." "Never yet did base dishonor blur my name," +said Elfonzo; "mine is a cause of renown; here are my warriors; +fear and tremble, for this night, though hell itself should oppose, +I will endeavor to avenge her whom thou hast banished in solitude. +The voice of Ambulinia shall be heard from that dark dungeon." +At that moment Ambulinia appeared at the window above, and with a +tremulous voice said, "Live, Elfonzo! oh! live to raise my stone +of moss! why should such language enter your heart? why should thy +voice rend the air with such agitation? I bid thee live, once more +remembering these tears of mine are shed alone for thee, in this dark +and gloomy vault, and should I perish under this load of trouble, +join the song of thrilling accents with the raven above my grave, +and lay this tattered frame beside the banks of the Chattahoochee +or the stream of Sawney's brook; sweet will be the song of death to +your Ambulinia. My ghost shall visit you in the smiles of Paradise, +and tell your high fame to the minds of that region, which is far more +preferable than this lonely cell. My heart shall speak for thee till +the latest hour; I know faint and broken are the sounds of sorrow, +yet our souls, Elfonzo, shall hear the peaceful songs together. +One bright name shall be ours on high, if we are not permitted to be +united here; bear in mind that I still cherish my old sentiments, +and the poet will mingle the names of Elfonzo and Ambulinia +in the tide of other days." "Fly, Elfonzo," said the voices +of his united band, "to the wounded heart of your beloved. +All enemies shall fall beneath thy sword. Fly through the clefts, +and the dim spark shall sleep in death." Elfonzo rushes forward +and strikes his shield against the door, which was barricaded, +to prevent any intercourse. His brave sons throng around him. +The people pour along the streets, both male and female, to prevent or +witness the melancholy scene. + +"To arms, to arms!" cried Elfonzo; "here is a victory to be won, +a prize to be gained that is more to me that the whole world beside." +"It cannot be done tonight," said Mr. Valeer. "I bear the clang +of death; my strength and armor shall prevail. My Ambulinia shall +rest in this hall until the break of another day, and if we fall, +we fall together. If we die, we die clinging to our tattered rights, +and our blood alone shall tell the mournful tale of a murdered +daughter and a ruined father." Sure enough, he kept watch all night, +and was successful in defending his house and family. The bright +morning gleamed upon the hills, night vanished away, the Major +and his associates felt somewhat ashamed that they had not been as +fortunate as they expected to have been; however, they still leaned +upon their arms in dispersed groups; some were walking the streets, +others were talking in the Major's behalf. Many of the citizen +suspended business, as the town presented nothing but consternation. +A novelty that might end in the destruction of some worthy +and respectable citizens. Mr. Valeer ventured in the streets, +though not without being well armed. Some of his friends congratulated +him on the decided stand he had taken, and hoped he would settle +the matter amicably with Elfonzo, without any serious injury. +"Me," he replied, "what, me, condescend to fellowship with a coward, +and a low-lived, lazy, undermining villain? no, gentlemen, this cannot be; +I had rather be borne off, like the bubble upon the dark blue ocean, +with Ambulinia by my side, than to have him in the ascending +or descending line of relationship. Gentlemen," continued he, +"if Elfonzo is so much of a distinguished character, and is so +learned in the fine arts, why do you not patronize such men? why +not introduce him into your families, as a gentleman of taste +and of unequaled magnanimity? why are you so very anxious that he +should become a relative of mine? Oh, gentlemen, I fear you yet +are tainted with the curiosity of our first parents, who were +beguiled by the poisonous kiss of an old ugly serpent, and who, +for one APPLE, DAMNED all mankind. I wish to divest myself, as far +as possible, of that untutored custom. I have long since learned +that the perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy, +is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambition to +our capacities; we will then be a happy and a virtuous people." +Ambulinia was sent off to prepare for a long and tedious journey. +Her new acquaintances had been instructed by her father how to treat her, +and in what manner, and to keep the anticipated visit entirely secret. +Elfonzo was watching the movements of everybody; some friends +had told him of the plot that was laid to carry off Ambulinia. +At night, he rallied some two or three of his forces, and went +silently along to the stately mansion; a faint and glimmering light +showed through the windows; lightly he steps to the door; there were +many voices rallying fresh in fancy's eye; he tapped the shutter; +it was opened instantly, and he beheld once more, seated beside +several ladies, the hope of all his toils; he rushed toward her, +she rose from her seat, rejoicing; he made one mighty grasp, +when Ambulinia exclaimed, "Huzza for Major Elfonzo! I will defend +myself and you, too, with this conquering instrument I hold in my hand; +huzza, I say, I now invoke time's broad wing to shed around us some +dewdrops of verdant spring." + +But the hour had not come for this joyous reunion; her friends +struggled with Elfonzo for some time, and finally succeeded +in arresting her from his hands. He dared not injure them, +because they were matrons whose courage needed no spur; +she was snatched from the arms of Elfonzo, with so much eagerness, +and yet with such expressive signification, that he calmly withdrew +from this lovely enterprise, with an ardent hope that he should be +lulled to repose by the zephyrs which whispered peace to his soul. +Several long days and night passed unmolested, all seemed to have +grounded their arms of rebellion, and no callidity appeared to be +going on with any of the parties. Other arrangements were made +by Ambulinia; she feigned herself to be entirely the votary of a +mother's care, and she, by her graceful smiles, that manhood might +claim his stern dominion in some other region, where such boisterous +love was not so prevalent. This gave the parents a confidence +that yielded some hours of sober joy; they believed that Ambulinia +would now cease to love Elfonzo, and that her stolen affections +would now expire with her misguided opinions. They therefore +declined the idea of sending her to a distant land. But oh! they +dreamed not of the rapture that dazzled the fancy of Ambulinia, +who would say, when alone, youth should not fly away on his rosy +pinions, and leave her to grapple in the conflict with unknown admirers. + + +No frowning age shall control + +The constant current of my soul, + +Nor a tear from pity's eye + +Shall check my sympathetic sigh. + + +With this resolution fixed in her mind, one dark and dreary night, +when the winds whistled and the tempest roared, she received intelligence +that Elfonzo was then waiting, and every preparation was then ready, +at the residence of Dr. Tully, and for her to make a quick escape +while the family was reposing. Accordingly she gathered her books, +went the wardrobe supplied with a variety of ornamental dressing, +and ventured alone in the streets to make her way to Elfonzo, +who was near at hand, impatiently looking and watching her arrival. +"What forms," said she, "are those rising before me? What is +that dark spot on the clouds? I do wonder what frightful ghost +that is, gleaming on the red tempest? Oh, be merciful and tell me +what region you are from. Oh, tell me, ye strong spirits, or ye +dark and fleeting clouds, that I yet have a friend." "A friend," +said a low, whispering voice. "I am thy unchanging, thy aged, +and thy disappointed mother. Why brandish in that hand of thine +a javelin of pointed steel? Why suffer that lip I have kissed +a thousand times to equivocate? My daughter, let these tears sink +deep into thy soul, and no longer persist in that which may be your +destruction and ruin. Come, my dear child, retract your steps, +and bear me company to your welcome home." Without one retorting word, +or frown from her brow, she yielded to the entreaties of her mother, +and with all the mildness of her former character she went along +with the silver lamp of age, to the home of candor and benevolence. +Her father received her cold and formal politeness--"Where has +Ambulinia been, this blustering evening, Mrs. Valeer?" inquired he. +"Oh, she and I have been taking a solitary walk," said the mother; +"all things, I presume, are now working for the best." + +Elfonzo heard this news shortly after it happened. "What," said he, +"has heaven and earth turned against me? I have been disappointed +times without number. Shall I despair?--must I give it over? +Heaven's decrees will not fade; I will write again--I will try again; +and if it traverses a gory field, I pray forgiveness at the altar +of justice." + + + +Desolate Hill, Cumming, Geo., 1844. + +Unconquered and Beloved Ambulinia-- +I have only time to say to you, not to despair; thy fame shall +not perish; my visions are brightening before me. The whirlwind's +rage is past, and we now shall subdue our enemies without doubt. +On Monday morning, when your friends are at breakfast, they will +not suspect your departure, or even mistrust me being in town, +as it has been reported advantageously that I have left for the west. +You walk carelessly toward the academy grove, where you will find +me with a lightning steed, elegantly equipped to bear you off where +we shall be joined in wedlock with the first connubial rights. +Fail not to do this--think not of the tedious relations of our wrongs +--be invincible. You alone occupy all my ambition, and I alone will +make you my happy spouse, with the same unimpeached veracity. +I remain, forever, your devoted friend and admirer, J. L. Elfonzo. + + + +The appointed day ushered in undisturbed by any clouds; nothing disturbed +Ambulinia's soft beauty. With serenity and loveliness she obeys +the request of Elfonzo. The moment the family seated themselves +at the table--"Excuse my absence for a short time," said she, +"while I attend to the placing of those flowers, which should have +been done a week ago." And away she ran to the sacred grove, +surrounded with glittering pearls, that indicated her coming. +Elfonzo hails her with his silver bow and his golden harp. They meet +--Ambulinia's countenance brightens--Elfonzo leads up his winged steed. +"Mount," said he, "ye true-hearted, ye fearless soul--the day +is ours." She sprang upon the back of the young thunder bolt, +a brilliant star sparkles upon her head, with one hand she +grasps the reins, and with the other she holds an olive branch. +"Lend thy aid, ye strong winds," they exclaimed, "ye moon, ye sun, +and all ye fair host of heaven, witness the enemy conquered." +"Hold," said Elfonzo, "thy dashing steed." "Ride on," said Ambulinia, +"the voice of thunder is behind us." And onward they went, +with such rapidity that they very soon arrived at Rural Retreat, +where they dismounted, and were united with all the solemnities +that usually attend such divine operations. They passed the day +in thanksgiving and great rejoicing, and on that evening they +visited their uncle, where many of their friends and acquaintances +had gathered to congratulate them in the field of untainted bliss. +The kind old gentleman met them in the yard: "Well," said he, "I wish +I may die, Elfonzo, if you and Ambulinia haven't tied a knot with your +tongue that you can't untie with your teeth. But come in, come in, +never mind, all is right--the world still moves on, and no one has +fallen in this great battle." + +Happy now is there lot! Unmoved by misfortune, they live among the +fair beauties of the South. Heaven spreads their peace and fame upon +the arch of the rainbow, and smiles propitiously at their triumph, +THROUGH THE TEARS OF THE STORM. + + + + + + +THE CALIFORNIAN'S TALE + + + +Thirty-five years ago I was out prospecting on the Stanislaus, +tramping all day long with pick and pan and horn, and washing a hatful +of dirt here and there, always expecting to make a rich strike, +and never doing it. It was a lovely region, woodsy, balmy, delicious, +and had once been populous, long years before, but now the +people had vanished and the charming paradise was a solitude. +They went away when the surface diggings gave out. In one place, +where a busy little city with banks and newspapers and fire companies +and a mayor and aldermen had been, was nothing but a wide expanse +of emerald turf, with not even the faintest sign that human life +had ever been present there. This was down toward Tuttletown. +In the country neighborhood thereabouts, along the dusty roads, +one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes, snug and cozy, +and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the doors +and windows were wholly hidden from sight--sign that these were +deserted homes, forsaken years ago by defeated and disappointed +families who could neither sell them nor give them away. Now and then, +half an hour apart, one came across solitary log cabins of the earliest +mining days, built by the first gold-miners, the predecessors of the +cottage-builders. In some few cases these cabins were still occupied; +and when this was so, you could depend upon it that the occupant +was the very pioneer who had built the cabin; and you could depend +on another thing, too--that he was there because he had once had +his opportunity to go home to the States rich, and had not done it; +had rather lost his wealth, and had then in his humiliation resolved +to sever all communication with his home relatives and friends, +and be to them thenceforth as one dead. Round about California +in that day were scattered a host of these living dead men +--pride-smitten poor fellows, grizzled and old at forty, whose secret +thoughts were made all of regrets and longings--regrets for their +wasted lives, and longings to be out of the struggle and done with it all. + +It was a lonesome land! Not a sound in all those peaceful expanses +of grass and woods but the drowsy hum of insects; no glimpse +of man or beast; nothing to keep up your spirits and make you glad +to be alive. And so, at last, in the early part of the afternoon, +when I caught sight of a human creature, I felt a most grateful uplift. +This person was a man about forty-five years old, and he was +standing at the gate of one of those cozy little rose-clad cottages +of the sort already referred to. However, this one hadn't +a deserted look; it had the look of being lived in and petted +and cared for and looked after; and so had its front yard, +which was a garden of flowers, abundant, gay, and flourishing. +I was invited in, of course, and required to make myself at home +--it was the custom of the country. + +It was delightful to be in such a place, after long weeks of daily +and nightly familiarity with miners' cabins--with all which this +implies of dirt floor, never-made beds, tin plates and cups, +bacon and beans and black coffee, and nothing of ornament but war +pictures from the Eastern illustrated papers tacked to the log walls. +That was all hard, cheerless, materialistic desolation, but here was a +nest which had aspects to rest the tired eye and refresh that something +in one's nature which, after long fasting, recognizes, when confronted +by the belongings of art, howsoever cheap and modest they may be, +that it has unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment. +I could not have believed that a rag carpet could feast me so, +and so content me; or that there could be such solace to the soul +in wall-paper and framed lithographs, and bright-colored tidies +and lamp-mats, and Windsor chairs, and varnished what-nots, with +sea-shells and books and china vases on them, and the score of little +unclassifiable tricks and touches that a woman's hand distributes +about a home, which one sees without knowing he sees them, yet would +miss in a moment if they were taken away. The delight that was +in my heart showed in my face, and the man saw it and was pleased; +saw it so plainly that he answered it as if it had been spoken. + +"All her work," he said, caressingly; "she did it all herself +--every bit," and he took the room in with a glance which was full +of affectionate worship. One of those soft Japanese fabrics +with which women drape with careful negligence the upper part of a +picture-frame was out of adjustment. He noticed it, and rearranged +it with cautious pains, stepping back several times to gauge +the effect before he got it to suit him. Then he gave it a light +finishing pat or two with his hand, and said: "She always does that. +You can't tell just what it lacks, but it does lack something +until you've done that--you can see it yourself after it's done, +but that is all you know; you can't find out the law of it. +It's like the finishing pats a mother gives the child's hair +after she's got it combed and brushed, I reckon. I've seen her +fix all these things so much that I can do them all just her way, +though I don't know the law of any of them. But she knows the law. +She knows the why and the how both; but I don't know the why; +I only know the how." + +He took me into a bedroom so that I might wash my hands; such a bedroom +as I had not seen for years: white counterpane, white pillows, +carpeted floor, papered walls, pictures, dressing-table, with mirror +and pin-cushion and dainty toilet things; and in the corner a wash-stand, +with real china-ware bowl and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish, +and on a rack more than a dozen towels--towels too clean and white +for one out of practice to use without some vague sense of profanation. +So my face spoke again, and he answered with gratified words: + +"All her work; she did it all herself--every bit. Nothing here +that hasn't felt the touch of her hand. Now you would think +--But I mustn't talk so much." + +By this time I was wiping my hands and glancing from detail to detail +of the room's belongings, as one is apt to do when he is in a new place, +where everything he sees is a comfort to his eye and his spirit; +and I became conscious, in one of those unaccountable ways, +you know, that there was something there somewhere that the man +wanted me to discover for myself. I knew it perfectly, and I knew +he was trying to help me by furtive indications with his eye, so I +tried hard to get on the right track, being eager to gratify him. +I failed several times, as I could see out of the corner of my eye +without being told; but at last I knew I must be looking straight +at the thing--knew it from the pleasure issuing in invisible waves +from him. He broke into a happy laugh, and rubbed his hands together, +and cried out: + +"That's it! You've found it. I knew you would. It's her picture." + +I went to the little black-walnut bracket on the farther wall, +and did find there what I had not yet noticed--a daguerreotype-case. +It contained the sweetest girlish face, and the most beautiful, +as it seemed to me, that I had ever seen. The man drank the admiration +from my face, and was fully satisfied. + +"Nineteen her last birthday," he said, as he put the picture back; +"and that was the day we were married. When you see her--ah, just wait +till you see her!" + +"Where is she? When will she be in?" + +"Oh, she's away now. She's gone to see her people. They live +forty or fifty miles from here. She's been gone two weeks today." + +"When do you expect her back?" + +"This is Wednesday. She'll be back Saturday, in the evening +--about nine o'clock, likely." + +I felt a sharp sense of disappointment. + +"I'm sorry, because I'll be gone then," I said, regretfully. + +"Gone? No--why should you go? Don't go. She'll be disappointed." + +She would be disappointed--that beautiful creature! If she had said +the words herself they could hardly have blessed me more. I was +feeling a deep, strong longing to see her--a longing so supplicating, +so insistent, that it made me afraid. I said to myself: "I will +go straight away from this place, for my peace of mind's sake." + +"You see, she likes to have people come and stop with us +--people who know things, and can talk--people like you. She delights +in it; for she knows--oh, she knows nearly everything herself, +and can talk, oh, like a bird--and the books she reads, why, you would +be astonished. Don't go; it's only a little while, you know, +and she'll be so disappointed." + +I heard the words, but hardly noticed them, I was so deep in my +thinkings and strugglings. He left me, but I didn't know. +Presently he was back, with the picture case in his hand, and he +held it open before me and said: + +"There, now, tell her to her face you could have stayed to see her, +and you wouldn't." + +That second glimpse broke down my good resolution. I would stay +and take the risk. That night we smoked the tranquil pipe, +and talked till late about various things, but mainly about her; +and certainly I had had no such pleasant and restful time for many +a day. The Thursday followed and slipped comfortably away. +Toward twilight a big miner from three miles away came--one of +the grizzled, stranded pioneers--and gave us warm salutation, +clothed in grave and sober speech. Then he said: + +"I only just dropped over to ask about the little madam, and when +is she coming home. Any news from her?" + +"Oh, yes, a letter. Would you like to hear it, Tom?" + +"Well, I should think I would, if you don't mind, Henry!" + +Henry got the letter out of his wallet, and said he would skip +some of the private phrases, if we were willing; then he went +on and read the bulk of it--a loving, sedate, and altogether +charming and gracious piece of handiwork, with a postscript full +of affectionate regards and messages to Tom, and Joe, and Charley, +and other close friends and neighbors. + +As the reader finished, he glanced at Tom, and cried out: + +"Oho, you're at it again! Take your hands away, and let me see +your eyes. You always do that when I read a letter from her. +I will write and tell her." + +"Oh no, you mustn't, Henry. I'm getting old, you know, and any +little disappointment makes me want to cry. I thought she'd +be here herself, and now you've got only a letter." + +"Well, now, what put that in your head? I thought everybody knew +she wasn't coming till Saturday." + +"Saturday! Why, come to think, I did know it. I wonder +what's the matter with me lately? Certainly I knew it. +Ain't we all getting ready for her? Well, I must be going now. +But I'll be on hand when she comes, old man!" + +Late Friday afternoon another gray veteran tramped over from his +cabin a mile or so away, and said the boys wanted to have a little +gaiety and a good time Saturday night, if Henry thought she wouldn't +be too tired after her journey to be kept up. + +"Tired? She tired! Oh, hear the man! Joe, YOU know she'd sit up +six weeks to please any one of you!" + +When Joe heard that there was a letter, he asked to have it read, +and the loving messages in it for him broke the old fellow all up; +but he said he was such an old wreck that THAT would happen to him +if she only just mentioned his name. "Lord, we miss her so!" +he said. + +Saturday afternoon I found I was taking out my watch pretty often. +Henry noticed it, and said, with a startled look: + +"You don't think she ought to be here soon, do you?" + +I felt caught, and a little embarrassed; but I laughed, and said +it was a habit of mine when I was in a state of expenctancy. +But he didn't seem quite satisfied; and from that time on he began +to show uneasiness. Four times he walked me up the road to a point +whence we could see a long distance; and there he would stand, +shading his eyes with his hand, and looking. Several times he said: + +"I'm getting worried, I'm getting right down worried. I know +she's not due till about nine o'clock, and yet something seems +to be trying to warn me that something's happened. You don't +think anything has happened, do you?" + +I began to get pretty thoroughly ashamed of him for his childishness; +and at last, when he repeated that imploring question still another time, +I lost my patience for the moment, and spoke pretty brutally to him. +It seemed to shrivel him up and cow him; and he looked so wounded +and so humble after that, that I detested myself for having done +the cruel and unnecessary thing. And so I was glad when Charley, +another veteran, arrived toward the edge of the evening, and nestled +up to Henry to hear the letter read, and talked over the preparations +for the welcome. Charley fetched out one hearty speech after another, +and did his best to drive away his friend's bodings and apprehensions. + +"Anything HAPPENED to her? Henry, that's pure nonsense. There isn't +anything going to happen to her; just make your mind easy as to that. +What did the letter say? Said she was well, didn't it? And said +she'd be here by nine o'clock, didn't it? Did you ever know her +to fail of her word? Why, you know you never did. Well, then, +don't you fret; she'll BE here, and that's absolutely certain, +and as sure as you are born. Come, now, let's get to decorating +--not much time left." + +Pretty soon Tom and Joe arrived, and then all hands set about adoring +the house with flowers. Toward nine the three miners said that +as they had brought their instruments they might as well tune up, +for the boys and girls would soon be arriving now, and hungry for +a good, old-fashioned break-down. A fiddle, a banjo, and a clarinet +--these were the instruments. The trio took their places side by side, +and began to play some rattling dance-music, and beat time with +their big boots. + +It was getting very close to nine. Henry was standing in the door +with his eyes directed up the road, his body swaying to the torture +of his mental distress. He had been made to drink his wife's +health and safety several times, and now Tom shouted: + +"All hands stand by! One more drink, and she's here!" + +Joe brought the glasses on a waiter, and served the party. +I reached for one of the two remaining glasses, but Joe growled +under his breath: + +"Drop that! Take the other." + +Which I did. Henry was served last. He had hardly swallowed his +drink when the clock began to strike. He listened till it finished, +his face growing pale and paler; then he said: + +"Boys, I'm sick with fear. Help me--I want to lie down!" + +They helped him to the sofa. He began to nestle and drowse, +but presently spoke like one talking in his sleep, and said: +"Did I hear horses' feet? Have they come?" + +One of the veterans answered, close to his ear: "It was Jimmy +Parish come to say the party got delayed, but they're right up +the road a piece, and coming along. Her horse is lame, but she'll +be here in half an hour." + +"Oh, I'm SO thankful nothing has happened!" + +He was asleep almost before the words were out of his mouth. +In a moment those handy men had his clothes off, and had tucked +him into his bed in the chamber where I had washed my hands. +They closed the door and came back. Then they seemed preparing to leave; +but I said: "Please don't go, gentlemen. She won't know me; I am +a stranger." + +They glanced at each other. Then Joe said: + +"She? Poor thing, she's been dead nineteen years!" + +"Dead?" + +"That or worse. She went to see her folks half a year after she +was married, and on her way back, on a Saturday evening, the Indians +captured her within five miles of this place, and she's never been +heard of since." + +"And he lost his mind in consequence?" + +"Never has been sane an hour since. But he only gets bad when +that time of year comes round. Then we begin to drop in here, +three days before she's due, to encourage him up, and ask if he's heard +from her, and Saturday we all come and fix up the house with flowers, +and get everything ready for a dance. We've done it every year +for nineteen years. The first Saturday there was twenty-seven +of us, without counting the girls; there's only three of us now, +and the girls are gone. We drug him to sleep, or he would go wild; +then he's all right for another year--thinks she's with him till the +last three or four days come round; then he begins to look for her, +and gets out his poor old letter, and we come and ask him to read it +to us. Lord, she was a darling!" + + + + + + + +A HELPLESS SITUATION + + + +Once or twice a year I get a letter of a certain pattern, +a pattern that never materially changes, in form and substance, +yet I cannot get used to that letter--it always astonishes me. +It affects me as the locomotive always affects me: I saw to myself, +"I have seen you a thousand times, you always look the same way, +yet you are always a wonder, and you are always impossible; to contrive +you is clearly beyond human genius--you can't exist, you don't exist, +yet here you are!" + +I have a letter of that kind by me, a very old one. I yearn to print it, +and where is the harm? The writer of it is dead years ago, no doubt, +and if I conceal her name and address--her this-world address +--I am sure her shade will not mind. And with it I wish to print +the answer which I wrote at the time but probably did not send. +If it went--which is not likely--it went in the form of a copy, +for I find the original still here, pigeonholed with the said letter. +To that kind of letters we all write answers which we do not send, +fearing to hurt where we have no desire to hurt; I have done it many +a time, and this is doubtless a case of the sort. + + +THE LETTER + + +X------, California, JUNE 3, 1879. + +Mr. S. L. Clemens, HARTFORD, CONN.: + + +Dear Sir,--You will doubtless be surprised to know who has presumed +to write and ask a favor of you. Let your memory go back to your days +in the Humboldt mines--'62-'63. You will remember, you and Clagett +and Oliver and the old blacksmith Tillou lived in a lean-to which was +half-way up the gulch, and there were six log cabins in the camp +--strung pretty well separated up the gulch from its mouth at the +desert to where the last claim was, at the divide. The lean-to +you lived in was the one with a canvas roof that the cow fell down +through one night, as told about by you in ROUGHING IT--my uncle +Simmons remembers it very well. He lived in the principal cabin, +half-way up the divide, along with Dixon and Parker and Smith. +It had two rooms, one for kitchen and the other for bunks, +and was the only one that had. You and your party were there on +the great night, the time they had dried-apple-pie, Uncle Simmons +often speaks of it. It seems curious that dried-apple-pie should +have seemed such a great thing, but it was, and it shows how far +Humboldt was out of the world and difficult to get to, and how slim +the regular bill of fare was. Sixteen years ago--it is a long time. +I was a little girl then, only fourteen. I never saw you, I lived +in Washoe. But Uncle Simmons ran across you every now and then, +all during those weeks that you and party were there working +your claim which was like the rest. The camp played out long +and long ago, there wasn't silver enough in it to make a button. +You never saw my husband, but he was there after you left, AND LIVED +IN THAT VERY LEAN-TO, a bachelor then but married to me now. +He often wishes there had been a photographer there in those days, +he would have taken the lean-to. He got hurt in the old Hal Clayton +claim that was abandoned like the others, putting in a blast +and not climbing out quick enough, though he scrambled the best +he could. It landed him clear down on the train and hit a Piute. +For weeks they thought he would not get over it but he did, +and is all right, now. Has been ever since. This is a long +introduction but it is the only way I can make myself known. +The favor I ask I feel assured your generous heart will grant: +Give me some advice about a book I have written. I do not claim +anything for it only it is mostly true and as interesting as most +of the books of the times. I am unknown in the literary world +and you know what that means unless one has some one of influence +(like yourself) to help you by speaking a good word for you. +I would like to place the book on royalty basis plan with any one you +would suggest. + +This is a secret from my husband and family. I intend +it as a surprise in case I get it published. + +Feeling you will take an interest in this and if possible write +me a letter to some publisher, or, better still, if you could see +them for me and then let me hear. + +I appeal to you to grant me this favor. With deepest gratitude I +think you for your attention. + + +One knows, without inquiring, that the twin of that embarrassing +letter is forever and ever flying in this and that and the other +direction across the continent in the mails, daily, nightly, hourly, +unceasingly, unrestingly. It goes to every well-known merchant, +and railway official, and manufacturer, and capitalist, and Mayor, +and Congressman, and Governor, and editor, and publisher, and author, +and broker, and banker--in a word, to every person who is supposed +to have "influence." It always follows the one pattern: "You do +not know me, BUT YOU ONCE KNEW A RELATIVE OF MINE," etc., etc. +We should all like to help the applicants, we should all be glad +to do it, we should all like to return the sort of answer that +is desired, but--Well, there is not a thing we can do that would +be a help, for not in any instance does that latter ever come from +anyone who CAN be helped. The struggler whom you COULD help does +his own helping; it would not occur to him to apply to you, stranger. +He has talent and knows it, and he goes into his fight eagerly and +with energy and determination--all alone, preferring to be alone. +That pathetic letter which comes to you from the incapable, +the unhelpable--how do you who are familiar with it answer it? +What do you find to say? You do not want to inflict a wound; +you hunt ways to avoid that. What do you find? How do you get out +of your hard place with a contend conscience? Do you try to explain? +The old reply of mine to such a letter shows that I tried that once. +Was I satisfied with the result? Possibly; and possibly not; +probably not; almost certainly not. I have long ago forgotten all +about it. But, anyway, I append my effort: + + +THE REPLY + + +I know Mr. H., and I will go to him, dear madam, if upon reflection +you find you still desire it. There will be a conversation. +I know the form it will take. It will be like this: + + +MR. H. How do her books strike you? + +MR. CLEMENS. I am not acquainted with them. + +H. Who has been her publisher? + +C. I don't know. + +H. She HAS one, I suppose? + +C. I--I think not. + +H. Ah. You think this is her first book? + +C. Yes--I suppose so. I think so. + +H. What is it about? What is the character of it? + +C. I believe I do not know. + +H. Have you seen it? + +C. Well--no, I haven't. + +H. Ah-h. How long have you known her? + +C. I don't know her. + +H. Don't know her? + +C. No. + +H. Ah-h. How did you come to be interested in her book, then? + +C. Well, she--she wrote and asked me to find a publisher for her, +and mentioned you. + +H. Why should she apply to you instead of me? + +C. She wished me to use my influence. + +H. Dear me, what has INFLUENCE to do with such a matter? + +C. Well, I think she thought you would be more likely to examine +her book if you were influenced. + +H. Why, what we are here FOR is to examine books--anybody's book +that comes along. It's our BUSINESS. Why should we turn away +a book unexamined because it's a stranger's? It would be foolish. +No publisher does it. On what ground did she request your influence, +since you do not know her? She must have thought you knew her +literature and could speak for it. Is that it? + +C. No; she knew I didn't. + +H. Well, what then? She had a reason of SOME sort for believing you +competent to recommend her literature, and also under obligations +to do it? + +C. Yes, I--I knew her uncle. + +H. Knew her UNCLE? + +C. Yes. + +H. Upon my word! So, you knew her uncle; her uncle knows her literature; +he endorses it to you; the chain is complete, nothing further needed; +you are satisfied, and therefore-- + +C. NO, that isn't all, there are other ties. I know the cabin +her uncle lived in, in the mines; I knew his partners, too; also I +came near knowing her husband before she married him, and I DID +know the abandoned shaft where a premature blast went off and he +went flying through the air and clear down to the trail and hit +an Indian in the back with almost fatal consequences. + +H. To HIM, or to the Indian? + +C. She didn't say which it was. + +H. (WITH A SIGH). It certainly beats the band! You don't know HER, +you don't know her literature, you don't know who got hurt when +the blast went off, you don't know a single thing for us to build +an estimate of her book upon, so far as I-- + +C. I knew her uncle. You are forgetting her uncle. + +H. Oh, what use is HE? Did you know him long? How long was it? + +C. Well, I don't know that I really knew him, but I must have +met him, anyway. I think it was that way; you can't tell about +these things, you know, except when they are recent. + +H. Recent? When was all this? + +C. Sixteen years ago. + +H. What a basis to judge a book upon! As first you said you knew him, +and now you don't know whether you did or not. + +C. Oh yes, I know him; anyway, I think I thought I did; I'm perfectly +certain of it. + +H. What makes you think you thought you knew him? + +C. Why, she says I did, herself. + +H. SHE says so! + +C. Yes, she does, and I DID know him, too, though I don't remember +it now. + +H. Come--how can you know it when you don't remember it. + +C. _I_ don't know. That is, I don't know the process, but I DO know +lots of things that I don't remember, and remember lots of things +that I don't know. It's so with every educated person. + +H. (AFTER A PAUSE). Is your time valuable? + +C. No--well, not very. + +H. Mine is. + +So I came away then, because he was looking tired. Overwork, I reckon; +I never do that; I have seen the evil effects of it. My mother +was always afraid I would overwork myself, but I never did. + +Dear madam, you see how it would happen if I went there. He would +ask me those questions, and I would try to answer them to suit him, +and he would hunt me here and there and yonder and get me embarrassed +more and more all the time, and at last he would look tired on +account of overwork, and there it would end and nothing done. +I wish I could be useful to you, but, you see, they do not +care for uncles or any of those things; it doesn't move them, +it doesn't have the least effect, they don't care for anything +but the literature itself, and they as good as despise influence. +But they do care for books, and are eager to get them and examine them, +no matter whence they come, nor from whose pen. If you will send +yours to a publisher--any publisher--he will certainly examine it, +I can assure you of that. + + + + + + +A TELEPHONIC CONVERSATION + + + +Consider that a conversation by telephone--when you are simply siting +by and not taking any part in that conversation--is one of the solemnest +curiosities of modern life. Yesterday I was writing a deep article +on a sublime philosophical subject while such a conversation was +going on in the room. I notice that one can always write best when +somebody is talking through a telephone close by. Well, the thing +began in this way. A member of our household came in and asked me +to have our house put into communication with Mr. Bagley's downtown. +I have observed, in many cities, that the sex always shrink from +calling up the central office themselves. I don't know why, +but they do. So I touched the bell, and this talk ensued: + +CENTRAL OFFICE. (GRUFFY.) Hello! + +I. Is it the Central Office? + +C. O. Of course it is. What do you want? + +I. Will you switch me on to the Bagleys, please? + +C. O. All right. Just keep your ear to the telephone. + +Then I heard K-LOOK, K-LOOK, K'LOOK--KLOOK-KLOOK-KLOOK-LOOK-LOOK! then +a horrible "gritting" of teeth, and finally a piping female voice: +Y-e-s? (RISING INFLECTION.) Did you wish to speak to me? + +Without answering, I handed the telephone to the applicant, and sat down. +Then followed that queerest of all the queer things in this world +--a conversation with only one end of it. You hear questions asked; +you don't hear the answer. You hear invitations given; you hear +no thanks in return. You have listening pauses of dead silence, +followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations +of glad surprise or sorrow or dismay. You can't make head or tail +of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the +other end of the wire says. Well, I heard the following remarkable +series of observations, all from the one tongue, and all shouted +--for you can't ever persuade the sex to speak gently into a telephone: + +Yes? Why, how did THAT happen? + +Pause. + +What did you say? + +Pause. + +Oh no, I don't think it was. + +Pause. + +NO! Oh no, I didn't mean THAT. I meant, put it in while it +is still boiling--or just before it COMES to a boil. + +Pause. + +WHAT? + +Pause. + +I turned it over with a backstitch on the selvage edge. + +Pause. + +Yes, I like that way, too; but I think it's better to baste it +on with Valenciennes or bombazine, or something of that sort. +It gives it such an air--and attracts so much noise. + +Pause. + +It's forty-ninth Deuteronomy, sixty-forth to ninety-seventh inclusive. +I think we ought all to read it often. + +Pause. + +Perhaps so; I generally use a hair pin. + +Pause. + +What did you say? (ASIDE.) Children, do be quiet! + +Pause + +OH! B FLAT! Dear me, I thought you said it was the cat! + +Pause. + +Since WHEN? + +Pause. + +Why, _I_ never heard of it. + +Pause. + +You astound me! It seems utterly impossible! + +Pause. + +WHO did? + +Pause. + +Good-ness gracious! + +Pause. + +Well, what IS this world coming to? Was it right in CHURCH? + +Pause. + +And was her MOTHER there? + +Pause. + +Why, Mrs. Bagley, I should have died of humiliation! What did +they DO? + +Long pause. + +I can't be perfectly sure, because I haven't the notes by me; +but I think it goes something like this: te-rolly-loll-loll, loll +lolly-loll-loll, O tolly-loll-loll-LEE-LY-LI-I-do! And then REPEAT, +you know. + +Pause. + +Yes, I think it IS very sweet--and very solemn and impressive, +if you get the andantino and the pianissimo right. + +Pause. + +Oh, gum-drops, gum-drops! But I never allow them to eat striped candy. +And of course they CAN'T, till they get their teeth, anyway. + +Pause. + +WHAT? + +Pause. + +Oh, not in the least--go right on. He's here writing--it doesn't +bother HIM. + +Pause. + +Very well, I'll come if I can. (ASIDE.) Dear me, how it does tire +a person's arm to hold this thing up so long! I wish she'd-- + +Pause. + +Oh no, not at all; I LIKE to talk--but I'm afraid I'm keeping you +from your affairs. + +Pause. + +Visitors? + +Pause. + +No, we never use butter on them. + +Pause. + +Yes, that is a very good way; but all the cook-books say they +are very unhealthy when they are out of season. And HE doesn't +like them, anyway--especially canned. + +Pause. + +Oh, I think that is too high for them; we have never paid over fifty +cents a bunch. + +Pause. + +MUST you go? Well, GOOD-by. + +Pause. + +Yes, I think so. GOOD-by. + +Pause. + +Four o'clock, then--I'll be ready. GOOD-by. + +Pause. + +Thank you ever so much. GOOD-by. + +Pause. + +Oh, not at all!--just as fresh--WHICH? Oh, I'm glad to hear you +say that. GOOD-by. + +(Hangs up the telephone and says, "Oh, it DOES tire a person's +arm so!") + +A man delivers a single brutal "Good-by," and that is the end of it. +Not so with the gentle sex--I say it in their praise; they cannot +abide abruptness. + + + + + + +EDWARD MILLS AND GEORGE BENTON: A TALE + + + +These two were distantly related to each other--seventh cousins, +or something of that sort. While still babies they became orphans, +and were adopted by the Brants, a childless couple, who quickly +grew very fond of them. The Brants were always saying: "Be pure, +honest, sober, industrious, and considerate of others, and success +in life is assured." The children heard this repeated some thousands +of times before they understood it; they could repeat it themselves +long before they could say the Lord's Prayer; it was painted over +the nursery door, and was about the first thing they learned to read. +It was destined to be the unswerving rule of Edward Mills's life. +Sometimes the Brants changed the wording a little, and said: +"Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never +lack friends." + +Baby Mills was a comfort to everybody about him. When he wanted +candy and could not have it, he listened to reason, and contented +himself without it. When Baby Benton wanted candy, he cried for it +until he got it. Baby Mills took care of his toys; Baby Benton +always destroyed his in a very brief time, and then made himself +so insistently disagreeable that, in order to have peace in the house, +little Edward was persuaded to yield up his play-things to him. + +When the children were a little older, Georgie became a heavy expense +in one respect: he took no care of his clothes; consequently, he +shone frequently in new ones, with was not the case with Eddie. +The boys grew apace. Eddie was an increasing comfort, Georgie an +increasing solicitude. It was always sufficient to say, in answer +to Eddie's petitions, "I would rather you would not do it" +--meaning swimming, skating, picnicking, berrying, circusing, +and all sorts of things which boys delight in. But NO answer +was sufficient for Georgie; he had to be humored in his desires, +or he would carry them with a high hand. Naturally, no boy got +more swimming skating, berrying, and so forth than he; no body +ever had a better time. The good Brants did not allow the boys +to play out after nine in summer evenings; they were sent to bed +at that hour; Eddie honorably remained, but Georgie usually slipped +out of the window toward ten, and enjoyed himself until midnight. +It seemed impossible to break Georgie of this bad habit, but the +Brants managed it at last by hiring him, with apples and marbles, +to stay in. The good Brants gave all their time and attention +to vain endeavors to regulate Georgie; they said, with grateful +tears in their eyes, that Eddie needed no efforts of theirs, +he was so good, so considerate, and in all ways so perfect. + +By and by the boys were big enough to work, so they were apprenticed +to a trade: Edward went voluntarily; George was coaxed and bribed. +Edward worked hard and faithfully, and ceased to be an expense to the +good Brants; they praised him, so did his master; but George ran away, +and it cost Mr. Brant both money and trouble to hunt him up and get +him back. By and by he ran away again--more money and more trouble. +He ran away a third time--and stole a few things to carry with him. +Trouble and expense for Mr. Brant once more; and, besides, it was with +the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in persuading the master +to let the youth go unprosecuted for the theft. + +Edward worked steadily along, and in time became a full partner +in his master's business. George did not improve; he kept the loving +hearts of his aged benefactors full of trouble, and their hands full +of inventive activities to protect him from ruin. Edward, as a boy, +had interested himself in Sunday-schools, debating societies, +penny missionary affairs, anti-tobacco organizations, anti-profanity +associations, and all such things; as a man, he was a quiet but +steady and reliable helper in the church, the temperance societies, +and in all movements looking to the aiding and uplifting of men. This +excited no remark, attracted no attention--for it was his "natural bent." + +Finally, the old people died. The will testified their loving +pride in Edward, and left their little property to George +--because he "needed it"; whereas, "owing to a bountiful Providence," +such was not the case with Edward. The property was left to +George conditionally: he must buy out Edward's partner with it; +else it must go to a benevolent organization called the Prisoner's +Friend Society. The old people left a letter, in which they begged +their dear son Edward to take their place and watch over George, +and help and shield him as they had done. + +Edward dutifully acquiesced, and George became his partner in +the business. He was not a valuable partner: he had been meddling +with drink before; he soon developed into a constant tippler now, +and his flesh and eyes showed the fact unpleasantly. Edward had +been courting a sweet and kindly spirited girl for some time. +They loved each other dearly, and--But about this period George began +to haunt her tearfully and imploringly, and at last she went crying +to Edward, and said her high and holy duty was plain before her +--she must not let her own selfish desires interfere with it: +she must marry "poor George" and "reform him." It would break +her heart, she knew it would, and so on; but duty was duty. +So she married George, and Edward's heart came very near breaking, +as well as her own. However, Edward recovered, and married another girl +--a very excellent one she was, too. + +Children came to both families. Mary did her honest best to reform +her husband, but the contract was too large. George went on drinking, +and by and by he fell to misusing her and the little ones sadly. +A great many good people strove with George--they were always at it, +in fact--but he calmly took such efforts as his due and their duty, +and did not mend his ways. He added a vice, presently--that of +secret gambling. He got deeply in debt; he borrowed money on the +firm's credit, as quietly as he could, and carried this system so far +and so successfully that one morning the sheriff took possession of +the establishment, and the two cousins found themselves penniless. + +Times were hard, now, and they grew worse. Edward moved his family +into a garret, and walked the streets day and night, seeking work. +He begged for it, but it was really not to be had. He was astonished +to see how soon his face became unwelcome; he was astonished +and hurt to see how quickly the ancient interest which people had +had in him faded out and disappeared. Still, he MUST get work; +so he swallowed his chagrin, and toiled on in search of it. +At last he got a job of carrying bricks up a ladder in a hod, +and was a grateful man in consequence; but after that NOBODY knew +him or cared anything about him. He was not able to keep up +his dues in the various moral organizations to which he belonged, +and had to endure the sharp pain of seeing himself brought under +the disgrace of suspension. + +But the faster Edward died out of public knowledge and interest, +the faster George rose in them. He was found lying, ragged and drunk, +in the gutter one morning. A member of the Ladies' Temperance Refuge +fished him out, took him in hand, got up a subscription for him, +kept him sober a whole week, then got a situation for him. +An account of it was published. + +General attention was thus drawn to the poor fellow, and a great +many people came forward and helped him toward reform with their +countenance and encouragement. He did not drink a drop for two months, +and meantime was the pet of the good. Then he fell--in the gutter; +and there was general sorrow and lamentation. But the noble +sisterhood rescued him again. They cleaned him up, they fed him, +they listened to the mournful music of his repentances, they got +him his situation again. An account of this, also, was published, +and the town was drowned in happy tears over the re-restoration +of the poor beast and struggling victim of the fatal bowl. +A grand temperance revival was got up, and after some rousing +speeches had been made the chairman said, impressively: "We are +not about to call for signers; and I think there is a spectacle +in store for you which not many in this house will be able to view +with dry eyes." There was an eloquent pause, and then George Benton, +escorted by a red-sashed detachment of the Ladies of the Refuge, +stepped forward upon the platform and signed the pledge. The air +was rent with applause, and everybody cried for joy. Everybody wrung +the hand of the new convert when the meeting was over; his salary +was enlarged next day; he was the talk of the town, and its hero. +An account of it was published. + +George Benton fell, regularly, every three months, but was faithfully +rescued and wrought with, every time, and good situations were +found for him. Finally, he was taken around the country lecturing, +as a reformed drunkard, and he had great houses and did an immense +amount of good. + +He was so popular at home, and so trusted--during his sober intervals +--that he was enabled to use the name of a principal citizen, and get +a large sum of money at the bank. A mighty pressure was brought +to bear to save him from the consequences of his forgery, and it +was partially successful--he was "sent up" for only two years. +When, at the end of a year, the tireless efforts of the benevolent +were crowned with success, and he emerged from the penitentiary +with a pardon in his pocket, the Prisoner's Friend Society met him +at the door with a situation and a comfortable salary, and all +the other benevolent people came forward and gave him advice, +encouragement and help. Edward Mills had once applied to the Prisoner's +Friend Society for a situation, when in dire need, but the question, +"Have you been a prisoner?" made brief work of his case. + +While all these things were going on, Edward Mills had been +quietly making head against adversity. He was still poor, but was +in receipt of a steady and sufficient salary, as the respected +and trusted cashier of a bank. George Benton never came near him, +and was never heard to inquire about him. George got to indulging +in long absences from the town; there were ill reports about him, +but nothing definite. + +One winter's night some masked burglars forced their way into the bank, +and found Edward Mills there alone. They commanded him to reveal +the "combination," so that they could get into the safe. He refused. +They threatened his life. He said his employers trusted him, +and he could not be traitor to that trust. He could die, if he must, +but while he lived he would be faithful; he would not yield up +the "combination." The burglars killed him. + +The detectives hunted down the criminals; the chief one proved +to be George Benton. A wide sympathy was felt for the widow and +orphans of the dead man, and all the newspapers in the land begged +that all the banks in the land would testify their appreciation +of the fidelity and heroism of the murdered cashier by coming +forward with a generous contribution of money in aid of his family, +now bereft of support. The result was a mass of solid cash amounting +to upward of five hundred dollars--an average of nearly three-eights +of a cent for each bank in the Union. The cashier's own bank +testified its gratitude by endeavoring to show (but humiliatingly +failed in it) that the peerless servant's accounts were not square, +and that he himself had knocked his brains out with a bludgeon +to escape detection and punishment. + +George Benton was arraigned for trial. Then everybody seemed to +forget the widow and orphans in their solicitude for poor George. +Everything that money and influence could do was done to save him, +but it all failed; he was sentenced to death. Straightway the +Governor was besieged with petitions for commutation or pardon; +they were brought by tearful young girls; by sorrowful old maids; +by deputations of pathetic widows; by shoals of impressive orphans. +But no, the Governor--for once--would not yield. + +Now George Benton experienced religion. The glad news flew all around. +From that time forth his cell was always full of girls and women and +fresh flowers; all the day long there was prayer, and hymn-singing, +and thanksgiving, and homilies, and tears, with never an interruption, +except an occasional five-minute intermission for refreshments. + +This sort of thing continued up to the very gallows, and George +Benton went proudly home, in the black cap, before a wailing +audience of the sweetest and best that the region could produce. +His grave had fresh flowers on it every day, for a while, +and the head-stone bore these words, under a hand pointing aloft: +"He has fought the good fight." + +The brave cashier's head-stone has this inscription: "Be pure, +honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never--" + +Nobody knows who gave the order to leave it that way, but it was +so given. + +The cashier's family are in stringent circumstances, now, it is said; +but no matter; a lot of appreciative people, who were not willing +that an act so brave and true as his should go unrewarded, +have collected forty-two thousand dollars--and built a Memorial +Church with it. + + + + + + +THE FIVE BOONS OF LIFE + + + +Chapter I + + +In the morning of life came a good fairy with her basket, and said: + +"Here are gifts. Take one, leave the others. And be wary, +chose wisely; oh, choose wisely! for only one of them is valuable." + +The gifts were five: Fame, Love, Riches, Pleasure, Death. +The youth said, eagerly: + +"There is no need to consider"; and he chose Pleasure. + +He went out into the world and sought out the pleasures that youth +delights in. But each in its turn was short-lived and disappointing, +vain and empty; and each, departing, mocked him. In the end he said: +"These years I have wasted. If I could but choose again, I would +choose wisely." + + + +Chapter II + + +The fairy appeared, and said: + +"Four of the gifts remain. Choose once more; and oh, remember +--time is flying, and only one of them is precious." + +The man considered long, then chose Love; and did not mark the tears +that rose in the fairy's eyes. + +After many, many years the man sat by a coffin, in an empty home. +And he communed with himself, saying: "One by one they have gone +away and left me; and now she lies here, the dearest and the last. +Desolation after desolation has swept over me; for each hour +of happiness the treacherous trader, Love, as sold me I have paid +a thousand hours of grief. Out of my heart of hearts I curse him." + + + +Chapter III + + +"Choose again." It was the fairy speaking. + +"The years have taught you wisdom--surely it must be so. +Three gifts remain. Only one of them has any worth--remember it, +and choose warily." + +The man reflected long, then chose Fame; and the fairy, sighing, +went her way. + +Years went by and she came again, and stood behind the man where he +sat solitary in the fading day, thinking. And she knew his thought: + +"My name filled the world, and its praises were on every tongue, +and it seemed well with me for a little while. How little a while +it was! Then came envy; then detraction; then calumny; then hate; +then persecution. Then derision, which is the beginning of the end. +And last of all came pity, which is the funeral of fame. Oh, +the bitterness and misery of renown! target for mud in its prime, +for contempt and compassion in its decay." + + + +Chapter IV + + +"Chose yet again." It was the fairy's voice. + +"Two gifts remain. And do not despair. In the beginning there +was but one that was precious, and it is still here." + +"Wealth--which is power! How blind I was!" said the man. +"Now, at last, life will be worth the living. I will spend, +squander, dazzle. These mockers and despisers will crawl in the +dirt before me, and I will feed my hungry heart with their envy. +I will have all luxuries, all joys, all enchantments of the spirit, +all contentments of the body that man holds dear. I will buy, +buy, buy! deference, respect, esteem, worship--every pinchbeck +grace of life the market of a trivial world can furnish forth. +I have lost much time, and chosen badly heretofore, but let that pass; +I was ignorant then, and could but take for best what seemed so." + +Three short years went by, and a day came when the man sat shivering +in a mean garret; and he was gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed, +and clothed in rags; and he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling: + +"Curse all the world's gifts, for mockeries and gilded lies! +And miscalled, every one. They are not gifts, but merely lendings. +Pleasure, Love, Fame, Riches: they are but temporary disguises for +lasting realities--Pain, Grief, Shame, Poverty. The fairy said true; +in all her store there was but one gift which was precious, +only one that was not valueless. How poor and cheap and mean I +know those others now to be, compared with that inestimable one, +that dear and sweet and kindly one, that steeps in dreamless and +enduring sleep the pains that persecute the body, and the shames +and griefs that eat the mind and heart. Bring it! I am weary, +I would rest." + + + +Chapter V + + +The fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts, but Death was wanting. +She said: + +"I gave it to a mother's pet, a little child. It was ignorant, +but trusted me, asking me to choose for it. You did not ask me +to choose." + +"Oh, miserable me! What is left for me?" + +"What not even you have deserved: the wanton insult of Old Age." + + + + + + +THE FIRST WRITING-MACHINES + + +From My Unpublished Autobiography + + + +Some days ago a correspondent sent in an old typewritten sheet, +faded by age, containing the following letter over the signature +of Mark Twain: + + +"Hartford, March 10, 1875. + + +"Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge +that fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using +the typewriter, for the reason that I never could write a letter +with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I +would not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had +made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don't like to write letters, +and so I don't want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding +little joker." + + +A note was sent to Mr. Clemens asking him if the letter was genuine +and whether he really had a typewriter as long ago as that. +Mr. Clemens replied that his best answer is the following chapter +from his unpublished autobiography: + + + +1904. VILLA QUARTO, FLORENCE, JANUARY. + + +Dictating autobiography to a typewriter is a new experience for me, +but it goes very well, and is going to save time and "language" +--the kind of language that soothes vexation. + +I have dictated to a typewriter before--but not autobiography. +Between that experience and the present one there lies a mighty gap +--more than thirty years! It is sort of lifetime. In that wide interval +much has happened--to the type-machine as well as to the rest of us. +At the beginning of that interval a type-machine was a curiosity. +The person who owned one was a curiosity, too. But now it is the +other way about: the person who DOESN'T own one is a curiosity. +I saw a type-machine for the first time in--what year? I suppose it +was 1873--because Nasby was with me at the time, and it was in Boston. +We must have been lecturing, or we could not have been in Boston, +I take it. I quitted the platform that season. + +But never mind about that, it is no matter. Nasby and I saw +the machine through a window, and went in to look at it. +The salesman explained it to us, showed us samples of its work, +and said it could do fifty-seven words a minute--a statement +which we frankly confessed that we did not believe. So he put +his type-girl to work, and we timed her by the watch. She actually +did the fifty-seven in sixty seconds. We were partly convinced, +but said it probably couldn't happen again. But it did. +We timed the girl over and over again--with the same result always: +she won out. She did her work on narrow slips of paper, and we +pocketed them as fast as she turned them out, to show as curiosities. +The price of the machine was one hundred and twenty-five dollars. +I bought one, and we went away very much excited. + +At the hotel we got out our slips and were a little disappointed +to find that they contained the same words. The girl had economized +time and labor by using a formula which she knew by heart. +However, we argued--safely enough--that the FIRST type-girl must +naturally take rank with the first billiard-player: neither of them +could be expected to get out of the game any more than a third or a +half of what was in it. If the machine survived--IF it survived +--experts would come to the front, by and by, who would double the girl's +output without a doubt. They would do one hundred words a minute +--my talking speed on the platform. That score has long ago been beaten. + +At home I played with the toy, repeated and repeating and repeated "The +Boy stood on the Burning Deck," until I could turn that boy's adventure +out at the rate of twelve words a minute; then I resumed the pen, +for business, and only worked the machine to astonish inquiring visitors. +They carried off many reams of the boy and his burning deck. + +By and by I hired a young woman, and did my first dictating (letters, +merely), and my last until now. The machine did not do both capitals +and lower case (as now), but only capitals. Gothic capitals they were, +and sufficiently ugly. I remember the first letter I dictated. +it was to Edward Bok, who was a boy then. I was not acquainted +with him at that time. His present enterprising spirit is not new +--he had it in that early day. He was accumulating autographs, and was +not content with mere signatures, he wanted a whole autograph LETTER. +I furnished it--in type-written capitals, SIGNATURE AND ALL. +It was long; it was a sermon; it contained advice; also reproaches. +I said writing was my TRADE, my bread-and-butter; I said it was +not fair to ask a man to give away samples of his trade; would he +ask the blacksmith for a horseshoe? would he ask the doctor for +a corpse? + +Now I come to an important matter--as I regard it. In the year +'74 the young woman copied a considerable part of a book of mine +ON THE MACHINE. In a previous chapter of this Autobiography I +have claimed that I was the first person in the world that ever had +a telephone in the house for practical purposes; I will now claim +--until dispossess--that I was the first person in the world to APPLY +THE TYPE-MACHINE TO LITERATURE. That book must have been THE +ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER. I wrote the first half of it in '72, +the rest of it in '74. My machinist type-copied a book for me +in '74, so I concluded it was that one. + +That early machine was full of caprices, full of defects--devilish ones. +It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. +After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, +so I thought I would give it to Howells. He was reluctant, for he +was suspicious of novelties and unfriendly toward them, and he remains +so to this day. But I persuaded him. He had great confidence in me, +and I got him to believe things about the machine that I did not +believe myself. He took it home to Boston, and my morals began +to improve, but his have never recovered. + +He kept it six months, and then returned it to me. I gave it away +twice after that, but it wouldn't stay; it came back. Then I +gave it to our coachman, Patrick McAleer, who was very grateful, +because he did not know the animal, and thought I was trying to +make him wiser and better. As soon as he got wiser and better he +traded it to a heretic for a side-saddle which he could not use, +and there my knowledge of its history ends. + + + + + + +ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER + + + +It is almost a fortnight now that I am domiciled in a medieval +villa in the country, a mile or two from Florence. I cannot speak +the language; I am too old not to learn how, also too busy when I +am busy, and too indolent when I am not; wherefore some will +imagine that I am having a dull time of it. But it is not so. +The "help" are all natives; they talk Italian to me, I answer +in English; I do not understand them, they do not understand me, +consequently no harm is done, and everybody is satisfied. In order +to be just and fair, I throw in an Italian word when I have one, +and this has a good influence. I get the word out of the morning paper. +I have to use it while it is fresh, for I find that Italian words +do not keep in this climate. They fade toward night, and next +morning they are gone. But it is no matter; I get a new one out +of the paper before breakfast, and thrill the domestics with it +while it lasts. I have no dictionary, and I do not want one; +I can select words by the sound, or by orthographic aspect. +Many of them have French or German or English look, and these are +the ones I enslave for the day's service. That is, as a rule. +Not always. If I find a learnable phrase that has an imposing look +and warbles musically along I do not care to know the meaning of it; +I pay it out to the first applicant, knowing that if I pronounce it +carefully HE will understand it, and that's enough. + +Yesterday's word was AVANTI. It sounds Shakespearian, and probably +means Avaunt and quit my sight. Today I have a whole phrase: +SONO DISPIACENTISSIMO. I do not know what it means, but it seems +to fit in everywhere and give satisfaction. Although as a rule +my words and phrases are good for one day and train only, I have +several that stay by me all the time, for some unknown reason, +and these come very handy when I get into a long conversation and need +things to fire up with in monotonous stretches. One of the best ones +is DOV' `E IL GATTO. It nearly always produces a pleasant surprise, +therefore I save it up for places where I want to express applause +or admiration. The fourth word has a French sound, and I think +the phrase means "that takes the cake." + +During my first week in the deep and dreamy stillness of this woodsy +and flowery place I was without news of the outside world, and was +well content without it. It has been four weeks since I had seen +a newspaper, and this lack seemed to give life a new charm and grace, +and to saturate it with a feeling verging upon actual delight. +Then came a change that was to be expected: the appetite for news +began to rise again, after this invigorating rest. I had to feed it, +but I was not willing to let it make me its helpless slave again; +I determined to put it on a diet, and a strict and limited one. +So I examined an Italian paper, with the idea of feeding it on that, +and on that exclusively. On that exclusively, and without help of +a dictionary. In this way I should surely be well protected against +overloading and indigestion. + +A glance at the telegraphic page filled me with encouragement. +There were no scare-heads. That was good--supremely good. But there +were headings--one-liners and two-liners--and that was good too; +for without these, one must do as one does with a German paper--pay our +precious time in finding out what an article is about, only to discover, +in many cases, that there is nothing in it of interest to you. +The headline is a valuable thing. + +Necessarily we are all fond of murders, scandals, swindles, +robberies, explosions, collisions, and all such things, when we +knew the people, and when they are neighbors and friends, but when +they are strangers we do not get any great pleasure out of them, +as a rule. Now the trouble with an American paper is that it has +no discrimination; it rakes the whole earth for blood and garbage, +and the result is that you are daily overfed and suffer a surfeit. +By habit you stow this muck every day, but you come by and by to +take no vital interest in it--indeed, you almost get tired of it. +As a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths of it concerns strangers only +--people away off yonder, a thousand miles, two thousand miles, +ten thousand miles from where you are. Why, when you come to think +of it, who cares what becomes of those people? I would not give +the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre +of those others. And, to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed +up in a scandal is more interesting than a whole Sodom and Gomorrah +of outlanders gone rotten. Give me the home product every time. + +Very well. I saw at a glance that the Florentine paper would +suit me: five out of six of its scandals and tragedies were local; +they were adventures of one's very neighbors, one might almost say +one's friends. In the matter of world news there was not too much, +but just about enough. I subscribed. I have had no occasion +to regret it. Every morning I get all the news I need for the day; +sometimes from the headlines, sometimes from the text. I have never +had to call for a dictionary yet. I read the paper with ease. +Often I do not quite understand, often some of the details escape me, +but no matter, I get the idea. I will cut out a passage or two, +then you see how limpid the language is: + + +Il ritorno dei Beati d'Italia + +Elargizione del Re all' Ospedale italiano + + +The first line means that the Italian sovereigns are coming back +--they have been to England. The second line seems to mean that they +enlarged the King at the Italian hospital. With a banquet, I suppose. +An English banquet has that effect. Further: + + +Il ritorno dei Sovrani + +a Roma + + +ROMA, 24, ore 22,50.--I Sovrani e le Principessine Reali si attendono +a Roma domani alle ore 15,51. + + +Return of the sovereigns to Rome, you see. Date of the telegram, +Rome, November 24, ten minutes before twenty-three o'clock. The +telegram seems to say, "The Sovereigns and the Royal Children expect +themselves at Rome tomorrow at fifty-one minutes after fifteen o'clock." + +I do not know about Italian time, but I judge it begins at midnight +and runs through the twenty-four hours without breaking bulk. +In the following ad, the theaters open at half-past twenty. +If these are not matinees, 20.30 must mean 8.30 P.M., by my reckoning. + + +Spettacolli del di 25 + +TEATRO DELLA PERGOLA--(Ore 20,30)--Opera. BOH`EME. TEATRO +ALFIERI.--Compagnia drammatica Drago--(Ore 20,30)--LA LEGGE. +ALHAMBRA--(Ore 20,30)--Spettacolo variato. SALA EDISON +--Grandiosoo spettacolo Cinematografico: QUO VADIS?--Inaugurazione della +Chiesa Russa--In coda al Direttissimo--Vedute di Firenze con +gran movimeno--America: Transporto tronchi giganteschi--I ladri +in casa del Diavolo--Scene comiche. CINEMATOGRAFO--Via Brunelleschi +n. 4.--Programma straordinario, DON CHISCIOTTE--Prezzi populari. + + +The whole of that is intelligible to me--and sane and rational, too +--except the remark about the Inauguration of a Russian Chinese. +That one oversizes my hand. Give me five cards. + +This is a four-page paper; and as it is set in long primer leaded +and has a page of advertisements, there is no room for the crimes, +disasters, and general sweepings of the outside world--thanks be! +Today I find only a single importation of the off-color sort: + + +Una Principessa + +che fugge con un cocchiere + + +PARIGI, 24.--Il MATIN ha da Berlino che la principessa +Schovenbare-Waldenbure scomparve il 9 novembre. Sarebbe partita +col suo cocchiere. + +La Principassa ha 27 anni. + + +Twenty-seven years old, and scomparve--scampered--on the 9th November. +You see by the added detail that she departed with her coachman. +I hope Sarebbe has not made a mistake, but I am afraid the chances +are that she has. SONO DISPIACENTISSIMO. + +There are several fires: also a couple of accidents. This is +one of them: + + +Grave disgrazia sul Ponte Vecchio + + +Stammattina, circe le 7,30, mentre Giuseppe Sciatti, di anni 55, +di Casellina e Torri, passava dal Ponte Vecchio, stando seduto sopra +un barroccio carico di verdura, perse l' equilibrio e cadde al suolo, +rimanendo con la gamba destra sotto una ruota del veicolo. + +Lo Sciatti fu subito raccolto da alcuni cittadini, che, per mezzo +della pubblica vettura n. 365, lo transporto a San Giovanni di Dio. + +Ivi il medico di guardia gli riscontro la frattura della gamba +destra e alcune lievi escoriazioni giudicandolo guaribile in 50 +giorni salvo complicazioni. + + +What it seems to say is this: "Serious Disgrace on the Old +Old Bridge. This morning about 7.30, Mr. Joseph Sciatti, aged 55, +of Casellina and Torri, while standing up in a sitting posture +on top of a carico barrow of vedure (foliage? hay? vegetables?), +lost his equilibrium and fell on himself, arriving with his left +leg under one of the wheels of the vehicle. + +"Said Sciatti was suddenly harvested (gathered in?) by several citizens, +who by means of public cab No. 365 transported to St. John of God." + +Paragraph No. 3 is a little obscure, but I think it says that +the medico set the broken left leg--right enough, since there +was nothing the matter with the other one--and that several +are encouraged to hope that fifty days well fetch him around +in quite giudicandolo-guaribile way, if no complications intervene. + +I am sure I hope so myself. + +There is a great and peculiar charm about reading news-scraps in a +language which you are not acquainted with--the charm that always goes +with the mysterious and the uncertain. You can never be absolutely +sure of the meaning of anything you read in such circumstances; +you are chasing an alert and gamy riddle all the time, and the +baffling turns and dodges of the prey make the life of the hunt. +A dictionary would spoil it. Sometimes a single word of doubtful +purport will cast a veil of dreamy and golden uncertainty over a +whole paragraph of cold and practical certainties, and leave steeped +in a haunting and adorable mystery an incident which had been vulgar +and commonplace but for that benefaction. Would you be wise to draw +a dictionary on that gracious word? would you be properly grateful? + +After a couple of days' rest I now come back to my subject and seek +a case in point. I find it without trouble, in the morning paper; +a cablegram from Chicago and Indiana by way of Paris. All the words +save one are guessable by a person ignorant of Italian: + + +Revolverate in teatro + + +PARIGI, 27.--La PATRIE ha da Chicago: + +Il guardiano del teatro dell'opera di Walace (Indiana), avendo voluto +espellare uno spettatore che continuava a fumare malgrado il diviety, +questo spalleggiato dai suoi amici tir`o diversi colpi di rivoltella. +Il guardiano ripose. Nacque una scarica generale. Grande panico +tra gli spettatori. Nessun ferito. + + +TRANSLATION.--"Revolveration in Theater. PARIS, 27TH. LA PATRIE +has from Chicago: The cop of the theater of the opera of Wallace, +Indiana, had willed to expel a spectator which continued to smoke +in spite of the prohibition, who, spalleggiato by his friends, +tire (Fr. TIRE, Anglice PULLED) manifold revolver-shots; +great panic among the spectators. Nobody hurt." + +It is bettable that that harmless cataclysm in the theater of the opera +of Wallace, Indiana, excited not a person in Europe but me, and so +came near to not being worth cabling to Florence by way of France. +But it does excite me. It excites me because I cannot make out, +for sure, what it was that moved the spectator to resist the officer. +I was gliding along smoothly and without obstruction or accident, +until I came to that word "spalleggiato," then the bottom fell out. +You notice what a rich gloom, what a somber and pervading mystery, +that word sheds all over the whole Wallachian tragedy. That is the charm +of the thing, that is the delight of it. This is where you begin, +this is where you revel. You can guess and guess, and have all +the fun you like; you need not be afraid there will be an end to it; +none is possible, for no amount of guessing will ever furnish you +a meaning for that word that you can be sure is the right one. +All the other words give you hints, by their form, their sound, +or their spelling--this one doesn't, this one throws out no hints, +this one keeps its secret. If there is even the slightest slight +shadow of a hint anywhere, it lies in the very meagerly suggestive +fact that "spalleggiato" carries our word "egg" in its stomach. +Well, make the most out of it, and then where are you at? +You conjecture that the spectator which was smoking in spite +of the prohibition and become reprohibited by the guardians, +was "egged on" by his friends, and that was owing to that evil +influence that he initiated the revolveration in theater that has +galloped under the sea and come crashing through the European +press without exciting anybody but me. But are you sure, +are you dead sure, that that was the way of it? No. Then the +uncertainty remains, the mystery abides, and with it the charm. +Guess again. + +If I had a phrase-book of a really satisfactory sort I would +study it, and not give all my free time to undictionarial readings, +but there is no such work on the market. The existing phrase-books +are inadequate. They are well enough as far as they go, but when +you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say. + + + + + + +ITALIAN WITH GRAMMAR + + + +I found that a person of large intelligence could read this beautiful +language with considerable facility without a dictionary, but I presently +found that to such a parson a grammar could be of use at times. +It is because, if he does not know the WERE'S and the WAS'S and the +MAYBE'S and the HAS-BEENS'S apart, confusions and uncertainties +can arise. He can get the idea that a thing is going to happen next +week when the truth is that it has already happened week before last. +Even more previously, sometimes. Examination and inquiry showed +me that the adjectives and such things were frank and fair-minded +and straightforward, and did not shuffle; it was the Verb that mixed +the hands, it was the Verb that lacked stability, it was the Verb that +had no permanent opinion about anything, it was the Verb that was always +dodging the issue and putting out the light and making all the trouble. + +Further examination, further inquiry, further reflection, +confirmed this judgment, and established beyond peradventure the +fact that the Verb was the storm-center. This discovery made plain +the right and wise course to pursue in order to acquire certainty +and exactness in understanding the statements which the newspaper +was daily endeavoring to convey to me: I must catch a Verb and +tame it. I must find out its ways, I must spot its eccentricities, +I must penetrate its disguises, I must intelligently foresee and +forecast at least the commoner of the dodges it was likely to try +upon a stranger in given circumstances, I must get in on its main +shifts and head them off, I must learn its game and play the limit. + +I had noticed, in other foreign languages, that verbs are bred +in families, and that the members of each family have certain features +or resemblances that are common to that family and distinguish it +from the other families--the other kin, the cousins and what not. +I had noticed that this family-mark is not usually the nose or the hair, +so to speak, but the tail--the Termination--and that these tails +are quite definitely differentiated; insomuch that an expert can +tell a Pluperfect from a Subjunctive by its tail as easily and as +certainly as a cowboy can tell a cow from a horse by the like process, +the result of observation and culture. I should explain that I +am speaking of legitimate verbs, those verbs which in the slang +of the grammar are called Regular. There are other--I am not meaning +to conceal this; others called Irregulars, born out of wedlock, +of unknown and uninteresting parentage, and naturally destitute +of family resemblances, as regards to all features, tails included. +But of these pathetic outcasts I have nothing to say. I do not +approve of them, I do not encourage them; I am prudishly delicate +and sensitive, and I do not allow them to be used in my presence. + +But, as I have said, I decided to catch one of the others and break +it into harness. One is enough. Once familiar with its assortment +of tails, you are immune; after that, no regular verb can conceal +its specialty from you and make you think it is working the past +or the future or the conditional or the unconditional when it is +engaged in some other line of business--its tail will give it away. +I found out all these things by myself, without a teacher. + +I selected the verb AMARE, TO LOVE. Not for any personal reason, +for I am indifferent about verbs; I care no more for one verb than +for another, and have little or no respect for any of them; but in +foreign languages you always begin with that one. Why, I don't know. +It is merely habit, I suppose; the first teacher chose it, +Adam was satisfied, and there hasn't been a successor since with +originality enough to start a fresh one. For they ARE a pretty +limited lot, you will admit that? Originality is not in their line; +they can't think up anything new, anything to freshen up the old +moss-grown dullness of the language lesson and put life and "go" +into it, and charm and grace and picturesqueness. + +I knew I must look after those details myself; therefore I thought +them out and wrote them down, and set for the FACCHINO and explained +them to him, and said he must arrange a proper plant, and get together +a good stock company among the CONTADINI, and design the costumes, +and distribute the parts; and drill the troupe, and be ready in three +days to begin on this Verb in a shipshape and workman-like manner. +I told him to put each grand division of it under a foreman, +and each subdivision under a subordinate of the rank of sergeant +or corporal or something like that, and to have a different uniform +for each squad, so that I could tell a Pluperfect from a Compound +Future without looking at the book; the whole battery to be under +his own special and particular command, with the rank of Brigadier, +and I to pay the freight. + +I then inquired into the character and possibilities of the selected verb, +and was much disturbed to find that it was over my size, it being +chambered for fifty-seven rounds--fifty-seven ways of saying I LOVE +without reloading; and yet none of them likely to convince a girl +that was laying for a title, or a title that was laying for rocks. + +It seemed to me that with my inexperience it would be foolish to go +into action with this mitrailleuse, so I ordered it to the rear +and told the facchino to provide something a little more primitive +to start with, something less elaborate, some gentle old-fashioned +flint-lock, smooth-bore, double-barreled thing, calculated to cripple +at two hundred yards and kill at forty--an arrangement suitable for a +beginner who could be satisfied with moderate results on the offstart +and did not wish to take the whole territory in the first campaign. + +But in vain. He was not able to mend the matter, all the verbs being +of the same build, all Gatlings, all of the same caliber and delivery, +fifty-seven to the volley, and fatal at a mile and a half. +But he said the auxiliary verb AVERE, TO HAVE, was a tidy thing, +and easy to handle in a seaway, and less likely to miss stays in +going about than some of the others; so, upon his recommendation I +chose that one, and told him to take it along and scrape its bottom +and break out its spinnaker and get it ready for business. + +I will explain that a facchino is a general-utility domestic. +Mine was a horse-doctor in his better days, and a very good one. + + +At the end of three days the facchino-doctor-brigadier was ready. +I was also ready, with a stenographer. We were in a room called +the Rope-Walk. This is a formidably long room, as is indicated +by its facetious name, and is a good place for reviews. At 9:30 +the F.-D.-B. took his place near me and gave the word of command; +the drums began to rumble and thunder, the head of the forces appeared +at an upper door, and the "march-past" was on. Down they filed, +a blaze of variegated color, each squad gaudy in a uniform of its own +and bearing a banner inscribed with its verbal rank and quality: +first the Present Tense in Mediterranean blue and old gold, then the +Past Definite in scarlet and black, then the Imperfect in green +and yellow, then the Indicative Future in the stars and stripes, +then the Old Red Sandstone Subjunctive in purple and silver +--and so on and so on, fifty-seven privates and twenty commissioned +and non-commissioned officers; certainly one of the most fiery and +dazzling and eloquent sights I have ever beheld. I could not keep back +the tears. Presently: + +"Halt!" commanded the Brigadier. + +"Front--face!" + +"Right dress!" + +"Stand at ease!" + +"One--two--three. In unison--RECITE!" + +It was fine. In one noble volume of sound of all the fifty-seven +Haves in the Italian language burst forth in an exalting +and splendid confusion. Then came commands: + +"About--face! Eyes--front! Helm alee--hard aport! Forward--march!" +and the drums let go again. + +When the last Termination had disappeared, the commander said +the instruction drill would now begin, and asked for suggestions. +I said: + +"They say I HAVE, THOU HAST, HE HAS, and so on, but they don't say WHAT. +It will be better, and more definite, if they have something +to have; just an object, you know, a something--anything will do; +anything that will give the listener a sort of personal as well +as grammatical interest in their joys and complaints, you see." + +He said: + +"It is a good point. Would a dog do?" + +I said I did not know, but we could try a dog and see. So he sent +out an aide-de-camp to give the order to add the dog. + + +The six privates of the Present Tense now filed in, in charge +of Sergeant AVERE (TO HAVE), and displaying their banner. +They formed in line of battle, and recited, one at a time, thus: + +"IO HO UN CANE, I have a dog." + +"TU HAI UN CANE, thou hast a dog." + +"EGLI HA UN CANE, he has a dog." + +"NOI ABBIAMO UN CANE, we have a dog." + +"VOI AVETE UN CANE, you have a dog." + +"EGLINO HANNO UN CANE, they have a dog." + +No comment followed. They returned to camp, and I reflected a while. +The commander said: + +"I fear you are disappointed." + +"Yes," I said; "they are too monotonous, too singsong, to dead-and-alive; +they have no expression, no elocution. It isn't natural; it could +never happen in real life. A person who had just acquired a dog +is either blame' glad or blame' sorry. He is not on the fence. +I never saw a case. What the nation do you suppose is the matter +with these people?" + +He thought maybe the trouble was with the dog. He said: + +"These are CONTADINI, you know, and they have a prejudice against dogs +--that is, against marimane. Marimana dogs stand guard over people's +vines and olives, you know, and are very savage, and thereby a grief +and an inconvenience to persons who want other people's things +at night. In my judgment they have taken this dog for a marimana, +and have soured on him." + +I saw that the dog was a mistake, and not functionable: +we must try something else; something, if possible, that could +evoke sentiment, interest, feeling. + +"What is cat, in Italian?" I asked. + +"Gatto." + +"Is it a gentleman cat, or a lady?" + +"Gentleman cat." + +"How are these people as regards that animal?" + +"We-ll, they--they--" + +"You hesitate: that is enough. How are they about chickens?" + +He tilted his eyes toward heaven in mute ecstasy. I understood. + +"What is chicken, in Italian?" I asked. + +"Pollo, PODERE." (Podere is Italian for master. It is a title +of courtesy, and conveys reverence and admiration.) "Pollo is one +chicken by itself; when there are enough present to constitute +a plural, it is POLLI." + +"Very well, polli will do. Which squad is detailed for duty next?" + +"The Past Definite." + +"Send out and order it to the front--with chickens. And let them +understand that we don't want any more of this cold indifference." + +He gave the order to an aide, adding, with a haunting tenderness +in his tone and a watering mouth in his aspect: + +"Convey to them the conception that these are unprotected chickens." +He turned to me, saluting with his hand to his temple, and explained, +"It will inflame their interest in the poultry, sire." + +A few minutes elapsed. Then the squad marched in and formed up, +their faces glowing with enthusiasm, and the file-leader shouted: + +"EBBI POLLI, I had chickens!" + +"Good!" I said. "Go on, the next." + +"AVEST POLLI, thou hadst chickens!" + +"Fine! Next!" + +"EBBE POLLI, he had chickens!" + +"Moltimoltissimo! Go on, the next!" + +"AVEMMO POLLI, we had chickens!" + +"Basta-basta aspettatto avanti--last man--CHARGE!" + +"EBBERO POLLI, they had chickens!" + +Then they formed in echelon, by columns of fours, refused the left, +and retired in great style on the double-quick. I was enchanted, +and said: + +"Now, doctor, that is something LIKE! Chickens are the ticket, +there is no doubt about it. What is the next squad?" + +"The Imperfect." + +"How does it go?" + +"IO AVENA, I had, TU AVEVI, thou hadst, EGLI AVENA, he had, +NOI AV--" + +"Wait--we've just HAD the hads. What are you giving me?" + +"But this is another breed." + +"What do we want of another breed? Isn't one breed enough? +HAD is HAD, and your tricking it out in a fresh way of spelling +isn't going to make it any hadder than it was before; now you know +that yourself." + +"But there is a distinction--they are not just the same Hads." + +"How do you make it out?" + +"Well, you use that first Had when you are referring to something +that happened at a named and sharp and perfectly definite moment; +you use the other when the thing happened at a vaguely defined time +and in a more prolonged and indefinitely continuous way." + +"Why, doctor, it is pure nonsense; you know it yourself. Look here: +If I have had a had, or have wanted to have had a had, or was in a +position right then and there to have had a had that hadn't had any chance +to go out hadding on account of this foolish discrimination which lets +one Had go hadding in any kind of indefinite grammatical weather but +restricts the other one to definite and datable meteoric convulsions, +and keeps it pining around and watching the barometer all the time, +and liable to get sick through confinement and lack of exercise, +and all that sort of thing, why--why, the inhumanity of it is enough, +let alone the wanton superfluity and uselessness of any such a loafing +consumptive hospital-bird of a Had taking up room and cumbering +the place for nothing. These finical refinements revolt me; +it is not right, it is not honorable; it is constructive nepotism +to keep in office a Had that is so delicate it can't come out when +the wind's in the nor'west--I won't have this dude on the payroll. +Cancel his exequator; and look here--" + +"But you miss the point. It is like this. You see--" + +"Never mind explaining, I don't care anything about it. Six Hads +is enough for me; anybody that needs twelve, let him subscribe; +I don't want any stock in a Had Trust. Knock out the Prolonged +and Indefinitely Continuous; four-fifths of it is water, anyway." + +"But I beg you, podere! It is often quite indispensable in cases where--" + +"Pipe the next squad to the assault!" + +But it was not to be; for at that moment the dull boom of the noon gun +floated up out of far-off Florence, followed by the usual softened +jangle of church-bells, Florentine and suburban, that bursts out in +murmurous response; by labor-union law the COLAZIONE [1] must stop; +stop promptly, stop instantly, stop definitely, like the chosen +and best of the breed of Hads. + +1. Colazione is Italian for a collection, a meeting, a seance, +a sitting.--M.T. + + + + + + +A BURLESQUE BIOGRAPHY + + + +Two or three persons having at different times intimated that if I +would write an autobiography they would read it when they got leisure, +I yield at last to this frenzied public demand and herewith tender +my history. + +Ours is a noble house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity. +The earliest ancestor the Twains have any record of was a friend of +the family by the name of Higgins. This was in the eleventh century, +when our people were living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England. +Why it is that our long line has ever since borne the maternal +name (except when one of them now and then took a playful +refuge in an alias to avert foolishness), instead of Higgins, +is a mystery which none of us has ever felt much desire to stir. +It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we leave it alone. +All the old families do that way. + +Arthour Twain was a man of considerable note--a solicitor on the +highway in William Rufus's time. At about the age of thirty he went +to one of those fine old English places of resort called Newgate, +to see about something, and never returned again. While there he +died suddenly. + +Augustus Twain seems to have made something of a stir about the +year 1160. He was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his old +saber and sharpen it up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night, +and stick it through people as they went by, to see them jump. +He was a born humorist. But he got to going too far with it; +and the first time he was found stripping one of these parties, +the authorities removed one end of him, and put it up on a nice high +place on Temple Bar, where it could contemplate the people and have +a good time. He never liked any situation so much or stuck to it so long. + +Then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows +a succession of soldiers--noble, high-spirited fellows, +who always went into battle singing, right behind the army, +and always went out a-whooping, right ahead of it. + +This is a scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart's poor witticism +that our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that +one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruit winter and summer. + +Early in the fifteenth century we have Beau Twain, called "the Scholar." +He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand. And he could imitate anybody's +hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head +off to see it. He had infinite sport with his talent. But by and +by he took a contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness +of the work spoiled his hand. Still, he enjoyed life all the time +he was in the stone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals, +was some forty-two years. In fact, he died in harness. During all +those long years he gave such satisfaction that he never was through +with one contract a week till the government gave him another. He was +a perfect pet. And he was always a favorite with his fellow-artists, +and was a conspicuous member of their benevolent secret society, +called the Chain Gang. He always wore his hair short, had a +preference for striped clothes, and died lamented by the government. +He was a sore loss to his country. For he was so regular. + +Some years later we have the illustrious John Morgan Twain. +He came over to this country with Columbus in 1492 as a passenger. +He appears to have been of a crusty, uncomfortable disposition. +He complained of the food all the way over, and was always threatening +to go ashore unless there was a change. He wanted fresh shad. +Hardly a day passed over his head that he did not go idling about +the ship with his nose in the air, sneering about the commander, +and saying he did not believe Columbus knew where he was going +to or had ever been there before. The memorable cry of "Land ho!" +thrilled every heart in the ship but his. He gazed awhile through a +piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on the distant water, +and then said: "Land be hanged--it's a raft!" + +When this questionable passenger came on board the ship, he brought +nothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief +marked "B. G.," one cotton sock marked "L. W. C.," one woolen one +marked "D. F.," and a night-shirt marked "O. M. R." And yet during +the voyage he worried more about his "trunk," and gave himself more +airs about it, than all the rest of the passengers put together. +If the ship was "down by the head," and would not steer, he would +go and move his "trunk" further aft, and then watch the effect. +If the ship was "by the stern," he would suggest to Columbus to detail +some men to "shift that baggage." In storms he had to be gagged, +because his wailings about his "trunk" made it impossible for the +men to hear the orders. The man does not appear to have been +openly charged with any gravely unbecoming thing, but it is noted +in the ship's log as a "curious circumstance" that albeit he brought +his baggage on board the ship in a newspaper, he took it ashore in +four trunks, a queensware crate, and a couple of champagne baskets. +But when he came back insinuating, in an insolent, swaggering way, +that some of this things were missing, and was going to search +the other passengers' baggage, it was too much, and they threw +him overboard. They watched long and wonderingly for him to +come up, but not even a bubble rose on the quietly ebbing tide. +But while every one was most absorbed in gazing over the side, +and the interest was momentarily increasing, it was observed with +consternation that the vessel was adrift and the anchor-cable hanging +limp from the bow. Then in the ship's dimmed and ancient log we +find this quaint note: + +"In time it was discouvered yt ye troblesome passenger hadde gone +downe and got ye anchor, and toke ye same and solde it to ye dam +sauvages from ye interior, saying yt he hadde founde it, ye sonne +of a ghun!" + +Yet this ancestor had good and noble instincts, and it is with +pride that we call to mind the fact that he was the first white +person who ever interested himself in the work of elevating +and civilizing our Indians. He built a commodious jail and put +up a gallows, and to his dying day he claimed with satisfaction +that he had had a more restraining and elevating influence on +the Indians than any other reformer that ever labored among them. +At this point the chronicle becomes less frank and chatty, +and closes abruptly by saying that the old voyager went to see +his gallows perform on the first white man ever hanged in America, +and while there received injuries which terminated in his death. + +The great-grandson of the "Reformer" flourished in sixteen hundred +and something, and was known in our annals as "the old Admiral," +though in history he had other titles. He was long in command of +fleets of swift vessels, well armed and manned, and did great service +in hurrying up merchantmen. Vessels which he followed and kept +his eagle eye on, always made good fair time across the ocean. +But if a ship still loitered in spite of all he could do, +his indignation would grow till he could contain himself no longer +--and then he would take that ship home where he lived and keep it +there carefully, expecting the owners to come for it, but they never did. +And he would try to get the idleness and sloth out of the sailors +of that ship by compelling them to take invigorating exercise and +a bath. He called it "walking a plank." All the pupils liked it. +At any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying it. +When the owners were late coming for their ships, the Admiral always +burned them, so that the insurance money should not be lost. +At last this fine old tar was cut down in the fullness of his years +and honors. And to her dying day, his poor heart-broken widow believed +that if he had been cut down fifteen minutes sooner he might have +been resuscitated. + +Charles Henry Twain lived during the latter part of the seventeenth +century, and was a zealous and distinguished missionary. +He converted sixteen thousand South Sea islanders, and taught them +that a dog-tooth necklace and a pair of spectacles was not enough +clothing to come to divine service in. His poor flock loved +him very, very dearly; and when his funeral was over, they got up +in a body (and came out of the restaurant) with tears in their eyes, +and saying, one to another, that he was a good tender missionary, +and they wished they had some more of him. + +Pah-go-to-wah-wah-pukketekeewis (Mighty-Hunter-with-a-Hog-Eye-Twain) +adorned the middle of the eighteenth century, and aided General +Braddock with all his heart to resist the oppressor Washington. +It was this ancestor who fired seventeen times at our Washington +from behind a tree. So far the beautiful romantic narrative +in the moral story-books is correct; but when that narrative goes +on to say that at the seventeenth round the awe-stricken savage +said solemnly that that man was being reserved by the Great Spirit +for some mighty mission, and he dared not lift his sacrilegious rifle +against him again, the narrative seriously impairs the integrity +of history. What he did say was: + +"It ain't no (hic) no use. 'At man's so drunk he can't stan' +still long enough for a man to hit him. I (hic) I can't 'ford +to fool away any more am'nition on him." + +That was why he stopped at the seventeenth round, and it was a good, +plain, matter-of-fact reason, too, and one that easily commends itself +to us by the eloquent, persuasive flavor of probability there is about it. + +I also enjoyed the story-book narrative, but I felt a marring misgiving +that every Indian at Braddock's Defeat who fired at a soldier +a couple of times (two easily grows to seventeen in a century), +and missed him, jumped to the conclusion that the Great Spirit +was reserving that soldier for some grand mission; and so I somehow +feared that the only reason why Washington's case is remembered +and the others forgotten is, that in his the prophecy came true, +and in that of the others it didn't. There are not books enough +on earth to contain the record of the prophecies Indians and other +unauthorized parties have made; but one may carry in his overcoat +pockets the record of all the prophecies that have been fulfilled. + +I will remark here, in passing, that certain ancestors of mine are +so thoroughly well-known in history by their aliases, that I have +not felt it to be worth while to dwell upon them, or even mention +them in the order of their birth. Among these may be mentioned +Richard Brinsley Twain, alias Guy Fawkes; John Wentworth Twain, +alias Sixteen-String Jack; William Hogarth Twain, alias Jack Sheppard; +Ananias Twain, alias Baron Munchausen; John George Twain, +alias Captain Kydd; and then there are George Francis Twain, +Tom Pepper, Nebuchadnezzar, and Baalam's Ass--they all belong +to our family, but to a branch of it somewhat distinctly removed +from the honorable direct line--in fact, a collateral branch, +whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that, in order +to acquire the notoriety we have always yearned and hungered for, +they have got into a low way of going to jail instead of getting hanged. + +It is not well, when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry +down too close to your own time--it is safest to speak only vaguely +of your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, +which I now do. + +I was born without teeth--and there Richard III. had the advantage +of me; but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I +had the advantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor +conspicuously honest. + +But now a thought occurs to me. My own history would really seem +so tame contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom +to leave it unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I +have read had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, +it would have been a felicitous thing for the reading public. +How does it strike you? + + + + + + +HOW TO TELL A STORY + +The Humorous Story an American Development.--Its Difference +from Comic and Witty Stories + + +I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. +I only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been +almost daily in the company of the most expert story-tellers for +many years. + +There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind +--the humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story +is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. +The humorous story depends for its effect upon the MANNER of the telling; +the comic story and the witty story upon the MATTER. + +The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander +around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; +but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. +The humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst. + +The humorous story is strictly a work of art--high and delicate art +--and only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling +the comic and the witty story; anybody can do it. The art of telling +a humorous story--understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print +--was created in America, and has remained at home. + +The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best +to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is +anything funny about it; but the teller of the comic story tells you +beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard, +then tells it with eager delight, and is the first person to laugh +when he gets through. And sometimes, if he has had good success, +he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the "nub" of it +and glance around from face to face, collecting applause, +and then repeat it again. It is a pathetic thing to see. + +Very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story +finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it. +Then the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will +divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual +and indifferent way, with the pretense that he does not know it +is a nub. + +Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience +presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise, +as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Setchell +used it before him, Nye and Riley and others use it today. + +But the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub; +he shouts it at you--every time. And when he prints it, +in England, France, Germany, and Italy, he italicizes it, +puts some whopping exclamation-points after it, and sometimes +explains it in a parenthesis. All of which is very depressing, +and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life. + +Let me set down an instance of the comic method, using an anecdote +which has been popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen +hundred years. The teller tells it in this way: + + +THE WOUNDED SOLDIER + + +In the course of a certain battle a soldier whose leg had been shot off +appealed to another soldier who was hurrying by to carry him to the rear, +informing him at the same time of the loss which he had sustained; +whereupon the generous son of Mars, shouldering the unfortunate, +proceeded to carry out his desire. The bullets and cannon-balls +were flying in all directions, and presently one of the latter +took the wounded man's head off--without, however, his deliverer +being aware of it. In no long time he was hailed by an officer, +who said: + +"Where are you going with that carcass?" + +"To the rear, sir--he's lost his leg!" + +"His leg, forsooth?" responded the astonished officer; "you mean +his head, you booby." + +Whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood +looking down upon it in great perplexity. At length he said: + +"It is true, sir, just as you have said." Then after a pause he added, +"BUT HE TOLD ME IT WAS HIS LEG!!!!!" + + +Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of +thunderous horse-laughter, repeating that nub from time to time +through his gasping and shriekings and suffocatings. + +It takes only a minute and a half to tell that in its comic-story form; +and isn't worth the telling, after all. Put into the humorous-story +form it takes ten minutes, and is about the funniest thing I have +ever listened to--as James Whitcomb Riley tells it. + +He tells it in the character of a dull-witted old farmer who has +just heard it for the first time, thinks it is unspeakably funny, +and is trying to repeat it to a neighbor. But he can't remember it; +so he gets all mixed up and wanders helplessly round and round, +putting in tedious details that don't belong in the tale and only +retard it; taking them out conscientiously and putting in others +that are just as useless; making minor mistakes now and then +and stopping to correct them and explain how he came to make them; +remembering things which he forgot to put in in their proper place +and going back to put them in there; stopping his narrative a good +while in order to try to recall the name of the soldier that was hurt, +and finally remembering that the soldier's name was not mentioned, +and remarking placidly that the name is of no real importance, anyway +--better, of course, if one knew it, but not essential, after all +--and so on, and so on, and so on. + +The teller is innocent and happy and pleased with himself, +and has to stop every little while to hold himself in and keep +from laughing outright; and does hold in, but his body quakes +in a jelly-like way with interior chuckles; and at the end of the +ten minutes the audience have laughed until they are exhausted, +and the tears are running down their faces. + +The simplicity and innocence and sincerity and unconsciousness +of the old farmer are perfectly simulated, and the result +is a performance which is thoroughly charming and delicious. +This is art--and fine and beautiful, and only a master can compass it; +but a machine could tell the other story. + +To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering +and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they +are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position +is correct. Another feature is the slurring of the point. A third +is the dropping of a studied remark apparently without knowing it, +as if one where thinking aloud. The fourth and last is the pause. + +Artemus Ward dealt in numbers three and four a good deal. He would +begin to tell with great animation something which he seemed to +think was wonderful; then lose confidence, and after an apparently +absent-minded pause add an incongruous remark in a soliloquizing way; +and that was the remark intended to explode the mine--and it did. + +For instance, he would say eagerly, excitedly, "I once knew a man +in New Zealand who hadn't a tooth in his head"--here his animation +would die out; a silent, reflective pause would follow, then he +would say dreamily, and as if to himself, "and yet that man could +beat a drum better than any man I ever saw." + +The pause is an exceedingly important feature in any kind of story, +and a frequently recurring feature, too. It is a dainty thing, +and delicate, and also uncertain and treacherous; for it must +be exactly the right length--no more and no less--or it fails +of its purpose and makes trouble. If the pause is too short the +impressive point is passed, and the audience have had time to divine +that a surprise is intended--and then you can't surprise them, +of course. + +On the platform I used to tell a negro ghost story that had a pause +in front of the snapper on the end, and that pause was the most important +thing in the whole story. If I got it the right length precisely, +I could spring the finishing ejaculation with effect enough to make +some impressible girl deliver a startled little yelp and jump out +of her seat--and that was what I was after. This story was called +"The Golden Arm," and was told in this fashion. You can practice +with it yourself--and mind you look out for the pause and get it right. + + +THE GOLDEN ARM + + +Once 'pon a time dey wuz a momsus mean man, en he live 'way out in de +prairie all 'lone by hisself, 'cep'n he had a wife. En bimeby she died, +en he tuck en toted her way out dah in de prairie en buried her. +Well, she had a golden arm--all solid gold, fum de shoulder down. +He wuz pow'ful mean--pow'ful; en dat night he couldn't sleep, +caze he want dat golden arm so bad. + +When it come midnight he couldn't stan' it no mo'; so he git up, +he did, en tuck his lantern en shoved out thoo de storm en dug her +up en got de golden arm; en he bent his head down 'gin de 'win, en +plowed en plowed en plowed thoo de snow. Den all on a sudden he +stop (make a considerable pause here, and look startled, and take +a listening attitude) en say: "My LAN', what's dat?" + +En he listen--en listen--en de win' say (set your teeth together +and imitate the wailing and wheezing singsong of the wind), +"Bzzz-z-zzz"--en den, way back yonder whah de grave is, he hear +a VOICE!--he hear a voice all mix' up in de win'--can't hardly +tell 'em 'part--"Bzzz--zzz--W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n ARM?" +(You must begin to shiver violently now.) + +En he begin to shiver en shake, en say, "Oh, my! OH, my lan'!" en de win' +blow de lantern out, en de snow en sleet blow in his face en mos' +choke him, en he start a-plowin' knee-deep toward home mos' dead, +he so sk'yerd--en pooty soon he hear de voice agin, en (pause) it 'us +comin AFTER him! "Bzzz--zzz--zzz W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n--ARM?" + +When he git to de pasture he hear it agin--closter now, +en A-COMIN'!--a-comin' back dah in de dark en de storm--(repeat +the wind and the voice). When he git to de house he rush upstairs +en jump in de bed en kiver up, head and years, en lay da shiverin' +en shakin'--en den way out dah he hear it AGIN!--en a-COMIN'! En +bimeby he hear (pause--awed, listening attitude)--pat--pat--pat HIT'S +A-COMIN' UPSTAIRS! Den he hear de latch, en he KNOW it's in de room! + +Den pooty soon he know it's a-STANNIN' BY DE BED! (Pause.) Den +--he know it's a-BENDIN' DOWN OVER HIM--en he cain't skasely git +his breath! Den--den--he seem to feel someth'n' C-O-L-D, right down +'most agin his head! (Pause.) + +Den de voice say, RIGHT AT HIS YEAR--"W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y g-o-l-d-e-n ARM?" +(You must wail it out very plaintively and accusingly; then you stare +steadily and impressively into the face of the farthest-gone auditor +--a girl, preferably--and let that awe-inspiring pause begin to build +itself in the deep hush. When it has reached exactly the right length, +jump suddenly at that girl and yell, "YOU'VE got it!") + +If you've got the PAUSE right, she'll fetch a dear little yelp and +spring right out of her shoes. But you MUST get the pause right; +and you will find it the most troublesome and aggravating and +uncertain thing you ever undertook. + + + + + + +GENERAL WASHINGTON'S NEGRO BODY-SERVANT + + +A Biographical Sketch + + + +The stirring part of this celebrated colored man's life properly began +with his death--that is to say, the notable features of his biography +began with the first time he died. He had been little heard of up +to that time, but since then we have never ceased to hear of him; +we have never ceased to hear of him at stated, unfailing intervals. +His was a most remarkable career, and I have thought that its history +would make a valuable addition to our biographical literature. +Therefore, I have carefully collated the materials for such a work, +from authentic sources, and here present them to the public. I have +rigidly excluded from these pages everything of a doubtful character, +with the object in view of introducing my work into the schools +for the instruction of the youth of my country. + +The name of the famous body-servant of General Washington was George. +After serving his illustrious master faithfully for half a century, +and enjoying throughout his long term his high regard and confidence, +it became his sorrowful duty at last to lay that beloved master +to rest in his peaceful grave by the Potomac. Ten years afterward +--in 1809--full of years and honors, he died himself, mourned by all +who knew him. The Boston GAZETTE of that date thus refers to +the event: + + +George, the favorite body-servant of the lamented Washington, +died in Richmond, Va., last Tuesday, at the ripe age of 95 years. +His intellect was unimpaired, and his memory tenacious, up to +within a few minutes of his decease. He was present at the second +installation of Washington as President, and also at his funeral, +and distinctly remembered all the prominent incidents connected with +those noted events. + + +From this period we hear no more of the favorite body-servant of +General Washington until May, 1825, at which time he died again. +A Philadelphia paper thus speaks of the sad occurrence: + + +At Macon, Ga., last week, a colored man named George, who was the +favorite body-servant of General Washington, died at the advanced +age of 95 years. Up to within a few hours of his dissolution he +was in full possession of all his faculties, and could distinctly +recollect the second installation of Washington, his death +and burial, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battle of Trenton, +the griefs and hardships of Valley Forge, etc. Deceased was +followed to the grave by the entire population of Macon. + + +On the Fourth of July, 1830, and also of 1834 and 1836, the subject +of this sketch was exhibited in great state upon the rostrum +of the orator of the day, and in November of 1840 he died again. +The St. Louis REPUBLICAN of the 25th of that month spoke as follows: + + +"ANOTHER RELIC OF THE REVOLUTION GONE." + + +"George, once the favorite body-servant of General Washington, +died yesterday at the house of Mr. John Leavenworth in this city, +at the venerable age of 95 years. He was in the full possession +of his faculties up to the hour of his death, and distinctly +recollected the first and second installations and death of +President Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles +of Trenton and Monmouth, the sufferings of the patriot army at +Valley Forge, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, +the speech of Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Delegates, +and many other old-time reminiscences of stirring interest. +Few white men die lamented as was this aged negro. The funeral +was very largely attended." + + +During the next ten or eleven years the subject of this sketch +appeared at intervals at Fourth-of-July celebrations in various +parts of the country, and was exhibited upon the rostrum with +flattering success. But in the fall of 1855 he died again. +The California papers thus speak of the event: + + +ANOTHER OLD HERO GONE + + +Died, at Dutch Flat, on the 7th of March, George (once the confidential +body-servant of General Washington), at the great age of 95 years. +His memory, which did not fail him till the last, was a wonderful +storehouse of interesting reminiscences. He could distinctly recollect +the first and second installations and death of President Washington, +the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth, +and Bunker Hill, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, +and Braddock's defeat. George was greatly respected in Dutch Flat, +and it is estimated that there were 10,000 people present at +his funeral. + + +The last time the subject of this sketch died was in June, 1864; and until +we learn the contrary, it is just to presume that he died permanently +this time. The Michigan papers thus refer to the sorrowful event: + + +ANOTHER CHERISHED REMNANT OF THE REVOLUTION GONE + + +George, a colored man, and once the favorite body-servant of +George Washington, died in Detroit last week, at the patriarchal age +of 95 years. To the moment of his death his intellect was unclouded, +and he could distinctly remember the first and second installations +and death of Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles +of Trenton and Monmouth, and Bunker Hill, the proclamation of the +Declaration of Independence, Braddock's defeat, the throwing over +of the tea in Boston harbor, and the landing of the Pilgrims. +He died greatly respected, and was followed to the grave by a vast +concourse of people. + + +The faithful old servant is gone! We shall never see him more until +he turns up again. He has closed his long and splendid career +of dissolution, for the present, and sleeps peacefully, as only they sleep +who have earned their rest. He was in all respects a remarkable man. +He held his age better than any celebrity that has figured in history; +and the longer he lived the stronger and longer his memory grew. +If he lives to die again, he will distinctly recollect the discovery +of America. + +The above resume of his biography I believe to be substantially +correct, although it is possible that he may have died once or twice +in obscure places where the event failed of newspaper notoriety. +One fault I find in all the notices of his death I have quoted, +and this ought to be correct. In them he uniformly and impartially +died at the age of 95. This could not have been. He might have +done that once, or maybe twice, but he could not have continued +it indefinitely. Allowing that when he first died, he died at +the age of 95, he was 151 years old when he died last, in 1864. +But his age did not keep pace with his recollections. When he died +the last time, he distinctly remembered the landing of the Pilgrims, +which took place in 1620. He must have been about twenty years +old when he witnessed that event, wherefore it is safe to assert +that the body-servant of General Washington was in the neighborhood +of two hundred and sixty or seventy years old when he departed this +life finally. + +Having waited a proper length of time, to see if the subject of his +sketch had gone from us reliably and irrevocably, I now publish his +biography with confidence, and respectfully offer it to a mourning nation. + +P.S.--I see by the papers that this imfamous old fraud has just +died again, in Arkansas. This makes six times that he is known +to have died, and always in a new place. The death of Washington's +body-servant has ceased to be a novelty; it's charm is gone; +the people are tired of it; let it cease. This well-meaning +but misguided negro has not put six different communities to the +expense of burying him in state, and has swindled tens of thousands +of people into following him to the grave under the delusion that +a select and peculiar distinction was being conferred upon them. +Let him stay buried for good now; and let that newspaper suffer +the severest censure that shall ever, in all the future time, +publish to the world that General Washington's favorite colored +body-servant has died again. + + + + + + +WIT INSPIRATIONS OF THE "TWO-YEAR-OLDS" + + + +All infants appear to have an impertinent and disagreeable fashion +nowadays of saying "smart" things on most occasions that offer, +and especially on occasions when they ought not to be saying anything +at all. Judging by the average published specimens of smart sayings, +the rising generation of children are little better than idiots. +And the parents must surely be but little better than the children, +for in most cases they are the publishers of the sunbursts of infantile +imbecility which dazzle us from the pages of our periodicals. +I may seem to speak with some heat, not to say a suspicion of +personal spite; and I do admit that it nettles me to hear about so +many gifted infants in these days, and remember that I seldom said +anything smart when I was a child. I tried it once or twice, but it +was not popular. The family were not expecting brilliant remarks +from me, and so they snubbed me sometimes and spanked me the rest. +But it makes my flesh creep and my blood run cold to think what might +have happened to me if I had dared to utter some of the smart things +of this generation's "four-year-olds" where my father could hear me. +To have simply skinned me alive and considered his duty at an end +would have seemed to him criminal leniency toward one so sinning. +He was a stern, unsmiling man, and hated all forms of precocity. +If I had said some of the things I have referred to, and said them in +his hearing, he would have destroyed me. He would, indeed. He would, +provided the opportunity remained with him. But it would not, +for I would have had judgment enough to take some strychnine first +and say my smart thing afterward. The fair record of my life has +been tarnished by just one pun. My father overheard that, and he +hunted me over four or five townships seeking to take my life. +If I had been full-grown, of course he would have been right; +but, child as I was, I could not know how wicked a thing I +had done. + +I made one of those remarks ordinarily called "smart things" +before that, but it was not a pun. Still, it came near causing a +serious rupture between my father and myself. My father and mother, +my uncle Ephraim and his wife, and one or two others were present, +and the conversation turned on a name for me. I was lying there +trying some India-rubber rings of various patterns, and endeavoring +to make a selection, for I was tired of trying to cut my teeth on +people's fingers, and wanted to get hold of something that would +enable me to hurry the thing through and get something else. +Did you ever notice what a nuisance it was cutting your teeth on +your nurse's finger, or how back-breaking and tiresome it was trying +to cut them on your big toe? And did you never get out of patience +and wish your teeth were in Jerico long before you got them half cut? +To me it seems as if these things happened yesterday. And they did, +to some children. But I digress. I was lying there trying the +India-rubber rings. I remember looking at the clock and noticing +that in an hour and twenty-five minutes I would be two weeks old, +and thinking how little I had done to merit the blessings that were so +unsparingly lavished upon me. My father said: + +"Abraham is a good name. My grandfather was named Abraham." + +My mother said: + +"Abraham is a good name. Very well. Let us have Abraham for one +of his names." + +I said: + +"Abraham suits the subscriber." + +My father frowned, my mother looked pleased; my aunt said: + +"What a little darling it is!" + +My father said: + +"Isaac is a good name, and Jacob is a good name." + +My mother assented, and said: + +"No names are better. Let us add Isaac and Jacob to his names." + +I said: + +"All right. Isaac and Jacob are good enough for yours truly. +Pass me that rattle, if you please. I can't chew India-rubber rings +all day." + +Not a soul made a memorandum of these sayings of mine, for publication. +I saw that, and did it myself, else they would have been utterly lost. +So far from meeting with a generous encouragement like other children +when developing intellectually, I was now furiously scowled upon +by my father; my mother looked grieved and anxious, and even my aunt +had about her an expression of seeming to think that maybe I had +gone too far. I took a vicious bite out of an India-rubber ring, +and covertly broke the rattle over the kitten's head, but said nothing. +Presently my father said: + +"Samuel is a very excellent name." + +I saw that trouble was coming. Nothing could prevent it. I laid +down my rattle; over the side of the cradle I dropped my uncle's +silver watch, the clothes-brush, the toy dog, my tin soldier, +the nutmeg-grater, and other matters which I was accustomed to examine, +and meditate upon and make pleasant noises with, and bang and batter +and break when I needed wholesome entertainment. Then I put on my +little frock and my little bonnet, and took my pygmy shoes in one +hand and my licorice in the other, and climbed out on the floor. +I said to myself, Now, if the worse comes to worst, I am ready. +Then I said aloud, in a firm voice: + +"Father, I cannot, cannot wear the name of Samuel." + +"My son!" + +"Father, I mean it. I cannot." + +"Why?" + +"Father, I have an invincible antipathy to that name." + +"My son, this is unreasonable. Many great and good men have been +named Samuel." + +"Sir, I have yet to hear of the first instance." + +"What! There was Samuel the prophet. Was not he great and good?" + +"Not so very." + +"My son! With His own voice the Lord called him." + +"Yes, sir, and had to call him a couple times before he could come!" + +And then I sallied forth, and that stern old man sallied forth after me. +He overtook me at noon the following day, and when the interview was +over I had acquired the name of Samuel, and a thrashing, and other +useful information; and by means of this compromise my father's +wrath was appeased and a misunderstanding bridged over which might +have become a permanent rupture if I had chosen to be unreasonable. +But just judging by this episode, what would my father have done +to me if I had ever uttered in his hearing one of the flat, +sickly things these "two-years-olds" say in print nowadays? +In my opinion there would have been a case of infanticide in our family. + + + + + + +AN ENTERTAINING ARTICLE + + + +I take the following paragraph from an article in the Boston ADVERTISER: + + +AN ENGLISH CRITIC ON MARK TWAIN + + +Perhaps the most successful flights of humor of Mark Twain have been +descriptions of the persons who did not appreciate his humor at all. +We have become familiar with the Californians who were thrilled with +terror by his burlesque of a newspaper reporter's way of telling a story, +and we have heard of the Pennsylvania clergyman who sadly returned +his INNOCENTS ABROAD to the book-agent with the remark that "the +man who could shed tears over the tomb of Adam must be an idiot." +But Mark Twain may now add a much more glorious instance to his string +of trophies. The SATURDAY REVIEW, in its number of October 8th, +reviews his book of travels, which has been republished in England, +and reviews it seriously. We can imagine the delight of the humorist +in reading this tribute to his power; and indeed it is so amusing +in itself that he can hardly do better than reproduce the article +in full in his next monthly Memoranda. + + +(Publishing the above paragraph thus, gives me a sort of authority +for reproducing the SATURDAY REVIEW'S article in full in these pages. +I dearly wanted to do it, for I cannot write anything half so +delicious myself. If I had a cast-iron dog that could read this +English criticism and preserve his austerity, I would drive him +off the door-step.) + + +(From the London "Saturday Review.") + + +REVIEWS OF NEW BOOKS + + +THE INNOCENTS ABROAD. A Book of Travels. By Mark Twain. +London: Hotten, publisher. 1870. + + +Lord Macaulay died too soon. We never felt this so deeply as when we +finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work. +Macaulay died too soon--for none but he could mete out complete +and comprehensive justice to the insolence, the impertinence, +the presumption, the mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance +of this author. + +To say that the INNOCENTS ABROAD is a curious book, would be to +use the faintest language--would be to speak of the Matterhorn +as a neat elevation or of Niagara as being "nice" or "pretty." +"Curious" is too tame a word wherewith to describe the imposing insanity +of this work. There is no word that is large enough or long enough. +Let us, therefore, photograph a passing glimpse of book and author, +and trust the rest to the reader. Let the cultivated English student +of human nature picture to himself this Mark Twain as a person capable +of doing the following-described things--and not only doing them, +but with incredible innocence PRINTING THEM calmly and tranquilly +in a book. For instance: + +He states that he entered a hair-dresser's in Paris to get shaved, +and the first "rake" the barber gave him with his razor it LOOSENED +HIS "HIDE" and LIFTED HIM OUT OF THE CHAIR. + +This is unquestionably exaggerated. In Florence he was so annoyed +by beggars that he pretends to have seized and eaten one in a +frantic spirit of revenge. There is, of course, no truth in this. +He gives at full length a theatrical program seventeen or eighteen +hundred years old, which he professes to have found in the ruins +of the Coliseum, among the dirt and mold and rubbish. It is a +sufficient comment upon this statement to remark that even a cast-iron +program would not have lasted so long under such circumstances. +In Greece he plainly betrays both fright and flight upon one occasion, +but with frozen effrontery puts the latter in this falsely tamed form: +"We SIDLED toward the Piraeus." "Sidled," indeed! He does not hesitate +to intimate that at Ephesus, when his mule strayed from the proper course, +he got down, took him under his arm, carried him to the road again, +pointed him right, remounted, and went to sleep contentedly till +it was time to restore the beast to the path once more. He states +that a growing youth among his ship's passengers was in the constant +habit of appeasing his hunger with soap and oakum between meals. +In Palestine he tells of ants that came eleven miles to spend +the summer in the desert and brought their provisions with them; +yet he shows by his description of the country that the feat was +an impossibility. He mentions, as if it were the most commonplace +of matters, that he cut a Moslem in two in broad daylight in Jerusalem, +with Godfrey de Bouillon's sword, and would have shed more blood IF +HE HAD HAD A GRAVEYARD OF HIS OWN. These statements are unworthy +a moment's attention. Mr. Twain or any other foreigner who did +such a thing in Jerusalem would be mobbed, and would infallibly +lose his life. But why go on? Why repeat more of his audacious +and exasperating falsehoods? Let us close fittingly with this one: +he affirms that "in the mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople +I got my feet so stuck up with a complication of gums, slime, +and general impurity, that I wore out more than two thousand +pair of bootjacks getting my boots off that night, and even then +some Christian hide peeled off with them." It is monstrous. +Such statements are simply lies--there is no other name for them. +Will the reader longer marvel at the brutal ignorance that pervades +the American nation when we tell him that we are informed upon perfectly +good authority that this extravagant compilation of falsehoods, +this exhaustless mine of stupendous lies, this INNOCENTS ABROAD, +has actually been adopted by the schools and colleges of several +of the states as a text-book! + +But if his falsehoods are distressing, his innocence and his ignorance +are enough to make one burn the book and despise the author. In one +place he was so appalled at the sudden spectacle of a murdered man, +unveiled by the moonlight, that he jumped out of the window, +going through sash and all, and then remarks with the most childlike +simplicity that he "was not scared, but was considerably agitated." +It puts us out of patience to note that the simpleton is densely +unconscious that Lucrezia Borgia ever existed off the stage. +He is vulgarly ignorant of all foreign languages, but is frank enough +to criticize, the Italians' use of their own tongue. He says they +spell the name of their great painter "Vinci, but pronounce it Vinchy" +--and then adds with a naivete possible only to helpless ignorance, +"foreigners always spell better than they pronounce." In another +place he commits the bald absurdity of putting the phrase "tare +an ouns" into an Italian's mouth. In Rome he unhesitatingly +believes the legend that St. Philip Neri's heart was so inflamed +with divine love that it burst his ribs--believes it wholly +because an author with a learned list of university degrees strung +after his name endorses it--"otherwise," says this gentle idiot, +"I should have felt a curiosity to know what Philip had for dinner." +Our author makes a long, fatiguing journey to the Grotto del Cane +on purpose to test its poisoning powers on a dog--got elaborately +ready for the experiment, and then discovered that he had no dog. +A wiser person would have kept such a thing discreetly to himself, +but with this harmless creature everything comes out. He hurts +his foot in a rut two thousand years old in exhumed Pompeii, +and presently, when staring at one of the cinder-like corpses unearthed +in the next square, conceives the idea that maybe it is the remains +of the ancient Street Commissioner, and straightway his horror softens +down to a sort of chirpy contentment with the condition of things. +In Damascus he visits the well of Ananias, three thousand years old, +and is as surprised and delighted as a child to find that the water +is "as pure and fresh as if the well had been dug yesterday." +In the Holy Land he gags desperately at the hard Arabic and Hebrew +Biblical names, and finally concludes to call them Baldwinsville, +Williamsburgh, and so on, "for convenience of spelling." + +We have thus spoken freely of this man's stupefying simplicity +and innocence, but we cannot deal similarly with his colossal ignorance. +We do not know where to begin. And if we knew where to begin, +we certainly would not know where to leave off. We will give +one specimen, and one only. He did not know, until he got to Rome, +that Michael Angelo was dead! And then, instead of crawling away +and hiding his shameful ignorance somewhere, he proceeds to express +a pious, grateful sort of satisfaction that he is gone and out +of his troubles! + +No, the reader may seek out the author's exhibition of his +uncultivation for himself. The book is absolutely dangerous, +considering the magnitude and variety of its misstatements, +and the convincing confidence with which they are made. +And yet it is a text-book in the schools of America. + +The poor blunderer mouses among the sublime creations of the +Old Masters, trying to acquire the elegant proficiency in +art-knowledge, which he has a groping sort of comprehension is a +proper thing for a traveled man to be able to display. But what is +the manner of his study? And what is the progress he achieves? +To what extent does he familiarize himself with the great pictures +of Italy, and what degree of appreciation does he arrive at? Read: + +"When we see a monk going about with a lion and looking up into heaven, +we know that that is St. Mark. When we see a monk with a book and a pen, +looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying to think of a word, we know +that that is St. Matthew. When we see a monk sitting on a rock, +looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull beside him, +and without other baggage, we know that that is St. Jerome. +Because we know that he always went flying light in the matter +of baggage. When we see other monks looking tranquilly up to heaven, +but having no trade-mark, we always ask who those parties are. +We do this because we humbly wish to learn." + +He then enumerates the thousands and thousand of copies of these +several pictures which he has seen, and adds with accustomed +simplicity that he feels encouraged to believe that when he has seen +"Some More" of each, and had a larger experience, he will eventually +"begin to take an absorbing interest in them"--the vulgar boor. + +That we have shown this to be a remarkable book, we think no one +will deny. That is a pernicious book to place in the hands of the +confiding and uniformed, we think we have also shown. That the book +is a deliberate and wicked creation of a diseased mind, is apparent +upon every page. Having placed our judgment thus upon record, +let us close with what charity we can, by remarking that even in this +volume there is some good to be found; for whenever the author talks +of his own country and lets Europe alone, he never fails to make +himself interesting, and not only interesting but instructive. +No one can read without benefit his occasional chapters and paragraphs, +about life in the gold and silver mines of California and Nevada; +about the Indians of the plains and deserts of the West, +and their cannibalism; about the raising of vegetables in kegs of +gunpowder by the aid of two or three teaspoons of guano; about the +moving of small arms from place to place at night in wheelbarrows +to avoid taxes; and about a sort of cows and mules in the Humboldt +mines, that climb down chimneys and disturb the people at night. +These matters are not only new, but are well worth knowing. +It is a pity the author did not put in more of the same kind. +His book is well written and is exceedingly entertaining, and so it +just barely escaped being quite valuable also. + + +(One month later) + + +Latterly I have received several letters, and see a number of +newspaper paragraphs, all upon a certain subject, and all of about +the same tenor. I here give honest specimens. One is from a New +York paper, one is from a letter from an old friend, and one is +from a letter from a New York publisher who is a stranger to me. +I humbly endeavor to make these bits toothsome with the remark that +the article they are praising (which appeared in the December GALAXY, +and PRETENDED to be a criticism from the London SATURDAY REVIEW +on my INNOCENTS ABROAD) WAS WRITTEN BY MYSELF, EVERY LINE OF IT: + + +The HERALD says the richest thing out is the "serious critique" +in the London SATURDAY REVIEW, on Mark Twain's INNOCENTS ABROAD. +We thought before we read it that it must be "serious," as everybody +said so, and were even ready to shed a few tears; but since perusing it, +we are bound to confess that next to Mark Twain's "Jumping Frog" +it's the finest bit of humor and sarcasm that we've come across in many +a day. + + +(I do not get a compliment like that every day.) + + +I used to think that your writings were pretty good, but after reading +the criticism in THE GALAXY from the LONDON REVIEW, have discovered +what an ass I must have been. If suggestions are in order, mine is, +that you put that article in your next edition of the INNOCENTS, +as an extra chapter, if you are not afraid to put your own humor +in competition with it. It is as rich a thing as I ever read. + + +(Which is strong commendation from a book publisher.) + + +The London Reviewer, my friend, is not the stupid, "serious" creature +he pretends to be, _I_ think; but, on the contrary, has a keep +appreciation and enjoyment of your book. As I read his article in +THE GALAXY, I could imagine him giving vent to many a hearty laugh. +But he is writing for Catholics and Established Church people, +and high-toned, antiquated, conservative gentility, whom it is +a delight to him to help you shock, while he pretends to shake his +head with owlish density. He is a magnificent humorist himself. + + +(Now that is graceful and handsome. I take off my hat to my life-long +friend and comrade, and with my feet together and my fingers spread +over my heart, I say, in the language of Alabama, "You do me proud.") + +I stand guilty of the authorship of the article, but I did not mean +any harm. I saw by an item in the Boston ADVERTISER that a solemn, +serious critique on the English edition of my book had appeared +in the London SATURDAY REVIEW, and the idea of SUCH a literary +breakfast by a stolid, ponderous British ogre of the quill was too +much for a naturally weak virtue, and I went home and burlesqued it +--reveled in it, I may say. I never saw a copy of the real SATURDAY +REVIEW criticism until after my burlesque was written and mailed +to the printer. But when I did get hold of a copy, I found it +to be vulgar, awkwardly written, ill-natured, and entirely serious +and in earnest. The gentleman who wrote the newspaper paragraph +above quoted had not been misled as to its character. + +If any man doubts my word now, I will kill him. No, I will not +kill him; I will win his money. I will bet him twenty to one, +and let any New York publisher hold the stakes, that the statements I +have above made as to the authorship of the article in question are +entirely true. Perhaps I may get wealthy at this, for I am willing +to take all the bets that offer; and if a man wants larger odds, +I will give him all he requires. But he ought to find out whether +I am betting on what is termed "a sure thing" or not before he +ventures his money, and he can do that by going to a public +library and examining the London SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th, +which contains the real critique. + +Bless me, some people thought that _I_ was the "sold" person! + + +P.S.--I cannot resist the temptation to toss in this most savory +thing of all--this easy, graceful, philosophical disquisition, +with his happy, chirping confidence. It is from the Cincinnati ENQUIRER: + + +Nothing is more uncertain than the value of a fine cigar. +Nine smokers out of ten would prefer an ordinary domestic article, +three for a quarter, to fifty-cent Partaga, if kept in ignorance +of the cost of the latter. The flavor of the Partaga is too delicate +for palates that have been accustomed to Connecticut seed leaf. +So it is with humor. The finer it is in quality, the more danger +of its not being recognized at all. Even Mark Twain has been taken +in by an English review of his INNOCENTS ABROAD. Mark Twain is by +no means a coarse humorist, but the Englishman's humor is so much +finer than his, that he mistakes it for solid earnest, and "lafts +most consumedly." + + +A man who cannot learn stands in his own light. Hereafter, when I +write an article which I know to be good, but which I may have reason +to fear will not, in some quarters, be considered to amount to much, +coming from an American, I will aver that an Englishman wrote it +and that it is copied from a London journal. And then I will occupy +a back seat and enjoy the cordial applause. + + +(Still later) + + +Mark Twain at last sees that the SATURDAY REVIEW'S criticism of his +INNOCENTS ABROAD was not serious, and he is intensely mortified at the +thought of having been so badly sold. He takes the only course left him, +and in the last GALAXY claims that HE wrote the criticism himself, +and published it in THE GALAXY to sell the public. This is ingenious, +but unfortunately it is not true. If any of our readers will take +the trouble to call at this office we sill show them the original +article in the SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th, which, on comparison, +will be found to be identical with the one published in THE GALAXY. +The best thing for Mark to do will be to admit that he was sold, +and say no more about it. + + +The above is from the Cincinnati ENQUIRER, and is a falsehood. +Come to the proof. If the ENQUIRER people, through any agent, +will produce at THE GALAXY office a London SATURDAY REVIEW +of October 8th, containing an article which, on comparison, +will be found to be identical with the one published in THE GALAXY, +I will pay to that agent five hundred dollars cash. Moreover, if at +any specified time I fail to produce at the same place a copy +of the London SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th, containing a lengthy +criticism upon the INNOCENTS ABROAD, entirely different, in every +paragraph and sentence, from the one I published in THE GALAXY, +I will pay to the ENQUIRER agent another five hundred dollars cash. +I offer Sheldon & Co., publishers, 500 Broadway, New York, +as my "backers." Any one in New York, authorized by the ENQUIRER, +will receive prompt attention. It is an easy and profitable way +for the ENQUIRER people to prove that they have not uttered a pitiful, +deliberate falsehood in the above paragraphs. Will they swallow +that falsehood ignominiously, or will they send an agent to THE +GALAXY office. I think the Cincinnati ENQUIRER must be edited +by children. + + + + + + +A LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY + + + +Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, OCTOBER 15, 1902. + +THE HON. THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY, WASHINGTON, D. C.: + + +Sir,--Prices for the customary kinds of winter fuel having reached +an altitude which puts them out of the reach of literary persons in +straitened circumstances, I desire to place with you the following order: + +Forty-five tons best old dry government bonds, suitable for furnace, +gold 7 per cents., 1864, preferred. + +Twelve tons early greenbacks, range size, suitable for cooking. + +Eight barrels seasoned 25 and 50 cent postal currency, vintage of 1866, +eligible for kindlings. + +Please deliver with all convenient despatch at my house in Riverdale +at lowest rates for spot cash, and send bill to + +Your obliged servant, + +Mark Twain, Who will be very grateful, and will vote right. + + + + + + +AMENDED OBITUARIES + +TO THE EDITOR: + + +Sir,--I am approaching seventy; it is in sight; it is only three +years away. Necessarily, I must go soon. It is but matter-of-course +wisdom, then, that I should begin to set my worldly house in +order now, so that it may be done calmly and with thoroughness, +in place of waiting until the last day, when, as we have often seen, +the attempt to set both houses in order at the same time has been +marred by the necessity for haste and by the confusion and waste +of time arising from the inability of the notary and the ecclesiastic +to work together harmoniously, taking turn about and giving each +other friendly assistance--not perhaps in fielding, which could +hardly be expected, but at least in the minor offices of keeping +game and umpiring; by consequence of which conflict of interests +and absence of harmonious action a draw has frequently resulted +where this ill-fortune could not have happened if the houses had been +set in order one at a time and hurry avoided by beginning in season, +and giving to each the amount of time fairly and justly proper to it. + +In setting my earthly house in order I find it of moment that I +should attend in person to one or two matters which men in my +position have long had the habit of leaving wholly to others, +with consequences often most regrettable. I wish to speak of only +one of these matters at this time: Obituaries. Of necessity, +an Obituary is a thing which cannot be so judiciously edited by any hand +as by that of the subject of it. In such a work it is not the Facts +that are of chief importance, but the light which the obituarist +shall throw upon them, the meaning which he shall dress them in, +the conclusions which he shall draw from them, and the judgments +which he shall deliver upon them. The Verdicts, you understand: +that is the danger-line. + +In considering this matter, in view of my approaching change, +it has seemed to me wise to take such measures as may be feasible, +to acquire, by courtesy of the press, access to my standing obituaries, +with the privilege--if this is not asking too much--of editing, +not their Facts, but their Verdicts. This, not for the present profit, +further than as concerns my family, but as a favorable influence +usable on the Other Side, where there are some who are not friendly +to me. + +With this explanation of my motives, I will now ask you of your +courtesy to make an appeal for me to the public press. It is my +desire that such journals and periodicals as have obituaries of me +lying in their pigeonholes, with a view to sudden use some day, +will not wait longer, but will publish them now, and kindly send +me a marked copy. My address is simply New York City--I have no +other that is permanent and not transient. + +I will correct them--not the Facts, but the Verdicts--striking out +such clauses as could have a deleterious influence on the Other Side, +and replacing them with clauses of a more judicious character. +I should, of course, expect to pay double rates for both the omissions +and the substitutions; and I should also expect to pay quadruple +rates for all obituaries which proved to be rightly and wisely worded +in the originals, thus requiring no emendations at all. + +It is my desire to leave these Amended Obituaries neatly bound +behind me as a perennial consolation and entertainment to my family, +and as an heirloom which shall have a mournful but definite +commercial value for my remote posterity. + +I beg, sir, that you will insert this Advertisement (1t-eow, agate, +inside), and send the bill to + +Yours very respectfully. + +Mark Twain. + + +P.S.--For the best Obituary--one suitable for me to read in public, +and calculated to inspire regret--I desire to offer a Prize, +consisting of a Portrait of me done entirely by myself in pen and ink +without previous instructions. The ink warranted to be the kind +used by the very best artists. + + + + + + +A MONUMENT TO ADAM + + + +Some one has revealed to the TRIBUNE that I once suggested +to Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, of Elmira, New York, that we get up +a monument to Adam, and that Mr. Beecher favored the project. +There is more to it than that. The matter started as a joke, +but it came somewhat near to materializing. + +It is long ago--thirty years. Mr. Darwin's DESCENT OF MAN has been +in print five or six years, and the storm of indignation raised +by it was still raging in pulpits and periodicals. In tracing +the genesis of the human race back to its sources, Mr. Darwin had +left Adam out altogether. We had monkeys, and "missing links," +and plenty of other kinds of ancestors, but no Adam. Jesting with +Mr. Beecher and other friends in Elmira, I said there seemed to be +a likelihood that the world would discard Adam and accept the monkey, +and that in the course of time Adam's very name would be forgotten +in the earth; therefore this calamity ought to be averted; +a monument would accomplish this, and Elmira ought not to waste +this honorable opportunity to do Adam a favor and herself a credit. + +Then the unexpected happened. Two bankers came forward and took +hold of the matter--not for fun, not for sentiment, but because they +saw in the monument certain commercial advantages for the town. +The project had seemed gently humorous before--it was more than +that now, with this stern business gravity injected into it. +The bankers discussed the monument with me. We met several times. +They proposed an indestructible memorial, to cost twenty-five +thousand dollars. The insane oddity of a monument set up in a village +to preserve a name that would outlast the hills and the rocks without +any such help, would advertise Elmira to the ends of the earth +--and draw custom. It would be the only monument on the planet +to Adam, and in the matter of interest and impressiveness could +never have a rival until somebody should set up a monument to the +Milky Way. + +People would come from every corner of the globe and stop off +to look at it, no tour of the world would be complete that left out +Adam's monument. Elmira would be a Mecca; there would be pilgrim +ships at pilgrim rates, pilgrim specials on the continent's railways; +libraries would be written about the monument, every tourist would +kodak it, models of it would be for sale everywhere in the earth, +its form would become as familiar as the figure of Napoleon. + +One of the bankers subscribed five thousand dollars, and I think +the other one subscribed half as much, but I do not remember with +certainty now whether that was the figure or not. We got designs made +--some of them came from Paris. + +In the beginning--as a detail of the project when it was yet a joke +--I had framed a humble and beseeching and perfervid petition to +Congress begging the government to built the monument, as a testimony +of the Great Republic's gratitude to the Father of the Human Race +and as a token of her loyalty to him in this dark day of humiliation +when his older children were doubting and deserting him. It seemed +to me that this petition ought to be presented, now--it would be +widely and feelingly abused and ridiculed and cursed, and would +advertise our scheme and make our ground-floor stock go off briskly. +So I sent it to General Joseph R. Hawley, who was then in the House, +and he said he would present it. But he did not do it. I think +he explained that when he came to read it he was afraid of it: +it was too serious, to gushy, too sentimental--the House might take it +for earnest. + +We ought to have carried out our monument scheme; we could +have managed it without any great difficulty, and Elmira would +now be the most celebrated town in the universe. + +Very recently I began to build a book in which one of the minor +characters touches incidentally upon a project for a monument to Adam, +and now the TRIBUNE has come upon a trace of the forgotten jest of +thirty years ago. Apparently mental telegraphy is still in business. +It is odd; but the freaks of mental telegraphy are usually odd. + + + + + + +A HUMANE WORD FROM SATAN + + + +[The following letter, signed by Satan and purporting to come from him, +we have reason to believe was not written by him, but by Mark Twain. +--Editor.] + +TO THE EDITOR OF HARPER'S WEEKLY: + + +Dear Sir and Kinsman,--Let us have done with this frivolous talk. +The American Board accepts contributions from me every year: +then why shouldn't it from Mr. Rockefeller? In all the ages, +three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been +conscience-money, as my books will show: then what becomes of +the sting when that term is applied to Mr. Rockefeller's gift? +The American Board's trade is financed mainly from the graveyards. +Bequests, you understand. Conscience-money. Confession of an old +crime and deliberate perpetration of a new one; for deceased's +contribution is a robbery of his heirs. Shall the Board decline +bequests because they stand for one of these offenses every time and +generally for both? + +Allow me to continue. The charge must persistently and resentfully +and remorselessly dwelt upon is that Mr. Rockefeller's contribution is +incurably tainted by perjury--perjury proved against him in the courts. +IT MAKES US SMILE--down in my place! Because there isn't a rich +man in your vast city who doesn't perjure himself every year before +the tax board. They are all caked with perjury, many layers thick. +Iron-clad, so to speak. If there is one that isn't, I desire +to acquire him for my museum, and will pay Dinosaur rates. +Will you say it isn't infraction of the law, but only annual evasion +of it? Comfort yourselves with that nice distinction if you like +--FOR THE PRESENT. But by and by, when you arrive, I will show you +something interesting: a whole hell-full of evaders! Sometimes a +frank law-breaker turns up elsewhere, but I get those others every time. + +To return to my muttons. I wish you to remember that my rich +perjurers are contributing to the American Board with frequency: +it is money filched from the sworn-off personal tax; therefore it +is the wages of sin; therefore it is my money; therefore it is _I_ +that contribute it; and, finally, it is therefore as I have said: +since the Board daily accepts contributions from me, why should it +decline them from Mr. Rockefeller, who is as good as I am, let the +courts say what they may? + + +Satan. + + + + + + + +INTRODUCTION TO "THE NEW GUIDE OF THE CONVERSATION IN + +PORTUGUESE AND ENGLISH" + + +by Pedro Carolino + + + +In this world of uncertainties, there is, at any rate, one thing +which may be pretty confidently set down as a certainty: and that is, +that this celebrated little phrase-book will never die while the +English language lasts. Its delicious unconscious ridiculousness, +and its enchanting naivete, as are supreme and unapproachable, +in their way, as are Shakespeare's sublimities. Whatsoever is +perfect in its kind, in literature, is imperishable: nobody can +imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; +it is perfect, it must and will stand alone: its immortality +is secure. + +It is one of the smallest books in the world, but few big books have +received such wide attention, and been so much pondered by the grave +and learned, and so much discussed and written about by the thoughtful, +the thoughtless, the wise, and the foolish. Long notices of it +have appeared, from time to time, in the great English reviews, +and in erudite and authoritative philological periodicals; and it +has been laughed at, danced upon, and tossed in a blanket by nearly +every newspaper and magazine in the English-speaking world. +Every scribbler, almost, has had his little fling at it, at one time +or another; I had mine fifteen years ago. The book gets out of print, +every now and then, and one ceases to hear of it for a season; +but presently the nations and near and far colonies of our tongue +and lineage call for it once more, and once more it issues from some +London or Continental or American press, and runs a new course around +the globe, wafted on its way by the wind of a world's laughter. + +Many persons have believed that this book's miraculous stupidities +were studied and disingenuous; but no one can read the volume +carefully through and keep that opinion. It was written in +serious good faith and deep earnestness, by an honest and upright +idiot who believed he knew something of the English language, +and could impart his knowledge to others. The amplest proof +of this crops out somewhere or other upon each and every page. +There are sentences in the book which could have been manufactured +by a man in his right mind, and with an intelligent and deliberate +purposes to seem innocently ignorant; but there are other sentences, +and paragraphs, which no mere pretended ignorance could ever achieve +--nor yet even the most genuine and comprehensive ignorance, +when unbacked by inspiration. + +It is not a fraud who speaks in the following paragraph of the +author's Preface, but a good man, an honest man, a man whose conscience +is at rest, a man who believes he has done a high and worthy work for +his nation and his generation, and is well pleased with his performance: + + +We expect then, who the little book (for the care what we wrote him, +and for her typographical correction) that may be worth the +acceptation of the studious persons, and especially of the Youth, +at which we dedicate him particularly. + + +One cannot open this book anywhere and not find richness. +To prove that this is true, I will open it at random and copy +the page I happen to stumble upon. Here is the result: + + + +DIALOGUE 16 + + +For To See the Town + + + +Anothony, go to accompany they gentilsmen, do they see the town. + +We won't to see all that is it remarquable here. + +Come with me, if you please. I shall not folget nothing what can +to merit your attention. Here we are near to cathedral; will you +come in there? + +We will first to see him in oudside, after we shall go in there +for to look the interior. + +Admire this master piece gothic architecture's. + +The chasing of all they figures is astonishing' indeed. + +The cupola and the nave are not less curious to see. + +What is this palace how I see yonder? + +It is the town hall. + +And this tower here at this side? + +It is the Observatory. + +The bridge is very fine, it have ten arches, and is constructed +of free stone. + +The streets are very layed out by line and too paved. + +What is the circuit of this town? + +Two leagues. + +There is it also hospitals here? + +It not fail them. + +What are then the edifices the worthest to have seen? + +It is the arsnehal, the spectacle's hall, the Cusiomhouse, +and the Purse. + +We are going too see the others monuments such that the public +pawnbroker's office, the plants garden's, the money office's, +the library. + +That it shall be for another day; we are tired. + + + +DIALOGUE 17 + + +To Inform One'self of a Person + + + +How is that gentilman who you did speak by and by? + +Is a German. + +I did think him Englishman. + +He is of the Saxony side. + +He speak the french very well. + +Tough he is German, he speak so much well italyan, french, spanish +and english, that among the Italyans, they believe him Italyan, +he speak the frenche as the Frenches himselves. The Spanishesmen +believe him Spanishing, and the Englishes, Englishman. It is +difficult to enjoy well so much several languages. + + +The last remark contains a general truth; but it ceases to be a truth +when one contracts it and apples it to an individual--provided that +that individual is the author of this book, Sehnor Pedro Carolino. +I am sure I should not find it difficult "to enjoy well so much +several languages"--or even a thousand of them--if he did the +translating for me from the originals into his ostensible English. + + + + + + +ADVICE TO LITTLE GIRLS + + + +Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for +every trifling offense. This retaliation should only be resorted +to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances. + +If you have nothing but a rag-doll stuffed with sawdust, while one +of your more fortunate little playmates has a costly China one, +you should treat her with a show of kindness nevertheless. +And you ought not to attempt to make a forcible swap with her unless +your conscience would justify you in it, and you know you are able +to do it. + +You ought never to take your little brother's "chewing-gum" away +from him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise +of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the +river on a grindstone. In the artless simplicity natural to this +time of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction. +In all ages of the world this eminently plausible fiction has lured +the obtuse infant to financial ruin and disaster. + +If at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, +do not correct him with mud--never, on any account, throw mud at him, +because it will spoil his clothes. It is better to scald him a little, +for then you obtain desirable results. You secure his immediate +attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time +your hot water will have a tendency to move impurities from his person, +and possibly the skin, in spots. + +If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply +that you won't. It is better and more becoming to intimate +that you will do as she bids you, and then afterward act quietly +in the matter according to the dictates of your best judgment. + +You should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you +are indebted for your food, and for the privilege of staying home +from school when you let on that you are sick. Therefore you ought +to respect their little prejudices, and humor their little whims, +and put up with their little foibles until they get to crowding you +too much. + +Good little girls always show marked deference for the aged. +You ought never to "sass" old people unless they "sass" you first. + + + + + + +POST-MORTEM POETRY [1] + + +In Philadelphia they have a custom which it would be pleasant +to see adopted throughout the land. It is that of appending to +published death-notices a little verse or two of comforting poetry. +Any one who is in the habit of reading the daily Philadelphia +LEDGER must frequently be touched by these plaintive tributes +to extinguished worth. In Philadelphia, the departure of a child +is a circumstance which is not more surely followed by a burial +than by the accustomed solacing poesy in the PUBLIC LEDGER. +In that city death loses half its terror because the knowledge +of its presence comes thus disguised in the sweet drapery of verse. +For instance, in a late LEDGER I find the following (I change +the surname): + + +DIED + + +Hawks.--On the 17th inst., Clara, the daughter of Ephraim +and Laura Hawks, aged 21 months and 2 days. + + + That merry shout no more I hear, + No laughing child I see, + No little arms are around my neck, + No feet upon my knee; + + No kisses drop upon my cheek, + These lips are sealed to me. + Dear Lord, how could I give Clara up + To any but to Thee? + + +A child thus mourned could not die wholly discontented. +From the LEDGER of the same date I make the following extract, +merely changing the surname, as before: + + +Becket.--On Sunday morning, 19th inst., John P., infant son +of George and Julia Becket, aged 1 year, 6 months, and 15 days. + + + That merry shout no more I hear, + No laughing child I see, + No little arms are round my neck, + No feet upon my knee; + + No kisses drop upon my cheek; + These lips are sealed to me. + Dear Lord, how could I give Johnnie up + To any but to Thee? + + +The similarity of the emotions as produced in the mourners in these +two instances is remarkably evidenced by the singular similarity +of thought which they experienced, and the surprising coincidence +of language used by them to give it expression. + +In the same journal, of the same date, I find the following +(surname suppressed, as before): + + +Wagner.--On the 10th inst., Ferguson G., the son of William +L. and Martha Theresa Wagner, aged 4 weeks and 1 day. + + + That merry shout no more I hear, + No laughing child I see, + No little arms are round my neck, + No feet upon my knee; + + No kisses drop upon my cheek, + These lips are sealed to me. + Dear Lord, how could I give Ferguson up + To any but to Thee? + + +It is strange what power the reiteration of an essentially poetical +thought has upon one's feelings. When we take up the LEDGER +and read the poetry about little Clara, we feel an unaccountable +depression of the spirits. When we drift further down the column +and read the poetry about little Johnnie, the depression and spirits +acquires and added emphasis, and we experience tangible suffering. +When we saunter along down the column further still and read +the poetry about little Ferguson, the word torture but vaguely +suggests the anguish that rends us. + +In the LEDGER (same copy referred to above) I find the following +(I alter surname, as usual): + + +Welch.--On the 5th inst., Mary C. Welch, wife of William B. Welch, +and daughter of Catharine and George W. Markland, in the 29th year +of her age. + + + A mother dear, a mother kind, + Has gone and left us all behind. + Cease to weep, for tears are vain, + Mother dear is out of pain. + + Farewell, husband, children dear, + Serve thy God with filial fear, + And meet me in the land above, + Where all is peace, and joy, and love. + + +What could be sweeter than that? No collection of salient facts +(without reduction to tabular form) could be more succinctly stated +than is done in the first stanza by the surviving relatives, +and no more concise and comprehensive program of farewells, +post-mortuary general orders, etc., could be framed in any +form than is done in verse by deceased in the last stanza. +These things insensibly make us wiser and tenderer, and better. +Another extract: + + +Ball.--On the morning of the 15th inst., Mary E., daughter of John +and Sarah F. Ball. + + + 'Tis sweet to rest in lively hope + That when my change shall come + Angels will hover round my bed, + To waft my spirit home. + +The following is apparently the customary form for heads of families: + + +Burns.--On the 20th inst., Michael Burns, aged 40 years. + + + Dearest father, thou hast left us, + Hear thy loss we deeply feel; + But 'tis God that has bereft us, + He can all our sorrows heal. + + Funeral at 2 o'clock sharp. + + +There is something very simple and pleasant about the following, +which, in Philadelphia, seems to be the usual form for consumptives +of long standing. (It deplores four distinct cases in the single +copy of the LEDGER which lies on the Memoranda editorial table): + + +Bromley.--On the 29th inst., of consumption, Philip Bromley, +in the 50th year of his age. + + Affliction sore long time he bore, + Physicians were in vain-- + Till God at last did hear him mourn, + And eased him of his pain. + + That friend whom death from us has torn, + We did not think so soon to part; + An anxious care now sinks the thorn + Still deeper in our bleeding heart. + + +This beautiful creation loses nothing by repetition. On the contrary, +the oftener one sees it in the LEDGER, the more grand and awe-inspiring +it seems. + +With one more extract I will close: + + +Doble.--On the 4th inst., Samuel Pervil Worthington Doble, +aged 4 days. + + + Our little Sammy's gone, + His tiny spirit's fled; + Our little boy we loved so dear + Lies sleeping with the dead. + + A tear within a father's eye, + A mother's aching heart, + Can only tell the agony + How hard it is to part. + + +Could anything be more plaintive than that, without requiring further +concessions of grammar? Could anything be likely to do more toward +reconciling deceased to circumstances, and making him willing to go? +Perhaps not. The power of song can hardly be estimated. There is +an element about some poetry which is able to make even physical +suffering and death cheerful things to contemplate and consummations +to be desired. This element is present in the mortuary poetry +of Philadelphia degree of development. + +The custom I have been treating of is one that should be adopted +in all the cities of the land. + +It is said that once a man of small consequence died, and the +Rev. T. K. Beecher was asked to preach the funeral sermon +--a man who abhors the lauding of people, either dead or alive, +except in dignified and simple language, and then only for merits +which they actually possessed or possess, not merits which they +merely ought to have possessed. The friends of the deceased got +up a stately funeral. They must have had misgivings that the +corpse might not be praised strongly enough, for they prepared +some manuscript headings and notes in which nothing was left +unsaid on that subject that a fervid imagination and an unabridged +dictionary could compile, and these they handed to the minister +as he entered the pulpit. They were merely intended as suggestions, +and so the friends were filled with consternation when the minister +stood in the pulpit and proceeded to read off the curious odds +and ends in ghastly detail and in a loud voice! And their +consternation solidified to petrification when he paused at the end, +contemplated the multitude reflectively, and then said, impressively: + +"The man would be a fool who tried to add anything to that. +Let us pray!" + +And with the same strict adhesion to truth it can be said that the +man would be a fool who tried to add anything to the following +transcendent obituary poem. There is something so innocent, +so guileless, so complacent, so unearthly serene and self-satisfied +about this peerless "hog-wash," that the man must be made of stone +who can read it without a dulcet ecstasy creeping along his backbone +and quivering in his marrow. There is no need to say that this +poem is genuine and in earnest, for its proofs are written all +over its face. An ingenious scribbler might imitate it after +a fashion, but Shakespeare himself could not counterfeit it. +It is noticeable that the country editor who published it did +not know that it was a treasure and the most perfect thing of its +kind that the storehouses and museums of literature could show. +He did not dare to say no to the dread poet--for such a poet +must have been something of an apparition--but he just shoveled +it into his paper anywhere that came handy, and felt ashamed, +and put that disgusted "Published by Request" over it, and hoped +that his subscribers would overlook it or not feel an impulse to read it: + + +(Published by Request) + + +LINES + +Composed on the death of Samuel and Catharine Belknap's children + + +by M. A. Glaze + + Friends and neighbors all draw near, + And listen to what I have to say; + And never leave your children dear + When they are small, and go away. + + But always think of that sad fate, + That happened in year of '63; + Four children with a house did burn, + Think of their awful agony. + + Their mother she had gone away, + And left them there alone to stay; + The house took fire and down did burn; + Before their mother did return. + + Their piteous cry the neighbors heard, + And then the cry of fire was given; + But, ah! before they could them reach, + Their little spirits had flown to heaven. + + Their father he to war had gone, + And on the battle-field was slain; + But little did he think when he went away, + But what on earth they would meet again. + + The neighbors often told his wife + Not to leave his children there, + Unless she got some one to stay, + And of the little ones take care. + + The oldest he was years not six, + And the youngest only eleven months old, + But often she had left them there alone, + As, by the neighbors, I have been told. + + How can she bear to see the place. + Where she so oft has left them there, + Without a single one to look to them, + Or of the little ones to take good care. + + Oh, can she look upon the spot, + Whereunder their little burnt bones lay, + But what she thinks she hears them say, + ''Twas God had pity, and took us on high.' + + And there may she kneel down and pray, + And ask God her to forgive; + And she may lead a different life + While she on earth remains to live. + + Her husband and her children too, + God has took from pain and woe. + May she reform and mend her ways, + That she may also to them go. + + And when it is God's holy will, + O, may she be prepared + To meet her God and friends in peace, + And leave this world of care. + +1. Written in 1870. + + + + + + +THE DANGER OF LYING IN BED + + +The man in the ticket-office said: + +"Have an accident insurance ticket, also?" + +"No," I said, after studying the matter over a little. "No, I +believe not; I am going to be traveling by rail all day today. +However, tomorrow I don't travel. Give me one for tomorrow." + +The man looked puzzled. He said: + +"But it is for accident insurance, and if you are going to travel +by rail--" + +"If I am going to travel by rail I sha'n't need it. Lying at home +in bed is the thing _I_ am afraid of." + +I had been looking into this matter. Last year I traveled twenty +thousand miles, almost entirely by rail; the year before, I traveled +over twenty-five thousand miles, half by sea and half by rail; +and the year before that I traveled in the neighborhood of ten +thousand miles, exclusively by rail. I suppose if I put in all +the little odd journeys here and there, I may say I have traveled +sixty thousand miles during the three years I have mentioned. +AND NEVER AN ACCIDENT. + +For a good while I said to myself every morning: "Now I +have escaped thus far, and so the chances are just that much +increased that I shall catch it this time. I will be shrewd, +and buy an accident ticket." And to a dead moral certainty I +drew a blank, and went to bed that night without a joint started +or a bone splintered. I got tired of that sort of daily bother, +and fell to buying accident tickets that were good for a month. +I said to myself, "A man CAN'T buy thirty blanks in one bundle." + +But I was mistaken. There was never a prize in the the lot. +I could read of railway accidents every day--the newspaper +atmosphere was foggy with them; but somehow they never came my way. +I found I had spent a good deal of money in the accident business, +and had nothing to show for it. My suspicions were aroused, and I +began to hunt around for somebody that had won in this lottery. +I found plenty of people who had invested, but not an individual +that had ever had an accident or made a cent. I stopped buying +accident tickets and went to ciphering. The result was astounding. +THE PERIL LAY NOT IN TRAVELING, BUT IN STAYING AT HOME. + +I hunted up statistics, and was amazed to find that after all +the glaring newspaper headlines concerning railroad disasters, +less than THREE HUNDRED people had really lost their lives by those +disasters in the preceding twelve months. The Erie road was set +down as the most murderous in the list. It had killed forty-six +--or twenty-six, I do not exactly remember which, but I know the +number was double that of any other road. But the fact straightway +suggested itself that the Erie was an immensely long road, and did +more business than any other line in the country; so the double +number of killed ceased to be matter for surprise. + +By further figuring, it appeared that between New York and Rochester +the Erie ran eight passenger-trains each way every day--16 altogether; +and carried a daily average of 6,000 persons. That is about a million +in six months--the population of New York City. Well, the Erie kills +from 13 to 23 persons of ITS million in six months; and in the same +time 13,000 of New York's million die in their beds! My flesh crept, +my hair stood on end. "This is appalling!" I said. "The danger +isn't in traveling by rail, but in trusting to those deadly beds. +I will never sleep in a bed again." + +I had figured on considerably less than one-half the length of +the Erie road. It was plain that the entire road must transport +at least eleven or twelve thousand people every day. There are +many short roads running out of Boston that do fully half as much; +a great many such roads. There are many roads scattered about the +Union that do a prodigious passenger business. Therefore it was fair +to presume that an average of 2,500 passengers a day for each road +in the country would be almost correct. There are 846 railway +lines in our country, and 846 times 2,500 are 2,115,000. So the +railways of America move more than two millions of people every day; +six hundred and fifty millions of people a year, without counting +the Sundays. They do that, too--there is no question about it; +though where they get the raw material is clear beyond the jurisdiction +of my arithmetic; for I have hunted the census through and through, +and I find that there are not that many people in the United States, +by a matter of six hundred and ten millions at the very least. +They must use some of the same people over again, likely. + +San Francisco is one-eighth as populous as New York; there are 60 +deaths a week in the former and 500 a week in the latter--if they +have luck. That is 3,120 deaths a year in San Francisco, and eight +times as many in New York--say about 25,000 or 26,000. The health +of the two places is the same. So we will let it stand as a fair +presumption that this will hold good all over the country, and that +consequently 25,000 out of every million of people we have must die +every year. That amounts to one-fortieth of our total population. +One million of us, then, die annually. Out of this million ten +or twelve thousand are stabbed, shot, drowned, hanged, poisoned, +or meet a similarly violent death in some other popular way, +such as perishing by kerosene-lamp and hoop-skirt conflagrations, +getting buried in coal-mines, falling off house-tops, breaking +through church, or lecture-room floors, taking patent medicines, +or committing suicide in other forms. The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46; +the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; +and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that +appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds! + +You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds. +The railroads are good enough for me. + +And my advice to all people is, Don't stay at home any more than +you can help; but when you have GOT to stay at home a while, +buy a package of those insurance tickets and sit up nights. +You cannot be too cautious. + +[One can see now why I answered that ticket-agent in the manner +recorded at the top of this sketch.] + +The moral of this composition is, that thoughtless people grumble +more than is fair about railroad management in the United States. +When we consider that every day and night of the year full fourteen +thousand railway-trains of various kinds, freighted with life +and armed with death, go thundering over the land, the marvel is, +NOT that they kill three hundred human beings in a twelvemonth, +but that they do not kill three hundred times three hundred! + + + + + + +PORTRAIT OF KING WILLIAM III + + +I never can look at those periodical portraits in THE GALAXY magazine +without feeling a wild, tempestuous ambition to be an artist. +I have seen thousands and thousands of pictures in my time +--acres of them here and leagues of them in the galleries of Europe +--but never any that moved me as these portraits do. + +There is a portrait of Monsignore Capel in the November number, +now COULD anything be sweeter than that? And there was Bismarck's, +in the October number; who can look at that without being purer +and stronger and nobler for it? And Thurlow and Weed's picture +in the September number; I would not have died without seeing that, +no, not for anything this world can give. But look back still +further and recall my own likeness as printed in the August number; +if I had been in my grave a thousand years when that appeared, +I would have got up and visited the artist. + +I sleep with all these portraits under my pillow every night, so that +I can go on studying them as soon as the day dawns in the morning. +I know them all as thoroughly as if I had made them myself; I know +every line and mark about them. Sometimes when company are present +I shuffle the portraits all up together, and then pick them out +one by one and call their names, without referring to the printing +on the bottom. I seldom make a mistake--never, when I am calm. + +I have had the portraits framed for a long time, waiting till +my aunt gets everything ready for hanging them up in the parlor. +But first one thing and then another interferes, and so the thing +is delayed. Once she said they would have more of the peculiar kind +of light they needed in the attic. The old simpleton! it is as dark +as a tomb up there. But she does not know anything about art, +and so she has no reverence for it. When I showed her my "Map of +the Fortifications of Paris," she said it was rubbish. + +Well, from nursing those portraits so long, I have come at last +to have a perfect infatuation for art. I have a teacher now, +and my enthusiasm continually and tumultuously grows, as I learn +to use with more and more facility the pencil, brush, and graver. +I am studying under De Mellville, the house and portrait painter. +[His name was Smith when he lived in the West.] He does any kind +of artist work a body wants, having a genius that is universal, +like Michael Angelo. Resembles that great artist, in fact. +The back of his head is like this, and he wears his hat-brim tilted +down on his nose to expose it. + +I have been studying under De Mellville several months now. +The first month I painted fences, and gave general satisfaction. +The next month I white-washed a barn. The third, I was doing +tin roofs; the forth, common signs; the fifth, statuary to stand +before cigar shops. This present month is only the sixth, and I am +already in portraits! + +The humble offering which accompanies these remarks [see figure] +--the portrait of his Majesty William III., King of Prussia +--is my fifth attempt in portraits, and my greatest success. +It has received unbounded praise from all classes of the community, +but that which gratifies me most is the frequent and cordial verdict +that it resembles the GALAXY portraits. Those were my first love, +my earliest admiration, the original source and incentive of my +art-ambition. Whatever I am in Art today, I owe to these portraits. +I ask no credit for myself--I deserve none. And I never take any, +either. Many a stranger has come to my exhibition (for I have had my +portrait of King William on exhibition at one dollar a ticket), and +would have gone away blessing ME, if I had let him, but I never did. +I always stated where I got the idea. + +King William wears large bushy side-whiskers, and some critics have +thought that this portrait would be more complete if they were added. +But it was not possible. There was not room for side-whiskers and +epaulets both, and so I let the whiskers go, and put in the epaulets, +for the sake of style. That thing on his hat is an eagle. +The Prussian eagle--it is a national emblem. When I say hat I +mean helmet; but it seems impossible to make a picture of a helmet +that a body can have confidence in. + +I wish kind friends everywhere would aid me in my endeavor to attract +a little attention to the GALAXY portraits. I feel persuaded it can +be accomplished, if the course to be pursued be chosen with judgment. +I write for that magazine all the time, and so do many abler men, +and if I can get these portraits into universal favor, it is all I ask; +the reading-matter will take care of itself. + + +COMMENDATIONS OF THE PORTRAIT + + +There is nothing like it in the Vatican. Pius IX. + + +It has none of that vagueness, that dreamy spirituality about it, +which many of the first critics of Arkansas have objected to in the +Murillo school of Art. Ruskin. + + +The expression is very interesting. J.W. Titian. + + +(Keeps a macaroni store in Venice, at the old family stand.) + + +It is the neatest thing in still life I have seen for years. + +Rosa Bonheur. + + +The smile may be almost called unique. Bismarck. + + +I never saw such character portrayed in a picture face before. +De Mellville. + + +There is a benignant simplicity about the execution of this +work which warms the heart toward it as much, full as much, +as it fascinates the eye. Landseer. + + +One cannot see it without longing to contemplate the artist. + +Frederick William. + + +Send me the entire edition--together with the plate and the +original portrait--and name your own price. And--would you +like to come over and stay awhile with Napoleon at Wilhelmsh:ohe? +It shall not cost you a cent. William III. + + + + + + +DOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD? + + + +Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and +petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity +a geologic period. + + + +The day after the arrival of Prince Henry I met an English friend, +and he rubbed his hands and broke out with a remark that was charged +to the brim with joy--joy that was evidently a pleasant salve +to an old sore place: + +"Many a time I've had to listen without retort to an old saying +that is irritatingly true, and until now seemed to offer no chance +for a return jibe: 'An Englishman does dearly love a lord'; +but after this I shall talk back, and say, 'How about the Americans?'" + +It is a curious thing, the currency that an idiotic saying can get. +The man that first says it thinks he has made a discovery. +The man he says it to, thinks the same. It departs on its travels, +is received everywhere with admiring acceptance, and not only as +a piece of rare and acute observation, but as being exhaustively +true and profoundly wise; and so it presently takes its place +in the world's list of recognized and established wisdoms, +and after that no one thinks of examining it to see whether it is +really entitled to its high honors or not. I call to mind instances +of this in two well-established proverbs, whose dullness is not +surpassed by the one about the Englishman and his love for a lord: +one of them records the American's Adoration of the Almighty Dollar, +the other the American millionaire-girl's ambition to trade cash for +a title, with a husband thrown in. + +It isn't merely the American that adores the Almighty Dollar, +it is the human race. The human race has always adored the hatful +of shells, or the bale of calico, or the half-bushel of brass rings, +or the handful of steel fish-hooks, or the houseful of black wives, +or the zareba full of cattle, or the two-score camels and asses, +or the factory, or the farm, or the block of buildings, or the +railroad bonds, or the bank stock, or the hoarded cash, or +--anything that stands for wealth and consideration and independence, +and can secure to the possessor that most precious of all things, +another man's envy. It was a dull person that invented the idea +that the American's devotion to the dollar is more strenuous than +another's. + +Rich American girls do buy titles, but they did not invent that idea; +it had been worn threadbare several hundred centuries before America +was discovered. European girls still exploit it as briskly as ever; +and, when a title is not to be had for the money in hand, they buy +the husband without it. They must put up the "dot," or there is +no trade. The commercialization of brides is substantially universal, +except in America. It exists with us, to some little extent, +but in no degree approaching a custom. + +"The Englishman dearly loves a lord." + +What is the soul and source of this love? I think the thing could +be more correctly worded: + +"The human race dearly envies a lord." + +That is to say, it envies the lord's place. Why? On two accounts, +I think: its Power and its Conspicuousness. + +Where Conspicuousness carries with it a Power which, by the light +of our own observation and experience, we are able to measure +and comprehend, I think our envy of the possessor is as deep and as +passionate as is that of any other nation. No one can care less +for a lord than the backwoodsman, who has had no personal contact +with lords and has seldom heard them spoken of; but I will not +allow that any Englishman has a profounder envy of a lord than has +the average American who has lived long years in a European capital +and fully learned how immense is the position the lord occupies. + +Of any ten thousand Americans who eagerly gather, at vast inconvenience, +to get a glimpse of Prince Henry, all but a couple of hundred +will be there out of an immense curiosity; they are burning up +with desire to see a personage who is so much talked about. +They envy him; but it is Conspicuousness they envy mainly, not the +Power that is lodged in his royal quality and position, for they +have but a vague and spectral knowledge and appreciation of that; +though their environment and associations they have been accustomed +to regard such things lightly, and as not being very real; consequently, +they are not able to value them enough to consumingly envy them. + +But, whenever an American (or other human being) is in the presence, +for the first time, of a combination of great Power and Conspicuousness +which he thoroughly understands and appreciates, his eager curiosity +and pleasure will be well-sodden with that other passion--envy +--whether he suspects it or not. At any time, on any day, in any part +of America, you can confer a happiness upon any passing stranger +by calling his attention to any other passing stranger and saying: + +"Do you see that gentleman going along there? It is Mr. Rockefeller." + +Watch his eye. It is a combination of power and conspicuousness +which the man understands. + +When we understand rank, we always like to rub against it. +When a man is conspicuous, we always want to see him. Also, if he +will pay us an attention we will manage to remember it. Also, we +will mention it now and then, casually; sometimes to a friend, +or if a friend is not handy, we will make out with a stranger. + +Well, then, what is rank, and what is conspicuousness? At once we +think of kings and aristocracies, and of world-wide celebrities +in soldierships, the arts, letters, etc., and we stop there. +But that is a mistake. Rank holds its court and receives its homage +on every round of the ladder, from the emperor down to the rat-catcher; +and distinction, also, exists on every round of the ladder, +and commands its due of deference and envy. + +To worship rank and distinction is the dear and valued privilege +of all the human race, and it is freely and joyfully exercised +in democracies as well as in monarchies--and even, to some extent, +among those creatures whom we impertinently call the Lower Animals. +For even they have some poor little vanities and foibles, though in +this matter they are paupers as compared to us. + +A Chinese Emperor has the worship of his four hundred millions +of subjects, but the rest of the world is indifferent to him. +A Christian Emperor has the worship of his subjects and of a large +part of the Christian world outside of his domains; but he is +a matter of indifference to all China. A king, class A, has an +extensive worship; a king, class B, has a less extensive worship; +class C, class D, class E get a steadily diminishing share of worship; +class L (Sultan of Zanzibar), class P (Sultan of Sulu), and class W +(half-king of Samoa), get no worship at all outside their own little +patch of sovereignty. + +Take the distinguished people along down. Each has his group +of homage-payers. In the navy, there are many groups; they start +with the Secretary and the Admiral, and go down to the quartermaster +--and below; for there will be groups among the sailors, and each of +these groups will have a tar who is distinguished for his battles, +or his strength, or his daring, or his profanity, and is admired +and envied by his group. The same with the army; the same +with the literary and journalistic craft; the publishing craft; +the cod-fishery craft; Standard Oil; U. S. Steel; the class A hotel +--and the rest of the alphabet in that line; the class A prize-fighter +--and the rest of the alphabet in his line--clear down to the lowest +and obscurest six-boy gang of little gamins, with its one boy +that can thrash the rest, and to whom he is king of Samoa, +bottom of the royal race, but looked up to with a most ardent +admiration and envy. + +There is something pathetic, and funny, and pretty, about this +human race's fondness for contact with power and distinction, +and for the reflected glory it gets out of it. The king, class A, +is happy in the state banquet and the military show which the +emperor provides for him, and he goes home and gathers the queen +and the princelings around him in the privacy of the spare room, +and tells them all about it, and says: + +"His Imperial Majesty put his hand upon my shoulder in the most +friendly way--just as friendly and familiar, oh, you can't imagine it! +--and everybody SEEING him do it; charming, perfectly charming!" + +The king, class G, is happy in the cold collation and the police +parade provided for him by the king, class B, and goes home +and tells the family all about it, and says: + +"And His Majesty took me into his own private cabinet for a smoke +and a chat, and there we sat just as sociable, and talking away +and laughing and chatting, just the same as if we had been born +in the same bunk; and all the servants in the anteroom could see +us doing it! Oh, it was too lovely for anything!" + +The king, class Q, is happy in the modest entertainment furnished him +by the king, class M, and goes home and tells the household about it, +and is as grateful and joyful over it as were his predecessors +in the gaudier attentions that had fallen to their larger lot. + +Emperors, kings, artisans, peasants, big people, little people--at the +bottom we are all alike and all the same; all just alike on the inside, +and when our clothes are off, nobody can tell which of us is which. +We are unanimous in the pride we take in good and genuine compliments +paid us, and distinctions conferred upon us, in attentions shown. +There is not one of us, from the emperor down, but is made like that. +Do I mean attentions shown us by the guest? No, I mean simply +flattering attentions, let them come whence they may. We despise +no source that can pay us a pleasing attention--there is no source +that is humble enough for that. You have heard a dear little girl +say to a frowzy and disreputable dog: "He came right to me and let +me pat him on the head, and he wouldn't let the others touch him!" +and you have seen her eyes dance with pride in that high distinction. +You have often seen that. If the child were a princess, would that +random dog be able to confer the like glory upon her with his +pretty compliment? Yes; and even in her mature life and seated +upon a throne, she would still remember it, still recall it, +still speak of it with frank satisfaction. That charming and +lovable German princess and poet, Carmen Sylva, Queen of Roumania, +remembers yet that the flowers of the woods and fields "talked to her" +when she was a girl, and she sets it down in her latest book; +and that the squirrels conferred upon her and her father the valued +compliment of not being afraid of them; and "once one of them, +holding a nut between its sharp little teeth, ran right up against +my father"--it has the very note of "He came right to me and let +me pat him on the head"--"and when it saw itself reflected in his +boot it was very much surprised, and stopped for a long time to +contemplate itself in the polished leather"--then it went its way. +And the birds! she still remembers with pride that "they came +boldly into my room," when she had neglected her "duty" and put +no food on the window-sill for them; she knew all the wild birds, +and forgets the royal crown on her head to remember with pride +that they knew her; also that the wasp and the bee were personal +friends of hers, and never forgot that gracious relationship +to her injury: "never have I been stung by a wasp or a bee." +And here is that proud note again that sings in that little child's +elation in being singled out, among all the company of children, +for the random dog's honor-conferring attentions. "Even in the very +worst summer for wasps, when, in lunching out of doors, our table +was covered with them and every one else was stung, they never +hurt me." + +When a queen whose qualities of mind and heart and character are +able to add distinction to so distinguished a place as a throne, +remembers with grateful exultation, after thirty years, honors and +distinctions conferred upon her by the humble, wild creatures of +the forest, we are helped to realize that complimentary attentions, +homage, distinctions, are of no caste, but are above all cast +--that they are a nobility-conferring power apart. + +We all like these things. When the gate-guard at the railway-station +passes me through unchallenged and examines other people's tickets, +I feel as the king, class A, felt when the emperor put the imperial +hand on his shoulder, "everybody seeing him do it"; and as the child +felt when the random dog allowed her to pat his head and ostracized +the others; and as the princess felt when the wasps spared her +and stung the rest; and I felt just so, four years ago in Vienna +(and remember it yet), when the helmeted police shut me off, +with fifty others, from a street which the Emperor was to pass through, +and the captain of the squad turned and saw the situation and said +indignantly to that guard: + +"Can't you see it is the Herr Mark Twain? Let him through!" + +It was four years ago; but it will be four hundred before I forget +the wind of self-complacency that rose in me, and strained my +buttons when I marked the deference for me evoked in the faces of my +fellow-rabble, and noted, mingled with it, a puzzled and resentful +expression which said, as plainly as speech could have worded it: +"And who in the nation is the Herr Mark Twain UM GOTTESWILLEN?" + +How many times in your life have you heard this boastful remark: + +"I stood as close to him as I am to you; I could have put out my +hand and touched him." + +We have all heard it many and many a time. It was a proud +distinction to be able to say those words. It brought envy to +the speaker, a kind of glory; and he basked in it and was happy +through all his veins. And who was it he stood so close to? +The answer would cover all the grades. Sometimes it was a king; +sometimes it was a renowned highwayman; sometimes it was an unknown +man killed in an extraordinary way and made suddenly famous by it; +always it was a person who was for the moment the subject of public +interest of a village. + +"I was there, and I saw it myself." That is a common and +envy-compelling remark. It can refer to a battle; to a handing; +to a coronation; to the killing of Jumbo by the railway-train; +to the arrival of Jenny Lind at the Battery; to the meeting of the +President and Prince Henry; to the chase of a murderous maniac; +to the disaster in the tunnel; to the explosion in the subway; +to a remarkable dog-fight; to a village church struck by lightning. +It will be said, more or less causally, by everybody in America who has +seen Prince Henry do anything, or try to. The man who was absent +and didn't see him to anything, will scoff. It is his privilege; +and he can make capital out of it, too; he will seem, even to himself, +to be different from other Americans, and better. As his opinion +of his superior Americanism grows, and swells, and concentrates +and coagulates, he will go further and try to belittle the distinction +of those that saw the Prince do things, and will spoil their pleasure +in it if he can. My life has been embittered by that kind of person. +If you are able to tell of a special distinction that has fallen +to your lot, it gravels them; they cannot bear it; and they try +to make believe that the thing you took for a special distinction +was nothing of the kind and was meant in quite another way. +Once I was received in private audience by an emperor. Last week +I was telling a jealous person about it, and I could see him wince +under it, see him bite, see him suffer. I revealed the whole episode +to him with considerable elaboration and nice attention to detail. +When I was through, he asked me what had impressed me most. +I said: + +"His Majesty's delicacy. They told me to be sure and back +out from the presence, and find the door-knob as best I could; +it was not allowable to face around. Now the Emperor knew it would +be a difficult ordeal for me, because of lack of practice; and so, +when it was time to part, he turned, with exceeding delicacy, +and pretended to fumble with things on his desk, so I could get +out in my own way, without his seeing me." + +It went home! It was vitriol! I saw the envy and disgruntlement rise +in the man's face; he couldn't keep it down. I saw him try to fix +up something in his mind to take the bloom off that distinction. +I enjoyed that, for I judged that he had his work cut out for him. +He struggled along inwardly for quite a while; then he said, +with a manner of a person who has to say something and hasn't anything +relevant to say: + +"You said he had a handful of special-brand cigars on the table?" + +"Yes; _I_ never saw anything to match them." + +I had him again. He had to fumble around in his mind as much +as another minute before he could play; then he said in as mean +a way as I ever heard a person say anything: + +"He could have been counting the cigars, you know." + +I cannot endure a man like that. It is nothing to him how unkind +he is, so long as he takes the bloom off. It is all he cares for. + +"An Englishman (or other human being) does dearly love a lord," +(or other conspicuous person.) It includes us all. We love to be +noticed by the conspicuous person; we love to be associated with such, +or with a conspicuous event, even in a seventh-rate fashion, +even in the forty-seventh, if we cannot do better. This accounts +for some of our curious tastes in mementos. It accounts for the large +private trade in the Prince of Wales's hair, which chambermaids +were able to drive in that article of commerce when the Prince made +the tour of the world in the long ago--hair which probably did +not always come from his brush, since enough of it was marketed +to refurnish a bald comet; it accounts for the fact that the rope +which lynches a negro in the presence of ten thousand Christian +spectators is salable five minutes later at two dollars and inch; +it accounts for the mournful fact that a royal personage does not +venture to wear buttons on his coat in public. + +We do love a lord--and by that term I mean any person whose situation +is higher than our own. The lord of the group, for instance: +a group of peers, a group of millionaires, a group of hoodlums, +a group of sailors, a group of newsboys, a group of saloon politicians, +a group of college girls. No royal person has ever been the object +of a more delirious loyalty and slavish adoration than is paid +by the vast Tammany herd to its squalid idol in Wantage. There is +not a bifurcated animal in that menagerie that would not be proud +to appear in a newspaper picture in his company. At the same time, +there are some in that organization who would scoff at the people +who have been daily pictured in company with Prince Henry, and would +say vigorously that THEY would not consent to be photographed +with him--a statement which would not be true in any instance. +There are hundreds of people in America who would frankly say to you +that they would not be proud to be photographed in a group with +the Prince, if invited; and some of these unthinking people would +believe it when they said it; yet in no instance would it be true. +We have a large population, but we have not a large enough one, +by several millions, to furnish that man. He has not yet been begotten, +and in fact he is not begettable. + +You may take any of the printed groups, and there isn't a person +in the dim background who isn't visibly trying to be vivid; if it +is a crowd of ten thousand--ten thousand proud, untamed democrats, +horny-handed sons of toil and of politics, and fliers of the eagle +--there isn't one who is trying to keep out of range, there isn't one +who isn't plainly meditating a purchase of the paper in the morning, +with the intention of hunting himself out in the picture and of framing +and keeping it if he shall find so much of his person in it as his +starboard ear. + +We all love to get some of the drippings of Conspicuousness, and we +will put up with a single, humble drip, if we can't get any more. +We may pretend otherwise, in conversation; but we can't pretend +it to ourselves privately--and we don't. We do confess in public +that we are the noblest work of God, being moved to it by long habit, +and teaching, and superstition; but deep down in the secret places +of our souls we recognize that, if we ARE the noblest work, the less +said about it the better. + +We of the North poke fun at the South for its fondness of titles +--a fondness for titles pure and simple, regardless of whether they +are genuine or pinchbeck. We forget that whatever a Southerner +likes the rest of the human race likes, and that there is no law of +predilection lodged in one people that is absent from another people. +There is no variety in the human race. We are all children, +all children of the one Adam, and we love toys. We can soon acquire +that Southern disease if some one will give it a start. It already +has a start, in fact. I have been personally acquainted with over +eighty-four thousand persons who, at one time or another in their lives, +have served for a year or two on the staffs of our multitudinous +governors, and through that fatality have been generals temporarily, +and colonels temporarily, and judge-advocates temporarily; but I +have known only nine among them who could be hired to let the title +go when it ceased to be legitimate. I know thousands and thousands +of governors who ceased to be governors away back in the last century; +but I am acquainted with only three who would answer your letter +if you failed to call them "Governor" in it. I know acres and acres +of men who have done time in a legislature in prehistoric days, +but among them is not half an acre whose resentment you would not +raise if you addressed them as "Mr." instead of "Hon." The first thing +a legislature does is to convene in an impressive legislative attitude, +and get itself photographed. Each member frames his copy and takes +it to the woods and hangs it up in the most aggressively conspicuous +place in his house; and if you visit the house and fail to inquire +what that accumulation is, the conversation will be brought around +to it by that aforetime legislator, and he will show you a figure +in it which in the course of years he has almost obliterated +with the smut of his finger-marks, and say with a solemn joy, "It's me!" + +Have you ever seen a country Congressman enter the hotel breakfast-room +in Washington with his letters?--and sit at his table and let on +to read them?--and wrinkle his brows and frown statesman-like? +--keeping a furtive watch-out over his glasses all the while to see +if he is being observed and admired?--those same old letters +which he fetches in every morning? Have you seen it? Have you +seen him show off? It is THE sight of the national capital. +Except one; a pathetic one. That is the ex-Congressman: the poor +fellow whose life has been ruined by a two-year taste of glory +and of fictitious consequence; who has been superseded, and ought +to take his heartbreak home and hide it, but cannot tear himself +away from the scene of his lost little grandeur; and so he lingers, +and still lingers, year after year, unconsidered, sometimes snubbed, +ashamed of his fallen estate, and valiantly trying to look otherwise; +dreary and depressed, but counterfeiting breeziness and gaiety, +hailing with chummy familiarity, which is not always welcomed, +the more-fortunes who are still in place and were once his mates. +Have you seen him? He clings piteously to the one little shred that +is left of his departed distinction--the "privilege of the floor"; +and works it hard and gets what he can out of it. That is the saddest +figure I know of. + +Yes, we do so love our little distinctions! And then we loftily +scoff at a Prince for enjoying his larger ones; forgetting that if we +only had his chance--ah! "Senator" is not a legitimate title. +A Senator has no more right to be addressed by it than have you +or I; but, in the several state capitals and in Washington, +there are five thousand Senators who take very kindly to +that fiction, and who purr gratefully when you call them by it +--which you may do quite unrebuked. Then those same Senators smile +at the self-constructed majors and generals and judges of the South! + +Indeed, we do love our distinctions, get them how we may. +And we work them for all they are worth. In prayer we call +ourselves "worms of the dust," but it is only on a sort of tacit +understanding that the remark shall not be taken at par. WE +--worms of the dust! Oh, no, we are not that. Except in fact; +and we do not deal much in fact when we are contemplating ourselves. + +As a race, we do certainly love a lord--let him be Croker, or a duke, +or a prize-fighter, or whatever other personage shall chance to be the +head of our group. Many years ago, I saw a greasy youth in overalls +standing by the HERALD office, with an expectant look in his face. +Soon a large man passed out, and gave him a pat on the shoulder. +That was what the boy was waiting for--the large man's notice. +The pat made him proud and happy, and the exultation inside of him +shone out through his eyes; and his mates were there to see the pat +and envy it and wish they could have that glory. The boy belonged +down cellar in the press-room, the large man was king of the +upper floors, foreman of the composing-room. The light in the boy's +face was worship, the foreman was his lord, head of his group. +The pat was an accolade. It was as precious to the boy as it would +have been if he had been an aristocrat's son and the accolade had +been delivered by his sovereign with a sword. The quintessence +of the honor was all there; there was no difference in values; +in truth there was no difference present except an artificial one +--clothes. + +All the human race loves a lord--that is, loves to look upon +or be noticed by the possessor of Power or Conspicuousness; +and sometimes animals, born to better things and higher ideals, +descend to man's level in this matter. In the Jardin des Plantes +I have see a cat that was so vain of being the personal friend +of an elephant that I was ashamed of her. + + + + + + +EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY + + + +MONDAY.--This new creature with the long hair is a good deal +in the way. It is always hanging around and following me about. +I don't like this; I am not used to company. I wish it would stay +with the other animals. . . . Cloudy today, wind in the east; +think we shall have rain. . . . WE? Where did I get that word +--the new creature uses it. + +TUESDAY.--Been examining the great waterfall. It is the finest thing +on the estate, I think. The new creature calls it Niagara Falls +--why, I am sure I do not know. Says it LOOKS like Niagara Falls. +That is not a reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility. +I get no chance to name anything myself. The new creature names +everything that comes along, before I can get in a protest. +And always that same pretext is offered--it LOOKS like the thing. +There is a dodo, for instance. Says the moment one looks at it +one sees at a glance that it "looks like a dodo." It will have to +keep that name, no doubt. It wearies me to fret about it, and it +does no good, anyway. Dodo! It looks no more like a dodo than +I do. + +WEDNESDAY.--Built me a shelter against the rain, but could not +have it to myself in peace. The new creature intruded. When I +tried to put it out it shed water out of the holes it looks with, +and wiped it away with the back of its paws, and made a noise +such as some of the other animals make when they are in distress. +I wish it would not talk; it is always talking. That sounds like a +cheap fling at the poor creature, a slur; but I do not mean it so. +I have never heard the human voice before, and any new and strange +sound intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of these dreaming +solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note. And this new sound +is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my ear, +first on one side and then on the other, and I am used only to sounds +that are more or less distant from me. + +FRIDAY. The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do. +I had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty +--GARDEN OF EDEN. Privately, I continue to call it that, but not any +longer publicly. The new creature says it is all woods and rocks +and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden. Says it +LOOKS like a park, and does not look like anything BUT a park. +Consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named NIAGARA +FALLS PARK. This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to me. +And already there is a sign up: + + +KEEP OFF + + +THE GRASS + + +My life is not as happy as it was. + +SATURDAY.--The new creature eats too much fruit. We are going +to run short, most likely. "We" again--that is ITS word; mine, too, +now, from hearing it so much. Good deal of fog this morning. +I do not go out in the fog myself. This new creature does. +It goes out in all weathers, and stumps right in with its muddy feet. +And talks. It used to be so pleasant and quiet here. + +SUNDAY.--Pulled through. This day is getting to be more and more trying. +It was selected and set apart last November as a day of rest. +I had already six of them per week before. This morning found +the new creature trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree. + +MONDAY.--The new creature says its name is Eve. That is all right, +I have no objections. Says it is to call it by, when I want it +to come. I said it was superfluous, then. The word evidently +raised me in its respect; and indeed it is a large, good word +and will bear repetition. It says it is not an It, it is a She. +This is probably doubtful; yet it is all one to me; what she is were +nothing to me if she would but go by herself and not talk. + +TUESDAY.--She has littered the whole estate with execrable names +and offensive signs: + + +This way to the Whirlpool + + +This way to Goat Island + + +Cave of the Winds this way + + +She says this park would make a tidy summer resort if there was +any custom for it. Summer resort--another invention of hers +--just words, without any meaning. What is a summer resort? +But it is best not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining. + +FRIDAY.--She has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the Falls. +What harm does it do? Says it makes her shudder. I wonder why; +I have always done it--always liked the plunge, and coolness. +I supposed it was what the Falls were for. They have no other +use that I can see, and they must have been made for something. +She says they were only made for scenery--like the rhinoceros and +the mastodon. + +I went over the Falls in a barrel--not satisfactory to her. +Went over in a tub--still not satisfactory. Swam the Whirlpool and +the Rapids in a fig-leaf suit. It got much damaged. Hence, tedious +complaints about my extravagance. I am too much hampered here. +What I need is a change of scene. + +SATURDAY.--I escaped last Tuesday night, and traveled two days, +and built me another shelter in a secluded place, and obliterated my +tracks as well as I could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast +which she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful +noise again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with. +I was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again +when occasion offers. She engages herself in many foolish things; +among others; to study out why the animals called lions and tigers +live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of teeth they +wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each other. +This is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each other, +and that would introduce what, as I understand, is called "death"; +and death, as I have been told, has not yet entered the Park. +Which is a pity, on some accounts. + +SUNDAY.--Pulled through. + +MONDAY.--I believe I see what the week is for: it is to give time +to rest up from the weariness of Sunday. It seems a good idea. +. . . She has been climbing that tree again. Clodded her out of it. +She said nobody was looking. Seems to consider that a sufficient +justification for chancing any dangerous thing. Told her that. +The word justification moved her admiration--and envy, too, I thought. +It is a good word. + +TUESDAY.--She told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body. +This is at least doubtful, if not more than that. I have not +missed any rib. . . . She is in much trouble about the buzzard; +says grass does not agree with it; is afraid she can't raise it; +thinks it was intended to live on decayed flesh. The buzzard must +get along the best it can with what is provided. We cannot overturn +the whole scheme to accommodate the buzzard. + +SATURDAY.--She fell in the pond yesterday when she was looking at +herself in it, which she is always doing. She nearly strangled, +and said it was most uncomfortable. This made her sorry for the +creatures which live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues +to fasten names on to things that don't need them and don't come +when they are called by them, which is a matter of no consequence +to her, she is such a numbskull, anyway; so she got a lot of them out +and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep warm, +but I have noticed them now and then all day and I don't see that +they are any happier there then they were before, only quieter. +When night comes I shall throw them outdoors. I will not sleep +with them again, for I find them clammy and unpleasant to lie among +when a person hasn't anything on. + +SUNDAY.--Pulled through. + +TUESDAY.--She has taken up with a snake now. The other animals are glad, +for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them; +and I am glad because the snake talks, and this enables me to get +a rest. + +FRIDAY.--She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of the tree, +and says the result will be a great and fine and noble education. +I told her there would be another result, too--it would introduce +death into the world. That was a mistake--it had been better +to keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea--she could +save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent +lions and tigers. I advised her to keep away from the tree. +She said she wouldn't. I foresee trouble. Will emigrate. + +WEDNESDAY.--I have had a variegated time. I escaped last night, +and rode a horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get +clear of the Park and hide in some other country before the +trouble should begin; but it was not to be. About an hour after +sun-up, as I was riding through a flowery plain where thousands +of animals were grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other, +according to their wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest +of frightful noises, and in one moment the plain was a frantic commotion +and every beast was destroying its neighbor. I knew what it meant +--Eve had eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world. +. . . The tigers ate my house, paying no attention when I ordered +them to desist, and they would have eaten me if I had stayed +--which I didn't, but went away in much haste. . . . I found this place, +outside the Park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but she +has found me out. Found me out, and has named the place Tonawanda +--says it LOOKS like that. In fact I was not sorry she came, +for there are but meager pickings here, and she brought some +of those apples. I was obliged to eat them, I was so hungry. +It was against my principles, but I find that principles have no +real force except when one is well fed. . . . She came curtained +in boughs and bunches of leaves, and when I asked her what she +meant by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down, +she tittered and blushed. I had never seen a person titter +and blush before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic. +She said I would soon know how it was myself. This was correct. +Hungry as I was, I laid down the apple half-eaten--certainly the +best one I ever saw, considering the lateness of the season +--and arrayed myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then +spoke to her with some severity and ordered her to go and get some +more and not make a spectacle or herself. She did it, and after this +we crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected +some skins, and I made her patch together a couple of suits proper +for public occasions. They are uncomfortable, it is true, but stylish, +and that is the main point about clothes. . . . I find she is a +good deal of a companion. I see I should be lonesome and depressed +without her, now that I have lost my property. Another thing, +she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter. +She will be useful. I will superintend. + +TEN DAYS LATER.--She accuses ME of being the cause of our disaster! +She says, with apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured +her that the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. +I said I was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts. +She said the Serpent informed her that "chestnut" was a figurative +term meaning an aged and moldy joke. I turned pale at that, +for I have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them +could have been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed +that they were new when I made them. She asked me if I had made +one just at the time of the catastrophe. I was obliged to admit +that I had made one to myself, though not aloud. It was this. +I was thinking about the Falls, and I said to myself, "How wonderful +it is to see that vast body of water tumble down there!" +Then in an instant a bright thought flashed into my head, and I let +it fly, saying, "It would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble +UP there!"--and I was just about to kill myself with laughing at +it when all nature broke loose in war and death and I had to flee +for my life. "There," she said, with triumph, "that is just it; +the Serpent mentioned that very jest, and called it the First Chestnut, +and said it was coeval with the creation." Alas, I am indeed +to blame. Would that I were not witty; oh, that I had never had +that radiant thought! + +NEXT YEAR.--We have named it Cain. She caught it while I was up country +trapping on the North Shore of the Erie; caught it in the timber a +couple of miles from our dug-out--or it might have been four, she isn't +certain which. It resembles us in some ways, and may be a relation. +That is what she thinks, but this is an error, in my judgment. +The difference in size warrants the conclusion that it is a different +and new kind of animal--a fish, perhaps, though when I put it in the +water to see, it sank, and she plunged in and snatched it out before +there was opportunity for the experiment to determine the matter. +I still think it is a fish, but she is indifferent about what it is, +and will not let me have it to try. I do not understand this. +The coming of the creature seems to have changed her whole nature +and made her unreasonable about experiments. She thinks more +of it than she does of any of the other animals, but is not able +to explain why. Her mind is disordered--everything shows it. +Sometimes she carries the fish in her arms half the night when it +complains and wants to get to the water. At such times the water +comes out of the places in her face that she looks out of, and she +pats the fish on the back and makes soft sounds with her mouth +to soothe it, and betrays sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways. +I have never seen her do like this with any other fish, and it +troubles me greatly. She used to carry the young tigers around so, +and play with them, before we lost our property, but it was only play; +she never took on about them like this when their dinner disagreed +with them. + +SUNDAY.--She doesn't work, Sundays, but lies around all tired out, +and likes to have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool +noises to amuse it, and pretends to chew its paws, and that makes +it laugh. I have not seen a fish before that could laugh. +This makes me doubt. . . . I have come to like Sunday myself. +Superintending all the week tires a body so. There ought to be +more Sundays. In the old days they were tough, but now they +come handy. + +WEDNESDAY.--It isn't a fish. I cannot quite make out what it is. +It makes curious devilish noises when not satisfied, and says "goo-goo" +when it is. It is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not +a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop; +it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; I feel sure it is not a fish, +though I cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim or not. +It merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its feet up. +I have not seen any other animal do that before. I said I believed it +was an enigma; but she only admired the word without understanding it. +In my judgment it is either an enigma or some kind of a bug. +If it dies, I will take it apart and see what its arrangements are. +I never had a thing perplex me so. + +THREE MONTHS LATER.--The perplexity augments instead of diminishing. +I sleep but little. It has ceased from lying around, and goes about on +its four legs now. Yet it differs from the other four legged animals, +in that its front legs are unusually short, consequently this +causes the main part of its person to stick up uncomfortably high +in the air, and this is not attractive. It is built much as we are, +but its method of traveling shows that it is not of our breed. +The short front legs and long hind ones indicate that it is a of +the kangaroo family, but it is a marked variation of that species, +since the true kangaroo hops, whereas this one never does. +Still it is a curious and interesting variety, and has not been +catalogued before. As I discovered it, I have felt justified +in securing the credit of the discovery by attaching my name to it, +and hence have called it KANGAROORUM ADAMIENSIS. . . . It must have +been a young one when it came, for it has grown exceedingly since. +It must be five times as big, now, as it was then, and when +discontented it is able to make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times +the noise it made at first. Coercion does not modify this, but has +the contrary effect. For this reason I discontinued the system. +She reconciles it by persuasion, and by giving it things which she +had previously told me she wouldn't give it. As already observed, +I was not at home when it first came, and she told me she found it +in the woods. It seems odd that it should be the only one, yet it +must be so, for I have worn myself out these many weeks trying to find +another one to add to my collection, and for this to play with; +for surely then it would be quieter and we could tame it more easily. +But I find none, nor any vestige of any; and strangest of all, +no tracks. It has to live on the ground, it cannot help itself; +therefore, how does it get about without leaving a track? +I have set a dozen traps, but they do no good. I catch all small +animals except that one; animals that merely go into the trap out +of curiosity, I think, to see what the milk is there for. They never +drink it. + +THREE MONTHS LATER.--The Kangaroo still continues to grow, which is +very strange and perplexing. I never knew one to be so long getting +its growth. It has fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur, +but exactly like our hair except that it is much finer and softer, +and instead of being black is red. I am like to lose my mind over +the capricious and harassing developments of this unclassifiable +zoological freak. If I could catch another one--but that is hopeless; +it is a new variety, and the only sample; this is plain. But I +caught a true kangaroo and brought it in, thinking that this one, +being lonesome, would rather have that for company than have no kin +at all, or any animal it could feel a nearness to or get sympathy +from in its forlorn condition here among strangers who do not +know its ways or habits, or what to do to make it feel that it +is among friends; but it was a mistake--it went into such fits at +the sight of the kangaroo that I was convinced it had never seen +one before. I pity the poor noisy little animal, but there is +nothing I can do to make it happy. If I could tame it--but that is +out of the question; the more I try the worse I seem to make it. +It grieves me to the heart to see it in its little storms of sorrow +and passion. I wanted to let it go, but she wouldn't hear of it. +That seemed cruel and not like her; and yet she may be right. +It might be lonelier than ever; for since I cannot find another one, +how could IT? + +FIVE MONTHS LATER.--It is not a kangaroo. No, for it supports +itself by holding to her finger, and thus goes a few steps on its +hind legs, and then falls down. It is probably some kind of a bear; +and yet it has no tail--as yet--and no fur, except upon its head. +It still keeps on growing--that is a curious circumstance, +for bears get their growth earlier than this. Bears are dangerous +--since our catastrophe--and I shall not be satisfied to have this +one prowling about the place much longer without a muzzle on. +I have offered to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one go, +but it did no good--she is determined to run us into all sorts +of foolish risks, I think. She was not like this before she lost +her mind. + +A FORTNIGHT LATER.--I examined its mouth. There is no danger yet: +it has only one tooth. It has no tail yet. It makes more noise +now than it ever did before--and mainly at night. I have moved out. +But I shall go over, mornings, to breakfast, and see if it has +more teeth. If it gets a mouthful of teeth it will be time for it +to go, tail or no tail, for a bear does not need a tail in order to +be dangerous. + +FOUR MONTHS LATER.--I have been off hunting and fishing a month, +up in the region that she calls Buffalo; I don't know why, unless it +is because there are not any buffaloes there. Meantime the bear +has learned to paddle around all by itself on its hind legs, +and says "poppa" and "momma." It is certainly a new species. +This resemblance to words may be purely accidental, of course, +and may have no purpose or meaning; but even in that case it is +still extraordinary, and is a thing which no other bear can do. +This imitation of speech, taken together with general absence of fur +and entire absence of tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new +kind of bear. The further study of it will be exceedingly interesting. +Meantime I will go off on a far expedition among the forests of +the north and make an exhaustive search. There must certainly be +another one somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it +has company of its own species. I will go straightway; but I will +muzzle this one first. + +THREE MONTHS LATER.--It has been a weary, weary hunt, yet I have +had no success. In the mean time, without stirring from the +home estate, she has caught another one! I never saw such luck. +I might have hunted these woods a hundred years, I never would +have run across that thing. + +NEXT DAY.--I have been comparing the new one with the old one, +and it is perfectly plain that they are of the same breed. +I was going to stuff one of them for my collection, but she +is prejudiced against it for some reason or other; so I have +relinquished the idea, though I think it is a mistake. It would +be an irreparable loss to science if they should get away. +The old one is tamer than it was and can laugh and talk like a parrot, +having learned this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so much, +and having the imitative faculty in a high developed degree. +I shall be astonished if it turns out to be a new kind of parrot; +and yet I ought not to be astonished, for it has already been +everything else it could think of since those first days when it +was a fish. The new one is as ugly as the old one was at first; +has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat complexion and the same singular +head without any fur on it. She calls it Abel. + +TEN YEARS LATER.--They are BOYS; we found it out long ago. +It was their coming in that small immature shape that puzzled us; +we were not used to it. There are some girls now. Abel is a good boy, +but if Cain had stayed a bear it would have improved him. After all +these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; +it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it +without her. At first I thought she talked too much; but now I should +be sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life. +Blessed be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me +to know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit! + + + + + + +EVE'S DIARY + + +Translated from the Original + + + +SATURDAY.--I am almost a whole day old, now. I arrived yesterday. +That is as it seems to me. And it must be so, for if there was +a day-before-yesterday I was not there when it happened, or I +should remember it. It could be, of course, that it did happen, +and that I was not noticing. Very well; I will be very watchful now, +and if any day-before-yesterdays happen I will make a note of it. +It will be best to start right and not let the record get confused, +for some instinct tells me that these details are going to be +important to the historian some day. For I feel like an experiment, +I feel exactly like an experiment; it would be impossible for a person +to feel more like an experiment than I do, and so I am coming to feel +convinced that that is what I AM--an experiment; just an experiment, +and nothing more. + +Then if I am an experiment, am I the whole of it? No, I think not; +I think the rest of it is part of it. I am the main part of it, +but I think the rest of it has its share in the matter. Is my +position assured, or do I have to watch it and take care of it? +The latter, perhaps. Some instinct tells me that eternal vigilance +is the price of supremacy. [That is a good phrase, I think, for one +so young.] + +Everything looks better today than it did yesterday. In the rush of +finishing up yesterday, the mountains were left in a ragged condition, +and some of the plains were so cluttered with rubbish and remnants +that the aspects were quite distressing. Noble and beautiful works +of art should not be subjected to haste; and this majestic new world +is indeed a most noble and beautiful work. And certainly marvelously +near to being perfect, notwithstanding the shortness of the time. +There are too many stars in some places and not enough in others, +but that can be remedied presently, no doubt. The moon got +loose last night, and slid down and fell out of the scheme +--a very great loss; it breaks my heart to think of it. There isn't +another thing among the ornaments and decorations that is comparable +to it for beauty and finish. It should have been fastened better. +If we can only get it back again-- +But of course there is no telling where it went to. And besides, +whoever gets it will hide it; I know it because I would do it myself. +I believe I can be honest in all other matters, but I already +begin to realize that the core and center of my nature is love +of the beautiful, a passion for the beautiful, and that it would +not be safe to trust me with a moon that belonged to another person +and that person didn't know I had it. I could give up a moon that I +found in the daytime, because I should be afraid some one was looking; +but if I found it in the dark, I am sure I should find some kind +of an excuse for not saying anything about it. For I do love moons, +they are so pretty and so romantic. I wish we had five or six; +I would never go to bed; I should never get tired lying on the moss-bank +and looking up at them. + +Stars are good, too. I wish I could get some to put in my hair. +But I suppose I never can. You would be surprised to find how far +off they are, for they do not look it. When they first showed, +last night, I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn't reach, +which astonished me; then I tried clods till I was all tired out, +but I never got one. It was because I am left-handed and cannot +throw good. Even when I aimed at the one I wasn't after I +couldn't hit the other one, though I did make some close shots, +for I saw the black blot of the clod sail right into the midst of +the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them, +and if I could have held out a little longer maybe I could have +got one. + +So I cried a little, which was natural, I suppose, for one of my age, +and after I was rested I got a basket and started for a place on the +extreme rim of the circle, where the stars were close to the ground +and I could get them with my hands, which would be better, anyway, +because I could gather them tenderly then, and not break them. +But it was farther than I thought, and at last I had go give it up; +I was so tired I couldn't drag my feet another step; and besides, +they were sore and hurt me very much. + +I couldn't get back home; it was too far and turning cold; +but I found some tigers and nestled in among them and was most +adorably comfortable, and their breath was sweet and pleasant, +because they live on strawberries. I had never seen a tiger before, +but I knew them in a minute by the stripes. If I could have one +of those skins, it would make a lovely gown. + +Today I am getting better ideas about distances. I was so eager +to get hold of every pretty thing that I giddily grabbed for it, +sometimes when it was too far off, and sometimes when it was but +six inches away but seemed a foot--alas, with thorns between! +I learned a lesson; also I made an axiom, all out of my own head +--my very first one; THE SCRATCHED EXPERIMENT SHUNS THE THORN. +I think it is a very good one for one so young. + +I followed the other Experiment around, yesterday afternoon, +at a distance, to see what it might be for, if I could. But I was +not able to make out. I think it is a man. I had never seen a man, +but it looked like one, and I feel sure that that is what it is. +I realize that I feel more curiosity about it than about any +of the other reptiles. If it is a reptile, and I suppose it is; +for it has frowzy hair and blue eyes, and looks like a reptile. +It has no hips; it tapers like a carrot; when it stands, it spreads +itself apart like a derrick; so I think it is a reptile, though it may +be architecture. + +I was afraid of it at first, and started to run every time it +turned around, for I thought it was going to chase me; but by +and by I found it was only trying to get away, so after that I +was not timid any more, but tracked it along, several hours, +about twenty yards behind, which made it nervous and unhappy. +At last it was a good deal worried, and climbed a tree. I waited +a good while, then gave it up and went home. + +Today the same thing over. I've got it up the tree again. + +SUNDAY.--It is up there yet. Resting, apparently. But that is +a subterfuge: Sunday isn't the day of rest; Saturday is appointed +for that. It looks to me like a creature that is more interested +in resting than it anything else. It would tire me to rest so much. +It tires me just to sit around and watch the tree. I do wonder +what it is for; I never see it do anything. + +They returned the moon last night, and I was SO happy! I think +it is very honest of them. It slid down and fell off again, +but I was not distressed; there is no need to worry when one has +that kind of neighbors; they will fetch it back. I wish I could +do something to show my appreciation. I would like to send them +some stars, for we have more than we can use. I mean I, not we, +for I can see that the reptile cares nothing for such things. + +It has low tastes, and is not kind. When I went there yesterday +evening in the gloaming it had crept down and was trying to catch +the little speckled fishes that play in the pool, and I had +to clod it to make it go up the tree again and let them alone. +I wonder if THAT is what it is for? Hasn't it any heart? +Hasn't it any compassion for those little creature? Can it be +that it was designed and manufactured for such ungentle work? +It has the look of it. One of the clods took it back of the ear, +and it used language. It gave me a thrill, for it was the first time I +had ever heard speech, except my own. I did not understand the words, +but they seemed expressive. + +When I found it could talk I felt a new interest in it, for I +love to talk; I talk, all day, and in my sleep, too, and I am +very interesting, but if I had another to talk to I could be twice +as interesting, and would never stop, if desired. + +If this reptile is a man, it isn't an IT, is it? That wouldn't +be grammatical, would it? I think it would be HE. I think so. +In that case one would parse it thus: nominative, HE; dative, HIM; +possessive, HIS'N. Well, I will consider it a man and call it he +until it turns out to be something else. This will be handier +than having so many uncertainties. + +NEXT WEEK SUNDAY.--All the week I tagged around after him and tried +to get acquainted. I had to do the talking, because he was shy, +but I didn't mind it. He seemed pleased to have me around, and I +used the sociable "we" a good deal, because it seemed to flatter him +to be included. + +WEDNESDAY.--We are getting along very well indeed, now, and getting +better and better acquainted. He does not try to avoid me any more, +which is a good sign, and shows that he likes to have me with him. +That pleases me, and I study to be useful to him in every way I can, +so as to increase his regard. During the last day or two I +have taken all the work of naming things off his hands, and this +has been a great relief to him, for he has no gift in that line, +and is evidently very grateful. He can't think of a rational name +to save him, but I do not let him see that I am aware of his defect. +Whenever a new creature comes along I name it before he has time +to expose himself by an awkward silence. In this way I have +saved him many embarrassments. I have no defect like this. +The minute I set eyes on an animal I know what it is. I don't +have to reflect a moment; the right name comes out instantly, +just as if it were an inspiration, as no doubt it is, for I am +sure it wasn't in me half a minute before. I seem to know just +by the shape of the creature and the way it acts what animal +it is. + +When the dodo came along he thought it was a wildcat--I saw it +in his eye. But I saved him. And I was careful not to do it +in a way that could hurt his pride. I just spoke up in a quite +natural way of pleasing surprise, and not as if I was dreaming +of conveying information, and said, "Well, I do declare, if there +isn't the dodo!" I explained--without seeming to be explaining +--how I know it for a dodo, and although I thought maybe he was +a little piqued that I knew the creature when he didn't, it was +quite evident that he admired me. That was very agreeable, and I +thought of it more than once with gratification before I slept. +How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have +earned it! + +THURSDAY.--my first sorrow. Yesterday he avoided me and seemed +to wish I would not talk to him. I could not believe it, +and thought there was some mistake, for I loved to be with him, +and loved to hear him talk, and so how could it be that he could +feel unkind toward me when I had not done anything? But at last it +seemed true, so I went away and sat lonely in the place where I first +saw him the morning that we were made and I did not know what he +was and was indifferent about him; but now it was a mournful place, +and every little think spoke of him, and my heart was very sore. +I did not know why very clearly, for it was a new feeling; I had +not experienced it before, and it was all a mystery, and I could +not make it out. + +But when night came I could not bear the lonesomeness, and went +to the new shelter which he has built, to ask him what I had done +that was wrong and how I could mend it and get back his kindness again; +but he put me out in the rain, and it was my first sorrow. + +SUNDAY.--It is pleasant again, now, and I am happy; but those were +heavy days; I do not think of them when I can help it. + +I tried to get him some of those apples, but I cannot learn to +throw straight. I failed, but I think the good intention pleased him. +They are forbidden, and he says I shall come to harm; but so I +come to harm through pleasing him, why shall I care for that harm? + +MONDAY.--This morning I told him my name, hoping it would interest him. +But he did not care for it. It is strange. If he should tell me +his name, I would care. I think it would be pleasanter in my ears +than any other sound. + +He talks very little. Perhaps it is because he is not bright, +and is sensitive about it and wishes to conceal it. It is +such a pity that he should feel so, for brightness is nothing; +it is in the heart that the values lie. I wish I could make him +understand that a loving good heart is riches, and riches enough, +and that without it intellect is poverty. + +Although he talks so little, he has quite a considerable +vocabulary. This morning he used a surprisingly good word. +He evidently recognized, himself, that it was a good one, for he +worked in in twice afterward, casually. It was good casual art, +still it showed that he possesses a certain quality of perception. +Without a doubt that seed can be made to grow, if cultivated. + +Where did he get that word? I do not think I have ever used it. + +No, he took no interest in my name. I tried to hide my disappointment, +but I suppose I did not succeed. I went away and sat on the +moss-bank with my feet in the water. It is where I go when I hunger +for companionship, some one to look at, some one to talk to. +It is not enough--that lovely white body painted there in the pool +--but it is something, and something is better than utter loneliness. +It talks when I talk; it is sad when I am sad; it comforts me with +its sympathy; it says, "Do not be downhearted, you poor friendless girl; +I will be your friend." It IS a good friend to me, and my only one; +it is my sister. + +That first time that she forsook me! ah, I shall never forget that +--never, never. My heart was lead in my body! I said, "She was all +I had, and now she is gone!" In my despair I said, "Break, my heart; +I cannot bear my life any more!" and hid my face in my hands, +and there was no solace for me. And when I took them away, +after a little, there she was again, white and shining and beautiful, +and I sprang into her arms! + +That was perfect happiness; I had known happiness before, but it was +not like this, which was ecstasy. I never doubted her afterward. +Sometimes she stayed away--maybe an hour, maybe almost the +whole day, but I waited and did not doubt; I said, "She is busy, +or she is gone on a journey, but she will come." And it was so: +she always did. At night she would not come if it was dark, for she +was a timid little thing; but if there was a moon she would come. +I am not afraid of the dark, but she is younger than I am; she was +born after I was. Many and many are the visits I have paid her; +she is my comfort and my refuge when my life is hard--and it is +mainly that. + +TUESDAY.--All the morning I was at work improving the estate; +and I purposely kept away from him in the hope that he would get +lonely and come. But he did not. + +At noon I stopped for the day and took my recreation by flitting all +about with the bees and the butterflies and reveling in the flowers, +those beautiful creatures that catch the smile of God out of the +sky and preserve it! I gathered them, and made them into wreaths +and garlands and clothed myself in them while I ate my luncheon +--apples, of course; then I sat in the shade and wished and waited. +But he did not come. + +But no matter. Nothing would have come of it, for he does not +care for flowers. He called them rubbish, and cannot tell one +from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that. He does +not care for me, he does not care for flowers, he does not care +for the painted sky at eventide--is there anything he does care for, +except building shacks to coop himself up in from the good clean rain, +and thumping the melons, and sampling the grapes, and fingering +the fruit on the trees, to see how those properties are coming along? + +I laid a dry stick on the ground and tried to bore a hole in it +with another one, in order to carry out a scheme that I had, +and soon I got an awful fright. A thin, transparent bluish film +rose out of the hole, and I dropped everything and ran! I thought +it was a spirit, and I WAS so frightened! But I looked back, and it +was not coming; so I leaned against a rock and rested and panted, +and let my limps go on trembling until they got steady again; +then I crept warily back, alert, watching, and ready to fly if there +was occasion; and when I was come near, I parted the branches +of a rose-bush and peeped through--wishing the man was about, +I was looking so cunning and pretty--but the sprite was gone. +I went there, and there was a pinch of delicate pink dust in the hole. +I put my finger in, to feel it, and said OUCH! and took it +out again. It was a cruel pain. I put my finger in my mouth; +and by standing first on one foot and then the other, and grunting, +I presently eased my misery; then I was full of interest, and began +to examine. + +I was curious to know what the pink dust was. Suddenly the name of it +occurred to me, though I had never heard of it before. It was FIRE! +I was as certain of it as a person could be of anything in the world. +So without hesitation I named it that--fire. + +I had created something that didn't exist before; I had added +a new thing to the world's uncountable properties; I realized this, +and was proud of my achievement, and was going to run and find him +and tell him about it, thinking to raise myself in his esteem +--but I reflected, and did not do it. No--he would not care for it. +He would ask what it was good for, and what could I answer? for if it +was not GOOD for something, but only beautiful, merely beautiful-- +So I sighed, and did not go. For it wasn't good for anything; +it could not build a shack, it could not improve melons, it could +not hurry a fruit crop; it was useless, it was a foolishness +and a vanity; he would despise it and say cutting words. +But to me it was not despicable; I said, "Oh, you fire, I love you, +you dainty pink creature, for you are BEAUTIFUL--and that is enough!" +and was going to gather it to my breast. But refrained. +Then I made another maxim out of my head, though it was so nearly +like the first one that I was afraid it was only a plagiarism: +"THE BURNT EXPERIMENT SHUNS THE FIRE." + +I wrought again; and when I had made a good deal of fire-dust I emptied +it into a handful of dry brown grass, intending to carry it home +and keep it always and play with it; but the wind struck it and it +sprayed up and spat out at me fiercely, and I dropped it and ran. +When I looked back the blue spirit was towering up and stretching +and rolling away like a cloud, and instantly I thought of the name +of it--SMOKE!--though, upon my word, I had never heard of smoke before. + +Soon brilliant yellow and red flares shot up through the smoke, +and I named them in an instant--FLAMES--and I was right, too, +though these were the very first flames that had ever been +in the world. They climbed the trees, then flashed splendidly +in and out of the vast and increasing volume of tumbling smoke, +and I had to clap my hands and laugh and dance in my rapture, +it was so new and strange and so wonderful and so beautiful! + +He came running, and stopped and gazed, and said not a word for +many minutes. Then he asked what it was. Ah, it was too bad that he +should ask such a direct question. I had to answer it, of course, +and I did. I said it was fire. If it annoyed him that I should know +and he must ask; that was not my fault; I had no desire to annoy him. +After a pause he asked: + +"How did it come?" + +Another direct question, and it also had to have a direct answer. + +"I made it." + +The fire was traveling farther and farther off. He went to the edge +of the burned place and stood looking down, and said: + +"What are these?" + +"Fire-coals." + +He picked up one to examine it, but changed his mind and put it +down again. Then he went away. NOTHING interests him. + +But I was interested. There were ashes, gray and soft and delicate +and pretty--I knew what they were at once. And the embers; +I knew the embers, too. I found my apples, and raked them out, +and was glad; for I am very young and my appetite is active. +But I was disappointed; they were all burst open and spoiled. +Spoiled apparently; but it was not so; they were better than raw ones. +Fire is beautiful; some day it will be useful, I think. + +FRIDAY.--I saw him again, for a moment, last Monday at nightfall, +but only for a moment. I was hoping he would praise me for trying +to improve the estate, for I had meant well and had worked hard. +But he was not pleased, and turned away and left me. He was also +displeased on another account: I tried once more to persuade him +to stop going over the Falls. That was because the fire had revealed +to me a new passion--quite new, and distinctly different from love, +grief, and those others which I had already discovered--FEAR. And it +is horrible!--I wish I had never discovered it; it gives me dark moments, +it spoils my happiness, it makes me shiver and tremble and shudder. +But I could not persuade him, for he has not discovered fear yet, +and so he could not understand me. + + +Extract from Adam's Diary + + +Perhaps I ought to remember that she is very young, a mere girl and +make allowances. She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world +is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for +delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it +and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. +And she is color-mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, +blue sky; the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadows on the mountains, +the golden islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon +sailing through the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering +in the wastes of space--none of them is of any practical value, +so far as I can see, but because they have color and majesty, +that is enough for her, and she loses her mind over them. +If she could quiet down and keep still a couple minutes at a time, +it would be a reposeful spectacle. In that case I think I could +enjoy looking at her; indeed I am sure I could, for I am coming +to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely creature +--lithe, slender, trim, rounded, shapely, nimble, graceful; and once +when she was standing marble-white and sun-drenched on a boulder, +with her young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes, +watching the flight of a bird in the sky, I recognized that she +was beautiful. + +MONDAY NOON.--If there is anything on the planet that she is not +interested in it is not in my list. There are animals that I am +indifferent to, but it is not so with her. She has no discrimination, +she takes to all of them, she thinks they are all treasures, +every new one is welcome. + +When the mighty brontosaurus came striding into camp, she regarded +it as an acquisition, I considered it a calamity; that is a good +sample of the lack of harmony that prevails in our views of things. +She wanted to domesticate it, I wanted to make it a present of the +homestead and move out. She believed it could be tamed by kind +treatment and would be a good pet; I said a pet twenty-one feet +high and eighty-four feet long would be no proper thing to have +about the place, because, even with the best intentions and without +meaning any harm, it could sit down on the house and mash it, +for any one could see by the look of its eye that it was absent-minded. + +Still, her heart was set upon having that monster, and she +couldn't give it up. She thought we could start a dairy with it, +and wanted me to help milk it; but I wouldn't; it was too risky. +The sex wasn't right, and we hadn't any ladder anyway. Then she +wanted to ride it, and look at the scenery. Thirty or forty feet +of its tail was lying on the ground, like a fallen tree, and she +thought she could climb it, but she was mistaken; when she got +to the steep place it was too slick and down she came, and would +have hurt herself but for me. + +Was she satisfied now? No. Nothing ever satisfies her but demonstration; +untested theories are not in her line, and she won't have them. +It is the right spirit, I concede it; it attracts me; I feel the +influence of it; if I were with her more I think I should take it +up myself. Well, she had one theory remaining about this colossus: +she thought that if we could tame it and make him friendly we could +stand in the river and use him for a bridge. It turned out that he +was already plenty tame enough--at least as far as she was concerned +--so she tried her theory, but it failed: every time she got him +properly placed in the river and went ashore to cross over him, +he came out and followed her around like a pet mountain. Like the +other animals. They all do that. + + +FRIDAY.--Tuesday--Wednesday--Thursday--and today: all without +seeing him. It is a long time to be alone; still, it is better +to be alone than unwelcome. + +I HAD to have company--I was made for it, I think--so I made +friends with the animals. They are just charming, and they have +the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour, +they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you +and wag their tail, if they've got one, and they are always ready +for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose. +I think they are perfect gentlemen. All these days we have had such +good times, and it hasn't been lonesome for me, ever. Lonesome! No, +I should say not. Why, there's always a swarm of them around +--sometimes as much as four or five acres--you can't count them; +and when you stand on a rock in the midst and look out over the +furry expanse it is so mottled and splashed and gay with color +and frisking sheen and sun-flash, and so rippled with stripes, +that you might think it was a lake, only you know it isn't; +and there's storms of sociable birds, and hurricanes of whirring wings; +and when the sun strikes all that feathery commotion, you have a blazing +up of all the colors you can think of, enough to put your eyes out. + +We have made long excursions, and I have seen a great deal of the world; +almost all of it, I think; and so I am the first traveler, +and the only one. When we are on the march, it is an imposing sight +--there's nothing like it anywhere. For comfort I ride a tiger +or a leopard, because it is soft and has a round back that fits me, +and because they are such pretty animals; but for long distance +or for scenery I ride the elephant. He hoists me up with his trunk, +but I can get off myself; when we are ready to camp, he sits and I +slide down the back way. + +The birds and animals are all friendly to each other, and there +are no disputes about anything. They all talk, and they all talk +to me, but it must be a foreign language, for I cannot make out +a word they say; yet they often understand me when I talk back, +particularly the dog and the elephant. It makes me ashamed. +It shows that they are brighter than I am, for I want to be the +principal Experiment myself--and I intend to be, too. + +I have learned a number of things, and am educated, now, but I +wasn't at first. I was ignorant at first. At first it used to vex +me because, with all my watching, I was never smart enough to be +around when the water was running uphill; but now I do not mind it. +I have experimented and experimented until now I know it never +does run uphill, except in the dark. I know it does in the dark, +because the pool never goes dry, which it would, of course, +if the water didn't come back in the night. It is best to prove +things by actual experiment; then you KNOW; whereas if you depend +on guessing and supposing and conjecturing, you never get educated. + +Some things you CAN'T find out; but you will never know you can't +by guessing and supposing: no, you have to be patient and go on +experimenting until you find out that you can't find out. And it is +delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting. +If there wasn't anything to find out, it would be dull. Even trying +to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying +to find out and finding out, and I don't know but more so. +The secret of the water was a treasure until I GOT it; then the +excitement all went away, and I recognized a sense of loss. + +By experiment I know that wood swims, and dry leaves, and feathers, +and plenty of other things; therefore by all that cumulative evidence +you know that a rock will swim; but you have to put up with simply +knowing it, for there isn't any way to prove it--up to now. +But I shall find a way--then THAT excitement will go. Such things +make me sad; because by and by when I have found out everything +there won't be any more excitements, and I do love excitements so! +The other night I couldn't sleep for thinking about it. + +At first I couldn't make out what I was made for, but now I think it +was to search out the secrets of this wonderful world and be happy +and thank the Giver of it all for devising it. I think there are many +things to learn yet--I hope so; and by economizing and not hurrying +too fast I think they will last weeks and weeks. I hope so. When you +cast up a feather it sails away on the air and goes out of sight; +then you throw up a clod and it doesn't. It comes down, every time. +I have tried it and tried it, and it is always so. I wonder why +it is? Of course it DOESN'T come down, but why should it SEEM to? +I suppose it is an optical illusion. I mean, one of them is. +I don't know which one. It may be the feather, it may be the clod; +I can't prove which it is, I can only demonstrate that one or the other +is a fake, and let a person take his choice. + +By watching, I know that the stars are not going to last. +I have seen some of the best ones melt and run down the sky. +Since one can melt, they can all melt; since they can all melt, +they can all melt the same night. That sorrow will come--I know it. +I mean to sit up every night and look at them as long as I can +keep awake; and I will impress those sparkling fields on my memory, +so that by and by when they are taken away I can by my fancy restore +those lovely myriads to the black sky and make them sparkle again, +and double them by the blur of my tears. + + +After the Fall + + +When I look back, the Garden is a dream to me. It was beautiful, +surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now it is lost, +and I shall not see it any more. + +The Garden is lost, but I have found HIM, and am content. +He loves me as well as he can; I love him with all the strength +of my passionate nature, and this, I think, is proper to my youth +and sex. If I ask myself why I love him, I find I do not know, +and do not really much care to know; so I suppose that this kind +of love is not a product of reasoning and statistics, like one's +love for other reptiles and animals. I think that this must be so. +I love certain birds because of their song; but I do not love Adam +on account of his singing--no, it is not that; the more he sings +the more I do not get reconciled to it. Yet I ask him to sing, +because I wish to learn to like everything he is interested in. +I am sure I can learn, because at first I could not stand it, +but now I can. It sours the milk, but it doesn't matter; I can get +used to that kind of milk. + +It is not on account of his brightness that I love him--no, it is +not that. He is not to blame for his brightness, such as it is, +for he did not make it himself; he is as God make him, and that +is sufficient. There was a wise purpose in it, THAT I know. +In time it will develop, though I think it will not be sudden; +and besides, there is no hurry; he is well enough just as he is. + +It is not on account of his gracious and considerate ways and +his delicacy that I love him. No, he has lacks in this regard, +but he is well enough just so, and is improving. + +It is not on account of his industry that I love him--no, it is +not that. I think he has it in him, and I do not know why he +conceals it from me. It is my only pain. Otherwise he is frank +and open with me, now. I am sure he keeps nothing from me but this. +It grieves me that he should have a secret from me, and sometimes it +spoils my sleep, thinking of it, but I will put it out of my mind; +it shall not trouble my happiness, which is otherwise full +to overflowing. + +It is not on account of his education that I love him--no, it is +not that. He is self-educated, and does really know a multitude +of things, but they are not so. + +It is not on account of his chivalry that I love him--no, it is not that. +He told on me, but I do not blame him; it is a peculiarity of sex, +I think, and he did not make his sex. Of course I would not have +told on him, I would have perished first; but that is a peculiarity +of sex, too, and I do not take credit for it, for I did not make +my sex. + +Then why is it that I love him? MERELY BECAUSE HE IS MASCULINE, +I think. + +At bottom he is good, and I love him for that, but I could love +him without it. If he should beat me and abuse me, I should go +on loving him. I know it. It is a matter of sex, I think. + +He is strong and handsome, and I love him for that, and I admire him +and am proud of him, but I could love him without those qualities. +He he were plain, I should love him; if he were a wreck, I should +love him; and I would work for him, and slave over him, and pray +for him, and watch by his bedside until I died. + +Yes, I think I love him merely because he is MINE and is MASCULINE. +There is no other reason, I suppose. And so I think it is as I +first said: that this kind of love is not a product of reasonings +and statistics. It just COMES--none knows whence--and cannot +explain itself. And doesn't need to. + +It is what I think. But I am only a girl, the first that has +examined this matter, and it may turn out that in my ignorance +and inexperience I have not got it right. + + +Forty Years Later + + +It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this +life together--a longing which shall never perish from the earth, +but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves, +until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name. + +But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I; +for he is strong, I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is +to me--life without him would not be life; now could I endure it? +This prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up +while my race continues. I am the first wife; and in the last wife I +shall be repeated. + + +At Eve's Grave + +ADAM: Wheresoever she was, THERE was Eden. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +A HORSE'S TALE + + + +CHAPTER I--SOLDIER BOY--PRIVATELY TO HIMSELF + +I am Buffalo Bill's horse. I have spent my life under his saddle--with +him in it, too, and he is good for two hundred pounds, without his +clothes; and there is no telling how much he does weigh when he is out on +the war-path and has his batteries belted on. He is over six feet, is +young, hasn't an ounce of waste flesh, is straight, graceful, springy in +his motions, quick as a cat, and has a handsome face, and black hair +dangling down on his shoulders, and is beautiful to look at; and nobody +is braver than he is, and nobody is stronger, except myself. Yes, a +person that doubts that he is fine to see should see him in his beaded +buck-skins, on my back and his rifle peeping above his shoulder, chasing +a hostile trail, with me going like the wind and his hair streaming out +behind from the shelter of his broad slouch. Yes, he is a sight to look +at then--and I'm part of it myself. + +I am his favorite horse, out of dozens. Big as he is, I have carried him +eighty-one miles between nightfall and sunrise on the scout; and I am +good for fifty, day in and day out, and all the time. I am not large, +but I am built on a business basis. I have carried him thousands and +thousands of miles on scout duty for the army, and there's not a gorge, +nor a pass, nor a valley, nor a fort, nor a trading post, nor a +buffalo-range in the whole sweep of the Rocky Mountains and the Great +Plains that we don't know as well as we know the bugle-calls. He is +Chief of Scouts to the Army of the Frontier, and it makes us very +important. In such a position as I hold in the military service one +needs to be of good family and possess an education much above the common +to be worthy of the place. I am the best-educated horse outside of the +hippodrome, everybody says, and the best-mannered. It may be so, it is +not for me to say; modesty is the best policy, I think. Buffalo Bill +taught me the most of what I know, my mother taught me much, and I taught +myself the rest. Lay a row of moccasins before me--Pawnee, Sioux, +Shoshone, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, and as many other tribes as you +please--and I can name the tribe every moccasin belongs to by the make of +it. Name it in horse-talk, and could do it in American if I had speech. + +I know some of the Indian signs--the signs they make with their hands, +and by signal-fires at night and columns of smoke by day. Buffalo Bill +taught me how to drag wounded soldiers out of the line of fire with my +teeth; and I've done it, too; at least I've dragged HIM out of the battle +when he was wounded. And not just once, but twice. Yes, I know a lot of +things. I remember forms, and gaits, and faces; and you can't disguise a +person that's done me a kindness so that I won't know him thereafter +wherever I find him. I know the art of searching for a trail, and I know +the stale track from the fresh. I can keep a trail all by myself, with +Buffalo Bill asleep in the saddle; ask him--he will tell you so. Many a +time, when he has ridden all night, he has said to me at dawn, "Take the +watch, Boy; if the trail freshens, call me." Then he goes to sleep. He +knows he can trust me, because I have a reputation. A scout horse that +has a reputation does not play with it. + +My mother was all American--no alkali-spider about HER, I can tell you; +she was of the best blood of Kentucky, the bluest Blue-grass aristocracy, +very proud and acrimonious--or maybe it is ceremonious. I don't know +which it is. But it is no matter; size is the main thing about a word, +and that one's up to standard. She spent her military life as colonel of +the Tenth Dragoons, and saw a deal of rough service--distinguished +service it was, too. I mean, she CARRIED the Colonel; but it's all the +same. Where would he be without his horse? He wouldn't arrive. It +takes two to make a colonel of dragoons. She was a fine dragoon horse, +but never got above that. She was strong enough for the scout service, +and had the endurance, too, but she couldn't quite come up to the speed +required; a scout horse has to have steel in his muscle and lightning in +his blood. + +My father was a bronco. Nothing as to lineage--that is, nothing as to +recent lineage--but plenty good enough when you go a good way back. When +Professor Marsh was out here hunting bones for the chapel of Yale +University he found skeletons of horses no bigger than a fox, bedded in +the rocks, and he said they were ancestors of my father. My mother heard +him say it; and he said those skeletons were two million years old, which +astonished her and made her Kentucky pretensions look small and pretty +antiphonal, not to say oblique. Let me see. . . . I used to know the +meaning of those words, but . . . well, it was years ago, and 'tisn't as +vivid now as it was when they were fresh. That sort of words doesn't +keep, in the kind of climate we have out here. Professor Marsh said +those skeletons were fossils. So that makes me part blue grass and part +fossil; if there is any older or better stock, you will have to look for +it among the Four Hundred, I reckon. I am satisfied with it. And am a +happy horse, too, though born out of wedlock. + +And now we are back at Fort Paxton once more, after a forty-day scout, +away up as far as the Big Horn. Everything quiet. Crows and Blackfeet +squabbling--as usual--but no outbreaks, and settlers feeling fairly easy. + +The Seventh Cavalry still in garrison, here; also the Ninth Dragoons, two +artillery companies, and some infantry. All glad to see me, including +General Alison, commandant. The officers' ladies and children well, and +called upon me--with sugar. Colonel Drake, Seventh Cavalry, said some +pleasant things; Mrs. Drake was very complimentary; also Captain and Mrs. +Marsh, Company B, Seventh Cavalry; also the Chaplain, who is always kind +and pleasant to me, because I kicked the lungs out of a trader once. It +was Tommy Drake and Fanny Marsh that furnished the sugar--nice children, +the nicest at the post, I think. + +That poor orphan child is on her way from France--everybody is full of +the subject. Her father was General Alison's brother; married a +beautiful young Spanish lady ten years ago, and has never been in America +since. They lived in Spain a year or two, then went to France. Both +died some months ago. This little girl that is coming is the only child. +General Alison is glad to have her. He has never seen her. He is a very +nice old bachelor, but is an old bachelor just the same and isn't more +than about a year this side of retirement by age limit; and so what does +he know about taking care of a little maid nine years old? If I could +have her it would be another matter, for I know all about children, and +they adore me. Buffalo Bill will tell you so himself. + +I have some of this news from over-hearing the garrison-gossip, the rest +of it I got from Potter, the General's dog. Potter is the great Dane. +He is privileged, all over the post, like Shekels, the Seventh Cavalry's +dog, and visits everybody's quarters and picks up everything that is +going, in the way of news. Potter has no imagination, and no great deal +of culture, perhaps, but he has a historical mind and a good memory, and +so he is the person I depend upon mainly to post me up when I get back +from a scout. That is, if Shekels is out on depredation and I can't get +hold of him. + + + +CHAPTER II--LETTER FROM ROUEN--TO GENERAL ALISON + +My dear Brother-in-Law,--Please let me write again in Spanish, I cannot +trust my English, and I am aware, from what your brother used to say, +that army officers educated at the Military Academy of the United States +are taught our tongue. It is as I told you in my other letter: both my +poor sister and her husband, when they found they could not recover, +expressed the wish that you should have their little Catherine--as +knowing that you would presently be retired from the army--rather than +that she should remain with me, who am broken in health, or go to your +mother in California, whose health is also frail. + +You do not know the child, therefore I must tell you something about her. +You will not be ashamed of her looks, for she is a copy in little of her +beautiful mother--and it is that Andalusian beauty which is not +surpassable, even in your country. She has her mother's charm and grace +and good heart and sense of justice, and she has her father's vivacity +and cheerfulness and pluck and spirit of enterprise, with the +affectionate disposition and sincerity of both parents. + +My sister pined for her Spanish home all these years of exile; she was +always talking of Spain to the child, and tending and nourishing the love +of Spain in the little thing's heart as a precious flower; and she died +happy in the knowledge that the fruitage of her patriotic labors was as +rich as even she could desire. + +Cathy is a sufficiently good little scholar, for her nine years; her +mother taught her Spanish herself, and kept it always fresh upon her ear +and her tongue by hardly ever speaking with her in any other tongue; her +father was her English teacher, and talked with her in that language +almost exclusively; French has been her everyday speech for more than +seven years among her playmates here; she has a good working use of +governess--German and Italian. It is true that there is always a faint +foreign fragrance about her speech, no matter what language she is +talking, but it is only just noticeable, nothing more, and is rather a +charm than a mar, I think. In the ordinary child-studies Cathy is +neither before nor behind the average child of nine, I should say. But I +can say this for her: in love for her friends and in high-mindedness and +good-heartedness she has not many equals, and in my opinion no superiors. +And I beg of you, let her have her way with the dumb animals--they are +her worship. It is an inheritance from her mother. She knows but little +of cruelties and oppressions--keep them from her sight if you can. She +would flare up at them and make trouble, in her small but quite decided +and resolute way; for she has a character of her own, and lacks neither +promptness nor initiative. Sometimes her judgment is at fault, but I +think her intentions are always right. Once when she was a little +creature of three or four years she suddenly brought her tiny foot down +upon the floor in an apparent outbreak of indignation, then fetched it a +backward wipe, and stooped down to examine the result. Her mother said: + +"Why, what is it, child? What has stirred you so?" + +"Mamma, the big ant was trying to kill the little one." + +"And so you protected the little one." + +"Yes, manure, because he had no friend, and I wouldn't let the big one +kill him." + +"But you have killed them both." + +Cathy was distressed, and her lip trembled. She picked up the remains +and laid them upon her palm, and said: + +"Poor little anty, I'm so sorry; and I didn't mean to kill you, but there +wasn't any other way to save you, it was such a hurry." + +She is a dear and sweet little lady, and when she goes it will give me a +sore heart. But she will be happy with you, and if your heart is old and +tired, give it into her keeping; she will make it young again, she will +refresh it, she will make it sing. Be good to her, for all our sakes! + +My exile will soon be over now. As soon as I am a little stronger I +shall see my Spain again; and that will make me young again! + +MERCEDES. + + + +CHAPTER III--GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER + +I am glad to know that you are all well, in San Bernardino. + +. . . That grandchild of yours has been here--well, I do not quite know +how many days it is; nobody can keep account of days or anything else +where she is! Mother, she did what the Indians were never able to do. +She took the Fort--took it the first day! Took me, too; took the +colonels, the captains, the women, the children, and the dumb brutes; +took Buffalo Bill, and all his scouts; took the garrison--to the last +man; and in forty-eight hours the Indian encampment was hers, illustrious +old Thunder-Bird and all. Do I seem to have lost my solemnity, my +gravity, my poise, my dignity? You would lose your own, in my +circumstances. Mother, you never saw such a winning little devil. She +is all energy, and spirit, and sunshine, and interest in everybody and +everything, and pours out her prodigal love upon every creature that will +take it, high or low, Christian or pagan, feathered or furred; and none +has declined it to date, and none ever will, I think. But she has a +temper, and sometimes it catches fire and flames up, and is likely to +burn whatever is near it; but it is soon over, the passion goes as +quickly as it comes. Of course she has an Indian name already; Indians +always rechristen a stranger early. Thunder-Bird attended to her case. +He gave her the Indian equivalent for firebug, or fire-fly. He said: + +"'Times, ver' quiet, ver' soft, like summer night, but when she mad she +blaze." + +Isn't it good? Can't you see the flare? She's beautiful, mother, +beautiful as a picture; and there is a touch of you in her face, and of +her father--poor George! and in her unresting activities, and her +fearless ways, and her sunbursts and cloudbursts, she is always bringing +George back to me. These impulsive natures are dramatic. George was +dramatic, so is this Lightning-Bug, so is Buffalo Bill. When Cathy first +arrived--it was in the forenoon--Buffalo Bill was away, carrying orders +to Major Fuller, at Five Forks, up in the Clayton Hills. At +mid-afternoon I was at my desk, trying to work, and this sprite had been +making it impossible for half an hour. At last I said: + +"Oh, you bewitching little scamp, CAN'T you be quiet just a minute or +two, and let your poor old uncle attend to a part of his duties?" + +"I'll try, uncle; I will, indeed," she said. + +"Well, then, that's a good child--kiss me. Now, then, sit up in that +chair, and set your eye on that clock. There--that's right. If you +stir--if you so much as wink--for four whole minutes, I'll bite you!" + +It was very sweet and humble and obedient she looked, sitting there, +still as a mouse; I could hardly keep from setting her free and telling +her to make as much racket as she wanted to. During as much as two +minutes there was a most unnatural and heavenly quiet and repose, then +Buffalo Bill came thundering up to the door in all his scout finery, +flung himself out of the saddle, said to his horse, "Wait for me, Boy," +and stepped in, and stopped dead in his tracks--gazing at the child. She +forgot orders, and was on the floor in a moment, saying: + +"Oh, you are so beautiful! Do you like me?" + +"No, I don't, I love you!" and he gathered her up with a hug, and then +set her on his shoulder--apparently nine feet from the floor. + +She was at home. She played with his long hair, and admired his big +hands and his clothes and his carbine, and asked question after question, +as fast as he could answer, until I excused them both for half an hour, +in order to have a chance to finish my work. Then I heard Cathy +exclaiming over Soldier Boy; and he was worthy of her raptures, for he is +a wonder of a horse, and has a reputation which is as shining as his own +silken hide. + + + +CHAPTER IV--CATHY TO HER AUNT MERCEDES + +Oh, it is wonderful here, aunty dear, just paradise! Oh, if you could +only see it! everything so wild and lovely; such grand plains, stretching +such miles and miles and miles, all the most delicious velvety sand and +sage-brush, and rabbits as big as a dog, and such tall and noble +jackassful ears that that is what they name them by; and such vast +mountains, and so rugged and craggy and lofty, with cloud-shawls wrapped +around their shoulders, and looking so solemn and awful and satisfied; +and the charming Indians, oh, how you would dote on them, aunty dear, and +they would on you, too, and they would let you hold their babies, the way +they do me, and they ARE the fattest, and brownest, and sweetest little +things, and never cry, and wouldn't if they had pins sticking in them, +which they haven't, because they are poor and can't afford it; and the +horses and mules and cattle and dogs--hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, +and not an animal that you can't do what you please with, except uncle +Thomas, but _I_ don't mind him, he's lovely; and oh, if you could hear +the bugles: TOO--TOO--TOO-TOO--TOO--TOO, and so on--perfectly beautiful! +Do you recognize that one? It's the first toots of the reveille; it +goes, dear me, SO early in the morning!--then I and every other soldier +on the whole place are up and out in a minute, except uncle Thomas, who +is most unaccountably lazy, I don't know why, but I have talked to him +about it, and I reckon it will be better, now. He hasn't any faults +much, and is charming and sweet, like Buffalo Bill, and Thunder-Bird, and +Mammy Dorcas, and Soldier Boy, and Shekels, and Potter, and Sour-Mash, +and--well, they're ALL that, just angels, as you may say. + +The very first day I came, I don't know how long ago it was, Buffalo Bill +took me on Soldier Boy to Thunder-Bird's camp, not the big one which is +out on the plain, which is White Cloud's, he took me to THAT one next +day, but this one is four or five miles up in the hills and crags, where +there is a great shut-in meadow, full of Indian lodges and dogs and +squaws and everything that is interesting, and a brook of the clearest +water running through it, with white pebbles on the bottom and trees all +along the banks cool and shady and good to wade in, and as the sun goes +down it is dimmish in there, but away up against the sky you see the big +peaks towering up and shining bright and vivid in the sun, and sometimes +an eagle sailing by them, not flapping a wing, the same as if he was +asleep; and young Indians and girls romping and laughing and carrying on, +around the spring and the pool, and not much clothes on except the girls, +and dogs fighting, and the squaws busy at work, and the bucks busy +resting, and the old men sitting in a bunch smoking, and passing the pipe +not to the left but to the right, which means there's been a row in the +camp and they are settling it if they can, and children playing JUST the +same as any other children, and little boys shooting at a mark with bows, +and I cuffed one of them because he hit a dog with a club that wasn't +doing anything, and he resented it but before long he wished he hadn't: +but this sentence is getting too long and I will start another. +Thunder-Bird put on his Sunday-best war outfit to let me see him, and he +was splendid to look at, with his face painted red and bright and intense +like a fire-coal and a valance of eagle feathers from the top of his head +all down his back, and he had his tomahawk, too, and his pipe, which has +a stem which is longer than my arm, and I never had such a good time in +an Indian camp in my life, and I learned a lot of words of the language, +and next day BB took me to the camp out on the Plains, four miles, and I +had another good time and got acquainted with some more Indians and dogs; +and the big chief, by the name of White Cloud, gave me a pretty little +bow and arrows and I gave him my red sash-ribbon, and in four days I +could shoot very well with it and beat any white boy of my size at the +post; and I have been to those camps plenty of times since; and I have +learned to ride, too, BB taught me, and every day he practises me and +praises me, and every time I do better than ever he lets me have a +scamper on Soldier Boy, and THAT'S the last agony of pleasure! for he is +the charmingest horse, and so beautiful and shiny and black, and hasn't +another color on him anywhere, except a white star in his forehead, not +just an imitation star, but a real one, with four points, shaped exactly +like a star that's hand-made, and if you should cover him all up but his +star you would know him anywhere, even in Jerusalem or Australia, by +that. And I got acquainted with a good many of the Seventh Cavalry, and +the dragoons, and officers, and families, and horses, in the first few +days, and some more in the next few and the next few and the next few, +and now I know more soldiers and horses than you can think, no matter how +hard you try. I am keeping up my studies every now and then, but there +isn't much time for it. I love you so! and I send you a hug and a kiss. + +CATHY. + +P.S.--I belong to the Seventh Cavalry and Ninth Dragoons, I am an +officer, too, and do not have to work on account of not getting any +wages. + + + +CHAPTER V--GENERAL ALISON TO MERCEDES + +She has been with us a good nice long time, now. You are troubled about +your sprite because this is such a wild frontier, hundreds of miles from +civilization, and peopled only by wandering tribes of savages? You fear +for her safety? Give yourself no uneasiness about her. Dear me, she's +in a nursery! and she's got more than eighteen hundred nurses. It would +distress the garrison to suspect that you think they can't take care of +her. They think they can. They would tell you so themselves. You see, +the Seventh Cavalry has never had a child of its very own before, and +neither has the Ninth Dragoons; and so they are like all new mothers, +they think there is no other child like theirs, no other child so +wonderful, none that is so worthy to be faithfully and tenderly looked +after and protected. These bronzed veterans of mine are very good +mothers, I think, and wiser than some other mothers; for they let her +take lots of risks, and it is a good education for her; and the more +risks she takes and comes successfully out of, the prouder they are of +her. They adopted her, with grave and formal military ceremonies of +their own invention--solemnities is the truer word; solemnities that were +so profoundly solemn and earnest, that the spectacle would have been +comical if it hadn't been so touching. It was a good show, and as stately +and complex as guard-mount and the trooping of the colors; and it had its +own special music, composed for the occasion by the bandmaster of the +Seventh; and the child was as serious as the most serious war-worn +soldier of them all; and finally when they throned her upon the shoulder +of the oldest veteran, and pronounced her "well and truly adopted," and +the bands struck up and all saluted and she saluted in return, it was +better and more moving than any kindred thing I have seen on the stage, +because stage things are make-believe, but this was real and the players' +hearts were in it. + +It happened several weeks ago, and was followed by some additional +solemnities. The men created a couple of new ranks, thitherto unknown to +the army regulations, and conferred them upon Cathy, with ceremonies +suitable to a duke. So now she is Corporal-General of the Seventh +Cavalry, and Flag-Lieutenant of the Ninth Dragoons, with the privilege +(decreed by the men) of writing U.S.A. after her name! Also, they +presented her a pair of shoulder-straps--both dark blue, the one with F. +L. on it, the other with C. G. Also, a sword. She wears them. Finally, +they granted her the salute. I am witness that that ceremony is +faithfully observed by both parties--and most gravely and decorously, +too. I have never seen a soldier smile yet, while delivering it, nor +Cathy in returning it. + +Ostensibly I was not present at these proceedings, and am ignorant of +them; but I was where I could see. I was afraid of one thing--the +jealousy of the other children of the post; but there is nothing of that, +I am glad to say. On the contrary, they are proud of their comrade and +her honors. It is a surprising thing, but it is true. The children are +devoted to Cathy, for she has turned their dull frontier life into a sort +of continuous festival; also they know her for a stanch and steady +friend, a friend who can always be depended upon, and does not change +with the weather. + +She has become a rather extraordinary rider, under the tutorship of a +more than extraordinary teacher--BB, which is her pet name for Buffalo +Bill. She pronounces it beeby. He has not only taught her seventeen +ways of breaking her neck, but twenty-two ways of avoiding it. He has +infused into her the best and surest protection of a +horseman--CONFIDENCE. He did it gradually, systematically, little by +little, a step at a time, and each step made sure before the next was +essayed. And so he inched her along up through terrors that had been +discounted by training before she reached them, and therefore were not +recognizable as terrors when she got to them. Well, she is a daring +little rider, now, and is perfect in what she knows of horsemanship. +By-and-by she will know the art like a West Point cadet, and will +exercise it as fearlessly. She doesn't know anything about side-saddles. +Does that distress you? And she is a fine performer, without any saddle +at all. Does that discomfort you? Do not let it; she is not in any +danger, I give you my word. + +You said that if my heart was old and tired she would refresh it, and you +said truly. I do not know how I got along without her, before. I was a +forlorn old tree, but now that this blossoming vine has wound itself +about me and become the life of my life, it is very different. As a +furnisher of business for me and for Mammy Dorcas she is exhaustlessly +competent, but I like my share of it and of course Dorcas likes hers, for +Dorcas "raised" George, and Cathy is George over again in so many ways +that she brings back Dorcas's youth and the joys of that long-vanished +time. My father tried to set Dorcas free twenty years ago, when we still +lived in Virginia, but without success; she considered herself a member +of the family, and wouldn't go. And so, a member of the family she +remained, and has held that position unchallenged ever since, and holds +it now; for when my mother sent her here from San Bernardino when we +learned that Cathy was coming, she only changed from one division of the +family to the other. She has the warm heart of her race, and its lavish +affections, and when Cathy arrived the pair were mother and child in five +minutes, and that is what they are to date and will continue. Dorcas +really thinks she raised George, and that is one of her prides, but +perhaps it was a mutual raising, for their ages were the same--thirteen +years short of mine. But they were playmates, at any rate; as regards +that, there is no room for dispute. + +Cathy thinks Dorcas is the best Catholic in America except herself. She +could not pay any one a higher compliment than that, and Dorcas could not +receive one that would please her better. Dorcas is satisfied that there +has never been a more wonderful child than Cathy. She has conceived the +curious idea that Cathy is TWINS, and that one of them is a boy-twin and +failed to get segregated--got submerged, is the idea. To argue with her +that this is nonsense is a waste of breath--her mind is made up, and +arguments do not affect it. She says: + +"Look at her; she loves dolls, and girl-plays, and everything a girl +loves, and she's gentle and sweet, and ain't cruel to dumb brutes--now +that's the girl-twin, but she loves boy-plays, and drums and fifes and +soldiering, and rough-riding, and ain't afraid of anybody or +anything--and that's the boy-twin; 'deed you needn't tell ME she's only +ONE child; no, sir, she's twins, and one of them got shet up out of +sight. Out of sight, but that don't make any difference, that boy is in +there, and you can see him look out of her eyes when her temper is up." + +Then Dorcas went on, in her simple and earnest way, to furnish +illustrations. + +"Look at that raven, Marse Tom. Would anybody befriend a raven but that +child? Of course they wouldn't; it ain't natural. Well, the Injun boy +had the raven tied up, and was all the time plaguing it and starving it, +and she pitied the po' thing, and tried to buy it from the boy, and the +tears was in her eyes. That was the girl-twin, you see. She offered him +her thimble, and he flung it down; she offered him all the doughnuts she +had, which was two, and he flung them down; she offered him half a paper +of pins, worth forty ravens, and he made a mouth at her and jabbed one of +them in the raven's back. That was the limit, you know. It called for +the other twin. Her eyes blazed up, and she jumped for him like a +wild-cat, and when she was done with him she was rags and he wasn't +anything but an allegory. That was most undoubtedly the other twin, you +see, coming to the front. No, sir; don't tell ME he ain't in there. +I've seen him with my own eyes--and plenty of times, at that." + +"Allegory? What is an allegory?" + +"I don't know, Marse Tom, it's one of her words; she loves the big ones, +you know, and I pick them up from her; they sound good and I can't help +it." + +"What happened after she had converted the boy into an allegory?" + +"Why, she untied the raven and confiscated him by force and fetched him +home, and left the doughnuts and things on the ground. Petted him, of +course, like she does with every creature. In two days she had him so +stuck after her that she--well, YOU know how he follows her everywhere, +and sets on her shoulder often when she rides her breakneck rampages--all +of which is the girl-twin to the front, you see--and he does what he +pleases, and is up to all kinds of devilment, and is a perfect nuisance +in the kitchen. Well, they all stand it, but they wouldn't if it was +another person's bird." + +Here she began to chuckle comfortably, and presently she said: + +"Well, you know, she's a nuisance herself, Miss Cathy is, she IS so busy, +and into everything, like that bird. It's all just as innocent, you +know, and she don't mean any harm, and is so good and dear; and it ain't +her fault, it's her nature; her interest is always a-working and always +red-hot, and she can't keep quiet. Well, yesterday it was 'Please, Miss +Cathy, don't do that'; and, 'Please, Miss Cathy, let that alone'; and, +'Please, Miss Cathy, don't make so much noise'; and so on and so on, till +I reckon I had found fault fourteen times in fifteen minutes; then she +looked up at me with her big brown eyes that can plead so, and said in +that odd little foreign way that goes to your heart, + +"'Please, mammy, make me a compliment." + +"And of course you did it, you old fool?" + +"Marse Tom, I just grabbed her up to my breast and says, 'Oh, you po' +dear little motherless thing, you ain't got a fault in the world, and you +can do anything you want to, and tear the house down, and yo' old black +mammy won't say a word!'" + +"Why, of course, of course--_I_ knew you'd spoil the child." + +She brushed away her tears, and said with dignity: + +"Spoil the child? spoil THAT child, Marse Tom? There can't ANYBODY spoil +her. She's the king bee of this post, and everybody pets her and is her +slave, and yet, as you know, your own self, she ain't the least little +bit spoiled." Then she eased her mind with this retort: "Marse Tom, she +makes you do anything she wants to, and you can't deny it; so if she +could be spoilt, she'd been spoilt long ago, because you are the very +WORST! Look at that pile of cats in your chair, and you sitting on a +candle-box, just as patient; it's because they're her cats." + +If Dorcas were a soldier, I could punish her for such large frankness as +that. I changed the subject, and made her resume her illustrations. She +had scored against me fairly, and I wasn't going to cheapen her victory +by disputing it. She proceeded to offer this incident in evidence on her +twin theory: + +"Two weeks ago when she got her finger mashed open, she turned pretty +pale with the pain, but she never said a word. I took her in my lap, and +the surgeon sponged off the blood and took a needle and thread and began +to sew it up; it had to have a lot of stitches, and each one made her +scrunch a little, but she never let go a sound. At last the surgeon was +so full of admiration that he said, 'Well, you ARE a brave little thing!' +and she said, just as ca'm and simple as if she was talking about the +weather, 'There isn't anybody braver but the Cid!' You see? it was the +boy-twin that the surgeon was a-dealing with. + +"Who is the Cid?" + +"I don't know, sir--at least only what she says. She's always talking +about him, and says he was the bravest hero Spain ever had, or any other +country. They have it up and down, the children do, she standing up for +the Cid, and they working George Washington for all he is worth." + +"Do they quarrel?" + +"No; it's only disputing, and bragging, the way children do. They want +her to be an American, but she can't be anything but a Spaniard, she +says. You see, her mother was always longing for home, po' thing! and +thinking about it, and so the child is just as much a Spaniard as if +she'd always lived there. She thinks she remembers how Spain looked, but +I reckon she don't, because she was only a baby when they moved to +France. She is very proud to be a Spaniard." + +Does that please you, Mercedes? Very well, be content; your niece is +loyal to her allegiance: her mother laid deep the foundations of her +love for Spain, and she will go back to you as good a Spaniard as you are +yourself. She has made me promise to take her to you for a long visit +when the War Office retires me. + +I attend to her studies myself; has she told you that? Yes, I am her +school-master, and she makes pretty good progress, I think, everything +considered. Everything considered--being translated--means holidays. +But the fact is, she was not born for study, and it comes hard. Hard for +me, too; it hurts me like a physical pain to see that free spirit of the +air and the sunshine laboring and grieving over a book; and sometimes +when I find her gazing far away towards the plain and the blue mountains +with the longing in her eyes, I have to throw open the prison doors; I +can't help it. A quaint little scholar she is, and makes plenty of +blunders. Once I put the question: + +"What does the Czar govern?" + +She rested her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand and took that +problem under deep consideration. Presently she looked up and answered, +with a rising inflection implying a shade of uncertainty, + +"The dative case?" + +Here are a couple of her expositions which were delivered with tranquil +confidence: + +"CHAPLAIN, diminutive of chap. LASS is masculine, LASSIE is feminine." + +She is not a genius, you see, but just a normal child; they all make +mistakes of that sort. There is a glad light in her eye which is pretty +to see when she finds herself able to answer a question promptly and +accurately, without any hesitation; as, for instance, this morning: + +"Cathy dear, what is a cube?" + +"Why, a native of Cuba." + +She still drops a foreign word into her talk now and then, and there is +still a subtle foreign flavor or fragrance about even her exactest +English--and long may this abide! for it has for me a charm that is very +pleasant. Sometimes her English is daintily prim and bookish and +captivating. She has a child's sweet tooth, but for her health's sake I +try to keep its inspirations under cheek. She is obedient--as is proper +for a titled and recognized military personage, which she is--but the +chain presses sometimes. For instance, we were out for a walk, and passed +by some bushes that were freighted with wild goose-berries. Her face +brightened and she put her hands together and delivered herself of this +speech, most feelingly: + +"Oh, if I was permitted a vice it would be the gourmandise!" + +Could I resist that? No. I gave her a gooseberry. + +You ask about her languages. They take care of themselves; they will not +get rusty here; our regiments are not made up of natives alone--far from +it. And she is picking up Indian tongues diligently. + + + +CHAPTER VI--SOLDIER BOY AND THE MEXICAN PLUG + +"When did you come?" + +"Arrived at sundown." + +"Where from?" + +"Salt Lake." + +"Are you in the service?" + +"No. Trade." + +"Pirate trade, I reckon." + +"What do you know about it?" + +"I saw you when you came. I recognized your master. He is a bad sort. +Trap-robber, horse-thief, squaw-man, renegado--Hank Butters--I know him +very well. Stole you, didn't he?" + +"Well, it amounted to that." + +"I thought so. Where is his pard?" + +"He stopped at White Cloud's camp." + +"He is another of the same stripe, is Blake Haskins." (Aside.) They are +laying for Buffalo Bill again, I guess. (Aloud.) "What is your name?" + +"Which one?" + +"Have you got more than one?" + +"I get a new one every time I'm stolen. I used to have an honest name, +but that was early; I've forgotten it. Since then I've had thirteen +aliases." + +"Aliases? What is alias?" + +"A false name." + +"Alias. It's a fine large word, and is in my line; it has quite a +learned and cerebrospinal incandescent sound. Are you educated?" + +"Well, no, I can't claim it. I can take down bars, I can distinguish +oats from shoe-pegs, I can blaspheme a saddle-boil with the college-bred, +and I know a few other things--not many; I have had no chance, I have +always had to work; besides, I am of low birth and no family. You speak +my dialect like a native, but you are not a Mexican Plug, you are a +gentleman, I can see that; and educated, of course." + +"Yes, I am of old family, and not illiterate. I am a fossil." + +"A which?" + +"Fossil. The first horses were fossils. They date back two million +years." + +"Gr-eat sand and sage-brush! do you mean it?" + +"Yes, it is true. The bones of my ancestors are held in reverence and +worship, even by men. They do not leave them exposed to the weather when +they find them, but carry them three thousand miles and enshrine them in +their temples of learning, and worship them." + +"It is wonderful! I knew you must be a person of distinction, by your +fine presence and courtly address, and by the fact that you are not +subjected to the indignity of hobbles, like myself and the rest. Would +you tell me your name?" + +"You have probably heard of it--Soldier Boy." + +"What!--the renowned, the illustrious?" + +"Even so." + +"It takes my breath! Little did I dream that ever I should stand face to +face with the possessor of that great name. Buffalo Bill's horse! Known +from the Canadian border to the deserts of Arizona, and from the eastern +marches of the Great Plains to the foot-hills of the Sierra! Truly this +is a memorable day. You still serve the celebrated Chief of Scouts?" + +"I am still his property, but he has lent me, for a time, to the most +noble, the most gracious, the most excellent, her Excellency Catherine, +Corporal-General Seventh Cavalry and Flag-Lieutenant Ninth Dragoons, +U.S.A.,--on whom be peace!" + +"Amen. Did you say HER Excellency?" + +"The same. A Spanish lady, sweet blossom of a ducal house. And truly a +wonder; knowing everything, capable of everything; speaking all the +languages, master of all sciences, a mind without horizons, a heart of +gold, the glory of her race! On whom be peace!" + +"Amen. It is marvellous!" + +"Verily. I knew many things, she has taught me others. I am educated. +I will tell you about her." + +"I listen--I am enchanted." + +"I will tell a plain tale, calmly, without excitement, without eloquence. +When she had been here four or five weeks she was already erudite in +military things, and they made her an officer--a double officer. She +rode the drill every day, like any soldier; and she could take the bugle +and direct the evolutions herself. Then, on a day, there was a grand +race, for prizes--none to enter but the children. Seventeen children +entered, and she was the youngest. Three girls, fourteen boys--good +riders all. It was a steeplechase, with four hurdles, all pretty high. +The first prize was a most cunning half-grown silver bugle, and mighty +pretty, with red silk cord and tassels. Buffalo Bill was very anxious; +for he had taught her to ride, and he did most dearly want her to win +that race, for the glory of it. So he wanted her to ride me, but she +wouldn't; and she reproached him, and said it was unfair and unright, and +taking advantage; for what horse in this post or any other could stand a +chance against me? and she was very severe with him, and said, 'You ought +to be ashamed--you are proposing to me conduct unbecoming an officer and +a gentleman.' So he just tossed her up in the air about thirty feet and +caught her as she came down, and said he was ashamed; and put up his +handkerchief and pretended to cry, which nearly broke her heart, and she +petted him, and begged him to forgive her, and said she would do anything +in the world he could ask but that; but he said he ought to go hang +himself, and he MUST, if he could get a rope; it was nothing but right he +should, for he never, never could forgive himself; and then SHE began to +cry, and they both sobbed, the way you could hear him a mile, and she +clinging around his neck and pleading, till at last he was comforted a +little, and gave his solemn promise he wouldn't hang himself till after +the race; and wouldn't do it at all if she won it, which made her happy, +and she said she would win it or die in the saddle; so then everything +was pleasant again and both of them content. He can't help playing jokes +on her, he is so fond of her and she is so innocent and unsuspecting; and +when she finds it out she cuffs him and is in a fury, but presently +forgives him because it's him; and maybe the very next day she's caught +with another joke; you see she can't learn any better, because she hasn't +any deceit in her, and that kind aren't ever expecting it in another +person. + +"It was a grand race. The whole post was there, and there was such +another whooping and shouting when the seventeen kids came flying down +the turf and sailing over the hurdles--oh, beautiful to see! Half-way +down, it was kind of neck and neck, and anybody's race and nobody's. +Then, what should happen but a cow steps out and puts her head down to +munch grass, with her broadside to the battalion, and they a-coming like +the wind; they split apart to flank her, but SHE?--why, she drove the +spurs home and soared over that cow like a bird! and on she went, and +cleared the last hurdle solitary and alone, the army letting loose the +grand yell, and she skipped from the horse the same as if he had been +standing still, and made her bow, and everybody crowded around to +congratulate, and they gave her the bugle, and she put it to her lips and +blew 'boots and saddles' to see how it would go, and BB was as proud as +you can't think! And he said, 'Take Soldier Boy, and don't pass him back +till I ask for him!' and I can tell you he wouldn't have said that to any +other person on this planet. That was two months and more ago, and +nobody has been on my back since but the Corporal-General Seventh Cavalry +and Flag-Lieutenant of the Ninth Dragoons, U.S.A.,--on whom be peace!" + +"Amen. I listen--tell me more." + +"She set to work and organized the Sixteen, and called it the First +Battalion Rocky Mountain Rangers, U.S.A., and she wanted to be bugler, +but they elected her Lieutenant-General and Bugler. So she ranks her +uncle the commandant, who is only a Brigadier. And doesn't she train +those little people! Ask the Indians, ask the traders, ask the soldiers; +they'll tell you. She has been at it from the first day. Every morning +they go clattering down into the plain, and there she sits on my back +with her bugle at her mouth and sounds the orders and puts them through +the evolutions for an hour or more; and it is too beautiful for anything +to see those ponies dissolve from one formation into another, and waltz +about, and break, and scatter, and form again, always moving, always +graceful, now trotting, now galloping, and so on, sometimes near by, +sometimes in the distance, all just like a state ball, you know, and +sometimes she can't hold herself any longer, but sounds the 'charge,' and +turns me loose! and you can take my word for it, if the battalion hasn't +too much of a start we catch up and go over the breastworks with the +front line. + +"Yes, they are soldiers, those little people; and healthy, too, not +ailing any more, the way they used to be sometimes. It's because of her +drill. She's got a fort, now--Fort Fanny Marsh. Major-General Tommy +Drake planned it out, and the Seventh and Dragoons built it. Tommy is +the Colonel's son, and is fifteen and the oldest in the Battalion; Fanny +Marsh is Brigadier-General, and is next oldest--over thirteen. She is +daughter of Captain Marsh, Company B, Seventh Cavalry. +Lieutenant-General Alison is the youngest by considerable; I think she is +about nine and a half or three-quarters. Her military rig, as +Lieutenant-General, isn't for business, it's for dress parade, because +the ladies made it. They say they got it out of the Middle Ages--out of +a book--and it is all red and blue and white silks and satins and +velvets; tights, trunks, sword, doublet with slashed sleeves, short cape, +cap with just one feather in it; I've heard them name these things; they +got them out of the book; she's dressed like a page, of old times, they +say. It's the daintiest outfit that ever was--you will say so, when you +see it. She's lovely in it--oh, just a dream! In some ways she is just +her age, but in others she's as old as her uncle, I think. She is very +learned. She teaches her uncle his book. I have seen her sitting by +with the book and reciting to him what is in it, so that he can learn to +do it himself. + +"Every Saturday she hires little Injuns to garrison her fort; then she +lays siege to it, and makes military approaches by make-believe trenches +in make-believe night, and finally at make-believe dawn she draws her +sword and sounds the assault and takes it by storm. It is for practice. +And she has invented a bugle-call all by herself, out of her own head, +and it's a stirring one, and the prettiest in the service. It's to call +ME--it's never used for anything else. She taught it to me, and told me +what it says: 'IT IS I, SOLDIER--COME!' and when those thrilling notes +come floating down the distance I hear them without fail, even if I am +two miles away; and then--oh, then you should see my heels get down to +business! + +"And she has taught me how to say good-morning and good-night to her, +which is by lifting my right hoof for her to shake; and also how to say +good-bye; I do that with my left foot--but only for practice, because +there hasn't been any but make-believe good-byeing yet, and I hope there +won't ever be. It would make me cry if I ever had to put up my left foot +in earnest. She has taught me how to salute, and I can do it as well as +a soldier. I bow my head low, and lay my right hoof against my cheek. +She taught me that because I got into disgrace once, through ignorance. +I am privileged, because I am known to be honorable and trustworthy, and +because I have a distinguished record in the service; so they don't +hobble me nor tie me to stakes or shut me tight in stables, but let me +wander around to suit myself. Well, trooping the colors is a very solemn +ceremony, and everybody must stand uncovered when the flag goes by, the +commandant and all; and once I was there, and ignorantly walked across +right in front of the band, which was an awful disgrace: Ah, the +Lieutenant-General was so ashamed, and so distressed that I should have +done such a thing before all the world, that she couldn't keep the tears +back; and then she taught me the salute, so that if I ever did any other +unmilitary act through ignorance I could do my salute and she believed +everybody would think it was apology enough and would not press the +matter. It is very nice and distinguished; no other horse can do it; +often the men salute me, and I return it. I am privileged to be present +when the Rocky Mountain Rangers troop the colors and I stand solemn, like +the children, and I salute when the flag goes by. Of course when she +goes to her fort her sentries sing out 'Turn out the guard!' and then . . +. do you catch that refreshing early-morning whiff from the +mountain-pines and the wild flowers? The night is far spent; we'll hear +the bugles before long. Dorcas, the black woman, is very good and nice; +she takes care of the Lieutenant-General, and is Brigadier-General +Alison's mother, which makes her mother-in-law to the Lieutenant-General. +That is what Shekels says. At least it is what I think he says, though I +never can understand him quite clearly. He--" + +"Who is Shekels?" + +"The Seventh Cavalry dog. I mean, if he IS a dog. His father was a +coyote and his mother was a wild-cat. It doesn't really make a dog out +of him, does it?" + +"Not a real dog, I should think. Only a kind of a general dog, at most, +I reckon. Though this is a matter of ichthyology, I suppose; and if it +is, it is out of my depth, and so my opinion is not valuable, and I don't +claim much consideration for it." + +"It isn't ichthyology; it is dogmatics, which is still more difficult and +tangled up. Dogmatics always are." + +"Dogmatics is quite beyond me, quite; so I am not competing. But on +general principles it is my opinion that a colt out of a coyote and a +wild-cat is no square dog, but doubtful. That is my hand, and I stand +pat." + +"Well, it is as far as I can go myself, and be fair and conscientious. I +have always regarded him as a doubtful dog, and so has Potter. Potter is +the great Dane. Potter says he is no dog, and not even poultry--though I +do not go quite so far as that. + +"And I wouldn't, myself. Poultry is one of those things which no person +can get to the bottom of, there is so much of it and such variety. It is +just wings, and wings, and wings, till you are weary: turkeys, and +geese, and bats, and butterflies, and angels, and grasshoppers, and +flying-fish, and--well, there is really no end to the tribe; it gives me +the heaves just to think of it. But this one hasn't any wings, has he?" + +"No." + +"Well, then, in my belief he is more likely to be dog than poultry. I +have not heard of poultry that hadn't wings. Wings is the SIGN of +poultry; it is what you tell poultry by. Look at the mosquito." + +"What do you reckon he is, then? He must be something." + +"Why, he could be a reptile; anything that hasn't wings is a reptile." + +"Who told you that?" + +"Nobody told me, but I overheard it." + +"Where did you overhear it?" + +"Years ago. I was with the Philadelphia Institute expedition in the Bad +Lands under Professor Cope, hunting mastodon bones, and I overheard him +say, his own self, that any plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium +that hadn't wings and was uncertain was a reptile. Well, then, has this +dog any wings? No. Is he a plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium? +Maybe so, maybe not; but without ever having seen him, and judging only +by his illegal and spectacular parentage, I will bet the odds of a bale +of hay to a bran mash that he looks it. Finally, is he uncertain? That +is the point--is he uncertain? I will leave it to you if you have ever +heard of a more uncertainer dog than what this one is?" + +"No, I never have." + +"Well, then, he's a reptile. That's settled." + +"Why, look here, whatsyourname" + +"Last alias, Mongrel." + +"A good one, too. I was going to say, you are better educated than you +have been pretending to be. I like cultured society, and I shall +cultivate your acquaintance. Now as to Shekels, whenever you want to +know about any private thing that is going on at this post or in White +Cloud's camp or Thunder-Bird's, he can tell you; and if you make friends +with him he'll be glad to, for he is a born gossip, and picks up all the +tittle-tattle. Being the whole Seventh Cavalry's reptile, he doesn't +belong to anybody in particular, and hasn't any military duties; so he +comes and goes as he pleases, and is popular with all the house cats and +other authentic sources of private information. He understands all the +languages, and talks them all, too. With an accent like gritting your +teeth, it is true, and with a grammar that is no improvement on +blasphemy--still, with practice you get at the meat of what he says, and +it serves. . . Hark! That's the reveille. . . . + +[THE REVEILLE] + +"Faint and far, but isn't it clear, isn't it sweet? There's no music +like the bugle to stir the blood, in the still solemnity of the morning +twilight, with the dim plain stretching away to nothing and the spectral +mountains slumbering against the sky. You'll hear another note in a +minute--faint and far and clear, like the other one, and sweeter still, +you'll notice. Wait . . . listen. There it goes! It says, 'IT IS I, +SOLDIER--COME!' . . . + +[SOLDIER BOY'S BUGLE CALL] + +. . . Now then, watch me leave a blue streak behind!" + + + +CHAPTER VII--SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS + +"Did you do as I told you? Did you look up the Mexican Plug?" + +"Yes, I made his acquaintance before night and got his friendship." + +"I liked him. Did you?" + +"Not at first. He took me for a reptile, and it troubled me, because I +didn't know whether it was a compliment or not. I couldn't ask him, +because it would look ignorant. So I didn't say anything, and soon liked +him very well indeed. Was it a compliment, do you think?" + +"Yes, that is what it was. They are very rare, the reptiles; very few +left, now-a-days." + +"Is that so? What is a reptile?" + +"It is a plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hasn't any +wings and is uncertain." + +"Well, it--it sounds fine, it surely does." + +"And it IS fine. You may be thankful you are one." + +"I am. It seems wonderfully grand and elegant for a person that is so +humble as I am; but I am thankful, I am indeed, and will try to live up +to it. It is hard to remember. Will you say it again, please, and say +it slow?" + +"Plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hasn't any wings and is +uncertain." + +"It is beautiful, anybody must grant it; beautiful, and of a noble sound. +I hope it will not make me proud and stuck-up--I should not like to be +that. It is much more distinguished and honorable to be a reptile than a +dog, don't you think, Soldier?" + +"Why, there's no comparison. It is awfully aristocratic. Often a duke +is called a reptile; it is set down so, in history." + +"Isn't that grand! Potter wouldn't ever associate with me, but I reckon +he'll be glad to when he finds out what I am." + +"You can depend upon it." + +"I will thank Mongrel for this. He is a very good sort, for a Mexican +Plug. Don't you think he is?" + +"It is my opinion of him; and as for his birth, he cannot help that. We +cannot all be reptiles, we cannot all be fossils; we have to take what +comes and be thankful it is no worse. It is the true philosophy." + +"For those others?" + +"Stick to the subject, please. Did it turn out that my suspicions were +right?" + +"Yes, perfectly right. Mongrel has heard them planning. They are after +BB's life, for running them out of Medicine Bow and taking their stolen +horses away from them." + +"Well, they'll get him yet, for sure." + +"Not if he keeps a sharp look-out." + +"HE keep a sharp lookout! He never does; he despises them, and all their +kind. His life is always being threatened, and so it has come to be +monotonous." + +"Does he know they are here?" + +"Oh yes, he knows it. He is always the earliest to know who comes and +who goes. But he cares nothing for them and their threats; he only +laughs when people warn him. They'll shoot him from behind a tree the +first he knows. Did Mongrel tell you their plans?" + +"Yes. They have found out that he starts for Fort Clayton day after +to-morrow, with one of his scouts; so they will leave to-morrow, letting +on to go south, but they will fetch around north all in good time." + +"Shekels, I don't like the look of it." + + + +CHAPTER VIII--THE SCOUT-START. BB AND LIEUTENANT-GENERAL ALISON + +BB (saluting). "Good! handsomely done! The Seventh couldn't beat it! +You do certainly handle your Rangers like an expert, General. And where +are you bound?" + +"Four miles on the trail to Fort Clayton." + +"Glad am I, dear! What's the idea of it?" + +"Guard of honor for you and Thorndike." + +"Bless--your--HEART! I'd rather have it from you than from the +Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the United States, you incomparable +little soldier!--and I don't need to take any oath to that, for you to +believe it." + +"I THOUGHT you'd like it, BB." + +"LIKE it? Well, I should say so! Now then--all ready--sound the +advance, and away we go!" + + + +CHAPTER IX--SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS AGAIN + +"Well, this is the way it happened. We did the escort duty; then we +came back and struck for the plain and put the Rangers through a rousing +drill--oh, for hours! Then we sent them home under Brigadier-General +Fanny Marsh; then the Lieutenant-General and I went off on a gallop over +the plains for about three hours, and were lazying along home in the +middle of the afternoon, when we met Jimmy Slade, the drummer-boy, and he +saluted and asked the Lieutenant-General if she had heard the news, and +she said no, and he said: + +"'Buffalo Bill has been ambushed and badly shot this side of Clayton, and +Thorndike the scout, too; Bill couldn't travel, but Thorndike could, and +he brought the news, and Sergeant Wilkes and six men of Company B are +gone, two hours ago, hotfoot, to get Bill. And they say--' + +"'GO!' she shouts to me--and I went." + +"Fast?" + +"Don't ask foolish questions. It was an awful pace. For four hours +nothing happened, and not a word said, except that now and then she said, +'Keep it up, Boy, keep it up, sweetheart; we'll save him!' I kept it up. +Well, when the dark shut down, in the rugged hills, that poor little chap +had been tearing around in the saddle all day, and I noticed by the slack +knee-pressure that she was tired and tottery, and I got dreadfully +afraid; but every time I tried to slow down and let her go to sleep, so I +could stop, she hurried me up again; and so, sure enough, at last over +she went! + +"Ah, that was a fix to be in I for she lay there and didn't stir, and +what was I to do? I couldn't leave her to fetch help, on account of the +wolves. There was nothing to do but stand by. It was dreadful. I was +afraid she was killed, poor little thing! But she wasn't. She came to, +by-and-by, and said, 'Kiss me, Soldier,' and those were blessed words. I +kissed her--often; I am used to that, and we like it. But she didn't get +up, and I was worried. She fondled my nose with her hand, and talked to +me, and called me endearing names--which is her way--but she caressed +with the same hand all the time. The other arm was broken, you see, but +I didn't know it, and she didn't mention it. She didn't want to distress +me, you know. + +"Soon the big gray wolves came, and hung around, and you could hear them +snarl, and snap at each other, but you couldn't see anything of them +except their eyes, which shone in the dark like sparks and stars. The +Lieutenant-General said, 'If I had the Rocky Mountain Rangers here, we +would make those creatures climb a tree.' Then she made believe that the +Rangers were in hearing, and put up her bugle and blew the 'assembly'; +and then, 'boots and saddles'; then the 'trot'; 'gallop'; 'charge!' Then +she blew the 'retreat,' and said, 'That's for you, you rebels; the +Rangers don't ever retreat!' + +"The music frightened them away, but they were hungry, and kept coming +back. And of course they got bolder and bolder, which is their way. It +went on for an hour, then the tired child went to sleep, and it was +pitiful to hear her moan and nestle, and I couldn't do anything for her. +All the time I was laying for the wolves. They are in my line; I have +had experience. At last the boldest one ventured within my lines, and I +landed him among his friends with some of his skull still on him, and +they did the rest. In the next hour I got a couple more, and they went +the way of the first one, down the throats of the detachment. That +satisfied the survivors, and they went away and left us in peace. + +"We hadn't any more adventures, though I kept awake all night and was +ready. From midnight on the child got very restless, and out of her +head, and moaned, and said, 'Water, water--thirsty'; and now and then, +'Kiss me, Soldier'; and sometimes she was in her fort and giving orders +to her garrison; and once she was in Spain, and thought her mother was +with her. People say a horse can't cry; but they don't know, because we +cry inside. + +"It was an hour after sunup that I heard the boys coming, and recognized +the hoof-beats of Pomp and Caesar and Jerry, old mates of mine; and a +welcomer sound there couldn't ever be. + +Buffalo Bill was in a horse-litter, with his leg broken by a bullet, and +Mongrel and Blake Haskins's horse were doing the work. Buffalo Bill and +Thorndike had lolled both of those toughs. + +"When they got to us, and Buffalo Bill saw the child lying there so +white, he said, 'My God!' and the sound of his voice brought her to +herself, and she gave a little cry of pleasure and struggled to get up, +but couldn't, and the soldiers gathered her up like the tenderest women, +and their eyes were wet and they were not ashamed, when they saw her arm +dangling; and so were Buffalo Bill's, and when they laid her in his arms +he said, 'My darling, how does this come?' and she said, 'We came to save +you, but I was tired, and couldn't keep awake, and fell off and hurt +myself, and couldn't get on again.' 'You came to save me, you dear +little rat? It was too lovely of you!' 'Yes, and Soldier stood by me, +which you know he would, and protected me from the wolves; and if he got +a chance he kicked the life out of some of them--for you know he would, +BB.' The sergeant said, 'He laid out three of them, sir, and here's the +bones to show for it.' 'He's a grand horse,' said BB; 'he's the grandest +horse that ever was! and has saved your life, Lieutenant-General Alison, +and shall protect it the rest of his life--he's yours for a kiss!' He +got it, along with a passion of delight, and he said, 'You are feeling +better now, little Spaniard--do you think you could blow the advance?' +She put up the bugle to do it, but he said wait a minute first. Then he +and the sergeant set her arm and put it in splints, she wincing but not +whimpering; then we took up the march for home, and that's the end of the +tale; and I'm her horse. Isn't she a brick, Shekels? + +"Brick? She's more than a brick, more than a thousand bricks--she's a +reptile!" + +"It's a compliment out of your heart, Shekels. God bless you for it!" + + + +CHAPTER X--GENERAL ALISON AND DORCAS + +"Too much company for her, Marse Tom. Betwixt you, and Shekels, the +Colonel's wife, and the Cid--" + +"The Cid? Oh, I remember--the raven." + +"--and Mrs. Captain Marsh and Famine and Pestilence the baby COYOTES, +and Sour-Mash and her pups, and Sardanapalus and her kittens--hang these +names she gives the creatures, they warp my jaw--and Potter: you--all +sitting around in the house, and Soldier Boy at the window the entire +time, it's a wonder to me she comes along as well as she does. She--" + +"You want her all to yourself, you stingy old thing!" + +"Marse Tom, you know better. It's too much company. And then the idea +of her receiving reports all the time from her officers, and acting upon +them, and giving orders, the same as if she was well! It ain't good for +her, and the surgeon don't like it, and tried to persuade her not to and +couldn't; and when he ORDERED her, she was that outraged and indignant, +and was very severe on him, and accused him of insubordination, and said +it didn't become him to give orders to an officer of her rank. Well, he +saw he had excited her more and done more harm than all the rest put +together, so he was vexed at himself and wished he had kept still. +Doctors DON'T know much, and that's a fact. She's too much interested in +things--she ought to rest more. She's all the time sending messages to +BB, and to soldiers and Injuns and whatnot, and to the animals." + +"To the animals?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Who carries them?" + +"Sometimes Potter, but mostly it's Shekels." + +"Now come! who can find fault with such pretty make-believe as that?" + +"But it ain't make-believe, Marse Tom. She does send them." + +"Yes, I don't doubt that part of it." + +"Do you doubt they get them, sir?" + +"Certainly. Don't you?" + +"No, sir. Animals talk to one another. I know it perfectly well, Marse +Tom, and I ain't saying it by guess." + +"What a curious superstition!" + +"It ain't a superstition, Marse Tom. Look at that Shekels--look at him, +NOW. Is he listening, or ain't he? NOW you see! he's turned his head +away. It's because he was caught--caught in the act. I'll ask you--could +a Christian look any more ashamed than what he looks now?--LAY DOWN! You +see? he was going to sneak out. Don't tell ME, Marse Tom! If animals +don't talk, I miss MY guess. And Shekels is the worst. He goes and +tells the animals everything that happens in the officers' quarters; and +if he's short of facts, he invents them. He hasn't any more principle +than a blue jay; and as for morals, he's empty. Look at him now; look at +him grovel. He knows what I am saying, and he knows it's the truth. You +see, yourself, that he can feel shame; it's the only virtue he's got. +It's wonderful how they find out everything that's going on--the animals. +They--" + +"Do you really believe they do, Dorcas?" + +"I don't only just believe it, Marse Tom, I know it. Day before +yesterday they knew something was going to happen. They were that +excited, and whispering around together; why, anybody could see that +they--But my! I must get back to her, and I haven't got to my errand +yet." + +"What is it, Dorcas?" + +"Well, it's two or three things. One is, the doctor don't salute when he +comes . . . Now, Marse Tom, it ain't anything to laugh at, and so--" + +"Well, then, forgive me; I didn't mean to laugh--I got caught +unprepared." + +"You see, she don't want to hurt the doctor's feelings, so she don't say +anything to him about it; but she is always polite, herself, and it hurts +that kind for people to be rude to them." + +"I'll have that doctor hanged." + +"Marse Tom, she don't WANT him hanged. She--" + +"Well, then, I'll have him boiled in oil." + +"But she don't WANT him boiled. I--" + +"Oh, very well, very well, I only want to please her; I'll have him +skinned." + +"Why, SHE don't want him skinned; it would break her heart. Now--" + +"Woman, this is perfectly unreasonable. What in the nation DOES she +want?" + +"Marse Tom, if you would only be a little patient, and not fly off the +handle at the least little thing. Why, she only wants you to speak to +him." + +"Speak to him! Well, upon my word! All this unseemly rage and row about +such a--a--Dorcas, I never saw you carry on like this before. You have +alarmed the sentry; he thinks I am being assassinated; he thinks there's +a mutiny, a revolt, an insurrection; he--" + +"Marse Tom, you are just putting on; you know it perfectly well; I don't +know what makes you act like that--but you always did, even when you was +little, and you can't get over it, I reckon. Are you over it now, Marse +Tom?" + +"Oh, well, yes; but it would try anybody to be doing the best he could, +offering every kindness he could think of, only to have it rejected with +contumely and . . . Oh, well, let it go; it's no matter--I'll talk to the +doctor. Is that satisfactory, or are you going to break out again?" + +"Yes, sir, it is; and it's only right to talk to him, too, because it's +just as she says; she's trying to keep up discipline in the Rangers, and +this insubordination of his is a bad example for them--now ain't it so, +Marse Tom?" + +"Well, there IS reason in it, I can't deny it; so I will speak to him, +though at bottom I think hanging would be more lasting. What is the rest +of your errand, Dorcas?" + +"Of course her room is Ranger headquarters now, Marse Tom, while she's +sick. Well, soldiers of the cavalry and the dragoons that are off duty +come and get her sentries to let them relieve them and serve in their +place. It's only out of affection, sir, and because they know military +honors please her, and please the children too, for her sake; and they +don't bring their muskets; and so--" + +"I've noticed them there, but didn't twig the idea. They are standing +guard, are they?" + +"Yes, sir, and she is afraid you will reprove them and hurt their +feelings, if you see them there; so she begs, if--if you don't mind +coming in the back way--" + +"Bear me up, Dorcas; don't let me faint." + +"There--sit up and behave, Marse Tom. You are not going to faint; you +are only pretending--you used to act just so when you was little; it does +seem a long time for you to get grown up." + +"Dorcas, the way the child is progressing, I shall be out of my job +before long--she'll have the whole post in her hands. I must make a +stand, I must not go down without a struggle. These encroachments. . . . +Dorcas, what do you think she will think of next?" + +"Marse Tom, she don't mean any harm." + +"Are you sure of it?" + +"Yes, Marse Tom." + +"You feel sure she has no ulterior designs?" + +"I don't know what that is, Marse Tom, but I know she hasn't." + +"Very well, then, for the present I am satisfied. What else have you +come about?" + +"I reckon I better tell you the whole thing first, Marse Tom, then tell +you what she wants. There's been an emeute, as she calls it. It was +before she got back with BB. The officer of the day reported it to her +this morning. It happened at her fort. There was a fuss betwixt +Major-General Tommy Drake and Lieutenant-Colonel Agnes Frisbie, and he +snatched her doll away, which is made of white kid stuffed with sawdust, +and tore every rag of its clothes off, right before them all, and is +under arrest, and the charge is conduct un--" + +"Yes, I know--conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman--a plain +case, too, it seems to me. This is a serious matter. Well, what is her +pleasure?" + +"Well, Marse Tom, she has summoned a court-martial, but the doctor don't +think she is well enough to preside over it, and she says there ain't +anybody competent but her, because there's a major-general concerned; and +so she--she--well, she says, would you preside over it for her? . . . +Marse Tom, SIT up! You ain't any more going to faint than Shekels is." + +"Look here, Dorcas, go along back, and be tactful. Be persuasive; don't +fret her; tell her it's all right, the matter is in my hands, but it +isn't good form to hurry so grave a matter as this. Explain to her that +we have to go by precedents, and that I believe this one to be new. In +fact, you can say I know that nothing just like it has happened in our +army, therefore I must be guided by European precedents, and must go +cautiously and examine them carefully. Tell her not to be impatient, it +will take me several days, but it will all come out right, and I will +come over and report progress as I go along. Do you get the idea, +Dorcas?" + +"I don't know as I do, sir." + +"Well, it's this. You see, it won't ever do for me, a brigadier in the +regular army, to preside over that infant court-martial--there isn't any +precedent for it, don't you see. Very well. I will go on examining +authorities and reporting progress until she is well enough to get me out +of this scrape by presiding herself. Do you get it now?" + +"Oh, yes, sir, I get it, and it's good, I'll go and fix it with her. LAY +DOWN! and stay where you are." + +"Why, what harm is he doing?" + +"Oh, it ain't any harm, but it just vexes me to see him act so." + +"What was he doing?" + +"Can't you see, and him in such a sweat? He was starting out to spread +it all over the post. NOW I reckon you won't deny, any more, that they +go and tell everything they hear, now that you've seen it with yo' own +eyes." + +"Well, I don't like to acknowledge it, Dorcas, but I don't see how I can +consistently stick to my doubts in the face of such overwhelming proof as +this dog is furnishing." + +"There, now, you've got in yo' right mind at last! I wonder you can be +so stubborn, Marse Tom. But you always was, even when you was little. +I'm going now." + +"Look here; tell her that in view of the delay, it is my judgment that +she ought to enlarge the accused on his parole." + +"Yes, sir, I'll tell her. Marse Tom?" + +"Well?" + +"She can't get to Soldier Boy, and he stands there all the time, down in +the mouth and lonesome; and she says will you shake hands with him and +comfort him? Everybody does." + +"It's a curious kind of lonesomeness; but, all right, I will." + + + +CHAPTER XI--SEVERAL MONTHS LATER. ANTONIO AND THORNDIKE + +"Thorndike, isn't that Plug you're riding an assert of the scrap you and +Buffalo Bill had with the late Blake Haskins and his pal a few months +back?" + +"Yes, this is Mongrel--and not a half-bad horse, either." + +"I've noticed he keeps up his lick first-rate. Say--isn't it a gaudy +morning?" + +"Right you are!" + +"Thorndike, it's Andalusian! and when that's said, all's said." + +"Andalusian AND Oregonian, Antonio! Put it that way, and you have my +vote. Being a native up there, I know. You being Andalusian-born--" + +"Can speak with authority for that patch of paradise? Well, I can. Like +the Don! like Sancho! This is the correct Andalusian dawn now--crisp, +fresh, dewy, fragrant, pungent--" + +"'What though the spicy breezes Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle--' + +--GIT up, you old cow! stumbling like that when we've just been praising +you! out on a scout and can't live up to the honor any better than that? +Antonio, how long have you been out here in the Plains and the Rockies?" + +"More than thirteen years." + +"It's a long time. Don't you ever get homesick?" + +"Not till now." + +"Why NOW?--after such a long cure." + +"These preparations of the retiring commandant's have started it up." + +"Of course. It's natural." + +"It keeps me thinking about Spain. I know the region where the Seventh's +child's aunt lives; I know all the lovely country for miles around; I'll +bet I've seen her aunt's villa many a time; I'll bet I've been in it in +those pleasant old times when I was a Spanish gentleman." + +"They say the child is wild to see Spain." + +"It's so; I know it from what I hear." + +"Haven't you talked with her about it?" + +"No. I've avoided it. I should soon be as wild as she is. That would +not be comfortable." + +"I wish I was going, Antonio. There's two things I'd give a lot to see. +One's a railroad." + +"She'll see one when she strikes Missouri." + +"The other's a bull-fight." + +"I've seen lots of them; I wish I could see another." + +"I don't know anything about it, except in a mixed-up, foggy way, +Antonio, but I know enough to know it's grand sport." + +"The grandest in the world! There's no other sport that begins with it. +I'll tell you what I've seen, then you can judge. It was my first, and +it's as vivid to me now as it was when I saw it. It was a Sunday +afternoon, and beautiful weather, and my uncle, the priest, took me as a +reward for being a good boy and because of my own accord and without +anybody asking me I had bankrupted my savings-box and given the money to +a mission that was civilizing the Chinese and sweetening their lives and +softening their hearts with the gentle teachings of our religion, and I +wish you could have seen what we saw that day, Thorndike. + +"The amphitheatre was packed, from the bull-ring to the highest +row--twelve thousand people in one circling mass, one slanting, solid +mass--royalties, nobles, clergy, ladies, gentlemen, state officials, +generals, admirals, soldiers, sailors, lawyers, thieves, merchants, +brokers, cooks, housemaids, scullery-maids, doubtful women, dudes, +gamblers, beggars, loafers, tramps, American ladies, gentlemen, +preachers, English ladies, gentlemen, preachers, German ditto, French +ditto, and so on and so on, all the world represented: Spaniards to +admire and praise, foreigners to enjoy and go home and find fault--there +they were, one solid, sloping, circling sweep of rippling and flashing +color under the downpour of the summer sun--just a garden, a gaudy, +gorgeous flower-garden! Children munching oranges, six thousand fans +fluttering and glimmering, everybody happy, everybody chatting gayly with +their intimates, lovely girl-faces smiling recognition and salutation to +other lovely girl-faces, gray old ladies and gentlemen dealing in the +like exchanges with each other--ah, such a picture of cheery contentment +and glad anticipation! not a mean spirit, nor a sordid soul, nor a sad +heart there--ah, Thorndike, I wish I could see it again. + +"Suddenly, the martial note of a bugle cleaves the hum and murmur--clear +the ring! + +"They clear it. The great gate is flung open, and the procession marches +in, splendidly costumed and glittering: the marshals of the day, then +the picadores on horseback, then the matadores on foot, each surrounded +by his quadrille of chulos. They march to the box of the city fathers, +and formally salute. The key is thrown, the bull-gate is unlocked. +Another bugle blast--the gate flies open, the bull plunges in, furious, +trembling, blinking in the blinding light, and stands there, a +magnificent creature, centre of those multitudinous and admiring eyes, +brave, ready for battle, his attitude a challenge. He sees his enemy: +horsemen sitting motionless, with long spears in rest, upon blindfolded +broken-down nags, lean and starved, fit only for sport and sacrifice, +then the carrion-heap. + +"The bull makes a rush, with murder in his eye, but a picador meets him +with a spear-thrust in the shoulder. He flinches with the pain, and the +picador skips out of danger. A burst of applause for the picador, hisses +for the bull. Some shout 'Cow!' at the bull, and call him offensive +names. But he is not listening to them, he is there for business; he is +not minding the cloak-bearers that come fluttering around to confuse him; +he chases this way, he chases that way, and hither and yon, scattering +the nimble banderillos in every direction like a spray, and receiving +their maddening darts in his neck as they dodge and fly--oh, but it's a +lively spectacle, and brings down the house! Ah, you should hear the +thundering roar that goes up when the game is at its wildest and +brilliant things are done! + +"Oh, that first bull, that day, was great! From the moment the spirit of +war rose to flood-tide in him and he got down to his work, he began to do +wonders. He tore his way through his persecutors, flinging one of them +clear over the parapet; he bowled a horse and his rider down, and plunged +straight for the next, got home with his horns, wounding both horse and +man; on again, here and there and this way and that; and one after +another he tore the bowels out of two horses so that they gushed to the +ground, and ripped a third one so badly that although they rushed him to +cover and shoved his bowels back and stuffed the rents with tow and rode +him against the bull again, he couldn't make the trip; he tried to +gallop, under the spur, but soon reeled and tottered and fell, all in a +heap. For a while, that bull-ring was the most thrilling and glorious +and inspiring sight that ever was seen. The bull absolutely cleared it, +and stood there alone! monarch of the place. The people went mad for +pride in him, and joy and delight, and you couldn't hear yourself think, +for the roar and boom and crash of applause." + +"Antonio, it carries me clear out of myself just to hear you tell it; it +must have been perfectly splendid. If I live, I'll see a bull-fight yet +before I die. Did they kill him?" + +"Oh yes; that is what the bull is for. They tired him out, and got him +at last. He kept rushing the matador, who always slipped smartly and +gracefully aside in time, waiting for a sure chance; and at last it came; +the bull made a deadly plunge for him--was avoided neatly, and as he sped +by, the long sword glided silently into him, between left shoulder and +spine--in and in, to the hilt. He crumpled down, dying." + +"Ah, Antonio, it IS the noblest sport that ever was. I would give a year +of my life to see it. Is the bull always killed?" + +"Yes. Sometimes a bull is timid, finding himself in so strange a place, +and he stands trembling, or tries to retreat. Then everybody despises +him for his cowardice and wants him punished and made ridiculous; so they +hough him from behind, and it is the funniest thing in the world to see +him hobbling around on his severed legs; the whole vast house goes into +hurricanes of laughter over it; I have laughed till the tears ran down my +cheeks to see it. When he has furnished all the sport he can, he is not +any longer useful, and is killed." + +"Well, it is perfectly grand, Antonio, perfectly beautiful. Burning a +nigger don't begin." + + + +CHAPTER XII--MONGREL AND THE OTHER HORSE + +"Sage-Brush, you have been listening?" + +"Yes." + +"Isn't it strange?" + +"Well, no, Mongrel, I don't know that it is." + +"Why don't you?" + +"I've seen a good many human beings in my time. They are created as they +are; they cannot help it. They are only brutal because that is their +make; brutes would be brutal if it was THEIR make." + +"To me, Sage-Brush, man is most strange and unaccountable. Why should he +treat dumb animals that way when they are not doing any harm?" + +"Man is not always like that, Mongrel; he is kind enough when he is not +excited by religion." + +"Is the bull-fight a religious service?" + +"I think so. I have heard so. It is held on Sunday." + +(A reflective pause, lasting some moments.) Then: + +"When we die, Sage-Brush, do we go to heaven and dwell with man?" + +"My father thought not. He believed we do not have to go there unless we +deserve it." + + + + + +PART II--IN SPAIN + + + +CHAPTER XIII--GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER + +It was a prodigious trip, but delightful, of course, through the Rockies +and the Black Hills and the mighty sweep of the Great Plains to +civilization and the Missouri border--where the railroading began and the +delightfulness ended. But no one is the worse for the journey; certainly +not Cathy, nor Dorcas, nor Soldier Boy; and as for me, I am not +complaining. + +Spain is all that Cathy had pictured it--and more, she says. She is in a +fury of delight, the maddest little animal that ever was, and all for +joy. She thinks she remembers Spain, but that is not very likely, I +suppose. The two--Mercedes and Cathy--devour each other. It is a +rapture of love, and beautiful to see. It is Spanish; that describes it. +Will this be a short visit? + +No. It will be permanent. Cathy has elected to abide with Spain and her +aunt. Dorcas says she (Dorcas) foresaw that this would happen; and also +says that she wanted it to happen, and says the child's own country is +the right place for her, and that she ought not to have been sent to me, +I ought to have gone to her. I thought it insane to take Soldier Boy to +Spain, but it was well that I yielded to Cathy's pleadings; if he had +been left behind, half of her heart would have remained with him, and she +would not have been contented. As it is, everything has fallen out for +the best, and we are all satisfied and comfortable. It may be that +Dorcas and I will see America again some day; but also it is a case of +maybe not. + +We left the post in the early morning. It was an affecting time. The +women cried over Cathy, so did even those stern warriors, the Rocky +Mountain Rangers; Shekels was there, and the Cid, and Sardanapalus, and +Potter, and Mongrel, and Sour-Mash, Famine, and Pestilence, and Cathy +kissed them all and wept; details of the several arms of the garrison +were present to represent the rest, and say good-bye and God bless you +for all the soldiery; and there was a special squad from the Seventh, +with the oldest veteran at its head, to speed the Seventh's Child with +grand honors and impressive ceremonies; and the veteran had a touching +speech by heart, and put up his hand in salute and tried to say it, but +his lips trembled and his voice broke, but Cathy bent down from the +saddle and kissed him on the mouth and turned his defeat to victory, and +a cheer went up. + +The next act closed the ceremonies, and was a moving surprise. It may be +that you have discovered, before this, that the rigors of military law +and custom melt insensibly away and disappear when a soldier or a +regiment or the garrison wants to do something that will please Cathy. +The bands conceived the idea of stirring her soldierly heart with a +farewell which would remain in her memory always, beautiful and unfading, +and bring back the past and its love for her whenever she should think of +it; so they got their project placed before General Burnaby, my +successor, who is Cathy's newest slave, and in spite of poverty of +precedents they got his permission. The bands knew the child's favorite +military airs. By this hint you know what is coming, but Cathy didn't. +She was asked to sound the "reveille," which she did. + +[REVEILLE] + +With the last note the bands burst out with a crash: and woke the +mountains with the "Star-Spangled Banner" in a way to make a body's heart +swell and thump and his hair rise! It was enough to break a person all +up, to see Cathy's radiant face shining out through her gladness and +tears. By request she blew the "assembly," now. . . . + +[THE ASSEMBLY] + +. . . Then the bands thundered in, with "Rally round the flag, boys, +rally once again!" Next, she blew another call ("to the Standard") . . . + +[TO THE STANDARD] + +. . . and the bands responded with "When we were marching through +Georgia." Straightway she sounded "boots and saddles," that thrilling +and most expediting call. . . . + +[BOOTS AND SADDLES] + +and the bands could hardly hold in for the final note; then they turned +their whole strength loose on "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are +marching," and everybody's excitement rose to blood-heat. + +Now an impressive pause--then the bugle sang "TAPS"--translatable, this +time, into "Good-bye, and God keep us all!" for taps is the soldier's +nightly release from duty, and farewell: plaintive, sweet, pathetic, for +the morning is never sure, for him; always it is possible that he is +hearing it for the last time. . . . + +[TAPS] + +. . . Then the bands turned their instruments towards Cathy and burst in +with that rollicking frenzy of a tune, "Oh, we'll all get blind drunk +when Johnny comes marching home--yes, we'll all get blind drunk when +Johnny comes marching home!" and followed it instantly with "Dixie," that +antidote for melancholy, merriest and gladdest of all military music on +any side of the ocean--and that was the end. And so--farewell! + +I wish you could have been there to see it all, hear it all, and feel it: +and get yourself blown away with the hurricane huzza that swept the place +as a finish. + +When we rode away, our main body had already been on the road an hour or +two--I speak of our camp equipage; but we didn't move off alone: when +Cathy blew the "advance" the Rangers cantered out in column of fours, and +gave us escort, and were joined by White Cloud and Thunder-Bird in all +their gaudy bravery, and by Buffalo Bill and four subordinate scouts. +Three miles away, in the Plains, the Lieutenant-General halted, sat her +horse like a military statue, the bugle at her lips, and put the Rangers +through the evolutions for half an hour; and finally, when she blew the +"charge," she led it herself. "Not for the last time," she said, and got +a cheer, and we said good-bye all around, and faced eastward and rode +away. + +Postscript. A Day Later. Soldier Boy was stolen last night. Cathy is +almost beside herself, and we cannot comfort her. Mercedes and I are not +much alarmed about the horse, although this part of Spain is in something +of a turmoil, politically, at present, and there is a good deal of +lawlessness. In ordinary times the thief and the horse would soon be +captured. We shall have them before long, I think. + + + +CHAPTER XIV--SOLDIER BOY--TO HIMSELF + +It is five months. Or is it six? My troubles have clouded my memory. +I have been all over this land, from end to end, and now I am back again +since day before yesterday, to that city which we passed through, that +last day of our long journey, and which is near her country home. I am a +tottering ruin and my eyes are dim, but I recognized it. If she could +see me she would know me and sound my call. I wish I could hear it once +more; it would revive me, it would bring back her face and the mountains +and the free life, and I would come--if I were dying I would come! She +would not know ME, looking as I do, but she would know me by my star. But +she will never see me, for they do not let me out of this shabby +stable--a foul and miserable place, with most two wrecks like myself for +company. + +How many times have I changed hands? I think it is twelve times--I +cannot remember; and each time it was down a step lower, and each time I +got a harder master. They have been cruel, every one; they have worked +me night and day in degraded employments, and beaten me; they have fed me +ill, and some days not at all. And so I am but bones, now, with a rough +and frowsy skin humped and cornered upon my shrunken body--that skin +which was once so glossy, that skin which she loved to stroke with her +hand. I was the pride of the mountains and the Great Plains; now I am a +scarecrow and despised. These piteous wrecks that are my comrades here +say we have reached the bottom of the scale, the final humiliation; they +say that when a horse is no longer worth the weeds and discarded rubbish +they feed to him, they sell him to the bull-ring for a glass of brandy, +to make sport for the people and perish for their pleasure. + +To die--that does not disturb me; we of the service never care for death. +But if I could see her once more! if I could hear her bugle sing again +and say, "It is I, Soldier--come!" + + + +CHAPTER XV--GENERAL ALISON TO MRS. DRAKE, THE COLONEL'S WIFE + +To return, now, to where I was, and tell you the rest. We shall never +know how she came to be there; there is no way to account for it. She +was always watching for black and shiny and spirited horses--watching, +hoping, despairing, hoping again; always giving chase and sounding her +call, upon the meagrest chance of a response, and breaking her heart over +the disappointment; always inquiring, always interested in sales-stables +and horse accumulations in general. How she got there must remain a +mystery. + +At the point which I had reached in a preceding paragraph of this +account, the situation was as follows: two horses lay dying; the bull +had scattered his persecutors for the moment, and stood raging, panting, +pawing the dust in clouds over his back, when the man that had been +wounded returned to the ring on a remount, a poor blindfolded wreck that +yet had something ironically military about his bearing--and the next +moment the bull had ripped him open and his bowls were dragging upon the +ground: and the bull was charging his swarm of pests again. Then came +pealing through the air a bugle-call that froze my blood--"IT IS I, +SOLDIER--COME!" I turned; Cathy was flying down through the massed +people; she cleared the parapet at a bound, and sped towards that +riderless horse, who staggered forward towards the remembered sound; but +his strength failed, and he fell at her feet, she lavishing kisses upon +him and sobbing, the house rising with one impulse, and white with +horror! Before help could reach her the bull was back again-- + +She was never conscious again in life. We bore her home, all mangled and +drenched in blood, and knelt by her and listened to her broken and +wandering words, and prayed for her passing spirit, and there was no +comfort--nor ever will be, I think. But she was happy, for she was far +away under another sky, and comrading again with her Rangers, and her +animal friends, and the soldiers. Their names fell softly and +caressingly from her lips, one by one, with pauses between. She was not +in pain, but lay with closed eyes, vacantly murmuring, as one who dreams. +Sometimes she smiled, saying nothing; sometimes she smiled when she +uttered a name--such as Shekels, or BB, or Potter. Sometimes she was at +her fort, issuing commands; sometimes she was careering over the plain at +the head of her men; sometimes she was training her horse; once she said, +reprovingly, "You are giving me the wrong foot; give me the left--don't +you know it is good-bye?" + +After this, she lay silent some time; the end was near. By-and-by she +murmured, "Tired . . . sleepy . . . take Cathy, mamma." Then, "Kiss me, +Soldier." For a little time, she lay so still that we were doubtful if +she breathed. Then she put out her hand and began to feel gropingly +about; then said, "I cannot find it; blow 'taps.'" It was the end. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Horse's Tale +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +CHRISTIAN SCIENCE + +by Mark Twain + + + +PREFACE + +Book I of this volume occupies a quarter or a third of the volume, +and consists of matter written about four years ago, but not hitherto +published in book form. It contained errors of judgment and of fact. +I have now corrected these to the best of my ability and later knowledge. + + +Book II was written at the beginning of 1903, and has not until +now appeared in any form. In it my purpose has been to present a +character-portrait of Mrs. Eddy, drawn from her own acts and words +solely, not from hearsay and rumor; and to explain the nature and scope +of her Monarchy, as revealed in the Laws by which she governs it, and +which she wrote herself. + +MARK TWAIN +NEW YORK. January, 1907. + + + + + +BOOK I CHRISTIAN SCIENCE + + "It is the first time since the dawn-days of Creation that + a Voice has gone crashing through space with such + placid and complacent confidence and command." + + + +CHAPTER I +VIENNA 1899. + +This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the +Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight, and +broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was +found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the +nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed +farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning +little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright colored +flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room, +separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the +front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the +manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring +that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables +a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars. + +There was a village a mile away, and a horse doctor lived there, but +there was no surgeon. It seemed a bad outlook; mine was distinctly a +surgery case. Then it was remembered that a lady from Boston was +summering in that village, and she was a Christian Science doctor and +could cure anything. So she was sent for. It was night by this time, +and she could not conveniently come, but sent word that it was no matter, +there was no hurry, she would give me "absent treatment" now, and come +in the morning; meantime she begged me to make myself tranquil and +comfortable and remember that there was nothing the matter with me. +I thought there must be some mistake. + +"Did you tell her I walked off a cliff seventy-five feet high?" + +"Yes." + +"And struck a boulder at the bottom and bounced?" + +"Yes." + +"And struck another one and bounced again?" + +"Yes." + +"And struck another one and bounced yet again?" + +"Yes." + +"And broke the boulders?" + +"Yes." + +"That accounts for it; she is thinking of the boulders. Why didn't you +tell her I got hurt, too?" + +"I did. I told her what you told me to tell her: that you were now but +an incoherent series of compound fractures extending from your scalp-lock +to your heels, and that the comminuted projections caused you to look +like a hat-rack." + +"And it was after this that she wished me to remember that there was +nothing the matter with me?" + +"Those were her words." + +"I do not understand it. I believe she has not diagnosed the case with +sufficient care. Did she look like a person who was theorizing, or did +she look like one who has fallen off precipices herself and brings to the +aid of abstract science the confirmations of personal experience?" + +"Bitte?" + +It was too large a contract for the Stubenmadchen's vocabulary; she +couldn't call the hand. I allowed the subject to rest there, and asked +for something to eat and smoke, and something hot to drink, and a basket +to pile my legs in; but I could not have any of these things. + +"Why?" + +"She said you would need nothing at all." + +"But I am hungry and thirsty, and in desperate pain." + +"She said you would have these delusions, but must pay no attention to +them. She wants you to particularly remember that there are no such +things as hunger and thirst and pain.'' + +"She does does she?" + +"It is what she said." + +Does she seem to be in full and functionable possession of her +intellectual plant, such as it is?" + +"Bitte?" + +"Do they let her run at large, or do they tie her up?" + +"Tie her up?" + +"There, good-night, run along, you are a good girl, but your mental +Geschirr is not arranged for light and airy conversation. Leave me to my +delusions." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +It was a night of anguish, of course--at least, I supposed it was, for it +had all the symptoms of it--but it passed at last, and the Christian +Scientist came, and I was glad She was middle-aged, and large and bony, +and erect, and had an austere face and a resolute jaw and a Roman beak +and was a widow in the third degree, and her name was Fuller. I was +eager to get to business and find relief, but she was distressingly +deliberate. She unpinned and unhooked and uncoupled her upholsteries one +by one, abolished the wrinkles with a flirt of her hand, and hung the +articles up; peeled off her gloves and disposed of them, got a book out +of her hand-bag, then drew a chair to the bedside, descended into it +without hurry, and I hung out my tongue. She said, with pity but without +passion: + +"Return it to its receptacle. We deal with the mind only, not with its +dumb servants." + +I could not offer my pulse, because the connection was broken; but she +detected the apology before I could word it, and indicated by a negative +tilt of her head that the pulse was another dumb servant that she had no +use for. Then I thought I would tell her my symptoms and how I felt, so +that she would understand the case; but that was another inconsequence, +she did not need to know those things; moreover, my remark about how I +felt was an abuse of language, a misapplication of terms. + +"One does not feel," she explained; "there is no such thing as feeling: +therefore, to speak of a non-existent thing as existent is a +contradiction. Matter has no existence; nothing exists but mind; the +mind cannot feel pain, it can only imagine it." + +"But if it hurts, just the same--" + +"It doesn't. A thing which is unreal cannot exercise the functions of +reality. Pain is unreal; hence, pain cannot hurt." + +In making a sweeping gesture to indicate the act of shooing the illusion +of pain out of the mind, she raked her hand on a pin in her dress, said +"Ouch!" and went tranquilly on with her talk. "You should never allow +yourself to speak of how you feel, nor permit others to ask you how you +are feeling; you should never concede that you are ill, nor permit others +to talk about disease or pain or death or similar nonexistences in your +presence. Such talk only encourages the mind to continue its empty +imaginings." Just at that point the Stuben-madchen trod on the cat's +tail, and the cat let fly a frenzy of cat-profanity. I asked, with +caution: + +"Is a cat's opinion about pain valuable?" + +"A cat has no opinion; opinions proceed from mind only; the lower +animals, being eternally perishable, have not been granted mind; without +mind, opinion is impossible." + +"She merely imagined she felt a pain--the cat?" + +"She cannot imagine a pain, for imagining is an effect of mind; without +mind, there is no imagination. A cat has no imagination." + +"Then she had a real pain?" + +"I have already told you there is no such thing as real pain." + +"It is strange and interesting. I do wonder what was the matter with the +cat. Because, there being no such thing as a real pain, and she not +being able to imagine an imaginary one, it would seem that God in His +pity has compensated the cat with some kind of a mysterious emotion +usable when her tail is trodden on which, for the moment, joins cat and +Christian in one common brotherhood of--" + +She broke in with an irritated-- + +"Peace! The cat feels nothing, the Christian feels nothing. Your empty +and foolish imaginings are profanation and blasphemy, and can do you an +injury. It is wiser and better and holier to recognize and confess that +there is no such thing as disease or pain or death." + +"I am full of imaginary tortures," I said, "but I do not think I could be +any more uncomfortable if they were real ones. What must I do to get rid +of them?" + +"There is no occasion to get rid of them since they do not exist. They +are illusions propagated by matter, and matter has no existence; there is +no such thing as matter." + +"It sounds right and clear, but yet it seems in a degree elusive; it +seems to slip through, just when you think you are getting a grip on it." + +"Explain." + +"Well, for instance: if there is no such thing as matter, how can matter +propagate things?" + +In her compassion she almost smiled. She would have smiled if there were +any such thing as a smile. + +"It is quite simple," she said; "the fundamental propositions of +Christian Science explain it, and they are summarized in the four +following self-evident propositions: +1. God is All in all. +2. God is good. Good is Mind +3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter +4. Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny death, evil, sin, disease. + +"There--now you see." + +It seemed nebulous; it did not seem to say anything about the difficulty +in hand--how non-existent matter can propagate illusions I said, with +some hesitancy: + +"Does--does it explain?" + +"Doesn't it? Even if read backward it will do it." + +With a budding hope, I asked her to do it backwards. + +"Very well. Disease sin evil death deny Good omnipotent God life matter +is nothing all being Spirit God Mind is Good good is God all in All is +God. There do you understand now? + +"It--it--well, it is plainer than it was before; still--" + +"Well?" + +"Could you try it some more ways?" + +"As many as you like; it always means the same. Interchanged in any way +you please it cannot be made to mean anything different from what it +means when put in any other way. Because it is perfect. You can jumble +it all up, and it makes no difference: it always comes out the way it was +before. It was a marvelous mind that produced it. As a mental tour de +force it is without a mate, it defies alike the simple, the concrete, and +the occult." + +"It seems to be a corker." + +I blushed for the word, but it was out before I could stop it. + +"A what?" + +"A--wonderful structure--combination, so to speak, of profound thoughts +--unthinkable ones--um--" + +It is true. Read backward, or forward, or perpendicularly, or at any +given angle, these four propositions will always be found to agree in +statement and proof." + +"Ah--proof. Now we are coming at it. The statements agree; they agree +with--with--anyway, they agree; I noticed that; but what is it they prove +I mean, in particular?" + +"Why, nothing could be clearer. They prove: + +"1. GOD--Principle, Life, +Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind. Do you get that?" + +"I--well, I seem to. Go on, please." + +"2. MAN--God's universal idea, individual, perfect, eternal. Is it +clear?" + +"It--I think so. Continue." + +"3. IDEA--An image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding. +There it is--the whole sublime Arcana of Christian Science in a nutshell. +Do you find a weak place in it anywhere?" + +"Well--no; it seems strong." + +"Very well There is more. Those three constitute the Scientific +Definition of Immortal Mind. Next, we have the Scientific Definition of +Mortal Mind. Thus. FIRST DEGREE: Depravity I. Physical-Passions and +appetites, fear, depraved will, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge, +sin, disease, death." + +"Phantasms, madam--unrealities, as I understand it." + +"Every one. SECOND DEGREE: Evil Disappearing. I. Moral-Honesty, +affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance. Is it clear?" + +"Crystal." + +"THIRD DEGREE: Spiritual Salvation. I. Spiritual-Faith, wisdom, power, +purity, understanding, health, love. You see how searchingly and +co-ordinately interdependent and anthropomorphous it all is. In this +Third Degree, as we know by the revelations of Christian Science, mortal +mind disappears." + +"Not earlier?" + +"No, not until the teaching and preparation for the Third Degree are +completed." + +"It is not until then that one is enabled to take hold of Christian +Science effectively, and with the right sense of sympathy and kinship, +as I understand you. That is to say, it could not succeed during the +processes of the Second Degree, because there would still be remains of +mind left; and therefore--but I interrupted you. You were about to +further explain the good results proceeding from the erosions and +disintegrations effected by the Third Degree. It is very interesting; +go on, please." + +"Yes, as I was saying, in this Third Degree mortal mind disappears. +Science so reverses the evidence before the corporeal human senses as to +make this scriptural testimony true in our hearts, 'the last shall be +first and the first shall be last,' that God and His idea may be to us +--what divinity really is, and must of necessity be all-inclusive." + +"It is beautiful. And with what exhaustive exactness your choice and +arrangement of words confirm and establish what you have claimed for the +powers and functions of the Third Degree. The Second could probably +produce only temporary absence of mind; it is reserved to the Third to +make it permanent. A sentence framed under the auspices of the Second +could have a kind of meaning--a sort of deceptive semblance of it +--whereas it is only under the magic of the Third that that defect would +disappear. Also, without doubt, it is the Third Degree that contributes +another remarkable specialty to Christian Science--viz., ease and flow +and lavishness of words, and rhythm and swing and smoothness. There must +be a special reason for this?" + +"Yes--God--all, all--God, good God, non-Matter, Matteration, Spirit, +Bones, Truth." + +"That explains it." + +"There is nothing in Christian Science that is not explicable; for God is +one, Time is one, Individuality is one, and may be one of a series, one +of many, as an individual man, individual horse; whereas God is one, not +one of a series, but one alone and without an equal." + +"These are noble thoughts. They make one burn to know more. How does +Christian Science explain the spiritual relation of systematic duality to +incidental deflection?" + +"Christian Science reverses the seeming relation of Soul and body--as +astronomy reverses the human perception of the movement of the solar +system--and makes body tributary to the Mind. As it is the earth which +is in motion, While the sun is at rest, though in viewing the sun rise +one finds it impossible to believe the sun not to be really rising, so +the body is but the humble servant of the restful Mind, though it seems +otherwise to finite sense; but we shall never understand this while we +admit that soul is in body, or mind in matter, and that man is included +in non-intelligence. Soul is God, unchangeable and eternal; and man +coexists with and reflects Soul, for the All-in-all is the Altogether, +and the Altogether embraces the All-one, Soul-Mind, Mind-Soul, Love, +Spirit, Bones, Liver, one of a series, alone and without an equal." + +"What is the origin of Christian Science? Is it a gift of God, or did it +just happen?" + +"In a sense, it is a gift of God. That is to say, its powers are from +Him, but the credit of the discovery of the powers and what they are for +is due to an American lady." + +"Indeed? When did this occur?" + +"In 1866. That is the immortal date when pain and disease and death +disappeared from the earth to return no more forever. That is, the +fancies for which those terms stand disappeared. The things themselves +had never existed; therefore, as soon as it was perceived that there were +no such things, they were easily banished. The history and nature of the +great discovery are set down in the book here, and--" + +"Did the lady write the book?" + +"Yes, she wrote it all, herself. The title is Science and Health, with +Key to the Scriptures--for she explains the Scriptures; they were not +understood before. Not even by the twelve Disciples. She begins thus +--I will read it to you." + +But she had forgotten to bring her glasses. + +"Well, it is no matter," she said. "I remember the words--indeed, all +Christian Scientists know the book by heart; it is necessary in our +practice. We should otherwise make mistakes and do harm. She begins +thus: 'In the year 1866 I discovered the Science of Metaphysical +Healing, and named it Christian Science.' And She says quite beautifully, +I think--'Through Christian Science, religion and medicine are inspired +with a diviner nature and essence, fresh pinions are given to faith and +understanding, and thoughts acquaint themselves intelligently with God.' +Her very words." + +"It is elegant. And it is a fine thought, too--marrying religion to +medicine, instead of medicine to the undertaker in the old way; for +religion and medicine properly belong together, they being the basis of +all spiritual and physical health. What kind of medicine do you give for +the ordinary diseases, such as--" + +"We never give medicine in any circumstances whatever! We--" + +"But, madam, it says--" + +"I don't care what it says, and I don't wish to talk about it." + +"I am sorry if I have offended, but you see the mention seemed in some +way inconsistent, and--" + +"There are no inconsistencies in Christian Science. The thing is +impossible, for the Science is absolute. It cannot be otherwise, since +it proceeds directly from the All-in-all and the Everything-in-Which, +also Soul, Bones, Truth, one of a series, alone and without equal. It is +Mathematics purified from material dross and made spiritual." + +"I can see that, but--" + +"It rests upon the immovable basis of an Apodictical Principle." + +The word flattened itself against my mind in trying to get in, and +disordered me a little, and before I could inquire into its pertinency, +she was already throwing the needed light: + +"This Apodictical Principle is the absolute Principle of Scientific +Mind-healing, the sovereign Omnipotence which delivers the children of +men from pain, disease, decay, and every ill that flesh is heir to." + +"Surely not every ill, every decay?" + +"Every one; there are no exceptions; there is no such thing as decay--it +is an unreality, it has no existence." + +"But without your glasses your failing eyesight does not permit you to--" + +"My eyesight cannot fail; nothing can fail; the Mind is master, and the +Mind permits no retrogression." + +She was under the inspiration of the Third Degree, therefore there could +be no profit in continuing this part of the subject. I shifted to other +ground and inquired further concerning the Discoverer of the Science. + +"Did the discovery come suddenly, like Klondike, or after long study and +calculation, like America?" + +"The comparisons are not respectful, since they refer to trivialities +--but let it pass. I will answer in the Discoverer's own words: 'God had +been graciously fitting me, during many years, for the reception of a +final revelation of the absolute Principle of Scientific Mind-healing.'" + +"Many years. How many?" + +"Eighteen centuries!" + +"All--God, God--good, good--God, Truth, Bones, Liver, one of a series, +alone and without equal--it is amazing!" + +"You may well say it, sir. Yet it is but the truth This American lady, +our revered and sacred Founder, is distinctly referred to, and her coming +prophesied, in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse; she could not have +been more plainly indicated by St. John without actually mentioning her +name." + +"How strange, how wonderful!" + +"I will quote her own words, from her Key to the Scriptures: 'The twelfth +chapter of the Apocalypse has a special suggestiveness in connection with +this nineteenth century.' There--do you note that? Think--note it well." + + +"But--what does it mean?" + +"Listen, and you will know. I quote her inspired words again: 'In the +opening of the Sixth Seal, typical of six thousand years since Adam, +there is one distinctive feature which has special reference to the +present age. Thus: + +"'Revelation xii. I. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven--a +woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her +head a crown of twelve stars.' + +"That is our Head, our Chief, our Discoverer of Christian Science +--nothing can be plainer, nothing surer. And note this: + +"'Revelation xii. 6. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she +had a place prepared of God.' + +"That is Boston. I recognize it, madam. These are sublime things, and +impressive; I never understood these passages before; please go on with +the--with the--proofs." + +"Very well. Listen: + +"'And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a +cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the +sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he held in his hand a little +book.' + +"A little book, merely a little book--could words be modester? Yet how +stupendous its importance! Do you know what book that was?" + +"Was it--" + +"I hold it in my hand--Christian Science!" + +"Love, Livers, Lights, Bones, Truth, Kidneys, one of a series, alone and +without equal--it is beyond imagination for wonder!" + +"Hear our Founder's eloquent words: 'Then will a voice from harmony cry, +"Go and take the little book: take it and eat it up, and it shall make +thy belly bitter; but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey." Mortal, +obey the heavenly evangel. Take up Divine Science. Read it from +beginning to end. Study it, ponder it. It will be, indeed, sweet at its +first taste, when it heals you; but murmur not over Truth, if you find +its digestion bitter.' You now know the history of our dear and holy +Science, sir, and that its origin is not of this earth, but only its +discovery. I will leave the book with you and will go, now; but give +yourself no uneasiness--I will give you absent treatment from now till I +go to bed." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +Under the powerful influence of the near treatment and the absent +treatment together, my bones were gradually retreating inward and +disappearing from view. The good work took a brisk start, now, and went +on swiftly. My body was diligently straining and stretching, this way +and that, to accommodate the processes of restoration, and every minute +or two I heard a dull click inside and knew that the two ends of a +fracture had been successfully joined. This muffled clicking and +gritting and grinding and rasping continued during the next three hours, +and then stopped--the connections had all been made. All except +dislocations; there were only seven of these: hips, shoulders, knees, +neck; so that was soon over; one after another they slipped into their +sockets with a sound like pulling a distant cork, and I jumped up as good +as new, as to framework, and sent for the horse-doctor. + +I was obliged to do this because I had a stomach-ache and a cold in the +head, and I was not willing to trust these things any longer in the hands +of a woman whom I did not know, and whose ability to successfully treat +mere disease I had lost all confidence. My position was justified by the +fact that the cold and the ache had been in her charge from the first, +along with the fractures, but had experienced not a shade of relief; and, +indeed, the ache was even growing worse and worse, and more and more +bitter, now, probably on account of the protracted abstention from food +and drink. + +The horse-doctor came, a pleasant man and full of hope and professional +interest in the case. In the matter of smell he was pretty aromatic--in +fact, quite horsy--and I tried to arrange with him for absent treatment, +but it was not in his line, so, out of delicacy, I did not press it. He +looked at my teeth and examined my hock, and said my age and general +condition were favorable to energetic measures; therefore he would give +me something to turn the stomach-ache into the botts and the cold in the +head into the blind staggers; then he should be on his own beat and would +know what to do. He made up a bucket of bran-mash, and said a dipperful +of it every two hours, alternated with a drench with turpentine and +axle-grease in it, would either knock my ailments out of me in twenty-four +hours, or so interest me in other ways as to make me forget they were on +the premises. He administered my first dose himself, then took his +leave, saying I was free to eat and drink anything I pleased and in any +quantity I liked. But I was not hungry any more, and did not care for +food. + +I took up the Christian Science book and read half of it, then took a +dipperful of drench and read the other half. The resulting experiences +were full of interest and adventure. All through the rumblings and +grindings and quakings and effervescings accompanying the evolution of +the ache into the botts and the cold into the blind staggers I could note +the generous struggle for mastery going on between the mash and the +drench and the literature; and often I could tell which was ahead, and +could easily distinguish the literature from the others when the others +were separate, though not when they were mixed; for when a bran-mash and +an eclectic drench are mixed together they look just like the Apodictical +Principle out on a lark, and no one can tell it from that. The finish +was reached at last, the evolutions were complete, and a fine success, +but I think that this result could have been achieved with fewer +materials. I believe the mash was necessary to the conversion of the +stomach-ache into the botts, but I think one could develop the blind +staggers out of the literature by itself; also, that blind staggers +produced in this way would be of a better quality and more lasting than +any produced by the artificial processes of the horse-doctor. + +For of all the strange and frantic and incomprehensible and +uninterpretable books which the imagination of man has created, surely +this one is the prize sample. It is written with a limitless confidence +and complacency, and with a dash and stir and earnestness which often +compel the effects of eloquence, even when the words do not seem to have +any traceable meaning. There are plenty of people who imagine they +understand the book; I know this, for I have talked with them; but in all +cases they were people who also imagined that there were no such things +as pain, sickness, and death, and no realities in the world; nothing +actually existent but Mind. It seems to me to modify the value of their +testimony. When these people talk about Christian Science they do as +Mrs. Fuller did: they do not use their own language, but the book's; they +pour out the book's showy incoherences, and leave you to find out later +that they were not originating, but merely quoting; they seem to know the +volume by heart, and to revere it as they would a Bible--another Bible, +perhaps I ought to say. Plainly the book was written under the mental +desolations of the Third Degree, and I feel sure that none but the +membership of that Degree can discover meanings in it. When you read it +you seem to be listening to a lively and aggressive and oracular speech +delivered in an unknown tongue, a speech whose spirit you get but not the +particulars; or, to change the figure, you seem to be listening to a +vigorous instrument which is making a noise which it thinks is a tune, +but which, to persons not members of the band, is only the martial +tooting of a trombone, and merrily stirs the soul through the noise, but +does not convey a meaning. + +The book's serenities of self-satisfaction do almost seem to smack of a +heavenly origin--they have no blood-kin in the earth. It is more than +human to be so placidly certain about things, and so finely superior, and +so airily content with one's performance. Without ever presenting +anything which may rightfully be called by the strong name of Evidence, +and sometimes without even mentioning a reason for a deduction at all, it +thunders out the startling words, "I have Proved" so and so. It takes +the Pope and all the great guns of his Church in battery assembled to +authoritatively settle and establish the meaning of a sole and single +unclarified passage of Scripture, and this at vast cost of time and study +and reflection, but the author of this work is superior to all that: she +finds the whole Bible in an unclarified audition, and at small expense of +time and no expense of mental effort she clarifies it from lid to lid, +reorganizes and improves the meanings, then authoritatively settles and +establishes them with formulas which you cannot tell from "Let there be +light!" and "Here you have it!" It is the first time since the dawn-days +of Creation that a Voice has gone crashing through space with such placid +and complacent confidence and command. + +[January, 1903. The first reading of any book whose terminology is +new and strange is nearly sure to leave the reader in a bewildered and +sarcastic state of mind. But now that, during the past two months, I +have, by diligence gained a fair acquaintanceship with Science and Health +technicalities, I no longer find the bulk of that work hard to +understand.--M. T.] + +P.S. The wisdom harvested from the foregoing thoughts has already done +me a service and saved me a sorrow. Nearly a month ago there came to me +from one of the universities a tract by Dr. Edward Anthony Spitzka on +the "Encephalic Anatomy of the Races." I judged that my opinion was +desired by the university, and I was greatly pleased with this attention +and wrote and said I would furnish it as soon as I could. That night I +put my plodding and disheartening Christian Science mining aside and took +hold of the matter. I wrote an eager chapter, and was expecting to +finish my opinion the next day, but was called away for a week, and my +mind was soon charged with other interests. It was not until to-day, +after the lapse of nearly a month, that I happened upon my Encephalic +chapter again. Meantime, the new wisdom had come to me, and I read it +with shame. I recognized that I had entered upon that work in far from +the right temper--far from the respectful and judicial spirit which was +its due of reverence. I had begun upon it with the following paragraph +for fuel: + +"FISSURES OF THE PARIETAL AND OCCIPITAL LOBES (LATERAL SURFACE).--The +Postcentral Fissural Complex--In this hemicerebrum, the postcentral and +subcentral are combined to form a continuous fissure, attaining a length +of 8.5 cm. Dorsally, the fissure bifurcates, embracing the gyre indented +by the caudal limb of the paracentral. The caudal limb of the +postcentral is joined by a transparietal piece. In all, five additional +rami spring from the combined fissure. A vadum separates it from the +parietal; another from the central." + +It humiliates me, now, to see how angry I got over that; and how +scornful. I said that the style was disgraceful; that it was labored and +tumultuous, and in places violent, that the treatment was involved and +erratic, and almost, as a rule, bewildering; that to lack of simplicity +was added a lack of vocabulary; that there was quite too much feeling +shown; that if I had a dog that would get so excited and incoherent over +a tranquil subject like Encephalic Anatomy I would not pay his tax; and +at that point I got excited myself and spoke bitterly of these mongrel +insanities, and said a person might as well try to understand Science and +Health. + +[I know, now, where the trouble was, and am glad of the interruption that +saved me from sending my verdict to the university. It makes me cold to +think what those people might have thought of me.--M. T.] + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +No one doubts--certainly not I--that the mind exercises a powerful +influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the +interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack, the +wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the +hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in their +work. They have all recognized the potency and availability of that +force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill; they know that +where the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence in the doctor +will make the bread pill effective. + +Faith in the doctor. Perhaps that is the entire thing. It seems to look +like it. In old times the King cured the king's evil by the touch of the +royal hand. He frequently made extraordinary cures. Could his footman +have done it? No--not in his own clothes. Disguised as the King, could +he have done it? I think we may not doubt it. I think we may feel sure +that it was not the King's touch that made the cure in any instance, but +the patient's faith in the efficacy of a King's touch. Genuine and +remarkable cures have been achieved through contact with the relics of a +saint. Is it not likely that any other bones would have done as well if +the substitution had been concealed from the patient? When I was a boy a +farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village had great fame as a +faith-doctor--that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her +from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, "Have faith +--it is all that is necessary," and they went away well of their ailments. +She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She +said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw +her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the +patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this +sort of industry, and has both the high and the low for patients. He +gets into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but +his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is +unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria +there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire +from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of +his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to +year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no +religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in +his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is +this confidence which does the work, and not some mysterious power +issuing from himself. + +Within the last quarter of a century, in America, several sects of curers +have appeared under various names and have done notable things in the way +of healing ailments without the use of medicines. There are the Mind +Cure the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, the Mental Science Cure, and the +Christian-Science Cure; and apparently they all do their miracles with +the same old, powerful instrument--the patient's imagination. Differing +names, but no difference in the process. But they do not give that +instrument the credit; each sect claims that its way differs from the +ways of the others. + +They all achieve some cures, there is no question about it; and the Faith +Cure and the Prayer Cure probably do no harm when they do no good, since +they do not forbid the patient to help out the cure with medicines if he +wants to; but the others bar medicines, and claim ability to cure every +conceivable human ailment through the application of their mental forces +alone. There would seem to be an element of danger here. It has the +look of claiming too much, I think. Public confidence would probably be +increased if less were claimed. + +The Christian Scientist was not able to cure my stomach-ache and my cold; +but the horse-doctor did it. This convinces me that Christian Science +claims too much. In my opinion it ought to let diseases alone and +confine itself to surgery. There it would have everything its own way. + +The horse-doctor charged me thirty kreutzers, and I paid him; in fact, I +doubled it and gave him a shilling. Mrs. Fuller brought in an itemized +bill for a crate of broken bones mended in two hundred and thirty-four +places--one dollar per fracture. + +"Nothing exists but Mind?" + +"Nothing," she answered. "All else is substanceless, all else is +imaginary." + +I gave her an imaginary check, and now she is suing me for substantial +dollars. It looks inconsistent. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to +each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple +many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and +obscurities now. + +Those of us who are not in the asylum, and not demonstrably due there, +are nevertheless, no doubt, insane in one or two particulars. I think we +must admit this; but I think that we are otherwise healthy-minded. I +think that when we all see one thing alike, it is evidence that, as +regards that one thing, our minds are perfectly sound. Now there are +really several things which we do all see alike; things which we all +accept, and about which we do not dispute. For instance, we who are +outside of the asylum all agree that water seeks its level; that the sun +gives light and heat; that fire consumes; that fog is damp; that six +times six are thirty-six, that two from ten leaves eight; that eight and +seven are fifteen. These are, perhaps, the only things we are agreed +about; but, although they are so few, they are of inestimable value, +because they make an infallible standard of sanity. Whosoever accepts +them him we know to be substantially sane; sufficiently sane; in the +working essentials, sane. Whoever disputes a single one of them him we +know to be wholly insane, and qualified for the asylum. + +Very well, the man who disputes none of them we concede to be entitled to +go at large. But that is concession enough. We cannot go any further +than that; for we know that in all matters of mere opinion that same man +is insane--just as insane as we are; just as insane as Shakespeare was. +We know exactly where to put our finger upon his insanity: it is where +his opinion differs from ours. + +That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and +unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any +question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious +matters. When a thoughtful and unblessed Mohammedan examines the +Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually +insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can +prove anything to a lunatic--for that is a part of his insanity and the +evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has +the same defect that afflicts his. All Democrats are insane, but not one +of them knows it; none but the Republicans and Mugwumps know it. All the +Republicans are insane, but only the Democrats and Mugwumps can perceive +it. The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are +insane. When I look around me, I am often troubled to see how many +people are mad. To mention only a few: + +The Atheist, The Theosophists, The Infidel, The Swedenborgians, The +Agnostic, The Shakers, The Baptist, The Millerites, The Methodist, The +Mormons, The Christian Scientist, The Laurence Oliphant Harrisites, The +Catholic, and the 115 Christian sects, the Presbyterian excepted, The +Grand Lama's people, The Monarchists, The Imperialists, The 72 Mohammedan +sects, The Democrats, The Republicans (but not the Mugwumps), The +Buddhist, The Blavatsky-Buddhist, The Mind-Curists, The Faith-Curists, +The Nationalist, The Mental Scientists, The Confucian, The Spiritualist, +The Allopaths, The 2000 East Indian sects, The Homeopaths, The +Electropaths, The Peculiar People, The-- + +But there's no end to the list; there are millions of them! And all +insane; each in his own way; insane as to his pet fad or opinion, but +otherwise sane and rational. This should move us to be charitable +towards one another's lunacies. I recognize that in his special belief +the Christian Scientist is insane, because he does not believe as I do; +but I hail him as my mate and fellow, because I am as insane as he insane +from his point of view, and his point of view is as authoritative as mine +and worth as much. That is to say, worth a brass farthing. Upon a great +religious or political question, the opinion of the dullest head in the +world is worth the same as the opinion of the brightest head in the +world--a brass farthing. How do we arrive at this? It is simple. The +affirmative opinion of a stupid man is neutralized by the negative +opinion of his stupid neighbor no decision is reached; the affirmative +opinion of the intellectual giant Gladstone is neutralized by the +negative opinion of the intellectual giant Newman--no decision is +reached. Opinions that prove nothing are, of course, without value any +but a dead person knows that much. This obliges us to admit the truth of +the unpalatable proposition just mentioned above--that, in disputed +matters political and religious, one man's opinion is worth no more than +his peer's, and hence it followers that no man's opinion possesses any +real value. It is a humbling thought, but there is no way to get around +it: all opinions upon these great subjects are brass-farthing opinions. + +It is a mere plain, simple fact--as clear and as certain as that eight +and seven make fifteen. And by it we recognize that we are all insane, +as concerns those matters. If we were sane, we should all see a +political or religious doctrine alike; there would be no dispute: it +would be a case of eight and seven--just as it is in heaven, where all +are sane and none insane. There there is but one religion, one belief; +the harmony is perfect; there is never a discordant note. + +Under protection of these preliminaries, I suppose I may now repeat +without offence that the Christian Scientist is insane. I mean him no +discourtesy, and I am not charging--nor even imagining--that he is +insaner than the rest of the human race. I think he is more +picturesquely insane than some of us. At the same time, I am quite sure +that in one important and splendid particular he is much saner than is +the vast bulk of the race. + +Why is he insane? I told you before: it is because his opinions are not +ours. I know of no other reason, and I do not need any other; it is the +only way we have of discovering insanity when it is not violent. It is +merely the picturesqueness of his insanity that makes it more interesting +than my kind or yours. For instance, consider his "little book"; the +"little book" exposed in the sky eighteen centuries ago by the flaming +angel of the Apocalypse, and handed down in our day to Mrs. Mary Baker G. +Eddy, of New Hampshire, and translated by her, word for word, into +English (with help of a polisher), and now published and distributed in +hundreds of editions by her at a clear profit per volume, above cost, of +seven hundred per cent.!--a profit which distinctly belongs to the angel +of the Apocalypse, and let him collect it if he can; a "little book" +which the C.S. very frequently calls by just that name, and always +enclosed in quotation-marks to keep its high origin exultantly in mind; a +"little book" which "explains" and reconstructs and new-paints and +decorates the Bible, and puts a mansard roof on it and a lightning-rod +and all the other modern improvements; a "little book" which for the +present affects to travel in yoke with the Bible and be friendly to it, +and within half a century will hitch the Bible in the rear and +thenceforth travel tandem, itself in the lead, in the coming great march +of Christian Scientism through the Protestant dominions of the planet. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +"Hungry ones throng to hear the Bible read in connection with the +text-book of Christian Science, Science and Health, with Key to the +Scriptures, by Mary Baker G. Eddy. These are our only preachers. They +are the word of God." "Christian Science Journal", October, 1898. + +Is that picturesque? A lady has told me that in a chapel of the Mosque +in Boston there is a picture or image of Mrs. Eddy, and that before it +burns a never-extinguished light. Is that picturesque? How long do you +think it will be before the Christian Scientist will be worshipping that +picture or image and praying to it? How long do you think it will be +before it is claimed that Mrs. Eddy is a Redeemer, a Christ, and Christ's +equal? Already her army of disciples speak of her reverently as "Our +Mother." + +How long will it be before they place her on the steps of the Throne +beside the Virgin--and, later, a step higher? First, Mary the Virgin and +Mary the Matron; later, with a change of precedence, Mary the Matron and +Mary the Virgin. Let the artist get ready with his canvas and his +brushes; the new Renaissance is on its way, and there will be money in +altar-canvases--a thousand times as much as the Popes and their Church +ever spent on the Old Masters; for their riches were poverty as +compared with what is going to pour into the treasure-chest of the +Christian-Scientist Papacy by-and-by, let us not doubt it. We will +examine the financial outlook presently and see what it promises. A +favorite subject of the new Old Master will be the first verse of the +twelfth chapter of Revelation--a verse which Mrs. Eddy says (in her +Annex to the Scriptures) has "one distinctive feature which has special +reference to the present age"--and to her, as is rather pointedly +indicated: + +"And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the +sun, and the moon under her feet," etc. + +The woman clothed with the sun will be a portrait of Mrs. Eddy. + +Is it insanity to believe that Christian-Scientism is destined to make +the most formidable show that any new religion has made in the world +since the birth and spread of Mohammedanism, and that within a century +from now it may stand second to Rome only, in numbers and power in +Christendom? + +If this is a wild dream it will not be easy to prove it so just yet, +I think. There seems argument that it may come true. The +Christian-Science "boom," proper, is not yet five years old; yet +already it has two hundred and fifty churches. + +It has its start, you see, and it is a phenomenally good one. Moreover, +it is latterly spreading with a constantly accelerating swiftness. It +has a better chance to grow and prosper and achieve permanency than any +other existing "ism"; for it has more to offer than any other. The past +teaches us that in order to succeed, a movement like this must not be a +mere philosophy, it must be a religion; also, that it must not claim +entire originality, but content itself with passing for an improvement on +an existing religion, and show its hand later, when strong and +prosperous--like Mohammedanism. + +Next, there must be money--and plenty of it. + +Next, the power and authority and capital must be concentrated in the +grip of a small and irresponsible clique, with nobody outside privileged +to ask questions or find fault. + +Next, as before remarked, it must bait its hook with some new and +attractive advantages over the baits offered by its competitors. A new +movement equipped with some of these endowments--like spiritualism, for +instance may count upon a considerable success; a new movement equipped +with the bulk of them--like Mohammedanism, for instance--may count upon +a widely extended conquest. Mormonism had all the requisites but one it +had nothing new and nothing valuable to bait with. Spiritualism lacked +the important detail of concentration of money and authority in the hands +of an irresponsible clique. + +The above equipment is excellent, admirable, powerful, but not perfect. +There is yet another detail which is worth the whole of it put together +and more; a detail which has never been joined (in the beginning of a +religious movement) to a supremely good working equipment since the world +began, until now: a new personage to worship. Christianity had the +Saviour, but at first and for generations it lacked money and +concentrated power. In Mrs. Eddy, Christian Science possesses the new +personage for worship, and in addition--here in the very beginning--a +working equipment that has not a flaw in it. In the beginning, +Mohammedanism had no money; and it has never had anything to offer its +client but heaven--nothing here below that was valuable. In addition to +heaven hereafter, Christian Science has present health and a cheerful +spirit to offer; and in comparison with this bribe all other this-world +bribes are poor and cheap. You recognize that this estimate is +admissible, do you not? + +To whom does Bellamy's "Nationalism" appeal? Necessarily to the few: +people who read and dream, and are compassionate, and troubled for the +poor and the hard-driven. To whom does Spiritualism appeal? Necessarily +to the few; its "boom" has lasted for half a century, and I believe it +claims short of four millions of adherents in America. Who are attracted +by Swedenborgianism and some of the other fine and delicate "isms"? The +few again: educated people, sensitively organized, with superior mental +endowments, who seek lofty planes of thought and find their contentment +there. And who are attracted by Christian Science? There is no limit; +its field is horizonless; its appeal is as universal as is the appeal of +Christianity itself. It appeals to the rich, the poor, the high, the +low, the cultured, the ignorant, the gifted, the stupid, the modest, the +vain, the wise, the silly, the soldier, the civilian, the hero, the +coward, the idler, the worker, the godly, the godless, the freeman, the +slave, the adult, the child; they who are ailing in body or mind, they +who have friends that are ailing in body or mind. To mass it in a +phrase, its clientage is the Human Race. Will it march? I think so. + +Remember its principal great offer: to rid the Race of pain and disease. +Can it do so? In large measure, yes. How much of the pain and disease +in the world is created by the imaginations of the sufferers, and then +kept alive by those same imaginations? Four-fifths? Not anything short +of that, I should think. Can Christian Science banish that four-fifths? +I think so. Can any other (organized) force do it? None that I know of. +Would this be a new world when that was accomplished? And a pleasanter +one--for us well people, as well as for those fussy and fretting sick +ones? Would it seem as if there was not as much gloomy weather as there +used to be? I think so. + +In the mean time, would the Scientist kill off a good many patients? +I think so. More than get killed off now by the legalized methods? +I will take up that question presently. + +At present, I wish to ask you to examine some of the Scientist's +performances, as registered in his magazine, The Christian Science +Journal--October number, 1898. First, a Baptist clergyman gives us this +true picture of "the average orthodox Christian"--and he could have added +that it is a true picture of the average (civilized) human being: + +"He is a worried and fretted and fearful man; afraid of himself and his +propensities, afraid of colds and fevers, afraid of treading on serpents +or drinking deadly things." + +Then he gives us this contrast: + +"The average Christian Scientist has put all anxiety and fretting under +his feet. He does have a victory over fear and care that is not achieved +by the average orthodox Christian." + +He has put all anxiety and fretting under his feet. What proportion of +your earnings or income would you be willing to pay for that frame of +mind, year in, year out? It really outvalues any price that can be put +upon it. Where can you purchase it, at any outlay of any sort, in any +Church or out of it, except the Scientist's? + +Well, it is the anxiety and fretting about colds, and fevers, and +draughts, and getting our feet wet, and about forbidden food eaten in +terror of indigestion, that brings on the cold and the fever and the +indigestion and the most of our other ailments; and so, if the Science +can banish that anxiety from the world I think it can reduce the world's +disease and pain about four-fifths. + +In this October number many of the redeemed testify and give thanks; and +not coldly, but with passionate gratitude. As a rule they seem drunk +with health, and with the surprise of it, the wonder of it, the +unspeakable glory and splendor of it, after a long, sober spell spent in +inventing imaginary diseases and concreting them with doctor-stuff. The +first witness testifies that when "this most beautiful Truth first dawned +on him" he had "nearly all the ills that flesh is heir to"; that those he +did not have he thought he had--and this made the tale about complete. +What was the natural result? Why, he was a dump-pit "for all the +doctors, druggists, and patent medicines of the country." Christian +Science came to his help, and "the old sick conditions passed away," and +along with them the "dismal forebodings" which he had been accustomed to +employ in conjuring up ailments. And so he was a healthy and cheerful +man, now, and astonished. + +But I am not astonished, for from other sources I know what must have +been his method of applying Christian Science. If I am in the right, he +watchfully and diligently diverted his mind from unhealthy channels and +compelled it to travel in healthy ones. Nothing contrivable by human +invention could be more formidably effective than that, in banishing +imaginary ailments and in closing the entrances against sub-sequent +applicants of their breed. I think his method was to keep saying, "I am +well! I am sound!--sound and well! well and sound! Perfectly sound, +perfectly well! I have no pain; there's no such thing as pain! I have +no disease; there's no such thing as disease! Nothing is real but Mind; +all is Mind, All-Good Good-Good, Life, Soul, Liver, Bones, one of a +series, ante and pass the buck!" + +I do not mean that that was exactly the formula used, but that it +doubtless contains the spirit of it. The Scientist would attach value to +the exact formula, no doubt, and to the religious spirit in which it was +used. I should think that any formula that would divert the mind from +unwholesome channels and force it into healthy ones would answer every +purpose with some people, though not with all. I think it most likely +that a very religious man would find the addition of the religious spirit +a powerful reinforcement in his case. + +The second witness testifies that the Science banished "an old organic +trouble," which the doctor and the surgeon had been nursing with drugs +and the knife for seven years. + +He calls it his "claim." A surface-miner would think it was not his +claim at all, but the property of the doctor and his pal the surgeon--for +he would be misled by that word, which is Christian-Science slang for +"ailment." The Christian Scientist has no ailment; to him there is no +such thing, and he will not use the hateful word. All that happens to +him is that upon his attention an imaginary disturbance sometimes +obtrudes itself which claims to be an ailment but isn't. + +This witness offers testimony for a clergyman seventy years old who had +preached forty years in a Christian church, and has now gone over to the +new sect. He was "almost blind and deaf." He was treated by the C. S. +method, and "when he heard the voice of Truth he saw spiritually." Saw +spiritually? It is a little indefinite; they had better treat him again. +Indefinite testimonies might properly be waste-basketed, since there is +evidently no lack of definite ones procurable; but this C. S. magazine +is poorly edited, and so mistakes of this kind must be expected. + +The next witness is a soldier of the Civil War. When Christian Science +found him, he had in stock the following claims: + +Indigestion, +Rheumatism, +Catarrh, +Chalky deposits in +Shoulder-joints, +Arm-joints, +Hand-joints, +Insomnia, +Atrophy of the muscles of +Arms. +Shoulders, +Stiffness of all those joints, +Excruciating pains most of the time. + +These claims have a very substantial sound. They came of exposure in the +campaigns. The doctors did all they could, but it was little. Prayers +were tried, but "I never realized any physical relief from that source." +After thirty years of torture, he went to a Christian Scientist and took +an hour's treatment and went home painless. Two days later, he "began to +eat like a well man." Then "the claims vanished--some at once, others +more gradually"; finally, "they have almost entirely disappeared." And +--a thing which is of still greater value--he is now "contented and +happy." That is a detail which, as earlier remarked, is a Scientist +Church specialty. And, indeed, one may go further and assert with +little or no exaggeration that it is a Christian-Science monopoly. With +thirty-one years' effort, the Methodist Church had not succeeded in +furnishing it to this harassed soldier. + +And so the tale goes on. Witness after witness bulletins his claims, +declares their prompt abolishment, and gives Mrs. Eddy's Discovery the +praise. Milk-leg is cured; nervous prostration is cured; consumption is +cured; and St. Vitus's dance is made a pastime. Even without a fiddle. +And now and then an interesting new addition to the Science slang appears +on the page. We have "demonstrations over chilblains" and such things. +It seems to be a curtailed way of saying "demonstrations of the power of +Christian-Science Truth over the fiction which masquerades under the name +of Chilblains." The children, as well as the adults, share in the +blessings of the Science. "Through the study of the 'little book' they +are learning how to be healthful, peaceful, and wise." Sometimes they +are cured of their little claims by the professional healer, and +sometimes more advanced children say over the formula and cure +themselves. + +A little Far-Western girl of nine, equipped with an adult vocabulary, +states her age and says, "I thought I would write a demonstration to +you." She had a claim, derived from getting flung over a pony's head and +landed on a rockpile. She saved herself from disaster by remembering to +say "God is All" while she was in the air. I couldn't have done it. I +shouldn't even have thought of it. I should have been too excited. +Nothing but Christian Science could have enabled that child to do that +calm and thoughtful and judicious thing in those circumstances. She came +down on her head, and by all the rules she should have broken it; but the +intervention of the formula prevented that, so the only claim resulting +was a blackened eye. Monday morning it was still swollen and shut. At +school "it hurt pretty badly--that is, it seemed to." So "I was excused, +and went down to the basement and said, 'Now I am depending on mamma +instead of God, and I will depend on God instead of mamma.'" No doubt +this would have answered; but, to make sure, she added Mrs. Eddy to the +team and recited "the Scientific Statement of Being," which is one of the +principal incantations, I judge. Then "I felt my eye opening." Why, +dear, it would have opened an oyster. I think it is one of the +touchingest things in child-history, that pious little rat down cellar +pumping away at the Scientific Statement of Being. + +There is a page about another good child--little Gordon. Little Gordon +"came into the world without the assistance of surgery or anaesthetics." +He was a "demonstration." A painless one; therefore, his coming evoked +"joy and thankfulness to God and the Discoverer of Christian Science." +It is a noticeable feature of this literature--the so frequent linking +together of the Two Beings in an equal bond; also of Their Two Bibles. +When little Gordon was two years old, "he was playing horse on the bed, +where I had left my 'little book.' I noticed him stop in his play, take +the book carefully in his little hands, kiss it softly, then look about +for the highest place of safety his arms could reach, and put it there." +This pious act filled the mother "with such a train of thought as I had +never experienced before. I thought of the sweet mother of long ago who +kept things in her heart," etc. It is a bold comparison; however, +unconscious profanations are about as common in the mouths of the lay +member ship of the new Church as are frank and open ones in the mouths of +its consecrated chiefs. + +Some days later, the family library--Christian-Science books--was lying +in a deep-seated window. This was another chance for the holy child to +show off. He left his play and went there and pushed all the books to +one side, except the Annex "It he took in both hands, slowly raised it to +his lips, then removed it carefully, and seated himself in the window." +It had seemed to the mother too wonderful to be true, that first time; +but now she was convinced that "neither imagination nor accident had +anything to do with it." Later, little Gordon let the author of his +being see him do it. After that he did it frequently; probably every +time anybody was looking. I would rather have that child than a chromo. +If this tale has any object, it is to intimate that the inspired book was +supernaturally able to convey a sense of its sacred and awful character +to this innocent little creature, without the intervention of outside +aids. The magazine is not edited with high-priced discretion. The +editor has a "claim," and he ought to get it treated. + +Among other witnesses there is one who had a "jumping toothache," which +several times tempted her to "believe that there was sensation in matter, +but each time it was overcome by the power of Truth." She would not +allow the dentist to use cocaine, but sat there and let him punch and +drill and split and crush the tooth, and tear and slash its ulcerations, +and pull out the nerve, and dig out fragments of bone; and she wouldn't +once confess that it hurt. And to this day she thinks it didn't, and I +have not a doubt that she is nine-tenths right, and that her Christian +Science faith did her better service than she could have gotten out of +cocaine. + +There is an account of a boy who got broken all up into small bits by an +accident, but said over the Scientific Statement of Being, or some of the +other incantations, and got well and sound without having suffered any +real pain and without the intrusion of a surgeon. + +Also, there is an account of the restoration to perfect health, in a +single night, of a fatally injured horse, by the application of Christian +Science. I can stand a good deal, but I recognize that the ice is +getting thin, here. That horse had as many as fifty claims; how could +he demonstrate over them? Could he do the All-Good, Good-Good, +Good-Gracious, Liver, Bones, Truth, All down but Nine, Set them up on the +Other Alley? Could he intone the Scientific Statement of Being? Now, +could he? Wouldn't it give him a relapse? Let us draw the line at +horses. Horses and furniture. + +There is plenty of other testimonies in the magazine, but these quoted +samples will answer. They show the kind of trade the Science is driving. +Now we come back to the question, Does the Science kill a patient here +and there and now and then? We must concede it. Does it compensate for +this? I am persuaded that it can make a plausible showing in that +direction. For instance: when it lays its hand upon a soldier who has +suffered thirty years of helpless torture and makes him whole in body and +mind, what is the actual sum of that achievement? This, I think: that it +has restored to life a subject who had essentially died ten deaths a year +for thirty years, and each of them a long and painful one. But for its +interference that man in the three years which have since elapsed, would +have essentially died thirty times more. There are thousands of young +people in the land who are now ready to enter upon a life-long death +similar to that man's. Every time the Science captures one of these and +secures to him life-long immunity from imagination-manufactured disease, +it may plausibly claim that in his person it has saved three hundred +lives. Meantime, it will kill a man every now and then. But no matter, +it will still be ahead on the credit side. + +[NOTE.--I have received several letters (two from educated and ostensibly +intelligent persons), which contained, in substance, this protest: "I +don't object to men and women chancing their lives with these people, but +it is a burning shame that the law should allow them to trust their +helpless little children in their deadly hands." Isn't it touching? +Isn't it deep? Isn't it modest? It is as if the person said: "I know +that to a parent his child is the core of his heart, the apple of his +eye, a possession so dear, so precious that he will trust its life in no +hands but those which he believes, with all his soul, to be the very best +and the very safest, but it is a burning shame that the law does not +require him to come to me to ask what kind of healer I will allow him to +call." The public is merely a multiplied "me."--M.T.] + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +"We consciously declare that Science and Health, with Key to the +Scriptures, was foretold, as well as its author, Mary Baker Eddy, in +Revelation x. She is the 'mighty angel,' or God's highest thought to +this age (verse 1), giving us the spiritual interpretation of the Bible +in the 'little book open' (verse 2). Thus we prove that Christian +Science is the second coming of Christ-Truth-Spirit."--Lecture by Dr. +George Tomkins, D.D. C.S. + +There you have it in plain speech. She is the mighty angel; she is the +divinely and officially sent bearer of God's highest thought. For the +present, she brings the Second Advent. We must expect that before she +has been in her grave fifty years she will be regarded by her following +as having been herself the Second Advent. She is already worshiped, and +we must expect this feeling to spread, territorially, and also to deepen +in intensity. + +Particularly after her death; for then, as any one can foresee, +Eddy-Worship will be taught in the Sunday-schools and pulpits of the +cult. Already whatever she puts her trade-mark on, though it be only a +memorial-spoon, is holy and is eagerly and gratefully bought by the +disciple, and becomes a fetish in his house. I say bought, for the +Boston Christian-Science Trust gives nothing away; everything it has is +for sale. And the terms are cash; and not only cash, but cash in +advance. Its god is Mrs. Eddy first, then the Dollar. Not a spiritual +Dollar, but a real one. From end to end of the Christian Science +literature not a single (material) thing in the world is conceded to be +real, except the Dollar. But all through and through its advertisements +that reality is eagerly and persistently recognized. + +The Dollar is hunted down in all sorts of ways; the Christian-Science +Mother-Church and Bargain-Counter in Boston peddles all kinds of +spiritual wares to the faithful, and always on the one condition--cash, +cash in advance. The Angel of the Apocalypse could not go there and get +a copy of his own pirated book on credit. Many, many precious Christian +Science things are to be had there for cash: Bible Lessons; Church +Manual; C. S. Hymnal; History of the building of the Mother-Church; lot +of Sermons; Communion Hymn, "Saw Ye My Saviour," by Mrs. Eddy, half a +dollar a copy, "words used by special permission of Mrs. Eddy." Also we +have Mrs. Eddy's and the Angel's little Blue-Annex in eight styles of +binding at eight kinds of war-prices; among these a sweet thing in +"levant, divinity circuit, leather lined to edge, round corners, gold +edge, silk sewed, each, prepaid, $6," and if you take a million you get +them a shilling cheaper--that is to say, "prepaid, $5.75." Also we have +Mrs. Eddy's Miscellaneous Writings, at 'andsome big prices, the +divinity-circuit style heading the exertions, shilling discount where +you take an edition Next comes Christ and Christmas, by the fertile Mrs. +Eddy--a poem--would God I could see it!--price $3, cash in advance. +Then follow five more books by Mrs. Eddy, at highwayman's rates, some of +them in "leatherette covers," some of them in "pebble cloth," with +divinity-circuit, compensation-balance, twin-screw, and the other modern +improvements; and at the same bargain-counter can be had The Christian +Science Journal. + +Christian-Science literary discharges are a monopoly of the Mother-Church +Headquarters Factory in Boston; none genuine without the trade-mark of +the Trust. You must apply there and not elsewhere. + +One hundred dollars for it. And I have a case among my statistics where +the student had a three weeks' course and paid three hundred for it. + +The Trust does love the Dollar, when it isn't a spiritual one. + +In order to force the sale of Mrs Eddy's Bible-Annex, no healer, +Metaphysical-College-bred or other, is allowed to practice the game +unless he possesses a copy of that book. That means a large and +constantly augmenting income for the Trust. No C.S. family would +consider itself loyal or pious or pain-proof without an Annex or two in +the house. That means an income for the Trust, in the near future, of +millions; not thousands-millions a year. + +No member, young or old, of a branch Christian-Scientist church can +acquire and retain membership in the Mother-Church unless he pay +"capitation tax" (of "not less than a dollar," say the By-Laws) to the +Boston Trust every year. That means an income for the Trust, in the near +future, of--let us venture to say--millions more per year. + +It is a reasonably safe guess that in America in 1920 there will be ten +million Christian Scientists, and three millions in Great Britain; that +these figures will be trebled in 1930; that in America in 1920 the +Christian Scientists will be a political force, in 1930 politically +formidable, and in 1940 the governing power in the Republic--to remain +that, permanently. And I think it a reasonable guess that the Trust +(which is already in our day pretty brusque in its ways) will then be the +most insolent and unscrupulous and tyrannical politico-religious master +that has dominated a people since the palmy days of the Inquisition. And +a stronger master than the strongest of bygone times, because this one +will have a financial strength not dreamed of by any predecessor; as +effective a concentration of irresponsible power as any predecessor has +had; in the railway, the telegraph, and the subsidized newspaper, better +facilities for watching and managing his empire than any predecessor has +had; and, after a generation or two, he will probably divide Christendom +with the Catholic Church. + +The Roman Church has a perfect organization, and it has an effective +centralization of power--but not of its cash. Its multitude of Bishops +are rich, but their riches remain in large measure in their own hands. +They collect from two hundred millions of people, but they keep the bulk +of the result at home. The Boston Pope of by-and-by will draw his +dollar-a-head capitation-tax from three hundred millions of the human +race, and the Annex and the rest of his book-shop stock will fetch in as +much more; and his Metaphysical Colleges, the annual Pilgrimage to Mrs. +Eddy's tomb, from all over the world-admission, the Christian-Science +Dollar (payable in advance)--purchases of consecrated glass beads, +candles, memorial spoons, aureoled chrome-portraits and bogus autographs +of Mrs. Eddy; cash offerings at her shrine no crutches of cured cripples +received, and no imitations of miraculously restored broken legs and +necks allowed to be hung up except when made out of the Holy Metal and +proved by fire-assay; cash for miracles worked at the tomb: these +money-sources, with a thousand to be yet invented and ambushed upon the +devotee, will bring the annual increment well up above a billion. And +nobody but the Trust will have the handling of it. In that day, the +Trust will monopolize the manufacture and sale of the Old and New +Testaments as well as the Annex, and raise their price to Annex rates, +and compel the devotee to buy (for even to-day a healer has to have the +Annex and the Scriptures or he is not allowed to work the game), and that +will bring several hundred million dollars more. In those days, the +Trust will have an income approaching five million dollars a day, and no +expenses to be taken out of it; no taxes to pay, and no charities to +support. That last detail should not be lightly passed over by the +reader; it is well entitled to attention. + +No charities to support. No, nor even to contribute to. One searches in +vain the Trust's advertisements and the utterances of its organs for any +suggestion that it spends a penny on orphans, widows, discharged +prisoners, hospitals, ragged schools, night missions, city missions, +libraries, old people's homes, or any other object that appeals to a +human being's purse through his heart. + +I have hunted, hunted, and hunted, by correspondence and otherwise, and +have not yet got upon the track of a farthing that the Trust has spent +upon any worthy object. Nothing makes a Scientist so uncomfortable as to +ask him if he knows of a case where Christian Science has spent money on +a benevolence, either among its own adherents or elsewhere. He is +obliged to say "No" And then one discovers that the person questioned has +been asked the question many times before, and that it is getting to be a +sore subject with him. Why a sore subject? Because he has written his +chiefs and asked with high confidence for an answer that will confound +these questioners--and the chiefs did not reply. He has written again, +and then again--not with confidence, but humbly, now--and has begged for +defensive ammunition in the voice of supplication. A reply does at last +come to this effect: "We must have faith in Our Mother, and rest content +in the conviction that whatever She does with the money it is in +accordance with orders from Heaven, for She does no act of any kind +without first 'demonstrating over' it." + +That settles it--as far as the disciple is concerned. His mind is +satisfied with that answer; he gets down his Annex and does an +incantation or two, and that mesmerizes his spirit and puts that to +sleep--brings it peace. Peace and comfort and joy, until some inquirer +punctures the old sore again. + +Through friends in America I asked some questions, and in some cases got +definite and informing answers; in other cases the answers were not +definite and not valuable. To the question, "Does any of the money go to +charities?" the answer from an authoritative source was: "No, not in the +sense usually conveyed by this word." (The italics are mine.) That +answer is cautious. But definite, I think--utterly and unassailably +definite--although quite Christian-Scientifically foggy in its phrasing. +Christian-Science testimony is generally foggy, generally diffuse, +generally garrulous. The writer was aware that the first word in his +phrase answered the question which I was asking, but he could not help +adding nine dark words. Meaningless ones, unless explained by him. It +is quite likely, as intimated by him, that Christian Science has invented +a new class of objects to apply the word "charity" to, but without an +explanation we cannot know what they are. We quite easily and naturally +and confidently guess that they are in all cases objects which will +return five hundred per cent. on the Trust's investment in them, but +guessing is not knowledge; it is merely, in this case, a sort of +nine-tenths certainty deducible from what we think we know of the +Trust's trade principles and its sly and furtive and shifty ways. + +Sly? Deep? Judicious? The Trust understands its business. The Trust +does not give itself away. It defeats all the attempts of us +impertinents to get at its trade secrets. To this day, after all our +diligence, we have not been able to get it to confess what it does with +the money. It does not even let its own disciples find out. All it says +is, that the matter has been "demonstrated over." Now and then a lay +Scientist says, with a grateful exultation, that Mrs. Eddy is enormously +rich, but he stops there; as to whether any of the money goes to other +charities or not, he is obliged to admit that he does not know. However, +the Trust is composed of human beings; and this justifies the conjecture +that if it had a charity on its list which it was proud of, we should +soon hear of it. + +"Without money and without price." Those used to be the terms. Mrs. +Eddy's Annex cancels them. The motto of Christian Science is, "The +laborer is worthy of his hire." And now that it has been "demonstrated +over," we find its spiritual meaning to be, "Do anything and everything +your hand may find to do; and charge cash for it, and collect the money +in advance." The Scientist has on his tongue's end a cut-and-dried, +Boston-supplied set of rather lean arguments, whose function is to show +that it is a Heaven-commanded duty to do this, and that the croupiers of +the game have no choice but to obey. + +The Trust seems to be a reincarnation. Exodus xxxii. 4. + +I have no reverence for the Trust, but I am not lacking in reverence for +the sincerities of the lay membership of the new Church. There is every +evidence that the lay members are entirely sincere in their faith, and I +think sincerity is always entitled to honor and respect, let the +inspiration of the sincerity be what it may. Zeal and sincerity can +carry a new religion further than any other missionary except fire and +sword, and I believe that the new religion will conquer the half of +Christendom in a hundred years. I am not intending this as a compliment +to the human race; I am merely stating an opinion. And yet I think that +perhaps it is a compliment to the race. I keep in mind that saying of an +orthodox preacher--quoted further back. He conceded that this new +Christianity frees its possessor's life from frets, fears, vexations, +bitterness, and all sorts of imagination-propagated maladies and pains, +and fills his world with sunshine and his heart with gladness. If +Christian Science, with this stupendous equipment--and final salvation +added--cannot win half the Christian globe, I must be badly mistaken in +the make-up of the human race. + +I think the Trust will be handed down like Me other Papacy, and will +always know how to handle its limitless cash. It will press the button; +the zeal, the energy, the sincerity, the enthusiasm of its countless +vassals will do the rest. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +The power which a man's imagination has over his body to heal it or make +it sick is a force which none of us is born without. The first man had +it, the last one will possess it. If left to himself, a man is most +likely to use only the mischievous half of the force--the half which +invents imaginary ailments for him and cultivates them; and if he is one +of these--very wise people, he is quite likely to scoff at the beneficent +half of the force and deny its existence. And so, to heal or help that +man, two imaginations are required: his own and some outsider's. The +outsider, B, must imagine that his incantations are the healing-power +that is curing A, and A must imagine that this is so. I think it is not +so, at all; but no matter, the cure is effected, and that is the main +thing. The outsider's work is unquestionably valuable; so valuable that +it may fairly be likened to the essential work performed by the engineer +when he handles the throttle and turns on the steam; the actual power is +lodged exclusively in the engine, but if the engine were left alone it +would never start of itself. Whether the engineer be named Jim, or Bob, +or Tom, it is all one--his services are necessary, and he is entitled to +such wage as he can get you to pay. Whether he be named Christian +Scientist, or Mental Scientist, or Mind Curist, or King's-Evil Expert, or +Hypnotist, it is all one; he is merely the Engineer; he simply turns on +the same old steam and the engine does the whole work. + +The Christian-Scientist engineer drives exactly the same trade as the +other engineers, yet he out-prospers the whole of them put together. + +Is it because he has captured the takingest name? I think that that is +only a small part of it. I think that the secret of his high prosperity +lies elsewhere. + +The Christian Scientist has organized the business. Now that was +certainly a gigantic idea. Electricity, in limitless volume, has existed +in the air and the rocks and the earth and everywhere since time began +--and was going to waste all the while. In our time we have organized +that scattered and wandering force and set it to work, and backed the +business with capital, and concentrated it in few and competent hands, +and the results are as we see. + +The Christian Scientist has taken a force which has been lying idle in +every member of the human race since time began, and has organized it, +and backed the business with capital, and concentrated it at Boston +headquarters in the hands of a small and very competent Trust, and there +are results. + +Therein lies the promise that this monopoly is going to extend its +commerce wide in the earth. I think that if the business were conducted +in the loose and disconnected fashion customary with such things, it +would achieve but little more than the modest prosperity usually secured +by unorganized great moral and commercial ventures; but I believe that so +long as this one remains compactly organized and closely concentrated in +a Trust, the spread of its dominion will continue. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +Four years ago I wrote the preceding chapters. I was assured by the wise +that Christian Science was a fleeting craze and would soon perish. This +prompt and all-competent stripe of prophet is always to be had in the +market at ground-floor rates. He does not stop to load, or consider, or +take aim, but lets fly just as he stands. Facts are nothing to him, he +has no use for such things; he works wholly by inspiration. And so, when +he is asked why he considers a new movement a passing fad and quickly +perishable, he finds himself unprepared with a reason and is more or less +embarrassed. For a moment. Only for a moment. Then he waylays the +first spectre of a reason that goes flitting through the desert places of +his mind, and is at once serene again and ready for conflict. Serene and +confident. Yet he should not be so, since he has had no chance to +examine his catch, and cannot know whether it is going to help his +contention or damage it. + +The impromptu reason furnished by the early prophets of whom I have +spoken was this: + +"There is nothing to Christian Science; there is nothing about it that +appeals to the intellect; its market will be restricted to the +unintelligent, the mentally inferior, the people who do not think." + +They called that a reason why the cult would not flourish and endure. It +seems the equivalent of saying: + +"There is no money in tinware; there is nothing about it that appeals to +the rich; its market will be restricted to the poor." + +It is like bringing forward the best reason in the world why Christian +Science should flourish and live, and then blandly offering it as a +reason why it should sicken and die. + +That reason was furnished me by the complacent and unfrightened prophets +four years ago, and it has been furnished me again to-day. If +conversions to new religions or to old ones were in any considerable +degree achieved through the intellect, the aforesaid reason would be +sound and sufficient, no doubt; the inquirer into Christian Science might +go away unconvinced and unconverted. But we all know that conversions +are seldom made in that way; that such a thing as a serious and +painstaking and fairly competent inquiry into the claims of a religion or +of a political dogma is a rare occurrence; and that the vast mass of men +and women are far from being capable of making such an examination. They +are not capable, for the reason that their minds, howsoever good they may +be, are not trained for such examinations. The mind not trained for that +work is no more competent to do it than are lawyers and farmers competent +to make successful clothes without learning the tailor's trade. There +are seventy-five million men and women among us who do not know how to +cut out and make a dress-suit, and they would not think of trying; yet +they all think they can competently think out a political or religious +scheme without any apprenticeship to the business, and many of them +believe they have actually worked that miracle. But, indeed, the truth +is, almost all the men and women of our nation or of any other get their +religion and their politics where they get their astronomy--entirely at +second hand. Being untrained, they are no more able to intelligently +examine a dogma or a policy than they are to calculate an eclipse. + +Men are usually competent thinkers along the lines of their specialized +training only. Within these limits alone are their opinions and +judgments valuable; outside of these limits they grope and are lost +--usually without knowing it. In a church assemblage of five hundred +persons, there will be a man or two whose trained minds can seize upon +each detail of a great manufacturing scheme and recognize its value or +its lack of value promptly; and can pass the details in intelligent +review, section by section, and finally as a whole, and then deliver a +verdict upon the scheme which cannot be flippantly set aside nor easily +answered. And there will be one or two other men there who can do the +same thing with a great and complicated educational project; and one or +two others who can do the like with a large scheme for applying +electricity in a new and unheard-of way; and one or two others who can do +it with a showy scheme for revolutionizing the scientific world's +accepted notions regarding geology. And so on, and so on. But the +manufacturing experts will not be competent to examine the educational +scheme intelligently, and their opinion about it would not be valuable; +neither of these two groups will be able to understand and pass upon the +electrical scheme; none of these three batches of experts will be able to +understand and pass upon the geological revolution; and probably not one +man in the entire lot will be competent to examine, capably, the +intricacies of a political or religious scheme, new or old, and deliver a +judgment upon it which any one need regard as precious. + +There you have the top crust. There will be four hundred and +seventy-five men and women present who can draw upon their training and +deliver incontrovertible judgments concerning cheese, and leather, and +cattle, and hardware, and soap, and tar, and candles, and patent +medicines, and dreams, and apparitions, and garden trucks, and cats, and +baby food, and warts, and hymns, and time-tables, and freight-rates, and +summer resorts, and whiskey, and law, and surgery, and dentistry, and +blacksmithing, and shoemaking, and dancing, and Huyler's candy, and +mathematics, and dog fights, and obstetrics, and music, and sausages, and +dry goods, and molasses, and railroad stocks, and horses, and literature, +and labor unions, and vegetables, and morals, and lamb's fries, and +etiquette, and agriculture. And not ten among the five hundred--let +their minds be ever so good and bright--will be competent, by grace of +the requisite specialized mental training, to take hold of a complex +abstraction of any kind and make head or tail of it. + +The whole five hundred are thinkers, and they are all capable thinkers +--but only within the narrow limits of their specialized trainings. Four +hundred and ninety of them cannot competently examine either a religious +plan or a political one. A scattering few of them do examine both--that +is, they think they do. With results as precious as when I examine the +nebular theory and explain it to myself. + +If the four hundred and ninety got their religion through their minds, +and by weighed and measured detail, Christian Science would not be a +scary apparition. But they don't; they get a little of it through their +minds, more of it through their feelings, and the overwhelming bulk of it +through their environment. + +Environment is the chief thing to be considered when one is proposing to +predict the future of Christian Science. It is not the ability to reason +that makes the Presbyterian, or the Baptist, or the Methodist, or the +Catholic, or the Mohammedan, or the Buddhist, or the Mormon; it is +environment. If religions were got by reasoning, we should have the +extraordinary spectacle of an American family with a Presbyterian in it, +and a Baptist, a Methodist, a Catholic, a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, and a +Mormon. A Presbyterian family does not produce Catholic families or +other religious brands, it produces its own kind; and not by intellectual +processes, but by association. And so also with Mohammedanism, the cult +which in our day is spreading with the sweep of a world-conflagration +through the Orient, that native home of profound thought and of subtle +intellectual fence, that fertile womb whence has sprung every great +religion that exists. Including our own; for with all our brains we +cannot invent a religion and market it. + +The language of my quoted prophets recurs to us now, and we wonder to +think how small a space in the world the mighty Mohammedan Church would +be occupying now, if a successful trade in its line of goods had been +conditioned upon an exhibit that would "appeal to the intellect" instead +of to "the unintelligent, the mentally inferior, the people who do not +think." + +The Christian Science Church, like the Mohammedan Church, makes no +embarrassing appeal to the intellect, has no occasion to do it, and can +get along quite well without it. + +Provided. Provided what? That it can secure that thing which is worth +two or three hundred thousand times more than an "appeal to the +intellect"--an environment. Can it get that? Will it be a menace to +regular Christianity if it gets that? Is it time for regular +Christianity to get alarmed? Or shall regular Christianity smile a smile +and turn over and take another nap? Won't it be wise and proper for +regular Christianity to do the old way, Me customary way, the historical +way--lock the stable-door after the horse is gone? Just as Protestantism +has smiled and nodded this long time (while the alert and diligent +Catholic was slipping in and capturing the public schools), and is now +beginning to hunt around for the key when it is too late? + +Will Christian Science get a chance to show its wares? It has already +secured that chance. Will it flourish and spread and prosper if it shall +create for itself the one thing essential to those conditions--an +environment? It has already created an environment. There are families +of Christian Scientists in every community in America, and each family is +a factory; each family turns out a Christian Science product at the +customary intervals, and contributes it to the Cause in the only way in +which contributions of recruits to Churches are ever made on a large +scale--by the puissant forces of personal contact and association. Each +family is an agency for the Cause, and makes converts among the +neighbors, and starts some more factories. + +Four years ago there were six Christian Scientists in a certain town that +I am acquainted with; a year ago there were two hundred and fifty there; +they have built a church, and its membership now numbers four hundred. +This has all been quietly done; done without frenzied revivals, without +uniforms, brass bands, street parades, corner oratory, or any of the +other customary persuasions to a godly life. Christian Science, like +Mohammedanism, is "restricted" to the "unintelligent, the people who do +not think." There lies the danger. It makes Christian Science +formidable. It is "restricted" to ninety-nine one-hundredths of the +human race, and must be reckoned with by regular Christianity. And will +be, as soon as it is too late. + + + + + + +BOOK II + +"There were remarkable things about the stranger called the Man +--Mystery-things so very extraordinary that they monopolized attention +and made all of him seem extraordinary; but this was not so, the most of +his qualities being of the common, every-day size and like anybody +else's. It was curious. He was of the ordinary stature, and had the +ordinary aspects; yet in him were hidden such strange contradictions and +disproportions! He was majestically fearless and heroic; he had the +strength of thirty men and the daring of thirty thousand; handling +armies, organizing states, administering governments--these were pastimes +to him; he publicly and ostentatiously accepted the human race at its own +valuation--as demigods--and privately and successfully dealt with it at +quite another and juster valuation--as children and slaves; his ambitions +were stupendous, and his dreams had no commerce with the humble plain, +but moved with the cloud-rack among the snow-summits. These features of +him were, indeed, extraordinary, but the rest of him was ordinary and +usual. He was so mean-minded, in the matter of jealousy, that it was +thought he was descended from a god; he was vain in little ways, and had +a pride in trivialities; he doted on ballads about moonshine and bruised +hearts; in education he was deficient, he was indifferent to literature, +and knew nothing of art; he was dumb upon all subjects but one, +indifferent to all except that one--the Nebular Theory. Upon that one +his flow of words was full and free, he was a geyser. The official +astronomers disputed his facts and deeded his views, and said that he had +invented both, they not being findable in any of the books. But many of +the laity, who wanted their nebulosities fresh, admired his doctrine and +adopted it, and it attained to great prosperity in spite of the hostility +of the experts."--The Legend of the Man-Mystery, ch. i. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +JANUARY, 1903. When we do not know a public man personally, we guess him +out by the facts of his career. When it is Washington, we all arrive at +about one and the same result. We agree that his words and his acts +clearly interpret his character to us, and that they never leave us in +doubt as to the motives whence the words and acts proceeded. It is the +same with Joan of Arc, it is the same with two or three or five or six +others among the immortals. But in the matter of motives and of a few +details of character we agree to disagree upon Napoleon, Cromwell, and +all the rest; and to this list we must add Mrs. Eddy. I think we can +peacefully agree as to two or three extraordinary features of her +make-up, but not upon the other features of it. We cannot peacefully +agree as to her motives, therefore her character must remain crooked to +some of us and straight to the others. + +No matter, she is interesting enough without an amicable agreement. In +several ways she is the most interesting woman that ever lived, and the +most extraordinary. The same may be said of her career, and the same may +be said of its chief result. She started from nothing. Her enemies +charge that she surreptitiously took from Quimby a peculiar system of +healing which was mind-cure with a Biblical basis. She and her friends +deny that she took anything from him. This is a matter which we can +discuss by-and-by. Whether she took it or invented it, it was +--materially--a sawdust mine when she got it, and she has turned it into +a Klondike; its spiritual dock had next to no custom, if any at all: from +it she has launched a world-religion which has now six hundred and +sixty-three churches, and she charters a new one every four days. When +we do not know a person--and also when we do--we have to judge his size +by the size and nature of his achievements, as compared with the +achievements of others in his special line of business--there is no other +way. Measured by this standard, it is thirteen hundred years since the +world has produced any one who could reach up to Mrs. Eddy's waistbelt. + +Figuratively speaking, Mrs. Eddy is already as tall as the Eiffel tower. +She is adding surprisingly to her stature every day. It is quite within +the probabilities that a century hence she will be the most imposing +figure that has cast its shadow across the globe since the inauguration +of our era. I grant that after saying these strong things, it is +necessary that I offer some details calculated to satisfactorily +demonstrate the proportions which I have claimed for her. I will do that +presently; but before exhibiting the matured sequoia gigantea, I believe +it will be best to exhibit the sprout from which it sprang. It may save +the reader from making miscalculations. The person who imagines that a +Big Tree sprout is bigger than other kinds of sprouts is quite mistaken. +It is the ordinary thing; it makes no show, it compels no notice, it +hasn't a detectible quality in it that entitles it to attention, or +suggests the future giant its sap is suckling. That is the kind of +sprout Mrs. Eddy was. + +From her childhood days up to where she was running a half-century a +close race and gaining on it, she was most humanly commonplace. + +She is the witness I am drawing this from. She has revealed it in her +autobiography not intentionally, of course--I am not claiming that. An +autobiography is the most treacherous thing there is. It lets out every +secret its author is trying to keep; it lets the truth shine unobstructed +through every harmless little deception he tries to play; it pitilessly +exposes him as a tin hero worshipping himself as Big Metal every time he +tries to do the modest-unconsciousness act before the reader. This is +not guessing; I am speaking from autobiographical personal experience; I +was never able to refrain from mentioning, with a studied casualness that +could deceive none but the most incautious reader, that an ancestor of +mine was sent ambassador to Spain by Charles I., nor that in a remote +branch of my family there exists a claimant to an earldom, nor that an +uncle of mine used to own a dog that was descended from the dog that was +in the Ark; and at the same time I was never able to persuade myself to +call a gibbet by its right name when accounting for other ancestors of +mine, but always spoke of it as the "platform"--puerilely intimating that +they were out lecturing when it happened. + +It is Mrs. Eddy over again. As regards her minor half, she is as +commonplace as the rest of us. Vain of trivial things all the first half +of her life, and still vain of them at seventy and recording them with +naive satisfaction--even rescuing some early rhymes of hers of the sort +that we all scribble in the innocent days of our youth--rescuing them and +printing them without pity or apology, just as the weakest and commonest +of us do in our gray age. More--she still frankly admires them; and in +her introduction of them profanely confers upon them the holy name of +"poetry." Sample: + + "And laud the land whose talents rock + The cradle of her power, + And wreaths are twined round Plymouth Rock + From erudition's bower." + + "Minerva's silver sandals still + Are loosed and not effete." + +You note it is not a shade above the thing which all human beings churn +out in their youth. + +You would not think that in a little wee primer--for that is what the +Autobiography is--a person with a tumultuous career of seventy years +behind her could find room for two or three pages of padding of this +kind, but such is the case. She evidently puts narrative together with +difficulty and is not at home in it, and is glad to have something +ready-made to fill in with. Another sample: + + "Here fame-honored Hickory rears his bold form, + And bears a brave breast to the lightning and storm, + While Palm, Bay, and Laurel in classical glee, + Chase Tulip, Magnolia, and fragrant Fringe-tree." + +Vivid? You can fairly see those trees galloping around. That she could +still treasure up, and print, and manifestly admire those Poems, +indicates that the most daring and masculine and masterful woman that has +appeared in the earth in centuries has the same soft, girly-girly places +in her that the rest of us have. + +When it comes to selecting her ancestors she is still human, natural, +vain, commonplace--as commonplace as I am myself when I am sorting +ancestors for my autobiography. She combs out some creditable Scots, and +labels them and sets them aside for use, not overlooking the one to whom +Sir William Wallace gave "a heavy sword encased in a brass scabbard," and +naively explaining which Sir William Wallace it was, lest we get the +wrong one by the hassock; this is the one "from whose patriotism and +bravery comes that heart-stirring air, 'Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled.'" +Hannah More was related to her ancestors. She explains who Hannah More +was. + +Whenever a person informs us who Sir William Wallace was, or who wrote +"Hamlet," or where the Declaration of Independence was fought, it fills +us with a suspicion wellnigh amounting to conviction, that that person +would not suspect us of being so empty of knowledge if he wasn't +suffering from the same "claim" himself. Then we turn to page 20 of the +Autobiography and happen upon this passage, and that hasty suspicion +stands rebuked: + +"I gained book-knowledge with far less labor than is usually requisite. +At ten years of age I was as familiar with Lindley Murray's Grammar as +with the Westminster Catechism; and the latter I had to repeat every +Sunday. My favorite studies were Natural Philosophy, Logic, and Moral +Science. From my brother Albert I received lessons in the ancient +tongues, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin." + +You catch your breath in astonishment, and feel again and still again the +pang of that rebuke. But then your eye falls upon the next sentence but +one, and the pain passes away and you set up the suspicion again with +evil satisfaction: + +"After my discovery of Christian Science, most of the knowledge I had +gleaned from school-books vanished like a dream." + +That disappearance accounts for much in her miscellaneous writings. As I +was saying, she handles her "ancestral shadows," as she calls them, just +as I do mine. It is remarkable. When she runs across "a relative of my +Grandfather Baker, General Henry Knox, of Revolutionary fame," she sets +him down; when she finds another good one, "the late Sir John Macneill, +in the line of my Grandfather Baker's family," she sets him down, and +remembers that he "was prominent in British politics, and at one time +held the position of ambassador to Persia"; when she discovers that her +grandparents "were likewise connected with Captain John Lovewell, whose +gallant leadership and death in the Indian troubles of 1722-25 caused +that prolonged contest to be known historically as Lovewell's War," she +sets the Captain down; when it turns out that a cousin of her grandmother +"was John Macneill, the New Hampshire general, who fought at Lundy's Lane +and won distinction in 1814 at the battle of Chippewa," she catalogues +the General. (And tells where Chippewa was.) And then she skips all her +platform people; never mentions one of them. It shows that she is just +as human as any of us. + +Yet, after all, there is something very touching in her pride in these +worthy small-fry, and something large and fine in her modesty in not +caring to remember that their kinship to her can confer no distinction +upon her, whereas her mere mention of their names has conferred upon them +a faceless earthly immortality. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +When she wrote this little biography her great life-work had already been +achieved, she was become renowned; to multitudes of reverent disciples +she was a sacred personage, a familiar of God, and His inspired channel +of communication with the human race. Also, to them these following +things were facts, and not doubted: + +She had written a Bible in middle age, and had published it; she had +recast it, enlarged it, and published it again; she had not stopped +there, but had enlarged it further, polished its phrasing, improved its +form, and published it yet again. It was at last become a compact, +grammatical, dignified, and workman-like body of literature. This was +good training, persistent training; and in all arts it is training that +brings the art to perfection. We are now confronted with one of the most +teasing and baffling riddles of Mrs. Eddy's history--a riddle which may +be formulated thus: + +How is it that a primitive literary gun which began as a hundred-yard +flint-lock smooth-bore muzzle-loader, and in the course of forty years +has acquired one notable improvement after another--percussion cap; fixed +cartridge; rifled barrel; efficiency at half a mile how is it that such a +gun, sufficiently good on an elephant hunt (Christian Science) from the +beginning, and growing better and better all the time during forty years, +has always collapsed back to its original flint-lock estate the moment +the huntress trained it on any other creature than an elephant? + +Something more than a generation ago Mrs. Eddy went out with her +flint-lock on the rabbit range; and this was a part of the result: + +"After his decease, and a severe casualty deemed fatal by skilful +physicians, we discovered that the Principle of all healing and the law +that governs it is God, a divine Principle, and a spiritual not material +law, and regained health."--Preface to Science and Health, first +revision, 1883. + +N.B. Not from the book itself; from the Preface. + +You will notice the awkwardness of that English. If you should carry +that paragraph up to the Supreme Court of the United States in order to +find out for good and all whether the fatal casualty happened to the dead +man--as the paragraph almost asserts--or to some person or persons not +even hinted at in the paragraph, the Supreme Court would be obliged to +say that the evidence established nothing with certainty except that +there had been a casualty--victim not known. + +The context thinks it explains who the victim was, but it does nothing of +the kind. It furnishes some guessing-material of a sort which enables +you to infer that it was "we" that suffered the mentioned injury, but if +you should carry the language to a court you would not be able to prove +that it necessarily meant that. "We" are Mrs. Eddy; a funny little +affectation. She replaced it later with the more dignified third person. + +The quoted paragraph is from Mrs. Eddy's preface to the first revision of +Science and Health (1883). Sixty-four pages further along--in the body +of the book (the elephant-range), she went out with that same flint-lock +and got this following result. Its English is very nearly as straight +and clean and competent as is the English of the latest revision of +Science and Health after the gun has been improved from smooth-bore +musket up to globe-sighted, long distance rifle: + +"Man controlled by his Maker has no physical suffering. His body is +harmonious, his days are multiplying instead of diminishing, he is +journeying towards Life instead of death, and bringing out the new man +and crucifying the old affections, cutting them off in every material +direction until he learns the utter supremacy of Spirit and yields +obedience thereto." + +In the latest revision of Science and Health (1902), the perfected gun +furnishes the following. The English is clean, compact, dignified, +almost perfect. But it is observable that it is not prominently better +than it is in the above paragraph, which was a product of the primitive +flint-lock: + +"How unreasonable is the belief that we are wearing out life and +hastening to death, and at the same time we are communing with +immortality? If the departed are in rapport with mortality, or matter, +they are not spiritual, but must still be mortal, sinful, suffering, and +dying. Then wherefore look to them--even were communication possible +--for proofs of immortality and accept them as oracles?"--Edition of +1902, page 78. + +With the above paragraphs compare these that follow. It is Mrs. Eddy +writing--after a good long twenty years of pen-practice. Compare also +with the alleged Poems already quoted. The prominent characteristic of +the Poems is affectation, artificiality; their makeup is a complacent and +pretentious outpour of false figures and fine writing, in the sophomoric +style. The same qualities and the same style will be found, unchanged, +unbettered, in these following paragraphs--after a lapse of more than +fifty years, and after--as aforesaid--long literary training. The +italics are mine: + +1. "What plague spot or bacilli were [sic] gnawing [sic] at the heart of +this metropolis . . . and bringing it [the heart] on bended knee? +Why, it was an institute that had entered its vitals--that, among other +things, taught games," et cetera.--C.S. Journal, p. 670, article +entitled "A Narrative--by Mary Baker G. Eddy." + +2. "Parks sprang up [sic] . . . electric-cars run [sic] merrily +through several streets, concrete sidewalks and macadamized roads dotted +[sic] the place," et cetera.--Ibid. + +3. "Shorn [sic] of its suburbs it had indeed little left to admire, save +to [sic] such as fancy a skeleton above ground breathing [sic] slowly +through a barren [sic] breast."--Ibid. + +This is not English--I mean, grown-up English. But it is +fifteen-year-old English, and has not grown a month since the same +mind produced the Poems. The standard of the Poems and of the +plague-spot-and-bacilli effort is exactly the same. It is most strange +that the same intellect that worded the simple and self-contained and +clean-cut paragraph beginning with "How unreasonable is the belief," +should in the very same lustrum discharge upon the world such a verbal +chaos as the utterance concerning that plague-spot or bacilli which were +gnawing at the insides of the metropolis and bringing its heart on bended +knee, thus exposing to the eye the rest of the skeleton breathing slowly +through a barren breast. + +The immense contrast between the legitimate English of Science and Health +and the bastard English of Mrs. Eddy's miscellaneous work, and between +the maturity of the one diction and the juvenility of the other, +suggests--compels--the question, Are there two guns? It would seem so. +Is there a poor, foolish, old, scattering flint-lock for rabbit, and a +long-range, centre-driving, up-to-date Mauser-magazine for elephant? It +looks like it. For it is observable that in Science and Health (the +elephant-ground) the practice was good at the start and has remained so, +and that the practice in the miscellaneous, outside, small-game field was +very bad at the start and was never less bad at any later time. + +I wish to say that of Mrs. Eddy I am not requiring perfect English, but +only good English. No one can write perfect English and keep it up +through a stretch of ten chapters. It has never been done. It was +approached in the "well of English undefiled"; it has been approached in +Mrs. Eddy's Annex to that Book; it has been approached in several English +grammars; I have even approached it myself; but none of us has made port. + +Now, the English of Science and Health is good. In passages to be found +in Mrs. Eddy's Autobiography (on pages 53, 57, 101, and 113), and on page +6 of her squalid preface to Science and Health, first revision, she seems +to me to claim the whole and sole authorship of the book. That she +wrote the Autobiography, and that preface, and the Poems, and the +Plague-spot-Bacilli, we are not permitted to doubt. Indeed, we know she +wrote them. But the very certainty that she wrote these things compels a +doubt that she wrote Science and Health. She is guilty of little +awkwardnesses of expression in the Autobiography which a practiced pen +would hardly allow to go uncorrected in even a hasty private letter, and +could not dream of passing by uncorrected in passages intended for print. +But she passes them placidly by; as placidly as if she did not suspect +that they were offenses against third-class English. I think that that +placidity was born of that very unawareness, so to speak. I will cite a +few instances from the Autobiography. The italics are mine: + +"I remember reading in my childhood certain manuscripts containing +Scriptural Sonnets, besides other verses and enigmas," etc. Page 7. + +[On page 27.] "Many pale cripples went into the Church leaning on +crutches who came out carrying them on their shoulders." + +It is awkward, because at the first glance it seems to say that the +cripples went in leaning on crutches which went out carrying the cripples +on their shoulders. It would have cost her no trouble to put her "who" +after her "cripples." I blame her a little; I think her proof-reader +should have been shot. We may let her capital C pass, but it is another +awkwardness, for she is talking about a building, not about a religious +society. + +"Marriage and Parentage "[Chapter-heading. Page 30]. You imagine that +she is going to begin a talk about her marriage and finish with some +account of her father and mother. And so you will be deceived. +"Marriage" was right, but "Parentage" was not the best word for the rest +of the record. It refers to the birth of her own child. After a certain +period of time "my babe was born." Marriage and Motherhood-Marriage and +Maternity-Marriage and Product-Marriage and Dividend--either of these +would have fitted the facts and made the matter clear. + +"Without my knowledge he was appointed a guardian." Page 32. + +She is speaking of her child. She means that a guardian for her child +was appointed, but that isn't what she says. + +"If spiritual conclusions are separated from their premises, the nexus is +lost, and the argument with its rightful conclusions, becomes +correspondingly obscure." Page 34. + +We shall never know why she put the word "correspondingly" in there. Any +fine, large word would have answered just as well: psychosuperintangibly +--electroincandescently--oligarcheologically--sanchrosynchro- +stereoptically--any of these would have answered, any of these would have +filled the void. + +"His spiritual noumenon and phenomenon silenced portraiture." Page 34. + +Yet she says she forgot everything she knew, when she discovered +Christian Science. I realize that noumenon is a daisy; and I will not +deny that I shall use it whenever I am in a company which I think I can +embarrass with it; but, at the same time, I think it is out of place +among friends in an autobiography. There, I think a person ought not to +have anything up his sleeve. It undermines confidence. But my +dissatisfaction with the quoted passage is not on account of noumenon; it +is on account of the misuse of the word "silenced." You cannot silence +portraiture with a noumenon; if portraiture should make a noise, a way +could be found to silence it, but even then it could not be done with a +noumenon. Not even with a brick, some authorities think. + +"It may be that the mortal life-battle still wages," etc. Page 35. + +That is clumsy. Battles do not wage, battles are waged. Mrs. Eddy has +one very curious and interesting peculiarity: whenever she notices that +she is chortling along without saying anything, she pulls up with a +sudden "God is over us all," or some other sounding irrelevancy, and for +the moment it seems to light up the whole district; then, before you can +recover from the shock, she goes flitting pleasantly and meaninglessly +along again, and you hurry hopefully after her, thinking you are going to +get something this time; but as soon as she has led you far enough away +from her turkey lot she takes to a tree. Whenever she discovers that she +is getting pretty disconnected, she couples-up with an ostentatious "But" +which has nothing to do with anything that went before or is to come +after, then she hitches some empties to the train-unrelated verses from +the Bible, usually--and steams out of sight and leaves you wondering how +she did that clever thing. For striking instances, see bottom paragraph +on page 34 and the paragraph on page 35 of her Autobiography. She has a +purpose--a deep and dark and artful purpose--in what she is saying in the +first paragraph, and you guess what it is, but that is due to your own +talent, not hers; she has made it as obscure as language could do it. +The other paragraph has no meaning and no discoverable intention. It is +merely one of her God-over-alls. I cannot spare room for it in this +place. + +"I beheld with ineffable awe our great Master's marvelous skill in +demanding neither obedience to hygienic laws nor," etc. Page 41. + +The word is loosely chosen-skill. She probably meant judgment, +intuition, penetration, or wisdom. + +"Naturally, my first jottings were but efforts to express in feeble +diction Truth's ultimate." Page 42. + +One understands what she means, but she should have been able to say what +she meant--at any time before she discovered Christian Science and forgot +everything she knew--and after it, too. If she had put "feeble" in front +of "efforts" and then left out "in" and "diction," she would have scored. + +" . . . its written expression increases in perfection under the +guidance of the great Master." Page 43. + +It is an error. Not even in those advantageous circumstances can +increase be added to perfection. + +"Evil is not mastered by evil; it can only be overcome with Good. This +brings out the nothingness of evil, and the eternal Somethingness +vindicates the Divine Principle and improves the race of Adam." Page 76. + +This is too extraneous for me. That is the trouble with Mrs. Eddy when +she sets out to explain an over-large exhibit: the minute you think the +light is bursting upon you the candle goes out and your mind begins to +wander. + +"No one else can drain the cup which I have drunk to the dregs, as the +discoverer and teacher of Christian Science" Page 47. + +That is saying we cannot empty an empty cup. We knew it before; and we +know she meant to tell us that that particular cup is going to remain +empty. That is, we think that that was the idea, but we cannot be sure. +She has a perfectly astonishing talent for putting words together in such +a way as to make successful inquiry into their intention impossible. + +She generally makes us uneasy when she begins to tune up on her +fine-writing timbrel. It carries me back to her Plague-Spot and Poetry +days, and I just dread those: + +"Into mortal mind's material obliquity I gazed and stood abashed. +Blanched was the cheek of pride. My heart bent low before the +omnipotence of Spirit, and a tint of humility soft as the heart of a +moonbeam mantled the earth. Bethlehem and Bethany, Gethsemane and +Calvary, spoke to my chastened sense as by the tearful lips of a babe." +Page 48. + +The heart of a moonbeam is a pretty enough Friendship's-Album expression +--let it pass, though I do think the figure a little strained; but +humility has no tint, humility has no complexion, and if it had it could +not mantle the earth. A moonbeam might--I do not know--but she did not +say it was the moonbeam. But let it go, I cannot decide it, she mixes me +up so. A babe hasn't "tearful lips," it's its eyes. You find none of +Mrs. Eddy's kind of English in Science and Health--not a line of it. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +Setting aside title-page, index, etc., the little Autobiography begins on +page 7 and ends on page 130. My quotations are from the first forty +pages. They seem to me to prove the presence of the 'prentice hand. The +style of the forty pages is loose and feeble and 'prentice-like. The +movement of the narrative is not orderly and sequential, but rambles +around, and skips forward and back and here and there and yonder, +'prentice-fashion. Many a journeyman has broken up his narrative and +skipped about and rambled around, but he did it for a purpose, for an +advantage; there was art in it, and points to be scored by it; the +observant reader perceived the game, and enjoyed it and respected it, if +it was well played. But Mrs. Eddy's performance was without intention, +and destitute of art. She could score no points by it on those terms, +and almost any reader can see that her work was the uncalculated +puttering of a novice. + +In the above paragraph I have described the first third of the booklet. +That third being completed, Mrs. Eddy leaves the rabbit-range, crosses +the frontier, and steps out upon her far-spreading big-game territory +--Christian Science and there is an instant change! The style smartly +improves; and the clumsy little technical offenses disappear. In these +two-thirds of the booklet I find only one such offence, and it has the +look of being a printer's error. + +I leave the riddle with the reader. Perhaps he can explain how it is +that a person-trained or untrained--who on the one day can write nothing +better than Plague-Spot-Bacilli and feeble and stumbling and wandering +personal history littered with false figures and obscurities and +technical blunders, can on the next day sit down and write fluently, +smoothly, compactly, capably, and confidently on a great big thundering +subject, and do it as easily and comfortably as a whale paddles around +the globe. + +As for me, I have scribbled so much in fifty years that I have become +saturated with convictions of one sort and another concerning a +scribbler's limitations; and these are so strong that when I am familiar +with a literary person's work I feel perfectly sure that I know enough +about his limitations to know what he can not do. If Mr. Howells should +pretend to me that he wrote the Plague-Spot Bacilli rhapsody, I should +receive the statement courteously; but I should know it for a--well, for +a perversion. If the late Josh Billings should rise up and tell me that +he wrote Herbert Spencer's philosophies; I should answer and say that the +spelling casts a doubt upon his claim. If the late Jonathan Edwards +should rise up and tell me he wrote Mr. Dooley's books, I should answer +and say that the marked difference between his style and Dooley's is +argument against the soundness of his statement. You see how much I +think of circumstantial evidence. In literary matters--in my belief--it +is often better than any person's word, better than any shady character's +oath. It is difficult for me to believe that the same hand that wrote +the Plague-Spot-Bacilli and the first third of the little Eddy biography +wrote also Science and Health. Indeed, it is more than difficult, it is +impossible. + +Largely speaking, I have read acres of what purported to be Mrs. Eddy's +writings, in the past two months. I cannot know, but I am convinced, +that the circumstantial evidence shows that her actual share in the work +of composing and phrasing these things was so slight as to be +inconsequential. Where she puts her literary foot down, her trail across +her paid polisher's page is as plain as the elephant's in a Sunday-school +procession. Her verbal output, when left undoctored by her clerks, is +quite unmistakable It always exhibits the strongly distinctive features +observable in the virgin passages from her pen already quoted by me: + +Desert vacancy, as regards thought. +Self-complacency. +Puerility. +Sentimentality. +Affectations of scholarly learning. +Lust after eloquent and flowery expression. +Repetition of pet poetic picturesquenesses. +Confused and wandering statement. +Metaphor gone insane. +Meaningless words, used because they are pretty, or showy, or unusual. +Sorrowful attempts at the epigrammatic. +Destitution of originality. + +The fat volume called Miscellaneous Writings of Mrs. Eddy contains +several hundred pages. Of the five hundred and fifty-four pages of prose +in it I find ten lines, on page 319, to be Mrs. Eddy's; also about a page +of the preface or "Prospectus"; also about fifteen pages scattered along +through the book. If she wrote any of the rest of the prose, it was +rewritten after her by another hand. Here I will insert two-thirds of +her page of the prospectus. It is evident that whenever, under the +inspiration of the Deity, she turns out a book, she is always allowed to +do some of the preface. I wonder why that is? It always mars the work. +I think it is done in humorous malice I think the clerks like to see her +give herself away. They know she will, her stock of usable materials +being limited and her procedure in employing them always the same, +substantially. They know that when the initiated come upon her first +erudite allusion, or upon any one of her other stage-properties, they can +shut their eyes and tell what will follow. She usually throws off an +easy remark all sodden with Greek or Hebrew or Latin learning; she +usually has a person watching for a star--she can seldom get away from +that poetic idea--sometimes it is a Chaldee, sometimes a Walking +Delegate, sometimes an entire stranger, but be he what he may, he is +generally there when the train is ready to move, and has his pass in his +hat-band; she generally has a Being with a Dome on him, or some other +cover that is unusual and out of the fashion; she likes to fire off a +Scripture-verse where it will make the handsomest noise and come nearest +to breaking the connection; she often throws out a Forefelt, or a +Foresplendor, or a Foreslander where it will have a fine nautical +foreto'gallant sound and make the sentence sing; after which she is +nearly sure to throw discretion away and take to her deadly passion, +Intoxicated Metaphor. At such a time the Mrs. Eddy that does not +hesitate is lost: + +"The ancient Greek looked longingly for the Olympiad. The Chaldee +watched the appearing of a star; to him no higher destiny dawned on the +dome of being than that foreshadowed by signs in the heavens. The meek +Nazarene, the scoffed of all scoffers, said, 'Ye can discern the face of +the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?'--for He forefelt +and foresaw the ordeal of a perfect Christianity, hated by sinners. + +"To kindle all minds with a gleam of gratitude, the new idea that comes +welling up from infinite Truth needs to be understood. The seer of this +age should be a sage. + +"Humility is the stepping-stone to a higher recognition of Deity. The +mounting sense gathers fresh forms and strange fire from the ashes of +dissolving self, and drops the world. Meekness heightens immortal +attributes, only by removing the dust that dims them. Goodness reveals +another scene and another self seemingly rolled up in shades, but brought +to light by the evolutions of advancing thought, whereby we discern the +power of Truth and Love to heal the sick. + +"Pride is ignorance; those assume most who have the least wisdom or +experience; and they steal from their neighbor, because they have so +little of their own."--Miscellaneous Writings, page 1, and six lines at +top of page 2. + +It is not believable that the hand that wrote those clumsy and affected +sentences wrote the smooth English of Science and Health. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +It is often said in print that Mrs. Eddy claims that God was the Author +of Science and Health. Mr. Peabody states in his pamphlet that "she says +not she but God was the Author." I cannot find that in her autobiography +she makes this transference of the authorship, but I think that in it she +definitely claims that she did her work under His inspiration--definitely +for her; for as a rule she is not a very definite person, even when she +seems to be trying her best to be clear and positive. Speaking of the +early days when her Science was beginning to unfold itself and gather +form in her mind, she says (Autobiography, page 43): + +"The divine hand led me into a new world of light and Life, a fresh +universe--old to God, but new to His 'little one.'" + +She being His little one, as I understand it. + +The divine hand led her. It seems to mean "God inspired me"; but when a +person uses metaphors instead of statistics--and that is Mrs. Eddy's +common fashion--one cannot always feel sure about the intention. + +[Page 56.] "Even the Scripture gave no direct interpretation of the +Scientific basis for demonstrating the spiritual Principle of healing, +until our Heavenly Father saw fit, through the Key to the Scriptures, in +Science and Health, to unlock this 'mystery of godliness.'" + +Another baffling metaphor. If she had used plain forecastle English, and +said "God wrote the Key and I put it in my book"; or if she had said "God +furnished me the solution of the mystery and I put it on paper"; or if +she had said "God did it all," then we should understand; but her phrase +is open to any and all of those translations, and is a Key which unlocks +nothing--for us. However, it seems to at least mean "God inspired me," +if nothing more. + +There was personal and intimate communion, at any rate we get that much +out of the riddles. The connection extended to business, after the +establishment of the teaching and healing industry. + +[Page 71.] "When God impelled me to set a price on my instruction," etc. +Further down: "God has since shown me, in multitudinous ways, the wisdom +of this decision." + +She was not able to think of a "financial equivalent"--meaning a +pecuniary equivalent--for her "instruction in Christian Science +Mind-healing." In this emergency she was "led" to charge three hundred +dollars for a term of "twelve half-days." She does not say who led her, +she only says that the amount greatly troubled her. I think it means +that the price was suggested from above, "led" being a theological term +identical with our commercial phrase "personally conducted." She "shrank +from asking it, but was finally led, by a strange providence, to accept +this fee." "Providence" is another theological term. Two leds and a +providence, taken together, make a pretty strong argument for +inspiration. I think that these statistics make it clear that the price +was arranged above. This view is constructively supported by the fact, +already quoted, that God afterwards approved, "in multitudinous ways," +her wisdom in accepting the mentioned fee. "Multitudinous ways" +--multitudinous encoring--suggests enthusiasm. Business enthusiasm. And +it suggests nearness. God's nearness to his "little one." Nearness, and +a watchful personal interest. A warm, palpitating, Standard-Oil +interest, so to speak. All this indicates inspiration. We may assume, +then, two inspirations: one for the book, the other for the business. + +The evidence for inspiration is further augmented by the testimony of +Rev. George Tomkins, D.D., already quoted, that Mrs. Eddy and her book +were foretold in Revelation, and that Mrs. Eddy "is God's brightest +thought to this age, giving us the spiritual interpretation of the Bible +in the 'little book'" of the Angel. + +I am aware that it is not Mr. Tomkins that is speaking, but Mrs. Eddy. +The commissioned lecturers of the Christian Science Church have to be +members of the Board of Lectureship. (By-laws Sec. 2, p. 70.) The +Board of Lectureship is selected by the Board of Directors of the Church. +(By-laws, Sec. 3, p. 70.) The Board of Directors of the Church is the +property of Mrs. Eddy. (By-laws, p. 22.) Mr. Tomkins did not make that +statement without authorization from headquarters. He necessarily got it +from the Board of Directors, the Board of Directors from Mrs. Eddy, Mrs. +Eddy from the Deity. Mr. Tomkins would have been turned down by that +procession if his remarks had been unsatisfactory to it. + +It may be that there is evidence somewhere--as has been claimed--that +Mrs. Eddy has charged upon the Deity the verbal authorship of Science and +Health. But if she ever made the charge, she has withdrawn it (as it +seems to me), and in the most formal and unqualified; of all ways. See +Autobiography, page 57: + +"When the demand for this book increased . . . the copyright was +infringed. I entered a suit at Law, and my copyright was protected." + +Thus it is plain that she did not plead that the Deity was the (verbal) +Author; for if she had done that, she would have lost her case--and with +rude promptness. It was in the old days before the Berne Convention and +before the passage of our amended law of 1891, and the court would have +quoted the following stern clause from the existing statute and frowned +her out of the place: + +"No Foreigner can acquire copyright in the United States." + +To sum up. The evidence before me indicates three things: + +1. That Mrs. Eddy claims the verbal author ship for herself. +2. That she denies it to the Deity. +3. That--in her belief--she wrote the book under the inspiration of the +Deity, but furnished the language herself. + +In one place in the Autobiography she claims both the language and the +ideas; but when this witness is testifying, one must draw the line +somewhere, or she will prove both sides of her case-nine sides, if +desired. + +It is too true. Much too true. Many, many times too true. She is a +most trying witness--the most trying witness that ever kissed the Book, I +am sure. There is no keeping up with her erratic testimony. As soon as +you have got her share of the authorship nailed where you half hope and +half believe it will stay and cannot be joggled loose any more, she +joggles it loose again--or seems to; you cannot be sure, for her habit of +dealing in meaningless metaphors instead of in plain, straightforward +statistics, makes it nearly always impossible to tell just what it is she +is trying to say. She was definite when she claimed both the language +and the ideas of the book. That seemed to settle the matter. It seemed +to distribute the percentages of credit with precision between the +collaborators: ninety-two per cent. to Mrs. Eddy, who did all the work, +and eight per cent. to the Deity, who furnished the inspiration not +enough of it to damage the copyright in a country closed against +Foreigners, and yet plenty to advertise the book and market it at famine +rates. Then Mrs. Eddy does not keep still, but fetches around and comes +forward and testifies again. It is most injudicious. For she resorts to +metaphor this time, and it makes trouble, for she seems to reverse the +percentages and claim only the eight per cent. for her self. I quote +from Mr. Peabody's book (Eddyism, or Christian Science. Boston: 15 Court +Square, price twenty-five cents): + +"Speaking of this book, Mrs. Eddy, in January last (1901) said: 'I should +blush to write of Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures, as I +have, were it of human origin, and I, apart from God, its author; but as +I was only a scribe echoing the harmonies of Heaven in divine +metaphysics, I cannot be supermodest of the Christian Science +text-book."' + +Mr. Peabody's comment: + +"Nothing could be plainer than that. Here is a distinct avowal that the +book entitled Science and Health was the work of Almighty God." + +It does seem to amount to that. She was only a "scribe." Confound the +word, it is just a confusion, it has no determinable meaning there, it +leaves us in the air. A scribe is merely a person who writes. He may be +a copyist, he may be an amanuensis, he may be a writer of originals, and +furnish both the language and the ideas. As usual with Mrs. Eddy, the +connection affords no help--"echoing" throws no light upon "scribe." A +rock can reflect an echo, a wall can do it, a mountain can do it, many +things can do it, but a scribe can't. A scribe that could reflect an +echo could get over thirty dollars a week in a side-show. Many +impresarios would rather have him than a cow with four tails. If we +allow that this present scribe was setting down the "harmonies of +Heaven"--and certainly that seems to have been the case then there was +only one way to do it that I can think of: listen to the music and put +down the notes one after another as they fell. In that case Mrs. Eddy +did not invent the tune, she only entered it on paper. Therefore +dropping the metaphor--she was merely an amanuensis, and furnished +neither the language of Science and Health nor the ideas. It reduces her +to eight per cent. (and the dividends on that and the rest). + +Is that it? We shall never know. For Mrs. Eddy is liable to testify +again at any time. But until she does it, I think we must conclude that +the Deity was Author of the whole book, and Mrs. Eddy merely His +telephone and stenographer. Granting this, her claim as the Voice of God +stands-for the present--justified and established. + + + + +POSTSCRIPT + +I overlooked something. It appears that there was more of that utterance +than Mr. Peabody has quoted in the above paragraph. It will be found in +Mrs. Eddy's organ, the Christian Science Journal (January, 1901) and +reads as follows: + +"It was not myself . . . which dictated Science and Health, with Key +to the Scriptures." + +That is certainly clear enough. The words which I have removed from that +important sentence explain Who it was that did the dictating. It was +done by + +"the divine power of Truth and Love, infinitely above me." + +Certainly that is definite. At last, through her personal testimony, we +have a sure grip upon the following vital facts, and they settle the +authorship of Science and Health beyond peradventure: + +1. Mrs. Eddy furnished "the ideas and the language." +2. God furnished the ideas and the language. + +It is a great comfort to have the matter authoritatively settled. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +It is hard to locate her, she shifts about so much. She is a shining +drop of quicksilver which you put your finger on and it isn't there. +There is a paragraph in the Autobiography (page 96) which places in +seemingly darkly significant procession three Personages: + +1. The Virgin Mary +2. Jesus of Nazareth. +3. Mrs. Eddy. + +This is the paragraph referred to: + +"No person can take the individual place of the Virgin Mary. No person +can compass or fulfil the individual mission of Jesus of Nazareth. No +person can take the place of the author of Science and Health, the +discoverer and founder of Christian Science. Each individual must fill +his own niche in time and eternity." + +I have read it many times, but I still cannot be sure that I rightly +understand it. If the Saviour's name had been placed first and the +Virgin Mary's second and Mrs. Eddy's third, I should draw the inference +that a descending scale from First Importance to Second Importance and +then to Small Importance was indicated; but to place the Virgin first, +the Saviour second, and Mrs. Eddy third, seems to turn the scale the +other way and make it an ascending scale of Importances, with Mrs. Eddy +ranking the other two and holding first place. + +I think that that was perhaps the intention, but none but a seasoned +Christian Scientist can examine a literary animal of Mrs. Eddy's creation +and tell which end of it the tail is on. She is easily the most baffling +and bewildering writer in the literary trade. + +Eddy is a commonplace name, and would have an unimpressive aspect in the +list of the reformed Holy Family. She has thought of that. In the book +of By-laws written by her--"impelled by a power not one's own"--there is +a paragraph which explains how and when her disciples came to confer a +title upon her; and this explanation is followed by a warning as to what +will happen to any female Scientist who shall desecrate it: + +"The title of Mother. Therefore if a student of Christian Science shall +apply this title, either to herself or to others, except as the term for +kinship according to the flesh, it shall be regarded by the Church as an +indication of disrespect for their Pastor Emeritus, and unfitness to be a +member of the Mother-Church." + +She is the Pastor Emeritus. + +While the quoted paragraph about the Procession seems to indicate that +Mrs. Eddy is expecting to occupy the First Place in it, that expectation +is not definitely avowed. In an earlier utterance of hers she is +clearer--clearer, and does not claim the first place all to herself, but +only the half of it. I quote from Mr. Peabody's book again: + +"In the Christian Science Journal for April, 1889, when it was her +property, and published by her, it was claimed for her, and with her +sanction, that she was equal with Jesus, and elaborate effort was made to +establish the claim. + +"Mrs. Eddy has distinctly authorized the claim in her behalf that she +herself was the chosen successor to and equal of Jesus." + +In her Miscellaneous Writings (using her once favorite "We" for "I") she +says that "While we entertain decided views . . . and shall express +them as duty demands, we shall claim no especial gift from our divine +origin," etc. + +Our divine origin. It suggests Equal again. It is inferable, then, that +in the near by-and-by the new Church will officially rank the Holy Family +in the following order: + +1. Jesus of Nazareth.--1. Our Mother. +2. The Virgin Mary. + + + + +SUMMARY + +I am not playing with Christian Science and its founder, I am examining +them; and I am doing it because of the interest I feel in the inquiry. +My results may seem inadequate to the reader, but they have for me +clarified a muddle and brought a sort of order out of a chaos, and so I +value them. + +My readings of Mrs. Eddy's uninspired miscellaneous literary efforts have +convinced me of several things: + +1. That she did not write Science and Health. +2. That the Deity did (or did not) write it. +3. That She thinks She wrote it. +4. That She believes She wrote it under the Deity's inspiration. +5. That She believes She is a Member of the Holy Family. +6. That She believes She is the equal of the Head of it. + +Finally, I think She is now entitled to the capital S--on her own +evidence. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Thus far we have a part of Mrs. Eddy's portrait. Not made of fictions, +surmises, reports, rumors, innuendoes, dropped by her enemies; no, she +has furnished all of the materials herself, and laid them on the canvas, +under my general superintendence and direction. As far as she has gone +with it, it is the presentation of a complacent, commonplace, illiterate +New England woman who "forgot everything she knew" when she discovered +her discovery, then wrote a Bible in good English under the inspiration +of God, and climbed up it to the supremest summit of earthly grandeur +attainable by man--where she sits serene to-day, beloved and worshiped by +a multitude of human beings of as good average intelligence as is +possessed by those that march under the banner of any competing cult. +This is not intended to flatter the competing cults, it is merely a +statement of cold fact. + +That a commonplace person should go climbing aloft and become a god or a +half-god or a quarter-god and be worshiped by men and women of average +intelligence, is nothing. It has happened a million times, it will +happen a hundred million more. It has been millions of years since the +first of these supernaturals appeared, and by the time the last one in +that inconceivably remote future shall have performed his solemn little +high-jinks on the stage and closed the business, there will be enough of +them accumulated in the museum on the Other Side to start a heaven of +their own-and jam it. + +Each in his turn those little supernaturals of our by-gone ages and aeons +joined the monster procession of his predecessors and marched +horizonward, disappeared, and was forgotten. They changed nothing, they +built nothing, they left nothing behind them to remember them by, nothing +to hold their disciples together, nothing to solidify their work and +enable it to defy the assaults of time and the weather. They passed, and +left a vacancy. They made one fatal mistake; they all made it, each in +his turn: they failed to organize their forces, they failed to centralize +their strength, they failed to provide a fresh Bible and a sure and +perpetual cash income for business, and often they failed to provide a +new and accepted Divine Personage to worship. + +Mrs. Eddy is not of that small fry. The materials that go to the making +of the rest of her portrait will prove it. She will furnish them +herself: + +She published her book. She copyrighted it. She copyrights everything. +If she should say, "Good-morning; how do you do?" she would copyright it; +for she is a careful person, and knows the value of small things. + +She began to teach her Science, she began to heal, she began to gather +converts to her new religion--fervent, sincere, devoted, grateful people. +A year or two later she organized her first Christian Science +"Association," with six of her disciples on the roster. + +She continued to teach and heal. She was charging nothing, she says, +although she was very poor. She taught and healed gratis four years +altogether, she says. + +Then, in 1879-81 she was become strong enough, and well enough +established, to venture a couple of impressively important moves. The +first of these moves was to aggrandize the "Association" to a "Church." +Brave? It is the right name for it, I think. The former name suggests +nothing, invited no remark, no criticism, no inquiry, no hostility; the +new name invited them all. She must have made this intrepid venture on +her own motion. She could have had no important advisers at that early +day. If we accept it as her own idea and her own act--and I think we +must--we have one key to her character. And it will explain subsequent +acts of hers that would merely stun us and stupefy us without it. Shall +we call it courage? Or shall we call it recklessness? Courage observes; +reflects; calculates; surveys the whole situation; counts the cost, +estimates the odds, makes up its mind; then goes at the enterprise +resolute to win or perish. Recklessness does not reflect, it plunges +fearlessly in with a hurrah, and takes the risks, whatever they may be, +regardless of expense. Recklessness often fails, Mrs. Eddy has never +failed--from the point of view of her followers. The point of view of +other people is naturally not a matter of weighty importance to her. + +The new Church was not born loose-jointed and featureless, but had a +defined plan, a definite character, definite aims, and a name which was a +challenge, and defied all comers. It was "a Mind-healing Church." It +was "without a creed." Its name, "The Church of Christ, Scientist." + +Mrs. Eddy could not copyright her Church, but she chartered it, which was +the same thing and relieved the pain. It had twenty-six charter members. +Mrs. Eddy was at once installed as its pastor. + +The other venture, above referred to, was Mrs. Eddy's Massachusetts +Metaphysical College, in which was taught "the pathology of spiritual +power." She could not copyright it, but she got it chartered. For +faculty it had herself, her husband of the period (Dr. Eddy), and her +adopted son, Dr. Foster-Eddy. The college term was "barely three +weeks," she says. Again she was bold, brave, rash, reckless--choose for +yourself--for she not only began to charge the student, but charged him a +hundred dollars a week for the enlightenments. And got it? some may +ask. Easily. Pupils flocked from far and near. They came by the +hundred. Presently the term was cut down nearly half, but the price +remained as before. To be exact, the term-cut was to seven lessons +--price, three hundred dollars. The college "yielded a large income." +This is believable. In seven years Mrs. Eddy taught, as she avers, over +four thousand students in it. (Preface to 1902 edition of Science and +Health.) Three hundred times four thousand is--but perhaps you can cipher +it yourself. I could do it ordinarily, but I fell down yesterday and +hurt my leg. Cipher it; you will see that it is a grand sum for a woman +to earn in seven years. Yet that was not all she got out of her college +in the seven. + +At the time that she was charging the primary student three hundred +dollars for twelve lessons she was not content with this tidy assessment, +but had other ways of plundering him. By advertisement she offered him +privileges whereby he could add eighteen lessons to his store for five +hundred dollars more. That is to say, he could get a total of thirty +lessons in her college for eight hundred dollars. + +Four thousand times eight hundred is--but it is a difficult sum for a +cripple who has not been "demonstrated over" to cipher; let it go. She +taught "over" four thousand students in seven years. "Over" is not +definite, but it probably represents a non-paying surplus of learners +over and above the paying four thousand. Charity students, doubtless. I +think that as interesting an advertisement as has been printed since the +romantic old days of the other buccaneers is this one from the Christian +Science Journal for September, 1886: + + +"MASSACHUSETTS METAPHYSICAL COLLEGE + +"Rev. MARY BAKER G. EDDY, PRESIDENT + +"571 Columbus Avenue, Boston + +"The collegiate course in Christian Science metaphysical healing includes +twelve lessons. Tuition, three hundred dollars. + +"Course in metaphysical obstetrics includes six daily lectures, and is +open only to students from this college. Tuition, one hundred dollars. + +"Class in theology, open (like the above) to graduates, receives six +additional lectures on the Scriptures, and summary of the principle and +practice of Christian Science, two hundred dollars. + +"Normal class is open to those who have taken the first course at this +college; six daily lectures complete the Normal course. Tuition, two +hundred dollars. + +"No invalids, and only persons of good moral character, are accepted as +students. All students are subject to examination and rejection; and +they are liable to leave the class if found unfit to remain in it. + +"A limited number of clergymen received free of charge. + +"Largest discount to indigent students, one hundred dollars on the first +course. + +"No deduction on the others. + +"Husband and wife, entered together, three hundred dollars. + +"Tuition for all strictly in advance." + +There it is--the horse-leech's daughter alive again, after a +three-century vacation. Fifty or sixty hours' lecturing for eight +hundred dollars. + +I was in error as to one matter: there are no charity students. +Gratis-taught clergymen must not be placed under that head; they are +merely an advertisement. Pauper students can get into the infant class +on a two-third rate (cash in advance), but not even an archangel can get +into the rest of the game at anything short of par, cash down. For it is +"in the spirit of Christ's charity, as one who is joyful to hear healing +to the sick" that Mrs. Eddy is working the game. She sends the healing +to them outside. She cannot bear it to them inside the college, for the +reason that she does not allow a sick candidate to get in. It is true +that this smells of inconsistency, but that is nothing; Mrs. Eddy would +not be Mrs. Eddy if she should ever chance to be consistent about +anything two days running. + +Except in the matter of the Dollar. The Dollar, and appetite for power +and notoriety. English must also be added; she is always consistent, she +is always Mrs. Eddy, in her English: it is always and consistently +confused and crippled and poor. She wrote the Advertisement; her +literary trade-marks are there. When she says all "students" are subject +to examination, she does not mean students, she means candidates for that +lofty place When she says students are "liable" to leave the class if +found unfit to remain in it, she does not mean that if they find +themselves unfit, or be found unfit by others, they will be likely to ask +permission to leave the class; she means that if she finds them unfit she +will be "liable" to fire them out. When she nobly offers "tuition for +all strictly in advance," she does not mean "instruction for all in +advance-payment for it later." No, that is only what she says, it is not +what she means. If she had written Science and Health, the oldest man in +the world would not be able to tell with certainty what any passage in it +was intended to mean. + +Her Church was on its legs. + +She was its pastor. It was prospering. + +She was appointed one of a committee to draught By-laws for its +government. It may be observed, without overplus of irreverence, that +this was larks for her. She did all of the draughting herself. From the +very beginning she was always in the front seat when there was business +to be done; in the front seat, with both eyes open, and looking sharply +out for Number One; in the front seat, working Mortal Mind with fine +effectiveness and giving Immortal Mind a rest for Sunday. When her +Church was reorganized, by-and-by, the By-laws were retained. She saw to +that. In these Laws for the government of her Church, her empire, her +despotism, Mrs. Eddy's character is embalmed for good and all. I think a +particularized examination of these Church-laws will be found +interesting. And not the less so if we keep in mind that they were +"impelled by a power not one's own," as she says--Anglice. the +inspiration of God. + +It is a Church "without a creed." Still, it has one. Mrs. Eddy +draughted it--and copyrighted it. In her own name. You cannot become a +member of the Mother-Church (nor of any Christian Science Church) without +signing it. It forms the first chapter of the By-laws, and is called +"Tenets." "Tenets of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, +Scientist." It has no hell in it--it throws it overboard. + + + + +THE PASTOR EMERITUS + +About the time of the reorganization, Mrs. Eddy retired from her position +of pastor of her Church, abolished the office of pastor in all branch +Churches, and appointed her book, Science and Health, to be +pastor-universal. Mrs. Eddy did not disconnect herself from the office +entirely, when she retired, but appointed herself Pastor Emeritus. It is +a misleading title, and belongs to the family of that phrase "without a +creed." It advertises her as being a merely honorary official, with +nothing to do, and no authority. The Czar of Russia is Emperor Emeritus +on the same terms. Mrs. Eddy was Autocrat of the Church before, with +limitless authority, and she kept her grip on that limitless authority +when she took that fictitious title. + +It is curious and interesting to note with what an unerring instinct the +Pastor Emeritus has thought out and forecast all possible encroachments +upon her planned autocracy, and barred the way against them, in the +By-laws which she framed and copyrighted--under the guidance of the +Supreme Being. + + + + +THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS + +For instance, when Article I. speaks of a President and Board of +Directors, you think you have discovered a formidable check upon the +powers and ambitions of the honorary pastor, the ornamental pastor, the +functionless pastor, the Pastor Emeritus, but it is a mistake. These +great officials are of the phrase--family of the Church-Without-a-Creed +and the Pastor-With-Nothing-to-Do; that is to say, of the family of +Large-Names-Which-Mean-Nothing. The Board is of so little consequence +that the By-laws do not state how it is chosen, nor who does it; but they +do state, most definitely, that the Board cannot fill a vacancy in its +number "except the candidate is approved by the Pastor Emeritus." + +The "candidate." The Board cannot even proceed to an election until the +Pastor Emeritus has examined the list and squelched such candidates as +are not satisfactory to her. + +Whether the original first Board began as the personal property of Mrs. +Eddy or not, it is foreseeable that in time, under this By-law, she would +own it. Such a first Board might chafe under such a rule as that, and +try to legislate it out of existence some day. But Mrs. Eddy was awake. +She foresaw that danger, and added this ingenious and effective clause: + +"This By-law can neither be amended nor annulled, except by consent of +Mrs. Eddy, the Pastor Emeritus" + + + + +THE PRESIDENT + +The Board of Directors, or Serfs, or Ciphers, elects the President. + +On these clearly worded terms: "Subject to the approval of the Pastor +Emeritus." + +Therefore She elects him. + +A long term can invest a high official with influence and power, and make +him dangerous. Mrs. Eddy reflected upon that; so she limits the +President's term to a year. She has a capable commercial head, an +organizing head, a head for government. + + + + +TREASURER AND CLERK + +There are a Treasurer and a Clerk. They are elected by the Board of +Directors. That is to say, by Mrs. Eddy. + +Their terms of office expire on the first Tuesday in June of each year, +"or upon the election of their successors." They must be watchfully +obedient and satisfactory to her, or she will elect and install their +successors with a suddenness that can be unpleasant to them. It goes +without saying that the Treasurer manages the Treasury to suit Mrs. Eddy, +and is in fact merely Temporary Deputy Treasurer. + +Apparently the Clerk has but two duties to perform: to read messages from +Mrs. Eddy to First Members assembled in solemn Council, and provide lists +of candidates for Church membership. The select body entitled First +Members are the aristocracy of the Mother-Church, the Charter Members, +the Aborigines, a sort of stylish but unsalaried little College of +Cardinals, good for show, but not indispensable. Nobody is indispensable +in Mrs. Eddy's empire; she sees to that. + +When the Pastor Emeritus sends a letter or message to that little +Sanhedrin, it is the Clerk's "imperative duty" to read it "at the place +and time specified." Otherwise, the world might come to an end. These +are fine, large frills, and remind us of the ways of emperors and such. +Such do not use the penny-post, they send a gilded and painted special +messenger, and he strides into the Parliament, and business comes to a +sudden and solemn and awful stop; and in the impressive hush that +follows, the Chief Clerk reads the document. It is his "imperative +duty." If he should neglect it, his official life would end. It is the +same with this Mother-Church Clerk; "if he fail to perform this important +function of his office," certain majestic and unshirkable solemnities +must follow: a special meeting "shall" be called; a member of the Church +"shall" make formal complaint; then the Clerk "shall" be "removed from +office." Complaint is sufficient, no trial is necessary. + +There is something very sweet and juvenile and innocent and pretty about +these little tinsel vanities, these grave apings of monarchical fuss and +feathers and ceremony, here on our ostentatiously democratic soil. She +is the same lady that we found in the Autobiography, who was so naively +vain of all that little ancestral military riffraff that she had dug up +and annexed. A person's nature never changes. What it is in childhood, +it remains. Under pressure, or a change of interest, it can partially or +wholly disappear from sight, and for considerable stretches of time, but +nothing can ever permanently modify it, nothing can ever remove it. + + + + +BOARD OF TRUSTEES + +There isn't any--now. But with power and money piling up higher and +higher every day and the Church's dominion spreading daily wider and +farther, a time could come when the envious and ambitious could start +the idea that it would be wise and well to put a watch upon these assets +--a watch equipped with properly large authority. By custom, a Board of +Trustees. Mrs. Eddy has foreseen that probability--for she is a woman +with a long, long look ahead, the longest look ahead that ever a woman +had--and she has provided for that emergency. In Art. I., Sec. 5, she +has decreed that no Board of Trustees shall ever exist in the +Mother-Church "except it be constituted by the Pastor Emeritus." + +The magnificence of it, the daring of it! Thus far, she is: + +The Massachusetts Metaphysical College; +Pastor Emeritus; +President; +Board of Directors; +Treasurer; +Clerk; +and future Board of Trustees; + +and is still moving onward, ever onward. When I contemplate her from a +commercial point of view, there are no words that can convey my +admiration of her. + + + + +READERS + +These are a feature of first importance in the church-machinery of +Christian Science. For they occupy the pulpit. They hold the place that +the preacher holds in the other Christian Churches. They hold that +place, but they do not preach. Two of them are on duty at a time--a man +and a woman. One reads a passage from the Bible, the other reads the +explanation of it from Science and Health--and so they go on alternating. +This constitutes the service--this, with choir-music. They utter no word +of their own. Art. IV., Sec. 6, closes their mouths with this +uncompromising gag: + +"They shall make no remarks explanatory of the Lesson-Sermon at any time +during the service." + +It seems a simple little thing. One is not startled by it at a first +reading of it; nor at the second, nor the third. One may have to read it +a dozen times before the whole magnitude of it rises before the mind. It +far and away oversizes and outclasses the best business-idea yet invented +for the safe-guarding and perpetuating of a religion. If it had been +thought of and put in force eighteen hundred and seventy years ago, there +would be but one Christian sect in the world now, instead of ten dozens +of them. + +There are many varieties of men in the world, consequently there are many +varieties of minds in its pulpits. This insures many differing +interpretations of important Scripture texts, and this in turn insures +the splitting up of a religion into many sects. It is what has happened; +it was sure to happen. + +Mrs. Eddy has noted this disastrous result of preaching, and has put up +the bars. She will have no preaching in her Church. She has explained +all essential Scriptures, and set the explanations down in her book. In +her belief her underlings cannot improve upon those explanations, and in +that stern sentence "they shall make no explanatory remarks" she has +barred them for all time from trying. She will be obeyed; there is no +question about that. + +In arranging her government she has borrowed ideas from various sources +--not poor ones, but the best in the governmental market--but this one is +new, this one came out of no ordinary business-head, this one must have +come out of her own, there has been no other commercial skull in a +thousand centuries that was equal to it. She has borrowed freely and +wisely, but I am sure that this idea is many times larger than all her +borrowings bulked together. One must respect the business-brain that +produced it--the splendid pluck and impudence that ventured to promulgate +it, anyway. + + + + +ELECTION OF READERS + +Readers are not taken at hap-hazard, any more than preachers are taken at +hap-hazard for the pulpits of other sects. No, Readers are elected by +the Board of Directors. But-- + +"Section 3. The Board shall inform the Pas. for Emeritus of the names +of candidates for Readers before they are elected, and if she objects to +the nomination, said candidates shall not be chosen." + +Is that an election--by the Board? Thus far I have not been able to find +out what that Board of Spectres is for. It certainly has no real +function, no duty which the hired girl could not perform, no office +beyond the mere recording of the autocrat's decrees. + +There are no dangerously long office-terms in Mrs. Eddy's government. +The Readers are elected for but one year. This insures their +subserviency to their proprietor. + +Readers are not allowed to copy out passages and read them from the +manuscript in the pulpit; they must read from Mrs. Eddy's book itself. +She is right. Slight changes could be slyly made, repeated, and in time +get acceptance with congregations. Branch sects could grow out of these +practices. Mrs. Eddy knows the human race, and how far to trust it. Her +limit is not over a quarter of an inch. It is all that a wise person +will risk. + +Mrs. Eddy's inborn disposition to copyright everything, charter +everything, secure the rightful and proper credit to herself for +everything she does, and everything she thinks she does, and everything +she thinks, and everything she thinks she thinks or has thought or +intends to think, is illustrated in Sec. 5 of Art. IV., defining the +duties of official Readers--in church: + +"Naming Book and Author. The Reader of Science and Health, with Key to +the Scriptures, before commencing to read from this book, shall +distinctly announce its full title and give the author's name." + +Otherwise the congregation might get the habit of forgetting who +(ostensibly) wrote the book. + + + + +THE ARISTOCRACY + +This consists of First Members and their apostolic succession. It is a +close corporation, and its membership limit is one hundred. Forty will +answer, but if the number fall below that, there must be an election, to +fill the grand quorum. + +This Sanhedrin can't do anything of the slightest importance, but it can +talk. It can "discuss." That is, it can discuss "important questions +relative to Church members", evidently persons who are already Church +members. This affords it amusement, and does no harm. + +It can "fix the salaries of the Readers." + +Twice a year it "votes on" admitting candidates. That is, for Church +membership. But its work is cut out for it beforehand, by Art. IX.: + +"Every recommendation for membership In the Church 'shall be +countersigned by a loyal student of Mrs. Eddy's, by a Director of this +Church, or by a First Member.'" + +All these three classes of beings are the personal property of Mrs. Eddy. +She has absolute control of the elections. + +Also it must "transact any Church business that may properly come before +it." + +"Properly" is a thoughtful word. No important business can come before +it. The By laws have attended to that. No important business goes +before any one for the final word except Mrs. Eddy. She has looked to +that. + +The Sanhedrin "votes on" candidates for admission to its own body. But +is its vote worth any more than mine would be? No, it isn't. Sec. 4, +of Art. V.--Election of First Members--makes this quite plain: + +"Before being elected, the candidates for First Members shall be approved +by the Pastor Emeritus over her own signature." + +Thus the Sanhedrin is the personal property of Mrs. Eddy. She owns it. +It has no functions, no authority, no real existence. It is another +Board of Shadows. Mrs. Eddy is the Sanhedrin herself. + +But it is time to foot up again and "see where we are at." Thus far, +Mrs. Eddy is + +The Massachusetts Metaphysical College; +Pastor Emeritus, +President; +Board of Directors; +Treasurer; +Clerk; +Future Board of Trustees; +Proprietor of the Priesthood: +Dictator of the Services; +Proprietor of the Sanhedrin. She has come far, and is still on her way. + + + + +CHURCH MEMBERSHIP + +In this Article there is another exhibition of a couple of the large +features of Mrs. Eddy's remarkable make-up: her business-talent and her +knowledge of human nature. + +She does not beseech and implore people to join her Church. She knows +the human race better than that. She gravely goes through the motions of +reluctantly granting admission to the applicant as a favor to him. The +idea is worth untold shekels. She does not stand at the gate of the fold +with welcoming arms spread, and receive the lost sheep with glad emotion +and set up the fatted calf and invite the neighbor and have a time. No, +she looks upon him coldly, she snubs him, she says: + +"Who are you? Who is your sponsor? Who asked you to come here? Go +away, and don't come again until you are invited." + +It is calculated to strikingly impress a person accustomed to Moody and +Sankey and Sam Jones revivals; accustomed to brain-turning appeals to the +unknown and unendorsed sinner to come forward and enter into the joy, +etc.--"just as he is"; accustomed to seeing him do it; accustomed to +seeing him pass up the aisle through sobbing seas of welcome, and love, +and congratulation, and arrive at the mourner's bench and be received +like a long-lost government bond. + +No, there is nothing of that kind in Mrs. Eddy's system. She knows that +if you wish to confer upon a human being something which he is not sure +he wants, the best way is to make it apparently difficult for him to get +it--then he is no son of Adam if that apple does not assume an interest +in his eyes which it lacked before. In time this interest can grow into +desire. Mrs. Eddy knows that when you cannot get a man to try--free of +cost--a new and effective remedy for a disease he is afflicted with, you +can generally sell it to him if you will put a price upon it which he +cannot afford. When, in the beginning, she taught Christian Science +gratis (for good reasons), pupils were few and reluctant, and required +persuasion; it was when she raised the limit to three hundred dollars for +a dollar's worth that she could not find standing room for the invasion +of pupils that followed. + +With fine astuteness she goes through the motions of making it difficult +to get membership in her Church. There is a twofold value in this +system: it gives membership a high value in the eyes of the applicant; +and at the same time the requirements exacted enable Mrs. Eddy to keep +him out if she has doubts about his value to her. A word further as to +applications for membership: + +"Applications of students of the Metaphysical College must be signed by +the Board of Directors." + +That is safe. Mrs. Eddy is proprietor of that Board. + +Children of twelve may be admitted if invited by "one of Mrs. Eddy's +loyal students, or by a First Member, or by a Director." + +These sponsors are the property of Mrs. Eddy, therefore her Church is +safeguarded from the intrusion of undesirable children. + +Other Students. Applicants who have not studied with Mrs. Eddy can get +in only "by invitation and recommendation from students of Mrs. Eddy.... +or from members of the Mother-Church." + +Other paragraphs explain how two or three other varieties of applicants +are to be challenged and obstructed, and tell us who is authorized to +invite them, recommend them endorse them, and all that. + +The safeguards are definite, and would seem to be sufficiently strenuous +--to Mr. Sam Jones, at any rate. Not for Mrs. Eddy. She adds this +clincher: + +"The candidates be elected by a majority vote of the First Members +present." + +That is the aristocracy, the aborigines, the Sanhedrin. It is Mrs. +Eddy's property. She herself is the Sanhedrin. No one can get into the +Church if she wishes to keep him out. + +This veto power could some time or other have a large value for her, +therefore she was wise to reserve it. + +It is likely that it is not frequently used. It is also probable that +the difficulties attendant upon getting admission to membership have been +instituted more to invite than to deter, more to enhance the value of +membership and make people long for it than to make it really difficult +to get. I think so, because the Mother. Church has many thousands of +members more than its building can accommodate. + + + + +AND SOME ENGLISH REQUIRED + +Mrs. Eddy is very particular as regards one detail curiously so, for her, +all things considered. The Church Readers must be "good English +scholars"; they must be "thorough English scholars." + +She is thus sensitive about the English of her subordinates for cause, +possibly. In her chapter defining the duties of the Clerk there is an +indication that she harbors resentful memories of an occasion when the +hazy quality of her own English made unforeseen and mortifying trouble: + +"Understanding Communications. Sec. 2. If the Clerk of this Church +shall receive a communication from the Pastor Emeritus which he does not +fully understand, he shall inform her of this fact before presenting it +to the Church, and obtain a clear understanding of the matter--then act +in accordance therewith." + +She should have waited to calm down, then, but instead she added this, +which lacks sugar: + +"Failing to adhere to this By-law, the Clerk must resign." + +I wish I could see that communication that broke the camel's back. It +was probably the one beginning: "What plague spot or bacilli were gnawing +at the heart of this metropolis and bringing it on bended knee?" and I +think it likely that the kindly disposed Clerk tried to translate it into +English and lost his mind and had to go to the hospital. That Bylaw was +not the offspring of a forecast, an intuition, it was certainly born of a +sorrowful experience. Its temper gives the fact away. + +The little book of By-laws has manifestly been tinkered by one of Mrs. +Eddy's "thorough English scholars," for in the majority of cases its +meanings are clear. The book is not even marred by Mrs. Eddy's peculiar +specialty--lumbering clumsinesses of speech. I believe the salaried +polisher has weeded them all out but one. In one place, after referring +to Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy goes on to say "the Bible and the +above-named book, with other works by the same author," etc. + +It is an unfortunate sentence, for it could mislead a hasty or careless +reader for a moment. Mrs. Eddy framed it--it is her very own--it bears +her trade-mark. "The Bible and Science and Health, with other works by +the same author," could have come from no literary vacuum but the one +which produced the remark (in the Autobiography): "I remember reading, in +my childhood, certain manuscripts containing Scriptural Sonnets, besides +other verses and enigmas." + +We know what she means, in both instances, but a low-priced Clerk would +not necessarily know, and on a salary like his he could quite excusably +aver that the Pastor Emeritus had commanded him to come and make +proclamation that she was author of the Bible, and that she was thinking +of discharging some Scriptural sonnets and other enigmas upon the +congregation. It could lose him his place, but it would not be fair, if +it happened before the edict about "Understanding Communications" was +promulgated. + + + + +"READERS" AGAIN + +The By-law book makes a showy pretence of orderliness and system, but it +is only a pretence. I will not go so far as to say it is a harum-scarum +jumble, for it is not that, but I think it fair to say it is at least +jumbulacious in places. For instance, Articles III. and IV. set forth +in much detail the qualifications and duties of Readers, she then skips +some thirty pages and takes up the subject again. It looks like +slovenliness, but it may be only art. The belated By-law has a +sufficiently quiet look, but it has a ton of dynamite in it. It makes +all the Christian Science Church Readers on the globe the personal +chattels of Mrs. Eddy. Whenever she chooses, she can stretch her long +arm around the world's fat belly and flirt a Reader out of his pulpit, +though he be tucked away in seeming safety and obscurity in a lost +village in the middle of China: + +"In any Church. Sec. 2. The Pastor Emeritus of the Mother-Church shall +have the right (through a letter addressed to the individual and Church +of which he is the Reader) to remove a Reader from this office in any +Church of Christ, Scientist, both in America and in foreign nations; or +to appoint the Reader to fill any office belonging to the Christian +Science denomination." + +She does not have to prefer charges against him, she does not have to +find him lazy, careless, incompetent, untidy, ill-mannered, unholy, +dishonest, she does not have to discover a fault of any kind in him, she +does not have to tell him nor his congregation why she dismisses and +disgraces him and insults his meek flock, she does not have to explain to +his family why she takes the bread out of their mouths and turns them +out-of-doors homeless and ashamed in a strange land; she does not have to +do anything but send a letter and say: "Pack!--and ask no questions!" + +Has the Pope this power?--the other Pope--the one in Rome. Has he +anything approaching it? Can he turn a priest out of his pulpit and +strip him of his office and his livelihood just upon a whim, a caprice, +and meanwhile furnishing no reasons to the parish? Not in America. And +not elsewhere, we may believe. + +It is odd and strange, to see intelligent and educated people among us +worshipping this self-seeking and remorseless tyrant as a God. This +worship is denied--by persons who are themselves worshippers of Mrs. +Eddy. I feel quite sure that it is a worship which will continue during +ages. + +That Mrs. Eddy wrote that amazing By-law with her own hand we have much +better evidence than her word. We have her English. It is there. It +cannot be imitated. She ought never to go to the expense of copyrighting +her verbal discharges. When any one tries to claim them she should call +me; I can always tell them from any other literary apprentice's at a +glance. It was like her to call America a "nation"; she would call a +sand-bar a nation if it should fall into a sentence in which she was +speaking of peoples, for she would not know how to untangle it and get it +out and classify it by itself. And the closing arrangement of that +By-law is in true Eddysonian form, too. In it she reserves authority to +make a Reader fill any office connected with a Science church-sexton, +grave-digger, advertising-agent, Annex-polisher, leader of the choir, +President, Director, Treasurer, Clerk, etc. She did not mean that. She +already possessed that authority. She meant to clothe herself with +power, despotic and unchallengeable, to appoint all Science Readers to +their offices, both at home and abroad. The phrase "or to appoint" is +another miscarriage of intention; she did not mean "or," she meant "and." + + +That By-law puts into Mrs. Eddy's hands absolute command over the most +formidable force and influence existent in the Christian Science kingdom +outside of herself, and it does this unconditionally and (by auxiliary +force of Laws already quoted) irrevocably. Still, she is not quite +satisfied. Something might happen, she doesn't know what. Therefore she +drives in one more nail, to make sure, and drives it deep: + +"This By-law can neither be amended nor annulled, except by consent of +the Pastor Emeritus." + +Let some one with a wild and delirious fancy try and see if he can +imagine her furnishing that consent. + + + + +MONOPOLY OF SPIRITUAL BREAD + +Very properly, the first qualification for membership in the +Mother-Church is belief in the doctrines of Christian Science. + +But these doctrines must not be gathered from secondary sources. There +is but one recognized source. The candidate must be a believer in the +doctrines of Christian Science "according to the platform and teaching +contained in the Christian Science text-book, 'Science and Health, with +Key to the Scriptures,' by Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy." + +That is definite, and is final. There are to be no commentaries, no +labored volumes of exposition and explanation by anybody except Mrs. +Eddy. Because such things could sow error, create warring opinions, +split the religion into sects, and disastrously cripple its power. Mrs. +Eddy will do the whole of the explaining, Herself--has done it, in fact. +She has written several books. They are to be had (for cash in advance), +they are all sacred; additions to them can never be needed and will never +be permitted. They tell the candidate how to instruct himself, how to +teach others, how to do all things comprised in the business--and they +close the door against all would-be competitors, and monopolize the +trade: + +"The Bible and the above--named book [Science and Health], with other +works by the same author," must be his only text-books for the commerce +--he cannot forage outside. + +Mrs. Eddy's words are to be the sole elucidators of the Bible and Science +and Health--forever. Throughout the ages, whenever there is doubt as to +the meaning of a passage in either of these books the inquirer will not +dream of trying to explain it to himself; he would shudder at the thought +of such temerity, such profanity, he would be haled to the Inquisition +and thence to the public square and the stake if he should be caught +studying into text-meanings on his own hook; he will be prudent and seek +the meanings at the only permitted source, Mrs. Eddy's commentaries. + +Value of this Strait-jacket. One must not underrate the magnificence of +this long-headed idea, one must not underestimate its giant possibilities +in the matter of trooping the Church solidly together and keeping it so. +It squelches independent inquiry, and makes such a thing impossible, +profane, criminal, it authoritatively settles every dispute that can +arise. It starts with finality--a point which the Roman Church has +travelled towards fifteen or sixteen centuries, stage by stage, and has +not yet reached. The matter of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin +Mary was not authoritatively settled until the days of Pius IX. +--yesterday, so to speak. + +As already noticed, the Protestants are broken up into a long array of +sects, a result of disputes about the meanings of texts, disputes made +unavoidable by the absence of an infallible authority to submit doubtful +passages to. A week or two ago (I am writing in the middle of January, +1903), the clergy and others hereabouts had a warm dispute in the papers +over this question: Did Jesus anywhere claim to be God? It seemed an +easy question, but it turned out to be a hard one. It was ably and +elaborately discussed, by learned men of several denominations, but in +the end it remained unsettled. + +A week ago, another discussion broke out. It was over this text: + +"Sell all that thou hast and distribute unto the poor." + +One verdict was worded as follows: + +"When Christ answered the rich young man and said for him to give to the +poor all he possessed or he could not gain everlasting life, He did not +mean it in the literal sense. My interpretation of His words is that we +should part with what comes between us and Christ. + +"There is no doubt that Jesus believed that the rich young man thought +more of his wealth than he did of his soul, and, such being the case, it +was his duty to give up the wealth. + +"Every one of us knows that there is something we should give up for +Christ. Those who are true believers and followers know what they have +given up, and those who are not yet followers know down in their hearts +what they must give up." + +Ten clergymen of various denominations were interviewed, and nine of them +agreed with that verdict. That did not settle the matter, because the +tenth said the language of Jesus was so strait and definite that it +explained itself: "Sell all," not a percentage. + +There is a most unusual feature about that dispute: the nine persons who +decided alike, quoted not a single authority in support of their +position. I do not know when I have seen trained disputants do the like +of that before. The nine merely furnished their own opinions, founded +upon--nothing at all. In the other dispute ("Did Jesus anywhere claim to +be God?") the same kind of men--trained and learned clergymen--backed up +their arguments with chapter and verse. On both sides. Plenty of +verses. Were no reinforcing verses to be found in the present case? It +looks that way. + +The opinion of the nine seems strange to me, for it is unsupported by +authority, while there was at least constructive authority for the +opposite view. + +It is hair-splitting differences of opinion over disputed text-meanings +that have divided into many sects a once united Church. One may infer +from some of the names in the following list that some of the differences +are very slight--so slight as to be not distinctly important, perhaps +--yet they have moved groups to withdraw from communions to which they +belonged and set up a sect of their own. The list--accompanied by +various Church statistics for 1902, compiled by Rev. Dr. H. K. +Carroll--was published, January 8, 1903, in the New York Christian +Advocate: + +Adventists (6 bodies), Baptists (13 bodies), Brethren (Plymouth) (4 +bodies), Brethren (River) (3 bodies), Catholics (8 bodies), Catholic +Apostolic, Christadelphians, Christian Connection, Christian Catholics, +Christian Missionary Association, Christian Scientists, Church of God +(Wine-brennarian), Church of the New Jerusalem, Congregationalists, +Disciples of Christ, Dunkards (4 bodies), Evangelical (2 bodies), Friends +(4 bodies), Friends of the Temple, German Evangelical Protestant, German +Evangelical Synod, Independent congregations, Jews (2 bodies), Latter-day +Saints (2 bodies), Lutherans (22 bodies), Mennonites (12 bodies), +Methodists (17 bodies), Moravians, Presbyterians (12 bodies), Protestant +Episcopal (2 bodies), Reformed (3 bodies), Schwenkfeldians, Social +Brethren, Spiritualists, Swedish Evangelical Miss. Covenant +(Waldenstromians), Unitarians, United Brethren (2 bodies), Universalists, + +Total of sects and splits--139. + +In the present month (February), Mr. E. I. Lindh, A..M., has +communicated to the Boston Transcript a hopeful article on the solution +of the problem of the "divided church." Divided is not too violent a +term. Subdivided could have been permitted if he had thought of it. He +came near thinking of it, for he mentions some of the subdivisions +himself: "the 12 kinds of Presbyterians, the 17 kinds of Methodists, the +13 kinds of Baptists, etc." He overlooked the 12 kinds of Mennonites and +the 22 kinds of Lutherans, but they are in Rev. Mr. Carroll's list. +Altogether, 76 splits under 5 flags. The Literary Digest (February 14th) +is pleased with Mr. Lindh's optimistic article, and also with the signs +of the times, and perceives that "the idea of Church unity is in the +air." + +Now, then, is not Mrs. Eddy profoundly wise in forbidding, for all time, +all explanations of her religion except such as she shall let on to be +her own? + +I think so. I think there can be no doubt of it. In a way, they will be +her own; for, no matter which member of her clerical staff shall furnish +the explanations, not a line of them will she ever allow to be printed +until she shall have approved it, accepted it, copyrighted it, cabbaged +it. We may depend on that with a four-ace confidence. + + + + +THE NEW INFALLIBILITY + +All in proper time Mrs. Eddy's factory will take hold of that +Commandment, and explain it for good and all. It may be that one member +of the shift will vote that the word "all" means all; it may be that ten +members of the shift will vote that "all" means only a percentage; but it +is Mrs. Eddy, not the eleven, who will do the deciding. And if she says +it is percentage, then percentage it is, forevermore--and that is what I +am expecting, for she doesn't sell all herself, nor any considerable part +of it, and as regards the poor, she doesn't declare any dividend; but if +she says "all" means all, then all it is, to the end of time, and no +follower of hers will ever be allowed to reconstruct that text, or shrink +it, or inflate it, or meddle with it in any way at all. Even to-day +--right here in the beginning--she is the sole person who, in the matter +of Christian Science exegesis, is privileged to exploit the Spiral Twist. +The Christian world has two Infallibles now. + +Of equal power? For the present only. When Leo XIII. passes to his +rest another Infallible will ascend his throne; others, and yet others, +and still others will follow him, and be as infallible as he, and decide +questions of doctrine as long as they may come up, all down the far +future; but Mary Baker G. Eddy is the only Infallible that will ever +occupy the Science throne. Many a Science Pope will succeed her, but she +has closed their mouths; they will repeat and reverently praise and adore +her infallibilities, but venture none themselves. In her grave she will +still outrank all other Popes, be they of what Church they may. She will +hold the supremest of earthly titles, The Infallible--with a capital T. +Many in the world's history have had a hunger for such nuggets and slices +of power as they might reasonably hope to grab out of an empire's or a +religion's assets, but Mrs. Eddy is the only person alive or dead who has +ever struck for the whole of them. For small things she has the eye of a +microscope, for large ones the eye of a telescope, and whatever she sees, +she wants. Wants it all. + + + + +THE SACRED POEMS + +When Mrs. Eddy's "sacred revelations" (that is the language of the +By-laws) are read in public, their authorship must be named. The By-laws +twice command this, therefore we mention it twice, to be fair. + +But it is also commanded that when a member publicly quotes "from the +poems of our Pastor Emeritus" the authorship shall be named. For these +are sacred, too. There are kindly people who may suspect a hidden +generosity in that By-law; they may think it is there to protect the +Official Reader from the suspicion of having written the poems himself. +Such do not know Mrs. Eddy. She does an inordinate deal of protecting, +but in no distinctly named and specified case in her history has Number +Two been the object of it. Instances have been claimed, but they have +failed of proof, and even of plausibility. + +"Members shall also instruct their students" to look out and advertise +the authorship when they read those poems and things. Not on Mrs. Eddy's +account, but "for the good of our Cause." + + + + +THE CHURCH EDIFICE + +1. Mrs. Eddy gave the land. It was not of much value at the time, but +it is very valuable now. +2. Her people built the Mother-Church edifice on it, at a cost of two +hundred and fifty thousand dollars. +3. Then they gave the whole property to her. +4. Then she gave it to the Board of Directors. She is the Board of +Directors. She took it out of one pocket and put it in the other. +5. Sec. 10 (of the deed). "Whenever said Directors shall determine +that it is inexpedient to maintain preaching, reading, or speaking in +said church in accordance with the terms of this deed, they are +authorized and required to reconvey forthwith said lot of land with the +building thereon to Mary Baker G. Eddy, her heirs and assigns forever, +by a proper deed of conveyance." + +She is never careless, never slipshod, about a matter of business. +Owning the property through her Board of Waxworks was safe enough, still +it was sound business to set another grip on it to cover accidents, and +she did it. Her barkers (what a curious name; I wonder if it is +copyrighted); her barkers persistently advertise to the public her +generosity in giving away a piece of land which cost her a trifle, and a +two--hundred--and--fifty--thousand--dollar church which cost her nothing; +and they can hardly speak of the unselfishness of it without breaking +down and crying; yet they know she gave nothing away, and never intended +to. However, such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity +that Noah and his party did not miss the boat. + +Some of the hostiles think that Mrs. Eddy's idea in protecting this +property in the interest of her heirs, and in accumulating a great money +fortune, is, that she may leave her natural heirs well provided for when +she goes. I think it is a mistake. I think she is of late years giving +herself large concern about only one interest-her power and glory, and +the perpetuation and worship of her Name--with a capital N. Her Church +is her pet heir, and I think it will get her wealth. It is the torch +which is to light the world and the ages with her glory. + +I think she once prized money for the ease and comfort it could bring, +the showy vanities it could furnish, and the social promotion it could +command; for we have seen that she was born into the world with little +ways and instincts and aspirations and affectations that are duplicates +of our own. I do not think her money-passion has ever diminished in +ferocity, I do not think that she has ever allowed a dollar that had no +friends to get by her alive, but I think her reason for wanting it has +changed. I think she wants it now to increase and establish and +perpetuate her power and glory with, not to add to her comforts and +luxuries, not to furnish paint and fuss and feathers for vain display. +I think her ambitions have soared away above the fuss-and-feather stage. +She still likes the little shows and vanities--a fact which she exposed +in a public utterance two or three days ago when she was not noticing +--but I think she does not place a large value upon them now. She could +build a mighty and far-shining brass-mounted palace if she wanted to, but +she does not do it. She would have had that kind of an ambition in the +early scrabbling times. She could go to England to-day and be worshiped +by earls, and get a comet's attention from the million, if she cared for +such things. She would have gone in the early scrabbling days for much +less than an earl, and been vain of it, and glad to show off before the +remains of the Scotch kin. But those things are very small to her now +--next to invisible, observed through the cloud-rack from the dizzy +summit where she perches in these great days. She does not want that +church property for herself. It is worth but a quarter of a million--a +sum she could call in from her far-spread flocks to-morrow with a lift of +her hand. Not a squeeze of it, just a lift. It would come without a +murmur; come gratefully, come gladly. And if her glory stood in more +need of the money in Boston than it does where her flocks are propagating +it, she would lift the hand, I think. + +She is still reaching for the Dollar, she will continue to reach for it; +but not that she may spend it upon herself; not that she may spend it +upon charities; not that she may indemnify an early deprivation and +clothe herself in a blaze of North Adams gauds; not that she may have +nine breeds of pie for breakfast, as only the rich New-Englander can; not +that she may indulge any petty material vanity or appetite that once was +hers and prized and nursed, but that she may apply that Dollar to +statelier uses, and place it where it may cast the metallic sheen of her +glory farthest across the receding expanses of the globe. + + + + +PRAYER + +A brief and good one is furnished in the book of By-laws. The Scientist +is required to pray it every day. + + + + +THE LORD'S PRAYER-AMENDED + +This is not in the By-laws, it is in the first chapter of Science and +Health, edition of 1902. I do not find it in the edition of 1884. It is +probable that it had not at that time been handed down. Science and +Health's (latest) rendering of its "spiritual sense" is as follows: + +"Our Father-Mother God' all-harmonious, adorable One. Thy kingdom is +within us, Thou art ever-present. Enable us to know--as in heaven, so on +earth--God is supreme. Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished +affections. And infinite Love is reflected in love. And Love leadeth us +not into temptation, but delivereth from sin, disease, and death. For +God is now and forever all Life, Truth, and Love." + +If I thought my opinion was desired and would be properly revered, I +should say that in my judgment that is as good a piece of carpentering as +any of those eleven Commandment--experts could do with the material after +all their practice. I notice only one doubtful place. "Lead us not into +temptation" seems to me to be a very definite request, and that the new +rendering turns the definite request into a definite assertion. I shall +be glad to have that turned back to the old way and the marks of the +Spiral Twist removed, or varnished over; then I shall be satisfied, and +will do the best I can with what is left. At the same time, I do feel +that the shrinkage in our spiritual assets is getting serious. First the +Commandments, now the Prayer. I never expected to see these steady old +reliable securities watered down to this. And this is not the whole of +it. Last summer the Presbyterians extended the Calling and Election +suffrage to nearly everybody entitled to salvation. They did not even +stop there, but let out all the unbaptized American infants we had been +accumulating for two hundred years and more. There are some that believe +they would have let the Scotch ones out, too, if they could have done it. +Everything is going to ruin; in no long time we shall have nothing left +but the love of God. + + + + +THE NEW UNPARDONABLE SIN + +"Working Against the Cause. Sec. 2. If a member of this Church shall +work against the accomplishment of what the Discoverer and Founder of +Christian Science understands is advantageous to the individual, to this +Church, and to the Cause of Christian Science"--out he goes. Forever. + +The member may think that what he is doing will advance the Cause, but he +is not invited to do any thinking. More than that, he is not permitted +to do any--as he will clearly gather from this By-law. When a person +joins Mrs. Eddy's Church he must leave his thinker at home. Leave it +permanently. To make sure that it will not go off some time or other +when he is not watching, it will be safest for him to spike it. If he +should forget himself and think just once, the By-law provides that he +shall be fired out-instantly-forever-no return. + +"It shall be the duty of this Church immediately to call a meeting, and +drop forever the name of this member from its records." + +My, but it breathes a towering indignation! + +There are forgivable offenses, but this is not one of them; there are +admonitions, probations, suspensions, in several minor cases; mercy is +shown the derelict, in those cases he is gently used, and in time he can +get back into the fold--even when he has repeated his offence. But let +him think, just once, without getting his thinker set to Eddy time, and +that is enough; his head comes off. There is no second offence, and +there is no gate open to that lost sheep, ever again. + +"This rule cannot be changed, amended, or annulled, except by unanimous +vote of all the First Members." + +The same being Mrs. Eddy. It is naively sly and pretty to see her keep +putting forward First Members, and Boards of This and That, and other +broideries and ruffles of her raiment, as if they were independent +entities, instead of a part of her clothes, and could do things all by +themselves when she was outside of them. + +Mrs. Eddy did not need to copyright the sentence just quoted, its English +would protect it. None but she would have shovelled that comically +superfluous "all" in there. + +The former Unpardonable Sin has gone out of service. We may frame the +new Christian Science one thus: + +"Whatsoever Member shall think, and without Our Mother's permission act +upon his think, the same shall be cut off from the Church forever." + +It has been said that I make many mistakes about Christian Science +through being ignorant of the spiritual meanings of its terminology. I +believe it is true. I have been misled all this time by that word +Member, because there was no one to tell me that its spiritual meaning +was Slave. + + + + +AXE AND BLOCK + +There is a By-law which forbids Members to practice hypnotism; the +penalty is excommunication. + +1. If a member is found to be a mental practitioner-- +2. Complaint is to be entered against him-- +3. By the Pastor Emeritus, and by none else; +4. No member is allowed to make complaint to her in the matter; +5. Upon Mrs. Eddy's mere "complaint"--unbacked by evidence or proof, and +without giving the accused a chance to be heard--his name shall be +dropped from this Church." + +Mrs. Eddy has only to say a member is guilty--that is all. That ends it. +It is not a case of he "may" be cut off from Christian Science salvation, +it is a case of he "shall" be. Her serfs must see to it, and not say a +word. + +Does the other Pope possess this prodigious and irresponsible power? +Certainly not in our day. + +Some may be curious to know how Mrs. Eddy finds out that a member is +practicing hypnotism, since no one is allowed to come before her throne +and accuse him. She has explained this in Christian Science History, +first and second editions, page 16: + +"I possess a spiritual sense of what the malicious mental practitioner is +mentally arguing which cannot be deceived; I can discern in the human +mind thoughts, motives, and purposes, and neither mental arguments nor +psychic power can affect this spiritual insight." + +A marvelous woman; with a hunger for power such as has never been seen in +the world before. No thing, little or big, that contains any seed or +suggestion of power escapes her avaricious eye; and when once she gets +that eye on it, her remorseless grip follows. There isn't a Christian +Scientist who isn't ecclesiastically as much her property as if she had +bought him and paid for him, and copyrighted him and got a charter. She +cannot be satisfied when she has handcuffed a member, and put a leg-chain +and ball on him and plugged his ears and removed his thinker, she goes on +wrapping needless chains round and round him, just as a spider would. +For she trusts no one, believes in no one's honesty, judges every one by +herself. Although we have seen that she has absolute and irresponsible +command over her spectral Boards and over every official and servant of +her Church, at home and abroad, over every minute detail of her Church's +government, present and future, and can purge her membership of guilty or +suspected persons by various plausible formalities and whenever she will, +she is still not content, but must set her queer mind to work and invent +a way by which she can take a member--any member--by neck and crop and +fling him out without anything resembling a formality at all. + +She is sole accuser and sole witness, and her testimony is final and +carries uncompromising and irremediable doom with it. + +The Sole-Witness Court! It should make the Council of Ten and the +Council of Three turn in their graves for shame, to see how little they +knew about satanic concentrations of irresponsible power. Here we have +one Accuser, one Witness, one Judge, one Headsman--and all four bunched +together in Mrs. Eddy, the Inspired of God, His Latest Thought to His +People, New Member of the Holy Family, the Equal of Jesus. + +When a Member is not satisfactory to Mrs. Eddy, and yet is blameless in +his life and faultless in his membership and in his Christian Science +walk and conversation, shall he hold up his head and tilt his hat over +one ear and imagine himself safe because of these perfections? Why, in +that very moment Mrs. Eddy will cast that spiritual X-ray of hers through +his dungarees and say: + +"I see his hypnotism working, among his insides--remove him to the +block!" + +What shall it profit him to know it isn't so? Nothing. His testimony is +of no value. No one wants it, no one will ask for it. He is not present +to offer it (he does not know he has been accused), and if he were there +to offer it, it would not be listened to. + +It was out of powers approaching Mrs. Eddy's--though not equalling them +--that the Inquisition and the devastations of the Interdict grew. She +will transmit hers. The man born two centuries from now will think he +has arrived in hell; and all in good time he will think he knows it. +Vast concentrations of irresponsible power have never in any age been +used mercifully, and there is nothing to suggest that the Christian +Science Papacy is going to spend money on novelties. + +Several Christian Scientists have asked me to refrain from prophecy. +There is no prophecy in our day but history. But history is a +trustworthy prophet. History is always repeating itself, because +conditions are always repeating themselves. Out of duplicated conditions +history always gets a duplicate product. + + + + +READING LETTERS AT MEETINGS + +I wonder if there is anything a Member can do that will not raise Mrs. +Eddy's jealousy? The By-laws seem to hunt him from pillar to post all +the time, and turn all his thoughts and acts and words into sins against +the meek and lowly new deity of his worship. Apparently her jealousy +never sleeps. Apparently any trifle can offend it, and but one penalty +appease it--excommunication. The By-laws might properly and reasonably +be entitled Laws for the Coddling and Comforting of Our Mother's Petty +Jealousies. The By-law named at the head of this paragraph reads its +transgressor out of the Church if he shall carry a letter from Mrs. Eddy +to the congregation and forget to read it or fail to read the whole of +it. + + + + +HONESTY REQUISITE + +Dishonest members are to be admonished; if they continue in dishonest +practices, excommunication follows. Considering who it is that draughted +this law, there is a certain amount of humor in it. + + + + +FURTHER APPLICATIONS OF THE AXE + +Here follow the titles of some more By-laws whose infringement is +punishable by excommunication: + + +Silence Enjoined. +Misteaching. +Departure from Tenets. +Violation of Christian Fellowship. +Moral Offences. +Illegal Adoption. +Broken By-laws. +Violation of By-laws. (What is the difference?) +Formulas Forbidden. +Official Advice. (Forbids Tom, Dick, and Harry's clack.) +Unworthy of Membership. +Final Excommunication. +Organizing Churches. + +This looks as if Mrs. Eddy had devoted a large share of her time and +talent to inventing ways to get rid of her Church members. Yet in +another place she seems to invite membership. Not in any urgent way, it +is true, still she throws out a bait to such as like notice and +distinction (in other words, the Human Race). Page 82: + +"It is important that these seemingly strict conditions be complied with, +as the names of the Members of the Mother-Church will be recorded in the +history of the Church and become a part thereof." + +We all want to be historical. + + + + +MORE SELF-PROTECTIONS + +The Hymnal. There is a Christian Science Hymnal. Entrance to it was +closed in 1898. Christian Science students who make hymns nowadays may +possibly get them sung in the Mother-Church, "but not unless approved by +the Pastor Emeritus." Art. XXVII, Sec. 2. + +Solo Singers. Mrs. Eddy has contributed the words of three of the hymns +in the Hymnal. Two of them appear in it six times altogether, each of +them being set to three original forms of musical anguish. Mrs. Eddy, +always thoughtful, has promulgated a By-law requiring the singing of one +of her three hymns in the Mother Church "as often as once each month." +It is a good idea. A congregation could get tired of even Mrs. Eddy's +muse in the course of time, without the cordializing incentive of +compulsion. We all know how wearisome the sweetest and touchingest +things can become, through rep-rep-repetition, and still +rep-rep-repetition, and more rep-rep-repetition-like "the sweet +by-and-by, in the sweet by-and-by," for instance, and "Tah-rah-rah +boom-de-aye"; and surely it is not likely that Mrs. Eddy's machine has +turned out goods that could outwear those great heart-stirrers, without +the assistance of the lash. "O'er Waiting Harpstrings of the Mind" is +pretty good, quite fair to middling--the whole seven of the stanzas--but +repetition would be certain to take the excitement out of it in the +course of time, even if there were fourteen, and then it would sound like +the multiplication table, and would cease to save. The congregation +would be perfectly sure to get tired; in fact, did get tired--hence the +compulsory By-law. It is a measure born of experience, not foresight. + +The By-laws say that "if a solo singer shall neglect or refuse to sing +alone" one of those three hymns as often as once a month, and oftener if +so directed by the Board of Directors--which is Mrs. Eddy--the singer's +salary shall be stopped. It is circumstantial evidence that some +soloists neglected this sacrament and others refused it. At least that +is the charitable view to take of it. There is only one other view to +take: that Mrs. Eddy did really foresee that there would be singers who +would some day get tired of doing her hymns and proclaiming the +authorship, unless persuaded by a Bylaw, with a penalty attached. The +idea could of course occur to her wise head, for she would know that a +seven-stanza break might well be a calamitous strain upon a soloist, and +that he might therefore avoid it if unwatched. He could not curtail it, +for the whole of anything that Mrs. Eddy does is sacred, and cannot be +cut. + + + + +BOARD OF EDUCATION + +It consists of four members, one of whom is President of it. Its members +are elected annually. Subject to Mrs. Eddy's approval. Art. XXX., Sec. 2. + +She owns the Board--is the Board. + +Mrs. Eddy is President of the Metaphysical College. If at any time she +shall vacate that office, the Directors of the College (that is to say, +Mrs. Eddy) "shall" elect to the vacancy the President of the Board of +Education (which is merely re-electing herself). + +It is another case of "Pastor Emeritus." She gives up the shadow of +authority, but keeps a good firm hold on the substance. + + + + +PUBLIC TEACHERS + +Applicants for admission to this industry must pass a thorough three +days' examination before the Board of Education "in Science and Health, +chapter on 'Recapitulation'; the Platform of Christian Science; page 403 +of Christian Science Practice, from line second to the second paragraph +of page 405; and page 488, second and third paragraphs." + + + + +BOARD OF LECTURESHIP + +The lecturers are exceedingly important servants of Mrs. Eddy, and she +chooses them with great care. Each of them has an appointed territory in +which to perform his duties--in the North, the South, the East, the West, +in Canada, in Great Britain, and so on--and each must stick to his own +territory and not forage beyond its boundaries. I think it goes without +saying--from what we have seen of Mrs. Eddy--that no lecture is delivered +until she has examined and approved it, and that the lecturer is not +allowed to change it afterwards. + +The members of the Board of Lectureship are elected annually-- + +"Subject to the approval of Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy." + + + + +MISSIONARIES + +There are but four. They are elected--like the rest of the domestics +--annually. So far as I can discover, not a single servant of the Sacred +Household has a steady job except Mrs. Eddy. It is plain that she trusts +no human being but herself. + + + + +THE BY-LAWS + +The branch Churches are strictly forbidden to use them. + +So far as I can see, they could not do it if they wanted to. The By-laws +are merely the voice of the master issuing commands to the servants. +There is nothing and nobody for the servants to re-utter them to. + +That useless edict is repeated in the little book, a few pages farther +on. There are several other repetitions of prohibitions in the book that +could be spared-they only take up room for nothing. + + + + +THE CREED +It is copyrighted. I do not know why, but I suppose it is to keep +adventurers from some day claiming that they invented it, and not Mrs. +Eddy and that "strange Providence" that has suggested so many clever +things to her. + +No Change. It is forbidden to change the Creed. That is important, at +any rate. + + + +COPYRIGHT + +I can understand why Mrs. Eddy copyrighted the early editions and +revisions of Science and Health, and why she had a mania for copyrighting +every scrap of every sort that came from her pen in those jejune days +when to be in print probably seemed a wonderful distinction to her in her +provincial obscurity, but why she should continue this delirium in these +days of her godship and her far-spread fame, I cannot explain to myself. +And particularly as regards Science and Health. She knows, now, that +that Annex is going to live for many centuries; and so, what good is a +fleeting forty-two-year copyright going to do it? + +Now a perpetual copyright would be quite another matter. I would like to +give her a hint. Let her strike for a perpetual copyright on that book. +There is precedent for it. There is one book in the world which bears +the charmed life of perpetual copyright (a fact not known to twenty +people in the world). By a hardy perversion of privilege on the part of +the lawmaking power the Bible has perpetual copyright in Great Britain. +There is no justification for it in fairness, and no explanation of it +except that the Church is strong enough there to have its way, right or +wrong. The recent Revised Version enjoys perpetual copyright, too--a +stronger precedent, even, than the other one. + +Now, then, what is the Annex but a Revised Version itself? Which of +course it is--Lord's Prayer and all. With that pair of formidable +British precedents to proceed upon, what Congress of ours-- + +But how short-sighted I am. Mrs. Eddy has thought of it long ago. She +thinks of everything. She knows she has only to keep her copyright of +1902 alive through its first stage of twenty-eight years, and perpetuity +is assured. A Christian Science Congress will reign in the Capitol then. +She probably attaches small value to the first edition (1875). Although +it was a Revelation from on high, it was slim, lank, incomplete, padded +with bales of refuse rags, and puffs from lassoed celebrities to fill it +out, an uncreditable book, a book easily sparable, a book not to be +mentioned in the same year with the sleek, fat, concise, compact, +compressed, and competent Annex of to-day, in its dainty flexible covers, +gilt--edges, rounded corners, twin screw, spiral twist, compensation +balance, Testament-counterfeit, and all that; a book just born to curl up +on the hymn-book-shelf in church and look just too sweet and holy for +anything. Yes, I see now what she was copyrighting that child for. + + + + +CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION + +It is true in matters of business Mrs. Eddy thinks of everything. She +thought of an organ, to disseminate the Truth as it was in Mrs. Eddy. +Straightway she started one--the Christian Science Journal. + +It is true--in matters of business Mrs. Eddy thinks of everything. As +soon as she had got the Christian Science Journal sufficiently in debt to +make its presence on the premises disagreeable to her, it occurred to her +to make somebody a present of it. Which she did, along with its debts. +It was in the summer of 1889. The victim selected was her Church +--called, in those days, The National Christian Scientist Association. + +She delivered this sorrow to those lambs as a "gift" in consideration of +their "loyalty to our great cause." + +Also--still thinking of everything--she told them to retain Mr. Bailey in +the editorship and make Mr. Nixon publisher. We do not know what it was +she had against those men; neither do we know whether she scored on +Bailey or not, we only know that God protected Nixon, and for that I am +sincerely glad, although I do not know Nixon and have never even seen +him. + +Nixon took the Journal and the rest of the Publishing Society's +liabilities, and demonstrated over them during three years, then brought +in his report: + +"On assuming my duties as publisher, there was not a dollar in the +treasury; but on the contrary the Society owed unpaid printing and paper +bills to the amount of several hundred dollars, not to mention a +contingent liability of many more hundreds"--represented by advance +--subscriptions paid for the Journal and the "Series," the which goods +Mrs. Eddy had not delivered. And couldn't, very well, perhaps, on a +Metaphysical College income of but a few thousand dollars a day, or a +week, or whatever it was in those magnificently flourishing times. The +struggling Journal had swallowed up those advance-payments, but its +"claim" was a severe one and they had failed to cure it. But Nixon cured +it in his diligent three years, and joyously reported the news that he +had cleared off all the debts and now had a fat six thousand dollars in +the bank. + +It made Mrs. Eddy's mouth water. + +At the time that Mrs. Eddy had unloaded that dismal gift on to her +National Association, she had followed her inveterate custom: she had +tied a string to its hind leg, and kept one end of it hitched to her +belt. We have seen her do that in the case of the Boston Mosque. When +she deeds property, she puts in that string-clause. It provides that +under certain conditions she can pull the string and land the property in +the cherished home of its happy youth. In the present case she believed +that she had made provision that if at any time the National Christian +Science Association should dissolve itself by a formal vote, she could +pull. + +A year after Nixon's handsome report, she writes the Association that she +has a "unique request to lay before it." It has dissolved, and she is +not quite sure that the Christian Science Journal has "already fallen +into her hands" by that act, though it "seems" to her to have met with +that accident; so she would like to have the matter decided by a formal +vote. But whether there is a doubt or not, "I see the wisdom," she says, +"of again owning this Christian Science waif." + +I think that that is unassailable evidence that the waif was making +money, hands down. + +She pulled her gift in. A few years later she donated the Publishing +Society, along with its real estate, its buildings, its plant, its +publications, and its money--the whole worth twenty--two thousand +dollars, and free of debt--to--Well, to the Mother-Church! + +That is to say, to herself. There is an act count of it in the Christian +Science Journal, and of how she had already made some other handsome +gifts--to her Church--and others to--to her Cause besides "an almost +countless number of private charities" of cloudy amount and otherwise +indefinite. This landslide of generosities overwhelmed one of her +literary domestics. While he was in that condition he tried to express +what he felt: + +"Let us endeavor to lift up our hearts in thankfulness to . . . our +Mother in Israel for these evidences of generosity and self-sacrifice +that appeal to our deepest sense of gratitude, even while surpassing our +comprehension." + +A year or two later, Mrs. Eddy promulgated some By-laws of a +self-sacrificing sort which assuaged him, perhaps, and perhaps enabled +his surpassed comprehension to make a sprint and catch up. These are to +be found in Art. XII., entitled. + + + + +THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING SOCIETY + +This Article puts the whole publishing business into the hands of a +publishing Board--special. Mrs. Eddy appoints to its vacancies. + +The profits go semi-annually to the Treasurer of the Mother-Church. Mrs. +Eddy owns the Treasurer. + +Editors and publishers of the Christian Science Journal cannot be elected +or removed without Mrs. Eddy's knowledge and consent. + +Every candidate for employment in a high capacity or a low one, on the +other periodicals or in the publishing house, must first be "accepted by +Mrs. Eddy as suitable." And "by the Board of Directors"--which is +surplusage, since Mrs. Eddy owns the Board. + +If at any time a weekly shall be started, "it shall be owned by The First +Church of Christ, Scientist"--which is Mrs. Eddy. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +I think that any one who will carefully examine the By-laws (I have +placed all of the important ones before the reader), will arrive at the +conclusion that of late years the master-passion in Mrs. Eddy's heart is +a hunger for power and glory; and that while her hunger for money still +remains, she wants it now for the expansion and extension it can furnish +to that power and glory, rather than what it can do for her towards +satisfying minor and meaner ambitions. + +I wish to enlarge a little upon this matter. I think it is quite clear +that the reason why Mrs. Eddy has concentrated in herself all powers, all +distinctions, all revenues that are within the command of the Christian +Science Church Universal is that she desires and intends to devote them +to the purpose just suggested--the upbuilding of her personal glory +--hers, and no one else's; that, and the continuing of her name's glory +after she shall have passed away. If she has overlooked a single power, +howsoever minute, I cannot discover it. If she has found one, large or +small, which she has not seized and made her own, there is no record of +it, no trace of it. In her foragings and depredations she usually puts +forward the Mother-Church--a lay figure--and hides behind it. Whereas, +she is in manifest reality the Mother-Church herself. It has an +impressive array of officials, and committees, and Boards of Direction, +of Education, of Lectureship, and so on--geldings, every one, shadows, +spectres, apparitions, wax-figures: she is supreme over them all, she can +abolish them when she will; blow them out as she would a candle. She is +herself the Mother-Church. Now there is one By-law which says that the +Mother-Church: + +"shall be officially controlled by no other church." + +That does not surprise us--we know by the rest of the By-laws that that +is a quite irrelevant remark. Yet we do vaguely and hazily wonder why +she takes the trouble to say it; why she wastes the words; what her +object can be--seeing that that emergency has been in so many, many ways, +and so effectively and drastically barred off and made impossible. Then +presently the object begins to dawn upon us. That is, it does after we +have read the rest of the By-law three or four times, wondering and +admiring to see Mrs. Eddy--Mrs. Eddy--Mrs. Eddy, of all persons--throwing +away power!--making a fair exchange--doing a fair thing for once more, +an almost generous thing! Then we look it through yet once more +unsatisfied, a little suspicious--and find that it is nothing but a sly, +thin make-believe, and that even the very title of it is a sarcasm and +embodies a falsehood--"self" government: + +"Local Self-Government. The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in +Boston, Massachusetts, shall assume no official control of other churches +of this denomination. It shall be officially controlled by no other +church." + +It has a most pious and deceptive give-and-take air of perfect fairness, +unselfishness, magnanimity--almost godliness, indeed. But it is all art. + + +In the By-laws, Mrs. Eddy, speaking by the mouth of her other self, the +Mother-Church, proclaims that she will assume no official control of +other churches-branch churches. We examine the other By-laws, and they +answer some important questions for us: + +1. What is a branch Church? It is a body of Christian Scientists, +organized in the one and only permissible way--by a member, in good +standing, of the Mother-Church, and who is also a pupil of one of Mrs. +Eddy's accredited students. That is to say, one of her properties. No +other can do it. There are other indispensable requisites; what are +they? + +2. The new Church cannot enter upon its functions until its members have +individually signed, and pledged allegiance to, a Creed furnished by Mrs. +Eddy. + +3. They are obliged to study her books, and order their lives by them. +And they must read no outside religious works. + +4. They must sing the hymns and pray the prayers provided by her, and +use no others in the services, except by her permission. + +5. They cannot have preachers and pastors. Her law. + +6. In their Church they must have two Readers--a man and a woman. + +7. They must read the services framed and appointed by her. + +8. She--not the branch Church--appoints those Readers. + +9. She--not the branch Church--dismisses them and fills the vacancies. + +10. She can do this without consulting the branch Church, and without +explaining. + +11. The branch Church can have a religious lecture from time to time. +By applying to Mrs. Eddy. There is no other way. + +12. But the branch Church cannot select the lecturer. Mrs. Eddy does +it. + +13. The branch Church pays his fee. + +14. The harnessing of all Christian Science wedding-teams, members of +the branch Church, must be done by duly authorized and consecrated +Christian Science functionaries. Her factory is the only one that makes +and licenses them. + +[15. Nothing is said about christenings. It is inferable from this that +a Christian Science child is born a Christian Scientist and requires no +tinkering.] + +[16. Nothing is said about funerals. It is inferable, then, that a +branch Church is privileged to do in that matter as it may choose.] + +To sum up. Are any important Church-functions absent from the list? I +cannot call any to mind. Are there any lacking ones whose exercise could +make the branch in any noticeable way independent of the Mother. Church? +--even in any trifling degree? I think of none. If the named functions +were abolished would there still be a Church left? Would there be even a +shadow of a Church left? Would there be anything at all left? even the +bare name? + +Manifestly not. There isn't a single vital and essential Church-function +of any kind, that is not named in the list. And over every one of them +the Mother-Church has permanent and unchallengeable control, upon every +one of them Mrs. Eddy has set her irremovable grip. She holds, in +perpetuity, autocratic and indisputable sovereignty and control over +every branch Church in the earth; and yet says, in that sugary, naive, +angel-beguiling way of hers, that the Mother-Church: + +"shall assume no official control of other churches of this +denomination." + +Whereas in truth the unmeddled-with liberties of a branch Christian +Science Church are but very, very few in number, and are these: + +1. It can appoint its own furnace-stoker, winters. +2. It can appoint its own fan-distributors, summers. +3. It can, in accordance with its own choice in the matter, burn, bury, +or preserve members who are pretending to be dead--whereas there is no +such thing as death. +4. It can take up a collection. + +The branch Churches have no important liberties, none that give them an +important voice in their own affairs. Those are all locked up, and Mrs. +Eddy has the key. "Local Self-Government" is a large name and sounds +well; but the branch Churches have no more of it than have the privates +in the King of Dahomey's army. + + + + +"MOTHER-CHURCH UNIQUE" + +Mrs. Eddy, with an envious and admiring eye upon the solitary and +rivalless and world-shadowing majesty of St. Peter's, reveals in her +By-laws her purpose to set the Mother-Church apart by itself in a stately +seclusion and make it duplicate that lone sublimity under the Western +sky. The By-law headed "Mother-Church Unique" says-- + +"In its relation to other Christian Science churches, the Mother-Church +stands alone. + +"It occupies a position that no other Church can fill. + +"Then for a branch Church to assume such position would be disastrous to +Christian Science, + +"Therefore--" + +Therefore no branch Church is allowed to have branches. There shall be +no Christian Science St. Peter's in the earth but just one--the +Mother-Church in Boston. + + + + +"NO FIRST MEMBERS" + +But for the thoughtful By-law thus entitled, every Science branch in the +earth would imitate the Mother-Church and set up an aristocracy. Every +little group of ground-floor Smiths and Furgusons and Shadwells and +Simpsons that organized a branch would assume that great title, of "First +Members," along with its vast privileges of "discussing" the weather and +casting blank ballots, and soon there would be such a locust-plague of +them burdening the globe that the title would lose its value and have to +be abolished. + +But where business and glory are concerned, Mrs. Eddy thinks of +everything, and so she did not fail to take care of her Aborigines, her +stately and exclusive One Hundred, her college of functionless cardinals, +her Sanhedrin of Privileged Talkers (Limited). After taking away all the +liberties of the branch Churches, and in the same breath disclaiming all +official control over their affairs, she smites them on the mouth with +this--the very mouth that was watering for those nobby ground-floor +honors-- + +"No First Members. Branch Churches shall not organize with First +Members, that special method of organization being adapted to the +Mother-Church alone." + +And so, first members being prohibited, we pierce through the cloud of +Mrs. Eddy's English and perceive that they must then necessarily organize +with Subsequent Members. There is no other way. It will occur to them +by-and-by to found an aristocracy of Early Subsequent Members. There is +no By-law against it. + + + + +"THE" + +I uncover to that imperial word. And to the mind, too, that conceived +the idea of seizing and monopolizing it as a title. I believe it is Mrs. +Eddy's dazzlingest invention. For show, and style, and grandeur, and +thunder and lightning and fireworks it outclasses all the previous +inventions of man, and raises the limit on the Pope. He can never put +his avid hand on that word of words--it is pre-empted. And copyrighted, +of course. It lifts the Mother-Church away up in the sky, and +fellowships it with the rare and select and exclusive little company of +the THE's of deathless glory--persons and things whereof history and the +ages could furnish only single examples, not two: the Saviour, the +Virgin, the Milky Way, the Bible, the Earth, the Equator, the Devil, the +Missing Link--and now The First Church, Scientist. And by clamor of +edict and By-law Mrs. Eddy gives personal notice to all branch Scientist +Churches on this planet to leave that THE alone. + +She has demonstrated over it and made it sacred to the Mother-Church: + +"The article 'The' must not be used before the titles of branch +Churches-- + +"Nor written on applications for membership in naming such churches." + +Those are the terms. There can and will be a million First Churches of +Christ, Scientist, scattered over the world, in a million towns and +villages and hamlets and cities, and each may call itself (suppressing +the article), "First Church of Christ. Scientist"--it is permissible, +and no harm; but there is only one The Church of Christ, Scientist, and +there will never be another. And whether that great word fall in the +middle of a sentence or at the beginning of it, it must always have its +capital T. + +I do not suppose that a juvenile passion for fussy little worldly shows +and vanities can furnish a match to this, anywhere in the history of the +nursery. Mrs. Eddy does seem to be a shade fonder of little special +distinctions and pomps than is usual with human beings. + +She instituted that immodest "The" with her own hand; she did not wait +for somebody else to think of it. + + + + +A LIFE-TERM MONOPOLY + +There is but one human Pastor in the whole Christian Science world; she +reserves that exalted place to herself. + + + + +A PERPETUAL ONE + +There is but one other object in the whole Christian Science world +honored with that title and holding that office: it is her book, the +Annex--permanent Pastor of The First Church, and of all branch Churches. + +With her own hand she draughted the By-laws which make her the only +really absolute sovereign that lives to-day in Christendom. + +She does not allow any objectionable pictures to be exhibited in the room +where her book is sold, nor any indulgence in idle gossip there; and from +the general look of that By-law I judge that a lightsome and improper +person can be as uncomfortable in that place as he could be in heaven. + + + + +THE SANCTUM SANCTORUM AND SACRED CHAIR + +In a room in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, there is a museum of +objects which have attained to holiness through contact with Mrs. Eddy +--among them an electrically lighted oil-picture of a chair which she +used to sit in--and disciples from all about the world go softly in +there, in restricted groups, under proper guard, and reverently gaze upon +those relics. It is worship. Mrs. Eddy could stop it if she was not +fond of it, for her sovereignty over that temple is supreme. + +The fitting-up of that place as a shrine is not an accident, nor a +casual, unweighed idea; it is imitated from age--old religious custom. +In Treves the pilgrim reverently gazes upon the Seamless Robe, and humbly +worships; and does the same in that other continental church where they +keep a duplicate; and does likewise in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, +in Jerusalem, where memorials of the Crucifixion are preserved; and now, +by good fortune we have our Holy Chair and things, and a market for our +adorations nearer home. + +But is there not a detail that is new, fresh, original? Yes, whatever +old thing Mrs. Eddy touches gets something new by the contact--something +not thought of before by any one--something original, all her own, and +copyrightable. The new feature is self worship--exhibited in permitting +this shrine to be installed during her lifetime, and winking her sacred +eye at it. + +A prominent Christian Scientist has assured me that the Scientists do not +worship Mrs. Eddy, and I think it likely that there may be five or six of +the cult in the world who do not worship her, but she herself is +certainly not of that company. Any healthy-minded person who will +examine Mrs. Eddy's little Autobiography and the Manual of By-laws +written by her will be convinced that she worships herself; and that she +brings to this service a fervor of devotion surpassing even that which +she formerly laid at the feet of the Dollar, and equalling any which +rises to the Throne of Grace from any quarter. + +I think this is as good a place as any to salve a hurt which I was the +means of inflicting upon a Christian Scientist lately. The first third +of this book was written in 1899 in Vienna. Until last summer I had +supposed that that third had been printed in a book which I published +about a year later--a hap which had not happened. I then sent the +chapters composing it to the North American Review, but failed in one +instance, to date them. And so, in an undated chapter I said a lady told +me "last night" so and so. There was nothing to indicate to the reader +that that "last night" was several years old, therefore the phrase seemed +to refer to a night of very recent date. What the lady had told me was, +that in a part of the Mother-Church in Boston she had seen Scientists +worshipping a portrait of Mrs. Eddy before which a light was kept +constantly burning. + +A Scientist came to me and wished me to retract that "untruth." He said +there was no such portrait, and that if I wanted to be sure of it I could +go to Boston and see for myself. I explained that my "last night" meant +a good while ago; that I did not doubt his assertion that there was no +such portrait there now, but that I should continue to believe it had +been there at the time of the lady's visit until she should retract her +statement herself. I was at no time vouching for the truth of the +remark, nevertheless I considered it worth par. + +And yet I am sorry the lady told me, since a wound which brings me no +happiness has resulted. I am most willing to apply such salve as I can. +The best way to set the matter right and make everything pleasant and +agreeable all around will be to print in this place a description of the +shrine as it appeared to a recent visitor, Mr. Frederick W. Peabody, of +Boston. I will copy his newspaper account, and the reader will see that +Mrs. Eddy's portrait is not there now: + +"We lately stood on the threshold of the Holy of Holies of the +Mother-Church, and with a crowd of worshippers patiently waited for +admittance to the hallowed precincts of the 'Mother's Room.' Over the +doorway was a sign informing us that but four persons at a time would be +admitted; that they would be permitted to remain but five minutes only, +and would please retire from the 'Mother's Room' at the ringing of the +bell. Entering with three of the faithful, we looked with profane eyes +upon the consecrated furnishings. A show-woman in attendance +monotonously announced the character of the different appointments. +Set in a recess of the wall and illumined with electric light was an +oil-painting the show-woman seriously declared to be a lifelike and +realistic picture of the Chair in which the Mother sat when she composed +her 'inspired' work. It was a picture of an old-fashioned? country, hair +cloth rocking-chair, and an exceedingly commonplace-looking table with a +pile of manuscript, an ink-bottle, and pen conspicuously upon it. On the +floor were sheets of manuscript. 'The mantel-piece is of pure onyx,' +continued the show-woman, 'and the beehive upon the window-sill is made +from one solid block of onyx; the rug is made of a hundred breasts of +eider-down ducks, and the toilet-room you see in the corner is of the +latest design, with gold-plated drain-pipes; the painted windows are from +the Mother's poem, "Christ and Christmas," and that case contains +complete copies of all the Mother's books.' The chairs upon which the +sacred person of the Mother had reposed were protected from sacrilegious +touch by a broad band of satin ribbon. My companions expressed their +admiration in subdued and reverent tones, and at the tinkling of the bell +we reverently tiptoed out of the room to admit another delegation of the +patient waiters at the door." + +Now, then, I hope the wound is healed. I am willing to relinquish the +portrait, and compromise on the Chair. At the same time, if I were going +to worship either, I should not choose the Chair. + +As a picturesquely and persistently interesting personage, there is no +mate to Mrs. Eddy, the accepted Equal of the Saviour. But some of her +tastes are so different from His! I find it quite impossible to imagine +Him, in life, standing sponsor for that museum there, and taking pleasure +in its sumptuous shows. I believe He would put that Chair in the fire, +and the bell along with it; and I think He would make the show-woman go +away. I think He would break those electric bulbs, and the "mantel-piece +of pure onyx," and say reproachful things about the golden drain-pipes of +the lavatory, and give the costly rug of duck-breasts to the poor, and +sever the satin ribbon and invite the weary to rest and ease their aches +in the consecrated chairs. What He would do with the painted windows we +can better conjecture when we come presently to examine their +peculiarities. + + + + +THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PASTOR-UNIVERSAL + +When Mrs. Eddy turned the pastors out of all the Christian Science +churches and abolished the office for all time as far as human occupancy +is concerned--she appointed the Holy Ghost to fill their place. If this +language be blasphemous, I did not invent the blasphemy, I am merely +stating a fact. I will quote from page 227 of Science and Health +(edition 1899), as a first step towards an explanation of this startling +matter--a passage which sets forth and classifies the Christian Science +Trinity: + +"Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune God, or triply divine +Principle. They represent a trinity in unity, three in one--the same in +essence, though multiform in office: God the Father; Christ the type of +Sonship; Divine Science, or the Holy Comforter. . . + +"The Holy Ghost, or Spirit, reveals this triune Principle, and (the Holy +Ghost) is expressed in Divine Science, which is the Comforter, leading +into all Truth, and revealing the divine Principle of the universe +--universal and perpetual harmony." + +I will cite another passage. Speaking of Jesus-- + +"His students then received the Holy Ghost. By this is meant, that by +all they had witnessed and suffered they were roused to an enlarged +understanding of Divine Science, even to the spiritual interpretation . . +. . . of His teachings," etc. + +Also, page 579, in the chapter called the Glossary: + +"HOLY GHOST. Divine Science; the developments of Life, Truth, and Love." + +The Holy Ghost reveals the massed spirit of the fused trinity; this +massed spirit is expressed in Divine Science, and is the Comforter; +Divine Science conveys to men the "spiritual interpretation" of the +Saviour's teachings. That seems to be the meaning of the quoted +passages. + +Divine Science is Christian Science; the book "Science and Health" is a +"revelation" of the whole spirit of the Trinity, and is therefore "The +Holy Ghost"; it conveys to men the "spiritual interpretation" of the +Bible's teachings and therefore is "the Comforter." + +I do not find this analyzing work easy, I would rather saw wood; and a +person can never tell whether he has added up a Science and Health sum +right or not, anyway, after all his trouble. Neither can he easily find +out whether the texts are still on the market or have been discarded from +the Book; for two hundred and fifty-eight editions of it have been +issued, and no two editions seem to be alike. The annual changes--in +technical terminology; in matter and wording; in transpositions of +chapters and verses; in leaving out old chapters and verses and putting +in new ones--seem to be next to innumerable, and as there is no index, +there is no way to find a thing one wants without reading the book +through. If ever I inspire a Bible-Annex I will not rush at it in a +half-digested, helter-skelter way and have to put in thirty-eight years +trying to get some of it the way I want it, I will sit down and think it +out and know what it is I want to say before I begin. An inspirer cannot +inspire for Mrs. Eddy and keep his reputation. I have never seen such +slipshod work, bar the ten that interpreted for the home market the "sell +all thou hast." I have quoted one "spiritual" rendering of the Lord's +Prayer, I have seen one other one, and am told there are five more. Yet +the inspirer of Mrs. Eddy the new Infallible casts a complacent critical +stone at the other Infallible for being unable to make up its mind about +such things. Science and Health, edition 1899, page 33: + +"The decisions, by vote of Church Councils, as to what should and should +not be considered Holy Writ, the manifest mistakes in the ancient +versions: the thirty thousand different readings in the Old Testament and +the three hundred thousand in the New--these facts show how a mortal and +material sense stole into the divine record, darkening, to some extent, +the inspired pages with its own hue." + +To some extent, yes--speaking cautiously. But it is nothing, really +nothing; Mrs. Eddy is only a little way behind, and if her inspirer lives +to get her Annex to suit him that Catholic record will have to "go 'way +back and set down," as the ballad says. Listen to the boastful song of +Mrs. Eddy's organ, the Christian Science Journal for March, 1902, about +that year's revamping and half-soling of Science and Health, whose +official name is the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, and who is now the +Official Pastor and Infallible and Unerring Guide of every Christian +Science church in the two hemispheres, hear Simple Simon that met the +pieman brag of the Infallible's fallibility: + +"Throughout the entire book the verbal changes are so numerous as to +indicate the vast amount of time and labor Mrs. Eddy has devoted to this +revision. The time and labor thus bestowed is relatively as great as +that of--the committee who revised the Bible.... Thus we have +additional evidence of the herculean efforts our beloved Leader has made +and is constantly making for the promulgation of Truth and the +furtherance of her divinely bestowed mission," etc. + +It is a steady job. I could help inspire if desired; I am not doing much +now, and would work for half-price, and should not object to the country. + + + + +PRICE OF THE PASTOR-UNIVERSAL + +The price of the Pastor-Universal, Science and Health, called in Science +literature the Comforter--and by that other sacred Name--is three +dollars in cloth, as heretofore, six when it is finely bound, and shaped +to imitate the Testament, and is broken into verses. Margin of profit +above cost of manufacture, from five hundred to seven hundred per cent., +as already noted In the profane subscription-trade, it costs the +publisher heavily to canvass a three-dollar book; he must pay the general +agent sixty per cent. commission--that is to say, one dollar and +eighty-cents. Mrs. Eddy escapes this blistering tax, because she owns +the Christian Science canvasser, and can compel him to work for nothing. +Read the following command--not request--fulminated by Mrs. Eddy, over +her signature, in the Christian Science Journal for March, 1897, and +quoted by Mr. Peabody in his book. The book referred to is Science and +Health: + +"It shall be the duty of all Christian Scientists to circulate and to +sell as many of these books as they can." + +That is flung at all the elect, everywhere that the sun shines, but no +penalty is shaken over their heads to scare them. The same command was +issued to the members (numbering to-day twenty-five thousand) of The +Mother-Church, also, but with it went a threat, of the infliction, in +case of disobedience, of the most dreaded punishment that has a place in +the Church's list of penalties for transgressions of Mrs. Eddy's edicts +--excommunication: + +"If a member of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, shall fail to obey +this injunction, it will render him liable to lose his membership in this +Church. MARY BAKER EDDY." + +It is the spirit of the Spanish Inquisition. + +None but accepted and well established gods can venture an affront like +that and do it with confidence. But the human race will take anything +from that class. Mrs. Eddy knows the human race; knows it better than +any mere human being has known it in a thousand centuries. My confidence +in her human-beingship is getting shaken, my confidence in her godship is +stiffening. + + + + +SEVEN HUNDRED PER CENT. + +A Scientist out West has visited a bookseller--with intent to find fault +with me--and has brought away the information that the price at which +Mrs. Eddy sells Science and Health is not an unusually high one for the +size and make of the book. That is true. But in the book-trade--that +profit-devourer unknown to Mrs. Eddy's book--a three-dollar book that is +made for thirty-five or forty cents in large editions is put at three +dollars because the publisher has to pay author, middleman, and +advertising, and if the price were much below three the profit accruing +would not pay him fairly for his time and labor. At the same time, if he +could get ten dollars for the book he would take it, and his morals would +not fall under criticism. + +But if he were an inspired person commissioned by the Deity to receive +and print and spread broadcast among sorrowing and suffering and poor men +a precious message of healing and cheer and salvation, he would have to +do as Bible Societies do--sell the book at a pinched margin above cost to +such as could pay, and give it free to all that couldn't; and his name +would be praised. But if he sold it at seven hundred per cent. profit +and put the money in his pocket, his name would be mocked and derided. +Just as Mrs. Eddy's is. And most justifiably, as it seems to me. + +The complete Bible contains one million words. The New Testament by +itself contains two hundred and forty thousand words. + +My '84 edition of Science and Health contains one hundred and twenty +thousand words--just half as many as the New Testament. + +Science and Health has since been so inflated by later inspirations that +the 1902 edition contains one hundred and eighty thousand words--not +counting the thirty thousand at the back, devoted by Mrs. Eddy to +advertising the book's healing abilities--and the inspiring continues +right along. + +If you have a book whose market is so sure and so great that you can give +a printer an everlasting order for thirty or forty or fifty thousand +copies a year he will furnish them at a cheap rate, because whenever +there is a slack time in his press-room and bindery he can fill the idle +intervals on your book and be making something instead of losing. That +is the kind of contract that can be let on Science and Health every year. +I am obliged to doubt that the three-dollar Science and Health costs Mrs. +Eddy above fifteen cents, or that the six dollar copy costs her above +eighty cents. I feel quite sure that the average profit to her on these +books, above cost of manufacture, is all of seven hundred per cent. + +Every proper Christian Scientist has to buy and own (and canvass for) +Science and Health (one hundred and eighty thousand words), and he must +also own a Bible (one million words). He can buy the one for from three +to six dollars, and the other for fifteen cents. Or, if three dollars is +all the money he has, he can get his Bible for nothing. When the Supreme +Being disseminates a saving Message through uninspired agents--the New +Testament, for instance--it can be done for five cents a copy, but when +He sends one containing only two-thirds as many words through the shop of +a Divine Personage, it costs sixty times as much. I think that in +matters of such importance it is bad economy to employ a wild-cat agency. + +Here are some figures which are perfectly authentic, and which seem to +justify my opinion. + +"These [Bible] societies, inspired only by a sense of religious duty, are +issuing the Bible at a price so small that they have made it the cheapest +book printed. For example, the American Bible Society offers an edition +of the whole Bible as low as fifteen cents and the New Testament at five +cents, and the British Society at sixpence and one penny, respectively. +These low prices, made possible by their policy of selling the books at +cost or below cost," etc.--New York Sun, February 25, 1903. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +We may now make a final footing-up of Mrs. Eddy, and see what she is, in +the fulness of her powers. She is + +The Massachusetts Metaphysical College +Pastor Emeritus; +President; +Board of Directors; +Board of Education; +Board of Lectureships; +Future Board of Trustees, +Proprietor of the Publishing-House and Periodicals; +Treasurer; +Clerk; +Proprietor of the Teachers; +Proprietor of the Lecturers; +Proprietor of the Missionaries; +Proprietor of the Readers; +Dictator of the Services; sole Voice of the Pulpit; +Proprietor of the Sanhedrin; +Sole Proprietor of the Creed. (Copyrighted.); +Indisputable Autocrat of the Branch Churches, with their life and death +in her hands; +Sole Thinker for The First Church (and the others); +Sole and Infallible Expounder of Doctrine, in life and in death; +Sole permissible Discoverer, Denouncer, Judge, and Executioner of +Ostensible Hypnotists; +Fifty-handed God of Excommunication--with a thunderbolt in every hand; +Appointer and Installer of the Pastor of all the Churches--the Perpetual +Pastor-Universal, Science and Health, "the Comforter." + + + + +CHAPTER X + +There she stands-painted by herself. No witness but herself has been +allowed to testify. She stands there painted by her acts, and decorated +by her words. When she talks, she has only a decorative value as a +witness, either for or against herself, for she deals mainly in +unsupported assertion; and in the rare cases where she puts forward a +verifiable fact she gets out of it a meaning which it refuses to furnish +to anybody else. Also, when she talks, she is unstable, she wanders, she +is incurably inconsistent; what she says to-day she contradicts tomorrow. + +But her acts are consistent. They are always faithful to her, they never +misinterpret her, they are a mirror which always reflects her exactly, +precisely, minutely, unerringly, and always the same, to date, with only +those progressive little natural changes in stature, dress, complexion, +mood, and carriage that mark--exteriorly--the march of the years and +record the accumulations of experience, while--interiorly--through all +this steady drift of evolution the one essential detail, the commanding +detail, the master detail of the make-up remains as it was in the +beginning, suffers no change and can suffer none; the basis of the +character; the temperament, the disposition, that indestructible iron +framework upon which the character is built, and whose shape it must +take, and keep, throughout life. We call it a person's nature. + +The man who is born stingy can be taught to give liberally--with his +hands; but not with his heart. The man born kind and compassionate can +have that disposition crushed down out of sight by embittering +experience; but if it were an organ the post-mortem would find it still +in his corpse. The man born ambitious of power and glory may live long +without finding it out, but when the opportunity comes he will know, will +strike for the largest thing within the limit of his chances at the +time-constable, perhaps--and will be glad and proud when he gets it, and +will write home about it. But he will not stop with that start; his +appetite will come again; and by-and-by again, and yet again; and when he +has climbed to police commissioner it will at last begin to dawn upon him +that what his Napoleon soul wants and was born for is something away +higher up--he does not quite know what, but Circumstance and Opportunity +will indicate the direction and he will cut a road through and find out. + +I think Mrs. Eddy was born with a far-seeing business-eye, but did not +know it; and with a great organizing and executive talent, and did not +know it; and with a large appetite for power and distinction, and did not +know it. I think the reason that her make did not show up until middle +life was that she had General Grant's luck--Circumstance and Opportunity +did not come her way when she was younger. The qualities that were born +in her had to wait for circumstance and opportunity--but they were there: +they were there to stay, whether they ever got a chance to fructify or +not. If they had come early, they would have found her ready and +competent. And they--not she--would have determined what they would set +her at and what they would make of her. If they had elected to +commission her as second-assistant cook in a bankrupt boarding-house, +I know the rest of it--I know what would have happened. She would have +owned the boarding-house within six months; she would have had the late +proprietor on salary and humping himself, as the worldly say; she would +have had that boarding-house spewing money like a mint; she would have +worked the servants and the late landlord up to the limit; she would have +squeezed the boarders till they wailed, and by some mysterious quality +born in her she would have kept the affections of certain of the lot +whose love and esteem she valued, and flung the others down the back +area; in two years she would own all the boarding-houses in the town, in +five all the boarding-houses in the State, in twenty all the hotels in +America, in forty all the hotels on the planet, and would sit at home +with her finger on a button and govern the whole combination as easily as +a bench-manager governs a dog-show. + +It would be a grand thing to see, and I feel a kind of disappointment +--but never mind, a religion is better and larger; and there is more to +it. And I have not been steeping myself in Christian Science all these +weeks without finding out that the one sensible thing to do with a +disappointment is to put it out of your mind and think of something +cheerfuler. + +We outsiders cannot conceive of Mrs. Eddy's Christian Science Religion as +being a sudden and miraculous birth, but only as a growth from a seed +planted by circumstances, and developed stage by stage by command and +compulsion of the same force. What the stages were we cannot know, but +are privileged to guess. She may have gotten the mental-healing idea +from Quimby--it had been experimented with for ages, and was no one's +special property. [For the present, for convenience' sake, let us +proceed upon the hypothesis that that was all she got of him, and that +she put up the rest of the assets herself. This will strain us, but let +us try it.] In each and all its forms and under all its many names, +mental healing had had limits, always, and they were rather narrow ones +--Mrs. Eddy, let us imagine, removed the fence, abolished the frontiers. +Not by expanding mental-healing, but by absorbing its small bulk into the +vaster bulk of Christian Science--Divine Science, The Holy Ghost, the +Comforter--which was a quite different and sublimer force, and one which +had long lain dormant and unemployed. + +The Christian Scientist believes that the Spirit of God (life and love) +pervades the universe like an atmosphere; that whoso will study Science +and Health can get from it the secret of how to inhale that transforming +air; that to breathe it is to be made new; that from the new man all +sorrow, all care, all miseries of the mind vanish away, for that only +peace, contentment and measureless joy can live in that divine fluid; +that it purifies the body from disease, which is a vicious creation of +the gross human mind, and cannot continue to exist in the presence of the +Immortal Mind, the renewing Spirit of God. + +The Scientist finds this reasonable, natural, and not harder to believe +than that the disease germ, a creature of darkness, perishes when exposed +to the light of the great sun--a new revelation of profane science which +no one doubts. He reminds us that the actinic ray, shining upon lupus, +cures it--a horrible disease which was incurable fifteen years ago, and +had been incurable for ten million years before; that this wonder, +unbelievable by the physicians at first, is believed by them now; and so +he is tranquilly confident that the time is coming when the world will be +educated up to a point where it will comprehend and grant that the light +of the Spirit of God, shining unobstructed upon the soul, is an actinic +ray which can purge both mind and body from disease and set them free and +make them whole. + +It is apparent, then, that in Christian Science it is not one man's mind +acting upon another man's mind that heals; that it is solely the Spirit +of God that heals; that the healer's mind performs no office but to +convey that force to the patient; that it is merely the wire which +carries the electric fluid, so to speak, and delivers the message. +Therefore, if these things be true, mental-healing and Science-healing +are separate and distinct processes, and no kinship exists between them. + +To heal the body of its ills and pains is a mighty benefaction, but in +our day our physicians and surgeons work a thousand miracles--prodigies +which would have ranked as miracles fifty years ago--and they have so +greatly extended their domination over disease that we feel so well +protected that we are able to look with a good deal of composure and +absence of hysterics upon the claims of new competitors in that field. + +But there is a mightier benefaction than the healing of the body, and +that is the healing of the spirit--which is Christian Science's other +claim. So far as I know, so far as I can find out, it makes it good. +Personally I have not known a Scientist who did not seem serene, +contented, unharassed. I have not found an outsider whose observation of +Scientists furnished him a view that differed from my own. Buoyant +spirits, comfort of mind, freedom from care these happinesses we all +have, at intervals; but in the spaces between, dear me, the black hours! +They have put a curse upon the life of every human being I have ever +known, young or old. I concede not a single exception. Unless it might +be those Scientists just referred to. They may have been playing a part +with me; I hope they were not, and I believe they were not. + +Time will test the Science's claim. If time shall make it good; if time +shall prove that the Science can heal the persecuted spirit of man and +banish its troubles and keep it serene and sunny and content--why, then +Mrs. Eddy will have a monument that will reach above the clouds. For if +she did not hit upon that imperial idea and evolve it and deliver it, its +discoverer can never be identified with certainty, now, I think. It is +the giant feature, it is the sun that rides in the zenith of Christian +Science, the auxiliary features are of minor consequence [Let us still +leave the large "if" aside, for the present, and proceed as if it had no +existence.] + +It is not supposable that Mrs. Eddy realized, at first, the size of her +plunder. (No, find--that is the word; she did not realize the size of +her find, at first.) It had to grow upon her, by degrees, in accordance +with the inalterable custom of Circumstance, which works by stages, and +by stages only, and never furnishes any mind with all the materials for a +large idea at one time. + +In the beginning, Mrs. Eddy was probably interested merely in the +mental-healing detail, and perhaps mainly interested in it pecuniary, +for she was poor. + +She would succeed in anything she undertook. She would attract pupils, +and her commerce would grow. She would inspire in patient and pupil +confidence in her earnestness, her history is evidence that she would not +fail of that. + +There probably came a time, in due course, when her students began to +think there was something deeper in her teachings than they had been +suspecting--a mystery beyond mental-healing, and higher. It is +conceivable that by consequence their manner towards her changed little +by little, and from respectful became reverent. It is conceivable that +this would have an influence upon her; that it would incline her to +wonder if their secret thought--that she was inspired--might not be a +well-grounded guess. It is conceivable that as time went on the thought +in their minds and its reflection in hers might solidify into conviction. + +She would remember, then, that as a child she had been called, more than +once, by a mysterious voice--just as had happened to little Samuel. +(Mentioned in her Autobiography.) She would be impressed by that ancient +reminiscence, now, and it could have a prophetic meaning for her. + +It is conceivable that the persuasive influences around her and within +her would give a new and powerful impulse to her philosophizings, and +that from this, in time, would result that great birth, the healing of +body and mind by the inpouring of the Spirit of God--the central and +dominant idea of Christian Science--and that when this idea came she +would not doubt that it was an inspiration direct from Heaven. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +[I must rest a little, now. To sit here and painstakingly spin out a +scheme which imagines Mrs. Eddy, of all people, working her mind on a +plane above commercialism; imagines her thinking, philosophizing, +discovering majestic things; and even imagines her dealing in +sincerities--to be frank, I find it a large contract But I have begun it, +and I will go through with it.] + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +It is evident that she made disciples fast, and that their belief in her +and in the authenticity of her heavenly ambassadorship was not of the +lukewarm and half-way sort, but was profoundly earnest and sincere. +Her book was issued from the press in 1875, it began its work of +convert-making, and within six years she had successfully launched a new +Religion and a new system of healing, and was teaching them to crowds of +eager students in a College of her own, at prices so extraordinary that +we are almost compelled to accept her statement (no, her guarded +intimation) that the rates were arranged on high, since a mere human +being unacquainted with commerce and accustomed to think in pennies +could hardly put up such a hand as that without supernatural help. + +From this stage onward--Mrs. Eddy being what she was--the rest of the +development--stages would follow naturally and inevitably. + +But if she had been anybody else, there would have been a different +arrangement of them, with different results. Being the extraordinary +person she was, she realized her position and its possibilities; realized +the possibilities, and had the daring to use them for all they were +worth. + +We have seen what her methods were after she passed the stage where her +divine ambassadorship was granted its executer in the hearts and minds of +her followers; we have seen how steady and fearless and calculated and +orderly was her march thenceforth from conquest to conquest; we have seen +her strike dead, without hesitancy, any hostile or questionable force +that rose in her path: first, the horde of pretenders that sprang up and +tried to take her Science and its market away from her--she crushed them, +she obliterated them; when her own National Christian Science Association +became great in numbers and influence, and loosely and dangerously +garrulous, and began to expound the doctrines according to its own +uninspired notions, she took up her sponge without a tremor of fear and +wiped that Association out; when she perceived that the preachers in her +pulpits were becoming afflicted with doctrine-tinkering, she recognized +the danger of it, and did not hesitate nor temporize, but promptly +dismissed the whole of them in a day, and abolished their office +permanently; we have seen that, as fast as her power grew, she was +competent to take the measure of it, and that as fast as its expansion +suggested to her gradually awakening native ambition a higher step she +took it; and so, by this evolutionary process, we have seen the gross +money-lust relegated to second place, and the lust of empire and glory +rise above it. A splendid dream; and by force of the qualities born in +her she is making it come true. + +These qualities--and the capacities growing out of them by the nurturing +influences of training, observation, and experience seem to be clearly +indicated by the character of her career and its achievements. They seem +to be: + +A clear head for business, and a phenomenally long one; +Clear understanding of business situations; +Accuracy in estimating the opportunities they offer; +Intelligence in planning a business move; +Firmness in sticking to it after it has been decided upon; +Extraordinary daring; +Indestructible persistency; +Devouring ambition; +Limitless selfishness; +A knowledge of the weaknesses and poverties and docilities of human +nature and how to turn them to account which has never been surpassed, if +ever equalled; + +And--necessarily--the foundation-stone of Mrs. Eddy's character is a +never-wavering confidence in herself. + +It is a granite character. And--quite naturally--a measure of the talc +of smallnesses common to human nature is mixed up in it and distributed +through it. When Mrs. Eddy is not dictating servilities from her throne +in the clouds to her official domestics in Boston or to her far-spread +subjects round about the planet, but is down on the ground, she is kin to +us and one of us: sentimental as a girl, garrulous, ungrammatical, +incomprehensible, affected, vain of her little human ancestry, unstable, +inconsistent, unreliable in statement, and naively and everlastingly +self-contradictory-oh, trivial and common and commonplace as the +commonest of us! just a Napoleon as Madame de Remusat saw him, a brass +god with clay legs. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +In drawing Mrs. Eddy's portrait it has been my purpose to restrict myself +to materials furnished by herself, and I believe I have done that. If I +have misinterpreted any of her acts, it was not done intentionally. + +It will be noticed that in skeletonizing a list of the qualities which +have carried her to the dizzy summit which she occupies, I have not +mentioned the power which was the commanding force employed in achieving +that lofty flight. It did not belong in that list; it was a force that +was not a detail of her character, but was an outside one. It was the +power which proceeded from her people's recognition of her as a +supernatural personage, conveyer of the Latest Word, and divinely +commissioned to deliver it to the world. The form which such a +recognition takes, consciously or unconsciously, is worship; and worship +does not question nor criticize, it obeys. The object of it does not +need to coddle it, bribe it, beguile it, reason with it, convince it--it +commands it; that is sufficient; the obedience rendered is not reluctant, +but prompt and whole-hearted. Admiration for a Napoleon, confidence in +him, pride in him, affection for him, can lift him high and carry him +far; and these are forms of worship, and are strong forces, but they are +worship of a mere human being, after all, and are infinitely feeble, as +compared with those that are generated by that other worship, the worship +of a divine personage. Mrs. Eddy has this efficient worship, this massed +and centralized force, this force which is indifferent to opposition, +untroubled by fear, and goes to battle singing, like Cromwell's soldiers; +and while she has it she can command and it will obey, and maintain her +on her throne, and extend her empire. + +She will have it until she dies; and then we shall see a curious and +interesting further development of her revolutionary work begin. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +The President and Board of Directors will succeed her, and the government +will go on without a hitch. The By-laws will bear that interpretation. +All the Mother-Church's vast powers are concentrated in that Board. Mrs. +Eddy's unlimited personal reservations make the Board's ostensible +supremacy, during her life, a sham, and the Board itself a shadow. But +Mrs. Eddy has not made those reservations for any one but herself--they +are distinctly personal, they bear her name, they are not usable by +another individual. When she dies her reservations die, and the Board's +shadow-powers become real powers, without the change of any important +By-law, and the Board sits in her place as absolute and irresponsible a +sovereign as she was. + +It consists of but five persons, a much more manageable Cardinalate than +the Roman Pope's. I think it will elect its Pope from its own body, and +that it will fill its own vacancies. An elective Papacy is a safe and +wise system, and a long-liver. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +We may take that up now. + +It is not a single if, but a several-jointed one; not an oyster, but a +vertebrate. + +1. Did Mrs. Eddy borrow from Quimby the Great Idea, or only the little +one, the old-timer, the ordinary mental-healing-healing by "mortal" mind? + +2. If she borrowed the Great Idea, did she carry it away in her head, or +in manuscript? + +3. Did she hit upon the Great Idea herself? By the Great Idea I mean, +of course, the conviction that the Force involved was still existent, and +could be applied now just as it was applied by Christ's Disciples and +their converts, and as successfully. +4. Did she philosophize it, systematize it, and write it down in a book? + +5. Was it she, and not another, that built a new Religion upon the book +and organized it? + +I think No. 5 can be answered with a Yes, and dismissed from the +controversy. And I think that the Great Idea, great as it was, would +have enjoyed but a brief activity, and would then have gone to sleep +again for some more centuries, but for the perpetuating impulse it got +from that organized and tremendous force. + +As for Nos. 1, 2, and 4, the hostiles contend that Mrs. Eddy got the +Great Idea from Quimby and carried it off in manuscript. But their +testimony, while of consequence, lacks the most important detail; so far +as my information goes, the Quimby manuscript has not been produced. I +think we cannot discuss No. 1 and No. 2 profitably. Let them go. + +For me, No. 3 has a mild interest, and No. 4 a violent one. + +As regards No. 3, Mrs. Eddy was brought up, from the cradle, an +old-time, boiler-iron, Westminster-Catechism Christian, and knew her +Bible as well as Captain Kydd knew his, "when he sailed, when he sailed," +and perhaps as sympathetically. The Great Idea had struck a million +Bible-readers before her as being possible of resurrection and +application--it must have struck as many as that, and been cogitated, +indolently, doubtingly, then dropped and forgotten--and it could have +struck her, in due course. But how it could interest her, how it could +appeal to her--with her make this a thing that is difficult to +understand. + +For the thing back of it is wholly gracious and beautiful: the power, +through loving mercifulness and compassion, to heal fleshly ills and +pains and grief--all--with a word, with a touch of the hand! This power +was given by the Saviour to the Disciples, and to all the converted. +All--every one. It was exercised for generations afterwards. Any +Christian who was in earnest and not a make-believe, not a policy +--Christian, not a Christian for revenue only, had that healing power, +and could cure with it any disease or any hurt or damage possible to +human flesh and bone. These things are true, or they are not. If they +were true seventeen and eighteen and nineteen centuries ago it would be +difficult to satisfactorily explain why or how or by what argument that +power should be nonexistent in Christians now. + +To wish to exercise it could occur to Mrs. Eddy--but would it? + +Grasping, sordid, penurious, famishing for everything she sees--money, +power, glory--vain, untruthful, jealous, despotic, arrogant, insolent, +pitiless where thinkers and hypnotists are concerned, illiterate, +shallow, incapable of reasoning outside of commercial lines, immeasurably +selfish-- + +Of course the Great Idea could strike her, we have to grant that, but why +it should interest her is a question which can easily overstrain the +imagination and bring on nervous prostration, or something like that, and +is better left alone by the judicious, it seems to me-- + +Unless we call to our help the alleged other side of Mrs. Eddy's make and +character the side which her multitude of followers see, and sincerely +believe in. Fairness requires that their view be stated here. It is the +opposite of the one which I have drawn from Mrs. Eddy's history and from +her By-laws. To her followers she is this: + +Patient, gentle, loving, compassionate, noble hearted, unselfish, +sinless, widely cultured, splendidly equipped mentally, a profound +thinker, an able writer, a divine personage, an inspired messenger whose +acts are dictated from the Throne, and whose every utterance is the Voice +of God. + +She has delivered to them a religion which has revolutionized their +lives, banished the glooms that shadowed them, and filled them and +flooded them with sunshine and gladness and peace; a religion which has +no hell; a religion whose heaven is not put off to another time, with a +break and a gulf between, but begins here and now, and melts into +eternity as fancies of the waking day melt into the dreams of sleep. + +They believe it is a Christianity that is in the New Testament; that it +has always been there, that in the drift of ages it was lost through +disuse and neglect, and that this benefactor has found it and given it +back to men, turning the night of life into day, its terrors into myths, +its lamentations into songs of emancipation and rejoicing. + +There we have Mrs. Eddy as her followers see her. She has lifted them +out of grief and care and doubt and fear, and made their lives beautiful; +she found them wandering forlorn in a wintry wilderness, and has led them +to a tropic paradise like that of which the poet sings: + + "O, islands there are on the face of the deep + Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep." + +To ask them to examine with a microscope the character of such a +benefactor; to ask them to examine it at all; to ask them to look at a +blemish which another person believes he has found in it--well, in their +place could you do it? Would you do it? Wouldn't you be ashamed to do +it? If a tramp had rescued your child from fire and death, and saved its +mother's heart from breaking, could you see his rags? Could you smell +his breath? Mrs. Eddy has done more than that for these people. + +They are prejudiced witnesses. To the credit of human nature it is not +possible that they should be otherwise. They sincerely believe that Mrs. +Eddy's character is pure and perfect and beautiful, and her history +without stain or blot or blemish. But that does not settle it. They +sincerely believe she did not borrow the Great Idea from Quimby, but hit +upon it herself. It may be so, and it could be so. Let it go--there is +no way to settle it. They believe she carried away no Quimby +manuscripts. Let that go, too--there is no way to settle it. They +believe that she, and not another, built the Religion upon the book, and +organized it. I believe it, too. + +Finally, they believe that she philosophized Christian Science, explained +it, systematized it, and wrote it all out with her own hand in the book +Science and Health. + +I am not able to believe that. Let us draw the line there. The known +and undisputed products of her pen are a formidable witness against her. +They do seem to me to prove, quite clearly and conclusively, that +writing, upon even simple subjects, is a difficult labor for her: that +she has never been able to write anything above third-rate English; that +she is weak in the matter of grammar; that she has but a rude and dull +sense of the values of words; that she so lacks in the matter of literary +precision that she can seldom put a thought into words that express it +lucidly to the reader and leave no doubts in his mind as to whether he +has rightly understood or not; that she cannot even draught a Preface +that a person can fully comprehend, nor one which can by any art be +translated into a fully understandable form; that she can seldom inject +into a Preface even single sentences whose meaning is uncompromisingly +clear--yet Prefaces are her specialty, if she has one. + +Mrs. Eddy's known and undisputed writings are very limited in bulk; they +exhibit no depth, no analytical quality, no thought above school +composition size, and but juvenile ability in handling thoughts of even +that modest magnitude. She has a fine commercial ability, and could +govern a vast railway system in great style; she could draught a set of +rules that Satan himself would say could not be improved on--for +devilish effectiveness--by his staff; but we know, by our excursions +among the Mother-Church's By-laws, that their English would discredit the +deputy baggage-smasher. I am quite sure that Mrs. Eddy cannot write well +upon any subject, even a commercial one. + +In the very first revision of Science and Health (1883), Mrs. Eddy wrote +a Preface which is an unimpeachable witness that the rest of the book was +written by somebody else. I have put it in the Appendix along with a +page or two taken from the body of the book, and will ask the reader to +compare the labored and lumbering and confused gropings of this Preface +with the easy and flowing and direct English of the other exhibit, and +see if he can believe that the one hand and brain produced both. + +And let him take the Preface apart, sentence by sentence, and searchingly +examine each sentence word by word, and see if he can find half a dozen +sentences whose meanings he is so sure of that he can rephrase them--in +words of his own--and reproduce what he takes to be those meanings. +Money can be lost on this game. I know, for I am the one that lost it. + +Now let the reader turn to the excerpt which I have made from the chapter +on "Prayer" (last year's edition of Science and Health), and compare that +wise and sane and elevated and lucid and compact piece of work with the +aforesaid Preface, and with Mrs. Eddy's poetry concerning the gymnastic +trees, and Minerva's not yet effete sandals, and the wreaths imported +from Erudition's bower for the decoration of Plymouth Rock, and the +Plague-spot and Bacilli, and my other exhibits (turn back to my Chapters +I. and II.) from the Autobiography, and finally with the late +Communication concerning me, and see if he thinks anybody's affirmation, +or anybody's sworn testimony, or any other testimony of any imaginable +kind would ever be likely to convince him that Mrs. Eddy wrote that +chapter on Prayer. + +I do not wish to impose my opinion on any one who will not permit it, but +such as it is I offer it here for what it is worth. I cannot believe, +and I do not believe, that Mrs. Eddy originated any of the thoughts and +reasonings out of which the book Science and Health is constructed; and I +cannot believe, and do not believe that she ever wrote any part of that +book. + +I think that if anything in the world stands proven, and well and solidly +proven, by unimpeachable testimony--the treacherous testimony of her own +pen in her known and undisputed literary productions--it is that Mrs. +Eddy is not capable of thinking upon high planes, nor of reasoning +clearly nor writing intelligently upon low ones. + +Inasmuch as--in my belief--the very first editions of the book Science +and Health were far above the reach of Mrs. Eddy's mental and literary +abilities, I think she has from the very beginning been claiming as her +own another person's book, and wearing as her own property laurels +rightfully belonging to that person--the real author of Science and +Health. And I think the reason--and the only reason--that he has not +protested is because his work was not exposed to print until after he was +safely dead. + +That with an eye to business, and by grace of her business talent, she +has restored to the world neglected and abandoned features of the +Christian religion which her thousands of followers find gracious and +blessed and contenting, I recognize and confess; but I am convinced that +every single detail of the work except just that one--the delivery of the +Product to the world--was conceived and performed by another. + + + + +APPENDIX A + +ORIGINAL FIRST PREFACE TO SCIENCE AND HEALTH + +There seems a Christian necessity of learning God's power and purpose to +heal both mind and body. This thought grew out of our early seeking Him +in all our ways, and a hopeless as singular invalidism that drugs +increased instead of diminished, and hygiene benefited only for a season. +By degrees we have drifted into more spiritual latitudes of thought, and +experimented as we advanced until demonstrating fully the power of mind +over the body. About the year 1862, having heard of a mesmerist in +Portland who was treating the sick by manipulation, we visited him; he +helped us for a time, then we relapsed somewhat. After his decease, and +a severe casualty deemed fatal by skilful physicians, we discovered that +the Principle of all healing and the law that governs it is God, a divine +Principle, and a spiritual not material law, and regained health. + +It was not an individual or mortal mind acting upon another so-called +mind that healed us. It was the glorious truths of Christian Science +that we discovered as we neared that verge of so-called material life +named death; yea, it was the great Shekinah, the spirit of Life, Truth, +and Love illuminating our understanding of the action and might of +Omnipotence! The old gentleman to whom we have referred had some very +advanced views on healing, but he was not avowedly religious neither +scholarly. We interchanged thoughts on the subject of healing the sick. +I restored some patients of his that he failed to heal, and left in his +possession some manuscripts of mine containing corrections of his +desultory pennings, which I am informed at his decease passed into the +hands of a patient of his, now residing in Scotland. He died in 1865 and +left no published works. The only manuscript that we ever held of his, +longer than to correct it, was one of perhaps a dozen pages, most of +which we had composed. He manipulated the sick; hence his ostensible +method of healing was physical instead of mental. + +We helped him in the esteem of the public by our writings, but never knew +of his stating orally or in writing that he treated his patients +mentally; never heard him give any directions to that effect; and have it +from one of his patients, who now asserts that he was the founder of +mental healing, that he never revealed to anyone his method. We refer to +these facts simply to refute the calumnies and false claims of our +enemies, that we are preferring dishonest claims to the discovery and +founding at this period of Metaphysical Healing or Christian Science. + +The Science and laws of a purely mental healing and their method of +application through spiritual power alone, else a mental argument against +disease, are our own discovery at this date. True, the Principle is +divine and eternal, but the application of it to heal the sick had been +lost sight of, and required to be again spiritually discerned and its +science discovered, that man might retain it through the understanding. +Since our discovery in 1866 of the divine science of Christian Healing, +we have labored with tongue and pen to found this system. In this +endeavor every obstacle has been thrown in our path that the envy and +revenge of a few disaffected students could devise. The superstition and +ignorance of even this period have not failed to contribute their mite +towards misjudging us, while its Christian advancement and scientific +research have helped sustain our feeble efforts. + +Since our first Edition of Science and Health, published in 1875, two of +the aforesaid students have plagiarized and pirated our works. In the +issues of E. J. A., almost exclusively ours, were thirteen paragraphs, +without credit, taken verbatim from our books. + +Not one of our printed works was ever copied or abstracted from the +published or from the unpublished writings of anyone. Throughout our +publications of Metaphysical Healing or Christian Science, when writing +or dictating them, we have given ourselves to contemplation wholly apart +from the observation of the material senses: to look upon a copy would +have distracted our thoughts from the subject before us. We were seldom +able to copy our own compositions, and have employed an amanuensis for +the last six years. Every work that we have had published has been +extemporaneously written; and out of fifty lectures and sermons that we +have delivered the last year, forty-four have been extemporaneous. We +have distributed many of our unpublished manuscripts; loaned to one of +our youngest students, R. K--------y, between three and four hundred pages, +of which we were sole author--giving him liberty to copy but not to +publish them. + +Leaning on the sustaining Infinite with loving trust, the trials of +to-day grow brief, and to-morrow is big with blessings. + +The wakeful shepherd, tending his flocks, beholds from the mountain's top +the first faint morning beam ere cometh the risen day. So from Soul's +loftier summits shines the pale star to prophet-shepherd, and it +traverses night, over to where the young child lies, in cradled +obscurity, that shall waken a world. Over the night of error dawn the +morning beams and guiding star of Truth, and "the wise men" are led by it +to Science, which repeats the eternal harmony that it reproduced, in +proof of immortality. The time for thinkers has come; and the time for +revolutions, ecclesiastical and civil, must come. Truth, independent of +doctrines or time-honored systems, stands at the threshold of history. +Contentment with the past, or the cold conventionality of custom, may no +longer shut the door on science; though empires fall, "He whose right it +is shall reign." Ignorance of God should no longer be the stepping-stone +to faith; understanding Him, "whom to know aright is Life eternal," is +the only guaranty of obedience. + +This volume may not open a new thought, and make it at once familiar. It +has the sturdy task of a pioneer, to hack away at the tall oaks and cut +the rough granite, leaving future ages to declare what it has done. We +made our first discovery of the adaptation of metaphysics to the +treatment of disease in the winter of 1866; since then we have tested the +Principle on ourselves and others, and never found it to fail to prove +the statements herein made of it. We must learn the science of Life, to +reach the perfection of man. To understand God as the Principle of all +being, and to live in accordance with this Principle, is the Science of +Life. But to reproduce this harmony of being, the error of personal +sense must yield to science, even as the science of music corrects tones +caught from the ear, and gives the sweet concord of sound. There are +many theories of physic and theology, and many calls in each of their +directions for the right way; but we propose to settle the question of +"What is Truth?" on the ground of proof, and let that method of healing +the sick and establishing Christianity be adopted that is found to give +the most health and to make the best Christians; science will then have a +fair field, in which case we are assured of its triumph over all opinions +and beliefs. Sickness and sin have ever had their doctors; but the +question is, Have they become less because of them? The longevity of our +antediluvians would say, No! and the criminal records of today utter +their voices little in favor of such a conclusion. Not that we would +deny to Caesar the things that are his, but that we ask for the things +that belong to Truth; and safely affirm, from the demonstrations we have +been able to make, that the science of man understood would have +eradicated sin, sickness, and death, in a less period than six thousand +years. We find great difficulties in starting this work right. Some +shockingly false claims are already made to a metaphysical practice; +mesmerism, its very antipodes, is one of them. Hitherto we have never, +in a single instance of our discovery, found the slightest resemblance +between mesmerism and metaphysics. No especial idiosyncrasy is requisite +to acquire a knowledge of metaphysical healing; spiritual sense is more +important to its discernment than the intellect; and those who would +learn this science without a high moral standard of thought and action, +will fail to understand it until they go up higher. Owing to our +explanations constantly vibrating between the same points, an irksome +repetition of words must occur; also the use of capital letters, genders, +and technicalities peculiar to the science. Variety of language, or +beauty of diction, must give place to close analysis and unembellished +thought. "Hoping all things, enduring all things," to do good to our +enemies, to bless them that curse us, and to bear to the sorrowing and +the sick consolation and healing, we commit these pages to posterity. + +MARY BAKER G. EDDY. + + + + +APPENDIX B + +The Gospel narratives bear brief testimony even to the life of our great +Master. His spiritual noumenon and phenomenon, silenced portraiture. +Writers, less wise than the Apostles, essayed in the Apocryphal New +Testament, a legendary and traditional history of the early life of +Jesus. But Saint Paul summarized the character of Jesus as the model of +Christianity, in these words: "Consider Him who endured such +contradictions of sinners against Himself. Who for the joy that was set +before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at +the right hand of the throne of God." + +It may be that the mortal life battle still wages, and must continue till +its involved errors are vanquished by victory-bringing Science; but this +triumph will come! God is over all. He alone is our origin, aim, and +Being. The real man is not of the dust, nor is he ever created through +the flesh; for his father and mother are the one Spirit, and his brethren +are all the children of one parent, the eternal Good. + +Any kind of literary composition was excessively difficult for Mrs. Eddy. +She found it grinding hard work to dig out anything to say. She +realized, at the above stage in her life, that with all her trouble she +had not been able to scratch together even material enough for a child's +Autobiography, and also that what she had secured was in the main not +valuable, not important, considering the age and the fame of the person +she was writing about; and so it occurred to her to attempt, in that +paragraph, to excuse the meagreness and poor quality of the feast she was +spreading, by letting on that she could do ever so much better if she +wanted to, but was under constraint of Divine etiquette. To feed with +more than a few indifferent crumbs a plebeian appetite for personal +details about Personages in her class was not the correct thing, and she +blandly points out that there is Precedent for this reserve. When Mrs. +Eddy tries to be artful--in literature--it is generally after the +manner of the ostrich; and with the ostrich's luck. Please try to find +the connection between the two paragraphs.--M. T. + + + + +APPENDIX C + +The following is the spiritual signification of the Lord's Prayer: + +Principle, eternal and harmonious, +Nameless and adorable Intelligence, +Thou art ever present and supreme. +And when this supremacy of Spirit shall appear, the dream of matter will +disappear. +Give us the understanding of Truth and Love. +And loving we shall learn God, and Truth will destroy all error. +And lead us unto the Life that is Soul, and deliver us from the errors of +sense, sin, sickness, and death, +For God is Life, Truth, and Love for ever. +--Science and Health, edition of 1881. + +It seems to me that this one is distinctly superior to the one that was +inspired for last year's edition. It is strange, but to my mind plain, +that inspiring is an art which does not improve with practice.--M. T. + + + + +APPENDIX D + +"For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, +Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in +his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come +to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, +What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, +and ye shall have them. + +"Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him." +--CHRIST JESUS. + +The prayer that reclaims the sinner and heals the sick, is an absolute +faith that all things are possible to God--a spiritual understanding of +Him--an unselfed love. Regardless of what another may say or think on +this subject, I speak from experience. This prayer, combined with +self-sacrifice and toil, is the means whereby God has enabled me to +do what I have done for the religion and health of mankind. + +Thoughts unspoken are not unknown to the divine Mind. Desire is prayer; +and no less can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may +be moulded and exalted before they take form in audible word, and in +deeds. + +What are the motives for prayer? Do we pray to make ourselves better, or +to benefit those that hear us; to enlighten the Infinite, or to be heard +of men? Are we benefited by praying? Yes, the desire which goes forth +hungering after righteousness is blessed of our Father, and it does not +return unto us void. + +God is not moved by the breath of praise to do more than He has already +done; nor can the Infinite do less than bestow all good, since He is +unchanging Wisdom and Love. We can do more for ourselves by humble +fervent petitions; but the All-loving does not grant them simply on the +ground of lip-service, for He already knows all. + +Prayer cannot change the Science of Being, but it does bring us into +harmony with it. Goodness reaches the demonstration of Truth. A request +that another may work for us never does our work. The habit of pleading +with the divine Mind, as one pleads with a human being, perpetuates the +belief in God as humanly circumscribed--an error which impedes spiritual +growth. + +God is Love. Can we ask Him to be more? God is Intelligence. Can we +inform the infinite Mind, or tell Him anything He does not already +comprehend? Do we hope to change perfection? Shall we plead for more at +the open fount, which always pours forth more than we receive? The +unspoken prayer does bring us nearer the Source of all existence and +blessedness. + +Asking God to be God is a "vain repetition." God is "the same yesterday, +and to-day, and forever"; and He who is immutably right will do right, +without being reminded of His province. The wisdom of man is not +sufficient to warrant him in advising God. + +Who would stand before a blackboard, and pray the principle of +mathematics to work out the problem? The rule is already established, +and it is our task to work out the solution. Shall we ask the divine +Principle of all goodness to do His own work? His work is done; and we +have only to avail ourselves of God's rule, in order to receive the +blessing thereof. + +The divine Being must be reflected by man--else man is not the image and +likeness of the patient, tender, and true, the one "altogether lovely"; +but to understand God is the work of eternity, and demands absolute +concentration of thought and energy. + +How empty are our conceptions of Deity! We admit theoretically that God +is good, omnipotent, omnipresent, infinite, and then we try to give +information to this infinite Mind; and plead for unmerited pardon, and a +liberal outpouring of benefactions. Are we really grateful for the good +already received? Then we shall avail ourselves of the blessings we +have, and thus be fitted to receive more. Gratitude is much more than a +verbal expression of thanks Action expresses more gratitude than speech. + +If we are ungrateful for Life, Truth, and Love, and yet return thanks to +God for all blessings, we are insincere; and incur the sharp censure our +Master pronounces on hypocrites. In such a case the only acceptable +prayer is to put the finger on the lips and remember our blessings. +While the heart is far from divine Truth and Love, we cannot conceal the +ingratitude of barren lives, for God knoweth all things. + +What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, +expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds. To keep the +commandments of our Master and follow his example, is our proper debt to +Him, and the only worthy evidence of our gratitude for all He has done. +Outward worship is not of itself sufficient to express loyal and +heartfelt gratitude, since He has said: "If ye love Me, keep My +Commandments." + +The habitual struggle to be always good, is unceasing prayer. Its +motives are made manifest in the blessings they bring--which, if not +acknowledged in audible words, attest our worthiness to be made partakers +of Love. + +Simply asking that we may love God will never make us love Him; but the +longing to be better and holier--expressed in daily watchfulness, and in +striving to assimilate more of the divine character--this will mould and +fashion us anew, until we awake in His likeness. We reach the Science of +Christianity through demonstration of the divine nature; but in this +wicked world goodness will "be evil spoken of," and patience must work +experience. + +Audible prayer can never do the works of spiritual understanding, which +regenerates; but silent prayer, watchfulness, and devout obedience, +enable us to follow Jesus' example. Long prayers, ecclesiasticism, and +creeds, have clipped the divine pinions of Love, and clad religion in +human robes. They materialize worship, hinder the Spirit, and keep man +from demonstrating his power over error. + +Sorrow for wrong-doing is but one step towards reform, and the very +easiest step. The next and great step required by Wisdom is the test of +our sincerity--namely, reformation. To this end we are placed under the +stress of circumstances. Temptation bids us repeat the offence, and woe +comes in return for what is done. So it will ever be, till we learn that +there is no discount in the law of justice, and that we must pay "the +uttermost farthing." The measure ye mete "shall be measured to you +again," and it will be full "and running over." + +Saints and sinners get their full award, but not always in this world. +The followers of Christ drank His cup. Ingratitude and persecution +filled it to the brim; but God pours the riches of His love into the +understanding and affections, giving us strength according to our day. +Sinners flourish "like a green bay-tree"; but, looking farther, the +Psalmist could see their end--namely, the destruction of sin through +suffering. + +Prayer is sometimes used, as a confessional to cancel sin. This error +impedes true religion. Sin is forgiven, only as it is destroyed by +Christ-Truth and Life If prayer nourishes the belief that sin is +cancelled, and that man is made better by merely praying, it is an evil. +He grows worse who continues in sin because he thinks himself forgiven. + +An apostle says that the Son of God (Christ) came to "destroy the works +of the devil." We should follow our divine Exemplar, and seek the +destruction of all evil works, error and disease included. We cannot +escape the penalty due for sin. The Scriptures say, that if we deny +Christ, "He also will deny us." + +The divine Love corrects and governs man. Men may pardon, but this +divine Principle alone reforms the sinner. God is not separate from the +wisdom He bestows. The talents He gives we must improve. Calling on Him +to forgive our work, badly done or left undone, implies the vain +supposition that we have nothing to do but to ask pardon, and that +afterwards we shall be free to repeat the offence. + +To cause suffering, as the result of sin, is the means of destroying sin. +Every supposed pleasure in sin will furnish more than its equivalent of +pain, until belief in material life and sin is destroyed. To reach +heaven, the harmony of Being, we must understand the divine Principle of +Being. + +"God is Love." More than this we cannot ask; higher we cannot look; +farther we cannot go. To suppose that God forgives or punishes sin, +according as His mercy is sought or unsought, is to misunderstand Love +and make prayer the safety-valve for wrong-doing. + +Jesus uncovered and rebuked sin before He cast it out. Of a sick woman +He said that Satan had bound her; and to Peter He said, "Thou art an +offense unto me." He came teaching and showing men how to destroy sin, +sickness, and death. He said of the fruitless tree, "It is hewn down." + +It is believed by many that a certain magistrate, who lived in the time +of Jesus, left this record: "His rebuke is fearful." The strong language +of our Master confirms this description. + +The only civil sentence which He had for error was, "Get thee behind Me, +Satan." Still stronger evidence that Jesus' reproof was pointed and +pungent is in His own words--showing the necessity for such forcible +utterance, when He cast out devils and healed the sick and sinful. The +relinquishment of error deprives material sense of its false claims. + +Audible prayer is impressive; it gives momentary solemnity and elevation +to thought; but does it produce any lasting benefit? Looking deeply into +these things, we find that "a zeal . . . not according to knowledge," +gives occasion for reaction unfavorable to spiritual growth, sober +resolve, and wholesome perception of God's requirements. The motives for +verbal prayer may embrace too much love of applause to induce or +encourage Christian sentiment. + +Physical sensation, not Soul, produces material ecstasy, and emotions. +If spiritual sense always guided men at such times, there would grow out +of those ecstatic moments a higher experience and a better life, with +more devout self-abnegation, and purity. A self-satisfied ventilation of +fervent sentiments never makes a Christian. God is not influenced by +man. The "divine ear" is not an auditorial nerve. It is the +all-hearing and all-knowing Mind, to whom each want of man is always +known, and by whom it will be supplied. + +The danger from audible prayer is, that it may lead us into temptation. +By it we may become involuntary hypocrites, uttering desires which are +not real, and consoling ourselves in the midst of sin, with the +recollection that we have prayed over it--or mean to ask forgiveness at +some later day. Hypocrisy is fatal to religion. + +A wordy prayer may afford a quiet sense of self-justification, though it +makes the sinner a hypocrite. We never need despair of an honest heart, +but there is little hope for those who only come spasmodically face to +face with their wickedness, and then seek to hide it. Their prayers are +indexes which do not correspond with their character. They hold secret +fellowship with sin; and such externals are spoken of by Jesus as "like +unto whited sepulchres . . . full of all uncleanness." + +If a man, though apparently fervent and prayerful, is impure, and +therefore insincere, what must be the comment upon him? If he had +reached the loftiness of his prayer, there would be no occasion for such +comment. If we feel the aspiration, humility, gratitude, and love which +our words express--this God accepts; and it is wise not to try to deceive +ourselves or others, for "there is nothing covered that shall not be +revealed." Professions and audible prayers are like charity in one +respect--they "cover a multitude of sins." Praying for humility, with +whatever fervency of expression, does not always mean a desire for it. +If we turn away from the poor, we are not ready to receive the reward of +Him who blesses the poor. We confess to having a very wicked heart, and +ask that it may be laid bare before us; but do we not already know more +of this heart than we are willing to have our neighbor see? + +We ought to examine ourselves, and learn what is the affection and +purpose of the heart; for this alone can show us what we honestly are. +If a friend informs us of a fault, do we listen to the rebuke patiently, +and credit what is said? Do we not rather give thanks that we are "not +as other men?" During many years the author has been most grateful for +merited rebuke. The sting lies in unmerited censure--in the falsehood +which does no one any good. + +The test of all prayer lies in the answer to these questions: Do we love +our neighbor better because of this asking? Do we pursue the old +selfishness, satisfied with having prayed for something better, though we +give no evidence of the sincerity of our requests by living consistently +with our prayer? If selfishness has given place to kindness, we shall +regard our neighbor unselfishly, and bless them that curse us; but we +shall never meet this great duty by simply asking that it may be done. +There is a cross to be taken up, before we can enjoy the fruition of our +hope and faith. + +Dost thou "love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy +soul, and with all thy mind?" This command includes much--even the +surrender of all merely material sensation, affection, and worship. This +is the El Dorado of Christianity. It involves the Science of Life, and +recognizes only the divine control of Spirit, wherein Soul is our master, +and material sense and human will have no place. + +Are you willing to leave all for Christ, for Truth, and so be counted +among sinners? No! Do you really desire to attain this point? No! +Then why make long prayers about it, and ask to be Christians, since you +care not to tread in the footsteps of our dear Master? If unwilling to +follow His example, wherefore pray with the lips that you may be +partakers of His nature? Consistent prayer is the desire to do right. +Prayer means that we desire to, and will, walk in the light so far as we +receive it, even though with bleeding footsteps, and waiting patiently on +the Lord, will leave our real desires to be rewarded by Him. + +The world must grow to the spiritual understanding of prayer. If good +enough to profit by Jesus' cup of earthly sorrows, God will sustain us +under these sorrows. Until we are thus divinely qualified, and willing +to drink His cup, millions of vain repetitions will never pour into +prayer the unction of Spirit, in demonstration of power, and "with signs +following." Christian Science reveals a necessity for overcoming the +world, the flesh and evil, and thus destroying all error. + +Seeking is not sufficient. It is striving which enables us to enter. +Spiritual attainments open the door to a higher understanding of the +divine Life. + +One of the forms of worship in Thibet is to carry a praying-machine +through the streets, and stop at the doors to earn a penny by grinding +out a prayer; whereas civilization pays for clerical prayers, in lofty +edifices. Is the difference very great, after all? + +Experience teaches us that we do not always receive the blessings we ask +for in prayer. + +There is some misapprehension of the source and means of all goodness and +blessedness, or we should certainly receive what we ask for. The +Scriptures say: "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye +may consume it upon your lusts." What we desire and ask for it is not +always best for us to receive. In this case infinite Love will not grant +the request. Do you ask Wisdom to be merciful and not punish sin? Then +"ye ask amiss." Without punishment, sin would multiply. Jesus' prayer, +"forgive us our debts," specified also the terms of forgiveness. When +forgiving the adulterous woman He said, "Go, and sin no more." + +A magistrate sometimes remits the penalty, but this may be no moral +benefit to the criminal; and at best, it only saves him from one form of +punishment. The moral law, which has the right to acquit or condemn, +always demands restitution, before mortals can "go up higher." Broken +law brings penalty, in order to compel this progress. + +Mere legal pardon (and there is no other, for divine Principle never +pardons our sins or mistakes till they are corrected) leaves the offender +free to repeat the offense; if, indeed, he has not already suffered +sufficiently from vice to make him turn from it with loathing. Truth +bestows no pardon upon error, but wipes it out in the most effectual +manner. Jesus suffered for our sins, not to annul the divine sentence +against an individual's sin, but to show that sin must bring inevitable +suffering. + +Petitions only bring to mortals the results of their own faith. We know +that a desire for holiness is requisite in order to gain it; but if we +desire holiness above all else, we shall sacrifice everything for it. We +must be willing to do this, that we may walk securely in the only +practical road to holiness. Prayer alone cannot change the unalterable +Truth, or give us an understanding of it; but prayer coupled with a +fervent habitual desire to know and do the will of God will bring us into +all Truth. Such a desire has little need of audible expression. It is +best expressed in thought and life. + + + + +APPENDIX E + +Reverend Heber Newton on Christian Science: + +To begin, then, at the beginning, Christian Science accepts the work of +healing sickness as an integral part of the discipleship of Jesus Christ. +In Christ it finds, what the Church has always recognized, theoretically, +though it has practically ignored the fact--the Great Physician. That +Christ healed the sick, we none of us question. It stands plainly upon +the record. This ministry of healing was too large a part of His work to +be left out from any picture of that life. Such service was not an +incident of His career--it was an essential element of that career. It +was an integral factor in His mission. The Evangelists leave us no +possibility of confusion on this point. Co-equal with his work of +instruction and inspiration was His work of healing. + +The records make it equally clear that the Master laid His charge upon +His disciples to do as He had done. "When He had called unto Him His +twelve disciples, He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them +out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease." In +sending them forth, "He commanded them, saying, . . . As ye go, +preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse +the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons." + +That the twelve disciples undertook to do the Master's work of healing, +and that they, in their measure, succeeded, seems beyond question. They +found in themselves the same power that the Master found in Himself, and +they used it as He had used His power. The record of The Acts of the +Apostles, if at all trustworthy history, shows that they, too, healed the +sick. + +Beyond the circle of the original twelve, it is equally clear that the +early disciples believed themselves charged with the same mission, and +that they sought to fulfil it. The records of the early Church make it +indisputable that powers of healing were recognized as among the gifts of +the Spirit. St. Paul's letters render it certain that these gifts were +not a privilege of the original twelve, merely, but that they were the +heritage into which all the disciples entered. + +Beyond the era of the primitive Church, through several generations, the +early Christians felt themselves called to the same ministry of healing, +and enabled with the same secret of power. Through wellnigh three +centuries, the gifts of healing appear to have been, more or less, +recognized and exercised in the Church. Through those generations, +however, there was a gradual disuse of this power, following upon a +failing recognition of its possession. That which was originally the +rule became the exception. By degrees, the sense of authority and power +to heal passed out from the consciousness of the Church. It ceased to be +a sign of the indwelling Spirit. For fifteen centuries, the recognition +of this authority and power has been altogether exceptional. Here and +there, through the history of these centuries, there have been those who +have entered into this belief of their own privilege and duty, and have +used the gift which they recognized. The Church has never been left +without a line of witnesses to this aspect of the discipleship of Christ. +But she has come to accept it as the normal order of things that what was +once the rule in the Christian Church should be now only the exception. +Orthodoxy has framed a theory of the words of Jesus to account for this +strange departure of His Church from them. It teaches us to believe that +His example was not meant to be followed, in this respect, by all His +disciples. The power of healing which was in Him was a purely +exceptional power. It was used as an evidence of His divine mission. It +was a miraculous gift. The gift of working miracles was not bestowed +upon His Church at large. His original disciples, the twelve apostles, +received this gift, as a necessity of the critical epoch of Christianity +--the founding of the Church. Traces of the power lingered on, in +weakening activity, until they gradually ceased, and the normal condition +of the Church was entered upon, in which miracles are no longer possible. + + +We accept this, unconsciously, as the true state of things in +Christianity. But it is a conception which will not bear a moment's +examination. There is not the slightest suggestion upon record that +Christ set any limit to this charge which He gave His disciples. On the +contrary, there are not lacking hints that He looked for the possession +and exercise of this power wherever His spirit breathed in men. + +Even if the concluding paragraph of St. Mark's Gospel were a later +appendix, it may none the less have been a faithful echo of words of the +Master, as it certainly is a trustworthy record of the belief of the +early Christians as to the thought of Jesus concerning His followers. In +that interesting passage, Jesus, after His death, appeared to the eleven, +and formally commissioned them, again, to take up His work in the world; +bidding them, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every +creature." "And these signs," He tells them, "shall follow them that +believe"--not the apostles only, but "them that believe," without limit +of time; "in My name they shall cast out devils . . . they shall lay +hands on the sick and they shall recover." The concluding discourse to +the disciples, recorded in the Gospel according to St. John, affirms the +same expectation on the part of Jesus; emphasizing it in His solemn way: +"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works that +I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do." + + + + +APPENDIX F + +Few will deny that an intelligence apart from man formed and governs the +spiritual universe and man; and this intelligence is the eternal Mind, +and neither matter nor man created this intelligence and divine +Principle; nor can this Principle produce aught unlike itself. All that +we term sin, sickness, and death is comprised in the belief of matter. +The realm of the real is spiritual; the opposite of Spirit is matter; and +the opposite of the real is unreal or material. Matter is an error of +statement, for there is no matter. This error of premises leads to error +of conclusion in every statement of matter as a basis. Nothing we can +say or believe regarding matter is true, except that matter is unreal, +simply a belief that has its beginning and ending. + +The conservative firm called matter and mind God never formed. The +unerring and eternal Mind destroys this imaginary copartnership, formed +only to be dissolved in a manner and at a period unknown. This +copartnership is obsolete. Placed under the microscope of metaphysics +matter disappears. Only by understanding there are not two, matter and +mind, is a logical and correct conclusion obtained by either one. +Science gathers not grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. Intelligence +never produced non-intelligence, such as matter: the immortal never +produced mortality, good never resulted in evil. The science of Mind +shows conclusively that matter is a myth. Metaphysics are above physics, +and drag not matter, or what is termed that, into one of its premises or +conclusions. Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges +the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul. These ideas are perfectly +tangible and real to consciousness, and they have this advantage--they +are eternal. Mind and its thoughts comprise the whole of God, the +universe, and of man. Reason and revelation coincide with this +statement, and support its proof every hour, for nothing is harmonious or +eternal that is not spiritual: the realization of this will bring out +objects from a higher source of thought; hence more beautiful and +immortal. + +The fact of spiritualization produces results in striking contrast to the +farce of materialization: the one produces the results of chastity and +purity, the other the downward tendencies and earthward gravitation of +sensualism and impurity. + +The exalting and healing effects of metaphysics show their fountain. +Nothing in pathology has exceeded the application of metaphysics. +Through mind alone we have prevented disease and preserved health. In +cases of chronic and acute diseases, in their severest forms, we have +changed the secretions, renewed structure, and restored health; have +elongated shortened limbs, relaxed rigid muscles, made cicatrized joints +supple; restored carious bones to healthy conditions, renewed that which +is termed the lost substance of the lungs; and restored healthy +organizations where disease was organic instead of functional. + + + + +MRS. EDDY IN ERROR + +I feel almost sure that Mrs. Eddy's inspiration--works are getting out of +repair. I think so because they made some errors in a statement which +she uttered through the press on the 17th of January. Not large ones, +perhaps, still it is a friend's duty to straighten such things out and +get them right when he can. Therefore I will put my other duties aside +for a moment and undertake this helpful service. She said as follows: + +"In view of the circulation of certain criticisms from the pen of Mark +Twain, I submit the following statement: + +"It is a fact, well understood, that I begged the students who first gave +me the endearing appellative 'mother' not to name me thus. But, without +my consent, that word spread like wildfire. I still must think the name +is not applicable to me. I stand in relation to this century as a +Christian discoverer, founder, and leader. I regard self-deification as +blasphemous; I may be more loved, but I am less lauded, pampered, +provided for, and cheered than others before me--and wherefore? Because +Christian Science is not yet popular, and I refuse adulation. + +"My visit to the Mother-Church after it was built and dedicated pleased +me, and the situation was satisfactory. The dear members wanted to greet +me with escort and the ringing of bells, but I declined, and went alone +in my carriage to the church, entered it, and knelt in thanks upon the +steps of its altar. There the foresplendor of the beginnings of truth +fell mysteriously upon my spirit. I believe in one Christ, teach one +Christ, know of but one Christ. I believe in but one incarnation, one +Mother Mary, and know I am not that one, and never claimed to be. It +suffices me to learn the Science of the Scriptures relative to this +subject. + +"Christian Scientists have no quarrel with Protestants, Catholics, or any +other sect. They need to be understood as following the divine Principle +God, Love and not imagined to be unscientific worshippers of a human +being. + +"In the aforesaid article, of which I have seen only extracts, Mark +Twain's wit was not wasted In certain directions. Christian Science +eschews divine rights in human beings. If the individual governed human +consciousness, my statement of Christian Science would be disproved, but +to understand the spiritual idea is essential to demonstrate Science and +its pure monotheism--one God, one Christ, no idolatry, no human +propaganda. Jesus taught and proved that what feeds a few feeds all. +His life-work subordinated the material to the spiritual, and He left +this legacy of truth to mankind. His metaphysics is not the sport of +philosophy, religion, or Science; rather it is the pith and finale of +them all. + +"I have not the inspiration or aspiration to be a first or second +Virgin-Mother--her duplicate, antecedent, or subsequent. What I am +remains to be proved by the good I do. We need much humility, wisdom, +and love to perform the functions of foreshadowing and foretasting heaven +within us. This glory is molten in the furnace of affliction." + +She still thinks the name of Our Mother not applicable to her; and she is +also able to remember that it distressed her when it was conferred upon +her, and that she begged to have it suppressed. Her memory is at fault +here. If she will take her By-laws, and refer to Section 1 of Article +XXII., written with her own hand--she will find that she has reserved +that title to herself, and is so pleased with it, and so--may we say +jealous?--about it, that she threatens with excommunication any sister +Scientist who shall call herself by it. This is that Section 1: + +"The Title of Mother. In the year 1895 loyal Christian Scientists had +given to the author of their text-book, the Founder of Christian Science, +the individual, endearing term of Mother. Therefore, if a student of +Christian Science shall apply this title, either to herself or to others, +except as the term for kinship according to the flesh, it shall be +regarded by the Church as an indication of disrespect for their Pastor +Emeritus, and unfitness to be a member of the Mother-Church." + +Mrs. Eddy is herself the Mother-Church--its powers and authorities are in +her possession solely--and she can abolish that title whenever it may +please her to do so. She has only to command her people, wherever they +may be in the earth, to use it no more, and it will never be uttered +again. She is aware of this. + +It may be that she "refuses adulation" when she is not awake, but when +she is awake she encourages it and propagates it in that museum called +"Our Mother's Room," in her Church in Boston. She could abolish that +institution with a word, if she wanted to. She is aware of that. I will +say a further word about the museum presently. + +Further down the column, her memory is unfaithful again: + +"I believe in . . . but one Mother Mary, and know I am not that one, +and never claimed to be." + +At a session of the National Christian Science Association, held in the +city of New York on the 27th of May, 1890, the secretary was "instructed +to send to our Mother greetings and words of affection from her assembled +children." + +Her telegraphic response was read to the Association at next day's +meeting: + +"All hail! He hath filled the hungry with good things and the sick hath +He not sent empty away.--MOTHER MARY." + +Which Mother Mary is this one? Are there two? If so, she is both of +them; for, when she signed this telegram in this satisfied and +unprotesting way, the Mother-title which she was going to so strenuously +object to, and put from her with humility, and seize with both hands, and +reserve as her sole property, and protect her monopoly of it with a stern +By-law, while recognizing with diffidence that it was "not applicable" to +her (then and to-day)--that Mother--title was not yet born, and would not +be offered to her until five years later. The date of the above "Mother +Mary" is 1890; the "individual, endearing title of Mother" was given her +"in 1895"--according to her own testimony. See her By-law quoted above. + +In his opening Address to that Convention of 1890, the President +recognized this Mary--our Mary-and abolished all previous ones. He said: + +"There is but one Moses, one Jesus; and there is but one Mary." + +The confusions being now dispersed, we have this clarified result: + +Were had been a Moses at one time, and only one; there had been a Jesus +at one time, and only one; there is a Mary and "only one." She is not a +Has Been, she is an Is--the "Author of Science and Health; and we cannot +ignore her." + +1. In 1890, there was but one Mother Mary. The President said so. +2. Mrs. Eddy was that one. She said so, in signing the telegram. +3. Mrs. Eddy was not that one for she says so, in her Associated Press +utterance of January 17th. +4. And has "never claimed to be that one"--unless the signature to the +telegram is a claim. + +Thus it stands proven and established that she is that Mary and isn't, +and thought she was and knows she wasn't. That much is clear. + +She is also "The Mother," by the election of 1895, and did not want the +title, and thinks it is not applicable to her, end will excommunicate any +one that tries to take it away from her. So that is clear. + +I think that the only really troublesome confusion connected with these +particular matters has arisen from the name Mary. Much vexation, much +misunderstanding, could have been avoided if Mrs. Eddy had used some of +her other names in place of that one. "Mother Mary" was certain to stir +up discussion. It would have been much better if she had signed the +telegram "Mother Baker"; then there would have been no Biblical +competition, and, of course, that is a thing to avoid. But it is not too +late, yet. + +I wish to break in here with a parenthesis, and then take up this +examination of Mrs. Eddy's Claim of January 17th again. + +The history of her "Mother Mary" telegram--as told to me by one who ought +to be a very good authority--is curious and interesting. The telegram +ostensibly quotes verse 53 from the "Magnificat," but really makes some +pretty formidable changes in it. This is St. Luke's version: + +"He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent +empty away." + +This is "Mother Mary's" telegraphed version: + +"He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the sick hath He not +sent empty away." + +To judge by the Official Report, the bursting of this bombshell in that +massed convention of trained Christians created no astonishment, since it +caused no remark, and the business of the convention went tranquilly on, +thereafter, as if nothing had happened. + +Did those people detect those changes? We cannot know. I think they +must have noticed them, the wording of St. Luke's verse being as +familiar to all Christians as is the wording of the Beatitudes; and I +think that the reason the new version provoked no surprise and no comment +was, that the assemblage took it for a "Key"--a spiritualized explanation +of verse 53, newly sent down from heaven through Mrs. Eddy. For all +Scientists study their Bibles diligently, and they know their Magnificat. +I believe that their confidence in the authenticity of Mrs. Eddy's +inspirations is so limitless and so firmly established that no change, +however violent, which she might make in a Bible text could disturb their +composure or provoke from them a protest. + +Her improved rendition of verse 53 went into the convention's report and +appeared in a New York paper the next day. The (at that time) Scientist +whom I mentioned a minute ago, and who had not been present at the +convention, saw it and marvelled; marvelled and was indignant--indignant +with the printer or the telegrapher, for making so careless and so +dreadful an error. And greatly distressed, too; for, of course, the +newspaper people would fall foul of it, and be sarcastic, and make fun of +it, and have a blithe time over it, and be properly thankful for the +chance. It shows how innocent he was; it shows that he did not know the +limitations of newspaper men in the matter of Biblical knowledge. The +new verse 53 raised no insurrection in the press; in fact, it was not +even remarked upon; I could have told him the boys would not know there +was anything the matter with it. I have been a newspaper man myself, and +in those days I had my limitations like the others. + +The Scientist hastened to Concord and told Mrs. Eddy what a disastrous +mistake had been made, but he found to his bewilderment that she was +tranquil about it, and was not proposing to correct it. He was not able +to get her to promise to make a correction. He asked her secretary if he +had heard aright when the telegram was dictated to him; the secretary +said he had, and took the filed copy of it and verified its authenticity +by comparing it with the stenographic notes. + +Mrs. Eddy did make the correction, two months later, in her official +organ. It attracted no attention among the Scientists; and, naturally, +none elsewhere, for that periodical's circulation was practically +confined to disciples of the cult. + +That is the tale as it was told to me by an ex-Scientist. Verse 53 +--renovated and spiritualized--had a narrow escape from a tremendous +celebrity. The newspaper men would have made it as famous as the +assassination of Caesar, but for their limitations. + +To return to the Claim. I find myself greatly embarrassed by Mrs. Eddy's +remark: "I regard self-deification as blasphemous." If she is right +about that, I have written a half-ream of manuscript this past week which +I must not print, either in the book which I am writing, or elsewhere: +for it goes into that very matter with extensive elaboration, citing, in +detail, words and acts of Mrs. Eddy's which seem to me to prove that she +is a faithful and untiring worshipper of herself, and has carried +self-deification to a length which has not been before ventured in ages. +If ever. There is not room enough in this chapter for that Survey, but I +can epitomize a portion of it here. + +With her own untaught and untrained mind, and without outside help, she +has erected upon a firm and lasting foundation the most minutely perfect, +and wonderful, and smoothly and exactly working, and best safe-guarded +system of government that has yet been devised in the world, as I +believe, and as I am sure I could prove if I had room for my documentary +evidences here. + +It is a despotism (on this democratic soil); a sovereignty more absolute +than the Roman Papacy, more absolute than the Russian Czarship; it has +not a single power, not a shred of authority, legislative or executive, +which is not lodged solely in the sovereign; all its dreams, its +functions, its energies, have a single object, a single reason for +existing, and only the one--to build to the sky the glory of the +sovereign, and keep it bright to the end of time. + +Mrs. Eddy is the sovereign; she devised that great place for herself, she +occupies that throne. + +In 1895, she wrote a little primer, a little body of autocratic laws, +called the Manual of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and put those +laws in force, in permanence. Her government is all there; all in that +deceptively innocent-looking little book, that cunning little devilish +book, that slumbering little brown volcano, with hell in its bowels. In +that book she has planned out her system, and classified and defined its +purposes and powers. + + + + +MAIN PARTS OF THE MACHINE + +A Supreme Church. At Boston. +Branch Churches. All over the world +One Pastor for the whole of them: to wit, her book, Science and Health. +Term of the book's office--forever. + +In every C.S. pulpit, two "Readers," a man and a woman. No talkers, no +preachers, in any Church-readers only. Readers of the Bible and her +books--no others. No commentators allowed to write or print. + +A Church Service. She has framed it--for all the C.S. Churches +--selected its readings, its prayers, and the hymns to be used, and has +appointed the order of procedure. No changes permitted. + +A Creed. She wrote it. All C.S. Churches must subscribe to it. No +other permitted. + +A Treasury. At Boston. She carries the key. + +A C.S. Book--Publishing House. For books approved by her. No others +permitted. + +Journals and Magazines. These are organs of hers, and are controlled by +her. + +A College. For teaching C.S. + + + + +DISTRIBUTION OF THE MACHINE'S POWERS AND DIGNITIES + +Supreme Church. +Pastor Emeritus--Mrs. Eddy. +Board of Directors. +Board of Education. +Board of Finance. +College Faculty. +Various Committees. +Treasurer. +Clerk. +First Members (of the Supreme Church). +Members of the Supreme Church. + +It looks fair, it looks real, but it is all a fiction. + +Even the little "Pastor Emeritus" is a fiction. Instead of being merely +an honorary and ornamental official, Mrs. Eddy is the only official in +the entire body that has the slightest power. In her Manual, she has +provided a prodigality of ways and forms whereby she can rid herself of +any functionary in the government whenever she wants to. The officials +are all shadows, save herself; she is the only reality. She allows no +one to hold office more than a year--no one gets a chance to become +over-popular or over-useful, and dangerous. "Excommunication" is the +favorite penalty-it is threatened at every turn. It is evidently the pet +dread and terror of the Church's membership. + +The member who thinks, without getting his thought from Mrs. Eddy before +uttering it, is banished permanently. One or two kinds of sinners can +plead their way back into the fold, but this one, never. To think--in +the Supreme Church--is the New Unpardonable Sin. + +To nearly every severe and fierce rule, Mrs. Eddy adds this rivet: "This +By-law shall not be changed without the consent of the Pastor Emeritus." + +Mrs. Eddy is the entire Supreme Church, in her own person, in the matter +of powers and authorities. + +Although she has provided so many ways of getting rid of unsatisfactory +members and officials, she was still afraid she might have left a +life-preserver lying around somewhere, therefore she devised a rule to +cover that defect. By applying it, she can excommunicate (and this is +perpetual again) every functionary connected with the Supreme Church, and +every one of the twenty-five thousand members of that Church, at an +hour's notice--and do it all by herself without anybody's help. + +By authority of this astonishing By-law, she has only to say a person +connected with that Church is secretly practicing hypnotism or mesmerism; +whereupon, immediate excommunication, without a hearing, is his portion! +She does not have to order a trial and produce evidence--her accusation +is all that is necessary. + +Where is the Pope? and where the Czar? As the ballad says: + + "Ask of the winds that far away + With fragments strewed the sea!" + +The Branch Church's pulpit is occupied by two "Readers." Without them +the Branch Church is as dead as if its throat had been cut. To have +control, then, of the Readers, is to have control of the Branch Churches. +Mrs. Eddy has that control--a control wholly without limit, a control +shared with no one. + +1. No Reader can be appointed to any Church in the Christian Science +world without her express approval. + +2. She can summarily expel from his or her place any Reader, at home or +abroad, by a mere letter of dismissal, over her signature, and without +furnishing any reason for it, to either the congregation or the Reader. + +Thus she has as absolute control over all Branch Churches as she has over +the Supreme Church. This power exceeds the Pope's. + +In simple truth, she is the only absolute sovereign in all Christendom. +The authority of the other sovereigns has limits, hers has none, none +whatever. And her yoke does not fret, does not offend. Many of the +subjects of the other monarchs feel their yoke, and are restive under it; +their loyalty is insincere. It is not so with this one's human property; +their loyalty is genuine, earnest, sincere, enthusiastic. The sentiment +which they feel for her is one which goes out in sheer perfection to no +other occupant of a throne; for it is love, pure from doubt, envy, +exaction, fault-seeking, a love whose sun has no spot--that form of love, +strong, great, uplifting, limitless, whose vast proportions are +compassable by no word but one, the prodigious word, Worship. And it is +not as a human being that her subjects worship her, but as a supernatural +one, a divine one, one who has comradeship with God, and speaks by His +voice. + +Mrs. Eddy has herself created all these personal grandeurs and +autocracies--with others which I have not (in this article) mentioned. +They place her upon an Alpine solitude and supremacy of power and +spectacular show not hitherto attained by any other self-seeking enslaver +disguised in the Christian name, and they persuade me that, although she +may regard "self-deification as blasphemous," she is as fond of it as I +am of pie. + +She knows about "Our Mother's Room" in the Supreme Church in Boston +--above referred to--for she has been in it. In a recently published +North American Review article, I quoted a lady as saying Mrs. Eddy's +portrait could be seen there in a shrine, lit by always-burning lights, +and that C.S. disciples came and worshiped it. That remark hurt the +feelings of more than one Scientist. They said it was not true, and +asked me to correct it. I comply with pleasure. Whether the portrait +was there four years ago or not, it is not there now, for I have +inquired. The only object in the shrine now, and lit by electrics--and +worshiped--is an oil-portrait of the horse-hair chair Mrs. Eddy used to +sit in when she was writing Science and Health! It seems to me that +adulation has struck bottom, here. + +Mrs. Eddy knows about that. She has been there, she has seen it, she has +seen the worshippers. She could abolish that sarcasm with a word. She +withholds the word. Once more I seem to recognize in her exactly the +same appetite for self-deification that I have for pie. We seem to be +curiously alike; for the love of self-deification is really only the +spiritual form of the material appetite for pie, and nothing could be +more strikingly Christian-Scientifically "harmonious." + +I note this phrase: + +"Christian Science eschews divine rights in human beings." + +"Rights" is vague; I do not know what it means there. Mrs. Eddy is not +well acquainted with the English language, and she is seldom able to say +in it what she is trying to say. She has no ear for the exact word, and +does not often get it. "Rights." Does it mean "honors?" "attributes?" + +"Eschews." This is another umbrella where there should be a torch; it +does not illumine the sentence, it only deepens the shadows. Does she +mean "denies?" "refuses?" "forbids?" or something in that line? Does she +mean: + +"Christian Science denies divine honors to human beings?" Or: + +"Christian Science refuses to recognize divine attributes in human +beings?" Or: + +"Christian Science forbids the worship of human beings?" + +The bulk of the succeeding sentence is to me a tunnel, but, when I emerge +at this end of it, I seem to come into daylight. Then I seem to +understand both sentences--with this result: + +"Christian Science recognizes but one God, forbids the worship of human +beings, and refuses to recognize the possession of divine attributes by +any member of the race." + +I am subject to correction, but I think that that is about what Mrs. Eddy +was intending to convey. Has her English--which is always difficult to +me--beguiled me into misunderstanding the following remark, which she +makes (calling herself "we," after an old regal fashion of hers) in her +preface to her Miscellaneous Writings? + +"While we entertain decided views as to the best method for elevating the +race physically, morally, and spiritually, and shall express these views +as duty demands, we shall claim no especial gift from our divine organ, +no supernatural power." + +Was she meaning to say: + +"Although I am of divine origin and gifted with supernatural power, I +shall not draw upon these resources in determining the best method of +elevating the race?" + +If she had left out the word "our," she might then seem to say: + +"I claim no especial or unusual degree of divine origin--" + +Which is awkward--most awkward; for one either has a divine origin or +hasn't; shares in it, degrees of it, are surely impossible. The idea of +crossed breeds in cattle is a thing we can entertain, for we are used to +it, and it is possible; but the idea of a divine mongrel is unthinkable. + +Well, then, what does she mean? I am sure I do not know, for certain. +It is the word "our" that makes all the trouble. With the "our" in, she +is plainly saying "my divine origin." The word "from" seems to be +intended to mean "on account of." It has to mean that or nothing, if +"our" is allowed to stay. The clause then says: + +"I shall claim no especial gift on account of my divine origin." + +And I think that the full sentence was intended to mean what I have +already suggested: + +"Although I am of divine origin, and gifted with supernatural power, I +shall not draw upon these resources in determining the best method of +elevating the race." + +When Mrs. Eddy copyrighted that Preface seven years ago, she had long +been used to regarding herself as a divine personage. I quote from Mr. +F. W. Peabody's book: + +"In the Christian Science Journal for April, 1889, when it was her +property, and published by her, it was claimed for her, and with her +sanction, that she was equal with Jesus, and elaborate effort was made to +establish the claim." + +"Mrs. Eddy has distinctly authorized the claim in her behalf, that she +herself was the chosen successor to and equal of Jesus." + +The following remark in that April number, quoted by Mr. Peabody, +indicates that her claim had been previously made, and had excited +"horror" among some "good people": + +"Now, a word about the horror many good people have of our making the +Author of Science and Health 'equal with Jesus.'" + +Surely, if it had excited horror in Mrs. Eddy also, she would have +published a disclaimer. She owned the paper; she could say what she +pleased in its columns. Instead of rebuking her editor, she lets him +rebuke those "good people" for objecting to the claim. + +These things seem to throw light upon those words, "our [my] divine +origin." + +It may be that "Christian Science eschews divine rights in human beings," +and forbids worship of any but "one God, one Christ"; but, if that is the +case, it looks as if Mrs. Eddy is a very unsound Christian Scientist, +and needs disciplining. I believe she has a serious malady +--"self-deification"; and that it will be well to have one of the +experts demonstrate over it. + +Meantime, let her go on living--for my sake. Closely examined, +painstakingly studied, she is easily the most interesting person on the +planet, and, in several ways, as easily the most extraordinary woman that +was ever born upon it. + + +P.S.--Since I wrote the foregoing, Mr. McCrackan's article appeared (in +the March number of the North American Review). Before his article +appeared--that is to say, during December, January, and February--I had +written a new book, a character-portrait of Mrs. Eddy, drawn from her own +acts and words, and it was then--together with the three brief articles +previously published in the North American Review--ready to be delivered +to the printer for issue in book form. In that book, by accident and +good luck, I have answered the objections made by Mr. McCrackan to my +views, and therefore do not need to add an answer here. Also, in it I +have corrected certain misstatements of mine which he has noticed, and +several others which he has not referred to. There are one or two +important matters of opinion upon which he and I are not in disagreement; +but there are others upon which we must continue to disagree, I suppose; +indeed, I know we must; for instance, he believes Mrs. Eddy wrote Science +and Health, whereas I am quite sure I can convince a person unhampered by +predilections that she did not. + +As concerns one considerable matter I hope to convert him. He believes +Mrs. Eddy's word; in his article he cites her as a witness, and takes her +testimony at par; but if he will make an excursion through my book when +it comes out, and will dispassionately examine her testimonies as there +accumulated, I think he will in candor concede that she is by a large +percentage the most erratic and contradictory and untrustworthy witness +that has occupied the stand since the days of the lamented Ananias. + + + + +CONCLUSION + +Broadly speaking, the hostiles reject and repudiate all the pretensions +of Christian Science Christianity. They affirm that it has added nothing +new to Christianity; that it can do nothing that Christianity could not +do and was not doing before Christian Science was born. + +In that case is there no field for the new Christianity, no opportunity +for usefulness, precious usefulness, great and distinguished usefulness? +I think there is. I am far from being confident that it can fill it, but +I will indicate that unoccupied field--without charge--and if it can +conquer it, it will deserve the praise and gratitude of the Christian +world, and will get it, I am sure. + +The present Christianity makes an excellent private Christian, but its +endeavors to make an excellent public one go for nothing, substantially. + +This is an honest nation--in private life. The American Christian is a +straight and clean and honest man, and in his private commerce with his +fellows can be trusted to stand faithfully by the principles of honor and +honesty imposed upon him by his religion. But the moment he comes +forward to exercise a public trust he can be confidently counted upon to +betray that trust in nine cases out of ten, if "party loyalty" shall +require it. + +If there are two tickets in the field in his city, one composed of honest +men and the other of notorious blatherskites and criminals, he will not +hesitate to lay his private Christian honor aside and vote for the +blatherskites if his "party honor" shall exact it. His Christianity is +of no use to him and has no influence upon him when he is acting in a +public capacity. He has sound and sturdy private morals, but he has no +public ones. In the last great municipal election in New York, almost a +complete one-half of the votes representing 3,500,000 Christians were +cast for a ticket that had hardly a man on it whose earned and proper +place was outside of a jail. But that vote was present at church next +Sunday the same as ever, and as unconscious of its perfidy as if nothing +had happened. + +Our Congresses consist of Christians. In their private life they are +true to every obligation of honor; yet in every session they violate them +all, and do it without shame; because honor to party is above honor to +themselves. It is an accepted law of public life that in it a man may +soil his honor in the interest of party expediency--must do it when +party expediency requires it. In private life those men would bitterly +resent--and justly--any insinuation that it would not be safe to leave +unwatched money within their reach; yet you could not wound their +feelings by reminding them that every time they vote ten dollars to the +pension appropriation nine of it is stolen money and they the marauders. +They have filched the money to take care of the party; they believe it +was right to do it; they do not see how their private honor is affected; +therefore their consciences are clear and at rest. By vote they do +wrongful things every day, in the party interest, which they could not be +persuaded to do in private life. In the interest of party expediency +they give solemn pledges, they make solemn compacts; in the interest of +party expediency they repudiate them without a blush. They would not +dream of committing these strange crimes in private life. + +Now then, can Christian Science introduce the Congressional Blush? There +are Christian Private Morals, but there are no Christian Public Morals, +at the polls, or in Congress or anywhere else--except here and there and +scattered around like lost comets in the solar system. Can Christian +Science persuade the nation and Congress to throw away their public +morals and use none but their private ones henceforth in all their +activities, both public and private? + +I do not think so; but no matter about me: there is the field--a grand +one, a splendid one, a sublime one, and absolutely unoccupied. Has +Christian Science confidence enough in itself to undertake to enter in +and try to possess it? + +Make the effort, Christian Science; it is a most noble cause, and it +might succeed. It could succeed. Then we should have a new literature, +with romances entitled, How To Be an Honest Congressman Though a +Christian; How To Be a Creditable Citizen Though a Christian. + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Christian Science, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +EXTRACT FROM CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a little +anxious. Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that time, like +a comet. LIKE a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over the lot of them! Of +course there warn't any of them going my way, as a steady thing, you +know, because they travel in a long circle like the loop of a lasso, +whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart for the Hereafter; but I +happened on one every now and then that was going my way for an hour or +so, and then we had a bit of a brush together. But it was generally +pretty one-sided, because I sailed by them the same as if they were +standing still. An ordinary comet don't make more than about 200,000 +miles a minute. Of course when I came across one of that sort--like +Encke's and Halley's comets, for instance--it warn't anything but just a +flash and a vanish, you see. You couldn't rightly call it a race. It +was as if the comet was a gravel-train and I was a telegraph despatch. +But after I got outside of our astronomical system, I used to flush a +comet occasionally that was something LIKE. WE haven't got any such +comets--ours don't begin. One night I was swinging along at a good round +gait, everything taut and trim, and the wind in my favor--I judged I was +going about a million miles a minute--it might have been more, it +couldn't have been less--when I flushed a most uncommonly big one about +three points off my starboard bow. By his stern lights I judged he was +bearing about northeast-and-by-north-half-east. Well, it was so near my +course that I wouldn't throw away the chance; so I fell off a point, +steadied my helm, and went for him. You should have heard me whiz, and +seen the electric fur fly! In about a minute and a half I was fringed +out with an electrical nimbus that flamed around for miles and miles and +lit up all space like broad day. The comet was burning blue in the +distance, like a sickly torch, when I first sighted him, but he begun to +grow bigger and bigger as I crept up on him. I slipped up on him so fast +that when I had gone about 150,000,000 miles I was close enough to be +swallowed up in the phosphorescent glory of his wake, and I couldn't see +anything for the glare. Thinks I, it won't do to run into him, so I +shunted to one side and tore along. By and by I closed up abreast of his +tail. Do you know what it was like? It was like a gnat closing up on +the continent of America. I forged along. By and by I had sailed along +his coast for a little upwards of a hundred and fifty million miles, and +then I could see by the shape of him that I hadn't even got up to his +waistband yet. Why, Peters, WE don't know anything about comets, down +here. If you want to see comets that ARE comets, you've got to go +outside of our solar system --where there's room for them, you +understand. My friend, I've seen comets out there that couldn't even lay +down inside the ORBITS of our noblest comets without their tails hanging +over. + +Well, I boomed along another hundred and fifty million miles, and got up +abreast his shoulder, as you may say. I was feeling pretty fine, I tell +you; but just then I noticed the officer of the deck come to the side and +hoist his glass in my direction. Straight off I heard him sing +out--"Below there, ahoy! Shake her up, shake her up! Heave on a hundred +million billion tons of brimstone!" + +"Ay-ay, sir!" + +"Pipe the stabboard watch! All hands on deck!" + +"Ay-ay, sir!" + +"Send two hundred thousand million men aloft to shake out royals and +sky-scrapers!" + +"Ay-ay, sir!" + +"Hand the stuns'ls! Hang out every rag you've got! Clothe her from stem +to rudder-post!" + +"Ay-ay, sir!" + +In about a second I begun to see I'd woke up a pretty ugly customer, +Peters. In less than ten seconds that comet was just a blazing cloud of +red-hot canvas. It was piled up into the heavens clean out of sight--the +old thing seemed to swell out and occupy all space; the sulphur smoke +from the furnaces--oh, well, nobody can describe the way it rolled and +tumbled up into the skies, and nobody can half describe the way it smelt. +Neither can anybody begin to describe the way that monstrous craft begun +to crash along. And such another powwow--thousands of bo's'n's whistles +screaming at once, and a crew like the populations of a hundred thousand +worlds like ours all swearing at once. Well, I never heard the like of +it before. + +We roared and thundered along side by side, both doing our level best, +because I'd never struck a comet before that could lay over me, and so I +was bound to beat this one or break something. I judged I had some +reputation in space, and I calculated to keep it. I noticed I wasn't +gaining as fast, now, as I was before, but still I was gaining. There +was a power of excitement on board the comet. Upwards of a hundred +billion passengers swarmed up from below and rushed to the side and begun +to bet on the race. Of course this careened her and damaged her speed. +My, but wasn't the mate mad! He jumped at that crowd, with his trumpet in +his hand, and sung out-- + +"Amidships! amidships, you! {1} or I'll brain the last idiot of you!" + +Well, sir, I gained and gained, little by little, till at last I went +skimming sweetly by the magnificent old conflagration's nose. By this +time the captain of the comet had been rousted out, and he stood there in +the red glare for'ard, by the mate, in his shirt-sleeves and slippers, +his hair all rats' nests and one suspender hanging, and how sick those +two men did look! I just simply couldn't help putting my thumb to my +nose as I glided away and singing out: + +"Ta-ta! ta-ta! Any word to send to your family?" + +Peters, it was a mistake. Yes, sir, I've often regretted that--it was a +mistake. You see, the captain had given up the race, but that remark was +too tedious for him--he couldn't stand it. He turned to the mate, and +says he-- + +"Have we got brimstone enough of our own to make the trip?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Sure?" + +"Yes, sir--more than enough." + +"How much have we got in cargo for Satan?" + +"Eighteen hundred thousand billion quintillions of kazarks." + +"Very well, then, let his boarders freeze till the next comet comes. +Lighten ship! Lively, now, lively, men! Heave the whole cargo +overboard!" + +Peters, look me in the eye, and be calm. I found out, over there, that a +kazark is exactly the bulk of a HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE WORLDS LIKE OURS! +They hove all that load overboard. When it fell it wiped out a +considerable raft of stars just as clean as if they'd been candles and +somebody blowed them out. As for the race, that was at an end. The +minute she was lightened the comet swung along by me the same as if I was +anchored. The captain stood on the stern, by the after-davits, and put +his thumb to his nose and sung out-- + +"Ta-ta! ta-ta! Maybe YOU'VE got some message to send your friends in the +Everlasting Tropics!" + +Then he hove up his other suspender and started for'ard, and inside of +three-quarters of an hour his craft was only a pale torch again in the +distance. Yes, it was a mistake, Peters--that remark of mine. I don't +reckon I'll ever get over being sorry about it. I'd 'a' beat the bully +of the firmament if I'd kept my mouth shut. + +But I've wandered a little off the track of my tale; I'll get back on my +course again. Now you see what kind of speed I was making. So, as I +said, when I had been tearing along this way about thirty years I begun +to get uneasy. Oh, it was pleasant enough, with a good deal to find out, +but then it was kind of lonesome, you know. Besides, I wanted to get +somewhere. I hadn't shipped with the idea of cruising forever. First +off, I liked the delay, because I judged I was going to fetch up in +pretty warm quarters when I got through; but towards the last I begun to +feel that I'd rather go to--well, most any place, so as to finish up the +uncertainty. + +Well, one night--it was always night, except when I was rushing by some +star that was occupying the whole universe with its fire and its +glare--light enough then, of course, but I necessarily left it behind in +a minute or two and plunged into a solid week of darkness again. The +stars ain't so close together as they look to be. Where was I? Oh yes; +one night I was sailing along, when I discovered a tremendous long row of +blinking lights away on the horizon ahead. As I approached, they begun +to tower and swell and look like mighty furnaces. Says I to myself-- + +"By George, I've arrived at last--and at the wrong place, just as I +expected!" + +Then I fainted. I don't know how long I was insensible, but it must have +been a good while, for, when I came to, the darkness was all gone and +there was the loveliest sunshine and the balmiest, fragrantest air in its +place. And there was such a marvellous world spread out before me--such +a glowing, beautiful, bewitching country. The things I took for furnaces +were gates, miles high, made all of flashing jewels, and they pierced a +wall of solid gold that you couldn't see the top of, nor yet the end of, +in either direction. I was pointed straight for one of these gates, and +a-coming like a house afire. Now I noticed that the skies were black +with millions of people, pointed for those gates. What a roar they made, +rushing through the air! The ground was as thick as ants with people, +too--billions of them, I judge. + +I lit. I drifted up to a gate with a swarm of people, and when it was my +turn the head clerk says, in a business-like way-- + +"Well, quick! Where are you from?" + +"San Francisco," says I. + +"San Fran--WHAT?" says he. + +"San Francisco." + +He scratched his head and looked puzzled, then he says-- + +"Is it a planet?" + +By George, Peters, think of it! "PLANET?" says I; "it's a city. And +moreover, it's one of the biggest and finest and--" + +"There, there!" says he, "no time here for conversation. We don't deal +in cities here. Where are you from in a GENERAL way?" + +"Oh," I says, "I beg your pardon. Put me down for California." + +I had him AGAIN, Peters! He puzzled a second, then he says, sharp and +irritable-- + +"I don't know any such planet--is it a constellation?" + +"Oh, my goodness!" says I. "Constellation, says you? No--it's a State." + +"Man, we don't deal in States here. WILL you tell me where you are from +IN GENERAL--AT LARGE, don't you understand?" + +"Oh, now I get your idea," I says. "I'm from America,--the United States +of America." + +Peters, do you know I had him AGAIN? If I hadn't I'm a clam! His face +was as blank as a target after a militia shooting-match. He turned to an +under clerk and says-- + +"Where is America? WHAT is America?" + +The under clerk answered up prompt and says-- + +"There ain't any such orb." + +"ORB?" says I. "Why, what are you talking about, young man? It ain't an +orb; it's a country; it's a continent. Columbus discovered it; I reckon +likely you've heard of HIM, anyway. America--why, sir, America--" + +"Silence!" says the head clerk. "Once for all, where--are--you--FROM?" + +"Well," says I, "I don't know anything more to say--unless I lump things, +and just say I'm from the world." + +"Ah," says he, brightening up, "now that's something like! WHAT world?" + +Peters, he had ME, that time. I looked at him, puzzled, he looked at me, +worried. Then he burst out-- + +"Come, come, what world?" + +Says I, "Why, THE world, of course." + +"THE world!" he says. "H'm! there's billions of them! . . . Next!" + +That meant for me to stand aside. I done so, and a sky-blue man with +seven heads and only one leg hopped into my place. I took a walk. It +just occurred to me, then, that all the myriads I had seen swarming to +that gate, up to this time, were just like that creature. I tried to run +across somebody I was acquainted with, but they were out of acquaintances +of mine just then. So I thought the thing all over and finally sidled +back there pretty meek and feeling rather stumped, as you may say. + +"Well?" said the head clerk. + +"Well, sir," I says, pretty humble, "I don't seem to make out which world +it is I'm from. But you may know it from this--it's the one the Saviour +saved." + +He bent his head at the Name. Then he says, gently-- + +"The worlds He has saved are like to the gates of heaven in number --none +can count them. What astronomical system is your world in? --perhaps +that may assist." + +"It's the one that has the sun in it--and the moon--and Mars"--he shook +his head at each name--hadn't ever heard of them, you see --"and +Neptune--and Uranus--and Jupiter--" + +"Hold on!" says he--"hold on a minute! Jupiter . . . Jupiter . . . Seems +to me we had a man from there eight or nine hundred years ago--but people +from that system very seldom enter by this gate." All of a sudden he +begun to look me so straight in the eye that I thought he was going to +bore through me. Then he says, very deliberate, "Did you come STRAIGHT +HERE from your system?" + +"Yes, sir," I says--but I blushed the least little bit in the world when +I said it. + +He looked at me very stern, and says-- + +"That is not true; and this is not the place for prevarication. You +wandered from your course. How did that happen?" + +Says I, blushing again-- + +"I'm sorry, and I take back what I said, and confess. I raced a little +with a comet one day--only just the least little bit--only the tiniest +lit--" + +"So--so," says he--and without any sugar in his voice to speak of. + +I went on, and says-- + +"But I only fell off just a bare point, and I went right back on my +course again the minute the race was over." + +"No matter--that divergence has made all this trouble. It has brought +you to a gate that is billions of leagues from the right one. If you had +gone to your own gate they would have known all about your world at once +and there would have been no delay. But we will try to accommodate you." +He turned to an under clerk and says-- + +"What system is Jupiter in?" + +"I don't remember, sir, but I think there is such a planet in one of the +little new systems away out in one of the thinly worlded corners of the +universe. I will see." + +He got a balloon and sailed up and up and up, in front of a map that was +as big as Rhode Island. He went on up till he was out of sight, and by +and by he came down and got something to eat and went up again. To cut a +long story short, he kept on doing this for a day or two, and finally he +came down and said he thought he had found that solar system, but it +might be fly-specks. So he got a microscope and went back. It turned +out better than he feared. He had rousted out our system, sure enough. +He got me to describe our planet and its distance from the sun, and then +he says to his chief-- + +"Oh, I know the one he means, now, sir. It is on the map. It is called +the Wart." + +Says I to myself, "Young man, it wouldn't be wholesome for you to go down +THERE and call it the Wart." + +Well, they let me in, then, and told me I was safe forever and wouldn't +have any more trouble. + +Then they turned from me and went on with their work, the same as if they +considered my case all complete and shipshape. I was a good deal +surprised at this, but I was diffident about speaking up and reminding +them. I did so hate to do it, you know; it seemed a pity to bother them, +they had so much on their hands. Twice I thought I would give up and let +the thing go; so twice I started to leave, but immediately I thought what +a figure I should cut stepping out amongst the redeemed in such a rig, +and that made me hang back and come to anchor again. People got to eying +me --clerks, you know--wondering why I didn't get under way. I couldn't +stand this long--it was too uncomfortable. So at last I plucked up +courage and tipped the head clerk a signal. He says-- + +"What! you here yet? What's wanting?" + +Says I, in a low voice and very confidential, making a trumpet with my +hands at his ear-- + +"I beg pardon, and you mustn't mind my reminding you, and seeming to +meddle, but hain't you forgot something?" + +He studied a second, and says-- + +"Forgot something? . . . No, not that I know of." + +"Think," says I. + +He thought. Then he says-- + +"No, I can't seem to have forgot anything. What is it?" + +"Look at me," says I, "look me all over." + +He done it. + +"Well?" says he. + +"Well," says I, "you don't notice anything? If I branched out amongst +the elect looking like this, wouldn't I attract considerable +attention?--wouldn't I be a little conspicuous?" + +"Well," he says, "I don't see anything the matter. What do you lack?" + +"Lack! Why, I lack my harp, and my wreath, and my halo, and my +hymn-book, and my palm branch--I lack everything that a body naturally +requires up here, my friend." + +Puzzled? Peters, he was the worst puzzled man you ever saw. Finally he +says-- + +"Well, you seem to be a curiosity every way a body takes you. I never +heard of these things before." + +I looked at the man awhile in solid astonishment; then I says-- + +"Now, I hope you don't take it as an offence, for I don't mean any, but +really, for a man that has been in the Kingdom as long as I reckon you +have, you do seem to know powerful little about its customs." + +"Its customs!" says he. "Heaven is a large place, good friend. Large +empires have many and diverse customs. Even small dominions have, as you +doubtless know by what you have seen of the matter on a small scale in +the Wart. How can you imagine I could ever learn the varied customs of +the countless kingdoms of heaven? It makes my head ache to think of it. +I know the customs that prevail in those portions inhabited by peoples +that are appointed to enter by my own gate--and hark ye, that is quite +enough knowledge for one individual to try to pack into his head in the +thirty-seven millions of years I have devoted night and day to that +study. But the idea of learning the customs of the whole appalling +expanse of heaven--O man, how insanely you talk! Now I don't doubt that +this odd costume you talk about is the fashion in that district of heaven +you belong to, but you won't be conspicuous in this section without it." + +I felt all right, if that was the case, so I bade him good-day and left. +All day I walked towards the far end of a prodigious hall of the office, +hoping to come out into heaven any moment, but it was a mistake. That +hall was built on the general heavenly plan--it naturally couldn't be +small. At last I got so tired I couldn't go any farther; so I sat down +to rest, and begun to tackle the queerest sort of strangers and ask for +information, but I didn't get any; they couldn't understand my language, +and I could not understand theirs. I got dreadfully lonesome. I was so +down-hearted and homesick I wished a hundred times I never had died. I +turned back, of course. About noon next day, I got back at last and was +on hand at the booking-office once more. Says I to the head clerk-- + +"I begin to see that a man's got to be in his own Heaven to be happy." + +"Perfectly correct," says he. "Did you imagine the same heaven would +suit all sorts of men?" + +"Well, I had that idea--but I see the foolishness of it. Which way am I +to go to get to my district?" + +He called the under clerk that had examined the map, and he gave me +general directions. I thanked him and started; but he says-- + +"Wait a minute; it is millions of leagues from here. Go outside and +stand on that red wishing-carpet; shut your eyes, hold your breath, and +wish yourself there." + +"I'm much obliged," says I; "why didn't you dart me through when I first +arrived?" + +"We have a good deal to think of here; it was your place to think of it +and ask for it. Good-by; we probably sha'n't see you in this region for +a thousand centuries or so." + +"In that case, o revoor," says I. + +I hopped onto the carpet and held my breath and shut my eyes and wished I +was in the booking-office of my own section. The very next instant a +voice I knew sung out in a business kind of a way-- + +"A harp and a hymn-book, pair of wings and a halo, size 13, for Cap'n Eli +Stormfield, of San Francisco!--make him out a clean bill of health, and +let him in." + +I opened my eyes. Sure enough, it was a Pi Ute Injun I used to know in +Tulare County; mighty good fellow--I remembered being at his funeral, +which consisted of him being burnt and the other Injuns gauming their +faces with his ashes and howling like wildcats. He was powerful glad to +see me, and you may make up your mind I was just as glad to see him, and +feel that I was in the right kind of a heaven at last. + +Just as far as your eye could reach, there was swarms of clerks, running +and bustling around, tricking out thousands of Yanks and Mexicans and +English and Arabs, and all sorts of people in their new outfits; and when +they gave me my kit and I put on my halo and took a look in the glass, I +could have jumped over a house for joy, I was so happy. "Now THIS is +something like!" says I. "Now," says I, "I'm all right--show me a +cloud." + +Inside of fifteen minutes I was a mile on my way towards the cloud-banks +and about a million people along with me. Most of us tried to fly, but +some got crippled and nobody made a success of it. So we concluded to +walk, for the present, till we had had some wing practice. + +We begun to meet swarms of folks who were coming back. Some had harps +and nothing else; some had hymn-books and nothing else; some had nothing +at all; all of them looked meek and uncomfortable; one young fellow +hadn't anything left but his halo, and he was carrying that in his hand; +all of a sudden he offered it to me and says-- + +"Will you hold it for me a minute?" + +Then he disappeared in the crowd. I went on. A woman asked me to hold +her palm branch, and then SHE disappeared. A girl got me to hold her +harp for her, and by George, SHE disappeared; and so on and so on, till I +was about loaded down to the guards. Then comes a smiling old gentleman +and asked me to hold HIS things. I swabbed off the perspiration and +says, pretty tart-- + +"I'll have to get you to excuse me, my friend,--_I_ ain't no hat-rack." + +About this time I begun to run across piles of those traps, lying in the +road. I just quietly dumped my extra cargo along with them. I looked +around, and, Peters, that whole nation that was following me were loaded +down the same as I'd been. The return crowd had got them to hold their +things a minute, you see. They all dumped their loads, too, and we went +on. + +When I found myself perched on a cloud, with a million other people, I +never felt so good in my life. Says I, "Now this is according to the +promises; I've been having my doubts, but now I am in heaven, sure +enough." I gave my palm branch a wave or two, for luck, and then I +tautened up my harp-strings and struck in. Well, Peters, you can't +imagine anything like the row we made. It was grand to listen to, and +made a body thrill all over, but there was considerable many tunes going +on at once, and that was a drawback to the harmony, you understand; and +then there was a lot of Injun tribes, and they kept up such another +war-whooping that they kind of took the tuck out of the music. By and by +I quit performing, and judged I'd take a rest. There was quite a nice +mild old gentleman sitting next me, and I noticed he didn't take a hand; +I encouraged him, but he said he was naturally bashful, and was afraid to +try before so many people. By and by the old gentleman said he never +could seem to enjoy music somehow. The fact was, I was beginning to feel +the same way; but I didn't say anything. Him and I had a considerable +long silence, then, but of course it warn't noticeable in that place. +After about sixteen or seventeen hours, during which I played and sung a +little, now and then --always the same tune, because I didn't know any +other--I laid down my harp and begun to fan myself with my palm branch. +Then we both got to sighing pretty regular. Finally, says he-- + +"Don't you know any tune but the one you've been pegging at all day?" + +"Not another blessed one," says I. + +"Don't you reckon you could learn another one?" says he. + +"Never," says I; "I've tried to, but I couldn't manage it." + +"It's a long time to hang to the one--eternity, you know." + +"Don't break my heart," says I; "I'm getting low-spirited enough +already." + +After another long silence, says he-- + +"Are you glad to be here?" + +Says I, "Old man, I'll be frank with you. This AIN'T just as near my +idea of bliss as I thought it was going to be, when I used to go to +church." + +Says he, "What do you say to knocking off and calling it half a day?" + +"That's me," says I. "I never wanted to get off watch so bad in my +life." + +So we started. Millions were coming to the cloud-bank all the time, +happy and hosannahing; millions were leaving it all the time, looking +mighty quiet, I tell you. We laid for the new-comers, and pretty soon +I'd got them to hold all my things a minute, and then I was a free man +again and most outrageously happy. Just then I ran across old Sam +Bartlett, who had been dead a long time, and stopped to have a talk with +him. Says I-- + +"Now tell me--is this to go on forever? Ain't there anything else for a +change?" + +Says he-- + +"I'll set you right on that point very quick. People take the figurative +language of the Bible and the allegories for literal, and the first thing +they ask for when they get here is a halo and a harp, and so on. Nothing +that's harmless and reasonable is refused a body here, if he asks it in +the right spirit. So they are outfitted with these things without a +word. They go and sing and play just about one day, and that's the last +you'll ever see them in the choir. They don't need anybody to tell them +that that sort of thing wouldn't make a heaven--at least not a heaven +that a sane man could stand a week and remain sane. That cloud-bank is +placed where the noise can't disturb the old inhabitants, and so there +ain't any harm in letting everybody get up there and cure himself as soon +as he comes. + +"Now you just remember this--heaven is as blissful and lovely as it can +be; but it's just the busiest place you ever heard of. There ain't any +idle people here after the first day. Singing hymns and waving palm +branches through all eternity is pretty when you hear about it in the +pulpit, but it's as poor a way to put in valuable time as a body could +contrive. It would just make a heaven of warbling ignoramuses, don't you +see? Eternal Rest sounds comforting in the pulpit, too. Well, you try +it once, and see how heavy time will hang on your hands. Why, +Stormfield, a man like you, that had been active and stirring all his +life, would go mad in six months in a heaven where he hadn't anything to +do. Heaven is the very last place to come to REST in,--and don't you be +afraid to bet on that!" + +Says I-- + +"Sam, I'm as glad to hear it as I thought I'd be sorry. I'm glad I come, +now." + +Says he-- + +"Cap'n, ain't you pretty physically tired?" + +Says I-- + +"Sam, it ain't any name for it! I'm dog-tired." + +"Just so--just so. You've earned a good sleep, and you'll get it. You've +earned a good appetite, and you'll enjoy your dinner. It's the same here +as it is on earth--you've got to earn a thing, square and honest, before +you enjoy it. You can't enjoy first and earn afterwards. But there's +this difference, here: you can choose your own occupation, and all the +powers of heaven will be put forth to help you make a success of it, if +you do your level best. The shoe-maker on earth that had the soul of a +poet in him won't have to make shoes here." + +"Now that's all reasonable and right," says I. "Plenty of work, and the +kind you hanker after; no more pain, no more suffering--" + +"Oh, hold on; there's plenty of pain here--but it don't kill. There's +plenty of suffering here, but it don't last. You see, happiness ain't a +THING IN ITSELF--it's only a CONTRAST with something that ain't pleasant. +That's all it is. There ain't a thing you can mention that is happiness +in its own self--it's only so by contrast with the other thing. And so, +as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it +ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh. Well, +there's plenty of pain and suffering in heaven--consequently there's +plenty of contrasts, and just no end of happiness." + +Says I, "It's the sensiblest heaven I've heard of yet, Sam, though it's +about as different from the one I was brought up on as a live princess is +different from her own wax figger." + +Along in the first months I knocked around about the Kingdom, making +friends and looking at the country, and finally settled down in a pretty +likely region, to have a rest before taking another start. I went on +making acquaintances and gathering up information. I had a good deal of +talk with an old bald-headed angel by the name of Sandy McWilliams. He +was from somewhere in New Jersey. I went about with him, considerable. +We used to lay around, warm afternoons, in the shade of a rock, on some +meadow-ground that was pretty high and out of the marshy slush of his +cranberry-farm, and there we used to talk about all kinds of things, and +smoke pipes. One day, says I-- + +"About how old might you be, Sandy?" + +"Seventy-two." + +"I judged so. How long you been in heaven?" + +"Twenty-seven years, come Christmas." + +"How old was you when you come up?" + +"Why, seventy-two, of course." + +"You can't mean it!" + +"Why can't I mean it?" + +"Because, if you was seventy-two then, you are naturally ninety-nine +now." + +"No, but I ain't. I stay the same age I was when I come." + +"Well," says I, "come to think, there's something just here that I want +to ask about. Down below, I always had an idea that in heaven we would +all be young, and bright, and spry." + +"Well, you can be young if you want to. You've only got to wish." + +"Well, then, why didn't you wish?" + +"I did. They all do. You'll try it, some day, like enough; but you'll +get tired of the change pretty soon." + +"Why?" + +"Well, I'll tell you. Now you've always been a sailor; did you ever try +some other business?" + +"Yes, I tried keeping grocery, once, up in the mines; but I couldn't +stand it; it was too dull--no stir, no storm, no life about it; it was +like being part dead and part alive, both at the same time. I wanted to +be one thing or t'other. I shut up shop pretty quick and went to sea." + +"That's it. Grocery people like it, but you couldn't. You see you +wasn't used to it. Well, I wasn't used to being young, and I couldn't +seem to take any interest in it. I was strong, and handsome, and had +curly hair,--yes, and wings, too!--gay wings like a butterfly. I went to +picnics and dances and parties with the fellows, and tried to carry on +and talk nonsense with the girls, but it wasn't any use; I couldn't take +to it--fact is, it was an awful bore. What I wanted was early to bed and +early to rise, and something to DO; and when my work was done, I wanted +to sit quiet, and smoke and think--not tear around with a parcel of giddy +young kids. You can't think what I suffered whilst I was young." + +"How long was you young?" + +"Only two weeks. That was plenty for me. Laws, I was so lonesome! You +see, I was full of the knowledge and experience of seventy-two years; the +deepest subject those young folks could strike was only a-b-c to me. And +to hear them argue--oh, my! it would have been funny, if it hadn't been +so pitiful. Well, I was so hungry for the ways and the sober talk I was +used to, that I tried to ring in with the old people, but they wouldn't +have it. They considered me a conceited young upstart, and gave me the +cold shoulder. Two weeks was a-plenty for me. I was glad to get back my +bald head again, and my pipe, and my old drowsy reflections in the shade +of a rock or a tree." + +"Well," says I, "do you mean to say you're going to stand still at +seventy-two, forever?" + +"I don't know, and I ain't particular. But I ain't going to drop back to +twenty-five any more--I know that, mighty well. I know a sight more than +I did twenty-seven years ago, and I enjoy learning, all the time, but I +don't seem to get any older. That is, bodily --my mind gets older, and +stronger, and better seasoned, and more satisfactory." + +Says I, "If a man comes here at ninety, don't he ever set himself back?" + +"Of course he does. He sets himself back to fourteen; tries it a couple +of hours, and feels like a fool; sets himself forward to twenty; it ain't +much improvement; tries thirty, fifty, eighty, and finally ninety--finds +he is more at home and comfortable at the same old figure he is used to +than any other way. Or, if his mind begun to fail him on earth at +eighty, that's where he finally sticks up here. He sticks at the place +where his mind was last at its best, for there's where his enjoyment is +best, and his ways most set and established." + +"Does a chap of twenty-five stay always twenty-five, and look it?" + +"If he is a fool, yes. But if he is bright, and ambitious and +industrious, the knowledge he gains and the experiences he has, change +his ways and thoughts and likings, and make him find his best pleasure in +the company of people above that age; so he allows his body to take on +that look of as many added years as he needs to make him comfortable and +proper in that sort of society; he lets his body go on taking the look of +age, according as he progresses, and by and by he will be bald and +wrinkled outside, and wise and deep within." + +"Babies the same?" + +"Babies the same. Laws, what asses we used to be, on earth, about these +things! We said we'd be always young in heaven. We didn't say HOW +young--we didn't think of that, perhaps--that is, we didn't all think +alike, anyway. When I was a boy of seven, I suppose I thought we'd all +be twelve, in heaven; when I was twelve, I suppose I thought we'd all be +eighteen or twenty in heaven; when I was forty, I begun to go back; I +remember I hoped we'd all be about THIRTY years old in heaven. Neither a +man nor a boy ever thinks the age he HAS is exactly the best one--he puts +the right age a few years older or a few years younger than he is. Then +he makes that ideal age the general age of the heavenly people. And he +expects everybody TO STICK at that age--stand stock-still--and expects +them to enjoy it!--Now just think of the idea of standing still in +heaven! Think of a heaven made up entirely of hoop-rolling, +marble-playing cubs of seven years!--or of awkward, diffident, +sentimental immaturities of nineteen!--or of vigorous people of thirty, +healthy-minded, brimming with ambition, but chained hand and foot to that +one age and its limitations like so many helpless galley-slaves! Think +of the dull sameness of a society made up of people all of one age and +one set of looks, habits, tastes and feelings. Think how superior to it +earth would be, with its variety of types and faces and ages, and the +enlivening attrition of the myriad interests that come into pleasant +collision in such a variegated society." + +"Look here," says I, "do you know what you're doing?" + +"Well, what am I doing?" + +"You are making heaven pretty comfortable in one way, but you are playing +the mischief with it in another." + +"How d'you mean?" + +"Well," I says, "take a young mother that's lost her child, and--" + +"Sh!" he says. "Look!" + +It was a woman. Middle-aged, and had grizzled hair. She was walking +slow, and her head was bent down, and her wings hanging limp and droopy; +and she looked ever so tired, and was crying, poor thing! She passed +along by, with her head down, that way, and the tears running down her +face, and didn't see us. Then Sandy said, low and gentle, and full of +pity: + +"SHE'S hunting for her child! No, FOUND it, I reckon. Lord, how she's +changed! But I recognized her in a minute, though it's twenty-seven +years since I saw her. A young mother she was, about twenty two or four, +or along there; and blooming and lovely and sweet? oh, just a flower! +And all her heart and all her soul was wrapped up in her child, her +little girl, two years old. And it died, and she went wild with grief, +just wild! Well, the only comfort she had was that she'd see her child +again, in heaven --'never more to part,' she said, and kept on saying it +over and over, 'never more to part.' And the words made her happy; yes, +they did; they made her joyful, and when I was dying, twenty-seven years +ago, she told me to find her child the first thing, and say she was +coming--'soon, soon, VERY soon, she hoped and believed!'" + +"Why, it's pitiful, Sandy." + +He didn't say anything for a while, but sat looking at the ground, +thinking. Then he says, kind of mournful: + +"And now she's come!" + +"Well? Go on." + +"Stormfield, maybe she hasn't found the child, but _I_ think she has. +Looks so to me. I've seen cases before. You see, she's kept that child +in her head just the same as it was when she jounced it in her arms a +little chubby thing. But here it didn't elect to STAY a child. No, it +elected to grow up, which it did. And in these twenty-seven years it has +learned all the deep scientific learning there is to learn, and is +studying and studying and learning and learning more and more, all the +time, and don't give a damn for anything BUT learning; just learning, and +discussing gigantic problems with people like herself." + +"Well?" + +"Stormfield, don't you see? Her mother knows CRANBERRIES, and how to +tend them, and pick them, and put them up, and market them; and not +another blamed thing! Her and her daughter can't be any more company for +each other NOW than mud turtle and bird o' paradise. Poor thing, she was +looking for a baby to jounce; _I_ think she's struck a disapp'intment." + +"Sandy, what will they do--stay unhappy forever in heaven?" + +"No, they'll come together and get adjusted by and by. But not this +year, and not next. By and by." + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +I had been having considerable trouble with my wings. The day after I +helped the choir I made a dash or two with them, but was not lucky. +First off, I flew thirty yards, and then fouled an Irishman and brought +him down--brought us both down, in fact. Next, I had a collision with a +Bishop--and bowled him down, of course. We had some sharp words, and I +felt pretty cheap, to come banging into a grave old person like that, +with a million strangers looking on and smiling to themselves. + +I saw I hadn't got the hang of the steering, and so couldn't rightly tell +where I was going to bring up when I started. I went afoot the rest of +the day, and let my wings hang. Early next morning I went to a private +place to have some practice. I got up on a pretty high rock, and got a +good start, and went swooping down, aiming for a bush a little over three +hundred yards off; but I couldn't seem to calculate for the wind, which +was about two points abaft my beam. I could see I was going considerable +to looard of the bush, so I worked my starboard wing slow and went ahead +strong on the port one, but it wouldn't answer; I could see I was going +to broach to, so I slowed down on both, and lit. I went back to the rock +and took another chance at it. I aimed two or three points to starboard +of the bush--yes, more than that--enough so as to make it nearly a +head-wind. I done well enough, but made pretty poor time. I could see, +plain enough, that on a head-wind, wings was a mistake. I could see that +a body could sail pretty close to the wind, but he couldn't go in the +wind's eye. I could see that if I wanted to go a-visiting any distance +from home, and the wind was ahead, I might have to wait days, maybe, for +a change; and I could see, too, that these things could not be any use at +all in a gale; if you tried to run before the wind, you would make a mess +of it, for there isn't anyway to shorten sail--like reefing, you +know--you have to take it ALL in--shut your feathers down flat to your +sides. That would LAND you, of course. You could lay to, with your head +to the wind--that is the best you could do, and right hard work you'd +find it, too. If you tried any other game, you would founder, sure. + +I judge it was about a couple of weeks or so after this that I dropped +old Sandy McWilliams a note one day--it was a Tuesday--and asked him to +come over and take his manna and quails with me next day; and the first +thing he did when he stepped in was to twinkle his eye in a sly way, and +say,-- + +"Well, Cap, what you done with your wings?" + +I saw in a minute that there was some sarcasm done up in that rag +somewheres, but I never let on. I only says,-- + +"Gone to the wash." + +"Yes," he says, in a dry sort of way, "they mostly go to the wash --about +this time--I've often noticed it. Fresh angels are powerful neat. When +do you look for 'em back?" + +"Day after to-morrow," says I. + +He winked at me, and smiled. + +Says I,-- + +"Sandy, out with it. Come--no secrets among friends. I notice you don't +ever wear wings--and plenty others don't. I've been making an ass of +myself--is that it?" + +"That is about the size of it. But it is no harm. We all do it at +first. It's perfectly natural. You see, on earth we jump to such +foolish conclusions as to things up here. In the pictures we always saw +the angels with wings on--and that was all right; but we jumped to the +conclusion that that was their way of getting around --and that was all +wrong. The wings ain't anything but a uniform, that's all. When they +are in the field--so to speak,--they always wear them; you never see an +angel going with a message anywhere without his wings, any more than you +would see a military officer presiding at a court-martial without his +uniform, or a postman delivering letters, or a policeman walking his +beat, in plain clothes. But they ain't to FLY with! The wings are for +show, not for use. Old experienced angels are like officers of the +regular army--they dress plain, when they are off duty. New angels are +like the militia--never shed the uniform--always fluttering and +floundering around in their wings, butting people down, flapping here, +and there, and everywhere, always imagining they are attracting the +admiring eye--well, they just think they are the very most important +people in heaven. And when you see one of them come sailing around with +one wing tipped up and t'other down, you make up your mind he is saying +to himself: 'I wish Mary Ann in Arkansaw could see me now. I reckon +she'd wish she hadn't shook me.' No, they're just for show, that's +all--only just for show." + +"I judge you've got it about right, Sandy," says I. + +"Why, look at it yourself," says he. "YOU ain't built for wings --no man +is. You know what a grist of years it took you to come here from the +earth--and yet you were booming along faster than any cannon-ball could +go. Suppose you had to fly that distance with your wings--wouldn't +eternity have been over before you got here? Certainly. Well, angels +have to go to the earth every day --millions of them--to appear in +visions to dying children and good people, you know--it's the heft of +their business. They appear with their wings, of course, because they +are on official service, and because the dying persons wouldn't know they +were angels if they hadn't wings--but do you reckon they fly with them? +It stands to reason they don't. The wings would wear out before they got +half-way; even the pin-feathers would be gone; the wing frames would be +as bare as kite sticks before the paper is pasted on. The distances in +heaven are billions of times greater; angels have to go all over heaven +every day; could they do it with their wings alone? No, indeed; they +wear the wings for style, but they travel any distance in an instant by +WISHING. The wishing-carpet of the Arabian Nights was a sensible +idea--but our earthly idea of angels flying these awful distances with +their clumsy wings was foolish. + +"Our young saints, of both sexes, wear wings all the time--blazing red +ones, and blue and green, and gold, and variegated, and rainbowed, and +ring-streaked-and-striped ones--and nobody finds fault. It is suitable +to their time of life. The things are beautiful, and they set the young +people off. They are the most striking and lovely part of their +outfit--a halo don't BEGIN." + +"Well," says I, "I've tucked mine away in the cupboard, and I allow to +let them lay there till there's mud." + +"Yes--or a reception." + +"What's that?" + +"Well, you can see one to-night if you want to. There's a barkeeper from +Jersey City going to be received." + +"Go on--tell me about it." + +"This barkeeper got converted at a Moody and Sankey meeting, in New York, +and started home on the ferry-boat, and there was a collision and he got +drowned. He is of a class that think all heaven goes wild with joy when +a particularly hard lot like him is saved; they think all heaven turns +out hosannahing to welcome them; they think there isn't anything talked +about in the realms of the blest but their case, for that day. This +barkeeper thinks there hasn't been such another stir here in years, as +his coming is going to raise. --And I've always noticed this peculiarity +about a dead barkeeper--he not only expects all hands to turn out when he +arrives, but he expects to be received with a torchlight procession." + +"I reckon he is disappointed, then." + +"No, he isn't. No man is allowed to be disappointed here. Whatever he +wants, when he comes--that is, any reasonable and unsacrilegious +thing--he can have. There's always a few millions or billions of young +folks around who don't want any better entertainment than to fill up +their lungs and swarm out with their torches and have a high time over a +barkeeper. It tickles the barkeeper till he can't rest, it makes a +charming lark for the young folks, it don't do anybody any harm, it don't +cost a rap, and it keeps up the place's reputation for making all comers +happy and content." + +"Very good. I'll be on hand and see them land the barkeeper." + +"It is manners to go in full dress. You want to wear your wings, you +know, and your other things." + +"Which ones?" + +"Halo, and harp, and palm branch, and all that." + +"Well," says I, "I reckon I ought to be ashamed of myself, but the fact +is I left them laying around that day I resigned from the choir. I +haven't got a rag to wear but this robe and the wings." + +"That's all right. You'll find they've been raked up and saved for you. +Send for them." + +"I'll do it, Sandy. But what was it you was saying about unsacrilegious +things, which people expect to get, and will be disappointed about?" + +"Oh, there are a lot of such things that people expect and don't get. +For instance, there's a Brooklyn preacher by the name of Talmage, who is +laying up a considerable disappointment for himself. He says, every now +and then in his sermons, that the first thing he does when he gets to +heaven, will be to fling his arms around Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and +kiss them and weep on them. There's millions of people down there on +earth that are promising themselves the same thing. As many as sixty +thousand people arrive here every single day, that want to run straight +to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and hug them and weep on them. Now mind +you, sixty thousand a day is a pretty heavy contract for those old +people. If they were a mind to allow it, they wouldn't ever have +anything to do, year in and year out, but stand up and be hugged and wept +on thirty-two hours in the twenty-four. They would be tired out and as +wet as muskrats all the time. What would heaven be, to THEM? It would +be a mighty good place to get out of--you know that, yourself. Those are +kind and gentle old Jews, but they ain't any fonder of kissing the +emotional highlights of Brooklyn than you be. You mark my words, Mr. +T.'s endearments are going to be declined, with thanks. There are limits +to the privileges of the elect, even in heaven. Why, if Adam was to show +himself to every new comer that wants to call and gaze at him and strike +him for his autograph, he would never have time to do anything else but +just that. Talmage has said he is going to give Adam some of his +attentions, as well as A., I. and J. But he will have to change his mind +about that." + +"Do you think Talmage will really come here?" + +"Why, certainly, he will; but don't you be alarmed; he will run with his +own kind, and there's plenty of them. That is the main charm of +heaven--there's all kinds here--which wouldn't be the case if you let the +preachers tell it. Anybody can find the sort he prefers, here, and he +just lets the others alone, and they let him alone. When the Deity +builds a heaven, it is built right, and on a liberal plan." + +Sandy sent home for his things, and I sent for mine, and about nine in +the evening we begun to dress. Sandy says,-- + +"This is going to be a grand time for you, Stormy. Like as not some of +the patriarchs will turn out." + +"No, but will they?" + +"Like as not. Of course they are pretty exclusive. They hardly ever +show themselves to the common public. I believe they never turn out +except for an eleventh-hour convert. They wouldn't do it then, only +earthly tradition makes a grand show pretty necessary on that kind of an +occasion." + +"Do they an turn out, Sandy?" + +"Who?--all the patriarchs? Oh, no--hardly ever more than a couple. You +will be here fifty thousand years--maybe more--before you get a glimpse +of all the patriarchs and prophets. Since I have been here, Job has been +to the front once, and once Ham and Jeremiah both at the same time. But +the finest thing that has happened in my day was a year or so ago; that +was Charles Peace's reception --him they called 'the Bannercross +Murderer'--an Englishman. There were four patriarchs and two prophets on +the Grand Stand that time --there hasn't been anything like it since +Captain Kidd came; Abel was there--the first time in twelve hundred +years. A report got around that Adam was coming; well, of course, Abel +was enough to bring a crowd, all by himself, but there is nobody that can +draw like Adam. It was a false report, but it got around, anyway, as I +say, and it will be a long day before I see the like of it again. The +reception was in the English department, of course, which is eight +hundred and eleven million miles from the New Jersey line. I went, along +with a good many of my neighbors, and it was a sight to see, I can tell +you. Flocks came from all the departments. I saw Esquimaux there, and +Tartars, Negroes, Chinamen--people from everywhere. You see a mixture +like that in the Grand Choir, the first day you land here, but you hardly +ever see it again. There were billions of people; when they were singing +or hosannahing, the noise was wonderful; and even when their tongues were +still the drumming of the wings was nearly enough to burst your head, for +all the sky was as thick as if it was snowing angels. Although Adam was +not there, it was a great time anyway, because we had three archangels on +the Grand Stand--it is a seldom thing that even one comes out." + +"What did they look like, Sandy?" + +"Well, they had shining faces, and shining robes, and wonderful rainbow +wings, and they stood eighteen feet high, and wore swords, and held their +heads up in a noble way, and looked like soldiers." + +"Did they have halos?" + +"No--anyway, not the hoop kind. The archangels and the upper-class +patriarchs wear a finer thing than that. It is a round, solid, splendid +glory of gold, that is blinding to look at. You have often seen a +patriarch in a picture, on earth, with that thing on --you remember +it?--he looks as if he had his head in a brass platter. That don't give +you the right idea of it at all--it is much more shining and beautiful." + +"Did you talk with those archangels and patriarchs, Sandy?" + +"Who--_I_? Why, what can you be thinking about, Stormy? I ain't worthy +to speak to such as they." + +"Is Talmage?" + +"Of course not. You have got the same mixed-up idea about these things +that everybody has down there. I had it once, but I got over it. Down +there they talk of the heavenly King--and that is right--but then they go +right on speaking as if this was a republic and everybody was on a dead +level with everybody else, and privileged to fling his arms around +anybody he comes across, and be hail-fellow-well-met with all the elect, +from the highest down. How tangled up and absurd that is! How are you +going to have a republic under a king? How are you going to have a +republic at all, where the head of the government is absolute, holds his +place forever, and has no parliament, no council to meddle or make in his +affairs, nobody voted for, nobody elected, nobody in the whole universe +with a voice in the government, nobody asked to take a hand in its +matters, and nobody ALLOWED to do it? Fine republic, ain't it?" + +"Well, yes--it IS a little different from the idea I had--but I thought I +might go around and get acquainted with the grandees, anyway--not exactly +splice the main-brace with them, you know, but shake hands and pass the +time of day." + +"Could Tom, Dick and Harry call on the Cabinet of Russia and do that?--on +Prince Gortschakoff, for instance?" + +"I reckon not, Sandy." + +"Well, this is Russia--only more so. There's not the shadow of a +republic about it anywhere. There are ranks, here. There are viceroys, +princes, governors, sub-governors, sub-sub-governors, and a hundred +orders of nobility, grading along down from grand-ducal archangels, stage +by stage, till the general level is struck, where there ain't any titles. +Do you know what a prince of the blood is, on earth?" + +"No." + +"Well, a prince of the blood don't belong to the royal family exactly, +and he don't belong to the mere nobility of the kingdom; he is lower than +the one, and higher than t'other. That's about the position of the +patriarchs and prophets here. There's some mighty high nobility +here--people that you and I ain't worthy to polish sandals for--and THEY +ain't worthy to polish sandals for the patriarchs and prophets. That +gives you a kind of an idea of their rank, don't it? You begin to see +how high up they are, don't you? just to get a two-minute glimpse of one +of them is a thing for a body to remember and tell about for a thousand +years. Why, Captain, just think of this: if Abraham was to set his foot +down here by this door, there would be a railing set up around that +foot-track right away, and a shelter put over it, and people would flock +here from all over heaven, for hundreds and hundreds of years, to look at +it. Abraham is one of the parties that Mr. Talmage, of Brooklyn, is +going to embrace, and kiss, and weep on, when he comes. He wants to lay +in a good stock of tears, you know, or five to one he will go dry before +he gets a chance to do it." + +"Sandy," says I, "I had an idea that _I_ was going to be equals with +everybody here, too, but I will let that drop. It don't matter, and I am +plenty happy enough anyway." + +"Captain, you are happier than you would be, the other way. These old +patriarchs and prophets have got ages the start of you; they know more in +two minutes than you know in a year. Did you ever try to have a sociable +improving-time discussing winds, and currents and variations of compass +with an undertaker?" + +"I get your idea, Sandy. He couldn't interest me. He would be an +ignoramus in such things--he would bore me, and I would bore him." + +"You have got it. You would bore the patriarchs when you talked, and +when they talked they would shoot over your head. By and by you would +say, 'Good morning, your Eminence, I will call again' --but you wouldn't. +Did you ever ask the slush-boy to come up in the cabin and take dinner +with you?" + +"I get your drift again, Sandy. I wouldn't be used to such grand people +as the patriarchs and prophets, and I would be sheepish and tongue-tied +in their company, and mighty glad to get out of it. Sandy, which is the +highest rank, patriarch or prophet?" + +"Oh, the prophets hold over the patriarchs. The newest prophet, even, is +of a sight more consequence than the oldest patriarch. Yes, sir, Adam +himself has to walk behind Shakespeare." + +"Was Shakespeare a prophet?" + +"Of course he was; and so was Homer, and heaps more. But Shakespeare and +the rest have to walk behind a common tailor from Tennessee, by the name +of Billings; and behind a horse-doctor named Sakka, from Afghanistan. +Jeremiah, and Billings and Buddha walk together, side by side, right +behind a crowd from planets not in our astronomy; next come a dozen or +two from Jupiter and other worlds; next come Daniel, and Sakka and +Confucius; next a lot from systems outside of ours; next come Ezekiel, +and Mahomet, Zoroaster, and a knife-grinder from ancient Egypt; then +there is a long string, and after them, away down toward the bottom, come +Shakespeare and Homer, and a shoemaker named Marais, from the back +settlements of France." + +"Have they really rung in Mahomet and all those other heathens?" + +"Yes--they all had their message, and they all get their reward. The man +who don't get his reward on earth, needn't bother--he will get it here, +sure." + +"But why did they throw off on Shakespeare, that way, and put him away +down there below those shoe-makers and horse-doctors and +knife-grinders--a lot of people nobody ever heard of?" + +"That is the heavenly justice of it--they warn't rewarded according to +their deserts, on earth, but here they get their rightful rank. That +tailor Billings, from Tennessee, wrote poetry that Homer and Shakespeare +couldn't begin to come up to; but nobody would print it, nobody read it +but his neighbors, an ignorant lot, and they laughed at it. Whenever the +village had a drunken frolic and a dance, they would drag him in and +crown him with cabbage leaves, and pretend to bow down to him; and one +night when he was sick and nearly starved to death, they had him out and +crowned him, and then they rode him on a rail about the village, and +everybody followed along, beating tin pans and yelling. Well, he died +before morning. He wasn't ever expecting to go to heaven, much less that +there was going to be any fuss made over him, so I reckon he was a good +deal surprised when the reception broke on him." + +"Was you there, Sandy?" + +"Bless you, no!" + +"Why? Didn't you know it was going to come off?" + +"Well, I judge I did. It was the talk of these realms--not for a day, +like this barkeeper business, but for twenty years before the man died." + +"Why the mischief didn't you go, then?" + +"Now how you talk! The like of me go meddling around at the reception of +a prophet? A mudsill like me trying to push in and help receive an awful +grandee like Edward J. Billings? Why, I should have been laughed at for +a billion miles around. I shouldn't ever heard the last of it." + +"Well, who did go, then?" + +"Mighty few people that you and I will ever get a chance to see, Captain. +Not a solitary commoner ever has the luck to see a reception of a +prophet, I can tell you. All the nobility, and all the patriarchs and +prophets--every last one of them--and all the archangels, and all the +princes and governors and viceroys, were there,--and NO small fry--not a +single one. And mind you, I'm not talking about only the grandees from +OUR world, but the princes and patriarchs and so on from ALL the worlds +that shine in our sky, and from billions more that belong in systems upon +systems away outside of the one our sun is in. There were some prophets +and patriarchs there that ours ain't a circumstance to, for rank and +illustriousness and all that. Some were from Jupiter and other worlds in +our own system, but the most celebrated were three poets, Saa, Bo and +Soof, from great planets in three different and very remote systems. +These three names are common and familiar in every nook and corner of +heaven, clear from one end of it to the other --fully as well known as +the eighty Supreme Archangels, in fact --where as our Moses, and Adam, +and the rest, have not been heard of outside of our world's little corner +of heaven, except by a few very learned men scattered here and there--and +they always spell their names wrong, and get the performances of one +mixed up with the doings of another, and they almost always locate them +simply IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM, and think that is enough without going into +little details such as naming the particular world they are from. It is +like a learned Hindoo showing off how much he knows by saying Longfellow +lives in the United States--as if he lived all over the United States, +and as if the country was so small you couldn't throw a brick there +without hitting him. Between you and me, it does gravel me, the cool way +people from those monster worlds outside our system snub our little +world, and even our system. Of course we think a good deal of Jupiter, +because our world is only a potato to it, for size; but then there are +worlds in other systems that Jupiter isn't even a mustard-seed to--like +the planet Goobra, for instance, which you couldn't squeeze inside the +orbit of Halley's comet without straining the rivets. Tourists from +Goobra (I mean parties that lived and died there--natives) come here, now +and then, and inquire about our world, and when they find out it is so +little that a streak of lightning can flash clear around it in the eighth +of a second, they have to lean up against something to laugh. Then they +screw a glass into their eye and go to examining us, as if we were a +curious kind of foreign bug, or something of that sort. One of them +asked me how long our day was; and when I told him it was twelve hours +long, as a general thing, he asked me if people where I was from +considered it worth while to get up and wash for such a day as that. +That is the way with those Goobra people--they can't seem to let a chance +go by to throw it in your face that their day is three hundred and +twenty-two of our years long. This young snob was just of age--he was +six or seven thousand of his days old--say two million of our years--and +he had all the puppy airs that belong to that time of life--that +turning-point when a person has got over being a boy and yet ain't quite +a man exactly. If it had been anywhere else but in heaven, I would have +given him a piece of my mind. Well, anyway, Billings had the grandest +reception that has been seen in thousands of centuries, and I think it +will have a good effect. His name will be carried pretty far, and it +will make our system talked about, and maybe our world, too, and raise us +in the respect of the general public of heaven. Why, look +here--Shakespeare walked backwards before that tailor from Tennessee, and +scattered flowers for him to walk on, and Homer stood behind his chair +and waited on him at the banquet. Of course that didn't go for much +THERE, amongst all those big foreigners from other systems, as they +hadn't heard of Shakespeare or Homer either, but it would amount to +considerable down there on our little earth if they could know about it. +I wish there was something in that miserable spiritualism, so we could +send them word. That Tennessee village would set up a monument to +Billings, then, and his autograph would outsell Satan's. Well, they had +grand times at that reception--a small-fry noble from Hoboken told me all +about it--Sir Richard Duffer, Baronet." + +"What, Sandy, a nobleman from Hoboken? How is that?" + +"Easy enough. Duffer kept a sausage-shop and never saved a cent in his +life because he used to give all his spare meat to the poor, in a quiet +way. Not tramps,--no, the other sort--the sort that will starve before +they will beg--honest square people out of work. Dick used to watch +hungry-looking men and women and children, and track them home, and find +out all about them from the neighbors, and then feed them and find them +work. As nobody ever saw him give anything to anybody, he had the +reputation of being mean; he died with it, too, and everybody said it was +a good riddance; but the minute he landed here, they made him a baronet, +and the very first words Dick the sausage-maker of Hoboken heard when he +stepped upon the heavenly shore were, 'Welcome, Sir Richard Duffer!' It +surprised him some, because he thought he had reasons to believe he was +pointed for a warmer climate than this one." + +All of a sudden the whole region fairly rocked under the crash of eleven +hundred and one thunder blasts, all let off at once, and Sandy says,-- + +"There, that's for the barkeep." + +I jumped up and says,-- + +"Then let's be moving along, Sandy; we don't want to miss any of this +thing, you know." + +"Keep your seat," he says; "he is only just telegraphed, that is all." + +"How?" + +"That blast only means that he has been sighted from the signal-station. +He is off Sandy Hook. The committees will go down to meet him, now, and +escort him in. There will be ceremonies and delays; they won't be coming +up the Bay for a considerable time, yet. It is several billion miles +away, anyway." + +"_I_ could have been a barkeeper and a hard lot just as well as not," +says I, remembering the lonesome way I arrived, and how there wasn't any +committee nor anything. + +"I notice some regret in your voice," says Sandy, "and it is natural +enough; but let bygones be bygones; you went according to your lights, +and it is too late now to mend the thing." + +"No, let it slide, Sandy, I don't mind. But you've got a Sandy Hook +HERE, too, have you?" + +"We've got everything here, just as it is below. All the States and +Territories of the Union, and all the kingdoms of the earth and the +islands of the sea are laid out here just as they are on the globe--all +the same shape they are down there, and all graded to the relative size, +only each State and realm and island is a good many billion times bigger +here than it is below. There goes another blast." + +"What is that one for?" + +"That is only another fort answering the first one. They each fire +eleven hundred and one thunder blasts at a single dash--it is the usual +salute for an eleventh-hour guest; a hundred for each hour and an extra +one for the guest's sex; if it was a woman we would know it by their +leaving off the extra gun." + +"How do we know there's eleven hundred and one, Sandy, when they all go +off at once?--and yet we certainly do know." + +"Our intellects are a good deal sharpened up, here, in some ways, and +that is one of them. Numbers and sizes and distances are so great, here, +that we have to be made so we can FEEL them--our old ways of counting and +measuring and ciphering wouldn't ever give us an idea of them, but would +only confuse us and oppress us and make our heads ache." + +After some more talk about this, I says: "Sandy, I notice that I hardly +ever see a white angel; where I run across one white angel, I strike as +many as a hundred million copper-colored ones--people that can't speak +English. How is that?" + +"Well, you will find it the same in any State or Territory of the +American corner of heaven you choose to go to. I have shot along, a +whole week on a stretch, and gone millions and millions of miles, through +perfect swarms of angels, without ever seeing a single white one, or +hearing a word I could understand. You see, America was occupied a +billion years and more, by Injuns and Aztecs, and that sort of folks, +before a white man ever set his foot in it. During the first three +hundred years after Columbus's discovery, there wasn't ever more than one +good lecture audience of white people, all put together, in America--I +mean the whole thing, British Possessions and all; in the beginning of +our century there were only 6,000,000 or 7,000,000--say seven; 12,000,000 +or 14,000,000 in 1825; say 23,000,000 in 1850; 40,000,000 in 1875. Our +death-rate has always been 20 in 1000 per annum. Well, 140,000 died the +first year of the century; 280,000 the twenty-fifth year; 500,000 the +fiftieth year; about a million the seventy-fifth year. Now I am going to +be liberal about this thing, and consider that fifty million whites have +died in America from the beginning up to to-day--make it sixty, if you +want to; make it a hundred million --it's no difference about a few +millions one way or t'other. Well, now, you can see, yourself, that when +you come to spread a little dab of people like that over these hundreds +of billions of miles of American territory here in heaven, it is like +scattering a ten-cent box of homoeopathic pills over the Great Sahara and +expecting to find them again. You can't expect us to amount to anything +in heaven, and we DON'T--now that is the simple fact, and we have got to +do the best we can with it. The learned men from other planets and other +systems come here and hang around a while, when they are touring around +the Kingdom, and then go back to their own section of heaven and write a +book of travels, and they give America about five lines in it. And what +do they say about us? They say this wilderness is populated with a +scattering few hundred thousand billions of red angels, with now and then +a curiously complected DISEASED one. You see, they think we whites and +the occasional nigger are Injuns that have been bleached out or blackened +by some leprous disease or other--for some peculiarly rascally SIN, mind +you. It is a mighty sour pill for us all, my friend--even the modestest +of us, let alone the other kind, that think they are going to be received +like a long-lost government bond, and hug Abraham into the bargain. I +haven't asked you any of the particulars, Captain, but I judge it goes +without saying--if my experience is worth anything--that there wasn't +much of a hooraw made over you when you arrived--now was there?" + +"Don't mention it, Sandy," says I, coloring up a little; "I wouldn't have +had the family see it for any amount you are a mind to name. Change the +subject, Sandy, change the subject." + +"Well, do you think of settling in the California department of bliss?" + +"I don't know. I wasn't calculating on doing anything really definite in +that direction till the family come. I thought I would just look around, +meantime, in a quiet way, and make up my mind. Besides, I know a good +many dead people, and I was calculating to hunt them up and swap a little +gossip with them about friends, and old times, and one thing or another, +and ask them how they like it here, as far as they have got. I reckon my +wife will want to camp in the California range, though, because most all +her departed will be there, and she likes to be with folks she knows." + +"Don't you let her. You see what the Jersey district of heaven is, for +whites; well, the Californian district is a thousand times worse. It +swarms with a mean kind of leather-headed mud-colored angels--and your +nearest white neighbor is likely to be a million miles away. WHAT A MAN +MOSTLY MISSES, IN HEAVEN, IS COMPANY --company of his own sort and color +and language. I have come near settling in the European part of heaven +once or twice on that account." + +"Well, why didn't you, Sandy?" + +"Oh, various reasons. For one thing, although you SEE plenty of whites +there, you can't understand any of them, hardly, and so you go about as +hungry for talk as you do here. I like to look at a Russian or a German +or an Italian--I even like to look at a Frenchman if I ever have the luck +to catch him engaged in anything that ain't indelicate--but LOOKING don't +cure the hunger--what you want is talk." + +"Well, there's England, Sandy--the English district of heaven." + +"Yes, but it is not so very much better than this end of the heavenly +domain. As long as you run across Englishmen born this side of three +hundred years ago, you are all right; but the minute you get back of +Elizabeth's time the language begins to fog up, and the further back you +go the foggier it gets. I had some talk with one Langland and a man by +the name of Chaucer--old-time poets--but it was no use, I couldn't quite +understand them, and they couldn't quite understand me. I have had +letters from them since, but it is such broken English I can't make it +out. Back of those men's time the English are just simply foreigners, +nothing more, nothing less; they talk Danish, German, Norman French, and +sometimes a mixture of all three; back of THEM, they talk Latin, and +ancient British, Irish, and Gaelic; and then back of these come billions +and billions of pure savages that talk a gibberish that Satan himself +couldn't understand. The fact is, where you strike one man in the +English settlements that you can understand, you wade through awful +swarms that talk something you can't make head nor tail of. You see, +every country on earth has been overlaid so often, in the course of a +billion years, with different kinds of people and different sorts of +languages, that this sort of mongrel business was bound to be the result +in heaven." + +"Sandy," says I, "did you see a good many of the great people history +tells about?" + +"Yes--plenty. I saw kings and all sorts of distinguished people." + +"Do the kings rank just as they did below?" + +"No; a body can't bring his rank up here with him. Divine right is a +good-enough earthly romance, but it don't go, here. Kings drop down to +the general level as soon as they reach the realms of grace. I knew +Charles the Second very well--one of the most popular comedians in the +English section--draws first rate. There are better, of course--people +that were never heard of on earth --but Charles is making a very good +reputation indeed, and is considered a rising man. Richard the +Lion-hearted is in the prize-ring, and coming into considerable favor. +Henry the Eighth is a tragedian, and the scenes where he kills people are +done to the very life. Henry the Sixth keeps a religious-book stand." + +"Did you ever see Napoleon, Sandy?" + +"Often--sometimes in the Corsican range, sometimes in the French. He +always hunts up a conspicuous place, and goes frowning around with his +arms folded and his field-glass under his arm, looking as grand, gloomy +and peculiar as his reputation calls for, and very much bothered because +he don't stand as high, here, for a soldier, as he expected to." + +"Why, who stands higher?" + +"Oh, a LOT of people WE never heard of before--the shoemaker and +horse-doctor and knife-grinder kind, you know--clodhoppers from goodness +knows where that never handled a sword or fired a shot in their +lives--but the soldiership was in them, though they never had a chance to +show it. But here they take their right place, and Caesar and Napoleon +and Alexander have to take a back seat. The greatest military genius our +world ever produced was a brick-layer from somewhere back of Boston--died +during the Revolution--by the name of Absalom Jones. Wherever he goes, +crowds flock to see him. You see, everybody knows that if he had had a +chance he would have shown the world some generalship that would have +made all generalship before look like child's play and 'prentice work. +But he never got a chance; he tried heaps of times to enlist as a +private, but he had lost both thumbs and a couple of front teeth, and the +recruiting sergeant wouldn't pass him. However, as I say, everybody +knows, now, what he WOULD have been,--and so they flock by the million to +get a glimpse of him whenever they hear he is going to be anywhere. +Caesar, and Hannibal, and Alexander, and Napoleon are all on his staff, +and ever so many more great generals; but the public hardly care to look +at THEM when HE is around. Boom! There goes another salute. The +barkeeper's off quarantine now." + +Sandy and I put on our things. Then we made a wish, and in a second we +were at the reception-place. We stood on the edge of the ocean of space, +and looked out over the dimness, but couldn't make out anything. Close +by us was the Grand Stand--tier on tier of dim thrones rising up toward +the zenith. From each side of it spread away the tiers of seats for the +general public. They spread away for leagues and leagues--you couldn't +see the ends. They were empty and still, and hadn't a cheerful look, but +looked dreary, like a theatre before anybody comes--gas turned down. +Sandy says,-- + +"We'll sit down here and wait. We'll see the head of the procession come +in sight away off yonder pretty soon, now." + +Says I,-- + +"It's pretty lonesome, Sandy; I reckon there's a hitch somewheres. Nobody +but just you and me--it ain't much of a display for the barkeeper." + +"Don't you fret, it's all right. There'll be one more gun-fire --then +you'll see." + +In a little while we noticed a sort of a lightish flush, away off on the +horizon. + +"Head of the torchlight procession," says Sandy. + +It spread, and got lighter and brighter: soon it had a strong glare like +a locomotive headlight; it kept on getting brighter and brighter till it +was like the sun peeping above the horizon-line at sea--the big red rays +shot high up into the sky. + +"Keep your eyes on the Grand Stand and the miles of seats--sharp!" says +Sandy, "and listen for the gun-fire." + +Just then it burst out, "Boom-boom-boom!" like a million thunderstorms in +one, and made the whole heavens rock. Then there was a sudden and awful +glare of light all about us, and in that very instant every one of the +millions of seats was occupied, and as far as you could see, in both +directions, was just a solid pack of people, and the place was all +splendidly lit up! It was enough to take a body's breath away. Sandy +says,-- + +"That is the way we do it here. No time fooled away; nobody straggling +in after the curtain's up. Wishing is quicker work than travelling. A +quarter of a second ago these folks were millions of miles from here. +When they heard the last signal, all they had to do was to wish, and here +they are." + +The prodigious choir struck up,-- + + "We long to hear thy voice, + To see thee face to face." + +It was noble music, but the uneducated chipped in and spoilt it, just as +the congregations used to do on earth. + +The head of the procession began to pass, now, and it was a wonderful +sight. It swept along, thick and solid, five hundred thousand angels +abreast, and every angel carrying a torch and singing--the whirring +thunder of the wings made a body's head ache. You could follow the line +of the procession back, and slanting upward into the sky, far away in a +glittering snaky rope, till it was only a faint streak in the distance. +The rush went on and on, for a long time, and at last, sure enough, along +comes the barkeeper, and then everybody rose, and a cheer went up that +made the heavens shake, I tell you! He was all smiles, and had his halo +tilted over one ear in a cocky way, and was the most satisfied-looking +saint I ever saw. While he marched up the steps of the Grand Stand, the +choir struck up,-- + + "The whole wide heaven groans, + And waits to hear that voice." + +There were four gorgeous tents standing side by side in the place of +honor, on a broad railed platform in the centre of the Grand Stand, with +a shining guard of honor round about them. The tents had been shut up +all this time. As the barkeeper climbed along up, bowing and smiling to +everybody, and at last got to the platform, these tents were jerked up +aloft all of a sudden, and we saw four noble thrones of gold, all caked +with jewels, and in the two middle ones sat old white-whiskered men, and +in the two others a couple of the most glorious and gaudy giants, with +platter halos and beautiful armor. All the millions went down on their +knees, and stared, and looked glad, and burst out into a joyful kind of +murmurs. They said,-- + +"Two archangels!--that is splendid. Who can the others be?" + +The archangels gave the barkeeper a stiff little military bow; the two +old men rose; one of them said, "Moses and Esau welcome thee!" and then +all the four vanished, and the thrones were empty. + +The barkeeper looked a little disappointed, for he was calculating to hug +those old people, I judge; but it was the gladdest and proudest multitude +you ever saw--because they had seen Moses and Esau. Everybody was +saying, "Did you see them?--I did--Esau's side face was to me, but I saw +Moses full in the face, just as plain as I see you this minute!" + +The procession took up the barkeeper and moved on with him again, and the +crowd broke up and scattered. As we went along home, Sandy said it was a +great success, and the barkeeper would have a right to be proud of it +forever. And he said we were in luck, too; said we might attend +receptions for forty thousand years to come, and not have a chance to see +a brace of such grand moguls as Moses and Esau. We found afterwards that +we had come near seeing another patriarch, and likewise a genuine prophet +besides, but at the last moment they sent regrets. Sandy said there +would be a monument put up there, where Moses and Esau had stood, with +the date and circumstances, and all about the whole business, and +travellers would come for thousands of years and gawk at it, and climb +over it, and scribble their names on it. + + + +Footnotes: + +{1} The captain could not remember what this word was. He said it was +in a foreign tongue. + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's EXTRACT FROM CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN, +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +GOLDSMITH'S FRIEND ABROAD AGAIN + +by Mark Twain + + + +NOTE.--No experience is set down in the following letters which had to be +invented. Fancy is not needed to give variety to the history of a +Chinaman's sojourn in America. Plain fact is amply sufficient. + + +LETTER I + + SHANGHAI, 18--. +DEAR CHING-FOO: It is all settled, and I am to leave my oppressed and +overburdened native land and cross the sea to that noble realm where all +are free and all equal, and none reviled or abused--America! America, +whose precious privilege it is to call herself the Land of the Free and +the Home of the Brave. We and all that are about us here look over the +waves longingly, contrasting the privations of this our birthplace with +the opulent comfort of that happy refuge. We know how America has +welcomed the Germans and the Frenchmen and the stricken and sorrowing +Irish, and we know how she has given them bread and work, and liberty, +and how grateful they are. And we know that America stands ready to +welcome all other oppressed peoples and offer her abundance to all that +come, without asking what their nationality is, or their creed or color. +And, without being told it, we know that the, foreign sufferers she has +rescued from oppression and starvation are the most eager of her children +to welcome us, because, having suffered themselves, they know what +suffering is, and having been generously succored, they long to be +generous to other unfortunates and thus show that magnanimity is not +wasted upon them. + AH SONG HI. + + + +LETTER II + + AT SEA, 18--. +DEAR CHING-FOO: We are far away at sea now; on our way to the beautiful +Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. We shall soon be where all men +are alike, and where sorrow is not known. + +The good American who hired me to go to his country is to pay me $12 a +month, which is immense wages, you know--twenty times as much as one gets +in China. My passage in the ship is a very large sum--indeed, it is a +fortune--and this I must pay myself eventually, but I am allowed ample +time to make it good to my employer in, he advancing it now. For a mere +form, I have turned over my wife, my boy, and my two daughters to my +employer's partner for security for the payment of the ship fare. But my +employer says they are in no danger of being sold, for he knows I will be +faithful to him, and that is the main security. + +I thought I would have twelve dollars to, begin life with in America, but +the American Consul took two of them for making a certificate that I was +shipped on the steamer. He has no right to do more than charge the ship +two dollars for one certificate for the ship, with the number of her +Chinese passengers set down in it; but he chooses to force a certificate +upon each and every Chinaman and put the two dollars in his pocket. As +1,300 of my countrymen are in this vessel, the Consul received $2,600 for +certificates. My employer tells me that the Government at Washington +know of this fraud, and are so bitterly opposed to the existence of such +a wrong that they tried hard to have the extor--the fee, I mean, +legalised by the last Congress;--[Pacific and Mediterranean steamship +bills.(Ed. Mem.)]--but as the bill did not pass, the Consul will have +to take the fee dishonestly until next Congress makes it legitimate. It +is a great and good and noble country, and hates all forms of vice and +chicanery. + +We are in that part of the vessel always reserved for my countrymen. +It is called the steerage. It is kept for us, my employer says, because +it is not subject to changes of temperature and dangerous drafts of air. +It is only another instance of the loving unselfishness of the Americans +for all unfortunate foreigners. The steerage is a little crowded, and +rather warm and close, but no doubt it is best for us that it should be +so. + +Yesterday our people got to quarrelling among themselves, and the captain +turned a volume of hot steam upon a mass of them and scalded eighty or +ninety of them more or less severely. Flakes and ribbons of skin came +off some of them. There was wild shrieking and struggling while the +vapour enveloped the great throng, and so some who were not scalded got +trampled upon and hurt. We do not complain, for my employer says this is +the usual way of quieting disturbances on board the ship, and that it is +done in the cabins among the Americans every day or two. + +Congratulate me, Ching-Fool In ten days more I shall step upon the shore +of America, and be received by her great-hearted people; and I shall +straighten myself up and feel that I am a free man among freemen. + + AH SONG HI. + + + +LETTER III + + SAN FRANCISCO, 18--. +DEAR CHING-FOO: I stepped ashore jubilant! I wanted to dance, shout, +sing, worship the generous Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. But +as I walked from the gangplank a man in a gray uniform--[Policeman] +--kicked me violently behind and told me to look out--so my employer +translated it. As I turned, another officer of the same kind struck me +with a short club and also instructed me to look out. I was about to +take hold of my end of the pole which had mine and Hong-Wo's basket and +things suspended from it, when a third officer hit me with his club to +signify that I was to drop it, and then kicked me to signify that he was +satisfied with my promptness. Another person came now, and searched all +through our basket and bundles, emptying everything out on the dirty +wharf. Then this person and another searched us all over. They found a +little package of opium sewed into the artificial part of Hong-Wo's +queue, and they took that, and also they made him prisoner and handed him +over to an officer, who marched him away. They took his luggage, too, +because of his crime, and as our luggage was so mixed together that they +could not tell mine from his, they took it all. When I offered to help +divide it, they kicked me and desired me to look out. + +Having now no baggage and no companion, I told my employer that if he was +willing, I would walk about a little and see the city and the people +until he needed me. I did not like to seem disappointed with my +reception in the good land of refuge for the oppressed, and so I looked +and spoke as cheerily as I could. But he said, wait a minute--I must be +vaccinated to prevent my taking the small-pox. I smiled and said I had +already had the small-pox, as he could see by the marks, and so I need +not wait to be "vaccinated," as he called it. But he said it was the +law, and I must be vaccinated anyhow. The doctor would never let me +pass, for the law obliged him to vaccinate all Chinamen and charge them +ten dollars apiece for it, and I might be sure that no doctor who would +be the servant of that law would let a fee slip through his fingers to +accommodate any absurd fool who had seen fit to have the disease in some +other country. And presently the doctor came and did his work and took +my last penny--my ten dollars which were the hard savings of nearly a +year and a half of labour and privation. Ah, if the law-makers had only +known there were plenty of doctors in the city glad of a chance to +vaccinate people for a dollar or two, they would never have put the price +up so high against a poor friendless Irish, or Italian, or Chinese pauper +fleeing to the good land to escape hunger and hard times. + + AH SONG HI. + + + + +LETTER IV + + SAN FRANCISCO, 18--. +DEAR CHING-FOO: I have been here about a month now, and am learning a +little of the language every day. My employer was disappointed in the +matter of hiring us out to service to the plantations in the far eastern +portion of this continent. His enterprise was a failure, and so he set +us all free, merely taking measures to secure to himself the repayment of +the passage money which he paid for us. We are to make this good to him +out of the first moneys we earn here. He says it is sixty dollars +apiece. + +We were thus set free about two weeks after we reached here. We had been +massed together in some small houses up to that time, waiting. I walked +forth to seek my fortune. I was to begin life a stranger in a strange +land, without a friend, or a penny, or any clothes but those I had on my +back. I had not any advantage on my side in the world--not one, except +good health and the lack of any necessity to waste any time or anxiety on +the watching of my baggage. No, I forget. I reflected that I had one +prodigious advantage over paupers in other lands--I was in America! I +was in the heaven-provided refuge of the oppressed and the forsaken! + +Just as that comforting thought passed through my mind, some young men +set a fierce dog on me. I tried to defend myself, but could do nothing. +I retreated to the recess of a closed doorway, and there the dog had me +at his mercy, flying at my throat and face or any part of my body that +presented itself. I shrieked for help, but the young men only jeered and +laughed. Two men in gray uniforms ( policemen is their official title) +looked on for a minute and then walked leisurely away. But a man stopped +them and brought them back and told them it was a shame to leave me in +such distress. Then the two policemen beat off the dog with small clubs, +and a comfort it was to be rid of him, though I was just rags and blood +from head to foot. The man who brought the policemen asked the young men +why they abused me in that way, and they said they didn't want any of his +meddling. And they said to him: + +"This Ching divil comes till Ameriky to take the bread out o' dacent +intilligent white men's mouths, and whir they try to defind their rights +there's a dale o' fuss made about it." + +They began to threaten my benefactor, and as he saw no friendliness in +the faces that had gathered meanwhile, he went on his way. He got many a +curse when he was gone. The policemen now told me I was under arrest and +must go with them. I asked one of them what wrong I had done to any one +that I should be arrested, and he only struck me with his club and +ordered me to "hold my yap." With a jeering crowd of street boys and +loafers at my heels, I was taken up an alley and into a stone-paved +dungeon which had large cells all down one side of it, with iron gates to +them. I stood up by a desk while a man behind it wrote down certain +things about me on a slate. One of my captors said: + +"Enter a charge against this Chinaman of being disorderly and disturbing +the peace." + +I attempted to say a word, but he said: + +"Silence! Now ye had better go slow, my good fellow. This is two or +three times you've tried to get off some of your d---d insolence. Lip +won't do here. You've got to simmer down, and if you don't take to it +paceable we'll see if we can't make you. Fat's your name?" + +"Ah Song Hi." + +"Alias what?" + +I said I did not understand, and he said what he wanted was my true name, +for he guessed I picked up this one since I stole my last chickens. They +all laughed loudly at that. + +Then they searched me. They found nothing, of course. They seemed very +angry and asked who I supposed would "go my bail or pay my fine." When +they explained these things to me, I said I had done nobody any harm, and +why should I need to have bail or pay a fine? Both of them kicked me and +warned me that I would find it to my advantage to try and be as civil as +convenient. I protested that I had not meant anything disrespectful. +Then one of them took me to one side and said: + +"Now look here, Johnny, it's no use you playing softly wid us. We mane +business, ye know; and the sooner ye put us on the scent of a V, the +asier yell save yerself from a dale of trouble. Ye can't get out o' this +for anny less. Who's your frinds?" + +I told him I had not a single friend in all the land of America, and that +I was far from home and help, and very poor. And I begged him to let me +go. + +He gathered the slack of my blouse collar in his grip and jerked and +shoved and hauled at me across the dungeon, and then unlocking an iron +cell-gate thrust me in with a kick and said: + +"Rot there, ye furrin spawn, till ye lairn that there's no room in +America for the likes of ye or your nation." + + AH SONG HI. + + + + +LETTER V + + SAN FRANCISCO, 18--. +DEAR CHING-FOO: You will remember that I had just been thrust violently +into a cell in the city prison when I wrote last. I stumbled and fell on +some one. I got a blow and a curse= and on top of these a kick or two +and a shove. In a second or two it was plain that I was in a nest of +prisoners and was being "passed around"--for the instant I was knocked +out of the way of one I fell on the head or heels of another and was +promptly ejected, only to land on a third prisoner and get a new +contribution of kicks and curses and a new destination. I brought up at +last in an unoccupied corner, very much battered and bruised and sore, +but glad enough to be let alone for a little while. I was on the +flag-stones, for there was, no furniture in the den except a long, broad +board, or combination of boards, like a barn-door, and this bed was +accommodating five or six persons, and that was its full capacity. They +lay stretched side by side, snoring--when not fighting. One end of the +board was four, inches higher than the other, and so the slant answered +for a pillow. There were no blankets, and the night was a little chilly; +the nights are always a little chilly in San Francisco, though never +severely cold. The board was a deal more comfortable than the stones, +and occasionally some flag-stone plebeian like me would try to creep to a +place on it; and then the aristocrats would hammer him good and make him +think a flag pavement was a nice enough place after all. + +I lay quiet in my corner, stroking my bruises, and listening to the +revelations the prisoners made to each other--and to me for some that +were near me talked to me a good deal. I had long had an idea that +Americans, being free, had no need of prisons, which are a contrivance of +despots for keeping restless patriots out of mischief. So I was +considerably surprised to find out my mistake. + +Ours was a big general cell, it seemed, for the temporary accommodation +of all comers whose crimes were trifling. Among us they were two +Americans, two "Greasers" (Mexicans), a Frenchman, a German, four +Irishmen, a Chilenean (and, in the next cell, only separated from us by a +grating, two women), all drunk, and all more or less noisy; and as night +fell and advanced, they grew more and more discontented and disorderly, +occasionally; shaking the prison bars and glaring through them at the +slowly pacing officer, and cursing him with all their hearts. The two +women were nearly middle-aged, and they had only had enough liquor to +stimulate instead of stupefy them. Consequently they would fondle and +kiss each other for some minutes, and then fall to fighting and keep it +up till they were just two grotesque tangles of rags and blood and +tumbled hair. Then they would rest awhile and pant and swear. While +they were affectionate they always spoke of each other as "ladies," but +while they were fighting "strumpet" was the mildest name they could think +of--and they could only make that do by tacking some sounding profanity +to it. In their last fight, which was toward midnight, one of them bit +off the other's finger, and then the officer interfered and put the +"Greaser" into the "dark cell" to answer for it because the woman that +did it laid it on him, and the other woman did not deny it because, as +she said afterward, she "wanted another crack at the huzzy when her +finger quit hurting," and so she did not want her removed. By this time +those two women had mutilated each other's clothes to that extent that +there was not sufficient left to cover their nakedness. I found that one +of these creatures had spent nine years in the county jail, and that the +other one had spent about four or five years in the same place. They had +done it from choice. As soon as they were discharged from captivity they +would go straight and get drunk, and then steal some trifling thing while +an officer was observing them. That would entitle them to another two, +months in jail, and there they would occupy clean, airy apartments, and +have good food in plenty, and being at no expense at all, they, could +make shirts for the clothiers at half a dollar apiece and thus keep +themselves in smoking tobacco and such other luxuries as they wanted. +When the two months were up they would go just as straight as they could +walk to Mother Leonard's and get drunk; and from there to Kearney street +and steal something; and thence to this city prison, and next day back to +the old quarters in the county jail again. One of them had really kept +this up for nine years and the other four or five, and both said they +meant to end their days in that prison. **--[**The former of the two +did.--Ed. Men.]--Finally, both these creatures fell upon me while I was +dozing with my head against their grating, and battered me considerably, +because they discovered that I was a Chinaman, and they said I was "a +bloody interlopin' loafer come from the devil's own country to take the +bread out of dacent people's mouths and put down the wages for work whin +it was all a Christian could do to kape body and sowl together as it +was." "Loafer" means one who will not work. + AH SONG HI. + + + + +LETTER VI + + SAN FRANCISCO, 18--. + +DEAR CHING-FOO: To continue--the two women became reconciled to each +other again through the common bond of interest and sympathy created +between them by pounding me in partnership, and when they had finished me +they fell to embracing each other again and swearing more eternal +affection like that which had subsisted between them all the evening, +barring occasional interruptions. They agreed to swear the finger-biting +on the Greaser in open court, and get him sent to the penitentiary for +the crime of mayhem. + +Another of our company was a boy of fourteen who had been watched for +some time by officers and teachers, and repeatedly detected in enticing +young girls from the public schools to the lodgings of gentlemen down +town. He had been furnished with lures in the form of pictures and +books of a peculiar kind, and these he had distributed among his clients. +There were likenesses of fifteen of these young girls on exhibition (only +to prominent citizens and persons in authority, it was said, though most +people came to get a sight) at the police headquarters, but no punishment +at all was to be inflicted on the poor little misses. The boy was +afterward sent into captivity at the House of Correction for some months, +and there was a strong disposition to punish the gentlemen who had +employed the boy to entice the girls, but as that could not be done +without making public the names of those gentlemen and thus injuring them +socially, the idea was finally given up. + +There was also in our cell that night a photographer (a kind of artist +who makes likenesses of people with a machine), who had been for some +time patching the pictured heads of well-known and respectable young +ladies to the nude, pictured bodies of another class of women; then from +this patched creation he would make photographs and sell them privately +at high prices to rowdies and blackguards, averring that these, the best +young ladies of the city, had hired him to take their likenesses in that +unclad condition. What a lecture the police judge read that photographer +when he was convicted! He told him his crime was little less than an +outrage. He abused that photographer till he almost made him sink +through the floor, and then he fined him a hundred dollars. And he told +him he might consider himself lucky that he didn't fine him a hundred and +twenty-five dollars. They are awfully severe on crime here. + +About two or two and a half hours after midnight, of that first +experience of mine in the city prison, such of us as were dozing were +awakened by a noise of beating and dragging and groaning, and in a little +while a man was pushed into our den with a "There, d---n you, soak there +a spell!"--and then the gate was closed and the officers went away again. +The man who was thrust among us fell limp and helpless by the grating, +but as nobody could reach him with a kick without the trouble of hitching +along toward him or getting fairly up to deliver it, our people only +grumbled at him, and cursed him, and called him insulting names--for +misery and hardship do not make their victims gentle or charitable toward +each other. But as he neither tried humbly to conciliate our people nor +swore back at them, his unnatural conduct created surprise, and several +of the party crawled to him where he lay in the dim light that came +through the grating, and examined into his case. His head was very +bloody and his wits were gone. After about an hour, he sat up and stared +around; then his eyes grew more natural and he began to tell how that he +was going along with a bag on his shoulder and a brace of policemen +ordered him to stop, which he did not do--was chased and caught, beaten +ferociously about the head on the way to the prison and after arrival +there, and finally I thrown into our den like a dog. + +And in a few seconds he sank down again and grew flighty of speech. One +of our people was at last penetrated with something vaguely akin to +compassion, may be, for he looked out through the gratings at the +guardian officer, pacing to and fro, and said: + +"Say, Mickey, this shrimp's goin' to die." + +"Stop your noise!" was all the answer he got. But presently our man +tried it again. He drew himself to the gratings, grasping them with his +hands, and looking out through them, sat waiting till the officer was +passing once more, and then said: + +"Sweetness, you'd better mind your eye, now, because you beats have +killed this cuss. You've busted his head and he'll pass in his checks +before sun-up. You better go for a doctor, now, you bet you had." + +The officer delivered a sudden rap on our man's knuckles with his club, +that sent him scampering and howling among the sleeping forms on the +flag-stones, and an answering burst of laughter came from the half dozen +policemen idling about the railed desk in the middle of the dungeon. + +But there was a putting of heads together out there presently, and a +conversing in low voices, which seemed to show that our man's talk had +made an impression; and presently an officer went away in a hurry, and +shortly came back with a person who entered our cell and felt the bruised +man's pulse and threw the glare of a lantern on his drawn face, striped +with blood, and his glassy eyes, fixed and vacant. The doctor examined +the man's broken head also, and presently said: + +"If you'd called me an hour ago I might have saved this man, may be too +late now." + +Then he walked out into the dungeon and the officers surrounded him, and +they kept up a low and earnest buzzing of conversation for fifteen +minutes, I should think, and then the doctor took his departure from the +prison. Several of the officers now came in and worked a little with the +wounded man, but toward daylight he died. + +It was the longest, longest night! And when the daylight came filtering +reluctantly into the dungeon at last, it was the grayest, dreariest, +saddest daylight! And yet, when an officer by and by turned off the +sickly yellow gas flame, and immediately the gray of dawn became fresh +and white, there was a lifting of my spirits that acknowledged and +believed that the night was gone, and straightway I fell to stretching my +sore limbs, and looking about me with a grateful sense of relief and a +returning interest in life. About me lay the evidences that what seemed +now a feverish dream and a nightmare was the memory of a reality instead. +For on the boards lay four frowsy, ragged, bearded vagabonds, snoring +--one turned end-for-end and resting an unclean foot, in a ruined +stocking, on the hairy breast of a neighbour; the young boy was uneasy, +and lay moaning in his sleep; other forms lay half revealed and half +concealed about the floor; in the furthest corner the gray light fell +upon a sheet, whose elevations and depressions indicated the places of +the dead man's face and feet and folded hands; and through the dividing +bars one could discern the almost nude forms of the two exiles from the +county jail twined together in a drunken embrace, and sodden with sleep. + +By and by all the animals in all the cages awoke, and stretched +themselves, and exchanged a few cuffs and curses, and then began to +clamour for breakfast. Breakfast was brought in at last--bread and +beefsteak on tin plates, and black coffee in tin cups, and no grabbing +allowed. And after several dreary hours of waiting, after this, we were +all marched out into the dungeon and joined there by all manner of +vagrants and vagabonds, of all shades and colours and nationalities, from +the other cells and cages of the place; and pretty soon our whole +menagerie was marched up-stairs and locked fast behind a high railing in +a dirty room with a dirty audience in it. And this audience stared at +us, and at a man seated on high behind what they call a pulpit in this +country, and at some clerks and other officials seated below him--and +waited. This was the police court. + +The court opened. Pretty soon I was compelled to notice that a culprit's +nationality made for or against him in this court. Overwhelming proofs +were necessary to convict an Irishman of crime, and even then his +punishment amounted to little; Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians had +strict and unprejudiced justice meted out to them, in exact accordance +with the evidence; negroes were promptly punished, when there was the +slightest preponderance of testimony against them; but Chinamen were +punished always, apparently. Now this gave me some uneasiness, I +confess. I knew that this state of things must of necessity be +accidental, because in this country all men were free and equal, and one +person could not take to himself an advantage not accorded to all other +individuals. I knew that, and yet in spite of it I was uneasy. + +And I grew still more uneasy, when I found that any succored and +befriended refugee from Ireland or elsewhere could stand up before that +judge and swear, away the life or liberty or character of a refugee from +China; but that by the law of the land the Chinaman could not testify +against the Irishman. I was really and truly uneasy, but still my faith +in the universal liberty that America accords and defends, and my deep +veneration for the land that offered all distressed outcasts a home and +protection, was strong within me, and I said to myself that it would all +come out right yet. + AH SONG HI. + + + + +LETTER VII + + SAN FRANCISCO, 18--. +DEAR CHING FOO: I was glad enough when my case came up. An hour's +experience had made me as tired of the police court as of the dungeon. +I was not uneasy about the result of the trial, but on the contrary felt +that as soon as the large auditory of Americans present should hear how +that the rowdies had set the dogs on me when I was going peacefully along +the street, and how, when I was all torn and bleeding, the officers +arrested me and put me in jail and let the rowdies go free, the gallant +hatred of oppression which is part of the very flesh and blood of every +American would be stirred to its utmost, and I should be instantly set at +liberty. In truth I began to fear for the other side. There in full +view stood the ruffians who had misused me, and I began to fear that in +the first burst of generous anger occasioned by the revealment of what +they had done, they might be harshly handled, and possibly even banished +the country as having dishonoured her and being no longer worthy to +remain upon her sacred soil. + +The official interpreter of the court asked my name, and then spoke it +aloud so that all could hear. Supposing that all was now ready, I +cleared my throat and began--in Chinese, because of my imperfect English: + +"Hear, O high and mighty mandarin, and believe! As I went about my +peaceful business in the street, behold certain men set a dog on me, +and-- + +"Silence!" + +It was the judge that spoke. The interpreter whispered to me that I must +keep perfectly still. He said that no statement would be received from +me--I must only talk through my lawyer. + +I had no lawyer. In the early morning a police court lawyer (termed, in +the higher circles of society, a "shyster") had come into our den in the +prison and offered his services to me, but I had been obliged to go +without them because I could not pay in advance or give security. I told +the interpreter how the matter stood. He said I must take my chances on +the witnesses then. I glanced around, and my failing confidence revived. + +"Call those four Chinamen yonder," I said. "They saw it all. I remember +their faces perfectly. They will prove that the white men set the dog on +me when I was not harming them." + +"That won't work," said he. "In this country white men can testify +against Chinamen all they want to, but Chinamen ain't allowed to testify +against white men!" + +What a chill went through me! And then I felt the indignant blood rise +to my cheek at this libel upon the Home of the Oppressed, where all men +are free and equal--perfectly equal--perfectly free and perfectly equal. +I despised this Chinese-speaking Spaniard for his mean slander of the +land that was sheltering and feeding him. I sorely wanted to sear his +eyes with that sentence from the great and good American Declaration of +Independence which we have copied in letters of gold in China and keep +hung up over our family altars and in our temples--I mean the one about +all men being created free and equal. + +But woe is me, Ching Foo, the man was right. He was right, after all. +There were my witnesses, but I could not use them. But now came a new +hope. I saw my white friend come in, and I felt that he had come there +purposely to help me. I may almost say I knew it. So I grew easier. +He passed near enough to me to say under his breath, "Don't be afraid," +and then I had no more fear. But presently the rowdies recognised him +and began to scowl at him in no friendly way, and to make threatening +signs at him. The two officers that arrested me fixed their eyes +steadily on his; he bore it well, but gave in presently, and dropped his +eyes. They still gazed at his eyebrows, and every time he raised his +eyes he encountered their winkless stare--until after a minute or two he +ceased to lift his head at all. The judge had been giving some +instructions privately to some one for a little while, but now he was +ready to resume business. Then the trial so unspeakably important to me, +and freighted with such prodigious consequence to my wife and children, +began, progressed, ended, was recorded in the books, noted down by the +newspaper reporters, and forgotten by everybody but me--all in the little +space of two minutes! + +"Ah Song Hi, Chinaman. Officers O'Flannigan and O'Flaherty, witnesses. +Come forward, Officer O'Flannigan." + +OFFICER--"He was making a disturbance in Kearny street." + +JUDGE--"Any witnesses on the other side?" No response. The white friend +raised his eyes encountered Officer O'Flaherty's--blushed a little--got +up and left the courtroom, avoiding all glances and not taking his own +from the floor. + +JUDGE--"Give him five dollars or ten days." + +In my desolation there was a glad surprise in the words; but it passed +away when I found that he only meant that I was to be fined five dollars +or imprisoned ten days longer in default of it. + +There were twelve or fifteen Chinamen in our crowd of prisoners, charged +with all manner of little thefts and misdemeanors, and their cases were +quickly disposed of, as a general thing. When the charge came from a +policeman or other white man, he made his statement and that was the end +of it, unless the Chinaman's lawyer could find some white person to +testify in his client's behalf, for, neither the accused Chinaman nor his +countrymen being allowed to say anything, the statement of the officers +or other white person was amply sufficient to convict. So, as I said, +the Chinamen's cases were quickly disposed of, and fines and imprisonment +promptly distributed among them. In one or two of the cases the charges +against Chinamen were brought by Chinamen themselves, and in those cases +Chinamen testified against Chinamen, through the interpreter; but the +fixed rule of the court being that the preponderance of testimony in such +cases should determine the prisoner's guilt or innocence, and there being +nothing very binding about an oath administered to the lower orders of +our people without the ancient solemnity of cutting off a chicken's head +and burning some yellow paper at the same time, the interested parties +naturally drum up a cloud of witnesses who are cheerfully willing to give +evidence without ever knowing anything about the matter in hand. The +judge has a custom of rattling through with as much of this testimony as +his patience will stand, and then shutting off the rest and striking an +average. + +By noon all the business of the court was finished, and then several of +us who had not fared well were remanded to prison; the judge went home; +the lawyers, and officers, and spectators departed their several ways, +and left the uncomely court-room to silence, solitude, and Stiggers, the +newspaper reporter, which latter would now write up his items (said an +ancient Chinaman to me), in the which he would praise all the policemen +indiscriminately and abuse the Chinamen and dead people. + + AH SONG HI. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Goldsmiths Friend Abroad Again +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +HOW TO TELL A STORY AND OTHERS + +by Mark Twain + + + +CONTENTS: + HOW TO TELL A STORY + THE WOUNDED SOLDIER + THE GOLDEN ARM + MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN + THE INVALIDS STORY + + + +HOW TO TELL A STORY + + The Humorous Story an American Development.--Its Difference + from Comic and Witty Stories. + +I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only +claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almost daily +in the company of the most expert story-tellers for many years. + +There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind--the +humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story is +American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The +humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; +the comic story and the witty story upon the matter. + +The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around +as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic +and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. The humorous story +bubbles gently along, the others burst. + +The humorous story is strictly a work of art--high and delicate art +--and only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling the +comic and the witty story; anybody can do it. The art of telling a +humorous story--understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print--was +created in America, and has remained at home. + +The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal +the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about +it; but the teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is one +of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager +delight, and is the first person to laugh when he gets through. And +sometimes, if he has had good success, he is so glad and happy that he +will repeat the "nub" of it and glance around from face to face, +collecting applause, and then repeat it again. It is a pathetic thing to +see. + +Very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story +finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it. +Then the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will divert +attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and +indifferent way, with the pretence that he does not know it is a nub. + +Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience +presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise, as if +wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Setchell used it before +him, Nye and Riley and others use it to-day. + +But the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub; he shouts it at +you--every time. And when he prints it, in England, France, Germany, and +Italy, he italicizes it, puts some whooping exclamation-points after it, +and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. All of which is very +depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life. + +Let me set down an instance of the comic method, using an anecdote which +has been popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen hundred years. +The teller tells it in this way: + + THE WOUNDED SOLDIER. + +In the course of a certain battle a soldier whose leg had been shot off +appealed to another soldier who was hurrying by to carry him to the rear, +informing him at the same time of the loss which he had sustained; +whereupon the generous son of Mars, shouldering the unfortunate, +proceeded to carry out his desire. The bullets and cannon-balls were +flying in all directions, and presently one of the latter took the +wounded man's head off--without, however, his deliverer being aware of +it. In no-long time he was hailed by an officer, who said: + +"Where are you going with that carcass?" + +"To the rear, sir--he's lost his leg!" + +"His leg, forsooth?" responded the astonished officer; "you mean his +head, you booby." + +Whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood +looking down upon it in great perplexity. At length he said: + +"It is true, sir, just as you have said." Then after a pause he added, +"But he TOLD me IT WAS HIS LEG! ! ! ! !" + + +Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous +horse-laughter, repeating that nub from time to time through his gaspings +and shriekings and suffocatings. + +It takes only a minute and a half to tell that in its comic-story form; +and isn't worth the telling, after all. Put into the humorous-story form +it takes ten minutes, and is about the funniest thing I have ever +listened to--as James Whitcomb Riley tells it. + +He tells it in the character of a dull-witted old farmer who has just +heard it for the first time, thinks it is unspeakably funny, and is +trying to repeat it to a neighbor. But he can't remember it; so he gets +all mixed up and wanders helplessly round and round, putting in tedious +details that don't belong in the tale and only retard it; taking them out +conscientiously and putting in others that are just as useless; making +minor mistakes now and then and stopping to correct them and explain how +he came to make them; remembering things which he forgot to put in in +their proper place and going back to put them in there; stopping his +narrative a good while in order to try to recall the name of the soldier +that was hurt, and finally remembering that the soldier's name was not +mentioned, and remarking placidly that the name is of no real importance, +anyway--better, of course, if one knew it, but not essential, after all +--and so on, and so on, and so on. + +The teller is innocent and happy and pleased with himself, and has to +stop every little while to hold himself in and keep from laughing +outright; and does hold in, but his body quakes in a jelly-like way with +interior chuckles; and at the end of the ten minutes the audience have +laughed until they are exhausted, and the tears are running down their +faces. + +The simplicity and innocence and sincerity and unconsciousness of the old +farmer are perfectly simulated, and the result is a performance which is +thoroughly charming and delicious. This is art and fine and beautiful, +and only a master can compass it; but a machine could tell the other +story. + +To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and +sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are +absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct. +Another feature is the slurring of the point. A third is the dropping of +a studied remark apparently without knowing it, as if one were thinking +aloud. The fourth and last is the pause. + +Artemus Ward dealt in numbers three and four a good deal. He would begin +to tell with great animation something which he seemed to think was +wonderful; then lose confidence, and after an apparently absent-minded +pause add an incongruous remark in a soliloquizing way; and that was the +remark intended to explode the mine--and it did. + +For instance, he would say eagerly, excitedly, "I once knew a man in New +Zealand who hadn't a tooth in his head"--here his animation would die +out; a silent, reflective pause would follow, then he would say dreamily, +and as if to himself, "and yet that man could beat a drum better than any +man I ever saw." + +The pause is an exceedingly important feature in any kind of story, and a +frequently recurring feature, too. It is a dainty thing, and delicate, +and also uncertain and treacherous; for it must be exactly the right +length--no more and no less--or it fails of its purpose and makes +trouble. If the pause is too short the impressive point is passed, and +[and if too long] the audience have had time to divine that a surprise is +intended--and then you can't surprise them, of course. + +On the platform I used to tell a negro ghost story that had a pause in +front of the snapper on the end, and that pause was the most important +thing in the whole story. If I got it the right length precisely, I +could spring the finishing ejaculation with effect enough to make some +impressible girl deliver a startled little yelp and jump out of her seat +--and that was what I was after. This story was called "The Golden Arm," +and was told in this fashion. You can practise with it yourself--and +mind you look out for the pause and get it right. + + THE GOLDEN ARM. + +Once 'pon a time dey wuz a monsus mean man, en he live 'way out in de +prairie all 'lone by hisself, 'cep'n he had a wife. En bimeby she died, +en he tuck en toted her way out dah in de prairie en buried her. Well, +she had a golden arm--all solid gold, fum de shoulder down. He wuz +pow'ful mean--pow'ful; en dat night he couldn't sleep, Gaze he want dat +golden arm so bad. + +When it come midnight he couldn't stan' it no mo'; so he git up, he did, +en tuck his lantern en shoved out thoo de storm en dug her up en got de +golden arm; en he bent his head down 'gin de win', en plowed en plowed en +plowed thoo de snow. Den all on a sudden he stop (make a considerable +pause here, and look startled, and take a listening attitude) en say: +"My LAN', what's dat!" + +En he listen--en listen--en de win' say (set your teeth together and +imitate the wailing and wheezing singsong of the wind), "Bzzz-z-zzz" +--en den, way back yonder whah de grave is, he hear a voice! he hear a +voice all mix' up in de win' can't hardly tell 'em 'part--" Bzzz-zzz +--W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n arm? --zzz--zzz-- W-h-o g-o-t m-y +g-o-l-d-e-n arm!" (You must begin to shiver violently now.) + +En he begin to shiver en shake, en say, "Oh, my! OH, my lan'! "en de +win' blow de lantern out, en de snow en sleet blow in his face en mos' +choke him, en he start a-plowin' knee-deep towards home mos' dead, he so +sk'yerd--en pooty soon he hear de voice agin, en (pause) it 'us comin' +after him! "Bzzz--zzz--zzz--W-h-o--g-o-t m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n--arm?" + +When he git to de pasture he hear it agin closter now, en a-comin'! +--a-comin' back dah in de dark en de storm--(repeat the wind and the +voice). When he git to de house he rush up-stairs en jump in de bed en +kiver up, head and years, en lay dah shiverin' en shakin'--en den way out +dah he hear it agin!--en a-comin'! En bimeby he hear (pause--awed, +listening attitude)--pat--pat--pat--hit's acomin' up-stairs! Den he +hear de latch, en he know it's in de room! + +Den pooty soon he know it's a-stannin' by de bed! (Pause.) Den--he know +it's a-bendin' down over him--en he cain't skasely git his breath! Den +--den--he seem to feel someth' n c-o-l-d, right down 'most agin his head! +(Pause.) + +Den de voice say, right at his year--"W-h-o g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n +arm?" (You must wail it out very plaintively and accusingly; then you +stare steadily and impressively into the face of the farthest-gone +auditor--a girl, preferably--and let that awe-inspiring pause begin to +build itself in the deep hush. When it has reached exactly the right +length, jump suddenly at that girl and yell, "You've got it!") + +If you've got the pause right, she'll fetch a dear little yelp and spring +right out of her shoes. But you must get the pause right; and you will +find it the most troublesome and aggravating and uncertain thing you ever +undertook. + + + + + + + +MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN + +I have three or four curious incidents to tell about. They seem to come +under the head of what I named "Mental Telegraphy" in a paper written +seventeen years ago, and published long afterwards.--[The paper entitled +"Mental Telegraphy," which originally appeared in Harper's Magazine for +December, 1893, is included in the volume entitled The American Claimant +and Other Stories and Sketches.] + +Several years ago I made a campaign on the platform with Mr. George W. +Cable. In Montreal we were honored with a reception. It began at two in +the afternoon in a long drawing-room in the Windsor Hotel. Mr. Cable and +I stood at one end of this room, and the ladies and gentlemen entered it +at the other end, crossed it at that end, then came up the long left-hand +side, shook hands with us, said a word or two, and passed on, in the +usual way. My sight is of the telescopic sort, and I presently +recognized a familiar face among the throng of strangers drifting in at +the distant door, and I said to myself, with surprise and high +gratification, "That is Mrs. R.; I had forgotten that she was a +Canadian." She had been a great friend of mine in Carson City, Nevada, +in the early days. I had not seen her or heard of her for twenty years; +I had not been thinking about her; there was nothing to suggest her to +me, nothing to bring her to my mind; in fact, to me she had long ago +ceased to exist, and had disappeared from my consciousness. But I knew +her instantly; and I saw her so clearly that I was able to note some of +the particulars of her dress, and did note them, and they remained +in my mind. I was impatient for her to come. In the midst of the +hand-shakings I snatched glimpses of her and noted her progress with the +slow-moving file across the end of the room; then I saw her start up the +side, and this gave me a full front view of her face. I saw her last +when she was within twenty-five feet of me. For an hour I kept thinking +she must still be in the room somewhere and would come at last, but I was +disappointed. + +When I arrived in the lecture-hall that evening some one said: "Come into +the waiting-room; there's a friend of yours there who wants to see you. +You'll not be introduced--you are to do the recognizing without help if +you can." + +I said to myself: "It is Mrs. R.; I shan't have any trouble." + +There were perhaps ten ladies present, all seated. In the midst of them +was Mrs. R., as I had expected. She was dressed exactly as she was when +I had seen her in the afternoon. I went forward and shook hands with her +and called her by name, and said: + +"I knew you the moment you appeared at the reception this afternoon." +She looked surprised, and said: "But I was not at the reception. I have +just arrived from Quebec, and have not been in town an hour." + +It was my turn to be surprised now. I said: "I can't help it. I give +you my word of honor that it is as I say. I saw you at the reception, +and you were dressed precisely as you are now. When they told me a +moment ago that I should find a friend in this room, your image rose +before me, dress and all, just as I had seen you at the reception." + +Those are the facts. She was not at the reception at all, or anywhere +near it; but I saw her there nevertheless, and most clearly and +unmistakably. To that I could make oath. How is one to explain this? I +was not thinking of her at the time; had not thought of her for years. +But she had been thinking of me, no doubt; did her thoughts flit through +leagues of air to me, and bring with it that clear and pleasant vision of +herself? I think so. That was and remains my sole experience in the +matter of apparitions--I mean apparitions that come when one is +(ostensibly) awake. I could have been asleep for a moment; the +apparition could have been the creature of a dream. Still, that is +nothing to the point; the feature of interest is the happening of the +thing just at that time, instead of at an earlier or later time, which is +argument that its origin lay in thought-transference. + +My next incident will be set aside by most persons as being merely +a "coincidence," I suppose. Years ago I used to think sometimes of +making a lecturing trip through the antipodes and the borders of the +Orient, but always gave up the idea, partly because of the great length +of the journey and partly because my wife could not well manage to go +with me. Towards the end of last January that idea, after an interval of +years, came suddenly into my head again--forcefully, too, and without any +apparent reason. Whence came it? What suggested it? I will touch upon +that presently. + +I was at that time where I am now--in Paris. I wrote at once to Henry M. +Stanley (London), and asked him some questions about his Australian +lecture tour, and inquired who had conducted him and what were the terms. +After a day or two his answer came. It began: + + "The lecture agent for Australia and New Zealand is par + excellence Mr. R. S. Smythe, of Melbourne." + +He added his itinerary, terms, sea expenses, and some other matters, and +advised me to write Mr. Smythe, which I did--February 3d. I began my +letter by saying in substance that while he did not know me personally we +had a mutual friend in Stanley, and that would answer for an +introduction. Then I proposed my trip, and asked if he would give me the +same terms which he had given Stanley. + +I mailed my letter to Mr. Smythe February 6th, and three days later I got +a letter from the selfsame Smythe, dated Melbourne, December 17th. I +would as soon have expected to get a letter from the late George +Washington. The letter began somewhat as mine to him had begun--with a +self-introduction: + + "DEAR MR. CLEMENS,--It is so long since Archibald Forbes and I + spent that pleasant afternoon in your comfortable house at + Hartford that you have probably quite forgotten the occasion." + +In the course of his letter this occurs: + + "I am willing to give you" [here he named the terms which he + had given Stanley] "for an antipodean tour to last, say, three + months." + +Here was the single essential detail of my letter answered three days +after I had mailed my inquiry. I might have saved myself the trouble and +the postage--and a few years ago I would have done that very thing, for I +would have argued that my sudden and strong impulse to write and ask some +questions of a stranger on the under side of the globe meant that the +impulse came from that stranger, and that he would answer my questions of +his own motion if I would let him alone. + +Mr. Smythe's letter probably passed under my nose on its way to lose +three weeks traveling to America and back, and gave me a whiff of its +contents as it went along. Letters often act like that. Instead of the +thought coming to you in an instant from Australia, the (apparently) +unsentient letter imparts it to you as it glides invisibly past your +elbow in the mail-bag. + +Next incident. In the following month--March--I was in America. I spent +a Sunday at Irvington-on-the-Hudson with Mr. John Brisben Walker, of the +Cosmopolitan magazine. We came into New York next morning, and went to +the Century Club for luncheon. He said some praiseful things about the +character of the club and the orderly serenity and pleasantness of its +quarters, and asked if I had never tried to acquire membership in it. +I said I had not, and that New York clubs were a continuous expense to +the country members without being of frequent use or benefit to them. + +"And now I've got an idea!" said I. "There's the Lotos--the first New +York club I was ever a member of--my very earliest love in that line. +I have been a member of it for considerably more than twenty years, yet +have seldom had a chance to look in and see the boys. They turn gray and +grow old while I am not watching. And my dues go on. I am going to +Hartford this afternoon for a day or two, but as soon as I get back I +will go to John Elderkin very privately and say: 'Remember the veteran +and confer distinction upon him, for the sake of old times. Make me an +honorary member and abolish the tax. If you haven't any such thing as +honorary membership, all the better--create it for my honor and glory.' +That would be a great thing; I will go to John Elderkin as soon as I get +back from Hartford." + +I took the last express that afternoon, first telegraphing Mr. F. G. +Whitmore to come and see me next day. When he came he asked: "Did you +get a letter from Mr. John Elderkin, secretary of the Lotos Club, before +you left New York?" + +"Then it just missed you. If I had known you were coming I would have +kept it. It is beautiful, and will make you proud. The Board of +Directors, by unanimous vote, have made you a life member, and squelched +those dues; and, you are to be on hand and receive your distinction on +the night of the 30th, which is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the +founding of the club, and it will not surprise me if they have some great +times there." + +What put the honorary membership in my head that day in the Century Club? +for I had never thought of it before. I don't know what brought the +thought to me at that particular time instead of earlier, but I am well +satisfied that it originated with the Board of Directors, and had been on +its way to my brain through the air ever since the moment that saw their +vote recorded. + +Another incident. I was in Hartford two or three days as a guest of the +Rev. Joseph H. Twichell. I have held the rank of Honorary Uncle to his +children for a quarter of a century, and I went out with him in the +trolley-car to visit one of my nieces, who is at Miss Porter's famous +school in Farmington. The distance is eight or nine miles. On the way, +talking, I illustrated something with an anecdote. This is the anecdote: + +Two years and a half ago I and the family arrived at Milan on our way to +Rome, and stopped at the Continental. After dinner I went below and took +a seat in the stone-paved court, where the customary lemon-trees stand in +the customary tubs, and said to myself, "Now this is comfort, comfort and +repose, and nobody to disturb it; I do not know anybody in Milan." + +Then a young gentleman stepped up and shook hands, which damaged my +theory. He said, in substance: + +"You won't remember me, Mr. Clemens, but I remember you very well. I was +a cadet at West Point when you and Rev. Joseph H. Twichell came there +some years ago and talked to us on a Hundredth Night. I am a lieutenant +in the regular army now, and my name is H. I am in Europe, all alone, +for a modest little tour; my regiment is in Arizona." + +We became friendly and sociable, and in the course of the talk he told me +of an adventure which had befallen him--about to this effect: + +"I was at Bellagio, stopping at the big hotel there, and ten days ago I +lost my letter of credit. I did not know what in the world to do. I was +a stranger; I knew no one in Europe; I hadn't a penny in my pocket; I +couldn't even send a telegram to London to get my lost letter replaced; +my hotel bill was a week old, and the presentation of it imminent--so +imminent that it could happen at any moment now. I was so frightened +that my wits seemed to leave me. I tramped and tramped, back and forth, +like a crazy person. If anybody approached me I hurried away, for no +matter what a person looked like, I took him for the head waiter with the +bill. + +"I was at last in such a desperate state that I was ready to do any wild +thing that promised even the shadow of help, and so this is the insane +thing that I did. I saw a family lunching at a small table on the +veranda, and recognized their nationality--Americans--father, mother, and +several young daughters--young, tastefully dressed, and pretty--the rule +with our people. I went straight there in my civilian costume, named my +name, said I was a lieutenant in the army, and told my story and asked +for help. + +"What do you suppose the gentleman did? But you would not guess in +twenty years. He took out a handful of gold coin and told me to help +myself--freely. That is what he did." + +The next morning the lieutenant told me his new letter of credit had +arrived in the night, so we strolled to Cook's to draw money to pay back +the benefactor with. We got it, and then went strolling through the +great arcade. Presently he said, "Yonder they are; come and be +introduced." I was introduced to the parents and the young ladies; then +we separated, and I never saw him or them any m--- + +"Here we are at Farmington," said Twichell, interrupting. + +We left the trolley-car and tramped through the mud a hundred yards or so +to the school, talking about the time we and Warner walked out there +years ago, and the pleasant time we had. + +We had a visit with my niece in the parlor, then started for the trolley +again. Outside the house we encountered a double rank of twenty or +thirty of Miss Porter's young ladies arriving from a walk, and we stood +aside, ostensibly to let them have room to file past, but really to look +at them. Presently one of them stepped out of the rank and said: + +"You don't know me, Mr. Twichell; but I know your daughter, and that +gives me the privilege of shaking hands with you." + +Then she put out her hand to me, and said: + +"And I wish to shake hands with you too, Mr. Clemens. You don't remember +me, but you were introduced to me in the arcade in Milan two years and a +half ago by Lieutenant H." + +What had put that story into my head after all that stretch of time? Was +it just the proximity of that young girl, or was it merely an odd +accident? + + + + + + + +THE INVALID'S STORY + +I seem sixty and married, but these effects are due to my condition and +sufferings, for I am a bachelor, and only forty-one. It will be hard for +you to believe that I, who am now but a shadow, was a hale, hearty man +two short years ago, a man of iron, a very athlete!--yet such is the +simple truth. But stranger still than this fact is the way in which I +lost my health. I lost it through helping to take care of a box of guns +on a two-hundred-mile railway journey one winter's night. It is the +actual truth, and I will tell you about it. + +I belong in Cleveland, Ohio. One winter's night, two years ago, I +reached home just after dark, in a driving snow-storm, and the first +thing I heard when I entered the house was that my dearest boyhood friend +and schoolmate, John B. Hackett, had died the day before, and that his +last utterance had been a desire that I would take his remains home to +his poor old father and mother in Wisconsin. I was greatly shocked and +grieved, but there was no time to waste in emotions; I must start at +once. I took the card, marked "Deacon Levi Hackett, Bethlehem, +Wisconsin," and hurried off through the whistling storm to the railway +station. Arrived there I found the long white-pine box which had been +described to me; I fastened the card to it with some tacks, saw it put +safely aboard the express car, and then ran into the eating-room to +provide myself with a sandwich and some cigars. When I returned, +presently, there was my coffin-box back again, apparently, and a young +fellow examining around it, with a card in his hands, and some tacks and +a hammer! I was astonished and puzzled. He began to nail on his card, +and I rushed out to the express car, in a good deal of a state of mind, +to ask for an explanation. But no--there was my box, all right, in the +express car; it hadn't been disturbed. [The fact is that without my +suspecting it a prodigious mistake had been made. I was carrying off a +box of guns which that young fellow had come to the station to ship to a +rifle company in Peoria, Illinois, and he had got my corpse!] Just then +the conductor sung out "All aboard," and I jumped into the express car +and got a comfortable seat on a bale of buckets. The expressman was +there, hard at work,--a plain man of fifty, with a simple, honest, +good-natured face, and a breezy, practical heartiness in his general +style. As the train moved off a stranger skipped into the car and set a +package of peculiarly mature and capable Limburger cheese on one end of +my coffin-box--I mean my box of guns. That is to say, I know now that it +was Limburger cheese, but at that time I never had heard of the article +in my life, and of course was wholly ignorant of its character. Well, we +sped through the wild night, the bitter storm raged on, a cheerless +misery stole over me, my heart went down, down, down! The old expressman +made a brisk remark or two about the tempest and the arctic weather, +slammed his sliding doors to, and bolted them, closed his window down +tight, and then went bustling around, here and there and yonder, setting +things to rights, and all the time contentedly humming "Sweet By and By," +in a low tone, and flatting a good deal. Presently I began to detect a +most evil and searching odor stealing about on the frozen air. This +depressed my spirits still more, because of course I attributed it to my +poor departed friend. There was something infinitely saddening about his +calling himself to my remembrance in this dumb pathetic way, so it was +hard to keep the tears back. Moreover, it distressed me on account of +the old expressman, who, I was afraid, might notice it. However, he went +humming tranquilly on, and gave no sign; and for this I was grateful. +Grateful, yes, but still uneasy; and soon I began to feel more and more +uneasy every minute, for every minute that went by that odor thickened up +the more, and got to be more and more gamey and hard to stand. Presently, +having got things arranged to his satisfaction, the expressman got some +wood and made up a tremendous fire in his stove. + +This distressed me more than I can tell, for I could not but feel that it +was a mistake. I was sure that the effect would be deleterious upon my +poor departed friend. Thompson--the expressman's name was Thompson, as I +found out in the course of the night--now went poking around his car, +stopping up whatever stray cracks he could find, remarking that it didn't +make any difference what kind of a night it was outside, he calculated to +make us comfortable, anyway. I said nothing, but I believed he was not +choosing the right way. Meantime he was humming to himself just as +before; and meantime, too, the stove was getting hotter and hotter, and +the place closer and closer. I felt myself growing pale and qualmish, +but grieved in silence and said nothing. + +Soon I noticed that the "Sweet By and By" was gradually fading out; next +it ceased altogether, and there was an ominous stillness. After a few +moments Thompson said, + +"Pfew! I reckon it ain't no cinnamon 't I've loaded up thish-yer stove +with!" + +He gasped once or twice, then moved toward the cof--gun-box, stood over +that Limburger cheese part of a moment, then came back and sat down near +me, looking a good deal impressed. After a contemplative pause, he said, +indicating the box with a gesture, + +"Friend of yourn?" + +"Yes," I said with a sigh. + +"He's pretty ripe, ain't he!" + +Nothing further was said for perhaps a couple of minutes, each being busy +with his own thoughts; then Thompson said, in a low, awed voice, + +"Sometimes it's uncertain whether they're really gone or not,--seem gone, +you know--body warm, joints limber--and so, although you think they're +gone, you don't really know. I've had cases in my car. It's perfectly +awful, becuz you don't know what minute they'll rise up and look at you!" +Then, after a pause, and slightly lifting his elbow toward the box, +--"But he ain't in no trance! No, sir, I go bail for him!" + +We sat some time, in meditative silence, listening to the wind and the +roar of the train; then Thompson said, with a good deal of feeling, + +"Well-a-well, we've all got to go, they ain't no getting around it. Man +that is born of woman is of few days and far between, as Scriptur' says. +Yes, you look at it any way you want to, it's awful solemn and cur'us: +they ain't nobody can get around it; all's got to go--just everybody, as +you may say. One day you're hearty and strong"--here he scrambled to his +feet and broke a pane and stretched his nose out at it a moment or two, +then sat down again while I struggled up and thrust my nose out at the +same place, and this we kept on doing every now and then--"and next day +he's cut down like the grass, and the places which knowed him then knows +him no more forever, as Scriptur' says. Yes'ndeedy, it's awful solemn +and cur'us; but we've all got to go, one time or another; they ain't no +getting around it." + +There was another long pause; then,-- + +"What did he die of?" + +I said I didn't know. + +"How long has he ben dead?" + +It seemed judicious to enlarge the facts to fit the probabilities; so I +said, + +"Two or three days." + +But it did no good; for Thompson received it with an injured look which +plainly said, "Two or three years, you mean." Then he went right along, +placidly ignoring my statement, and gave his views at considerable length +upon the unwisdom of putting off burials too long. Then he lounged off +toward the box, stood a moment, then came back on a sharp trot and +visited the broken pane, observing, + +"'Twould 'a' ben a dum sight better, all around, if they'd started him +along last summer." + +Thompson sat down and buried his face in his red silk handkerchief, and +began to slowly sway and rock his body like one who is doing his best to +endure the almost unendurable. By this time the fragrance--if you may +call it fragrance--was just about suffocating, as near as you can come at +it. Thompson's face was turning gray; I knew mine hadn't any color left +in it. By and by Thompson rested his forehead in his left hand, with his +elbow on his knee, and sort of waved his red handkerchief towards the box +with his other hand, and said,-- + +"I've carried a many a one of 'em,--some of 'em considerable overdue, +too,--but, lordy, he just lays over 'em all!--and does it easy Cap., they +was heliotrope to HIM!" + +This recognition of my poor friend gratified me, in spite of the sad +circumstances, because it had so much the sound of a compliment. + +Pretty soon it was plain that something had got to be done. I suggested +cigars. Thompson thought it was a good idea. He said, + +"Likely it'll modify him some." + +We puffed gingerly along for a while, and tried hard to imagine that +things were improved. But it wasn't any use. Before very long, and +without any consultation, both cigars were quietly dropped from our +nerveless fingers at the same moment. Thompson said, with a sigh, + +"No, Cap., it don't modify him worth a cent. Fact is, it makes him +worse, becuz it appears to stir up his ambition. What do you reckon we +better do, now?" + +I was not able to suggest anything; indeed, I had to be swallowing and +swallowing, all the time, and did not like to trust myself to speak. +Thompson fell to maundering, in a desultory and low-spirited way, about +the miserable experiences of this night; and he got to referring to my +poor friend by various titles,--sometimes military ones, sometimes civil +ones; and I noticed that as fast as my poor friend's effectiveness grew, +Thompson promoted him accordingly,--gave him a bigger title. Finally he +said, + +"I've got an idea. Suppos' n we buckle down to it and give the Colonel a +bit of a shove towards t'other end of the car?--about ten foot, say. He +wouldn't have so much influence, then, don't you reckon?" + +I said it was a good scheme. So we took in a good fresh breath at the +broken pane, calculating to hold it till we got through; then we went +there and bent over that deadly cheese and took a grip on the box. +Thompson nodded "All ready," and then we threw ourselves forward with all +our might; but Thompson slipped, and slumped down with his nose on the +cheese, and his breath got loose. He gagged and gasped, and floundered +up and made a break for the door, pawing the air and saying hoarsely, +"Don't hender me! --gimme the road! I'm a-dying; gimme the road!" +Out on the cold platform I sat down and held his head a while, and he +revived. Presently he said, + +"Do you reckon we started the Gen'rul any?" + +I said no; we hadn't budged him. + +"Well, then, that idea's up the flume. We got to think up something +else. He's suited wher' he is, I reckon; and if that's the way he feels +about it, and has made up his mind that he don't wish to be disturbed, +you bet he's a-going to have his own way in the business. Yes, better +leave him right wher' he is, long as he wants it so; becuz he holds all +the trumps, don't you know, and so it stands to reason that the man that +lays out to alter his plans for him is going to get left." + +But we couldn't stay out there in that mad storm; we should have frozen +to death. So we went in again and shut the door, and began to suffer +once more and take turns at the break in the window. By and by, as we +were starting away from a station where we had stopped a moment Thompson. +pranced in cheerily, and exclaimed, + +"We're all right, now! I reckon we've got the Commodore this time. I +judge I've got the stuff here that'll take the tuck out of him." + +It was carbolic acid. He had a carboy of it. He sprinkled it all around +everywhere; in fact he drenched everything with it, rifle-box, cheese and +all. Then we sat down, feeling pretty hopeful. But it wasn't for long. +You see the two perfumes began to mix, and then--well, pretty soon we +made a break for the door; and out there Thompson swabbed his face with +his bandanna and said in a kind of disheartened way, + +"It ain't no use. We can't buck agin him. He just utilizes everything +we put up to modify him with, and gives it his own flavor and plays it +back on us. Why, Cap., don't you know, it's as much as a hundred times +worse in there now than it was when he first got a-going. I never did +see one of 'em warm up to his work so, and take such a dumnation interest +in it. No, Sir, I never did, as long as I've ben on the road; and I've +carried a many a one of 'em, as I was telling you." + +We went in again after we were frozen pretty stiff; but my, we couldn't +stay in, now. So we just waltzed back and forth, freezing, and thawing, +and stifling, by turns. In about an hour we stopped at another station; +and as we left it Thompson came in with a bag, and said,-- + +"Cap., I'm a-going to chance him once more,--just this once; and if we +don't fetch him this time, the thing for us to do, is to just throw up +the sponge and withdraw from the canvass. That's the way I put it up." +He had brought a lot of chicken feathers, and dried apples, and leaf +tobacco, and rags, and old shoes, and sulphur, and asafoetida, and one +thing or another; and he, piled them on a breadth of sheet iron in the +middle of the floor, and set fire to them. + +When they got well started, I couldn't see, myself, how even the corpse +could stand it. All that went before was just simply poetry to that +smell,--but mind you, the original smell stood up out of it just as +sublime as ever,--fact is, these other smells just seemed to give it a +better hold; and my, how rich it was! I didn't make these reflections +there--there wasn't time--made them on the platform. And breaking for +the platform, Thompson got suffocated and fell; and before I got him +dragged out, which I did by the collar, I was mighty near gone myself. +When we revived, Thompson said dejectedly,-- + +"We got to stay out here, Cap. We got to do it. They ain't no other +way. The Governor wants to travel alone, and he's fixed so he can +outvote us." + +And presently he added, + +"And don't you know, we're pisoned. It's our last trip, you can make up +your mind to it. Typhoid fever is what's going to come of this. I feel +it acoming right now. Yes, sir, we're elected, just as sure as you're +born." + +We were taken from the platform an hour later, frozen and insensible, at +the next station, and I went straight off into a virulent fever, and +never knew anything again for three weeks. I found out, then, that I had +spent that awful night with a harmless box of rifles and a lot of +innocent cheese; but the news was too late to save me; imagination had +done its work, and my health was permanently shattered; neither Bermuda +nor any other land can ever bring it back tome. This is my last trip; I +am on my way home to die. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of How Tell a Story and Others +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES + +by Mark Twain + + +CONTENTS: + + INTRODUCTION + PREFACE + THE STORY OF A SPEECH + PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS + COMPLIMENTS AND DEGREES + BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS + DEDICATION SPEECH + DIE SCHRECKEN DER DEUTSCHEN SPRACHE. + THE HORRORS OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE + GERMAN FOR THE HUNGARIANS + A NEW GERMAN WORD + UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM + THE WEATHER + THE BABIES + OUR CHILDREN AND GREAT DISCOVERIES + EDUCATING THEATRE-GOERS + THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE + POETS AS POLICEMEN + PUDD'NHEAD WILSON DRAMATIZED + DALY THEATRE + THE DRESS OF CIVILIZED WOMAN + DRESS REFORM AND COPYRIGHT + COLLEGE GIRLS + GIRLS + THE LADIES + WOMAN'S PRESS CLUB + VOTES FOR WOMEN + WOMAN-AN OPINION + ADVICE TO GIRLS + TAXES AND MORALS + TAMMANY AND CROKER + MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION + MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT + CHINA AND THE PHILIPPINES + THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL MORALS + LAYMAN'S SERMON + UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT SOCIETY + PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION + EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP + COURAGE + THE DINNER TO MR. CHOATE + ON STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE + HENRY M. STANLEY + DINNER TO MR. JEROME + HENRY IRVING + DINNER TO HAMILTON W. MABIE + INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY + DINNER TO WHITELAW REID + ROGERS AND RAILROADS + THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER + SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS + READING-ROOM OPENING + LITERATURE + DISAPPEARANCE OF LITERATURE + THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER + THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING + SPELLING AND PICTURES + BOOKS AND BURGLARS + AUTHORS' CLUB + BOOKSELLERS + "MARK TWAIN's FIRST APPEARANCE" + MORALS AND MEMORY + QUEEN VICTORIA + JOAN OF ARC + ACCIDENT INSURANCE--ETC. + OSTEOPATHY + WATER-SUPPLY + MISTAKEN IDENTITY + CATS AND CANDY + OBITUARY POETRY + CIGARS AND TOBACCO + BILLIARDS + THE UNION RIGHT OR WRONG? + AN IDEAL FRENCH ADDRESS + STATISTICS + GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR + SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE + CHARITY AND ACTORS + RUSSIAN REPUBLIC + RUSSIAN SUFFERERS + WATTERSON AND TWAIN AS REBELS + ROBERT FULTON FUND + FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN + LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF MARK TWAIN + COPYRIGHT + IN AID OF THE BLIND + DR. MARK TWAIN, FARMEOPATH + MISSOURI UNIVERSITY SPEECH + BUSINESS + CARNEGIE THE BENEFACTOR + ON POETRY, VERACITY, AND SUICIDE + WELCOME HOME + AN UNDELIVERED SPEECH + SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY + TO THE WHITEFRIARS + THE ASCOT GOLD CUP + THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER + GENERAL MILES AND THE DOG + WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH + THE DAY WE CELEBRATE + INDEPENDENCE DAY + AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH + ABOUT LONDON + PRINCETON + THE ST. LOUIS HARBOR-BOAT "MARK TWAIN" + SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY + + + + +INTRODUCTION + +These speeches will address themselves to the minds and hearts of those +who read them, but not with the effect they had with those who heard +them; Clemens himself would have said, not with half the effect. I have +noted elsewhere how he always held that the actor doubled the value of +the author's words; and he was a great actor as well as a great author. +He was a most consummate actor, with this difference from other actors, +that he was the first to know the thoughts and invent the fancies to +which his voice and action gave the color of life. Representation is the +art of other actors; his art was creative as well as representative; it +was nothing at second hand. + +I never heard Clemens speak when I thought he quite failed; some burst +or spurt redeemed him when he seemed flagging short of the goal, and, +whoever else was in the running, he came in ahead. His near-failures +were the error of a rare trust to the spontaneity in which other speakers +confide, or are believed to confide, when they are on their feet. He +knew that from the beginning of oratory the orator's spontaneity was for +the silence and solitude of the closet where he mused his words to an +imagined audience; that this was the use of orators from Demosthenes and +Cicero up and down. He studied every word and syllable, and memorized +them by a system of mnemonics peculiar to himself, consisting of an +arbitrary arrangement of things on a table--knives, forks, salt-cellars; +inkstands, pens, boxes, or whatever was at hand--which stood for points +and clauses and climaxes, and were at once indelible diction and constant +suggestion. He studied every tone and every gesture, and he forecast the +result with the real audience from its result with that imagined +audience. Therefore, it was beautiful to see him and to hear him; he +rejoiced in the pleasure he gave and the blows of surprise which he +dealt; and because he had his end in mind, he knew when to stop. + +I have been talking of his method and manner; the matter the reader has +here before him; and it is good matter, glad, honest, kind, just. + + W. D. HOWELLS. + + + + + + +PREFACE + +FROM THE PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION OF "MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES" + +If I were to sell the reader a barrel of molasses, and he, instead of +sweetening his substantial dinner with the same at judicious intervals, +should eat the entire barrel at one sitting, and then abuse me for making +him sick, I would say that he deserved to be made sick for not knowing +any better how to utilize the blessings this world affords. And if I +sell to the reader this volume of nonsense, and he, instead of seasoning +his graver reading with a chapter of it now and then, when his mind +demands such relaxation, unwisely overdoses himself with several chapters +of it at a single sitting, he will deserve to be nauseated, and he will +have nobody to blame but himself if he is. There is no more sin in +publishing an entire volume of nonsense than there is in keeping a +candy-store with no hardware in it. It lies wholly with the customer +whether he will injure himself by means of either, or will derive from +them the benefits which they will afford him if he uses their +possibilities judiciously. + Respectfully submitted, + THE AUTHOR. + + + + + + MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES + + + + +THE STORY OF A SPEECH + + An address delivered in 1877, and a review of it twenty-nine + years later. The original speech was delivered at a dinner + given by the publishers of The Atlantic Monthly in honor of the + seventieth anniversary o f the birth of John Greenleaf + Whittier, at the Hotel Brunswick, Boston, December 17, 1877. + +This is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of pleasant +reminiscences concerning literary folk; therefore I will drop lightly +into history myself. Standing here on the shore of the Atlantic and +contemplating certain of its largest literary billows, I am reminded of a +thing which happened to me thirteen years ago, when I had just succeeded +in stirring up a little Nevadian literary puddle myself, whose +spume-flakes were beginning to blow thinly Californiaward. I started an +inspection tramp through the southern mines of California. I was callow +and conceited, and I resolved to try the virtue of my 'nom de guerre'. + +I very soon had an opportunity. I knocked at a miner's lonely log cabin +in the foot-hills of the Sierras just at nightfall. It was snowing at +the time. A jaded, melancholy man of fifty, barefooted, opened the door +to me. When he heard my 'nom de guerre' he looked more dejected than +before. He let me in--pretty reluctantly, I thought--and after the +customary bacon and beans, black coffee and hot whiskey, I took a pipe. +This sorrowful man had not said three words up to this time. Now he +spoke up and said, in the voice of one who is secretly suffering, "You're +the fourth--I'm going to move." "The fourth what?" said I. "The fourth +littery man that has been here in twenty-four hours--I'm going to move." +"You don't tell me!" said I; "who were the others?" "Mr. Longfellow, +Mr. Emerson, and Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes--consound the lot!" + +You can, easily believe I was interested. I supplicated--three hot +whiskeys did the rest--and finally the melancholy miner began. Said he: + +"They came here just at dark yesterday evening, and I let them in of +course. Said they were going to the Yosemite. They were a rough lot, +but that's nothing; everybody looks rough that travels afoot. +Mr. Emerson was a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed. Mr. Holmes was +as fat as a balloon; he weighed as much as three hundred, and had double +chins all the way down to his stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built like a +prizefighter. His head was cropped and bristly, like as if he had a wig +made of hair-brushes. His nose lay straight down, his face, like a +finger with the end joint tilted up. They had been drinking, I could see +that. And what queer talk they used! Mr. Holmes inspected this cabin, +then he took me by the buttonhole, and says he: + + "'Through the deep caves of thought + I hear a voice that sings, + Build thee more stately mansions, + O my soul!' + +"Says I, 'I can't afford it, Mr. Holmes, and moreover I don't want to.' +Blamed if I liked it pretty well, either, coming from a stranger, that +way. However, I started to get out my bacon and beans, when Mr. Emerson +came and looked on awhile, and then he takes me aside by the buttonhole +and says: + + "'Give me agates for my meat; + Give me cantharids to eat; + From air and ocean bring me foods, + From all zones and altitudes.' + +"Says I, 'Mr. Emerson, if you'll excuse me, this ain't no hotel.' +You see it sort of riled me--I warn't used to the ways of littery swells. +But I went on a-sweating over my work, and next comes Mr. Longfellow and +buttonholes me, and interrupts me. Says he: + + "'Honor be to Mudjekeewis! + You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis--' + +"But I broke in, and says I, 'Beg your pardon, Mr. Longfellow, if you'll +be so kind as to hold your yawp for about five minutes and let me get +this grub ready, you'll do me proud.' Well, sir, after they'd filled up +I set out the jug. Mr. Holmes looks at it, and then he fires up all of a +sudden and yells: + + "Flash out a stream of blood-red wine! + For I would drink to other days.' + +"By George, I was getting kind of worked up. I don't deny it, I was +getting kind of worked up. I turns to Mr. Holmes, and says I, 'Looky +here, my fat friend, I'm a-running this shanty, and if the court knows +herself, you'll take whiskey straight or you'll go dry.' Them's the very +words I said to him. Now I don't want to sass such famous littery +people, but you see they kind of forced me. There ain't nothing +onreasonable 'bout me; I don't mind a passel of guests a-treadin' on my +tail three or four times, but when it comes to standing on it it's +different, 'and if the court knows herself,' I says, 'you'll take whiskey +straight or you'll go dry.' Well, between drinks they'd swell around the +cabin and strike attitudes and spout; and pretty soon they got out a +greasy old deck and went to playing euchre at ten cents a corner--on +trust. I began to notice some pretty suspicious things. Mr. Emerson +dealt, looked at his hand, shook his head, says: + + "'I am the doubter and the doubt--' + +and ca'mly bunched the hands and went to shuffling for a new layout. +Says he: + + "'They reckon ill who leave me out; + They know not well the subtle ways I keep. + I pass and deal again!' + +Hang'd if he didn't go ahead and do it, too! Oh, he was a cool one! +Well, in about a minute things were running pretty tight, but all of a +sudden I see by Mr. Emerson's eye he judged he had 'em. He had already +corralled two tricks, and each of the others one. So now he kind of +lifts a little in his chair and says: + + "'I tire of globes and aces! + Too long the game is played!' + +--and down he fetched a right bower. Mr. Longfellow smiles as sweet as +pie and says: + + "'Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, + For the lesson thou hast taught,' + +--and blamed if he didn't down with another right bower! Emerson claps +his hand on his bowie, Longfellow claps his on his revolver, and I went +under a bunk. There was going to be trouble; but that monstrous Holmes +rose up, wobbling his double chins, and says he, 'Order, gentlemen; the +first man that draws, I'll lay down on him and smother him!' All quiet +on the Potomac, you bet! + +"They were pretty how-come-you-so' by now, and they begun to blow. +Emerson says, 'The nobbiest thing I ever wrote was "Barbara Frietchie."' +Says Longfellow, 'It don't begin with my "Biglow Papers."' Says Holmes, +'My "Thanatopsis" lays over 'em both.' They mighty near ended in a fight. +Then they wished they had some more company--and Mr. Emerson pointed to +me and says: + + "'Is yonder squalid peasant all + That this proud nursery could breed?' + +He was a-whetting his bowie on his boot--so I let it pass. Well, sir, +next they took it into their heads that they would like some music; so +they made me stand up and sing "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" till I +dropped-at thirteen minutes past four this morning. That's what I've +been through, my friend. When I woke at seven, they were leaving, thank +goodness, and Mr. Longfellow had my only boots on, and his'n under his +arm. Says I, 'Hold on, there, Evangeline, what are you going to do with +them?' He says, 'Going to make tracks with 'em; because: + + "'Lives of great men all remind us + We can make our lives sublime; + And, departing, leave behind us + Footprints on the sands of time.' + +"As I said, Mr. Twain, you are the fourth in twenty-four hours--and I'm +going to move; I ain't suited to a littery atmosphere." + +I said to the miner, "Why, my dear sir, these were not the gracious +singers to whom we and the world pay loving reverence and homage; these +were impostors." + +The miner investigated me with a calm eye for a while; then said he, "Ah! +impostors, were they? Are you?" + +I did not pursue the subject, and since then I have not travelled on my +'nom de guerre' enough to hurt. Such was the reminiscence I was moved to +contribute, Mr. Chairman. In my enthusiasm I may have exaggerated the +details a little, but you will easily forgive me that fault, since I +believe it is the first time I have ever deflected from perpendicular +fact on an occasion like this. + + ......................... + +From Mark Twain's Autobiography. + + January 11, 1906. + +Answer to a letter received this morning: + + DEAR MRS. H.,--I am forever your debtor for reminding me of that + curious passage in my life. During the first year or, two after it + happened, I could not bear to think of it. My pain and shame were + so intense, and my sense of having been an imbecile so settled, + established and confirmed, that I drove the episode entirely from my + mind--and so all these twenty-eight or twenty-nine years I have + lived in the conviction that my performance of that time was coarse, + vulgar, and destitute of humor. But your suggestion that you and + your family found humor in it twenty-eight years ago moved me to + look into the matter. So I commissioned a Boston typewriter to + delve among the Boston papers of that bygone time and send me a copy + of it. + + It came this morning, and if there is any vulgarity about it I am + not able to discover it. If it isn't innocently and ridiculously + funny, I am no judge. I will see to it that you get a copy. + + +What I have said to Mrs. H. is true. I did suffer during a year or two +from the deep humiliations of that episode. But at last, in 1888, in +Venice, my wife and I came across Mr. and Mrs. A. P. C., of Concord, +Massachusetts, and a friendship began then of the sort which nothing but +death terminates. The C.'s were very bright people and in every way +charming and companionable. We were together a month or two in Venice +and several months in Rome, afterward, and one day that lamented break of +mine was mentioned. And when I was on the point of lathering those +people for bringing it to my mind when I had gotten the memory of it +almost squelched, I perceived with joy that the C.'s were indignant about +the way that my performance had been received in Boston. They poured out +their opinions most freely and frankly about the frosty attitude of the +people who were present at that performance, and about the Boston +newspapers for the position they had taken in regard to the matter. +That position was that I had been irreverent beyond belief, beyond +imagination. Very well; I had accepted that as a fact for a year or two, +and had been thoroughly miserable about it whenever I thought of it +--which was not frequently, if I could help it. Whenever I thought of it +I wondered how I ever could have been inspired to do so unholy a thing. +Well, the C.'s comforted me, but they did not persuade me to continue to +think about the unhappy episode. I resisted that. I tried to get it out +of my mind, and let it die, and I succeeded. Until Mrs. H.'s letter +came, it had been a good twenty-five years since I had thought of that +matter; and when she said that the thing was funny I wondered if possibly +she might be right. At any rate, my curiosity was aroused, and I wrote +to Boston and got the whole thing copied, as above set forth. + +I vaguely remember some of the details of that gathering--dimly I can see +a hundred people--no, perhaps fifty--shadowy figures sitting at tables +feeding, ghosts now to me, and nameless forevermore. I don't know who +they were, but I can very distinctly see, seated at the grand table and +facing the rest of us, Mr. Emerson, supernaturally grave, unsmiling; +Mr. Whittier, grave, lovely, his beautiful spirit shining out of his +face; Mr. Longfellow, with his silken white hair and his benignant face; +Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, flashing smiles and affection and all +good-fellowship everywhere like a rose-diamond whose facets are being +turned toward the light first one way and then another--a charming man, +and always fascinating, whether he was talking or whether he was sitting +still (what he would call still, but what would be more or less motion to +other people). I can see those figures with entire distinctness across +this abyss of time. + +One other feature is clear--Willie Winter (for these past thousand years +dramatic editor of the New York Tribune, and still occupying that high +post in his old age) was there. He was much younger then than he is now, +and he showed 'it. It was always a pleasure to me to see Willie Winter +at a banquet. During a matter of twenty years I was seldom at a banquet +where Willie Winter was not also present, and where he did not read a +charming poem written for the occasion. He did it this time, and it was +up to standard: dainty, happy, choicely phrased, and as good to listen to +as music, and sounding exactly as if it was pouring unprepared out of +heart and brain. + +Now at that point ends all that was pleasurable about that notable +celebration of Mr. Whittier's seventieth birthday--because I got up at +that point and followed Winter, with what I have no doubt I supposed +would be the gem of the evening--the gay oration above quoted from the +Boston paper. I had written it all out the day before and had perfectly +memorized it, and I stood up there at my genial and happy and +self-satisfied ease, and began to deliver it. Those majestic guests; +that row of venerable and still active volcanoes, listened; as did +everybody else in the house, with attentive interest. Well, I delivered +myself of--we'll say the first two hundred words of my speech. I was +expecting no returns from that part of the speech, but this was not the +case as regarded the rest of it. I arrived now at the dialogue: "The +old miner said, 'You are the fourth, I'm going to move.' 'The fourth +what?' said I. He answered, 'The fourth littery man that has been here +in twenty-four hours. I am going to move.' 'Why, you don't tell me;' +said I. 'Who were the others?' 'Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Oliver +Wendell Holmes, consound the lot--'" + +Now, then, the house's attention continued, but the expression of +interest in the faces turned to a sort of black frost. I wondered what +the trouble was. I didn't know. I went on, but with difficulty +--I struggled along, and entered upon that miner's fearful description of +the bogus Emerson, the bogus Holmes, the bogus Longfellow, always hoping +--but with a gradually perishing hope that somebody--would laugh, or that +somebody would at least smile, but nobody did. I didn't know enough to +give it up and sit down, I was too new to public speaking, and so I went +on with this awful performance, and carried it clear through to the end, +in front of a body of people who seemed turned to stone with horror. +It was the sort of expression their faces would have worn if I had been +making these remarks about the Deity and the rest of the Trinity; there +is no milder way, in which to describe the petrified condition and the +ghastly expression of those people. + +When I sat down it was with a heart which had long ceased to beat. +I shall never be as dead again as I was then. I shall never be as +miserable again as I was then. I speak now as one who doesn't know what +the condition of things may be in the next world, but in this one I shall +never be as wretched again as I was then. Howells, who was near me, +tried to say a comforting word, but couldn't get beyond a gasp. There +was no use--he understood the whole size of the disaster. He had good +intentions, but the words froze before they could get out. It was an +atmosphere that would freeze anything. If Benvenuto Cellini's salamander +had been in that place he would not have survived to be put into +Cellini's autobiography. There was a frightful pause. There was an +awful silence, a desolating silence. Then the next man on the list had +to get up--there was no help for it. That was Bishop--Bishop had just +burst handsomely upon the world with a most acceptable novel, which had +appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, a place which would make any novel +respectable and any author noteworthy. In this case the novel itself was +recognized as being, without extraneous help, respectable. Bishop was +away up in the public favor, and he was an object of high interest, +consequently there was a sort of national expectancy in the air; we may +say our American millions were standing, from Maine to Texas and from +Alaska to Florida, holding their breath, their lips parted, their hands +ready to applaud, when Bishop should get up on that occasion, and for the +first time in his life speak in public. It was under these damaging +conditions that he got up to "make good," as the vulgar say. I had +spoken several times before, and that is the reason why I was able to go +on without dying in my tracks, as I ought to have done--but Bishop had +had no experience. He was up facing those awful deities--facing those +other people, those strangers--facing human beings for the first time in +his life, with a speech to utter. No doubt it was well packed away in +his memory, no doubt it was fresh and usable, until I had been heard +from. I suppose that after that, and under the smothering pall of that +dreary silence, it began to waste away and disappear out of his head like +the rags breaking from the edge of a fog, and presently there wasn't any +fog left. He didn't go on--he didn't last long. It was not many +sentence's after his first before he began to hesitate, and break, and +lose his grip, and totter, and wobble, and at last he slumped down in a +limp and mushy pile. + +Well, the programme for the occasion was probably not more than +one-third finished, but it ended there. Nobody rose. The next man +hadn't strength enough to get up, and everybody looked so dazed, so +stupefied, paralyzed; it was impossible for anybody to do anything, or +even try. Nothing could go on in that strange atmosphere. Howells +mournfully, and without words, hitched himself to Bishop and me and +supported us out of the room. It was very kind--he was most generous. +He towed us tottering away into same room in that building, and we sat +down there. I don't know what my remark was now, but I know the nature +of it. It was the kind of remark you make when you know that nothing in +the world can help your case. But Howells was honest--he had to say the +heart-breaking things he did say: that there was no help for this +calamity, this shipwreck, this cataclysm; that this was the most +disastrous thing that had ever happened in anybody's history--and then he +added, "That is, for you--and consider what you have done for Bishop. It +is bad enough in your case, you deserve, to suffer. You have committed +this crime, and you deserve to have all you are going to get. But here +is an innocent man. Bishop had never done you any harm, and see what you +have done to him. He can never hold his head up again. The world can +never look upon Bishop as being a live person. He is a corpse." + +That is the history of that episode of twenty-eight years ago, which +pretty nearly killed me with shame during that first year or two whenever +it forced its way into my mind. + +Now then, I take that speech up and examine it. As I said, it arrived +this morning, from Boston. I have read it twice, and unless I am an +idiot, it hasn't a single defect in it from the first word to the last. +It is just as good as good can be. It is smart; it is saturated with +humor. There isn't a suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity in it +anywhere. What could have been the matter with that house? It is +amazing, it is incredible, that they didn't shout with laughter, and +those deities the loudest of them all. Could the fault have been with +me? Did I lose courage when I saw those great men up there whom I was +going to describe in such a strange fashion? If that happened, if I +showed doubt, that can account for it, for you can't be successfully +funny if you show that you are afraid of it. Well, I can't account for +it, but if I had those beloved and revered old literary immortals back +here now on the platform at Carnegie Hall I would take that same old +speech, deliver it, word for word, and melt them till they'd run all over +that stage. Oh, the fault must have been with me, it is not in the +speech at all. + + + + + + +PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS + + ADDRESS AT THE FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, N. E. SOCIETY, + PHILADELPHIA, DECEMBER 22, 1881 + + On calling upon Mr. Clemens to make response, + President Rollins said: + + "This sentiment has been assigned to one who was never exactly + born in New England, nor, perhaps, were any of his ancestors. + He is not technically, therefore, of New England descent. + Under the painful circumstances in which he has found himself, + however, he has done the best he could--he has had all his + children born there, and has made of himself a New England + ancestor. He is a self-made man. More than this, and better + even, in cheerful, hopeful, helpful literature he is of New + England ascent. To ascend there in any thing that's reasonable + is difficult; for--confidentially, with the door shut--we all + know that they are the brightest, ablest sons of that goodly + land who never leave it, and it is among and above them that + Mr. Twain has made his brilliant and permanent ascent--become + a man of mark." + +I rise to protest. I have kept still for years; but really I think there +is no sufficient justification for this sort of thing. What do you want +to celebrate those people for?--those ancestors of yours of 1620--the +Mayflower tribe, I mean. What do you want to celebrate them for? Your +pardon: the gentleman at my left assures me that you are not celebrating +the Pilgrims themselves, but the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth rock +on the 22d of December. So you are celebrating their landing. Why, the +other pretext was thin enough, but this is thinner than ever; the other +was tissue, tinfoil, fish-bladder, but this is gold-leaf. Celebrating +their lauding! What was there remarkable about it, I would like to know? +What can you be thinking of? Why, those Pilgrims had been at sea three +or four months. It was the very middle of winter: it was as cold as +death off Cape Cod there. Why shouldn't they come ashore? If they +hadn't landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact: It +would have been a case of monumental leatherheadedness which the world +would not willingly let die. If it had been you, gentlemen, you probably +wouldn't have landed, but you have no shadow of right to be celebrating, +in your ancestors, gifts which they did not exercise, but only +transmitted. Why, to be celebrating the mere landing of the Pilgrims +--to be trying to make out that this most natural and simple and +customary procedure was an extraordinary circumstance--a circumstance to +be amazed at, and admired, aggrandized and glorified, at orgies like this +for two hundred and sixty years--hang it, a horse would have known enough +to land; a horse--Pardon again; the gentleman on my right assures me that +it was not merely the landing of the Pilgrims that we are celebrating, +but the Pilgrims themselves. So we have struck an inconsistency here +--one says it was the landing, the other says it was the Pilgrims. It +is an inconsistency characteristic of your intractable and disputatious +tribe, for you never agree about anything but Boston. Well, then, what +do you want to celebrate those Pilgrims for? They were a mighty hard +lot--you know it. I grant you, without the slightest unwillingness, that +they were a deal more gentle and merciful and just than were the people +of Europe of that day; I grant you that they are better than their +predecessors. But what of that?--that is nothing. People always +progress. You are better than your fathers and grandfathers were +(this is the first time I have ever aimed a measureless slander at the +departed, for I consider such things improper). Yes, those among you who +have not been in the penitentiary, if such there be, are better than your +fathers and grandfathers were; but is that any sufficient reason, for +getting up annual dinners and celebrating you? No, by no means--by no +means. Well, I repeat, those Pilgrims were a hard lot. They took good +care of themselves, but they abolished everybody else's ancestors. I am +a border-ruffian from the State of Missouri. I am a Connecticut Yankee +by adoption. In me, you have Missouri morals, Connecticut culture; this, +gentlemen, is the combination which makes the perfect man. But where are +my ancestors? Whom shall I celebrate? Where shall I find the raw +material? + +My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian--an early Indian. +Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. Not one drop of my +blood flows in that Indian's veins today. I stand here, lone and +forlorn, without an ancestor. They skinned him! I do not object to +that, if they needed his fur; but alive, gentlemen-alive! They skinned +him alive--and before company! That is what rankles. Think how he must +have felt; for he was a sensitive person and easily embarrassed. If he +had been a bird, it would have been all right, and no violence done to +his feelings, because he would have been considered "dressed." But he +was not a bird, gentlemen, he was a man, and probably one of the most +undressed men that ever was. I ask you to put yourselves in his place. +I ask it as a favor; I ask it as a tardy act of justice; I ask it in the +interest of fidelity to the traditions of your ancestors; I ask it that +the world may contemplate, with vision unobstructed by disguising +swallow-tails and white cravats, the spectacle which the true New England +Society ought to present. Cease to come to these annual orgies in this +hollow modern mockery--the surplusage of raiment. Come in character; +come in the summer grace, come in the unadorned simplicity, come in the +free and joyous costume which your sainted ancestors provided for mine. + +Later ancestors of mine were the Quakers William Robinson, Marmaduke +Stevenson, et al. Your tribe chased them put of the country for their +religion's sake; promised them death if they came back; for your +ancestors had forsaken the homes they loved, and braved the perils of the +sea, the implacable climate, and the savage wilderness, to acquire that +highest and most precious of boons, freedom for every man on this broad +continent to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience--and +they were not going to allow a lot of pestiferous Quakers to interfere +with it. Your ancestors broke forever the chains of political slavery, +and gave the vote to every man in this wide land, excluding none!--none +except those who did not belong to the orthodox church. Your ancestors +--yes, they were a hard lot; but, nevertheless, they gave us religious +liberty to worship as they required us to worship, and political liberty +to vote as the church required; and so I the bereft one, I the forlorn +one, am here to do my best to help you celebrate them right. + +The Quaker woman Elizabeth Hooton was an ancestress of mine. Your people +were pretty severe with her you will confess that. But, poor thing! +I believe they changed her opinions before she died, and took her into +their fold; and so we have every reason to presume that when she died she +went to the same place which your ancestors went to. It is a great pity, +for she was a good woman. Roger Williams was an ancestor of mine. +I don't really remember what your people did with him. But they banished +him to Rhode Island, anyway. And then, I believe, recognizing that this +was really carrying harshness to an unjustifiable extreme, they took pity +on him and burned him. They were a hard lot! All those Salem witches +were ancestors of mine! Your people made it tropical for them. Yes, +they did; by pressure and the gallows they made such a clean deal with +them that there hasn't been a witch and hardly a halter in our family +from that day to this, and that is one hundred and eighty-nine years. +The first slave brought into New England out of Africa by your +progenitors was an ancestor of mine--for I am of a mixed breed, an +infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel. I'm not one of your sham +meerschaums that you can color in a week. No, my complexion is the +patient art of eight generations. Well, in my own time, I had acquired a +lot of my kin--by purchase, and swapping around, and one way and another +--and was getting along very well. Then, with the inborn perversity of +your lineage, you got up a war, and took them all away from me. And so, +again am I bereft, again am I forlorn; no drop of my blood flows in the +veins of any living being who is marketable. + +O my friends, hear me and reform! I seek your good, not mine. You have +heard the speeches. Disband these New England societies--nurseries of a +system of steadily augmenting laudation and hosannaing, which; if +persisted in uncurbed, may some day in the remote future beguile you into +prevaricating and bragging. Oh, stop, stop, while you are still +temperate in your appreciation of your ancestors! Hear me, I beseech +you; get up an auction and sell Plymouth Rock! The Pilgrims were a +simple and ignorant race. They never had seen any good rocks before, or +at least any that were not watched, and so they were excusable for +hopping ashore in frantic delight and clapping an iron fence around this +one. But you, gentlemen, are educated; you are enlightened; you know +that in the rich land of your nativity, opulent New England, overflowing +with rocks, this one isn't worth, at the outside, more than thirty-five +cents. Therefore, sell it, before it is injured by exposure, or at least +throw it open to the patent-medicine advertisements, and let it earn its +taxes: + +Yes, hear your true friend-your only true friend--list to his voice. +Disband these societies, hotbeds of vice, of moral decay--perpetuators of +ancestral superstition. Here on this board I see water, I see milk, I +see the wild and deadly lemonade. These are but steps upon the downward +path. Next we shall see tea, then chocolate, then coffee--hotel coffee. +A few more years--all too few, I fear--mark my words, we shall have +cider! Gentlemen, pause ere it be too late. You are on the broad road +which leads to dissipation, physical ruin, moral decay, gory crime and +the gallows! I beseech you, I implore you, in the name of your anxious +friends, in the name of your suffering families, in the name of your +impending widows and orphans, stop ere it be too late. Disband these New +England societies, renounce these soul-blistering saturnalia, cease from +varnishing the rusty reputations of your long-vanished ancestors--the +super-high-moral old iron-clads of Cape Cod, the pious buccaneers of +Plymouth Rock--go home, and try to learn to behave! + +However, chaff and nonsense aside, I think I honor and appreciate your +Pilgrim stock as much as you do yourselves, perhaps; and I endorse and +adopt a sentiment uttered by a grandfather of mine once--a man of sturdy +opinions, of sincere make of mind, and not given to flattery. He said: +"People may talk as they like about that Pilgrim stock, but, after all's +said and done, it would be pretty hard to improve on those people; and, +as for me, I don't mind coming out flatfooted and saying there ain't any +way to improve on them--except having them born in, Missouri!" + + + + + + +COMPLIMENTS AND DEGREES + + DELIVERED AT THE LOTOS CLUB, JANUARY 11, 1908 + + In introducing Mr. Clemens, Frank R. Lawrence, the President + of the Lotos Club, recalled the fact that the first club dinner + in the present club-house, some fourteen years ago, was in + honor of Mark Twain. + +I wish to begin this time at the beginning, lest I forget it altogether; +that is to say, I wish to thank you for this welcome that you are giving, +and the welcome which you gave me seven years ago, and which I forgot to +thank you for at that time. I also wish to thank you for the welcome you +gave me fourteen years ago, which I also forgot to thank you for at the +time. + +I hope you will continue this custom to give me a dinner every seven +years before I join the hosts in the other world--I do not know which +world. + +Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Porter have paid me many compliments. It is very +difficult to take compliments. I do not care whether you deserve the +compliments or not, it is just as difficult to take them. The other +night I was at the Engineers' Club, and enjoyed the sufferings of +Mr. Carnegie. They were complimenting him there; there it was all +compliments, and none of them deserved. They say that you cannot live +by bread alone, but I can live on compliments. + +I do not make any pretence that I dislike compliments. The stronger the +better, and I can manage to digest them. I think I have lost so much by +not making a collection of compliments, to put them away and take them +out again once in a while. When in England I said that I would start to +collect compliments, and I began there and I have brought some of them +along. + +The first one of these lies--I wrote them down and preserved them +--I think they are mighty good and extremely just. It is one of Hamilton +Mabie's compliments. He said that La Salle was the first one to make a +voyage of the Mississippi, but Mark Twain was the first to chart, light, +and navigate it for the whole world. + +If that had been published at the time that I issued that book [Life on +the Mississippi], it would have been money in my pocket. I tell you, it +is a talent by itself to pay compliments gracefully and have them ring +true. It's an art by itself. + +Here is another compliment by Albert Bigelow Paine, my biographer. He is +writing four octavo volumes about me, and he has been at my elbow two and +one-half years. + +I just suppose that he does not know me, but says he knows me. He says +"Mark Twain is not merely a great writer, a great philosopher, a great +man; he is the supreme expression of the human being, with his strength +and his weakness." What a talent for compression! It takes a genius in +compression to compact as many facts as that. + +W. D. Howells spoke of me as first of Hartford, and ultimately of the +solar system, not to say of the universe: + +You know how modest Howells is. If it can be proved that my fame reaches +to Neptune and Saturn; that will satisfy even me. You know how modest +and retiring Howells seems to be, but deep down he is as vain as I am. + +Mr. Howells had been granted a degree at Oxford, whose gown was red. +He had been invited to an exercise at Columbia, and upon inquiry had been +told that it was usual to wear the black gown: Later he had found that +three other men wore bright gowns, and he had lamented that he had been +one of the black mass, and not a red torch. + +Edison wrote: "The average American loves his family. If he has any love +left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark Twain." + +Now here's the compliment of a little Montana girl which came to me +indirectly. She was in a room in which there was a large photograph of +me. After gazing at it steadily for a time, she said: + +"We've got a John the Baptist like that." She also said: "Only ours has +more trimmings." + +I suppose she meant the halo. Now here is a gold-miner's compliment. +It is forty-two years old. It was my introduction to an audience to +which I lectured in a log school-house. There were no ladies there. +I wasn't famous then. They didn't know me. Only the miners were there, +with their breeches tucked into their boottops and with clay all over +them. They wanted some one to introduce me, and they selected a miner, +who protested, saying: + +"I don't know anything about this man. Anyhow, I only know two things +about him. One is, he has never been in jail, and the other is, I don't +know why." + +There's one thing I want to say about that English trip. I knew his +Majesty the King of England long years ago, and I didn't meet him for the +first time then. One thing that I regret was that some newspapers said +I talked with the Queen of England with my hat on. I don't do that with +any woman. I did not put it on until she asked me to. Then she told me +to put it on, and it's a command there. I thought I had carried my +American democracy far enough. So I put it on. I have no use for a hat, +and never did have. + +Who was it who said that the police of London knew me? Why, the police +know me everywhere. There never was a day over there when a policeman +did not salute me, and then put up his hand and stop the traffic of the +world. They treated me as though I were a duchess. + +The happiest experience I had in England was at a dinner given in the +building of the Punch publication, a humorous paper which is appreciated +by all Englishmen. It was the greatest privilege ever allowed a +foreigner. I entered the dining-room of the building, where those men +get together who have been running the paper for over fifty years. We +were about to begin dinner when the toastmaster said: "Just a minute; +there ought to be a little ceremony." Then there was that meditating +silence for a while, and out of a closet there came a beautiful little +girl dressed in pink, holding in her hand a copy of the previous week's +paper, which had in it my cartoon. It broke me all up. I could not even +say "Thank you." That was the prettiest incident of the dinner, the +delight of all that wonderful table. When she was about to go; I said, +"My child, you are not going to leave me; I have hardly got acquainted +with you." She replied, "You know I've got to go; they never let me come +in here before, and they never will again." That is one of the beautiful +incidents that I cherish. + + [At the conclusion of his speech, and while the diners were still + cheering him, Colonel Porter brought forward the red-and-gray gown + of the Oxford "doctor," and Mr. Clemens was made to don it. + The diners rose to their feet in their enthusiasm. With the + mortar-board on his head, and looking down admiringly at himself, + Mr. Twain said--] + +I like that gown. I always did like red. The redder it is the better +I like it. I was born for a savage. Now, whoever saw any red like this? +There is no red outside the arteries of an archangel that could compare +with this. I know you all envy me. I am going to have luncheon shortly +with ladies just ladies. I will be the only lady of my sex present, and +I shall put on this gown and make those ladies look dim. + + + + + + +BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS + + ADDRESS AT THE PILGRIMS' CLUB LUNCHEON, GIVEN IN HONOR OF Mr. + CLEMENS AT THE SAVOY HOTEL, LONDON, JUNE 25, 1907. + + Mr. Birrell, M.P., Chief-Secretary for Ireland, in introducing + Mr. Clemens said: "We all love Mark Twain, and we are here to + tell him so. One more point--all the world knows it, and that + is why it is dangerous to omit it--our guest is a distinguished + citizen of the Great Republic beyond the seas. In America his + 'Huckleberry Finn' and his 'Tom Sawyer' are what 'Robinson + Crusoe' and 'Tom Brown's School Days' have been to us. They + are racy of the soil. They are books to which it is impossible + to place any period of termination. I will not speak of the + classics--reminiscences of much evil in our early lives. We do + not meet here to-day as critics with our appreciations and + depreciations, our twopenny little prefaces or our forewords. + I am not going to say what the world a thousand years hence + will think of Mark Twain. Posterity will take care of itself, + will read what it wants to read, will forget what it chooses to + forget, and will pay no attention whatsoever to our critical + mumblings and jumblings. Let us therefore be content to say to + our friend and guest that we are here speaking for ourselves + and for our children, to say what he has been to us. I + remember in Liverpool, in 1867, first buying the copy, which I + still preserve, of the celebrated 'Jumping Frog.' It had a few + words of preface which reminded me then that our guest in those + days was called 'the wild humorist of the Pacific slope,' and a + few lines later down, 'the moralist of the Main.' That was + some forty years ago. Here he is, still the humorist, still + the moralist. His humor enlivens and enlightens his morality, + and his morality is all the better for his humor. That is one + of the reasons why we love him. I am not here to mention any + book of his--that is a subject of dispute in my family circle, + which is the best and which is the next best--but I must put in + a word, lest I should not be true to myself--a terrible thing + --for his Joan of Arc, a book of chivalry, of nobility, and of + manly sincerity for which I take this opportunity of thanking + him. But you can all drink this toast, each one of you with + his own intention. You can get into it what meaning you like. + Mark Twain is a man whom English and Americans do well to + honor. He is the true consolidator of nations. His delightful + humor is of the kind which dissipates and destroys national + prejudices. His truth and his honor, his love of truth, and + his love of honor, overflow all boundaries. He has made the + world better by his presence. We rejoice to see him here. + Long may he live to reap the plentiful harvest of hearty, + honest human affection!" + +Pilgrims, I desire first to thank those undergraduates of Oxford. +When a man has grown so old as I am, when he has reached the verge of +seventy-two years, there is nothing that carries him back to the +dreamland of his life, to his boyhood, like recognition of those young +hearts up yonder. And so I thank them out of my heart. I desire to thank +the Pilgrims of New York also for their kind notice and message which +they have cabled over here. Mr. Birrell says he does not know how he got +here. But he will be able to get away all right--he has not drunk +anything since he came here. I am glad to know about those friends of +his, Otway and Chatterton--fresh, new names to me. I am glad of the +disposition he has shown to rescue them from the evils of poverty, and if +they are still in London, I hope to have a talk with them. For a while I +thought he was going to tell us the effect which my book had upon his +growing manhood. I thought he was going to tell us how much that effect +amounted to, and whether it really made him what he now is, but with the +discretion born of Parliamentary experience he dodged that, and we do not +know now whether he read the book or not. He did that very neatly. I +could not do it any better myself. + +My books have had effects, and very good ones, too, here and there, and +some others not so good. There is no doubt about that. But I remember +one monumental instance of it years and years ago. Professor Norton, of +Harvard, was over here, and when he came back to Boston I went out with +Howells to call on him. Norton was allied in some way by marriage with +Darwin. + +Mr. Norton was very gentle in what he had to say, and almost delicate, +and he said: "Mr. Clemens, I have been spending some time with Mr. Darwin +in England, and I should like to tell you something connected with that +visit. You were the object of it, and I myself would have been very +proud of it, but you may not be proud of it. At any rate, I am going to +tell you what it was, and to leave to you to regard it as you please. +Mr. Darwin took me up to his bedroom and pointed out certain things +there-pitcher-plants, and so on, that he was measuring and watching from +day to day--and he said: 'The chambermaid is permitted to do what she +pleases in this room, but she must never touch those plants and never +touch those books on that table by that candle. With those books I read +myself to sleep every night.' Those were your own books." I said: +"There is no question to my mind as to whether I should regard that as a +compliment or not. I do regard it as a very great compliment and a very +high honor that that great mind, laboring for the whole human race, +should rest itself on my books. I am proud that he should read himself +to sleep with them." + +Now, I could not keep that to myself--I was so proud of it. As soon as I +got home to Hartford I called up my oldest friend--and dearest enemy on +occasion--the Rev. Joseph Twichell, my pastor, and I told him about that, +and, of course, he was full of interest and venom. Those people who get +no compliments like that feel like that. He went off. He did not issue +any applause of any kind, and I did not hear of that subject for some +time. But when Mr. Darwin passed away from this life, and some time +after Darwin's Life and Letters came out, the Rev. Mr. Twichell procured +an early copy of that work and found something in it which he considered +applied to me. He came over to my house--it was snowing, raining, +sleeting, but that did not make any difference to Twichell. He produced +the book, and turned over and over, until he came to a certain place, +when he said: "Here, look at this letter from Mr. Darwin to Sir Joseph +Hooker." What Mr. Darwin said--I give you the idea and not the very +words--was this: I do not know whether I ought to have devoted my whole +life to these drudgeries in natural history and the other sciences or +not, for while I may have gained in one way I have lost in another. Once +I had a fine perception and appreciation of high literature, but in me +that quality is atrophied. "That was the reason," said Mr. Twichell, "he +was reading your books." + +Mr. Birrell has touched lightly--very lightly, but in not an +uncomplimentary way--on my position in this world as a moralist. I am +glad to have that recognition, too, because I have suffered since I have +been in this town; in the first place, right away, when I came here, from +a newsman going around with a great red, highly displayed placard in the +place of an apron. He was selling newspapers, and there were two +sentences on that placard which would have been all right if they had +been punctuated; but they ran those two sentences together without a +comma or anything, and that would naturally create a wrong impression, +because it said, "Mark Twain arrives Ascot Cup stolen." No doubt many a +person was misled by those sentences joined together in that unkind way. +I have no doubt my character has suffered from it. I suppose I ought to +defend my character, but how can I defend it? I can say here and now +--and anybody can see by my face that I am sincere, that I speak the truth +--that I have never seen that Cup. I have not got the Cup--I did not have +a chance to get it. I have always had a good character in that way. I +have hardly ever stolen anything, and if I did steal anything I had +discretion enough to know about the value of it first. I do not steal +things that are likely to get myself into trouble. I do not think any of +us do that. I know we all take things--that is to be expected--but +really, I have never taken anything, certainly in England, that amounts +to any great thing. I do confess that when I was here seven years ago I +stole a hat, but that did not amount to anything. It was not a good hat, +and was only a clergyman's hat, anyway. + +I was at a luncheon party, and Archdeacon Wilberforce was there also. I +dare say he is Archdeacon now--he was a canon then--and he was serving in +the Westminster battery, if that is the proper term--I do not know, as +you mix military and ecclesiastical things together so much. He left the +luncheon table before I did. He began this. I did steal his hat, but he +began by taking mine. I make that interjection because I would not +accuse Archdeacon Wilberforce of stealing my hat--I should not think of +it. I confine that phrase to myself. He merely took my hat. +And with good judgment, too--it was a better hat than his. He came out +before the luncheon was over, and sorted the hats in the hall, and +selected one which suited. It happened to be mine. He went off with it. +When I came out by-and-by there was no hat there which would go on my +head except his, which was left behind. My head was not the customary +size just at that time. I had been receiving a good many very nice and +complimentary attentions, and my head was a couple of sizes larger than +usual, and his hat just suited me. The bumps and corners were all right +intellectually. There were results pleasing to me--possibly so to him. +He found out whose hat it was, and wrote me saying it was pleasant that +all the way home, whenever he met anybody his gravities, his solemnities, +his deep thoughts, his eloquent remarks were all snatched up by the +people he met, and mistaken for brilliant humorisms. + +I had another experience. It was not unpleasing. I was received with a +deference which was entirely foreign to my experience by everybody whom I +met, so that before I got home I had a much higher opinion of myself than +I have ever had before or since. And there is in that very connection an +incident which I remember at that old date which is rather melancholy to +me, because it shows how a person can deteriorate in a mere seven years. +It is seven years ago. I have not that hat now. I was going down +Pall-Mall, or some other of your big streets, and I recognized that that +hat needed ironing. I went into a big shop and passed in my hat, and +asked that it might be ironed. They were courteous, very courteous, even +courtly. They brought that hat back to me presently very sleek and nice, +and I asked how much there was to pay. They replied that they did not +charge the clergy anything. I have cherished the delight of that moment +from that day to this. It was the first thing I did the other day to go +and hunt up that shop and hand in my hat to have it ironed. I said when +it came back, "How much to pay?" They said, "Ninepence." In seven years +I have acquired all that worldliness, and I am sorry to be back where I +was seven years ago. + +But now I am chaffing and chaffing and chaffing here, and I hope you will +forgive me for that; but when a man stands on the verge of seventy-two +you know perfectly well that he never reached that place without knowing +what this life is heart-breaking bereavement. And so our reverence is +for our dead. We do not forget them; but our duty is toward the living; +and if we can be cheerful, cheerful in spirit, cheerful in speech and in +hope, that is a benefit to those who are around us. + +My own history includes an incident which will always connect me with +England in a pathetic way, for when I arrived here seven years ago with +my wife and my daughter--we had gone around the globe lecturing to raise +money to clear off a debt--my wife and one of my daughters started across +the ocean to bring to England our eldest daughter. She was twenty four +years of age and in the bloom of young womanhood, and we were +unsuspecting. When my wife and daughter--and my wife has passed from +this life since--when they had reached mid Atlantic, a cablegram--one of +those heartbreaking cablegrams which we all in our days have to +experience--was put into my hand. It stated that that daughter of ours +had gone to her long sleep. And so, as I say, I cannot always be +cheerful, and I cannot always be chaffing; I must sometimes lay the cap +and bells aside, and recognize that I am of the human race like the rest, +and must have my cares and griefs. And therefore I noticed what Mr. +Birrell said--I was so glad to hear him say it--something that was in the +nature of these verses here at the top of this: + + "He lit our life with shafts of sun + And vanquished pain. + Thus two great nations stand as one + In honoring Twain." + +I am very glad to have those verses. I am very glad and very grateful +for what Mr. Birrell said in that connection. I have received since I +have been here, in this one week, hundreds of letters from all conditions +of people in England--men, women, and children--and there is in them +compliment, praise, and, above all and better than all, there is in them +a note of affection. Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection +--that is the last and final and most precious reward that any man can +win, whether by character or achievement, and I am very grateful to have +that reward. All these letters make me feel that here in England--as in +America--when I stand under the English flag, I am not a stranger. I am +not an alien, but at home. + + + + + + +DEDICATION SPEECH + + AT THE DEDICATION OF THE COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, + MAY 16, 1908 + + Mr. Clemens wore his gown as Doctor of Laws, Oxford University. + Ambassador Bryce and Mr. Choate had made the formal addresses. + +How difficult, indeed, is the higher education. Mr. Choate needs a +little of it. He is not only short as a statistician of New York, but he +is off, far off, in his mathematics. The four thousand citizens of +Greater New York, indeed! + +But I don't think it was wise or judicious on the part of Mr. Choate to +show this higher education he has obtained. He sat in the lap of that +great education (I was there at the time), and see the result--the +lamentable result. Maybe if he had had a sandwich here to sustain him +the result would not have been so serious. + +For seventy-two years I have been striving to acquire that higher +education which stands for modesty and diffidence, and it doesn't work. + +And then look at Ambassador Bryce, who referred to his alma mater, +Oxford. He might just as well have included me. Well, I am a later +production. + +If I am the latest graduate, I really and sincerely hope I am not the +final flower of its seven centuries; I hope it may go on for seven ages +longer. + + + + + + +DIE SCHRECKEN DER DEUTSCHEN SPRACHE [THE HORRORS OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE] + + ADDRESS TO THE VIENNA PRESS CLUB, NOVEMBER 21, 1897, + DELIVERED IN GERMAN [Here in literal translation] + +It has me deeply touched, my gentlemen, here so hospitably received to +be. From colleagues out of my own profession, in this from my own home +so far distant land. My heart is full of gratitude, but my poverty of +German words forces me to greater economy of expression. Excuse you, my +gentlemen, that I read off, what I you say will. [But he didn't read]. + +The German language speak I not good, but have numerous connoisseurs me +assured that I her write like an angel. Maybe--maybe--I know not. Have +till now no acquaintance with the angels had. That comes later--when it +the dear God please--it has no hurry. + +Since long, my gentlemen, have I the passionate longing nursed a speech +on German to hold, but one has me not permitted. Men, who no feeling for +the art had, laid me ever hindrance in the way and made naught my desire +--sometimes by excuses, often by force. Always said these men to me: +"Keep you still, your Highness! Silence! For God's sake seek another +way and means yourself obnoxious to make." + +In the present case, as usual it is me difficult become, for me the +permission to obtain. The committee sorrowed deeply, but could me the +permission not grant on account of a law which from the Concordia demands +she shall the German language protect. Du liebe Zeit! How so had one to +me this say could--might--dared--should? I am indeed the truest friend +of the German language--and not only now, but from long since--yes, +before twenty years already. And never have I the desire had the noble +language to hurt; to the contrary, only wished she to improve--I would +her only reform. It is the dream of my life been. I have already visits +by the various German governments paid and for contracts prayed. I am +now to Austria in the same task come. I would only some changes effect. +I would only the language method--the luxurious, elaborate construction +compress, the eternal parenthesis suppress, do away with, annihilate; the +introduction of more than thirteen subjects in one sentence forbid; the +verb so far to the front pull that one it without a telescope discover +can. With one word, my gentlemen, I would your beloved language simplify +so that, my gentlemen, when you her for prayer need, One her yonder-up +understands. + +I beseech you, from me yourself counsel to let, execute these mentioned +reforms. Then will you an elegant language possess, and afterward, when +you some thing say will, will you at least yourself understand what you +said had. But often nowadays, when you a mile-long sentence from you +given and you yourself somewhat have rested, then must you have a +touching inquisitiveness have yourself to determine what you actually +spoken have. Before several days has the correspondent of a local paper +a sentence constructed which hundred and twelve words contain, and +therein were seven parentheses smuggled in, and the subject seven times +changed. Think you only, my gentlemen, in the course of the voyage of a +single sentence must the poor, persecuted, fatigued subject seven times +change position! + +Now, when we the mentioned reforms execute, will it no longer so bad be. +Doch noch eins. I might gladly the separable verb also a little bit +reform. I might none do let what Schiller did: he has the whole history +of the Thirty Years' War between the two members of a separable verb +in-pushed. That has even Germany itself aroused, and one has Schiller the +permission refused the History of the Hundred Years' War to compose--God +be it thanked! After all these reforms established be will, will the +German language the noblest and the prettiest on the world be. + +Since to you now, my gentlemen, the character of my mission known is, +beseech I you so friendly to be and to me your valuable help grant. +Mr. Potzl has the public believed make would that I to Vienna come am in +order the bridges to clog up and the traffic to hinder, while I +observations gather and note. Allow you yourselves but not from him +deceived. My frequent presence on the bridges has an entirely innocent +ground. Yonder gives it the necessary space, yonder can one a noble long +German sentence elaborate, the bridge-railing along, and his whole +contents with one glance overlook. On the one end of the railing pasted +I the first member of a separable verb and the final member cleave I to +the other end--then spread the body of the sentence between it out! +Usually are for my purposes the bridges of the city long enough; when I +but Potzl's writings study will I ride out and use the glorious endless +imperial bridge. But this is a calumny; Potzl writes the prettiest +German. Perhaps not so pliable as the mine, but in many details much +better. Excuse you these flatteries. These are well deserved. + +Now I my speech execute--no, I would say I bring her to the close. I am a +foreigner--but here, under you, have I it entirely forgotten. And so +again and yet again proffer I you my heartiest thanks. + + + + + + +GERMAN FOR THE HUNGARIANS + + ADDRESS AT THE JUBILEE CELEBRATION OF THE EMANCIPATION OF THE + HUNGARIAN PRESS, MARCH 26, 1899 + + The Ministry and members of Parliament were present. The + subject was the "Ausgleich"--i. e., the arrangement for the + apportionment of the taxes between Hungary and Austria. + Paragraph 14 of the ausgleich fixes the proportion each country + must pay to the support of the army. It is the paragraph which + caused the trouble and prevented its renewal. + +Now that we are all here together, I think it will be a good idea to +arrange the ausgleich. If you will act for Hungary I shall be quite +willing to act for Austria, and this is the very time for it. There +couldn't be a better, for we are all feeling friendly, fair-minded, and +hospitable now, and, full of admiration for each other, full of +confidence in each other, full of the spirit of welcome, full of the +grace of forgiveness, and the disposition to let bygones be bygones. + +Let us not waste this golden, this beneficent, this providential +opportunity. I am willing to make any concession you want, just so we +get it settled. I am not only willing to let grain come in free, I am +willing to pay the freight on it, and you may send delegates to the +Reichsrath if you like. All I require is that they shall be quiet, +peaceable people like your own deputies, and not disturb our proceedings. + +If you want the Gegenseitigengeldbeitragendenverhaltnismassigkeiten +rearranged and readjusted I am ready for that. I will let you off at +twenty-eight per cent.--twenty-seven--even twenty-five if you insist, +for there is nothing illiberal about me when I am out on a diplomatic +debauch. + +Now, in return for these concessions, I am willing to take anything in +reason, and I think we may consider the business settled and the +ausgleich ausgegloschen at last for ten solid years, and we will sign the +papers in blank, and do it here and now. + +Well, I am unspeakably glad to have that ausgleich off my hands. It has +kept me awake nights for anderthalbjahr. + +But I never could settle it before, because always when I called at the +Foreign Office in Vienna to talk about it, there wasn't anybody at home, +and that is not a place where you can go in and see for yourself whether +it is a mistake or not, because the person who takes care of the front +door there is of a size that discourages liberty of action and the free +spirit of investigation. To think the ausgleich is abgemacht at last! +It is a grand and beautiful consummation, and I am glad I came. + +The way I feel now I do honestly believe I would rather be just my own +humble self at this moment than paragraph 14. + + + + + + +A NEW GERMAN WORD + + To aid a local charity Mr. Clemens appeared before a + fashionable audience in Vienna, March 10, 1899, reading his + sketch "The Lucerne Girl," and describing how he had been + interviewed and ridiculed. He said in part: + +I have not sufficiently mastered German, to allow my using it with +impunity. My collection of fourteen-syllable German words is still +incomplete. But I have just added to that collection a jewel +--a veritable jewel. I found it in a telegram from Linz, and it +contains ninety-five letters: + +Personaleinkommensteuerschatzungskommissionsmitgliedsreisekostenrechnungs +erganzungsrevisionsfund + +If I could get a similar word engraved upon my tombstone I should sleep +beneath it in peace. + + + + + + +UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM + + DELIVERED AT THE DINNER GIVEN BY THE PUBLISHERS OF "THE + ATLANTIC MONTHLY" TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, IN HONOR OF HIS + SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY, AUGUST 29, 1879 + +I would have travelled a much greater distance than I have come to +witness the paying of honors to Doctor Holmes; for my feeling toward him +has always been one of peculiar warmth. When one receives a letter from +a great man for the first time in his life, it is a large event to him, +as all of you know by your own experience. You never can receive letters +enough from famous men afterward to obliterate that one, or dim the +memory of the pleasant surprise it was, and the gratification it gave +you. Lapse of time cannot make it commonplace or cheap. + +Well, the first great man who ever wrote me a letter was our guest +--Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was also the first great literary man I ever +stole anything from--and that is how I came to write to him and he to me. +When my first book was new, a friend of mine said to me, "The dedication +is very neat." Yes, I said, I thought it was. My friend said, "I always +admired it, even before I saw it in The Innocents Abroad." I naturally +said: "What do you mean? Where did you ever see it before?" "Well, I +saw it first some years ago as Doctor Holmes's dedication to his Songs in +Many Keys." Of course, my first impulse was to prepare this man's +remains for burial, but upon reflection I said I would reprieve him for a +moment or two and give him a chance to prove his assertion if he could: +We stepped into a book-store, and he did prove it. I had really stolen +that dedication, almost word for word. I could not imagine how this +curious thing had happened; for I knew one thing--that a certain amount +of pride always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, and that this +pride protects a man from deliberately stealing other people's ideas. +That is what a teaspoonful of brains will do for a man--and admirers had +often told me I had nearly a basketful--though they were rather reserved +as to the size of the basket. + +However, I thought the thing out, and solved the mystery. Two years +before, I had been laid up a couple of weeks in the Sandwich Islands, and +had read and re-read Doctor Holmes's poems till my mental reservoir was +filled up with them to the brim. The dedication lay on the top, and +handy, so, by-and-by, I unconsciously stole it. Perhaps I unconsciously +stole the rest of the volume, too, for many people have told me that my +book was pretty poetical, in one way or another. Well, of course, I +wrote Doctor Holmes and told him I hadn't meant to steal, and he wrote +back and said in the kindest way that it was all right and no harm done; +and added that he believed we all unconsciously worked over ideas +gathered in reading and hearing, imagining they were original with +ourselves. He stated a truth, and did it in such a pleasant way, and +salved over my sore spot so gently and so healingly, that I was rather +glad I had committed the crime, far the sake of the letter. I afterward +called on him and told him to make perfectly free with any ideas of mine +that struck him as being good protoplasm for poetry. He could see by +that that there wasn't anything mean about me; so we got along right from +the start. I have not met Doctor Holmes many times since; and lately he +said--However, I am wandering wildly away from the one thing which +I got on my feet to do; that is, to make my compliments to you, my +fellow-teachers of the great public, and likewise to say that I am right +glad to see that Doctor Holmes is still in his prime and full of generous +life; and as age is not determined by years, but by trouble and +infirmities of mind and body, I hope it may be a very long time yet +before any one can truthfully say, "He is growing old." + + + + + + +THE WEATHER + + ADDRESS AT THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY'S SEVENTY FIRST + ANNUAL DINNER, NEW YORK CITY + +The next toast was: "The Oldest Inhabitant-The Weather of New England." + + "Who can lose it and forget it? + Who can have it and regret it? + Be interposer 'twixt us Twain." + --Merchant of Venice. + +I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in +New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it +must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment and +learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted +to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take +their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. There is a sumptuous +variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's +admiration--and regret. The weather is always doing something there; +always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and +trying them on the people to see how they will go. But it gets through +more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have +counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of +four-and-twenty hours. It was I that made the fame and fortune of that +man that had that marvellous collection of weather on exhibition at the +Centennial, that so astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all +over the world and get specimens from all the climes. I said, "Don't you +do it; you come to New England on a favorable spring day." I told him +what we could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity. Well, he +came and he made his collection in four days. As to variety, why, he +confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never +heard of before. And as to quantity well, after he had picked out and +discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather +enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to +deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor. The people of +New England are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some +things which they will not stand. Every year they kill a lot of poets +for writing about "Beautiful Spring." These are generally casual +visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and +cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. And so the +first thing they know the opportunity to inquire how they feel has +permanently gone by. Old Probabilities has a mighty reputation for +accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. You take up the +paper and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what to-day's +weather is going to be on the Pacific, down South, in the Middle States, +in the Wisconsin region. See him sail along in the joy and pride of his +power till he gets to New England, and then see his tail drop. +He doesn't know what the weather is going to be in New England. +Well, he mulls over it, and by and-by he gets out something about like +this: Probably northeast to southwest winds, varying to the southward +and westward and eastward, and points between, high and low barometer +swapping around from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, +and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and +lightning. Then he jots down his postscript from his wandering mind, to +cover accidents. "But it is possible that the programme may be wholly +changed in the mean time." Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New +England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one +thing certain about it: you are certain there is going to be plenty of +it--a perfect grand review; but you never can tell which end of the +procession is going to move first. You fix up for the drought; you leave +your umbrella in the house and sally out, and two to one you get +drowned. You make up your mind that the earthquake is due; you stand +from under, and take hold of something to steady yourself, and the first +thing you know you get struck by lightning. These are great +disappointments; but they can't be helped. The lightning there is +peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't +leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether--Well, you'd +think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there. +And the thunder. When the thunder begins to merely tune up and scrape +and saw, and key up the instruments for the performance, strangers say, +"Why, what awful thunder you have here!" But when the baton is raised and +the real concert begins, you'll find that stranger down in the cellar +with his head in the ash-barrel. Now as to the size of the weather in +New England--lengthways, I mean. It is utterly disproportioned to the +size of that little country. Half the time, when it is packed as full as +it can stick, you will see that New England weather sticking out beyond +the edges and projecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the +neighboring States. She can't hold a tenth part of her weather. You can +see cracks all about where she has strained herself trying to do it. +I could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the New England +weather, but I will give but a single specimen. I like to hear rain on a +tin roof. So I covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that +luxury. Well, sir, do you think it ever rains on that tin? No, sir; +skips it every time. Mind, in this speech I have been trying merely to +do honor to the New England weather--no language could do it justice. +But, after all, there is at least one or two things about that weather +(or, if you please, effects produced by it) which we residents would not +like to part with. If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should +still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for +all its bullying vagaries--the ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed +with ice from the bottom to the top--ice that is as bright and clear as +crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen +dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of +Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun +comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that +glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change +and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red +to green, and green to gold--the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very +explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, +the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, +intolerable magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong. + + + + + + +THE BABIES + +THE BABIES + + DELIVERED AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF THE + TENNESSEE TO THEIR FIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U. S. GRANT, + NOVEMBER, 1879 + + The fifteenth regular toast was "The Babies.--As they comfort + us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities." + +I like that. We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have +not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works +down to the babies, we stand on common ground. It is a shame that for a +thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if +he didn't amount to anything. If you will stop and think a minute--if +you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life +and recontemplate your first baby--you will remember that he amounted to +a good deal, and even something over. You soldiers all know that when +that little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in your +resignation. He took entire command. You became his lackey, his mere +body-servant, and you had to stand around too. He was not a commander +who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything else. You +had to execute his order whether it was possible or not. And there was +only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the +double-quick. He treated you with every sort of insolence and +disrespect, and the bravest of you didn't dare to say a word. You could +face the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back blow for +blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted +your nose, you had to take it. When the thunders of war were sounding in +your ears you set your faces toward the batteries, and advanced with +steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his war whoop you +advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of the chance, too. +When he called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw out any +side-remarks about certain services being unbecoming an officer and a +gentleman? No. You got up and got it. When he ordered his pap bottle +and it was not warm, did you talk back? Not you. You went to work and +warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office as to take a +suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was right--three +parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a +drop of peppermint to kill those immortal hiccoughs. I can taste that +stuff yet. And how many things you learned as you went along! +Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying +that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angels are +whispering to him. Very pretty, but too thin--simply wind on the +stomach, my friends. If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual +hour, two o'clock in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly and remark, +with a mental addition which would not improve a Sunday-school book much, +that that was the very thing you were about to propose yourself? Oh! +you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down +the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified +baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing! +--Rock a-by Baby in the Tree-top, for instance. What a spectacle far an +Army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction for the neighbors, too; +for it is not everybody within, a mile around that likes military music +at three in the morning. And, when you had been keeping this sort of +thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet head intimated that +nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? You simply +went on until you dropped in the last ditch. The idea that a baby +doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front +yard full by itself. One baby can, furnish more business than you and +your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, +irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please, you +can't make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one +baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for +twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there ain't any real +difference between triplets and an insurrection. + +Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance of +the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop! Fifty years +from now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it still +survive (and let us hope it may), will be floating over a Republic +numbering 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our +increase. Our present schooner of State will have grown into a political +leviathan--a Great Eastern. The cradled babies of to-day will be on +deck. Let them be well trained, for we are going to leave a big contract +on their hands. Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in +the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred +things, if we could know which ones they are. In one of these cradles +the unconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething think +of it! and putting in a world of dead earnest, unarticulated, but +perfectly justifiable profanity over it, too. In another the future +renowned astronomer is blinking at the shining Milky Way with but a +languid interest poor little chap!--and wondering what has become of that +other one they call the wet-nurse. In another the future great historian +is lying--and doubtless will continue to lie until his earthly mission is +ended. In another the future President is busying himself with no +profounder problem of state than what the mischief has become of his hair +so early; and in a mighty array of other cradles there are now some +60,000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him occasion to +grapple with that same old problem a second, time. And in still one +more cradle, some where under the flag, the future illustrious +commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his +approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole +strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his +big toe into his mouth--an achievement which, meaning no disrespect, the +illustrious guest of this evening turned his entire attention to some +fifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a prophecy of the man, +there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded. + + + + + + +OUR CHILDREN AND GREAT DISCOVERIES + + DELIVERED AT THE AUTHORS' CLUB, NEW YORK + +Our children--yours--and--mine. They seem like little things to talk +about--our children, but little things often make up the sum of human +life--that's a good sentence. I repeat it, little things often produce +great things. Now, to illustrate, take Sir Isaac Newton--I presume some +of you have heard of Mr. Newton. Well, once when Sir Isaac Newton +--a mere lad--got over into the man's apple orchard--I don't know +what he was doing there--I didn't come all the way from Hartford to +q-u-e-s-t-i-o-n Mr. Newton's honesty--but when he was there--in the main +orchard--he saw an apple fall and he was a-t-t-racted toward it, and that +led to the discovery--not of Mr. Newton but of the great law of +attraction and gravitation. + +And there was once another great discoverer--I've forgotten his name, +and I don't remember what he discovered, but I know it was something very +important, and I hope you will all tell your children about it when you +get home. Well, when the great discoverer was once loafn' around down in +Virginia, and a-puttin' in his time flirting with Pocahontas--oh! +Captain John Smith, that was the man's name--and while he and Poca were +sitting in Mr. Powhatan's garden, he accidentally put his arm around her +and picked something simple weed, which proved to be tobacco--and now we +find it in every Christian family, shedding its civilizing influence +broadcast throughout the whole religious community. + +Now there was another great man, I can't think of his name either, who +used to loaf around and watch the great chandelier in the cathedral at +Pisa., which set him to thinking about the great law of gunpowder, and +eventually led to the discovery of the cotton-gin. + +Now, I don't say this as an inducement for our young men to loaf around +like Mr. Newton and Mr. Galileo and Captain Smith, but they were once +little babies two days old, and they show what little things have +sometimes accomplished. + + + + + + +EDUCATING THEATRE-GOERS + + The children of the Educational Alliance gave a performance of + "The Prince and the Pauper" on the afternoon of April 14, 1907, + in the theatre of the Alliance Building in East Broadway. The + audience was composed of nearly one thousand children of the + neighborhood. Mr. Clemens, Mr. Howells, and Mr. Daniel Frohman + were among the invited guests. + +I have not enjoyed a play so much, so heartily, and so thoroughly since I +played Miles Hendon twenty-two years ago. I used to play in this piece +("The Prince and the Pauper") with my children, who, twenty-two years +ago, were little youngsters. One of my daughters was the Prince, and a +neighbor's daughter was the Pauper, and the children of other neighbors +played other parts. But we never gave such a performance as we have seen +here to-day. It would have been beyond us. + +My late wife was the dramatist and stage-manager. Our coachman was the +stage-manager, second in command. We used to play it in this simple way, +and the one who used to bring in the crown on a cushion--he was a little +fellow then--is now a clergyman way up high--six or seven feet high--and +growing higher all the time. We played it well, but not as well as you +see it here, for you see it done by practically trained professionals. + +I was especially interested in the scene which we have just had, for +Miles Hendon was my part. I did it as well as a person could who never +remembered his part. The children all knew their parts. They did not +mind if I did not know mine. I could thread a needle nearly as well as +the player did whom you saw to-day. The words of my part I could supply +on the spot. The words of the song that Miles Hendon sang here I did not +catch. But I was great in that song. + + [Then Mr. Clemens hummed a bit of doggerel that the reporter + made out as this: + + "There was a woman in her town, + She loved her husband well, + But another man just twice as well." + + "How is that?" demanded Mr. Clemens. Then resuming] + +It was so fresh and enjoyable to make up a new set of words each time +that I played the part. + +If I had a thousand citizens in front of me, I would like to give them +information, but you children already know all that I have found out +about the Educational Alliance. It's like a man living within thirty +miles of Vesuvius and never knowing about a volcano. It's like living +for a lifetime in Buffalo, eighteen miles from Niagara, and never going +to see the Falls. So I had lived in New York and knew nothing about the +Educational Alliance. + +This theatre is a part of the work, and furnishes pure and clean plays. +This theatre is an influence. Everything in the world is accomplished by +influences which train and educate. When you get to be seventy-one and a +half, as I am, you may think that your education is over, but it isn't. + +If we had forty theatres of this kind in this city of four millions, how +they would educate and elevate! We should have a body of educated +theatre-goers. + +It would make better citizens, honest citizens. One of the best gifts a +millionaire could make would be a theatre here and a theatre there. It +would make of you a real Republic, and bring about an educational level. + + + + + + +THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE + + On November 19, 1907, Mr. Clemens entertained a party of six or + seven hundred of his friends, inviting them to witness the + representation of "The Prince and the Pauper," flayed by boys + and girls of the East Side at the Children's Educational + Theatre, New York. + +Just a word or two to let you know how deeply I appreciate the honor +which the children who are the actors and frequenters of this cozy +playhouse have conferred upon me. They have asked me to be their +ambassador to invite the hearts and brains of New York to come down here +and see the work they are doing. I consider it a grand distinction to be +chosen as their intermediary. Between the children and myself there is +an indissoluble bond of friendship. + +I am proud of this theatre and this performance--proud, because I am +naturally vain--vain of myself and proud of the children. + +I wish we could reach more children at one time. I am glad to see that +the children of the East Side have turned their backs on the Bowery +theatres to come to see the pure entertainments presented here. + +This Children's Theatre is a great educational institution. I hope the +time will come when it will be part of every public school in the land. +I may be pardoned in being vain. I was born vain, I guess. [At this +point the stage-manager's whistle interrupted Mr. Clemens.] That settles +it; there's my cue to stop. I was to talk until the whistle blew, but it +blew before I got started. It takes me longer to get started than most +people. I guess I was born at slow speed. My time is up, and if you'll +keep quiet for two minutes I'll tell you something about Miss Herts, the +woman who conceived this splendid idea. She is the originator and the +creator of this theatre. Educationally, this institution coins the gold +of young hearts into external good. + + + [On April 23, 1908, he spoke again at the same place] + +I will be strictly honest with you; I am only fit to be honorary +president. It is not to be expected that I should be useful as a real +president. But when it comes to things ornamental I, of course, have no +objection. There is, of course, no competition. I take it as a very +real compliment because there are thousands of children who have had a +part in this request. It is promotion in truth. + +It is a thing worth doing that is done here. You have seen the children +play. You saw how little Sally reformed her burglar. She could reform +any burglar. She could reform me. This is the only school in which can +be taught the highest and most difficult lessons--morals. In other +schools the way of teaching morals is revolting. Here the children who +come in thousands live through each part. + +They are terribly anxious for the villain to get his bullet, and that I +take to be a humane and proper sentiment. They spend freely the ten +cents that is not saved without a struggle. It comes out of the candy +money, and the money that goes for chewing-gum and other necessaries of +life. They make the sacrifice freely. This is the only school which +they are sorry to leave. + + + + + + +POETS AS POLICEMEN + + Mr. Clemens was one of the speakers at the Lotos Club dinner to + Governor Odell, March 24, 1900. The police problem was + referred to at length. + +Let us abolish policemen who carry clubs and revolvers, and put in a +squad of poets armed to the teeth with poems on Spring and Love. I would +be very glad to serve as commissioner, not because I think I am +especially qualified, but because I am too tired to work and would like +to take a rest. + +Howells would go well as my deputy. He is tired too, and needs a rest +badly. + +I would start in at once to elevate, purify, and depopulate the red-light +district. I would assign the most soulful poets to that district, +all heavily armed with their poems. Take Chauncey Depew as a sample. +I would station them on the corners after they had rounded up all the +depraved people of the district so they could not escape, and then have +them read from their poems to the poor unfortunates. The plan would be +very effective in causing an emigration of the depraved element. + + + + + + +PUDD'NHEAD WILSON DRAMATIZED + + When Mr. Clemens arrived from Europe in 1895 one of the first + things he did was to see the dramatization of Pudd'nhead + Wilson. The audience becoming aware of the fact that Mr. + Clemens was in the house called upon him for a speech. + +Never in my life have I been able to make a speech without preparation, +and I assure you that this position in which I find myself is one totally +unexpected. + +I have been hemmed in all day by William Dean Howells and other frivolous +persons, and I have been talking about everything in the world except +that of which speeches are constructed. Then, too, seven days on the +water is not conducive to speech-making. I will only say that I +congratulate Mr. Mayhew; he has certainly made a delightful play out of +my rubbish. His is a charming gift. Confidentially I have always had +an idea that I was well equipped to write plays, but I have never +encountered a manager who has agreed with me. + + + + + + +DALY THEATRE + + ADDRESS AT A DINNER AFTER THE ONE HUNDREDTH PERFORMANCE OF + "THE TAMING OF THE SHREW." + + Mr. Clemens made the following speech, which he incorporated + afterward in Following the Equator. + +I am glad to be here. This is the hardest theatre in New York to get +into, even at the front door. I never, got in without hard work. I am +glad we have got so far in at last. Two or three years ago I had an +appointment to meet Mr. Daly on the stage of this theatre at eight +o'clock in the evening. Well, I got on a train at Hartford to come to +New York and keep the appointment. All I had to do was to come to the +back door of the theatre on Sixth Avenue. I did not believe that; I did +not believe it could be on Sixth Avenue, but that is what Daly's note +said--come to that door, walk right in, and keep the appointment. It +looked very easy. It looked easy enough, but I had not much confidence +in the Sixth Avenue door. + +Well, I was kind of bored on the train, and I bought some newspapers--New +Haven newspapers--and there was not much news in them, so I read the +advertisements. There was one advertisement of a bench-show. I had +heard of bench-shows, and I often wondered what there was about them to +interest people. I had seen bench-shows--lectured to bench-shows, in +fact--but I didn't want to advertise them or to brag about them. Well, +I read on a little, and learned that a bench-show was not a bench-show +--but dogs, not benches at all--only dogs. I began to be interested, +and as there was nothing else to do I read every bit of the +advertisement, and learned that the biggest thing in this show was a St. +Bernard dog that weighed one hundred and forty-five pounds. Before I got +to New York I was so interested in the bench-shows that I made up my mind +to go to one the first chance I got. Down on Sixth Avenue, near where +that back door might be, I began to take things leisurely. I did not +like to be in too much of a hurry. There was not anything in sight that +looked like a back door. The nearest approach to it was a cigar store. +So I went in and bought a cigar, not too expensive, but it cost enough to +pay for any information I might get and leave the dealer a fair profit. +Well, I did not like to be too abrupt, to make the man think me crazy, by +asking him if that was the way to Daly's Theatre, so I started gradually +to lead up to the subject, asking him first if that was the way to Castle +Garden. When I got to the real question, and he said he would show me +the way, I was astonished. He sent me through a long hallway, and I +found myself in a back yard. Then I went through a long passageway and +into a little room, and there before my eyes was a big St. Bernard dog +lying on a bench. There was another door beyond and I went there, and +was met by a big, fierce man with a fur cap on and coat off, who +remarked, "Phwat do yez want?" I told him I wanted to see Mr. Daly. +"Yez can't see Mr. Daly this time of night," he responded. I urged that +I had an appointment with Mr. Daly, and gave him my card, which did not +seem to impress him much. "Yez can't get in and yez can't shmoke here. +Throw away that cigar. If yez want to see Mr. Daly, yez 'll have to be +after going to the front door and buy a ticket, and then if yez have luck +and he's around that way yez may see him." I was getting discouraged, +but I had one resource left that had been of good service in similar +emergencies. Firmly but kindly I told him my name was Mark Twain, and I +awaited results. There was none. He was not fazed a bit. "Phwere's +your order to see Mr. Daly?" he asked. I handed him the note, and he +examined it intently. "My friend," I remarked, "you can read that better +if you hold it the other side up." But he took no notice of the +suggestion, and finally asked: "Where's Mr. Daly's name?" "There it is," +I told him, "on the top of the page." "That's all right," he said, +"that's where he always puts it; but I don't see the 'W' in his name," +and he eyed me distrustfully. Finally, he asked, "Phwat do yez want to +see Mr. Daly for?" "Business." "Business?" "Yes." It was my only +hope. "Phwat kind--theatres?" that was too much. "No." "What kind of +shows, then?" "Bench-shows." It was risky, but I was desperate." +Bench--shows, is it--where?" The big man's face changed, and he began to +look interested. "New Haven." "New Haven, it is? Ah, that's going to +be a fine show. I'm glad to see you. Did you see a big dog in the other +room?" "Yes." "How much do you think that dog weighs?" "One hundred +and forty-five pounds." "Look at that, now! He's a good judge of dogs, +and no mistake. He weighs all of one hundred and thirty-eight. Sit down +and shmoke--go on and shmoke your cigar, I'll tell Mr. Daly you are +here." In a few minutes I was on the stage shaking hands with Mr. Daly, +and the big man standing around glowing with satisfaction. "Come around +in front," said Mr. Daly, "and see the performance. I will put you into +my own box." And as I moved away I heard my honest friend mutter, "Well, +he desarves it." + + + + + + +THE DRESS OF CIVILIZED WOMAN + +A large part of the daughter of civilization is her dress--as it should +be. Some civilized women would lose half their charm without dress, and +some would lose all of it. The daughter Of modern civilization dressed +at her utmost best is a marvel of exquisite and beautiful art and +expense. All the lands, all the climes, and all the arts are laid under +tribute to furnish her forth. Her linen is from Belfast, her robe is +from Paris, her lace is from Venice, or Spain, or France, her feathers +are from the remote regions of Southern Africa, her furs from the remoter +region of the iceberg and the aurora, her fan from Japan, her diamonds +from Brazil, her bracelets from California, her pearls from Ceylon, her +cameos from Rome. She has gems and trinkets from buried Pompeii, and +others that graced comely Egyptian forms that have been dust and ashes +now for forty centuries. Her watch is from Geneva, her card case is from +China, her hair is from--from--I don't know where her hair is from; I +never could find out; that is, her other hair--her public hair, her +Sunday hair; I don't mean the hair she goes to bed with. + +And that reminds me of a trifle. Any time you want to you can glance +around the carpet of a Pullman car, and go and pick up a hair-pin; but +not to save your life can you get any woman in that car to acknowledge +that hair-pin. Now, isn't that strange? But it's true. The woman who +has never swerved from cast-iron veracity and fidelity in her whole life +will, when confronted with this crucial test, deny her hair-pin. She +will deny that hair-pin before a hundred witnesses. I have stupidly got +into more trouble and more hot water trying to hunt up the owner of a +hair-pin in a Pullman than by any other indiscretion of my life. + + + + + + +DRESS REFORM AND COPYRIGHT + + When the present copyright law was under discussion, Mr. + Clemens appeared before the committee. He had sent Speaker + Cannon the following letter: + + "DEAR UNCLE JOSEPH,--Please get me the thanks of Congress, not + next week but right away. It is very necessary. Do accomplish + this for your affectionate old friend right away--by, + persuasion if you can, by violence if you must, for it is + imperatively necessary that I get on the floor of the House for + two or three hours and talk to the members, man by man, in + behalf of support; encouragement, and protection of one of the + nation's most valuable assets and industries--its literature. + I have arguments with me--also a barrel with liquid in it. + + "Give me a chance. Get me the thanks of Congress. Don't wait + for others--there isn't time; furnish them to me yourself and + let Congress ratify later. I have stayed away and let Congress + alone for seventy-one years and am entitled to the thanks. + Congress knows this perfectly well, and I have long felt hurt + that this quite proper and earned expression of gratitude has + been merely felt by the House and never publicly uttered. + + "Send me an order on the sergeant-at-arms quick. When shall I + come? + "With love and a benediction, + "MARK TWAIN." + + + While waiting to appear before the committee, My. Clemens + talked to the reporters: + +Why don't you ask why I am wearing such apparently unseasonable clothes? +I'll tell you. I have found that when a man reaches the advanced age of +seventy-one years, as I have, the continual sight of dark clothing is +likely to have a depressing effect upon him. Light-colored clothing is +more pleasing to the eye and enlivens the spirit. Now, of course, I +cannot compel every one to wear such clothing just for my especial +benefit, so I do the next best thing and wear it myself. + +Of course, before a man reaches my years the fear of criticism might +prevent him from indulging his fancy. I am not afraid of that. I am +decidedly for pleasing color combinations in dress. I like to see the +women's clothes, say, at the opera. What can be more depressing than the +sombre black which custom requires men to wear upon state occasions? +A group of men in evening clothes looks like a flock of crows, and is +just about as inspiring. + +After all, what is the purpose of clothing? Are not clothes intended +primarily to preserve dignity and also to afford comfort to their wearer? +Now I know of nothing more uncomfortable than the present-day clothes of +men. The finest clothing made is a person's own skin, but, of course, +society demands something more than this. + +The best-dressed man I have ever seen, however, was a native of the +Sandwich Islands who attracted my attention thirty years ago. Now, when +that man wanted to don especial dress to honor a public occasion or a +holiday, why, he occasionally put on a pair of spectacles. Otherwise the +clothing with which God had provided him sufficed. + +Of course, I have ideas of dress reform. For one thing, why not adopt +some of the women's styles? Goodness knows, they adopt enough of ours. +Take the peek-a-boo waist, for instance. It has the obvious advantages +of being cool and comfortable, and in addition it is almost always made +up in pleasing colors which cheer and do not depress. + +It is true that I dressed the Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court +in a plug-hat, but, let's see, that was twenty-five years ago. Then no +man was considered fully dressed until he donned a plug-hat. Nowadays I +think that no man is dressed until he leaves it home. Why, when I left +home yesterday they trotted out a plug-hat for me to wear. + +"You must wear it," they told me; "why, just think of going to Washington +without a plug-hat!" But I said no; I would wear a derby or nothing. +Why, I believe I could walk along the streets of New York--I never do +--but still I think I could--and I should never see a well-dressed man +wearing a plug-hat. If I did I should suspect him of something. I don't +know just what, but I would suspect him. + +Why, when I got up on the second story of that Pennsylvania ferry-boat +coming down here yesterday I saw Howells coming along. He was the only +man on the boat with a plug-hat, and I tell you he felt ashamed of +himself. He said he had been persuaded to wear it against his better +sense. But just think of a man nearly seventy years old who has not a +mind of his own on such matters! + +"Are you doing any work now?" the youngest and most serious reporter +asked. + +Work? I retired from work on my seventieth birthday. Since then I have +been putting in merely twenty-six hours a day dictating my autobiography, +which, as John Phoenix said in regard to his autograph, may be relied +upon as authentic, as it is written exclusively by me. But it is not to +be published in full until I am thoroughly dead. I have made it as +caustic, fiendish, and devilish as possible. It will fill many volumes, +and I shall continue writing it until the time comes for me to join the +angels. It is going to be a terrible autobiography. It will make the +hair of some folks curl. But it cannot be published until I am dead, and +the persons mentioned in it and their children and grandchildren are +dead. It is something awful! + +"Can you tell us the names of some of the notables that are here to see +you off?" + +I don't know. I am so shy. My shyness takes a peculiar phase. I never +look a person in the face. The reason is that I am afraid they may know +me and that I may not know them, which makes it very embarrassing for +both of us. I always wait for the other person to speak. I know lots of +people, but I don't know who they are. It is all a matter of ability to +observe things. I never observe anything now. I gave up the habit years +ago. You should keep a habit up if you want to become proficient in it. +For instance, I was a pilot once, but I gave it up, and I do not believe +the captain of the Minneapolis would let me navigate his ship to London. +Still, if I think that he is not on the job I may go up on the bridge and +offer him a few suggestions. + + + + + + +COLLEGE GIRLS + + Five hundred undergraduates, under the auspices of the Woman's + University Club, New York, welcomed Mr. Clemens as their guest, + April 3, 1906, and gave him the freedom of the club, which the + chairman explained was freedom to talk individually to any girl + present. + +I've worked for the public good thirty years, so for the rest of my life +I shall work for my personal contentment. I am glad Miss Neron has fed +me, for there is no telling what iniquity I might wander into on an empty +stomach--I mean, an empty mind. + +I am going to tell you a practical story about how once upon a time I was +blind--a story I should have been using all these months, but I never +thought about telling it until the other night, and now it is too late, +for on the nineteenth of this month I hope to take formal leave of the +platform forever at Carnegie Hall--that is, take leave so far as talking +for money and for people who have paid money to hear me talk. I shall +continue to infest the platform on these conditions--that there is nobody +in the house who has paid to hear me, that I am not paid to be heard, and +that there will be none but young women students in the audience. [Here +Mr. Clemens told the story of how he took a girl to the theatre while he +was wearing tight boots, which appears elsewhere in this volume, and +ended by saying: "And now let this be a lesson to you--I don't know what +kind of a lesson; I'll let you think it out."] + + + + + + +GIRLS + +In my capacity of publisher I recently received a manuscript from a +teacher which embodied a number of answers given by her pupils to +questions propounded. These answers show that the children had nothing +but the sound to go by--the sense was perfectly empty. Here are some of +their answers to words they were asked to define: Auriferous--pertaining +to an orifice; ammonia--the food of the gods; equestrian--one who asks +questions; parasite--a kind of umbrella; ipecaca--man who likes a good +dinner. And here is the definition of an ancient word honored by a great +party: Republican--a sinner mentioned in the Bible. And here is an +innocent deliverance of a zoological kind: "There are a good many donkeys +in the theological gardens." Here also is a definition which really +isn't very bad in its way: Demagogue--a vessel containing beer and other +liquids. Here, too, is a sample of a boy's composition on girls, which, +I must say, I rather like: + +"Girls are very stuckup and dignified in their manner and behaveyour. +They think more of dress than anything and like to play with dowls and +rags. They cry if they see a cow in a far distance and are afraid of +guns. They stay at home all the time and go to church every Sunday. +They are al-ways sick. They are al-ways furry and making fun of boys +hands and they say how dirty. They cant play marbles. I pity them poor +things. They make fun of boys and then turn round and love them. +I don't belave they ever kiled a cat or anything. They look out every +nite and say, 'Oh, a'nt the moon lovely!'--Thir is one thing I have not +told and that is they al-ways now their lessons bettern boys." + + + + + + +THE LADIES + + DELIVERED AT THE ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL, 1872, OF THE SCOTTISH + CORPORATION OF LONDON + + Mr. Clemens replied to the toast "The Ladies." + +I am proud, indeed, of the distinction of being chosen to respond to this +especial toast, to "The Ladies," or to women if you please, for that is +the preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the older, and therefore +the more entitled to reverence. I have noticed that the Bible, with that +plain, blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous characteristic of the +Scriptures, is always particular to never refer to even the illustrious +mother of all mankind as a "lady," but speaks of her as a woman. It is +odd, but you will find it is so. I am peculiarly proud of this honor, +because I think that the toast to women is one which, by right and by +every rule of gallantry, should take precedence of all others--of the +army, of the navy, of even royalty itself--perhaps, though the latter is +not necessary in this day and in this land, for the reason that, tacitly, +you do drink a broad general health to all good women when you drink the +health of the Queen of England and the Princess of Wales. I have in mind +a poem just now which is familiar to you all, familiar to everybody. And +what an inspiration that was, and how instantly the present toast recalls +the verses to all our minds when the most noble, the most gracious, the +purest, and sweetest of all poets says: + + "Woman! O woman!---er + Wom----" + +However, you remember the lines; and you remember how feelingly, how +daintily, how almost imperceptibly the verses raise up before you, +feature by feature, the ideal of a true and perfect woman; and how, as +you contemplate the finished marvel, your homage grows into worship of +the intellect that could create so fair a thing out of mere breath, mere +words. And you call to mind now, as I speak, how the poet, with stern +fidelity to the history of all humanity, delivers this beautiful child of +his heart and his brain over to the trials and sorrows that must come to +all, sooner or later, that abide in the earth, and how the pathetic story +culminates in that apostrophe--so wild, so regretful, so full of mournful +retrospection. The lines run thus: + + "Alas!--alas!--a--alas! + ----Alas!--------alas!" + +--and so on. I do not remember the rest; but, taken together, it seems +to me that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that human genius has +ever brought forth--and I feel that if I were to talk hours I could not +do my great theme completer or more graceful justice than I have now done +in simply quoting that poet's matchless words. The phases of the womanly +nature are infinite in their variety. Take any type of woman, and you +shall find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to +love. And you shall find the whole joining you heart and hand. Who was +more patriotic than Joan of Arc? Who was braver? Who has given us a +grander instance of self-sacrificing devotion? Ah! you remember, you +remember well, what a throb of pain, what a great tidal wave of grief +swept over us all when Joan of Arc fell at Waterloo. Who does not sorrow +for the loss of Sappho, the sweet singer of Israel? Who among us does +not miss the gentle ministrations, the softening influences, the humble +piety of Lucretia Borgia? Who can join in the heartless libel that says +woman is extravagant in dress when he can look back and call to mind our +simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed in her modification of the Highland +costume? Sir, women have been soldiers, women have been painters, women +have been poets. As long as language lives the name of Cleopatra will +live. And not because she conquered George III.--but because she wrote +those divine lines: + + "Let dogs delight to bark and bite, + For God hath made them so." + +The story of the world is adorned with the names of illustrious ones of +our own sex--some of, them sons of St. Andrew, too--Scott, Bruce, Burns, +the warrior Wallace, Ben Nevis--the gifted Ben Lomond, and the great new +Scotchman, Ben Disraeli.--[Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, at that time Prime +Minister of England, had just been elected Lord Rector of Glasgow +University, and had made a speech which gave rise to a world of +discussion]--Out of the great plains of history tower whole mountain +ranges of sublime women: the Queen of Sheba, Josephine, Semiramis, Sairey +Gamp; the list is endless--but I will not call the mighty roll, the names +rise up in your own memories at the mere suggestion, luminous with the +glory of deeds that cannot die, hallowed by the loving worship of the +good and the true of all epochs and all climes. Suffice it for our pride +and our honor that we in our day have added to it such names as those of +Grace Darling and Florence Nightingale. Woman is all that she should be +gentle, patient, longsuffering, trustful, unselfish, full of generous +impulses. It is her blessed mission to comfort the sorrowing, plead for +the erring, encourage the faint of purpose, succor the distressed, uplift +the fallen, befriend the friendless--in a word, afford the healing of her +sympathies and a home in her heart for all the bruised and persecuted +children that knock at its hospitable door. And when I say, God bless +her, there is none among us who has known the ennobling affection of a +wife, or the steadfast devotion of a mother but in his heart will say, +Amen! + + + + + + +WOMAN'S PRESS CLUB + + On October 27, 1900, the New York Woman's Press Club gave a tea + in Carnegie Hall. Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor. + +If I were asked an opinion I would call this an ungrammatical nation. +There is no such thing as perfect grammar, and I don't always speak good +grammar myself. But I have been foregathering for the past few days with +professors of American universities, and I've heard them all say things +like this: "He don't like to do it." [There was a stir.] Oh, you'll hear +that to-night if you listen, or, "He would have liked to have done it." +You'll catch some educated Americans saying that. When these men take +pen in hand they write with as good grammar as any. But the moment they +throw the pen aside they throw grammatical morals aside with it. + +To illustrate the desirability and possibility of concentration, I must +tell you a story of my little six-year-old daughter. The governess had +been teaching her about the reindeer, and, as the custom was, she related +it to the family. She reduced the history of that reindeer to two or +three sentences when the governess could not have put it into a page. +She said: "The reindeer is a very swift animal. A reindeer once drew a +sled four hundred miles in two hours." She appended the comment: "This +was regarded as extraordinary." And concluded: "When that reindeer was +done drawing that sled four hundred miles in two hours it died." + +As a final instance of the force of limitations in the development of +concentration, I must mention that beautiful creature, Helen Keller, whom +I have known for these many years. I am filled with the wonder of her +knowledge, acquired because shut out from all distraction. If I could +have been deaf, dumb, and blind I also might have arrived at something. + + + + + + +VOTES FOR WOMEN + + AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE HEBREW TECHNICAL SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, + HELD IN THE TEMPLE EMMANUEL, JANUARY 20, 1901 + + Mr. Clemens was introduced by President Meyer, who said: "In + one of Mr. Clemens's works he expressed his opinion of men, + saying he had no choice between Hebrew and Gentile, black men + or white; to him all men were alike. But I never could find + that he expressed his opinion of women; perhaps that opinion + was so exalted that he could not express it. We shall now be + called to hear what he thinks of women." + +LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It is a small help that I can afford, but it is +just such help that one can give as coming from the heart through the +mouth. The report of Mr. Meyer was admirable, and I was as interested in +it as you have been. Why, I'm twice as old as he, and I've had so much +experience that I would say to him, when he makes his appeal for help: +"Don't make it for to-day or to-morrow, but collect the money on the +spot." + +We are all creatures of sudden impulse. We must be worked up by steam, +as it were. Get them to write their wills now, or it may be too late by +-and-by. Fifteen or twenty years ago I had an experience I shall never +forget. I got into a church which was crowded by a sweltering and +panting multitude. The city missionary of our town--Hartford--made a +telling appeal for help. He told of personal experiences among the poor +in cellars and top lofts requiring instances of devotion and help. The +poor are always good to the poor. When a person with his millions gives +a hundred thousand dollars it makes a great noise in the world, but he +does not miss it; it's the widow's mite that makes no noise but does the +best work. + +I remember on that occasion in the Hartford church the collection was +being taken up. The appeal had so stirred me that I could hardly wait +for the hat or plate to come my way. I had four hundred dollars in my +pocket, and I was anxious to drop it in the plate and wanted to borrow +more. But the plate was so long in coming my way that the fever-heat of +beneficence was going down lower and lower--going down at the rate of a +hundred dollars a minute. The plate was passed too late. When it +finally came to me, my enthusiasm had gone down so much that I kept my +four hundred dollars--and stole a dime from the plate. So, you see, time +sometimes leads to crime. + +Oh, many a time have I thought of that and regretted it, and I adjure you +all to give while the fever is on you. + +Referring to woman's sphere in life, I'll say that woman is always right. +For twenty-five years I've been a woman's rights man. I have always +believed, long before my mother died, that, with her gray hairs and +admirable intellect, perhaps she knew as much as I did. Perhaps she knew +as much about voting as I. + +I should like to see the time come when women shall help to make the +laws. I should like to see that whip-lash, the ballot, in the hands of +women. As for this city's government, I don't want to say much, except +that it is a shame--a shame; but if I should live twenty-five years +longer--and there is no reason why I shouldn't--I think I'll see women +handle the ballot. If women had the ballot to-day, the state of things +in this town would not exist. + +If all the women in this town had a vote to-day they would elect a mayor +at the next election, and they would rise in their might and change the +awful state of things now existing here. + + + + + + +WOMAN-AN OPINION + + ADDRESS AT AN EARLY BANQUET OF THE WASHINGTON + CORRESPONDENTS' CLUB + + The twelfth toast was as follows: "Woman--The pride of any + profession, and the jewel of ours." + +MR. PRESIDENT,--I do not know why I should be singled out to receive the +greatest distinction of the evening--for so the office of replying to the +toast of woman has been regarded in every age. I do not know why I have +received his distinction, unless it be that I am a trifle less homely +than the other members of the club. But be this as it may, Mr. +President, I am proud of the position, and you could not have chosen any +one who would have accepted it more gladly, or labored with a heartier +good-will to do the subject justice than I--because, sir, I love the sex. +I love all the women, irrespective of age or color. + +Human intellect cannot estimate what we owe to woman, sir. She sews on +our buttons; she mends our clothes; she ropes us in at the church fairs; +she confides in us; she tells us whatever she can find out about the +little private affairs of the neighbors; she gives us good advice, and +plenty of it; she soothes our aching brows; she bears our children--ours +as a general thing. In all relations of life, sir, it is but a just and +graceful tribute to woman to say of her that she is a brick. + +Wheresoever you place woman, sir--in whatever position or estate--she is +an ornament to the place she occupies, and a treasure to the world. [Here +Mr. Clemens paused, looked inquiringly at his hearers, and remarked that +the applause should come in at this point. It came in. He resumed his +eulogy.] Look at Cleopatra! look at Desdemona!--look at Florence +Nightingale!--look at Joan of Arc!--look at Lucretia Borgia! +[Disapprobation expressed.] Well [said Mr. Clemens, scratching his head, +doubtfully], suppose we let Lucretia slide. Look at Joyce Heth!--look at +Mother Eve! You need not look at her unless you want to, but [said Mr. +Clemens, reflectively, after a pause] Eve was ornamental, sir +--particularly before the fashions changed. I repeat, sir, look at the +illustrious names of history. Look at the Widow Machree!--look at Lucy +Stone!--look at Elizabeth Cady Stanton!--look at George Francis Train! +And, sir, I say it with bowed head and deepest veneration--look at the +mother of Washington! She raised a boy that could not tell a lie--could +not tell a lie! But he never had any chance. It might have been +different if he had belonged to the Washington Newspaper Correspondents' +Club. + +I repeat, sir, that in whatever position you place a woman she is an +ornament to society and a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart, she +has few equals and no superiors; as a cousin, she is convenient; as a +wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper, she is precious; as a +wetnurse, she has no equal among men. + +What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be +scarce, sir, almighty scarce. Then let us cherish her; let us protect +her; let us give her our support, our encouragement, our sympathy, +ourselves--if we get a chance. + +But, jesting aside, Mr. President, woman is lovable, gracious, kind of +heart, beautiful--worthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all deference. +Not any here will refuse to drink her health right cordially in this +bumper of wine, for each and every one has personally known, and loved, +and honored the very best one of them all--his own mother. + + + + + + +ADVICE TO GIRLS + + In 1907 a young girl whom Mr. Clemens met on the steamer + Minnehaha called him "grandpa," and he called her his + granddaughter. She was attending St. Timothy's School, at + Catonsville, Maryland, and Mr. Clemens promised her to see her + graduate. He accordingly made the journey from New York on + June 10, 1909, and delivered a short address. + +I don't know what to tell you girls to do. Mr. Martin has told you +everything you ought to do, and now I must give you some don'ts. + +There are three things which come to my mind which I consider excellent +advice: + +First, girls, don't smoke--that is, don't smoke to excess. I am +seventy-three and a half years old, and have been smoking seventy-three +of them. But I never smoke to excess--that is, I smoke in moderation, +only one cigar at a time. + +Second, don't drink--that is, don't drink to excess. + +Third, don't marry--I mean, to excess. + +Honesty is the best policy. That is an old proverb; but you don't want +ever to forget it in your journey through life. + + + + + + +TAXES AND MORALS + +ADDRESS DELIVERED IN NEW YORK, JANUARY 22, 1906 + + At the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Tuskeegee + Institute by Booker Washington, Mr. Choate presided, and in + introducing Mr. Clemens made fun of him because he made play + his work, and that when he worked hardest he did so lying in + bed. + +I came here in the responsible capacity of policeman to watch Mr. Choate. +This is an occasion of grave and serious importance, and it seems +necessary for me to be present, so that if he tried to work off any +statement that required correction, reduction, refutation, or exposure, +there would be a tried friend of the public to protect the house. He has +not made one statement whose veracity fails to tally exactly with my own +standard. I have never seen a person improve so. This makes me thankful +and proud of a country that can produce such men--two such men. And all +in the same country. We can't be with you always; we are passing away, +and then--well, everything will have to stop, I reckon. It is a sad +thought. But in spirit I shall still be with you. Choate, too--if he +can. + +Every born American among the eighty millions, let his creed or +destitution of creed be what it may, is indisputably a Christian--to this +degree that his moral constitution is Christian. + +There are two kinds of Christian morals, one private and the other +public. These two are so distinct, so unrelated, that they are no more +akin to each other than are archangels and politicians. During three +hundred and sixty-three days in the year the American citizen is true to +his Christian private morals, and keeps undefiled the nation's character +at its best and highest; then in the other two days of the year he leaves +his Christian private morals at home and carries his Christian public +morals to the tax office and the polls, and does the best he can to +damage and undo his whole year's faithful and righteous work. Without a +blush he will vote for an unclean boss if that boss is his party's Moses, +without compunction he will vote against the best man in the whole land +if he is on the other ticket. Every year in a number of cities and +States he helps put corrupt men in office, whereas if he would but throw +away his Christian public morals, and carry his Christian private morals +to the polls, he could promptly purify the public service and make the +possession of office a high and honorable distinction. + +Once a year he lays aside his Christian private morals and hires a +ferry-boat and piles up his bonds in a warehouse in New Jersey for three +days, and gets out his Christian public morals and goes to the tax office +and holds up his hands and swears he wishes he may never--never if he's +got a cent in the world, so help him. The next day the list appears in +the papers--a column and a quarter of names, in fine print, and every man +in the list a billionaire and member of a couple of churches. I know all +those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the +whole lot of them. They never miss a sermon when they are so's to be +around, and they never miss swearing-off day, whether they are so's to be +around or not. + +I used to be an honest man. I am crumbling. No--I have crumbled. When +they assessed me at $75,000 a fortnight ago I went out and tried to +borrow the money, and couldn't; then when I found they were letting a +whole crop of millionaires live in New York at a third of the price they +were charging me I was hurt, I was indignant, and said: "This is the last +feather. I am not going to run this town all by myself." In that +moment--in that memorable moment--I began to crumble. In fifteen minutes +the disintegration was complete. In fifteen minutes I had become just a +mere moral sand-pile; and I lifted up my hand along with those seasoned +and experienced deacons and swore off every rag of personal property I've +got in the world, clear down to cork leg, glass eye, and what is left of +my wig. + +Those tax officers were moved; they were profoundly moved. They had long +been accustomed to seeing hardened old grafters act like that, and they +could endure the spectacle; but they were expecting better things of me, +a chartered, professional moralist, and they were saddened. + +I fell visibly in their respect and esteem, and I should have fallen in +my own, except that I had already struck bottom, and there wasn't any +place to fall to. + +At Tuskeegee they will jump to misleading conclusions from insufficient +evidence, along with Doctor Parkhurst, and they will deceive the student +with the superstition that no gentleman ever swears. + +Look at those good millionaires; aren't they gentlemen? Well, they +swear. Only once in a year, maybe, but there's enough bulk to it to make +up for the lost time. And do they lose anything by it? No, they don't; +they save enough in three minutes to support the family seven years. +When they swear, do we shudder? No--unless they say "damn!" Then we do. +It shrivels us all up. Yet we ought not to feel so about it, because we +all swear--everybody. Including the ladies. Including Doctor Parkhurst, +that strong and brave and excellent citizen, but superficially educated. + +For it is not the word that is the sin, it is the spirit back of the +word. When an irritated lady says "oh!" the spirit back of it is "damn!" +and that is the way it is going to be recorded against her. It always +makes me so sorry when I hear a lady swear like that. But if she says +"damn," and says it in an amiable, nice way, it isn't going to be +recorded at all. + +The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong; he can swear and +still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and, benevolent and +affectionate way. The historian, John Fiske, whom I knew well and loved, +was a spotless and most noble and upright Christian gentleman, and yet he +swore once. Not exactly that, maybe; still, he--but I will tell you +about it. + +One day, when he was deeply immersed in his work, his wife came in, much +moved and profoundly distressed, and said: "I am sorry to disturb you, +John, but I must, for this is a serious matter, and needs to be attended +to at once." + +Then, lamenting, she brought a grave accusation against their little son. +She said: "He has been saying his Aunt Mary is a fool and his Aunt Martha +is a damned fool." Mr. Fiske reflected upon the matter a minute, then +said: "Oh, well, it's about the distinction I should make between them +myself." + +Mr. Washington, I beg you to convey these teachings to your great and +prosperous and most beneficent educational institution, and add them to +the prodigal mental and moral riches wherewith you equip your fortunate +proteges for the struggle of life. + + + + + + +TAMMANY AND CROKER + + Mr. Clemens made his debut as a campaign orator on October 7, + 1901, advocating the election of Seth Low for Mayor, not as a + Republican, but as a member of the "Acorns," which he described + as a "third party having no political affiliation, but was + concerned only in the selection of the best candidates and the + best member." + +Great Britain had a Tammany and a Croker a good while ago. This Tammany +was in India, and it began its career with the spread of the English +dominion after the Battle of Plassey. Its first boss was Clive, a +sufficiently crooked person sometimes, but straight as a yard stick +when compared with the corkscrew crookedness of the second boss, Warren +Hastings. + +That old-time Tammany was the East India Company's government, and had +its headquarters at Calcutta. Ostensibly it consisted of a Great Council +of four persons, of whom one was the Governor-General, Warren Hastings; +really it consisted of one person--Warren Hastings; for by usurpation he +concentrated all authority in himself and governed the country like an +autocrat. + +Ostensibly the Court of Directors, sitting in London and representing the +vast interests of the stockholders, was supreme in authority over the +Calcutta Great Council, whose membership it appointed and removed at +pleasure, whose policies it dictated, and to whom it conveyed its will in +the form of sovereign commands; but whenever it suited Hastings, he +ignored even that august body's authority and conducted the mighty +affairs of the British Empire in India to suit his own notions. + +At his mercy was the daily bread of every official, every trader, every +clerk, every civil servant, big and little, in the whole huge India +Company's machine, and the man who hazarded his bread by any failure of +subserviency to the boss lost it. + +Now then, let the supreme masters of British India, the giant corporation +of the India Company of London, stand for the voters of the city of New +York; let the Great Council of Calcutta stand for Tammany; let the +corrupt and money-grubbing great hive of serfs which served under the +Indian Tammany's rod stand for New York Tammany's serfs; let Warren +Hastings stand for Richard Croker, and it seems to me that the parallel +is exact and complete. And so let us be properly grateful and thank God +and our good luck that we didn't invent Tammany. + +Edmund Burke, regarded by many as the greatest orator of all times, +conducted the case against Warren Hastings in that renowned trial which +lasted years, and which promises to keep its renown for centuries to +come. I wish to quote some of the things he said. I wish to imagine him +arraigning Mr. Croker and Tammany before the voters of New York City and +pleading with them for the overthrow of that combined iniquity of the 5th +of November, and will substitute for "My Lords," read "Fellow-Citizens"; +for "Kingdom," read "City"; for "Parliamentary Process," read "Political +Campaign"; for "Two Houses," read "Two Parties," and so it reads: + +"Fellow--citizens, I must look upon it as an auspicious circumstance to +this cause, in which the honor of the city is involved, that from the +first commencement of our political campaign to this the hour of solemn +trial not the smallest difference of opinion has arisen, between the two +parties. + +"You will see, in the progress of this cause, that there is not only a +long, connected, systematic series of misdemeanors, but an equally +connected system of maxims and principles invented to justify them. +Upon both of these you must judge. + +"It is not only the interest of the city of New York, now the most +considerable part of the city of the Americans, which is concerned, but +the credit and honor of the nation itself will be decided by this +decision." + + At a later meeting of the Acorn Club, Mr. Clemens said: + +Tammany is dead, and there's no use in blackguarding a corpse. + +The election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. He had +only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him, +"Where is the best place to go to?" He was undecided about it. So the +minister told him that each place had its advantages--heaven for climate, +and hell for society. + + + + + + +MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION + + ADDRESS AT THE CITY CLUB DINNER, JANUARY 4,1901 + + Bishop Potter told how an alleged representative of Tammany + Hall asked him in effect if he would cease his warfare upon the + Police Department if a certain captain and inspector were + dismissed. He replied that he would never be satisfied until + the "man at the top" and the "system" which permitted evils in + the Police Department were crushed. + +The Bishop has just spoken of a condition of things which none of us can +deny, and which ought not to exist; that is, the lust of gain--a lust +which does not stop short of the penitentiary or the jail to accomplish +its ends. But we may be sure of one thing, and that is that this sort of +thing is not universal. If it were, this country would not be. You may +put this down as a fact: that out of every fifty men, forty-nine are +clean. Then why is it, you may ask, that the forty-nine don't have +things the way they want them? I'll tell you why it is. A good deal has +been said here to-night about what is to be accomplished by organization. +That's just the thing. It's because the fiftieth fellow and his pals are +organized and the other forty-nine are not that the dirty one rubs it +into the clean fellows every time. + +You may say organize, organize, organize; but there may be so much +organization that it will interfere with the work to be done. The Bishop +here had an experience of that sort, and told all about it down-town the +other night. He was painting a barn--it was his own barn--and yet he was +informed that his work must stop; he was a non-union painter, and +couldn't continue at that sort of job. + +Now, all these conditions of which you complain should be remedied, and I +am here to tell you just how to do it. I've been a statesman without +salary for many years, and I have accomplished great and widespread good. +I don't know that it has benefited anybody very much, even if it was +good; but I do know that it hasn't harmed me very much, and is hasn't +made me any richer. + +We hold the balance of power. Put up your best men for office, and we +shall support the better one. With the election of the best man for +Mayor would follow the selection of the best man for Police Commissioner +and Chief of Police. + +My first lesson in the craft of statesmanship was taken at an early age. +Fifty-one years ago I was fourteen years old, and we had a society in the +town I lived in, patterned after the Freemasons, or the Ancient Order of +United Farmers, or some such thing--just what it was patterned after +doesn't matter. It had an inside guard and an outside guard, and a +past-grand warden, and a lot of such things, so as to give dignity to the +organization and offices to the members. + +Generally speaking it was a pretty good sort of organization, and some of +the very best boys in the village, including--but I mustn't get personal +on an occasion like this--and the society would have got along pretty +well had it not been for the fact that there were a certain number of the +members who could be bought. They got to be an infernal nuisance. Every +time we had an election the candidates had to go around and see the +purchasable members. The price per vote was paid in doughnuts, and it +depended somewhat on the appetites of the individuals as to the price +of the votes. + +This thing ran along until some of us, the really very best boys in the +organization, decided that these corrupt practices must stop, and for the +purpose of stopping them we organized a third party. We had a name, but +we were never known by that name. Those who didn't like us called us the +Anti-Doughnut party, but we didn't mind that. + +We said: "Call us what you please; the name doesn't matter. We are +organized for a principle." By-and-by the election came around, and +we made a big mistake. We were triumphantly beaten. That taught us a +lesson. Then and there we decided never again to nominate anybody for +anything. We decided simply to force the other two parties in the +society to nominate their very best men. Although we were organized for +a principle, we didn't care much about that. Principles aren't of much +account anyway, except at election-time. After that you hang them up to +let them season. + +The next time we had an election we told both the other parties that we'd +beat any candidates put up by any one of them of whom we didn't approve. +In that election we did business. We got the man we wanted. I suppose +they called us the Anti-Doughnut party because they couldn't buy us with +their doughnuts. They didn't have enough of them. Most reformers arrive +at their price sooner or later, and I suppose we would have had our +price; but our opponents weren't offering anything but doughnuts, and +those we spurned. + +Now it seems to me that an Anti-Doughnut party is just what is wanted in +the present emergency. I would have the Anti-Doughnuts felt in every city +and hamlet and school district in this State and in the United States. +I was an Anti-Doughnut in my boyhood, and I'm an Anti-Doughnut still. +The modern designation is Mugwump. There used to be quite a number of us +Mugwumps, but I think I'm the only one left. I had a vote this fall, and +I began to make some inquiries as to what I had better do with it. + +I don't know anything about finance, and I never did, but I know some +pretty shrewd financiers, and they told me that Mr. Bryan wasn't safe on +any financial question. I said to myself, then, that it wouldn't do for +me to vote for Bryan, and I rather thought--I know now--that McKinley +wasn't just right on this Philippine question, and so I just didn't vote +for anybody. I've got that vote yet, and I've kept it clean, ready to +deposit at some other election. It wasn't cast for any wildcat financial +theories, and it wasn't cast to support the man who sends our boys as +volunteers out into the Philippines to get shot down under a polluted +flag. + + + + + + +MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT + +ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE ST. NICHOLAS SOCIETY, NEW YORK, +DECEMBER 6, 1900 + + Doctor Mackay, in his response to the toast "St. Nicholas," + referred to Mr. Clemens, saying:--"Mark Twain is as true a + preacher of true righteousness as any bishop, priest, or + minister of any church to-day, because he moves men to forget + their faults by cheerful well-doing instead of making them sour + and morbid by everlastingly bending their attention to the + seamy and sober side of life." + +MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE ST. NICHOLAS SOCIETY,--These are, +indeed, prosperous days for me. Night before last, in a speech, the +Bishop of the Diocese of New York complimented me for my contribution to +theology, and to-night the Reverend Doctor Mackay has elected me to the +ministry. I thanked Bishop Potter then for his compliment, and I thank +Doctor Mackay now for that promotion. I think that both have discerned +in me what I long ago discerned, but what I was afraid the world would +never learn to recognize. + +In this absence of nine years I find a great improvement in the city of +New York. I am glad to speak on that as a toast--"The City of New York." +Some say it has improved because I have been away. Others, and I agree +with them, say it has improved because I have come back. We must judge +of a city, as of a man, by its external appearances and by its inward +character. In externals the foreigner coming to these shores is more +impressed at first by our sky-scrapers. They are new to him. He has not +done anything of the sort since he built the tower of Babel. The +foreigner is shocked by them. + +In the daylight they are ugly. They are--well, too chimneyfied and too +snaggy--like a mouth that needs attention from a dentist; like a cemetery +that is all monuments and no gravestones. But at night, seen from the +river where they are columns towering against the sky, all sparkling with +light, they are fairylike; they are beauty more satisfactory to the soul +and more enchanting than anything that man has dreamed of since the +Arabian nights. We can't always have the beautiful aspect of things. +Let us make the most of our sights that are beautiful and let the others +go. When your foreigner makes disagreeable comments on New York by +daylight, float him down the river at night. + +What has made these sky-scrapers possible is the elevator. The cigar-box +which the European calls a "lift" needs but to be compared with our +elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. +That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American +elevator acts like the man's patent purge--it worked. As the inventor +said, "This purge doesn't waste any time fooling around; it attends +strictly to business." + +That New-Yorkers have the cleanest, quickest, and most admirable system +of street railways in the world has been forced upon you by the abnormal +appreciation you have of your hackman. We ought always to be grateful to +him for that service. Nobody else would have brought such a system into +existence for us. We ought to build him a monument. We owe him one as +much as we owe one to anybody. Let it be a tall one. Nothing permanent, +of course; build it of plaster, say. Then gaze at it and realize how +grateful we are--for the time being--and then pull it down and throw it +on the ash-heap. That's the way to honor your public heroes. + +As to our streets, I find them cleaner than they used to be. I miss +those dear old landmarks, the symmetrical mountain ranges of dust and +dirt that used to be piled up along the streets for the wind and rain to +tear down at their pleasure. Yes, New York is cleaner than Bombay. +I realize that I have been in Bombay, that I now am in New York; that it +is not my duty to flatter Bombay, but rather to flatter New York. + +Compared with the wretched attempts of London to light that city, New +York may fairly be said to be a well-lighted city. Why, London's attempt +at good lighting is almost as bad as London's attempt at rapid transit. +There is just one good system of rapid transit in London--the "Tube," and +that, of course, had been put in by Americans. Perhaps, after a while, +those Americans will come back and give New York also a good underground +system. Perhaps they have already begun. I have been so busy since I +came back that I haven't had time as yet to go down cellar. + +But it is by the laws of the city, it is by the manners of the city, it +is by the ideals of the city, it is by the customs of the city and by the +municipal government which all these elements correct, support, and +foster, by which the foreigner judges the city. It is by these that he +realizes that New York may, indeed, hold her head high among the cities +of the world. It is by these standards that he knows whether to class +the city higher or lower than the other municipalities of the world. + +Gentlemen, you have the best municipal government in the world--the +purest and the most fragrant. The very angels envy you, and wish +they could establish a government like it in heaven. You got it by a +noble fidelity to civic duty. You got it by stern and ever-watchful +exertion of the great powers with which you are charged by the rights +which were handed down to you by your forefathers, by your manly refusal +to let base men invade the high places of your government, and by instant +retaliation when any public officer has insulted you in the city's name +by swerving in the slightest from the upright and full performance of his +duty. It is you who have made this city the envy of the cities of the +world. God will bless you for it--God will bless you for it. Why, when +you approach the final resting-place the angels of heaven will gather at +the gates and cry out: + +"Here they come! Show them to the archangel's box, and turn the +lime-light on them!" + + + + + +CHINA AND THE PHILIPPINES + + AT A DINNER GIVEN IN THE WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL, DECEMBER, 1900 + + Winston Spencer Churchill was introduced by Mr. Clemens. + +For years I've been a self-appointed missionary to bring about the union +of America and the motherland. They ought to be united. Behold America, +the refuge of the oppressed from everywhere (who can pay fifty dollars' +admission)--any one except a Chinaman--standing up for human rights +everywhere, even helping China let people in free when she wants to +collect fifty dollars upon them. And how unselfishly England has wrought +for the open door for all! And how piously America has wrought for that +open door in all cases where it was not her own! + +Yes, as a missionary I've sung my songs of praise. And yet I think that +England sinned when she got herself into a war in South Africa which she +could have avoided, just as we sinned in getting into a similar war in +the Philippines. Mr. Churchill, by his father, is an Englishman; by his +mother he is an American--no doubt a blend that makes the perfect man. +England and America; yes, we are kin. And now that we are also kin in +sin, there is nothing more to be desired. The harmony is complete, the +blend is perfect. + + + + + + +THEORETICAL MORALS + + The New Vagabonds Club of London, made up of the leading + younger literary men of the day, gave a dinner in honor of Mr. + and Mrs. Clemens, July 8, 1899. + +It has always been difficult--leave that word difficult--not exceedingly +difficult, but just difficult, nothing more than that, not the slightest +shade to add to that--just difficult--to respond properly, in the right +phraseology, when compliments are paid to me; but it is more than +difficult when the compliments are paid to a better than I--my wife. + +And while I am not here to testify against myself--I can't be expected to +do so, a prisoner in your own country is not admitted to do so--as to +which member of the family wrote my books, I could say in general that +really I wrote the books myself. My wife puts the facts in, and they +make it respectable. My modesty won't suffer while compliments are being +paid to literature, and through literature to my family. I can't get +enough of them. + +I am curiously situated to-night. It so rarely happens that I am +introduced by a humorist; I am generally introduced by a person of grave +walk and carriage. That makes the proper background of gravity for +brightness. I am going to alter to suit, and haply I may say some +humorous things. + +When you start with a blaze of sunshine and upburst of humor, when you +begin with that, the proper office of humor is to reflect, to put you +into that pensive mood of deep thought, to make you think of your sins, +if you wish half an hour to fly. Humor makes me reflect now to-night, it +sets the thinking machinery in motion. Always, when I am thinking, there +come suggestions of what I am, and what we all are, and what we are +coming to. A sermon comes from my lips always when I listen to a +humorous speech. + +I seize the opportunity to throw away frivolities, to say something to +plant the seed, and make all better than when I came. In Mr. Grossmith's +remarks there was a subtle something suggesting my favorite theory of the +difference between theoretical morals and practical morals. I try to +instil practical morals in the place of theatrical--I mean theoretical; +but as an addendum--an annex--something added to theoretical morals. + +When your chairman said it was the first time he had ever taken the +chair, he did not mean that he had not taken lots of other things; he +attended my first lecture and took notes. This indicated the man's +disposition. There was nothing else flying round, so he took notes; he +would have taken anything he could get. + +I can bring a moral to bear here which shows the difference between +theoretical morals and practical morals. Theoretical morals are the sort +you get on your mother's knee, in good books, and from the pulpit. You +gather them in your head, and not in your heart; they are theory without +practice. Without the assistance of practice to perfect them, it is +difficult to teach a child to "be honest, don't steal." + +I will teach you how it should be done, lead you into temptation, teach +you how to steal, so that you may recognize when you have stolen and feel +the proper pangs. It is no good going round and bragging you have never +taken the chair. + +As by the fires of experience, so by commission of crime, you learn real +morals. Commit all the crimes, familiarize yourself with all sins, take +them in rotation (there are only two or three thousand of them), stick to +it, commit two or three every day, and by-and-by you will be proof +against them. When you are through you will be proof against all sins +and morally perfect. You will be vaccinated against every possible +commission of them. This is the only way. + +I will read you a written statement upon the subject that I wrote three +years ago to read to the Sabbath-schools. [Here the lecturer turned his +pockets out, but without success.] No! I have left it at home. Still, +it was a mere statement of fact, illustrating the value of practical +morals produced by the commission of crime. + +It was in my boyhood just a statement of fact, reading is only more +formal, merely facts, merely pathetic facts, which I can state so as to +be understood. It relates to the first time I ever stole a watermelon; +that is, I think it was the first time; anyway, it was right along there +somewhere. + +I stole it out of a farmer's wagon while he was waiting on another +customer. "Stole" is a harsh term. I withdrew--I retired that +watermelon. I carried it to a secluded corner of a lumber-yard. I broke +it open. It was green--the greenest watermelon raised in the valley that +year. + +The minute I saw it was green I was sorry, and began to reflect +--reflection is the beginning of reform. If you don't reflect when you +commit a crime then that crime is of no use; it might just as well have +been committed by some one else: You must reflect or the value is lost; +you are not vaccinated against committing it again. + +I began to reflect. I said to myself: "What ought a boy to do who has +stolen a green watermelon? What would George Washington do, the father +of his country, the only American who could not tell a lie? What would +he do? There is only one right, high, noble thing for any boy to do who +has stolen a watermelon of that class he must make restitution; he must +restore that stolen property to its rightful owner." I said I would do +it when I made that good resolution. I felt it to be a noble, uplifting +obligation. I rose up spiritually stronger and refreshed. I carried +that watermelon back--what was left of it--and restored it to the farmer, +and made him give me a ripe one in its place. + +Now you see that this constant impact of crime upon crime protects you +against further commission of crime. It builds you up. A man can't +become morally perfect by stealing one or a thousand green watermelons, +but every little helps. + +I was at a great school yesterday (St. Paul's), where for four hundred +years they have been busy with brains, and building up England by +producing Pepys, Miltons, and Marlboroughs. Six hundred boys left to +nothing in the world but theoretical morality. I wanted to become the +professor of practical morality, but the high master was away, so I +suppose I shall have to go on making my living the same old way--by +adding practical to theoretical morality. + +What are the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome, compared +to the glory and grandeur and majesty of a perfected morality such as you +see before you? + +The New Vagabonds are old vagabonds (undergoing the old sort of reform). +You drank my health; I hope I have not been unuseful. Take this system +of morality to your hearts. Take it home to your neighbors and your +graves, and I hope that it will be a long time before you arrive there. + + + + + + +LAYMAN'S SERMON + + The Young Men's Christian Association asked Mr. Clemens to + deliver a lay sermon at the Majestic Theatre, New York, March + 4, 1906. More than five thousand young men tried to get into + the theatre, and in a short time traffic was practically + stopped in the adjacent streets. The police reserves had to be + called out to thin the crowd. Doctor Fagnani had said + something before about the police episode, and Mr. Clemens took + it up. + +I have been listening to what was said here, and there is in it a lesson +of citizenship. You created the police, and you are responsible for +them. One must pause, therefore, before criticising them too harshly. +They are citizens, just as we are. A little of citizenship ought to be +taught at the mother's knee and in the nursery. Citizenship is what +makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it. What keeps a +republic on its legs is good citizenship. + +Organization is necessary in all things. It is even necessary in reform. +I was an organization myself once--for twelve hours. I was in Chicago a +few years ago about to depart for New York. There were with me Mr. +Osgood, a publisher, and a stenographer. I picked out a state-room on a +train, the principal feature of which was that it contained the privilege +of smoking. The train had started but a short time when the conductor +came in and said that there had been a mistake made, and asked that we +vacate the apartment. I refused, but when I went out on the platform +Osgood and the stenographer agreed to accept a section. They were too +modest. + +Now, I am not modest. I was born modest, but it didn't last. I asserted +myself; insisted upon my rights, and finally the Pullman Conductor and +the train conductor capitulated, and I was left in possession. + +I went into the dining--car the next morning for breakfast. Ordinarily +I only care for coffee and rolls, but this particular morning I espied an +important-looking man on the other side of the car eating broiled +chicken. I asked for broiled chicken, and I was told by the waiter and +later by the dining-car conductor that there was no broiled chicken. +There must have been an argument, for the Pullman conductor came in and +remarked: "If he wants broiled chicken, give it to him. If you haven't +got it on the train, stop somewhere. It will be better for all +concerned!" I got the chicken. + +It is from experiences such as these that you get your education of life, +and you string them into jewels or into tinware, as you may choose. +I have received recently several letters asking my counsel or advice. +The principal request is for some incident that may prove helpful to the +young. There were a lot of incidents in my career to help me along +--sometimes they helped me along faster than I wanted to go. + +Here is such a request. It is a telegram from Joplin, Missouri, and it +reads: "In what one of your works can we find the definition of a +gentleman?" + +I have not answered that telegram, either; I couldn't. It seems to me +that if any man has just merciful and kindly instincts he would be a +gentleman, for he would need nothing else in the world. + +I received the other day a letter from my old friend, William Dean +Howells--Howells, the head of American literature. No one is able to +stand with him. He is an old, old friend of mine, and he writes me, +"To-morrow I shall be sixty-nine years old." Why, I am surprised at +Howells writing that! I have known him longer than that. I'm sorry to +see a man trying to appear so young. Let's see. Howells says now, +"I see you have been burying Patrick. I suppose he was old, too." + +No, he was never old--Patrick. He came to us thirty-six years ago. He +was my coachman on the morning that I drove my young bride to our new +home. He was a young Irishman, slender, tall, lithe, honest, truthful, +and he never changed in all his life. He really was with us but +twenty-five years, for he did not go with us to Europe, but he never +regarded that as separation. As the children grew up he was their guide. +He was all honor, honesty, and affection. He was with us in New +Hampshire, with us last summer, and his hair was just as black, his eyes +were just as blue, his form just as straight, and his heart just as good +as on the day we first met. In all the long years Patrick never made a +mistake. He never needed an order, he never received a command. He +knew. I have been asked for my idea of an ideal gentleman, and I give it +to you Patrick McAleer. + + + + + + +UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT SOCIETY + + After the serious addresses were made, Seth Low introduced Mr. + Clemens at the Settlement House, February 2, 1901. + +The older we grow the greater becomes our, wonder at how much ignorance +one can contain without bursting one's clothes. Ten days ago I did not +know anything about the University Settlement except what I'd read in the +pamphlets sent me. Now, after being here and hearing Mrs. Hewitt and +Mrs. Thomas, it seems to me I know of nothing like it at all. It's a +charity that carries no humiliation with it. Marvellous it is, to think +of schools where you don't have to drive the children in but drive them +out. It was not so in my day. + +Down-stairs just now I saw a dancing lesson going on. You must pay a +cent for a lesson. You can't get it for nothing. That's the reason I +never learned to dance. + +But it was the pawnbroker's shop you have here that interested me +mightily. I've known something about pawnbrokers' shops in my time, +but here you have a wonderful plan. The ordinary pawnbroker charges +thirty-six per cent. a year for a loan, and I've paid more myself, but +here a man or woman in distress can obtain a loan for one per cent. +a month! It's wonderful! + +I've been interested in all I've heard to-day, especially in the romances +recounted by Mrs. Thomas, which reminds me that I have a romance of my +own in my autobiography, which I am building for the instruction of the +world. + +In San Francisco, many years ago, when I was a newspaper reporter +(perhaps I should say I had been and was willing to be), a pawnbroker was +taking care of what property I had. There was a friend of mine, a poet, +out of a job, and he was having a hard time of it, too. There was +passage in it, but I guess I've got to keep that for the autobiography. + +Well, my friend the poet thought his life was a failure, and I told him I +thought it was, and then he said he thought he ought to commit suicide, +and I said "all right," which was disinterested advice to a friend in +trouble; but, like all such advice, there was just a little bit of +self-interest back of it, for if I could get a "scoop" on the other +newspapers I could get a job. + +The poet could be spared, and so, largely for his own good and partly for +mine, I kept the thing in his mind, which was necessary, as would-be +suicides are very changeable aid hard to hold to their purpose. He had a +preference for a pistol, which was an extravagance, for we hadn't enough +between us to hire a pistol. A fork would have been easier. + +And so he concluded to drown himself, and I said it was an excellent +idea--the only trouble being that he was so good a swimmer. So we went +down to the beach. I went along to see that the thing was done right. +Then something most romantic happened. There came in on the sea +something that had been on its way for three years. It rolled in across +the broad Pacific with a message that was full of meaning to that poor +poet and cast itself at his feet. It was a life-preserver! This was a +complication. And then I had an idea--he never had any, especially when +he was going to write poetry; I suggested that we pawn the life-preserver +and get a revolver. + +The pawnbroker gave us an old derringer with a bullet as big as a hickory +nut. When he heard that it was only a poet that was going to kill +himself he did not quibble. Well, we succeeded in sending a bullet right +through his head. It was a terrible moment when he placed that pistol +against his forehead and stood for an instant. I said, "Oh, pull the +trigger!" and he did, and cleaned out all the gray matter in his brains. +It carried the poetic faculty away, and now he's a useful member of +society. + +Now, therefore, I realize that there's no more beneficent institution +than this penny fund of yours, and I want all the poets to know this. +I did think about writing you a check, but now I think I'll send you a +few copies of what one of your little members called 'Strawberry Finn'. + + + + + + +PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION + + ADDRESS AT A MEETING OF THE BERKELEY LYCEUM, NEW YORK, + NOVEMBER 23, 1900 + +I don't suppose that I am called here as an expert on education, for that +would show a lack of foresight on your part and a deliberate intention to +remind me of my shortcomings. + +As I sat here looking around for an idea it struck me that I was called +for two reasons. One was to do good to me, a poor unfortunate traveller +on the world's wide ocean, by giving me a knowledge of the nature and +scope of your society and letting me know that others beside myself have +been of some use in the world. The other reason that I can see is that +you have called me to show by way of contrast what education can +accomplish if administered in the right sort of doses. + +Your worthy president said that the school pictures, which have received +the admiration of the world at the Paris Exposition, have been sent to +Russia, and this was a compliment from that Government--which is very +surprising to me. Why, it is only an hour since I read a cablegram in +the newspapers beginning "Russia Proposes to Retrench." I was not +expecting such a thunderbolt, and I thought what a happy thing it will be +for Russians when the retrenchment will bring home the thirty thousand +Russian troops now in Manchuria, to live in peaceful pursuits. I thought +this was what Germany should do also without delay, and that France and +all the other nations in China should follow suit. + +Why should not China be free from the foreigners, who are only making +trouble on her soil? If they would only all go home, what a pleasant +place China would be for the Chinese! We do not allow Chinamen to come +here, and I say in all seriousness that it would be a graceful thing to +let China decide who shall go there. + +China never wanted foreigners any more than foreigners wanted Chinamen, +and on this question I am with the Boxers every time. The Boxer is a +patriot. He loves his country better than he does the countries of other +people. I wish him success. The Boxer believes in driving us out of his +country. I am a Boxer too, for I believe in driving him out of our +country. + +When I read the Russian despatch further my dream of world peace +vanished. It said that the vast expense of maintaining the army had made +it necessary to retrench, and so the Government had decided that to +support the army it would be necessary to withdraw the appropriation from +the public schools. This is a monstrous idea to us. + +We believe that out of the public school grows the greatness of a nation. + +It is curious to reflect how history repeats itself the world over. Why, +I remember the same thing was done when I was a boy on the Mississippi +River. There was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public +schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said +if they stopped the schools they would not save anything, because every +time a school was closed a jail had to be built. + +It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. He'll never get fat. I believe +it is better to support schools than jails. + +The work of your association is better and shows more wisdom than the +Czar of Russia and all his people. This is not much of a compliment, but +it's the best I've got in stock. + + + + + + +EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP + + On the evening of May 14, 1908, the alumni of the College of + the City of New York celebrated the opening of the new college + buildings at a banquet in the Waldorf Astoria. Mr. Clemens + followed Mayor McClellan. + +I agreed when the Mayor said that there was not a man within hearing who +did not agree that citizenship should be placed above everything else, +even learning. + +Have you ever thought about this? Is there a college in the whole +country where there is a chair of good citizenship? There is a kind of +bad citizenship which is taught in the schools, but no real good +citizenship taught. There are some which teach insane citizenship, +bastard citizenship, but that is all. Patriotism! Yes; but patriotism +is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. He is the man who talks the +loudest. + +You can begin that chair of citizenship in the College of the City of New +York. You can place it above mathematics and literature, and that is +where it belongs. + +We used to trust in God. I think it was in 1863 that some genius +suggested that it be put upon the gold and silver coins which circulated +among the rich. They didn't put it on the nickels and coppers because +they didn't think the poor folks had any trust in God. + +Good citizenship would teach accuracy of thinking and accuracy of +statement. Now, that motto on the coin is an overstatement. Those +Congressmen had no right to commit this whole country to a theological +doctrine. But since they did, Congress ought to state what our creed +should be. + +There was never a nation in the world that put its whole trust in God. +It is a statement made on insufficient evidence. Leaving out the +gamblers, the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our trust in +God after a fashion. But, after all, it is an overstatement. + +If the cholera or black plague should come to these shores, perhaps the +bulk of the nation would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest would +put their trust in the Health Board of the City of New York. + +I read in the papers within the last day or two of a poor young girl who +they said was a leper. Did the people in that populous section of the +country where she was--did they put their trust in God? The girl was +afflicted with the leprosy, a disease which cannot be communicated from +one person to another. + +Yet, instead of putting their trust in God, they harried that poor +creature, shelterless and friendless, from place to place, exactly as +they did in the Middle Ages, when they made lepers wear bells, so that +people could be warned of their approach and avoid them. Perhaps those +people in the Middle Ages thought they were putting their trust in God. + +The President ordered the removal of that motto from the coin, and I +thought that it was well. I thought that overstatement should not stay +there. But I think it would better read, "Within certain judicious +limitations we trust in God," and if there isn't enough room on the coin +for this, why, enlarge the coin. + +Now I want to tell a story about jumping at conclusions. It was told to +me by Bram Stoker, and it concerns a christening. There was a little +clergyman who was prone to jump at conclusions sometimes. One day he was +invited to officiate at a christening. He went. There sat the +relatives--intelligent-looking relatives they were. The little +clergyman's instinct came to him to make a great speech. He was given to +flights of oratory that way--a very dangerous thing, for often the wings +which take one into clouds of oratorical enthusiasm are wax and melt up +there, and down you come. + +But the little clergyman couldn't resist. He took the child in his arms, +and, holding it, looked at it a moment. It wasn't much of a child. It +was little, like a sweet-potato. Then the little clergyman waited +impressively, and then: "I see in your countenances," he said, +"disappointment of him. I see you are disappointed with this baby. Why? +Because he is so little. My friends, if you had but the power of looking +into the future you might see that great things may come of little +things. There is the great ocean, holding the navies of the world, which +comes from little drops of water no larger than a woman's tears. There +are the great constellations in the sky, made up of little bits of stars. +Oh, if you could consider his future you might see that he might become +the greatest poet of the universe, the greatest warrior the world has +ever known, greater than Caesar, than Hannibal, than--er--er" (turning to +the father)--"what's his name?" + +The father hesitated, then whispered back: "His name? Well, his name is +Mary Ann." + + + + + + +COURAGE + + At a beefsteak dinner, given by artists, caricaturists, and + humorists of New York City, April 18, 1908, Mr. Clemens, Mr. H. + H. Rogers, and Mr. Patrick McCarren were the guests of honor. + Each wore a white apron, and each made a short speech. + +In the matter of courage we all have our limits. + +There never was a hero who did not have his bounds. I suppose it may be +said of Nelson and all the others whose courage has been advertised that +there came times in their lives when their bravery knew it had come to +its limit. + +I have found mine a good many times. Sometimes this was expected--often +it was unexpected. I know a man who is not afraid to sleep with a +rattlesnake, but you could not get him to sleep with a safety-razor. + +I never had the courage to talk across a long, narrow room I should be at +the end of the room facing all the audience. If I attempt to talk across +a room I find myself turning this way and that, and thus at alternate +periods I have part of the audience behind me. You ought never to have +any part of the audience behind you; you never can tell what they are +going to do. + +I'll sit down. + + + + + + +THE DINNER TO MR. CHOATE + + AT A DINNER GIVEN IN HONOR OF AMBASSADOR JOSEPH H. CHOATE AT + THE LOTOS CLUB, NOVEMBER 24, 7902 + + The speakers, among others, were: Senator Depew, William Henry + White, Speaker Thomas Reed, and Mr. Choate. Mr. Clemens spoke, + in part, as follows: + +The greatness of this country rests on two anecdotes. The first one is +that of Washington and his hatchet, representing the foundation of true +speaking, which is the characteristic of our people. The second one is +an old one, and I've been waiting to hear it to-night; but as nobody has +told it yet, I will tell it. + +You've heard it before, and you'll hear it many, many times more. It is +an anecdote of our guest, of the time when he was engaged as a young man +with a gentle Hebrew, in the process of skinning the client. The main +part in that business is the collection of the bill for services in +skinning the man. "Services" is the term used in that craft for the +operation of that kind-diplomatic in its nature. + +Choate's--co-respondent--made out a bill for $500 for his services, so +called. But Choate told him he had better leave the matter to him, and +the next day he collected the bill for the services and handed the Hebrew +$5000, saying, "That's your half of the loot," and inducing that +memorable response: "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." + +The deep-thinkers didn't merely laugh when that happened. They stopped +to think, and said "There's a rising man. He must be rescued from the +law and consecrated to diplomacy. The commercial advantages of a great +nation lie there in that man's keeping. We no longer require a man to +take care of our moral character before the world. Washington and his +anecdote have done that. We require a man to take care of our commercial +prosperity." + +Mr. Choate has carried that trait with him, and, as Mr. Carnegie has +said, he has worked like a mole underground. + +We see the result when American railroad iron is sold so cheap in England +that the poorest family can have it. He has so beguiled that Cabinet of +England. + +He has been spreading the commerce of this nation, and has depressed +English commerce in the same ratio. This was the principle underlying +that anecdote, and the wise men saw it; the principle of give and take +--give one and take ten--the principle of diplomacy. + + + + + + +ON STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE + + Mr. Clemens was entertained at dinner by the Whitefriars' Club, + London, at the Mitre Tavern, on the evening of August 6, 1872. + In reply to the toast in his honor he said: + +GENTLEMEN,--I thank you very heartily indeed for this expression of +kindness toward me. What I have done for England and civilization in the +arduous affairs which I have engaged in (that is good: that is so smooth +that I will say it again and again)--what I have done for England and +civilization in the arduous part I have performed I have done with a +single-hearted devotion and with no hope of reward. I am proud, I am +very proud, that it was reserved for me to find Doctor Livingstone and +for Mr. Stanley to get all the credit. I hunted for that man in Africa +all over seventy-five or one hundred parishes, thousands and thousands of +miles in the wilds and deserts all over the place, sometimes riding +negroes and sometimes travelling by rail. I didn't mind the rail or +anything else, so that I didn't come in for the tar and feathers. I +found that man at Ujiji--a place you may remember if you have ever been +there--and it was a very great satisfaction that I found him just in the +nick of time. I found that poor old man deserted by his niggers and by +his geographers, deserted by all of his kind except the gorillas +--dejected, miserable, famishing, absolutely famishing--but he was +eloquent. Just as I found him he had eaten his last elephant, and he +said to me: "God knows where I shall get another." He had nothing to +wear except his venerable and honorable naval suit, and nothing to eat +but his diary. + +But I said to him: "It is all right; I have discovered you, and Stanley +will be here by the four-o'clock train and will discover you officially, +and then we will turn to and have a reg'lar good time." I said: "Cheer +up, for Stanley has got corn, ammunition, glass beads, hymn-books, +whiskey, and everything which the human heart can desire; he has got all +kinds of valuables, including telegraph-poles and a few cart-loads of +money. By this time communication has been made with the land of Bibles +and civilization, and property will advance." And then we surveyed all +that country, from Ujiji, through Unanogo and other places, to +Unyanyembe. I mention these names simply for your edification, nothing +more--do not expect it--particularly as intelligence to the Royal +Geographical Society. And then, having filled up the old man, we were +all too full for utterance and departed. We have since then feasted on +honors. + +Stanley has received a snuff-box and I have received considerable snuff; +he has got to write a book and gather in the rest of the credit, and I am +going to levy on the copyright and to collect the money. Nothing comes +amiss to me--cash or credit; but, seriously, I do feel that Stanley is +the chief man and an illustrious one, and I do applaud him with all my +heart. Whether he is an American or a Welshman by birth, or one, or +both, matters not to me. So far as I am personally concerned, I am +simply here to stay a few months, and to see English people and to learn +English manners and customs, and to enjoy myself; so the simplest thing I +can do is to thank you for the toast you have honored me with and for the +remarks you have made, and to wish health and prosperity to the +Whitefriars' Club, and to sink down to my accustomed level. + + + + + + +HENRY M. STANLEY + + ADDRESS DELIVERED IN BOSTON, NOVEMBER, 1886 + + Mr. Clemens introduced Mr. Stanley. + +LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, if any should ask, Why is it that you are here as +introducer of the lecturer? I should answer that I happened to be around +and was asked to perform this function. I was quite willing to do so, +and, as there was no sort of need of an introduction, anyway, it could be +necessary only that some person come forward for a moment and do an +unnecessary thing, and this is quite in my line. Now, to introduce so +illustrious a name as Henry M. Stanley by any detail of what the man has +done is clear aside from my purpose; that would be stretching the +unnecessary to an unconscionable degree. When I contrast what I have +achieved in my measurably brief life with what he has achieved in his +possibly briefer one, the effect is to sweep utterly away the ten-story +edifice of my own self-appreciation and leave nothing behind but the +cellar. When you compare these achievements of his with the achievements +of really great men who exist in history, the comparison, I believe, is +in his favor. I am not here to disparage Columbus. + +No, I won't do that; but when you come to regard the achievements of +these two men, Columbus and Stanley, from the standpoint of the +difficulties they encountered, the advantage is with Stanley and against +Columbus. Now, Columbus started out to discover America. Well, he +didn't need to do anything at all but sit in the cabin of his ship and +hold his grip and sail straight on, and America would discover itself. +Here it was, barring his passage the whole length and breadth of the +South American continent, and he couldn't get by it. He'd got to +discover it. But Stanley started out to find Doctor Livingstone, who was +scattered abroad, as you may say, over the length and breadth of a vast +slab of Africa as big as the United States. + +It was a blind kind of search. He was the worst scattered of men. But I +will throw the weight of this introduction upon one very peculiar feature +of Mr. Stanley's character, and that is his indestructible Americanism +--an Americanism which he is proud of. And in this day and time, when it +is the custom to ape and imitate English methods and fashion, it is like +a breath of fresh air to stand in the presence of this untainted American +citizen who has been caressed and complimented by half of the crowned +heads of Europe who could clothe his body from his head to his heels with +the orders and decorations lavished upon him. And yet, when the untitled +myriads of his own country put out their hands in welcome to him and +greet him, "Well done," through the Congress of the United States, that +is the crown that is worth all the rest to him. He is a product of +institutions which exist in no other country on earth-institutions that +bring out all that is best and most heroic in a man. I introduce Henry +M. Stanley. + + + + + + +DINNER TO MR. JEROME + + A dinner to express their confidence in the integrity and good + judgment of District-Attorney Jerome was given at Delmonico's + by over three hundred of his admirers on the evening of May 7, + 1909. + +Indeed, that is very sudden. I was not informed that the verdict was +going to depend upon my judgment, but that makes not the least difference +in the world when you already know all about it. It is not any matter +when you are called upon to express it; you can get up and do it, and my +verdict has already been recorded in my heart and in my head as regards +Mr. Jerome and his administration of the criminal affairs of this county. + +I agree with everything Mr. Choate has said in his letter regarding Mr. +Jerome; I agree with everything Mr. Shepard has said; and I agree with +everything Mr. Jerome has said in his own commendation. And I thought +Mr. Jerome was modest in that. If he had been talking about another +officer of this county, he could have painted the joys and sorrows of +office and his victories in even stronger language than he did. + +I voted for Mr. Jerome in those old days, and I should like to vote for +him again if he runs for any office. I moved out of New York, and that +is the reason, I suppose, I cannot vote for him again. There may be some +way, but I have not found it out. But now I am a farmer--a farmer up in +Connecticut, and winning laurels. Those people already speak with such +high favor, admiration, of my farming, and they say that I am the only +man that has ever come to that region who could make two blades of grass +grow where only three grew before. + +Well, I cannot vote for him. You see that. As it stands now, I cannot. +I am crippled in that way and to that extent, for I would ever so much +like to do it. I am not a Congress, and I cannot distribute pensions, +and I don't know any other legitimate way to buy a vote. But if I should +think of any legitimate way, I shall make use of it, and then I shall +vote for Mr. Jerome. + + + + + + +HENRY IRVING + + The Dramatic and Literary Society of London gave a welcome-home + dinner to Sir Henry Irving at the Savoy Hotel, London, June 9, + 1900. In proposing the toast of "The Drama" Mr. Clemens said: + +I find my task a very easy one. I have been a dramatist for thirty +years. I have had an ambition in all that time to overdo the work of the +Spaniard who said he left behind him four hundred dramas when he died. +I leave behind me four hundred and fifteen, and am not yet dead. + +The greatest of all the arts is to write a drama. It is a most difficult +thing. It requires the highest talent possible and the rarest gifts. +No, there is another talent that ranks with it--for anybody can write a +drama--I had four hundred of them--but to get one accepted requires real +ability. And I have never had that felicity yet. + +But human nature is so constructed, we are so persistent, that when we +know that we are born to a thing we do not care what the world thinks +about it. We go on exploiting that talent year after year, as I have +done. I shall go on writing dramas, and some day the impossible may +happen, but I am not looking for it. + +In writing plays the chief thing is novelty. The world grows tired of +solid forms in all the arts. I struck a new idea myself years ago. +I was not surprised at it. I was always expecting it would happen. +A person who has suffered disappointment for many years loses confidence, +and I thought I had better make inquiries before I exploited my new idea +of doing a drama in the form of a dream, so I wrote to a great authority +on knowledge of all kinds, and asked him whether it was new. + +I could depend upon him. He lived in my dear home in America--that dear +home, dearer to me through taxes. He sent me a list of plays in which +that old device had been used, and he said that there was also a modern +lot. He travelled back to China and to a play dated two thousand six +hundred years before the Christian era. He said he would follow it up +with a list of the previous plays of the kind, and in his innocence would +have carried them back to the Flood. + +That is the most discouraging thing that has ever happened to me in my +dramatic career. I have done a world of good in a silent and private +way, and have furnished Sir Henry Irving with plays and plays and plays. +What has he achieved through that influence. See where he stands now +--on the summit of his art in two worlds and it was I who put him there +--that partly put him there. + +I need not enlarge upon the influence the drama has exerted upon +civilization. It has made good morals entertaining. I am to be followed +by Mr. Pinero. I conceive that we stand at the head of the profession. +He has not written as many plays as I have, but he has lead that +God-given talent, which I lack, of working hem off on the manager. +I couple his name with this toast, and add the hope that his influence +will be supported in exercising his masterly handicraft in that great +gift, and that he will long live to continue his fine work. + + + + + + +DINNER TO HAMILTON W. MABIE + + ADDRESS DELIVERED APRIL 29, 1901 + + In introducing Mr. Clemens, Doctor Van Dyke said: + + "The longer the speaking goes on to-night the more I wonder how + I got this job, and the only explanation I can give for it is + that it is the same kind of compensation for the number of + articles I have sent to The Outlook, to be rejected by Hamilton + W. Mabie. There is one man here to-night that has a job cut + out for him that none of you would have had--a man whose humor + has put a girdle of light around the globe, and whose sense of + humor has been an example for all five continents. He is going + to speak to you. Gentlemen, you know him best as Mark Twain." + +MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,--This man knows now how it feels to be the +chief guest, and if he has enjoyed it he is the first man I have ever +seen in that position that did enjoy it. And I know, by side-remarks +which he made to me before his ordeal came upon him, that he was feeling +as some of the rest of us have felt under the same circumstances. He was +afraid that he would not do himself justice; but he did--to my surprise. +It is a most serious thing to be a chief guest on an occasion like this, +and it is admirable, it is fine. It is a great compliment to a man that +he shall come out of it so gloriously as Mr. Mabie came out of it +tonight--to my surprise. He did it well. + +He appears to be editor of The Outlook, and notwithstanding that, I have +every admiration, because when everything is said concerning The Outlook, +after all one must admit that it is frank in its delinquencies, that it +is outspoken in its departures from fact, that it is vigorous in its +mistaken criticisms of men like me. I have lived in this world a long, +long time, and I know you must not judge a man by the editorials that he +puts in his paper. A man is always better than his printed opinions. +A man always reserves to himself on the inside a purity and an honesty +and a justice that are a credit to him, whereas the things that he prints +are just the reverse. + +Oh yes, you must not judge a man by what he writes in his paper. Even in +an ordinary secular paper a man must observe some care about it; he must +be better than the principles which he puts in print. And that is the +case with Mr. Mabie. Why, to see what he writes about me and the +missionaries you would think he did not have any principles. But that is +Mr. Mabie in his public capacity. Mr. Mabie in his private capacity is +just as clean a man as I am. + +In this very room, a month or two ago, some people admired that portrait; +some admired this, but the great majority fastened on that, and said, +"There is a portrait that is a beautiful piece of art." When that +portrait is a hundred years old it will suggest what were the manners and +customs in our time. Just as they talk about Mr. Mabie to-night, in that +enthusiastic way, pointing out the various virtues of the man and the +grace of his spirit, and all that, so was that portrait talked about. +They were enthusiastic, just as we men have been over the character and +the work of Mr. Mabie. And when they were through they said that +portrait, fine as it is, that work, beautiful as it is, that piece of +humanity on that canvas, gracious and fine as it is, does not rise to +those perfections that exist in the man himself. Come up, Mr. Alexander. +[The reference was to James W. Alexander, who happened to be sitting +--beneath the portrait of himself on the wall.] Now, I should come up +and show myself. But he cannot do it, he cannot do it. He was born that +way, he was reared in that way. Let his modesty be an example, and I +wish some of you had it, too. But that is just what I have been saying +--that portrait, fine as it is, is not as fine as the man it represents, +and all the things that have been said about Mr. Mabie, and certainly +they have been very nobly worded and beautiful, still fall short of the +real Mabie. + + + + + + +INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY + + James Whitcomb Riley and Edgar Wilson Nye (Bill Nye) were to + give readings in Tremont Temple, Boston, November, 1888. Mr. + Clemens was induced to introduce Messrs. Riley and Nye. His + appearance on the platform was a surprise to the audience, and + when they recognized him there was a tremendous demonstration. + +I am very glad indeed to introduce these young people to you, and at the +same time get acquainted with them myself. I have seen them more than +once for a moment, but have not had the privilege of knowing them +personally as intimately as I wanted to. I saw them first, a great many +years ago, when Mr. Barnum had them, and they were just fresh from Siam. +The ligature was their best hold then, the literature became their best +hold later, when one of them committed an indiscretion, and they had to +cut the old bond to accommodate the sheriff. + +In that old former time this one was Chang, that one was Eng. The +sympathy existing between the two was most extraordinary; it was so fine, +so strong, so subtle, that what the one ate the other digested; when one +slept, the other snored; if one sold a thing, the other scooped the +usufruct. This independent and yet dependent action was observable in +all the details of their daily life--I mean this quaint and arbitrary +distribution of originating cause and resulting effect between the two +--between, I may say, this dynamo and the other always motor, or, in +other words, that the one was always the creating force, the other always +the utilizing force; no, no, for while it is true that within certain +well-defined zones of activity the one was always dynamo and the other +always motor, within certain other well-defined zones these positions +became exactly reversed. + +For instance, in moral matters Mr. Chang Riley was always dynamo, Mr. Eng +Nye was always motor; for while Mr. Chang Riley had a high--in fact, an +abnormally high and fine moral sense, he had no machinery to work it +with; whereas, Mr. Eng Nye, who hadn't any moral sense at all, and hasn't +yet, was equipped with all the necessary plant for putting a noble deed +through, if he could only get the inspiration on reasonable terms +outside. + +In intellectual matters, on the other hand, Mr. Eng Nye was always +dynamo, Mr. Chang Riley was always motor; Mr. Eng Nye had a stately +intellect, but couldn't make it go; Mr. Chang Riley hadn't, but could. +That is to say, that while Mr. Chang Riley couldn't think things himself, +he had a marvellous natural grace in setting them down and weaving them +together when his pal furnished the raw material. + +Thus, working together, they made a strong team; laboring together, they +could do miracles; but break the circuit, and both were impotent. It has +remained so to this day: they must travel together, hoe, and plant, and +plough, and reap, and sell their public together, or there's no result. + +I have made this explanation, this analysis, this vivisection, so to +speak, in order that you may enjoy these delightful adventurers +understandingly. When Mr. Eng Nye's deep and broad and limpid +philosophies flow by in front of you, refreshing all the regions round +about with their gracious floods, you will remember that it isn't his +water; it's the other man's, and he is only working the pump. And when +Mr. Chang Riley enchants your ear, and soothes your spirit, and touches +your heart with the sweet and genuine music of his poetry--as sweet and +as genuine as any that his friends, the birds and the bees, make about +his other friends, the woods and the flowers--you will remember, while +placing justice where justice is due, that it isn't his music, but the +other man's--he is only turning the crank. + +I beseech for these visitors a fair field, a singleminded, one-eyed +umpire, and a score bulletin barren of goose-eggs if they earn it--and I +judge they will and hope they will. Mr. James Whitcomb Chang Riley will +now go to the bat. + + + + + + +DINNER TO WHITELAW REID + + ADDRESS AT THE DINNER IN HONOR OF AMBASSADOR REID, GIVEN BY THE + PILGRIMS' CLUB OF NEW YORK ON FEBRUARY 19, 1908 + +I am very proud to respond to this toast, as it recalls the proudest day +of my life. The delightful hospitality shown me at the time of my visit +to Oxford I shall cherish until I die. In that long and distinguished +career of mine I value that degree above all other honors. When the ship +landed even the stevedores gathered on the shore and gave an English +cheer. Nothing could surpass in my life the pleasure of those four +weeks. No one could pass by me without taking my hand, even the +policemen. I've been in all the principal capitals of Christendom in my +life, and have always been an object of interest to policemen. Sometimes +there was suspicion in their eyes, but not always. With their puissant +hand they would hold up the commerce of the world to let me pass. + +I noticed in the papers this afternoon a despatch from Washington, saying +that Congress would immediately pass a bill restoring to our gold coinage +the motto "In God We Trust." I'm glad of that; I'm glad of that. I was +troubled when that motto was removed. Sure enough, the prosperities of +the whole nation went down in a heap when we ceased to trust in God in +that conspicuously advertised way. I knew there would be trouble. And +if Pierpont Morgan hadn't stepped in--Bishop Lawrence may now add to his +message to the old country that we are now trusting in God again. So we +can discharge Mr. Morgan from his office with honor. + +Mr. Reid said an hour or so ago something about my ruining my activities +last summer. They are not ruined, they are renewed. I am stronger now +--much stronger. I suppose that the spiritual uplift I received +increased my physical power more than anything I ever had before. I was +dancing last night at 1.30 o'clock. + +Mr. Choate has mentioned Mr. Reid's predecessors. Mr. Choate's head is +full of history, and some of it is true, too. I enjoyed hearing him tell +about the list of the men who had the place before he did. He mentioned +a long list of those predecessors, people I never heard of before, and +elected five of them to the Presidency by his own vote. I'm glad and +proud to find Mr. Reid in that high position, because he didn't look it +when I knew him forty years ago. I was talking to Reid the other day, +and he showed me my autograph on an old paper twenty years old. I didn't +know I had an autograph twenty years ago. Nobody ever asked me for it. + +I remember a dinner I had long ago with Whitelaw Reid and John Hay at +Reid's expense. I had another last summer when I was in London at the +embassy that Choate blackguards so. I'd like to live there. + +Some people say they couldn't live on the salary, but I could live on the +salary and the nation together. Some of us don't appreciate what this +country can do. There's John Hay, Reid, Choate, and me. This is the +only country in the world where youth, talent, and energy can reach such +heights. It shows what we could do without means, and what people can do +with talent and energy when they find it in people like us. + +When I first came to New York they were all struggling young men, and I +am glad to see that they have got on in the world. I knew John Hay when +I had no white hairs in my head and more hair than Reid has now. Those +were days of joy and hope. Reid and Hay were on the staff of the +Tribune. I went there once in that old building, and I looked all around +and I finally found a door ajar and looked in. It wasn't Reid or Hay +there, but it was Horace Greeley. Those were in the days when Horace +Greeley was a king. That was the first time I ever saw him and the last. + +I was admiring him when he stopped and seemed to realize that there was a +fine presence there somewhere. He tried to smile, but he was out of +smiles. He looked at me a moment, and said: + +"What in H---do you want?" + +He began with that word "H." That's a long word and a profane word. +I don't remember what the word was now, but I recognized the power of it. +I had never used that language myself, but at that moment I was +converted. It has been a great refuge for me in time of trouble. If a +man doesn't know that language he can't express himself on strenuous +occasions. When you have that word at your command let trouble come. + +But later Hay rose, and you know what summit Whitelaw Reid has reached, +and you see me. Those two men have regulated troubles of nations and +conferred peace upon mankind. And in my humble way, of which I am quite +vain, I was the principal moral force in all those great international +movements. These great men illustrated what I say. Look at us great +people--we all come from the dregs of society. That's what can be done +in this country. That's what this country does for you. + +Choate here--he hasn't got anything to say, but he says it just the same, +and he can do it so felicitously, too. I said long ago he was the +handsomest man America ever produced. May the progress of civilization +always rest on such distinguished men as it has in the past! + + + + + + +ROGERS AND RAILROADS + + AT A BANQUET GIVEN MR. H. H. ROGERS BY THE BUSINESS MEN OF + NORFOLK, VA., CELEBRATING THE OPENING OF THE VIRGINIAN RAILWAY, + APRIL, 3, 1909 + + Toastmaster: + + "I have often thought that when the time comes, which must come + to all of us, when we reach that Great Way in the Great Beyond, + and the question is propounded, 'What have you done to gain + admission into this great realm?' if the answer could be + sincerely made, 'I have made men laugh,' it would be the surest + passport to a welcome entrance. We have here to-night one who + has made millions laugh--not the loud laughter that bespeaks + the vacant mind, but the laugh of intelligent mirth that helps + the human heart and the human mind. I refer, of course, to + Doctor Clemens. I was going to say Mark Twain, his literary + title, which is a household phrase in more homes than that of + any other man, and you know him best by that dear old title." + +I thank you, Mr. Toastmaster, for the compliment which you have paid me, +and I am sure I would rather have made people laugh than cry, yet in my +time I have made some of them cry; and before I stop entirely I hope to +make some more of them cry. I like compliments. I deal in them myself. +I have listened with the greatest pleasure to the compliments which the +chairman has paid to Mr. Rogers and that road of his to-night, and I hope +some of them are deserved. + +It is no small distinction to a man like that to sit here before an +intelligent crowd like this and to be classed with Napoleon and Caesar. +Why didn't he say that this was the proudest day of his life? Napoleon +and Caesar are dead, and they can't be here to defend themselves. But +I'm here! + +The chairman said, and very truly, that the most lasting thing in the +hands of man are the roads which Caesar built, and it is true that he +built a lot of them; and they are there yet. + +Yes, Caesar built a lot of roads in England, and you can find them. But +Rogers has only built one road, and he hasn't finished that yet. I like +to hear my old friend complimented, but I don't like to hear it overdone. + +I didn't go around to-day with the others to see what he is doing. I +will do that in a quiet time, when there is not anything going on, and +when I shall not be called upon to deliver intemperate compliments on a +railroad in which I own no stock. + +They proposed that I go along with the committee and help inspect that +dump down yonder. I didn't go. I saw that dump. I saw that thing when +I was coming in on the steamer, and I didn't go because I was diffident, +sentimentally diffident, about going and looking at that thing again +--that great, long, bony thing; it looked just like Mr. Rogers's foot. + +The chairman says Mr. Rogers is full of practical wisdom, and he is. +It is intimated here that he is a very ingenious man, and he, is a very +competent financier. Maybe he is now, but it was not always so. I know +lots of private things in his life which people don't know, and I know +how he started; and it was not a very good start. I could have done +better myself. The first time he crossed the Atlantic he had just made +the first little strike in oil, and he was so young he did not like to +ask questions. He did not like to appear ignorant. To this day he don't +like to appear ignorant, but he can look as ignorant as anybody. +On board the ship they were betting on the run of the ship, betting a +couple of shillings, or half a crown, and they proposed that this youth +from the oil regions should bet on the run of the ship. He did not like +to ask what a half-crown was, and he didn't know; but rather than be +ashamed of himself he did bet half a crown on the run of the ship, and in +bed he could not sleep. He wondered if he could afford that outlay in +case he lost. He kept wondering over it, and said to himself: "A king's +crown must be worth $20,000, so half a crown would cost $10,000." +He could not afford to bet away $10,000 on the run of the ship, so he +went up to the stakeholder and gave him $150 to let him off. + +I like to hear Mr. Rogers complimented. I am not stingy in compliments +to him myself. Why, I did it to-day when I sent his wife a telegram to +comfort her. That is the kind of person I am. I knew she would be +uneasy about him. I knew she would be solicitous about what he might do +down here, so I did it to quiet her and to comfort her. I said he was +doing well for a person out of practice. There is nothing like it. +He is like I used to be. There were times when I was careless--careless +in my dress when I got older. You know how uncomfortable your wife can +get when you are going away without her superintendence. Once when my +wife could not go with me (she always went with me when she could +--I always did meet that kind of luck), I was going to Washington once, a +long time ago, in Mr. Cleveland's first administration, and she could not +go; but, in her anxiety that I should not desecrate the house, she made +preparation. She knew that there was to be a reception of those authors +at the White House at seven o'clock in the evening. She said, "If I +should tell you now what I want to ask of you, you would forget it before +you get to Washington, and, therefore, I have written it on a card, and +you will find it in your dress--vest pocket when you are dressing at the +Arlington--when you are dressing to see the President." I never thought +of it again until I was dressing, and I felt in that pocket and took it +out, and it said, in a kind of imploring way, "Don't wear your arctics in +the White House." + +You complimented Mr. Rogers on his energy, his foresightedness, +complimented him in various ways, and he has deserved those compliments, +although I say it myself; and I enjoy them all. There is one side of Mr. +Rogers that has not been mentioned. If you will leave that to me I will +touch upon that. There was a note in an editorial in one of the Norfolk +papers this morning that touched upon that very thing, that hidden side +of Mr. Rogers, where it spoke of Helen Keller and her affection for Mr. +Rogers, to whom she dedicated her life book. And she has a right to feel +that way, because, without the public knowing anything about it, he +rescued, if I may use that term, that marvellous girl, that wonderful +Southern girl, that girl who was stone deaf, blind, and dumb from +scarlet-fever when she was a baby eighteen months old; and who now is as +well and thoroughly educated as any woman on this planet at twenty-nine +years of age. She is the most marvellous person of her sex that has +existed on this earth since Joan of Arc. + +That is not all Mr. Rogers has done; but you never see that side of his +character, because it is never protruding; but he lends a helping hand +daily out of that generous heart of his. You never hear of it. He is +supposed to be a moon which has one side dark and the other bright. +But the other side, though you don't see it, is not dark; it is bright, +and its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are not God. + +I would take this opportunity to tell something that I have never been +allowed to tell by Mr. Rogers, either by my mouth or in print, and if I +don't look at him I can tell it now. + +In 1893, when the publishing company of Charles L. Webster, of which I +was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. If you will +remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that you could +not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and I was on my back; my +books were not worth anything at all, and I could not give away my +copyrights. Mr. Rogers had long enough vision ahead to say, "Your books +have supported you before, and after the panic is over they will support +you again," and that was a correct proposition. He saved my copyrights, +and saved me from financial ruin. He it was who arranged with my +creditors to allow me to roam the face of the earth for four years and +persecute the nations thereof with lectures, promising that at the end of +four years I would pay dollar for dollar. That arrangement was made; +otherwise I would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a +borrowed one at that. + +You see his white mustache and his head trying to get white (he is always +trying to look like me--I don't blame him for that). These are only +emblematic of his character, and that is all. I say, without exception, +hair and all, he is the whitest man I have ever known. + + + + + + +THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER + + ADDRESS AT THE TYPOTHETAE DINNER GIVEN AT DELMONICO'S, + JANUARY 18, 1886, COMMEMORATING THE BIRTHDAY OF + BENJAMIN FRANKLIN + + Mr. Clemens responded to the toast "The Compositor." + +The chairman's historical reminiscences of Gutenberg have caused me to +fall into reminiscences, for I myself am something of an antiquity. +All things change in the procession of years, and it may be that I am +among strangers. It may be that the printer of to-day is not the printer +of thirty-five years ago. I was no stranger to him. I knew him well. +I built his fire for him in the winter mornings; I brought his water from +the village pump; I swept out his office; I picked up his type from under +his stand; and, if he were there to see, I put the good type in his case +and the broken ones among the "hell matter"; and if he wasn't there to +see, I dumped it all with the "pi" on the imposing-stone--for that was +the furtive fashion of the cub, and I was a cub. I wetted down the paper +Saturdays, I turned it Sundays--for this was a country weekly; I rolled, +I washed the rollers, I washed the forms, I folded the papers, I carried +them around at dawn Thursday mornings. The carrier was then an object of +interest to all the dogs in town. If I had saved up all the bites I ever +received, I could keep M. Pasteur busy for a year. I enveloped the +papers that were for the mail--we had a hundred town subscribers and +three hundred and fifty country ones; the town subscribers paid in +groceries and the country ones in cabbages and cord-wood--when they paid +at all, which was merely sometimes, and then we always stated the fact in +the paper, and gave them a puff; and if we forgot it they stopped the +paper. Every man on the town list helped edit the thing--that is, +he gave orders as to how it was to be edited; dictated its opinions, +marked out its course for it, and every time the boss failed to connect +he stopped his paper. We were just infested with critics, and we tried +to satisfy them all over. We had one subscriber who paid cash, and he +was more trouble than all the rest. He bought us once a year, body and +soul, for two dollars. He used to modify our politics every which way, +and he made us change our religion four times in five years. If we ever +tried to reason with him, he would threaten to stop his paper, and, of +course, that meant bankruptcy and destruction. That man used to write +articles a column and a half long, leaded long primer, and sign them +"Junius," or "Veritas," or "Vox Populi," or some other high-sounding rot; +and then, after it was set up, he would come in and say he had changed +his mind-which was a gilded figure of speech, because he hadn't any--and +order it to be left out. We couldn't afford "bogus" in that office, so +we always took the leads out, altered the signature, credited the article +to the rival paper in the next village, and put it in. Well, we did have +one or two kinds of "bogus." Whenever there was a barbecue, or a circus, +or a baptizing, we knocked off for half a day, and then to make up for +short matter we would "turn over ads"--turn over the whole page and +duplicate it. The other "bogus" was deep philosophical stuff, which we +judged nobody ever read; so we kept a galley of it standing, and kept on +slapping the same old batches of it in, every now and then, till it got +dangerous. Also, in the early days of the telegraph we used to economize +on the news. We picked out the items that were pointless and barren of +information and stood them on a galley, and changed the dates and +localities, and used them over and over again till the public interest in +them was worn to the bone. We marked the ads, but we seldom paid any +attention to the marks afterward; so the life of a "td" ad and a "tf" ad +was equally eternal. I have seen a "td" notice of a sheriff's sale still +booming serenely along two years after the sale was over, the sheriff +dead, and the whole circumstance become ancient history. Most of the +yearly ads were patent-medicine stereotypes, and we used to fence with +them. + +I can see that printing-office of prehistoric times yet, with its horse +bills on, the walls, its "d" boxes clogged with tallow, because we always +stood the candle in the "k" box nights, its towel, which was not +considered soiled until it could stand alone, and other signs and symbols +that marked the establishment of that kind in the Mississippi Valley; +and I can see, also, the tramping "jour," who flitted by in the summer +and tarried a day, with his wallet stuffed with one shirt and a hatful of +handbills; for if he couldn't get any type to set he would do a +temperance lecture. His way of life was simple, his needs not complex; +all he wanted was plate and bed and money enough to get drunk on, and he +was satisfied. But it may be, as I have said, that I am among strangers, +and sing the glories of a forgotten age to unfamiliar ears, so I will +"make even" and stop. + + + + + + +SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS + + On November 15, 1900, the society gave a reception to Mr. + Clemens, who came with his wife and daughter. So many members + surrounded the guests that Mr. Clemens asked: "Is this genuine + popularity or is it all a part of a prearranged programme?" + +MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It seems a most difficult thing for +any man to say anything about me that is not complimentary. I don't know +what the charm is about me which makes it impossible for a person to say +a harsh thing about me and say it heartily, as if he was glad to say it. + +If this thing keeps on it will make me believe that I am what these kind +chairmen say of me. In introducing me, Judge Ransom spoke of my modesty +as if he was envious of me. I would like to have one man come out +flat-footed and say something harsh and disparaging of me, even if it +were true. I thought at one time, as the learned judge was speaking, +that I had found that man; but he wound up, like all the others, by +saying complimentary things. + +I am constructed like everybody else, and enjoy a compliment as well as +any other fool, but I do like to have the other side presented. And +there is another side. I have a wicked side. Estimable friends who know +all about it would tell you and take a certain delight in telling you +things that I have done, and things further that I have not repented. + +The real life that I live, and the real life that I suppose all of you +live, is a life of interior sin. That is what makes life valuable and +pleasant. To lead a life of undiscovered sin! That is true joy. + +Judge Ransom seems to have all the virtues that he ascribes to me. But, +oh my! if you could throw an X-ray through him. We are a pair. I have +made a life-study of trying to appear to be what he seems to think I am. +Everybody believes that I am a monument of all the virtues, but it is +nothing of the sort. I am living two lives, and it keeps me pretty busy. + +Some day there will be a chairman who will forget some of these merits of +mine, and then he will make a speech. + +I have more personal vanity than modesty, and twice as much veracity as +the two put together. + +When that fearless and forgetful chairman is found there will be another +story told. At the Press Club recently I thought that I had found +him. He started in in the way that I knew I should be painted with all +sincerity, and was leading to things that would not be to my credit; but +when he said that he never read a book of mine I knew at once that he was +a liar, because he never could have had all the wit and intelligence with +which he was blessed unless he had read my works as a basis. + +I like compliments. I like to go home and tell them all over again to +the members of my family. They don't believe them, but I like to tell +them in the home circle, all the same. I like to dream of them if I can. + +I thank everybody for their compliments, but I don't think that I am +praised any more than I am entitled to be. + + + + + + +READING-ROOM OPENING + + On October 13, 1900, Mr. Clemens made his last address + preceding his departure for America at Kensal Rise, London. + +I formally declare this reading-room open, and I think that the +legislature should not compel a community to provide itself with +intelligent food, but give it the privilege of providing it if the +community so desires. + +If the community is anxious to have a reading-room it would put its hand +in its pocket and bring out the penny tax. I think it a proof of the +healthy, moral, financial, and mental condition of the community if it +taxes itself for its mental food. + +A reading-room is the proper introduction to a library, leading up +through the newspapers and magazines to other literature. What would we +do without newspapers? + +Look at the rapid manner in which the news of the Galveston disaster was +made known to the entire world. This reminds me of an episode which +occurred fifteen years ago when I was at church in Hartford, Connecticut. + +The clergyman decided to make a collection for the survivors, if any. +He did not include me among the leading citizens who took the plates +around for collection. I complained to the governor of his lack of +financial trust in me, and he replied: "I would trust you myself--if you +had a bell-punch." + +You have paid me many compliments, and I like to listen to compliments. +I indorse all your chairman has said to you about the union of England +and America. He also alluded to my name, of which I am rather fond. + +A little girl wrote me from New Zealand in a letter I received yesterday, +stating that her father said my proper name was not Mark Twain but Samuel +Clemens, but that she knew better, because Clemens was the name of the +man who sold the patent medicine, and his name was not Mark. She was +sure it was Mark Twain, because Mark is in the Bible and Twain is in the +Bible. + +I was very glad to get that expression of confidence in my origin, and as +I now know my name to be a scriptural one, I am not without hopes of +making it worthy. + + + + + + +LITERATURE + + ADDRESS AT THE ROYAL LITERARY FUND BANQUET, LONDON, MAY 4, 1900 + + Anthony Hope introduced Mr. Clemens to make the response to the + toast "Literature." + +MR. HOPE has been able to deal adequately with this toast without +assistance from me. Still, I was born generous. If he had advanced any +theories that needed refutation or correction I would have attended to +them, and if he had made any statements stronger than those which he is +in the habit of making I would have dealt with them. + +In fact, I was surprised at the mildness of his statements. I could not +have made such statements if I had preferred to, because to exaggerate is +the only way I can approximate to the truth. You cannot have a theory +without principles. Principles is another name for prejudices. I have +no prejudices in politics, religion, literature, or anything else. + +I am now on my way to my own country to run for the presidency because +there are not yet enough candidates in the field, and those who have +entered are too much hampered by their own principles, which are +prejudices. + +I propose to go there to purify the political atmosphere. I am in favor +of everything everybody is in favor of. What you should do is to satisfy +the whole nation, not half of it, for then you would only be half a +President. + +There could not be a broader platform than mine. I am in favor of +anything and everything--of temperance and intemperance, morality and +qualified immorality, gold standard and free silver. + +I have tried all sorts of things, and that is why I want to by the great +position of ruler of a country. I have been in turn reporter, editor, +publisher, author, lawyer, burglar. I have worked my way up, and wish to +continue to do so. + +I read to-day in a magazine article that Christendom issued last year +fifty-five thousand new books. Consider what that means! Fifty-five +thousand new books meant fifty-four thousand new authors. We are going +to have them all on our hands to take care of sooner or later. +Therefore, double your, subscriptions to the literary fund! + + + + + + +DISAPPEARANCE OF LITERATURE + + ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CLUB, AT + SHERRY'S, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 20, 1900 + + Mr. Clemens spoke to the toast "The Disappearance of + Literature." Doctor Gould presided, and in introducing + Mr. Clemens said that he (the speaker), when in Germany, had to + do a lot of apologizing for a certain literary man who was + taking what the Germans thought undue liberties with their + language. + +It wasn't necessary for your chairman to apologize for me in Germany. +It wasn't necessary at all. Instead of that he ought to have impressed +upon those poor benighted Teutons the service I rendered them. Their +language had needed untangling for a good many years. Nobody else seemed +to want to take the job, and so I took it, and I flatter myself that I +made a pretty good job of it. The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting +up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world +when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But +that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it +down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it +away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they +just shovel in German. I maintain that there is no necessity for +apologizing for a man who helped in a small way to stop such mutilation. + +We have heard a discussion to-night on the disappearance of literature. +That's no new thing. That's what certain kinds of literature have been +doing for several years. The fact is, my friends, that the fashion in +literature changes, and the literary tailors have to change their cuts or +go out of business. Professor Winchester here, if I remember fairly +correctly what he said, remarked that few, if any, of the novels produced +to-day would live as long as the novels of Walter Scott. That may be his +notion. Maybe he is right; but so far as I am concerned, I don't care if +they don't. + +Professor Winchester also said something about there being no modern +epics like Paradise Lost. I guess he's right. He talked as if he was +pretty familiar with that piece of literary work, and nobody would +suppose that he never had read it. I don't believe any of you have ever +read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you +just want to take on trust. It's a classic, just as Professor Winchester +says, and it meets his definition of a classic--something that everybody +wants to have read and nobody wants to read. + +Professor Trent also had a good deal to say about the disappearance of +literature. He said that Scott would outlive all his critics. I guess +that's true. The fact of the business is, you've got to be one of two +ages to appreciate Scott. When you're eighteen you can read Ivanhoe, and +you want to wait until you are ninety to read some of the rest. It takes +a pretty well-regulated, abstemious critic to live ninety years. + +But as much as these two gentlemen have talked about the disappearance of +literature, they didn't say anything about my books. Maybe they think +they've disappeared. If they do, that just shows their ignorance on the +general subject of literature. I am not as young as I was several years +ago, and maybe I'm not so fashionable, but I'd be willing to take my +chances with Mr. Scott to-morrow morning in selling a piece of literature +to the Century Publishing Company. And I haven't got much of a pull +here, either. I often think that the highest compliment ever paid to my +poor efforts was paid by Darwin through President Eliot, of Harvard +College. At least, Eliot said it was a compliment, and I always take the +opinion of great men like college presidents on all such subjects as +that. + +I went out to Cambridge one day a few years ago and called on President +Eliot. In the course of the conversation he said that he had just +returned from England, and that he was very much touched by what he +considered the high compliment Darwin was paying to my books, and he went +on to tell me something like this: + +"Do you know that there is one room in Darwin's house, his bedroom, where +the housemaid is never allowed to touch two things? One is a plant +he is growing and studying while it grows" (it was one of those +insect-devouring plants which consumed bugs and beetles and things for the +particular delectation of Mr. Darwin) "and the other some books that lie +on the night table at the head of his bed. They are your books, Mr. +Clemens, and Mr. Darwin reads them every night to lull him to sleep." + +My friends, I thoroughly appreciated that compliment, and considered it +the highest one that was ever paid to me. To be the means of soothing to +sleep a brain teeming with bugs and squirming things like Darwin's was +something that I had never hoped for, and now that he is dead I never +hope to be able to do it again. + + + + + + +THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER + + AT THE ANNUAL DINNER, NOVEMBER 13, 1900 + + Col. William L. Brown, the former editor of the Daily News, as + president of the club, introduced Mr. Clemens as the principal + ornament of American literature. + +I must say that I have already begun to regret that I left my gun at +home. I've said so many times when a chairman has distressed me with +just such compliments that the next time such a thing occurs I will +certainly use a gun on that chairman. It is my privilege to compliment +him in return. You behold before you a very, very old man. A cursory +glance at him would deceive the most penetrating. His features seem to +reveal a person dead to all honorable instincts--they seem to bear the +traces of all the known crimes, instead of the marks of a life spent for +the most part, and now altogether, in the Sunday-school of a life that +may well stand as an example to all generations that have risen or will +riz--I mean to say, will rise. His private character is altogether +suggestive of virtues which to all appearances he has got. If you +examine his past history you will find it as deceptive as his features, +because it is marked all over with waywardness and misdemeanor--mere +effects of a great spirit upon a weak body--mere accidents of a great +career. In his heart he cherishes every virtue on the list of virtues, +and he practises them all--secretly--always secretly. You all know him +so well that there is no need for him to be introduced here. Gentlemen, +Colonel Brown. + + + + + + +THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING + + ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN TO MR. CARNEGIE AT THE DEDICATION + OF THE NEW YORK ENGINEERS' CLUB, DECEMBER 9, 1907 + + Mr. Clemens was introduced by the president of the club, who, + quoting from the Mark Twain autobiography, recalled the day + when the distinguished writer came to New York with $3 in small + change in his pockets and a $10 bill sewed in his clothes. + +It seems to me that I was around here in the neighborhood of the Public +Library about fifty or sixty years ago. I don't deny the circumstance, +although I don't see how you got it out of my autobiography, which was +not to be printed until I am dead, unless I'm dead now. I had that $3 in +change, and I remember well the $10 which was sewed in my coat. I have +prospered since. Now I have plenty of money and a disposition to +squander it, but I can't. One of those trust companies is taking care of +it. + +Now, as this is probably the last time that I shall be out after +nightfall this winter, I must say that I have come here with a mission, +and I would make my errand of value. + +Many compliments have been paid to Mr. Carnegie to-night. I was +expecting them. They are very gratifying to me. + +I have been a guest of honor myself, and I know what Mr. Carnegie is +experiencing now. It is embarrassing to get compliments and compliments +and only compliments, particularly when he knows as well as the rest of +us that on the other side of him there are all sorts of things worthy of +our condemnation. + +Just look at Mr. Carnegie's face. It is fairly scintillating with +fictitious innocence. You would think, looking at him, that he had never +committed a crime in his life. But no--look at his pestiferious +simplified spelling. You can't any of you imagine what a crime that has +been. Torquemada was nothing to Mr. Carnegie. That old fellow shed some +blood in the Inquisition, but Mr. Carnegie has brought destruction to the +entire race. I know he didn't mean it to be a crime, but it was, just +the same. He's got us all so we can't spell anything. + +The trouble with him is that he attacked orthography at the wrong end. +He meant well, but he, attacked the symptoms and not the cause of the +disease. He ought to have gone to work on the alphabet. There's not a +vowel in it with a definite value, and not a consonant that you can hitch +anything to. Look at the "h's" distributed all around. There's +"gherkin." What are you going to do with the "h" in that? What the +devil's the use of "h" in gherkin, I'd like to know. It's one thing I +admire the English for: they just don't mind anything about them at all. + +But look at the "pneumatics" and the "pneumonias" and the rest of them. +A real reform would settle them once and for all, and wind up by giving +us an alphabet that we wouldn't have to spell with at all, instead of +this present silly alphabet, which I fancy was invented by a drunken +thief. Why, there isn't a man who doesn't have to throw out about +fifteen hundred words a day when he writes his letters because he can't +spell them! It's like trying to do a St. Vitus's dance with wooden legs. + +Now I'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell "pterodactyl," not even +the prisoner at the bar. I'd like to hear him try once--but not in +public, for it's too near Sunday, when all extravagant histrionic +entertainments are barred. I'd like to hear him try in private, and when +he got through trying to spell "pterodactyl" you wouldn't know whether it +was a fish or a beast or a bird, and whether it flew on its legs or +walked with its wings. The chances are that he would give it tusks and +make it lay eggs. + +Let's get Mr. Carnegie to reform the alphabet, and we'll pray for him +--if he'll take the risk. If we had adequate, competent vowels, with a +system of accents, giving to each vowel its own soul and value, so every +shade of that vowel would be shown in its accent, there is not a word in +any tongue that we could not spell accurately. That would be competent, +adequate, simplified spelling, in contrast to the clipping, the hair +punching, the carbuncles, and the cancers which go by the name of +simplified spelling. If I ask you what b-o-w spells you can't tell me +unless you know which b-o-w I mean, and it is the same with r-o-w, +b-o-r-e, and the whole family of words which were born out of lawful +wedlock and don't know their own origin. + +Now, if we had an alphabet that was adequate and competent, instead of +inadequate and incompetent, things would be different. Spelling reform +has only made it bald-headed and unsightly. There is the whole tribe of +them, "row" and "read" and "lead"--a whole family who don't know who they +are. I ask you to pronounce s-o-w, and you ask me what kind of a one. + +If we had a sane, determinate alphabet, instead of a hospital of +comminuted eunuchs, you would know whether one referred to the act of a +man casting the seed over the ploughed land or whether one wished to +recall the lady hog and the future ham. + +It's a rotten alphabet. I appoint Mr. Carnegie to get after it, and +leave simplified spelling alone. + +Simplified spelling brought about sun-spots, the San Francisco +earthquake, and the recent business depression, which we would never have +had if spelling had been left all alone. + +Now, I hope I have soothed Mr. Carnegie and made him more comfortable +than he would have been had he received only compliment after compliment, +and I wish to say to him that simplified spelling is all right, but, like +chastity, you can carry it too far. + + + + + + +SPELLING AND PICTURES + + ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, AT THE + WALDORF-ASTORIA, SEPTEMBER 18, 1906 + +I am here to make an appeal to the nations in behalf of the simplified +spelling. I have come here because they cannot all be reached except +through you. There are only two forces that can carry light to all the +corners of the globe--only two--the sun in the heavens and the Associated +Press down here. I may seem to be flattering the sun, but I do not mean +it so; I am meaning only to be just and fair all around. You speak with +a million voices; no one can reach so many races, so many hearts and +intellects, as you--except Rudyard Kipling, and he cannot do it without +your help. If the Associated Press will adopt and use our simplified +forms, and thus spread them to the ends of the earth, covering the whole +spacious planet with them as with a garden of flowers, our difficulties +are at an end. + +Every day of the three hundred and sixty-five the only pages of the +world's countless newspapers that are read by all the human beings and +angels and devils that can read, are these pages that are built out of +Associated Press despatches. And so I beg you, I beseech you--oh, I +implore you to spell them in our simplified forms. Do this daily, +constantly, persistently, for three months--only three months--it is all +I ask. The infallible result?--victory, victory all down the line. For +by that time all eyes here and above and below will have become adjusted +to the change and in love with it, and the present clumsy and ragged +forms will be grotesque to the eye and revolting to the soul. And we +shall be rid of phthisis and phthisic and pneumonia and pneumatics, and +diphtheria and pterodactyl, and all those other insane words which no man +addicted to the simple Christian life can try to spell and not lose some +of the bloom of his piety in the demoralizing attempt. Do not doubt it. +We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change places with +an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and +happy in it. We do not regret our old, yellow fangs and snags and tushes +after we have worn nice, fresh, uniform store teeth a while. + +Do I seem to be seeking the good of the world? That is the idea. It is +my public attitude; privately I am merely seeking my own profit. We all +do it, but it is sound and it is virtuous, for no public interest is +anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private interests. +In 1883, when the simplified-spelling movement first tried to make a +noise, I was indifferent to it; more--I even irreverently scoffed at it. +What I needed was an object-lesson, you see. It is the only way to teach +some people. Very well, I got it. At that time I was scrambling along, +earning the family's bread on magazine work at seven cents a word, +compound words at single rates, just as it is in the dark present. +I was the property of a magazine, a seven-cent slave under a boiler-iron +contract. One day there came a note from the editor requiring me to +write ten pages--on this revolting text: "Considerations concerning the +alleged subterranean holophotal extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous +superimbrication of the Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the +unintelligibility of its plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects." + +Ten pages of that. Each and every word a seventeen-jointed vestibuled +railroad train. Seven cents a word. I saw starvation staring the family +in the face. I went to the editor, and I took a stenographer along so as +to have the interview down in black and white, for no magazine editor can +ever remember any part of a business talk except the part that's got +graft in it for him and the magazine. I said, "Read that text, Jackson, +and let it go on the record; read it out loud." He read it: +"Considerations concerning the alleged subterranean holophotal +extemporaneousness of the conchyliaceous superimbrication of the +Ornithorhyncus, as foreshadowed by the unintelligibility of its +plesiosaurian anisodactylous aspects." + +I said, "You want ten pages of those rumbling, great, long, summer +thunderpeals, and you expect to get them at seven cents a peal?" + +He said, "A word's a word, and seven cents is the contract; what are you +going to do about it?" + +I said, "Jackson, this is cold-blooded oppression. What's an average +English word?" + +He said, "Six letters." + +I said, "Nothing of the kind; that's French, and includes the spaces +between the words; an average English word is four letters and a half. +By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary +and shaved it down till the average is three letters and a half. I can +put one thousand and two hundred words on your page, and there's not +another man alive that can come within two hundred of it. My page is +worth eighty-four dollars to me. It takes exactly as long to fill your +magazine page with long words as it does with short ones-four hours. +Now, then, look at the criminal injustice of this requirement of yours. +I am careful, I am economical of my time and labor. For the family's +sake I've got to be so. So I never write 'metropolis' for seven cents, +because I can get the same money for 'city.' I never write 'policeman,' +because I can get the same price for 'cop.' And so on and so on. I never +write 'valetudinarian' at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can +humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; +I wouldn't do it for fifteen. Examine your obscene text, please; count +the words." + +He counted and said it was twenty-four. I asked him to count the +letters. He made it two hundred and three. + +I said, "Now, I hope you see the whole size of your crime. With my +vocabulary I would make sixty words out of those two hundred and five +letters, and get four dollars and twenty cents for it; whereas for your +inhuman twenty-four I would get only one dollar and sixty-eight cents. +Ten pages of these sky-scrapers of yours would pay me only about three +hundred dollars; in my simplified vocabulary the same space and the same +labor would pay me eight hundred and forty dollars. I do not wish to +work upon this scandalous job by the piece. I want to be hired by the +year." He coldly refused. I said: + +"Then for the sake of the family, if you have no feeling for me, you +ought at least to allow me overtime on that word extemporaneousness." +Again he coldly refused. I seldom say a harsh word to any one, but I was +not master of myself then, and I spoke right out and called him an +anisodactylous plesiosaurian conchyliaceous Ornithorhyncus, and rotten to +the heart with holoaophotal subterranean extemporaneousness. God forgive +me for that wanton crime; he lived only two hours. + +From that day to this I have been a devoted and hard-working member of +the heaven-born institution, the International Association for the +Prevention of Cruelty to Authors, and now I am laboring with Carnegie's +Simplified Committee, and with my heart in the work . . . . + +Now then, let us look at this mighty question reasonably, rationally, +sanely--yes, and calmly, not excitedly. What is the real function, the +essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn't it merely +to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with +words of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome +forms? But can we? Yes. I hold in my hand the proof of it. Here is a +letter written by a woman, right out of her heart of hearts. I think she +never saw a spelling-book in her life. The spelling is her own. There +isn't a waste letter in it anywhere. It reduces the fonetics to the last +gasp--it squeezes the surplusage out of every word--there's no spelling +that can begin with it on this planet outside of the White House. And as +for the punctuation, there isn't any. It is all one sentence, eagerly +and breathlessly uttered, without break or pause in it anywhere. The +letter is absolutely genuine--I have the proofs of that in my possession. +I can't stop to spell the words for you, but you can take the letter +presently and comfort your eyes with it. I will read the letter: + +"Miss dear freind I took some Close into the armerry and give them to you +to Send too the suffrers out to California and i Hate to treble you but i +got to have one of them Back it was a black oll wolle Shevyott With a +jacket to Mach trimed Kind of Fancy no 38 Burst measure and palsy +menterry acrost the front And the color i woodent Trubble you but it +belonged to my brothers wife and she is Mad about it i thoght she was +willin but she want she says she want done with it and she was going to +Wear it a Spell longer she ant so free harted as what i am and she Has +got more to do with Than i have having a Husband to Work and slave For +her i gels you remember Me I am shot and stout and light complected i +torked with you quite a spell about the suffrars and said it was orful +about that erth quake I shoodent wondar if they had another one rite off +seeine general Condision of the country is Kind of Explossive i hate to +take that Black dress away from the suffrars but i will hunt round And +see if i can get another One if i can i will call to the armerry for it +if you will jest lay it asside so no more at present from your True +freind + +"i liked your +appearance very Much" + +Now you see what simplified spelling can do. + +It can convey any fact you need to convey; and it can pour out emotions +like a sewer. I beg you, I beseech you, to adopt our spelling, and print +all your despatches in it. + +Now I wish to say just one entirely serious word: + +I have reached a time of life, seventy years and a half, where none of +the concerns of this world have much interest for me personally. I think +I can speak dispassionately upon this matter, because in the little while +that I have got to remain here I can get along very well with these +old-fashioned forms, and I don't propose to make any trouble about it at +all. I shall soon be where they won't care how I spell so long as I keep +the Sabbath. + +There are eighty-two millions of us people that use this orthography, and +it ought to be simplified in our behalf, but it is kept in its present +condition to satisfy one million people who like to have their literature +in the old form. That looks to me to be rather selfish, and we keep the +forms as they are while we have got one million people coming in here +from foreign countries every year and they have got to struggle with this +orthography of ours, and it keeps them back and damages their citizenship +for years until they learn to spell the language, if they ever do learn. +This is merely sentimental argument. + +People say it is the spelling of Chaucer and Spencer and Shakespeare and +a lot of other people who do not know how to spell anyway, and it has +been transmitted to us and we preserved it and wish to preserve it +because of its ancient and hallowed associations. + +Now, I don't see that there is any real argument about that. If that +argument is good, then it would be a good argument not to banish the +flies and the cockroaches from hospitals because they have been there so +long that the patients have got used to them and they feel a tenderness +for them on account of the associations. Why, it is like preserving a +cancer in a family because it is a family cancer, and we are bound to it +by the test of affection and reverence and old, mouldy antiquity. + +I think that this declaration to improve this orthography of ours is our +family cancer, and I wish we could reconcile ourselves to have it cut out +and let the family cancer go. + +Now, you see before you the wreck and ruin of what was once a young +person like yourselves. I am exhausted by the heat of the day. I must +take what is left of this wreck and run out of your presence and carry it +away to my home and spread it out there and sleep the sleep of the +righteous. There is nothing much left of me but my age and my +righteousness, but I leave with you my love and my blessing, and may you +always keep your youth. + + + + + + +BOOKS AND BURGLARS + + ADDRESS TO THE REDDING (CONN.) LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, + OCTOBER 28, 1908 + +Suppose this library had been in operation a few weeks ago, and the +burglars who happened along and broke into my house--taking a lot of +things they didn't need, and for that matter which I didn't need--had +first made entry into this institution. + +Picture them seated here on the floor, poring by the light of their +dark-lanterns over some of the books they found, and thus absorbing moral +truths and getting a moral uplift. The whole course of their lives would +have been changed. As it was, they kept straight on in their immoral way +and were sent to jail. + +For all we know, they may next be sent to Congress. + +And, speaking of burglars, let us not speak of them too harshly. Now, I +have known so many burglars--not exactly known, but so many of them have +come near me in my various dwelling-places, that I am disposed to allow +them credit for whatever good qualities they possess. + +Chief among these, and, indeed, the only one I just now think of, is +their great care while doing business to avoid disturbing people's sleep. + +Noiseless as they may be while at work, however, the effect of their +visitation is to murder sleep later on. + +Now we are prepared for these visitors. All sorts of alarm devices have +been put in the house, and the ground for half a mile around it has been +electrified. The burglar who steps within this danger zone will set +loose a bedlam of sounds, and spring into readiness for action our +elaborate system of defences. As for the fate of the trespasser, do not +seek to know that. He will never be heard of more. + + + + + + + +AUTHORS' CLUB + + ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN IN HONOR OF MR. CLEMENS, LONDON, + JUNE, 1899 + + Mr. Clemens was introduced by Sir Walter Besant. + +It does not embarrass me to hear my books praised so much. It only +pleases and delights me. I have not gone beyond the age when +embarrassment is possible, but I have reached the age when I know how to +conceal it. It is such a satisfaction to me to hear Sir Walter Besant, +who is much more capable than I to judge of my work, deliver a judgment +which is such a contentment to my spirit. + +Well, I have thought well of the books myself, but I think more of them +now. It charms me also to hear Sir Spencer Walpole deliver a similar +judgment, and I shall treasure his remarks also. I shall not discount +the praises in any possible way. When I report them to my family they +shall lose nothing. There are, however, certain heredities which come +down to us which our writings of the present day may be traced to. +I, for instance, read the Walpole Letters when I was a boy. I absorbed +them, gathered in their grace, wit, and humor, and put them away to be +used by-and-by. One does that so unconsciously with things one really +likes. I am reminded now of what use those letters have been to me. + +They must not claim credit in America for what was really written in +another form so long ago. They must only claim that I trimmed this, +that, and the other, and so changed their appearance as to make them seem +to be original. You now see what modesty I have in stock. But it has +taken long practice to get it there. + +But I must not stand here talking. I merely meant to get up and give my +thanks for the pleasant things that preceding speakers have said of me. +I wish also to extend my thanks to the Authors' Club for constituting me +a member, at a reasonable price per year, and for giving me the benefit +of your legal adviser. + +I believe you keep a lawyer. I have always kept a lawyer, too, though I +have never made anything out of him. It is service to an author to have +a lawyer. There is something so disagreeable in having a personal +contact with a publisher. So it is better to work through a lawyer--and +lose your case. I understand that the publishers have been meeting +together also like us. I don't know what for, but possibly they are +devising new and mysterious ways for remunerating authors. I only wish +now to thank you for electing me a member of this club--I believe I have +paid my dues--and to thank you again for the pleasant things you have +said of me. + +Last February, when Rudyard Kipling was ill in America, the sympathy +which was poured out to him was genuine and sincere, and I believe that +which cost Kipling so much will bring England and America closer +together. I have been proud and pleased to see this growing affection +and respect between the two countries. I hope it will continue to grow, +and, please God, it will continue to grow. I trust we authors will leave +to posterity, if we have nothing else to leave, a friendship between +England and America that will count for much. I will now confess that +I have been engaged for the past eight days in compiling a publication. +I have brought it here to lay at your feet. I do not ask your indulgence +in presenting it, but for your applause. + +Here it is: "Since England and America may be joined together in +Kipling, may they not be severed in 'Twain.'" + + + + + + +BOOKSELLERS + + Address at banquet on Wednesday evening, May 20, 1908, of the + American Booksellers' Association, which included most of the + leading booksellers of America, held at the rooms of the Aldine + Association, New York. + +This annual gathering of booksellers from all over America comes together +ostensibly to eat and drink, but really to discuss, business; therefore +I am required to, talk shop. I am required to furnish a statement of the +indebtedness under which I lie to you gentlemen for your help in enabling +me to earn my living. For something over forty years I have acquired my +bread by print, beginning with The Innocents Abroad, followed at +intervals of a year or so by Roughing It, Tom Sawyer, Gilded Age, and so +on. For thirty-six years my books were sold by subscription. You are +not interested in those years, but only in the four which have since +followed. The books passed into the hands of my present publishers at +the beginning of 1900, and you then became the providers of my diet. +I think I may say, without flattering you, that you have done exceedingly +well by me. Exceedingly well is not too strong a phrase, since the +official statistics show that in four years you have sold twice as many +volumes of my venerable books as my contract with my publishers bound you +and them to sell in five years. To your sorrow you are aware that +frequently, much too frequently, when a book gets to be five or ten years +old its annual sale shrinks to two or three hundred copies, and after an +added ten or twenty years ceases to sell. But you sell thousands of my +moss-backed old books every year--the youngest of them being books that +range from fifteen to twenty-seven years old, and the oldest reaching +back to thirty-five and forty. + +By the terms of my contract my publishers had to account to me for, +50,000 volumes per year for five years, and pay me for them whether they +sold them or not. It is at this point that you gentlemen come in, for it +was your business to unload 250,000 volumes upon the public in five years +if you possibly could. Have you succeeded? Yes, you have--and more. +For in four years, with a year still to spare, you have sold the 250,000 +volumes, and 240,000 besides. + +Your sales have increased each year. In the first year you sold 90,328; +in the second year, 104,851; in the third, 133,975; in the fourth year +--which was last year--you sold 160,000. The aggregate for the four +years is 500,000 volumes, lacking 11,000. + +Of the oldest book, The Innocents Abroad,--now forty years old--you sold +upward of 46,000 copies in the four years; of Roughing It--now +thirty-eight years old; I think--you sold 40,334; of Tom Sawyer, 41,000. +And so on. + +And there is one thing that is peculiarly gratifying to me: the Personal +Recollections of Joan of Arc is a serious book; I wrote it for love, and +never expected it to sell, but you have pleasantly disappointed me in +that matter. In your hands its sale has increased each year. In 1904 +you sold 1726 copies; in 1905, 2445; in 1906, 5381; and last year, 6574. + + + + + + +"MARK TWAIN'S FIRST APPEARANCE" + + On October 5, 1906, Mr. Clemens, following a musical recital by + his daughter in Norfolk, Conn., addressed her audience on the + subject of stage-fright. He thanked the people for making + things as easy as possible for his daughter's American debut as + a contralto, and then told of his first experience before the + public. + +My heart goes out in sympathy to any one who is making his first +appearance before an audience of human beings. By a direct process of +memory I go back forty years, less one month--for I'm older than I look. + +I recall the occasion of my first appearance. San Francisco knew me then +only as a reporter, and I was to make my bow to San Francisco as a +lecturer. I knew that nothing short of compulsion would get me to the +theatre. So I bound myself by a hard-and-fast contract so that I could +not escape. I got to the theatre forty-five minutes before the hour set +for the lecture. My knees were shaking so that I didn't know whether I +could stand up. If there is an awful, horrible malady in the world, it +is stage-fright-and seasickness. They are a pair. I had stage-fright +then for the first and last time. I was only seasick once, too. It was +on a little ship on which there were two hundred other passengers. +I--was--sick. I was so sick that there wasn't any left for those other +two hundred passengers. + +It was dark and lonely behind the scenes in that theatre, and I peeked +through the little peekholes they have in theatre curtains and looked +into the big auditorium. That was dark and empty, too. By-and-by it +lighted up, and the audience began to arrive. + +I had got a number of friends of mine, stalwart men, to sprinkle +themselves through the audience armed with big clubs. Every time I said +anything they could possibly guess I intended to be funny they were to +pound those clubs on the floor. Then there was a kind lady in a box up +there, also a good friend of mine, the wife of the Governor. She was to +watch me intently, and whenever I glanced toward her she was going to +deliver a gubernatorial laugh that would lead the whole audience into +applause. + +At last I began. I had the manuscript tucked under a United States flag +in front of me where I could get at it in case of need. But I managed to +get started without it. I walked up and down--I was young in those days +and needed the exercise--and talked and talked. + +Right in the middle of the speech I had placed a gem. I had put in a +moving, pathetic part which was to get at the hearts and souls of my +hearers. When I delivered it they did just what I hoped and expected. +They sat silent and awed. I had touched them. Then I happened to glance +up at the box where the Governor's wife was--you know what happened. + +Well, after the first agonizing five minutes, my stage-fright left me, +never to return. I know if I was going to be hanged I could get up and +make a good showing, and I intend to. But I shall never forget my +feelings before the agony left me, and I got up here to thank you for her +for helping my daughter, by your kindness, to live through her first +appearance. And I want to thank you for your appreciation of her +singing, which is, by-the-way, hereditary. + + + + + + +MORALS AND MEMORY + + Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor at a reception held at + Barnard College (Columbia University), March 7, 1906, by the + Barnard Union. One of the young ladies presented Mr. Clemens, + and thanked him for his amiability in coming to make them an + address. She closed with the expression of the great joy it + gave her fellow-collegians, "because we all love you." + +If any one here loves me, she has my sincere thanks. Nay, if any one +here is so good as to love me--why, I'll be a brother to her. She shall +have my sincere, warm, unsullied affection. When I was coming up in the +car with the very kind young lady who was delegated to show me the way, +she asked me what I was going to talk about. And I said I wasn't sure. +I said I had some illustrations, and I was going to bring them in. +I said I was certain to give those illustrations, but that I hadn't the +faintest notion what they were going to illustrate. + +Now, I've been thinking it over in this forest glade [indicating the +woods of Arcady on the scene setting], and I've decided to work them in +with something about morals and the caprices of memory. That seems to me +to be a pretty good subject. You see, everybody has a memory and it's +pretty sure to have caprices. And, of course, everybody has morals. + +It's my opinion that every one I know has morals, though I wouldn't like +to ask. I know I have. But I'd rather teach them than practice them any +day. "Give them to others"--that's my motto. Then you never have any +use for them when you're left without. Now, speaking of the caprices of +memory in general, and of mine in particular, it's strange to think of +all the tricks this little mental process plays on us. Here we're +endowed with a faculty of mind that ought to be more supremely +serviceable to us than them all. And what happens? This memory of ours +stores up a perfect record of the most useless facts and anecdotes and +experiences. And all the things that we ought to know--that we need to +know--that we'd profit by knowing--it casts aside with the careless +indifference of a girl refusing her true lover. It's terrible to think +of this phenomenon. I tremble in all my members when I consider all the +really valuable things that I've forgotten in seventy years--when I +meditate upon the caprices of my memory. + +There's a bird out in California that is one perfect symbol of the human +memory. I've forgotten the bird's name (just because it would be +valuable for me to know it--to recall it to your own minds, perhaps). + +But this fool of a creature goes around collecting the most ridiculous +things you can imagine and storing them up. He never selects a thing +that could ever prove of the slightest help to him; but he goes about +gathering iron forks, and spoons, and tin cans, and broken mouse-traps +--all sorts of rubbish that is difficult for him to carry and yet be any +use when he gets it. Why, that bird will go by a gold watch to bring +back one of those patent cake-pans. + +Now, my mind is just like that, and my mind isn't very different from +yours--and so our minds are just like that bird. We pass by what would +be of inestimable value to us, and pack our memories with the most +trivial odds and ends that never by any chance; under any circumstances +whatsoever, could be of the slightest use to any one. + +Now, things that I have remembered are constantly popping into my head. +And I am repeatedly startled by the vividness with which they recur to me +after the lapse of years and their utter uselessness in being remembered +at all. + +I was thinking over some on my way up here. They were the illustrations +I spoke about to the young lady on the way up. And I've come to the +conclusion, curious though it is, that I can use every one of these +freaks of memory to teach you all a lesson. I'm convinced that each one +has its moral. And I think it's my duty to hand the moral on to you. + +Now, I recall that when I was a boy I was a good boy--I was a very good +boy. Why, I was the best boy in my school. I was the best boy in that +little Mississippi town where I lived. The population was only about +twenty million. You may not believe it, but I was the best boy in that +State--and in the United States, for that matter. + +But I don't know why I never heard any one say that but myself. I always +recognized it. But even those nearest and dearest to me couldn't seem to +see it. My mother, especially, seemed to think there was something wrong +with that estimate. And she never got over that prejudice. + +Now, when my mother got to be eighty-five years old her memory failed +her. She forgot little threads that hold life's patches of meaning +together. She was living out West then, and I went on to visit her. + +I hadn't seen my mother in a year or so. And when I got there she knew +my face; knew I was married; knew I had a family, and that I was living +with them. But she couldn't, for the life of her, tell my name or who I +was. So I told her I was her boy. + +"But you don't live with me," she said. + +"No," said I, "I'm living in Rochester." + +"What are you doing there?" + +"Going to school." + +"Large school?" + +"Very large." + +"All boys?" + +"All boys." + +"And how do you stand?" said my mother. + +"I'm the best boy in that school," I answered. + +"Well," said my mother, with a return of her old fire, "I'd like to know +what the other boys are like." + +Now, one point in this story is the fact that my mother's mind went back +to my school days, and remembered my little youthful self-prejudice when +she'd forgotten everything else about me. + +The other point is the moral. There's one there that you will find if +you search for it. + +Now, here's something else I remember. It's about the first time I ever +stole a watermelon. "Stole" is a strong word. Stole? Stole? No, I +don't mean that. It was the first time I ever withdrew a watermelon. +It was the first time I ever extracted a watermelon. That is exactly the +word I want--"extracted." It is definite. It is precise. It perfectly +conveys my idea. Its use in dentistry connotes the delicate shade of +meaning I am looking for. You know we never extract our own teeth. + +And it was not my watermelon that I extracted. I extracted that +watermelon from a farmer's wagon while he was inside negotiating with an +other customer. I carried that watermelon to one of the secluded +recesses of the lumber-yard, and there I broke it open. + +It was a green watermelon. + +Well, do you know when I saw that I began to feel sorry--sorry--sorry. +It seemed to me that I had done wrong. I reflected deeply. I reflected +that I was young--I think I was just eleven. But I knew that though +immature I did not lack moral advancement. I knew what a boy ought to do +who had extracted a watermelon--like that. + +I considered George Washington, and what action he would have taken under +similar circumstances. Then I knew there was just one thing to make me +feel right inside, and that was--Restitution. + +So I said to myself: "I will do that. I will take that green watermelon +back where I got it from." And the minute I had said it I felt that +great moral uplift that comes to you when you've made a noble resolution. + +So I gathered up the biggest fragments, and I carried them back to the +farmer's wagon, and I restored the watermelon--what was left of it. And +I made him give me a good one in place of it, too. + +And I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself going around working off +his worthless, old, green watermelons on trusting purchasers who had to +rely on him. How could they tell from the outside whither the melons +were good or not? That was his business. Arid if he didn't reform, I +told him I'd see that he didn't get any more of my trade--nor anybody, +else's I knew, if I could help it. + +You know that man was as contrite as a revivalist's last convert. +He said he was all broken up to think I'd gotten a green watermelon. +He promised the he would never carry another green watermelon if he +starved for it. And he drove off--a better man. + +Now, do you see what I did for that man? He was on a downward path, and +I rescued him. But all I got out of it was a watermelon. + +Yet I'd rather have that memory--just that memory of the good I did for +that depraved farmer--than all the material gain you can think of. Look +at the lesson he got! I never got anything like that from it. But I +ought to be satisfied: I was only eleven years old, but I secured +everlasting benefit to other people. + +The moral in this is perfectly clear, and I think there's one in they +next memory I'm going to tell you about. + +To go back to my childhood, there's another little incident that comes to +me from which you can draw even another moral. It's about one of the +times I went fishing. You see, in our house there was a sort of family +prejudice against going fishing if you hadn't permission. But it would +frequently be bad judgment to ask. So I went fishing secretly, as it +were--way up the Mississippi. It was an exquisitely happy trip, I +recall, with a very pleasant sensation. + +Well, while I was away there was a tragedy in our town. A stranger, +stopping over on his way East from California; was stabbed to death in an +unseemly brawl. + +Now; my father was justice of the peace, and because he was justice of +the peace he was coroner; and since he was coroner he was also constable; +and being constable he vas sheriff; and out of consideration for his +holding the office of sheriff he was likewise county clerk and a dozen +other officials I don't think of just this minute. + +I thought he had power of life or death, only he didn't use it over other +boys. He was sort of an austere man. Somehow I didn't like being round +him when I'd done anything he, disapproved of. So that's the reason I +wasn't often around. + +Well, when this gentleman got knifed they communicated with the proper +authority; the coroner, and they laid, the corpse out in the coroner's +office--our front sitting-room--in preparation for the inquest the next +morning. + +About 9 or 10 o'clock I got back from fishing. It was a little too late +for me to be received by my folks, so I took my shoes off and slipped +noiselessly up the back way to the sitting-room. I was very tired, and I +didn't wish to disturb my people. So I groped my way to the sofa and lay +down. + +Now, I didn't know anything of what had happened during my absence. +But I was sort of nervous on my own account-afraid of being caught, +and rather dubious about the morning affair. And I had been lying there +a few moments when my eyes gradually got used to the darkness, and I +became aware of something on the other side of the room. + +It was something foreign to the apartment. It had an uncanny appearance. +And I sat up looking very hard, and wondering what in heaven this long, +formless, vicious-looking thing might be. + +First I thought I'd go and see. Then I thought, "Never mind that." + +Mind you, I had no cowardly sensations whatever, but it didn't seem +exactly prudent to investigate. But I somehow couldn't keep my eyes off +the thing. And the more I looked at it the more disagreeably it grew on +me. But I was resolved to play the man. So I decided to turn over and +count a hundred, and let the patch of moonlight creep up and show me what +the dickens it was. + +I turned over and tried to count, but I couldn't keep my mind on it. +I kept thinking of that grewsome mass. I was losing count all the time, +and going back and beginning over again. Oh no; I wasn't frightened +--just annoyed. But by the time I'd gotten to the century mark I turned +cautiously over and opened my eyes with great fortitude. + +The moonlight revealed to me a marble-white human hand. Well, maybe I +wasn't embarrassed! But then that changed to a creepy feeling again, and +I thought I'd try the counting again. I don't know how many hours or +weeks it was that I lay there counting hard. But the moonlight crept up +that white arm, and it showed me a lead face and a terrible wound over +the heart. + +I could scarcely say that I was terror-stricken or anything like that. +But somehow his eyes interested me so that I went right out of the +window. I didn't need the sash. But it seemed easier to take it than +leave it behind. + +Now, let that teach you a lesson--I don't know just what it is. But at +seventy years old I find that memory of peculiar value to me. I have +been unconsciously guided by it all these years. Things that seemed +pigeon-holed and remote are a perpetual influence. Yes, you're taught in +so many ways. And you're so felicitously taught when you don't know it. + +Here's something else that taught me a good deal. + +When I was seventeen I was very bashful, and a sixteen-year-old girl came +to stay a week with us. She was a peach, and I was seized with a +happiness not of this world. + +One evening my mother suggested that, to entertain her, I take her to the +theatre. I didn't really like to, because I was seventeen and sensitive +about appearing in the streets with a girl. I couldn't see my way to +enjoying my delight in public. But we went. + +I didn't feel very happy. I couldn't seem to keep my mind on the play. +I became conscious, after a while, that that was due less to my lovely +company than my boots. They were sweet to look upon, as smooth as skin, +but fitted ten time as close. I got oblivious to the play and the girl +and the other people and everything but my boots until--I hitched one +partly off. The sensation was sensuously perfect: I couldn't help it. I +had to get the other off, partly. Then I was obliged to get them off +altogether, except that I kept my feet in the legs so they couldn't get +away. + +From that time I enjoyed the play. But the first thing I knew the +curtain came down, like that, without my notice, and--I hadn't any boots +on. What's more, they wouldn't go on. I tugged strenuously. And the +people in our row got up and fussed and said things until the peach and I +simply had to move on. + +We moved--the girl on one arm and the boots under the other. + +We walked home that way, sixteen blocks, with a retinue a mile long: +Every time we passed a lamp-post, death gripped one at the throat. But +we, got home--and I had on white socks. + +If I live to be nine hundred and ninety-nine years old I don't suppose I +could ever forget that walk. I, remember, it about as keenly as the +chagrin I suffered on another occasion. + +At one time in our domestic history we had a colored butler who had a +failing. He could never remember to ask people who came to the door to +state their business. So I used to suffer a good many calls +unnecessarily. + +One morning when I was especially busy he brought me a card engraved with +a name I did not know. So I said, "What does he wish to see me for?" and +Sylvester said, "Ah couldn't ask him, sah; he, wuz a genlinun." "Return +instantly," I thundered, "and inquire his mission. Ask him what's his +game." Well, Sylvester returned with the announcement that he had +lightning-rods to sell. "Indeed," said I, "things are coming to a fine +pass when lightning-rod agents send up engraved cards." "He has +pictures," added Sylvester. "Pictures, indeed! He maybe peddling +etchings. Has he a Russia leather case?" But Sylvester was too +frightened to remember. I said; "I am going down to make it hot for that +upstart!" + +I went down the stairs, working up my temper all the way. When I got to +the parlor I was in a fine frenzy concealed beneath a veneer of frigid +courtesy. And when I looked in the door, sure enough he had a Russia +leather case in his hand. But I didn't happen to notice that it was our +Russia leather case. + +And if you'd believe me, that man was sitting with a whole gallery of +etchings spread out before him. But I didn't happen to notice that they +were our etchings, spread out by some member of my family for some +unguessed purpose. + +Very curtly I asked the gentleman his business. With a surprised, timid +manner he faltered that he had met my wife and daughter at Onteora, and +they had asked him to call. Fine lie, I thought, and I froze him. + +He seemed to be kind of non-plussed, and sat there fingering the etchings +in the case until I told him he needn't bother, because we had those. +That pleased him so much that he leaned over, in an embarrassed way, to +pick up another from the floor. But I stopped him. I said, "We've got +that, too." He seemed pitifully amazed, but I was congratulating myself +on my great success. + +Finally the gentleman asked where Mr. Winton lived; he'd met him in the +mountains, too. So I said I'd show him gladly. And I did on the spot. +And when he was gone I felt queer, because there were all his etchings +spread out on the floor. + +Well, my wife came in and asked me who had been in. I showed her the +card, and told her all exultantly. To my dismay she nearly fainted. She +told me he had been a most kind friend to them in the country, and had +forgotten to tell me that he was expected our way. And she pushed me out +of the door, and commanded me to get over to the Wintons in a hurry and +get him back. + +I came into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Winton was sitting up very stiff +in a chair, beating me at my own game. Well, I began, to put another +light on things. Before many seconds Mrs. Winton saw it was time to +change her temperature. In five minutes I had asked the man to luncheon, +and she to dinner, and so on. + +We made that fellow change his trip and stay a week, and we gave him the +time of his life. Why, I don't believe we let him get sober the whole +time. + +I trust that you will carry away some good thought from these lessons I +have given you, and that the memory of them will inspire you to higher +things, and elevate you to plans far above the old--and--and-- + +And I tell you one thing, young ladies: I've had a better time with you +to-day than with that peach fifty-three years ago. + + + + + + +QUEEN VICTORIA + + ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES CLUB, AT + DELMONICO'S, MONDAY, MAY 25, IN HONOR OF QUEEN VICTORIA'S + BIRTHDAY + + Mr. Clemens told the story of his duel with a rival editor: how + he practised firing at a barn door and failed to hit it, but a + friend of his took off the head of a little bird at thirty-five + yards and attributed the shot to Mark twain. The duel did not + take place. Mr. Clemens continued as follows: + +It also happened that I was the means of stopping duelling in Nevada, for +a law was passed sending all duellists to jail for two years, and the +Governor, hearing of my marksmanship, said that if he got me I should go +to prison for the full term. That's why I left Nevada, and I have not +been there since. + +You do me a high honor, indeed, in selecting me to speak of my country +in this commemoration of the birthday of that noble lady whose life was +consecrated to the virtues and the humanities and to the promotion of +lofty ideals, and was a model upon which many a humbler life was formed +and made beautiful while she lived, and upon which many such lives will +still be formed in the generations that are to come--a life which finds +its just image in the star which falls out of its place in the sky and +out of existence, but whose light still streams with unfaded lustre +across the abysses of space long after its fires have been extinguished +at their source. + +As a woman the Queen was all that the most exacting standards could +require. As a far-reaching and effective beneficent moral force she had +no peer in her time among either, monarchs or commoners. As a monarch +she was without reproach in her great office. We may not venture, +perhaps, to say so sweeping a thing as this in cold blood about any +monarch that preceded her upon either her own throne or upon any other. +It is a colossal eulogy, but it is justified. + +In those qualities of the heart which beget affection in all sorts and +conditions of men she was rich, surprisingly rich, and for this she will +still be remembered and revered in the far-off ages when the political +glories of her reign shall have faded from vital history and fallen to a +place in that scrap-heap of unverifiable odds and ends which we call +tradition. Which is to say, in briefer phrase, that her name will live +always. And with it her character--a fame rare in the history of +thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, since it will not rest +upon harvested selfish and sordid ambitions, but upon love, earned and +freely vouchsafed. She mended broken hearts where she could, but she +broke none. + +What she did for us in America in our time of storm and stress we shall +not forget, and whenever we call it to mind we shall always remember the +wise and righteous mind that guided her in it and sustained and supported +her--Prince Albert's. We need not talk any idle talk here to-night about +either possible or impossible war between the two countries; there will +be no war while we remain sane and the son of Victoria and Albert sits +upon the throne. In conclusion, I believe I may justly claim to utter +the voice of my country in saying that we hold him in deep honor, and +also in cordially wishing him a long life and a happy reign. + + + + + + +JOAN OF ARC + + ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS, GIVEN AT + THE ALDINE ASSOCIATION CLUB, DECEMBER 22, 1905 + + Just before Mr. Clemens made his speech, a young woman attired + as Joan of Arc, with a page bearing her flag of battle, + courtesied reverently and tendered Mr. Clemens a laurel wreath + on a satin pillow. He tried to speak, but his voice failed + from excess of emotion. "I thank you!" he finally exclaimed, + and, pulling him self together, he began his speech. + +Now there is an illustration [pointing to the retreating Joan of Arc]. +That is exactly what I wanted--precisely what I wanted--when I was +describing to myself Joan of Arc, after studying her history and her +character for twelve years diligently. + +That was the product--not the conventional Joan of Arc. Wherever you +find the conventional Joan of Arc in history she is an offence to anybody +who knows the story of that wonderful girl. + +Why, she was--she was almost supreme in several details. She had a +marvellous intellect; she had a great heart, had a noble spirit, was +absolutely pure in her character, her feeling, her language, her words, +her everything--she was only eighteen years old. + +Now put that heart into such a breast--eighteen years old--and give it +that masterly intellect which showed in the face, and furnish it with +that almost god-like spirit, and what are you going to have? +The conventional Joan of Arc? Not by any means. That is impossible. +I cannot comprehend any such thing as that. + +You must have a creature like that young and fair and beautiful girl we +just saw. And her spirit must look out of the eyes. The figure should +be--the figure should be in harmony with all that, but, oh, what we get +in the conventional picture, and it is always the conventional picture! + +I hope you will allow me to say that your guild, when you take the +conventional, you have got it at second-hand. Certainly, if you had +studied and studied, then you might have something else as a result, but +when you have the common convention you stick to that. + +You cannot prevail upon the artist to do it; he always gives you a Joan +of Arc--that lovely creature that started a great career at thirteen, but +whose greatness arrived when she was eighteen; and merely, because she +was a girl he can not see the divinity in her, and so he paints a +peasant, a coarse and lubberly figure--the figure of a cotton-bale, and +he clothes that in the coarsest raiment of the peasant region just like a +fish woman, her hair cropped short like a Russian peasant, and that face +of hers, which should be beautiful and which should radiate all the +glories which are in the spirit and in her heart that expression in that +face is always just the fixed expression of a ham. + +But now Mr. Beard has intimated a moment ago, and so has Sir +Purdon-Clarke also, that the artist, the, illustrator, does not often +get the idea of the man whose book he is illustrating. Here is a very +remarkable instance of the other thing in Mr. Beard, who illustrated a +book of mine. You may never have heard of it. I will tell you about it +now--A Yankee in King Arthur's Court. + +Now, Beard got everything that I put into that book and a little more +besides. Those pictures of Beard's in that book--oh, from the first page +to the last is one vast sardonic laugh at the trivialities, the +servilities of our poor human race, and also at the professions and the +insolence of priest-craft and king-craft--those creatures that make +slaves of themselves and have not the manliness to shake it off. Beard +put it all in that book. I meant it to be there. I put a lot of it +there and Beard put the rest. + +What publisher of mine in Hartford had an eye for the pennies, and he +saved them. He did not waste any on the illustrations. He had a very +good artist--Williams--who had never taken a lesson in drawing. +Everything he did was original. The publisher hired the cheapest +wood-engraver he could find, and in my early books you can see a trace of +that. You can see that if Williams had had a chance he would have made +some very good pictures. He had a good heart and good intentions. + +I had a character in the first book he illustrated--The Innocents Abroad. +That was a boy seventeen or eighteen years old--Jack Van Nostrand--a New +York boy, who, to my mind, was a very remarkable creature. He and I +tried to get Williams to understand that boy, and make a picture of Jack +that would be worthy of Jack. + +Jack was a most singular combination. He was born and reared in New York +here. He was as delicate in his feelings, as clean and pure and refined +in his feelings as any lovely girl that ever was, but whenever he +expressed a feeling he did it in Bowery slang, and it was a most curious +combination--that delicacy of his and that apparent coarseness. There +was no coarseness inside of Jack at all, and Jack, in the course of +seventeen or eighteen years, had acquired a capital of ignorance that was +marvellous--ignorance of various things, not of all things. For +instance, he did not know anything about the Bible. He had never been in +Sunday-school. Jack got more out of the Holy Land than anybody else, +because the others knew what they were expecting, but it was a land of +surprises to him. + +I said in the book that we found him watching a turtle on a log, stoning +that turtle, and he was stoning that turtle because he had read that "The +song of the turtle was heard in the land," and this turtle wouldn't sing. +It sounded absurd, but it was charged on Jack as a fact, and as he went +along through that country he had a proper foil in an old rebel colonel, +who was superintendent and head engineer in a large Sunday-school in +Wheeling, West Virginia. That man was full of enthusiasm wherever he +went, and would stand and deliver himself of speeches, and Jack would +listen to those speeches of the colonel and wonder. + +Jack had made a trip as a child almost across this continent in the first +overland stage-coach. That man's name who ran that line of stages--well, +I declare that name is gone. Well, names will go. + +Halliday--ah, that's the name--Ben Halliday, your uncle [turning to Mr. +Carnegie]. That was the fellow--Ben Halliday--and Jack was full of +admiration at the prodigious speed that that line of stages made--and it +was good speed--one hundred and twenty-five miles a day, going day and +night, and it was the event of Jack's life, and there at the Fords of the +Jordan the colonel was inspired to a speech (he was always making a +speech), so he called us up to him. He called up five sinners and three +saints. It has been only lately that Mr. Carnegie beatified me. And he +said: "Here are the Fords of the Jordan--a monumental place. At this +very point, when Moses brought the children of Israel through--he brought +the children of Israel from Egypt through the desert you see them--he +guarded them through that desert patiently, patiently during forty years, +and brought them to this spot safe and sound. There you see--there is +the scene of what Moses did." + +And Jack said: "Moses who?" + +"Oh," he says, "Jack, you ought not to ask that! Moses, the great +law-giver! Moses, the great patriot! Moses, the great warrior! Moses, +the great guide, who, as I tell you, brought these people through these +three hundred miles of sand in forty years, and landed there safe and +sound." + +Jack said: "There's nothin' in that three hundred miles in forty years. +Ben Halliday would have snaked 'em through in thirty--six hours." + +Well, I was speaking of Jack's innocence, and it was beautiful. Jack was +not ignorant on all subjects. That boy was a deep student in the history +of Anglo-Saxon liberty, and he was a patriot all the way through to the +marrow. There was a subject that interested him all the time. Other +subjects were of no concern to Jack, but that quaint, inscrutable +innocence of his I could not get Williams to put into the picture. + +Yes, Williams wanted to do it. He said: "I will make him as innocent as +a virgin." He thought a moment, and then said, "I will make him as +innocent as an unborn virgin;" which covered the ground. + +I was reminded of Jack because I came across a letter to-day which is +over thirty years old that Jack wrote. Jack was doomed to consumption. +He was very long and slim, poor creature; and in a year or two after he +got back from that excursion, to the Holy Land he went on a ride on +horseback through Colorado, and he did not last but a year or two. + +He wrote this letter, not to me, but to a friend of mine; and he said: +"I have ridden horseback"--this was three years after--"I hate ridden +horseback four hundred miles through a desert country where you never see +anything but cattle now and then, and now and then a cattle station--ten +miles apart, twenty miles apart. Now you tell Clemens that in all that +stretch of four hundred miles I have seen only two books--the Bible and +'Innocents Abroad'. Tell Clemens the Bible was in a very good +condition." + +I say that he had studied, and he had, the real Saxon liberty, the +acquirement of our liberty, and Jack used to repeat some verses--I don't +know where they came from, but I thought of them to-day when I saw that +letter--that that boy could have been talking of himself in those quoted +lines from that unknown poet: + + "For he had sat at Sidney's feet + And walked with him in plain apart, + And through the centuries heard the beat + Of Freedom's march through Cromwell's heart." + +And he was that kind of a boy. He should have lived, and yet he should +not have lived, because he died at that early age--he couldn't have been +more than twenty--he had seen all there was to see in the world that was +worth the trouble of living in it; he had seen all of this world that is +valuable; he had seen all of this world that was illusion, and illusion, +is the only valuable thing in it. He had arrived at that point where +presently the illusions would cease and he would have entered upon the +realities of life, and God help the man that has arrived at that point. + + + + + + +ACCIDENT INSURANCE--ETC. + + DELIVERED IN HARTFORD, AT A DINNER TO CORNELIUS WALFORD, + OF LONDON + +GENTLEMAN,--I am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished +guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance centre has +extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band of +brothers working sweetly hand in hand--the Colt's arms company making the +destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life-insurance citizens +paying for the victims when they pass away, Mr. Batterson perpetuating +their memory with his stately monuments, and our fire-insurance comrades +taking care of their hereafter. I am glad to assist in welcoming our +guest--first, because he is an Englishman, and I owe a heavy debt of +hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen; and secondly, because he +is in sympathy with insurance, and has been the means of making many +other men cast their sympathies in the same direction. + +Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance +line of business--especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been +a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a +better man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a +kindlier aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their +horror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest--as an +advertisement. I do not seem, to care for poetry any more. I do not +care for politics--even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now +there is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable. + +There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. I have seen an +entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon +of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in +their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my experience +of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a +freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his +remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. And I have seen +nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer's +face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden leg. + +I will remark here, by way of advertisement, that that noble charity +which we have named the HARTFORD ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY is an +institution, which is peculiarly to be depended upon. A man is bound to +prosper who gives it his custom. No man pan take out a policy in it and +not get crippled before the year is out. Now there was one indigent man +who had been disappointed so often with other companies that he had grown +disheartened, his appetite left him, he ceased to smile--said life was +but a weariness. Three weeks ago I got him to insure with us, and now he +is the brightest, happiest spirit in this land--has a good steady income +and a stylish suit of new bandages every day, and travels around on a +shutter. + +I will say in conclusion, that my share of the welcome to our guest is +none the less hearty because I talk so much nonsense, and I know that I +curl say the same far the rest of the speakers. + + + + + + +OSTEOPATHY + + On February 27, 1901, Mr. Clemens appeared before the Assembly + Committee in Albany, New York, in favor of the Seymour bill + legalizing the practice of osteopathy. + +MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,--Dr. Van Fleet is the gentleman who gave me +the character. I have heard my character discussed a thousand times +before you were born, sir, and shown the iniquities in it, and you did +not get more than half of them. + +I was touched and distressed when they brought that part of a child in +here, and proved that you cannot take a child to pieces in that way. +What remarkable names those diseases have! It makes me envious of the +man that has them all. I have had many diseases, and am thankful for all +I have had. + +One of the gentlemen spoke of the knowledge of something else found in +Sweden, a treatment which I took. It is, I suppose, a kindred thing. +There is apparently no great difference between them. I was a year and a +half in London and Sweden, in the hands of that grand old man, Mr. +Kildren. + +I cannot call him a doctor, for he has not the authority to give a +certificate if a patient should die, but fortunately they don't. + +The State stands as a mighty Gibraltar clothed with power. It stands +between me and my body, and tells me what kind of a doctor I must employ. +When my soul is sick unlimited spiritual liberty is given me by the +State. Now then, it doesn't seem logical that the State shall depart +from this great policy, the health of the soul, and change about and take +the other position in the matter of smaller consequence--the health of +the body. + +The Bell bill limitations would drive the osteopaths out of the State. +Oh, dear me! when you drive somebody out of the State you create the same +condition as prevailed in the Garden of Eden. + +You want the thing that you can't have. I didn't care much about the +osteopaths, but as soon as I found they were going to drive them out I +got in a state of uneasiness, and I can't sleep nights now. + +I know how Adam felt in the Garden of Eden about the prohibited apple. +Adam didn't want the apple till he found out he couldn't have it, +just as he would have wanted osteopathy if he couldn't have it. + +Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I +experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I +choose injudiciously, does the State die? Oh no. + +I was the subject of my mother's experiment. She was wise. She made +experiments cautiously. She didn't pick out just any child in the flock. +No, she chose judiciously. She chose one she could spare, and she +couldn't spare the others. I was the choice child of the flock; so I had +to take all of the experiments. + +In 1844 Kneipp filled the world with the wonder of the water cure. +Mother wanted to try it, but on sober second thought she put me through. +A bucket of ice-water was poured over to see the effect. Then I was +rubbed down with flannels, sheet was dipped in the water, and I was put +to bed. I perspired so much that mother put a life-preserver to bed with +me. + +But this had nothing but a spiritual effect on me, and I didn't care for +that. When they took off the sheet it was yellow from the output of my +conscience, the exudation of sin. It purified me spiritually, and it +remains until this day. + +I have experimented with osteopathy and allopathy. I took a chance at +the latter for old times' sake, for, three tines, when a boy, mother's +new methods got me so near death's door she had to call in the family +physician to pull me out. + +The physicians think they are moved by regard for the best interests of +the public. Isn't there a little touch of self-interest back of it all? +It seems to me there is, and I don't claim to have all the virtues--only +nine or ten of them. + +I was born in the "Banner State," and by "Banner State" I mean Missouri. +Osteopathy was born in the same State, and both of us are getting along +reasonably well. At a time during my younger days my attention was +attracted to a picture of a house which bore the inscription, "Christ +Disputing with the Doctors." + +I could attach no other meaning to it than that Christ was actually +quarreling with the doctors. So I asked an old slave, who was a sort of +a herb doctor in a small way--unlicensed, of course--what the meaning of +the picture was. "What had has done?" I asked. And the colored man +replied "Humph, he ain't got no license." + + + + + + +WATER-SUPPLY + + Mr. Clemens visited Albany on February 21 and 28, 1901. The + privileges of the floor were granted and he was asked to make a + short address to the Senate. + +MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,--I do not know how to thank you sufficiently +for this high honor which you are conferring upon me. I have for the +second time now enjoyed this kind of prodigal hospitality--in the other +House yesterday, to-day in this one. I am a modest man, and diffident +about appearing before legislative bodies, and yet utterly an entirely +appreciative of a courtesy like this when it is extended to me, and I +thank you very much for it. + +If I had the privilege, which unfortunately I have not got, of suggesting +things to the legislators in my individual capacity, I would so enjoy the +opportunity that I would not charge anything for it at all. I would do +that without a salary. I would give them the benefit of my wisdom and +experience in legislative bodies, and if I could have had the privilege +for a few minutes of giving advice to the other House I should have liked +to, but of course I could not undertake it, as they did not ask me to do +it--but if they had only asked me! + +Now that the House is considering a measure which is to furnish a +water-supply to the city of New York, why, permit me to say I live in New +York myself. I know all about its ways, its desires, and its residents, +and--if I had the privilege--I should have urged them not to weary +themselves over a measure like that to furnish water to the city of New +York, for we never drink it. + +But I will not venture to advise this body, as I only venture to advise +bodies who are, not present. + + + + + + +MISTAKEN IDENTITY + +ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL "LADIES' DAY," PAPYRUS CLUB, BOSTON + +LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I am perfectly astonished--a-s-t-o-n-i-s-h-e-d +--ladies and gentlemen--astonished at the way history repeats itself. +I find myself situated at this moment exactly and precisely as I was once +before, years ago, to a jot, to a tittle--to a very hair. There isn't a +shade of difference. It is the most astonishing coincidence that ever +--but wait. I will tell you the former instance, and then you will see +it for yourself. Years ago I arrived one day at Salamanca, New York, +eastward bound; must change cars there and take the sleeper train. There +were crowds of people there, and they were swarming into the long sleeper +train and packing it full, and it was a perfect purgatory of dust and +confusion and gritting of teeth and soft, sweet, and low profanity. +I asked the young man in the ticket-office if I could have a +sleeping-section, and he answered "No," with a snarl that shrivelled me +up like burned leather. I went off, smarting under this insult to my +dignity, and asked another local official, supplicatingly, if I couldn't +have some poor little corner somewhere in a sleeping-car; but he cut me +short with a venomous "No, you can't; every corner is full. Now, don't +bother me any more"; and he turned his back and walked off. My dignity +was in a state now which cannot be described. I was so ruffled that +--"well," I said to my companion, "If these people knew who I am they--" +But my companion cut me short there--"Don't talk such folly," he said; +"if they did know who you are, do you suppose it would help your +high-mightiness to a vacancy in a train which has no vacancies in it?" + +This did not improve my condition any to speak of, but just then I +observed that the colored porter of a sleeping-car had his eye on me. +I saw his dark countenance light up. He whispered to the uniformed +conductor, punctuating with nods and jerks toward me, and straightway +this conductor came forward, oozing politeness from every pore. + +"Can I be of any service to you?" he asked. "Will you have a place in +the sleeper?" + +"Yes," I said, "and much oblige me, too. Give me anything--anything will +answer." + +"We have nothing left but the big family state-room," he continued, "with +two berths and a couple of arm-chairs in it, but it is entirely at your +disposal. Here, Tom, take these satchels aboard!" + +Then he touched his hat and we and the colored Tom moved along. I was +bursting to drop just one little remark to my companion, but I held in +and waited. Tom made us comfortable in that sumptuous great apartment, +and then said, with many bows and a perfect affluence of smiles: + +"Now, is dey anything you want, sah? Case you kin have jes' anything you +wants. It don't make no difference what it is." + +"Can I have some hot water and a tumbler at nine to-night-blazing hot?" +I asked. "You know about the right temperature for a hot Scotch punch?" + +"Yes, sah, dat you kin; you kin pen on it; I'll get it myself." + +"Good! Now, that lamp is hung too high. Can I have a big coach candle +fixed up just at the head of my bed, so that I can read comfortably?" + +"Yes, sah, you kin; I'll fix her up myself, an' I'll fix her so she'll +burn all night. Yes, sah; an' you can jes' call for anything you want, +and dish yer whole railroad'll be turned wrong end up an' inside out for +to get it for you. Dat's so." And he disappeared. + +Well, I tilted my head back, hooked my thumbs in my armholes, smiled a +smile on my companion, and said, gently: + +"Well, what do you say now?" + +My companion was not in the humor to respond, and didn't. The next +moment that smiling black face was thrust in at the crack of the door, +and this speech followed: + +"Laws bless you, sah, I knowed you in a minute. I told de conductah so. +Laws! I knowed you de minute I sot eyes on you." + +"Is that so, my boy?" (Handing him a quadruple fee.) "Who am I?" + +"Jenuel McClellan," and he disappeared again. + +My companion said, vinegarishly, "Well, well! what do you say now?" +Right there comes in the marvellous coincidence I mentioned a while ago +--viz., I was speechless, and that is my condition now. Perceive it? + + + + + + +CATS AND CANDY + + The following address was delivered at a social meeting of + literary men in New York in 1874: + +When I was fourteen I was living with my parents, who were very poor--and +correspondently honest. We had a youth living with us by the name of Jim +Wolfe. He was an excellent fellow, seventeen years old, and very +diffident. He and I slept together--virtuously; and one bitter winter's +night a cousin Mary--she's married now and gone--gave what they call a +candy-pulling in those days in the West, and they took the saucers of hot +candy outside of the house into the snow, under a sort of old bower that +came from the eaves--it was a sort of an ell then, all covered with +vines--to cool this hot candy in the snow, and they were all sitting +there. In the mean time we were gone to bed. We were not invited to +attend this party; we were too young. + +The young ladies and gentlemen were assembled there, and Jim and I were +in bed. There was about four inches of snow on the roof of this ell, and +our windows looked out on it; and it was frozen hard. A couple of +tom-cats--it is possible one might have been of the opposite sex--were +assembled on the chimney in the middle of this ell, and they were +growling at a fearful rate, and switching their tails about and going on, +and we couldn't sleep at all. + +Finally Jim said, "For two cents I'd go out and snake them cats off that +chimney." So I said, "Of course you would." He said, "Well, I would; +I have a mighty good notion to do it." Says I, "Of course you have; +certainly you have, you have a great notion to do it." I hoped he might +try it, but I was afraid he wouldn't. + +Finally I did get his ambition up, and he raised the window and climbed +out on the icy roof, with nothing on but his socks and a very short +shirt. He went climbing along on all fours on the roof toward the +chimney where the cats were. In the mean time these young ladies and +gentlemen were enjoying themselves down under the eaves, and when Jim got +almost to that chimney he made a pass at the cats, and his heels flew up +and he shot down and crashed through those vines, and lit in the midst of +the ladies and gentlemen, and sat down in those hot saucers of candy. + +There was a stampede, of course, and he came up-stairs dropping pieces of +chinaware and candy all the way up, and when he got up there--now anybody +in the world would have gone into profanity or something calculated to +relieve the mind, but he didn't; he scraped the candy off his legs, +nursed his blisters a little, and said, "I could have ketched them cats +if I had had on a good ready." + +[Does any reader know what a "ready" was in 1840? D.W.] + + + + + + +OBITUARY POETRY + + ADDRESS AT THE ACTORS' FUND FAIR, PHILADELPHIA, in 1895 + +LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--The--er this--er--welcome occasion gives me an +--er--opportunity to make an--er--explanation that I have long desired to +deliver myself of. I rise to the highest honors before a Philadelphia +audience. In the course of my checkered career I have, on divers +occasions, been charged--er--maliciously with a more or less serious +offence. It is in reply to one of the more--er--important of these that +I wish to speak. More than once I have been accused of writing obituary +poetry in the Philadelphia Ledger. + +I wish right here to deny that dreadful assertion. I will admit that +once, when a compositor in the Ledger establishment, I did set up some of +that poetry, but for a worse offence than that no indictment can be found +against me. I did not write that poetry--at least, not all of it. + + + + + + +CIGARS AND TOBACCO + +My friends for some years now have remarked that I am an inveterate +consumer of tobacco. That is true, but my habits with regard to tobacco +have changed. I have no doubt that you will say, when I have explained +to you what my present purpose is, that my taste has deteriorated, but I +do not so regard it. + +Whenever I held a smoking-party at my house, I found that my guests had +always just taken the pledge. + +Let me tell you briefly the history of my personal relation to tobacco. +It began, I think, when I was a lad, and took the form of a quid, which I +became expert in tucking under my tongue. Afterward I learned the +delights of the pipe, and I suppose there was no other youngster of my +age who could more deftly cut plug tobacco so as to make it available for +pipe-smoking. + +Well, time ran on, and there came a time when I was able to gratify one +of my youthful ambitions--I could buy the choicest Havana cigars without +seriously interfering with my income. I smoked a good many, changing off +from the Havana cigars to the pipe in the course of a day's smoking. + +At last it occurred to me that something was lacking in the Havana +cigar. It did not quite fulfil my youthful anticipations. +I experimented. I bought what was called a seed-leaf cigar with a +Connecticut wrapper. After a while I became satiated of these, and I +searched for something else, The Pittsburg stogy was recommended to me. +It certainly had the merit of cheapness, if that be a merit in tobacco, +and I experimented with the stogy. + +Then, once more, I changed off, so that I might acquire the subtler +flavor of the Wheeling toby. Now that palled, and I looked around New +York in the hope of finding cigars which would seem to most people vile, +but which, I am sure, would be ambrosial to me. I couldn't find any. +They put into my hands some of those little things that cost ten cents a +box, but they are a delusion. + +I said to a friend, "I want to know if you can direct me to an honest +tobacco merchant who will tell me what is the worst cigar in the New York +market, excepting those made for Chinese consumption--I want real +tobacco. If you will do this and I find the man is as good as his word, +I will guarantee him a regular market for a fair amount of his cigars." + +We found a tobacco dealer who would tell the truth--who, if a cigar was +bad, would boldly say so. He produced what he called the very worst +cigars he had ever had in his shop. He let me experiment with one then +and there. The test was satisfactory. + +This was, after all, the real thing. I negotiated for a box of them and +took them away with me, so that I might be sure of having them handy when +I want them. + +I discovered that the "worst cigars," so called, are the best for me, +after all. + + + + + + +BILLIARDS + + Mr. Clemens attended a billiard tourney on the evening of April + 24, 1906, and was called on to tell a story. + +The game of billiards has destroyed my naturally sweet disposition. +Once, when I was an underpaid reporter in Virginia City, whenever I +wished to play billiards I went out to look for an easy mark. One day a +stranger came to town and opened a billiard parlor. I looked him over +casually. When he proposed a game, I answered, "All right." + +"Just knock the balls around a little so that I can get your gait," he +said; and when I had done so, he remarked: "I will be perfectly fair with +you. I'll play you left-handed." I felt hurt, for he was cross-eyed, +freckled, and had red hair, and I determined to teach him a lesson. He +won first shot, ran out, took my half-dollar, and all I got was the +opportunity to chalk my cue. + +"If you can play like that with your left hand," I said, "I'd like to see +you play with your right." + +"I can't," he said. "I'm left-handed." + + + + + + +THE UNION RIGHT OR WRONG + + REMINISCENCES OF NEVADA + +I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that Nevada had lively newspapers +in those days. + +My great competitor among the reporters was Boggs, of the Union, an +excellent reporter. + +Once in three or four months he would get a little intoxicated; but, as a +general thing, he was a wary and cautious drinker, although always ready +to damp himself a little with the enemy. + +He had the advantage of me in one thing: he could get the monthly +public-school report and I could not, because the principal hated my sheet +--the 'Enterprise'. + +One snowy night, when the report was due, I started out, sadly wondering +how I was to get it. + +Presently, a few steps up the almost deserted street, I stumbled on +Boggs, and asked him where he was going. + +"After the school report." + +"I'll go along with you." + +"No, Sir. I'll excuse you." + +"Have it your own way." + +A saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steaming pitcher of hot punch, and +Boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully. + +He gazed fondly after the boy, and saw him start up the Enterprise +stairs. + +I said: + +"I wish you could help me get that school business, but since you can't, +I must run up to the Union office and see if I can get a proof of it +after it's set up, though I don't begin to suppose I can. Good night." + +"Hold on a minute. I don't mind getting the report and sitting around +with the boys a little while you copy it, if you're willing to drop down +to the principal's with me." + +"Now you talk like a human being. Come along." + +We ploughed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the report--a short +document--and soon copied it in our office. + +Meantime, Boggs helped himself to the punch. + +I gave the manuscript back to him, and we started back to get an inquest. + +At four o'clock in the morning, when we had gone to press and were having +a relaxing concert as usual (for some of the printers were good singers +and others good performers on the guitar and on that atrocity the +accordion), the proprietor of the Union strode in and asked if anybody +had heard anything of Boggs or the school report. + +We stated the case, and all turned out to help hunt for the delinquent. + +We found him standing on a table in a saloon, with an old tin lantern in +one hand and the school report in the other, haranguing a gang of +"corned" miners on, the iniquity of squandering the public money on +education "when hundreds and hundreds of honest, hard-working men were +literally starving for whiskey." + +He had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties for hours. + +We dragged him away, and put him into bed. + +Of course there was no school report in the Union, and Boggs held me +accountable, though I was innocent of any intention or desire to compass +its absence from that paper, and was as sorry as any one that the +misfortune had occurred. But we were perfectly friendly. + +The day the next school report was due the proprietor of the Tennessee +Mine furnished us a buggy, and asked us to go down and write something +about the property--a very common request, and one always gladly acceded +to when people furnished buggies, for we were as fond of pleasure +excursions as other people. + +The "mine" was a hole in the ground ninety feet deep, and no way of +getting down into it but by holding on to a rope and being lowered with a +windlass. + +The workmen had just gone off somewhere to dinner. + +I was not strong enough to lower Boggs's bulk, so I took an unlighted +candle in my teeth, made a loop for my foot in the end of the rope, +implored Boggs not to go to sleep or let the windlass get the start of +him, and then swung out over the shaft. + +I reached the bottom muddy and bruised about the elbows, but safe. + +I lit the candle, made an examination of the rock, selected some +specimens, and shouted to Boggs to hoist away. + +No answer. + +Presently a head appeared in the circle of daylight away aloft, and a +voice came down: + +"Are you all set?" + +"All set-hoist away!" + +"Are you comfortable?" + +"Perfectly." + +"Could you wait a little?" + +"Oh, certainly-no particular hurry." + +"Well-good-bye." + +"Why, where are you going?" + +"After the school report!" + +And he did. + +I stayed down there an hour, and surprised the workmen when they hauled +up and found a man on the rope instead of a bucket of rock. + +I walked home, too--five miles-up-hill. + +We had no school report next morning--but the Union had. + + + + + + +AN IDEAL FRENCH ADDRESS + + EXTRACT FROM "PARIS NOTES," IN "TOM SAWYER ABROAD," ETC. + +I am told that a French sermon is like a French speech--it never names an +historical event, but only the date of it; if you are not up in dates, +you get left. A French speech is something like this: + +"Comrades, citizens, brothers, noble parts of the only sublime and +perfect nation, let us not forget that the 21st January cast off our +chains; that the 10th August relieved us of the shameful presence of +foreign spies; that the 5th September was its own justification before +Heaven and humanity; that the 18th Brumaire contained the seeds of its +own punishment; that the 14th July was the mighty voice of liberty +proclaiming the resurrection, the new day, and inviting the oppressed +peoples of the earth to look upon the divine face of France and live; +and let us here record our everlasting curse against the man of the +2d December, and declare in thunder tones, the native tones of France, +that but for him there had been no 17th Mardi in history, no 12th +October, nor 9th January, no 22d April, no 16th November, no 30th +September, no 2d July, no 14th February, no 29th June, no 15th August, no +31st May--that but for him, France, the pure, the grand, the peerless, +had had a serene and vacant almanac to-day." + +I have heard of one French sermon which closed in this odd yet eloquent +way: + +"My hearers, we have sad cause to remember the man of the 13th January. +The results of the vast crime of the 13th January have been in just +proportion to the magnitude of the act itself. But for it there had been +no 30th November--sorrowful spectacle! The grisly deed of the 16th June +had not been done but for it, nor had the man of the 16th June known +existence; to it alone the 3d September was due, also the fatal 12th +October. Shall we, then, be grateful for the 13th January, with its +freight of death for you and me and all that breathe? Yes, my friends, +for it gave us also that which had never come but for it, and it alone +--the blessed 25th December." + +It may be well enough to explain. The man of the 13th January is Adam; +the crime of that date was the eating of the apple; the sorrowful +spectacle of the 30th November was the expulsion from Eden; the grisly +deed of the 16th June was the murder of Abel; the act of the 3d September +was the beginning of the journey to the land of Nod; the 12th day of +October, the last mountaintops disappeared under the flood. When you go +to church in France, you want to take your almanac with you--annotated. + + + + + + +STATISTICS + + EXTRACT FROM "THE HISTORY OF THE SAVAGE CLUB" + + During that period of gloom when domestic bereavement had + forced Mr. Clemens and his dear ones to secure the privacy they + craved until their wounds should heal, his address was known to + only a very few of his closest friends. One old friend in New + York, after vain efforts to get his address, wrote him a letter + addressed as follows + + MARK TWAIN, + God Knows Where, + Try London. + + The letter found him, and Mr. Clemens replied to the letter + expressing himself surprised and complimented that the person + who was credited with knowing his whereabouts should take so + much interest in him, adding: "Had the letter been addressed to + the care of the 'other party,' I would naturally have expected + to receive it without delay." + + His correspondent tried again, and addressed the second letter: + + MARK TWAIN, + The Devil Knows Where, + Try London. + + This found him also no less promptly. + + On June 9, 1899, he consented to visit the Savage Club, London, + on condition that there was to be no publicity and no speech + was to be expected from him. The toastmaster, in proposing the + health of their guest, said that as a Scotchman, and therefore + as a born expert, he thought Mark Twain had little or no claim + to the title of humorist. Mr. Clemens had tried to be funny + but had failed, and his true role in life was statistics; that + he was a master of statistics, and loved them for their own + sake, and it would be the easiest task he ever undertook if he + would try to count all the real jokes he had ever made. While + the toastmaster was speaking, the members saw Mr. Clemens's + eyes begin to sparkle and his cheeks to flush. He jumped up, + and made a characteristic speech. + +Perhaps I am not a humorist, but I am a first-class fool--a simpleton; +for up to this moment I have believed Chairman MacAlister to be a decent +person whom I could allow to mix up with my friends and relatives. The +exhibition he has just made of himself reveals him to be a scoundrel and +a knave of the deepest dye. I have been cruelly deceived, and it serves +me right for trusting a Scotchman. Yes, I do understand figures, and I +can count. I have counted the words in MacAlister's drivel (I certainly +cannot call it a speech), and there were exactly three thousand four +hundred and thirty-nine. I also carefully counted the lies--there were +exactly three thousand four hundred and thirty-nine. Therefore, I leave +MacAlister to his fate. + +I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, +because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is +dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I am not feeling very well +myself. + + + + + + +GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR + + ADDRESS AT A FAIR HELD AT THE WALDORF-ASTORIA, NEW YORK, IN + OCTOBER, 1900, IN AID OF THE ORPHANS AT GALVESTON + +I expected that the Governor of Texas would occupy this place first and +would speak to you, and in the course of his remarks would drop a text +for me to talk from; but with the proverbial obstinacy that is proverbial +with governors, they go back on their duties, and he has not come here, +and has not furnished me with a text, and I am here without a text. I +have no text except what you furnish me with your handsome faces, and +--but I won't continue that, for I could go on forever about attractive +faces, beautiful dresses, and other things. But, after all, compliments +should be in order in a place like this. + +I have been in New York two or three days, and have been in a condition +of strict diligence night and day, the object of this diligence being to +regulate the moral and political situation on this planet--put it on a +sound basis--and when you are regulating the conditions of a planet it +requires a great deal of talk in a great many kinds of ways, and when you +have talked a lot the emptier you get, and get also in a position of +corking. When I am situated like that, with nothing to say, I feel as +though I were a sort of fraud; I seem to be playing a part, and please +consider I am playing a part for want of something better, and this, is +not unfamiliar to me; I have often done this before. + +When I was here about eight years ago I was coming up in a car of the +elevated road. Very few people were in that car, and on one end of it +there was no one, except on the opposite seat, where sat a man about +fifty years old, with a most winning face and an elegant eye--a beautiful +eye; and I took him from his dress to be a master mechanic, a man who had +a vocation. He had with him a very fine little child of about four or +five years. I was watching the affection which existed between those +two. I judged he was the grandfather, perhaps. It was really a pretty +child, and I was admiring her, and as soon as he saw I was admiring her +he began to notice me. + +I could see his admiration of me in his eye, and I did what everybody +else would do--admired the child four times as much, knowing I would get +four times as much of his admiration. Things went on very pleasantly. +I was making my way into his heart. + +By-and-by, when he almost reached the station where he was to get off, +he got up, crossed over, and he said: "Now I am going to say something to +you which I hope you will regard as a compliment." And then he went on +to say: "I have never seen Mark Twain, but I have seen a portrait of him, +and any friend of mine will tell you that when I have once seen a +portrait of a man I place it in my eye and store it away in my memory, +and I can tell you now that you look enough like Mark Twain to be his +brother. Now," he said, "I hope you take this as a compliment. Yes, you +are a very good imitation; but when I come to look closer, you are +probably not that man." + +I said: "I will be frank with you. In my desire to look like that +excellent character I have dressed for the character; I have been playing +a part." + +He said: "That is all right, that is all right; you look very well on the +outside, but when it comes to the inside you are not in it with the +original" + +So when I come to a place like this with nothing valuable to say I always +play a part. But I will say before I sit down that when it comes to +saying anything here I will express myself in this way: I am heartily in +sympathy with you in your efforts to help those who were sufferers in +this calamity, and in your desire to heap those who were rendered +homeless, and in saying this I wish to impress on you the fact that I am +not playing a part. + + + + + + +SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE + + After the address at the Robert Fulton Fund meeting, June 19, + 1906, Mr. Clemens talked to the assembled reporters about the + San Francisco earthquake. + +I haven't been there since 1868, and that great city of San Francisco has +grown up since my day. When I was there she had one hundred and eighteen +thousand people, and of this number eighteen thousand were Chinese. +I was a reporter on the Virginia City Enterprise in Nevada in 1862, and +stayed there, I think, about two years, when I went to San Francisco and +got a job as a reporter on The Call. I was there three or four +years. + +I remember one day I was walking down Third Street in San Francisco. It +was a sleepy, dull Sunday afternoon, and no one was stirring. Suddenly +as I looked up the street about three hundred yards the whole side of a +house fell out. The street was full of bricks and mortar. At the same +time I was knocked against the side of a house, and stood there stunned +for a moment. + +I thought it was an earthquake. Nobody else had heard anything about it +and no one said earthquake to me afterward, but I saw it and I wrote it. +Nobody else wrote it, and the house I saw go into the street was the only +house in the city that felt it. I've always wondered if it wasn't a +little performance gotten up for my especial entertainment by the nether +regions. + + + + + + +CHARITY AND ACTORS + + ADDRESS AT THE ACTORS' FUND FAIR IN THE METROPOLITAN + OPERA HOUSE, NEW YORK, MAY 6, 1907 + + Mr. Clemens, in his white suit, formally declared the fair + open. Mr. Daniel Frohman, in introducing Mr. Clemens, said: + + "We intend to make this a banner week in the history of the + Fund, which takes an interest in every one on the stage, be he + actor, singer, dancer, or workman. We have spent more than + $40,000 during the past year. Charity covers a multitude of + sins, but it also reveals a multitude of virtues. At the + opening of the former fair we had the assistance of Edwin Booth + and Joseph Jefferson. In their place we have to-day that + American institution and apostle of wide humanity--Mark Twain." + +As Mr. Frohman has said, charity reveals a multitude of virtues. This is +true, and it is to be proved here before the week is over. Mr. Frohman +has told you something of the object and something of the character of +the work. He told me he would do this--and he has kept his word! I had +expected to hear of it through the newspapers. I wouldn't trust anything +between Frohman and the newspapers--except when it's a case of charity! + +You should all remember that the actor has been your benefactor many and +many a year. When you have been weary and downcast he has lifted your +heart out of gloom and given you a fresh impulse. You are all under +obligation to him. This is your opportunity to be his benefactor--to +help provide for him in his old age and when he suffers from infirmities. + +At this fair no one is to be persecuted to buy. If you offer a +twenty-dollar bill in payment for a purchase of $1 you will receive $19 +in change. There is to be no robbery here. There is to be no creed here +--no religion except charity. We want to raise $250,000--and that is a +great task to attempt. + +The President has set the fair in motion by pressing the button in +Washington. Now your good wishes are to be transmuted into cash. + +By virtue of the authority in me vested I declare the fair open. I call +the ball game. Let the transmuting begin! + + + + + + +RUSSIAN REPUBLIC + +The American auxiliary movement to aid the cause of freedom in Russia was +launched on the evening of April 11, 1906, at the Club A house, 3 Fifth +Avenue, with Mr. Clemens and Maxim Gorky as the principal spokesmen. +Mr. Clemens made an introductory address, presenting Mr. Gorky. + +If we can build a Russian republic to give to the persecuted people of +the Tsar's domain the same measure of freedom that we enjoy, let us go +ahead and do it. We need not discuss the methods by which that purpose +is to be attained. Let us hope that fighting will be postponed or +averted for a while, but if it must come-- + +I am most emphatically in sympathy with the movement, now on foot in +Russia, to make that country free. I am certain that it will be +successful, as it deserves to be. Any such movement should have and +deserves our earnest and unanimous co-operation, and such a petition for +funds as has been explained by Mr. Hunter, with its just and powerful +meaning, should have the utmost support of each and every one of us. +Anybody whose ancestors were in this country when we were trying to free +ourselves from oppression, must sympathize with those who now are trying +to do the same thing in Russia. + +The parallel I have just drawn only goes to show that it makes no +difference whether the oppression is bitter or not; men with red, warm +blood in their veins will not endure it, but will seek to cast it off. +If we keep our hearts in this matter Russia will be free. + + + + + + +RUSSIAN SUFFERERS + + On December 18, 1905, an entertainment was given at the Casino + for the benefit of the Russian sufferers. After the + performance Mr. Clemens spoke. + +LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It seems a sort of cruelty to inflict upon an +audience like this our rude English tongue, after we have heard that +divine speech flowing in that lucid Gallic tongue. + +It has always been a marvel to me--that French language; it has always +been a puzzle to me. How beautiful that language is. How expressive it +seems to be. How full of grace it is. + +And when it comes from lips like those, how eloquent and how liquid it +is. And, oh, I am always deceived--I always think I am going to +understand it. + +Oh, it is such a delight to me, such a delight to me, to meet Madame +Bernhardt, and laugh hand to hand and heart to heart with her. + +I have seen her play, as we all have, and oh, that is divine; but I have +always wanted to know Madame Bernhardt herself--her fiery self. I have +wanted to know that beautiful character. + +Why, she is the youngest person I ever saw, except myself--for I always +feel young when I come in the presence of young people. + +I have a pleasant recollection of an incident so many years ago--when +Madame Bernhardt came to Hartford, where I lived, and she was going to +play and the tickets were three dollars, and there were two lovely women +--a widow and her daughter--neighbors of ours, highly cultivated ladies +they were; their tastes were fine and elevated, but they were very poor, +and they said "Well, we must not spend six dollars on a pleasure of the +mind, a pleasure of the intellect; we must spend it, if it must go at +all, to furnish to somebody bread to eat." + +And so they sorrowed over the fact that they had to give up that great +pleasure of seeing Madame Bernhardt, but there were two neighbors equally +highly cultivated and who could not afford bread, and those good-hearted +Joneses sent that six dollars--deprived themselves of it--and sent it to +those poor Smiths to buy bread with. And those Smiths took it and bought +tickets with it to see Madame Bernhardt. + +Oh yes, some people have tastes and intelligence also. + +Now, I was going to make a speech--I supposed I was, but I am not. It is +late, late; and so I am going to tell a story; and there is this +advantage about a story, anyway, that whatever moral or valuable thing +you put into a speech, why, it gets diffused among those involuted +sentences and possibly your audience goes away without finding out what +that valuable thing was that you were trying to confer upon it; but, dear +me, you put the same jewel into a story and it becomes the keystone of +that story, and you are bound to get it--it flashes, it flames, it is the +jewel in the toad's head--you don't overlook that. + +Now, if I am going to talk on such a subject as, for instance, the lost +opportunity--oh, the lost opportunity. Anybody in this house who has +reached the turn of life--sixty, or seventy, or even fifty, or along +there--when he goes back along his history, there he finds it mile-stoned +all the way with the lost opportunity, and you know how pathetic that is. + +You younger ones cannot know the full pathos that lies in those words +--the lost opportunity; but anybody who is old, who has really lived and +felt this life, he knows the pathos of the lost opportunity. + +Now, I will tell you a story whose moral is that, whose lesson is that, +whose lament is that. + +I was in a village which is a suburb of New Bedford several years ago +--well, New Bedford is a suburb of Fair Haven, or perhaps it is the other +way; in any case, it took both of those towns to make a great centre of +the great whaling industry of the first half of the nineteenth century, +and I was up there at Fair Haven some years ago with a friend of mine. + +There was a dedication of a great town-hall, a public building, and we +were there in the afternoon. This great building was filled, like this +great theatre, with rejoicing villagers, and my friend and I started down +the centre aisle. He saw a man standing in that aisle, and he said "Now, +look at that bronzed veteran--at that mahogany-faced man. Now, tell me, +do you see anything about that man's face that is emotional? Do you see +anything about it that suggests that inside that man anywhere there are +fires that can be started? Would you ever imagine that that is a human +volcano?" + +"Why, no," I said, "I would not. He looks like a wooden Indian in front +of a cigar store." + +"Very well," said my friend, "I will show you that there is emotion even +in that unpromising place. I will just go to that man and I will just +mention in the most casual way an incident in his life. That man is +getting along toward ninety years old. He is past eighty. I will +mention an incident of fifty or sixty years ago. Now, just watch the +effect, and it will be so casual that if you don't watch you won't know +when I do say that thing--but you just watch the effect." + +He went on down there and accosted this antiquity, and made a remark or +two. I could not catch up. They were so casual I could not recognize +which one it was that touched that bottom, for in an instant that old man +was literally in eruption and was filling the whole place with profanity +of the most exquisite kind. You never heard such accomplished profanity. +I never heard it also delivered with such eloquence. + +I never enjoyed profanity as I enjoyed it then--more than if I had been +uttering it myself. There is nothing like listening to an artist--all +his passions passing away in lava, smoke, thunder, lightning, and +earthquake. + +Then this friend said to me: "Now, I will tell you about that. About +sixty years ago that man was a young fellow of twenty-three, and had just +come home from a three years' whaling voyage. He came into that village +of his, happy and proud because now, instead of being chief mate, he was +going to be master of a whaleship, and he was proud and happy about it. + +"Then he found that there had been a kind of a cold frost come upon that +town and the whole region roundabout; for while he had been away the +Father Mathew temperance excitement had come upon the whole region. +Therefore, everybody had taken the pledge; there wasn't anybody for miles +and miles around that had not taken the pledge. + +"So you can see what a solitude it was to this young man, who was fond of +his grog. And he was just an outcast, because when they found he would +not join Father Mathew's Society they ostracized him, and he went about +that town three weeks, day and night, in utter loneliness--the only human +being in the whole place who ever took grog, and he had to take it +privately. + +"If you don't know what it is to be ostracized, to be shunned by your +fellow-man, may you never know it. Then he recognized that there was +something more valuable in this life than grog, and that is the +fellowship of your fellow-man. And at last he gave it up, and at nine +o'clock one night he went down to the Father Mathew Temperance Society, +and with a broken heart he said: 'Put my name down for membership in this +society.' + +"And then he went away crying, and at earliest dawn the next morning they +came for him and routed him out, and they said that new ship of his was +ready to sail on a three years' voyage. In a minute he was on board that +ship and gone. + +"And he said--well, he was not out of sight of that town till he began to +repent, but he had made up his mind that he would not take a drink, and +so that whole voyage of three years was a three years' agony to that man +because he saw all the time the mistake he had made. + +"He felt it all through; he had constant reminders of it, because the +crew would pass him with their grog, come out on the deck and take it, +and there was the torturous Smell of it. + +"He went through the whole, three years of suffering, and at last coming +into port it was snowy, it was cold, he was stamping through the snow two +feet deep on the deck and longing to get home, and there was his crew +torturing him to the last minute with hot grog, but at last he had his +reward. He really did get to shore at fast, and jumped and ran and +bought a jug and rushed to the society's office, and said to the +secretary: + +"'Take my name off your membership books, and do it right away! I have +got a three years' thirst on.' + +"And the secretary said: 'It is not necessary. You were blackballed!'" + + + + + + +WATTERSON AND TWAIN AS REBELS + + ADDRESS AT THE CELEBRATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S 92D BIRTHDAY + ANNIVERSARY, CARNEGIE HALL, FEBRUARY 11, 1901, TO RAISE FUNDS + FOR THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY AT CUMBERLAND GAP, TENN. + +LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--The remainder of my duties as presiding chairman +here this evening are but two--only two. One of them is easy, and the +other difficult. That is to say, I must introduce the orator, and then +keep still and give him a chance. The name of Henry Watterson carries +with it its own explanation. It is like an electric light on top of +Madison Square Garden; you touch the button and the light flashes up out +of the darkness. You mention the name of Henry Watterson, and your minds +are at once illuminated with the splendid radiance of his fame and +achievements. A journalist, a soldier, an orator, a statesman, a rebel. +Yes, he was a rebel; and, better still, now he is a reconstructed rebel. + +It is a curious circumstance, a circumstance brought about without any +collusion or prearrangement, that he and I, both of whom were rebels +related by blood to each other, should be brought here together this +evening bearing a tribute in our hands and bowing our heads in reverence +to that noble soul who for three years we tried to destroy. I don't know +as the fact has ever been mentioned before, but it is a fact, +nevertheless. Colonel Watterson and I were both rebels, and we are blood +relations. I was a second lieutenant in a Confederate company for a +while--oh, I could have stayed on if I had wanted to. I made myself +felt, I left tracks all around the country. I could have stayed on, but +it was such weather. I never saw such weather to be out-of-doors in, in +all my life. + +The Colonel commanded a regiment, and did his part, I suppose, to destroy +the Union. He did not succeed, yet if he had obeyed me he would have +done so. I had a plan, and I fully intended to drive General Grant into +the Pacific Ocean--if I could get transportation. I told Colonel +Watterson about it. I told him what he had to do. What I wanted him to +do was to surround the Eastern army and wait until I came up. But he was +insubordinate; he stuck on some quibble of military etiquette about a +second lieutenant giving orders to a colonel or something like that. And +what was the consequence? The Union was preserved. This is the first +time I believe that that secret has ever been revealed. + +No one outside of the family circle, I think, knew it before; but there +the facts are. Watterson saved the Union; yes, he saved the Union. And +yet there he sits, and not a step has been taken or a movement made +toward granting him a pension. That is the way things are done. It is a +case where some blushing ought to be done. You ought to blush, and I +ought to blush, and he--well, he's a little out of practice now. + + + + + + +ROBERT FULTON FUND + + ADDRESS MADE ON THE EVENING OF APRIL 19, 1906 + + Mr. Clemens had been asked to address the association by Gen. + Frederick D. Grant, president. He was offered a fee of $1,000, + but refused it, saying: + + "I shall be glad to do it, but I must stipulate that you keep + the $1,000, and add it to the Memorial Fund as my contribution + to erect a monument in New York to the memory of the man who + applied steam to navigation." + + At this meeting Mr. Clemens made this formal announcement from + the platform: + + "This is my last appearance on the paid platform. I shall not + retire from the gratis platform until I am buried, and courtesy + will compel me to keep still and not disturb the others. Now, + since I must, I shall say good-bye. I see many faces in this + audience well known to me. They are all my friends, and I feel + that those I don't know are my friends, too. I wish to + consider that you represent the nation, and that in saying + good-bye to you I am saying good-bye to the nation. In the + great name of humanity, let me say this final word: I offer an + appeal in behalf of that vast, pathetic multitude of fathers, + mothers, and helpless little children. They were sheltered and + happy two days ago. Now they are wandering, forlorn, hopeless, + and homeless, the victims of a great disaster. So I beg of + you, I beg of you, to open your hearts and open your purses and + remember San Francisco, the smitten city." + +I wish to deliver a historical address. I've been studying the history +of---er--a--let me see--a [then he stopped in confusion, and walked over +to Gen. Fred D. Grant, who sat at the head of the platform. He leaned +over an a whisper, and then returned to the front of the stage and +continued]. Oh yes! I've been studying Robert Fulton. I've been +studying a biographical sketch of Robert Fulton, the inventor of--er--a +--let's see--ah yes, the inventor of the electric telegraph and the Morse +sewing--machine. Also, I understand he invented the air--diria--pshaw! +I have it at last--the dirigible balloon. Yes, the dirigible--but it is +a difficult word, and I don't see why anybody should marry a couple of +words like that when they don't want to be married at all and are likely +to quarrel with each other all the time. I should put that couple of +words under the ban of the United States Supreme Court, under its +decision of a few days ago, and take 'em out and drown 'em. + +I used to know Fulton. It used to do me good to see him dashing through +tile town on a wild broncho. + +And Fulton was born in---er--a--Well, it doesn't make much difference +where he was born, does it? I remember a man who came to interview me +once, to get a sketch of my life. I consulted with a friend--a practical +man--before he came, to know how I should treat him. + +"Whenever you give the interviewer a fact," he said, "give him another +fact that will contradict it. Then he'll go away with a jumble that he +can't use at all. Be gentle, be sweet, smile like an idiot--just be +natural." That's what my friend told me to do, and I did it. + +"Where were you born?" asked the interviewer. + +"Well-er-a," I began, "I was born in Alabama, or Alaska, or the Sandwich +Islands; I don't know where, but right around there somewhere. And you +had better put it down before you forget it." + +"But you weren't born in all those places," he said. + +"Well, I've offered you three places. Take your choice. They're all at +the same price." + +"How old are you?" he asked. + +"I shall be nineteen in June," I said. + +"Why, there's such a discrepancy between your age and your looks," he +said. + +"Oh, that's nothing," I said, "I was born discrepantly." + +Then we got to talking about my brother Samuel, and he told me my +explanations were confusing. + +"I suppose he is dead," I said. "Some said that he was dead and some +said that he wasn't." + +"Did you bury him without knowing whether he was dead or not?" asked the +reporter. + +"There was a mystery," said I. "We were twins, and one day when we were +two weeks old--that is, he was one week old, and I was one week old--we +got mixed up in the bath-tub, and one of us drowned. We never could tell +which. One of us had a strawberry birthmark on the back of his hand. +There it is on my hand. This is the one that was drowned. There's no +doubt about it. + +"Where's the mystery?" he said. + +"Why, don't you see how stupid it was to bury the wrong twin?" +I answered. I didn't explain it any more because he said the explanation +confused him. To me it is perfectly plain. + +But, to get back to Fulton. I'm going along like an old man I used to +know who used to start to tell a story about his grandfather. He had an +awfully retentive memory, and he never finished the story, because he +switched off into something else. He used to tell about how his +grandfather one day went into a pasture, where there was a ram. The old +man dropped a silver dime in the grass, and stooped over to pick it up. +The ram was observing him, and took the old man's action as an +invitation. + +Just as he was going to finish about the ram this friend of mine would +recall that his grandfather had a niece who had a glass eye. She used to +loan that glass eye to another lady friend, who used it when she received +company. The eye didn't fit the friend's face, and it was loose. And +whenever she winked it would turn aver. + +Then he got on the subject of accidents, and he would tell a story about +how he believed accidents never happened. + +"There was an Irishman coming down a ladder with a hod of bricks," he +said, "and a Dutchman was standing on the ground below. The Irishman +fell on the Dutchman and killed him. Accident? Never! If the Dutchman +hadn't been there the Irishman would have been killed. Why didn't the +Irishman fall on a dog which was next, to the Dutchman? Because the dog +would have seen him coming." + +Then he'd get off from the Dutchman to an uncle named Reginald Wilson. +Reginald went into a carpet factory one day, and got twisted into the +machinery's belt. He went excursioning around the factory until he was +properly distributed and was woven into sixty-nine yards of the best +three-ply carpet. His wife bought the carpet, and then she erected a +monument to his memory. It read: + + Sacred to the memory + of + sixty-nine yards of the best three-ply carpet + containing the mortal remainders of + + REGINALD WILSON + + Go thou and do likewise + +And so an he would ramble about telling the story of his grandfather +until we never were told whether he found the ten-cent piece or whether +something else happened. + + + + + + +FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN + + ADDRESS DELIVERED SEPTEMBER 23, 1907 + + Lieutenant-Governor Ellyson, of Virginia, in introducing Mr. + Clemens, said: + + "The people have come here to bring a tribute of affectionate + recollection for the man who has contributed so much to the + progress of the world and the happiness of mankind." As Mr. + Clemens came down to the platform the applause became louder + and louder, until Mr. Clemens held out his hand for silence. + It was a great triumph, and it was almost a minute after the + applause ceased before Mr. Clemens could speak. He attempted + it once, and when the audience noticed his emotion, it cheered + again loudly. + +LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I am but human, and when you, give me a reception +like that I am obliged to wait a little while I get my voice. When you +appeal to my head, I don't feel it; but when you appeal to my heart, I do +feel it. + +We are here to celebrate one of the greatest events of American history, +and not only in American history, but in the world's history. + +Indeed it was--the application of steam by Robert Fulton. + +It was a world event--there are not many of them. It is peculiarly an +American event, that is true, but the influence was very broad in effect. +We should regard this day as a very great American holiday. We have not +many that are exclusively American holidays. We have the Fourth of July, +which we regard as an American holiday, but it is nothing of the kind. +I am waiting for a dissenting voice. All great efforts that led up to +the Fourth of July were made, not by Americans, but by English residents +of America, subjects of the King of England. + +They fought all the fighting that was done, they shed and spilt all the +blood that was spilt, in securing to us the invaluable liberties which +are incorporated in the Declaration of Independence; but they were not +Americans. They signed the Declaration of Independence; no American's +name is signed to that document at all. There never was an American such +as you and I are until after the Revolution, when it had all been fought +out and liberty secured, after the adoption of the Constitution, and the +recognition of the Independence of America by all powers. + +While we revere the Fourth of July--and let us always revere it, and the +liberties it conferred upon us--yet it was not an American event, a great +American day. + +It was an American who applied that steam successfully. There are not a +great many world events, and we have our full share. The telegraph, +telephone, and the application of steam to navigation--these are great +American events. + +To-day I have been requested, or I have requested myself, not to confine +myself to furnishing you with information, but to remind you of things, +and to introduce one of the nation's celebrants. + +Admiral Harrington here is going to tell you all that I have left untold. +I am going to tell you all that I know, and then he will follow up with +such rags and remnants as he can find, and tell you what he knows. + +No doubt you have heard a great deal about Robert Fulton and the +influences that have grown from his invention, but the little steamboat +is suffering neglect. + +You probably do not know a great deal about that boat. It was the most +important steamboat in the world. I was there and saw it. Admiral +Harrington was there at the time. It need not surprise you, for he is +not as old as he looks. That little boat was interesting in every way. +The size of it. The boat was one [consults Admiral], he said ten feet +long. The breadth of that boat [consults Admiral], two hundred feet. +You see, the first and most important detail is the length, then the +breadth, and then the depth; the depth of that boat was [consults again] +--the Admiral says it was a flat boat. Then her tonnage--you know +nothing about a boat until you know two more things: her speed and her +tonnage. We know the speed she made. She made four miles---and +sometimes five miles. It was on her initial trip, on, August 11, 1807, +that she made her initial trip, when she went from [consults Admiral] +Jersey City--to Chicago. That's right. She went by way of Albany. +Now comes the tonnage of that boat. Tonnage of a boat means the amount +of displacement; displacement means the amount of water a vessel can +shove in a day. The tonnage of man is estimated by the amount of whiskey +he can displace in a day. + +Robert Fulton named the 'Clermont' in honor of his bride, that is, +Clermont was the name of the county-seat. + +I feel that it surprises you that I know so much. In my remarks of +welcome of Admiral Harrington I am not going to give him compliments. +Compliments always embarrass a man. You do not know anything to say. +It does not inspire you with words. There is nothing you can say in +answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many +times, and they always embarrass me--I always feel that they have not +said enough. + +The Admiral and myself have held public office, and were associated +together a great deal a friendly way in the time of Pocahontas. That +incident where Pocahontas saves the life of Smith from her father, +Powhatan's club, was gotten up by the Admiral and myself to advertise +Jamestown. + +At that time the Admiral and myself did not have the facilities of +advertising that you have. + +I have known Admiral Harrington in all kinds of situations--in public +service, on the platform, and in the chain-gang now and then--but it was +a mistake. A case of mistaken identity. I do not think it is at all a +necessity to tell you Admiral Harrington's public history. You know that +it is in the histories. I am not here to tell you anything about his +public life, but to expose his private life. + +I am something of a poet. When the great poet laureate, Tennyson, died, +and I found that the place was open, I tried to get it--but I did not get +it. Anybody can write the first line of a poem, but it is a very +difficult task to make the second line rhyme with the first. When I was +down in Australia there were two towns named Johnswood and Par-am. I +made this rhyme: + + "The people of Johnswood are pious and good; + The people of Par-am they don't care a----." + +I do not want to compliment Admiral Harrington, but as long as such men +as he devote their lives to the public service the credit of the country +will never cease. I will say that the same high qualities, the same +moral and intellectual attainments, the same graciousness of manner, of +conduct, of observation, and expression have caused Admiral Harrington to +be mistaken for me--and I have been mistaken for him. + +A mutual compliment can go no further, and I now have the honor and +privilege of introducing to you Admiral Harrington. + + + + + + +LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF MARK TWAIN + + ADDRESS AT THE FIRST FORMAL DINNER IN THE NEW CLUB-HOUSE, + NOVEMBER 11, 1893 + + In introducing the guest of the evening, Mr. Lawrence said: + + "To-night the old faces appear once more amid new surroundings. + The place where last we met about the table has vanished, and + to-night we have our first Lotos dinner in a home that is all + our own. It is peculiarly fitting that the board should now be + spread in honor of one who has been a member of the club for + full a score of years, and it is a happy augury for the future + that our fellow-member whom we assemble to greet should be the + bearer of a most distinguished name in the world of letters; + for the Lotos Club is ever at its best when paying homage to + genius in literature or in art. Is there a civilized being who + has not heard the name of Mark Twain? We knew him long years + ago, before he came out of the boundless West, brimful of wit + and eloquence, with no reverence for anything, and went abroad + to educate the untutored European in the subtleties of the + American joke. The world has looked on and applauded while he + has broken many images. He has led us in imagination all over + the globe. With him as our guide we have traversed alike the + Mississippi and the Sea of Galilee. At his bidding we have + laughed at a thousand absurdities. By a laborious process of + reasoning he has convinced us that the Egyptian mummies are + actually dead. He has held us spellbound upon the plain at the + foot of the great Sphinx, and we have joined him in weeping + bitter tears at the tomb of Adam. To-night we greet him in the + flesh. What name is there in literature that can be likened to + his? Perhaps some of the distinguished gentlemen about this + table can tell us, but I know of none. Himself his only + parallel!" + +MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN, AND MY FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE LOTOS CLUB,--I +have seldom in my lifetime listened to compliments so felicitously +phrased or so well deserved. I return thanks for them from a full heart +and an appreciative spirit, and I will say this in self-defence: While I +am charged with having no reverence for anything, I wish to say that I +have reverence for the man who can utter such truths, and I also have a +deep reverence and a sincere one for a club that can do such justice to +me. To be the chief guest of such a club is something to be envied, and +if I read your countenances rightly I am envied. I am glad to see this +club in such palatial quarters. I remember it twenty years ago when it +was housed in a stable. + +Now when I was studying for the ministry there were two or three things +that struck my attention particularly. At the first banquet mentioned in +history that other prodigal son who came back from his travels was +invited to stand up and have his say. They were all there, his brethren, +David and Goliath, and--er, and if he had had such experience as I have +had he would have waited until those other people got through talking. +He got up and testified to all his failings. Now if he had waited before +telling all about his riotous living until the others had spoken he might +not have given himself away as he did, and I think that I would give +myself away if I should go on. I think I'd better wait until the others +hand in their testimony; then if it is necessary for me to make an +explanation, I will get up and explain, and if I cannot do that, I'll +deny it happened. + + Later in the evening Mr. Clemens made another speech, replying + to a fire of short speeches by Charles Dudley Warner, Charles + A. Dana, Seth Low, General Porter, and many others, each + welcoming the guest of honor. + +I don't see that I have a great deal to explain. I got off very well, +considering the opportunities that these other fellows had. I don't see +that Mr. Low said anything against me, and neither did Mr. Dana. +However, I will say that I never heard so many lies told in one evening +as were told by Mr. McKelway--and I consider myself very capable; but +even in his case, when he got through, I was gratified by finding how +much he hadn't found out. By accident he missed the very things that I +didn't want to have said, and now, gentlemen, about Americanism. + +I have been on the continent of Europe for two and a half years. I have +met many Americans there, some sojourning for a short time only, others +making protracted stays, and it has been very gratifying to me to find +that nearly all preserved their Americanism. I have found they all like +to see the Flag fly, and that their hearts rise when they see the Stars +and Stripes. I met only one lady who had forgotten the land of her birth +and glorified monarchical institutions. + +I think it is a great thing to say that in two and a half years I met +only one person who had fallen a victim to the shams--I think we may call +them shams--of nobilities and of heredities. She was entirely lost in +them. After I had listened to her for a long time, I said to her: "At +least you must admit that we have one merit. We are not like the +Chinese, who refuse to allow their citizens who are tired of the country +to leave it. Thank God, we don't!" + + + + + + +COPYRIGHT + + With Mr. Howells, Edward Everett Hale, Thomas Nelson Page, and + a number of other authors, Mr. Clemens appeared before the + committee December 6, 1906. The new Copyright Bill + contemplated an author's copyright for the term of his life and + for fifty years thereafter, applying also for the benefit of + artists, musicians, and others, but the authors did most of the + talking. F. D. Millet made a speech for the artists, and John + Philip Sousa for the musicians. + + Mr. Clemens was the last speaker of the day, and its chief + feature. He made a speech, the serious parts of which created + a strong impression, and the humorous parts set the Senators + and Representatives in roars of laughter. + +I have read this bill. At least I have read such portions as I could +understand. Nobody but a practised legislator can read the bill and +thoroughly understand it, and I am not a practised legislator. + +I am interested particularly and especially in the part of the bill which +concerns my trade. I like that extension of copyright life to the +author's life and fifty years afterward. I think that would satisfy any +reasonable author, because it would take care of his children. Let the +grandchildren take care of themselves. That would take care of my +daughters, and after that I am not particular. I shall then have long +been out of this struggle, independent of it, indifferent to it. + +It isn't objectionable to me that all the trades and professions in the +United States are protected by the bill. I like that. They are all +important and worthy, and if we can take care of them under the Copyright +law I should like to see it done. I should like to see oyster culture +added, and anything else. + +I am aware that copyright must have a limit, because that is required by +the Constitution of the United States, which sets aside the earlier +Constitution, which we call the decalogue. The decalogue says you shall +not take away from any man his profit. I don't like to be obliged to use +the harsh term. What the decalogue really says is, "Thou shaft not +steal," but I am trying to use more polite language. + +The laws of England and America do take it away, do select but one class, +the people who create the literature of the land. They always talk +handsomely about the literature of the land, always what a fine, great, +monumental thing a great literature is, and in the midst of their +enthusiasm they turn around and do what they can to discourage it. + +I know we must have a limit, but forty-two years is too much of a limit. +I am quite unable to guess why there should be a limit at all to the +possession of the product of a man's labor. There is no limit to real +estate. + +Doctor Bale has suggested that a man might just as well, after +discovering a coal-mine and working it forty-two years, have the +Government step in and take it away. + +What is the excuse? It is that the author who produced that book has had +the profit of it long enough, and therefore the Government takes a profit +which does not belong to it and generously gives it to the 88,000,000 of +people. But it doesn't do anything of the kind. It merely takes the +author's property, takes his children's bread, and gives the publisher +double profit. He goes on publishing the book and as many of his +confederates as choose to go into the conspiracy do so, and they rear +families in affluence. + +And they continue the enjoyment of those ill-gotten gains generation +after generation forever, for they never die. In a few weeks or months +or years I shall be out of it, I hope under a monument. I hope I shall +not be entirely forgotten, and I shall subscribe to the monument myself. +But I shall not be caring what happens if there are fifty years left of +my copyright. My copyright produces annually a good deal more than I can +use, but my children can use it. I can get along; I know a lot of +trades. But that goes to my daughters, who can't get along as well as I +can because I have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don't know +anything and can't do anything. I hope Congress will extend to them the +charity which they have failed to get from me. + +Why, if a man who is not even mad, but only strenuous--strenuous about +race-suicide--should come to me and try to get me to use my large +political and ecclesiastical influence to get a bill passed by this +Congress limiting families to twenty-two children by one mother, I should +try to calm him down. I should reason with him. I should say to him, +"Leave it alone. Leave it alone and it will take care of itself. Only +one couple a year in the United States can reach that limit. If they +have reached that limit let them go right on. Let them have all the +liberty they want. In restricting that family to twenty-two children you +are merely conferring discomfort and unhappiness on one family per year +in a nation of 88,000,000, which is not worth while." + +It is the very same with copyright. One author per year produces a book +which can outlive the forty-two-year limit; that's all. This nation +can't produce two authors a year that can do it; the thing is +demonstrably impossible. All that the limited copyright can do is to +take the bread out of the mouths of the children of that one author per +year. + +I made an estimate some years ago, when I appeared before a committee of +the House of Lords, that we had published in this country since the +Declaration of Independence 220,000 books. They have all gone. They had +all perished before they were ten years old. It is only one book in 1000 +that can outlive the forty-two year limit. Therefore why put a limit at +all? You might as well limit the family to twenty-two children. + +If you recall the Americans in the nineteenth century who wrote books +that lived forty-two years you will have to begin with Cooper; you can +follow with Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allan Poe, +and there you have to wait a long time. You come to Emerson, and you +have to stand still and look further. You find Howells and T. B. +Aldrich, and then your numbers begin to run pretty thin, and you question +if you can name twenty persons in the United States who--in a whole +century have written books that would live forty-two years. Why, you +could take them all and put them on one bench there [pointing]. Add the +wives and children and you could put the result on, two or three more +benches. + +One hundred persons--that is the little, insignificant crowd whose +bread-and-butter is to be taken away for what purpose, for what profit to +anybody? You turn these few books into the hands of the pirate and of +the legitimate publisher, too, and they get the profit that should have +gone to the wife and children. + +When I appeared before that committee of the House of Lords the chairman +asked me what limit I would propose. I said, "Perpetuity." I could see +some resentment in his manner, and he said the idea was illogical, for +the reason that it has long ago been decided that there can be no such +thing as property in ideas. I said there was property in ideas before +Queen Anne's time; they had perpetual copyright. He said, "What is a +book? A book is just built from base to roof on ideas, and there can be +no property in it." + +I said I wished he could mention any kind of property on this planet that +had a pecuniary value which was not derived from an idea or ideas. + +He said real estate. I put a supposititious case, a dozen Englishmen who +travel through South Africa and camp out, and eleven of them see +nothing at all; they are mentally blind. But there is one in the party +who knows what this harbor means and what the lay of the land means. To +him it means that some day a railway will go through here, and there on +that harbor a great city will spring up. That is his idea. And he has +another idea, which is to go and trade his last bottle of Scotch whiskey +and his last horse-blanket to the principal chief of that region and +buy a piece of land the size of Pennsylvania. + +That was the value of an idea that the day would come when the Cape to +Cairo Railway would be built. + +Every improvement that is put upon the real estate is the result of an +idea in somebody's head. The skyscraper is another idea; the railroad is +another; the telephone and all those things are merely symbols which +represent ideas. An andiron, a wash-tub, is the result of an idea that +did not exist before. + +So if, as that gentleman said, a book does consist solely of ideas, that +is the best argument in the world that it is property, and should not be +under any limitation at all. We don't ask for that. Fifty years from +now we shall ask for it. + +I hope the bill will pass without any deleterious amendments. I do seem +to be extraordinarily interested in a whole lot of arts and things that I +have got nothing to do with. It is a part of my generous, liberal +nature; I can't help it. I feel the same sort of charity to everybody +that was manifested by a gentleman who arrived at home at two o'clock in +the morning from the club and was feeling so perfectly satisfied with +life, so happy, and so comfortable, and there was his house weaving, +weaving, weaving around. He watched his chance, and by and by when the +steps got in his neighborhood he made a jump and climbed up and got on +the portico. + +And the house went on weaving and weaving and weaving, but he watched the +door, and when it came around his way he plunged through it. He got to +the stairs, and when he went up on all fours the house was so unsteady +that he could hardly make his way, but at last he got to the top and +raised his foot and put it on the top step. But only the toe hitched on +the step, and he rolled down and fetched up on the bottom step, with his +arm around the newel-post, and he said: + +"God pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like this." + + + + + + +IN AID OF THE BLIND + + ADDRESS AT A PUBLIC MEETING OF THE NEW YORK ASSOCIATION FOR + PROMOTING THE INTERESTS OF THE BLIND AT THE WALDORF ASTORIA, + MARCH 29, 1906 + +If you detect any awkwardness in my movements and infelicities in my +conduct I will offer the explanation that I never presided at a meeting +of any kind before in my life, and that I do find it out of my line. +I supposed I could do anything anybody else could, but I recognize that +experience helps, and I do feel the lack of that experience. I don't +feel as graceful and easy as I ought to be in order to impress an +audience. I shall not pretend that I know how to umpire a meeting like +this, and I shall just take the humble place of the Essex band. + +There was a great gathering in a small New England town, about +twenty-five years ago. I remember that circumstance because there was +something that happened at that time. It was a great occasion. They +gathered in the militia and orators and everybody from all the towns +around. It was an extraordinary occasion. + +The little local paper threw itself into ecstasies of admiration and +tried to do itself proud from beginning to end. It praised the orators, +the militia, and all the bands that came from everywhere, and all this in +honest country newspaper detail, but the writer ran out of adjectives +toward the end. Having exhausted his whole magazine of praise and +glorification, he found he still had one band left over. He had to say +something about it, and he said: "The Essex band done the best it could." + +I am an Essex band on this occasion, and I am going to get through as +well as inexperience and good intentions will enable me. I have got all +the documents here necessary to instruct you in the objects and +intentions of this meeting and also of the association which has called +the meeting. But they are too voluminous. I could not pack those +statistics into my head, and I had to give it up. I shall have to just +reduce all that mass of statistics to a few salient facts. There are too +many statistics and figures for me. I never could do anything with +figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished +anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and to-day the only +mathematics I know is multiplication, and the minute I get away up in +that, as soon as I reach nine times seven-- + +[Mr. Clemens lapsed into deep thought for a moment. He was trying to +figure out nine times seven, but it was a hopeless task, and he turned to +St. Clair McKelway, who sat near him. Mr. McKelway whispered the answer, +and the speaker resumed:] + +I've got it now. It's eighty-four. Well, I can get that far all right +with a little hesitation. After that I am uncertain, and I can't manage +a statistic. + +"This association for the--" + +[Mr. Clemens was in another dilemma. Again he was obliged to turn to Mr. +McKelway.] + +Oh yes, for promoting the interests of the blind. It's a long name. If +I could I would write it out for you and let you take it home and study +it, but I don't know how to spell it. And Mr. Carnegie is down in +Virginia somewhere. Well, anyway, the object of that association which +has been recently organized, five months ago, in fact, is in the hands of +very, very energetic, intelligent, and capable people, and they will push +it to success very surely, and all the more surely if you will give them +a little of your assistance out of your pockets. + +The intention, the purpose, is to search out all the blind and find work +for them to do so that they may earn, their own bread. Now it is dismal +enough to be blind--it is dreary, dreary life at best, but it can be +largely ameliorated by finding something for these poor blind people to +do with their hands. The time passes so heavily that it is never day or +night with them, it is always night, and when they have to sit with +folded hands and with nothing to do to amuse or entertain or employ their +minds, it is drearier and drearier. + +And then the knowledge they have that they must subsist on charity, and +so often reluctant charity, it would renew their lives if they could have +something to do with their hands and pass their time and at the same time +earn their bread, and know the sweetness of the bread which is the result +of the labor of one's own hands. They need that cheer and pleasure. It +is the only way you can turn their night into day, to give them happy +hearts, the only thing you can put in the place of the blessed sun. That +you can do in the way I speak of. + +Blind people generally who have seen the light know what it is to miss +the light. Those who have gone blind since they were twenty years old +--their lives are unendingly dreary. But they can be taught to use +their hands and to employ themselves at a great many industries. That +association from which this draws its birth in Cambridge, Massachusetts, +has taught its blind to make many things. They make them better than +most people, and more honest than people who have the use of their eyes. +The goods they make are readily salable. People like them. And so they +are supporting themselves, and it is a matter of cheer, cheer. They pass +their time now not too irksomely as they formerly did. + +What this association needs and wants is $15,000. The figures are set +down, and what the money is for, and there is no graft in it or I would +not be here. And they hope to beguile that out of your pockets, and you +will find affixed to the programme an opportunity, that little blank +which you will fill out and promise so much money now or to-morrow or +some time. Then, there is another opportunity which is still better, and +that is that you shall subscribe an annual sum. + +I have invented a good many useful things in my time, but never anything +better than that of getting money out of people who don't want to part +with it. It is always for good objects, of course. This is the plan: +When you call upon a person to contribute to a great and good object, and +you think he should furnish about $1,000, he disappoints you as like as +not. Much the best way to work him to supply that thousand dollars is to +split it into parts and contribute, say a hundred dollars a year, or +fifty, or whatever the sum maybe. Let him contribute ten or twenty a +year. He doesn't feel that, but he does feel it when you call upon him +to contribute a large amount. When you get used to it you would rather +contribute than borrow money. + +I tried it in Helen Keller's case. Mr. Hutton wrote me in 1896 or 1897 +when I was in London and said: "The gentleman who has been so liberal in +taking care of Helen Keller has died without making provision for her in +his will, and now they don't know what to do." They were proposing to +raise a fund, and he thought $50,000 enough to furnish an income of $2400 +or $2500 a year for the support of that wonderful girl and her wonderful +teacher, Miss Sullivan, now Mrs. Macy. I wrote to Mr. Hutton and said: +"Go on, get up your fund. It will be slow, but if you want quick work, +I propose this system," the system I speak of, of asking people to +contribute such and such a sum from year to year and drop out whenever +they please, and he would find there wouldn't be any difficulty, people +wouldn't feel the burden of it. And he wrote back saying he had raised +the $2400 a year indefinitely by that system in, a single afternoon. We +would like to do something just like that to-night. We will take as many +checks as you care to give. You can leave your donations in the big room +outside. + +I knew once what it was to be blind. I shall never forget that +experience. I have been as blind as anybody ever was for three or four +hours, and the sufferings that I endured and the mishaps and the +accidents that are burning in my memory make my sympathy rise when I feel +for the blind and always shall feel. I once went to Heidelberg on an +excursion. I took a clergyman along with me, the Rev. Joseph Twichell, +of Hartford, who is still among the living despite that fact. I always +travel with clergymen when I can. It is better for them, it is better +for me. And any preacher who goes out with me in stormy weather and +without a lightning rod is a good one. The Reverend Twichell is one of +those people filled with patience and endurance, two good ingredients for +a man travelling with me, so we got along very well together. In that +old town they have not altered a house nor built one in 1500 years. We +went to the inn and they placed Twichell and me in a most colossal +bedroom, the largest I ever saw or heard of. It was as big as this room. + +I didn't take much notice of the place. I didn't really get my bearings. +I noticed Twichell got a German bed about two feet wide, the kind in +which you've got to lie on your edge, because there isn't room to lie on +your back, and he was way down south in that big room, and I was way up +north at the other end of it, with a regular Sahara in between. + +We went to bed. Twichell went to sleep, but then he had his conscience +loaded and it was easy for him to get to sleep. I couldn't get to sleep. +It was one of those torturing kinds of lovely summer nights when you hear +various kinds of noises now and then. A mouse away off in the southwest. +You throw things at the mouse. That encourages the mouse. But I +couldn't stand it, and about two o'clock I got up and thought I would +give it up and go out in the square where there was one of those tinkling +fountains, and sit on its brink and dream, full of romance. + +I got out of bed, and I ought to have lit a candle, but I didn't think of +it until it was too late. It was the darkest place that ever was. There +has never been darkness any thicker than that. It just lay in cakes. + +I thought that before dressing I would accumulate my clothes. I pawed +around in the dark and found everything packed together on the floor +except one sock. I couldn't get on the track of that sock. It might +have occurred to me that maybe it was in the wash. But I didn't think of +that. I went excursioning on my hands and knees. Presently I thought, +"I am never going to find it; I'll go back to bed again." That is what I +tried to do during the next three hours. I had lost the bearings of that +bed. I was going in the wrong direction all the time. By-and-by I came +in collision with a chair and that encouraged me. + +It seemed to me, as far as I could recollect, there was only a chair here +and there and yonder, five or six of them scattered over this territory, +and I thought maybe after I found that chair I might find the next one. +Well, I did. And I found another and another and another. I kept going +around on my hands and knees, having those sudden collisions, and finally +when I banged into another chair I almost lost my temper. And I raised +up, garbed as I was, not for public exhibition, right in front of a +mirror fifteen or sixteen feet high. + +I hadn't noticed the mirror; didn't know it was there. And when I saw +myself in the mirror I was frightened out of my wits. I don't allow any +ghosts to bite me, and I took up a chair and smashed at it. A million +pieces. Then I reflected. That's the way I always do, and it's +unprofitable unless a man has had much experience that way and has clear +judgment. And I had judgment, and I would have had to pay for that +mirror if I hadn't recollected to say it was Twichell who broke it. + +Then I got down, on my hands and knees and went on another exploring +expedition. + +As far as I could remember there were six chairs in that Oklahoma, and +one table, a great big heavy table, not a good table to hit with your +head when rushing madly along. In the course of time I collided with +thirty-five chairs and tables enough to stock that dining-room out there. +It was a hospital for decayed furniture, and it was in a worse condition +when I got through with it. I went on and on, and at last got to a place +where I could feel my way up, and there was a shelf. I knew that wasn't +in the middle of the room. Up to that time I was afraid I had gotten out +of the city. + +I was very careful and pawed along that shelf, and there was a pitcher of +water about a foot high, and it was at the head of Twichell's bed, but I +didn't know it. I felt that pitcher going and I grabbed at it, but it +didn't help any and came right down in Twichell's face and nearly drowned +him. But it woke him up. I was grateful to have company on any terms. +He lit a match, and there I was, way down south when I ought to have been +back up yonder. My bed was out of sight it was so far away. You needed +a telescope to find it. Twichell comforted me and I scrubbed him off and +we got sociable. + +But that night wasn't wasted. I had my pedometer on my leg. Twichell +and I were in a pedometer match. Twichell had longer legs than I. The +only way I could keep up was to wear my pedometer to bed. I always walk +in my sleep, and on this occasion I gained sixteen miles on him. After +all, I never found that sock. I never have seen it from that day to +this. But that adventure taught me what it is to be blind. That was one +of the most serious occasions of my whole life, yet I never can speak of +it without somebody thinking it isn't serious. You try it and see how +serious it is to be as the blind are and I was that night. + +[Mr. Clemens read several letters of regret. He then introduced Joseph +H. Choate, saying:] + +It is now my privilege to present to you Mr. Choate. I don't have to +really introduce him. I don't have to praise him, or to flatter him. +I could say truly that in the forty-seven years I have been familiarly +acquainted with him he has always been the handsomest man America has +ever produced. And I hope and believe he will hold the belt forty-five +years more. He has served his country ably, faithfully, and brilliantly. +He stands at the summit, at the very top in the esteem and regard of his +countrymen, and if I could say one word which would lift him any higher +in his countrymen's esteem and affection, I would say that word whether +it was true or not. + + + + + + +DR. MARK TWAIN, FARMEOPATH + + ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE NEW YORK POST-GRADUATE + MEDICAL SCHOOL AND HOSPITAL, JANUARY 21, 1909 + + The president, Dr. George N. Miller, in introducing Mr. + Clemens, referred to his late experience with burglars. + +GENTLEMEN AND DOCTORS,--I am glad to be among my own kind to-night. +I was once a sharpshooter, but now I practise a much higher and equally +as deadly a profession. It wasn't so very long ago that I became a +member of your cult, and for the time I've been in the business my record +is one that can't be scoffed at. + +As to the burglars, I am perfectly familiar with these people. I have +always had a good deal to do with burglars--not officially, but through +their attentions to me. I never suffered anything at the hands of a +burglar. They have invaded my house time and time again. They never got +anything. Then those people who burglarized our house in September--we +got back the plated ware they took off, we jailed them, and I have been +sorry ever since. They did us a great service they scared off all the +servants in the place. + +I consider the Children's Theatre, of which I am president, and the +Post-Graduate Medical School as the two greatest institutions in the +country. This school, in bringing its twenty thousand physicians from all +parts of the country, bringing them up to date, and sending them back +with renewed confidence, has surely saved hundreds of thousands of lives +which otherwise would have been lost. + +I have been practising now for seven months. When I settled on my farm +in Connecticut in June I found the Community very thinly settled--and +since I have been engaged in practice it has become more thinly settled +still. This gratifies me, as indicating that I am making an impression +on my community. I suppose it is the same with all of you. + +I have always felt that I ought to do something for you, and so I +organized a Redding (Connecticut) branch of the Post-Graduate School. +I am only a country farmer up there, but I am doing the best I can. + +Of course, the practice of medicine and surgery in a remote country +district has its disadvantages, but in my case I am happy in a division +of responsibility. I practise in conjunction with a horse-doctor, a +sexton, and an undertaker. The combination is air-tight, and once a man +is stricken in our district escape is impossible for him. + +These four of us--three in the regular profession and the fourth an +undertaker--are all good men. There is Bill Ferguson, the Redding +undertaker. Bill is there in every respect. He is a little lukewarm on +general practice, and writes his name with a rubber stamp. Like my old +Southern, friend, he is one of the finest planters anywhere. + +Then there is Jim Ruggles, the horse-doctor. Ruggles is one of the best +men I have got. He also is not much on general medicine, but he is a +fine horse-doctor. Ferguson doesn't make any money off him. + +You see, the combination started this way. When I got up to Redding and +had become a doctor, I looked around to see what my chances were for +aiding in, the great work. The first thing I did was to determine what +manner of doctor I was to be. Being a Connecticut farmer, I naturally +consulted my farmacopia, and at once decided to become a farmeopath. + +Then I got circulating about, and got in touch with Ferguson and +Ruggles. Ferguson joined readily in my ideas, but Ruggles kept saying +that, while it was all right for an undertaker to get aboard, he couldn't +see where it helped horses. + +Well, we started to find out what was the trouble with the community, and +it didn't take long to find out that there was just one disease, and that +was race-suicide. And driving about the country-side I was told by my +fellow-farmers that it was the only rational human and valuable disease. +But it is cutting into our profits so that we'll either have to stop it +or we'll have to move. + +We've had some funny experiences up there in Redding. Not long ago a +fellow came along with a rolling gait and a distressed face. We asked +him what was the matter. We always hold consultations on every case, as +there isn't business enough for four. He said he didn't know, but that +he was a sailor, and perhaps that might help us to give a diagnosis. We +treated him for that, and I never saw a man die more peacefully. + +That same afternoon my dog Tige treed an African gentleman. We chained +up the dog, and then the gentleman came down and said he had +appendicitis. We asked him if he wanted to be cut open, and he said yes, +that he'd like to know if there was anything in it. So we cut him open +and found nothing in him but darkness. So we diagnosed his case as +infidelity, because he was dark inside. Tige is a very clever dog, and +aids us greatly. + +The other day a patient came to me and inquired if I was old Doctor +Clemens-- + +As a practitioner I have given a great deal of my attention to Bright's +disease. I have made some rules for treating it that may be valuable. +Listen: + +Rule 1. When approaching the bedside of one whom an all-wise President +--I mean an all-wise Providence--well, anyway, it's the same thing--has +seen fit to afflict with disease--well, the rule is simple, even if it is +old-fashioned. + +Rule 2. I've forgotten just what it is, but-- + +Rule 3. This is always indispensable: Bleed your patient. + + + + + + +MISSOURI UNIVERSITY SPEECH + + ADDRESS DELIVERED JUNE 4, 1902, AT COLUMBIA, MO. + + When the name of Samuel L. Clemens was called the humorist + stepped forward, put his hand to his hair, and apparently + hesitated. There was a dead silence for a moment. Suddenly + the entire audience rose and stood in silence. Some one began + to spell out the word Missouri with an interval between the + letters. All joined in. Then the house again became silent. + Mr. Clemens broke the spell: + +As you are all standing [he drawled in his characteristic voice], I +guess, I suppose I had better stand too. + +[Then came a laugh and loud cries for a speech. As the great humorist +spoke of his recent visit to Hannibal, his old home, his voice trembled.] + +You cannot know what a strain it was on my emotions [he said]. In fact, +when I found myself shaking hands with persons I had not seen for fifty +years and looking into wrinkled faces that were so young and joyous when +I last saw them, I experienced emotions that I had never expected, and +did not know were in me. I was profoundly moved anal saddened to think +that this was the last time, perhaps, that I would ever behold those kind +old faces and dear old scenes of childhood. + +[The humorist then changed to a lighter mood, and for a time the audience +was in a continual roar of laughter. He was particularly amused at the +eulogy on himself read by Gardiner Lathrop in conferring the degree.] He +has a fine opportunity to distinguish himself [said Mr. Clemens] by +telling the truth about me. + +I have seen it stated in print that as a boy I had been guilty of +stealing peaches, apples, and watermelons. I read a story to this effect +very closely not long ago, and I was convinced of one thing, which was +that the man who wrote it was of the opinion that it was wrong to steal, +and that I had not acted right in doing so. I wish now, however, to make +an honest statement, which is that I do not believe, in all my checkered +career, I stole a ton of peaches. + +One night I stole--I mean I removed--a watermelon from a wagon while the +owner was attending to another customer. I crawled off to a secluded +spot, where I found that it was green. It was the greenest melon in the +Mississippi Valley. Then I began to reflect. I began to be sorry. I +wondered what George Washington would have done had he been in my place. +I thought a long time, and then suddenly felt that strange feeling which +comes to a man with a good resolution, and I took up that watermelon and +took it back to its owner. I handed him the watermelon and told him to +reform. He took my lecture much to heart, and, when he gave me a good +one in place of the green melon, I forgave him. + +I told him that I would still be a customer of his, and that I cherished +no ill-feeling because of the incident--that would remain green in my +memory. + + + + + + +BUSINESS + + The alumni of Eastman College gave their annual banquet, + March 30, 1901, at the Y. M. C. A. Building. Mr. James G. + Cannon, of the Fourth National Bank, made the first speech of + the evening, after which Mr. Clemens was introduced by Mr. + Bailey as the personal friend of Tom Sawyer, who was one of the + types of successful business men. + +MR. CANNON has furnished me with texts enough to last as slow a speaker +as myself all the rest of the night. I took exception to the introducing +of Mr. Cannon as a great financier, as if he were the only great +financier present. I am a financier. But my methods are not the same as +Mr. Cannon's. + +I cannot say that I have turned out the great business man that I thought +I was when I began life. But I am comparatively young yet, and may +learn. I am rather inclined to believe that what troubled me was that I +got the big-head early in the game. I want to explain to you a few +points of difference between the principles of business as I see them and +those that Mr. Cannon believes in. + +He says that the primary rule of business success is loyalty to your +employer. That's all right--as a theory. What is the matter with +loyalty to yourself? As nearly as I can understand Mr. Cannon's +methods, there is one great drawback to them. He wants you to work a +great deal. Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much +more-restful. My idea is that the employer should be the busy man, and +the employee the idle one. The employer should be the worried man, and +the employee the happy one. And why not? He gets the salary. My plan +is to get another man to do the work for me. In that there's more +repose. What I want is repose first, last, and all the time. + +Mr. Cannon says that there are three cardinal rules of business success; +they are diligence, honesty, and truthfulness. Well, diligence is all +right. Let it go as a theory. Honesty is the best policy--when there is +money in it. But truthfulness is one of the most dangerous--why, this +man is misleading you. + +I had an experience to-day with my wife which illustrates this. I was +acknowledging a belated invitation to another dinner for this evening, +which seemed to have been sent about ten days ago. It only reached me +this morning. I was mortified at the discourtesy into which I had been +brought by this delay, and wondered what was being thought of me by my +hosts. As I had accepted your invitation, of course I had to send +regrets to my other friends. + +When I started to write this note my wife came up and stood looking over +my shoulder. Women always want to know what is going on. Said she +"Should not that read in the third person?" I conceded that it should, +put aside what I was writing, and commenced over again. That seemed to +satisfy her, and so she sat down and let me proceed. I then--finished my +first note--and so sent what I intended. I never could have done this if +I had let my wife know the truth about it. Here is what I wrote: + + TO THE OHIO SOCIETY,--I have at this moment received a most kind + invitation (eleven days old) from Mr. Southard, president; and a + like one (ten days old) from Mr. Bryant, president of the Press + Club. I thank the society cordially for the compliment of these + invitations, although I am booked elsewhere and cannot come. + + But, oh, I should like to know the name of the Lightning Express by + which they were forwarded; for I owe a friend a dozen chickens, and + I believe it will be cheaper to send eggs instead, and let them + develop on the road. + Sincerely yours, + Mark TWAIN. + + +I want to tell you of some of my experiences in business, and then I will +be in a position to lay down one general rule for the guidance of those +who want to succeed in business. My first effort was about twenty-five +years ago. I took hold of an invention--I don't know now what it was all +about, but some one came to me tend told me it was a good thing, and that +there was lots of money in it. He persuaded me to invest $15,000, and I +lived up to my beliefs by engaging a man to develop it. To make a long +story short, I sunk $40,000 in it. + +Then I took up the publication of a book. I called in a publisher and +said to him: "I want you to publish this book along lines which I shall +lay down. I am the employer, and you are the employee. I am going to +show them some new kinks in the publishing business. And I want you to +draw on me for money as you go along," which he did. He drew on me for +$56,000. Then I asked him to take the book and call it off. But he +refused to do that. + +My next venture was with a machine for doing something or other. I knew +less about that than I did about the invention. But I sunk $170,000 in +the business, and I can't for the life of me recollect what it was the +machine was to do. + +I was still undismayed. You see, one of the strong points about my +business life was that I never gave up. I undertook to publish General +Grant's book, and made $140,000 in six months. My axiom is, to succeed +in business: avoid my example. + + + + + + +CARNEGIE THE BENEFACTOR + + At the dinner given in honor of Andrew Carnegie by the Lotos + Club, March 17, 1909, Mr. Clemens appeared in a white suit from + head to feet. He wore a white double-breasted coat, white + trousers, and white shoes. The only relief was a big black + cigar, which he confidentially informed the company was not + from his usual stack bought at $3 per barrel. + +The State of Missouri has for its coat of arms a barrel-head with two +Missourians, one on each side of it, and mark the motto--"United We +Stand, Divided We Fall." Mr. Carnegie, this evening, has suffered from +compliments. It is interesting to hear what people will say about a man. +Why, at the banquet given by this club in my honor, Mr. Carnegie had the +inspiration for which the club is now honoring him. If Dunfermline +contributed so much to the United States in contributing Mr. Carnegie, +what would have happened if all Scotland had turned out? These +Dunfermline folk have acquired advantages in coming to America. + +Doctor McKelway paid the top compliment, the cumulation, when he said of +Mr. Carnegie: + +"There is a man who wants to pay more taxes than he is charged." Richard +Watson Gilder did very well for a poet. He advertised his magazine. He +spoke of hiring Mr. Carnegie--the next thing he will be trying to hire +me. + +If I undertook--to pay compliments I would do it stronger than any others +have done it, for what Mr. Carnegie wants are strong compliments. Now, +the other side of seventy, I have preserved, as my chiefest virtue, +modesty. + + + + + + +ON POETRY, VERACITY, AND SUICIDE + + ADDRESS AT A DINNER OF THE MANHATTAN DICKENS FELLOWSHIP, + NEW YORK CITY, FEBRUARY 7, 1906 + + This dinner was in commemoration of the ninety-fourth + anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. On an other + occasion Mr. Clemens told the same story with variations and a + different conclusion to the University Settlement Society. + +I always had taken an interest in young people who wanted to become +poets. I remember I was particularly interested in one budding poet when +I was a reporter. His name was Butter. + +One day he came to me and said, disconsolately, that he was going to +commit suicide--he was tired of life, not being able to express his +thoughts in poetic form. Butter asked me what I thought of the idea. + +I said I would; that it was a good idea. "You can do me a friendly turn. +You go off in a private place and do it there, and I'll get it all. You +do it, and I'll do as much for you some time." + +At first he determined to drown himself. Drowning is so nice and clean, +and writes up so well in a newspaper. + +But things ne'er do go smoothly in weddings, suicides, or courtships. +Only there at the edge of the water, where Butter was to end himself, +lay a life-preserver--a big round canvas one, which would float after the +scrap-iron was soaked out of it. + +Butter wouldn't kill himself with the life-preserver in sight, and so I +had an idea. I took it to a pawnshop, and [soaked] it for a revolver: +The pawnbroker didn't think much of the exchange, but when I explained +the situation he acquiesced. We went up on top of a high building, and +this is what happened to the poet: + +He put the revolver to his forehead and blew a tunnel straight through +his head. The tunnel was about the size of your finger. You could look +right through it. The job was complete; there was nothing in it. + +Well, after that that man never could write prose, but he could write +poetry. He could write it after he had blown his brains out. There is +lots of that talent all over the country, but the trouble is they don't +develop it. + +I am suffering now from the fact that I, who have told the truth a good +many times in my life, have lately received more letters than anybody +else urging me to lead a righteous life. I have more friends who want to +see me develop on a high level than anybody else. + +Young John D. Rockefeller, two weeks ago, taught his Bible class all +about veracity, and why it was better that everybody should always keep a +plentiful supply on hand. Some of the letters I have received suggest +that I ought to attend his class and learn, too. Why, I know Mr. +Rockefeller, and he is a good fellow. He is competent in many ways to +teach a Bible class, but when it comes to veracity he is only thirty-five +years old. I'm seventy years old. I have been familiar with veracity +twice as long as he. + +And the story about George Washington and his little hatchet has also +been suggested to me in these letters--in a fugitive way, as if I needed +some of George Washington and his hatchet in my constitution. Why, dear +me, they overlook the real point in that story. The point is not the one +that is usually suggested, and you can readily see that. + +The point is not that George said to his father, "Yes, father, I cut down +the cheery-tree; I can't tell a lie," but that the little boy--only seven +years old--should have his sagacity developed under such circumstances. +He was a boy wise beyond his years. His conduct then was a prophecy of +later years. Yes, I think he was the most remarkable man the country +ever produced-up to my time, anyway. + +Now then, little George realized that circumstantial evidence was against +him. He knew that his father would know from the size of the chips that +no full-grown hatchet cut that tree down, and that no man would have +haggled it so. He knew that his father would send around the plantation +and inquire for a small boy with a hatchet, and he had the wisdom to come +out and confess it. Now, the idea that his father was overjoyed when he +told little George that he would rather have him cut down, a thousand +cheery-trees than tell a lie is all nonsense. What did he really mean? +Why, that he was absolutely astonished that he had a son who had the +chance to tell a lie and didn't. + +I admire old George--if that was his name--for his discernment. He knew +when he said that his son couldn't tell a lie that he was stretching it a +good deal. He wouldn't have to go to John D. Rockefeller's Bible class +to find that out. The way the old George Washington story goes down it +doesn't do anybody any good. It only discourages people who can tell a +lie. + + + + + + +WELCOME HOME + + ADDRESS AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOR AT THE LOTOS CLUB, + NOVEMBER 10, 1900 + +In August, 1895, just before sailing for Australia, Mr. Clemens issued +the following statement: + +"It has been reported that I sacrificed, for the benefit of the +creditors, the property of the publishing firm whose financial backer I +was, and that I am now lecturing for my own benefit. + +"This is an error. I intend the lectures, as well as the property, for +the creditors. The law recognizes no mortgage on a man's brains, and a +merchant who has given up all he has may take advantage of the laws of +insolvency and may start free again for himself. But I am not a business +man, and honor is a harder master than the law. It cannot compromise for +less than one hundred cents on a dollar, and its debts are never +outlawed. + +"I had a two-thirds interest in the publishing firm whose capital I +furnished. If the firm had prospered I would have expected to collect +two-thirds of the profits. As it is, I expect to pay all the debts. My +partner has no resources, and I do not look for assistance to my wife, +whose contributions in cash from her own means have nearly equalled the +claims of all the creditors combined. She has taken nothing; on the +contrary, she has helped and intends to help me to satisfy the +obligations due to the rest of the creditors. + +"It is my intention to ask my creditors to accept that as a legal +discharge, and trust to my honor to pay the other fifty per cent. as fast +as I can earn it. From my reception thus far on my lecturing tour, I am +confident that if I live I can pay off the last debt within four years. + +"After which, at the age of sixty-four, I can make a fresh and +unincumbered start in life. I am going to Australia, India, and South +Africa, and next year I hope to make a tour of the great cities of the +United States." + +I thank you all out of my heart for this fraternal welcome, and it seems +almost too fine, almost too magnificent, for a humble Missourian such as +I am, far from his native haunts on the banks of the Mississippi; yet my +modesty is in a degree fortified by observing that I am not the only +Missourian who has been honored here to-night, for I see at this very +table-here is a Missourian [indicating Mr. McKelway], and there is a +Missourian [indicating Mr. Depew], and there is another Missourian--and +Hendrix and Clemens; and last but not least, the greatest Missourian of +them all--here he sits--Tom Reed, who has always concealed his birth till +now. And since I have been away I know what has been happening in his +case: he has deserted politics, and now is leading a creditable life. He +has reformed, and God prosper him; and I judge, by a remark which he made +up-stairs awhile ago, that he had found a new business that is utterly +suited to his make and constitution, and all he is doing now is that he +is around raising the average of personal beauty. + +But I am grateful to the president for the kind words which he has said +of me, and it is not for me to say whether these praises were deserved or +not. I prefer to accept them just as they stand, without concerning +myself with the statistics upon which they have been built, but only with +that large matter, that essential matter, the good-fellowship, the +kindliness, the magnanimity, and generosity that prompted their +utterance. Well, many things have happened since I sat here before, and +now that I think of it, the president's reference to the debts which were +left by the bankrupt firm of Charles L. Webster & Co. gives me an +opportunity to say a word which I very much wish to say, not for myself, +but for ninety-five men and women whom I shall always hold in high esteem +and in pleasant remembrance--the creditors of that firm. They treated me +well; they treated me handsomely. There were ninety-six of them, and by +not a finger's weight did ninety-five of them add to the burden of that +time for me. Ninety-five out of the ninety-six--they didn't indicate by +any word or sign that they were anxious about their money. They treated +me well, and I shall not forget it; I could not forget it if I wanted to. +Many of them said, "Don't you worry, don't you hurry"; that's what they +said. Why, if I could have that kind of creditors always, and that +experience, I would recognize it as a personal loss to be out of debt. +I owe those ninety-five creditors a debt of homage, and I pay it now in +such measure as one may pay so fine a debt in mere words. Yes, they said +that very thing. I was not personally acquainted with ten of them, and +yet they said, "Don't you worry, and don't you hurry." I know that +phrase by heart, and if all the other music should perish out of the +world it would still sing to me. I appreciate that; I am glad to say +this word; people say so much about me, and they forget those creditors. +They were handsomer than I was--or Tom Reed. + +Oh, you have been doing many things in this time that I have been absent; +you have done lots of things, some that are well worth remembering, too. +Now, we have fought a righteous war since I have gone, and that is rare +in history--a righteous war is so rare that it is almost unknown in +history; but by the grace of that war we set Cuba free, and we joined her +to those three or four nations that exist on this earth; and we started +out to set those poor Filipinos free, too, and why, why, why that most +righteous purpose of ours has apparently miscarried I suppose I never +shall know. + +But we have made a most creditable record in China in these days--our +sound and level-headed administration has made a most creditable record +over there, and there are some of the Powers that cannot say that by any +means. The Yellow Terror is threatening this world to-day. It is +looming vast and ominous on that distant horizon. I do not know what is +going to be the result of that Yellow Terror, but our government has had +no hand in evoking it, and let's be happy in that and proud of it. + +We have nursed free silver, we watched by its cradle; we have done the +best we could to raise that child, but those pestiferous Republicans have +--well, they keep giving it the measles every chance they get, and we +never shall raise that child. Well, that's no matter--there's plenty of +other things to do, and we must think of something else. Well, we have +tried a President four years, criticised him and found fault with him the +whole time, and turned around a day or two ago with votes enough to spare +to elect another. O consistency! consistency! thy name--I don't know +what thy name is--Thompson will do--any name will do--but you see there +is the fact, there is the consistency. Then we have tried for governor +an illustrious Rough Rider, and we liked him so much in that great office +that now we have made him Vice-President--not in order that that office +shall give him distinction, but that he may confer distinction upon that +office. And it's needed, too--it's needed. And now, for a while anyway, +we shall not be stammering and embarrassed when a stranger asks us, "What +is the name of the Vice-President?" This one is known; this one is +pretty well known, pretty widely known, and in some quarters favorably. +I am not accustomed to dealing in these fulsome compliments, and I am +probably overdoing it a little; but--well, my old affectionate admiration +for Governor Roosevelt has probably betrayed me into the complimentary +excess; but I know him, and you know him; and if you give him rope +enough--I mean if--oh yes, he will justify that compliment; leave it just +as it is. And now we have put in his place Mr. Odell, another Rough +Rider, I suppose; all the fat things go to that profession now. Why, I +could have been a Rough Rider myself if I had known that this political +Klondike was going to open up, and I would have been a Rough Rider if I +could have gone to war on an automobile but not on a horse! No, I know +the horse too well; I have known the horse in war and in peace, and there +is no place where a horse is comfortable. The horse has too many +caprices, and he is too much given to initiative. He invents too many +new ideas. No, I don't want anything to do with a horse. + +And then we have taken Chauncey Depew out of a useful and active life and +made him a Senator--embalmed him, corked him up. And I am not grieving. +That man has said many a true thing about me in his time, and I always +said something would happen to him. Look at that [pointing to Mr. Depew] +gilded mummy! He has made my life a sorrow to me at many a banquet on +both sides of the ocean, and now he has got it. Perish the hand that +pulls that cork! + +All these things have happened, all these things have come to pass, while +I have been away, and it just shows how little a Mugwump can be missed in +a cold, unfeeling world, even when he is the last one that is left +--a GRAND OLD PARTY all by himself. And there is another thing that has +happened, perhaps the most imposing event of them all: the institution +called the Daughters of the--Crown--the Daughters of the Royal Crown--has +established itself and gone into business. Now, there's an American idea +for you; there's an idea born of God knows what kind of specialized +insanity, but not softening of the brain--you cannot soften a thing that +doesn't exist--the Daughters of the Royal Crown! Nobody eligible but +American descendants of Charles II. Dear me, how the fancy product of +that old harem still holds out! + +Well, I am truly glad to foregather with you again, and partake of the +bread and salt of this hospitable house once more. Seven years ago, when +I was your guest here, when I was old and despondent, you gave me the +grip and the word that lift a man up and make him glad to be alive; and +now I come back from my exile young again, fresh and alive, and ready to +begin life once more, and your welcome puts the finishing touch upon my +restored youth and makes it real to me, and not a gracious dream that +must vanish with the morning. I thank you. + + + + + + +AN UNDELIVERED SPEECH + + The steamship St. Paul was to have been launched from Cramp's + shipyard in Philadelphia on March 25, 1895. After the + launching a luncheon was to nave been given, at which Mr. + Clemens was to make a speech. Just before the final word was + given a reporter asked Mr. Clemens for a copy of his speech to + be delivered at the luncheon. To facilitate the work of the + reporter he loaned him a typewritten copy of the speech. It + happened, however, that when the blocks were knocked away the + big ship refused to budge, and no amount of labor could move + her an inch. She had stuck fast upon the ways. As a result, + the launching was postponed for a week or two; but in the mean + time Mr. Clemens had gone to Europe. Years after a reporter + called on Mr. Clemens and submitted the manuscript of the + speech, which was as follows: + +Day after to-morrow I sail for England in a ship of this line, the Paris. +It will be my fourteenth crossing in three years and a half. Therefore, +my presence here, as you see, is quite natural, quite commercial. I am +interested in ships. They interest me more now than hotels do. When a +new ship is launched I feel a desire to go and see if she will be good +quarters for me to live in, particularly if she belongs to this line, for +it is by this line that I have done most of my ferrying. + +People wonder why I go so much. Well, I go partly for my health, partly +to familiarize myself with the road. I have gone over the same road so +many times now that I know all the whales that belong along the route, +and latterly it is an embarrassment to me to meet them, for they do not +look glad to see me, but annoyed, and they seem to say: "Here is this old +derelict again." + +Earlier in life this would have pained me and made me ashamed, but I am +older now, and when I am behaving myself, and doing right, I do not care +for a whale's opinion about me. When we are young we generally estimate +an opinion by the size of the person that holds it, but later we find +that that is an uncertain rule, for we realize that there are times when +a hornet's opinion disturbs us more than an emperor's. + +I do not mean that I care nothing at all for a whale's opinion, for that +would be going to too great a length. Of course, it is better to have +the good opinion of a whale than his disapproval; but my position is that +if you cannot have a whale's good opinion, except at some sacrifice of +principle or personal dignity, it is better to try to live without it. +That is my idea about whales. + +Yes, I have gone over that same route so often that I know my way without +a compass, just by the waves. I know all the large waves and a good many +of the small ones. Also the sunsets. I know every sunset and where it +belongs just by its color. Necessarily, then, I do not make the passage +now for scenery. That is all gone by. + +What I prize most is safety, and in, the second place swift transit and +handiness. These are best furnished, by the American line, whose +watertight compartments have no passage through them; no doors to be left +open, and consequently no way for water to get from one of them to +another in time of collision. If you nullify the peril which collisions +threaten you with, you nullify the only very serious peril which attends +voyages in the great liners of our day, and makes voyaging safer than +staying at home. + +When the Paris was half-torn to pieces some years ago, enough of the +Atlantic ebbed and flowed through one end of her, during her long agony, +to sink the fleets of the world if distributed among them; but she +floated in perfect safety, and no life was lost. In time of collision +the rock of Gibraltar is not safer than the Paris and other great ships +of this line. This seems to be the only great line in the world that +takes a passenger from metropolis to metropolis without the intervention +of tugs and barges or bridges--takes him through without breaking bulk, +so to speak. + +On the English side he lands at a dock; on the dock a special train is +waiting; in an hour and three-quarters he is in, London. Nothing could +be handier. If your journey were from a sand-pit on our side to a +lighthouse on the other, you could make it quicker by other lines, but +that is not the case. The journey is from the city of New York to the +city of London, and no line can do that journey quicker than this one, +nor anywhere near as conveniently and handily. And when the passenger +lands on our side he lands on the American side of the river, not in the +provinces. As a very learned man said on the last voyage (he is head +quartermaster of the New York land garboard streak of the middle watch) + +"When we land a passenger on the American side there's nothing betwix him +and his hotel but hell and the hackman." + +I am glad, with you and the nation, to welcome the new ship. She is +another pride, another consolation, for a great country whose mighty +fleets have all vanished, and which has almost forgotten, what it is to +fly its flag to sea. I am not sure as to which St. Paul she is named +for. Some think it is the one that is on the upper Mississippi, but the +head quartermaster told me it was the one that killed Goliath. But it is +not important. No matter which it is, let us give her hearty welcome and +godspeed. + + + + + + +SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY + + AT THE METROPOLITAN CLUB, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 28, 1902 + + Address at a dinner given in honor of Mr. Clemens by Colonel + Harvey, President of Harper & Brothers. + +I think I ought to be allowed to talk as long as I want to, for the +reason that I have cancelled all my winter's engagements of every kind, +for good and sufficient reasons, and am making no new engagements for +this winter, and, therefore, this is the only chance I shall have to +disembowel my skull for a year--close the mouth in that portrait for a +year. I want to offer thanks and homage to the chairman for this +innovation which he has introduced here, which is an improvement, as I +consider it, on the old-fashioned style of conducting occasions like +this. That was bad that was a bad, bad, bad arrangement. Under that old +custom the chairman got up and made a speech, he introduced the prisoner +at the bar, and covered him all over with compliments, nothing but +compliments, not a thing but compliments, never a slur, and sat down and +left that man to get up and talk without a text. You cannot talk on +compliments; that is not a text. No modest person, and I was born one, +can talk on compliments. A man gets up and is filled to the eyes with +happy emotions, but his tongue is tied; he has nothing to say; he is in +the condition of Doctor Rice's friend who came home drunk and explained +it to his wife, and his wife said to him, "John, when you have drunk all +the whiskey you want, you ought to ask for sarsaparilla." He said, "Yes, +but when I have drunk all the whiskey I want I can't say sarsaparilla." +And so I think it is much better to leave a man unmolested until the +testimony and pleadings are all in. Otherwise he is dumb--he is at the +sarsaparilla stage. + +Before I get to the higgledy-piggledy point, as Mr. Howells suggested I +do, I want to thank you, gentlemen, for this very high honor you are +doing me, and I am quite competent to estimate it at its value. I see +around me captains of all the illustrious industries, most distinguished +men; there are more than fifty here, and I believe I know thirty-nine of +them well. I could probably borrow money from--from the others, anyway. +It is a proud thing to me, indeed, to see such a distinguished company +gather here on such an occasion as this, when there is no foreign prince +to be feted--when you have come here not to do honor to hereditary +privilege and ancient lineage, but to do reverence to mere moral +excellence and elemental veracity-and, dear me, how old it seems to make +me! I look around me and I see three or four persons I have known so +many, many years. I have known Mr. Secretary Hay--John Hay, as the +nation and the rest of his friends love to call him--I have known John +Hay and Tom Reed and the Reverend Twichell close upon thirty-six years. +Close upon thirty-six years I have known those venerable men. I have +known Mr. Howells nearly thirty-four years, and I knew Chauncey Depew +before he could walk straight, and before he learned to tell the truth. +Twenty-seven years ago, I heard him make the most noble and eloquent and +beautiful speech that has ever fallen from even his capable lips. Tom +Reed said that my principal defect was inaccuracy of statement. Well, +suppose that that is true. What's the use of telling the truth all the +time? I never tell the truth about Tom Reed--but that is his defect, +truth; he speaks the truth always. Tom Reed has a good heart, and he has +a good intellect, but he hasn't any judgment. Why, when Tom Reed was +invited to lecture to the Ladies' Society for the Procreation or +Procrastination, or something, of morals, I don't know what it was +--advancement, I suppose, of pure morals--he had the immortal indiscretion +to begin by saying that some of us can't be optimists, but by judiciously +utilizing the opportunities that Providence puts in our way we can all be +bigamists. You perceive his limitations. Anything he has in his mind he +states, if he thinks it is true. Well, that was true, but that was no +place to say it--so they fired him out. + +A lot of accounts have been settled here tonight for me; I have held +grudges against some of these people, but they have all been wiped out by +the very handsome compliments that have been paid me. Even Wayne +MacVeagh--I have had a grudge against him many years. The first time I +saw Wayne MacVeagh was at a private dinner-party at Charles A. Dana's, +and when I got there he was clattering along, and I tried to get a word +in here and there; but you know what Wayne MacVeagh is when he is +started, and I could not get in five words to his one--or one word to his +five. I struggled along and struggled along, and--well, I wanted to tell +and I was trying to tell a dream I had had the night before, and it was a +remarkable dream, a dream worth people's while to listen to, a dream +recounting Sam Jones the revivalist's reception in heaven. I was on a +train, and was approaching the celestial way-station--I had a through +ticket--and I noticed a man sitting alongside of me asleep, and he had +his ticket in his hat. He was the remains of the Archbishop of +Canterbury; I recognized him by his photograph. I had nothing against +him, so I took his ticket and let him have mine. He didn't object--he +wasn't in a condition to object--and presently when the train stopped at +the heavenly station--well, I got off, and he went on by request--but +there they all were, the angels, you know, millions of them, every one +with a torch; they had arranged for a torch-light procession; they were +expecting the Archbishop, and when I got off they started to raise a +shout, but it didn't materialize. I don't know whether they were +disappointed. I suppose they had a lot of superstitious ideas about the +Archbishop and what he should look like, and I didn't fill the bill, and +I was trying to explain to Saint Peter, and was doing it in the German +tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit. Well, I found it was +no use, I couldn't get along, for Wayne MacVeagh was occupying the whole +place, and I said to Mr. Dana, "What is the matter with that man? Who is +that man with the long tongue? What's the trouble with him, that long, +lank cadaver, old oil-derrick out of a job--who is that?" "Well, now," +Mr. Dana said, "you don't want to meddle with him; you had better keep +quiet; just keep quiet, because that's a bad man. Talk! He was born to +talk. Don't let him get out with you; he'll skin you." I said, "I have +been skinned, skinned, and skinned for years, there is nothing left." +He said, "Oh, you'll find there is; that man is the very seed and +inspiration of that proverb which says, 'No matter how close you skin an +onion, a clever man can always peel it again.'" Well, I reflected and +I quieted down. That would never occur to Tom Reed. He's got no +discretion. Well, MacVeagh is just the same man; he hasn't changed a bit +in all those years; he has been peeling Mr. Mitchell lately. That's the +kind of man he is. + +Mr. Howells--that poem of his is admirable; that's the way to treat a +person. Howells has a peculiar gift for seeing the merits of people, +and he has always exhibited them in my favor. Howells has never written +anything about me that I couldn't read six or seven times a day; he is +always just and always fair; he has written more appreciatively of me +than any one in this world, and published it in the North American +Review. He did me the justice to say that my intentions--he italicized +that--that my intentions were always good, that I wounded people's +conventions rather than their convictions. Now, I wouldn't want anything +handsomer than that said of me. I would rather wait, with anything harsh +I might have to say, till the convictions become conventions. Bangs has +traced me all the way down. He can't find that honest man, but I will +look for him in the looking-glass when I get home. It was intimated by +the Colonel that it is New England that makes New York and builds up this +country and makes it great, overlooking the fact that there's a lot of +people here who came from elsewhere, like John Hay from away out West, +and Howells from Ohio, and St. Clair McKelway and me from Missouri, and +we are doing what we can to build up New York a little-elevate it. Why, +when I was living in that village of Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of +the Mississippi, and Hay up in the town of Warsaw, also on the banks of +the Mississippi River it is an emotional bit of the Mississippi, and when +it is low water you have to climb up to it on a ladder, and when it +floods you have to hunt for it; with a deep-sea lead--but it is a great +and beautiful country. In that old time it was a paradise for +simplicity--it was a simple, simple life, cheap but comfortable, and full +of sweetness, and there was nothing of this rage of modern civilization +there at all. It was a delectable land. I went out there last June, +and I met in that town of Hannibal a schoolmate of mine, John Briggs, +whom I had not seen for more than fifty years. I tell you, that was a +meeting! That pal whom I had known as a little boy long ago, and knew +now as a stately man three or four inches over six feet and browned by +exposure to many climes, he was back there to see that old place again. +We spent a whole afternoon going about here and there and yonder, and +hunting up the scenes and talking of the crimes which we had committed so +long ago. It was a heartbreaking delight, full of pathos, laughter, and +tears, all mixed together; and we called the roll of the boys and girls +that we picnicked and sweethearted with so many years ago, and there were +hardly half a dozen of them left; the rest were in their graves; and we +went up there on the summit of that hill, a treasured place in my memory, +the summit of Holiday's Hill, and looked out again over that magnificent +panorama of the Mississippi River, sweeping along league after league, a +level green paradise on one side, and retreating capes and promontories +as far as you could see on the other, fading away in the soft, rich +lights of the remote distance. I recognized then that I was seeing now +the most enchanting river view the planet could furnish. I never knew it +when I was a boy; it took an educated eye that had travelled over the +globe to know and appreciate it; and John said, "Can you point out the +place where Bear Creek used to be before the railroad came?" I said, +"Yes, it ran along yonder." "And can you point out the swimming-hole?" +"Yes, out there." And he said, "Can you point out the place where we +stole the skiff?" Well, I didn't know which one he meant. Such a +wilderness of events had intervened since that day, more than fifty years +ago, it took me more than five minutes to call back that little incident, +and then I did call it back; it was a white skiff, and we painted it red +to allay suspicion. And the saddest, saddest man came along--a stranger +he was--and he looked that red skiff over so pathetically, and he said: +"Well, if it weren't for the complexion I'd know whose skiff that was." +He said it in that pleading way, you know, that appeals for sympathy and +suggestion; we were full of sympathy for him, but we weren't in any +condition to offer suggestions. I can see him yet as he turned away with +that same sad look on his face and vanished out of history forever. +I wonder what became of that man. I know what became of the skiff. +Well, it was a beautiful life, a lovely life. There was no crime. +Merely little things like pillaging orchards and watermelon-patches and +breaking the Sabbath--we didn't break the Sabbath often enough to +signify--once a week perhaps. But we were good boys, good Presbyterian +boys, all Presbyterian boys, and loyal and all that; anyway, we were good +Presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we did +wander a little from the fold. + +Look at John Hay and me. There we were in obscurity, and look where we +are now. Consider the ladder which he has climbed, the illustrious +vocations he has served--and vocations is the right word; he has in all +those vocations acquitted himself with high credit and honor to his +country and to the mother that bore him. Scholar, soldier, diplomat, +poet, historian--now, see where we are. He is Secretary of State and I +am a gentleman. It could not happen in any other country. Our +institutions give men the positions that of right belong to them through +merit; all you men have won your places, not by heredities, and not by +family influence or extraneous help, but only by the natural gifts God +gave you at your birth, made effective by your own energies; this is the +country to live in. + +Now, there is one invisible guest here. A part of me is present; the +larger part, the better part, is yonder at her home; that is my wife, +and she has a good many personal friends here, and I think it won't +distress any one of them to know that, although she is going to be +confined to that bed for many months to come from that nervous +prostration, there is not any danger and she is coming along very well +--and I think it quite appropriate that I should speak of her. I knew +her for the first time just in the same year that I first knew John Hay +and Tom Reed and Mr. Twichell--thirty-six years ago--and she has been the +best friend I have ever had, and that is saying a good deal; she has +reared me--she and Twichell together--and what I am I owe to them. +Twichell why, it is such a pleasure to look upon Twichell's face! For +five-and-twenty years I was under the Rev. Mr. Twichell's tuition, I was +in his pastorate, occupying a pew in his church, and held him in due +reverence. That man is full of all the graces that go to make a person +companionable and beloved; and wherever Twichell goes to start a church +the people flock there to buy the land; they find real estate goes up all +around the spot, and the envious and the thoughtful always try to get +Twichell to move to their neighborhood and start a church; and wherever +you see him go you can go and buy land there with confidence, feeling +sure that there will be a double price for you before very long. I am not +saying this to flatter Mr. Twichell; it is the fact. Many and many a +time I have attended the annual sale in his church, and bought up all the +pews on a margin--and it would have been better for me spiritually and +financially if I had stayed under his wing. + +I have tried to do good in this world, and it is marvellous in how many +different ways I have done good, and it is comfortable to reflect--now, +there's Mr. Rogers--just out of the affection I bear that man many a time +I have given him points in finance that he had never thought of--and if +he could lay aside envy, prejudice, and superstition, and utilize those +ideas in his business, it would make a difference in his bank account. + +Well, I like the poetry. I like all the speeches and the poetry, too. +I liked Doctor Van Dyke's poem. I wish I could return thanks in proper +measure to you, gentlemen, who have spoken and violated your feelings to +pay me compliments; some were merited and some you overlooked, it is +true; and Colonel Harvey did slander every one of you, and put things +into my mouth that I never said, never thought of at all. + +And now, my wife and I, out of our single heart, return you our deepest +and most grateful thanks, and--yesterday was her birthday. + + + + + + +TO THE WHITEFRIARS + + ADDRESS AT THE DINNER GIVEN BY THE WHITEFRIARS CLUB IN HONOR OF + MR. CLEMENS, LONDON, JUNE 20, 1899 + + The Whitefriars Club was founded by Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Mr. + Clemens was made an honorary member in 1874. The members are + representative of literary and journalistic London. The toast + of "Our Guest" was proposed by Louis F. Austin, of the + Illustrated London News, and in the course of some humorous + remarks he referred to the vow and to the imaginary woes of the + "Friars," as the members of the club style themselves. + +MR. CHAIRMAN AND BRETHREN OF THE VOW--in whatever the vow is; for +although I have been a member of this club for five-and twenty years, +I don't know any more about what that vow is than Mr. Austin seems to. +But what ever the vow is, I don't care what it is. I have made a +thousand vows. + +There is no pleasure comparable to making a vow in the presence of one +who appreciates that vow, in the presence of men who honor and appreciate +you for making the vow, and men who admire you for making the vow. + +There is only one pleasure higher than that, and that is to get outside +and break the vow. A vow is always a pledge of some kind or other for +the protection of your own morals and principles or somebody else's, +and generally, by the irony of fate, it is for the protection of your own +morals. + +Hence we have pledges that make us eschew tobacco or wine, and while you +are taking the pledge there is a holy influence about that makes you feel +you are reformed, and that you can never be so happy again in this world +until--you get outside and take a drink. + +I had forgotten that I was a member of this club--it is so long ago. +But now I remember that I was here five-and-twenty years ago, and that I +was then at a dinner of the Whitefriars Club, and it was in those old +days when you had just made two great finds. All London was talking +about nothing else than that they had found Livingstone, and that the +lost Sir Roger Tichborne had been found--and they were trying him for it. + +And at the dinner, Chairman (I do not know who he was)--failed to come to +time. The gentleman who had been appointed to pay me the customary +compliments and to introduce me forgot the compliments, and did not know +what they were. + +And George Augustus Sala came in at the last moment, just when I was +about to go without compliments altogether. And that man was a gifted +man. They just called on him instantaneously, while he was going to sit +down, to introduce the stranger, and Sala, made one of those marvellous +speeches which he was capable of making. I think no man talked so fast +as Sala did. One did not need wine while he was making a speech. The +rapidity of his utterance made a man drunk in a minute. An incomparable +speech was that, an impromptu speech, and--an impromptu speech is a +seldom thing, and he did it so well. + +He went into the whole history of the United States, and made it entirely +new to me. He filled it with episodes and incidents that Washington +never heard of, and he did it so convincingly that although I knew none +of it had happened, from that day to this I do not know any history but +Sala's. + +I do not know anything so sad as a dinner where you are going to get up +and say something by-and-by, and you do not know what it is. You sit and +wonder and wonder what the gentleman is going to say who is going to +introduce you. You know that if he says something severe, that if he +will deride you, or traduce you, or do anything of that kind, he will +furnish you with a text, because anybody can get up and talk against +that. + +Anybody can get up and straighten out his character. But when a +gentleman gets up and merely tells the truth about you, what can you do? + +Mr. Austin has done well. He has supplied so many texts that I will have +to drop out a lot of them, and that is about as difficult as when you do +not have any text at all. Now, he made a beautiful and smooth speech +without any difficulty at all, and I could have done that if I had gone +on with the schooling with which I began. I see here a gentleman on my +left who was my master in the art of oratory more than twenty-five years +ago. + +When I look upon the inspiring face of Mr. Depew, it carries me a long +way back. An old and valued friend of mine is he, and I saw his career +as it came along, and it has reached pretty well up to now, when he, by +another miscarriage of justice, is a United States Senator. But those +were delightful days when I was taking lessons in oratory. + +My other master the Ambassador-is not here yet. Under those two +gentlemen I learned to make after-dinner speeches, and it was charming. + +You know the New England dinner is the great occasion on the other side +of the water. It is held every year to celebrate the landing of the +Pilgrims. Those Pilgrims were a lot of people who were not needed in +England, and you know they had great rivalry, and they were persuaded to +go elsewhere, and they chartered a ship called Mayflower and set sail, +and I have heard it said that they pumped the Atlantic Ocean through that +ship sixteen times. + +They fell in over there with the Dutch from Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and a +lot of other places with profane names, and it is from that gang that Mr. +Depew is descended. + +On the other hand, Mr. Choate is descended from those Puritans who landed +on a bitter night in December. Every year those people used to meet at a +great banquet in New York, and those masters of mind in oratory had to +make speeches. It was Doctor Depew's business to get up there and +apologise for the Dutch, and Mr. Choate had to get up later and explain +the crimes of the Puritans, and grand, beautiful times we used to have. + +It is curious that after that long lapse of time I meet the Whitefriars +again, some looking as young and fresh as in the old days, others showing +a certain amount of wear and tear, and here, after all this time, I find +one of the masters of oratory and the others named in the list. + +And here we three meet again as exiles on one pretext or another, and you +will notice that while we are absent there is a pleasing tranquillity in +America--a building up of public confidence. We are doing the best we +can for our country. I think we have spent our lives in serving our +country, and we never serve it to greater advantage than when we get out +of it. + +But impromptu speaking--that is what I was trying to learn. That is a +difficult thing. I used to do it in this way. I used to begin about a +week ahead, and write out my impromptu, speech and get it by heart. Then +I brought it to the New England dinner printed on a piece of paper in my +pocket, so that I could pass it to the reporters all cut and dried, and +in order to do an impromptu speech as it should be done you have to +indicate the places for pauses and hesitations. I put them all in it. +And then you want the applause in the right places. + +When I got to the place where it should come in, if it did not come in +I did not care, but I had it marked in the paper. And these masters of +mind used to wonder why it was my speech came out in the morning in the +first person, while theirs went through the butchery of synopsis. + +I do that kind of speech (I mean an offhand speech), and do it well, and +make no mistake in such a way to deceive the audience completely and make +that audience believe it is an impromptu speech--that is art. + +I was frightened out of it at last by an experience of Doctor Hayes. He +was a sort of Nansen of that day. He had been to the North Pole, and it +made him celebrated. He had even seen the polar bear climb the pole. + +He had made one of those magnificent voyages such as Nansen made, and in +those days when a man did anything which greatly distinguished him for +the moment he had to come on to the lecture platform and tell all about +it. + +Doctor Hayes was a great, magnificent creature like Nansen, superbly +built. He was to appear in Boston. He wrote his lecture out, and it was +his purpose to read it from manuscript; but in an evil hour he concluded +that it would be a good thing to preface it with something rather +handsome, poetical, and beautiful that he could get off by heart and +deliver as if it were the thought of the moment. + +He had not had my experience, and could not do that. He came on the +platform, held his manuscript down, and began with a beautiful piece of +oratory. He spoke something like this: + +"When a lonely human being, a pigmy in the midst of the architecture of +nature, stands solitary on those icy waters and looks abroad to the +horizon and sees mighty castles and temples of eternal ice raising up +their pinnacles tipped by the pencil of the departing sun--" + +Here a man came across the platform and touched him on the shoulder, and +said: "One minute." And then to the audience: + +"Is Mrs. John Smith in the house? Her husband has slipped on the ice and +broken his leg." + +And you could see the Mrs. John Smiths get up everywhere and drift out of +the house, and it made great gaps everywhere. Then Doctor Hayes began +again: "When a lonely man, a pigmy in the architecture--" The janitor +came in again and shouted: "It is not Mrs. John Smith! It is Mrs. John +Jones!" + +Then all the Mrs. Jones got up and left. Once more the speaker started, +and was in the midst of the sentence when he was interrupted again, and +the result was that the lecture was not delivered. But the lecturer +interviewed the janitor afterward in a private room, and of the fragments +of the janitor they took "twelve basketsful." + +Now, I don't want to sit down just in this way. I have been talking with +so much levity that I have said no serious thing, and you are really no +better or wiser, although Robert Buchanan has suggested that I am a +person who deals in wisdom. I have said nothing which would make you +better than when you came here. + +I should be sorry to sit down without having said one serious word which +you can carry home and relate to your children and the old people who are +not able to get away. + +And this is just a little maxim which has saved me from many a difficulty +and many a disaster, and in times of tribulation and uncertainty has come +to my rescue, as it shall to yours if you observe it as I do day and +night. + +I always use it in an emergency, and you can take it home as a legacy +from me, and it is "When in doubt, tell the truth." + + + + + + +THE ASCOT GOLD CUP + + The news of Mr. Clemens's arrival in England in June, 1907, was + announced in the papers with big headlines. Immediately + following the announcement was the news--also with big + headlines--that the Ascot Gold Cup had been stolen the same + day. The combination, MARK TWAIN ARRIVES-ASCOT CUP STOLEN, + amused the public. The Lord Mayor of London gave a banquet at + the Mansion House in honor of Mr. Clemens. + +I do assure you that I am not so dishonest as I look. I have been so +busy trying to rehabilitate my honor about that Ascot Cup that I have had +no time to prepare a speech. + +I was not so honest in former days as I am now, but I have always been +reasonably honest. Well, you know how a man is influenced by his +surroundings. Once upon a time I went to a public meeting where the +oratory of a charitable worker so worked on my feelings that, in common +with others, I would have dropped something substantial in the hat--if it +had come round at that moment. + +The speaker had the power of putting those vivid pictures before one. +We were all affected. That was the moment for the hat. I would have put +two hundred dollars in. Before he had finished I could have put in four +hundred dollars. I felt I could have filled up a blank check--with +somebody else's name--and dropped it in. + +Well, now, another speaker got up, and in fifteen minutes damped my +spirit; and during the speech of the third speaker all my enthusiasm went +away. When at last the hat came round I dropped in ten cents--and took +out twenty-five. + +I came over here to get the honorary degree from Oxford, and I would have +encompassed the seven seas for an honor like that--the greatest honor +that has ever fallen to my share. I am grateful to Oxford for conferring +that honor upon me, and I am sure my country appreciates it, because +first and foremost it is an honor to my country. + +And now I am going home again across the sea. I am in spirit young but +in the flesh old, so that it is unlikely that when I go away I shall ever +see England again. But I shall go with the recollection of the generous +and kindly welcome I have had. + +I suppose I must say "Good-bye." I say it not with my lips only, but +from the heart. + + + + + + +THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER + + A portrait of Mr. Clemens, signed by all the members of the + club attending the dinner, was presented to him, July 6, 1907, + and in submitting the toast "The Health of Mark Twain" Mr. J. + Scott Stokes recalled the fact that he had read parts of Doctor + Clemens's works to Harold Frederic during Frederic's last + illness. + +MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-SAVAGES,--I am very glad indeed to have that +portrait. I think it is the best one that I have ever had, and there +have been opportunities before to get a good photograph. I have sat to +photographers twenty-two times to-day. Those sittings added to those +that have preceded them since I have been in Europe--if we average at +that rate--must have numbered one hundred to two hundred sittings. Out +of all those there ought to be some good photographs. This is the best I +have had, and I am glad to have your honored names on it. I did not know +Harold Frederic personally, but I have heard a great deal about him, and +nothing that was not pleasant and nothing except such things as lead a +man to honor another man and to love him. I consider that it is a +misfortune of mine that I have never had the luck to meet him, and if any +book of mine read to him in his last hours made those hours easier for +him and more comfortable, I am very glad and proud of that. I call to +mind such a case many years ago of an English authoress, well known in +her day, who wrote such beautiful child tales, touching and lovely in +every possible way. In a little biographical sketch of her I found that +her last hours were spent partly in reading a book of mine, until she was +no longer able to read. That has always remained in my mind, and I have +always cherished it as one of the good things of my life. I had read +what she had written, and had loved her for what she had done. + +Stanley apparently carried a book of mine feloniously away to Africa, +and I have not a doubt that it had a noble and uplifting influence there +in the wilds of Africa--because on his previous journeys he never carried +anything to read except Shakespeare and the Bible. I did not know of +that circumstance. I did not know that he had carried a book of mine. +I only noticed that when he came back he was a reformed man. I knew +Stanley very well in those old days. Stanley was the first man who ever +reported a lecture of mine, and that was in St. Louis. When I was down +there the next time to give the same lecture I was told to give them +something fresh, as they had read that in the papers. I met Stanley here +when he came back from that first expedition of his which closed with the +finding of Livingstone. You remember how he would break out at the +meetings of the British Association, and find fault with what people +said, because Stanley had notions of his own, and could not contain them. +They had to come out or break him up--and so he would go round and +address geographical societies. He was always on the warpath in those +days, and people always had to have Stanley contradicting their geography +for them and improving it. But he always came back and sat drinking beer +with me in the hotel up to two in the morning, and he was then one of the +most civilized human beings that ever was. + +I saw in a newspaper this evening a reference to an interview which +appeared in one of the papers the other day, in which the interviewer +said that I characterized Mr. Birrell's speech the other day at the +Pilgrims' Club as "bully." Now, if you will excuse me, I never use slang +to an interviewer or anybody else. That distresses me. Whatever I said +about Mr. Birrell's speech was said in English, as good English as +anybody uses. If I could not describe Mr. Birrell's delightful speech +without using slang I would not describe it at all. I would close my +mouth and keep it closed, much as it would discomfort me. + +Now that comes of interviewing a man in the first person, which is an +altogether wrong way to interview him. It is entirely wrong because none +of you, I, or anybody else, could interview a man--could listen to a man +talking any length of time and then go off and reproduce that talk in the +first person. It can't be done. What results is merely that the +interviewer gives the substance of what is said and puts it in his own +language and puts it in your mouth. It will always be either better +language than you use or worse, and in my case it is always worse. +I have a great respect for the English language. I am one of its +supporters, its promoters, its elevators. I don't degrade it. A slip of +the tongue would be the most that you would get from me. I have always +tried hard and faithfully to improve my English and never to degrade it. +I always try to use the best English to describe what I think and what I +feel, or what I don't feel and what I don't think. + +I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to +facts. I don't know anything that mars good literature so completely as +too much truth. Facts contain a deal of poetry, but you can't use too +many of them without damaging your literature. I love all literature, +and as long as I am a doctor of literature--I have suggested to you for +twenty years I have been diligently trying to improve my own literature, +and now, by virtue of the University of Oxford, I mean to doctor +everybody else's. + +Now I think I ought to apologize for my clothes. At home I venture +things that I am not permitted by my family to venture in foreign parts. +I was instructed before I left home and ordered to refrain from white +clothes in England. I meant to keep that command fair and clean, and I +would have done it if I had been in the habit of obeying instructions, +but I can't invent a new process in life right away. I have not had +white clothes on since I crossed the ocean until now. + +In these three or four weeks I have grown so tired of gray and black that +you have earned my gratitude in permitting me to come as I have. I wear +white clothes in the depth of winter in my home, but I don't go out in +the streets in them. I don't go out to attract too much attention. +I like to attract some, and always I would like to be dressed so that I +may be more conspicuous than anybody else. + +If I had been an ancient Briton, I would not have contented myself with +blue paint, but I would have bankrupted the rainbow. I so enjoy gay +clothes in which women clothe themselves that it always grieves me when I +go to the opera to see that, while women look like a flower-bed, the men +are a few gray stumps among them in their black evening dress. These are +two or three reasons why I wish to wear white clothes: When I find +myself in assemblies like this, with everybody in black clothes, I know I +possess something that is superior to everybody else's. Clothes are +never clean. You don't know whether they are clean or not, because you +can't see. + +Here or anywhere you must scour your head every two or three days or it +is full of grit. Your clothes must collect just as much dirt as your +hair. If you wear white clothes you are clean, and your cleaning bill +gets so heavy that you have to take care. I am proud to say that I can +wear a white suit of clothes without a blemish for three days. If you +need any further instruction in the matter of clothes I shall be glad to +give it to you. I hope I have convinced some of you that it is just as +well to wear white clothes as any other kind. I do not want to boast. +I only want to make you understand that you are not clean. + +As to age, the fact that I am nearly seventy-two years old does not +clearly indicate how old I am, because part of every day--it is with me +as with you, you try to describe your age, and you cannot do it. +Sometimes you are only fifteen; sometimes you are twenty-five. It is +very seldom in a day that I am seventy-two years old. I am older now +sometimes than I was when I used to rob orchards; a thing which I would +not do to-day--if the orchards were watched. I am so glad to be here +to-night. I am so glad to renew with the Savages that now ancient time +when I first sat with a company of this club in London in 1872. That is +a long time ago. But I did stay with the Savages a night in London long +ago, and as I had come into a very strange land, and was with friends, as +I could see, that has always remained in my mind as a peculiarly blessed +evening, since it brought me into contact with men of my own kind and my +own feelings. + +I am glad to be here, and to see you all again, because it is very likely +that I shall not see you again. It is easier than I thought to come +across the Atlantic. I have been received, as you know, in the most +delightfully generous way in England ever since I came here. It keeps me +choked up all the time. Everybody is so generous, and they do seem to +give you such a hearty welcome. Nobody in the world can appreciate it +higher than I do. It did not wait till I got to London, but when I came +ashore at Tilbury the stevedores on the dock raised the first welcome +--a good and hearty welcome from the men who do the heavy labor in the +world, and save you and me having to do it. They are the men who with +their hands build empires and make them prosper. It is because of them +that the others are wealthy and can live in luxury. They received me +with a "Hurrah!" that went to my heart. They are the men that build +civilization, and without them no civilization can be built. So I came +first to the authors and creators of civilization, and I blessedly end +this happy meeting with the Savages who destroy it. + + + + + + +GENERAL MILES AND THE DOG + + Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor at a dinner given by the + Pleiades Club at the Hotel Brevoort, December 22, 1907. The + toastmaster introduced the guest of the evening with a high + tribute to his place in American literature, saying that he was + dear to the hearts of all Americans. + +It is hard work to make a speech when you have listened to compliments +from the powers in authority. A compliment is a hard text to preach to. +When the chairman introduces me as a person of merit, and when he says +pleasant things about me, I always feel like answering simply that what +he says is true; that it is all right; that, as far as I am concerned, +the things he said can stand as they are. But you always have to say +something, and that is what frightens me. + +I remember out in Sydney once having to respond to some complimentary +toast, and my one desire was to turn in my tracks like any other worm +--and run, for it. I was remembering that occasion at a later date when +I had to introduce a speaker. Hoping, then, to spur his speech by +putting him, in joke, on the defensive, I accused him in my introduction +of everything I thought it impossible for him to have committed. When I +finished there was an awful calm. I had been telling his life history by +mistake. + +One must keep up one's character. Earn a character first if you can, and +if you can't, then assume one. From the code of morals I have been +following and revising and revising for seventy-two years I remember one +detail. All my life I have been honest--comparatively honest. I could +never use money I had not made honestly--I could only lend it. + +Last spring I met General Miles again, and he commented on the fact that +we had known each other thirty years. He said it was strange that we had +not met years before, when we had both been in Washington. At that point +I changed the subject, and I changed it with art. But the facts are +these: + +I was then under contract for my Innocents Abroad, but did not have a +cent to live on while I wrote it. So I went to Washington to do a little +journalism. There I met an equally poor friend, William Davidson, who +had not a single vice, unless you call it a vice in a Scot to love +Scotch. Together we devised the first and original newspaper syndicate, +selling two letters a week to twelve newspapers and getting $1 a letter. +That $24 a week would have been enough for us--if we had not had to +support the jug. + +But there was a day when we felt that we must have $3 right away--$3 at +once. That was how I met the General. It doesn't matter now what we +wanted so much money at one time for, but that Scot and I did +occasionally want it. The Scot sent me out one day to get it. He had a +great belief in Providence, that Scottish friend of mine. He said: "The +Lord will provide." + +I had given up trying to find the money lying about, and was in a hotel +lobby in despair, when I saw a beautiful unfriended dog. The dog saw me, +too, and at once we became acquainted. Then General Miles came in, +admired the dog, and asked me to price it. I priced it at $3. He +offered me an opportunity to reconsider the value of the beautiful +animal, but I refused to take more than Providence knew I needed. The +General carried the dog to his room. + +Then came in a sweet little middle-aged man, who at once began looking +around the lobby. + +"Did you lose a dog?" I asked. He said he had. + +"I think I could find it," I volunteered, "for a small sum." + +"'How much?'" he asked. And I told him $3. + +He urged me to accept more, but I did not wish to outdo Providence. Then +I went to the General's room and asked for the dog back. He was very +angry, and wanted to know why I had sold him a dog that did not belong to +me. + +"That's a singular question to ask me, sir," I replied. "Didn't you ask +me to sell him? You started it." And he let me have him. I gave him +back his $3 and returned the dog, collect, to its owner. That second $3 +I earned home to the Scot, and we enjoyed it, but the first $3, the money +I got from the General, I would have had to lend. + +The General seemed not to remember my part in that adventure, and I never +had the heart to tell him about it. + + + + + + +WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH + + Mark Twain's speech at the dinner of the "Freundschaft + Society," March 9, 1906, had as a basis the words of + introduction used by Toastmaster Frank, who, referring to + Pudd'nhead Wilson, used the phrase, "When in doubt, tell the + truth." + +MR. CHAIRMAN, Mr. PUTZEL, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE FREUNDSCHAFT,--That maxim +I did invent, but never expected it to be applied to me. I did say, +"When you are in doubt," but when I am in doubt myself I use more +sagacity. + +Mr. Grout suggested that if I have anything to say against Mr. Putzel, or +any criticism of his career or his character, I am the last person to +come out on account of that maxim and tell the truth. That is altogether +a mistake. + +I do think it is right for other people to be virtuous so that they can +be happy hereafter, but if I knew every impropriety that even Mr. Putzel +has committed in his life, I would not mention one of them. My judgment +has been maturing for seventy years, and I have got to that point where I +know better than that. + +Mr. Putzel stands related to me in a very tender way (through the tax +office), and it does not behoove me to say anything which could by any +possibility militate against that condition of things. + +Now, that word--taxes, taxes, taxes! I have heard it to-night. I have +heard it all night. I wish somebody would change that subject; that is a +very sore subject to me. + +I was so relieved when judge Leventritt did find something that was not +taxable--when he said that the commissioner could not tax your patience. +And that comforted me. We've got so much taxation. I don't know of a +single foreign product that enters this country untaxed except the answer +to prayer. + +On an occasion like this the proprieties require that you merely pay +compliments to the guest of the occasion, and I am merely here to pay +compliments to the guest of the occasion, not to criticise him in any +way, and I can say only complimentary things to him. + +When I went down to the tax office some time ago, for the first time in +New York, I saw Mr. Putzel sitting in the "Seat of Perjury." I recognized +him right away. I warmed to him on the spot. I didn't know that I had +ever seen him before, but just as soon as I saw him I recognized him. +I had met him twenty-five years before, and at that time had achieved a +knowledge of his abilities and something more than that. + +I thought: "Now, this is the man whom I saw twenty-five years ago." +On that occasion I not only went free at his hands, but carried off +something more than that. I hoped it would happen again. + +It was twenty-five years ago when I saw a young clerk in Putnam's +bookstore. I went in there and asked for George Haven Putnam, and handed +him my card, and then the young man said Mr. Putnam was busy and I +couldn't see him. Well, I had merely called in a social way, and so it +didn't matter. + +I was going out when I saw a great big, fat, interesting-looking book +lying there, and I took it up. It was an account of the invasion of +England in the fourteenth century by the Preaching Friar, and it +interested me. + +I asked him the price of it, and he said four dollars. + +"Well," I said, "what discount do you allow to publishers?" + +He said: "Forty percent. off." + +I said: "All right, I am a publisher." + +He put down the figure, forty per cent. off, on a card. + +Then I said: "What discount do you allow to authors?" + +He said: "Forty per cent. off." + +"Well," I said, "set me down as an author." + +"Now," said I, "what discount do you allow to the clergy?" + +He said: "Forty per cent. off." + +I said to him that I was only on the road, and that I was studying for +the ministry. I asked him wouldn't he knock off twenty per cent. for +that. He set down the figure, and he never smiled once. + +I was working off these humorous brilliancies on him and getting no +return--not a scintillation in his eye, not a spark of recognition of +what I was doing there. I was almost in despair. + +I thought I might try him once more, so I said "Now, I am also a member +of the human race. Will you let me have the ten per cent. off for that?" +He set it down, and never smiled. + +Well, I gave it up. I said: "There is my card with my address on it, +but I have not any money with me. Will you please send the bill to +Hartford?" I took up the book and was going away. + +He said: "Wait a minute. There is forty cents coming to you." + +When I met him in the tax office I thought maybe I could make something +again, but I could not. But I had not any idea I could when I came, and +as it turned out I did get off entirely free. + +I put up my hand and made a statement. It gave me a good deal of pain to +do that. I was not used to it. I was born and reared in the higher +circles of Missouri, and there we don't do such things--didn't in my +time, but we have got that little matter settled--got a sort of tax +levied on me. + +Then he touched me. Yes, he touched me this time, because he cried +--cried! He was moved to tears to see that I, a virtuous person only a +year before, after immersion for one year--during one year in the New +York morals--had no more conscience than a millionaire. + + + + + + +THE DAY WE CELEBRATE, + + ADDRESS AT THE FOURTH-OF-JULY DINNER OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY, + LONDON, 1899. + +I noticed in Ambassador Choate's speech that he said: "You may be +Americans or Englishmen, but you cannot be both at the same time." +You responded by applause. + +Consider the effect of a short residence here. I find the Ambassador +rises first to speak to a toast, followed by a Senator, and I come third. +What a subtle tribute that to monarchial influence of the country when +you place rank above respectability! + +I was born modest, and if I had not been things like this would force it +upon me. I understand it quite well. I am here to see that between them +they do justice to the day we celebrate, and in case they do not I must +do it myself. But I notice they have considered this day merely from one +side--its sentimental, patriotic, poetic side. But it has another side. +It has a commercial, a business side that needs reforming. It has a +historical side. + +I do not say "an" historical side, because I am speaking the American +language. I do not see why our cousins should continue to say "an" +hospital, "an" historical fact, "an" horse. It seems to me the Congress +of Women, now in session, should look to it. I think "an" is having a +little too much to do with it. It comes of habit, which accounts for +many things. + +Yesterday, for example, I was at a luncheon party. At the end of the +party a great dignitary of the English Established Church went away half +an hour before anybody else and carried off my hat. Now, that was an +innocent act on his part. He went out first, and of course had the +choice of hats. As a rule I try to get out first myself. But I hold +that it was an innocent, unconscious act, due, perhaps, to heredity. +He was thinking about ecclesiastical matters, and when a man is in that +condition of mind he will take anybody's hat. The result was that the +whole afternoon I was under the influence of his clerical hat and could +not tell a lie. Of course, he was hard at it. + +It is a compliment to both of us. His hat fitted me exactly; my hat +fitted him exactly. So I judge I was born to rise to high dignity in the +Church some how or other, but I do not know what he was born for. That +is an illustration of the influence of habit, and it is perceptible here +when they say "an" hospital, "an" European, "an" historical. + +The business aspects of the Fourth of July is not perfect as it stands. +See what it costs us every year with loss of life, the crippling of +thousands with its fireworks, and the burning down of property. It is +not only sacred to patriotism sand universal freedom, but to the surgeon, +the undertaker, the insurance offices--and they are working, it for all +it is worth. + +I am pleased to see that we have a cessation of war for the time. This +coming from me, a soldier, you will appreciate. I was a soldier in the +Southern war for two weeks, and when gentlemen get up to speak of the +great deeds our army and navy have recently done, why, it goes all +through me and fires up the old war spirit. I had in my first engagement +three horses shot under me. The next ones went over my head, the next +hit me in the back. Then I retired to meet an engagement. + +I thank you, gentlemen, for making even a slight reference to the war +profession, in which I distinguished myself, short as my career was. + + + + + + +INDEPENDENCE DAY + + The American Society in London gave a banquet, July 4, 1907, at + the Hotel Cecil. Ambassador Choate called on Mr. Clemens to + respond to the toast "The Day We Celebrate." + +MR. CHAIRMAN, MY LORD, AND GENTLEMEN,--Once more it happens, as it has +happened so often since I arrived in England a week or two ago, that +instead of celebrating the Fourth of July properly as has been indicated, +I have to first take care of my personal character. Sir Mortimer Durand +still remains unconvinced. Well, I tried to convince these people from +the beginning that I did not take the Ascot Cup; and as I have failed to +convince anybody that I did not take the cup, I might as well confess I +did take it and be done with it. I don't see why this uncharitable +feeling should follow me everywhere, and why I should have that crime +thrown up to me on all occasions. The tears that I have wept over it +ought to have created a different feeling than this--and, besides, +I don't think it is very right or fair that, considering England has been +trying to take a cup of ours for forty years--I don't see why they should +take so much trouble when I tried to go into the business myself. + +Sir Mortimer Durand, too, has had trouble from going to a dinner here, +and he has told you what he suffered in consequence. But what did he +suffer? He only missed his train, and one night of discomfort, and he +remembers it to this day. Oh! if you could only think what I have +suffered from a similar circumstance. Two or three years ago, in New +York, with that Society there which is made up of people from all British +Colonies, and from Great Britain generally, who were educated in British +colleges and. British schools, I was there to respond to a toast of some +kind or other, and I did then what I have been in the habit of doing, +from a selfish motive, for a long time, and that is, I got myself placed +No, 3 in the list of speakers--then you get home early. + +I had to go five miles up-river, and had to catch a, particular train or +not get there. But see the magnanimity which is born in me, which I have +cultivated all my life. A very famous and very great British clergyman +came to me presently, and he said: "I am away down in the list; I have +got to catch a certain train this Saturday night; if I don't catch that +train I shall be carried beyond midnight and break the Sabbath. Won't +you change places with me?" I said: "Certainly I will." I did it at +once. Now, see what happened. + +Talk about Sir Mortimer Durand's sufferings for a single night! I have +suffered ever since because I saved that gentleman from breaking the +Sabbath-yes, saved him. I took his place, but I lost my train, and it +was I who broke the Sabbath. Up to that time I never had broken the +Sabbath in my life, and from that day to this I never have kept it. + +Oh! I am learning much here to-night. I find I didn't know anything +about the American Society--that is, I didn't know its chief virtue. +I didn't know its chief virtue until his Excellency our Ambassador +revealed it--I may say, exposed it. I was intending to go home on the +13th of this month, but I look upon that in a different light now. I am +going to stay here until the American Society pays my passage. + +Our Ambassador has spoken of our Fourth of July and the noise it makes. +We have got a double Fourth of July--a daylight Fourth and a midnight +Fourth. During the day in America, as our Ambassador has indicated, we +keep the Fourth of July properly in a reverent spirit. We devote it to +teaching our children patriotic things--reverence for the Declaration of +Independence. We honor the day all through the daylight hours, and when +night comes we dishonor it. Presently--before long--they are getting +nearly ready to begin now--on the Atlantic coast, when night shuts down, +that pandemonium will begin, and there will be noise, and noise, and +noise--all night long--and there will be more than noise there will be +people crippled, there will be people killed, there will be people who +will lose their eyes, and all through that permission which we give to +irresponsible boys to play with firearms and fire-crackers, and all sorts +of dangerous things: We turn that Fourth of July, alas! over to rowdies +to drink and get drunk and make the night hideous, and we cripple and +kill more people than you would imagine. + +We probably began to celebrate our Fourth-of-July night in that way one +hundred and twenty-five years ago, and on every Fourth-of-July night +since these horrors have grown and grown, until now, in our five +thousand towns of America, somebody gets killed or crippled on every +Fourth-of-July night, besides those cases of sick persons whom we never +hear of, who die as the result of the noise or the shock. They cripple +and kill more people on the Fourth of July in, America than they kill and +cripple in our wars nowadays, and there are no pensions for these folk. +And, too, we burn houses. Really we destroy more property on every +Fourth-of-July night than the whole of the United States was worth one +hundred and twenty-five years ago. Really our Fourth of July is our day +of mourning, our day of sorrow. Fifty thousand people who have lost +friends, or who have had friends crippled, receive that Fourth of July, +when it comes, as a day of mourning for the losses they have sustained in +their families. + +I have suffered in that way myself. I have had relatives killed in that +way. One was in Chicago years ago--an uncle of mine, just as good an +uncle as I have ever had, and I had lots of them--yes, uncles to burn, +uncles to spare. This poor uncle, full of patriotism, opened his mouth +to hurrah, and a rocket went down his throat. Before that man could ask +for a drink of water to quench that thing, it blew up and scattered him +all, over the forty-five States, and--really, now, this is true--I know +about it myself--twenty-four hours after that it was raining buttons, +recognizable as his, on the Atlantic seaboard. A person cannot have a +disaster like that and be entirely cheerful the rest of his life. I had +another uncle, on an entirely different Fourth of July, who was blown up +that way, and really it trimmed him as it would a tree. He had hardly a +limb left on him anywhere. All we have left now is an expurgated edition +of that uncle. But never mind about these things; they are merely +passing matters. Don't let me make you sad. + +Sir Mortimer Durand said that you, the English people, gave up your +colonies over there--got tired of them--and did it with reluctance. +Now I wish you just to consider that he was right about that, and that he +had his reasons for saying that England did not look upon our Revolution +as a foreign war, but as a civil war fought by Englishmen. + +Our Fourth of July which we honor so much, and which we love so much, and +which we take so much pride in, is an English institution, not an +American one, and it comes of a great ancestry. The first Fourth of July +in that noble genealogy dates back seven centuries lacking eight years. +That is the day of the Great Charter--the Magna Charta--which was born at +Runnymede in the next to the last year of King John, and portions of the +liberties secured thus by those hardy Barons from that reluctant King +John are a part of our Declaration of Independence, of our Fourth of +July, of our American liberties. And the second of those Fourths of July +was not born, until four centuries later, in, Charles the First's time, +in the Bill of Rights, and that is ours, that is part of our liberties. +The next one was still English, in New England, where they established +that principle which remains with us to this day, and will continue to +remain with us--no taxation without representation. That is always going +to stand, and that the English Colonies in New England gave us. + +The Fourth of July, and the one which you are celebrating now, born, in +Philadelphia on the 4th of July, 1776--that is English, too. It is not +American. Those were English colonists, subjects of King George III., +Englishmen at heart, who protested against the oppressions of the Home +Government. Though they proposed to cure those oppressions and remove +them, still remaining under the Crown, they were not intending a +revolution. The revolution was brought about by circumstances which they +could not control. The Declaration of Independence was written by a +British subject, every name signed to it was the name of a British +subject. There was not the name of a single American attached to the +Declaration of Independence--in fact, there was not an American in the +country in that day except the Indians out on the plains. They were +Englishmen, all Englishmen--Americans did not begin until seven, years +later, when that Fourth of July had become seven years old, and then, the +American Republic was established. Since then, there have been +Americans. So you see what we owe to England in the matter of liberties. + +We have, however, one Fourth of July which is absolutely our own, and +that is that great proclamation issued forty years ago by that great +American to whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid that just and beautiful +tribute--Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's proclamation, which not only set the +black slaves free, but set the white man free also. The owner was set +free from the burden and offence, that sad condition of things where he +was in so many instances a master and owner of slaves when he did not +want to be. That proclamation set them all free. But even in this +matter England suggested it, for England had set her slaves free thirty +years before, and we followed her example. We always followed her +example, whether it was good or bad. + +And it was an English judge that issued that other great proclamation, +and established that great principle that, when a slave, let him belong +to whom he may, and let him come whence he may, sets his foot upon +English soil, his fetters by that act fall away and he is a free man +before the world. We followed the example of 1833, and we freed our +slaves as I have said. + +It is true, then, that all our Fourths of July, and we have five of them, +England gave to us, except that one that I have mentioned--the +Emancipation Proclamation, and, lest we forget, let us all remember that +we owe these things to England. Let us be able to say to Old England, +this great-hearted, venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our +Fourths of July that we love and that we honor and revere, you gave us +the Declaration of Independence, which is the Charter of our rights, you, +the venerable Mother of Liberties, the Protector of Anglo-Saxon Freedom +--you gave us these things, and we do most honestly thank you for them. + + + + + + +AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH + + ADDRESS AT A GATHERING OF AMERICANS IN LONDON, JULY 4, 1872 + +MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I thank you for the compliment +which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it I will +not afflict you with many words. It is pleasant to celebrate in this +peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an experiment +which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and wrought out to +a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors. It has taken nearly +a hundred years to bring the English and Americans into kindly and +mutually appreciative relations, but I believe it has been accomplished +at last. It was a great step when the two last misunderstandings were +settled by arbitration instead of cannon. It is another great step when +England adopts our sewing-machines without claiming the invention--as +usual. It was another when they imported one of our sleeping-cars the +other day. And it warmed my heart more than, I can tell, yesterday, when +I witnessed the spectacle of an Englishman, ordering an American sherry +cobbler of his own free will and accord--and not only that but with a +great brain and a level head reminding the barkeeper not to forget the +strawberries. With a common origin, a common language, a common +literature, a common religion, and--common drinks, what is longer needful +to the cementing of the two nations together in a permanent bond of +brotherhood? + +This is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land. A great and +glorious land, too--a land which has developed a Washington, a Franklin, +a Wm. M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel C. +Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had its equal (in some +respects), and a United States Army which conquered sixty Indians in +eight months by tiring them out which is much better than uncivilized +slaughter, God knows. We have a criminal jury system which is superior +to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty +of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read. +And I may observe that we have an insanity plea that would have saved +Cain. I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some +legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world. + +I refer with effusion to our railway system, which consents to let us +live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners. It only +destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and +twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and +unnecessary people at crossings. The companies seriously regretted the +killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for +some of them--voluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not +claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law against +a railway company. But, thank Heaven, the railway companies are +generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without--compulsion. +I know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time. After an +accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old relative +of mine in a basket, with the remark, "Please state what figure you hold +him at--and return the basket." Now there couldn't be anything +friendlier than that. + +But I must not stand here and brag all night. However, you won't mind a +body bragging a little about his country on the Fourth of July. It is a +fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle. I will say only one more word +of brag--and a hopeful one. It is this. We have a form of government +which gives each man a fair chance and no favor. With us no individual +is born with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in +contempt. Let such of us as are not dukes find our consolation in that. +And we may find hope for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is the +condition of our political morality to-day, England has risen up out of a +far fouler since the days when Charles I. ennobled courtesans and all +political place was a matter of bargain and sale. There is hope for us +yet.* + + *At least the above is the speech which I was going to make, + but our minister, General Schenck, presided, and after the + blessing, got up and made a great, long, inconceivably dull + harangue, and wound up by saying that inasmuch as speech-making + did not seem to exhilarate the guests much, all further oratory + would be dispensed with during the evening, and we could just + sit and talk privately to our elbow-neighbors and have a good, + sociable time. It is known that in consequence of that remark + forty-four perfected speeches died in the womb. The + depression, the gloom, the solemnity that reigned over the + banquet from that time forth will be a lasting memory with many + that were there. By that one thoughtless remark General + Schenck lost forty-four of the best friends he had in England. + More than one said that night: "And this is the sort of person + that is sent to represent us in a great sister empire!" + + + + + + +ABOUT LONDON + + ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN BY THE SAVAGE CLUB, + LONDON, SEPTEMBER 28, 1872. + + Reported by Moncure D. Conway in the Cincinnati Commercial. + +It affords me sincere pleasure to meet this distinguished club, a club +which has extended its hospitalities and its cordial welcome to so many +of my countrymen. I hope [and here the speaker's voice became low and +fluttering] you will excuse these clothes. I am going to the theatre; +that will explain these clothes. I have other clothes than these. +Judging human nature by what I have seen of it, I suppose that the +customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is to make a pun +on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that he is the +first man that that idea has occurred to. It is a credit to our human +nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all our +depravity (and God knows and you know we are depraved enough) and all our +sophistication, and untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ of +innocence and simplicity still. When a stranger says to me, with a glow +of inspiration in his eye, some gentle, innocuous little thing about +"Twain and one flesh," and all that sort of thing, I don't try to crush +that man into the earth--no. I feel like saying: "Let me take you by the +hand, sir; let me embrace you; I have not heard that pun for weeks." +We will deal in palpable puns. We will call parties named King "Your +Majesty," and we will say to the Smiths that we think we have heard that +name before somewhere. Such is human nature. We cannot alter this. +It is God that made us so for some good and wise purpose. Let us not +repine. But though I may seem strange, may seem eccentric, I mean to +refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though I could make a +very good one if I had time to think about it--a week. + +I cannot express to you what entire enjoyment I find in this first visit +to this prodigious metropolis of yours. Its wonders seem to me to be +limitless. I go about as in a dream--as in a realm of enchantment--where +many things are rare and beautiful, and all things are strange and +marvellous. Hour after hour I stand--I stand spellbound, as it were--and +gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square. [Leicester Square being a +horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the centre, the +king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better +condition.] I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry VIII., and +Judge Jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind +which of my ancestors I admire the most. I go to that matchless Hyde +Park and drive all around it, and then I start to enter it at the Marble +Arch---and--am induced to "change my mind." [Cabs are not permitted in +Hyde Park--nothing less aristocratic than a private carriage.] It is a +great benefaction--is Hyde Park. There, in his hansom cab, the invalid +can go--the poor, sad child of misfortune--and insert his nose between +the railings, and breathe the pure, health--giving air of the country and +of heaven. And if he is a swell invalid, who isn't obliged to depend +upon parks for his country air, he can drive inside--if he owns his +vehicle. I drive round and round Hyde Park, and the more I see of the +edges of it the more grateful I am that the margin is extensive. + +And I have been to the Zoological Gardens. What a wonderful place that +is! I never have seen such a curious and interesting variety of wild +animals in any garden before--except "Mabilie." I never believed before +there were so many different kinds of animals in the world as you can +find there--and I don't believe it yet. I have been to the British +Museum. I would advise you to drop in there some time when you have +nothing to do for--five minutes--if you have never been there: It seems +to me the noblest monument that this nation has yet erected to her +greatness. I say to her, our greatness--as a nation. True, she has +built other monuments, and stately ones, as well; but these she has +uplifted in honor of two or three colossal demigods who have stalked +across the world's stage, destroying tyrants and delivering nations, and +whose prodigies will still live in the memories of men ages after their +monuments shall have crumbled to dust--I refer to the Wellington and +Nelson monuments, and--the Albert memorial. [Sarcasm. The Albert +memorial is the finest monument in the world, and celebrates the +existence of as commonplace a person as good luck ever lifted out of +obscurity.] + +The library at the British Museum I find particularly astounding. +I have read there hours together, and hardly made an impression on it. +I revere that library. It is the author's friend. I don't care how mean +a book is, it always takes one copy. [A copy of every book printed in +Great Britain must by law be sent to the British Museum, a law much +complained of by publishers.] And then every day that author goes there +to gaze at that book, and is encouraged to go on in the good work. +And what a touching sight it is of a Saturday afternoon to see the poor, +careworn clergymen gathered together in that vast reading--room cabbaging +sermons for Sunday. You will pardon my referring to these things. + +Everything in this monster city interests me, and I cannot keep from +talking, even at the risk of being instructive. People here seem always +to express distances by parables. To a stranger it is just a little +confusing to be so parabolic--so to speak. I collar a citizen, and I +think I am going to get some valuable information out of him. I ask him +how far it is to Birmingham, and he says it is twenty-one shillings and +sixpence. Now we know that doesn't help a man who is trying to learn. +I find myself down-town somewhere, and I want to get some sort of idea +where I am--being usually lost when alone--and I stop a citizen and say: +"How far is it to Charing Cross?" "Shilling fare in a cab," and off he +goes. I suppose if I were to ask a Londoner how far it, is from the +sublime to the ridiculous, he would try to express it in coin. But I am +trespassing upon your time with these geological statistics and +historical reflections. I will not longer keep you from your orgies. +'Tis a real pleasure for me to be here, and I thank you for it. The name +of the Savage Club is associated in my mind with the kindly interest and +the friendly offices which you lavished upon an old friend of mine who +came among you a stranger, and you opened your English hearts to him and +gave him welcome and a home--Artemus Ward. Asking that you will join me, +I give you his memory. + + + + + + +PRINCETON + + Mr. Clemens spent several days in May, 1901, in Princeton, New + Jersey, as the guest of Lawrence Hutton. He gave a reading one + evening before a large audience composed of university students + and professors. Before the reading Mr. Clemens said: + +I feel exceedingly surreptitious in coming down here without an +announcement of any kind. I do not want to see any advertisements +around, for the reason that I'm not a lecturer any longer. I reformed +long ago, and I break over and commit this sin only just one time this +year: and that is moderate, I think, for a person of my disposition. It +is not my purpose to lecture any more as long as I live. I never intend +to stand up on a platform any more--unless by the request of a sheriff or +something like that. + + + + + + +THE ST. LOUIS HARBOR-BOAT "MARK TWAIN" + + The Countess de Rochambeau christened the St. Louis harbor-boat + 'Mark Twain' in honor of Mr. Clemens, June 6, 1902. Just + before the luncheon he acted as pilot. + + "Lower away lead!" boomed out the voice of the pilot. + + "Mark twain, quarter five and one-half-six feet!" replied the + leadsman below. + + "You are all dead safe as long as I have the wheel--but this is + my last time at the wheel." + + At the luncheon Mr. Clemens made a short address. + +First of all, no--second of all--I wish to offer my thanks for the honor +done me by naming this last rose of summer of the Mississippi Valley for +me, this boat which represents a perished interest, which I fortified +long ago, but did not save its life. And, in the first place, I wish to +thank the Countess de Rochambeau for the honor she has done me in +presiding at this christening. + +I believe that it is peculiarly appropriate that I should be allowed the +privilege of joining my voice with the general voice of St. Louis and +Missouri in welcoming to the Mississippi Valley and this part of the +continent these illustrious visitors from France. + +When La Salle came down this river a century and a quarter ago there was +nothing on its banks but savages. He opened up this great river, and by +his simple act was gathered in this great Louisiana territory. I would +have done it myself for half the money. + + + + + + +SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY + + ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN BY COLONEL GEORGE HARVEY AT + DELMONICO'S, DECEMBER 5, 1905, TO CELEBRATE THE SEVENTIETH + ANNIVERSARY OF MR. CLEMENS' BIRTH + + Mr. Howells introduced Mr. Clemens: + + "Now, ladies and gentlemen, and Colonel Harvey, I will try not + to be greedy on your behalf in wishing the health of our + honored and, in view of his great age, our revered guest. I + will not say, 'Oh King, live forever!' but 'Oh King, live as + long as you like!'" [Amid great applause and waving of napkins + all rise and drink to Mark Twain.] + +Well, if I made that joke, it is the best one I ever made, and it is in +the prettiest language, too.--I never can get quite to that height. But +I appreciate that joke, and I shall remember it--and I shall use it when +occasion requires. + +I have had a great many birthdays in my time. I remember the first one +very well, and I always think of it with indignation; everything was so +crude, unaesthetic, primeval. Nothing like this at all. No proper +appreciative preparation made; nothing really ready. Now, for a person +born with high and delicate instincts--why, even the cradle wasn't +whitewashed--nothing ready at all. I hadn't any hair, I hadn't any +teeth, I hadn't any clothes, I had to go to my first banquet just like +that. Well, everybody came swarming in. It was the merest little bit of +a village--hardly that, just a little hamlet, in the backwoods of +Missouri, where nothing ever happened, and the people were all +interested, and they all came; they looked me over to see if there was +anything fresh in my line. Why, nothing ever happened in that village +--I--why, I was the only thing that had really happened there for months +and months and months; and although I say it myself that shouldn't, I +came the nearest to being a real event that had happened in that village +in more than, two years. Well, those people came, they came with that +curiosity which is so provincial, with that frankness which also is so +provincial, and they examined me all around and gave their opinion. +Nobody asked them, and I shouldn't have minded if anybody had paid me a +compliment, but nobody did. Their opinions were all just green with +prejudice, and I feel those opinions to this day. Well, I stood that as +long as--well, you know I was born courteous, and I stood it to the +limit. I stood it an hour, and then the worm turned. I was the warm; it +was my turn to turn, and I turned. I knew very well the strength of my +position; I knew that I was the only spotlessly pure and innocent person +in that whole town, and I came out and said so: And they could not say a +word. It was so true: They blushed; they were embarrassed. Well, that +was the first after-dinner speech I ever made: I think it was after +dinner. + +It's a long stretch between that first birthday speech and this one. +That was my cradle-song; and this is my swan-song, I suppose. I am used +to swan-songs; I have sung them several, times. + +This is my seventieth birthday, and I wonder if you all rise to the size +of that proposition, realizing all the significance of that phrase, +seventieth birthday. + +The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life when you arrive at a new +and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which +have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon +your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach--unrebuked. You can +tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. You shall +never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you +climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell +on the particulars with senile rapture. I have been anxious to explain +my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right. + +I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly +to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else. It sounds like an +exaggeration, but that is really the common rule for attaining to old +age. When we examine the programme of any of these garrulous old people +we always find that the habits which have preserved them would have +decayed us; that the way of life which enabled them to live upon the +property of their heirs so long, as Mr. Choate says, would have put us +out of commission ahead of time. I will offer here, as a sound maxim, +this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road. + +I will now teach, offering my way of life to whomsoever desires to commit +suicide by the scheme which has enabled me to beat the doctor and the +hangman for seventy years. Some of the details may sound untrue, but +they are not. I am not here to deceive; I am here to teach. + +We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to +harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. Since forty I have +been regular about going to bed and getting up--and that is one of the +main things. I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't +anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I +had to. This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity. +It has saved me sound, but it would injure another person. + +In the matter of diet--which is another main thing--I have been +persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me +until one or the other of us got the best of it. Until lately I got the +best of it myself. But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince-pie +after midnight; up to then I had always believed it wasn't loaded. For +thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and +no bite nor sup until seven-thirty in the evening. Eleven hours. That +is all right for me, and is wholesome, because I have never had a +headache in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy +comfortably by that road, and they would be foolish to try it. And I +wish to urge upon you this--which I think is wisdom--that if you find you +can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go. When +they take off the Pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on +your things, count your checks, and get out at the first way station +where there's a cemetery. + +I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. +I have no other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when +I began to smoke, I only know that it was in my father's lifetime, and +that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I was +a shade past eleven; ever since then I have smoked publicly. As an +example to others, and--not that I care for moderation myself, it has +always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when +awake. It is a good rule. I mean, for me; but some of you know quite +well that it wouldn't answer for everybody that's trying to get to be +seventy. + +I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I wake up in the night, +sometimes once, sometimes twice; sometimes three times, and I never waste +any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old and dear and +precious to me that I would feel as you, sir, would feel if you should +lose the only moral you've got--meaning the chairman--if you've got one: +I am making no charges: I will grant, here, that I have stopped smoking +now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it +was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a +slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds. + +To-day it is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the limit. I have +never bought cigars with life-belts around them. I early found that +those were too expensive for me: I have always bought cheap cigars +--reasonably cheap, at any rate. Sixty years ago they cost me four +dollars a barrel, but my taste has improved, latterly, and I pay seven, +now. Six or seven. Seven, I think. Yes; it's seven. But that includes +the barrel. I often have smoking-parties at my house; but the people +that come have always just taken the pledge. I wonder why that is? + +As for drinking, I have no rule about that. When the others drink I +like to help; otherwise I remain dry, by habit and preference. This +dryness does not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because you are +different. You let it alone. + +Since I was seven years old I have seldom take, a dose of medicine, and +have still seldomer needed one. But up to seven I lived exclusively on +allopathic medicines. Not that I needed them, for I don't think I did; +it was for economy; my father took a drug-store for a debt, and it made +cod-liver oil cheaper than the other breakfast foods. We had nine +barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years. Then I was weaned. The +rest of the family had to get along with rhubarb and ipecac and such +things, because I was the pet. I was the first Standard Oil Trust. +I had it all. By the time the drugstore was exhausted my health was +established, and there has never been much the matter with me since. +But you know very well it would be foolish for the average child to start +for seventy on that basis. It happened to be just the thing for me, +but that was merely an accident; it couldn't happen again in a century. + +I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never +intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any benefit +when you are tired; and I was always tired. But let another person try +my way, and see where he will come out. I desire now to repeat and +emphasise that maxim: We can't reach old age by another man's road. My +habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you. + +I have lived a severely moral life. But it would be a mistake for other +people to try that, or for me to recommend it. Very few would succeed: +you have to have a perfectly colossal stock of morals; and you can't get +them on a margin; you have to have the whole thing, and put them in your +box. Morals are an acquirement--like music, like a foreign language, +like piety, poker, paralysis--no man is born with them. I wasn't myself, +I started poor. I hadn't a single moral. There is hardly a man in this +house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that--the +world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. +I can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, +the weather, the--I can remember how everything looked. It was an old +moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, +anyway. But if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a +dry place, and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's +Fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat +of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she +will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. +When I got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she +hadn't any exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. +Under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and +served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she +got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and +character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for +business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her +--ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was--I sold her to Leopold, the pirate +King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very +glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 +feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They +believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match. + +Morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin +microbes, and the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes is +morals. Now you take a sterilized Christian--I mean, you take the +sterilized Christian, for there's only one. Dear sir, I wish you +wouldn't look at me like that. + +Threescore years and ten! + +It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After that, you owe no +active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a +time-expired man, to use Kipling's military phrase: You have served your +term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become an +honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not +for you, nor any bugle-tail but "lights out." You pay the time-worn duty +bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer--and without prejudice--for +they are not legally collectable. + +The previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many +tinges, you cam lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you will +never need it again. If you shrink at thought of night, and winter, and +the late home-coming from the banquet and the lights and the laughter +through the deserted streets--a desolation which would not remind you +now, as for a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping, and you +must creep in a-tiptoe and not disturb them, but would only remind you +that you need not tiptoe, you can never disturb them more--if you shrink +at thought of these things, you need only reply, "Your invitation honors +me, and pleases me because you still keep me in your remembrance, but I +am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney-corner, and smoke my +pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all +affection; and that when you in your return shall arrive at pier No.70 +you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay +your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart." + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mark Twain's Speeches +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + +MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS COMPLETE + +ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE + + +MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1853-1866 + +VOLUME I + + +FOREWORD + +Nowhere is the human being more truly revealed than in his letters. +Not in literary letters--prepared with care, and the thought of possible +publication--but in those letters wrought out of the press of +circumstances, and with no idea of print in mind. A collection of such +documents, written by one whose life has become of interest to mankind at +large, has a value quite aside from literature, in that it reflects in +some degree at least the soul of the writer. + +The letters of Mark Twain are peculiarly of the revealing sort. He was a +man of few restraints and of no affectations. In his correspondence, +as in his talk, he spoke what was in his mind, untrammeled by literary +conventions. + +Necessarily such a collection does not constitute a detailed life story, +but is supplementary to it. An extended biography of Mark Twain has +already been published. His letters are here gathered for those who wish +to pursue the subject somewhat more exhaustively from the strictly +personal side. Selections from this correspondence were used in the +biography mentioned. Most of these are here reprinted in the belief that +an owner of the "Letters" will wish the collection to be reasonably +complete. + + +[Etext Editor's Note: A. B. Paine considers this compendium a supplement +to his "Mark Twain, A Biography", I have arranged the volumes of the +"Letters" to correspond as closely as possible with the dates of the +Project Gutenberg six volumes of the "Biography". D.W.] + + + +MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS + +MARK TWAIN--A BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY + +SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS, for nearly half a century known and celebrated +as "Mark Twain," was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835. +He was one of the foremost American philosophers of his day; he was the +world's most famous humorist of any day. During the later years of his +life he ranked not only as America's chief man of letters, but likewise +as her best known and best loved citizen. + +The beginnings of that life were sufficiently unpromising. The family +was a good one, of old Virginia and Kentucky stock, but its circumstances +were reduced, its environment meager and disheartening. The father, John +Marshall Clemens--a lawyer by profession, a merchant by vocation--had +brought his household to Florida from Jamestown, Tennessee, somewhat +after the manner of judge Hawkins as pictured in The Gilded Age. Florida +was a small town then, a mere village of twenty-one houses located on +Salt River, but judge Clemens, as he was usually called, optimistic and +speculative in his temperament, believed in its future. Salt River would +be made navigable; Florida would become a metropolis. He established a +small business there, and located his family in the humble frame cottage +where, five months later, was born a baby boy to whom they gave the name +of Samuel--a family name--and added Langhorne, after an old Virginia +friend of his father. + +The child was puny, and did not make a very sturdy fight for life. +Still he weathered along, season after season, and survived two stronger +children, Margaret and Benjamin. By 1839 Judge Clemens had lost faith in +Florida. He removed his family to Hannibal, and in this Mississippi +River town the little lad whom the world was to know as Mark Twain spent +his early life. In Tom Sawyer we have a picture of the Hannibal of those +days and the atmosphere of his boyhood there. + +His schooling was brief and of a desultory kind. It ended one day in +1847, when his father died and it became necessary that each one should +help somewhat in the domestic crisis. His brother Orion, ten years his +senior, was already a printer by trade. Pamela, his sister; also +considerably older, had acquired music, and now took a few pupils. +The little boy Sam, at twelve, was apprenticed to a printer named Ament. +His wages consisted of his board and clothes--"more board than clothes," +as he once remarked to the writer. + +He remained with Ament until his brother Orion bought out a small paper +in Hannibal in 1850. The paper, in time, was moved into a part of the +Clemens home, and the two brothers ran it, the younger setting most of +the type. A still younger brother, Henry, entered the office as an +apprentice. The Hannibal journal was no great paper from the beginning, +and it did not improve with time. Still, it managed to survive--country +papers nearly always manage to survive--year after year, bringing in some +sort of return. It was on this paper that young Sam Clemens began his +writings--burlesque, as a rule, of local characters and conditions +--usually published in his brother's absence; generally resulting in +trouble on his return. Yet they made the paper sell, and if Orion had +but realized his brother's talent he might have turned it into capital +even then. + +In 1853 (he was not yet eighteen) Sam Clemens grew tired of his +limitations and pined for the wider horizon of the world. He gave out to +his family that he was going to St. Louis, but he kept on to New York, +where a World's Fair was then going on. In New York he found employment +at his trade, and during the hot months of 1853 worked in a +printing-office in Cliff Street. By and by he went to Philadelphia, +where he worked a brief time; made a trip to Washington, and presently +set out for the West again, after an absence of more than a year. + +Onion, meanwhile, had established himself at Muscatine, Iowa, but soon +after removed to Keokuk, where the brothers were once more together, +till following their trade. Young Sam Clemens remained in Keokuk until +the winter of 1856-57, when he caught a touch of the South-American fever +then prevalent; and decided to go to Brazil. He left Keokuk for +Cincinnati, worked that winter in a printing-office there, and in April +took the little steamer, Paul Jones, for New Orleans, where he expected +to find a South-American vessel. In Life on the Mississippi we have his +story of how he met Horace Bixby and decided to become a pilot instead of +a South American adventurer--jauntily setting himself the stupendous task +of learning the twelve hundred miles of the Mississippi River between St. +Louis and New Orleans--of knowing it as exactly and as unfailingly, even +in the dark, as one knows the way to his own features. It seems +incredible to those who knew Mark Twain in his later years--dreamy, +unpractical, and indifferent to details--that he could have acquired so +vast a store of minute facts as were required by that task. Yet within +eighteen months he had become not only a pilot, but one of the best and +most careful pilots on the river, intrusted with some of the largest and +most valuable steamers. He continued in that profession for two and a +half years longer, and during that time met with no disaster that cost +his owners a single dollar for damage. + +Then the war broke out. South Carolina seceded in December, 1860 and +other States followed. Clemens was in New Orleans in January, 1861, when +Louisiana seceded, and his boat was put into the Confederate service and +sent up the Red River. His occupation gone, he took steamer for the +North--the last one before the blockade closed. A blank cartridge was +fired at them from Jefferson Barracks when they reached St. Louis, but +they did not understand the signal, and kept on. Presently a shell +carried away part of the pilot-house and considerably disturbed its +inmates. They realized, then, that war had really begun. + +In those days Clemens's sympathies were with the South. He hurried up to +Hannibal and enlisted with a company of young fellows who were recruiting +with the avowed purpose of "throwing off the yoke of the invader." They +were ready for the field, presently, and set out in good order, a sort of +nondescript cavalry detachment, mounted on animals more picturesque than +beautiful. Still, it was a resolute band, and might have done very well, +only it rained a good deal, which made soldiering disagreeable and hard. +Lieutenant Clemens resigned at the end of two weeks, and decided to go to +Nevada with Orion, who was a Union abolitionist and had received an +appointment from Lincoln as Secretary of the new Territory. + +In 'Roughing It' Mark Twain gives us the story of the overland journey +made by the two brothers, and a picture of experiences at the other end +--true in aspect, even if here and there elaborated in detail. He was +Orion's private secretary, but there was no private-secretary work to do, +and no salary attached to the position. The incumbent presently went to +mining, adding that to his other trades. + +He became a professional miner, but not a rich one. He was at Aurora, +California, in the Esmeralda district, skimping along, with not much to +eat and less to wear, when he was summoned by Joe Goodman, owner and +editor of the Virginia City Enterprise, to come up and take the local +editorship of that paper. He had been contributing sketches to it now +and then, under the pen, name of "Josh," and Goodman, a man of fine +literary instincts, recognized a talent full of possibilities. This was +in the late summer of 1862. Clemens walked one hundred and thirty miles +over very bad roads to take the job, and arrived way-worn and +travel-stained. He began on a salary of twenty-five dollars a week, +picking up news items here and there, and contributing occasional +sketches, burlesques, hoaxes, and the like. When the Legislature +convened at Carson City he was sent down to report it, and then, for the +first time, began signing his articles "Mark Twain," a river term, used +in making soundings, recalled from his piloting days. The name presently +became known up and down the Pacific coast. His articles were, copied +and commented upon. He was recognized as one of the foremost among a +little coterie of overland writers, two of whom, Mark Twain and Bret +Harte, were soon to acquire a world-wide fame. + +He left Carson City one day, after becoming involved in a duel, the +result of an editorial squib written in Goodman's absence, and went +across the Sierras to San Francisco. The duel turned out farcically +enough, but the Nevada law, which regarded even a challenge or its +acceptance as a felony, was an inducement to his departure. Furthermore, +he had already aspired to a wider field of literary effort. He attached +himself to the Morning Call, and wrote occasionally for one or two +literary papers--the Golden Era and the Californian---prospering well +enough during the better part of the year. Bret Harte and the rest of +the little Pacific-slope group were also on the staff of these papers, +and for a time, at least, the new school of American humor mustered in +San Francisco. + +The connection with the Call was not congenial. In due course it came to +a natural end, and Mark Twain arranged to do a daily San Francisco letter +for his old paper, the Enterprise. The Enterprise letters stirred up +trouble. They criticized the police of San Francisco so severely that +the officials found means of making the writer's life there difficult and +comfortless. With Jim Gillis, brother of a printer of whom he was fond, +and who had been the indirect cause of his troubles, he went up into +Calaveras County, to a cabin on jackass Hill. Jim Gillis, a lovable, +picturesque character (the Truthful James of Bret Harte), owned mining +claims. Mark Twain decided to spend his vacation in pocket-mining, and +soon added that science to his store of knowledge. It was a halcyon, +happy three months that he lingered there, but did not make his fortune; +he only laid the corner-stone. + +They tried their fortune at Angel's Camp, a place well known to readers +of Bret Harte. But it rained pretty steadily, and they put in most of +their time huddled around the single stove of the dingy hotel of Angel's, +telling yarns. Among the stories was one told by a dreary narrator named +Ben Coon. It was about a frog that had been trained to jump, but failed +to win a wager because the owner of a rival frog had surreptitiously +loaded him with shot. The story had been circulated among the camps, but +Mark Twain had never heard it until then. The tale and the tiresome +fashion of its telling amused him. He made notes to remember it. + +Their stay in Angel's Camp came presently to an end. One day, when the +mining partners were following the specks of gold that led to a pocket +somewhere up the hill, a chill, dreary rain set in. Jim, as usual was +washing, and Clemens was carrying water. The "color" became better and +better as they ascended, and Gillis, possessed with the mining passion, +would have gone on, regardless of the rain. Clemens, however, protested, +and declared that each pail of water was his last. Finally he said, in +his deliberate drawl: + +"Jim, I won't carry any more water. This work is too disagreeable. +Let's go to the house and wait till it clears up." + +Gillis had just taken out a pan of earth. "Bring one more pail, Sam," he +pleaded. + +"I won't do it, Jim! Not a drop! Not if I knew there was a million +dollars in that pan!" + +They left the pan standing there and went back to Angel's Camp. The rain +continued and they returned to jackass Hill without visiting their claim +again. Meantime the rain had washed away the top of the pan of earth +left standing on the slope above Angel's, and exposed a handful of +nuggets-pure gold. Two strangers came along and, observing it, had sat +down to wait until the thirty-day claim-notice posted by Jim Gillis +should expire. They did not mind the rain--not with that gold in sight +--and the minute the thirty days were up they followed the lead a few +pans further, and took out-some say ten, some say twenty, thousand +dollars. It was a good pocket. Mark Twain missed it by one pail of +water. Still, it is just as well, perhaps, when one remembers The +Jumping Frog. + +Matters having quieted down in San Francisco, he returned and took up his +work again. Artemus Ward, whom he had met in Virginia City, wrote him +for something to use in his (Ward's) new book. Clemens sent the frog +story, but he had been dilatory in preparing it, and when it reached New +York, Carleton, the publisher, had Ward's book about ready for the press. +It did not seem worth while to Carleton to include the frog story, and +handed it over to Henry Clapp, editor of the Saturday Press--a perishing +sheet-saying: + +"Here, Clapp, here's something you can use." + +The story appeared in the Saturday Press of November 18, 1865. According +to the accounts of that time it set all New York in a roar, which +annoyed, rather than gratified, its author. He had thought very little +of it, indeed, yet had been wondering why some of his more highly +regarded work had not found fuller recognition. + +But The Jumping Frog did not die. Papers printed it and reprinted it, +and it was translated into foreign tongues. The name of "Mark Twain" +became known as the author of that sketch, and the two were permanently +associated from the day of its publication. + +Such fame as it brought did not yield heavy financial return. Its author +continued to win a more or less precarious livelihood doing miscellaneous +work, until March, 1866, when he was employed by the Sacramento Union to +contribute a series of letters from the Sandwich Islands. They were +notable letters, widely read and freely copied, and the sojourn there was +a generally fortunate one. It was during his stay in the islands that +the survivors of the wrecked vessel, the Hornet, came in, after long +privation at sea. Clemens was sick at the time, but Anson Burlingame, +who was in Honolulu, on the way to China, had him carried in a cot to the +hospital, where he could interview the surviving sailors and take down +their story. It proved a great "beat" for the Union, and added +considerably to its author's prestige. On his return to San Francisco he +contributed an article on the Hornet disaster to Harper's Magazine, and +looked forward to its publication as a beginning of a real career. But, +alas! when it appeared the printer and the proof-reader had somehow +converted "Mark Twain" into "Mark Swain," and his dreams perished. + +Undecided as to his plans, he was one day advised by a friend to deliver +a lecture. He was already known as an entertaining talker, and his +adviser judged his possibilities well. In Roughing It we find the story +of that first lecture and its success. He followed it with other +lectures up and down the Coast. He had added one more profession to his +intellectual stock in trade. + +Mark Twain, now provided with money, decided to pay a visit to his +people. He set out for the East in December, 1866, via Panama, arriving +in New York in January. A few days later he was with his mother, then +living with his sister, in St. Louis. A little later he lectured in +Keokuk, and in Hannibal, his old home. + +It was about this time that the first great Mediterranean steamship +excursion began to be exploited. No such ocean picnic had ever been +planned before, and it created a good deal of interest East and West. +Mark Twain heard of it and wanted to go. He wrote to friends on the +'Alta California,' of San Francisco, and the publishers of that paper had +sufficient faith to advance the money for his passage, on the +understanding that he was to contribute frequent letters, at twenty +dollars apiece. It was a liberal offer, as rates went in those days, and +a godsend in the fullest sense of the word to Mark Twain. + +Clemens now hurried to New York in order to be there in good season for +the sailing date, which was in June. In New York he met Frank Fuller, +whom he had known as territorial Governor of Utah, an energetic and +enthusiastic admirer of the Western humorist. Fuller immediately +proposed that Clemens give a lecture in order to establish his reputation +on the Atlantic coast. Clemens demurred, but Fuller insisted, and +engaged Cooper Union for the occasion. Not many tickets were sold. +Fuller, however, always ready for an emergency, sent out a flood of +complimentaries to the school-teachers of New York and adjacent +territory, and the house was crammed. It turned out to be a notable +event. Mark Twain was at his best that night; the audience laughed +until, as some of them declared when the lecture was over, they were too +weak to leave their seats. His success as a lecturer was assured. + +The Quaker City was the steamer selected for the great oriental tour. +It sailed as advertised, June 8, 1867, and was absent five months, during +which Mark Twain contributed regularly to the 'Alta-California', and +wrote several letters for the New York Tribune. They were read and +copied everywhere. They preached a new gospel in travel literature +--a gospel of seeing with an overflowing honesty; a gospel of sincerity +in according praise to whatever he considered genuine, and ridicule to +the things believed to be shams. It was a gospel that Mark Twain +continued to preach during his whole career. It became, in fact, his +chief literary message to the world, a world ready for that message. + +He returned to find himself famous. Publishers were ready with plans for +collecting the letters in book form. The American Publishing Company, +of Hartford, proposed a volume, elaborately illustrated, to be sold by +subscription. He agreed with them as to terms, and went to Washington' +to prepare copy. But he could not work quietly there, and presently was +back in San Francisco, putting his book together, lecturing occasionally, +always to crowded houses. He returned in August, 1868, with the +manuscript of the Innocents Abroad, and that winter, while his book was +being manufactured, lectured throughout the East and Middle West, making +his headquarters in Hartford, and in Elmira, New York. + +He had an especial reason for going to Elmira. On the Quaker City he had +met a young man by the name of Charles Langdon, and one day, in the Bay +of Smyrna, had seen a miniature of the boy's sister, Olivia Langdon, then +a girl of about twenty-two. He fell in love with that picture, and still +more deeply in love with the original when he met her in New York on his +return. The Langdon home was in Elmira, and it was for this reason that +as time passed he frequently sojourned there. When the proofs of the +Innocents Abroad were sent him he took them along, and he and sweet +"Livy" Langdon read them together. What he lacked in those days in +literary delicacy she detected, and together they pruned it away. She +became his editor that winter--a position which she held until her death. + +The book was published in July, 1869, and its success was immediate and +abundant. On his wedding-day, February 2, 1870, Clemens received a check +from his publishers for more than four thousand dollars, royalty +accumulated during the three months preceding. The sales soon amounted +to more than fifty thousand copies, and had increased to very nearly one +hundred thousand at the end of the first three years. It was a book of +travel, its lowest price three dollars and fifty cents. Even with our +increased reading population no such sale is found for a book of that +description to-day. And the Innocents Abroad holds its place--still +outsells every other book in its particular field. [This in 1917. D.W.] + +Mark Twain now decided to settle down. He had bought an interest in the +Express, of Buffalo, New York, and took up his residence in that city in +a house presented to the young couple by Mr. Langdon. It did not prove a +fortunate beginning. Sickness, death, and trouble of many kinds put a +blight on the happiness of their first married year and gave, them a +distaste for the home in which they had made such a promising start. +A baby boy, Langdon Clemens, came along in November, but he was never a +strong child. By the end of the following year the Clemenses had +arranged for a residence in Hartford, temporary at first, later made +permanent. It was in Hartford that little Langdon died, in 1872. + +Clemens, meanwhile, had sold out his interest in the Express, severed his +connection with the Galaxy, a magazine for which he was doing a +department each month, and had written a second book for the American +Publishing Company, Roughing It, published in 1872. In August of the +same year he made a trip to London, to get material for a book on +England, but was too much sought after, too continuously feted, to do any +work. He went alone, but in November returned with the purpose of taking +Mrs. Clemens and the new baby, Susy, to England the following spring. +They sailed in April, 1873, and spent a good portion of the year in +England and Scotland. They returned to America in November, and Clemens +hurried back to London alone to deliver a notable series of lectures +under the management of George Dolby, formerly managing agent for Charles +Dickens. For two months Mark Twain lectured steadily to London +audiences--the big Hanover Square rooms always filled. He returned to +his family in January, 1874. + +Meantime, a home was being built for them in Hartford, and in the autumn +of 1874 they took up residence in ita happy residence, continued through +seventeen years--well-nigh perfect years. Their summers they spent in +Elmira, on Quarry Farm--a beautiful hilltop, the home of Mrs. Clemens's +sister. It was in Elmira that much of Mark Twain's literary work was +done. He had a special study there, some distance from the house, where +he loved to work out his fancies and put them into visible form. + +It was not so easy to work at Hartford; there was too much going on. +The Clemens home was a sort of general headquarters for literary folk, +near and far, and for distinguished foreign visitors of every sort. +Howells and Aldrich used it as their half-way station between Boston and +New York, and every foreign notable who visited America made a pilgrimage +to Hartford to see Mark Twain. Some even went as far as Elmira, among +them Rudyard Kipling, who recorded his visit in a chapter of his American +Notes. Kipling declared he had come all the way from India to see Mark +Twain. + +Hartford had its own literary group. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe lived +near the Clemens home; also Charles Dudley Warner. The Clemens and +Warner families were constantly associated, and The Gilded Age, published +in 1873, resulted from the friendship of Warner and Mark Twain. The +character of Colonel Sellers in that book has become immortal, and it is +a character that only Mark Twain could create, for, though drawn from his +mother's cousin, James Lampton, it embodies--and in no very exaggerated +degree--characteristics that were his own. The tendency to make millions +was always imminent; temptation was always hard to resist. Money-making +schemes are continually being placed before men of means and prominence, +and Mark Twain, to the day of his death, found such schemes fatally +attractive. + +It was because of the Sellers characteristics in him that he invested in +a typesetting-machine which cost him nearly two hundred thousand dollars +and helped to wreck his fortunes by and by. It was because of this +characteristic that he invested in numberless schemes of lesser +importance, but no less disastrous in the end. His one successful +commercial venture was his association with Charles L. Webster in the +publication of the Grant Memoirs, of which enough copies were sold to pay +a royalty of more than four hundred thousand dollars to Grant's widow +--the largest royalty ever paid from any single publication. It saved +the Grant family from poverty. Yet even this triumph was a misfortune +to Mark Twain, for it led to scores of less profitable book ventures and +eventual disaster. + +Meanwhile he had written and published a number of books. Tom Sawyer, +The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn, and +A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court were among the volumes that +had entertained the world and inspired it with admiration and love for +their author. In 1878-79 he had taken his family to Europe, where they +spent their time in traveling over the Continent. It was during this +period that he was joined by his intimate friend, the Rev. Joseph H. +Twichell, of Hartford, and the two made a journey, the story of which is +told in A Tramp Abroad. + +In 1891 the Hartford house was again closed, this time indefinitely, +and the family, now five in number, took up residence in Berlin. The +typesetting-machine and the unfortunate publishing venture were drawing +heavily on the family finances at this period, and the cost of the +Hartford establishment was too great to be maintained. During the next +three years he was distracted by the financial struggle which ended in +April, 1894, with the failure of Charles L. Webster & Co. Mark Twain now +found himself bankrupt, and nearly one hundred thousand dollars in debt. +It had been a losing fight, with this bitter ending always in view; +yet during this period of hard, hopeless effort he had written a large +portion of the book which of all his works will perhaps survive the +longest--his tender and beautiful story of Joan of Arc. All his life +Joan had been his favorite character in the world's history, and during +those trying months and years of the early nineties--in Berlin, in +Florence, in Paris--he was conceiving and putting his picture of that +gentle girl-warrior into perfect literary form. It was published in +Harper's Magazine--anonymously, because, as he said, it would not have +been received seriously had it appeared over his own name. The +authorship was presently recognized. Exquisitely, reverently, as the +story was told, it had in it the, touch of quaint and gentle humor which +could only have been given to it by Mark Twain. + +It was only now and then that Mark Twain lectured during these years. +He had made a reading tour with George W. Cable during the winter of +1884-85, but he abominated the platform, and often vowed he would never +appear before an audience again. Yet, in 1895, when he was sixty years +old, he decided to rebuild his fortunes by making a reading tour around +the world. It was not required of him to pay his debts in full. The +creditors were willing to accept fifty per cent. of the liabilities, and +had agreed to a settlement on that basis. But this did not satisfy Mrs. +Clemens, and it did not satisfy him. They decided to pay dollar for +dollar. They sailed for America, and in July, 1895, set out from Elmira +on the long trail across land and sea. Mrs. Clemens, and Clara Clemens, +joined this pilgrimage, Susy and Jean Clemens remaining at Elmira with +their aunt. Looking out of the car windows, the travelers saw Susy +waving them an adieu. It was a picture they would long remember. + +The reading tour was one of triumph. High prices and crowded houses +prevailed everywhere. The author-reader visited Australia, New Zealand, +India, Ceylon, South Africa, arriving in England, at last, with the money +and material which would pay off the heavy burden of debt and make him +once more free before the world. And in that hour of triumph came the +heavy blow. Susy Clemens, never very strong, had been struck down. The +first cable announced her illness. The mother and Clara sailed at once. +Before they were half-way across the ocean a second cable announced that +Susy was dead. The father had to meet and endure the heartbreak alone; +he could not reach America, in time for the burial. He remained in +England, and was joined there by the sorrowing family. + +They passed that winter in London, where he worked at the story of his +travels, Following the Equator, the proofs of which he read the next +summer in Switzerland. The returns from it, and from his reading +venture, wiped away Mark Twain's indebtedness and made him free. He +could go back to America; as he said, able to look any man in the face +again. + +Yet he did not go immediately. He could live more economically abroad, +and economy was still necessary. The family spent two winters in Vienna, +and their apartments there constituted a veritable court where the +world's notables gathered. Another winter in England followed, and then, +in the latter part of 1900, they went home--that is, to America. Mrs. +Clemens never could bring herself to return to Hartford, and never saw +their home there again. + +Mark Twain's return to America, was in the nature of a national event. +Wherever he appeared throngs turned out to bid him welcome. Mighty +banquets were planned in his honor. + +In a house at 14 West Tenth Street, and in a beautiful place at +Riverdale, on the Hudson, most of the next three years were passed. Then +Mrs. Clemens's health failed, and in the autumn of 1903 the family went +to Florence for her benefit. There, on the 5th of June, 1904, she died. +They brought her back and laid her beside Susy, at Elmira. That winter +the family took up residence at 21 Fifth Avenue, New York, and remained +there until the completion of Stormfield, at Redding, Connecticut, in +1908. + +In his later life Mark Twain was accorded high academic honors. Already, +in 1888, he had received from Yale College the degree of Master of Arts, +and the same college made him a Doctor of Literature in 1901. A year +later the university of his own State, at Columbia, Missouri, conferred +the same degree, and then, in 1907, came the crowning honor, when +venerable Oxford tendered him the doctor's robe. + +"I don't know why they should give me a degree like that," he said, +quaintly. "I never doctored any literature--I wouldn't know how." + +He had thought never to cross the ocean again, but he declared he would +travel to Mars and back, if necessary, to get that Oxford degree. +He appreciated its full meaning-recognition by the world's foremost +institution of learning of the achievements of one who had no learning of +the institutionary kind. He sailed in June, and his sojourn in England +was marked by a continuous ovation. His hotel was besieged by callers. +Two secretaries were busy nearly twenty hours a day attending to visitors +and mail. When he appeared on the street his name went echoing in every +direction and the multitudes gathered. On the day when he rose, in his +scarlet robe and black mortar-board, to receive his degree (he must have +made a splendid picture in that dress, with his crown of silver hair), +the vast assembly went wild. What a triumph, indeed, for the little +Missouri printer-boy! It was the climax of a great career. + +Mark Twain's work was always of a kind to make people talk, always +important, even when it was mere humor. Yet it was seldom that; there +was always wisdom under it, and purpose, and these things gave it dynamic +force and enduring life. Some of his aphorisms--so quaint in form as to +invite laughter--are yet fairly startling in their purport. His +paraphrase, "When in doubt, tell the truth," is of this sort. "Frankness +is a jewel; only the young can afford it," he once said to the writer, +apropos of a little girl's remark. His daily speech was full of such +things. The secret of his great charm was his great humanity and the +gentle quaintness and sincerity of his utterance. + +His work did not cease when the pressing need of money came to an end. +He was full of ideas, and likely to begin a new article or story at any +time. He wrote and published a number of notable sketches, articles, +stories, even books, during these later years, among them that marvelous +short story--"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg." In that story, as in +most of his later work, he proved to the world that he was much more than +a humorist--that he was, in fact, a great teacher, moralist, philosopher +--the greatest, perhaps, of his age. + +His life at Stormfield--he had never seen the place until the day of his +arrival, June 18, 1908--was a peaceful and serene old age. Not that he +was really old; he never was that. His step, his manner, his point of +view, were all and always young. He was fond of children and frequently +had them about him. He delighted in games--especially in billiards--and +in building the house at Stormfield the billiard-room was first +considered. He had a genuine passion for the sport; without it his +afternoon was not complete. His mornings he was likely to pass in bed, +smoking--he was always smoking--and attending to his correspondence and +reading. History and the sciences interested him, and his bed was strewn +with biographies and stories of astronomical and geological research. +The vastness of distances and periods always impressed him. He had no +head for figures, but he would labor for hours over scientific +calculations, trying to compass them and to grasp their gigantic import. +I remember once finding him highly elated over the fact that he had +figured out for himself the length in hours and minutes of a "light +year." He showed me the pages covered with figures, and was more proud of +them than if they had been the pages of an immortal story. Then we +played billiards, but even his favorite game could not make him +altogether forget his splendid achievement. + +It was on the day before Christmas, 1909, that heavy bereavement once +more came into the life of Mark Twain. His daughter Jean, long subject +to epileptic attacks, was seized with a convulsion while in her bath and +died before assistance reached her. He was dazed by the suddenness of +the blow. His philosophy sustained him. He was glad, deeply glad for +the beautiful girl that had been released. + +"I never greatly envied anybody but the dead," he said, when he had +looked at her. "I always envy the dead." + +The coveted estate of silence, time's only absolute gift, it was the one +benefaction he had ever considered worth while. + +Yet the years were not unkindly to Mark Twain. They brought him sorrow, +but they brought him likewise the capacity and opportunity for large +enjoyment, and at the last they laid upon him a kind of benediction. +Naturally impatient, he grew always more gentle, more generous, more +tractable and considerate as the seasons passed. His final days may be +said to have been spent in the tranquil light of a summer afternoon. + +His own end followed by a few months that of his daughter. There were +already indications that his heart was seriously affected, and soon after +Jean's death he sought the warm climate of Bermuda. But his malady made +rapid progress, and in April he returned to Stormfield. He died there +just a week later, April 21, 1910. + +Any attempt to designate Mark Twain's place in the world's literary +history would be presumptuous now. Yet I cannot help thinking that he +will maintain his supremacy in the century that produced him. I think so +because, of all the writers of that hundred years, his work was the most +human his utterances went most surely to the mark. In the long analysis +of the ages it is the truth that counts, and he never approximated, never +compromised, but pronounced those absolute verities to which every human +being of whatever rank must instantly respond. + +His understanding of subjective human nature--the vast, unwritten life +within--was simply amazing. Such knowledge he acquired at the +fountainhead--that is, from himself. He recognized in himself an extreme +example of the human being with all the attributes of power and of +weakness, and he made his exposition complete. + +The world will long miss Mark Twain; his example and his teaching will be +neither ignored nor forgotten. Genius defies the laws of perspective and +looms larger as it recedes. The memory of Mark Twain remains to us a +living and intimate presence that today, even more than in life, +constitutes a stately moral bulwark reared against hypocrisy and +superstition--a mighty national menace to sham. + + + + + + + MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS + + +I + +EARLY LETTERS, 1853. NEW YORK AND PHILADELPHIA + + We have no record of Mark Twain's earliest letters. Very likely + they were soiled pencil notes, written to some school sweetheart + --to "Becky Thatcher," perhaps--and tossed across at lucky moments, + or otherwise, with happy or disastrous results. One of those + smudgy, much-folded school notes of the Tom Sawyer period would be + priceless to-day, and somewhere among forgotten keepsakes it may + exist, but we shall not be likely to find it. No letter of his + boyhood, no scrap of his earlier writing, has come to light except + his penciled name, SAM CLEMENS, laboriously inscribed on the inside + of a small worn purse that once held his meager, almost non-existent + wealth. He became a printer's apprentice at twelve, but as he + received no salary, the need of a purse could not have been urgent. + He must have carried it pretty steadily, however, from its + appearance--as a kind of symbol of hope, maybe--a token of that + Sellers-optimism which dominated his early life, and was never + entirely subdued. + + No other writing of any kind has been preserved from Sam Clemens's + boyhood, none from that period of his youth when he had served his + apprenticeship and was a capable printer on his brother's paper, a + contributor to it when occasion served. Letters and manuscripts of + those days have vanished--even his contributions in printed form are + unobtainable. It is not believed that a single number of Orion + Clemens's paper, the Hannibal Journal, exists to-day. + + It was not until he was seventeen years old that Sam Clemens wrote a + letter any portion of which has survived. He was no longer in + Hannibal. Orion's unprosperous enterprise did not satisfy him. + His wish to earn money and to see the world had carried him first to + St. Louis, where his sister Pamela was living, then to New York + City, where a World's Fair in a Crystal Palace was in progress. + The letter tells of a visit to this great exhibition. It is not + complete, and the fragment bears no date, but it was written during + the summer of 1853. + + + Fragment of a letter from Sam L. Clemens to his sister + Pamela Moffett, in St. Louis, summer of 1853: + +. . . From the gallery (second floor) you have a glorious sight--the +flags of the different countries represented, the lofty dome, glittering +jewelry, gaudy tapestry, &c., with the busy crowd passing to and fro--tis +a perfect fairy palace--beautiful beyond description. + +The Machinery department is on the main floor, but I cannot enumerate any +of it on account of the lateness of the hour (past 8 o'clock.) It would +take more than a week to examine everything on exhibition; and as I was +only in a little over two hours tonight, I only glanced at about +one-third of the articles; and having a poor memory; I have enumerated +scarcely any of even the principal objects. The visitors to the Palace +average 6,000 daily--double the population of Hannibal. The price of +admission being 50 cents, they take in about $3,000. + +The Latting Observatory (height about 280 feet) is near the Palace--from +it you can obtain a grand view of the city and the country round. The +Croton Aqueduct, to supply the city with water, is the greatest wonder +yet. Immense sewers are laid across the bed of the Hudson River, and +pass through the country to Westchester county, where a whole river is +turned from its course, and brought to New York. From the reservoir in +the city to the Westchester county reservoir, the distance is +thirty-eight miles! and if necessary, they could supply every family +in New York with one hundred barrels of water per day! + +I am very sorry to learn that Henry has been sick. He ought to go to the +country and take exercise; for he is not half so healthy as Ma thinks he +is. If he had my walking to do, he would be another boy entirely. Four +times every day I walk a little over one mile; and working hard all day, +and walking four miles, is exercise--I am used to it, now, though, and it +is no trouble. Where is it Orion's going to? Tell Ma my promises are +faithfully kept, and if I have my health I will take her to Ky. in the +spring--I shall save money for this. Tell Jim and all the rest of them +to write, and give me all the news. I am sorry to hear such bad news +from Will and Captain Bowen. I shall write to Will soon. The +Chatham-square Post Office and the Broadway office too, are out of my +way, and I always go to the General Post Office; so you must write the +direction of my letters plain, "New York City, N. Y.," without giving the +street or anything of the kind, or they may go to some of the other +offices. (It has just struck 2 A.M. and I always get up at 6, and am +at work at 7.) You ask me where I spend my evenings. Where would you +suppose, with a free printers' library containing more than 4,000 volumes +within a quarter of a mile of me, and nobody at home to talk to? I shall +write to Ella soon. Write soon + Truly your Brother + SAM. + +P. S. I have written this by a light so dim that you nor Ma could not +read by it. + + + He was lodging in a mechanics' cheap boarding-house in Duane Street, + and we may imagine the bareness of his room, the feeble poverty of + his lamp. + + "Tell Ma my promises are faithfully kept." It was the day when he + had left Hannibal. His mother, Jane Clemens, a resolute, wiry woman + of forty-nine, had put together his few belongings. Then, holding + up a little Testament: + + "I want you to take hold of the end of this, Sam," she said, "and + make me a promise. I want you to repeat after me these words: + 'I do solemnly swear that I will not throw a card, or drink a drop + of liquor while I am gone.'" + + It was this oath, repeated after her, that he was keeping + faithfully. The Will Bowen mentioned is a former playmate, one of + Tom Sawyer's outlaw band. He had gone on the river to learn + piloting with an elder brother, the "Captain." What the bad news + was is no longer remembered, but it could not have been very + serious, for the Bowen boys remained on the river for many years. + "Ella" was Samuel Clemens's cousin and one-time sweetheart, Ella + Creel. "Jim" was Jim Wolfe, an apprentice in Orion's office, and + the hero of an adventure which long after Mark Twain wrote under the + title of, "Jim Wolfe and the Cats." + + There is scarcely a hint of the future Mark Twain in this early + letter. It is the letter of a boy of seventeen who is beginning to + take himself rather seriously--who, finding himself for the first + time far from home and equal to his own responsibilities, is willing + to carry the responsibility of others. Henry, his brother, three + years younger, had been left in the printing-office with Orion, who, + after a long, profitless fight, is planning to remove from Hannibal. + The young traveler is concerned as to the family outlook, and will + furnish advice if invited. He feels the approach of prosperity, and + will take his mother on a long-coveted trip to her old home in the + spring. His evenings? Where should he spend them, with a free + library of four thousand volumes close by? It is distinctly a + youthful letter, a bit pretentious, and wanting in the spontaneity + and humor of a later time. It invites comment, now, chiefly because + it is the first surviving document in the long human story. + + He was working in the printing-office of John A. Gray and Green, on + Cliff Street, and remained there through the summer. He must have + written more than once during this period, but the next existing + letter--also to Sister Pamela--was written in October. It is + perhaps a shade more natural in tone than the earlier example, and + there is a hint of Mark Twain in the first paragraph. + + + To Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + NEW YORK . . . , Oct. Saturday '53. +MY DEAR SISTER,--I have not written to any of the family for some time, +from the fact, firstly, that I didn't know where they were, and secondly, +because I have been fooling myself with the idea that I was going to +leave New York every day for the last two weeks. I have taken a liking +to the abominable place, and every time I get ready to leave, I put it +off a day or so, from some unaccountable cause. It is as hard on my +conscience to leave New York, as it was easy to leave Hannibal. I think +I shall get off Tuesday, though. + +Edwin Forrest has been playing, for the last sixteen days, at the +Broadway Theatre, but I never went to see him till last night. The play +was the "Gladiator." I did not like parts of it much, but other portions +were really splendid. In the latter part of the last act, where the +"Gladiator" (Forrest) dies at his brother's feet, (in all the fierce +pleasure of gratified revenge,) the man's whole soul seems absorbed in +the part he is playing; and it is really startling to see him. I am +sorry I did not see him play "Damon and Pythias" the former character +being his greatest. He appears in Philadelphia on Monday night. + +I have not received a letter from home lately, but got a "'Journal'" the +other day, in which I see the office has been sold. I suppose Ma, Orion +and Henry are in St. Louis now. If Orion has no other project in his +head, he ought to take the contract for getting out some weekly paper, if +he cannot get a foremanship. Now, for such a paper as the "Presbyterian" +(containing about 60,000,--[Sixty thousand ems, type measurement.]) +he could get $20 or $25 per week, and he and Henry could easily do the +work; nothing to do but set the type and make up the forms.... + +If my letters do not come often, you need not bother yourself about me; +for if you have a brother nearly eighteen years of age, who is not able +to take care of himself a few miles from home, such a brother is not +worth one's thoughts: and if I don't manage to take care of No. 1, be +assured you will never know it. I am not afraid, however; I shall ask +favors from no one, and endeavor to be (and shall be) as "independent as +a wood-sawyer's clerk." + +I never saw such a place for military companies as New York. Go on the +street when you will, you are sure to meet a company in full uniform, +with all the usual appendages of drums, fifes, &c. I saw a large company +of soldiers of 1812 the other day, with a '76 veteran scattered here and +there in the ranks. And as I passed through one of the parks lately, +I came upon a company of boys on parade. Their uniforms were neat, and +their muskets about half the common size. Some of them were not more +than seven or eight years of age; but had evidently been well-drilled. + +Passage to Albany (160 miles) on the finest steamers that ply' the +Hudson, is now 25 cents--cheap enough, but is generally cheaper than that +in the summer. + +I want you to write as soon as I tell you where to direct your letter. +I would let you know now, if I knew myself. I may perhaps be here a week +longer; but I cannot tell. When you write tell me the whereabouts of the +family. My love to Mr. Moffett and Ella. Tell Ella I intend to write to +her soon, whether she wants me to nor not. + Truly your Brother, + SAML L. CLEMENS. + + + He was in Philadelphia when he wrote the nest letter that has come + down to us, and apparently satisfied with the change. It is a + letter to Orion Clemens, who had disposed of his paper, but + evidently was still in Hannibal. An extended description of a trip + to Fairmount Park is omitted because of its length, its chief + interest being the tendency it shows to descriptive writing--the + field in which he would make his first great fame. There is, + however, no hint of humor, and only a mild suggestion of the author + of the Innocents Abroad in this early attempt. The letter as here + given is otherwise complete, the omissions being indicated. + + + To Orion Clemens, in Hannibal: + + PHILADELPHIA, PA. Oct. 26,1853. +MY DEAR BROTHER,--It was at least two weeks before I left New York, that +I received my last letter from home: and since then, not a word have I +heard from any of you. And now, since I think of it, it wasn't a letter, +either, but the last number of the "Daily Journal," saying that that +paper was sold, and I very naturally supposed from that, that the family +had disbanded, and taken up winter quarters in St. Louis. Therefore, I +have been writing to Pamela, till I've tired of it, and have received no +answer. I have been writing for the last two or three weeks, to send Ma +some money, but devil take me if I knew where she was, and so the money +has slipped out of my pocket somehow or other, but I have a dollar left, +and a good deal owing to me, which will be paid next Monday. I shall +enclose the dollar in this letter, and you can hand it to her. I know +it's a small amount, but then it will buy her a handkerchief, and at the +same time serve as a specimen of the kind of stuff we are paid with in +Philadelphia, for you see it's against the law, in Pennsylvania, to keep +or pass a bill of less denomination than $5. I have only seen two or +three bank bills since I have been in the State. On Monday the hands are +paid off in sparkling gold, fresh from the Mint; so your dreams are not +troubled with the fear of having doubtful money in your pocket. + +I am subbing at the Inquirer office. One man has engaged me to work for +him every Sunday till the first of next April, (when I shall return home +to take Ma to Ky;) and another has engaged my services for the 24th of +next month; and if I want it, I can get subbing every night of the week. +I go to work at 7 o'clock in the evening, and work till 3 o'clock the +next morning. I can go to the theatre and stay till 12 o'clock and then +go to the office, and get work from that till 3 the next morning; when I +go to bed, and sleep till 11 o'clock, then get up and loaf the rest of +the day. The type is mostly agate and minion, with some bourgeois; and +when one gets a good agate take,--["Agate," "minion," etc., sizes of +type; "take," a piece of work. Type measurement is by ems, meaning the +width of the letter 'm'.]--he is sure to make money. I made $2.50 last +Sunday, and was laughed at by all the hands, the poorest of whom sets +11,000 on Sunday; and if I don't set 10,000, at least, next Sunday, I'll +give them leave to laugh as much as they want to. Out of the 22 +compositors in this office, 12 at least, set 15,000 on Sunday. + +Unlike New York, I like this Philadelphia amazingly, and the people in +it. There is only one thing that gets my "dander" up--and that is the +hands are always encouraging me: telling me--"it's no use to get +discouraged--no use to be down-hearted, for there is more work here than +you can do!" "Down-hearted," the devil! I have not had a particle of +such a feeling since I left Hannibal, more than four months ago. I fancy +they'll have to wait some time till they see me down-hearted or afraid of +starving while I have strength to work and am in a city of 400,000 +inhabitants. When I was in Hannibal, before I had scarcely stepped out +of the town limits, nothing could have convinced me that I would starve +as soon as I got a little way from home.... + +The grave of Franklin is in Christ Church-yard, corner of Fifth and Arch +streets. They keep the gates locked, and one can only see the flat slab +that lies over his remains and that of his wife; but you cannot see the +inscription distinctly enough to read it. The inscription, I believe, +reads thus: + + "Benjamin | + and | Franklin" + Deborah | + +I counted 27 cannons (6 pounders) planted in the edge of the sidewalk in +Water St. the other day. They are driven into the ground, about a foot, +with the mouth end upwards. A ball is driven fast into the mouth of +each, to exclude the water; they look like so many posts. They were put +there during the war. I have also seen them planted in this manner, +round the old churches, in N. Y..... + +There is one fine custom observed in Phila. A gentleman is always +expected to hand up a lady's money for her. Yesterday, I sat in the +front end of the 'bus, directly under the driver's box--a lady sat +opposite me. She handed me her money, which was right. But, Lord! +a St. Louis lady would think herself ruined, if she should be so familiar +with a stranger. In St. Louis a man will sit in the front end of the +stage, and see a lady stagger from the far end, to pay her fare. The +Phila. 'bus drivers cannot cheat. In the front of the stage is a thing +like an office clock, with figures from 0 to 40, marked on its face. +When the stage starts, the hand of the clock is turned toward the 0. +When you get in and pay your fare, the driver strikes a bell, and the +hand moves to the figure 1--that is, "one fare, and paid for," and there +is your receipt, as good as if you had it in your pocket. When a +passenger pays his fare and the driver does not strike the bell +immediately, he is greeted "Strike that bell! will you?" + +I must close now. I intend visiting the Navy Yard, Mint, etc., before I +write again. You must write often. You see I have nothing to write +interesting to you, while you can write nothing that will not interest +me. Don't say my letters are not long enough. Tell Jim Wolfe to write. +Tell all the boys where I am, and to write. Jim Robinson, particularly. +I wrote to him from N. Y. Tell me all that is going on in H--l. + Truly your brother + SAM. + + +Those were primitive times. Imagine a passenger in these easy-going days +calling to a driver or conductor to "Strike that bell!" + +"H--l" is his abbreviation for Hannibal. He had first used it in a title +of a poem which a few years before, during one of Orion's absences, he +had published in the paper. "To Mary in Hannibal" was too long to set as +a display head in single column. The poem had no great merit, but under +the abbreviated title it could hardly fail to invite notice. It was one +of several things he did to liven up the circulation during a brief +period of his authority. + +The doubtful money he mentions was the paper issued by private banks, +"wild cat," as it was called. He had been paid with it in New York, +and found it usually at a discount--sometimes even worthless. Wages and +money were both better in Philadelphia, but the fund for his mother's +trip to Kentucky apparently did not grow very rapidly. + +The next letter, written a month later, is also to Orion Clemens, who had +now moved to Muscatine, Iowa, and established there a new paper with an +old title, 'The Journal'. + + + To Orion Clemens, in Muscatine, Iowa: + + PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 28th, 1853. +MY DEAR BROTHER,--I received your letter today. I think Ma ought to +spend the winter in St. Louis. I don't believe in that climate--it's too +cold for her. + +The printers' annual ball and supper came off the other night. The +proceeds amounted to about $1,000. The printers, as well as other +people, are endeavoring to raise money to erect a monument to Franklin, +but there are so many abominable foreigners here (and among printers, +too,) who hate everything American, that I am very certain as much money +for such a purpose could be raised in St. Louis, as in Philadelphia. +I was in Franklin's old office this morning--the "North American" +(formerly "Philadelphia Gazette") and there was at least one foreigner +for every American at work there. + +How many subscribers has the Journal got? What does the job-work pay? +and what does the whole concern pay?..... + +I will try to write for the paper occasionally, but I fear my letters +will be very uninteresting, for this incessant night-work dulls one's +ideas amazingly. + +From some cause, I cannot set type nearly so fast as when I was at home. +Sunday is a long day, and while others set 12 and 15,000, yesterday, I +only set 10,000. However, I will shake this laziness off, soon, I reckon +.... + +How do you like "free-soil?"--I would like amazingly to see a good +old-fashioned negro. + My love to all + Truly your brother + SAM. + + + We may believe that it never occurred to the young printer, looking + up landmarks of Ben Franklin, that time would show points of + resemblance between the great Franklin's career and his own. Yet + these seem now rather striking. Like Franklin, he had been taken + out of school very young and put at the printer's trade; like + Franklin, he had worked in his brother's office, and had written for + the paper. Like him, too, he had left quietly for New York and + Philadelphia to work at the trade of printing, and in time Samuel + Clemens, like Benjamin Franklin, would become a world-figure, + many-sided, human, and of incredible popularity. The boy Sam + Clemens may have had such dreams, but we find no trace of them. + + There is but one more letter of this early period. Young Clemens + spent some time in Washington, but if he wrote from there his + letters have disappeared. The last letter is from Philadelphia and + seems to reflect homesickness. The novelty of absence and travel + was wearing thin. + + + To Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 5, '53. +MY DEAR SISTER,--I have already written two letters within the last two +hours, and you will excuse me if this is not lengthy. If I had the +money, I would come to St. Louis now, while the river is open; but within +the last two or three weeks I have spent about thirty dollars for +clothing, so I suppose I shall remain where I am. I only want to return +to avoid night-work, which is injuring my eyes. I have received one or +two letters from home, but they are not written as they should be, and I +know no more about what is going on there than the man in the moon. One +only has to leave home to learn how to write an interesting letter to an +absent friend when he gets back. I suppose you board at Mrs. Hunter's +yet--and that, I think, is somewhere in Olive street above Fifth. +Philadelphia is one of the healthiest places in the Union. I wanted to +spend this winter in a warm climate, but it is too late now. I don't +like our present prospect for cold weather at all. + Truly your brother + SAM. + + + But he did not return to the West for another half year. The + letters he wrote during that period have not survived. It was late + in the summer of 1854 when he finally started for St. Louis. He sat + up for three days and nights in a smoking-car to make the journey, + and arrived exhausted. The river packet was leaving in a few hours + for Muscatine, Iowa, where his mother and his two brothers were now + located. He paid his sister a brief visit, and caught the boat. + Worn-out, he dropped into his berth and slept the thirty-six hours + of the journey. + + It was early when-he arrived--too early to arouse the family. In + the office of the little hotel where he waited for daylight he found + a small book. It contained portraits of the English rulers, with + the brief facts of their reigns. Young Clemens entertained himself + by learning this information by heart. He had a fine memory for + such things, and in an hour or two had the printed data perfectly + and permanently committed. This incidentally acquired knowledge + proved of immense value to him. It was his groundwork for all + English history. + + + + +II + +LETTERS 1856-61. KEOKUK, AND THE RIVER. END OF PILOTING + + There comes a period now of nearly four years, when Samuel Clemens + was either a poor correspondent or his letters have not been + preserved. Only two from this time have survived--happily of + intimate biographical importance. + + Young Clemens had not remained in Muscatine. His brother had no + inducements to offer, and he presently returned to St. Louis, where + he worked as a compositor on the Evening News until the following + spring, rooming with a young man named Burrough, a journeyman + chair-maker with a taste for the English classics. Orion Clemens, + meantime, on a trip to Keokuk, had casually married there, and a + little later removed his office to that city. He did not move the + paper; perhaps it did not seem worth while, and in Keokuk he + confined himself to commercial printing. The Ben Franklin Book and + Job Office started with fair prospects. Henry Clemens and a boy + named Dick Hingham were the assistants, and somewhat later, when + brother Sam came up from St. Louis on a visit, an offer of five + dollars a week and board induced him to remain. Later, when it + became increasingly difficult to pay the five dollars, Orion took + his brother into partnership, which perhaps relieved the financial + stress, though the office methods would seem to have left something + to be desired. It is about at this point that the first of the two + letters mentioned was written. The writer addressed it to his + mother and sister--Jane Clemens having by this time taken up her + home with her daughter, Mrs. Moffett. + + + To Mrs. Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + KEOKUK, Iowa, June 10th, 1856. +MY DEAR MOTHER & SISTER,--I have nothing to write. Everything is going +on well. The Directory is coming on finely. I have to work on it +occasionally, which I don't like a particle I don't like to work at too +many things at once. They take Henry and Dick away from me too. Before +we commenced the Directory, I could tell before breakfast just how much +work could be done during the day, and manage accordingly--but now, they +throw all my plans into disorder by taking my hands away from their work. +I have nothing to do with the book--if I did I would have the two book +hands do more work than they do, or else I would drop it. It is not a +mere supposition that they do not work fast enough--I know it; for +yesterday the two book hands were at work all day, Henry and Dick all the +afternoon, on the advertisements, and they set up five pages and a half +--and I set up two pages and a quarter of the same matter after supper, +night before last, and I don't work fast on such things. They are either +excessively slow motioned or very lazy. I am not getting along well with +the job work. I can't work blindly--without system. I gave Dick a job +yesterday, which I calculated he would set in two hours and I could work +off in three, and therefore just finish it by supper time, but he was +transferred to the Directory, and the job, promised this morning, remains +untouched. Through all the great pressure of job work lately, I never +before failed in a promise of the kind. + Your Son + SAM +Excuse brevity this is my 3rd letter to-night. + + + Samuel Clemens was never celebrated for his patience; we may imagine + that the disorder of the office tried his nerves. He seems, on the + whole, however, to have been rather happy in Keokuk. There were + plenty of young people there, and he was a favorite among them. But + he had grown dissatisfied, and when one day some weeks later there + fell into His hands an account of the riches of the newly explored + regions of the upper Amazon, he promptly decided to find his fortune + at the headwaters of the great South-American river. The second + letter reports this momentous decision. It was written to Henry + Clemens, who was temporarily absent-probably in Hannibal. + + + To Henry Clemens: + + KEOKUK, August 5th, '56. +MY DEAR BROTHER,--..... Ward and I held a long consultation, Sunday +morning, and the result was that we two have determined to start to +Brazil, if possible, in six weeks from now, in order to look carefully +into matters there and report to Dr. Martin in time for him to follow on +the first of March. We propose going via New York. Now, between you and +I and the fence you must say nothing about this to Orion, for he thinks +that Ward is to go clear through alone, and that I am to stop at New York +or New Orleans until he reports. But that don't suit me. My confidence +in human nature does not extend quite that far. I won't depend upon +Ward's judgment, or anybody's else--I want to see with my own eyes, and +form my own opinion. But you know what Orion is. When he gets a notion +into his head, and more especially if it is an erroneous one, the Devil +can't get it out again. So I know better than to combat his arguments +long, but apparently yielded, inwardly determined to go clear through. +Ma knows my determination, but even she counsels me to keep it from +Orion. She says I can treat him as I did her when I started to St. Louis +and went to New York--I can start to New York and go to South America! +Although Orion talks grandly about furnishing me with fifty or a hundred +dollars in six weeks, I could not depend upon him for ten dollars, so I +have "feelers" out in several directions, and have already asked for a +hundred dollars from one source (keep it to yourself.) I will lay on my +oars for awhile, and see how the wind sets, when I may probably try to +get more. Mrs. Creel is a great friend of mine, and has some influence +with Ma and Orion, though I reckon they would not acknowledge it. I am +going up there tomorrow, to press her into my service. I shall take care +that Ma and Orion are plentifully supplied with South American books. +They have Herndon's Report now. Ward and the Dr. and myself will hold a +grand consultation tonight at the office. We have agreed that no more +shall be admitted into our company. + +I believe the Guards went down to Quincy today to escort our first +locomotive home. + Write soon. + Your Brother, + SAM. + + + Readers familiar with the life of Mark Twain know that none of the + would-be adventurers found their way to the Amazon: His two + associates gave up the plan, probably for lack of means. Young + Clemens himself found a fifty-dollar bill one bleak November day + blowing along the streets of Keokuk, and after duly advertising his + find without result, set out for the Amazon, by way of Cincinnati + and New Orleans. + + "I advertised the find and left for the Amazon the same day," he + once declared, a statement which we may take with a literary + discount. + + He remained in Cincinnati that winter (1856-57) working at his + trade. No letters have been preserved from that time, except two + that were sent to a Keokuk weekly, the Saturday Post, and as these + were written for publication, and are rather a poor attempt at + burlesque humor--their chief feature being a pretended illiteracy + --they would seem to bear no relation to this collection. He roomed + that winter with a rugged, self-educated Scotchman--a mechanic, but + a man of books and philosophies, who left an impress on Mark Twain's + mental life. + + In April he took up once more the journey toward South America, but + presently forgot the Amazon altogether in the new career that opened + to him. All through his boyhood and youth Samuel Clemens had wanted + to be a pilot. Now came the long-deferred opportunity. On the + little Cincinnati steamer, the Paul Jones, there was a pilot named + Horace Bixby. Young Clemens idling in the pilot-house was one + morning seized with the old ambition, and laid siege to Bixby to + teach him the river. The terms finally agreed upon specified a fee + to Bixby of five hundred dollars, one hundred down, the balance when + the pupil had completed the course and was earning money. But all + this has been told in full elsewhere, and is only summarized here + because the letters fail to complete the story. + + Bixby soon made some trips up the Missouri River, and in his absence + turned his apprentice, or "cub," over to other pilots, such being + the river custom. Young Clemens, in love with the life, and a + favorite with his superiors, had a happy time until he came under a + pilot named Brown. Brown was illiterate and tyrannical, and from + the beginning of their association pilot and apprentice disliked + each other cordially. + + It is at this point that the letters begin once more--the first + having been written when young Clemens, now twenty-two years old, + had been on the river nearly a year. Life with Brown, of course, + was not all sorrow, and in this letter we find some of the fierce + joy of adventure which in those days Samuel Clemens loved. + + + To Onion Clemens and Wife, in Keokuk, Iowa: + + SAINT LOUIS, March 9th, 1858. +DEAR BROTHER AND SISTER,--I must take advantage of the opportunity now +presented to write you, but I shall necessarily be dull, as I feel +uncommonly stupid. We have had a hard trip this time. Left Saint Louis +three weeks ago on the Pennsylvania. The weather was very cold, and the +ice running densely. We got 15 miles below town, landed the boat, and +then one pilot. Second Mate and four deck hands took the sounding boat +and shoved out in the ice to hunt the channel. They failed to find it, +and the ice drifted them ashore. The pilot left the men with the boat +and walked back to us, a mile and a half. Then the other pilot and +myself, with a larger crew of men started out and met with the same fate. +We drifted ashore just below the other boat. Then the fun commenced. We +made fast a line 20 fathoms long, to the bow of the yawl, and put the men +(both crews) to it like horses, on the shore. Brown, the pilot, stood in +the bow, with an oar, to keep her head out, and I took the tiller. We +would start the men, and all would go well till the yawl would bring up +on a heavy cake of ice, and then the men would drop like so many +ten-pins, while Brown assumed the horizontal in the bottom of the boat. +After an hour's hard work we got back, with ice half an inch thick on the +oars. Sent back and warped up the other yawl, and then George (the first +mentioned pilot,) and myself, took a double crew of fresh men and tried +it again. This time we found the channel in less than half an hour, +and landed on an island till the Pennsylvania came along and took us off. +The next day was colder still. I was out in the yawl twice, and then we +got through, but the infernal steamboat came near running over us. We +went ten miles further, landed, and George and I cleared out again--found +the channel first trial, but got caught in the gorge and drifted +helplessly down the river. The Ocean Spray came along and started into +the ice after us, but although she didn't succeed in her kind intention +of taking us aboard, her waves washed us out, and that was all we wanted. +We landed on an island, built a big fire and waited for the boat. She +started, and ran aground! It commenced raining and sleeting, and a very +interesting time we had on that barren sandbar for the next four hours, +when the boat got off and took us aboard. The next day was terribly +cold. We sounded Hat Island, warped up around a bar and sounded again +--but in order to understand our situation you will have to read Dr. Kane. +It would have been impossible to get back to the boat. But the Maria +Denning was aground at the head of the island--they hailed us--we ran +alongside and they hoisted us in and thawed us out. We had then been out +in the yawl from 4 o'clock in the morning till half past 9 without being +near a fire. There was a thick coating of ice over men, yawl, ropes and +everything else, and we looked like rock-candy statuary. We got to Saint +Louis this morning, after an absence of 3 weeks--that boat generally +makes the trip in 2. + +Henry was doing little or nothing here, and I sent him to our clerk to +work his way for a trip, by measuring wood piles, counting coal boxes, +and other clerkly duties, which he performed satisfactorily. He may go +down with us again, for I expect he likes our bill of fare better than +that of his boarding house. + +I got your letter at Memphis as I went down. That is the best place to +write me at. The post office here is always out of my route, somehow or +other. Remember the direction: "S.L.C., Steamer Pennsylvania Care Duval +& Algeo, Wharfboat, Memphis." I cannot correspond with a paper, because +when one is learning the river, he is not allowed to do or think about +anything else. + +I am glad to see you in such high spirits about the land, and I hope you +will remain so, if you never get richer. I seldom venture to think about +our landed wealth, for "hope deferred maketh the heart sick." + +I did intend to answer your letter, but I am too lazy and too sleepy now. +We have had a rough time during the last 24 hours working through the ice +between Cairo and Saint Louis, and I have had but little rest. + +I got here too late to see the funeral of the 10 victims by the burning +of the Pacific hotel in 7th street. Ma says there were 10 hearses, with +the fire companies (their engines in mourning--firemen in uniform,) the +various benevolent societies in uniform and mourning, and a multitude of +citizens and strangers, forming, altogether, a procession of 30,000 +persons! One steam fire engine was drawn by four white horses, with +crape festoons on their heads. + Well I am--just--about--asleep-- + Your brother + SAM. + + + Among other things, we gather from this letter that Orion Clemens + had faith in his brother as a newspaper correspondent, though the + two contributions from Cincinnati, already mentioned, were not + promising. Furthermore, we get an intimation of Orion's unfailing + confidence in the future of the "land"--that is to say, the great + tract of land in Eastern Tennessee which, in an earlier day, his + father had bought as a heritage for his children. It is the same + Tennessee land that had "millions in it" for Colonel Sellers--the + land that would become, as Orion Clemens long afterward phrased it, + "the worry of three generations." + + The Doctor Kane of this letter is, of course, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, + the American Arctic explorer. Any book of exploration always + appealed to Mark Twain, and in those days Kane was a favorite. + + The paragraph concerning Henry, and his employment on the + Pennsylvania, begins the story of a tragedy. The story has been + fully told elsewhere,--[Mark Twain: A Biography, by same author.] + --and need only be sketched briefly here. Henry, a gentle, faithful + boy, shared with his brother the enmity of the pilot Brown. Some + two months following the date of the foregoing letter, on a down + trip of the Pennsylvania, an unprovoked attack made by Brown upon + the boy brought his brother Sam to the rescue. Brown received a + good pummeling at the hands of the future humorist, who, though + upheld by the captain, decided to quit the Pennsylvania at New + Orleans and to come up the river by another boat. The Brown episode + has no special bearing on the main tragedy, though now in retrospect + it seems closely related to it. Samuel Clemens, coming up the river + on the A. T. Lacey, two days behind the Pennsylvania, heard a voice + shout as they approached the Greenville, Mississippi, landing: + + "The Pennsylvania is blown up just below Memphis, at Ship Island! + One hundred and fifty lives lost!" + + It was a true report. At six o'clock of a warm, mid-June morning, + while loading wood, sixty miles below Memphis, the Pennsylvania's + boilers had exploded with fearful results. Henry Clemens was among + the injured. He was still alive when his brother reached Memphis on + the Lacey, but died a few days later. Samuel Clemens had idolized + the boy, and regarded himself responsible for his death. The letter + that follows shows that he was overwrought by the scenes about him + and the strain of watching, yet the anguish of it is none the less + real. + + + To Mrs. Onion Clemens: + + MEMPHIS, TENN., Friday, June 18th, 1858. +DEAR SISTER MOLLIE,--Long before this reaches you, my poor Henry my +darling, my pride, my glory, my all, will have finished his blameless +career, and the light of my life will have gone out in utter darkness. +(O, God! this is hard to bear.) Hardened, hopeless,--aye, lost--lost +--lost and ruined sinner as I am--I, even I, have humbled myself to the +ground and prayed as never man prayed before, that the great God might +let this cup pass from me--that he would strike me to the earth, but +spare my brother--that he would pour out the fulness of his just wrath +upon my wicked head, but have mercy, mercy, mercy upon that unoffending +boy. The horrors of three days have swept over me--they have blasted my +youth and left me an old man before my time. Mollie, there are gray +hairs in my head tonight. For forty-eight hours I labored at the bedside +of my poor burned and bruised, but uncomplaining brother, and then the +star of my hope went out and left me in the gloom of despair. Men take +me by the hand and congratulate me, and call me "lucky" because I was not +on the Pennsylvania when she blew up! May God forgive them, for they +know not what they say. + +Mollie you do not understand why I was not on that boat--I will tell you. +I left Saint Louis on her, but on the way down, Mr. Brown, the pilot that +was killed by the explosion (poor fellow,) quarreled with Henry without +cause, while I was steering. Henry started out of the pilot-house--Brown +jumped up and collared him--turned him half way around and struck him in +the face!--and him nearly six feet high--struck my little brother. I was +wild from that moment. I left the boat to steer herself, and avenged the +insult--and the Captain said I was right--that he would discharge Brown +in N. Orleans if he could get another pilot, and would do it in St. +Louis, anyhow. Of course both of us could not return to St. Louis on the +same boat--no pilot could be found, and the Captain sent me to the A. T. +Lacey, with orders to her Captain to bring me to Saint Louis. Had +another pilot been found, poor Brown would have been the "lucky" man. + +I was on the Pennsylvania five minutes before she left N. Orleans, and I +must tell you the truth, Mollie--three hundred human beings perished by +that fearful disaster. Henry was asleep--was blown up--then fell back on +the hot boilers, and I suppose that rubbish fell on him, for he is +injured internally. He got into the water and swam to shore, and got +into the flatboat with the other survivors.--[Henry had returned once to +the Pennsylvania to render assistance to the passengers. Later he had +somehow made his way to the flatboat.]--He had nothing on but his wet +shirt, and he lay there burning up with a southern sun and freezing in +the wind till the Kate Frisbee came along. His wounds were not dressed +till he got to Memphis, 15 hours after the explosion. He was senseless +and motionless for 12 hours after that. But may God bless Memphis, the +noblest city on the face of the earth. She has done her duty by these +poor afflicted creatures--especially Henry, for he has had five--aye, +ten, fifteen, twenty times the care and attention that any one else has +had. Dr. Peyton, the best physician in Memphis (he is exactly like the +portraits of Webster) sat by him for 36 hours. There are 32 scalded men +in that room, and you would know Dr. Peyton better than I can describe +him, if you could follow him around and hear each man murmur as he +passes, "May the God of Heaven bless you, Doctor!" The ladies have done +well, too. Our second Mate, a handsome, noble hearted young fellow, will +die. Yesterday a beautiful girl of 15 stooped timidly down by his side +and handed him a pretty bouquet. The poor suffering boy's eyes kindled, +his lips quivered out a gentle "God bless you, Miss," and he burst into +tears. He made them write her name on a card for him, that he might not +forget it. + +Pray for me, Mollie, and pray for my poor sinless brother. + Your unfortunate Brother, + SAML. L. CLEMENS. + +P. S. I got here two days after Henry. + + + It is said that Mark Twain never really recovered from the tragedy + of his brother's death--that it was responsible for the serious, + pathetic look that the face of the world's greatest laugh-maker + always wore in repose. + + He went back to the river, and in September of the same year, after + an apprenticeship of less than eighteen months, received his license + as a St. Louis and New Orleans pilot, and was accepted by his old + chief, Bixby, as full partner on an important boat. In Life on the + Mississippi Mark Twain makes the period of his study from two to two + and a half years, but this is merely an attempt to magnify his + dullness. He was, in fact, an apt pupil and a pilot of very high + class. + + Clemens was now suddenly lifted to a position of importance. The + Mississippi River pilot of those days was a person of distinction, + earning a salary then regarded as princely. Certainly two hundred + and fifty dollars a month was large for a boy of twenty-three. At + once, of course, he became the head of the Clemens family. His + brother Orion was ten years older, but he had not the gift of + success. By common consent the younger brother assumed permanently + the position of family counselor and financier. We expect him to + feel the importance of his new position, and he is too human to + disappoint us. Incidentally, we notice an improvement in his + English. He no longer writes "between you and I" + + + Fragment of a letter to Orion Clemens. Written at St. + Louis in 1859: + +.....I am not talking nonsense, now--I am in earnest, I want you to keep +your troubles and your plans out of the reach of meddlers, until the +latter are consummated, so that in case you fail, no one will know it but +yourself. + +Above all things (between you and me) never tell Ma any of your troubles; +she never slept a wink the night your last letter came, and she looks +distressed yet. Write only cheerful news to her. You know that she will +not be satisfied so long as she thinks anything is going on that she is +ignorant of--and she makes a little fuss about it when her suspicions are +awakened; but that makes no difference--. I know that it is better that +she be kept in the dark concerning all things of an unpleasant nature. +She upbraids me occasionally for giving her only the bright side of my +affairs (but unfortunately for her she has to put up with it, for I know +that troubles that I curse awhile and forget, would disturb her slumbers +for some time.) (Parenthesis No. 2--Possibly because she is deprived of +the soothing consolation of swearing.) Tell her the good news and me the +bad. + +Putting all things together, I begin to think I am rather lucky than +otherwise--a notion which I was slow to take up. The other night I was +about to round to for a storm--but concluded that I could find a smoother +bank somewhere. I landed 5 miles below. The storm came--passed away and +did not injure us. Coming up, day before yesterday, I looked at the spot +I first chose, and half the trees on the bank were torn to shreds. We +couldn't have lived 5 minutes in such a tornado. And I am also lucky in +having a berth, while all the young pilots are idle. This is the +luckiest circumstance that ever befell me. Not on account of the wages +--for that is a secondary consideration--but from the fact that the City +of Memphis is the largest boat in the trade and the hardest to pilot, and +consequently I can get a reputation on her, which is a thing I never +could accomplish on a transient boat. I can "bank" in the neighborhood +of $100 a month on her, and that will satisfy me for the present +(principally because the other youngsters are sucking their fingers.) +Bless me! what a pleasure there is in revenge! and what vast respect +Prosperity commands! Why, six months ago, I could enter the "Rooms," and +receive only a customary fraternal greeting--but now they say, "Why, how +are you, old fellow--when did you get in?" + +And the young pilots who used to tell me, patronizingly, that I could +never learn the river cannot keep from showing a little of their chagrin +at seeing me so far ahead of them. Permit me to "blow my horn," for I +derive a living pleasure from these things, and I must confess that when +I go to pay my dues, I rather like to let the d---d rascals get a glimpse +of a hundred dollar bill peeping out from amongst notes of smaller +dimensions, whose face I do not exhibit! You will despise this egotism, +but I tell you there is a "stern joy" in it..... + +Pilots did not remain long on one boat, as a rule; just why it is not so +easy to understand. Perhaps they liked the experience of change; perhaps +both captain and pilot liked the pursuit of the ideal. In the +light-hearted letter that follows--written to a friend of the family, +formerly of Hannibal--we get something of the uncertainty of the pilot's +engagements. + + + To Mrs. Elizabeth W. Smith, in Jackson, + Cape Girardeau County, Mo.: + + ST. Louis, Oct. 31 [probably 1859]. +DEAR AUNT BETSEY,--Ma has not written you, because she did not know when +I would get started down the river again..... + +You see, Aunt Betsey, I made but one trip on the packet after you left, +and then concluded to remain at home awhile. I have just discovered this +morning that I am to go to New Orleans on the "Col. Chambers"--fine, +light-draught, swift-running passenger steamer--all modern accommodations +and improvements--through with dispatch--for freight or passage apply on +board, or to--but--I have forgotten the agent's name--however, it makes +no difference--and as I was saying, or had intended to say, Aunt Betsey, +probably, if you are ready to come up, you had better take the "Ben +Lewis," the best boat in the packet line. She will be at Cape Girardeau +at noon on Saturday (day after tomorrow,) and will reach here at +breakfast time, Sunday. If Mr. Hamilton is chief clerk,--very well, +I am slightly acquainted with him. And if Messrs. Carter Gray and Dean +Somebody (I have forgotten his other name,) are in the pilot-house--very +well again-I am acquainted with them. Just tell Mr. Gray, Aunt Betsey +--that I wish him to place himself at your command. + +All the family are well--except myself--I am in a bad way again--disease, +Love, in its most malignant form. Hopes are entertained of my recovery, +however. At the dinner table--excellent symptom--I am still as "terrible +as an army with banners." + +Aunt Betsey--the wickedness of this world--but I haven't time to moralize +this morning. + Goodbye + SAM CLEMENS. + + + As we do not hear of this "attack" again, the recovery was probably + prompt. His letters are not frequent enough for us to keep track of + his boats, but we know that he was associated with Bixby from time + to time, and now and again with one of the Bowen boys, his old + Hannibal schoolmates. He was reveling in the river life, the ease + and distinction and romance of it. No other life would ever suit + him as well. He was at the age to enjoy just what it brought him + --at the airy, golden, overweening age of youth. + + + To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa: + + ST. LOUIS, Mch. 1860. +MY DEAR BRO.,--Your last has just come to hand. It reminds me strongly +of Tom Hood's letters to his family, (which I have been reading lately). +But yours only remind me of his, for although there is a striking +likeness, your humour is much finer than his, and far better expressed. +Tom Hood's wit, (in his letters) has a savor of labor about it which is +very disagreeable. Your letter is good. That portion of it wherein the +old sow figures is the very best thing I have seen lately. Its quiet +style resembles Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," and "Don Quixote," +--which are my beau ideals of fine writing. + +You have paid the preacher! Well, that is good, also. What a man wants +with religion in these breadless times, surpasses my comprehension. + +Pamela and I have just returned from a visit to the most wonderfully +beautiful painting which this city has ever seen--Church's "Heart of the +Andes"--which represents a lovely valley with its rich vegetation in all +the bloom and glory of a tropical summer--dotted with birds and flowers +of all colors and shades of color, and sunny slopes, and shady corners, +and twilight groves, and cool cascades--all grandly set off with a +majestic mountain in the background with its gleaming summit clothed in +everlasting ice and snow! I have seen it several times, but it is always +a new picture--totally new--you seem to see nothing the second time which +you saw the first. We took the opera glass, and examined its beauties +minutely, for the naked eye cannot discern the little wayside flowers, +and soft shadows and patches of sunshine, and half-hidden bunches of +grass and jets of water which form some of its most enchanting features. +There is no slurring of perspective effect about it--the most distant +--the minutest object in it has a marked and distinct personality--so that +you may count the very leaves on the trees. When you first see the tame, +ordinary-looking picture, your first impulse is to turn your back upon +it, and say "Humbug"--but your third visit will find your brain gasping +and straining with futile efforts to take all the wonder in--and +appreciate it in its fulness--and understand how such a miracle could +have been conceived and executed by human brain and human hands. You +will never get tired of looking at the picture, but your reflections +--your efforts to grasp an intelligible Something--you hardly know what +--will grow so painful that you will have to go away from the thing, +in order to obtain relief. You may find relief, but you cannot banish +the picture--It remains with you still. It is in my mind now--and the +smallest feature could not be removed without my detecting it. So much +for the "Heart of the Andes." + +Ma was delighted with her trip, but she was disgusted with the girls for +allowing me to embrace and kiss them--and she was horrified at the +Schottische as performed by Miss Castle and myself. She was perfectly +willing for me to dance until 12 o'clock at the imminent peril of my +going to sleep on the after watch--but then she would top off with a very +inconsistent sermon on dancing in general; ending with a terrific +broadside aimed at that heresy of heresies, the Schottische. + +I took Ma and the girls in a carriage, round that portion of New Orleans +where the finest gardens and residences are to be seen, and although it +was a blazing hot dusty day, they seemed hugely delighted. To use an +expression which is commonly ignored in polite society, they were +"hell-bent" on stealing some of the luscious-looking oranges from +branches which overhung the fences, but I restrained them. They were not +aware before that shrubbery could be made to take any queer shape which a +skilful gardener might choose to twist it into, so they found not only +beauty but novelty in their visit. We went out to Lake Pontchartrain in +the cars. + Your Brother + SAM CLEMENS + + + We have not before heard of Miss Castle, who appears to have been + one of the girls who accompanied Jane Clemens on the trip which her + son gave her to New Orleans, but we may guess that the other was his + cousin and good comrade, Ella Creel. One wishes that he might have + left us a more extended account of that long-ago river journey, a + fuller glimpse of a golden age that has vanished as completely as + the days of Washington. + + We may smile at the natural youthful desire to air his reading, and + his art appreciation, and we may find his opinions not without + interest. We may even commend them--in part. Perhaps we no longer + count the leaves on Church's trees, but Goldsmith and Cervantes + still deserve the place assigned them. + + He does not tell us what boat he was on at this time, but later in + the year he was with Bixby again, on the Alonzo Child. We get a bit + of the pilot in port in his next. + + + To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa: + + "ALONZO CHILD," N. ORLEANS, Sep. 28th 1860. +DEAR BROTHER,--I just received yours and Mollies letter yesterday--they +had been here two weeks--forwarded from St. Louis. We got here +yesterday--will leave at noon to-day. Of course I have had no time, in +24 hours, to do anything. Therefore I'll answer after we are under way +again. Yesterday, I had many things to do, but Bixby and I got with the +pilots of two other boats and went off dissipating on a ten dollar dinner +at a French restaurant breathe it not unto Ma!--where we ate sheep-head, +fish with mushrooms, shrimps and oysters--birds--coffee with brandy burnt +in it, &c &c,--ate, drank and smoked, from 2 p.m. until 5 o'clock, and +then--then the day was too far gone to do any thing. + +Please find enclosed and acknowledge receipt of--$20.00 + In haste + SAM L. CLEMENS + + + It should be said, perhaps, that when he became pilot Jane Clemens + had released her son from his pledge in the matter of cards and + liquor. This license did not upset him, however. He cared very + little for either of these dissipations. His one great indulgence + was tobacco, a matter upon which he was presently to receive some + grave counsel. He reports it in his next letter, a sufficiently + interesting document. The clairvoyant of this visit was Madame + Caprell, famous in her day. Clemens had been urged to consult her, + and one idle afternoon concluded to make the experiment. The letter + reporting the matter to his brother is fragmentary, and is the last + remaining to us of the piloting period. + + + Fragment of a letter to Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa: + + NEW ORLEANS February 6, 1862. +.....She's a very pleasant little lady--rather pretty--about 28,--say +5 feet 2 and one quarter--would weigh 116--has black eyes and hair--is +polite and intelligent--used good language, and talks much faster than I +do. + +She invited me into the little back parlor, closed the door; and we were +alone. We sat down facing each other. Then she asked my age. Then she +put her hands before her eyes a moment, and commenced talking as if she +had a good deal to say and not much time to say it in. Something after +this style: + +MADAME. Yours is a watery planet; you gain your livelihood on the water; +but you should have been a lawyer--there is where your talents lie: you +might have distinguished yourself as an orator, or as an editor; you have +written a great deal; you write well--but you are rather out of practice; +no matter--you will be in practice some day; you have a superb +constitution, and as excellent health as any man in the world; you have +great powers of endurance; in your profession your strength holds out +against the longest sieges, without flagging; still, the upper part of +your lungs, the top of them is slightly affected--you must take care of +yourself; you do not drink, but you use entirely too much tobacco; and +you must stop it; mind, not moderate, but stop the use of it totally; +then I can almost promise you 86 when you will surely die; otherwise look +out for 28, 31, 34, 47, and 65; be careful--for you are not of a +long-lived race, that is on your father's side; you are the only healthy +member of your family, and the only one in it who has anything like the +certainty of attaining to a great age--so, stop using tobacco, and be +careful of yourself..... In some respects you take after your father, +but you are much more like your mother, who belongs to the long-lived, +energetic side of the house.... You never brought all your energies to +bear upon any subject but what you accomplished it--for instance, you are +self-made, self-educated. + +S. L. C. Which proves nothing. + +MADAME. Don't interrupt. When you sought your present occupation you +found a thousand obstacles in the way--obstacles unknown--not even +suspected by any save you and me, since you keep such matters to +yourself--but you fought your way, and hid the long struggle under a mask +of cheerfulness, which saved your friends anxiety on your account. To do +all this requires all the qualities I have named. + +S. L. C. You flatter well, Madame. + +MADAME. Don't interrupt: Up to within a short time you had always lived +from hand to mouth-now you are in easy circumstances--for which you need +give credit to no one but yourself. The turning point in your life +occurred in 1840-7-8. + +S. L. C. Which was? + +MADAME. A death perhaps, and this threw you upon the world and made you +what you are; it was always intended that you should make yourself; +therefore, it was well that this calamity occurred as early as it did. +You will never die of water, although your career upon it in the future +seems well sprinkled with misfortune. You will continue upon the water +for some time yet; you will not retire finally until ten years from now +.... What is your brother's age? 35--and a lawyer? and in pursuit of an +office? Well, he stands a better chance than the other two, and he may +get it; he is too visionary--is always flying off on a new hobby; this +will never do--tell him I said so. He is a good lawyer--a, very good +lawyer--and a fine speaker--is very popular and much respected, and makes +many friends; but although he retains their friendship, he loses their +confidence by displaying his instability of character..... The land he +has now will be very valuable after a while-- + +S. L. C. Say a 50 years hence, or thereabouts. Madame-- + +MADAME. No--less time-but never mind the land, that is a secondary +consideration--let him drop that for the present, and devote himself to +his business and politics with all his might, for he must hold offices +under the Government..... + +After a while you will possess a good deal of property--retire at the end +of ten years--after which your pursuits will be literary--try the law +--you will certainly succeed. I am done now. If you have any questions +to ask--ask them freely--and if it be in my power, I will answer without +reserve--without reserve. + +I asked a few questions of minor importance--paid her $2--and left, under +the decided impression that going to the fortune teller's was just as +good as going to the opera, and the cost scarcely a trifle more--ergo, +I will disguise myself and go again, one of these days, when other +amusements fail. Now isn't she the devil? That is to say, isn't she a +right smart little woman? + +When you want money, let Ma know, and she will send it. She and Pamela +are always fussing about change, so I sent them a hundred and twenty +quarters yesterday--fiddler's change enough to last till I get back, I +reckon. + SAM. + + + It is not so difficult to credit Madame Caprell with clairvoyant + powers when one has read the letters of Samuel Clemens up to this + point. If we may judge by those that have survived, her prophecy of + literary distinction for him was hardly warranted by anything she + could have known of his past performance. These letters of his + youth have a value to-day only because they were written by the man + who later was to become Mark Twain. The squibs and skits which he + sometimes contributed to the New Orleans papers were bright, + perhaps, and pleasing to his pilot associates, but they were without + literary value. He was twenty-five years old. More than one author + has achieved reputation at that age. Mark Twain was of slower + growth; at that age he had not even developed a definite literary + ambition: Whatever the basis of Madame Caprell's prophecy, we must + admit that she was a good guesser on several matters, "a right smart + little woman," as Clemens himself phrased it. + + She overlooked one item, however: the proximity of the Civil War. + Perhaps it was too close at hand for second sight. A little more + than two months after the Caprell letter was written Fort Sumter was + fired upon. Mask Twain had made his last trip as a pilot up the + river to St. Louis--the nation was plunged into a four years' + conflict. + + There are no letters of this immediate period. Young Clemens went + to Hannibal, and enlisting in a private company, composed mainly of + old schoolmates, went soldiering for two rainy, inglorious weeks, + by the end of which he had had enough of war, and furthermore had + discovered that he was more of a Union abolitionist than a + slave-holding secessionist, as he had at first supposed. + Convictions were likely to be rather infirm during those early days + of the war, and subject to change without notice. Especially was + this so in a border State. + + + + +III + +LETTERS 1861-62. ON THE FRONTIER. MINING ADVENTURES. +JOURNALISTIC BEGINNINGS + + Clemens went from the battle-front to Keokuk, where Orion was + preparing to accept the appointment prophesied by Madame Caprell. + Orion was a stanch Unionist, and a member of Lincoln's Cabinet had + offered him the secretaryship of the new Territory of Nevada. Orion + had accepted, and only needed funds to carry him to his destination. + His pilot brother had the funds, and upon being appointed "private" + secretary, agreed to pay both passages on the overland stage, which + would bear them across the great plains from St. Jo to Carson City. + Mark Twain, in Roughing It, has described that glorious journey and + the frontier life that followed it. His letters form a supplement + of realism to a tale that is more or less fictitious, though + marvelously true in color and background. The first bears no date, + but it was written not long after their arrival, August 14, 1861. + It is not complete, but there is enough of it to give us a very fair + picture of Carson City, "a wooden town; its population two thousand + souls." + + + Part of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens, in St. Louis: + + (Date not given, but Sept, or Oct., 1861.) +MY DEAR MOTHER,--I hope you will all come out here someday. But I shan't +consent to invite you, until we can receive you in style. But I guess we +shall be able to do that, one of these days. I intend that Pamela shall +live on Lake Bigler until she can knock a bull down with her fist--say, +about three months. + +"Tell everything as it is--no better, and no worse." + +Well, "Gold Hill" sells at $5,000 per foot, cash down; "Wild cat" isn't +worth ten cents. The country is fabulously rich in gold, silver, copper, +lead, coal, iron, quick silver, marble, granite, chalk, plaster of Paris, +(gypsum,) thieves, murderers, desperadoes, ladies, children, lawyers, +Christians, Indians, Chinamen, Spaniards, gamblers, sharpers, coyotes +(pronounced Ki-yo-ties,) poets, preachers, and jackass rabbits. +I overheard a gentleman say, the other day, that it was "the d---dest +country under the sun."--and that comprehensive conception I fully +subscribe to. It never rains here, and the dew never falls. No flowers +grow here, and no green thing gladdens the eye. The birds that fly over +the land carry their provisions with them. Only the crow and the raven +tarry with us. Our city lies in the midst of a desert of the purest +--most unadulterated, and compromising sand--in which infernal soil +nothing but that fag-end of vegetable creation, "sage-brush," ventures to +grow. If you will take a Lilliputian cedar tree for a model, and build a +dozen imitations of it with the stiffest article of telegraph wire--set +them one foot apart and then try to walk through them, you'll understand +(provided the floor is covered 12 inches deep with sand,) what it is to +wander through a sage-brush desert. When crushed, sage brush emits an +odor which isn't exactly magnolia and equally isn't exactly polecat but +is a sort of compromise between the two. It looks a good deal like +grease-wood, and is the ugliest plant that was ever conceived of. It is +gray in color. On the plains, sage-brush and grease-wood grow about +twice as large as the common geranium--and in my opinion they are a very +good substitute for that useless vegetable. Grease-wood is a perfect +--most perfect imitation in miniature of a live oak tree-barring the color +of it. As to the other fruits and flowers of the country, there ain't +any, except "Pulu" or "Tuler," or what ever they call it,--a species of +unpoetical willow that grows on the banks of the Carson--a RIVER, 20 +yards wide, knee deep, and so villainously rapid and crooked, that it +looks like it had wandered into the country without intending it, and had +run about in a bewildered way and got lost, in its hurry to get out again +before some thirsty man came along and drank it up. I said we are +situated in a flat, sandy desert--true. And surrounded on all sides by +such prodigious mountains, that when you gaze at them awhile,--and begin +to conceive of their grandeur--and next to feel their vastness expanding +your soul--and ultimately find yourself growing and swelling and +spreading into a giant--I say when this point is reached, you look +disdainfully down upon the insignificant village of Carson, and in that +instant you are seized with a burning desire to stretch forth your hand, +put the city in your pocket, and walk off with it. + +As to churches, I believe they have got a Catholic one here, but like +that one the New York fireman spoke of, I believe "they don't run her +now:" Now, although we are surrounded by sand, the greatest part of the +town is built upon what was once a very pretty grassy spot; and the +streams of pure water that used to poke about it in rural sloth and +solitude, now pass through on dusty streets and gladden the hearts of men +by reminding them that there is at least something here that hath its +prototype among the homes they left behind them. And up "King's Canon," +(please pronounce canyon, after the manner of the natives,) there are +"ranches," or farms, where they say hay grows, and grass, and beets and +onions, and turnips, and other "truck" which is suitable for cows--yes, +and even Irish potatoes; also, cabbage, peas and beans. + +The houses are mostly frame, unplastered, but "papered" inside with +flour-sacks sewed together, and the handsomer the "brand" upon the sacks +is, the neater the house looks. Occasionally, you stumble on a stone +house. On account of the dryness of the country, the shingles on the +houses warp till they look like short joints of stove pipe split +lengthwise. + +(Remainder missing.) + + + In this letter is something of the "wild freedom of the West," which + later would contribute to his fame. The spirit of the frontier--of + Mark Twain--was beginning to stir him. + + There had been no secretary work for him to do, and no provision for + payment. He found his profit in studying human nature and in + prospecting native resources. He was not interested in mining not + yet. With a boy named John Kinney he made an excursion to Lake + Bigler--now Tahoe--and located a timber claim, really of great + value. They were supposed to build a fence around it, but they were + too full of the enjoyment of camp-life to complete it. They put in + most of their time wandering through the stately forest or drifting + over the transparent lake in a boat left there by lumbermen. They + built themselves a brush house, but they did not sleep in it. In + 'Roughing It' he writes, "It never occurred to us, for one thing; + and, besides, it was built to hold the ground, and that was enough. + We did not wish to strain it." + + They were having a glorious time, when their camp-fire got away from + them and burned up their claim. His next letter, of which the + beginning is missing, describes the fire. + + + Fragment of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens and + Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + +.....The level ranks of flame were relieved at intervals by the +standard-bearers, as we called the tall dead trees, wrapped in fire, and +waving their blazing banners a hundred feet in the air. Then we could +turn from this scene to the Lake, and see every branch, and leaf, and +cataract of flame upon its bank perfectly reflected as in a gleaming, +fiery mirror. The mighty roaring of the conflagration, together with our +solitary and somewhat unsafe position (for there was no one within six +miles of us,) rendered the scene very impressive. Occasionally, one of +us would remove his pipe from his mouth and say, "Superb! magnificent! +Beautiful! but-by the Lord God Almighty, if we attempt to sleep in this +little patch tonight, we'll never live till morning! for if we don't burn +up, we'll certainly suffocate." But he was persuaded to sit up until we +felt pretty safe as far as the fire was concerned, and then we turned in, +with many misgivings. When we got up in the morning, we found that the +fire had burned small pieces of drift wood within six feet of our boat, +and had made its way to within 4 or 5 steps of us on the South side. We +looked like lava men, covered as we were with ashes, and begrimed with +smoke. We were very black in the face, but we soon washed ourselves +white again. + +John D. Kinney, a Cincinnati boy, and a first-rate fellow, too, who came +out with judge Turner, was my comrade. We staid at the Lake four days +--I had plenty of fun, for John constantly reminded me of Sam Bowen when +we were on our campaign in Missouri. But first and foremost, for Annie's, +Mollies, and Pamela's comfort, be it known that I have never been guilty +of profane language since I have been in this Territory, and Kinney +hardly ever swears.--But sometimes human nature gets the better of him. +On the second day we started to go by land to the lower camp, a distance +of three miles, over the mountains, each carrying an axe. I don't think +we got lost exactly, but we wandered four hours over the steepest, +rockiest and most dangerous piece of country in the world. I couldn't +keep from laughing at Kinney's distress, so I kept behind, so that he +could not see me. After he would get over a dangerous place, with +infinite labor and constant apprehension, he would stop, lean on his axe, +and look around, then behind, then ahead, and then drop his head and +ruminate awhile.--Then he would draw a long sigh, and say: "Well--could +any Billygoat have scaled that place without breaking his --- ------ neck?" +And I would reply, "No,--I don't think he could." "No--you don't think +he could--" (mimicking me,) "Why don't you curse the infernal place? +You know you want to.--I do, and will curse the --- ------ thieving +country as long as I live." Then we would toil on in silence for awhile. +Finally I told him--"Well, John, what if we don't find our way out of +this today--we'll know all about the country when we do get out." "Oh +stuff--I know enough--and too much about the d---d villainous locality +already." Finally, we reached the camp. But as we brought no provisions +with us, the first subject that presented itself to us was, how to get +back. John swore he wouldn't walk back, so we rolled a drift log apiece +into the Lake, and set about making paddles, intending to straddle the +logs and paddle ourselves back home sometime or other. But the Lake +objected--got stormy, and we had to give it up. So we set out for the +only house on this side of the Lake--three miles from there, down the +shore. We found the way without any trouble, reached there before +sundown, played three games of cribbage, borrowed a dug-out and pulled +back six miles to the upper camp. As we had eaten nothing since sunrise, +we did not waste time in cooking our supper or in eating it, either. +After supper we got out our pipes--built a rousing camp fire in the open +air-established a faro bank (an institution of this country,) on our huge +flat granite dining table, and bet white beans till one o'clock, when +John went to bed. We were up before the sun the next morning, went out +on the Lake and caught a fine trout for breakfast. But unfortunately, I +spoilt part of the breakfast. We had coffee and tea boiling on the fire, +in coffee-pots and fearing they might not be strong enough, I added more +ground coffee, and more tea, but--you know mistakes will happen.--I put +the tea in the coffee-pot, and the coffee in the teapot--and if you +imagine that they were not villainous mixtures, just try the effect once. + +And so Bella is to be married on the 1st of Oct. Well, I send her and +her husband my very best wishes, and--I may not be here--but wherever I +am on that night, we'll have a rousing camp-fire and a jollification in +honor of the event. + +In a day or two we shall probably go to the Lake and build another cabin +and fence, and get everything into satisfactory trim before our trip to +Esmeralda about the first of November. + +What has become of Sam Bowen? I would give my last shirt to have him out +here. I will make no promises, but I believe if John would give him a +thousand dollars and send him out here he would not regret it. He might +possibly do very well here, but he could do little without capital. + +Remember me to all my St. Louis and Keokuk friends, and tell Challie and +Hallie Renson that I heard a military band play "What are the Wild Waves +Saying?" the other night, and it reminded me very forcibly of them. It +brought Ella Creel and Belle across the Desert too in an instant, for +they sang the song in Orion's yard the first time I ever heard it. It +was like meeting an old friend. I tell you I could have swallowed that +whole band, trombone and all, if such a compliment would have been any +gratification to them. + Love to the young folks, + SAM. + + +The reference in the foregoing letter to Esmeralda has to do with mining +plans. He was beginning to be mildly interested, and, with his brother +Orion, had acquired "feet" in an Esmeralda camp, probably at a very small +price--so small as to hold out no exciting prospect of riches. In his +next letter he gives us the size of this claim, which he has visited. +His interest, however, still appears to be chiefly in his timber claim on +Lake Bigler (Tahoe), though we are never to hear of it again after this +letter. + + + To Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + CARSON CITY, Oct. 25, 1861. +MY DEAR SISTER,--I have just finished reading your letter and Ma's of +Sept. 8th. How in the world could they have been so long coming? You +ask me if I have for gotten my promise to lay a claim for Mr. Moffett. +By no means. I have already laid a timber claim on the borders of a lake +(Bigler) which throws Como in the shade--and if we succeed in getting one +Mr. Jones, to move his saw-mill up there, Mr. Moffett can just consider +that claim better than bank stock. Jones says he will move his mill up +next spring. In that claim I took up about two miles in length by one in +width--and the names in it are as follows: "Sam. L Clemens, Wm. A. +Moffett, Thos. Nye" and three others. It is situated on "Sam Clemens +Bay"--so named by Capt. Nye--and it goes by that name among the +inhabitants of that region. I had better stop about "the Lake," though, +--for whenever I think of it I want to go there and die, the place is so +beautiful. I'll build a country seat there one of these days that will +make the Devil's mouth water if he ever visits the earth. Jim Lampton +will never know whether I laid a claim there for him or not until he +comes here himself. We have now got about 1,650 feet of mining ground +--and if it proves good, Mr. Moffett's name will go in--if not, I can get +"feet" for him in the Spring which will be good. You see, Pamela, the +trouble does not consist in getting mining ground--for that is plenty +enough--but the money to work it with after you get it is the mischief. +When I was in Esmeralda, a young fellow gave me fifty feet in the "Black +Warrior"--an unprospected claim. The other day he wrote me that he had +gone down eight feet on the ledge, and found it eight feet thick--and +pretty good rock, too. He said he could take out rock now if there were +a mill to crush it--but the mills are all engaged (there are only four of +them) so, if I were willing, he would suspend work until Spring. I wrote +him to let it alone at present--because, you see, in the Spring I can go +down myself and help him look after it. There will then be twenty mills +there. Orion and I have confidence enough in this country to think that +if the war will let us alone we can make Mr. Moffett rich without its +ever costing him a cent of money or particle of trouble. We shall lay +plenty of claims for him, but if they never pay him anything, they will +never cost him anything, Orion and I are not financiers. Therefore, you +must persuade Uncle Jim to come out here and help us in that line. +I have written to him twice to come. I wrote him today. In both letters +I told him not to let you or Ma know that we dealt in such romantic +nonsense as "brilliant prospects," because I always did hate for anyone +to know what my plans or hopes or prospects were--for, if I kept people +in ignorance in these matters, no one could be disappointed but myself, +if they were not realized. You know I never told you that I went on the +river under a promise to pay Bixby $500, until I had paid the money and +cleared my skirts of the possibility of having my judgment criticised. +I would not say anything about our prospects now, if we were nearer home. +But I suppose at this distance you are more anxious than you would be if +you saw us every month-and therefore it is hardly fair to keep you in the +dark. However, keep these matters to yourselves, and then if we fail, +we'll keep the laugh in the family. + +What we want now is something that will commence paying immediately. +We have got a chance to get into a claim where they say a tunnel has been +run 150 feet, and the ledge struck. I got a horse yesterday, and went +out with the Attorney-General and the claim-owner--and we tried to go to +the claim by a new route, and got lost in the mountains--sunset overtook +us before we found the claim--my horse got too lame to carry me, and I +got down and drove him ahead of me till within four miles of town--then +we sent Rice on ahead. Bunker, (whose horse was in good condition,) +undertook, to lead mine, and I followed after him. Darkness shut him out +from my view in less than a minute, and within the next minute I lost the +road and got to wandering in the sage brush. I would find the road +occasionally and then lose it again in a minute or so. I got to Carson +about nine o'clock, at night, but not by the road I traveled when I left +it. The General says my horse did very well for awhile, but soon refused +to lead. Then he dismounted, and had a jolly time driving both horses +ahead of him and chasing them here and there through the sage brush (it +does my soul good when I think of it) until he got to town, when both +animals deserted him, and he cursed them handsomely and came home alone. +Of course the horses went to their stables. + +Tell Sammy I will lay a claim for him, and he must come out and attend to +it. He must get rid of that propensity for tumbling down, though, for +when we get fairly started here, I don't think we shall have time to pick +up those who fall..... + +That is Stoughter's house, I expect, that Cousin Jim has moved into. +This is just the country for Cousin Jim to live in. I don't believe it +would take him six months to make $100,000 here, if he had 3,000 dollars +to commence with. I suppose he can't leave his family though. + +Tell Mrs. Benson I never intend to be a lawyer. I have been a slave +several times in my life, but I'll never be one again. I always intend +to be so situated (unless I marry,) that I can "pull up stakes" and clear +out whenever I feel like it. + +We are very thankful to you, Pamela, for the papers you send. We have +received half a dozen or more, and, next to letters, they are the most +welcome visitors we have. + Write oftener, Pamela. + Yr. Brother + SAM. + + +The "Cousin Jim" mentioned in this letter is the original of the +character of Colonel Sellers. Whatever Mark Twain's later opinion of +Cousin Jim Lampton's financial genius may have been, he seems to have +respected it at this time. + +More than three months pass until we have another letter, and in that +time the mining fever had become well seated. Mark Twain himself was +full of the Sellers optimism, and it was bound to overflow, fortify as he +would against it. + +He met with little enough encouragement. With three companions, in +midwinter, he made a mining excursion to the much exploited Humboldt +region, returning empty-handed after a month or two of hard experience. +This is the trip picturesquely described in Chapters XXVII to XXXIII of +Roughing It.--[It is set down historically in Mark Twain 'A Biography.' +Harper & brothers.]--He, mentions the Humboldt in his next letter, but +does not confess his failure. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + CARSON CITY, Feb. 8, 1862. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--By George Pamela, I begin to fear that I have +invoked a Spirit of some kind or other which I will find some difficulty +in laying. I wasn't much terrified by your growing inclinations, but +when you begin to call presentiments to your aid, I confess that I +"weaken." Mr. Moffett is right, as I said before--and I am not much +afraid of his going wrong. Men are easily dealt with--but when you get +the women started, you are in for it, you know. But I have decided on +two things, viz: Any of you, or all of you, may live in California, for +that is the Garden of Eden reproduced--but you shall never live in +Nevada; and secondly, none of you, save Mr. Moffett, shall ever cross the +Plains. If you were only going to Pike's Peak, a little matter of 700 +miles from St. Jo, you might take the coach, and I wouldn't say a word. +But I consider it over 2,000 miles from St. Jo to Carson, and the first +6 or 800 miles is mere Fourth of July, compared to the balance of the +route. But Lord bless you, a man enjoys every foot of it. If you ever +come here or to California, it must be by sea. Mr. Moffett must come by +overland coach, though, by all means. He would consider it the jolliest +little trip he ever took in his life. Either June, July, or August are +the proper months to make the journey in. He could not suffer from heat, +and three or four heavy army blankets would make the cold nights +comfortable. If the coach were full of passengers, two good blankets +would probably be sufficient. If he comes, and brings plenty of money, +and fails to invest it to his entire satisfaction; I will prophesy no +more. + +But I will tell you a few things which you wouldn't have found out if I +hadn't got myself into this scrape. I expect to return to St. Louis in +July--per steamer. I don't say that I will return then, or that I shall +be able to do it--but I expect to--you bet. I came down here from +Humboldt, in order to look after our Esmeralda interests, and my +sore-backed horse and the bad roads have prevented me from making the +journey. Yesterday one of my old Esmeralda friends, Bob Howland, arrived +here, and I have had a talk with him. He owns with me in the "Horatio +and Derby" ledge. He says our tunnel is in 52 feet, and a small stream +of water has been struck, which bids fair to become a "big thing" by the +time the ledge is reached--sufficient to supply a mill. Now, if you knew +anything of the value of water, here; you would perceive, at a glance +that if the water should amount to 50 or 100 inches, we wouldn't care +whether school kept or not. If the ledge should prove to be worthless, +we'd sell the water for money enough to give us quite a lift. But you +see, the ledge will not prove to be worthless. We have located, near by, +a fine site for a mill; and when we strike the ledge, you know, we'll +have a mill-site, water power, and pay-rock, all handy. Then we shan't +care whether we have capital or not. Mill-folks will build us a mill, +and wait for their pay. If nothing goes wrong, we'll strike the ledge in +June--and if we do, I'll be home in July, you know. + +Pamela, don't you know that undemonstrated human calculations won't do +to bet on? Don't you know that I have only talked, as yet, but proved +nothing? Don't you know that I have expended money in this country but +have made none myself? Don't you know that I have never held in my hands +a gold or silver bar that belonged to me? Don't you know that it's all +talk and no cider so far? Don't you know that people who always feel +jolly, no matter where they are or what happens to them--who have the +organ of hope preposterously developed--who are endowed with an +uncongealable sanguine temperament--who never feel concerned about the +price of corn--and who cannot, by any possibility, discover any but the +bright side of a picture--are very apt to go to extremes, and exaggerate +with 40-horse microscopic power? Of course I never tried to raise these +suspicions in your mind, but then your knowledge of the fact that some +people's poor frail human nature is a sort of crazy institution anyhow, +ought to have suggested them to you. Now, if I hadn't thoughtlessly got +you into the notion of coming out here, and thereby got myself into a +scrape, I wouldn't have given you that highly-colored paragraph about the +mill, etc., because, you know, if that pretty little picture should fail, +and wash out, and go the Devil generally, it wouldn't cost me the loss of +an hour's sleep, but you fellows would be so much distressed on my +account as I could possibly be if "circumstances beyond my control" were +to prevent my being present at my own funeral. But--but-- + + "In the bright lexicon of youth, + There's no such word as Fail--" + and I'll prove it! + +And look here. I came near forgetting it. Don't you say a word to me +about "trains" across the plains. Because I am down on that arrangement. +That sort of thing is "played out," you know. The Overland Coach or the +Mail Steamer is the thing. + +You want to know something about the route between California and Nevada +Territory? Suppose you take my word for it, that it is exceedingly +jolly. Or take, for a winter view, J. Ross Brown's picture, in Harper's +Monthly, of pack mules tumbling fifteen hundred feet down the side of a +mountain. Why bless you, there's scenery on that route. You can stand +on some of those noble peaks and see Jerusalem and the Holy Land. And +you can start a boulder, and send it tearing up the earth and crashing +over trees-down-down-down-to the very devil, Madam. And you would +probably stand up there and look, and stare and wonder at the +magnificence spread out before you till you starved to death, if let +alone. But you should take someone along to keep you moving. + +Since you want to know, I will inform you that an eight-stamp water mill, +put up and ready for business would cost about $10,000 to $12,000. Then, +the water to run it with would cost from $1,000 to $30,000--and even +more, according to the location. What I mean by that, is, that water +powers in THIS vicinity, are immensely valuable. So, also, in Esmeralda. +But Humboldt is a new country, and things don't cost so much there yet. +I saw a good water power sold there for $750.00. But here is the way the +thing is managed. A man with a good water power on Carson river will +lean his axe up against a tree (provided you find him chopping cord-wood +at $4 a day,) and taking his chalk pipe out of his mouth to afford him an +opportunity to answer your questions, will look you coolly in the face +and tell you his little property is worth forty or fifty thousand +dollars! But you can easily fix him. You tell him that you'll build a +quartz mill on his property, and make him a fourth or a third, or half +owner in said mill in consideration of the privilege of using said +property--and that will bring him to his milk in a jiffy. So he spits on +his hands, and goes in again with his axe, until the mill is finished, +when lo! out pops the quondam wood-chopper, arrayed in purple and fine +linen, and prepared to deal in bank-stock, or bet on the races, or take +government loans, with an air, as to the amount, of the most don't care +a-d---dest unconcern that you can conceive of. By George, if I just had +a thousand dollars--I'd be all right! Now there's the "Horatio," for +instance. There are five or six shareholders in it, and I know I could +buy half of their interests at, say $20 per foot, now that flour is worth +$50 per barrel and they are pressed for money. But I am hard up myself, +and can't buy--and in June they'll strike the ledge and then "good-bye +canary." I can't get it for love or money. Twenty dollars a foot! +Think of it. For ground that is proven to be rich. Twenty dollars, +Madam--and we wouldn't part with a foot of our 75 for five times the sum. +So it will be in Humboldt next summer. The boys will get pushed and sell +ground for a song that is worth a fortune. But I am at the helm, now. +I have convinced Orion that he hasn't business talent enough to carry on +a peanut stand, and he has solemnly promised me that he will meddle no +more with mining, or other matters not connected with the Secretary's +office. So, you see, if mines are to be bought or sold, or tunnels run, +or shafts sunk, parties have to come to me--and me only. I'm the "firm," +you know. + +"How long does it take one of those infernal trains to go through?" +Well, anywhere between three and five months. + +Tell Margaret that if you ever come to live in California, that you can +promise her a home for a hundred years, and a bully one--but she wouldn't +like the country. Some people are malicious enough to think that if the +devil were set at liberty and told to confine himself to Nevada +Territory, that he would come here--and look sadly around, awhile, and +then get homesick and go back to hell again. But I hardly believe it, +you know. I am saying, mind you, that Margaret wouldn't like the +country, perhaps--nor the devil either, for that matter, or any other man +but I like it. When it rains here, it never lets up till it has done all +the raining it has got to do--and after that, there's a dry spell, you +bet. Why, I have had my whiskers and moustaches so full of alkali dust +that you'd have thought I worked in a starch factory and boarded in a +flour barrel. + +Since we have been here there has not been a fire--although the houses +are built of wood. They "holler" fire sometimes, though, but I am always +too late to see the smoke before the fire is out, if they ever have any. +Now they raised a yell here in front of the office a moment ago. I put +away my papers, and locked up everything of value, and changed my boots, +and pulled off my coat, and went and got a bucket of water, and came back +to see what the matter was, remarking to myself, "I guess I'll be on hand +this time, any way." But I met a friend on the pavement, and he said, +"Where you been? Fire's out half an hour ago." + +Ma says Axtele was above "suspition"--but I have searched through +Webster's Unabridged, and can't find the word. However, it's of no +consequence--I hope he got down safely. I knew Axtele and his wife as +well as I know Dan Haines. Mrs. A. once tried to embarrass me in the +presence of company by asking me to name her baby, when she was well +aware that I didn't know the sex of that Phenomenon. But I told her to +call it Frances, and spell it to suit herself. That was about nine years +ago, and Axtele had no property, and could hardly support his family by +his earnings. He was a pious cuss, though. Member of Margaret Sexton's +Church. + +And Ma says "it looks like a man can't hold public office and be honest." +Why, certainly not, Madam. A man can't hold public office and be honest. +Lord bless you, it is a common practice with Orion to go about town +stealing little things that happen to be lying around loose. And I don't +remember having heard him speak the truth since we have been in Nevada. +He even tries to prevail upon me to do these things, Ma, but I wasn't +brought up in that way, you know. You showed the public what you could +do in that line when you raised me, Madam. But then you ought to have +raised me first, so that Orion could have had the benefit of my example. +Do you know that he stole all the stamps out of an 8 stamp quartz mill +one night, and brought them home under his over-coat and hid them in the +back room? + Yrs. etc., + SAM + + + A little later he had headed for the Esmeralda Hills. Some time in + February he was established there in a camp with a young man by the + name of Horatio Phillips (Raish). Later he camped with Bob Howland, + who, as City Marshal of Aurora, became known as the most fearless + man in the Territory, and, still later, with Calvin H. Higbie (Cal), + to whom 'Roughing It' would one day be dedicated. His own funds + were exhausted by this time, and Orion, with his rather slender + salary, became the financial partner of the firm. + + It was a comfortless life there in the Esmeralda camp. Snow covered + everything. There was nothing to do, and apparently nothing to + report; for there are no letters until April. Then the first one is + dated Carson City, where he seems to be making a brief sojourn. It + is a rather heavy attempt to be light-hearted; its playfulness + suggests that of a dancing bear. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in St. Louis: + + CARSON CITY, April 2, 1862. +MY DEAR MOTHER,--Yours of March 2nd has just been received. I see I am +in for it again--with Annie. But she ought to know that I was always +stupid. She used to try to teach me lessons from the Bible, but I never +could understand them. Doesn't she remember telling me the story of +Moses, one Sunday, last Spring, and how hard she tried to explain it and +simplify it so that I could understand it--but I couldn't? And how she +said it was strange that while her ma and her grandma and her uncle Orion +could understand anything in the world, I was so dull that I couldn't +understand the "ea-siest thing?" And doesn't she remember that finally a +light broke in upon me and I said it was all right--that I knew old Moses +himself--and that he kept a clothing store in Market Street? And then +she went to her ma and said she didn't know what would become of her +uncle Sam he was too dull to learn anything--ever! And I'm just as dull +yet. Now I have no doubt her letter was spelled right, and was correct +in all particulars--but then I had to read it according to my lights; and +they being inferior, she ought to overlook the mistakes I make specially, +as it is not my fault that I wasn't born with good sense. I am sure she +will detect an encouraging ray of intelligence in that last argument..... + +I am waiting here, trying to rent a better office for Orion. I have got +the refusal after next week of a room on first floor of a fire-proof +brick-rent, eighteen hundred dollars a year. Don't know yet whether we +can get it or not. If it is not rented before the week is up, we can. + +I was sorry to hear that Dick was killed. I gave him his first lesson in +the musket drill. We had half a dozen muskets in our office when it was +over Isbell's Music Rooms. + +I hope I am wearing the last white shirt that will embellish my person +for many a day--for I do hope that I shall be out of Carson long before +this reaches you. + Love to all. + Very Respectfully + SAM. + + + The "Annie" in this letter was his sister Pamela's little daughter; + long years after, she would be the wife of Charles L. Webster, Mark + Twain's publishing partner. "Dick" the reader may remember as Dick + Hingham, of the Keokuk printing-office; he was killed in charging + the works at Fort Donelson. + + Clemens was back in Esmeralda when the next letter was written, and + we begin now to get pictures of that cheerless mining-camp, and to + know something of the alternate hopes and discouragements of the + hunt for gold--the miner one day soaring on wings of hope, on the + next becoming excited, irritable, profane. The names of new mines + appear constantly and vanish almost at a touch, suggesting the + fairy-like evanescence of their riches. + + But a few of the letters here will best speak for themselves; not + all of them are needed. It is perhaps unnecessary to say that there + is no intentional humor in these documents. + + + To Orion Clemens, in Carson City: + + ESMERALDA, 13th April, 1862. +MY DEAR BROTHER,--Wasson got here night before last "from the wars." +Tell Lockhart he is not wounded and not killed--is altogether unhurt. +He says the whites left their stone fort before he and Lieut. Noble got +there. A large amount of provisions and ammunition, which they left +behind them, fell into the hands of the Indians. They had a pitched +battle with the savages some fifty miles from the fort, in which Scott +(sheriff) and another man was killed. This was the day before the +soldiers came up with them. I mean Noble's men, and those under Cols. +Evans and Mayfield, from Los Angeles. Evans assumed the chief command +--and next morning the forces were divided into three parties, and +marched against the enemy. Col. Mayfield was killed, and Sergeant +Gillespie, also Noble's colonel was wounded. The California troops went +back home, and Noble remained, to help drive the stock over here. And, +as Cousin Sally Dillard says, this is all I know about the fight. + +Work not yet begun on the H. and Derby--haven't seen it yet. It is still +in the snow. Shall begin on it within 3 or 4 weeks--strike the ledge in +July. Guess it is good--worth from $30 to $50 a foot in California. + +Why didn't you send the "Live Yankee" deed-the very one I wanted? Have +made no inquiries about it, much. Don't intend to until I get the deed. +Send it along--by mail--d---n the Express--have to pay three times for +all express matter; once in Carson and twice here. I don't expect to +take the saddle-bags out of the express office. I paid twenty-five cts. +for the Express deeds. + +Man named Gebhart shot here yesterday while trying to defend a claim on +Last Chance Hill. Expect he will die. + +These mills here are not worth a d---n-except Clayton's--and it is not in +full working trim yet. + +Send me $40 or $50--by mail--immediately. + +The Red Bird is probably good--can't work on the tunnel on account of +snow. The "Pugh" I have thrown away--shan't re-locate it. It is nothing +but bed-rock croppings--too much work to find the ledge, if there is one. +Shan't record the "Farnum" until I know more about it--perhaps not at +all. + +"Governor" under the snow. + +"Douglas" and "Red Bird" are both recorded. + +I have had opportunities to get into several ledges, but refused all but +three--expect to back out of two of them. + +Stir yourself as much as possible, and lay up $100 or $15,000, subject to +my call. I go to work to-morrow, with pick and shovel. Something's got +to come, by G--, before I let go, here. + +Col. Youngs says you must rent Kinkead's room by all means--Government +would rather pay $150 a month for your office than $75 for Gen. North's. +Says you are playing your hand very badly, for either the Government's +good opinion or anybody's else, in keeping your office in a shanty. Says +put Gov. Nye in your place and he would have a stylish office, and no +objections would ever be made, either. When old Col. Youngs talks this +way, I think it time to get a fine office. I wish you would take that +office, and fit it up handsomely, so that I can omit telling people that +by this time you are handsomely located, when I know it is no such thing. + +I am living with "Ratio Phillips." Send him one of those black +portfolios--by the stage, and put a couple of pen-holders and a dozen +steel pens in it. + +If you should have occasion to dispose of the long desk before I return, +don't forget to break open the middle drawer and take out my things. +Envelop my black cloth coat in a newspaper and hang it in the back room. + +Don't buy anything while I am here--but save up some money for me. Don't +send any money home. I shall have your next quarter's salary spent +before you get it, I think. I mean to make or break here within the next +two or three months. + Yrs. + SAM + + +The "wars" mentioned in the opening paragraph of this letter were +incident to the trouble concerning the boundary line between California +and Nevada. The trouble continued for some time, with occasional +bloodshed. The next letter is an exultant one. There were few enough of +this sort. We cannot pretend to keep track of the multiplicity of mines +and shares which lure the gold-hunters, pecking away at the flinty +ledges, usually in the snow. It has been necessary to abbreviate this +letter, for much of it has lost all importance with the years, and is +merely confusing. Hope is still high in the writer's heart, and +confidence in his associates still unshaken. Later he was to lose faith +in "Raish," whether with justice or not we cannot know now. + + + To Orion Clowns, in Carson City: + + ESMERALDA, May 11, 1862. +MY DEAR BRO.,--TO use a French expression I have "got my d--d satisfy" at +last. Two years' time will make us capitalists, in spite of anything. +Therefore, we need fret and fume, and worry and doubt no more, but just +lie still and put up with privations for six months. Perhaps three +months will "let us out." Then, if Government refuses to pay the rent on +your new office we can do it ourselves. We have got to wait six weeks, +anyhow, for a dividend, maybe longer--but that it will come there is no +shadow of a doubt, I have got the thing sifted down to a dead moral +certainty. I own one-eighth of the new "Monitor Ledge, Clemens Company," +and money can't buy a foot of it; because I know it to contain our +fortune. The ledge is six feet wide, and one needs no glass to see gold +and silver in it. Phillips and I own one half of a segregated claim in +the "Flyaway" discovery, and good interests in two extensions on it. +We put men to work on our part of the discovery yesterday, and last night +they brought us some fine specimens. Rock taken from ten feet below the +surface on the other part of the discovery, has yielded $150.00 to the +ton in the mill and we are at work 300 feet from their shaft. + +May 12--Yours by the mail received last night. "Eighteen hundred feet in +the C. T. Rice's Company!" Well, I am glad you did not accept of the 200 +feet. Tell Rice to give it to some poor man. + +But hereafter, when anybody holds up a glittering prospect before you, +just argue in this wise, viz: That, if all spare change be devoted to +working the "Monitor" and "Flyaway," 12 months, or 24 at furthest, will +find all our earthly wishes satisfied, so far as money is concerned--and +the more "feet" we have, the more anxiety we must bear--therefore, why +not say "No--d---n your 'prospects,' I wait on a sure thing--and a man +is less than a man, if he can't wait 2 years for a fortune?" When you +and I came out here, we did not expect '63 or '64 to find us rich men +--and if that proposition had been made, we would have accepted it +gladly. Now, it is made. + +Well, I am willing, now, that "Neary's tunnel," or anybody else's tunnel +shall succeed. Some of them may beat us a few months, but we shall be on +hand in the fullness of time, as sure as fate. I would hate to swap +chances with any member of the "tribe"--in fact, I am so lost to all +sense and reason as to be capable of refusing to trade "Flyaway" (with +but 200 feet in the Company of four,) foot for foot for that splendid +"Lady Washington," with its lists of capitalist proprietors, and its +35,000 feet of Priceless ground. + +I wouldn't mind being in some of those Clear Creek claims, if I lived in +Carson and we could spare the money. But I have struck my tent in +Esmeralda, and I care for no mines but those which I can superintend +myself. I am a citizen here now, and I am satisfied--although R. and I +are strapped and we haven't three days' rations in the house. + +Raish is looking anxiously for money and so am I. Send me whatever you +can spare conveniently--I want it to work the Flyaway with. My fourth of +that claim only cost me $50, (which isn't paid yet, though,) and I +suppose I could sell it here in town for ten times that amount today, but +I shall probably hold onto it till the cows come home. I shall work the +"Monitor" and the other claims with my own hands. I prospected of a +pound of "M," yesterday, and Raish reduced it with the blow-pipe, and got +about ten or twelve cents in gold and silver, besides the other half of +it which we spilt on the floor and didn't get. The specimen came from +the croppings, but was a choice one, and showed much free gold to the +naked eye. + +Well, I like the corner up-stairs office amazingly--provided, it has one +fine, large front room superbly carpeted, for the safe and a $150 desk, +or such a matter--one handsome room amidships, less handsomely gotten up, +perhaps, for records and consultations, and one good-sized bedroom and +adjoining it a kitchen, neither of which latter can be entered by anybody +but yourself--and finally, when one of the ledges begins to pay, the +whole to be kept in parlor order by two likely contrabands at big wages, +the same to be free of expense to the Government. You want the entire +second story--no less room than you would have had in Harris and Co's. +Make them fix for you before the 1st of July-for maybe you might want to +"come out strong" on the 4th, you know. + +No, the Post Office is all right and kept by a gentleman but W. F. +Express isn't. They charge 25 cts to express a letter from here, but I +believe they have quit charging twice for letters that arrive prepaid. + +The "Flyaway" specimen I sent you, (taken by myself from DeKay's shaft, +300 feet from where we are going to sink) cannot be called "choice," +exactly--say something above medium, to be on the safe side. But I have +seen exceedingly choice chunks from that shaft. My intention at first in +sending the Antelope specimen was that you might see that it resembles +the Monitor--but, come to think, a man can tell absolutely nothing about +that without seeing both ledges themselves. I tried to break a handsome +chunk from a huge piece of my darling Monitor which we brought from the +croppings yesterday, but it all splintered up, and I send you the scraps. +I call that "choice"--any d---d fool would. Don't ask if it has been +assayed, for it hasn't. It don't need it. It is amply able to speak for +itself. It is six feet wide on top, and traversed through and through +with veins whose color proclaims their worth. What the devil does a man +want with any more feet when he owns in the Flyaway and the invincible +bomb-proof Monitor? + +If I had anything more to say I have forgotten what it was, unless, +perhaps, that I want a sum of money--anywhere from $20 to $150, as soon +as possible. + +Raish sends regards. He or I, one will drop a line to the "Age" +occasionally. I suppose you saw my letters in the "Enterprise." + Yr. BRO, + SAM + +P. S. I suppose Pamela never will regain her health, but she could +improve it by coming to California--provided the trip didn't kill her. + +You see Bixby is on the flag-ship. He always was the best pilot on the +Mississippi, and deserves his "posish." They have done a reckless thing, +though, in putting Sam Bowen on the "Swan"--for if a bomb-shell happens +to come his way, he will infallibly jump overboard. + +Send me another package of those envelopes, per Bagley's coat pocket. + + + We see how anxious he was for his brother to make a good official + showing. If a niggardly Government refused to provide decent + quarters--no matter; the miners, with gold pouring in, would + themselves pay for a suite "superbly carpeted," and all kept in + order by "two likely contrabands"--that is to say, negroes. Samuel + Clemens in those days believed in expansion and impressive + surroundings. His brother, though also mining mad, was rather + inclined to be penny wise in the matter of office luxury--not a bad + idea, as it turned out. + + Orion, by the way, was acquiring "feet" on his own account, and in + one instance, at least, seems to have won his brother's + commendation. + + The 'Enterprise' letters mentioned we shall presently hear of again. + + + To Orion Clemens, in Carson City: + + ESMERALDA, Sunday, May--, 1862. +MY DEAR BROTHER,--Well, if you haven't "struck it rich--" that is, if the +piece of rock you sent me came from a bona fide ledge--and it looks as if +it did. If that is a ledge, and you own 200 feet in it, why, it's a big +thing--and I have nothing more to say. If you have actually made +something by helping to pay somebody's prospecting expenses it is a +wonder of the first magnitude, and deserves to rank as such. + +If that rock came from a well-defined ledge, that particular vein must be +at least an inch wide, judging from this specimen, which is fully that +thick. + +When I came in the other evening, hungry and tired and ill-natured, and +threw down my pick and shovel, Raish gave me your specimen--said Bagley +brought it, and asked me if it were cinnabar. I examined it by the +waning daylight, and took the specks of fine gold for sulphurets--wrote +you I did not think much of it--and posted the letter immediately. + +But as soon as I looked at it in the broad light of day, I saw my +mistake. During the week, we have made three horns, got a blow-pipe, &c, +and yesterday, all prepared, we prospected the "Mountain House." I broke +the specimen in two, and found it full of fine gold inside. Then we +washed out one-fourth of it, and got a noble prospect. This we reduced +with the blow-pipe, and got about two cents (herewith enclosed) in pure +gold. + +As the fragment prospected weighed rather less than an ounce, this would +give about $500 to the ton. We were eminently well satisfied. +Therefore, hold on to the "Mountain House," for it is a "big thing." +Touch it lightly, as far as money is concerned, though, for it is well to +reserve the code of justice in the matter of quartz ledges--that is, +consider them all (and their owners) guilty (of "shenanigan") until they +are proved innocent. + +P. S.--Monday--Ratio and I have bought one-half of a segregated claim in +the original "Flyaway," for $100--$50 down. We haven't a cent in the +house. We two will work the ledge, and have full control, and pay all +expenses. If you can spare $100 conveniently, let me have it--or $50, +anyhow, considering that I own one fourth of this, it is of course more +valuable than one 1/7 of the "Mountain House," although not so rich .... + + + There is too much of a sameness in the letters of this period to use + all of them. There are always new claims, and work done, apparently + without system or continuance, hoping to uncover sudden boundless + affluence. + + In the next letter and the one following it we get a hint of an + episode, or rather of two incidents which he combined into an + episode in Roughing It. The story as told in that book is an + account of what might have happened, rather than history. There was + never really any money in the "blind lead" of the Wide West claim, + except that which was sunk in it by unfortunate investors. Only + extracts from these letters are given. The other portions are + irrelevant and of slight value. + + + Extract from a letter to Orion Clemens, in Carson City: + + 1862. +Two or three of the old "Salina" company entered our hole on the Monitor +yesterday morning, before our men got there, and took possession, armed +with revolvers. And according to the d---d laws of this forever d---d +country, nothing but the District Court (and there ain't any) can touch +the matter, unless it assumes the shape of an infernal humbug which they +call "forcible entry and detainer," and in order to bring that about, you +must compel the jumpers to use personal violence toward you! We went up +and demanded possession, and they refused. Said they were in the hole, +armed and meant to die for it, if necessary. + +I got in with them, and again demanded possession. They said I might +stay in it as long as I pleased, and work but they would do the same. +I asked one of our company to take my place in the hole, while I went to +consult a lawyer. He did so. The lawyer said it was no go. They must +offer some "force." + +Our boys will try to be there first in the morning--in which case they +may get possession and keep it. Now you understand the shooting scrape +in which Gebhart was killed the other day. The Clemens Company--all of +us--hate to resort to arms in this matter, and it will not be done until +it becomes a forced hand--but I think that will be the end of it, +never-the-less. + + + The mine relocated in this letter was not the "Wide West," but it + furnished the proper incident. The only mention of the "Wide West" + is found in a letter written in July. + + + Extract from a letter to Orion Clemens, in Carson City: + 1862 +If I do not forget it, I will send you, per next mail, a pinch of decom. +(decomposed rock) which I pinched with thumb and finger from "Wide West" +ledge awhile ago. Raish and I have secured 200 out of a 400 ft. in it, +which perhaps (the ledge, I mean) is a spur from the W. W.--our shaft is +about 100 ft. from the W. W. shaft. In order to get in, we agreed to +sink 30 ft. We have sub-let to another man for 50 ft., and we pay for +powder and sharpening tools. + + + The "Wide West" claim was forfeited, but there is no evidence to + show that Clemens and his partners were ever, except in fiction, + "millionaires for ten days." The background, the local color, and + the possibilities are all real enough, but Mark Twain's aim in this, + as in most of his other reminiscent writing, was to arrange and + adapt his facts to the needs of a good story. + + The letters of this summer (1862) most of them bear evidence of + waning confidence in mining as a source of fortune--the miner has + now little faith in his own judgment, and none at all in that of his + brother, who was without practical experience. + + + Letter to Orion Clemens, in Carson City: + + ESMERALDA, Thursday. +MY DEAR BRO.,--Yours of the 17th, per express, just received. Part of it +pleased me exceedingly, and part of it didn't. Concerning the letter, +for instance: You have PROMISED me that you would leave all mining +matters, and everything involving an outlay of money, in my hands. + +Sending a man fooling around the country after ledges, for God's sake! +when there are hundreds of feet of them under my nose here, begging for +owners, free of charge. I don't want any more feet, and I won't touch +another foot--so you see, Orion, as far as any ledges of Perry's are +concerned, (or any other except what I examine first with my own eyes,) +I freely yield my right to share ownership with you. + +The balance of your letter, I say, pleases me exceedingly. Especially +that about the H. and D. being worth from $30 to $50 in Cal. It pleases +me because, if the ledges prove to be worthless, it will be a pleasant +reflection to know that others were beaten worse than ourselves. Raish +sold a man 30 feet, yesterday, at $20 a foot, although I was present at +the sale, and told the man the ground wasn't worth a d---n. He said he +had been hankering after a few feet in the H. and D. for a long time, and +he had got them at last, and he couldn't help thinking he had secured a +good thing. We went and looked at the ledges, and both of them +acknowledged that there was nothing in them but good "indications." Yet +the owners in the H. and D. will part with anything else sooner than +with feet in these ledges. Well, the work goes slowly--very slowly on, +in the tunnel, and we'll strike it some day. But--if we "strike it +rich,"--I've lost my guess, that's all. I expect that the way it got so +high in Cal. was, that Raish's brother, over there was offered $750.00 +for 20 feet of it, and he refused ..... + +Couldn't go on the hill today. It snowed. It always snows here, I +expect. + +Don't you suppose they have pretty much quit writing, at home? + +When you receive your next 1/4 yr's salary, don't send any of it here +until after you have told me you have got it. Remember this. I am +afraid of that H. and D. + +They have struck the ledge in the Live Yankee tunnel, and I told the +President, Mr. Allen, that it wasn't as good as the croppings. He said +that was true enough, but they would hang to it until it did prove rich. +He is much of a gentleman, that man Allen. + +And ask Gaslerie why the devil he don't send along my commission as +Deputy Sheriff. The fact of my being in California, and out of his +country, wouldn't amount to a d---n with me, in the performance of my +official duties. + +I have nothing to report, at present, except that I shall find out all I +want to know about this locality before I leave it. + +How do the Records pay? + Yr. Bro. + SAM. + + + In one of the foregoing letters--the one dated May 11 there is a + reference to the writer's "Enterprise Letters." Sometimes, during + idle days in the camp, the miner had followed old literary impulses + and written an occasional burlesque sketch, which he had signed + "Josh," and sent to the Territorial Enterprise, at Virginia City. + --[One contribution was sent to a Keokuk paper, The Gate City, and a + letter written by Mrs. Jane Clemens at the time would indicate that + Mark Twain's mother did not always approve of her son's literary + efforts. She hopes that he will do better, and some time write + something "that his kin will be proud of."]--The rough, vigorous + humor of these had attracted some attention, and Orion, pleased with + any measure of success that might come to his brother, had allowed + the authorship of them to become known. When, in July, the + financial situation became desperate, the Esmeralda miner was moved + to turn to literature for relief. But we will let him present the + situation himself. + + + To Orion Clemens, in Carson City: + + ESMERALDA, July 23d, 1862. +MY DEAR BRO.,--No, I don't own a foot in the "Johnson" ledge--I will tell +the story some day in a more intelligible manner than Tom has told it. +You needn't take the trouble to deny Tom's version, though. I own 25 +feet (1-16) of the 1st east ex. on it--and Johnson himself has contracted +to find the ledge for 100 feet. Contract signed yesterday. But as the +ledge will be difficult to find he is allowed six months to find it in. +An eighteenth of the Ophir was a fortune to John D. Winters--and the +Ophir can't beat the Johnson any..... + +My debts are greater than I thought for; I bought $25 worth of clothing, +and sent $25 to Higbie, in the cement diggings. I owe about $45 or $50, +and have got about $45 in my pocket. But how in the h--l I am going to +live on something over $100 until October or November, is singular. The +fact is, I must have something to do, and that shortly, too..... + +Now write to the Sacramento Union folks, or to Marsh, and tell them I'll +write as many letters a week as they want, for $10 a week--my board must +be paid. Tell them I have corresponded with the N. Orleans Crescent, and +other papers--and the Enterprise. California is full of people who have +interests here, and it's d---d seldom they hear from this country. +I can't write a specimen letter--now, at any rate--I'd rather undertake +to write a Greek poem. Tell 'em the mail and express leave three times a +week, and it costs from 25 to 50 cents to send letters by the blasted +express. If they want letters from here, who'll run from morning till +night collecting materials cheaper. I'll write a short letter twice a +week, for the present, for the "Age," for $5 per week. Now it has been a +long time since I couldn't make my own living, and it shall be a long +time before I loaf another year..... + +If I get the other 25 feet in the Johnson ex., I shan't care a d---n. +I'll be willing to curse awhile and wait. And if I can't move the bowels +of those hills this fall, I will come up and clerk for you until I get +money enough to go over the mountains for the winter. + Yr. Bro. + SAM. + + + The Territorial Enterprise at Virginia City was at this time owned + by Joseph T. Goodman, who had bought it on the eve of the great + Comstock silver-mining boom, and from a struggling, starving sheet + had converted it into one of the most important--certainly the most + picturesque-papers on the coast. The sketches which the Esmeralda + miner had written over the name of "Josh" fitted into it exactly, + and when a young man named Barstow, in the business office, urged + Goodman to invite "Josh" to join their staff, the Enterprise owner + readily fell in with the idea. Among a lot of mining matters of no + special interest, Clemens, July 30th, wrote his brother: "Barstow + has offered me the post as local reporter for the Enterprise at $25 + a week, and I have written him that I will let him know next mail, + if possible." + + In Roughing It we are told that the miner eagerly accepted the + proposition to come to Virginia City, but the letters tell a + different story. Mark Twain was never one to abandon any + undertaking easily. His unwillingness to surrender in a lost cause + would cost him more than one fortune in the years to come. A week + following the date of the foregoing he was still undecided. + + + To Orion Clemens, in Carson City: + + ESMERALDA, Aug. 7, 1862. +MY DEAR BRO,--Barstow wrote that if I wanted the place I could have it. +I wrote him that I guessed I would take it, and asked him how long before +I must come up there. I have not heard from him since. + +Now, I shall leave at mid-night tonight, alone and on foot for a walk of +60 or 70 miles through a totally uninhabited country, and it is barely +possible that mail facilities may prove infernally "slow" during the few +weeks I expect to spend out there. But do you write Barstow that I have +left here for a week or so, and in case he should want me he must write +me here, or let me know through you. + +The Contractors say they will strike the Fresno next week. After fooling +with those assayers a week, they concluded not to buy "Mr. Flower" at +$50, although they would have given five times the sum for it four months +ago. So I have made out a deed for one half of all Johnny's ground and +acknowledged and left in judge F. K. Becktel's hands, and if judge Turner +wants it he must write to Becktel and pay him his Notary fee of $1.50. +I would have paid that fee myself, but I want money now as I leave town +tonight. However, if you think it isn't right, you can pay the fee to +judge Turner yourself. + +Hang to your money now. I may want some when I get back..... + +See that you keep out of debt-to anybody. Bully for B.! Write him that +I would write him myself, but I am to take a walk tonight and haven't +time. Tell him to bring his family out with him. He can rely upon what +I say--and I say the land has lost its ancient desolate appearance; the +rose and the oleander have taken the place of the departed sage-bush; a +rich black loam, garnished with moss, and flowers, and the greenest of +grass, smiles to Heaven from the vanished sand-plains; the "endless +snows" have all disappeared, and in their stead, or to repay us for their +loss, the mountains rear their billowy heads aloft, crowned with a +fadeless and eternal verdure; birds, and fountains, and trees-tropical +bees--everywhere!--and the poet dreamt of Nevada when he wrote: + + "and Sharon waves, in solemn praise, + Her silent groves of palm." + +and today the royal Raven listens in a dreamy stupor to the songs of +the thrush and the nightingale and the canary--and shudders when the +gaudy-plumaged birds of the distant South sweep by him to the orange +groves of Carson. Tell him he wouldn't recognize the d--d country. +He should bring his family by all means. + +I intended to write home, but I haven't done it. + Yr. Bro. + SAM. + + + In this letter we realize that he had gone into the wilderness to + reflect--to get a perspective on the situation. He was a great + walker in those days, and sometimes with Higbie, sometimes alone, + made long excursions. One such is recorded in Roughing It, the trip + to Mono Lake. We have no means of knowing where his seventy-mile + tour led him now, but it is clear that he still had not reached a + decision on his return. Indeed, we gather that he is inclined to + keep up the battle among the barren Esmeralda hills. + + + Last mining letter; written to Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + ESMERALDA, CAL., Aug. 15, 1862. +MY DEAR SISTER,-I mailed a letter to you and Ma this morning, but since +then I have received yours to Orion and me. Therefore, I must answer +right away, else I may leave town without doing it at all. What in +thunder are pilot's wages to me? which question, I beg humbly to observe, +is of a general nature, and not discharged particularly at you. But it +is singular, isn't it, that such a matter should interest Orion, when it +is of no earthly consequence to me? I never have once thought of +returning home to go on the river again, and I never expect to do any +more piloting at any price. My livelihood must be made in this country +--and if I have to wait longer than I expected, let it be so--I have no +fear of failure. You know I have extravagant hopes, for Orion tells you +everything which he ought to keep to himself--but it's his nature to do +that sort of thing, and I let him alone. I did think for awhile of going +home this fall--but when I found that that was and had been the cherished +intention and the darling aspiration every year, of these old care-worn +Californians for twelve weary years--I felt a little uncomfortable, but +I stole a march on Disappointment and said I would not go home this fall. +I will spend the winter in San Francisco, if possible. Do not tell any +one that I had any idea of piloting again at present--for it is all a +mistake. This country suits me, and--it shall suit me, whether or no.... + +Dan Twing and I and Dan's dog, "cabin" together--and will continue to do +so for awhile--until I leave for-- + +The mansion is 10x12, with a "domestic" roof. Yesterday it rained--the +first shower for five months. "Domestic," it appears to me, is not +water-proof. We went outside to keep from getting wet. Dan makes the +bed when it is his turn to do it--and when it is my turn, I don't, you +know. The dog is not a good hunter, and he isn't worth shucks to watch +--but he scratches up the dirt floor of the cabin, and catches flies, and +makes himself generally useful in the way of washing dishes. Dan gets up +first in the morning and makes a fire--and I get up last and sit by it, +while he cooks breakfast. We have a cold lunch at noon, and I cook +supper--very much against my will. However, one must have one good meal +a day, and if I were to live on Dan's abominable cookery, I should lose +my appetite, you know. Dan attended Dr. Chorpenning's funeral yesterday, +and he felt as though he ought to wear a white shirt--and we had a jolly +good time finding such an article. We turned over all our traps, and he +found one at last--but I shall always think it was suffering from yellow +fever. He also found an old black coat, greasy, and wrinkled to that +degree that it appeared to have been quilted at some time or other. In +this gorgeous costume he attended the funeral. And when he returned, his +own dog drove him away from the cabin, not recognizing him. This is +true. + +You would not like to live in a country where flour was $40 a barrel? +Very well; then, I suppose you would not like to live here, where flour +was $100 a barrel when I first came here. And shortly afterwards, it +couldn't be had at any price--and for one month the people lived on +barley, beans and beef--and nothing beside. Oh, no--we didn't luxuriate +then! Perhaps not. But we said wise and severe things about the vanity +and wickedness of high living. We preached our doctrine and practised +it. Which course I respectfully recommend to the clergymen of St. Louis. + +Where is Beack Jolly?--[a pilot]--and Bixby? + Your Brother + SAM. + + + + +IV + +LETTERS 1863-64. "MARK TWAIN." COMSTOCK JOURNALISM. ARTEMUS WARD + +There is a long hiatus in the correspondence here. For a space of many +months there is but one letter to continue the story. Others were +written, of course, but for some reason they have not survived. It was +about the end of August (1862) when the miner finally abandoned the +struggle, and with his pack on his shoulders walked the one and thirty +miles over the mountains to Virginia City, arriving dusty, lame, and +travel-stained to claim at last his rightful inheritance. At the +Enterprise office he was welcomed, and in a brief time entered into his +own. Goodman, the proprietor, himself a man of great ability, had +surrounded himself with a group of gay-hearted fellows, whose fresh, wild +way of writing delighted the Comstock pioneers far more than any sober +presentation of mere news. Samuel Clemens fitted exactly into this +group. By the end of the year he had become a leader of it. When he +asked to be allowed to report the coming Carson legislature, Goodman +consented, realizing that while Clemens knew nothing of parliamentary +procedure, he would at least make the letters picturesque. + +It was in the midst of this work that he adopted the name which he was to +make famous throughout the world. The story of its adoption has been +fully told elsewhere and need not be repeated here.--[See Mark Twain: A +Biography, by the same author; Chapter XL.] + +"Mark Twain" was first signed to a Carson letter, February 2, 1863, and +from that time was attached to all of Samuel Clemens's work. The letters +had already been widely copied, and the name now which gave them +personality quickly obtained vogue. It was attached to himself as well +as to the letters; heretofore he had been called Sam or Clemens, now he +became almost universally Mark Twain and Mark. + +This early period of Mark Twain's journalism is full of delicious +history, but we are permitted here to retell only such of it as will +supply connection to the infrequent letters. He wrote home briefly in +February, but the letter contained nothing worth preserving. Then two +months later he gives us at least a hint of his employment. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + VIRGINIA, April 11, 1863. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--It is very late at night, and I am writing +in my room, which is not quite as large or as nice as the one I had at +home. My board, washing and lodging cost me seventy-five dollars a +month. + +I have just received your letter, Ma, from Carson--the one in which you +doubt my veracity about the statements I made in a letter to you. That's +right. I don't recollect what the statements were, but I suppose they +were mining statistics. I have just finished writing up my report for +the morning paper, and giving the Unreliable a column of advice about how +to conduct himself in church, and now I will tell you a few more lies, +while my hand is in. For instance, some of the boys made me a present of +fifty feet in the East India G. and S. M. Company ten days ago. I was +offered ninety-five dollars a foot for it, yesterday, in gold. I refused +it--not because I think the claim is worth a cent for I don't but because +I had a curiosity to see how high it would go, before people find out how +worthless it is. Besides, what if one mining claim does fool me? I have +got plenty more. I am not in a particular hurry to get rich. I suppose +I couldn't well help getting rich here some time or other, whether I +wanted to or not. You folks do not believe in Nevada, and I am glad you +don't. Just keep on thinking so. + +I was at the Gould and Curry mine, the other day, and they had two or +three tons of choice rock piled up, which was valued at $20,000 a ton. +I gathered up a hat-full of chunks, on account of their beauty as +specimens--they don't let everybody supply themselves so liberally. I +send Mr. Moffett a little specimen of it for his cabinet. If you don't +know what the white stuff on it is, I must inform you that it is purer +silver than the minted coin. There is about as much gold in it as there +is silver, but it is not visible. I will explain to you some day how to +detect it. + +Pamela, you wouldn't do for a local reporter--because you don't +appreciate the interest that attaches to names. An item is of no use +unless it speaks of some person, and not then, unless that person's name +is distinctly mentioned. The most interesting letter one can write, to +an absent friend, is one that treats of persons he has been acquainted +with rather than the public events of the day. Now you speak of a young +lady who wrote to Hollie Benson that she had seen me; and you didn't +mention her name. It was just a mere chance that I ever guessed who she +was--but I did, finally, though I don't remember her name, now. I was +introduced to her in San Francisco by Hon. A. B. Paul, and saw her +afterwards in Gold Hill. They were a very pleasant lot of girls--she and +her sisters. + +P. S. I have just heard five pistol shots down street--as such things +are in my line, I will go and see about it. + +P. S. No 2--5 A.M.--The pistol did its work well--one man--a Jackson +County Missourian, shot two of my friends, (police officers,) through the +heart--both died within three minutes. Murderer's name is John Campbell. + + The "Unreliable" of this letter was a rival reporter on whom Mark + Twain had conferred this name during the legislative session. His + real name was Rice, and he had undertaken to criticize Clemens's + reports. The brisk reply that Rice's letters concealed with a show + of parliamentary knowledge a "festering mass of misstatements the + author of whom should be properly termed the 'Unreliable," fixed + that name upon him for life. This burlesque warfare delighted the + frontier and it did not interfere with friendship. Clemens and Rice + were constant associates, though continually firing squibs at each + other in their respective papers--a form of personal journalism much + in vogue on the Comstock. + + In the next letter we find these two journalistic "blades" enjoying + themselves together in the coast metropolis. This letter is labeled + "No. 2," meaning, probably, the second from San Francisco, but No. 1 + has disappeared, and even No, 2 is incomplete. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + +No. 2--($20.00 Enclosed) + LICK HOUSE, S. F., June 1, '63. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--The Unreliable and myself are still here, +and still enjoying ourselves. I suppose I know at least a thousand +people here--a, great many of them citizens of San Francisco, but the +majority belonging in Washoe--and when I go down Montgomery street, +shaking hands with Tom, Dick and Harry, it is just like being in Main +street in Hannibal and meeting the old familiar faces. I do hate to go +back to Washoe. We fag ourselves completely out every day, and go to +sleep without rocking, every night. We dine out and we lunch out, and we +eat, drink and are happy--as it were. After breakfast, I don't often see +the hotel again until midnight--or after. I am going to the Dickens +mighty fast. I know a regular village of families here in the house, but +I never have time to call on them. Thunder! we'll know a little more +about this town, before we leave, than some of the people who live in it. +We take trips across the Bay to Oakland, and down to San Leandro, and +Alameda, and those places; and we go out to the Willows, and Hayes Park, +and Fort Point, and up to Benicia; and yesterday we were invited out on a +yachting excursion, and had a sail in the fastest yacht on the Pacific +Coast. Rice says: "Oh, no--we are not having any fun, Mark--Oh, no, I +reckon not--it's somebody else--it's probably the 'gentleman in the +wagon'!" (popular slang phrase.) When I invite Rice to the Lick House to +dinner, the proprietors send us champagne and claret, and then we do put +on the most disgusting airs. Rice says our calibre is too light--we +can't stand it to be noticed! + +I rode down with a gentleman to the Ocean House, the other day, to see +the sea horses, and also to listen to the roar of the surf, and watch the +ships drifting about, here, and there, and far away at sea. When I stood +on the beach and let the surf wet my feet, I recollected doing the same +thing on the shores of the Atlantic--and then I had a proper appreciation +of the vastness of this country--for I had traveled from ocean to ocean +across it. + (Remainder missing.) + + + Not far from Virginia City there are some warm springs that + constantly send up jets of steam through fissures in the + mountainside. The place was a health resort, and Clemens, always + subject to bronchial colds, now and again retired there for a cure. + + A letter written in the late summer--a gay, youthful document + --belongs to one of these periods of convalescence. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + +No. 12--$20 enclosed. + STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, August 19, '63. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--Ma, you have given my vanity a deadly thrust. +Behold, I am prone to boast of having the widest reputation, as a local +editor, of any man on the Pacific coast, and you gravely come forward and +tell me "if I work hard and attend closely to my business, I may aspire +to a place on a big San Francisco daily, some day." There's a comment on +human vanity for you! Why, blast it, I was under the impression that I +could get such a situation as that any time I asked for it. But I don't +want it. No paper in the United States can afford to pay me what my +place on the "Enterprise" is worth. If I were not naturally a lazy, +idle, good-for-nothing vagabond, I could make it pay me $20,000 a year. +But I don't suppose I shall ever be any account. I lead an easy life, +though, and I don't care a cent whether school keeps or not. Everybody +knows me, and I fare like a prince wherever I go, be it on this side of +the mountains or the other. And I am proud to say I am the most +conceited ass in the Territory. + +You think that picture looks old? Well, I can't help it--in reality I am +not as old as I was when I was eighteen. + +I took a desperate cold more than a week ago, and I seduced Wilson (a +Missouri boy, reporter of the Daily Union,) from his labors, and we went +over to Lake Bigler. But I failed to cure my cold. I found the "Lake +House" crowded with the wealth and fashion of Virginia, and I could not +resist the temptation to take a hand in all the fun going. Those +Virginians--men and women both--are a stirring set, and I found if I went +with them on all their eternal excursions, I should bring the consumption +home with me--so I left, day before yesterday, and came back into the +Territory again. A lot of them had purchased a site for a town on the +Lake shore, and they gave me a lot. When you come out, I'll build you a +house on it. The Lake seems more supernaturally beautiful now, than +ever. It is the masterpiece of the Creation. + +The hotel here at the Springs is not so much crowded as usual, and I am +having a very comfortable time of it. The hot, white steam puffs up out +of fissures in the earth like the jets that come from a steam-boat's +'scape pipes, and it makes a boiling, surging noise like a steam-boat, +too-hence the name. We put eggs in a handkerchief and dip them in the +springs--they "soft boil" in 2 Minutes, and boil as hard as a rock in +4 minutes. These fissures extend more than a quarter of a mile, and the +long line of steam columns looks very pretty. A large bath house is +built over one of the springs, and we go in it and steam ourselves as +long as we can stand it, and then come out and take a cold shower bath. +You get baths, board and lodging, all for $25 a week--cheaper than living +in Virginia without baths..... + Yrs aft + MARK. + + + It was now the autumn of 1863. Mark Twain was twenty-eight years + old. On the Coast he had established a reputation as a gaily + original newspaper writer. Thus far, however, he had absolutely no + literary standing, nor is there any evidence that he had literary + ambitions; his work was unformed, uncultivated--all of which seems + strange, now, when we realize that somewhere behind lay the + substance of immortality. Rudyard Kipling at twenty-eight had done + his greatest work. + + Even Joseph Goodman, who had a fine literary perception and a deep + knowledge of men, intimately associated with Mark Twain as he was, + received at this time no hint of his greater powers. Another man on + the staff of the Enterprise, William Wright, who called himself "Dan + de Quille," a graceful humorist, gave far more promise, Goodman + thought, of future distinction. + + It was Artemus Ward who first suspected the value of Mark Twain's + gifts, and urged him to some more important use of them. Artemus in + the course of a transcontinental lecture tour, stopped in Virginia + City, and naturally found congenial society on the Enterprise staff. + He had intended remaining but a few days, but lingered three weeks, + a period of continuous celebration, closing only with the holiday + season. During one night of final festivities, Ward slipped away + and gave a performance on his own account. His letter to Mark + Twain, from Austin, Nevada, written a day or two later, is most + characteristic. + + + Artemus Ward's letter to Mark Twain: + + AUSTIN, Jan. 1, '64. +MY DEAREST LOVE,--I arrived here yesterday a.m. at 2 o'clock. It is a +wild, untamable place, full of lionhearted boys. I speak tonight. See +small bills. + +Why did you not go with me and save me that night?--I mean the night I +left you after that dinner party. I went and got drunker, beating, I may +say, Alexander the Great, in his most drinkinist days, and I blackened my +face at the Melodeon, and made a gibbering, idiotic speech. God-dam it! +I suppose the Union will have it. But let it go. I shall always +remember Virginia as a bright spot in my existence, as all others must or +rather cannot be, as it were. + +Love to Jo. Goodman and Dan. I shall write soon, a powerfully convincing +note to my friends of "The Mercury." Your notice, by the way, did much +good here, as it doubtlessly will elsewhere. The miscreants of the Union +will be batted in the snout if they ever dare pollute this rapidly rising +city with their loathsome presence. + +Some of the finest intellects in the world have been blunted by liquor. + +Do not, sir--do not flatter yourself that you are the only +chastely-humorous writer onto the Pacific slopes. + +Good-bye, old boy--and God bless you! The matter of which I spoke to you +so earnestly shall be just as earnestly attended to--and again with very +many warm regards for Jo. and Dan., and regards to many of the good +friends we met. + I am Faithfully, gratefully yours, + ARTEMUS WARD. + + + The Union which Ward mentions was the rival Virginia. City paper; + the Mercury was the New York Sunday Mercury, to which he had urged + Mark Twain to contribute. Ward wrote a second letter, after a siege + of illness at Salt Lake City. He was a frail creature, and three + years later, in London, died of consumption. His genius and + encouragement undoubtedly exerted an influence upon Mark Twain. + Ward's second letter here follows. + + + Artemus Ward to S. L. Clemens: + + SALT LAKE CITY, Jan. 21, '64. +MY DEAR MARK,--I have been dangerously ill for the past two weeks here, +of congestive fever. Very grave fears were for a time entertained of my +recovery, but happily the malady is gone, though leaving me very, very +weak. I hope to be able to resume my journey in a week or so. I think +I shall speak in the Theater here, which is one of the finest +establishments of the kind in America. + +The Saints have been wonderfully kind to me, I could not have been better +or more tenderly nursed at home--God bless them! + +I am still exceedingly weak--can't write any more. Love to Jo and Dan, +and all the rest. Write me at St. Louis. + Always yours, + ARTEMUS WARD. + + + If one could only have Mark Twain's letters in reply to these! but + they have vanished and are probably long since dust. A letter which + he wrote to his mother assures us that he undertook to follow Ward's + advice. He was not ready, however, for serious literary effort. + The article, sent to the Mercury, was distinctly of the Comstock + variety; it was accepted, but it apparently made no impression, and + he did not follow it up. + + For one thing, he was just then too busy reporting the Legislature + at Carson City and responding to social demands. From having been a + scarcely considered unit during the early days of his arrival in + Carson Mark Twain had attained a high degree of importance in the + little Nevada capital. In the Legislature he was a power; as + correspondent for the Enterprise he was feared and respected as well + as admired. His humor, his satire, and his fearlessness were + dreaded weapons. + + Also, he was of extraordinary popularity. Orion's wife, with her + little daughter, Jennie, had come out from the States. The Governor + of Nevada had no household in Carson City, and was generally absent. + Orion Clemens reigned in his stead, and indeed was usually addressed + as "Governor" Clemens. His home became the social center of the + capital, and his brilliant brother its chief ornament. From the + roughest of miners of a year before he had become, once more, almost + a dandy in dress, and no occasion was complete without him. When + the two Houses of the Legislature assembled, in January, 1864, a + burlesque Third House was organized and proposed to hold a session, + as a church benefit. After very brief consideration it was decided + to select Mark Twain to preside at this Third House assembly under + the title of "Governor," and a letter of invitation was addressed to + him. His reply to it follows: + + + To S. Pixley and G. A. Sears, Trustees: + + CARSON CITY, January 23, 1864. +GENTLEMEN, Certainly. If the public can find anything in a grave state +paper worth paying a dollar for, I am willing that they should pay that +amount, or any other; and although I am not a very dusty Christian +myself, I take an absorbing interest in religious affairs, and would +willingly inflict my annual message upon the Church itself if it might +derive benefit thereby. You can charge what you please; I promise the +public no amusement, but I do promise a reasonable amount of instruction. +I am responsible to the Third House only, and I hope to be permitted to +make it exceedingly warm for that body, without caring whether the +sympathies of the public and the Church be enlisted in their favor, and +against myself, or not. + Respectfully, + MARK TWAIN. + + + There is a quality in this letter more suggestive of the later Mark + Twain than anything that has preceded it. His Third House address, + unfortunately, has not been preserved, but those who heard it + regarded it as a classic. It probably abounded in humor of the + frontier sort-unsparing ridicule of the Governor, the Legislature, + and individual citizens. It was all taken in good part, of course, + and as a recognition of his success he received a gold watch, with + the case properly inscribed to "The Governor of the Third House." + This was really his first public appearance in a field in which he + was destined to achieve very great fame. + + + + +V + +LETTERS 1864-66. SAN FRANCISCO AND HAWAII + + Life on the Comstock came to an end for Mark Twain in May, 1864. It + was the time of The Flour Sack Sanitary Fund, the story of which he + has told in Roughing It. He does not, however, refer to the + troubles which this special fund brought upon himself. Coming into + the Enterprise office one night, after a gay day of "Fund" + celebration, Clemens wrote, for next day's paper, a paragraph + intended to be merely playful, but which proved highly offending to + certain ladies concerned with the flour-sack enterprise. No files + of the paper exist today, so we cannot judge of the quality of humor + that stirred up trouble. + + The trouble, however, was genuine enough, Virginia's rival paper + seized upon the chance to humiliate its enemy, and presently words + were passed back and forth until nothing was left to write but a + challenge. The story of this duel, which did not come off, has been + quite fully told elsewhere, both by Mark Twain and the present + writer; but the following letter--a revelation of his inner feelings + in the matter of his offense--has never before been published. + + + To Mrs. Cutler, in Carson City: + + VIRGINIA, May 23rd, 1864. +MRS. W. K. CUTLER: + +MADAM,--I address a lady in every sense of the term. Mrs. Clemens has +informed me of everything that has occurred in Carson in connection with +that unfortunate item of mine about the Sanitary Funds accruing from the +ball, and from what I can understand, you are almost the only lady in +your city who has understood the circumstances under which my fault was +committed, or who has shown any disposition to be lenient with me. Had +the note of the ladies been properly worded, I would have published an +ample apology instantly--and possibly I might even have done so anyhow, +had that note arrived at any other time--but it came at a moment when I +was in the midst of what ought to have been a deadly quarrel with the +publishers of the Union, and I could not come out and make public +apologies to any one at such a time. It is bad policy to do it even now +(as challenges have already passed between myself and a proprietor of the +Union, and the matter is still in abeyance,) but I suppose I had better +say a word or two to show the ladies that I did not wilfully and +maliciously do them a wrong. + +But my chief object, Mrs. Cutler, in writing you this note (and you will +pardon the liberty I have taken,) was to thank you very kindly and +sincerely for the consideration you have shown me in this matter, and for +your continued friendship for Mollie while others are disposed to +withdraw theirs on account of a fault for which I alone am responsible. + Very truly yours, + SAM. L. CLEMENS. + + + The matter did not end with the failure of the duel. A very strict + law had just been passed, making it a felony even to send or accept + a challenge. Clemens, on the whole, rather tired of Virginia City + and Carson, thought it a good time to go across the mountains to San + Francisco. With Steve Gillis, a printer, of whom he was very fond + --an inveterate joker, who had been more than half responsible for + the proposed duel, and was to have served as his second--he took the + stage one morning, and in due time was in the California metropolis, + at work on the Morning Call. + + Clemens had been several times in San Francisco, and loved the + place. We have no letter of that summer, the first being dated + several months after his arrival. He was still working on the Call + when it was written, and contributing literary articles to the + Californian, of which Bret Harte, unknown to fame, was editor. + Harte had his office just above the rooms of the Call, and he and + Clemens were good friends. San Francisco had a real literary group + that, for a time at least, centered around the offices of the Golden + Era. In a letter that follows Clemens would seem to have scorned + this publication, but he was a frequent contributor to it at one + period. Joaquin Miller was of this band of literary pioneers; also + Prentice Mulford, Charles Warren Stoddard, Fitzhugh Ludlow, and + Orpheus C. Kerr. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + Sept. 25, 1864. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--You can see by my picture that this superb +climate agrees with me. And it ought, after living where I was never out +of sight of snow peaks twenty-four hours during three years. Here we +have neither snow nor cold weather; fires are never lighted, and yet +summer clothes are never worn--you wear spring clothing the year round. + +Steve Gillis, who has been my comrade for two years, and who came down +here with me, is to be married, in a week or two, to a very pretty girl +worth $130,000 in her own right--and then I shall be alone again, until +they build a house, which they will do shortly. + +We have been here only four months, yet we have changed our lodgings five +times, and our hotel twice. We are very comfortably fixed where we are, +now, and have no fault to find with the rooms or with the people--we are +the only lodgers in a well-to-do private family, with one grown daughter +and a piano in the parlor adjoining our room. But I need a change, and +must move again. I have taken rooms further down the street. I shall +stay in this little quiet street, because it is full of gardens and +shrubbery, and there are none but dwelling houses in it. + +I am taking life easy, now, and I mean to keep it up for awhile. I don't +work at night any more. I told the "Call" folks to pay me $25 a week and +let me work only in daylight. So I get up at ten every morning, and quit +work at five or six in the afternoon. You ask if I work for greenbacks? +Hardly. What do you suppose I could do with greenbacks here? + +I have engaged to write for the new literary paper--the "Californian" +--same pay I used to receive on the "Golden Era"--one article a week, +fifty dollars a month. I quit the "Era," long ago. It wasn't high-toned +enough. The "Californian" circulates among the highest class of the +community, and is the best weekly literary paper in the United States +--and I suppose I ought to know. + +I work as I always did--by fits and starts. I wrote two articles last +night for the Californian, so that lets me out for two weeks. That would +be about seventy-five dollars, in greenbacks, wouldn't it? + +Been down to San Jose (generally pronounced Sannozay--emphasis on last +syllable)--today fifty miles from here, by railroad. Town of 6,000 +inhabitants, buried in flowers and shrubbery. The climate is finer than +ours here, because it is not so close to the ocean, and is protected from +the winds by the coast range. + +I had an invitation today, to go down on an excursion to San Luis Obispo, +and from thence to the city of Mexico, to be gone six or eight weeks, or +possibly longer, but I could not accept, on account of my contract to act +as chief mourner or groomsman at Steve's wedding. + +I have triumphed. They refused me and other reporters some information +at a branch of the Coroner's office--Massey's undertaker establishment, +a few weeks ago. I published the wickedest article on them I ever wrote +in my life, and you can rest assured we got all the information we wanted +after that. + +By the new census, San Francisco has a population of 130,000. They don't +count the hordes of Chinamen. + Yrs aftly, + SAM. + + +I send a picture for Annie, and one for Aunt Ella--that is, if she will +have it. + + + Relations with the Call ceased before the end of the year, though + not in the manner described in Roughing It. Mark Twain loved to + make fiction of his mishaps, and to show himself always in a bad + light. As a matter of fact, he left the Call with great + willingness, and began immediately contributing a daily letter to + the Enterprise, which brought him a satisfactory financial return. + + In the biographical sketch with which this volume opens, and more + extendedly elsewhere, has been told the story of the trouble growing + out of the Enterprise letters, and of Mark Twain's sojourn with + James Gillis in the Tuolumne Hills. Also how, in the frowsy hotel + at Angel's Camp, he heard the frog anecdote that would become the + corner-stone of his fame. There are no letters of this period--only + some note-book entries. It is probable that he did not write home, + believing, no doubt, that he had very little to say. + + For more than a year there is not a line that has survived. Yet it + had been an important year; the jumping frog story, published in New + York, had been reprinted East and West, and laughed over in at least + a million homes. Fame had not come to him, but it was on the way. + + Yet his outlook seems not to have been a hopeful one. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 20, 1866. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I do not know what to write; my life is so +uneventful. I wish I was back there piloting up and down the river +again. Verily, all is vanity and little worth--save piloting. + +To think that, after writing many an article a man might be excused for +thinking tolerably good, those New York people should single out a +villainous backwoods sketch to compliment me on! "Jim Smiley and His +Jumping Frog"--a squib which would never have been written but to please +Artemus Ward, and then it reached New York too late to appear in his +book. + +But no matter. His book was a wretchedly poor one, generally speaking, +and it could be no credit to either of us to appear between its covers. + +This paragraph is from the New York correspondence of the San Francisco +Alta: + +(Clipping pasted in.) + + "Mark Twain's story in the Saturday Press of November 18th, called + 'Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,' has set all New York in a roar, + and he may be said to have made his mark. I have been asked fifty + times about it and its author, and the papers are copying it far and + near. It is voted the best thing of the day. Cannot the + Californian afford to keep Mark all to itself? It should not let + him scintillate so widely without first being filtered through the + California press." + +The New York publishing house of Carleton & Co. gave the sketch to the +Saturday Press when they found it was too late for the book. + +Though I am generally placed at the head of my breed of scribblers in +this part of the country, the place properly belongs to Bret Harte, +I think, though he denies it, along with the rest. He wants me to club a +lot of old sketches together with a lot of his, and publish a book. +I wouldn't do it, only he agrees to take all the trouble. But I want to +know whether we are going to make anything out of it, first. However, he +has written to a New York publisher, and if we are offered a bargain that +will pay for a month's labor we will go to work and prepare the volume +for the press. + Yours affy, + SAM. + + + Bret Harte and Clemens had by this time quit the Californian, + expecting to contribute to Eastern periodicals. Clemens, however, + was not yet through with Coast journalism. There was much interest + just at this time in the Sandwich Islands, and he was selected by + the foremost Sacramento paper to spy out the islands and report + aspects and conditions there. His letters home were still + infrequent, but this was something worth writing. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + SAN FRANCISCO, March 5th, 1866. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I start to do Sandwich Islands day after +tomorrow, (I suppose Annie is geographer enough by this time to find them +on the map), in the steamer "Ajax." We shall arrive there in about +twelve days. My friends seem determined that I shall not lack +acquaintances, for I only decided today to go, and they have already sent +me letters of introduction to everybody down there worth knowing. I am +to remain there a month and ransack the islands, the great cataracts and +the volcanoes completely, and write twenty or thirty letters to the +Sacramento Union--for which they pay me as much money as I would get if I +staid at home. + +If I come back here I expect to start straight across the continent by +way of the Columbia river, the Pend d'Oreille Lakes, through Montana and +down the Missouri river,--only 200 miles of land travel from San +Francisco to New Orleans. + Goodbye for the present. + Yours, + SAM. + + + His home letters from the islands are numerous enough; everything + there being so new and so delightful that he found joy in telling of + it; also, he was still young enough to air his triumphs a little, + especially when he has dined with the Grand Chamberlain and is going + to visit the King! + + The languorous life of the islands exactly suited Mask Twain. All + his life he remembered them--always planning to return, some day, to + stay there until he died. In one of his note-books he wrote: "Went + with Mr. Dam to his cool, vine-shaded home; no care-worn or eager, + anxious faces in this land of happy contentment. God, what a + contrast with California and the Washoe!" + + And again: + + "Oh, Islands there are on the face of the deep + Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep." + + The letters tell the story of his sojourn, which stretched itself + into nearly five months. + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + HONOLULU, SANDWICH ISLANDS, April 3, 1866. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I have been here two or three weeks, and like +the beautiful tropical climate better and better. I have ridden on +horseback all over this island (Oahu) in the meantime, and have visited +all the ancient battle-fields and other places of interest. I have got a +lot of human bones which I took from one of these battle-fields--I guess +I will bring you some of them. I went with the American Minister and +took dinner this evening with the King's Grand Chamberlain, who is +related to the royal family, and although darker than a mulatto, he has +an excellent English education and in manners is an accomplished +gentleman. The dinner was as ceremonious as any I ever attended in +California--five regular courses, and five kinds of wine and one of +brandy. He is to call for me in the morning with his carriage, and we +will visit the King at the palace--both are good Masons--the King is a +Royal Arch Mason. After dinner tonight they called in the "singing +girls," and we had some beautiful music; sung in the native tongue. + +The steamer I came here in sails tomorrow, and as soon as she is gone I +shall sail for the other islands of the group and visit the great +volcano--the grand wonder of the world. Be gone two months. + Yrs. + SAM. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + WAILUKU SUGAR PLANTATION, + ISLAND OF MAUI, H. I., May 4,1866. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--11 O'clock at night.--This is the +infernalist darkest country, when the moon don't shine; I stumbled and +fell over my horse's lariat a minute ago and hurt my leg, so I must stay +here tonight. + +I got the same leg hurt last week; I said I hadn't got hold of a spirited +horse since I had been on the island, and one of the proprietors loaned +me a big vicious colt; he was altogether too spirited; I went to tighten +the cinch before mounting him, when he let out with his left leg (?) and +kicked me across a ten-acre lot. A native rubbed and doctored me so well +that I was able to stand on my feet in half an hour. It was then half +after four and I had an appointment to go seven miles and get a girl and +take her to a card party at five. + +I have been clattering around among the plantations for three weeks, now, +and next week I am going to visit the extinct crater of Mount Haleakala +--the largest in the world; it is ten miles to the foot of the mountain; +it rises 10,000 feet above the valley; the crater is 29 miles in +circumference and 1,000 feet deep. Seen from the summit, the city +of St. Louis would look like a picture in the bottom of it. + +As soon as I get back from Haleakala (pronounced Hally-ekka-lah) I will +sail for Honolulu again and thence to the Island of Hawaii (pronounced +Hah-wy-ye,) to see the greatest active volcano in the world--that of +Kilauea (pronounced Kee-low-way-ah)--and from thence back to San +Francisco--and then, doubtless, to the States. I have been on this trip +two months, and it will probably be two more before I get back to +California. + Yrs affy + SAM. + + + He was having a glorious time--one of the most happy, carefree + adventures of his career. No form of travel or undertaking could + discountenance Mark Twain at thirty. + + + To Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Carson City: + + HONOLULU, May 22, 1866. +MY DEAR SISTER,--I have just got back from a sea voyage--from the +beautiful island of Maui, I have spent five weeks there, riding backwards +and forwards among the sugar plantations--looking up the splendid scenery +and visiting the lofty crater of Haleakala. It has been a perfect +jubilee to me in the way of pleasure. + +I have not written a single line, and have not once thought of business, +or care or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness. Few such months +come in a lifetime. + +I set sail again, a week hence, for the island of Hawaii, to see the +great active volcano of Kilauea. I shall not get back here for four or +five weeks, and shall not reach San Francisco before the latter part of +July. + +So it is no use to wait for me to go home. Go on yourselves. + +If I were in the east now, I could stop the publication of a piratical +book which has stolen some of my sketches. + +It is late-good-bye, Mollie, + Yr Bro + SAM. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + HONOLULU, SANDWICH ISLANDS, June 21,1866. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I have just got back from a hard trip through +the Island of Hawaii, begun on the 26th of May and finished on the 18th +of June--only six or seven days at sea--all the balance horse-back, and +the hardest mountain road in the world. I staid at the volcano about a +week and witnessed the greatest eruption that has occurred for years. +I lived well there. They charge $4 a day for board, and a dollar or two +extra for guides and horses. I had a pretty good time. They didn't +charge me anything. I have got back sick--went to bed as soon as I +arrived here--shall not be strong again for several days yet. I rushed +too fast. I ought to have taken five or six weeks on that trip. + +A week hence I start for the Island of Kauai, to be gone three weeks and +then I go back to California. + +The Crown Princess is dead and thousands of natives cry and wail and +dance and dance for the dead, around the King's Palace all night and +every night. They will keep it up for a month and then she will be +buried. + +Hon. Anson Burlingame, U. S. Minister to China, and Gen. Van Valkenburgh, +Minister to Japan, with their families and suites, have just arrived here +en route. They were going to do me the honor to call on me this morning, +and that accounts for my being out of bed now. You know what condition +my room is always in when you are not around--so I climbed out of bed and +dressed and shaved pretty quick and went up to the residence of the +American Minister and called on them. Mr. Burlingame told me a good deal +about Hon. Jere Clemens and that Virginia Clemens who was wounded in a +duel. He was in Congress years with both of them. Mr. B. sent for his +son, to introduce him--said he could tell that frog story of mine as well +as anybody. I told him I was glad to hear it for I never tried to tell +it myself without making a botch of it. At his request I have loaned Mr. +Burlingame pretty much everything I ever wrote. I guess he will be an +almighty wise man by the time he wades through that lot. + +If the New United States Minister to the Sandwich Islands (Hon. Edwin +McCook,) were only here now, so that I could get his views on this new +condition of Sandwich Island politics, I would sail for California at +once. But he will not arrive for two weeks yet and so I am going to +spend that interval on the island of Kauai. + +I stopped three days with Hon. Mr. Cony, Deputy Marshal of the Kingdom, +at Hilo, Hawaii, last week and by a funny circumstance he knew everybody +that I ever knew in Hannibal and Palmyra. We used to sit up all night +talking and then sleep all day. He lives like a Prince. Confound that +Island! I had a streak of fat and a streak of lean all over it--got lost +several times and had to sleep in huts with the natives and live like a +dog. + +Of course I couldn't speak fifty words of the language. Take it +altogether, though, it was a mighty hard trip. + Yours Affect. + SAM. + + + Burlingame and Van Valkenburgh were on their way to their posts, + and their coming to the islands just at this time proved a most + important circumstance to Mark Twain. We shall come to this + presently, in a summary of the newspaper letters written to the + Union. June 27th he wrote to his mother and sister a letter, only a + fragment of which survives, in which he tells of the arrival in + Honolulu of the survivors of the ship Hornet, burned on the line, + and of his securing the first news report of the lost vessel. + + + Part of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + HONOLULU, June 27, 1866 . +. . . with a gill of water a day to each man. I got the whole story +from the third mate and two of the sailors. If my account gets to the +Sacramento Union first, it will be published first all over the United +States, France, England, Russia and Germany--all over the world; I may +say. You will see it. Mr. Burlingame went with me all the time, and +helped me question the men--throwing away invitations to dinner with the +princes and foreign dignitaries, and neglecting all sorts of things to +accommodate me. You know how I appreciate that kind of thing--especially +from such a man, who is acknowledged to have no superior in the +diplomatic circles of the world, and obtained from China concessions in +favor of America which were refused to Sir Frederick Bruce and Envoys of +France and Russia until procured for them by Burlingame himself--which +service was duly acknowledged by those dignitaries. He hunted me up as +soon as he came here, and has done me a hundred favors since, and says if +I will come to China in the first trip of the great mail steamer next +January and make his house in Pekin my home, he will afford me facilities +that few men can have there for seeing and learning. He will give me +letters to the chiefs of the great Mail Steamship Company which will be +of service to me in this matter. I expect to do all this, but I expect +to go to the States first--and from China to the Paris World's Fair. + +Don't show this letter. + Yours affly + SAM. + +P. S. The crown Princess of this Kingdom will be buried tomorrow with +great ceremony--after that I sail in two weeks for California. + + + This concludes Mark Twain's personal letters from the islands. + Of his descriptive news letters there were about twenty, and they + were regarded by the readers of the Union as distinctly notable. + Re-reading those old letters to-day it is not altogether easy to + understand why. They were set in fine nonpareil type, for one + thing, which present-day eyes simply refuse at any price, and the + reward, by present-day standards, is not especially tempting. + + The letters began in the Union with the issue of April the 16th, + 1866. The first--of date March 18th--tells of the writer's arrival + at Honolulu. The humor in it is not always of a high order; it + would hardly pass for humor today at all. That the same man who + wrote the Hawaiian letters in 1866 (he was then over thirty years + old) could, two years later, have written that marvelous book, the + Innocents Abroad, is a phenomenon in literary development. + + The Hawaiian letters, however, do show the transition stage between + the rough elemental humor of the Comstock and the refined and subtle + style which flowered in the Innocents Abroad. Certainly Mark + Twain's genius was finding itself, and his association with the + refined and cultured personality of Anson Burlingame undoubtedly + aided in that discovery. Burlingame pointed out his faults to him, + and directed him to a better way. No more than that was needed at + such a time to bring about a transformation. + + The Sandwich Islands letters, however, must have been precisely + adapted to their audience--a little more refined than the log + Comstock, a little less subtle than the Atlantic public--and they + added materially to his Coast prestige. But let us consider a + sample extract from the first Sandwich Islands letter: + + +Our little band of passengers were as well and thoughtfully cared for by +the friends they left weeping upon the wharf, as ever were any similar +body of pilgrims. The traveling outfit conferred upon me began with a +naval uniform, continued with a case of wine, a small assortment of +medicinal liquors and brandy, several boxes of cigars, a bunch of +matches, a fine-toothed comb, and a cake of soap, and ended with a pair +of socks. (N. B. I gave the soap to Brown, who bit into it, and then. +shook his head and said that, as a general thing, he liked to prospect +curious, foreign dishes, and find out what they were made of, but he +couldn't go that, and threw it overboard.) + + It is nearly impossible to imagine humor in this extract, yet it is + a fair sample of the entire letter. + + He improves in his next, at least, in description, and gives us a + picture of the crater. In this letter, also, he writes well and + seriously, in a prophetic strain, of the great trade that is to be + established between San Francisco and Hawaii, and argues for a line + of steamers between the ports, in order that the islands might be + populated by Americans, by which course European trade in that + direction could be superseded. But the humor in this letter, such + as it is, would scarcely provoke a smile to-day. + + As the letters continue, he still urges the fostering of the island + trade by the United States, finds himself impressed by the work of + the missionaries, who have converted cannibals to Christians, and + gives picturesque bits of the life and scenery. + + Hawaii was then dominated chiefly by French and English; though the + American interests were by no means small. + + Extract from letter No. 4: + + +Cap. Fitch said "There's the king. That's him in the buggy. I know him +as far as I can see him." + +I had never seen a king, and I naturally took out a note-book and put him +down: "Tall, slender, dark, full-bearded; green frock-coat, with lapels +and collar bordered with gold band an inch wide; plug hat, broad gold +band around it; royal costume looks too much like livery; this man is not +as fleshy as I thought he was." + +I had just got these notes when Cap. Fitch discovered that he'd got hold +of the wrong king, or rather, that he'd got hold of the king's driver, +or a carriage driver of one of the nobility. The king wasn't present at +all. It was a great disappointment to me. I heard afterwards that the +comfortable, easy-going king, Kamehameha V., had been seen sitting on a +barrel on the wharf, the day before, fishing. But there was no +consolation in that. That did not restore me my lost king. + + + This has something of the flavor of the man we were to know later; + the quaint, gentle resignation to disappointment which is one of the + finest touches in his humor. + + Further on he says: "I had not shaved since I left San Francisco. + As soon as I got ashore I hunted up a striped pole, and shortly + found one. I always had a yearning to be a king. This may never + be, I suppose, but, at any rate, it will always be a satisfaction to + me to know that, if I am not a king, I am the next thing to it. + I have been shaved by the king's barber." + + Honolulu was a place of cats. He saw cats of every shade and + variety. He says: "I saw cats--tomcats, Mary-Ann cats, bobtailed + cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed cats, + gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped cats, + spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual cats, + groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, armies of cats, + multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat, + and lazy, and sound asleep." Which illustrates another + characteristic of the humor we were to know later--the humor of + grotesque exaggeration, in which he was always strong. + + He found the islands during his periods of inaction conducive to + indolence. "If I were not so fond of looking into the rich mass of + green leaves," he says, "that swathe the stately tamarind right + before my door, I would idle less, and write more, I think." + + The Union made good use of his letters. Sometimes it printed them + on the front page. Evidently they were popular from the beginning. + The Union was a fine, handsome paper--beautiful in its minute + typography, and in its press-work; more beautiful than most papers + of to-day, with their machine-set type, their vulgar illustrations, + and their chain-lightning presses. A few more extracts: + + "The only cigars here are those trifling, insipid, tasteless, + flavorless things they call Manilas--ten for twenty-five cents--and + it would take a thousand of them to be worth half the money. After + you have smoked about thirty-five dollars' worth of them in the + forenoon, you feel nothing but a desperate yearning to go out + somewhere and take a smoke." + + "Captains and ministers form about half the population. The third + fourth is composed of Kanakas and mercantile foreigners and their + families. The final fourth is made up of high officers of the + Hawaiian government, and there are just about enough cats to go + round." + + In No. 6, April the 2d, he says: "An excursion to Diamond Head, and + the king's cocoanut grove, was planned to-day, at 4.30 P. M., the + party to consist of half a dozen gentlemen and three ladies. They + all started at the appointed hour except myself. Somebody remarked + that it was twenty minutes past five o'clock, and that woke me up. + It was a fortunate circumstance that Cap. Phillips was there with + his 'turn-out,' as he calls his top buggy that Cap. Cook brought + here in 1778, and a horse that was here when Cap. Cook came." + + This bit has something the savor of his subsequent work, but, as a + rule, the humor compares poorly with that which was to come later. + + In No. 7 he speaks of the natives singing American songs--not always + to his comfort. "Marching Through Georgia" was one of their + favorite airs. He says: "If it had been all the same to Gen. + Sherman, I wish he had gone around by the way of the Gulf of Mexico, + instead of marching through Georgia." + + Letters Nos. 8, 9, and 10 were not of special importance. In No. 10 + he gives some advice to San Francisco as to the treatment of + whalers. He says: + + "If I were going to advise San Francisco as to the best strategy to + employ in order to secure the whaling trade, I should say, 'Cripple + your facilities for "pulling" sea captains on any pretence that + sailors can trump up, and show the whaler a little more + consideration when he is in port.'" + + In No. 11, May 24th, he tells of a trip to the Kalehi Valley, and + through historic points. At one place he looked from a precipice + over which old Kamehameha I. drove the army of Oahu, three-quarters + of a century before. + + The vegetation and glory of the tropics attracted him. "In one open + spot a vine of a species unknown had taken possession of two tall + dead stumps, and wound around and about them, and swung out from + their tops, and twined their meeting tendrils together into a + faultless arch. Man, with all his art, could not improve upon its + symmetry." + + He saw Sam Brannan's palace, "The Bungalow," built by one Shillaber + of San Francisco at a cost of from thirty to forty thousand dollars. + In its day it had outshone its regal neighbor, the palace of the + king, but had fallen to decay after passing into Brannan's hands, + and had become a picturesque Theban ruin by the time of Mark Twain's + visit. + + In No. 12, June 20th (written May 23d), he tells of the Hawaiian + Legislature, and of his trip to the island of Maui, where, as he + says, he never spent so pleasant a month before, or bade any place + good-by so regretfully. + + In No. 13 he continues the Legislature, and gives this picture of + Minister Harris: "He is six feet high, bony and rather slender; + long, ungainly arms; stands so straight he leans back a little; has + small side whiskers; his head long, up and down; he has no command + of language or ideas; oratory all show and pretence; a big washing + and a small hang-out; weak, insipid, and a damn fool in general." + + In No. 14, June 22d, published July 16th, he tells of the death and + burial ceremonies of the Princess Victoria K. K., and, what was to + be of more importance to him, of the arrival of Anson Burlingame, + U. S. Minister to China, and Gen. Van Valkenburgh, U. S. Minister to + Japan. They were to stay ten or fourteen days, he said, but an + effort would be made to have them stay over July 4th. + + Speaking of Burlingame: "Burlingame is a man who could be esteemed, + respected, and popular anywhere, no matter whether he was among + Christians or cannibals." Then, in the same letter, comes the great + incident. "A letter arrived here yesterday, giving a meagre account + of the arrival, on the Island of Hawaii, of nineteen poor, starving + wretches, who had been buffeting a stormy sea, in an open boat, for + forty-three days. Their ship, the Hornet, from New York, with a + quantity of kerosene on board had taken fire and burned in Lat. 2d. + north, and Long. 35d. west. When they had been entirely out of + provisions for a day or two, and the cravings of hunger become + insufferable, they yielded to the ship-wrecked mariner's fearful and + awful alternative, and solemnly drew lots to determine who of their + number should die, to furnish food for his comrades; and then the + morning mists lifted, and they saw land. They are being cared for + at Sanpahoe (Not yet corroborated)." + + The Hornet disaster was fully told in his letter of June 27th. The + survivors were brought to Honolulu, and with the assistance of the + Burlingame party, Clemens, laid up with saddle boils, was carried on + a stretcher to the hospital, where, aided by Burlingame, he + interviewed the shipwrecked men, securing material for the most + important piece of serious writing he had thus far performed. + Letter No. 15 to the Union--of date June 25th--occupied the most of + the first page in the issue of July 19. It was a detailed account + of the sufferings of officers and crew, as given by the third + officer and members of the crew. + + From letter No. 15: + +In the postscript of a letter which I wrote two or three days ago, and +sent by the ship "Live Yankee," I gave you the substance of a letter +received here from Hilo, by Walker Allen and Co., informing them that a +boat, containing fifteen men in a helpless and starving condition, had +drifted ashore at Sanpahoe, Island of Hawaii, and that they had belonged +to the clipper ship "Hornet"--Cap. Mitchell, master--had been afloat +since the burning of that vessel, about one hundred miles north of the +equator, on the third of May--forty-three days. + +The Third Mate, and ten of the seamen have arrived here, and are now in +the hospital. Cap. Mitchell, one seaman named Antonio Passene, and two +passengers, Samuel and Henry Ferguson, of New York City, eighteen and +twenty-eight years, are still at Hilo, but are expected here within the +week. In the Captain's modest epitome of the terrible romance you detect +the fine old hero through it. It reads like Grant. + + + Here follows the whole terrible narrative, which has since been + published in more substantial form, and has been recognized as + literature. It occupied three and a half columns on the front page + of the Union, and, of course, constituted a great beat for that + paper--a fact which they appreciated to the extent of one hundred + dollars the column upon the writer's return from the islands. + + In letters Nos. 14. and 15. he gives further particulars of the + month of mourning for the princess, and funeral ceremonials. He + refers to Burlingame, who was still in the islands. The remaining + letters are unimportant. + + The Hawaiian episode in Mark Twain's life was one of those spots + that seemed to him always filled with sunlight. From beginning to + end it had been a long luminous dream; in the next letter, written + on the homeward-bound ship, becalmed under a cloudless sky, we + realize the fitting end of the experience. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + ON BOARD SHIP Smyrniote, + AT SEA, July 30, 1866. +DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I write, now, because I must go hard at work as +soon as I get to San Francisco, and then I shall have no time for other +things--though truth to say I have nothing now to write which will be +calculated to interest you much. We left the, Sandwich Islands eight or +ten days--or twelve days ago--I don't know which, I have been so hard at +work until today (at least part of each day,) that the time has slipped +away almost unnoticed. The first few days we came at a whooping gait +being in the latitude of the "North-east trades," but we soon ran out of +them. We used them as long as they lasted-hundred of miles--and came +dead straight north until exactly abreast of San Francisco precisely +straight west of the city in a bee-line--but a long bee-line, as we were +about two thousand miles at sea-consequently, we are not a hundred yards +nearer San Francisco than you are. And here we lie becalmed on a glassy +sea--we do not move an inch-we throw banana and orange peel overboard and +it lies still on the water by the vessel's side. Sometimes the ocean is +as dead level as the Mississippi river, and glitters glassily as if +polished--but usually, of course, no matter how calm the weather is, we +roll and surge over the grand ground-swell. We amuse ourselves tying +pieces of tin to the ship's log and sinking them to see how far we can +distinguish them under water--86 feet was the deepest we could see a +small piece of tin, but a white plate would show about as far down as the +steeple of Dr. Bullard's church would reach, I guess. The sea is very +dark and blue here. + +Ever since we got becalmed--five days--I have been copying the diary of +one of the young Fergusons (the two boys who starved and suffered, with +thirteen others, in an open boat at sea for forty-three days, lately, +after their ship, the "Hornet," was burned on the equator.) Both these +boys, and Captain Mitchell, are passengers with us. I am copying the +diary to publish in Harper's Magazine, if I have time to fix it up +properly when I get to San Francisco. + +I suppose, from present appearances,--light winds and calms,--that we +shall be two or three weeks at sea, yet--and I hope so--I am in no hurry +to go to work. + + + Sunday Morning, Aug. 6. +This is rather slow. We still drift, drift, drift along--at intervals a +spanking breeze and then--drift again--hardly move for half a day. But I +enjoy it. We have such snowy moonlight, and such gorgeous sunsets. +And the ship is so easy--even in a gale she rolls very little, compared +to other vessels--and in this calm we could dance on deck, if we chose. +You can walk a crack, so steady is she. Very different from the Ajax. +My trunk used to get loose in the stateroom and rip and tear around the +place as if it had life in it, and I always had to take my clothes off in +bed because I could not stand up and do it. + +There is a ship in sight--the first object we have seen since we left +Honolulu. We are still 1300 or 1400 miles from land and so anything like +this that varies the vast solitude of the ocean makes all hands +light-hearted and cheerful. We think the ship is the "Comet," which left +Honolulu several hours before we did. She is about twelve miles away, +and so we cannot see her hull, but the sailors think it is the Comet +because of some peculiarity about her fore-top-gallant sails. We have +watched her all the forenoon. + +Afternoon We had preaching on the quarter-deck by Rev. Mr. Rising, of +Virginia City, old friend of mine. Spread a flag on the booby-hatch, +which made a very good pulpit, and then ranged the chairs on either side +against the bulwarks; last Sunday we had the shadow of the mainsail, but +today we were on the opposite tack, close hauled, and had the sun. I am +leader of the choir on this ship, and a sorry lead it is. I hope they +will have a better opinion of our music in Heaven than I have down here. +If they don't a thunderbolt will come down and knock the vessel endways. + +The other ship is the Comet--she is right abreast three miles away, +sailing on our course--both of us in a dead calm. With the glasses we +can see what we take to be men and women on her decks. I am well +acquainted with nearly all her passengers, and being so close seems right +sociable. + +Monday 7--I had just gone to bed a little after midnight when the 2d mate +came and roused up the captain and said "The Comet has come round and is +standing away on the other tack." I went up immediately, and so did all +our passengers, without waiting to dress-men, women and children. There +was a perceptible breeze. Pretty soon the other ship swept down upon us +with all her sails set, and made a fine show in the luminous starlight. +She passed within a hundred yards of us, so we could faintly see persons +on her decks. We had two minutes' chat with each other, through the +medium of hoarse shouting, and then she bore away to windward. + +In the morning she was only a little black peg standing out of the glassy +sea in the distant horizon--an almost invisible mark in the bright sky. +Dead calm. So the ships have stood, all day long--have not moved 100 +yards. + +Aug. 8--The calm continues. Magnificent weather. The gentlemen have all +turned boys. They play boyish games on the poop and quarter-deck. For +instance: They lay a knife on the fife-rail of the mainmast--stand off +three steps, shut one eye, walk up and strike at it with the fore-finger; +(seldom hit it;) also they lay a knife on the deck and walk seven or +eight steps with eyes close shut, and try to find it. They kneel--place +elbows against knees--extend hands in front along the deck--place knife +against end of fingers--then clasp hands behind back and bend forward and +try to pick up the knife with their teeth and rise up from knees without +rolling over or losing their balance. They tie a string to the shrouds +--stand with back against it walk three steps (eyes shut)--turn around +three times and go and put finger on the string; only a military man can +do it. If you want to know how perfectly ridiculous a grown man looks +performing such absurdities in the presence of ladies, get one to try it. + +Afternoon--The calm is no more. There are three vessels in sight. It is +so sociable to have them hovering about us on this broad waste of water. +It is sunny and pleasant, but blowing hard. Every rag about the ship is +spread to the breeze and she is speeding over the sea like a bird. There +is a large brig right astern of us with all her canvas set and chasing us +at her best. She came up fast while the winds were light, but now it is +hard to tell whether she gains or not. We can see the people on the +forecastle with the glass. The race is exciting. I am sorry to know +that we shall soon have to quit the vessel and go ashore if she keeps up +this speed. + +Friday, Aug. 10--We have breezes and calms alternately. The brig is two +miles to three astern, and just stays there. We sail directly east--this +brings the brig, with all her canvas set, almost in the eye of the sun, +when it sets--beautiful. She looks sharply cut and black as a coal, +against a background of fire and in the midst of a sea of blood. + +San Francisco, Aug. 20.--We never saw the Comet again till the 13th, in +the morning, three miles away. At three o'clock that afternoon, 25 days +out from Honolulu, both ships entered the Golden Gate of San Francisco +side by side, and 300 yards apart. There was a gale blowing, and both +vessels clapped on every stitch of canvas and swept up through the +channel and past the fortresses at a magnificent gait. + +I have been up to Sacramento and squared accounts with the Union. They +paid me a great deal more than they promised me. + Yrs aff + SAM. + + + + +VI. + +LETTERS 1866-67. THE LECTURER. SUCCESS ON THE COAST. IN NEW YORK. +THE GREAT OCEAN EXCURSION + + It was August 13th when he reached San Francisco and wrote in his + note-book, "Home again. No--not home again--in prison again, and + all the wild sense of freedom gone. City seems so cramped and so + dreary with toil and care and business anxieties. God help me, I + wish I were at sea again!" + + The transition from the dreamland of a becalmed sailing-vessel to + the dull, cheerless realities of his old life, and the uncertainties + of his future, depressed him--filled him with forebodings. At one + moment he felt himself on the verge of suicide--the world seemed so + little worth while. + + He wished to make a trip around the world, a project that required + money. He contemplated making a book of his island letters and + experiences, and the acceptance by Harper's Magazine of the revised + version of the Hornet Shipwreck story encouraged this thought. + + Friends urged him to embody in a lecture the picturesque aspect of + Hawaiian life. The thought frightened him, but it also appealed to + him strongly. He believed he could entertain an audience, once he + got started on the right track. As Governor of the Third House at + Carson City he had kept the audience in hand. Men in whom he had + the utmost confidence insisted that he follow up the lecture idea + and engage the largest house in the city for his purpose. The + possibility of failure appalled him, but he finally agreed to the + plan. + + In Roughing It, and elsewhere, has been told the story of this + venture--the tale of its splendid success. He was no longer + concerned, now, as to his immediate future. The lecture field was + profitable. His audience laughed and shouted. He was learning the + flavor of real success and exulting in it. With Dennis McCarthy, + formerly one of the partners in the Enterprise, as manager, he made + a tour of California and Nevada. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and others, in St. Louis: + + VIRGINIA CITY, Nov. 1, 1866. +ALL THE FOLKS, AFFECTIONATE GREETING,--You know the flush time's are +past, and it has long been impossible to more than half fill the Theatre +here, with any sort of attraction, but they filled it for me, night +before last--full--dollar all over the house. + +I was mighty dubious about Carson, but the enclosed call and some +telegrams set that all right--I lecture there tomorrow night. + +They offer a full house and no expense in Dayton--go there next. Sandy +Baldwin says I have made the most sweeping success of any man he knows +of. + +I have lectured in San Francisco, Sacramento, Marysville, Grass Valley, +Nevada, You Bet, Red Dog and Virginia. I am going to talk in Carson, +Gold Hill, Silver City, Dayton, Washoe, San Francisco again, and again +here if I have time to re-hash the lecture. + +Then I am bound for New York--lecture on the Steamer, maybe. + +I'll leave toward 1st December--but I'll telegraph you. + Love to all. + Yrs. + MARK. + + +His lecture tour continued from October until December, a period of +picturesque incident, the story of which has been recorded elsewhere. +--[See Mark Twain: A Biography, by the same author]--It paid him well; +he could go home now, without shame. Indeed, from his next letter, full +of the boyish elation which always to his last years was the complement +of his success, we gather that he is going home with special honors +--introductions from ministers and the like to distinguished personages +of the East. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: + + SAN F., Dec. 4, 1866. +MY DEAR FOLKS,--I have written to Annie and Sammy and Katie some time +ago--also, to the balance of you. + +I called on Rev. Dr. Wadsworth last night with the City College man, +but he wasn't at home. I was sorry, because I wanted to make his +acquaintance. I am thick as thieves with the Rev. Stebbings, and I am +laying for the Rev. Scudder and the Rev. Dr. Stone. I am running on +preachers, now, altogether. I find them gay. Stebbings is a regular +brick. I am taking letters of introduction to Henry Ward Beecher, Rev. +Dr. Tyng, and other eminent parsons in the east. Whenever anybody offers +me a letter to a preacher, now I snaffle it on the spot. I shall make +Rev. Dr. Bellows trot out the fast nags of the cloth for me when I get to +New York. Bellows is an able, upright and eloquent man--a man of +imperial intellect and matchless power--he is Christian in the truest +sense of the term and is unquestionably a brick.... + +Gen. Drum has arrived in Philadelphia and established his head-quarters +there, as Adjutant Genl. to Maj. Gen. Meade. Col. Leonard has received a +letter from him in which he offers me a complimentary benefit if I will +come there. I am much obliged, really, but I am afraid I shan't lecture +much in the States. + +The China Mail Steamer is getting ready and everybody says I am throwing +away a fortune in not going in her. I firmly believe it myself. + +I sail for the States in the Opposition steamer of the 5th inst., +positively and without reserve. My room is already secured for me, and +is the choicest in the ship. I know all the officers. + + Yrs. Affy + MARK. + + + We get no hint of his plans, and perhaps he had none. If his + purpose was to lecture in the East, he was in no hurry to begin. + Arriving in New York, after an adventurous voyage, he met a number + of old Californians--men who believed in him--and urged him to + lecture. He also received offers of newspaper engagements, and from + Charles Henry Webb, who had published the Californian, which Bret + Harte had edited, came the proposal to collect his published + sketches, including the jumping Frog story, in book form. Webb + himself was in New York, and offered the sketches to several + publishers, including Canton, who had once refused the Frog story by + omitting it from Artemus Ward's book. It seems curious that Canton + should make a second mistake and refuse it again, but publishers + were wary in those days, and even the newspaper success of the Frog + story did not tempt him to venture it as the title tale of a book. + Webb finally declared he would publish the book himself, and + Clemens, after a few weeks of New York, joined his mother and family + in St. Louis and gave himself up to a considerable period of + visiting, lecturing meantime in both Hannibal and Keokuk. + + Fate had great matters in preparation for him. The Quaker City + Mediterranean excursion, the first great ocean picnic, was announced + that spring, and Mark Twain realized that it offered a possible + opportunity for him to see something of the world. He wrote at once + to the proprietors of the Alta-California and proposed that they + send him as their correspondent. To his delight his proposition was + accepted, the Alta agreeing to the twelve hundred dollars passage + money, and twenty dollars each for letters. + + The Quaker City was not to sail until the 8th of June, but the Alta + wished some preliminary letters from New York. Furthermore, Webb + had the Frog book in press, and would issue it May 1st. Clemens, + therefore, returned to New York in April, and now once more being + urged by the Californians to lecture, he did not refuse. Frank + Fuller, formerly Governor of Utah, took the matter in hand and + engaged Cooper Union for the venture. He timed it for May 6th, + which would be a few days after the appearance of Webb's book. + Clemens was even more frightened at the prospect of this lecture + than he had been in San Francisco, and with more reason, for in New + York his friends were not many, and competition for public favor was + very great. There are two letters written May 1st, one to his + people, and one to Bret Harte, in San Francisco; that give us the + situation. + + + + + + +MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1867-1875 + +ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE + + + +VOLUME II. + + + + To Bret Harte, in San Francisco: + + WESTMINSTER HOTEL, May 1, 1867. +DEAR BRET,--I take my pen in hand to inform you that I am well and hope +these few lines will find you enjoying the same God's blessing. + +The book is out, and is handsome. It is full of damnable errors of +grammar and deadly inconsistencies of spelling in the Frog sketch because +I was away and did not read the proofs; but be a friend and say nothing +about these things. When my hurry is over, I will send you an autograph +copy to pisen the children with. + +I am to lecture in Cooper Institute next Monday night. Pray for me. + +We sail for the Holy Land June 8. Try to write me (to this hotel,) and +it will be forwarded to Paris, where we remain 10 or 15 days. + +Regards and best wishes to Mrs. Bret and the family. + Truly Yr Friend + MARK. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: + + WESTMINSTER HOTEL, May 1, 1867. +DEAR FOLKS,--Don't expect me to write for a while. My hands are full of +business on account of my lecture for the 6th inst., and everything looks +shady, at least, if not dark. I have got a good agent--but now after we +have hired Cooper Institute and gone to an expense in one way or another +of $500, it comes out that I have got to play against Speaker Colfax at +Irving Hall, Ristori, and also the double troupe of Japanese jugglers, +the latter opening at the great Academy of Music--and with all this +against me I have taken the largest house in New York and cannot back +water. Let her slide! If nobody else cares I don't. + +I'll send the book soon. I am awfully hurried now, but not worried. + Yrs. + SAM. + + +The Cooper Union lecture proved a failure, and a success. When it became +evident to Fuller that the venture was not going to pay, he sent out a +flood of complimentaries to the school-teachers of New York City and the +surrounding districts. No one seems to have declined them. Clemens +lectured to a jammed house and acquired much reputation. Lecture +proposals came from several directions, but he could not accept them now. +He wrote home that he was eighteen Alta letters behind and had refused +everything. Thos. Nast, the cartoonist, then in his first fame, propped +a joint tour, Clemens to lecture while he, Nast, would illustrate with +"lightning" sketches; but even this could not be considered now. In a +little while he would sail, and the days were overfull. A letter written +a week before he sailed is full of the hurry and strain of these last +days. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: + + WESTMINSTER HOTEL, NEW YORK, June 1, 1867. +DEAR FOLKS,--I know I ought to write oftener (just got your last,) and +more fully, but I cannot overcome my repugnance to telling what I am +doing or what I expect to do or propose to do. Then, what have I left to +write about? Manifestly nothing. + +It isn't any use for me to talk about the voyage, because I can have no +faith in that voyage till the ship is under way. How do I know she will +ever sail? My passage is paid, and if the ship sails, I sail in her--but +I make no calculations, have bought no cigars, no sea-going clothing +--have made no preparation whatever--shall not pack my trunk till the +morning we sail. Yet my hands are full of what I am going to do the day +before we sail--and what isn't done that day will go undone. + +All I do know or feel, is, that I am wild with impatience to move--move +--move! Half a dozen times I have wished I had sailed long ago in some +ship that wasn't going to keep me chained here to chafe for lagging ages +while she got ready to go. Curse the endless delays! They always kill +me--they make me neglect every duty and then I have a conscience that +tears me like a wild beast. I wish I never had to stop anywhere a month. +I do more mean things, the moment I get a chance to fold my hands and sit +down than ever I can get forgiveness for. + +Yes, we are to meet at Mr. Beach's next Thursday night, and I suppose we +shall have to be gotten up regardless of expense, in swallow-tails, white +kids and everything en regle. + +I am resigned to Rev. Mr. Hutchinson's or anybody else's supervision. +I don't mind it. I am fixed. I have got a splendid, immoral, +tobacco-smoking, wine-drinking, godless room-mate who is as good and true +and right-minded a man as ever lived--a man whose blameless conduct and +example will always be an eloquent sermon to all who shall come within +their influence. But send on the professional preachers--there are none +I like better to converse with. If they're not narrow minded and bigoted +they make good companions. + +I asked them to send the N. Y. Weekly to you--no charge. I am not going +to write for it. Like all other, papers that pay one splendidly it +circulates among stupid people and the 'canaille.' I have made no +arrangement with any New York paper--I will see about that Monday or +Tuesday. + Love to all + Good bye, + Yrs affy + SAM. + + + The "immoral" room-mate whose conduct was to be an "eloquent + example" was Dan Slote, immortalized in the Innocents as "Dan" + --a favorite on the ship, and later beloved by countless readers. + + There is one more letter, written the night before the Quaker City + sailed-a letter which in a sense marks the close of the first great + period of his life--the period of aimless wandering--adventure + --youth. + + Perhaps a paragraph of explanation should precede this letter. + Political changes had eliminated Orion in Nevada, and he was now + undertaking the practice of law. "Bill Stewart" was Senator + Stewart, of Nevada, of whom we shall hear again. The "Sandwich + Island book," as may be imagined, was made up of his letters to the + Sacramento Union. Nothing came of the venture, except some chapters + in 'Roughing It', rewritten from the material. "Zeb and John + Leavenworth" were pilots whom he had known on the river. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family in St. Louis: + + NEW YORK, June 7th, 1867. +DEAR FOLKS, I suppose we shall be many a league at sea tomorrow night, +and goodness knows I shall be unspeakably glad of it. + +I haven't got anything to write, else I would write it. I have just +written myself clear out in letters to the Alta, and I think they are the +stupidest letters that were ever written from New York. Corresponding +has been a perfect drag ever since I got to the states. If it continues +abroad, I don't know what the Tribune and Alta folks will think. +I have withdrawn the Sandwich Island book--it would be useless to publish +it in these dull publishing times. As for the Frog book, I don't believe +that will ever pay anything worth a cent. I published it simply to +advertise myself--not with the hope of making anything out of it. + +Well, I haven't anything to write, except that I am tired of staying in +one place--that I am in a fever to get away. Read my Alta letters--they +contain everything I could possibly write to you. Tell Zeb and John +Leavenworth to write me. They can get plenty of gossip from the pilots. + +An importing house sent two cases of exquisite champagne aboard the ship +for me today--Veuve Clicquot and Lac d'Or. I and my room-mate have set +apart every Saturday as a solemn fast day, wherein we will entertain no +light matters of frivolous conversation, but only get drunk. (That is a +joke.) His mother and sisters are the best and most homelike people I +have yet found in a brown stone front. There is no style about them, +except in house and furniture. + +I wish Orion were going on this voyage, for I believe he could not help +but be cheerful and jolly. I often wonder if his law business is going +satisfactorily to him, but knowing that the dull season is setting in now +(it looked like it had already set in before) I have felt as if I could +almost answer the question myself--which is to say in plain words, I was +afraid to ask. I wish I had gone to Washington in the winter instead of +going West. I could have gouged an office out of Bill Stewart for him, +and that would atone for the loss of my home visit. But I am so +worthless that it seems to me I never do anything or accomplish anything +that lingers in my mind as a pleasant memory. My mind is stored full of +unworthy conduct toward Orion and towards you all, and an accusing +conscience gives me peace only in excitement and restless moving from +place to place. If I could say I had done one thing for any of you that +entitled me to your good opinion, (I say nothing of your love, for I am +sure of that, no matter how unworthy of it I may make myself, from Orion +down you have always given me that, all the days of my life, when God +Almighty knows I seldom deserve it,) I believe I could go home and stay +there and I know I would care little for the world's praise or blame. +There is no satisfaction in the world's praise anyhow, and it has no +worth to me save in the way of business. I tried to gather up its +compliments to send to you, but the work was distasteful and I dropped +it. + +You observe that under a cheerful exterior I have got a spirit that is +angry with me and gives me freely its contempt. I can get away from that +at sea, and be tranquil and satisfied--and so, with my parting love and +benediction for Orion and all of you, I say goodbye and God bless you +all--and welcome the wind that wafts a weary soul to the sunny lands of +the Mediterranean! + Yrs. Forever, + SAM. + + + + +VII. + +LETTERS 1867. THE TRAVELER. THE VOYAGE OF THE "QUAKER CITY" + +Mark Twain, now at sea, was writing many letters; not personal letters, +but those unique descriptive relations of travel which would make him his +first great fame--those fresh first impressions preserved to us now as +chapters of The Innocents Abroad. Yet here and there in the midst of +sight-seeing and reporting he found time to send a brief line to those at +home, merely that they might have a word from his own hand, for he had +ordered the papers to which he was to contribute--the Alta and the New +York Tribune--sent to them, and these would give the story of his +travels. The home letters read like notebook entries. + + + Letters to Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: + + + FAYAL (Azores,) June 20th, 1867. +DEAR FOLKS,--We are having a lively time here, after a stormy trip. We +meant to go to San Miguel, but were driven here by stress of weather. +Beautiful climate. + Yrs. + Affect. + SAM. + + + GIBRALTAR, June 30th, 1867. +DEAR FOLKS,--Arrived here this morning, and am clear worn out with +riding and climbing in and over and around this monstrous rock and its +fortifications. Summer climate and very pleasant. + Yrs. + SAM. + + + TANGIER, MOROCCO, (AFRICA), July 1, 1867. +DEAR FOLKS, Half a dozen of us came here yesterday from Gibraltar and +some of the company took the other direction; went up through Spain, to +Paris by rail. We decided that Gibraltar and San Roque were all of Spain +that we wanted to see at present and are glad we came here among the +Africans, Moors, Arabs and Bedouins of the desert. I would not give this +experience for all the balance of the trip combined. This is the +infernalest hive of infernally costumed barbarians I have ever come +across yet. + Yrs. + SAM. + + + AT SEA, July 2, 1867. +DR. FOLKS,--We are far up the intensely blue and ravishingly beautiful +Mediterranean. And now we are just passing the island of Minorca. The +climate is perfectly lovely and it is hard to drive anybody to bed, day +or night. We remain up the whole night through occasionally, and by this +means enjoy the rare sensation of seeing the sun rise. But the sunsets +are soft, rich, warm and superb! + +We had a ball last night under the awnings of the quarter deck, and the +share of it of three of us was masquerade. We had full, flowing, +picturesque Moorish costumes which we purchased in the bazaars of +Tangier. + Yrs. + SAM. + + + MARSEILLES, FRANCE, July 5, 1867. +We are here. Start for Paris tomorrow. All well. Had gorgeous 4th of +July jollification yesterday at sea. + Yrs. + SAM. + + + The reader may expand these sketchy outlines to his heart's content + by following the chapters in The Innocents Abroad, which is very + good history, less elaborated than might be supposed. But on the + other hand, the next letter adds something of interest to the + book-circumstances which a modest author would necessarily omit. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: + + YALTA, RUSSIA, Aug. 25, 1867. +DEAR FOLKS,--We have been representing the United States all we knew how +today. We went to Sebastopol, after we got tired of Constantinople (got +your letter there, and one at Naples,) and there the Commandant and the +whole town came aboard and were as jolly and sociable as old friends. +They said the Emperor of Russia was at Yalta, 30 miles or 40 away, and +urged us to go there with the ship and visit him--promised us a cordial +welcome. They insisted on sending a telegram to the Emperor, and also a +courier overland to announce our coming. But we knew that a great +English Excursion party, and also the Viceroy of Egypt, in his splendid +yacht, had been refused an audience within the last fortnight, so we +thought it not safe to try it. They said, no difference--the Emperor +would hardly visit our ship, because that would be a most extraordinary +favor, and one which he uniformly refuses to accord under any +circumstances, but he would certainly receive us at his palace. We still +declined. But we had to go to Odessa, 250 miles away, and there the +Governor General urged us, and sent a telegram to the Emperor, which we +hardly expected to be answered, but it was, and promptly. So we sailed +back to Yalta. + +We all went to the palace at noon, today, (3 miles) in carriages and on +horses sent by the Emperor, and we had a jolly time. Instead of the +usual formal audience of 15 minutes, we staid 4 hours and were made a +good deal more at home than we could have been in a New York +drawing-room. The whole tribe turned out to receive our party-Emperor, +Empress, the oldest daughter (Grand-Duchess Marie, a pretty girl of 14,) +a little Grand Duke, her brother, and a platoon of Admirals, Princes, +Peers of the Empire, etc., and in a little while an aid-de-camp arrived +with a request from the Grand Duke Michael, the Emperor's brother, that +we would visit his palace and breakfast with him. The Emperor also +invited us, on behalf of his absent eldest son and heir (aged 22,) to +visit his palace and consider it a visit to him. They all talk English +and they were all very neatly but very plainly dressed. You all dress a +good deal finer than they were dressed. The Emperor and his family threw +off all reserve and showed us all over the palace themselves. It is very +rich and very elegant, but in no way gaudy. + +I had been appointed chairman of a committee to draught an address to the +Emperor in behalf of the passengers, and as I fully expected, and as they +fully intended, I had to write the address myself. I didn't mind it, +because I have no modesty and would as soon write to an Emperor as to +anybody else--but considering that there were 5 on the committee I +thought they might have contributed one paragraph among them, anyway. +They wanted me to read it to him, too, but I declined that honor--not +because I hadn't cheek enough (and some to spare,) but because our Consul +at Odessa was along, and also the Secretary of our Legation at St. +Petersburgh, and of course one of those ought to read it. The Emperor +accepted the address--it was his business to do it--and so many others +have praised it warmly that I begin to imagine it must be a wonderful +sort of document and herewith send you the original draught of it to be +put into alcohol and preserved forever like a curious reptile. + +They live right well at the Grand Duke Michael's their breakfasts are not +gorgeous but very excellent--and if Mike were to say the word I would go +there and breakfast with him tomorrow. + Yrs aff + SAM. + +P. S. [Written across the face of the last page.] They had told us it +would be polite to invite the Emperor to visit the ship, though he would +not be likely to do it. But he didn't give us a chance--he has requested +permission to come on board with his family and all his relations +tomorrow and take a sail, in case it is calm weather. I can, entertain +them. My hand is in, now, and if you want any more Emperors feted in +style, trot them out. + + + The next letter is of interest in that it gives us the program and + volume of his work. With all the sight seeing he was averaging a + full four letters a week--long letters, requiring careful + observation and inquiry. How fresh and impressionable and full of + vigor he was, even in that fierce southern heat! No one makes the + Mediterranean trip in summer to-day, and the thought of adding + constant letter-writing to steady travel through southern France, + Italy, Greece, and Turkey in blazing midsummer is stupefying. And + Syria and Egypt in September! + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: + + CONSTANTINOPLE, Sept. 1, '67. + +DEAR FOLKS,--All well. Do the Alta's come regularly? I wish I knew +whether my letters reach them or not. Look over the back papers and see. +I wrote them as follows: + 1 Letter from Fayal, in the Azores Islands. + 1 from Gibraltar, in Spain. + 1 from Tangier, in Africa. + 2 from Paris and Marseilles, in France. + 1 from Genoa, in Italy. + 1 from Milan. + 1 from Lake Como. + 1 from some little place in Switzerland--have forgotten the name. + 4 concerning Lecce, Bergamo, Padua, Verona, Battlefield of Marengo, +Pestachio, and some other cities in Northern Italy. + 2 from Venice. + 1 about Bologna. + 1 from Florence. + 1 from Pisa. + 1 from Leghorn. + 1 from Rome and Civita Vecchia. + 2 from Naples. + 1 about Pazzuoli, where St. Paul landed, the Baths of Nero, and the +ruins of Baia, Virgil's tomb, the Elysian Fields, the Sunken Cities and +the spot where Ulysses landed. + 1 from Herculaneum and Vesuvius. + 1 from Pompeii. + 1 from the Island of Ischia. + 1 concerning the Volcano of Stromboli, the city and Straits of +Messina, the land of Sicily, Scylla and Charybdis etc. + 1 about the Grecian Archipelago. + 1 about a midnight visit to Athens, the Piraeus and the ruins of the +Acropolis. + 1 about the Hellespont, the site of ancient Troy, the Sea of +Marmara, etc. + 2 about Constantinople, the Golden Horn and the beauties of the +Bosphorus. + 1 from Odessa and Sebastopol in Russia, the Black Sea, etc. + 2 from Yalta, Russia, concerning a visit to the Czar. +And yesterday I wrote another letter from Constantinople and + 1 today about its neighbor in Asia, Scatter. I am not done with +Turkey yet. Shall write 2 or 3 more. + +I have written to the New York Herald 2 letters from Naples, (no name +signed,) and 1 from Constantinople. + +To the New York Tribune I have written + 1 from Fayal. + 1 from Civita Vecchia in the Roman States. + 2 from Yalta, Russia. + And 1 from Constantinople. + +I have never seen any of these letters in print except the one to the +Tribune from Fayal and that was not worth printing. + +We sail hence tomorrow, perhaps, and my next letters will be mailed at +Smyrna, in Syria. I hope to write from the Sea of Tiberius, Damascus, +Jerusalem, Joppa, and possibly other points in the Holy Land. The +letters from Egypt, the Nile and Algiers I will look out for, myself. +I will bring them in my pocket. + +They take the finest photographs in the world here. I have ordered some. +They will be sent to Alexandria, Egypt. + +You cannot conceive of anything so beautiful as Constantinople, viewed +from the Golden Horn or the Bosphorus. I think it must be the handsomest +city in the world. I will go on deck and look at it for you, directly. +I am staying in the ship, tonight. I generally stay on shore when we are +in port. But yesterday I just ran myself down. Dan Slote, my room-mate, +is on shore. He remained here while we went up the Black Sea, but it +seems he has not got enough of it yet. I thought Dan had got the +state-room pretty full of rubbish at last, but a while ago his dragoman +arrived with a bran new, ghastly tomb-stone of the Oriental pattern, with +his name handsomely carved and gilded on it, in Turkish characters. That +fellow will buy a Circassian slave, next. + +I am tired. We are going on a trip, tomorrow. I must to bed. Love to +all. + Yrs + SAM. + + + U. S. CONSUL'S OFFICE, BEIRUT, SYRIA, Sept. 11. (1867) +DEAR FOLKS,--We are here, eight of us, making a contract with a dragoman +to take us to Baalbek, then to Damascus, Nazareth, &c. then to Lake +Genassareth (Sea of Tiberias,) then South through all the celebrated +Scriptural localities to Jerusalem--then to the Dead Sea, the Cave of +Macpelah and up to Joppa where the ship will be. We shall be in the +saddle three weeks--we have horses, tents, provisions, arms, a dragoman +and two other servants, and we pay five dollars a day apiece, in gold. + Love to all, yrs. + SAM. + +We leave tonight, at two o'clock in the morning. + + + There appear to be no further home letters written from Syria--and + none from Egypt. Perhaps with the desert and the delta the heat at + last became too fearful for anything beyond the actual requirements + of the day. When he began his next it was October, and the fiercer + travel was behind him. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: + + CAGHARI, SARDINIA, Oct, 12, 1867. +DEAR FOLKS,--We have just dropped anchor before this handsome city and-- + + ALGIERS, AFRICA, Oct. 15. +They would not let us land at Caghari on account of cholera. Nothing to +write. + + MALAGA, SPAIN, Oct. 17. +The Captain and I are ashore here under guard, waiting to know whether +they will let the ship anchor or not. Quarantine regulations are very +strict here on all vessels coming from Egypt. I am a little anxious +because I want to go inland to Granada and see the Alhambra. I can go on +down by Seville and Cordova, and be picked up at Cadiz. + +Later: We cannot anchor--must go on. We shall be at Gibraltar before +midnight and I think I will go horseback (a long days) and thence by rail +and diligence to Cadiz. I will not mail this till I see the Gibraltar +lights--I begin to think they won't let us in anywhere. + +11.30 P. M.--Gibraltar. +At anchor and all right, but they won't let us land till morning--it is a +waste of valuable time. We shall reach New York middle of November. + Yours, + SAM. + + + CADIZ, Oct 24, 1867. +DEAR FOLKS,--We left Gibraltar at noon and rode to Algeciras, (4 hours) +thus dodging the quarantine, took dinner and then rode horseback all +night in a swinging trot and at daylight took a caleche (a wheeled +vehicle) and rode 5 hours--then took cars and traveled till twelve at +night. That landed us at Seville and we were over the hard part of our +trip, and somewhat tired. Since then we have taken things comparatively +easy, drifting around from one town to another and attracting a good deal +of attention, for I guess strangers do not wander through Andalusia and +the other Southern provinces of Spain often. The country is precisely as +it was when Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were possible characters. + +But I see now what the glory of Spain must have been when it was under +Moorish domination. No, I will not say that, but then when one is +carried away, infatuated, entranced, with the wonders of the Alhambra and +the supernatural beauty of the Alcazar, he is apt to overflow with +admiration for the splendid intellects that created them. + +I cannot write now. I am only dropping a line to let you know I am well. +The ship will call for us here tomorrow. We may stop at Lisbon, and +shall at the Bermudas, and will arrive in New York ten days after this +letter gets there. + SAM. + + This is the last personal letter written during that famous first + sea-gipsying, and reading it our regret grows that he did not put + something of his Spanish excursion into his book. He never returned + to Spain, and he never wrote of it. Only the barest mention of + "seven beautiful days" is found in The Innocents Abroad. + + + + +VIII. + +LETTERS 1867-68. WASHINGTON AND SAN FRANCISCO. THE PROPOSED BOOK OF +TRAVEL. A NEW LECTURE + + From Mark Twain's home letters we get several important side-lights + on this first famous book. We learn, for in stance, that it was he + who drafted the ship address to the Emperor--the opening lines of + which became so wearisome when repeated by the sailors. + Furthermore, we learn something of the scope and extent of his + newspaper correspondence, which must have kept him furiously busy, + done as it was in the midst of super-heated and continuous + sight-seeing. He wrote fifty three letters to the Alta-California, + six to the New York Tribune, and at least two to the New York + Herald more than sixty, all told, of an average, length of three to + four thousand words each. Mark Twain always claimed to be a lazy + man, and certainly he was likely to avoid an undertaking not suited + to his gifts, but he had energy in abundance for work in his chosen + field. To have piled up a correspondence of that size in the time, + and under the circumstances already noted, quality considered, may + be counted a record in the history of travel letters. + + They made him famous. Arriving in New York, November 19, 1867, Mark + Twain found himself no longer unknown to the metropolis, or to any + portion of America. Papers East and West had copied his Alta and + Tribune letters and carried his name into every corner of the States + and Territories. He had preached a new gospel in travel literature, + the gospel of frankness and sincerity that Americans could + understand. Also his literary powers had awakened at last. His + work was no longer trivial, crude, and showy; it was full of + dignity, beauty, and power; his humor was finer, worthier. The + difference in quality between the Quaker City letters and those + written from the Sandwich Islands only a year before can scarcely be + measured. + + He did not remain in New York, but went down to Washington, where he + had arranged for a private secretaryship with Senator William M. + Stewart,--[The "Bill" Stewart mentioned in the preceding chapter.] + whom he had known in Nevada. Such a position he believed would make + but little demand upon his time, and would afford him an insight + into Washington life, which he could make valuable in the shape of + newspaper correspondence. + + But fate had other plans for him. He presently received the + following letter: + + From Elisha Bliss, Jr., in Hartford + OFFICE OF THE AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY. + + HARTFORD, CONN, Nov 21, 1867. +SAMUEL L. CLEMENS Esq. +Tribune Office, New York. + +DR. SIR,--We take the liberty to address you this, in place of a letter +which we had recently written and was about to forward to you, not +knowing your arrival home was expected so soon. We are desirous of +obtaining from you a work of some kind, perhaps compiled from your +letters from the East, &c., with such interesting additions as may be +proper. We are the publishers of A. D. Richardson's works, and flatter +ourselves that we can give an author as favorable terms and do as full +justice to his productions as any other house in the country. We are +perhaps the oldest subscription house in the country, and have never +failed to give a book an immense circulation. We sold about 100,000 +copies of Richardson's F. D. & E. (Field, Dungeon and Escape) and are +now printing 41,000, of "Beyond the Mississippi," and large orders ahead. +If you have any thought of writing a book, or could be induced to do so, +we should be pleased to see you; and will do so. Will you do us the +favor to reply at once, at your earliest convenience. + Very truly, &c., + E. BLISS, Jr. + Secty. + + Clemens had already the idea of a book in mind and welcomed this + proposition. + + + To Elisha Bliss, Jr., in Hartford: + + WASHINGTON, Dec. 2, 1867. +E. BLISS, Jr. Esq. +Sec'y American Publishing Co.-- + +DEAR SIR,--I only received your favor of Nov. 21st last night, at the +rooms of the Tribune Bureau here. It was forwarded from the Tribune +office, New York, where it had lain eight or ten days. This will be +a sufficient apology for the seeming discourtesy of my silence. + +I wrote fifty-two (three) letters for the San Francisco "Alta California" +during the Quaker City excursion, about half of which number have been +printed, thus far. The "Alta" has few exchanges in the East, and I +suppose scarcely any of these letters have been copied on this side of +the Rocky Mountains. I could weed them of their chief faults of +construction and inelegancies of expression and make a volume that would +be more acceptable in many respects than any I could now write. When +those letters were written my impressions were fresh, but now they have +lost that freshness; they were warm then--they are cold, now. I could +strike out certain letters, and write new ones wherewith to supply their +places. If you think such a book would suit your purpose, please drop me +a line, specifying the size and general style of the volume; when the +matter ought to be ready; whether it should have pictures in it or not; +and particularly what your terms with me would be, and what amount of +money I might possibly make out of it. The latter clause has a degree of +importance for me which is almost beyond my own comprehension. But you +understand that, of course. + +I have other propositions for a book, but have doubted the propriety of +interfering with good newspaper engagements, except my way as an author +could be demonstrated to be plain before me. But I know Richardson, and +learned from him some months ago, something of an idea of the +subscription plan of publishing. If that is your plan invariably, it +looks safe. + +I am on the N. Y. Tribune staff here as an "occasional,", among other +things, and a note from you addressed to + Very truly &c. + SAM L. CLEMENS, + +New York Tribune Bureau, Washington, will find me, without fail. + + + The exchange of these two letters marked the beginning of one of the + most notable publishing connections in American literary history. + The book, however, was not begun immediately. Bliss was in poor + health and final arrangements were delayed; it was not until late in + January that Clemens went to Hartford and concluded the arrangement. + + Meantime, fate had disclosed another matter of even greater + importance; we get the first hint of it in the following letter, + though to him its beginning had been earlier--on a day in the blue + harbor of Smyrna, when young Charles Langdon, a fellow-passenger on + the Quaker City, had shown to Mark Twain a miniature of young + Langdon's sister at home: + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + 224 F. STREET, WASH, Jan. 8, 1868. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--And so the old Major has been there, has he? +I would like mighty well to see him. I was a sort of benefactor to him +once. I helped to snatch him out when he was about to ride into a +Mohammedan Mosque in that queer old Moorish town of Tangier, in Africa. +If he had got in, the Moors would have knocked his venerable old head +off, for his temerity. + +I have just arrived from New York-been there ever since Christmas staying +at the house of Dan Slote my Quaker City room-mate, and having a splendid +time. Charley Langdon, Jack Van Nostrand, Dan and I, (all Quaker City +night-hawks,) had a blow-out at Dan's' house and a lively talk over old +times. We went through the Holy Land together, and I just laughed till +my sides ached, at some of our reminiscences. It was the unholiest gang +that ever cavorted through Palestine, but those are the best boys in the +world. We needed Moulton badly. I started to make calls, New Year's +Day, but I anchored for the day at the first house I came to--Charlie +Langdon's sister was there (beautiful girl,) and Miss Alice Hooker, +another beautiful girl, a niece of Henry Ward Beecher's. We sent the old +folks home early, with instructions not to send the carriage till +midnight, and then I just staid there and worried the life out of those +girls. I am going to spend a few days with the Langdon's in Elmira, New +York, as soon as I get time, and a few days at Mrs. Hooker's in Hartford, +Conn., shortly. + +Henry Ward Beecher sent for me last Sunday to come over and dine (he +lives in Brooklyn, you know,) and I went. Harriet Beecher Stowe was +there, and Mrs. and Miss Beecher, Mrs. Hooker and my old Quaker City +favorite, Emma Beach. + +We had a very gay time, if it was Sunday. I expect I told more lies than +I have told before in a month. + +I went back by invitation, after the evening service, and finished the +blow-out, and then staid all night at Mr. Beach's. Henry Ward is a +brick. + +I found out at 10 o'clock, last night, that I was to lecture tomorrow +evening and so you must be aware that I have been working like sin all +night to get a lecture written. I have finished it, I call it "Frozen +Truth." It is a little top-heavy, though, because there is more truth in +the title than there is in the lecture. + +But thunder, I mustn't sit here writing all day, with so much business +before me. + +Good by, and kind regards to all. + Yrs affy + SAM L. CLEMENS. + + + Jack Van Nostrand of this letter is "Jack" of the Innocents. Emma + Beach was the daughter of Moses S. Beach, of the 'New York Sun.' + Later she became the wife of the well-known painter, Abbot H. + Thayer. + + We do not hear of Miss Langdon again in the letters of that time, + but it was not because she was absent from his thoughts. He had + first seen her with her father and brother at the old St. Nicholas + Hotel, on lower Broadway, where, soon after the arrival of the + Quaker City in New York, he had been invited to dine. Long + afterward he said: "It is forty years ago; from that day to this she + has never been out of my mind." + + From his next letter we learn of the lecture which apparently was + delivered in Washington. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + WASH. Jan. 9, 1868. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--That infernal lecture is over, thank Heaven! +It came near being a villainous failure. It was not advertised at all. +The manager was taken sick yesterday, and the man who was sent to tell +me, never got to me till afternoon today. There was the dickens to pay. +It was too late to do anything--too late to stop the lecture. I scared +up a door-keeper, and was ready at the proper time, and by pure good luck +a tolerably good house assembled and I was saved! I hardly knew what I +was going to talk about, but it went off in splendid style. I was to +have preached again Saturday night, but I won't--I can't get along +without a manager. + +I have been in New York ever since Christmas, you know, and now I shall +have to work like sin to catch up my correspondence. + +And I have got to get up that book, too. Cut my letters out of the +Alta's and send them to me in an envelop. Some, here, that are not +mailed yet, I shall have to copy, I suppose. + +I have got a thousand things to do, and am not doing any of them. I feel +perfectly savage. + Good bye + Yrs aff + SAM. + + + On the whole, matters were going well with him. His next letter is + full of his success--overflowing with the boyish radiance which he + never quite outgrew. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + HARTFORD, CONN. Jan. 24-68. +DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--This is a good week for me. I stopped in the +Herald office as I came through New York, to see the boys on the staff, +and young James Gordon Bennett asked me to write twice a week, +impersonally, for the Herald, and said if I would I might have full +swing, and (write) about anybody and everybody I wanted to. I said I +must have the very fullest possible swing, and he said "all right." +I said "It's a contract--" and that settled that matter. + +I'll make it a point to write one letter a week, any-how. + +But the best thing that has happened was here. This great American +Publishing Company kept on trying to bargain with me for a book till I +thought I would cut the matter short by coming up for a talk. I met Rev. +Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn, and with his usual whole-souled way of +dropping his own work to give other people a lift when he gets a chance, +he said, "Now, here, you are one of the talented men of the age--nobody +is going to deny that---but in matters of business, I don't suppose you +know more than enough to came in when it rains. I'll tell you what to +do, and how to do it." And he did. + +And I listened well, and then came up here and made a splendid contract +for a Quaker City book of 5 or 600 large pages, with illustrations, the +manuscript to be placed in the publishers' hands by the middle of July. +My percentage is to be a fifth more than they have ever paid any author, +except Horace Greeley. Beecher will be surprised, I guess, when he hears +this. + +But I had my mind made up to one thing--I wasn't going to touch a book +unless there was money in it, and a good deal of it. I told them so. +I had the misfortune to "bust out" one author of standing. They had his +manuscript, with the understanding that they would publish his book if +they could not get a book from me, (they only publish two books at a +time, and so my book and Richardson's Life of Grant will fill the bill +for next fall and winter)--so that manuscript was sent back to its author +today. + +These publishers get off the most tremendous editions of their books you +can imagine. I shall write to the Enterprise and Alta every week, +as usual, I guess, and to the Herald twice a week--occasionally to the +Tribune and the Magazines (I have a stupid article in the Galaxy, just +issued) but I am not going to write to this, that and the other paper any +more. + +The Chicago Tribune wants letters, but I hope and pray I have charged +them so much that they will not close the contract. I am gradually +getting out of debt, but these trips to New York do cost like sin. +I hope you have cut out and forwarded my printed letters to Washington +--please continue to do so as they arrive. + +I have had a tip-top time, here, for a few days (guest of Mr. Jno. +Hooker's family--Beecher's relatives-in a general way of Mr. Bliss, also, +who is head of the publishing firm.) Puritans are mighty straight-laced +and they won't let me smoke in the parlor, but the Almighty don't make +any better people. + +Love to all-good-bye. I shall be in New York 3 days--then go on to the +Capital. + Yrs affly, especially Ma., + Yr SAM. + +I have to make a speech at the annual Herald dinner on the 6th of May. + + + No formal contract for the book had been made when this letter was + written. A verbal agreement between Bliss and Clemens had been + reached, to be ratified by an exchange of letters in the near + future. Bliss had made two propositions, viz., ten thousand + dollars, cash in hand, or a 5-per-cent. royalty on the selling price + of the book. The cash sum offered looked very large to Mark Twain, + and he was sorely tempted to accept it. He had faith, however, in + the book, and in Bliss's ability to sell it. He agreed, therefore, + to the royalty proposition; "The best business judgment I ever + displayed" he often declared in after years. Five per cent. + royalty sounds rather small in these days of more liberal contracts. + But the American Publishing Company sold its books only by + subscription, and the agents' commissions and delivery expenses ate + heavily into the profits. Clemens was probably correct in saying + that his percentage was larger than had been paid to any previous + author except Horace Greeley. The John Hooker mentioned was the + husband of Henry Ward Beecher's sister, Isabel. It was easy to + understand the Beecher family's robust appreciation of Mark Twain. + + From the office of Dan Slote, his room-mate of the Quaker City + --"Dan" of the Innocents--Clemens wrote his letter that closed the + agreement with Bliss. + + + To Elisha Bliss, Jr., in Hartford: + + Office of SLOTE & WOODMAN, Blank Book Manufacturers, + Nos. 119-121 William St. + NEW YORK, January 27, 1868. +Mr. E. Bliss, Jr. + Sec'y American Publishing Co. + Hartford Conn. + +DEAR SIR, Your favor of Jan. 25th is received, and in reply, I will say +that I accede to your several propositions, viz: That I furnish to the +American Publishing Company, through you, with MSS sufficient for a +volume of 500 to 600 pages, the subject to be the Quaker City, the +voyage, description of places, &c., and also embodying the substance of +the letters written by me during that trip, said MSS to be ready about +the first of August, next, I to give all the usual and necessary +attention in preparing said MSS for the press, and in preparation of +illustrations, in correction of proofs--no use to be made by me of the +material for this work in any way which will conflict with its interest +--the book to be sold by the American Publishing Co., by subscription +--and for said MS and labor on my part said Company to pay me a copyright +of 5 percent, upon the subscription price of the book for all copies +sold. + +As further proposed by you, this understanding, herein set forth shall be +considered a binding contract upon all parties concerned, all minor +details to be arranged between us hereafter. + Very truly yours, + SAM. L. CLEMENS. + + + (Private and General.) + +I was to have gone to Washington tonight, but have held over a day, to +attend a dinner given by a lot of newspaper Editors and literary +scalliwags, at the Westminster Hotel. Shall go down to-morrow, if I +survive the banquet. + Yrs truly + SAM. CLEMENS. + + + Mark Twain, in Washington, was in line for political preferment: His + wide acquaintance on the Pacific slope, his new fame and growing + popularity, his powerful and dreaded pen, all gave him special + distinction at the capital. From time to time the offer of one + office or another tempted him, but he wisely, or luckily, resisted. + In his letters home are presented some of his problems. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + 224 F. STREET WASHINGTON Feb. 6, 1868. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--For two months there have been some fifty +applications before the government for the postmastership of San +Francisco, which is the heaviest concentration of political power on the +coast and consequently is a post which is much coveted., + +When I found that a personal friend of mine, the Chief Editor of the Alta +was an applicant I said I didn't want it--I would not take $10,000 a year +out of a friend's pocket. + +The two months have passed, I heard day before yesterday that a new and +almost unknown candidate had suddenly turned up on the inside track, and +was to be appointed at once. I didn't like that, and went after his case +in a fine passion. I hunted up all our Senators and representatives and +found that his name was actually to come from the President early in the +morning. + +Then Judge Field said if I wanted the place he could pledge me the +President's appointment--and Senator Conness said he would guarantee me +the Senate's confirmation. It was a great temptation, but it would +render it impossible to fill my book contract, and I had to drop the +idea. + +I have to spend August and September in Hartford which isn't San +Francisco. Mr. Conness offers me any choice out of five influential +California offices. Now, some day or other I shall want an office and +then, just my luck, I can't get it, I suppose. + +They want to send me abroad, as a Consul or a Minister. I said I didn't +want any of the pie. God knows I am mean enough and lazy enough, now, +without being a foreign consul. + +Sometime in the course of the present century I think they will create a +Commissioner of Patents, and then I hope to get a berth for Orion. + +I published 6 or 7 letters in the Tribune while I was gone, now I cannot +get them. I suppose I must have them copied. + Love to all + SAM. + + +Orion Clemens was once more a candidate for office: Nevada had become a +State; with regularly elected officials, and Orion had somehow missed +being chosen. His day of authority had passed, and the law having failed +to support him, he was again back at his old occupation, setting type in +St. Louis. He was, as ever, full of dreams and inventions that would +some day lead to fortune. With the gift of the Sellers imagination, +inherited by all the family, he lacked the driving power which means +achievement. More and more as the years went by he would lean upon his +brother for moral and physical support. The chances for him in +Washington do not appear to have been bright. The political situation +under Andrew Johnson was not a happy one. + + + To Orion Clemens, in St. Louis: + + 224 F. STREET, WASH., Feb. 21. (1868) +MY DEAR BRO.,--I am glad you do not want the clerkship, for that Patent +Office is in such a muddle that there would be no security for the +permanency of a place in it. The same remark will apply to all offices +here, now, and no doubt will, till the close of the present +administration. + +Any man who holds a place here, now, stands prepared at all times to +vacate it. You are doing, now, exactly what I wanted you to do a year +ago. + +We chase phantoms half the days of our lives. + +It is well if we learn wisdom even then, and save the other half. + +I am in for it. I must go on chasing them until I marry--then I am done +with literature and all other bosh,--that is, literature wherewith to +please the general public. + +I shall write to please myself, then. I hope you will set type till you +complete that invention, for surely government pap must be nauseating +food for a man--a man whom God has enabled to saw wood and be +independent. It really seemed to me a falling from grace, the idea of +going back to San Francisco nothing better than a mere postmaster, albeit +the public would have thought I came with gilded honors, and in great +glory. + +I only retain correspondence enough, now, to make a living for myself, +and have discarded all else, so that I may have time to spare for the +book. Drat the thing, I wish it were done, or that I had no other +writing to do. + +This is the place to get a poor opinion of everybody in. There isn't one +man in Washington, in civil office, who has the brains of Anson +Burlingame--and I suppose if China had not seized and saved his great +talents to the world, this government would have discarded him when his +time was up. + +There are more pitiful intellects in this Congress! Oh, geeminy! There +are few of them that I find pleasant enough company to visit. + +I am most infernally tired of Wash. and its "attractions." To be busy +is a man's only happiness--and I am--otherwise I should die + Yrs. aff + SAM. + + + The secretarial position with Senator Stewart was short-lived. One + cannot imagine Mark Twain as anybody's secretary, and doubtless + there was little to be gained on either side by the arrangement. + They parted without friction, though in later years, when Stewart + had become old and irascible, he used to recount a list of + grievances and declare that he had been obliged to threaten violence + in order to bring Mark to terms; but this was because the author of + Roughing It had in that book taken liberties with the Senator, to + the extent of an anecdote and portrait which, though certainly + harmless enough, had for some reason given deep offense. + + Mark Twain really had no time for secretary work. For one thing he + was associated with John Swinton in supplying a Washington letter to + a list of newspapers, and then he was busy collecting his Quaker + City letters, and preparing the copy for his book. Matters were + going well enough, when trouble developed from an unexpected + quarter. The Alta-California had copyrighted the letters and + proposed to issue them in book form. There had been no contract + which would prevent this, and the correspondence which Clemens + undertook with the Alta management led to nothing. He knew that he + had powerful friends among the owners, if he could reach them + personally, and he presently concluded to return to San Francisco, + make what arrangement he could, and finish his book there. It was + his fashion to be prompt; in his next letter we find him already on + the way. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: + + AT SEA, Sunday, March 15, Lat. 25. (1868) +DEAR FOLKS,--I have nothing to write, except that I am well--that the +weather is fearfully hot-that the Henry Chauncey is a magnificent ship +--that we have twelve hundred, passengers on board--that I have two +staterooms, and so am not crowded--that I have many pleasant friends +here, and the people are not so stupid as on the Quaker City--that we had +Divine Service in the main saloon at 10.30 this morning--that we expect +to meet the upward bound vessel in Latitude 23, and this is why I am +writing now. + +We shall reach Aspinwall Thursday morning at 6 o'clock, and San Francisco +less than two weeks later. I worry a great deal about being obliged to +go without seeing you all, but it could not be helped. + +Dan Slote, my splendid room-mate in the Quaker City and the noblest man +on earth, will call to see you within a month. Make him dine with you +and spend the evening. His house is my home always in. New York. + Yrs affy, + SAM. + + +The San Francisco trip proved successful. Once on the ground Clemens had +little difficulty in convincing the Alta publishers that they had +received full value in the newspaper use of the letters, and that the +book rights remained with the author. A letter to Bliss conveys the +situation. + + + To Elisha Bliss, Jr., in Hartford: + + SAN FRANCISCO, May 5, '68. + +E. BLISS, Jr. Esq. + +Dr. SIR,--The Alta people, after some hesitation, have given me +permission to use my printed letters, and have ceased to think of +publishing them themselves in book form. I am steadily at work, and +shall start East with the completed Manuscript, about the middle of June. + +I lectured here, on the trip, the other night-over sixteen hundred +dollars in gold in the house--every seat taken and paid for before night. + Yrs truly, + MARK TWAIN. + + + But he did not sail in June. His friends persuaded him to cover his + lecture circuit of two years before, telling the story of his + travels. This he did with considerable profit, being everywhere + received with great honors. He ended this tour with a second + lecture in San Francisco, announced in a droll and characteristic + fashion which delighted his Pacific admirers, and insured him a + crowded house.--[See Mark Twain: A Biography, chap xlvi, and + Appendix H.] + + His agreement had been to deliver his MS. about August 1st. + Returning by the Chauncey, July 28th, he was two days later in + Hartford, and had placid the copy for the new book in Bliss's hands. + It was by no means a compilation of his newspaper letters. His + literary vision was steadily broadening. All of the letters had + been radically edited, some had been rewritten, some entirely + eliminated. He probably thought very well of the book, an opinion + shared by Bliss, but it is unlikely that either of them realized + that it was to become a permanent classic, and the best selling book + of travel for at least fifty years. + + + + +IX. + +LETTERS 1868-70. COURTSHIP, AND "THE INNOCENTS ABROAD" + + The story of Mark Twain's courtship has been fully told in the + completer story of his life; it need only be briefly sketched here + as a setting for the letters of this period. In his letter of + January 8th we note that he expects to go to Elmira for a few days + as soon as he has time. + + But he did not have time, or perhaps did not receive a pressing + invitation until he had returned with his MS. from California. + Then, through young Charles Langdon, his Quaker City shipmate, he + was invited to Elmira. The invitation was given for a week, but + through a subterfuge--unpremeditated, and certainly fair enough in + a matter of love-he was enabled to considerably prolong his visit. + By the end of his stay he had become really "like one of the + family," though certainly not yet accepted as such. The fragmentary + letter that follows reflects something of his pleasant situation. + The Mrs. Fairbanks mentioned in this letter had been something more + than a "shipmother" to Mark Twain. She was a woman of fine literary + taste, and Quaker City correspondent for her husband's paper, the + Cleveland Herald. She had given Mark Twain sound advice as to his + letters, which he had usually read to her, and had in no small + degree modified his early natural tendency to exaggeration and + outlandish humor. He owed her much, and never failed to pay her + tribute. + + Part of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: + + ELMIRA, N.Y. Aug. 26, 1868. +DEAR FOLKS,--You see I am progressing--though slowly. I shall be here +a week yet maybe two--for Charlie Langdon cannot get away until his +father's chief business man returns from a journey--and a visit to Mrs. +Fairbanks, at Cleveland, would lose half its pleasure if Charlie were not +along. Moulton of St. Louis ought to be there too. We three were Mrs. +F's "cubs," in the Quaker City. She took good care that we were at +church regularly on Sundays; at the 8-bells prayer meeting every night; +and she kept our buttons sewed on and our clothing in order--and in a +word was as busy and considerate, and as watchful over her family of +uncouth and unruly cubs, and as patient and as long-suffering, withal, as +a natural mother. So we expect..... + + Aug. 25th. +Didn't finish yesterday. Something called me away. I am most +comfortably situated here. This is the pleasantest family I ever knew. +I only have one trouble, and that is they give me too much thought and +too much time and invention to the object of making my visit pass +delightfully. It needs---- + + Just how and when he left the Langdon home the letters do not + record. Early that fall he began a lecture engagement with James + Redpath, proprietor of the Boston Lyceum Bureau, and his engagements + were often within reach of Elmira. He had a standing invitation now + to the Langdon home, and the end of the week often found him there. + Yet when at last he proposed for the hand of Livy Langdon the + acceptance was by no means prompt. He was a favorite in the Langdon + household, but his suitability as a husband for the frail and gentle + daughter was questioned. + + However, he was carrying everything, just then, by storm. The + largest houses everywhere were crowded to hear him. Papers spoke of + him as the coming man of the age, people came to their doors to see + him pass. There is but one letter of this period, but it gives us + the picture. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: + + CLEVELAND, Nov. 20, 1868. +DEAR FOLKS,--I played against the Eastern favorite, Fanny Kemble, in +Pittsburgh, last night. She had 200 in her house, and I had upwards of +1,500. All the seats were sold (in a driving rain storm, 3 days ago,) +as reserved seats at 25 cents extra, even those in the second and third +tiers--and when the last seat was gone the box office had not been open +more than 2 hours. When I reached the theatre they were turning people +away and the house was crammed, 150 or 200 stood up, all the evening. + +I go to Elmira tonight. I am simply lecturing for societies, at $100 a +pop. + Yrs + SAM. + + + It would be difficult for any family to refuse relationship with one + whose star was so clearly ascending, especially when every + inclination was in his favor, and the young lady herself encouraged + his suit. A provisional engagement was presently made, but it was + not finally ratified until February of the following year. Then in + a letter from one of his lecture points he tells his people + something of his happiness. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: + + LOCKPORT, N. Y. Feb. 27, 1868. +DEAR FOLKS,--I enclose $20 for Ma. I thought I was getting ahead of her +little assessments of $35 a month, but find I am falling behind with her +instead, and have let her go without money. Well, I did not mean to do +it. But you see when people have been getting ready for months in a +quiet way to get married, they are bound to grow stingy, and go to saving +up money against that awful day when it is sure to be needed. I am +particularly anxious to place myself in a position where I can carry on +my married life in good shape on my own hook, because I have paddled my +own canoe so long that I could not be satisfied now to let anybody help +me--and my proposed father-in-law is naturally so liberal that it would +be just like him to want to give us a start in life. But I don't want it +that way. I can start myself. I don't want any help. I can run this +institution without any outside assistance, and I shall have a wife who +will stand by me like a soldier through thick and thin, and never +complain. She is only a little body, but she hasn't her peer in +Christendom. I gave her only a plain gold engagement ring, when fashion +imperatively demands a two-hundred dollar diamond one, and told her it +was typical of her future lot--namely, that she would have to flourish on +substantials rather than luxuries. (But you see I know the girl--she +don't care anything about luxuries.) She is a splendid girl. She spends +no money but her usual year's allowance, and she spends nearly every cent +of that on other people. She will be a good sensible little wife, +without any airs about her. I don't make intercession for her beforehand +and ask you to love her, for there isn't any use in that--you couldn't +help it if you were to try. + +I warn you that whoever comes within the fatal influence of her beautiful +nature is her willing slave for evermore. I take my affidavit on that +statement. Her father and mother and brother embrace and pet her +constantly, precisely as if she were a sweetheart, instead of a blood +relation. She has unlimited power over her father, and yet she never +uses it except to make him help people who stand in need of help.... + +But if I get fairly started on the subject of my bride, I never shall get +through--and so I will quit right here. I went to Elmira a little over a +week ago, and staid four days and then had to go to New York on business. + + ...................... + + No further letters have been preserved until June, when he is in + Elmira and with his fiancee reading final proofs on the new book. + They were having an idyllic good time, of course, but it was a + useful time, too, for Olivia Langdon had a keen and refined literary + instinct, and the Innocents Abroad, as well as Mark Twain's other + books, are better to-day for her influence. + + It has been stated that Mark Twain loved the lecture platform, but + from his letters we see that even at this early date, when he was at + the height of his first great vogue as a public entertainer, he had + no love for platform life. Undoubtedly he rejoiced in the brief + periods when he was actually before his audience and could play upon + it with his master touch, but the dreary intermissions of travel and + broken sleep were too heavy a price to pay. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis + + ELMIRA, June 4. (1868) +DEAR FOLKS,--Livy sends you her love and loving good wishes, and I send +you mine. The last 3 chapters of the book came tonight--we shall read it +in the morning and then thank goodness, we are done. + +In twelve months (or rather I believe it is fourteen,) I have earned just +eighty dollars by my pen--two little magazine squibs and one newspaper +letter--altogether the idlest, laziest 14 months I ever spent in my life. +And in that time my absolute and necessary expenses have been scorchingly +heavy--for I have now less than three thousand six hundred dollars in +bank out of the eight or nine thousand I have made during those months, +lecturing. My expenses were something frightful during the winter. +I feel ashamed of my idleness, and yet I have had really no inclination +to do anything but court Livy. I haven't any other inclination yet. +I have determined not to work as hard traveling, any more, as I did last +winter, and so I have resolved not to lecture outside of the 6 New +England States next winter. My Western course would easily amount to +$10,000, but I would rather make 2 or 3 thousand in New England than +submit again to so much wearing travel. (I have promised to talk ten +nights for a thousand dollars in the State of New York, provided the +places are close together.) But after all if I get located in a newspaper +in a way to suit me, in the meantime, I don't want to lecture at all next +winter, and probably shan't. I most cordially hate the lecture field. +And after all, I shudder to think that I may never get out of it. + +In all conversations with Gough, and Anna Dickinson, Nasby, Oliver +Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips and the other old stagers, I could not +observe that they ever expected or hoped to get out of the business. +I don't want to get wedded to it as they are. Livy thinks we can live on +a very moderate sum and that we'll not need to lecture. I know very well +that she can live on a small allowance, but I am not so sure about +myself. I can't scare her by reminding her that her father's family +expenses are forty thousand dollars a year, because she produces the +documents at once to show that precious little of this outlay is on her +account. But I must not commence writing about Livy, else I shall never +stop. There isn't such another little piece of perfection in the world +as she is. + +My time is become so short, now, that I doubt if I get to California this +summer. If I manage to buy into a paper, I think I will visit you a +while and not go to Cal. at all. I shall know something about it after +my next trip to Hartford. We all go there on the 10th--the whole family +--to attend a wedding, on the 17th. I am offered an interest in a +Cleveland paper which would pay me $2,300 to $2,500 a year, and a salary +added of $3,000. The salary is fair enough, but the interest is not +large enough, and so I must look a little further. The Cleveland folks +say they can be induced to do a little better by me, and urge me to come +out and talk business. But it don't strike me--I feel little or no +inclination to go. + +I believe I haven't anything else to write, and it is bed-time. I want +to write to Orion, but I keep putting it off--I keep putting everything +off. Day after day Livy and I are together all day long and until 10 at +night, and then I feel dreadfully sleepy. If Orion will bear with me and +forgive me I will square up with him yet. I will even let him kiss Livy. + +My love to Mollie and Annie and Sammie and all. Good-bye. + Affectionately, + SAM. + + + It is curious, with his tendency to optimism and general expansion + of futures, that he says nothing of the possible sales of the new + book, or of his expectations in that line. It was issued in July, + and by June the publishers must have had promising advance orders + from their canvassers; but apparently he includes none of these + chickens in his financial forecast. Even when the book had been out + a full month, and was being shipped at the rate of several hundreds + a day, he makes no reference to it in a letter to his sister, other + than to ask if she has not received a copy. This, however, was a + Mark Twain peculiarity. Writing was his trade; the returns from it + seldom excited him. It was only when he drifted into strange and + untried fields that he began to chase rainbows, to blow iridescent + bubbles, and count unmined gold. + + + To Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + BUFFALO, Aug. 20, 1869. +MY DEAR SISTER,--I have only time to write a line. I got your letter +this morning and mailed it to Livy. She will be expecting me tonight and +I am sorry to disappoint her so, but then I couldn't well get away. I +will go next Saturday. + +I have bundled up Livy's picture and will try and recollect to mail it +tomorrow. It is a porcelaintype and I think you will like it. + +I am sorry I never got to St. Louis, because I may be too busy to go, for +a long time. But I have been busy all the time and St. Louis is clear +out of the way, and remote from the world and all ordinary routes of +travel. You must not place too much weight upon this idea of moving the +capital from Washington. St. Louis is in some respects a better place +for it than Washington, though there isn't more than a toss-up between +the two after all. One is dead and the other in a trance. Washington is +in the centre of population and business, while St. Louis is far removed +from both. And you know there is no geographical centre any more. The +railroads and telegraph have done away with all that. It is no longer +a matter of sufficient importance to be gravely considered by thinking +men. The only centres, now, are narrowed down to those of intelligence, +capital and population. As I said before Washington is the nearest to +those and you don't have to paddle across a river on ferry boats of a +pattern popular in the dark ages to get to it, nor have to clamber up +vilely paved hills in rascally omnibuses along with a herd of all sorts +of people after you are there. Secondly, the removal of the capital is +one of those old, regular, reliable dodges that are the bread-and meat of +back country congressmen. It is agitated every year. It always has +been, it always will be; It is not new in any respect. Thirdly. The +Capitol has cost $40,000,000 already and lacks a good deal of being +finished, yet. There are single stones in the Treasury building (and a +good many of them) that cost twenty-seven thousand dollars apiece--and +millions were spent in the construction of that and the Patent Office and +the other great government buildings. To move to St. Louis, the country +must throw away a hundred millions of capital invested in those +buildings, and go right to work to spend a hundred millions on new +buildings in St. Louis. Shall we ever have a Congress, a majority of +whose members are hopelessly insane? Probably not. But it is possible +--unquestionably such a thing is possible. Only I don't believe it will +happen in our time; and I am satisfied the capital will not be moved +until it does happen. But if St. Louis would donate the ground and the +buildings, it would be a different matter. No, Pamela, I don't see any +good reason to believe you or I will ever see the capital moved. + +I have twice instructed the publishers to send you a book--it was the +first thing I did--long before the proofs were finished. Write me if it +is not yet done. + +Livy says we must have you all at our marriage, and I say we can't. +It will be at Christmas or New Years, when such a trip across the country +would be equivalent to murder & arson & everything else.--And it would +cost five hundred dollars--an amount of money she don't know the value of +now, but will before a year is gone. She grieves over it, poor little +rascal, but it can't be helped. She must wait awhile, till I am firmly +on my legs, & then she shall see you. She says her father and mother +will invite you just as soon as the wedding date is definitely fixed, +anyway--& she thinks that's bound to settle it. But the ice & snow, & +the long hard journey, & the injudiciousness of laying out any money +except what we are obliged to part with while we are so much in debt, +settles the case differently. For it is a debt. + +.....Mr. Langdon is just as good as bound for $25,000 for me, and has +already advanced half of it in cash. I wrote and asked whether I had +better send him my note, or a due-bill, or how he would prefer to have +the indebtedness made of record and he answered every other topic in the +letter pleasantly but never replied to that at all. Still, I shall give +my note into the hands of his business agent here, and pay him the +interest as it falls due. We must "go slow." We are not in the +Cleveland Herald. We are a hundred thousand times better off, but there +isn't so much money in it. + +(Remainder missing.) + + + In spite of the immediate success of his book--a success the like of + which had scarcely been known in America-Mark Twain held himself to + be, not a literary man, but a journalist: He had no plans for + another book; as a newspaper owner and editor he expected, with his + marriage, to settle down and devote the rest of his life to + journalism. The paper was the Buffalo Express; his interest in it + was one-third--the purchase price, twenty-five thousand dollars, of + which he had paid a part, Jervis Langdon, his future father-in-law, + having furnished cash and security for the remainder. He was + already in possession in August, but he was not regularly in Buffalo + that autumn, for he had agreed with Redpath to deliver his Quaker + City lecture, and the tour would not end until a short time before + his wedding-day, February 2, 1870. + + Our next letter hardly belongs in this collection; as it was + doubtless written with at least the possibility of publication in + view. But it is too amusing, too characteristic of Mark Twain, to + be omitted. It was sent in response to an invitation from the New + York Society of California Pioneers to attend a banquet given in New + York City, October 13, 1869, and was, of course, read to the + assembled diners. + + + To the New York Society of California Pioneers, in New York City: + + ELMIRA, October 11, 1869. +GENTLEMEN,--Circumstances render it out of my power to take advantage of +the invitation extended to me through Mr. Simonton, and be present at +your dinner at New York. I regret this very much, for there are several +among you whom I would have a right to join hands with on the score of +old friendship, and I suppose I would have a sublime general right to +shake hands with the rest of you on the score of kinship in California +ups and downs in search of fortune. + +If I were to tell some of my experience, you would recognize California +blood in me; I fancy the old, old story would sound familiar, no doubt. +I have the usual stock of reminiscences. For instance: I went to +Esmeralda early. I purchased largely in the "Wide West," "Winnemucca," +and other fine claims, and was very wealthy. I fared sumptuously on +bread when flour was $200 a barrel and had beans for dinner every Sunday, +when none but bloated aristocrats could afford such grandeur. But I +finished by feeding batteries in a quartz mill at $15 a week, and wishing +I was a battery myself and had somebody to feed me. My claims in +Esmeralda are there yet. I suppose I could be persuaded to sell. + +I went to Humboldt District when it was new; I became largely interested +in the "Alba Nueva" and other claims with gorgeous names, and was rich +again--in prospect. I owned a vast mining property there. I would not +have sold out for less than $400,000 at that time. But I will now. +Finally I walked home--200 miles partly for exercise, and partly because +stage fare was expensive. Next I entered upon an affluent career in +Virginia City, and by a judicious investment of labor and the capital of +friends, became the owner of about all the worthless wild cat mines there +were in that part of the country. Assessments did the business for me +there. There were a hundred and seventeen assessments to one dividend, +and the proportion of income to outlay was a little against me. My +financial barometer went down to 32 Fahrenheit, and the subscriber was +frozen out. + +I took up extensions on the main lead-extensions that reached to British +America, in one direction, and to the Isthmus of Panama in the other--and +I verily believe I would have been a rich man if I had ever found those +infernal extensions. But I didn't. I ran tunnels till I tapped the +Arctic Ocean, and I sunk shafts till I broke through the roof of +perdition; but those extensions turned up missing every time. I am +willing to sell all that property and throw in the improvements. + +Perhaps you remember that celebrated "North Ophir?" I bought that mine. +It was very rich in pure silver. You could take it out in lumps as large +as a filbert. But when it was discovered that those lumps were melted +half dollars, and hardly melted at that, a painful case of "salting" was +apparent, and the undersigned adjourned to the poorhouse again. + +I paid assessments on "Hale and Norcross" until they sold me out, and I +had to take in washing for a living--and the next month that infamous +stock went up to $7,000 a foot. + +I own millions and millions of feet of affluent silver leads in Nevada +--in fact the entire undercrust of that country nearly, and if Congress +would move that State off my property so that I could get at it, I would +be wealthy yet. But no, there she squats--and here am I. Failing health +persuades me to sell. If you know of any one desiring a permanent +investment, I can furnish one that will have the virtue of being eternal. + +I have been through the California mill, with all its "dips, spurs and +angles, variations and sinuosities." I have worked there at all the +different trades and professions known to the catalogues. I have been +everything, from a newspaper editor down to a cow-catcher on a +locomotive, and I am encouraged to believe that if there had been a few +more occupations to experiment on, I might have made a dazzling success +at last, and found out what mysterious designs Providence had in creating +me. + +But you perceive that although I am not a Pioneer, I have had a +sufficiently variegated time of it to enable me to talk Pioneer like a +native, and feel like a Forty-Niner. Therefore, I cordially welcome you +to your old-remembered homes and your long deserted firesides, and close +this screed with the sincere hope that your visit here will be a happy +one, and not embittered by the sorrowful surprises that absence and lapse +of years are wont to prepare for wanderers; surprises which come in the +form of old friends missed from their places; silence where familiar +voices should be; the young grown old; change and decay everywhere; home +a delusion and a disappointment; strangers at hearthstone; sorrow where +gladness was; tears for laughter; the melancholy-pomp of death where the +grace of life has been! + +With all good wishes for the Returned Prodigals, and regrets that I +cannot partake of a small piece of the fatted calf (rare and no gravy,) + I am yours, cordially, + MARK TWAIN. + + + In the next letter we find him in the midst of a sort of confusion + of affairs, which, in one form or another, would follow him + throughout the rest of his life. It was the price of his success + and popularity, combined with his general gift for being concerned + with a number of things, and a natural tendency for getting into hot + water, which becomes more evident as the years and letters pass in + review. Orion Clemens, in his attempt to save money for the + government, had employed methods and agents which the officials at + Washington did not understand, and refused to recognize. Instead of + winning the credit and commendation he had expected, he now found + himself pursued by claims of considerable proportions. The "land" + referred to is the Tennessee tract, the heritage which John Clemens + had provided for his children. Mark Twain had long since lost faith + in it, and was not only willing, but eager to renounce his rights. + + "Nasby" is, of course, David R. Locke, of the Toledo Blade, whose + popularity at this time both as a lecturer and writer was very + great. Clemens had met him here and there on their platform tour, + and they had become good friends. Clemens, in fact, had once + proposed to Nasby a joint trip to the Pacific coast. + + The California idea had been given up, but both Mark Twain and Nasby + found engagements enough, and sufficient profit east of the + Mississippi. Boston was often their headquarters that winter ('69 + and '70), and they were much together. "Josh Billings," another of + Redpath's lecturers, was likewise often to be found in the Lyceum + offices. There is a photograph of Mark Twain, Nasby, and Josh + Billings together. + + Clemens also, that winter, met William Dean Howells, then in the + early days of his association with the Atlantic Monthly. The two + men, so widely different, became firm friends at sight, and it was + to Howells in the years to come that Mark Twain would write more + letters, and more characteristic letters, than to any other living + man. Howells had favorably reviewed 'The Innocents Abroad,' and + after the first moment of their introduction had passed Clemens + said: "When I read that review of yours I felt like the woman who + said that she was so glad that her baby had come white." It was not + the sort of thing that Howells would have said, but it was the sort + of thing that he could understand and appreciate from Mark Twain. + + In company with Nasby Clemens, that season, also met Oliver Wendell + Holmes. Later he had sent Holmes a copy of his book and received a + pleasantly appreciative reply. "I always like," wrote Holmes, "to + hear what one of my fellow countrymen, who is not a Hebrew scholar, + or a reader of hiero-glyphics, but a good-humored traveler with a + pair of sharp, twinkling Yankee (in the broader sense) eyes in his + head, has to say about the things that learned travelers often make + unintelligible, and sentimental ones ridiculous or absurd .... I + hope your booksellers will sell a hundred thousand copies of your + travels." A wish that was realized in due time, though it is + doubtful if Doctor Holmes or any one else at the moment believed + that a book of that nature and price (it was $3.50 a copy) would + ever reach such a sale. + + + + To Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: + + BOSTON, Nov. 9, 1869. +MY DEAR SISTER,--Three or four letters just received from home. My first +impulse was to send Orion a check on my publisher for the money he wants, +but a sober second thought suggested that if he has not defrauded the +government out of money, why pay, simply because the government chooses +to consider him in its debt? No: Right is right. The idea don't suit +me. Let him write the Treasury the state of the case, and tell them he +has no money. If they make his sureties pay, then I will make the +sureties whole, but I won't pay a cent of an unjust claim. You talk of +disgrace. To my mind it would be just as disgraceful to allow one's self +to be bullied into paying that which is unjust. + +Ma thinks it is hard that Orion's share of the land should be swept away +just as it is right on the point (as it always has been) of becoming +valuable. Let her rest easy on that point. This letter is his ample +authority to sell my share of the land immediately and appropriate the +proceeds--giving no account to me, but repaying the amount to Ma first, +or in case of her death, to you or your heirs, whenever in the future he +shall be able to do it. Now, I want no hesitation in this matter. I +renounce my ownership from this date, for this purpose, provided it is +sold just as suddenly as he can sell it. + +In the next place--Mr. Langdon is old, and is trying hard to withdraw +from business and seek repose. I will not burden him with a purchase +--but I will ask him to take full possession of a coal tract of the land +without paying a cent, simply conditioning that he shall mine and throw +the coal into market at his own cost, and pay to you and all of you what +he thinks is a fair portion of the profits accruing--you can do as you +please with the rest of the land. Therefore, send me (to Elmira,) +information about the coal deposits so framed that he can comprehend the +matter and can intelligently instruct an agent how to find it and go to +work. + +Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience +--4,000 critics--and on the success of this matter depends my future +success in New England. But I am not distressed. Nasby is in the same +boat. Tonight decides the fate of his brand-new lecture. He has just +left my room--been reading his lecture to me--was greatly depressed. I +have convinced him that he has little to fear. + +I get just about five hundred more applications to lecture than I can +possibly fill--and in the West they say "Charge all you please, but +come." I shan't go West at all. I stop lecturing the 22d of January, +sure. But I shall talk every night up to that time. They flood me with +high-priced invitations to write for magazines and papers, and publishers +besiege me to write books. Can't do any of these things. + +I am twenty-two thousand dollars in debt, and shall earn the money and +pay it within two years--and therefore I am not spending any money except +when it is necessary. + +I had my life insured for $10,000 yesterday (what ever became of Mr. +Moffett' s life insurance?) "for the benefit of my natural heirs"--the +same being my mother, for Livy wouldn't claim it, you may be sure of +that. This has taken $200 out of my pocket which I was going to send to +Ma. But I will send her some, soon. Tell Orion to keep a stiff upper +lip--when the worst comes to the worst I will come forward. Must talk in +Providence, R. I., tonight. Must leave now. I thank Mollie and Orion +and the rest for your letters, but you see how I am pushed--ought to have +6 clerks. + Affectionately, + SAM. + + + By the end of January, 1870 more than thirty thousand copies of the + Innocents had been sold, and in a letter to his publisher the author + expressed his satisfaction. + + + To Elisha Bliss, in Hartford: + + ELMIRA, Jan. 28 '70. +FRIEND BLISS,--..... Yes, I am satisfied with the way you are running the +book. You are running it in staving, tip-top, first-class style. I +never wander into any corner of the country but I find that an agent has +been there before me, and many of that community have read the book. And +on an average about ten people a day come and hunt me up to thank me and +tell me I'm a benefactor! I guess this is a part of the programme we +didn't expect in the first place. + +I think you are rushing this book in a manner to be proud of; and you +will make the finest success of it that has ever been made with a +subscription book, I believe. What with advertising, establishing +agencies, &c., you have got an enormous lot of machinery under way and +hard at work in a wonderfully short space of time. It is easy to see, +when one travels around, that one must be endowed with a deal of genuine +generalship in order to maneuvre a publication whose line of battle +stretches from end to end of a great continent, and whose foragers and +skirmishers invest every hamlet and besiege every village hidden away in +all the vast space between. + +I'll back you against any publisher in America, Bliss--or elsewhere. + Yrs as ever + CLEMENS. + + + There is another letter written just at this time which of all + letters must not be omitted here. Only five years earlier Mark + Twain, poor, and comparatively unknown, had been carrying water + while Jim Gillis and Dick Stoker washed out the pans of dirt in + search of the gold pocket which they did not find. Clemens must + have received a letter from Gillis referring to some particular + occasion, but it has disappeared; the reply, however, always + remained one of James Gillis's treasured possessions. + + + To James Gillis, in his cabin on Jackass Hill, + Tuolumne Co., California: + + ELMIRA, N.Y. Jan. 26, '70. +DEAR JIM,--I remember that old night just as well! And somewhere among my +relics I have your remembrance stored away. It makes my heart ache yet +to call to mind some of those days. Still, it shouldn't--for right in +the depths of their poverty and their pocket-hunting vagabondage lay the +germ of my coming good fortune. You remember the one gleam of jollity +that shot across our dismal sojourn in the rain and mud of Angels' Camp +I mean that day we sat around the tavern stove and heard that chap tell +about the frog and how they filled him with shot. And you remember how +we quoted from the yarn and laughed over it, out there on the hillside +while you and dear old Stoker panned and washed. I jotted the story down +in my note-book that day, and would have been glad to get ten or fifteen +dollars for it--I was just that blind. But then we were so hard up! +I published that story, and it became widely known in America, India, +China, England--and the reputation it made for me has paid me thousands +and thousands of dollars since. Four or five months ago I bought into +the Express (I have ordered it sent to you as long as you live--and if +the book keeper sends you any bills, you let me hear of it.) I went +heavily in debt never could have dared to do that, Jim, if we hadn't +heard the jumping Frog story that day. + +And wouldn't I love to take old Stoker by the hand, and wouldn't I love +to see him in his great specialty, his wonderful rendition of "Rinalds" +in the "Burning Shame!" Where is Dick and what is he doing? Give him my +fervent love and warm old remembrances. + +A week from today I shall be married to a girl even better, and lovelier +than the peerless "Chapparal Quails." You can't come so far, Jim, but +still I cordially invite you to come, anyhow--and I invite Dick, too. +And if you two boys were to land here on that pleasant occasion, we would +make you right royally welcome. + Truly your friend, + SAML L. CLEMENS. + +P. S. "California plums are good, Jim--particularly when they are +stewed." + + + Steve Gillis, who sent a copy of his letter to the writer, added: + "Dick Stoker--dear, gentle unselfish old Dick-died over three years + ago, aged 78. I am sure it will be a melancholy pleasure to Mark to + know that Dick lived in comfort all his later life, sincerely loved + and respected by all who knew him. He never left Jackass Hill. He + struck a pocket years ago containing enough not only to build + himself a comfortable house near his old cabin, but to last him, + without work, to his painless end. He was a Mason, and was buried + by the Order in Sonora. + + "The 'Quails'--the beautiful, the innocent, the wild little Quails + --lived way out in the Chapparal; on a little ranch near the + Stanislaus River, with their father and mother. They were famous + for their beauty and had many suitors." + + The mention of "California plums" refers to some inedible fruit + which Gillis once, out of pure goodness of heart, bought of a poor + wandering squaw, and then, to conceal his motive, declared that they + were something rare and fine, and persisted in eating them, though + even when stewed they nearly choked him. + + + + +X. + +LETTERS 1870-71. MARK TWAIN IN BUFFALO. MARRIAGE. THE BUFFALO EXPRESS. +"MEMORANDA." LECTURES. A NEW BOOK + + Samuel L. Clemens and Olivia Langdon were married in the Langdon + home at Elmira, February 2, 1870, and took up their residence in + Buffalo in a beautiful home, a wedding present from the bride's + father. The story of their wedding, and the amusing circumstances + connected with their establishment in Buffalo, have been told + elsewhere.--[Mark Twain: A Biography, chap. lxxiv.] + + Mark Twain now believed that he was through with lecturing. Two + letters to Redpath, his agent, express his comfortable condition. + + + To James Redpath, in Boston: + + BUFFALO, March 22, 1890. +DEAR RED,--I am not going to lecture any more forever. I have got things +ciphered down to a fraction now. I know just about what it will cost us +to live and I can make the money without lecturing. Therefore old man, +count me out. + Your friend, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + To James Redpath, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, N. Y. May 10, 1870. +FRIEND REDPATH,--I guess I am out of the field permanently. + +Have got a lovely wife; a lovely house, bewitchingly furnished; +a lovely carriage, and a coachman whose style and dignity are simply +awe-inspiring--nothing less--and I am making more money than necessary +--by considerable, and therefore why crucify myself nightly on the +platform. The subscriber will have to be excused from the present +season at least. + +Remember me to Nasby, Billings and Fall.--[Redpath's partner in the +lecture lyceum.]--Luck to you! I am going to print your menagerie, +Parton and all, and make comments. + +In next Galaxy I give Nasby's friend and mine from Philadelphia (John +Quill, a literary thief) a "hyste." + Yours always and after. + MARK. + + + The reference to the Galaxy in the foregoing letter has to do with a + department called Memoranda, which he had undertaken to conduct for + the new magazine. This work added substantially to his income, and + he believed it would be congenial. He was allowed free hand to + write and print what he chose, and some of his best work at this + time was published in the new department, which he continued for a + year. + + Mark Twain now seemed to have his affairs well regulated. His + mother and sister were no longer far away in St. Louis. Soon after + his marriage they had, by his advice, taken up residence at + Fredonia, New York, where they could be easily visited from Buffalo. + + Altogether, the outlook seemed bright to Mark Twain and his wife, + during the first months of their marriage. Then there came a + change. In a letter which Clemens wrote to his mother and sister we + get the first chapter of disaster. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens, and Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.: + + ELMIRA, N. Y. June 25, 1870. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--We were called here suddenly by telegram, 3 +days ago. Mr. Langdon is very low. We have well-nigh lost hope--all of +us except Livy. + +Mr. Langdon, whose hope is one of his most prominent characteristics, +says himself, this morning, that his recovery is only a possibility, not +a probability. He made his will this morning--that is, appointed +executors--nothing else was necessary. The household is sad enough +Charley is in Bavaria. We telegraphed Munroe & Co. Paris, to notify +Charley to come home--they sent the message to Munich. Our message left +here at 8 in the morning and Charley's answer arrived less than eight +hours afterward. He sailed immediately. + +He will reach home two weeks from now. The whole city is troubled. As I +write (at the office,) a dispatch arrives from Charley who has reached +London, and will sail thence on 28th. He wants news. We cannot send him +any. + Affectionately + SAM. + +P. S. I sent $300 to Fredonia Bank for Ma--It is in her name. + + + Mrs. Clemens, herself, was not in the best of health at this time, + but devotion to her father took her to his bedside, where she + insisted upon standing long, hard watches, the strain of which told + upon her severely. Meantime, work must go on; the daily demand of + the newspaper and the monthly call of the Memoranda could not go + unheeded. Also, Bliss wanted a new book, and met Mark Twain at + Elmira to arrange for it. In a letter to Orion we learn of this + project. + + + To Orion Clemens, in St. Louis: + + ELMIRA, July 15, 1870 +MY DEAR BRO.,--Per contract I must have another 600-page book ready for +my publisher Jan. z, and I only began it today. The subject of it is a +secret, because I may possibly change it. But as it stands, I propose to +do up Nevada and Cal., beginning with the trip across the country in the +stage. Have you a memorandum of the route we took--or the names of any +of the Stations we stopped at? Do you remember any of the scenes, names, +incidents or adventures of the coach trip?--for I remember next to +nothing about the matter. Jot down a foolscap page of items for me. +I wish I could have two days' talk with you. + +I suppose I am to get the biggest copyright, this time, ever paid on a +subscription book in this country. + +Give our love to Mollie.--Mr. Langdon is very low. + Yr Bro + SAM. + + + The "biggest copyright," mentioned in this letter, was a royalty of + 7 1/2 per cent., which Bliss had agreed to pay, on the retail price + of the book. The book was Roughing It, though this title was not + decided upon until considerably later. Orion Clemens eagerly + furnished a detailed memorandum of the route of their overland + journey, which brought this enthusiastic acknowledgment: + + + To Orion Clemens, in St. Louis: + + BUF., 1870. +DEAR BRO.,--I find that your little memorandum book is going to be ever +so much use to me, and will enable me to make quite a coherent narrative +of the Plains journey instead of slurring it over and jumping 2,000 miles +at a stride. The book I am writing will sell. In return for the use of +the little memorandum book I shall take the greatest pleasure in +forwarding to you the third $1,000 which the publisher of the forthcoming +work sends me or the first $1,000, I am not particular--they will both be +in the first quarterly statement of account from the publisher. + In great haste, + Yr Obliged Bro. + SAM. + +Love to Mollie. We are all getting along tolerably well. + + + Mr. Langdon died early in August, and Mrs. Clemens returned to + Buffalo, exhausted in mind and body. If she hoped for rest now, in + the quiet of her own home, she was disappointed, as the two brief + letters that follow clearly show. + + + To Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.: + + BUFFALO, Aug. 31, 70. +MY DEAR SISTER,--I know I ought to be thrashed for not writing you, but +I have kept putting it off. We get heaps of letters every day; it is a +comfort to have somebody like you that will let us shirk and be patient +over it. We got the book and I did think I wrote a line thanking you for +it-but I suppose I neglected it. + +We are getting along tolerably well. Mother [Mrs. Langdon] is here, and +Miss Emma Nye. Livy cannot sleep since her father's death--but I give +her a narcotic every night and make her. I am just as busy as I can be +--am still writing for the Galaxy and also writing a book like the +"Innocents" in size and style. I have got my work ciphered down to days, +and I haven't a single day to spare between this and the date which, by +written contract I am to deliver the M.S. of the book to the publisher. + ----In a hurry + Affectionately + SAM + + + To Orion Clemens, in St, Louis: + + BUF. Sept. 9th, 1870. +MY DEAR BRO,--O here! I don't want to be consulted at all about Tenn. +I don't want it even mentioned to me. When I make a suggestion it is for +you to act upon it or throw it aside, but I beseech you never to ask my +advice, opinion or consent about that hated property. If it was because +I felt the slightest personal interest in the infernal land that I ever +made a suggestion, the suggestion would never be made. + +Do exactly as you please with the land--always remember this--that so +trivial a percentage as ten per cent will never sell it. + +It is only a bid for a somnambulist. + +I have no time to turn round, a young lady visitor (schoolmate of Livy's) +is dying in the house of typhoid fever (parents are in South Carolina) +and the premises are full of nurses and doctors and we are all fagged +out. + Yrs. + SAM. + + + Miss Nye, who had come to cheer her old schoolmate, had been + prostrated with the deadly fever soon after her arrival. Another + period of anxiety and nursing followed. Mrs. Clemens, in spite of + her frail health, devoted much time to her dying friend, until by + the time the end came she was herself in a precarious condition. + This was at the end of September. A little more than a month later, + November 7th, her first child, Langdon Clemens, was prematurely + born. To the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and wife, of Hartford, Mark + Twain characteristically announced the new arrival. + + + To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and wife, in Hartford, Conn.: + + BUFFALO, Nov 12, '70. +DEAR UNCLE AND AUNT,--I came into the world on the 7th inst., and +consequently am about five days old, now. I have had wretched health +ever since I made my appearance. First one thing and then another has +kept me under the weather, and as a general thing I have been chilly and +uncomfortable. + +I am not corpulent, nor am I robust in any way. At birth I only weighed +4 1/2 pounds with my clothes on--and the clothes were the chief feature of +the weight, too, I am obliged to confess. But I am doing finely, +all things considered. I was at a standstill for 3 days and a half, but +during the last 24 hours I have gained nearly an ounce, avoirdupois. + +They all say I look very old and venerable-and I am aware, myself, that I +never smile. Life seems a serious thing, what I have seen of it--and my +observation teaches me that it is made up mainly of hiccups, unnecessary +washings, and colic. But no doubt you, who are old, have long since +grown accustomed and reconciled to what seems to me such a disagreeable +novelty. + +My father said, this morning, when my face was in repose and thoughtful, +that I looked precisely as young Edward Twichell of Hartford used to look +some is months ago--chin, mouth, forehead, expression--everything. + +My little mother is very bright and cheery, and I guess she is pretty +happy, but I don't know what about. She laughs a great deal, +notwithstanding she is sick abed. And she eats a great deal, though she +says that is because the nurse desires it. And when she has had all the +nurse desires her to have, she asks for more. She is getting along very +well indeed. + +My aunt Susie Crane has been here some ten days or two weeks, but goes +home today, and Granny Fairbanks of Cleveland arrives to take her place. +--[Mrs. Fairbanks, of the Quaker City excursion.] + Very lovingly, + LANGDON CLEMENS. + +P. S. Father said I had better write because you would be more +interested in me, just now, than in the rest of the family. + + + Clemens had made the acquaintance of the Rev. Joseph Hopkins + Twichell and his wife during his several sojourns in Hartford, in + connection with his book publication, and the two men had + immediately become firm friends. Twichell had come to Elmira in + February to the wedding to assist Rev. Thos. K. Beecher in the + marriage ceremony. Joseph Twichell was a devout Christian, while + Mark Twain was a doubter, even a scoffer, where orthodoxy was + concerned, yet the sincerity and humanity of the two men drew them + together; their friendship was lifelong. + + A second letter to Twichell, something more than a month later, + shows a somewhat improved condition in the Clemens household. + + + To Rev. Twichell, in Hartford: + + BUF. Dec. 19th, 1870. +DEAR J. H.,--All is well with us, I believe--though for some days the +baby was quite ill. We consider him nearly restored to health now, +however. Ask my brother about us--you will find him at Bliss's +publishing office, where he is gone to edit Bliss's new paper--left here +last Monday. Make his and his wife's acquaintance. Take Mrs. T. to see +them as soon as they are fixed. + +Livy is up, and the prince keeps her busy and anxious these latter days +and nights, but I am a bachelor up stairs and don't have to jump up and +get the soothing syrup--though I would as soon do it as not, I assure +you. (Livy will be certain to read this letter.) + +Tell Harmony (Mrs. T.) that I do hold the baby, and do it pretty handily, +too, although with occasional apprehensions that his loose head will fall +off. I don't have to quiet him--he hardly ever utters a cry. He is +always thinking about something. He is a patient, good little baby. + +Smoke? I always smoke from 3 till 5 Sunday afternoons--and in New York +the other day I smoked a week, day and night. But when Livy is well I +smoke only those two hours on Sunday. I'm "boss" of the habit, now, and +shall never let it boss me any more. Originally, I quit solely on Livy's +account, (not that I believed there was the faintest reason in the +matter, but just as I would deprive myself of sugar in my coffee if she +wished it, or quit wearing socks if she thought them immoral,) and I +stick to it yet on Livy's account, and shall always continue to do so, +without a pang. But somehow it seems a pity that you quit, for Mrs. T. +didn't mind it if I remember rightly. Ah, it is turning one's back upon +a kindly Providence to spurn away from us the good creature he sent to +make the breath of life a luxury as well as a necessity, enjoyable as +well as useful, to go and quit smoking when then ain't any sufficient +excuse for it! Why, my old boy, when they use to tell me I would shorten +my life ten years by smoking, they little knew the devotee they were +wasting their puerile word upon--they little knew how trivial and +valueless I would regard a decade that had no smoking in it! But I won't +persuade you, Twichell--I won't until I see you again--but then we'll +smoke for a week together, and then shut off again. + +I would have gone to Hartford from New York last Saturday, but I got so +homesick I couldn't. But maybe I'll come soon. + +No, Sir, catch me in the metropolis again, to get homesick. + +I didn't know Warner had a book out. + +We send oceans and continents of love--I have worked myself down, today. + Yrs always + MARK. + + + With his establishment in Buffalo, Clemens, as already noted, had + persuaded his sister, now a widow, and his mother, to settle in + Fredonia, not far away. Later, he had found a position for Orion, + as editor of a small paper which Bliss had established. What with + these several diversions and the sorrows and sicknesses of his own + household, we can readily imagine that literary work had been + performed under difficulties. Certainly, humorous writing under + such disturbing conditions could not have been easy, nor could we + expect him to accept an invitation to be present and make a comic + speech at an agricultural dinner, even though Horace Greeley would + preside. However, he sent to the secretary of the association a + letter which might be read at the gathering: + + + To A. B. Crandall, in Woodberry Falls, N. Y., to be read + at an agricultural dinner: + + BUFFALO, Dec. 26, 1870. +GENTLEMEN,--I thank you very much for your invitation to the Agricultural +dinner, and would promptly accept it and as promptly be there but for the +fact that Mr. Greeley is very busy this month and has requested me to +clandestinely continue for him in The Tribune the articles "What I Know +about Farming." Consequently the necessity of explaining to the readers +of that journal why buttermilk cannot be manufactured profitably at 8 +cents a quart out of butter that costs 60 cents a pound compels my stay +at home until the article is written. + With reiterated thanks, I am + Yours truly, + MARK TWAIN. + + + In this letter Mark Twain made the usual mistake as to the title of + the Greeley farming series, "What I Know of Farming" being the + correct form. + + The Buffalo Express, under Mark Twain's management, had become a + sort of repository for humorous efforts, often of an indifferent + order. Some of these things, signed by nom de plumes, were charged + to Mark Twain. When Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee" devastated the + country, and was so widely parodied, an imitation of it entitled, + "Three Aces," and signed "Carl Byng," was printed in the Express. + Thomas Bailey Aldrich, then editor of Every Saturday, had not met + Mark Twain, and, noticing the verses printed in the exchanges over + his signature, was one of those who accepted them as Mark Twain's + work. He wrote rather an uncomplimentary note in Every Saturday + concerning the poem and its authorship, characterizing it as a + feeble imitation of Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee." Clemens promptly + protested to Aldrich, then as promptly regretted having done so, + feeling that he was making too much of a small matter. Hurriedly he + sent a second brief note. + + + To Thomas Bailey Aldrich, editor of "Every Saturday," + Boston, Massachusetts: + + BUFFALO, Jan. 22, 1870. +DEAR SIR,--Please do not publish the note I sent you the other day about +"Hy. Slocum's" plagiarism entitled "Three Aces"--it is not important +enough for such a long paragraph. Webb writes me that he has put in a +paragraph about it, too--and I have requested him to suppress it. If you +would simply state, in a line and a half under "Literary Notes," that you +mistook one "Hy. Slocum" (no, it was one "Carl Byng," I perceive) "Carl +Byng" for Mark Twain, and that it was the former who wrote the plagiarism +entitled "Three Aces," I think that would do a fair justice without any +unseemly display. But it is hard to be accused of plagiarism--a crime I +never have committed in my life. + Yrs. Truly + MARK TWAIN. + + + But this came too late. Aldrich replied that he could not be + prevented from doing him justice, as forty-two thousand copies of + the first note, with the editor's apology duly appended, were + already in press. He would withdraw his apology in the next number + of Every Saturday, if Mark Twain said so. Mark Twain's response + this time assumed the proportions of a letter. + + + To Thomas Bailey Aldrich, in Boston: + + 472 DELAWARE ST., BUFFALO, Jan. 28. +DEAR MR. ALDRICH,--No indeed, don't take back the apology! Hang it, I +don't want to abuse a man's civility merely because he gives me the +chance. + +I hear a good deal about doing things on the "spur of the moment" +--I invariably regret the things I do on the spur of the moment. That +disclaimer of mine was a case in point. I am ashamed every time I think +of my bursting out before an unconcerned public with that bombastic +pow-wow about burning publishers' letters, and all that sort of imbecility, +and about my not being an imitator, etc. Who would find out that I am a +natural fool if I kept always cool and never let nature come to the +surface? Nobody. + +But I did hate to be accused of plagiarizing Bret Harte, who trimmed and +trained and schooled me patiently until he changed me from an awkward +utterer of coarse grotesquenesses to a writer of paragraphs and chapters +that have found a certain favor in the eyes of even some of the very +decentest people in the land--and this grateful remembrance of mine ought +to be worth its face, seeing that Bret broke our long friendship a year +ago without any cause or provocation that I am aware of. + +Well, it is funny, the reminiscences that glare out from murky corners of +one's memory, now and then, without warning. Just at this moment a +picture flits before me: Scene--private room in Barnum's Restaurant, +Virginia, Nevada; present, Artemus Ward, Joseph T. Goodman, (editor and +proprietor Daily "Enterprise"), and "Dan de Quille" and myself, reporters +for same; remnants of the feast thin and scattering, but such tautology +and repetition of empty bottles everywhere visible as to be offensive to +the sensitive eye; time, 2.30 A.M.; Artemus thickly reciting a poem about +a certain infant you wot of, and interrupting himself and being +interrupted every few lines by poundings of the table and shouts of +"Splendid, by Shorzhe!" Finally, a long, vociferous, poundiferous and +vitreous jingling of applause announces the conclusion, and then Artemus: +"Let every man 'at loves his fellow man and 'preciates a poet 'at loves +his fellow man, stan' up!--Stan' up and drink health and long life to +Thomas Bailey Aldrich!--and drink it stanning!" (On all hands fervent, +enthusiastic, and sincerely honest attempts to comply.) Then Artemus: +"Well--consider it stanning, and drink it just as ye are!" Which was +done. + +You must excuse all this stuff from a stranger, for the present, and when +I see you I will apologize in full. + +Do you know the prettiest fancy and the neatest that ever shot through +Harte's brain? It was this: When they were trying to decide upon a +vignette for the cover of the Overland, a grizzly bear (of the arms of +the State of California) was chosen. Nahl Bras. carved him and the page +was printed, with him in it, looking thus: [Rude sketch of a grizzly +bear.] + +As a bear, he was a success--he was a good bear--. But then, it was +objected, that he was an objectless bear--a bear that meant nothing in +particular, signified nothing,--simply stood there snarling over his +shoulder at nothing--and was painfully and manifestly a boorish and +ill-natured intruder upon the fair page. All hands said that--none were +satisfied. They hated badly to give him up, and yet they hated as much +to have him there when there was no paint to him. But presently Harte +took a pencil and drew these two simple lines under his feet and behold +he was a magnificent success!--the ancient symbol of California savagery +snarling at the approaching type of high and progressive Civilization, +the first Overland locomotive!: [Sketch of a small section of railway +track.] + +I just think that was nothing less than inspiration itself. + +Once more I apologize, and this time I do it "stanning!" + Yrs. Truly + SAML. L. CLEMENS. + + + The "two simple lines," of course, were the train rails under the + bear's feet, and completed the striking cover design of the Overland + monthly. + + The brief controversy over the "Three Aces" was the beginning of + along and happy friendship between Aldrich and Mark Twain. Howells, + Aldrich, Twichell, and Charles Dudley Warner--these were Mark + Twain's intimates, men that he loved, each for his own special charm + and worth. + + Aldrich he considered the most brilliant of living men. + + In his reply to Clemens's letter, Aldrich declared that he was glad + now that, for the sake of such a letter, he had accused him falsely, + and added: + + "Mem. Always abuse people. + + "When you come to Boston, if you do not make your presence manifest + to me, I'll put in a !! in 'Every Saturday' to the effect that + though you are generally known as Mark Twain your favorite nom de + plume is 'Barry Gray.'" + + Clemens did not fail to let Aldrich know when he was in Boston + again, and the little coterie of younger writers forgathered to give + him welcome. + + Buffalo agreed with neither Mrs. Clemens nor the baby. What with + nursing and anguish of mind, Mark Twain found that he could do + nothing on the new book, and that he must give up his magazine + department. He had lost interest in his paper and his surroundings + in general. Journalism and authorship are poor yoke-mates. To + Onion Clemens, at this time editing Bliss's paper at Hartford, he + explained the situation. + + + To Onion Clemens, in Hartford: + + BUFFALO, 4th 1871. +MY DEAR BRO,--What I wanted of the "Liar" Sketch, was to work it into the +California book--which I shall do. But day before yesterday I concluded +to go out of the Galaxy on the strength of it, so I have turned it into +the last Memoranda I shall ever write, and published it as a "specimen +chapter" of my forthcoming book. + +I have written the Galaxy people that I will never furnish them another +article long or short, for any price but $500.00 cash--and have requested +them not to ask me for contributions any more, even at that price. + +I hope that lets them out, for I will stick to that. Now do try and +leave me clear out of the 'Publisher' for the present, for I am +endangering my reputation by writing too much--I want to get out of the +public view for awhile. + +I am still nursing Livy night and day and cannot write anything. I am +nearly worn out. We shall go to Elmira ten days hence (if Livy can +travel on a mattress then,) and stay there till I have finished the +California book--say three months. But I can't begin work right away +when I get there--must have a week's rest, for I have been through 30 +days' terrific siege. + +That makes it after the middle of March before I can go fairly to work +--and then I'll have to hump myself and not lose a moment. You and Bliss +just put yourselves in my place and you will see that my hands are full +and more than full. + +When I told Bliss in N. Y. that I would write something for the Publisher +I could not know that I was just about to lose fifty days. Do you see +the difference it makes? Just as soon as ever I can, I will send some +of the book M.S. but right in the first chapter I have got to alter the +whole style of one of my characters and re-write him clear through to +where I am now. It is no fool of a job, I can tell you, but the book +will be greatly bettered by it. Hold on a few days--four or five--and +I will see if I can get a few chapters fixed to send to Bliss. + +I have offered this dwelling house and the Express for sale, and when we +go to Elmira we leave here for good. I shall not select a new home till +the book is finished, but we have little doubt that Hartford will be the +place. + +We are almost certain of that. Ask Bliss how it would be to ship our +furniture to Hartford, rent an upper room in a building and unbox it and +store it there where somebody can frequently look after it. Is not the +idea good? The furniture is worth $10,000 or $12,000 and must not be +jammed into any kind of a place and left unattended to for a year. + +The first man that offers $25,000 for our house can take it--it cost +that. What are taxes there? Here, all bunched together--of all kinds, +they are 7 per cent--simply ruin. + +The things you have written in the Publisher are tip-top. + In haste, + Yr Bro + SAM + + + There are no further letters until the end of April, by which time + the situation had improved. Clemens had sold his interest in the + Express (though at a loss), had severed his magazine connection, and + was located at Quarry Farm, on a beautiful hilltop above Elmira, the + home of Mrs. Clemens's sister, Mrs. Theodore Crane. The pure air + and rest of that happy place, where they were to spend so many + idyllic summers, had proved beneficial to the sick ones, and work on + the new book progressed in consequence. Then Mark Twain's old + editor, "Joe" Goodman, came from Virginia City for a visit, and his + advice and encouragement were of the greatest value. Clemens even + offered to engage Goodman on a salary, to remain until he had + finished his book. Goodman declined the salary, but extended his + visit, and Mark Twain at last seems to have found himself working + under ideal conditions. He jubilantly reports his progress. + + + To Elisha Bliss, in Hartford: + + ELMIRA, Monday. May 15th 1871 +FRIEND BLISS,--Yrs rec'd enclosing check for $703.35 The old "Innocents" +holds out handsomely. + +I have MS. enough on hand now, to make (allowing for engravings) about +400 pages of the book--consequently am two-thirds done. I intended to +run up to Hartford about the middle of the week and take it along; +because it has chapters in it that ought by all means to be in the +prospectus; but I find myself so thoroughly interested in my work, now +(a thing I have not experienced for months) that I can't bear to lose a +single moment of the inspiration. So I will stay here and peg away as +long as it lasts. My present idea is to write as much more as I have +already written, and then cull from the mass the very best chapters and +discard the rest. I am not half as well satisfied with the first part of +the book as I am with what I am writing now. When I get it done I want +to see the man who will begin to read it and not finish it. If it falls +short of the "Innocents" in any respect I shall lose my guess. + +When I was writing the "Innocents" my daily stunt was 30 pages of MS and +I hardly ever got beyond it; but I have gone over that nearly every day +for the last ten. That shows that I am writing with a red-hot interest. +Nothing grieves me now--nothing troubles me, nothing bothers me or gets +my attention--I don't think of anything but the book, and I don't have an +hour's unhappiness about anything and don't care two cents whether school +keeps or not. It will be a bully book. If I keep up my present lick +three weeks more I shall be able and willing to scratch out half of the +chapters of the Overland narrative--and shall do it. + +You do not mention having received my second batch of MS, sent a week or +two ago--about 100 pages. + +If you want to issue a prospectus and go right to canvassing, say the +word and I will forward some more MS--or send it by hand--special +messenger. Whatever chapters you think are unquestionably good, we will +retain of course, so they can go into a prospectus as well one time as +another. The book will be done soon, now. I have 1200 pages of MS +already written and am now writing 200 a week--more than that, in fact; +during the past week wrote 23 one day, then 30, 33, 35, 52, and 65. +--How's that? + +It will be a starchy book, and should be full of snappy pictures +--especially pictures worked in with the letterpress. The dedication +will be worth the price of the volume--thus: + + To the Late Cain. + This Book is Dedicated: + +Not on account of respect for his memory, for it merits little respect; +not on account of sympathy with him, for his bloody deed placed him +without the pale of sympathy, strictly speaking: but out of a mere human +commiseration for him that it was his misfortune to live in a dark age +that knew not the beneficent Insanity Plea. + +I think it will do. + Yrs. CLEMENS. + +P. S.--The reaction is beginning and my stock is looking up. I am +getting the bulliest offers for books and almanacs; am flooded with +lecture invitations, and one periodical offers me $6,000 cash for 12 +articles, of any length and on any subject, treated humorously or +otherwise. + + + The suggested dedication "to the late Cain" may have been the + humoristic impulse of the moment. At all events, it did not + materialize. + + Clemens's enthusiasm for work was now such that he agreed with + Redpath to return to the platform that autumn, and he began at once + writing lectures. His disposal of the Buffalo paper had left him + considerably in debt, and platforming was a sure and quick method of + retrenchment. More than once in the years ahead Mark Twain would + return to travel and one-night stands to lift a burden of debt. + Brief letters to Redpath of this time have an interest and even a + humor of their own. + + + Letters to James Redpath, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, June 27, 1871. +DEAR RED,--Wrote another lecture--a third one-today. It is the one I am +going to deliver. I think I shall call it "Reminiscences of Some +Pleasant Characters Whom I Have Met," (or should the "whom" be left out?) +It covers my whole acquaintance--kings, lunatics, idiots and all. +Suppose you give the item a start in the Boston papers. If I write fifty +lectures I shall only choose one and talk that one only. + +No sir: Don't you put that scarecrow (portrait) from the Galaxy in, I +won't stand that nightmare. + Yours, + MARK. + + + ELMIRA, July 10, 1871. +DEAR REDPATH,--I never made a success of a lecture delivered in a church +yet. People are afraid to laugh in a church. They can't be made to do +it in any possible way. + +Success to Fall's carbuncle and many happy returns. + Yours, + MARK. + + + To Mr. Fall, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, N. Y. July 20, 1871. +FRIEND FALL,--Redpath tells me to blow up. Here goes! I wanted you to +scare Rondout off with a big price. $125 ain't big. I got $100 the +first time I ever talked there and now they have a much larger hall. +It is a hard town to get to--I run a chance of getting caught by the ice +and missing next engagement. Make the price $150 and let them draw out. + Yours + MARK + + + Letters to James Redpath, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Tuesday Aug. 8, 1871. +DEAR RED,--I am different from other women; my mind changes oftener. +People who have no mind can easily be steadfast and firm, but when a man +is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea of +foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo. See? +Therefore, if you will notice, one week I am likely to give rigid +instructions to confine me to New England; next week, send me to Arizona; +the next week withdraw my name; the next week give you full untrammelled +swing; and the week following modify it. You must try to keep the run of +my mind, Redpath, it is your business being the agent, and it always was +too many for me. It appears to me to be one of the finest pieces of +mechanism I have ever met with. Now about the West, this week, I am +willing that you shall retain all the Western engagements. But what I +shall want next week is still with God. + +Let us not profane the mysteries with soiled hands and prying eyes of +sin. + Yours, + MARK. + +P. S. Shall be here 2 weeks, will run up there when Nasby comes. + + + ELMIRA, N. Y. Sept. 15, 1871. +DEAR REDPATH,--I wish you would get me released from the lecture at +Buffalo. I mortally hate that society there, and I don't doubt they +hired me. I once gave them a packed house free of charge, and they never +even had the common politeness to thank me. They left me to shift for +myself, too, a la Bret Harte at Harvard. Get me rid of Buffalo! +Otherwise I'll have no recourse left but to get sick the day I lecture +there. I can get sick easy enough, by the simple process of saying the +word--well never mind what word--I am not going to lecture there. + Yours, + MARK. + + + BUFFALO, Sept. 26, 1871. +DEAR REDPATH,--We have thought it all over and decided that we can't +possibly talk after Feb. 2. + +We shall take up our residence in Hartford 6 days from now + Yours + MARK. + + + + +XI. + +LETTERS 1871-72. REMOVAL TO HARTFORD. A LECTURE TOUR. "ROUGHING IT." +FIRST LETTER TO HOWELLS + + The house they had taken in Hartford was the Hooker property on + Forest Street, a handsome place in a distinctly literary + neighborhood. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dudley Warner, and + other well-known writers were within easy walking distance; Twichell + was perhaps half a mile away. + + It was the proper environment for Mark Twain. He settled his little + family there, and was presently at Redpath's office in Boston, which + was a congenial place, as we have seen before. He did not fail to + return to the company of Nasby, Josh Billings, and those others of + Redpath's "attractions" as long and as often as distance would + permit. Bret Harte, who by this time had won fame, was also in + Boston now, and frequently, with Howells, Aldrich, and Mark Twain, + gathered in some quiet restaurant corner for a luncheon that lasted + through a dim winter afternoon--a period of anecdote, reminiscence, + and mirth. They were all young then, and laughed easily. Howells, + has written of one such luncheon given by Ralph Keeler, a young + Californian--a gathering at which James T. Fields was present + "Nothing remains to me of the happy time but a sense of idle and + aimless and joyful talk-play, beginning and ending nowhere, of eager + laughter, of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat-lightning + shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional concentration of our + joint mockeries upon our host, who took it gladly." + + But a lecture circuit cannot be restricted to the radius of Boston. + Clemens was presently writing to Redpath from Washington and points + farther west. + + + To James Redpath, in Boston: + + WASHINGTON, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 1871. +DEAR RED,--I have come square out, thrown "Reminiscences" overboard, and +taken "Artemus Ward, Humorist," for my subject. Wrote it here on Friday +and Saturday, and read it from MS last night to an enormous house. It +suits me and I'll never deliver the nasty, nauseous "Reminiscences" any +more. + Yours, + MARK. + + + The Artemus Ward lecture lasted eleven days, then he wrote: + + + To Redpath and Fall, in Boston: + + BUFFALO DEPOT, Dec. 8, 1871. +REDPATH & FALL, BOSTON,--Notify all hands that from this time I shall +talk nothing but selections from my forthcoming book "Roughing It." +Tried it last night. Suits me tip-top. + SAM'L L. CLEMENS. + + + The Roughing It chapters proved a success, and continued in high + favor through the rest of the season. + + + To James Redpath, in Boston: + + LOGANSPORT, IND. Jan. 2, 1872. +FRIEND REDPATH,--Had a splendid time with a splendid audience in +Indianapolis last night--a perfectly jammed house, just as I have had all +the time out here. I like the new lecture but I hate the "Artemus Ward" +talk and won't talk it any more. No man ever approved that choice of +subject in my hearing, I think. + +Give me some comfort. If I am to talk in New York am I going to have a +good house? I don't care now to have any appointments cancelled. I'll +even "fetch" those Dutch Pennsylvanians with this lecture. + +Have paid up $4000 indebtedness. You are the, last on my list. Shall +begin to pay you in a few days and then I shall be a free man again. + Yours, + MARK. + + + With his debts paid, Clemens was anxious to be getting home. Two + weeks following the above he wrote Redpath that he would accept no + more engagements at any price, outside of New England, and added, + "The fewer engagements I have from this time forth the better I + shall be pleased." By the end of February he was back in Hartford, + refusing an engagement in Boston, and announcing to Redpath, "If I + had another engagement I'd rot before I'd fill it." From which we + gather that he was not entirely happy in the lecture field. + + As a matter of fact, Mark Twain loathed the continuous travel and + nightly drudgery of platform life. He was fond of entertaining, and + there were moments of triumph that repaid him for a good deal, but + the tyranny of a schedule and timetables was a constant + exasperation. + + Meantime, Roughing It had appeared and was selling abundantly. Mark + Twain, free of debt, and in pleasant circumstances, felt that the + outlook was bright. It became even more so when, in March, the + second child, a little girl, Susy, was born, with no attending + misfortunes. But, then, in the early summer little Langdon died. + It was seldom, during all of Mark Twain's life, that he enjoyed more + than a brief period of unmixed happiness. + + It was in June of that year that Clemens wrote his first letter to + William Dean Howells the first of several hundred that would follow + in the years to come, and has in it something that is characteristic + of nearly all the Clemens-Howells letters--a kind of tender + playfulness that answered to something in Howells's make-up, his + sense of humor, his wide knowledge of a humanity which he pictured + so amusingly to the world. + + + To William Dean Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, June 15, 1872. +FRIEND HOWELLS,--Could you tell me how I could get a copy of your +portrait as published in Hearth and Home? I hear so much talk about it +as being among the finest works of art which have yet appeared in that +journal, that I feel a strong desire to see it. Is it suitable for +framing? I have written the publishers of H & H time and again, but they +say that the demand for the portrait immediately exhausted the edition +and now a copy cannot be had, even for the European demand, which has now +begun. Bret Harte has been here, and says his family would not be +without that portrait for any consideration. He says his children get up +in the night and yell for it. I would give anything for a copy of that +portrait to put up in my parlor. I have Oliver Wendell Holmes and Bret +Harte's, as published in Every Saturday, and of all the swarms that come +every day to gaze upon them none go away that are not softened and +humbled and made more resigned to the will of God. If I had yours to put +up alongside of them, I believe the combination would bring more souls to +earnest reflection and ultimate conviction of their lost condition, than +any other kind of warning would. Where in the nation can I get that +portrait? Here are heaps of people that want it,--that need it. There +is my uncle. He wants a copy. He is lying at the point of death. He +has been lying at the point of death for two years. He wants a copy--and +I want him to have a copy. And I want you to send a copy to the man that +shot my dog. I want to see if he is dead to every human instinct. + +Now you send me that portrait. I am sending you mine, in this letter; +and am glad to do it, for it has been greatly admired. People who are +judges of art, find in the execution a grandeur which has not been +equalled in this country, and an expression which has not been approached +in any. + Yrs truly, + S. L. CLEMENS. + +P. S. 62,000 copies of "Roughing It" sold and delivered in 4 months. + + + The Clemens family did not spend the summer at Quarry Farm that + year. The sea air was prescribed for Mrs. Clemens and the baby, and + they went to Saybrook, Connecticut, to Fenwick Hall. Clemens wrote + very little, though he seems to have planned Tom Sawyer, and perhaps + made its earliest beginning, which was in dramatic form. + + His mind, however, was otherwise active. He was always more or less + given to inventions, and in his next letter we find a description of + one which he brought to comparative perfection. + + He had also conceived the idea of another book of travel, and this + was his purpose of a projected trip to England. + + + To Orion Clemens, in Hartford: + + FENWICK HALL, SAYBROOK, CONN. + Aug. 11, 1872. +MY DEAR BRO.--I shall sail for England in the Scotia, Aug. 21. + +But what I wish to put on record now, is my new invention--hence this +note, which you will preserve. It is this--a self-pasting scrap-book +--good enough idea if some juggling tailor does not come along and +ante-date me a couple of months, as in the case of the elastic veststrap. + +The nuisance of keeping a scrap-book is: 1. One never has paste +or gum tragacanth handy; 2. Mucilage won't stick, or stay, 4 weeks; +3. Mucilage sucks out the ink and makes the scraps unreadable; +4. To daub and paste 3 or 4 pages of scraps is tedious, slow, nasty and +tiresome. My idea is this: Make a scrap-book with leaves veneered or +coated with gum-stickum of some kind; wet the page with sponge, brush, +rag or tongue, and dab on your scraps like postage stamps. + +Lay on the gum in columns of stripes. + +Each stripe of gum the length of say 20 ems, small pica, and as broad as +your finger; a blank about as broad as your finger between each 2 +stripes--so in wetting the paper you need not wet any more of the gum +than your scrap or scraps will cover--then you may shut up the book and +the leaves won't stick together. + +Preserve, also, the envelope of this letter--postmark ought to be good +evidence of the date of this great humanizing and civilizing invention. + +I'll put it into Dan Slote's hands and tell him he must send you all over +America, to urge its use upon stationers and booksellers--so don't buy +into a newspaper. The name of this thing is "Mark Twain's Self-Pasting +Scrapbook." + +All well here. Shall be up a P. M. Tuesday. Send the carriage. + Yr Bro. + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The Dan Slote of this letter is, of course, his old Quaker City + shipmate, who was engaged in the blank-book business, the firm being + Slote & Woodman, located at 119 and 121 William Street, New York. + + + + +XII. + +LETTERS 1872-73. MARK TWAIN IN ENGLAND. LONDON HONORS. ACQUAINTANCE +WITH DR. JOHN BROWN. A LECTURE TRIUMPH. "THE GILDED AGE" + + Clemens did, in fact, sail for England on the given date, and was + lavishly received there. All literary London joined in giving him a + good time. He had not as yet been received seriously by the older + American men of letters, but England made no question as to his + title to first rank. Already, too, they classified him as of the + human type of Lincoln, and reveled in him without stint. Howells + writes: "In England, rank, fashion, and culture rejoiced in him. + Lord Mayors, Lord Chief justices, and magnates of many kinds were + his hosts." + + He was treated so well and enjoyed it all so much that he could not + write a book--the kind of book he had planned. One could not poke + fun at a country or a people that had welcomed him with open arms. + He made plenty of notes, at first, but presently gave up the book + idea and devoted himself altogether to having a good time. + + He had one grievance--a publisher by the name of Hotten, a sort of + literary harpy, of which there were a great number in those days of + defective copyright, not merely content with pilfering his early + work, had reprinted, under the name of Mark Twain, the work of a + mixed assortment of other humorists, an offensive volume bearing the + title, Screamers and Eye-openers, by Mark Twain. + + They besieged him to lecture in London, and promised him overflowing + houses. Artemus Ward, during his last days, had earned London by + storm with his platform humor, and they promised Mark Twain even + greater success. For some reason, however, he did not welcome the + idea; perhaps there was too much gaiety. To Mrs. Clemens he wrote: + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford: + + LONDON, Sep. 15, 1872. +Livy, darling, everybody says lecture-lecture-lecture--but I have not the +least idea of doing it--certainly not at present. Mr. Dolby, who took +Dickens to America, is coming to talk business to me tomorrow, though I +have sent him word once before, that I can't be hired to talk here, +because I have no time to spare. + +There is too much sociability--I do not get along fast enough with work. +Tomorrow I lunch with Mr. Toole and a Member of Parliament--Toole is the +most able Comedian of the day. And then I am done for a while. On +Tuesday I mean to hang a card to my keybox, inscribed--"Gone out of the +City for a week"--and then I shall go to work and work hard. One can't +be caught in a hive of 4,000,000 people, like this. + +I have got such a perfectly delightful razor. I have a notion to buy +some for Charley, Theodore and Slee--for I know they have no such razors +there. I have got a neat little watch-chain for Annie--$20. + +I love you my darling. My love to all of you. + SAML. + + + That Mark Twain should feel and privately report something of his + triumphs we need not wonder at. Certainly he was never one to give + himself airs, but to have the world's great literary center paying + court to him, who only ten years before had been penniless and + unknown, and who once had been a barefoot Tom Sawyer in Hannibal, + was quite startling. It is gratifying to find evidence of human + weakness in the following heart-to-heart letter to his publisher, + especially in view of the relating circumstances. + + + To Elisha Bliss, in Hartford: + + LONDON, Sept. 28, 1872. +FRIEND BLISS,--I have been received in a sort of tremendous way, tonight, +by the brains of London, assembled at the annual dinner of the Sheriffs +of London--mine being (between you and me) a name which was received with +a flattering outburst of spontaneous applause when the long list of +guests was called. + +I might have perished on the spot but for the friendly support and +assistance of my excellent friend Sir John Bennett--and I want you to +paste the enclosed in a couple of the handsomest copies of the +"Innocents" and "Roughing It," and send them to him. His address is + + "Sir John Bennett, + Cheapside, + London." + Yrs Truly + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The "relating circumstances" were these: At the abovementioned + dinner there had been a roll-call of the distinguished guests + present, and each name had been duly applauded. Clemens, conversing + in a whisper with his neighbor, Sir John Bennett, did not give very + close attention to the names, applauding mechanically with the + others. + + Finally, a name was read that brought out a vehement hand-clapping. + Mark Twain, not to be outdone in cordiality, joined vigorously, and + kept his hands going even after the others finished. Then, + remarking the general laughter, he whispered to Sir John: "Whose + name was that we were just applauding?" + + "Mark Twain's." + + We may believe that the "friendly support" of Sir John Bennett was + welcome for the moment. But the incident could do him no harm; the + diners regarded it as one of his jokes, and enjoyed him all the more + for it. + + He was ready to go home by November, but by no means had he had + enough of England. He really had some thought of returning there + permanently. In a letter to Mrs. Crane, at Quarry Farm, he wrote: + + "If you and Theodore will come over in the Spring with Livy and me, + and spend the summer you will see a country that is so beautiful + that you will be obliged to believe in Fairyland..... and Theodore + can browse with me among dusty old dens that look now as they looked + five hundred years ago; and puzzle over books in the British Museum + that were made before Christ was born; and in the customs of their + public dinners, and the ceremonies of every official act, and the + dresses of a thousand dignitaries, trace the speech and manners of + all the centuries that have dragged their lagging decades over + England since the Heptarchy fell asunder. I would a good deal + rather live here if I could get the rest of you over." + + In a letter home, to his mother and sister, we get a further picture + of his enjoyment. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett: + + LONDON, Nov. 6, 1872. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I have been so everlasting busy that I +couldn't write--and moreover I have been so unceasingly lazy that I +couldn't have written anyhow. I came here to take notes for a book, but +I haven't done much but attend dinners and make speeches. But have had a +jolly good time and I do hate to go away from these English folks; they +make a stranger feel entirely at home--and they laugh so easily that it +is a comfort to make after-dinner speeches here. I have made hundreds of +friends; and last night in the crush of the opening of the New Guild-hall +Library and Museum, I was surprised to meet a familiar face every few +steps. Nearly 4,000 people, of both sexes, came and went during the +evening, so I had a good opportunity to make a great many new +acquaintances. + +Livy is willing to come here with me next April and stay several months +--so I am going home next Tuesday. I would sail on Saturday, but that is +the day of the Lord Mayor's annual grand state dinner, when they say 900 +of the great men of the city sit down to table, a great many of them in +their fine official and court paraphernalia, so I must not miss it. +However, I may yet change my mind and sail Saturday. I am looking at a +fine Magic lantern which will cost a deal of money, and if I buy it Sammy +may come and learn to make the gas and work the machinery, and paint +pictures for it on glass. I mean to give exhibitions for charitable +purposes in Hartford, and charge a dollar a head. + In a hurry, + Ys affly + SAM. + + + He sailed November 12th on the Batavia, arriving in New York two + weeks later. There had been a presidential election in his absence. + General Grant had defeated Horace Greeley, a result, in some measure + at least, attributed to the amusing and powerful pictures of the + cartoonist, Thomas Nast. Mark Twain admired Greeley's talents, but + he regarded him as poorly qualified for the nation's chief + executive. He wrote: + + + To Th. Nast, in Morristown, N. J.: + + HARTFORD, Nov. 1872. +Nast, you more than any other man have won a prodigious victory for +Grant--I mean, rather, for civilization and progress. Those pictures +were simply marvelous, and if any man in the land has a right to hold his +head up and be honestly proud of his share in this year's vast events +that man is unquestionably yourself. We all do sincerely honor you, and +are proud of you. + MARK TWAIN. + + + Perhaps Mark Twain was too busy at this time to write letters. His + success in England had made him more than ever popular in America, + and he could by no means keep up with the demands on him. In + January he contributed to the New York Tribune some letters on the + Sandwich Islands, but as these were more properly articles they do + not seem to belong here. + + He refused to go on the lecture circuit, though he permitted Redpath + to book him for any occasional appearance, and it is due to one of + these special engagements that we have the only letter preserved + from this time. It is to Howells, and written with that + exaggeration with which he was likely to embellish his difficulties. + We are not called upon to believe that there were really any such + demonstrations as those ascribed to Warner and himself. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + FARMINGTON AVE, Hartford Feb. 27. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I am in a sweat and Warner is in another. I told +Redpath some time ago I would lecture in Boston any two days he might +choose provided they were consecutive days-- + +I never dreamed of his choosing days during Lent since that was his +special horror--but all at once he telegraphs me, and hollers at me in +all manner of ways that I am booked for Boston March 5 of all days in the +year--and to make matters just as mixed and uncertain as possible, I +can't find out to save my life whether he means to lecture me on the 6th +or not. + +Warner's been in here swearing like a lunatic, and saying he had written +you to come on the 4th,--and I said, "You leather-head, if I talk in +Boston both afternoon and evening March 5, I'll have to go to Boston the +4th,"--and then he just kicked up his heels and went off cursing after a +fashion I never heard of before. + +Now let's just leave this thing to Providence for 24 hours--you bet it +will come out all right. + Yours ever + MARK. + + + He was writing a book with Warner at this time--The Gilded Age + --the two authors having been challenged by their wives one night at + dinner to write a better book than the current novels they had been + discussing with some severity. Clemens already had a story in his + mind, and Warner agreed to collaborate in the writing. It was begun + without delay. Clemens wrote the first three hundred and + ninety-nine pages, and read there aloud to Warner, who took up the + story at this point and continued it through twelve chapters, after + which they worked alternately, and with great enjoyment. They also + worked rapidly, and in April the story was completed. For a + collaboration by two men so different in temperament and literary + method it was a remarkable performance. + + Another thing Mark Twain did that winter was to buy some land on + Farmington Avenue and begin the building of a home. He had by no + means given up returning to England, and made his plans to sail with + Mrs. Clemens and Susy in May. Miss Clara Spaulding, of Elmira + --[Later Mrs. John B. Stanchfield, of New York.]--a girlhood friend + of Mrs. Clemens--was to accompany them. + + The Daily Graphic heard of the proposed journey, and wrote, asking + for a farewell word. His characteristic reply is the only letter of + any kind that has survived from that spring. + + + To the Editor of "The Daily Graphic," in New York City: + + HARTFORD, Apl. 17, 1873. +ED. GRAPHIC,--Your note is received. If the following two lines which I +have cut from it are your natural handwriting, then I understand you to +ask me "for a farewell letter in the name of the American people." Bless +you, the joy of the American people is just a little premature; I haven't +gone yet. And what is more, I am not going to stay, when I do go. + +Yes, it is true. I am only going to remain beyond the sea, six months, +that is all. I love stir and excitement; and so the moment the spring +birds begin to sing, and the lagging weariness of summer to threaten, +I grow restless, I get the fidgets; I want to pack off somewhere where +there's something going on. But you know how that is--you must have felt +that way. This very day I saw the signs in the air of the coming +dullness, and I said to myself, "How glad I am that I have already +chartered a steamship!" There was absolutely nothing in the morning +papers. You can see for yourself what the telegraphic headings were: + + BY TELEGRAPH + +A Father Killed by His Son + +A Bloody Fight in Kentucky + +A Court House Fired, and +Negroes Therein Shot +while Escaping + +A Louisiana Massacre + +An Eight-year-old murderer +Two to Three Hundred Men Roasted Alive! + +A Town in a State of General Riot + +A Lively Skirmish in Indiana +(and thirty other similar headings.) + +The items under those headings all bear date yesterday, Apl. 16 (refer to +your own paper)--and I give you my word of honor that that string of +commonplace stuff was everything there was in the telegraphic columns +that a body could call news. Well, said I to myself this is getting +pretty dull; this is getting pretty dry; there don't appear to be +anything going on anywhere; has this progressive nation gone to sleep? +Have I got to stand another month of this torpidity before I can begin to +browse among the lively capitals of Europe? + +But never mind-things may revive while I am away. During the last two +months my next-door neighbor, Chas. Dudley Warner, has dropped his +"Back-Log Studies," and he and I have written a bulky novel in +partnership. He has worked up the fiction and I have hurled in the facts. +I consider it one of the most astonishing novels that ever was written. +Night after night I sit up reading it over and over again and crying. It +will be published early in the Fall, with plenty of pictures. Do you +consider this an advertisement?--and if so, do you charge for such things +when a man is your friend? + Yours truly, + SAML. L. CLEMENS, + "MARK TWAIN," + + + An amusing, even if annoying, incident happened about the time of + Mark Twain's departure. A man named Chew related to Twichell a most + entertaining occurrence. Twichell saw great possibilities in it, + and suggested that Mark Twain be allowed to make a story of it, + sharing the profits with Chew. Chew agreed, and promised to send + the facts, carefully set down. Twichell, in the mean time, told the + story to Clemens, who was delighted with it and strongly tempted to + write it at once, while he was in the spirit, without waiting on + Chew. Fortunately, he did not do so, for when Chew's material came + it was in the form of a clipping, the story having been already + printed in some newspaper. Chew's knowledge of literary ethics + would seem to have been slight. He thought himself entitled to + something under the agreement with Twichell. Mark Twain, by this + time in London, naturally had a different opinion. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + LONDON, June 9, '73. +DEAR OLD JOE,--I consider myself wholly at liberty to decline to pay Chew +anything, and at the same time strongly tempted to sue him into the +bargain for coming so near ruining me. If he hadn't happened to send me +that thing in print, I would have used the story (like an innocent fool) +and would straightway have been hounded to death as a plagiarist. It +would have absolutely destroyed me. I cannot conceive of a man being such +a hopeless ass (after serving as a legislative reporter, too) as to +imagine that I or any other literary man in his senses would consent to +chew over old stuff that had already been in print. If that man weren't +an infant in swaddling clothes, his only reply to our petition would have +been, "It has been in print." It makes me as mad as the very Old Harry +every time I think of Mr. Chew and the frightfully narrow escape I have +had at his hands. Confound Mr. Chew, with all my heart! I'm willing +that he should have ten dollars for his trouble of warming over his cold +victuals--cheerfully willing to that--but no more. If I had had him near +when his letter came, I would have got out my tomahawk and gone for him. +He didn't tell the story half as well as you did, anyhow. + +I wish to goodness you were here this moment--nobody in our parlor but +Livy and me,--and a very good view of London to the fore. We have a +luxuriously ample suite of apartments in the Langham Hotel, 3rd floor, +our bedroom looking straight up Portland Place and our parlor having a +noble array of great windows looking out upon both streets (Portland +Place and the crook that joins it to Regent Street.) + +9 P.M. Full twilight--rich sunset tints lingering in the west. + +I am not going to write anything--rather tell it when I get back. I love +you and Harmony, and that is all the fresh news I've got, anyway. And I +mean to keep that fresh all the time. + Lovingly + MARK. + +P. S.--Am luxuriating in glorious old Pepy's Diary, and smoking. + + + Letters are exceedingly scarce through all this period. Mark Twain, + now on his second visit to London, was literally overwhelmed with + honors and entertainment; his rooms at the Langham were like a + court. Such men as Robert Browning, Turgenieff, Sir John Millais, + and Charles Kingsley hastened to call. Kingsley and others gave him + dinners. Mrs. Clemens to her sister wrote: "It is perfectly + discouraging to try to write you." + + The continuous excitement presently told on her. In July all + further engagements were canceled, and Clemens took his little + family to Scotland, for quiet and rest. They broke the journey at + York, and it was there that Mark Twain wrote the only letter + remaining from this time. + + + Part of a letter to Mrs. Jervis Langdon, of Elmira, N. Y.: + +For the present we shall remain in this queer old walled town, with its +crooked, narrow lanes, that tell us of their old day that knew no wheeled +vehicles; its plaster-and-timber dwellings, with upper stories far +overhanging the street, and thus marking their date, say three hundred +years ago; the stately city walls, the castellated gates, the ivy-grown, +foliage-sheltered, most noble and picturesque ruin of St. Mary's Abbey, +suggesting their date, say five hundred years ago, in the heart of +Crusading times and the glory of English chivalry and romance; the vast +Cathedral of York, with its worn carvings and quaintly pictured windows, +preaching of still remoter days; the outlandish names of streets and +courts and byways that stand as a record and a memorial, all these +centuries, of Danish dominion here in still earlier times; the hint here +and there of King Arthur and his knights and their bloody fights with +Saxon oppressors round about this old city more than thirteen hundred +years gone by; and, last of all, the melancholy old stone coffins and +sculptured inscriptions, a venerable arch and a hoary tower of stone that +still remain and are kissed by the sun and caressed by the shadows every +day, just as the sun and the shadows have kissed and caressed them every +lagging day since the Roman Emperor's soldiers placed them here in the +times when Jesus the Son of Mary walked the streets of Nazareth a youth, +with no more name or fame than the Yorkshire boy who is loitering down +this street this moment. + + Their destination was Edinburgh, where they remained a month. Mrs. + Clemens's health gave way on their arrival there, and her husband, + knowing the name of no other physician in the place, looked up Dr. + John Brown, author of Rab and His Friends, and found in him not only + a skilful practitioner, but a lovable companion, to whom they all + became deeply attached. Little Susy, now seventeen months old, + became his special favorite. He named her Megalops, because of her + great eyes. + + Mrs. Clemens regained her strength and they returned to London. + Clemens, still urged to lecture, finally agreed with George Dolby to + a week's engagement, and added a promise that after taking his wife + and daughter back to America he would return immediately for a more + extended course. Dolby announced him to appear at the Queen's + Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, for the week of October 13-18, his + lecture to be the old Sandwich Islands talk that seven years before + had brought him his first success. The great hall, the largest in + London, was thronged at each appearance, and the papers declared + that Mark Twain had no more than "whetted the public appetite" for + his humor. Three days later, October 1873, Clemens, with his + little party, sailed for home. Half-way across the ocean he wrote + the friend they had left in Scotland: + + + To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh: + + MID-ATLANTIC, Oct. 30, 1873. +OUR DEAR FRIEND THE DOCTOR,--We have plowed a long way over the sea, +and there's twenty-two hundred miles of restless water between us, now, +besides the railway stretch. And yet you are so present with us, so +close to us that a span and a whisper would bridge the distance. + +The first three days were stormy, and wife, child, maid, and Miss +Spaulding were all sea-sick 25 hours out of the 24, and I was sorry I +ever started. However, it has been smooth, and balmy, and sunny and +altogether lovely for a day or two now, and at night there is a broad +luminous highway stretching over the sea to the moon, over which the +spirits of the sea are traveling up and down all through the secret night +and having a genuine good time, I make no doubt. + +Today they discovered a "collie" on board! I find (as per advertisement +which I sent you) that they won't carry dogs in these ships at any price. +This one has been concealed up to this time. Now his owner has to pay +L10 or heave him overboard. Fortunately the doggie is a performing +doggie and the money will be paid. So after all it was just as well you +didn't intrust your collie to us. + +A poor little child died at midnight and was buried at dawn this morning +--sheeted and shotted, and sunk in the middle of the lonely ocean in +water three thousand fathoms deep. Pity the poor mother. + With our love. + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Mark Twain was back in London, lecturing again at the Queen's + Concert Rooms, after barely a month's absence. Charles Warren + Stoddard, whom he had known in California, shared his apartment at + the Langham, and acted as his secretary--a very necessary office, + for he was besieged by callers and bombarded with letters. + + He remained in London two months, lecturing steadily at Hanover + Square to full houses. It is unlikely that there is any other + platform record to match it. One letter of this period has been + preserved. It is written to Twichell, near the end of his + engagement. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + LONDON, Jan. 5 1874. +MY DEAR OLD JOE,--I knew you would be likely to graduate into an ass if +I came away; and so you have--if you have stopped smoking. However, I +have a strong faith that it is not too late, yet, and that the +judiciously managed influence of a bad example will fetch you back again. + +I wish you had written me some news--Livy tells me precious little. She +mainly writes to hurry me home and to tell me how much she respects me: +but she's generally pretty slow on news. I had a letter from her along +with yours, today, but she didn't tell me the book is out. However, it's +all right. I hope to be home 20 days from today, and then I'll see her, +and that will make up for a whole year's dearth of news. I am right down +grateful that she is looking strong and "lovelier than ever." I only +wish I could see her look her level best, once--I think it would be a +vision. + +I have just spent a good part of this day browsing through the Royal +Academy Exhibition of Landseer's paintings. They fill four or five great +salons, and must number a good many hundreds. This is the only +opportunity ever to see them, because the finest of them belong to the +queen and she keeps them in her private apartments. Ah, they're +wonderfully beautiful! There are such rich moonlights and dusks in "The +Challenge" and "The Combat;" and in that long flight of birds across a +lake in the subdued flush of sunset (or sunrise--for no man can ever tell +tother from which in a picture, except it has the filmy morning mist +breathing itself up from the water). And there is such a grave +analytical profundity in the faces of "The Connoisseurs;" and such pathos +in the picture of the fawn suckling its dead mother, on a snowy waste, +with only the blood in the footprints to hint that she is not asleep. +And the way he makes animals absolute flesh and blood--insomuch that if +the room were darkened ever so little and a motionless living animal +placed beside a painted one, no man could tell which was which. + +I interrupted myself here, to drop a line to Shirley Brooks and suggest +a cartoon for Punch. It was this. In one of the Academy salons (in the +suite where these pictures are), a fine bust of Landseer stands on a +pedestal in the centre of the room. I suggest that some of Landseer's +best known animals be represented as having come down out of their frames +in the moonlight and grouped themselves about the bust in mourning +attitudes. + +Well, old man, I am powerful glad to hear from you and shall be powerful +glad to see you and Harmony. I am not going to the provinces because I +cannot get halls that are large enough. I always felt cramped in Hanover +Square Rooms, but I find that everybody here speaks with awe and respect +of that prodigious place, and wonder that I could fill it so long. + +I am hoping to be back in 20 days, but I have so much to go home to and +enjoy with a jubilant joy, that it seems hardly possible that it can ever +come to pass in so uncertain a world as this. + +I have read the novel--[The Gilded Age, published during his absence, +December, 1873.]--here, and I like it. I have made no inquiries about +it, though. My interest in a book ceases with the printing of it. + With a world of love, + SAML. + + + + +XIII. + +LETTERS 1874. HARTFORD AND ELMIRA. A NEW STUDY. BEGINNING "TOM +SAWYER." THE SELLERS PLAY. + +Naturally Redpath would not give him any peace now. His London success +must not be wasted. At first his victim refused point-blank, and with +great brevity. But he was overborne and persuaded, and made occasional +appearances, wiring at last this final defiant word: + + + Telegram to James Redpath, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, March 3, 1874. +JAMES REDPATH,--Why don't you congratulate me? + +I never expect to stand on a lecture platform again after Thursday night. + MARK. + + + That he was glad to be home again we may gather from a letter sent + at this time to Doctor Brown, of Edinburgh. + + + To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh: + + FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD + Feby. 28, 1874. +MY DEAR FRIEND,--We are all delighted with your commendations of the +Gilded Age-and the more so because some of our newspapers have set forth +the opinion that Warner really wrote the book and I only added my name to +the title page in order to give it a larger sale. I wrote the first +eleven chapters, every word and every line. I also wrote chapters 24, +25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 21, 42, 43, 45, 51, 52. 53, 57, +59, 60, 61, 62, and portions of 35, 49 and 56. So I wrote 32 of the 63 +chapters entirely and part of 3 others beside. + +The fearful financial panic hit the book heavily, for we published it in +the midst of it. But nevertheless in the 8 weeks that have now elapsed +since the day we published, we have sold 40,000 copies; which gives +L3,000 royalty to be divided between the authors. This is really the +largest two-months' sale which any American book has ever achieved +(unless one excepts the cheaper editions of Uncle Tom's Cabin). The +average price of our book is 16 shillings a copy--Uncle Tom was 2 +shillings a copy. But for the panic our sale would have been doubled, +I verily believe. I do not believe the sale will ultimately go over +100,000 copies. + +I shipped to you, from Liverpool, Barley's Illustrations of Judd's +"Margaret" (the waiter at the Adelphi Hotel agreeing to ship it securely +per parcel delivery,) and I do hope it did not miscarry, for we in +America think a deal of Barley's--[Felix Octavius Carr barley, 1822-1888, +illustrator of the works of Irving, Cooper, etc. Probably the most +distinguished American illustrator of his time.]--work. I shipped the +novel ("Margaret") to you from here a week ago. + +Indeed I am thankful for the wife and the child--and if there is one +individual creature on all this footstool who is more thoroughly and +uniformly and unceasingly happy than I am I defy the world to produce him +and prove him. In my opinion, he doesn't exist. I was a mighty rough, +coarse, unpromising subject when Livy took charge of me 4 years ago, and +I may still be, to the rest of the world, but not to her. She has made a +very creditable job of me. + +Success to the Mark Twain Club!-and the novel shibboleth of the Whistle. +Of course any member rising to speak would be required to preface his +remark with a keen respectful whistle at the chair-the chair recognizing +the speaker with an answering shriek, and then as the speech proceeded +its gravity and force would be emphasized and its impressiveness +augmented by the continual interjection of whistles in place of +punctuation-pauses; and the applause of the audience would be manifested +in the same way .... + +They've gone to luncheon, and I must follow. With strong love from us +both. + Your friend, + SAML. L. CLEMENS. + + + These were the days when the Howells and Clemens families began + visiting back and forth between Boston and Hartford, and sometimes + Aldrich came, though less frequently, and the gatherings at the + homes of Warner and Clemens were full of never-to-be-forgotten + happiness. Of one such visit Howells wrote: + + "In the good-fellowship of that cordial neighborhood we had two such + days as the aging sun no longer shines on in his round. There was + constant running in and out of friendly houses, where the lively + hosts and guests called one another by their christian names or + nicknames, and no such vain ceremony as knocking or ringing at + doors. Clemens was then building the stately mansion in which he + satisfied his love of magnificence as if it had been another + sealskin coat, and he was at the crest of the prosperity which + enabled him to humor every whim or extravagance." + + It was the delight of such a visit that kept Clemens constantly + urging its repetition. One cannot but feel the genuine affection of + these letters. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + Mch. 1, 1876. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Now you will find us the most reasonable people in the +world. We had thought of precipitating upon you George Warner and wife +one day; Twichell and his jewel of a wife another day, and Chas. Perkins +and wife another. Only those--simply members of our family, they are. +But I'll close the door against them all--which will "fix" all of the lot +except Twichell, who will no more hesitate to climb in at the back window +than nothing. + +And you shall go to bed when you please, get up when you please, talk +when you please, read when you please. Mrs. Howells may even go to New +York Saturday if she feels that she must, but if some gentle, unannoying +coaxing can beguile her into putting that off a few days, we shall be +more than glad, for I do wish she and Mrs. Clemens could have a good +square chance to get acquainted with each other. But first and last and +all the time, we want you to feel untrammeled and wholly free from +restraint, here. + +The date suits--all dates suit. + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Mch. 20, 1876. +DEAR HOWELLS,--You or Aldrich or both of you must come to Hartford to +live. Mr. Hall, who lives in the house next to Mrs. Stowe's (just where +we drive in to go to our new house) will sell for $16,000 or $17,000. +The lot is 85 feet front and 150 deep--long time and easy payments on the +purchase? You can do your work just as well here as in Cambridge, can't +you? Come, will one of you boys buy that house? Now say yes. + +Mrs. Clemens is an invalid yet, but is getting along pretty fairly. + +We send best regards. + MARK. + + + April found the Clemens family in Elmira. Mrs. Clemens was not + over-strong, and the cares of house-building were many. They went + early, therefore, remaining at the Langdon home in the city until + Quarry Farm should feel a touch of warmer sun, Clemens wrote the + news to Doctor Brown. + + + To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh: + + ELMIRA, N. Y., April 27, '86. +DEAR DOCTOR,--This town is in the interior of the State of New York +--and was my wife's birth-place. We are here to spend the whole summer. +Although it is so near summer, we had a great snow-storm yesterday, and +one the day before. This is rather breaking in upon our plans, as it may +keep us down here in the valley a trifle longer than we desired. It gets +fearfully hot here in the summer, so we spend our summers on top of a +hill 6 or 700 feet high, about two or three miles from here--it never +gets hot up there. + +Mrs. Clemens is pretty strong, and so is the "little wifie" barring a +desperate cold in the head the child grows in grace and beauty +marvellously. I wish the nations of the earth would combine in a baby +show and give us a chance to compete. I must try to find one of her +latest photographs to enclose in this. And this reminds me that Mrs. +Clemens keeps urging me to ask you for your photograph and last night she +said, "and be sure to ask him for a photograph of his sister, and +Jock-but say Master Jock--do not be headless and forget that courtesy; he +is Jock in our memories and our talk, but he has a right to his title +when a body uses his name in a letter." Now I have got it all in--I +can't have made any mistake this time. Miss Clara Spaulding looked in, a +moment, yesterday morning, as bright and good as ever. She would like to +lay her love at your feet if she knew I was writing--as would also fifty +friends of ours whom you have never seen, and whose homage is as fervent +as if the cold and clouds and darkness of a mighty sea did not lie +between their hearts and you. Poor old Rab had not many "friends" at +first, but if all his friends of today could gather to his grave from the +four corners of the earth what a procession there would be! And Rab's +friends are your friends. + +I am going to work when we get on the hill-till then I've got to lie +fallow, albeit against my will. We join in love to you and yours. + Your friend ever, + SAML. L. CLEMENS. + +P. S. I enclose a specimen of villainy. A man pretends to be my brother +and my lecture agent--gathers a great audience together in a city more +than a thousand miles from here, and then pockets the money and elopes, +leaving the audience to wait for the imaginary lecturer! I am after him +with the law. + + + It was a historic summer at the Farm. A new baby arrived in June; a + new study was built for Mark Twain by Mrs. Crane, on the hillside + near the old quarry; a new book was begun in it--The Adventures of + Tom Sawyer--and a play, the first that Mark Twain had really + attempted, was completed--the dramatization of The Gilded Age. + + An early word went to Hartford of conditions at the Farm. + + + To Rev. and Mrs. Twichell, in Hartford: + + ELMIRA, June 11, 1874. + +MY DEAR OLD JOE AND HARMONY,--The baby is here and is the great American +Giantess--weighing 7 3/4 pounds. We had to wait a good long time for +her, but she was full compensation when she did come. + +The Modoc was delighted with it, and gave it her doll at once. There is +nothing selfish about the Modoc. She is fascinated with the new baby. +The Modoc rips and tears around out doors, most of the time, and +consequently is as hard as a pine knot and as brown as an Indian. She +is bosom friend to all the ducks, chickens, turkeys and guinea hens on +the place. Yesterday as she marched along the winding path that leads up +the hill through the red clover beds to the summer-house, there was a +long procession of these fowls stringing contentedly after her, led by a +stately rooster who can look over the Modoc's head. The devotion of +these vassals has been purchased with daily largess of Indian meal, and +so the Modoc, attended by her bodyguard, moves in state wherever she +goes. + +Susie Crane has built the loveliest study for me, you ever saw. It is +octagonal, with a peaked roof, each octagon filled with a spacious +window, and it sits perched in complete isolation on top of an elevation +that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant +blue hills. It is a cosy nest, with just room in it for a sofa and a +table and three or four chairs--and when the storms sweep down the remote +valley and the lightning flashes above the hills beyond, and the rain +beats upon the roof over my head, imagine the luxury of it! It stands +500 feet above the valley and 2 1/2 miles from it. + +However one must not write all day. We send continents of love to you +and yours. + Affectionately + MARK. + + + We have mentioned before that Clemens had settled his mother and + sister at Fredonia, New York, and when Mrs. Clemens was in condition + to travel he concluded to pay them a visit. + + It proved an unfortunate journey; the hot weather was hard on Mrs. + Clemens, and harder still, perhaps, on Mark Twain's temper. At any + period of his life a bore exasperated him, and in these earlier days + he was far more likely to explode than in his mellower age. Remorse + always followed--the price he paid was always costly. We cannot + know now who was the unfortunate that invited the storm, but in the + next letter we get the echoes of it and realize something of its + damage. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia: + + ELMIRA, Aug. 15. +MX DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I came away from Fredonia ashamed of myself; +--almost too much humiliated to hold up my head and say good-bye. For I +began to comprehend how much harm my conduct might do you socially in +your village. I would have gone to that detestable oyster-brained bore +and apologized for my inexcusable rudeness to him, but that I was +satisfied he was of too small a calibre to know how to receive an apology +with magnanimity. + +Pamela appalled me by saying people had hinted that they wished to visit +Livy when she came, but that she had given them no encouragement. +I feared that those people would merely comprehend that their courtesies +were not wanted, and yet not know exactly why they were not wanted. + +I came away feeling that in return for your constant and tireless efforts +to secure our bodily comfort and make our visit enjoyable, I had basely +repaid you by making you sad and sore-hearted and leaving you so. And +the natural result has fallen to me likewise--for a guilty conscience has +harassed me ever since, and I have not had one short quarter of an hour +of peace to this moment. + +You spoke of Middletown. Why not go there and live? Mr. Crane says it +is only about a hundred miles this side of New York on the Erie road. +The fact that one or two of you might prefer to live somewhere else is +not a valid objection--there are no 4 people who would all choose the +same place--so it will be vain to wait for the day when your tastes shall +be a unit. I seriously fear that our visit has damaged you in Fredonia, +and so I wish you were out of it. + +The baby is fat and strong, and Susie the same. Susie was charmed with +the donkey and the doll. + Ys affectionately + SAML. + +P. S.--DEAR MA AND PAMELA--I am mainly grieved because I have been rude +to a man who has been kind to you--and if you ever feel a desire to +apologize to him for me, you may be sure that I will endorse the apology, +no matter how strong it may be. I went to his bank to apologize to him, +but my conviction was strong that he was not man enough to know how to +take an apology and so I did not make it. + + + William Dean Howells was in those days writing those vividly + realistic, indeed photographic stories which fixed his place among + American men of letters. He had already written 'Their Wedding + Journey' and 'A Chance Acquaintance' when 'A Foregone Conclusion' + appeared. For the reason that his own work was so different, and + perhaps because of his fondness for the author, Clemens always + greatly admired the books of Howells. Howells's exact observation + and his gift for human detail seemed marvelous to Mark Twain, who + with a bigger brush was inclined to record the larger rather than + the minute aspects of life. The sincerity of his appreciation of + Howells, however, need not be questioned, nor, for that matter, his + detestation of Scott. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, Aug. 22, 1874. +DEAR HOWELLS,--I have just finished reading the 'Foregone Conclusion' to +Mrs. Clemens and we think you have even outdone yourself. I should think +that this must be the daintiest, truest, most admirable workmanship that +was ever put on a story. The creatures of God do not act out their +natures more unerringly than yours do. If your genuine stories can die, +I wonder by what right old Walter Scott's artificialities shall continue +to live. + +I brought Mrs. Clemens back from her trip in a dreadfully broken-down +condition--so by the doctor's orders we unpacked the trunks sorrowfully +to lie idle here another month instead of going at once to Hartford and +proceeding to furnish the new house which is now finished. We hate to +have it go longer desolate and tenantless, but cannot help it. + +By and by, if the madam gets strong again, we are hoping to have the +Grays there, and you and the Aldrich households, and Osgood, down to +engage in an orgy with them. + Ys Ever + MARK + + + Howells was editor of the Atlantic by this time, and had been urging + Clemens to write something suitable for that magazine. He had done + nothing, however, until this summer at Quarry Farm. There, one + night in the moonlight, Mrs. Crane's colored cook, who had been a + slave, was induced to tell him her story. It was exactly the story + to appeal to Mark Twain, and the kind of thing he could write. He + set it down next morning, as nearly in her own words and manner as + possible, without departing too far from literary requirements. + + He decided to send this to Howells. He did not regard it very + highly, but he would take the chance. An earlier offering to the + magazine had been returned. He sent the "True Story," with a brief + note: + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, Sept. 2, '74. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--.....I enclose also a "True Story" which has no humor +in it. You can pay as lightly as you choose for that, if you want it, +for it is rather out of my line. I have not altered the old colored +woman's story except to begin at the beginning, instead of the middle, as +she did--and traveled both ways..... + Yrs Ever + MARK. + + But Howells was delighted with it. He referred to its "realest kind + of black talk," and in another place added, "This little story + delights me more and more. I wish you had about forty of them." + + Along with the "True Story" Mark Twain had sent the "Fable for Good + Old Boys and Girls"; but this Howells returned, not, as he said, + because he didn't like it, but because the Atlantic on matters of + religion was just in that "Good Lord, Good Devil condition when a + little fable like yours wouldn't leave it a single Presbyterian, + Baptist, Unitarian, Episcopalian, Methodist, or Millerite paying + subscriber, while all the deadheads would stick to it and abuse it + in the denominational newspapers!" + + But the shorter MS. had been only a brief diversion. Mark Twain was + bowling along at a book and a play. The book was Tom Sawyer, as + already mentioned, and the play a dramatization from The Gilded Age. + Clemens had all along intended to dramatize the story of Colonel + Sellers, and was one day thunderstruck to receive word from + California that a San Francisco dramatist had appropriated his + character in a play written for John T. Raymond. Clemens had taken + out dramatic copyright on the book, and immediately stopped the + performance by telegraph. A correspondence between the author and + the dramatist followed, leading to a friendly arrangement by which + the latter agreed to dispose of his version to Mark Twain. A good + deal of discussion from time to time having arisen over the + authorship of the Sellers play, as presented by Raymond, certain + among the letters that follow may be found of special interest. + Meanwhile we find Clemens writing to Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, + on these matters and events in general. The book MS., which he + mentions as having put aside, was not touched again for nearly a + year. + + + To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh: + + QUARRY FARM, NEAR ELMIRA, N. Y. + Sept. 4, 1874. +DEAR FRIEND,--I have been writing fifty pages of manuscript a day, on an +average, for sometime now, on a book (a story) and consequently have been +so wrapped up in it and so dead to anything else, that I have fallen +mighty short in letter-writing. But night before last I discovered that +that day's chapter was a failure, in conception, moral truth to nature, +and execution--enough blemish to impair the excellence of almost any +chapter--and so I must burn up the day's work and do it all over again. +It was plain that I had worked myself out, pumped myself dry. So I +knocked off, and went to playing billiards for a change. I haven't had +an idea or a fancy for two days, now--an excellent time to write to +friends who have plenty of ideas and fancies of their own, and so will +prefer the offerings of the heart before those of the head. Day after +to-morrow I go to a neighboring city to see a five-act-drama of mine +brought out, and suggest amendments in it, and would about as soon spend +a night in the Spanish Inquisition as sit there and be tortured with all +the adverse criticisms I can contrive to imagine the audience is +indulging in. But whether the play be successful or not, I hope I shall +never feel obliged to see it performed a second time. My interest in my +work dies a sudden and violent death when the work is done. + +I have invented and patented a pretty good sort of scrap-book (I think) +but I have backed down from letting it be known as mine just at present +--for I can't stand being under discussion on a play and a scrap-book at +the same time! + +I shall be away two days, and then return to take our tribe to New York, +where we shall remain five days buying furniture for the new house, and +then go to Hartford and settle solidly down for the winter. After all +that fallow time I ought to be able to go to work again on the book. +We shall reach Hartford about the middle of September, I judge. + +We have spent the past four months up here on top of a breezy hill, six +hundred feet high, some few miles from Elmira, N. Y., and overlooking +that town; (Elmira is my wife's birthplace and that of Susie and the new +baby). This little summer house on the hill-top (named Quarry Farm +because there's a quarry on it,) belongs to my wife's sister, Mrs. Crane. + +A photographer came up the other day and wanted to make some views, +and I shall send you the result per this mail. + +My study is a snug little octagonal den, with a coal-grate, 6 big +windows, one little one, and a wide doorway (the latter opening upon the +distant town.) On hot days I spread the study wide open, anchor my papers +down with brickbats and write in the midst of the hurricanes, clothed in +the same thin linen we make shirts of. The study is nearly on the peak +of the hill; it is right in front of the little perpendicular wall of +rock left where they used to quarry stones. On the peak of the hill is +an old arbor roofed with bark and covered with the vine you call the +"American Creeper"--its green is almost bloodied with red. The Study is +30 yards below the old arbor and 200 yards above the dwelling-house-it is +remote from all noises..... + +Now isn't the whole thing pleasantly situated? + +In the picture of me in the study you glimpse (through the left-hand +window) the little rock bluff that rises behind the pond, and the bases +of the little trees on top of it. The small square window is over the +fireplace; the chimney divides to make room for it. Without the +stereoscope it looks like a framed picture. All the study windows have +Venetian blinds; they long ago went out of fashion in America but they +have not been replaced with anything half as good yet. + +The study is built on top of a tumbled rock-heap that has morning-glories +climbing about it and a stone stairway leading down through and dividing +it. + +There now--if you have not time to read all this, turn it over to "Jock" +and drag in the judge to help. + +Mrs. Clemens must put in a late picture of Susie--a picture which she +maintains is good, but which I think is slander on the child. + +We revisit the Rutland Street home many a time in fancy, for we hold +every individual in it in happy and grateful memory. + Goodbye, + Your friend, + SAML. L. CLEMENS. + +P. S.--I gave the P. O. Department a blast in the papers about sending +misdirected letters of mine back to the writers for reshipment, and got a +blast in return, through a New York daily, from the New York postmaster. +But I notice that misdirected letters find me, now, without any +unnecessary fooling around. + + + The new house in Hartford was now ready to be occupied, and in a + letter to Howells, written a little more than a fortnight after the + foregoing, we find them located in "part" of it. But what seems + more interesting is that paragraph of the letter which speaks of + close friendly relations still existing with the Warners, in that it + refutes a report current at this time that there was a break between + Clemens and Warner over the rights in the Sellers play. There was, + in fact, no such rupture. Warner, realizing that he had no hand in + the character of Sellers, and no share in the work of dramatization, + generously yielded all claim to any part of the returns. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Sept. 20, 1876. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--All right, my boy, send proof sheets here. I amend +dialect stuff by talking and talking and talking it till it sounds right +--and I had difficulty with this negro talk because a negro sometimes +(rarely) says "goin" and sometimes "gwyne," and they make just such +discrepancies in other words--and when you come to reproduce them on +paper they look as if the variation resulted from the writer's +carelessness. But I want to work at the proofs and get the dialect as +nearly right as possible. + +We are in part of the new house. Goodness knows when we'll get in the +rest of it--full of workmen yet. + +I worked a month at my play, and launched it in New York last Wednesday. +I believe it will go. The newspapers have been complimentary. It is +simply a setting for the one character, Col. Sellers--as a play I guess +it will not bear a critical assault in force. + +The Warners are as charming as ever. They go shortly to the devil for a +year--(which is but a poetical way of saying they are going to afflict +themselves with the unsurpassable--(bad word) of travel for a spell.) +I believe they mean to go and see you, first-so they mean to start from +heaven to the other place; not from earth. How is that? + +I think that is no slouch of a compliment--kind of a dim religious light +about it. I enjoy that sort of thing. + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + Raymond, in a letter to the Sun, stated that not "one line" of the + California dramatization had been used by Mark Twain, "except that + which was taken bodily from The Gilded Age." Clemens himself, in a + statement that he wrote for the Hartford Post, but suppressed, + probably at the request of his wife, gave a full history of the + play's origin, a matter of slight interest to-day. + + Sellers on the stage proved a great success. The play had no + special merit as a literary composition, but the character of + Sellers delighted the public, and both author and actor were richly + repaid for their entertainment. + + + + +XIV. + +LETTERS 1874. MISSISSIPPI CHAPTERS. VISITS TO BOSTON. +A JOKE ON ALDRICH + +"Couldn't you send me some such story as that colored one for our January +number--that is, within a month?" wrote Howells, at the end of September, +and during the week following Mark Twain struggled hard to comply, but +without result. When the month was nearly up he wrote: + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Oct. 23, 1874. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have delayed thus long, hoping I might do something +for the January number and Mrs. Clemens has diligently persecuted me day +by day with urgings to go to work and do that something, but it's no use +--I find I can't. We are in such a state of weary and endless confusion +that my head won't go. So I give it up..... + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + But two hours later, when he had returned from one of the long walks + which he and Twichell so frequently took together, he told a + different story. + + +Later, P.M. HOME, 24th '74. + +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I take back the remark that I can't write for the Jan. +number. For Twichell and I have had a long walk in the woods and I got +to telling him about old Mississippi days of steam-boating glory and +grandeur as I saw them (during 5 years) from the pilothouse. He said +"What a virgin subject to hurl into a magazine!" I hadn't thought of that +before. Would you like a series of papers to run through 3 months or 6 +or 9?--or about 4 months, say? + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + Howells himself had come from a family of pilots, and rejoiced in + the idea. A few days later Mark Twain forwarded the first + instalment of the new series--those wonderful chapters that begin, + now, with chapter four in the Mississippi book. Apparently he was + not without doubt concerning the manuscript, and accompanied it with + a brief line. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + +DEAR HOWELLS,--Cut it, scarify it, reject it handle it with entire +freedom. + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + But Howells had no doubts as to the quality of the new find. He + declared that the "piece" about the Mississippi was capital, that it + almost made the water in their ice-pitcher turn muddy as he read it. + "The sketch of the low-lived little town was so good that I could + have wished that there was more of it. I want the sketches, if you + can make them, every month." + + The "low-lived little town" was Hannibal, and the reader can turn to + the vivid description of it in the chapter already mentioned. + + In the same letter Howells refers to a "letter from Limerick," which + he declares he shall keep until he has shown it around--especially + to Aldrich and Osgood. + + The "letter from Limerick" has to do with a special episode. + Mention has just been made of Mark Twain's walk with Twichell. + Frequently their walks were extended tramps, and once in a daring + moment one or the other of them proposed to walk to Boston. The + time was November, and the bracing air made the proposition seem + attractive. They were off one morning early, Twichell carrying a + little bag, and Clemens a basket of luncheon. A few days before, + Clemens had written Redpath that the Rev. J. H. Twichell and he + expected to start at eight o'clock Thursday morning "to walk to + Boston in twenty-four hours--or more. We shall telegraph Young's + Hotel for rooms Saturday night, in order to allow for a low average + of pedestrianism." + + They did not get quite to Boston. In fact, they got only a little + farther than the twenty-eight miles they made the first day. + Clemens could hardly walk next morning, but they managed to get to + North Ashford, where they took a carriage for the nearest railway + station. There they telegraphed to Redpath and Howells that they + would be in Boston that evening. Howells, of course, had a good + supper and good company awaiting them at his home, and the + pedestrians spent two happy days visiting and recounting their + adventures. + + It was one morning, at his hotel, that Mark Twain wrote the Limerick + letter. It was addressed to Mrs. Clemens, but was really intended + for Howells and Twichell and the others whom it mentions. It was an + amusing fancy, rather than a letter, but it deserves place here. + + + To Mrs. Clemens---intended for Howells, Aldrich, etc. + + BOSTON, Nov. 16, 1935. [1874] +DEAR LIVY, You observe I still call this beloved old place by the name it +had when I was young. Limerick! It is enough to make a body sick. + +The gentlemen-in-waiting stare to see me sit here telegraphing this +letter to you, and no doubt they are smiling in their sleeves. But let +them! The slow old fashions are good enough for me, thank God, and I +will none other. When I see one of these modern fools sit absorbed, +holding the end of a telegraph wire in his hand, and reflect that a +thousand miles away there is another fool hitched to the other end of it, +it makes me frantic with rage; and then am I more implacably fixed and +resolved than ever, to continue taking twenty minutes to telegraph you +what I communicate in ten sends by the new way if I would so debase +myself. And when I see a whole silent, solemn drawing-room full of +idiots sitting with their hands on each other's foreheads "communing," I +tug the white hairs from my head and curse till my asthma brings me the +blessed relief of suffocation. In our old day such a gathering talked +pure drivel and "rot," mostly, but better that, a thousand times, than +these dreary conversational funerals that oppress our spirits in this mad +generation. + +It is sixty years since I was here before. I walked hither, then, with +my precious old friend. It seems incredible, now, that we did it in two +days, but such is my recollection. I no longer mention that we walked +back in a single day, it makes me so furious to see doubt in the face of +the hearer. Men were men in those old times. Think of one of the +puerile organisms in this effeminate age attempting such a feat. + +My air-ship was delayed by a collision with a fellow from China loaded +with the usual cargo of jabbering, copper-colored missionaries, and so I +was nearly an hour on my journey. But by the goodness of God thirteen of +the missionaries were crippled and several killed, so I was content to +lose the time. I love to lose time, anyway, because it brings soothing +reminiscences of the creeping railroad days of old, now lost to us +forever. + +Our game was neatly played, and successfully.--None expected us, of +course. You should have seen the guards at the ducal palace stare when +I said, "Announce his grace the Archbishop of Dublin and the Rt. Hon. +the Earl of Hartford." Arrived within, we were all eyes to see the Duke +of Cambridge and his Duchess, wondering if we might remember their faces, +and they ours. In a moment, they came tottering in; he, bent and +withered and bald; she blooming with wholesome old age. He peered +through his glasses a moment, then screeched in a reedy voice: "Come to +my arms! Away with titles--I'll know ye by no names but Twain and +Twichell! Then fell he on our necks and jammed his trumpet in his ear, +the which we filled with shoutings to this effect: God bless you, old +Howells what is left of you!" + +We talked late that night--none of your silent idiot "communings" for us +--of the olden time. We rolled a stream of ancient anecdotes over our +tongues and drank till the lord Archbishop grew so mellow in the mellow +past that Dublin ceased to be Dublin to him and resumed its sweeter +forgotten name of New York. In truth he almost got back into his ancient +religion, too, good Jesuit, as he has always been since O'Mulligan the +First established that faith in the Empire. + +And we canvassed everybody. Bailey Aldrich, Marquis of Ponkapog, came +in, got nobly drunk, and told us all about how poor Osgood lost his +earldom and was hanged for conspiring against the second Emperor--but +he didn't mention how near he himself came to being hanged, too, for +engaging in the same enterprise. He was as chaffy as he was sixty years +ago, too, and swore the Archbishop and I never walked to Boston--but +there was never a day that Ponkapog wouldn't lie, so be it by the grace +of God he got the opportunity. + +The Lord High Admiral came in, a hale gentleman close upon seventy and +bronzed by the suns and storms of many climes and scarred with the wounds +got in many battles, and I told him how I had seen him sit in a high +chair and eat fruit and cakes and answer to the name of Johnny. His +granddaughter (the eldest) is but lately warned to the youngest of the +Grand Dukes, and so who knows but a day may come when the blood of the +Howells's may reign in the land? I must not forget to say, while I think +of it, that your new false teeth are done, my dear, and your wig. Keep +your head well bundled with a shawl till the latter comes, and so cheat +your persecuting neuralgias and rheumatisms. Would you believe it?--the +Duchess of Cambridge is deafer than you--deafer than her husband. They +call her to breakfast with a salvo of artillery; and usually when it +thunders she looks up expectantly and says "come in....." + +The monument to the author of "Gloverson and His Silent partners" is +finished. It is the stateliest and the costliest ever erected to the +memory of any man. This noble classic has now been translated into all +the languages of the earth and is adored by all nations and known to all +creatures. Yet I have conversed as familiarly with the author of it as I +do with my own great-grandchildren. + +I wish you could see old Cambridge and Ponkapog. I love them as dearly +as ever, but privately, my dear, they are not much improvement on idiots. +It is melancholy to hear them jabber over the same pointless anecdotes +three and four times of an evening, forgetting that they had jabbered +them over three or four times the evening before. Ponkapog still writes +poetry, but the old-time fire has mostly gone out of it. Perhaps his +best effort of late years is this: + + "O soul, soul, soul of mine: + Soul, soul, soul of thine! + Thy soul, my soul, two souls entwine, + And sing thy lauds in crystal wine!" + +This he goes about repeating to everybody, daily and nightly, insomuch +that he is become a sore affliction to all that know him. + +But I must desist. There are drafts here, everywhere and my gout is +something frightful. My left foot hath resemblance to a snuff-bladder. + God be with you. + HARTFORD. + +These to Lady Hartford, in the earldom of Hartford, in the upper portion +of the city of Dublin. + + + One may imagine the joy of Howells and the others in this ludicrous + extravaganza, which could have been written by no one but Mark + Twain. It will hardly take rank as prophecy, though certainly true + forecast in it is not wholly lacking. + + Clemens was now pretty well satisfied with his piloting story, but + he began to have doubts as to its title, "Old Times on the + Mississippi." It seemed to commit him to too large an undertaking. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + Dec. 3, 1874. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Let us change the heading to "Piloting on the Miss in +the Old Times"--or to "Steamboating on the M. in Old Times"--or to +"Personal Old Times on the Miss."--We could change it for Feb. if now +too late for Jan.--I suggest it because the present heading is too +pretentious, too broad and general. It seems to command me to deliver a +Second Book of Revelation to the world, and cover all the Old Times the +Mississippi (dang that word, it is worse than "type" or "Egypt ") ever +saw--whereas here I have finished Article No. III and am about to start +on No. 4. and yet I have spoken of nothing but of Piloting as a science +so far; and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject. +And I don't care to. Any muggins can write about Old Times on the Miss. +of 500 different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble +about the piloting of that day--and no man ever has tried to scribble +about it yet. Its newness pleases me all the time--and it is about the +only new subject I know of. If I were to write fifty articles they would +all be about pilots and piloting--therefore let's get the word Piloting +into the heading. There's a sort of freshness about that, too. + Ys ever, + MARK. + + + But Howells thought the title satisfactory, and indeed it was the + best that could have been selected for the series. He wrote every + few days of his delight in the papers, and cautioned the author not + to make an attempt to please any "supposed Atlantic audience," + adding, "Yarn it off into my sympathetic ear." Clemens replied: + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + H't'f'd. Dec. 8, 1874. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It isn't the Atlantic audience that distresses me; for +it is the only audience that I sit down before in perfect serenity (for +the simple reason that it doesn't require a "humorist" to paint himself +striped and stand on his head every fifteen minutes.) The trouble was, +that I was only bent on "working up an atmosphere" and that is to me a +most fidgety and irksome thing, sometimes. I avoid it, usually, but in +this case it was absolutely necessary, else every reader would be +applying the atmosphere of his own or sea experiences, and that shirt +wouldn't fit, you know. + +I could have sent this Article II a week ago, or more, but I couldn't +bring myself to the drudgery of revising and correcting it. I have been +at that tedious work 3 hours, now, and by George but I am glad it is +over. + +Say--I am as prompt as a clock, if I only know the day a thing is wanted +--otherwise I am a natural procrastinaturalist. Tell me what day and +date you want Nos. 3 and 4, and I will tackle and revise them and they'll +be there to the minute. + +I could wind up with No. 4., but there are some things more which I am +powerfully moved to write. Which is natural enough, since I am a person +who would quit authorizing in a minute to go to piloting, if the madam +would stand it. I would rather sink a steamboat than eat, any time. + +My wife was afraid to write you--so I said with simplicity, "I will give +you the language--and ideas." Through the infinite grace of God there +has not been such another insurrection in the family before as followed +this. However, the letter was written, and promptly, too--whereas, +heretofore she has remained afraid to do such things. + +With kind regards to Mrs. Howells, + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + The "Old Times" papers appeared each month in the Atlantic until + July, 1875, and take rank to-day with Mark Twain's best work. When + the first number appeared, John Hay wrote: "It is perfect; no more + nor less. I don't see how you do it." Which was reported to + Howells, who said: "What business has Hay, I should like to know, + praising a favorite of mine? It's interfering." + + These were the days when the typewriter was new. Clemens and + Twichell, during their stay in Boston, had seen the marvel in + operation, and Clemens had been unable to resist owning one. It was + far from being the perfect machine of to-day; the letters were all + capitals, and one was never quite certain, even of those. Mark + Twain, however, began with enthusiasm and practised faithfully. On + the day of its arrival he wrote two letters that have survived, the + first to his brother, the other to Howells. + + + Typewritten letter to W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Dec. 9, 1874. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I want to add a short paragraph to article No. 1, when +the proof comes. Merely a line or two, however. + +I don't know whether I am going to make this typewriting machine go or +nto: that last word was intended for n-not; but I guess I shall make some +sort of a succss of it before I run it very long. I am so thick-fingered +that I miss the keys. + +You needn't a swer this; I am only practicing to get three; another +slip-up there; only practici?ng to get the hang of the thing. I notice +I miss fire & get in a good many unnecessary letters and punctuation marks. +I am simply using you for a target to bang at. Blame my cats but this +thing requires genius in order to work it just right. + Yours ever, + (M)ARK. + + + + Knowing Mark Twain, Howells wrote: "When you get tired of the + machine send it to me." Clemens naturally did get tired of the + machine; it was ruining his morals, he said. He presently offered + it to Howells, who by this time hesitated, but eventually yielded + and accepted it. If he was blasted by its influence the fact has + not been recorded. + + One of the famous Atlantic dinners came along in December. "Don't + you dare to refuse that invitation," wrote Howells, "to meet + Emerson, Aldrich, and all those boys at the Parker House, at six + o'clock, Tuesday, December 15th. Come!" + + Clemens had no desire to refuse; he sent word that he would come, + and followed it with a characteristic line. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Sunday. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I want you to ask Mrs. Howells to let you stay all +night at the Parker House and tell lies and have an improving time, and +take breakfast with me in the morning. I will have a good room for you, +and a fire. Can't you tell her it always makes you sick to go home late +at night, or something like that? That sort of thing rouses Mrs. +Clemens's sympathies, easily; the only trouble is to keep them up. +Twichell and I talked till 2 or 3 in the morning, the night we supped at +your house and it restored his health, on account of his being drooping +for some time and made him much more robuster than what he was before. +Will Mrs. Howells let you? + Yrs ever, + S. L. C. + + Aldrich had issued that year a volume of poems, and he presented + Clemens with a copy of it during this Boston visit. The letter of + appreciation which follows contains also reference to an amusing + incident; but we shall come to that presently. + + + To T. B. Aldrich, in Ponkapog, Mass. + + FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD. + Dec. 18, 1874. +MY DEAR ALDRICH,--I read the "Cloth of Gold" through, coming down in the +cars, and it is just lightning poetry--a thing which it gravels me to say +because my own efforts in that line have remained so persistently +unrecognized, in consequence of the envy and jealousy of this generation. +"Baby Bell" always seemed perfection, before, but now that I have +children it has got even beyond that. About the hour that I was reading +it in the cars, Twichell was reading it at home and forthwith fell upon +me with a burst of enthusiasm about it when I saw him. This was +pleasant, because he has long been a lover of it. + +"Thos. Bailey Aldrich responded" etc., "in one of the brightest speeches +of the evening." + +That is what the Tribune correspondent says. And that is what everybody +that heard it said. Therefore, you keep still. Don't ever be so unwise +as to go on trying to unconvince those people. + +I've been skating around the place all day with some girls, with Mrs. +Clemens in the window to do the applause. There would be a power of fun +in skating if you could do it with somebody else's muscles.--There are +about twenty boys booming by the house, now, and it is mighty good to +look at. + +I'm keeping you in mind, you see, in the matter of photographs. I have +a couple to enclose in this letter and I want you to say you got them, +and then I shall know I have been a good truthful child. + +I am going to send more as I ferret them out, about the place.--And I +won't forget that you are a "subscriber." + +The wife and I unite in warm regards to you and Mrs. Aldrich. + Yrs ever, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + A letter bearing the same date as the above went back to Howells, we + find, in reference to still another incident, which perhaps should + come first. + + Mark Twain up to this time had worn the black "string" necktie of + the West--a decoration which disturbed Mrs. Clemens, and invited + remarks from his friends. He had persisted in it, however, up to + the date of the Atlantic dinner, when Howells and Aldrich decided + that something must be done about it. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Dec. 18, 1874. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I left No. 3, (Miss. chapter) in my eldest's reach, and +it may have gone to the postman and it likewise may have gone into the +fire. I confess to a dread that the latter is the case and that that +stack of MS will have to be written over again. If so, O for the return +of the lamented Herod! + +You and Aldrich have made one woman deeply and sincerely grateful--Mrs. +Clemens. For months--I may even say years--she had shown unaccountable +animosity toward my neck-tie, even getting up in the night to take it +with the tongs and blackguard it--sometimes also going so far as to +threaten it. + +When I said you and Aldrich had given me two new neck-ties, and that they +were in a paper in my overcoat pocket, she was in a fever of happiness +until she found I was going to frame them; then all the venom in her +nature gathered itself together,--insomuch that I, being near to a door, +went without, perceiving danger. + +Now I wear one of the new neck-ties, nothing being sacred in Mrs. +Clemens's eyes that can be perverted to a gaud that shall make the person +of her husband more alluring than it was aforetime. + +Jo Twichell was the delightedest old boy I ever saw, when he read the +words you had written in that book. He and I went to the Concert of the +Yale students last night and had a good time. + +Mrs. Clemens dreads our going to New Orleans, but I tell her she'll have +to give her consent this time. + +With kindest regards unto ye both. + Yrs ever, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The reference to New Orleans at the end of this letter grew + naturally out of the enthusiasm aroused by the Mississippi papers. + The more Clemens wrote about the river the more he wished to revisit + it and take Howells with him. Howells was willing enough to go and + they eventually arranged to take their wives on the excursion. This + seemed all very well and possible, so long as the time was set for + some date in the future still unfixed. But Howells was a busy + editor, and it was much more easy for him to promise good-naturedly + than to agree on a definite time of departure. He explained at + length why he could not make the journey, and added: "Forgive me + having led you on to fix a time; I never thought it would come to + that; I supposed you would die, or something. I am really more + sorry and ashamed than I can make it appear." So the beautiful plan + was put aside, though it was not entirely abandoned for a long time. + + We now come to the incident mentioned in Mark Twain's letter to + Aldrich, of December the 18th. It had its beginning at the Atlantic + dinner, where Aldrich had abused Clemens for never sending him any + photographs of himself. It was suggested by one or the other that + his name be put down as a "regular subscriber" for all Mark Twain + photographs as they "came out." Clemens returned home and hunted up + fifty-two different specimens, put each into an envelope, and began + mailing them to him, one each morning. When a few of them had + arrived Aldrich wrote, protesting. + + "The police," he said, "have a way of swooping down on that kind of + publication. The other day they gobbled up an entire edition of + 'The Life in New York.'" + + Whereupon Clemens bundled up the remaining collection--forty-five + envelopes of photographs and prints-and mailed them together. + + Aldrich wrote, now, violently declaring the perpetrator of the + outrage to be known to the police; that a sprawling yellow figure + against a green background had been recognized as an admirable + likeness of Mark Twain, alias the jumping Frog, a well-known + Californian desperado, formerly the chief of Henry Plummer's band of + road agents in Montana. The letter was signed, "T. Bayleigh, Chief + of Police." On the back of the envelope "T. Bayleigh" had also + written that it was "no use for the person to send any more letters, + as the post-office at that point was to be blown up. Forty-eight + hogs-head of nitroglycerine had been syrupticiously introduced into + the cellar of the building, and more was expected. R.W.E. H.W.L. + O.W.H., and other conspirators in masks have been seen flitting + about the town for some days past. The greatest excitement combined + with the most intense quietness reigns at Ponkapog." + + + + +XV. + +LETTERS FROM HARTFORD, 1875. MUCH CORRESPONDENCE WITH HOWELLS + +Orion Clemens had kept his job with Bliss only a short time. His mental +make-up was such that it was difficult for him to hold any position long. +He meant to do well, but he was unfortunate in his efforts. His ideas +were seldom practical, his nature was yielding and fickle. He had +returned to Keokuk presently, and being convinced there was a fortune in +chickens, had prevailed upon his brother to purchase for him a little +farm not far from the town. But the chicken business was not lively and +Orion kept the mail hot with manuscripts and propositions of every sort, +which he wanted his brother to take under advisement. + +Certainly, to Mark Twain Orion Clemens was a trial. The letters of the +latter show that scarcely one of them but contains the outline of some +rainbow-chasing scheme, full of wild optimism, and the certainty that +somewhere just ahead lies the pot of gold. Only, now and then, there is +a letter of abject humiliation and complete surrender, when some golden +vision, some iridescent soap-bubble, had vanished at his touch. Such +depression did not last; by sunrise he was ready with a new dream, new +enthusiasm, and with a new letter inviting his "brother Sam's" interest +and investment. Yet, his fear of incurring his brother's displeasure was +pitiful, regardless of the fact that he constantly employed the very +means to insure that result. At one time Clemens made him sign a sworn +agreement that he would not suggest any plan or scheme of investment for +the period of twelve months. Orion must have kept this agreement. He +would have gone to the stake before he would have violated an oath, but +the stake would have probably been no greater punishment than his +sufferings that year. + +On the whole, Samuel Clemens was surprisingly patient and considerate +with Orion, and there was never a time that he was not willing to help. +Yet there were bound to be moments of exasperation; and once, when his +mother, or sister, had written, suggesting that he encourage his +brother's efforts, he felt moved to write at considerable freedom. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.: + + HARTFORD, Sunday, 1875. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I Saw Gov. Newell today and he said he was +still moving in the matter of Sammy's appointment--[As a West Point +cadet.]--and would stick to it till he got a result of a positive nature +one way or the other, but thus far he did not know whether to expect +success or defeat. + +Ma, whenever you need money I hope you won't be backward about saying so +--you can always have it. We stint ourselves in some ways, but we have +no desire to stint you. And we don't intend to, either. + +I can't "encourage" Orion. Nobody can do that, conscientiously, for the +reason that before one's letter has time to reach him he is off on some +new wild-goose chase. Would you encourage in literature a man who, the +older he grows the worse he writes? Would you encourage Orion in the +glaring insanity of studying law? If he were packed and crammed full of +law, it would be worthless lumber to him, for his is such a capricious +and ill-regulated mind that he would apply the principles of the law with +no more judgment than a child of ten years. I know what I am saying. +I laid one of the plainest and simplest of legal questions before Orion +once, and the helpless and hopeless mess he made of it was absolutely +astonishing. Nothing aggravates me so much as to have Orion mention law +or literature to me. + +Well, I cannot encourage him to try the ministry, because he would change +his religion so fast that he would have to keep a traveling agent under +wages to go ahead of him to engage pulpits and board for him. + +I cannot conscientiously encourage him to do anything but potter around +his little farm and put in his odd hours contriving new and impossible +projects at the rate of 365 a year--which is his customary average. +He says he did well in Hannibal! Now there is a man who ought to be +entirely satisfied with the grandeurs, emoluments and activities of a hen +farm-- + +If you ask me to pity Orion, I can do that. I can do it every day and +all day long. But one can't "encourage" quick-silver, because the +instant you put your finger on it it isn't there. No, I am saying too +much--he does stick to his literary and legal aspirations; and he +naturally would select the very two things which he is wholly and +preposterously unfitted for. If I ever become able, I mean to put Orion +on a regular pension without revealing the fact that it is a pension. +That is best for him. Let him consider it a periodical loan, and pay +interest out of the principal. Within a year's time he would be looking +upon himself as a benefactor of mine, in the way of furnishing me a good +permanent investment for money, and that would make him happy and +satisfied with himself. If he had money he would share with me in a +moment and I have no disposition to be stingy with him. + Affly + SAM. +Livy sends love. + + + The New Orleans plan was not wholly dead at this time. Howells + wrote near the end of January that the matter was still being + debated, now and then, but was far from being decided upon. He + hoped to go somewhere with Mrs. Howells for a brief time in March, + he said. Clemens, in haste, replied: + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Jan. 26, 1875. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--When Mrs. Clemens read your letter she said: "Well, +then, wherever they go, in March, the direction will be southward and so +they must give us a visit on the way." I do not know what sort of +control you may be under, but when my wife speaks as positively as that, +I am not in the habit of talking back and getting into trouble. Situated +as I am, I would not be able to understand, now, how you could pass by +this town without feeling that you were running a wanton risk and doing a +daredevil thing. I consider it settled that you are to come in March, +and I would be sincerely sorry to learn that you and Mrs. Howells feel +differently about it. + +The piloting material has been uncovering itself by degrees, until it has +exposed such a huge hoard to my view that a whole book will be required +to contain it if I use it. So I have agreed to write the book for Bliss. +--[The book idea was later given up for the time being.]--I won't be +able to run the articles in the Atlantic later than the September number, +for the reason that a subscription book issued in the fall has a much +larger sale than if issued at any other season of the year. It is funny +when I reflect that when I originally wrote you and proposed to do from 6 +to 9 articles for the magazine, the vague thought in my mind was that 6 +might exhaust the material and 9 would be pretty sure to do it. Or +rather it seems to me that that was my thought--can't tell at this +distance. But in truth 9 chapters don't now seem to more than open up +the subject fairly and start the yarn to wagging. + +I have been sick a-bed several days, for the first time in 21 years. +How little confirmed invalids appreciate their advantages. I was able to +read the English edition of the Greville Memoirs through without +interruption, take my meals in bed, neglect all business without a pang, +and smoke 18 cigars a day. I try not to look back upon these 21 years +with a feeling of resentment, and yet the partialities of Providence do +seem to me to be slathered around (as one may say) without that gravity +and attention to detail which the real importance of the matter would +seem to suggest. + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + The New Orleans idea continued to haunt the letters. The thought of + drifting down the Mississippi so attracted both Clemens and Howells, + that they talked of it when they met, and wrote of it when they were + separated. Howells, beset by uncertainties, playfully tried to put + the responsibility upon his wife. Once he wrote: "She says in the + noblest way, 'Well, go to New Orleans, if you want to so much' (you + know the tone). I suppose it will do if I let you know about the + middle of February?" + + But they had to give it up in the end. Howells wrote that he had + been under the weather, and on half work the whole winter. He did + not feel that he had earned his salary, he said, or that he was + warranted in taking a three weeks' pleasure trip. Clemens offered + to pay all the expenses of the trip, but only indefinite + postponement followed. It would be seven years more before Mark + Twain would return to the river, and then not with Howells. + + In a former chapter mention has been made of Charles Warren + Stoddard, whom Mark Twain had known in his California days. He was + fond of Stoddard, who was a facile and pleasing writer of poems and + descriptive articles. During the period that he had been acting as + Mark Twain's secretary in London, he had taken pleasure in + collecting for him the news reports of the celebrated Tichborn + Claimant case, then in the English courts. Clemens thought of + founding a story on it, and did, in fact, use the idea, though 'The + American Claimant,' which he wrote years later, had little or no + connection with the Tichborn episode. + + + To C. W. Stoddard: + + HARTFORD, Feb. 1, 1875. +DEAR CHARLEY,--All right about the Tichborn scrapbooks; send them along +when convenient. I mean to have the Beecher-Tilton trial scrap-book as a +companion..... + +I am writing a series of 7-page articles for the Atlantic at $20 a page; +but as they do not pay anybody else as much as that, I do not complain +(though at the same time I do swear that I am not content.) However the +awful respectability of the magazine makes up. + +I have cut your articles about San Marco out of a New York paper (Joe +Twichell saw it and brought it home to me with loud admiration,) and sent +it to Howells. It is too bad to fool away such good literature in a +perishable daily journal. + +Do remember us kindly to Lady Hardy and all that rare family--my wife and +I so often have pleasant talks about them. + Ever your friend, + SAML. L. CLEMENS. + + + The price received by Mark Twain for the Mississippi papers, as + quoted in this letter, furnishes us with a realizing sense of the + improvement in the literary market, with the advent of a flood of + cheap magazines and the Sunday newspaper. The Atlantic page + probably contained about a thousand words, which would make his + price average, say, two cents per word. Thirty years later, when + his fame was not much more extended, his pay for the same matter + would have been fifteen times as great, that is to say, at the rate + of thirty cents per word. But in that early time there were no + Sunday magazines--no literary magazines at all except the Atlantic, + and Harpers, and a few fashion periodicals. Probably there were + news-stands, but it is hard to imagine what they must have looked + like without the gay pictorial cover-femininity that to-day pleases + and elevates the public and makes author and artist affluent. + + Clemens worked steadily on the river chapters, and Howells was + always praising him and urging him to go on. At the end of January + he wrote: "You're doing the science of piloting splendidly. Every + word's interesting. And don't you drop the series 'til you've got + every bit of anecdote and reminiscence into it." + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Feb. 10, 1875. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Your praises of my literature gave me the solidest +gratification; but I never did have the fullest confidence in my critical +penetration, and now your verdict on S-----has knocked what little I did +have gully-west! I didn't enjoy his gush, but I thought a lot of his +similes were ever so vivid and good. But it's just my luck; every time I +go into convulsions of admiration over a picture and want to buy it right +away before I've lost the chance, some wretch who really understands art +comes along and damns it. But I don't mind. I would rather have my +ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have got so much more +of it. + +I send you No. 5 today. I have written and re-written the first half of +it three different times, yesterday and today, and at last Mrs. Clemens +says it will do. I never saw a woman so hard to please about things she +doesn't know anything about. + Yours ever, + MARK. + + + Of course, the reference to his wife's criticism in this is tenderly + playful, as always--of a pattern with the severity which he pretends + for her in the next. + + + To Mrs. W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + 1875 +DEAR MRS. HOWELLS,--Mrs. Clemens is delighted to get the pictures, and so +am I. I can perceive in the group, that Mr. Howells is feeling as I so +often feel, viz: "Well, no doubt I am in the wrong, though I do not know +how or where or why--but anyway it will be safest to look meek, and walk +circumspectly for a while, and not discuss the thing." And you look +exactly as Mrs. Clemens does after she has said, "Indeed I do not wonder +that you can frame no reply: for you know only too well, that your +conduct admits of no excuse, palliation or argument--none!" + +I shall just delight in that group on account of the good old human +domestic spirit that pervades it--bother these family groups that put on +a state aspect to get their pictures taken in. + +We want a heliotype made of our eldest daughter. How soft and rich and +lovely the picture is. Mr. Howells must tell me how to proceed in the +matter. + Truly Yours + SAM. L. CLEMENS. + + + In the next letter we have a picture of Susy--[This spelling of the + name was adopted somewhat later and much preferred. It appears as + "Susie" in most of the earlier letters.]--Clemens's third birthday, + certainly a pretty picture, and as sweet and luminous and tender + today as it was forty years ago-as it will be a hundred years hence, + if these lines should survive that long. The letter is to her uncle + Charles Langdon, the "Charlie" of the Quaker City. "Atwater" was + associated with the Langdon coal interests in Elmira. "The play" + is, of course, "The Gilded Age." + + + To Charles Langdon, in Elmira: + + Mch. 19, 1875. +DEAR CHARLIE,--Livy, after reading your letter, used her severest form of +expression about Mr. Atwater--to wit: She did not "approve" of his +conduct. This made me shudder; for it was equivalent to Allie +Spaulding's saying "Mr. Atwater is a mean thing;" or Rev. Thomas +Beecher's saying "Damn that Atwater," or my saying "I wish Atwater was +three hundred million miles in----!" + +However, Livy does not often get into one of these furies, God be +thanked. + +In Brooklyn, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago, +the play paid me an average of nine hundred dollars a week. In smaller +towns the average is $400 to $500. + +This is Susie's birth-day. Lizzie brought her in at 8.30 this morning +(before we were up) hooded with a blanket, red curl-papers in her hair, a +great red japonica, in one hand (for Livy) and a yellow rose-bud nestled +in violets (for my buttonhole) in the other--and she looked wonderfully +pretty. She delivered her memorials and received her birth-day kisses. +Livy laid her japonica, down to get a better "holt" for kissing-which +Susie presently perceived, and became thoughtful: then said sorrowfully, +turning the great deeps of her eyes upon her mother: "Don't you care for +you wow?" + +Right after breakfast we got up a rousing wood fire in the main hall +(it is a cold morning) illuminated the place with a rich glow from all +the globes of the newell chandelier, spread a bright rug before the fire, +set a circling row of chairs (pink ones and dove-colored) and in the +midst a low invalid-table covered with a fanciful cloth and laden with +the presents--a pink azalia in lavish bloom from Rosa; a gold inscribed +Russia-leather bible from Patrick and Mary; a gold ring (inscribed) from +"Maggy Cook;" a silver thimble (inscribed with motto and initials) from +Lizzie; a rattling mob of Sunday clad dolls from Livy and Annie, and a +Noah's Ark from me, containing 200 wooden animals such as only a human +being could create and only God call by name without referring to the +passenger list. Then the family and the seven servants assembled there, +and Susie and the "Bay" arrived in state from above, the Bay's head being +fearfully and wonderfully decorated with a profusion of blazing red +flowers and overflowing cataracts of lycopodium. Wee congratulatory +notes accompanied the presents of the servants. I tell you it was a +great occasion and a striking and cheery group, taking all the +surroundings into account and the wintry aspect outside. + +(Remainder missing.) + + + There was to be a centennial celebration that year of the battles of + Lexington and Concord, and Howells wrote, urging Clemens and his + wife to visit them and attend it. Mrs. Clemens did not go, and + Clemens and Howells did not go, either--to the celebration. They + had their own ideas about getting there, but found themselves unable + to board the thronged train at Concord, and went tramping about in + the cold and mud, hunting a conveyance, only to return at length to + the cheer of the home, defeated and rather low in spirits. + + Twichell, who went on his own hook, had no such difficulties. To + Howells, Mark Twain wrote the adventures of this athletic and + strenuous exponent of the gospel. + + The "Winnie" mentioned in this letter was Howells's daughter + Winifred. She had unusual gifts, but did not live to develop them. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD. Apl. 23, 1875. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I've got Mrs. Clemens's picture before me, and hope I +shall not forget to send it with this. + +Joe Twichell preached morning and evening here last Sunday; took midnight +train for Boston; got an early breakfast and started by rail at 7.30 +A. M. for Concord; swelled around there until 1 P. M., seeing +everything; then traveled on top of a train to Lexington; saw everything +there; traveled on top of a train to Boston, (with hundreds in company) +deluged with dust, smoke and cinders; yelled and hurrahed all the way +like a schoolboy; lay flat down to dodge numerous bridges, and sailed +into the depot, howling with excitement and as black as a chimney-sweep; +got to Young's Hotel at 7 P. M.; sat down in reading-room and immediately +fell asleep; was promptly awakened by a porter who supposed he was drunk; +wandered around an hour and a half; then took 9 P. M. train, sat down in +smoking car and remembered nothing more until awakened by conductor as +the train came into Hartford at 1.30 A. M. Thinks he had simply a +glorious time--and wouldn't have missed the Centennial for the world. +He would have run out to see us a moment at Cambridge, but was too dirty. +I wouldn't have wanted him there--his appalling energy would have been an +insufferable reproach to mild adventurers like you and me. + +Well, he is welcome to the good time he had--I had a deal better one. +My narrative has made Mrs. Clemens wish she could have been there.--When +I think over what a splendid good sociable time I had in your house I +feel ever so thankful to the wise providence that thwarted our several +ably-planned and ingenious attempts to get to Lexington. I am coming +again before long, and then she shall be of the party. + +Now you said that you and Mrs. Howells could run down here nearly any +Saturday. Very well then, let us call it next Saturday, for a "starter." +Can you do that? By that time it will really be spring and you won't +freeze. The birds are already out; a small one paid us a visit +yesterday. We entertained it and let it go again, Susie protesting. + +The spring laziness is already upon me--insomuch that the spirit begins +to move me to cease from Mississippi articles and everything else and +give myself over to idleness until we go to New Orleans. I have one +article already finished, but somehow it doesn't seem as proper a chapter +to close with as the one already in your hands. I hope to get in a mood +and rattle off a good one to finish with--but just now all my moods are +lazy ones. + +Winnie's literature sings through me yet! Surely that child has one of +these "futures" before her. + +Now try to come--will you? + +With the warmest regards of the two of us-- + Yrs ever, + S. L. CLEMENS. + +Mrs. Clemens sent a note to Mrs. Howells, which will serve as a pendant +to the foregoing. + + + From Mrs. Clemens to Mrs. Howells, in Boston: + +MY DEAR MRS. HOWELLS,--Don't dream for one instant that my not getting a +letter from you kept me from Boston. I am too anxious to go to let such +a thing as that keep me. + +Mr. Clemens did have such a good time with you and Mr. Howells. +He evidently has no regret that he did not get to the Centennial. I was +driven nearly distracted by his long account of Mr. Howells and his +wanderings. I would keep asking if they ever got there, he would never +answer but made me listen to a very minute account of everything that +they did. At last I found them back where they started from. + +If you find misspelled words in this note, you will remember my infirmity +and not hold me responsible. + Affectionately yours, + LIVY L. CLEMENS. + +In spite of his success with the Sellers play and his itch to follow it +up, Mark Twain realized what he believed to be his literary limitations. +All his life he was inclined to consider himself wanting in the finer +gifts of character-shading and delicate portrayal. Remembering Huck +Finn, and the rare presentation of Joan of Arc, we may not altogether +agree with him. Certainly, he was never qualified to delineate those +fine artificialities of life which we are likely to associate with +culture, and perhaps it was something of this sort that caused the +hesitation confessed in the letter that follows. Whether the plan +suggested interested Howells or not we do not know. In later years +Howells wrote a novel called The Story of a Play; this may have been its +beginning. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Apl. 26, 1875. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--An actor named D. H. Harkins has been here to ask me to +put upon paper a 5-act play which he has been mapping out in his mind for +3 or 4 years. He sat down and told me his plot all through, in a clear, +bright way, and I was a deal taken with it; but it is a line of +characters whose fine shading and artistic development requires an abler +hand than mine; so I easily perceived that I must not make the attempt. +But I liked the man, and thought there was a good deal of stuff in him; +and therefore I wanted his play to be written, and by a capable hand, +too. So I suggested you, and said I would write and see if you would be +willing to undertake it. If you like the idea, he will call upon you in +the course of two or three weeks and describe his plot and his +characters. Then if it doesn't strike you favorably, of course you can +simply decline; but it seems to me well worth while that you should hear +what he has to say. You could also "average" him while he talks, and +judge whether he could play your priest--though I doubt if any man can do +that justice. + +Shan't I write him and say he may call? If you wish to communicate +directly with him instead, his address is "Larchmont Manor, Westchester +Co., N. Y." + +Do you know, the chill of that 19th of April seems to be in my bones yet? +I am inert and drowsy all the time. That was villainous weather for a +couple of wandering children to be out in. + Ys ever + MARK. + + + The sinister typewriter did not find its way to Howells for nearly a + year. Meantime, Mark Twain had refused to allow the manufacturers + to advertise his ownership. He wrote to them: + + + HARTFORD, March 19, 1875. +Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge the +fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using the typewriter, +for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody +without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe +the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc., +etc. I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people to know +I own this curiosity-breeding little joker. + + + Three months later the machine was still in his possession. Bliss + had traded a twelve-dollar saddle for it, but apparently showed + little enthusiasm in his new possession. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + June 25, 1875. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I told Patrick to get some carpenters and box the +machine and send it to you--and found that Bliss had sent for the machine +and earned it off. + +I have been talking to you and writing to you as if you were present when +I traded the machine to Bliss for a twelve-dollar saddle worth $25 +(cheating him outrageously, of course--but conscience got the upper hand +again and I told him before I left the premises that I'd pay for the +saddle if he didn't like the machine--on condition that he donate said +machine to a charity) + +This was a little over five weeks ago--so I had long ago concluded that +Bliss didn't want the machine and did want the saddle--wherefore I jumped +at the chance of shoving the machine off onto you, saddle or no saddle so +I got the blamed thing out of my sight. + +The saddle hangs on Tara's walls down below in the stable, and the +machine is at Bliss's grimly pursuing its appointed mission, slowly and +implacably rotting away another man's chances for salvation. + +I have sent Bliss word not to donate it to a charity (though it is a pity +to fool away a chance to do a charity an ill turn,) but to let me know +when he has got his dose, because I've got another candidate for +damnation. You just wait a couple of weeks and if you don't see the +Type-Writer come tilting along toward Cambridge with an unsatisfied +appetite in its eye, I lose my guess. + +Don't you be mad about this blunder, Howells--it only comes of a bad +memory, and the stupidity which is inseparable from true genius. Nothing +intentionally criminal in it. + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + It was November when Howells finally fell under the baleful + influence of the machine. He wrote: + + "The typewriter came Wednesday night, and is already beginning to + have its effect on me. Of course, it doesn't work: if I can + persuade some of the letters to get up against the ribbon they won't + get down again without digital assistance. The treadle refuses to + have any part or parcel in the performance; and I don't know how to + get the roller to turn with the paper. Nevertheless I have begun + several letters to My d-a-r lemans, as it prefers to spell your + respected name, and I don't despair yet of sending you something in + its beautiful handwriting--after I've had a man out from the agent's + to put it in order. It's fascinating in the meantime, and it wastes + my time like an old friend." + + The Clemens family remained in Hartford that summer, with the + exception of a brief season at Bateman's Point, R. I., near + Newport. By this time Mark Twain had taken up and finished the Tom + Sawyer story begun two years before. Naturally he wished Howells to + consider the MS. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, July 5th, 1875. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have finished the story and didn't take the chap +beyond boyhood. I believe it would be fatal to do it in any shape but +autobiographically--like Gil Blas. I perhaps made a mistake in not +writing it in the first person. If I went on, now, and took him into +manhood, he would just like like all the one-horse men in literature and +the reader would conceive a hearty contempt for him. It is not a boy's +book, at all. It will only be read by adults. It is only written for +adults. + +Moreover the book is plenty long enough as it stands. It is about 900 +pages of MS, and may be 1000 when I shall have finished "working up" +vague places; so it would make from 130 to 150 pages of the Atlantic +--about what the Foregone Conclusion made, isn't it? + +I would dearly like to see it in the Atlantic, but I doubt if it would +pay the publishers to buy the privilege, or me to sell it. Bret Harte +has sold his novel (same size as mine, I should say) to Scribner's +Monthly for $6,500 (publication to begin in September, I think,) and he +gets a royalty of 7 1/2 per cent from Bliss in book form afterwards. He +gets a royalty of ten per cent on it in England (issued in serial +numbers) and the same royalty on it in book form afterwards, and is to +receive an advance payment of five hundred pounds the day the first No. +of the serial appears. If I could do as well, here, and there, with +mine, it might possibly pay me, but I seriously doubt it though it is +likely I could do better in England than Bret, who is not widely known +there. + +You see I take a vile, mercenary view of things--but then my household +expenses are something almost ghastly. + +By and by I shall take a boy of twelve and run him on through life (in +the first person) but not Tom Sawyer--he would not be a good character +for it. + +I wish you would promise to read the MS of Tom Sawyer some time, and see +if you don't really decide that I am right in closing with him as a boy +--and point out the most glaring defects for me. It is a tremendous favor +to ask, and I expect you to refuse and would be ashamed to expect you to +do otherwise. But the thing has been so many months in my mind that it +seems a relief to snake it out. I don't know any other person whose +judgment I could venture to take fully and entirely. Don't hesitate +about saying no, for I know how your time is taxed, and I would have +honest need to blush if you said yes. + +Osgood and I are "going for" the puppy G---- on infringement of +trademark. To win one or two suits of this kind will set literary folks +on a firmer bottom. I wish Osgood would sue for stealing Holmes's poem. +Wouldn't it be gorgeous to sue R---- for petty larceny? I will promise +to go into court and swear I think him capable of stealing pea-nuts from +a blind pedlar. + Yrs ever, + CLEMENS. + + + Of course Howells promptly replied that he would read the story, + adding: "You've no idea what I may ask you to do for me, some day. + I'm sorry that you can't do it for the Atlantic, but I + succumb. Perhaps you will do Boy No. 2 for us." Clemens, + conscience-stricken, meantime, hastily put the MS. out of reach + of temptation. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + July 13, 1875 +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Just as soon as you consented I realized all the +atrocity of my request, and straightway blushed and weakened. +I telegraphed my theatrical agent to come here and carry off the MS and +copy it. + +But I will gladly send it to you if you will do as follows: dramatize it, +if you perceive that you can, and take, for your remuneration, half of +the first $6000 which I receive for its representation on the stage. You +could alter the plot entirely, if you chose. I could help in the work, +most cheerfully, after you had arranged the plot. I have my eye upon two +young girls who can play "Tom" and "Huck." I believe a good deal of a +drama can be made of it. Come--can't you tackle this in the odd hours of +your vacation? or later, if you prefer? + +I do wish you could come down once more before your holiday. I'd give +anything! + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + +Howells wrote that he had no time for the dramatization and urged Clemens +to undertake it himself. He was ready to read the story, whenever it +should arrive. Clemens did not hurry, however, The publication of Tom +Sawyer could wait. He already had a book in press--the volume of +Sketches New and Old, which he had prepared for Bliss several years +before. + +Sketches was issued that autumn, and Howells gave it a good notice +--possibly better than it deserved. + +Considered among Mark Twain's books to-day, the collection of sketches +does not seem especially important. With the exception of the frog story +and the "True Story" most of those included--might be spared. Clemens +himself confessed to Howells that He wished, when it was too late, that +he had destroyed a number of them. The book, however, was distinguished +in a special way: it contains Mark Twain's first utterance in print on +the subject of copyright, a matter in which he never again lost interest. +The absurdity and injustice of the copyright laws both amused and +irritated him, and in the course of time he would be largely instrumental +in their improvement. In the book his open petition to Congress that all +property rights, as well as literary ownership, should be put on the +copyright basis and limited to a "beneficent term of forty-two years," +was more or less of a joke, but, like so many of Mark Twain's jokes, it +was founded on reason and justice. + +He had another idea, that was not a joke: an early plan in the direction +of international copyright. It was to be a petition signed by the +leading American authors, asking the United States to declare itself to +be the first to stand for right and justice by enacting laws against the +piracy of foreign books. It was a rather utopian scheme, as most schemes +for moral progress are, in their beginning. It would not be likely ever +to reach Congress, but it would appeal to Howells and his Cambridge +friends. Clemens wrote, outlining his plan of action. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Sept. 18, 1875. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--My plan is this--you are to get Mr. Lowell and Mr. +Longfellow to be the first signers of my copyright petition; you must +sign it yourself and get Mr. Whittier to do likewise. Then Holmes will +sign--he said he would if he didn't have to stand at the head. Then I'm +fixed. I will then put a gentlemanly chap under wages and send him +personally to every author of distinction in the country, and corral the +rest of the signatures. Then I'll have the whole thing lithographed +(about a thousand copies) and move upon the President and Congress in +person, but in the subordinate capacity of a party who is merely the +agent of better and wiser men--men whom the country cannot venture to +laugh at. + +I will ask the President to recommend the thing in his message (and if he +should ask me to sit down and frame the paragraph for him I should blush +--but still I would frame it.) + +Next I would get a prime leader in Congress: I would also see that votes +enough to carry the measure were privately secured before the bill was +offered. This I would try through my leader and my friends there. + +And then if Europe chose to go on stealing from us, we would say with +noble enthusiasm, "American lawmakers do steal but not from foreign +authors--Not from foreign authors!" + +You see, what I want to drive into the Congressional mind is the simple +fact that the moral law is "Thou shalt not steal"--no matter what Europe +may do. + +I swear I can't see any use in robbing European authors for the benefit +of American booksellers, anyway. + +If we can ever get this thing through Congress, we can try making +copyright perpetual, some day. There would be no sort of use in it, +since only one book in a hundred millions outlives the present copyright +term--no sort of use except that the writer of that one book have his +rights--which is something. + +If we only had some God in the country's laws, instead of being in such a +sweat to get Him into the Constitution, it would be better all around. + +The only man who ever signed my petition with alacrity, and said that the +fact that a thing was right was all-sufficient, was Rev. Dr. Bushnell. + +I have lost my old petition, (which was brief) but will draft and enclose +another--not in the words it ought to be, but in the substance. I want +Mr. Lowell to furnish the words (and the ideas too,) if he will do it. + +Say--Redpath beseeches me to lecture in Boston in November--telegraphs +that Beecher's and Nast's withdrawal has put him in the tightest kind of +a place. So I guess I'll do that old "Roughing It" lecture over again in +November and repeat it 2 or 3 times in New York while I am at it. + +Can I take a carriage after the lecture and go out and stay with you that +night, provided you find at that distant time that it will not +inconvenience you? Is Aldrich home yet? + With love to you all + Yrs ever, + S. L. C. + + + Of course the petition never reached Congress. Holmes's comment + that governments were not in the habit of setting themselves up as + high moral examples, except for revenue, was shared by too many + others. The petition was tabled, but Clemens never abandoned his + purpose and lived to see most of his dream fulfilled. Meantime, + Howells's notice of the Sketches appeared in the Atlantic, and + brought grateful acknowledgment from the author. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Oct. 19, 1875. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--That is a perfectly superb notice. You can easily +believe that nothing ever gratified me so much before. The newspaper +praises bestowed upon the "Innocents Abroad" were large and generous, but +somehow I hadn't confidence in the critical judgement of the parties who +furnished them. You know how that is, yourself, from reading the +newspaper notices of your own books. They gratify a body, but they +always leave a small pang behind in the shape of a fear that the critic's +good words could not safely be depended upon as authority. Yours is the +recognized critical Court of Last Resort in this country; from its +decision there is no appeal; and so, to have gained this decree of yours +before I am forty years old, I regard as a thing to be right down proud +of. Mrs. Clemens says, "Tell him I am just as grateful to him as I can +be." (It sounds as if she were grateful to you for heroically trampling +the truth under foot in order to praise me but in reality it means that +she is grateful to you for being bold enough to utter a truth which she +fully believes all competent people know, but which none has heretofore +been brave enough to utter.) You see, the thing that gravels her is that +I am so persistently glorified as a mere buffoon, as if that entirely +covered my case--which she denies with venom. + +The other day Mrs. Clemens was planning a visit to you, and so I am +waiting with a pleasurable hope for the result of her deliberations. +We are expecting visitors every day, now, from New York; and afterward +some are to come from Elmira. I judge that we shall then be free to go +Bostonward. I should be just delighted; because we could visit in +comfort, since we shouldn't have to do any shopping--did it all in New +York last week, and a tremendous pull it was too. + +Mrs. C. said the other day, "We will go to Cambridge if we have to walk; +for I don't believe we can ever get the Howellses to come here again +until we have been there." I was gratified to see that there was one +string, anyway, that could take her to Cambridge. But I will do her the +justice to say that she is always wanting to go to Cambridge, independent +of the selfish desire to get a visit out of you by it. I want her to get +started, now, before children's diseases are fashionable again, because +they always play such hob with visiting arrangements. + With love to you all + Yrs Ever + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Mark Twain's trips to Boston were usually made alone. Women require + more preparation to go visiting, and Mrs. Clemens and Mrs. Howells + seem to have exchanged visits infrequently. For Mark Twain, + perhaps, it was just as well that his wife did not always go with + him; his absent-mindedness and boyish ingenuousness often led him + into difficulties which Mrs. Clemens sometimes found embarrassing. + In the foregoing letter they were planning a visit to Cambridge. In + the one that follows they seem to have made it--with certain + results, perhaps not altogether amusing at the moment. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + Oct. 4, '75. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We had a royal good time at your house, and have had a +royal good time ever since, talking about it, both privately and with the +neighbors. + +Mrs. Clemens's bodily strength came up handsomely under that cheery +respite from household and nursery cares. I do hope that Mrs. Howells's +didn't go correspondingly down, under the added burden to her cares and +responsibilities. Of course I didn't expect to get through without +committing some crimes and hearing of them afterwards, so I have taken +the inevitable lashings and been able to hum a tune while the punishment +went on. I "caught it" for letting Mrs. Howells bother and bother about +her coffee when it was "a good deal better than we get at home." +I "caught it" for interrupting Mrs. C. at the last moment and losing her +the opportunity to urge you not to forget to send her that MS when the +printers are done with it. I "caught it" once more for personating that +drunken Col. James. I "caught it" for mentioning that Mr. Longfellow's +picture was slightly damaged; and when, after a lull in the storm, +I confessed, shame-facedly, that I had privately suggested to you that we +hadn't any frames, and that if you wouldn't mind hinting to Mr. Houghton, +&c., &c., &c., the Madam was simply speechless for the space of a minute. +Then she said: + +"How could you, Youth! The idea of sending Mr. Howells, with his +sensitive nature, upon such a repulsive er--" + +"Oh, Howells won't mind it! You don't know Howells. Howells is a man +who--" She was gone. But George was the first person she stumbled on in +the hall, so she took it out of George. I was glad of that, because it +saved the babies. + +I've got another rattling good character for my novel! That great work +is mulling itself into shape gradually. + +Mrs. Clemens sends love to Mrs. Howells--meantime she is diligently +laying up material for a letter to her. + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + The "George" of this letter was Mark Twain's colored butler, a + valued and even beloved member of the household--a most picturesque + character, who "one day came to wash windows," as Clemens used to + say, "and remained eighteen years." The fiction of Mrs. Clemens's + severity he always found amusing, because of its entire contrast + with the reality of her gentle heart. + + Clemens carried the Tom Sawyer MS. to Boston himself and placed it + in Howells's hands. Howells had begged to be allowed to see the + story, and Mrs. Clemens was especially anxious that he should do so. + She had doubts as to certain portions of it, and had the fullest + faith in Howells's opinion. + + It was a gratifying one when it came. Howells wrote: "I finished + reading Tom Sawyer a week ago, sitting up till one A.M. to get to + the end, simply because it was impossible to leave off. It's + altogether the best boy's story I ever read. It will be an immense + success. But I think you ought to treat it explicitly as a boy's + story. Grown-ups will enjoy it just as much if you do; and if you + should put it forth as a study of boy character from the grown-up + point of view, you give the wrong key to it.... The adventures + are enchanting. I wish I had been on that island. The + treasure-hunting, the loss in the cave--it's all exciting and + splendid. I shouldn't think of publishing this story serially. + Give me a hint when it's to be out, and I'll start the sheep to + jumping in the right places"--meaning that he would have an advance + review ready for publication in the Atlantic, which was a leader of + criticism in America. + + Mark Twain was writing a great deal at this time. Howells was + always urging him to send something to the Atlantic, declaring a + willingness to have his name appear every month in their pages, and + Clemens was generally contributing some story or sketch. The + "proof" referred to in the next letter was of one of these articles. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Nov. 23, '75. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Herewith is the proof. In spite of myself, how +awkwardly I do jumble words together; and how often I do use three words +where one would answer--a thing I am always trying to guard against. +I shall become as slovenly a writer as Charles Francis Adams, if I don't +look out. (That is said in jest; because of course I do not seriously +fear getting so bad as that. I never shall drop so far toward his and +Bret Harte's level as to catch myself saying "It must have been wiser to +have believed that he might have accomplished it if he could have felt +that he would have been supported by those who should have &c. &c. &c.") +The reference to Bret Harte reminds me that I often accuse him of being a +deliberate imitator of Dickens; and this in turn reminds me that I have +charged unconscious plagiarism upon Charley Warner; and this in turn +reminds me that I have been delighting my soul for two weeks over a bran +new and ingenious way of beginning a novel--and behold, all at once it +flashes upon me that Charley Warner originated the idea 3 years ago and +told me about it! Aha! So much for self-righteousness! I am well +repaid. Here are 108 pages of MS, new and clean, lying disgraced in the +waste paper basket, and I am beginning the novel over again in an +unstolen way. I would not wonder if I am the worst literary thief in the +world, without knowing it. + +It is glorious news that you like Tom Sawyer so well. I mean to see to +it that your review of it shall have plenty of time to appear before the +other notices. Mrs. Clemens decides with you that the book should issue +as a book for boys, pure and simple--and so do I. It is surely the +correct idea. As to that last chapter, I think of just leaving it off +and adding nothing in its place. Something told me that the book was +done when I got to that point--and so the strong temptation to put Huck's +life at the Widow's into detail, instead of generalizing it in a +paragraph was resisted. Just send Sawyer to me by express--I enclose +money for it. If it should get lost it will be no great matter. + +Company interfered last night, and so "Private Theatricals" goes over +till this evening, to be read aloud. Mrs. Clemens is mad, but the story +will take that all out. This is going to be a splendid winter night for +fireside reading, anyway. + +I am almost at a dead stand-still with my new story, on account of the +misery of having to do it all over again. We--all send love to you--all. + Yrs ever + MARK. + + +The "story" referred to may have been any one of several begun by him at +this time. His head was full of ideas for literature of every sort. +Many of his beginnings came to nothing, for the reason that he started +wrong, or with no definitely formed plan. Others of his literary +enterprises were condemned by his wife for their grotesqueness or for the +offense they might give in one way or another, however worthy the +intention behind them. Once he wrote a burlesque on family history "The +Autobiography of a Damned Fool." "Livy wouldn't have it," he said later, +"so I gave it up." The world is indebted to Mark Twain's wife for the +check she put upon his fantastic or violent impulses. She was his +public, his best public--clearheaded and wise. That he realized this, +and was willing to yield, was by no means the least of his good fortunes. +We may believe that he did not always yield easily, and perhaps sometimes +only out of love for her. In the letter which he wrote her on her +thirtieth birthday we realize something of what she had come to mean in +his life. + + + To Mrs. Clemens on her Thirtieth Birthday: + + HARTFORD, November 27, 1875. +Livy darling, six years have gone by since I made my first great success +in life and won you, and thirty years have passed since Providence made +preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world. Every +day we live together adds to the security of my confidence, that we can +never any more wish to be separated than that we can ever imagine a +regret that we were ever joined. You are dearer to me to-day, my child, +than you were upon the last anniversary of this birth-day; you were +dearer then than you were a year before--you have grown more and more +dear from the first of those anniversaries, and I do not doubt that this +precious progression will continue on to the end. + +Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age and their +gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting and believing +that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them blessed. + +So, with abounding affection for you and our babies, I hail this day that +brings you the matronly grace and dignity of three decades! + + Always Yours + S. L. C. + + + + + + +MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1876-1885 + +ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE + + + +VOLUME III. + + +XVI. + +LETTERS, 1876, CHIEFLY TO W. D. HOWELLS. LITERATURE AND POLITICS. +PLANNING A PLAY WITH BRET HARTE + + The Monday Evening Club of Hartford was an association of most of + the literary talent of that city, and it included a number of very + distinguished members. The writers, the editors, the lawyers, and + the ministers of the gospel who composed it were more often than not + men of national or international distinction. There was but one + paper at each meeting, and it was likely to be a paper that would + later find its way into some magazine. + + Naturally Mark Twain was one of its favorite members, and his + contributions never failed to arouse interest and discussion. A + "Mark Twain night" brought out every member. In the next letter we + find the first mention of one of his most memorable contributions--a + story of one of life's moral aspects. The tale, now included in his + collected works, is, for some reason, little read to-day; yet the + curious allegory, so vivid in its seeming reality, is well worth + consideration. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Jan. 11, '76. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Indeed we haven't forgotten the Howellses, nor scored +up a grudge of any kind against them; but the fact is I was under the +doctor's hands for four weeks on a stretch and have been disabled from +working for a week or so beside. I thought I was well, about ten days +ago, so I sent for a short-hand writer and dictated answers to a bushel +or so of letters that had been accumulating during my illness. Getting +everything shipshape and cleared up, I went to work next day upon an +Atlantic article, which ought to be worth $20 per page (which is the +price they usually pay for my work, I believe) for although it is only 70 +pages MS (less than two days work, counting by bulk,) I have spent 3 more +days trimming, altering and working at it. I shall put in one more day's +polishing on it, and then read it before our Club, which is to meet at +our house Monday evening, the 24th inst. I think it will bring out +considerable discussion among the gentlemen of the Club--though the title +of the article will not give them much notion of what is to follow,--this +title being "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in +Connecticut"--which reminds me that today's Tribune says there will be a +startling article in the current Atlantic, in which a being which is +tangible bud invisible will figure-exactly the case with the sketch of +mine which I am talking about! However, mine can lie unpublished a year +or two as well as not--though I wish that contributor of yours had not +interfered with his coincidence of heroes. + +But what I am coming at, is this: won't you and Mrs. Howells come down +Saturday the 22nd and remain to the Club on Monday night? We always have +a rattling good time at the Club and we do want you to come, ever so +much. Will you? Now say you will. Mrs. Clemens and I are persuading +ourselves that you twain will come. + +My volume of sketches is doing very well, considering the times; received +my quarterly statement today from Bliss, by which I perceive that 20,000 +copies have been sold--or rather, 20,000 had been sold 3 weeks ago; a lot +more, by this time, no doubt. + +I am on the sick list again--and was, day before yesterday--but on the +whole I am getting along. + Yrs ever + MARK + + + Howells wrote that he could not come down to the club meeting, + adding that sickness was "quite out of character" for Mark Twain, + and hardly fair on a man who had made so many other people feel + well. He closed by urging that Bliss "hurry out" 'Tom Sawyer.' + "That boy is going to make a prodigious hit." Clemens answered: + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston. + + HARTFORD, Jan. 18, '76. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Thanks, and ever so many, for the good opinion of 'Tom +Sawyer.' Williams has made about 300 rattling pictures for it--some of +them very dainty. Poor devil, what a genius he has and how he does +murder it with rum. He takes a book of mine, and without suggestion from +anybody builds no end of pictures just from his reading of it. + +There was never a man in the world so grateful to another as I was to you +day before yesterday, when I sat down (in still rather wretched health) +to set myself to the dreary and hateful task of making final revision of +Tom Sawyer, and discovered, upon opening the package of MS that your +pencil marks were scattered all along. This was splendid, and swept away +all labor. Instead of reading the MS, I simply hunted out the pencil +marks and made the emendations which they suggested. I reduced the boy +battle to a curt paragraph; I finally concluded to cut the Sunday school +speech down to the first two sentences, leaving no suggestion of satire, +since the book is to be for boys and girls; I tamed the various +obscenities until I judged that they no longer carried offense. So, at a +single sitting I began and finished a revision which I had supposed would +occupy 3 or 4. days and leave me mentally and physically fagged out at +the end. I was careful not to inflict the MS upon you until I had +thoroughly and painstakingly revised it. Therefore, the only faults left +were those that would discover themselves to others, not me--and these +you had pointed out. + +There was one expression which perhaps you overlooked. When Huck is +complaining to Tom of the rigorous system in vogue at the widow's, he +says the servants harass him with all manner of compulsory decencies, and +he winds up by saying: "and they comb me all to hell." (No exclamation +point.) Long ago, when I read that to Mrs. Clemens, she made no comment; +another time I created occasion to read that chapter to her aunt and her +mother (both sensitive and loyal subjects of the kingdom of heaven, so to +speak) and they let it pass. I was glad, for it was the most natural +remark in the world for that boy to make (and he had been allowed few +privileges of speech in the book;) when I saw that you, too, had let it +go without protest, I was glad, and afraid; too--afraid you hadn't +observed it. Did you? And did you question the propriety of it? Since +the book is now professedly and confessedly a boy's and girl's hook, that +darn word bothers me some, nights, but it never did until I had ceased to +regard the volume as being for adults. + +Don't bother to answer now, (for you've writing enough to do without +allowing me to add to the burden,) but tell me when you see me again! + +Which we do hope will be next Saturday or Sunday or Monday. Couldn't you +come now and mull over the alterations which you are going to make in +your MS, and make them after you go back? Wouldn't it assist the work if +you dropped out of harness and routine for a day or two and have that +sort of revivification which comes of a holiday-forgetfulness of the +work-shop? I can always work after I've been to your house; and if you +will come to mine, now, and hear the club toot their various horns over +the exasperating metaphysical question which I mean to lay before them in +the disguise of a literary extravaganza, it would just brace you up like +a cordial. + +(I feel sort of mean trying to persuade a man to put down a critical +piece of work at a critical time, but yet I am honest in thinking it +would not hurt the work nor impair your interest in it to come under the +circumstances.) Mrs. Clemens says, "Maybe the Howellses could come Monday +if they cannot come Saturday; ask them; it is worth trying." Well, how's +that? Could you? It would be splendid if you could. Drop me a postal +card--I should have a twinge of conscience if I forced you to write a +letter, (I am honest about that,)--and if you find you can't make out to +come, tell me that you bodies will come the next Saturday if the thing is +possible, and stay over Sunday. + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + Howells, however, did not come to the club meeting, but promised to + come soon when they could have a quiet time to themselves together. + As to Huck's language, he declared: + + "I'd have that swearing out in an instant. I suppose I didn't + notice it because the locution was so familiar to my Western sense, + and so exactly the thing that Huck would say." Clemens changed the + phrase to, "They comb me all to thunder," and so it stands to-day. + + The "Carnival of Crime," having served its purpose at the club, + found quick acceptance by Howells for the Atlantic. He was so + pleased with it, in fact, that somewhat later he wrote, urging that + its author allow it to be printed in a dainty book, by Osgood, who + made a specialty of fine publishing. Meantime Howells had written + his Atlantic notice of Tom Sawyer, and now inclosed Clemens a proof + of it. We may judge from the reply that it was satisfactory. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + Apl 3, '76. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It is a splendid notice and will embolden weak-kneed +journalistic admirers to speak out, and will modify or shut up the +unfriendly. To "fear God and dread the Sunday school" exactly described +that old feeling which I used to have, but I couldn't have formulated it. +I want to enclose one of the illustrations in this letter, if I do not +forget it. Of course the book is to be elaborately illustrated, and I +think that many of the pictures are considerably above the American +average, in conception if not in execution. + +I do not re-enclose your review to you, for you have evidently read and +corrected it, and so I judge you do not need it. About two days after +the Atlantic issues I mean to begin to send books to principal journals +and magazines. + +I read the "Carnival of Crime" proof in New York when worn and witless +and so left some things unamended which I might possibly have altered had +I been at home. For instance, "I shall always address you in your own +S-n-i-v-e-l-i-n-g d-r-a-w-l, baby." I saw that you objected to something +there, but I did not understand what! Was it that it was too personal? +Should the language be altered?--or the hyphens taken out? Won't you +please fix it the way it ought to be, altering the language as you +choose, only making it bitter and contemptuous? + +"Deuced" was not strong enough; so I met you halfway with "devilish." + +Mrs. Clemens has returned from New York with dreadful sore throat, and +bones racked with rheumatism. She keeps her bed. "Aloha nui!" as the +Kanakas say. + MARK. + + + Henry Irving once said to Mark Twain: "You made a mistake by not + adopting the stage as a profession. You would have made even a + greater actor than a writer." + + Mark Twain would have made an actor, certainly, but not a very + tractable one. His appearance in Hartford in "The Loan of a Lover" + was a distinguished event, and his success complete, though he made + so many extemporaneous improvements on the lines of thick-headed + Peter Spuyk, that he kept the other actors guessing as to their + cues, and nearly broke up the performance. It was, of course, an + amateur benefit, though Augustin Daly promptly wrote, offering to + put it on for a long run. + + The "skeleton novelette" mentioned in the next letter refers to a + plan concocted by Howells and Clemens, by which each of twelve + authors was to write a story, using the same plot, "blindfolded" as + to what the others had written. It was a regular "Mark Twain" + notion, and it is hard to-day to imagine Howells's continued + enthusiasm in it. Neither he nor Clemens gave up the idea for a + long time. It appears in their letters again and again, though + perhaps it was just as well for literature that it was never carried + out. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + Apl. 22, 1876. +MY DEAR HOWELLS, You'll see per enclosed slip that I appear for the first +time on the stage next Wednesday. You and Mrs. H. come down and you +shall skip in free. + +I wrote my skeleton novelette yesterday and today. It will make a little +under 12 pages. + +Please tell Aldrich I've got a photographer engaged, and tri-weekly issue +is about to begin. Show him the canvassing specimens and beseech him to +subscribe. + Ever yours, + S. L. C. + + + In his next letter Mark Twain explains why Tom Sawyer is not to + appear as soon as planned. The reference to "The Literary + Nightmare" refers to the "Punch, Conductor, Punch with Care" sketch, + which had recently appeared in the Atlantic. Many other versifiers + had had their turn at horse-car poetry, and now a publisher was + anxious to collect it in a book, provided he could use the Atlantic + sketch. Clemens does not tell us here the nature of Carlton's + insult, forgiveness of which he was not yet qualified to grant, but + there are at least two stories about it, or two halves of the same + incident, as related afterward by Clemens and Canton. Clemens said + that when he took the Jumping Frog book to Carlton, in 1867, the + latter, pointing to his stock, said, rather scornfully: "Books? + I don't want your book; my shelves are full of books now," though + the reader may remember that it was Carlton himself who had given + the frog story to the Saturday Press and had seen it become famous. + Carlton's half of the story was that he did not accept Mark Twain's + book because the author looked so disreputable. Long afterward, + when the two men met in Europe, the publisher said to the now rich + and famous author: "Mr. Clemens, my one claim on immortality is that + I declined your first book." + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Apl. 25, 1876 +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Thanks for giving me the place of honor. + +Bliss made a failure in the matter of getting Tom Sawyer ready on time +--the engravers assisting, as usual. I went down to see how much of a +delay there was going to be, and found that the man had not even put a +canvasser on, or issued an advertisement yet--in fact, that the +electrotypes would not all be done for a month! But of course the main +fact was that no canvassing had been done--because a subscription harvest +is before publication, (not after, when people have discovered how bad +one's book is.) + +Well, yesterday I put in the Courant an editorial paragraph stating that +Tam Sawyer is "ready to issue, but publication is put off in order to +secure English copyright by simultaneous publication there and here. The +English edition is unavoidably delayed." + +You see, part of that is true. Very well. When I observed that my +"Sketches" had dropped from a sale of 6 or 7000 a month down to 1200 a +month, I said "this ain't no time to be publishing books; therefore, let +Tom lie still till Autumn, Mr. Bliss, and make a holiday book of him to +beguile the young people withal." + +I shall print items occasionally, still further delaying Tom, till I ease +him down to Autumn without shock to the waiting world. + +As to that "Literary Nightmare" proposition. I'm obliged to withhold +consent, for what seems a good reason--to wit: A single page of horse-car +poetry is all that the average reader can stand, without nausea; now, to +stack together all of it that has been written, and then add it to my +article would be to enrage and disgust each and every reader and win the +deathless enmity of the lot. + +Even if that reason were insufficient, there would still be a sufficient +reason left, in the fact that Mr. Carlton seems to be the publisher of +the magazine in which it is proposed to publish this horse-car matter. +Carlton insulted me in Feb. 1867, and so when the day arrives that sees +me doing him a civility I shall feel that I am ready for Paradise, since +my list of possible and impossible forgivenesses will then be complete. + +Mrs. Clemens says my version of the blindfold novelette "A Murder and A +Marriage" is "good." Pretty strong language--for her. + +The Fieldses are coming down to the play tomorrow, and they promise to +get you and Mrs. Howells to come too, but I hope you'll do nothing of the +kind if it will inconvenience you, for I'm not going to play either +strikingly bad enough or well enough to make the journey pay you. + +My wife and I think of going to Boston May 7th to see Anna Dickinson's +debut on the 8th. If I find we can go, I'll try to get a stage box and +then you and Mrs. Howells must come to Parker's and go with us to the +crucifixion. + +(Is that spelt right?--somehow it doesn't look right.) + +With our very kindest regards to the whole family. + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + The mention of Anna Dickinson, at the end of this letter, recalls a + prominent reformer and lecturer of the Civil War period. She had + begun her crusades against temperance and slavery in 1857, when she + was but fifteen years old, when her success as a speaker had been + immediate and extraordinary. Now, in this later period, at the age + of thirty-four, she aspired to the stage--unfortunately for her, as + her gifts lay elsewhere. Clemens and Howells knew Miss Dickinson, + and were anxious for the success which they hardly dared hope for. + Clemens arranged a box party. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + May 4, '76. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I shall reach Boston on Monday the 8th, either at +4:30 p.m. or 6 p.m. (Which is best?) and go straight to Parker's. +If you and Mrs. Howells cannot be there by half past 4, I'll not plan to +arrive till the later train-time (6,) because I don't want to be there +alone--even a minute. Still, Joe Twichell will doubtless go with me +(forgot that,) he is going to try hard to. Mrs. Clemens has given up +going, because Susy is just recovering from about the savagest assault of +diphtheria a child ever did recover from, and therefore will not be +entirely her healthy self again by the 8th. + +Would you and Mrs. Howells like to invite Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich? I have +a large proscenium box--plenty of room. Use your own pleasure about it +--I mainly (that is honest,) suggest it because I am seeking to make +matters pleasant for you and Mrs. Howells. I invited Twichell because I +thought I knew you'd like that. I want you to fix it so that you and the +Madam can remain in Boston all night; for I leave next day and we can't +have a talk, otherwise. I am going to get two rooms and a parlor; and +would like to know what you decide about the Aldriches, so as to know +whether to apply for an additional bedroom or not. + +Don't dine that evening, for I shall arrive dinnerless and need your +help. + +I'll bring my Blindfold Novelette, but shan't exhibit it unless you +exhibit yours. You would simply go to work and write a novelette that +would make mine sick. Because you would know all about where my weak +points lay. No, Sir, I'm one of these old wary birds! + +Don't bother to write a letter--3 lines on a postal card is all that I +can permit from a busy man. + Yrs ever + MARK. + +P. S. Good! You'll not have to feel any call to mention that debut in +the Atlantic--they've made me pay the grand cash for my box!--a thing +which most managers would be too worldly-wise to do, with journalistic +folks. But I'm most honestly glad, for I'd rather pay three prices, any +time, than to have my tongue half paralyzed with a dead-head ticket. + +Hang that Anna Dickinson, a body can never depend upon her debuts! She +has made five or six false starts already. If she fails to debut this +time, I will never bet on her again. + + + In his book, My Mark Twain, Howells refers to the "tragedy" of Miss + Dickinson's appearance. She was the author of numerous plays, some + of which were successful, but her career as an actress was never + brilliant. + + At Elmira that summer the Clemenses heard from their good friend + Doctor Brown, of Edinburgh, and sent eager replies. + + + To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh: + + ELMIRA, NEW YORK, U. S. June 22, 1876. +DEAR FRIEND THE DOCTOR,--It was a perfect delight to see the well-known +handwriting again! But we so grieve to know that you are feeling +miserable. It must not last--it cannot last. The regal summer is come +and it will smile you into high good cheer; it will charm away your +pains, it will banish your distresses. I wish you were here, to spend +the summer with us. We are perched on a hill-top that overlooks a little +world of green valleys, shining rivers, sumptuous forests and billowy +uplands veiled in the haze of distance. We have no neighbors. It is the +quietest of all quiet places, and we are hermits that eschew caves and +live in the sun. Doctor, if you'd only come! + +I will carry your letter to Mrs. C. now, and there will be a glad woman, +I tell you! And she shall find one of those pictures to put in this for +Mrs. Barclays and if there isn't one here we'll send right away to +Hartford and get one. Come over, Doctor John, and bring the Barclays, +the Nicolsons and the Browns, one and all! + Affectionately, + SAML. L. CLEMENS. + + + From May until August no letters appear to have passed between + Clemens and Howells; the latter finally wrote, complaining of the + lack of news. He was in the midst of campaign activities, he said, + writing a life of Hayes, and gaily added: "You know I wrote the life + of Lincoln, which elected him." He further reported a comedy he had + completed, and gave Clemens a general stirring up as to his own + work. + + Mark Twain, in his hillside study, was busy enough. Summer was his + time for work, and he had tried his hand in various directions. His + mention of Huck Finn in his reply to Howells is interesting, in that + it shows the measure of his enthusiasm, or lack of it, as a gauge of + his ultimate achievement + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, Aug. 9, 1876. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I was just about to write you when your letter came +--and not one of those obscene postal cards, either, but reverently, upon +paper. + +I shall read that biography, though the letter of acceptance was amply +sufficient to corral my vote without any further knowledge of the man. +Which reminds me that a campaign club in Jersey City wrote a few days ago +and invited me to be present at the raising of a Tilden and Hendricks +flag there, and to take the stand and give them some "counsel." Well, I +could not go, but gave them counsel and advice by letter, and in the +kindliest terms as to the raising of the flag--advised them "not to raise +it." + +Get your book out quick, for this is a momentous time. If Tilden is +elected I think the entire country will go pretty straight to--Mrs. +Howells's bad place. + +I am infringing on your patent--I started a record of our children's +sayings, last night. Which reminds me that last week I sent down and got +Susie a vast pair of shoes of a most villainous pattern, for I discovered +that her feet were being twisted and cramped out of shape by a smaller +and prettier article. She did not complain, but looked degraded and +injured. At night her mamma gave her the usual admonition when she was +about to say her prayers--to wit: + +"Now, Susie--think about God." + +"Mamma, I can't, with those shoes." + +The farm is perfectly delightful this season. It is as quiet and +peaceful as a South Sea Island. Some of the sunsets which we have +witnessed from this commanding eminence were marvelous. One evening a +rainbow spanned an entire range of hills with its mighty arch, and from a +black hub resting upon the hill-top in the exact centre, black rays +diverged upward in perfect regularity to the rainbow's arch and created a +very strongly defined and altogether the most majestic, magnificent and +startling half-sunk wagon wheel you can imagine. After that, a world of +tumbling and prodigious clouds came drifting up out of the West and took +to themselves a wonderfully rich and brilliant green color--the decided +green of new spring foliage. Close by them we saw the intense blue of +the skies, through rents in the cloud-rack, and away off in another +quarter were drifting clouds of a delicate pink color. In one place hung +a pall of dense black clouds, like compacted pitch-smoke. And the +stupendous wagon wheel was still in the supremacy of its unspeakable +grandeur. So you see, the colors present in the sky at once and the same +time were blue, green, pink, black, and the vari-colored splendors of the +rainbow. All strong and decided colors, too. I don't know whether this +weird and astounding spectacle most suggested heaven, or hell. The +wonder, with its constant, stately, and always surprising changes, lasted +upwards of two hours, and we all stood on the top of the hill by my study +till the final miracle was complete and the greatest day ended that we +ever saw. + +Our farmer, who is a grave man, watched that spectacle to the end, and +then observed that it was "dam funny." + +The double-barreled novel lies torpid. I found I could not go on with +it. The chapters I had written were still too new and familiar to me. +I may take it up next winter, but cannot tell yet; I waited and waited to +see if my interest in it would not revive, but gave it up a month ago and +began another boys' book--more to be at work than anything else. I have +written 400 pages on it--therefore it is very nearly half done. It is +Huck Finn's Autobiography. I like it only tolerably well, as far as I +have got, and may possibly pigeonhole or burn the MS when it is done. + +So the comedy is done, and with a "fair degree of satisfaction." That +rejoices me, and makes me mad, too--for I can't plan a comedy, and what +have you done that God should be so good to you? I have racked myself +baldheaded trying to plan a comedy harness for some promising characters +of mine to work in, and had to give it up. It is a noble lot of blooded +stock and worth no end of money, but they must stand in the stable and be +profitless. I want to be present when the comedy is produced and help +enjoy the success. + +Warner's book is mighty readable, I think. + Love to yez. + Yrs ever + MARK + + + Howells promptly wrote again, urging him to enter the campaign for + Hayes. "There is not another man in this country," he said, "who + could help him so much as you." The "farce" which Clemens refers to + in his reply, was "The Parlor Car," which seems to have been about + the first venture of Howells in that field. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, August 23, 1876. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I am glad you think I could do Hayes any good, for I +have been wanting to write a letter or make a speech to that end. I'll +be careful not to do either, however, until the opportunity comes in a +natural, justifiable and unlugged way; and shall not then do anything +unless I've got it all digested and worded just right. In which case I +might do some good--in any other I should do harm. When a humorist +ventures upon the grave concerns of life he must do his job better than +another man or he works harm to his cause. + +The farce is wonderfully bright and delicious, and must make a hit. You +read it to me, and it was mighty good; I read it last night and it was +better; I read it aloud to the household this morning and it was better +than ever. So it would be worth going a long way to see it well played; +for without any question an actor of genius always adds a subtle +something to any man's work that none but the writer knew was there +before. Even if he knew it. I have heard of readers convulsing +audiences with my "Aurelia's Unfortunate Young Man." If there is +anything really funny in the piece, the author is not aware of it. + +All right--advertise me for the new volume. I send you herewith a sketch +which will make 3 pages of the Atlantic. If you like it and accept it, +you should get it into the December No. because I shall read it in public +in Boston the 13th and 14th of Nov. If it went in a month earlier it +would be too old for me to read except as old matter; and if it went in a +month later it would be too old for the Atlantic--do you see? And if you +wish to use it, will you set it up now, and send me three proofs?--one +to correct for Atlantic, one to send to Temple Bar (shall I tell them to +use it not earlier than their November No.) and one to use in practising +for my Boston readings. + +We must get up a less elaborate and a much better skeleton-plan for the +Blindfold Novels and make a success of that idea. David Gray spent +Sunday here and said we could but little comprehend what a rattling stir +that thing would make in the country. He thought it would make a mighty +strike. So do I. But with only 8 pages to tell the tale in, the plot +must be less elaborate, doubtless. What do you think? + +When we exchange visits I'll show you an unfinished sketch of Elizabeth's +time which shook David Gray's system up pretty exhaustively. + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + The MS. sketch mentioned in the foregoing letter was "The + Canvasser's Tale," later included in the volume, Tom Sawyer Abroad, + and Other Stories. It is far from being Mark Twain's best work, but + was accepted and printed in the Atlantic. David Gray was an able + journalist and editor whom Mark Twain had known in Buffalo. + + The "sketch of Elizabeth's time" is a brilliant piece of writing + --an imaginary record of conversation and court manners in the good + old days of free speech and performance, phrased in the language of + the period. Gray, John Hay, Twichell, and others who had a chance + to see it thought highly of it, and Hay had it set in type and a few + proofs taken for private circulation. Some years afterward a West + Point officer had a special font of antique type made for it, and + printed a hundred copies. But the present-day reader would hardly + be willing to include "Fireside Conversation in the Time of Queen + Elizabeth" in Mark Twain's collected works. + + Clemens was a strong Republican in those days, as his letters of + this period show. His mention of the "caves" in the next is another + reference to "The Canvasser's Tale." + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + Sept. 14, 1876. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Yes, the collection of caves was the origin of it. +I changed it to echoes because these being invisible and intangible, +constituted a still more absurd species of property, and yet a man could +really own an echo, and sell it, too, for a high figure--such an echo as +that at the Villa Siminetti, two miles from Milan, for instance. +My first purpose was to have the man make a collection of caves and +afterwards of echoes; but perceived that the element of absurdity and +impracticability was so nearly identical as to amount to a repetition of +an idea..... + +I will not, and do not, believe that there is a possibility of Hayes's +defeat, but I want the victory to be sweeping..... + +It seems odd to find myself interested in an election. I never was +before. And I can't seem to get over my repugnance to reading or +thinking about politics, yet. But in truth I care little about any +party's politics--the man behind it is the important thing. + +You may well know that Mrs. Clemens liked the Parlor Car--enjoyed it ever +so much, and was indignant at you all through, and kept exploding into +rages at you for pretending that such a woman ever existed--closing each +and every explosion with "But it is just what such a woman would do." +--"It is just what such a woman would say." They all voted the Parlor +Car perfection--except me. I said they wouldn't have been allowed to +court and quarrel there so long, uninterrupted; but at each critical +moment the odious train-boy would come in and pile foul literature all +over them four or five inches deep, and the lover would turn his head +aside and curse--and presently that train-boy would be back again (as on +all those Western roads) to take up the literature and leave prize candy. + +Of course the thing is perfect, in the magazine, without the train-boy; +but I was thinking of the stage and the groundlings. If the dainty +touches went over their heads, the train-boy and other possible +interruptions would fetch them every time. Would it mar the flow of the +thing too much to insert that devil? I thought it over a couple of hours +and concluded it wouldn't, and that he ought to be in for the sake of the +groundlings (and to get new copyright on the piece.) + +And it seemed to me that now that the fourth act is so successfully +written, why not go ahead and write the 3 preceding acts? And then after +it is finished, let me put into it a low-comedy character (the girl's or +the lover's father or uncle) and gobble a big pecuniary interest in your +work for myself. Do not let this generous proposition disturb your rest +--but do write the other 3 acts, and then it will be valuable to +managers. And don't go and sell it to anybody, like Harte, but keep it +for yourself. + +Harte's play can be doctored till it will be entirely acceptable and then +it will clear a great sum every year. I am out of all patience with +Harte for selling it. The play entertained me hugely, even in its +present crude state. + Love to you all. + Yrs ever, + MARK + + + Following the Sellers success, Clemens had made many attempts at + dramatic writing. Such undertakings had uniformly failed, but he + had always been willing to try again. In the next letter we get the + beginning of what proved his first and last direct literary + association, that is to say, collaboration, with Bret Harte. + Clemens had great admiration for Harte's ability and believed that + between them they could turn out a successful play. Whether or not + this belief was justified will appear later. Howells's biography of + Hayes, meanwhile, had not gone well. He reported that only two + thousand copies had been sold in what was now the height of the + campaign. "There's success for you," he said; "it makes me despair + of the Republic." + + Clemens, on his part, had made a speech for Hayes that Howells + declared had put civil-service reform in a nutshell; he added: "You + are the only Republican orator, quoted without distinction of party + by all the newspapers." + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Oct. 11, 1876. +MY DEAR HOWELLS, This is a secret, to be known to nobody but you (of +course I comprehend that Mrs. Howells is part of you) that Bret Harte +came up here the other day and asked me to help him write a play and +divide the swag, and I agreed. I am to put in Scotty Briggs (See Buck +Fanshaw's Funeral, in "Roughing It.") and he is to put in a Chinaman (a, +wonderfully funny creature, as Bret presents him--for 5 minutes--in his +Sandy Bar play.) This Chinaman is to be the character of the play, and +both of us will work on him and develop him. Bret is to draw a plot, and +I am to do the same; we shall use the best of the two, or gouge from both +and build a third. My plot is built--finished it yesterday--six days' +work, 8 or 9 hours a day, and has nearly killed me. + +Now the favor I ask of you is that you will have the words "Ah Sin, a +Drama," printed in the middle of a note-paper page and send the same to +me, with Bill. We don't want anybody to know that we are building this +play. I can't get this title page printed here without having to lie so +much that the thought of it is disagreeable to one reared as I have been. +And yet the title of the play must be printed--the rest of the +application for copyright is allowable in penmanship. + +We have got the very best gang of servants in America, now. When George +first came he was one of the most religious of men. He had but one +fault--young George Washington's. But I have trained him; and now it +fairly breaks Mrs. Clemens's heart to hear George stand at that front +door and lie to the unwelcome visitor. But your time is valuable; I must +not dwell upon these things.....I'll ask Warner and Harte if they'll do +Blindfold Novelettes. Some time I'll simplify that plot. All it needs +is that the hanging and the marriage shall not be appointed for the same +day. I got over that difficulty, but it required too much MS to +reconcile the thing--so the movement of the story was clogged. + +I came near agreeing to make political speeches with our candidate for +Governor the 16th and 23 inst., but I had to give up the idea, for Harte +and I will be here at work then. + Yrs ever, + MARK + + + Mark Twain was writing few letters these days to any one but + Howells, yet in November he sent one to an old friend of his youth, + Burrough, the literary chair-maker who had roomed with him in the + days when he had been setting type for the St. Louis Evening News. + + + To Mr. Burrough, of St. Louis: + + HARTFORD, Nov. 1, 1876. +MY DEAR BURROUGHS,--As you describe me I can picture myself as I was 20 +years ago. The portrait is correct. You think I have grown some; upon +my word there was room for it. You have described a callow fool, a +self-sufficient ass, a mere human tumble-bug.... imagining that he is +remodeling the world and is entirely capable of doing it right. +Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense +and pitiful chuckle-headedness--and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of +it all. That is what I was at 19 and 20; and that is what the average +Southerner is at 60 today. Northerners, too, of a certain grade. It is +of children like this that voters are made. And such is the primal +source of our government! A man hardly knows whether to swear or cry +over it. + +I think I comprehend the position there--perfect freedom to vote just as +you choose, provided you choose to vote as other people think--social +ostracism, otherwise. The same thing exists here, among the Irish. +An Irish Republican is a pariah among his people. Yet that race find +fault with the same spirit in Know-Nothingism. + +Fortunately a good deal of experience of men enabled me to choose my +residence wisely. I live in the freest corner of the country. There are +no social disabilities between me and my Democratic personal friends. +We break the bread and eat the salt of hospitality freely together and +never dream of such a thing as offering impertinent interference in each +other's political opinions. + +Don't you ever come to New York again and not run up here to see me. I +Suppose we were away for the summer when you were East; but no matter, +you could have telegraphed and found out. We were at Elmira N. Y. and +right on your road, and could have given you a good time if you had +allowed us the chance. + +Yes, Will Bowen and I have exchanged letters now and then for several +years, but I suspect that I made him mad with my last--shortly after you +saw him in St. Louis, I judge. There is one thing which I can't stand +and won't stand, from many people. That is sham sentimentality--the kind +a school-girl puts into her graduating composition; the sort that makes +up the Original Poetry column of a country newspaper; the rot that deals +in the "happy days of yore," the "sweet yet melancholy past," with its +"blighted hopes" and its "vanished dreams" and all that sort of drivel. +Will's were always of this stamp. I stood it years. When I get a letter +like that from a grown man and he a widower with a family, it gives me +the stomach ache. And I just told Will Bowen so, last summer. I told +him to stop being 16 at 40; told him to stop drooling about the sweet yet +melancholy past, and take a pill. I said there was but one solitary +thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is +the past--can't be restored. Well, I exaggerated some of these truths a +little--but only a little--but my idea was to kill his sham +sentimentality once and forever, and so make a good fellow of him again. +I went to the unheard-of trouble of re-writing the letter and saying the +same harsh things softly, so as to sugarcoat the anguish and make it a +little more endurable and I asked him to write and thank me honestly for +doing him the best and kindliest favor that any friend ever had done him +--but he hasn't done it yet. Maybe he will, sometime. I am grateful to +God that I got that letter off before he was married (I get that news +from you) else he would just have slobbered all over me and drowned me +when that event happened. + +I enclose photograph for the young ladies. I will remark that I do not +wear seal-skin for grandeur, but because I found, when I used to lecture +in the winter, that nothing else was able to keep a man warm sometimes, +in these high latitudes. I wish you had sent pictures of yourself and +family--I'll trade picture for picture with you, straight through, if you +are commercially inclined. + Your old friend, + SAML L. CLEMENS. + + + + +XVII. + +LETTERS, 1877. TO BERMUDA WITH TWICHELL. PROPOSITION TO TH. NAST. +THE WHITTIER DINNER + + Mark Twain must have been too busy to write letters that winter. + Those that have survived are few and unimportant. As a matter of + fact, he was writing the play, "Ah Sin," with Bret Harte, and + getting it ready for production. Harte was a guest in the Clemens + home while the play was being written, and not always a pleasant + one. He was full of requirements, critical as to the 'menage,' to + the point of sarcasm. The long friendship between Clemens and Harte + weakened under the strain of collaboration and intimate daily + intercourse, never to renew its old fiber. It was an unhappy + outcome of an enterprise which in itself was to prove of little + profit. The play, "Ah Sin," had many good features, and with + Charles T. Parsloe in an amusing Chinese part might have been made a + success, if the two authors could have harmoniously undertaken the + needed repairs. It opened in Washington in May, and a letter from + Parsloe, written at the moment, gives a hint of the situation. + + + From Charles T. Parsloe to S. L. Clemens: + + WASHINGTON, D. C. May 11th, 1877. +MR. CLEMENS,--I forgot whether I acknowledged receipt of check by +telegram. Harte has been here since Monday last and done little or +nothing yet, but promises to have something fixed by tomorrow morning. +We have been making some improvements among ourselves. The last act is +weak at the end, and I do hope Mr. Harte will have something for a good +finish to the piece. The other acts I think are all right, now. + +Hope you have entirely recovered. I am not very well myself, the +excitement of a first night is bad enough, but to have the annoyance with +Harte that I have is too much for a beginner. I ain't used to it. The +houses have been picking up since Tuesday Mr. Ford has worked well and +hard for us. + Yours in, haste, + CHAS. THOS. PARSLOE. + + + The play drew some good houses in Washington, but it could not hold + them for a run. Never mind what was the matter with it; perhaps a + very small change at the right point would have turned it into a + fine success. We have seen in a former letter the obligation which + Mark Twain confessed to Harte--a debt he had tried in many ways to + repay--obtaining for him a liberal book contract with Bliss; + advancing him frequent and large sums of money which Harte could + not, or did not, repay; seeking to advance his fortunes in many + directions. The mistake came when he introduced another genius into + the intracacies of his daily life. Clemens went down to Washington + during the early rehearsals of "Ah Sin." + + Meantime, Rutherford B. Hayes had been elected President, and + Clemens one day called with a letter of introduction from Howells, + thinking to meet the Chief Executive. His own letter to Howells, + later, probably does not give the real reason of his failure, but it + will be amusing to those who recall the erratic personality of + George Francis Train. Train and Twain were sometimes confused by + the very unlettered; or pretendedly, by Mark Twain's friends. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + BALTIMORE, May 1, '77. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Found I was not absolutely needed in Washington so I +only staid 24 hours, and am on my way home, now. I called at the White +House, and got admission to Col. Rodgers, because I wanted to inquire +what was the right hour to go and infest the, President. It was my luck +to strike the place in the dead waste and middle of the day, the very +busiest time. I perceived that Mr. Rodgers took me for George Francis +Train and had made up his mind not to let me get at the President; so at +the end of half an hour I took my letter of introduction from the table +and went away. It was a great pity all round, and a great loss to the +nation, for I was brim full of the Eastern question. I didn't get to see +the President or the Chief Magistrate either, though I had sort of a +glimpse of a lady at a window who resembled her portraits. + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + Howells condoled with him on his failure to see the President, + "but," he added, "if you and I had both been there, our combined + skill would have no doubt procured us to be expelled from the White + House by Fred Douglass. But the thing seems to be a complete + failure as it was." Douglass at this time being the Marshal of + Columbia, gives special point to Howells's suggestion. + + Later, in May, Clemens took Twichell for an excursion to Bermuda. + He had begged Howells to go with them, but Howells, as usual, was + full of literary affairs. Twichell and Clemens spent four glorious + days tramping the length and breadth of the beautiful island, and + remembered it always as one of their happiest adventures. "Put it + down as an Oasis!" wrote Twichell on his return, "I'm afraid I shall + not see as green a spot again soon. And it was your invention and + your gift. And your company was the best of it. Indeed, I never + took more comfort in being with you than on this journey, which, my + boy, is saying a great deal." + + + To Howells, Clemens triumphantly reported the success of the + excursion. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, May 29, 1877. +Confound you, Joe Twichell and I roamed about Bermuda day and night and +never ceased to gabble and enjoy. About half the talk was--"It is a +burning shame that Howells isn't here." "Nobody could get at the very +meat and marrow of this pervading charm and deliciousness like Howells;" +"How Howells would revel in the quaintness, and the simplicity of this +people and the Sabbath repose of this land." "What an imperishable +sketch Howells would make of Capt. West the whaler, and Capt. Hope with +the patient, pathetic face, wanderer in all the oceans for 42 years, +lucky in none; coming home defeated once more, now, minus his ship +--resigned, uncomplaining, being used to this." "What a rattling chapter +Howells would make out of the small boy Alfred, with his alert eye and +military brevity and exactness of speech; and out of the old landlady; +and her sacred onions; and her daughter; and the visiting clergyman; and +the ancient pianos of Hamilton and the venerable music in vogue there +--and forty other things which we shall leave untouched or touched but +lightly upon, we not being worthy." "Dam Howells for not being here!" +(this usually from me, not Twichell.) + +O, your insufferable pride, which will have a fall some day! If you had +gone with us and let me pay the $50 which the trip and the board and the +various nicknacks and mementoes would cost, I would have picked up enough +droppings from your conversation to pay me 500 per cent profit in the way +of the several magazine articles which I could have written, whereas I +can now write only one or two and am therefore largely out of pocket by +your proud ways. Ponder these things. Lord, what a perfectly bewitching +excursion it was! I traveled under an assumed name and was never +molested with a polite attention from anybody. + Love to you all. + Yrs ever + MARK + + + Aldrich, meantime, had invited the Clemenses to Ponkapog during the + Bermuda absence, and Clemens hastened to send him a line expressing + regrets. At the close he said: + + + To T. B. Aldrich, in Ponkapog, Mass.: + + FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, June 3, 1877. +Day after tomorrow we leave for the hills beyond Elmira, N. Y. for the +summer, when I shall hope to write a book of some sort or other to beat +the people with. A work similar to your new one in the Atlantic is what +I mean, though I have not heard what the nature of that one is. Immoral, +I suppose. Well, you are right. Such books sell best, Howells says. +Howells says he is going to make his next book indelicate. He says he +thinks there is money in it. He says there is a large class of the +young, in schools and seminaries who--But you let him tell you. He has +ciphered it all down to a demonstration. + +With the warmest remembrances to the pair of you + Ever Yours + SAMUEL L. CLEMENS. + + + Clemens would naturally write something about Bermuda, and began at + once, "Random Notes of an Idle Excursion," and presently completed + four papers, which Howells eagerly accepted for the Atlantic. Then + we find him plunging into another play, this time alone. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, June 27, 1877. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--If you should not like the first 2 chapters, send them +to me and begin with Chapter 3--or Part 3, I believe you call these +things in the magazine. I have finished No. 4., which closes the series, +and will mail it tomorrow if I think of it. I like this one, I liked the +preceding one (already mailed to you some time ago) but I had my doubts +about 1 and 2. Do not hesitate to squelch them, even with derision and +insult. + +Today I am deep in a comedy which I began this morning--principal +character, that old detective--I skeletoned the first act and wrote the +second, today; and am dog-tired, now. Fifty-four close pages of MS in 7 +hours. Once I wrote 55 pages at a sitting--that was on the opening +chapters of the "Gilded Age" novel. When I cool down, an hour from now, +I shall go to zero, I judge. + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + Clemens had doubts as to the quality of the Bermuda papers, and with + some reason. They did not represent him at his best. Nevertheless, + they were pleasantly entertaining, and Howells expressed full + approval of them for Atlantic use. The author remained troubled. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, July 4,1877. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It is splendid of you to say those pleasant things. +But I am still plagued with doubts about Parts 1 and 2. If you have any, +don't print. If otherwise, please make some cold villain like Lathrop +read and pass sentence on them. Mind, I thought they were good, at +first--it was the second reading that accomplished its hellish purpose on +me. Put them up for a new verdict. Part 4 has lain in my pigeon-hole a +good while, and when I put it there I had a Christian's confidence in 4 +aces in it; and you can be sure it will skip toward Connecticut tomorrow +before any fatal fresh reading makes me draw my bet. + +I've piled up 151 MS pages on my comedy. The first, second and fourth +acts are done, and done to my satisfaction, too. Tomorrow and next day +will finish the 3rd act and the play. I have not written less than 30 +pages any day since I began. Never had so much fun over anything in my +life-never such consuming interest and delight. (But Lord bless you the +second reading will fetch it!) And just think!--I had Sol Smith Russell +in my mind's eye for the old detective's part, and hang it he has gone +off pottering with Oliver Optic, or else the papers lie. + +I read everything about the President's doings there with exultation. + +I wish that old ass of a private secretary hadn't taken me for George +Francis Train. If ignorance were a means of grace I wouldn't trade that +gorilla's chances for the Archbishop of Canterbury's. + +I shall call on the President again, by and by. I shall go in my war +paint; and if I am obstructed the nation will have the unusual spectacle +of a private secretary with a pen over one ear a tomahawk over the other. + +I read the entire Atlantic this time. Wonderful number. Mrs. Rose Terry +Cooke's story was a ten-strike. I wish she would write 12 old-time New +England tales a year. + +Good times to you all! Mind if you don't run here for a few days you +will go to hence without having had a fore-glimpse of heaven. + + MARK. + + + The play, "Ah Sin," that had done little enough in Washington, was + that summer given another trial by Augustin Daly, at the Fifth + Avenue Theater, New York, with a fine company. Clemens had + undertaken to doctor the play, and it would seem to have had an + enthusiastic reception on the opening night. But it was a summer + audience, unspoiled by many attractions. "Ah Sin" was never a + success in the New York season--never a money-maker on the road. + + The reference in the first paragraph of the letter that follows is + to the Bermuda chapters which Mark Twain was publishing + simultaneously in England and America. + + + ELMIRA, Aug 3,1877. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have mailed one set of the slips to London, and told +Bentley you would print Sept. 15, in October Atlantic, and he must not +print earlier in Temple Bar. Have I got the dates and things right? + +I am powerful glad to see that No. 1 reads a nation sight better in print +than it did in MS. I told Bentley we'd send him the slips, each time, 6 +weeks before day of publication. We can do that can't we? Two months +ahead would be still better I suppose, but I don't know. + +"Ah Sin" went a-booming at the Fifth Avenue. The reception of Col. +Sellers was calm compared to it. + +*The criticisms were just; the criticisms of the great New York dailies +are always just, intelligent, and square and honest--notwithstanding, +by a blunder which nobody was seriously to blame for, I was made to say +exactly the opposite of this in a newspaper some time ago. Never said it +at all, and moreover I never thought it. I could not publicly correct it +before the play appeared in New York, because that would look as if I had +really said that thing and then was moved by fears for my pocket and my +reputation to take it back. But I can correct it now, and shall do it; +for now my motives cannot be impugned. When I began this letter, it had +not occurred to me to use you in this connection, but it occurs to me +now. Your opinion and mine, uttered a year ago, and repeated more than +once since, that the candor and ability of the New York critics were +beyond question, is a matter which makes it proper enough that I should +speak through you at this time. Therefore if you will print this +paragraph somewhere, it may remove the impression that I say unjust +things which I do not think, merely for the pleasure of talking. + +There, now, Can't you say-- + +"In a letter to Mr. Howells of the Atlantic Monthly, Mark Twain describes +the reception of the new comedy 'Ali Sin,' and then goes on to say:" etc. + +Beginning at the star with the words, "The criticisms were just." Mrs. +Clemens says, "Don't ask that of Mr. Howells--it will be disagreeable to +him." I hadn't thought of it, but I will bet two to one on the +correctness of her instinct. We shall see. + +Will you cut that paragraph out of this letter and precede it with the +remarks suggested (or with better ones,) and send it to the Globe or some +other paper? You can't do me a bigger favor; and yet if it is in the +least disagreeable, you mustn't think of it. But let me know, right +away, for I want to correct this thing before it grows stale again. +I explained myself to only one critic (the World)--the consequence was a +noble notice of the play. This one called on me, else I shouldn't have +explained myself to him. + +I have been putting in a deal of hard work on that play in New York, but +it is full of incurable defects. + +My old Plunkett family seemed wonderfully coarse and vulgar on the stage, +but it was because they were played in such an outrageously and +inexcusably coarse way. The Chinaman is killingly funny. I don't know +when I have enjoyed anything as much as I did him. The people say there +isn't enough of him in the piece. That's a triumph--there'll never be +any more of him in it. + +John Brougham said, "Read the list of things which the critics have +condemned in the piece, and you have unassailable proofs that the play +contains all the requirements of success and a long life." + +That is true. Nearly every time the audience roared I knew it was over +something that would be condemned in the morning (justly, too) but must +be left in--for low comedies are written for the drawing-room, the +kitchen and the stable, and if you cut out the kitchen and the stable the +drawing-room can't support the play by itself. + +There was as much money in the house the first two nights as in the first +ten of Sellers. Haven't heard from the third--I came away. + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + In a former letter we have seen how Mark Twain, working on a story + that was to stand as an example of his best work, and become one of + his surest claims to immortality (The Adventures of Huckleberry + Finn), displayed little enthusiasm in his undertaking. In the + following letter, which relates the conclusion of his detective + comedy, we find him at the other extreme, on very tiptoe with + enthusiasm over something wholly without literary value or dramatic + possibility. One of the hall-marks of genius is the inability to + discriminate as to the value of its output. "Simon Wheeler, Amateur + Detective" was a dreary, absurd, impossible performance, as wild and + unconvincing in incident and dialogue as anything out of an asylum + could well be. The title which he first chose for it, "Balaam's + Ass," was properly in keeping with the general scheme. Yet Mark + Twain, still warm with the creative fever, had the fullest faith in + it as a work of art and a winner of fortune. It would never see the + light of production, of course. We shall see presently that the + distinguished playwright, Dion Boucicault, good-naturedly + complimented it as being better than "Ahi Sin." One must wonder + what that skilled artist really thought, and how he could do even + this violence to his conscience. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, Wednesday P.M. (1877) +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It's finished. I was misled by hurried mis-paging. +There were ten pages of notes, and over 300 pages of MS when the play was +done. Did it in 42 hours, by the clock; 40 pages of the Atlantic--but +then of course it's very "fat." Those are the figures, but I don't +believe them myself, because the thing's impossible. + +But let that pass. All day long, and every day, since I finished (in the +rough) I have been diligently altering, amending, re-writing, cutting +down. I finished finally today. Can't think of anything else in the way +of an improvement. I thought I would stick to it while the interest was +hot--and I am mighty glad I did. A week from now it will be frozen--then +revising would be drudgery. (You see I learned something from the fatal +blunder of putting "Ah Sin" aside before it was finished.) + +She's all right, now. She reads in two hours and 20 minutes and will +play not longer than 2 3/4 hours. Nineteen characters; 3 acts; (I +bunched 2 into 1.) + +Tomorrow I will draw up an exhaustive synopsis to insert in the printed +title-page for copyrighting, and then on Friday or Saturday I go to New +York to remain a week or ten days and lay for an actor. Wish you could +run down there and have a holiday. 'Twould be fun. + +My wife won't have "Balaam's Ass"; therefore I call the piece "Cap'n +Simon Wheeler, The Amateur Detective." + Yrs + MARK. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, Aug. 29, 1877. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Just got your letter last night. No, dern that +article,--[One of the Bermuda chapters.]--it made me cry when I read it +in proof, it was so oppressively and ostentatiously poor. Skim your eye +over it again and you will think as I do. If Isaac and the prophets of +Baal can be doctored gently and made permissible, it will redeem the +thing: but if it can't, let's burn all of the articles except the +tail-end of it and use that as an introduction to the next article--as I +suggested in my letter to you of day before yesterday. (I had this proof +from Cambridge before yours came.) + +Boucicault says my new play is ever so much better than "Ah Sin;" says +the Amateur detective is a bully character, too. An actor is chawing +over the play in New York, to see if the old Detective is suited to his +abilities. Haven't heard from him yet. + +If you've got that paragraph by you yet, and if in your judgment it would +be good to publish it, and if you absolutely would not mind doing it, +then I think I'd like to have you do it--or else put some other words in +my mouth that will be properer, and publish them. But mind, don't think +of it for a moment if it is distasteful--and doubtless it is. I value +your judgment more than my own, as to the wisdom of saying anything at +all in this matter. To say nothing leaves me in an injurious position +--and yet maybe I might do better to speak to the men themselves when I +go to New York. This was my latest idea, and it looked wise. + +We expect to leave here for home Sept. 4, reaching there the 8th--but we +may be delayed a week. + +Curious thing. I read passages from my play, and a full synopsis, to +Boucicault, who was re-writing a play, which he wrote and laid aside 3 or +4 years ago. (My detective is about that age, you know.) Then he read a +passage from his play, where a real detective does some things that are +as idiotic as some of my old Wheeler's performances. Showed me the +passages, and behold, his man's name is Wheeler! However, his Wheeler +is not a prominent character, so we'll not alter the names. My Wheeler's +name is taken from the old jumping Frog sketch. + +I am re-reading Ticknor's diary, and am charmed with it, though I still +say he refers to too many good things when he could just as well have +told them. Think of the man traveling 8 days in convoy and familiar +intercourse with a band of outlaws through the mountain fastnesses of +Spain--he the fourth stranger they had encountered in thirty years--and +compressing this priceless experience into a single colorless paragraph +of his diary! They spun yarns to this unworthy devil, too. + +I wrote you a very long letter a day or two ago, but Susy Crane wanted to +make a copy of it to keep, so it has not gone yet. It may go today, +possibly. + +We unite in warm regards to you and yours. + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + The Ticknor referred to in a former letter was Professor George + Ticknor, of Harvard College, a history-writer of distinction. On + the margin of the "Diary" Mark Twain once wrote, "Ticknor is a + Millet, who makes all men fall in love with him." And adds: "Millet + was the cause of lovable qualities in people, and then he admired + and loved those persons for the very qualities which he (without + knowing it) had created in them. Perhaps it would be strictly truer + of these two men to say that they bore within them the divine + something in whose presence the evil in people fled away and hid + itself, while all that was good in them came spontaneously forward + out of the forgotten walls and comers in their systems where it was + accustomed to hide." + + It is Frank Millet, the artist, he is speaking of--a knightly soul + whom all the Clemens household loved, and who would one day meet his + knightly end with those other brave men that found death together + when the Titanic went down. + + The Clemens family was still at Quarry Farm at the end of August, + and one afternoon there occurred a startling incident which Mark + Twain thought worth setting down in practically duplicate letters to + Howells and to Dr. John Brown. It may be of interest to the reader + to know that John T. Lewis, the colored man mentioned, lived to a + good old age--a pensioner of the Clemens family and, in the course + of time, of H. H. Rogers. Howells's letter follows. It is the + "very long letter" referred to in the foregoing. + + + To W. D. Howells and wife, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, Aug. 25 '77. +MY DEAR HOWELLSES,--I thought I ought to make a sort of record of it for +further reference; the pleasantest way to do that would be to write it to +somebody; but that somebody would let it leak into print and that we wish +to avoid. The Howellses would be safe--so let us tell the Howellses +about it. + +Day before yesterday was a fine summer day away up here on the summit. +Aunt Marsh and Cousin May Marsh were here visiting Susie Crane and Livy +at our farmhouse. By and by mother Langdon came up the hill in the "high +carriage" with Nora the nurse and little Jervis (Charley Langdon's little +boy)--Timothy the coachman driving. Behind these came Charley's wife and +little girl in the buggy, with the new, young, spry, gray horse--a +high-stepper. Theodore Crane arrived a little later. + +The Bay and Susy were on hand with their nurse, Rosa. I was on hand, +too. Susy Crane's trio of colored servants ditto--these being Josie, +house-maid; Aunty Cord, cook, aged 62, turbaned, very tall, very broad, +very fine every way (see her portrait in "A True Story just as I Heard +It" in my Sketches;) Chocklate (the laundress) (as the Bay calls her--she +can't say Charlotte,) still taller, still more majestic of proportions, +turbaned, very black, straight as an Indian--age 24. Then there was the +farmer's wife (colored) and her little girl, Susy. + +Wasn't it a good audience to get up an excitement before? Good +excitable, inflammable material? + +Lewis was still down town, three miles away, with his two-horse wagon, +to get a load of manure. Lewis is the farmer (colored). He is of mighty +frame and muscle, stocky, stooping, ungainly, has a good manly face and a +clear eye. Age about 45--and the most picturesque of men, when he sits +in his fluttering work-day rags, humped forward into a bunch, with his +aged slouch hat mashed down over his ears and neck. It is a spectacle to +make the broken-hearted smile. Lewis has worked mighty hard and remained +mighty poor. At the end of each whole year's toil he can't show a gain +of fifty dollars. He had borrowed money of the Cranes till he owed them +$700 and he being conscientious and honest, imagine what it was to him to +have to carry this stubborn, helpless load year in and year out. + +Well, sunset came, and Ida the young and comely (Charley Langdon's wife) +and her little Julia and the nurse Nora, drove out at the gate behind the +new gray horse and started down the long hill--the high carriage +receiving its load under the porte cochere. Ida was seen to turn her +face toward us across the fence and intervening lawn--Theodore waved +good-bye to her, for he did not know that her sign was a speechless +appeal for help. + +The next moment Livy said, "Ida's driving too fast down hill!" She +followed it with a sort of scream, "Her horse is running away!" + +We could see two hundred yards down that descent. The buggy seemed to +fly. It would strike obstructions and apparently spring the height of a +man from the ground. + +Theodore and I left the shrieking crowd behind and ran down the hill +bare-headed and shouting. A neighbor appeared at his gate--a tenth of a +second too late! the buggy vanished past him like a thought. My last +glimpse showed it for one instant, far down the descent, springing high +in the air out of a cloud of dust, and then it disappeared. As I flew +down the road my impulse was to shut my eyes as I turned them to the +right or left, and so delay for a moment the ghastly spectacle of +mutilation and death I was expecting. + +I ran on and on, still spared this spectacle, but saying to myself: +"I shall see it at the turn of the road; they never can pass that turn +alive." When I came in sight of that turn I saw two wagons there bunched +together--one of them full of people. I said, "Just so--they are staring +petrified at the remains." + +But when I got amongst that bunch, there sat Ida in her buggy and nobody +hurt, not even the horse or the vehicle. Ida was pale but serene. As I +came tearing down, she smiled back over her shoulder at me and said, +"Well, we're alive yet, aren't we?" A miracle had been performed +--nothing else. + +You see Lewis, the prodigious, humped upon his front seat, had been +toiling up, on his load of manure; he saw the frantic horse plunging down +the hill toward him, on a full gallop, throwing his heels as high as a +man's head at every jump. So Lewis turned his team diagonally across the +road just at the "turn," thus making a V with the fence--the running +horse could not escape that, but must enter it. Then Lewis sprang to the +ground and stood in this V. He gathered his vast strength, and with a +perfect Creedmoor aim he seized the gray horse's bit as he plunged by and +fetched him up standing! + +It was down hill, mind you. Ten feet further down hill neither Lewis nor +any other man could have saved them, for they would have been on the +abrupt "turn," then. But how this miracle was ever accomplished at all, +by human strength, generalship and accuracy, is clean beyond my +comprehension--and grows more so the more I go and examine the ground and +try to believe it was actually done. I know one thing, well; if Lewis +had missed his aim he would have been killed on the spot in the trap he +had made for himself, and we should have found the rest of the remains +away down at the bottom of the steep ravine. + +Ten minutes later Theodore and I arrived opposite the house, with the +servants straggling after us, and shouted to the distracted group on the +porch, "Everybody safe!" + +Believe it? Why how could they? They knew the road perfectly. We might +as well have said it to people who had seen their friends go over +Niagara. + +However, we convinced them; and then, instead of saying something, or +going on crying, they grew very still--words could not express it, I +suppose. + +Nobody could do anything that night, or sleep, either; but there was a +deal of moving talk, with long pauses between pictures of that flying +carriage, these pauses represented--this picture intruded itself all the +time and disjointed the talk. + +But yesterday evening late, when Lewis arrived from down town he found +his supper spread, and some presents of books there, with very +complimentary writings on the fly-leaves, and certain very complimentary +letters, and more or less greenbacks of dignified denomination pinned to +these letters and fly-leaves,--and one said, among other things, (signed +by the Cranes) "We cancel $400 of your indebtedness to us," &c. &c. + +(The end thereof is not yet, of course, for Charley Langdon is West and +will arrive ignorant of all these things, today.) + +The supper-room had been kept locked and imposingly secret and mysterious +until Lewis should arrive; but around that part of the house were +gathered Lewis's wife and child, Chocklate, Josie, Aunty Cord and our +Rosa, canvassing things and waiting impatiently. They were all on hand +when the curtain rose. + +Now, Aunty Cord is a violent Methodist and Lewis an implacable Dunker +--Baptist. Those two are inveterate religious disputants. The +revealments having been made Aunty Cord said with effusion-- + +"Now, let folks go on saying there ain't no God! Lewis, the Lord sent +you there to stop that horse." + +Says Lewis: + +"Then who sent the horse there in sich a shape?" + +But I want to call your attention to one thing. When Lewis arrived the +other evening, after saving those lives by a feat which I think is the +most marvelous of any I can call to mind--when he arrived, hunched up on +his manure wagon and as grotesquely picturesque as usual, everybody +wanted to go and see how he looked. They came back and said he was +beautiful. It was so, too--and yet he would have photographed exactly as +he would have done any day these past 7 years that he has occupied this +farm. + + Aug. 27. +P. S. Our little romance in real life is happily and satisfactorily +completed. Charley has come, listened, acted--and now John T. Lewis has +ceased to consider himself as belonging to that class called "the poor." + +It has been known, during some years, that it was Lewis's purpose to buy +a thirty dollar silver watch some day, if he ever got where he could +afford it. Today Ida has given him a new, sumptuous gold Swiss +stem-winding stop-watch; and if any scoffer shall say, "Behold this thing +is out of character," there is an inscription within, which will silence +him; for it will teach him that this wearer aggrandizes the watch, not +the watch the wearer. + +I was asked beforehand, if this would be a wise gift, and I said "Yes, +the very wisest of all;" I know the colored race, and I know that in +Lewis's eyes this fine toy will throw the other more valuable +testimonials far away into the shade. If he lived in England the Humane +Society would give him a gold medal as costly as this watch, and nobody +would say: "It is out of character." If Lewis chose to wear a town +clock, who would become it better? + +Lewis has sound common sense, and is not going to be spoiled. The +instant he found himself possessed of money, he forgot himself in a plan +to make his old father comfortable, who is wretchedly poor and lives down +in Maryland. His next act, on the spot, was the proffer to the Cranes of +the $300 of his remaining indebtedness to them. This was put off by them +to the indefinite future, for he is not going to be allowed to pay that +at all, though he doesn't know it. + +A letter of acknowledgment from Lewis contains a sentence which raises it +to the dignity of literature: + +"But I beg to say, humbly, that inasmuch as divine providence saw fit to +use me as a instrument for the saving of those presshious lives, the +honner conferd upon me was greater than the feat performed." + +That is well said. + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + Howells was moved to use the story in the. "Contributors' Club," + and warned Clemens against letting it get into the newspapers. He + declared he thought it one of the most impressive things he had ever + read. But Clemens seems never to have allowed it to be used in any + form. In its entirety, therefore, it is quite new matter. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Sept. 19, 1877. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I don't really see how the story of the runaway horse +could read well with the little details of names and places and things +left out. They are the true life of all narrative. It wouldn't quite +do to print them at this time. We'll talk about it when you come. +Delicacy--a sad, sad false delicacy--robs literature of the best two +things among its belongings. Family-circle narrative and obscene +stories. But no matter; in that better world which I trust we are all +going to I have the hope and belief that they will not be denied us. + +Say--Twichell and I had an adventure at sea, 4 months ago, which I did +not put in my Bermuda articles, because there was not enough to it. But +the press dispatches bring the sequel today, and now there's plenty to +it. A sailless, wasteless, chartless, compassless, grubless old +condemned tub that has been drifting helpless about the ocean for 4 +months and a half, begging bread and water like any other tramp, flying a +signal of distress permanently, and with 13 innocent, marveling +chuckleheaded Bermuda niggers on board, taking a Pleasure Excursion! Our +ship fed the poor devils on the 25th of last May, far out at sea and left +them to bullyrag their way to New York--and now they ain't as near New +York as they were then by 250 miles! They have drifted 750 miles and are +still drifting in the relentless Gulf Stream! What a delicious magazine +chapter it would make--but I had to deny myself. I had to come right out +in the papers at once, with my details, so as to try to raise the +government's sympathy sufficiently to have better succor sent them than +the cutter Colfax, which went a little way in search of them the other +day and then struck a fog and gave it up. + +If the President were in Washington I would telegraph him. + +When I hear that the "Jonas Smith" has been found again, I mean to send +for one of those darkies, to come to Hartford and give me his adventures +for an Atlantic article. + +Likely you will see my today's article in the newspapers. + Yrs ever, + MARK. + +The revenue cutter Colfax went after the Jonas Smith, thinking there was +mutiny or other crime on board. It occurs to me now that, since there is +only mere suffering and misery and nobody to punish, it ceases to be a +matter which (a republican form of) government will feel authorized to +interfere in further. Dam a republican form of government. + + + Clemens thought he had given up lecturing for good; he was + prosperous and he had no love for the platform. But one day an idea + popped into his head: Thomas Nast, the "father of the American + cartoon," had delivered a successful series of illustrated lectures + --talks for which he made the drawings as he went along. Mark + Twain's idea was to make a combination with Nast. His letter gives + us the plan in full. + + + To Thomas Nast, Morristown, N. J.: + + HARTFORD, CONN. 1877. +MY DEAR NAST,--I did not think I should ever stand on a platform again +until the time was come for me to say "I die innocent." But the same old +offers keep arriving. I have declined them all, just as usual, though +sorely tempted, as usual. + +Now, I do not decline because I mind talking to an audience, but because +(1) traveling alone is so heartbreakingly dreary, and (2) shouldering the +whole show is such a cheer-killing responsibility. + +Therefore, I now propose to you what you proposed to me in 1867, ten +years ago (when I was unknown) viz., that you stand on the platform and +make pictures, and I stand by you and blackguard the audience. I should +enormously enjoy meandering around (to big towns--don't want to go to the +little ones) with you for company. + +My idea is not to fatten the lecture agents and lyceums on the spoils, +but put all the ducats religiously into two equal piles, and say to the +artist and lecturer, "Absorb these." + +For instance--[Here follows a plan and a possible list of cities to be +visited. The letter continues] + +Call the gross receipts $100,000 for four months and a half, and the +profit from $60,000 to $75,000 (I try to make the figures large enough, +and leave it to the public to reduce them.) + +I did not put in Philadelphia because Pugh owns that town, and last +winter when I made a little reading-trip he only paid me $300 and +pretended his concert (I read fifteen minutes in the midst of a concert) +cost him a vast sum, and so he couldn't afford any more. I could get up +a better concert with a barrel of cats. + +I have imagined two or three pictures and concocted the accompanying +remarks to see how the thing would go. I was charmed. + +Well, you think it over, Nast, and drop me a line. We should have some +fun. + Yours truly, + SAMUEL L. CLEMENS. + + + The plan came to nothing. Nast, like Clemens, had no special taste + for platforming, and while undoubtedly there would have been large + profits in the combination, the promise of the venture did not + compel his acceptance. + + In spite of his distaste for the platform Mark Twain was always + giving readings and lectures, without charge, for some worthy + Hartford cause. He was ready to do what he could to help an + entertainment along, if he could do it in his own way--an original + way, sometimes, and not always gratifying to the committee, whose + plans were likely to be prearranged. + + For one thing, Clemens, supersensitive in the matter of putting + himself forward in his own town, often objected to any special + exploitation of his name. This always distressed the committee, who + saw a large profit to their venture in the prestige of his fame. + The following characteristic letter was written in self-defense + when, on one such occasion, a committee had become sufficiently + peevish to abandon a worthy enterprise. + + + To an Entertainment Committee, in Hartford: + + Nov. 9. +E. S. SYKES, Esq: + +Dr. SIR,--Mr. Burton's note puts upon me all the blame of the destruction +of an enterprise which had for its object the succor of the Hartford +poor. That is to say, this enterprise has been dropped because of the +"dissatisfaction with Mr. Clemens's stipulations." Therefore I must be +allowed to say a word in my defense. + +There were two "stipulations"--exactly two. I made one of them; if the +other was made at all, it was a joint one, from the choir and me. + +My individual stipulation was, that my name should be kept out of the +newspapers. The joint one was that sufficient tickets to insure a good +sum should be sold before the date of the performance should be set. +(Understand, we wanted a good sum--I do not think any of us bothered +about a good house; it was money we were after) + +Now you perceive that my concern is simply with my individual +stipulation. Did that break up the enterprise? + +Eugene Burton said he would sell $300 worth of the tickets himself.--Mr. +Smith said he would sell $200 or $300 worth himself. My plan for Asylum +Hill Church would have ensured $150 from that quarter.--All this in the +face of my "Stipulation." It was proposed to raise $1000; did my +stipulation render the raising of $400 or $500 in a dozen churches +impossible? + +My stipulation is easily defensible. When a mere reader or lecturer has +appeared 3 or 4 times in a town of Hartford's size, he is a good deal +more than likely to get a very unpleasant snub if he shoves himself +forward about once or twice more. Therefore I long ago made up my mind +that whenever I again appeared here, it should be only in a minor +capacity and not as a chief attraction. + +Now, I placed that harmless and very justifiable stipulation before the +committee the other day; they carried it to headquarters and it was +accepted there. I am not informed that any objection was made to it, or +that it was regarded as an offense. It seems late in the day, now, after +a good deal of trouble has been taken and a good deal of thankless work +done by the committees, to, suddenly tear up the contract and then turn +and bowl me down from long range as being the destroyer of it. + +If the enterprise has failed because of my individual stipulation, here +you have my proper and reasonable reasons for making that stipulation. + +If it has failed because of the joint stipulation, put the blame there, +and let us share it collectively. + +I think our plan was a good one. I do not doubt that Mr. Burton still +approves of it, too. I believe the objections come from other quarters, +and not from him. Mr. Twichell used the following words in last Sunday's +sermon, (if I remember correctly): + +"My hearers, the prophet Deuteronomy says this wise thing: 'Though ye +plan a goodly house for the poor, and plan it with wisdom, and do take +off your coats and set to to build it, with high courage, yet shall the +croaker presently come, and lift up his voice, (having his coat on,) and +say, Verily this plan is not well planned--and he will go his way; and +the obstructionist will come, and lift up his voice, (having his coat +on,) and say, Behold, this is but a sick plan--and he will go his way; +and the man that knows it all will come, and lift up his voice, (having +his coat on,) and say, Lo, call they this a plan? then will he go his +way; and the places which knew him once shall know him no more forever, +because he was not, for God took him. Now therefore I say unto you, +Verily that house will not be budded. And I say this also: He that +waiteth for all men to be satisfied with his plan, let him seek eternal +life, for he shall need it.'" + +This portion of Mr. Twichell's sermon made a great impression upon me, +and I was grieved that some one had not wakened me earlier so that I +might have heard what went before. + + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Mr. Sykes (of the firm of Sykes & Newton, the Allen House Pharmacy) + replied that he had read the letter to the committee and that it had + set those gentlemen right who had not before understood the + situation. "If others were as ready to do their part as yourself + our poor would not want assistance," he said, in closing. + + We come now to an incident which assumes the proportions of an + episode-even of a catastrophe--in Mark Twain's career. The disaster + was due to a condition noted a few pages earlier--the inability of + genius to judge its own efforts. The story has now become history + --printed history--it having been sympathetically told by Howells in + My Mark Twain, and more exhaustively, with a report of the speech + that invited the lightning, in a former work by the present writer. + + The speech was made at John Greenleaf Whittier's seventieth birthday + dinner, given by the Atlantic staff on the evening of December 17, + 1877. It was intended as a huge joke--a joke that would shake the + sides of these venerable Boston deities, Longfellow, Emerson, + Holmes, and the rest of that venerated group. Clemens had been a + favorite at the Atlantic lunches and dinners--a speech by him always + an event. This time he decided to outdo himself. + + He did that, but not in the way he had intended. To use one of his + own metaphors, he stepped out to meet the rainbow and got struck by + lightning. His joke was not of the Boston kind or size. When its + full nature burst upon the company--when the ears of the assembled + diners heard the sacred names of Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes + lightly associated with human aspects removed--oh, very far removed + --from Cambridge and Concord, a chill fell upon the diners that + presently became amazement, and then creeping paralysis. Nobody + knew afterward whether the great speech that he had so gaily planned + ever came to a natural end or not. Somebody--the next on the + program--attempted to follow him, but presently the company melted + out of the doors and crept away into the night. + + It seemed to Mark Twain that his career had come to an end. Back in + Hartford, sweating and suffering through sleepless nights, he wrote + Howells his anguish. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + Sunday Night. 1877. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--My sense of disgrace does not abate. It grows. I see +that it is going to add itself to my list of permanencies--a list of +humiliations that extends back to when I was seven years old, and which +keep on persecuting me regardless of my repentancies. + +I feel that my misfortune has injured me all over the country; therefore +it will be best that I retire from before the public at present. It will +hurt the Atlantic for me to appear in its pages, now. So it is my +opinion and my wife's that the telephone story had better be suppressed. +Will you return those proofs or revises to me, so that I can use the same +on some future occasion? + +It seems as if I must have been insane when I wrote that speech and saw +no harm in it, no disrespect toward those men whom I reverenced so much. +And what shame I brought upon you, after what you said in introducing me! +It burns me like fire to think of it. + +The whole matter is a dreadful subject--let me drop it here--at least on +paper. + Penitently yrs, + MARK. + + + Howells sent back a comforting letter. "I have no idea of dropping + you out of the Atlantic," he wrote; "and Mr. Houghton has still + less, if possible. You are going to help and not hurt us many a + year yet, if you will.... You are not going to be floored by it; + there is more justice than that, even in this world." + + Howells added that Charles Elliot Norton had expressed just the + right feeling concerning the whole affair, and that many who had not + heard the speech, but read the newspaper reports of it, had found it + without offense. + + Clemens wrote contrite letters to Holmes, Emerson, and Longfellow, + and received most gracious acknowledgments. Emerson, indeed, had + not heard the speech: His faculties were already blurred by the + mental mists that would eventually shut him in. Clemens wrote again + to Howells, this time with less anguish. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Friday, 1877. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Your letter was a godsend; and perhaps the welcomest +part of it was your consent that I write to those gentlemen; for you +discouraged my hints in that direction that morning in Boston--rightly, +too, for my offense was yet too new, then. Warner has tried to hold up +our hands like the good fellow he is, but poor Twichell could not say a +word, and confessed that he would rather take nearly any punishment than +face Livy and me. He hasn't been here since. + +It is curious, but I pitched early upon Mr. Norton as the very man who +would think some generous thing about that matter, whether he said it or +not. It is splendid to be a man like that--but it is given to few to be. + +I wrote a letter yesterday, and sent a copy to each of the three. I +wanted to send a copy to Mr. Whittier also, since the offense was done +also against him, being committed in his presence and he the guest of the +occasion, besides holding the well-nigh sacred place he does in his +people's estimation; but I didn't know whether to venture or not, and so +ended by doing nothing. It seemed an intrusion to approach him, and even +Livy seemed to have her doubts as to the best and properest way to do in +the case. I do not reverence Mr. Emerson less, but somehow I could +approach him easier. + +Send me those proofs, if you have got them handy; I want to submit them +to Wylie; he won't show them to anybody. + +Had a very pleasant and considerate letter from Mr. Houghton, today, and +was very glad to receive it. + +You can't imagine how brilliant and beautiful that new brass fender is, +and how perfectly naturally it takes its place under the carved oak. How +they did scour it up before they sent it! I lied a good deal about it +when I came home--so for once I kept a secret and surprised Livy on a +Christmas morning! + +I haven't done a stroke of work since the Atlantic dinner; have only +moped around. But I'm going to try tomorrow. How could I ever have. + +Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and +all His works must be contemplated with respect. + +Livy and I join in the warmest regards to you and yours, + Yrs ever, + MARK. + +Longfellow, in his reply, said: "I do not believe anybody was much hurt. +Certainly I was not, and Holmes tells me he was not. So I think you may +dismiss the matter from your mind without further remorse." + +Holmes wrote: "It never occurred to me for a moment to take offense, or +feel wounded by your playful use of my name." + +Miss Ellen Emerson replied for her father (in a letter to Mrs. Clemens) +that the speech had made no impression upon him, giving at considerable +length the impression it had made on herself and other members of the +family. + + Clearly, it was not the principals who were hurt, but only those who + held them in awe, though one can realize that this would not make it + much easier for Mark Twain. + + + + +XVIII. + +LETTERS FROM EUROPE, 1878-79. TRAMPING WITH TWICHELL. WRITING A NEW +TRAVEL BOOK. LIFE IN MUNICH + + Whether the unhappy occurrence at the Whittier dinner had anything + to do with Mark Twain's resolve to spend a year or two in Europe + cannot be known now. There were other good reasons for going, one + in particular being a demand for another book of travel. It was + also true, as he explains in a letter to his mother, that his days + were full of annoyances, making it difficult for him to work. He + had a tendency to invest money in almost any glittering enterprise + that came along, and at this time he was involved in the promotion + of a variety of patent rights that brought him no return other than + assessment and vexation. + + Clemens's mother was by this time living with her son Onion and his + wife, in Iowa. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa: + + HARTFORD, Feb. 17, 1878 +MY DEAR MOTHER,--I suppose I am the worst correspondent in the whole +world; and yet I grow worse and worse all the time. My conscience +blisters me for not writing you, but it has ceased to abuse me for not +writing other folks. + +Life has come to be a very serious matter with me. I have a badgered, +harassed feeling, a good part of my time. It comes mainly of business +responsibilities and annoyances, and the persecution of kindly letters +from well meaning strangers--to whom I must be rudely silent or else put +in the biggest half of my time bothering over answers. There are other +things also that help to consume my time and defeat my projects. Well, +the consequence is, I cannot write a book at home. This cuts my income +down. Therefore, I have about made up my mind to take my tribe and fly +to some little corner of Europe and budge no more until I shall have +completed one of the half dozen books that lie begun, up stairs. Please +say nothing about this at present. + +We propose to sail the 11th of April. I shall go to Fredonia to meet +you, but it will not be well for Livy to make that trip I am afraid. +However, we shall see. I will hope she can go. + +Mr. Twichell has just come in, so I must go to him. We are all well, and +send love to you all. + Affly, + SAM. + + + He was writing few letters at this time, and doing but little work. + There were always many social events during the winter, and what + with his European plans and a diligent study of the German language, + which the entire family undertook, his days and evenings were full + enough. Howells wrote protesting against the European travel and + berating him for his silence: + + "I never was in Berlin and don't know any family hotel there. + I should be glad I didn't, if it would keep you from going. You + deserve to put up at the Sign of the Savage in Vienna. Really, it's + a great blow to me to hear of that prospected sojourn. It's a + shame. I must see you, somehow, before you go. I'm in dreadfully + low spirits about it. + + "I was afraid your silence meant something wicked." + + Clemens replied promptly, urging a visit to Hartford, adding a + postscript for Mrs. Howells, characteristic enough to warrant + preservation. + + + P. S. to Mrs. Howells, in Boston: + + Feb. '78. +DEAR MRS. HOWELLS. Mrs. Clemens wrote you a letter, and handed it to me +half an hour ago, while I was folding mine to Mr. Howells. I laid that +letter on this table before me while I added the paragraph about R,'s +application. Since then I have been hunting and swearing, and swearing +and hunting, but I can't find a sign of that letter. It is the most +astonishing disappearance I ever heard of. Mrs. Clemens has gone off +driving--so I will have to try and give you an idea of her communication +from memory. Mainly it consisted of an urgent desire that you come to +see us next week, if you can possibly manage it, for that will be a +reposeful time, the turmoil of breaking up beginning the week after. She +wants you to tell her about Italy, and advise her in that connection, if +you will. Then she spoke of her plans--hers, mind you, for I never have +anything quite so definite as a plan. She proposes to stop a fortnight +in (confound the place, I've forgotten what it was,) then go and live in +Dresden till sometime in the summer; then retire to Switzerland for the +hottest season, then stay a while in Venice and put in the winter in +Munich. This program subject to modifications according to +circumstances. She said something about some little by-trips here and +there, but they didn't stick in my memory because the idea didn't charm +me. + +(They have just telephoned me from the Courant office that Bayard Taylor +and family have taken rooms in our ship, the Holsatia, for the 11th +April.) + +Do come, if you possibly can!--and remember and don't forget to avoid +letting Mrs. Clemens find out I lost her letter. Just answer her the +same as if you had got it. + Sincerely yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The Howellses came, as invited, for a final reunion before the + breaking up. This was in the early half of March; the Clemenses + were to sail on the 11th of the following month. + + Orion Clemens, meantime, had conceived a new literary idea and was + piling in his MS. as fast as possible to get his brother's judgment + on it before the sailing-date. It was not a very good time to send + MS., but Mark Twain seems to have read it and given it some + consideration. "The Journey in Heaven," of his own, which he + mentions, was the story published so many years later under the + title of "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven." He had began it in + 1868, on his voyage to San Francisco, it having been suggested by + conversations with Capt. Ned Wakeman, of one of the Pacific + steamers. Wakeman also appears in 'Roughing It,' Chap. L, as Capt. + Ned Blakely, and again in one of the "Rambling Notes of an Idle + Excursion," as "Captain Hurricane Jones." + + + To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk: + + HARTFORD, Mch. 23, 1878. +MY DEAR BRO.,--Every man must learn his trade--not pick it up. +God requires that he learn it by slow and painful processes. The +apprentice-hand, in black-smithing, in medicine, in literature, in +everything, is a thing that can't be hidden. It always shows. + +But happily there is a market for apprentice work, else the "Innocents +Abroad" would have had no sale. Happily, too, there's a wider market for +some sorts of apprentice literature than there is for the very best of +journey-work. This work of yours is exceedingly crude, but I am free to +say it is less crude than I expected it to be, and considerably better +work than I believed you could do, it is too crude to offer to any +prominent periodical, so I shall speak to the N. Y. Weekly people. To +publish it there will be to bury it. Why could not same good genius have +sent me to the N. Y. Weekly with my apprentice sketches? + +You should not publish it in book form at all--for this reason: it is +only an imitation of Verne--it is not a burlesque. But I think it may be +regarded as proof that Verne cannot be burlesqued. + +In accompanying notes I have suggested that you vastly modify the first +visit to hell, and leave out the second visit altogether. Nobody would, +or ought to print those things. You are not advanced enough in +literature to venture upon a matter requiring so much practice. Let me +show you what a man has got to go through: + +Nine years ago I mapped out my "Journey in Heaven." I discussed it with +literary friends whom I could trust to keep it to themselves. + +I gave it a deal of thought, from time to time. After a year or more I +wrote it up. It was not a success. Five years ago I wrote it again, +altering the plan. That MS is at my elbow now. It was a considerable +improvement on the first attempt, but still it wouldn't do--last year and +year before I talked frequently with Howells about the subject, and he +kept urging me to do it again. + +So I thought and thought, at odd moments and at last I struck what I +considered to be the right plan! Mind I have never altered the ideas, +from the first--the plan was the difficulty. When Howells was here last, +I laid before him the whole story without referring to my MS and he said: +"You have got it sure this time. But drop the idea of making mere +magazine stuff of it. Don't waste it. Print it by itself--publish it +first in England--ask Dean Stanley to endorse it, which will draw some of +the teeth of the religious press, and then reprint in America." I doubt +my ability to get Dean Stanley to do anything of the sort, but I shall do +the rest--and this is all a secret which you must not divulge. + +Now look here--I have tried, all these years, to think of some way of +"doing" hell too--and have always had to give it up. Hell, in my book, +will not occupy five pages of MS I judge--it will be only covert hints, +I suppose, and quickly dropped, I may end by not even referring to it. + +And mind you, in my opinion you will find that you can't write up hell so +it will stand printing. Neither Howells nor I believe in hell or the +divinity of the Savior, but no matter, the Savior is none the less a +sacred Personage, and a man should have no desire or disposition to refer +to him lightly, profanely, or otherwise than with the profoundest +reverence. + +The only safe thing is not to introduce him, or refer to him at all, +I suspect. I have entirely rewritten one book 3 (perhaps 4.) times, +changing the plan every time--1200 pages of MS. wasted and burned--and +shall tackle it again, one of these years and maybe succeed at last. +Therefore you need not expect to get your book right the first time. +Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and +lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are +God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases +to get under the bed, by and by. + +Mr. Perkins will send you and Ma your checks when we are gone. But don't +write him, ever, except a single line in case he forgets the checks--for +the man is driven to death with work. + +I see you are half promising yourself a monthly return for your book. +In my experience, previously counted chickens never do hatch. How many +of mine I have counted! and never a one of them but failed! It is much +better to hedge disappointment by not counting.--Unexpected money is a +delight. The same sum is a bitterness when you expected more. + +My time in America is growing mighty short. Perhaps we can manage in +this way: Imprimis, if the N. Y. Weekly people know that you are my +brother, they will turn that fact into an advertisement--a thing of value +to them, but not to you and me. This must be prevented. I will write +them a note to say you have a friend near Keokuk, Charles S. Miller, +who has a MS for sale which you think is a pretty clever travesty on +Verne; and if they want it they might write to him in your care. Then if +any correspondence ensues between you and them, let Mollie write for you +and sign your name--your own hand writing representing Miller's. Keep +yourself out of sight till you make a strike on your own merits there is +no other way to get a fair verdict upon your merits. + +Later-I've written the note to Smith, and with nothing in it which he can +use as an advertisement. I'm called--Good bye-love to you both. + +We leave here next Wednesday for Elmira: we leave there Apl. 9 or 10--and +sail 11th + Yr Bro. + SAM. + + + In the letter that follows the mention of Annie and Sam refers, of + course, to the children of Mrs. Moffett, who had been, Pamela + Clemens. They were grown now, and Annie Moffett was married to + Charles L. Webster, who later was to become Mark Twain's business + partner. The Moffetts and Websters were living in Fredonia at this + time, and Clemens had been to pay them a good-by visit. The Taylor + dinner mentioned was a farewell banquet given to Bayard Taylor, who + had been appointed Minister to Germany, and was to sail on the ship + with Mark Twain. Mark Twain's mother was visiting in Fredonia when + this letter was written. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in Fredonia: + + Apr. 7, '78. +MY DEAR MOTHER,--I have told Livy all about Annie's beautiful house, and +about Sam and Charley, and about Charley's ingenious manufactures and his +strong manhood and good promise, and how glad I am that he and Annie +married. And I have told her about Annie's excellent house-keeping, also +about the great Bacon conflict; (I told you it was a hundred to one that +neither Livy nor the European powers had heard of that desolating +struggle.) + +And I have told her how beautiful you are in your age and how bright your +mind is with its old-time brightness, and how she and the children would +enjoy you. And I have told her how singularly young Pamela is looking, +and what a fine large fellow Sam is, and how ill the lingering syllable +"my" to his name fits his port and figure. + +Well, Pamela, after thinking it over for a day or so, I came near +inquiring about a state-room in our ship for Sam, to please you, but my +wiser former resolution came back to me. It is not for his good that he +have friends in the ship. His conduct in the Bacon business shows that +he will develop rapidly into a manly man as soon as he is cast loose from +your apron strings. + +You don't teach him to push ahead and do and dare things for himself, but +you do just the reverse. You are assisted in your damaging work by the +tyrannous ways of a village--villagers watch each other and so make +cowards of each other. After Sam shall have voyaged to Europe by +himself, and rubbed against the world and taken and returned its cuffs, +do you think he will hesitate to escort a guest into any whisky-mill in +Fredonia when he himself has no sinful business to transact there? +No, he will smile at the idea. If he avoids this courtesy now from +principle, of course I find no fault with it at all--only if he thinks it +is principle he may be mistaken; a close examination may show it is only +a bowing to the tyranny of public opinion. + +I only say it may--I cannot venture to say it will. Hartford is not a +large place, but it is broader than to have ways of that sort. Three or +four weeks ago, at a Moody and Sankey meeting, the preacher read a letter +from somebody "exposing" the fact that a prominent clergyman had gone +from one of those meetings, bought a bottle of lager beer and drank it on +the premises (a drug store.) + +A tempest of indignation swept the town. Our clergymen and everybody +else said the "culprit" had not only done an innocent thing, but had done +it in an open, manly way, and it was nobody's right or business to find +fault with it. Perhaps this dangerous latitude comes of the fact that we +never have any temperance "rot" going on in Hartford. + +I find here a letter from Orion, submitting some new matter in his story +for criticism. When you write him, please tell him to do the best he can +and bang away. I can do nothing further in this matter, for I have but 3 +days left in which to settle a deal of important business and answer a +bushel and a half of letters. I am very nearly tired to death. + +I was so jaded and worn, at the Taylor dinner, that I found I could not +remember 3 sentences of the speech I had memorized, and therefore got up +and said so and excused myself from speaking. I arrived here at 3 +o'clock this morning. I think the next 3 days will finish me. The idea +of sitting down to a job of literary criticism is simply ludicrous. + +A young lady passenger in our ship has been placed under Livy's charge. +Livy couldn't easily get out of it, and did not want to, on her own +account, but fully expected I would make trouble when I heard of it. +But I didn't. A girl can't well travel alone, so I offered no objection. +She leaves us at Hamburg. So I've got 6 people in my care, now--which is +just 6 too many for a man of my unexecutive capacity. I expect nothing +else but to lose some of them overboard. + +We send our loving good-byes to all the household and hope to see you +again after a spell. + Affly Yrs. + SAM. + + + There are no other American letters of this period. The Clemens + party, which included Miss Clara Spaulding, of Elmira, sailed as + planned, on the Holsatia, April 11, 1878. As before stated, Bayard + Taylor was on the ship; also Murat Halstead and family. On the eve + of departure, Clemens sent to Howells this farewell word: + + "And that reminds me, ungrateful dog that I am, that I owe as much + to your training as the rude country job-printer owes to the city + boss who takes him in hand and teaches him the right way to handle + his art. I was talking to Mrs. Clemens about this the other day, + and grieving because I never mentioned it to you, thereby seeming to + ignore it, or to be unaware of it. Nothing that has passed under + your eye needs any revision before going into a volume, while all my + other stuff does need so much." + + A characteristic tribute, and from the heart. + + The first European letter came from Frankfort, a rest on their way + to Heidelberg. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN, May 4, 1878. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I only propose to write a single line to say we are +still around. Ah, I have such a deep, grateful, unutterable sense of +being "out of it all." I think I foretaste some of the advantages of +being dead. Some of the joy of it. I don't read any newspapers or care +for them. When people tell me England has declared war, I drop the +subject, feeling that it is none of my business; when they tell me Mrs. +Tilton has confessed and Mr. B. denied, I say both of them have done that +before, therefore let the worn stub of the Plymouth white-wash brush be +brought out once more, and let the faithful spit on their hands and get +to work again regardless of me--for I am out of it all. + +We had 2 almost devilish weeks at sea (and I tell you Bayard Taylor is a +really lovable man--which you already knew) then we staid a week in the +beautiful, the very beautiful city of Hamburg; and since then we have +been fooling along, 4 hours per day by rail, with a courier, spending the +other 20 in hotels whose enormous bedchambers and private parlors are an +overpowering marvel to me: Day before yesterday, in Cassel, we had a love +of a bedroom ,31 feet long, and a parlor with 2 sofas, 12 chairs, a +writing desk and 4 tables scattered around, here and there in it. Made +of red silk, too, by George. + +The times and times I wish you were along! You could throw some fun into +the journey; whereas I go on, day by day, in a smileless state of solemn +admiration. + +What a paradise this is! What clean clothes, what good faces, what +tranquil contentment, what prosperity, what genuine freedom, what superb +government. And I am so happy, for I am responsible for none of it. I +am only here to enjoy. How charmed I am when I overhear a German word +which I understand. With love from us 2 to you 2. + + MARK. + +P. S. We are not taking six days to go from Hamburg to Heidelberg +because we prefer it. Quite on the contrary. Mrs. Clemens picked up a +dreadful cold and sore throat on board ship and still keeps them in +stock--so she could only travel 4 hours a day. She wanted to dive +straight through, but I had different notions about the wisdom of it. +I found that 4 hours a day was the best she could do. Before I forget +it, our permanent address is Care Messrs. Koester & Co., Backers, +Heidelberg. We go there tomorrow. + +Poor Susy! From the day we reached German soil, we have required Rosa to +speak German to the children--which they hate with all their souls. The +other morning in Hanover, Susy came to us (from Rosa, in the nursery) and +said, in halting syllables, "Papa, vie viel uhr ist es?"--then turned +with pathos in her big eyes, and said, "Mamma, I wish Rosa was made in +English." + +(Unfinished) + + + Frankfort was a brief halting-place, their destination being + Heidelberg. They were presently located there in the beautiful + Schloss hotel, which overlooks the old castle with its forest + setting, the flowing Neckar, and the distant valley of the Rhine. + Clemens, who had discovered the location, and loved it, toward the + end of May reported to Howells his felicities. + + + Part of letter to W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + SCHLOSS-HOTEL HEIDELBERG, + Sunday, a. m., May 26, 1878. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--....divinely located. From this airy porch among the +shining groves we look down upon Heidelberg Castle, and upon the swift +Neckar, and the town, and out over the wide green level of the Rhine +valley--a marvelous prospect. We are in a Cul-de-sac formed of +hill-ranges and river; we are on the side of a steep mountain; the river +at our feet is walled, on its other side, (yes, on both sides,) by a +steep and wooded mountain-range which rises abruptly aloft from the +water's edge; portions of these mountains are densely wooded; the plain +of the Rhine, seen through the mouth of this pocket, has many and +peculiar charms for the eye. + +Our bedroom has two great glass bird-cages (enclosed balconies) one +looking toward the Rhine valley and sunset, the other looking up the +Neckar cul-de-sac, and naturally we spend nearly all our time in these +--when one is sunny the other is shady. We have tables and chairs in +them; we do our reading, writing, studying, smoking and suppering in +them. + +The view from these bird-cages is my despair. The pictures change from +one enchanting aspect to another in ceaseless procession, never keeping +one form half an hour, and never taking on an unlovely one. + +And then Heidelberg on a dark night! It is massed, away down there, +almost right under us, you know, and stretches off toward the valley. +Its curved and interlacing streets are a cobweb, beaded thick with +lights--a wonderful thing to see; then the rows of lights on the arched +bridges, and their glinting reflections in the water; and away at the far +end, the Eisenbahnhof, with its twenty solid acres of glittering +gas-jets, a huge garden, as one may say, whose every plant is a flame. + +These balconies are the darlingest things. I have spent all the morning +in this north one. Counting big and little, it has 256 panes of glass in +it; so one is in effect right out in the free sunshine, and yet sheltered +from wind and rain--and likewise doored and curtained from whatever may +be going on in the bedroom. It must have been a noble genius who devised +this hotel. Lord, how blessed is the repose, the tranquillity of this +place! Only two sounds; the happy clamor of the birds in the groves, and +the muffled music of the Neckar, tumbling over the opposing dykes. It is +no hardship to lie awake awhile, nights, for this subdued roar has +exactly the sound of a steady rain beating upon a roof. It is so healing +to the spirit; and it bears up the thread of one's imaginings as the +accompaniment bears up a song. + +While Livy and Miss Spaulding have been writing at this table, I have sat +tilted back, near by, with a pipe and the last Atlantic, and read Charley +Warner's article with prodigious enjoyment. I think it is exquisite. +I think it must be the roundest and broadest and completest short essay +he has ever written. It is clear, and compact, and charmingly done. + +The hotel grounds join and communicate with the Castle grounds; so we and +the children loaf in the winding paths of those leafy vastnesses a great +deal, and drink beer and listen to excellent music. + +When we first came to this hotel, a couple of weeks ago, I pointed to a +house across the river, and said I meant to rent the centre room on the +3d floor for a work-room. Jokingly we got to speaking of it as my +office; and amused ourselves with watching "my people" daily in their +small grounds and trying to make out what we could of their dress, &c., +without a glass. Well, I loafed along there one day and found on that +house the only sign of the kind on that side of the river: "Moblirte +Wohnung zu Vermiethen!" I went in and rented that very room which I had +long ago selected. There was only one other room in the whole +double-house unrented. + +(It occurs to me that I made a great mistake in not thinking to deliver a +very bad German speech, every other sentence pieced out with English, at +the Bayard Taylor banquet in New York. I think I could have made it one +of the features of the occasion.)--[He used this plan at a gathering of +the American students in Heidelberg, on July 4th, with great effect; so +his idea was not wasted.] + +We left Hartford before the end of March, and I have been idle ever +since. I have waited for a call to go to work--I knew it would come. +Well, it began to come a week ago; my note-book comes out more and more +frequently every day since; 3 days ago I concluded to move my manuscript +over to my den. Now the call is loud and decided at last. So tomorrow I +shall begin regular, steady work, and stick to it till middle of July or +1st August, when I look for Twichell; we will then walk about Germany 2 +or 3 weeks, and then I'll go to work again--(perhaps in Munich.) + +We both send a power of love to the Howellses, and we do wish you were +here. Are you in the new house? Tell us about it. + Yrs Ever + MARK. + + + There has been no former mention in the letters of the coming of + Twichell; yet this had been a part of the European plan. Mark Twain + had invited his walking companion to make a tramp with him through + Europe, as his guest. Material for the new book would grow faster + with Twichell as a companion; and these two in spite of their widely + opposed views concerning Providence and the general scheme of + creation, were wholly congenial comrades. Twichell, in Hartford, + expecting to receive the final summons to start, wrote: "Oh, my! do + you realize, Mark, what a symposium it is to be? I do. To begin + with, I am thoroughly tired, and the rest will be worth everything. + To walk with you and talk with you for weeks together--why, it's my + dream of luxury." + + August 1st brought Twichell, and the friends set out without delay + on a tramp through the Black Forest, making short excursions at + first, but presently extending them in the direction of Switzerland. + Mrs. Clemens and the others remained in Heidelberg, to follow at + their leisure. To Mrs. Clemens her husband sent frequent reports of + their wanderings. It will be seen that their tramp did not confine + itself to pedestrianism, though they did, in fact, walk a great + deal, and Mark Twain in a note to his mother declared, "I loathe all + travel, except on foot." The reports to Mrs. Clemens follow: + + + Letters to Mrs. Clemens, in Heidelberg: + + ALLERHEILIGEN Aug. 5, 1878 8:30 p.m. +Livy darling, we had a rattling good time to-day, but we came very near +being left at Baden-Baden, for instead of waiting in the waiting-room, we +sat down on the platform to wait where the trains come in from the other +direction. We sat there full ten minutes--and then all of a sudden it +occurred to me that that was not the right place. + +On the train the principal of the big English school at Nauheim (of which +Mr. Scheiding was a teacher), introduced himself to me, and then he +mapped out our day for us (for today and tomorrow) and also drew a map +and gave us directions how to proceed through Switzerland. He had his +entire school with him, taking them on a prodigious trip through +Switzerland--tickets for the round trip ten dollars apiece. He has done +this annually for 10 years. We took a post carriage from Aachen to +Otterhofen for 7 marks--stopped at the "Pflug" to drink beer, and saw +that pretty girl again at a distance. Her father, mother, and two +brothers received me like an ancient customer and sat down and talked as +long as I had any German left. The big room was full of red-vested +farmers (the Gemeindrath of the district, with the Burgermeister at the +head,) drinking beer and talking public business. They had held an +election and chosen a new member and had been drinking beer at his +expense for several hours. (It was intensely Black-foresty.) + +There was an Australian there (a student from Stuttgart or somewhere,) +and Joe told him who I was and he laid himself out to make our course +plain, for us--so I am certain we can't get lost between here and +Heidelberg. + +We walked the carriage road till we came to that place where one sees the +foot path on the other side of the ravine, then we crossed over and took +that. For a good while we were in a dense forest and judged we were +lost, but met a native women who said we were all right. We fooled along +and got there at 6 p.m.--ate supper, then followed down the ravine to the +foot of the falls, then struck into a blind path to see where it would +go, and just about dark we fetched up at the Devil's Pulpit on top of the +hills. Then home. And now to bed, pretty sleepy. Joe sends love and I +send a thousand times as much, my darling. + S. L. C. + + + HOTEL GENNIN. +Livy darling, we had a lovely day jogged right along, with a good horse +and sensible driver--the last two hours right behind an open carriage +filled with a pleasant German family--old gentleman and 3 pretty +daughters. At table d'hote tonight, 3 dishes were enough for me, and +then I bored along tediously through the bill of fare, with a back-ache, +not daring to get up and bow to the German family and leave. I meant to +sit it through and make them get up and do the bowing; but at last Joe +took pity on me and said he would get up and drop them a curtsy and put +me out of my misery. I was grateful. He got up and delivered a +succession of frank and hearty bows, accompanying them with an atmosphere +of good-fellowship which would have made even an English family +surrender. Of course the Germans responded--then I got right up and they +had to respond to my salaams, too. So "that was done." + +We walked up a gorge and saw a tumbling waterfall which was nothing to +Giessbach, but it made me resolve to drop you a line and urge you to go +and see Giessbach illuminated. Don't fail--but take a long day's rest, +first. I love you, sweetheart. + SAML. + + + OVER THE GEMMI PASS. + 4.30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 24, 1878. +Livy darling, Joe and I have had a most noble day. Started to climb (on +foot) at 8.30 this morning among the grandest peaks! Every half hour +carried us back a month in the season. We left them harvesting 2d crop +of hay. At 9 we were in July and found ripe strawberries; at 9.30 we +were in June and gathered flowers belonging to that month; at 10 we were +in May and gathered a flower which appeared in Heidelberg the 17th of +that month; also forget-me-nots, which disappeared from Heidelberg about +mid-May; at 11.30 we were in April (by the flowers;) at noon we had rain +and hail mixed, and wind and enveloping fogs, and considered it March; at +12.30 we had snowbanks above us and snowbanks below us, and considered it +February. Not good February, though, because in the midst of the wild +desolation the forget-me-not still bloomed, lovely as ever. + +What a flower garden the Gemmi Pass is! After I had got my hands full +Joe made me a paper bag, which I pinned to my lapel and filled with +choice specimens. I gathered no flowers which I had ever gathered before +except 4 or 5 kinds. We took it leisurely and I picked all I wanted to. +I mailed my harvest to you a while ago. Don't send it to Mrs. Brooks +until you have looked it over, flower by flower. It will pay. + +Among the clouds and everlasting snows I found a brave and bright little +forget-me-not growing in the very midst of a smashed and tumbled +stone-debris, just as cheerful as if the barren and awful domes and +ramparts that towered around were the blessed walls of heaven. I thought +how Lilly Warner would be touched by such a gracious surprise, if she, +instead of I, had seen it. So I plucked it, and have mailed it to her +with a note. + +Our walk was 7 hours--the last 2 down a path as steep as a ladder, +almost, cut in the face of a mighty precipice. People are not allowed to +ride down it. This part of the day's work taxed our knees, I tell you. +We have been loafing about this village (Leukerbad) for an hour, now we +stay here over Sunday. Not tired at all. (Joe's hat fell over the +precipice--so he came here bareheaded.) I love you, my darling. + + SAML. + + + ST. NICHOLAS, Aug. 26th, '78. +Livy darling, we came through a-whooping today, 6 hours tramp up steep +hills and down steep hills, in mud and water shoe-deep, and in a steady +pouring rain which never moderated a moment. I was as chipper and fresh +as a lark all the way and arrived without the slightest sense of fatigue. +But we were soaked and my shoes full of water, so we ate at once, +stripped and went to bed for 2 1/2 hours while our traps were thoroughly +dried, and our boots greased in addition. Then we put our clothes on hot +and went to table d'hote. + +Made some nice English friends and shall see them at Zermatt tomorrow. + +Gathered a small bouquet of new flowers, but they got spoiled. I sent +you a safety-match box full of flowers last night from Leukerbad. + +I have just telegraphed you to wire the family news to me at Riffel +tomorrow. I do hope you are all well and having as jolly a time as we +are, for I love you, sweetheart, and also, in a measure, the Bays. +--[Little Susy's word for "babies."]--Give my love to Clara Spaulding +and also to the cubs. + SAML. + + + This, as far as it goes, is a truer and better account of the + excursion than Mark Twain gave in the book that he wrote later. A + Tramp Abroad has a quality of burlesque in it, which did not belong + to the journey at all, but was invented to satisfy the craving for + what the public conceived to be Mark Twain's humor. The serious + portions of the book are much more pleasing--more like himself. + The entire journey, as will be seen, lasted one week more than a + month. + + Twichell also made his reports home, some of which give us + interesting pictures of his walking partner. In one place he wrote: + "Mark is a queer fellow. There is nothing he so delights in as a + swift, strong stream. You can hardly get him to leave one when once + he is within the influence of its fascinations." + + Twichell tells how at Kandersteg they were out together one evening + where a brook comes plunging down from Gasternthal and how he pushed + in a drift to see it go racing along the current. "When I got back + to the path Mark was running down stream after it as hard as he + could go, throwing up his hands and shouting in the wildest ecstasy, + and when a piece went over a fall and emerged to view in the foam + below he would jump up and down and yell. He said afterward that he + had not been so excited in three months." + + In other places Twichell refers to his companion's consideration for + the feeling of others, and for animals. "When we are driving, his + concern is all about the horse. He can't bear to see the whip used, + or to see a horse pull hard." + +After the walk over Gemmi Pass he wrote: "Mark to-day was immensely +absorbed in flowers. He scrambled around and gathered a great variety, +and manifested the intensest pleasure in them. He crowded a pocket of +his note-book with his specimens, and wanted more room." + +Whereupon Twichell got out his needle and thread and some stiff paper he +had and contrived the little paper bag to hang to the front of his vest. + +The tramp really ended at Lausanne, where Clemens joined his party, but a +short excursion to Chillon and Chamonix followed, the travelers finally +separating at Geneva, Twichell to set out for home by way of England, +Clemens to remain and try to write the story of their travels. He +hurried a good-by letter after his comrade: + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell: + + (No date) +DEAR OLD JOE,--It is actually all over! I was so low-spirited at the +station yesterday, and this morning, when I woke, I couldn't seem to +accept the dismal truth that you were really gone, and the pleasant +tramping and talking at an end. Ah, my boy! it has been such a rich +holiday to me, and I feel under such deep and honest obligations to you +for coming. I am putting out of my mind all memory of the times when I +misbehaved toward you and hurt you: I am resolved to consider it +forgiven, and to store up and remember only the charming hours of the +journeys and the times when I was not unworthy to be with you and share a +companionship which to me stands first after Livy's. It is justifiable +to do this; for why should I let my small infirmities of disposition live +and grovel among my mental pictures of the eternal sublimities of the +Alps? + +Livy can't accept or endure the fact that you are gone. But you are, +and we cannot get around it. So take our love with you, and bear it also +over the sea to Harmony, and God bless you both. + + MARK. + + + From Switzerland the Clemens party worked down into Italy, + sight-seeing, a diversion in which Mark Twain found little enough of + interest. He had seen most of the sights ten years before, when his + mind was fresh. He unburdened himself to Twichell and to Howells, + after a period of suffering. + + + To J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + ROME, Nov. 3, '78. +DEAR JOE,--.....I have received your several letters, and we have +prodigiously enjoyed them. How I do admire a man who can sit down and +whale away with a pen just the same as if it was fishing--or something +else as full of pleasure and as void of labor. I can't do it; else, in +common decency, I would when I write to you. Joe, if I can make a book +out of the matter gathered in your company over here, the book is safe; +but I don't think I have gathered any matter before or since your visit +worth writing up. I do wish you were in Rome to do my sightseeing for +me. Rome interests me as much as East Hartford could, and no more. That +is, the Rome which the average tourist feels an interest in; but there +are other things here which stir me enough to make life worth living. +Livy and Clara Spaulding are having a royal time worshiping the old +Masters, and I as good a time gritting my ineffectual teeth over them. + +A friend waits for me. A power of love to you all. + Amen. + MARK. + + + In his letter to Howells he said: "I wish I could give those sharp + satires on European life which you mention, but of course a man + can't write successful satire except he be in a calm, judicial + good-humor; whereas I hate travel, and I hate hotels, and I hate the + opera, and I hate the old masters. In truth, I don't ever seem to + be in a good-enough humor with anything to satirize it. No, I want + to stand up before it and curse it and foam at the mouth, or take a + club and pound it to rags and pulp. I have got in two or three + chapters about Wagner's operas, and managed to do it without showing + temper, but the strain of another such effort would burst me!" + + From Italy the Clemens party went to Munich, where they had arranged + in advance for winter quarters. Clemens claims, in his report of + the matter to Howells, that he took the party through without the + aid of a courier, though thirty years later, in some comment which + he set down on being shown the letter, he wrote concerning this + paragraph: "Probably a lie." He wrote, also, that they acquired a + great affection for Fraulein Dahlweiner: "Acquired it at once and it + outlasted the winter we spent in her house." + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + No 1a, Karlstrasse, 2e Stock. + Care Fraulein Dahlweiner. + MUNICH, Nov. 17, 1878. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We arrived here night before last, pretty well fagged: +an 8-hour pull from Rome to Florence; a rest there of a day and two +nights; then 5 1/2 hours to Bologna; one night's rest; then from noon to +10:30 p.m. carried us to Trent, in the Austrian Tyrol, where the +confounded hotel had not received our message, and so at that miserable +hour, in that snowy region, the tribe had to shiver together in fireless +rooms while beds were prepared and warmed, then up at 6 in the morning +and a noble view of snow-peaks glittering in the rich light of a full +moon while the hotel-devils lazily deranged a breakfast for us in the +dreary gloom of blinking candles; then a solid 12 hours pull through the +loveliest snow ranges and snow-draped forest--and at 7 p.m. we hauled up, +in drizzle and fog, at the domicile which had been engaged for us ten +months before. Munich did seem the horriblest place, the most desolate +place, the most unendurable place!--and the rooms were so small, the +conveniences so meagre, and the porcelain stoves so grim, ghastly, +dismal, intolerable! So Livy and Clara (Spaulding) sat down forlorn, +and cried, and I retired to a private, place to pray. By and by we all +retired to our narrow German beds; and when Livy and I finished talking +across the room, it was all decided that we would rest 24 hours then pay +whatever damages were required, and straightway fly to the south of +France. + +But you see, that was simply fatigue. Next morning the tribe fell in +love with the rooms, with the weather, with Munich, and head over heels +in love with Fraulein Dahlweiner. We got a larger parlor--an ample one +--threw two communicating bedrooms into one, for the children, and now we +are entirely comfortable. The only apprehension, at present, is that the +climate may not be just right for the children, in which case we shall +have to go to France, but it will be with the sincerest regret. + +Now I brought the tribe through from Rome, myself. We never had so +little trouble before. The next time anybody has a courier to put out to +nurse, I shall not be in the market. + +Last night the forlornities had all disappeared; so we gathered around +the lamp, after supper, with our beer and my pipe, and in a condition of +grateful snugness tackled the new magazines. I read your new story +aloud, amid thunders of applause, and we all agreed that Captain Jenness +and the old man with the accordion-hat are lovely people and most +skillfully drawn--and that cabin-boy, too, we like. Of course we are all +glad the girl is gone to Venice--for there is no place like Venice. Now +I easily understand that the old man couldn't go, because you have a +purpose in sending Lyddy by herself: but you could send the old man over +in another ship, and we particularly want him along. Suppose you don't +need him there? What of that? Can't you let him feed the doves? +Can't you let him fall in the canal occasionally? Can't you let his +good-natured purse be a daily prey to guides and beggar-boys? Can't you +let him find peace and rest and fellowship under Pere Jacopo's kindly +wing? (However, you are writing the book, not I--still, I am one of the +people you are writing it for, you understand.) I only want to insist, in +a friendly way, that the old man shall shed his sweet influence +frequently upon the page--that is all. + +The first time we called at the convent, Pere Jacopo was absent; the next +(Just at this moment Miss Spaulding spoke up and said something about +Pere Jacopo--there is more in this acting of one mind upon another than +people think) time, he was there, and gave us preserved rose-leaves to +eat, and talked about you, and Mrs. Howells, and Winnie, and brought out +his photographs, and showed us a picture of "the library of your new +house," but not so--it was the study in your Cambridge house. He was +very sweet and good. He called on us next day; the day after that we +left Venice, after a pleasant sojourn Of 3 or 4 weeks. He expects to +spend this winter in Munich and will see us often, he said. + +Pretty soon, I am going to write something, and when I finish it I shall +know whether to put it to itself or in the "Contributors' Club." That +"Contributors' Club" was a most happy idea. By the way, I think that the +man who wrote the paragraph beginning at the bottom of page 643 has said +a mighty sound and sensible thing. I wish his suggestion could be +adopted. + +It is lovely of you to keep that old pipe in such a place of honor. + +While it occurs to me, I must tell you Susie's last. She is sorely +badgered with dreams; and her stock dream is that she is being eaten up +by bears. She is a grave and thoughtful child, as you will remember. +Last night she had the usual dream. This morning she stood apart (after +telling it,) for some time, looking vacantly at the floor, and absorbed +in meditation. At last she looked up, and with the pathos of one who +feels he has not been dealt by with even-handed fairness, said "But +Mamma, the trouble is, that I am never the bear, but always the person." + +It would not have occurred to me that there might be an advantage, even +in a dream, in occasionally being the eater, instead of always the party +eaten, but I easily perceived that her point was well taken. + +I'm sending to Heidelberg for your letter and Winnie's, and I do hope +they haven't been lost. + +My wife and I send love to you all. + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + The Howells story, running at this time in the Atlantic, and so much + enjoyed by the Clemens party, was "The Lady of the Aroostook." The + suggestions made for enlarging the part of the "old man" are + eminently characteristic. + + Mark Twain's forty-third birthday came in Munich, and in his letter + conveying this fact to his mother we get a brief added outline of + the daily life in that old Bavarian city. Certainly, it would seem + to have been a quieter and more profitable existence than he had + known amid the confusion of things left behind in, America. + + + To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in America: + + No. 1a Karlstrasse, + Dec. 1, MUNICH. 1878. +MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,--I broke the back of life yesterday and +started down-hill toward old age. This fact has not produced any effect +upon me that I can detect. + +I suppose we are located here for the winter. I have a pleasant +work-room a mile from here where I do my writing. The walk to and from +that place gives me what exercise I need, and all I take. We staid three +weeks in Venice, a week in Florence, a fortnight in Rome, and arrived +here a couple of weeks ago. Livy and Miss Spaulding are studying drawing +and German, and the children have a German day-governess. I cannot see +but that the children speak German as well as they do English. + +Susie often translates Livy's orders to the servants. I cannot work and +study German at the same time: so I have dropped the latter, and do not +even read the language, except in the morning paper to get the news. + +We have all pretty good health, latterly, and have seldom had to call the +doctor. The children have been in the open air pretty constantly for +months now. In Venice they were on the water in the gondola most of the +time, and were great friends with our gondolier; and in Rome and Florence +they had long daily tramps, for Rosa is a famous hand to smell out the +sights of a strange place. Here they wander less extensively. + +The family all join in love to you all and to Orion and Mollie. + Affly + Your son + SAM. + + + + +XIX. + +LETTERS 1879. RETURN TO AMERICA. THE GREAT GRANT REUNION + +Life went on very well in Munich. Each day the family fell more in love +with Fraulein Dahlweiner and her house. + +Mark Twain, however, did not settle down to his work readily. His +"pleasant work-room" provided exercise, but no inspiration. When he +discovered he could not find his Swiss note-book he was ready to give up +his travel-writing altogether. In the letter that follows we find him +much less enthusiastic concerning his own performances than over the +story by Howells, which he was following in the Atlantic. + +The "detective" chapter mentioned in this letter was not included in +'A Tramp Abroad.' It was published separately, as 'The Stolen White +Elephant' in a volume bearing that title. The play, which he had now +found "dreadfully witless and flat," was no other than "Simon Wheeler, +Detective," which he had once regarded so highly. The "Stewart" referred +to was the millionaire merchant, A. T. Stewart, whose body was stolen in +the expectation of reward. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + MUNICH, Jan. 21, (1879) +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It's no use, your letter miscarried in some way and is +lost. The consul has made a thorough search and says he has not been +able to trace it. It is unaccountable, for all the letters I did not +want arrived without a single grateful failure. Well, I have read-up, +now, as far as you have got, that is, to where there's a storm at sea +approaching,--and we three think you are clear, out-Howellsing Howells. +If your literature has not struck perfection now we are not able to see +what is lacking. It is all such truth--truth to the life; every where +your pen falls it leaves a photograph. I did imagine that everything had +been said about life at sea that could be said, but no matter, it was all +a failure and lies, nothing but lies with a thin varnish of fact,--only +you have stated it as it absolutely is. And only you see people and +their ways, and their insides and outsides as they are, and make them +talk as they do talk. I think you are the very greatest artist in these +tremendous mysteries that ever lived. There doesn't seem to be anything +that can be concealed from your awful all-seeing eye. It must be a +cheerful thing for one to live with you and be aware that you are going +up and down in him like another conscience all the time. Possibly you +will not be a fully accepted classic until you have been dead a hundred +years,--it is the fate of the Shakespeares and of all genuine prophets, +--but then your books will be as common as Bibles, I believe. You're not +a weed, but an oak; not a summer-house, but a cathedral. In that day I +shall still be in the Cyclopedias, too, thus: "Mark Twain; history and +occupation unknown--but he was personally acquainted with Howells." +There--I could sing your praises all day, and feel and believe every bit +of it. + +My book is half finished; I wish to heaven it was done. I have given up +writing a detective novel--can't write a novel, for I lack the faculty; +but when the detectives were nosing around after Stewart's loud remains, +I threw a chapter into my present book in which I have very extravagantly +burlesqued the detective business--if it is possible to burlesque that +business extravagantly. You know I was going to send you that detective +play, so that you could re-write it. Well I didn't do it because I +couldn't find a single idea in it that could be useful to you. It was +dreadfully witless and flat. I knew it would sadden you and unfit you +for work. + +I have always been sorry we threw up that play embodying Orion which you +began. It was a mistake to do that. Do keep that MS and tackle it +again. It will work out all right; you will see. I don't believe that +that character exists in literature in so well-developed a condition as +it exists in Orion's person. Now won't you put Orion in a story? Then +he will go handsomely into a play afterwards. How deliciously you could +paint him--it would make fascinating reading--the sort that makes a +reader laugh and cry at the same time, for Orion is as good and +ridiculous a soul as ever was. + +Ah, to think of Bayard Taylor! It is too sad to talk about. I was so +glad there was not a single sting and so many good praiseful words in the +Atlantic's criticism of Deukalion. + Love to you all + Yrs Ever + MARK + +We remain here till middle of March. + + + In 'A Tramp Abroad' there is an incident in which the author + describes himself as hunting for a lost sock in the dark, in a vast + hotel bedroom at Heilbronn. The account of the real incident, as + written to Twichell, seems even more amusing. + + The "Yarn About the Limburger Cheese and the Box of Guns," like "The + Stolen White Elephant," did not find place in the travel-book, but + was published in the same volume with the elephant story, added to + the rambling notes of "An Idle Excursion." + + With the discovery of the Swiss note-book, work with Mark Twain was + going better. His letter reflects his enthusiasm. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + MUNICH, Jan 26 '79. +DEAR OLD JOE,--Sunday. Your delicious letter arrived exactly at the +right time. It was laid by my plate as I was finishing breakfast at 12 +noon. Livy and Clara, (Spaulding) arrived from church 5 minutes later; +I took a pipe and spread myself out on the sofa, and Livy sat by and +read, and I warmed to that butcher the moment he began to swear. There +is more than one way of praying, and I like the butcher's way because the +petitioner is so apt to be in earnest. I was peculiarly alive to his +performance just at this time, for another reason, to wit: Last night I +awoke at 3 this morning, and after raging to my self for 2 interminable +hours, I gave it up. I rose, assumed a catlike stealthiness, to keep +from waking Livy, and proceeded to dress in the pitch dark. Slowly but +surely I got on garment after garment--all down to one sock; I had one +slipper on and the other in my hand. Well, on my hands and knees I crept +softly around, pawing and feeling and scooping along the carpet, and +among chair-legs for that missing sock; I kept that up; and still kept it +up and kept it up. At first I only said to myself, "Blame that sock," +but that soon ceased to answer; my expletives grew steadily stronger and +stronger,--and at last, when I found I was lost, I had to sit flat down +on the floor and take hold of something to keep from lifting the roof off +with the profane explosion that was trying to get out of me. I could see +the dim blur of the window, but of course it was in the wrong place and +could give me no information as to where I was. But I had one comfort +--I had not waked Livy; I believed I could find that sock in silence if +the night lasted long enough. So I started again and softly pawed all +over the place,--and sure enough at the end of half an hour I laid my +hand on the missing article. I rose joyfully up and butted the wash-bowl +and pitcher off the stand and simply raised----so to speak. Livy +screamed, then said, "Who is that? what is the matter?" I said "There +ain't anything the matter--I'm hunting for my sock." She said, "Are you +hunting for it with a club?" + +I went in the parlor and lit the lamp, and gradually the fury subsided +and the ridiculous features of the thing began to suggest themselves. +So I lay on the sofa, with note-book and pencil, and transferred the +adventure to our big room in the hotel at Heilbronn, and got it on paper +a good deal to my satisfaction. + +I found the Swiss note-book, some time ago. When it was first lost I was +glad of it, for I was getting an idea that I had lost my faculty of +writing sketches of travel; therefore the loss of that note-book would +render the writing of this one simply impossible, and let me gracefully +out; I was about to write to Bliss and propose some other book, when the +confounded thing turned up, and down went my heart into my boots. But +there was now no excuse, so I went solidly to work--tore up a great part +of the MS written in Heidelberg,--wrote and tore up,--continued to write +and tear up,--and at last, reward of patient and noble persistence, my +pen got the old swing again! + +Since then I'm glad Providence knew better what to do with the Swiss +note-book than I did, for I like my work, now, exceedingly, and often +turn out over 30 MS pages a day and then quit sorry that Heaven makes the +days so short. + +One of my discouragements had been the belief that my interest in this +tour had been so slender that I couldn't gouge matter enough out of it to +make a book. What a mistake. I've got 900 pages written (not a word in +it about the sea voyage) yet I stepped my foot out of Heidelberg for the +first time yesterday,--and then only to take our party of four on our +first pedestrian tour--to Heilbronn. I've got them dressed elaborately +in walking costume--knapsacks, canteens, field-glasses, leather leggings, +patent walking shoes, muslin folds around their hats, with long tails +hanging down behind, sun umbrellas, and Alpenstocks. They go all the way +to Wimpfen by rail-thence to Heilbronn in a chance vegetable cart drawn +by a donkey and a cow; I shall fetch them home on a raft; and if other +people shall perceive that that was no pedestrian excursion, they +themselves shall not be conscious of it.--This trip will take 100 pages +or more,--oh, goodness knows how many! for the mood is everything, not +the material, and I already seem to see 300 pages rising before me on +that trip. Then, I propose to leave Heidelberg for good. Don't you see, +the book (1800 MS pages,) may really be finished before I ever get to +Switzerland? + +But there's one thing; I want to tell Frank Bliss and his father to be +charitable toward me in,--that is, let me tear up all the MS I want to, +and give me time to write more. I shan't waste the time--I haven't the +slightest desire to loaf, but a consuming desire to work, ever since I +got back my swing. And you see this book is either going to be compared +with the Innocents Abroad, or contrasted with it, to my disadvantage. +I think I can make a book that will be no dead corpse of a thing and I +mean to do my level best to accomplish that. + +My crude plans are crystalizing. As the thing stands now, I went to +Europe for three purposes. The first you know, and must keep secret, +even from the Blisses; the second is to study Art; and the third to +acquire a critical knowledge of the German language. My MS already shows +that the two latter objects are accomplished. It shows that I am moving +about as an Artist and a Philologist, and unaware that there is any +immodesty in assuming these titles. Having three definite objects has +had the effect of seeming to enlarge my domain and give me the freedom of +a loose costume. It is three strings to my bow, too. + +Well, your butcher is magnificent. He won't stay out of my mind.--I keep +trying to think of some way of getting your account of him into my book +without his being offended--and yet confound him there isn't anything you +have said which he would see any offense in,--I'm only thinking of his +friends--they are the parties who busy themselves with seeing things for +people. But I'm bound to have him in. I'm putting in the yarn about the +Limburger cheese and the box of guns, too--mighty glad Howells declined +it. It seems to gather richness and flavor with age. I have very nearly +killed several companies with that narrative,--the American Artists Club, +here, for instance, and Smith and wife and Miss Griffith (they were here +in this house a week or two.) I've got other chapters that pretty nearly +destroyed the same parties, too. + +O, Switzerland! the further it recedes into the enriching haze of time, +the more intolerably delicious the charm of it and the cheer of it and +the glory and majesty and solemnity and pathos of it grow. Those +mountains had a soul; they thought; they spoke,--one couldn't hear it +with the ears of the body, but what a voice it was!--and how real. Deep +down in my memory it is sounding yet. Alp calleth unto Alp!--that +stately old Scriptural wording is the right one for God's Alps and God's +ocean. How puny we were in that awful presence--and how painless it was +to be so; how fitting and right it seemed, and how stingless was the +sense of our unspeakable insignificance. And Lord how pervading were the +repose and peace and blessedness that poured out of the heart of the +invisible Great Spirit of the Mountains. + +Now what is it? There are mountains and mountains and mountains in this +world--but only these take you by the heart-strings. I wonder what the +secret of it is. Well, time and time again it has seemed to me that I +must drop everything and flee to Switzerland once more. It is a longing +--a deep, strong, tugging longing--that is the word. We must go again, +Joe.--October days, let us get up at dawn and breakfast at the tower. I +should like that first rate. + +Livy and all of us send deluges of love to you and Harmony and all the +children. I dreamed last night that I woke up in the library at home and +your children were frolicing around me and Julia was sitting in my lap; +you and Harmony and both families of Warners had finished their welcomes +and were filing out through the conservatory door, wrecking Patrick's +flower pots with their dress skirts as they went. Peace and plenty abide +with you all! + MARK. + +I want the Blisses to know their part of this letter, if possible. They +will see that my delay was not from choice. + + + Following the life of Mark Twain, whether through his letters or + along the sequence of detailed occurrence, we are never more than a + little while, or a little distance, from his brother Orion. In one + form or another Orion is ever present, his inquiries, his proposals, + his suggestions, his plans for improving his own fortunes, command + our attention. He was one of the most human creatures that ever + lived; indeed, his humanity excluded every form of artificiality + --everything that needs to be acquired. Talented, trusting, + child-like, carried away by the impulse of the moment, despite a + keen sense of humor he was never able to see that his latest plan + or project was not bound to succeed. Mark Twain loved him, pitied + him--also enjoyed him, especially with Howells. Orion's new plan + to lecture in the interest of religion found its way to Munich, + with the following result: + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + MUNICH, Feb. 9. (1879) +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have just received this letter from Orion--take care +of it, for it is worth preserving. I got as far as 9 pages in my answer +to it, when Mrs. Clemens shut down on it, and said it was cruel, and made +me send the money and simply wish his lecture success. I said I couldn't +lose my 9 pages--so she said send them to you. But I will acknowledge +that I thought I was writing a very kind letter. + +Now just look at this letter of Orion's. Did you ever see the +grotesquely absurd and the heart-breakingly pathetic more closely joined +together? Mrs. Clemens said "Raise his monthly pension." So I wrote to +Perkins to raise it a trifle. + +Now only think of it! He still has 100 pages to write on his lecture, +yet in one inking of his pen he has already swooped around the United +States and invested the result! + +You must put him in a book or a play right away. You are the only man +capable of doing it. You might die at any moment, and your very greatest +work would be lost to the world. I could write Orion's simple biography, +and make it effective, too, by merely stating the bald facts--and this I +will do if he dies before I do; but you must put him into romance. This +was the understanding you and I had the day I sailed. + +Observe Orion's career--that is, a little of it: (1) He has belonged to +as many as five different religious denominations; last March he withdrew +from the deaconship in a Congregational Church and the Superintendency of +its Sunday School, in a speech in which he said that for many months (it +runs in my mind that he said 13 years,) he had been a confirmed infidel, +and so felt it to be his duty to retire from the flock. + +2. After being a republican for years, he wanted me to buy him a +democratic newspaper. A few days before the Presidential election, he +came out in a speech and publicly went over to the democrats; he +prudently "hedged" by voting for 6 state republicans, also. + +The new convert was made one of the secretaries of the democratic +meeting, and placed in the list of speakers. He wrote me jubilantly of +what a ten-strike he was going to make with that speech. All right--but +think of his innocent and pathetic candor in writing me something like +this, a week later: + +"I was more diffident than I had expected to be, and this was increased +by the silence with which I was received when I came forward; so I seemed +unable to get the fire into my speech which I had calculated upon, and +presently they began to get up and go out; and in a few minutes they all +rose up and went away." + +How could a man uncover such a sore as that and show it to another? Not +a word of complaint, you see--only a patient, sad surprise. + +3. His next project was to write a burlesque upon Paradise Lost. + +4. Then, learning that the Times was paying Harte $100 a column for +stories, he concluded to write some for the same price. I read his first +one and persuaded him not to write any more. + +5. Then he read proof on the N. Y. Eve. Post at $10 a week and meekly +observed that the foreman swore at him and ordered him around "like a +steamboat mate." + +6. Being discharged from that post, he wanted to try agriculture--was +sure he could make a fortune out of a chicken farm. I gave him $900 and +he went to a ten-house village a miles above Keokuk on the river bank +--this place was a railway station. He soon asked for money to buy a +horse and light wagon,--because the trains did not run at church time on +Sunday and his wife found it rather far to walk. + +For a long time I answered demands for "loans" and by next mail always +received his check for the interest due me to date. In the most +guileless way he let it leak out that he did not underestimate the value +of his custom to me, since it was not likely that any other customer of +mine paid his interest quarterly, and this enabled me to use my capital +twice in 6 months instead of only once. But alas, when the debt at last +reached $1800 or $2500 (I have forgotten which) the interest ate too +formidably into his borrowings, and so he quietly ceased to pay it or +speak of it. At the end of two years I found that the chicken farm had +long ago been abandoned, and he had moved into Keokuk. Later in one of +his casual moments, he observed that there was no money in fattening a +chicken on 65 cents worth of corn and then selling it for 50. + +7. Finally, if I would lend him $500 a year for two years, (this was 4 +or 5 years ago,) he knew he could make a success as a lawyer, and would +prove it. This is the pension which we have just increased to $600. The +first year his legal business brought him $5. It also brought him an +unremunerative case where some villains were trying to chouse some negro +orphans out of $700. He still has this case. He has waggled it around +through various courts and made some booming speeches on it. The negro +children have grown up and married off, now, I believe, and their +litigated town-lot has been dug up and carted off by somebody--but Orion +still infests the courts with his documents and makes the welkin ring +with his venerable case. The second year, he didn't make anything. The +third he made $6, and I made Bliss put a case in his hands--about half an +hour's work. Orion charged $50 for it--Bliss paid him $15. Thus four or +five years of slaving has brought him $26, but this will doubtless be +increased when he gets done lecturing and buys that "law library." +Meantime his office rent has been $60 a year, and he has stuck to that +lair day by day as patiently as a spider. + +8. Then he by and by conceived the idea of lecturing around America as +"Mark Twain's Brother"--that to be on the bills. Subject of proposed +lecture, "On the, Formation of Character." + +9. I protested, and he got on his warpaint, couched his lance, and ran a +bold tilt against total abstinence and the Red Ribbon fanatics. It +raised a fine row among the virtuous Keokukians. + +10. I wrote to encourage him in his good work, but I had let a mail +intervene; so by the time my letter reached him he was already winning +laurels as a Red Ribbon Howler. + +11. Afterward he took a rabid part in a prayer-meeting epidemic; dropped +that to travesty Jules Verne; dropped that, in the middle of the last +chapter, last March, to digest the matter of an infidel book which he +proposed to write; and now he comes to the surface to rescue our "noble +and beautiful religion" from the sacrilegious talons of Bob Ingersoll. + +Now come! Don't fool away this treasure which Providence has laid at +your feet, but take it up and use it. One can let his imagination run +riot in portraying Orion, for there is nothing so extravagant as to be +out of character with him. + +Well-good-bye, and a short life and a merry one be yours. Poor old +Methusaleh, how did he manage to stand it so long? + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + To Orion Clemens + (Unsent and inclosed with the foregoing, to W. D. Howells): + + MUNICH, Feb. 9, (1879) +MY DEAR BRO.,--Yours has just arrived. I enclose a draft on Hartford for +$25. You will have abandoned the project you wanted it for, by the time +it arrives,--but no matter, apply it to your newer and present project, +whatever it is. You see I have an ineradicable faith in your +unsteadfastness,--but mind you, I didn't invent that faith, you conferred +it on me yourself. But fire away, fire away! I don't see why a +changeable man shouldn't get as much enjoyment out of his changes, and +transformations and transfigurations as a steadfast man gets out of +standing still and pegging at the same old monotonous thing all the time. +That is to say, I don't see why a kaleidoscope shouldn't enjoy itself as +much as a telescope, nor a grindstone have as good a time as a whetstone, +nor a barometer as good a time as a yardstick. I don't feel like girding +at you any more about fickleness of purpose, because I recognize and +realize at last that it is incurable; but before I learned to accept this +truth, each new weekly project of yours possessed the power of throwing +me into the most exhausting and helpless convulsions of profanity. But +fire away, now! Your magic has lost its might. I am able to view your +inspirations dispassionately and judicially, now, and say "This one or +that one or the other one is not up to your average flight, or is above +it, or below it." + +And so, without passion, or prejudice, or bias of any kind, I sit in +judgment upon your lecture project, and say it was up to your average, +it was indeed above it, for it had possibilities in it, and even +practical ones. While I was not sorry you abandoned it, I should not be +sorry if you had stuck to it and given it a trial. But on the whole you +did the wise thing to lay it aside, I think, because a lecture is a most +easy thing to fail in; and at your time of life, and in your own town, +such a failure would make a deep and cruel wound in your heart and in +your pride. It was decidedly unwise in you to think for a moment of +coming before a community who knew you, with such a course of lectures; +because Keokuk is not unaware that you have been a Swedenborgian, a +Presbyterian, a Congregationalist, and a Methodist (on probation), and +that just a year ago you were an infidel. If Keokuk had gone to your +lecture course, it would have gone to be amused, not instructed, for when +a man is known to have no settled convictions of his own he can't +convince other people. They would have gone to be amused and that would +have been a deep humiliation to you. It could have been safe for you to +appear only where you were unknown--then many of your hearers would think +you were in earnest. And they would be right. You are in earnest while +your convictions are new. But taking it by and large, you probably did +best to discard that project altogether. But I leave you to judge of +that, for you are the worst judge I know of. + +(Unfinished.) + + + That Mark Twain in many ways was hardly less child-like than his + brother is now and again revealed in his letters. He was of + steadfast purpose, and he possessed the driving power which Orion + Clemens lacked; but the importance to him of some of the smaller + matters of life, as shown in a letter like the following, bespeaks a + certain simplicity of nature which he never outgrew: + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + MUNICH, Feb. 24. (1879) +DEAR OLD JOE,--It was a mighty good letter, Joe--and that idea of yours +is a rattling good one. But I have not sot down here to answer your +letter,--for it is down at my study,--but only to impart some +information. + +For a months I had not shaved without crying. I'd spend 3/4 of an hour +whetting away on my hand--no use, couldn't get an edge. Tried a razor +strop-same result. So I sat down and put in an hour thinking out the +mystery. Then it seemed plain--to wit: my hand can't give a razor an +edge, it can only smooth and refine an edge that has already been given. +I judge that a razor fresh from the hone is this shape V--the long point +being the continuation of the edge--and that after much use the shape is +this V--the attenuated edge all worn off and gone. By George I knew that +was the explanation. And I knew that a freshly honed and freshly +strapped razor won't cut, but after strapping on the hand as a final +operation, it will cut.--So I sent out for an oil-stone; none to be had, +but messenger brought back a little piece of rock the size of a +Safety-match box--(it was bought in a shoemaker's shop) bad flaw in +middle of it, too, but I put 4 drops of fine Olive oil on it, picked out +the razor marked "Thursday" because it was never any account and would be +no loss if I spoiled it--gave it a brisk and reckless honing for 10 +minutes, then tried it on a hair--it wouldn't cut. Then I trotted it +through a vigorous 20-minute course on a razor-strap and tried it on a +hair-it wouldn't cut--tried it on my face--it made me cry--gave it a +5-minute stropping on my hand, and my land, what an edge she had! +We thought we knew what sharp razors were when we were tramping in +Switzerland, but it was a mistake--they were dull beside this old +Thursday razor of mine--which I mean to name Thursday October Christian, +in gratitude. I took my whetstone, and in 20 minutes I put two more of +my razors in splendid condition--but I leave them in the box--I never use +any but Thursday O. C., and shan't till its edge is gone--and then I'll +know how to restore it without any delay. + +We all go to Paris next Thursday--address, Monroe & Co., Bankers. + With love + Ys Ever + MARK. + + + In Paris they found pleasant quarters at the Hotel Normandy, but it + was a chilly, rainy spring, and the travelers gained a rather poor + impression of the French capital. Mark Twain's work did not go + well, at first, because of the noises of the street. But then he + found a quieter corner in the hotel and made better progress. In a + brief note to Aldrich he said: "I sleep like a lamb and write like a + lion--I mean the kind of a lion that writes--if any such." He + expected to finish the book in six weeks; that is to say, before + returning to America. He was looking after its illustrations + himself, and a letter to Frank Bliss, of The American Publishing + Company, refers to the frontpiece, which, from time to time, has + caused question as to its origin. To Bliss he says: "It is a thing + which I manufactured by pasting a popular comic picture into the + middle of a celebrated Biblical one--shall attribute it to Titian. + It needs to be engraved by a master." + + The weather continued bad in France and they left there in July to + find it little better in England. They had planned a journey to + Scotland to visit Doctor Brown, whose health was not very good. In + after years Mark Twain blamed himself harshly for not making the + trip, which he declared would have meant so much to Mrs. Clemens. + He had forgotten by that time the real reasons for not going--the + continued storms and uncertainty of trains (which made it barely + possible for them to reach Liverpool in time for their + sailing-date), and with characteristic self-reproach vowed that + only perversity and obstinacy on his part had prevented the journey + to Scotland. From Liverpool, on the eve of sailing, he sent Doctor + Brown a good-by word. + + + To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh: + + WASHINGTON HOTEL, LIME STREET, LIVERPOOL. + Aug. (1879) +MY DEAR MR. BROWN,--During all the 15 months we have been spending on the +continent, we have been promising ourselves a sight of you as our latest +and most prized delight in a foreign land--but our hope has failed, our +plan has miscarried. One obstruction after another intruded itself, and +our short sojourn of three or four weeks on English soil was thus +frittered gradually away, and we were at last obliged to give up the idea +of seeing you at all. It is a great disappointment, for we wanted to +show you how much "Megalopis" has grown (she is 7 now) and what a fine +creature her sister is, and how prettily they both speak German. There +are six persons in my party, and they are as difficult to cart around as +nearly any other menagerie would be. My wife and Miss Spaulding are +along, and you may imagine how they take to heart this failure of our +long promised Edinburgh trip. We never even wrote you, because we were +always so sure, from day to day, that our affairs would finally so shape +themselves as to let us get to Scotland. But no,--everything went wrong +we had only flying trips here and there in place of the leisurely ones +which we had planned. + +We arrived in Liverpool an hour ago very tired, and have halted at this +hotel (by the advice of misguided friends)--and if my instinct and +experience are worth anything, it is the very worst hotel on earth, +without any exception. We shall move to another hotel early in the +morning to spend to-morrow. We sail for America next day in the +"Gallic." + +We all join in the sincerest love to you, and in the kindest remembrance +to "Jock"--[Son of Doctor Brown.]--and your sister. + Truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + It was September 3, 1879, that Mark Twain returned to America by the + steamer Gallic. In the seventeen months of his absence he had taken + on a "traveled look" and had added gray hairs. A New York paper + said of his arrival that he looked older than when he went to + Germany, and that his hair had turned quite gray. + + Mark Twain had not finished his book of travel in Paris--in fact, + it seemed to him far from complete--and he settled down rather + grimly to work on it at Quarry Farm. When, after a few days no word + of greeting came from Howells, Clemens wrote to ask if he were dead + or only sleeping. Howells hastily sent a line to say that he had + been sleeping "The sleep of a torpid conscience. I will feign that + I did not know where to write you; but I love you and all of yours, + and I am tremendously glad that you are home again. When and where + shall we meet? Have you come home with your pockets full of + Atlantic papers?" Clemens, toiling away at his book, was, as usual, + not without the prospect of other plans. Orion, as literary + material, never failed to excite him. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, Sept. 15, 1879. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--When and where? Here on the farm would be an elegant +place to meet, but of course you cannot come so far. So we will say +Hartford or Belmont, about the beginning of November. The date of our +return to Hartford is uncertain, but will be three or four weeks hence, +I judge. I hope to finish my book here before migrating. + +I think maybe I've got some Atlantic stuff in my head, but there's none +in MS, I believe. + +Say--a friend of mine wants to write a play with me, I to furnish the +broad-comedy cuss. I don't know anything about his ability, but his +letter serves to remind me of our old projects. If you haven't used +Orion or Old Wakeman, don't you think you and I can get together and +grind out a play with one of those fellows in it? Orion is a field which +grows richer and richer the more he mulches it with each new top-dressing +of religion or other guano. Drop me an immediate line about this, won't +you? I imagine I see Orion on the stage, always gentle, always +melancholy, always changing his politics and religion, and trying to +reform the world, always inventing something, and losing a limb by a new +kind of explosion at the end of each of the four acts. Poor old chap, +he is good material. I can imagine his wife or his sweetheart +reluctantly adopting each of his new religious in turn, just in time to +see him waltz into the next one and leave her isolated once more. + +(Mem. Orion's wife has followed him into the outer darkness, after 30 +years' rabid membership in the Presbyterian Church.) + +Well, with the sincerest and most abounding love to you and yours, from +all this family, I am, + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + The idea of the play interested Howells, but he had twinges of + conscience in the matter of using Orion as material. He wrote: + "More than once I have taken the skeleton of that comedy of ours and + viewed it with tears..... I really have a compunction or two about + helping to put your brother into drama. You can say that he is your + brother, to do what you like with him, but the alien hand might + inflict an incurable hurt on his tender heart." + + As a matter of fact, Orion Clemens had a keen appreciation of his + own shortcomings, and would have enjoyed himself in a play as much + as any observer of it. Indeed, it is more than likely that he would + have been pleased at the thought of such distinguished + dramatization. From the next letter one might almost conclude that + he had received a hint of this plan, and was bent upon supplying + rich material. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, Oct. 9 '79. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Since my return, the mail facilities have enabled Orion +to keep me informed as to his intentions. Twenty-eight days ago it was +his purpose to complete a work aimed at religion, the preface to which he +had already written. Afterward he began to sell off his furniture, with +the idea of hurrying to Leadville and tackling silver-mining--threw up +his law den and took in his sign. Then he wrote to Chicago and St. Louis +newspapers asking for a situation as "paragrapher"--enclosing a taste of +his quality in the shape of two stanzas of "humorous rhymes." By a later +mail on the same day he applied to New York and Hartford insurance +companies for copying to do. + +However, it would take too long to detail all his projects. They +comprise a removal to south-west Missouri; application for a reporter's +berth on a Keokuk paper; application for a compositor's berth on a St. +Louis paper; a re-hanging of his attorney's sign, "though it only creaks +and catches no flies;" but last night's letter informs me that he has +retackled the religious question, hired a distant den to write in, +applied to my mother for $50 to re-buy his furniture, which has advanced +in value since the sale--purposes buying $25 worth of books necessary to +his labors which he had previously been borrowing, and his first chapter +is already on its way to me for my decision as to whether it has enough +ungodliness in it or not. Poor Orion! + +Your letter struck me while I was meditating a project to beguile you, +and John Hay and Joe Twichell, into a descent upon Chicago which I dream +of making, to witness the re-union of the great Commanders of the Western +Army Corps on the 9th of next month. My sluggish soul needs a fierce +upstirring, and if it would not get it when Grant enters the meeting +place I must doubtless "lay" for the final resurrection. Can you and Hay +go? At the same time, confound it, I doubt if I can go myself, for this +book isn't done yet. But I would give a heap to be there. I mean to +heave some holiness into the Hartford primaries when I go back; and if +there was a solitary office in the land which majestic ignorance and +incapacity, coupled with purity of heart, could fill, I would run for it. +This naturally reminds me of Bret Harte--but let him pass. + +We propose to leave here for New York Oct. 21, reaching Hartford 24th or +25th. If, upon reflection, you Howellses find, you can stop over here on +your way, I wish you would do it, and telegraph me. Getting pretty +hungry to see you. I had an idea that this was your shortest way home, +but like as not my geography is crippled again--it usually is. + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + The "Reunion of the Great Commanders," mentioned in the foregoing, + was a welcome to General Grant after his journey around the world. + Grant's trip had been one continuous ovation--a triumphal march. + In '79 most of his old commanders were still alive, and they had + planned to assemble in Chicago to do him honor. A Presidential year + was coming on, but if there was anything political in the project + there were no surface indications. Mark Twain, once a Confederate + soldier, had long since been completely "desouthernized"--at least + to the point where he felt that the sight of old comrades paying + tribute to the Union commander would stir his blood as perhaps it + had not been stirred, even in that earlier time, when that same + commander had chased him through the Missouri swamps. Grant, + indeed, had long since become a hero to Mark Twain, though it is + highly unlikely that Clemens favored the idea of a third term. Some + days following the preceding letter an invitation came for him to be + present at the Chicago reunion; but by this time he had decided not + to go. The letter he wrote has been preserved. + + + To Gen. William E. Strong, in Chicago: + + FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD. + Oct. 28, 1879. +GEN. WM. E. STRONG, CH'M, + AND GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE: + +I have been hoping during several weeks that it might be my good fortune +to receive an invitation to be present on that great occasion in Chicago; +but now that my desire is accomplished my business matters have so shaped +themselves as to bar me from being so far from home in the first half of +November. It is with supreme regret that I lost this chance, for I have +not had a thorough stirring up for some years, and I judged that if I +could be in the banqueting hall and see and hear the veterans of the Army +of the Tennessee at the moment that their old commander entered the room, +or rose in his place to speak, my system would get the kind of upheaval +it needs. General Grant's progress across the continent is of the +marvelous nature of the returning Napoleon's progress from Grenoble to +Paris; and as the crowning spectacle in the one case was the meeting with +the Old Guard, so, likewise, the crowning spectacle in the other will be +our great captain's meeting with his Old Guard--and that is the very +climax which I wanted to witness. + +Besides, I wanted to see the General again, any way, and renew the +acquaintance. He would remember me, because I was the person who did not +ask him for an office. However, I consume your time, and also wander +from the point--which is, to thank you for the courtesy of your +invitation, and yield up my seat at the table to some other guest who may +possibly grace it better, but will certainly not appreciate its +privileges more, than I should. + With great respect, + I am, Gentlemen, + Very truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + +Private:--I beg to apologize for my delay, gentlemen, but the card of +invitation went to Elmira, N. Y. and hence has only just now reached me. + + + This letter was not sent. He reconsidered and sent an acceptance, + agreeing to speak, as the committee had requested. Certainly there + was something picturesque in the idea of the Missouri private who + had been chased for a rainy fortnight through the swamps of Ralls + County being selected now to join in welcome to his ancient enemy. + + The great reunion was to be something more than a mere banquet. It + would continue for several days, with processions, great + assemblages, and much oratory. + + Mark Twain arrived in Chicago in good season to see it all. Three + letters to Mrs. Clemens intimately present his experiences: his + enthusiastic enjoyment and his own personal triumph. + + The first was probably written after the morning of his arrival. + The Doctor Jackson in it was Dr. A. Reeves Jackson, the + guide-dismaying "Doctor" of Innocents Abroad. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford: + + PALMER HOUSE, CHICAGO, Nov. 11. +Livy darling, I am getting a trifle leg-weary. Dr. Jackson called and +dragged me out of bed at noon, yesterday, and then went off. I went down +stairs and was introduced to some scores of people, and among them an +elderly German gentleman named Raster, who said his wife owed her life to +me--hurt in Chicago fire and lay menaced with death a long time, but the +Innocents Abroad kept her mind in a cheerful attitude, and so, with the +doctor's help for the body she pulled through.... They drove me to Dr. +Jackson's and I had an hour's visit with Mrs. Jackson. Started to walk +down Michigan Avenue, got a few steps on my way and met an erect, +soldierly looking young gentleman who offered his hand; said, "Mr. +Clemens, I believe--I wish to introduce myself--you were pointed out to +me yesterday as I was driving down street--my name is Grant." + +"Col. Fred Grant?" + +"Yes. My house is not ten steps away, and I would like you to come and +have a talk and a pipe, and let me introduce my wife." + +So we turned back and entered the house next to Jackson's and talked +something more than an hour and smoked many pipes and had a sociable good +time. His wife is very gentle and intelligent and pretty, and they have +a cunning little girl nearly as big as Bay but only three years old. +They wanted me to come in and spend an evening, after the banquet, with +them and Gen. Grant, after this grand pow-wow is over, but I said I was +going home Friday. Then they asked me to come Friday afternoon, when +they and the general will receive a few friends, and I said I would. +Col. Grant said he and Gen. Sherman used the Innocents Abroad as their +guide book when they were on their travels. + +I stepped in next door and took Dr. Jackson to the hotel and we played +billiards from 7 to 11.30 P.M. and then went to a beer-mill to meet some +twenty Chicago journalists--talked, sang songs and made speeches till 6 +o'clock this morning. Nobody got in the least degree "under the +influence," and we had a pleasant time. Read awhile in bed, slept till +11, shaved, went to breakfast at noon, and by mistake got into the +servants' hall. I remained there and breakfasted with twenty or thirty +male and female servants, though I had a table to myself. + +A temporary structure, clothed and canopied with flags, has been erected +at the hotel front, and connected with the second-story windows of a +drawing-room. It was for Gen. Grant to stand on and review the +procession. Sixteen persons, besides reporters, had tickets for this +place, and a seventeenth was issued for me. I was there, looking down on +the packed and struggling crowd when Gen. Grant came forward and was +saluted by the cheers of the multitude and the waving of ladies' +handkerchiefs--for the windows and roofs of all neighboring buildings +were massed full of life. Gen. Grant bowed to the people two or three +times, then approached my side of the platform and the mayor pulled me +forward and introduced me. It was dreadfully conspicuous. The General +said a word or so--I replied, and then said, "But I'll step back, +General, I don't want to interrupt your speech." + +"But I'm not going to make any--stay where you are--I'll get you to make +it for me." + +General Sherman came on the platform wearing the uniform of a full +General, and you should have heard the cheers. Gen. Logan was going to +introduce me, but I didn't want any more conspicuousness. + +When the head of the procession passed it was grand to see Sheridan, in +his military cloak and his plumed chapeau, sitting as erect and rigid as +a statue on his immense black horse--by far the most martial figure I +ever saw. And the crowd roared again. + +It was chilly, and Gen. Deems lent me his overcoat until night. He came +a few minutes ago--5.45 P.M., and got it, but brought Gen. Willard, who +lent me his for the rest of my stay, and will get another for himself +when he goes home to dinner. Mine is much too heavy for this warm +weather. + +I have a seat on the stage at Haverley's Theatre, tonight, where the Army +of the Tennessee will receive Gen. Grant, and where Gen. Sherman will +make a speech. At midnight I am to attend a meeting of the Owl Club. + +I love you ever so much, my darling, and am hoping to +get a word from you yet. + SAML. + + + Following the procession, which he describes, came the grand + ceremonies of welcome at Haverley's Theatre. The next letter is + written the following morning, or at least soiree time the following + day, after a night of ratification. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford: + + CHICAGO, Nov. 12, '79. +Livy darling, it was a great time. There were perhaps thirty people on +the stage of the theatre, and I think I never sat elbow-to-elbow with so +many historic names before. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Schofield, Pope, +Logan, Augur, and so on. What an iron man Grant is! He sat facing the +house, with his right leg crossed over his left and his right boot-sole +tilted up at an angle, and his left hand and arm reposing on the arm of +his chair--you note that position? Well, when glowing references were +made to other grandees on the stage, those grandees always showed a +trifle of nervous consciousness--and as these references came frequently, +the nervous change of position and attitude were also frequent. But +Grant!--he was under a tremendous and ceaseless bombardment of praise and +gratulation, but as true as I'm sitting here he never moved a muscle of +his body for a single instant, during 30 minutes! You could have played +him on a stranger for an effigy. Perhaps he never would have moved, but +at last a speaker made such a particularly ripping and blood-stirring +remark about him that the audience rose and roared and yelled and stamped +and clapped an entire minute--Grant sitting as serene as ever--when Gen. +Sherman stepped to him, laid his hand affectionately on his shoulder, +bent respectfully down and whispered in his ear. Gen. Grant got up and +bowed, and the storm of applause swelled into a hurricane. He sat down, +took about the same position and froze to it till by and by there was +another of those deafening and protracted roars, when Sherman made him +get up and bow again. He broke up his attitude once more--the extent of +something more than a hair's breadth--to indicate me to Sherman when the +house was keeping up a determined and persistent call for me, and poor +bewildered Sherman, (who did not know me), was peering abroad over the +packed audience for me, not knowing I was only three feet from him and +most conspicuously located, (Gen. Sherman was Chairman.) + +One of the most illustrious individuals on that stage was "Ole Abe," the +historic war eagle. He stood on his perch--the old savage-eyed rascal +--three or four feet behind Gen. Sherman, and as he had been in nearly +every battle that was mentioned by the orators his soul was probably +stirred pretty often, though he was too proud to let on. + +Read Logan's bosh, and try to imagine a burly and magnificent Indian, in +General's uniform, striking a heroic attitude and getting that stuff off +in the style of a declaiming school-boy. + +Please put the enclosed scraps in the drawer and I will scrap-book them. + +I only staid at the Owl Club till 3 this morning and drank little or +nothing. Went to sleep without whisky. Ich liebe dish. + + SAML. + + + But it is in the third letter that we get the climax. On the same + day he wrote a letter to Howells, which, in part, is very similar in + substance and need not be included here. + + A paragraph, however, must not be omitted. + + "Imagine what it was like to see a bullet-shredded old battle-flag + reverently unfolded to the gaze of a thousand middle-aged soldiers, + most of whom hadn't seen it since they saw it advancing over + victorious fields, when they were in their prime. And imagine what + it was like when Grant, their first commander, stepped into view + while they were still going mad over the flag, and then right in the + midst of it all somebody struck up, 'When we were marching through + Georgia.' Well, you should have heard the thousand voices lift that + chorus and seen the tears stream down. If I live a hundred years I + shan't ever forget these things, nor be able to talk about them .... + Grand times, my boy, grand times!" + + At the great banquet Mark Twain's speech had been put last on the + program, to hold the house. He had been invited to respond to the + toast of "The Ladies," but had replied that he had already responded + to that toast more than once. There was one class of the community, + he said, commonly overlooked on these occasions--the babies--he + would respond to that toast. In his letter to Howells he had not + been willing to speak freely of his personal triumph, but to Mrs. + Clemens he must tell it all, and with that child-like ingenuousness + which never failed him to his last day. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford: + + CHICAGO, Nov. 14 '79. +A little after 5 in the morning. + +I've just come to my room, Livy darling, I guess this was the memorable +night of my life. By George, I never was so stirred since I was born. +I heard four speeches which I can never forget. One by Emory Storrs, one +by Gen. Vilas (O, wasn't it wonderful!) one by Gen. Logan (mighty +stirring), one by somebody whose name escapes me, and one by that +splendid old soul, Col. Bob Ingersoll,--oh, it was just the supremest +combination of English words that was ever put together since the world +began. My soul, how handsome he looked, as he stood on that table, in +the midst of those 500 shouting men, and poured the molten silver from +his lips! Lord, what an organ is human speech when it is played by a +master! All these speeches may look dull in print, but how the lightning +glared around them when they were uttered, and how the crowd roared in +response! It was a great night, a memorable night. I am so richly +repaid for my journey--and how I did wish with all my whole heart that +you were there to be lifted into the very seventh heaven of enthusiasm, +as I was. The army songs, the military music, the crashing applause +--Lord bless me, it was unspeakable. + +Out of compliment they placed me last in the list--No. 15--I was to "hold +the crowd"--and bless my life I was in awful terror when No. 14. rose, +at a o'clock this morning and killed all the enthusiasm by delivering the +flattest, insipidest, silliest of all responses to "Woman" that ever a +weary multitude listened to. Then Gen. Sherman (Chairman) announced my +toast, and the crowd gave me a good round of applause as I mounted on top +of the dinner table, but it was only on account of my name, nothing more +--they were all tired and wretched. They let my first sentence go in. +silence, till I paused and added "we stand on common ground"--then they +burst forth like a hurricane and I saw that I had them! From that time +on, I stopped at the end of each sentence, and let the tornado of +applause and laughter sweep around me--and when I closed with "And if the +child is but the prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt +that he succeeded," I say it who oughtn't to say it, the house came down +with a crash. For two hours and a half, now, I've been shaking hands and +listening to congratulations. Gen. Sherman said, "Lord bless you, my +boy, I don't know how you do it--it's a secret that's beyond me--but it +was great--give me your hand again." + +And do you know, Gen. Grant sat through fourteen speeches like a graven +image, but I fetched him! I broke him up, utterly! He told me he +laughed till the tears came and every bone in his body ached. (And do +you know, the biggest part of the success of the speech lay in the fact +that the audience saw that for once in his life he had been knocked out +of his iron serenity.) + +Bless your soul, 'twas immense. I never was so proud in my life. Lots +and lots of people--hundreds I might say--told me my speech was the +triumph of the evening--which was a lie. Ladies, Tom, Dick and Harry +--even the policemen--captured me in the halls and shook hands, and +scores of army officers said "We shall always be grateful to you for +coming." General Pope came to bunt me up--I was afraid to speak to him on +that theatre stage last night, thinking it might be presumptuous to +tackle a man so high up in military history. Gen. Schofield, and other +historic men, paid their compliments. Sheridan was ill and could not +come, but I'm to go with a General of his staff and see him before I go +to Col. Grant's. Gen. Augur--well, I've talked with them all, received +invitations from them all--from people living everywhere--and as I said +before, it's a memorable night. I wouldn't have missed it for anything +in the world. + +But my sakes, you should have heard Ingersoll's speech on that table! +Half an hour ago he ran across me in the crowded halls and put his arms +about me and said "Mark, if I live a hundred years, I'll always be +grateful for your speech--Lord what a supreme thing it was." But I told +him it wasn't any use to talk, he had walked off with the honors of that +occasion by something of a majority. Bully boy is Ingersoll--traveled +with him in the cars the other day, and you can make up your mind we had +a good time. + +Of course I forgot to go and pay for my hotel car and so secure it, but +the army officers told me an hour ago to rest easy, they would go at +once, at this unholy hour of the night and compel the railways to do +their duty by me, and said "You don't need to request the Army of the +Tennessee to do your desires--you can command its services." + +Well, I bummed around that banquet hall from 8 in the evening till 2 in +the morning, talking with people and listening to speeches, and I never +ate a single bite or took a sup of anything but ice water, so if I seem +excited now, it is the intoxication of supreme enthusiasm. By George, it +was a grand night, a historical night. + +And now it is a quarter past 6 A.M.--so good bye and God bless you and +the Bays,--[Family word for babies]--my darlings + + SAML. + + +Show it to Joe if you want to--I saw some of his friends here. + +Mark Twain's admiration for Robert Ingersoll was very great, and we may +believe that he was deeply impressed by the Chicago speech, when we find +him, a few days later, writing to Ingersoll for a perfect copy to read to +a young girls' club in Hartford. Ingersoll sent the speech, also some of +his books, and the next letter is Mark Twain's acknowledgment. + + + To Col. Robert G. Ingersoll: + + HARTFORD, Dec. 14. +MY DEAR INGERSOLL,--Thank you most heartily for the books--I am devouring +them--they have found a hungry place, and they content it and satisfy it +to a miracle. I wish I could hear you speak these splendid chapters +before a great audience--to read them by myself and hear the boom of the +applause only in the ear of my imagination, leaves a something wanting +--and there is also a still greater lack, your manner, and voice, and +presence. + +The Chicago speech arrived an hour too late, but I was all right anyway, +for I found that my memory had been able to correct all the errors. +I read it to the Saturday Club (of young girls) and told them to remember +that it was doubtful if its superior existed in our language. + Truly Yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The reader may remember Mark Twain's Whittier dinner speech of 1877, + and its disastrous effects. Now, in 1879, there was to be another + Atlantic gathering: a breakfast to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, to + which Clemens was invited. He was not eager to accept; it would + naturally recall memories of two years before, but being urged by + both Howells and Warner, he agreed to attend if they would permit + him to speak. Mark Twain never lacked courage and he wanted to + redeem himself. To Howells he wrote: + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Nov. 28, 1879. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--If anybody talks, there, I shall claim the right to say +a word myself, and be heard among the very earliest--else it would be +confoundedly awkward for me--and for the rest, too. But you may read +what I say, beforehand, and strike out whatever you choose. + +Of course I thought it wisest not to be there at all; but Warner took the +opposite view, and most strenuously. + +Speaking of Johnny's conclusion to become an outlaw, reminds me of +Susie's newest and very earnest longing--to have crooked teeth and +glasses--"like Mamma." + +I would like to look into a child's head, once, and see what its +processes are. + Yrs ever, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The matter turned out well. Clemens, once more introduced by + Howells--this time conservatively, it may be said--delivered a + delicate and fitting tribute to Doctor Holmes, full of graceful + humor and grateful acknowledgment, the kind of speech he should have + given at the Whittier dinner of two years before. No reference was + made to his former disaster, and this time he came away covered with + glory, and fully restored in his self-respect. + + + + +XX. + +LETTERS OF 1880, CHIEFLY TO HOWELLS. "THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER." MARK +TWAIN MUGWUMP SOCIETY + +The book of travel,--[A Tramp Abroad.]--which Mark Twain had hoped to +finish in Paris, and later in Elmira, for some reason would not come to +an end. In December, in Hartford, he was still working on it, and he +would seem to have finished it, at last, rather by a decree than by any +natural process of authorship. This was early in January, 1880. To +Howells he reports his difficulties, and his drastic method of ending +them. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Jan. 8, '80. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Am waiting for Patrick to come with the carriage. +Mrs. Clemens and I are starting (without the children) to stay +indefinitely in Elmira. The wear and tear of settling the house broke +her down, and she has been growing weaker and weaker for a fortnight. +All that time--in fact ever since I saw you--I have been fighting a +life-and-death battle with this infernal book and hoping to get done some +day. I required 300 pages of MS, and I have written near 600 since I saw +you--and tore it all up except 288. This I was about to tear up +yesterday and begin again, when Mrs. Perkins came up to the billiard room +and said, "You will never get any woman to do the thing necessary to save +her life by mere persuasion; you see you have wasted your words for three +weeks; it is time to use force; she must have a change; take her home and +leave the children here." + +I said, "If there is one death that is painfuller than another, may I get +it if I don't do that thing." + +So I took the 288 pages to Bliss and told him that was the very last line +I should ever write on this book. (A book which required 2600 pages of +MS, and I have written nearer four thousand, first and last.) + +I am as soary (and flighty) as a rocket, to-day, with the unutterable joy +of getting that Old Man of the Sea off my back, where he has been +roosting for more than a year and a half. Next time I make a contract +before writing the book, may I suffer the righteous penalty and be burnt, +like the injudicious believer. + +I am mighty glad you are done your book (this is from a man who, above +all others, feels how much that sentence means) and am also mighty glad +you have begun the next (this is also from a man who knows the felicity +of that, and means straightway to enjoy it.) The Undiscovered starts off +delightfully--I have read it aloud to Mrs. C. and we vastly enjoyed it. + +Well, time's about up--must drop a line to Aldrich. + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + In a letter which Mark Twain wrote to his brother Orion at this + period we get the first hint of a venture which was to play an + increasingly important part in the Hartford home and fortunes during + the next ten or a dozen years. This was the type-setting machine + investment, which, in the end, all but wrecked Mark Twain's + finances. There is but a brief mention of it in the letter to + Orion, and the letter itself is not worth preserving, but as + references to the "machine" appear with increasing frequency, it + seems proper to record here its first mention. In the same letter + he suggests to his brother that he undertake an absolutely truthful + autobiography, a confession in which nothing is to be withheld. He + cites the value of Casanova's memories, and the confessions of + Rousseau. Of course, any literary suggestion from "Brother Sam" was + gospel to Orion, who began at once piling up manuscript at a great + rate. + + Meantime, Mark Twain himself, having got 'A Tramp Abroad' on the + presses, was at work with enthusiasm on a story begun nearly three + years before at Quarry Farm-a story for children-its name, as he + called it then, "The Little Prince and The Little Pauper." He was + presently writing to Howells his delight in the new work. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Mch. 11, '80. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--.....I take so much pleasure in my story that I am loth +to hurry, not wanting to get it done. Did I ever tell you the plot of +it? It begins at 9 a.m., Jan. 27, 1547, seventeen and a half hours +before Henry VIII's death, by the swapping of clothes and place, between +the prince of Wales and a pauper boy of the same age and countenance (and +half as much learning and still more genius and imagination) and after +that, the rightful small King has a rough time among tramps and ruffians +in the country parts of Kent, whilst the small bogus King has a gilded +and worshipped and dreary and restrained and cussed time of it on the +throne--and this all goes on for three weeks--till the midst of the +coronation grandeurs in Westminster Abbey, Feb. 20, when the ragged true +King forces his way in but cannot prove his genuineness--until the bogus +King, by a remembered incident of the first day is able to prove it for +him--whereupon clothes are changed and the coronation proceeds under the +new and rightful conditions. + +My idea is to afford a realizing sense of the exceeding severity of the +laws of that day by inflicting some of their penalties upon the King +himself and allowing him a chance to see the rest of them applied to +others--all of which is to account for certain mildnesses which +distinguished Edward VI's reign from those that preceded and followed it. + +Imagine this fact--I have even fascinated Mrs. Clemens with this yarn for +youth. My stuff generally gets considerable damning with faint praise +out of her, but this time it is all the other way. She is become the +horseleech's daughter and my mill doesn't grind fast enough to suit her. +This is no mean triumph, my dear sir. + +Last night, for the first time in ages, we went to the theatre--to see +Yorick's Love. The magnificence of it is beyond praise. The language is +so beautiful, the passion so fine, the plot so ingenious, the whole thing +so stirring, so charming, so pathetic! But I will clip from the Courant +--it says it right. + +And what a good company it is, and how like live people they all acted! +The "thee's" and the "thou's" had a pleasant sound, since it is the +language of the Prince and the Pauper. You've done the country a service +in that admirable work.... + Yrs Ever, + MARK. + + + The play, "Yorick's Love," mentioned in this letter, was one which + Howells had done for Lawrence Barrett. + + Onion Clemens, meantime, was forwarding his manuscript, and for once + seems to have won his brother's approval, so much so that Mark Twain + was willing, indeed anxious, that Howells should run the + "autobiography" in the Atlantic. We may imagine how Onion prized + the words of commendation which follow: + + + To Orion Clemens: + + May 6, '80. +MY DEAR BROTHER,--It is a model autobiography. + +Continue to develop your character in the same gradual inconspicuous and +apparently unconscious way. The reader, up to this time, may have his +doubts, perhaps, but he can't say decidedly, "This writer is not such a +simpleton as he has been letting on to be." Keep him in that state of +mind. If, when you shall have finished, the reader shall say, "The man +is an ass, but I really don't know whether he knows it or not," your work +will be a triumph. + +Stop re-writing. I saw places in your last batch where re-writing had +done formidable injury. Do not try to find those places, else you will +mar them further by trying to better them. It is perilous to revise a +book while it is under way. All of us have injured our books in that +foolish way. + +Keep in mind what I told you--when you recollect something which belonged +in an earlier chapter, do not go back, but jam it in where you are. +Discursiveness does not hurt an autobiography in the least. + +I have penciled the MS here and there, but have not needed to make any +criticisms or to knock out anything. + +The elder Bliss has heart disease badly, and thenceforth his life hangs +upon a thread. + Yr Bro + SAM. + + + But Howells could not bring himself to print so frank a confession + as Orion had been willing to make. "It wrung my heart," he said, + "and I felt haggard after I had finished it. The writer's soul is + laid bare; it is shocking." Howells added that the best touches in + it were those which made one acquainted with the writer's brother; + that is to say, Mark Twain, and that these would prove valuable + material hereafter--a true prophecy, for Mark Twain's early + biography would have lacked most of its vital incident, and at least + half of its background, without those faithful chapters, fortunately + preserved. Had Onion continued, as he began, the work might have + proved an important contribution to literature, but he went trailing + off into by-paths of theology and discussion where the interest was + lost. There were, perhaps, as many as two thousand pages of it, + which few could undertake to read. + + Mark Twain's mind was always busy with plans and inventions, many of + them of serious intent, some semi-serious, others of a purely + whimsical character. Once he proposed a "Modest Club," of which the + first and main qualification for membership was modesty. "At + present," he wrote, "I am the only member; and as the modesty + required must be of a quite aggravated type, the enterprise did seem + for a time doomed to stop dead still with myself, for lack of + further material; but upon reflection I have come to the conclusion + that you are eligible. Therefore, I have held a meeting and voted + to offer you the distinction of membership. I do not know that we + can find any others, though I have had some thought of Hay, Warner, + Twichell, Aldrich, Osgood, Fields, Higginson, and a few more + --together with Mrs. Howells, Mrs. Clemens, and certain others + of the sex." + + Howells replied that the only reason he had for not joining the + Modest Club was that he was too modest--too modest to confess his + modesty. "If I could get over this difficulty I should like to + join, for I approve highly of the Club and its object.... It ought + to be given an annual dinner at the public expense. If you think I + am not too modest you may put my name down and I will try to think + the same of you. Mrs. Howells applauded the notion of the club from + the very first. She said that she knew one thing: that she was + modest enough, anyway. Her manner of saying it implied that the + other persons you had named were not, and created a painful + impression in my mind. I have sent your letter and the rules to + Hay, but I doubt his modesty. He will think he has a right to + belong to it as much as you or I; whereas, other people ought only + to be admitted on sufferance." + + Our next letter to Howells is, in the main, pure foolery, but we get + in it a hint what was to become in time one of Mask Twain's + strongest interests, the matter of copyright. He had both a + personal and general interest in the subject. His own books were + constantly pirated in Canada, and the rights of foreign authors were + not respected in America. We have already seen how he had drawn a + petition which Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow, and others were to sign, + and while nothing had come of this plan he had never ceased to + formulate others. Yet he hesitated when he found that the proposed + protection was likely to work a hardship to readers of the poorer + class. Once he wrote: "My notions have mightily changed lately.... + I can buy a lot of the copyright classics, in paper, at from three + to thirty cents apiece. These things must find their way into the + very kitchens and hovels of the country..... And even if the treaty + will kill Canadian piracy, and thus save me an average of $5,000 a + year, I am down on it anyway, and I'd like cussed well to write an + article opposing the treaty." + + + To W. D. Howells, in Belmont, Mass.: + + Thursday, June 6th, 1880. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--There you stick, at Belmont, and now I'm going to +Washington for a few days; and of course, between you and Providence that +visit is going to get mixed, and you'll have been here and gone again +just about the time I get back. Bother it all, I wanted to astonish you +with a chapter or two from Orion's latest book--not the seventeen which +he has begun in the last four months, but the one which he began last +week. + +Last night, when I went to bed, Mrs. Clemens said, "George didn't take +the cat down to the cellar--Rosa says he has left it shut up in the +conservatory." So I went down to attend to Abner (the cat.) About 3 in +the morning Mrs. C. woke me and said, "I do believe I hear that cat in +the drawing-room--what did you do with him?" I answered up with the +confidence of a man who has managed to do the right thing for once, and +said "I opened the conservatory doors, took the library off the alarm, +and spread everything open, so that there wasn't any obstruction between +him and the cellar." Language wasn't capable of conveying this woman's +disgust. But the sense of what she said, was, "He couldn't have done any +harm in the conservatory--so you must go and make the entire house free +to him and the burglars, imagining that he will prefer the coal-bins to +the drawing-room. If you had had Mr. Howells to help you, I should have +admired but not been astonished, because I should know that together you +would be equal to it; but how you managed to contrive such a stately +blunder all by yourself, is what I cannot understand." + +So, you see, even she knows how to appreciate our gifts. + +Brisk times here.--Saturday, these things happened: Our neighbor Chas. +Smith was stricken with heart disease, and came near joining the +majority; my publisher, Bliss, ditto, ditto; a neighbor's child died; +neighbor Whitmore's sixth child added to his five other cases of measles; +neighbor Niles sent for, and responded; Susie Warner down, abed; Mrs. +George Warner threatened with death during several hours; her son Frank, +whilst imitating the marvels in Barnum's circus bills, thrown from his +aged horse and brought home insensible: Warner's friend Max Yortzburgh, +shot in the back by a locomotive and broken into 32 distinct pieces and +his life threatened; and Mrs. Clemens, after writing all these cheerful +things to Clara Spaulding, taken at midnight, and if the doctor had not +been pretty prompt the contemplated Clemens would have called before his +apartments were ready. + +However, everybody is all right, now, except Yortzburg, and he is +mending--that is, he is being mended. I knocked off, during these +stirring times, and don't intend to go to work again till we go away for +the Summer, 3 or 6 weeks hence. So I am writing to you not because I +have anything to say, but because you don't have to answer and I need +something to do this afternoon..... + +I have a letter from a Congressman this morning, and he says Congress +couldn't be persuaded to bother about Canadian pirates at a time like +this when all legislation must have a political and Presidential bearing, +else Congress won't look at it. So have changed my mind and my course; +I go north, to kill a pirate. I must procure repose some way, else I +cannot get down to work again. + +Pray offer my most sincere and respectful approval to the President--is +approval the proper word? I find it is the one I most value here in the +household and seldomest get. + +With our affection to you both. + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + It was always dangerous to send strangers with letters of + introduction to Mark Twain. They were so apt to arrive at the wrong + time, or to find him in the wrong mood. Howells was willing to risk + it, and that the result was only amusing instead of tragic is the + best proof of their friendship. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Belmont, Mass.: + + June 9, '80. +Well, old practical joker, the corpse of Mr. X----has been here, and I +have bedded it and fed it, and put down my work during 24 hours and tried +my level best to make it do something, or say something, or appreciate +something--but no, it was worse than Lazarus. A kind-hearted, +well-meaning corpse was the Boston young man, but lawsy bless me, +horribly dull company. Now, old man, unless you have great confidence in +Mr. X's judgment, you ought to make him submit his article to you before +he prints it. For only think how true I was to you: Every hour that he +was here I was saying, gloatingly, "O G-- d--- you, when you are in bed +and your light out, I will fix you" (meaning to kill him)...., but then +the thought would follow--" No, Howells sent him--he shall be spared, +he shall be respected he shall travel hell-wards by his own route." + +Breakfast is frozen by this time, and Mrs. Clemens correspondingly hot. +Good bye. + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + "I did not expect you to ask that man to live with you," Howells + answered. "What I was afraid of was that you would turn him out of + doors, on sight, and so I tried to put in a good word for him. + After this when I want you to board people, I'll ask you. I am + sorry for your suffering. I suppose I have mostly lost my smell for + bores; but yours is preternaturally keen. I shall begin to be + afraid I bore you. (How does that make you feel?)" + + In a letter to Twichell--a remarkable letter--when baby Jean Clemens + was about a month old, we get a happy hint of conditions at Quarry + Farm, and in the background a glimpse of Mark Twain's unfailing + tragic reflection. + + + To Rev. Twichell, in Hartford: + + QUARRY FARM, Aug. 29 ['80]. +DEAR OLD JOE,--Concerning Jean Clemens, if anybody said he "didn't see no +pints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog," I should think +he was convicting himself of being a pretty poor sort of observer.... +I will not go into details; it is not necessary; you will soon be in +Hartford, where I have already hired a hall; the admission fee will be +but a trifle. + +It is curious to note the change in the stock-quotation of the Affection +Board brought about by throwing this new security on the market. Four +weeks ago the children still put Mamma at the head of the list right +along, where she had always been. But now: + + Jean + Mamma + Motley [a cat] + Fraulein [another] + Papa + +That is the way it stands, now Mamma is become No. 2; I have dropped from +No. 4., and am become No. 5. Some time ago it used to be nip and tuck +between me and the cats, but after the cats "developed" I didn't stand +any more show. + +I've got a swollen ear; so I take advantage of it to lie abed most of the +day, and read and smoke and scribble and have a good time. Last evening +Livy said with deep concern, "O dear, I believe an abscess is forming in +your ear." + +I responded as the poet would have done if he had had a cold in the +head-- + + "Tis said that abscess conquers love, + But O believe it not." + +This made a coolness. + +Been reading Daniel Webster's Private Correspondence. Have read a +hundred of his diffuse, conceited, "eloquent," bathotic (or bathostic) +letters written in that dim (no, vanished) Past when he was a student; +and Lord, to think that this boy who is so real to me now, and so booming +with fresh young blood and bountiful life, and sappy cynicisms about +girls, has since climbed the Alps of fame and stood against the sun one +brief tremendous moment with the world's eyes upon him, and then--f-z-t-! +where is he? Why the only long thing, the only real thing about the +whole shadowy business is the sense of the lagging dull and hoary lapse +of time that has drifted by since then; a vast empty level, it seems, +with a formless spectre glimpsed fitfully through the smoke and mist that +lie along its remote verge. + +Well, we are all getting along here first-rate; Livy gains strength +daily, and sits up a deal; the baby is five weeks old and--but no more of +this; somebody may be reading this letter 80 years hence. And so, my +friend (you pitying snob, I mean, who are holding this yellow paper in +your hand in 1960,) save yourself the trouble of looking further; I know +how pathetically trivial our small concerns will seem to you, and I will +not let your eye profane them. No, I keep my news; you keep your +compassion. Suffice it you to know, scoffer and ribald, that the little +child is old and blind, now, and once more toothless; and the rest of us +are shadows, these many, many years. Yes, and your time cometh! + + MARK. + + + At the Farm that year Mark Twain was working on The Prince and the + Pauper, and, according to a letter to Aldrich, brought it to an end + September 19th. It is a pleasant letter, worth preserving. The + book by Aldrich here mentioned was 'The Stillwater Tragedy.' + + + To T. B. Aldrich, in Ponkapog, Mass.: + + ELMIRA, Sept. 15, '80. +MY DEAR ALDRICH,--Thank you ever so much for the book--I had already +finished it, and prodigiously enjoyed it, in the periodical of the +notorious Howells, but it hits Mrs. Clemens just right, for she is +having a reading holiday, now, for the first time in same months; so +between-times, when the new baby is asleep and strengthening up for +another attempt to take possession of this place, she is going to read +it. Her strong friendship for you makes her think she is going to like +it. + +I finished a story yesterday, myself. I counted up and found it between +sixty and eighty thousand words--about the size of your book. It is for +boys and girls--been at work at it several years, off and on. + +I hope Howells is enjoying his journey to the Pacific. He wrote me that +you and Osgood were going, also, but I doubted it, believing he was in +liquor when he wrote it. In my opinion, this universal applause over his +book is going to land that man in a Retreat inside of two months. +I notice the papers say mighty fine things about your book, too. +You ought to try to get into the same establishment with Howells. +But applause does not affect me--I am always calm--this is because I am +used to it. + +Well, good-bye, my boy, and good luck to you. Mrs. Clemens asks me to +send her warmest regards to you and Mrs. Aldrich--which I do, and add +those of + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + While Mark Twain was a journalist in San Francisco, there was a + middle-aged man named Soule, who had a desk near him on the Morning + Call. Soule was in those days highly considered as a poet by his + associates, most of whom were younger and less gracefully poetic. + But Soule's gift had never been an important one. Now, in his old + age, he found his fame still local, and he yearned for wider + recognition. He wished to have a volume of poems issued by a + publisher of recognized standing. Because Mark Twain had been one + of Soule's admirers and a warm friend in the old days, it was + natural that Soule should turn to him now, and equally natural that + Clemens should turn to Howells. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + Sunday, Oct. 2 '80. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Here's a letter which I wrote you to San Francisco the +second time you didn't go there.... I told Soule he needn't write you, +but simply send the MS. to you. O dear, dear, it is dreadful to be an +unrecognized poet. How wise it was in Charles Warren Stoddard to take in +his sign and go for some other calling while still young. + +I'm laying for that Encyclopedical Scotchman--and he'll need to lock the +door behind him, when he comes in; otherwise when he hears my proposed +tariff his skin will probably crawl away with him. He is accustomed to +seeing the publisher impoverish the author--that spectacle must be +getting stale to him--if he contracts with the undersigned he will +experience a change in that programme that will make the enamel peel off +his teeth for very surprise--and joy. No, that last is what Mrs. Clemens +thinks--but it's not so. The proposed work is growing, mightily, in my +estimation, day by day; and I'm not going to throw it away for any mere +trifle. If I make a contract with the canny Scot, I will then tell him +the plan which you and I have devised (that of taking in the humor of all +countries)--otherwise I'll keep it to myself, I think. Why should we +assist our fellowman for mere love of God? + Yrs ever + MARK. + + One wishes that Howells might have found value enough in the verses + of Frank Soule to recommend them to Osgood. To Clemens he wrote: + "You have touched me in regard to him, and I will deal gently with + his poetry. Poor old fellow! I can imagine him, and how he must + have to struggle not to be hard or sour." + + The verdict, however, was inevitable. Soule's graceful verses + proved to be not poetry at all. No publisher of standing could + afford to give them his imprint. + + The "Encyclopedical Scotchman" mentioned in the preceding letter was + the publisher Gebbie, who had a plan to engage Howells and Clemens + to prepare some sort of anthology of the world's literature. The + idea came to nothing, though the other plan mentioned--for a library + of humor--in time grew into a book. + + Mark Twain's contracts with Bliss for the publication of his books + on the subscription plan had been made on a royalty basis, beginning + with 5 per cent. on 'The Innocents Abroad' increasing to 7 per + cent. on 'Roughing It,' and to 10 per cent. on later books. Bliss + had held that these later percentages fairly represented one half + the profits. Clemens, however, had never been fully satisfied, and + his brother Onion had more than once urged him to demand a specific + contract on the half-profit basis. The agreement for the + publication of 'A Tramp Abroad' was made on these terms. Bliss died + before Clemens received his first statement of sales. Whatever may + have been the facts under earlier conditions, the statement proved + to Mark Twain's satisfaction; at least, that the half-profit + arrangement was to his advantage. It produced another result; it + gave Samuel Clemens an excuse to place his brother Onion in a + position of independence. + + + To Onion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa: + + Sunday, Oct 24 '80. +MY DEAR BRO.,--Bliss is dead. The aspect of the balance-sheet is +enlightening. It reveals the fact, through my present contract, (which +is for half the profits on the book above actual cost of paper, printing +and binding,) that I have lost considerably by all this nonsense--sixty +thousand dollars, I should say--and if Bliss were alive I would stay with +the concern and get it all back; for on each new book I would require a +portion of that back pay; but as it is (this in the very strictest +confidence,) I shall probably go to a new publisher 6 or 8 months hence, +for I am afraid Frank, with his poor health, will lack push and drive. + +Out of the suspicions you bred in me years ago, has grown this result, +--to wit, that I shall within the twelvemonth get $40,000 out of this +"Tramp" instead Of $20,000. Twenty thousand dollars, after taxes and +other expenses are stripped away, is worth to the investor about $75 a +month--so I shall tell Mr. Perkins to make your check that amount per +month, hereafter, while our income is able to afford it. This ends the +loan business; and hereafter you can reflect that you are living not on +borrowed money but on money which you have squarely earned, and which has +no taint or savor of charity about it--and you can also reflect that the +money you have been receiving of me all these years is interest charged +against the heavy bill which the next publisher will have to stand who +gets a book of mine. + +Jean got the stockings and is much obliged; Mollie wants to know whom she +most resembles, but I can't tell; she has blue eyes and brown hair, and +three chins, and is very fat and happy; and at one time or another she +has resembled all the different Clemenses and Langdons, in turn, that +have ever lived. + +Livy is too much beaten out with the baby, nights, to write, these times; +and I don't know of anything urgent to say, except that a basket full of +letters has accumulated in the 7 days that I have been whooping and +cursing over a cold in the head--and I must attack the pile this very +minute. + With love from us + Y aff + SAM +$25 enclosed. + + + + On the completion of The Prince and Pauper story, Clemens had + naturally sent it to Howells for consideration. Howells wrote: + "I have read the two P's and I like it immensely, it begins well and + it ends well." He pointed out some things that might be changed or + omitted, and added: "It is such a book as I would expect from you, + knowing what a bottom of fury there is to your fun." Clemens had + thought somewhat of publishing the story anonymously, in the fear + that it would not be accepted seriously over his own signature. + + The "bull story" referred to in the next letter is the one later + used in the Joan of Arc book, the story told Joan by "Uncle Laxart," + how he rode a bull to a funeral. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + Xmas Eve, 1880. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I was prodigiously delighted with what you said about +the book--so, on the whole, I've concluded to publish intrepidly, instead +of concealing the authorship. I shall leave out that bull story. + +I wish you had gone to New York. The company was small, and we had a +first-rate time. Smith's an enjoyable fellow. I liked Barrett, too. +And the oysters were as good as the rest of the company. It was worth +going there to learn how to cook them. + +Next day I attended to business--which was, to introduce Twichell to Gen. +Grant and procure a private talk in the interest of the Chinese +Educational Mission here in the U. S. Well, it was very funny. Joe had +been sitting up nights building facts and arguments together into a +mighty and unassailable array and had studied them out and got them by +heart--all with the trembling half-hearted hope of getting Grant to add +his signature to a sort of petition to the Viceroy of China; but Grant +took in the whole situation in a jiffy, and before Joe had more than +fairly got started, the old man said: "I'll write the Viceroy a Letter +--a separate letter--and bring strong reasons to bear upon him; I know +him well, and what I say will have weight with him; I will attend to it +right away. No, no thanks--I shall be glad to do it--it will be a labor +of love." + +So all Joe's laborious hours were for naught! It was as if he had come +to borrow a dollar, and been offered a thousand before he could unfold +his case.... + +But it's getting dark. Merry Christmas to all of you. + Yrs Ever, + MARK. + + + The Chinese Educational Mission, mentioned in the foregoing, was a + thriving Hartford institution, projected eight years before by a + Yale graduate named Yung Wing. The mission was now threatened, and + Yung Wing, knowing the high honor in which General Grant was held in + China, believed that through him it might be saved. Twichell, of + course, was deeply concerned and naturally overjoyed at Grant's + interest. A day or two following the return to Hartford, Clemens + received a letter from General Grant, in which he wrote: "Li Hung + Chang is the most powerful and most influential Chinaman in his + country. He professed great friendship for me when I was there, and + I have had assurances of the same thing since. I hope, if he is + strong enough with his government, that the decision to withdraw the + Chinese students from this country may be changed." + + But perhaps Li Hung Chang was experiencing one of his partial + eclipses just then, or possibly he was not interested, for the + Hartford Mission did not survive. + + + + +XXI. + +LETTERS 1881, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. ASSISTING A YOUNG SCULPTOR. +LITERARY PLANS + +With all of Mark Twain's admiration for Grant, he had opposed him as a +third-term President and approved of the nomination of Garfield. He had +made speeches for Garfield during the campaign just ended, and had been +otherwise active in his support. Upon Garfield's election, however, he +felt himself entitled to no special favor, and the single request which +he preferred at length could hardly be classed as, personal, though made +for a "personal friend." + + + To President-elect James A. Garfield, in Washington: + + HARTFORD, Jany. 12, '81. +GEN. GARFIELD + +DEAR SIR,--Several times since your election persons wanting office have +asked me "to use my influence" with you in their behalf. + +To word it in that way was such a pleasant compliment to me that I never +complied. I could not without exposing the fact that I hadn't any +influence with you and that was a thing I had no mind to do. + +It seems to me that it is better to have a good man's flattering estimate +of my influence--and to keep it--than to fool it away with trying to get +him an office. But when my brother--on my wife's side--Mr. Charles J. +Langdon--late of the Chicago Convention--desires me to speak a word for +Mr. Fred Douglass, I am not asked "to use my influence" consequently I am +not risking anything. So I am writing this as a simple citizen. I am +not drawing on my fund of influence at all. A simple citizen may express +a desire with all propriety, in the matter of a recommendation to office, +and so I beg permission to hope that you will retain Mr. Douglass in his +present office of Marshall of the District of Columbia, if such a course +will not clash with your own preferences or with the expediencies and +interest of your administration. I offer this petition with peculiar +pleasure and strong desire, because I so honor this man's high and +blemishless character and so admire his brave, long crusade for the +liberties and elevation of his race. + +He is a personal friend of mine, but that is nothing to the point, his +history would move me to say these things without that, and I feel them +too. + With great respect + I am, General, + Yours truly, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Clemens would go out of his way any time to grant favor to the + colored race. His childhood associations were partly accountable + for this, but he also felt that the white man owed the negro a debt + for generations of enforced bondage. He would lecture any time in a + colored church, when he would as likely as not refuse point-blank to + speak for a white congregation. Once, in Elmira, he received a + request, poorly and none too politely phrased, to speak for one of + the churches. He was annoyed and about to send a brief refusal, + when Mrs. Clemens, who was present, said: + + "I think I know that church, and if so this preacher is a colored + man; he does not know how to write a polished letter--how should + he?" Her husband's manner changed so suddenly that she added: + "I will give you a motto, and it will be useful to you if you will + adopt it: Consider every man colored until he is proved white." + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Feb. 27, 1881. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I go to West Point with Twichell tomorrow, but shall be +back Tuesday or Wednesday; and then just as soon thereafter as you and +Mrs. Howells and Winny can come you will find us ready and most glad to +see you--and the longer you can stay the gladder we shall be. I am not +going to have a thing to do, but you shall work if you want to. On the +evening of March 10th, I am going to read to the colored folk in the +African Church here (no whites admitted except such as I bring with me), +and a choir of colored folk will sing jubilee songs. I count on a good +time, and shall hope to have you folks there, and Livy. I read in +Twichell's chapel Friday night and had a most rattling high time--but the +thing that went best of all was Uncle Remus's Tar Baby. I mean to try +that on my dusky audience. They've all heard that tale from childhood +--at least the older members have. + +I arrived home in time to make a most noble blunder--invited Charley +Warner here (in Livy's name) to dinner with the Gerhardts, and told him +Livy had invited his wife by letter and by word of mouth also. I don't +know where I got these impressions, but I came home feeling as one does +who realizes that he has done a neat thing for once and left no flaws or +loop-holes. Well, Livy said she had never told me to invite Charley and +she hadn't dreamed of inviting Susy, and moreover there wasn't any +dinner, but just one lean duck. But Susy Warner's intuitions were +correct--so she choked off Charley, and staid home herself--we waited +dinner an hour and you ought to have seen that duck when he was done +drying in the oven. + MARK. + + + Clemens and his wife were always privately assisting worthy and + ambitious young people along the way of achievement. Young actors + were helped through dramatic schools; young men and women were + assisted through college and to travel abroad. Among others Clemens + paid the way of two colored students, one through a Southern + institution and another through the Yale law school. + + The mention of the name of Gerhardt in the preceding letter + introduces the most important, or at least the most extensive, of + these benefactions. The following letter gives the beginning of the + story: + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + +Private and Confidential. + HARTFORD, Feb. 21, 1881. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Well, here is our romance. + +It happened in this way. One morning, a month ago--no, three weeks +--Livy, and Clara Spaulding and I were at breakfast, at 10 A.M., and I +was in an irritable mood, for the barber was up stairs waiting and his +hot water getting cold, when the colored George returned from answering +the bell and said: "There's a lady in the drawing-room wants to see you." +"A book agent!" says I, with heat. "I won't see her; I will die in my +tracks, first." + +Then I got up with a soul full of rage, and went in there and bent +scowling over that person, and began a succession of rude and raspy +questions--and without even offering to sit down. + +Not even the defendant's youth and beauty and (seeming) timidity were +able to modify my savagery, for a time--and meantime question and answer +were going on. She had risen to her feet with the first question; and +there she stood, with her pretty face bent floorward whilst I inquired, +but always with her honest eyes looking me in the face when it came her +turn to answer. + +And this was her tale, and her plea-diffidently stated, but +straight-forwardly; and bravely, and most winningly simply and earnestly: +I put it in my own fashion, for I do not remember her words: + +Mr. Karl Gerhardt, who works in Pratt & Whitney's machine shops, has made +a statue in clay, and would I be so kind as to come and look at it, and +tell him if there is any promise in it? He has none to go to, and he +would be so glad. + +"O, dear me," I said, "I don't know anything about art--there's nothing I +could tell him." + +But she went on, just as earnestly and as simply as before, with her +plea--and so she did after repeated rebuffs; and dull as I am, even I +began by and by to admire this brave and gentle persistence, and to +perceive how her heart of hearts was in this thing, and how she couldn't +give it up, but must carry her point. So at last I wavered, and promised +in general terms that I would come down the first day that fell idle--and +as I conducted her to the door, I tamed more and more, and said I would +come during the very next week--"We shall be so glad--but--but, would you +please come early in the week?--the statue is just finished and we are so +anxious--and--and--we did hope you could come this week--and"--well, I +came down another peg, and said I would come Monday, as sure as death; +and before I got to the dining room remorse was doing its work and I was +saying to myself, "Damnation, how can a man be such a hound? why didn't I +go with her now?" Yes, and how mean I should have felt if I had known +that out of her poverty she had hired a hack and brought it along to +convey me. But luckily for what was left of my peace of mind, I didn't +know that. + +Well, it appears that from here she went to Charley Warner's. There was +a better light, there, and the eloquence of her face had a better chance +to do its office. Warner fought, as I had done; and he was in the midst +of an article and very busy; but no matter, she won him completely. He +laid aside his MS and said, "Come, let us go and see your father's +statue. That is--is he your father?" "No, he is my husband." So this +child was married, you see. + +This was a Saturday. Next day Warner came to dinner and said "Go!--go +tomorrow--don't fail." He was in love with the girl, and with her +husband too, and said he believed there was merit in the statue. Pretty +crude work, maybe, but merit in it. + +Patrick and I hunted up the place, next day; the girl saw us driving up, +and flew down the stairs and received me. Her quarters were the second +story of a little wooden house--another family on the ground floor. The +husband was at the machine shop, the wife kept no servant, she was there +alone. She had a little parlor, with a chair or two and a sofa; and the +artist-husband's hand was visible in a couple of plaster busts, one of +the wife, and another of a neighbor's child; visible also in a couple of +water colors of flowers and birds; an ambitious unfinished portrait of +his wife in oils: some paint decorations on the pine mantel; and an +excellent human ear, done in some plastic material at 16. + +Then we went into the kitchen, and the girl flew around, with enthusiasm, +and snatched rag after rag from a tall something in the corner, and +presently there stood the clay statue, life size--a graceful girlish +creature, nude to the waist, and holding up a single garment with one +hand the expression attempted being a modified scare--she was interrupted +when about to enter the bath. + +Then this young wife posed herself alongside the image and so remained +--a thing I didn't understand. But presently I did--then I said: + +"O, it's you!" + +"Yes," she said, "I was the model. He has no model but me. I have stood +for this many and many an hour--and you can't think how it does tire one! +But I don't mind it. He works all day at the shop; and then, nights and +Sundays he works on his statue as long as I can keep up." + +She got a big chisel, to use as a lever, and between us we managed to +twist the pedestal round and round, so as to afford a view of the statue +from all points. Well, sir, it was perfectly charming, this girl's +innocence and purity---exhibiting her naked self, as it were, to a +stranger and alone, and never once dreaming that there was the slightest +indelicacy about the matter. And so there wasn't; but it will be many +along day before I run across another woman who can do the like and show +no trace of self-consciousness. + +Well, then we sat down, and I took a smoke, and she told me all about her +people in Massachusetts--her father is a physician and it is an old and +respectable family--(I am able to believe anything she says.) And she +told me how "Karl" is 26 years old; and how he has had passionate +longings all his life toward art, but has always been poor and obliged to +struggle for his daily bread; and how he felt sure that if he could only +have one or two lessons in-- + +"Lessons? Hasn't he had any lessons?" + +No. He had never had a lesson. + +And presently it was dinner time and "Karl" arrived--a slender young +fellow with a marvelous head and a noble eye--and he was as simple and +natural, and as beautiful in spirit as his wife was. But she had to do +the talking--mainly--there was too much thought behind his cavernous eyes +for glib speech. + +I went home enchanted. Told Livy and Clara Spaulding all about the +paradise down yonder where those two enthusiasts are happy with a yearly +expense of $350. Livy and Clara went there next day and came away +enchanted. A few nights later the Gerhardts kept their promise and came +here for the evening. It was billiard night and I had company and so was +not down; but Livy and Clara became more charmed with these children than +ever. + +Warner and I planned to get somebody to criticise the statue whose +judgment would be worth something. So I laid for Champney, and after two +failures I captured him and took him around, and he said "this statue is +full of faults--but it has merits enough in it to make up for them" +--whereat the young wife danced around as delighted as a child. When we +came away, Champney said, "I did not want to say too much there, but the +truth is, it seems to me an extraordinary performance for an untrained +hand. You ask if there is promise enough there to justify the Hartford +folk in going to an expense of training this young man. I should say, +yes, decidedly; but still, to make everything safe, you had better get +the judgment of a sculptor." + +Warner was in New York. I wrote him, and he said he would fetch up Ward +--which he did. Yesterday they went to the Gerhardts and spent two +hours, and Ward came away bewitched with those people and marveling at +the winning innocence of the young wife, who dropped naturally into +model-attitude beside the statue (which is stark naked from head to heel, +now--G. had removed the drapery, fearing Ward would think he was afraid +to try legs and hips) just as she has always done before. + +Livy and I had two long talks with Ward yesterday evening. He spoke +strongly. He said, "if any stranger had told me that this apprentice did +not model that thing from plaster casts, I would not have believed it." +He said "it is full of crudities, but it is full of genius, too. It is +such a statue as the man of average talent would achieve after two years +training in the schools. And the boldness of the fellow, in going +straight to nature! He is an apprentice--his work shows that, all over; +but the stuff is in him, sure. Hartford must send him to Paris--two +years; then if the promise holds good, keep him there three more--and +warn him to study, study, work, work, and keep his name out of the +papers, and neither ask for orders nor accept them when offered." + +Well, you see, that's all we wanted. After Ward was gone Livy came out +with the thing that was in her mind. She said, "Go privately and start +the Gerhardts off to Paris, and say nothing about it to any one else." + +So I tramped down this morning in the snow-storm--and there was a +stirring time. They will sail a week or ten days from now. + +As I was starting out at the front door, with Gerhardt beside me and the +young wife dancing and jubilating behind, this latter cried out +impulsively, "Tell Mrs. Clemens I want to hug her--I want to hug you +both!" + +I gave them my old French book and they were going to tackle the +language, straight off. + +Now this letter is a secret--keep it quiet--I don't think Livy would mind +my telling you these things, but then she might, you know, for she is a +queer girl. + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + Champney was J. Wells Champney, a portrait-painter of distinction; + Ward was the sculptor, J. Q. A. Ward. + + The Gerhardts were presently off to Paris, well provided with means + to make their dreams reality; in due time the letters will report + them again. + + The Uncle Remus tales of Joel Chandler Harris gave Mark Twain great + pleasure. He frequently read them aloud, not only at home but in + public. Finally, he wrote Harris, expressing his warm appreciation, + and mentioning one of the negro stories of his own childhood, "The + Golden Arm," which he urged Harris to look up and add to his + collection. + + "You have pinned a proud feather in Uncle-Remus's cap," replied + Harris. "I do not know what higher honor he could have than to + appear before the Hartford public arm in arm with Mark Twain." + + He disclaimed any originality for the stories, adding, "I understand + that my relations toward Uncle Remus are similar to those that exist + between an almanac maker and the calendar." He had not heard the + "Golden Arm" story and asked for the outlines; also for some + publishing advice, out of Mark Twain's long experience. + + + To Joel Chandler Harris, in Atlanta: + + ELMIRA, N.Y., Aug. 10. +MY DEAR MR. HARRIS,--You can argue yourself into the delusion that the +principle of life is in the stories themselves and not in their setting; +but you will save labor by stopping with that solitary convert, for he is +the only intelligent one you will bag. In reality the stories are only +alligator pears--one merely eats them for the sake of the salad-dressing. +Uncle Remus is most deftly drawn, and is a lovable and delightful +creation; he, and the little boy, and their relations with each other, +are high and fine literature, and worthy to live, for their own sakes; +and certainly the stories are not to be credited with them. But enough +of this; I seem to be proving to the man that made the multiplication +table that twice one are two. + +I have been thinking, yesterday and to-day (plenty of chance to think, as +I am abed with lumbago at our little summering farm among the solitudes +of the Mountaintops,) and I have concluded that I can answer one of your +questions with full confidence--thus: Make it a subscription book. +Mighty few books that come strictly under the head of literature will +sell by subscription; but if Uncle Remus won't, the gift of prophecy has +departed out of me. When a book will sell by subscription, it will sell +two or three times as many copies as it would in the trade; and the +profit is bulkier because the retail price is greater..... + +You didn't ask me for a subscription-publisher. If you had, I should +have recommended Osgood to you. He inaugurates his subscription +department with my new book in the fall..... + +Now the doctor has been here and tried to interrupt my yarn about "The +Golden Arm," but I've got through, anyway. + +Of course I tell it in the negro dialect--that is necessary; but I have +not written it so, for I can't spell it in your matchless way. It is +marvelous the way you and Cable spell the negro and creole dialects. + +Two grand features are lost in print: the weird wailing, the rising and +falling cadences of the wind, so easily mimicked with one's mouth; and +the impressive pauses and eloquent silences, and subdued utterances, +toward the end of the yarn (which chain the attention of the children +hand and foot, and they sit with parted lips and breathless, to be +wrenched limb from limb with the sudden and appalling "You got it"). + +Old Uncle Dan'l, a slave of my uncle's' aged 60, used to tell us children +yarns every night by the kitchen fire (no other light;) and the last yarn +demanded, every night, was this one. By this time there was but a +ghastly blaze or two flickering about the back-log. We would huddle +close about the old man, and begin to shudder with the first familiar +words; and under the spell of his impressive delivery we always fell a +prey to that climax at the end when the rigid black shape in the twilight +sprang at us with a shout. + +When you come to glance at the tale you will recollect it--it is as +common and familiar as the Tar Baby. Work up the atmosphere with your +customary skill and it will "go" in print. + +Lumbago seems to make a body garrulous--but you'll forgive it. + Truly yours + S. L. CLEMENS + + + The "Golden Arm" story was one that Clemens often used in his public + readings, and was very effective as he gave it. + + In his sketch, "How to Tell a Story," it appears about as he used to + tell it. Harris, receiving the outlines of the old Missouri tale, + presently announced that he had dug up its Georgia relative, an + interesting variant, as we gather from Mark Twain's reply. + + + To Joel Chandler Harris, in Atlanta: + + HARTFORD, '81. +MY DEAR MR. HARRIS,--I was very sure you would run across that Story +somewhere, and am glad you have. A Drummond light--no, I mean a Brush +light--is thrown upon the negro estimate of values by his willingness to +risk his soul and his mighty peace forever for the sake of a silver +sev'm-punce. And this form of the story seems rather nearer the true +field-hand standard than that achieved by my Florida, Mo., negroes with +their sumptuous arm of solid gold. + +I judge you haven't received my new book yet--however, you will in a day +or two. Meantime you must not take it ill if I drop Osgood a hint about +your proposed story of slave life..... + +When you come north I wish you would drop me a line and then follow it in +person and give me a day or two at our house in Hartford. If you will, +I will snatch Osgood down from Boston, and you won't have to go there at +all unless you want to. Please to bear this strictly in mind, and don't +forget it. + Sincerely yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Charles Warren Stoddard, to whom the next letter is written, was one + of the old California literary crowd, a graceful writer of verse and + prose, never quite arriving at the success believed by his friends + to be his due. He was a gentle, irresponsible soul, well loved by + all who knew him, and always, by one or another, provided against + want. The reader may remember that during Mark Twain's great + lecture engagement in London, winter of 1873-74, Stoddard lived with + him, acting as his secretary. At a later period in his life he + lived for several years with the great telephone magnate, Theodore + N. Vail. At the time of this letter, Stoddard had decided that in + the warm light and comfort of the Sandwich Islands he could survive + on his literary earnings. + + + To Charles Warren Stoddard, in the Sandwich Islands: + + HARTFORD, Oct. 26 '81. +MY DEAR CHARLIE,--Now what have I ever done to you that you should not +only slide off to Heaven before you have earned a right to go, but must +add the gratuitous villainy of informing me of it?..... + +The house is full of carpenters and decorators; whereas, what we really +need here, is an incendiary. If the house would only burn down, we would +pack up the cubs and fly to the isles of the blest, and shut ourselves up +in the healing solitudes of the crater of Haleakala and get a good rest; +for the mails do not intrude there, nor yet the telephone and the +telegraph. And after resting, we would come down the mountain a piece +and board with a godly, breech-clouted native, and eat poi and dirt and +give thanks to whom all thanks belong, for these privileges, and never +house-keep any more. + +I think my wife would be twice as strong as she is, but for this wearing +and wearying slavery of house-keeping. However, she thinks she must +submit to it for the sake of the children; whereas, I have always had a +tenderness for parents too, so, for her sake and mine, I sigh for the +incendiary. When the evening comes and the gas is lit and the wear and +tear of life ceases, we want to keep house always; but next morning we +wish, once more, that we were free and irresponsible boarders. + +Work?--one can't you know, to any purpose. I don't really get anything +done worth speaking of, except during the three or four months that we +are away in the Summer. I wish the Summer were seven years long. I keep +three or four books on the stocks all the time, but I seldom add a +satisfactory chapter to one of them at home. Yes, and it is all because +my time is taken up with answering the letters of strangers. It can't be +done through a short hand amanuensis--I've tried that--it wouldn't work +--I couldn't learn to dictate. What does possess strangers to write so +many letters? I never could find that out. However, I suppose I did it +myself when I was a stranger. But I will never do it again. + +Maybe you think I am not happy? the very thing that gravels me is that I +am. I don't want to be happy when I can't work; I am resolved that +hereafter I won't be. What I have always longed for, was the privilege +of living forever away up on one of those mountains in the Sandwich +Islands overlooking the sea. + Yours ever + MARK. + +That magazine article of yours was mighty good: up to your very best I +think. I enclose a book review written by Howells. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Oct. 26 '81. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I am delighted with your review, and so is Mrs. +Clemens. What you have said, there, will convince anybody that reads it; +a body cannot help being convinced by it. That is the kind of a review +to have; the doubtful man; even the prejudiced man, is persuaded and +succumbs. + +What a queer blunder that was, about the baronet. I can't quite see how +I ever made it. There was an opulent abundance of things I didn't know; +and consequently no need to trench upon the vest-pocketful of things I +did know, to get material for a blunder. + +Charley Warren Stoddard has gone to the Sandwich Islands permanently. +Lucky devil. It is the only supremely delightful place on earth. It +does seem that the more advantage a body doesn't earn, here, the more of +them God throws at his head. This fellow's postal card has set the +vision of those gracious islands before my mind, again, with not a leaf +withered, nor a rainbow vanished, nor a sun-flash missing from the waves, +and now it will be months, I reckon, before I can drive it away again. +It is beautiful company, but it makes one restless and dissatisfied. + +With love and thanks, + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + The review mentioned in this letter was of The Prince and the + Pauper. What the queer "blunder" about the baronet was, the present + writer confesses he does not know; but perhaps a careful reader + could find it, at least in the early edition; very likely it was + corrected without loss of time. + + Clemens now and then found it necessary to pay a visit to Canada in + the effort to protect his copyright. He usually had a grand time on + these trips, being lavishly entertained by the Canadian literary + fraternity. In November, 1881, he made one of these journeys in the + interest of The Prince and the Pauper, this time with Osgood, who + was now his publisher. In letters written home we get a hint of his + diversions. The Monsieur Frechette mentioned was a Canadian poet of + considerable distinction. "Clara" was Miss Clara Spaulding, of + Elmira, who had accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Clemens to Europe in 1873, + and again in 1878. Later she became Mrs. John B. Staachfield, of + New York City. Her name has already appeared in these letters many + times. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford: + + MONTREAL, Nov. 28 '81. +Livy darling, you and Clara ought to have been at breakfast in the great +dining room this morning. English female faces, distinctive English +costumes, strange and marvelous English gaits--and yet such honest, +honorable, clean-souled countenances, just as these English women almost +always have, you know. Right away-- + +But they've come to take me to the top of Mount Royal, it being a cold, +dry, sunny, magnificent day. Going in a sleigh. + Yours lovingly, + SAML. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford: + + MONTREAL, Sunday, November 27, 1881. +Livy dear, a mouse kept me awake last night till 3 or 4 o'clock--so I am +lying abed this morning. I would not give sixpence to be out yonder in +the storm, although it is only snow. + +[The above paragraph is written in the form of a rebus illustrated with +various sketches.] + +There--that's for the children--was not sure that they could read +writing; especially jean, who is strangely ignorant in some things. + +I can not only look out upon the beautiful snow-storm, past the vigorous +blaze of my fire; and upon the snow-veiled buildings which I have +sketched; and upon the churchward drifting umbrellas; and upon the +buffalo-clad cabmen stamping their feet and thrashing their arms on the +corner yonder: but I also look out upon the spot where the first white +men stood, in the neighborhood of four hundred years ago, admiring the +mighty stretch of leafy solitudes, and being admired and marveled at by +an eager multitude of naked savages. The discoverer of this region, and +namer of it, Jacques Cartier, has a square named for him in the city. I +wish you were here; you would enjoy your birthday, I think. + +I hoped for a letter, and thought I had one when the mail was handed in, +a minute ago, but it was only that note from Sylvester Baxter. You must +write--do you hear?--or I will be remiss myself. + +Give my love and a kiss to the children, and ask them to give you my love +and a kiss from + SAML. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford: + + QUEBEC, Sunday. '81. +Livy darling, I received a letter from Monsieur Frechette this morning, +in which certain citizens of Montreal tendered me a public dinner next +Thursday, and by Osgood's advice I accepted it. I would have accepted +anyway, and very cheerfully but for the delay of two days--for I was +purposing to go to Boston Tuesday and home Wednesday; whereas, now I go +to Boston Friday and home Saturday. I have to go by Boston on account of +business. + +We drove about the steep hills and narrow, crooked streets of this old +town during three hours, yesterday, in a sleigh, in a driving snow-storm. +The people here don't mind snow; they were all out, plodding around on +their affairs--especially the children, who were wallowing around +everywhere, like snow images, and having a mighty good time. I wish I +could describe the winter costume of the young girls, but I can't. It is +grave and simple, but graceful and pretty--the top of it is a brimless +fur cap. Maybe it is the costume that makes pretty girls seem so +monotonously plenty here. It was a kind of relief to strike a homely +face occasionally. + +You descend into some of the streets by long, deep stairways; and in the +strong moonlight, last night, these were very picturesque. I did wish +you were here to see these things. You couldn't by any possibility sleep +in these beds, though, or enjoy the food. + +Good night, sweetheart, and give my respects to the cubs. + + SAML. + + + It had been hoped that W. D. Howells would join the Canadian + excursion, but Howells was not very well that autumn. He wrote that + he had been in bed five weeks, "most of the time recovering; so you + see how bad I must have been to begin with. But now I am out of any + first-class pain; I have a good appetite, and I am as abusive and + peremptory as Guiteau." Clemens, returning to Hartford, wrote him a + letter that explains itself. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Dec. 16 '81. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It was a sharp disappointment--your inability to +connect, on the Canadian raid. What a gaudy good time we should have +had! + +Disappointed, again, when I got back to Boston; for I was promising +myself half an hour's look at you, in Belmont; but your note to Osgood +showed that that could not be allowed out yet. + +The Atlantic arrived an hour ago, and your faultless and delicious Police +Report brought that blamed Joe Twichell powerfully before me. There's a +man who can tell such things himself (by word of mouth,) and has as sure +an eye for detecting a thing that is before his eyes, as any man in the +world, perhaps--then why in the nation doesn't he report himself with a +pen? + +One of those drenching days last week, he slopped down town with his +cubs, and visited a poor little beggarly shed where were a dwarf, a fat +woman, and a giant of honest eight feet, on exhibition behind tawdry +show-canvases, but with nobody to exhibit to. The giant had a broom, and +was cleaning up and fixing around, diligently. Joe conceived the idea of +getting some talk out of him. Now that never would have occurred to me. +So he dropped in under the man's elbow, dogged him patiently around, +prodding him with questions and getting irritated snarls in return which +would have finished me early--but at last one of Joe's random shafts +drove the centre of that giant's sympathies somehow, and fetched him. +The fountains of his great deep were broken up, and he rained a flood of +personal history that was unspeakably entertaining. + +Among other things it turned out that he had been a Turkish (native) +colonel, and had fought all through the Crimean war--and so, for the +first time, Joe got a picture of the Charge of the Six Hundred that made +him see the living spectacle, the flash of flag and tongue-flame, the +rolling smoke, and hear the booming of the guns; and for the first time +also, he heard the reasons for that wild charge delivered from the mouth +of a master, and realized that nobody had "blundered," but that a cold, +logical, military brain had perceived this one and sole way to win an +already lost battle, and so gave the command and did achieve the victory. + +And mind you Joe was able to come up here, days afterwards, and reproduce +that giant's picturesque and admirable history. But dern him, he can't +write it--which is all wrong, and not as it should be. + +And he has gone and raked up the MS autobiography (written in 1848,) of +Mrs. Phebe Brown, (author of "I Love to Steal a While Away,") who +educated Yung Wing in her family when he was a little boy; and I came +near not getting to bed at all, last night, on account of the lurid +fascinations of it. Why in the nation it has never got into print, I +can't understand. + +But, by jings! the postman will be here in a minute; so, congratulations +upon your mending health, and gratitude that it is mending; and love to +you all. + Yrs Ever + MARK. + +Don't answer--I spare the sick. + + + + +XXII. + +LETTERS, 1882, MAINLY TO HOWELLS. WASTED FURY. OLD SCENES REVISITED. +THE MISSISSIPPI BOOK + + A man of Mark Twain's profession and prominence must necessarily be + the subject of much newspaper comment. Jest, compliment, criticism + --none of these things disturbed him, as a rule. He was pleased + that his books should receive favorable notices by men whose opinion + he respected, but he was not grieved by adverse expressions. Jests + at his expense, if well written, usually amused him; cheap jokes + only made him sad; but sarcasms and innuendoes were likely to enrage + him, particularly if he believed them prompted by malice. Perhaps + among all the letters he ever wrote, there is none more + characteristic than this confession of violence and eagerness for + reprisal, followed by his acknowledgment of error and a manifest + appreciation of his own weakness. It should be said that Mark Twain + and Whitelaw Reid were generally very good friends, and perhaps for + the moment this fact seemed to magnify the offense. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Jan. 28 '82. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Nobody knows better than I, that there are times when +swearing cannot meet the emergency. How sharply I feel that, at this +moment. Not a single profane word has issued from my lips this mornin +--I have not even had the impulse to swear, so wholly ineffectual would +swearing have manifestly been, in the circumstances. But I will tell you +about it. + +About three weeks ago, a sensitive friend, approaching his revelation +cautiously, intimated that the N. Y. Tribune was engaged in a kind of +crusade against me. This seemed a higher compliment than I deserved; but +no matter, it made me very angry. I asked many questions, and gathered, +in substance, this: Since Reid's return from Europe, the Tribune had +been flinging sneers and brutalities at me with such persistent frequency +"as to attract general remark." I was an angered--which is just as good +an expression, I take it, as an hungered. Next, I learned that Osgood, +among the rest of the "general," was worrying over these constant and +pitiless attacks. Next came the testimony of another friend, that the +attacks were not merely "frequent," but "almost daily." Reflect upon +that: "Almost daily" insults, for two months on a stretch. What would +you have done? + +As for me, I did the thing which was the natural thing for me to do, that +is, I set about contriving a plan to accomplish one or the other of two +things: 1. Force a peace; or 2. Get revenge. When I got my plan +finished, it pleased me marvelously. It was in six or seven sections, +each section to be used in its turn and by itself; the assault to begin +at once with No. 1, and the rest to follow, one after the other, to keep +the communication open while I wrote my biography of Reid. I meant to +wind up with this latter great work, and then dismiss the subject for +good. + +Well, ever since then I have worked day and night making notes and +collecting and classifying material. I've got collectors at work in +England. I went to New York and sat three hours taking evidence while a +stenographer set it down. As my labors grew, so also grew my +fascination. Malice and malignity faded out of me--or maybe I drove them +out of me, knowing that a malignant book would hurt nobody but the fool +who wrote it. I got thoroughly in love with this work; for I saw that I +was going to write a book which the very devils and angels themselves +would delight to read, and which would draw disapproval from nobody but +the hero of it, (and Mrs. Clemens, who was bitter against the whole +thing.) One part of my plan was so delicious that I had to try my hand +on it right away, just for the luxury of it. I set about it, and sure +enough it panned out to admiration. I wrote that chapter most carefully, +and I couldn't find a fault with it. (It was not for the biography--no, +it belonged to an immediate and deadlier project.) + +Well, five days ago, this thought came into my mind (from Mrs. Clemens's): +"Wouldn't it be well to make sure that the attacks have been 'almost +daily'?--and to also make sure that their number and character will +justify me in doing what I am proposing to do?" + +I at once set a man to work in New York to seek out and copy every +unpleasant reference which had been made to me in the Tribune from Nov. +1st to date. On my own part I began to watch the current numbers, for I +had subscribed for the paper. + +The result arrived from my New York man this morning. O, what a pitiable +wreck of high hopes! The "almost daily" assaults, for two months, +consist of--1. Adverse criticism of P. & P. from an enraged idiot in the +London Atheneum; 2. Paragraph from some indignant Englishman in the Pall +Mall Gazette who pays me the vast compliment of gravely rebuking some +imaginary ass who has set me up in the neighborhood of Rabelais; 3. A +remark of the Tribune's about the Montreal dinner, touched with an almost +invisible satire; 4. A remark of the Tribune's about refusal of Canadian +copyright, not complimentary, but not necessarily malicious--and of +course adverse criticism which is not malicious is a thing which none but +fools irritate themselves about. + +There--that is the prodigious bugaboo, in its entirety! Can you conceive +of a man's getting himself into a sweat over so diminutive a provocation? +I am sure I can't. What the devil can those friends of mine have been +thinking about, to spread these 3 or 4 harmless things out into two +months of daily sneers and affronts? The whole offense, boiled down, +amounts to just this: one uncourteous remark of the Tribune about my +book--not me between Nov. 1 and Dec. 20; and a couple of foreign +criticisms (of my writings, not me,) between Nov. 1 and Jan. 26! If I +can't stand that amount of friction, I certainly need reconstruction. +Further boiled down, this vast outpouring of malice amounts to simply +this: one jest from the Tribune (one can make nothing more serious than +that out of it.) One jest--and that is all; for the foreign criticisms do +not count, they being matters of news, and proper for publication in +anybody's newspaper. + +And to offset that one jest, the Tribune paid me one compliment Dec. 23, +by publishing my note declining the New York New England dinner, while +merely (in the same breath,) mentioning that similar letters were read +from General Sherman and other men whom we all know to be persons of real +consequence. + +Well, my mountain has brought forth its mouse, and a sufficiently small +mouse it is, God knows. And my three weeks' hard work have got to go +into the ignominious pigeon-hole. Confound it, I could have earned ten +thousand dollars with infinitely less trouble. However, I shouldn't have +done it, for I am too lazy, now, in my sere and yellow leaf, to be +willing to work for anything but love..... I kind of envy you people who +are permitted for your righteousness' sake to dwell in a boarding house; +not that I should always want to live in one, but I should like the +change occasionally from this housekeeping slavery to that wild +independence. A life of don't-care-a-damn in a boarding house is what I +have asked for in many a secret prayer. I shall come by and by and +require of you what you have offered me there. + Yours ever, + MARK. + + + Howells, who had already known something of the gathering storm, + replied: "Your letter was an immense relief to me, for although I + had an abiding faith that you would get sick of your enterprise, + I wasn't easy until I knew that you had given it up." + + Joel Chandler Harris appears again in the letters of this period. + Twichell, during a trip South about this time, had called on Harris + with some sort of proposition or suggestion from Clemens that Harris + appear with him in public, and tell, or read, the Remus stories from + the platform. But Harris was abnormally diffident. Clemens later + pronounced him "the shyest full-grown man" he had ever met, and the + word which Twichell brought home evidently did not encourage the + platform idea. + + + To Joel Chandler Harris, in Atlanta: + + HARTFORD, Apl. 2, '82. +Private. + +MY DEAR MR. HARRIS,--Jo Twichell brought me your note and told me of his +talk with you. He said you didn't believe you would ever be able to +muster a sufficiency of reckless daring to make you comfortable and at +ease before an audience. Well, I have thought out a device whereby I +believe we can get around that difficulty. I will explain when I see +you. + +Jo says you want to go to Canada within a month or six weeks--I forget +just exactly what he did say; but he intimated the trip could be delayed +a while, if necessary. If this is so, suppose you meet Osgood and me in +New Orleans early in May--say somewhere between the 1st and 6th? + +It will be well worth your while to do this, because the author who goes +to Canada unposted, will not know what course to pursue [to secure +copyright] when he gets there; he will find himself in a hopeless +confusion as to what is the correct thing to do. Now Osgood is the only +man in America, who can lay out your course for you and tell you exactly +what to do. Therefore, you just come to New Orleans and have a talk with +him. + +Our idea is to strike across lots and reach St. Louis the 20th of April +--thence we propose to drift southward, stopping at some town a few +hours or a night, every day, and making notes. + +To escape the interviewers, I shall follow my usual course and use a +fictitious name (C. L. Samuel, of New York.) I don't know what Osgood's +name will be, but he can't use his own. + +If you see your way to meet us in New Orleans, drop me a line, now, and +as we approach that city I will telegraph you what day we shall arrive +there. + +I would go to Atlanta if I could, but shan't be able. We shall go back +up the river to St. Paul, and thence by rail X-lots home. + +(I am making this letter so dreadfully private and confidential because +my movements must be kept secret, else I shan't be able to pick up the +kind of book-material I want.) + +If you are diffident, I suspect that you ought to let Osgood be your +magazine-agent. He makes those people pay three or four times as much as +an article is worth, whereas I never had the cheek to make them pay more +than double. + Yrs Sincerely + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + "My backwardness is an affliction," wrote Harris..... "The ordeal + of appearing on the stage would be a terrible one, but my experience + is that when a diffident man does become familiar with his + surroundings he has more impudence than his neighbors. Extremes + meet." + + He was sorely tempted, but his courage became as water at the + thought of footlights and assembled listeners. Once in New York he + appears to have been caught unawares at a Tile Club dinner and made + to tell a story, but his agony was such that at the prospect of a + similar ordeal in Boston he avoided that city and headed straight + for Georgia and safety. + + The New Orleans excursion with Osgood, as planned by Clemens, proved + a great success. The little party took the steamer Gold Dust from + St. Louis down river toward New Orleans. Clemens was quickly + recognized, of course, and his assumed name laid aside. The author + of "Uncle Remus" made the trip to New Orleans. George W. Cable was + there at the time, and we may believe that in the company of Mark + Twain and Osgood those Southern authors passed two or three + delightful days. Clemens also met his old teacher Bixby in New + Orleans, and came back up the river with him, spending most of his + time in the pilot-house, as in the old days. It was a glorious + trip, and, reaching St. Louis, he continued it northward, stopping + off at Hannibal and Quincy.' + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford: + + QUINCY, ILL. May 17, '82. +Livy darling, I am desperately homesick. But I have promised Osgood, and +must stick it out; otherwise I would take the train at once and break for +home. + +I have spent three delightful days in Hannibal, loitering around all day +long, examining the old localities and talking with the grey-heads who +were boys and girls with me 30 or 40 years ago. It has been a moving +time. I spent my nights with John and Helen Garth, three miles from +town, in their spacious and beautiful house. They were children with me, +and afterwards schoolmates. Now they have a daughter 19 or 20 years old. +Spent an hour, yesterday, with A. W. Lamb, who was not married when I saw +him last. He married a young lady whom I knew. And now I have been +talking with their grown-up sons and daughters. Lieutenant Hickman, the +spruce young handsomely-uniformed volunteer of 1846, called on me--a +grisly elephantine patriarch of 65 now, his grace all vanished. + +That world which I knew in its blossoming youth is old and bowed and +melancholy, now; its soft cheeks are leathery and wrinkled, the fire is +gone out in its eyes, and the spring from its step. It will be dust and +ashes when I come again. I have been clasping hands with the moribund +--and usually they said, "It is for the last time." + +Now I am under way again, upon this hideous trip to St. Paul, with a +heart brimming full of thoughts and images of you and Susie and Bay and +the peerless Jean. And so good night, my love. + + SAML. + + + Clemens's trip had been saddened by learning, in New Orleans, the + news of the death of Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh. To Doctor + Brown's son, whom he had known as "Jock," he wrote immediately on + his return to Hartford. + + + To Mr. John Brown, in Edinburgh + + HARTFORD, June 1, 1882. +MY DEAR MR. BROWN,--I was three thousand miles from home, at breakfast in +New Orleans, when the damp morning paper revealed the sorrowful news +among the cable dispatches. There was no place in America, however +remote, or however rich, or poor or high or humble where words of +mourning for your father were not uttered that morning, for his works had +made him known and loved all over the land. To Mrs. Clemens and me, +the loss is personal; and our grief the grief one feels for one who was +peculiarly near and dear. Mrs. Clemens has never ceased to express +regret that we came away from England the last time without going to see +him, and often we have since projected a voyage across the Atlantic for +the sole purpose of taking him by the hand and looking into his kind eyes +once more before he should be called to his rest. + +We both thank you greatly for the Edinburgh papers which you sent. My +wife and I join in affectionate remembrances and greetings to yourself +and your aunt, and in the sincere tender of our sympathies. + + Faithfully yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + +Our Susie is still "Megalops." He gave her that name: + +Can you spare a photograph of your father? We have none but the one +taken in a group with ourselves. + + + William Dean Howells, at the age of forty-five, reached what many + still regard his highest point of achievement in American realism. + His novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham, which was running as a Century + serial during the summer of 1882, attracted wide attention, and upon + its issue in book form took first place among his published novels. + Mark Twain, to the end of his life, loved all that Howells wrote. + Once, long afterward, he said: "Most authors give us glimpses of a + radiant moon, but Howells's moon shines and sails all night long." + When the instalments of The Rise of Silas Lapham began to appear, he + overflowed in adjectives, the sincerity of which we need not doubt, + in view of his quite open criticisms of the author's reading + delivery. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Belmont, Mass.: + +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I am in a state of wild enthusiasm over this July +instalment of your story. It's perfectly dazzling--it's masterly +--incomparable. Yet I heard you read it--without losing my balance. +Well, the difference between your reading and your writing is-remarkable. +I mean, in the effects produced and the impression left behind. Why, the +one is to the other as is one of Joe Twichell's yarns repeated by a +somnambulist. Goodness gracious, you read me a chapter, and it is a +gentle, pearly dawn, with a sprinkle of faint stars in it; but by and by +I strike it in print, and shout to myself, "God bless us, how has that +pallid former spectacle been turned into these gorgeous sunset +splendors!" + +Well, I don't care how much you read your truck to me, you can't +permanently damage it for me that way. It is always perfectly fresh and +dazzling when I come on it in the magazine. Of course I recognize the +form of it as being familiar--but that is all. That is, I remember it as +pyrotechnic figures which you set up before me, dead and cold, but ready +for the match--and now I see them touched off and all ablaze with +blinding fires. You can read, if you want to, but you don't read worth a +damn. I know you can read, because your readings of Cable and your +repeatings of the German doctor's remarks prove that. + +That's the best drunk scene--because the truest--that I ever read. There +are touches in it that I never saw any writer take note of before. And +they are set before the reader with amazing accuracy. How very drunk, +and how recently drunk, and how altogether admirably drunk you must have +been to enable you to contrive that masterpiece! + +Why I didn't notice that that religious interview between Marcia and Mrs. +Halleck was so deliciously humorous when you read it to me--but dear me, +it's just too lovely for anything. (Wrote Clark to collar it for the +"Library.") + +Hang it, I know where the mystery is, now; when you are reading, you +glide right along, and I don't get a chance to let the things soak home; +but when I catch it in the magazine, I give a page 20 or 30 minutes in +which to gently and thoroughly filter into me. Your humor is so very +subtle, and elusive--(well, often it's just a vanishing breath of perfume +which a body isn't certain he smelt till he stops and takes another +smell) whereas you can smell other + +(Remainder obliterated.) + + + Among Mark Twain's old schoolmates in Hannibal was little Helen + Kercheval, for whom in those early days he had a very tender spot + indeed. But she married another schoolmate, John Garth, who in time + became a banker, highly respected and a great influence. John and + Helen Garth have already been mentioned in the letter of May 17th. + + + To John Garth, in Hannibal: + + HARTFORD, July 3 '82. +DEAR JOHN,--Your letter of June i9 arrived just one day after we ought to +have been in Elmira, N. Y. for the summer: but at the last moment the +baby was seized with scarlet fever. I had to telegraph and countermand +the order for special sleeping car; and in fact we all had to fly around +in a lively way and undo the patient preparations of weeks--rehabilitate +the dismantled house, unpack the trunks, and so on. A couple of days +later, the eldest child was taken down with so fierce a fever that she +was soon delirious--not scarlet fever, however. Next, I myself was +stretched on the bed with three diseases at once, and all of them fatal. +But I never did care for fatal diseases if I could only have privacy and +room to express myself concerning them. + +We gave early warning, and of course nobody has entered the house in all +this time but one or two reckless old bachelors--and they probably wanted +to carry the disease to the children of former flames of theirs. The +house is still in quarantine and must remain so for a week or two yet--at +which time we are hoping to leave for Elmira. + Always your friend + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + By the end of summer Howells was in Europe, and Clemens, in Elmira, + was trying to finish his Mississippi book, which was giving him a + great deal of trouble. It was usually so with his non-fiction + books; his interest in them was not cumulative; he was prone to grow + weary of them, while the menace of his publisher's contract was + maddening. Howells's letters, meant to be comforting, or at least + entertaining, did not always contribute to his peace of mind. The + Library of American Humor which they had planned was an added + burden. Before sailing, Howells had written: "Do you suppose you + can do your share of the reading at Elmira, while you are writing at + the Mississippi book?" + + In a letter from London, Howells writes of the good times he is + having over there with Osgood, Hutton, John Hay, Aldrich, and Alma + Tadema, excursioning to Oxford, feasting, especially "at the Mitre + Tavern, where they let you choose your dinner from the joints + hanging from the rafter, and have passages that you lose yourself in + every time you try to go to your room..... Couldn't you and Mrs. + Clemens step over for a little while?..... We have seen lots of + nice people and have been most pleasantly made of; but I would + rather have you smoke in my face, and talk for half a day just for + pleasure, than to go to the best house or club in London." The + reader will gather that this could not be entirely soothing to a man + shackled by a contract and a book that refused to come to an end. + + + To W. D. Howells, in London: + + HARTFORD, CONN. Oct 30, 1882. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I do not expect to find you, so I shan't spend many +words on you to wind up in the perdition of some European dead-letter +office. I only just want to say that the closing installments of the +story are prodigious. All along I was afraid it would be impossible for +you to keep up so splendidly to the end; but you were only, I see now, +striking eleven. It is in these last chapters that you struck twelve. +Go on and write; you can write good books yet, but you can never match +this one. And speaking of the book, I inclose something which has been +happening here lately. + +We have only just arrived at home, and I have not seen Clark on our +matters. I cannot see him or any one else, until I get my book finished. +The weather turned cold, and we had to rush home, while I still lacked +thirty thousand words. I had been sick and got delayed. I am going to +write all day and two thirds of the night, until the thing is done, or +break down at it. The spur and burden of the contract are intolerable to +me. I can endure the irritation of it no longer. I went to work at nine +o'clock yesterday morning, and went to bed an hour after midnight. +Result of the day, (mainly stolen from books, tho' credit given,) 9500 +words, so I reduced my burden by one third in one day. It was five days +work in one. I have nothing more to borrow or steal; the rest must all +be written. It is ten days work, and unless something breaks, it will be +finished in five. We all send love to you and Mrs. Howells, and all the +family. + Yours as ever, + MARK. + + +Again, from Villeneuve, on lake Geneva, Howells wrote urging him this +time to spend the winter with them in Florence, where they would write +their great American Comedy of 'Orme's Motor,' "which is to enrich us +beyond the dreams of avarice.... We could have a lot of fun writing it, +and you could go home with some of the good old Etruscan malaria in your +bones, instead of the wretched pinch-beck Hartford article that you are +suffering from now.... it's a great opportunity for you. Besides, +nobody over there likes you half as well as I do." + +It should be added that 'Orme's Motor' was the provisional title that +Clemens and Howells had selected for their comedy, which was to be built, +in some measure, at least, around the character, or rather from the +peculiarities, of Orion Clemens. The Cable mentioned in Mark Twain's +reply is, of course, George W. Cable, who only a little while before had +come up from New Orleans to conquer the North with his wonderful tales +and readings. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Switzerland: + + HARTFORD, Nov. 4th, 1882. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Yes, it would be profitable for me to do that, because +with your society to help me, I should swiftly finish this now apparently +interminable book. But I cannot come, because I am not Boss here, and +nothing but dynamite can move Mrs. Clemens away from home in the winter +season. + +I never had such a fight over a book in my life before. And the +foolishest part of the whole business is, that I started Osgood to +editing it before I had finished writing it. As a consequence, large +areas of it are condemned here and there and yonder, and I have the +burden of these unfilled gaps harassing me and the thought of the broken +continuity of the work, while I am at the same time trying to build the +last quarter of the book. However, at last I have said with sufficient +positiveness that I will finish the book at no particular date; that I +will not hurry it; that I will not hurry myself; that I will take things +easy and comfortably, write when I choose to write, leave it alone when I +so prefer. The printers must wait, the artists, the canvassers, and all +the rest. I have got everything at a dead standstill, and that is where +it ought to be, and that is where it must remain; to follow any other +policy would be to make the book worse than it already is. I ought to +have finished it before showing to anybody, and then sent it across the +ocean to you to be edited, as usual; for you seem to be a great many +shades happier than you deserve to be, and if I had thought of this thing +earlier, I would have acted upon it and taken the tuck somewhat out of +your joyousness. + +In the same mail with your letter, arrived the enclosed from Orme the +motor man. You will observe that he has an office. I will explain that +this is a law office and I think it probably does him as much good to +have a law office without anything to do in it, as it would another man +to have one with an active business attached. You see he is on the +electric light lay now. Going to light the city and allow me to take all +the stock if I want to. And he will manage it free of charge. It never +would occur to this simple soul how much less costly it would be to me, +to hire him on a good salary not to manage it. Do you observe the same +old eagerness, the same old hurry, springing from the fear that if he +does not move with the utmost swiftness, that colossal opportunity will +escape him? Now just fancy this same frantic plunging after vast +opportunities, going on week after week with this same man, during fifty +entire years, and he has not yet learned, in the slightest degree, that +there isn't any occasion to hurry; that his vast opportunity will always +wait; and that whether it waits or flies, he certainly will never catch +it. This immortal hopefulness, fortified by its immortal and unteachable +misjudgment, is the immortal feature of this character, for a play; and +we will write that play. We should be fools else. That staccato +postscript reads as if some new and mighty business were imminent, for it +is slung on the paper telegraphically, all the small words left out. +I am afraid something newer and bigger than the electric light is +swinging across his orbit. Save this letter for an inspiration. I have +got a hundred more. + +Cable has been here, creating worshipers on all hands. He is a marvelous +talker on a deep subject. I do not see how even Spencer could unwind a +thought more smoothly or orderly, and do it in a cleaner, clearer, +crisper English. He astounded Twichell with his faculty. You know when +it comes down to moral honesty, limpid innocence, and utterly blemishless +piety, the Apostles were mere policemen to Cable; so with this in mind +you must imagine him at a midnight dinner in Boston the other night, +where we gathered around the board of the Summerset Club; Osgood, full, +Boyle O'Reilly, full, Fairchild responsively loaded, and Aldrich and +myself possessing the floor, and properly fortified. Cable told Mrs. +Clemens when he returned here, that he seemed to have been entertaining +himself with horses, and had a dreamy idea that he must have gone to +Boston in a cattle-car. It was a very large time. He called it an orgy. +And no doubt it was, viewed from his standpoint. + +I wish I were in Switzerland, and I wish we could go to Florence; but we +have to leave these delights to you; there is no helping it. We all join +in love to you and all the family. + Yours as ever + MARK. + + + + +XXIII. + +LETTERS, 1883, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. A GUEST OF THE MARQUIS OF LORNE. +THE HISTORY GAME. A PLAY BY HOWELLS AND MARK TWAIN + + Mark Twain, in due season, finished the Mississippi book and placed + it in Osgood's hands for publication. It was a sort of partnership + arrangement in which Clemens was to furnish the money to make the + book, and pay Osgood a percentage for handling it. It was, in fact, + the beginning of Mark Twain's adventures as a publisher. + + Howells was not as happy in Florence as he had hoped to be. The + social life there overwhelmed him. In February he wrote: "Our two + months in Florence have been the most ridiculous time that ever even + half-witted people passed. We have spent them in chasing round + after people for whom we cared nothing, and being chased by them. + My story isn't finished yet, and what part of it is done bears the + fatal marks of haste and distraction. Of course, I haven't put pen + to paper yet on the play. I wring my hands and beat my breast when + I think of how these weeks have been wasted; and how I have been + forced to waste them by the infernal social circumstances from which + I couldn't escape." + + Clemens, now free from the burden of his own book, was light of + heart and full of ideas and news; also of sympathy and appreciation. + Howells's story of this time was "A Woman's Reason." Governor + Jewell, of this letter, was Marshall Jewell, Governor of Connecticut + from 1871 to 1873. Later, he was Minister to Russia, and in 1874 + was United States Postmaster-General. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Florence: + + HARTFORD, March 1st, 1883. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We got ourselves ground up in that same mill, once, in +London, and another time in Paris. It is a kind of foretaste of hell. +There is no way to avoid it except by the method which you have now +chosen. One must live secretly and cut himself utterly off from the +human race, or life in Europe becomes an unbearable burden and work an +impossibility. I learned something last night, and maybe it may +reconcile me to go to Europe again sometime. I attended one of the +astonishingly popular lectures of a man by the name of Stoddard, who +exhibits interesting stereopticon pictures and then knocks the interest +all out of them with his comments upon them. But all the world go there +to look and listen, and are apparently well satisfied. And they ought to +be fully satisfied, if the lecturer would only keep still, or die in the +first act. But he described how retired tradesmen and farmers in Holland +load a lazy scow with the family and the household effects, and then loaf +along the waterways of the low countries all the summer long, paying no +visits, receiving none, and just lazying a heavenly life out in their own +private unpestered society, and doing their literary work, if they have +any, wholly uninterrupted. If you had hired such a boat and sent for us +we should have a couple of satisfactory books ready for the press now +with no marks of interruption, vexatious wearinesses, and other +hellishnesses visible upon them anywhere. We shall have to do this +another time. We have lost an opportunity for the present. Do you +forget that Heaven is packed with a multitude of all nations and that +these people are all on the most familiar how-the-hell-are-you footing +with Talmage swinging around the circle to all eternity hugging the +saints and patriarchs and archangels, and forcing you to do the same +unless you choose to make yourself an object of remark if you refrain? +Then why do you try to get to Heaven? Be warned in time. + +We have all read your two opening numbers in the Century, and consider +them almost beyond praise. I hear no dissent from this verdict. I did +not know there was an untouched personage in American life, but I had +forgotten the auctioneer. You have photographed him accurately. + +I have been an utterly free person for a month or two; and I do not +believe I ever so greatly appreciated and enjoyed--and realized the +absence of the chains of slavery as I do this time. Usually my first +waking thought in the morning is, "I have nothing to do to-day, I belong +to nobody, I have ceased from being a slave." Of course the highest +pleasure to be got out of freedom, and having nothing to do, is labor. +Therefore I labor. But I take my time about it. I work one hour or four +as happens to suit my mind, and quit when I please. And so these days +are days of entire enjoyment. I told Clark the other day, to jog along +comfortable and not get in a sweat. I said I believed you would not be +able to enjoy editing that library over there, where you have your own +legitimate work to do and be pestered to death by society besides; +therefore I thought if he got it ready for you against your return, that +that would be best and pleasantest. + +You remember Governor Jewell, and the night he told about Russia, down in +the library. He was taken with a cold about three weeks ago, and I +stepped over one evening, proposing to beguile an idle hour for him with +a yarn or two, but was received at the door with whispers, and the +information that he was dying. His case had been dangerous during that +day only and he died that night, two hours after I left. His taking off +was a prodigious surprise, and his death has been most widely and +sincerely regretted. Win. E. Dodge, the father-in-law of one of Jewell's +daughters, dropped suddenly dead the day before Jewell died, but Jewell +died without knowing that. Jewell's widow went down to New York, to +Dodge's house, the day after Jewell's funeral, and was to return here day +before yesterday, and she did--in a coffin. She fell dead, of heart +disease, while her trunks were being packed for her return home. +Florence Strong, one of Jewell's daughters, who lives in Detroit, started +East on an urgent telegram, but missed a connection somewhere, and did +not arrive here in time to see her father alive. She was his favorite +child, and they had always been like lovers together. He always sent her +a box of fresh flowers once a week to the day of his death; a custom +which he never suspended even when he was in Russia. Mrs. Strong had +only just reached her Western home again when she was summoned to +Hartford to attend her mother's funeral. + +I have had the impulse to write you several times. I shall try to +remember better henceforth. + +With sincerest regards to all of you, + Yours as ever, + MARK. + + + Mark Twain made another trip to Canada in the interest of copyright + --this time to protect the Mississippi book. When his journey was + announced by the press, the Marquis of Lorne telegraphed an + invitation inviting him to be his guest at Rideau Hall, in Ottawa. + Clemens accepted, of course, and was handsomely entertained by the + daughter of Queen Victoria and her husband, then Governor-General of + Canada. + + On his return to Hartford he found that Osgood had issued a curious + little book, for which Clemens had prepared an introduction. It was + an absurd volume, though originally issued with serious intent, its + title being The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and + English.'--[The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and + English, by Pedro Caxolino, with an introduction by Mark Twain. + Osgood, Boston, 1883. ]--Evidently the "New Guide" was prepared by + some simple Portuguese soul with but slight knowledge of English + beyond that which could be obtained from a dictionary, and his + literal translation of English idioms are often startling, as, for + instance, this one, taken at random: + + "A little learneds are happies enough for to may to satisfy their + fancies on the literature." + + Mark Twain thought this quaint book might amuse his royal hostess, + and forwarded a copy in what he considered to be the safe and proper + form. + + To Col. De Winton, in Ottawa, Canada: + + HARTFORD, June 4, '83. +DEAR COLONEL DE WINTON,--I very much want to send a little book to her +Royal Highness--the famous Portuguese phrase book; but I do not know the +etiquette of the matter, and I would not wittingly infringe any rule of +propriety. It is a book which I perfectly well know will amuse her "some +at most" if she has not seen it before, and will still amuse her "some at +least," even if she has inspected it a hundred times already. So I will +send the book to you, and you who know all about the proper observances +will protect me from indiscretion, in case of need, by putting the said +book in the fire, and remaining as dumb as I generally was when I was up +there. I do not rebind the thing, because that would look as if I +thought it worth keeping, whereas it is only worth glancing at and +casting aside. + +Will you please present my compliments to Mrs. De Winton and Mrs. +Mackenzie?--and I beg to make my sincere compliments to you, also, for +your infinite kindnesses to me. I did have a delightful time up there, +most certainly. + Truly yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + +P. S. Although the introduction dates a year back, the book is only just +now issued. A good long delay. + + S. L. C. + + Howells, writing from Venice, in April, manifested special interest + in the play project: "Something that would run like Scheherazade, + for a thousand and one nights," so perhaps his book was going + better. He proposed that they devote the month of October to the + work, and inclosed a letter from Mallory, who owned not only a + religious paper, The Churchman, but also the Madison Square Theater, + and was anxious for a Howells play. Twenty years before Howells had + been Consul to Venice, and he wrote, now: "The idea of my being here + is benumbing and silencing. I feel like the Wandering Jew, or the + ghost of the Cardiff giant." + + He returned to America in July. Clemens sent him word of welcome, + with glowing reports of his own undertakings. The story on which he + was piling up MS. was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, begun + seven years before at Quarry Farm. He had no great faith in it + then, and though he had taken it up again in 1880, his interest had + not lasted to its conclusion. This time, however, he was in the + proper spirit, and the story would be finished. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, July 20, '83. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We are desperately glad you and your gang are home +again--may you never travel again, till you go aloft or alow. Charley +Clark has gone to the other side for a run--will be back in August. He +has been sick, and needed the trip very much. + +Mrs. Clemens had a long and wasting spell of sickness last Spring, but +she is pulling up, now. The children are booming, and my health is +ridiculous, it's so robust, notwithstanding the newspaper misreports. + +I haven't piled up MS so in years as I have done since we came here to +the farm three weeks and a half ago. Why, it's like old times, to step +right into the study, damp from the breakfast table, and sail right in +and sail right on, the whole day long, without thought of running short +of stuff or words. + +I wrote 4000 words to-day and I touch 3000 and upwards pretty often, and +don't fall below 1600 any working day. And when I get fagged out, I lie +abed a couple of days and read and smoke, and then go it again for 6 or 7 +days. I have finished one small book, and am away along in a big 433 +one that I half-finished two or three years ago. I expect to complete it +in a month or six weeks or two months more. And I shall like it, whether +anybody else does or not. + +It's a kind of companion to Tom Sawyer. There's a raft episode from it +in second or third chapter of life on the Mississippi..... + +I'm booming, these days--got health and spirits to waste--got an +overplus; and if I were at home, we would write a play. But we must do +it anyhow by and by. + +We stay here till Sep. 10; then maybe a week at Indian Neck for sea air, +then home. + +We are powerful glad you are all back; and send love according. + + Yrs Ever + MARK + + + To Onion Clemens and family, in Keokuk, Id.: + + ELMIRA, July 22, '83. +Private. + +DEAR MA AND ORION AND MOLLIE,--I don't know that I have anything new to +report, except that Livy is still gaining, and all the rest of us +flourishing. I haven't had such booming working-days for many years. +I am piling up manuscript in a really astonishing way. I believe I shall +complete, in two months, a book which I have been fooling over for +7 years. This summer it is no more trouble to me to write than it is to +lie. + +Day before yesterday I felt slightly warned to knock off work for one +day. So I did it, and took the open air. Then I struck an idea for the +instruction of the children, and went to work and carried it out. It +took me all day. I measured off 817 feet of the road-way in our farm +grounds, with a foot-rule, and then divided it up among the English +reigns, from the Conqueror down to 1883, allowing one foot to the year. +I whittled out a basket of little pegs and drove one in the ground at the +beginning of each reign, and gave it that King's name--thus: + +I measured all the reigns exactly as many feet to the reign as there were +years in it. You can look out over the grounds and see the little pegs +from the front door--some of them close together, like Richard II, +Richard Cromwell, James II, &c; and some prodigiously wide apart, like +Henry III, Edward III, George III, &c. It gives the children a realizing +sense of the length or brevity of a reign. Shall invent a violent game +to go with it. + +And in bed, last night, I invented a way to play it indoors--in a far +more voluminous way, as to multiplicity of dates and events--on a +cribbage board. + +Hello, supper's ready. + Love to all. + Good bye. + SAML. + + + Onion Clemens would naturally get excited over the idea of the game + and its commercial possibilities. Not more so than his brother, + however, who presently employed him to arrange a quantity of + historical data which the game was to teach. For a season, indeed, + interest in the game became a sort of midsummer madness which + pervaded the two households, at Keokuk and at Quarry Farm. Howells + wrote his approval of the idea of "learning history by the running + foot," which was a pun, even if unintentional, for in its out-door + form it was a game of speed as well as knowledge. + + Howells adds that he has noticed that the newspapers are exploiting + Mark Twain's new invention of a history game, and we shall presently + see how this happened. + + Also, in this letter, Howells speaks of an English nobleman to whom + he has given a letter of introduction. "He seemed a simple, quiet, + gentlemanly man, with a good taste in literature, which he evinced + by going about with my books in his pockets, and talking of yours." + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--How odd it seems, to sit down to write a letter with +the feeling that you've got time to do it. But I'm done work, for this +season, and so have got time. I've done two seasons' work in one, and +haven't anything left to do, now, but revise. I've written eight or nine +hundred MS pages in such a brief space of time that I mustn't name the +number of days; I shouldn't believe it myself, and of course couldn't +expect you to. I used to restrict myself to 4 or 5 hours a day and +5 days in the week, but this time I've wrought from breakfast till +5.15 p.m. six days in the week; and once or twice I smouched a Sunday +when the boss wasn't looking. Nothing is half so good as literature +hooked on Sunday, on the sly. + +I wrote you and Twichell on the same night, about the game, and was +appalled to get a note from him saying he was going to print part of my +letter, and was going to do it before I could get a chance to forbid it. +I telegraphed him, but was of course too late. + +If you haven't ever tried to invent an indoor historical game, don't. +I've got the thing at last so it will work, I guess, but I don't want any +more tasks of that kind. When I wrote you, I thought I had it; whereas I +was only merely entering upon the initiatory difficulties of it. I might +have known it wouldn't be an easy job, or somebody would have invented a +decent historical game long ago--a thing which nobody had done. I think +I've got it in pretty fair shape--so I have caveated it. + +Earl of Onston--is that it? All right, we shall be very glad to receive +them and get acquainted with them. And much obliged to you, too. +There's plenty of worse people than the nobilities. I went up and spent +a week with the Marquis and the Princess Louise, and had as good a time +as I want. + +I'm powerful glad you are all back again; and we will come up there if +our little tribe will give us the necessary furlough; and if we can't get +it, you folks must come to us and give us an extension of time. We get +home Sept. 11. + +Hello, I think I see Waring coming! + +Good-by-letter from Clark, which explains for him. + +Love to you all from the + CLEMENSES. + +No--it wasn't Waring. I wonder what the devil has become of that man. +He was to spend to-day with us, and the day's most gone, now. + +We are enjoying your story with our usual unspeakableness; and I'm right +glad you threw in the shipwreck and the mystery--I like it. Mrs. Crane +thinks it's the best story you've written yet. We--but we always think +the last one is the best. And why shouldn't it be? Practice helps. + +P. S. I thought I had sent all our loves to all of you, but Mrs. Clemens +says I haven't. Damn it, a body can't think of everything; but a woman +thinks you can. I better seal this, now--else there'll be more +criticism. + +I perceive I haven't got the love in, yet. Well, we do send the love of +all the family to all the Howellses. + S. L. C. + + +There had been some delay and postponement in the matter of the play +which Howells and Clemens agreed to write. They did not put in the +entire month of October as they had planned, but they did put in a +portion of that month, the latter half, working out their old idea. +In the end it became a revival of Colonel Sellers, or rather a caricature +of that gentle hearted old visionary. Clemens had always complained that +the actor Raymond had never brought out the finer shades of Colonel +Sellers's character, but Raymond in his worst performance never belied +his original as did Howells and Clemens in his dramatic revival. These +two, working together, let their imaginations run riot with disastrous +results. The reader can judge something of this himself, from The +American Claimant the book which Mark Twain would later build from the +play. + +But at this time they thought it a great triumph. They had "cracked +their sides" laughing over its construction, as Howells once said, and +they thought the world would do the same over its performance. They +decided to offer it to Raymond, but rather haughtily, indifferently, +because any number of other actors would be waiting for it. + +But this was a miscalculation. Raymond now turned the tables. Though +favorable to the idea of a new play, he declared this one did not present +his old Sellers at all, but a lunatic. In the end he returned the MS. +with a brief note. Attempts had already been made to interest other +actors, and would continue for some time. + + + + +XXIV + +LETTERS, 1884, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. CABLE'S GREAT APRIL FOOL. +"HUCK FINN" IN PRESS. MARK TWAIN FOR CLEVELAND. CLEMENS AND CABLE + +Mark Twain had a lingering attack of the dramatic fever that winter. +He made a play of the Prince and Pauper, which Howells pronounced "too +thin and slight and not half long enough." He made another of Tom +Sawyer, and probably destroyed it, for no trace of the MS. exists to-day. +Howells could not join in these ventures, for he was otherwise occupied +and had sickness in his household. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + Jan. 7, '84. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--"O my goodn's", as Jean says. You have now encountered +at last the heaviest calamity that can befall an author. The scarlet +fever, once domesticated, is a permanent member of the family. Money may +desert you, friends forsake you, enemies grow indifferent to you, but the +scarlet fever will be true to you, through thick and thin, till you be +all saved or damned, down to the last one. I say these things to cheer +you. + +The bare suggestion of scarlet fever in the family makes me shudder; I +believe I would almost rather have Osgood publish a book for me. + +You folks have our most sincere sympathy. Oh, the intrusion of this +hideous disease is an unspeakable disaster. + +My billiard table is stacked up with books relating to the Sandwich +Islands: the walls axe upholstered with scraps of paper penciled with +notes drawn from them. I have saturated myself with knowledge of that +unimaginably beautiful land and that most strange and fascinating people. +And I have begun a story. Its hidden motive will illustrate a but-little +considered fact in human nature; that the religious folly you are born in +you will die in, no matter what apparently reasonabler religious folly +may seem to have taken its place meanwhile, and abolished and obliterated +it. I start Bill Ragsdale at 12 years of age, and the heroine at 4, in +the midst of the ancient idolatrous system, with its picturesque and +amazing customs and superstitions, 3 months before the arrival of the +missionaries and the erection of a shallow Christianity upon the ruins of +the old paganism. Then these two will become educated Christians, and +highly civilized. + +And then I will jump 15 years, and do Ragsdale's leper business. When we +came to dramatize, we can draw a deal of matter from the story, all ready +to our hand. + Yrs Ever + MARK. + + + He never finished the Sandwich Islands story which he and Howells + were to dramatize later. His head filled up with other projects, + such as publishing plans, reading-tours, and the like. The + type-setting machine does not appear in the letters of this period, + but it was an important factor, nevertheless. It was costing + several thousand dollars a month for construction and becoming + a heavy drain on Mark Twain's finances. It was necessary to + recuperate, and the anxiety for a profitable play, or some other + adventure that would bring a quick and generous return, grew out + of this need. + + Clemens had established Charles L. Webster, his nephew by marriage, + in a New York office, as selling agent for the Mississippi book and + for his plays. He was also planning to let Webster publish the new + book, Huck Finn. + + George W. Cable had proven his ability as a reader, and Clemens saw + possibilities in a reading combination, which was first planned to + include Aldrich, and Howells, and a private car. + + But Aldrich and Howells did not warm to the idea, and the car was + eliminated from the plan. Cable came to visit Clemens in Hartford, + and was taken with the mumps, so that the reading-trip was + postponed. + + The fortunes of the Sellers play were most uncertain and becoming + daily more doubtful. In February, Howells wrote: "If you have got + any comfort in regard to our play I wish you would heave it into my + bosom." + + Cable recovered in time, and out of gratitude planned a great + April-fool surprise for his host. He was a systematic man, and did + it in his usual thorough way. He sent a "private and confidential" + suggestion to a hundred and fifty of Mark Twain's friends and + admirers, nearly all distinguished literary men. The suggestion + was that each one of them should send a request for Mark Twain's + autograph, timing it so that it would arrive on the 1st of April. + All seemed to have responded. Mark Twain's writing-table on April + Fool morning was heaped with letters, asking in every ridiculous + fashion for his "valuable autograph." The one from Aldrich was a + fair sample. He wrote: "I am making a collection of autographs of + our distinguished writers, and having read one of your works, + Gabriel Convoy, I would like to add your name to the list." + + Of course, the joke in this was that Gabriel Convoy was by Bret + Harte, who by this time was thoroughly detested by Mark Twain. The + first one or two of the letters puzzled the victim; then he + comprehended the size and character of the joke and entered into it + thoroughly. One of the letters was from Bloodgood H. Cutter, the + "Poet Lariat" of Innocents Abroad. Cutter, of course, wrote in + "poetry," that is to say, doggerel. Mark Twain's April Fool was a + most pleasant one. + + + Rhymed letter by Bloodgood H. Cutter to Mark Twain: + + LITTLE NECK, LONG ISLAND. + + LONG ISLAND FARMER, TO HIS FRIEND AND PILGRIM BROTHER, + SAMUEL L. CLEMENS, ESQ. + +Friends, suggest in each one's behalf +To write, and ask your autograph. +To refuse that, I will not do, +After the long voyage had with you. +That was a memorable time You wrote in prose, I wrote in Rhyme To +describe the wonders of each place, And the queer customs of each race. + +That is in my memory yet +For while I live I'll not forget. +I often think of that affair +And the many that were with us there. + +As your friends think it for the best +I ask your Autograph with the rest, +Hoping you will it to me send +'Twill please and cheer your dear old friend: + + Yours truly, + BLOODGOOD H. CUTTER. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Apl 8, '84. +MY DEAR HOWELLS, It took my breath away, and I haven't recovered it yet, +entirely--I mean the generosity of your proposal to read the proofs of +Huck Finn. + +Now if you mean it, old man--if you are in earnest--proceed, in God's +name, and be by me forever blest. I cannot conceive of a rational man +deliberately piling such an atrocious job upon himself; but if there is +such a man and you be that man, why then pile it on. It will cost me a +pang every time I think of it, but this anguish will be eingebusst to me +in the joy and comfort I shall get out of the not having to read the +verfluchtete proofs myself. But if you have repented of your +augenblichlicher Tobsucht and got back to calm cold reason again, I won't +hold you to it unless I find I have got you down in writing somewhere. +Herr, I would not read the proof of one of my books for any fair and +reasonable sum whatever, if I could get out of it. + +The proof-reading on the P & P cost me the last rags of my religion. + M. + + +Howells had written that he would be glad to help out in the reading of +the proofs of Huck Finn, which book Webster by this time had in hand. +Replying to Clemens's eager and grateful acceptance now, he wrote: "It is +all perfectly true about the generosity, unless I am going to read your +proofs from one of the shabby motives which I always find at the bottom +of my soul if I examine it." A characteristic utterance, though we may +be permitted to believe that his shabby motives were fewer and less +shabby than those of mankind in general. + +The proofs which Howells was reading pleased him mightily. Once, during +the summer, he wrote: "if I had written half as good a book as Huck Finn +I shouldn't ask anything better than to read the proofs; even as it is, +I don't, so send them on; they will always find me somewhere." + +This was the summer of the Blaine-Cleveland campaign. Mark Twain, in +company with many other leading men, had mugwumped, and was supporting +Cleveland. From the next letter we gather something of the aspects of +that memorable campaign, which was one of scandal and vituperation. We +learn, too, that the young sculptor, Karl Gerhardt, having completed a +three years' study in Paris, had returned to America a qualified artist. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, Aug. 21, '84. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--This presidential campaign is too delicious for +anything. Isn't human nature the most consummate sham and lie that was +ever invented? Isn't man a creature to be ashamed of in pretty much all +his aspects? Man, "know thyself "--and then thou wilt despise thyself, +to a dead moral certainty. Take three quite good specimens--Hawley, +Warner, and Charley Clark. Even I do not loathe Blaine more than they +do; yet Hawley is howling for Blaine, Warner and Clark are eating their +daily crow in the paper for him, and all three will vote for him. O +Stultification, where is thy sting, O slave where is thy hickory! + +I suppose you heard how a marble monument for which St. Gaudens was +pecuniarily responsible, burned down in Hartford the other day, +uninsured--for who in the world would ever think of insuring a marble +shaft in a cemetery against a fire?--and left St. Gauden out of pocket +$15,000. + +It was a bad day for artists. Gerhardt finished my bust that day, and +the work was pronounced admirable by all the kin and friends; but in +putting it in plaster (or rather taking it out) next day it got ruined. +It was four or five weeks hard work gone to the dogs. The news flew, and +everybody on the farm flocked to the arbor and grouped themselves about +the wreck in a profound and moving silence--the farm-help, the colored +servants, the German nurse, the children, everybody--a silence +interrupted at wide intervals by absent-minded ejaculations wising from +unconscious breasts as the whole size of the disaster gradually worked +its way home to the realization of one spirit after another. + +Some burst out with one thing, some another; the German nurse put up her +hands and said, "Oh, Schade! oh, schrecklich! "But Gerhardt said +nothing; or almost that. He couldn't word it, I suppose. But he went to +work, and by dark had everything thoroughly well under way for a fresh +start in the morning; and in three days' time had built a new bust which +was a trifle better than the old one--and to-morrow we shall put the +finishing touches on it, and it will be about as good a one as nearly +anybody can make. + Yrs Ever + MARK. + + +If you run across anybody who wants a bust, be sure and recommend +Gerhardt on my say-so. + +But Howells was determinedly for Blaine. "I shall vote for Blaine," he +replied. "I do not believe he is guilty of the things they accuse him +of, and I know they are not proved against him. As for Cleveland, his +private life may be no worse than that of most men, but as an enemy of +that contemptible, hypocritical, lop-sided morality which says a woman +shall suffer all the shame of unchastity and man none, I want to see him +destroyed politically by his past. The men who defend him would take +their wives to the White House if he were president, but if he married +his concubine--'made her an honest woman' they would not go near him. I +can't stand that." + +Certainly this was sound logic, in that day, at least. But it left +Clemens far from satisfied. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, Sept. 17, '84. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Somehow I can't seem to rest quiet under the idea of +your voting for Blaine. I believe you said something about the country +and the party. Certainly allegiance to these is well; but as certainly a +man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor--the party or the +country come second to that, and never first. I don't ask you to vote at +all--I only urge you to not soil yourself by voting for Blaine. + +When you wrote before, you were able to say the charges against him were +not proven. But you know now that they are proven, and it seems to me +that that bars you and all other honest and honorable men (who are +independently situated) from voting for him. + +It is not necessary to vote for Cleveland; the only necessary thing to +do, as I understand it, is that a man shall keep himself clean, (by +withholding his vote for an improper man) even though the party and the +country go to destruction in consequence. It is not parties that make or +save countries or that build them to greatness--it is clean men, clean +ordinary citizens, rank and file, the masses. Clean masses are not made +by individuals standing back till the rest become clean. + +As I said before, I think a man's first duty is to his own honor; not to +his country and not to his party. Don't be offended; I mean no offence. +I am not so concerned about the rest of the nation, but--well, good-bye. + Ys Ever + MARK. + + + There does not appear to be any further discussion of the matter + between Howells and Clemens. Their letters for a time contained no + suggestion of politics. + + Perhaps Mark Twain's own political conscience was not entirely clear + in his repudiation of his party; at least we may believe from his + next letter that his Cleveland enthusiasm was qualified by a + willingness to support a Republican who would command his admiration + and honor. The idea of an eleventh-hour nomination was rather + startling, whatever its motive. + + + To Mr. Pierce, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Oct. 22, '84. +MY DEAR MR. PIERCE,--You know, as well as I do, that the reason the +majority of republicans are going to vote for Blaine is because they feel +that they cannot help themselves. Do not you believe that if Mr. Edmunds +would consent to run for President, on the Independent ticket--even at +this late day--he might be elected? + +Well, if he wouldn't consent, but should even strenuously protest and say +he wouldn't serve if elected, isn't it still wise and fair to nominate +him and vote for him? since his protest would relieve him from all +responsibility; and he couldn't surely find fault with people for forcing +a compliment upon him. And do not you believe that his name thus +compulsorily placed at the head of the Independent column would work +absolutely certain defeat to Blain and save the country's honor? + +Politicians often carry a victory by springing some disgraceful and +rascally mine under the feet of the adversary at the eleventh hour; would +it not be wholesome to vary this thing for once and spring as formidable +a mine of a better sort under the enemy's works? + +If Edmunds's name were put up, I would vote for him in the teeth of all +the protesting and blaspheming he could do in a month; and there are lots +of others who would do likewise. + +If this notion is not a foolish and wicked one, won't you just consult +with some chief Independents, and see if they won't call a sudden +convention and whoop the thing through? To nominate Edmunds the 1st of +November, would be soon enough, wouldn't it? + +With kindest regards to you and the Aldriches, + Yr Truly + S. L. CLEMENS. + + +Clemens and Cable set out on their reading-tour in November. They were a +curiously-assorted pair: Cable was of orthodox religion, exact as to +habits, neat, prim, all that Clemens was not. In the beginning Cable +undertook to read the Bible aloud to Clemens each evening, but this part +of the day's program was presently omitted by request. If they spent +Sunday in a town, Cable was up bright and early visiting the various +churches and Sunday-schools, while Mark Twain remained at the hotel, in +bed, reading or asleep. + + + + +XXV + +THE GREAT YEAR OF 1885. CLEMENS AND CABLE. PUBLICATION OF "HUCK FINN." +THE GRANT MEMOIRS. MARK TWAIN AT FIFTY + + The year 1885 was in some respects the most important, certainly the + most pleasantly exciting, in Mark Twain's life. It was the year in + which he entered fully into the publishing business and launched one + of the most spectacular of all publishing adventures, The Personal + Memoirs of General U. S. Grant. Clemens had not intended to do + general publishing when he arranged with Webster to become + sales-agent for the Mississippi book, and later general agent for + Huck Finn's adventures; he had intended only to handle his own + books, because he was pretty thoroughly dissatisfied with other + publishing arrangements. Even the Library of Humor, which Howells, + with Clark, of the Courant, had put together for him, he left with + Osgood until that publisher failed, during the spring of 1885. + Certainly he never dreamed of undertaking anything of the + proportions of the Grant book. + + He had always believed that Grant could make a book. More than + once, when they had met, he had urged the General to prepare his + memoirs for publication. Howells, in his 'My Mark Twain', tells of + going with Clemens to see Grant, then a member of the ill-fated firm + of Grant and Ward, and how they lunched on beans, bacon and coffee + brought in from a near-by restaurant. It was while they were eating + this soldier fare that Clemens--very likely abetted by Howells + --especially urged the great commander to prepare his memoirs. But + Grant had become a financier, as he believed, and the prospect of + literary earnings, however large, did not appeal to him. + Furthermore, he was convinced that he was without literary ability + and that a book by him would prove a failure. + + But then, by and by, came a failure more disastrous than anything he + had foreseen--the downfall of his firm through the Napoleonic + rascality of Ward. General Grant was utterly ruined; he was left + without income and apparently without the means of earning one. It + was the period when the great War Series was appeasing in the + Century Magazine. General Grant, hard-pressed, was induced by the + editors to prepare one or more articles, and, finding that he could + write them, became interested in the idea of a book. It is + unnecessary to repeat here the story of how the publication of this + important work passed into the hands of Mark Twain; that is to say, + the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co., the details having been fully + given elsewhere.--[See Mark Twain: A Biography, chap. cliv.]-- + + We will now return for the moment to other matters, as reported in + order by the letters. Clemens and Cable had continued their + reading-tour into Canada, and in February found themselves in + Montreal. Here they were invited by the Toque Bleue Snow-shoe Club + to join in one of their weekly excursions across Mt. Royal. They + could not go, and the reasons given by Mark Twain are not without + interest. The letter is to Mr. George Iles, author of Flame, + Electricity, and the Camera, and many other useful works. + + + To George Iles, far the Toque Blew Snow-shoe Club, + Montreal: + + DETROIT, February 12, 1885. + Midnight, P.S. +MY DEAR ILES,--I got your other telegram a while ago, and answered it, +explaining that I get only a couple of hours in the middle of the day for +social life. I know it doesn't seem rational that a man should have to +lie abed all day in order to be rested and equipped for talking an hour +at night, and yet in my case and Cable's it is so. Unless I get a great +deal of rest, a ghastly dulness settles down upon me on the platform, and +turns my performance into work, and hard work, whereas it ought always to +be pastime, recreation, solid enjoyment. Usually it is just this latter, +but that is because I take my rest faithfully, and prepare myself to do +my duty by my audience. + +I am the obliged and appreciative servant of my brethren of the Snow-shoe +Club, and nothing in the world would delight me more than to come to +their house without naming time or terms on my own part--but you see how +it is. My cast iron duty is to my audience--it leaves me no liberty and +no option. + +With kindest regards to the Club, and to you, + I am Sincerely yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + In the next letter we reach the end of the Clemens-Cable venture and + get a characteristic summing up of Mark Twain's general attitude + toward the companion of his travels. It must be read only in the + clear realization of Mark Twain's attitude toward orthodoxy, and his + habit of humor. Cable was as rigidly orthodox as Mark Twain was + revolutionary. The two were never anything but the best of friends. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + PHILADA. Feb. 27, '85. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--To-night in Baltimore, to-morrow afternoon and night in +Washington, and my four-months platform campaign is ended at last. It +has been a curious experience. It has taught me that Cable's gifts of +mind are greater and higher than I had suspected. But-- + +That "But" is pointing toward his religion. You will never, never know, +never divine, guess, imagine, how loathsome a thing the Christian +religion can be made until you come to know and study Cable daily and +hourly. Mind you, I like him; he is pleasant company; I rage and swear +at him sometimes, but we do not quarrel; we get along mighty happily +together; but in him and his person I have learned to hate all religions. +He has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath-day and hunt up new and +troublesome ways to dishonor it. + +Nat Goodwin was on the train yesterday. He plays in Washington all the +coming week. He is very anxious to get our Sellers play and play it +under changed names. I said the only thing I could do would be to write +to you. Well, I've done it. + Ys Ever + MARK. + + + Clemens and Webster were often at the house of General Grant during + these early days of 1885, and it must have been Webster who was + present with Clemens on the great occasion described in the + following telegram. It was on the last day and hour of President + Arthur's administration that the bill was passed which placed + Ulysses S. Grant as full General with full pay on the retired list, + and it is said that the congressional clock was set back in order + that this enactment might become a law before the administration + changed. General Grant had by this time developed cancer and was + already in feeble health. + + + Telegram to Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford: + + NEW YORK, Mar. 4, 1885. +To MRS. S. L. CLEMENS, We were at General Grant's at noon and a telegram +arrived that the last act of the expiring congress late this morning +retired him with full General's rank and accompanying emoluments. The +effect upon him was like raising the dead. We were present when the +telegram was put in his hand. + + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Something has been mentioned before of Mark Twain's investments and + the generally unprofitable habit of them. He had a trusting nature, + and was usually willing to invest money on any plausible + recommendation. He was one of thousands such, and being a person of + distinction he now and then received letters of inquiry, complaint, + or condolence. A minister wrote him that he had bought some stocks + recommended by a Hartford banker and advertised in a religious + paper. He added, "After I made that purchase they wrote me that you + had just bought a hundred shares and that you were a 'shrewd' man." + The writer closed by asking for further information. He received + it, as follows: + + + To the Rev. J----, in Baltimore: + + WASHINGTON, Mch. 2,'85. +MY DEAR SIR,--I take my earliest opportunity to answer your favor of Feb. + +B---- was premature in calling me a "shrewd man." I wasn't one at that +time, but am one now--that is, I am at least too shrewd to ever again +invest in anything put on the market by B----. I know nothing whatever +about the Bank Note Co., and never did know anything about it. B---- +sold me about $4,000 or $5,000 worth of the stock at $110, and I own it +yet. He sold me $10,000 worth of another rose-tinted stock about the +same time. I have got that yet, also. I judge that a peculiarity of +B----'s stocks is that they are of the staying kind. I think you should +have asked somebody else whether I was a shrewd man or not for two +reasons: the stock was advertised in a religious paper, a circumstance +which was very suspicious; and the compliment came to you from a man who +was interested to make a purchaser of you. I am afraid you deserve your +loss. A financial scheme advertised in any religious paper is a thing +which any living person ought to know enough to avoid; and when the +factor is added that M. runs that religious paper, a dead person ought to +know enough to avoid it. + Very Truly Yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The story of Huck Finn was having a wide success. Webster handled + it skillfully, and the sales were large. In almost every quarter + its welcome was enthusiastic. Here and there, however, could be + found an exception; Huck's morals were not always approved of by + library reading-committees. The first instance of this kind was + reported from Concord; and would seem not to have depressed the + author-publisher. + + + To Chas. L. Webster, in New York: + + Mch 18, '85. +DEAR CHARLEY,--The Committee of the Public Library of Concord, Mass, have +given us a rattling tip-top puff which will go into every paper in the +country. They have expelled Huck from their library as "trash and +suitable only for the slums." That will sell 25,000 copies for us sure. + + S. L. C. + + + Perhaps the Concord Free Trade Club had some idea of making amends + to Mark Twain for the slight put upon his book by their librarians, + for immediately after the Huck Finn incident they notified him of + his election to honorary membership. + + Those were the days of "authors' readings," and Clemens and Howells + not infrequently assisted at these functions, usually given as + benefits of one kind or another. From the next letter, written + following an entertainment given for the Longfellow memorial, we + gather that Mark Twain's opinion of Howells's reading was steadily + improving. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, May 5, '85. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--.....Who taught you to read? Observation and thought, +I guess. And practice at the Tavern Club?--yes; and that was the best +teaching of all: + +Well, you sent even your daintiest and most delicate and fleeting points +home to that audience--absolute proof of good reading. But you couldn't +read worth a damn a few years ago. I do not say this to flatter. It is +true I looked around for you when I was leaving, but you had already +gone. + +Alas, Osgood has failed at last. It was easy to see that he was on the +very verge of it a year ago, and it was also easy to see that he was +still on the verge of it a month or two ago; but I continued to hope--but +not expect that he would pull through. The Library of Humor is at his +dwelling house, and he will hand it to you whenever you want it. + +To save it from any possibility of getting mixed up in the failure, +perhaps you had better send down and get it. I told him, the other day, +that an order of any kind from you would be his sufficient warrant for +its delivery to you. + +In two days General Grant has dictated 50 pages of foolscap, and thus the +Wilderness and Appomattox stand for all time in his own words. This +makes the second volume of his book as valuable as the first. + +He looks mighty well, these latter days. + Yrs Ever + MARK. + + + "I am exceedingly glad," wrote Howells, "that you approve of my + reading, for it gives me some hope that I may do something on the + platform next winter..... but I would never read within a hundred + miles of you, if I could help it. You simply straddled down to the + footlights and took that house up in the hollow of your hand and + tickled it." + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, July 21, 1885. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--You are really my only author; I am restricted to you, +I wouldn't give a damn for the rest. + +I bored through Middlemarch during the past week, with its labored and +tedious analyses of feelings and motives, its paltry and tiresome people, +its unexciting and uninteresting story, and its frequent blinding flashes +of single-sentence poetry, philosophy, wit, and what not, and nearly died +from the overwork. I wouldn't read another of those books for a farm. +I did try to read one other--Daniel Deronda. I dragged through three +chapters, losing flesh all the time, and then was honest enough to quit, +and confess to myself that I haven't any romance literature appetite, as +far as I can see, except for your books. + +But what I started to say, was, that I have just read Part II of Indian +Summer, and to my mind there isn't a waste line in it, or one that could +be improved. I read it yesterday, ending with that opinion; and read it +again to-day, ending with the same opinion emphasized. I haven't read +Part I yet, because that number must have reached Hartford after we left; +but we are going to send down town for a copy, and when it comes I am to +read both parts aloud to the family. It is a beautiful story, and makes +a body laugh all the time, and cry inside, and feel so old and so +forlorn; and gives him gracious glimpses of his lost youth that fill him +with a measureless regret, and build up in him a cloudy sense of his +having been a prince, once, in some enchanted far-off land, and of being +an exile now, and desolate--and Lord, no chance ever to get back there +again! That is the thing that hurts. Well, you have done it with +marvelous facility and you make all the motives and feelings perfectly +clear without analyzing the guts out of them, the way George Eliot does. +I can't stand George Eliot and Hawthorne and those people; I see what +they are at a hundred years before they get to it and they just tire me +to death. And as for "The Bostonians," I would rather be damned to John +Bunyan's heaven than read that. + Yrs Ever + MARK + + + It is as easy to understand Mark Twain's enjoyment of Indian Summer + as his revolt against Daniel Deronda and The Bostonians. He cared + little for writing that did not convey its purpose in the simplest + and most direct terms. It is interesting to note that in thanking + Clemens for his compliment Howells wrote: "What people cannot see is + that I analyze as little as possible; they go on talking about the + analytical school, which I am supposed to belong to, and I want to + thank you for using your eyes..... Did you ever read De Foe's + 'Roxana'? If not, then read it, not merely for some of the deepest + insights into the lying, suffering, sinning, well-meaning human + soul, but for the best and most natural English that a book was ever + written in." + + General Grant worked steadily on his book, dictating when he could, + making brief notes on slips of paper when he could no longer speak. + Clemens visited him at Mt. McGregor and brought the dying soldier + the comforting news that enough of his books were already sold to + provide generously for his family, and that the sales would + aggregate at least twice as much by the end of the year. + + This was some time in July. On the 23d of that month General Grant + died. Immediately there was a newspaper discussion as to the most + suitable place for the great chieftain to lie. Mark Twain's + contribution to this debate, though in the form of an open letter, + seems worthy of preservation here. + + + To the New York "Sun," on the proper place for Grant's Tomb: + +To THE EDITOR OP' THE SUN:--SIR,--The newspaper atmosphere is charged +with objections to New York as a place of sepulchre for General Grant, +and the objectors are strenuous that Washington is the right place. They +offer good reasons--good temporary reasons--for both of these positions. + +But it seems to me that temporary reasons are not mete for the occasion. +We need to consider posterity rather than our own generation. We should +select a grave which will not merely be in the right place now, but will +still be in the right place 500 years from now. + +How does Washington promise as to that? You have only to hit it in one +place to kill it. Some day the west will be numerically strong enough to +move the seat of government; her past attempts are a fair warning that +when the day comes she will do it. Then the city of Washington will lose +its consequence and pass out of the public view and public talk. It is +quite within the possibilities that, a century hence, people would wonder +and say, "How did your predecessors come to bury their great dead in this +deserted place?" + +But as long as American civilisation lasts New York will last. I cannot +but think she has been well and wisely chosen as the guardian of a grave +which is destined to become almost the most conspicuous in the world's +history. Twenty centuries from now New York will still be New York, +still a vast city, and the most notable object in it will still be the +tomb and monument of General Grant. + +I observe that the common and strongest objection to New York is that she +is not "national ground." Let us give ourselves no uneasiness about +that. Wherever General Grant's body lies, that is national ground. + + S. L. CLEMENS. +ELMIRA, July 27. + + + The letter that follows is very long, but it seems too important and + too interesting to be omitted in any part. General Grant's early + indulgence in liquors had long been a matter of wide, though not + very definite, knowledge. Every one had heard how Lincoln, on being + told that Grant drank, remarked something to the effect that he + would like to know what kind of whisky Grant used so that he might + get some of it for his other generals. Henry Ward Beecher, selected + to deliver a eulogy on the dead soldier, and doubtless wishing + neither to ignore the matter nor to make too much of it, naturally + turned for information to the publisher of Grant's own memoirs, + hoping from an advance copy to obtain light. + + + To Henry Ward Beecher,.Brooklyn: + + ELMIRA, N. Y. Sept. 11, '85. +MY DEAR MR. BEECHER,--My nephew Webster is in Europe making contracts for +the Memoirs. Before he sailed he came to me with a writing, directed to +the printers and binders, to this effect: + +"Honor no order for a sight or copy of the Memoirs while I am absent, +even though it be signed by Mr. Clemens himself." + +I gave my permission. There were weighty reasons why I should not only +give my permission, but hold it a matter of honor to not dissolve the +order or modify it at any time. So I did all of that--said the order +should stand undisturbed to the end. If a principal could dissolve his +promise as innocently as he can dissolve his written order unguarded by +his promise, I would send you a copy of the Memoirs instantly. I did not +foresee you, or I would have made an exception. + + ........................... + +My idea gained from army men, is that the drunkenness (and sometimes +pretty reckless spreeing, nights,) ceased before he came East to be Lt. +General. (Refer especially to Gen. Wm. B. Franklin--[If you could see +Franklin and talk with him--then he would unbosom,]) It was while Grant +was still in the West that Mr. Lincoln said he wished he could find out +what brand of whisky that fellow used, so he could furnish it to some of +the other generals. Franklin saw Grant tumble from his horse drunk, +while reviewing troops in New Orleans. The fall gave him a good deal of +a hurt. He was then on the point of leaving for the Chattanooga region. +I naturally put "that and that together" when I read Gen. O. O. Howards's +article in the Christian Union, three or four weeks ago--where he +mentions that the new General arrived lame from a recent accident. +(See that article.) And why not write Howard? + +Franklin spoke positively of the frequent spreeing. In camp--in time of +war. + + ......................... + +Captain Grant was frequently threatened by the Commandant of his Oregon +post with a report to the War Department of his conduct unless he +modified his intemperance. The report would mean dismissal from the +service. At last the report had to be made out; and then, so greatly was +the captain beloved, that he was privately informed, and was thus enabled +to rush his resignation to Washington ahead of the report. Did the +report go, nevertheless? I don't know. If it did, it is in the War +Department now, possibly, and seeable. I got all this from a regular +army man, but I can't name him to save me. + +The only time General Grant ever mentioned liquor to me was about last +April or possibly May. He said: + +"If I could only build up my strength! The doctors urge whisky and +champagne; but I can't take them; I can't abide the taste of any kind of +liquor." + +Had he made a conquest so complete that even the taste of liquor was +become an offense? Or was he so sore over what had been said about his +habit that he wanted to persuade others and likewise himself that he +hadn't even ever had any taste for it? It sounded like the latter, but +that's no evidence. + +He told me in the fall of '84 that there was something the matter with +his throat, and that at the suggestion of his physicians he had reduced +his smoking to one cigar a day. Then he added, in a casual fashion, that +he didn't care for that one, and seldom smoked it. + +I could understand that feeling. He had set out to conquer not the habit +but the inclination--the desire. He had gone at the root, not the trunk. +It's the perfect way and the only true way (I speak from experience.) +How I do hate those enemies of the human race who go around enslaving +God's free people with pledges--to quit drinking instead of to quit +wanting to drink. + +But Sherman and Van Vliet know everything concerning Grant; and if you +tell them how you want to use the facts, both of them will testify. +Regular army men have no concealments about each other; and yet they make +their awful statements without shade or color or malice with a frankness +and a child-like naivety, indeed, which is enchanting-and stupefying. +West Point seems to teach them that, among other priceless things not to +be got in any other college in this world. If we talked about our +guild-mates as I have heard Sherman, Grant, Van Vliet and others talk +about theirs--mates with whom they were on the best possible terms--we +could never expect them to speak to us again. + + ....................... + +I am reminded, now, of another matter. The day of the funeral I sat an +hour over a single drink and several cigars with Van Vliet and Sherman +and Senator Sherman; and among other things Gen. Sherman said, with +impatient scorn: + +"The idea of all this nonsense about Grant not being able to stand rude +language and indelicate stories! Why Grant was full of humor, and full +of the appreciation of it. I have sat with him by the hour listening to +Jim Nye's yarns, and I reckon you know the style of Jim Nye's histories, +Clemens. It makes me sick--that newspaper nonsense. Grant was no +namby-pamby fool, he was a man--all over--rounded and complete." + +I wish I had thought of it! I would have said to General Grant: "Put +the drunkenness in the Memoirs--and the repentance and reform. Trust the +people." + +But I will wager there is not a hint in the book. He was sore, there. +As much of the book as I have read gives no hint, as far as I recollect. + +The sick-room brought out the points of Gen. Grant's character--some of +them particularly, to wit: + +His patience; his indestructible equability of temper; his exceeding +gentleness, kindness, forbearance, lovingness, charity; his loyalty: to +friends, to convictions, to promises, half-promises, infinitesimal +fractions and shadows of promises; (There was a requirement of him which +I considered an atrocity, an injustice, an outrage; I wanted to implore +him to repudiate it; Fred Grant said, "Save your labor, I know him; he is +in doubt as to whether he made that half-promise or not--and, he will +give the thing the benefit of the doubt; he will fulfill that +half-promise or kill himself trying;" Fred Grant was right--he did +fulfill it;) his aggravatingly trustful nature; his genuineness, +simplicity, modesty, diffidence, self-depreciation, poverty in the +quality of vanity-and, in no contradiction of this last, his simple +pleasure in the flowers and general ruck sent to him by Tom, Dick and +Harry from everywhere--a pleasure that suggested a perennial surprise +that he should be the object of so much fine attention--he was the most +lovable great child in the world; (I mentioned his loyalty: you remember +Harrison, the colored body-servant? the whole family hated him, but that +did not make any difference, the General always stood at his back, +wouldn't allow him to be scolded; always excused his failures and +deficiencies with the one unvarying formula, "We are responsible for +these things in his race--it is not fair to visit our fault upon them +--let him alone;" so they did let him alone, under compulsion, until the +great heart that was his shield was taken away; then--well they simply +couldn't stand him, and so they were excusable for determining to +discharge him--a thing which they mortally hated to do, and by lucky +accident were saved from the necessity of doing;) his toughness as a +bargainer when doing business for other people or for his country +(witness his "terms" at Donelson, Vicksburg, etc.; Fred Grant told me his +father wound up an estate for the widow and orphans of a friend in St. +Louis--it took several years; at the end every complication had been +straightened out, and the property put upon a prosperous basis; great +sums had passed through his hands, and when he handed over the papers +there were vouchers to show what had been done with every penny) and his +trusting, easy, unexacting fashion when doing business for himself (at +that same time he was paying out money in driblets to a man who was +running his farm for him--and in his first Presidency he paid every one +of those driblets again (total, $3,000 F. said,) for he hadn't a scrap of +paper to show that he had ever paid them before; in his dealings with me +he would not listen to terms which would place my money at risk and leave +him protected--the thought plainly gave him pain, and he put it from him, +waved it off with his hands, as one does accounts of crushings and +mutilations--wouldn't listen, changed the subject;) and his fortitude! +He was under, sentence of death last spring; he sat thinking, musing, +several days--nobody knows what about; then he pulled himself together +and set to work to finish that book, a colossal task for a dying man. +Presently his hand gave out; fate seemed to have got him checkmated. +Dictation was suggested. No, he never could do that; had never tried it; +too old to learn, now. By and by--if he could only do Appomattox-well. +So he sent for a stenographer, and dictated 9,000 words at a single +sitting!--never pausing, never hesitating for a word, never repeating +--and in the written-out copy he made hardly a correction. He dictated +again, every two or three days--the intervals were intervals of +exhaustion and slow recuperation--and at last he was able to tell me that +he had written more matter than could be got into the book. I then +enlarged the book--had to. Then he lost his voice. He was not quite +done yet, however:--there was no end of little plums and spices to be +stuck in, here and there; and this work he patiently continued, a few +lines a day, with pad and pencil, till far into July, at Mt. McGregor. +One day he put his pencil aside, and said he was done--there was nothing +more to do. If I had been there I could have foretold the shock that +struck the world three days later. + +Well, I've written all this, and it doesn't seem to amount to anything. +But I do want to help, if I only could. I will enclose some scraps from +my Autobiography--scraps about General Grant--they may be of some trifle +of use, and they may not--they at least verify known traits of his +character. My Autobiography is pretty freely dictated, but my idea is to +jack-plane it a little before I die, some day or other; I mean the rude +construction and rotten grammar. It is the only dictating I ever did, +and it was most troublesome and awkward work. You may return it to +Hartford. + Sincerely Yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The old long-deferred Library of Humor came up again for discussion, + when in the fall of 1885 Howells associated himself with Harper & + Brothers. Howells's contract provided that his name was not to + appear on any book not published by the Harper firm. He wrote, + therefore, offering to sell out his interest in the enterprise for + two thousand dollars, in addition to the five hundred which he had + already received--an amount considered to be less than he was to + have received as joint author and compiler. Mark Twain's answer + pretty fully covers the details of this undertaking. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Oct. 18, 1885. +Private. + +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I reckon it would ruin the book that is, make it +necessary to pigeon-hole it and leave it unpublished. I couldn't publish +it without a very responsible name to support my own on the title page, +because it has so much of my own matter in it. I bought Osgood's rights +for $3,000 cash, I have paid Clark $800 and owe him $700 more, which must +of course be paid whether I publish or not. Yet I fully recognize that I +have no sort of moral right to let that ancient and procrastinated +contract hamper you in any way, and I most certainly won't. So, it is my +decision,--after thinking over and rejecting the idea of trying to buy +permission of the Harpers for $2,500 to use your name, (a proposition +which they would hate to refuse to a man in a perplexed position, and yet +would naturally have to refuse it,) to pigeon-hole the "Library": not +destroy it, but merely pigeon-hole it and wait a few years and see what +new notion Providence will take concerning it. He will not desert us +now, after putting in four licks to our one on this book all this time. +It really seems in a sense discourteous not to call it "Providence's +Library of Humor." + +Now that deal is all settled, the next question is, do you need and must +you require that $2,000 now? Since last March, you know, I am carrying a +mighty load, solitary and alone--General Grant's book--and must carry it +till the first volume is 30 days old (Jan. 1st) before the relief money +will begin to flow in. From now till the first of January every dollar +is as valuable to me as it could be to a famishing tramp. If you can +wait till then--I mean without discomfort, without inconvenience--it will +be a large accommodation to me; but I will not allow you to do this favor +if it will discommode you. So, speak right out, frankly, and if you need +the money I will go out on the highway and get it, using violence, if +necessary. + +Mind, I am not in financial difficulties, and am not going to be. I am +merely a starving beggar standing outside the door of plenty--obstructed +by a Yale time-lock which is set for Jan. 1st. I can stand it, and stand +it perfectly well; but the days do seem to fool along considerable slower +than they used to. + +I am mighty glad you are with the Harpers. I have noticed that good men +in their employ go there to stay. + Yours ever, + MARK. + + + In the next letter we begin to get some idea of the size of Mark + Twain's first publishing venture, and a brief summary of results may + not be out of place here. + + The Grant Life was issued in two volumes. In the early months of + the year when the agents' canvass was just beginning, Mark Twain, + with what seems now almost clairvoyant vision, prophesied a sale of + three hundred thousand sets. The actual sales ran somewhat more + than this number. On February 27, 1886, Charles L. Webster & Co. + paid to Mrs. Grant the largest single royalty check in the history + of book-publishing. The amount of it was two hundred thousand + dollars. Subsequent checks increased the aggregate return to + considerably more than double this figure. In a memorandum made by + Clemens in the midst of the canvass he wrote." + + "During 100 consecutive days the sales (i. e., subscriptions) of + General Grant's book averaged 3,000 sets (6,000 single volumes) per + day: Roughly stated, Mrs. Grant's income during all that time was + $5,000 a day." + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HOTEL NORMANDIE + NEW YORK, Dec. 2, '85. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I told Webster, this afternoon, to send you that +$2,000; but he is in such a rush, these first days of publication, that +he may possibly forget it; so I write lest I forget it too. Remind me, +if he should forget. When I postponed you lately, I did it because I +thought I should be cramped for money until January, but that has turned +out to be an error, so I hasten to cut short the postponement. + +I judge by the newspapers that you are in Auburndale, but I don't know it +officially. + +I've got the first volume launched safely; consequently, half of the +suspense is over, and I am that much nearer the goal. We've bound and +shipped 200,000 books; and by the 10th shall finish and ship the +remaining 125,000 of the first edition. I got nervous and came down to +help hump-up the binderies; and I mean to stay here pretty much all the +time till the first days of March, when the second volume will issue. +Shan't have so much trouble, this time, though, if we get to press pretty +soon, because we can get more binderies then than are to be had in front +of the holidays. One lives and learns. I find it takes 7 binderies four +months to bind 325,000 books. + +This is a good book to publish. I heard a canvasser say, yesterday, that +while delivering eleven books he took 7 new subscriptions. But we shall +be in a hell of a fix if that goes on--it will "ball up" the binderies +again. + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + November 30th that year was Mark Twain's fiftieth birthday, an event + noticed by the newspapers generally, and especially observed by many + of his friends. Warner, Stockton and many others sent letters; + Andrew Lang contributed a fine poem; also Oliver Wendell. Holmes + --the latter by special request of Miss Gilder--for the Critic. + These attentions came as a sort of crowning happiness at the end of + a golden year. At no time in his life were Mark Twain's fortunes + and prospects brighter; he had a beautiful family and a perfect + home. Also, he had great prosperity. The reading-tour with Cable + had been a fine success. His latest book, The Adventures of + Huckleberry Finn, had added largely to his fame and income. + The publication of the Grant Memoirs had been a dazzling triumph. + Mark Twain had become recognized, not only as America's most + distinguished author, but as its most envied publisher. And now, + with his fiftieth birthday, had come this laurel from Holmes, last + of the Brahmins, to add a touch of glory to all the rest. We feel + his exaltation in his note of acknowledgment. + + + To Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Boston: + +DEAR MR. HOLMES,--I shall never be able to tell you the half of how proud +you have made me. If I could you would say you were nearly paid for the +trouble you took. And then the family: If I can convey the electrical +surprise and gratitude and exaltation of the wife and the children last +night, when they happened upon that Critic where I had, with artful +artlessness, spread it open and retired out of view to see what would +happen--well, it was great and fine and beautiful to see, and made me +feel as the victor feels when the shouting hosts march by; and if you +also could have seen it you would have said the account was squared. For +I have brought them up in your company, as in the company of a warm and +friendly and beneficent but far-distant sun; and so, for you to do this +thing was for the sun to send down out of the skies the miracle of a +special ray and transfigure me before their faces. I knew what that poem +would be to them; I knew it would raise me up to remote and shining +heights in their eyes, to very fellowship with the chambered Nautilus +itself, and that from that fellowship they could never more dissociate me +while they should live; and so I made sure to be by when the surprise +should come. + +Charles Dudley Warner is charmed with the poem for its own felicitous +sake; and so indeed am I, but more because it has drawn the sting of my +fiftieth year; taken away the pain of it, the grief of it, the somehow +shame of it, and made me glad and proud it happened. + +With reverence and affection, + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Holmes wrote with his own hand: "Did Miss Gilder tell you I had + twenty-three letters spread out for answer when her suggestion came + about your anniversary? I stopped my correspondence and made my + letters wait until the lines were done." + + + + + + +MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1886-1900 + +ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE + + + +VOLUME IV. + + +XXVI + +LETTERS, 1886-87. JANE CLEMENS'S ROMANCE. UNMAILED LETTERS, ETC. + + When Clemens had been platforming with Cable and returned to + Hartford for his Christmas vacation, the Warner and Clemens families + had joined in preparing for him a surprise performance of The Prince + and the Pauper. The Clemens household was always given to + theatricals, and it was about this time that scenery and a stage + were prepared--mainly by the sculptor Gerhardt--for these home + performances, after which productions of The Prince and the Pauper + were given with considerable regularity to audiences consisting of + parents and invited friends. The subject is a fascinating one, but + it has been dwelt upon elsewhere.--[In Mark Twain: A Biography, + chaps. cliii and clx.]--We get a glimpse of one of these occasions + as well as of Mark Twain's financial progress in the next brief + note. + + To W. D. Howells; in Boston: + + Jan. 3, '86. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--The date set for the Prince and Pauper play is ten +days hence--Jan. 13. I hope you and Pilla can take a train that arrives +here during the day; the one that leaves Boston toward the end of the +afternoon would be a trifle late; the performance would have already +begun when you reached the house. + +I'm out of the woods. On the last day of the year I had paid out +$182,000 on the Grant book and it was totally free from debt. + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + Mark Twain's mother was a woman of sturdy character and with a keen + sense of humor and tender sympathies. Her husband, John Marshall + Clemens, had been a man of high moral character, honored by all who + knew him, respected and apparently loved by his wife. No one would + ever have supposed that during all her years of marriage, and almost + to her death, she carried a secret romance that would only be told + at last in the weary disappointment of old age. It is a curious + story, and it came to light in this curious way: + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, May 19, '86. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--..... Here's a secret. A most curious and pathetic +romance, which has just come to light. Read these things, but don't +mention them. Last fall, my old mother--then 82--took a notion to attend +a convention of old settlers of the Mississippi Valley in an Iowa town. +My brother's wife was astonished; and represented to her the hardships +and fatigues of such a trip, and said my mother might possibly not even +survive them; and said there could be no possible interest for her in +such a meeting and such a crowd. But my mother insisted, and persisted; +and finally gained her point. They started; and all the way my mother +was young again with excitement, interest, eagerness, anticipation. They +reached the town and the hotel. My mother strode with the same eagerness +in her eye and her step, to the counter, and said: + +"Is Dr. Barrett of St. Louis, here?" + +"No. He was here, but he returned to St. Louis this morning." + +"Will he come again?" + +"No." + +My mother turned away, the fire all gone from her, and said, "Let us go +home." + +They went straight back to Keokuk. My mother sat silent and thinking for +many days--a thing which had never happened before. Then one day she +said: + +"I will tell you a secret. When I was eighteen, a young medical student +named Barrett lived in Columbia (Ky.) eighteen miles away; and he used to +ride over to see me. This continued for some time. I loved him with my +whole heart, and I knew that he felt the same toward me, though no words +had been spoken. He was too bashful to speak--he could not do it. +Everybody supposed we were engaged--took it for granted we were--but we +were not. By and by there was to be a party in a neighboring town, and +he wrote my uncle telling him his feelings, and asking him to drive me +over in his buggy and let him (Barrett) drive me back, so that he might +have that opportunity to propose. My uncle should have done as he was +asked, without explaining anything to me; but instead, he read me the +letter; and then, of course, I could not go--and did not. He (Barrett) +left the country presently, and I, to stop the clacking tongues, and to +show him that I did not care, married, in a pet. In all these sixty-four +years I have not seen him since. I saw in a paper that he was going to +attend that Old Settlers' Convention. Only three hours before we reached +that hotel, he had been standing there!" + +Since then, her memory is wholly faded out and gone; and now she writes +letters to the school-mates who had been dead forty years, and wonders +why they neglect her and do not answer. + +Think of her carrying that pathetic burden in her old heart sixty-four +years, and no human being ever suspecting it! + Yrs ever, + MARK. + +We do not get the idea from this letter that those two long ago +sweethearts quarreled, but Mark Twain once spoke of their having done so, +and there may have been a disagreement, assuming that there was a +subsequent meeting. It does not matter, now. In speaking of it, Mark +Twain once said: "It is as pathetic a romance as any that has crossed the +field of my personal experience in a long lifetime."--[When Mark Twain: +A Biography was written this letter had not come to light, and the matter +was stated there in accordance with Mark Twain's latest memory of it.] + +Howells wrote: "After all, how poor and hackneyed all the inventions are +compared with the simple and stately facts. Who could have imagined such +a heart-break as that? Yet it went along with the fulfillment of +everyday duty and made no more noise than a grave under foot. I doubt if +fiction will ever get the knack of such things." + +Jane Clemens now lived with her son Orion and his wife, in Keokuk, where +she was more contented than elsewhere. In these later days her memory +had become erratic, her realization of events about her uncertain, but +there were times when she was quite her former self, remembering clearly +and talking with her old-time gaiety of spirit. Mark Twain frequently +sent her playful letters to amuse her, letters full of such boyish gaiety +as had amused her long years before. The one that follows is a fair +example. It was written after a visit which Clemens and his family had +paid to Keokuk. + + + To Jane Clemens, in Keokuk: + + ELMIRA, Aug. 7, '86. +DEAR MA,--I heard that Molly and Orion and Pamela had been sick, but I +see by your letter that they are much better now, or nearly well. When +we visited you a month ago, it seemed to us that your Keokuk weather was +pretty hot; Jean and Clara sat up in bed at Mrs. McElroy's and cried +about it, and so did I; but I judge by your letter that it has cooled +down, now, so that a person is comparatively comfortable, with his skin +off. Well it did need cooling; I remember that I burnt a hole in my +shirt, there, with some ice cream that fell on it; and Miss Jenkins told +me they never used a stove, but cooked their meals on a marble-topped +table in the drawing-room, just with the natural heat. If anybody else +had told me, I would not have believed it. I was told by the Bishop of +Keokuk that he did not allow crying at funerals, because it scalded the +furniture. If Miss Jenkins had told me that, I would have believed it. +This reminds me that you speak of Dr. Jenkins and his family as if they +were strangers to me. Indeed they are not. Don't you suppose I remember +gratefully how tender the doctor was with Jean when she hurt her arm, and +how quickly he got the pain out of the hurt, whereas I supposed it was +going to last at least an hour? No, I don't forget some things as easily +as I do others. + +Yes, it was pretty hot weather. Now here, when a person is going to die, +he is always in a sweat about where he is going to; but in Keokuk of +course they don't care, because they are fixed for everything. It has +set me reflecting, it has taught me a lesson. By and by, when my health +fails, I am going to put all my affairs in order, and bid good-bye to my +friends here, and kill all the people I don't like, and go out to Keokuk +and prepare for death. + +They are all well in this family, and we all send love. + Affly Your Son + SAM. + + + The ways of city officials and corporations are often past + understanding, and Mark Twain sometimes found it necessary to write + picturesque letters of protest. The following to a Hartford + lighting company is a fair example of these documents. + + + To a gas and electric-lighting company, in Hartford: + +GENTLEMEN,--There are but two places in our whole street where lights +could be of any value, by any accident, and you have measured and +appointed your intervals so ingeniously as to leave each of those places +in the centre of a couple of hundred yards of solid darkness. When I +noticed that you were setting one of your lights in such a way that I +could almost see how to get into my gate at night, I suspected that it +was a piece of carelessness on the part of the workmen, and would be +corrected as soon as you should go around inspecting and find it out. +My judgment was right; it is always right, when you axe concerned. For +fifteen years, in spite of my prayers and tears, you persistently kept a +gas lamp exactly half way between my gates, so that I couldn't find +either of them after dark; and then furnished such execrable gas that I +had to hang a danger signal on the lamp post to keep teams from running +into it, nights. Now I suppose your present idea is, to leave us a +little more in the dark. + +Don't mind us--out our way; we possess but one vote apiece, and no rights +which you are in any way bound to respect. Please take your electric +light and go to--but never mind, it is not for me to suggest; you will +probably find the way; and any way you can reasonably count on divine +assistance if you lose your bearings. + + S. L. CLEMENS. + + [Etext Editor's Note: Twain wrote another note to Hartford Gas and + Electric, which he may not have mailed and which Paine does not + include in these volumes: + "Gentleman:--Someday you are going to move me almost to the point + of irritation with your God-damned chuckle headed fashion of + turning off your God-damned gas without giving notice to your + God-damned parishioners--and you did it again last night--" + D.W.] + + Frequently Clemens did not send letters of this sort after they were + written. Sometimes he realized the uselessness of such protest, + sometimes the mere writing of them had furnished the necessary + relief, and he put, the letter away, or into the wastebasket, and + wrote something more temperate, or nothing at all. A few such + letters here follow. + + Clemens was all the time receiving application from people who + wished him to recommend one article or another; books, plays, + tobacco, and what not. They were generally persistent people, + unable to accept a polite or kindly denial. Once he set down some + remarks on this particular phase of correspondence. He wrote: + + +I + +No doubt Mr. Edison has been offered a large interest in many and many an +electrical project, for the use of his name to float it withal. And no +doubt all men who have achieved for their names, in any line of activity +whatever, a sure market value, have been familiar with this sort of +solicitation. Reputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt from pure +silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure. + +And so, people without a hall-mark of their own are always trying to get +the loan of somebody else's. + +As a rule, that kind of a person sees only one side of the case. He sees +that his invention or his painting or his book is--apparently--a trifle +better than you yourself can do, therefore why shouldn't you be willing +to put your hall-mark on it? You will be giving the purchaser his full +money's worth; so who is hurt, and where is the harm? Besides, are you +not helping a struggling fellow-craftsman, and is it not your duty to do +that? + +That side is plenty clear enough to him, but he can't and won't see the +other side, to-wit: that you are a rascal if you put your hall-mark upon +a thing which you did not produce yourself, howsoever good it may be. +How simple that is; and yet there are not two applicants in a hundred who +can, be made to see it. + +When one receives an application of this sort, his first emotion is an +indignant sense of insult; his first deed is the penning of a sharp +answer. He blames nobody but that other person. That person is a very +base being; he must be; he would degrade himself for money, otherwise it +would not occur to him that you would do such a thing. But all the same, +that application has done its work, and taken you down in your own +estimation. You recognize that everybody hasn't as high an opinion of +you as you have of yourself; and in spite of you there ensues an interval +during which you are not, in your own estimation as fine a bird as you +were before. + +However, being old and experienced, you do not mail your sharp letter, +but leave it lying a day. That saves you. For by that time you have +begun to reflect that you are a person who deals in exaggerations--and +exaggerations are lies. You meant yours to be playful, and thought you +made them unmistakably so. But you couldn't make them playfulnesses to a +man who has no sense of the playful and can see nothing but the serious +side of things. You rattle on quite playfully, and with measureless +extravagance, about how you wept at the tomb of Adam; and all in good +time you find to your astonishment that no end of people took you at your +word and believed you. And presently they find out that you were not in +earnest. They have been deceived; therefore, (as they argue--and there +is a sort of argument in it,) you are a deceiver. If you will deceive in +one way, why shouldn't you in another? So they apply for the use of your +trade-mark. You are amazed and affronted. You retort that you are not +that kind of person. Then they are amazed and affronted; and wonder +"since when?" + +By this time you have got your bearings. You realize that perhaps there +is a little blame on both sides. You are in the right frame, now. So +you write a letter void of offense, declining. You mail this one; you +pigeon-hole the other. + +That is, being old and experienced, you do, but early in your career, you +don't: you mail the first one. + + +II + +An enthusiast who had a new system of musical notation, wrote to me and +suggested that a magazine article from me, contrasting the absurdities of +the old system with the simplicities of his new one, would be sure to +make a "rousing hit." He shouted and shouted over the marvels wrought by +his system, and quoted the handsome compliments which had been paid it by +famous musical people; but he forgot to tell me what his notation was +like, or what its simplicities consisted in. So I could not have written +the article if I had wanted to--which I didn't; because I hate strangers +with axes to grind. I wrote him a courteous note explaining how busy I +was--I always explain how busy I am--and casually drooped this remark: + +"I judge the X-X notation to be a rational mode of representing music, in +place of the prevailing fashion, which was the invention of an idiot." + +Next mail he asked permission to print that meaningless remark. +I answered, no--courteously, but still, no; explaining that I could not +afford to be placed in the attitude of trying to influence people with a +mere worthless guess. What a scorcher I got, next mail! Such irony! +such sarcasm, such caustic praise of my superhonorable loyalty to the +public! And withal, such compassion for my stupidity, too, in not being +able to understand my own language. I cannot remember the words of this +letter broadside, but there was about a page used up in turning this idea +round and round and exposing it in different lights. + + Unmailed Answer: + +DEAR SIR,--What is the trouble with you? If it is your viscera, you +cannot have them taken out and reorganized a moment too soon. I mean, +if they are inside. But if you are composed of them, that is another +matter. Is it your brain? But it could not be your brain. Possibly it +is your skull: you want to look out for that. Some people, when they get +an idea, it pries the structure apart. Your system of notation has got +in there, and couldn't find room, without a doubt that is what the +trouble is. Your skull was not made to put ideas in, it was made to +throw potatoes at. + Yours Truly. + + + Mailed Answer: + +DEAR SIR,--Come, come--take a walk; you disturb the children. + Yours Truly. + + +There was a day, now happily nearly over, when certain newspapers made a +practice of inviting men distinguished in any walk of life to give their +time and effort without charge to express themselves on some subject of +the day, or perhaps they were asked to send their favorite passages in +prose or verse, with the reasons why. Such symposiums were "features" +that cost the newspapers only the writing of a number of letters, +stationery, and postage. To one such invitation Mark Twain wrote two +replies. They follow herewith: + + Unmailed Answer: + +DEAR SIR,--I have received your proposition--which you have imitated from +a pauper London periodical which had previously imitated the idea of this +sort of mendicancy from seventh-rate American journalism, where it +originated as a variation of the inexpensive "interview." + +Why do you buy Associated Press dispatches? To make your paper the more +salable, you answer. But why don't you try to beg them? Why do you +discriminate? I can sell my stuff; why should I give it to you? Why +don't you ask me for a shirt? What is the difference between asking me +for the worth of a shirt and asking me for the shirt itself? Perhaps you +didn't know you were begging. I would not use that argument--it makes +the user a fool. The passage of poetry--or prose, if you will--which has +taken deepest root in my thought, and which I oftenest return to and +dwell upon with keenest no matter what, is this: That the proper place +for journalists who solicit literary charity is on the street corner with +their hats in their hands. + + + Mailed Answer: + +DEAR SIR,--Your favor of recent date is received, but I am obliged by +press of work to decline. + + + The manager of a traveling theatrical company wrote that he had + taken the liberty of dramatizing Tom Sawyer, and would like also the + use of the author's name--the idea being to convey to the public + that it was a Mark Twain play. In return for this slight favor the + manager sent an invitation for Mark Twain to come and see the play + --to be present on the opening night, as it were, at his (the + manager's) expense. He added that if the play should be a go in the + cities there might be some "arrangement" of profits. Apparently + these inducements did not appeal to Mark Twain. The long unmailed + reply is the more interesting, but probably the briefer one that + follows it was quite as effective. + + Unmailed Answer: + + HARTFORD, Sept. 8, '87. +DEAR SIR,--And so it has got around to you, at last; and you also have +"taken the liberty." You are No. 1365. When 1364 sweeter and better +people, including the author, have "tried" to dramatize Tom Sawyer and +did not arrive, what sort of show do you suppose you stand? That is a +book, dear sir, which cannot be dramatized. One might as well try to +dramatize any other hymn. Tom Sawyer is simply a hymn, put into prose +form to give it a worldly air. + +Why the pale doubt that flitteth dim and nebulous athwart the forecastle +of your third sentence? Have no fears. Your piece will be a Go. +It will go out the back door on the first night. They've all done it +--the 1364. So will 1365. Not one of us ever thought of the simple +device of half-soling himself with a stove-lid. Ah, what suffering a +little hindsight would have saved us. Treasure this hint. + +How kind of you to invite me to the funeral. Go to; I have attended a +thousand of them. I have seen Tom Sawyer's remains in all the different +kinds of dramatic shrouds there are. You cannot start anything fresh. +Are you serious when you propose to pay my expence--if that is the +Susquehannian way of spelling it? And can you be aware that I charge a +hundred dollars a mile when I travel for pleasure? Do you realize that +it is 432 miles to Susquehanna? Would it be handy for you to send me the +$43,200 first, so I could be counting it as I come along; because +railroading is pretty dreary to a sensitive nature when there's nothing +sordid to buck at for Zeitvertreib. + +Now as I understand it, dear and magnanimous 1365, you are going to +recreate Tom Sawyer dramatically, and then do me the compliment to put me +in the bills as father of this shady offspring. Sir, do you know that +this kind of a compliment has destroyed people before now? Listen. + +Twenty-four years ago, I was strangely handsome. The remains of it are +still visible through the rifts of time. I was so handsome that human +activities ceased as if spellbound when I came in view, and even +inanimate things stopped to look--like locomotives, and district +messenger boys and so-on. In San Francisco, in the rainy season I was +often mistaken for fair weather. Upon one occasion I was traveling in +the Sonora region, and stopped for an hour's nooning, to rest my horse +and myself. All the town came out to look. The tribes of Indians +gathered to look. A Piute squaw named her baby for me,--a voluntary +compliment which pleased me greatly. Other attentions were paid me. +Last of all arrived the president and faculty of Sonora University and +offered me the post of Professor of Moral Culture and the Dogmatic +Humanities; which I accepted gratefully, and entered at once upon my +duties. But my name had pleased the Indians, and in the deadly kindness +of their hearts they went on naming their babies after me. I tried to +stop it, but the Indians could not understand why I should object to so +manifest a compliment. The thing grew and grew and spread and spread and +became exceedingly embarrassing. The University stood it a couple of +years; but then for the sake of the college they felt obliged to call a +halt, although I had the sympathy of the whole faculty. The president +himself said to me, "I am as sorry as I can be for you, and would still +hold out if there were any hope ahead; but you see how it is: there are a +hundred and thirty-two of them already, and fourteen precincts to hear +from. The circumstance has brought your name into most wide and +unfortunate renown. It causes much comment--I believe that that is not +an over-statement. Some of this comment is palliative, but some of it +--by patrons at a distance, who only know the statistics without the +explanation,--is offensive, and in some cases even violent. Nine +students have been called home. The trustees of the college have been +growing more and more uneasy all these last months--steadily along with +the implacable increase in your census--and I will not conceal from you +that more than once they have touched upon the expediency of a change in +the Professorship of Moral Culture. The coarsely sarcastic editorial in +yesterday's Alta, headed Give the Moral Acrobat a Rest--has brought +things to a crisis, and I am charged with the unpleasant duty of +receiving your resignation." + +I know you only mean me a kindness, dear 1365, but it is a most deadly +mistake. Please do not name your Injun for me. Truly Yours. + + + Mailed Answer: + + NEW YORK, Sept. 8. 1887. +DEAR SIR,--Necessarily I cannot assent to so strange a proposition. And +I think it but fair to warn you that if you put the piece on the stage, +you must take the legal consequences. + Yours respectfully, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Before the days of international copyright no American author's + books were pirated more freely by Canadian publishers than those of + Mark Twain. It was always a sore point with him that these books, + cheaply printed, found their way into the United States, and were + sold in competition with his better editions. The law on the + subject seemed to be rather hazy, and its various interpretations + exasperating. In the next unmailed letter Mark Twain relieves + himself to a misguided official. The letter is worth reading today, + if for no other reason, to show the absurdity of copyright + conditions which prevailed at that time. + + + Unmailed Letter to H. C. Christiancy, on book Piracy: + + HARTFORD, Dec. 18, '87. +H. C. CHRISTIANCY, ESQ. + +DEAR SIR,--As I understand it, the position of the U. S. Government is +this: If a person be captured on the border with counterfeit bonds in his +hands--bonds of the N. Y. Central Railway, for instance--the procedure in +his case shall be as follows: + +1. If the N. Y. C. have not previously filed in the several police +offices along the border, proof of ownership of the originals of the +bonds, the government officials must collect a duty on the counterfeits, +and then let them go ahead and circulate in this country. + +2. But if there is proof already on file, then the N. Y. C. may pay the +duty and take the counterfeits. + +But in no case will the United States consent to go without its share of +the swag. It is delicious. The biggest and proudest government on earth +turned sneak-thief; collecting pennies on stolen property, and pocketing +them with a greasy and libidinous leer; going into partnership with +foreign thieves to rob its own children; and when the child escapes the +foreigner, descending to the abysmal baseness of hanging on and robbing +the infant all alone by itself! Dear sir, this is not any more +respectable than for a father to collect toll on the forced prostitution +of his own daughter; in fact it is the same thing. Upon these terms, +what is a U. S. custom house but a "fence?" That is all it is: a +legalized trader in stolen goods. + +And this nasty law, this filthy law, this unspeakable law calls itself a +"regulation for the protection of owners of copyright!" Can sarcasm go +further than that? In what way does it protect them? Inspiration itself +could not furnish a rational answer to that question. Whom does it +protect, then? Nobody, as far as I can see, but the foreign thief +--sometimes--and his fellow-footpad the U. S. government, all the time. +What could the Central Company do with the counterfeit bonds after it had +bought them of the star spangled banner Master-thief? Sell them at a +dollar apiece and fetch down the market for the genuine hundred-dollar +bond? What could I do with that 20-cent copy of "Roughing It" which the +United States has collared on the border and is waiting to release to me +for cash in case I am willing to come down to its moral level and help +rob myself? Sell it at ten or fifteen cents--duty added--and destroy the +market for the original $3,50 book? Who ever did invent that law? I +would like to know the name of that immortal jackass. + +Dear sir, I appreciate your courtesy in stretching your authority in the +desire to do me a kindness, and I sincerely thank you for it. But I have +no use for that book; and if I were even starving for it I would not pay +duty on in either to get it or suppress it. No doubt there are ways in +which I might consent to go into partnership with thieves and fences, +but this is not one of them. This one revolts the remains of my +self-respect; turns my stomach. I think I could companion with a +highwayman who carried a shot-gun and took many risks; yes, I think +I should like that if I were younger; but to go in with a big rich +government that robs paupers, and the widows and orphans of paupers and +takes no risk--why the thought just gags me. + +Oh, no, I shall never pay any duties on pirated books of mine. I am much +too respectable for that--yet awhile. But here--one thing that grovels +me is this: as far as I can discover--while freely granting that the +U. S. copyright laws are far and away the most idiotic that exist +anywhere on the face of the earth--they don't authorize the government to +admit pirated books into this country, toll or no toll. And so I think +that that regulation is the invention of one of those people--as a rule, +early stricken of God, intellectually--the departmental interpreters of +the laws, in Washington. They can always be depended on to take any +reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it. They +can be depended on, every time, to defeat a good law, and make it +inoperative--yes, and utterly grotesque, too, mere matter for laughter +and derision. Take some of the decisions of the Post-office Department, +for instance--though I do not mean to suggest that that asylum is any +worse than the others for the breeding and nourishing of incredible +lunatics--I merely instance it because it happens to be the first to come +into my mind. Take that case of a few years ago where the P. M. General +suddenly issued an edict requiring you to add the name of the State after +Boston, New York, Chicago, &c, in your superscriptions, on pain of having +your letter stopped and forwarded to the dead-letter office; yes, and I +believe he required the county, too. He made one little concession in +favor of New York: you could say "New York City," and stop there; but if +you left off the "city," you must add "N. Y." to your "New York." Why, +it threw the business of the whole country into chaos and brought +commerce almost to a stand-still. Now think of that! When that man goes +to--to--well, wherever he is going to--we shan't want the microscopic +details of his address. I guess we can find him. + +Well, as I was saying, I believe that this whole paltry and ridiculous +swindle is a pure creation of one of those cabbages that used to be at +the head of one of those Retreats down there--Departments, you know--and +that you will find it so, if you will look into it. And moreover--but +land, I reckon we are both tired by this time. + Truly Yours, + MARK TWAIN. + + + + + +XXVII + +MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS OF 1887. LITERARY ARTICLES. PEACEFUL DAYS AT THE +FARM. FAVORITE READING. APOLOGY TO MRS. CLEVELAND, ETC. + +We have seen in the preceding chapter how unknown aspirants in one field +or another were always seeking to benefit by Mark Twain's reputation. +Once he remarked, "The symbol of the human race ought to be an ax; every +human being has one concealed about him somewhere." He declared when a +stranger called on him, or wrote to him, in nine cases out of ten he +could distinguish the gleam of the ax almost immediately. The following +letter is closely related to those of the foregoing chapter, only that +this one was mailed--not once, but many times, in some form adapted to +the specific applicant. It does not matter to whom it was originally +written, the name would not be recognized. + + + To Mrs. T. Concerning unearned credentials, etc. + + HARTFORD, 1887. +MY DEAR MADAM,--It is an idea which many people have had, but it is of no +value. I have seen it tried out many and many a time. I have seen a +lady lecturer urged and urged upon the public in a lavishly complimentary +document signed by Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes and some others of +supreme celebrity, but--there was nothing in her and she failed. If +there had been any great merit in her she never would have needed those +men's help and (at her rather mature age,) would never have consented to +ask for it. + +There is an unwritten law about human successes, and your sister must bow +to that law, she must submit to its requirements. In brief this law is: + + 1. No occupation without an apprenticeship. + + 2. No pay to the apprentice. + +This law stands right in the way of the subaltern who wants to be a +General before he has smelt powder; and it stands (and should stand) in +everybody's way who applies for pay or position before he has served his +apprenticeship and proved himself. Your sister's course is perfectly +plain. Let her enclose this letter to Maj. J. B. Pond, and offer to +lecture a year for $10 a week and her expenses, the contract to be +annullable by him at any time, after a month's notice, but not annullable +by her at all. The second year, he to have her services, if he wants +them, at a trifle under the best price offered her by anybody else. + +She can learn her trade in those two years, and then be entitled to +remuneration--but she can not learn it in any less time than that, unless +she is a human miracle. + +Try it, and do not be afraid. It is the fair and right thing. If she +wins, she will win squarely and righteously, and never have to blush. + Truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Howells wrote, in February, offering to get a publisher to take the + Library of Humor off Mark Twain's hands. Howells had been paid + twenty-six hundred dollars for the work on it, and his conscience + hurt him when he reflected that the book might never be used. In + this letter he also refers to one of the disastrous inventions in + which Clemens had invested--a method of casting brass dies for + stamping book-covers and wall-paper. Howells's purpose was to + introduce something of the matter into his next story. Mark Twain's + reply gives us a light on this particular invention. + + + HARTFORD, Feb. 15, '87. +DEAR HOWELLS,--I was in New York five days ago, and Webster mentioned the +Library, and proposed to publish it a year or a year and half hence. +I have written him your proposition to-day. (The Library is part of the +property of the C. L. W. & Co. firm.) + +I don't remember what that technical phrase was, but I think you will +find it in any Cyclopedia under the head of "Brass." The thing I best +remember is, that the self-styled "inventor" had a very ingenious way of +keeping me from seeing him apply his invention: the first appointment was +spoiled by his burning down the man's shop in which it was to be done, +the night before; the second was spoiled by his burning down his own shop +the night before. He unquestionably did both of these things. He really +had no invention; the whole project was a blackmailing swindle, and cost +me several thousand dollars. + +The slip you sent me from the May "Study" has delighted Mrs. Clemens and +me to the marrow. To think that thing might be possible to many; but to +be brave enough to say it is possible to you only, I certainly believe. +The longer I live the clearer I perceive how unmatchable, how +unapproachable, a compliment one pays when he says of a man "he has the +courage (to utter) his convictions." Haven't you had reviewers talk Alps +to you, and then print potato hills? + +I haven't as good an opinion of my work as you hold of it, but I've +always done what I could to secure and enlarge my good opinion of it. +I've always said to myself, "Everybody reads it and that's something--it +surely isn't pernicious, or the most acceptable people would get pretty +tired of it." And when a critic said by implication that it wasn't high +and fine, through the remark "High and fine literature is wine" I +retorted (confidentially, to myself,) "yes, high and fine literature is +wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water." + +You didn't tell me to return that proof-slip, so I have pasted it into my +private scrap-book. None will see it there. With a thousand thanks. + Ys Ever + MARK. + + + Our next letter is an unmailed answer, but it does not belong with + the others, having been withheld for reasons of quite a different + sort. Jeanette Gilder, then of the Critic, was one of Mark Twain's + valued friends. In the comment which he made, when it was shown to + him twenty-two years later, he tells us why he thinks this letter + was not sent. The name, "Rest-and-be-Thankful," was the official + title given to the summer place at Elmira, but it was more often + known as "Quarry Farm." + + + To Jeannette Gilder (not mailed): + + HARTFORD, May 14, '87. +MY DEAR MISS GILDER,--We shall spend the summer at the same old place-the +remote farm called "Rest-and-be-Thankful," on top of the hills three +miles from Elmira, N. Y. Your other question is harder to answer. It is +my habit to keep four or five books in process of erection all the time, +and every summer add a few courses of bricks to two or three of them; but +I cannot forecast which of the two or three it is going to be. It takes +seven years to complete a book by this method, but still it is a good +method: gives the public a rest. I have been accused of "rushing into +print" prematurely, moved thereto by greediness for money; but in truth +I have never done that. Do you care for trifles of information? (Well, +then, "Tom Sawyer" and "The Prince and the Pauper" were each on the +stocks two or three years, and "Old Times on the Mississippi" eight.) +One of my unfinished books has been on the stocks sixteen years; another +seventeen. This latter book could have been finished in a day, at any +time during the past five years. But as in the first of these two +narratives all the action takes place in Noah's ark, and as in the other +the action takes place in heaven, there seemed to be no hurry, and so I +have not hurried. Tales of stirring adventure in those localities do not +need to be rushed to publication lest they get stale by waiting. In +twenty-one years, with all my time at my free disposal I have written and +completed only eleven books, whereas with half the labor that a +journalist does I could have written sixty in that time. I do not +greatly mind being accused of a proclivity for rushing into print, but +at the same time I don't believe that the charge is really well founded. +Suppose I did write eleven books, have you nothing to be grateful for? +Go to---remember the forty-nine which I didn't write. + Truly Yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Notes (added twenty-two years later): + +Stormfield, April 30, 1909. It seems the letter was not sent. I +probably feared she might print it, and I couldn't find a way to say so +without running a risk of hurting her. No one would hurt Jeannette +Gilder purposely, and no one would want to run the risk of doing it +unintentionally. She is my neighbor, six miles away, now, and I must +ask her about this ancient letter. + +I note with pride and pleasure that I told no untruths in my unsent +answer. I still have the habit of keeping unfinished books lying around +years and years, waiting. I have four or five novels on hand at present +in a half-finished condition, and it is more than three years since I +have looked at any of them. I have no intention of finishing them. +I could complete all of them in less than a year, if the impulse should +come powerfully upon me: Long, long ago money-necessity furnished that +impulse once, ("Following the Equator"), but mere desire for money has +never furnished it, so far as I remember. Not even money-necessity was +able to overcome me on a couple of occasions when perhaps I ought to have +allowed it to succeed. While I was a bankrupt and in debt two offers +were made me for weekly literary contributions to continue during a year, +and they would have made a debtless man of me, but I declined them, with +my wife's full approval, for I had known of no instance where a man had +pumped himself out once a week and failed to run "emptyings" before the +year was finished. + +As to that "Noah's Ark" book, I began it in Edinburgh in 1873;--[This is +not quite correct. The "Noah's Ark" book was begun in Buffalo in 1870.] +I don't know where the manuscript is now. It was a Diary, which +professed to be the work of Shem, but wasn't. I began it again several +months ago, but only for recreation; I hadn't any intention of carrying +it to a finish +--or even to the end of the first chapter, in fact. + +As to the book whose action "takes place in Heaven." That was a small +thing, ("Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.") It lay in my +pigeon-holes 40 years, then I took it out and printed it in Harper's +Monthly last year. + S. L. C. + + +In the next letter we get a pretty and peaceful picture of +"Rest-and-be-Thankful." These were Mark Twain's balmy days. The +financial drain of the type-machine was heavy but not yet exhausting, and +the prospect of vast returns from it seemed to grow brighter each day. +His publishing business, though less profitable, was still prosperous, +his family life was ideal. How gratefully, then, he could enter into the +peace of that "perfect day." + + + To Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Ia.: + + ON THE HILL NEAR ELMIRA, July 10, '87. +DEAR MOLLIE,--This is a superb Sunday for weather--very cloudy, and the +thermometer as low as 65. The city in the valley is purple with shade, +as seen from up here at the study. The Cranes are reading and loafing in +the canvas-curtained summer-house 50 yards away on a higher (the highest) +point; the cats are loafing over at "Ellerslie" which is the children's +estate and dwellinghouse in their own private grounds (by deed from Susie +Crane) a hundred yards from the study, amongst the clover and young oaks +and willows. Livy is down at the house, but I shall now go and bring her +up to the Cranes to help us occupy the lounges and hammocks--whence a +great panorama of distant hill and valley and city is seeable. The +children have gone on a lark through the neighboring hills and woods. +It is a perfect day indeed. + With love to you all. + SAM. + + +Two days after this letter was written we get a hint of what was the +beginning of business trouble--that is to say, of the failing health of +Charles L. Webster. Webster was ambitious, nervous, and not robust. +He had overworked and was paying the penalty. His trouble was +neurasthenia, and he was presently obliged to retire altogether from the +business. The "Sam and Mary" mentioned were Samuel Moffet and his wife. + + + To Mrs. Pamela Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y. + + ELMIRA, July 12, '87 +MY DEAR SISTER,--I had no idea that Charley's case was so serious. +I knew it was bad, and persistent, but I was not aware of the full size +of the matter. + +I have just been writing to a friend in Hartford' who treated what I +imagine was a similar case surgically last fall, and produced a permanent +cure. If this is a like case, Charley must go to him. + +If relief fails there, he must take the required rest, whether the +business can stand it or not. + +It is most pleasant to hear such prosperous accounts of Sam and Mary, +I do not see how Sam could well be more advantageously fixed. He can +grow up with that paper, and achieve a successful life. + +It is not all holiday here with Susie and Clara this time. They have to +put in some little time every day on their studies. Jean thinks she is +studying too, but I don't know what it is unless it is the horses; she +spends the day under their heels in the stables--and that is but a +continuation of her Hartford system of culture. + +With love from us all to you all. + Affectionately + SAM. + + +Mark Twain had a few books that he read regularly every year or two. +Among these were 'Pepys's Diary', Suetonius's 'Lives of the Twelve +Caesars', and Thomas Carlyle's 'French Revolution'. He had a passion for +history, biography, and personal memoirs of any sort. In his early life +he had cared very little for poetry, but along in the middle eighties he +somehow acquired a taste for Browning and became absorbed in it. +A Browning club assembled as often as once a week at the Clemens home in +Hartford to listen to his readings of the master. He was an impressive +reader, and he carefully prepared himself for these occasions, indicating +by graduated underscorings, the exact values he wished to give to words +and phrases. Those were memorable gatherings, and they must have +continued through at least two winters. It is one of the puzzling phases +of Mark Twain's character that, notwithstanding his passion for direct +and lucid expression, he should have found pleasure in the poems of +Robert Browning. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, Aug. 22, '87. +MY DEAR HOWELLS,--How stunning are the changes which age makes in a man +while he sleeps. When I finished Carlyle's French Revolution in 1871, +I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since, I have read it +differently being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and +environment (and Taine and St. Simon): and now I lay the book down once +more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte!--And not a pale, +characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat. Carlyle teaches no such gospel +so the change is in me--in my vision of the evidences. + +People pretend that the Bible means the same to them at 50 that it did at +all former milestones in their journey. I wonder how they can lie so. +It comes of practice, no doubt. They would not say that of Dickens's or +Scott's books. Nothing remains the same. When a man goes back to look +at the house of his childhood, it has always shrunk: there is no instance +of such a house being as big as the picture in memory and imagination +call for. Shrunk how? Why, to its correct dimensions: the house hasn't +altered; this is the first time it has been in focus. + +Well, that's loss. To have house and Bible shrink so, under the +disillusioning corrected angle, is loss-for a moment. But there are +compensations. You tilt the tube skyward and bring planets and comets +and corona flames a hundred and fifty thousand miles high into the field. +Which I see you have done, and found Tolstoi. I haven't got him in focus +yet, but I've got Browning . . . . + Ys Ever + MARK. + + + Mention has been made already of Mark Twain's tendency to + absentmindedness. He was always forgetting engagements, or getting + them wrong. Once he hurried to an afternoon party, and finding the + mistress of the house alone, sat down and talked to her comfortably + for an hour or two, not remembering his errand at all. It was only + when he reached home that he learned that the party had taken place + the week before. It was always dangerous for him to make + engagements, and he never seemed to profit by sorrowful experience. + We, however, may profit now by one of his amusing apologies. + + + To Mrs. Grover Cleveland, in Washington: + + HARTFORD, Nov. 6, 1887. +MY DEAR MADAM,--I do not know how it is in the White House, but in this +house of ours whenever the minor half of the administration tries to run +itself without the help of the major half it gets aground. Last night +when I was offered the opportunity to assist you in the throwing open the +Warner brothers superb benefaction in Bridgeport to those fortunate +women, I naturally appreciated the honor done me, and promptly seized my +chance. I had an engagement, but the circumstances washed it out of my +mind. If I had only laid the matter before the major half of the +administration on the spot, there would have been no blunder; but I never +thought of that. So when I did lay it before her, later, I realized once +more that it will not do for the literary fraction of a combination to +try to manage affairs which properly belong in the office of the business +bulk of it. I suppose the President often acts just like that: goes and +makes an impossible promise, and you never find it out until it is next +to impossible to break it up and set things straight again. Well, that +is just our way, exactly-one half of the administration always busy +getting the family into trouble, and the other half busy getting it out +again. And so we do seem to be all pretty much alike, after all. The +fact is, I had forgotten that we were to have a dinner party on that +Bridgeport date--I thought it was the next day: which is a good deal of +an improvement for me, because I am more used to being behind a day or +two than ahead. But that is just the difference between one end of this +kind of an administration and the other end of it, as you have noticed, +yourself--the other end does not forget these things. Just so with a +funeral; if it is the man's funeral, he is most always there, of course +--but that is no credit to him, he wouldn't be there if you depended on +him to remember about it; whereas, if on the other hand--but I seem to +have got off from my line of argument somehow; never mind about the +funeral. Of course I am not meaning to say anything against funerals +--that is, as occasions--mere occasions--for as diversions I don't think +they amount to much But as I was saying--if you are not busy I will look +back and see what it was I was saying. + +I don't seem to find the place; but anyway she was as sorry as ever +anybody could be that I could not go to Bridgeport, but there was no help +for it. And I, I have been not only sorry but very sincerely ashamed of +having made an engagement to go without first making sure that I could +keep it, and I do not know how to apologize enough for my heedless breach +of good manners. + With the sincerest respect, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Samuel Clemens was one of the very few authors to copyright a book + in England before the enactment of the international copyright law. + As early as 1872 he copyrighted 'Roughing It' in England, and + piratical publishers there respected his rights. Finally, in 1887, + the inland revenue office assessed him with income tax, which he + very willingly paid, instructing his London publishers, Chatto & + Windus, to pay on the full amount he had received from them. But + when the receipt for his taxes came it was nearly a yard square with + due postage of considerable amount. Then he wrote: + + + To Mr. Chatto, of Chatto & Windus, in London: + + HARTFORD, Dec. 5, '87. +MY DEAR CHATTO,--Look here, I don't mind paying the tax, but don't you +let the Inland Revenue Office send me any more receipts for it, for the +postage is something perfectly demoralizing. If they feel obliged to +print a receipt on a horse-blanket, why don't they hire a ship and send +it over at their own expense? + +Wasn't it good that they caught me out with an old book instead of a new +one? The tax on a new book would bankrupt a body. It was my purpose to +go to England next May and stay the rest of the year, but I've found that +tax office out just in time. My new book would issue in March, and they +would tax the sale in both countries. Come, we must get up a compromise +somehow. You go and work in on the good side of those revenue people and +get them to take the profits and give me the tax. Then I will come over +and we will divide the swag and have a good time. + +I wish you to thank Mr. Christmas for me; but we won't resist. The +country that allows me copyright has a right to tax me. + Sincerely Yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Another English tax assessment came that year, based on the report + that it was understood that he was going to become an English + resident, and had leased Buckenham Hall, Norwich, for a year. + Clemens wrote his publishers: "I will explain that all that about + Buckenham Hall was an English newspaper's mistake. I was not in + England, and if I had been I wouldn't have been at Buckenham Hall, + anyway, but at Buckingham Palace, or I would have endeavored to find + out the reason why." Clemens made literature out of this tax + experience. He wrote an open letter to Her Majesty Queen Victoria. + Such a letter has no place in this collection. It was published in + the "Drawer" of Harper's Magazine, December, 1887, and is now + included in the uniform edition of his works under the title of, + "A Petition to the Queen of England." + + From the following letter, written at the end of the year, we gather + that the type-setter costs were beginning to make a difference in + the Clemens economies. + + + To Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia: + + HARTFORD, Dec. 18, '87. +DEAR PAMELA,--will you take this $15 and buy some candy or some other +trifle for yourself and Sam and his wife to remember that we remember +you, by? + +If we weren't a little crowded this year by the typesetter, I'd send a +check large enough to buy a family Bible or some other useful thing like +that. However we go on and on, but the type-setter goes on forever--at +$3,000 a month; which is much more satisfactory than was the case the +first seventeen months, when the bill only averaged $2,000, and promised +to take a thousand years. We'll be through, now, in 3 or 4 months, I +reckon, and then the strain will let up and we can breathe freely once +more, whether success ensues or failure. + +Even with a type-setter on hand we ought not to be in the least scrimped +--but it would take a long letter to explain why and who is to blame. + +All the family send love to all of you and best Christmas wishes for your +prosperity. + Affectionately, + SAM. + + + + +XXVIII + +LETTERS,1888. A YALE DEGREE. WORK ON "THE YANKEE." ON INTERVIEWING, +ETC. + + Mark Twain received his first college degree when he was made Master + of Arts by Yale, in June, 1888. Editor of the Courant, Charles H. + Clarke, was selected to notify him of his new title. Clarke was an + old friend to whom Clemens could write familiarly. + + + To Charles H. Clarke, in Hartford: + + ELMIRA, July 2, '88. +MY DEAR CHARLES,--Thanks for your thanks, and for your initiation +intentions. I shall be ready for you. I feel mighty proud of that +degree; in fact, I could squeeze the truth a little closer and say vain +of it. And why shouldn't I be?--I am the only literary animal of my +particular subspecies who has ever been given a degree by any College in +any age of the world, as far as I know. + Sincerely Yours + S. L. Clemens M. A. + + + Reply: Charles H. Clarke to S. L Clemens: + +MY DEAR FRIEND, You are "the only literary animal of your particular +subspecies" in existence and you've no cause for humility in the fact. +Yale has done herself at least as much credit as she has done you, and +"Don't you forget it." + C. H. C. + + + With the exception of his brief return to the river in 1882. Mark + Twain had been twenty-seven years away from pilots and piloting. + Nevertheless, he always kept a tender place in his heart for the old + times and for old river comrades. Major "Jack" Downing had been a + Mississippi pilot of early days, but had long since retired from the + river to a comfortable life ashore, in an Ohio town. Clemens had + not heard from him for years when a letter came which invited the + following answer. + + + To Major "Jack" Downing, in Middleport Ohio: + + ELMIRA, N. Y.[no month] 1888. +DEAR MAJOR,--And has it come to this that the dead rise up and speak? +For I supposed that you were dead, it has been so long since I heard your +name. + +And how young you've grown! I was a mere boy when I knew you on the +river, where you had been piloting for 35 years, and now you are only a +year and a half older than I am! I mean to go to Hot Springs myself and +get 30 or 40 years knocked off my age. It's manifestly the place that +Ponce de Leon was striking for, but the poor fellow lost the trail. + +Possibly I may see you, for I shall be in St. Louis a day or two in +November. I propose to go down the river and "note the changes" once +more before I make the long crossing, and perhaps you can come there. +Will you? I want to see all the boys that are left alive. + +And so Grant Marsh, too, is flourishing yet? A mighty good fellow, and +smart too. When we were taking that wood flat down to the Chambers, +which was aground, I soon saw that I was a perfect lubber at piloting +such a thing. I saw that I could never hit the Chambers with it, so I +resigned in Marsh's favor, and he accomplished the task to my admiration. +We should all have gone to the mischief if I had remained in authority. +I always had good judgement, more judgement than talent, in fact. + +No; the nom de plume did not originate in that way. Capt. Sellers used +the signature, "Mark Twain," himself, when he used to write up the +antiquities in the way of river reminiscences for the New Orleans +Picayune. He hated me for burlesquing them in an article in the True +Delta; so four years later when he died, I robbed the corpse--that is I +confiscated the nom de plume. I have published this vital fact 3,000 +times now. But no matter, it is good practice; it is about the only fact +that I can tell the same way every time. Very glad, indeed, to hear from +you Major, and shall be gladder still to see you in November. + + Truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + He did not make the journey down the river planned for that year. + He had always hoped to make another steamboat trip with Bixby, but + one thing and another interfered and he did not go again. + + Authors were always sending their books to Mark Twain to read, and + no busy man was ever more kindly disposed toward such offerings, + more generously considerate of the senders. Louis Pendleton was a + young unknown writer in 1888, but Clemens took time to read his + story carefully, and to write to him about it a letter that cost + precious time, thought, and effort. It must have rejoiced the young + man's heart to receive a letter like that, from one whom all young + authors held supreme. + + + To Louis Pendleton, in Georgia: + + ELMIRA, N. Y., Aug. 4, '88. +MY DEAR SIR,--I found your letter an hour ago among some others which had +lain forgotten a couple of weeks, and I at once stole time enough to read +Ariadne. Stole is the right word, for the summer "Vacation" is the only +chance I get for work; so, no minute subtracted from work is borrowed, it +is stolen. But this time I do not repent. As a rule, people don't send +me books which I can thank them for, and so I say nothing--which looks +uncourteous. But I thank you. Ariadne is a beautiful and satisfying +story; and true, too--which is the best part of a story; or indeed of any +other thing. Even liars have to admit that, if they are intelligent +liars; I mean in their private [the word conscientious written but +erased] intervals. (I struck that word out because a man's private +thought can never be a lie; what he thinks, is to him the truth, always; +what he speaks--but these be platitudes.) + +If you want me to pick some flaws--very well--but I do it unwillingly. +I notice one thing--which one may notice also in my books, and in all +books whether written by man or God: trifling carelessness of statement +or Expression. If I think that you meant that she took the lizard from +the water which she had drawn from the well, it is evidence--it is almost +proof--that your words were not as clear as they should have been. True, +it is only a trifling thing; but so is mist on a mirror. I would have +hung the pail on Ariadne's arm. You did not deceive me when you said +that she carried it under her arm, for I knew she didn't; still it was +not your right to mar my enjoyment of the graceful picture. If the pail +had been a portfolio, I wouldn't be making these remarks. The engraver +of a fine picture revises, and revises, and revises--and then revises, +and revises, and revises; and then repeats. And always the charm of that +picture grows, under his hand. It was good enough before--told its +story, and was beautiful. True: and a lovely girl is lovely, with +freckles; but she isn't at her level best with them. + +This is not hypercriticism; you have had training enough to know that. + +So much concerning exactness of statement. In that other not-small +matter--selection of the exact single word--you are hard to catch. +Still, I should hold that Mrs. Walker considered that there was no +occasion for concealment; that "motive" implied a deeper mental search +than she expended on the matter; that it doesn't reflect the attitude of +her mind with precision. Is this hypercriticism? I shan't dispute it. +I only say, that if Mrs. Walker didn't go so far as to have a motive, I +had to suggest that when a word is so near the right one that a body +can't quite tell whether it is or isn't, it's good politics to strike it +out and go for the Thesaurus. That's all. Motive may stand; but you +have allowed a snake to scream, and I will not concede that that was the +best word. + +I do not apologize for saying these things, for they are not said in the +speck-hunting spirit, but in the spirit of want-to-help-if-I-can. They +would be useful to me if said to me once a month, they may be useful to +you, said once. + +I save the other stories for my real vacation--which is nine months long, +to my sorrow. I thank you again. + Truly Yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + In the next letter we get a sidelight on the type-setting machine, + the Frankenstein monster that was draining their substance and + holding out false hopes of relief and golden return. The program + here outlined was one that would continue for several years yet, + with the end always in sight, but never quite attained. + + + To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Ia.: + + Oct. 3, '88. +Private. + +Saturday 29th, by a closely calculated estimate, there were 85 days' work +to do on the machine. + +We can use 4 men, but not constantly. If they could work constantly it +would complete the machine in 21 days, of course. They will all be on +hand and under wages, and each will get in all the work there is +opportunity for, but by how much they can reduce the 85 days toward the +21 days, nobody can tell. + +To-day I pay Pratt & Whitney $10,000. This squares back indebtedness and +everything to date. They began about May or April or March 1886--along +there somewhere, and have always kept from a dozen to two dozen +master-hands on the machine. + +That outgo is done; 4 men for a month or two will close up that leak and +caulk it. Work on the patents is also kind of drawing toward a +conclusion. + +Love to you both. All well here. + +And give our love to Ma if she can get the idea. + + SAM. + + + Mark Twain that year was working pretty steadily on 'The Yankee at + King Arthur's Court', a book which he had begun two years before. + He had published nothing since the Huck Finn story, and his company + was badly in need of a new book by an author of distinction. Also + it was highly desirable to earn money for himself; wherefore he set + to work to finish the Yankee story. He had worked pretty steadily + that summer in his Elmira study, but on his return to Hartford found + a good deal of confusion in the house, so went over to Twichell's, + where carpenter work was in progress. He seems to have worked there + successfully, though what improvement of conditions he found in that + numerous, lively household, over those at home it would be difficult + to say. + + + To Theodore W. Crane, at Quarry Farm, Elmira, N. Y. + + Friday, Oct.,5, '88. +DEAR THEO,--I am here in Twichell's house at work, with the noise of the +children and an army of carpenters to help. Of course they don't help, +but neither do they hinder. It's like a boiler-factory for racket, and +in nailing a wooden ceiling onto the room under me the hammering tickles +my feet amazingly sometimes, and jars my table a good deal; but I never +am conscious of the racket at all, and I move my feet into position of +relief without knowing when I do it. I began here Monday morning, and +have done eighty pages since. I was so tired last night that I thought I +would lie abed and rest, to-day; but I couldn't resist. I mean to try to +knock off tomorrow, but it's doubtful if I do. I want to finish the day +the machine finishes, and a week ago the closest calculations for that +indicated Oct. 22--but experience teaches me that their calculations will +miss fire, as usual. + +The other day the children were projecting a purchase, Livy and I to +furnish the money--a dollar and a half. Jean discouraged the idea. She +said: "We haven't got any money. Children, if you would think, you would +remember the machine isn't done." + +It's billiards to-night. I wish you were here. + With love to you both + S. L. C. + +P. S. I got it all wrong. It wasn't the children, it was Marie. She +wanted a box of blacking, for the children's shoes. Jean reproved her +--and said: + +"Why, Marie, you mustn't ask for things now. The machine isn't done." + + S. L. C. + + + The letter that follows is to another of his old pilot friends, one + who was also a schoolmate, Will Bowen, of Hannibal. There is today + no means of knowing the occasion upon which this letter was written, + but it does not matter; it is the letter itself that is of chief + value. + + + To Will Bowen, in Hannibal, Mo.: + + HARTFORD, Nov 4, '88. +DEAR WILL,--I received your letter yesterday evening, just as I was +starting out of town to attend a wedding, and so my mind was privately +busy, all the evening, in the midst of the maelstrom of chat and chaff +and laughter, with the sort of reflections which create themselves, +examine themselves, and continue themselves, unaffected by surroundings +--unaffected, that is understood, by the surroundings, but not +uninfluenced by them. Here was the near presence of the two supreme +events of life: marriage, which is the beginning of life, and death which +is the end of it. I found myself seeking chances to shirk into corners +where I might think, undisturbed; and the most I got out of my thought, +was this: both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one promises +happiness, doubtless the other assures it. A long procession of people +filed through my mind--people whom you and I knew so many years ago--so +many centuries ago, it seems like-and these ancient dead marched to the +soft marriage music of a band concealed in some remote room of the house; +and the contented music and the dreaming shades seemed in right accord +with each other, and fitting. Nobody else knew that a procession of the +dead was passing though this noisy swarm of the living, but there it was, +and to me there was nothing uncanny about it; Rio, they were welcome +faces to me. I would have liked to bring up every creature we knew in +those days--even the dumb animals--it would be bathing in the fabled +Fountain of Youth. + +We all feel your deep trouble with you; and we would hope, if we might, +but your words deny us that privilege. To die one's self is a thing that +must be easy, and of light consequence, but to lose a part of one's self +--well, we know how deep that pang goes, we who have suffered that +disaster, received that wound which cannot heal. + Sincerely your friend + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + His next is of quite a different nature. Evidently the typesetting + conditions had alarmed Orion, and he was undertaking some economies + with a view of retrenchment. Orion was always reducing economy to + science. Once, at an earlier date, he recorded that he had figured + his personal living expenses down to sixty cents a week, but + inasmuch as he was then, by his own confession, unable to earn the + sixty cents, this particular economy was wasted. Orion was a trial, + certainly, and the explosion that follows was not without excuse. + Furthermore, it was not as bad as it sounds. Mark Twain's rages + always had an element of humor in them, a fact which no one more + than Orion himself would appreciate. He preserved this letter, + quietly noting on the envelope, "Letter from Sam, about ma's nurse." + + + Letter to Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa: + + NOV. 29, '88. +Jesus Christ!--It is perilous to write such a man. You can go crazy on +less material than anybody that ever lived. What in hell has produced +all these maniacal imaginings? You told me you had hired an attendant +for ma. Now hire one instantly, and stop this nonsense of wearing Mollie +and yourself out trying to do that nursing yourselves. Hire the +attendant, and tell me her cost so that I can instruct Webster & Co. to +add it every month to what they already send. Don't fool away any more +time about this. And don't write me any more damned rot about "storms," +and inability to pay trivial sums of money and--and--hell and damnation! +You see I've read only the first page of your letter; I wouldn't read the +rest for a million dollars. + Yr + SAM. + +P. S. Don't imagine that I have lost my temper, because I swear. I +swear all day, but I do not lose my temper. And don't imagine that I am +on my way to the poorhouse, for I am not; or that I am uneasy, for I am +not; or that I am uncomfortable or unhappy--for I never am. I don't know +what it is to be unhappy or uneasy; and I am not going to try to learn +how, at this late day. + SAM. + + + Few men were ever interviewed oftener than Mark Twain, yet he never + welcomed interviewers and was seldom satisfied with them. "What I + say in an interview loses it character in print," he often remarked, + "all its life and personality. The reporter realizes this himself, + and tries to improve upon me, but he doesn't help matters any." + + Edward W. Bok, before he became editor of the Ladies Home Journal, + was conducting a weekly syndicate column under the title of "Bok's + Literary Leaves." It usually consisted of news and gossip of + writers, comment, etc., literary odds and ends, and occasional + interviews with distinguished authors. He went up to Hartford one + day to interview Mark Twain. The result seemed satisfactory to Bok, + but wishing to be certain that it would be satisfactory to Clemens, + he sent him a copy for approval. The interview was not returned; + in the place of it came a letter-not altogether disappointing, as + the reader may believe. + + + To Edward W. Bok, in New York: + +MY DEAR MR. BOK,--No, no. It is like most interviews, pure twaddle and +valueless. + +For several quite plain and simple reasons, an "interview" must, as a +rule, be an absurdity, and chiefly for this reason--It is an attempt to +use a boat on land or a wagon on water, to speak figuratively. Spoken +speech is one thing, written speech is quite another. Print is the +proper vehicle for the latter, but it isn't for the former. The moment +"talk" is put into print you recognize that it is not what it was when +you heard it; you perceive that an immense something has disappeared from +it. That is its soul. You have nothing but a dead carcass left on your +hands. Color, play of feature, the varying modulations of the voice, the +laugh, the smile, the informing inflections, everything that gave that +body warmth, grace, friendliness and charm and commended it to your +affections--or, at least, to your tolerance--is gone and nothing is left +but a pallid, stiff and repulsive cadaver. + +Such is "talk" almost invariably, as you see it lying in state in an +"interview". The interviewer seldom tries to tell one how a thing was +said; he merely puts in the naked remark and stops there. When one +writes for print his methods are very different. He follows forms which +have but little resemblance to conversation, but they make the reader +understand what the writer is trying to convey. And when the writer is +making a story and finds it necessary to report some of the talk of his +characters observe how cautiously and anxiously he goes at that risky and +difficult thing. "If he had dared to say that thing in my presence," +said Alfred, "taking a mock heroic attitude, and casting an arch glance +upon the company, blood would have flowed." + +"If he had dared to say that thing in my presence," said Hawkwood, with +that in his eye which caused more than one heart in that guilty +assemblage to quake, "blood would have flowed." + +"If he had dared to say that thing in my presence," said the paltry +blusterer, with valor on his tongue and pallor on his lips, "blood would +have flowed." + +So painfully aware is the novelist that naked talk in print conveys no +meaning that he loads, and often overloads, almost every utterance of his +characters with explanations and interpretations. It is a loud +confession that print is a poor vehicle for "talk"; it is a recognition +that uninterpreted talk in print would result in confusion to the reader, +not instruction. + +Now, in your interview, you have certainly been most accurate; you have +set down the sentences I uttered as I said them. But you have not a word +of explanation; what my manner was at several points is not indicated. +Therefore, no reader can possibly know where I was in earnest and where I +was joking; or whether I was joking altogether or in earnest altogether. +Such a report of a conversation has no value. It can convey many +meanings to the reader, but never the right one. To add interpretations +which would convey the right meaning is a something which would require +--what? An art so high and fine and difficult that no possessor of it +would ever be allowed to waste it on interviews. + +No; spare the reader, and spare me; leave the whole interview out; it is +rubbish. I wouldn't talk in my sleep if I couldn't talk better than +that. + +If you wish to print anything print this letter; it may have some value, +for it may explain to a reader here and there why it is that in +interviews, as a rule, men seem to talk like anybody but themselves. + Very sincerely yours, + MARK TWAIN. + + + + +XXIX + +LETTERS, 1889. THE MACHINE. DEATH OF MR. CRANE. +CONCLUSION OF THE YANKEE + +In January, 1889, Clemens believed, after his long seven years of +waiting, fruition had come in the matter of the type machine. Paige, the +inventor, seemed at last to have given it its finishing touches. The +mechanical marvel that had cost so much time, mental stress, and a +fortune in money, stood complete, responsive to the human will and touch +--the latest, and one of the greatest, wonders of the world. To George +Standring, a London printer and publisher, Clemens wrote: "The machine is +finished!" and added, "This is by far the most marvelous invention ever +contrived by man. And it is not a thing of rags and patches; it is made +of massive steel, and will last a century." + +In his fever of enthusiasm on that day when he had actually seen it in +operation, he wrote a number of exuberant letters. They were more or +less duplicates, but as the one to his brother is of fuller detail and +more intimate than the others, it has been selected for preservation +here. + + To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk: + + HARTFORD, Jan. 5, '89. +DEAR ORION,--At 12.20 this afternoon a line of movable types was spaced +and justified by machinery, for the first time in the history of the +world! And I was there to see. It was done automatically--instantly +--perfectly. This is indeed the first line of movable types that ever +was perfectly spaced and perfectly justified on this earth. + +This was the last function that remained to be tested--and so by long +odds the most amazing and extraordinary invention ever born of the brain +of man stands completed and perfect. Livy is down stairs celebrating. + +But it's a cunning devil, is that machine!--and knows more than any man +that ever lived. You shall see. We made the test in this way. We set +up a lot of random letters in a stick--three-fourths of a line; then +filled out the line with quads representing 14 spaces, each space to be +35/1000 of an inch thick. Then we threw aside the quads and put the +letters into the machine and formed them into 15 two-letter words, +leaving the words separated by two-inch vacancies. Then we started up +the machine slowly, by hand, and fastened our eyes on the space-selecting +pins. The first pin-block projected its third pin as the first word came +traveling along the race-way; second block did the same; but the third +block projected its second pin! + +"Oh, hell! stop the machine--something wrong--it's going to set a +30/1000 space!" + +General consternation. "A foreign substance has got into the spacing +plates." This from the head mathematician. + +"Yes, that is the trouble," assented the foreman. + +Paige examined. "No--look in, and you can see that there's nothing of +the kind." Further examination. "Now I know what it is--what it must +be: one of those plates projects and binds. It's too bad--the first +test is a failure." A pause. "Well, boys, no use to cry. Get to work +--take the machine down.--No--Hold on! don't touch a thing! Go right +ahead! We are fools, the machine isn't. The machine knows what it's +about. There is a speck of dirt on one of those types, and the machine +is putting in a thinner space to allow for it!" + +That was just it. The machine went right ahead, spaced the line, +justified it to a hair, and shoved it into the galley complete and +perfect! We took it out and examined it with a glass. You could not +tell by your eye that the third space was thinner than the others, but +the glass and the calipers showed the difference. Paige had always said +that the machine would measure invisible particles of dirt and allow for +them, but even he had forgotten that vast fact for the moment. + +All the witnesses made written record of the immense historical birth +--the first justification of a line of movable type by machinery--and +also set down the hour and the minute. Nobody had drank anything, and +yet everybody seemed drunk. Well-dizzy, stupefied, stunned. + +All the other wonderful inventions of the human brain sink pretty nearly +into commonplace contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle. +Telephones, telegraphs, locomotives, cotton gins, sewing machines, +Babbage calculators, jacquard looms, perfecting presses, Arkwright's +frames--all mere toys, simplicities! The Paige Compositor marches alone +and far in the lead of human inventions. + +In two or three weeks we shall work the stiffness out of her joints and +have her performing as smoothly and softly as human muscles, and then we +shall speak out the big secret and let the world come and gaze. + +Return me this letter when you have read it. + + SAM. + + + Judge of the elation which such a letter would produce in Keokuk! + Yet it was no greater than that which existed in Hartford--for a + time. + + Then further delays. Before the machine got "the stiffness out of + her joints" that "cunning devil" manifested a tendency to break the + types, and Paige, who was never happier than when he was pulling + things to pieces and making improvements, had the type-setter apart + again and the day of complete triumph was postponed. + + There was sadness at the Elmira farm that spring. Theodore Crane, + who had long been in poor health, seemed to grow daily worse. In + February he had paid a visit to Hartford and saw the machine in + operation, but by the end of May his condition was very serious. + Remembering his keen sense of humor, Clemens reported to him + cheering and amusing incidents. + + + To Mrs. Theodore Crane. in Elmira, N. Y.: + + HARTFORD, May 28, '89. +Susie dear, I want you to tell this to Theodore. You know how +absent-minded Twichell is, and how desolate his face is when he is in +that frame. At such times, he passes the word with a friend on the +street and is not aware of the meeting at all. Twice in a week, our +Clara had this latter experience with him within the past month. But the +second instance was too much for her, and she woke him up, in his tracks, +with a reproach. She said: + +"Uncle Joe, why do you always look as if you were just going down into +the grave, when you meet a person on the street?"--and then went on to +reveal to him the funereal spectacle which he presented on such +occasions. Well, she has met Twichell three times since then, and would +swim the Connecticut to avoid meeting him the fourth. As soon as he +sights her, no matter how public the place nor how far off she is, he +makes a bound into the air, heaves arms and legs into all sorts of +frantic gestures of delight, and so comes prancing, skipping and +pirouetting for her like a drunken Indian entering heaven. + +With a full invoice of love from us all to you and Theodore. + + S. L. C. + + + The reference in the next to the "closing sentence" in a letter + written by Howells to Clemens about this time, refers to a + heart-broken utterance of the former concerning his daughter + Winnie, who had died some time before. She had been a gentle + talented girl, but never of robust health. Her death had followed + a long period of gradual decline. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Judy 13, '89. +DEAR HOWELLS,--I came on from Elmira a day or two ago, where I left a +house of mourning. Mr. Crane died, after ten months of pain and two +whole days of dying, at the farm on the hill, the 3rd inst: A man who had +always hoped for a swift death. Mrs. Crane and Mrs. Clemens and the +children were in a gloom which brought back to me the days of nineteen +years ago, when Mr. Langdon died. It is heart-breaking to see Mrs. +Crane. Many a time, in the past ten days, the sight of her has reminded +me, with a pang, of the desolation which uttered itself in the closing +sentence of your last letter to me. I do see that there is an argument +against suicide: the grief of the worshipers left behind; the awful +famine in their hearts, these are too costly terms for the release. + +I shall be here ten days yet, and all alone: nobody in the house but the +servants. Can't Mrs. Howells spare you to me? Can't you come and stay +with me? The house is cool and pleasant; your work will not be +interrupted; we will keep to ourselves and let the rest of the world do +the same; you can have your choice of three bedrooms, and you will find +the Children's schoolroom (which was built for my study,) the perfection +of a retired and silent den for work. There isn't a fly or a mosquito on +the estate. Come--say you will. + +With kindest regards to Mrs. Howells, and Pilla and John, + Yours Ever + MARK. + + +Howells was more hopeful. He wrote: "I read something in a strange book, +The Physical Theory of Another Life, that consoles a little; namely, we +see and feel the power of Deity in such fullness that we ought to infer +the infinite justice and Goodness which we do not see or feel." And a +few days later, he wrote: "I would rather see and talk with you than any +other man in the world outside my own blood." + +A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court was brought to an end that +year and given to the artist and printer. Dan Beard was selected for the +drawings, and was given a free hand, as the next letter shows. + + + To Fred J. Hall, Manager Charles L. Webster & Co.: + +[Charles L. Webster, owing to poor health, had by this time retired +from the firm.] + + ELMIRA, July 20, '89. +DEAR MR. HALL,--Upon reflection--thus: tell Beard to obey his own +inspiration, and when he sees a picture in his mind put that picture on +paper, be it humorous or be it serious. I want his genius to be wholly +unhampered, I shan't have fears as to the result. They will be better +pictures than if I mixed in and tried to give him points on his own +trade. + +Send this note and he'll understand. + Yr + S. L. C. + + + Clemens had made a good choice in selecting Beard for the + illustrations. He was well qualified for the work, and being of a + socialistic turn of mind put his whole soul into it. When the + drawings were completed, Clemens wrote: "Hold me under permanent + obligations. What luck it was to find you! There are hundreds of + artists that could illustrate any other book of mine, but there was + only one who could illustrate this one. Yes, it was a fortunate + hour that I went netting for lightning bugs and caught a meteor. + Live forever!" + + Clemens, of course, was anxious for Howells to read The Yankee, and + Mrs. Clemens particularly so. Her eyes were giving her trouble that + summer, so that she could not read the MS. for herself, and she had + grave doubts as to some of its chapters. It may be said here that + the book to-day might have been better if Mrs. Clemens had been able + to read it. Howells was a peerless critic, but the revolutionary + subject-matter of the book so delighted him that he was perhaps + somewhat blinded to its literary defects. However, this is + premature. Howells did not at once see the story. He had promised + to come to Hartford, but wrote that trivial matters had made his + visit impossible. From the next letter we get the situation at this + time. The "Mr. Church" mentioned was Frederick S. Church, the + well-known artist. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, July 24, '89. +DEAR HOWELLS,--I, too, was as sorry as I could be; yes, and desperately +disappointed. I even did a heroic thing: shipped my book off to New York +lest I should forget hospitality and embitter your visit with it. Not +that I think you wouldn't like to read it, for I think you would; but not +on a holiday that's not the time. I see how you were situated--another +familiarity of Providence and wholly wanton intrusion--and of course we +could not help ourselves. Well, just think of it: a while ago, while +Providence's attention was absorbed in disordering some time-tables so as +to break up a trip of mine to Mr. Church's on the Hudson, that Johnstown +dam got loose. I swear I was afraid to pray, for fear I should laugh. +Well, I'm not going to despair; we'll manage a meet yet. + +I expect to go to Hartford again in August and maybe remain till I have +to come back here and fetch the family. And, along there in August, some +time, you let on that you are going to Mexico, and I will let on that I +am going to Spitzbergen, and then under cover of this clever stratagem we +will glide from the trains at Worcester and have a time. I have noticed +that Providence is indifferent about Mexico and Spitzbergen. + Ys Ever + MARK. + + + Possibly Mark Twain was not particularly anxious that Howells should + see his MS., fearing that he might lay a ruthless hand on some of + his more violent fulminations and wild fancies. However this may + be, further postponement was soon at an end. Mrs. Clemens's eyes + troubled her and would not permit her to read, so she requested that + the Yankee be passed upon by soberminded critics, such as Howells + and Edmund Clarence Stedman. Howells wrote that even if he hadn't + wanted to read the book for its own sake, or for the author's sake, + he would still want to do it for Mrs. Clemens's. Whereupon the + proofs were started in his direction. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + ELMIRA, Aug. 24, '89. +DEAR HOWELLS,--If you should be moved to speak of my book in the Study, +I shall be glad and proud--and the sooner it gets in, the better for the +book; though I don't suppose you can get it in earlier than the November +number--why, no, you can't get it in till a month later than that. Well, +anyway I don't think I'll send out any other press copy--except perhaps +to Stedman. I'm not writing for those parties who miscall themselves +critics, and I don't care to have them paw the book at all. It's my +swan-song, my retirement from literature permanently, and I wish to pass +to the cemetery unclodded. + +I judge that the proofs have begun to reach you about this time, as I had +some (though not revises,) this morning. I'm sure I'm going to be +charmed with Beard's pictures. Observe his nice take-off of Middle-Age +art-dinner-table scene. + Ys sincerely + MARK. + + + Howells's approval of the Yankee came almost in the form of exultant + shouts, one after reading each batch of proof. First he wrote: + "It's charming, original, wonderful! good in fancy and sound to the + core in morals." And again, "It's a mighty great book, and it makes + my heart burn with wrath. It seems God did not forget to put a soul + into you. He shuts most literary men off with a brain, merely." + Then, a few days later: "The book is glorious--simply noble; what + masses of virgin truth never touched in print before!" and, finally, + "Last night I read your last chapter. As Stedman says of the whole + book, it's titanic." + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Sept. 22, '89. +DEAR HOWELLS,--It is immensely good of you to grind through that stuff +for me; but it gives peace to Mrs. Clemens's soul; and I am as grateful +to you as a body can be. I am glad you approve of what I say about the +French Revolution. Few people will. It is odd that even to this day +Americans still observe that immortal benefaction through English and +other monarchical eyes, and have no shred of an opinion about it that +they didn't get at second-hand. + +Next to the 4th of July and its results, it was the noblest and the +holiest thing and the most precious that ever happened in this earth. +And its gracious work is not done yet--not anywhere in the remote +neighborhood of it. + +Don't trouble to send me all the proofs; send me the pages with your +corrections on them, and waste-basket the rest. We issue the book +Dec. 10; consequently a notice that appears Dec. 20 will be just in good +time. + +I am waiting to see your Study set a fashion in criticism. When that +happens--as please God it must--consider that if you lived three +centuries you couldn't do a more valuable work for this country, or a +humaner. + +As a rule a critic's dissent merely enrages, and so does no good; but by +the new art which you use, your dissent must be as welcome as your +approval, and as valuable. I do not know what the secret of it is, +unless it is your attitude--man courteously reasoning with man and +brother, in place of the worn and wearisome critical attitude of all this +long time--superior being lecturing a boy. + +Well, my book is written--let it go. But if it were only to write over +again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and +they keep multiplying and multiplying; but now they can't ever be said. +And besides, they would require a library--and a pen warmed up in hell. + Ys Ever + MARK. + + + The type-setting machine began to loom large in the background. + Clemens believed it perfected by this time. Paige had got it + together again and it was running steadily--or approximately so + --setting type at a marvelous speed and with perfect accuracy. In + time an expert operator would be able to set as high as eight + thousand ems per hour, or about ten times as much as a good + compositor could set and distribute by hand. Those who saw it were + convinced--most of them--that the type-setting problem was solved by + this great mechanical miracle. If there were any who doubted, it + was because of its marvelously minute accuracy which the others only + admired. Such accuracy, it was sometimes whispered, required + absolutely perfect adjustment, and what would happen when the great + inventor--"the poet in steel," as Clemens once called him--was no + longer at hand to supervise and to correct the slightest variation. + But no such breath of doubt came to Mark Twain; he believed the + machine as reliable as a constellation. + + But now there was need of capital to manufacture and market the + wonder. Clemens, casting about in his mind, remembered Senator + Jones, of Nevada, a man of great wealth, and his old friend, Joe + Goodman, of Nevada, in whom Jones had unlimited confidence. He + wrote to Goodman, and in this letter we get a pretty full exposition + of the whole matter as it stood in the fall of 1889. We note in + this communication that Clemens says that he has been at the machine + three years and seven months, but this was only the period during + which he had spent the regular monthly sum of three thousand + dollars. His interest in the invention had begun as far back as + 1880. + + + To Joseph T. Goodman, in Nevada: + + Private. HARTFORD, Oct. 7, '89. +DEAR JOE,-I had a letter from Aleck Badlam day before yesterday, +and in answering him I mentioned a matter which I asked him to consider +a secret except to you and John McComb,--[This is Col. McComb, of the +Alta-California, who had sent Mark Twain on the Quaker City +excursion]--as I am not ready yet to get into the newspapers. + +I have come near writing you about this matter several times, but it +wasn't ripe, and I waited. It is ripe, now. It is a type-setting +machine which I undertook to build for the inventor (for a consideration). +I have been at it three years and seven months without losing a day, at a +cost of $3,000 a month, and in so private a way that Hartford has known +nothing about it. Indeed only a dozen men have known of the matter. +I have reported progress from time to time to the proprietors of the +N. Y. Sun, Herald, Times, World, Harper Brothers and John F. Trow; also +to the proprietors of the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe. Three +years ago I asked all these people to squelch their frantic desire to +load up their offices with the Mergenthaler (N. Y. Tribune) machine, and +wait for mine and then choose between the two. They have waited--with no +very gaudy patience--but still they have waited; and I could prove to +them to-day that they have not lost anything by it. But I reserve the +proof for the present--except in the case of the N. Y. Herald; I sent an +invitation there the other day--a courtesy due a paper which ordered +$240,000 worth of our machines long ago when it was still in a crude +condition. The Herald has ordered its foreman to come up here next +Thursday; but that is the only invitation which will go out for some +time yet. + +The machine was finished several weeks ago, and has been running ever +since in the machine shop. It is a magnificent creature of steel, all of +Pratt & Whitney's super-best workmanship, and as nicely adjusted and as +accurate as a watch. In construction it is as elaborate and complex as +that machine which it ranks next to, by every right--Man--and in +performance it is as simple and sure. + +Anybody can set type on it who can read--and can do it after only 15 +minutes' instruction. The operator does not need to leave his seat at +the keyboard; for the reason that he is not required to do anything but +strike the keys and set type--merely one function; the spacing, +justifying, emptying into the galley, and distributing of dead matter is +all done by the machine without anybody's help--four functions. + +The ease with which a cub can learn is surprising. Day before yesterday +I saw our newest cub set, perfectly space and perfectly justify 2,150 ems +of solid nonpareil in an hour and distribute the like amount in the same +hour--and six hours previously he had never seen the machine or its +keyboard. It was a good hour's work for 3-year veterans on the other +type-setting machines to do. We have 3 cubs. The dean of the trio is a +school youth of 18. Yesterday morning he had been an apprentice on the +machine 16 working days (8-hour days); and we speeded him to see what he +could do in an hour. In the hour he set 5,900 ems solid nonpareil, and +the machine perfectly spaced and justified it, and of course distributed +the like amount in the same hour. Considering that a good fair +compositor sets 700 and distributes 700 in the one hour, this boy did the +work of about 8 x a compositors in that hour. This fact sends all other +type-setting machines a thousand miles to the rear, and the best of them +will never be heard of again after we publicly exhibit in New York. + +We shall put on 3 more cubs. We have one school boy and two compositors, +now,--and we think of putting on a type writer, a stenographer, and +perhaps a shoemaker, to show that no special gifts or training are +required with this machine. We shall train these beginners two or three +months--or until some one of them gets up to 7,000 an hour--then we will +show up in New York and run the machine 24 hours a day 7 days in the +week, for several months--to prove that this is a machine which will +never get out of order or cause delay, and can stand anything an anvil +can stand. You know there is no other typesetting machine that can run +two hours on a stretch without causing trouble and delay with its +incurable caprices. + +We own the whole field--every inch of it--and nothing can dislodge us. + +Now then, above is my preachment, and here follows the reason and purpose +of it. I want you to run over here, roost over the machine a week and +satisfy yourself, and then go to John P. Jones or to whom you please, and +sell me a hundred thousand dollars' worth of this property and take ten +per cent in cash or the "property" for your trouble--the latter, if you +are wise, because the price I ask is a long way short of the value. + +What I call "property" is this. A small part of my ownership consists of +a royalty of $500 on every machine marketed under the American patents. +My selling-terms are, a permanent royalty of one dollar on every +American-marketed machine for a thousand dollars cash to me in hand paid. +We shan't market any fewer than 5,000 machines in 15 years--a return of +fifteen thousand dollars for one thousand. A royalty is better than +stock, in one way--it must be paid, every six months, rain or shine; it +is a debt, and must be paid before dividends are declared. By and by, +when we become a stock company I shall buy these royalties back for stock +if I can get them for anything like reasonable terms. + +I have never borrowed a penny to use on the machine, and never sold a +penny's worth of the property until the machine was entirely finished and +proven by the severest tests to be what she started out to be--perfect, +permanent, and occupying the position, as regards all kindred machines, +which the City of Paris occupies as regards the canvas-backs of the +mercantile marine. + +It is my purpose to sell two hundred dollars of my royalties at the above +price during the next two months and keep the other $300. + +Mrs. Clemens begs Mrs. Goodman to come with you, and asks pardon for not +writing the message herself--which would be a pathetically-welcome +spectacle to me; for I have been her amanuensis for 8 months, now, since +her eyes failed her. Yours as always + MARK. + + + While this letter with its amazing contents is on its way to + astonish Joe Goodman, we will consider one of quite a different, + but equally characteristic sort. We may assume that Mark Twain's + sister Pamela had been visiting him in Hartford and was now making + a visit in Keokuk. + + + To Mrs. Moffett, in Keokuk: + + HARTFORD, Oct 9, '89. +DEAR PAMELA,--An hour after you left I was suddenly struck with a +realizing sense of the utter chuckle-headedness of that notion of mine: +to send your trunk after you. Land! it was idiotic. None but a lunatic +would, separate himself from his baggage. + +Well, I am soulfully glad the baggage fetcher saved me from consummating +my insane inspiration. I met him on the street in the afternoon and paid +him again. I shall pay him several times more, as opportunity offers. + +I declined the invitation to banquet with the visiting South American +Congress, in a polite note explaining that I had to go to New York today. +I conveyed the note privately to Patrick; he got the envelope soiled, +and asked Livy to put on a clean one. That is why I am going to the +banquet; also why I have disinvited the boys I thought I was going to +punch billiards with, upstairs to-night. + +Patrick is one of the injudiciousest people I ever struck. And I am the +other. + Your Brother + SAM. + + + The Yankee was now ready for publication, and advance sheets were + already in the reviewers' hands. Just at this moment the Brazilian + monarchy crumbled, and Clemens was moved to write Sylvester Baxter, + of the Boston Herald, a letter which is of special interest in its + prophecy of the new day, the dawn of which was even nearer than he + suspected. + + +DEAR MR. BAXTER, Another throne has gone down, and I swim in oceans of +satisfaction. I wish I might live fifty years longer; I believe I should +see the thrones of Europe selling at auction for old iron. I believe I +should really see the end of what is surely the grotesquest of all the +swindles ever invented by man-monarchy. It is enough to make a graven +image laugh, to see apparently rational people, away down here in this +wholesome and merciless slaughter-day for shams, still mouthing empty +reverence for those moss-backed frauds and scoundrelisms, hereditary +kingship and so-called "nobility." It is enough to make the monarchs and +nobles themselves laugh--and in private they do; there can be no question +about that. I think there is only one funnier thing, and that is the +spectacle of these bastard Americans--these Hamersleys and Huntingtons +and such--offering cash, encumbered by themselves, for rotten carcases +and stolen titles. When our great brethren the disenslaved Brazilians +frame their Declaration of Independence, I hope they will insert this +missing link: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all monarchs +are usurpers, and descendants of usurpers; for the reason that no throne +was ever set up in this world by the will, freely exercised, of the only +body possessing the legitimate right to set it up--the numerical mass of +the nation." + +You already have the advance sheets of my forthcoming book in your hands. +If you will turn to about the five hundredth page, you will find a state +paper of my Connecticut Yankee in which he announces the dissolution of +King Arthur's monarchy and proclaims the English Republic. Compare it +with the state paper which announces the downfall of the Brazilian +monarchy and proclaims the Republic of the United States of Brazil, and +stand by to defend the Yankee from plagiarism. There is merely a +resemblance of ideas, nothing more. The Yankee's proclamation was +already in print a week ago. This is merely one of those odd +coincidences which are always turning up. Come, protect the Yank from +that cheapest and easiest of all charges--plagiarism. Otherwise, you +see, he will have to protect himself by charging approximate and +indefinite plagiarism upon the official servants of our majestic twin +down yonder, and then there might be war, or some similar annoyance. + +Have you noticed the rumor that the Portuguese throne is unsteady, and +that the Portuguese slaves are getting restive? Also, that the head +slave-driver of Europe, Alexander III, has so reduced his usual monthly +order for chains that the Russian foundries are running on only half time +now? Also that other rumor that English nobility acquired an added +stench the other day--and had to ship it to India and the continent +because there wasn't any more room for it at home? Things are working. +By and by there is going to be an emigration, may be. Of course we shall +make no preparation; we never do. In a few years from now we shall have +nothing but played-out kings and dukes on the police, and driving the +horse-cars, and whitewashing fences, and in fact overcrowding all the +avenues of unskilled labor; and then we shall wish, when it is too late, +that we had taken common and reasonable precautions and drowned them at +Castle Garden. + + + There followed at this time a number of letters to Goodman, but as + there is much of a sameness in them, we need not print them all. + Clemens, in fact, kept the mails warm with letters bulging with + schemes for capitalization, and promising vast wealth to all + concerned. When the letters did not go fast enough he sent + telegrams. In one of the letters Goodman is promised "five hundred + thousand dollars out of the profits before we get anything + ourselves." One thing we gather from these letters is that Paige + has taken the machine apart again, never satisfied with its + perfection, or perhaps getting a hint that certain of its + perfections were not permanent. A letter at the end of November + seems worth preserving here. + + + To Joseph T. Goodman, in California: + + HARTFORD, Nov. 29, '89. +DEAR JOE, Things are getting into better and more flexible shape every +day. Papers are now being drawn which will greatly simplify the raising +of capital; I shall be in supreme command; it will not be necessary for +the capitalist to arrive at terms with anybody but me. I don't want to +dicker with anybody but Jones. I know him; that is to say, I want to +dicker with you, and through you with Jones. Try to see if you can't be +here by the 15th of January. + +The machine was as perfect as a watch when we took her apart the other +day; but when she goes together again the 15th of January we expect her +to be perfecter than a watch. + +Joe, I want you to sell some royalties to the boys out there, if you can, +for I want to be financially strong when we go to New York. You know the +machine, and you appreciate its future enormous career better than any +man I know. At the lowest conceivable estimate (2,000 machines a year,) +we shall sell 34,000 in the life of the patent--17 years. + +All the family send love to you--and they mean it, or they wouldn't say +it. + Yours ever + MARK. + + + The Yankee had come from the press, and Howells had praised it in + the "Editor's Study" in Harper's Magazine. He had given it his + highest commendation, and it seems that his opinion of it did not + change with time. "Of all fanciful schemes of fiction it pleases me + most," he in one place declared, and again referred to it as + "a greatly imagined and symmetrically developed tale." + + In more than one letter to Goodman, Clemens had urged him to come + East without delay. "Take the train, Joe, and come along," he wrote + early in December. And we judge from the following that Joe had + decided to come. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Dec. 23, '89. +DEAR HOWELLS,--The magazine came last night, and the Study notice is just +great. The satisfaction it affords us could not be more prodigious if +the book deserved every word of it; and maybe it does; I hope it does, +though of course I can't realize it and believe it. But I am your +grateful servant, anyway and always. + +I am going to read to the Cadets at West Point Jan. 11. I go from here +to New York the 9th, and up to the Point the 11th. Can't you go with me? +It's great fun. I'm going to read the passages in the "Yankee" in which +the Yankee's West Point cadets figure--and shall covertly work in a +lecture on aristocracy to those boys. I am to be the guest of the +Superintendent, but if you will go I will shake him and we will go to the +hotel. He is a splendid fellow, and I know him well enough to take that +liberty. + +And won't you give me a day or two's visit toward the end of January? +For two reasons: the machine will be at work again by that time, and we +want to hear the rest of the dream-story; Mrs. Clemens keeps speaking +about it and hankering for it. And we can have Joe Goodman on hand again +by that time, and I want you to get to know him thoroughly. It's well +worth it. I am going to run up and stay over night with you as soon as I +can get a chance. + +We are in the full rush of the holidays now, and an awful rush it is, +too. You ought to have been here the other day, to make that day perfect +and complete. All alone I managed to inflict agonies on Mrs: Clemens, +whereas I was expecting nothing but praises. I made a party call the day +after the party--and called the lady down from breakfast to receive it. +I then left there and called on a new bride, who received me in her +dressing-gown; and as things went pretty well, I stayed to luncheon. +The error here was, that the appointed reception-hour was 3 in the +afternoon, and not at the bride's house but at her aunt's in another part +of the town. However, as I meant well, none of these disasters +distressed me. + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + The Yankee did not find a very hearty welcome in England. English + readers did not fancy any burlesque of their Arthurian tales, or + American strictures on their institutions. Mark Twain's publishers + had feared this, and asked that the story be especially edited for + the English edition. Clemens, however, would not listen to any + suggestions of the sort. + + + To Messrs. Chatto & Windus, in London, Eng.: + +GENTLEMEN,--Concerning The Yankee, I have already revised the story +twice; and it has been read critically by W. D. Howells and Edmund +Clarence Stedman, and my wife has caused me to strike out several +passages that have been brought to her attention, and to soften others. +Furthermore, I have read chapters of the book in public where Englishmen +were present and have profited by their suggestions. + +Now, mind you, I have taken all this pains because I wanted to say a +Yankee mechanic's say against monarchy and its several natural props, +and yet make a book which you would be willing to print exactly as it +comes to you, without altering a word. + +We are spoken of (by Englishmen) as a thin-skinned people. It is you who +are thin-skinned. An Englishman may write with the most brutal frankness +about any man or institution among us and we republish him without +dreaming of altering a line or a word. But England cannot stand that +kind of a book written about herself. It is England that is +thin-skinned. It causeth me to smile when I read the modifications of my +language which have been made in my English editions to fit them for the +sensitive English palate. + +Now, as I say, I have taken laborious pains to so trim this book of +offense that you might not lack the nerve to print it just as it stands. +I am going to get the proofs to you just as early as I can. I want you +to read it carefully. If you can publish it without altering a single +word, go ahead. Otherwise, please hand it to J. R. Osgood in time for +him to have it published at my expense. + +This is important, for the reason that the book was not written for +America; it was written for England. So many Englishmen have done their +sincerest best to teach us something for our betterment that it seems to +me high time that some of us should substantially recognize the good +intent by trying to pry up the English nation to a little higher level of +manhood in turn. + Very truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + +The English nation, at least a considerable portion of it, did not wish +to be "pried up to a higher level of manhood" by a Connecticut Yankee. +The papers pretty generally denounced the book as coarse; in fact, a +vulgar travesty. Some of the critics concluded that England, after all, +had made a mistake in admiring Mark Twain. Clemens stood this for a time +and then seems to have decided that something should be done. One of the +foremost of English critics was his friend and admirer; he would state +the case to him fully and invite his assistance. + + + To Andrew Lang, in London: + +[First page missing.] + + 1889 +They vote but do not print. The head tells you pretty promptly whether +the food is satisfactory or not; and everybody hears, and thinks the +whole man has spoken. It is a delusion. Only his taste and his smell +have been heard from--important, both, in a way, but these do not build +up the man; and preserve his life and fortify it. + +The little child is permitted to label its drawings "This is a cow this +is a horse," and so on. This protects the child. It saves it from the +sorrow and wrong of hearing its cows and its horses criticized as +kangaroos and work benches. A man who is white-washing a fence is doing +a useful thing, so also is the man who is adorning a rich man's house +with costly frescoes; and all of us are sane enough to judge these +performances by standards proper to each. Now, then, to be fair, an +author ought to be allowed to put upon his book an explanatory line: +"This is written for the Head;" "This is written for the Belly and the +Members." And the critic ought to hold himself in honor bound to put +away from him his ancient habit of judging all books by one standard, and +thenceforth follow a fairer course. + +The critic assumes, every time, that if a book doesn't meet the +cultivated-class standard, it isn't valuable. Let us apply his law all +around: for if it is sound in the case of novels, narratives, pictures, +and such things, it is certainly sound and applicable to all the steps +which lead up to culture and make culture possible. It condemns the +spelling book, for a spelling book is of no use to a person of culture; +it condemns all school books and all schools which lie between the +child's primer and Greek, and between the infant school and the +university; it condemns all the rounds of art which lie between the cheap +terra cotta groups and the Venus de Medici, and between the chromo and +the Transfiguration; it requires Whitcomb Riley to sing no more till he +can sing like Shakespeare, and it forbids all amateur music and will +grant its sanction to nothing below the "classic." + +Is this an extravagant statement? No, it is a mere statement of fact. +It is the fact itself that is extravagant and grotesque. And what is the +result? This--and it is sufficiently curious: the critic has actually +imposed upon the world the superstition that a painting by Raphael is +more valuable to the civilizations of the earth than is a chromo; and the +august opera than the hurdy-gurdy and the villagers' singing society; and +Homer than the little everybody's-poet whose rhymes are in all mouths +today and will be in nobody's mouth next generation; and the Latin +classics than Kipling's far-reaching bugle-note; and Jonathan Edwards +than the Salvation Army; and the Venus de Medici than the plaster-cast +peddler; the superstition, in a word, that the vast and awful comet that +trails its cold lustre through the remote abysses of space once a century +and interests and instructs a cultivated handful of astronomers is worth +more to the world than the sun which warms and cheers all the nations +every day and makes the crops to grow. + +If a critic should start a religion it would not have any object but to +convert angels: and they wouldn't need it. The thin top crust of +humanity--the cultivated--are worth pacifying, worth pleasing, worth +coddling, worth nourishing and preserving with dainties and delicacies, +it is true; but to be caterer to that little faction is no very dignified +or valuable occupation, it seems to me; it is merely feeding the +over-fed, and there must be small satisfaction in that. It is not that +little minority who are already saved that are best worth trying to +uplift, I should think, but the mighty mass of the uncultivated who are +underneath. That mass will never see the Old Masters--that sight is for +the few; but the chromo maker can lift them all one step upward toward +appreciation of art; they cannot have the opera, but the hurdy-gurdy and +the singing class lift them a little way toward that far light; they will +never know Homer, but the passing rhymester of their day leaves them +higher than he found them; they may never even hear of the Latin +classics, but they will strike step with Kipling's drum-beat, and they +will march; for all Jonathan Edwards's help they would die in their +slums, but the Salvation Army will beguile some of them up to pure air +and a cleaner life; they know no sculpture, the Venus is not even a name +to them, but they are a grade higher in the scale of civilization by the +ministrations of the plaster-cast than they were before it took its place +upon then mantel and made it beautiful to their unexacting eyes. + +Indeed I have been misjudged, from the very first. I have never tried in +even one single instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes. +I was not equipped for it, either by native gifts or training. And I +never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger +game--the masses. I have seldom deliberately tried to instruct them, +but have done my best to entertain them. To simply amuse them would have +satisfied my dearest ambition at any time; for they could get instruction +elsewhere, and I had two chances to help to the teacher's one: for +amusement is a good preparation for study and a good healer of fatigue +after it. My audience is dumb, it has no voice in print, and so I cannot +know whether I have won its approbation or only got its censure. + +Yes, you see, I have always catered for the Belly and the Members, but +have been served like the others--criticized from the culture-standard +--to my sorrow and pain; because, honestly, I never cared what became of +the cultured classes; they could go to the theatre and the opera--they +had no use for me and the melodeon. + +And now at last I arrive at my object and tender my petition, making +supplication to this effect: that the critics adopt a rule recognizing +the Belly and the Members, and formulate a standard whereby work done for +them shall be judged. Help me, Mr. Lang; no voice can reach further than +yours in a case of this kind, or carry greater weight of authority. + + + Lang's reply was an article in the Illustrated London News on "The + Art of Mark Twain." Lang had no admiration to express for the + Yankee, which he confessed he had not cared to read, but he + glorified Huck Finn to the highest. "I can never forget, nor be + ungrateful for the exquisite pleasure with which I read Huckleberry + Finn for the first time, years ago," he wrote; "I read it again last + night, deserting Kenilworth for Huck. I never laid it down till I + had finished it." + + Lang closed his article by referring to the story of Huck as the + "great American novel which had escaped the eyes of those who + watched to see this new planet swim into their ken." + + + + + +LETTERS, 1890, CHIEFLY TO JOS. T. GOODMAN. THE GREAT MACHINE ENTERPRISE + + Dr. John Brown's son, whom Mark Twain and his wife had known in 1873 + as "Jock," sent copies of Dr. John Brown and His Sister Isabella, by + E. T. McLaren. It was a gift appreciated in the Clemens home. + + + To Mr. John Brown, in Edinburgh, Scotland: + + HARTFORD, Feby 11, 1890. +DEAR MR. BROWN,--Both copies came, and we are reading and re-reading the +one, and lending the other, to old time adorers of "Rab and his Friends." +It is an exquisite book; the perfection of literary workmanship. It says +in every line, "Don't look at me, look at him"--and one tries to be good +and obey; but the charm of the painter is so strong that one can't keep +his entire attention on the developing portrait, but must steal +side-glimpses of the artist, and try to divine the trick of her +felicitous brush. In this book the doctor lives and moves just as he +was. He was the most extensive slave-holder of his time, and the +kindest; and yet he died without setting one of his bondmen free. +We all send our very, very kindest regards. + Sincerely yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + If Mark Twain had been less interested in the type-setting machine + he might possibly have found a profit that winter in the old Sellers + play, which he had written with Howells seven years before. The + play had eventually been produced at the Lyceum Theatre in New York, + with A. P. Burbank in the leading role, and Clemens and Howells as + financial backers. But it was a losing investment, nor did it pay + any better when Clemens finally sent Burbank with it on the road. + Now, however, James A. Herne, a well-known actor and playwright, + became interested in the idea, after a discussion of the matter with + Howells, and there seemed a probability that with changes made under + Herne's advisement the play might be made sensible and successful. + + But Mark Twain's greater interest was now all in the type-machine, + and certainly he had no money to put into any other venture. His + next letter to Goodman is illuminating--the urgency of his need for + funds opposed to that conscientiousness which was one of the most + positive forces of Mark Twain's body spiritual. The Mr. Arnot of + this letter was an Elmira capitalist. + + + To Jos. T. Goodman, in California: + + HARTFORD, March 31, '90. +DEAR JOE,--If you were here, I should say, "Get you to Washington and beg +Senator Jones to take the chances and put up about ten or "--no, I +wouldn't. The money would burn a hole in my pocket and get away from me +if the furnisher of it were proceeding upon merely your judgment and mine +and without other evidence. It is too much of a responsibility. + +But I am in as close a place to-day as ever I was; $3,000 due for the +last month's machine-expenses, and the purse empty. I notified Mr. Arnot +a month ago that I should want $5,000 to-day, and his check arrived last +night; but I sent it back to him, because when he bought of me on the 9th +of December I said that I would not draw upon him for 3 months, and that +before that date Senator Jones would have examined the machine and +approved, or done the other thing. If Jones should arrive here a week or +ten days from now (as he expects to do,) and should not approve, and +shouldn't buy any royalties, my deal with Arnot would not be +symmetrically square, and then how could I refund? The surest way was to +return his check. + +I have talked with the madam, and here is the result. I will go down to +the factory and notify Paige that I will scrape together $6,000 to meet +the March and April expenses, and will retire on the 30th of April and +return the assignment to him if in the meantime I have not found +financial relief. + +It is very rough; for the machine does at last seem perfect, and just a +bird to go! I think she's going to be good for 8,000 ems an hour in the +hands of a good ordinary man after a solid year's practice. I may be in +error, but I most solidly believe it. + +There's an improved Mergenthaler in New York; Paige and Davis and I +watched it two whole afternoons. + With the love of us all, + MARK. + + + Arnot wrote Clemens urging him to accept the check for five thousand + dollars in this moment of need. Clemens was probably as sorely + tempted to compromise with his conscience as he had ever been in his + life, but his resolution field firm. + + + To M. H. Arnot, in Elmira, N. Y.: + +MR. M. H. ARNOT + +DEAR SIR,--No--no, I could not think of taking it, with you unsatisfied; +and you ought not to be satisfied until you have made personal +examination of the machine and had a consensus of testimony of +disinterested people, besides. My own perfect knowledge of what is +required of such a machine, and my perfect knowledge of the fact that +this is the only machine that can meet that requirement, make it +difficult for me to realize that a doubt is possible to less well-posted +men; and so I would have taken your money without thinking, and thus +would have done a great wrong to you and a great one to myself. And now +that I go back over the ground, I remember that where I said I could get +along 3 months without drawing on you, that delay contemplated a visit +from you to the machine in the interval, and your satisfaction with its +character and prospects. I had forgotten all that. But I remember it +now; and the fact that it was not "so nominated in the bond" does not +alter the case or justify me in making my call so prematurely. I do not +know that you regarded all that as a part of the bargain--for you were +thoroughly and magnanimously unexacting--but I so regarded it, +notwithstanding I have so easily managed to forget all about it. + +You so gratified me, and did me so much honor in bonding yourself to me +in a large sum, upon no evidence but my word and with no protection but +my honor, that my pride in that is much stronger than my desire to reap a +money advantage from it. + +With the sincerest appreciation I am Truly yours + S L. CLEMENS. + +P. S. I have written a good many words and yet I seem to have failed to +say the main thing in exact enough language--which is, that the +transaction between us is not complete and binding until you shall have +convinced yourself that the machine's character and prospects are +satisfactory. + +I ought to explain that the grippe delayed us some weeks, and that we +have since been waiting for Mr. Jones. When he was ready, we were not; +and now we have been ready more than a month, while he has been kept in +Washington by the Silver bill. He said the other day that to venture out +of the Capitol for a day at this time could easily chance to hurt him if +the bill came up for action, meantime, although it couldn't hurt the +bill, which would pass anyway. Mrs. Jones said she would send me two or +three days' notice, right after the passage of the bill, and that they +would follow as soon as I should return word that their coming would not +inconvenience us. I suppose I ought to go to New York without waiting +for Mr. Jones, but it would not be wise to go there without money. + +The bill is still pending. + + + The Mergenthaler machine, like the Paige, was also at this time in + the middle stages of experimental development. It was a slower + machine, but it was simpler, less expensive, occupied less room. + There was not so much about it to get out of order; it was not so + delicate, not so human. These were immense advantages. + + But no one at this time could say with certainty which typesetter + would reap the harvest of millions. It was only sure that at least + one of them would, and the Mergenthaler people were willing to trade + stock for stock with the Paige company in order to insure financial + success for both, whichever won. Clemens, with a faith that never + faltered, declined this offer, a decision that was to cost him + millions. + + Winter and spring had gone and summer had come, but still there had + been no financial conclusion with Jones, Mackay, and the other rich + Californians who were to put up the necessary million for the + machine's manufacture. Goodman was spending a large part of his + time traveling back and forth between California and Washington, + trying to keep business going at both ends. Paige spent most of his + time working out improvements for the type-setter, delicate + attachments which complicated its construction more and more. + + + To Joe T. Goodman, in Washington: + + HARTFORD, June 22, '90. +DEAR JOE,--I have been sitting by the machine 2 hours, this afternoon, +and my admiration of it towers higher than ever. There is no sort of +mistake about it, it is the Big Bonanza. In the 2 hours, the time lost +by type-breakage was 3 minutes. + +This machine is totally without a rival. Rivalry with it is impossible. +Last Friday, Fred Whitmore (it was the 28th day of his apprenticeship on +the machine) stacked up 49,700 ems of solid nonpareil in 8 hours, and the +type-breaking delay was only 6 minutes for the day. + +I claim yet, as I have always claimed, that the machine's market (abroad +and here together,) is today worth $150,000,000 without saying anything +about the doubling and trebling of this sum that will follow within the +life of the patents. Now here is a queer fact: I am one of the +wealthiest grandees in America--one of the Vanderbilt gang, in fact--and +yet if you asked me to lend you a couple of dollars I should have to ask +you to take my note instead. + +It makes me cheerful to sit by the machine: come up with Mrs. Goodman and +refresh yourself with a draught of the same. + Ys ever + MARK. + + + The machine was still breaking the types now and then, and no doubt + Paige was itching to take it to pieces, and only restrained by force + from doing so. He was never thoroughly happy unless he was taking + the machine apart or setting it up again. Finally, he was allowed + to go at it--a disasterous permission, for it was just then that + Jones decided to steal a day or two from the Silver Bill and watch + the type-setter in operation. Paige already had it in parts when + this word came from Goodman, and Jones's visit had to be called off. + His enthusiasm would seem to have weakened from that day. In July, + Goodman wrote that both Mackay and Jones had become somewhat + diffident in the matter of huge capitalization. He thought it + partly due, at least, to "the fatal delays that have sicklied over + the bloom of original enthusiasm." Clemens himself went down to + Washington and perhaps warmed Jones with his eloquence; at least, + Jones seemed to have agreed to make some effort in the matter a + qualified promise, the careful word of a wary politician and + capitalist. How many Washington trips were made is not certain, but + certainly more than one. Jones would seem to have suggested forms + of contracts, but if he came to the point of signing any there is no + evidence of it to-day. + + Any one who has read Mark Twain's, "A Connecticut Yankee in King + Arthur's Court," has a pretty good idea of his opinion of kings in + general, and tyrants in particular. Rule by "divine right," however + liberal, was distasteful to him; where it meant oppression it + stirred him to violence. In his article, "The Czar's Soliloquy," he + gave himself loose rein concerning atrocities charged to the master + of Russia, and in a letter which he wrote during the summer of 1890, + he offered a hint as to remedies. The letter was written by + editorial request, but was never mailed. Perhaps it seemed too + openly revolutionary at the moment. + + Yet scarcely more than a quarter of a century was needed to make it + "timely." Clemens and his family were spending some weeks in the + Catskills when it was written. + + + An unpublished letter on the Czar. + + ONTEORA, 1890. +TO THE EDITOR OF FREE RUSSIA,--I thank you for the compliment of your +invitation to say something, but when I ponder the bottom paragraph on +your first page, and then study your statement on your third page, of the +objects of the several Russian liberation-parties, I do not quite know +how to proceed. Let me quote here the paragraph referred to: + +"But men's hearts are so made that the sight of one voluntary victim for +a noble idea stirs them more deeply than the sight of a crowd submitting +to a dire fate they cannot escape. Besides, foreigners could not see so +clearly as the Russians how much the Government was responsible for the +grinding poverty of the masses; nor could they very well realize the +moral wretchedness imposed by that Government upon the whole of educated +Russia. But the atrocities committed upon the defenceless prisoners are +there in all their baseness, concrete and palpable, admitting of no +excuse, no doubt or hesitation, crying out to the heart of humanity +against Russian tyranny. And the Tzar's Government, stupidly confident +in its apparently unassailable position, instead of taking warning from +the first rebukes, seems to mock this humanitarian age by the aggravation +of brutalities. Not satisfied with slowly killing its prisoners, and +with burying the flower of our young generation in the Siberian desserts, +the Government of Alexander III. resolved to break their spirit by +deliberately submitting them to a regime of unheard-of brutality and +degradation." + +When one reads that paragraph in the glare of George Kennan's +revelations, and considers how much it means; considers that all earthly +figures fail to typify the Czar's government, and that one must descend +into hell to find its counterpart, one turns hopefully to your statement +of the objects of the several liberation-parties--and is disappointed. +Apparently none of them can bear to think of losing the present hell +entirely, they merely want the temperature cooled down a little. + +I now perceive why all men are the deadly and uncompromising enemies of +the rattlesnake: it is merely because the rattlesnake has not speech. +Monarchy has speech, and by it has been able to persuade men that it +differs somehow from the rattlesnake, has something valuable about it +somewhere, something worth preserving, something even good and high and +fine, when properly "modified," something entitling it to protection from +the club of the first comer who catches it out of its hole. It seems a +most strange delusion and not reconcilable with our superstition that man +is a reasoning being. If a house is afire, we reason confidently that it +is the first comer's plain duty to put the fire out in any way he can +--drown it with water, blow it up with dynamite, use any and all means to +stop the spread of the fire and save the rest of the city. What is the +Czar of Russia but a house afire in the midst of a city of eighty +millions of inhabitants? Yet instead of extinguishing him, together with +his nest and system, the liberation-parties are all anxious to merely +cool him down a little and keep him. + +It seems to me that this is illogical--idiotic, in fact. Suppose you had +this granite-hearted, bloody-jawed maniac of Russia loose in your house, +chasing the helpless women and little children--your own. What would you +do with him, supposing you had a shotgun? Well, he is loose in your +house-Russia. And with your shotgun in your hand, you stand trying to +think up ways to "modify" him. + +Do these liberation-parties think that they can succeed in a project +which has been attempted a million times in the history of the world and +has never in one single instance been successful--the "modification" of a +despotism by other means than bloodshed? They seem to think they can. +My privilege to write these sanguinary sentences in soft security was +bought for me by rivers of blood poured upon many fields, in many lands, +but I possess not one single little paltry right or privilege that come +to me as a result of petition, persuasion, agitation for reform, or any +kindred method of procedure. When we consider that not even the most +responsible English monarch ever yielded back a stolen public right until +it was wrenched from them by bloody violence, is it rational to suppose +that gentler methods can win privileges in Russia? + +Of course I know that the properest way to demolish the Russian throne +would be by revolution. But it is not possible to get up a revolution +there; so the only thing left to do, apparently, is to keep the throne +vacant by dynamite until a day when candidates shall decline with thanks. +Then organize the Republic. And on the whole this method has some large +advantages; for whereas a revolution destroys some lives which cannot +well be spared, the dynamite way doesn't. Consider this: the +conspirators against the Czar's life are caught in every rank of life, +from the low to the high. And consider: if so many take an active part, +where the peril is so dire, is this not evidence that the sympathizers +who keep still and do not show their hands, are countless for multitudes? +Can you break the hearts of thousands of families with the awful Siberian +exodus every year for generations and not eventually cover all Russia +from limit to limit with bereaved fathers and mothers and brothers and +sisters who secretly hate the perpetrator of this prodigious crime and +hunger and thirst for his life? Do you not believe that if your wife or +your child or your father was exiled to the mines of Siberia for some +trivial utterances wrung from a smarting spirit by the Czar's intolerable +tyranny, and you got a chance to kill him and did not do it, that you +would always be ashamed to be in your own society the rest of your life? +Suppose that that refined and lovely Russian lady who was lately stripped +bare before a brutal soldiery and whipped to death by the Czar's hand in +the person of the Czar's creature had been your wife, or your daughter or +your sister, and to-day the Czar should pass within reach of your hand, +how would you feel--and what would you do? Consider, that all over vast +Russia, from boundary to boundary, a myriad of eyes filled with tears +when that piteous news came, and through those tears that myriad of eyes +saw, not that poor lady, but lost darlings of their own whose fate her +fate brought back with new access of grief out of a black and bitter past +never to be forgotten or forgiven. + +If I am a Swinburnian--and clear to the marrow I am--I hold human nature +in sufficient honor to believe there are eighty million mute Russians +that are of the same stripe, and only one Russian family that isn't. + + MARK TWAIN. + + + Type-setter matters were going badly. Clemens still had faith in + Jones, and he had lost no grain of faith in the machine. The money + situation, however, was troublesome. With an expensive + establishment, and work of one sort or another still to be done on + the machine, his income would not reach. Perhaps Goodman had + already given up hope, for he does not seem to have returned from + California after the next letter was written--a colorless letter + --in which we feel a note of resignation. The last few lines are + sufficient. + + + To Joe T. Goodman, in California: + +DEAR JOE,--...... I wish you could get a day off and make those two or +three Californians buy those privileges, for I'm going to need money +before long. + +I don't know where the Senator is; but out on the Coast I reckon. + +I guess we've got a perfect machine at last. We never break a type, now, +and the new device for enabling the operator to touch the last letters +and justify the line simultaneously works, to a charm. + With love to you both, + MARK + + + The year closed gloomily enough. The type-setter seemed to be + perfected, but capital for its manufacture was not forthcoming. + The publishing business of Charles L. Webster & Co. was returning + little or no profit. Clemens's mother had died in Keokuk at the end + of October, and his wife's mother, in Elmira a month later. Mark + Twain, writing a short business letter to his publishing manager, + Fred J. Ball, closed it: "Merry Xmas to you!--and I wish to God I + could have one myself before I die." + + + + +XXXI + +LETTERS, 1891, TO HOWELLS, MRS. CLEMENS AND OTHERS. +RETURN TO LITERATURE. AMERICAN CLAIMANT. LEAVING HARTFORD. +EUROPE. DOWN THE RHINE + +Clemens was still not without hope in the machine, at the beginning of +the new year (1891) but it was a hope no longer active, and it presently +became a moribund. Jones, on about the middle of February, backed out +altogether, laying the blame chiefly on Mackay and the others, who, he +said, had decided not to invest. Jones "let his victim down easy" with +friendly words, but it was the end, for the present, at least, of machine +financiering. + +It was also the end of Mark Twain's capital. His publishing business was +not good. It was already in debt and needing more money. There was just +one thing for him to do and he did it at once, not stopping to cry over +spilt milk, but with good courage and the old enthusiasm that never +failed him, he returned to the trade of authorship. He dug out +half-finished articles and stories, finished them and sold them, and +within a week after the Jones collapse he was at work on a novel based an +the old Sellers idea, which eight years before he and Howells had worked +into a play. The brief letter in which he reported this news to Howells +bears no marks of depression, though the writer of it was in his +fifty-sixth year; he was by no means well, and his financial prospects +were anything but golden. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Feb. 24, '91 +DEAR HOWELLS,--Mrs. Clemens has been sick abed for near two weeks, but is +up and around the room now, and gaining. I don't know whether she has +written Mrs. Howells or not--I only know she was going to--and will yet, +if she hasn't. We are promising ourselves a whole world of pleasure in +the visit, and you mustn't dream of disappointing us. + +Does this item stir an interest in you? Began a novel four days ago, and +this moment finished chapter four. Title of the book + + "Colonel Mulberry Sellers. + American Claimant + Of the + Great Earldom of Rossmore' + in the + Peerage of Great Britain." + + Ys Ever + MARK. + + +Probably Mark Twain did not return to literary work reluctantly. He had +always enjoyed writing and felt now that he was equipped better than ever +for authorship, at least so far as material was concerned. There exists +a fragmentary copy of a letter to some unknown correspondent, in which he +recites his qualifications. It bears evidence of having been written +just at this time and is of unusual interest at this point. + + + Fragment of Letter to -------, 1891: + +. . . . I confine myself to life with which I am familiar when +pretending to portray life. But I confined myself to the boy-life out on +the Mississippi because that had a peculiar charm for me, and not because +I was not familiar with other phases of life. I was a soldier two weeks +once in the beginning of the war, and was hunted like a rat the whole +time. Familiar? My splendid Kipling himself hasn't a more burnt-in, +hard-baked, and unforgetable familiarity with that death-on-the-pale- +horse-with-hell-following-after, which is a raw soldier's first fortnight +in the field--and which, without any doubt, is the most tremendous +fortnight and the vividest he is ever going to see. + +Yes, and I have shoveled silver tailings in a quartz-mill a couple of +weeks, and acquired the last possibilities of culture in that direction. +And I've done "pocket-mining" during three months in the one little patch +of ground in the whole globe where Nature conceals gold in pockets--or +did before we robbed all of those pockets and exhausted, obliterated, +annihilated the most curious freak Nature ever indulged in. There are +not thirty men left alive who, being told there was a pocket hidden on +the broad slope of a mountain, would know how to go and find it, or have +even the faintest idea of how to set about it; but I am one of the +possible 20 or 30 who possess the secret, and I could go and put my hand +on that hidden treasure with a most deadly precision. + +And I've been a prospector, and know pay rock from poor when I find it +--just with a touch of the tongue. And I've been a silver miner and know +how to dig and shovel and drill and put in a blast. And so I know the +mines and the miners interiorly as well as Bret Harte knows them +exteriorly. + +And I was a newspaper reporter four years in cities, and so saw the +inside of many things; and was reporter in a legislature two sessions +and the same in Congress one session, and thus learned to know personally +three sample bodies of the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and +the cowardliest hearts that God makes. + +And I was some years a Mississippi pilot, and familiarly knew all the +different kinds of steam-boatmen--a race apart, and not like other folk. + +And I was for some years a traveling "jour" printer, and wandered from +city to city--and so I know that sect familiarly. + +And I was a lecturer on the public platform a number of seasons and was a +responder to toasts at all the different kinds of banquets--and so I know +a great many secrets about audiences--secrets not to be got out of books, +but only acquirable by experience. + +And I watched over one dear project of mine for years, spent a fortune on +it, and failed to make it go--and the history of that would make a large +book in which a million men would see themselves as in a mirror; and they +would testify and say, Verily, this is not imagination; this fellow has +been there--and after would cast dust upon their heads, cursing and +blaspheming. + +And I am a publisher, and did pay to one author's widow (General Grant's) +the largest copyright checks this world has seen--aggregating more than +L80,000 in the first year. + +And I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55. + +Now then; as the most valuable capital or culture or education usable in +the building of novels is personal experience I ought to be well equipped +for that trade. + +I surely have the equipment, a wide culture, and all of it real, none of +it artificial, for I don't know anything about books. + + [No signature.] + + + Clemens for several years had been bothered by rheumatism in his + shoulder. The return now to the steady use of the pen aggravated + his trouble, and at times he was nearly disabled. The phonograph + for commercial dictation had been tried experimentally, and Mark + Twain was always ready for any innovation. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Feb. 28, '91. +DEAR HOWELLS,--Won't you drop-in at the Boylston Building (New +England Phonograph Co) and talk into a phonograph in an ordinary +conversation-voice and see if another person (who didn't hear you do it) +can take the words from the thing without difficulty and repeat them to +you. If the experiment is satisfactory (also make somebody put in a +message which you don't hear, and see if afterward you can get it out +without difficulty) won't you then ask them on what terms they will rent +me a phonograph for 3 months and furnish me cylinders enough to carry +75,000 words. 175 cylinders, ain't it? + +I don't want to erase any of them. My right arm is nearly disabled by +rheumatism, but I am bound to write this book (and sell 100,000 copies of +it--no, I mean a million--next fall) I feel sure I can dictate the book +into a phonograph if I don't have to yell. I write 2,000 words a day; I +think I can dictate twice as many. + +But mind, if this is going to be too much trouble to you--go ahead and do +it, all the same. + Ys ever + MARK. + + + Howells, always willing to help, visited the phonograph place, and a + few days later reported results. He wrote: "I talked your letter + into a fonograf in my usual tone at my usual gait of speech. Then + the fonograf man talked his answer in at his wonted swing and swell. + Then we took the cylinder to a type-writer in the next room, and she + put the hooks into her ears and wrote the whole out. I send you the + result. There is a mistake of one word. I think that if you have + the cheek to dictate the story into the fonograf, all the rest is + perfectly easy. It wouldn't fatigue me to talk for an hour as I + did." + + Clemens did not find the phonograph entirely satisfactory, at least + not for a time, and he appears never to have used it steadily. His + early experience with it, however, seems interesting. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, Apl. 4, '91. +DEAR HOWELLS,--I'm ashamed. It happened in this way. I was proposing to +acknowledge the receipt of the play and the little book per phonograph, +so that you could see that the instrument is good enough for mere +letter-writing; then I meant to add the fact that you can't write +literature with it, because it hasn't any ideas and it hasn't any gift +for elaboration, or smartness of talk, or vigor of action, or felicity of +expression, but is just matter-of-fact, compressive, unornamental, and as +grave and unsmiling as the devil. + +I filled four dozen cylinders in two sittings, then found I could have +said about as much with the pen and said it a deal better. Then I +resigned. + +I believe it could teach one to dictate literature to a phonographer--and +some time I will experiment in that line. + +The little book is charmingly written, and it interested me. But it +flies too high for me. Its concretest things are filmy abstractions to +me, and when I lay my grip on one of them and open my hand, I feel as +embarrassed as I use to feel when I thought I had caught a fly. I'm +going to try to mail it back to you to-day--I mean I am going to charge +my memory. Charging my memory is one of my chief industries .... + +With our loves and our kindest regards distributed among you according to +the proprieties. + Yrs ever + MARK. + +P. S.--I'm sending that ancient "Mental Telegraphy" article to Harper's +--with a modest postscript. Probably read it to you years ago. + S. L. C. + + + The "little book" mentioned in this letter was by Swedenborg, an + author in whom the Boston literary set was always deeply interested. + "Mental Telegraphy" appeared in Harper's Magazine, and is now + included in the Uniform Edition of Mark Twain's books. It was + written in 1878. + + Joe Goodman had long since returned to California, it being clear + that nothing could be gained by remaining in Washington. On receipt + of the news of the type-setter's collapse he sent a consoling word. + Perhaps he thought Clemens would rage over the unhappy circumstance, + and possibly hold him in some measure to blame. But it was + generally the smaller annoyances of life that made Mark Twain rage; + the larger catastrophes were likely to stir only his philosophy. + + The Library of American Literature, mentioned in the following + letter, was a work in many volumes, edited by Edmund Clarence + Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson. + + + To Joe T. Goodman: + + April [?] 1891. +DEAR JOE, Well, it's all right, anyway. Diplomacy couldn't have saved +it--diplomacy of mine--at that late day. I hadn't any diplomacy in +stock, anyway. In order to meet Jones's requirements I had to surrender +the old contract (a contract which made me boss of the situation and gave +me the whip-hand of Paige) and allow the new one to be drafted and put in +its place. I was running an immense risk, but it was justified by +Jones's promises--promises made to me not merely once but every time I +tallied with him. When February arrived, I saw signs which were mighty +plain reading. Signs which meant that Paige was hoping and praying that +Jones would go back on me--which would leave Paige boss, and me robbed +and out in the cold. His prayers were answered, and I am out in the +cold. If I ever get back my nine-twentieths interest, it will be by +law-suit--which will be instituted in the indefinite future, when the +time comes. + +I am at work again--on a book. Not with a great deal of spirit, but with +enough--yes, plenty. And I am pushing my publishing house. It has +turned the corner after cleaning $50,000 a year for three consecutive +years, and piling every cent of it into one book--Library of American +Literature--and from next January onward it will resume dividends. But +I've got to earn $50,000 for it between now and then--which I will do if +I keep my health. This additional capital is needed for that same book, +because its prosperity is growing so great and exacting. + +It is dreadful to think of you in ill health--I can't realize it; you are +always to me the same that you were in those days when matchless health. +and glowing spirits and delight in life were commonplaces with us. Lord +save us all from old age and broken health and a hope-tree that has lost +the faculty of putting out blossoms. + + With love to you both from us all. + MARK. + + + Mark Twain's residence in Hartford was drawing rapidly to a close. + Mrs. Clemens was poorly, and his own health was uncertain. They + believed that some of the European baths would help them. + Furthermore, Mark Twain could no longer afford the luxury of his + Hartford home. In Europe life could be simpler and vastly cheaper. + He was offered a thousand dollars apiece for six European letters, + by the McClure syndicate and W. M. Laffan, of the Sun. This would + at least give him a start on the other side. The family began + immediately their sad arrangements for departure. + + + To Fred J. Hall (manager Chas. L. Webster & Co.), N. Y.: + + HARTFORD, Apl. 14, '91. +DEAR MR. HALL,--Privately--keep it to yourself--as you, are already +aware, we are going to Europe in June, for an indefinite stay. We shall +sell the horses and shut up the house. We wish to provide a place for +our coachman, who has been with us a 21 years, and is sober, active, +diligent, and unusually bright and capable. You spoke of hiring a +colored man as engineer and helper in the packing room. Patrick would +soon learn that trade and be very valuable. We will cease to need him by +the middle or end of June. Have you made irrevocable arrangements with +the colored man, or would you prefer to have Patrick, if he thinks he +would like to try? + +I have not said anything to him about it yet. + + Yours + S. L. C. + + + It was to be a complete breaking up of their beautiful + establishment. Patrick McAleer, George the butler, and others of + their household help had been like members of the family. We may + guess at the heartbreak of it all, even though the letters remain + cheerful. + + Howells, strangely enough, seems to have been about the last one to + be told of their European plans; in fact, he first got wind of it + from the papers, and wrote for information. Likely enough Clemens + had not until then had the courage to confess. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + HARTFORD, May 20, '91. +DEAR HOWELLS,--For her health's sake Mrs. Clemens must try baths +somewhere, and this it is that has determined us to go to Europe. +The water required seems to be provided at a little obscure and +little-visited nook up in the hills back of the Rhine somewhere and you +get to it by Rhine traffic-boat and country stage-coach. Come, get "sick +or sorry enough" and join us. We shall be a little while at that bath, +and the rest of the summer at Annecy (this confidential to you) in Haute +Savoie, 22 miles from Geneva. Spend the winters in Berlin. I don't know +how long we shall be in Europe--I have a vote, but I don't cast it. I'm +going to do whatever the others desire, with leave to change their mind, +without prejudice, whenever they want to. Travel has no longer, any +charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to see except +heaven and hell, and I have only a vague curiosity as concerns one of +those. + +I found I couldn't use the play--I had departed too far from its lines +when I came to look at it. I thought I might get a great deal of +dialogue out of it, but I got only 15 loosely written pages--they saved +me half a days work. It was the cursing phonograph. There was abundance +of good dialogue, but it couldn't befitted into the new conditions of the +story. + +Oh, look here--I did to-day what I have several times in past years +thought of doing: answered an interviewing proposition from a rich +newspaper with the reminder that they had not stated the terms; that my +time was all occupied with writing, at good pay, and that as talking was +harder work I should not care to venture it unless I knew the pay was +going to be proportionately higher. I wish I had thought of this the +other day when Charley Stoddard turned a pleasant Englishman loose on me +and I couldn't think of any rational excuse. + Ys Ever + MARK. + + + Clemens had finished his Sellers book and had disposed of the serial + rights to the McClure syndicate. The house in Hartford was closed + early in June, and on the 6th the family, with one maid, Katie + Leary, sailed on the Gascogne. Two weeks later they had begun a + residence abroad which was to last for more than nine years. + + It was not easy to get to work in Europe. Clemens's arm remained + lame, and any effort at writing brought suffering. The Century + Magazine proposed another set of letters, but by the end of July he + had barely begun on those promised to McClure and Laffan. In + August, however, he was able to send three: one from Aix about the + baths there, another from Bayreuth concerning the Wagner festival, + and a third from Marienbad, in Bohemia, where they rested for a + time. He decided that he would arrange for no more European letters + when the six were finished, but would gather material for a book. + He would take a courier and a kodak and go tramping again in some + fashion that would be interesting to do and to write. + + The idea finally matured when he reached Switzerland and settled the + family at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, facing Lake Leman. + He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged + Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European + trip, to accompany him. The courier went over to Bourget and bought + for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged its owner as their + pilot. It was the morning of September 20, when they began their + floating-trip down the beautiful historic river that flows through + the loveliest and most romantic region of France. He wrote daily to + Mrs. Clemens, and his letters tell the story of that drowsy, happy + experience better than the notes made with a view to publication. + Clemens had arrived at Lake Bourget on the evening before the + morning of their start and slept on the Island of Chatillon, in an + old castle of the same name. Lake Bourget connects with the Rhone + by a small canal. + + + Letters and Memoranda to Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland: + + Sept. 20, 1891. + Sunday, 11 a.m. +On the lake Bourget--just started. The castle of Chatillon high overhead +showing above the trees. It was a wonderfully still place to sleep in. +Beside us there was nobody in it but a woman, a boy and a dog. A Pope +was born in the room I slept in. No, he became a Pope later. + +The lake is smooth as glass--a brilliant sun is shining. + +Our boat is comfortable and shady with its awning. + +11.20 We have crossed the lake and are entering the canal. Shall +presently be in the Rhone. + +Noon. Nearly down to the Rhone. Passing the village of Chanaz. + +3.15 p. m. Sunday. We have been in the Rhone 3 hours. It is +unimaginably still and reposeful and cool and soft and breezy. No rowing +or work of any kind to do--we merely float with the current--we glide +noiseless and swift--as fast as a London cab-horse rips along--8 miles an +hour--the swiftest current I've ever boated in. We have the entire river +to ourselves--nowhere a boat of any kind. + Good bye Sweetheart + S. L. C. + + + PORT DE GROLEE, Monday, 4.15 p.m. + [Sept. 21, 1891] +Name of the village which we left five minutes ago. + +We went ashore at 5 p. m. yesterday, dear heart, and walked a short mile +to St. Geuix, a big village, and took quarters at the principal inn; had +a good dinner and afterwards along walk out of town on the banks of the +Guiers till 7.30. + +Went to bed at 8.30 and continued to make notes and read books and +newspapers till midnight. Slept until 8, breakfasted in bed, and lay +till noon, because there had been a very heavy rain in the night and the +day was still dark and lowering. But at noon the sun broke through and +in 15 minutes we were tramping toward the river. Got afloat at 1 p. m. +but at 2.40 we had to rush suddenly ashore and take refuge in the above +village. Just as we got ourselves and traps safely housed in the inn, +the rain let go and came down in great style. We lost an hour and a half +there, but we are off again, now, with bright sunshine. + +I wrote you yesterday my darling, and shall expect to write you every +day. + +Good-day, and love to all of you. + SAML. + + + ON THE RHONE BELOW VILLEBOIS, + Tuesday noon. +Good morning, sweetheart. Night caught us yesterday where we had to take +quarters in a peasant's house which was occupied by the family and a lot +of cows and calves--also several rabbits.--[His word for fleas.]--The +latter had a ball, and I was the ball-room; but they were very friendly +and didn't bite. + +The peasants were mighty kind and hearty, and flew around and did their +best to make us comfortable. This morning I breakfasted on the shore in +the open air with two sociable dogs and a cat. Clean cloth, napkin and +table furniture, white sugar, a vast hunk of excellent butter, good +bread, first class coffee with pure milk, fried fish just caught. +Wonderful that so much cleanliness should come out of such a phenomenally +dirty house. + +An hour ago we saw the Falls of the Rhone, a prodigiously rough and +dangerous looking place; shipped a little water but came to no harm. +It was one of the most beautiful pieces of piloting and boat-management +I ever saw. Our admiral knew his business. + +We have had to run ashore for shelter every time it has rained +heretofore, but Joseph has been putting in his odd time making a +water-proof sun-bonnet for the boat, and now we sail along dry although +we had many heavy showers this morning. + +With a word of love to you all and particularly you, + SAML. + + + ON THE RHONE, BELOW VIENNA. +I salute you, my darling. Your telegram reached me in Lyons last night +and was very pleasant news indeed. + +I was up and shaved before 8 this morning, but we got delayed and didn't +sail from Lyons till 10.30--an hour and a half lost. And we've lost +another hour--two of them, I guess--since, by an error. We came in sight +of Vienne at 2 o'clock, several miles ahead, on a hill, and I proposed to +walk down there and let the boat go ahead of us. So Joseph and I got out +and struck through a willow swamp along a dim path, and by and by came +out on the steep bank of a slough or inlet or something, and we followed +that bank forever and ever trying to get around the head of that slough. +Finally I noticed a twig standing up in the water, and by George it had a +distinct and even vigorous quiver to it! I don't know when I have felt +so much like a donkey. On an island! I wanted to drown somebody, but I +hadn't anybody I could spare. However, after another long tramp we found +a lonely native, and he had a scow and soon we were on the mainland--yes, +and a blamed sight further from Vienne than we were when we started. + +Notes--I make millions of them; and so I get no time to write to you. If +you've got a pad there, please send it poste-restante to Avignon. I may +not need it but I fear I shall. + +I'm straining to reach St. Pierre de Boef, but it's going to be a close +fit, I reckon. + + + AFLOAT, Friday, 3 p.m., '91. +Livy darling, we sailed from St. Pierre de Boef six hours ago, and are +now approaching Tournon, where we shall not stop, but go on and make +Valence, a City Of 25,000 people. It's too delicious, floating with the +swift current under the awning these superb sunshiny days in deep peace +and quietness. Some of these curious old historical towns strangely +persuade me, but it is so lovely afloat that I don't stop, but view them +from the outside and sail on. We get abundance of grapes and peaches for +next to nothing. + +Joseph is perfect. He is at his very best--and never was better in his +life. I guess he gets discouraged and feels disliked and in the way when +he is lying around--but here he is perfection, and brim full of useful +alacrities and helps and ingenuities. + +When I woke up an hour ago and heard the clock strike 4, I said "I seem +to have been asleep an immensely long time; I must have gone to bed +mighty early; I wonder what time I did go to bed." And I got up and lit +a candle and looked at my watch to see. + + + AFLOAT + 2 HOURS BELOW BOURG ST. ANDEOL. + Monday, 11 a.m., Sept. 28. +Livy darling, I didn't write yesterday. We left La Voulte in a driving +storm of cold rain--couldn't write in it--and at 1 p. m. when we were +not thinking of stopping, we saw a picturesque and mighty ruin on a high +hill back of a village, and I was seized with a desire to explore it; so +we landed at once and set out with rubbers and umbrella, sending the boat +ahead to St. Andeol, and we spent 3 hours clambering about those cloudy +heights among those worn and vast and idiotic ruins of a castle built by +two crusaders 650 years ago. The work of these asses was full of +interest, and we had a good time inspecting, examining and scrutinizing +it. All the hills on both sides of the Rhone have peaks and precipices, +and each has its gray and wasted pile of mouldy walls and broken towers. +The Romans displaced the Gauls, the Visigoths displaced the Romans, the +Saracens displaced the Visigoths, the Christians displaced the Saracens, +and it was these pious animals who built these strange lairs and cut each +other's throats in the name and for the glory of God, and robbed and +burned and slew in peace and war; and the pauper and the slave built +churches, and the credit of it went to the Bishop who racked the money +out of them. These are pathetic shores, and they make one despise the +human race. + +We came down in an hour by rail, but I couldn't get your telegram till +this morning, for it was Sunday and they had shut up the post office to +go to the circus. I went, too. It was all one family--parents and 5 +children--performing in the open air to 200 of these enchanted villagers, +who contributed coppers when called on. It was a most gay and strange +and pathetic show. I got up at 7 this morning to see the poor devils +cook their poor breakfast and pack up their sordid fineries. + +This is a 9 k-m. current and the wind is with us; we shall make Avignon +before 4 o'clock. I saw watermelons and pomegranates for sale at St. +Andeol. + + With a power of love, Sweetheart, + SAML. + + + HOTEL D'EUROPE, AVIGNON, + Monday, 6 p.m., Sept. 28. +Well, Livy darling, I have been having a perfect feast of letters for an +hour, and I thank you and dear Clam with all my heart. It's like hearing +from home after a long absence. + +It is early to be in bed, but I'm always abed before 9, on this voyage; +and up at 7 or a trifle later, every morning. If I ever take such a trip +again, I will have myself called at the first tinge of dawn and get to +sea as soon after as possible. The early dawn on the water-nothing can +be finer, as I know by old Mississippi experience. I did so long for you +and Sue yesterday morning--the most superb sunrise!--the most marvelous +sunrise! and I saw it all from the very faintest suspicion of the coming +dawn all the way through to the final explosion of glory. But it had +interest private to itself and not to be found elsewhere in the world; +for between me and it, in the far distant-eastward, was a silhouette +mountain-range in which I had discovered, the previous afternoon, a most +noble face upturned to the sky, and mighty form out stretched, which I +had named Napoleon Dreaming of Universal Empire--and now, this prodigious +face, soft, rich, blue, spirituelle, asleep, tranquil, reposeful, lay +against that giant conflagration of ruddy and golden splendors all rayed +like a wheel with the upstreaming and far-reaching lances of the sun. It +made one want to cry for delight, it was so supreme in its unimaginable +majesty and beauty. + +We had a curious experience today. A little after I had sealed and +directed my letter to you, in which I said we should make Avignon before +4, we got lost. We ceased to encounter any village or ruin mentioned in +our "particularizes" and detailed Guide of the Rhone--went drifting along +by the hour in a wholly unknown land and on an uncharted river! Confound +it, we stopped talking and did nothing but stand up in the boat and +search the horizons with the glass and wonder what in the devil had +happened. And at last, away yonder at 5 o'clock when some east towers +and fortresses hove in sight we couldn't recognize them for Avignon--yet +we knew by the broken bridge that it was Avignon. + +Then we saw what the trouble was--at some time or other we had drifted +down the wrong side of an island and followed a sluggish branch of the +Rhone not frequented in modern times. We lost an hour and a half by it +and missed one of the most picturesque and gigantic and history-sodden +masses of castellated medieval ruin that Europe can show. + +It was dark by the time we had wandered through the town and got the +letters and found the hotel--so I went to bed. + +We shall leave here at noon tomorrow and float down to Arles, arriving +about dark, and there bid good bye to the boat, the river-trip finished. +Between Arles and Nimes (and Avignon again,) we shall be till Saturday +morning--then rail it through on that day to Ouchy, reaching the hotel at +11 at night if the train isn't late. + +Next day (Sunday) if you like, go to Basel, and Monday to Berlin. But I +shall be at your disposal, to do exactly as you desire and prefer. + + With no end of love to all of you and twice as much to you, + sweetheart, + SAML. + +I believe my arm is a trifle better than it was when I started. + + + The mention in the foregoing letter of the Napoleon effigy is the + beginning of what proved to be a rather interesting episode. Mark + Twain thought a great deal of his discovery, as he called it--the + giant figure of Napoleon outlined by the distant mountain range. + In his note-book he entered memoranda telling just where it was to + be seen, and added a pencil sketch of the huge profile. But then he + characteristically forgot all about it, and when he recalled the + incident ten years later, he could not remember the name of the + village, Beauchastel, from which the great figure could be seen; + also, that he had made a record of the place. + + But he was by this time more certain than ever that his discovery + was a remarkable one, which, if known, would become one of the great + natural wonders, such as Niagara Falls. Theodore Stanton was + visiting him at the time, and Clemens urged him, on his return to + France, to make an excursion to the Rhone and locate the Lost + Napoleon, as he now called it. But Clemens remembered the wonder as + being somewhere between Arles and Avignon, instead of about a + hundred miles above the last-named town. Stanton naturally failed + to find it, and it remained for the writer of these notes, motoring + up the Rhone one September day, exactly twenty-two years after the + first discovery, to re-locate the vast reclining figure of the first + consul of France, "dreaming of Universal Empire." The re-discovery + was not difficult--with Mark Twain's memoranda as a guide--and it + was worth while. Perhaps the Lost Napoleon is not so important a + natural wonder as Mark Twain believed, but it is a striking picture, + and on a clear day the calm blue face outlined against the sky will + long hold the traveler's attention. + + To Clara Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland: + + AFLOAT, 11.20 a.m., Sept. 29, Tuesday. +DEAR OLD BEN,--The vast stone masses and huge towers of the ancient papal +palace of Avignon are projected above an intervening wooded island a mile +up the river behind me--for we are already on our way to Arles. It is a +perfectly still morning, with a brilliant sun, and very hot--outside; but +I am under cover of the linen hood, and it is cool and shady in here. + +Please tell mamma I got her very last letter this morning, and I perceive +by it that I do not need to arrive at Ouchy before Saturday midnight. +I am glad, because I couldn't do the railroading I am proposing to do +during the next two or three days and get there earlier. I could put in +the time till Sunday midnight, but shall not venture it without +telegraphic instructions from her to Nimes day after tomorrow, Oct. 1, +care Hotel Manivet. + +The only adventures we have is in drifting into rough seas now and then. +They are not dangerous, but they go thro' all the motions of it. +Yesterday when we shot the Bridge of the Holy Spirit it was probably in +charge of some inexperienced deputy spirit for the day, for we were +allowed to go through the wrong arch, which brought us into a tourbillon +below which tried to make this old scow stand on its head. Of course I +lost my temper and blew it off in a way to be heard above the roar of the +tossing waters. I lost it because the admiral had taken that arch in +deference to my opinion that it was the best one, while his own judgment +told him to take the one nearest the other side of the river. I could +have poisoned him I was so mad to think I had hired such a turnip. +A boatman in command should obey nobody's orders but his own, and yield +to nobody's suggestions. + +It was very sweet of you to write me, dear, and I thank you ever so much. +With greatest love and kisses, + PAPA. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland: + + ARLES, Sept. 30, noon. +Livy darling, I hain't got no time to write today, because I am sight +seeing industriously and imagining my chapter. + +Bade good-bye to the river trip and gave away the boat yesterday evening. +We had ten great days in her. + +We reached here after dark. We were due about 4.30, counting by +distance, but we couldn't calculate on such a lifeless current as we +found. + I love you, sweetheart. + SAML. + + + It had been a long time since Clemens had written to his old friend + Twichell, but the Rhone trip must have reminded him of those days + thirteen years earlier, when, comparatively young men, he and + Twichell were tramping through the Black Forest and scaling Gemmi + Pass. He sent Twichell a reminder of that happy time. + + + To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn: + + NIMES, Oct. 1, '91. +DEAR JOE,--I have been ten days floating down the Rhone on a raft, from +Lake Bourget, and a most curious and darling kind of a trip it has been. +You ought to have been along--I could have made room for you easily--and +you would have found that a pedestrian tour in Europe doesn't begin with +a raft-voyage for hilarity and mild adventure, and intimate contact with +the unvisited native of the back settlements, and extinction from the +world and newspapers, and a conscience in a state of coma, and lazy +comfort, and solid happiness. In fact there's nothing that's so lovely. + +But it's all over. I gave the raft away yesterday at Arles, and am +loafing along back by short stages on the rail to Ouchy-Lausanne where +the tribe are staying. + Love to you all + MARK. + + + The Clemenses settled in Berlin for the winter, at 7 Kornerstrasse, + and later at the Hotel Royal. There had been no permanent + improvement in Mark Twain's arm and he found writing difficult. + Some of the letters promised to Laffan and McClure were still + unfinished. + + Young Hall, his publishing manager in America, was working hard to + keep the business afloat, and being full of the optimism of his + years did not fail to make as good a showing as he could. We may + believe his letters were very welcome to Clemens and his wife, who + found little enough in the general prospect to comfort them. + + + To Mr. Hall, in New York: + + BERLIN, Nov. 27, '91. +DEAR MR. HALL,--That kind of a statement is valuable. It came this +morning. This is the first time since the business began that I have had +a report that furnished the kind of information I wanted, and was really +enlightening and satisfactory. Keep it up. Don't let it fall into +desuetude. + +Everything looks so fine and handsome with the business, now, that I feel +a great let-up from depression. The rewards of your long and patient +industry are on their way, and their arrival safe in port, presently, +seems assured. + +By George, I shall be glad when the ship comes in! + +My arm is so much better that I was able to make a speech last night to +250 Americans. But when they threw my portrait on the screen it was a +sorrowful reminder, for it was from a negative of 15 years ago, and +hadn't a gray hair in it. And now that my arm is better, I have stolen a +couple of days and finished up a couple of McClure letters that have been +lying a long time. + +I shall mail one of them to you next Tuesday--registered. Lookout for +it. + +I shall register and mail the other one (concerning the "Jungfrau") next +Friday look out for it also, and drop me a line to let me know they have +arrived. + +I shall write the 6th and last letter by and by when I have studied +Berlin sufficiently. + +Yours in a most cheerful frame of mind, and with my and all the family's +Thanksgiving greetings and best wishes, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Postscript by Mrs. Clemens written on Mr. Clemens's letter: + +DEAR MR. HALL,--This is my birthday and your letter this morning was a +happy addition to the little gifts on the breakfast table. I thought of +going out and spending money for something unnecessary after it came, but +concluded perhaps I better wait a little longer. + Sincerely yours + O. L. CLEMENS. + + + "The German Chicago" was the last of the six McClure letters and was + finished that winter in Berlin. It is now included in the Uniform + Edition of Mark Twain's works, and is one of the best descriptive + articles of the German capital ever written. He made no use of the + Rhone notes further than to put them together in literary form. + They did not seem to him to contain enough substance to warrant + publication. A letter to Hall, written toward the end of December, + we find rather gloomy in tone, though he is still able to extract + comfort and even cheerfulness from one of Mr. Hall's reports. + + + Memorandum to Fred J. Hall, in New York: + +Among the MSS I left with you are a few that have a recent look and are +written on rather stiff pale green paper. If you will have those +type-writered and keep the originals and send me the copies (one per +mail, not two.) I'll see if I can use them. + +But tell Howells and other inquirers that my hopes of writing anything +are very slender--I seem to be disabled for life. + +Drop McClure a line and tell him the same. I can't dare to make an +engagement now for even a single letter. + +I am glad Howells is on a magazine, but sorry he gave up the Study. +I shall have to go on a magazine myself if this L. A. L. continues to +hold my nose down to the grind-stone much longer. + +I'm going to hold my breath, now, for 30 days--then the annual statement +will arrive and I shall know how we feel! Merry Xmas to you from us all. + + Sincerely, + S. L. C. + +P. S. Just finished the above and finished raging at the eternal German +tax-gatherer, and so all the jubilant things which I was going to say +about the past year's business got knocked out of me. After writing this +present letter I was feeling blue about Huck Finn, but I sat down and +overhauled your reports from now back to last April and compared them +with the splendid Oct.-Nov. business, and went to bed feeling refreshed +and fine, for certainly it has been a handsome year. Now rush me along +the Annual Report and let's see how we feel! + S. L. C. + + + + +XXXII + +LETTERS, 1892, CHIEFLY TO MR. HALL AND MRS. CRANE. IN BERLIN, MENTONE, +BAD-NAUHEIM, FLORENCE + +Mark Twain was the notable literary figure in Berlin that winter, the +center of every great gathering. He was entertained by the Kaiser, and +shown many special attentions by Germans of every rank. His books were +as well known in Berlin as in New York, and at court assemblies and +embassies he was always a chief center of interest. + +He was too popular for his own good; the gaiety of the capital told on +him. Finally, one night, after delivering a lecture in a hot room, he +contracted a severe cold, driving to a ball at General von Versen's, and +a few days later was confined to his bed with pneumonia. It was not a +severe attack, but it was long continued. He could write some letters +and even work a little, but he was not allowed to leave his bed for many +weeks, a condition which he did not find a hardship, for no man ever +enjoyed the loose luxury of undress and the comfort of pillows more than +Mark Twain. In a memorandum of that time he wrote: "I am having a +booming time all to myself." + +Meantime, Hall, in America, was sending favorable reports of the +publishing business, and this naturally helped to keep up his spirits. +He wrote frequently to Hall, of course, but the letters for the most part +are purely of a business nature and of little interest to the general +reader. + + + To Fred J. Hall, in New York: + + HOTEL ROYAL, BERLIN, Feb. 12. +DEAR MR. HALL,--Daly wants to get the stage rights of the "American +Claimant." The foundation from which I wrote the story is a play of the +same name which has been in A. P. Burbank's hands 5 or 6 years. That +play cost me some money (helping Burbank stage it) but has never brought +me any. I have written Burbank (Lotos Club) and asked him to give me +back his rights in the old play so that I can treat with Daly and utilize +this chance to even myself up. Burbank is a lovely fellow, and if he +objects I can't urge him. But you run in at the Lotos and see him; and +if he relinquishes his claim, then I would like you to conduct the +business with Daly; or have Whitford or some other lawyer do it under +your supervision if you prefer. + +This morning I seem to have rheumatism in my right foot. + +I am ordered south by the doctor and shall expect to be well enough to +start by the end of this month. + + [No signature.] + + + + It is curious, after Clemens and Howells had tried so hard and so + long to place their "Sellers" Play, that now, when the story + appeared in book form, Augustin Daly should have thought it worth + dramatizing. Daly and Clemens were old friends, and it would seem + that Daly could hardly have escaped seeing the play when it was + going the rounds. But perhaps there is nothing more mysterious in + the world than the ways and wants of theatrical managers. The + matter came to nothing, of course, but the fact that Daly should + have thought a story built from an old discarded play had a play in + it seems interesting. + + Clemens and his wife were advised to leave the cold of Berlin as + soon as he was able to travel. This was not until the first of + March, when, taking their old courier, Joseph Very, they left the + children in good hands and journeyed to the south of France. + + + To Susy Clemens, in Berlin: + + MENTONE, Mch 22, '92. +SUSY DEAR,--I have been delighted to note your easy facility with your +pen and proud to note also your literary superiorities of one kind and +another--clearness of statement, directness, felicity of expression, +photographic ability in setting forth an incident--style--good style--no +barnacles on it in the way of unnecessary, retarding words (the Shipman +scrapes off the barnacles when he wants his racer to go her best gait and +straight to the buoy.) You should write a letter every day, long or short +--and so ought I, but I don't. + +Mamma says, tell Clara yes, she will have to write a note if the fan +comes back mended. + +We couldn't go to Nice to-day--had to give it up, on various accounts +--and this was the last chance. I am sorry for Mamma--I wish she could +have gone. She got a heavy fall yesterday evening and was pretty stiff +and lame this morning, but is working it off trunk packing. + +Joseph is gone to Nice to educate himself in Kodaking--and to get the +pictures mounted which Mamma thinks she took here; but I noticed she +didn't take the plug out, as a rule. When she did, she took nine +pictures on top of each other--composites. + With lots of love. + PAPA. + + + In the course of their Italian wanderings they reached Florence, + where they were so comfortable and well that they decided to engage + a villa for the next winter. Through Prof. Willard Fiske, they + discovered the Villa Viviani, near Settignano, an old palace + beautifully located on the hilltops east of Florence, commanding a + wonderful view of the ancient city. Clemens felt that he could work + there, and time proved that he was right. + + For the summer, however, they returned to Germany, and located at + Bad-Nauheim. Clemens presently decided to make a trip to America to + give some personal attention to business matters. For one thing, + his publishing-house, in spite of prosperity, seemed constantly to + be requiring more capital, and then a Chicago company had been + persuaded by Paige to undertake the manufacture of the type-setter. + It was the beginning of a series of feverish trips which he would + make back and forth across the ocean during the next two years. + + + To Fred J. Hall, in New York: + + BAD-NAUHEIM, June 11, '92. + Saturday. +DEAR MR. HALL,--If this arrives before I do, let it inform you that I am +leaving Bremen for New York next Tuesday in the "Havel." + +If you can meet me when the ship arrives, you can help me to get away +from the reporters; and maybe you can take me to your own or some other +lodgings where they can't find me. + +But if the hour is too early or too late for you, I shall obscure myself +somewhere till I can come to the office. + +Yours sincerely + S. L. C. + + + Nothing of importance happened in America. The new Paige company + had a factory started in Chicago and expected to manufacture fifty + machines as a beginning. They claimed to have capital, or to be + able to command it, and as the main control had passed from + Clemens's hands, he could do no more than look over the ground and + hope for the best. As for the business, about all that he could do + was to sign certain notes necessary to provide such additional + capital as was needed, and agree with Hall that hereafter they would + concentrate their efforts and resist further temptation in the way + of new enterprise. Then he returned to Bad-Nauheim and settled down + to literature. This was the middle of July, and he must have worked + pretty steadily, for he presently had a variety of MSS. ready to + offer. + + + To Fred J. Hall, in New York: + + Aug. 10, '92. +DEAR MR. HALT,--I have dropped that novel I wrote you about, because I +saw a more effective way of using the main episode--to wit: by telling it +through the lips of Huck Finn. So I have started Huck Finn and Tom +Sawyer (still 15 years old) and their friend the freed slave Jim around +the world in a stray balloon, with Huck as narrator, and somewhere after +the end of that great voyage he will work in the said episode and then +nobody will suspect that a whole book has been written and the globe +circumnavigated merely to get that episode in an effective (and at the +same time apparently unintentional) way. I have written 12,000 words of +this narrative, and find that the humor flows as easily as the adventures +and surprises--so I shall go along and make a book of from 50,000 to +100,000 words. + +It is a story for boys, of course, and I think will interest any boy +between 8 years and 80. + +When I was in New York the other day Mrs. Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas, +wrote and, offered me $5,000 for (serial right) a story for boys 50,000 +words long. I wrote back and declined, for I had other matter in my +mind, then. + +I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so +that it will not only interest boys but will also strongly interest any +man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience. + +Now this story doesn't need to be restricted to a Childs magazine--it is +proper enough for any magazine, I should think, or for a syndicate. I +don't swear it, but I think so. + +Proposed title of the story, "New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." + + [No signature.] + + + The "novel" mentioned in the foregoing was The Extraordinary Twins, + a story from which Pudd'nhead Wilson would be evolved later. It was + a wildly extravagant farce--just the sort of thing that now and then + Mark Twain plunged into with an enthusiasm that had to work itself + out and die a natural death, or mellow into something worth while. + Tom Sawyer Abroad, as the new Huck story was finally called, was + completed and disposed of to St. Nicholas for serial publication. + + The Twichells were in Europe that summer, and came to Bad-Nauheim. + The next letter records a pleasant incident. The Prince of Wales of + that day later became King Edward VII. + + + To Mr. and Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa.: + + Private. BAD-NAUHEIM, Aug. 23, '92. +DEAR ORION AND MOLLIE,--("Private" because no newspaper-man or other +gossip must get hold of it) + +Livy is getting along pretty well, and the doctor thinks another summer +here will cure her. + +The Twichell's have been here four days and we have had good times with +them. Joe and I ran over to Homburg, the great pleasure resort, +Saturday, to dine with some friends, and in the morning I went walking in +the promenade and met the British Ambassador to the Court of Berlin, and +he introduced me to the Prince of Wales, and I found him a most unusually +comfortable and unembarrassing Englishman to talk with--quick to see the +obscurest point, and equipped with a laugh which is spontaneous and +catching. Am invited by a near friend of his to meet him at dinner day +after tomorrow, and there could be a good time, but the brass band will +smash the talk and spoil everything. + +We are expecting to move to Florence ten or twelve days hence, but if +this hot weather continues we shall wait for cooler. I take Clara to +Berlin for the winter-music, mainly, with German and French added. Thus +far, Jean is our only glib French scholar. + +We all send love to you all and to Pamela and Sam's family, and Annie. + + SAM + + + Clemens and family left Bad-Nauheim for Italy by way of Switzerland. + In September Mrs. Clemens's sister, Mrs. Crane, who had been with + them in Europe during the first year, had now returned to America. + Mrs. Clemens had improved at the baths, though she had by no means + recovered her health. We get a general report of conditions from + the letter which Clemens wrote Mrs. Crane from Lucerne, Switzerland, + where the party rested for several days. The "Phelps" mentioned in + this letter was William Walter Phelps, United States Minister to + Germany. The Phelps and Clemens families had been much associated + in Berlin. "Mason" was Frank Mason, Consul General at Frankfort, + and in later years at Paris. "Charlie and Ida" were Charles and + Mrs. Langdon, of Elmira. + + + To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira, N. Y.: + + LUCERNE, Sept. 18, '92. +DEAR AUNT SUE,--Imagine how I felt to find that you had actually gone off +without filling my traveling ink stand which you gave me! I found it out +yesterday. Livy advised me to write you about it. + +I have been driving this pen hard. I wrote 280 pages on a yarn called +"Tom Sawyer Abroad," then took up the "Twins" again, destroyed the last +half of the manuscript and re-wrote it in another form, and am going to +continue it and finish it in Florence. "Tom Sawyer" seems rather pale to +the family after the extravagances of the Twins, but they came to like it +after they got used to it. + +We remained in Nauheim a little too long. If we had left there four or +five days earlier we should have made Florence in 3 days; but by the time +we got started Livy had got smitten with what we feared might be +erysipelas--greatly swollen neck and face, and unceasing headaches. We +lay idle in Frankfort 4 days, doctoring. We started Thursday and made +Bale. Hard trip, because it was one of those trains that gets tired +every seven minutes and stops to rest three quarters of an hour. It took +us 3 1/2 hours to get here, instead of the regulation 2.20. We reached +here Friday evening and will leave tomorrow (Tuesday) morning. The rest +has made the headaches better. We shall pull through to Milan tomorrow +if possible. Next day we shall start at 10 a. m., and try to make +Bologna, 5 hours. Next day (Thursday) Florence, D. V. Next year we will +walk, for these excursions have got to be made over again. I've got +seven trunks, and I undertook to be courier because I meant to express +them to Florence direct, but we were a couple of days too late. All +continental roads had issued a peremptory order that no baggage should +travel a mile except in the company of the owner. (All over Europe +people are howling; they are separated from their baggage and can't get +it forwarded to them) I have to re-ship my trunks every day. It is very +amusing--uncommonly so. There seemed grave doubts about our being able +to get these trunks over the Italian frontier, but I've got a very +handsome note from the Frankfort Italian Consul General addressed to all +Italian Customs Officers, and we shall get through if anybody does. + +The Phelpses came to Frankfort and we had some great times--dinner at his +hotel, the Masons, supper at our inn--Livy not in it. She was merely +allowed a glimpse, no more. Of course, Phelps said she was merely +pretending to be ill; was never looking so well and fine. + +The children are all right. They paddle around a little, and drive-so do +we all. Lucerne seems to be pretty full of tourists. The Fleulen boat +went out crowded yesterday morning. + +The Paris Herald has created a public interest by inoculating one of its +correspondents with cholera. A man said yesterday he wished to God they +would inoculate all of them. Yes, the interest is quite general and +strong, and much hope is felt. + +Livy says, I have said enough bad things, and better send all our loves +to you and Charley and Ida and all the children and shut up. Which I do +--and shut up. + S. L. C. + + + They reached Florence on the 26th, and four days later we find + Clemens writing again to Mrs. Crane, detailing everything at length. + Little comment on this letter is required; it fully explains itself. + Perhaps a word of description from one of his memoranda will not be + out of place. Of the villa he wrote: "It is a plain, square + building, like a box, and is painted light green and has green + window-shutters. It stands in a commanding position on the + artificial terrace of liberal dimensions, which is walled around + with masonry. From the walls the vineyards and olive groves of the + estate slant away toward the valley.... Roses overflow the + retaining walls and the battered and mossy stone urn on the + gate-post, in pink and yellow cataracts, exactly as they do on the + drop-curtains in the theaters. The house is a very fortress for + strength." + + The Mrs. Ross in this letter was Janet Ross, daughter of Lady Duff + Gordon, remembered to-day for her Egyptian letters. The Ross castle + was but a little distance away. + + + To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira: + + VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE. + Sept. 30, 1892 +DEAR SUE,--We have been in the house several days, and certainly it is a +beautiful place,--particularly at this moment, when the skies are a deep +leaden color, the domes of Florence dim in the drizzling rain, and +occasional perpendicular coils of lightning quivering intensely in the +black sky about Galileo's Tower. It is a charming panorama, and the most +conspicuous towers and domes down in the city look to-day just as they +looked when Boccaccio and Dante used to contemplate them from this +hillock five and six hundred years ago. + +The Mademoiselle is a great help to Livy in the housekeeping, and is a +cheery and cheerful presence in the house. The butler is equipped with a +little French, and it is this fact that enables the house to go--but it +won't go well until the family get some sort of facility with the Italian +tongue, for the cook, the woman-of-all-work and the coachman understand +only that. It is a stubborn and devilish language to learn, but Jean and +the others will master it. Livy's German Nauheim girl is the worst off +of anybody, as there is no market for her tongue at all among the help. + +With the furniture in and the curtains up the house is very pretty, and +not unhomelike. At mid-night last night we heard screams up stairs--Susy +had set the lofty window curtains afire with a candle. This sounds kind +of frightful, whereas when you come to think of it, a burning curtain or +pile of furniture hasn't any element of danger about it in this fortress. +There isn't any conceivable way to burn this house down, or enable a +conflagration on one floor to climb to the next. + +Mrs. Ross laid in our wood, wine and servants for us, and they are +excellent. She had the house scoured from Cellar to rook the curtains +washed and put up, all beds pulled to pieces, beaten, washed and put +together again, and beguiled the Marchese into putting a big porcelain +stove in the vast central hall. She is a wonderful woman, and we don't +quite see how or when we should have gotten under way without her. + +Observe our address above--the post delivers letters daily at the house. + +Even with the work and fuss of settling the house Livy has improved--and +the best is yet to come. There is going to be absolute seclusion here +--a hermit life, in fact. We (the rest of us) shall run over to the +Ross's frequently, and they will come here now and then and see Livy +--that is all. Mr. Fiske is away--nobody knows where--and the work on +his house has been stopped and his servants discharged. Therefore we +shall merely go Rossing--as far as society is concerned--shan't circulate +in Florence until Livy shall be well enough to take a share in it. + +This present house is modern. It is not much more than two centuries +old; but parts of it, and also its foundations are of high antiquity. +The fine beautiful family portraits--the great carved ones in the large +ovals over the doors of the big hall--carry one well back into the past. +One of them is dated 1305--he could have known Dante, you see. Another +is dated 1343--he could have known Boccaccio and spent his afternoons in +Fiesole listening to the Decameron tales. Another is dated 1463 +--he could have met Columbus..... + +Evening. The storm thundered away until night, and the rain came down in +floods. For awhile there was a partial break, which furnished about such +a sunset as will be exhibited when the Last Day comes and the universe +tumbles together in wreck and ruin. I have never seen anything more +spectacular and impressive. + +One person is satisfied with the villa, anyway. Jean prefers it to all +Europe, save Venice. Jean is eager to get at the Italian tongue again, +now, and I see that she has forgotten little or nothing of what she +learned of it in Rome and Venice last spring. + +I am the head French duffer of the family. Most of the talk goes over my +head at the table. I catch only words, not phrases. When Italian comes +to be substituted I shall be even worse off than I am now, I suppose. + +This reminds me that this evening the German girl said to Livy, "Man hat +mir gesagt loss Sie una candella verlaught habe"--unconsciously dropping +in a couple of Italian words, you see. So she is going to join the +polyglots, too, it appears. They say it is good entertainment to hear +her and the butler talk together in their respective tongues, piecing out +and patching up with the universal sign-language as they go along. Five +languages in use in the house (including the sign-language-hardest-worked +of them all) and yet with all this opulence of resource we do seem to +have an uncommonly tough time making ourselves understood. + +What we lack is a cat. If we only had Germania! That was the most +satisfactory all-round cat I have seen yet. Totally ungermanic in the +raciness of his character and in the sparkle of his mind and the +spontaneity of his movements. We shall not look upon his like again.... + + S. L. C. + + + Clemens got well settled down to work presently. He found the + situation, the climate, the background, entirely suited to literary + production, and in a little while he had accomplished more than at + any other time since his arrival in Europe. From letters to Mrs. + Crane and to Mr. Hall we learn something of his employments and his + satisfaction. + + + To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira: + + VILLA VIVIANI + SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE. Oct. 22, '92. +DEAR SUE,--We are getting wonted. The open fires have driven away the +cold and the doubt, and now a cheery spirit pervades the place. Livy and +the Kings and Mademoiselle having been taking their tea a number of +times, lately, on the open terrace with the city and the hills and the +sunset for company. I stop work, a few minutes, as a rule, when the sun +gets down to the hilltops west of Florence, and join the tea-group to +wonder and exclaim. There is always some new miracle in the view, a new +and exquisite variation in the show, a variation which occurs every 15 +minutes between dawn and night. Once early in the morning, a multitude +of white villas not before perceived, revealed themselves on the far +hills; then we recognized that all those great hills are snowed thick +with them, clear to the summit. + +The variety of lovely effects, the infinitude of change, is something not +to be believed by any who has not seen it. No view that I am acquainted +with in the world is at all comparable to this for delicacy, charm, +exquisiteness, dainty coloring, and bewildering rapidity of change. It +keeps a person drunk with pleasure all the time. Sometimes Florence +ceases to be substantial, and becomes just a faint soft dream, with domes +and towers of air, and one is persuaded that he might blow it away with a +puff of his breath. + +Livy is progressing admirably. This is just the place for her. + + [Remainder missing.] + + + To Fred J. Hall, in New York: + + Dec. 12, '92. +DEAR MR. HALL,--November check received. + +I have lent the Californian's Story to Arthur Stedman for his Author Club +Book, so your suggestion that my new spring-book bear that name arrives +too late, as he probably would not want us to use that story in a book of +ours until the Author book had had its run. That is for him to decide +--and I don't want him hampered at all in his decision. I, for my part, +prefer the "$1,000,000 Banknote and Other Stories" by Mark Twain as a +title, but above my judgment I prefer yours. I mean this--it is not +taffy. + +I told Arthur to leave out the former squib or paragraph and use only the +Californian's Story. Tell him this is because I am going to use that in +the book I am now writing. + +I finished "Those Extraordinary Twins" night before last makes 60 or +80,000 words--haven't counted. + +The last third of it suits me to a dot. I begin, to-day, to entirely +recast and re-write the first two-thirds--new plan, with two minor +characters, made very prominent, one major character cropped out, and the +Twins subordinated to a minor but not insignificant place. + +The minor character will now become the chiefest, and I will name the +story after him--"Puddn'head Wilson." + +Merry Xmas to you, and great prosperity and felicity! + + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + + +XXXIII + +LETTERS, 1893, TO MR. HALL, MRS. CLEMENS, AND OTHERS. FLORENCE. +BUSINESS TROUBLES. "PUDD'NHEAD WILSON." "JOAN OF ARC." +AT THE PLAYERS, NEW YORK + +The reader may have suspected that young Mr. Hall in New York was having +his troubles. He was by this time one-third owner in the business of +Charles L. Webster & Co., as well as its general manager. The business +had been drained of its capital one way and another-partly by the +publication of unprofitable books; partly by the earlier demands of the +typesetter, but more than all by the manufacturing cost and agents' +commissions demanded by L. A. L.; that is to say, the eleven large +volumes constituting the Library of American Literature, which Webster +had undertaken to place in a million American homes. There was plenty of +sale for it--indeed, that was just the trouble; for it was sold on +payments--small monthly payments--while the cost of manufacture and the +liberal agents' commissions were cash items, and it would require a +considerable period before the dribble of collections would swell into a +tide large enough to satisfy the steady outflow of expense. A sale of +twenty-five sets a day meant prosperity on paper, but unless capital +could be raised from some other source to make and market those books +through a period of months, perhaps even years, to come, it meant +bankruptcy in reality. It was Hall's job, with Clemens to back him, to +keep their ship afloat on these steadily ebbing financial waters. It was +also Hall's affair to keep Mark Twain cheerful, to look pleasant himself, +and to show how they were steadily getting rich because orders were +pouring in, though a cloud that resembled bankruptcy loomed always a +little higher upon the horizon. If Hall had not been young and an +optimist, he would have been frightened out of his boots early in the +game. As it was, he made a brave steady fight, kept as cheerful and +stiff an upper lip as possible, always hoping that something would +happen--some grand sale of his other books, some unexpected inflow from +the type-setter interests--anything that would sustain his ship until the +L. A. L. tide should turn and float it into safety. + +Clemens had faith in Hall and was fond of him. He never found fault with +him; he tried to accept his encouraging reports at their face value. He +lent the firm every dollar of his literary earnings not absolutely needed +for the family's support; he signed new notes; he allowed Mrs. Clemens to +put in such remnants of her patrimony as the type-setter had spared. + +The situation in 1893 was about as here outlined. The letters to Hall of +that year are frequent and carry along the story. To any who had formed +the idea that Mark Twain was irascible, exacting, and faultfinding, they +will perhaps be a revelation. + + + To Fred J. Hall, in New York: + + FLORENCE, Jan. 1, '93. +DEAR MR. HALL,--Yours of Dec. 19 is to hand, and Mrs. Clemens is deeply +distressed, for she thinks I have been blaming you or finding fault with +you about something. But most surely that cannot be. I tell her that +although I am prone to write hasty and regrettable things to other +people, I am not a bit likely to write such things to you. I can't +believe I have done anything so ungrateful. If I have, pile coals of +fire on my head, for I deserve it! + +I wonder if my letter of credit isn't an encumbrance? Do you have to +deposit the whole amount it calls for? If that is so, it is an +encumbrance, and we must withdraw it and take the money out of soak. +I have never made drafts upon it except when compelled, because I thought +you deposited nothing against it, and only had to put up money that I +drew upon it; that therefore the less I drew the easier it would be for +you. + +I am dreadfully sorry I didn't know it would be a help to you to let my +monthly check pass over a couple of months. I could have stood that by +drawing what is left of Mrs. Clemens's letter of credit, and we would +have done it cheerfully. + +I will write Whitmore to send you the "Century" check for $1,000, and you +can collect Mrs. Dodge's $2,000 (Whitmore has power of attorney which I +think will enable him to endorse it over to you in my name.) If you need +that $3,000 put it in the business and use it, and send Whitmore the +Company's note for a year. If you don't need it, turn it over to Mr. +Halsey and let him invest it for me. + +I've a mighty poor financial head, and I may be all wrong--but tell me if +I am wrong in supposing that in lending my own firm money at 6 per cent I +pay 4 of it myself and so really get only a per cent? Now don't laugh if +that is stupid. + +Of course my friend declined to buy a quarter interest in the L. A. L. +for $200,000. I judged he would. I hoped he would offer $100,000, but +he didn't. If the cholera breaks out in America, a few months hence, we +can't borrow or sell; but if it doesn't we must try hard to raise +$100,000. I wish we could do it before there is a cholera scare. + +I have been in bed two or three days with a cold, but I got up an hour +ago, and I believe I am all right again. + +How I wish I had appreciated the need of $100,000 when I was in New York +last summer! I would have tried my best to raise it. It would make us +able to stand 1,000 sets of L. A. L. per month, but not any more, I +guess. + +You have done magnificently with the business, and we must raise the +money somehow, to enable you to reap the reward of all that labor. + Sincerely Yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + +"Whitmore," in this letter, was F. G. Whitmore, of Hartford, Mark Twain's +financial agent. The money due from Mrs. Dodge was a balance on Tom +Sawyer Abroad, which had been accepted by St. Nicholas. Mr. Halsey was a +down-town broker. + +Clemens, who was growing weary of the constant demands of L. A. L., had +conceived the idea that it would be well to dispose of a portion of it +for enough cash to finance its manufacture. + +We don't know who the friend was to whom he offered a quarter interest +for the modest sum of two hundred thousand dollars. But in the next +letter we discover designs on a certain very canny Scotchman of Skibo. + + + To Fred J. Hall, in New York: + + FLORENCE, Jan. 28, '92. +DEAR MR. HALL,--I want to throw out a suggestion and see what you think +of it. We have a good start, and solid ground under us; we have a +valuable reputation; our business organization is practical, sound and +well-devised; our publications are of a respect-worthy character and of a +money-breeding species. Now then I think that the association with us of +some one of great name and with capital would give our business a +prodigious impetus--that phrase is not too strong. + +As I look at it, it is not money merely that is needed; if that were all, +the firm has friends enough who would take an interest in a paying +venture; we need some one who has made his life a success not only from a +business standpoint, but with that achievement back of him, has been +great enough to make his power felt as a thinker and a literary man. It +is a pretty usual thing for publishers to have this sort of partners. +Now you see what a power Carnegie is, and how far his voice reaches in +the several lines I speak of. Do you know him? You do by correspondence +or purely business talks about his books--but personally, I mean? so that +it would not be an intrusion for you to speak to him about this desire of +mine--for I would like you to put it before him, and if you fail to +interest him in it, you will probably get at least some valuable +suggestions from him. I'll enclose a note of introduction--you needn't +use it if you don't need to. + Yours S. L. C. + +P. S. Yes, I think I have already acknowledged the Dec. $1,000 and the +Jan. $500--and if another $500 was mailed 3 days ago there's no hiatus. + +I think I also reminded you that the new letter of credit does not cover +the unexpended balance of the old one but falls considerably short of it. + +Do your best with Carnegie, and don't wait to consider any of my +intermediate suggestions or talks about our raising half of the $200,000 +ourselves. I mean, wait for nothing. To make my suggestion available I +should have to go over and see Arnot, and I don't want to until I can +mention Carnegie's name to him as going in with us. + +My book is type-written and ready for print--"Pudd'nhead Wilson-a Tale." +(Or, "Those Extraordinary Twins," if preferable.) + +It makes 82,500 words--12,000 more than Huck Finn. But I don't know what +to do with it. Mrs. Clemens thinks it wouldn't do to go to the Am. Pub. +Co. or anywhere outside of our own house; we have no subscription +machinery, and a book in the trade is a book thrown away, as far as +money-profit goes. I am in a quandary. Give me a lift out of it. + +I will mail the book to you and get you to examine it and see if it is +good or if it is bad. I think it is good, and I thought the Claimant +bad, when I saw it in print; but as for real judgment, I think I am +destitute of it. + +I am writing a companion to the Prince and Pauper, which is half done and +will make 200,000 words; and I have had the idea that if it were gotten +up in handsome style, with many illustrations and put at a high enough +price maybe the L. A. L. canvassers would take it and run it with that +book. Would they? It could be priced anywhere from $4 up to $10, +according to how it was gotten up, I suppose. + +I don't want it to go into a magazine. + S. L. C. + +I am having several short things type-"writered." I will send them to +you presently. I like the Century and Harper's, but I don't know that I +have any business to object to the Cosmopolitan if they pay as good +rates. I suppose a man ought to stick to one magazine, but that may be +only superstition. What do you think? + S. L. C. + + + "The companion to The Prince and the Pauper," mentioned in this + letter, was the story of Joan of Arc, perhaps the most finished of + Mark Twain's literary productions. His interest in Joan had been + first awakened when, as a printer's apprentice in Hannibal, he had + found blowing along the street a stray leaf from some printed story + of her life. That fragment of history had pictured Joan in prison, + insulted and mistreated by ruffians. It had aroused all the + sympathy and indignation in the boy, Sam Clemens; also, it had + awakened his interest in history, and, indeed, in all literature. + + His love for the character of Joan had grown with the years, until + in time he had conceived the idea of writing her story. As far back + as the early eighties he had collected material for it, and had + begun to make the notes. One thing and another had interfered, and + he had found no opportunity for such a story. Now, however, in + Florence, in the ancient villa, and in the quiet garden, looking + across the vineyards and olive groves to the dream city along the + Arno, he felt moved to take up the tale of the shepherd girl of + France, the soldier maid, or, as he called her, "The noble child, + the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have + produced." His surroundings and background would seem to have been + perfect, and he must have written with considerable ease to have + completed a hundred thousand words in a period of not more than six + weeks. + + Perhaps Hall did not even go to see Carnegie; at all events nothing + seems to have come of the idea. Once, at a later time, Mask Twain + himself mentioned the matter to Carnegie, and suggested to him that + it was poor financiering to put all of one's eggs into one basket, + meaning into iron. But Carnegie answered, "That's a mistake; put + all your eggs into one basket and watch that basket." + + It was March when Clemens felt that once more his presence was + demanded in America. He must see if anything could be realized from + the type-setter or L. A. L. + + + To Fred J. Hall, in New York: + + March 13, '93. +DEAR MR. HALL,--I am busy getting ready to sail the 22d, in the Kaiser +Wilhelm II. + +I send herewith 2 magazine articles. + +The Story contains 3,800 to 4,000 words. + +The "Diary" contains 3,800 words. + +Each would make about 4 pages of the Century. + +The Diary is a gem, if I do say it myself that shouldn't. + +If the Cosmopolitan wishes to pay $600 for either of them or $1,200 for +both, gather in the check, and I will use the money in America instead of +breaking into your treasury. + +If they don't wish to trade for either, send the articles to the Century, +without naming a price, and if their check isn't large enough I will call +and abuse them when I come. + +I signed and mailed the notes yesterday. + Yours + S. L. C. + + + Clemens reached New York on the 3d of April and made a trip to + Chicago, but accomplished nothing, except to visit the World's Fair + and be laid up with a severe cold. The machine situation had not + progressed. The financial stringency of 1893 had brought everything + to a standstill. The New York bank would advance Webster & Co. no + more money. So disturbed were his affairs, so disordered was + everything, that sometimes he felt himself as one walking amid + unrealities. A fragment of a letter to Mrs. Crane conveys this: + + "I dreamed I was born and grew up and was a pilot on the Mississippi + and a miner and a journalist in Nevada and a pilgrim in the Quaker + City, and had a wife and children and went to live in a villa at + Florence--and this dream goes on and on and sometimes seems so real + that I almost believe it is real. I wonder if it is? But there is + no way to tell, for if one applies tests they would be part of the + dream, too, and so would simply aid the deceit. I wish I knew + whether it is a dream or real." + + He saw Warner, briefly, in America; also Howells, now living in New + York, but he had little time for visiting. On May 13th he sailed + again for Europe on the Kaiser Wilhelm II. On the night before + sailing he sent Howells a good-by word. + + + To W. D. Howells, in New York City: + + MURRAY HILL HOTEL, NEW YORE, May 12, 1893. + Midnight. +DEAR HOWELLS--I am so sorry I missed you. + +I am very glad to have that book for sea entertainment, and I thank you +ever so much for it. + +I've had a little visit with Warner at last; I was getting afraid I +wasn't going to have a chance to see him at all. I forgot to tell you +how thoroughly I enjoyed your account of the country printing office, and +how true it all was and how intimately recognizable in all its details. +But Warner was full of delight over it, and that reminded me, and I am +glad, for I wanted to speak of it. + +You have given me a book; Annie Trumbull has sent me her book; I bought a +couple of books; Mr. Hall gave me a choice German book; Laflan gave me +two bottles of whisky and a box of cigars--I go to sea nobly equipped. + +Good-bye and all good fortune attend you and yours--and upon you all I +leave my benediction. + MARK. + + + Mention has already been made of the Ross home being very near to + Viviani, and the association of the Ross and Clemens families. + There was a fine vegetable garden on the Ross estate, and it was in + the interest of it that the next letter was written to the Secretary + of Agriculture. + + + To Hon. J. Sterling Morton, in Washington, D. C.: + Editorial Department Century Magazine, Union Square, + + NEW YORK, April 6, 1893. +TO THE HON. J. STERLING MORTON,--Dear Sir: Your petitioner, Mark Twain, +a poor farmer of Connecticut--indeed, the poorest one there, in the +opinion of many-desires a few choice breeds of seed corn (maize), and in +return will zealously support the Administration in all ways honorable +and otherwise. + +To speak by the card, I want these things to hurry to Italy to an English +lady. She is a neighbor of mine outside of Florence, and has a great +garden and thinks she could raise corn for her table if she had the right +ammunition. I myself feel a warm interest in this enterprise, both on +patriotic grounds and because I have a key to that garden, which I got +made from a wax impression. It is not very good soil, still I think she +can grow enough for one table and I am in a position to select the table. +If you are willing to aid and abet a countryman (and Gilder thinks you +are,) please find the signature and address of your petitioner below. + +Respectfully and truly yours. + MARK TWAIN, + +67 Fifth Avenue, New York. + +P. S.--A handful of choice (Southern) watermelon seeds would pleasantly +add to that lady's employments and give my table a corresponding lift. + + + His idea of business values had moderated considerably by the time + he had returned to Florence. He was not hopeless yet, but he was + clearly a good deal disheartened--anxious for freedom. + + + To Fred J. Hall, in New York: + + FLORENCE May 30, '93 +DEAR MR. HALL,--You were to cable me if you sold any machine royalties +--so I judge you have not succeeded. + +This has depressed me. I have been looking over the past year's letters +and statements and am depressed still more. + +I am terribly tired of business. I am by nature and disposition unfitted +for it and I want to get out of it. I am standing on the Mount Morris +volcano with help from the machine a long way off--doubtless a long way +further off than the Connecticut Co. imagines. + +Now here is my idea for getting out. + +The firm owes Mrs. Clemens and me--I do not know quite how much, but it +is about $170,000 or $175,000, I suppose (I make this guess from the +documents here, whose technicalities confuse me horribly.) + +The firm owes other sums, but there is stock and cash assets to cover the +entire indebtedness and $116,679.20 over. Is that it? In addition we +have the L. A. L. plates and copyright, worth more than $130,000--is +that correct? + +That is to say, we have property worth about $250,000 above indebtedness, +I suppose--or, by one of your estimates, $300,000? The greater part of +the first debts to me is in notes paying 6 percent. The rest (the old +$70,000 or whatever it is) pays no interest. + +Now then, will Harper or Appleton, or Putnam give me $200,000 for those +debts and my two-thirds interest in the firm? (The firm of course taking +the Mount Morris and all such obligations off my hands and leaving me +clear of all responsibility.) + +I don't want much money. I only want first class notes--$200,000 worth +of them at 6 per cent, payable monthly;--yearly notes, renewable annually +for 3 years, with $5,000 of the principal payable at the beginning and +middle of each year. After that, the notes renewable annually and +(perhaps) a larger part of the principal payable semi-annually. + +Please advise me and suggest alterations and emendations of the above +scheme, for I need that sort of help, being ignorant of business and not +able to learn a single detail of it. + +Such a deal would make it easy for a big firm to pour in a big cash +capital and jump L. A. L. up to enormous prosperity. Then your one-third +would be a fortune--and I hope to see that day! + +I enclose an authority to use with Whitmore in case you have sold any +royalties. But if you can't make this deal don't make any. Wait a +little and see if you can't make the deal. Do make the deal if you +possibly can. And if any presence shall be necessary in order to +complete it I will come over, though I hope it can be done without that. + +Get me out of business! + +And I will be yours forever gratefully, + S. L. CLEMENS. + +My idea is, that I am offering my 2/3 of L. A. L. and the business for +thirty or forty thousand dollars. Is that it? + +P. S. S. The new firm could retain my books and reduce them to a +10 percent royalty. S. L. C. + + + To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO (FLORENCE) + June 9, '93. +DEAR JOE,--The sea voyage set me up and I reached here May 27 in +tolerable condition--nothing left but weakness, cough all gone. + +Old Sir Henry Layard was here the other day, visiting our neighbor Janet +Ross, daughter of Lady Duff Gordon, and since then I have been reading +his account of the adventures of his youth in the far East. In a +footnote he has something to say about a sailor which I thought might +interest you--viz: + +"This same quartermaster was celebrated among the English in Mesopotamia +for an entry which he made in his log-book-after a perilous storm; 'The +windy and watery elements raged. Tears and prayers was had recourse to, +but was of no manner of use. So we hauled up the anchor and got round +the point.'" + +There--it isn't Ned Wakeman; it was before his day. + + With love, + MARK. + + + They closed Villa Viviani in June and near the end of the month + arrived in Munich in order that Mrs. Clemens might visit some of the + German baths. The next letter is written by her and shows her deep + sympathy with Hall in his desperate struggle. There have been few + more unselfish and courageous women in history than Mark Twain's + wife. + + + From Mrs. Clemens to Mr. Hall, in New York: + + June 27th 1893 + MUNICH. +DEAR MR. HALL,--Your letter to Mr. Clemens of June 16th has just reached +here; as he has gone to Berlin for Clara I am going to send you just a +line in answer to it. + +Mr. Clemens did not realize what trouble you would be in when his letter +should reach you or he would not have sent it just then. I hope you will +not worry any more than you can help. Do not let our interests weigh on +you too heavily. We both know you will, as you always have, look in +every way to the best interests of all. + +I think Mr. Clemens is right in feeling that he should get out of +business, that he is not fitted for it; it worries him too much. + +But he need be in no haste about it, and of course, it would be the very +farthest from his desire to imperil, in the slightest degree, your +interests in order to save his own. + +I am sure that I voice his wish as well as mine when I say that he would +simply like you to bear in mind the fact that he greatly desires to be +released from his present anxiety and worry, at a time when it shall not +endanger your interest or the safety of the business. + +I am more sorry than I can express that this letter of Mr. Clemens' +should have reached you when you were struggling under such terrible +pressure. I hope now that the weight is not quite so heavy. He would +not have written you about the money if he had known that it was an +inconvenience for you to send it. He thought the book-keeper whose duty +it is to forward it had forgotten. + +We can draw on Mr. Langdon for money for a few weeks until things are a +little easier with you. As Mr. Clemens wrote you we would say "do not +send us any more money at present" if we were not afraid to do so. I +will say, however, do not trouble yourself if for a few weeks you are not +able to send the usual amount. + +Mr. Clemens and I have the greatest possible desire, not to increase in +any way your burdens, and sincerely wish we might aid you. + +I trust my brother may be able, in his talk with you, to throw some +helpful light on the situation. + +Hoping you will see a change for the better and begin to reap the fruit +of your long and hard labor. + Believe me + Very Cordially yours + OLIVIA L. CLEMENS. + + +Hall, naturally, did not wish to be left alone with the business. He +realized that his credit would suffer, both at the bank and with the +public, if his distinguished partner should retire. He wrote, therefore, +proposing as an alternate that they dispose of the big subscription set +that was swamping them. It was a good plan--if it would work--and we +find Clemens entering into it heartily. + + + To Fred J. Hall, in New York: + + MUNICH, July 3, '93. +DEAR MR. HALL,--You make a suggestion which has once or twice flitted +dimly through my mind heretofore to wit, sell L. A. L. + +I like that better than the other scheme, for it is no doubt feasible, +whereas the other is perhaps not. + +The firm is in debt, but L. A. L. is free--and not only free but has +large money owing to it. A proposition to sell that by itself to a big +house could be made without embarrassment we merely confess that we +cannot spare capital from the rest of the business to run it on the huge +scale necessary to make it an opulent success. + +It will be selling a good thing--for somebody; and it will be getting rid +of a load which we are clearly not able to carry. Whoever buys will have +a noble good opening--a complete equipment, a well organized business, +a capable and experienced manager, and enterprise not experimental but +under full sail, and immediately able to pay 50 per cent a year on every +dollar the publisher shall actually invest in it--I mean in making and +selling the books. + +I am miserably sorry to be adding bothers and torments to the over-supply +which you already have in these hideous times, but I feel so troubled, +myself, considering the dreary fact that we are getting deeper and deeper +in debt and the L. A. L. getting to be a heavier and heavier burden all +the time, that I must bestir myself and seek a way of relief. + +It did not occur to me that in selling out I would injure you--for that I +am not going to do. But to sell L. A. L. will not injure you it will put +you in better shape. + Sincerely Yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + To Fred J. Hall, in New York: + + July 8, '92. +DEAR MR. HALL,--I am sincerely glad you are going to sell L. A. L. I am +glad you are shutting off the agents, and I hope the fatal book will be +out of our hands before it will be time to put them on again. With +nothing but our non-existent capital to work with the book has no value +for us, rich a prize as it will be to any competent house that gets it. + +I hope you are making an effort to sell before you discharge too many +agents, for I suppose the agents are a valuable part of the property. + +We have been stopping in Munich for awhile, but we shall make a break for +some country resort in a few days now. + Sincerely Yours + S. L. C. + + July 8 +P. S. No, I suppose I am wrong in suggesting that you wait a moment +before discharging your L. A. L. agents--in fact I didn't mean that. +I judge your only hope of salvation is in discharging them all at once, +since it is their commissions that threaten to swamp us. It is they who +have eaten up the $14,000 I left with you in such a brief time, no doubt. + +I feel panicky. + +I think the sale might be made with better advantage, however, now, than +later when the agents have got out of the purchaser's reach. + S. L. C. + +P. S. No monthly report for many months. + + + Those who are old enough to remember the summer of 1893 may recall + it as a black financial season. Banks were denying credit, + businesses were forced to the wall. It was a poor time to float any + costly enterprise. The Chicago company who was trying to build the + machines made little progress. The book business everywhere was + bad. In a brief note following the foregoing letters Clemens wrote + Hall: + + "It is now past the middle of July and no cablegram to say the + machine is finished. We are afraid you are having miserable days + and worried nights, and we sincerely wish we could relieve you, but + it is all black with us and we don't know any helpful thing to say + or do." + + He inclosed some kind of manuscript proposition for John Brisben + Walker, of the Cosmopolitan, with the comment: "It is my ingenious + scheme to protect the family against the alms-house for one more + year--and after that--well, goodness knows! I have never felt so + desperate in my life--and good reason, for I haven't got a penny to + my name, and Mrs. Clemens hasn't enough laid up with Langdon to keep + us two months." + + It was like Mark Twain, in the midst of all this turmoil, to project + an entirely new enterprise; his busy mind was always visioning + success in unusual undertakings, regardless of immediate conditions + and the steps necessary to achievement. + + + To Fred J. Hall, in New York: + + July 26, '93. +DEAR MR. HALL,--..... I hope the machine will be finished this month; +but it took me four years and cost me $100,000 to finish the other +machine after it was apparently entirely complete and setting type like a +house-afire. + +I wonder what they call "finished." After it is absolutely perfect it +can't go into a printing-office until it has had a month's wear, running +night and day, to get the bearings smooth, I judge. + +I may be able to run over about mid-October. Then if I find you relieved +of L. A. L. we will start a magazine inexpensive, and of an entirely +unique sort. Arthur Stedman and his father editors of it. Arthur could +do all the work, merely submitting it to his father for approval. + +The first number should pay--and all subsequent ones--25 cents a number. +Cost of first number (20,000 copies) $2,000. Give most of them away, +sell the rest. Advertising and other expenses--cost unknown. Send one +to all newspapers--it would get a notice--favorable, too. + +But we cannot undertake it until L. A. L, is out of the way. With our +hands free and some capital to spare, we could make it hum. + +Where is the Shelley article? If you have it on hand, keep it and I will +presently tell you what to do with it. + +Don't forget to tell me. + Yours Sincerely + S. L. C. + + + The Shelley article mentioned in this letter was the "Defense of + Harriet Sheller," one of the very best of his essays. How he could + have written this splendid paper at a time of such distraction + passes comprehension. Furthermore, it is clear that he had revised, + indeed rewritten, the long story of Pudd'nhead Wilson. + + + To Fred J. Hall, in New York: + + July 30, '93. +DEAR MR. HALL,--This time "Pudd'nhead Wilson" is a success! Even Mrs. +Clemens, the most difficult of critics, confesses it, and without +reserves or qualifications. Formerly she would not consent that it be +published either before or after my death. I have pulled the twins apart +and made two individuals of them; I have sunk them out of sight, they are +mere flitting shadows, now, and of no importance; their story has +disappeared from the book. Aunt Betsy Hale has vanished wholly, leaving +not a trace behind; aunt Patsy Cooper and her daughter Rowena have almost +disappeared--they scarcely walk across the stage. The whole story is +centered on the murder and the trial; from the first chapter the movement +is straight ahead without divergence or side-play to the murder and the +trial; everything that is done or said or that happens is a preparation +for those events. Therefore, 3 people stand up high, from beginning to +end, and only 3--Pudd'nhead, "Tom" Driscoll, and his nigger mother, +Roxana; none of the others are important, or get in the way of the story +or require the reader's attention. Consequently, the scenes and episodes +which were the strength of the book formerly are stronger than ever, now. + +When I began this final reconstruction the story contained 81,500 words, +now it contains only 58,000. I have knocked out everything that delayed +the march of the story--even the description of a Mississippi steamboat. +There's no weather in, and no scenery--the story is stripped for flight! + +Now, then what is she worth? The amount of matter is but 3,000 words +short of the American Claimant, for which the syndicate paid $12,500. +There was nothing new in that story, but the finger-prints in this one +is virgin ground--absolutely fresh, and mighty curious and interesting +to everybody. + +I don't want any more syndicating--nothing short of $20,000, anyway, and +that I can't get--but won't you see how much the Cosmopolitan will stand? + +Do your best for me, for I do not sleep these nights, for visions of the +poor-house. + +This in spite of the hopeful tone of yours of 11th to Langdon (just +received) for in me hope is very nearly expiring. Everything does look +so blue, so dismally blue! + +By and by I shall take up the Rhone open-boat voyage again, but not now +--we are going to be moving around too much. I have torn up some of it, +but still have 15,000 words that Mrs. Clemens approves of, and that I +like. I may go at it in Paris again next winter, but not unless I know I +can write it to suit me. + +Otherwise I shall tackle Adam once more, and do him in a kind of a +friendly and respectful way that will commend him to the Sunday schools. +I've been thinking out his first life-days to-day and framing his +childish and ignorant impressions and opinions for him. + +Will ship Pudd'nhead in a few days. When you get it cable + + Mark Twain + Care Brownship, London + Received. + +I mean to ship "Pudd'nhead Wilson" to you-say, tomorrow. It'll furnish +me hash for awhile I reckon. I am almost sorry it is finished; it was +good entertainment to work at it, and kept my mind away from things. + +We leave here in about ten days, but the doctors have changed our plans +again. I think we shall be in Bohemia or thereabouts till near the end +of September, then go to Paris and take a rest. + Yours Sincerely + S. L. C. + +P. S. Mrs. Clemens has come in since, and read your letter and is deeply +distressed. She thinks that in some letter of mine I must have +reproached you. She says it is wonderful that you have kept the ship +afloat in this storm that has seen fleets and fleets go down; that from +what she learns of the American business-situation from her home letters +you have accomplished a marvel in the circumstances, and that she cannot +bear to have a word said to you that shall voice anything but praise and +the heartiest appreciation--and not the shadow of a reproach will she +allow. + +I tell her I didn't reproach you and never thought of such a thing. And +I said I would break open my letter and say so. + +Mrs. Clemens says I must tell you not to send any money for a month or +two--so that you may be afforded what little relief is in our power. +All right--I'm willing; (this is honest) but I wish Brer Chatto would +send along his little yearly contribution. I dropped him a line about +another matter a week ago--asked him to subscribe for the Daily News for +me--you see I wanted to remind him in a covert way that it was pay-up +time--but doubtless I directed the letter to you or some one else, for I +don't hear from him and don't get any Daily News either. + + +To Fred J. Hall, in New York: + + Aug. 6, '93. +DEAR MR. HALL,--I am very sorry--it was thoughtless in me. Let the +reports go. Send me once a month two items, and two only: + +Cash liabilities--(so much) +Cash assets--(so much) + +I can perceive the condition of the business at a glance, then, and that +will be sufficient. + +Here we never see a newspaper, but even if we did I could not come +anywhere near appreciating or correctly estimating the tempest you have +been buffeting your way through--only the man who is in it can do that +--but I have tried not to burden you thoughtlessly or wantonly. I have +been wrought and unsettled in mind by apprehensions, and that is a thing +that is not helpable when one is in a strange land and sees his resources +melt down to a two months' supply and can't see any sure daylight beyond. +The bloody machine offered but a doubtful outlook--and will still offer +nothing much better for a long time to come; for when Davis's "three +weeks" is up there's three months' tinkering to follow I guess. That is +unquestionably the boss machine of the world, but is the toughest one on +prophets, when it is in an incomplete state, that has ever seen the +light. Neither Davis nor any other man can foretell with any +considerable approach to certainty when it will be ready to get down to +actual work in a printing office. + + [No signature.] + + + Three days after the foregoing letter was written he wrote, briefly: + + "Great Scott but it's a long year-for you and me! I never knew the + almanac to drag so. At least since I was finishing that other + machine. + + "I watch for your letters hungrily--just as I used to watch for the + cablegram saying the machine's finished; but when 'next week + certainly' swelled into 'three weeks sure' I recognized the old + familiar tune I used to hear so much. Ward don't know what + sick-heartedness is--but he is in a way to find out." + + Always the quaint form of his humor, no matter how dark the way. + We may picture him walking the floor, planning, scheming, and + smoking--always smoking--trying to find a way out. It was not the + kind of scheming that many men have done under the circumstances; + not scheming to avoid payment of debts, but to pay them. + + + To Fred J. Hall, in New York: + + Aug. 14, '93 +DEAR MR. HALL,--I am very glad indeed if you and Mr. Langdon are able to +see any daylight ahead. To me none is visible. I strongly advise that +every penny that comes in shall be applied to paying off debts. I may be +in error about this, but it seems to me that we have no other course +open. We can pay a part of the debts owing to outsiders--none to the +Clemenses. In very prosperous times we might regard our stock and +copyrights as assets sufficient, with the money owing to us, to square up +and quit even, but I suppose we may not hope for such luck in the present +condition of things. + +What I am mainly hoping for, is to save my royalties. If they come into +danger I hope you will cable me, so that I can come over and try to save +them, for if they go I am a beggar. + +I would sail to-day if I had anybody to take charge of my family and help +them through the difficult journeys commanded by the doctors. I may be +able to sail ten days hence; I hope so, and expect so. + +We can never resurrect the L. A. L. I would not spend any more money on +that book. You spoke, a while back, of trying to start it up again as a +preparation to disposing of it, but we are not in shape to venture that, +I think. It would require more borrowing, and we must not do that. + Yours Sincerely + S. L. C. + +Aug. 16. I have thought, and thought, but I don't seem to arrive in any +very definite place. Of course you will not have an instant's safety +until the bank debts are paid. There is nothing to be thought of but to +hand over every penny as fast as it comes in--and that will be slow +enough! Or could you secure them by pledging part of our cash assets +and-- + +I am coming over, just as soon as I can get the family moved and settled. + S. L. C. + + + Two weeks following this letter he could endure the suspense no + longer, and on August 29th sailed once more for America. In New + York, Clemens settled down at the Players Club, where he could live + cheaply, and undertook some literary work while he was casting about + for ways and means to relieve the financial situation. Nothing + promising occurred, until one night at the Murray Hill Hotel he was + introduced by Dr. Clarence C. Rice to Henry H. Rogers, of the + Standard Oil group of financiers. Rogers had a keen sense of humor + and had always been a great admirer of Mark Twain's work. It was a + mirthful evening, and certainly an eventful one in Mark Twain's + life. A day or two later Doctor Rice asked the millionaire to + interest himself a little in Clemens's business affairs, which he + thought a good deal confused. Just what happened is not remembered + now, but from the date of the next letter we realize that a + discussion of the matter by Clemens and Rogers must have followed + pretty promptly. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Europe: + + Oct. 18, '93. +DEAR, DEAR SWEETHEART,--I don't seem to get even half a chance to write +you, these last two days, and yet there's lots to say. + +Apparently everything is at last settled as to the giveaway of L. A. L., +and the papers will be signed and the transfer made to-morrow morning. + +Meantime I have got the best and wisest man in the whole Standard Oil +group of mufti-millionaires a good deal interested in looking into the +type-setter (this is private, don't mention it.) He has been searching +into that thing for three weeks, and yesterday he said to me, "I find the +machine to be all you represented it--I have here exhaustive reports from +my own experts, and I know every detail of its capacity, its immense +value, its construction, cost, history, and all about its inventor's +character. I know that the New York Co. and the Chicago Co. are both +stupid, and that they are unbusinesslike people, destitute of money and +in a hopeless boggle." + +Then he told me the scheme he had planned, then said: "If I can arrange +with these people on this basis--it will take several weeks to find out +--I will see to it that they get the money they need. Then the thing will +move right along and your royalties will cease to be waste paper. I will +post you the minute my scheme fails or succeeds. In the meantime, you +stop walking the floor. Go off to the country and try to be gay. You +may have to go to walking again, but don't begin till I tell you my +scheme has failed." And he added: "Keep me posted always as to where you +are--for if I need you and can use you--I want to know where to put my +hand on you." + +If I should even divulge the fact that the Standard Oil is merely talking +remotely about going into the type-setter, it would send my royalties up. + +With worlds and worlds of love and kisses to you all, + SAML. + + +With so great a burden of care shifted to the broad financial shoulders +of H. H. Rogers, Mark Twain's spirits went ballooning, soaring toward the +stars. He awoke, too, to some of the social gaieties about him, and +found pleasure in the things that in the hour of his gloom had seemed +mainly mockery. We find him going to a Sunday evening at Howells's, to +John Mackay's, and elsewhere. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris: + + Dec. 2, '93. +LIVY DARLING,--Last night at John Mackay's the dinner consisted of soup, +raw oysters, corned beef and cabbage, and something like a custard. +I ate without fear or stint, and yet have escaped all suggestion of +indigestion. The men present were old gray Pacific-coasters whom I knew +when I and they were young and not gray. The talk was of the days when +we went gypsying a long time ago--thirty years. Indeed it was a talk of +the dead. Mainly that. And of how they looked, and the harum-scarum +things they did and said. For there were no cares in that life, no aches +and pains, and not time enough in the day (and three-fourths of the +night) to work off one's surplus vigor and energy. Of the mid-night +highway robbery joke played upon me with revolvers at my head on the +windswept and desolate Gold Hill Divide, no witness is left but me, the +victim. All the friendly robbers are gone. These old fools last night +laughed till they cried over the particulars of that old forgotten crime. + +John Mackay has no family here but a pet monkey--a most affectionate and +winning little devil. But he makes trouble for the servants, for he is +full of curiosity and likes to take everything out of the drawers and +examine it minutely; and he puts nothing back. The examinations of +yesterday count for nothing to-day--he makes a new examination every day. +But he injures nothing. + +I went with Laffan to the Racquet Club the other night and played, +billiards two hours without starting up any rheumatism. I suppose it was +all really taken out of me in Berlin. + +Richard Harding Davis spoke yesterday of Clara's impersonations at Mrs. +Van Rensselaer's here and said they were a wonderful piece of work. + +Livy dear, I do hope you are comfortable, as to quarters and food at the +Hotel Brighton. But if you're not don't stay there. Make one more +effort--don't give it up. Dear heart, this is from one who loves you +--which is Saml. + + + It was decided that Rogers and Clemens should make a trip to Chicago + to investigate personally the type-setter situation there. Clemens + reports the details of the excursion to Mrs. Clemens in a long + subdivided letter, most of which has no general interest and is here + omitted. The trip, as a whole, would seem to have been + satisfactory. The personal portions of the long Christmas letter + may properly be preserved. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris: + + THE PLAYERS, Xmas, 1893. + No. 1. +Merry Xmas, my darling, and all my darlings! I arrived from Chicago +close upon midnight last night, and wrote and sent down my Christmas +cablegram before undressing: "Merry Xmas! Promising progress made in +Chicago." It would get to the telegraph office toward 8 this morning and +reach you at luncheon. + +I was vaguely hoping, all the past week, that my Xmas cablegram would be +definite, and make you all jump with jubilation; but the thought always +intruded itself, "You are not going out there to negotiate with a man, +but with a louse. This makes results uncertain." + +I was asleep as Christmas struck upon the clock at mid night, and didn't +wake again till two hours ago. It is now half past 10 Xmas morning; I +have had my coffee and bread, and shan't get out of bed till it is time +to dress for Mrs. Laflan's Christmas dinner this evening--where I shall +meet Bram Stoker and must make sure about that photo with Irving's +autograph. I will get the picture and he will attend to the rest. In +order to remember and not forget--well, I will go there with my dress +coat wrong side out; it will cause remark and then I shall remember. + + + No. 2 and 3. +I tell you it was interesting! The Chicago campaign, I mean. On the way +out Mr. Rogers would plan out the campaign while I walked the floor and +smoked and assented. Then he would close it up with a snap and drop it +and we would totally change the subject and take up the scenery, etc. + +(Here follows the long detailed report of the Chicago conference, of +interest only to the parties directly concerned.) + + + No. 4. +We had nice tripe, going and coming. Mr. Rogers had telegraphed the +Pennsylvania Railroad for a couple of sections for us in the fast train +leaving at 2 p. m. the 22nd. The Vice President telegraphed back that +every berth was engaged (which was not true--it goes without saying) but +that he was sending his own car for us. It was mighty nice and +comfortable. In its parlor it had two sofas, which could become beds at +night. It had four comfortably-cushioned cane arm-chairs. It had a very +nice bedroom with a wide bed in it; which I said I would take because I +believed I was a little wider than Mr. Rogers--which turned out to be +true; so I took it. It had a darling back-porch--railed, roofed and +roomy; and there we sat, most of the time, and viewed the scenery and +talked, for the weather was May weather, and the soft dream-pictures of +hill and river and mountain and sky were clear and away beyond anything I +have ever seen for exquisiteness and daintiness. + +The colored waiter knew his business, and the colored cook was a finished +artist. Breakfasts: coffee with real cream; beefsteaks, sausage, bacon, +chops, eggs in various ways, potatoes in various--yes, and quite +wonderful baked potatoes, and hot as fire. Dinners--all manner of +things, including canvas-back duck, apollinaris, claret, champagne, etc. + +We sat up chatting till midnight, going and coming; seldom read a line, +day or night, though we were well fixed with magazines, etc.; then I +finished off with a hot Scotch and we went to bed and slept till 9.30a.m. +I honestly tried to pay my share of hotel bills, fees, etc., but I was +not allowed--and I knew the reason why, and respected the motive. I will +explain when I see you, and then you will understand. + +We were 25 hours going to Chicago; we were there 24 hours; we were 30 +hours returning. Brisk work, but all of it enjoyable. We insisted on +leaving the car at Philadelphia so that our waiter and cook (to whom Mr. +R. gave $10 apiece,) could have their Christmas-eve at home. + +Mr. Rogers's carriage was waiting for us in Jersey City and deposited me +at the Players. There--that's all. This letter is to make up for the +three letterless days. I love you, dear heart, I love you all. + SAML. + + + + +XXXIV + +LETTERS 1894. A WINTER IN NEW YORK. BUSINESS FAILURE. +END OF THE MACHINE + +The beginning of the new year found Mark Twain sailing buoyantly on a +tide of optimism. He believed that with H. H. Rogers as his financial +pilot he could weather safely any storm or stress. He could divert +himself, or rest, or work, and consider his business affairs with +interest and amusement, instead of with haggard anxiety. He ran over to +Hartford to see an amateur play; to Boston to give a charity reading; to +Fair Haven to open the library which Mr. Rogers had established there; he +attended gay dinners, receptions, and late studio parties, acquiring the +name of the "Belle of New York." In the letters that follow we get the +echo of some of these things. The Mrs. Rice mentioned in the next brief +letter was the wife of Dr. Clarence C. Rice, who had introduced +H. H. Rogers to Mark Twain. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris: + + Jan. 12, '94 +Livy darling, I came down from Hartford yesterday with Kipling, and he +and Hutton and I had the small smoking compartment to ourselves and found +him at last at his ease, and not shy. He was very pleasant company +indeed. He is to be in the city a week, and I wish I could invite him to +dinner, but it won't do. I should be interrupted by business, of course. +The construction of a contract that will suit Paige's lawyer (not Paige) +turns out to be very difficult. He is embarrassed by earlier advice to +Paige, and hates to retire from it and stultify himself. The +negotiations are being conducted, by means of tedious long telegrams and +by talks over the long-distance telephone. We keep the wires loaded. + +Dear me, dinner is ready. So Mrs. Rice says. + + With worlds of love, + SAML. + + +Clemens and Oliver Wendell Holmes had met and become friends soon after +the publication of Innocents Abroad, in 1869. Now, twenty-five years +later, we find a record of what without doubt was their last meeting. +It occurred at the home of Mrs. James T. Field. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris: + + BOSTON, Jan. 25, '94. +Livy darling, I am caught out worse this time than ever before, in the +matter of letters. Tuesday morning I was smart enough to finish and mail +my long letter to you before breakfast--for I was suspecting that I would +not have another spare moment during the day. It turned out just so. + +In a thoughtless moment I agreed to come up here and read for the poor. +I did not reflect that it would cost me three days. I could not get +released. Yesterday I had myself called at 8 and ran out to Mr. Rogers's +house at 9, and talked business until half past 10; then caught 11 +o'clock train and arrived here at 6; was shaven and dressed by 7 and +ready for dinner here in Mrs. Field's charming house. + +Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes never goes out now (he is in his 84th year,) +but he came out this time-said he wanted to "have a time" once more with +me. + +Mrs. Fields said Aldrich begged to come and went away crying because she +wouldn't let him. She allowed only her family (Sarah Orne Jewett and +sister) to be present, because much company would overtax Dr. Holmes. + +Well, he was just delightful! He did as brilliant and beautiful talking +(and listening) as ever he did in his life, I guess. Fields and Jewett +said he hadn't been in such splendid form in years. He had ordered his +carriage for 9. + +The coachman sent in for him at 9; but he said, "Oh, nonsense!--leave +glories and grandeurs like these? Tell him to go away and come in an +hour!" + +At 10 he was called for again, and Mrs. Fields, getting uneasy, rose, but +he wouldn't go--and so we rattled ahead the same as ever. Twice more +Mrs. Fields rose, but he wouldn't go--and he didn't go till half past 10 +--an unwarrantable dissipation for him in these days. He was +prodigiously complimentary about some of my books, and is having +Pudd'nhead read to him. I told him you and I used the Autocrat as a +courting book and marked it all through, and that you keep it in the +sacred green box with the love letters, and it pleased him. + +Good-bye, my dear darling, it is 15 minutes to dinner and I'm not dressed +yet. I have a reception to-night and will be out very late at that place +and at Irving's Theatre where I have a complimentary box. I wish you +were all here. + SAML. + + + In the next letter we meet James J. Corbett--"Gentleman Jim," as he + was sometimes called--the champion pugilist of that day. + + The Howells incident so amusingly dramatized will perhaps be more + appreciated if the reader remembers that Mark Twain himself had at + intervals been a mind-healing enthusiast. Indeed, in spite of his + strictures on Mrs. Eddy, his interest in the subject of mind-cure + continued to the end of his life. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris: + + Sunday, 9.30 a. m. +Livy dear, when we got out to the house last night, Mrs. Rogers, who is +up and around, now, didn't want to go down stairs to dinner, but Mr. R. +persuaded her and we had a very good time indeed. By 8 o'clock we were +down again and bought a fifteen-dollar box in the Madison Square Garden +(Rogers bought it, not I,) then he went and fetched Dr. Rice while I +(went) to the Players and picked up two artists--Reid and Simmons--and +thus we filled 5 of the 6 seats. There was a vast multitude of people in +the brilliant place. Stanford White came along presently and invited me +to go to the World-Champion's dressing room, which I was very glad to do. +Corbett has a fine face and is modest and diffident, besides being the +most perfectly and beautifully constructed human animal in the world. +I said: + +"You have whipped Mitchell, and maybe you will whip Jackson in June--but +you are not done, then. You will have to tackle me." + +He answered, so gravely that one might easily have thought him in +earnest: + +"No--I am not going to meet you in the ring. It is not fair or right to +require it. You might chance to knock me out, by no merit of your own, +but by a purely accidental blow; and then my reputation would be gone and +you would have a double one. You have got fame enough and you ought not +to want to take mine away from me." + +Corbett was for a long time a clerk in the Nevada Bank in San Francisco. + +There were lots of little boxing matches, to entertain the crowd: then at +last Corbett appeared in the ring and the 8,000 people present went mad +with enthusiasm. My two artists went mad about his form. They said they +had never seen anything that came reasonably near equaling its perfection +except Greek statues, and they didn't surpass it. + +Corbett boxed 3 rounds with the middle-weight Australian champion--oh, +beautiful to see!--then the show was over and we struggled out through a +perfect wash of humanity. When we reached the street I found I had left +my arctics in the box. I had to have them, so Simmons said he would go +back and get them, and I didn't dissuade him. I couldn't see how he was +going to make his way a single yard into that solid oncoming wave of +people--yet he must plow through it full 50 yards. He was back with the +shoes in 3 minutes! + +How do you reckon he accomplished that miracle? By saying: + +"Way, gentlemen, please--coming to fetch Mr. Corbett's overshoes." + +The word flew from mouth to mouth, the Red Sea divided, and Simmons +walked comfortably through and back, dry shod. Simmons (this was +revealed to me under seal of secrecy by Reid) is the hero of "Gwen," and +he and Gwen's author were once engaged to marry. This is "fire-escape" +Simmons, the inveterate talker, you know: "Exit--in case of Simmons." + +I had an engagement at a beautiful dwelling close to the Players for +10.30; I was there by 10.45. Thirty cultivated and very musical ladies +and gentlemen present--all of them acquaintances and many of them +personal friends of mine. That wonderful Hungarian Band was there (they +charge $500 for an evening.) Conversation and Band until midnight; then a +bite of supper; then the company was compactly grouped before me and I +told about Dr. B. E. Martin and the etchings, and followed it with the +Scotch-Irish Christening. My, but the Martin is a darling story! Next, +the head tenor from the Opera sang half a dozen great songs that set the +company wild, yes, mad with delight, that nobly handsome young Damrosch +accompanying on the piano. + +Just a little pause--then the Band burst out into an explosion of weird +and tremendous dance music, a Hungarian celebrity and his wife took the +floor--I followed; I couldn't help it; the others drifted in, one by one, +and it was Onteora over again. + +By half past 4 I had danced all those people down--and yet was not tired; +merely breathless. I was in bed at 5, and asleep in ten minutes. Up at +9 and presently at work on this letter to you. I think I wrote until 2 +or half past. Then I walked leisurely out to Mr. Rogers's (it is called +3 miles but it is short of it) arriving at 3.30, but he was out +--to return at 5.30--(and a person was in, whom I don't particularly like) +--so I didn't stay, but dropped over and chatted with the Howellses until +6. + +First, Howells and I had a chat together. I asked about Mrs. H. He said +she was fine, still steadily improving, and nearly back to her old best +health. I asked (as if I didn't know): + +"What do you attribute this strange miracle to?" + +"Mind-cure--simply mind-cure." + +"Lord, what a conversion! You were a scoffer three months ago." + +"I? I wasn't." + +"You were. You made elaborate fun of me in this very room." + +"I did not, Clemens." + +"It's a lie, Howells, you did." + +I detailed to him the conversation of that time--with the stately +argument furnished by Boyesen in the fact that a patient had actually +been killed by a mind-curist; and Howells's own smart remark that when +the mind-curist is done with you, you have to call in a "regular" at last +because the former can't procure you a burial permit. + +At last he gave in--he said he remembered that talk, but had now been a +mind-curist so long it was difficult for him to realize that he had ever +been anything else. + +Mrs. H. came skipping in, presently, the very person, to a dot, that she +used to be, so many years ago. + +Mrs. H. said: "People may call it what they like, but it is just +hypnotism, and that's all it is--hypnotism pure and simple. Mind-cure! +--the idea! Why, this woman that cured me hasn't got any mind. She's a +good creature, but she's dull and dumb and illiterate and--" + +"Now Eleanor!" + +"I know what I'm talking about!--don't I go there twice a week? And Mr. +Clemens, if you could only see her wooden and satisfied face when she +snubs me for forgetting myself and showing by a thoughtless remark that +to me weather is still weather, instead of being just an abstraction and +a superstition--oh, it's the funniest thing you ever saw! A-n-d-when she +tilts up her nose-well, it's--it's--Well it's that kind of a nose that--" + +"Now Eleanor!--the woman is not responsible for her nose--" and so-on and +so-on. It didn't seem to me that I had any right to be having this feast +and you not there. + +She convinced me before she got through, that she and William James are +right--hypnotism and mind-cure are the same thing; no difference between +them. Very well; the very source, the very center of hypnotism is Paris. +Dr. Charcot's pupils and disciples are right there and ready to your hand +without fetching poor dear old Susy across the stormy sea. Let Mrs. +Mackay (to whom I send my best respects), tell you whom to go to to learn +all you need to learn and how to proceed. Do, do it, honey. Don't lose +a minute. + +.....At 11 o'clock last night Mr. Rogers said: + +"I am able to feel physical fatigue--and I feel it now. You never show +any, either in your eyes or your movements; do you ever feel any?" + +I was able to say that I had forgotten what that feeling was like. Don't +you remember how almost impossible it was for me to tire myself at the +Villa? Well, it is just so in New York. I go to bed unfatigued at 3, +I get up fresh and fine six hours later. I believe I have taken only one +daylight nap since I have been here. + +When the anchor is down, then I shall say: + +"Farewell--a long farewell--to business! I will never touch it again!" + +I will live in literature, I will wallow in it, revel in it, I will swim +in ink! Joan of Arc--but all this is premature; the anchor is not down +yet. + +To-morrow (Tuesday) I will add a P. S. if I've any to add; but, whether +or no, I must mail this to morrow, for the mail steamer goes next day. + +5.30 p. m. Great Scott, this is Tuesday! I must rush this letter into +the mail instantly. + +Tell that sassy Ben I've got her welcome letter, and I'll write her as +soon as I get a daylight chance. I've most time at night, but I'd +druther write daytimes. + SAML. + + + The Reid and Simmons mentioned in the foregoing were Robert Reid and + Edward Simmons, distinguished painter--the latter a brilliant, + fluent, and industrious talker. The title; "Fire-escape Simmons," + which Clemens gives him, originated when Oliver Herford, whose + quaint wit has so long delighted New-Yorkers, one day pinned up by + the back door of the Players the notice: "Exit in case of Simmons." + Gwen, a popular novel of that day, was written by Blanche Willis + Howard. + + "Jamie" Dodge, in the next letter, was the son of Mrs. Mary Mapes + Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas. + + + To Clara Clemens, in Paris: + + MR. ROGERS'S OFFICE, Feb. 5, '94. +Dear Benny--I was intending to answer your letter to-day, but I am away +down town, and will simply whirl together a sentence or two for +good-fellowship. I have bought photographs of Coquelin and Jane Hading +and will ask them to sign them. I shall meet Coquelin tomorrow night, +and if Hading is not present I will send her picture to her by somebody. + +I am to breakfast with Madame Nordica in a few days, and meantime I hope +to get a good picture of her to sign. She was of the breakfast company +yesterday, but the picture of herself which she signed and gave me does +not do her majestic beauty justice. + +I am too busy to attend to the photo-collecting right, because I have to +live up to the name which Jamie Dodge has given me--the "Belle of New +York"--and it just keeps me rushing. Yesterday I had engagements to +breakfast at noon, dine at 3, and dine again at 7. I got away from the +long breakfast at 2 p. m., went and excused myself from the 3 o'clock +dinner, then lunched with Mrs. Dodge in 58th street, returned to the +Players and dressed, dined out at 9, and was back at Mrs. Dodge's at +10 p. m. where we had magic-lantern views of a superb sort, and a lot of +yarns until an hour after midnight, and got to bed at 2 this morning +--a good deal of a gain on my recent hours. But I don't get tired; I +sleep as sound as a dead person, and always wake up fresh and strong +--usually at exactly 9. + +I was at breakfast lately where people of seven separate nationalities +sat and the seven languages were going all the time. At my side sat +a charming gentleman who was a delightful and active talker, and +interesting. He talked glibly to those folks in all those seven +languages and still had a language to spare! I wanted to kill him, for +very envy. + + I greet you with love and kisses. + PAPA. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris: + + Feb.--. +Livy dear, last night I played billiards with Mr. Rogers until 11, then +went to Robert Reid's studio and had a most delightful time until 4 this +morning. No ladies were invited this time. Among the people present +were-- + +Coquelin; +Richard Harding Davis; +Harrison, the great out-door painter; +Wm. H. Chase, the artist; +Bettini, inventor of the new phonograph. +Nikola Tesla, the world-wide illustrious electrician; see article about +him in Jan. or Feb. Century. +John Drew, actor; +James Barnes, a marvelous mimic; my, you should see him! +Smedley the artist; +Zorn the artist; +Zogbaum the artist; +Reinhart the artist; +Metcalf the artist; +Ancona, head tenor at the Opera; + +Oh, a great lot of others. Everybody there had done something and was in +his way famous. + +Somebody welcomed Coquelin in a nice little French speech; John Drew did +the like for me in English, and then the fun began. Coquelin did some +excellent French monologues--one of them an ungrammatical Englishman +telling a colorless historiette in French. It nearly killed the fifteen +or twenty people who understood it. + +I told a yarn, Ancona sang half a dozen songs, Barnes did his darling +imitations, Harding Davis sang the hanging of Danny Deever, which was of +course good, but he followed it with that most fascinating (for what +reason I don't know) of all Kipling's poems, "On the Road to Mandalay," +sang it tenderly, and it searched me deeper and charmed me more than the +Deever. + +Young Gerrit Smith played some ravishing dance music and we all danced +about an hour. There couldn't be a pleasanter night than that one was. +Some of those people complained of fatigue but I don't seem to know what +the sense of fatigue is. + +Coquelin talks quite good English now. He said: + +"I have a brother who has the fine mind--ah, a charming and delicate +fancy, and he knows your writings so well, and loves them--and that is +the same with me. It will stir him so when I write and tell him I have +seen you!" + +Wasn't that nice? We talked a good deal together. He is as winning as +his own face. But he wouldn't sign that photograph for Clara. "That? +No! She shall have a better one. I will send it to you." + +He is much driven, and will forget it, but Reid has promised to get the +picture for me, and I will try and keep him reminded. + +Oh, dear, my time is all used up and your letters are not answered. + +Mama, dear, I don't go everywhere--I decline most things. But there are +plenty that I can't well get out of. + +I will remember what you say and not make my yarning too common. + +I am so glad Susy has gone on that trip and that you are trying the +electric. May you both prosper. For you are mighty dear to me and in my +thoughts always. + SAML. + + + The affairs of the Webster Publishing Company were by this time + getting into a very serious condition indeed. The effects of the + panic of the year before could not be overcome. Creditors were + pressing their claims and profits were negligible. In the following + letter we get a Mark Twain estimate of the great financier who so + cheerfully was willing to undertake the solving of Mark Twain's + financial problems. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris: + + THE PLAYERS, Feb. 15, '94. 11.30 p. m. +Livy darling, Yesterday I talked all my various matters over with Mr. +Rogers and we decided that it would be safe for me to leave here the 7th +of March, in the New York. So his private secretary, Miss Harrison, +wrote and ordered a berth for me and then I lost no time in cabling you +that I should reach Southampton March 14, and Paris the 15th. Land, but +it made my pulses leap, to think I was going to see you again!..... +One thing at a time. I never fully laid Webster's disastrous condition +before Mr. Rogers until to-night after billiards. I did hate to burden +his good heart and over-worked head with it, but he took hold with +avidity and said it was no burden to work for his friends, but a +pleasure. We discussed it from various standpoints, and found it a +sufficiently difficult problem to solve; but he thinks that after he has +slept upon it and thought it over he will know what to suggest. + +You must not think I am ever rude with Mr. Rogers, I am not. He is not +common clay, but fine--fine and delicate--and that sort do not call out +the coarsenesses that are in my sort. I am never afraid of wounding him; +I do not need to watch myself in that matter. The sight of him is peace. + +He wants to go to Japan--it is his dream; wants to go with me--which +means, the two families--and hear no more about business for awhile, and +have a rest. And he needs it. But it is like all the dreams of all busy +men--fated to remain dreams. + +You perceive that he is a pleasant text for me. It is easy to write +about him. When I arrived in September, lord how black the prospect was +--how desperate, how incurably desperate! Webster and Co had to have a +small sum of money or go under at once. I flew to Hartford--to my +friends--but they were not moved, not strongly interested, and I was +ashamed that I went. It was from Mr. Rogers, a stranger, that I got the +money and was by it saved. And then--while still a stranger--he set +himself the task of saving my financial life without putting upon me (in +his native delicacy) any sense that I was the recipient of a charity, +a benevolence--and he has accomplished that task; accomplished it at a +cost of three months of wearing and difficult labor. He gave that time +to me--time which could not be bought by any man at a hundred thousand +dollars a month--no, nor for three times the money. + +Well, in the midst of that great fight, that long and admirable fight, +George Warner came to me and said: + +"There is a splendid chance open to you. I know a man--a prominent man +--who has written a book that will go like wildfire; a book that arraigns +the Standard Oil fiends, and gives them unmitigated hell, individual by +individual. It is the very book for you to publish; there is a fortune +in it, and I can put you in communication with the author." + +I wanted to say: + +"The only man I care for in the world; the only man I would give a damn +for; the only man who is lavishing his sweat and blood to save me and +mine from starvation and shame, is a Standard Oil fiend. If you know me, +you know whether I want the book or not." + +But I didn't say that. I said I didn't want any book; I wanted to get +out of the publishing business and out of all business, and was here for +that purpose and would accomplish it if I could. + +But there's enough. I shall be asleep by 3, and I don't need much sleep, +because I am never drowsy or tired these days. Dear, dear Susy my +strength reproaches me when I think of her and you, my darling. + + SAML. + + + But even so able a man as Henry Rogers could not accomplish the + impossible. The affairs of the Webster Company were hopeless, the + business was not worth saving. By Mr. Rogers's advice an assignment + was made April, 18, 1894. After its early spectacular success less + than ten years had brought the business to failure. The publication + of the Grant memoirs had been its only great achievement. + + Clemens would seem to have believed that the business would resume, + and for a time Rogers appears to have comforted him in his hope, but + we cannot believe that it long survived. Young Hall, who had made + such a struggle for its salvation, was eager to go on, but he must + presently have seen the futility of any effort in that direction. + + Of course the failure of Mark Twain's firm made a great stir in the + country, and it is easy to understand that loyal friends would rally + in his behalf. + + + To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris: + + April 22, '94. +Dear old darling, we all think the creditors are going to allow us to +resume business; and if they do we shall pull through and pay the debts. +I am prodigiously glad we made an assignment. And also glad that we did +not make it sooner. Earlier we should have made a poor showing; but now +we shall make a good one. + +I meet flocks of people, and they all shake me cordially by the hand and +say "I was so sorry to hear of the assignment, but so glad you did it. +It was around, this long time, that the concern was tottering, and all +your friends were afraid you would delay the assignment too long." + +John Mackay called yesterday, and said, "Don't let it disturb you, Sam +--we all have to do it, at one time or another; it's nothing to be +ashamed of." + +One stranger out in New York State sent me a dollar bill and thought +he would like to get up a dollar-subscription for me. And Poultney +Bigelow's note came promptly, with his check for $1,000. I had been +meeting him every day at the Club and liking him better and better all +the time. I couldn't take his money, of course, but I thanked him +cordially for his good will. + +Now and then a good and dear Joe Twichell or Susy Warner condoles with me +and says "Cheer up--don't be downhearted," and some other friend says, +"I am glad and surprised to see how cheerful you are and how bravely you +stand it"--and none of them suspect what a burden has been lifted from me +and how blithe I am inside. Except when I think of you, dear heart--then +I am not blithe; for I seem to see you grieving and ashamed, and dreading +to look people in the face. For in the thick of the fight there is +cheer, but you are far away and cannot hear the drums nor see the +wheeling squadrons. You only seem to see rout, retreat, and dishonored +colors dragging in the dirt--whereas none of these things exist. There +is temporary defeat, but no dishonor--and we will march again. Charley +Warner said to-day, "Sho, Livy isn't worrying. So long as she's got you +and the children she doesn't care what happens. She knows it isn't her +affair." Which didn't convince me. + +Good bye my darling, I love you and all of the kids--and you can tell +Clara I am not a spitting gray kitten. + SAML. + + + Clemens sailed for Europe as soon as his affairs would permit him + to go. He must get settled where he could work comfortably. + Type-setter prospects seemed promising, but meantime there was + need of funds. + + He began writing on the ship, as was his habit, and had completed + his article on Fenimore Cooper by the time he reached London. In + August we find him writing to Mr. Rogers from Etretat, a little + Norman watering-place. + + + To H. H. Rogers, in New York: + + ETRETAT, (NORMANDIE) + CHALET DES ABRIS + Aug. 25, '94. +DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I find the Madam ever so much better in health and +strength. The air is superb and soothing and wholesome, and the Chalet +is remote from noise and people, and just the place to write in. I shall +begin work this afternoon. + +Mrs. Clemens is in great spirits on, account of the benefit which she has +received from the electrical treatment in Paris and is bound to take it +up again and continue it all the winter, and of course I am perfectly +willing. She requires me to drop the lecture platform out of my mind and +go straight ahead with Joan until the book is finished. If I should have +to go home for even a week she means to go with me--won't consent to be +separated again--but she hopes I won't need to go. + +I tell her all right, "I won't go unless you send, and then I must." + +She keeps the accounts; and as she ciphers it we can't get crowded for +money for eight months yet. I didn't know that. But I don't know much +anyway. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The reader may remember that Clemens had written the first half of + his Joan of Arc book at the Villa Viviani, in Florence, nearly two + years before. He had closed the manuscript then with the taking of + Orleans, and was by no means sure that he would continue the story + beyond that point. Now, however, he was determined to reach the + tale's tragic conclusion. + + + To H. H. Rogers, in New York: + + ETRETAT, + Sunday, Sept. 9, '94. +DEAR MR. ROGERS, I drove the quill too hard, and I broke down--in my +head. It has now been three days since I laid up. When I wrote you a +week ago I had added 10,000 words or thereabout to Joan. Next day I +added 1,500 which was a proper enough day's work though not a full one; +but during Tuesday and Wednesday I stacked up an aggregate of 6,000 +words--and that was a very large mistake. My head hasn't been worth a +cent since. + +However, there's a compensation; for in those two days I reached and +passed--successfully--a point which I was solicitous about before I ever +began the book: viz., the battle of Patay. Because that would naturally +be the next to the last chapter of a work consisting of either two books +or one. In the one case one goes right along from that point (as I shall +do now); in the other he would add a wind-up chapter and make the book +consist of Joan's childhood and military career alone. + +I shall resume work to-day; and hereafter I will not go at such an +intemperate' rate. My head is pretty cobwebby yet. + +I am hoping that along about this time I shall hear that the machine is +beginning its test in the Herald office. I shall be very glad indeed to +know the result of it. I wish I could be there. + Sincerely yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Rouen, where Joan met her martyrdom, was only a short distance away, + and they halted there en route to Paris, where they had arranged to + spend the winter. The health of Susy Clemens was not good, and they + lingered in Rouen while Clemens explored the old city and + incidentally did some writing of another sort. In a note to Mr. + Rogers he said: "To put in my odd time I am writing some articles + about Paul Bourget and his Outre-Mer chapters--laughing at them and + at some of our oracular owls who find them important. What the hell + makes them important, I should like to know!" + + He was still at Rouen two weeks later and had received encouraging + news from Rogers concerning the type-setter, which had been placed + for trial in the office of the Chicago Herald. Clemens wrote: "I + can hardly keep from sending a hurrah by cable. I would certainly + do it if I wasn't superstitious." His restraint, though wise, was + wasted the end was near. + + + To H. H. Rogers, in New York: + + 169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE, + PARIS, Dec. 22; '94. +DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I seemed to be entirely expecting your letter, and also +prepared and resigned; but Lord, it shows how little we know ourselves +and how easily we can deceive ourselves. It hit me like a thunder-clap. +It knocked every rag of sense out of my head, and I went flying here and +there and yonder, not knowing what I was doing, and only one clearly +defined thought standing up visible and substantial out of the crazy +storm-drift that my dream of ten years was in desperate peril, and out of +the 60,000 or 90,000 projects for its rescue that came floating through +my skull, not one would hold still long enough for me to examine it and +size it up. Have you ever been like that? Not so much so, I reckon. + +There was another clearly defined idea--I must be there and see it die. +That is, if it must die; and maybe if I were there we might hatch up some +next-to-impossible way to make it take up its bed and take a walk. + +So, at the end of four hours I started, still whirling and walked over to +the rue Scribe--4 P. M.--and asked a question or two and was told I +should be running a big risk if I took the 9 P. M. train for London and +Southampton; "better come right along at 6.52 per Havre special and step +aboard the New York all easy and comfortable." Very! and I about two +miles from home, with no packing done. + +Then it occurred to me that none of these salvation-notions that were +whirl-winding through my head could be examined or made available unless +at least a month's time could be secured. So I cabled you, and said to +myself that I would take the French steamer tomorrow (which will be +Sunday). + +By bedtime Mrs. Clemens had reasoned me into a fairly rational and +contented state of mind; but of course it didn't last long. So I went on +thinking--mixing it with a smoke in the dressing room once an hour--until +dawn this morning. Result--a sane resolution; no matter what your answer +to my cable might be, I would hold still and not sail until I should get +an answer to this present letter which I am now writing, or a cable +answer from you saying "Come" or "Remain." + +I have slept 6 hours, my pond has clarified, and I find the sediment of +my 70,000 projects to be of this character: + +[Several pages of suggestions for reconstructing the machine follow.] + +Don't say I'm wild. For really I'm sane again this morning. + + ...................... + +I am going right along with Joan, now, and wait untroubled till I hear +from you. If you think I can be of the least use, cable me "Come." +I can write Joan on board ship and lose no time. Also I could discuss my +plan with the publisher for a deluxe Joan, time being an object, for some +of the pictures could be made over here cheaply and quickly, but would +cost much time and money in America. + + ...................... + +If the meeting should decide to quit business Jan. 4, I'd like to have +Stoker stopped from paying in any more money, if Miss Harrison doesn't +mind that disagreeable job. And I'll have to write them, too, of course. + With love, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The "Stoker" of this letter was Bram Stoker, long associated with + Sir Henry Irving. Irving himself had also taken stock in the + machine. The address, 169 Rue de l'Universite, whence these letters + are written, was the beautiful studio home of the artist Pomroy + which they had taken for the winter. + + + To H. H. Rogers, in New York: + + 169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE, + PARIS, Dec. 27, '94. +DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Notwithstanding your heart is "old and hard," you make +a body choke up. I know you "mean every word you say" and I do take it +"in the same spirit in which you tender it." I shall keep your regard +while we two live--that I know; for I shall always remember what you have +done for me, and that will insure me against ever doing anything that +could forfeit it or impair it. I am 59 years old; yet I never had a +friend before who put out a hand and tried to pull me ashore when he +found me in deep waters. + +It is six days or seven days ago that I lived through that despairing +day, and then through a night without sleep; then settled down next day +into my right mind (or thereabouts,) and wrote you. I put in the rest of +that day till 7 P. M. plenty comfortably enough writing a long chapter +of my book; then went to a masked ball blacked up as Uncle Remus, taking +Clara along; and we had a good time. I have lost no day since and +suffered no discomfort to speak of, but drove my troubles out of my mind +and had good success in keeping them out--through watchfulness. I have +done a good week's work and put the book a good way ahead in the Great +Trial, which is the difficult part which requires the most thought and +carefulness. I cannot see the end of the Trial yet, but I am on the +road. I am creeping surely toward it. + +"Why not leave them all to me." My business bothers? I take you by the +hand! I jump at the chance! + +I ought to be ashamed and I am trying my best to be ashamed--and yet I do +jump at the chance in spite of it. I don't want to write Irving and I +don't want to write Stoker. It doesn't seem as if I could. But I can +suggest something for you to write them; and then if you see that I am +unwise, you can write them something quite different. Now this is my +idea: + + 1. To return Stoker's $100 to him and keep his stock. + + 2. And tell Irving that when luck turns with me I will make good to + him what the salvage from the dead Co. fails to pay him of his $500. + + +P. S. Madam says No, I must face the music. So I enclose my effort to +be used if you approve, but not otherwise. + +There! Now if you will alter it to suit your judgment and bang away, I +shall be eternally obliged. + +We shall try to find a tenant for our Hartford house; not an easy matter, +for it costs heavily to live in. We can never live in it again; though +it would break the family's hearts if they could believe it. + +Nothing daunts Mrs. Clemens or makes the world look black to her--which +is the reason I haven't drowned myself. + +We all send our deepest and warmest greetings to you and all of yours and +a Happy New Year! + S. L. CLEMENS. + + +Enclosure: + +MY DEAR STOKER,--I am not dating this because it is not to be mailed at +present. + +When it reaches you it will mean that there is a hitch in my +machine-enterprise--a hitch so serious as to make it take to itself the +aspect of a dissolved dream. This letter, then, will contain cheque for +the $100 which you have paid. And will you tell Irving for me--I can't +get up courage enough to talk about this misfortune myself, except to +you, whom by good luck I haven't damaged yet that when the wreckage +presently floats ashore he will get a good deal of his $500 back; and a +dab at a time I will make up to him the rest. + +I'm not feeling as fine as I was when I saw you there in your home. +Please remember me kindly to Mrs. Stoker. I gave up that London +lecture-project entirely. Had to--there's never been a chance since +to find the time. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + + +XXXV + +LETTERS, 1895-96, TO H. H. ROGERS AND OTHERS. FINISHING "JOAN OF ARC." +THE TRIP AROUND THE WORLD. DEATH OF SUSY CLEMENS + + + To H. H. Rogers, in New York City: + + [No date.] +DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Yours of Dec. 21 has arrived, containing the circular +to stockholders and I guess the Co. will really quit--there doesn't seem +to be any other wise course. + +There's one thing which makes it difficult for me to soberly realize that +my ten year dream is actually dissolved; and that is, that it reveries my +horoscope. The proverb says, "Born lucky, always lucky," and I am very +superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for +one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or +in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times +before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise. +When the "Pennsylvania" blew up and the telegraph reported my brother as +fatally injured (with 60 others) but made no mention of me, my uncle said +to my mother "It means that Sam was somewhere else, after being on that +boat a year and a half--he was born lucky." Yes, I was somewhere else. +I am so superstitious that I have always been afraid to have business +dealings with certain relatives and friends of mine because they were +unlucky people. All my life I have stumbled upon lucky chances of large +size, and whenever they were wasted it was because of my own stupidity +and carelessness. And so I have felt entirely certain that that machine +would turn up trumps eventually. It disappointed me lots of times, but I +couldn't shake off the confidence of a life-time in my luck. + +Well, whatever I get out of the wreckage will be due to good luck--the +good luck of getting you into the scheme--for, but for that, there +wouldn't be any wreckage; it would be total loss. + +I wish you had been in at the beginning. Then we should have had the +good luck to step promptly ashore. + +Miss Harrison has had a dream which promises me a large bank account, +and I want her to go ahead and dream it twice more, so as to make the +prediction sure to be fulfilled. + +I've got a first rate subject for a book. It kept me awake all night, +and I began it and completed it in my mind. The minute I finish Joan +I will take it up. + Love and Happy New Year to you all. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + This was about the end of the machine interests so far as Clemens + was concerned. Paige succeeded in getting some new people + interested, but nothing important happened, or that in any way + affected Mark Twain. Characteristically he put the whole matter + behind him and plunged into his work, facing comparative poverty and + a burden of debts with a stout heart. The beginning of the new year + found him really poorer in purse than he had ever been in his life, + but certainly not crushed, or even discouraged--at least, not + permanently--and never more industrious or capable. + + + To H. H. Rogers, in New York City: + + 169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE, + PARIS, Jan. 23, '95. +DEAR MR. ROGERS,--After I wrote you, two or three days ago I thought I +would make a holiday of the rest of the day--the second deliberate +holiday since I had the gout. On the first holiday I wrote a tale of +about 6,000 words, which was 3 days' work in one; and this time I did +8,000 before midnight. I got nothing out of that first holiday but the +recreation of it, for I condemned the work after careful reading and some +revision; but this time I fared better--I finished the Huck Finn tale +that lies in your safe, and am satisfied with it. + +The Bacheller syndicate (117 Tribune Building) want a story of 5,000 +words (lowest limit of their London agent) for $1,000 and offer to plank +the check on delivery, and it was partly to meet that demand that I took +that other holiday. So as I have no short story that suits me (and can't +and shan't make promises), the best I can do is to offer the longer one +which I finished on my second holiday--"Tom Sawyer, Detective." + +It makes 27 or 28,000 words, and is really written for grown folks, +though I expect young folk to read it, too. It transfers to the banks of +the Mississippi the incidents of a strange murder which was committed in +Sweden in old times. + +I'll refer applicants for a sight of the story to you or Miss Harrison. +--[Secretary to Mr. Rogers.] + Yours sincerely, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + To H. H. Rogers, in New York City: + + 169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE, + Apr. 29, '95. +DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Your felicitous delightful letter of the 15th arrived +three days ago, and brought great pleasure into the house. + +There is one thing that weighs heavily on Mrs. Clemens and me. That is +Brusnahan's money. If he is satisfied to have it invested in the Chicago +enterprise, well and good; if not, we would like to have the money paid +back to him. I will give him as many months to decide in as he pleases +--let him name 6 or 10 or 12--and we will let the money stay where it is +in your hands till the time is up. Will Miss Harrison tell him so? I +mean if you approve. I would like him to have a good investment, but +would meantime prefer to protect him against loss. + +At 6 minutes past 7, yesterday evening, Joan of Arc was burned at the +stake. + +With the long strain gone, I am in a sort of physical collapse today, but +it will be gone tomorrow. I judged that this end of the book would be +hard work, and it turned out so. I have never done any work before that +cost so much thinking and weighing and measuring and planning and +cramming, or so much cautious and painstaking execution. For I wanted +the whole Rouen trial in, if it could be got in in such a way that the +reader's interest would not flag--in fact I wanted the reader's interest +to increase; and so I stuck to it with that determination in view--with +the result that I have left nothing out but unimportant repetitions. +Although it is mere history--history pure and simple--history stripped +naked of flowers, embroideries, colorings, exaggerations, invention--the +family agree that I have succeeded. It was a perilous thing to try in a +tale, but I never believed it a doubtful one--provided I stuck strictly +to business and didn't weaken and give up: or didn't get lazy and skimp +the work. The first two-thirds of the book were easy; for I only needed +to keep my historical road straight; therefore I used for reference only +one French history and one English one--and shoveled in as much fancy +work and invention on both sides of the historical road as I pleased. +But on this last third I have constantly used five French sources and +five English ones and I think no telling historical nugget in any of them +has escaped me. + +Possibly the book may not sell, but that is nothing--it was written for +love. + +There--I'm called to see company. The family seldom require this of me, +but they know I am not working today. + Yours sincerely, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + "Brusnahan," of the foregoing letter, was an employee of the New + York Herald, superintendent of the press-room--who had invested some + of his savings in the type-setter. + + In February Clemens returned to New York to look after matters + connected with his failure and to close arrangements for a + reading-tour around the world. He was nearly sixty years old, and + time had not lessened his loathing for the platform. More than + once, however, in earlier years, he had turned to it as a + debt-payer, and never yet had his burden been so great as now. He + concluded arrangements with Major Pond to take him as far as the + Pacific Coast, and with R. S. Smythe, of Australia, for the rest of + the tour. In April we find him once more back in Paris preparing + to bring the family to America, He had returned by way of London, + where he had visited Stanley the explorer--an old friend. + + + To H. H. Rogers, in New York City: + + 169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE, + Sunday, Apr.7,'95. +DEAR MR. ROGERS,--..... Stanley is magnificently housed in London, in a +grand mansion in the midst of the official world, right off Downing +Street and Whitehall. He had an extraordinary assemblage of brains and +fame there to meet me--thirty or forty (both sexes) at dinner, and more +than a hundred came in, after dinner. Kept it up till after midnight. +There were cabinet ministers, ambassadors, admirals, generals, canons, +Oxford professors, novelists, playwrights, poets, and a number of people +equipped with rank and brains. I told some yarns and made some speeches. +I promised to call on all those people next time I come to London, and +show them the wife and the daughters. If I were younger and very strong +I would dearly love to spend a season in London--provided I had no work +on hand, or no work more exacting than lecturing. I think I will lecture +there a month or two when I return from Australia. + +There were many delightful ladies in that company. One was the wife of +His Excellency Admiral Bridge, Commander-in Chief of the Australian +Station, and she said her husband was able to throw wide all doors to me +in that part of the world and would be glad to do it, and would yacht me +and my party around, and excursion us in his flag-ship and make us have a +great time; and she said she would write him we were coming, and we would +find him ready. I have a letter from her this morning enclosing a letter +of introduction to the Admiral. I already know the Admiral commanding in +the China Seas and have promised to look in on him out there. He sleeps +with my books under his pillow. P'raps it is the only way he can sleep. + +According to Mrs. Clemens's present plans--subject to modification, of +course--we sail in May; stay one day, or two days in New York, spend +June, July and August in Elmira and prepare my lectures; then lecture in +San Francisco and thereabouts during September and sail for Australia +before the middle of October and open the show there about the middle of +November. We don't take the girls along; it would be too expensive and +they are quite willing to remain behind anyway. + +Mrs. C. is feeling so well that she is not going to try the New York +doctor till we have gone around the world and robbed it and made the +finances a little easier. + With a power of love to you all, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + There would come moments of depression, of course, and a week later + he wrote: "I am tired to death all the time:" To a man of less + vitality, less vigor of mind and body, it is easy to believe that + under such circumstances this condition would have remained + permanent. But perhaps, after all, it was his comic outlook on + things in general that was his chief life-saver. + + + To H. H. Rogers, in New York City: + + 169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE, Apr. 29, '95. +DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I have been hidden an hour or two, reading proof of +Joan and now I think I am a lost child. I can't find anybody on the +place. The baggage has all disappeared, including the family. I reckon +that in the hurry and bustle of moving to the hotel they forgot me. But +it is no matter. It is peacefuller now than I have known it for days and +days and days. + +In these Joan proofs which I have been reading for the September Harper +I find a couple of tip-top platform readings--and I mean to read them on +our trip. If the authorship is known by then; and if it isn't, I will +reveal it. The fact is, there is more good platform-stuff in Joan than +in any previous book of mine, by a long sight. + +Yes, every danged member of the tribe has gone to the hotel and left me +lost. I wonder how they can be so careless with property. I have got to +try to get there by myself now. + +All the trunks are going over as luggage; then I've got to find somebody +on the dock who will agree to ship 6 of them to the Hartford Customhouse. +If it is difficult I will dump them into the river. It is very careless +of Mrs. Clemens to trust trunks and things to me. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + By the latter part of May they were at Quarry Farm, and Clemens, + laid up there with a carbuncle, was preparing for his long tour. + The outlook was not a pleasant one. To Mr. Rogers he wrote: "I + sha'n't be able to stand on the platform before we start west. I + sha'n't get a single chance to practice my reading; but will have to + appear in Cleveland without the essential preparation. Nothing in + this world can save it from being a shabby, poor disgusting + performance. I've got to stand; I can't do it and talk to a house, + and how in the nation am I going to sit? Land of Goshen, it's this + night week! Pray for me." + + The opening at Cleveland July 15th appears not to have been much of + a success, though from another reason, one that doubtless seemed + amusing to him later. + + + To H. H. Rogers, in New York City: + + (Forenoon) + CLEVELAND, July 16, '95. +DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Had a roaring success at the Elmira reformatory Sunday +night. But here, last night, I suffered defeat--There were a couple of +hundred little boys behind me on the stage, on a lofty tier of benches +which made them the most conspicuous objects in the house. And there was +nobody to watch them or keep them quiet. Why, with their scufflings and +horse-play and noise, it was just a menagerie. Besides, a concert of +amateurs had been smuggled into the program (to precede me,) and their +families and friends (say ten per cent of the audience) kept encoring +them and they always responded. So it was 20 minutes to 9 before I got +the platform in front of those 2,600 people who had paid a dollar apiece +for a chance to go to hell in this fashion. + +I got started magnificently, but inside of half an hour the scuffling +boys had the audience's maddened attention and I saw it was a gone case; +so I skipped a third of my program and quit. The newspapers are kind, +but between you and me it was a defeat. There ain't going to be any more +concerts at my lectures. I care nothing for this defeat, because it was +not my fault. My first half hour showed that I had the house, and I +could have kept it if I hadn't been so handicapped. + Yours sincerely, + S. L. CLEMENS. + +P. S. Had a satisfactory time at Petoskey. Crammed the house and turned +away a crowd. We had $548 in the house, which was $300 more than it had +ever had in it before. I believe I don't care to have a talk go off +better than that one did. + + + Mark Twain, on this long tour, was accompanied by his wife and his + daughter Clara--Susy and Jean Clemens remaining with their aunt at + Quarry Farm. The tour was a financial success from the start. + By the time they were ready to sail from Vancouver five thousand + dollars had been remitted to Mr. Rogers against that day of + settlement when the debts of Webster & Co. were to be paid. Perhaps + it should be stated here that a legal settlement had been arranged + on a basis of fifty cents on the dollar, but neither Clemens nor his + wife consented to this as final. They would pay in full. + + They sailed from Vancouver August 23, 1895. About the only letter + of this time is an amusing note to Rudyard Kipling, written at the + moment of departure. + + + To Rudyard Kipling, in England: + + August, 1895. +DEAR KIPLING,--It is reported that you are about to visit India. This +has moved me to journey to that far country in order that I may unload +from my conscience a debt long due to you. Years ago you came from India +to Elmira to visit me, as you said at the time. It has always been my +purpose to return that visit and that great compliment some day. I shall +arrive next January and you must be ready. I shall come riding my ayah +with his tusks adorned with silver bells and ribbons and escorted by a +troop of native howdahs richly clad and mounted upon a herd of wild +bungalows; and you must be on hand with a few bottles of ghee, for I +shall be thirsty. + Affectionately, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Clemens, platforming in Australia, was too busy to write letters. + Everywhere he was welcomed by great audiences, and everywhere + lavishly entertained. He was beset by other carbuncles, but would + seem not to have been seriously delayed by them. A letter to his + old friend Twichell carries the story. + + + To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + FRANK MOELLER'S MASONIC HOTEL, + NAPIER, NEW ZEALAND, + November 29, '95. +DEAR JOE,--Your welcome letter of two months and five days ago has just +arrived, and finds me in bed with another carbuncle. It is No. 3. Not a +serious one this time. I lectured last night without inconvenience, but +the doctors thought best to forbid to-night's lecture. My second one +kept me in bed a week in Melbourne. + +.....We are all glad it is you who is to write the article, it delights +us all through. + +I think it was a good stroke of luck that knocked me on my back here at +Napier, instead of some hotel in the centre of a noisy city. Here we +have the smooth and placidly-complaining sea at our door, with nothing +between us and it but 20 yards of shingle--and hardly a suggestion of +life in that space to mar it or make a noise. Away down here fifty-five +degrees south of the Equator this sea seems to murmur in an unfamiliar +tongue--a foreign tongue--tongue bred among the ice-fields of the +Antarctic--a murmur with a note of melancholy in it proper to the vast +unvisited solitudes it has come from. It was very delicious and solacing +to wake in the night and find it still pulsing there. I wish you were +here--land, but it would be fine! + +Livy and Clara enjoy this nomadic life pretty well; certainly better than +one could have expected they would. They have tough experiences, in the +way of food and beds and frantic little ships, but they put up with the +worst that befalls with heroic endurance that resembles contentment. + +No doubt I shall be on the platform next Monday. A week later we shall +reach Wellington; talk there 3 nights, then sail back to Australia. We +sailed for New Zealand October 30. + +Day before yesterday was Livy's birthday (under world time), and tomorrow +will be mine. I shall be 60--no thanks for it. + +I and the others send worlds and worlds of love to all you dear ones. + + MARK. + + + The article mentioned in the foregoing letter was one which Twichell + had been engaged by Harper's Magazine to write concerning the home + life and characteristics of Mark Twain. By the time the Clemens + party had completed their tour of India--a splendid, triumphant + tour, too full of work and recreation for letter-writing--and had + reached South Africa, the article had appeared, a satisfactory one, + if we may judge by Mark Twain's next. + + This letter, however, has a special interest in the account it gives + of Mark Twain's visit to the Jameson raiders, then imprisoned at + Pretoria. + + + To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC, + The Queen's Birthday, '96. + (May 24) +DEAR OLD JOE,--Harper for May was given to me yesterday in Johannesburg +by an American lady who lives there, and I read your article on me while +coming up in the train with her and an old friend and fellow-Missourian +of mine, Mrs. John Hays Hammond, the handsome and spirited wife of the +chief of the 4 Reformers, who lies in prison here under a 15-year +sentence, along with 50 minor Reformers who are in for 1 and 5-year +terms. Thank you a thousand times Joe, you have praised me away above my +deserts, but I am not the man to quarrel with you for that; and as for +Livy, she will take your very hardiest statements at par, and be grateful +to you to the bottom of her heart. Between you and Punch and Brander +Matthews, I am like to have my opinion of myself raised sufficiently +high; and I guess the children will be after you, for it is the study of +their lives to keep my self-appreciation down somewhere within bounds. + +I had a note from Mrs. Rev. Gray (nee Tyler) yesterday, and called on her +to-day. She is well. + +Yesterday I was allowed to enter the prison with Mrs. Hammond. A Boer +guard was at my elbow all the time, but was courteous and polite, only +he barred the way in the compound (quadrangle or big open court) and +wouldn't let me cross a white mark that was on the ground--the +"death-line" one of the prisoners called it. Not in earnest, though, I +think. I found that I had met Hammond once when he was a Yale senior and +a guest of Gen. Franklin's. I also found that I had known Capt. Mein +intimately 32 years ago. One of the English prisoners had heard me +lecture in London 23 years ago. After being introduced in turn to all +the prisoners, I was allowed to see some of the cells and examine their +food, beds, etc. I was told in Johannesburg that Hammond's salary of +$150,000 a year is not stopped, and that the salaries of some of the +others are still continued. Hammond was looking very well indeed, and I +can say the same of all the others. When the trouble first fell upon +them it hit some of them very hard; several fell sick (Hammond among +them), two or three had to be removed to the hospital, and one of the +favorites lost his mind and killed himself, poor fellow, last week. His +funeral, with a sorrowing following of 10,000, took the place of the +public demonstration the Americans were getting up for me. + +These prisoners are strong men, prominent men, and I believe they are all +educated men. They are well off; some of them are wealthy. They have a +lot of books to read, they play games and smoke, and for awhile they will +be able to bear up in their captivity; but not for long, not for very +long, I take it. I am told they have times of deadly brooding and +depression. I made them a speech--sitting down. It just happened so. +I don't prefer that attitude. Still, it has one advantage--it is only a +talk, it doesn't take the form of a speech. I have tried it once before +on this trip. However, if a body wants to make sure of having "liberty," +and feeling at home, he had better stand up, of course. I advised them +at considerable length to stay where they were--they would get used to it +and like it presently; if they got out they would only get in again +somewhere else, by the look of their countenances; and I promised to go +and see the President and do what I could to get him to double their +jail-terms. + +We had a very good sociable time till the permitted time was up and a +little over, and we outsiders had to go. I went again to-day, but the +Rev. Mr. Gray had just arrived, and the warden, a genial, elderly Boer +named Du Plessis--explained that his orders wouldn't allow him to admit +saint and sinner at the same time, particularly on a Sunday. Du Plessis +--descended from the Huguenot fugitives, you see, of 200 years ago +--but he hasn't any French left in him now--all Dutch. + +It gravels me to think what a goose I was to make Livy and Clara remain +in Durban; but I wanted to save them the 30-hour railway trip to +Johannesburg. And Durban and its climate and opulent foliage were so +lovely, and the friends there were so choice and so hearty that I +sacrificed myself in their interests, as I thought. It is just the +beginning of winter, and although the days are hot, the nights are cool. +But it's lovely weather in these regions, too; and the friends are as +lovely as the weather, and Johannesburg and Pretoria are brimming with +interest. I talk here twice more, then return to Johannesburg next +Wednesday for a fifth talk there; then to the Orange Free State capital, +then to some town on the way to Port Elizabeth, where the two will join +us by sea from Durban; then the gang will go to Kimberley and presently +to the Cape--and so, in the course of time, we shall get through and sail +for England; and then we will hunt up a quiet village and I will write +and Livy edit, for a few months, while Clara and Susy and Jean study +music and things in London. + +We have had noble good times everywhere and every day, from Cleveland, +July 15, to Pretoria, May 24, and never a dull day either on sea or land, +notwithstanding the carbuncles and things. Even when I was laid up 10 +days at Jeypore in India we had the charmingest times with English +friends. All over India the English well, you will never know how good +and fine they are till you see them. + +Midnight and after! and I must do many things to-day, and lecture +tonight. + +A world of thanks to you, Joe dear, and a world of love to all of you. + + MARK. + + + Perhaps for readers of a later day a word as to what constituted the + Jameson raid would not be out of place here. Dr. Leander Starr + Jameson was an English physician, located at Kimberley. President + Kruger (Oom Paul), head of the South African Republic, was one of + his patients; also, Lobengula, the Matabele chief. From Lobengula + concessions were obtained which led to the formation of the South + African Company. Jameson gave up his profession and went in for + conquest, associating himself with the projects of Cecil Rhodes. + In time he became administrator of Rhodesia. By the end of 1894. + he was in high feather, and during a visit to England was feted as + a sort of romantic conqueror of the olden time. Perhaps this turned + his head; at all events at the end of 1895 came the startling news + that "Dr. Jim," as he was called, at the head of six hundred men, + had ridden into the Transvaal in support of a Rhodes scheme for an + uprising at Johannesburg. The raid was a failure. Jameson, and + those other knights of adventure, were captured by the forces of + "Oom Paul," and some of them barely escaped execution. The Boer + president handed them over to the English Government for punishment, + and they received varying sentences, but all were eventually + released. Jameson, later, became again prominent in South-African + politics, but there is no record of any further raids. + + ......................... + + The Clemens party sailed from South Africa the middle of July, 1896, + and on the last day of the month reached England. They had not + planned to return to America, but to spend the winter in or near + London in some quiet place where Clemens could write the book of his + travels. + + The two daughters in America, Susy and Jean, were expected to arrive + August 12th, but on that day there came, instead, a letter saying + that Susy Clemens was not well enough to sail. A cable inquiry was + immediately sent, but the reply when it came was not satisfactory, + and Mrs. Clemens and Clara sailed for America without further delay. + This was on August 15th. Three days later, in the old home at + Hartford, Susy Clemens died of cerebral fever. She had been + visiting Mrs. Charles Dudley Warner, but by the physician's advice + had been removed to the comfort and quiet of her own home, only a + few steps away. + + Mark Twain, returning from his triumphant tour of the world in the + hope that soon, now, he might be free from debt, with his family + happily gathered about him, had to face alone this cruel blow. + There was no purpose in his going to America; Susy would be buried + long before his arrival. He awaited in England the return of his + broken family. They lived that winter in a quiet corner of Chelsea, + No. 23 Tedworth Square. + + + To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn.: + + Permanent address: + % CHATTO & WINDUS + 111 T. MARTIN'S LANE, LONDON, + Sept. 27, '96. +Through Livy and Katy I have learned, dear old Joe, how loyally you stood +poor Susy's friend, and mine, and Livy's: how you came all the way down, +twice, from your summer refuge on your merciful errands to bring the +peace and comfort of your beloved presence, first to that poor child, and +again to the broken heart of her poor desolate mother. It was like you; +like your good great heart, like your matchless and unmatchable self. +It was no surprise to me to learn that you stayed by Susy long hours, +careless of fatigue and heat, it was no surprise to me to learn that you +could still the storms that swept her spirit when no other could; for she +loved you, revered you, trusted you, and "Uncle Joe" was no empty phrase +upon her lips! I am grateful to you, Joe, grateful to the bottom of my +heart, which has always been filled with love for you, and respect and +admiration; and I would have chosen you out of all the world to take my +place at Susy's side and Livy's in those black hours. + +Susy was a rare creature; the rarest that has been reared in Hartford in +this generation. And Livy knew it, and you knew it, and Charley Warner +and George, and Harmony, and the Hillyers and the Dunhams and the +Cheneys, and Susy and Lilly, and the Bunces, and Henry Robinson and Dick +Burton, and perhaps others. And I also was of the number, but not in the +same degree--for she was above my duller comprehension. I merely knew +that she was my superior in fineness of mind, in the delicacy and +subtlety of her intellect, but to fully measure her I was not competent. +I know her better now; for I have read her private writings and sounded +the deeps of her mind; and I know better, now, the treasure that was mine +than I knew it when I had it. But I have this consolation: that dull as +I was, I always knew enough to be proud when she commended me or my work +--as proud as if Livy had done it herself--and I took it as the accolade +from the hand of genius. I see now--as Livy always saw--that she had +greatness in her; and that she herself was dimly conscious of it. + +And now she is dead--and I can never tell her. + +God bless you Joe--and all of your house. + S. L. C. + + + To Mr. Henry C. Robinson, Hartford, Conn.: + + LONDON, Sept. 28, '96. +It is as you say, dear old friend, "the pathos of it" yes, it was a +piteous thing--as piteous a tragedy as any the year can furnish. When we +started westward upon our long trip at half past ten at night, July 14, +1895, at Elmira, Susy stood on the platform in the blaze of the electric +light waving her good-byes to us as the train glided away, her mother +throwing back kisses and watching her through her tears. One year, one +month, and one week later, Clara and her mother having exactly completed +the circuit of the globe, drew up at that platform at the same hour of +the night, in the same train and the same car--and again Susy had come a +journey and was near at hand to meet them. She was waiting in the house +she was born in, in her coffin. + +All the circumstances of this death were pathetic--my brain is worn to +rags rehearsing them. The mere death would have been cruelty enough, +without overloading it and emphasizing it with that score of harsh and +wanton details. The child was taken away when her mother was within +three days of her, and would have given three decades for sight of her. + +In my despair and unassuageable misery I upbraid myself for ever parting +with her. But there is no use in that. Since it was to happen it would +have happened. + With love + S. L. C. + + + The life at Tedworth Square that winter was one of almost complete + privacy. Of the hundreds of friends which Mark Twain had in London + scarcely half a dozen knew his address. He worked steadily on his + book of travels, 'Following the Equator', and wrote few letters + beyond business communications to Mr. Rogers. In one of these he + said, "I am appalled! Here I am trying to load you up with work + again after you have been dray-horsing over the same tiresome ground + for a year. It's too bad, and I am ashamed of it." + + But late in November he sent a letter of a different sort--one that + was to have an important bearing on the life of a girl today of + unique and world-wide distinction. + + + To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in New York City: + +For and in behalf of Helen Keller, +stone blind and deaf, and formerly dumb. + +DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--Experience has convinced me that when one wishes to +set a hard-worked man at something which he mightn't prefer to be +bothered with, it is best to move upon him behind his wife. If she can't +convince him it isn't worth while for other people to try. + +Mr. Rogers will remember our visit with that astonishing girl at Lawrence +Hutton's house when she was fourteen years old. Last July, in Boston, +when she was 16 she underwent the Harvard examination for admission to +Radcliffe College. She passed without a single condition. She was +allowed the same amount of time that is granted to other applicants, and +this was shortened in her case by the fact that the question papers had +to be read to her. Yet she scored an average of 90 as against an average +of 78 on the part of the other applicants. + +It won't do for America to allow this marvelous child to retire from her +studies because of poverty. If she can go on with them she will make a +fame that will endure in history for centuries. Along her special lines +she is the most extraordinary product of all the ages. + +There is danger that she must retire from the struggle for a College +degree for lack of support for herself and for Miss Sullivan, (the +teacher who has been with her from the start--Mr. Rogers will remember +her.) Mrs. Hutton writes to ask me to interest rich Englishmen in her +case, and I would gladly try, but my secluded life will not permit it. +I see nobody. Nobody knows my address. Nothing but the strictest hiding +can enable me to write my long book in time. + +So I thought of this scheme: Beg you to lay siege to your husband and get +him to interest himself and Mess. John D. and William Rockefeller and the +other Standard Oil chiefs in Helen's case; get them to subscribe an +annual aggregate of six or seven hundred or a thousand dollars--and agree +to continue this for three or four years, until she has completed her +college course. I'm not trying to limit their generosity--indeed no, +they may pile that Standard Oil, Helen Keller College Fund as high as +they please, they have my consent. + +Mrs. Hutton's idea is to raise a permanent fund the interest upon which +shall support Helen and her teacher and put them out of the fear of want. +I shan't say a word against it, but she will find it a difficult and +disheartening job, and meanwhile what is to become of that miraculous +girl? + +No, for immediate and sound effectiveness, the thing is for you to plead +with Mr. Rogers for this hampered wonder of your sex, and send him +clothed with plenary powers to plead with the other chiefs--they have +spent mountains of money upon the worthiest benevolences, and I think +that the same spirit which moved them to put their hands down through +their hearts into their pockets in those cases will answer "Here!" when +its name is called in this one. 638 + +There--I don't need to apologize to you or to H. H. for this appeal that +I am making; I know you too well for that. + +Good-bye with love to all of you + S. L. CLEMENS. + +Laurence Hutton is on the staff of Harper's Monthly--close by, and handy +when wanted. + + + The plea was not made in vain. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers interested + themselves most liberally in Helen Keller's fortune, and certainly + no one can say that any of those who contributed to her success ever + had reason for disappointment. + + In his letter of grateful acknowledgment, which follows, Clemens + also takes occasion to thank Mr. Rogers for his further efforts in + the matter of his own difficulties. This particular reference + concerns the publishing, complications which by this time had arisen + between the American Publishing Company, of Hartford, and the house + in Franklin Square. + + + LONDON, Dec. 22, '96. +DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--It is superb! And I am beyond measure grateful to you +both. I knew you would be interested in that wonderful girl, and that +Mr. Rogers was already interested in her and touched by her; and I was +sure that if nobody else helped her you two would; but you have gone far +and away beyond the sum I expected--may your lines fall in pleasant +places here and Hereafter for it! + +The Huttons are as glad and grateful as they can be, and I am glad for +their sakes as well as for Helen's. + +I want to thank Mr. Rogers for crucifying himself again on the same old +cross between Bliss and Harper; and goodness knows I hope he will come to +enjoy it above all other dissipations yet, seeing that it has about it +the elements of stability and permanency. However, at any time that he +says sign, we're going to do it. + Ever sincerely Yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + + +XXXVI + +LETTERS 1897. LONDON, SWITZERLAND, VIENNA + +Mark Twain worked steadily on his book that sad winter and managed to +keep the gloom out of his chapters, though it is noticeable that +'Following the Equator' is more serious than his other books of travel. +He wrote few letters, and these only to his three closest friends, +Howells, Twichell, and Rogers. In the letter to Twichell, which follows, +there is mention of two unfinished manuscripts which he expects to +resume. One of these was a dream story, enthusiastically begun, but +perhaps with insufficient plot to carry it through, for it never reached +conclusion. He had already tried it in one or two forms and would begin +it again presently. The identity of the other tale is uncertain. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + LONDON, Jan. 19, '97. +DEAR JOE,--Do I want you to write to me? Indeed I do. I do not want +most people to write, but I do want you to do it. The others break my +heart, but you will not. You have a something divine in you that is not +in other men. You have the touch that heals, not lacerates. And you +know the secret places of our hearts. You know our life--the outside of +it--as the others do--and the inside of it--which they do not. You have +seen our whole voyage. You have seen us go to sea, a cloud of sail--and +the flag at the peak; and you see us now, chartless, adrift--derelicts; +battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our pride gone. For it +is gone. And there is nothing in its place. The vanity of life was all +we had, and there is no more vanity left in us. We are even ashamed of +that we had; ashamed that we trusted the promises of life and builded +high--to come to this! + +I did know that Susy was part of us; I did not know that she could go +away; I did not know that she could go away, and take our lives with her, +yet leave our dull bodies behind. And I did not know what she was. To +me she was but treasure in the bank; the amount known, the need to look +at it daily, handle it, weigh it, count it, realize it, not necessary; +and now that I would do it, it is too late; they tell me it is not there, +has vanished away in a night, the bank is broken, my fortune is gone, I +am a pauper. How am I to comprehend this? How am I to have it? Why am +I robbed, and who is benefited? + +Ah, well, Susy died at home. She had that privilege. Her dying eyes +rested upon nothing that was strange to them, but only upon things which +they had known and loved always and which had made her young years glad; +and she had you, and Sue, and Katy, and John, and Ellen. This was happy +fortune--I am thankful that it was vouchsafed to her. If she had died in +another house-well, I think I could not have borne that. To us, our +house was not unsentient matter--it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to +see us with; and approvals, and solicitudes, and deep sympathies; it was +of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the +peace of its benediction. We never came home from an absence that its +face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome--and we could +not enter it unmoved. And could we now, oh, now, in spirit we should +enter it unshod. + +I am trying to add to the "assets" which you estimate so generously. +No, I am not. The thought is not in my mind. My purpose is other. I am +working, but it is for the sake of the work--the "surcease of sorrow" +that is found there. I work all the days, and trouble vanishes away when +I use that magic. This book will not long stand between it and me, now; +but that is no matter, I have many unwritten books to fly to for my +preservation; the interval between the finishing of this one and the +beginning of the next will not be more than an hour, at most. +Continuances, I mean; for two of them are already well along--in fact +have reached exactly the same stage in their journey: 19,000 words each. +The present one will contain 180,000 words--130,000 are done. I am well +protected; but Livy! She has nothing in the world to turn to; nothing +but housekeeping, and doing things for the children and me. She does not +see people, and cannot; books have lost their interest for her. She sits +solitary; and all the day, and all the days, wonders how it all happened, +and why. We others were always busy with our affairs, but Susy was her +comrade--had to be driven from her loving persecutions--sometimes at 1 in +the morning. To Livy the persecutions were welcome. It was heaven to +her to be plagued like that. But it is ended now. Livy stands so in +need of help; and none among us all could help her like you. + +Some day you and I will walk again, Joe, and talk. I hope so. We could +have such talks! We are all grateful to you and Harmony--how grateful it +is not given to us to say in words. We pay as we can, in love; and in +this coin practicing no economy. + Good bye, dear old Joe! + MARK. + + + The letters to Mr. Rogers were, for the most part, on matters of + business, but in one of them he said: "I am going to write with all + my might on this book, and follow it up with others as fast as I can + in the hope that within three years I can clear out the stuff that + is in me waiting to be written, and that I shall then die in the + promptest kind of a way and no fooling around." And in one he + wrote: "You are the best friend ever a man had, and the surest." + + + To W. D. Howells, in New York + + LONDON, Feb. 23, '97. +DEAR HOWELLS,-I find your generous article in the Weekly, and I want to +thank you for its splendid praises, so daringly uttered and so warmly. +The words stir the dead heart of me, and throw a glow of color into a +life which sometimes seems to have grown wholly wan. I don't mean that I +am miserable; no--worse than that--indifferent. Indifferent to nearly +everything but work. I like that; I enjoy it, and stick to it. I do it +without purpose and without ambition; merely for the love of it. + +This mood will pass, some day--there is history for it. But it cannot +pass until my wife comes up out of the submergence. She was always so +quick to recover herself before, but now there is no rebound, and we are +dead people who go through the motions of life. Indeed I am a mud image, +and it will puzzle me to know what it is in me that writes, and has +comedy-fancies and finds pleasure in phrasing them. It is a law of our +nature, of course, or it wouldn't happen; the thing in me forgets the +presence of the mud image and goes its own way, wholly unconscious of it +and apparently of no kinship with it. I have finished my book, but I go +on as if the end were indefinitely away--as indeed it is. There is no +hurry--at any rate there is no limit. + +Jean's spirits are good; Clara's are rising. They have youth--the only +thing that was worth giving to the race. + +These are sardonic times. Look at Greece, and that whole shabby muddle. +But I am not sorry to be alive and privileged to look on. If I were not +a hermit I would go to the House every day and see those people scuffle +over it and blether about the brotherhood of the human race. This has +been a bitter year for English pride, and I don't like to see England +humbled--that is, not too much. We are sprung from her loins, and it +hurts me. I am for republics, and she is the only comrade we've got, in +that. We can't count France, and there is hardly enough of Switzerland +to count. Beneath the governing crust England is sound-hearted--and +sincere, too, and nearly straight. But I am appalled to notice that the +wide extension of the surface has damaged her manners, and made her +rather Americanly uncourteous on the lower levels. + +Won't you give our love to the Howellses all and particular? + Sincerely yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The travel-book did not finish easily, and more than once when he + thought it completed he found it necessary to cut and add and + change. The final chapters were not sent to the printer until the + middle of May, and in a letter to Mr. Rogers he commented: "A + successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out + of it." Clemens was at the time contemplating a uniform edition of + his books, and in one of his letters to Mr. Rogers on the matter he + wrote, whimsically, "Now I was proposing to make a thousand sets at + a hundred dollars a set, and do the whole canvassing myself..... I + would load up every important jail and saloon in America with de + luxe editions of my books. But Mrs. Clemens and the children object + to this, I do not know why." And, in a moment of depression: "You + see the lightning refuses to strike me--there is where the defect + is. We have to do our own striking as Barney Barnato did. But + nobody ever gets the courage until he goes crazy." + + They went to Switzerland for the summer to the village of Weggis, on + Lake Lucerne--"The charmingest place we ever lived in," he declared, + "for repose, and restfulness, and superb scenery." It was here that + he began work on a new story of Tom and Huck, and at least upon one + other manuscript. From a brief note to Mr. Rogers we learn + something of his employments and economies. + + + To Henry H. Rogers, in New York: + + LUCERNE, August the something or other, 1897. +DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I am writing a novel, and am getting along very well +with it. + +I believe that this place (Weggis, half an hour from Lucerne,) is the +loveliest in the world, and the most satisfactory. We have a small house +on the hillside all to ourselves, and our meals are served in it from the +inn below on the lake shore. Six francs a day per head, house and food +included. The scenery is beyond comparison beautiful. We have a row +boat and some bicycles, and good roads, and no visitors. Nobody knows we +are here. And Sunday in heaven is noisy compared to this quietness. + Sincerely yours + S. L. C. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + LUCERNE, Aug. 22, '97. +DEAR JOE,--Livy made a noble find on the Lucerne boat the other day on +one of her shopping trips--George Williamson Smith--did I tell you about +it? We had a lovely time with him, and such intellectual refreshment as +we had not tasted in many a month. + +And the other night we had a detachment of the jubilee Singers--6. I had +known one of them in London 24 years ago. Three of the 6 were born in +slavery, the others were children of slaves. How charming they were--in +spirit, manner, language, pronunciation, enunciation, grammar, phrasing, +matter, carriage, clothes--in every detail that goes to make the real +lady and gentleman, and welcome guest. We went down to the village hotel +and bought our tickets and entered the beer-hall, where a crowd of German +and Swiss men and women sat grouped at round tables with their beer mugs +in front of them--self-contained and unimpressionable looking people, an +indifferent and unposted and disheartened audience--and up at the far end +of the room sat the Jubilees in a row. The Singers got up and stood--the +talking and glass jingling went on. Then rose and swelled out above +those common earthly sounds one of those rich chords the secret of whose +make only the Jubilees possess, and a spell fell upon that house. It was +fine to see the faces light up with the pleased wonder and surprise of +it. No one was indifferent any more; and when the singers finished, the +camp was theirs. It was a triumph. It reminded me of Launcelot riding +in Sir Kay's armor and astonishing complacent Knights who thought they +had struck a soft thing. The Jubilees sang a lot of pieces. Arduous and +painstaking cultivation has not diminished or artificialized their music, +but on the contrary--to my surprise--has mightily reinforced its +eloquence and beauty. Away back in the beginning--to my mind--their +music made all other vocal music cheap; and that early notion is +emphasized now. It is utterly beautiful, to me; and it moves me +infinitely more than any other music can. I think that in the Jubilees +and their songs America has produced the perfectest flower of the ages; +and I wish it were a foreign product, so that she would worship it and +lavish money on it and go properly crazy over it. + +Now, these countries are different: they would do all that, if it were +native. It is true they praise God, but that is merely a formality, and +nothing in it; they open out their whole hearts to no foreigner. + +The musical critics of the German press praise the Jubilees with great +enthusiasm--acquired technique etc, included. + +One of the jubilee men is a son of General Joe Johnson, and was educated +by him after the war. The party came up to the house and we had a +pleasant time. + +This is paradise, here--but of course we have got to leave it by and by. +The 18th of August--[Anniversary of Susy Clemens's death.]--has come and +gone, Joe--and we still seem to live. + With love from us all. + MARK. + + + Clemens declared he would as soon spend his life in Weggis "as + anywhere else in the geography," but October found them in Vienna + for the winter, at the Hotel Metropole. The Austrian capital was + just then in a political turmoil, the character of which is hinted + in the following: + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + HOTEL METROPOLE, + VIENNA, Oct. 23, '97. +DEAR JOE,--We are gradually getting settled down and wonted. Vienna is +not a cheap place to live in, but I have made one small arrangement +which: has a distinctly economical aspect. The Vice Consul made the +contract for me yesterday-to-wit: a barber is to come every morning 8.30 +and shave me and keep my hair trimmed for $2.50 a month. I used to pay +$1.50 per shave in our house in Hartford. + +Does it suggest to you reflections when you reflect that this is the most +important event which has happened to me in ten days--unless I count--in +my handing a cabman over to the police day before yesterday, with the +proper formalities, and promised to appear in court when his case comes +up. + +If I had time to run around and talk, I would do it; for there is much +politics agoing, and it would be interesting if a body could get the hang +of it. It is Christian and Jew by the horns--the advantage with the +superior man, as usual--the superior man being the Jew every time and in +all countries. Land, Joe, what chance would the Christian have in a +country where there were 3 Jews to 10 Christians! Oh, not the shade of a +shadow of a chance. The difference between the brain of the average +Christian and that of the average Jew--certainly in Europe--is about the +difference between a tadpole's and an Archbishop's. It's a marvelous, +race--by long odds the most marvelous that the world has produced, I +suppose. + +And there's more politics--the clash between Czech and Austrian. I wish +I could understand these quarrels, but of course I can't. + +With the abounding love of us all + MARK. + + + In Following the Equator there was used an amusing picture showing + Mark Twain on his trip around the world. It was a trick photograph + made from a picture of Mark Twain taken in a steamer-chair, cut out + and combined with a dilapidated negro-cart drawn by a horse and an + ox. In it Clemens appears to be sitting luxuriously in the end of + the disreputable cart. His companions are two negroes. To the + creator of this ingenious effect Mark Twain sent a characteristic + acknowledgment. + + + To T. S. Frisbie + + VIENNA, Oct. 25, '97. +MR. T. S. FRISBIE,--Dear Sir: The picture has reached me, and has moved +me deeply. That was a steady, sympathetic and honorable team, and +although it was not swift, and not showy, it pulled me around the globe +successfully, and always attracted its proper share of attention, even in +the midst of the most costly and fashionable turnouts. Princes and dukes +and other experts were always enthused by the harness and could hardly +keep from trying to buy it. The barouche does not look as fine, now, as +it did earlier-but that was before the earthquake. + +The portraits of myself and uncle and nephew are very good indeed, and +your impressionist reproduction of the palace of the Governor General of +India is accurate and full of tender feeling. + +I consider that this picture is much more than a work of art. How much +more, one cannot say with exactness, but I should think two-thirds more. + + Very truly yours + MARK TWAIN. + + + Following the Equator was issued by subscription through Mark + Twain's old publishers, the Blisses, of Hartford. The sale of it + was large, not only on account of the value of the book itself, but + also because of the sympathy of the American people with Mark + Twain's brave struggle to pay his debts. When the newspapers began + to print exaggerated stories of the vast profits that were piling + up, Bliss became worried, for he thought it would modify the + sympathy. He cabled Clemens for a denial, with the following + result: + + + To Frank E. Bliss, in Hartford: + + VIENNA, Nov. 4, 1897. +DEAR BLISS,--Your cablegram informing me that a report is in circulation +which purports to come from me and which says I have recently made +$82,000 and paid all my debts has just reached me, and I have cabled +back my regret to you that it is not true. I wrote a letter--a private +letter--a short time ago, in which I expressed the belief that I should +be out of debt within the next twelvemonth. If you make as much as usual +for me out of the book, that belief will crystallize into a fact, and I +shall be wholly out of debt. I am encoring you now. + +It is out of that moderate letter that the Eighty-Two Thousand-Dollar +mare's nest has developed. But why do you worry about the various +reports? They do not worry me. They are not unfriendly, and I don't see +how they can do any harm. Be patient; you have but a little while to +wait; the possible reports are nearly all in. It has been reported that +I was seriously ill--it was another man; dying--it was another man; dead +--the other man again. It has been reported that I have received a +legacy it was another man; that I am out of debt--it was another man; and +now comes this $82,000--still another man. It has been reported that I +am writing books--for publication; I am not doing anything of the kind. +It would surprise (and gratify) me if I should be able to get another +book ready for the press within the next three years. You can see, +yourself, that there isn't anything more to be reported--invention is +exhausted. Therefore, don't worry, Bliss--the long night is breaking. +As far as I can see, nothing remains to be reported, except that I have +become a foreigner. When you hear it, don't you believe it. And don't +take the trouble to deny it. Merely just raise the American flag on our +house in Hartford, and let it talk. + Truly yours, + MARK TWAIN. + +P. S. This is not a private letter. I am getting tired of private +letters. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + VIENNA + HOTEL METROPOLE, NOV. 19, '97. +DEAR JOE,--Above is our private (and permanent) address for the winter. +You needn't send letters by London. + +I am very much obliged for Forrest's Austro-Hungarian articles. I have +just finished reading the first one: and in it I find that his opinion +and Vienna's are the same, upon a point which was puzzling me--the +paucity (no, the absence) of Austrian Celebrities. He and Vienna both +say the country cannot afford to allow great names to grow up; that the +whole safety and prosperity of the Empire depends upon keeping things +quiet; can't afford to have geniuses springing up and developing ideas +and stirring the public soul. I am assured that every time a man finds +himself blooming into fame, they just softly snake him down and relegate +him to a wholesome obscurity. It is curious and interesting. + +Three days ago the New York World sent and asked a friend of mine +(correspondent of a London daily) to get some Christmas greetings from +the celebrities of the Empire. She spoke of this. Two or three bright +Austrians were present. They said "There are none who are known all over +the world! none who have achieved fame; none who can point to their work +and say it is known far and wide in the earth: there are no names; +Kossuth (known because he had a father) and Lecher, who made the 12 hour +speech; two names-nothing more. Every other country in the world, +perhaps, has a giant or two whose heads are away up and can be seen, but +ours. We've got the material--have always had it--but we have to +suppress it; we can't afford to let it develop; our political salvation +depends upon tranquillity--always has." + +Poor Livy! She is laid up with rheumatism; but she is getting along now. +We have a good doctor, and he says she will be out of bed in a couple of +days, but must stay in the house a week or ten. + +Clara is working faithfully at her music, Jean at her usual studies, and +we all send love. + MARK. + + + Mention has already been made of the political excitement in Vienna. + The trouble between the Hungarian and German legislative bodies + presently became violent. Clemens found himself intensely + interested, and was present in one of the galleries when it was + cleared by the police. All sorts of stories were circulated as to + what happened to him, one of which was cabled to America. A letter + to Twichell sets forth what really happened. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + HOTEL METROPOLE, + VIENNA, Dec. 10, '97. +DEAR JOE,--Pond sends me a Cleveland paper with a cablegram from here in +it which says that when the police invaded the parliament and expelled +the 11 members I waved my handkerchief and shouted 'Hoch die Deutschen!' +and got hustled out. Oh dear, what a pity it is that one's adventures +never happen! When the Ordner (sergeant-at-arms) came up to our gallery +and was hurrying the people out, a friend tried to get leave for me to +stay, by saying, "But this gentleman is a foreigner--you don't need to +turn him out--he won't do any harm." + +"Oh, I know him very well--I recognize him by his pictures; and I should +be very glad to let him stay, but I haven't any choice, because of the +strictness of the orders." + +And so we all went out, and no one was hustled. Below, I ran across the +London Times correspondent, and he showed me the way into the first +gallery and I lost none of the show. The first gallery had not +misbehaved, and was not disturbed. + +. . . We cannot persuade Livy to go out in society yet, but all the +lovely people come to see her; and Clara and I go to dinner parties, and +around here and there, and we all have a most hospitable good time. +Jean's woodcarving flourishes, and her other studies. + +Good-bye Joe--and we all love all of you. + MARK. + + + Clemens made an article of the Austrian troubles, one of the best + things he ever wrote, and certainly one of the clearest elucidations + of the Austro-Hungarian confusions. It was published in Harper's + Magazine, and is now included in his complete works. + + Thus far none of the Webster Company debts had been paid--at least, + none of importance. The money had been accumulating in Mr. Rogers's + hands, but Clemens was beginning to be depressed by the heavy + burden. He wrote asking for relief. + + + Part of a letter to H. H. Rogers, in New York: + +DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I throw up the sponge. I pull down the flag. Let us +begin on the debts. I cannot bear the weight any longer. It totally +unfits me for work. I have lost three entire months now. In that time I +have begun twenty magazine articles and books--and flung every one of +them aside in turn. The debts interfered every time, and took the spirit +out of any work. And yet I have worked like a bond slave and wasted no +time and spared no effort---- + +Rogers wrote, proposing a plan for beginning immediately upon the debts. +Clemens replied enthusiastically, and during the next few weeks wrote +every few days, expressing his delight in liquidation. + + + Extracts from letters to H. H. Rogers, in New York: + +. . . We all delighted with your plan. Only don't leave B--out. +Apparently that claim has been inherited by some women--daughters, no +doubt. We don't want to see them lose any thing. B----- is an ass, and +disgruntled, but I don't care for that. I am responsible for the money +and must do the best I can to pay it..... I am writing hard--writing for +the creditors. + + + Dec. 29. +Land we are glad to see those debts diminishing. For the first time in +my life I am getting more pleasure out of paying money out than pulling +it in. + + + Jan. 2. +Since we have begun to pay off the debts I have abundant peace of mind +again--no sense of burden. Work is become a pleasure again--it is not +labor any longer. + + + March 7. +Mrs. Clemens has been reading the creditors' letters over and over again +and thanks you deeply for sending them, and says it is the only really +happy day she has had since Susy died. + + + + +XXXVII + +LETTERS, 1898, TO HOWELLS AND TWICHELL. LIFE IN VIENNA. PAYMENT OF THE +DEBTS. ASSASSINATION OF THE EMPRESS + +The end of January saw the payment of the last of Mark Twain's debts. +Once more he stood free before the world--a world that sounded his +praises. The latter fact rather amused him. "Honest men must be pretty +scarce," he said, "when they make so much fuss over even a defective +specimen." When the end was in sight Clemens wrote the news to Howells +in a letter as full of sadness as of triumph. + + + To W. D. Howells, in New York: + + HOTEL METROPOLE, + VIENNA, Jan. 22, '98. +DEAR HOWELLS,--Look at those ghastly figures. I used to write it +"Hartford, 1871." There was no Susy then--there is no Susy now. And how +much lies between--one long lovely stretch of scented fields, and +meadows, and shady woodlands, and suddenly Sahara! You speak of the +glorious days of that old time--and they were. It is my quarrel--that +traps like that are set. Susy and Winnie given us, in miserable sport, +and then taken away. + +About the last time I saw you I described to you the culminating disaster +in a book I was going to write (and will yet, when the stroke is further +away)--a man's dead daughter brought to him when he had been through all +other possible misfortunes--and I said it couldn't be done as it ought to +be done except by a man who had lived it--it must be written with the +blood out of a man's heart. I couldn't know, then, how soon I was to be +made competent. I have thought of it many a time since. If you were +here I think we could cry down each other's necks, as in your dream. +For we are a pair of old derelicts drifting around, now, with some of our +passengers gone and the sunniness of the others in eclipse. + +I couldn't get along without work now. I bury myself in it up to the +ears. Long hours--8 and 9 on a stretch, sometimes. And all the days, +Sundays included. It isn't all for print, by any means, for much of it +fails to suit me; 50,000 words of it in the past year. It was because of +the deadness which invaded me when Susy died. But I have made a change +lately--into dramatic work--and I find it absorbingly entertaining. +I don't know that I can write a play that will play: but no matter, I'll +write half a dozen that won't, anyway. Dear me, I didn't know there was +such fun in it. I'll write twenty that won't play. I get into immense +spirits as soon as my day is fairly started. Of course a good deal of +this friskiness comes of my being in sight of land--on the Webster & Co. +debts, I mean. (Private.) We've lived close to the bone and saved every +cent we could, and there's no undisputed claim, now, that we can't cash. +I have marked this "private" because it is for the friends who are +attending to the matter for us in New York to reveal it when they want to +and if they want to. There are only two claims which I dispute and which +I mean to look into personally before I pay them. But they are small. +Both together they amount to only $12,500. I hope you will never get the +like of the load saddled onto you that was saddled onto me 3 years ago. +And yet there is such a solid pleasure in paying the things that I reckon +maybe it is worth while to get into that kind of a hobble, after all. +Mrs. Clemens gets millions of delight out of it; and the children have +never uttered one complaint about the scrimping, from the beginning. + +We all send you and all of you our love. + MARK. + + + Howells wrote: "I wish you could understand how unshaken you are, + you old tower, in every way; your foundations are struck so deep + that you will catch the sunshine of immortal years, and bask in the + same light as Cervantes and Shakespeare." + + The Clemens apartments at the Metropole became a sort of social + clearing-house of the Viennese art and literary life, much more like + an embassy than the home of a mere literary man. Celebrities in + every walk of life, persons of social and official rank, writers for + the press, assembled there on terms hardly possible in any other + home in Vienna. Wherever Mark Twain appeared in public he was a + central figure. Now and then he read or spoke to aid some benefit, + and these were great gatherings attended by members of the royal + family. It was following one such event that the next letter was + written. + + +(Private) + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + HOTEL METROPOLE, + VIENNA, Feb. 3, '98. +DEAR JOE, There's that letter that I began so long ago--you see how +it is: can't get time to finish anything. I pile up lots of work, +nevertheless. There may be idle people in the world, but I'm not one of +them. I say "Private" up there because I've got an adventure to tell, +and you mustn't let a breath of it get out. First I thought I would lay +it up along with a thousand others that I've laid up for the same +purpose--to talk to you about, but--those others have vanished out of my +memory; and that must not happen with this. + +The other night I lectured for a Vienna charity; and at the end of it +Livy and I were introduced to a princess who is aunt to the heir apparent +of the imperial throne--a beautiful lady, with a beautiful spirit, and +very cordial in her praises of my books and thanks to me for writing +them; and glad to meet me face to face and shake me by the hand--just the +kind of princess that adorns a fairy tale and makes it the prettiest tale +there is. + +Very well, we long ago found that when you are noticed by supremacies, +the correct etiquette is to go, within a couple of days, and pay your +respects in the quite simple form of writing your name in the Visitors' +Book kept in the office of the establishment. That is the end of it, and +everything is squared up and ship-shape. + +So at noon today Livy and I drove to the Archducal palace, and got by the +sentries all right, and asked the grandly-uniformed porter for the book +and said we wished to write our names in it. And he called a servant in +livery and was sending us up stairs; and said her Royal Highness was out +but would soon be in. Of course Livy said "No--no--we only want the +book;" but he was firm, and said, "You are Americans?" + +"Yes." + +"Then you are expected, please go up stairs." + +"But indeed we are not expected--please let us have the book and--" + +"Her Royal Highness will be back in a very little while--she commanded me +to tell you so--and you must wait." + +Well, the soldiers were there close by--there was no use trying to +resist--so we followed the servant up; but when he tried to beguile us +into a drawing-room, Livy drew the line; she wouldn't go in. And she +wouldn't stay up there, either. She said the princess might come in at +any moment and catch us, and it would be too infernally ridiculous for +anything. So we went down stairs again--to my unspeakable regret. For +it was too darling a comedy to spoil. I was hoping and praying the +princess would come, and catch us up there, and that those other +Americans who were expected would arrive, and be taken for impostors by +the portier, and shot by the sentinels--and then it would all go into the +papers, and be cabled all over the world, and make an immense stir and be +perfectly lovely. And by that time the princess would discover that we +were not the right ones, and the Minister of War would be ordered out, +and the garrison, and they would come for us, and there would be another +prodigious time, and that would get cabled too, and--well, Joe, I was in +a state of perfect bliss. But happily, oh, so happily, that big portier +wouldn't let us out--he was sorry, but he must obey orders--we must go +back up stairs and wait. Poor Livy--I couldn't help but enjoy her +distress. She said we were in a fix, and how were we going to explain, +if the princess should arrive before the rightful Americans came? We +went up stairs again--laid off our wraps, and were conducted through one +drawing room and into another, and left alone there and the door closed +upon us. + +Livy was in a state of mind! She said it was too theatrically +ridiculous; and that I would never be able to keep my mouth shut; that I +would be sure to let it out and it would get into the papers--and she +tried to make me promise--"Promise what?" I said--"to be quiet about +this? Indeed I won't--it's the best thing that ever happened; I'll tell +it, and add to it; and I wish Joe and Howells were here to make it +perfect; I can't make all the rightful blunders myself--it takes all +three of us to do justice to an opportunity like this. I would just like +to see Howells get down to his work and explain, and lie, and work his +futile and inventionless subterfuges when that princess comes raging in +here and wanting to know." But Livy could not hear fun--it was not a +time to be trying to be funny--we were in a most miserable and shameful +situation, and if-- + +Just then the door spread wide and our princess and 4 more, and 3 little +princes flowed in! Our princess, and her sister the Archduchess Marie +Therese (mother to the imperial Heir and to the young girl Archduchesses +present, and aunt to the 3 little princes)--and we shook hands all around +and sat down and had a most sociable good time for half an hour--and by +and by it turned out that we were the right ones, and had been sent for +by a messenger who started too late to catch us at the hotel. We were +invited for 2 o'clock, but we beat that arrangement by an hour and a +half. + +Wasn't it a rattling good comedy situation? Seems a kind of pity we were +the right ones. It would have been such nuts to see the right ones come, +and get fired out, and we chatting along comfortably and nobody +suspecting us for impostors. + +We send lots and lots of love. + MARK. + + + The reader who has followed these pages has seen how prone Mark + Twain was to fall a victim to the lure of a patent-right--how he + wasted several small fortunes on profitless contrivances, and one + large one on that insatiable demon of intricacy and despair, the + Paige type-setter. It seems incredible that, after that experience + and its attending disaster, he should have been tempted again. But + scarcely was the ink dry on the receipts from his creditors when he + was once more borne into the clouds on the prospect of millions, + perhaps even billions, to be made from a marvelous carpet-pattern + machine, the invention of Sczezepanik, an Austrian genius. That + Clemens appreciated his own tendencies is shown by the parenthetic + line with which he opens his letter on the subject to Mr. Rogers. + Certainly no man was ever a more perfect prototype of Colonel + Sellers than the creator of that lovely, irrepressible visionary. + + + To Mr. Rogers, in New York: + + March 24, '98. +DEAR MR. ROGERS,--(I feel like Col. Sellers). + +Mr. Kleinberg [agent for Sczezepanik] came according to appointment, at +8.30 last night, and brought his English-speaking Secretary. I asked +questions about the auxiliary invention (which I call "No. 2 ") and got +as good an idea of it as I could. It is a machine. It automatically +punches the holes in the jacquard cards, and does it with mathematical +accuracy. It will do for $1 what now costs $3. So it has value, but +"No. 2" is the great thing(the designing invention.) It saves $9 out of +$10 and the jacquard looms must have it. + +Then I arrived at my new project, and said to him in substance, this: + +"You are on the point of selling the No. 2 patents to Belgium, Italy, +etc. I suggest that you stop those negotiations and put those people off +two or three months. They are anxious now, they will not be less anxious +then--just the reverse; people always want a thing that is denied them. + +"So far as I know, no great world-patent has ever yet been placed in the +grip of a single corporation. This is a good time to begin. + +"We have to do a good deal of guess-work here, because we cannot get hold +of just the statistics we want. Still, we have some good statistics--and +I will use those for a test. + +"You say that of the 1500 Austrian textile factories, 800 use the +jacquard. Then we will guess that of the 4,000 American factories 2,000 +use the jacquard and must have our No. 2. + +"You say that a middle-sized Austrian factory employs from 20 to 30 +designers and pays them from 800 to 3,000 odd florins a year--(a florin +is 2 francs). Let us call the average wage 1500 florins ($600). + +"Let us apply these figures (the low wages too) to the 2,000 American +factories--with this difference, to guard against over-guessing; that +instead of allowing for 20 to 30 designers to a middle-sized factory, we +allow only an average of 10 to each of the 2,000 factories--a total of +20,000 designers. Wages at $600, a total of $12,000,000. Let us +consider that No. 2 will reduce this expense to $2,000,000 a year. The +saving is $5,000,000 per each of the $200,000,000 of capital employed in +the jacquard business over there. + +"Let us consider that in the countries covered by this patent, an +aggregate of $1,500,000,000 of capital is employed in factories requiring +No. 2. + +"The saving (as above) is $75,000,000 a year. The Company holding in its +grip all these patents would collar $50,000,000 of that, as its share. +Possibly more. + +"Competition would be at an end in the Jacquard business, on this planet. +Price-cutting would end. Fluctuations in values would cease. The +business would be the safest and surest in the world; commercial panics +could not seriously affect it; its stock would be as choice an investment +as Government bonds. When the patents died the Company would be so +powerful that it could still keep the whole business in its hands. Would +you like to grant me the privilege of placing the whole jacquard business +of the world in the grip of a single Company? And don't you think that +the business would grow-grow like a weed?" + +"Ach, America--it is the country of the big! Let me get my breath--then +we will talk." + +So then we talked--talked till pretty late. Would Germany and England +join the combination? I said the Company would know how to persuade +them. + +Then I asked for a Supplementary Option, to cover the world, and we +parted. + +I am taking all precautions to keep my name out of print in connection +with this matter. And we will now keep the invention itself out of print +as well as we can. Descriptions of it have been granted to the "Dry +Goods Economist" (New York) and to a syndicate of American papers. I +have asked Mr. Kleinberg to suppress these, and he feels pretty sure he +can do it. + With love, + S. L. C. + + + If this splendid enthusiasm had not cooled by the time a reply came + from Mr. Rogers, it must have received a sudden chill from the + letter which he inclosed--the brief and concise report from a + carpet-machine expert, who said: "I do not feel that it would be of + any value to us in our mills, and the number of jacquard looms in + America is so limited that I am of the opinion that there is no + field for a company to develop the invention here. A cursory + examination of the pamphlet leads me to place no very high value + upon the invention, from a practical standpoint." + + With the receipt of this letter carpet-pattern projects would seem + to have suddenly ceased to be a factor in Mark Twain's calculations. + Such a letter in the early days of the type-machine would have saved + him a great sum in money and years of disappointment. But perhaps + he would not have heeded it then. + + The year 1898 brought the Spanish-American War. Clemens was + constitutionally against all wars, but writing to Twichell, whose + son had enlisted, we gather that this one was an exception. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + KALTENLEUTGEBEN, NEAR VIENNA, + June 17, '98. +DEAR JOE,--You are living your war-days over again in Dave, and it must +be a strong pleasure, mixed with a sauce of apprehension--enough to make +it just schmeck, as the Germans say. Dave will come out with two or +three stars on his shoulder-straps if the war holds, and then we shall +all be glad it happened. + +We started with Bull Run, before. Dewey and Hobson have introduced an +improvement on the game this time. + +I have never enjoyed a war-even in written history--as I am enjoying this +one. For this is the worthiest one that was ever fought, so far as my +knowledge goes. It is a worthy thing to fight for one's freedom; it is +another sight finer to fight for another man's. And I think this is the +first time it has been done. + +Oh, never mind Charley Warner, he would interrupt the raising of Lazarus. +He would say, the will has been probated, the property distributed, it +will be a world of trouble to settle the rows--better leave well enough +alone; don't ever disturb anything, where it's going to break the soft +smooth flow of things and wobble our tranquillity. + +Company! (Sh! it happens every day--and we came out here to be quiet.) + +Love to you all. + MARK. + + + They were spending the summer at Kaltenleutgeben, a pleasant village + near Vienna, but apparently not entirely quiet. Many friends came + out from Vienna, including a number of visiting Americans. Clemens, + however, appears to have had considerable time for writing, as we + gather from the next to Howells. + + + To W. D. Howells, in America: + + KALTENLEUTGEBEN, BEI WIEN, + Aug. 16, '98. +DEAR HOWELLS,--Your letter came yesterday. It then occurred to me that I +might have known (per mental telegraph) that it was due; for a couple of +weeks ago when the Weekly came containing that handsome reference to me I +was powerfully moved to write you; and my letter went on writing itself +while I was at work at my other literature during the day. But next day +my other literature was still urgent--and so on and so on; so my letter +didn't get put into ink at all. But I see now, that you were writing, +about that time, therefore a part of my stir could have come across the +Atlantic per mental telegraph. In 1876 or '75 I wrote 40,000 words of a +story called "Simon Wheeler" wherein the nub was the preventing of an +execution through testimony furnished by mental telegraph from the other +side of the globe. I had a lot of people scattered about the globe who +carried in their pockets something like the old mesmerizer-button, made +of different metals, and when they wanted to call up each other and have +a talk, they "pressed the button" or did something, I don't remember +what, and communication was at once opened. I didn't finish the story, +though I re-began it in several new ways, and spent altogether 70,000 +words on it, then gave it up and threw it aside. + +This much as preliminary to this remark: some day people will be able to +call each other up from any part of the world and talk by mental +telegraph--and not merely by impression, the impression will be +articulated into words. It could be a terrible thing, but it won't be, +because in the upper civilizations everything like sentimentality (I was +going to say sentiment) will presently get materialized out of people +along with the already fading spiritualities; and so when a man is called +who doesn't wish to talk he will be like those visitors you mention: "not +chosen"--and will be frankly damned and shut off. + +Speaking of the ill luck of starting a piece of literary work wrong-and +again and again; always aware that there is a way, if you could only +think it out, which would make the thing slide effortless from the pen +--the one right way, the sole form for you, the other forms being for men +whose line those forms are, or who are capabler than yourself: I've had +no end of experience in that (and maybe I am the only one--let us hope +so.) Last summer I started 16 things wrong--3 books and 13 mag. +articles--and could only make 2 little wee things, 1500 words altogether, +succeed:--only that out of piles and stacks of diligently-wrought MS., +the labor of 6 weeks' unremitting effort. I could make all of those +things go if I would take the trouble to re-begin each one half a dozen +times on a new plan. But none of them was important enough except one: +the story I (in the wrong form) mapped out in Paris three or four years +ago and told you about in New York under seal of confidence--no other +person knows of it but Mrs. Clemens--the story to be called "Which was +the Dream?" + +A week ago I examined the MS--10,000 words--and saw that the plan was a +totally impossible one-for me; but a new plan suggested itself, and +straightway the tale began to slide from the pen with ease and +confidence. I think I've struck the right one this time. I have already +put 12,000 words of it on paper and Mrs. Clemens is pretty outspokenly +satisfied with it-a hard critic to content. I feel sure that all of the +first half of the story--and I hope three-fourths--will be comedy; but by +the former plan the whole of it (except the first 3 chapters) would have +been tragedy and unendurable, almost. I think I can carry the reader a +long way before he suspects that I am laying a tragedy-trap. In the +present form I could spin 16 books out of it with comfort and joy; but I +shall deny myself and restrict it to one. (If you should see a little +short story in a magazine in the autumn called "My Platonic Sweetheart" +written 3 weeks ago) that is not this one. It may have been a +suggester, though. + +I expect all these singular privacies to interest you, and you are not to +let on that they don't. + +We are leaving, this afternoon, for Ischl, to use that as a base for the +baggage, and then gad around ten days among the lakes and mountains to +rest-up Mrs. Clemens, who is jaded with housekeeping. I hope I can get a +chance to work a little in spots--I can't tell. But you do it--therefore +why should you think I can't? + + [Remainder missing.] + + + The dream story was never completed. It was the same that he had + worked on in London, and perhaps again in Switzerland. It would be + tried at other times and in other forms, but it never seemed to + accommodate itself to a central idea, so that the good writing in it + eventually went to waste. The short story mentioned, "My Platonic + Sweetheart," a charming, idyllic tale, was not published during Mark + Twain's lifetime. Two years after his death it appeared in Harper's + Magazine. + + The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva was the + startling event of that summer. In a letter to Twichell Clemens + presents the tragedy in a few vivid paragraphs. Later he treated it + at some length in a magazine article which, very likely because of + personal relations with members of the Austrian court, he withheld + from print. It has since been included in a volume of essays, What + Is Man, etc. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + KALTENLEUTGEBEN, Sep. 13, '98. +DEAR JOE,--You are mistaken; people don't send us the magazines. No +--Harper, Century and McClure do; an example I should like to recommend to +other publishers. And so I thank you very much for sending me Brander's +article. When you say "I like Brander Matthews; he impresses me as a man +of parts and power," I back you, right up to the hub--I feel the same +way--. And when you say he has earned your gratitude for cuffing me for +my crimes against the Leather stockings and the Vicar, I ain't making any +objection. Dern your gratitude! + +His article is as sound as a nut. Brander knows literature, and loves +it; he can talk about it and keep his temper; he can state his case so +lucidly and so fairly and so forcibly that you have to agree with him, +even when you don't agree with him; and he can discover and praise such +merits as a book has, even when they are half a dozen diamonds scattered +through an acre of mud. And so he has a right to be a critic. + +To detail just the opposite of the above invoice is to describe me. I +haven't any right to criticise books, and I don't do it except when I +hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden +me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I +have to stop every time I begin. + +That good and unoffending lady the Empress is killed by a mad-man, and I +am living in the midst of world-history again. The Queen's jubilee last +year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and now this murder, +which will still be talked of and described and painted a thousand years +from now. To have a personal friend of the wearer of the crown burst in +at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening and say in a voice broken +with tears, "My God the Empress is murdered," and fly toward her home +before we can utter a question-why, it brings the giant event home to +you, makes you a part of it and personally interested; it is as if your +neighbor Antony should come flying and say "Caesar is butchered--the head +of the world is fallen!" + +Of course there is no talk but of this. The mourning is universal and +genuine, the consternation is stupefying. The Austrian Empire is being +draped with black. Vienna will be a spectacle to see, by next Saturday, +when the funeral cortege marches. We are invited to occupy a room in the +sumptuous new hotel (the "Krantz" where we are to live during the Fall +and Winter) and view it, and we shall go. + +Speaking of Mrs. Leiter, there is a noble dame in Vienna, about whom they +retail similar slanders. She said in French--she is weak in French--that +she had been spending a Sunday afternoon in a gathering of the +"demimonde." Meaning the unknown land, that mercantile land, that +mysterious half-world which underlies the aristocracy. But these +Malaproperies are always inventions--they don't happen. + +Yes, I wish we could have some talks; I'm full to the eye-lids. Had a +noble good one with Parker and Dunham--land, but we were grateful for +that visit! + Yours with all our loves. + MARK. + + [Inclosed with the foregoing.] + +Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must +concede high rank to the German Emperor's. He justly describes it as a +"deed unparalleled for ruthlessness," and then adds that it was "ordained +from above." + +I think this verdict will not be popular "above." A man is either a free +agent or he isn't. If a man is a free agent, this prisoner is +responsible for what he has done; but if a man is not a free agent, if +the deed was ordained from above, there is no rational way of making this +prisoner even partially responsible for it, and the German court cannot +condemn him without manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic; and +by disregarding its laws even Emperors as capable and acute as William II +can be beguiled into making charges which should not be ventured upon +except in the shelter of plenty of lightning-rods. + MARK. + + + The end of the year 1898 found Mark Twain once more in easy, even + luxurious, circumstances. The hard work and good fortune which had + enabled him to pay his debts had, in the course of another year, + provided what was comparative affluence: His report to Howells is + characteristic and interesting. + + + To W. D. Howells, in New York: + + HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN, L. NEVER MARKT 6 + Dec. 30, '98. +DEAR HOWELLS,--I begin with a date--including all the details--though I +shall be interrupted presently by a South-African acquaintance who is +passing through, and it may be many days before I catch another leisure +moment. Note how suddenly a thing can become habit, and how +indestructible the habit is, afterward! In your house in Cambridge a +hundred years ago, Mrs. Howells said to me, "Here is a bunch of your +letters, and the dates are of no value, because you don't put any in +--the years, anyway." That remark diseased me with a habit which has cost +me worlds of time and torture and ink, and millions of vain efforts and +buckets of tears to break it, and here it is yet--I could easier get rid +of a virtue..... + +I hope it will interest you (for I have no one else who would much care +to know it) that here lately the dread of leaving the children in +difficult circumstances has died down and disappeared and I am now having +peace from that long, long nightmare, and can sleep as well as anyone. +Every little while, for these three years, now, Mrs. Clemens has come +with pencil and paper and figured up the condition of things (she keeps +the accounts and the bank-book) and has proven to me that the clouds were +lifting, and so has hoisted my spirits temporarily and kept me going till +another figuring-up was necessary. Last night she figured up for her own +satisfaction, not mine, and found that we own a house and furniture in +Hartford; that my English and American copyrights pay an income which +represents a value of $200,000; and that we have $107,000 cash in the +bank. I have been out and bought a box of 6-cent cigars; I was smoking +4 1/2 centers before. + +At the house of an English friend, on Christmas Eve, we saw the +Mouse-Trap played and well played. I thought the house would kill itself +with laughter. By George they played with life! and it was most +devastatingly funny. And it was well they did, for they put us Clemenses +in the front seat, and if they played it poorly I would have assaulted +them. The head young man and girl were Americans, the other parts were +taken by English, Irish and Scotch girls. Then there was a +nigger-minstrel show, of the genuine old sort, and I enjoyed that, too, +for the nigger-show was always a passion of mine. This one was created +and managed by a Quaker doctor from Philada., (23 years old) and he was +the middle man. There were 9 others--5 Americans from 5 States and a +Scotchman, 2 Englishmen and an Irishman--all post-graduate-medical young +fellows, of course--or, it could be music; but it would be bound to be +one or the other. + +It's quite true--I don't read you "as much as I ought," nor anywhere near +half as much as I want to; still I read you all I get a chance to. +I saved up your last story to read when the numbers should be complete, +but before that time arrived some other admirer of yours carried off the +papers. I will watch admirers of yours when the Silver Wedding journey +begins, and that will not happen again. The last chance at a bound book +of yours was in London nearly two years ago--the last volume of your +short things, by the Harpers. I read the whole book twice through and +some of the chapters several times, and the reason that that was as far +as I got with it was that I lent it to another admirer of yours and he is +admiring it yet. Your admirers have ways of their own; I don't know +where they get them. + +Yes, our project is to go home next autumn if we find we can afford to +live in New York. We've asked a friend to inquire about flats and +expenses. But perhaps nothing will come of it. We do afford to live +in the finest hotel in Vienna, and have 4 bedrooms, a dining-room, a +drawing-room, 3 bath-rooms and 3 Vorzimmers, (and food) but we couldn't +get the half of it in New York for the same money ($600 a month). + + +Susy hovers about us this holiday week, and the shadows fall all about us +of + + "The days when we went gipsying + A long time ago." + +Death is so kind, so benignant, to whom he loves; but he goes by us +others and will not look our way. We saw the "Master of Palmyra" last +night. How Death, with the gentleness and majesty, made the human +grand-folk around him seem little and trivial and silly! + +With love from all of us to all of you. + MARK. + + + + +XXXVIII + +LETTERS, 1899, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. VIENNA. LONDON. A SUMMER IN +SWEDEN + +The beginning of 1899 found the Clemens family still in Vienna, occupying +handsome apartments at the Hotel Krantz. Their rooms, so often thronged +with gay and distinguished people, were sometimes called the "Second +Embassy." Clemens himself was the central figure of these assemblies. +Of all the foreign visitors in the Austrian capital he was the most +notable. Everywhere he was surrounded by a crowd of listeners--his +sayings and opinions were widely quoted. + +A project for world disarmament promulgated by the Czar of Russia would +naturally interest Mark Twain, and when William T. Stead, of the Review +of Reviews, cabled him for an opinion on the matter, he sent at first a +brief word and on the same day followed it with more extended comment. +The great war which has since devastated the world gives to this incident +an added interest. + + + To Wm. T. Stead, in London: + +No. 1. + VIENNA, Jan. 9. +DEAR MR. STEAD,-The Czar is ready to disarm: I am ready to disarm. +Collect the others, it should not be much of a task now. + MARK TWAIN. + + +To Wm. T. Stead, in London: + +No. 2. +DEAR MR. STEAD,--Peace by compulsion. That seems a better idea than the +other. Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should +not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and +history seems to show that that cannot be done. Can't we reduce the +armaments little by little--on a pro rata basis--by concert of the +powers? Can't we get four great powers to agree to reduce their strength +10 per cent a year and thrash the others into doing likewise? For, of +course, we cannot expect all of the powers to be in their right minds at +one time. It has been tried. We are not going to try to get all of them +to go into the scheme peaceably, are we? In that case I must withdraw my +influence; because, for business reasons, I must preserve the outward +signs of sanity. Four is enough if they can be securely harnessed +together. They can compel peace, and peace without compulsion would be +against nature and not operative. A sliding scale of reduction of 10 per +cent a year has a sort of plausible look, and I am willing to try that if +three other powers will join. I feel sure that the armaments are now +many times greater than necessary for the requirements of either peace or +war. Take wartime for instance. Suppose circumstances made it necessary +for us to fight another Waterloo, and that it would do what it did +before--settle a large question and bring peace. I will guess that +400,000 men were on hand at Waterloo (I have forgotten the figures). +In five hours they disabled 50,000 men. It took them that tedious, long +time because the firearms delivered only two or three shots a minute. +But we would do the work now as it was done at Omdurman, with shower +guns, raining 600 balls a minute. Four men to a gun--is that the number? +A hundred and fifty shots a minute per man. Thus a modern soldier is 149 +Waterloo soldiers in one. Thus, also, we can now retain one man out of +each 150 in service, disband the others, and fight our Waterloos just as +effectively as we did eighty-five years ago. We should do the same +beneficent job with 2,800 men now that we did with 400,000 then. The +allies could take 1,400 of the men, and give Napoleon 1,400 and then whip +him. + +But instead what do we see? In war-time in Germany, Russia and France, +taken together we find about 8 million men equipped for the field. Each +man represents 149 Waterloo men, in usefulness and killing capacity. +Altogether they constitute about 350 million Waterloo men, and there are +not quite that many grown males of the human race now on this planet. +Thus we have this insane fact--that whereas those three countries could +arm 18,000 men with modern weapons and make them the equals of 3 million +men of Napoleon's day, and accomplish with them all necessary war work, +they waste their money and their prosperity creating forces of their +populations in piling together 349,982,000 extra Waterloo equivalents +which they would have no sort of use for if they would only stop drinking +and sit down and cipher a little. + +Perpetual peace we cannot have on any terms, I suppose; but I hope we can +gradually reduce the war strength of Europe till we get it down to where +it ought to be--20,000 men, properly armed. Then we can have all the +peace that is worth while, and when we want a war anybody can afford it. + + + VIENNA, January 9. +P. S.--In the article I sent the figures are wrong--"350 million" ought +to be 450 million; "349,982,000" ought to be 449,982,000, and the remark +about the sum being a little more than the present number of males on the +planet--that is wrong, of course; it represents really one and a half the +existing males. + + + Now and then one of Mark Twain's old comrades still reached out to + him across the years. He always welcomed such letters--they came as + from a lost land of romance, recalled always with tenderness. He + sent light, chaffing replies, but they were never without an + undercurrent of affection. + + + To Major "Jack" Downing, in Middleport, Ohio: + + HOTEL KRANTZ, WEIN, I, NEUER MART 6, + Feb. 26, 1899. +DEAR MAJOR,--No: it was to Bixby that I was apprenticed. He was to teach +me the river for a certain specified sum. I have forgotten what it was, +but I paid it. I steered a trip for Bart Bowen, of Keokuk, on the A. T. +Lacy, and I was partner with Will Bowen on the A. B. Chambers (one trip), +and with Sam Bowen a whole summer on a small Memphis packet. + +The newspaper report you sent me is incorrect. Bixby is not 67: he is +97. I am 63 myself, and I couldn't talk plain and had just begun to walk +when I apprenticed myself to Bixby who was then passing himself off for +57 and successfully too, for he always looked 60 or 70 years younger than +he really was. At that time he was piloting the Mississippi on a Potomac +commission granted him by George Washington who was a personal friend of +his before the Revolution. He has piloted every important river in +America, on that commission, he has also used it as a passport in Russia. +I have never revealed these facts before. I notice, too, that you are +deceiving the people concerning your age. The printed portrait which you +have enclosed is not a portrait of you, but a portrait of me when I was +19. I remember very well when it was common for people to mistake Bixby +for your grandson. Is it spreading, I wonder--this disposition of pilots +to renew their youth by doubtful methods? Beck Jolly and Joe Bryan--they +probably go to Sunday school now--but it will not deceive. + +Yes, it is as you say. All of the procession but a fraction has passed. +It is time for us all to fall in. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + To W. D. Howells, in New York: + + HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN I. NEUER MARKT 6 + April 2, '99. +DEAR HOWELLS,--I am waiting for the April Harper, which is about due now; +waiting, and strongly interested. You are old enough to be a weary man, +with paling interests, but you do not show it. You do your work in the +same old delicate and delicious and forceful and searching and perfect +way. I don't know how you can--but I suspect. I suspect that to you +there is still dignity in human life, and that Man is not a joke--a poor +joke--the poorest that was ever contrived. Since I wrote my Bible, (last +year)--["What Is Man."]--which Mrs. Clemens loathes, and shudders over, +and will not listen to the last half nor allow me to print any part of +it, Man is not to me the respect-worthy person he was before; and so I +have lost my pride in him, and can't write gaily nor praisefully about +him any more. And I don't intend to try. I mean to go on writing, for +that is my best amusement, but I shan't print much. (for I don't wish to +be scalped, any more than another.) + +April 5. The Harper has come. I have been in Leipzig with your party, +and then went on to Karlsbad and saw Mrs. Marsh's encounter with the +swine with the toothpick and the other manners--["Their Silver Wedding +Journey."]--At this point Jean carried the magazine away. + +Is it imagination, or--Anyway I seem to get furtive and fleeting glimpses +which I take to be the weariness and condolence of age; indifference to +sights and things once brisk with interest; tasteless stale stuff which +used to be champagne; the boredom of travel: the secret sigh behind the +public smile, the private What-in-hell-did-I-come-for! + +But maybe that is your art. Maybe that is what you intend the reader to +detect and think he has made a Columbus-discovery. Then it is well done, +perfectly done. I wrote my last travel book--[Following the Equator.] +--in hell; but I let on, the best I could, that it was an excursion +through heaven. Some day I will read it, and if its lying cheerfulness +fools me, then I shall believe it fooled the reader. How I did loathe +that journey around the world!--except the sea-part and India. + +Evening. My tail hangs low. I thought I was a financier--and I bragged +to you. I am not bragging, now. The stock which I sold at such a fine +profit early in January, has never ceased to advance, and is now worth +$60,000 more than I sold it for. I feel just as if I had been spending +$20,000 a month, and I feel reproached for this showy and unbecoming +extravagance. + +Last week I was going down with the family to Budapest to lecture, and to +make a speech at a banquet. Just as I was leaving here I got a telegram +from London asking for the speech for a New York paper. I (this is +strictly private) sent it. And then I didn't make that speech, but +another of a quite different character--a speech born of something +which the introducer said. If that said speech got cabled and printed, +you needn't let on that it was never uttered. + +That was a darling night, and those Hungarians were lively people. We +were there a week and had a great time. At the banquet I heard their +chief orator make a most graceful and easy and beautiful and delicious +speech--I never heard one that enchanted me more--although I did not +understand a word of it, since it was in Hungarian. But the art of it! +--it was superlative. + +They are wonderful English scholars, these people; my lecture audience +--all Hungarians--understood me perfectly--to judge by the effects. The +English clergyman told me that in his congregation are 150 young English +women who earn their living teaching their language; and that there are. +others besides these. + +For 60 cents a week the telephone reads the morning news to you at home; +gives you the stocks and markets at noon; gives you lessons in 3 foreign +languages during 3 hours; gives you the afternoon telegrams; and at night +the concerts and operas. Of course even the clerks and seamstresses and +bootblacks and everybody else are subscribers. + +(Correction. Mrs. Clemens says it is 60 cents a month.) + +I am renewing my youth. I made 4 speeches at one banquet here last +Saturday night. And I've been to a lot of football matches. + +Jean has been in here examining the poll for the Immortals ("Literature," +March 24,) in the hope, I think, that at last she should find me at the +top and you in second place; and if that is her ambition she has suffered +disappointment for the third time--and will never fare any better, I +hope, for you are where you belong, by every right. She wanted to know +who it is that does the voting, but I was not able to tell her. Nor when +the election will be completed and decided. + +Next Morning. I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every +morning--well knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities and +basenesses and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and +cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the +human race. I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not +despair. + +(Escaped from) 5 o'clock tea. ('sh!) Oh, the American girl in Europe! +Often she is creditable, but sometimes she is just shocking. This one, +a minute ago--19, fat-face, raspy voice, pert ways, the self-complacency +of God; and with it all a silly laugh (embarrassed) which kept breaking +out through her chatter all along, whereas there was no call for it, for +she said nothing that was funny. "Spose so many 've told y' how they +'njoyed y'r chapt'r on the Germ' tongue it's bringin' coals to Newcastle +Kehe! say anything 'bout it Ke-hehe! Spent m' vacation 'n Russia, 'n +saw Tolstoi; he said--" It made me shudder. + +April 12. Jean has been in here with a copy of Literature, complaining +that I am again behind you in the election of the 10 consecrated members; +and seems troubled about it and not quite able to understand it. But I +have explained to her that you are right there on the ground, inside the +pool-booth, keeping game--and that that makes a large difference in these +things. + +13th. I have been to the Knustausstellung with Mrs. Clemens. The office +of art seems to be to grovel in the dirt before Emperors and this and +that and the other damned breed of priests. + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + Howells and Clemens were corresponding regularly again, though not + with the frequency of former years. Perhaps neither of them was + bubbling over with things to say; perhaps it was becoming yearly + less attractive to pick up a pen and write, and then, of course, + there was always the discouragement of distance. Once Howells + wrote: "I know this will find you in Austria before I can well turn + round, but I must make believe you are in Kennebunkport before I can + begin it." And in another letter: "It ought to be as pleasant to + sit down and write to you as to sit down and talk to you, but it + isn't..... The only reason why I write is that I want another + letter from you, and because I have a whole afternoon for the job. + I have the whole of every afternoon, for I cannot work later than + lunch. I am fagged by that time, and Sunday is the only day that + brings unbearable leisure. I hope you will be in New York another + winter; then I shall know what to do with these foretastes of + eternity." + + Clemens usually wrote at considerable length, for he had a good deal + to report of his life in the Austrian capital, now drawing to a + close. + + + To W. D. Howells, in New York: + + May 12, 1899. +DEAR HOWELLS,--7.15 p. m. Tea (for Mr. and Mrs. Tower, who are leaving +for Russia) just over; nice people and rather creditable to the human +race: Mr. and Mrs. Tower; the new Minister and his wife; the Secretary of +Legation; the Naval (and Military) Attach; several English ladies; an +Irish lady; a Scotch lady; a particularly nice young Austrian baron who +wasn't invited but came and went supposing it was the usual thing and +wondered at the unusually large gathering; two other Austrians and +several Americans who were also in his fix; the old Baronin Langeman, +the only Austrian invited; the rest were Americans. It made just a +comfortable crowd in our parlor, with an overflow into Clara's through +the folding doors. I don't enjoy teas, and am daily spared them by Mrs. +Clemens, but this was a pleasant one. I had only one accident. The old +Baronin Langeman is a person I have a strong fondness for, for we +violently disagree on some subjects and as violently agree on others +--for instance, she is temperance and I am not: she has religious beliefs +and feelings and I have none; (she's a Methodist!) she is a democrat and +so am I; she is woman's rights and so am I; she is laborers' rights and +approves trades unions and strikes, and that is me. And so on. After +she was gone an English lady whom I greatly like, began to talk sharply +against her for contributing money, time, labor, and public expression of +favor to a strike that is on (for an 11-hour day) in the silk factories +of Bohemia--and she caught me unprepared and betrayed me into over-warm +argument. I am sorry: for she didn't know anything about the subject, +and I did; and one should be gentle with the ignorant, for they are the +chosen of God. + +(The new Minister is a good man, but out of place. The Sec. of Legation +is a good man, but out of place. The Attache is a good man, but out of +place. Our government for displacement beats the new White Star ship; +and her possible is 17,200 tons.) + +May 13, 4 p. m. A beautiful English girl and her handsome English +husband came up and spent the evening, and she certainly is a bird. +English parents--she was born and reared in Roumania and couldn't talk +English till she was 8 or 10. She came up clothed like the sunset, and +was a delight to look at. (Roumanian costume.)..... + +Twenty-four young people have gone out to the Semmering to-day (and +to-morrow) and Mrs. Clemens and an English lady and old Leschetitzky and +his wife have gone to chaperon them. They gave me a chance to go, but +there are no snow mountains that I want to look at. Three hours out, +three hours back, and sit up all night watching the young people dance; +yelling conversationally and being yelled at, conversationally, by new +acquaintances, through the deafening music, about how I like Vienna, and +if it's my first visit, and how long we expect to stay, and did I see the +foot-washing, and am I writing a book about Vienna, and so on. The terms +seemed too severe. Snow mountains are too dear at the price .... + +For several years I have been intending to stop writing for print as +soon as I could afford it. At last I can afford it, and have put the +pot-boiler pen away. What I have been wanting is a chance to write a +book without reserves--a book which should take account of no one's +feelings, and no one's prejudices, opinions, beliefs, hopes, illusions, +delusions; a book which should say my say, right out of my heart, in the +plainest language and without a limitation of any sort. I judged that +that would be an unimaginable luxury, heaven on earth. + +It is under way, now, and it is a luxury! an intellectual drunk: Twice I +didn't start it right; and got pretty far in, both times, before I found +it out. But I am sure it is started right this time. It is in +tale-form. I believe I can make it tell what I think of Man, and how he +is constructed, and what a shabby poor ridiculous thing he is, and how +mistaken he is in his estimate of his character and powers and qualities +and his place among the animals. + +So far, I think I am succeeding. I let the madam into the secret day +before yesterday, and locked the doors and read to her the opening +chapters. She said-- + +"It is perfectly horrible--and perfectly beautiful!" + +"Within the due limits of modesty, that is what I think." + +I hope it will take me a year or two to write it, and that it will turn +out to be the right vessel to contain all the abuse I am planning to dump +into it. + Yours ever + MARK. + + + The story mentioned in the foregoing, in which Mark Twain was to + give his opinion of man, was The Mysterious Stranger. It was not + finished at the time, and its closing chapter was not found until + after his death. Six years later (1916) it was published serially + in Harper's Magazine, and in book form. + + The end of May found the Clemens party in London, where they were + received and entertained with all the hospitality they had known in + earlier years. Clemens was too busy for letter-writing, but in the + midst of things he took time to report to Howells an amusing + incident of one of their entertainments. + + + To W. D. Howells, in America: + + LONDON, July 3, '99 +DEAR HOWELLS,--..... I've a lot of things to write you, but it's no use +--I can't get time for anything these days. I must break off and write a +postscript to Canon Wilberforce before I go to bed. This afternoon he +left a luncheon-party half an hour ahead of the rest, and carried off my +hat (which has Mark Twain in a big hand written in it.) When the rest of +us came out there was but one hat that would go on my head--it fitted +exactly, too. So wore it away. It had no name in it, but the Canon was +the only man who was absent. I wrote him a note at 8 p.m.; saying that +for four hours I had not been able to take anything that did not belong +to me, nor stretch a fact beyond the frontiers of truth, and my family +were getting alarmed. Could he explain my trouble? And now at 8.30 p.m. +comes a note from him to say that all the afternoon he has been +exhibiting a wonder-compelling mental vivacity and grace of expression, +etc., etc., and have I missed a hat? Our letters have crossed. + Yours ever + MARK. + + + News came of the death of Robert Ingersoll. Clemens had been always + one of his most ardent admirers, and a warm personal friend. To + Ingersoll's niece he sent a word of heartfelt sympathy. + + + To Miss Eva Farrell, in New York: + + 30 WELLINGTON COURT, ALBERT GATE. +DEAR MISS FARRELL,--Except my daughter's, I have not grieved for any +death as I have grieved for his. His was a great and beautiful spirit, +he was a man--all man from his crown to his foot soles. My reverence for +him was deep and genuine; I prized his affection for me and returned it +with usury. + Sincerely Yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Clemens and family decided to spend the summer in Sweden, at Sauna, + in order to avail themselves of osteopathic treatment as practised + by Heinrick Kellgren. Kellgren's method, known as the "Swedish + movements," seemed to Mark Twain a wonderful cure for all ailments, + and he heralded the discovery far and wide. He wrote to friends far + and near advising them to try Kellgren for anything they might + happen to have. Whatever its beginning, any letter was likely to + close with some mention of the new panacea. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, traveling in Europe: + + SANNA, Sept. 6, '99. +DEAR JOE,--I've no business in here--I ought to be outside. I shall +never see another sunset to begin with it this side of heaven. Venice? +land, what a poor interest that is! This is the place to be. I have +seen about 60 sunsets here; and a good 40 of them were clear and away +beyond anything I had ever imagined before for dainty and exquisite and +marvellous beauty and infinite change and variety. America? Italy? The +tropics? They have no notion of what a sunset ought to be. And this +one--this unspeakable wonder! It discounts all the rest. It brings the +tears, it is so unutterably beautiful. + +If I had time, I would say a word about this curative system here. The +people actually do several of the great things the Christian Scientists +pretend to do. You wish to advise with a physician about it? Certainly. +There is no objection. He knows next to something about his own trade, +but that will not embarrass him in framing a verdict about this one. +I respect your superstitions--we all have them. It would be quite +natural for the cautious Chinaman to ask his native priest to instruct +him as to the value of the new religious specialty which the Western +missionary is trying to put on the market, before investing in it. (He +would get a verdict.) + Love to you all! + Always Yours + MARK. + + Howells wrote that he was going on a reading-tour-dreading it, of + course-and asking for any advice that Clemens felt qualified to + give. Naturally, Clemens gave him the latest he had in stock, + without realizing, perhaps, that he was recommending an individual + practice which few would be likely to imitate. Nevertheless, what + he says is interesting. + + + To W. D. Howells, in America: + + SANNA, SWEDEN, Sept. 26, '99. +DEAR HOWELLS,--Get your lecture by heart--it will pay you. I learned a +trick in Vienna--by accident--which I wish I had learned years ago. I +meant to read from a Tauchnitz, because I knew I hadn't well memorized +the pieces; and I came on with the book and read a few sentences, then +remembered that the sketch needed a few words of explanatory +introduction; and so, lowering the book and now and then unconsciously +using it to gesture with, I talked the introduction, and it happened to +carry me into the sketch itself, and then I went on, pretending that I +was merely talking extraneous matter and would come to the sketch +presently. It was a beautiful success. I knew the substance of the +sketch and the telling phrases of it; and so, the throwing of the rest of +it into informal talk as I went along limbered it up and gave it the snap +and go and freshness of an impromptu. I was to read several pieces, and +I played the same game with all of them, and always the audience thought +I was being reminded of outside things and throwing them in, and was +going to hold up the book and begin on the sketch presently--and so I +always got through the sketch before they were entirely sure that it had +begun. I did the same thing in Budapest and had the same good time over +again. It's a new dodge, and the best one that was ever invented. Try +it. You'll never lose your audience--not even for a moment. Their +attention is fixed, and never wavers. And that is not the case where one +reads from book or MS., or where he stands up without a note and frankly +exposes the fact, by his confident manner and smooth phrasing, that he is +not improvising, but reciting from memory. And in the heat of telling a +thing that is memorised in substance only, one flashes out the happiest +suddenly-begotten phrases every now and then! Try it. Such a phrase has +a life and sparkle about it that twice as good a one could not exhibit if +prepared beforehand, and it "fetches" an audience in such an enthusing +and inspiring and uplifting way that that lucky phrase breeds another +one, sure. + +Your September instalment--["Their Silver Wedding journey."]--was +delicious--every word of it. You haven't lost any of your splendid art. +Callers have arrived. + With love + MARK. + + + "Yes," wrote Howells, "if I were a great histrionic artist like you + I would get my poor essays by heart, and recite them, but being what + I am I should do the thing so lifelessly that I had better recognise + their deadness frankly and read them." + + From Vienna Clemens had contributed to the Cosmopolitan, then owned + by John Brisben Walker, his first article on Christian Science. It + was a delicious bit of humor and found such enthusiastic + appreciation that Walker was moved to send an additional $200 check + in payment for it. This brought prompt acknowledgment. + + + To John Brisben Walker, in Irvington, N. Y.: + + LONDON, Oct. 19, '99 +DEAR MR. WALKER,--By gracious but you have a talent for making a man feel +proud and good! To say a compliment well is a high art--and few possess +it. You know how to do it, and when you confirm its sincerity with a +handsome cheque the limit is reached and compliment can no higher go. +I like to work for you: when you don't approve an article you say so, +recognizing that I am not a child and can stand it; and when you approve +an article I don't have to dicker with you as if I raised peanuts and you +kept a stand; I know I shall get every penny the article is worth. + +You have given me very great pleasure, and I thank you for it. + Sincerely Yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + On the same day he sent word to Howells of the good luck which now + seemed to be coming his way. The Joan of Arc introduction was the + same that today appears in his collected works under the title of + Saint Joan of Arc. + + + To W. D. Howells, in New York: + + LONDON, Oct. 19, '99. +DEAR HOWELLS,--My, it's a lucky day!--of the sort when it never rains but +it pours. I was to write an introduction to a nobler book--the English +translation of the Official Record (unabridged) of the Trials and +Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, and make a lot of footnotes. I wrote the +introduction in Sweden, and here a few days ago I tore loose from a tale +I am writing, and took the MS book and went at the grind of note-making +--a fearful job for a man not used to it. This morning brought a note +from my excellent friend Murray, a rich Englishman who edits the +translation, saying, "Never mind the notes--we'll make the translators +do them." That was comfort and joy. + +The same mail brought a note from Canon Wilberforce, asking me to talk +Joan of Arc in his drawing-room to the Dukes and Earls and M. P.'s +--(which would fetch me out of my seclusion and into print, and I +couldn't have that,) and so of course I must run down to the Abbey and +explain--and lose an hour. Just then came Murray and said "Leave that to +me--I'll go and do the explaining and put the thing off 3 months; you +write a note and tell him I am coming." + +(Which I did, later.) Wilberforce carried off my hat from a lunch party +last summer, and in to-day's note he said he wouldn't steal my new hat +this time. In my note I said I couldn't make the drawing-room talk, now +--Murray would explain; and added a P. S.: "You mustn't think it is +because I am afraid to trust my hat in your reach again, for I assure you +upon honor it isn't. I should bring my old one." + +I had suggested to Murray a fortnight ago, that he get some big guns to +write introductory monographs for the book. + +Miss X, Joan's Voices and Prophecies. + +The Lord Chief Justice of England, the legal prodigies which she +performed before her judges. + +Lord Roberts, her military genius. + +Kipling, her patriotism. + +And so on. When he came this morning he said he had captured Miss X; +that Lord Roberts and Kipling were going to take hold and see if they +could do monographs worthy of the book. He hadn't run the others to +cover yet, but was on their track. Very good news. It is a grand book, +and is entitled to the best efforts of the best people. As for me, I +took pains with my Introduction, and I admit that it is no slouch of a +performance. + +Then I came down to Chatto's, and found your all too beautiful letter, +and was lifted higher than ever. Next came letters from America properly +glorifying my Christian Science article in the Cosmopolitan (and one +roundly abusing it,) and a letter from John Brisben Walker enclosing $200 +additional pay for the article (he had already paid enough, but I didn't +mention that--which wasn't right of me, for this is the second time he +has done such a thing, whereas Gilder has done it only once and no one +else ever.) I make no prices with Walker and Gilder--I can trust them. + +And last of all came a letter from M-. How I do wish that man was in +hell. Even-the briefest line from that idiot puts me in a rage. + +But on the whole it has been a delightful day, and with M----in hell it +would have been perfect. But that will happen, and I can wait. + +Ah, if I could look into the inside of people as you do, and put it on +paper, and invent things for them to do and say, and tell how they said +it, I could writs a fine and readable book now, for I've got a prime +subject. I've written 30,000 words of it and satisfied myself that the +stuff is there; so I am going to discard that MS and begin all over again +and have a good time with it. + +Oh, I know how you feel! I've been in hell myself. You are there +tonight. By difference in time you are at luncheon, now--and not eating +it. Nothing is so lonesome as gadding around platforming. I have +declined 45 lectures to-day-England and Scotland. I wanted the money, +but not the torture: Good luck to you!--and repentance. + With love to all of you + MARK. + + + + + +LETTERS OF 1900, MAINLY TO TWICHELL. THE BOER WAR. BOXER TROUBLES. +THE RETURN TO AMERICA + +The New Year found Clemens still in London, chiefly interested in +osteopathy and characteristically glorifying the practice at the expense +of other healing methods. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + LONDON, Jan. 8, 1900. +DEAR JOE,--Mental Telepathy has scored another. Mental Telegraphy will +be greatly respected a century hence. + +By the accident of writing my sister and describing to her the remarkable +cures made by Kellgren with his hands and without drugs, I brought upon +myself a quite stunning surprise; for she wrote to me that she had been +taking this very treatment in Buffalo--and that it was an American +invention. + +Well, it does really turn out that Dr. Still, in the middle of Kansas, in +a village, began to experiment in 1874, only five years after Kellgren +began the same work obscurely in the village of Gotha, in Germany. Dr. +Still seems to be an honest man; therefore I am persuaded that Kellgren +moved him to his experiments by Mental Telegraphy across six hours of +longitude, without need of a wire. By the time Still began to +experiment, Kellgren had completed his development of the principles of +his system and established himself in a good practice in London--1874 +--and was in good shape to convey his discovery to Kansas, Mental +Telegraphically. + +Yes, I was greatly surprised to find that my mare's nest was much in +arrears: that this new science was well known in America under the name +of Osteopathy. Since then, I find that in the past 3 years it has got +itself legalized in 14 States in spite of the opposition of the +physicians; that it has established 20 Osteopathic schools and colleges; +that among its students are 75 allopathic physicians; that there is a +school in Boston and another in Philadelphia, that there are about 100 +students in the parent college (Dr. Still's at Kirksville, Missouri,) and +that there are about 2,000 graduates practicing in America. Dear me, +there are not 30 in Europe. Europe is so sunk in superstitions and +prejudices that it is an almost impossible thing to get her to do +anything but scoff at a new thing--unless it come from abroad; as witness +the telegraph, dentistry, &c. + +Presently the Osteopath will come over here from America and will soon +make himself a power that must be recognized and reckoned with; and then, +25 years from now, England will begin to claim the invention and tell all +about its origin, in the Cyclopedia B-----as in the case of the +telegraph, applied anaesthetics and the other benefactions which she +heaped her abuse upon when her inventors first offered them to her. + +I cannot help feeling rather inordinately proud of America for the gay +and hearty way in which she takes hold of any new thing that comes along +and gives it a first rate trial. Many an ass in America, is getting a +deal of benefit out of X-Science's new exploitation of an age-old healing +principle--faith, combined with the patient's imagination--let it boom +along! I have no objection. Let them call it by what name they choose, +so long as it does helpful work among the class which is numerically +vastly the largest bulk of the human race, i.e. the fools, the idiots, +the pudd'nheads. + +We do not guess, we know that 9 in 10 of the species are pudd'nheads. +We know it by various evidences; and one of them is, that for ages the +race has respected (and almost venerated) the physician's grotesque +system--the emptying of miscellaneous and harmful drugs into a person's +stomach to remove ailments which in many cases the drugs could not reach +at all; in many cases could reach and help, but only at cost of damage to +some other part of the man; and in the remainder of the cases the drug +either retarded the cure, or the disease was cured by nature in spite of +the nostrums. The doctor's insane system has not only been permitted to +continue its follies for ages, but has been protected by the State and +made a close monopoly--an infamous thing, a crime against a free-man's +proper right to choose his own assassin or his own method of defending +his body against disease and death. + +And yet at the same time, with curious and senile inconsistency, the +State has allowed the man to choose his own assassin--in one detail--the +patent-medicine detail--making itself the protector of that perilous +business, collecting money out of it, and appointing no committee of +experts to examine the medicines and forbid them when extra dangerous. +Really, when a man can prove that he is not a jackass, I think he is in +the way to prove that he is no legitimate member of the race. + +I have by me a list of 52 human ailments--common ones--and in this list I +count 19 which the physician's art cannot cure. But there isn't one +which Osteopathy or Kellgren cannot cure, if the patient comes early. + +Fifteen years ago I had a deep reverence for the physician and the +surgeon. But 6 months of closely watching the Kellgren business has +revolutionized all that, and now I have neither reverence nor respect for +the physician's trade, and scarcely any for the surgeon's,--I am +convinced that of all quackeries, the physician's is the grotesquest and +the silliest. And they know they are shams and humbugs. They have taken +the place of those augurs who couldn't look each other in the face +without laughing. + +See what a powerful hold our ancient superstitions have upon us: two +weeks ago, when Livy committed an incredible imprudence and by +consequence was promptly stricken down with a heavy triple attack +--influenza, bronchitis, and a lung affected--she recognized the gravity +of the situation, and her old superstitions rose: she thought she ought +to send for a doctor--Think of it--the last man in the world I should +want around at such a time. Of course I did not say no--not that I was +indisposed to take the responsibility, for I was not, my notion of a +dangerous responsibility being quite the other way--but because it is +unsafe to distress a sick person; I only said we knew no good doctor, and +it could not be good policy to choose at hazard; so she allowed me to +send for Kellgren. To-day she is up and around--cured. It is safe to +say that persons hit in the same way at the same time are in bed yet, and +booked to stay there a good while, and to be in a shackly condition and +afraid of their shadows for a couple of years or more to come. + +It will be seen by the foregoing that Mark Twain's interest in the +Kellgren system was still an ardent one. Indeed, for a time he gave most +of his thought to it, and wrote several long appreciations, perhaps with +little idea of publication, but merely to get his enthusiasm physically +expressed. War, however, presently supplanted medicine--the Boer +troubles in South Africa and the Boxer insurrection in China. It was a +disturbing, exciting year. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Boston: + + WELLINGTON COURT, KNIGHTSBRIDGE, + Jan. 25, 1900. +DEAR HOWELLS,--If you got half as much as Pond prophesied, be content and +praise God--it has not happened to another. But I am sorry he didn't go +with you; for it is marvelous to hear him yarn. He is good company, +cheery and hearty, and his mill is never idle. Your doing a lecture tour +was heroic. It was the highest order of grit, and you have a right to be +proud of yourself. No mount of applause or money or both could save it +from being a hell to a man constituted as you are. It is that even to +me, who am made of coarser stuff. + +I knew the audiences would come forward and shake hands with you--that +one infallible sign of sincere approval. In all my life, wherever it +failed me I left the hall sick and ashamed, knowing what it meant. + +Privately speaking, this is a sordid and criminal war, and in every way +shameful and excuseless. Every day I write (in my head) bitter magazine +articles about it, but I have to stop with that. For England must not +fall; it would mean an inundation of Russian and German political +degradations which would envelop the globe and steep it in a sort of +Middle-Age night and slavery which would last till Christ comes again. +Even wrong--and she is wrong--England must be upheld. He is an enemy of +the human race who shall speak against her now. Why was the human race +created? Or at least why wasn't something creditable created in place of +it. God had his opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no, +He must commit this grotesque folly--a lark which must have cost him a +regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects. For a +giddy and unbecoming caprice there has been nothing like it till this +war. I talk the war with both sides--always waiting until the other man +introduces the topic. Then I say "My head is with the Briton, but my +heart and such rags of morals as I have are with the Boer--now we will +talk, unembarrassed and without prejudice." And so we discuss, and have +no trouble. + + Jan. 26. +It was my intention to make some disparaging remarks about the human +race; and so I kept this letter open for that purpose, and for the +purpose of telling my dream, wherein the Trinity were trying to guess a +conundrum, but I can do better--for I can snip out of the "Times" various +samples and side-lights which bring the race down to date, and expose it +as of yesterday. If you will notice, there is seldom a telegram in a +paper which fails to show up one or more members and beneficiaries of our +Civilization as promenading in his shirt-tail, with the rest of his +regalia in the wash. + +I love to see the holy ones air their smug pieties and admire them and +smirk over them, and at the same moment frankly and publicly show their +contempt for the pieties of the Boer--confidently expecting the approval +of the country and the pulpit, and getting it. + +I notice that God is on both sides in this war; thus history repeats +itself. But I am the only person who has noticed this; everybody here +thinks He is playing the game for this side, and for this side only. + + With great love to you all + MARK. + + + One cannot help wondering what Mark Twain would have thought of + human nature had he lived to see the great World War, fought mainly + by the Christian nations who for nearly two thousand years had been + preaching peace on earth and goodwill toward men. But his opinion + of the race could hardly have been worse than it was. And nothing + that human beings could do would have surprised him. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + LONDON, Jan. 27, 1900. +DEAR JOE,--Apparently we are not proposing to set the Filipinos free and +give their islands to them; and apparently we are not proposing to hang +the priests and confiscate their property. If these things are so, the +war out there has no interest for me. + +I have just been examining chapter LXX of "Following the Equator," to see +if the Boer's old military effectiveness is holding out. It reads +curiously as if it had been written about the present war. + +I believe that in the next chapter my notion of the Boer was rightly +conceived. He is popularly called uncivilized, I do not know why. +Happiness, food, shelter, clothing, wholesale labor, modest and rational +ambitions, honesty, kindliness, hospitality, love of freedom and +limitless courage to fight for it, composure and fortitude in time of +disaster, patience in time of hardship and privation, absence of noise +and brag in time of victory, contentment with a humble and peaceful life +void of insane excitements--if there is a higher and better form of +civilization than this, I am not aware of it and do not know where to +look for it. I suppose we have the habit of imagining that a lot of +artistic, intellectual and other artificialities must be added, or it +isn't complete. We and the English have these latter; but as we lack the +great bulk of these others, I think the Boer civilization is the best of +the two. My idea of our civilization is that it is a shabby poor thing +and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogancies, meannesses, and +hypocrisies. As for the word, I hate the sound of it, for it conveys a +lie; and as for the thing itself, I wish it was in hell, where it +belongs. + +Provided we could get something better in the place of it. But that is +not possible, perhaps. Poor as it is, it is better than real savagery, +therefore we must stand by it, extend it, and (in public) praise it. +And so we must not utter any hateful word about England in these days, +nor fail to hope that she will win in this war, for her defeat and fall +would be an irremediable disaster for the mangy human race.... Naturally, +then, I am for England; but she is profoundly in the wrong, Joe, and no +(instructed) Englishman doubts it. At least that is my belief. + +Maybe I managed to make myself misunderstood, as to the Osteopathists. +I wanted to know how the men impress you. As to their Art, I know fairly +well about that, and should not value Hartford's opinion of it; nor a +physician's; nor that of another who proposed to enlighten me out of his +ignorance. Opinions based upon theory, superstition and ignorance are +not very precious. + +Livy and the others are off for the country for a day or two. + Love to you all + MARK. + + + The next letter affords a pleasant variation. Without doubt it was + written on realizing that good nature and enthusiasm had led him + into indiscretion. This was always happening to him, and letters + like this are not infrequent, though generally less entertaining. + + + To Mr. Ann, in London: + + WELLINGTON COURT, Feb. 23, '00. +DEAR MR. ANN,--Upon sober second thought, it won't do!--I withdraw that +letter. Not because I said anything in it which is not true, for I +didn't; but because when I allow my name to be used in forwarding a +stock-scheme I am assuming a certain degree of responsibility as toward +the investor, and I am not willing to do that. I have another objection, +a purely selfish one: trading upon my name, whether the enterprise scored +a success or a failure would damage me. I can't afford that; even the +Archbishop of Canterbury couldn't afford it, and he has more character to +spare than I have. (Ah, a happy thought! If he would sign the letter +with me that would change the whole complexion of the thing, of course. +I do not know him, yet I would sign any commercial scheme that he would +sign. As he does not know me, it follows that he would sign anything +that I would sign. This is unassailable logic--but really that is all +that can be said for it.) + +No, I withdraw the letter. This virgin is pure up to date, and is going +to remain so. + Ys sincerely, + S. L. C. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + WELLINGTON COURT, + KNIGHTSBRIDGE, Mch. 4, '00. +DEAR JOE,--Henry Robinson's death is a sharp wound to me, and it goes +very deep. I had a strong affection for him, and I think he had for me. +Every Friday, three-fourths of the year for 16 years he was of the +billiard-party in our house. When we come home, how shall we have +billiard-nights again--with no Ned Bunce and no Henry Robinson? +I believe I could not endure that. We must find another use for that +room. Susy is gone, George is gone, Libby Hamersley, Ned Bunce, Henry +Robinson. The friends are passing, one by one; our house, where such +warm blood and such dear blood flowed so freely, is become a cemetery. +But not in any repellent sense. Our dead are welcome there; their life +made it beautiful, their death has hallowed it, we shall have them with +us always, and there will be no parting. + +It was a moving address you made over Ward Cheney--that fortunate, youth! +Like Susy, he got out of life all that was worth the living, and got his +great reward before he had crossed the tropic frontier of dreams and +entered the Sahara of fact. The deep consciousness of Susy's good +fortune is a constant comfort to me. + +London is happy-hearted at last. The British victories have swept the +clouds away and there are no uncheerful faces. For three months the +private dinner parties (we go to no public ones) have been Lodges of +Sorrow, and just a little depressing sometimes; but now they are smiley +and animated again. Joe, do you know the Irish gentleman and the Irish +lady, the Scotch gentleman and the Scotch lady? These are darlings, +every one. Night before last it was all Irish--24. One would have to +travel far to match their ease and sociability and animation and sparkle +and absence of shyness and self-consciousness. + +It was American in these fine qualities. This was at Mr. Lecky's. He is +Irish, you know. Last night it was Irish again, at Lady Gregory's. Lord +Roberts is Irish; and Sir William Butler; and Kitchener, I think; and a +disproportion of the other prominent Generals are of Irish and Scotch +breed-keeping up the traditions of Wellington, and Sir Colin Campbell of +the Mutiny. You will have noticed that in S. A. as in the Mutiny, it is +usually the Irish and the Scotch that are placed in the fore-front of the +battle. An Irish friend of mine says this is because the Kelts are +idealists, and enthusiasts, with age-old heroisms to emulate and keep +bright before the world; but that the low-class Englishman is dull and +without ideals, fighting bull-doggishly while he has a leader, but losing +his head and going to pieces when his leader falls--not so with the Kelt. +Sir Wm. Butler said "the Kelt is the spear-head of the British lance." + Love to you all. + MARK. + + + The Henry Robinson mentioned in the foregoing letter was Henry C. + Robinson, one-time Governor of Connecticut, long a dear and intimate + friend of the Clemens household. "Lecky" was W. E. H. Lecky, the + Irish historian whose History of European Morals had been, for many + years, one of Mark Twain's favorite books: + + In July the Clemenses left the small apartment at 30 Wellington + Court and established a summer household a little way out of London, + at Dollis Hill. To-day the place has been given to the public under + the name of Gladstone Park, so called for the reason that in an + earlier time Gladstone had frequently visited there. It was a + beautiful spot, a place of green grass and spreading oaks. In a + letter in which Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister she said: "It is + simply divinely beautiful and peaceful; the great, old trees are + beyond everything. I believe nowhere in the world do you find such + trees as in England." Clemens wrote to Twichell: "From the house + you can see little but spacious stretches of hay-fields and green + turf..... Yet the massed, brick blocks of London are reachable in + three minutes on a horse. By rail we can be in the heart of London, + in Baker Street, in seventeen minutes--by a smart train in five." + + Mail, however, would seem to have been less prompt. + + + To the Editor of the Times, in London: + +SIR,--It has often been claimed that the London postal service was +swifter than that of New York, and I have always believed that the claim +was justified. But a doubt has lately sprung up in my mind. I live +eight miles from Printing House Square; the Times leaves that point at 4 +o'clock in the morning, by mail, and reaches me at 5 in the afternoon, +thus making the trip in thirteen hours. + +It is my conviction that in New York we should do it in eleven. + + C. +DOLLIS HILL, N. W. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + DOLLIS HILL HOUSE, KILBURN, N. W. + LONDON, Aug. 12, '00. +DEAR JOE,--The Sages Prof. Fiske and Brander Matthews were out here to +tea a week ago and it was a breath of American air to see them. We +furnished them a bright day and comfortable weather--and they used it all +up, in their extravagant American way. Since then we have sat by coal +fires, evenings. + +We shall sail for home sometime in October, but shall winter in New York +where we can have an osteopath of good repute to continue the work of +putting this family in proper condition. + +Livy and I dined with the Chief Justice a month ago and he was as +well-conditioned as an athlete. + +It is all China, now, and my sympathies are with the Chinese. They have +been villainously dealt with by the sceptred thieves of Europe, and I +hope they will drive all the foreigners out and keep them out for good. +I only wish it; of course I don't really expect it. + +Why, hang it, it occurs to me that by the time we reach New York you +Twichells will be invading Europe and once more we shall miss the +connection. This is thoroughly exasperating. Aren't we ever going to +meet again? + With no end of love from all of us, + MARK. + +P. S. Aug. 18. +DEAR JOE,--It is 7.30 a. m. I have been waking very early, lately. If +it occurs once more, it will be habit; then I will submit and adopt it. + +This is our day of mourning. It is four years since Susy died; it is +five years and a month that I saw her alive for the last time-throwing +kisses at us from the railway platform when we started West around the +world. + +Sometimes it is a century; sometimes it was yesterday. + With love + MARK. + + + We discover in the foregoing letter that the long European residence + was drawing to an end. More than nine years had passed since the + closing of the Hartford house--eventful years that had seen failure, + bereavement, battle with debt, and rehabilitated fortunes. All the + family were anxious to get home--Mark Twain most anxious of all. + + They closed Dollis Hill House near the end of September, and put up + for a brief period at a family hotel, an amusing picture of which + follows. + + + To J. Y. M. MacAlister, in London: + + Sep. 1900. +MY DEAR MACALISTER,--We do really start next Saturday. I meant to sail +earlier, but waited to finish some studies of what are called Family +Hotels. They are a London specialty, God has not permitted them to exist +elsewhere; they are ramshackle clubs which were dwellings at the time of +the Heptarchy. Dover and Albemarle Streets are filled with them. The +once spacious rooms are split up into coops which afford as much +discomfort as can be had anywhere out of jail for any money. All the +modern inconveniences are furnished, and some that have been obsolete for +a century. The prices are astonishingly high for what you get. The +bedrooms are hospitals for incurable furniture. I find it so in this +one. They exist upon a tradition; they represent the vanishing home-like +inn of fifty years ago, and are mistaken by foreigners for it. Some +quite respectable Englishmen still frequent them through inherited habit +and arrested development; many Americans also, through ignorance and +superstition. The rooms are as interesting as the Tower of London, but +older I think. Older and dearer. The lift was a gift of William the +Conqueror, some of the beds are prehistoric. They represent geological +periods. Mine is the oldest. It is formed in strata of Old Red +Sandstone, volcanic tufa, ignis fatuus, and bicarbonate of hornblende, +superimposed upon argillaceous shale, and contains the prints of +prehistoric man. It is in No. 149. Thousands of scientists come to see +it. They consider it holy. They want to blast out the prints but +cannot. Dynamite rebounds from it. + +Finished studies and sail Saturday in Minnehaha. + Yours ever affectionately, + MARK TWAIN. + + + They sailed for New York October 6th, and something more than a week + later America gave them a royal welcome. The press, far and wide, + sounded Mark Twain's praises once more; dinners and receptions were + offered on every hand; editors and lecture agents clamored for him. + + The family settled in the Earlington Hotel during a period of + house-hunting. They hoped eventually to return to Hartford, but + after a brief visit paid by Clemens alone to the old place he wrote: + + + To Sylvester Baxter, in Boston: + + NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 1900. +DEAR MR. BAXTER,--It was a great pleasure to me to renew the other days +with you, and there was a pathetic pleasure in seeing Hartford and the +house again; but I realize that if we ever enter the house again to live, +our hearts will break. I am not sure that we shall ever be strong enough +to endure that strain. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Mr. and Mrs. Rogers wished to have them in their neighborhood, but + the houses there were not suitable, or were too expensive. Through + Mr. Frank Doubleday they eventually found, at 14 West Tenth Street, + a large residence handsomely furnished, and this they engaged for + the winter. "We were lucky to get this big house furnished," he + wrote MacAlister in London. "There was not another one in town + procurable that would answer us, but this one is all right--space + enough in it for several families, the rooms all old-fashioned, + great size." + + The little note that follows shows that Mark Twain had not entirely + forgotten the days of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. + + + To a Neighbor on West Tenth Street, New York: + + Nov. 30. +DEAR MADAM,--I know I ought to respect my duty and perform it, but I am +weak and faithless where boys are concerned, and I can't help secretly +approving pretty bad and noisy ones, though I do object to the kind that +ring door-bells. My family try to get me to stop the boys from holding +conventions on the front steps, but I basely shirk out of it, because I +think the boys enjoy it. + +My wife has been complaining to me this evening about the boys on the +front steps and under compulsion I have made some promises. But I am +very forgetful, now that I am old, and my sense of duty is getting +spongy. + Very truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + + + + +MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1901-1906 + +ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE + + + +VOLUME V. + + +XL + +LETTERS OF 1901, CHIEFLY TO TWICHELL. MARK TWAIN AS A REFORMER. +SUMMER AT SARANAC. ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY + + An editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal, early in 1901, said: + "A remarkable transformation, or rather a development, has taken + place in Mark Twain. The genial humorist of the earlier day is now + a reformer of the vigorous kind, a sort of knight errant who does + not hesitate to break a lance with either Church or State if he + thinks them interposing on that broad highway over which he believes + not a part but the whole of mankind has the privilege of passing in + the onward march of the ages." + + Mark Twain had begun "breaking the lance" very soon after his return + from Europe. He did not believe that he could reform the world, but + at least he need not withhold his protest against those things which + stirred his wrath. He began by causing the arrest of a cabman who + had not only overcharged but insulted him; he continued by writing + openly against the American policy in the Philippines, the + missionary propaganda which had resulted in the Chinese uprising and + massacre, and against Tammany politics. Not all of his efforts were + in the line of reform; he had become a sort of general spokesman + which the public flocked to hear, whatever the subject. On the + occasion of a Lincoln Birthday service at Carnegie Hall he was + chosen to preside, and he was obliged to attend more dinners than + were good for his health. His letters of this period were mainly + written to his old friend Twichell, in Hartford. Howells, who lived + in New York, he saw with considerable frequency. + + In the letter which follows the medicine which Twichell was to take + was Plasmon, an English proprietary remedy in which Mark Twain had + invested--a panacea for all human ills which osteopathy could not + reach. + + + To Rev. Joseph Twichell, in Hartford: + + 14 W. 10TH ST. Jan. 23, '01. +DEAR JOE,--Certainly. I used to take it in my coffee, but it settled to +the bottom in the form of mud, and I had to eat it with a spoon; so I +dropped the custom and took my 2 teaspoonfuls in cold milk after +breakfast. If we were out of milk I shoveled the dry powder into my +mouth and washed it down with water. The only essential is to get it +down, the method is not important. + +No, blame it, I can't go to the Alumni dinner, Joe. It takes two days, +and I can't spare the time. Moreover I preside at the Lincoln birthday +celebration in Carnegie Hall Feb. 11 and I must not make two speeches so +close together. Think of it--two old rebels functioning there--I as +President, and Watterson as Orator of the Day! Things have changed +somewhat in these 40 years, thank God. + +Look here--when you come down you must be our guest--we've got a roomy +room for you, and Livy will make trouble if you go elsewhere. Come +straight to 14 West 10th. + +Jan. 24. Livy says Amen to that; also, can you give us a day or two's +notice, so the room will be sure to be vacant? + +I'm going to stick close to my desk for a month, now, hoping to write a +small book. + Ys Ever + MARK + + + The letter which follows is a fair sample of Mark Twain's private + violence on a subject which, in public print, he could only treat + effectively by preserving his good humor. When he found it + necessary to boil over, as he did, now and then, for relief, he + always found a willing audience in Twichell. The mention of his + "Private Philosophy" refers to 'What Is Man?', privately published + in 1906; reissued by his publishers in 1916. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + 14 W. 10th Jan. 29, '01. +DEAR JOE,--I'm not expecting anything but kicks for scoffing, and am +expecting a diminution of my bread and butter by it, but if Livy will let +me I will have my say. This nation is like all the others that have been +spewed upon the earth--ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its +vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will be, when they +get all these hypocrites assembled there! + +I can't understand it! You are a public guide and teacher, Joe, and are +under a heavy responsibility to men, young and old; if you teach your +people--as you teach me--to hide their opinions when they believe the +flag is being abused and dishonored, lest the utterance do them and a +publisher a damage, how do you answer for it to your conscience? You are +sorry for me; in the fair way of give and take, I am willing to be a +little sorry for you. + +However, I seem to be going counter to my own Private Philosophy--which +Livy won't allow me to publish--because it would destroy me. But I hope +to see it in print before I die. I planned it 15 years ago, and wrote it +in '98. I've often tried to read it to Livy, but she won't have it; it +makes her melancholy. The truth always has that effect on people. Would +have, anyway, if they ever got hold of a rag of it--Which they don't. + +You are supposing that I am supposing that I am moved by a Large +Patriotism, and that I am distressed because our President has blundered +up to his neck in the Philippine mess; and that I am grieved because this +great big ignorant nation, which doesn't know even the A B C facts of the +Philippine episode, is in disgrace before the sarcastic world--drop that +idea! I care nothing for the rest--I am only distressed and troubled +because I am befouled by these things. That is all. When I search +myself away down deep, I find this out. Whatever a man feels or thinks +or does, there is never any but one reason for it--and that is a selfish +one. + +At great inconvenience, and expense of precious time I went to the chief +synagogue the other night and talked in the interest of a charity school +of poor Jew girls. I know--to the finest, shades--the selfish ends that +moved me; but no one else suspects. I could give you the details if I +had time. You would perceive how true they are. + +I've written another article; you better hurry down and help Livy squelch +it. + +She's out pottering around somewhere, poor housekeeping slave; and Clara +is in the hands of the osteopath, getting the bronchitis pulled and +hauled out of her. It was a bad attack, and a little disquieting. It +came day before yesterday, and she hasn't sat up till this afternoon. +She is getting along satisfactorily, now. + Lots of love to you all. + MARK + + + Mark Twain's religion had to do chiefly with humanity in its present + incarnation, and concerned itself very little with any possible + measure of reward or punishment in some supposed court of the + hereafter. Nevertheless, psychic investigation always interested + him, and he was good-naturedly willing to explore, even hoping, + perhaps, to be convinced that individuality continues beyond death. + The letter which follows indicates his customary attitude in + relation to spiritualistic research. The experiments here + mentioned, however, were not satisfactory. + + + To Mrs. Charles McQuiston: + + DOBBS FERRY, N. Y. + March 26, 1901. +DEAR MRS. McQUISTON,--I have never had an experience which moved me to +believe the living can communicate with the dead, but my wife and I have +experimented in the matter when opportunity offered and shall continue to +do so. + +I enclose a letter which came this morning--the second from the same +source. Mrs. K----is a Missourian, and lately she discovered, by +accident, that she was a remarkable hypnotiser. Her best subject is a +Missouri girl, Miss White, who is to come here soon and sustain strictly +scientific tests before professors at Columbia University. Mrs. Clemens +and I intend to be present. And we shall ask the pair to come to our +house to do whatever things they can do. Meantime, if you thought well +of it, you might write her and arrange a meeting, telling her it is by my +suggestion and that I gave you her address. + +Someone has told me that Mrs. Piper is discredited. I cannot be sure, +but I think it was Mr. Myers, President of the London Psychical Research +Society--we heard of his death yesterday. He was a spiritualist. I am +afraid he was a very easily convinced man. We visited two mediums whom +he and Andrew Lang considered quite wonderful, but they were quite +transparent frauds. + +Mrs. Clemens corrects me: One of those women was a fraud, the other not a +fraud, but only an innocent, well-meaning, driveling vacancy. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + In Mark Twain's Bermuda chapters entitled Idle Notes of an Idle + Excursion he tells of an old sea captain, one Hurricane Jones, who + explained biblical miracles in a practical, even if somewhat + startling, fashion. In his story of the prophets of Baal, for + instance, the old captain declared that the burning water was + nothing more nor less than petroleum. Upon reading the "notes," + Professor Phelps of Yale wrote that the same method of explaining + miracles had been offered by Sir Thomas Browne. + + Perhaps it may be added that Captain Hurricane Jones also appears in + Roughing It, as Captain Ned Blakely. + + + To Professor William Lyon Phelps; + + YALE UNIVERSITY, + NEW YORK, April 24, 1901. +MY DEAR SIR,--I was not aware that old Sir Thomas had anticipated that +story, and I am much obliged to you for furnishing me the paragraph. +t is curious that the same idea should leave entered two heads so unlike +as the head of that wise old philosopher and that of Captain Ned Wakeman, +a splendidly uncultured old sailor, but in his own opinion a thinker by +divine right. He was an old friend of mine of many years' standing; +I made two or three voyages with him, and found him a darling in many +ways. The petroleum story was not told to me; he told it to Joe +Twichell, who ran across him by accident on a sea voyage where I think +the two were the only passengers. A delicious pair, and admirably mated, +they took to each other at once and became as thick as thieves. Joe was +passing under a fictitious name, and old Wakeman didn't suspect that he +was a parson; so he gave his profanity full swing, and he was a master of +that great art. You probably know Twichell, and will know that that is a +kind of refreshment which he is very capable of enjoying. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + For the summer Clemens and his family found a comfortable lodge in + the Adirondacks--a log cabin called "The Lair"--on Saranac Lake. + Soon after his arrival there he received an invitation to attend the + celebration of Missouri's eightieth anniversary. He sent the + following letter: + + + To Edward L. Dimmitt, in St. Louis: + + AMONG THE ADIRONDACK LAKES, July 19, 1901. +DEAR MR. DIMMITT,--By an error in the plans, things go wrong end first in +this world, and much precious time is lost and matters of urgent +importance are fatally retarded. Invitations which a brisk young fellow +should get, and which would transport him with joy, are delayed and +impeded and obstructed until they are fifty years overdue when they reach +him. + +It has happened again in this case. + +When I was a boy in Missouri I was always on the lookout for invitations +but they always miscarried and went wandering through the aisles of time; +and now they are arriving when I am old and rheumatic and can't travel +and must lose my chance. + +I have lost a world of delight through this matter of delaying +invitations. Fifty years ago I would have gone eagerly across the world +to help celebrate anything that might turn up. IT would have made no +difference to me what it was, so that I was there and allowed a chance to +make a noise. + +The whole scheme of things is turned wrong end to. Life should begin +with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its +capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages. As things are now, when in +youth a dollar would bring a hundred pleasures, you can't have it. When +you are old, you get it and there is nothing worth buying with it then. + +It's an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity +to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without +the capacity. + +I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. +I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is +no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities +proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and +inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way +and imminent as indicated above. + +Yours is a great and memorable occasion, and as a son of Missouri I +should hold it a high privilege to be there and share your just pride in +the state's achievements; but I must deny myself the indulgence, while +thanking you earnestly for the prized honor you have done me in asking me +to be present. + Very truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + In the foregoing Mark Twain touches upon one of his favorite + fancies: that life should begin with old age and approach strong + manhood, golden youth, to end at last with pampered and beloved + babyhood. Possibly he contemplated writing a story with this idea + as the theme, but He seems never to have done so. + + The reader who has followed these letters may remember Yung Wing, + who had charge of the Chinese educational mission in Hartford, and + how Mark Twain, with Twichell, called on General Grant in behalf of + the mission. Yung Wing, now returned to China, had conceived the + idea of making an appeal to the Government of the United States for + relief of his starving countrymen. + + + To J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + AMPERSAND, N. Y., July 28, '01. +DEAR JOE,--As you say, it is impracticable--in my case, certainly. For +me to assist in an appeal to that Congress of land-thieves and liars +would be to bring derision upon it; and for me to assist in an appeal for +cash to pass through the hands of those missionaries out there, of any +denomination, Catholic or Protestant, wouldn't do at all. They wouldn't +handle money which I had soiled, and I wouldn't trust them with it, +anyway. They would devote it to the relief of suffering--I know +that--but the sufferers selected would be converts. The +missionary-utterances exhibit no humane feeling toward the others, but in +place of it a spirit of hate and hostility. And it is natural; the Bible +forbids their presence there, their trade is unlawful, why shouldn't +their characters be of necessity in harmony with--but never mind, let it +go, it irritates me. + +Later.... I have been reading Yung Wing's letter again. It may be that +he is over-wrought by his sympathies, but it may not be so. There may be +other reasons why the missionaries are silent about the Shensi-2-year +famine and cannibalism. It may be that there are so few Protestant +converts there that the missionaries are able to take care of them. That +they are not likely to largely concern themselves about Catholic converts +and the others, is quite natural, I think. + +That crude way of appealing to this Government for help in a cause which +has no money in it, and no politics, rises before me again in all its +admirable innocence! Doesn't Yung Wing know us yet? However, he has +been absent since '96 or '97. We have gone to hell since then. Kossuth +couldn't raise 30 cents in Congress, now, if he were back with his moving +Magyar-Tale. + +I am on the front porch (lower one--main deck) of our little bijou of a +dwelling-house. The lake-edge (Lower Saranac) is so nearly under me that +I can't see the shore, but only the water, small-pored with +rain-splashes--for there is a heavy down-pour. It is charmingly like +sitting snuggled up on a ship's deck with the stretching sea all around +--but very much more satisfactory, for at sea a rain-storm is depressing, +while here of course the effect engendered is just a deep sense of +comfort and contentment. The heavy forest shuts us solidly in on three +sides there are no neighbors. There are beautiful little tan-colored +impudent squirrels about. They take tea, 5 p. m., (not invited) at the +table in the woods where Jean does my typewriting, and one of them has +been brave enough to sit upon Jean's knee with his tail curved over his +back and munch his food. They come to dinner, 7 p. m., on the front +porch (not invited). They all have the one name--Blennerhasset, from +Burr's friend--and none of them answers to it except when hungry. + +We have been here since June 21st. For a little while we had some warm +days--according to the family's estimate; I was hardly discommoded +myself. Otherwise the weather has been of the sort you are familiar with +in these regions: cool days and cool nights. We have heard of the hot +wave every Wednesday, per the weekly paper--we allow no dailies to +intrude. Last week through visitors also--the only ones we have had +--Dr. Root and John Howells. + +We have the daily lake-swim; and all the tribe, servants included (but +not I) do a good deal of boating; sometimes with the guide, sometimes +without him--Jean and Clara are competent with the oars. If we live +another year, I hope we shall spend its summer in this house. + +We have taken the Appleton country seat, overlooking the Hudson, at +Riverdale, 25 minutes from the Grand Central Station, for a year, +beginning Oct. 1, with option for another year. We are obliged to be +close to New York for a year or two. + +Aug. 3rd. I go yachting a fortnight up north in a 20-knot boat 225 feet +long, with the owner, (Mr. Rogers), Tom Reid, Dr. Rice, Col. A. G. Paine +and one or two others. Judge Howland would go, but can't get away from +engagements; Professor Sloane would go, but is in the grip of an illness. +Come--will you go? If you can manage it, drop a post-card to me c/o H.H. +Rogers, 26 Broadway. I shall be in New York a couple of days before we +sail--July 31 or Aug. 1, perhaps the latter,--and I think I shall stop at +the Hotel Grosvenor, cor. 10th St and 5th ave. + +We all send you and the Harmonies lots and gobs of love. + MARK + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + AMPERSAND, N. Y., Aug. 28. +DEAR JOE,--Just a word, to scoff at you, with your extravagant suggestion +that I read the biography of Phillips Brooks--the very dullest book that +has been printed for a century. Joe, ten pages of Mrs. Cheney's masterly +biography of her fathers--no, five pages of it--contain more meat, more +sense, more literature, more brilliancy, than that whole basketful of +drowsy rubbish put together. Why, in that dead atmosphere even Brooks +himself is dull--he wearied me; oh how he wearied me! + +We had a noble good time in the Yacht, and caught a Chinese missionary +and drowned him. + Love from us all to you all. + MARK. + + + The assassination of President McKinley occurred September 6, 1901. + Such an event would naturally stir Mark Twain to comment on human + nature in general. His letter to Twichell is as individual as it is + sound in philosophy. At what period of his own life, or under what + circumstances, he made the long journey with tragic intent there is + no means of knowing now. There is no other mention of it elsewhere + in the records that survive him. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + AMPERSAND, Tuesday, (Sept. 10, 1901) +DEAR JOE,--It is another off day, but tomorrow I shall resume work to a +certainty, and bid a long farewell to letter-scribbling. + +The news of the President looks decidedly hopeful, and we are all glad, +and the household faces are much improved, as to cheerfulness. Oh, the +talk in the newspapers! Evidently the Human Race is the same old Human +Race. And how unjust, and unreflectingly discriminating, the talkers +are. Under the unsettling effects of powerful emotion the talkers are +saying wild things, crazy things--they are out of themselves, and do not +know it; they are temporarily insane, yet with one voice they declare +the assassin sane--a man who has been entertaining fiery and reason +--debauching maggots in his head for weeks and months. Why, no one is +sane, straight along, year in and year out, and we all know it. Our +insanities are of varying sorts, and express themselves in varying forms +--fortunately harmless forms as a rule--but in whatever form they occur +an immense upheaval of feeling can at any time topple us distinctly over +the sanity-line for a little while; and then if our form happens to be of +the murderous kind we must look out--and so must the spectator. + +This ass with the unpronounceable name was probably more insane than +usual this week or two back, and may get back upon his bearings by and +by, but he was over the sanity-border when he shot the President. It is +possible that it has taken him the whole interval since the murder of the +King of Italy to get insane enough to attempt the President's life. +Without a doubt some thousands of men have been meditating the same act +in the same interval, but new and strong interests have intervened and +diverted their over-excited minds long enough to give them a chance to +settle, and tranquilize, and get back upon a healthy level again. Every +extraordinary occurrence unsettles the heads of hundreds of thousands of +men for a few moments or hours or days. If there had been ten kings +around when Humbert fell they would have been in great peril for a day or +more--and from men in whose presence they would have been quite safe +after the excess of their excitement had had an interval in which to cool +down. I bought a revolver once and travelled twelve hundred miles to +kill a man. He was away. He was gone a day. With nothing else to do, +I had to stop and think--and did. Within an hour--within half of it +--I was ashamed of myself--and felt unspeakably ridiculous. I do not +know what to call it if I was not insane. During a whole week my head +was in a turmoil night and day fierce enough and exhausting enough to +upset a stronger reason than mine. + +All over the world, every day, there are some millions of men in that +condition temporarily. And in that time there is always a moment +--perhaps only a single one when they would do murder if their man was at +hand. If the opportunity comes a shade too late, the chances are that it +has come permanently too late. Opportunity seldom comes exactly at the +supreme moment. This saves a million lives a day in the world--for sure. + +No Ruler is ever slain but the tremendous details of it are ravenously +devoured by a hundred thousand men whose minds dwell, unaware, near the +temporary-insanity frontier--and over they go, now! There is a day--two +days--three--during which no Ruler would be safe from perhaps the half of +them; and there is a single moment wherein he would not be safe from any +of them, no doubt. + +It may take this present shooting-case six months to breed another +ruler-tragedy, but it will breed it. There is at least one mind +somewhere which will brood, and wear, and decay itself to the +killing-point and produce that tragedy. + +Every negro burned at the stake unsettles the excitable brain of another +one--I mean the inflaming details of his crime, and the lurid +theatricality of his exit do it--and the duplicate crime follows; and +that begets a repetition, and that one another one and so on. Every +lynching-account unsettles the brains of another set of excitable white +men, and lights another pyre--115 lynchings last year, 102 inside of 8 +months this year; in ten years this will be habit, on these terms. + +Yes, the wild talk you see in the papers! And from men who are sane when +not upset by overwhelming excitement. A U. S. Senator-Cullom--wants this +Buffalo criminal lynched! It would breed other lynchings--of men who are +not dreaming of committing murders, now, and will commit none if Cullom +will keep quiet and not provide the exciting cause. + +And a District Attorney wants a law which shall punish with death +attempts upon a President's life--this, mind you, as a deterrent. +It would have no effect--or the opposite one. The lunatic's mind-space +is all occupied--as mine was--with the matter in hand; there is no room +in it for reflections upon what may happen to him. That comes after the +crime. + +It is the noise the attempt would make in the world that would breed the +subsequent attempts, by unsettling the rickety minds of men who envy the +criminal his vast notoriety--his obscure name tongued by stupendous Kings +and Emperors--his picture printed everywhere, the trivialest details of +his movements, what he eats, what he drinks; how he sleeps, what he says, +cabled abroad over the whole globe at cost of fifty thousand dollars a +day--and he only a lowly shoemaker yesterday!--like the assassin of the +President of France--in debt three francs to his landlady, and insulted +by her--and to-day she is proud to be able to say she knew him +"as familiarly as you know your own brother," and glad to stand till she +drops and pour out columns and pages of her grandeur and her happiness +upon the eager interviewer. + +Nothing will check the lynchings and ruler-murder but absolute silence +--the absence of pow-pow about them. How are you going to manage that? +By gagging every witness and jamming him into a dungeon for life; by +abolishing all newspapers; by exterminating all newspaper men; and by +extinguishing God's most elegant invention, the Human Race. It is quite +simple, quite easy, and I hope you will take a day off and attend to it, +Joe. I blow a kiss to you, and am + Lovingly Yours, + MARK. + + + When the Adirondack summer ended Clemens settled for the winter in + the beautiful Appleton home at Riverdale-on-the-Hudson. It was a + place of wide-spreading grass and shade-a house of ample room. They + were established in it in time for Mark Twain to take an active + interest in the New York elections and assist a ticket for good + government to defeat Tammany Hall. + + + + +XLI + +LETTERS OF 1902. RIVERDALE. YORK HARBOR. ILLNESS OF MRS. CLEMENS + +The year 1902 was an eventful one for Mark Twain. In April he received a +degree of LL.D. from the University of Missouri and returned to his +native State to accept it. This was his last journey to the Mississippi +River. During the summer Mrs. Clemens's health broke down and illnesses +of one sort or another visited other members of the family. Amid so much +stress and anxiety Clemens had little time or inclination for work. He +wrote not many letters and mainly somber ones. Once, by way of +diversion, he worked out the idea of a curious club--which he formed--its +members to be young girls--girls for the most part whom he had never +seen. They were elected without their consent from among those who wrote +to him without his consent, and it is not likely that any one so chosen +declined membership. One selection from his letters to the French +member, Miss Helene Picard, of St.-Die, France, will explain the club and +present a side of Mask Twain somewhat different from that found in most +of his correspondence. + + + To Miss Picard, in St.-Die, France: + + RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON, February 22, 1902. +DEAR MISS HELENE,--If you will let me call you so, considering that my +head is white and that I have grownup daughters. Your beautiful letter +has given me such deep pleasure! I will make bold to claim you for a +friend and lock you up with the rest of my riches; for I am a miser who +counts his spoil every day and hoards it secretly and adds to it when he +can, and is grateful to see it grow. + +Some of that gold comes, like yourself, in a sealed package, and I can't +see it and may never have the happiness; but I know its value without +that, and by what sum it increases my wealth. + +I have a Club, a private Club, which is all my own. I appoint the +Members myself, and they can't help themselves, because I don't allow +them to vote on their own appointment and I don't allow them to resign! +They are all friends whom I have never seen (save one), but who have +written friendly letters to me. + +By the laws of my Club there can be only one Member in each country, and +there can be no male Member but myself. Some day I may admit males, but +I don't know--they are capricious and inharmonious, and their ways +provoke me a good deal. It is a matter which the Club shall decide. + +I have made four appointments in the past three or four months: You as +Member for France, a young Highland girl as Member for Scotland, a +Mohammedan girl as Member for Bengal, and a dear and bright young niece +of mine as Member for the United States--for I do not represent a country +myself, but am merely Member at Large for the Human Race. + +You must not try to resign, for the laws of the Club do not allow that. +You must console yourself by remembering that you are in the best of +company; that nobody knows of your membership except myself--that no +Member knows another's name, but only her country; that no taxes are +levied and no meetings held (but how dearly I should like to attend +one!). + +One of my Members is a Princess of a royal house, another is the daughter +of a village book-seller on the continent of Europe. For the only +qualification for Membership is intellect and the spirit of good will; +other distinctions, hereditary or acquired, do not count. + +May I send you the Constitution and Laws of the Club? I shall be so +pleased if I may. It is a document which one of my daughters typewrites +for me when I need one for a new Member, and she would give her eyebrows +to know what it is all about, but I strangle her curiosity by saying: +"There are much cheaper typewriters than you are, my dear, and if you try +to pry into the sacred mysteries of this Club one of your prosperities +will perish sure." + +My favorite? It is "Joan of Arc." My next is "Huckleberry Finn," but +the family's next is "The Prince and the Pauper." (Yes, you are right +--I am a moralist in disguise; it gets me into heaps of trouble when I +go thrashing around in political questions.) + +I wish you every good fortune and happiness and I thank you so much for +your letter. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Early in the year Clemens paid a visit to Twichell in Hartford, and + after one of their regular arguments on theology and the moral + accountability of the human race, arguments that had been going on + between them for more than thirty years--Twichell lent his visitor + Freedom of the Will, by Jonathan Edwards, to read on the way home. + The next letter was the result. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON. + Feb. '02. +DEAR JOE,--"After compliments."--[Meaning "What a good time you gave me; +what a happiness it was to be under your roof again; etc., etc." See +opening sentence of all translations of letters passing between Lord +Roberts and Indian princes and rulers.]--From Bridgeport to New York; +thence to home; and continuously until near midnight I wallowed and +reeked with Jonathan in his insane debauch; rose immediately refreshed +and fine at 10 this morning, but with a strange and haunting sense of +having been on a three days' tear with a drunken lunatic. It is years +since I have known these sensations. All through the book is the glaze +of a resplendent intellect gone mad--a marvelous spectacle. No, not all +through the book--the drunk does not come on till the last third, where +what I take to be Calvinism and its God begins to show up and shine red +and hideous in the glow from the fires of hell, their only right and +proper adornment. By God I was ashamed to be in such company. + +Jonathan seems to hold (as against the Arminian position) that the Man +(or his Soul or his Will) never creates an impulse itself, but is moved +to action by an impulse back of it. That's sound! + +Also, that of two or more things offered it, it infallibly chooses the +one which for the moment is most pleasing to ITSELF. Perfectly correct! +An immense admission for a man not otherwise sane. + +Up to that point he could have written chapters III and IV of my +suppressed "Gospel." But there we seem to separate. He seems to concede +the indisputable and unshakable dominion of Motive and Necessity (call +them what he may, these are exterior forces and not under the man's +authority, guidance or even suggestion)--then he suddenly flies the logic +track and (to all seeming) makes the man and not these exterior forces +responsible to God for the man's thoughts, words and acts. It is frank +insanity. + +I think that when he concedes the autocratic dominion of Motive and +Necessity he grants, a third position of mine--that a man's mind is a +mere machine--an automatic machine--which is handled entirely from the +outside, the man himself furnishing it absolutely nothing: not an ounce +of its fuel, and not so much as a bare suggestion to that exterior +engineer as to what the machine shall do, nor how it shall do it nor +when. + +After that concession, it was time for him to get alarmed and shirk--for +he was pointing straight for the only rational and possible next-station +on that piece of road the irresponsibility of man to God. + +And so he shirked. Shirked, and arrived at this handsome result: + +Man is commanded to do so-and-so. It has been ordained from the +beginning of time that some men shan't and others can't. + +These are to be blamed: let them be damned. + +I enjoy the Colonel very much, and shall enjoy the rest of him with an +obscene delight. + Joe, the whole tribe shout love to you and yours! + MARK. + + + We have not heard of Joe Goodman since the trying days of '90 and + '91, when he was seeking to promote the fortunes of the type-setting + machine. Goodman, meantime, who had in turn been miner, printer, + publisher, and farmer; had been devoting his energies and genius to + something entirely new: he had been translating the prehistoric + Mayan inscriptions of Yucatan, and with such success that his work + was elaborately published by an association of British scientists. + In due time a copy of this publication came to Clemens, who was full + of admiration of the great achievement. + + + To J. T. Goodman, in California: + + RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON, + June 13, '02. +DEAR JOE,--I am lost in reverence and admiration! It is now twenty-four +hours that I have been trying to cool down and contemplate with quiet +blood this extraordinary spectacle of energy, industry, perseverance, +pluck, analytical genius, penetration, this irruption of thunders and +fiery splendors from a fair and flowery mountain that nobody had supposed +was a sleeping volcano, but I seem to be as excited as ever. Yesterday +I read as much as half of the book, not understanding a word but +enchanted nevertheless--partly by the wonder of it all, the study, the +erudition, the incredible labor, the modesty, the dignity, the majestic +exclusiveness of the field and its lofty remoteness from things and +contacts sordid and mean and earthy, and partly by the grace and beauty +and limpidity of the book's unsurpassable English. Science, always great +and worshipful, goes often in hodden grey, but you have clothed her in +garments meet for her high degree. + +You think you get "poor pay" for your twenty years? No, oh no. You have +lived in a paradise of the intellect whose lightest joys were beyond the +reach of the longest purse in Christendom, you have had daily and nightly +emancipation from the world's slaveries and gross interests, you have +received a bigger wage than any man in the land, you have dreamed a +splendid dream and had it come true, and to-day you could not afford to +trade fortunes with anybody--not even with another scientist, for he must +divide his spoil with his guild, whereas essentially the world you have +discovered is your own and must remain so. + +It is all just magnificent, Joe! And no one is prouder or gladder than + Yours always + MARK. + + + At York Harbor, Maine, where they had taken a cottage for the + summer--a pretty place, with Howells not far distant, at Kittery + Point--Mrs. Clemens's health gave way. This was at a period when + telegraphic communication was far from reliable. The old-time + Western Union had fallen from grace; its "system" no longer + justified the best significance of that word. The new day of + reorganization was coming, and it was time for it. Mark Twain's + letter concerning the service at York Harbor would hardly be + warranted today, but those who remember conditions of that earlier + time will agree that it was justified then, and will appreciate its + satire. + + + To the President of The Western Union, in New York: + + "THE PINES" + YORK HARBOR, MAINE. +DEAR SIR,--I desire to make a complaint, and I bring it to you, the head +of the company, because by experience I know better than to carry it to a +subordinate. + +I have been here a month and a half, and by testimony of friends, +reinforced by personal experience I now feel qualified to claim as an +established fact that the telegraphic service here is the worst in the +world except that Boston. + +These services are actually slower than was the New York and Hartford +service in the days when I last complained to you--which was fifteen or +eighteen years ago, when telegraphic time and train time between the +mentioned points was exactly the same, to-wit, three hours and a half. +Six days ago--it was that raw day which provoked so much comment--my +daughter was on her way up from New York, and at noon she telegraphed me +from New Haven asking that I meet her with a cloak at Portsmouth. Her +telegram reached me four hours and a quarter later--just 15 minutes too +late for me to catch my train and meet her. + +I judge that the telegram traveled about 200 miles. It is the best +telegraphic work I have seen since I have been here, and I am mentioning +it in this place not as a complaint but as a compliment. I think a +compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible, +because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous +and gentle reception. + +Still, there is a detail or two connected with this matter which ought +perhaps to be mentioned. And now, having smoothed the way with the +compliment, I will venture them. The head corpse in the York Harbor +office sent me that telegram altho (1) he knew it would reach me too late +to be of any value; (2) also, that he was going to send it to me by his +boy; (3) that the boy would not take the trolley and come the 2 miles in +12 minutes, but would walk; (4) that he would be two hours and a quarter +on the road; (5) and that he would collect 25 cents for transportation, +for a telegram which the he knew to be worthless before he started it. +From these data I infer that the Western Union owes me 75 cents; that is +to say, the amount paid for combined wire and land transportation +--a recoup provided for in the printed paragraph which heads the +telegraph-blank. + +By these humane and Christian stages we now arrive at the complaint +proper. We have had a grave case of illness in the family, and a +relative was coming some six hundred miles to help in the sick-room +during the convalescing period. It was an anxious time, of course, +and I wrote and asked to be notified as to the hour of the expected +arrival of this relative in Boston or in York Harbor. Being afraid of +the telegraph--which I think ought not to be used in times of hurry and +emergency--I asked that the desired message be brought to me by some +swift method of transportation. By the milkman, if he was coming this +way. But there are always people who think they know more than you do, +especially young people; so of course the young fellow in charge of this +lady used the telegraph. And at Boston, of all places! Except York +Harbor. + +The result was as usual; let me employ a statelier and exacter term, and +say, historical. + +The dispatch was handed to the h. c. of the Boston office at 9 this +morning. It said, "Shall bring A. S. to you eleven forty-five this +morning." The distance traveled by the dispatch is forty or fifty miles, +I suppose, as the train-time is five minutes short of two hours, and the +trains are so slow that they can't give a W. U. telegram two hours and +twenty minutes start and overtake it. + +As I have said, the dispatch was handed in at Boston at 9. The expected +visitors left Boston at 9.40, and reached my house at 12 noon, beating +the telegram 2 solid hours, and 5 minutes over. + +The boy brought the telegram. It was bald-headed with age, but still +legible. The boy was prostrate with travel and exposure, but still +alive, and I went out to condole with him and get his last wishes and +send for the ambulance. He was waiting to collect transportation before +turning his passing spirit to less serious affairs. I found him +strangely intelligent, considering his condition and where he is getting +his training. I asked him at what hour the telegram was handed to the +h. c. in Boston. He answered brightly, that he didn't know. + +I examined the blank, and sure enough the wary Boston h. c. had +thoughtfully concealed that statistic. I asked him at what hour it had +started from Boston. He answered up as brightly as ever, and said he +didn't know. + +I examined the blank, and sure enough the Boston h. c. had left that +statistic out in the cold, too. In fact it turned out to be an official +concealment--no blank was provided for its exposure. And none required +by the law, I suppose. "It is a good one-sided idea," I remarked; +"They can take your money and ship your telegram next year if they want +to--you've no redress. The law ought to extend the privilege to all of +us." + +The boy looked upon me coldly. + +I asked him when the telegram reached York Harbor. He pointed to some +figures following the signature at the bottom of the blank--"12.14." +I said it was now 1.45 and asked-- + +"Do you mean that it reached your morgue an hour and a half ago?" + +He nodded assent. + +"It was at that time half an hour too late to be of any use to me, if I +wanted to go and meet my people--which was the case--for by the wording +of the message you can see that they were to arrive at the station at +11.45. Why did, your h. c. send me this useless message? Can't he read? +Is he dead?" + +"It's the rules." + +"No, that does not account for it. Would he have sent it if it had been +three years old, I in the meantime deceased, and he aware of it?" + +The boy didn't know. + +"Because, you know, a rule which required him to forward to the cemetery +to-day a dispatch due three years ago, would be as good a rule as one +which should require him to forward a telegram to me to-day which he knew +had lost all its value an hour or two before he started it. The +construction of such a rule would discredit an idiot; in fact an idiot +--I mean a common ordinary Christian idiot, you understand--would be +ashamed of it, and for the sake of his reputation wouldn't make it. What +do you think?" + +He replied with much natural brilliancy that he wasn't paid for thinking. + +This gave me a better opinion of the commercial intelligence pervading +his morgue than I had had before; it also softened my feelings toward +him, and also my tone, which had hitherto been tinged with bitterness. + +"Let bygones be bygones," I said, gently, "we are all erring creatures, +and mainly idiots, but God made us so and it is dangerous to criticise." + Sincerely + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + One day there arrived from Europe a caller with a letter of + introduction from Elizabeth, Queen of Rumania, better known as + Carmen Sylva. The visitor was Madam Hartwig, formerly an American + girl, returning now, because of reduced fortunes, to find profitable + employment in her own land. Her husband, a man of high principle, + had declined to take part in an "affair of honor," as recognized by + the Continental code; hence his ruin. Elizabeth of Rumania was one + of the most loved and respected of European queens and an author of + distinction. Mark Twain had known her in Vienna. Her letter to him + and his own letter to the public (perhaps a second one, for its date + is two years later) follow herewith. + + + From Carmen Sylva to Mark Twain: + + BUCAREST, May 9, 1902. +HONORED MASTER,--If I venture to address you on behalf of a poor lady, +who is stranded in Bucarest I hope not to be too disagreeable. + +Mrs. Hartwig left America at the age of fourteen in order to learn to +sing which she has done thoroughly. Her husband had quite a brilliant +situation here till he refused to partake 'dans une afaire onereuse', +so it seems. They haven't a penny and each of them must try to find a +living. She is very nice and pleasant and her school is so good that she +most certainly can give excellent singing lessons. + +I beg your pardon for being a bore to one I so deeply love and admire, +to whom I owe days and days of forgetfulness of self and troubles and the +intensest of all joys: Hero-worship! People don't always realize what a +happiness that is! God bless you for every beautiful thought you poured +into my tired heart and for every smile on a weary way! + + CARMEN SYLVA. + + + From Mark Twain to the Public: + + Nov. 16, '04. +TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,--I desire to recommend Madame Hartwig to my +friends and the public as a teacher of singing and as a concert-vocalist. +She has lived for fifteen years at the court of Roumania, and she brought +with her to America an autograph letter in which her Majesty the Queen of +Roumania cordially certified her to me as being an accomplished and +gifted singer and teacher of singing, and expressed a warm hope that her +professional venture among us would meet with success; through absence in +Europe I have had no opportunity to test the validity of the Queen's +judgment in the matter, but that judgment is the utterance of an entirely +competent authority--the best that occupies a throne, and as good as any +that sits elsewhere, as the musical world well knows--and therefore back +it without hesitation, and endorse it with confidence. + +I will explain that the reason her Majesty tried to do her friend a +friendly office through me instead of through someone else was, not that +I was particularly the right or best person for the office, but because I +was not a stranger. It is true that I am a stranger to some of the +monarchs--mainly through their neglect of their opportunities--but such +is not the case in the present instance. The latter fact is a high +compliment to me, and perhaps I ought to conceal it. Some people would. + + MARK TWAIN. + + + + + Mrs. Clemens's improvement was scarcely perceptible. It was not + until October that they were able to remove her to Riverdale, and + then only in a specially arranged invalid-car. At the end of the + long journey she was carried to her room and did not leave it again + for many months. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + RIVERDALE, N. Y., Oct. 31, '02. +DEAR JOE,--It is ten days since Susy [Twichell] wrote that you were laid +up with a sprained shoulder, since which time we have had no news about +it. I hope that no news is good news, according to the proverb; still, +authoritative confirmation of it will be gladly received in this family, +if some of you will furnish it. Moreover, I should like to know how and +where it happened. In the pulpit, as like as not, otherwise you would +not be taking so much pains to conceal it. This is not a malicious +suggestion, and not a personally-invented one: you told me yourself, +once, that you threw artificial power and impressiveness into places in +your sermons where needed, by "banging the bible"--(your own words.) +You have reached a time of life when it is not wise to take these risks. +You would better jump around. We all have to change our methods as the +infirmities of age creep upon us. Jumping around will be impressive now, +whereas before you were gray it would have excited remark. + +Poor Livy drags along drearily. It must be hard times for that turbulent +spirit. It will be a long time before she is on her feet again. It is a +most pathetic case. I wish I could transfer it to myself. Between +ripping and raging and smoking and reading, I could get a good deal of a +holiday out of it. + +Clara runs the house smoothly and capably. She is discharging a +trial-cook today and hiring another. + A power of love to you all! + MARK. + + +Such was the state of Mrs. Clemens's health that visitors were excluded +from the sick room, and even Clemens himself was allowed to see her no +more than a few moments at a time. These brief, precious visits were the +chief interests of his long days. Occasionally he was allowed to send +her a few lines, reporting his occupations, and these she was sometimes +permitted to answer. Only one of his notes has been preserved, written +after a day, now rare, of literary effort. Its signature, the letter Y, +stands for "Youth," always her name for him. + + + To Mrs. Clemens: + +DEAR HEART,--I've done another full day's work, and finished before 4. +I have been reading and dozing since and would have had a real sleep a +few minutes ago but for an incursion to bring me a couple of unimportant +letters. I've stuck to the bed all day and am getting back my lost +ground. Next time I will be strictly careful and make my visit very +short--just a kiss and a rush. Thank you for your dear, dear note; you +who are my own and only sweetheart. + Sleep well! + Y. + + + + +XLII + +LETTERS OF 1903. TO VARIOUS PERSONS. HARD DAYS AT RIVERDALE. +LAST SUMMER AT ELMIRA. THE RETURN TO ITALY + +The reader may perhaps recall that H. H. Rogers, some five or six years +earlier, had taken charge of the fortunes of Helen Keller, making it +possible for her to complete her education. Helen had now written her +first book--a wonderful book--'The Story of My Life', and it had been +successfully published. For a later generation it may be proper to +explain that the Miss Sullivan, later Mrs. Macy, mentioned in the letter +which follows, was the noble woman who had devoted her life to the +enlightenment of this blind, dumb girl--had made it possible for her to +speak and understand, and, indeed, to see with the eyes of luminous +imagination. + +The case of plagiarism mentioned in this letter is not now remembered, +and does not matter, but it furnished a text for Mark Twain, whose +remarks on the subject in general are eminently worth while. + + + To Helen Keller, in Wrentham, Mass.: + + RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON, + ST. PATRICK'S DAY, '03. +DEAR HELEN,--I must steal half a moment from my work to say how glad I am +to have your book, and how highly I value it, both for its own sake and +as a remembrances of an affectionate friendship which has subsisted +between us for nine years without a break, and without a single act of +violence that I can call to mind. I suppose there is nothing like it in +heaven; and not likely to be, until we get there and show off. I often +think of it with longing, and how they'll say, "There they come--sit +down in front!" I am practicing with a tin halo. You do the same. I was +at Henry Rogers's last night, and of course we talked of you. He is not +at all well; you will not like to hear that; but like you and me, he is +just as lovely as ever. + +I am charmed with your book-enchanted. You are a wonderful creature, +the most wonderful in the world--you and your other half together +--Miss Sullivan, I mean, for it took the pair of you to make a complete +and perfect whole. How she stands out in her letters! her brilliancy, +penetration, originality, wisdom, character, and the fine literary +competencies of her pen--they are all there. + +Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was +that "plagiarism" farce! As if there was much of anything in any human +utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernal, the soul--let +us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable +material of all human utterances--is plagiarism. For substantially all +ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million +outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and +satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas +there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little +discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his +temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. When +a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten centuries +and ten thousand men--but we call it his speech, and really some +exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It +is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we +call it his; but there are others that contributed. It takes a thousand +men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a +photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing--and the last man +gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite--that +is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine +parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure +and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do +that. + +Then why don't we unwittingly reproduce the phrasing of a story, as well +as the story itself? It can hardly happen--to the extent of fifty words +except in the case of a child: its memory-tablet is not lumbered with +impressions, and the actual language can have graving-room there, and +preserve the language a year or two, but a grown person's memory-tablet +is a palimpsest, with hardly a bare space upon which to engrave a phrase. +It must be a very rare thing that a whole page gets so sharply printed +upon a man's mind, by a single reading, that it will stay long enough to +turn up some time or other and be mistaken by him for his own. No doubt +we are constantly littering our literature with disconnected sentences +borrowed from books at some unremembered time and now imagined to be our +own, but that is about the most we can do. In 1866 I read Dr. Holmes's +poems, in the Sandwich Islands. A year and a half later I stole his +dictation, without knowing it, and used it to dedicate my "Innocents +Abroad" with. Then years afterwards I was talking with Dr. Holmes about +it. He was not an ignorant ass--no, not he: he was not a collection of +decayed human turnips, like your "Plagiarism Court;" and so when I said, +"I know now where I stole it, but whom did you steal it from," he said, +"I don't remember; I only know I stole it from somebody, because I have +never originated anything altogether myself, nor met anybody who had." + +To think of those solemn donkeys breaking a little child's heart with +their ignorant rubbish about plagiarism! I couldn't sleep for +blaspheming about it last night. Why, their whole lives, their whole +histories, all their learning, all their thoughts, all their opinions +were one solid ruck of plagiarism, and they didn't know it and never +suspected it. A gang of dull and hoary pirates piously setting +themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they +think they've caught filching a chop! Oh, dam-- + +But you finish it, dear, I am running short of vocabulary +today. Ever lovingly your friend, + MARK. + +(Edited and modified by Clara Clemens, deputy to her mother, who for more +than 7 months has been ill in bed and unable to exercise her official +function.) + + + The burden of the Clemens household had fallen almost entirely upon + Clara Clemens. In addition to supervising its customary affairs, + she also shouldered the responsibility of an unusual combination of + misfortunes, for besides the critical condition of her mother, her + sister, Jean Clemens, was down with pneumonia, no word of which must + come to Mrs. Clemens. Certainly it was a difficult position. In + some account of it, which he set down later, Clemens wrote: "It was + fortunate for us all that Clara's reputation for truthfulness was so + well established in her mother's mind. It was our daily protection + from disaster. The mother never doubted Clara's word. Clara could + tell her large improbabilities without exciting any suspicion, + whereas if I tried to market even a small and simple one the case + would have been different. I was never able to get a reputation + like Clara's." + + The accumulation of physical ailments in the Clemens home had + somewhat modified Mark Twain's notion of medical practice. He was + no longer radical; he had become eclectic. It is a good deal of a + concession that he makes to Twichell, after those earlier letters + from Sweden, in which osteopathy had been heralded as the anodyne + for all human ills. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + +DEAR JOE,--Livy does really make a little progress these past 3 or 4 +days, progress which is visible to even the untrained eye. The +physicians are doing good work with her, but my notion is, that no art of +healing is the best for all ills. I should distribute the ailments +around: surgery cases to the surgeons; lupus to the actinic-ray +specialist; nervous prostration to the Christian Scientist; most ills to +the allopath and the homeopath; (in my own particular case) rheumatism, +gout and bronchial attacks to the osteopathist. + +Mr. Rogers was to sail southward this morning--and here is this weather! +I am sorry. I think it's a question if he gets away tomorrow. + Ys Ever + MARK. + + + It was through J. Y. M. MacAlister, to whom the next letter is + written, that Mark Twain had become associated with the Plasmon + Company, which explains the reference to "shares." He had seen much + of MacAlister during the winter at Tedworth Square, and had grown + fond of him. It is a characteristic letter, and one of interesting + fact. + + + To J. Y. M. MacAlister, in London: + + RIVERDALE, NEW YORK. + April, 7, '03. +DEAR MACALISTER,--Yours arrived last night, and God knows I was glad to +get it, for I was afraid I had blundered into an offence in some way and +forfeited your friendship--a kind of blunder I have made so many times in +my life that I am always standing in a waiting and morbid dread of its +occurrence. + +Three days ago I was in condition--during one horribly long night--to +sympathetically roast with you in your "hell of troubles." During that +night I was back again where I was in the black days when I was buried +under a mountain of debt. I called the daughters to me in private +council and paralysed them with the announcement, "Our outgo has +increased in the past 8 months until our expenses are now 125 per cent. +greater than our income." + +It was a mistake. When I came down in the morning a gray and aged wreck, +and went over the figures again, I found that in some unaccountable way +(unaccountable to a business man but not to me) I had multiplied the +totals by 2. By God I dropped 75 years on the floor where I stood. + +Do you know it affected me as one is affected when he wakes out of a +hideous dream and finds that it was only a dream. It was a great comfort +and satisfaction to me to call the daughters to a private meeting of the +Board again and say, "You need not worry any more; our outgo is only a +third more than our income; in a few months your mother will be out of +her bed and on her feet again--then we shall drop back to normal and be +all right." + +Certainly there is a blistering and awful reality about a well-arranged +unreality. It is quite within the possibilities that two or three nights +like that night of mine could drive a man to suicide. He would refuse to +examine the figures; they would revolt him so, and he could go to his +death unaware that there was nothing serious about them. I cannot get +that night out of my head, it was so vivid, so real, so ghastly. In any +other year of these 33 the relief would have been simple: go where you +can cut your cloth to fit your income. You can't do that when your wife +can't be moved, even from one room to the next. + +Clam spells the trained nurse afternoons; I am allowed to see Mrs. +Clemens 20 minutes twice a day and write her two letters a day provided I +put no news in them. No other person ever sees her except the physician +and now and then a nerve-specialist from New York. She saw there was +something the matter that morning, but she got no facts out of me. But +that is nothing--she hasn't had anything but lies for 8 months. A fact +would give her a relapse. + +The doctor and a specialist met in conspiracy five days ago, and in their +belief she will by and by come out of this as good as new, substantially. +They ordered her to Italy for next winter--which seems to indicate that +by autumn she will be able to undertake the voyage. So Clara is writing +a Florence friend to take a look round among the villas for us in the +regions near that city. It seems early to do this, but Joan Bergheim +thought it would be wise. + +He and his wife lunched with us here yesterday. They have been abroad in +Havana 4 months, and they sailed for England this morning. + +I am enclosing an order for half of my (your) Founders shares. You are +not to refuse them this time, though you have done it twice before. They +are yours, not mine, and for your family's sake if not your own you +cannot in these cloudy days renounce this property which is so clearly +yours and theirs. You have been generous long enough; be just, now to +yourself. Mr. Rogers is off yachting for 5 or 6 weeks--I'll get them +when he returns. The head of the house joins me in warmest greetings and +remembrances to you and Mrs. MacAlister. + Ever yours, + Mark. + +May 8. Great Scott! I never mailed this letter! I addressed it, put +"Registered" on it--then left it lying unsealed on the arm of my chair, +and rushed up to my bed quaking with a chill. I've never been out of the +bed since--oh, bronchitis, rheumatism, two sets of teeth aching, land, +I've had a dandy time for 4 weeks. And to-day--great guns, one of the +very worst! . . . + +I'm devilish sorry, and I do apologise--for although I am not as slow as +you are about answering letters, as a rule, I see where I'm standing this +time. + +Two weeks ago Jean was taken down again--this time with measles, and I +haven't been able to go to her and she hasn't been able to come to me. + +But Mrs. Clemens is making nice progress, and can stand alone a moment or +two at a time. + +Now I'll post this. + MARK + + + The two letters that follow, though written only a few days apart, + were separated in their arrival by a period of seven years. The + second letter was, in some way, mislaid and not mailed; and it was + not until after the writer of it was dead that it was found and + forwarded. + + Mark Twain could never get up much enthusiasm for the writings of + Scott. His praise of Quentin Durward is about the only approval he + ever accorded to the works of the great romanticist. + + + To Brander Matthews, in New York: + + NEW YORK CITY, May 4, '03. +DEAR BRANDER,--I haven't been out of my bed for four weeks, but--well, I +have been reading, a good deal, and it occurs to me to ask you to sit +down, some time or other when you have 8 or 9 months to spare, and jot me +down a certain few literary particulars for my help and elevation. Your +time need not be thrown away, for at your further leisure you can make +Colombian lectures out of the results and do your students a good turn. + +1. Are there in Sir Walter's novels passages done in good English +--English which is neither slovenly or involved? + +2. Are there passages whose English is not poor and thin and +commonplace, but is of a quality above that? + +3. Are there passages which burn with real fire--not punk, fox-fire, +make believe? + +4. Has he heroes and heroines who are not cads and cadesses? + +5. Has he personages whose acts and talk correspond with their +characters as described by him? + +6. Has he heroes and heroines whom the reader admires, admires, and +knows why? + +7. Has he funny characters that are funny, and humorous passages that +are humorous? + +8. Does he ever chain the reader's interest, and make him reluctant to +lay the book down? + +9. Are there pages where he ceases from posing, ceases from admiring the +placid flood and flow of his own dilutions, ceases from being artificial, +and is for a time, long or short, recognizably sincere and in earnest? + +10. Did he know how to write English, and didn't do it because he didn't +want to? + +11. Did he use the right word only when he couldn't think of another +one, or did he run so much to wrong because he didn't know the right one +when he saw it? + +13. Can you read him? and keep your respect for him? Of course a +person could in his day--an era of sentimentality and sloppy romantics +--but land! can a body do it today? + +Brander, I lie here dying, slowly dying, under the blight of Sir Walter. +I have read the first volume of Rob Roy, and as far as chapter XIX of Guy +Mannering, and I can no longer hold my head up nor take my nourishment. +Lord, it's all so juvenile! so artificial, so shoddy; and such wax +figures and skeletons and spectres. Interest? Why, it is impossible to +feel an interest in these bloodless shams, these milk-and-water humbugs. +And oh, the poverty of the invention! Not poverty in inventing +situations, but poverty in furnishing reasons for them. Sir Walter +usually gives himself away when he arranges for a situation--elaborates, +and elaborates, and elaborates, till if you live to get to it you don't +believe in it when it happens. + +I can't find the rest of Rob Roy, I can't stand any more Mannering--I do +not know just what to do, but I will reflect, and not quit this great +study rashly. He was great, in his day, and to his proper audience; and +so was God in Jewish times, for that matter, but why should either of +them rank high now? And do they?--honest, now, do they? Dam'd if I +believe it. + +My, I wish I could see you and Leigh Hunt! + Sincerely Yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + To Brander Matthews, in New York: + + RIVERDALE, May 8,'03 (Mailed June, 1910). +DEAR BRANDER,--I'm still in bed, but the days have lost their dulness +since I broke into Sir Walter and lost my temper. I finished Guy +Mannering--that curious, curious book, with its mob of squalid shadows +jabbering around a single flesh-and-blood being--Dinmont; a book crazily +put together out of the very refuse of the romance-artist's stage +properties--finished it and took up Quentin Durward, and finished that. + +It was like leaving the dead to mingle with the living: it was like +withdrawing from the infant class in the College of journalism to sit +under the lectures in English literature in Columbia University. + +I wonder who wrote Quentin Durward? + Yrs ever + MARK. + + + In 1903, preparations were going on for a great world's fair, to be + held in St. Louis, and among other features proposed was a World's + Literary Convention, with a week to be set apart in honor of Mark + Twain, and a special Mark Twain Day in it, on which the National + Association would hold grand services in honor of the distinguished + Missourian. A letter asking his consent to the plan brought the + following reply. + + + To T. F. Gatts, of Missouri: + + NEW YORK, May 30, 1903. +DEAR MR. GATTS,--It is indeed a high compliment which you offer me in +naming an association after me and in proposing the setting apart of a +Mark Twain day at the great St. Louis fair, but such compliments are not +proper for the living; they are proper and safe for the dead only. I +value the impulse which moves you to tender me these honors. I value it +as highly as any one can, and am grateful for it, but I should stand in a +sort of terror of the honors themselves. So long as we remain alive we +are not safe from doing things which, however righteously and honorably +intended, can wreck our repute and extinguish our friendships. + +I hope that no society will be named for me while I am still alive, for I +might at some time or other do something which would cause its members to +regret having done me that honor. After I shall have joined the dead I +shall follow the customs of those people and be guilty of no conduct that +can wound any friend; but until that time shall come I shall be a +doubtful quantity like the rest of our race. + Very truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The National Mark Twain Association did not surrender easily. Mr. + Gatts wrote a second letter full of urgent appeal. If Mark Twain + was tempted, we get no hint of it in his answer. + + + To T. F. Gatts, of Missouri: + + NEW YORK, June 8, 1903. +DEAR MR. GATTS,--While I am deeply touched by the desire of my friends of +Hannibal to confer these great honors upon me, I must still forbear to +accept them. Spontaneous and unpremeditated honors, like those which +came to me at Hannibal, Columbia, St. Louis and at the village stations +all down the line, are beyond all price and are a treasure for life in +the memory, for they are a free gift out of the heart and they come +without solicitations; but I am a Missourian and so I shrink from +distinctions which have to be arranged beforehand and with my privity, +for I then became a party to my own exalting. I am humanly fond of +honors that happen but chary of those that come by canvass and intention. +With sincere thanks to you and your associates for this high compliment +which you have been minded to offer me, I am, + Very truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + We have seen in the letter to MacAlister that Mark Twain's wife had + been ordered to Italy and plans were in progress for an + establishment there. By the end of June Mrs. Clemens was able to + leave Riverdale, and she made the journey to Quarry Farm, Elmira, + where they would remain until October, the month planned for their + sailing. The house in Hartford had been sold; and a house which, + prior to Mrs. Clemens's breakdown they had bought near Tarrytown + (expecting to settle permanently on the Hudson) had been let. They + were going to Europe for another indefinite period. + + At Quarry Farm Mrs. Clemens continued to improve, and Clemens, once + more able to work, occupied the study which Mrs. Crane had built for + him thirty years before, and where Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and the + Wandering Prince had been called into being. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn.: + + QUARRY FARM, ELMIRA, N. Y., + July 21, '03. +DEAR JOE,--That love-letter delighted Livy beyond any like utterance +received by her these thirty years and more. I was going to answer it +for her right away, and said so; but she reserved the privilege to +herself. I judge she is accumulating Hot Stuff--as George Ade would say. +. . . + +Livy is coming along: eats well, sleeps some, is mostly very gay, not +very often depressed; spends all day on the porch, sleeps there a part of +the night, makes excursions in carriage and in wheel-chair; and, in the +matter of superintending everything and everybody, has resumed business +at the old stand. + +Did you ever go house-hunting 3,000 miles away? It costs three months of +writing and telegraphing to pull off a success. We finished 3 or 4 days +ago, and took the Villa Papiniano (dam the name, I have to look at it a +minutes after writing it, and then am always in doubt) for a year by +cable. Three miles outside of Florence, under Fiesole--a darling +location, and apparently a choice house, near Fiske. + +There's 7 in our gang. All women but me. It means trunks and things. +But thanks be! To-day (this is private) comes a most handsome voluntary +document with seals and escutcheons on it from the Italian Ambassador +(who is a stranger to me) commanding the Customs people to keep their +hands off the Clemens's things. Now wasn't it lovely of him? And wasn't +it lovely of me to let Livy take a pencil and edit my answer and knock a +good third of it out? + +And that's a nice ship--the Irene! new--swift--13,000 tons--rooms up in +the sky, open to sun and air--and all that. I was desperately troubled +for Livy--about the down-cellar cells in the ancient "Latin." + +The cubs are in Riverdale, yet; they come to us the first week in August. + With lots and lots of love to you all, + MARK. + + + The arrangement for the Villa Papiniano was not completed, after + all, and through a good friend, George Gregory Smith, a resident of + Florence, the Villa Quarto, an ancient home of royalty, on the hills + west of Florence, was engaged. Smith wrote that it was a very + beautiful place with a south-eastern exposure, looking out toward + Valombrosa and the Chianti Hills. It had extensive grounds and + stables, and the annual rental for it all was two thousand dollars a + year. It seemed an ideal place, in prospect, and there was great + hope that Mrs. Clemens would find her health once more in the + Italian climate which she loved. + + Perhaps at this point, when Mark Twain is once more leaving America, + we may offer two letters from strangers to him--letters of + appreciation--such as he was constantly receiving from those among + the thousands to whom he had given happiness. The first is from + Samuel Merwin, one day to become a popular novelist, then in the + hour of his beginnings. + + + To Mark Twain, from Samuel Merwin: + + PLAINFIELD, N. J. + August 4, 1903. +DEAR MR. CLEMENS,--For a good many years I have been struggling with the +temptation to write you and thank you for the work you have done; and +to-day I seem to be yielding. + +During the past two years I have been reading through a group of writers +who seem to me to represent about the best we have--Sir Thomas Malory, +Spenser, Shakespeare, Boswell, Carlyle, Le Sage. In thinking over one +and then another, and then all of them together, it was plain to see why +they were great men and writers: each brought to his time some new blood, +new ideas,--turned a new current into the stream. I suppose there have +always been the careful, painstaking writers, the men who are always +taken so seriously by their fellow craftsmen. It seems to be the +unconventional man who is so rare--I mean the honestly unconventional +man, who has to express himself in his own big way because the +conventional way isn't big enough, because ne needs room and freedom. + +We have a group of the more or less conventional men now--men of dignity +and literary position. But in spite of their influence and of all the +work they have done, there isn't one of them to whom one can give one's +self up without reservation, not one whose ideas seem based on the deep +foundation of all true philosophy,--except Mark Twain. + +I hope this letter is not an impertinence. I have just been turning +about, with my head full of Spenser and Shakespeare and "Gil Blas," +looking for something in our own present day literature to which I could +surrender myself as to those five gripping old writings. And nothing +could I find until I took up "Life on the Mississippi," and "Huckleberry +Finn," and, just now, the "Connecticut Yankee." It isn't the first time +I have read any of these three, and it's because I know it won't be the +last, because these books are the only ones written in my lifetime that +claim my unreserved interest and admiration and, above all, my feelings, +that I've felt I had to write this letter. + +I like to think that "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" will be looked +upon, fifty or a hundred years from now, as the picture of buoyant, +dramatic, human American life. I feel, deep in my own heart, pretty sure +that they will be. They won't be looked on then as the work of a +"humorist" any more than we think of Shakespeare as a humorist now. +I don't mean by this to set up a comparison between Mark Twain and +Shakespeare: I don't feel competent to do it; and I'm not at all sure +that it could be done until Mark Twain's work shall have its fair share +of historical perspective. But Shakespeare was a humorist and so, thank +Heaven! is Mark Twain. And Shakespeare plunged deep into the deep, sad +things of life; and so, in a different way (but in a way that has more +than once brought tears to my eyes) has Mark Twain. But after all, it +isn't because of any resemblance for anything that was ever before +written that Mark Twain's books strike in so deep: it's rather because +they've brought something really new into our literature--new, yet old as +Adam and Eve and the Apple. And this achievement, the achievement of +putting something into literature that was not there before, is, I should +think, the most that any writer can ever hope to do. It is the one mark +of distinction between the "lonesome" little group of big men and the +vast herd of medium and small ones. Anyhow, this much I am sure of--to +the young man who hopes, however feebly, to accomplish a little +something, someday, as a writer, the one inspiring example of our time is +Mark Twain. + Very truly yours, + SAMUEL MERWIN. + + +Mark Twain once said he could live a month on a good compliment, and from +his reply, we may believe this one to belong in, that class. + + + To Samuel Merwin, in Plainfield, N. J.: + + Aug. 16, '03. +DEAR MR. MERWIN,--What you have said has given me deep pleasure--indeed I +think no words could be said that could give me more. + Very sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The next "compliment" is from one who remains unknown, for she + failed to sign her name in full. But it is a lovely letter, and + loses nothing by the fact that the writer of it was willing to + remain in obscurity. + + + To Mark Twain, from Margaret M----: + + PORTLAND, OREGON + Aug. 18, 1903. +MY DEAR, DEAR MARK TWAIN,--May a little girl write and tell you how +dearly she loves and admires your writings? Well, I do and I want to +tell you your ownself. Don't think me too impertinent for indeed I don't +mean to be that! I have read everything of yours that I could get and +parts that touch me I have read over and over again. They seem such dear +friends to me, so like real live human beings talking and laughing, +working and suffering too! One cannot but feel that it is your own life +and experience that you have painted. So do not wonder that you seem a +dear friend to me who has never even seen you. I often think of you as +such in my own thoughts. I wonder if you will laugh when I tell you I +have made a hero of you? For when people seem very sordid and mean and +stupid (and it seems as if everybody was) then the thought will come like +a little crumb of comfort "well, Mark Twain isn't anyway." And it does +really brighten me up. + +You see I have gotten an idea that you are a great, bright spirit of +kindness and tenderness. One who can twist everybody's-even your +own-faults and absurdities into hearty laughs. Even the person mocked +must laugh! Oh, Dear! How often you have made me laugh! And yet as +often you have struck something infinite away down deep in my heart so +that I want to cry while half laughing! + +So this all means that I want to thank you and to tell you. "God always +love Mark Twain!" is often my wish. I dearly love to read books, and I +never tire of reading yours; they always have a charm for me. Good-bye, +I am afraid I have not expressed what I feel. But at least I have tried. + Sincerely yours. + MARGARET M.---- + + + Clemens and family left Elmira October the 5th for New York City. + They remained at the Hotel Grosvenor until their sailing date, + October 24th. A few days earlier, Mr. Frank Doubleday sent a volume + of Kipling's poems and de Blowitz's Memoirs for entertainment on the + ship. Mark Twain's acknowledgment follows. + + + To F. N. Doubleday, in New York: + + THE GROSVENOR, + October 12, '03. +DEAR DOUBLEDAY,--The books came--ever so many thanks. I have been +reading "The Bell Buoy" and "The Old Men" over and over again--my custom +with Kipling's work-and saving up the rest for other leisurely and +luxurious meals. A bell-buoy is a deeply impressive fellow-being. +In these many recent trips up and down the Sound in the Kanawha +--[Mr. Rogers's yacht.]--he has talked to me nightly, sometimes in his +pathetic and melancholy way, sometimes with his strenuous and urgent +note, and I got his meaning--now I have his words! No one but Kipling +could do this strong and vivid thing. Some day I hope to hear the poem +chanted or sung--with the bell-buoy breaking in, out of the distance. + +"The Old Men," delicious, isn't it? And so comically true. I haven't +arrived there yet, but I suppose I am on the way.... + Yours ever, + MARK. + +P. S. Your letter has arrived. It makes me proud and glad--what Kipling +says. I hope Fate will fetch him to Florence while we are there. +I would rather see him than any other man. + +We've let the Tarrytown house for a year. Man, you would never have +believed a person could let a house in these times. That one's for sale, +the Hartford one is sold. When we buy again may we--may I--be damned.... + +I've dipped into Blowitz and find him quaintly and curiously interesting. +I think he tells the straight truth, too. I knew him a little, 23 years +ago. + + The appreciative word which Kipling had sent Doubleday was: "I love + to think of the great and God-like Clemens. He is the biggest man + you have on your side of the water by a damn sight, and don't you + forget it. Cervantes was a relation of his." + + + + +XLIII + +LETTERS OF 1904. TO VARIOUS PERSONS. LIFE IN VILLA QUARTO. DEATH OF +MRS. CLEMENS. THE RETURN TO AMERICA + +Mrs. Clemens stood the voyage to Italy very well and, in due time, the +family were installed in the Villa Reale di Quarto, the picturesque old +Palace of Cosimo, a spacious, luxurious place, even if not entirely +cheerful or always comfortable during the changeable Tuscan winter. +Congratulated in a letter from MacAlister in being in the midst of +Florentine sunshine, he answered: "Florentine sunshine? Bless you, there +isn't any. We have heavy fogs every morning, and rain all day. This +house is not merely large, it is vast--therefore I think it must always +lack the home feeling." + +Neither was their landlady, the American wife of an Italian count, all +that could be desired. From a letter to Twichell, however, we learn that +Mark Twain's work was progressing well. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, + FLORENCE, Jan. 7, '04. +DEAR JOE,--. . . I have had a handsome success, in one way, here. +I left New York under a sort of half promise to furnish to the Harper +magazines 30,000 words this year. Magazining is difficult work because +every third page represents 2 pages that you have put in the fire; +(because you are nearly sure to start wrong twice) and so when you have +finished an article and are willing to let it go to print it represents +only 10 cents a word instead of 30. + +But this time I had the curious (and unprecedented) luck to start right +in each case. I turned out 37,000 words in 25 working days; and the +reason I think I started right every time is, that not only have I +approved and accepted the several articles, but the court of last resort +(Livy) has done the same. + +On many of the between-days I did some work, but only of an idle and not +necessarily necessary sort, since it will not see print until I am dead. +I shall continue this (an hour per day) but the rest of the year I expect +to put in on a couple of long books (half-completed ones.) No more +magazine-work hanging over my head. + +This secluded and silent solitude this clean, soft air and this +enchanting view of Florence, the great valley and the snow-mountains that +frame it are the right conditions for work. They are a persistent +inspiration. To-day is very lovely; when the afternoon arrives there +will be a new picture every hour till dark, and each of them divine--or +progressing from divine to diviner and divinest. On this (second) floor +Clara's room commands the finest; she keeps a window ten feet high wide +open all the time and frames it in. I go in from time to time, every day +and trade sass for a look. The central detail is a distant and stately +snow-hump that rises above and behind blackforested hills, and its +sloping vast buttresses, velvety and sun-polished with purple shadows +between, make the sort of picture we knew that time we walked in +Switzerland in the days of our youth. + +I wish I could show your letter to Livy--but she must wait a week or so +for it. I think I told you she had a prostrating week of tonsilitis a +month ago; she has remained very feeble ever since, and confined to the +bed of course, but we allow ourselves to believe she will regain the lost +ground in another month. Her physician is Professor Grocco--she could +not have a better. And she has a very good trained nurse. + +Love to all of you from all of us. And to all of our dear Hartford +friends. + MARK + +P. S. 3 days later. + +Livy is as remarkable as ever. The day I wrote you--that night, I mean +--she had a bitter attack of gout or rheumatism occupying the whole left +arm from shoulder to fingers, accompanied by fever. The pains racked her +50 or 60 hours; they have departed, now--and already she is planning a +trip to Egypt next fall, and a winter's sojourn there! This is life in +her yet. + +You will be surprised that I was willing to do so much magazine-writing +--a thing I have always been chary about--but I had good reasons. Our +expenses have been so prodigious for a year and a half, and are still so +prodigious, that Livy was worrying altogether too much about them, and +doing a very dangerous amount of lying awake on their account. It was +necessary to stop that, and it is now stopped. + +Yes, she is remarkable, Joe. Her rheumatic attack set me to cursing and +swearing, without limit as to time or energy, but it merely concentrated +her patience and her unconquerable fortitude. It is the difference +between us. I can't count the different kinds of ailments which have +assaulted her in this fiendish year and a half--and I forgive none of +them--but here she comes up again as bright and fresh and enterprising as +ever, and goes to planning about Egypt, with a hope and a confidence +which are to me amazing. + +Clara is calling for me--we have to go into town and pay calls. + + MARK. + + + In Florence, that winter, Clemens began dictating to his secretary + some autobiographical chapters. This was the work which was "not to + see print until I am dead." He found it a pleasant, lazy occupation + and wrote his delight in it to Howells in a letter which seems not + to have survived. In his reply, Howells wrote: "You do stir me + mightily with the hope of dictating and I will try it when I get the + chance. But there is the tempermental difference. You are dramatic + and unconscious; you count the thing more than yourself; I am cursed + with consciousness to the core, and can't say myself out; I am + always saying myself in, and setting myself above all that I say, as + of more worth. Lately I have felt as if I were rotting with + egotism. I don't admire myself; I am sick of myself; but I can't + think of anything else. Here I am at it now, when I ought to be + rejoicing with you at the blessing you have found .... I'd like, + immensely, to read your autobiography. You always rather bewildered + me by your veracity, and I fancy you may tell the truth about + yourself. But all of it? The black truth which we all know of + ourselves in our hearts, or only the whity-brown truth of the + pericardium, or the nice, whitened truth of the shirtfront? Even + you won't tell the black heart's--truth. The man who could do it + would be famed to the last day the sun shone upon." + + We gather from Mark Twain's answer that he was not deceiving himself + in the matter of his confessions. + + + To W. D. Howells, in New York: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE, + March 14, '04. +DEAR HOWELLS,--Yes, I set up the safeguards, in the first day's +dictating; taking this position: that an autobiography is the truest of +all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the +truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with +hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is +there, between the lines, where the author is raking dust upon it, the +result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily +diligences. + +The summer in England! you can't ask better luck than that. Then you +will run over to Florence; we shall all be hungry to see you-all. We are +hunting for another villa, (this one is plenty large enough but has no +room in it) but even if we find it I am afraid it will be months before +we can move Mrs. Clemens. Of course it will. But it comforts us to let +on that we think otherwise, and these pretensions help to keep hope alive +in her. + Good-bye, with love, Amen. + Yours ever + MARK. + + + News came of the death of Henry M. Stanley, one of Mark Twain's + oldest friends. Clemens once said that he had met Stanley in St. + Louis where he (Clemens) had delivered a lecture which Stanley had + reported. In the following letter he fixes the date of their + meeting as early in 1867, which would be immediately after Mark + Twain's return from California, and just prior to the Quaker City + excursion--a fact which is interesting only because it places the + two men together when each was at the very beginning of a great + career. + + + To Lady Stanley, in England: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, FIRENZE, May 11, '04. +DEAR LADY STANLEY,--I have lost a dear and honored friend--how fast they +fall about me now, in my age! The world has lost a tried and proved +hero. And you--what have you lost? It is beyond estimate--we who know +you, and what he was to you, know that. How far he stretches across my +life! I knew him when his work was all before him five years before the +great day that he wrote his name far-away up on the blue of the sky for +the world to see and applaud and remember; I have known him as friend and +intimate ever since. It is 37 years. I have known no other friend and +intimate so long, except John Hay--a friendship which dates from the same +year and the same half of it, the first half of 1867. I grieve with you +and with your family, dear Lady Stanley, it is all I can do; but that I +do out of my heart. It would be we, instead of I, if Mrs. Clemens knew, +but in all these 20 months that she has lain a prisoner in her bed we +have hidden from her all things that could sadden her. Many a friend is +gone whom she still asks about and still thinks is living. + +In deepest sympathy I beg the privilege of signing myself + Your friend, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, May 11, '04 +DEAR JOE,--Yours has this moment arrived--just as I was finishing a note +to poor Lady Stanley. I believe the last country-house visit we paid in +England was to Stanley's. Lord, how my friends and acquaintances fall +about me now, in my gray-headed days! Vereschagin, Mommsen, Dvorak, +Lenbach, Jokai--all so recently, and now Stanley. I had known Stanley 37 +years. Goodness, who is it I haven't known! As a rule the necrologies +find me personally interested--when they treat of old stagers. Generally +when a man dies who is worth cabling, it happens that I have run across +him somewhere, some time or other. + +Oh, say! Down by the Laurentian Library there's a marble image that has +been sitting on its pedestal some 450 Years, if my dates are right +--Cosimo I. I've seen the back of it many a time, but not the front; but +yesterday I twisted my head around after we had driven by, and the +profane exclamation burst from my mouth before I could think: "there's +Chauncey Depew!" + +I mean to get a photo of it--and use it if it confirms yesterday's +conviction. That's a very nice word from the Catholic Magazine and I am +glad you sent it. I mean to show it to my priest--we are very fond of +him. He is a stealing man, and is also learnedly scientific. He +invented the thing which records the seismatic disturbances, for the +peoples of the earth. And he's an astronomer and has an observatory of +his own. + +Ah, many's the cry I have, over reflecting that maybe we could have had +Young Harmony for Livy, and didn't have wit enough to think of it. + +Speaking of Livy reminds me that your inquiry arrives at a good time +(unberufen) It has been weeks (I don't know how many!) since we could +have said a hopeful word, but this morning Katy came the minute the +day-nurse came on watch and said words of a strange and long-forgotten +sound: "Mr. Clemens, Mrs. Clemens is really and truly better!--anybody +can see it; she sees it herself; and last night at 9 o'clock she said +it." + +There--it is heart-warming, it is splendid, it is sublime; let us enjoy +it, let us make the most of it today--and bet not a farthing on tomorrow. +The tomorrows have nothing for us. Too many times they have breathed the +word of promise to our ear and broken it to our hope. We take no +tomorrow's word any more. + +You've done a wonder, Joe: you've written a letter that can be sent in to +Livy--that doesn't often happen, when either a friend or a stranger +writes. You did whirl in a P. S. that wouldn't do, but you wrote it on a +margin of a page in such a way that I was able to clip off the margin +clear across both pages, and now Livy won't perceive that the sheet isn't +the same size it used to was. It was about Aldrich's son, and I came +near forgetting to remove it. It should have been written on a loose +strip and enclosed. That son died on the 5th of March and Aldrich wrote +me on the night before that his minutes were numbered. On the 18th Livy +asked after that patient, and I was prepared, and able to give her a +grateful surprise by telling her "the Aldriches are no longer uneasy +about him." + +I do wish I could have been present and heard Charley Clark. When he +can't light up a dark place nobody can. + With lots of love to you all. + MARK. + + + Mrs. Clemens had her bad days and her good days-days when there + seemed no ray of light, and others that seemed almost to promise + recovery. The foregoing letter to Twichell, and the one which + follows, to Richard Watson Gilder, reflect the hope and fear that + daily and hourly alternated at Villa Quarto + + + To Richard Watson Gilder, in New York: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE, + May 12, '04. +DEAR GILDER,--A friend of ours (the Baroness de Nolda) was here this +afternoon and wanted a note of introduction to the Century, for she has +something to sell to you in case you'll want to make her an offer after +seeing a sample of the goods. I said "With pleasure: get the goods +ready, send the same to me, I will have Jean type-write them, then I will +mail them to the Century and tonight I will write the note to Mr. Gilder +and start it along. Also write me a letter embodying what you have been +saying to me about the goods and your proposed plan of arranging and +explaining them, and I will forward that to Gilder too." + +As to the Baroness. She is a German; 30 years old; was married at 17; is +very pretty-indeed I might say very pretty; has a lot of sons (5) running +up from seven to 12 years old. Her husband is a Russian. They live half +the time in Russia and the other half in Florence, and supply population +alternately to the one country and then to the other. Of course it is a +family that speaks languages. This occurs at their table--I know it by +experience: It is Babel come again. The other day, when no guests were +present to keep order, the tribes were all talking at once, and 6 +languages were being traded in; at last the littlest boy lost his temper +and screamed out at the top of his voice, with angry sobs: "Mais, +vraiment, io non capisco gar nichts." + +The Baroness is a little afraid of her English, therefore she will write +her remarks in French--I said there's a plenty of translators in New +York. Examine her samples and drop her a line. + +For two entire days, now, we have not been anxious about Mrs. Clemens +(unberufen). After 20 months of bed-ridden solitude and bodily misery +she all of a sudden ceases to be a pallid shrunken shadow, and looks +bright and young and pretty. She remains what she always was, the most +wonderful creature of fortitude, patience, endurance and recuperative +power that ever was. But ah, dear, it won't last; this fiendish malady +will play new treacheries upon her, and I shall go back to my prayers +again--unutterable from any pulpit! + With love to you and yours, + S. L. C. + +May 13 10 A.M. I have just paid one of my pair of permitted 2 minutes +visits per day to the sick room. And found what I have learned to +expect--retrogression, and that pathetic something in the eye which +betrays the secret of a waning hope. + + + The year of the World's Fair had come, and an invitation from Gov. + Francis, of Missouri, came to Mark Twain in Florence, personally + inviting him to attend the great celebration and carry off first + prize. We may believe that Clemens felt little in the spirit of + humor, but to such an invitation he must send a cheerful, even if + disappointing, answer. + + + To Gov. Francis, of Missouri: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, FIRENZE, + May 26, 1904. +DEAR GOVERNOR FRANCIS,--It has been a dear wish of mine to exhibit myself +at the Great Fair and get a prize, but circumstances beyond my control +have interfered, and I must remain in Florence. Although I have never +taken prizes anywhere else I used to take them at school in Missouri half +a century ago, and I ought to be able to repeat, now, if I could have a +chance. I used to get the medal for good spelling, every week, and I +could have had the medal for good conduct if there hadn't been so much +curruption in Missouri in those days; still, I got it several times by +trading medals and giving boot. I am willing to give boot now, if +--however, those days are forever gone by in Missouri, and perhaps it is +better so. Nothing ever stops the way it was in this changeable world. +Although I cannot be at the Fair, I am going to be represented there +anyway, by a portrait, by Professor Gelli. You will find it excellent. +Good judges here say it is better than the original. They say it has all +the merits of the original and keeps still, besides. It sounds like +flattery, but it is just true. + +I suppose you will get a prize, because you have created the most +prodigious and in all ways most wonderful Fair the planet has ever seen. +Very well, you have indeed earned it: and with it the gratitude of the +State and the nation. + Sincerely yours, + MARK TWAIN + + It was only a few days after the foregoing was written that death + entered Villa Quarto--unexpectedly at last--for with the first June + days Mrs. Clemens had seemed really to improve. It was on Sunday, + June 5th, that the end came. Clemens, with his daughter Jean, had + returned from a long drive, during which they had visited a Villa + with the thought of purchase. On their return they were told that + their patient had been better that afternoon than for three months. + Yet it was only a few hours later that she left them, so suddenly + and quietly that even those near her did not at first realize that + she was gone. + + + To W. D. Howells, in New York. + + VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE, + June 6, '94. [1904] +DEAR HOWELLS,--Last night at 9.20 I entered Mrs. Clemens's room to say +the usual goodnight--and she was dead--tho' no one knew it. She had been +cheerfully talking, a moment before. She was sitting up in bed--she had +not lain down for months--and Katie and the nurse were supporting her. +They supposed she had fainted, and they were holding the oxygen pipe to +her mouth, expecting to revive her. I bent over her and looked in her +face, and I think I spoke--I was surprised and troubled that she did not +notice me. Then we understood, and our hearts broke. How poor we are +today! + +But how thankful I am that her persecutions are ended. I would not call +her back if I could. + +Today, treasured in her worn old Testament, I found a dear and gentle +letter from you, dated Far Rockaway, Sept. 13, 1896, about our poor +Susy's death. I am tired and old; I wish I were with Livy. + +I send my love-and hers-to you all. + S. L. C. + + + In a letter to Twichell he wrote: "How sweet she was in death; how + young, how beautiful, how like her dear, girlish self cf thirty + years ago; not a gray hair showing." + + The family was now without plans for the future until they + remembered the summer home of R. W. Gilder, at Tyringham, + Massachusetts, and the possibility of finding lodgment for + themselves in that secluded corner of New England. Clemens wrote + without delay, as follows: + + + To R. W. Gilder, in New York: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE, + June 7, '04. +DEAR GILDER FAMILY,--I have been worrying and worrying to know what to +do: at last I went to the girls with an idea: to ask the Gilders to get +us shelter near their summer home. It was the first time they have not +shaken their heads. So to-morrow I will cable to you and shall hope to +be in time. + +An, hour ago the best heart that ever beat for me and mine went silent +out of this house, and I am as one who wanders and has lost his way. She +who is gone was our head, she was our hands. We are now trying to make +plans--we: we who have never made a plan before, nor ever needed to. If +she could speak to us she would make it all simple and easy with a word, +and our perplexities would vanish away. If she had known she was near to +death she would have told us where to go and what to do: but she was not +suspecting, neither were we. (She had been chatting cheerfully a moment +before, and in an instant she was gone from us and we did not know it. +We were not alarmed, we did not know anything had happened. It was a +blessed death--she passed away without knowing it.) She was all our +riches and she is gone: she was our breath, she was our life and now we +are nothing. + +We send you our love--and with it the love of you that was in her heart +when she died. + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Howells wrote his words of sympathy, adding: "The character which + now remains a memory was one of the most perfect ever formed on the + earth," and again, after having received Clemens's letter: "I cannot + speak of your wife's having kept that letter of mine where she did. + You know how it must humiliate a man in his unworthiness to have + anything of his so consecrated. She hallowed what she touched, far + beyond priests." + + + To W. D. Howells, in New York: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, '04. + June 12, 6 p. m. +DEAR HOWELLS,--We have to sit and hold our hands and wait--in the silence +and solitude of this prodigious house; wait until June 25, then we go to +Naples and sail in the Prince Oscar the 26th. There is a ship 12 days +earlier (but we came in that one.) I see Clara twice a day--morning and +evening--greeting--nothing more is allowed. She keeps her bed, and says +nothing. She has not cried yet. I wish she could cry. It would break +Livy's heart to see Clara. We excuse ourselves from all the friends that +call--though of course only intimates come. Intimates--but they are not +the old old friends, the friends of the old, old times when we laughed. + +Shall we ever laugh again? If I could only see a dog that I knew in the +old times! and could put my arms around his neck and tell him all, +everything, and ease my heart. + +Think-in 3 hours it will be a week!--and soon a month; and by and by a +year. How fast our dead fly from us. + +She loved you so, and was always as pleased as a child with any notice +you took of her. + +Soon your wife will be with you, oh fortunate man! And John, whom mine +was so fond of. The sight of him was such a delight to her. Lord, the +old friends, how dear they are. + S. L. C. + + + To Rev. J. R. Twichell, in Hartford: + + VILLA DI QUARTO, FLORENCE, + June 18, '04. +DEAR JOE,--It is 13 days. I am bewildered and must remain so for a time +longer. It was so sudden, so unexpected. Imagine a man worth a hundred +millions who finds himself suddenly penniless and fifty million in debt +in his old age. + +I was richer than any other person in the world, and now I am that pauper +without peer. Some day I will tell you about it, not now. + MARK. + + + A tide of condolence flowed in from all parts of the world. It was + impossible to answer all. Only a few who had been their closest + friends received a written line, but the little printed + acknowledgment which was returned was no mere formality. It was a + heartfelt, personal word. + + They arrived in America in July, and were accompanied by Twichell to + Elmira, and on the 14th Mrs. Clemens was laid to rest by the side of + Susy and little Langdon. R. W. Gilder had arranged for them to + occupy, for the summer, a cottage on his place at Tyringham, in the + Berkshire Hills. By November they were at the Grosvenor, in New + York, preparing to establish themselves in a house which they had + taken on the corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue--Number 21. + + + To F. N. Doubleday, in New York: + +DEAR DOUBLEDAY,--I did not know you were going to England: I would have +freighted you with such messages of homage and affection to Kipling. +And I would have pressed his hand, through you, for his sympathy with +me in my crushing loss, as expressed by him in his letter to Gilder. +You know my feeling for Kipling and that it antedates that expression. + +I was glad that the boys came here to invite me to the house-warming and +I think they understood why a man in the shadow of a calamity like mine +could not go. + +It has taken three months to repair and renovate our house--corner of 9th +and 5th Avenue, but I shall be in it in io or 15 days hence. Much of the +furniture went into it today (from Hartford). We have not seen it for 13 +years. Katy Leary, our old housekeeper, who has been in our service more +than 24 years, cried when she told me about it to-day. She said "I had +forgotten it was so beautiful, and it brought Mrs. Clemens right back to +me--in that old time when she was so young and lovely." + +Jean and my secretary and the servants whom we brought from Italy because +Mrs. Clemens liked them so well, are still keeping house in the Berkshire +hills--and waiting. Clara (nervously wrecked by her mother's death) is +in the hands of a specialist in 69th St., and I shall not be allowed to +have any communication with her--even telephone--for a year. I am in +this comfortable little hotel, and still in bed--for I dasn't budge till +I'm safe from my pet devil, bronchitis. + +Isn't it pathetic? One hour and ten minutes before Mrs. Clemens died I +was saying to her "To-day, after five months search, I've found the villa +that will content you: to-morrow you will examine the plans and give it +your consent and I will buy it." Her eyes danced with pleasure, for she +longed for a home of her own. And there, on that morrow, she lay white +and cold. And unresponsive to my reverent caresses--a new thing to me +and a new thing to her; that had not happened before in five and thirty +years. + +I am coming to see you and Mrs. Doubleday by and bye. She loved and +honored Mrs. Doubleday and her work. + Always yours, + MARK. + + + It was a presidential year and the air was thick with politics. + Mark Twain was no longer actively interested in the political + situation; he was only disheartened by the hollowness and pretense + of office-seeking, and the methods of office-seekers in general. + Grieved that Twichell should still pin his faith to any party when + all parties were so obviously venal and time-serving, he wrote in + outspoken and rather somber protest. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + THE GROSVENOR, Nov. 4, '04. +Oh, dear! get out of that sewer--party politics--dear Joe. At least +with your mouth. We hail only two men who could make speeches for their +parties and preserve their honor and their dignity. One of them is dead. +Possibly there were four. I am sorry for John Hay; sorry and ashamed. +And yet I know he couldn't help it. He wears the collar, and he had to +pay the penalty. Certainly he had no more desire to stand up before a +mob of confiding human incapables and debauch them than you had. +Certainly he took no more real pleasure in distorting history, concealing +facts, propagating immoralities, and appealing to the sordid side of +human nature than did you; but he was his party's property, and he had to +climb away down and do it. + +It is interesting, wonderfully interesting--the miracles which +party-politics can do with a man's mental and moral make-up. Look at +McKinley, Roosevelt, and yourself: in private life spotless in character; +honorable, honest, just, humane, generous; scorning trickeries, +treacheries, suppressions of the truth, mistranslations of the meanings +of facts, the filching of credit earned by another, the condoning of +crime, the glorifying of base acts: in public political life the reverse +of all this. + +McKinley was a silverite--you concealed it. Roosevelt was a silverite +--you concealed it. Parker was a silverite--you publish it. Along with +a shudder and a warning: "He was unsafe then. Is he any safer now?" + +Joe, even I could be guilty of such a thing as that--if I were in +party-politics; I really believe it. + +Mr. Cleveland gave the country the gold standard; by implication you +credit the matter to the Republican party. + +By implication you prove the whole annual pension-scoop, concealing the +fact that the bulk of the money goes to people who in no way deserve it. +You imply that all the batteners upon this bribery-fund are Republicans. +An indiscreet confession, since about half of them must have been +Democrats before they were bought. + +You as good as praise Order 78. It is true you do not shout, and you do +not linger, you only whisper and skip--still, what little you do in the +matter is complimentary to the crime. + +It means, if it means anything, that our outlying properties will all be +given up by the Democrats, and our flag hauled down. All of them? Not +only the properties stolen by Mr. McKinley and Mr. Roosevelt, but the +properties honestly acquired? Joe, did you believe that hardy statement +when you made it? Yet you made it, and there it stands in permanent +print. Now what moral law would suffer if we should give up the stolen +ones? But-- + +"You know our standard-bearer. He will maintain all that we have +gained"--by whatever process. Land, I believe you! + +By George, Joe, you are as handy at the game as if you had been in +training for it all your life. Your campaign Address is built from the +ground up upon the oldest and best models. There isn't a paragraph in it +whose facts or morals will wash--not even a sentence, I believe. + +But you will soon be out of this. You didn't want to do it--that is +sufficiently apparent, thanks be!--but you couldn't well get out of it. +In a few days you will be out of it, and then you can fumigate yourself +and take up your legitimate work again and resume your clean and +wholesome private character once more and be happy--and useful. + +I know I ought to hand you some guff, now, as propitiation and apology +for these reproaches, but on the whole I believe I won't. + +I have inquired, and find that Mitsikuri does not arrive here until +to-morrow night. I shall watch out, and telephone again, for I greatly +want to see him. + Always Yours, + MARK. + +P. S.--Nov, 4. I wish I could learn to remember that it is unjust and +dishonorable to put blame upon the human race for any of its acts. For +it did not make itself, it did not make its nature, it is merely a +machine, it is moved wholly by outside influences, it has no hand in +creating the outside influences nor in choosing which of them it will +welcome or reject, its performance is wholly automatic, it has no more +mastership nor authority over its mind than it has over its stomach, +which receives material from the outside and does as it pleases with it, +indifferent to it's proprietor's suggestions, even, let alone his +commands; wherefore, whatever the machine does--so called crimes and +infamies included--is the personal act of its Maker, and He, solely, is +responsible. I wish I could learn to pity the human race instead of +censuring it and laughing at it; and I could, if the outside influences +of old habit were not so strong upon my machine. It vexes me to catch +myself praising the clean private citizen Roosevelt, and blaming the +soiled President Roosevelt, when I know that neither praise nor blame is +due to him for any thought or word or deed of his, he being merely a +helpless and irresponsible coffee-mill ground by the hand of God. + + Through a misunderstanding, Clemens, something more than a year + earlier, had severed his connection with the Players' Club, of which + he had been one of the charter members. Now, upon his return to New + York, a number of his friends joined in an invitation to him to + return. It was not exactly a letter they sent, but a bit of an old + Scotch song-- + + "To Mark Twain + from + The Clansmen. + Will ye no come back again, + Will ye no come back again? + Better lo'ed ye canna be. + Will ye no come back again?" + + Those who signed it were David Monroe, of the North American Review; + Robert Reid, the painter, and about thirty others of the Round Table + Group, so called because its members were accustomed to lunching at + a large round table in a bay window of the Player dining-room. Mark + Twain's reply was prompt and heartfelt. He wrote: + + + To Robt. Reid and the Others: + +WELL-BELOVED,--Surely those lovely verses went to Prince Charley's heart, +if he had one, and certainly they have gone to mine. I shall be glad and +proud to come back again after such a moving and beautiful compliment as +this from comrades whom I have loved so long. I hope you can poll the +necessary vote; I know you will try, at any rate. It will be many months +before I can foregather with you, for this black border is not +perfunctory, not a convention; it symbolizes the loss of one whose memory +is the only thing I worship. + +It is not necessary for me to thank you--and words could not deliver what +I feel, anyway. I will put the contents of your envelope in the small +casket where I keep the things which have become sacred to me. + + S. L. C. + + +A year later, Mark Twain did "come back again," as an honorary life +member, and was given a dinner of welcome by those who had signed the +lines urging his return. + + + + +XLIV + +LETTERS OF 1905. TO TWICHELL, MR. DUNEKA AND OTHERS. +POLITICS AND HUMANITY. A SUMMER AT DUBLIN. MARK TWAIN AT 70 + + In 1884 Mark Twain had abandoned the Republican Party to vote for + Cleveland. He believed the party had become corrupt, and to his + last day it was hard for him to see anything good in Republican + policies or performance. He was a personal friend of Thedore + Roosevelt's but, as we have seen in a former letter, Roosevelt the + politician rarely found favor in his eyes. With or without + justification, most of the President's political acts invited his + caustic sarcasm and unsparing condemnation. Another letter to + Twichell of this time affords a fair example. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + Feb. 16, '05. +DEAR JOE,--I knew I had in me somewhere a definite feeling about the +President if I could only find the words to define it with. Here they +are, to a hair--from Leonard Jerome: "For twenty years I have loved +Roosevelt the man and hated Roosevelt the statesman and politician." + +It's mighty good. Every time, in 25 years, that I have met Roosevelt the +man, a wave of welcome has streaked through me with the hand-grip; +but whenever (as a rule) I meet Roosevelt the statesman and politician, +I find him destitute of morals and not respectworthy. It is plain that +where his political self and his party self are concerned he has nothing +resembling a conscience; that under those inspirations he is naively +indifferent to the restraints of duty and even unaware of them; ready to +kick the Constitution into the back yard whenever it gets in the way; and +whenever he smells a vote, not only willing but eager to buy it, give +extravagant rates for it and pay the bill not out of his own pocket or +the party's, but out of the nation's, by cold pillage. As per Order 78 +and the appropriation of the Indian trust funds. + +But Roosevelt is excusable--I recognize it and (ought to) concede it. +We are all insane, each in his own way, and with insanity goes +irresponsibility. Theodore the man is sane; in fairness we ought to keep +in mind that Theodore, as statesman and politician, is insane and +irresponsible. + +Do not throw these enlightenments aside, but study them, let them raise +you to higher planes and make you better. You taught me in my callow +days, let me pay back the debt now in my old age out of a thesaurus with +wisdom smelted from the golden ores of experience. + Ever yours for sweetness and light + MARK. + + + The next letter to Twichell takes up politics and humanity in + general, in a manner complimentary to neither. Mark Twain was never + really a pessimist, but he had pessimistic intervals, such as come + to most of us in life's later years, and at such times he let + himself go without stint concerning "the damned human race," as he + called it, usually with a manifest sense of indignation that he + should be a member of it. In much of his later writing + --A Mysterious Stranger for example--he said his say with but small + restraint, and certainly in his purely intellectual moments he was + likely to be a pessimist of the most extreme type, capably damning + the race and the inventor of it. Yet, at heart, no man loved his + kind more genuinely, or with deeper compassion, than Mark Twain, + perhaps for its very weaknesses. It was only that he had intervals + --frequent intervals, and rather long ones--when he did not admire + it, and was still more doubtful as to the ways of providence. + + + To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: + + March 14, '05. +DEAR JOE,--I have a Puddn'head maxim: + +"When a man is a pessimist before 48 he knows too much; if he is an +optimist after it, he knows too little." + +It is with contentment, therefore, that I reflect that I am better and +wiser than you. Joe, you seem to be dealing in "bulks," now; the "bulk" +of the farmers and U. S. Senators are "honest." As regards purchase and +sale with money? Who doubts it? Is that the only measure of honesty? +Aren't there a dozen kinds of honesty which can't be measured by the +money-standard? Treason is treason--and there's more than one form of +it; the money-form is but one of them. When a person is disloyal to any +confessed duty, he is plainly and simply dishonest, and knows it; knows +it, and is privately troubled about it and not proud of himself. Judged +by this standard--and who will challenge the validity of it?--there isn't +an honest man in Connecticut, nor in the Senate, nor anywhere else. I do +not even except myself, this time. + +Am I finding fault with you and the rest of the populace? No--I assure +you I am not. For I know the human race's limitations, and this makes it +my duty--my pleasant duty--to be fair to it. Each person in it is honest +in one or several ways, but no member of it is honest in all the ways +required by--by what? By his own standard. Outside of that, as I look +at it, there is no obligation upon him. + +Am I honest? I give you my word of honor (private) I am not. For seven +years I have suppressed a book which my conscience tells me I ought to +publish. I hold it a duty to publish it. There are other difficult +duties which I am equal to, but I am not equal to that one. Yes, even I +am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is. +We are certainly all honest in one or several ways--every man in the +world--though I have reason to think I am the only one whose black-list +runs so light. Sometimes I feel lonely enough in this lofty solitude. + +Yes, oh, yes, I am not overlooking the "steady progress from age to age +of the coming of the kingdom of God and righteousness." "From age to +age"--yes, it describes that giddy gait. I (and the rocks) will not live +to see it arrive, but that is all right--it will arrive, it surely will. +But you ought not to be always ironically apologizing for the Deity. If +that thing is going to arrive, it is inferable that He wants it to +arrive; and so it is not quite kind of you, and it hurts me, to see you +flinging sarcasms at the gait of it. And yet it would not be fair in me +not to admit that the sarcasms are deserved. When the Deity wants a +thing, and after working at it for "ages and ages" can't show even a +shade of progress toward its accomplishment, we--well, we don't laugh, +but it is only because we dasn't. The source of "righteousness"--is in +the heart? Yes. And engineered and directed by the brain? Yes. Well, +history and tradition testify that the heart is just about what it was in +the beginning; it has undergone no shade of change. Its good and evil +impulses and their consequences are the same today that they were in Old +Bible times, in Egyptian times, in Greek times, in Middle Age times, in +Twentieth Century times. There has been no change. + +Meantime, the brain has undergone no change. It is what it always was. +There are a few good brains and a multitude of poor ones. It was so in +Old Bible times and in all other times--Greek, Roman, Middle Ages and +Twentieth Century. Among the savages--all the savages--the average brain +is as competent as the average brain here or elsewhere. I will prove it +to you, some time, if you like. And there are great brains among them, +too. I will prove that also, if you like. + +Well, the 19th century made progress--the first progress after "ages and +ages"--colossal progress. In what? Materialities. Prodigious +acquisitions were made in things which add to the comfort of many and +make life harder for as many more. But the addition to righteousness? +Is that discoverable? I think not. The materialities were not invented +in the interest of righteousness; that there is more righteousness in the +world because of them than there, was before, is hardly demonstrable, I +think. In Europe and America, there is a vast change (due to them) in +ideals--do you admire it? All Europe and all America, are feverishly +scrambling for money. Money is the supreme ideal--all others take tenth +place with the great bulk of the nations named. Money-lust has always +existed, but not in the history of the world was it ever a craze, a +madness, until your time and mine. This lust has rotted these nations; +it has made them hard, sordid, ungentle, dishonest, oppressive. + +Did England rise against the infamy of the Boer war? No--rose in favor +of it. Did America rise against the infamy of the Phillipine war? No +--rose in favor of it. Did Russia rise against the infamy of the present +war? No--sat still and said nothing. Has the Kingdom of God advanced in +Russia since the beginning of time? + +Or in Europe and America, considering the vast backward step of the +money-lust? Or anywhere else? If there has been any progress toward +righteousness since the early days of Creation--which, in my ineradicable +honesty, I am obliged to doubt--I think we must confine it to ten per +cent of the populations of Christendom, (but leaving, Russia, Spain and +South America entirely out.) This gives us 320,000,000 to draw the ten +per cent from. That is to say, 32,000,000 have advanced toward +righteousness and the Kingdom of God since the "ages and ages" have been +flying along, the Deity sitting up there admiring. Well, you see it +leaves 1,200,000,000 out of the race. They stand just where they have +always stood; there has been no change. + +N. B. No charge for these informations. Do come down soon, Joe. + With love, + MARK. + + + St. Clair McKelway, of The Brooklyn Eagle, narrowly escaped injuries + in a railway accident, and received the following. Clemens and + McKelway were old friends. + + + To St. Clair McKelway, in Brooklyn: + + 21 FIFTH AVE. Sunday Morning. + April 30, 1905. +DEAR McKELWAY, Your innumerable friends are grateful, most grateful. + +As I understand the telegrams, the engineer of your train had never seen +a locomotive before. Very well, then, I am once more glad that there is +an Ever-watchful Providence to foresee possible results and send Ogdens +and McIntyres along to save our friends. + +The Government's Official report, showing that our railways killed twelve +hundred persons last year and injured sixty thousand convinces me that +under present conditions one Providence is not enough to properly and +efficiently take care of our railroad business. But it is +characteristically American--always trying to get along short-handed and +save wages. + +I am helping your family congratulate themselves, and am your friend as +always. + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Clemens did not spend any more summers at Quarry Farm. All its + associations were beautiful and tender, but they could only sadden + him. The life there had been as of another world, sunlit, idyllic, + now forever vanished. For the summer of 1905 he leased the Copley + Green house at Dublin, New Hampshire, where there was a Boston + colony of writing and artistic folk, including many of his long-time + friends. Among them was Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who + wrote a hearty letter of welcome when he heard the news. Clemens + replied in kind. + + + To Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in Boston: + + 21 FIFTH AVE. Sunday, March 26, z9o.5. +DEAR COL. HIGGINSON,--I early learned that you would be my neighbor in +the Summer and I rejoiced, recognizing in you and your family a large +asset. I hope for frequent intercourse between the two households. I +shall have my youngest daughter with me. The other one will go from the +rest-cure in this city to the rest-cure in Norfolk Conn and we shall not +see her before autumn. We have not seen her since the middle of October. + +Jean (the youngest daughter) went to Dublin and saw the house and came +back charmed with it. I know the Thayers of old--manifestly there is no +lack of attractions up there. Mrs. Thayer and I were shipmates in a wild +excursion perilously near 40 years ago. + +You say you "send with this" the story. Then it should be here but it +isn't, when I send a thing with another thing, the other thing goes but +the thing doesn't, I find it later--still on the premises. Will you look +it up now and send it? + +Aldrich was here half an hour ago, like a breeze from over the fields, +with the fragrance still upon his spirit. I am tired of waiting for that +man to get old. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. C. + + + Mark Twain was in his seventieth year, old neither in mind nor body, + but willing to take life more quietly, to refrain from travel and + gay events. A sort of pioneers' reunion was to be held on the + Pacific Coast, and a letter from Robert Fulton, of Reno, Nevada, + invited Clemens to attend. He did not go, but he sent a letter that + we may believe was the next best thing to those who heard it read. + + + To Robert Fulton, in Reno, Nevada: + + IN THE MOUNTAINS, + May 24, 1905. +DEAR MR. FULTON,--I remember, as if it were yesterday, that when I +disembarked from the overland stage in front of the Ormsby in Carson City +in August, 1861, I was not expecting to be asked to come again. I was +tired, discouraged, white with alkali dust, and did not know anybody; +and if you had said then, "Cheer up, desolate stranger, don't be +down-hearted--pass on, and come again in 1905," you cannot think how +grateful I would have been and how gladly I would have closed the +contract. Although I was not expecting to be invited, I was watching out +for it, and was hurt and disappointed when you started to ask me and +changed it to, "How soon are you going away?" + +But you have made it all right, now, the wound is closed. And so I thank +you sincerely for the invitation; and with you, all Reno, and if I were a +few years younger I would accept it, and promptly. I would go. I would +let somebody else do the oration, but, as for me, I would talk +--just talk. I would renew my youth; and talk--and talk--and talk +--and have the time of my life! I would march the unforgotten and +unforgettable antiques by, and name their names, and give them reverent +Hailand-farewell as they passed: Goodman, McCarthy, Gillis, Curry, +Baldwin, Winters, Howard, Nye, Stewart; Neely Johnson, Hal Clayton, +North, Root,--and my brother, upon whom be peace!--and then the +desperadoes, who made life a joy and the "Slaughter-house" a precious +possession: Sam Brown, Farmer Pete, Bill Mayfield, Six-fingered Jake, +Jack Williams and the rest of the crimson discipleship--and so on and so +on. Believe me, I would start a resurrection it would do you more good +to look at than the next one will, if you go on the way you are doing +now. + +Those were the days! those old ones. They will come no more. Youth will +come no more. They were so full to the brim with the wine of life; there +have been no others like them. It chokes me up to think of them. Would +you like me to come out there and cry? It would not beseem my white +head. + +Good-bye. I drink to you all. Have a good time--and take an old man's +blessing. + MARK TWAIN. + + + A few days later he was writing to H. H. Bancroft, of San Francisco, + who had invited him for a visit in event of his coming to the Coast. + Henry James had just been there for a week and it was hoped that + Howells would soon follow. + + + To H. H. Bancroft, in San Francisco: + + UP IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, + May 27, 1905. +DEAR MR. BANCROFT,--I thank you sincerely for the tempting hospitalities +which you offer me, but I have to deny myself, for my wandering days are +over, and it is my desire and purpose to sit by the fire the rest of my +remnant of life and indulge myself with the pleasure and repose of work +--work uninterrupted and unmarred by duties or excursions. + +A man who like me, is going to strike 70 on the 30th of next November has +no business to be flitting around the way Howells does--that shameless +old fictitious butter fly. (But if he comes, don't tell him I said it, +for it would hurt him and I wouldn't brush a flake of powder from his +wing for anything. I only say it in envy of his indestructible youth, +anyway. Howells will be 88 in October.) With thanks again, + Sincerely yours, + S. L. C. + + + Clemens found that the air of the New Hampshire hills agreed with + him and stimulated him to work. He began an entirely new version of + The Mysterious Stranger, of which he already had a bulky and nearly + finished manuscript, written in Vienna. He wrote several hundred + pages of an extravaganza entitled, Three Thousand Years Among the + Microbes, and then, having got his superabundant vitality reduced + (it was likely to expend itself in these weird mental exploits), + he settled down one day and wrote that really tender and beautiful + idyl, Eve's Diary, which he had begun, or at least planned, the + previous summer at Tyringham. In a letter to Mr. Frederick A. + Duneka, general manager of Harper & Brothers, he tells something of + the manner of the story; also his revised opinion of Adam's Diary, + written in '93, and originally published as a souvenir of Niagara + Falls. + + + To Frederick A. Duneka, in New York: + + DUBLIN, July 16, '05. +DEAR MR. DUNEKA,--I wrote Eve's Diary, she using Adam's Diary as her +(unwitting and unconscious) text, of course, since to use any other text +would have been an imbecility--then I took Adam's Diary and read it. It +turned my stomach. It was not literature; yet it had been literature +once--before I sold it to be degraded to an advertisement of the Buffalo +Fair. I was going to write and ask you to melt the plates and put it out +of print. + +But this morning I examined it without temper, and saw that if I +abolished the advertisement it would be literature again. + +So I have done it. I have struck out 700 words and inserted 5 MS pages +of new matter (650 words), and now Adam's Diary is dam good--sixty times +as good as it ever was before. + +I believe it is as good as Eve's Diary now--no, it's not quite that good, +I guess, but it is good enough to go in the same cover with Eve's. I'm +sure of that. + +I hate to have the old Adam go out any more--don't put it on the presses +again, let's put the new one in place of it; and next Xmas, let us bind +Adam and Eve in one cover. They score points against each other--so, if +not bound together, some of the points would not be perceived..... + +P. S. Please send another Adam's Diary, so that I can make 2 revised +copies. Eve's Diary is Eve's love-Story, but we will not name it that. + Yrs ever, + MARK. + + + The peace-making at Portsmouth between Japan and Russia was not + satisfactory to Mark Twain, who had fondly hoped there would be no + peace until, as he said, "Russian liberty was safe. One more battle + would have abolished the waiting chains of millions upon millions of + unborn Russians and I wish it could have been fought." He set down + an expression of his feelings for the Associated Press, and it + invited many letters. Charles Francis Adams wrote, "It attracted my + attention because it so exactly expresses the views I have myself + all along entertained." + + Clemens was invited by Colonel George Harvey to dine with the + Russian emissaries, Baron Rosen and Sergius Witte. He declined, but + his telegram so pleased Witte that he asked permission to publish + it, and announced that he would show it to the Czar. + + + Telegram. To Col. George Harvey, in New York: + +TO COLONEL HARVEY,--I am still a cripple, otherwise I should be more than +glad of this opportunity to meet the illustrious magicians who came here +equipped with nothing but a pen, and with it have divided the honors of +the war with the sword. It is fair to presume that in thirty centuries +history will not get done admiring these men who attempted what the world +regarded as impossible and achieved it. + + Witte would not have cared to show the Czar the telegram in its + original form, which follows. + + + Telegram (unsent). To Col. George Harvey, in New York: + +TO COLONEL HARVEY,--I am still a cripple, otherwise I should be more than +glad of this opportunity to meet those illustrious magicians who with the +pen have annulled, obliterated, and abolished every high achievement of +the Japanese sword and turned the tragedy of a tremendous war into a gay +and blithesome comedy. If I may, let me in all respect and honor salute +them as my fellow-humorists, I taking third place, as becomes one who was +not born to modesty, but by diligence and hard work is acquiring it. + MARK. + + Nor still another unsent form, perhaps more characteristic than + either of the foregoing. + + Telegram (unsent). To Col. George Harvey, in New York: + +DEAR COLONEL,--No, this is a love-feast; when you call a lodge of sorrow +send for me. + MARK. + + + To Mrs. Crane, Quarry Farm: + + DUBLIN, Sept. 24, '05. +Susy dear, I have had a lovely dream. Livy, dressed in black, was +sitting up in my bed (here) at my right and looking as young and sweet as +she used to do when she was in health. She said: "what is the name of +your sweet sister?" I said, "Pamela." "Oh, yes, that is it, I thought +it was--" (naming a name which has escaped me) "Won't you write it down for +me?" I reached eagerly for a pen and pad--laid my hands upon both--then +said to myself, "It is only a dream," and turned back sorrowfully and +there she was, still. The conviction flamed through me that our lamented +disaster was a dream, and this a reality. I said, "How blessed it is, +how blessed it is, it was all a dream, only a dream!" She only smiled +and did not ask what dream I meant, which surprised me. She leaned her +head against mine and I kept saying, "I was perfectly sure it was a +dream, I never would have believed it wasn't." + +I think she said several things, but if so they are gone from my memory. +I woke and did not know I had been dreaming. She was gone. I wondered +how she could go without my knowing it, but I did not spend any thought +upon that, I was too busy thinking of how vivid and real was the dream +that we had lost her and how unspeakably blessed it was to find that it +was not true and that she was still ours and with us. + S. L. C. + + + One day that summer Mark Twain received a letter from the actress, + Minnie Maddern Fiske, asking him to write something that would aid + her in her crusade against bull-fighting. The idea appealed to him; + he replied at once. + + + To Mrs. Fiske: + +DEAR MRS. FISKE,--I shall certainly write the story. But I may not get +it to suit me, in which case it will go in the fire. Later I will try +again--and yet again--and again. I am used to this. It has taken me +twelve years to write a short story--the shortest one I ever wrote, I +think.--[Probably "The Death Disk."]--So do not be discouraged; I will +stick to this one in the same way. Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + He did not delay in his beginning, and a few weeks later was sending + word to his publisher about it. + + + To Frederick A. Duneka, in New York: + + Oct. 2, '05. +DEAR MR. DUNEKA,--I have just finished a short story which I "greatly +admire," and so will you--"A Horse's Tale"--about 15,000 words, at a +rough guess. It has good fun in it, and several characters, and is +lively. I shall finish revising it in a few days or more, then Jean will +type it. + +Don't you think you can get it into the Jan. and Feb. numbers and issue +it as a dollar booklet just after the middle of Jan. when you issue the +Feb. number? + +It ought to be ably illustrated. + +Why not sell simultaneous rights, for this once, to the Ladies' Home +Journal or Collier's, or both, and recoup yourself?--for I would like to +get it to classes that can't afford Harper's. Although it doesn't +preach, there's a sermon concealed in it. + Yr sincerely, + MARK. + + + Five days later he added some rather interesting facts concerning + the new story. + + + To F. A. Duneka, in New York: + + Oct. 7, 1906. ['05] +DEAR MR. DUNEKA,--..... I've made a poor guess as to number of words. +I think there must be 20,000. My usual page of MS. contains about 130 +words; but when I am deeply interested in my work and dead to everything +else, my hand-writing shrinks and shrinks until there's a great deal more +than 130 on a page--oh, yes, a deal more. Well, I discover, this +morning, that this tale is written in that small hand. + +This strong interest is natural, for the heroine is my daughter, Susy, +whom we lost. It was not intentional--it was a good while before I found +it out. + +So I am sending you her picture to use--and to reproduce with +photographic exactness the unsurpassable expression and all. May you +find an artist who has lost an idol! + +Take as good care of the picture as you can and restore it to me when I +come. + +I hope you will illustrate this tale considerably. Not humorous +pictures. No. When they are good (or bad) one's humor gets no chance to +play surprises on the reader. A humorous subject illustrated seriously +is all right, but a humorous artist is no fit person for such work. You +see, the humorous writer pretends to absolute seriousness (when he knows +his trade) then for an artist--to step in and give his calculated gravity +all away with a funny picture--oh, my land! It gives me the dry gripes +just to think of it. It would be just about up to the average comic +artist's intellectual level to make a funny picture of the horse kicking +the lungs out of a trader. Hang it, the remark is funny--because the +horse is not aware of it but the fact is not humorous, it is tragic and +it is no subject for a humorous picture. + +Could I be allowed to sit in judgment upon the pictures before they are +accepted--at least those in which Cathy may figure? + +This is not essential. It is but a suggestion, and it is hereby +withdrawn, if it would be troublesome or cause delay. + +I hope you will reproduce the cat-pile, full page. And save the photo +for me in as good condition as possible. When Susy and Clara were little +tots those cats had their profoundest worship, and there is no duplicate +of this picture. These cats all had thundering names, or inappropriate +ones--furnished by the children with my help. One was named Buffalo +Bill. + +Are you interested in coincidences? + +After discovering, about the middle of the book, that Cathy was Susy +Clemens, I put her picture with my MS., to be reproduced. After the book +was finished it was discovered that Susy had a dim model of Soldier Boy +in her arms; I had forgotten all about that toy. + +Then I examined the cat-picture and laid it with the MS. for +introduction; but it was not until yesterday that I remembered that one +of the cats was named Buffalo Bill. + Sincerely yours, + MARK. + + + The reference in this letter to shrinkage of his hand-writing with + the increasing intensity of his interest, and the consequent + addition of the number of words to the page, recalls another fact, + noted by Mr. Duneka, viz.: that because of his terse Anglo-Saxon + diction, Mark Twain could put more words on a magazine page than any + other writer. It is hardly necessary to add that he got more force + into what he put on the page for the same reason. + + There was always a run of reporters at Mark Twain's New York home. + His opinion was sought for on every matter of public interest, and + whatever happened to him in particular was considered good for at + least half a column of copy, with his name as a catch-line at the + top. When it was learned that he was to spend the summer in New + Hampshire, the reporters had all wanted to find out about it. Now + that the summer was ending, they began to want to know how he had + liked it, what work he had done and what were his plans for another + year. As they frequently applied to his publishers for these + details it was finally suggested to him that he write a letter + furnishing the required information. His reply, handed to Mr. + Duneka, who was visiting him at the moment, is full of interest. + + + Mem. for Mr. Duneka: + + DUBLIN, Oct. 9, 1905. +.....As to the other matters, here are the details. + +Yes, I have tried a number of summer homes, here and in Europe together. + +Each of these homes had charms of its own; charms and delights of its +own, and some of them--even in Europe had comforts. Several of them had +conveniences, too. They all had a "view." + +It is my conviction that there should always be some water in a view +--a lake or a river, but not the ocean, if you are down on its level. I +think that when you are down on its level it seldom inflames you with an +ecstasy which you could not get out of a sand-flat. It is like being on +board ship, over again; indeed it is worse than that, for there's three +months of it. On board ship one tires of the aspects in a couple of +days, and quits looking. The same vast circle of heaving humps is spread +around you all the time, with you in the centre of it and never gaining +an inch on the horizon, so far as you can see; for variety, a flight of +flying-fish, mornings; a flock of porpoises throwing summersaults +afternoons; a remote whale spouting, Sundays; occasional phosphorescent +effects, nights; every other day a streak of black smoke trailing along +under the horizon; on the one single red letter day, the illustrious +iceberg. I have seen that iceberg thirty-four times in thirty-seven +voyages; it is always the same shape, it is always the same size, it +always throws up the same old flash when the sun strikes it; you may set +it on any New York door-step of a June morning and light it up with a +mirror-flash; and I will engage to recognize it. It is artificial, and +it is provided and anchored out by the steamer companies. I used to like +the sea, but I was young then, and could easily get excited over any kind +of monotony, and keep it up till the monotonies ran out, if it was a +fortnight. + +Last January, when we were beginning to inquire about a home for this +summer, I remembered that Abbott Thayer had said, three years before, +that the New Hampshire highlands was a good place. He was right--it was +a good place. Any place that is good for an artist in paint is good for +an artist in morals and ink. Brush is here, too; so is Col. T. W. +Higginson; so is Raphael Pumpelly; so is Mr. Secretary Hitchcock; so is +Henderson; so is Learned; so is Summer; so is Franklin MacVeigh; so is +Joseph L. Smith; so is Henry Copley Greene, when I am not occupying his +house, which I am doing this season. Paint, literature, science, +statesmanship, history, professorship, law, morals,--these are all +represented here, yet crime is substantially unknown. + +The summer homes of these refugees are sprinkled, a mile apart, among the +forest-clad hills, with access to each other by firm smooth country roads +which are so embowered in dense foliage that it is always twilight in +there, and comfortable. The forests are spider-webbed with these good +roads, they go everywhere; but for the help of the guide-boards, the +stranger would not arrive anywhere. + +The village--Dublin--is bunched together in its own place, but a good +telephone service makes its markets handy to all those outliars. I have +spelt it that way to be witty. The village executes orders on, the +Boston plan--promptness and courtesy. + +The summer homes are high-perched, as a rule, and have contenting +outlooks. The house we occupy has one. Monadnock, a soaring double +hump, rises into the sky at its left elbow--that is to say, it is close +at hand. From the base of the long slant of the mountain the valley +spreads away to the circling frame of the hills, and beyond the frame the +billowy sweep of remote great ranges rises to view and flows, fold upon +fold, wave upon wave, soft and blue and unwordly, to the horizon fifty +miles away. In these October days Monadnock and the valley and its +framing hills make an inspiring picture to look at, for they are +sumptuously splashed and mottled and be-torched from sky-line to sky-line +with the richest dyes the autumn can furnish; and when they lie flaming +in the full drench of the mid-afternoon sun, the sight affects the +spectator physically, it stirs his blood like military music. + +These summer homes are commodious, well built, and well furnished--facts +which sufficiently indicate that the owners built them to live in +themselves. They have furnaces and wood fireplaces, and the rest of the +comforts and conveniences of a city home, and can be comfortably occupied +all the year round. + +We cannot have this house next season, but I have secured Mrs. Upton's +house which is over in the law and science quarter, two or three miles +from here, and about the same distance from the art, literary, and +scholastic groups. The science and law quarter has needed improving, +this good while. + +The nearest railway-station is distant something like an hour's drive; it +is three hours from there to Boston, over a branch line. You can go to +New York in six hours per branch lines if you change cars every time you +think of it, but it is better to go to Boston and stop over and take the +trunk line next day, then you do not get lost. + +It is claimed that the atmosphere of the New Hampshire highlands is +exceptionally bracing and stimulating, and a fine aid to hard and +continuous work. It is a just claim, I think. I came in May, and +wrought 35 successive days without a break. It is possible that I could +not have done it elsewhere. I do not know; I have not had any +disposition to try it, before. I think I got the disposition out of the +atmosphere, this time. I feel quite sure, in fact, that that is where it +came from. + +I am ashamed to confess what an intolerable pile of manuscript I ground +out in the 35 days, therefore I will keep the number of words to myself. +I wrote the first half of a long tale--"The Adventures of a Microbe" and +put it away for a finish next summer, and started another long tale--"The +Mysterious Stranger;" I wrote the first half of it and put it with the +other for a finish next summer. I stopped, then. I was not tired, but I +had no books on hand that needed finishing this year except one that was +seven years old. After a little I took that one up and finished it. Not +for publication, but to have it ready for revision next summer. + +Since I stopped work I have had a two months' holiday. The summer has +been my working time for 35 years; to have a holiday in it (in America) +is new for me. I have not broken it, except to write "Eve's Diary" and +"A Horse's Tale"--short things occupying the mill 12 days. + +This year our summer is 6 months long and ends with November and the +flight home to New York, but next year we hope and expect to stretch it +another month and end it the first of December. + + [No signature.] + + + The fact that he was a persistent smoker was widely known, and many + friends and admirers of Mark Twain sent him cigars, most of which he + could not use, because they were too good. He did not care for + Havana cigars, but smoked the fragrant, inexpensive domestic tobacco + with plenty of "pep" in it, as we say today. Now and then he had an + opportunity to head off some liberal friend, who wrote asking + permission to contribute to his cigar collection, as instance the + following. + + + To Rev. L. M. Powers, in Haverhill, Mass.: + + Nov. 9, 1905. +DEAR MR. POWERS,--I should accept your hospitable offer at once but for +the fact I couldn't do it and remain honest. That is to say if I allowed +you to send me what you believe to be good cigars it would distinctly +mean that I meant to smoke them, whereas I should do nothing of the kind. +I know a good cigar better than you do, for I have had 60 years +experience. + +No, that is not what I mean; I mean I know a bad cigar better than +anybody else; I judge by the price only; if it costs above 5 cents I know +it to be either foreign or half-foreign, and unsmokeable. By me. I have +many boxes of Havana cigars, of all prices from 20 cts apiece up to 1.66 +apiece; I bought none of them, they were all presents, they are an +accumulation of several years. I have never smoked one of them and never +shall, I work them off on the visitor. You shall have a chance when you +come. + +Pessimists are born not made; optimists are born not made; but no man is +born either pessimist wholly or optimist wholly, perhaps; he is +pessimistic along certain lines and optimistic along certain others. +That is my case. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + In spite of all the fine photographs that were made of him, there + recurred constantly among those sent him to be autographed a print + of one which, years before, Sarony had made and placed on public + sale. It was a good photograph, mechanically and even artistically, + but it did not please Mark Twain. Whenever he saw it he recalled + Sarony with bitterness and severity. Once he received an inquiry + concerning it, and thus feelingly expressed himself. + + + To Mr. Row (no address): + + 21 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, + November 14, 1905. +DEAR MR. ROW,--That alleged portrait has a private history. Sarony was +as much of an enthusiast about wild animals as he was about photography; +and when Du Chaillu brought the first Gorilla to this country in 1819 he +came to me in a fever of excitement and asked me if my father was of +record and authentic. I said he was; then Sarony, without any abatement +of his excitement asked if my grandfather also was of record and +authentic. I said he was. Then Sarony, with still rising excitement and +with joy added to it, said he had found my great grandfather in the +person of the gorilla, and had recognized him at once by his resemblance +to me. I was deeply hurt but did not reveal this, because I knew Saxony +meant no offense for the gorilla had not done him any harm, and he was +not a man who would say an unkind thing about a gorilla wantonly. I went +with him to inspect the ancestor, and examined him from several points of +view, without being able to detect anything more than a passing +resemblance. "Wait," said Sarony with confidence, "let me show you." +He borrowed my overcoat--and put it on the gorilla. The result was +surprising. I saw that the gorilla while not looking distinctly like me +was exactly what my great grand father would have looked like if I had +had one. Sarong photographed the creature in that overcoat, and spread +the picture about the world. It has remained spread about the world ever +since. It turns up every week in some newspaper somewhere or other. It +is not my favorite, but to my exasperation it is everybody else's. +Do you think you could get it suppressed for me? I will pay the limit. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The year 1905 closed triumphantly for Mark Twain. The great + "Seventieth Birthday" dinner planned by Colonel George Harvey is + remembered to-day as the most notable festival occasion in New York + literary history. Other dinners and ovations followed. At seventy + he had returned to the world, more beloved, more honored than ever + before. + + + + +XLV + +LETTERS, 1906, TO VARIOUS PERSONS. THE FAREWELL LECTURE. A SECOND +SUMMER IN DUBLIN. BILLIARDS AND COPYRIGHT + + MARK TWAIN at "Pier Seventy," as he called it, paused to look + backward and to record some memoirs of his long, eventful past. The + Autobiography dictations begun in Florence were resumed, and daily + he traveled back, recalling long-ago scenes and all-but-forgotten + places. He was not without reminders. Now and again there came + some message that brought back the old days--the Tom Sawyer and Huck + Finn days--or the romance of the river that he never recalled other + than with tenderness and a tone of regret that it was gone. An + invitation to the golden wedding of two ancient friends moved and + saddened him, and his answer to it conveys about all the story of + life. + + + To Mr. and Mrs. Gordon: + + 21 FIFTH AVENUE, + Jan. 24, '06. +DEAR GORDONS,--I have just received your golden-wedding "At Home" and am +trying to adjust my focus to it and realize how much it means. It is +inconceivable! With a simple sweep it carries me back over a stretch of +time measurable only in astronomical terms and geological periods. +It brings before me Mrs. Gordon, young, round-limbed, handsome; and with +her the Youngbloods and their two babies, and Laura Wright, that +unspoiled little maid, that fresh flower of the woods and the prairies. +Forty-eight years ago! + +Life was a fairy-tale, then, it is a tragedy now. When I was 43 and John +Hay 41 he said life was a tragedy after 40, and I disputed it. Three +years ago he asked me to testify again: I counted my graves, and there +was nothing for me to say. + +I am old; I recognize it but I don't realize it. I wonder if a person +ever really ceases to feel young--I mean, for a whole day at a time. My +love to you both, and to all of us that are left. + MARK. + + + Though he used very little liquor of any kind, it was Mark Twain's + custom to keep a bottle of Scotch whiskey with his collection of + pipes and cigars and tobacco on a little table by his bed-side. + During restless nights he found a small quantity of it conducive to + sleep. Andrew Carnegie, learning of this custom, made it his + business to supply Scotch of his own special importation. The first + case came, direct from Scotland. When it arrived Clemens sent this + characteristic acknowledgment. + + + To Andrew Carnegie, in Scotland: + + 21 FIFTH AVE. Feb. 10, '06. +DEAR ST. ANDREW,--The whisky arrived in due course from over the water; +last week one bottle of it was extracted from the wood and inserted into +me, on the instalment plan, with this result: that I believe it to be the +best, smoothest whisky now on the planet. Thanks, oh, thanks: I have +discarded Peruna. + +Hoping that you three are well and happy and will be coming back before +the winter sets in. + I am, + Sincerely yours, + MARK. + + + It must have been a small bottle to be consumed by him in a week, or + perhaps he had able assistance. The next brief line refers to the + manuscript of his article, "Saint Joan of Arc," presented to the + museum at Rouen. + + + To Edward E. Clarke: + + 21 FIFTH AVE., Feb., 1906. +DEAR SIR,--I have found the original manuscript and with great pleasure I +transmit it herewith, also a printed copy. + +It is a matter of great pride to me to have any word of mine concerning +the world's supremest heroine honored by a place in that Museum. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The series of letters which follows was prepared by Mark Twain and + General Fred Grant, mainly with a view of advertising the lecture + that Clemens had agreed to deliver for the benefit of the Robert + Fulton Monument Association. It was, in fact, to be Mark Twain's + "farewell lecture," and the association had really proposed to pay + him a thousand dollars for it. The exchange of these letters, + however, was never made outside of Mark Twain's bed-room. Propped + against the pillows, pen in hand, with General Grant beside him, + they arranged the series with the idea of publication. Later the + plan was discarded, so that this pleasant foolery appears here for + the first, time. + + + PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL + + (Correspondence) + + Telegram + + Army Headquarters (date) +MARK TWAIN, New York,--Would you consider a proposal to talk at Carnegie +Hall for the benefit of the Robert Fulton Monument Association, of which +you are a Vice President, for a fee of a thousand dollars? + F. D. GRANT, + President, + Fulton Monument Association. + + + Telegraphic Answer: + +MAJOR-GENERAL F. D. GRANT, Army Headquarters,--I shall be glad to do it, +but I must stipulate that you keep the thousand dollars and add it to the +Monument fund as my contribution. + CLEMENS. + + +Letters: + +DEAR MR. CLEMENS,--You have the thanks of the Association, and the terms +shall be as you say. But why give all of it? Why not reserve a portion +--why should you do this work wholly without compensation? + Truly yours + FRED. D. GRANT. + + +MAJOR GENERAL GRANT, Army Headquarters. + +DEAR GENERAL,--Because I stopped talking for pay a good many years ago, +and I could not resume the habit now without a great deal of personal +discomfort. I love to hear myself talk, because I get so much +instruction and moral upheaval out of it, but I lose the bulk of this joy +when I charge for it. Let the terms stand. + +General, if I have your approval, I wish to use this good occasion to +retire permanently from the platform. + Truly yours + S. L. CLEMENS. + + +DEAR MR. CLEMENS,--Certainly. But as an old friend, permit me to say, +Don't do that. Why should you?--you are not old yet. + Yours truly, + FRED D. GRANT. + + +DEAR GENERAL,--I mean the pay-platform; I shan't retire from the +gratis-platform until after I am dead and courtesy requires me to keep +still and not disturb the others. + +What shall I talk about? My idea is this: to instruct the audience about +Robert Fulton, and..... Tell me--was that his real name, or was it his +nom de plume? However, never mind, it is not important--I can skip it, +and the house will think I knew all about it, but forgot. Could you find +out for me if he was one of the Signers of the Declaration, and which +one? But if it is any trouble, let it alone, I can skip it. Was he out +with Paul Jones? Will you ask Horace Porter? And ask him if he brought +both of them home. These will be very interesting facts, if they can be +established. But never mind, don't trouble Porter, I can establish them +anyway. The way I look at it, they are historical gems--gems of the very +first water. + +Well, that is my idea, as I have said: first, excite the audience with a +spoonful of information about Fulton, then quiet down with a barrel of +illustration drawn by memory from my books--and if you don't say anything +the house will think they never heard of it before, because people don't +really read your books, they only say they do, to keep you from feeling +bad. Next, excite the house with another spoonful of Fultonian fact, +then tranquilize them again with another barrel of illustration. And so +on and so on, all through the evening; and if you are discreet and don't +tell them the illustrations don't illustrate anything, they won't notice +it and I will send them home as well-informed about Robert Fulton as I am +myself. Don't be afraid; I know all about audiences, they believe +everything you say, except when you are telling the truth. + Truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + +P.S. Mark all the advertisements "Private and Confidential," otherwise +the people will not read them. + M. T. + + +DEAR MR. CLEMENS,--How long shall you talk? I ask in order that we may +be able to say when carriages may be called. + Very Truly yours, + HUGH GORDON MILLER, + Secretary. + + +DEAR MR. MILLER,--I cannot say for sure. It is my custom to keep on +talking till I get the audience cowed. Sometimes it takes an hour and +fifteen minutes, sometimes I can do it in an hour. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + +Mem. My charge is 2 boxes free. Not the choicest--sell the choicest, +and give me any 6-seat boxes you please. + S. L. C. + +I want Fred Grant (in uniform) on the stage; also the rest of the +officials of the Association; also other distinguished people--all the +attractions we can get. Also, a seat for Mr. Albert Bigelow Paine, who +may be useful to me if he is near me and on the front. + S. L. C. + + + The seat chosen for the writer of these notes was to be at the front + of the stage in order that the lecturer might lean over now and then + and pretend to be asking information concerning Fulton. I was not + entirely happy in the thought of this showy honor, and breathed more + freely when this plan was abandoned and the part assigned to General + Grant. + + The lecture was given in Carnegie Hall, which had been gayly + decorated for the occasion. The house was more than filled, and a + great sum of money was realized for the fund. + + It was that spring that Gorky and Tchaikowski, the Russian + revolutionists, came to America hoping to arouse interest in their + cause. The idea of the overthrow of the Russian dynasty was + pleasant to Mark Twain. Few things would have given him greater + comfort than to have known that a little more than ten years would + see the downfall of Russian imperialism. The letter which follows + was a reply to an invitation from Tchaikowski, urging him to speak + at one of the meetings. + + +DEAR MR. TCHAIKOWSKI,--I thank you for the honor of the invitation, but +I am not able to accept it, because on Thursday evening I shall be +presiding at a meeting whose object is to find remunerative work for +certain classes of our blind who would gladly support themselves if they +had the opportunity. + +My sympathies are with the Russian revolution, of course. It goes +without saying. I hope it will succeed, and now that I have talked with +you I take heart to believe it will. Government by falsified promises; +by lies, by treacheries, and by the butcher-knife for the aggrandizement +of a single family of drones and its idle and vicious kin has been borne +quite long enough in Russia, I should think, and it is to be hoped that +the roused nation, now rising in its strength, will presently put an end +to it and set up the republic in its place. Some of us, even of the +white headed, may live to see the blessed day when Czars and Grand Dukes +will be as scarce there as I trust they are in heaven. + Most sincerely yours, + MARK TWAIN. + + + There came another summer at Dublin, New Hampshire, this time in the + fine Upton residence on the other slope of Monadnock, a place of + equally beautiful surroundings, and an even more extended view. + Clemens was at this time working steadily on his so-called + Autobiography, which was not that, in fact, but a series of + remarkable chapters, reminiscent, reflective, commentative, written + without any particular sequence as to time or subject-matter. He + dictated these chapters to a stenographer, usually in the open air, + sitting in a comfortable rocker or pacing up and down the long + veranda that faced a vast expanse of wooded slope and lake and + distant blue mountains. It became one of the happiest occupations + of his later years. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Maine: + + DUBLIN, Sunday, June 17, '06. +DEAR HOWELLS,--..... The dictating goes lazily and pleasantly on. With +intervals. I find that I have been at it, off and on, nearly two hours a +day for 155 days, since Jan. 9. To be exact I've dictated 75 hours in 80 +days and loafed 75 days. I've added 60,000 words in the month that I've +been here; which indicates that I've dictated during 20 days of that +time--40 hours, at an average of 1,500 words an hour. It's a plenty, and +I am satisfied. + +There's a good deal of "fat" I've dictated, (from Jan. 9) 210,000 words, +and the "fat" adds about 50,000 more. + +The "fat" is old pigeon-holed things, of the years gone by, which I or +editors didn't das't to print. For instance, I am dumping in the little +old book which I read to you in Hartford about 30 years ago and which you +said "publish--and ask Dean Stanley to furnish an introduction; he'll do +it." ("Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.") It reads quite to suit +me, without altering a word, now that it isn't to see print until I am +dead. + +To-morrow I mean to dictate a chapter which will get my heirs and assigns +burnt alive if they venture to print it this side of 2006 A.D.--which I +judge they won't. There'll be lots of such chapters if I live 3 or 4 +years longer. The edition of A.D. 2006 will make a stir when it comes +out. I shall be hovering around taking notice, along with other dead +pals. You are invited. + MARK. + + His tendency to estimate the measure of the work he was doing, and + had completed, must have clung to him from his old printer days. + + The chapter which was to get his heirs and assigns burned alive was + on the orthodox God, and there was more than one such chapter. In + the next letter he refers to two exquisite poems by Howells, and the + writer of these notes recalls his wonderful reading of them aloud. + 'In Our Town' was a collection of short stories then recently issued + by William Allen White. Howells had recommended them. + + + To W. D. Howells, in Maine: + + 21 FIFTH AVE., Tuesday Eve. +DEAR HOWELLS,--It is lovely of you to say those beautiful things--I don't +know how to thank you enough. But I love you, that I know. + +I read "After the Wedding" aloud and we felt all the pain of it and the +truth. It was very moving and very beautiful--would have been +over-comingly moving, at times, but for the haltings and pauses compelled +by the difficulties of MS--these were a protection, in that they +furnished me time to brace up my voice, and get a new start. Jean wanted +to keep the MS for another reading-aloud, and for "keeps," too, I +suspected, but I said it would be safest to write you about it. + +I like "In Our Town," particularly that Colonel, of the Lookout Mountain +Oration, and very particularly pages 212-16. I wrote and told White so. + +After "After the Wedding" I read "The Mother" aloud and sounded its human +deeps with your deep-sea lead. I had not read it before, since it was +first published. + +I have been dictating some fearful things, for 4 successive mornings--for +no eye but yours to see until I have been dead a century--if then. But +I got them out of my system, where they had been festering for years--and +that was the main thing. I feel better, now. + +I came down today on business--from house to house in 12 1/2 hours, and +expected to arrive dead, but am neither tired nor sleepy. + Yours as always + MARK. + + + To William Allen White, in Emporia, Kans.: + + DUBLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE, + June 24, 1906. +DEAR MR. WHITE,--Howells told me that "In Our Town" was a charming book, +and indeed it is. All of it is delightful when read one's self, parts of +it can score finely when subjected to the most exacting of tests--the +reading aloud. Pages 197 and 216 are of that grade. I have tried them a +couple of times on the family, and pages 212 and 216 are qualified to +fetch any house of any country, caste or color, endowed with those riches +which are denied to no nation on the planet--humor and feeling. + +Talk again--the country is listening. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Witter Bynner, the poet, was one of the editors of McClure's + Magazine at this time, but was trying to muster the courage to give + up routine work for verse-making and the possibility of poverty. + Clemens was fond of Bynner and believed in his work. He did not + advise him, however, to break away entirely from a salaried + position--at least not immediately; but one day Bynner did so, and + reported the step he had taken, with some doubt as to the answer he + would receive. + + + To Witter Bynner, in New York: + + DUBLIN, Oct. 5, 1906. +DEAR POET,--You have certainly done right for several good reasons; at +least, of them, I can name two: + +1. With your reputation you can have your freedom and yet earn your +living. 2. if you fall short of succeeding to your wish, your +reputation will provide you another job. And so in high approval I +suppress the scolding and give you the saintly and fatherly pat instead. + MARK TWAIN. + + + On another occasion, when Bynner had written a poem to Clara + Clemens, her father pretended great indignation that the first poem + written by Bynner to any one in his household should not be to him, + and threatened revenge. At dinner shortly after he produced from + his pocket a slip of paper on which he had set down what he said was + "his only poem." He read the lines that follow: + + "Of all sad words of tongue or pen, + The saddest are these: It might have been. + Ah, say not so! as life grows longer, leaner, thinner, + We recognize, O God, it might have Bynner!" + + He returned to New York in October and soon after was presented by + Mrs. H. H. Rogers with a handsome billiard-table. + + He had a passion for the game, but had played comparatively little + since the old Hartford days of fifteen years before, when a group of + his friends used to assemble on Friday nights in the room at the top + of the house for long, strenuous games and much hilarity. Now the + old fever all came back; the fascinations of the game superseded + even his interest in the daily dictations. + + + To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in New York: + + 21 FIFTH AVENUE, Monday, Nov., 1906. +DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--The billiard table is better than the doctors. It is +driving out the heartburn in a most promising way. I have a billiardist +on the premises, and I walk not less than ten miles every day with the +cue in my hand. And the walking is not the whole of the exercise, nor +the most health-giving part of it, I think. Through the multitude of the +positions and attitudes it brings into play every muscle in the body and +exercises them all. + +The games begin right after luncheon, daily, and continue until midnight, +with 2 hours' intermission for dinner and music. And so it is 9 hours' +exercise per day, and 10 or 12 on Sunday. Yesterday and last night it +was 12--and I slept until 8 this morning without waking. The billiard +table, as a Sabbath breaker can beat any coal-breaker in Pennsylvania, +and give it 30 in, the game. If Mr. Rogers will take to daily billiards +he can do without doctors and the massageur, I think. + +We are really going to build a house on my farm, an hour and a half from +New York. It is decided. It is to be built by contract, and is to come +within $25,000. + With love and many thanks. + S. L. C. + +P.S. Clara is in the sanitarium--till January 28 when her western +concert tour will begin. She is getting to be a mighty competent singer. +You must know Clara better; she is one of the very finest and completest +and most satisfactory characters I have ever met. Others knew it before, +but I have always been busy with other matters. + + + The "billiardist on the premises" was the writer of these notes, + who, earlier in the year, had become his biographer, and, in the + course of time, his daily companion and friend. The farm mentioned + was one which he had bought at Redding, Connecticut, where, later, + he built the house known as "Stormfield." + + Henry Mills Alden, for nearly forty years editor of Harper's + Magazine, arrived at his seventieth birthday on November 11th that + year, and Harper & Brothers had arranged to give him a great dinner + in the offices of Franklin Square, where, for half a century, he had + been an active force. Mark Twain, threatened with a cold, and + knowing the dinner would be strenuous, did not feel able to attend, + so wrote a letter which, if found suitable, could be read at the + gathering. + + + To Mr. Henry Alden: + +ALDEN,--dear and ancient friend--it is a solemn moment. You have now +reached the age of discretion. You have been a long time arriving. Many +years ago you docked me on an article because the subject was too old; +later, you docked me on an article because the subject was too new; later +still, you docked me on an article because the subject was betwixt and +between. Once, when I wrote a Letter to Queen Victoria, you did not put +it in the respectable part of the Magazine, but interred it in that +potter's field, the Editor's Drawer. As a result, she never answered it. +How often we recall, with regret, that Napoleon once shot at a magazine +editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember, with +charity, that his intentions were good. + +You will reform, now, Alden. You will cease from these economies, and +you will be discharged. But in your retirement you will carry with you +the admiration and earnest good wishes of the oppressed and toiling +scribes. This will be better than bread. Let this console you when the +bread fails. + +You will carry with you another thing, too--the affection of the scribes; +for they all love you in spite of your crimes. For you bear a kind heart +in your breast, and the sweet and winning spirit that charms away all +hostilities and animosities, and makes of your enemy your friend and +keeps him so. You have reigned over us thirty-six years, and, please +God, you shall reign another thirty-six--"and peace to Mahmoud on his +golden throne!" + Always yours + MARK + + + A copyright bill was coming up in Washington and a delegation of + authors went down to work for it. Clemens was not the head of the + delegation, but he was the most prominent member of it, as well as + the most useful. He invited the writer to accompany him, and + elsewhere I have told in detail the story of that excursion,--[See + Mark Twain; A Biography, chap. ccli,]--which need be but briefly + touched upon here. + + His work was mainly done aside from that of the delegation. They + had him scheduled for a speech, however, which he made without notes + and with scarcely any preparation. Meantime he had applied to + Speaker Cannon for permission to allow him on the floor of the + House, where he could buttonhole the Congressmen. He was not + eligible to the floor without having received the thanks of + Congress, hence the following letter: + + + To Hon. Joseph Cannon, House of Representatives: + + Dec. 7, 1906. +DEAR UNCLE JOSEPH,--Please get me the thanks of the Congress--not next +week but right away. It is very necessary. Do accomplish this for your +affectionate old friend right away; by persuasion, if you can, by +violence if you must, for it is imperatively necessary that I get on the +floor for two or three hours and talk to the members, man by man, in +behalf of the support, encouragement and protection of one of the +nation's most valuable assets and industries--its literature. I have +arguments with me, also a barrel, with liquid in it. + +Give me a chance. Get me the thanks of Congress. Don't wait for others; +there isn't time. I have stayed away and let Congress alone for +seventy-one years and I am entitled to thanks. Congress knows it +perfectly well and I have long felt hurt that this quite proper and +earned expression of gratitude has been merely felt by the House and +never publicly uttered. Send me an order on the Sergeant-at-Arms quick. +When shall I come? With love and a benediction. + MARK TWAIN. + + + This was mainly a joke. Mark Twain did not expect any "thanks," but + he did hope for access to the floor, which once, in an earlier day, + had been accorded him. We drove to the Capitol and he delivered his + letter to "Uncle Joe" by hand. "Uncle Joe" could not give him the + privilege of the floor; the rules had become more stringent. He + declared they would hang him if he did such a thing. He added that + he had a private room down-stairs, where Mark Twain might establish + headquarters, and that he would assign his colored servant, Neal, of + long acquaintanceship with many of the members, to pass the word + that Mark Twain was receiving. + + The result was a great success. All that afternoon members of + Congress poured into the Speaker's room and, in an atmosphere blue + with tobacco smoke, Mark Twain talked the gospel of copyright to his + heart's content. + + The bill did not come up for passage that session, but Mark Twain + lived to see his afternoon's lobbying bring a return. In 1909, + Champ Clark, and those others who had gathered around him that + afternoon, passed a measure that added fourteen years to the + copyright term. + + The next letter refers to a proposed lobby of quite a different + sort. + + + To Helen Keller, in Wrentham, Mass.: + + 21 FIFTH AVENUE, + Dec. 23, '06. +DEAR HELEN KELLER,--. . . You say, "As a reformer, you know that +ideas must be driven home again and again." + +Yes, I know it; and by old experience I know that speeches and documents +and public meetings are a pretty poor and lame way of accomplishing it. +Last year I proposed a sane way--one which I had practiced with success +for a quarter of a century--but I wasn't expecting it to get any +attention, and it didn't. + +Give me a battalion of 200 winsome young girls and matrons, and let me +tell them what to do and how to do it, and I will be responsible for +shining results. If I could mass them on the stage in front of the +audience and instruct them there, I could make a public meeting take hold +of itself and do something really valuable for once. Not that the real +instruction would be done there, for it wouldn't; it would be previously +done privately, and merely repeated there. + +But it isn't going to happen--the good old way will be stuck to: there'll +be a public meeting: with music, and prayer, and a wearying report, and a +verbal description of the marvels the blind can do, and 17 speeches--then +the call upon all present who are still alive, to contribute. This hoary +program was invented in the idiot asylum, and will never be changed. Its +function is to breed hostility to good causes. + +Some day somebody will recruit my 200--my dear beguilesome Knights of the +Golden Fleece--and you will see them make good their ominous name. + +Mind, we must meet! not in the grim and ghastly air of the platform, +mayhap, but by the friendly fire--here at 21. + Affectionately your friend, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + They did meet somewhat later that winter in the friendly parlors of + No. 21, and friends gathered in to meet the marvelous blind girl and + to pay tribute to Miss Sullivan (Mrs. Macy) for her almost + incredible achievement. + + + + + + +MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1907-1910 + +ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE + + + +VOLUME VI. + + +XLVI + +LETTERS 1907-08. A DEGREE FROM OXFORD. THE NEW HOME AT REDDING + + The author, J. Howard Moore, sent a copy of his book, The Universal + Kinship, with a letter in which he said: "Most humorists have no + anxiety except to glorify themselves and add substance to their + pocket-books by making their readers laugh. You have shown, on many + occasions, that your mission is not simply to antidote the + melancholy of a world, but includes a real and intelligent concern + for the general welfare of your fellowman." + + The Universal Kinship was the kind of a book that Mark Twain + appreciated, as his acknowledgment clearly shows. + + + To Mr. J. Howard Moore: + + Feb. 2, '07. +DEAR MR. MOORE, The book has furnished me several days of deep pleasure +and satisfaction; it has compelled my gratitude at the same time, since +it saves me the labor of stating my own long-cherished opinions and +reflections and resentments by doing it lucidly and fervently and +irascibly for me. + +There is one thing that always puzzles me: as inheritors of the mentality +of our reptile ancestors we have improved the inheritance by a thousand +grades; but in the matter of the morals which they left us we have gone +backward as many grades. That evolution is strange, and to me +unaccountable and unnatural. Necessarily we started equipped with their +perfect and blemishless morals; now we are wholly destitute; we have no +real, morals, but only artificial ones--morals created and preserved by +the forced suppression of natural and hellish instincts. Yet we are dull +enough to be vain of them. Certainly we are a sufficiently comical +invention, we humans. + Sincerely Yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Mark Twain's own books were always being excommunicated by some + librarian, and the matter never failed to invite the attention and + amusement of the press, and the indignation of many correspondents. + Usually the books were Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, the morals of which + were not regarded as wholly exemplary. But in 1907 a small library, + in a very small town, attained a day's national notoriety by putting + the ban on Eve's Diary, not so much on account of its text as for + the chaste and exquisite illustrations by Lester Ralph. When the + reporters came in a troop to learn about it, the author said: "I + believe this time the trouble is mainly with the pictures. I did + not draw them. I wish I had--they are so beautiful." + + Just at this time, Dr. William Lyon Phelps, of Yale, was giving a + literary talk to the Teachers' Club, of Hartford, dwelling on the + superlative value of Mark Twain's writings for readers old and + young. Mrs. F. G. Whitmore, an old Hartford friend, wrote Clemens + of the things that Phelps had said, as consolation for Eve's latest + banishment. This gave him a chance to add something to what he had + said to the reporters. + + + To Mrs. Whitmore, in Hartford: + + Feb. 7, 1907. +DEAR MRS. WHITMORE,--But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book +of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected +youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it +delights me and doesn't anger me. But even if it angered me such words +as those of Professor Phelps would take the sting all out. Nobody +attaches weight to the freaks of the Charlton Library, but when a man +like Phelps speaks, the world gives attention. Some day I hope to meet +him and thank him for his courage for saying those things out in public. +Custom is, to think a handsome thing in private but tame it down in the +utterance. + +I hope you are all well and happy; and thereto I add my love. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + In May, 1907, Mark Twain was invited to England to receive from + Oxford the degree of Literary Doctor. It was an honor that came to + him as a sort of laurel crown at the end of a great career, and + gratified him exceedingly. To Moberly Bell, of the London Times, + he expressed his appreciation. Bell had been over in April and + Clemens believed him concerned in the matter. + + + To Moberly Bell, in London: + + 21 FIFTH AVENUE, May 3, '07 +DEAR MR. BELL,--Your hand is in it! and you have my best thanks. +Although I wouldn't cross an ocean again for the price of the ship that +carried me, I am glad to do it for an Oxford degree. I shall plan to +sail for England a shade before the middle of June, so that I can have a +few days in London before the 26th. + Sincerely, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + He had taken a house at Tuxedo for the summer, desiring to be near + New York City, and in the next letter he writes Mr. Rogers + concerning his London plans. We discover, also, in this letter that + he has begun work on the Redding home and the cost is to come + entirely out of the autobiographical chapters then running in the + North American Review. It may be of passing interest to note here + that he had the usual house-builder's fortune. He received thirty + thousand dollars for the chapters; the house cost him nearly double + that amount. + + + To H. H. Rogers, in New York: + + TUXEDO PARK, + May 29, '07. +DEAR ADMIRAL,--Why hang it, I am not going to see you and Mrs. Rogers at +all in England! It is a great disappointment. I leave there a month +from now--June 29. No, I shall see you; for by your itinerary you are +most likely to come to London June 21st or along there. So that is very +good and satisfactory. I have declined all engagements but two--Whitelaw +Reid (dinner) June 21, and the Pilgrims (lunch), June 25. The Oxford +ceremony is June 26. I have paid my return passage in the +Minne-something, but it is just possible that I may want to stay in +England a week or two longer--I can't tell, yet. I do very much want +to meet up with the boys for the last time. + +I have signed the contract for the building of the house on my +Connecticut farm and specified the cost limit, and work has been begun. +The cost has to all come out of a year's instalments of Autobiography in +the N. A. Review. + +Clara, is winning her way to success and distinction with sure and steady +strides. By all accounts she is singing like a bird, and is not afraid +on the concert stage any more. + +Tuxedo is a charming place; I think it hasn't its equal anywhere. + +Very best wishes to you both. + S. L. C. + + + The story of Mark Twain's extraordinary reception and triumph in + England has been told.--[Mark Twain; A Biography, chaps. cclvi- + cclix]--It was, in fact, the crowning glory of his career. Perhaps + one of the most satisfactory incidents of his sojourn was a dinner + given to him by the staff of Punch, in the historic offices at 10 + Bouverie Street where no other foreign visitor had been thus + honored--a notable distinction. When the dinner ended, little joy + Agnew, daughter of the chief editor, entered and presented to the + chief guest the original drawing of a cartoon by Bernard Partridge, + which had appeared on the front page of Punch. In this picture the + presiding genius of the paper is offering to Mark Twain health, long + life, and happiness from "The Punch Bowl." + + A short time after his return to America he received a pretty + childish letter from little Miss Agnew acknowledging a photograph he + had sent her, and giving a list of her pets and occupations. Such a + letter always delighted Mark Twain, and his pleasure in this one is + reflected in his reply. + + + To Miss Joy Agnew, in London: + + TUXEDO PARK, NEW YORK. +Unto you greetings and salutation and worship, you dear, sweet little +rightly-named Joy! I can see you now almost as vividly as I saw you that +night when you sat flashing and beaming upon those sombre swallow-tails. + + "Fair as a star when only one + Is shining in the sky." + +Oh, you were indeed the only one--there wasn't even the remotest chance +of competition with you, dear! Ah, you are a decoration, you little +witch! + +The idea of your house going to the wanton expense of a flower garden! +--aren't you enough? And what do you want to go and discourage the other +flowers for? Is that the right spirit? is it considerate? is it kind? +How do you suppose they feel when you come around--looking the way you +look? And you so pink and sweet and dainty and lovely and supernatural? +Why, it makes them feel embarrassed and artificial, of course; and in my +opinion it is just as pathetic as it can be. Now then you want to +reform--dear--and do right. + +Well certainly you are well off, Joy: + +3 bantams; +3 goldfish; +3 doves; +6 canaries; +2 dogs; +1 cat; + +All you need, now, to be permanently beyond the reach of want, is one +more dog--just one more good, gentle, high principled, affectionate, +loyal dog who wouldn't want any nobler service than the golden privilege +of lying at your door, nights, and biting everything that came along--and +I am that very one, and ready to come at the dropping of a hat. + +Do you think you could convey my love and thanks to your "daddy" and Owen +Seaman and those other oppressed and down-trodden subjects of yours, you +darling small tyrant? + +On my knees! These--with the kiss of fealty from your other subject-- + + MARK TWAIN + + + Elinor Glyn, author of Three Weeks and other erotic tales, was in + America that winter and asked permission to call on Mark Twain. An + appointment was made and Clemens discussed with her, for an hour or + more, those crucial phases of life which have made living a complex + problem since the days of Eve in Eden. Mrs. Glyn had never before + heard anything like Mark Twain's wonderful talk, and she was anxious + to print their interview. She wrote what she could remember of it + and sent it to him for approval. If his conversation had been + frank, his refusal was hardly less so. + + + To Mrs. Elinor Glyn, in New York: + + Jan. 22, '08. +DEAR MRS. GLYN, It reads pretty poorly--I get the sense of it, but it is +a poor literary job; however, it would have to be that because nobody can +be reported even approximately, except by a stenographer. +Approximations, synopsized speeches, translated poems, artificial flowers +and chromos all have a sort of value, but it is small. If you had put +upon paper what I really said it would have wrecked your type-machine. +I said some fetid, over-vigorous things, but that was because it was a +confidential conversation. I said nothing for print. My own report of +the same conversation reads like Satan roasting a Sunday school. It, and +certain other readable chapters of my autobiography will not be published +until all the Clemens family are dead--dead and correspondingly +indifferent. They were written to entertain me, not the rest of the +world. I am not here to do good--at least not to do it intentionally. +You must pardon me for dictating this letter; I am sick a-bed and not +feeling as well as I might. + Sincerely Yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Among the cultured men of England Mark Twain had no greater admirer, + or warmer friend, than Andrew Lang. They were at one on most + literary subjects, and especially so in their admiration of the life + and character of Joan of Arc. Both had written of her, and both + held her to be something almost more than mortal. When, therefore, + Anatole France published his exhaustive biography of the maid of + Domremy, a book in which he followed, with exaggerated minuteness + and innumerable footnotes, every step of Joan's physical career at + the expense of her spiritual life, which he was inclined to cheapen, + Lang wrote feelingly, and with some contempt, of the performance, + inviting the author of the Personal Recollections to come to the + rescue of their heroine. "Compare every one of his statements with + the passages he cites from authorities, and make him the laughter of + the world" he wrote. "If you are lazy about comparing I can make + you a complete set of what the authorities say, and of what this + amazing novelist says that they say. When I tell you that he thinks + the Epiphany (January 6, Twelfth Night) is December 25th--Christmas + Day-you begin to see what an egregious ass he is. Treat him like + Dowden, and oblige"--a reference to Mark Twain's defense of Harriet + Shelley, in which he had heaped ridicule on Dowden's Life of the + Poet--a masterly performance; one of the best that ever came from + Mark Twain's pen. + + Lang's suggestion would seem to have been a welcome one. + + + To Andrew Lang, in London: + + NEW YORK, April 25, 1908. +DEAR MR. LANG,--I haven't seen the book nor any review of it, but only +not very-understandable references to it--of a sort which discomforted +me, but of course set my interest on fire. I don't want to have to read +it in French--I should lose the nice shades, and should do a lot of gross +misinterpreting, too. But there'll be a translation soon, nicht wahr? +I will wait for it. I note with joy that you say: "If you are lazy about +comparing, (which I most certainly am), I can make you a complete set of +what the authorities say, and of what this amazing novelist says that +they say." + +Ah, do it for me! Then I will attempt the article, and (if I succeed in +doing it to my satisfaction,) will publish it. It is long since I +touched a pen (3 1/2 years), and I was intending to continue this happy +holiday to the gallows, but--there are things that could beguile me to +break this blessed Sabbath. + Yours very sincerely, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Certainly it is an interesting fact that an Englishman--one of the + race that burned Joan--should feel moved to defend her memory + against the top-heavy perversions of a distinguished French author. + + But Lang seems never to have sent the notes. The copying would have + been a tremendous task, and perhaps he never found the time for it. + We may regret to-day that he did not, for Mark Twain's article on + the French author's Joan would have been at least unique. + + Samuel Clemens could never accustom himself to the loss of his wife. + From the time of her death, marriage-which had brought him his + greatest joy in life-presented itself to him always with the thought + of bereavement, waiting somewhere just behind. The news of an + approaching wedding saddened him and there was nearly always a + somber tinge in his congratulations, of which the following to a + dear friend is an example: + + + To Father Fitz-Simon, in Washington: + + June 5, '08. +DEAR FATHER FITZ-SIMON,--Marriage--yes, it is the supreme felicity of +life, I concede it. And it is also the supreme tragedy of life. The +deeper the love the surer the tragedy. And the more disconsolating when +it comes. + +And so I congratulate you. Not perfunctorily, not lukewarmly, but with a +fervency and fire that no word in the dictionary is strong enough to +convey. And in the same breath and with the same depth and sincerity, +I grieve for you. Not for both of you and not for the one that shall go +first, but for the one that is fated to be left behind. For that one +there is no recompense.--For that one no recompense is possible. + +There are times--thousands of times--when I can expose the half of my +mind, and conceal the other half, but in the matter of the tragedy of +marriage I feel too deeply for that, and I have to bleed it all out or +shut it all in. And so you must consider what I have been through, and +am passing through and be charitable with me. + +Make the most of the sunshine! and I hope it will last long--ever so +long. + +I do not really want to be present; yet for friendship's sake and because +I honor you so, I would be there if I could. + Most sincerely your friend, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The new home at Redding was completed in the spring of 1908, and on + the 18th of June, when it was entirely fitted and furnished, Mark + Twain entered it for the first time. He had never even seen the + place nor carefully examined plans which John Howells had made for + his house. He preferred the surprise of it, and the general + avoidance of detail. That he was satisfied with the result will be + seen in his letters. He named it at first "Innocence at Home"; + later changing this title to "Stormfield." + + The letter which follows is an acknowledgment of an interesting + souvenir from the battle-field of Tewksbury (1471), and some relics + of the Cavalier and Roundhead Regiments encamped at Tewksbury in + 1643. + + + To an English admirer: + + INNOCENCE AT HOME, REDDING, CONNECTICUT, + Aug. 15, '08. +DEAR SIR,--I highly prize the pipes, and shall intimate to people that +"Raleigh" smoked them, and doubtless he did. After a little practice I +shall be able to go further and say he did; they will then be the most +interesting features of my library's decorations. The Horse-shoe is +attracting a good deal of attention, because I have intimated that the +conqueror's horse cast it; it will attract more when I get my hand in and +say he cast it, I thank you for the pipes and the shoe; and also for the +official guide, which I read through at a single sitting. If a person +should say that about a book of mine I should regard it as good evidence +of the book's interest. + Very truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + In his philosophy, What Is Man?, and now and again in his other + writings, we find Mark Twain giving small credit to the human mind + as an originator of ideas. The most original writer of his time, he + took no credit for pure invention and allowed none to others. The + mind, he declared, adapted, consciously or unconsciously; it did not + create. In a letter which follows he elucidates this doctrine. The + reference in it to the "captain" and to the kerosene, as the reader + may remember, have to do with Captain "Hurricane" Jones and his + theory of the miracles of "Isaac and of the prophets of Baal," as + expounded in Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion. + + By a trick of memory Clemens gives The Little Duke as his suggestion + for The Prince and the Pauper; he should have written The Prince and + the Page, by the same author. + + + To Rev. F. Y. Christ, in New York: + + REDDING, CONN., Aug., '08. +DEAR SIR,--You say "I often owe my best sermons to a suggestion received +in reading or from other exterior sources." Your remark is not quite in +accordance with the facts. We must change it to--"I owe all my thoughts, +sermons and ideas to suggestions received from sources outside of myself." +The simplified English of this proposition is--"No man's brains ever +originated an idea." It is an astonishing thing that after all these +ages the world goes on thinking the human brain machinery can originate a +thought. + +It can't. It never has done it. In all cases, little and big, the +thought is born of a suggestion; and in all cases the suggestions come to +the brain from the outside. The brain never acts except from exterior +impulse. + +A man can satisfy himself of the truth of this by a single process,--let +him examine every idea that occurs to him in an hour; a day; in a week +--in a lifetime if he please. He will always find that an outside +something suggested the thought, something which he saw with his eyes or +heard with his ears or perceived by his touch--not necessarily to-day, +nor yesterday, nor last year, nor twenty years ago, but sometime or +other. Usually the source of the suggestion is immediately traceable, +but sometimes it isn't. + +However, if you will examine every thought that occurs to you for the +next two days, you will find that in at least nine cases out of ten you +can put your finger on the outside suggestion--And that ought to convince +you that No. 10 had that source too, although you cannot at present hunt +it down and find it. + +The idea of writing to me would have had to wait a long time if it waited +until your brain originated it. It was born of an outside suggestion +--Sir Thomas and my old Captain. + +The hypnotist thinks he has invented a new thing--suggestion. This is +very sad. I don't know where my captain got his kerosene idea. (It was +forty-one years ago, and he is long ago dead.) But I know that it didn't +originate in his head, but it was born from a suggestion from the +outside. + +Yesterday a guest said, "How did you come to think of writing 'The Prince +and the Pauper?'" I didn't. The thought came to me from the outside +--suggested by that pleasant and picturesque little history-book, Charlotte +M. Yonge's "Little Duke," I doubt if Mrs. Burnett knows whence came to +her the suggestion to write "Little Lord Fauntleroy," but I know; it came +to her from reading "The Prince and the Pauper." In all my life I have +never originated an idea, and neither has she, nor anybody else. + +Man's mind is a clever machine, and can work up materials into ingenious +fancies and ideas, but it can't create the material; none but the gods +can do that. In Sweden I saw a vast machine receive a block of wood, and +turn it into marketable matches in two minutes. It could do everything +but make the wood. That is the kind of machine the human mind is. Maybe +this is not a large compliment, but it is all I can afford..... + Your friend and well-wisher + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in Fair Hawn, Mass.: + + REDDING, CONN, Aug. 12, 1908. +DEAR MRS. ROGERS, I believe I am the wellest man on the planet to-day, +and good for a trip to Fair Haven (which I discussed with the Captain of +the New Bedford boat, who pleasantly accosted me in the Grand Central +August 5) but the doctor came up from New York day before yesterday, and +gave positive orders that I must not stir from here before frost. It is +because I was threatened with a swoon, 10 or 12 days ago, and went to New +York a day or two later to attend my nephew's funeral and got horribly +exhausted by the heat and came back here and had a bilious collapse. In +24 hours I was as sound as a nut again, but nobody believes it but me. + +This is a prodigiously satisfactory place, and I am so glad I don't have +to go back to the turmoil and rush of New York. The house stands high +and the horizons are wide, yet the seclusion is perfect. The nearest +public road is half a mile away, so there is nobody to look in, and I +don't have to wear clothes if I don't want to. I have been down stairs +in night-gown and slippers a couple of hours, and have been photographed +in that costume; but I will dress, now, and behave myself. + +That doctor had half an idea that there is something the matter with my +brain. . . Doctors do know so little and they do charge so much for +it. I wish Henry Rogers would come here, and I wish you would come with +him. You can't rest in that crowded place, but you could rest here, for +sure! I would learn bridge, and entertain you, and rob you. + With love to you both, + Ever yours, + S. L. C. + + + In the foregoing letter we get the first intimation of Mark Twain's + failing health. The nephew who had died was Samuel E. Moffett, son + of Pamela Clemens. Moffett, who was a distinguished journalist--an + editorial writer on Collier's Weekly, a man beloved by all who knew + him--had been drowned in the surf off the Jersey beach. + + + To W. D. Howells, Kittery Point, Maine: + + Aug. 12, '08. +DEAR HOWELLS,--Won't you and Mrs. Howells and Mildred come and give us as +many days as you can spare, and examine John's triumph? It is the most +satisfactory house I am acquainted with, and the most satisfactorily +situated. + +But it is no place to work in, because one is outside of it all the time, +while the sun and the moon are on duty. Outside of it in the loggia, +where the breezes blow and the tall arches divide up the scenery and +frame it. + +It's a ghastly long distance to come, and I wouldn't travel such a +distance to see anything short of a memorial museum, but if you can't +come now you can at least come later when you return to New York, for the +journey will be only an hour and a half per express-train. Things are +gradually and steadily taking shape inside the house, and nature is +taking care of the outside in her ingenious and wonderful fashion--and +she is competent and asks no help and gets none. I have retired from New +York for good, I have retired from labor for good, I have dismissed my +stenographer and have entered upon a holiday whose other end is in the +cemetery. + Yours ever, + MARK. + + + From a gentleman in Buffalo Clemens one day received a letter + inclosing an incompleted list of the world's "One Hundred Greatest + Men," men who had exerted "the largest visible influence on the life + and activities of the race." The writer asked that Mark Twain + examine the list and suggest names, adding "would you include Jesus, + as the founder of Christianity, in the list?" + + To the list of statesmen Clemens added the name of Thomas Paine; to + the list of inventors, Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. The + question he answered in detail. + + + To-----------, Buffalo, N. Y. + + Private. REDDING, CONN, Aug. 28, '08. +DEAR SIR,--By "private," I mean don't print any remarks of mine. + + .................. +I like your list. + +The "largest visible influence." + +These terms require you to add Jesus. And they doubly and trebly require +you to add Satan. From A.D. 350 to A.D. 1850 these gentlemen exercised a +vaster influence over a fifth part of the human race than was exercised +over that fraction of the race by all other influences combined. +Ninety-nine hundredths of this influence proceeded from Satan, the +remaining fraction of it from Jesus. During those 1500 years the fear of +Satan and Hell made 99 Christians where love of God and Heaven landed +one. During those 1500 years, Satan's influence was worth very nearly a +hundred times as much to the business as was the influence of all the +rest of the Holy Family put together. + +You have asked me a question, and I have answered it seriously and +sincerely. You have put in Buddha--a god, with a following, at one time, +greater than Jesus ever had: a god with perhaps a little better evidence +of his godship than that which is offered for Jesus's. How then, in +fairness, can you leave Jesus out? And if you put him in, how can you +logically leave Satan out? Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but +it is the lightning that does the work. + Very truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The "Children's Theatre" of the next letter was an institution of + the New York East Side in which Mark Twain was deeply interested. + The children were most, if not all, of Hebrew parentage, and the + performances they gave, under the direction of Alice M. Herts, were + really remarkable. It seemed a pity that lack of funds should have + brought this excellent educational venture to an untimely end. + + The following letter was in reply to one inclosing a newspaper + clipping reporting a performance of The Prince and the Pauper, given + by Chicago school children. + + + To Mrs. Hookway, in Chicago: + Sept., 1908. +DEAR MRS. HOOKWAY,--Although I am full of the spirit of work this +morning, a rarity with me lately--I must steal a moment or two for a +word in person: for I have been reading the eloquent account in the +Record-Herald and am pleasurably stirred, to my deepest deeps. The +reading brings vividly back to me my pet and pride. The Children's +Theatre of the East side, New York. And it supports and re-affirms what +I have so often and strenuously said in public that a children's theatre +is easily the most valuable adjunct that any educational institution for +the young can have, and that no otherwise good school is complete without +it. + +It is much the most effective teacher of morals and promoter of good +conduct that the ingenuity of man has yet devised, for the reason that +its lessons are not taught wearily by book and by dreary homily, but by +visible and enthusing action; and they go straight to the heart, which is +the rightest of right places for them. Book morals often get no further +than the intellect, if they even get that far on their spectral and +shadowy pilgrimage: but when they travel from a Children's Theatre they +do not stop permanently at that halfway house, but go on home. + +The children's theatre is the only teacher of morals and conduct and high +ideals that never bores the pupil, but always leaves him sorry when the +lesson is over. And as for history, no other teacher is for a moment +comparable to it: no other can make the dead heroes of the world rise up +and shake the dust of the ages from their bones and live and move and +breathe and speak and be real to the looker and listener: no other can +make the study of the lives and times of the illustrious dead a delight, +a splendid interest, a passion; and no other can paint a history-lesson +in colors that will stay, and stay, and never fade. + +It is my conviction that the children's theatre is one of the very, very +great inventions of the twentieth century; and that its vast educational +value--now but dimly perceived and but vaguely understood--will presently +come to be recognized. By the article which I have been reading I find +the same things happening in the Howland School that we have become +familiar with in our Children's Theatre (of which I am President, and +sufficiently vain of the distinction.) These things among others; + +1. The educating history-study does not stop with the little players, +but the whole school catches the infection and revels in it. + +2. And it doesn't even stop there; the children carry it home and infect +the family with it--even the parents and grandparents; and the whole +household fall to studying history, and bygone manners and customs and +costumes with eager interest. And this interest is carried along to the +studying of costumes in old book-plates; and beyond that to the selecting +of fabrics and the making of clothes. Hundreds of our children learn, +the plays by listening without book, and by making notes; then the +listener goes home and plays the piece--all the parts! to the family. +And the family are glad and proud; glad to listen to the explanations and +analyses, glad to learn, glad to be lifted to planes above their dreary +workaday lives. Our children's theatre is educating 7,000 children--and +their families. When we put on a play of Shakespeare they fall to +studying it diligently; so that they may be qualified to enjoy it to the +limit when the piece is staged. + +3. Your Howland School children do the construction-work, +stage-decorations, etc. That is our way too. Our young folks do +everything that is needed by the theatre, with their own hands; +scene-designing, scene-painting, gas-fitting, electric work, +costume-designing--costume making, everything and all things indeed--and +their orchestra and its leader are from their own ranks. + +The article which I have been reading, says--speaking of the historical +play produced by the pupils of the Howland School-- + +"The question naturally arises, What has this drama done for those who so +enthusiastically took part?--The touching story has made a year out of +the Past live for the children as could no chronology or bald statement +of historical events; it has cultivated the fancy and given to the +imagination strength and purity; work in composition has ceased to be +drudgery, for when all other themes fall flat a subject dealing with some +aspect of the drama presented never fails to arouse interest and a rapid +pushing of pens over paper." + +That is entirely true. The interest is not confined to the drama's +story, it spreads out all around the period of the story, and gives to +all the outlying and unrelated happenings of that period a fascinating +interest--an interest which does not fade out with the years, but remains +always fresh, always inspiring, always welcome. History-facts dug by the +job, with sweat and tears out of a dry and spiritless text-book--but +never mind, all who have suffered know what that is. . . + I remain, dear madam, + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Mark Twain had a special fondness for cats. As a boy he always + owned one and it generally had a seat beside him at the table. + There were cats at Quarry Farm and at Hartford, and in the house at + Redding there was a gray mother-cat named Tammany, of which he was + especially fond. Kittens capering about were his chief delight. + In a letter to a Chicago woman he tells how those of Tammany + assisted at his favorite game. + + + To Mrs. Mabel Larkin Patterson, in Chicago: + + REDDING, CONNECTICUT, + Oct. 2, '08. +DEAR MRS. PATTERSON,--The contents of your letter are very pleasant and +very welcome, and I thank you for them, sincerely. If I can find a +photograph of my "Tammany" and her kittens, I will enclose it in this. + +One of them likes to be crammed into a corner-pocket of the billiard +table--which he fits as snugly as does a finger in a glove and then he +watches the game (and obstructs it) by the hour, and spoils many a shot +by putting out his paw and changing the direction of a passing ball. +Whenever a ball is in his arms, or so close to him that it cannot be +played upon without risk of hurting him, the player is privileged to +remove it to anyone of the 3 spots that chances to be vacant. + +Ah, no, my lecturing days are over for good and all. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The letter to Howells which follows was written a short time before + the passage of the copyright extension bill, which rendered Mark + Twain's new plan, here mentioned, unneeded--at least for the time. + + + To W. D. Howells, in New York: + + Monday, Oct. 26, '08. +Oh, I say! Where are you hiding, and why are you hiding? You promised +to come here and you didn't keep your word. (This sounds like +astonishment--but don't be misled by that.) + +Come, fire up again on your fiction-mill and give us another good +promise. And this time keep it--for it is your turn to be astonished. +Come and stay as long as you possibly can. I invented a new copyright +extension scheme last Friday, and sat up all night arranging its details. +It will interest you. Yesterday I got it down on paper in as compact a +form as I could. Harvey and I have examined the scheme, and to-morrow or +next day he will send me a couple of copyright-experts to arrange about +getting certain statistics for me. + +Authors, publishers and the public have always been damaged by the +copyright laws. The proposed amendment will advantage all three--the +public most of all. I think Congress will pass it and settle the vexed +question permanently. + +I shall need your assent and the assent of about a dozen other authors. +Also the assent of all the large firms of the 300 publishers. These +authors and publishers will furnish said assent I am sure. Not even the +pirates will be able to furnish a serious objection, I think. + +Come along. This place seemed at its best when all around was +summer-green; later it seemed at its best when all around was burning +with the autumn splendors; and now once more it seems at its best, with +the trees naked and the ground a painter's palette. + Yours ever, + MARK. + + + Clemens was a great admirer of the sea stories of W. W. Jacobs and + generally kept one or more of this author's volumes in reach of his + bed, where most of his reading was done. The acknowledgment that + follows was sent when he had finished Salthaven. + + + To W. W. Jacobs, in England: + + REDDING, CONN, + Oct. 28, '08. +DEAR MR. JACOBS,--It has a delightful look. I will not venture to say +how delightful, because the words would sound extravagant, and would +thereby lose some of their strength and to that degree misrepresent me. +It is my conviction that Dialstone Lane holds the supremacy over all +purely humorous books in our language, but I feel about Salthaven as the +Cape Cod poet feels about Simon Hanks: + + "The Lord knows all things, great and small, + With doubt he's not perplexed: + 'Tis Him alone that knows it all + But Simon Hanks comes next." + +The poet was moved by envy and malice and jealousy, but I am not: I place +Salthaven close up next to Dialstone because I think it has a fair and +honest right to that high position. I have kept the other book moving; +I shall begin to hand this one around now. + +And many thanks to you for remembering me. + +This house is out in the solitudes of the woods and the hills, an hour +and a half from New York, and I mean to stay in it winter and summer the +rest of my days. I beg you to come and help occupy it a few days the +next time you visit the U.S. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + One of the attractions of Stormfield was a beautiful mantel in the + billiard room, presented by the Hawaiian Promotion Committee. It + had not arrived when the rest of the house was completed, but came + in time to be set in place early in the morning of the owner's + seventy-third birthday. It was made of a variety of Hawaiian woods, + and was the work of a native carver, F. M. Otremba. Clemens was + deeply touched by the offering from those "western isles"--the + memory of which was always so sweet to him. + + + To Mr. Wood, in Hawaii: + + Nov. 30, '08. +DEAR MR. WOOD,--The beautiful mantel was put in its place an hour ago, +and its friendly "Aloha" was the first uttered greeting my 73rd birthday +received. It is rich in color, rich in quality, and rich in decoration, +therefore it exactly harmonizes with the taste for such things which was +born in me and which I have seldom been able to indulge to my content. +It will be a great pleasure to me, daily renewed, to have under my eye +this lovely reminder of the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored +in any ocean, and I beg to thank the Committee for providing me that +pleasure. + Sincerely Yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + + +XLVII + +LETTERS, 1909. TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. LIFE AT STORMFIELD. COPYRIGHT +EXTENSION. DEATH OF JEAN CLEMENS + + Clemens remained at Stormfield all that winter. New York was sixty + miles away and he did not often care to make the journey. He was + constantly invited to this or that public gathering, or private + party, but such affairs had lost interest for him. He preferred the + quiet of his luxurious home with its beautiful outlook, while for + entertainment he found the billiard afternoons sufficient. Guests + came from the city, now and again, for week-end visits, and if he + ever was restless or lonely he did not show it. + + Among the invitations that came was one from General O. O. Howard + asking him to preside at a meeting to raise an endowment fund for a + Lincoln Memorial University at Cumberland Gap, Tennessee. Closing + his letter, General Howard said, "Never mind if you did fight on the + other side." + + + To General O. O. Howard: + + STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONNECTICUT, + Jan, 12, '09. +DEAR GENERAL HOWARD,--You pay me a most gratifying compliment in asking +me to preside, and it causes me very real regret that I am obliged to +decline, for the object of the meeting appeals strongly to me, since that +object is to aid in raising the $500,000 Endowment Fund for Lincoln +Memorial University. The Endowment Fund will be the most fitting of all +the memorials the country will dedicate to the memory of Lincoln, +serving, as it will, to uplift his very own people. + +I hope you will meet with complete success, and I am sorry I cannot be +there to witness it and help you rejoice. But I am older than people +think, and besides I live away out in the country and never stir from +home, except at geological intervals, to fill left-over engagements in +mesozoic times when I was younger and indiscreeter. + +You ought not to say sarcastic things about my "fighting on the other +side." General Grant did not act like that. General Grant paid me +compliments. He bracketed me with Zenophon--it is there in his Memoirs +for anybody to read. He said if all the confederate soldiers had +followed my example and adopted my military arts he could never have +caught enough of them in a bunch to inconvenience the Rebellion. General +Grant was a fair man, and recognized my worth; but you are prejudiced, +and you have hurt my feelings. + But I have an affection for you, anyway. + MARK TWAIN. + + + One of Mark Twain's friends was Henniker-Heaton, the so-called + "Father of Penny Postage" between England and America. When, after + long years of effort, he succeeded in getting the rate established, + he at once bent his energies in the direction of cheap cable service + and a letter from him came one day to Stormfield concerning his new + plans. This letter happened to be over-weight, which gave Mark + Twain a chance for some amusing exaggerations at his expense. + + + To Henniker-Heaton, in London: + + STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONNECTICUT, + Jan. 18, 1909. +DEAR HENNIKER-HEATON,--I do hope you will succeed to your heart's desire +in your cheap-cablegram campaign, and I feel sure you will. Indeed your +cheap-postage victory, achieved in spite of a quarter-century of +determined opposition, is good and rational prophecy that you will. +Wireless, not being as yet imprisoned in a Chinese wall of private cash +and high-placed and formidable influence, will come to your aid and make +your new campaign briefer and easier than the other one was. + +Now then, after uttering my serious word, am I privileged to be frivolous +for a moment? When you shall have achieved cheap telegraphy, are you +going to employ it for just your own selfish profit and other people's +pecuniary damage, the way you are doing with your cheap postage? You get +letter-postage reduced to 2 cents an ounce, then you mail me a 4-ounce +letter with a 2-cent stamp on it, and I have to pay the extra freight at +this end of the line. I return your envelope for inspection. Look at +it. Stamped in one place is a vast "T," and under it the figures "40," +and under those figures appears an "L," a sinister and suspicious and +mysterious L. In another place, stamped within a circle, in offensively +large capitals, you find the words "DUE 8 CENTS." Finally, in the midst +of a desert space up nor-noreastard from that circle you find a figure +"3" of quite unnecessarily aggressive and insolent magnitude--and done +with a blue pencil, so as to be as conspicuous as possible. I inquired +about these strange signs and symbols of the postman. He said they were +P. O. Department signals for his instruction. + +"Instruction for what?" + +"To get extra postage." + +"Is it so? Explain. Tell me about the large T and the 40. + +"It's short for Take 40--or as we postmen say, grab 40" + +Go on, please, while I think up some words to swear with." + +"Due 8 means, grab 8 more." + +"Continue." + +"The blue-pencil 3 was an afterthought. There aren't any stamps for +afterthoughts; the sums vary, according to inspiration, and they whirl in +the one that suggests itself at the last moment. Sometimes they go +several times higher than this one. This one only means hog 3 cents +more. And so if you've got 51 cents about you, or can borrow it--" + +"Tell me: who gets this corruption?" + +"Half of it goes to the man in England who ships the letter on short +postage, and the other half goes to the P.O.D. to protect cheap postage +from inaugurating a deficit." + +"-------------------" + +"I can't blame you; I would say it myself in your place, if these ladies +were not present. But you see I'm only obeying orders, I can't help +myself." + +"Oh, I know it; I'm not blaming you. Finally, what does that L stand +for?" + +"Get the money, or give him L. It's English, you know." + +"Take it and go. It's the last cent I've got in the world--." + +After seeing the Oxford pageant file by the grand stand, picture after +picture, splendor after splendor, three thousand five hundred strong, the +most moving and beautiful and impressive and historically-instructive +show conceivable, you are not to think I would miss the London pageant of +next year, with its shining host of 15,000 historical English men and +women dug from the misty books of all the vanished ages and marching in +the light of the sun--all alive, and looking just as they were used to +look! Mr. Lascelles spent yesterday here on the farm, and told me all +about it. I shall be in the middle of my 75th year then, and interested +in pageants for personal and prospective reasons. + +I beg you to give my best thanks to the Bath Club for the offer of its +hospitalities, but I shall not be able to take advantage of it, because I +am to be a guest in a private house during my stay in London. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + It was in 1907 that Clemens had seen the Oxford Pageant--during the + week when he had been awarded his doctor's degree. It gave him the + greatest delight, and he fully expected to see the next one, planned + for 1910. + + In the letter to Howells which follows we get another glimpse of + Mark Twain's philosophy of man, the irresponsible machine. + + + To W. D. Howells, in New York: + + STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONN., + Jan. 18, '09. +DEAR HOWELLS,--I have to write a line, lazy as I am, to say how your Poe +article delighted me; and to say that I am in agreement with +substantially all you say about his literature. To me his prose is +unreadable--like Jane Austin's. No, there is a difference. I could read +his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It +seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death. + +Another thing: you grant that God and circumstances sinned against Poe, +but you also grant that he sinned against himself--a thing which he +couldn't do and didn't do. + +It is lively up here now. I wish you could come. + Yrs ever, + MARK + + + To W. D. Howells, in New York: + + STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONNECTICUT, + 3 in the morning, Apl. 17, '09. + [Written with pencil]. +My pen has gone dry and the ink is out of reach. Howells, Did you write +me day-before-day before yesterday, or did I dream it? In my mind's eye +I most vividly see your hand-write on a square blue envelop in the +mailpile. I have hunted the house over, but there is no such letter. +Was it an illusion? + +I am reading Lowell's letter, and smoking. I woke an hour ago and am +reading to keep from wasting the time. On page 305, vol. I. I have +just margined a note: + +"Young friend! I like that! You ought to see him now." + +It seemed startlingly strange to hear a person call you young. It was a +brick out of a blue sky, and knocked me groggy for a moment. Ah me, the +pathos of it is, that we were young then. And he--why, so was he, but he +didn't know it. He didn't even know it 9 years later, when we saw him +approaching and you warned me, saying, "Don't say anything about age--he +has just turned fifty, and thinks he is old and broods over it." + +[Well, Clara did sing! And you wrote her a dear letter.] + +Time to go to sleep. + Yours ever, + MARK. + + + To Daniel Kiefer: + + [No date.] +DANL KIEFER ESQ. DEAR SIR,--I should be far from willing to have a +political party named after me. + +I would not be willing to belong to a party which allowed its members to +have political aspirations or to push friends forward for political +preferment. + Yours very truly, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + The copyright extension, for which the author had been working so + long, was granted by Congress in 1909, largely as the result of that + afternoon in Washington when Mark Twain had "received" in "Uncle + Joe" Cannon's private room, and preached the gospel of copyright + until the daylight faded and the rest of the Capitol grew still. + Champ Clark was the last to linger that day and they had talked far + into the dusk. Clark was powerful, and had fathered the bill. Now + he wrote to know if it was satisfactory. + + + To Champ Clark, in Washington: + + STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONN., June 5, '09. +DEAR CHAMP CLARK--Is the new copyright law acceptable to me? +Emphatically, yes! Clark, it is the only sane, and clearly defined, and +just and righteous copyright law that has ever existed in the United +States. Whosoever will compare it with its predecessors will have no +trouble in arriving at that decision. + +The bill which was before the committee two years ago when I was down +there was the most stupefying jumble of conflicting and apparently +irreconcilable interests that was ever seen; and we all said "the case is +hopeless, absolutely hopeless--out of this chaos nothing can be built." +But we were in error; out of that chaotic mass this excellent bill has +been instructed; the warring interests have been reconciled, and the +result is as comely and substantial a legislative edifice as lifts its +domes and towers and protective lightning rods out of the statute book, +I think. When I think of that other bill, which even the Deity couldn't +understand, and of this one which even I can understand, I take off my +hat to the man or men who devised this one. Was it R. U. Johnson? Was +it the Author's League? Was it both together? I don't know, but I take +off my hat, anyway. Johnson has written a valuable article about the new +law--I enclose it. + +At last--at last and for the first time in copyright history we are ahead +of England! Ahead of her in two ways: by length of time and by fairness +to all interests concerned. Does this sound like shouting? Then I must +modify it: all we possessed of copyright-justice before the fourth of +last March we owed to England's initiative. + Truly Yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Because Mark Twain amused himself with certain aspects of Christian + Science, and was critical of Mrs. Eddy, there grew up a wide + impression that he jeered at the theory of mental healing; when, as + a matter of fact, he was one of its earliest converts, and never + lost faith in its power. The letter which follows is an excellent + exposition of his attitude toward the institution of Christian + Science and the founder of the church in America. + + + To J. Wylie Smith, Glasgow, Scotland: + + "STORMFIELD," August 7, 1909 +DEAR SIR,--My view of the matter has not changed. To wit, that Christian +Science is valuable; that it has just the same value now that it had when +Mrs. Eddy stole it from Quimby; that its healing principle (its most +valuable asset) possesses the same force now that it possessed a million +years ago before Quimby was born; that Mrs. Eddy. . . organized that +force, and is entitled to high credit for that. Then, with a splendid +sagacity she hitched it to. . . a religion, the surest of all ways to +secure friends for it, and support. In a fine and lofty way +--figuratively speaking--it was a tramp stealing a ride on the lightning +express. Ah, how did that ignorant village-born peasant woman know the +human being so well? She has no more intellect than a tadpole--until it +comes to business then she is a marvel! Am I sorry I wrote the book? +Most certainly not. You say you have 500 (converts) in Glasgow. Fifty +years from now, your posterity will not count them by the hundred, but by +the thousand. I feel absolutely sure of this. + Very truly yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Clemens wrote very little for publication that year, but he enjoyed + writing for his own amusement, setting down the things that boiled, + or bubbled, within him: mainly chapters on the inconsistencies of + human deportment, human superstition and human creeds. The "Letters + from the Earth" referred to in the following, were supposed to have + been written by an immortal visitant from some far realm to a + friend, describing the absurdities of mankind. It is true, as he + said, that they would not do for publication, though certainly the + manuscript contains some of his mgt delicious writing. Miss + Wallace, to whom the next letter is written, had known Mark Twain in + Bermuda, and, after his death, published a dainty volume entitled + Mark Twain in the Happy Island. + + + "STORMFIELD," REDDING, CONNECTICUT, + Nov. 13, '09. +DEAR BETSY,--I've been writing "Letters from the Earth," and if you will +come here and see us I will--what? Put the MS in your hands, with the +places to skip marked? No. I won't trust you quite that far. I'll read +messages to you. This book will never be published--in fact it couldn't +be, because it would be felony to soil the mails with it, for it has much +Holy Scripture in it of the kind that . . . can't properly be read +aloud, except from the pulpit and in family worship. Paine enjoys it, +but Paine is going to be damned one of these days, I suppose. + +The autumn splendors passed you by? What a pity. I wish you had been +here. It was beyond words! It was heaven and hell and sunset and +rainbows and the aurora all fused into one divine harmony, and you +couldn't look at it and keep the tears back. All the hosannahing strong +gorgeousnesses have gone back to heaven and hell and the pole, now, but +no matter; if you could look out of my bedroom window at this moment, you +would choke up; and when you got your voice you would say: This is not +real, this is a dream. Such a singing together, and such a whispering +together, and such a snuggling together of cosy soft colors, and such +kissing and caressing, and such pretty blushing when the sun breaks out +and catches those dainty weeds at it--you remember that weed-garden of +mine?--and then--then the far hills sleeping in a dim blue trance--oh, +hearing about it is nothing, you should be here to see it. + +Good! I wish I could go on the platform and read. And I could, if it +could be kept out of the papers. There's a charity-school of 400 young +girls in Boston that I would give my ears to talk to, if I had some more; +but--oh, well, I can't go, and it's no use to grieve about it. + +This morning Jean went to town; also Paine; also the butler; also Katy; +also the laundress. The cook and the maid, and the boy and the +roustabout and Jean's coachman are left--just enough to make it lonesome, +because they are around yet never visible. However, the Harpers are +sending Leigh up to play billiards; therefore I shall survive. + Affectionately, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Early in June that year, Clemens had developed unmistakable symptoms + of heart trouble of a very serious nature. It was angina pectoris, + and while to all appearances he was as well as ever and usually felt + so, he was periodically visited by severe attacks of acute "breast + pains" which, as the months passed, increased in frequency and + severity. He was alarmed and distressed--not on his own account, + but because of his daughter Jean--a handsome girl, who had long been + subject to epileptic seizures. In case of his death he feared that + Jean would be without permanent anchorage, his other daughter, + Clara--following her marriage to Ossip Gabrilowitsch in October + --having taken up residence abroad. + + This anxiety was soon ended. On the morning of December 24th, jean + Clemens was found dead in her apartment. She was not drowned in her + bath, as was reported, but died from heart exhaustion, the result of + her malady and the shock of cold water. + [Questionable diagnosis! D.W.] + + The blow to her father was terrible, but heavy as it was, one may + perhaps understand that her passing in that swift, painless way must + have afforded him a measure of relief. + + + To Mrs. Gabrilowitsch, in Europe: + + REDDING, CONN., + Dec. 29, '09. +O, Clara, Clara dear, I am so glad she is out of it and safe--safe! I am +not melancholy; I shall never be melancholy again, I think. You see, I +was in such distress when I came to realize that you were gone far away +and no one stood between her and danger but me--and I could die at any +moment, and then--oh then what would become of her! For she was wilful, +you know, and would not have been governable. + +You can't imagine what a darling she was, that last two or three days; +and how fine, and good, and sweet, and noble-and joyful, thank Heaven! +--and how intellectually brilliant. I had never been acquainted with +Jean before. I recognized that. + +But I mustn't try to write about her--I can't. I have already poured my +heart out with the pen, recording that last day or two. + +I will send you that--and you must let no one but Ossip read it. + +Good-bye. + I love you so! + And Ossip. + FATHER. + + +The writing mentioned in the last paragraph was his article 'The Death of +Jean,' his last serious writing, and one of the world's most beautiful +examples of elegiac prose.--[Harper's Magazine, Dec., 1910,] and later in +the volume, 'What Is Man and Other Essays.' + + + + +XLVIII + +LETTERS OF 1910. LAST TRIP TO BERMUDA. LETTERS TO PAINE. +THE LAST LETTER + + Mark Twain had returned from a month's trip to Bermuda a few days + before Jean died. Now, by his physician's advice, he went back to + those balmy islands. He had always loved them, since his first trip + there with Twichell thirty-three years earlier, and at "Bay House," + the residence of Vice-Consul Allen, where he was always a welcome + guest, he could have the attentions and care and comforts of a home. + Taking Claude, the butler, as his valet, he sailed January 5th, and + presently sent back a letter in which he said, "Again I am leading + the ideal life, and am immeasurably content." + + By his wish, the present writer and his family were keeping the + Stormfield house open for him, in order that he might be able to + return to its comforts at any time. He sent frequent letters--one + or two by each steamer--but as a rule they did not concern matters + of general interest. A little after his arrival, however, he wrote + concerning an incident of his former visit--a trivial matter--but + one which had annoyed him. I had been with him in Bermuda on the + earlier visit, and as I remember it, there had been some slight + oversight on his part in the matter of official etiquette--something + which doubtless no one had noticed but himself. + + + To A. B. Paine, in Redding: + + BAY HOUSE, Jan. 11, 1910. + +DEAR PAINE,--. . . There was a military lecture last night at the +Officer's Mess, prospect, and as the lecturer honored me with a special +and urgent invitation and said he wanted to lecture to me particularly, +I being "the greatest living master of the platform-art," I naturally +packed Helen and her mother into the provided carriage and went. + +As soon as we landed at the door with the crowd the Governor came to me +at once and was very cordial, and apparently as glad to see me as he said +he was. So that incident is closed. And pleasantly and entirely +satisfactorily. Everything is all right, now, and I am no longer in a +clumsy and awkward situation. + +I "met up" with that charming Colonel Chapman, and other officers of the +regiment, and had a good time. + +Commandant Peters of the "Carnegie" will dine here tonight and arrange a +private visit for us to his ship, the crowd to be denied access. + Sincerely Yours, + S. L. C. + + + "Helen" of this letter was Mr. and Mrs. Allen's young daughter, + a favorite companion of his walks and drives. "Loomis" and "Lark," + mentioned in the letters which follow, were Edward E. Loomis--his + nephew by marriage--named by Mark Twain as one of the trustees of + his estate, and Charles T. Lark, Mark Twain's attorney. + + + To A. B. Paine, in Redding: + + HAMILTON, Jan. 21, '10. +DEAR PAINE,--Thanks for your letter, and for its contenting news of the +situation in that foreign and far-off and vaguely-remembered country +where you and Loomis and Lark and other beloved friends are. + +I have a letter from Clara this morning. She is solicitous, and wants me +well and watchfully taken care of. My, she ought to see Helen and her +parents and Claude administer that trust! + +Also she says: "I hope to hear from you or Mr. Paine very soon." + +I am writing her, and I know you will respond to your part of her prayer. +She is pretty desolate now, after Jean's emancipation--the only kindness +God ever did that poor unoffending child in all her hard life. + Ys ever + S. L. C. + + + Send Clara a copy of Howells's gorgeous letter. I want a copy of my + article that he is speaking of. + + + The "gorgeous letter" was concerning Mark Twain's article, "The + Turning-point in My Life" which had just appeared in one of the + Harper publications. Howells wrote of it, "While your wonderful + words are warm in my mind yet, I want to tell you what you know + already: that you never wrote anything greater, finer, than that + turning-point paper of yours." + + From the early Bermuda letters we may gather that Mark Twain's days + were enjoyable enough, and that his malady was not giving him + serious trouble, thus far. Near the end of January he wrote: "Life + continues here the same as usual. There isn't a flaw in it. Good + times, good home, tranquil contentment all day and every day, + without a break. I shouldn't know how to go about bettering my + situation." He did little in the way of literary work, probably + finding neither time nor inclination for it. When he wrote at all + it was merely to set down some fanciful drolleries with no thought + of publication. + + + To Prof. William Lyon Phelps, Yale College: + + HAMILTON, March 12. +DEAR PROFESSOR PHELPS,--I thank you ever so much for the book--[Professor +Phelps's Essays on Modern Novelists.]--which I find charming--so charming +indeed, that I read it through in a single night, and did not regret the +lost night's sleep. I am glad if I deserve what you have said about me: +and even if I don't I am proud and well contented, since you think I +deserve it. + +Yes, I saw Prof. Lounsbury, and had a most pleasant time with him. He +ought to have staid longer in this little paradise--partly for his own +sake, but mainly for mine. + +I knew my poor Jean had written you. I shall not have so dear and sweet +a secretary again. + +Good health to you, and all good fortune attend you. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + He would appear to have written not many letters besides those to + Mrs. Gabrilowitsch and to Stormfield, but when a little girl sent + him a report of a dream, inspired by reading The Prince and the + Pauper, he took the time and trouble to acknowledge it, realizing, + no doubt, that a line from him would give the child happiness. + + + To Miss Sulamith, in New York: + + "BAY HOUSE," BERMUDA, March 21, 1910. +DEAR MISS SULAMITH,--I think it is a remarkable dream for a girl of 13 to +have dreamed, in fact for a person of any age to have dreamed, because it +moves by regular grade and sequence from the beginning to the end, which +is not the habit of dreams. I think your report of it is a good piece of +work, a clear and effective statement of the vision. + +I am glad to know you like the "Prince and the Pauper" so well and I +believe with you that the dream is good evidence of that liking. I think +I may say, with your sister that I like myself best when I am serious. + Sincerely yours, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + Through February, and most of March, letters and reports from him + were about the same. He had begun to plan for his return, and + concerning amusements at Stormfield for the entertainment of the + neighbors, and for the benefit of the library which he had founded + soon after his arrival in Redding. In these letters he seldom + mentioned the angina pains that had tortured him earlier. But once, + when he sent a small photograph of himself, it seemed to us that his + face had become thin and that he had suffered. Certainly his next + letter was not reassuring. + + + To A. B. Paine, in Redding: + +DEAR PAINE,--We must look into the magic-lantern business. Maybe the +modern lantern is too elaborate and troublesome for back-settlement use, +but we can inquire. We must have some kind of a show at "Stormfield" to +entertain the countryside with. + +We are booked to sail in the "Bermudian" April 23rd, but don't tell +anybody, I don't want it known. I may have to go sooner if the pain in +my breast doesn't mend its ways pretty considerably. I don't want to die +here for this is an unkind place for a person in that condition. I +should have to lie in the undertaker's cellar until the ship would remove +me and it is dark down there and unpleasant. + +The Colliers will meet me on the pier and I may stay with them a week or +two before going home. It all depends on the breast pain--I don't want +to die there. I am growing more and more particular about the place. + With love, + S. L. C. + + + This letter had been written by the hand of his "secretary," Helen + Allen: writing had become an effort to him. Yet we did not suspect + how rapidly the end was approaching and only grew vaguely alarmed. + A week later, however, it became evident that his condition was + critical. + + +DEAR PAINE,--. . . . I have been having a most uncomfortable time for +the past 4 days with that breast-pain, which turns out to be an affection +of the heart, just as I originally suspected. The news from New York is +to the effect that non-bronchial weather has arrived there at last, +therefore if I can get my breast trouble in traveling condition I may +sail for home a week or two earlier than has heretofore been proposed: + Yours as ever + S. L. CLEMENS, + (per H. S. A.) + + + In this letter he seems to have forgotten that his trouble had been + pronounced an affection of the heart long before he left America, + though at first it had been thought that it might be gastritis. + The same mail brought a letter from Mr. Allen explaining fully the + seriousness of his condition. I sailed immediately for Bermuda, + arriving there on the 4th of April. He was not suffering at the + moment, though the pains came now with alarming frequency and + violence. He was cheerful and brave. He did not complain. He gave + no suggestion of a man whose days were nearly ended. + + A part of the Stormfield estate had been a farm, which he had given + to Jean Clemens, where she had busied herself raising some live + stock and poultry. After her death he had wished the place to be + sold and the returns devoted to some memorial purpose. The sale had + been made during the winter and the price received had been paid in + cash. I found him full of interest in all affairs, and anxious to + discuss the memorial plan. A day or two later he dictated the + following letter-the last he would ever send. + + It seemed fitting that this final word from one who had so long + given happiness to the whole world should record a special gift to + his neighbors. + + + To Charles T. Lark, in New York: + + HAMILTON, BERMUDA. + April 6, 1910. +DEAR MR. LARK,--I have told Paine that I want the money derived from the +sale of the farm, which I had given, but not conveyed, to my daughter +Jean, to be used to erect a building for the Mark Twain Library of +Redding, the building to be called the Jean L. Clemens Memorial Building. + +I wish to place the money $6,000.00 in the hands of three trustees, +--Paine and two others: H. A. Lounsbury and William E. Hazen, all of +Redding, these trustees to form a building Committee to decide on the +size and plan of the building needed and to arrange for and supervise the +work in such a manner that the fund shall amply provide for the building +complete, with necessary furnishings, leaving, if possible, a balance +remaining, sufficient for such repairs and additional furnishings as may +be required for two years from the time of completion. + +Will you please draw a document covering these requirements and have it +ready by the time I reach New York (April 14th). + Very sincerely, + S. L. CLEMENS. + + + We sailed on the 12th of April, reaching New York on the 14th, + as he had planned. A day or two later, Mr. and Mrs. Gabrilowitsch, + summoned from Italy by cable, arrived. He suffered very little + after reaching Stormfield, and his mind was comparatively clear up + to the last day. On the afternoon of April 21st he sank into a + state of coma, and just at sunset he died. Three days later, at + Elmira, New York, he was laid beside Mrs. Clemens and those others + who had preceded him. + + + + + THE LAST DAY AT STORMFIELD + + By BLISS CARMAN. + + At Redding, Connecticut, + The April sunrise pours + Over the hardwood ridges + Softening and greening now + In the first magic of Spring. + + The wild cherry-trees are in bloom, + The bloodroot is white underfoot, + The serene early light flows on, + Touching with glory the world, + And flooding the large upper room + Where a sick man sleeps. + Slowly he opens his eyes, + After long weariness, smiles, + And stretches arms overhead, + While those about him take heart. + + With his awakening strength, + (Morning and spring in the air, + The strong clean scents of earth, + The call of the golden shaft, + Ringing across the hills) + He takes up his heartening book, + Opens the volume and reads, + A page of old rugged Carlyle, + The dour philosopher + Who looked askance upon life, + Lurid, ironical, grim, + Yet sound at the core. + But weariness returns; + He lays the book aside + With his glasses upon the bed, + And gladly sleeps. Sleep, + Blessed abundant sleep, + Is all that he needs. + + And when the close of day + Reddens upon the hills + And washes the room with rose, + In the twilight hush + The Summoner comes to him + Ever so gently, unseen, + Touches him on the shoulder; + And with the departing sun + Our great funning friend is gone. + + How he has made us laugh! + A whole generation of men + Smiled in the joy of his wit. + But who knows whether he was not + Like those deep jesters of old + Who dwelt at the courts of Kings, + Arthur's, Pendragon's, Lear's, + Plying the wise fool's trade, + Making men merry at will, + Hiding their deeper thoughts + Under a motley array,-- + Keen-eyed, serious men, + Watching the sorry world, + The gaudy pageant of life, + With pity and wisdom and love? + + Fearless, extravagant, wild, + His caustic merciless mirth + Was leveled at pompous shams. + Doubt not behind that mask + There dwelt the soul of a man, + Resolute, sorrowing, sage, + As sure a champion of good + As ever rode forth to fray. + + Haply--who knows?--somewhere + In Avalon, Isle of Dreams, + In vast contentment at last, + With every grief done away, + While Chaucer and Shakespeare wait, + And Moliere hangs on his words, + And Cervantes not far off + Listens and smiles apart, + With that incomparable drawl + He is jesting with Dagonet now. + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete +by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + + + + + + + + APPENDIX X + + A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF MARK TWAIN'S WORK + + PUBLISHED AND OTHERWISE--FROM 1851-1910 + + BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE + + +Note 1.--This is not a detailed bibliography, but merely a general list +of Mark Twain's literary undertakings, in the order of performance, +showing when, and usually where, the work was done, when and where first +published, etc. An excellent Mark Twain bibliography has been compiled +by Mr. Merle Johnson, to whom acknowledgments are due for important +items. + +Note 2.--Only a few of the more important speeches are noted. Volumes +that are merely collections of tales or articles are not noted. + +Note 3.--Titles are shortened to those most commonly in use, as "Huck +Finn" or "Huck" for "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." + +Names of periodicals are abbreviated. + +The initials U. E. stand for the "Uniform Edition" of Mark Twain's +works. + + + + 1851. + +Edited the Hannibal Journal during the absence of the owner and editor, +Orion Clemens. +Wrote local items for the Hannibal Journal. +Burlesque of a rival editor in the Hannibal Journal. +Wrote two sketches for The Sat. Eve. Post (Philadelphia). +To MARY IN H-l. Hannibal Journal. + + + 1852-53. + +JIM WOLFE AND THE FIRE--Hannibal Journal. +Burlesque of a rival editor in the Hannibal Journal. + + + 1853. + +Wrote obituary poems--not published. +Wrote first letters home. + + + 1855-56. + +First after-dinner speech; delivered at a printers' banquet in Keokuk, +Iowa. +Letters from Cincinnati, November 16, 1856, signed "Snodgrass"-- +Saturday Post (Keokuk). + + 1857. + +Letters from Cincinnati, March 16, 1857, signed "Snodgrass"--Saturday +Post (Keokuk). + + + 1858. + +Anonymous contributions to the New Orleans Crescent and probably to St. +Louis papers. + + + 1859. + +Burlesque of Capt. Isaiah Sellers--True Delta (New Orleans), May 8 or 9. + + + 1861. + +Letters home, published in The Gate City (Keokuk). + + + 1862. + +Letters and sketches, signed "Josh," for the Territorial Enterprise +(Virginia City, Nevada). +REPORT OF THE LECTURE OF PROF. PERSONAL PRONOUN--Enterprise. +REPORT OF A FOURTH OF JULY ORATION--Enterprise. +THE PETRIFIED MAN--Enterprise. +Local news reporter for the Enterprise from August. + + + 1863. + +Reported the Nevada Legislature for the Enterprise. +First used the name "Mark Twain," February 2. +ADVICE TO THE UNRELIABLE--Enterprise. +CURING A COLD--Enterprise. U. E. +INFORMATION FOR THE MILLION--Enterprise. +ADVICE TO GOOD LITTLE GIRLS--Enterprise. +THE DUTCH NICK MASSACRE--Enterprise. +Many other Enterprise sketches. +THE AGED PILOT MAN (poem)--" ROUGHING IT." U. E. + + + 1864. + +Reported the Nevada Legislature for the Enterprise. +Speech as "Governor of the Third House." +Letters to New York Sunday Mercury. +Local reporter on the San Francisco Call. +Articles and sketches for the Golden Era. +Articles and sketches for the Californian. +Daily letters from San Francisco to the Enterprise. +(Several of the Era and Californian sketches appear in SKETCHES NEW AND +OLD. U. E.) + + + 1865. + +Notes for the Jumping Frog story; Angel's Camp, February. +Sketches etc., for the Golden Era and Californian. +Daily letter to the Enterprise. +THE JUMPING FROG (San Francisco)Saturday Press. New York, +November 18. U. E. + + + 1866. + +Daily letter to the Enterprise. +Sandwich Island letters to the Sacramento Union. +Lecture on the Sandwich Islands, San Francisco, October 2. +FORTY-THREE DAYS IN AN OPEN BOAT--Harper's Magazine, December (error in +signature made it Mark Swain). + + + 1867. + +Letters to Alta California from New York. +JIM WOLFE AND THE CATS--N. Y. Sunday Mercury. +THE JUMPING FROG--book, published by Charles Henry Webb, May 1. U. E. +Lectured at Cooper Union, May, '66. +Letters to Alta California and New York Tribune from the Quaker City-- +Holy Land excursion. +Letter to New York Herald on the return from the Holy Land. +After-dinner speech on "Women" (Washington). +Began arrangement for the publication of THE INNOCENTS ABROAD. + + + 1868. + +Newspaper letters, etc., from Washington, for New York Citizen, Tribune, +Herald, and other papers and periodicals. +Preparing Quaker City letters (in Washington and San Francisco) for book +publication. +CAPTAIN WAKEMAN'S (STORMFIELD'S) VISIT TO HEAVEN (San Francisco), +published Harper's Magazine, December, 1907-January, 1908 (also book, +Harpers). +Lectured in California and Nevada on the "Holy Land," July 2. +S'CAT! Anonymous article on T. K. Beecher (Elmira), published in local +paper. +Lecture-tour, season 1868-69. + + + 1869. + +THE INNOCENTS ABROAD--book (Am. Pub. Co.), July 20. U. E. +Bought one-third ownership in the Buffalo Express. +Contributed editorials, sketches, etc., to the Express. +Contributed sketches to Packard's Monthly, Wood's Magazine, etc. +Lecture-tour, season 1869-70. + + + 1870. + +Contributed various matter to Buffalo Express. +Contributed various matter under general head of "MEMORANDA" to Galaxy +Magazine, May to April, '71. +ROUGHING IT begun in September (Buffalo). +SHEM'S DIARY (Buffalo) (unfinished). +GOD, ANCIENT AND MODERN (unpublished). + + + 1871. + +MEMORANDA continued in Galaxy to April. +AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND FIRST ROMANCE--[THE FIRST ROMANCE had appeared in the +Express in 1870. Later included in SKETCHES.]--booklet (Sheldon & Co.). +U. E. +ROUGHING IT finished (Quarry Farm). +Ruloff letter--Tribune. +Wrote several sketches and lectures (Quarry Farm). +Western play (unfinished). +Lecture-tour, season 1871-72. + + + 1872. + +ROUGHING IT--book (Am. Pub. Co.), February. U. E. +THE MARK TWAIN SCRAP-BOOK invented (Saybrook, Connecticut). +TOM SAWYER begun as a play (Saybrook, Connecticut). +A few unimportant sketches published in "Practical jokes," etc. +Began a book on England (London). + + + 1873. + +Letters on the Sandwich Islands-Tribune, January 3 and 6. +THE GILDED AGE (with C. D. Warner)--book (Am. Pub. Co), December. U. E. +THE LICENSE OF THE PRESS--paper for The Monday Evening Club. +Lectured in London, October 18 and season 1873-74. + + + 1874. + +TOM SAWYER continued (in the new study at Quarry Farm). +A TRUE STORY (Quarry Farm)-Atlantic, November. U. E. +FABLES (Quarry Farm). U. E. +COLONEL SELLERS--play (Quarry Farm) performed by John T. Raymond. +UNDERTAKER'S LOVE-STORY (Quarry Farm) (unpublished). +OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI (Hartford) Atlantic, January to July, 1875. +Monarchy letter to Mrs. Clemens, dated 1935 (Boston). + + + 1875. + +UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE--paper for The Monday Evening Club. +SKETCHES NEW AND OLD--book (Am. Pub. Co.), July. U. E. +TOM SAWYER concluded (Hartford). +THE CURIOUS REP. OF GONDOUR--Atlantic, October (unsigned). +PUNCH, CONDUCTOR, PUNCH--Atlantic, February, 1876. U. E. +THE SECOND ADVENT (unfinished). +THE MYSTERIOUS CHAMBER (unfinished). +AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A DAMN FOOL (unfinished). +Petition for International Copyright. + + + 1876. + +Performed in THE LOAN OF THE LOVER as Peter Spuyk (Hartford). +CARNIVAL OF CRIME--paper for The Monday Evening Club--Atlantic, June. +U. E. +HUCK FINN begun (Quarry Farm). +CANVASSER'S STORY (Quarry Farm)--Atlantic, December. U. E. +"1601" (Quarry Farm), privately printed. [And not edited by Livy. D.W.] +AH SIN (with Bret Harte)--play, (Hartford). +TOM SAWYER--book (Am. Pub. Co.), December. U. E. +Speech on "The Weather," New England Society, December 22. + + + 1877. + +LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ-CLARENCE, ETC. (Quarry Farm)--Atlantic. +IDLE EXCURSION (Quarry Farm)--Atlantic, October, November, December. +U. E. +SIMON WHEELER, DETECTIVE--play (Quarry Farm) (not produced). +PRINCE AND PAUPER begun (Quarry Farm). +Whittier birthday speech (Boston), December. + + + 1878. + +MAGNANIMOUS INCIDENT (Hartford)--Atlantic, May. U. E. +A TRAMP ABROAD (Heidelberg and Munich). +MENTAL TELEGRAPHY--Harper's Magazine, December, 1891. U. E. +GAMBETTA DUEL--Atlantic, February, 1879 (included in TRAMP). U. E. +REV. IN PITCAIRN--Atlantic, March, 1879. U. E. +STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT--book (Osgood & Co.), 1882. U. E. +(The three items last named were all originally a part of the TRAMP +ABROAD.) + + + 1879. + +A TRAMP ABROAD continued (Paris, Elmira, and Hartford). +Adam monument scheme (Elmira). +Speech on "The Babies" (Grant dinner, Chicago), November. +Speech on "Plagiarism" (Holmes breakfast, Boston), December. + + + 1880. + +PRINCE AND PAUPER concluded (Hartford and Elmira). +HUCK FINN continued (Quarry Farm, Elmira). +A CAT STORY (Quarry Farm) (unpublished). +A TRAMP ABROAD--book (Am. Pub. Co.), March 13. U. E. +EDWARD MILLS AND GEO. BENTON (Hartford)--Atlantic, August. U. E. +MRS. McWILLIAMS AND THE LIGHTNING (Hartford)--Atlantic, September. U. E. + + + 1881. + +A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE--Century, November. U. E. +A BIOGRAPHY OF -----(unfinished). +PRINCE AND PAUPER--book (Osgood R; CO.), December. +BURLESQUE ETIQUETTE (unfinished). [Included in LETTERS FROM THE EARTH +D.W.] + + + 1882. + +LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI (Elmira and Hartford). + + + 1883. + +LIFE ON THE Mississippi--book (Osgood R CO.), May. U. E. +WHAT Is HAPPINESS?--paper for The Monday Evening Club. +Introduction to Portuguese conversation book (Hartford). +HUCK FINN concluded (Quarry Farm). +HISTORY GAME (Quarry Farm). +AMERICAN CLAIMANT (with W. D. Howells)--play (Hartford), produced by +A. P. Burbank. +Dramatized TOM SAWYER and PRINCE AND PAUPER (not produced). + + + 1884. + +Embarked in publishing with Charles L. Webster. +THE CARSON FOOTPRINTS--the San Franciscan. +HUCK FINN--book (Charles L. Webster & Co.), December. U. E. +Platform-readings with George W. Cable, season '84-'85. + + + 1885. + +Contracted for General Grant's Memoirs. +A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED--Century, December. U. E. +THE UNIVERSAL TINKER--Century, December (open letter signed X. Y. Z. +Letter on the government of children--Christian Union.) +KIDITCHIN (children's poem). + + + 1886. + +Introduced Henry M. Stanley (Boston). +CONNECTICUT YANKEE begun (Hartford). +ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT--Century, April, 1887. +LUCK--Harper's, August, 1891. +GENERAL GRANT AND MATTHEW ARNOLD--Army and Navy dinner speech. + + + 1887. + +MEISTERSCHAFT--play (Hartford)-Century, January, 1888. U. E. +KNIGHTS OF LABOR--essay (not published). +To THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND--Harper's Magazine, December. U. E. +CONSISTENCY--paper for The Monday Evening Club. + + + 1888. + +Introductory for "Unsent Letters" (unpublished). +Master of Arts degree from Yale. +Yale Alumni address (unpublished). +Copyright controversy with Brander Matthews--Princeton Review. +Replies to Matthew Arnold's American criticisms (unpublished). +YANKEE continued (Elmira and Hartford). +Introduction of Nye and Riley (Boston). + + + 1889. + +A MAJESTIC LITERARY FOSSIL Harper's Magazine, February, 1890. U. E. +HUCK AND TOM AMONG THE INDIANS (unfinished). +Introduction to YANKEE (not used). +LETTER To ELSIE LESLIE--St Nicholas, February, 1890. +CONNECTICUT YANKEE--book (Webster & Co.), December. U. E. + + + 1890. + +Letter to Andrew Lang about English Criticism. +(No important literary matters this year. Mark Twain engaged +promoting the Paige typesetting-machine.) + + + 1891. + +AMERICAN CLAIMANT (Hartford) syndicated; also book (Webster & Co.), May, +1892. U. E. +European letters to New York Sun. +DOWN THE RHONE (unfinished). +KORNERSTRASSE (unpublished). + + + 1892. + +THE GERMAN CHICAGO (Berlin--Sun.) U. E. +ALL KINDS OF SHIPS (at sea). U. E. +Tom SAWYER ABROAD (Nauheim)--St. Nicholas, November, '93, to April, '94. +U. E. +THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS (Nauheim). U. E. +PUDD'NHEAD WILSON (Nauheim and Florence)--Century, December, '93, to +June, '94 U. E. +$100,000 BANK-NOTE (Florence)--Century, January, '93. U. E. + + + 1893. + +JOAN OF ARC begun (at Villa Viviani, Florence) and completed up to the +raising of the Siege of Orleans. +CALIFORNIAN'S TALE (Florence) Liber Scriptorum, also Harper's. +ADAM'S DIARY (Florence)--Niagara Book, also Harper's. +ESQUIMAU MAIDEN'S ROMANCE--Cosmopolitan, November. U. E. +IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD?--Cosmopolitan, September. U. E. +TRAVELING WITH A REFORMER--Cosmopolitan, December. U. E. +IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY (Florence)--N. A.--Rev., July, '94. U. E. +FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENSES--[This may not have been written +until early in 1894.]--(Players, New York)--N. A. Rev., July,'95 U. E. + + + 1894. + +JOAN OF ARC continued (Etretat and Paris). +WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US (Etretat)--N. A. Rev., January, '95 U. E. +TOM SAWYER ABROAD--book (Webster & Co.), April. U. E. +PUDD'NHEAD WILSON--book (Am. Pub. Co.), November. U. E. +The failure of Charles L. Webster & Co., April 18. +THE DERELICT--poem (Paris) (unpublished). + + + 1895. + +JOAN OF ARC finished (Paris), January 28, Harper's Magazine, April to +December. +MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN--Harper's, September. U. E. +A LITTLE NOTE TO PAUL BOURGET. U. E. +Poem to Mrs. Beecher (Elmira) (not published). U. E. +Lecture-tour around the world, begun at Elmira, July 14, ended July 31. + + + 1896. + +JOAN OF ARC--book (Harpers) May. U. E. +TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE, and other stories-book (Harpers), November. +FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR begun (23 Tedworth Square, London). + + + 1897. + +FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR--book (Am. Pub. Co.), November. +QUEEN'S JUBILEE (London), newspaper syndicate; book privately printed. +JAMES HAMMOND TRUMBULL--Century, November. +WHICH WAS WHICH? (London and Switzerland) (unfinished). +TOM AND HUCK (Switzerland) (unfinished). + +HELLFIRE HOTCHKISS (Switzerland) (unfinished). +IN MEMORIAM--poem (Switzerland)-Harper's Magazine. U. E. +Concordia Club speech (Vienna). +STIRRING TIMES IN AUSTRIA (Vienna)--Harper's Magazine, March, 1898. U. E. + + + 1898. + +THE AUSTRIAN EDISON KEEPING SCHOOL AGAIN (Vienna)Century, August. U. E. +AT THE APPETITE CURE (Vienna)--Cosmopolitan, August. U. E. +FROM THE LONDON TIMES, 1904 (Vienna)--Century, November. U. E. +ABOUT PLAY-ACTING (Vienna)--Forum, October. U. E. +CONCERNING THE JEWS (Vienna)--Harper's Magazine, September, '99. U. E. +CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND MRS. EDDY (Vienna)--Cosmopolitan, October. U. E. +THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG (Vienna)--Harper's Magazine, December, +'99 U. E. +Autobiographical chapters (Vienna); some of them used in the N. A. Rev., +1906-07. +WHAT IS MAN? (Kaltenleutgeben)--book (privately printed), August, 1906. +ASSASSINATION OF AN EMPRESS (Kaltenleutgeben) (unpublished). +THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER (unfinished). +Translations of German plays (unproduced). + + + 1899. + +DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES (Vienna)--Forum, March. U. E. +MY LITERARY DEBUT (Vienna)--Century, December. U. E. +CHRISTIAN SCIENCE (Vienna)--N. A. Rev., December, 1902, January and +February, 1903. +Translated German plays (Vienna) (unproduced). +Collaborated with Siegmund Schlesinger on plays (Vienna) (unfinished). +Planned a postal-check scheme (Vienna). +Articles about the Kellgren treatment (Sanna, Sweden) (unpublished). +ST. JOAN OF ARC (London)--Harper's Magazine, December, 1904. U. E. +MY FIRST LIE, AND How I GOT OUT OF IT (London)--New York World. U. E. + +Articles on South African War (London) (unpublished) +Uniform Edition of Mark Twain's works (Am. Pub. Co.). + + + 1900. + +TWO LITTLE TALES (London)--Century, November, 1901. U. E. +Spoke on "Copyright" before the House of Lords. +Delivered many speeches in London and New York. + + + 1901. + +TO THE PERSON SITTING IN DARKNESS (14 West Tenth Street, New York)-- +N. A. Rev., February. +TO MY MISSIONARY CRITICS (14 West Tenth Street, New York)--N. A. Rev., +April. +DOUBLE-BARREL DETECTIVE STORY (Saranac Lake, "The Lair") Harper's +Magazine, January and February, 1902. +Lincoln Birthday Speech, February 11. +Many other speeches. +PLAN FOR CASTING VOTE PARTY (Riverdale) (unpublished). +THE STUPENDOUS PROCESSION (Riverdale) (unpublished). +ANTE-MORTEM OBITUARIES--Harper's Weekly. +Received degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale. + + + 1902. + +DOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD? (Riverdale)--N. A. Rev., April. U. E. +FIVE BOONS of LIFE (Riverdale)--Harper's Weekly, July 5. U. E. +WHY NOT ABOLISH IT? (Riverdale)--Harper's Weekly, July 5. +DEFENSE OF GENERAL FUNSTON (Riverdale)--N. A. Rev., May. +IF I COULD BE THERE (Riverdale unpublished). +Wrote various articles, unfinished or unpublished. +Received degree of LL.D. from the University of Missouri, June. + +THE BELATED PASSPORT (York Harbor)--Harper's Weekly, December 6. U. E. +WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL? (York Harbor)--Harper's Magazine, December. U. E. +Poem (Riverdale and York Harbor) (unpublished) +Sixty-seventh Birthday speech (New York), November 27. + + + 1903. + +MRS. EDDY IN ERROR (Riverdale)--N. A. Rev., April. +INSTRUCTIONS IN ART (Riverdale)-Metropolitan, April and May. +EDDYPUS, and other C. S. articles (unfinished). +A DOG'S TALE (Elmira)--Harper's Magazine, December. U. E. +ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER (Florence)--Harper's Weekly, January 21, 1904. +U. E. +ITALIAN WITH GRAMMAR (Florence)--Harper's Magazine, August, U. E. +THE $30,000 BEQUEST (Florence)--Harper's Weekly, December 10, 1904. U. E. + + + 1904. + +AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Florence)--portions published, N. A. Rev. and Harper's +Weekly. +CONCERNING COPYRIGHT (Tyringham, Massachusetts)--N. A. Rev., January, +1905. +TSARS SOLILOQUY (21 Fifth Avenue, New York)--N. A. Rev., March, 1905. +ADAM'S DIARY--book (Harpers), April. + + + 1905. + +LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY (21 Fifth Avenue, New York)--pamphlet, P. R. Warren +Company. +THE WAR PRAYER (21 Fifth Avenue, New York) (unpublished). +EVE'S DIARY (Dublin, New Hampshire)--Harper's Magazine, December. +3,000 YEARS AMONG THE MICROBES (unfinished). +INTERPRETING THE DEITY (Dublin New Hampshire) (unpublished). +A HORSE'S TALE (Dublin, New Hampshire)-Harper's Magazine, +August and September, 1906. +Seventieth Birthday speech. +W. D. HOWELLS (21 Fifth Avenue, New York)-Harper's Magazine, July, 1906. + + + 1906. + +Autobiography dictation (21 Fifth Avenue, New York; and Dublin, New +Hampshire)--selections published, N. A. Rev., 1906 and 1907. +Many speeches. +Farewell lecture, Carnegie Hall, April 19. +WHAT IS MAN?--book (privately printed). +Copyright speech (Washington), December. + + + 1907. + +Autobiography dictations (27 Fifth Avenue, New York; and Tuxedo). +Degree of Doctor of Literature conferred by Oxford, June 26. +Made many London speeches. +Begum of Bengal speech (Liverpool). +CHRISTIAN SCIENCE--book (Harpers), February. U. E. +CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT To HEAVEN--book (Harpers). + + + 1908. + +Autobiography dictations (21 Fifth Avenue, New York; and Redding, +Connecticut). +Lotos Club and other speeches. +Aldrich memorial speech. + + + 1909. + +IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?--book (Harpers), April. +A FABLE--Harper's Magazine December. +Copyright documents (unpublished). +Address to St. Timothy School. +MARJORIE FLEMING (Stormfield)--Harper's Bazar, December. +THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE (Stormfield)--Harper's Bazar, February, 1910 +BESSIE DIALOGUE (unpublished). +LETTERS FROM THE EARTH (unfinished). +THE DEATH OF JEAN--Harper's, December, 1910. +THE INTERNATIONAL LIGHTNING TRUST (unpublished). + + + 1910. + +VALENTINES TO HELEN AND OTHERS (not published). +ADVICE TO PAINE (not published). + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of +Mark Twain, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPLETE PG TWAIN *** + +***** This file should be named 3200.txt or 3200.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.net/3/2/0/3200/ + +Produced by David Widger and Many Project Gutenberg Volunteers + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Values can be overwritten on command line. +set(MAJOR_VERSION "${MAJOR_VERSION_GIT}" CACHE STRING "major version") +set(MINOR_VERSION "${MINOR_VERSION_GIT}" CACHE STRING "minor version") +set(PATCH_VERSION "${PATCH_VERSION_GIT}" CACHE STRING "patch version") + +string(CONCAT VERSION "${MAJOR_VERSION}.${MINOR_VERSION}.${PATCH_VERSION}") +string(TIMESTAMP BUILD_DATE "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S") + +message("") +message("*******************************************************************") +message("* Regex performance tool version ${VERSION}") +message("* Build type: ${CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE}") +message("* Can be changed with: cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=[Release|Debug]") +message("*******************************************************************") +message("") + +add_subdirectory(vendor) +add_subdirectory(src) + +message("") + diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 79dd629..972a1c8 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -1,2 +1,48 @@ -# regex-performance -Performance comparison of regular expression engines. +# Regex Performance +## Introduction +Regular expressions are commonly used in pattern search algorithms. +This tool is based on the work of John Maddock (See his own regex comparison [here|http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_41_0/libs/regex/doc/gcc-performance.html) +and the sljit project (See their regex comparision [here|http://sljit.sourceforge.net/regex_perf.html]). + +## Supported engines +The following regex engines are supported and covered by the tool: +- [Hyperscan|https://github.com/01org/hyperscan] +- [Oniguruma|https://github.com/kkos/oniguruma] +- [RE2|https://github.com/google/re2] +- [Tre|https://github.com/laurikari/tre] +- [PCRE2|http://www.pcre.oashrg] +- [Rust regex crate|https://doc.rust-lang.org/regex/regex/index.html] + +## Building the tool +The different engines have different requirements which are not described here. +Please see the related project documentations. + +In the case all depencies are fulfilled, just configure and build the cmake based project: + +```bash +mkdir build && cd build +cmake .. +make +``` + +The `make` command will build all engines and the test tool `regex_perf`. + +To build the test tool or a library only, call `make` with corresponding target, i.e.: + +```bash +make regex_perf +``` + +## Usage +The test tool calls each engine with a defined set of different regular expression on a given file. +The repository contains a ~16Mbyte large text file (3200.txt) which can be used for measuring. + +```bash +./regex_perf -f ./3200.txt +``` + +By default, the tool repeats each test 5 times and prints the best time of each test. +The overall time to process each regular expression is measured and accounted. +The scoring algorithhm distributes the fastest engine 5 points, the second fastest 4 points and so on. +The score points help to limit the impact of a slow regular expression eninge test in comparision to +the absolut time value. diff --git a/src/CMakeLists.txt b/src/CMakeLists.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4331c58 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/CMakeLists.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +add_subdirectory(rust) + +# configure files +configure_file(${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/version.h.in ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/version.h) + +set(REGEX_SOURCES + main.c + onig.c + hyperscan.c + pcre2.c + rust.c + tre.c + re2.cpp +) + +include_directories( + ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/vendor/local/include + ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/rust/include +) + +link_directories( + ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/vendor/local/lib + ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/rregex/release +) + +add_executable(regex_perf ${REGEX_SOURCES}) + +add_dependencies(regex_perf librregex) + +target_link_libraries(regex_perf rregex hs onig re2 tre pcre2-8 pthread dl) diff --git a/src/hyperscan.c b/src/hyperscan.c new file mode 100644 index 0000000..763201c --- /dev/null +++ b/src/hyperscan.c @@ -0,0 +1,64 @@ +#include + +#include "main.h" + +#include + +static int found = 0; + +static int eventHandler(UNUSED unsigned int id, + UNUSED unsigned long long from, + UNUSED unsigned long long to, + UNUSED unsigned int flags, + UNUSED void * ctx) { + found++; + return 0; +} + +int hs_find_all(char * pattern, char * subject, int subject_len, int repeat) +{ + TIME_TYPE start, end, resolution; + int time, best_time = 0; + + hs_database_t * database; + hs_compile_error_t * compile_err; + if (hs_compile(pattern, HS_FLAG_DOTALL | HS_FLAG_MULTILINE, HS_MODE_BLOCK, NULL, &database, &compile_err) != HS_SUCCESS) { + fprintf(stderr, "ERROR: Unable to compile pattern \"%s\": %s\n", + pattern, compile_err->message); + hs_free_compile_error(compile_err); + return -1; + } + + hs_scratch_t * scratch = NULL; + if (hs_alloc_scratch(database, &scratch) != HS_SUCCESS) { + fprintf(stderr, "ERROR: Unable to allocate scratch space. Exiting.\n"); + hs_free_database(database); + return -1; + } + + GET_TIME_RESOLUTION(resolution); + + do { + found = 0; + GET_TIME(start); + if (hs_scan(database, subject, subject_len, 0, scratch, eventHandler, pattern) != HS_SUCCESS) { + fprintf(stderr, "ERROR: Unable to scan input buffer. Exiting.\n"); + hs_free_scratch(scratch); + hs_free_database(database); + return -1; + } + GET_TIME(end); + + time = TIME_DIFF_IN_MS(start, end, resolution); + if (!best_time || time < best_time) { + best_time = time; + } + } while (--repeat > 0); + + printResult("hscan", best_time, found); + + hs_free_scratch(scratch); + hs_free_database(database); + + return best_time; +} diff --git a/src/main.c b/src/main.c new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b7d2b0d --- /dev/null +++ b/src/main.c @@ -0,0 +1,166 @@ +#include +#include +#include +#include + +#include "main.h" +#include "version.h" + +static char* data = NULL; +static int data_len = 0; + +struct regex_imp { + char * name; + int score; + int time; + int inc_time; + int (*find_all)(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat); +}; + +static struct regex_imp regex [] = { + {.name = "pcre", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = pcre2_std_find_all}, + {.name = "pcre-dfa", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = pcre2_dfa_find_all}, + {.name = "pcre-jit", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = pcre2_jit_find_all}, + {.name = "re2", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = re2_find_all}, + {.name = "onig", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = onig_find_all}, + {.name = "tre", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = tre_find_all}, + {.name = "hscan", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = hs_find_all}, + {.name = "rust_regex", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = rust_find_all}, +}; + +void load(char const * file_name) +{ + int i; + + FILE* f; + f = fopen(file_name, "rb"); + if (!f) { + fprintf(stderr, "Cannot open '%s'!\n", file_name); + return; + } + + fseek(f, 0, SEEK_END); + data_len = ftell(f); + fseek(f, 0, SEEK_SET); + + data = (char*)malloc(data_len + 1); + if (!data) { + fprintf(stderr, "Cannot allocate memory!\n"); + fclose(f); + return; + } + data[data_len] = '\0'; + fread(data, data_len, 1, f); + fclose(f); + + for (i = 0; i < data_len; ++i) + if (data[i] == '\r') + data[i] = '\n'; + fprintf(stdout, "'%s' loaded. (Length: %d bytes)\n", file_name, data_len); +} + +void find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat) +{ + int iter, top; + fprintf(stdout, "-----------------\nRegex: '%s'\n", pattern); + for (iter = 0; iter < sizeof(regex)/sizeof(regex[0]); iter++) { + int ret = regex[iter].find_all(pattern, subject, subject_len, repeat); + if (ret != -1) { + regex[iter].time = ret; + regex[iter].inc_time += ret; + } + } + + int score_points = 5; + for (top = 0; top < score_points; top++) { + int best = -1; + + for (iter = 0; iter < sizeof(regex)/sizeof(regex[0]); iter++) { + if (regex[iter].time != -1 && (best == -1 || best > regex[iter].time)) { + best = regex[iter].time; + } + } + + for (iter = 0; iter < sizeof(regex)/sizeof(regex[0]); iter++) { + if (regex[iter].time != -1 && best == regex[iter].time) { + regex[iter].score += score_points; + regex[iter].time = -1; + } + } + + score_points--; + } +} + +void printResult(char * name, int time, int found) +{ + fprintf(stdout, "[%10s] time: %5d ms (%d matches)\n", name, (int)time, found); + fflush(stdout); +} + +int main(int argc, char **argv) +{ + char const * file = NULL; + int repeat = 5; + int c = 0; + + while ((c = getopt(argc, argv, "nhvf:")) != -1) { + switch (c) { + case 'f': + file = optarg; + break; + case 'n': + repeat = atoi(optarg); + break; + case 'v': + printf("%s\n", VERSION_STRING); + exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); + case 'h': + printf("Usage: %s [option] -f \n\n", argv[0]); + printf("Options:\n"); + printf(" -f\tInput file.\n"); + printf(" -n\tSet number of repetitions. Default: 5\n"); + printf(" -v\tGet the application version and build date.\n"); + printf(" -h\tPrint this help message\n\n"); + exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); + } + } + + if (file == NULL) { + fprintf(stderr, "No input file given.\n"); + exit(EXIT_FAILURE); + } + + load(file); + if (data_len == 0) { + exit(EXIT_FAILURE); + } + + find_all("Twain", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all("(?i)Twain", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all("[a-z]shing", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all("Huck[a-zA-Z]+|Saw[a-zA-Z]+", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all("\\b\\w+nn\\b", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all("[a-q][^u-z]{13}x", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all("Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all("(?i)Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all(".{0,2}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all(".{2,4}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all("Tom.{10,25}river|river.{10,25}Tom", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all("[a-zA-Z]+ing", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all("\\s[a-zA-Z]{0,12}ing\\s", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all("([A-Za-z]awyer|[A-Za-z]inn)\\s", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all("[\"'][^\"']{0,30}[?!\\.][\"']", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all("\u221E|\u2713", data, data_len, repeat); + find_all("\\p{Sm}", data, data_len, repeat); + + int iter; + fprintf(stdout, "-----------------\nScores:\n"); + for (iter = 0; iter < sizeof(regex)/sizeof(regex[0]); iter++) { + fprintf(stdout, "%10s: %6u points, %6u ms\n", regex[iter].name, regex[iter].score, regex[iter].inc_time); + } + + free(data); + + exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); +} diff --git a/src/main.h b/src/main.h new file mode 100644 index 0000000..815bff3 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/main.h @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +#ifdef __cplusplus +extern "C" { +#endif + +#include + +#define TIME_TYPE clock_t +#define GET_TIME(res) do { res = clock(); } while(0) +#define GET_TIME_RESOLUTION(res) do { res = CLOCKS_PER_SEC; } while(0) +#define TIME_DIFF_IN_MS(begin, end, resolution) ((int)((double)((end) - (begin)) * 1000 / (resolution))) +#define UNUSED __attribute__((unused)) + +// Common result print +void printResult(char* name, int time, int found); + +int pcre2_std_find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat); +int pcre2_dfa_find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat); +int pcre2_jit_find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat); +int re2_find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat); +int tre_find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat); +int onig_find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat); +int hs_find_all(char * pattern, char * subject, int subject_len, int repeat); +int rust_find_all(char * pattern, char * subject, int subject_len, int repeat); + +#ifdef __cplusplus +} +#endif + diff --git a/src/onig.c b/src/onig.c new file mode 100644 index 0000000..00844f5 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/onig.c @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +#include +#include + +#include "main.h" + +#include + +int onig_find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat) +{ + regex_t* reg; + OnigRegion *region; + TIME_TYPE start, end, resolution; + unsigned char *ptr; + int res, len, found, time, best_time = 0; + + GET_TIME_RESOLUTION(resolution); + + res = onig_new(®, (unsigned char *)pattern, (unsigned char *)pattern + strlen((char* )pattern), + ONIG_OPTION_DEFAULT, ONIG_ENCODING_ASCII, ONIG_SYNTAX_DEFAULT, NULL); + if (res != ONIG_NORMAL) { + printf("Onig compilation failed\n"); + return -1; + } + region = onig_region_new(); + if (!region) { + printf("Cannot allocate region\n"); + return -1; + } + + do { + found = 0; + ptr = (unsigned char *)subject; + len = subject_len; + + GET_TIME(start); + while (1) { + res = onig_search(reg, ptr, ptr + len, ptr, ptr + len, region, ONIG_OPTION_NONE); + if (res < 0) + break; + // printf("match: %d %d\n", (ptr - (unsigned char *)subject) + region->beg[0], (ptr - (unsigned char *)subject) + region->end[0]); + ptr += region->end[0]; + len -= region->end[0]; + found++; + } + GET_TIME(end); + time = TIME_DIFF_IN_MS(start, end, resolution); + if (!best_time || time < best_time) + best_time = time; + } while (--repeat > 0); + printResult("onig", best_time, found); + + onig_region_free(region, 1); + onig_free(reg); + + return best_time; +} diff --git a/src/pcre2.c b/src/pcre2.c new file mode 100644 index 0000000..579b7df --- /dev/null +++ b/src/pcre2.c @@ -0,0 +1,196 @@ +#include + +#include "main.h" + +#define PCRE2_CODE_UNIT_WIDTH 8 +#include + +static int work_space[4096]; + +int pcre2_find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat, int mode) +{ + pcre2_code *re; + pcre2_compile_context *comp_ctx; + pcre2_match_data *match_data; + pcre2_match_context *match_ctx; + int err_code; + PCRE2_SIZE err_offset; + pcre2_jit_stack *stack = NULL; + PCRE2_SIZE *ovector; + char *ptr; + int len; + TIME_TYPE start = 0, end = 0, resolution = 0; + int found, time, best_time = 0; + + GET_TIME_RESOLUTION(resolution); + + comp_ctx = pcre2_compile_context_create(NULL); + if (!comp_ctx) { + printf("PCRE2 cannot allocate compile context\n"); + return -1; + } + + pcre2_set_newline(comp_ctx, PCRE2_NEWLINE_ANYCRLF); + + re = pcre2_compile( + (PCRE2_SPTR8) pattern, /* the pattern */ + PCRE2_ZERO_TERMINATED, /* length */ + PCRE2_MULTILINE, /* options */ + &err_code, /* for error code */ + &err_offset, /* for error offset */ + comp_ctx); /* use default character tables */ + + if (!re) { + printf("PCRE2 compilation failed at offset %d: [%d]\n", (int)err_offset, err_code); + return -1; + } + + pcre2_compile_context_free(comp_ctx); + + match_ctx = pcre2_match_context_create(NULL); + if (!match_ctx) { + printf("PCRE JIT cannot allocate match context\n"); + return -1; + } + + if (mode == 2) { + if (pcre2_jit_compile(re, PCRE2_JIT_COMPLETE)) { + printf("PCRE JIT compilation failed\n"); + return -1; + } + stack = pcre2_jit_stack_create(65536, 65536, NULL); + if (!stack) { + printf("PCRE JIT cannot allocate JIT stack\n"); + return -1; + } + pcre2_jit_stack_assign(match_ctx, NULL, stack); + } + + if (mode == 1) + match_data = pcre2_match_data_create(32, NULL); + else + match_data = pcre2_match_data_create_from_pattern(re, NULL); + + if (!match_data) { + printf("PCRE2 cannot allocate match data\n"); + return -1; + } + + ovector = pcre2_get_ovector_pointer(match_data); + + do { + found = 0; + ptr = subject; + len = subject_len; + switch (mode) { + case 0: + GET_TIME(start); + while (1) { + err_code = pcre2_match( + re, /* the compiled pattern */ + (PCRE2_SPTR8) ptr, /* the subject string */ + len, /* the length of the subject */ + 0, /* start at offset 0 in the subject */ + 0, /* default options */ + match_data, /* match data */ + match_ctx); /* match context */ + + if (err_code <= 0) { + if (err_code == PCRE2_ERROR_NOMATCH) + break; + printf("PCRE pcre_exec failed with: %d\n", err_code); + break; + } + + // printf("match: %d %d\n", (ptr - subject) + match[0], (ptr - subject) + match[1]); + ptr += ovector[1]; + len -= ovector[1]; + found++; + } + GET_TIME(end); + break; + + case 1: + GET_TIME(start); + while (1) { + err_code = pcre2_dfa_match( + re, /* the compiled pattern */ + (PCRE2_SPTR8) ptr, /* the subject string */ + len, /* the length of the subject */ + 0, /* start at offset 0 in the subject */ + 0, /* default options */ + match_data, /* match data */ + match_ctx, /* match context */ + work_space, /* work space */ + 4096); /* number of elements (NOT size in bytes) */ + + if (err_code <= 0) { + if (err_code == PCRE2_ERROR_NOMATCH) + break; + printf("PCRE pcre_exec failed with: %d\n", err_code); + break; + } + + // printf("match: %d %d\n", (ptr - subject) + match[0], (ptr - subject) + match[1]); + ptr += ovector[1]; + len -= ovector[1]; + found++; + } + GET_TIME(end); + break; + + case 2: + GET_TIME(start); + while (1) { + err_code = pcre2_jit_match( + re, /* the compiled pattern */ + (PCRE2_SPTR8) ptr, /* the subject string */ + len, /* the length of the subject */ + 0, /* start at offset 0 in the subject */ + 0, /* default options */ + match_data, /* match data */ + match_ctx); /* match context */ + + if (err_code <= 0) { + if (err_code == PCRE2_ERROR_NOMATCH) + break; + printf("PCRE pcre_exec failed with: %d\n", err_code); + break; + } + + // printf("match: %d %d\n", (ptr - subject) + match[0], (ptr - subject) + match[1]); + ptr += ovector[1]; + len -= ovector[1]; + found++; + } + GET_TIME(end); + break; + } + time = TIME_DIFF_IN_MS(start, end, resolution); + if (!best_time || time < best_time) + best_time = time; + } while (--repeat > 0); + printResult(mode == 0 ? "pcre" : (mode == 1 ? "pcre-dfa" : "pcre-jit"), best_time, found); + + if (stack) + pcre2_jit_stack_free(stack); + pcre2_match_context_free(match_ctx); + pcre2_code_free(re); + + return best_time; +} + +int pcre2_std_find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat) +{ + return pcre2_find_all(pattern, subject, subject_len, repeat, 0); +} + +int pcre2_dfa_find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat) +{ + return pcre2_find_all(pattern, subject, subject_len, repeat, 1); +} + +int pcre2_jit_find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat) +{ + return pcre2_find_all(pattern, subject, subject_len, repeat, 2); +} diff --git a/src/re2.cpp b/src/re2.cpp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8fce472 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/re2.cpp @@ -0,0 +1,66 @@ +#include +#include + +#include "main.h" + +#include +#include + +static void * get_re2_object(char* pattern) +{ + RE2 * obj; + + obj = new RE2(pattern, RE2::Latin1); + if (!obj->ok()) { + printf("pattern error!\n"); + delete obj; + obj = NULL; + } + return obj; +} + +static void free_re2_object(void* obj) +{ + delete (RE2*)obj; +} + +static int search_all_re2(void* obj, char* subject, int subject_len) +{ + re2::StringPiece input(subject, subject_len); + //re2::StringPiece result; + int found = 0; + + while (RE2::FindAndConsume(&input, *(RE2*)obj)) { + // printf("match: %d %d @%d\n", result.data() - subject, result.size(), input.data() - subject); + found++; + } + return found; +} + +extern "C" int re2_find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat) +{ + void * obj = get_re2_object(pattern); + TIME_TYPE start, end, resolution; + int found, time, best_time = 0; + + GET_TIME_RESOLUTION(resolution); + + if (!obj) { + printf("RE2 compilation failed\n"); + return -1; + } + + do { + GET_TIME(start); + found = search_all_re2(obj, subject, subject_len); + GET_TIME(end); + time = TIME_DIFF_IN_MS(start, end, resolution); + if (!best_time || time < best_time) + best_time = time; + } while (--repeat > 0); + printResult((char *) "re2", best_time, found); + + free_re2_object(obj); + + return best_time; +} diff --git a/src/rust.c b/src/rust.c new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a44fcaa --- /dev/null +++ b/src/rust.c @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +#include + +#include "main.h" + +#include + +int rust_find_all(char * pattern, char * subject, int subject_len, int repeat) +{ + TIME_TYPE start, end, resolution; + int time, best_time = 0; + int found = 0; + + struct Regex const * regex_hdl = regex_new(pattern); + if (regex_hdl == NULL) { + fprintf(stderr, "ERROR: Unable to compile pattern \"%s\"\n", pattern); + return -1; + } + + GET_TIME_RESOLUTION(resolution); + + do { + GET_TIME(start); + found = regex_matches(regex_hdl, (uint8_t*) subject, subject_len); + GET_TIME(end); + + time = TIME_DIFF_IN_MS(start, end, resolution); + if (!best_time || time < best_time) { + best_time = time; + } + } while (--repeat > 0); + + printResult("rust_regex", best_time, found); + + regex_free(regex_hdl); + + return best_time; +} diff --git a/src/rust/.cargo/config.in b/src/rust/.cargo/config.in new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ca53bf5 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/rust/.cargo/config.in @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +[build] +target-dir = "@PROJECT_BINARY_DIR@/rregex" diff --git a/src/rust/.gitignore b/src/rust/.gitignore new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7a683c0 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/rust/.gitignore @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +*.lock +target/* diff --git a/src/rust/CMakeLists.txt b/src/rust/CMakeLists.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e788f5 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/rust/CMakeLists.txt @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +# check rust package manager +find_program(RUST_CARGO cargo) + +if(NOT RUST_CARGO) + message(FATAL_ERROR "Rust package manager 'cargo' not found.") +else() + execute_process(COMMAND ${RUST_CARGO} --version OUTPUT_VARIABLE CARGO_VERSION) + string(STRIP ${CARGO_VERSION} CARGO_VERSION) + message("-- Found rust packet manager: ${CARGO_VERSION}") +endif() + +configure_file(${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/.cargo/config.in ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/.cargo/config) + +add_custom_target(librregex ALL + # create rust regex library + COMMAND ${RUST_CARGO} build --release + WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} +) diff --git a/src/rust/Cargo.toml b/src/rust/Cargo.toml new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ad890bd --- /dev/null +++ b/src/rust/Cargo.toml @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@ +[package] +name = "rust regex" +version = "0.1.0" +authors = ["Daniel Schmidt "] + +[lib] +name = "rregex" +crate-type = ["staticlib"] + +[dependencies] +regex = { version = "0.2.1"} +libc = "0.2.19" \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/src/rust/include/rregex.h b/src/rust/include/rregex.h new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f791802 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/rust/include/rregex.h @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +#include + +struct Regex; + +extern struct Regex const * regex_new(char * const regex); +extern uint32_t regex_matches(struct Regex const * const exp, uint8_t * const str, uint64_t str_len); +extern void regex_free(struct Regex const * const exp); diff --git a/src/rust/src/lib.rs b/src/rust/src/lib.rs new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ae17d51 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/rust/src/lib.rs @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +extern crate regex; +extern crate libc; + +use regex::Regex; +use libc::c_char; +use std::boxed::Box; +use std::ffi::CStr; +use std::slice; +use std::str; +use std::ptr; + +#[no_mangle] +pub extern fn regex_new(c_buf: *const c_char) -> *const Regex { + let c_str: &CStr = unsafe { CStr::from_ptr(c_buf) }; + + let exp = match Regex::new(c_str.to_str().unwrap()) { + Ok(val) => Box::into_raw(Box::new(val)), + Err(_) => ptr::null() + }; + + exp as *const Regex +} + +#[no_mangle] +pub extern fn regex_matches(raw_exp: *mut Regex, p: *const u8, len: u64) -> u64 { + let exp = unsafe { Box::from_raw(raw_exp) }; + let s = unsafe { + let slice = slice::from_raw_parts(p, len as usize); + str::from_utf8(slice).unwrap() + }; + + let findings = exp.find_iter(s).count(); + Box::into_raw(exp); + findings as u64 +} + +#[no_mangle] +pub extern fn regex_free(raw_exp: *mut Regex) { + unsafe { Box::from_raw(raw_exp) }; +} diff --git a/src/tre.c b/src/tre.c new file mode 100644 index 0000000..52c033e --- /dev/null +++ b/src/tre.c @@ -0,0 +1,50 @@ +#include + +#include "main.h" + +#include + +int tre_find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat) +{ + int err_val; + regex_t regex; + regmatch_t match[1]; + char *ptr; + int len; + TIME_TYPE start, end, resolution; + int found, time, best_time = 0; + + GET_TIME_RESOLUTION(resolution); + + err_val = tre_regcomp(®ex, pattern, REG_EXTENDED | REG_NEWLINE); + if (err_val != 0) { + printf("TRE compilation failed with error %d\n", err_val); + return -1; + } + + do { + found = 0; + ptr = subject; + len = subject_len; + GET_TIME(start); + while (1) { + err_val = tre_regnexec(®ex, ptr, len, 1, match, 0); + if (err_val != 0) + break; + + // printf("match: %d %d\n", (ptr - subject) + match[0].rm_so, (ptr - subject) + match[0].rm_eo); + found++; + ptr += match[0].rm_eo; + len -= match[0].rm_eo; + } + GET_TIME(end); + time = TIME_DIFF_IN_MS(start, end, resolution); + if (!best_time || time < best_time) + best_time = time; + } while (--repeat > 0); + printResult("tre", best_time, found); + + tre_regfree(®ex); + + return best_time; +} diff --git a/src/version.h.in b/src/version.h.in new file mode 100644 index 0000000..59ccecf --- /dev/null +++ b/src/version.h.in @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +//! @file version.h +//! @brief definition of the semantic version + +#ifndef VERSION_H +#define VERSION_H + +/** + * major version + */ +#define MAJOR_VERSION @MAJOR_VERSION@ + +/** + * minor version + */ +#define MINOR_VERSION @MINOR_VERSION@ + +/** + * patch level + */ +#define PATCH_VERSION @PATCH_VERSION@ + +/** + * ctk version string + */ +#define VERSION_STRING "@MAJOR_VERSION@.@MINOR_VERSION@.@PATCH_VERSION@ @BUILD_DATE@" + +/** + * numerical representation of the ctk version + */ +#define VERSION_32BIT ((MAJOR_VERSION << 24) | (MINOR_VERSION << 16) | (PATCH_VERSION << 8) | 0) + +#endif // VERSION_H diff --git a/vendor/CMakeLists.txt b/vendor/CMakeLists.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0f19bb5 --- /dev/null +++ b/vendor/CMakeLists.txt @@ -0,0 +1,61 @@ +include(ExternalProject) + +# hyperscan +ExternalProject_Add(libhs + GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/01org/hyperscan.git + PREFIX ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} + SOURCE_DIR hyperscan + TMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/hyperscan-tmp + STAMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/hyperscan-stamp + BINARY_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/hyperscan-build + DOWNLOAD_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/hyperscan-down + CMAKE_ARGS -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/local +) + +# oniguruma +ExternalProject_Add(libonig + GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/kkos/oniguruma + PREFIX ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} + SOURCE_DIR oniguruma + TMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/oniguruma-tmp + STAMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/oniguruma-stamp + BINARY_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/oniguruma-build + DOWNLOAD_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/oniguruma-down + CMAKE_ARGS -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/local +) + +# re2 +ExternalProject_Add(libre2 + GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/google/re2.git + PREFIX ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} + SOURCE_DIR re2 + TMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/re2-tmp + STAMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/re2-stamp + BINARY_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/re2-build + DOWNLOAD_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/re2-down + CMAKE_ARGS -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/local +) + +# tre +ExternalProject_Add(libtre + GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/laurikari/tre.git + PREFIX ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} + SOURCE_DIR tre + TMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/tre-tmp + STAMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/tre-stamp + BINARY_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/tre-build + DOWNLOAD_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/tre-down + CONFIGURE_COMMAND cd ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/tre/ && ./utils/autogen.sh && cd ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/tre-build && ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/tre/configure --prefix=${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/local +) + +# pcre2 +ExternalProject_Add(libpcre2 + SVN_REPOSITORY svn://vcs.exim.org/pcre2/code/trunk + PREFIX ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} + SOURCE_DIR pcre2 + TMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/pcre2-tmp + STAMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/pcre2-stamp + BINARY_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/pcre2-build + DOWNLOAD_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/pcre2-down + CONFIGURE_COMMAND ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/pcre2/configure --prefix=${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/local --enable-jit --enable-unicode +) diff --git a/vendor/hyperscan b/vendor/hyperscan new file mode 160000 index 0000000..7aff6f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/vendor/hyperscan @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +Subproject commit 7aff6f6136e659f9dab48f2d383baa0fcb08bbc0 diff --git a/vendor/oniguruma b/vendor/oniguruma new file mode 160000 index 0000000..816bc78 --- /dev/null +++ b/vendor/oniguruma @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +Subproject commit 816bc782812f082525d02df364f068bb6349cb87 diff --git a/vendor/pcre2/.gitignore b/vendor/pcre2/.gitignore new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2fe211e --- /dev/null +++ b/vendor/pcre2/.gitignore @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +.libs/ +usr/ +*.lo +*.la +*.log +*.status diff --git a/vendor/re2 b/vendor/re2 new file mode 160000 index 0000000..ae9cb49 --- /dev/null +++ b/vendor/re2 @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +Subproject commit ae9cb49a2e2ba95de4f0c6ec5a8afd039996d2c7 diff --git a/vendor/tre b/vendor/tre new file mode 160000 index 0000000..6fb7206 --- /dev/null +++ b/vendor/tre @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +Subproject commit 6fb7206b935b35814c5078c20046dbe065435363 From 279d7fc84ecd2f9e653b8204b9689ca596405b67 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2017 20:04:45 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 02/17] Fix README links. --- README.md | 16 ++++++++-------- 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 972a1c8..05ccd59 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -1,17 +1,17 @@ # Regex Performance ## Introduction Regular expressions are commonly used in pattern search algorithms. -This tool is based on the work of John Maddock (See his own regex comparison [here|http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_41_0/libs/regex/doc/gcc-performance.html) -and the sljit project (See their regex comparision [here|http://sljit.sourceforge.net/regex_perf.html]). +This tool is based on the work of John Maddock (See his own regex comparison [here](http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_41_0/libs/regex/doc/gcc-performance.html)) +and the sljit project (See their regex comparision [here](http://sljit.sourceforge.net/regex_perf.html)). ## Supported engines The following regex engines are supported and covered by the tool: -- [Hyperscan|https://github.com/01org/hyperscan] -- [Oniguruma|https://github.com/kkos/oniguruma] -- [RE2|https://github.com/google/re2] -- [Tre|https://github.com/laurikari/tre] -- [PCRE2|http://www.pcre.oashrg] -- [Rust regex crate|https://doc.rust-lang.org/regex/regex/index.html] +- [Hyperscan](https://github.com/01org/hyperscan) +- [Oniguruma](https://github.com/kkos/oniguruma) +- [RE2](https://github.com/google/re2) +- [Tre](https://github.com/laurikari/tre) +- [PCRE2](http://www.pcre.oashrg) +- [Rust regex crate](https://doc.rust-lang.org/regex/regex/index.html) ## Building the tool The different engines have different requirements which are not described here. From 5b867713123b57c6a7a34c0db955acf3bb8553c1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2017 12:28:05 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 03/17] [Changed] implementation as noted in review. - [Added] travis CI config file --- .travis.yml | 25 ++++++ CMakeLists.txt | 2 +- README.md | 8 +- src/CMakeLists.txt | 11 ++- src/main.c | 175 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++------------ src/rust/CMakeLists.txt | 6 +- src/rust/include/rregex.h | 2 +- vendor/CMakeLists.txt | 2 +- 8 files changed, 166 insertions(+), 65 deletions(-) create mode 100644 .travis.yml diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aab7ebe --- /dev/null +++ b/.travis.yml @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +require: sudo + +addons: + apt: + sources: + - ubuntu-toolchain-r-test + packages: + - gcc-6 + - g++-6 + - cmake + - ragel + - python3 + - libboost-all-dev + - libpcap0.8-dev + - autoconf + - automake + - gettext + - libtool + +before_install: + - curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh + - cmake .. + +install: + - make diff --git a/CMakeLists.txt b/CMakeLists.txt index 6c3d621..4c15da9 100644 --- a/CMakeLists.txt +++ b/CMakeLists.txt @@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE "-O3") ## BUILD TYPE if(NOT CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE) - set(CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE "Debug" CACHE STRING "Choose the type of build, options are: Release Debug" FORCE) + set(CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE "Release" CACHE STRING "Choose the type of build, options are: Release Debug" FORCE) endif() set_property(CACHE CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE PROPERTY STRINGS "Release" "Debug") diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 05ccd59..2599e21 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -2,7 +2,9 @@ ## Introduction Regular expressions are commonly used in pattern search algorithms. This tool is based on the work of John Maddock (See his own regex comparison [here](http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_41_0/libs/regex/doc/gcc-performance.html)) -and the sljit project (See their regex comparision [here](http://sljit.sourceforge.net/regex_perf.html)). +and the sljit project (See their regex comparison [here](http://sljit.sourceforge.net/regex_perf.html)). + +## Requirements ## Supported engines The following regex engines are supported and covered by the tool: @@ -10,7 +12,7 @@ The following regex engines are supported and covered by the tool: - [Oniguruma](https://github.com/kkos/oniguruma) - [RE2](https://github.com/google/re2) - [Tre](https://github.com/laurikari/tre) -- [PCRE2](http://www.pcre.oashrg) +- [PCRE2](http://www.pcre.org) - [Rust regex crate](https://doc.rust-lang.org/regex/regex/index.html) ## Building the tool @@ -38,7 +40,7 @@ The test tool calls each engine with a defined set of different regular expressi The repository contains a ~16Mbyte large text file (3200.txt) which can be used for measuring. ```bash -./regex_perf -f ./3200.txt +./src/regex_perf -f ./3200.txt ``` By default, the tool repeats each test 5 times and prints the best time of each test. diff --git a/src/CMakeLists.txt b/src/CMakeLists.txt index 4331c58..769a6e7 100644 --- a/src/CMakeLists.txt +++ b/src/CMakeLists.txt @@ -18,10 +18,13 @@ include_directories( ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/rust/include ) -link_directories( - ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/vendor/local/lib - ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/rregex/release -) +link_directories(${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/vendor/local/lib) + +if(CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE MATCHES "^Release") + link_directories(${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/rregex/release) +else() + link_directories(${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/rregex/debug) +endif() add_executable(regex_perf ${REGEX_SOURCES}) diff --git a/src/main.c b/src/main.c index b7d2b0d..cd2b711 100644 --- a/src/main.c +++ b/src/main.c @@ -9,30 +9,52 @@ static char* data = NULL; static int data_len = 0; -struct regex_imp { - char * name; +struct result { int score; int time; - int inc_time; +}; + +struct engines { + char * name; int (*find_all)(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat); }; -static struct regex_imp regex [] = { - {.name = "pcre", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = pcre2_std_find_all}, - {.name = "pcre-dfa", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = pcre2_dfa_find_all}, - {.name = "pcre-jit", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = pcre2_jit_find_all}, - {.name = "re2", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = re2_find_all}, - {.name = "onig", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = onig_find_all}, - {.name = "tre", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = tre_find_all}, - {.name = "hscan", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = hs_find_all}, - {.name = "rust_regex", .score = 0, .time = -1, .inc_time = 0, .find_all = rust_find_all}, +static struct engines engines [] = { + {.name = "pcre", .find_all = pcre2_std_find_all}, + {.name = "pcre-dfa", .find_all = pcre2_dfa_find_all}, + {.name = "pcre-jit", .find_all = pcre2_jit_find_all}, + {.name = "re2", .find_all = re2_find_all}, + {.name = "onig", .find_all = onig_find_all}, + {.name = "tre", .find_all = tre_find_all}, + {.name = "hscan", .find_all = hs_find_all}, + {.name = "rust_regex", .find_all = rust_find_all}, +}; + +static char * regex [] = { + "Twain", + "(?i)Twain", + "[a-z]shing", + "Huck[a-zA-Z]+|Saw[a-zA-Z]+", + "\\b\\w+nn\\b", + "[a-q][^u-z]{13}x", + "Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn", + "(?i)Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn", + ".{0,2}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)", + ".{2,4}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)", + "Tom.{10,25}river|river.{10,25}Tom", + "[a-zA-Z]+ing", + "\\s[a-zA-Z]{0,12}ing\\s", + "([A-Za-z]awyer|[A-Za-z]inn)\\s", + "[\"'][^\"']{0,30}[?!\\.][\"']", + "\u221E|\u2713", + "\\p{Sm}" // any mathematical symbol }; void load(char const * file_name) { int i; - FILE* f; + FILE * f; f = fopen(file_name, "rb"); if (!f) { fprintf(stderr, "Cannot open '%s'!\n", file_name); @@ -50,46 +72,57 @@ void load(char const * file_name) return; } data[data_len] = '\0'; - fread(data, data_len, 1, f); + + int size = fread(data, data_len, 1, f); + if (size == 0) { + fprintf(stderr, "Reading file failed!\n"); + } fclose(f); - for (i = 0; i < data_len; ++i) - if (data[i] == '\r') + for (i = 0; i < data_len; ++i) { + if (data[i] == '\r') { data[i] = '\n'; + } + } fprintf(stdout, "'%s' loaded. (Length: %d bytes)\n", file_name, data_len); } -void find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat) +void find_all(char* pattern, char* subject, int subject_len, int repeat, struct result * engine_results) { - int iter, top; + int iter; + fprintf(stdout, "-----------------\nRegex: '%s'\n", pattern); - for (iter = 0; iter < sizeof(regex)/sizeof(regex[0]); iter++) { - int ret = regex[iter].find_all(pattern, subject, subject_len, repeat); + + for (iter = 0; iter < sizeof(engines)/sizeof(engines[0]); iter++) { + int ret = engines[iter].find_all(pattern, subject, subject_len, repeat); if (ret != -1) { - regex[iter].time = ret; - regex[iter].inc_time += ret; + engine_results[iter].time = ret; + } else { + engine_results[iter].time = 0; } } int score_points = 5; - for (top = 0; top < score_points; top++) { - int best = -1; - - for (iter = 0; iter < sizeof(regex)/sizeof(regex[0]); iter++) { - if (regex[iter].time != -1 && (best == -1 || best > regex[iter].time)) { - best = regex[iter].time; + for (int top = 0; top < score_points; top++) { + int best = 0; + + for (iter = 0; iter < sizeof(engines)/sizeof(engines[0]); iter++) { + if (engine_results[iter].time > 0 && + engine_results[iter].score == 0 && + (best == 0 || best > engine_results[iter].time)) { + best = engine_results[iter].time; } } - for (iter = 0; iter < sizeof(regex)/sizeof(regex[0]); iter++) { - if (regex[iter].time != -1 && best == regex[iter].time) { - regex[iter].score += score_points; - regex[iter].time = -1; + for (iter = 0; iter < sizeof(engines)/sizeof(engines[0]); iter++) { + if (engine_results[iter].time > 0 && best == engine_results[iter].time) { + engine_results[iter].score = score_points; } } score_points--; } + } void printResult(char * name, int time, int found) @@ -101,10 +134,11 @@ void printResult(char * name, int time, int found) int main(int argc, char **argv) { char const * file = NULL; + char * out_file = NULL; int repeat = 5; int c = 0; - while ((c = getopt(argc, argv, "nhvf:")) != -1) { + while ((c = getopt(argc, argv, "n:hvf:o:")) != -1) { switch (c) { case 'f': file = optarg; @@ -112,6 +146,9 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv) case 'n': repeat = atoi(optarg); break; + case 'o': + out_file = optarg; + break; case 'v': printf("%s\n", VERSION_STRING); exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); @@ -120,6 +157,7 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv) printf("Options:\n"); printf(" -f\tInput file.\n"); printf(" -n\tSet number of repetitions. Default: 5\n"); + printf(" -o\tWrite measured data into CSV file.\n"); printf(" -v\tGet the application version and build date.\n"); printf(" -h\tPrint this help message\n\n"); exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); @@ -136,28 +174,57 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv) exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } - find_all("Twain", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all("(?i)Twain", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all("[a-z]shing", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all("Huck[a-zA-Z]+|Saw[a-zA-Z]+", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all("\\b\\w+nn\\b", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all("[a-q][^u-z]{13}x", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all("Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all("(?i)Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all(".{0,2}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all(".{2,4}(Tom|Sawyer|Huckleberry|Finn)", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all("Tom.{10,25}river|river.{10,25}Tom", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all("[a-zA-Z]+ing", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all("\\s[a-zA-Z]{0,12}ing\\s", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all("([A-Za-z]awyer|[A-Za-z]inn)\\s", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all("[\"'][^\"']{0,30}[?!\\.][\"']", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all("\u221E|\u2713", data, data_len, repeat); - find_all("\\p{Sm}", data, data_len, repeat); + struct result results[sizeof(regex)/sizeof(regex[0])][sizeof(engines)/sizeof(engines[0])] = {0}; + struct result engine_results[sizeof(engines)/sizeof(engines[0])] = {0}; - int iter; - fprintf(stdout, "-----------------\nScores:\n"); - for (iter = 0; iter < sizeof(regex)/sizeof(regex[0]); iter++) { - fprintf(stdout, "%10s: %6u points, %6u ms\n", regex[iter].name, regex[iter].score, regex[iter].inc_time); + for (int iter = 0; iter < sizeof(regex)/sizeof(regex[0]); iter++) { + find_all(regex[iter], data, data_len, repeat, results[iter]); + + for (int iiter = 0; iiter < sizeof(engines)/sizeof(engines[0]); iiter++) { + engine_results[iiter].time += results[iter][iiter].time; + engine_results[iiter].score += results[iter][iiter].score; + } + } + + fprintf(stdout, "-----------------\nTotal Results:\n"); + for (int iter = 0; iter < sizeof(engines)/sizeof(engines[0]); iter++) { + fprintf(stdout, "[%10s] time: %6u ms, score: %6u points,\n", engines[iter].name, engine_results[iter].time, engine_results[iter].score); + } + + if (out_file != NULL) { + int iter, iiter; + + FILE * f; + f = fopen(out_file, "w"); + if (!f) { + fprintf(stderr, "Cannot open '%s'!\n", out_file); + exit(EXIT_FAILURE); + } + + /* write table header*/ + fprintf(f, "regex;"); + for (iter = 0; iter < sizeof(engines)/sizeof(engines[0]); iter++) { + fprintf(f, "%s [ms];", engines[iter].name); + } + for (iter = 0; iter < sizeof(engines)/sizeof(engines[0]); iter++) { + fprintf(f, "%s [sp];", engines[iter].name); + } + fprintf(f, "\n"); + + /* write data */ + for (iter = 0; iter < sizeof(regex)/sizeof(regex[0]); iter++) { + fprintf(f, "%s;", regex[iter]); + + for (iiter = 0; iiter < sizeof(engines)/sizeof(engines[0]); iiter++) { + fprintf(f, "%d;", results[iter][iiter].time); + } + for (iiter = 0; iiter < sizeof(engines)/sizeof(engines[0]); iiter++) { + fprintf(f, "%d;", results[iter][iiter].score); + } + fprintf(f, "\n"); + } + + fclose(f); } free(data); diff --git a/src/rust/CMakeLists.txt b/src/rust/CMakeLists.txt index 6e788f5..6e463f9 100644 --- a/src/rust/CMakeLists.txt +++ b/src/rust/CMakeLists.txt @@ -11,8 +11,12 @@ endif() configure_file(${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/.cargo/config.in ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/.cargo/config) +if(CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE MATCHES "^Release") + set(RUST_CARGO_RELEASE_OPT "--release") +endif() + add_custom_target(librregex ALL # create rust regex library - COMMAND ${RUST_CARGO} build --release + COMMAND ${RUST_CARGO} build ${RUST_CARGO_RELEASE_OPT} WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} ) diff --git a/src/rust/include/rregex.h b/src/rust/include/rregex.h index f791802..13043ca 100644 --- a/src/rust/include/rregex.h +++ b/src/rust/include/rregex.h @@ -3,5 +3,5 @@ struct Regex; extern struct Regex const * regex_new(char * const regex); -extern uint32_t regex_matches(struct Regex const * const exp, uint8_t * const str, uint64_t str_len); +extern uint64_t regex_matches(struct Regex const * const exp, uint8_t * const str, uint64_t str_len); extern void regex_free(struct Regex const * const exp); diff --git a/vendor/CMakeLists.txt b/vendor/CMakeLists.txt index 0f19bb5..755494c 100644 --- a/vendor/CMakeLists.txt +++ b/vendor/CMakeLists.txt @@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ ExternalProject_Add(libtre # pcre2 ExternalProject_Add(libpcre2 - SVN_REPOSITORY svn://vcs.exim.org/pcre2/code/trunk + URL https://ftp.pcre.org/pub/pcre/pcre2-10.23.tar.gz PREFIX ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} SOURCE_DIR pcre2 TMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/pcre2-tmp From fab7fef4b3797fa39d2d719f45aa62612d29f5b0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2017 14:17:26 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 04/17] Fix travis config file. --- .travis.yml | 5 ++++- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml index aab7ebe..b5a0475 100644 --- a/.travis.yml +++ b/.travis.yml @@ -1,5 +1,9 @@ require: sudo +language: rust +rust: + - stable + addons: apt: sources: @@ -18,7 +22,6 @@ addons: - libtool before_install: - - curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh - cmake .. install: From 028bc0328526e6984f3911185c24bc58d9771d23 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2017 14:24:15 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 05/17] Fixed trafic CI config file. --- .travis.yml | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml index b5a0475..da3c62b 100644 --- a/.travis.yml +++ b/.travis.yml @@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ addons: - libtool before_install: - - cmake .. + - mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. install: - make From b5539f00a83c860ad5171fe09164bf07785ebde8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2017 19:23:15 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 06/17] Fixed travis CI config file. --- .travis.yml | 4 +++- CMakeLists.txt | 2 +- 2 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml index da3c62b..5afb390 100644 --- a/.travis.yml +++ b/.travis.yml @@ -1,4 +1,5 @@ -require: sudo +dist: trusty +sudo: required language: rust rust: @@ -8,6 +9,7 @@ addons: apt: sources: - ubuntu-toolchain-r-test + - george-edison55-cmake-3.x packages: - gcc-6 - g++-6 diff --git a/CMakeLists.txt b/CMakeLists.txt index 4c15da9..60915a3 100644 --- a/CMakeLists.txt +++ b/CMakeLists.txt @@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ # Regex Performance # ###################### -cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.6) +cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.0) project(RegexPeformance C CXX) From 266960060623f1e32ffcdd094dffe13503277ae1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2017 20:00:33 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 07/17] Fixed travis CI config file. --- .travis.yml | 5 +---- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml index 5afb390..bed35d1 100644 --- a/.travis.yml +++ b/.travis.yml @@ -9,11 +9,8 @@ addons: apt: sources: - ubuntu-toolchain-r-test - - george-edison55-cmake-3.x + - boost-latest packages: - - gcc-6 - - g++-6 - - cmake - ragel - python3 - libboost-all-dev From 1fd38812198b736315e836bd448215a0960d545a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2017 20:35:42 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 08/17] Fixed travis CI config file. --- .travis.yml | 10 ++++++++-- 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml index bed35d1..7cb874c 100644 --- a/.travis.yml +++ b/.travis.yml @@ -9,11 +9,11 @@ addons: apt: sources: - ubuntu-toolchain-r-test - - boost-latest packages: + - gcc-6 + - g++-6 - ragel - python3 - - libboost-all-dev - libpcap0.8-dev - autoconf - automake @@ -21,6 +21,12 @@ addons: - libtool before_install: + - sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kzemek/boost + - sudo add-apt-repository ppa:george-edison55/cmake-3.x + - sudo apt-get update + - sudo apt-get install libboost1.58-dev cmake + - sudo alternatives --set gcc /usr/bin/gcc-6 + - sudo alternatives --set g++ /usr/bin/g++-6 - mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. install: From 457aaa5a5cde4c77c0d291f454554a8ca77dc1ed Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2017 20:40:59 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 09/17] Fixed travis CI config file. --- .travis.yml | 8 ++++---- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml index 7cb874c..fe53282 100644 --- a/.travis.yml +++ b/.travis.yml @@ -21,10 +21,10 @@ addons: - libtool before_install: - - sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kzemek/boost - - sudo add-apt-repository ppa:george-edison55/cmake-3.x - - sudo apt-get update - - sudo apt-get install libboost1.58-dev cmake + - sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kzemek/boost -y + - sudo add-apt-repository ppa:george-edison55/cmake-3.x -y + - sudo apt-get update -q + - sudo apt-get install libboost1.58-dev cmake -y - sudo alternatives --set gcc /usr/bin/gcc-6 - sudo alternatives --set g++ /usr/bin/g++-6 - mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. From 6d5963181e854df247dd1cd99275a6a65341c1e1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2017 20:45:40 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 10/17] Fixed travis CI config file. --- .travis.yml | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml index fe53282..9fb9d02 100644 --- a/.travis.yml +++ b/.travis.yml @@ -25,8 +25,8 @@ before_install: - sudo add-apt-repository ppa:george-edison55/cmake-3.x -y - sudo apt-get update -q - sudo apt-get install libboost1.58-dev cmake -y - - sudo alternatives --set gcc /usr/bin/gcc-6 - - sudo alternatives --set g++ /usr/bin/g++-6 + - sudo update-alternatives --set gcc /usr/bin/gcc-6 + - sudo update-alternatives --set g++ /usr/bin/g++-6 - mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. install: From c4e622c0ba5392f2eb59bb17e55ec665e94c02df Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 09:07:29 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 11/17] [Fixed] travis ci config file. --- .travis.yml | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml index 9fb9d02..07c8955 100644 --- a/.travis.yml +++ b/.travis.yml @@ -25,6 +25,7 @@ before_install: - sudo add-apt-repository ppa:george-edison55/cmake-3.x -y - sudo apt-get update -q - sudo apt-get install libboost1.58-dev cmake -y + - sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-6 1 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-6 - sudo update-alternatives --set gcc /usr/bin/gcc-6 - sudo update-alternatives --set g++ /usr/bin/g++-6 - mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. From 33dc98a8125eb50ad2082e8d711b6c54548c330e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 09:13:39 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 12/17] Further fix. --- .travis.yml | 1 - 1 file changed, 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml index 07c8955..50df4d9 100644 --- a/.travis.yml +++ b/.travis.yml @@ -27,7 +27,6 @@ before_install: - sudo apt-get install libboost1.58-dev cmake -y - sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-6 1 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-6 - sudo update-alternatives --set gcc /usr/bin/gcc-6 - - sudo update-alternatives --set g++ /usr/bin/g++-6 - mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. install: From 96e115fd1bf528399f168b82f85455f9d435e32e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 09:46:21 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 13/17] [Fixed] source paths of external projects. --- vendor/CMakeLists.txt | 10 +++++----- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-) diff --git a/vendor/CMakeLists.txt b/vendor/CMakeLists.txt index 755494c..c05ccfb 100644 --- a/vendor/CMakeLists.txt +++ b/vendor/CMakeLists.txt @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ include(ExternalProject) ExternalProject_Add(libhs GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/01org/hyperscan.git PREFIX ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} - SOURCE_DIR hyperscan + SOURCE_DIR ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/hyperscan TMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/hyperscan-tmp STAMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/hyperscan-stamp BINARY_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/hyperscan-build @@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ ExternalProject_Add(libhs ExternalProject_Add(libonig GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/kkos/oniguruma PREFIX ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} - SOURCE_DIR oniguruma + SOURCE_DIR ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/oniguruma TMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/oniguruma-tmp STAMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/oniguruma-stamp BINARY_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/oniguruma-build @@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ ExternalProject_Add(libonig ExternalProject_Add(libre2 GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/google/re2.git PREFIX ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} - SOURCE_DIR re2 + SOURCE_DIR ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/re2 TMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/re2-tmp STAMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/re2-stamp BINARY_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/re2-build @@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ ExternalProject_Add(libre2 ExternalProject_Add(libtre GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/laurikari/tre.git PREFIX ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} - SOURCE_DIR tre + SOURCE_DIR ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/tre TMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/tre-tmp STAMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/tre-stamp BINARY_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/tre-build @@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ ExternalProject_Add(libtre ExternalProject_Add(libpcre2 URL https://ftp.pcre.org/pub/pcre/pcre2-10.23.tar.gz PREFIX ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} - SOURCE_DIR pcre2 + SOURCE_DIR ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/pcre2 TMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/pcre2-tmp STAMP_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/pcre2-stamp BINARY_DIR ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/pcre2-build From af5d111f9e08eb707c5b7391f287c2115b96555f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 10:08:28 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 14/17] [Added] autopoint to list of requirements. --- .travis.yml | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml index 50df4d9..ea28224 100644 --- a/.travis.yml +++ b/.travis.yml @@ -17,6 +17,7 @@ addons: - libpcap0.8-dev - autoconf - automake + - autopoint - gettext - libtool From a422461474ad255e9e38ddf127ba9d9ca0eff1e8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 10:42:32 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 15/17] [Fixed] travis ci config file. --- .travis.yml | 6 ++++-- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml index ea28224..6f43221 100644 --- a/.travis.yml +++ b/.travis.yml @@ -21,14 +21,16 @@ addons: - gettext - libtool -before_install: +install: - sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kzemek/boost -y - sudo add-apt-repository ppa:george-edison55/cmake-3.x -y - sudo apt-get update -q - sudo apt-get install libboost1.58-dev cmake -y - sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-6 1 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-6 - sudo update-alternatives --set gcc /usr/bin/gcc-6 + +before_script: - mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. -install: +script: - make From 5dd56fdb4661919f522bc4040b7418ff4d02cd70 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 11:34:05 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 16/17] [Added] requirements. --- README.md | 21 +++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 21 insertions(+) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 2599e21..9841422 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -5,6 +5,21 @@ This tool is based on the work of John Maddock (See his own regex comparison [he and the sljit project (See their regex comparison [here](http://sljit.sourceforge.net/regex_perf.html)). ## Requirements +| dependency | version | +|------------|----------| +| Cmake | >=3.0 | +| Ragel | 6.9 | +| Python | >=3.0 | +| Boost | >=1.57 | +| Pcap | >=0.8 | +| Autoconf | 2.69 (*) | +| Automake | 1.15 (*) | +| Autopoint | 0.19.7 (*)| +| Gettext | 0.19.7 (*)| +| Libtool | 2.4.6 (*)| +| Git | 2.11.0 (*)| + +(*) Tested with named version only. Older versions may work too. ## Supported engines The following regex engines are supported and covered by the tool: @@ -48,3 +63,9 @@ The overall time to process each regular expression is measured and accounted. The scoring algorithhm distributes the fastest engine 5 points, the second fastest 4 points and so on. The score points help to limit the impact of a slow regular expression eninge test in comparision to the absolut time value. + +You can specify a file to write the test results per expression and engine: +```bash +./src/regex_perf -f ./3200.txt -o ./results.csv +``` +The test tool writes the results in a csv-compatible format. From 662f09ceacd10ef850b00d08123cc759511ef23e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Daniel Schmidt Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 11:40:24 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 17/17] [Added] build status. --- README.md | 2 ++ 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 9841422..60ad8a1 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -1,4 +1,6 @@ # Regex Performance +[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/rust-leipzig/regex-performance.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/rust-leipzig/regex-performance) + ## Introduction Regular expressions are commonly used in pattern search algorithms. This tool is based on the work of John Maddock (See his own regex comparison [here](http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_41_0/libs/regex/doc/gcc-performance.html))